Reverse Mortgage as an Estate Planning Tool, with Brady Mullen

0:03 So, a reverse mortgage in my book as a professional in the business for decades is really like one of the most important tools in your toolbox. Now, true disclosure, I really use tools. I have a son-in-law who hangs pictures for me if I need something or I hire a guy on Fiverr to help me. But the idea is that financial advisor, if you're going to really look at somebody's holistic package, how do we help somebody get to where they want to go or from A to B in a certain plan? There's all kinds of tools you can use stocks, bonds, and fancier products. And one of the tools and toolbox that's very underutilized, which is why I launched this podcast is reverse mortgage. Really excited to have here somebody who's had a career in financial advising as a financial adviser. He now is at the corporate office of one of the largest reverse mortgage lenders in the country and one of the best for my money, CrossCountry Mortgage. Brady Mullen, thank you Brady for joining us today.

0:54 Thanks, Bill. Good to be here. So, what's your official title at CrossCountry? Oh, it's some business development. It's what they call people that they don't know what to call them. It's like business development manager or something like that. Yeah.

1:05 I love it because within the within the corporate office is a big deal, but the rest of us like whatever. He's a mucky muck of some sort. Whatever he is. I didn't really. So, let so I know you had a career and we'll get to a little bit to your story as a financial adviser. Where do you see the unique opportunity for reverse mortgages to fit into a financial advisor's toolkit to help them be more successful at their business?

1:29 Well, it's kind of a progression. It was for me. So, at first, you know, probably like most financial advisors, I'm kind of open-minded until I hear more about it. And so, when I remember hearing about reverse mortgages, I was first exposed to it when I was in a CE class. It was sponsored by some reverse mortgage originator, and it was a CE class about long-term care, if I remember right. And he just kind of told me what it about it and I was like, "Huh, you know, I've heard of those, but that sounds different than what I remember. I should look into that." And it still just kind of got back burnered in my mind. And I remember it just kind of it just wasn't urgent at the time, but I remember thinking, "That's different." And I referred a couple clients who I thought could have used it. And I was kind of where a lot of financial advisers are where we hear people say, "Well, I can see how that would be the right fit in the right scenario. I can see, you know, it's not right for everybody, but I could see it fitting that scenario." And that's where I was for a while. And then gosh, you know, I became more and more educated about it and started to understand it more and more. And this is while I was still a financial adviser. I wasn't working for CrossCountry at the time. I was running a practice. And I got to the point where I was like, "Wow, all you're doing with this is turning an asset that's illiquid into an asset that's liquid." And all things equal, that's just a good thing. There's nothing. There's I got to the point where I thought, well, unless you're planning on leaving the home soon, in which case you wouldn't want to pay the cost of any kind of refinance, you know, traditional or reverse or otherwise. But I thought to myself, why would anybody choose to have an asset that could be liquid illiquid? That doesn't make any sense.

2:53 Right. Right. And so there's a number of reasons why. Now, I'm a probate and estate planning real estate broker. So I deal with the, oh, we didn't have any liquidity. We need some, we have to sell a piece of property. Whereas had they had a reverse mortgage at least they could have but with the excess usage or take mortgage put the money into liquid assets they would at least have those assets available. So I'm kind of the after we didn't plan ahead of time to have enough liquid assets case. As a financial adviser your job is to prepare. So let's talk about some of the cases where somebody might need liquid assets that are unexpected. What are what are examples where somebody all of a sudden needs to have access to liquid assets they didn't plan on before? But what are the common cases?

3:37 Yeah. Like pick a pick a scenario long, you know, earlier than expected death and you lose, you know, half a social security in retirement or long-term care needs or a kid with special needs or you just you don't have kids or your kids are independent financially and you want to just spend some of the wealth that you've spent a lifetime building up. One of the one of the major downsides of real estate as an asset in general is that it's illiquid, relatively illiquid, right? You can buy or sell real estate, but it takes a lot of time, takes a lot of money, and you can't sell parts of it, right? So, if you want if you want $10,000 worth of some real estate that you own, whether you live there or whether it's an investment, that's tricky to access because you can't sell $10,000 worth of real estate. And so, the way they make that liquid, is through lines of credit against that against that property. And the one the one knee-jerk reaction that a lot of people get, financial advisors included, and I was in the same boat until it kind of dawned on me is that well, they'll say, "Yeah, you can get access to the value there, but you're paying interest on anything you pull out." And the more I thought about that, I thought, well, yeah, but you still control the asset. So like life insurance policies are built this way fundamentally inside internal in a permanently life in a permanent life insurance policy. You don't distribute the asset because it's tax efficient to leave it there. You borrow against it. But because you've you still own the asset on your balance sheet and you borrow against it, your balance sheet doesn't care that you did that. It's as if you sold some of the asset and you no longer have access to its future growth.

5:02 But because you didn't sell it and you do own its future growth, the fact that interest is accruing on the line of credit is okay. It's the equivalent fundamentally of selling a portion of the house piece by piece, which is brilliant. Like it cuts it makes one of the worst attributes of real estate ownership which is illiquidity. There's lots of good things about real estate ownership by the way, but that's probably its weakest link and it just takes that off the table because now that the equity or at least a portion of it's not 100% but a portion of that equity is completely liquid and you can use it peace meal.

5:34 And even that portion if you could sell it, you'd have to pay taxes on it typically. And with the reverse mortgage, you don't pay taxes when you borrow the money out. You only borrow you only pay taxes when you sell the property.

5:44 Yeah. Or you avoid it altogether if you pass away and your kids get the step up in basis and all that good stuff. Like so what's funny is wealthy families have been using this type of strategy for like hundreds of years. It's not a new idea. It's just had a hard time making its way down into middle class households because people have been taught to be completely fearful of debt. And what they don't realize is when wealthy families when they want to raise capital, they don't always do it this way, but it's one of the tools at their disposal is rather than selling a portion of the business that they built or a portion of their real estate or something, they borrow against it and all hold on to it. And they do that for two reasons. One is the most obvious one is that it's significantly more tax effective to do that. And the other reason is in many cases those assets for wealthy families aren't liquid, right? It might be a restaurant that they've built up over the years and they don't want to sell a portion of it and give up control or pay the taxes. So like Elon Musk, you know, not to go down a political route because he's kind of a lightning rod for political conversations lately, but when he bought Twitter, he didn't sell Tesla stock to do it. He borrowed the money

6:47 Against his Tesla stock. Sorry, he borrowed against his Tesla stock. Yeah. Like because that's a that's a game that they've been playing for years and it's a legitimate way to use the money. You're making something that's illiquid or something you don't want to give up control of, you're making it liquid by borrowing against it. And it has tax ramifications in a good way.

7:04 Famously here in LA, we have a family that, you know, the bad news is the good news is the value of the asset went up so much the Los Angeles Lakers that when the owner passed and he had I think three siblings or three kids to divide it to and I think it's a fourth heir as well. You know, to divide it in four pieces is difficult. How much cash do you have? And it went up so much to the valuation being $10 billion to give three kids each $2.5 billion. That's a hard loan to get. You can't walk into BFA or Wells Fargo get that. And there's a case there's no reverse mortgage there. But that shows the challenge. Now they sell the asset to pay it out. And in real estate often times families find they need to they have one that needs to get paid out. Well, the reverse mortgage can give the liquid assets to get the process going before they pass even and that creates some liquidity, you know. So talk a bit when you when you as a professional I know your job is to develop relations with through CrossCountry reverse mortgage department are they signing on as affiliates or are they signing on to refer business to your professionals? What's the relationship between a financial adviser and CrossCountry?

8:09 Well the way I think of it like financial advisers are what people think of their financial adviser as is sort of like a CFO for a household. At least that's the ideal relationship that a financial adviser wants with his or her clients. And I think to myself, like the CFOs that I know, they manage both sides of the balance sheet, not just the assets, right? Clearly the real estate choices that you and I make as adults and husbands and fathers, I mean, I don't know what your family situation is, but like we have to make real estate decisions because we have to have shelter. And these have huge a huge financial impact on our lives. And yet a lot of financial advisers don't really talk much about that. Sometimes it's for compliance reasons. Sometimes because they haven't been trained, sometimes both. And I'm not saying that there's some evil conspiracy where, you know, trying to keep those industries separate, but they're separate. And so what I'm what I'm trying to do with our team is to help us be a resource for financial advisers in because financial advisers need relationships with people that can handle the other side of the balance sheet, the liability side of the balance sheet, because that's hugely important for people. We're talking about six and sometimes seven figure financial tools that financial advisors have a little bit of a of a minefield to walk through to talk about compliantly with their clients in a lot of cases, but they need those resources. Their clients need those resources for their financial health. And we're trying to build relationships to help them have access to those tools and the knowledge how to implement them and integrate them into the financial plan in general. And when they don't have liquidity, they have to pay a tremendous penalty of some sort, excess taxes or selling at a discount when they otherwise wouldn't want to versus when they have liquidity. I'm in a large estate right now I'm working with and you know, fortunately we have about $40 million of liquid assets. And there's a problem on a loan that was called due because the deedent passed and I guess there's a provision that allows banks to call loans due. I didn't realize this in commercial loans because he guaranteed it. He's passed even though his assets are still there. And fortunately for us, you know, the administrator said, "Fine, I'll just pay it off. I've got an extra couple million

10:11 Dollars in this account. We'll just pay it off. We don't need the loan that bad." All a sudden, the bank said, "Whoa. We'll refinance it. Well, you know, we want to work with you." No,

10:20 That Yeah. Yeah. No, we'll just write a check. Thank you. It'll be gone with you. But in many cases, the opposite. If you if the opposite was true, and there's a time when everything was tied up in this estate that, you know, what do we do in order to raise a million dollars? Well, we sell a $2 million property and hope we get 1.9 million on a quick sale price because we need the money right away. We can't fully market it and wait to get a $2 million price. Maybe if you have to close in 30 days or something like that. So, that's where these things come into play. So, let's talk a bit about how do you how do you contact and develop relationships or is a company creating relationships and you're nurturing the relationship? What's your role from the advisers that you work with on a on a day-to-day basis? What's that look like? Well, we typically offer we typically meet financial advisors through offering CE. And the way we do that is we just lead a discussion about here's how this works. And it's a financial tool that your clients are bound to ask you about. It's getting more and more popular. And a lot of the thought leadership in the financial planning world is starting to tell financial advisors, you know, in their publications. I'm talking about like Dr. Wade Fowl and Barry Saxs and Jamie Hopkins. Like that's a they're the thought leaders in that space. They're telling financial advisers, this is something you should probably understand because you can't just ignore the value of somebody's home in their financial plan. And if you're calling yourself a financial planner, that's a big asset. You can't just ignore that,

11:33 Right? And so the, you know, the way I see it is financial advisers over the next 10 years are going to have relationships with someone that can do reverse mortgages. And, you know, we want to be the ones that are helping them connect those dots earlier than later because a lot of people's, you know, financial well-being is at stake. So, we do we do a lot of those presentations through CE classes where I go through or some of our we have other I'm not the only one that does them, but we have a group of us that do these CE classes and we just kind of explain here's how it works. Here are the upsides, here's the downsides, here's the costs, here are the limitations. And the main point that I try to make in this whole conversation and I've mentioned it before because it's really quite simple. You're just making the equity liquid and the fact that it attributes or that it excuse me the fact that it acrus interest is normal because you still own the asset and so that's an okay thing wealthy families have been doing this for generations and generations and you know what financial asset can you imagine that you would choose to be illiquid over liquid you think if let's say you have money at the bank so sometimes we'll do we'll talk about this and people will say yeah but I don't want to spend my home equity And I think to myself, well, that's not really the point. Like, you may need to, A, or B, maybe you don't ever need to, but can you imagine if you went to the bank and you needed your savings and you didn't really want to spend your savings, but you ended up needing to, and the bank said, "Oh, sorry, that's not liquid." Like, that's not acceptable with any kind of wealth when we have the ability to make it liquid, to keep it illiquid.

13:01 That doesn't make any sense. You know, a classic case. Also, I just experienced a client who mom is a widow and getting on and lives in LA. Kids live in Las Vegas. They want to move mom to a care facility in Las Vegas market. So, they take their time getting the house on the market. They move mom to their house temporarily thinking they'll clean up the house and sell it. And along with 15 other neighbor 15,000 neighbors, the house burns down and they owed the they owned the property free and clear. In their mind, it was worth at least $2 million and they could sell it easily because it was a hot market in the Palisades. Well, it's so hot it burned up. A B you know the insurance is dragging on to pay the full claim. They're helping they're advancing quickly funds for emergency situations and living but not for settlements. The settlements are well below market and now these prices are dropping in value. And so had they had a reverse mortgage for $500,000, they could just write the check and pull the money out. Who imagined that would happen? Nobody. But isn't that the job of the adviser to prepare for the unforeseen possibilities? And now they're sitting there saying, "When how we get a hold of mom's money? It's going to be who knows 6 months, a year. I mean, nobody really knows the answer to that question." And so that's a case where like you said, it's not that you need the money. Is that you need to know that you have the access to money in case something comes up you never imagine. And that's why we have, you know, those kind of unimagined situations.

14:29 Yeah. When people talk about the Pardon me, Bill, go ahead. No, that's when people talk about a reverse mortgage costing, you know, more money than a traditional mortgage, that's usually true, right? There's that insurance policy that you have to pay for. Depending on the type of reverse mortgage, there's a couple of different types, but the most common one, the HECM, the FHA insured mortgage, there's an extra cost to that when you when you get it. And that is one of the main reasons. So my brother is a CPA. He and I wrote a book about reverse mortgages. And we literally call the book reverse mortgages the financial ugly duckling

14:58 Because people are so tempted to compare it to something that they're familiar with that they understand and that they know. And yet it really deserves to be it really deserves to be to be analyzed on its own merits by itself because it is a unique financial tool. So like the feature that you're talking about where you have this line of credit on your home and something happens to it or you need access to it or you just need temporary access. You need some funds, you can take it in and pay it back. Like it's this open-ended line of credit where you can if you pay it down, you can rebarorrow that money back if you want to. It's a really beautiful financial tool. And if you're if you're expecting that kind of tool to do the to cost differently than a traditional mortgage, well, you're right. It doesn't it isn't a traditional mortgage. It does something completely different. And the fact that it's insured and guaranteed regardless of the value of the house, your line of credit is still growing, which is something we haven't even mentioned now, but people who are listening to this podcast probably know that it's almost to when I when I do the presentation most of the time, there comes a point in the presentation where people's alarms start going off in the back of their head, which is the too good to be true alarm that we all have. And it's like, how does this financial tool possibly do that? And the answer is, well, it's that insurance policy that makes all of this possible. So, yes, it costs some money to have that in place, but it does something that no other mortgages will do.

16:10 I think of the and I'm not selling the mortgage. I don't I'm not an originator. I'm just a mortgage real estate broker who works with mortgage originators and wish more of my customers had this product or thought about this product. I think everybody who buys a house and owns a free and clear should get the line of credit the HECM line of credit on their property if not advanced money. I think of this mortgage as like a Swiss Army knife. A Swiss Army knife is not a very good knife. I have other knives that are much better for various purposes. I have a steak knife. I have a, you know, a cutting knife for a pocket knife for defense purposes. It's not a very good screwdriver. It has a Phillips head, a flathead, a this, a that. It's a great Swiss Army knife because in a small package, it has all these things. And I think the reverse mortgage is the same way. It's not a great forward mortgage. It's not a great line of credit in of itself. Is not a great it's a great multiple tool that if you make it fit for your needs can be the best tool or not and you need to evaluate that I think and this is the thing I was I'm leading all this up to which is you mentioned a couple times you know the reputation of the product I was involved with this product when it first came out I call it reverse mortgage 1.0 know when there was a lot of dishonesty and a lot of wild things done and that caused the product to be highly regulated when what's now I call reverse mortgage 2 I think unfortunately still suffers from the stench of the first time around financial planners and financial advisers and attorneys and accounts tend to be a little older and remember that and I think also the stench of servicing issues now I've only interview originators from who are great originators and they take care of the customers ers after they close their mortgage. Those people go to on to the phone service bureaus often have bad experiences because those companies don't have good service. That's why they have to advertise on television. And I would say, let's let me introduce you to a great mortgage origin. He'll take care of you. So talk a little bit. You must get push back from people who don't know why they know it's bad, but they know it's bad. And I would say it's either the stink of the first product or it's the stink of the current servicing. And then how do you address that?

18:13 I actually think it's something else, Bill. Oh, I think we often attribute it to that and I think I actually think our industry does that in a it's a mistake to do that. So like the Yes, there have been unscrupulous easy for me to say lenders and you could say that about any industry, right? There's unscrupulous attorneys and accountants and everything.

18:33 Not Realtors®, every other industry though. Yes. Yeah. Except for Realtors® of course. So what I what I think is the foundation of all the misunderstanding and all the negative stigma and it's not that it hasn't been adjusted over time. Things have been updated and that's great. But I think the biggest source of the confusion and the stigma is that it creates an emotionally misleading it's got an emotionally misleading financial concept at its core,

18:58 Which is which is borrowing the money. But the way that I address this is think about so let's say you've got a family that wants to go on a 50th wedding anniversary, right? We've got this big extended family. Mom and dad want to pay for the whole trip and they and let's say in this example they can afford it. So there isn't a question of unaffordability. They've got some assets that they're fined and they decide to budget $50,000 for this big trip with plane tickets and cruise tickets and what they're going to celebrate this big 50th wedding anniversary party. If they sell $50,000 worth their worth of their investments to pay for that party and let's say that account went from 500,000 down to 450, right? 400 or $50,000 less. If that account doubles over the next 10 years, is anybody who thinks this through not understanding that they are $100,000 less wealthy 10 years from now because they went on that trip 10 years ago and spent $50,000.

19:49 That is that's clear. Yeah. If it would double in that amount of time, then they are they are $100,000 less wealthy because they did that. And nobody faults them for doing that. That's just how money works, by the way. That's how if you spent, you know, $10 on lunch today or $20 on lunch today, that's $40 you won't have sometime in the future if you had invested it. But is anybody really saying don't ever go out to lunch? No. We all understand that money works that way and we have to balance the value of the present and the future and all that stuff. But for some reason, if they would have used a reverse mortgage to go on that vacation, instead of the $50,000 out of their account, then their account would have remained at 500. It would have grown to a million. It would have doubled. But they would owe on their reverse mortgage instead of at 50. They borrowed it at $50,000. 10 years later they owe $100,000. And that feels ugly because they forget that it's a part of a bigger picture because I'm still like at the wealth at the end of that period is still $900,000 any way you calculate it. You either have a million dollar on your assets and $100,000 on your liabilities or you have $900,000 worth of assets and no liabilities. It's the same amount of wealth, but there's no statement on my portfolio. If I let's say it doubled from 450 to 900 because I used that for the vacation. There's no there's nothing on the statement that says, "Hey Brady, remember that trip you took 10 years ago that was $50,000? Do you realize your account would be a million dollar if you hadn't done that?

21:08 I mean, I know that's true, but I don't have to face it all the time, right? But if I see in an estate for my for my line of credit that's grown from 50 to 100,000, if I look at that in isolation, that feels ugly unless I remember that it preserved for me 10 thou or $50,000 10 years ago that is now $100,000 that I wouldn't own, which is again why wealthy families do this. It's just another strategy of where to get assets when they need them. And I think they have a little bit of an advantage besides the wealth in that they have people working for them that help them keep them help keep them a little emotionally separated from their money because seeing a liability go from 50,000 to 100,000. It's easy to look at that and say, "Holy cow, I owe $100,000 for that $50,000 trip I took 10 years ago." And it's like, well, I know that's emotionally difficult, but that's the same as if you'd spent the money 50, you know, 50 grand 10 years ago. That's hard for people to digest,

21:58 I think. Yeah. And you add to that the mistaken idea, well, if I owe the money and can't pay the mortgage, they'll take the house away from me, which is never going to happen with a reverse mortgage. As long as you pay the taxes and insurance, you know, or HOA dues or whatever else you need to pay, but the mortgage is not going to take away the house because you don't have to pay it.

22:13 Unlike a regular mortgage, you never have to pay. That's the beauty of it. You can you don't have to. Okay. So that's an interesting idea. So you have a whole different perspective on this. I never really considered. And I can't solve that one. I can solve the stench of 1.0 by talking about the changes and regulations and I can solve the lack of education by having this podcast. But what you're talking about really requires a professional to kind of explain to their customer and show them on a piece of paper, hey, this is where this is your full financial statement. All we're moving is from here to here. Either you're going to lower this by 50,000, which over time will reduce your appreciation of these assets, or you the 50,000 is going to go here and it'll be a $100,000 mortgage, but you have the $100,000 more assets here. And so it needs a professional to do that. That's

22:58 Well, if you think about it's like so selling an asset and foregoing all of its future growth is fundamentally the same thing as keeping the asset and borrowing against it. Fundamentally, that's the same thing

23:09 Except you pay taxes when you sell the asset perhaps. Yeah. And you don't when you are against it. That's the And one thing about people who are wealthy, man, they figure out how not to pay taxes. I'll never forget well, I won't get into the politics of it, but yeah, definitely wealthy people figure it out. They spend more time not paying taxes than they think they do once they're wealthy and they can use that to their advantage over and over again. It gives them a chance to do things the rest of us couldn't do.

23:31 Wow. Okay. So, let's talk about a practical level. You offer CE classes for financial advisors. Do you offer to the public? Do originators in your company set up these classes and bring you in as the talent? How what's mechanically? What does that look like?

23:46 It happens all sorts of ways. So, I do a lot of them actually that are one-on-one. In fact, I encourage our team like if you have a if you have a if you could get an hour with a financial advisor and talk about what you do and talk about how this product works, would you take that hour? And the answer is always yeah, that would be a great opportunity. So, when I do when we do CE, it isn't always to groups of 30 40 advisors. It can be, but I recommend very strongly to our originators. I say if you want to set up a C class with one adviser or maybe a small team that works together, do that. I'll zoom in, you go there in person, we'll talk about it. And by then I'm telling you, I'm not even rounding. I'm saying 100% of the time financial advisors is when they are when they invest the time to learn how this works. I don't think it's because I'm a great presenter. I think it's because once people realize how this tool really works, it's like why don't more people do that? On that.

24:42 I that's the thing that got me into this. You know, I started this whole this whole thing. This is we're filming this now in June. I started this last year in December on a file where some explained to me the reverse mortgage HECM for purchase and why you shouldn't pay cash to buy a house. If you can pay cash, why you should get the maximum purchase you can get, save those assets. And he went through the numbers and I thought, how do I not know this? I'm a real estate broker now. I don't work with buyers often. I don't work in a senior area in particular. I'm in West Los Angeles. I don't work in a vacation area like Florida where I deal with people with second homes and such or moving. I was here's the pathetic part. I was looking to buy a home in Florida. I like to move to Florida. I lived in Florida before I lived in California. I was married in Florida. But we're not going to. My wife and I have our grandkids here nearby. And so I said, "Well, what if I could buy a house there?" Call my residence for tax purposes. I'd say it would be almost free if I did that. How much can I afford to pay cash for a home when I'm keeping my current home? I can't use the equity and I still have to pay for the sec the home I have now. I wish to move my residence and my business. And so I had about $500,000 of excess money, which isn't really a lot or enough. And I was looking I was frustrated. And then I talked to a originator. I they may have been CrossCountry actually when you think about it. And they said, "Well, why don't you get a heck purchase?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said you can get a $800,000 house, get a $300,000 HECMs and a $500,000 cash where we' be $800,000 and just opens up more. And I saw that now truth is my wife's not letting me. So it's like a fantasy. I'm like imagining some girlfriend or something. But the but the idea that paying cash you can get 30% more really without any extra monthly payment. Was just and I'm a real estate broker. How do I not know this?

26:31 Now you're not in the real estate broker education piece. Your company is your company works with virtually every great real estate agent in the country. So hopefully this video will help them encourage them to go out and educate their Realtors® and

26:43 Well I do a lot of CE for Realtors® as well. Oh wow. Yeah. I mean I just my I was 20 years of financial adviser. But our presentations are typically for Realtors® and financial advisers. And I think like what you're saying and another aspect that I see is people who can afford to pay cash for the house they want. It's the house they want and they could afford to pay cash. And I would still jump in the middle and say, "No. Don't do that.

27:07 You want that liquid." And they might say, "Well, yeah, but I can just I can just get a reverse mortgage when I when I if I need it when I need it." And my response to that is, "Well, yes, but it's going to cost you more and you're going to get less if you do that." And second of all, and this is important, this is really important, and this gets overlooked by real estate agents, financial advisors, accountants all the time, is that if you buy a house with a reverse, the interest that it creates, the interest that occurs is as deductible as any other mortgage if and when you decide to pay it. Well, not when, like you, it will get paid eventually when you sell the house or when you pass away. That creates massive 1098s. And those 1098s aren't deductible if you take it as a cash out withdrawal. It's only deductible if it's used for purchase debt, right? Acquisition debt or improvement if you use it to improve the home. So, if you buy the house cash and then take the money back out later, the interest that creates isn't deductible. The IRS doesn't allow that. But if you buy the house with the reverse mortgage, that interest is deductible. And these create, we're talking about massive 1098s or like six figure 1098s that become deductions. It's insane what can be done on a financial planning and tax perspective that is just going right by financial advisers because they're not they're not typically trained on loan products. It's not their fault. There's no again I don't think there's some evil conspiracy. Somebody would twirl in his mustache, you know, trying to keep these industries separated, real estate and finance, but there's a lot of overlap here that we can use to help our clients lives if we just connect the dots and do it for them.

28:32 Well, and for real estate agents, you know, often an exit strategy is a really big deal. In my case, I also flip some properties. I have a really big one closing now. I'm gonna have a large tax liability this year because I have a good income year, a good business year, and a large, for me at least, large flip. Well, that creates a kind of a surge in taxes that, you know, had I been, you know, in Florida two years ago, I would avoid the California portion, but I saw the state portion. Well, if I had the reverse mortgage, I might use this as the year to pay down all the interest, and take the deduction on the interest this year because I don't have that interest deduction maybe other year. So, it creates some options that, you know, as you look at your finances, it just creates options. Like I said from the beginning, it's not a great knife. It's not a great flat screwdriver. It's not a great Phillips screwdriver, but it's all three in one little package on my desk. That's why it was Swiss Army knife. And I think that's why everybody should look at and just look at a reverse mortgage. And if you're financial advisor, look at the product. And I think one way to do that is obviously reach out to your cross-country mortgage reverse representative to try to set up a an appointment and or reach out to Brady directly I guess. And I guess do people reach out to you and then you refer them to a originator? Is that part of the process?

29:41 Depending on where they are and you know if they want to meet with somebody in person we've got people all over the country or yeah I just connect them with our lenders. So I don't do I don't do loan personally. I'm here in a different capacity. Well, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and talk more about that, I have I think up on the screen right now your contact information. 720285850 and your email is brad. Mullen atcccm.com for crosscountry mortgage.com. I know them. I've worked with them as a company for quite a while. I know a lot of originators there as well as management. Great company. And Brady, I'm really I'm trying to think who put us together. Somebody was nice enough to reach out and say I should reach out to you and made you available to me. So, you know, I

30:20 Love to know who that is. Yeah. I owe somebody a thank you, but in the meantime, until then, let me just thank you personally for being on today, taking time to educate us and then offering yourself to other people going forward. I really appreciate your time.

30:30 Yeah, you're welcome. And thanks for reaching out and I would highly encourage people to connect with me on LinkedIn. I try to post about three or four times a month some topic about where real estate and personal finance come together. And yet, financial advisers can't really talk about it for compliance and legal reasons. And real estate agents and lenders aren't their job isn't to see the whole picture and make financial plans for people. So, I put a lot of content out there about the importance of, you know, making the right decision from a real estate perspective and how it affects your overall finances. So, there's some I spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff and trying to make trying to make things clear.

31:04 And for Realtors®, originators who are looking for content for your blogs and for your video topics, take one of Brady's talk about link to him and there's a great source of information as well. So, thank you so much Brady. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate. It's always it's a pleasure talking to you.

31:17 My pleasure. Thanks, Bill. And for the rest of you, this is the Reverse Mortgage Podcast. We get together and every week issue a new episode with usually top reverse mortgage originators, sometimes management in this case. Really a great resource. I thought I hope you've found it helpful to teach us a little bit how to be more effective in our job serving our customers using reverse mortgage or integrating it into the rest of their package with our advisers. If I can help, please reach out. I'm Bill Gross Probate on social media. If you like this episode, like it, comment, subscribe, reach out if I can help any way. If you'd like to be interviewed or know somebody who should be, feel free to make a suggestion. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.