Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of Mic Dub. Season three has been a blast. We like to always say that we do this live on LinkedIn YouTube, but we try to get people into the comments so that they can actually ask our guests live questions. But ultimately it goes into a podcast where hopefully you are listening on Apple, Spotify, Google, YouTube.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: If you.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: If you see us on YouTube, please give us a subscribe. It's very important to us and we, again, we always film. We like to say it, but we always film. 02:00 p.m. eastern time on Thursdays and of course, 11:00 a.m.
today's episode is about home ownership. Post close. Borrowers managing their largest asset. We will have Daniel Smith on as a guest who I met at the FHFA velocity. He is tackling something from a genuine perspective that he believes by helping homeowners. Post close. There's certain demographics that end up in the house and do not have as much success. Maybe the financial education or the family structure, whatever it may be. There's certain people that succeed and thrive in home ownership, and there's certain people that are surprised. And when he comes on, we will get further into it. I think one thing, Mike, I'll hit you with real quick.
No one's talking about it anymore, but I think in 2022, it was or early 2023, CNBC dropped that article about a high number. Like 79% of millennials had buyer's remorse after buying the home. And I think they bought it because financially, you're supposed to buy it. It makes sense. Why give the money to the landlord? But the homeownership part of it, they found very difficult for some quantitative reasons, like repair, and some qualitative reasons, like can't go to that Red Sox game this weekend because I have to take care of the gutters or mow the lawn or you know what I'm. And you got to think even more that maybe has to do with the millennial piece or does it have to do with Mike, the fact that everybody waived their inspection cause they weren't going to get a home if they didn't.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: You know, there was a. There were two. I don't remember their names. Um, but she talked about it on Lewis Howell's podcast, millennials. I think they were 20 somethings. And she said, yeah, I used to own a house and I sold it for a profit. But you know what? Too much maintenance for me because she's a YouTube sensation and she's living the best life in her digital nomad days. And so home ownership just isn't the same thing for her. But you know what's interesting, Mike, as you say that, is that I think that millennials in their thirties, when they were not buying houses, when it was supposed to be like, oh, this generation doesn't know what they're doing. This generation can't save. This generation is not going to do this. They actually have the highest propensity right now to save. And even though there's some in that generation that may be complaining about home ownership, homeownership is not a YouTube video that lasts five minutes. It's actually potentially a 30 year investment in time and energy. So I think once people start having kids, then it becomes much more real, and the desire for settlement in a permanent place will become also much more real. So I think it will all come into more of a realization of better home ownership as a result.
Daniel. Hey. Hey. Well, good morning from where I'm at, and maybe good afternoon for where you're at.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Good afternoon, Mandy.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: Welcome to the show.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Thank you very much.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: You know, we're just talking about how much tech this generation uses. Technology for social media, influencers, maybe homeownership.
It just seems like it's more of a waning or passing thing, and they're not really looking at it as a 30 year investment. I mean, when I go to my mechanic to get my car fixed, I get, not only do I get on my cell phone a digital report, it's going to tell me when I need to go in for my oil change, for my air filters, for my cabin filter, for, you know, switching out fluids and this and that. And it's super interesting to me. Right. Cause, you know, I don't, I don't spend. I mean, I live in San Diego, and houses are kind of expensive in San Diego, right. But. And yet, I don't have the same type of technology keeping up to when do I need to change my. I mean, I kind of, like, I'm guess to me, well, I changed my, my air filter here. You know, I, I did my roof around here, and the outside painting and, or the stucco is around this time. And, you know, there really isn't a maintenance, digital way to maintain my property, nor is there a digital way for me to really do anything. And as we, and as Mike was talking about the technology that is currently available that you represent, there's some opportunity for homeowners, actually. So why don't you, you know, before we get into what is it that you, that you offer, can we talk about you for just a moment.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. So my background is I spent approximately 20 years in technology.
You know, one of my last major roles was in telecom. And part of that was really working on the Internet of things. And there was so much promise because my role really started with looking at, you know, how building a business case basically around the Internet of things and all these things, and, you know, um, coming from a technology background and spending like 20 years in tech, you know, I started at the foundations like web design, uh, mobile application, digital strategy, really helping companies get onto the web. Um, and then, uh, in even a telecom, you know, part of what I had to do was help a telecom move from, um, going in stores to make payments to really online payments. So part of that I really realized and I started to think true, you know, how we really start looking. You know, once you're in technology, you love technology. You know, everything's in your life, you know, feels like glue it to technology. But then I started really, you know, switching over to the marketing side because again, you know, getting people to move from a very standard way of thinking to now having to make digital payments and stuff like that. It really required, you know, a shift of thinking and so really started to think about the consumer journey and how that really has evolved. And because I was working on the Internet of Things side, it really kind of forced me to put both together.
And so, you know, that has been part of my journey. I spent the last three years really understanding the real estate side of it, the homeownership side. Being a homeowner for the past, um, twelve years plus. And so I experience all the things that you speak about, but for me it's even worse because, you know, my life was so crazy sometimes. Like, I spent some time this morning just looking for something. I did find out, but I found something that I was looking for sometime last year related to my house that was related to my ESC.
And the funny story about that was I changed my EC right before the pandemic.
