Latest / WCHS Network Podcasts / Ask the Expert: Russ Bonasso - From West Side Charleston Roots to Cornerstone First Mortgage

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Ask the Expert: Russ Bonasso - From West Side Charleston Roots to Cornerstone First Mortgage · WCHS Network Podcasts

0:00
Speaker 1: Unlock your dream property with Meeks Realty Group, where Rich
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Speaker 1: residential or commercial. We've got Charleston to Huntington covered. Your
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0:15
Speaker 2: The views and opinions expressed on this program do not
0:18
Speaker 2: necessarily reflect the views and opinions of five ad WCCHS
0:22
Speaker 2: it's employees or WVRC Media.
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Speaker 3: Minutes past eight o'clock, you're listening to as the expert
0:35
Speaker 3: be shs the Voice of Charleston, I'm Del Cooper. Thanks
0:37
Speaker 3: so much for tuning in on this Tuesday morning. Feels
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Speaker 3: a little bit fall like outside. It's a nice morning
0:42
Speaker 3: out there at sunny, but it's a little crisp, but
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Speaker 3: under fifty when I left the house. Probably just over
0:47
Speaker 3: fifty right now as you're coming into Charleston or where
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Speaker 3: have your head this morning. It's clear visibility, not any
0:52
Speaker 3: major traffic on the highways right now, so things should
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Speaker 3: be pretty good for you. If you're a regular listening
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Speaker 3: to the listener to the program and ask the expert
0:59
Speaker 3: you want to be saying Tuesday. Let's see what Tuesday
1:02
Speaker 3: that we have here. Well, if you've been listening to
1:04
Speaker 3: our promotions thing, you know that we have a brand
1:05
Speaker 3: new expert that we're gonna introduce you to this morning.
1:08
Speaker 3: Russell Bonasso is here. He is the owner of Cornerstone
1:11
Speaker 3: First Mortgage here in Charleston, and we're gonna be talking
1:14
Speaker 3: about mortgages and a whole lot more than that this morning.
1:17
Speaker 3: But put that in your in your hat for just
1:19
Speaker 3: a moment. If you have any questions as things go
1:20
Speaker 3: along here this morning, when the opportunity comes, you can
1:22
Speaker 3: give us a call. Three zer a four three four
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Speaker 3: two eight one three one three zer a four three
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Speaker 3: four two eight one three one Russell, good morning. How
1:28
Speaker 3: you doing this morning?
1:28
Speaker 4: Good morning Dale, I'm doing well. How are you?
1:30
Speaker 3: I'm doing very well. Appreciate your time in coming in
1:32
Speaker 3: and I'm very excited to be talking about mortgages on
1:35
Speaker 3: the radio once again. This is as we've talked before.
1:38
Speaker 3: I have some history in the in the mortgage industry.
1:40
Speaker 3: That's not the important thing is the Only thing that
1:42
Speaker 3: is important about that is I know that man, Sometimes
1:45
Speaker 3: people just don't know you know. I mean you you
1:46
Speaker 3: are at the UH when you make when you have
1:49
Speaker 3: a relationship with someone who trust to do your mortgages,
1:53
Speaker 3: you have to trust that person because you're not an
1:55
Speaker 3: expert in these things. You're as the homeowner, you're not
1:58
Speaker 3: necessarily an expert in mortgages. You don't know what products
2:00
Speaker 3: are available out there, what you can do that's going
2:02
Speaker 3: to be best for your household, what's going to help you.
2:05
Speaker 3: We have to trust what you can help us with
2:07
Speaker 3: because it's hard for a consumer to know all of
2:10
Speaker 3: these things and to know how they would work. So
2:12
Speaker 3: it's important to get this information out on the radio
2:13
Speaker 3: and to share it with folks.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, the mortgage process itself is a complicated process. There's
2:20
Speaker 5: been you know, essentially unfolding regulation at a pretty steady
2:25
Speaker 5: pace over the last i'd say, all the way back
2:28
Speaker 5: to the Great Financial Crisis and Dodd Frank and so
2:30
Speaker 5: having somebody that is familiar with the rules, familiar with
2:34
Speaker 5: the products and the process is paramount when you're thinking
2:39
Speaker 5: about doing a mortgage. So I figured we could talk
2:41
Speaker 5: about some of that today. What options you have, what
2:46
Speaker 5: options you should seriously consider, what options you should not consider.
2:50
Speaker 3: Essentially, let's talk a little bit. Let's introduce our listening
2:53
Speaker 3: audience to you a little bit what I really like
2:54
Speaker 3: to do on this program. Because you're going to be
2:56
Speaker 3: on here a monthly for a while, people get to
2:59
Speaker 3: know you quite a bit. We have a lot of
3:00
Speaker 3: long running experts on here, so I like to have
3:03
Speaker 3: the listening audience get to know you a little bit.
3:04
Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit about Russell, tell us a
3:06
Speaker 3: little bit about your background.
3:07
Speaker 4: Sure, sure, So.
3:09
Speaker 5: I'm a lifelong West Virginia resident, born and raised here
3:12
Speaker 5: in Charleston. Grew up on the West Side, lived on
3:16
Speaker 5: Hunt Avenue on the corner of Hunt and Hazelwood till
3:18
Speaker 5: I was nine. Then my folks moved up to Summit
3:21
Speaker 5: off of Edgewood, up by a golf course up there.
3:25
Speaker 4: And left went to I was. I went to J.
3:29
Speaker 5: Robbins Elementary School, which is now a parking lot over
3:31
Speaker 5: by Best de Crete if you if you're looking for
3:35
Speaker 5: a good giro, one of the best in town. I
3:38
Speaker 5: still go over there maybe once or twice a month,
3:41
Speaker 5: just for my gyro and black Blah Blah was the
3:44
Speaker 5: first seventh grade class at Stonewall Junior High School.
3:47
Speaker 3: For those of you.
3:47
Speaker 5: Remember when it was still Stonewall and when it was
3:50
Speaker 5: still a junior high so first seventh grade class there.
3:52
Speaker 4: I graduated from Capital.
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Speaker 5: In the mid nineties and then went to w got
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Speaker 5: my undergrad and business, got a master's degree in busines
4:00
Speaker 5: this minor and communication and then uh, you know, so
4:04
Speaker 5: so basically my education.
4:06
Speaker 4: Uh grew up.
4:07
Speaker 5: I'm a I'm a nineties guy and uh, and then
4:12
Speaker 5: traveled some but ended up coming back after graduation from
4:17
Speaker 5: w to Charleston and bought a house essentially on the
4:20
Speaker 5: street I grew up on ten years ago and really
4:24
Speaker 5: love the West Side community. So when we opened our
4:28
Speaker 5: branch for Cornerstone, it's in the heart of Elk City.
