A Crash Course In Becoming a Reverse Mortgage Specialist

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Are you curious about reverse mortgages? Have you ever wondered does reverse have a place in your future? What's the future for reverse? Are they difficult? How much money can you make? Well today, this episode is for you because I have got one of the foremost experts on reverse mortgages and reverse mortgage training for loan officers. Christina Harms is my special guest and she has been originating reverse mortgages for well over a decade and she's going to reveal to you on this episode everything you need to know about reverse mortgages. Hey listeners, Jeff Zimper, welcome to this episode of the mortgage marketing radio podcast. Hey, by the way, how are you doing? It is when I'm releasing this podcast, it is June 2022. We are officially at the 50% mark. The halfway mark, are you running a marathon, are you in a race, are you looping around the track? Hey, at the halfway point, I've been working with some of my coaching members to take a look at where we're pulling the car in, right? If you imagine for me the one, right, racing, what do they do? They pull the car in every once in a while when it needs to be checked, when the tires need to be swapped out when they need to make a small, quick slide adjustment to the vehicle. My question for you is, are you taking a look at your business, where are you on the track, how are you making progress, are you where you expected to be, and if not, how are you going to make some changes in shifts right now? Finally we've moved out from a refi heavy market to a purchase heavy market, and the primary source for purchase business in this country still is real estate agents. In my market last month, Clark County, Nevada, there were approximately 3,500 existing homes sold, not including new construction. The NAO reports that 87% of buyers finance their home. So if I do the math on that, that's 3,000 purchase loans in my backyard, and there was a recent study by 1,000 watt consulting that proved that upwards of 50% of buyers use the agent recommended lender, sometimes even when they come with their own lender. So continue with me on the math, right, the 3,000 purchase loans, if 50% of buyers are using the agent recommended lender, that's potentially 1,500 buyers being referred by the lenders in my backyard. So what is my job then? My job is to get in front of the business, the source of business, and being that the numbers still bear out that almost 90% of buyers are financing their home, right, and almost 90% of buyers are still working with an agent, and up to 50% of those buyers are strongly open to and actually use the referred lender from the agent, then my job is to get in front of the agents who have those buyers, build connections, relationships with those agents to capture my ship fair share of those 1,500 buyers, does that make sense? The question then is what systems will I implement to grow my agent connections and relationships to capture more buyers? And I'd like to present to you a better way, my agent classes, part of our mortgage marketing pro membership where every single month you can get in front of agents at scale to become the pre-eminent business, the pre-eminent business of choice, the lender of choice become the local authority amongst your real estate agent population. This works if you work it. Chris Madden. He was on the podcast back last year, episode 217, he's closed over $16 million in referrals from agent classes. He teaches agent classes, he provides educational content, and he uses Instagram to engage clients, sorry, agents directly. This has resulted in just about every single one of his referral partners coming from Instagram and his classes, he scales faster. He's projected a growth rate of 46% year over year because he's become the pre-eminent business. Does that sound like something you'd like to do for yourself in your career? If so, go to mortgagemarketing.pro, learn more about how we're helping loan officers like Chris become the pre-eminent lender in their local market. Okay, so on this episode, you've heard on the intro, my special guest is Christina Harms, what we're talking about is reverse mortgages, everything you wanted to know about reverse. Christina is a wonderful human being with a caring heart, which is one of the reasons why she succeeds with reverse mortgages. And I think it was about time that we talk about reverse and hear it straight from the source of somebody who's done hundreds of reverse loans. The ins, the outs, the good, the bad, the ugly, and if you've considered reverse as a potential source for you, a potential future direction in your business, what you need to know before you even consider adding reverse to your mix. And of course, there are lots of links we talk about in this episode. We're going to put links to all those in the show notes, but of particular interest is Christina's private Facebook group, which is where she provides free training and education for people all about reverse. And we'll put a link to that as well. If you want to search it on Facebook, it's Christina Harms, reverse mortgage coach. Go check that out. And then there's other links in the show notes, make sure you check those out as well. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Christina Harms, welcome to the show. Hey, Jeff, thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure and dare I say an honor and I'm not just blowing smoke, but I say that because I already have a certain level of respect and admiration for what you do because I know it's not easy and I always also have an extra level of appreciation for somebody who's broken away from the herd, so to speak, right? In this herd of reverse mortgage originations, and we'll get into that. But for the benefit of people listening, how about the brief bio on Christina? Yeah, thank you. Gosh, where do I start? So I started in my dad's office when I was 16. I started as just an assistant kind of task working. He was a mortgage broker. From there, I learned how to be a mortgage broker for regular loans. And then I also learned how to be a real estate agent. In my young career, I started to be a first-time homebuyer's agent and I would do the mortgage. And so these young couples would, you know, they would rely on me for everything. And I would be the one to give them the keys at the end, having also gone through the hurdles of the mortgage, which a lot of the time weren't easy. So it was just a really fulfilling thing to do. When I was about 25, I actually assisted my dad on his second reverse, his first reverse he didn't include me on. The second one he did, and it was life changing for me. I, it's life changing to give somebody the first keys, of course, but it compares nothing to setting up a cup, in this case, it was a couple of seniors for the rest of their life. When, when the wife hugged me at closing, she had tears in her eyes and she, I could just feel the relief washing over her because she had just been so worried for so long. They got into some financial situations. He was in ailing health and so she was really concerned. He was going to pass and leave her with this financial situation that, one, she'd never have to deal, had to deal with. She didn't do the finances at all. And then two, where was she going to go because the only thing she had for assets was her home. And it wasn't, you know, a $2 million house where she could easily sell it and use tons of equity. She didn't want to sell it. And so providing that roof over the head for as long as she may live and fixing their financial situation, we actually got the money and a line of credit. It was just absolutely life changing, which sounds good to be true. It's not. There's some things about the product. Of course, I educate on, but it is a really amazing, amazing loan. And from that point on, I've never looked back. Yeah, that's, that's interesting. That's a good story. We'll definitely unpack that more, the impact that you have on people with that. Let's let's deal with, well, let me ask you this first, that was as you referred to it, I was going to ask you why reverse. And it was that it was that like the shift to defining moment where you saw the impact you could make. And you're like, I mean, I want more of that, right? Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So how did you then? How long ago was this, by the way? A little over a decade. So how did your career, do you do nothing but reverse today? Correct. Okay. So how did you make that migration? Was that like, did you, did you question that? Were you like, you know, because that's, that's when reverse is still kind of had that bad stigma, you know? It was, it was actually the years where it was coming off of that because I used to do lunch and learned. And we would tell everybody about the amazing changes and protections being built in. Right. I was right at that cusp of change. And to me, that was really important because there were protections built in that I fully believe in. If I had started to do reverse market just 20 years ago, there were protections that needed to be there that weren't. So I'm not sure that I would have been fully behind the product. Of course, the life changing, of course, you know, let people decide their own level of risk. But, you know, if it's not something I will put my grandparents in, it's not something I want to do. And the previous structures, there were some challenges there. But as of about 10 years ago, they started to make these changes. They've continued to make changes pretty regularly. That continue to make the product much, much safer and a great solution. But you still come up against misconceptions about reverse, right? What are the most common ones you, you hear either from L.O.s or from clients? I actually hear a lot from L.O.s too. So I'm surprised, I was surprised at that. So we'll talk about what I've created for that aspect later. But the most common ones I hear are, oh, the bank's going to take my house. No, they're not. It's a mortgage. It's a lean on title, just like any of the mortgage, you have to pay your taxes and insurance and live in the home as your primary. That is a unique thing to reverse. You have to live in it as your primary. But if you do those things, the mortgage isn't due until you pass away, sell or move out of the property permanently or default on those things. Just like any other mortgage that could happen. Another really common one is, oh, I have to leave as much as I can to my kids. Let me say, I have to leave the house to my kids. And what they're really trying to say is I want to leave as much as I can to my kids because the kids aren't really going to keep the house. They're going to sell it and split the equity. Well, then it's just dollars. And so then we're talking about the whole picture, right? Not just the house. And when we create that whole picture, the financial wealth, including home equity, it's a much, much bigger pie. And so people have always kind of said, don't do the house. And that has come from our country's agricultural history, which is just not applicable today. So then what's the most often reason you're seeing people utilize this reverse mortgage? My clients typically fall into about two buckets. So the longest time for the longest time, reverse mortgages were the loan of last resort. And they kind of earned that reputation because you didn't have to qualify really. If you were 62, you owned enough, enough equity in your home, and you had a pulse, well, let's get you that reverse mortgage. And they didn't check if people could stay, keep the lights on still. Some people were in such a bad financial situation, even the reverse couldn't help. And so now we have qualifying standards. And so it really does make us look at, is this a sustainable solution? And I've had conversations where I say, this isn't a fit. This is absolutely not a fit. You need to go to this person and maybe they can help you. But reverse isn't the right option for you in your situation. The growth of reverse though, I mean two things. And doing a little prepping for this call, I looked at a statistics, and you know this obviously very well, is the amount of equity people now have is at all time highs. And that, and by the way, let's just, you said earlier, the minimum age to qualify for a reverse is 