If credit unions launch or upgrade their mortgage lending operations in the coming year, real estate professionals and borrowers will come.

That is the message offered by the American Credit Union Mortgage Association's executive director, Bob Dorsa.

"That's going to be my theme this year," Dorsa said. "If we build it, they will come." The "it" in Dorsa's optimistic sentence are professional mortgage origination programs that CU members and Realtors know about and the "they" are those very same real estate professionals and members.

Dorsa said the theme came to him as he met real estate professionals attending the National Association of Realtors' annual convention in New Orleans last week. Dorsa called the meeting "more upbeat" than last year's convention and said it was full of good contacts for credit unions.

"I must have 50 or 60 videos of Realtors who are credit union members and who say on camera how much they love their CUs," Dorsa said, "but as is so often the case they love their CUs for their auto loan or for electronic banking or for something else. Not for their mortgage services."

Dorsa called ACUMA's message that more credit unions can and should offer mortgage origination "crucial" because the activity will provide a source of income to credit unions at a time when other income streams are shrinking.