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Even in a competitive industry, not everyone is your competitor…

A couple of years into the End of the Real Estate World As We Know It, it looks like there are still a few more dips ahead on the roller coaster ride no one asked for.  I see the good people of the mortgage and real estate industry buckling up for another year of uncertainty.  Much has changed, and yet, much hasn’t.  One thing that may have to is our general attitude toward our peers.

If you follow my blog at all (Hi Mom!), you know that I find the industry—especially the settlement services industry—to be relationship-driven.  Even as we slowly and reluctantly incorporate real technology into our processes, and begin to incorporate some science and forecasting into our processes, we still live and die by the people we know and work with.  I’ve been writing about this since I started the blog.  In a world dominated by numbers and “best-practices,” it can be a wonderful thing.

But there is a dark side to that approach as well, and still alive and well in the real estate and mortgage industry.  Sometimes, we fixate on our competition.  I mean, really fixate.  We let what they do, what they don’t do, what we think they’re doing, what we hear they’re doing and what we hear they’re thinking about doing really, really affect us. Sometimes, it drives us to distraction.  Often, it prevents us from communicating, expanding, taking risks and even collaborating.

It’s easy to see why.  This is a small, commoditized industry.  The margin for differentiation  is razor thin.  We labor in, shall we say, an unevenly regulated and even more unevenly monitored industry.  Some competitors don’t play by the rules, and get away with it.  And, because it’s a relationship-driven industry, it can, at times, be an effective tactic to drive down the competition rather than building up one’s own product or service.

So what’s the downside?  I believe the next few years will show it.

As is the case with any industry being crushed by a giant regulatory jackhammer undergoing change, there is some opportunity in the cracks and gaps.  I’ll go so far as to say that, in the next couple of years, I think we’ll see some new businesses, and even some new people, seeking opportunity in our space.  And, in times where revenue is less than certain, and the overall market and environment is a bit choppy, nobody spends a lot.  They can’t.  They need to keep cash on hand.  (You know, just in case the government wants it.)

Enter (within, of course, the acceptable parameters of RESPA) collaboration and partnership.  I believe that in the next few years, the game will not be as much about how well we do, as it will be about whom we do it with.  At least for the smaller businesses in our space.

Of course,for one fixated on anything that could be deemed “competition,” the opportunities for partnership are limited, aren’t they?

This is not a suggestion that we mail our financials to our direct competitors for Christmas, nor do the lyrics of Kum-bay-ah and an invitation to hold hands follow.  But it is a suggestion that we worry a little less about who’s out to get us, and a little more on where the opportunity is, and with whom we can partner to take it.  Part of surviving a bad market is finding new ways of doing old things, and keeping your friends close.

If nothing else, there will be fewer ulcers in the industry.  And perhaps, just perhaps, we’ll plant the seeds for a new and better way of doing what we do…just as the market finally rights itself.

 Just a thought.