The final count won’t be in until later this week, but attendance at the 20th annual New England Mortgage Banking Conference appears to be down about a third from its peak in 2005.
Around 1,600 people had pre-registered for last week’s event in Providence, R.I., which is pretty typical, according to Kevin M. Cuff, executive director of the Massachusetts Mortgage Bankers Association. But he added that the number of walk-ins, around 500 through Thursday – the second of the three-day event – is down from prior years. That would put total attendance around 2,100, down from the record-high 3,100 in 2005, Cuff said.
“If you’re in the industry, you really ought to be here,” he said. Some people may have decided against coming not because of a recent cut – not in jobs, but because in the target for the federal funds rate, he noted.
“The Fed’s cut on Tuesday may have helped people looking for business,” Cuff said. “The effects of it are real. But it is also perceptual. People are looking for something positive, and this is it.”
The Federal Reserve cut the target rate by 50 basis points to 4.75 percent, which is the first time the Fed has cut the overnight rate since June 25, 2003.
‘A Unique Value Position’
The number of vendors, which was 190 last year, was down to 142 this year, Cuff said. This year’s event, however, had a component not seen last year: a job fair, with three dozen companies participating.
“I am tickled by the support we had for the job fair, particularly at this time,” Cuff said.
The job fair component was quickly put together within the last month, in response to mounting layoffs in the industry. But some of the vendors seemed surprised by the low number of job seekers at the event.
“I don’t think there was enough time to advertise this to the unemployed,” said Debbie Moore, senior vice president of the wholesale division at Florida Capital Bank Mortgage, of Jacksonville.
Lisa Donlan Arthur, a regional sales recruiter in Hyannis for First Horizon Home Loan Corp., estimated fewer than 100 job seekers attended the fair.
Cuff, however, said he saw steady activity at the job fair. “The reality is,” he added, “the job fair is going on in all different corners of Providence.”
Shelton, Conn.-based Connecticut Home Mortgage, like other vendors participating in the job fair, was searching primarily for originators. Joshua R. Hollander, a general manager overseeing the company’s sales team, said an affiliation with Prudential Connecticut Realty is helping Connecticut Home Mortgage grow, even as other companies are shedding employees.
“We do twice the national average for in-house mortgage companies,” Hollander said. In leveraging the association with Prudential, “I think we have a unique value position,” he said. “The fact that they’re still growing gives us the opportunity to grow.”
Brian Koss, managing partner at Mortgage Network in Danvers, was also at the job fair looking to hire 100 percent commission-based sales staff. But a lot of the people looking for jobs these days are managers and wholesale executives, he said.
Moore has seen the same thing.
“A lot of middle management people” are looking for jobs, Moore said. Employers are reluctant to hire them, she suggested, because they are overqualified for originator jobs. Those people, unfortunately, “have worked themselves right out of a job,” she said.
