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How to Buy Help Clients Buy Before They Sell · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  Nick, welcome to Las Vegas and welcome to the show.
• 0:14
  Absolutely.
• 0:15
  Thanks so much for having me, Jeff.
• 0:16
  You know, the current market we're in is, as you well know, right?
• 0:19
  We've got inventory, well, depending on the market you're in, I call out a transaction
• 0:24
  recession.
• 0:25
  We've got affordability issues.
• 0:28
  We've got higher interest rates.
• 0:29
  We've got, I'm seeing maybe you are as well.
• 0:32
  A lot of properties now starting to sit longer, average days on market, and we're starting
• 0:36
  to see a little bit of price softening come.
• 0:40
  So what is buy before you sell and what problems I guess specifically does it address in
• 0:45
  this market?
• 0:46
  Yeah.
• 0:47
  So we can start with the problems here.
• 0:48
  So there's really, you know, if I'm a client and I'm looking to buy my next home and
• 0:51
  I currently own one, right?
• 0:53
  That's most people are not first time home buyers, especially in this market, right?
• 0:56
  Right.
• 0:57
  So if you have an existing property, there's really two problems that you face, right?
• 1:01
  The first is most of the money that you have is tied up in that home, right?
• 1:05
  So you need to get that money out so you can, you know, use it for a down payment on
• 1:08
  your next property, right?
• 1:09
  The second problem, and this is really a lending problem, and loan officers will tell
• 1:13
  you this all the time.
• 1:14
  It's, hey, I've got to count the client's existing mortgage payment in the DTI calculation.
• 1:19
  Right.
• 1:20
  And when that happens, oftentimes throws off the ratios, you can actually qualify the client,
• 1:23
  right?
• 1:24
  So what you say is a loan officer is great, no problem, sell your home, and then it'll
• 1:29
  be able to then come to me when it's sold, yeah?
• 1:31
  Exactly.
• 1:32
  Come to me when it's sold, or, you know, let's time it out, and that's always fun, which
• 1:35
  is, which is always, it never works.
• 1:37
  No.
• 1:38
  Very rare that it works.
• 1:39
  It works the way that you want, right?
• 1:40
  And so, so those are the kind of the two problems that we see.
• 1:43
  And what, by before you sell it does is we solve both those.
• 1:46
  So the first problem again, getting that money out of your house, what we do is we offer
• 1:49
  a bridge loan, but it's a 0% interest bridge loan.
• 1:53
  So that client can access up to 75% combined loan to value, existing property, and use
• 1:59
  that to buy their next home.
• 2:00
  So let's say it's a million dollar house, the client's got $500,000 remaining on their
• 2:04
  mortgage balance, we can lend up to 250, that client can then use that money to go buy
• 2:09
  their next house.
• 2:10
  So look at down payment.
• 2:11
  Exactly.
• 2:12
  Exactly, use it for down payment.
• 2:13
  So that's the first way to, basically unlock equity from your existing property without
• 2:17
  an expensive he-lock or bridge loan.
• 2:18
  It's a 0% interest loan.
• 2:20
  You don't have to count that payment if you're a loan officer at all of that bridge
• 2:23
  loan, as well.
• 2:24
  The second piece, and this is kind of the trickier one, is how do you remove that existing
• 2:28
  liability, right?
• 2:30
  And the way we do it is we actually place an offer on the client's departing residence.
• 2:35
  And there's a guideline in Fannie Freddy that states it's a departing residence guideline.
• 2:38
  It states if there's a bona fide cash offer, contingency free offer on the client's
• 2:43
  departing residence, you do not have to count those payments in your DTI calculation.
• 2:48
  You can remove those payments.
• 2:49
  When you do that, you now have the ability to qualify the client for the new home, only
• 2:53
  with the new payments, right?
• 2:55
  And not with that existing mortgage payment, and not with that bridge loan payment because
• 2:59
  there's no payment associated with it.
• 3:01
  Right.
• 3:02
  So you have now three loans, but you're only qualifying the client with one, that new
• 3:06
  mortgage.
• 3:07
  And so you're now able to qualify the client, and you're able to get that equity out
• 3:10
  of the existing property so they can go buy their next one.
• 3:13
  And hence the product's name, buy before yourself, right?
• 3:16
  It now buys their home, and now they have time to sell it, right?
• 3:20
  And the way that the product works is they've got 120 days.
• 3:23
  Our offer is 120 days after they buy their new home.
• 3:27
  It's outstanding for 120 days.
• 3:29
  After 120 days, we will buy the home if we need to, but oftentimes 98% plus at the time,
• 3:35
  the client sells the home on the open market to another buyer for market price and receives
• 3:40
  the funds.
• 3:41
  The 120 days doesn't start until it doesn't start until the client buys their new home.
• 3:45
  Interesting.
• 3:46
  So they have even more time.
• 3:49
  Exactly.
• 3:50
  If they want to list it early, they can, that we sell it all the time.
• 3:53
  But oftentimes, we also see that the client, hey, I want to get my new home.
• 3:57
  I want my home to be vacant and staged.
• 4:00
  And then I want to sell it for three, four, five percent more, which is often what we see
• 4:03
  as well.
• 4:04
  It's a huge benefit to the program.
• 4:06
  Because they're staging it.
• 4:07
  They're staging it.
• 4:08
  It's vacant.
• 4:09
  There's no pets running around.
• 4:10
  Sure.
• 4:11
  It's running around.
• 4:12
  It's just a lot more sellable, I think, when your stuff's not all in the house.
• 4:15
  How does this compare to open door offer pad type?
• 4:19
  Yeah.
• 4:20
  So they open their offer pad.
• 4:22
  They are really focused on getting you out quickly.
• 4:25
  Right.
• 4:26
  Hey, I need to sell my home right now, and I just need to get out.
• 4:29
  And there's a certain client for that.
• 4:31
  Sure.