62. Is that correct? For the FHA Hechum, yes, but there are other private types. The lowest age, one of those programs has age 55. Okay, so I could qualify. You may, we should talk after if you want to look into it. No, you're not race. Well, actually that's a nice transition. And let's talk about the different types of reverse mortgages and any comments you want to add about, you know, what they're right for or not. Yeah, so they're not always available in every state that's going to be the first thing people want to check for. And there are lots of different types of reverse mortgages there, we kind of use a lot of different terms, but they're all interchangeable. So you'll hear the words jumbo, you'll hear the word proprietary, you'll hear the word portfolio, you'll even hear private. They're all referring to these types of reverse mortgages that are not FHA. And they're relatively new in about 2015. I believe one of the bigger lenders rolled out the first program. It went well. Their first offering to secondary went really well. So then other lenders jumped in. And so now we have solutions for people with million dollar homes. We have solutions for people who are not age qualified to a Hechum. We have solutions for people who don't want the mortgage insurance. These a lot of the private, well, excuse me, all the private. So they don't have mortgage insurance on them. Now, excuse me, the lenders do self insure. So the rates are higher. So it is a trade off. I think that's similar to forward, you know, jumbo's have higher. But the transition has been amazing. So we've got. It's no longer a loan of last resort. And now we have these jumbo's. The largest home I ever did a reverse mortgage on was 15 million. It was worth a million. Yeah. And that guy was not desperate. He just understood the finances and how to work that with his. The rest of his assets and portfolio to have a better all overall. Better overall outcome for his heirs as well as the rest of his life. And for his wife, there was a medical need she had to. So it was just beautiful. And so we're getting these these two like. You know, the middle class hasn't filled in yet. Because the middle class typically follows what the wealthier do. Well, the wealthier wealthier is starting to incorporate reverse mortgages. So we have these really different segments of the population that are utilizing this one because it's a need base. They just don't have anything else. And then one because they see what an incredible retirement tool it is. It's just time until that gap starts to fill. And without going super deep, can you tease this a little bit about why it is a smart retirement tool for the right person. I'll tease you. That means I got to be short. So the most powerful piece of this is cash flow. You work your whole life to accumulate assets so that you can retire and live on them. Well, the largest piece of your of your entire puzzle is your home equity. So ignoring that is a really hard situation to retire on. And why would you? It's the best investment you've ever made. And yet people don't touch it in this thing there. By the way, nothing or not. What you're saying there is, okay, so I'm retired. I'm sitting on this house. I've got all this equity. But it's untapped resources. And what we're saying is this is now become a financial instrument to access this untapped cash that you have. So that now you've got two sides of the coin. You've got a person who maybe isn't right. Super successful financially or savvy if you will. And they're like, hey, I just need money to pay the bills. Then there's this other side where it's just like, okay, they're smart. They leverage different financial instruments. Right. This is what you're saying. Absolutely. Yeah, you got that right. All right. So casual leads me to ask then a little bit about there. There are the different types or options. And I'm looking at my cheat sheet here. When it comes to home reverse mortgages is. Can you walk us through the different types of payment, you know, lump sum, et cetera? Yeah, absolutely. So different products will offer different things. But in general, there are different ways you can receive proceeds. The most common people are familiar with is, of course, what the TV used to tell us forever. Oh, the mortgage company will pay you every month. And absolutely that can happen. That's called a 10 year payment. Not 10 years, but 10 year. A T E N U R E like professors have. Right. 10 year. And that is equal monthly payments for as long as you live in the home. Which imagine if you live to be 110. Which we all are doing in the next 20 years. All this person of date of recorded history is 112 so far. So that person probably didn't have a reverse that I know, but God, they should have. All right. So you've got the 10 year payment, which is the most common. But it's actually not the most common that I use in my practice. I use the line of credit the most because that protects longevity that protects against the future. The line of credit on the FHA Heckham, for example, is a growing line of credit. It doesn't matter if the real estate market crashes or not. That line of credit will be available. It can never be frozen. And that growth factor will continue to happen. Then beyond that, people who are familiar with he locks or home equity line of credit, like you get through your credit union or bank. Those are typically only open for 10 years. And then at the end of that 10 years, you can't draw anymore. But oh, my goodness, you better start paying us back. And that payment jumps up. So if you're 63 and you get a he lock, well, by the time you're 73, unless some miracle has happened, most people's finances haven't increased to support a larger payment. And a lot of them didn't understand that's how it would work. And so that what was really cool is the line of credit in the reverse. It doesn't just go for 10 years. It goes for the entire life of the loan until you draw it down to zero. And it continues to grow. So the power of this growth piece in the line of credit is incredible. You let it compounding growth. If you let it sit there for 10, 20 years, you're going to have a large pool to pull from. You do