4:32
Speaker 5: It's kind of nestled in between Sergio's, uh another plug
4:35
Speaker 5: for Sergio's restaurant, and I had some great pizza down there,
4:38
Speaker 5: uh and the Elk City Playhouse location. Yeah, so so
4:43
Speaker 5: it's a it's a great spot. We have parking out back.
4:46
Speaker 5: With what Ty Bullock is doing and kind of the
4:50
Speaker 5: revitalization of Elk City is impressive. At some point, we'll
4:56
Speaker 5: have legal aid going in uh to the old Stat's Hospital,
5:00
Speaker 5: projecting anywhere between maybe thirty and forty employees, maybe higher
5:04
Speaker 5: than that that'll.
5:05
Speaker 4: Be in there.
5:05
Speaker 5: But if you're and I'm sin down there on a
5:07
Speaker 5: regular basis, now, you know, the energy down there is
5:11
Speaker 5: pretty amazing. And you know, like I said, being a
5:13
Speaker 5: lifelong West Side resident is gives me goosebumps, you know,
5:17
Speaker 5: to think about how how well that's not.
5:21
Speaker 3: Doing it is really amazing. I have a similar situation
5:24
Speaker 3: where I left the state for a long time, lived
5:27
Speaker 3: out of country for a while, lived in other parts
5:28
Speaker 3: of the United States, came back here in twenty ten.
5:31
Speaker 3: I bought my grandma's house, so I decided to kind
5:33
Speaker 3: of this end. We lived there for a little while
5:35
Speaker 3: when I was growing up, so it was kind of
5:36
Speaker 3: my childhood home that I purchased and remodeled when I
5:38
Speaker 3: moved back here. So I hear where you're coming from.
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Speaker 3: Man pride in the community and unfortunately can all cities
5:44
Speaker 3: lagging a little behind Elk City right now. But we
5:46
Speaker 3: finally got most of our construction done at least off
5:48
Speaker 3: off the bridge, so that its exactly true, exactly true.
5:53
Speaker 3: So you went to WVU, you came back here, and
5:57
Speaker 3: now you have I was really surprised because you're not
5:59
Speaker 3: that that old of a gentleman, but your experience in
6:03
Speaker 3: this in this mortgage space is immense. I mean, you
6:05
Speaker 3: have a lot of experience here. Yeah.
6:07
Speaker 5: So I came back did two years with the Salvation
6:11
Speaker 5: Army Boys and Girls Club over on the West Side
6:13
Speaker 5: again as their executive director. Tremendous experience. Really gave me
6:19
Speaker 5: some insight in terms of how I wanted to help people.
6:22
Speaker 5: And you know, the social services industry and the social
6:25
Speaker 5: services game is not for the faant of heart, right,
6:28
Speaker 5: There's a lot of needy people and it was and
6:32
Speaker 5: it was a tremendous experience for me. At the end
6:35
Speaker 5: of those two years, I got an opportunity to essentially
6:40
Speaker 5: start working in banking. Got an offer from one of
6:41
Speaker 5: my friends that he said, hey, have you ever thought
6:42
Speaker 5: about banking? I knew it was a way to leverage
6:44
Speaker 5: my degrees, and I said, no, not really, not about banking,
6:48
Speaker 5: but let's talk about it. And so that opened up
6:50
Speaker 5: a conversation to where I started in two thousand and
6:53
Speaker 5: seven as a personal banker Chase.
6:56
Speaker 4: I was there for five.
6:57
Speaker 5: Years and just not every body gets to marry a
7:04
Speaker 5: vocation or a career that they love. For me, banking
7:08
Speaker 5: and really it's the financial services industry. But it was
7:11
Speaker 5: one that I fell in love with and that I
7:13
Speaker 5: was good at and I was able to help a
7:15
Speaker 5: lot of people. And then in twenty twelve, I had
7:20
Speaker 5: another opportunity to start as a mortgage banker and decided
7:26
Speaker 5: to say yes to that. And so for the last
7:29
Speaker 5: from twenty twelve to essentially the end of beginning of
7:34
Speaker 5: twenty four mid of twenty four, I was a mortgage
7:37
Speaker 5: banker for Chase the last ten years. So basically from
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Speaker 5: fourteen to twenty three, I was the top producer there
7:44
Speaker 5: in terms of units and also volume, which is pretty
7:49
Speaker 5: steep competition, but you know, so for that last decade,
7:54
Speaker 5: that was what I was able to do in terms
7:56
Speaker 5: of Chase and production there.
7:58
Speaker 3: So you've been along the long curve of mortgage history, really,
8:02
Speaker 3: you've seen a lot of these things happened. I had
8:06
Speaker 3: some experience in the industry in the nineties. I saw
8:08
Speaker 3: what a lot of people consider, you know, the good
8:09
Speaker 3: old days or whatever it might have been. I worked
8:11
Speaker 3: for a very ethical mortgage broker at the time, the
8:14
Speaker 3: guy that hired me and I ended up running a
8:15
Speaker 3: couple of shops for him. He was a very ethical guy.
8:17
Speaker 3: Back back in those days, there was very few regulations
8:21
Speaker 3: as far as what you could charge it, there was
8:23
Speaker 3: a running thing. It was like ten on the front,
8:24
Speaker 3: ten on the back, you know, I mean you upsold everything.
8:27
Speaker 3: And because people were coming out of a huge interest
8:30
Speaker 3: rate environment into a very to a very much less
8:35
Speaker 3: of an interest rate environment, so there was a lot
8:36
Speaker 3: of play room in there on what people were up
8:38
Speaker 3: selling on interest rates. And the owner of my company
8:40
Speaker 3: wouldn't do that. He limited to like three and three,
8:43
Speaker 3: you know, like to try to make it so you
8:44
Speaker 3: could make money, but not rake people over coals because
8:47
Speaker 3: you could have you know, you want to your clients
8:49
Speaker 3: to come by. You don't want to tap out all
8:50
Speaker 3: their equity, exceter, you know, whatever it might be. But
8:52
Speaker 3: you've seen this entire bend. And we talked a little
8:55
Speaker 3: bit before the show, and we'll get it in this
8:56
Speaker 3: a little bit later on. But things maybe I had
9:00
Speaker 3: a little too strict when it came to lending money.
9:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, we were talking about this even before we started
9:05
Speaker 5: the show, where there were things called ninja no income,
9:08
Speaker 5: no job or asset loans, which you know, I like
9:13
Speaker 5: to have a common sets approach to mortgage.
9:15
Speaker 3: Right.
9:15
Speaker 5: So underwriting is nothing more than some of my favorite
9:18
Speaker 5: underwriters when you're having a conversation with them, You're trying
9:20
Speaker 5: to get a loan done, and they say, look, tell
9:22
Speaker 5: me a story. Tell me, tell me why this loan
9:24
Speaker 5: makes sense, tell me why we should put our assets
9:26
Speaker 5: out there on loan, and why it's going to be repaid.