• 4:32
  But there is no kind of market sale opportunity for them.
• 4:35
  Open door is making it offer that's lower than the market value.
• 4:39
  Obviously, they need to.
• 4:40
  They're going to fix and flip that home and sell it for profit.
• 4:43
  That's how they make their money.
• 4:44
  For us, we're saying, look, get the best of both worlds.
• 4:47
  We will make sure that we guarantee that your home sells no matter what, right?
• 4:50
  It's either going to sell to us or it's going to sell to another buyer.
• 4:53
  And you also get to maximize the value you get for your home.
• 4:56
  So you get to sell it on the open market.
• 4:58
  So you get that on market pricing at the same time you get that guarantee, right?
• 5:02
  And that's kind of the difference between us and an open door offer pad.
• 5:05
  Okay.
• 5:06
  And as we talk about how they make money, for those that are wondering, let's talk about
• 5:10
  obviously you guys get to get paid somehow, so why don't you break that down a little bit?
• 5:13
  Absolutely.
• 5:14
  So we charge 2.4% of the departing residents sale price, right?
• 5:18
  So if the price is $500,000, that the home sells for, we would charge 12,000, right?
• 5:23
  So that's how the product works today.
• 5:25
  So you think about it 2.4%, oh, that's close to the agent commission, it's a lot of money.
• 5:30
  Let's kind of break it down, right?
• 5:32
  So I think the first way that I think about it is if I'm going to do an alternative, right?
• 5:38
  Oftentimes a HELOC or a bridge loan or something like that, it gets very complicated.
• 5:43
  And if you can find a way for the client to qualify for all the loans, there is interest
• 5:47
  that's occurring every single day and oftentimes it ends up being more expensive to go that
• 5:51
  route anyway.
• 5:52
  So that's the first piece.
• 5:53
  The second piece is if you want to try to make it work from a sale and buy perspective,
• 5:58
  think about this opportunity, right?
• 5:59
  You're buying your next home.
• 6:01
  You decide to sell your first one.
• 6:03
  Now all of a sudden you have to move somewhere and live somewhere for a little bit, right?
• 6:06
  So you're spending money on the moving costs, you're spending money on a hotel and apartment,
• 6:10
  whatever it is until you find your next home, right?
• 6:13
  That's another piece of it.
• 6:15
  The third thing I think of is if I want to try to make the timing work, I got to sell
• 6:19
  my home really fast.
• 6:21
  And when you sell your home fast, you got to sell it for less, you got to fire sell it.
• 6:24
  Right.
• 6:25
  And when you go and submit an offer on your new home with a home sale contingency, right?
• 6:29
  All of a sudden you're spending more money to buy that next home to make your offer more
• 6:33
  competitive to that seller.
• 6:34
  Yes.
• 6:35
  So by the time you add up all of that, you're well over the 2.4% that you could have just
• 6:38
  paid for the convenience of the product.
• 6:41
  And that's the way that I like to think about the 2.4% fee objection that we see from
• 6:45
  clients and loan officers today.
• 6:47
  Yeah.
• 6:48
  So how do you, I mean, what do you usually see the reaction when people, because obviously
• 6:52
  that's a little bit of sticker shock, but then you walk people through probably a similar
• 6:56
  explanation like you just did right now and they look at the big picture of all that stuff
• 6:59
  and they're like, okay, I'm curious.
• 7:03
  If you have any numbers, and this is of course a little bit on the spot, like of the,
• 7:07
  if you present to 10 home sellers or 50 or whatever, like you have an idea of how many
• 7:12
  convert on that.
• 7:13
  Yeah.
• 7:14
  I would say, so if I'm talking to you, well, again, we really pitched to loan officers
• 7:17
  on our end.
• 7:18
  And then those loan officers then pitched to clients.
• 7:19
  So anecdotally through those loan officers, I can kind of tell you rough what we see.
• 7:23
  Of the loan officers we talk to about 7 out of 10 are like, this is actually cheap, right?
• 7:29
  Because compared to the options that I have, this makes a ton of sense, right?
• 7:32
  Those three other loan officers who think it's expensive, we walk them through what we
• 7:36
  talk through today, right?
• 7:37
  We also talk about the vacancy of the home and agents absolutely love that, that piece of
• 7:42
  it, right?
• 7:43
  It's like, hey, home's vacant.
• 7:44
  I don't have to worry about anything.
• 7:45
  I can do showings all day long, I can get this home sold for a lot more money, agents
• 7:49
  love that and it's a huge benefit to them.
• 7:51
  And so we talk through that with the lenders as well and that's what we, we, we kind of
• 7:54
  use for the objections there.
• 7:56
  Now when those lenders go to clients, I'd say 10 clients is probably the same thing.
• 8:00
  Or you have seven clients who are like, okay, I understand it.
• 8:02
  Maybe they don't say, this is really cheap, they just say, hey, this makes a lot of financial
• 8:05
  sense for me, given my other options.
• 8:08
  And then three clients will say, I'm not going to do this, I'm going to find another crazy
• 8:12
  way to make this happen.
• 8:13
  And that's okay.
• 8:14
  Right.
• 8:15
  Again, it's, it's not for everybody, just like off bad and all that isn't for everybody.
• 8:18
  Exactly.
• 8:19
  And bridge loans aren't for everybody.
• 8:20
  Exactly.
• 8:21
  Okay, so I want to come back to the LOP's for a second and how you equip them to be,
• 8:25
  to be able to represent this.
• 8:26
  But before I do, this has been in the back of my head knowing loan officers, it's going
• 8:30
  to come back to compensation for the loan officer.
• 8:33
  So obviously if a loan officer does a bridge loan or a HELOC, they're going to get compensated.
• 8:37
  So why would they play this out?
• 8:39
  How do they get compensated?
• 8:40
  Yeah.
• 8:41
  So we actually, we do have some partnerships where we offer compensation.
• 8:44
  And so basically we work with large companies across the country and we were able to
• 8:50
  compensate some of those loan officers, right?
• 8:51
  So that's one way that they can get compensated.
• 8:53
  If they're with that company.
• 8:54
  If they're with the company.
• 8:55
  So they're listed on your website, some of them.
• 8:56
  Yep.
• 8:57
  So I don't remember the website.
• 8:58
  And again, it's all bespoke for each partner, right?
• 8:59
  It's all just determined by that partner we work with the partnership with them.
• 9:03
  There are opportunities to be able to make additional money through the product.
• 9:06
  So that's one piece.
• 9:08
  The second is, and again, it's really cool.
• 9:10
  We're originating the bridge loan, right?
• 9:13
  We're doing basically all of the work here on the bridge loan side, right?
• 9:17
  Now obviously the loan officer has to pitch the client.
• 9:19
  They have to work with the client.
• 9:20
  They have to explain a new product.
• 9:21
  There is work that has to be done by the loan officer there.
• 9:23
  But as far as the kind of mechanics to actually manufacture this loan, that is all being
• 9:28
  done by us, right?
• 9:30
  And a lot of that heavy lifting we take on.
• 9:32
  And so if I'm a loan officer, it's, hey, I don't have to deal with the headache of doing
• 9:36
  all this work for a HELOC or for a bridge loan that I have to do in a standard scenario.
• 9:42
  We take on all that work and I still get compensated in the case that they do.
• 9:46
  If they don't get compensated, they are able to make the deal work, right?
• 9:50
  A lot of times, loan officers come to us and say, hey, there's no way I could have done
• 9:53
  this deal without using Bible for you so.
• 9:56
  They would not have made their commission on the purchase mortgage without us.
• 10:00
  And so that's kind of the way that we think about it is either you're getting your commission
• 10:03
  on the purchase mortgage that you may not have gotten before.
• 10:07
  Or again, with these additional partners that we do have, there is way to access some
• 10:12
  conversation.
• 10:13
  Interesting.
• 10:14
  And I would imagine you're looking for more partners.
• 10:15
  Always.
• 10:16
  Absolutely.
• 10:17
  We're definitely open to it.
• 10:18
  Yeah.
• 10:19
  So if you're listening to this and you want to learn more about this and how you can potentially
• 10:22
  be a partner or just the program itself, obviously we're going to link this up in the
• 10:25
  show notes.
• 10:26
  Absolutely.
• 10:27
  Website, all that stuff.
• 10:28
  Yeah.
• 10:29
  You know, I'm sitting here and you know, you can probably gather this, I'm just, I'm trying
• 10:33
  to poke holes, right?
• 10:34
  I'm trying to find downside.
• 10:37
  What is the downside?
• 10:38
  Yeah.
• 10:39
  I mean, again, I think, you know, we have some clients who are concerned about the fee,
• 10:42
  right?
• 10:43
  And I get it.
• 10:44
  Sure.
• 10:45
  So that's one piece.
• 10:46
  I really think that what we've done is we've tried to identify all the places where
• 10:49
  there could be a downside and turn it into an upside as best we can, right?
• 10:52
  So again, I know that's kind of a cop-out answer in some ways to say there's really not
• 10:57
  a downside, but I would say that if this scenario fits you, right, you're looking to buy your
• 11:02
  next home and you sell your car in an order to qualify.
• 11:05
  It does make the most economical sense in most scenarios and in most scenarios, it makes
• 11:10
  sense to, you know, to go ahead and sell your home vacant, right?
• 11:15
  And I think that's really important piece that we see really benefit the consumer at the
• 11:20
  end of the day.
• 11:21
  How does the real estate agent get involved in this, you know, but is it from the loan
• 11:26
  officer?
• 11:27
  It's a great question.
• 11:28
  Yes.
• 11:29
  So the loan officer is typically the way that we see a deal come in is the loan officer is
• 11:32
  talking to a client or an agent and they say, hey, we've got this client in the agent
• 11:38
  case or if they've got a client already and they bring them in and they basically go into
• 11:43
  our website, they enter a few piece of information, right?
• 11:45
  Here's the departing residence address.
• 11:47
  Here's the client name and here's the agent involved in the transaction, right?
• 11:51
  That agent is notified of what's going on and that agent is ultimately going to be responsible
• 11:56
  for selling that departing residence.
• 11:57
  Is it listed by the agent listed by the agent?
• 12:00
  We don't touch that at all.
• 12:01
  And the compensation to them is the same.
• 12:03
  The same.
• 12:04
  We'll standard whatever they negotiate.
• 12:05
  Whatever they negotiate.
• 12:06
  We don't get into that at all.
• 12:07
  And so the agent can be, you know, again, they can sell it.
• 12:10
  And that's not, but that's on both sides, sell side, buy side, can you have the traditional
• 12:13
  we got a listing agent?
• 12:14
  We got a buyer's agent.
• 12:15
  100%.
• 12:16
  You could have any scenario you want.
• 12:18
  Again, we work with any loan officer, any agent, right?
• 12:21
  We can work with you.
• 12:22
  We don't have any loan officers in-house.
• 12:24
  We don't have any agents in-house.
• 12:25
  We don't work that way.
• 12:26
  It's all an open system.
• 12:28
  So anyone can participate in these transactions.
• 12:31
  And so yeah, the agent is typically involved mainly with the sale of that departing residence.
• 12:36
  And we do interact with the agent.
• 12:37
  We talk to them about the timeline, the 120 days.
• 12:39
  We make sure they know what's going on.
• 12:42
  And we do engage with them.
• 12:43
  We have a large agent network at home like generally.
• 12:46
  And so we find that agents, again, they love the product and we work with them all the
• 12:51
  time.
• 12:52
  We found that loan officers oftentimes are more adept at financially structuring these
• 12:57
  things with the mortgage, since they know the mortgage a little bit more.
• 13:00
  So that's why we decided to really focus on the loan officers, have them use this as
• 13:04
  a pitch to get more agents, bring them into the network and kind of grow their business
• 13:08
  from there.
• 13:09
  Yeah.
• 13:10
  Let's speak of challenges.
• 13:11
  Let's move away from kind of the financial side of things and how about just the market
• 13:18
  message, educating the market.
• 13:21
  I imagine that's a bit of a challenge too.
• 13:24
  Absolutely.
• 13:25
  I think if you look at the market as a whole right now, and we were kind of talking about
• 13:28
  this a little bit before this.
• 13:30
  But inventory is kind of weird depending on which market you're in.
• 13:34
  I think that some homes are sitting for a really long time.
• 13:37
  Some homes are selling really quickly.
• 13:38
  It's kind of a very big mix of things.
• 13:41
  These are very localized markets.
• 13:42
  Very localized markets.
• 13:43
  So I think the use cases and the pitches are different in different markets.
• 13:48
  So we have to be better, I think, as we continue to grow, identifying what's going on in each
• 13:53
  market and making sure that loan officers can understand, hey, this is the best way to
• 13:57
  use it in my market.
• 13:58
  And a lot of times what's great is that the loan officers come back to us and say, hey,
• 14:01
  guess what I just did.
• 14:02
  I sold it like this.
• 14:03
  I sold it like that.
• 14:04
  I think it's really, really interesting to kind of get that feedback and then create
• 14:08
  marketing materials for these loan officers to help them gain agent partners and gain
• 14:12
  clients.
• 14:13
  And so we kind of have this self-fulfilling loop.
• 14:15
  And I kind of joke with the team, a lot of our marketing materials are just built by
• 14:19
  our customers.
• 14:20
  Right.
• 14:21
  And we say this to loan officers all the time, hey, if you find a way to pitch this product,
• 14:25
  that's really unique and that works for you in your market, tell us, will help you bolster
• 14:30
  that.
• 14:31
  And it's our best interest and their best interest to kind of use it to grow, grow the
• 14:33
  product.
• 14:34
  I'd say that's the challenge for the markets.
• 14:36
  It's very localized as far as how the product is being used.
• 14:39
  Can you give us a sense of either a number of transactions or community or just get a
• 14:44
  sense of like, hey, what kind of footprint is there for this?
• 14:47
  Yeah.
• 14:48
  So we've done thousands of these, we've done over 3,000, I believe, at this point.
• 14:53
  We've unlocked somewhere around 800 million or so in equity to this date, which is
• 14:58
  really awesome.
• 15:00
  We've grown very fast.
• 15:02
  I think that's one big piece.
• 15:04
  We've seen the adoption really, really hit, especially as we've kind of onboarded more
• 15:07
  and more partners as we've grown there.
• 15:10
  And so yeah, we've helped about probably 3,300 or so, I believe, as the number, clients
• 15:16
  so far with the program.
• 15:17
  When you say you've grown fast, how do you grow?
• 15:20
  What is your branding or marketing awareness strategy, is it largely through the existing
• 15:24
  network you have?
• 15:25
  Yeah.
• 15:26
  So I'd say the biggest growth for us is through our partners.
• 15:29
  So we have some large retail partners.
• 15:30
  We have one really large wholesale partner as well and that's kind of how we grow.
• 15:33
  So we like to say we don't necessarily need to take credit for the program.
• 15:40
  And this is a really big benefit and I really like this kind of concept of white labeling
• 15:45
  the program.
• 15:46
  So I was thinking.
• 15:47
  If I'm a loan officer, right, let's say ABC mortgage, right?
• 15:52
  My clients trust ABC mortgages programs a lot more than home light, right?
• 15:57
  They've never heard of home light.
• 15:58
  What is this third party that they're introducing to the transaction?
• 16:00
  No, this is ABC's buy before you sell program.
• 16:03
  In fact, we have companies who have renamed the program.
• 16:06
  That's what I thought.
• 16:07
  I think I'm thinking of a couple that I'm like, is that really home light?
• 16:10
  Exactly.
• 16:11
  Exactly.
• 16:12
  A lot of times you're like, wait a second.
• 16:13
  Is this home light behind the scenes?
• 16:14
  Right.
• 16:15
  And for us, again, we love that.
• 16:16
  We love when you kind of take it, make it your own.
• 16:18
  We don't have any pride in or you could use the name as well.
• 16:21
  You could.
• 16:22
  And a lot of people do because it's very simple and easy to understand that but we've
• 16:25
  had people call it the contingency buster, right, which is I think a great name, right?
• 16:30
  It's like that one.
• 16:32
  Yeah, exactly.
• 16:33
  So it depends on the market and again, I think that kind of localized feel and we're willing
• 16:39
  and able to do that for any partner.
• 16:42
  Then is home light because you guys are originating it.
• 16:45
  Are you interacting with the seller, the client themselves, right, the home?
• 16:49
  We don't.
• 16:50
  Yes.
• 16:51
  We have to send it.
• 16:52
  And will you do it under that white label thing if needed?
• 16:54
  Yes.
• 16:55
  Basically, there's a couple agreements and things that they have to sign as they go through
• 16:58
  the process, which are provided via home light, but basically everything is white labeled
• 17:03
  beyond those legal.
• 17:04
  So if you're calling or emailing like, you know, hi, this is CHIP at ABC Lender and we
• 17:09
  need this.
• 17:10
  Yeah, we wouldn't go that far, but oftentimes a loan officer is handling all of that communication
• 17:14
  with us.
• 17:15
  So they're really going to be in the intermediary.
• 17:16
  It's kind of like you're the underwriter and process or that's the way I would think
• 17:19
  about it.
• 17:20
  I was going to say it's kind of like a wholesale mortgage relationship in some ways,
• 17:22
  right?
• 17:23
  We're the wholesale lender.
