I started in mortgages in 2007 for a brokerage office in Salem, Oregon. Within my first year and a half, I was one of the top-producing loan officers in the office. At the same time, the world around me was coming apart. I didn’t realize at the time that the industry I had just joined was starting to exhale. The mid-2000s boom was over, companies were shrinking, and loan officers who had spent years building businesses were leaving the industry cold turkey. Every week seemed to bring another round of layoffs, closures, or panic (implode-o-meter anyone?).
