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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Nick, welcome to Las Vegas and welcome to the show.
- [00:14]
B
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Jeff.
- [00:16]
A
You know, the current market we're in is, as you well know, right. We've got inventory, well, depending on the market you're in, I call it a transaction recession. We've got affordability issues, we've got higher interest rates. We've got, I'm seeing, and maybe you are as well, a lot of properties now starting to sit longer average days on market. We're starting to see a little bit of price softening come. So what is buy before you sell and what problems I guess specifically does it address in this market?
- [00:46]
B
Yeah, yeah. So we can start with the problems here. So there's really, you know, if I'm a client and I'm looking to buy my next home and I currently own one. Right. That's most people are not first time home buyers, especially in this market. Right, right. And so when you have an existing property, there's really two problems that you face. Right. The first is most of the money that you have is tied up in that home.
- [01:05]
A
Yes.
- [01:05]
B
Right. So you need to get that money out so you can, you know, use it for a down payment on your next property. Right. The second problem, and this is really a lending problem and loan officers will tell you this all the time, it's hey, I've got to count the client's existing mortgage payment in the DTI calculation. Right. And when that happens, oftentimes throws off the ratios. You can't actually qualify the client. Right. And so what you say as a loan officer is great, no problem. Sell your home and then it'll be.
- [01:30]
A
Then come to me when it's sold.
- [01:31]
B
Exactly when it's sold. Or you know, let's time it out.
- [01:34]
A
Yeah, that's always fun.
- [01:36]
B
Which is, which is always. It never works. Very rare that it works. It works the way that you want. Right. And so, so those are the kind of the two problems that we see. And what buy before you sell does is we solve both those. So the first problem again, getting that money out of your house, what we do is we offer a bridge loan, but it's a 0% interest bridge loan. And so that client can Access up to 75% Combined loan to value an existing property. Property and use that to buy their next home. So let's say it's a million dollar house. The client's got $500,000 remaining on their mortgage balance. We can lend up to 250. That client can then use that money to go buy their Next house.
- [02:10]
A
So like a down payment?
- [02:11]
B
Exactly, exactly. Use it for a down payment. So that's the first way to basically unlock equity from your existing property. Without an expensive HELOC or bridge loan, it's 0% interest loan. You don't have to count that payment if you're a loan officer at all of that bridge loan as well. The second piece, and this is kind of the trickier one, is how do you remove that existing liability? Right. And the way we do it is we actually place an offer on the client's departing residence. And there's a guideline in Fannie Freddie that states it's a departing residence guideline. It states if there's a bona fide cash offer, contingency free offer on the client's departing residence, you do not have to count those payments in your DTI calculation, you can remove those payments. And when you do that, you now have the ability to qualify the client for the new home only with the new payments. Right. And not with that existing mortgage payment and not with that bridge loan payment because there's no payment associated with it. So you have now three loans, but you're only qualifying the client with one with that new mortgage. And so you're now able to qualify the client and you're able to get that equity out of the existing property so they can go buy their next one. And hence the product's name, buy before you sell. Right, Right. Client now buys their home and now they have time to sell it. Right. And the way that the product works is they've got 120 days. Our offer is 120 days after they buy their new home. It's outstanding for 120 days. After 120 days, we will buy the home if we need to. But oftentimes 98% plus of the time, the client sells the home on the open market to another buyer for market price and receives the funds.
- [03:41]
A
The 120 days doesn't start until, doesn't.
- [03:44]
B
Start until the client buys their new home.
- [03:46]
A
Interesting.
- [03:46]
B
Yes.
- [03:46]
A
All right, so they have even more time.
- [03:49]
B
Exactly. If they want to list it early, they can. We see that all the time. But oftentimes, you know, we also see that the client, hey, I want to get my new home. I want my home to be vacant and staged, and then I want to sell it for 3, 4, 5% more, which is often what we see as well. It's a huge benefit to the, to.
- [04:05]
A
The program because they're staging it.
- [04:07]
B
They're staging it. It's vacant. There's no pets running around, kids running around. You know, it's just, it's a lot more sellable, I think. When your stuff's not all, you know, in the house.
- [04:15]
A
How does this compare to, you know, open door offer pad type?
- [04:20]
B
Yeah. So the open door offer pad, they are really focused on getting you out quickly, right? Hey, I need to sell my home right now, and I just need to get out. And there's a certain client for that. But there is no kind of market sale opportunity for them, right. Opendoor is making an offer that's lower than the market value. Obviously they need to. They're gonna fix and flip that home and sell it for profit. That's how they make their money. For us, we're saying, look, get the best of both worlds. We will make sure that we guarantee that your home sells no matter what, right. It's either going to sell to us or it's going to sell to another buyer. And you also get to maximize the value you get for your home. So you get to sell it on the open market. So you get that on market pricing. At the same time you get that guarantee.
- [05:02]
A
Right.
- [05:03]
B
And that's the, that's kind of the difference between us and an open door offer pad.
- [05:06]
A
Okay. And seeing as we talked about how they make money, let's, for those that are wondering, let's talk about, obviously you guys got to get paid somehow, so why don't you break that down a little bit?
- [05:14]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. So we charge 2.4% of the departing resident sale price, right? So if the price is $500,000 that the home sells for, we would charge 12,000. So that's how, that's how the product works today. So you think about it, 2.4%. Oh, that's, you know, that's close to the agent commission. That's a lot of money. Let's kind of break it down, right? So, so I think the, the first way that I think about it is if I'm going to do an alternative, right. Oftentimes a HELOC or a, or a bridge loan or something like that, it gets very complicated. Even if you can find the client to qualify for all the loans, there is interest that's occurring every single day. And oftentimes it ends up being more expensive to go that route anyway. So that's the first piece. The second piece is if you want to try to make it work from a sale and buy perspective. Think about this opportunity, right? You're buying your next home, you decide to sell your first one. Now all of a Sudden you have to move somewhere and live somewhere for a little bit. So you're spending money on the moving costs, you're spending money on a hotel, an apartment, whatever it is, until you find your next home. Right. That's another. Another piece of it. The third thing I think of is if I want to try to make the timing work, I got to sell my home really fast. And when you sell your home fast, you got to sell it for less. You got to fire. Sell it.
- [06:25]
A
Right.
- [06:25]
B
And when you go and submit an offer on your new home with a home sale contingency. Right. All of a sudden you're spending more money to buy that next home to make your offer more competitive to that seller.
- [06:34]
A
Yes.
- [06:35]
B
So by the time you add up all of that, you're well over the 2.4% that you could have just paid for the convenience of the product. And that's the way that I like to think about the 2.4% fee OB that we see from. From clients and loan officers today.
- [06:48]
A
Yeah. So how do you. I mean, what do you usually see the reaction when people. Because obviously that's a little bit of sticker shock. But then you walk people through probably a similar explanation like you just did right now, and they look at the big picture of all that stuff, and they're like, oh, okay. I'm curious if you have any numbers. And this is, of course, a little bit on the spot.
- [07:06]
B
Sure.
- [07:06]
A
Like of the. If you present to 10 home sellers or 50 or whatever, like you have an idea of how many convert on that.
- [07:13]
B
Yeah, I would say so if I'm. If I'm talking to you. Well, again, we really pitch to loan officers on our end, and then those loan officers then pitch to clients. So anecdotally, through those loan officers, I can kind of tell you roughly what we see of the loan officers we talk to. About 7 out of 10 are like, this is actually cheap. Right. Because compared to the options that I have, this makes a ton of sense. Right. Those three other loan officers who think it's expensive, we walk them through what we talk through today. Right. We also talk about the vacant vacancy of the home. Agents absolutely love that. That piece of it. Right. It's like, hey, home's vacant. I don't have to worry about anything. I can do showings all day long. I can get this home sold for a lot more money. Agents love that. It's a huge benefit to them. And so we talk through that with the lenders as well, and that's what we kind of use for the objections there. Now, when those lenders go to clients, I'd say 10 clients, it's probably the same thing. You have seven clients who are like, okay, I understand it. Maybe they don't say, wow, this is really cheap. They just say, hey, this makes a lot of financial sense for me, given my other options. And then three clients will say, I'm not going to do this. I'm going to find another crazy way to make this happen. And that's okay, right? Again, again, it's, it's, it's not for everybody.
- [08:17]
A
Just like off bad and all that isn't for everybody.
- [08:19]
B
Exactly.
- [08:19]
A
And bridge loans aren't for everybody.
- [08:20]
B
Exactly.
- [08:21]
A
Okay, so I want to come back to the lo piece for a second and how you equip them to be, to be able to represent this. But before I do, this has been in the back of my head. Knowing loan officers, it's going to come back to compensation for the loan officer. So obviously, if a loan officer does a bridge loan or heloc, they're going to get compensated. So what, why, why would they play this out? How do they get comp.
- [08:40]
B
Yeah, so, so we actually, we do have some partnerships where we offer compensation. And so basically we work with you companies across the country and we, we were able to, to compensate some of those loan officers. Right. So that's, that's one way that they can get compensated.
- [08:53]
A
If they're with that company.
- [08:54]
B
If they're with that company.
- [08:55]
A
So they're listed on your website? Some of them.
- [08:56]
B
Yep, some of them are on the website. And again, it's all bespoke for each partner. Right? It's all just determined by that partner. We work, we work for the partnership with them. There are opportunities to be able to, to, to make additional money through the, through the product. So that's one piece. The second is, and again, it's, it's, it's really cool. It's. We're originating the bridge loan, right. We're doing basically all of the work here on the bridge loan side. Right. Now, obviously, the loan officer has to pitch the client, they have to work with the client. They have to explain a new product. There is work that has to be done by the loan officer there. But as far as the kind of mechanics to actually manufacture this loan, that is all being done by us. Right? And a lot of that heavy lifting we take on. And so if I'm a loan officer, it's, hey, I don't have to deal with the headache of doing all this work for a heloc. Or for a bridge loan that I standard, that I have to do in a standard scenario, we take on all that work and I still get compensated. In the case that they do, if they don't get compensated, they are able to make the deal work. Right. A lot of times loan officers come to us and say, hey, there's no way I could have done this deal without using buy before you sell. So they would not have made their commission on the purchase mortgage without us. And so that's kind of the way that we think about is either you're getting your commission on the purchase mortgage that you may not have gotten before, or again, with these additional partners that we do have, there is a way to access some compensation.
- [10:13]
A
Interesting. And I would imagine you're looking for more partners.
- [10:16]
B
Always. Always. Absolutely. We're definitely, definitely open to it.
- [10:19]
A
Yeah. So if you're listening to this and you know, you want to learn more about this and how you can potentially be a partner or just the program itself, obviously we're going to link this up in the show notes.
- [10:26]
B
Absolutely.
- [10:27]
A
Website, all that stuff. Yeah. You know, I'm sitting here and you know, you can probably gather this. I'm just, I'm trying to poke holes. Right. I'm trying to find downside. What is the downside?
- [10:38]
B
Yeah, I mean, again, I think we have some clients who are concerned about the fee and I get it. So that's one piece. I really think that what we've done is we've tried to identify all the places where there could be a downside and turn it into an upside as best we can. Right. And so again, I know that's kind of a cop out answer in some ways to say there's really not a downside. But I would say that if this scenario fits you right, you're looking to buy your next home, you sell your current in order to qualify. It does make the most economical sense in most scenarios. And in most scenarios it makes sense to, you know, to go ahead and, and, and sell your home list. Sell your home vacant. Right. And I think that's a really important piece that we see really benefit the consumer. At the end of the day.
- [11:21]
A
How does the real estate agent get involved in this? You know, is it from the loan officer?
- [11:28]
B
It's a great question. Yeah. So the loan officer is typically the way that we see a deal come in is loan officer is talking to a client or an agent and they say, hey, we've got this client in the agent case. Or if they've got a client already and they bring Them in, and they basically go into our website. They enter a few pieces of information. Right. Here's the departing residence address, here's the client name, and here's the agent involved in the transaction. Right. That agent is notified of what's going on, and that agent is ultimately going to be responsible for selling that departing residence.
- [11:58]
A
Is it listed by the agent?
- [11:59]
B
Listed by the agent. We don't touch that at all.
- [12:01]
A
And the compensation to them is the same standard. Whatever they negotiate.
- [12:05]
B
Whatever they negotiate.
- [12:06]
A
We don't.
- [12:06]
B
We don't get into that at all. And so the agent can be, you know, again, they can.
- [12:10]
A
And that's on not nothing. But that's on both sides. Sell side and both sides. Can you have the traditional. We got a listing agent, we got a buyer's agent.
- [12:15]
B
100%. 100%. You could. You could have any scenario you want. We, we, again, we work with any loan officer, any agent.
- [12:21]
A
Right.
- [12:21]
B
We can work with you. We don't have any loan officers in house. We don't have any agents in house. We don't work that way. It's all an open system. So anyone can participate in these transactions. And so, yeah, the agent is typically involved mainly with the sale of that departing residence. And we do interact with the agent. We talk to them about the timeline, the 120 days. We make sure they know what's going on, and we do engage with them. We have a large agent network at HomeLight generally, and so we find that agents, again, they love the product, and we work with them all the time. We found that loan officers oftentimes are more adept at financially structuring these things with the mortgage, since they know the mortgage a little bit more. So that's why we decided to really focus on the loan officers. Have them, you know, use this as a pitch to get more agents, bring them into the network, and kind of grow their business from there.
- [13:10]
A
Yeah. Speaking of challenges, let's move away from like, you know, kind of the, you know, the financial side of things. And. And how about just the market message? Right. Educating the market, like, I imagine that's a bit of a challenge, too.
- [13:24]
B
Absolutely. Yeah. I think if you look at the market as a whole right now. Right. And we were kind of talking about this a little bit before this, but, you know, inventory is kind of weird, depending on which market you're in. Right. I think that some homes are sitting for a really long time. Some homes are selling really quickly. It's kind of a very big mix of things. Very localized, very localized markets. And so I Think the use cases and the, the pitches are different in different markets, so we have to be better. I think as we continue to grow about identifying, you know, what's going on in each market and making sure that loan officers can understand, hey, this is the best way to use it in my market. And a lot of times what's great is the loan officers come back to us and say, hey, guess what I just did. I sold it like this, I sold it like that. Right. And I think it's really, really interesting to kind of get that feedback and then create marketing materials for these loan officers to help them gain agent partners and gain clients. And so we kind of have this self fulfilling loop. And I kind of joke with the team, a lot of our marketing materials are just built by our customers. Right. And we say this to loan officers all the time, hey, if you, if you find a way to pitch this product that's really unique and that works for you and your market, tell us, we'll help you bolster that. And it's in our best interest and their best interest to kind of use it to grow, grow the product. And so I'd say that's the challenge for the markets. It's very localized as far as how the product is being used.
- [14:40]
A
Can you give us a sense of either number of transactions or community or just get a sense of like, hey, what kind of footprint is there for this?
- [14:47]
B
Yeah, so we've done thousands of these, done over 3,000. I believe at this point we've unlocked somewhere around 800 million or so in equity to this date. Right. Which is, which is really awesome. We've grown very fast. I think that's one big piece is we've seen the adoption really hit, especially as we've kind of onboarded more and more partners as we've grown there. And so, yeah, we've helped about probably 3200 or so I believe is the number clients so far with the program.
- [15:17]
A
When you say you've grown fast, how do you grow? What is your branding or marketing awareness strategy? Is it largely through the existing network you have or.
- [15:25]
B
Yeah, so I'd say the biggest growth for us is through, through our partners. So we have some large retail partners, we have one really large wholesale partner as well. And that's kind of how we grow. And so we, we like to say we don't, we don't necessarily need to take credit for the program.
- [15:40]
A
Yeah.
- [15:40]
B
And this is a really big benefit. And I kind of like, I really like this kind of concept of white labeling the program Right.
- [15:46]
A
That's what I was thinking.
- [15:47]
B
If I'm. If I'm a loan officer. Right. At, let's say, ABC Mortgage. Right. My clients trust ABC Mortgages programs a lot more than Homelight. Right. They've never heard of Homelight. What is this third party that they're introducing to the transaction? No, this is ABC's buy before you sell program. In fact, we have companies who have renamed the program.
- [16:06]
A
That's what I was. I thought. I think I'm thinking of a couple that I'm like, is that really Homelight?
- [16:10]
B
Exactly, exactly. A lot of times you're like, wait a second, is this Homelight behind the scenes? And for us, again, we love that. We love when you kind of take it, make it your own. We don't have any pride in.
- [16:20]
A
Or you could use the name as well.
- [16:22]
B
You could, and a lot of people do because it's. It's very simple and easy to understand and all that. But we've had people call it the Contingency buster. Right. Which is, I think, a great name. Right.
- [16:31]
A
It's like that one.
- [16:32]
B
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's, you know, it kind of depends on. On. On the market. And again, I think that kind of localized feel, and we're willing and able to do that for kind of any partner.
- [16:43]
A
Then is Home Light, because you guys are originating it. Are you interacting with the seller, the client themselves? Right. The home.
- [16:49]
B
We don't. Yes. I mean, we have to. We have to send.
- [16:52]
A
And will you do it under that white label thing if needed?
- [16:54]
B
Yeah. So basically, you know, there's a couple agreements and things that they have to sign as they go through the process, which are provided via homelight. But basically everything is white labeled beyond those. Those legal agreements.
- [17:05]
A
So if you're calling or emailing, like, you know, hi, this is Chip, BC lender. And we need this.
- [17:10]
B
Yeah, we wouldn't go that far, but oftentimes a loan officer is handling all of that communication with us, so they're.
- [17:15]
A
Really gonna be the intermediary. It's kind of like you're the underwriter and processor.
- [17:19]
B
That's the way I would think about it. I was gonna say it's kind of like a wholesale mortgage relationship in some ways. Right. Where the wholesale lender. Not technically, but the same kind of, kind of vibe. And that's the way that we think about it. A lot of these loan officers actually don't want us to talk to their clients because it's their client. Right. They've worked really hard to get this lead or procure the agent who's given them the lead. They want to deal with the client directly and they say, hey, I'm going to pitch this to the client every now and then they say, hey, this is my first ever deal. I'd love for you to jump on a call ourselves. The client, the agent. We'll do that. But ultimately the loan officer is the one who's structuring the entire transaction and they want credit for it and they should get credit for it. Right. They're the ones who are finding this client and, and allowing them to, to buy and sell.
- [17:59]
A
What about for the listener? We have a loan officer who's working at a company that's not currently affiliated with you guys in a, you know, formalized way. Sure. What considerations do they like? Because I'm thinking if I'm an ELO and I hear this, I'm like, I work for this big bank or whatever it is. Like, am I going to be able to present this deal or.
- [18:17]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So the way that I would think about it is, first of all, always submit the transaction. Right. And we can kind of talk through it together reg of the partner. And so we'll, we'll, we'll kind of link the website at the end. But, but I think that that's the first thing I would say. We have loan officers all the time from any mortgage company who will come in. The key thing is the departing residence guidelines. So pretty much everybody in the country, every lender in the country will support the departing residence guideline from Fannie Freddie. There are probably some lenders that have overlays. We've ran into it before, and in those scenarios, we obviously wouldn't be able to use that piece of the program. But that's the only time that I would say there'd be an issue. So my, my recommendation there would be 98% of the time we can figure out a way to do the transaction. Even if you're not fully partnered with us yet. Oftentimes what we'll do is we'll go through a transaction or two, and then we'll go and talk to the branch manager, the vp, whoever it is, and kind of work our way into a partnership there. If, if the loan officer has a good experience, if they want to talk about ways to potentially get paid. Right. Those are things that they would have to do after, you know, we do a few transactions.
- [19:19]
A
Yeah. I'm trying to think of the, you know, counting the revenue of the production to the particular branch or company. Right. They don't. Unless there's an agreement in place or something. They don't get that. Correct, Right, correct. And I'm just, you know, thinking like real world stuff. I'm sure you've run into this as well because you have various mindsets of people out there.
- [19:34]
B
Sure.
- [19:34]
A
In the marketplace of like, well, why would we do that? It's not even going to count towards our volume and ships and overrides and all this stuff.
- [19:39]
B
Yeah. And again, I think the other piece there that I talked about earlier is, you know, you wouldn't have gotten the deal without us in a lot of cases. Right. And so we see, like a lot of times we'll get calls from loan officers that say, hey, this deal's closing next week. I need you to save it. Right. And we're like, okay, well, what's happening? Well, departing residence was under contract. Contract fell through. Now they're not going to be able to sell their house. They're not going to get the money. We come in, we rescue. So those scenarios. Right. The loan officer was not going to get that commission, and they were so close to getting it. Now they're not getting it anymore. They find us, they bring us the transaction, we find a way to make it work. And now all of a sudden, that loan officer saved the deal, got the commission. Yes. They didn't make additional revenue from the actual change. But still, you're making that commission that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
- [20:22]
A
Well, I mean, even if you're making a commission or not, I mean, it's wonderful you can get paid. But I do think that, you know this. I remember the times, and there's probably a bunch of Eldos listening who have probably done a deal where they didn't get paid anyways. Right. Within their own for whatever reasons, or you referred it out to some other party of a, of a loan you can't do. Sure. You're. The whole thing comes back to the relationship. You're, you're winning the relationship in the eyes of the realtor. Let's say you still got the deal done. And I mean, they don't ultimately care how the deal got done for sure. Right. Granted, you'd rather do the deal, but there's going to be times when it makes sense to just, you know, kind of be the facilitator of that deal getting done.
- [21:00]
B
It makes you look like a superstar.
- [21:01]
A
Right.
- [21:02]
B
I think that's, that's one thing that we hear from loan officers all the time is I get to do something that I thought was impossible. Right. I get to literally save Transactions. I get to offer this to agents and see their lives light up and say, hey, I can use this for a client right now and I can get their situation.
- [21:16]
A
And obviously, the referrals that come out of that for the actual home seller.
- [21:19]
B
Absolutely.
- [21:19]
A
Slash buyer, which, by the way, they're going to need a new loan on that purchase.
- [21:25]
B
Yeah, right.
- [21:26]
A
So you're going to get that.
- [21:27]
B
That's. That's exactly what I'm saying. They're always going to get that new loan on the purchase. Right. Typically. And so that's what's really, really critical.
- [21:33]
A
All right, so you give up. Yeah. Interesting.
- [21:35]
B
Yep.
- [21:35]
A
So you're not going to be compensated per se for structure, you know, having home lights save the deal and allow them to buy before they sell. But you're going to win on the other side of that.
- [21:43]
B
Correct, correct. And potentially the future. Right. You just use offer this to the client when they buy their next home, when they refinance, whatever it might be, you're front and center for them. You just created this really cool scenario. And at the same time, I think one of the big things that loan officers are doing today is they're going in the market and saying, hey, it's really hard for me to stand out. Mortgage rates are high. Everyone knows that. That's all I can pitch. I have to pitch specialty products now. And this is a specialty product that you can go to your agents with and say, hey, I've got something unique, I've got something new, and I've got something that can help your clients.
- [22:16]
A
Right.
- [22:17]
B
I think that's a really big benefit as well.
- [22:19]
A
Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit, because I think that's the next kind of section for us to go into now that we've laid the foundation. Very educational. I'm curious, what are the activities that you see that the more successful loan officers do to get engagement in their local market with agents?
- [22:34]
B
Yeah, for me, we often see them taking agents to doing classes with agents. Right. And saying, hey, I've got 10 agents that I work with really closely. I'm going to have them bring all their friends and et cetera, and try to create as big a class as possible. And just going through the program. And it's obviously not always just about buy before you sell. Obviously, it's, hey, here's some tools I'm using in the market. Here's some tools that you can benefit from as an agent as well. But I think the classes are super underrated. And I think that in today's world, we don't think of necessarily that as being the way that we should spread reach people. Yeah, exactly. You know, social media and all that. I get it. Like, obviously there are people who have big influences on social media who can talk about this there and maybe that's their venue. But I actually find that these local classes are actually very beneficial for.
- [23:24]
A
It takes some time to educate people on it.
- [23:26]
B
Exactly, exactly. And it's also the in person, I think in this industry will always be something that's really important and trust. Exactly. And so I think that that has been in probably the more successful campaigns that loan officers do today is when they have these big classes in person, virtual whatever. But it's still classes where they're offering this to the.
- [23:46]
A
How do you equip the loan officers to, let's say, teach a class per se? Do you guys have some resources in your website?
- [23:50]
B
We do, we do. So see on the website you'll share. There's tons of resources there, pitch decks, one pagers, whatever you need, all there to focus on the agent.
- [24:00]
A
Do you have a, for a loan officer? Let's say I'm like, okay, I want to, you know, go out there and consider hosting a class for agents or something. I want to get educated personally as an lo. Do you have like a concierge, an onboarding process or.
- [24:12]
B
We do, yeah. So we have, we'll do webinars ourselves.
- [24:15]
A
So they can invite agents to a webinar.
- [24:17]
B
They can invite agents to our webinar and vice versa. Right.
- [24:21]
A
What about consumers?
- [24:22]
B
We typically don't have consumers in those just because typically the consumer will have a very specific scenario and they'll often ask about that scenario. We don't want to talk about, you know, specific scenario in front of everyone here. But, but, but yeah. So typically it's going to be just the, the agents and the, the loan officers. So we'll do webinars just for los. We'll do webinars for ellos and agents. Webinars just for agents. It's, it kind of is all over the board. But typically our webinars are going to be loan officers and then they'll invite their agents.
- [24:48]
A
Right.
- [24:48]
B
And say, hey, you know, can you come in and kind of pitch this product? Maybe we have a five, ten minute slot where we talk about it. Loan officer kind of piggyback piggybacks off of us. And it's a great way to kind of sell the product from there.
