The Right Reverse Mortgage Could Make All the Difference, with Todd Walcott

0:02 So I've interviewed 40 or 50 originators from various companies and there's a lot of different strategies and approaches the companies take in reverse mortgage. One of the people I really enjoyed the conversation with last time we had Todd Walcott where [clears throat] he really kind of took us behind the scenes and showed us how these reverse mortgages are priced and where you have an opportunity to save a lot of money where the right reverse mortgage can really save you quite a bit. Great experience in the reverse mortgage. Glad to have you back Todd Walk. Thank you for joining us today.

0:30 Good to be back. So, one of the things I took away from our last conversation was that the right mortgage the difference can be 105 $20,000 difference just based on who the lender is or the package or picking the right option in front of you. Can you excuse me? Can you talk a little bit about that? And I have your handout. You can you can kind of walk us through the math on how this all plays out.

0:51 Yeah. Yeah. I'll kind of show you how the back end works. But, a lot of times people don't know how to people know how to shop for a forward mortgage. This is like what's your rate, what is your fees, you know, what are your fees? They know how to do that. And on a reverse mortgage, it's a little bit more difficult u because the product has a little bit of a twist in that there is no one rate. Most of like what I do most of is the FHA, you know, home equity conversion mortgages, the reverse. And those have different margins that come to them with them. And so the margin is the value that we add to the index. The index being the one-year Treasury bill. The sum of those two numbers equals your interest rate and that rate changes monthly. And so with a lot of lenders,

1:35 Well, hold on one second. Let's break that down. Hold on. So the margin is the amount we raise over a set number like on business loans, prime plus one, prime plus two, prime plus zero.

1:46 Yep. And in the case of reverse mortgages, it's the one-year Treasury bill. Yep. One year Treasury plus a plus a variable margin, you know. Since that treasury is really set nationally. There's a market for that, right? You can check online. Then the thing for the consumer to look at is what's the difference over that Treasury bill that I'm going to pay. Whether it be 1%, 2%, 3%, 8%. That's really going to determine the combination what your interest rate is.

2:13 Exactly. 100%. Okay. And so, yeah. So, basically, you know, the slide you have up is something that no one will ever show you. You will never see this in any scenario. Because this is kind of like, you know, showing you the sticker, you know, you know, on the whatever the car dealer sees that they really paid for it that's not the MSRP on the fort. This is how it really works on the back end. Here's the mechanics of how mortgage brokers get paid. And so, a lot of times when you when you reach out to big box, you know, celebrity mortgage, you're going to get a quote package. And that quote package will have the 30-year fixed rate option, a one-year adjustable, and then the one-mon adjustable. And everybody goes to the one-month adjustable because that has the best interest rate. And the loan amount is simply a function of the age and the interest rate. Lower the interest rate, the bigger the loan amount's going to be. And so, we're always looking at an adjustable rate product. But then there's like how we get paid. And if you were to put that slide back up, nope. That's kind of that's so that's what that's what you'll see as a disclosure there. That's is the good one. If you can slide over to the 100% if you can make that a little bit bigger. We can work on that. We can work from this. Yeah, they go. Yeah. Yeah. Do that. Yeah. Go to the 100. There you go.

3:34 That's perfect. So on the left hand side of this you see the margin, you know, which goes from at the bottom you have a one and a half% margin. You know if the treasury bill is about 3 and 3/4 today. So if you have a 1 and a half about three and a half actually. So if you have a 1 and a half margin on top of a 3 and a half% treasury bill, your interest rate is going to be 5%. And if you have a 1 and 3/4 margin, your rate would be about 5 and a/4%. [snorts] And so let's work with the purchase where we're using the reverse mortgage to purchase a house. And so at the top you see 0 to 10% 10 to 20%. And that's the percentage of the loan amount over the principal limit that we're utilizing. So, in a purchase, we're usually just going with the full 100% just to make it easy. And so, here's where things get tricky. If you get a, you know, big box lender that just shows you one margin, they're probably going to show you a margin of two and if you're lucky, two and a quarter. Typically, what I see is two and a half. And so when you when you look at that margin of two and a half, right in kind of the middle of the screen on the left, and you go all the way over to the far right where it says 90% to 100%. That number is 7.1%. That's what we make on the back. That's what we're getting from the investor to originate that loan at that margin of, you know, two and a half%.

