Wholesale vs Retail Home Loans with Sean Lee: Why Brokers Win

Welcome back to Mortgage Daddies. We have Sean Lee back in town from Washington. Little red eye flight again? Oh, yeah. You could say that. I heard it was quite the experience. It was a, an all-night eventNever fun. That’s why I hate traveling. Too much time. Too time-consuming. I need to find a way to teleport. That would help. Then maybe I’ll come to Washington. On your way through, just stop in Minnesota to visit Dustin. Yeah. You know, it’s quick, it speeds things up. We just need to get you up to, like, over 200 mil and then it’s private jet time. I’m Vernon. I run the top mortgage brokerage in Massachusetts with over 20 years of experience. I’m Craig. I’ve done $100 million consistently since my second full year in the business. And I’m Massachusetts’ top mortgage broker. We’re the Mortgage Daddies with real advice, real stories, and real results. Let’s get going. This guy in private aviation is next level. He was. We can’t even afford first class. Like, li- listen, we’re still on budgets over around here. Sean’s like, “Wait, what are you talking about? I got first class. “I had steak on my midnight flight. No. That does not happen. Do you get a pod when you come this, uh, far? Or is it, like, a regular seat? Uh, no. I was in the exit row. Oh? Yep. So a little extra legroom? Little, little,extra leg room. Not too bad. That helps. You need to talk to the person who’s booking that travel for you, man. You’ve gotta step up your game. Yeah. Whoever that is. Somebody at Milestone. Yeah. I mean, we, we probably gotta talk to that person about this. I mean, in an exit row, 6, 7hour flight? Yeah. It seems a little too good for him. Well, yeah. I mean, he’s not that much bigger than Dustin- His legs aren’t that long. so it’s all right. I, I do the upgrades on my own. I’ve got, I’ve got status. I can- I wanna see receipts of this. I can move my, uh, my seat around. So you’ve beenI mean, hyp- hypothetically- You’ve beenI’d do that same exact thing. I’d let them book it and then I just upgrade it myself afterwards- Yup. move myself around. I think how the last time we went to Houston they had me on, like, row 27 in the middle seat or something. I was like, “Whoa, guys. Chill. “Well, when you’re 6’5”. You can’t do it. That, that doesn’t work. I, I really try not to fly if it’s not first class. Just, not because of the food, nothing. Just straight room. It’s a very uncomfortable flight for me to be sitting like this. When you’reYou’re a wide guy. Yeah. He’s got long legs. I wasAnd I like to be on the computer and you can’t- Yeah. sit in economy and type. You’ve got all all alligator arms. I- it should be illegal- It just doesn’t work. how small those seats are. Like, you literally this for 5 hours straight. All right. I’ve got a take. I don’t know if it’s good for Mortgage Daddies or not. Wha- what is it? I think- We can cut it out if needs be. I think there should be a minimum fitness requirement for people that sit in the exit row. Or just buy 2 seats. Oh. For the e- no, for the exit row, he’s saying, like, you should have to be ableOh, yeah. Because he, all you might need then- All they, all they do is like, “Are you okay with this? “To this, like, 9yearold woman who’s like, “Yes. “I was like, “How is she gonna help me? “She’s not helping anybody. Right. Or the woman with, like, a cast- Yeah. on her ankle. Like, you’re not moving anybody through the exit row quickly. Or removing the door. Let’s all be honest. If that plane goes down in that exit row, you’re the first one off that plane and you’re not helping anybody else. I’m out. I will say this, though. I got so lucky, I think, on one of my flights recently. Jam-packed flight. I have an aisle, uh, I have a window seat. Now, I prefer window so I don’t, I don’t get up during the flight. So I don’t have to go to the bathroom 38 times like everybody else. Take a window. Lady sits down in the aisle. She looks over at me, she’s like, “Feel free to use the middle seat. I purchased both of these. “I was like, “She’s a genius. “Like, she was a genius. After that, it might be worth skipping, like- It’s probably cheaper thanTo go that route and just buy the middle seat. It’s probably cheaper than first class. Some of these first class tickets are insane. It’s wild. It’s wild. I like flying JetBlue. That’s why I asked you why you flew in on Delta. ‘Cause if you can get the pod on JetBlue, I’ve only done it once there and once back the first time I went there, and now it’s never been available since. Like, full recliner, go s- go to sleep laying down completely flat. That was game changer. Then I was like, “I’ll just keep flying to Seattle if you want. “Never gotten it back again. I’m like, “I hate all of this. “”I never wanna go back to Seattle. “But it’s fun. So you’ve been pretty busy in the last, uh, since the last time you’ve been on. SoVery busy. Yeah. Creating. Our first repeat guest. Yeah. And you’ve been, uh, busy trying to recruit. Yes. How’s that go? We’ve been recruiting. Ah, y- I, I know. Yes. You gotta tell them. Yeah. Yeah, you’re doing a great job. I mean, you have us traveling everywhere, you’re going everywhere. We were just most recently in, uh, the great state of Texas, down in Houston. We had some meetings down there. Uh, and then I stuckSean, he’s so kind a trip to Kansas City? Kansas City, yeah. So we, we left Houston, I came home. He went to Kansas City for the day and then that night flew back to, uh, Seattle. Yep. Which is you’re next level. Like, honestly, you’re next level. Yeah. Met, met with a great, uh, smaller broker owner there, um, and a, a big, uh, loan officer from an independent mortgage bank, uh, who is interested in, in, you know, getting out of the, the rat race that is, uh, retail lending. She’s, she’s competing against other people in her company. They’ve oversaturated the market. Um, and that, that plan just has not worked for that company and that market. And she’s feeling the effects of it and it’s hurting her, her production. So she’s looking for, for a new home and I’m super, uh, excited about the potential to bring her on here because I know she will thrive. One of the big things weWe went on a recruiting appointment yesterday. You were in town, totally off, you know, a plane for about 7 hours before we were sitting in our first meeting. And I keep hearing the same thing comes up, k- keep coming up when we’re talking to retail loan officers specifically, is control. And it’s mind-blowing to me because the retail channel thinks that they have all this control over their file ’cause they can talk to an underwriter. And it came up yesterday and I’m like, “ThisWe have to change the game on this. “Like if I could-get that one message out to every, you know, retail IMB out there. It was that you guys do not have more control over the loan process than we do on the broker side. Like, I’ll take any meeting with anybody, anywhere, and have this conversation. I mean, you don’t have to be a recruiter or a development, business development officer like yourself. Stick Craig on the phone with any retail loan officer and ask who’s got more control over a file. But that’s the number one thing, in my opinion, that I just keep hearing over and over again. I’m like, “What control do you guys have over this? “You guys don’t even control your own price and the rate and how much you guys can make on a deal or any of that. Is thatLike, what are some of the other things that you see coming up where they say that theythey’re winning, they’re beating r- uh, you know, wholesale and brokers? That’s the biggest one. And it is the largest false narrative in our industry, is that brokers don’t have control. And it’sI think it’s the last thing that the independent mortgage banks are holding onto for, uh, retention. It’s all they talk about. That’s all they talk about. That’s the only thing that they can say. And it’s not true. And there are examples of it. Every single time you talk to loan officers from independent mortgage banks, maybe not branch manager level, they all have to ask for pricing exceptions. And that doesn’t exist on our platform. Yeah. If you don’t ever want to make a pricing exception again, come to Milestone. You can control your own destiny. You can make decisions on the fly. That comes through as confidence. That comes through as a- a- a way that you can build trust with your partners, answer their questions and secure a deal right on the spot. You can’t do that in an independent mortgage bank- No. if you’re asking for a pricing exception, not knowing if it’s gonna get, um, gonna get, uh, goes through or not. And yeah, I mean, when you talk about control, it’s, it’s not just, okay, pricing, sure, we have complete control over pricing. We’re selling from raw wholesale rates. But also you can control which investors you’re going to, which products you’re, you’re selling or you have access to, or you’re offering, which programs. And because we have so many different investors, our loan officers have access to the entire spectrum of loan programs and products. It’s a huge- I think-differentiator for us. I think if you take a really good retail loan officer, and I know a lot of them, right? Like every single time we go out somewhere, especially, you know, uh, in the New England area, everybody’s like, “Oh, you know this guy? You know this guy? “I’m like, “I know