Mortgages for 55+, with Eric Ellsworth of HighTechLending

0:03 Welcome to the Reverse Mortgage Podcast. I'm Bill Gross. Usually we get reverse mortgage originators. Today though sometimes we get vendors and we also get management and this today we have one of those one of those. We have executive vice president of sales for HighTechLending, one of the largest lenders in the country and also one of the largest that has a reverse mortgage focus, Eric Ellsworth. Eric, thank you for joining us today on Reverse Mortgage Podcast.

0:29 Hey, thanks Bill. I think I think that's the first time I've been called one of those. So yeah to us you're one of those you know [laughter] having

0:38 Yeah. No, I'm being honest. I mean I think hey if I'm wrong on that and if you're watching this online just put a note. Am I right or wrong on that? Or management one of those or one of us. Anyhow that's me as a compliment out of respect. I think we have to be respectful that you know you control. So give me a little background. I know you're the VP of sales. Give an idea of the organization that you're involved with and how many people how many originators and how many staff people are you involved with.

1:05 Yeah. No, I appreciate it and thanks Bill for having me on and just to set the record straight, I am I am a licensed mortgage loan originator as well. So, I think I've got four like 14 state licenses and then a California real estate broker as well. So, HighTechLending, we've got about 200 employees, of which over 90 sales reps, and we've got, kind of, you know, just different channels. So, we also offer reverse mortgages through our wholesale department. So, we wholesale reverse mortgages. We've got an internal call [snorts] center that does and focuses on 55 and the 55 and older demographic, which I know we're going to talk a little bit about today. And then we have distributed retail branches throughout the country. We're licensed in just over 30 states, kind of the we call it the smile states from Washington down to Texas all the way up and states in the Midwest as well. So yeah hopefully that's a good explanation of who we are.

2:13 And then in the reverse space you also have a separate brand American Senior Lending. Talk about that and the decision to have a separate name as opposed to using the same branding.

2:25 Yeah. So you know one of the when [clears throat] we came to HighTechLending it was important for us to focus on a demographic. So you think about you know other brands that are out there in other industries and I always think about like USAA they focus on military veterans and for you know the mortgage industry we really want to focus on that 55 and older demographic. We feel that there's a there's a very large problem that a lot of homeowners have. Maybe they didn't save enough for retirement but they're sitting on a lot of equity. So, when we came over to HighTechLending, gosh, three and a half years ago now, they had already had an existing brand called American Senior. We changed a little bit. We added American Senior Lending, which we think that fits. That's a really nice brand with what we're targeting. We do a lot of reverse mortgages. All different types of reverse mortgages that are, we actually do all of them that are in the marketplace today. And then we started creating new products in the space really tailored towards that 55 and older demographic.

3:36 And I think that it's important to note that you guys do focus on the demographic, not the product. And you know, when I as a real estate broker look at, you know, Zillow and real estate companies, they always have pictures of young couples. And I'm happy for them. I mean, my daughter and son-in-law looking to buy a house and they look like the picture, you know, with the two kids and a stroller and the dog, but you know, a lot of you know, setting aside reverse mortgage for a second, a lot of the home market is 55 and older buyers and they have different product needs and different service needs than maybe some 24 year old high-tech guy and gal who are very online. So talk a little bit about when you say you target that niche, what does that mean to you as a company?

4:22 Yeah. No, good question. And you know, just for some context here, I've been in lending for about 24 years, 18 of which I focused on reverse mortgages. And I think that, you know, when I got in the business, there's always been this huge blue ocean dream for the reverse mortgage industry where there's this massive opportunity of seniors 55 and older at the time, 62 and older. Now it's 55 and older really what we target and that are sitting on a tremendous amount of home equity that maybe didn't save enough for retirement. But what we've seen over those years is the as the industry when I got in it, Bill, there was about 120,000 FHA reverse mortgages being done annually and just these past 12 months that dropped to 24,000. So unfortunately now I say that we've also come out with proprietary products which they don't track as easily as the FHA home equity conversion mortgage which is the traditional one you think about. But the industry has gone in the opposite direction. And so

5:33 You know you sit there and you've dedicated 18 years of your career towards this product which I think right is a phenomenal product. We're big fans. I think it solves a ton of problems,

