Toward the end of the film The Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins’ character Andy Dufresne quietly reminds Morgan Freeman’s jaded, burned-out Red that “hope is a good thing.”
Judging by the past few weeks, we can’t help but agree.
Just a few months ago, we and essentially everyone else, were sadly but dutifully reporting on what we saw as the seeming death of the mortgage industry as we knew it. The region’s mortgage banking trade associations were all in desperate shape.
Conventions that once drew thousands were struggling to draw even a few hundred. An already lackluster (at best) public attitude toward the mortgage industry was further crushed under the boot heel of a cruel, and getting crueler, economy.
As a result, the ranks of registered mortgage lenders in Massachusetts alone were cut in half in two short years, from more than 500 in 2007 to just 258 as of Dec. 1. Mortgage brokers fared even worse – 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.
The obituary, it seemed, was all but written for New England’s once-thriving mortgage industry.
But it seems we forgot that it’s darkest just before the dawn, and in a few short weeks, our attitude has changed from grimly pessimistic to cautiously hopeful.
Last year, our parent company, The Warren Group, inked a modest deal with the Connecticut Mortgage Bankers Association to stage their annual “Mortgage Expo in the Sun” with them. It was a show that played, like many others, to diminished attendance less than a year ago.
We and our partners had modest expectations – around 800 attendees, a few dozen exhibitors and participating companies. We understood the gravity of the mortgage industry’s plight, the tightness of funds and the overall pessimism.
Our expectations were grounded in reality, but we secretly hoped for much more. As it turns out, our hopes were more realistic than even our wildest expectations.
We’ve stopped guessing as to how many attendees will show up at this week’s Expo In The Sun. In the vicinity of 1,500 is safe. What started out as roughly 250 participating companies has ballooned to 472, and counting. With little more than a few print advertisements, a well-placed email campaign and word of mouth, our modest (but hopeful) show has turned into the second largest mortgage industry event in the nation.
In short, it appears we aren’t the only ones hoping for a change in direction.
Now, our intent in pointing out these numbers is not to self-promote, or gloat. If our own reporting did not back up what we now see as a resurgence of hope and strength in the industry, we wouldn’t be writing this at all.
But the numbers indicate that some are doing exceptionally well after months of turmoil. Winthrop’s MSA Mortgage saw an 84 percent increase in total loan activity through Dec. 1 of last year compared to 2008. Needham-based Greenpark Mortgage was up 83 percent. First Eastern Mortgage Corp., a subsidiary of Boston’s First Federal Savings Bank, was up a whopping 147 percent.
It seems a handful of well-managed, smart companies have emerged from the darkness and are filling the void left by now-defunct rivals with a stronger, more ethical and more able base of mortgage professionals, eager to prove that reports of their own demise have been drastically premature and overblown.
These companies, and hundreds more like them, are hopeful. Hopeful for a future that needs them and more like them. Hopeful that their own prosperity will lead to, and come from, the prosperity of their neighbors. Hopeful that months of negative growth are giving way to a real, and sustainable, recovery.
And that hope, like Andy said, is a good thing.
