Give the Gift of a Reverse Mortgage, with Brady Mullen of CrossCountry Mortgage

0:02 I'm a real estate agent. I've been in the business for decades and I continue to learn more about the reverse mortgage product. I actually was an originator at one point and did some of them before I moved out of originating and into real estate full-time over 20 years ago. But it is amazing. I launched this podcast because I know as a country we should be doing 10 times as many reverse mortgages as we are, but for the lack of knowledge and the bad reputation and maybe the lack of exposure. And that's why I launched this podcast. And here I'm having return guest Brady Mullinon who's not just a originator. He's written a book on the subject. He's very successful. And here he unleashes on me a whole new concept on how to use reverse mortgages to combat affordability issues, but also how to create family legacy. Barry, thank you so much for joining us.

0:49 Thanks, Bill. I'm going to I'm going to correct one thing you said really quickly. I don't originate anymore. I serve at CrossCountry Mortgage to help our originators connect with financial advisers and just I was a financial adviser for 20 years. I sold my practice in 2021. So I personally don't originate. We have a specialized team of reverse originators, but we're a we're a big team.

1:08 So Oh, and you know, a big company like CrossCountry can afford to have someone like you around to help support their business, which is fantastic. But either way, you're active in the business. You were talking about a financial planner the other day and you mentioned you know and for me I was shocked when I found out that because I was shopping for a home. I didn't know I should consider mortgage as an option. I so embarrassed me I mentioned this on other episodes. But what you and I were just talking about as we set this up and kind of changed the topic was there's a whole additional world of using reverse mortgage to help protect legacy wealth to help create more affordability for real estate for families. Talk a little bit about how that came to be that you came up with this concept or at least brought to your attention to bring it to my attention.

1:55 Well, I mean, I could talk about reverse mortgages for ages because they're one of the most flexible financial tools I've ever seen. And I'm talking about that with 25 years in the financial industries. There's they're just poorly understood and misunderstood and underappreciated. The concept that we were talking about and you hear sometimes people in the reverse mortgage world talk about giving with a warm hand instead of a cold hand. And what they're talking about is if you have wealth that you know is going to go on to future generations, why not give it to them while you're living so that you can help coach them? You can be there around you can be around to enjoy what that's what that's doing for your children or grandchildren. And you can give it to them earlier. So, for example, this is just a simple example, but if you want to help somebody pay for a college education, whether it's a kid or a grandkid, why wouldn't you do that now instead of later when a college if you if you give them the money when you pass away? That's 10 or 15 or 20 years of college education that they didn't have or, you know, 20 years of life without a college education when you could give it to them early. So, most people and that's not nobody's going to argue with what I just said there. It's pretty straightforward. So, but most people struggle with the idea when you compare it to, all right, if I take if I have some investments and I take out, you know, 50 grand to help my grandkid get an education or something like that. Nobody thinks twice about doing that if they feel like they can afford it. Like, that's an easy thing to do. It's an easy concept for people to understand. Where things get where the wires get crossed for people is when you think about doing that with home equity through a reverse mortgage, they think, "Yeah, but if I do that, I'm going to owe interest." And the I literally have a chapter in the book that you were talking about that we call this concept the most important thing. And it's frankly not specific to reverse mortgages. It's specific to learning how to think about liabilities and assets together because you have to put them together to get a full picture of the financial plan. So here's where I'm going with that. If I give my kid $50,000 from my investments and they get a college education, then 10 years from now, say I don't have a $100,000 that I would have otherwise had because if I left my investments alone, they'll