all these guys. “Just like when I go to Washington, you know all those guys. You take the best of the best on that side, and I challenge them to, to sit in a room with Craig and battle it out and just go back and forth debating on which one has more, um, more, more say in the transaction, over pricing, control, underwriting, clear to close, the speed and the efficiencies that we have on the broker channel. Like, it’s crazy to me that there’s still that many retail loan officers out there that believe that they’re at the best place. And you sit down and you talk to these guys and you’re like, “I don’t know how to make you believe anything we’re saying because it’s so much better that it looks like we’re just making this up to try to get a meeting or to get you guys to transition over to wholesale. “Like, I think that’s, for me, when I go to these meetings, that’s the hardest part, right? Where I, you know, 1, one of our recent, uh, trips, we, we went and sat in, uh, an office and we’re having this whole conversation and it’s like, “What are you doing? You don’t have to do it this way. “And he’s like, “No, you have to do it this way. “It’s just like, “No, you don’t. “Like, “This is a way different system. “And just really trying to change their mindset, right? I think that’sYou do it, it better than anybody I’ve seen in this space. Well, I think h- the people that do it the best are the people that have actually made the move from retail or independent mortgage banks to our channel. The guys like Adrian Webb, right? Who ha- had a, an extensive retail background. And he was always sold that same narrative, “You don’t have control, right? It’s gonna take longer to close. “A- Everything. “You can’t, you can’t talk to the underwriters,” right? All of these different messages that, that the IMBs tell their, their loan officers. Um, but he’s a great example of somebody that came over and said, “I’ve been lied to this entire time. “”And now I see the light. now I understand how much more efficient it is, how much, uh, more price-effective we are, uh, and just how much the entire experience is for me, my borrowers, and my industry partners. Um, so sure, it can come from me, I can articulate it, you can, we can, we can put that message out there. But really, I mean, you know, talk to the people that have made the move, listen to them, because they will tell you how much better it is, how much more efficient. A- another great example, um, one of our inve- uh, oh, so a lot of the IMBs will say, “Y- you don’t have access to the underwriters,” right? ‘Cause we don’t have underwriting in-house. We outsource it. It’s the most expensive part of the loan process outside of LO compensation. So we’re expensing the most, uh, uh, the most expensive part of the loan process and leveraging companies that can do it with technology and scale and can do it more affordably than we can. So the message is, yeah, “So you don’t have control over your underwriters. “One of our investors has a 2hour response time on all underwriting inquiries. So any time you make an in- inquiry, you’re going to get a response on that within 2 hours. That does not exist with retail. You’ve got people taking smoke breaks, they’re mad that, you know, the LOs are making a million dollars a year and got a $500,000 a year signing bonus, whatever it is. And they’ve got a chip on their so- shoulder where these underwriters are paid based on performance, they’re paid based on response time, and held to these other metrics stan- and standards that keep the experience for us head and shoulders above what anybody else is providing. Yeah, I can’t agree with you more. It’s just, uhAnd at the end of the day, it’s the underwriters aren’t sitting in our building, but they’re the ones underwriting our file for the investor who is buying that loan, right? So w- they want to do a great job, they want to give us a great experience. They don’t have a retail channel, they’re not trying to do business any other way. there’s not an investor we deal with, we got 45, 50 investors that we can’t pick up the phone and call the account executive, the underwriter, a closing team. Um, it’s just, it’s wild to me that every single recruiting appointment we go on or call, it’s like, “I, I don’t want to lose control. “I’m like, “How many loans did you close last month? “”Seven. “”Seven loans? Wow. Can you imagine if you didn’t have to call the underwriter and you got a 2hour response, that you could do 15 loans just by speeding that up? “I mean, we talk about it all the time, you know, before we came on the episode, we talk about Craig Snell and his story and how he’s been able to evolve over the last 5 years to becoming one of the top