The mortgage business is a cyclical business. We’ve seen the seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine, no doubt about that. But there are also seasons within any particular mortgage year.
Since new home sales have been devastated, the building season has not been as important as it was during the boom years. The building season varies enormously. It is all year round in some markets, like Las Vegas. Barrow, Alaska, on the other hand, has a six-week-long summer window of opportunity to build. But generally it coincides with spring and summer. And it creates demand for mortgages on those units in cycles.
Another mortgage season will soon be upon us, and that is the meeting season. This is the annual rite of passage where mortgage executives leave home, fly to remote locations, and meet with their own kind to socialize and catch up on the news of the day.
It is impossible to list all the mortgage meetings that will happen each fall, but maybe my own schedule will give some idea of the hectic rush of conferences.
Let’s start with our own
This is our second live Reg Forum, and it will feature sessions on a wide variety of topics. The Consumer Financial Protection Board, of course, will be a big topic of discussion—and we’re also hoping to have at least one of the big guns at CFPB come and address the show. There will also be talk on the upcoming election, Fair Lending enforcement, audits and state licensing laws.
Our parent, SourceMedia, plans to follow this up with a webinar on compliance Sept. 27, our third such this year.
The New England Regional Mortgage Bankers Conference is set for late September in Newport, R.I. This is usually a lively show, featuring training updates, Federal Housing Administration news, and reports from executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And of course there is news about regional markets. New England resisted the housing recession longer than most but eventually followed, and now shows signs of exiting.
In October I plan to attend the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Bubble series (a very lively colloquium held every six months) and the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual meeting, to be held for the second straight year in Chicago. President Bill Clinton is set to address the MBA annual and he’s always good company.
On Nov. 28-30, the Mortgage Technology Conference will be held in Miami Beach, Fla. It will be our first time back to the Beach in several years. Several of our best MTCs were held on Miami Beach in previous years, and again the plan is to present the latest need-to-know items as pertains to mortgage automation.
Make it a point to catch up with me at one or more of these meetings if you’re going. It’s the season.
