Explaining Broker Job Losses

The mortgage job picture was not awful in June despite slow application growth. In total, the industry shed 2,400 full-time employees – 1,800 of which were loan brokers. (For the full story visit: www.nationalmortgagenews.com. Also, the mortgage numbers lag the national totals by one month.) Brian Benjamin of Two River Mortgage in Northern New Jersey doesn't quite believe the figures reported by the Quarterly Data Report (a National Mortgage News subscription-only publication) which say that in 1Q brokers accounted for just 7% of all loan production. I've explained that our figures are based on what 40 still very active wholesalers have been telling us. But perhaps the brokerage segment is in better shape than some of us may think. It may be that brokers are not necessarily losing their jobs but are morphing into LOs at depositories and nonbank originators. Benjamin assures me that he still has plenty of wholesalers sending him tons of loan menus each day. I believe him. Over the past six months NMN has reported on several new entrants into the wholesale channel. Meanwhile, in a few weeks, the QDR will publish its 2Q production analysis. Just maybe we will see an uptick in the broker share. To subscribe to the QDR send an email to: Deartra.Todd@SourceMedia.com…