- [25:00]
A
So I'm on your website right now, just testing something out real quickly here with this. It Says, are you buying, selling or both? Right. So I clicked, I clicked both and now it's going through this, you know, kind of form process. I'm wondering, is this a lead gen opportunity then for some of your members as well?
- [25:15]
B
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, we definitely hope for that as well. Right.
- [25:21]
A
So do you have eyeballs? Are you driving traffic to the site?
- [25:24]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. A lot of times post those webinars. We'll see that. And then again, you know, we drop the very specific link of buy before you sell and that one will have access to some great tools and resources for the loan officer as well. Right.
- [25:38]
A
So sorry if I kind of. I'm drunk. Didn't hear, but are you, do you have a certain amount of flow of consumers coming to the site?
- [25:47]
B
Yes, we do. And so, and yeah, I guess, you know, I guess I can talk about kind of the Homelight at its core. And this is since where we shift.
- [25:54]
A
A little bit away from buy before you sell. But I think it's relevant for the listener who are who. Like this is another potential source of business because you have to source that out somewhere.
- [26:02]
B
For sure. For sure. Yeah, we do. Oftentimes we'll have a lot of clients actually flowing through our site. And since 2012, HomeLight's main focus has been an agent matching platform. Right. And so what we do.
- [26:14]
A
That's right, yeah.
- [26:15]
B
Is we actually, we have a network of top agents. We've got about 28,000 agents that we work with. And we basically connect clients, buyers and sellers with these agent partners. And so we've been doing that for a very long time. Recently, you know, as we've launched these new products, we do get clients who come in, they're buying and selling. Right. And buy before you sell does make sense to them. And we do have loan officers who we will, you know, send some of those transactions to as well. And so it's a great flow for, for leads for buy before you sell. And again, it's not, that is not our core kind of business, but there is again, there are some leads that come, come through there that we will, you know, we, we will transact on.
- [26:52]
A
So another benefit, another benefit. What do you think in terms of your biggest market challenges with going to market? What is it?
- [27:01]
B
Yeah, I would say it's loan officers get a lot of emails every single day.
- [27:07]
A
Right.
- [27:07]
B
They get a lot of calls, they get a lot of, a lot of things. And so I think staying top of mind is, is very, is, is very important for us to do. And it's, and it's difficult. Right. In today's market, you have, again, all of these people pitching all kinds of products. At some point, if I'm a loan officer, I'm skeptical. I feel like, hey, I already know what I'm doing. I don't want to talk about any of this stuff. And maybe I want to learn more, but I don't know which source to look at to learn more. I feel like everything is very overwhelming, especially as a newer loan officer. It's like, which products are actually good, which ones aren't, et cetera. And so it's very hard sometimes to kind of break through that noise. And so I think this standard, hey, I'm going to pick up the phone and call as many loan officers as I can today and just have a sales team do that all day long. That's very difficult to do because loan officers don't want to have those conversations unless they know it's from a trusted source. And so that's why we've kind of switched our go to market to, hey, if we can talk to these companies and they can have internal champions who understand the product, believe in the product, and have used the product before. Right. It's a lot easier to kind of spread. And so the initial challenge was, how do we break into some of those? And as you do, you get the scale of, okay, now this company's using it, I trust the product. Now we're going to go ahead and launch it with another, et cetera. Right.
- [28:23]
A
And you've had to go through, I assume, some type of an internal approval process with some of these larger lenders.
- [28:28]
B
With all of them, almost. Yeah, the legal stuff, legal compliance, you know how it goes. Right, right, right.
- [28:34]
A
That's the sales prevention department.
- [28:35]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And most of them, some of them are actually, I've met some really cool compliance people.
- [28:40]
A
Yeah. Wow.
- [28:41]
B
So, wow. They're out there for sure.
- [28:44]
A
And so, once again, I'll reiterate, you're obviously looking for additional partners, whether it be an individual who wants to learn more about this. There will be the link in the show notes. But also it's. You're looking for more lenders to add to your roster of logos that we can see on the website here. And these are, you know, these are well known, like large lenders. Sure. And so this, I guarantee you, there's loan officers listening right now. I don't know if you want to roll off any names. I'm trying to get it. But there's loan officers right now who work with the lenders. You already partner with.
- [29:11]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [29:12]
A
And sometimes it's just a matter of disseminating that information down to the local market level.
- [29:15]
B
Exactly right.
- [29:16]
A
And you might even be able to, you know, you might even be approved already with this and maybe you just need to go find out.