4:52 You know, a million dollar. Break this down for a second before we go on because I'm a little slow here. So what this means is a [clears throat] lender can package up a loan offer a customer in this case 2.5% margin if rates today the if the TBO rate is

5:07 Three and a half let's say three and a half three and a half plus two and a half is 6% not seven but for sake of discussion 6% they make the loan they ship the however much money to the buyer for the loan let's say it's $500,000

5:20 They can turn around now they not only is that loan worth $500,000 but they're going to get a premium of about 7% of the $500,000 on top of whatever fees they charge. They might charge origination fee, processing fee, [clears throat] document fee, appraisals, and all the expenses. Yeah. But they're going to get back on a half million dollar loan. They're going to get, say, $35,000 of additional money. That's what the loan's worth for having originated. And they sell it to a company that buys it from them.

5:47 Correct. And so you have like a large company like Finance of America, Mutual of Omaha, you know, where you're paying for a lot of advertising. Well, that advertising costs money,

5:55 Right? And if you're making 35 grand alone, you can afford some commercial airtime. But the problem, and I'm not saying, well, Todd, if you do a loan at $35,000, you can buy some Ram Super Bowl tickets or something in a private jet fly, I would think. [laughter]

6:11 I will be take me by the way. We will be we will be flying private. And so that's why I you know what I'll do is first I'll quote usually most likely I'll quote three different margins. You know, one and a half, one and three/4ers, and 2%. And if you go over there, you're still making four points on the deal, you know, and the average, you know, reverse mortgage is really about, you know, 250,300 would probably be the average, I would say, you know, in my market. So if, you know, if I'm doing a loan at two with a margin of 2% or I'm making 5% on the back, you know, I'm not charging an origination fee on that loan. There's no reason to. What you'll see a lot of these larger lenders, you know, name lenders do is they'll charge the origination fee and just say that this is set by FHA or set by HUD. And that's not entirely a true statement. The maximum origination fee that a lender can charge is 2% of the first 200,000 and then 1% of every amount over that of the appraised value. So if you have a $200,000 house, the mag the maximum origination fee is four grand. That doesn't mean you have to charge four grand. That's just the cap set by HUD. But a lot of times they'll just disclose that in. Well, this is the loan fee. It's 2% of the first 200, 1% of everything over that capped at 6,000.

7:31 And so that's where that it gets kind of this is this is one of the sleazier parts I think of that I don't like about our business is you're working with an elderly client, a vulnerable client base. You're not educating them. They don't have any education. So you end up like selling them two and a half and a margin of two and a half% and making 35 grand. And I see it all the time. So when

7:54 This is where buyers who might shop and they might go to a lender who gives them a great deal, they're going to charge them zero origination fee.

8:02 Yeah. But really if you move the margin from one and a half to three, the lenders increased their money by 7%. So they've given away one point, but they may have raised their fee on the backside by three or 4%.

8:16 Exactly. That's a lot of money. 100%. And so like when people and I always encourage people, I'm like, "Get another quote if you don't have one." Or people will come to me and they're like, "Well, do you want to see my quote?" And I'm like, "I don't need to see it. I know exactly what that quote says if you tell me where it came from." you know, and I'm like, "But I'll show you that rate that they're the index or the margin they're showing you, and I'll show you what we would do at that." You know, I'd always say at two and, you know, two and 38, two and a quart, I don't go that high. I don't originate up in that in that sphere. But at two point at 2% margin, you know, we're typically we're waving the origination fee. When you get into small loans, I you know, like if I'm doing a loan where I don't make people take an advance on the line. A lot of a lot of lenders will require they take a minimum $50,000. I don't do that. You know, it's like if you're just setting this up for a credit line to have, I'll charge at the origination fee because there's nothing on the back end. But, you know, I'll do it at the one and a half percent and just make my minimum fee. You know, you if it's fif, you know, if you're just financing closing cost and the mortgage insurance, you know, that's 30 grand, call it, you know, on a loan. But, you know, you're talking how making three points on 30 grand is $900. So I may at that point I may as well just go with the lowest margin and just you know make it up in a referral. [clears throat and cough] It's like that's my thing is you know our business comes a lot from referrals that you saying oh I did this and I got a really good rate and here's you know that would be my thing is if I do it if I give a little bit away to get the deal in it'll come back to me in the form of a referral. I have no doubt about that. And so this is where [clears throat] I think buyers are misled into thinking they can shop for a loan

