Rats
Posted on | January 11, 2008 | No Comments
I was probably about fourteen years old and I was with a group of grown men on a commercial fishing trip. I’m pretty sure the only reason I was there was because I was the son of the employer of the majority of the men. I was holding my own though – I had probably close to six hundred pounds of fish in the box.
The Captain for this trip was a man I truly admired. Lets call him Frank. I would always go to Frank when I had a question about boat-handling or navigation or even just his thoughts on catching a certain kind of fish. On this trip, I called out to Frank from below decks and told him we had rats – lots of rats.
I watched from the passageway (stairs) as the rats started climbing the stairs, running across the deck, up on the fish box and over the side. Rats deserting a sinking ship.
Nine or ten minutes later, four men and a fourteen year old boy were jealously holding on to floating fish boxes and some life preservers that escaped from their storage lockers.
I thank God almost every day for that experience; here’s why: I had been on boats most of my life so I was not the kind to panic out of proportion to the circumstances. I did not foresee desertion on a desert island, or weeks adrift on a vine-lashed raft or anything like that. What I did see though was the seriousness of the situation. Experiencing the sinking and witnessing the rats has, somehow, helped me to realize there are a lot of times when a quick appraisal of a situation is a pretty good idea. Almost every week something in this industry reminds me of sinking ships and rats.
We have a serious situation in the mortgage field services industry. We have rats – lots of rats. Lord knows I have a talent for finding fault but you don’t have to put in a whole lot of effort to see the mess we’re in. What’s hot right now? The buzz words right now are: “City of Baltimore sues Wells Fargo Over Sub-prime mortgages”, “Countrywide stock dives on bankruptcy rumor”, “Countrywide’s local counsel describes letters as ‘recreated’”, and it goes on and on. That’s today’s buzz – today’s! And that’s just the lenders and service companies. The rest of us are going to get what’s coming to us too!
So what kind of shape is our part of the business in – the field service part? It’s in a big mess too and I can give you my thoughts on some possible reasons:
- HUD publishes requirements with crystal clear wording such as “unhealthy”, “large quantities”, “sharp objects”, “large containers”, “consistent” and many more. Then, fees are mandated that are a quarter or a third of going rates so there are few “Top 100″ types of companies interested in getting involved. Then marketing and management of properties is bid out to:
- M&M contractors that have no field personnel and quickly pass responsibility to:
- Nationals that each have their own interpretation of the regulations and an insistent attitude that they, and only they, are doing things right. They utilize the services of the low bidder:
- Contractors and inspectors that are fighting for fees so low that only those with a vivid imagination will be in this business tomorrow.
- Technology outranks results. If you doubt this, report a house as being purple. Your report will probably disagree with a previous report. Give as your explanation, “Saturday paint sell ” and life is good again.
- Some companies have way too much influence and are now telling HUD what their regulations mean.
Of course I could continue but maybe I am really making too big a deal of all this. After all, nobody really looses anything. The contractors and inspectors have it covered with a $1,000,000 E&O policy!
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