loan officers in the entire nation. Um, how did he do that? And he’s never worked retail. I mean, I spent 10, 12, 13 years on retail. And that was my number one pain point. You know, the market isn’t going all that well. The units and the volume’s not there, but my volume is still there because, you know, that’s what I do, I go out and I win, right? But there’s onlyOf loan officers that, that really succeed and they’re in the top 10% of all loan officers. If you’re not in that top 10%, you don’t have any control over your destiny. Like, you have to beg for a pricing exception. You have to beg for that rush. How do you, how do you transition that, um, that rescue deal that you’re taking from a, a new business partner who’s trusting you now to take it from one of the IMBs and you stick it in your pipeline, you close it in 7 days? That real estate agent is now sending that broker all of their business going forward because you just did what you said you were gonna do. And on the retail channel, it, that was one of my biggest pet peeves. I’m telling you, like, you close 50, 75, $100 million and you have to walk in, you have to call, and I was a branch manager, I think they just gave those titles out to everybody who was a big producer to try to keep you there, a little $30,000, $35,000 salary or whatever, whatever it was. Um, but at the end of the day, I would still have to call somebody and ask for, “Hey, uh, you know, I’m getting shopped. I’m at six and a half and I need to go to 6. 375. ” “Yeah, we can’t make that happen. “I was like, “What is happening? “And then you get into these markets where we’re going into right now with refinances, you talk about speed, I was lucky enough because you’re a producer, that you’d have access to your underwriter, in-house, right? So I’d have one underwriter, everybody else is on a round robin if you’re not putting in the volume. But that underwriter’s only capable of underwriting, it was like 50 or 60 loans, and I, it wasn’t just my loan she was working on, she’d be working on another 2 or 3 loan officers that are doing decent production. she’s not touching the file every 2 hours. It’s like, it’s next in th- you’re, you’re the 5th in queue, you know, next within 24 hours. I’m like, “Within 24 hours? I just need you to look at this pay stub, right? “And next thing you know, you’re, you’re buying, uh, purses or sending lunch over to try to get, to grease the wheels to get that thing pushed up, right? We don’t have to deal with that, right? Like, what Craig does, 2hour turn times, submit it, so like, hey, we’ll get the income looked at, signed off on within a couple of hours. It- it’s, it’s incredible to me that that narrative is still out there- Right. in 2025. Nevermind the technology and the AI that’s all coming out right now. Like, some of these IMBs, and we’re not gonna get into, you know, who they are, how long do you think it’s gonna take them to make a decision on AI or any of those type of things that are happening with the technology piece of really implementing that, right? Like, we’ve tried to implement technology. We’re a much smaller company, so we can roll out technology or peel it back on a dime. Yeah. You think a top 10 IMB is gonna roll out AI across the board for every one of their originators in weeks, months? Well, I think that’s a big, one of the big reasons why they’re continuing to lose market share, and have been for the last-10 years or so. Uh, we saw broker market share hit a, a low after the financial crisis of 12% against INBs and, and, uh, the big banks. And, uh, in that time, we’ve grown to 30%. Yeah. And most of that shift is i- it’s loan officers bringing their business from independent mortgage banks to the, the broker world. And they’re doing it because of technology. They’re doing it because they want the transparency. They do it because they want same day closes, right? Or same day clear to closes or, or approvals, uh, which happen all the time. So if you follow Craig’s Facebook, like, you’ll see these posts from our investors on, on same, same day approvals, right? And it’s just a better experience all the way around. So yeah, we’re seeing it. And, and they are losing market share because they can’t make these quick adjustments, uh, because i- it’s next to impossible to, you know, get rid of some of that, that corporate bloat that they have. Um, and they’ve gotta, they’ve gotta grease the pockets of, of these big executives that have, you know, expensive habits. Um- Like private aviation. Private avi- which is, you know-Craig may be going down that path. Um- No. He needs it. But it, it is great to see, uh, you know, Craig, you know, succeed without having that experience, um, in