9:57 Because if you don't shop hard on the margin and compare that you're really not getting a whole picture of the cost. And if you pay like in this use this example instead of say two 3% margin you're going to pay 1% more for the loan as long as you have that loan or that balance. Y

10:16 And so waiving 1% origination fee while they've made three or 4% more in the back end already and then they're charging 1% more per year over the next three four five 10 years it can be a very expensive proposition and so that's why it's really important

10:30 Correct for a buyer to compare this yeah and that's [clears throat] exactly and I'm trying to think if there was a if like if we could if we paid that if we paid the MI I mean I have to kind of research it if there Is there a time where that makes sense? And it just might be buying down the interest rate on a forward mortgage. The longer you're going to be there, the better off you are at a lower margin.

10:54 Correct. And so the same thing like if this were a really short like typically if you're telling me that this is we're going to sell this house in two years or we're going to be going into assisted living we're never going to move out of in two years. Then I would probably figure out a way to make the higher margin work just to get you out of a house payment or try and figure out a different way to kind of get you from A to B. But so yeah, is there a scenario that could work? I'd have to see if we could pay the mortgage insurance. I've never done that. I've just I've never looked at rates that high. And I've always had borrowers [clears throat and cough] where the long-term solution for their plan. So

11:28 Well, I guess it was a HECM for purchase where you're going to buy a new house. You haven't yet sold your old house. Your plans to sell the old house and pay off pay down the mortgage and keep the credit line as a ongoing you have to keep it for a certain amount of time if you're going to keep the house for you know a extended period of time a year or two while you relocate or one spouse goes the other one's not ready to go yet there's some scenarios I think the key thing then is to understand that the more choices we have as consumers the more options we have to get the right fit for us but the key is to make an informed decision and so I really appreciate you kind of lay these numbers out and I think for those of us who are real estate professionals, attorneys, financial planners knowing that the true cost is competitive. We don't have to lock into just a one point or zero point loan. There's also the margins to look at. That's really important. So talk a bit about let's now move this to looking at this is looking at it from the consumer point of view or from the referral partner point of view. Talk about as a region point of view. You know you where you work you have this flexibility. A lot of people I interview, they work for a company where they have a rate sheet and they have certain options. [laughter] So talk about how your pricing strategy kind of affects where you are and how that works for you and for your clients.

12:40 So the reason I kind of went to a shop the a company of the size that I work for, which is a small boutique lender, you know, that down here we focus in leasehold properties, which is which is real common in the Palm Springs area, Coachella Valley. But I have a lot more flexibility with my boss because I'm not splitting it this pie up with six or seven people. You know, when I was at you know, bigger lenders like Guaranteed Rate, you know, Axia, Prospect, Homebridge, which is now CMG, you're right. You know, they're like, okay, here's the margin we sell and that is two and 38, two and a half.

13:15 Which and the reason was is like we had to feed a lot of mouths like a guaranteed rate. I had six levels of management above me. You know, that's a lot of mouths to feed. And I know when I was at Axia, which was a great little company, there were there were four levels of management. I knew that each one of them got one point off of every deal I close. So, you need seven points then to feed all of those mouths. With me and my company owner, it's like it's us, you know, it's like I'm working it. I'm negotiating it with him. So, if I'm doing a deal for six grand, you know, just to make the origination fee and help someone out, you know, to get them in the right place moving forward, I don't get any push back. When I was at some of the other companies though, I would have to argue just to get into a 2% margin. I'm like do we really need you know and that's what got frustrating is that I didn't feel that I was providing the best value you know to the client you know I was just I was selling them the right product with in the sphere I had but I knew that by being somewhere else you know I could be [clears throat] more competitive when it came to you know to pricing and so that's kind of why I am now with a much smaller company is just to have that flexibility of where I can offer you a margin that doesn't have a two in front of it and not have to argue knowing that when I'm doing the best right listing. I'm doing what's right for the client. So,

