Reverse Mortgages Explained, with Hank Rhoads

0:02 Welcome to Reverse Mortgage Podcast. You know, the reverse mortgage is such a broad tool and has so many different applications that affects people's lives. It's always great to get a professional who understands this at a deep level rather than just an 800 answering service that's going to answer the basic questions and send you paper to read on your own. We're lucky to have today Hank Rhoads American Senior Lending who is an expert in reverse mortgages and we chatted a little bit before we started. Thanks so much for joining us today. My pleasure. Good to be here Bill. I've got to listen to a lot of your podcast recently and what great content. So it's a real thrill for me to be on your podcast. Well, likewise and we had a chance to chat a little bit before we started as well. We've talked before a couple times but in particular about something that's kind of newer in my business is working with professional fiduciaries and I know that you know, when people are on their own getting a mortgage or setting up a plan, they're not thinking about that but for me for many customers that's been the difference between a great plan on paper and a great plan that's executed. So talk a little bit about your experience working with or where you see a need for professional fiduciaries. Yeah, so I've been surprised. You know, 20 years doing reverse mortgages the last two or three years I've been particularly focused on making sure homeowners are ready for the end of their reverse mortgage and that includes things like making sure that their trust is set up, that they got the right successor trustee, that they don't have the wrong heirs named in their trusts.

1:33 And so a lot is revealed during my work with them on that and one of the things that surprised me was the percentage of homeowners that don't have the appropriate successor trustee. They don't have anybody, right? Either the wrong family members or no friend or neighbor that they're comfortable with and so they want or need a professional fiduciary and I am shocked It probably happens from my little anecdotal experience, maybe 15 or 20% of the time. So, all of a sudden in the last couple years, I've needed fiduciaries, and they're hard to find. They're very hard to

2:10 Had one. Yeah. It's hard to find that I have a good friend I talked to about years ago, and he had great related experience. He had professional management experience. He had been a commercial real estate appraiser, commercial property manager, and in many cases in California, the bulk of the assets is in real estate. And he got the license, and we did some business together. And next thing you know, he's managing a $40 million estate, and we're doing all kinds of business together. So, yeah, it is a business. If you're interested in getting into it, I'd love to talk to you about it. I have any connection other than like to encourage people to do it. In California, if you do more than one at a time, you need a license. In other states, you don't. And so, I just tell you the wide-open opportunity, I think, for people to get into this. So, you're talking about one scenario, which is designated somebody up front. And I think what happens is sometimes people designate one child or two children, you know, one primary and another secondary. And then, I often have seen this default like Bank of America's Trust Department or Wells Fargo's Trust Department. Some of those banks don't do that anymore, for example. Or worse, they do, and you're stuck working with Bank of America or Wells Fargo. And so, I think this is where attorneys have relations with professional fiduciaries and can recommend them. And I think it's something to ask your attorney if you're doing a plan, you know, who's the right person to manage this for me?

3:29 Also, let me ask you because to me as a real estate broker, my primary job is disposing of the assets on a trust, right? They're not calling me to you know, garden the property. They're asking me, you know, "Hey, we have a house we want to sell." And when it's a professional, I just find that they are much more on their game. Things move more quickly. What's it like with you? I guess the reverse mortgage is getting paid off when they're calling you, or how do you get involved with a at what stage you get involved with a professional fiduciary? Yeah, so you referenced your friend as a former appraiser. That's one of the podcasts I listened to yours recently that I really enjoyed and it confirms my need for fiduciaries, something that was missing. You know, we need a broad range of experts to support our clients if we're going to be wrap around like I know you want to be, like I want to be. And so I haven't had that. And my experience with suddenly needing fiduciaries typically you know, 80-year-old homeowner who her brother is in Florida, her older brother who's 90 and that's her fiduciary from her trust or that's her successor trustee from her trust that she made 25 years ago. And he's great at financial and he's perfect guy, she trusts him, but he's 90 and he's in Florida and she's in California.