have a medical event or finally need to take care of the roof or whatever. Some people are a little more luxurious with it. Actually take that vacation, but they wouldn't have otherwise. But most people are just looking to make sure they don't outlive their assets. And adding in the reverse can absolutely do that. So with the line of credit, you can draw that down against the balance, right? Draw again. Yeah, think of it as two buckets, right? The kind of credit which is not used money yet, it's just equity that you have in borrowed. Right. And then you have a loan balance bucket. So as you use the line of credit, you know, say you used 10,000, well, that goes into the loan balance bucket now. It's adding to the loan balance. Right. And all that's based on equity owed. And what's what's the, I know it differs. There's in terms of max ratios, right? How do they determine that? It's more complex. So in regular mortgages, we have things like, oh, it's 80% LTV for this program. Oh, it's 95% LTV for this program. In reverse, we actually don't even use the word LTV, but most of our audience is going to relate to that. So I will. In that the LTV or principal limit factor is actually gotten to by the youngest borrowers age. Current interest rates. And the home's value or max claim, whichever is lower. We have a cap on value limits. And so what's cool about that is that every single time you look at your first mortgage numbers, they're going to be different. And I say that's cool because I had a client who in 2019, she asked me to do her reverse. At that point in time, she would have had to bring in about 80,000. But a year later, she didn't do it, right? So she got one year older, which helps a little in the LTV. It's not a ton, but the increased equity and the lowered interest rates in 2020 meant that she actually received $120,000. So those LTVs swing in huge ways mostly because of interest rates. Interesting. And I know interest rates vary. So I don't want to try and, you know, paint in a corner here, but people are naturally curious what the range of rates would be. Yeah, we follow, I mean, interest rates, whatever they are on the 30 year fix for somewhere near that typically. It's not too far off. Reverse mortgage interest rates are often a little bit higher, right? It's a mortgage with no payment. But, you know, in 2002, gosh, I want to say that mortgage was probably in the 3% range. No, excuse me, 2020. But now we are in the 4 to 5 to 6, depending on what product you're looking at. Got it, got it. And then of course, while we're talking about interest rates fees, they're various as well. So once again, what would your comment be about those that are curious about fees? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for asking. A big misconception that reverse mortgages are super expensive to get. They can be. There are certain structures that are beneficial to do that way. But with all the new product offerings, there are actually products where the lender will cover every cost except the ones they can't, which is counseling government recording fees as for state and local. Which, that's a lot of closing costs. So it's almost a no-cost loan. We can't say it's no cost because there legally are a couple things we can't pay for. But you can have that and then you can all go all the way up to having the mortgage insurance so that you can get the low rates. And in that case, closing costs, you know, anywhere from 10 to 20,000 are kind of common, but they're financed in just like a regular FHA loan. Regular FHA has that upfront portion and reverse has one as well. I don't believe they're the same numbers though. And naturally, we are speaking to loan officers. And so, you know, the discussion around compensation is usually, you know, somewhere close nearby when you look at the funding alone. And I don't have any actual stats on this, but let me just give you my perception is, is the rumor is right that, oh, yeah, you can quote make a lot of money. Let's just put it out there doing a reverse, meaning the average, you know, comp to the L.O. is higher than that of a more traditional loan. Yeah, that that actually brings a lot of negativity into our industry, but it's not entirely untrue. You can make a lot, but what people forget is that the reverse mortgage process, the clientele, the tasks you have to do. There's a lot more and then forward like, for instance, we have to get our own application signed. So you have to, like I used to go to every client's house and sit at their kitchen table and watch them write out 60 signatures and this 100 page application. Now I do it through Docu sign, but I'm still dragging and dropping signatures. So we don't have the tech that the forward side has, which I think makes life a little easier. What I found in my practice is when I switched from from forward to reverse, in my head, it was about one reverse was about equal to about three regular mortgages in the amount of work. And so when you do get paid more, I'm very grateful for it because it takes a lot to get this thing through and to have the expertise to be able to do it successfully. Now that's a big misconception, though, because pricing has really taint. And so right now what is a little comical to me is, you know, you got these forward people who are not finding loans anywhere else. And so they're like, oh, reverse pays a lot. Let me just do this one that I got thrown my way. And then they go through the trauma of trying to do it on their own, maybe with the help of an AE, but it's, it's a lot. And then they get to the end and realize that they're pricing, at least for brokers, I'm not going to speak for other companies. So the pricing didn't lock when they lock that loans for the interest rate, our pricing doesn't lock until closing. And so you end up with a big swing in your commission. And right now that swing is down. I mean, we're not, we're not making much more than regular loans right now, depending on the situation. So I say that on average, you know, if you're doing like that $15 million home. That was a private and that loan amount was really big. So I could make a decent on that. But my average, you know, the FHA Heckham has a max