Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to our opening episode of season four of the Mic'd up show, where every mortgage has a story.
This is the ultimate hub where hidden stories behind the mortgage industry come to life. I'm Michael Kelleher. My co host is Michael Zhao. And in every episode we dive deep into the entrepreneurial spirit, strategic insights and breakthrough innovations that build the world's greatest mortgage companies. Whether you're advancing your career, scouting for industry leaders like the one we have today, or exploring opportunities in fintech and proptech, you're in the right place. Get ready to unlock the story behind every mortgage. Today we are diving in with Candace McNaught who has been a staple in the mortgage industry 2023 woman of influence award in Housing Wire. And those awards aren't easy. I think I've spent like to try and get the tech innovator. I think I spent over $2,000 in submissions and I never won. So it's not like everybody just wins or paying gets you in. So congratulations. But where I saw you was at the IMB conference with KP up on stage and I was, I was really amazed at your ability to understand the landscape of mortgage. And for those that don't watch this show in your first time tuning in, the purpose of this show is for the people. If you're in the lending industry in any capacity, you get to really understand the direction of where it's going and how easily accessible these leaders can be at the conference scene. But we know a lot of people don't get to go to the conference because the great talent doesn't always, you know, you don't want your great talent getting recruited or maybe they don't know about it or maybe they'd have to leave like their actual. They have to like actually close loans. So you don't want to send your closer at the end of the month to a out out to Denver. So we try to bring on guests that you would see at these conferences and, and people speak on stage and some are everybody's always good but I always question whether they're telling me something you know, I kind of already know. And it's pretty basically like Chat GPT. I find Chat GP doesn't take an angle on anything. It's just this long wave of like, oh, that's interesting. You really get the dynamic of the industry today and more IMBs are talking about it than ever, which is the loan officers are so in demand that enterprises have to actually cater to them on tech stacks in other areas and they recognize that that's not always scalable, but they have to play in between and also be the best salesperson. Script reading. So you were talking all about that, but you started as branch manager, right, with supreme in 2008. Is that what you said?
[00:02:51] Speaker B: My business partner was with CTX Mortgage and that acquisition happened with Bolti and it was my first year in the mortgage business. And again I will Highlight September of OH8, the worst time to enter the business.
And I was actually hired as a director of marketing because marketing was my background. And Rodney was big in Texas and he said, listen, just sit back, don't say anything and just listen because it's. It's chaotic times right now. And I was like, oh my gosh, what have I got myself into? I came from the medical business and I got into the mortgage business and that's how it all started. And that was with Supreme.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Did you feel like running that branch or turning slowly into the running the branch?
That it's the same dynamic as today, that like all these national lenders would love your business and maybe because it was 08, it'd be different, but just do you see a whole different world and maybe because lo comp. Whatever it is that is driving today versus that 2008 period.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And honestly, I see a lot of similarities. I haven't seen the landscape change a whole lot. Lo comp hasn't really come down. The demand of loan officers and their wants and their needs has not come down. The demand of wanting a loa. The demand of wanting their own processor, that hasn't changed. I would say some have become a little flexible because you could say, hey, we'll pay you more lo comp if you don't bring this person over. And so there's a little bit of leverage there. Loans back in the day, they were so paper. Right. Rubber stamps, rubber thumb. You needed those assistance to sit there and thumb through documents to where now you've got a lot of automation and some tech partners that are helping streamline our business and make us more efficient. So that's probably the one trend I've seen decline. But really overall we still have some work to do and I think that that's where we're going to have to head in the next three years.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And just your climb then as like knowing that it has been the same. You've climbed to where in your previous job, I mean, you're running 200 branches, 700 loan officers. People were important to you. I think you had like five directs, 15. It does that have like an entrepreneurial feel to it. You're running that or is it more corporate when you get that big?
[00:05:00] Speaker B: No, it's more entrepreneurial because I'm really big on not having middle layers. So you have to learn how to shift and pivot, but you also have to have the knowledge and the expertise in those departments. So for an example, I oversaw recruiting, marketing, branch finance, which was PNLs and sales. And it was like you would literally take one hat off and put another hat on and you had to know how to pivot. But for me, it allowed me to align the strategy to ensure that it for every business channel that I was overseeing. I knew that we were all in the same focus because the more leaders that you get in there, and if you're not having conversations and you're not collaborating, it gets diluted and one person's off in this direction and this one's over here. And think about it. I said sales and marketing, those two go hand in hand. And while I'm doing that and running branch PNLs, that goes a hand in hand too, because I'm looking at the cost to produce the bottom line, the usage of tech. Tech stacks. What are we spending per month per loan officer on tech stack? And then you've got recruiting. Okay, if you're going out on the market and you're recruiting, what tech stacks should I be looking at? What am I missing? Is my value prop not aligned with the rest of the people in the industry? So while some used to say, candace, you know, you're trying to control everything, it's like, no, you don't understand. Has nothing to do with control. It has everything to do with being successful and making sure that you're moving in the right direction because it can become so lost. And I can promise you that, you know, for anyone that's out there listening, you're probably nodding your head if I had to guess. Because if you're not overseeing those channels and you're responsible for working with leaders that are running those channels that are not aligned with you and are wanting to go out and do their own thing, you probably are feeling somewhat lost. You feel like you're not a part of the decision making and it's going to inevitably impact you and what you're doing and your success.
[00:06:52] Speaker C: You were with Rodney. Rodney, as I recall, back in your initial those days, he was like one of the top new construction originators back at the time, right?
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: And he, to my knowledge, he was one of the first ones to really kill it in the market. And since you were able to grow from being a marketing assistant into operations? How does that give you a little bit more insight when working not only with the transition recently of originators with Axia and also when working with the P Ls and the assistants? I mean, there. Some people like you want to keep on, some people like you don't have to. But, you know, for P L purposes you probably should. How does that translate for P L when making transitions either in recruiting and also for gross operations as you, as you expand? I mean, we're, we're in a interesting time in the market where we. There was a whole bunch of layoffs in the entire industry, but Planet Home has been able to make an expansion. So how does that translate in how you are willing to work with the individuals when they have assistance or processors or ops and, and working with them in their personality traits?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really great question. I, you know, I encourage a lot of people that if you're going to be in leadership, never stop learning. You know, this was a hot topic yesterday at the housing economic summit and it was, you know, just continue to learn. Learn all things, I think is what Jessica said specifically. And it's so true because as a director of marketing, I was a marketing person. People think that marketing's like arts and crowns and crafts and it doesn't really have a lot of substance to it. And it's also the first area that a lot of companies make cuts. You know, when you go through reduction in forces is marketing. But the one thing I can tell you is you can put me in front of a $10 million a year loan officer, or you can put me in front of a $300 million a year loan officer. And I can have a sophisticated conversation with you about how we're going to get you to grow and how we're going to take you from 10 million to 30 million a year. And we're going to build a plan because it's all about building journey maps and campaigns and utilizing your database and understanding products that are specific to your states. And you know, hey, I understand the business. I also used to process loans because during COVID we were taking so many leads. I didn't have enough employees and 700 leads a month. I just said, hey, I'll learn how to process loans. And so I did. But you know what? It really taught me a lot about, you know, loas and processors. Those are some of your best advocates. They can help you sell the loan. We really need loan officers out on the front line doing their job. And the more volume that you can get, the more assistance that you can get on the inside. I love that model all day long. We're not great at all things. I don't expect loan officers to be detail oriented and eccentric to put a loan inside of Encompass, hit all the hard stops, sit there and wait, watch it spin, go back in, go back out. You know, that's not the best use of their time. We need them out on the streets to sell. But from a marketing perspective, you got to give them the tools to feel confident to go sell and get loans. And by doing that is you're sitting down and you have to build a plan with them individually. And you know, I love acquisitions because sometimes you've got those lower leaning loan officers that have been really affected by this industry, by this market. And in my opinion it has nothing to do with how good they are in sales. Sometimes it's geographically of where they're located. You go up to Minnesota, they got five months to operate. That's it. Like the lights come on, you better go find loans before the next freeze comes. That is nothing against them. So I love treating loan officers with respect on, on so many levels of hey, it's okay. We're going to get you where you want to be. Let's have a conversation of where do you want to go? Where do you want to be? Some don't have an appetite to be the biggest. They don't want to be number one. But you know what? They still have a living that they need to make men's for. And I think that that's an opportunity of where the retention is so high because if you pour into those individuals specifically one on one and don't treat them as a group or as a whole.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: That's what stood out to me on stage where talked about how different levels of loan officers or you can same store sales, right? Like you can lift up those people doing two loans to three and your talent to be able to do that. And one of the biggest stoppers in sales I find someone who sells is inertia. So you want to keep things moving and sometimes you need that fresh motivation. I asked about entrepreneurs and most loan officers really are entrepreneurs. And unfortunately as a loan officer, there's no actual residual income. When you close a loan, you get paid and you have to go get another one. So your residual is really your process or what you were describing. Are you mapped out on exactly what you're going to do for the next three, six, can you repeat in the number? The numbers will work. So I think having access to you to motivate, bring that inertia, excite people and then have plans is, is something special. How are you going to scale that? Because Planet Home grows in everything it does. Jim Bop's done it with, I mean you can't get a 203k without going through your correspondent channel. Your numbers are insane on the correspondent. And now I heard there's a huge focus capital and with leadership so there's no doubt you guys are going to expand. What's your plan to get cand in every branch making sure that you're accessible.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: So you know I recently joined Planet and the reason why I did this was because it was a company that had the ability to scale. It's the company that has the product suite. It's the company that has proven that they know how to run a business. Look at the correspondent, look at servicing. Now we're doing subservicing and for that that means that retail has so much underlying opportunity. Um, I'm a big believer in video. I love this kind of stuff because every week I start to send out a video to our entire sales team. I'm going to give you a mantra of the week, I'm going to give you a sales product of the week and I'm going to give you the sales strategy of the week. And how I'm doing that is because just this morning I was on a product call with our head of cap markets and he was like hey look this group over here locked 10 loans yesterday. And I said let's break it down, I want to see what products they're putting them on because I'm going to call these individuals over here because maybe it's a missed opportunity. And you know what? It was an in house DPA program that we've recently just brought on that maybe some don't know how to use, they don't know about it, they don't have the marketing material for it. And I'm going to call them and I'm going to say hey you know what, I'm going to challenge you to go get 10 locks in the next week by using this product. And if you want to talk to someone, I will set up that phone call with the loan officer that locked those 10 loans yesterday and we're going to share best practices because you're in completely two different states and that's how you do it. If you're trying to do it in this big casting, wide net effort, you're going to miss it. You can get there. But I Mean, I'm new, I'm coming in. I'm going to have to do it in a one by one scenario. And I have no problem with that. I have no issues with traveling. I'm headed to Arizona next week. I'm in Colorado the following week. I'm taking people out to dinner, I'm sitting down with them.
You know, one thing that my mentor always taught me was don't, you know, always start your conversations off by saying, what do you need from me? What do you need more from the company? And allowing them to share that with you. And then it presents you an opportunity to say, now this is what I need from you.
Because it's just a really great way of going into it as being a partner and that we're in this as a partnership and that you're going to be willing to listen to them. Oftentimes we see some of these branch managers and regional managers call and you know, they call these loan officers and they just browbeat them. You know, Susie, she found a 10 or you know, she locked in loans yesterday and you didn't lock anything, you know, without providing them solutions.
You need to really understand the larger landscape and understanding before you start to just come over the top on some of your producers because that's a really great way to lose them.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah, the weight loss coaches that shame people aren't, aren't doing so well these days.
[00:14:48] Speaker C: How do you multiply yourself to, to the landscape of that many individuals? I mean, is that, is that tech based or is that just, is that a lot of Microsoft Teams? How do you spread yourself in speaking to that many originators?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah, so Bomb, bomb. It's, you know, not to have a shameless plug, but that's, that's my video platform. Our marketing team has a newsletter that they send out, so they incorporate me in the newsletter. Individual LOS will start to reach out to me. I'll use a priority, I will cancel any meeting to make time for a loan officer, but really leverage your tech tools. You know, like we're expecting loan officers to use them. Well, I use them as a leader because that's also another way that I can gain adoption onto my Martech stacks. Right. We all pay for seats. That's, that's not an unknown in this environment. So the more that I can use those things and I can encourage them to communicate with them, then I'm hoping that they'll start to use it for their own, you know, benefit as well. But yeah, that really, it's, that's how we use our video Channel. We do use teams. We've got chats that are set up.
I leverage my learning and development teams, leverage the 203k departments, leverage the condo departments on a dime. I can send out something today and then I could say, hey, we need to have training on this in house dpa. Too many people are missing the opportunities. Our branch advocacy team will pop in, create something and they'll set the call up for first thing on Monday. And then I make a large announcement of why we're having a hosted training.
[00:16:16] Speaker C: Are you looking at, do you ever look at individual branch P&LS? I mean you can look at production from the originator standpoint. You can look at, you know, application counts, you can look at the, when they're locking, price acceptance, so on and so forth.
How do you look at the branch P. Ls if you're, if you're an originator and you're, and you're thinking about, hey, maybe I want to be a brand, a producing branch manager. I want to transition, you know, from doing six to eight loans a month. But now I think I can, you know, with my assistant, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to organically transition over into, from an individual loan officer to a branch. How do you look at the successful panels and then explain that to an original saying, hey, you know what you were, you know, you were averaging 80 basis points or 100 basis points as originator if you decide to move to be a PNL owner. On the surface it looks awesome, but then with all your people, you end up at 65 bips versus 80 bips or 100.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:08] Speaker C: How do you speak to the successful originator and tell them, hey, maybe you're a great originator, but maybe you won't be a great business owner? And because I'm sure that happens. In fact, I know that happens. So how do you speak to that?
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it happens often actually. And then you find some that are, that come in and they say, well, I've been a P and l owner for 15 years, I'm not willing to go back. And it's like, hey, listen, let's don't fool ourselves. Let's just start at the top. No one is selling high margins right now, right. So you know, we're being compressed. So that's where you start. And then you start to look at the cost to produce. You start to look at credit pools, how much the encompass fees are and all the little things that continue as add ons that we do have to charge for and Then what we're willing to connect, you know, collect what we're willing to charge in fees. What are our other competitors doing? So I think it's a coaching opportunity.
I like to say, hey, let's bring you on as a non P and L for 90 days and then let's visit it on the 91st day. Let me show where you've landed and then let's make a business decision from there. Nine times out of 10, they all love it. They all say, you know what, that's great because it's going to be, it's going to be ugly the first 90 days anyways. Nobody wants to look at that. And I have found that when you bring them on as a piano owner in that first 90 days, they sit there and hyper focus on the piano so much that they lose their confidence and their ability to want to go out and sell. And so it's a deterrent. So I'm like, that's not where your best effort needs to be. You need to be out on the street talking to your partners, letting them know that you've made a move, why you may made the move, not sitting back there looking at numbers all day. And right now it's just, it's a hard environment to really be a P and L owner. But you know, you give them accuracy, you give them numbers.
I love data. I use power bi to have reports. I have an amazing analytics team that we're constantly, I'm like, hey, I want to see this report, I want to see this report. Because what's going to happen is, is when you show a loan officer or a branch manager that's a P and L owner numbers, they're going to want a deeper dive into it. Well, where did you get that? How did you come up with that? I don't think that that number is accurate. And you're always going to need to be able to back yourself up with reporting suites that can say this is the intel on the data that we're receiving. Those numbers are accurate.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: What do you see as some promising career growth in IMBs right now for that young loan officer that's young in mortgage. Let's say it's gotten through their twenties and now people are starting to refer them business, trust them with the tax returns and thing.
Should they be asking to see the P and L of the branch and learn it? Should they aspire or should they just constantly maybe just work on selling and it'll come to them? What is that career path in an industry that sometimes I don't think advertises it too well to outsiders, that you can come in and work your way up.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: You know, honestly, Michael, what I have found is if you've got a loan officer that is just great at sales and can consistently close five or six loans a month, they have no desire to want to be a P and L owner. You know why? Because they have a constant stream of income and revenue coming in. The ones that want to be P and L owners are the ones that are not closing a consistent book of business that think that they can make a lot of money off the bottom line and that they can take that, you know, every 90 days or whatever they're distributing. You know, parameters are that 10%, there's a lot of rules around how often you can pay out against a P and L. That's how they're trying to become rich quick. And I think it's the wrong strategy if you want to be a leader and you want to grow a team and that's your overall arching vision. I have seen successful piano owners that were loan officers in the day that have become non producing branch managers that have built 40 and $50 million a month groups. Those make excellent PNL owners. They're entrepreneurial, they understand the business, they understand the bottom line. They're going to treat it like it's their own checkbook and they'll appreciate it. Loan officers that are just coming into the business, I highly discourage it because I've, I've seen so many say why I'm closing two loans a month. I want to be a P and L owner.
No, that's just not unfortunately for me and our business model, that is just not a good fit. But again, you don't ever want to come in and say, you know, just no, it's hey, can we just agree maybe on a not yet. And could we try it for the first 90 days by not doing it on a P and L? And then when you're ready, I'll open up the book and I'll show you where you are and then you can decide nine times out of ten they're like, nope, I don't. Once they see it, they're like, oh no. Because guess what happens? You don't get paid if you're not profitable.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Yeah, you need to go from like 2 to 4. You're not going to do that staring at your P and L every day for an hour. There's not enough time in the day, I feel like for anybody. So we are going to take a quick commercial break to our sponsors. We are now encouraging vendors to reach out to us. Best deal in town.
You get to be on a show that has a massive reach as well as some amazing guests that get to watch them. So if we could just run those and on the other side, Mike Zao have an amazing question for you.
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[00:23:35] Speaker C: Candace, with your experience back working not only throughout the last 10 years or 15 years, but I always like to go back to CTX because CTX isn't around anymore but they had some huge originators. What were some coaching lessons that you learned along the way from either from the beginning or throughout your process? What are some of the coaching lessons that you think you've gleaned that, that everybody should know in this industry that maybe it, maybe it's not a secret to you, but you know it's maybe it's a secret to somebody else only because it's not it. You know, you don't know until you know. Right. What are some of the coaching lessons that you think you may have gleaned along the way in your career?
It as a, as a P L owner or as in marketing or you know, just in general that. Cause you think you know, yes, I need to be coached on this and this. Yes, I Need to grow in this.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm just gonna be real with you, Michael. There was a little school of hard knocks there for about the first eight years. Because when you get into the business and you're young, at the age, you know, I was young, people just kind of look at you like, eh, you know, and it's hard. It's really hard. And you know, there was a lot of times that I some setbacks and I was like, you know, I want to be bigger than I am. I want to do more than I am. And oftentimes I would just get told, you know, you just, you need to get more time under your belt. You need to sit in on more projects. You need to better understand this. Oh, you're just a director of marketing. You're not a VP of marketing. Oh, you just ran a branch. You've never worked in the corporate environment. I mean, that's just true statistics. And so I was like, okay, well, number one, I love to read. There are so many books I could give you that I just found to be very helpful for me, Boundaries is one of them. Shoe Dog is another one.
I have many and I often share these on LinkedIn because it was what helped me with my personal growth to learn to not get frustrated and not get mad and not give up. When someone told me no, I'm very passionate at the heart. And so when someone tells me no, I take that as that's not a not yet. And that's really what it means. Don't ever take no for no. Take it as a not yet. You're in charge of your own destiny and you have the power to turn it into a no. And I never settled for it. And I was presented opportunity because I tried to be an expert into things that I set in on meetings.
You know, I got the opportunity to come into the corporate office. If there were projects and stuff that were going on, I would just say, hey, do you mind if I just sit in? I don't have any opinions to share. I don't want to opine. I just want to be a fly on the wall so I can learn what you're talking about. You know, from an IT perspective. It was one of the most critical components to our business that I never understood at a whole that I needed to better understand, especially if I was going to run marketing and technology stuff stacks, because those are a lot of API integrations and they slow things down and there's a lot of latency and development work that you just can't have an appreciation for your partners on the back end. The moment that you can understand all the moving parts of your partners in an organization and truly build what's called leadership amongst your executives, they will then give you the respect that you deserve. They understand that you're there to protect them, not to just continue to add projects to their plate. And then as you start to evolve and you start to do these conferences and then you start networking and then you can start, you really can sit down and have a conversation with anyone at a table with confidence based on all the things that you've learned. It just then starts to create. Then you kind of become this expert, you know, overall, again, doesn't mean that you're going to know everything. But if you can have a conversation at about 40 to 50% and also then take that conversation and learn more. I was sitting next to Justin yesterday, and he is the general manager for Blend, and I'm a partner of his. And I learned something from our lunch yesterday, and it was a new product that they had just rolled out. And he was like, hey, this could be great for your servicing department. Well, I don't run servicing. I'm on the retail side. But guess what? I want to take that opportunity and help us monetize it across all channels in our business. I'll go get the appropriate people on servicing, but that's how you make your company better, is by sharing ideas.
So continuing to learn, never stop learning. Include yourself in conversations, regardless if it's relevant to you or not. Just ask to be a part of the audience, not to be, you know, a participator. Don't be a disruptor. That's like one of my keywords for this year. Because you can disrupt this business so fast because there's so many channels that are operating at full capacity and they're tired and we're still operating on a very slim crew that if you bring so many ideas to the table without vetting it before you bring it, you then can become a disruptor and it will kind of create you some hardships along the way. So that would be my key takeaway.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: It made me think, too, and, and I can relate. When I loan officer getting, I always said, like, getting tax returns from the local orthodontist that did my teeth when I was 14 was just like, impossible. Like, for him to trust me and hand me how much he makes on that same orthodontist. And then I joined Rotary, which is ironic because it's the one place you're not allowed to say what you do for Business you're not supposed to network but by showing up for three years straight, one year I made a hundred thousand dollars just on all the people just started trusting, referring.
No longer was that barrier of being, being young.
So it's hard but it's worth it when you can get in there. You do have to build your business. Advice for a loan officer would be on what you said. The reps at these vendors would. We'll take your call. So if, if you can reach out to them and try and understand the product more. Not their head of like the person you sat next to but just that customer service. They're dying to talk to loan officers because adoption is so low when it gets there and it allows a loan officer to. I find the ones that grow the fastest, know the tech and can sell. So that was a takeaway. What were some of your takeaways from the. I want to put you on the spot but that real estate panel at the Housing Wire I thought was so cool.
You can comment on what I said or you can have another takeaway but they said a lot of the first time home buyers are now people that are inheriting money. So they're not like you're 30 year old. That's why they're doing it. They're older, they're over 40, but they got this new insert. They don't know how to spend that money. They're not very wise. They actually need loan officers more than digital. And another one was with the commuting the cost of child care and how that's like not in the dti. Right. But that's going to impact the amount of money people have to put down.
Just the child care things. I have a three month old and a five year old and it's just I, I could so relate and that's why I love talking. Sometimes the real estate agents are just so on the street and they, they gave an angle. Did you find any from that? I guess you could say from any panel but that panel in particular.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought that that panel was fantastic. I actually shared some of the quotes this morning with some of our other leaders.
So again note, takeaway sharing is caring. So for my leaders that live out of state that could not come to this conferen a whole dialogue this morning of hey, here's 21 things that I learned yesterday that I found insightful. And I downloaded Logan's PowerPoint presentation and gave it to my secondary guy because it was optional and I was like hey, you know, like here you go. He was like oh My gosh, thanks. So, not to digress, but yesterday I thought it was just fantastic in that panel, you know, she even said that majority of first time home buyers right now are also single women. Hello. Like, that was pretty strong and powerful. She also said that the amount of people that are looking to purchase are also being asked to come back into the office.
And so what they're doing is they're, they're starting to look at homes around their area so they can take public transportation, so they don't have tolls, they don't have to purchase a car, they don't have the additional expenses. And I thought that was really interesting.
And then because you've got the childcare, and then it wasn't even just childcare, it was pet care, dog sitters, cat sitters. Those were some other things that were mentioned too. It's expensive. It's all expensive. You know, so there's so many different variables. But they also did say that, you know, make sure that we're leaning on the data. This has been one of my largest key takeaways this year. Lean on data and don't be fearful of it because the data will tell you how you need to be running your business. It will tell you the products that you need to be going after. And why I say that is because first time home buyers, the average age right now is 38 years old. You know, they showed that slide yesterday, Michael, of the millennials. The millennials are going to be. That's your audience. It's not the younger audience anymore. They can't afford it. Housing affordability is a massive issue in today's world. Do you know the average age of the number one people that moved last year? Okay. For purchases, 63 years old. You know why? Because they're the baby boomers. They've got equity. They're looking to downsize, or as I call right size. They don't want the pool, they don't want the landscaping anymore. Okay, well, if you're a company out here only focused on first time homebuyer products, you missed the sweep. Why do you think reverse mortgages came out of the woodworks last year? Because that was the audience and, and you started to see a lot of companies adopt reverse. And y'all, everybody was like, what is going on? That's why. So if you read the data and you listen to these panels and like you said, these realtor groups, Bright, she was the chief economist for Bright mls. They've got their ear on the ground. So lean on your partners again. Pick up the Phone and call your agents and go, what are you seeing? What are you hearing? This is what I'm seeing and hearing. Do you think that this product would be good for you? Yeah, it's going to be good for you, or no, it's not. That's not what I'm seeing. This is what I'm seeing. And that's really how we need to be doing our book of business. That's why I kind of said in my, in my repost this morning, make sure your strategies are all aligned, but don't go too far off the track because the, the narrow, it's still pretty narrow for us right now. And you really got to pay attention to what other people are doing and what they're saying.
The other big key I take away, I heard yesterday Too was that 70 to 80% of sellers are home buyers. They're looking to repurchase homes. That's a really big positive number that we should be excited about for 20, 25.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And two more stats. I won't have a question, Mike. You can ask the question after. But one was the woman from Bright recommended. When you're looking at this data, the national listings, active listings is what you should look at, but you really need to look down what Candace said at the zip code level, she said and then at property type. So condos, for example, sellers are willing to negotiate. Single family. They're not. So that's going to be an entry point of affordability.
And exactly what you said. But just some stats. 50. They said 55% of home buyers back, you know, before COVID Proximity to the work was important to them. That number last year was 33%. How close it is to work. They are expecting that to get back up to 55%. So a 20% jump. So that's a place where you can start to look to use that again to help guide home homeowners that are looking. It's going to be okay. Let's find a place near where you work. Just being aware of that provides value to your referral partners. And having the stats or data allows you to just have such an advantage. Right. Like if there's no, if they can't afford anywhere near where they work, that might not be the best use of your time. You might want to refer to another loan officer and. But the stats are starting to come out and if you can get ahead of them, that's where the, the money is. But I didn't have, I mean, I, I just wanted to let you go there, Mike. I don't Want to jump in?
[00:36:14] Speaker C: No, that's. That's fine. How do you integrate. I mean, that's a lot. That's a lot to unpack, but so how do you integrate that to an originator that in a lot of originators are legends in their own mind. Even if there are doing 10 to 20 loans a month, you know, that's like, oh, yeah, I already knew this. I already knew this. How does. How do you integrate this information from the higher level? You know, this is a lot of the people that were. There were executives. So how do you integrate that. That information to the main street level, to the originator, so that they can actually implement, you know, whether to. To third, to millennials or to baby boomers or Gen Xers? How does that integrate it at the. At the street level for you as an executive?
[00:36:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, again, I think some things that have been lost in the mortgage business as leaders is they all think that they can just kind of sit back and let loan officers go out and kind of run rogue and do their thing. Well, that's why we have such high turnover and retention in this business, in this industry, because, you know, oftentimes they feel forgotten. You know, they feel like my company's out recruiting, but yet no one's called me and asked me, hey, Candace, why did you only close two loans this month? What can we do to help you? So, for me, I'm taking just kind of the alternative approach.
And that is it's my job to find and be the expert as a leader in the business, to take the intel that I learned yesterday, share that with my head of cap markets, share that with my other regional leaders, and then go, hey, products team, what products do we have in the queue? Oh, we have these 10 products. Nope, we're going to reevaluate. We're going to move this one. Number three is not going to be number eight, and number eight is not going to become number two, because that's a part of the strategy. And then you go, because this is what I heard yesterday. And, oh, hey, by the way, we need to find a product that does X, Y and Z, and then I also need it in this state. And then you start to just go back into it. And then once you have it, then you call your loan officers or your branch managers or your regionals, your teams, and you say, hey, guess what? Six weeks ago, we heard about this, and this was a statistic. And what we did is we went hard to work for you, and we developed this product, and we called Virginia and we got Virginia housing. And we're going to help you go out and we're going to help you sell it. Let's, let's help you host an event. Let's get all your realtors, let's, we'll fly out there, we'll sell it, we'll talk about why we deliver the product and you can just be there to make the introductions. What do you think that loan officer is going to say? Holy cow, are you kidding me? That's fantastic. Do you think that that loan officer is going to ever leave Planet? No, they're not.