3:57 Be invested, they'll grow over time, etc. Now, granted, investments go up and down, but over a 10-year period of time, there's a really good chance that my $50,000 would be 100. If I borrowed the $50,000, which makes people all of a sudden feel kind of icky about that. Well, I don't want to do that with a with a mortgage or with a with a loan or a line of credit, which is what, you know, most of the reverse mortgages are. They think if I borrow that and never make a payment, 10 years from now, I'll owe $100,000. Well, if you kept the investments and they are now worth $100,000 on your balance sheet as an asset and you owe $100,000 on the reverse mortgage, your balance sheet is exactly the same. You either have $100,000 less in your investments and or you have $100,000 more and $100,000 liability on the on the line of credit. It's the same thing. And a some good evidence that wealthy families and businesses have been doing this, by the way, for hundreds of years. I didn't make this idea up. They attach lines of credit to their assets, not because they're broke, but because lines of credit are extremely valuable financial tools. And so they borrow against their assets instead of selling them when that suits them. And it doesn't I mean wealthy families and businesses also sell assets. So it's not like they do either or. They're just adding one more tool into their into their tool belt for when they when they want to access wealth that they have. They have an option to either sell it or borrow against it. But it has the same effect on your balance sheet. Only borrowing against it is more tax efficient by the way. But it has the same effect. And they figured that out. They don't recoil at the emotional hurdle that it just takes to overcome the idea that if I borrow against my home to help my kids, I'm going to owe more later on or I'll have payments or something like that. Well, with a reverse mortgage, you don't have to make payments if you don't want to. You certainly can if you want to, but as it accumulates, but bec and because I left my investments alone to do that, my balance sheet doesn't care.

5:40 So once people have an understanding that is how money works and that's how it has worked since inception and how it will always work into the future then you kind of get over the idea that debt is always a bad thing. It isn't. So if I use that to help a grandkid then they can have that education or home ownership like a lot of people are thinking about using this to help that kid or grandkid buy their first home because affordability is a challenge for the younger generations. We'll talk about that more, but it's a challenge for them in a way that it wasn't a challenge if you bought a house 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. And it's not like, well, I'm not saying that we owe them anything or I mean, maybe we do. I'm not I'm not just I'm just not talking about that. But if you want to help a kid or a grandkid buy a home ownership is a huge boon to a financial situation. And if you can help them do that 10 or 15 years earlier, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars more equity and wealth and stability that you can provide them. And where people would not think twice about using that, using some investments to do that if they could afford it, you can also use home equity to do that. And that way you can you can use what you've benefited from by buying, you know, if you bought a house 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, you've benefited from a falling interest rate environment because interest rates fell from the early 80s to the early 2020s. That was a boost for equity because home owners home ownership became what's a better way to say that? Equity appreciated. Like homes appreciated.

7:00 When interest rates drop, that has a that has a tailwind for home values. So if you bought a house since sometime since the late 1980s, you had lowering interest rates which was good for home values and also it's good for you know you can ratchet down your interest rate by refinancing down to these crazy low rates. This current generation doesn't have that at least not in the not in the it's not obvious that they're going to benefit from that. They may or may not. We don't know what the future will hold. But if you can accept that benefited you in a major financial way and you can use some of your equity to help a help a the younger generation get started, the amount that will cost in interest is a fraction of what they will benefit by through home ownership or benefit from through home ownership. You just have to run some numbers and it's pretty straightforward. So when you talk about giving a gift of property for a family member or lending them money or taking a reverse mortgage out, you almost could look at giving them the money in advance, but you're not giving them the money. So there's no gift tax or tax implications if you're lending it to them. Is another option. And so it seems to me, and again, this is being done a lot not because it doesn't make sense. Is because less than 5% of Realtors® even think about reverse mortgages and wealth planners as well don't think about it. But I can imagine a scenario where you could have a house that's worth you know in my market a million dollars in a in a smart market half million dollars that's paid off in full and you know you want to live there for the rest of your life and you're going to retire in place and you have family members but if they're going to inherit $100 $200,000 each or individually you can take their first mortgage and give it to them now in the form of down payment or purchase of a house. And so all you're saying is just taking the timetable and shifting it to when it might have its most impact.

8:52 That's exactly right. And what again the emotional friction that causes for people is they'll say to themselves, "Yeah, but then there's going to be interest." And it's like, okay, if you were to ask if you were to ask me like I don't feel entitled to an inheritance. If my parents passed away today, I'd get one because they have some wealth, but if they I hope they use all of it before they die. But let's just put ourselves in the inherites shoes. If I'm going to inherit some money and I could inherit say $100,000 now or $200,000 10 years from now, if I'm in a in an age where I need to be able to if I want to go to college or if I want to help a kid go to college or if I need to buy a home because I don't own a home yet and I want to make that a part of my life, I'd much rather have

9:34 Kids to you want your kids to live near you and then they'll raise their grandkids near you as well, but they can't afford the house near you. So, they're looking to move to a cheaper area. All of a sudden, you can say, "Hey, we can give you the money for down payment or we can give you the money for house cash rather than give it to you when we pass. We'll just give it to you now or some other format of transfer."

9:52 Yeah. And so, what will happen when you do that is so if my parents, let's say my parents gave me $100,000 to buy my first home, for example, I mean, I've owned a home for a long time, but I'm just generally speaking. If they gave me $100,000 through a reverse mortgage to buy my home for the first time, then what will happen? Let's say that they pass away 10 years from now, they might if they never make a payment on that reverse mortgage, they will owe maybe $200,000, something like that 10 years from now. But I will have experienced 10 years of home ownership by then. So I'll have a few hundred,000 of equity. Remember, there's debt payown and there's I'm going to be spending money every month to have a roof over my head. I'm either going to be giving it to the lender or giving it to a landlord. So, as you make payments, the you get equity just by making payments and then some appreciation. Even if you estimate very modest appreciation, you'll have way more than $200,000 of equity by the time the parents pass away. I don't mean to be talking so frankly about death, but it's a reality. So, if we if we don't talk frankly about it, then we're just ignoring it. But so what people always what I like to do is just calculate the numbers. So if my parents have a $200,000 mortgage balance by the time, you know, 10 years from now, but I have three or 350 or $400,000 of equity in the home that I've built up over time and I've got a stable place to raise my kids and build my family, which are, by the way, are my parents' grandkids. Right.

11:15 Right. Grandparent. I'm totally tuned into that. You got my attention. Yeah. Yeah. There is more wealth now in the entire family anyways. Yes. My parents have $200,000 less because there's that liability. Again, I'm assuming that they don't make a payment on that, but they can't they can. That's a huge misunderstanding in the public. And I know that you know this, but people the originators in the world, we need to we need to shout from the rooftops that the flexibility of a reverse mortgage is that you can make payments whenever you want. That's huge. We always talk about not making payments, but like I'm going to sign if the reverse mortgage, if the HECM exists the way it does today when I'm 62, I will literally be signing on my birthday. There's no downside to making my equity liquid. So that's another story for another time. But

11:59 Well, in the purchase scenario, if you have kids and you want to give them money, like I live in a neighborhood where the teardowns are selling for $1.9 million, right? And so, young families have a hard time, you know, starting up and living in this neighborhood. And there families that, you know, give their kids money. And it's great if you have those kind of assets. I think that's great. But if all your assets are in your house and you've paid it down, so one option would be reverse mortgage. You can give them the down payment or you give them all the money for the house, whatever. But you have some flexibility. Just to point out what you just said, some of the options could include a I'll give you the cash that you can use as a gift. You know, there's maybe taxifications there. B, I can lend you the money. I could borrow my money, my reverse mortgage equity, $500,000 million, and lend you the money on your purchase, and you pay the interest that I'm getting on my reverse mortgage if I wanted to do it that way because that's ultimately your house anyhow. You're really kind of putting your own money in your own savings account. If you're the only child or one of two children, you make a trust or a deal ahead of time. So, it all kind of works out that way. And then you could then theoretically give gift amounts annually by reducing the principal, you know, in accordance with your estate plan. And so I'm not saying any of those are the right answer for anybody. I'm saying everybody should consider all those options. If you're in the business and you have equity in your home and you have kids you want to work with to keep around or to help get into a house, it's a much as you said from a balance sheet perspective, it's the same, but now you have your the recipient perhaps building equity in a house rather than it just sitting in your equity in your home. And I think all those are things that somebody should sit down with real estate professionals who can lay out those options and make those work. I want to I want to point out something else or double click maybe I'll call it on something that you said which is you said something to the effect of sometimes people will give their kids you know the wealth or the cash or sometimes the money that they have or the wealth that they have it's sitting in the equity of their home and both of those are true but there's also a really common scenario where the wealth that people have is in IRA or 401ks from past