9:29
Speaker 5: And so you say, hey, this is the reason, and
9:33
Speaker 5: all of the underwriting regulations are out there to basically
9:37
Speaker 5: stop you made stream to say hey, look, this story
9:39
Speaker 5: does not make sense.
9:40
Speaker 4: This we're not going to be able to approve this loan.
9:42
Speaker 5: Or you know what that makes sense And if you
9:44
Speaker 5: need an exception, yeah, that exception makes sense. And so
9:47
Speaker 5: if you can explain it well, I feel like in
9:51
Speaker 5: my experience with Chase over the years of my experience
9:53
Speaker 5: of Cornerstone, underwriters will give you a green light on.
9:58
Speaker 4: Things that you know, does us just do? It doesn't
10:01
Speaker 4: make sense.
10:02
Speaker 5: As far as those those ninja loans, you know what
10:05
Speaker 5: happened in the run up to two thousand and five,
10:08
Speaker 5: six and seven, and what we now refer to historically
10:12
Speaker 5: is the Great Financial Crash or crisis. Those regulations everybody
10:18
Speaker 5: would agree, common sense wise, they didn't make much sense. Right,
10:22
Speaker 5: So somebody that has what we call it was the
10:24
Speaker 5: subprime year. So somebody has a score below, say five
10:28
Speaker 5: to eighty, and they they haven't been on their job
10:31
Speaker 5: very long, and they have a ton of lates. It
10:34
Speaker 5: just doesn't make sense that they would get a thirty
10:36
Speaker 5: year mortgage with a really preferential rate. And you know,
10:40
Speaker 5: kind of what happened was these people were getting loans,
10:42
Speaker 5: but they were getting loans.
10:43
Speaker 4: At higher rates.
10:44
Speaker 5: So you match a barrow where there isn't well qualified
10:47
Speaker 5: with a rate that's too high for them, you know,
10:50
Speaker 5: and you do that for long enough and enough times,
10:53
Speaker 5: and it kind of it breaks the system, which is
10:56
Speaker 5: exactly what happened with the collapse. And so a lot
10:58
Speaker 5: of the regulation that came out of that was the
11:00
Speaker 5: Dodd Frank Regulation dog Dodd Frank Act, and so we
11:06
Speaker 5: saw the pendulum swing towards regulation in a really substantial
11:10
Speaker 5: way in those years afterwards. So you know, nine, ten, eleven,
11:15
Speaker 5: and twelve, and then that's when I started kind of
11:16
Speaker 5: in the in the midst of the implementation of the
11:20
Speaker 5: Dodd Frank regulation, and and we've started to see the
11:24
Speaker 5: pendulum swing back some a bit with deregulation. But I
11:30
Speaker 5: think with the new administration, one of the platforms they
11:32
Speaker 5: ran on was deregulation. So I think we will see
11:36
Speaker 5: a swing war to the center. I think it probably
11:39
Speaker 5: I was joking with you before. You know, a lot
11:40
Speaker 5: of times people say, Okay, get a mortgage, get a
11:43
Speaker 5: root canal, minor surgery, which which one of those three
11:46
Speaker 5: do I want? Sometimes, you know, doing a mortgage would
11:48
Speaker 5: fall below those other two. So I do think, and
11:52
Speaker 5: the reality is it's it's difficult, right, it is intentionally
11:55
Speaker 5: difficult to get a mortgage.
11:58
Speaker 3: And so.
12:01
Speaker 5: I think we will see, you know, we're ath the
12:03
Speaker 5: end of twenty four. I think we'll see over the
12:05
Speaker 5: next few years the pendulum swing back a little bit
12:09
Speaker 5: to the center. I certainly don't think we're going anywhere
12:11
Speaker 5: near where we were after the Great or excuse me,
12:15
Speaker 5: before the Great financial Crisis. But I do think there'll
12:18
Speaker 5: be a swing back to the center some And what
12:20
Speaker 5: that does to the individual, right for the person who's
12:22
Speaker 5: just buying their first home, or maybe their investor and
12:25
Speaker 5: they're looking for opportunity out there, it opens that window
12:29
Speaker 5: to be able to buy that first home, to be
12:30
Speaker 5: able to maybe buy your second home, if you want
12:32
Speaker 5: to buy an investment property, if you want to buy
12:34
Speaker 5: a second home and one of the Carolinas or Florida.
12:37
Speaker 5: It makes that opportunity open where it's kind of been closed.
12:43
Speaker 4: For a long time.
12:44
Speaker 3: Right, this is all exciting and stuff, and what I
12:46
Speaker 3: really like about kind of your story and where you've
12:48
Speaker 3: positioned yourself right now as you're in the perfect situation
12:52
Speaker 3: because you've moved on from Chase, from being from a
12:55
Speaker 3: national originating company, and now you have Cornerstone First Mortgage
12:59
Speaker 3: which is here locally. What that allows you to do
13:01
Speaker 3: if I understand the industry correctly, You're no longer beholding
13:05
Speaker 3: to just Chase this set of underwriting guidelines and different
13:07
Speaker 3: things along those lines. You've now you have all of
13:09
Speaker 3: this experience, you're from this area, you live over on
13:11
Speaker 3: the West side in Elk City. You can put all
13:14
Speaker 3: of that That actually is is equity as far as
13:17
Speaker 3: as mental equity goes. That's a lot of equity in
13:20
Speaker 3: this market. When where you understand things that you know,
13:23
Speaker 3: calling an eight hundred numbers not necessarily want to get
13:25
Speaker 3: you to you understand some of the situations that people
13:27
Speaker 3: are going to, which probably leads you into why Cornerstone
13:30
Speaker 3: First more you should begin.
13:30
Speaker 5: With right exactly, so our phone numbers three oh four,
13:33
Speaker 5: three four five loan again, three oh four, three four
13:35
Speaker 5: five loan. You'll notice it's a West Virginia prefix. Now
13:38
Speaker 5: you can get Vanity phone numbers that are actually three
13:40
Speaker 5: or four, but it is actually a dedicated line.
13:42
Speaker 3: That's not you got three four five man, that's the
13:44
Speaker 3: checker number. You got three four five in Charles and
13:46
Speaker 3: you got a real business.
13:46
Speaker 5: Right So, and as far as uh, you know what
13:50
Speaker 5: we were able to do with Chase. Chase is the
13:52
Speaker 5: phenomenal company, largest financial institution by assets in America, run
13:57
Speaker 5: by Jamie Diamond, who's, in my opinion, smartest guy Wall Street.
14:01
Speaker 4: You know, a a just a really top notch company.