• 17:24
  Not technically, but the same kind of vibe there.
• 17:27
  And that's the way that we think about it.
• 17:28
  A lot of these loan officers actually don't want us to talk to their clients because it's
• 17:32
  their client, right?
• 17:33
  They've worked really hard to get this lead or procure the agent who's given them the
• 17:35
  lead.
• 17:36
  They want to deal with the client directly and they say, hey, I'm going to pitch this
• 17:40
  to the client.
• 17:41
  Every now and then they say, hey, you know, this is my first ever deal.
• 17:43
  I'd love for you to jump on a call, you know, ourselves, the client, the agent.
• 17:47
  We'll do that.
• 17:48
  But ultimately, the loan officer is the one who's structuring the entire transaction and
• 17:53
  they want credit for it and they should get credit for it, right?
• 17:55
  They're the ones who are finding this client and allowing them to buy and sell.
• 17:59
  What about for the listener, we have a loan officer who's working out a company that's
• 18:03
  not currently affiliated with you guys in a, you know, formalized way?
• 18:08
  What considerations do they, like, yeah, because I'm thinking, if I'm an LL and I hear
• 18:11
  this, I'm like, I work for this big bank or whatever it is, like, am I going to be able
• 18:15
  to present this deal or...
• 18:16
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:17
  So the way that I think about it is, first of all, always submit the transaction, right?
• 18:22
  And we can kind of talk through it together, regardless of the partner.
• 18:25
  And so we'll kind of link the website at the end, but I think that's the first thing
• 18:29
  I would say.
• 18:30
  We have loan officers all the time from any mortgage company who will come in.
• 18:34
  The key thing is the departing residence guidelines.
• 18:36
  So pretty much everybody in the country, every land of the country will support the departing
• 18:40
  residence guideline from Fannie Freddie.
• 18:42
  There are probably some lenders that have overlays we've ran into before and in those scenarios,
• 18:46
  we obviously wouldn't be able to use that piece of the program.
• 18:50
  But that's the only time that I would say there'd be an issue.
• 18:51
  So my recommendation there would be 98% of the time.
• 18:55
  We can figure out a way to do the transaction, even if you're not fully partnered with
• 18:59
  us yet.
• 19:00
  Often times what we'll do is we'll go through a transaction or two, and then we'll go
• 19:03
  and talk to the branch manager, the VP, whoever it is, and kind of work our way into a partnership
• 19:09
  there if the one officer has a good experience, if they want to talk about ways to potentially
• 19:13
  get paid, right?
• 19:14
  Those are things that they would have to do after we do a few transactions.
• 19:18
  Yeah, I'm trying to think of the counting the revenue of the production to the
• 19:21
  particular branch or company, right?
• 19:23
  They don't, unless there's an agreement in place or something, they don't get that,
• 19:27
  right?
• 19:28
  And I'm just thinking like real-world stuff, I'm sure you've run into this as well because
• 19:31
  you have various mindsets of people out there in the marketplace of like, well, why
• 19:35
  would we do that?
• 19:36
  It's not even going to count towards our volume and business and overrides and all this
• 19:38
  stuff.
• 19:39
  Yeah, and again, I think the other piece there that talks about earlier is, you know,
• 19:42
  you wouldn't have gotten the deal without us in a lot of cases, right?
• 19:44
  And so we see, like, a lot of times we'll get calls from loan officers that say, hey,
• 19:48
  this deal's closing next week, I need you to save it, right?
• 19:51
  And we're like, okay, well, what's happening?
• 19:53
  Well, the departing residence was under contract.
• 19:55
  Contract fell through.
• 19:57
  Now they're not going to sell their house.
• 19:58
  Okay, yeah, they're not going to get the money.
• 20:00
  We come in, we rescue.
• 20:01
  So those scenarios, right?
• 20:03
  The loan officer was not going to get that commission in, you know, they were so close
• 20:06
  to getting it.
• 20:07
  Now they're not getting it anymore.
• 20:08
  They find us.
• 20:09
  They bring us the transaction.
• 20:10
  We find a way to make it work.
• 20:11
  And now all of a sudden, that loan officer saved the deal, got the commission.
• 20:15
  Yes, they didn't make additional revenue from the actual bridge.
• 20:18
  But still you're making that commission that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise, right?
• 20:21
  Well, I mean, even if you're making a commission or not, I mean, it's wonderful if you can
• 20:24
  get paid.
• 20:25
  But I do think that, you know, this, I remember the times and there's probably a much
• 20:29
  of those listening who have probably done a deal where they didn't get paid anyways,
• 20:34
  right?
• 20:35
  Yes.
• 20:36
  Within their own, for whatever reasons.
• 20:37
  For sure.
• 20:38
  Or you referred it out to some other party of a loan you can't do.
• 20:43
  The whole thing comes back to the relationship.
• 20:44
  You're winning the relationship in the eyes of the realtor, let's say.
• 20:48
  You still got the deal done.
• 20:50
  I mean, they don't ultimately care how the deal got done.
• 20:52
  For sure.
• 20:53
  For sure.
• 20:54
  You'd rather do the deal, but there's going to be times where it makes sense to just,
• 20:57
  you know, kind of be the facilitator of that deal getting done.
• 21:00
  It makes you look like a superstar, right?
• 21:01
  I think that's one thing that we hear from loan officers all the time is I get to do something
• 21:05
  that I thought was impossible, right?
• 21:07
  I get to literally save transactions.
• 21:10
  I get to offer this to agents and see their lives light up and say, Hey, I can use this
• 21:14
  for a client right now.
• 21:15
  Yeah.
• 21:16
  And I can get their situation.
• 21:17
  They're going to come out of that for the actual home seller slash buyer.
• 21:21
  Wish by the way, they're going to need a new loan on that purchase, right?
• 21:25
  So you're going to get that.
• 21:27
  That's exactly what I'm saying.
• 21:28
  They're always going to get that new loan on the purchase, right?
• 21:30
  Typically.
• 21:31
  Yeah.
• 21:32
  And so that's what's really, really critical for that.
• 21:33
  So you give up.
• 21:34
  So yeah, interesting.
• 21:35
  Yep.
• 21:36
  So you're not going to be compensated per se for structuring, you know, having home lights
• 21:38
  save the deal and allow them to buy before they sell, but you're going to win on the
• 21:42
  other side of that.
• 21:43
  Correct.
• 21:44
  Correct.
• 21:45
  Right.
• 21:46
  And you just offer this to the client when they buy their next home, when they refinance
• 21:48
  whatever it might be, your front and center for them, you just created this, this really
• 21:52
  cool scenario.
• 21:53
  And at the same time, I think one of the, one of the big things that the loan officer
• 21:58
  doing today is they're going in the market and saying, Hey, it's really hard for me to stand
• 22:03
  out.
• 22:04
  Mortgage rates are high.
• 22:05
  Everyone knows that.
• 22:06
  Right.
• 22:07
  That's all I can pitch.
• 22:08
  I have to pitch specialty products now.
• 22:09
  And this is a specialty product that you can go to your agents with and say, Hey, I've got
• 22:13
  something unique.
• 22:14
  I've got something new.
• 22:15
  And I've got something that can help your clients.
• 22:16
  Right.
• 22:17
  I think that's a really big benefit as well.
• 22:18
  Correct.
• 22:19
  Yeah.
• 22:20
  Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit because I think that's the next kind of section
• 22:22
  for us to go into.
• 22:23
  Sure.
• 22:24
  Now that we've laid the foundation very educational, I'm curious, what are the activities
• 22:28
  that you see that the more successful loan officers do to get engagement in their local
• 22:33
  market with agents?
• 22:34
  Yeah.
• 22:35
  For me, it's, we often see them taking agents to doing classes with agents, right?
• 22:40
  They're saying, Hey, I've got, you know, 10 agents that I work with really closely.
• 22:44
  I'm going to have them bring all their friends and et cetera and kind of create a big,
• 22:47
  as big a class as possible and just going through the program.
• 22:50
  And it's obviously, you know, not always just about buy before you sell.
• 22:53
  Obviously, it's, Hey, here's some tools I'm using in the market.
• 22:55
  Right.
• 22:56
  Here's some tools that, you know, you can benefit from as an agent as well.
• 22:58
  But I think the classes are super underrated.
• 23:01
  Yeah.
• 23:02
  And, you know, I think that, you know, it's in today's world, right?
• 23:05
  We don't think of necessarily that as being the way that, you know, we should spread.
• 23:09
  Right.
• 23:10
  Reach people.
• 23:11
  Yeah, exactly.
• 23:12
  You know, social media and all that.
• 23:13
  I get it.
• 23:14
  Like, obviously, there are people who have big influences on social media who can, you
• 23:16
  know, talk about this there and that, and maybe that's their venue, but I actually find
• 23:20
  that these local classes are actually very beneficial for taking some time to educate
• 23:24
  people on it.
• 23:25
  Exactly.
• 23:26
  Exactly.
• 23:27
  And, and it's also, you know, the in person, I think, in this industry will always, always
• 23:31
  be something.
• 23:32
  Yeah.
• 23:33
  That's really important and trust exactly.
• 23:34
  So, I think that that has been probably the more successful campaigns that loan officers
• 23:39
  do today is when they have these big classes in person, virtual, whatever, but it's still,
• 23:43
  it's still classes where they're offering this to the industry.
• 23:45
  How do you equip the loan officers to, let's say, teach a class per se, do you guys have
• 23:49
  some resources in your website?
• 23:50
  We do.
• 23:51
  We do.
• 23:52
  So, yeah, on the website, you'll share there's, there's tons of resources there, pitch decks,
• 23:55
  one-pagers, whatever you need, all there to focus on the agent.
• 23:59
  Do you have a for a loan officer?
• 24:01
  Let's say, I'm like, okay, I want to, I want to, you know, go out there and, and consider
• 24:05
  hosting a class for agents or something.
• 24:06
  I want to get educated personally as an L.O.
• 24:08
  Do you have like a concierge and onboarding process or?
• 24:11
  We do, yes.
• 24:12
  So, we have, we'll do webinars ourselves.
• 24:14
  So, you will.
• 24:15
  So, they can invite agents to a webinar.
• 24:17
  They can invite agents to our webinar.
• 24:19
  That's cool.
• 24:20
  They, they, they, an advice first.
• 24:21
  We'll have consumers.
• 24:22
  We typically don't have consumers in those.
• 24:24
  Just because typically the consumer will have a very specific scenario and they'll often
• 24:29
  ask about that scenario.
• 24:30
  We don't want to talk about, you know, specific scenario in front of what's here, but, but,
• 24:33
  yes, so typically it's going to be just the, the agents and the, the loan officers.
• 24:37
  So, we'll do webinars just for L.O.'s, we'll do webinars for L.O.'s and agents, webinars
• 24:42
  just for agents.
• 24:43
  It kind of is all over the board, but typically our webinars are going to be loan officers
• 24:46
  and then they'll invite their agents and say, hey, you know, can you come in and kind
• 24:50
  of pitch this product?
• 24:51
  Maybe we have a five, ten-minute slot where we talk about it and loan officer kind of
• 24:55
  piggybacks, piggybacks off of us and it's a great way to kind of sell the product from
• 24:58
  there.
• 24:59
  So I'm on your website right now, just testing something out real quickly here with us.
• 25:03
  Yeah.
• 25:04
  It says, are you buying, selling, or both, right?
• 25:05
  So I clicked, I clicked both and now it's going through this, you know, kind of form
• 25:08
  process.
• 25:09
  I'm wondering, is this a lead gen opportunity then for some of your members as well?
• 25:14
  Yes, absolutely.
• 25:15
  Absolutely.
• 25:16
  Yes, we, we, we definitely hope for, hope for that as well, right?
• 25:21
  So.
• 25:22
  How do you, do you have eyeballs?
• 25:23
  Are you driving traffic to the side?
• 25:24
  Absolutely.
• 25:25
  Absolutely.
• 25:26
  A lot of times post those webinars.
• 25:27
  We'll see that.
• 25:28
  We drop the very specific link of, of, of buy before you sell.
• 25:32
  And that one will have access to some, some great tools and resources for the loan officer
• 25:36
  as well, right?
• 25:37
  So, sorry if I kind of, I'm, didn't, didn't hear, but are you, do you have a certain
• 25:43
  amount of, of flow of consumers coming to the site?
• 25:46
  Yes, we do.
• 25:47
  Okay.
• 25:48
  And so, and yeah, I guess, you know, I, I guess I can talk about kind of the, the home
• 25:51
  light at its core and this is since, where we should look away from buy before you sell
• 25:55
  a little bit.
• 25:56
  Yes.
• 25:57
  But I think it's relevant for the listener.
• 25:58
  Yeah.
• 25:59
  Yeah.
• 26:00
  Or who, who, like this is another potential source of business, because you have to source
• 26:01
  that out somewhere.
• 26:02
  For sure, for sure.
• 26:03
  So, yeah, we do, we do oftentimes will have, we'll have a lot of clients actually flowing
• 26:07
  through our site.
• 26:08
  And really, since 2012, home lights main focus has been an agent matching platform, right?
• 26:13
  And so what we do is we actually, we have a, a network of top agents.
• 26:17
  We've got about 28,000 agents that we work with.
• 26:20
  And we basically connect clients, buyers, and sellers with these agent partners.
• 26:25
  And so we've been doing that for a very long time.
• 26:27
  Recently, you know, as we've launched these new products, we do get clients who come
• 26:31
  in, they're buying and selling, right?
• 26:33
  And buy before you sell does make sense to them.
• 26:35
  And we do have loan officers who we will, you know, send some of those transactions to
• 26:38
  as well.
• 26:39
  And so it's a great flow for, for leads for buy before you sell.
• 26:42
  And again, it's not, that is not our core kind of business.
• 26:46
  But there is, again, there are some leads that come, come through there.
• 26:49
  But we will, you know, we will, we will transact on it.
• 26:51
  Yeah.
• 26:52
  Another benefit.
• 26:53
  Another benefit.
• 26:54
  What do you think in terms of your biggest market challenges with going to market?
• 27:00
  What is it?
• 27:01
  Yeah.
• 27:02
  I would say it's, loan officers get a lot of emails every single day, right?
• 27:07
  They get a lot of calls.
• 27:08
  They get a lot of, a lot of things.
• 27:10
  And so I think staying top of mind is very, is very important for us to do.
• 27:14
  And it's, and it's difficult, right?
• 27:16
  In today's market, you have, again, all of these people pitching all kinds of products.
• 27:19
  At some point, if I'm a loan officer, I'm skeptical.
• 27:22
  Yeah.
• 27:23
  I feel like, hey, I already know what I'm doing.
• 27:25
  I don't want to talk about any of this stuff.
• 27:26
  And maybe, maybe I want to learn more, but I don't know which source to look at to learn
• 27:30
  more, right?
• 27:31
  I feel like everything is very overwhelming, especially as a newer loan officer, right?
• 27:35
  It's like, which products are actually good, which ones aren't, et cetera, right?
• 27:39
  And so it's very hard sometimes to kind of break through that noise.
• 27:42
  And so I think this standard, hey, I'm going to pick up the phone and call as many loan
• 27:45
  officers as I can today and just have a sales team do that all day long.
• 27:49
  That's very difficult to do, because loan officers don't want to have those conversations
• 27:53
  unless they know it's from a trusted source.
• 27:55
  And so that's why we've kind of switched our go-to market to, hey, if we can talk to
• 27:59
  these companies, and they can have internal champions who understand the product, believe
• 28:04
  in the product, and use, and have used the product before, right?
• 28:08
  It's a lot easier to kind of spread.
• 28:10
  And so the initial challenge was how do we break into some of those?
• 28:14
  And as you do, you get the scale of, okay, now this company's using it, I trust the
• 28:18
  products.
• 28:19
  Now we're going to go ahead and launch it with another, et cetera, right?
• 28:22
  And you've had to go through.
• 28:23
  I assume some type of an internal approval process, right, with some of these larger
• 28:27
  relenders.
• 28:28
  With all of them, almost.
• 28:29
  Yeah.
• 28:30
  It's a illegal stuff.
• 28:31
  A legal compliance.
• 28:32
  Right, right.
• 28:33
  Right.
• 28:34
  But it's the sales prevention department.
• 28:35
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 28:36
  Exactly.
• 28:37
  And most of them, some of them are actually, I've met some really cool compliance people.
• 28:40
  Oh, wow.
• 28:41
  Wow.
• 28:42
  They're out there for sure.
• 28:44
  And so once again, I'll reiterate, you're obviously looking for additional partners, whether
• 28:48
  it be an individual L.O. who wants to learn more about this.
• 28:50
  There will be the link in the show notes, but also it's, you're looking for more lenders
• 28:53
  to add to your roster of logos that we can see on the website here.
• 28:57
  And these are, you know, these are well-known, like large lenders.
• 29:00
  Sure.
• 29:01
  And so there's, I guarantee you, there's a loan officers listening right now.
• 29:04
  I don't know if you want to roll off any names.
• 29:05
  I'm trying to get it, but there's a loan officers right now who work with the lenders you
• 29:09
  already partnered with.
• 29:10
  Yeah.
• 29:11
  And sometimes it's just a matter of disseminating that information down to the local market level.
