Over the past four months we have read dozens of articles, seen countless television news spots, and heard many radio talk show hosts try to fix blame for the current mess in the mortgage market on someone. Included in the finger pointing have been past Presidents, the current President, Congress, government institutions, Wall Street, builders, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers. All of these opinions are based in some form of truth, and the fact is there is enough blame to go around. No single entity needs to accept it all. The one place few pundits want to go is to place some of the blame on the individual borrower.

The Front Range of Colorado has seen a dramatic decrease of mortgage originators in the past four years. In 2007 there were 19,000 originators in the state offering real estate home mortgage loans and today less than 3,500 remain. However, one local lender, Freedom Financial Services, not only keeps growing but received the Excellence in Customer Service award in 2008 and 2010 from the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado.