Laurie Souza really misses the mortgage industry. But she’s got to admit, her new gig has its perks.

And she’s not alone.

The state is riddled with former mortgage professionals like Souza: Bill Pasquarelli drives a truck for UPS. Barbara Hajjar is a secretary at a hospital. Craig Good runs a fruit and flower stand by the Old South Meeting House in Boston. All once owned their own mortgage businesses.

Souza, a former wholesale mortgage representative, left her job after the real estate bubble imploded. But she’s now riding a completely new bubble, as a kind of Mary Kay of cash-for-gold. Her new business, Boston-based Gold to Green Parties, organizes home parties where groups of women gather at a friend’s house, bring their old gold jewelry and exchange it for piles of cash.

“We’re growing like crazy,” Souza said. “It’s fun, no stress, everybody’s making money.”

Still, she didn’t want to leave the wholesale mortgage business, and she hopes it makes a comeback. But with so many brokers out of business, she had no contacts to sell her loans.

The mortgage industry implosion crushed thousands of businesses outright. But subsequent regulations and a related skyrocketing cost of business have kept the wrecking ball swinging, as brokers leave the business or scale back drastically.

In late 2007, Massachusetts’ Division of Banks had 1,511 licensed mortgage brokers on the books. In December 2008, it was down to 1,006. As of Dec. 1, 2009, about 600 brokers were licensed here.

Souza said she has former colleagues who went into insurance or financial advising; she has friends who are now patching together a living as shopgirls. Lots work for her part-time at Gold to Green.

“Some loan officers have gone to banks,” she said. “Like somebody you know who owned his own company for 30 years is now a loan officer at Wells Fargo. They’ve closed businesses – they’ve had to. And it’s really sad.”

Frustration & Disillusionment

Official DOB statistics through Jan. 1 have yet to be released, but there will be at least one less than the Dec. 1 figure of 600.

Jesse Mason, formerly of Mason Mortgage, held on through the mortgage industry meltdown, but is washing his hands of it after only a couple years. He said he planned to close Jan. 1.

The cost of staying in business is four times what it was when he got his license two years ago, Mason said. Higher insurance fees, higher capital level requirements, extra licensing fees – the costs have become overwhelming.

But it’s not just the cost, it’s the mortgage process. Mason and other mortgage brokers are scrambling to meet new regulations such as the Home Valuation Code of Conduct, RESPA and others, and they say many of those changes brought nothing but ill. New requirements are supposed to protect consumers; instead, the brokers say, they make the process costlier and far more frustrating, while still killing appraisers and brokers’ ability to survive.

Mason said he couldn’t instill any confidence in his customers anymore. The mortgage process, from application to closing, has become more precarious thanks to new obstacles that hamstring brokers.

It hurts his ability to get referrals, which is the bread and butter of the business.

“It’s like asking [customers,] ‘Hey, these last two months of hell, you want to tell your friends or family to go through this with me?’” he said.

Mason, like many former mortgage brokers, is disillusioned and not quite sure where he’ll end up. Some, like Souza, struggled for awhile; Souza left the business two years ago, and says she was repeatedly rejected for mortgage-related jobs in banks. According to them, she said, all mortgage brokers and professionals had a black mark against them.

Barbara Hajjar, who spent decades in the finance industry, is more nostalgic for her former job. She closed up her brokerage, Worcester-based Mortgage Concepts, in 2007. Now she’s a secretary at UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, but gets most of her income working for Souza’s Gold to Green Parties.

Back To Basics

Craig Good, formerly of Norwood-based Mortgage Results, was aware of the same scorn for people in his industry after he shut it down in May 2008. But now, he’s upbeat about his new job.

“I’ve turned into a small-time fruit and flower peddler in downtown Boston,” he said. “My stand is awesome.”

The pay is about a third of what his mortgage business was, and the work is tough. Good now has to unload trucks and deal with the elements, although his stand is strongly sheltered and moderately heated. But the simplicity of the work appeals to him.

In his brokerage, “I was busy running around, being a big shot,” but at the fruit stand, the work has a refreshing, back-to-basics quality. Somebody gets a bad apple, he says, he just gives them a new one. Brokering mortgages, meanwhile, involves convoluted deal-making and a different frame of mind.

The stand, Lambert’s Marketplace, is part of his family business. He reconnected with his roots when it became clear the housing market was contracting.

Bill Pasquarelli, a former loan officer for Beverly-based Reliant Mortgage, also returned to a more hands-on job. Unloading UPS trucks for a living has its advantages – Pasquarelli lost 45 pounds in his first month of work, for example.

The mortgage industry had its perks, including a much heftier paycheck when the market was good. But the good times could easily slip away.

“When it was good, it was good,” Pasquarelli recalled. “When it was bad, it was real bad.”

Hajjar is hoping the mortgage industry will come back and that she can at least become a loan officer, but she doubts that will happen anytime soon. Even if she does go back into the business, she doesn’t expect she’ll be able to open her own shop again.

“It won’t be what it was.”