14:33 I get asked a lot by real estate agents why I'm with the company I'm with and the format, the systems, and the fees. And I always say you have to build your business and find the right platform to run your business and take ownership of your business. I imagine in your case, you're trading off seven levels of management. You're trading off maybe a bigger national brand. You're pay you're trading off some national marketing for the control, the ability to offer better pricing. But then that means probably you're more responsible for genering your own business. So talk about a bit that choice you make obviously consciously between well I'm going to forego the branding and the name and maybe some of the stuff for relying on my own ability to perform.

15:14 Sure 100%. You know you know in my market it's Palm Springs so we're you know we're an older market you like that's just that's we're a retirement community. You know, so I just kind of felt that I would be able to do a lot more locally. You know, just working with Realtors®, getting them to understand reverse for purchase, you know, working more one-on-one with financial planners, getting them over the hurdle of this is a horrible product. I'm getting them to understand it, you know, and to me I what I preferred about reverse mortgage was that you were it was a lot more of an end of product where I am meeting your family and I'm meeting your kids and you know, I'm talking to your financial planner and you don't do that on forward mortgages. So these are a little bit of a slower role where it can take you know you weeks just to get you from talk to you know application because we have to get you through the counseling and stuff you know so it's a slower process to begin with and so yeah I don't have the national marketing but because of my higher compensation on a smaller amount because I'm not I'm making more money working at a smaller company charging a lower fee and the client's getting a better margin getting a better interest rate so I can spend money how I want to rather than how the larger company wanted to do it. I didn't have to follow that model. But mostly it was just kind of getting rid of that ick factor of like we're you're taking advantage of an elderly client you know by charging these high margins you know and under the guise of you know we are a you know a well-known brand mortgage company that you should trust you know and you know let's see what is it trust but verify. And so that's why I'm always like shop learn how to shop for a reverse mortgage which is I try and help people do and make and make your decision then and when you talk to different people you'll

17:00 You know you'll kind of figure out is this person a right fit for me because these are tough loans like these are higher documentation you're a lot of the borrowers you know aren't as tech-savvy or as computer savvy you know some of my borrowers love to text in their 80s you know others don't have computers and you know and can't get out of the house quite as easy so I'm making trips to you know linta you which is what I can do you know working for a small company so yeah

17:25 One of the things that comes across both this time and last time in talking to you is you know kind of addresses one of the problems of the industry which is there's [clears throat] so much tension nervousness anxiety worry over this product in particular that holds people back from getting it all products the one that I find consumers kind of push back to me and say well I don't want one of those It's reverse mortgage and yet it's one that's really underserved and so I talk about this a lot with maybe management other companies and it's always about developing the soft skills not the technology well technology is important and we have to be efficient and productive and all that and you have some nice you numbers you've given us but I can see the difference for you is helping the customer get comfortable with the process and being able to trust you as a person versus dialing an 800 number and going to some call center. So talk about how you work that into your business you know operations.

18:21 Yeah. Yeah. So for me I am more about education. I'm more about educating you as a as a customer making you a you know a knowledgeable you know client. You know I want you to be smart. I want you to feel good about this loan rather than getting through the process and just being like this was icky. And so I'm all about education. I you know we'll talk about different margins. We'll talk about how this works. We'll talk about how the servicing is different. You know, so I spend more time just educating you than like quoting you right and trying to get you to apply for the loan and saying we have to get this done now, you know, and yeah, there needs to be call to action. So, you know, I'm a little bit that's not my personality, you know, I'm not high pressure like let's get this closed. But I think if I educate you right and you get comfortable that way then I'm going to earn the business that way rather than just like sell you that you know pressure you into something and nobody wants that you know right so yeah so many times I've gone to people's houses more than once you know you know get during the loan process you know the we still have to do a lot of wet signing and that you know I will drive and wet sign and those will be two-hour conversations where you will you offer me many drinks and sometimes I will say yes. [laughter]

