Lenders Facing LO Recruitment Problems?

With residential production falling sharply the past few years, it might seem as though loan officer recruitment would be the last thing on the mind of mortgage bankers. But surprisingly, one of lenders' biggest challenges these days is finding a few good men and women to join the sales force. The number of mortgage jobs has fallen by about half, from a peak of just over 500,000 in February 2006, to about 248,000 in April. And fundings are expected to drop by more than a third from last year's volume, to about $1.2 trillion this year. But with so many players having quit the business, opportunity exists for those that are left to pick up market share. A number of lenders say they would like to hire loan officers-if only they could find them. "The industry is shrinking at a pace faster than the loan volume is shrinking," said William Giambrone, chief executive of Platinum Home Mortgage Corp., Rolling Meadows, Ill. "If the participants are going away faster than the loan volume is going away," it creates opportunity, he said. Jesse Gnazzo, an assistant vice president and area sales manager at McCue Mortgage, in New Britain, Conn., said recruitment has always been a challenge but that the difficulties are different today than during the housing boom. A couple of years ago, he said, the risk was that you could lure somebody with a huge signing bonus but then the recruit would not produce enough loan volume. Today, the problem is an aging sales force, he said. Gnazzo and other lenders said that they are having difficulty recruiting experienced loan officers because such professionals are more cautious these days about switching jobs and worried about the potential instability at some companies.