Market Updates 2.0

Do any of you remember that phone number you used to call to get market information. First you had to call a phone number, then key in a code for the bond market update? Then listen to a 30 second add form one of your competitors before getting the report? This is how the news of the day traveled in the early 90’s. Then, the coolest service ever came along. Some guy would take that same information, type it up, and send it off to your pager (yes, I said pager) throughout the day. What I liked most about the pages is that they had to fit into the very limited amount of bandwidth that a text pager would allow. No room for fluff, just cut to the chase.

Fast forward to 2000. Borrowers were becoming increasingly savvy about floating and locking in rates. They wanted that same information that you used to call that rates line for. While any Loan officer that’s worth their weight in salt should be able to explain what’s going on in the market on any given day, most did not posses the technical skills to mass distribute that information to their clients. I was working at Myers Internet at the time. One of the key features of our web sites was the Market Update. It was a daily article written for consumers that told them what was going on in the world of mortgage rates. Lenderama continues to offer the Myers Market Update here.

This was a step in the right direction, but the LO had no control over the content. It’s fair to say that many weren’t qualified to do any better, but for a top LO, this was a very 1.0 solution, and a fairly expensive one.

Enter the world of Web 2.0. Today, the technology exists for a Loan Officer who knows more about mortgages than html to share their market commentary with their client base. Basically, all it will cost you is your time. Here are some examples.

Our own Robert Ashby uses a blog to share his market commentary. He has a traditional mortgage blog, but he also has one that’s dedicated purely to market commentary. You can start a blog on wordpress.com and do this something similar for free.

Brian Brady is using a free service called Twitter to share his market advice. Twitter is all about short and sweet. You can only post short messages, but like the pager, I think brevity is the soul of wit.

Alex Stenback uses twitter as well. He goes on to feature his twitter updates on his blog. They’re listed on the top of his far right column under the title BTM: Quick News/Twitter.

All of this can be done for free. Amazing when I think back at how much I must have paid for that pager service, and they had no real way to broadcast that knowledge to my clients. The ingenuity of these top professionals has also inspired me to create yet another project. I’m going to build an example of a completely free web site that any loan originator could create and maintain. Then I’m going to show you all how I did it. Stay tuned.

Mortgage Industry Professionals. Like what you see?
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