19:37 Whoa. I think we found the secret here. You get your clients drunk and they'll sign anything. I think that's you don't get me. That would be wrong. For the record, that's your the listening. That would be wrong. [laughter] [gasps]

19:48 No, I think it's kind of interesting. I had one client where they did offer me like an apperal spritz four times. And at that point, I'm thinking about do I have a competent client at this point? And I did not. You know,

20:01 The first time you offered me a drink. I'm okay. That's good. The second, the fourth time. Did you remember you offered me that already? You know, I'm good right now. So yeah, but one of the areas that amazes me about this business, you know, I launched this podcast a little over a year ago. You were one of my first guests last year. I had this pre this feeling when I started this and it's been proven which is one of the problems with the product is too many originators look at this as a transaction and once it's done there's nothing there for them to do. The person's either going to die maybe they'll move they'll call them but unlikely at that stage [clears throat] and there's a builtin process for the relationship which is the annual report or the annual certification I guess that customers have to do on heeka mortgages. To me, that seems like a natural marketing opportunity. Like, you just calendared every year, you know, a month before it goes out. Hey, you're going to get the statement. I'm here to help you. Here's my calendar link or call me and we'll set a time. If you need to meet with me, I'll meet with you. That it gives you the chance to stay in touch with them when they're going to tell you, my wife is passing away. I'm feeling ill. I'm going I'm now in assisted living. My son's trying to take things over. Can you help? It would make those transitions so much more effective. But I really try to push originators. Some get that. I imagine that's part of your business.

21:22 100%. You know, and why would it not be? Why would it not? And again, that's more of that's what I like about this kind of a loan is it's more of the a slow roll. It's more of a long game. You know, and just like a forward mortgage, there are refinance opportunities on this product. Where you have, you know, our loan amount, our maximum claim amount, you know, is capped at what used to be 1 point 1.201 million and now we're at a,249,000. So when you have increases in the, you know, the annual loan amounts, you know, then we can look at, you know, doing a refi. I had one borrower that actually beat me to it, you [snorts] know, where he's like, I hear I can get more money and I'm like, we can get you more money, you know. And so these and the thing about refinances is you don't have the same you only pay mortgage insurance which is the high expense of these loans. You only pay the mortgage insurance on the change in the loan amount. So if I increase your loan amount 100 grand your mortgage insurance is only 3,000 rather than 2% of the purchase price or 2% of the appraised value. So closing costs are a lot less. And again, once you've had this loan and you've advanced a lot more money, as we kind of went back to, if you've got a substantial loan amount or if you have a good size loan amount, I don't have to charge you an origination fee. So, the refinance costs on this product are actually cheap relative to other, you know, forward mortgages or it's so it's not too expensive to do that. So, there's there are more refinance opportunities with this. We're also seeing lower margins. You know, that used to be the lowest margin I saw was one and three/4ers. And now we're seeing I think I saw one investor offering one and a quarter margin, you know, so

23:02 You know, there's ch, you know, this market is changing. You know, we're seeing more proprietary products, which is the conventional side of this. We're seeing lower margins. We're are you as a as an organization, National Reverse Mortgage Lender Association, you know, we're, you know, pressuring HUD for changes to the mortgage insurance premium, you know, because our side of the product of the FHA product makes them the mutual mortgage insurance fund is pretty low risk compared to the overall FHA market. We keep the defaults and the losses down for the reverse, you know, or I'm sorry, for the FHA, you know, mortgage insurance, you know, fund. And so we're trying, you know, but yeah, so we're trying to work on that as well. But getting off topic, let's reel it back in where we

23:46 Seems to me though also the annual certification is an opportunity to maintain relation with a customer for referrals, right? Their kids need to buy a house, their kids need to refinance,

23:55 The Realtor® referred it to you or the financial planner referred it to you. You tell them, "Hey, I just talked to Joe and Mary and they did their annual certification and everything's good." It just seems like if you did no other marketing, but every customer you ever did their annual certification and then told whoever referred you or was involved in transaction, it just seems like you have more business than you ever know what to do with.

24:16 You know, you're giving me marketing. You're telling me to do like now I've got I'm taking information from this call. I would tell the industry, you know, I've been saying this as long as I've been on this podcast and I on one hand I hate to you hesitate to tell the people how to run their business, but to me it just seems like as a natural the one thing you do is call your past clients. Yeah.