14:05
Speaker 5: But there were some product restrictions in there, which is
14:08
Speaker 5: one of the reasons I wanted to leave. And in
14:10
Speaker 5: terms of like Quarterstone, you know what it is, It's
14:13
Speaker 5: it's a branch, So there is a there's all. It's
14:16
Speaker 5: another corporation also like Chase, and so I have a
14:19
Speaker 5: branch for but it's a platform that when I was
14:23
Speaker 5: essentially interviewing and thinking about making this transition, like how
14:26
Speaker 5: could I best help uh, not only customers here in Charleston,
14:31
Speaker 5: in West Virginia, but where's the most flexibility and access
14:35
Speaker 5: to product. Cornerstone was the platform that that I chose.
14:40
Speaker 5: And so, yeah, like you were talking about, you called
14:43
Speaker 5: it kind of mental equity. I would also call it
14:45
Speaker 5: relationship equity in terms of being able to deal with
14:48
Speaker 5: people locally. So when I left Chase, I was the
14:51
Speaker 5: last boots on the ground here in the state. As
14:53
Speaker 5: far as a mortgage banker, they still do mortgages, and
14:55
Speaker 5: they'll they'll plug you in with somebody, but it will
14:57
Speaker 5: more than likely be somebody in a call center. And
14:59
Speaker 5: that's not unique to Chase. It's industry wide. There is
15:03
Speaker 5: a push with AI, right artificial intelligence, where they are
15:07
Speaker 5: letting they're letting AI essentially drive the boat in terms
15:12
Speaker 5: of how do you make how do you interact with customers?
15:16
Speaker 5: And so what's happening is you have these CRMs, these
15:18
Speaker 5: client resource management tools that are super sophisticated, and they
15:23
Speaker 5: do a really good job of identifying, say, and you
15:26
Speaker 5: know what, I think Dale needs a phone call because
15:28
Speaker 5: he has I could tell from his aggregated information that
15:32
Speaker 5: he needs a refinance and and he's basically drowning in
15:35
Speaker 5: credit card debt. And you might say, well, that's that's
15:38
Speaker 5: kind of big brother, but that's kind of where we are.
15:42
Speaker 5: And so my thought is, I want to have a
15:45
Speaker 5: local option for people where if you don't necessarily want
15:49
Speaker 5: to to call in or what I call digit is
15:52
Speaker 5: my line digital faceless lenders. Right, you're putting your information
15:56
Speaker 5: out there.
15:57
Speaker 4: You don't really know.
15:57
Speaker 5: Who's going to get it. And yes, this person works
16:02
Speaker 5: for whoever the large lender is, and they're an employee
16:04
Speaker 5: and they're bound by their compliance and privacy rules. However,
16:08
Speaker 5: you don't know who that is, right, you don't know
16:10
Speaker 5: where they live, and now they have access to all
16:11
Speaker 5: your information I was sharing with you before. I think
16:14
Speaker 5: it was two point nine billion people's information was compromised
16:19
Speaker 5: just in the last six months twelve months and a
16:22
Speaker 5: data breach. Essentially, you know there's seven point seven billion
16:25
Speaker 5: people in the world, that's roughly half of the population.
16:29
Speaker 5: Basically all of the adults information was compromised. And so
16:34
Speaker 5: you know, we've all either tap to us, right, or
16:38
Speaker 5: we know somebody that were like one degree away from
16:40
Speaker 5: that's been a victim of identity theft, or they just
16:44
Speaker 5: constantly get scam calls because your information is out there
16:46
Speaker 5: on the dark web and so the need for privacy,
16:50
Speaker 5: what I would call hyperlocal privacy, is paramount. And then
16:54
Speaker 5: one by one, I'm seeing I interact with customers that
16:57
Speaker 5: will that bring this in as a concern, and we
17:01
Speaker 5: kind of walk through the process of Okay, this is
17:03
Speaker 5: how you freeze your credit, this is how you if
17:05
Speaker 5: you need to talk to the Social Securities Administration, this
17:07
Speaker 5: is what you do, which you would think, and why
17:09
Speaker 5: are you doing that mortgage? Well, because there is an
17:12
Speaker 5: avalanche of credit and privacy issues that are affecting customers.
17:19
Speaker 5: So that's that's another reason that you know, I decided
17:22
Speaker 5: to make the switch.
17:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's very uh when you think about it,
17:26
Speaker 3: exactly what you're talking about. You know, you're sending anonymously
17:30
Speaker 3: your information online to someone who Yeah, they're they're cojoined
17:35
Speaker 3: with a large lender somewhere, but you don't know how
17:37
Speaker 3: many steps removed they are from a brick and mortar
17:39
Speaker 3: place where they have like actual oversight people that make
17:43
Speaker 3: sure they're in compliance. Are they a homework I mean,
17:45
Speaker 3: you don't not that there's necessarily anything wrong with those things.
17:47
Speaker 3: It's just you keep on throwing darts into the unknown.
17:49
Speaker 3: You don't know what you're going to hit at some
17:50
Speaker 3: point in time. Yeah.
17:51
Speaker 5: We live in a digital world, right, it's it's uh.
17:54
Speaker 5: There are those of us that are digital immigrants like
17:57
Speaker 5: you and me, and then natives, which are our kids.
17:59
Speaker 5: Yeah that grew up in the digital world. But the
18:02
Speaker 5: reality is there is, like anything, there's going to be
18:05
Speaker 5: a pendulum swing one way and then back. And as
18:07
Speaker 5: we move into this kind of like AI sophisticated world,
18:12
Speaker 5: the perils of letting go of your private information and
18:16
Speaker 5: the downside is once it's out there, it's out there, right.
18:19
Speaker 5: And so I've had this conversation with my own I've
18:22
Speaker 5: got four sons and with my wife, like I think
18:25
Speaker 5: protocol and like expected behavior will be. You know, you
18:29
Speaker 5: get your kids a booster, you get you do this,
18:31
Speaker 5: you do this, you do this, you go freeze your
18:33
Speaker 5: kids credit right at a very young age and and
18:36
Speaker 5: then that way you have to be the one to
18:38
Speaker 5: go and unlock it until they're eighteen.
18:41
Speaker 4: And I think we'll see.
18:43
Speaker 5: And unfolding into this because you know, it's by the
18:47
Speaker 5: time you realize and it's too late.
18:49
Speaker 4: It's too late, you know.
18:50
Speaker 5: And as adult, like I said, most of us have
18:53
Speaker 5: either got the scam email saying hey, you know I
18:55
Speaker 5: can have your information or we know you know, literally
18:59
Speaker 5: two weeks ago.
19:00
Speaker 4: In this last two weeks I was dealing with.
19:01
Speaker 3: The lady.
19:03
Speaker 5: Personally that I know that I'm just kind of walking
19:06
Speaker 5: through the process. I wasn't even more related, just hey,
19:09
Speaker 5: you know fell victim to the gift card scheme, right,
19:13
Speaker 5: So working through getting that fixed. So the need for
19:17
Speaker 5: having somebody that you could either pick up a phone
19:19
Speaker 5: call local number that you can we text, right. If
19:21
Speaker 5: you want to text me, you can text me or
19:23
Speaker 5: just walk in. Now I am a by appointment only, right,
19:26
Speaker 5: but if you want to set an appointment, we're right there.