So that's the value that you have to be providing. We have to be the experts internally in making sure. And guess what? We want to do that. That's our job. That's what I get paid to do as a leader, is be there to support the sales teams and we should take pride in it. Like you can just tell like I'm going on 17 years of being in this business and I've been at the executive level for about three years now. And I'm just a, I'm really grateful to be where I'm at and have a seat of where I am. It makes me very proud. And then secondly, I want to, I want to represent the company that I'm aligned with as being just single handedly, number one, the best, number two, the most supportive and number three, the most desirable place for people to want to come and work.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Because you can't see the picture if you're in the frame. So if you have somebody that can have this omnichannel approach or, or corporate brings in the extra muscle, but they bring it in a way because there is sometimes this underlining resentment by sales people to have managers that don't participate or haven't sold before or you know, that are. So when you have somebody coming in with sales ideas and bringing the corporate backing to make sure that it is a good turnout, there's a good product. Right. Good people behind it. We're not hearing as much of that. You're right. We're hearing more about the recruiting. I think that's fantastic and I think that is a wake up call to other lenders that Planet Home is stepping up. Candace is here and it's taking care of, you know, your own people first, which is very important. And doing that is really what's going to attract other, other loan officers. It's a lot easier, especially with what everything we've gone through. If somebody gives you a new approach and you can tell you have your Marketing, you know, hat on there and your sales hat.
I think people just need a, a fresh injection of being different within their community and, and ideas like that are absolutely how you do it and how you get people off the phone and off Zillow and over to, to plan at home or wherever your home is. As a loan officer, I appreciate you coming on the show. Are there any final thoughts or messages to the lending industry that, that you have for us here?
[00:41:21] Speaker B: You know, I want to close out with that. There was a lot of hope yesterday in that room. I was exchanging some notes with other leaders at other companies. There is a lot of optimism and I know it's going to materialize. I think that we have the ability to help it materialize. And I just want to tell everybody, just man, if you've made it this far out of the three year cycle that we've been in, you can continue to make it. We will get back to the basics. Back to the basics meaning pick up the phone, call your customers, stop relying so much on text message and links, get back out there, get in front of them, do open houses. If you've done this for 20 plus years, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the way to run your business and we've all become very complacent. But I would just encourage you to take this approach and I promise you it is going to warrant you an extra one to two deals a month regardless. If you've got the product stack, you still have the ability to be the expert. So by putting yourself out there utilizing video, don't, don't be afraid of it. Just, just get back to the basics. That's about the best I can share.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Any final thoughts, Mike?
[00:42:28] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of glean by the way. Thank you, Candace for doing this. What I glean from our conversation, number one, is that have the courage to go and do what you need to do. Number two, go ahead. And because of the courage, it's okay to fail. And in the school of hard knocks, you're going to have failure. However, when you in the numbers game of that, you're also going to reach a lot of success. And the, the one thing I really appreciate that you said is you ask the question to your, to the people that you're working with, what do you need from me and what do you need from my company? And if that type of servant attitude with the asking, with the doing and with the, all the information that, that you're able to provide, Candace, it's, it's no wonder to me that it's with that type of attitude and that type of information you're able to glean not only to Planet Home but to its originators that you're able to take on not only a merger or not only an acquisition, but also expand to the to the presence originators and how they could. You can work with them in their P Ls, in their sales and in their originations. So thank you for for giving us all these nuggets of wisdom so that we're able to glean this not only for the management of the owners, but also for the originators on Main street as well.
[00:43:43] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you both for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:43:46] Speaker D: Thank you for joining us on this journey into the heart of mortgage innovation. Remember, every mortgage has a story and we're here to help you write yours. If you enjoyed today's insights, please subscribe, share with your network and connect with us on social media. Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries and uncovering the stories that drive our industry forward.