24:35 And offer them the make sure because the one and I feel like that's service to the industry because the one thing that really hangs over this I just had one today where it was a verse mortgage, dad died and what's the likely outcome? Well, unless you refinance or sell the house, it's going to go to foreclosure. That it's inevitable. You're going to get a letter, you're going to get a time period, you're going to get six months, maybe depends on how you're going to get six months minimum. But six months means foreclosure date or six months can mean they'll give extensions. They may or may not. You know, all that's

25:08 A whole topic. But why would you not call a customer to avoid all that nonsense and be the knight in shining armor when they need some help? I agree and that's a great reminder for me too, you know, because And just make sure that everyone else is, you know, is clear. Every year annually, we have to, you get a certification as a borrower saying that you're still living in the property and then you're still married to your spouse that's living in the property. And then if there are any changes, then you have to let us know. And that's the one the one big servicing requirement that's different from a forward mortgage. And so if you ignore those letters, then you get a you know, you get a default notice in the mail. So that's the notification that we're talking about, which is a great it is a great time of year. I do send out emails, remember to do this, but a call that is probably more appropriate kind of

25:55 Just to kind of have that touch. I remember saying is too time-consuming. I said, well, how many reverse mortgages have you done in your career? He said, well, you know, 200. And I said, it's one a day. Like every day you call past client. [laughter] Every day you call them and they're going to love you. They're going to love that phone call.

26:12 Yep. One a day. Okay. It's like five or it's like calling your mom or calling you know somebody you know when you call you got to call your mom every Sunday okay but you know once you're on the call it's nice you're talking to a human being you're making their day like that's the least we could do as human beings we're still if look if we don't take on the if we don't grab the role of the human in this relationship Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Amazon are going to replace us with all the technology and chips and robots and all kinds of stuff and so to me it just seems that we need to push ourselves into that spot more than anywhere else. Talk a little bit about, you know, I know you work for, you know, as you describe a boutique company. As an industry, I see that we just need to do about 10 times more of these between people who are sitting on free and clear properties. You and I talked before we started about customers who are on social security, but they live in houses paid free and clear and they're barely making it and they're scrambling every month where they could rebalance things a little bit. That doesn't mean you want to spend it all on a vacation, but you can make some changes there. But we have the chance to really make a change in people's lives or buying cash, which is another one. I that's how I got involved with this was I was looking to buy property for cash. I was limited and all of a sudden I realized I could buy

27:26 34% more by using a HECM for purchase. But to do that, we're going to need more originators and that's either going to be forward originators who are going to learn this product. My concern is they're going to go one foot in, one foot out and never really become an expert like you are in this or we can bring in new people who are salespeople just in the for in the reverse space. Which of those two strategies do you see is working most commonly successfully and do you get involved with any such mentorship?

27:57 So it's our company actually as a my company Contempo Lending has been around for about 20 years here in Palm Springs. I think we have probably eight originators. I teach them more about how to put these together. But it is a different animal. Just pricing them is different. And a lot of our people don't, you know, understand how to do that. So like I love educating them, you know, as to which strategy works. You know, it depends on the person. If you're the one that just wants to go in and make a ton of money on, you know, as few deals as possible where you're going to do these higher rate margin loans, you know, that there are those people. You know, I've had them work for me when I had my own shop, you know, and so all of them work. As a as an industry, as a as National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, our goal is to educate more people because the more education you have about this to do this product, you know, then it doesn't have the, you know, the all the negative associations that go with it because all the negative associations are just it just people don't know. And so the more information we can get out there, the better it's going to be for all of us. So I don't think of this market as a you know as a if I if I get this if you get the deal I lost it. I think that there is market there's market share for everybody.

29:14 There's plenty. So yeah there is. So you know for me what it came down to was I didn't want to work for a big a big lender or a big institution anymore, you know.

29:24 Yeah. It just wasn't my, you know, at 60, you know, I just didn't want to work that way anymore, you know. Just like I wanted to have more flexibility,

29:33 Right? And kind [laughter] of get there. So, as far as other originators, I feel like there's education and I also think that the National Reverse Mortgage Lender Association also is about raising the standards. I think it's one thing there's education and I think that when you're part of a group, you're kind of responsible to each other to maintain standards and try to improve things for the industry as a general. And I really feel and I've been I was fortunate to be invited to be a guest speaker at the regional event this year and I really feel you know the opportunity to say hey let's all raise our standards hold me accountable as a real estate broker but let me point out where you can raise your standard to help customers. I do think that you talked about pricing transparency which I think is a great level and I think your personal approach to working with customers and giving that personal service that's where this industry is headed whether you like it or not. If you can't sit with a customer and get them to trust you, like you, and then want to do business with you after that, Facebook and Google are going to steal the rest of the business. So, we need to be sharper and better, and I think you're right in the middle of that of that target as far as business goes.

30:40 Yeah. And when it comes to like certified reverse mortgage professionals, which is a subset of, you know, people that do reverse mortgages, you know, we do have the accountability that you don't have with, you know, going to just any loan officer on the street. You know, if you have a problem with the certified verse of CRMP, we have an association and so we are held accountable. You know, we have an ethics committee that reviews complaints against its member and there are the last I heard there were about 208 of us, you know, nationally. But we also have we agree to a different set of standards where things like you know when it comes to churning a loan where you're constantly refinancing people, you know, I have to wait 18 months as part of the code of ethics I agree to whereas the HUD requirement is 12 months. So we, you know, we agree to act, to a higher set of ethical standards than just originators in general. So that's, you know, a reason to work with a CRMP. But yeah,

31:32 And having interviewed a bunch of them, they all to me seem like they're at the top of their game. Whereas I, when I started this podcast, I'll just be honest with you, I started this, I interviewed a couple people who I knew were good originators. And I said, who's a good reverse mortgage originator? Well, it was some guy they knew and liked who did a couple, but he just was transacting and yet the people in the in the CRMPS who are certified as professionals in this field were everyone a cut above and I just think that's the result of both the education and I think the standards of holding each other to a higher and that's my goal this podcast is to raise a standard of originators and obviously we as Realtors® and attorneys and financial planners we should be working with the best for our clients. It's not just about the guy who did a loan for us, but it's about who's best for our client. And so, Ty, I think you fit that you fit that category particularly in the Palm Springs greater, you know, desert area. And that's it sounds like you have a pretty wide circle that you that you service, not just Palm Springs, but the greater Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, all that area. I really want to thank you for being on our call today. I know the best place to send people for your website is toddwalcott.com. And then you have on there your contact information. What else is on your website that you like people to notice when they go on and try to find more information about you?

32:53 Well, as we kind of talked before, what I like is you can actually you're going to get a phone number and you're going to get like my email address that you can reach out to me. Number one, right? So that you're going to get me and not a call center.

33:04 I understand people not putting their phone number on a website. How many times [laughter] how many phone calls you really get that you're that bus? Are you really that busy with phone calls? Yeah. Yeah.

33:14 An email, you get that much spam, you can't sort it out somehow faster or use filters. Is it really that big? So, I appreciate that about your website. Has your contact info right there.

33:23 And so, but the other thing I do is, you know, I'm working on making more of more informational, more educational. So, I've recorded a series of, you know, of segments on different topics like solar, non-browing spouse, you know, reverse purchase. So, I get to get those videos up on there because that's my whole thing is you know, expert in and subject matter is kind of my goal for this market. So, fantastic. So, I'll be changing that and getting some videos on there next couple of weeks. To where there'll be some a little bit more meat to it.

33:52 Fantastic. Well, Todd Walcott, you can find me at toddwalcott.com. Phone number [phone number]. Really appreciate you being with us today and appreciate the education and the showing us kind of behind the scenes what the pricing looks like and where people can save some money. Thank you so much for being on our call today.

34:06 You bet. Good to talk to you. And thank you for watching today. This is the Reverse Mortgage Podcast. We interview originators, managers, vendors in this business every week. A new episode. Do you like this? Give me some comments, feedback. If you think you should be interviewed, send me your contact info. Let's talk about it. As always, I'm Bill Gross Probate on social media. Make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.