14:02 Employers and it's punitive to take out large sums from that home ownership right if I' if I've got $2 million in my IRA and I want to give my kid $50,000 for a down payment on a home. Taking that $50,000 or $100,000 out of an IRA that's a I don't want to face that tax consequence of doing that. So, borrowing the money from my home instead just means that I can leave those assets where they are and let them keep appreciating and my kids are going to inherit that anyways. That's a really that's another common Well, Dr. Dr. FA said it better than I can and he is his point is one of the major one of the major flaws that people have or that's the wrong way to say that one of the major mistakes people make when they analyze reverse mortgages is that they look at it in a silo.

14:46 But remember if I use my equity to pay for something it doesn't even matter what it is. It could be something as basic as food and medicine or it could be a vacation or it could be helping a kid buy a home. But if I use my home equity to do that instead of some other asset that I would have used otherwise. Yes. If I don't take the value of that asset into account when I'm looking at the picture 10 years from now, then I'm missing an entire half of the picture.

15:08 Yes, I just said entire half. Those are contradictory terms. I'm missing half the picture, which is a big portion of the picture. You have to look at the whole thing in concert because that's what a financial plan should be.

15:19 Well, in my world, I'm in California. I want to say about 8% of wealth is in real estate. And that and that then makes it even more important. Nationally, I think it's much less. But it's very common for families where I live in Los Angeles in particular to have a house that's worth two, three, four, $5 million and almost all of their family wealth is in that because it is hard to get into and they raise kids and that was expensive but they may have an estate of $5 million which is great. But if you can take out half million and then have your kids buy a house near you rather than moving to some cheaper location you know that becomes some options. In other places where you have securities as your wealth, that's not an option. And so maybe you paid out for a house and you're glad you've done it and you have all these IAS and securities, which is great. But if it's in if it's in an retirement account, you're limit as to what you can do with it. And I guess the other option is you can take the income, maybe a required minimum distribution or whatever from your IAS to pay the interest on your reverse mortgage if that's really what you want to do. But rather than liquidate and pay taxes, this is just an option. Think I rambled a bit. I think the summary is that you need reverse mortgage has to be looked at in context of the whole.

16:32 It's a tool not the solution, but it's a tool to a person's finances that offers this flexibility. And the idea of using it for purchase

16:42 As a gift or purchase for somebody other than yourself is one of the very powerful solutions that people are looking for an answer to. Well, I love that idea for Realtors®, too. In fact, Greg Moss, the guy we mentioned earlier, he's the one that brought that to my attention because he mentioned something that you were talking to Tom Evans about in your in your podcast about the average age of first-time home buyers keeps creeping up. And there's a reason for that. It's

17:06 I worry for my adult children on how they're and I have five of them, so there's a lot of them to worry about, but like affordability really is a challenge in a way that it wasn't as challenging in the past. And I don't and I still think it's better than renting by a huge margin. And don't get me started on that because people think, well, the solution to affordable housing is just to rent. It's like, no. Like, it's whatever it costs the investor to maintain and own that home, they're passing those costs on to you. Like, it's the same product. It's a it's a roof over your head. But if we can help them, especially with something that we benefited from those falling interest rates envir environments that we experienced for so long and the and the appreciation, if we can use if we can use the fact or the wealth that just landed in our laps for being homeowners say, you know, starting in the 80s all the way up to the early 2020s, if we can use some of that to help the next generation, this is the way to do that. Because ultimately, and this sometimes it takes some explanation for people to come to this conclusion, but if you if you just learn about reverse mortgages enough, what you realize is all you're really doing is turning an illquid asset into a liquid asset. That's how wealthy families have turned illlquid assets in the business or in the family into liquid assets is they attach a line of credit to it. That's all you're doing. You

18:22 I think the you talk you talk about the math. I think that we live in the most wealthy times probably in history if you're in America. Yet you know the wealth is consolidated amongst a smaller percentage who are wealthier than ever before. At the same time as you mentioned we have an affordability issue. That's just because the math it's just not distributed and the tools aren't in a way that work for the for the common the current situation. And I think for I mean families often don't think about but 10 years go by and your kids aren't married. Well, maybe one reason is they don't have a house or I don't have prospects to buy a house, to form a family, to have grandkids. And so those of us who are in the family business, you are in a big way. I'm in the grandkid business at this point. The obvious solution to having more kids or have kids have a better life and a legacy is making this available. And there are many families I know who look back and say, "Gee, if I just five or 10 years ago said to my son or daughter, hey, you know, we do have money for down payment. We'll get you in a house." Don't let that hold you back from getting married. There's so many people I've met who are 40 years old who say, "Well, I can't afford to get married because I can't buy a house yet and become first-time home buyers at 40 that could have started at 30 and raised kids." And that's a big problem. And I don't know anybody who says to me, "I wish I'd helped my kids earlier regret it." I know the opposite. Many people tell me I wish I had started a few years ago and thought about this and that's what this you know creates an opportunity for is getting involved financially and I think the other thing is the opportunity for us as professionals for originators across country and around the country and for me as a real estate agent these the solutions that used to exist don't work enough you know the old days of saving 3% down and buying an FHA loan doesn't work in mo in Los Angeles for example enough times But if we get creative and talk to our customers, hey, you talk about your parents and talk about your wealth and let's look at the public record what the house is worth and what are they going to do with they're going to if they're going to give it to you anyhow, why not start that process or get some of it now or

20:25 Begin maybe you make a loan back to them to protect their interest. These are creative solutions that exist for us as professionals that but we have to ask the next question to get a little deeper and to unlock. So, I know that your job is primarily educating your originators as well as the marketplace. Talk about what's available for let's say specifically real estate agents where I know you have a book. I don't want to I don't want to close the podcast off with the promo of your book. I have a copy of it. I bought it and it's great. You're obviously a professional in this. But for real estate agents, do your originators do seminars or continuing ed or is there a way that real estate agents can learn about these options so they can begin to think more creatively? Yeah, we do we do events all the time where we talk about I mean honestly I could talk for four hours about reverse mortgages and not repeat myself. There's so much to know because it's one of the most creative and flexible financial tools. And so we start with like a 101 class and here's how they work fundamentally. Here's what this is. And what I would I mean I'm guessing that most people that listen to this podcast know what a reverse mortgage is and generally how they work. But one thing I love to ask the audience is don't take somebody's opinion who can't describe what it is. And we should be very good at describing what that is. And I always boil it down to a what makes a mortgage a reverse mortgage is three specific features. Payments are optional. There's no specific due date on the balance. It's due when the last surviving spouse no longer lives in the home and it's non-reourse. And if somebody's sharing an opinion about it like Dave Ramsey's of the world, if they're saying, "Oh, you'd never want to do this." if they can't if they can't describe what a reverse mortgage is, which is those three things. Those three things are true about all reverse mortgages. Different products have different bells and whistles, but those three things are inherent in reverse mortgages. Most people can't even answer that question, and yet they tend to have strong opinions about them.

22:15 So what I would what I would tell Realtors® who want to understand how this can a help them help their clients but also grow their business is there are there are people all over the country that are living in a house that they would not like to live in if they could choose otherwise and I'm talking about you know 60 plus age group. So, if you were to ask all of your clients or all of your contacts that are aged 60 or older, say, "Are you living in your dream house?" A huge portion of them are going to say, "Well, not really, but I have this 3% mortgage that I don't want to get rid of. And if I, you know, if I sell my house and take my equity minus cost, I don't really have enough to buy a house with cash that I want to live in. So, I kind of feel stuck. And I don't want to get a new mortgage with a 6 and 12% rate or six or seven or whatever rates are at the time and what they qualify for." So, they kind of feel stuck even though it's a house that's got too much yard, maybe too many rooms or stairs or all of the above that for whatever reason or it's not close to their kids or amenities that they like, whatever. So, they feel kind of stuck because of that legacy rate mortgage. And what they don't realize is you could take if you sell a house and walk away with say 500 grand. This is just an example because markets are so different all over the country. But if you walk away from a house that's maybe worth 675 or something and you walk away with 500,000 after you pay off the mortgage and costs of you know the transaction whatnot, you could buy something like a 7 or $800,000 house with that $500,000 and still not have a mortgage payment,

23:36 Right? A required mortgage payment, let's say that because you can make payments on these whenever you want, right? So that gives you that opens up so many more opportunities. And if you think about that, I just in that situation, I just left a home that was worth 675. I bought a home worth 800 and I had a payment before and I don't have a payment now, at least a required payment that and remember it's fun to do the math, but if we're not really adding quality of life to people's lives, what's the point, right? That's the that's the ultimate reason why we're helping people.

24:08 And you're talking about somebody spending I mean, let's just be honest about it. They're spending the last two decades, two or three decades of their life in a home. Like where that home is and the amenities and the feel of that home that matters. That's an important phase of life. You want to go out in a comfortable place. That's a perfect time to you know in the industry we call it right sizing because it might be upsizing. It might be downsizing. It might just be re relocating but that's a perfect opportunity to use a tool like this and if you understand it and help the clients feel like oh this is this is the way money works and it's a beautifully created financial tool. And once they understand that, now from a Realtor® perspective, that's two transactions, right? You're helping them get rid of the house that they're in and you're helping them getting get into a house that they want to live in, they just have to overcome the stigma of a reverse mortgage. It's a it's a beautiful tool, but there's an emotional reaction to it that is unwarranted. It's not true. It's just it's just real. It's out there.

25:07 Well, I feel like marketing is there's two choices of marketing. There's a marketing that's easy that doesn't really help the customer, right? Right? There's a lot of, you know, spam and this and that, but you're not really helping the customer. You're just selling them. And there's the other thing where you really help your customer to get real value. And that's harder work, but in the long run creates a deeper relationship and a better business. I in my opinion. And so that's why I feel like for any originator watching this, if you're a Ford originator not doing reverses, this is your opportunity for real estate agents for sure to learn the details of this product and or to find an expert to work with on this. You can create opportunities for customers they don't know exist. And if you create the opportunity, generally you get some benefit out of that. As Bray said, maybe two sales, maybe one sale, maybe none, but a happy customer refers you somebody down the road or the good karma creates some more business down the road. You

25:58 Really Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but you hit the nail on the head there about if you bring the solution to a client, you're So, let me say it this way. I know that a lot of the effort that real estate agents spend in marketing their business and trying to be known as a as a real estate expert is spent on competing with other real estate agents. Right? So essentially the problem they're trying to solve is when somebody that I know has a real estate need and they pick up the phone and they're thinking about who should I call, I want that person to be me if I'm a real estate agent. And that will probably never go away, but it's a it's and so you do things to stay top of mind. You're hitting them on this, you're on social media and all that good stuff. But with the strategy we just talked about, you're talking about a demographic. So, in my head, you've got someone living in a home that isn't right for them, but they don't want to get rid of their 3% mortgage, and they feel kind of stuck because they don't have enough equity to go pay cash for something, and they don't want a new 30-year mortgage or the payment. You're talking about somebody that has a problem that they know is a problem, but they just can't even imagine that there's a solution to that problem. And so, they've settled. They're not calling any real estate agent because they're thinking to themselves, I've only got $500,000 of equity in my $675,000 house. I'm just going to stay here. So, they don't even think of calling a real estate agent. You bring that solution to them, then you're not competing with your with other real estate agents because you're the one that came up with this idea where like, well, I can get you into that house in the 55 plus community that's really nice and you won't have payments, by the way, if you don't want that.

27:24 And for the real estate agent or merger out there who says, "Well, maybe I won't get that much business out of it." You have to understand if you help your customer whether or not they whether or not this is the right solution for them and they take action or not. If you're the one talking about possible solutions and then when the next problem comes up you're the phone call. And so to use this example, somebody might if you put the idea out there to your database, to your clients, and somebody calls you and walks through the whole scenario and just says, you know, I'm not really ready to do that, whether it be move to the to the new facil, new community or, you know, write the money to my kids today, but three years from now, they need to sell. You're the person they're going to call. Not Google, not Zillow, not Red Fin. You because you're somebody they trust and realize you're talking about things that just aren't on the internet everywhere else. And so that's the key distinction I think. You know, I've made my niche in probate real estate and helping people out of these difficult legal situations and people call me as a result of that. Originators out there, if you get a reverse mortgage that the borrowers pass away and the family's scrambling, I can help with those probates. I have a reverse mortgage SOS product. People call me with those problems. Doesn't mean every deal becomes a listing. It just means that I help a lot of people. Some for free and some actually do business on. And I think for Realtors®, this product is amazing. I think that Brady and your company offer a great resource. Now with cross I know a bunch of crosscountry mortgage reps over the years, your huge company, very successful. Is the strategy for the Realtor® to contact them their local guy? Is there is there strategy to contact you and you connect them with somebody local? What's the process? Or we can do we can do either or. I mean, contact your local your local loan officer and they we have a reverse department that supports them to grow to help to grow their business and to help them offer all the different products. One of the things that I like about we're not the only company that does this, but it's helpful to work with a company that does both forward and reverse because sometimes the reverse isn't the right solution and you want somebody to point that out. If

29:26 You're working with someone that only does reverse, you don't want them trying to fit a round peg and a square hole. So yeah, we have we have a team to analyze. What we want to do is be the lifetime loan officer for the client. And so we're not going to we're not going to put the wrong product in the wrong time because we're versed in all of them. And we're not the only ones like that. Like there's our competitors. There's some pretty good ones out there. But yeah, they can contact their local CrossCountry mortgage or they can reach out if they don't know who that is. They can reach out to us at corporate and we can find people in their area and help them work with them.

29:56 I don't know how long it's been, but I know CrossCountry's been around at least 15 years. I think I've worked with one or one of their loan reps or another over the years as a listing agent. I get contacted by a lot of lenders, good and bad, and CrossCountry consistently. He's one of the best. Brady, you're a great resource to your company and you guys having a reverse mortgage department. It's so important. I really appreciate you. I do want to point out anybody who wants to watch wants to see it. He has a book, Reverse Mortgages. It's so good. I have it. I read it. It's phenomenal. I think it covers kind of the whole picture and it probably is maybe mostly suited, if I had to guess, maybe mostly suited for you know, professional like me as a Realtor® to understand it to share with customers. But again, I think it's a great way to learn the tools in the book overall. Give me your take on the book. Who's who did you write it for?

30:40 So, we were I'm a huge fan of the book that Wade Pfau wrote about it. Yep. But his content is difficult for a lot of people to digest because it's very technical. His audience is mostly financial advisers, not the general public. Yes.

