It's getting tougher to get a mortgage-broker license

Filed in archive mortgage news on July 2, 2009

It's harder to become a mortgage broker these days. Of course, it seems like an ever dwindling people want to be mortgage brokers today. Maybe, then, it's an example of everything working out the way it's supposed to.

It's fairly obvious why there are fewer mortgage brokers out there: The housing industry is still a disaster area. Home sales, though they've been inching up a bit, are still far below where they stood just one year ago. Getting clients today isn't nearly as easy for loan officers. During the housing boom years, they could wait for their phones to ring with new business. Today, loan officers have to work for their business.

To make life even more difficult for loan officers, many states are making it more difficult for them to receive mortgage broker licenses.

For instance, the Massachusetts Division of Banks, according to the Boston Business Journal, is now rejecting about 23 percent of the would-be loan officers who apply in that state for mortgage broker licenses. Many of the applicants rejected were convicted felons.

The reason for all this scrutiny? States don't want to see another mortgage mess hit the country. During the housing boom, a lot of unqualified, unskilled and unsavory mortgage brokers passed out mortgage money to borrowers who didn't have the financial means to make monthly mortgage payments. These same sleazy brokers steered homeowners into risky loans, mortgage products such as interest-only loans and adjustable-rate mortgages with artificially low initial interest rates.

It's good, then, to see states such as Massachusetts being more vigilant. Of course, it would have been nice if states were as vigilant back in the late 1990s, when unscrupulous loan officers helped sow the seeds for today's mortgage and economic disasters.

I know it's impossible to keep all the bad eggs out of an industry. But back when I was covering the mortgage-lending industry in the mid- to late-1990s, I'd come across lenders who knew nothing about banking, budgets or financial matters. Yet here they were, handling the biggest transactions that most people ever make. It was a bit terrifying.

Back then, though, everyone in the mortgage business was having too much fun making money. No one seemed to notice how crooked everything was.