And, you know, everybody was, you know, doing stuff during the pandemic, but nobody was really allowing people to come into their houses, etcetera. So, you know, some of that maintenance that you had to do on your ESC, et cetera, you know, was kind of shoved in the background because you would you you because of COVID And then I realized, like, my EC last year, I live in Florida, so last year, the EC started to act up a bit. So I was like, okay, well, it's time to have a, you know, a blowout and AC and you know, get it, get some maintenance done on it. But for the life of me, I could not find the documents. You know, like this morning I found a document and I'm like, it's so interesting that why we need these tools to be able to help our life become way more simplistic because we all just live very busy lives. So that's, you know, my background in terms of why I'm doing this in here.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Yeah, great promo first, serendipitous situations working out. That's why it's fascinating that my wife will clean out junk drawers and I still have a problem with it. I'm like, we might need that. We might that. What does that plug go to? I'm not sure, but it has to go to something in this house. And there's actually a viral sensation now where you're supposed to use a spatula and give your parents a spatula, and they're only allowed to get three scoops of their. And in fact, that's what they're doing, too. People are selling scoops of their, their junk drawer for big money, and it's become a viral, a funny thing because of what you said, which is people don't organize. I think it's twofold. One is they don't organize what they need, right. And if they really don't want to make the effort to upload a documents into your portal, then they should throw away the documents altogether. But they can't have they. So they pack rat because they can't get rid of those documents. But they also don't want to take the time to just. I guess that proves they find value in those documents, meaning the humidifier, you know, instruction manual, they find value enough that they can't throw it away, but not enough value to just upload it or link it up and just be done with it. And. Yeah, I'm one of those people. Can you just tell for our listeners what Internet of Things is for like a four year old?
I think it's like a smart thermostat, but I'm not sure.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: So when I was working on it, you know, we were looking, and that is one of the definitions, I think, that, you know, but as a society, we were promised, you know, smart fridges, smart stoves, you know, all the smart devices. So the Internet of Things really focused on how to make a lot of what we call manual stuff smart.
And, you know, in technology stuff terms is like making the dumb stuff smart because like your stove or, you know, there were all these applications of, like your fridge being able to tell you when to order milk. And remember, that was one of those famous lines about what the Internet of Things offered us as a society and stuff like that. But when you, when we look at it and we go down the pipeline, you know, I was, I was bogged down in conversations about, okay, what is the hub that we supposed to use? Because again, the different devices connecting to all these hubs, what keeps them? And so for your lighting system, I know there's like some great work that Philips has done. So Phillips would have a lighting system that you plug in the hub, and as you're walking the house, you know, you can, you know, tap or, you know, you can do it from remotely, et cetera. So some of those things have worked. So the Internet of things really is about really making things that would manually be done kind of really smart. So even your ring doorbell, etcetera, would also be part of that Internet of things trend. Just the issue has been around it, though, is, but a lot of things that we expected didn't really come to fruition because it's been so hard to find common ground around putting all of those things together.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Interesting. Can I ask you just entrepreneur to entrepreneur here?
For me, the challenge with the Internet of things in a home, I think, is where is that information going? Where is this data going? I think that, for me, is the hurdle to get over. Now, I ended up getting a ring. So once I got over the hurdle, I liked it, and I don't think about it anymore. But to have all that smart piece in there, I think, is a hurdle. So I was saying, as an entrepreneur, I would guess that you probably can't price it at a point that makes sense for homeowners unless you get access to their data and are able to somehow bring down the price by, there's probably no way that I could use it here and not give anybody access to that data. Right? Like run it on an intranet that's not available today, right?
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it isn't. And I would say, you know, the best business model to me that, and I kind of put back on my telecom heart here, is that, you know, telecoms were, like, in best position and basically in prime position to have access to a lot of that ability to lower costs. Because if I am in your house already with providing you with Internet, then ultimately I have the ability now to be able to kind of upsell your services at a reduced cost because I already know who you are. I have all your data already.
I know what you're surfing.
So am I really concerned about just some of your data. And also, for me, even from a business model standpoint, which was one of the ways I started looking at it when I was even building out the business case, is that you can subsidize ads against it. So you have this ability now for me to, you know, if I have some kind of portal, therefore I can subsidize that with an ad. So in addition to being a telecom, I now become an ad company and kind of do it like Google, and I'm able to generate revenue that way. So I think that to me, the data points are always going to be there. I think that there is such an over preponderance on how data is used, and some of it is fear, some of it is just understanding what has happened within society in the last few years and all the bad actors, et cetera, out there. But I think that my personal viewpoint is if people want to find a way to get to your data, they will.
And so you just have to be really conscious about putting the steps in place to protect yourself and just always be on your guard around your data and how you build that privacy into it.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: I was just gonna say, on last week's episode, we talked about the book good to great and sell the mills, right? And so that, I think it was a Walgreens story in that book, correct me if I'm wrong, but they believe so much, or the mills were so much part of their success that what made them good to great versus other companies is they were still able to say, hey, we're going to sell it and go here.
And then we talked about Vikings burning the boat. Right. And then just going in. It seems like a moment like, can you tell us how keepingly, how you see keepingly work, what your, you know, what motivated you to get started? I guess in your sell the mills scenario, it seems like I even think I'd have an attachment to try and bring over some Internet of things into my post close portal. It seems like you actually have that good to great characteristic where I could be wrong, is it in there yet? But it seems like you're leading with the basics first.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Michael, you're Mike squared. What is. Michael, what is Mike? My goodness. I love you guys. You figured out how to do it. But that's one of my favorite books, actually. I've read everything from good to greed built by choice. I'm looking at them over on my bookshelf here. And so one of the things, the way I look at it, I think that, number one, this moment is coming, whether or not we try to downplay it, whether or not we think it's years or. I've had conversations with persons who say, yeah, that's not happening. And I'm like, hold on. Look at where we are with real estate and what is just has happened. There's no way that we're going back to what when you, Michael, you and I have been in some of these events whereby people tell you real estate hasn't changed in 100 years, or we're still doing things the same.
