MortgageOnlineBlog.Com

Posted At : January 16, 2008 5:32 PM 
I went to the Inman conference in NYC last week. My second. Since the first conference in Aug 07 we have:

• Started a consumer facing and an industry facing blog
• Have recorded and distributed 15 interview podcasts with industry leaders
• Have grown my RSS reader list to around 25 various mortgage, lead gen and real estate blogs
• Redesigned our website
• Began to use facebook and linkedin to increase our visibility and credibility
• Integrated our website with our lead management system

Unfortunately the mortgage industry at Inman was not well represented. I know that Realtors are the focus at Inman but there is much we can learn from the topics covered. After my first 6 months learning how Web 2.0 effects our industry… here are some basic observations about our industry:

• We are behind Realtors in embracing web 2.0 practices. Way behind.
• We might be spending too much time worrying about Countrywide and the wreckage of the subprime world and fearing that the end is near.. and not enough time seeing that the survivors have a great opportunity to grow market share
• There are a lot of technologies and providers that remind me of the saying “50 % of my marketing budget is wasted, I just don’t know which 50%”
• Bad economic news is good for interest rates and 2008 has the potential to be the biggest A paper refi year since 2003.
• There are a lot of great people working to move consumers from on line shoppers to on line buyers

I plan on attending the next Inman conference in SF and I encourage anyone in the on line mortgage industry to join me. Heck the Nationals are in SF, who’s in?