Hi all! I work as an originator at a small local bank. My boss recently asked me what thoughts and ideas I had to help us stay competitive in this market. I thought it was a great question and I gave him some thoughts:

• keeping our land loans competitive because these are future construction loans. We already have a great construction product.

• we do a lot with second homes and investments. Trying to keep aggressive with these since they seem to be getting under contract more than first time homebuyers with smaller down payments.

• people are piling into ARMs a lot more than fixed rates right now. I know our pricing desk has a method to their madness, but when our 7/6m ARM is sitting at 4%, can't we call it 3.99%? Looks a lot better to customers.

What do you all think? If you could meet with the high ups at your lending institution what ideas would you pitch?