- [29:23]
B
Exactly, exactly. And so, yeah, in that scenario, ask your branch manager, go to the website. You can send us an email, all that good stuff as well. If you're curious. If you, if you're like, hey, I don't see my. My company listed. There's a lot of companies that aren't listed on the site. Yeah, of course, we're obviously partnered with as well.
- [29:36]
A
Right.
- [29:37]
B
But yeah, there's some very large ones on there.
- [29:38]
A
Can you give me like, just a ballpark, like, how many lenders are you partnered with?
- [29:42]
B
We've done transactions with, I think over 1600 different companies.
- [29:47]
A
Oh, wow.
- [29:49]
B
But various levels of. Yeah, but again, that could be like a small brokerage. It's just one person. It could be kind of anything. I'd say, like, the more formalized partners is we have about 50.
- [30:00]
A
You did mention something about a large wholesaler.
- [30:03]
B
We do, we do. We do have a large wholesaler as well.
- [30:05]
A
She'll remain nameless for the moment.
- [30:07]
B
Yeah, well, I know. I can, I can show you. Yeah, we work with the loan store. That's the main one that we work with.
- [30:12]
A
All right, cool.
- [30:12]
B
And we've been working with the loan store for quite some time and yeah, they've been awesome to work with. They have a great network of folks that, again, we've known them for. We've known them since the accept.ink days, actually. Oh, really?
- [30:26]
A
Are you trying to get conversations with people like UWM and Rocket and all that?
- [30:30]
B
Right now we're focused on working with the lone store. It's kind of our main focus. And again, they've continued to grow the business, help us. Their AES are amazing. And so that's kind of who we're focused on right now. Maybe sometime in the future. But I think right now we're really just focused on the one wholesale. Again, any broker can access the wholesale lender. And we've seen that there's a lot of benefits of having kind of one focused partner. And so that's what we've done to date and I think we'll continue to do for quite some time. On the retail side, that's where we see a lot of really great partners as well. And again, you can see this. It's all on the website, but fairway lower.com, those type of cross country. Cross country. So those type of retail enders, they're very large. But what I like is you find a lot of them are very tight knit groups who are all very supportive of each other, want to just offer the best products to their clients. And it's really great to work with those types of companies as well.
- [31:24]
A
Yeah, fantastic. Well, you know, in this type of conversation I put my loan officer hat on and I, you know, always look at this through the filter of is this something that I would feel relevant to bring to the market? Sure, if I'm a loan officer and I haven't heard anything that would convince me otherwise. Like you said, you want to have specialty products, you want to be able to, as I always say, solve problems in the current market and like these are problems that you can help people solve. So I would recommend for you listening is to check the link in the show notes. The website is lenders.homelight.com you can go there now, link it up in the show notes. Just you know, opt in, have a conversation with somebody. That'd probably be. Any recommendations?
- [32:04]
B
There's a lot of people you could talk to. A lot of them are named Nick. Actually we have a lot of names.
- [32:09]
A
Prerequisite.
- [32:10]
B
Prerequisite. It's pretty funny. So. But yeah, there's, there's quite a few folks that you can talk to who are account executives and, or just.
- [32:17]
A
Well, there's like a form or something. They can just, just ask for more information.
- [32:19]
B
They can fill out the form and then those people will reach out from there.
- [32:22]
A
Right, right.
- [32:22]
B
Exactly.
- [32:22]
A
Okay.
- [32:23]
B
Wow.
- [32:23]
A
Fantastic. Hey man, this has been a great conversation and I, I'm very confident there's going to be people listening who are going to go check this out for more information. So appreciate you being here and sharing this.
- [32:33]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Jeff. And thanks again for bringing me out to Vegas here.
- [32:36]
A
Absolutely. So listeners, you know what to do if you like this episode. Hey, check the link in the show notes. Share this with somebody you think might find it valuable. And if you like it, leave us a review. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Okay, that's it for today's episode. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to remind you about my agent classes. Your proven system to double your agent referrals in just 90 days. Imagine never having to cold call again. Instead building real lasting relationships with top producing agents who want to send you business with done for you presentations, marketing, automation, weekly coaching. It's all designed to make growing your business easier and fun. So if you're ready to take control of your agent referrals and grow your income, visit MortgageMarketing Pro or check the link in the show notes. And while you're there, don't forget to check out the success stories from other mortgage bros who've already seen incredible results. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode.