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Each year, the mortgage industry loses some of its employees.  Some leave through attrition; some through layoffs; some through natural selection.

When business is growing, lost workers are replaced with new hires and the mortgage machine rolls ahead.  When mortgage business is slowing, new workers aren't hired. 

Collectively, the industry loses experience, wisdom and general know-how. 

A lot of folks look at the situation and say "good riddance".  It's the complete wrong attitude. 

Having fewer qualified loan officers in this country will cost Americans (hundreds of?) millions of dollars.   This is because each time that a loan officer leaves the industry, he leaves his clients and their mortgages behind, too.

Owners of "orphaned" mortgages are at a tremendous cash flow disadvantage versus everyone else:

• When rates fall, there is nobody there to tell them
• When pricing policies change, there is nobody there to advise them
• When mortgage guidelines change, there is nobody there to make a new plan with them

90,000 people left the mortgage industry in 2007.  That's a lot of orphaned mortgages and a lot of abandoned homeowners. 

And it's not like the "big bank" to which homeowners write their mortgage checks each month is going to proactively call and say "Let's lower that rate for you".  Owners of orphaned mortgages are truly on their own in the mortgage world.

By contrast, an actively managed mortgage can save homeowners money. 

As a personal example, when mortgage rates fell in late-November, they fell hard.  It only lasted for about a day-and-a-half.  During that time, I was on the horn with all of my eligible clients and made two major wins:

1. I lowered their mortgage rates from their existing levels to something better
2. Using Wall Street's delivery premium, I was able to credit all closing costs

These were true "no cost" remortgages -- my clients got better rates, lower payments, and it didn't cost them a penny.

Owners of orphaned mortgages didn't get calls like this.  They're paying higher rates than the rest of the country.

And the examples aren't just isolated to getting lower rates:

• A real estate investor converted his highly-leveraged ARM to a fixed-rate mortgage before new mortgage guidelines prevented it
• A low-600 FICO homeowner remortgaged her home loan before Fannie 2.000% low-credit-score fee made it cost-prohibitive
• A homeowner in southern Florida remortgaged his home loan before falling values pushed his loan-to-value above 80% and required PMI

Owners of orphaned mortgages don't get the advice and end up paying the price.  When their loan officer left the business, they lost their "guy on the inside" and it's turning out to be expensive.

If your mortgage has been orphaned, talk to a friend whose mortgage hasn't.  Get the name and contact information for that loan officer, then call and ask if he's accepting new clients.  If your friend isn't 100 percent sure whether or not he was abandoned, there's a better-than-great chance that he was.

Mortgage rates and mortgage markets change every day.  It's the homeowners with active mortgage managers that will always have the best rates, payment, and mortgage planning guidance.

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Dan Green is an active loan officer. Email or call 513-443-2020. Dan is on Twitter at @mortgagereports.