5:45 But it's got a perception issue in the marketplace and right, wrong or indifferent. We looked at ourselves in the mirror and we said, "Look, it's out there and we've been battling it for 18 years. We want to be a full-service company where every client that we talk to, Bill, we want to make sure that we give them all their options. And you know, maybe a reverse mortgage isn't the right solution for their you know, for how long they plan on staying in the home, what they plan on doing with the home, what their outlook is for the rest of their life. And you know, we really wanted to take a more objective approach with product and say, "Hey, here's all your option. It might be a traditional home equity line of credit, might be a traditional cash out refinance or something else." we wanted to be able to have the tools to be a full-service resource and not just try to corner them into one product, especially if they didn't want it. And then in addition to that, we decided, you know, look, there's a huge opportunity here for us to create a brand new product. And that's what I'm also really excited to talk to you about today to as well.

6:58 So, I'm going to tee that up as follows. I'm a real estate broker in LA. And I look at and I had previously been an originator and I done a couple reverse mortgages, what I call the 1.0 reverse mortgages. And at that time realized, you know, it was way more complicated than I was capable of as an originator doing well in addition to the rest of my business. I felt like you need to niche it and I didn't wasn't ready to do that. But I respect it. Today as a real estate broker I look at so many homes are owned free and clear that they haven't even looked at a reverse mortgage that if one in 10 did and then so many people now you know the older group buying for cash maybe selling a house in California for 2 million buying in Tennessee or Texas or Arizona for a million dollars pocketing a lot of the difference or investing the difference that don't even look at don't even consider reverse mortgage as an alternative that if one in 10 of those people did together, we would have about 10 times the business as reverse mortgages as an industry. Now, I've been saying this for a year and a half and the numbers continue to go down. So, I'm not turning around the market. I wish I could, but it is my mission to at least get people to evaluate the options with a professional originator who does this and is honest and is going to give them the best bet. I don't want them to call the 800 number that you see on commercials in between innings of a baseball game because that's not going to give them the service they need. I meet people like on your, you know, your team, Hank Rhodess, I know, shout out Matt Allen as well. These are people I would trust my business to. I would, but everybody who has a cash purchase should, of course, 55 or older, 62 over should look at that. Everybody who has a house free and clear 62 or over, maybe 55 should look at it. And the problem is the reputation is so bad of the product that you just say reverse mortgage. And I say it and I feel like it's from the movie Young Frankenstein when they would say the name of the evil Fraer AND THE HORSE [laughter] THAT YOU SEE reverse mortgage and people going to scream. And so part of your solution, this is fascinating to

9:01 Me, was to have a product and not use the name reverse mortgage even though, okay, I'm not going to tell anybody it's reverse mortgage, but let's just be honest, it looks like one. It talks like one, it sounds like one. So talk a bit about the strategy of creating a product and more importantly the naming of the product or the branding of the product not being reverse mortgage.

9:19 Yeah. No. So good stuff. And I've seen that look right. We've done so many seminar actually I've done seminars with Hank Roads before and we've heard it all Bill as far as you know people that are against [snorts] the product. And look I honestly think a reverse mortgage is the best product in the marketplace. I really do. What mortgage can you have that you don't have to make a monthly payment on? Especially for those that are retired, you have the flexibility to make a payment if you want to. So, you could

9:50 You could get a reverse mortgage, put it in place, continue to make your mortgage payments. There's additional benefits in actually making payments towards a reverse mortgage, which I know doesn't get talked about a lot, but if you run into a difficult time or a large medical expense that you can't afford, guess what? You don't have to make a mortgage payment if you don't want to and you're not at risk of losing your home. Whereas on a traditional any other type of traditional financing, if you can't make that payment, you know, eventually, you know, several months down the road, you're at risk of losing your house. So, you know, we battled, going back to your question, we battled this perception issue where you know, my wife's dogs, aunts, uncles said, "Don't get a reverse mortgage." or somebody said it's a bad deal or a neighbor who's not a financial expert said don't get it right we had a bad experience with it and it's really unfortunate because it really could solve a lot of people's pro cash flow problems in retirement with the cost of living going up. So we set out and let me be clear this is not a it is actually not a reverse mortgage that we created. And we started serving Yeah. We started surveying customers and just hundreds and thousands of customers to see what products they like, what products are they used to. And here's what we found. Of the people we surveyed, over 70% of them have either taken out and enjoyed a home equity line of credit or would consider using a traditional home equity line of credit to tap into the equity of their home. In the same survey, only 7% have either taken out or would consider a reverse mortgage. So, we're sitting here looking at the space and we're saying, "Okay, we get it. The market's telling us we want to create a