claim of 97800. Then if we're talking around 50% on TV, your largest loan amounts are going to be in the three to 400 range, if that bar was old, if they're young, like 62, it's going to be less than that. So what people get really confused about is they see the rate sheet and their eyes get real big because they're seeing some big numbers. Those big numbers are on really tiny loan amounts. You know, if I'm getting eight points on a $25,000 loan, well, how much money is that really? A mobile home park and all that. Yeah. So that's how it works. You get paid less points as it gets larger in loan amounts. So that helps compensate. And pricing swings a lot. Investors used to have a really big appetite for reverse because they were held for seven years, whereas the regular mortgage only held on average for three years. That's not the case anymore because we just went through this really big kind of turnover where even reverse mortgages were being refinanced really early and quickly because there was so much appreciation and interest rates were down. Just that just is to say pricing really, really swings. So back to the different types of a reverse mortgages for a moment, the most common option you're seeing people select is the line of credit. Is that accurate? In my practice. Now that's not going to be true all over the country, but I'm in California where there's a lot of equity. So yeah, set up that line of credit. Interesting, interesting. What happens in this may differ, of course, based on loan type and investor, et cetera. But what happens is when somebody wants to get out of the reverse mortgage? Do they have to sell the house or cash pay off the balance? What? I almost want to answer that question with a question. What happens when you want to get out of your existing mortgage? Refi or sell. Yeah. Same. Really? So you just reply into a forward mortgage. If you want to, yeah, you absolutely can. Most people get used to not having to make a payment and they love the features. This is a cool stat I want in this recording. 93% is the approval rating for people who actually have reverse mortgages. Really? So they don't we don't typically see that when we see that kind of activity, I'll get brokers asking me like, I'm trying to refinance so and so out of a reverse. I bring up, well, did you know they can make payments? And a lot of the time, the errors are the ones driving the boat on that. And if they just start making payments, well, then they're going to achieve their same goal without having to commit their parent to having monthly payments. Payments to pay down the principal? Yeah. And the accrued interest, right? You don't make a payment every month. So there's interest. It's stacking on the balance of the loan. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I guess you got to look at the numbers to see which one is more advantageous. I know in my situation, actually, we have a personal situation going on with this right now. Not that I want to disclose all of it, but maybe we can chat offline. But that's one of the considerations that's happening right now. There's an existing reverse and the strategy has changed to where you know what? We want to keep the house as a legacy house, right, for the family and et cetera, et cetera. So right now they're looking at getting out of reverse. So I'm glad to know it's just it's a simple refine them. Yeah, we can talk. I'll show you how to look to figure out what your monthly payment would be to either pay down the loan or at least just keep it steady so that more interest doesn't add to it. And you know, all the family members if they want to pitch in forward towards that payment. And then the beauty is if something happens in the future and one family member can't pay or mom and dad need more funds, the reverse is still there. So you have it. Get it rid of it. That's an interesting concept. It's like it's like this forever line of credit. Until it's drawn down to zero, but you can pay back into it if you want. Right. Right. That's very interesting. Okay. All right. I also want to make sure that we don't leave the scene of scenes we talked about money and different types of loan products and all this kind of stuff. And the fact that it is a more difficult loan to work and in L.O.'s, you know, they see the numbers like you said, oh my god, I'm going to make X amount of points on this, whatever. Who I was trying to think about how to present this question because people get blinded by quote the money or whatever, right. And by the way, just so you know, the filter I'm coming through at this through is I have thought to myself, if I ever was going to get back into originating, I would want to be a specialist in a niche. And the two that come up for me is either divorce specialist or reverse potentially. But what should somebody know or who would a pursuing reverse as a career? Who like, how would you advise against it? You know what I mean? Oh, oh, I easy. I've had the benefit of working for some real big companies. I helped build the reverse division. So I got to work with the forward loan officers and help them start to try to integrate reverse. I saw the people who went, did it well and I saw the people who burned out and failed out quickly. Words of caution. The biggest most important piece is patience. I did a poll the other day and that was the number one thing that loan officer doing reverse must have a lot of patience. But patience isn't just enough. You really have to commit to the expertise because if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to mess up enough loans to ruin your reputation before you ever get started. And so that's the thing. It's like, you know, I always say, oh, you have to care about your clients as if they were your own. But caring isn't enough, right? I'm not going to let my dentist do brain surgery when I need it because he really cares about me. You have to know what you're doing. You have to be competent and caring and you can't be competent by learning on your first file. And that is the biggest misconception. And I get it. I was a forward loan officer. I used to grab a matrix to help get my guidelines and go and do a loan that I'd never done before and my clients never knew the difference. Reverse is not that way at all. And that's the biggest pitfall. And it ruins our reputation. Honestly, like it kills me when rates are down and everybody floods to the reverse space a little bit because they're trying to get through these loans on the loan. And they're doing a big disservice to their clients and their seniors, you know, it's a protected class. We should we owe them more than that. Well, so let's talk about that then. How do they get educated? And by the way, I'm, I know that we'll talk about the NRMLA and probably other organizations like that. But right now, you don't need any special designation to to originate a reverse. Excuse me. That is company by company. So no, there's no extra legal requirement. Now, certain states have weird things going on. But in general, no, a regular broker who has access to a lender who will do reverse, they can just go try it. And the resources, yeah, I don't love it, but they can. The resources, the lenders have courses and everything. But again, you have to actually do them. And then the courses are good, but there's some information left out. So there's other resources. I can kind of give a list of resources if you got to. And we've got your own. So throw that in the mix as well. But yeah, where would you direct people? They they legitimately want to, you know, you know, get serious about reverse. Yeah. Well, if you're getting serious, the first place is join my free Facebook group. So you can stay in the know on the conversation and ask these kinds of questions to a whole community of people. Either learning reverse or already doing reverse. And that is just search Facebook, Christina Barnes reverse mortgage training. Yes. And we'll also put a direct link in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you. So that is where I update everyone. So the resources I'm going to say there are new ones that come out. And that's where I post them. But very first is the there's a book called Understanding Reverse. And it's by the author Dan Holtquist. And as you know, if you have someone in your family with the reverse, this is actually having my desk. This is a book you want because it's written in like question and answer formats. So let me just open one. I love it. I love the fact that you have it on the desk. By the way, that's a serious student. So what are mandatory obligations at chapter five? And then you go to chapter five and it's two pages explaining what that is. And the whole book is written that way. It's really good for errors because you weren't in the initial conversations typically. And so you don't know how it worked or why they did it. And that book can help you understand. Oh, oh, there's all these features. Oh, okay, I can see why they did this now. And maybe know how to move forward with it. It will also show errors, you know, if you're wrapping up a reverse mortgage after someone has passed. There's some information on there in there on that too. Then there's a publication reverse mortgage daily subscribe to that. There's a podcast heck of moral subscribe to that. There are a bunch of other books written by financial planners. So if you're really, really looking to dive in. You need your baseline of education before you start on those books. So, you know, I would say understanding reverse. Join my my class. I actually offer a course that is meant to take the originator from oh crap. What do I do? I have a reverse mortgage lead all the way through. Thank you for your signed application. We're putting it in process. So everything a loan officer needs to do. And there's a lot in those steps and how to approach the client with the clients actually thinking when you say this. All that's built into this, you know, it's a five module course I built. And then I do private coaching as well. Because you really need a mentor. So people who can't, you know, maybe that company doesn't pay enough to make it make sense to hire a private mentor. Your company should have someone available to you to do these loans with. And I highly recommend you actually just take it on the chin split the file. Yes, you may make less commission, but 100% of zero is still zero. And that's what I've seen a lot of loan officers do. Okay. And I wrote all that down and there will be links to all that in the show notes, the books resources and stuff. So thank you for that. Before I forget though, how do you originate? You know, where do you get the business? Oh, it's been, it's been a journey. So when I was in my 20s, I was single and I was a bit of a workaholic. I was at a networking meeting at 7 a.m. three days a week every week for like two years. And I would hand out my business cards that I do reverse mortgages, even though at that time I was still doing regular mortgages. I didn't want it to appear that way. I wanted to appear that I was the specialist and I was the person for their reverse. And I still believe in that today. I think that has made a big difference in my career. And so I would hand out those. I would, I got on speaking panels. I really understood my stuff. You got to put the reps in. You got to get the loans in. You do that for in my belief system, typically through referral partners, because this is a really high trust type of product. Yes. And the loyalty is built in when you've got the referrals. So I think that's the most solid way. So by referral partners, obviously real estate ages is one, but you also like financial advisors, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Really good referral partners, realtors, financial planners, financial advisors, CPAs, accountants, attorneys. And you largely got audience or in front or created awareness. No, we get realtors, right, networking, lunch and learns, all that. But how did you do it with the financial advisors, attorneys type stuff? That's not pill battle. It's mostly one on one. I mean, some people have these big agreements where they do lunch and learns. And for me, I haven't found that to be super effective. There's a couple offices that are receptive to it, but it's mostly just one on one. They need us. They don't really know they need us yet. Some of them are starting to become aware of that. But there's not that many reverse people. And so being that go to for financial planners is a big resource. Now, you do have to answer a lot of questions. You're not just going to suddenly have turned the faucet on and they're going to send you a ton of leads. You got to earn their business and you do that through proving you have the expertise and doing well by their clients. Yeah. And you said I was reading some of your stuff and you were alluding to in one of your articles or whatever it was that I saw you posting something about, you know, the financial advisor missing the equity as a quote opportunity if you will paraphrasing. But my question around that was, you know, how often are you seeing that scenario play out of financial advisor, you, the homeowner, whatever doing this reverse and they're going to reposition that 200 grand or whatever. And actually instead of have that as cash lump sum or draw down and they're going to reposition that to an investment. Maybe you're more, you know, what do you call it wealthier clients would be doing that. Yeah. So it's interesting. In theory, people think, Oh, I'll pull the cash out from the house and put it with my other assets. But what we actually do is we help you stop pulling from those other assets as quickly as much with the reverse. So it's most cases we're not pulling the equity and putting it in with the financial planner. We're actually helping the financial planner protect their business and their assets. Yeah, they, you know, they've all got that client that calls twice a year going, I need 20,000 because I, whatever. And they show the model of, okay, if I give you that 20,000, now you've got to die when you're 93 instead of 97. So it's like, all right, we can stop that sort of activity. And that's the basic. There are much more complex strategies, but financial planners are also new to reverse. They don't know all of them yet. So the lowest hanging fruit is let's at least stop the bleeding on your assets. Yes, 100%. Okay, that's cool. I wanted to get that out of the way because I was curious about that. Because you know, there's thinking like the financial advisor like, well, how does that help me sell more of my products, right? But what you're saying is it's protecting the existing that they have, which is good. And the right financial advisor isn't about just making the money. They're about right, the long term planning and all that kind of stuff. Much like people like you are, which is you're not in this just for the money. You're in it to serve back to that original day. You saw that changed your life, right? Okay, so in just the last few minutes that we have, what's the, let me bring up my little stat here. Oh, the other, any other organizations you want to mention regarding training, education knowledge or anything like that. You mentioned one normal, of course, that's the organization, that's the association. It's the national reverse mortgage lenders association. And they are, if you have, if you have not compliant marketing, they typically see it first. And if you're not a member, they don't have the opportunity to tell you, hey, let's clean this up and they'll pass it on to the appropriate agencies. So it's a really nice benefit to be a member because there are things in reverse that you, this is really a word of caution for anybody listening. You can't just go out there and market with the same rules you understand on regular mortgages. There's extra layering because seniors are protected class. So yeah, that's one big benefit. And then of course they have the conferences. I stay in the know by the conferences by being a member. It's a great organization. Yeah, so they have a certification over there, which you are one of. And based on the last stat, at least on your website, there was less than 200 people that have that certification. Yeah, it's a pretty hard test. You have to have done at least 50 reverse mortgages. Okay. And my, my little towel is, I was the youngest one to ever achieve the credential. It's a hard test to pass. That by the way, and I'm just going rapid fire for second time now. Was, is that a consideration youth, right? Like was that ever working against you being younger? I think it worked against me and then it worked for me because I have always carried myself as a professional because of that. I was trying to overcome my young face. I was trying to get my clients like they were my grandparents because that's truly the relation that I could reference. And I think I serve them better because of it. And the expertise, you know, you can't walk into a room talking about how you're the reverse mortgage person and not know your stuff. And so I think all of those things have helped me overcome any age difference. The first conception I see a lot too is like, oh, well, I'm 60 now. I guess I should turn my practice to reverse. Okay, there's still a lot of things you got to know to just switch that. And it can help. I mean, being of the same age range, I've seen a lot of success in there too. But I don't want anybody to discredit themselves because it can be done no matter what you look like, what you're, you know, what age you are or whatever. It's just about being the expert and caring and doing your service. Okay, great. So the future then for reverse mortgages, I'm looking at some stats and this is from Investopedia. I don't see what their source is. Oh, it's a, it's a normal is their source. But in 2021, it looks like they said there was how many, how many, where was that number in terms of total reverse mortgages done in the country? Do you know what that number is? I lost. Not, not currently. I used to know that number. 49,000 in September 2021, the FHA specifically, not including the private. So the FHA backed mortgage insurance reverses 40, 50,000 for the month of September. Let's say here in the federal fiscal year 2021, which ended September 35. Yes, that's a big question is how, what, you know, how many of these could I have could I be doing? You know what I mean? Oh, got it. Yeah. So a really top reverse originator does eight to 12 a month. Okay. The average does four a month. I mean, four is a good producer. There are people who make their business work off of doing two a month, you know, they can pay more. They don't always have to be careful. But yeah, the numbers are skewed down for sure. As a top producer and forward, I think does something like 30, 40 loans a month. And 30, 40 of these, you're going to have a pretty big team helping absorb a lot of the FaceTime phone calls paperwork to get to that level. And it looks here gender wise. Maybe this is just because of who dies first, but the female borrowers. It's 35% according to 20% roughly for male. So you work with more like widows. In my practice, not so much, but there are reverse specialists who work exclusively with widows. So that's definitely a thing. In my practice, I ended up really financially savvy. So I ended up attracting kind of attorney types and financial guys. So you got to hang with those conversations. I think it depends on the originator to not it's not just, you know, everything out there. All right. Well, then let's just get your last last question is what's your opinion on the future of reverse? I think it's here to stay. I think it's here in a big way. And I think it's going to be the same in grace for the boomer's retirement over the next 20 years. I think everyone's finally seen that we can't ignore the home equity. And I think it's something like 90% of baby boomers have no interest in leaving their home. They love their home. And so this helps marry those two concepts of lifestyle where I want to be and financials where I have to be. It helps marry it. And I think it's just going to be, I mean, I've got my whole career on it. Interesting. You say that because it reminds me of it's also a way to continue, you know, loan volume or production as to your point earlier. Now we're all in these two 3% loans. The lack of inventory. Where am I going to go? Like all that stuff, right? How do you continue to keep that loan volume? That's why I talk about niches, right? Because there's always a niche that needs the service. And so this as well as a divorce is one of those niches that are always going to need service. And you can do both too because silver divorce is on the rise. Yes. So if you know your reverse stuff and you know the divorce stuff, oh, that's beautiful. And if you're listening to this and you're getting more silver like me, that might be an appropriate road for you. At least look into it. There's a ton of misinformation. The biggest thing when we hear negative things comes down to they don't understand how it actually works. I just thought of this real quick. One last question because this is what I help a lot of people do is like with content showing up online your personal brand. What do you think about the necessity for having a brand or presence online serving reverse? I think it's absolutely necessary. Not because seniors are online, although they are. They are on Facebook, right? They're watching their grandkids pictures. They're interacting with their family that way. Not because of them directly, but because of the referral partners, your your realtors, your financial planners, your attorneys, they all are running their businesses online as well. And so when they need to refer someone, they're looking online first. So I think it's really important. And as well, you're often working with some of the family members. Good point. Yes, the kid in New York is trying to help their California parents. They're going to look for you online. If they don't find you well, then they're going to reroute to a different provider, typically. Right. And what I saw about you in doing my research is you are doing a good job with your Google business profile because you have 25 reviews on there, which is great. And they're all five stars. And so that's also one of those, right? That's the first impression. I'm going to go to Google, type in, you know, your name or whatever. And here you are. And you're like, Oh, great. First piece of credibility. Yeah. And 25 is hard to get for reverse. I know. I see the four guys with like 300 views. I'm like, Oh, that'd be nice. Well, look, I know we are at the end of our time available. This has been wonderfully educational. You are obviously an amazing human being serving a crowd of, you know, audience of people who really needed. Thank you for involved for doing that, showing up and serving in the world. And as we said, we're going to put links to your private Facebook group, all the other things that you noted there so that people can connect with you. Is there anywhere else you want to direct them? Or is that pretty much it? Facebook group? Pretty much it. I mean, I'm on Facebook a lot of my day helping train. So yeah. Great. Well, grateful for you to be here, Christina. Thank you so much. Listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, please let us know leave a review and also make sure you check out the resources that we provided and we'll see you on the next one. Hey, thanks for tuning into this episode of the mortgage marketing radio podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember if you like this episode, please leave us a review that helps us reach more people and bring more good value and content to you are listeners. And then don't forget if you are a loan officer who wants more agent referrals in less time. Be sure to check out the mortgage marketing pro membership at mortgagemarketing.pro and learn more about our turnkey system of agent classes that puts you front and center of your local real estate agents attracting agents instead of chasing them and getting agent referrals like clockwork every single month. Just like Kerry Cobb who her first year in the business with closing over 75 loans achieved 40% of those 75 loans exclusively from agent classes. And if you want to learn how she did it now, you can do it to once again go to mortgage marketing pro and I'll see you over there. Thanks for listening. Bye for now. Hey guys, what's up real quick. You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you if that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchase loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. 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