And all of those conversations. And so the more you go to these events, the more you have people who are like, once we're making money, we're good. And so once you're able to close a mortgage, we're not necessarily worried about certain things. But I think that, you know, where I have kind of drawn the line and, you know, kind of burned the boards, as it were, is that. I think that, number one, this is a moment we are not going back from, whether or not it's what we build or what some other actors or other competitors build in the space. I think that ultimately, what my point about where we are is that there is this moment for transparency. Like, you know, when Michael Zoo was defining all his documents on what he's done.
What happens to the person who comes after you and wants to buy your house, but doesn't understand exactly what you've done. And so I see this as a great opportunity for transparency. I like to see defining keepingly on what we're doing. We are really focused on transparency of data, transparency of the asset. For most of us, our home is our most important asset. It's the asset that we spend the most amount of money on. But when you start drilling deeper into the information and what is going on in the ecosystem, you realize like 78% people spend more time researching a flat screen tv or their brand new car versus actually spending time on figuring out their mortgage or who to talk to. For a mortgage and all of those different elements, this is why it is our most important asset. We don't spend enough time on actually understanding the asset class.
There's been so much euphoria around the home ownership experience and journey. And so we get into falling in love with the home, but not necessarily falling in love with the work of maintaining and growing the value of their home. So to answer the question about what is keepingly? Keepingly is a home ownership sustainability platform that is focused on helping homeowners to manage, maintain and grow the value of their home.
And the way we do that is a centralized tool whereby we say that we like to start at a point of your clothes where you have all your closing documents, etcetera. One of my favorite lines, I go into spaces doing pictures sometimes and I start by asking how many people can find their closing documents.
90% of the time, less than ten persons can find their closing documents. You know it some way, it's in a draw somewhere, it's in a file folder, we know it's there, but can you pull it up in 2 seconds and figure out, you know, where it is, what has been done, you know, what, what are the changes? And it applies to everything from, you know, closing documents to even if you have done a refi, to, God forbid, you're ready to sell and you have to fill out that seller's disclosures document. So Michael, zoo, back to your point about that roof change. When was that done?
Or the stucco or any of those things, when did you paint?
Because while they materially may not necessarily be important in an inspection, it becomes really important for evaluation.
It comes really important for the person coming in understanding, okay, they changed the fridge five years ago. It may have a few more years versus me coming into the house and my own experiences. After a year, my fridge was gone. Now I had a horror story because my fridge count and my wife is pregnant. I need to go find a new fridge now. This was not something I expected or had to really time to think about because your food spoiling, going bad, your wife is pregnant. It's like, hey, you know, life changes really fast for you in some of these circumstances. Had we understood exactly what had been done, you know, we could have made some provisions and preparations. And I also think that from the mortgage side, I'll put this plug in for you keller. You know, we need new mortgage products because again, for homeowners who buy a house, what happens in the first few years is that youre really cash poor. So in most instances, you dont have the finances to go out and buy something if something crashes. And so new mortgage products would help us to be able to understand. Exactly, okay, I may be able to do a lower mortgage rate or give you some kind of concessions for the first five years so that you can keep the house sustainable. So that is kind of what keeping me is about. Theres so many other things from our scoring technology to some of the other things. But yeah, that in a nutshell or very simplistic viewpoint is keeping me.
[00:21:59] Speaker C: There's so many things that I think about when, by the way, this is one of the first times I'm hearing about keepingly and some of. And the nuance it, because I don't think the average homeowner really understands how valuable it is to keep instructions and records and just things. I mean, like, for example, like on my phone app right now, I have. This is my. This is what I have on my. You can't see it here, but I have all the apps. I have my Sonos app, I have my ring app, I have myq app, I have my life 360, my Leslie's pool app, you know, LG for my stove, my microwave, my televisions, my roku, my nests. I mean, I have all these apps on my telephone, right? And then on top of that, when I buy things, you know, not every. Not everything that I buy, even, even the LG things, it's not like there's a QR code. I can easily scan and upload and do this. But I think that if I knew I was going to be a first time home buyer or even a move up buyer, you know what? This is not my forever home, but what I do want is I want to have all my records so that whoever is going to buy my next home, and this takes some forethought, whoever is going to buy that next home, they're going to want. What are the. They don't want this thing of instructions, things of instructions, this, this thick of books. They want to know. I'm going to go into the app, I'm going to. I'm going to look at the PDF. I'm going to look at it on my phone, I'm going to read the instructions. And if I need to go into Google and figure out where is it on the PDF? This is what I want now, Daniel, is this something that is possible with keepingly? Is that they can just go into keepingly and say, I'm looking for the instructions, and this is why I did it. This is the model, the version even warranties. And is that, is that, is that something now that adds value to the value of a house versus, you know, if you have one house that doesn't have all this stuff, but you have the other house which has all the instructions, the permits, the. And when everything is supposed to be done, what kind of value does that add to a homeowner?
[00:24:05] Speaker B: So, you know, I'll tackle the first part of the question.
Yeah. In terms of keepingly, we started at the foundational model, which basically means that we've started with you being able to do the uploads, because we had to really think through exactly how users would use a platform, what people would need, how the documents would be structured.
And so we started building a very foundational piece. And so we are consistently adding layers. In a few weeks, we have an upgraded version coming out, but the ability to use QR codes, one of the things that we are looking at is being able to, so, diving deeper, you can do things like upload mortgage statements, insurance documents, invoices, receipts, um, everything to do with your manuals, um, warranties, uh, any of those kinds of stuff. And we, some of that is going to be overlaid with being able to get like notifications on like when your warranties, I can't tell you even my horror stories of warranties or being two months out of warranty because didn't know, didn't track, didn't have the, uh, presence of mind to think, well, this may happen, and therefore I should do it. And so, you know, when you've lost an appliance because you're two months out of warranty, it really got you because you did not necessarily have the presence, you have no notification or tell you, hey, Daniel. And unless it's like with some of those big box retailers and even they themselves sometimes don't even kind of notify you or keep you up to date on some of those things. So I think that it's really, for us, important and I think that, yes, there are, but again, we're now moving into the cycle. Remember, real estate hasn't really changed that much in so many years. So we now really moving into cycles whereby. So when I bought my house, I remember the lady giving us a folder of things. And I've had so many stories where people would say, hey, you know, the previous seller had, you know, folders and binders, but I looked through that when we got the house, and I didn't necessarily keep, keep up to speed with that. And so you have a lot of those stories now, if it's on your phone and it's digitized, and it did. So it makes it really easy for you to be able to understand. Okay, so, so you've done a, you, you do a renovation on your home. So this is why it becomes really critical. So you've done a renovation on your home. Number one, what does before look like? What does after look like? How much money have you spent? Because again, if you go to, for evaluation or have an appraiser come into your house, they're going to want to, you're going to ask you, okay, so when was this done? You know, if they asked for the records to be able to see, you should be able to present them. You know, if you say, well, I think it was done five years ago, go, then they don't necessarily have concrete details on that. So they may say, okay, well, here's what we can prove that I'm not necessarily going to, but it does add value to your house at the end of the day. And so even in your seller's disclosure forms, being able to outline exactly what you've done when really provides you with a lot more. And I think that, and so what we've seen preliminary even from some of our own data sets, and even in a lot of the conversations that we've been privy to, is that homeowners who actually have documents and are better record keepers, on average get 20% to 30% more. I think ive heard even higher numbers, but theyre able to get more when they actually sell their house. And this doesnt even start even talking about what your mortgage and underwriting process looks like.
If you buy 70% to 80% of the loans in the market, understand what is the ability now to be able to actually have correct data? Because from where I sit, I think that as a society, we are possibly undervalued and in terms of what the asset class is actually with, because we don't actually understand what is the current conditions of anybody's house.
[00:28:21] Speaker C: Does keepingly communicate with any vendors yet? So for example, can it communicate with LG to say, hey, you need to upgrade your technology, either the water filter and the, in the refrigerator, or hey, you know what, there's now up, you know, or your interest rate is this, but it's time to refinance. Does it communicate with, with your current mortgage servicer or does it communicate with your realtor that the realtor can send out comparable sales for your neighborhood so that the realtor can keep that client? So this keepingly provide a way so they can maintain the relationship somehow with their, with their other vendors? Or can you add somebody in there in case you, maybe you didn't like your, your loan officer, maybe you didn't like your realtor, so you want other people to now have that communication so they can let you know.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Best buy.
[00:29:15] Speaker C: And all that stuff. I mean, there's a whole slew of people that.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. So the relative piece is there, the relative piece is built out, you know, again, you know, just talking about what we have in a few weeks, relatives can communicate. We've realized, you know, and there's the start in the real estate industry, 85% of homeowners are happy with their relatives. Only 20% come back when they're ready to sell. And so we're looking at that arbitrage and being able to now give you. So as part of your closing documents, what we have on our platform is that, and the largest part of why businesses don't return is that they can't remember their relative details. So that is built into what we have. So that you always have your realtor details, because you do business in a very short time with your relative very fast, and you call them every day, you talk to them, you always want an update weekly, whatever the case may be. And once you're in that home, it feels almost transactional in a lot of cases. And so what we're trying to do is make it more relational instead of transactional. So to your point, being able to have that, in terms of some of the other retailers and vendors, those are some of the things that are on the horizon. We are looking at how to be able to give you that access for the big box retailers, the LG's or the home Depots or Lowe's, et cetera.
That ability to be able to do that. We're looking at how to integrate APIs and stuff like that to be able to provide you, because most of the times being able to get your manual comes from them, and so they provide you to manual most times, as people base QR codes like you were suggesting, um, should have some of those things, um, me being able to QR code my, my, um, my manual and then just, you know, have it just drop into my, my keeping the platform so I can always have it, so, you know, I decide to turn, and also when you're turning over the materials to the new user, you know, as part of your disclosure, um, you can give it over. So it makes life easier. And what we really focus on is how transparent and easy this process can become so that you, as the current homeowner, understands how to de risk yourself and increase the value of your asset. And I think that what were looking at is how we derisk the whole asset class, from mortgage to insurance to everything. And so even as what were seeing, and I dont know how, if you guys have dealt with, look at what insurance costs are, in some states, insurance costs have gone up by 50%. Understanding how to derisk the asset by me being able to actually have details about what is done or what has been done or what I can do provides me with that ability to be able to better protect myself on the asset.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Jeff, Im going to jump in here and talk product and everything. I am keepingly user and I'm looking at my keepingly. I need to build up my score but it says in order for me to get points I can clean my dryer vents. Just so happens my wife and I three days ago, we're talking about cleaning like we need to clean the dryer vents. So there is clearly relevant information there that that needs to be done.
Also, not cleaning your dry events causes fire more house fires cause higher insurance. Right. So I do think there is some correlation here between better homeowners should get better insurance prices or, and ill even go one step further. And this is my call out to the whole mortgage industry. I have had some conversations where the data is clearly the king here and what youre doing is going to be the holy grail that mortgage lenders and real estate agents are sort of around the first poll in the lead to be able to do this and once one does it, the other is going to go, oh, I didn't, I didn't. Whoops. We had all the time in the world. We didn't do it. Hey, you could, could have watched our show. We talk a lot of forward thinking ideas. You really need to start with keeping late because you don't want to do it on your own. It's going to be a long, long process till consumers eventually are just going in and knowing that a portal like keepingly exists, let's say it's not keepingly, but the mortgage industry collectively, if enough use it, have a chance to get out in that early lead because then you have realtors, but oh, you definitely have zillow, Amazon and others, even ice and the ability to grade it and trade it. They are coming for what is here. And so I think it's a wake up call. And I will say, um, behaviorally, you, you spoke about more and more people are looking at what they're eating these days because of tick tock, Instagram. It's telling you that the seed oils, this oils, they're also looking on mold. Um, and this is where I think keeping Lee is really going to like. People can't grasp it yet, but three years from now they're going to want to know if the previous owner has mouse, you know, um, but what, I don't know what the appropriate, you know, mouse turds, poop all like, all underneath the, because, because they weren't doing the proper pieces and, and they're going to see on their tiktoks that kids that grow up with that in the air, you know you can't clean it, mold, you know it. The lead paint of yesterday will be all of these behind the wall things of the future. And you have no way to prove it right that you don't have it in your house unless you brought them a whole report card and said look, I clean my dryer vents for the last four years.
Not saying it definitely happens, but if you wake up one day and when people are home search and that becomes a big thing, I think that's what you're talking. The asset class could be different, but regardless it's coming, it's very valuable I hope because mortgages our audience, somebody wakes up and says well let's, I don't know your pricing model but it's almost our duty as mortgage even with to take a little bit of hit, get this thing out there to all of our customers from now on. And not to mention Mike, ill pass it over to you for the question. But you saw a Greg Scherz article about the servicers at 50% of all the refinance business servicers were able to retain during COVID and Garth Graham and Stratmore is predicting in next year services will retain 60% of all the refinances. So if Mister Cooper's the one who has a great app, if their 1.5 trillion is your customer that you closed and gave to them, you're going to need a keepingly to know who's active, who isn't, who's part of that 40% you can grab or can you actually start grabbing some of that 60%? That's sort of my mic drop of where it's going. What do you think Mike?
[00:36:14] Speaker C: I mean that was part of the discussion last week actually at Western Secondary out in California, talking about Mister Cooper.
Some of the behind scenes conversation I was overhearing is that theres some genuine retail fear that with the servicing thats being sold out that the servicing companies are going to back solicit any type of refinance opportunities. But even more dangerously as rates begin to come down, that the AI thats potentially in the system at certain servicers like Mister Cooper, that you know with trillions of dollars of mortgages being serviced, that the originator or the original or the originate original originator can also lose the opportunity as a result of the sale of the service seen to a Mister Cooper or a caliber or whoever. And I think that an app like keepingly has an opportunity for the homeowner to actually maintain some, not only control over who they want to use and also how they want to be communicated. And the homeowner has some opportunity here to actually take control over themselves. One of the things I was surprised that we didn't mention yet was title insurance and home warranty because, you know, for most homeowners that I know of, they have a home warranty policy in that first year. And then after that first year, Evan.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: I will say though, I am so sick of every buddies tech idea subsidized by home warranties, you know, in the commission coming out of that, I have yet, I was talking with somebody this the other day, I've yet to hear an original idea that's not go back to home warranty and that's where the money should come from. And I'm saying like, give me paint, give me something. Because consumers, the home warranties would be great, but if they're representing you and theyre so clever, like, oh, we dont cover ice trays. You know, you as a mortgage company have to be careful because then its reflected on you. Theyre tricky. If anybodys had them like I do, they have seven ways to Sunday on that refrigerator. Not to cover it, though they did pay for my new refrigerator, so there is value in it. But ive also spent dollar 200 in failed trips because they found some little twist that I, you know, so I always get a little chapped with home warranty because that is not new. That has been pitched since I started easy mortgage apps in 2013.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: And for context, I actually let my home warranty lapse because my same experience with home warranty, you know, something's going on. Washer Dryer, refrigerator, I mean, even worse, uh, the, the h vac system, my heating, my heating and air conditioning system, I'm just like, oh, you know, this XYZ thing happened. Oh, sorry, not going to do that because of XYZ reasons. I'm like, well, isn't that why, I mean, why did I buy a warranty? I think I have warranties. I even have warranties on my cell phones that I purchased through my carrier. And for me to sit there and go, oh, wow, this home warranty doesn't, it's the only warranty that people question. But yet here we are, we have an application that a homeowner can take control of and say, I'm going to self insure or self warranty the things that I want to take care of. So that in the event that I want to use either fire insurance or property casualty insurance or home warranty or something, that there is now a place where I can store the records, whenever I do a home improvement, whenever I purchase, whether it's something from LG, Samsung, or whether it's something from General Electric or some, or something, there's an application, instruction manual, XYZ, roofing, plumbing, whatever, there's places around where I can keep track of that, not just for me. And also add value as a homeowner to the next buyer.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that what you guys. I think that the piece about the maintenance is kind of what you guys are really alluding to and what we have found, you know, even the data and the research shows that preventative maintenance helps reduce a lot of costs. Because as a society, we spent somewhere in the ballpark of between 60 and 70 something each billion, depending on the year. Because I think that some of the numbers between emergency repairs and, um, disaster repairs kind of gets mixed. But I think when you take emergency repairs on a house alone, it's somewhere between 50 and $60 billion that we spending per year. And that could be anywhere from you walking in your house and your pipe gets busted. So all of a sudden you have to call a plumber who has to come and do that kind of maintenance. You weren't expecting that. That's an emergency repair. And so preventative maintenance helps to reduce a lot of. So even when you start thinking of it, the market for it is pretty big in terms of helping people to prevent a lot of disasters and emergencies. When you look at the insurance side, well, we've had this conversation. I think that insurance side is even bigger. I think that it's somewhere, when you start looking at claims, you would get somewhere between 100 billion per year is done in claims around the home.
And you depending on, just like Keller was talking about the trickiness of the warranty companies, et cetera, and not wanting to pay, I think even for insurance, it's kind of the same thing sometimes. Because, again, it's when this 100 billion in claims is like, we don't want to pee that out. I mean, I live in Florida. 14 insurance companies have pulled out in two years. You realize that it's a high risk state, you know, hurricanes, floods, etcetera. So I do think that the way I look at it is that it's a way, again, to create risk mitigation. But there has to be, just like Keller was really speaking to what we have built in terms of, you know, the scoring methodology. We, we've built our own scoring methodology, which is similar to a credit score for your house. Every time you do something or every time you upload a document, you get a score. And we have realized that that is really critical in terms of engaging the user base, but also ensuring people are incentivized to want to do it there right now isn't really much incentivization in a lot of the things around your home, if it's not necessarily when you're selling it. And we hope that, again, you get the capital gains when you actually sell the house. But in between that period of you walking into your house, to you leaving your house, there sometimes isn't that incentivization for you to be able to do things, which is why emergency repairs becomes a thing. But again, one of the fundamental lessons my parents taught me is like, do a little bit at a time. Consistency allows you to be able to have better results.
And so if we give people the tools to be able to think about what they should be doing or having their documents and all those things, it gives them the consistency of doing it. And for those of us, especially your first time homeowners, what I would say your low and moderate income homeowners also fall into some of those categories.
Giving them the tools to be able to do this when they become homeowners gives them that ability now to be able to really think of your house as an asset. It's like, hey, what is the value I'm getting?
[00:44:12] Speaker C: Robert, do home inspectors currently have capacity to give a keepingly score to a potential homeowner for someone that's in contract?
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Not yet. But what I would say, though, is that that's where we are aiming to be. So when you sell your house, you should be able to say, this is my keep track score.
These are all the things that I've done. And therefore. And so it may not be inspector, but trust me, if you're a mortgage company that you have to underwrite a house and you see a score that is really near perfect, then your underwriting job is easier versus you not knowing exactly what you have to send an inspection and therefore, when. And that mold story Michael kind of was speaking about really resonated. Two weeks ago on our podcast, we had the head of an organization called House ATL. Uh, no, the Hub. The Hub ATL. And what she was talking about was moving into her house. And less than a few weeks in, she had mold. And the story she was telling about mood, it was frightening. She actually had to move out. And, you know, it was amazing to me. You know, all of the things that you don't really think about in your journey and experience of home ownership, the things that we dont talk about, and I came in when you guys were talking about millennials and their own experience.
I think 92% of millennials find that home ownership is an arduous task, and there is a lot of buyers remorse in the market because of how hard they think home ownership is. So I think that we have this responsibility to create better details around it, to be able to divers the whole asset, but also to help them feel really comfortable about the process of home ownership and really give them the tools to own it. And I think that kind of falls within all of us in the ecosystem, really, how we think about it. Because my job isn't home ownership 24/7 so I'm not thinking about that 24/7 but the moment something goes wrong, and just like, why am I doing this? This doesn't make sense.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: And this is the message for lenders, like, you need the canvas, because where I see keeping Lee going is at that moment things go wrong. People like to jump in and read comments of it happening to other people to make better decisions. Is that in keepingly today? Not the way I'm talking about it. Because you need like, almost like Reddit type results, and it's no different than driving around, right. And if the brake light comes on, you don't bring it down as soon as the cars are like, oh, there it goes, and like two days later. And so I get what you're saying, but it is hard to teach people to, as salespeople know, it's a lot harder to sell vitamins than aspirin. Very easy to sell aspirin. With that said, I do believe you need to create the canvas as a lender, and the rest will follow. So once the mold starts to appear, the people that can go in there quickly and somebody says, run the air conditioner down to 60, dehumidifier down to 60, and then an air conditioner, then the next comment says your electric bill would be three times the amount if versus just hiring a commercial company to come out there with three of them and do it in 2 hours, then you go, okay, that's what I'm doing. That was great advice. Got it. On keepingly lenders have the opportunity to be there, but you can't, like, wave a magic wand and all of a sudden magic happens. You gotta just like working out, just like practicing free throws, you gotta start small. This industry has a bad habit of either wanting to build it themselves in silos or wanting the magic before they go into it. I'm telling you, when you tune into the mic dub show on our 700th episode. All you need to do is start today with keepingly. Let it evolve, but subsidize it. Get it going before the realtors figure out a solution, before Ice figures out a solution, before Amazon buys a solution. And it's already sitting there, you know, in the form of Alexa. I just ruined everybody listening to the podcast because there's just turned on. I won't do that again as we end here.
Daniel, we started this before you jumped on. There has to be a big piece of keepingly that is able to help those who don't have the surroundings. Maybe it's a father that, you know, can give the advice when. I mean, I don't know how many times I call my dad about house related items, right? So if somebody doesn't have a father or maybe grew up in an apartment and so has less exposure to house related things, and everything's even more foreign. And it's very hard for people who grew up in a home to relate to somebody who grew up in an apartment. Do you have any of those type of, um, fact finding pieces or any stories on who you think, um, will get the biggest lift of keepingly or if it goes well, what, you know, you'll be the most proud of down the road?
[00:49:25] Speaker B: Um, so that, that, that really comes back to education. Um, and we have been all in on trying to educate. I think that, you know, I'd answer the second part also with this, is that the homeowner, who is the first time homeowner, we do believe that they get the biggest benefit out of this because they don't necessarily know how to. But I would say that if I'm looking at it, and if I'm honest, that's really short sighted, because what we trying to do is really reduce the stress of the ownership experience.
And so the educational piece, we started our own podcast because we realized, you know what, there are so many moving parts, like, with all that's going on with relatives currently, like, how am I, as a homeowner supposed to know? Like, most people didn't know that you could negotiate with your relatives. I mean, and I've heard people say, you know, everybody should have known that you could have, like, there were people who did not know that they could negotiate with their relatives. And so, you know, I. What we've learned, what we've understood is demystifying a lot of the homeownership journey and process what you should change, which is why we started with the keep track score. And the keep track score has a maintenance checklist built into it. So as you come on and as you start using it, you get this maintenance checklist. But this maintenance checklist right now is really generalized based on the four seasons of the year. As we continue to gather data points and data sets, it's going to become really granular. So Michael is going to have a different data set from Michael, who is going to have a very different one, because you're in California versus you're in Boston, and therefore the different seasons. And what you need to do on your house at this point of the really changes. And so we do believe that education is the biggest piece, but not just education, whereby we're going to just do podcasts or just going to, it's a collaborative education. So what we are also looking at is looking at data points and what we see and how people are using the platform, but also what people are doing and being able to now create our own educational tools. And they are also educational, too. So, for instance, first time homeowners, a lot of them, if you want to access certain types of role, whether it's Fannie, Freddie, or FHA, et cetera, there are, you know, housing concern things that you need to go true.
Housing counseling does a good job of getting you into the home. What housing counseling doesn't do is really help you stay in the home. And if you're a homeowner, and I encountered this this week recently dealing with a government agency where somebody was like, saying, homeowners really like their privacy. And I'm like, homeowners really like their house.
My privacy is inconsequential. If I am getting the tools to be able to help me to create more value, because again, when I'm selling the house, what I want is to be able to get the, I would say the highest amount that I can sell it for.
But to be able to do that, then I need to have the data points, I need the transparency. But I think that we have gotten, again, to that question that I first joined on. It was like, the transparency or the security of the data. And I think that we have to understand that in some point, we'll give up some of that. But for me at least, you know, being able to help educate the asset class so my kid down the road, God forbid I die, you know, how would she know what I've done in the house? And being able to have that kind of education and data, to be able to create a pathway forward, helps us, and it helps everybody in the ecosystem, I would say even from the Department of Housing, how would they understand what has happened in homes so that they can create plans for housing five years into the future? They don't have that information.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I had an epiphany here. So, like Kamala Harris's $25,000 down payment program, it should really be 23,000 plus $2,000 worth of keeping. Plus you advice. You're almost accelerating people into a process that they're, they're really not going to enjoy because like you said in the beginning, they enjoy the home. They don't necessarily enjoy the process of maintaining a home.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And then if you can speak to the vice president if she find, if she does win. Love that. But, um. But, yeah, definitely. I think that that is, you know, a critical piece. I think that, you know, so many people in the last few years have gotten into homes. But again, going back to the whole buyers remorse situation because it became pretty easy to get a home. And despite all the gloom and doom about the numbers, we know that were easily selling trillions of dollars this year in housing, despite the interest rates. And so people are going to be moving into new homes. The problem is it becomes, are they able to really maintain? And even when we look at insurance costs, that is one of those frightening issues to me. When I look at it, it's that, again, the education piece of when you move into this house, you have homeowners insurance. You have, you know, if you got a loan where you paid no down payment, then you have MPI, then you have real estate taxes and all of these costs. Sometimes I don't think that, again, they're really properly explained end to end of some homeowners. So people get into these situations and I'd rather pay my mortgage, or most people would rather pay their mortgage and miss out on some other bills. But when your bills become too much because you didn't estimate for that 50% insurance cost increase, then how are you really going to subsidize that? Are you going to go into debt to be able to pay your insurance so that you can keep your house, or are you going to go without insurance? These are the real questions homeowners are facing right now.
[00:55:39] Speaker C: You know, we're getting to the top of the hour here. We're getting ready to wrap it up. But I said something in the comments, and I said, honesty, transparency, security, legacy in perpetuity. And I think the reason I wrote that down is this is what keeping Lee has an opportunity to do.
If you listen to housing wire, when Logan Modishami is talking with Sarah Wheeler, they're talking about how the silver wave never came about silverwave, meaning, like the baby boomers who are owning property and they're supposed to be selling all these properties and so on and so forth. Well, the reality is that if you have an application or. Or. Or you have accessibility to keepingly or something where you keep records, where you keep what's going on, how things work, then you're not only are they doing it for you, but for that silver wave that never came about, you're able to now keep all that information and pass it on in legacy for the security of that next generation.
Mike's probably not, but I'm a child of immigrants that came into the United States, and my wife is an immigrant. So then my kids are technically kids of immigrants. Meaning that we have this desire to pass on a legacy for our home ownership, not only from us, but also back onto them. And when you have an application, like keeping, you promote the honesty of what's happened to the house, the transparency of what is going to happen, all the instructions. It gives you the security of how everything is being brought about, and in turn, brings legacy to the homeownership experience. So that for the. For the, uh, for the millennials and Gen Z ers that are out there saying, oh, homeownership is just such a nightmare, and I got to take care of this, and so on and so forth, actually, if you think about it, but in legacy and in perpetuity, this type of application brings to light. It's really front of the mind type of application.
[00:57:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:57:37] Speaker C: You're talking about not only. It's not just about today, it's about the 30 year mortgage paying it off and then having. And having the security of that, and then knowing that you have a keeping lease score that you're. It's like the FICO scope for a house that maybe underwriting has gone through. Maybe each contractor went through it, maybe a mortgage originator with an underwriter went through it, maybe the home inspector went through it, the realtor went through it. Multiple layers of transparency that has a grading score that has a possibility of providing that type of transparency, thusly giving the security to a homeownership, and also in perpetuity, providing that type of legacy not just for someone, for an immigrant, but also for anybody who wants to have ownership. And maybe they've been in the United States for 100 years and they never own. And now they have the opportunity to, through the application, through their real estate professionals, their financing professionals, to take that home ownership journey that next step into, into security, legacy and perpetuity. And having that honesty and transparency through the application of keepingly provides the opportunity for that.
That should be our mic'd up commercial.
[00:58:46] Speaker B: Yes, it should be. I love it.
[00:58:48] Speaker A: That's why I didn't say anything at the end. We can click it out.
[00:58:51] Speaker B: I was like, hey, this guy is doing a great job. He's killing it. Anything I say would be, you know, pale in comparison. But yes, I do 100%. I just read the story of this woman who was 77 who became a homeowner, and she was like, so, you know, over the moon about home ownership. And I think that, you know, while you were speaking, one of the things that hit me in a recent conversation, I did an op ed where I was asked, you know, is home ownership really worth it? And I think that, but what we need to really do is be able to dissect what are the aspects of homeownership? Because if were not dissecting, okay, this is my cost, this is my asset, this is my liabilities. This is what ive spent over the years to be able to maintain.
What I tell people is that we really dont have data around homeownership. We do a kind of math called straight line depreciation. I buy for this, I sell it for that. Not really. That's not the true cost of ownership. When you added insurance, when you added property taxes, when you added maintenance, the cost is varying. But am I able to. So you spoke about being immigrants. I think one of the things that I realized is when we looked at numbers of refis during the pandemic, $56 billion was done. Only 3% of those minorities who actually refined, again, that education, peace, understanding. Ok, I can take out a refi. We were at historic low rates. If you didn't refi then, now we're at the top of the market at 7%. You're kind of out of the water. So ultimately, I think that just being able to have that knowledge and that experience whereby you have somebody else holding your hand through this process, I think adds layers and loads more comfort. I tell people my own experience, also an immigrant myself, is I picked up the phone and I called friends. I was like, hey, you did this multiple times. Walk me through this. And I was able to, you know, fall into that refi, you know, category in that period. Had I not had friends who I can tap into. I tell people, despite the fact that I have an MBA, I understand the finance of it, but understanding when to do things is totally different. And that's market experience that a lot of us need. So in this largest asset class, we kind of need that to be able to make the best decisions.
[01:01:08] Speaker C: Absolutely. I love that you brought that up because even. Even for that 77 year old to go buy a house, there's so many components you have to have. Financial education, fiscal literacy, qualifying credit, savings for the down payment. There's all those facets that somebody has to go through in order to qualify today, which is something that we don't touch enough about, is financial literacy and the education of finances behind it, and then maintaining that for the keeping of the home. Home as well.
Mike.
[01:01:41] Speaker A: I agree with both of you. It was a very good way of ending it. And I've talked more than usual, so we will.
Thank you, Dan, for coming on. I'm really glad to have met you in the way that I did meet you at the FHFA velocity, because I think a lot of what you're doing is going to be bridging the gap between lenders that are for profit companies and the other side of people that are trying to uplift homeowners. And make sure, because another birdie I talked to in Washington makes it very clear that 60% of all government run stuff, we'll call it, is paid for by property taxes. So the majority of stuff, you know, things that. That make our government go are done at the town level and that police firefight and that comes out of tax. So housing has to work. They have a reason for it. Lenders make money on the mortgages, so they have a reason. Somebody needs to bridge the gap and make it more harmonious, make it more about honesty, transparency, security and legacy in perpetuity.
[01:02:59] Speaker B: I love it.
