Housing Wire Changes, For the Better

Bottom line: Housing Wire is changing format to become a mortgage industry blog. To find out more, please read on….

As a mortgage industry insider with a strong understanding of the industry and a nice, fat rolodex of contacts to leverage, I started Housing Wire on Dec. 16, 2006 as an experiment in free information. That was my primary thought at the time — although I also admittedly wanted to show a former employer that they had made a huge mistake in refusing to pay me what an associate publisher is worth.

Irrespective of the motivation, however, HW has grown amazingly fast: If current traffic levels for March are extrapolated to an entire month, this site will have served more than 300,000 page views and hosted more than 85,000 unique visitors before the month is out. (That’s alot, for those of you keeping score at home).

And I’m truly grateful for — and humbled by — all of the support.

This site is not a full-time endeavor for me; but as the site has grown, I’ve felt an increasing obligation to the thousands of readers who come here each day looking for up-to-the-minute news. It’s a pressure I know well as a former editor; but I wasn’t expecting to feel the same pull on a side project such as this.

With that in mind, HW is going to become a blog about the mortgage industry, for the mortgage industry, written by an industry insider and peppered with the insight that only comes from being in the industry.

So what does all this mean? It means that instead of reading industry news here, you’ll find more commentary about that news. I’ll post my thoughts and informed insight when it makes sense to do so — which means there is likely to be more analysis and rumors, but fewer posts. I’ve only got so much time.

I’d really love to hear what you think, either of the work that’s been done here in the past, or of the change to industry blog — so feel free to send me a personal email at pjackson@housingwire.com, or link in to this blog going forward. It’d be great to know that what I’m working on here means as much to you as it does to me.

You’ll see the signs of transformation to blog here in the days ahead, including the ability to comment on posts — and I do hope you’ll comment on what you read and join in the discussion. Our industry desperately needs that sort of interaction.

In some ways, too, I’m getting back to the idea that started this very project three months ago….that our industry needs a independent source to discuss ideas and foster the free exchange of information.

Thanks again for your support.