11:54 New innovative home equity line of credit that seniors can benefit from and help improve their cash flow. So, we came out with a product called the Equity Select HELOC. It's both a first and second position home equity line of credit. And it's actually available for people 18 and older. There's no age restrictions, but here's what I'll say. It's age-based loan to value. And what that means is the older you are, similar to a reverse mortgage, the more equity you're going to qualify for. So it really starts to make real sense when somebody's 55 and older, 60 plus, right? You're going to be able to tap into more of the value of your home than you would if you're 18. It's probably not going to look as attractive for you. So okay, we want to put the product on the chassis of a home equity line of credit, but we want to give if it's not a reverse mortgage, it has to have a minimum payment, right? So, we also looked at other payment structures, and this is very similar to a credit card, right? And we're all familiar with how credit cards work where you get your statement every single month and you've got that minimum payment. And we all know if you make the minimum payment, it's probably not enough to cover the interest. So whatever you don't pay on your minimum payment gets added on to your loan balance or your credit card balance. So the next month you might have a little bit bigger of a balance.

13:23 We like that flexibility for seniors. So we created this similar payment structure as a credit card for your for your mortgage where you've got a payment as low as a 100, you know, 1% of the balance every single month. That's it. So 1% of the amounts. We always encourage them to pay more if they can, but if you've got a month where you can't make a payment or you've got a large medical expense or some other expense and you need to make that minimum payment, you can rest assured that you've got that small monthly payment. So, for instance, just to give you some make this real and tangible for your listeners, Bill, a $300,000 Equity Select home equity line of credit, the minimum payment on that for the next 40 years, we have a capped minimum payment will never exceed $391 a month. No.

14:14 So, where can you go and borrow $300,000 and you're you know for the next 40 years the bank is never going to require you to pay more than $391 a month. You can always pay more. You can pay it down and draw against it just like on a traditional HELOC. But the idea here is ultimate payment flexibility. But then we wanted to add two features that we think are really important with a product like this. Number one, we've got that capped payment. So there's no recast on a traditional HELOC. After five years, you know this, after five or 10 years, that payment goes from an interestonly payment to a principal and interest payment on a short term. So all of a sudden, clients and homeowners feel this tremendous payment shock. With Equity Select, there is no payment recast and we cap that payment. So, in that $300,000 example, $391, that's the minimum payment you'll ever be required to pay for the next 40 years because it is a 40-year term. And then the second thing that we added is nonreourse if the loan balance can grow, similar to a reverse mortgage where you're not making a payment, so the interest gets tacked onto the balance of the loan. We thought it was important to have the same feature as a reverse mortgage where it's got a nonreourse feature which means the homeowner, the heirs, the estate can never owe more on the house than what it's worth. Our only collateral is the lender is the home. So you can rest assured, hey, you know, if you sell your home for less than what the loan balance is, if it ever got to that point, which it probably won't, but if it does, you're never going to be required to pay more than what you sell it for.

15:54 You know, it of course the laws vary by state. In California, most purchase mortgages are non-recourse. You buy a house and if it goes upside down, the lender can foreclose. You don't owe them anything. U most refinances actually are also processed as non-recourse in California because they're doing a mortgage deed to trust and the lender would rather foreclose quickly and forgo that option. But there is the risk that and this happened in 20089 when houses were way upside down that if they bought the house back and you were 100,000 short they would put a lean on you personally and it really destroyed people's credits force bankruptcies and so I think but more in this case it's more about the fear of what a liability is and you kind of take that off the table. So I think that's fantastic. I think that you know the most common misperceptions of earth mortgages and I'm sure it's true of your product as well is that the bank's going to take the property back, right? That's their They're just lending me the money short-term so I can get it back. You're not in the business of foreclosing, are you? I mean, you don't have a real estate department. You're not packaging these properties up to sell or to rent out or anything, are you?

16:53 Yeah. Look, that's that's the last thing we would ever want, right? And you know, we are you know, a company that wants a good reputation. And when you deal with seniors, it's a protected class. So, you want to make sure that you're a company that's doing good, right, and doing the right thing by your customers. And the last thing we would ever want to risk is headline risk, right? Where all of the sudden we have displaced homeowners because of a product. We do everything to avoid that, including putting those safety measures on the loan product, the nonre no recast. We want to allow homeowners, especially those that are 55 and older, to stay and age in place because most of them want to, right? And there's a bunch of different reasons that I mean, I know that's not what this one is about, but like in California, you've got capital gains tax, you've got other things to really consider. If you're, you know, if you're trying to downsize or sell your home or should I stay and maybe remodel, you know, we've got a lot of clients that end up doing that. Just recently in the Bay Area

18:09 Actually Hank who you had [snorts] on here he deals with this every day where you know you go visit and somebody's got a you know two $2.5 million home they've never remodeled it and you know they're considering selling it but they would get a huge capital gains tax hit and with these types of products reverse mortgage equity select we really want to give them the ability to fix up the house like they want, remodel it. And really age, we call it age in place, which I'm sure you've heard that term before.

18:45 Yeah. I mean, I think I am actually. So, turns out [laughter] it's a place, but that's another story. And is this product available for purchase as well?

18:55 Yeah. So, the timing of this is unique. We actually just rolled out the ability to use Equity Select to purchase a home yesterday, Bill, believe it or not. So,

19:06 You told it was coming when I spoke to you a couple weeks ago, I think, or last week. So, I knew this is this is going to be good. So, exclusive here on the Reverse Mortgage Podcast. The Equity Select product can be used for purchase mortgages as well.

19:21 You got it. You got it. Yeah. Yeah. Very exciting. You know, we've we also do we wholesale this product, too. And you know, all the brokers and loan officers and everybody that have seen this loan, not only are they excited because they can go out and market, hey, get a $300,000 home equity line of credit and never have to pay more than $391 a month for 40 years. That's a great marketable product. But they've all asked about, hey, can I use this to help somebody purchase a [snorts] home? And you absolutely can now, which is pretty exciting. So talk a bit about doing is the wholesale under the HighTechLending brand or is it because American senior is a retail only channel. Correct.

20:04 Yeah. So retail we have branches and our call center are American Senior Lending. We used to be the wholesale department used to be wholes American Senior Lending wholesale as well, but we actually just finished rebranding it under the HighTechLending brand

20:25 Because it's not, you know, just for seniors. Equity Select, you know, we have we just did one for a 39-year-old, right? So if somebody has equity,

20:37 You know, this product could be a good solution for them. A really flexible option for talk now VP of sales. So I imagine you handle both the wholesale and the retail channels for yourselves. Talk a bit about as a company how you balance that. You know I've worked with companies that were wholesale focused and I was in the retail side always. I've worked companies are more balanced. I've been an executive at a company where we had to balance that. Talk a bit about kind of the competing interests or competing challenges and how you balance that to be effective for your company.

21:07 So me personally you mean? Yeah. I mean, well, obviously you're part of the executive team. I imagine you're So, how does a company how does your company seek to both, you know, work the wholesale channel and the retail and make sure it works for both? I mean, that's a I know it's a challenge. I've been in that. I've been in that seat before myself, actually. So, talk a bit about how you do that and how you how your originators on the retail side should feel like you're there for them 100%. And then your wholesale clients as well need to feel that you're going to give them the good service and the support they deserve as well.

21:38 Yeah. No, that's a really good question. And I start off by I'll start off by saying I had a lot of hair when I started. [laughter] no. Look, it's you know, and I don't say this because it's the right thing to say. I say it because it's true. It we've got great people, Bill, and it's you know, you're only as effective as the people around you. And I believe that and I'm really blessed to have some people way smarter than I am at what they do surrounding me. And that's what's been great about building this company is we've attracted tremendous talent. And that's up and down. That's from you know the janitor to the executive to the president of the company. We have built and this is something I'm really proud of Bill I we talk about this all the time and one of my thing is I don't care what your title is in the organization if I have this analogy if the trash is full take it out right doesn't matter what the job is

22:51 If you can find people that are no matter what their role is are willing to jump in and if they see a problem try to fix it if they see something needs to get done they do it and we're all rowing the vote in the same direction. And sometimes that can be challenging, right? Because you're dealing with

23:09 You're dealing with people and money and money and you've got different personalities and you got and but I'm really proud to say that man, we have we have really been in a lot of ways lucky to attract really good people that are passionate about our vision and our mission. And that really is to help seniors and make sure that they're well informed. I mean, look, this is financing and [snorts] no matter how you slice it's debt and debt can be a bad thing. But it also can be leveraged and give you freedom as well. And it's very important to do and make sure that you've got people that are empathetic to that, right? And not chasing a dollar. They're truly trying to help. And at the end of the day, and I know I keep using these lines, but your value as a company, your value as a professional is directly related to the value of the problem you can solve.

24:22 Yes. Right? The bigger the problem I can solve, the bigger the problem our company can solve, the more valuable we naturally become.

24:32 Right? So, we believe there's a very large problem with the rising cost of living. We think there's a solution. There's a tremendous amount of home equity out there that can help senior homeowners live comfortably and not eat beans and rice every day and actually do some of the things that they want to do and have the freedom to do so. And our job is to release that equity to them responsibly and show them all their options.

25:01 How do you attract great people to a company? I mean, that's got to be one of the main functions of any of any great company. I don't know if that falls in your you have HR people handle that but I imagine you must be involved in hiring the people that you work with directly. What's that look like?

25:18 Yeah. No, good question. So a lot of most I'll say this, most of the people that we've hired are referrals from internal employees, right? Recommendations of internal employees.

25:31 I found over the years if somebody's willing to refer somebody, they're putting their name on it in a way, right? And if it's a if it's a good employee that you know and you trust, there's a good chance that [snorts] you're going to trust that new employee if you hire them. As long as they're skilled and they got the skills that you're looking for. Our HR director is phenomenal. Her name's Linda and she is just she's the best in the business as far as I'm concerned and she does a very good job reaching out internally first. [clears throat] we always look to look internally first, especially if it's, you know, an opportunity that somebody internally wants to look at to take a position or if they have somebody that they'd like to refer that they feel would be a good fit for that role. And then externally, she does in her department, they do a lot of screening, right? And a lot of that screening u obviously skill and licensing and all of that is very important that comes first. But it's personality. So she kind of

26:40 She's kind of our first line of defense. And then and then it filters through and it'll meet with the hiring manager and ultimately I'll meet with them as well. At least on the sales side. But I feel like we've that's a pretty good recipe. A and I would I would venture to say over 80 85% of the people we end up hiring are either from internal or an internal referral. In the real estate industry where I work, some of the biggest stories are consolidation of these major monopolies, buying business and then using their heft to take, you know, large swats of business, Zillow and Rocket by Red Fin and Compass, you know, buying up companies and last week Rio buying ReMax. And I agents, I know agents really worried about that. Oh my gosh, you know, this is going to cause me problems. I feel like, well, if you if you think that's your competition, then it is going to cause you a problem. I look at that as they're just training all the buyers agents for my listings because my clients are still going to pick me based on what I do as long as I do it. In the mortgage industry, you the same challenges. I think you have Zillow, you know, trying to get in the mortgage business because they are just a you can't speak about them, but I can. They're just a monopoly that just has an insatable appetite for destruction. And you have Rocket, same thing. Buying Red Fin, offering discounts to people who use Red Fin on the hidden listings, the whole thing is just complete nonsense, I think. How do you keep the clarity and how do you keep your salespeople clear on none that really matters? If we service a individual person who needs help with their equity, we win. And if we don't, we lose. I think it's as simple as that.

28:19 Yeah. Yeah. Look, it starts with the people that you have on your team and you because of that you build a reputation and you build the right processes, right? You build the right you know, you got to you got to think of the whole client experience from the first person that they interact with the organization. If they call into the organization, make sure that whoever's answering the phone does it with a smile on their face, right? And you're right, it is a challenge, right? Because obviously we want to grow and you want to scale as a company. You want to be profitable. We are a for-profit company, right? But you're building a reputation and there's so many more valuable things you get off out of being remarkable for your clients,

29:16 Right? If somebody if somebody experiences HighTechLending or American Senior Lending, if a client does and they have a remarkable experience, they're going to tell everybody. And I know that because I see it every single day. And they'll tell them about their experience. If they have a bad experience, they're going to shout it from the mountain tops.

29:37 Yes. Right. You're going to get reviews. You're going to get and that ripple effect is actually way worse and bigger unfortunately than if it was a good interaction. So I think it's important you know in my role I think it's very important that you're always mindful of hearing from consumers, right? So we get surveys from you know on the wholesale side from our clients there are mortgage brokers and loan officers. We do surveys on every single funded transaction to and we go through each area processing underwriting pricing everything like how was that experience? How was your experience with your account executive? We do the same for our customers, right? We want to hear back from them because if there's a problem, we want to fix it right away because we understand how important it is for that to be a smooth process. It can be stressful, right, borrowing that much money or, you know, you've worked your whole life to pay off your home, now you're considering accessing that equity

30:46 With debt. I get that it can be stressful and we want the person and the people that you're working with to be a remarkable experience. So, I hope that's just not too broad, but we no

30:58 We definitely, you know, it's really important to us to hear that feedback from customers. That's what makes us better every single day. You know, it's funny when I interview attorneys, the best attorneys, I've talked to some really good ones. They all say the same thing that the business development is number one is do good work. Like you do good work then business kind of comes to you more easily and if you don't do good work you're forever working on overcoming that to that my fantasy if I ever was hired by high-tech to run the company replace David or you and I'm in charge of the place my fancy reverse mortgage company probably not with you guys with one of the other ones that are that are not as good service would be to tell the originator that come pick up your check but bring with me bring with it proof truth you've contacted every client you did a loan for in the last year and every check you have to update that because it just amazes me the industry shooting itself in the foot when the person who passed and we say oh it's great mortgage because it's nonreourse it's a great mortgage because we've prepared you whatever equity you needed was taken out in time and yet that process is so poorly handled that's why I launched this podcast to get in touch with first mortgage originators to say let me help them through that probate process Let's get them the right advice before they before they even get there. Let's get them into a trust, do some estate plan to avoid the probate problems. We should be at the forefront of that. And I feel like at a minimum, even the heck loan requires, I think, the customer once a year to fill out a form.

32:30 Why not require the originator to do that? Now, I know that's presumptuous and each originator has their own book of business, but walk me off the ledge there. Why should I not implement that policy if I replaced you or replace David in your company? [snorts] well, there's a there's a few different directions I want to go here. One, you know, I'll fall on the sword there. I need to make that a priority in my own organization, right? Because I agree with you, Bill, that's a that's a that's a big issue and it needs to be solved. U, you talked about Hank Rhodess and I'm going to do a shameless plug here. Hank works tirelessly on solving that issue that problem

33:14 As you know. We actually did a full client training. You there's a there's a website called www.endofreverse.com and you will see on there a full training for consumers for heirs for reverse mortgages that Hank and I it's a whole video [snorts] series. There it is. Yep. It's a whole video series for the heirs in the estate and we went out and did seminars about this very issue because it's a problem. People are not prepared for what happens at the end when a homeowner passes away and the estate doesn't know what to do. And we provide this resource to help homeowners, [snorts] heirs, and the estate make that and we work with their servicing company that has their reverse mortgage specifically to make that a smoother process because look, number one, and I and I'll share this too, Bill. We this is a big this is a big deal. One of the biggest problems is homeowners that aren't in a trust.

34:22 Yes. Right. Particularly in California, it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. And it is in other states, too. But I agree with you. I'm in California, too. It is a nightmare. We anybody that does a transaction with us, we give a free trust and estate plan to I don't know if Hank mentioned that or not.

34:41 You know, he may have, you know, I tell agents all the time. Just because you tell me something, you know, I'm busy and at the moment I'm thinking about something else. Tell me like seven or 10 times. I'll finally figure it out. I didn't that may be he may have told me and I certainly don't remember it and would and would be promoting it and I'd be giving you flowers for that on this call but I don't have that information in my fingertips. Tell me about that. How's that work?

35:02 So you know how expensive it can be, [clears throat] right? It can be expensive. This problem at that we were talking about at the end of a reverse mortgage, most of it can be solved immediately if the if the homeowner, the borrower is has the home in their trust. Yes.

35:22 And has a trust. Yes. A lot of originators I [snorts] I'm just going to say they just want the loan to fund, right? They get paid, they're on commission. Again, it goes back to we want to do good by doing good, right? We want to make sure that we're looking at the whole picture for the client and it's critical that they are in a trust. So much so that we partnered with you've probably seen their commercials, trust and will.

35:49 For sure. They've been my other podcast. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Large company. We pay for the homeowner to get a trust. So, at the end of the transaction, we help them through that process. At the end of the transaction, we give them a code, they can go in. We also have like here in California, we have a specific attorney that if somebody wants more of that face-to-face more intimate approach, we have somebody that we use here locally in California

36:17 That we will we will pay for the trust and that's a full estate plan. That's not just Yeah. Yeah. Just a cookie cutter, right? And so we think it's very important for somebody, you know, my father passed away a year and a half ago and he

36:35 He took the [clears throat] time to do all of that, the trust, he made sure everything was set up for the final. That was the biggest blessing he could have given his family, right? Made things so much easier for us. And like you said, we see homeowners at the end of a reverse mortgage, the estates having to go through probate. They don't know even where to start, what to do. They don't know the timelines. They're not dealing with this every day like we are. So for us, it's making sure that they have that trust. So look, we're on a mission, Bill. Honestly, I hope I hope this comes across on this your podcast here. A reverse mortgage should not just be a transaction, right? You want to be working with somebody that's looking at the entire picture and setting the estate and the homeowner up for success long term, not just a short-term solution. That's why we created products like Equity Select. That's why we offer a free trust for every transaction that we do. We think it's very important that the entire experience, not just the transaction, but we want the heirs to have a good experience at the end of reverse mortgage because

37:46 I believe what you mentioned, this big problem, that's the biggest issue with the perception issue. 100%. The heirs have a big issue at the end. They're having a hard time figuring it all out and then they go tell 10 people that don't get a reverse mortgage. My mom had one and it was a nightmare at the end of a reverse mortgage. We want to avoid that at all costs. Yeah. And that's why we add these extra services.

38:10 Well, I'm going to I'm going to tout this. I mean, I'm surprised I didn't know this because I've been talking about this and confronting managers. I try to be polite about, but I'm losing patience because when you told me the statistics of the drop of the mortgages, we're going the wrong way. We need to go the right way. And now perhaps the stats don't fully appreciate I guess the private mortgage private products and hopefully your private product will be one of those that's off the radar but will help people quite a bit. So look I got a little over time. You've been very generous. I really appreciate Eric Ellsworth is the senior vice president of sales at HighTechLending. One of the national lender that does a full range of programs both forward stamp mortgages and reverse. And they had the division that we've had other guests on our podcast, American Senior Lending. Shout out [clears throat] to Hank Rhodess and I think also Matt I'm blank but anyhow we've had other people on as well.

39:06 Phenomenal I'm sorry Matt Allen. Matt Allen definitely [clears throat] and phenomenal that you guys do this. I just want to throw some flowers on this and say this is what companies do who are really focusing on being a service to customers rather than just a commission check. I just am so excited to hear for it. You know, Eric, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Congratulations on the new product, the great service you have and all the great originators you have. And thank you for being on the podcast today.

39:30 Hey, thanks for having me, Bill. And for [clears throat] the rest of this Reverse Mortgage Podcast, we usually have originators. So, today we had one of those who's one of us. We had a manager who actually licensed as an originator. Obviously, very focused on helping us with our customers and phenomenal product, the end of reverse mortgage. I'm going to talk about that in future podcasts. If you like this, please let me know. Don't like it, give me some comments. Reach out if I can help in any way. Bill pro at Bill Gross probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.