really setting the bar for, for what it means to be a successful loan officer in this channel, in this space. And he’s gonna continue to grow and, um, he, he’s gonna build, um, a, a playbook, a, a blueprint for success. And he, and he already has built it, that other loan officers can follow. You mentioned the 10% earlier. That top 10%, you’re exactly right. The top 10% of loan officers at independent mortgage banks, they’ve got it made. They get everything they want. Um, the companies will bend over backwards for them. Um, and I don’t know that tho- those are necessarily the people that we’re gonna target, right? Yeah. For our recruiting efforts. But it’s anybody else, you know, maybe above the bottom 10%. So it’s, it’s that middle 80%- Is that, is that-that we can go after. 25 to $80 million producer, I would say this to, to, to any INB re- retail loan officer. Have you ever seen a successful broker, mortgage broker go to, go back to retail? I, I’m yet to see one. It doesn’t happen. It does not happen. You do not leave retail, come to a broker channel, and if you’re a $50 1000000, $60 1000000, $75 million producer, $100 million producer, how many brokers that are doing $100 1000000, $50 million are like, “You know, I don’t really have a lotta control. I’m gonna go back to the dark side. “Doesn’t happen. So I, I n- I never worked on that side, but I got recruited heavily to try to go to that side by 3 or 4 different major companies. And, you know, I don’t, I didn’t wanna make a switch just to make a switch, so I had a lot of questions. And, you know, they just don’t seem to be able to answer the questions. And the only answer you get is, “You have more control on this side. “I’m like, “How, how do I have more control? “And I could already tell by the fact that the people I’m talking to that they are so disconnected from how business is run and what we can actually do. I don’t know what life was like, you know, in 2008 or 2009 with mortgage brokers or what changed and if you didn’t have control or where this whole stigma came from. But I think it’s insane. Like, I really don’t understand how anybody could say that, because I can get a loan in, disclosed, signed, underwritten the same day. If we have everything, we can get it cleared the same exact day and pull a package and close, you know, as soon as you want pretty much with any of our investors. And, you know, there’s some out there that are not as good, but there’s probably some, you know, other retail lenders that are not as good either and you’re gonna wanna kill yourself if you work there. But you just gotta figure out, you know, where the best place to operate is, who you wanna use for the reasons as to why, and you have complete control of what you wanna do in pricing so you’re never worried about it. And then the other side of it too is you get a lotta deals sent to you, and if you have a lotta referral partners, you never wanna b- you never wanna say no that you can’t do something that somebody else can do. And on this side of the business, you really never have to do that. And that was one thing that you would have to do if you work at a, a retail lender, because they have their own guidelines that they only go down to. do if you work at a- a retail lender, because they have their own guidelines that they only go down to. So if you work at a company and their lowest FICO score that they go to is at a 600, well, what do you do with everybody that’s below that? Right. You gotta go kick it out and refer them to somebody else, or, you know, hopefully work on their credit and get it. You know, we- we could do that. Yeah. You know, I just closed a 530533 credit score last week in under 30 days. I don’t know how much more control you can have ofor options that you can have that other people do not have. I would have never closed that deal if I worked at a retail lender. Right. Or i- definitely not in f- less than 30 days. Yeah, we wereWe were talking about flights earlier, and it’s like, imagine you only had access to JetBlue- Yeah. right, and their schedule of flights. No one is only going to shop for flights on JetBlue’s website. Maybe Vernon. I’m just kidding. But you’re going to go to Travelocity or kayak. com, right? Yeah. Or Expedia, and you’re going to look at all of the different options, you’re going to look at all of the different price points. Sure, you probably have a carrier that, you know, you prefer and that’s- that’s great, maybe go there. Your analogy is spot on. Because yes, you might get a little bit of a better deal, and for us, as a broker, like, I may be able to get you a little bit of a better rate going to XYZ, but that experience, I already know is not gonna be the