30:56 Now I eat that stuff up. I absolutely love it. But I wanted to write something, my brother and I, so we co-authored it. We wanted to write something that was a little more digestible by the consumers. So, we tried to put some authority in there, put some math in there, but make it understandable and talk about conceptuals or conceptual elements at a higher level. And what I'll point out, so if we're talking to Realtors® or even loan officers, so I want to make this very clear. I really there's very little money in writing books on such a narrow topic. So, I'm going to do a plug for the book, but it isn't because I'm trying to sell books. In fact, we have a lot of loan officers that will literally buy the book for real estate agents or clients who want to read it. So, the point isn't to sell books, but I will tell you this. Books are a great reciprocity tool. Like, I could receive a book from somebody that I don't ever intend to read, but it's but it's like it's against my nature to throw that away, right? People just don't throw books away. So, it's a great way to deliver some information that gives you a follow-up opportunity because people really appreciate that. And I will say this just that I don't think that my brother and I are fantastic authors. Like it's not it's not a it's not going to become a Broadway musical anytime soon the book but it's pretty good and it's pretty basic and I will tell you this I can't think of a single person that has read it cover to cover that hasn't come back to me and said I'm going to do one of those the day I turn 62 that I'd never thought about it that way but once you put it into a financial planning context which is my back well I'm a financial planner my brother's a CPA and we talk about this is what this financial tool was built to be this is how it works. Here's how you integrate it. It's a it's a backs stop. It you're just turning your equity into something that is usable. It doesn't mean you even have to use it, but why wouldn't like what's the downside of doing that? And once people read that book, they become fans.

32:46 They feel like they're on the inside circle like, "Oh, I see what everybody's getting wrong about reverse mortgages and now I know." They become advocates for it. And it's also a great way to introduce the topic. If you're a real estate agent or a financial adviser, it's a great way to introduce the topic without saying, "Hey, I think you should consider a reverse mortgage." You can simply say, "These aren't what people think. You should read about it from some authoritative positions, accountants and financial advisers and whatnot. Here's a book about it rather than, you know, here's somebody on YouTube that's talking about it that can't even define what it is." So, it's a great way to bring the topic up without, you know, recommending it, just recommending learning about it. That's a lot easier recommendation to make. And people usually come back saying that is so different than I thought, I'm on board. It's a it's a clever it's a clever idea. We just sort of laid it out. You know, I my recommendation anybody's looking for more business in 2026. If you're an originator or reverse mortgage specialist, even a real estate agent, you can get this book or anything like it. You can read one chapter a week. Maybe takes you 30 minutes at most. 15 minutes. It's not that big a book. 15 minutes. 30 minutes. Summarize what you read in about three sentences. Find some graphic online and post it on your social media and send it out to your entire customer list once a week. And in 15 20 weeks of the year, I'm chapters exactly there are. You've covered it. Repeat it. If you just did that, your social media would drive more leads for business, but more importantly, you'd help educate prospective customers about this very important tool. And so, I think that's the power of now, of course, you have to attribute it to Brady and put a link to the book if that's what you're going to do. I imagine if you're CrossCountry, you can maybe get away with it for free. I don't know what the deal is there, but either way, I would just say this is an opportunity to not to be the expert day one, but to take people in your learning journey and share with them what you're learning. And that's what's lacking in our business today is people actually sharing the real insights. Hey, aha, I didn't know that you could do this. I didn't know there was a line of credit associated with this. I didn't know if I didn't get the line of credit, but a regular mortgage, it builds a line of credit anyhow. I didn't know that. These are things your customers need to know about. And Bri, I

34:48 Just really want to thank you so much for sharing. I know we can go for hours about this, but I've got a little over time with you, so I have to wrap it up. But thank you so much for your time today, so much for your contribution to the industry. His contact information down below. And of course, if you're watching this or listening this on the audio, reach out to me. I'd be more than glad to make a connection. Britney Mullen at CrossCountry Mortgage, thank you so much for sharing with us today.

35:09 You're welcome, Bill. It's always a pleasure. And for the rest of you, this is the Reverse Mortgage Podcast. I do this every week with originators in this case an executive at one of the largest originating companies in the country CrossCountry mortgage as well as an author on the subject. So hopefully we got a lot out of it. If you have questions or comments love to see them. If you want to be interviewed on the program or you know somebody you should be send that as well. I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.