19:30
Speaker 3: It's it's so much different than seeding all of your
19:34
Speaker 3: knowledge to somebody online that you're hoping is just doing
19:36
Speaker 3: the thing. The thing right, even if you reached out
19:38
Speaker 3: to them, it's still man a big unknown. You're making sure.
19:41
Speaker 3: You want to make sure all the connections are encrypted
19:43
Speaker 3: and the information is not getting sniffed out somewhere. I mean,
19:46
Speaker 3: it is so much nicer to be able to see,
19:48
Speaker 3: even if you're still emailing stuff or whatever it is,
19:50
Speaker 3: to see where it's going to. You know, that's a
19:51
Speaker 3: huge difference in somebody local that's from here, locally, that
19:54
Speaker 3: knows the area. We're gonna get into some of that
19:55
Speaker 3: when we come back. What we're going to do now,
19:56
Speaker 3: we'll take a break when we come back. I want
19:58
Speaker 3: to get into more about is that how Russell can
20:01
Speaker 3: help folks. What products are available out there. If you're
20:04
Speaker 3: out there, maybe some of the things you can look
20:05
Speaker 3: at in your own life that might mean that that
20:07
Speaker 3: you might be someone that could be helped by the
20:09
Speaker 3: different types of products that are out there. And also
20:11
Speaker 3: exactly why it matters to have somebody that knows the
20:14
Speaker 3: location a little bit, or what's Virginia and Charleston's kind
20:16
Speaker 3: of a unique area. Somebody looking at things from the
20:19
Speaker 3: Missouri or something like that's not going to know our area,
20:22
Speaker 3: and so there's a benefit to having somebody local on
20:25
Speaker 3: your side. We're going to talk about all of that
20:26
Speaker 3: and more when we come back. If you want to
20:28
Speaker 3: shoot in a phone call, you're more than welcome to
20:29
Speaker 3: do that. Call our business line right now. We're still
20:31
Speaker 3: working on getting on of our studio lines patched back,
20:33
Speaker 3: but our business line three zero four three four two
20:35
Speaker 3: eight one three one three four two eight one three
20:37
Speaker 3: one just tell Tracy. You want to talk to Russell one,
20:40
Speaker 3: ask the expert and you'll get right back to the
20:41
Speaker 3: studio three zero four, three four two eight one three one.
20:44
Speaker 3: You can also text over questions of three zero four
20:46
Speaker 3: nine three five five zero zero eight. Let's go ahead
20:49
Speaker 3: and take a break. We'll be back right after this.
20:50
Speaker 3: You're listening to ask the expert. My guest this morning
20:52
Speaker 3: for the first time, welcoming on board. It's Russell Bonasso.
20:55
Speaker 3: He is with Cornerstone First Mortgage on in Elk City.
20:58
Speaker 3: We want to talk more about that, says when we
21:00
Speaker 3: come back, when I ask the expert. Wcchs the Boys
21:02
Speaker 3: of Charleston.
21:03
Speaker 2: The holiday season is here and your local Parmer store
21:06
Speaker 2: is ready. The holiday season is the busiest time of
21:09
Speaker 2: the year. Take it easy on yourself by visiting your
21:12
Speaker 2: local Parmar store. From gas to groceries and all those
21:15
Speaker 2: last minute things you need for your gatherings. Parmer has it.
21:19
Speaker 2: Sign up for the Parmar Rewards card and download the
21:22
Speaker 2: Parmar app to with locations in West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, Pennsylvania,
21:28
Speaker 2: and Virginia. If there's not a Parmer store near you now,
21:31
Speaker 2: there will be soon.
21:32
Speaker 6: One of the region's largest art and craft shows returns
21:35
Speaker 6: to the Charleston Convention Center November fifteenth through the seventeenth.
21:38
Speaker 6: The Capital City Art and Craft Show is back. See
21:41
Speaker 6: and buy a true cornucopia of creativity at the fifty
21:45
Speaker 6: fifth show. Nearly one hundred and fifty booths of jewelry, pottery, woodwork,
21:49
Speaker 6: holiday decorations, ironworks, paintings, quilts, foods, and more. Start your
21:54
Speaker 6: holiday shopping at the fifty to fifth Capital City Art
21:56
Speaker 6: and Craft Show, presented by the Canalla City Alliance Club.
21:59
Speaker 6: We'll see you at the Charleston Convention Center.
22:03
Speaker 7: Hey, West Virginia need extra defense this season. Don't let
22:08
Speaker 7: respiratory illness slow you down. Vaccines are your best defense
22:12
Speaker 7: this fall because your health protects their future. So you
22:17
Speaker 7: can celebrate safety, get closer with confidence, and never miss
22:23
Speaker 7: a moment. Breathe Easy, West Virginia. Find out how by
22:27
Speaker 7: going to Breathe Easy dot WV dot com.
22:35
Speaker 3: You're listening to ask the expert wchs the Voice of
22:37
Speaker 3: Charles and give us a call this morning. Three zer
22:38
Speaker 3: a four three four two eight one three one three
22:40
Speaker 3: zer a four three four two eight one three one
22:42
Speaker 3: with me as sooner this morning. Russell Bonasso is here.
22:44
Speaker 3: He is the owner of Cornerstone First Mortgage, located to
22:46
Speaker 3: twenty Washington Street West and Charleston Over in Elk City.
22:50
Speaker 3: Their phone number is Threes are A four three four
22:52
Speaker 3: five fifty six twenty six. Threes are A four three
22:55
Speaker 3: four five loan? Is that right? Yep? Yeah, right, yep.
22:58
Speaker 3: Threes are a four three four five loan. Is where
23:00
Speaker 3: you can find it. You can also do a search
23:02
Speaker 3: on line for Cornerstone First Mortgage. WV would probably be
23:05
Speaker 3: the easiest way to get over to the website to
23:08
Speaker 3: find out more information about Russell. I'm really looking forward
23:10
Speaker 3: to the rest of our conversation this morning. If you
23:12
Speaker 3: have any questions for Russell, you can give us a call.
23:13
Speaker 3: Three zer a four three four two eight one three
23:15
Speaker 3: one three zero four three four two eight one three one.
23:17
Speaker 3: Now we're going to talk about a little bit. We've
23:19
Speaker 3: done the introduction. We've kind of set your philosophy on things.
23:23
Speaker 3: Now we can talk about the folks that are out
23:24
Speaker 3: there and who you can help. Products are available, things
23:27
Speaker 3: that you're looking to get into. What is kind of
23:29
Speaker 3: your mission as far as the folks that you think
23:32
Speaker 3: that you can help the most.
