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Even though some feel the housing market may be “bottoming out” these days, decision-makers in the mortgage and title industries are still nervously watching the stream of regulatory ideas streaming out of our nation’s capital, which has become some combination of Frankenstein’s lab and crash course in understanding the mortgage industry in the first place.

It’s very easy, and possibly very appropriate, to grumble about the bombastic proclamations coming from some of the very same congresspeople bludgeoning Freddie and Fannie to get more people into homes just five years ago.  It’s all too easy to observe that, when it comes to the mortgage industry, our elected representatives and appointed regulators may well understand less than the average consumer about how the industry works.

But it ain’t gonna change any time soon.  Sorry, but that’s just the way it is right now.

I’m finding the good people of my industry dividing roughly into two camps right now.  With terms like “HVCC,” “CFPA” and “RESPA reform” among many keeping business owners and executives up at night, it’s probably safe to say that 2009 will be the year the mortgage and settlement services industry gets hammered by “reform.”  And, as is the case with things like tax “reform,” it’s probably fair to say that this patchwork of well-intentioned legislation will spawn more than a few unintended consequences.  Some are bemoaning this.  Others are making the best of it.

I’m seeing more than a few entrepreneurial sorts (and not just in small businesses) out there trying their best to make lemonade from the rotten lemons coming their way.  Unfortunately, the industry doesn’t have as much clout with lawmakers as it once did.  So it’s time to brace for change.  Some will do that literally, bracing the proverbial door, hiding their heads in the sand or, worse, going back into a bunker to wait for the storm to pass.  But it’s safe to say that, when those folks come back out of the bunker, they’re not really going to recognize their neighborhoods anymore.

Others are preparing for the change, even adapting their product and marketing strategies to it.  Will they need to be flexible?  Hell yes.  Will they need to stop and start again in a mad dance of “hurry up and wait”—much as our Congress does?  Hell yes.  But will they come out ahead in the long run for it?

Hell yes.

I applaud those in the title and mortgage industry who are doing their best to get ready for the wave of change coming their way from on high.  Given the choices of fighting the changes, adapting to them, or curling up in the fetal position, they’re taking a realist’s approach.  A business approach.  I’m already hearing ideas about taking advantage (resisting the urge here to use the extremely overused cliché “leverage”) of the proposed new regulations.  And no, I’m not talking about the scam artists out there preying on those already up to their ears in mortgage debt.  Rather, I’m talking about those targeting their marketing to other businesses affected by the new regulations and laws.  I’m talking about those seeing the new demographics being created in this very space by the seismic shifts in the market.  And I’m talking to those who know what most successful business owners know:  change, no matter how disagreeable, always brings a new opportunity somewhere.  Kudos to those who are out there figuring out how to be the first to tap into it.