I am entering my 19th year in real estate. When I first got into the business, I heard about a mortgage banker that was the most knowledgable in the business. he also had a distain for Realtors. I made it a point to tell him that I wanted to learn the business from his perspective, and that one deal was not worth my integrity just to get something sold. With some degree of skepticism, he took me under his wing. Many free lunches later, I appreciated the fact that he was the borrowers most trusted advocate. He lent money based on character, as well as being convinced that the buyer would do everything to make their payments. He also wanted to make sure that they planned for market corrections, so he refused to do adjustable rate mortgages. To paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel, where have you gone Don Broome, the nation's mortgage holders turn their lonely eyes to you. Many things have gone terribly wrong since that time. First, the gene pool of mortgage lenders and realtors have become diluted. We have too many people in this business without experience, a business plan, and so desperate or greedy that they will do anything to make a sale. Most of the mortgage bankers are not knowledgable enough, and many sell mortgages that net the highest commission. Sub-Prime mortgages were very attractive because you could convince borrowers that 4.25% would not change, the market has a long run coming, and you could save so much, just please don't read the fine print with such boring details as accelerator causes, and prepayment penalties among others. They happened to triple their commission on closing. Now many people are stuck with bad paper. This is not going to be solved by government intervention, or freezing rates. Markets like California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada will keep going done. Even with a freeze, the value of the home is the problem. If you freeze a loan at say 7%, but those markets depreciate at 30% which is coming in many places, your negative equity is going to be like the albatross around the neck of The Ancient Mariner. People will still walk away from their mortgages thereby exacerbating the free fall of value. It will take a long time before this works out in those above markets. Inflated values are not coming back anytime to soon. Even the old timers like Don Broome can't stop that. But going into the future we need to dramatically raise the entry level to both loan originators and Realtors. They both need to make a declaration of who they represent. In Oklahoma as in other states we declare this up front. It is high time that the mortgage industry also has a disclosure of representation. Then maybe potential lawsuits will outweigh the short term gains that are now coming home to haunt them.