23:33
Speaker 5: Sure, So first of all, just give my NMLS. So
23:36
Speaker 5: I'd like to give that out there. It's four two
23:38
Speaker 5: seven five four eight. So every licensed mortgage originator has
23:43
Speaker 5: a license number.
23:44
Speaker 4: That's mine.
23:44
Speaker 5: Four two seven five four eight. As far as my
23:48
Speaker 5: philosophy on who I can help, essentially, I'm looking to
23:51
Speaker 5: help in home buyers, investors, anybody that is looking to
23:56
Speaker 5: tap into the equity in their home because of maybe
23:58
Speaker 5: higher interest rates. So essentially, if you're buying a home,
24:02
Speaker 5: whether you're a first time home buyer or not. And
24:05
Speaker 5: one of the reasons I made the switch to Cornerstone
24:07
Speaker 5: was just access to product. I was not able to
24:09
Speaker 5: access and do West Virginia housing loans. We were not
24:13
Speaker 5: on their approved list. Where we are now with Cornerstone
24:18
Speaker 5: as an originator. If you are buying a home out
24:23
Speaker 5: of state, right, or maybe you're buying a home up
24:26
Speaker 5: in Morgantown, or you want to buy a home down
24:28
Speaker 5: to Marshall for your kid. Second homes right, we do those,
24:32
Speaker 5: do a lot of those, and investment property. So if
24:34
Speaker 5: you're thinking, you know what I'd really like to get
24:37
Speaker 5: into the investment game, I've seen I know somebody I
24:40
Speaker 5: have an uncle, I have a good friend who you know,
24:42
Speaker 5: they have a ton of passive income from rental property.
24:45
Speaker 5: And you know, not only our mortgage rates at an
24:47
Speaker 5: all time time rent is at an all time high.
24:49
Speaker 5: And you know, if you're a renter and you're listening
24:51
Speaker 5: to this show, I know you're sitting there nodding your
24:53
Speaker 5: head saying I know. So if you're on the other
24:56
Speaker 5: side of that and you want to take, you know,
24:59
Speaker 5: leverage that our opportunity to get into the investment property
25:04
Speaker 5: game and the run of property game, we can help
25:06
Speaker 5: out with that. We also so you can also do
25:10
Speaker 5: we offer home equity lines of credit, which in the
25:14
Speaker 5: last five or six years, less and less providers have
25:18
Speaker 5: offered helocks for a number of different reasons. But we're
25:22
Speaker 5: able to access home equities. And then also there's something
25:25
Speaker 5: called a he loan, which is a closed in second right,
25:28
Speaker 5: so it's a second lean behind your first mortgage, but
25:31
Speaker 5: it's a fixed rate and it's an installment right off
25:34
Speaker 5: the get go.
25:35
Speaker 7: Right.
25:35
Speaker 5: It's not a revolving where you just have to make
25:37
Speaker 5: a minimum payment of like the interest. It's actually a
25:40
Speaker 5: he loan, and those are even more of a unicorn
25:43
Speaker 5: in the home landing game, so have access to he loans.
25:47
Speaker 5: But really what I've done a fair amount, even in
25:49
Speaker 5: the last six months or so, rates started to go
25:52
Speaker 5: up in March of twenty two, right, that was kind
25:54
Speaker 5: of the if you're looking at the graph, that's the
25:57
Speaker 5: bottom of the curve as far as mortgage rates. And
26:00
Speaker 5: so as people and people obviously will be frustrated with,
26:05
Speaker 5: you know, whether your originator, your consumer, you're an individual,
26:08
Speaker 5: or your business, you're you're frustrated with residential mortgage rates.
26:11
Speaker 5: But the thing you're more frustrated with is the pace
26:14
Speaker 5: of inflation, right, and it is it's generational, right, we
26:20
Speaker 5: haven't haven't been here since the late seventies as far
26:23
Speaker 5: as inflation, and it's really stripping, stripping away consumers discretionary
26:29
Speaker 5: income and the ability to buy things. And so the
26:33
Speaker 5: one upside to inflated asset values is home prices are up.
26:38
Speaker 5: And you know, I'd say, up until about really COVID,
26:43
Speaker 5: we didn't see a huge bump in home prices in
26:45
Speaker 5: West Virginia. We'd see a little bit of an increase,
26:48
Speaker 5: but that nothing that you could possibly call a bubble, right,
26:52
Speaker 5: just slight slight increases where since COVID. You've you've seen
26:57
Speaker 5: significant home value increases and so so you know, when
27:00
Speaker 5: it first happened, I thought, oh man, well when this
27:02
Speaker 5: goes back down? But the reality is, and this is
27:04
Speaker 5: again just my Russ Binaska's opinion, I don't know that
27:07
Speaker 5: we'll see a correction in West Virginia the way we
27:09
Speaker 5: will other places because it was so long overdue. And
27:13
Speaker 5: the home value that people will find and you can
27:17
Speaker 5: go find it on Zillo and some other places, but
27:19
Speaker 5: the home value that you'll see now is probably going
27:23
Speaker 5: to be an accurate reflection as opposed to some type
27:26
Speaker 5: of inflated number versus say, ten years ago.
27:29
Speaker 3: That's a really great point that you make because of
27:32
Speaker 3: one of the other backend issues that happened during the
27:34
Speaker 3: during the crisis with all the mortgage stuff, was that
27:37
Speaker 3: praise value started getting so inflated that people, you know,
27:40
Speaker 3: suddenly you're buying one hundred percent off of a property
27:43
Speaker 3: that was already overinflated by thirty thousand dollars. When you
27:46
Speaker 3: start getting behind on that payment and you're trying to
27:48
Speaker 3: find options to get out from under it, Can I
27:49
Speaker 3: do this? Can I do that? I mean, not only
27:51
Speaker 3: do you have no equity, you have reverse, you have
27:53
Speaker 3: your you're underwater on it, and you can't do anything
27:56
Speaker 3: with that property. And that's a lot of people lost
27:57
Speaker 3: their homes with that.
27:58
Speaker 5: And I think there is still some element of that
28:01
Speaker 5: that danger out of state some of these markets that
28:04
Speaker 5: saw where one the demand was higher, so the prices
28:07
Speaker 5: were pushed up higher. But as that demand wanes. Now,
28:11
Speaker 5: you know, and I've seen it in Texas, I've seen
28:13
Speaker 5: it in Ohio, and I've.
28:15
Speaker 4: Even seen it here in West Virginia.