4:52 And I'm like, okay, so who else do you have? Right. Nobody else. So situations like that have happened for me 15 or 20 times in the last 18 months where I just needed a fiduciary. The other example is well, they don't have any heirs, right? Or their nieces and nephews. And I can imagine I haven't experienced this yet except more on an anecdotal level, the difference between working with someone that's professional that has done this dozens, hundreds of times instead of a family member that's just completely and totally overwhelmed. Yeah. Yeah, in my case, my successor trustee is my daughter who today has two young kids and is pregnant with a third. And I'm thinking, if I could just say to her, "Hey, you can hire a professional to do the work for you." and for a very reasonable level, there's professionals who do this stuff. You don't have to take it on yourself. I don't even think people are aware or if you're a busy professional, you might want to hire somebody cuz that way you're delegating the work. So let's talk about more go back to basic reverse mortgage Give me a little background. I know this is something you specialize in and is your focus. How long you've been doing reverse mortgages and when did you decide to kind of make that your primary focus? So I've been doing it long enough to when I started people would say to me aren't you a little young to be doing reverse mortgages? You know what I never hear anymore? I never hear that anymore, right?

6:14 Yeah. You still look young. Yeah, so about 21 years and I'm a few years away from being able to get my own reverse mortgage and I almost know the exact date I get my reverse mortgage. My wife is 5 months younger than me and so when she turns 62 within a few days of her 62nd birthday, we'll get our reverse mortgage because you know, I know how to use a reverse mortgage. I often tell people I'm not an expert on anything. Don't ask but when it comes to reverse mortgages, there you go, right? I got you covered and so I know exactly how to use a reverse mortgage and it's adding over a million dollars of tax-free funds to my retirement plan during my lifetime in my house and that's going to be a huge benefit. I'm much more secure in the middle of night about my personal financial situation around retirement because I know I'll have that reverse mortgage on board. So from having done this for 21 years, I know I'm very conscientious. You know, I will be for myself like I am for my clients but it's a great access to remarkable housing wealth particularly in California and you know, statistically everybody knows the statistics. We're ill-prepared for funding our retirement. It's so expensive. It's getting more expensive.

7:38 We didn't save enough. We didn't invest enough. Our income isn't enough. Oh, but you have this million dollar two million dollar asset if you're in California. Hopefully, you know, it's not over encumbered. And if you understood the program and most people don't, you understand you got a great solution that probably will help you make it to 95 years old if you get the right advice if you're sophisticated if you use it the right way, it's a great tool. You know, one of the reasons I've launched this podcast in all honesty, I thought about it cuz it relates I specialize in probate real estate and more and more cases where mother father passed had a reverse mortgage kids didn't know what to do facing foreclosure and rather than just go to any attorney, you got to move like they split those cases and so I've learned how to do that and help people through that. I'm also learned how to you know, what the options are at the end or not at the end. But one of the things that struck me I was looking to buy a property in Florida and I was thinking well if I move my personal residence there's tax advantages. I used to live in Florida. Now I'm married and my wife and I live near my grandkids and so we're not going to give up our a house here in LA. Probably wouldn't sell this house, but I could buy a primary residence and make that my residence. And I was like well if how much cash do I have? Well, I only had excess cash like that I could put into that let's say $500,000.

9:00 And I was like I couldn't really afford much for $500,000. And then I talked to a reverse mortgage rep. Well, hold on I could also get a reverse mortgage and buy an $800,000 house. All of a sudden there were a lot of options. Now, I don't want to get divorced if I move to Florida I'd have to get divorced. I can't afford to move and get divorced. So we're not there yet. But my point is that here I'm a real estate agent I feel like I'm a pretty smart guy. I used to originate reverse mortgages when they first came out. And I didn't realize on a purchase of course you wouldn't pay cash of course you would get a reverse mortgage. If you're thinking of paying all cash, why would you not do that? And it just struck me how if I don't know this other people don't. And I did research and I and I found at least in my calculations about one in 10 people who could or should have a reverse mortgage have one. And so that's why I launched this was to reach out. So tell me how do we reach out to people and tell them at least consider the tool. I'm not saying everybody should get one. I'm saying anybody who's buying a house and I know for originators purchases are tougher than maybe the refinances and the timelines don't mesh up real well. But still with proper planning it can be done. Tell me what do we do to get more people to think about that tool or more real estate agents at least look at that tool to help their customers make things more affordable or buy more house and have a better life.