• 29:15
  Exactly.
• 29:16
  Right?
• 29:17
  And you might even be able to, you know, you might even be approved already with this.
• 29:21
  And maybe you just need to go find out.
• 29:22
  Exactly.
• 29:23
  Exactly.
• 29:24
  And so yeah, in that scenario, ask a branch manager, go to the website, you can send us
• 29:27
  an email.
• 29:28
  All that good stuff as well.
• 29:29
  If you're curious, if you're like, hey, I don't see my company listed, there's a lot
• 29:33
  of companies that aren't listed on the site.
• 29:34
  Yeah, of course.
• 29:35
  We're obviously partnered with as well.
• 29:36
  Right.
• 29:37
  But yeah, there's some very large ones on there.
• 29:38
  Can you give me just a ballpark, like how many lenders are you partnered with?
• 29:41
  We've done transactions with, I think, over 1,600 different companies.
• 29:46
  Oh, wow.
• 29:47
  Okay.
• 29:48
  But.
• 29:49
  Various levels of, yeah.
• 29:50
  But again, that could be like a small brokerage, it's just one person.
• 29:54
  It could be kind of anything.
• 29:55
  I'd say like the more formalized partners, we have about 50.
• 29:59
  But you did mention something about a large wholesaler.
• 30:02
  We do.
• 30:03
  We do have a large wholesaler as well.
• 30:05
  Shall we remain nameless for the moment?
• 30:06
  Yeah.
• 30:07
  Well, I know I can.
• 30:08
  Okay.
• 30:09
  And we've been working with the LoneStore for quite some time, and yeah, they've been awesome
• 30:17
  to work with.
• 30:18
  They have a great network of folks that we, again, we've known them for, we've known
• 30:22
  them since the accept.ink days, actually.
• 30:24
  Oh, really?
• 30:25
  Are you trying to get conversations with people at UWM and I'll rock it and all that?
• 30:29
  Right now we're focused on working with the LoneStore.
• 30:32
  It's kind of our main focus.
• 30:33
  And they've, again, they've continued to grow, grow the business, help us, their AEs are
• 30:37
  amazing.
• 30:38
  They're the ones who are focused on right now, maybe sometime in the future, but I think
• 30:41
  right now we're really just focused on the one wholesale.
• 30:45
  Again, any broker can access the wholesale lender, and we've seen that there's a lot of
• 30:50
  benefits of having kind of one focused partner, and so that's what we've done to date.
• 30:54
  And I think we'll continue to do for quite some time.
• 30:56
  On the retail side, that's where we see a lot of really great partners as well.
• 31:02
  And again, you can see this is all on the website, but fairway, lower.com, those type
• 31:06
  of cross-country.
• 31:07
  Cross-country, yeah.
• 31:08
  So those type of retail owners, they're very large.
• 31:11
  But what I like is you find a lot of them are very tight-knit groups who are all very
• 31:17
  supportive of each other, want to just offer the best products to their clients, and it's
• 31:21
  really, really great to work with those types of companies as well.
• 31:24
  Yeah, fantastic.
• 31:25
  Well, you know, in this type of conversation, I put my Lone Officer hat on, and I, you
• 31:29
  know, always look at this through the filter of, is this something that I would feel relevant
• 31:33
  to bring to the market?
• 31:34
  Sure.
• 31:35
  If I'm a Lone Officer, and I haven't heard anything that would convince me otherwise.
• 31:39
  Like you said, you want to have specialty products, you want to be able to, as I always say,
• 31:42
  solve problems in the current market, and like these are problems that you can help people
• 31:47
  solve.
• 31:48
  So, I would recommend for you listening is to check the link in the show notes.
• 31:52
  The website is lenders.homelight.com, you can go there now, link it up in the show notes.
• 31:58
  Just, you know, opt in, have a conversation with somebody, that'd probably be any recommendations.
• 32:04
  There's a lot of people you can talk to.
• 32:05
  A lot of them are named Nick, actually.
• 32:07
  We're big enough.
• 32:08
  We have a lot of people.
• 32:09
  It's a prerequisite.
• 32:10
  Yeah, prerequisite.
• 32:11
  It's pretty funny.
• 32:12
  So, but yeah, there's quite a few folks that you can talk to who are account executives
• 32:16
  and or just.
• 32:17
  Well, there's like a forum or something that they can just ask for more information.
• 32:19
  Yeah, they can fill out the forum, and those people will reach out from there.
• 32:21
  Right, right, right.
• 32:22
  Exactly.
• 32:23
  Wow.
• 32:24
  Fantastic.
• 32:25
  Hey man, this has been a great conversation, and I'm very confident there's going to be
• 32:28
  people listening who are going to go check this out for more information.
• 32:31
  So, appreciate you being here and sharing this.
• 32:33
  Absolutely.
• 32:34
  Thank you, Jeff.
• 32:35
  And thanks again for bringing me out to Vegas here.
• 32:36
  Absolutely.
• 32:37
  So, listeners, you know what to do.
• 32:38
  If you like this episode, hey, check the link of the show notes.
• 32:40
  Share this with somebody you think might find it valuable, and if you like it, leave us
• 32:44
  a review.
• 32:45
  We'll see you on the next one.
• 32:46
  Bye for now.
• 32:47
  Okay, that's it for today's episode.
• 32:48
  Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes.
• 32:52
  You're proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days.
• 32:56
  Imagine never having to co-call again, instead building real lasting relationships with
• 33:01
  top-producing agents who want to send you business.
• 33:04
  With done for your presentations, marketing automation, weekly coaching, it's all designed
• 33:08
  to make growing your business easier and fun.
• 33:12
  So, if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income, visit
• 33:16
  mortgagemarketing.pro or check the link in the show notes and while you're there, don't
• 33:20
  forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage pros who've already seen
• 33:23
  incredible results.
• 33:24
  Thanks for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.