28:16
Speaker 5: But where we were talking about home sales, in a
28:19
Speaker 5: matter of you measured so forever in West Virginia, if
28:22
Speaker 5: you had a home that you wanted to sell and
28:24
Speaker 5: you put it on the market, you would measure how
28:27
Speaker 5: fast it's sold, typically in weeks, sometimes months, right where
28:33
Speaker 5: during COVID and what came out of COVID, you were
28:36
Speaker 5: no longer measuring it in weeks and months. You were
28:39
Speaker 5: measuring it in days and in some cases hours. Right legitimately,
28:45
Speaker 5: you know if your house didn't sell within the first
28:47
Speaker 5: twenty four hours, certainly in some markets outside of West Virginia,
28:49
Speaker 5: but even in West Virginia, that means your realtor did
28:51
Speaker 5: something wrong that means you did something wrong. That means
28:53
Speaker 5: you didn't put a right price point, but like you know,
28:55
Speaker 5: to not get under contract or at least have like
28:57
Speaker 5: ten offers in the first twenty four hours.
28:59
Speaker 4: Was disappointed.
29:00
Speaker 5: I mean, we have moved away from that right now,
29:03
Speaker 5: we're still nowhere near where we were before COVID in
29:05
Speaker 5: the sense that I'd say, instead of if we were
29:08
Speaker 5: measuring it in weeks and months and then we shifted
29:11
Speaker 5: to you know, days and hours, we're no longer at hours,
29:13
Speaker 5: but we're certainly still at days.
29:15
Speaker 3: Right.
29:15
Speaker 5: So if you know, have somebody who I'm doing home
29:19
Speaker 5: purchase for down honeyth and they listed their home and
29:22
Speaker 5: I think they went under contract in about two weeks, right,
29:26
Speaker 5: So I would say that's a realistic expectation, you know,
29:30
Speaker 5: if you go much past two weeks, if you go
29:31
Speaker 5: to thirty days. I had a customer in Florida that
29:34
Speaker 5: had helped over the years. She listed her house. It
29:37
Speaker 5: took her like three months to sell, and so her
29:40
Speaker 5: question again was is a price too high or is
29:44
Speaker 5: it people just waiting on the sideline. So that's another
29:46
Speaker 5: thing we're kind of seeing with the higher rates with inflation,
29:49
Speaker 5: people were saying you know what, Yeah, I don't want
29:51
Speaker 5: to rent, but I'm willing to rent for the next
29:53
Speaker 5: six months to see what kind of happens, And especially
29:55
Speaker 5: with an overturn in the administration and a cl sweep
30:00
Speaker 5: of you know, all three the branches, I'm curious as
30:04
Speaker 5: to what legislation will look like. You know, we were
30:08
Speaker 5: talking about this before. Mortgage rates are not determined by
30:13
Speaker 5: the President or the Senate. It's not even really done
30:17
Speaker 5: by the FED, right, They're done by investors that buy
30:20
Speaker 5: mortgage backed securities. So paradoxically, when the Fed did a
30:24
Speaker 5: fifty point a fifty basis point drop on September eighteenth,
30:29
Speaker 5: everybody thought I had like five people literally, my hand
30:33
Speaker 5: was on the trigger the mouse right getting ready to
30:36
Speaker 5: click lock their rate, and rates went up, and it's
30:41
Speaker 5: kind of like what just happened there? But what had
30:44
Speaker 5: happened was investors had already baked in. They knew the
30:48
Speaker 5: rate drop was coming, so it was already baked in.
30:49
Speaker 5: So rates jumped up when the news hit. Then the
30:52
Speaker 5: jobs report hit like a week later, and rates kept
30:56
Speaker 5: moving up. So you know, if you're looking at a
30:58
Speaker 5: snapshot in time to day, may not be the lowest
31:01
Speaker 5: rate in the last say six months, and it's certainly
31:06
Speaker 5: not the lowest rate in the last three and a
31:07
Speaker 5: half years, but I do believe there will be lower
31:10
Speaker 5: rates coming in twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six.
31:14
Speaker 5: And so if you're a home if you're a homeowner
31:16
Speaker 5: and you're looking to leverage your homes homes equity, right,
31:21
Speaker 5: whether that's a heelock closed in second or just to
31:23
Speaker 5: cash out refinance, we can help you with that. So
31:28
Speaker 5: that's one thing. And then you also have something called
31:30
Speaker 5: a rate and term refinance. Those are for the folks that,
31:32
Speaker 5: you know what, maybe I got an arm a couple
31:34
Speaker 5: of years ago because I thought I wasn't sure what
31:37
Speaker 5: my situation was gonna be. If you you know, if
31:39
Speaker 5: you only have a job that's maybe three to five
31:40
Speaker 5: years and then you're gonna gonna move, or you just
31:44
Speaker 5: took a higher rate and you because you wanted to
31:46
Speaker 5: get in that home, and it's like, man, I got
31:47
Speaker 5: in at six seven five and I'm not any lower
31:50
Speaker 5: than that, Like, man, I want some relief. I do
31:53
Speaker 5: think those rate and term opportunities will pop up in
31:57
Speaker 5: twenty five and twenty six, so home byres refinance those
32:01
Speaker 5: people that just want to an instrument, be at a
32:04
Speaker 5: home equity loan or home equity line of credit to
32:07
Speaker 5: access you know, home equity lines of credit are great
32:09
Speaker 5: because they're revolving and it gives you instant access to
32:14
Speaker 5: cash and then.
32:15
Speaker 4: You have the ability to pay it back.
32:17
Speaker 5: Usually it's a ten year revolving window and then it
32:20
Speaker 5: converts into a twenty year installment repayment. So but I
32:24
Speaker 5: really don't want to talk a ton about product to share, Yeah,
32:26
Speaker 5: just because I do want to do some deep dives
32:28
Speaker 5: in later episodes. A lot of people might say this
32:32
Speaker 5: is nerd alert. I'm gonna switch the stage.
32:34
Speaker 3: Broadly speaking, though, for people that might think that, well,
32:37
Speaker 3: the interest rate environment hasn't been very friendly for the
32:39
Speaker 3: last couple of years. Historically, it's still very low rates.
32:41
Speaker 3: First of all. Also, now that you're talking about second
32:46
Speaker 3: mortgage opportunities, whether through helocks or clotheslines or something like that,
32:50
Speaker 3: if you have a good rate on your first and
32:52
Speaker 3: you still need to get some equity out of your home,
32:54
Speaker 3: you have a second morgage you can go through. Sure
32:55
Speaker 3: the rates want to be higher, but at least you
32:56
Speaker 3: don't have to refinance that thirty that you have at
32:59
Speaker 3: a four percent in TT rate or whatever it might
33:01
Speaker 3: be that I mean, that's a situation I'm in. I
33:03
Speaker 3: have a rate that so low I can't do anything
33:04
Speaker 3: with it right now.
33:05
Speaker 5: You got to say you got two hundred and fifty
33:07
Speaker 5: k at you know, three point seventy five or four
33:09
Speaker 5: in a quarter, and you're looking at a home mech
33:11
Speaker 5: when you have seventy five K because you want to
33:12
Speaker 5: do the deck, you want to do the kitchen or whatever,
33:15
Speaker 5: do you know, finish out the basement. And you're like,
33:19
Speaker 5: I don't. Yeah, I'm just I will I will delay
33:22
Speaker 5: whatever that major home improvement is because I'm not going
33:25
Speaker 5: to I'm not going to lose two hundred fifty thousan
33:28
Speaker 5: dollars at four in a quarter at three seventy five.