10:17 Yeah, that's a great share Bill and I can really connect to what you just shared. The program is underutilized because it's misunderstood. Honestly, it's too complicated. You know, I wish the program wasn't so complicated. People don't trust what they don't understand. And then there's too few professional people like if you said if you could magically access all the experts nationwide on reverse mortgages, you'd come up with a really small number. I mean expertise like I had Matt Allen on your podcast months ago. He's total expert. I'm a total expert. There's probably only a few hundred of us nationwide. And then with the complexity of the program means professional people like you and attorneys, mortgage professionals, financial advisors, they don't understand the program either. If it wasn't so and then it wasn't so complex and it's the same for the consumer. So they don't trust what they don't understand. And for me when I meet with someone to talk about reverse mortgages, it's a few hours that we spend trying to get them to understand the program, you know, in rare cases, but for the average person, sometimes there's some like brilliant people that they ask me five or 10 questions and they're good to go, right?

11:45 It would be like that for you. If you know, I know you have a background in a lot of things including reverse mortgages, but with your sophistication around real estate and lending, you and I can spend 10 minutes and you can make a decision about whether or not you want to do a reverse mortgage. But that's not normal. I'm typically meeting with women that you know, my average client 70, 80 year old woman, single or maybe she's connected to a man or married, but it's a process. And so there's not enough professionals that have been exposed to this enough. How many different podcasts have you done on how many different products and professional people? You know, reverse mortgage is just this little sliver of thing that no one understands or takes the time to understand that they can then explain and offer to people. So for all of those reasons under utilized and not capitalized and it can and it's a game changer for people, you know, over a thousand reverse mortgages I've done and Wow. Significant improvements for 80 or 90% of them. Some people are wealthy and they're taking advantage of the program like they should, but I don't know that I changed their life. But there's a transaction where we signed closed yesterday, completely changed this guy's life. A lot of health issues.

13:02 He may have had some financial issues, but the biggest problem he had like he could afford to pay his mortgage, but he hadn't paid it for six months. So the home's in foreclosure, he's immobile, the house is a total wreck. But I show up. You know, I met him four different times. Last night was the last time, but we saved him from foreclosure, we cleaned up his house, we gave him a bunch of money. We didn't have a trust, we got him a trust. So he'd avoid probate for his heirs and completely changed his life and that happens a few times a month with the people I work with. And so it makes a significant difference for people. And I have hundreds of stories. Not quite as compelling as that one but a lot of people where all of a sudden now they can afford to be retired and maintain a good quality of life. So very not enough people understand that. Yeah, I mean for sure not enough people understand the product. So what are one or two of the biggest misconceptions, you know, when you talk to people and I'm sure you get, you know, referral and you talk to people on the phone and some of them you know are barely open to talk about it but you want to open the door. What are one or two of the big misconceptions that you get when people referred to that somebody thinks they should be getting a reverse mortgage but somehow that in their minds they shouldn't that you have to deal with?

14:25 Well, you know, the most famous one is I'll no longer own the home, right? That everybody assumes that you give up ownership of your house. You don't and as proof of that well, you get the privilege of getting to pay your taxes and your homeowner's insurance and HOA if you have HOA. So you continue to own the home. Another big misconception e- even people I spend time with they forget this and so it's like I've got to mention to them again and again. You don't lose the equity to your home. And these reverse mortgages, they might lend you if you're young maybe 35 to 40% of your home's value. If you're older, they might loan 60 to 65% of your home's value. But all that so that's not 100% of your home's value. That's just a percentage, you know, mid-range either side of 50%. All that equity that we don't make available to you is still your equity. So that's going to be your equity when you sell or it'll be your heirs' equity if you die in your home. People don't understand that retained equity and that appreciation is going to belong to you or your heirs and you know, I have clients that are reverse mortgage 17 or 18 years ago that are now dying and they have as much or more equity in their house now than they did when I did the reverse mortgage for them and they took a bunch of tax free money from their reverse mortgage and it's because of you know, particularly in California the way home values have appreciated. It'll outpace loan distributions and loan growth. And going up with as much or more equity than when we started the loan. So that's not unusual that happens.

16:03 You know, I think that I have another podcast on the real estate market where I talk about how I think the real estate news industry is so destructive because it's all click bait. It's always depressing people, scaring people. And you know, you had two points. One is it's not your house which it is your house. It is your equity. The other one is about what happens if you know, the loan goes over the value of the house and the reality is you have these headlines that home values are plummeting but they're plummeting from a rise of three and a half percent to a rise of only one percent per year. And that's one percent of the whole house and you're only borrowing 30, 40, 50% maybe of the equity. And so your equity is still growing you know, one percent per year. Your loan is just based on the mortgage payment portion of the half or 30% that you have. And so these are major areas that people I think need to kind of have a plan. You know, like you mentioned when you meet with people it's a couple hours. How do you get the leverage in the relationship to get people to commit to spend that kind of time? You know, in a world where people you know, watch videos for 15, 30 seconds and I purposely do long form videos like this and I don't do shorts because I you know, if you don't have the patience to watch me for 30 seconds, I don't care if you subscribe to my channel or not. I want to give people good information and educate them. I also want to challenge professionals like you to step up in your education. So, talk to me a little bit. How is it that you get somebody to come to you with that kind of leverage where they're willing to say, "Yeah, please hey, tell me about reverse mortgages for 2 hours. I have nothing else to do." I mean, on one hand, they have nothing maybe more important to do, objectively speaking, but we all have ball games and kids and grandkids and stuff and our and our notifications and our phone going off.

17:44 How do you earn that relationship? Yeah. Great question. So, you know, couple things. You know, my clientele, they're older. They're 60s, 70s, 80s. Watch yourself now. And I'm right there with them, you know. I'm walking on the

18:08 I am too. I am too. Yeah. And they aren't they lot of times they're not as they're not as busy, you know. Yeah. And so, they're more available. And one of the things that bothers me is some of my clients, some of my dear family, they have a lot of time on their hands. They're actually you know, lonely and bored. And I'm not saying that. A lot of my clients are very busy. It's a mixed bag. But something as and I sometimes have a hard time scheduling with them just based on their schedules. But my schedule, you know, I do this 40 or 50 hours a week. And my priority is my appointments. And so, and I'll meet with people on the weekends. I'll meet with people in the evenings. And so, I'll whenever they're available. And there's something as important as this. And I tell people how important this is. You think about what you're planning to do here. You're contemplating a financial product that's attached to your home that could help you for the next 10 or 20 years. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars or and we're talking about a million dollar asset or more sometimes, you know, potentially. So, they have time for that. I don't and then the and then in terms of connecting with them, you know, I know you better than you know me because I've seen your podcast, I've read your articles and this is the third time you know, I've gotten together and I'm like I'm going to be like you, right? I'm interested in people on a personal level. And I tell people mine our meeting is going to be at least an hour. It might be 90 minutes. I have all the time in the world for them.

19:45 I enjoy people, right? And I want to know them and you know, I tell my peers or newer reverse mortgage loan officers that I feel better coming out of a meeting when I spent more time talking to them about anything other than reverse mortgage, right? If it's a 90 minute meeting, well, I hope I spent 50 minutes talking about everything else and maybe only 40 minutes talking about the reverse mortgage cuz I'm curious and I want to know people and it allows me to be more effective helping them because I know more about them and then they end up liking me and trusting me more because I'm curious, authentic about them and their family, their situation, their pets, where they've been, how they met their spouse on and on and on. So, that's a that's a connecting mechanism that builds the trust, builds the rapport and allows the relationship to grow and maintain I maintain these relationships for the for the for the their entire life, you know, I try. I want to. Yeah. Yeah, when I started in sales, there was different coaching methods and personality profiles you'd learn and my personality profile in those days was always a high D driver which really meant more of factual based and more you know, task oriented than person.

21:04 And what I realized was over time, Well, some truth to that obviously, that really just meant I was selfish, because I'm interested in getting paid. I'm not interested in helping the customer. The goal of all these personalities is to connect with your customers. It's not to be more of you. It's to be more for them. And what I've learned over time also is that if I find something about a way to help somebody, also I'm interested in them, right? I'm not interested in comparing our relative differences. I'm very interested in, well, how can I help you provide for your family? How can I help you keep your family together? How can I help you maybe, you know, move if that's what you want to do, or cash out of a situation that's difficult. And when that's the case, I pay attention and listen. When I don't care, then it's hard to do that. And I think that's part of it. And so, I think you're like me in the sense I have time I always have time to talk to people who can do business with me during business hours. I have time for business for people who don't after business hours, because I limit my business hours. So, I have time for my wife, my grandkids, cuz I make that time for them available. And same with customers during the day. Originators I talk to all day long and to real estate brokers. And let's let me just kind of wrap up here, cuz you obviously you've been very successful, one of the top in the industry. Other originators have mentioned your name to me. I was referred to you or introduced to you by another colleague, which again, in many businesses that's not usual, but in this business Matt Allen said, "You've got to talk to Hank Roden. He's the best." I heard that from two other people as well.

22:30 The next generation of originators behind us, it does not seem to me there's many are coming in and competing. I know in my business, I feel like I should have been put out of business 5 years ago, but for the lack of new Realtors®. I think COVID made it hard for them. I think the there's a lot of reasons why. And I see the same in reverse mortgages, that the it does skew older, no offense. We're similar age or close in age. But that I don't see either the new guys coming in. I don't see the young hot superstars I might have expected to see. I'm sure there are some. I haven't seen everybody, but I they're not obvious to me, I guess I would say. And I don't see the companies really putting the effort in into generating that. And I think it then comes to us as individual people to make time for our next generation in the industry. So, talk a little bit about how do you see that? You know, that's my perspective. What do you see about the next generation of originator? You obviously work for a large company that I'm sure they're trying to bring more people in. You can't just recruit other people's people. You have to build your own. What do you see going on in the industry and what role, if any, do you play in that? Yeah. You're right. You know, 15 years ago, I got to go to my first President's Club and bring my wife and you know, it's Caribbean or I don't know, Mexico some point or sunny nice beach.

23:49 And bring my wife and we show up and we go into the room where everybody's signing in or meeting up, you know, the normal thing. And she's looking around and she's wondering who are all these people in the room, right? Are these hotel guests? Are these reverse mortgage clients? I'm like, "No, honey, these are my peers, right?" she had her own sales background in pharmaceutical and medical sales and she was expecting people well dressed, young, sharp, like "No, honey, this is what we look like, right? And she's like, "No way, right?" Yeah.

24:28 I resemble that remark. So, and it's the and it's a real problem like you know, we talked 10 or 15 minutes ago about we're the experts. And there aren't enough. And the experts that they are that there are, they're you know, my age, a little bit younger, a little bit older. And I have clamored for this and if I was an executive you know, if I was a leader in this industry like nationwide besides just as a loan originator, I'd be very focused on what you're talking about. Let's bring in some young hotshots, you know, you make a lot of money you know how lucrative real estate is. Lending is very lucrative, too. And if you're a top reverse mortgage if you're top reverse mortgage loan officer, there's a ton of job satisfaction. And if you're smart, the competition isn't what do they call it? There's it's blue water, you know, red water, blue water. I don't have a lot of competition. And my competition isn't real impressive. And so there's a lot of blue water ocean if you want to do reverse mortgages. And if you're young and you're good at sales and you care about people and you want to make a lot of money, oh my gosh, you've got something with this, right? There's a lot to learn.

25:47 It's a big learning curve, but young people should be jumping on this. But who's out there telling them, you know, it's a certain skill set and interest level? But there are a lot of people that would love this job. I've loved it for over 20 years. I've done very well, a lot of job satisfaction. And I think if magically a bunch of 20 30-year-olds who have the right temperament and there's thousands of them that could turn into a hundreds of them could turn into doing this job, they'd be glad they did. And the industry and our profession and these individual companies need to find those people. But I'm very discouraged that there's not enough of that or much of that occurring. We need to do that. Is it the same you mentioned similar in real estate? Is that also going on in real estate? Yeah, I think so. You know, I think that, you know, I was an originator until about 2008 or 9 and by that point I had like 15 different business cards in 16 years. I never changed jobs. And I when I came across reverse mortgages, I saw it as a great opportunity. I might have stayed with it if I'd found the right company or knew I found the right company. I think in the mortgages, the company affiliation is really important. In real estate it's not. So, in real estate we get we have companies that do great job of I think kind of getting people started and they kind of leave them hanging.

27:06 And what they sell them on is it's going to be easy. And they sell them on oh here's a guy who you know makes a million dollars a year. Well, okay, show them someone from zero to 50,000 or zero to 100,000 and what that person did. And create that plan on that and support them on that. And so I get agents to call me, you know, weekly, "Hey, I want to do what you do." Well, great. And then what do you do? And I explain to them they go, "Well, that's a lot of work." I said, "Well, I mean, it's not a lot of work. I work 33 hours a week on my schedule. That's all I really work. I work 5 days a week, 9:00 to 5:00. I take a 2-hour break in the middle to exercise and relax a little bit. I don't work after 5:00 and I don't work Saturday, Sunday but for 3 or 4 hours doing creative work. So, it's not that much work. But when I work, I work. I'm either talking to you, I'm talking to customers, I'm talking to attorneys, I'm talking to vendors or whatever. And when you say that like somehow young people have the misconception the goal is to find something we make a lot of money and don't work hard. I think it's the opposite. Find something you love to do and you help people and it doesn't feel like work. I'm saying to you it's hard work but like this. Most people couldn't do I'm going to do three or four of these interviews today. Most people couldn't do it. Why? Because it takes concentration, preparation, focus, blocking out your phone or whatever.

28:27 It's not that hard. I mean, you're a nice guy to talk to. It's pretty actually pretty easy this one. Some of them are a little harder. But I think that there's a most younger people today don't have the right work ethic which is you can achieve anything in life if you work hard enough consistently over time. But if you want to be successful you have to work hard consistently over time. There isn't a shortcut. That is the shortcut. And somehow I find that there's exceptions. And the ones who are exceptions are the you know unicorns who are going to get all the success in the future because too many I think of the younger generation Realtors® come in. Why I want to do luxury homes? Why? Well, I just sold one house I make you know $500,000. Yeah, do you know how hard they work to make that one sale? And by the way, they split it with 10 other agents. Do you know how hard that is? They have no idea. So to answer your question, I think I think this is a broader issue than just reverse mortgages and just real estate. Real estate I think has been decimated financially. You know, our sales are down 30% over 5 years ago. The companies have been sued repeatedly. There's no capital to invest. And so I don't think that the companies are the solution to invest in their people. Reverse mortgage companies are a little different. They're profitable. They have servicing portfolios in some cases. They have flows of income. And I And I do think there's tremendous opportunity for companies to find the ones who want to work hard and do the work because I think it's a great career. It's a great business where you have self-respect. You help other people.

29:59 Along the way you make a lot of money. Real estate is the same. But it really requires a lot of self-starting. And I just don't There's something about our current climate. You know, life changed 4 years ago. 4 years ago when I was in real estate, it was an industry of people who loved to work hard and compete. Now it seems like they're trying not to do that. Just my observation. You know, there's an enormous need for real estate, right? Of course. Like transactions got to occur. People are going to be buying and selling houses like their whole life. You know, I don't know how many in a lifetime, multiple. And then for reverse mortgage, there's a huge need for funding your retirement. I mean, statistically you talk about how people just they can't afford to be retired. There's a this enormous need and there's you know, things are messed up where we don't we're not ready to meet that need. Not even close. And you know, if I did what you did, if you told somebody you tell somebody what you do, you tell a young person is contemplating real estate and they just listen to you and they're like oh, heck no. If I did the same thing to somebody that's got to contemplate they'd be no, I can't do all that. I know because you know, I've had my real estate brokers I had to get it twice. I had my real estate sales person and like you know, I want my broker's license that 15 years ago got busy with Lenny and like I don't need my broker's license I let it go. Three or four years ago rate spike. I'm like I need to diversify my income. I'm going to get my real estate license so I can help my clients sell their homes.

31:29 So I get my broker's license back and one of my best friends who's a remarkable busy Realtor® he's my neighbor. I meet with him and talk about this and we go to lunch and I hear what he does and I'm so discouraged afterwards. I'm like oh, heck no, I can't do all that, right? So now I do generate income from real estate, but I help my clients connect to the right Realtor® so I get a referral fee and then I stay involved. I help them with the end of the reverse mortgage working with the loan servicer and all the complications of the family, the estate, the attorneys the escrow, title, whatever needs to be done. So I add a lot of value and I get that referral fee the real estate agent I referred to. Love the help I end up being but when I thought I was going to get involved with the real estate as soon as I found out what it involved I'm like no, right? It's intimidating. It's a lot and my daughter's interested in real estate, but she's only 20. And so I got you know, you got to baby step your way you know, if you it's like trying to eat a large pizza. You just eat it a bite at a time, right? And

32:37 Yes, I an expert at eating a whole large pizza, by the way. It is one bite at a time. Yeah. And so if people professional people that want to be professional people in our industry, you know, just do it in bite-size. And you know, if you love it and you eat some of this pizza and you end up liking it and you keep eating, well, all of a sudden, you're Bill Gross or Hank Rhoads. Bill Gross doing real estate, Hank Rhoads doing reverse mortgage. And you love all of it. You know, you and I love our work. Well, when we describe it to somebody, they're like, "Oh, heck no, I can't do all that. That's too much. I got a lot to learn. That's so demanding." And but we didn't get here in a day, you know? No. No. No. And so young people need to be realistic about how this is going to unfold. I also think that you have to really hyper To be successful long run, you have to really hyper focus. Being a originator, I don't think it's good enough. Being a reverse mortgage originator or forward originator, to me, makes more sense. I think being a purchase originator is different than being a refinance originator in the in the forward world. And then and on the reverse side, you know, there's a couple different areas I see people specializing in. I'm in real estate, but I specialize in probate and trust real estate, which is litigation attorneys. You know, when people call me and say, "Hey, I have a friend buying a house in Beverly Hills." I say, "Hey, thank you, but I just don't really do that." You know, I don't go to open houses. I don't really tour properties.

33:54 If they have a house picked out, I can help negotiate and write the contract for a lower fee, but I just don't you know, you have to know what you do well and do that and try to play in that arena. And so the newer people I was I always say you know, get any job you can to learn. The most important asset, I think, is yourself, learning your own education and the trade and the specifics. And then find an area that's, you know, a niche. You mentioned the blue water analogy for reverse mortgages. I think this is one that's wide open and I would encourage anybody as well as we talked to starting in the big beginning about fiduciaries. I think but I think reverse mortgage is a wide open area that the ones who are really good, no offense, it's so good I think they're a little bit satisfied. And there's room for more, and I think so many do it poorly that as long as you're better than those guys, you look good. And you know, I always tell people in real estate, if Facebook or Google could do my job, they would. I mean, they're spending billions of dollars to figure that out. They can't do what I do. They can do what bad Realtors® do better than the bad Realtors®. They just can't do what I do on my unique cases. And the exact same with reverse mortgages. As long as you're the person who can explain to people how to use these very complicated but powerful tools, if you're the one that can do that, there'll be a need for you. If you're just another spreadsheet, another webpage, yeah, chat GPT is going to replace you and you're in big trouble and you better figure out one way not to be that person. And I think that's where the human action is so important.

35:24 That specialization that you're doing is so good for you and your clients and especially people that need your help. And there's a lot of areas to specialize in real estate. There's probably dozens of major areas where you could specialize. And you wouldn't think that's true in as much in lending. It's not as much true as in lending. And I specialize in lending, you know, 99% of my transactions I've ever done have been reverse mortgage, right? I've done a couple of non-reverse mortgage loans, but I prefer to specialize. And then there's even specialization in my reverse mortgage. Like Yes. I do I do an occasional reverse mortgage purchase. I can do it, but it hasn't been something I love. I have a small team. And so I might I hand that off to one of my loan officers who likes to do purchase transactions, specializes in reverse mortgage purchase transactions. I like to work with financial planners. I have that background. But that hasn't been a focus of mine. There's a lot to focus on. I happen to be direct to consumers. I like to do seminars. I have an office in a 55 and over community that we market and we drive people to my office. And so there's all kinds of ways to specialize and you figure it out as you go. You figure it out. You do it. It's booming for you. Same thing I did.

36:43 So you find your niche. Well, I found my niche to change. My original probate niche when I started 6 years ago for about 2 years was going to court everyday and it was a unique niche. Unique in Los Angeles is with the largest probate court in America. We had nine different court probate rooms in one building which is unusual. Most big counties have it spread out in multiple locations. So I had a chance to see things that nobody in America could see. I saw more probate cases and more sales of real estate than any judge attorney ever in that you know a couple year period. And parlayed that and then when COVID shut down I parlayed that into a different a discipline. I can imagine a brand new guy who just did reverse mortgage for purchase in a you know a tourist town like you know Boca Raton, Florida or Miami Beach, Florida and just said every Realtor® know hey if you ever see anybody in cash let me show me advantages of reverse mortgage. Probably a great team. I got Hank Ross who will who do the seminar or do the but we will get that person a little more money available than just the cash they have available. And if you just did that all day long 4 hours a day you'd have more money than you know what to do with. You'd have more happy customers. You'd have You'd have Realtors® begging you hey can you come by me my customer cuz he wants to buy 1.2 but he only has 900,000. I know you can do a reverse and get that extra three or four. You know those are things that you find that niche and rather than you have to chase people like in my case people call me up with questions or problems rather than me calling them and it just changes the whole dynamic. So and I think you that's why you played reverse mortgages. I appreciate you sharing kind of background. I know I've gone a little long with you. I think you like to talk all day long. I'm sure you have other things to do besides talk to me. So Hank can people get ahold of you? I know we have your website up here as well as a banner with the contact info, local.americansenior.com/hank-rhoades r h o a d s is the website. Phone number [phone number].

38:38 Is that Is that the best way to get ahold of you? Yeah, all any of that, yes. And yeah, this was this was great, Bill. I could I could talk to you for hours. You know, one of the things we didn't talk about so have me back in a couple months if you're interested. You know, a lot of it is good news around the reverse mortgage and how it can make a huge difference for people and what the industry needs. You know, those are things we talked about. One of the things that we didn't talk about that I want to talk about with you if you're interested in the future is it's not all champagne and roses and candy because these entities reverse mortgages are actually can be a little bit of a problem, right? For families who are not prepared. Yeah. And so I'd love to come back and we can focus on that because that's an area of expertise I've focused on the last few years where we're making a big difference for families who are dealing with the end of the reverse mortgage for a loved one and there's a lot of help needed in that arena. So Hank, we'll get that book right away as soon as we're done recording here. I'll send you the link and we'll get that done. That's how That's why I got into this was I felt like originators don't prepare the customers or when the customer has a phone call, there was no relationship and so if you if you make your reverse mortgage on an 800 number because some fancy Hollywood celebrity, that celebrity is not there when it's time to close out the reverse mortgage and the and the family's panicking facing foreclosure losing their equity versus I know your customers call you cuz you prepped them on that. And so I'd like to talk about that and spread those practices to your colleagues in the industry as well. So, look, Hank, thank you so much for your time today. It's always great to talk to you. Continue success and talk soon. Likewise, thanks, Bill. Have a great day.

40:20 If you're actually this is the Reverse Mortgage Podcast, we get together new issue every week with usually top originators as well as vendors and consultants and such. If you want to continue the conversation on our Facebook group, the Reverse Mortgage Podcast, you can go there and ask questions, look for referrals, post referrals if you're looking for an attorney, looking for a Reverse Mortgage Consultant to service some particular area or niche. If I can help, reach out to me. I'm at Bill Gross Probate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.