33:31
Speaker 5: And so yes, that bringing in that second it's kind
33:35
Speaker 5: of a no brainer really. And if you look at
33:37
Speaker 5: the blended rate, right, so a lot of people are like,
33:38
Speaker 5: well it's nine percent, It's like okay, well, let's say
33:41
Speaker 5: you put that fifty k on your combination of your
33:45
Speaker 5: lows and home depot right and your visa card. Right.
33:48
Speaker 5: Guess what, that's the twenty nine percent Even if you
33:50
Speaker 5: have tier one credit. Right, you're still going to be
33:53
Speaker 5: in the twenties, right, those days of being tier one
33:55
Speaker 5: credit and being in the teams on your credit card,
33:57
Speaker 5: they're gone. And yes, you could pay it off within
33:59
Speaker 5: this or the next statement cycle, and you don't get
34:01
Speaker 5: charge of the financing charge. But you know, if you
34:04
Speaker 5: had the type of cash, you probably wouldn't be putting
34:06
Speaker 5: on a car in the first place. So yeah, this,
34:09
Speaker 5: the second option is tremendous. And I think one savvy
34:14
Speaker 5: homeowners are already doing that, right. I have people that
34:17
Speaker 5: have something called an emergency helock, right, just an emergency
34:19
Speaker 5: HOMEQ with a lot of credit, and I would originate
34:20
Speaker 5: it for them and they're I'm like, what are you
34:22
Speaker 5: gonna use this for?
34:22
Speaker 4: Like, I'm not, you know, I.
34:24
Speaker 3: Just want to use they have.
34:26
Speaker 5: To So but yeah, tapping into seconds or or a
34:30
Speaker 5: great idea. And and I'd like to see more people
34:35
Speaker 5: as again home home prices are up, right, go ahead
34:38
Speaker 5: and strake while the iron's hot, Because you don't, you're
34:40
Speaker 5: not gonna have what are called look backs where you're
34:42
Speaker 5: gonna go back and a lender is gonna come in
34:43
Speaker 5: and say, you know what, we want to drop your
34:46
Speaker 5: line of credit because we've done a digital evaluation and
34:49
Speaker 5: see your homes uh gone down in value.
34:52
Speaker 3: So the I find all of the different options that
34:55
Speaker 3: are available now and your mission is really pretty inspiring
34:58
Speaker 3: on the way that you do it. Because when I
35:00
Speaker 3: was in mortgage industry as well, it was sort of
35:02
Speaker 3: a similar guy. He came back to his home, he
35:04
Speaker 3: opened up a business. He wanted to run an ethical
35:07
Speaker 3: company because there's a lot of companies running around doing
35:09
Speaker 3: unethical business at the time. He kind of foresaw a
35:12
Speaker 3: lot of what happened with the financial crisis. He's like,
35:14
Speaker 3: we can't keep doing things like this because it's going
35:16
Speaker 3: to We're going to cannibalize ourselves. He was right, it's
35:18
Speaker 3: exactly what happened. So you're somebody that's that's taken this advantage,
35:22
Speaker 3: and you might be out here and being one of
35:24
Speaker 3: these people that have the lower interest rates, but you
35:26
Speaker 3: also might be somebody in the middle. And there's a
35:28
Speaker 3: lot of different opportunities out there. We can't get into
35:30
Speaker 3: all of it right now, but you can roll in
35:31
Speaker 3: some debt consolidation and different things like that where you
35:34
Speaker 3: might end up capturing a little bit of a higher rate.
35:36
Speaker 3: But if suddenly if if cash flow is your issue
35:39
Speaker 3: and you can and you can free up three or
35:41
Speaker 3: four hundred dollars a month off of your monthly expenses,
35:43
Speaker 3: that is also very beneficial to someone. These are all
35:46
Speaker 3: things that we can talk about in the future that
35:48
Speaker 3: are really beneficial for your clients. We have about forty
35:50
Speaker 3: five seconds left or so if you want to give
35:52
Speaker 3: one more pitch to folks, tell folks where to find you, sure,
35:54
Speaker 3: and a little bit about the other company real quick.
35:57
Speaker 5: So essentially it's three h four three four five long,
36:00
Speaker 5: and if you want to give me a call, you
36:01
Speaker 5: can find us at two twenty Washington Street West in
36:05
Speaker 5: Charleston in Elk City, again in between Sergio's and the
36:08
Speaker 5: Elk City Playhouse. If you're driving down Tennessee Avenue away
36:11
Speaker 5: from the river, you basically will be looking at uh
36:13
Speaker 5: looking at a branch. Some people might say, well, why
36:17
Speaker 5: don't why do we need another mortgage lender in town?
36:19
Speaker 5: And the reality is, like I said, there are digital
36:21
Speaker 5: lenders that are they're constricting in terms of their presence
36:26
Speaker 5: in the state, but also you have other local lenders
36:29
Speaker 5: that do a great job. But when I kind of
36:32
Speaker 5: looked around, I felt like there was not that presence
36:35
Speaker 5: in Elk City. There is that presence in Charleston and
36:38
Speaker 5: to the greater degree of the Kenaal Valley and West Virginia.
36:41
Speaker 5: But it was my experience that I'd helped enough people
36:44
Speaker 5: and I knew I could help those same people when
36:46
Speaker 5: I left, and that's where I'm now.
36:49
Speaker 3: Man, it is great information. I am looking forward to
36:51
Speaker 3: having this show on. We're gonna be doing it on
36:53
Speaker 3: the second Tuesday of every month for the next several
36:56
Speaker 3: months here with Russell Banasso from Cornerstone First Mortgan. But
37:00
Speaker 3: you can find this podcast if you missed any portion
37:01
Speaker 3: of this and you want to catch at the show.
37:03
Speaker 3: We've covered a lot of ground and Russell introduced himselves
37:05
Speaker 3: very well. You can go to WCHS network dot com
37:07
Speaker 3: slash podcast. We'll have that up within about an hour
37:09
Speaker 3: or so, and you can catch him out here next
37:11
Speaker 3: month as well. Russell, thank you so much for your time.
37:13
Speaker 3: We really appreciate it.
37:14
Speaker 4: Thank you, Dale, it's great.
37:15
Speaker 2: Thank you.
37:15
Speaker 3: Dave Allen. Five eighty Live is up next. Have a
37:17
Speaker 3: great day, everyone. Five eight WHSA nint e six point
37:20
Speaker 3: five FM, Charleston at four point five Cross Lanes, l
37:23
Speaker 3: UVRC media station. We are proud to live here too.