best. It’s not gonna be the smoothest, it’s not gonna be the fastest. Could we get it done? Yeah, we’re gonna get it done, but it’s not gonna be as easy for you. So sometimes the decision on where we put the loans is because how quick do you need to close? How smooth a transaction do you want this to be? How responsive is the borrower withWe go here and maybe the rate’s a tiny bit higher, your payment’s $20 difference, but you’re cleared in under 7 days, you don’t have to worry about it, you needed to close quickly, or you can go somewhere else. We have those options. Do you wanna go through that? Do you wanna go through those hurdles and fly, you know, an airline that maybe isn’t Delta? Y- you get a little bit of a better deal, but your experience isn’t gonna be good. Your flight maybe got delayed. You know, it’s kindait’s- it’s kinda the same thing, you know? I don’t think the consumer realizes. That’s a great analogy. I’m sitting here. I don’t think the consumer actually realizes that analogy. Would you rather fly Frontier and have 3 layovers and lose your bags, absolutely have no leg room, no nothing? Would you like to fly Delta first class, direct flight in, you’re gonna be taken care of? Like, that’s going to the broker channel, flying Delta, and you wanna stay on the retail side, you’re flying Frontier. And Frontier’s just got a great marketing. Like, that’s why INBs, they’ve been doing it. They have all the marketing, they’ve been doing it for a long time. There’s certain pockets of broker channel, butWell, it’s another reason that market share will continue to shift. It’s, we’re not gonna stop at- at 30%. We’ll get 40, then we’ll get 50 and we’ll get 70 and I don’t know if we’re- we’re ever gonna have 100%, maybe that shouldn’t be the goal. Um, but the market share will continue to shift because we have conditioned buying behavior through companies like Zillow and Amazon, all these companies, Expedia, that provide you options. The consumer wants options, the new loan officer is going to want options. They’ve- they’ve grown up having all of these options, they’re reading reviews, they wanna be able to make their own choices, they want transparency. That exists in our world, itthose choices and that transparency does not exist- Yeah. with independent mortgage banks. You’re- you’re hitting a button and you’re getting a rate. That’s your only option. Right. With us, you hit a button, you get 50 different rates, different rate sheets, different buydown options, different programs that people roll out. You get every option under the sun that you can provide to somebody, and then you also take that and figure out, okay, well, how quick do I need to close, you know, how smooth of a process it’s gonna be? But we have options for mo- I mean, there’s investors I use just for certain credit scores because they have really good pricing on it. They know how to do it and they’re really good at it. Other investors don’t like that. Well, what if you work at just that one, bank, or that one lender? Well, you’re just stuck to that and you’re gonna lose so much business because of it. And in a market now where, you know, realtors, they don’t understand that, right? They don’t understand that, hey, I might be great at what I do, but my b- my company only does really this. So if you don’t fit into this box, I can’t really help you and do anything. So the clients that you’re referring as a realtor over to me, half of them I have to make them fill out an application, get all their paperwork, run their credit, tell them, “Sorry, we can’t do it. “But you could send it to Vern on the broker side and he can run it and he can look at it, he can pull your credit one time, he can look at your documents and he can send it to any one of his 50 investors and your client doesn’t feel thatThey don’t even know. They don’t even feel that stress. And you as a realtor, who- who are you gonna wanna r- never mind the closing faster part of it, I mean, that is all proven on how fast we can close it, how much control we have. But if you’re a realtor referring somebody business, do I wanna refer it to somebody that can only do certain things and are gonna put my client through that? ifI know, as a consumer, you go through a process and you don’t get the answer you want, y- you maybe give up, right? You’re gonna go back to renting. Right. Go back to leasing. “Ah, I can’t do this. “Well, no, maybe you could do that. I’ve gotten so many deals referred, thank God that I have good agents that I work with, that are like, “No, you, you know, you went to this bank, they said no. Give this guy a call,” and we were able to do something thatand they were able to buy a house that they would have just ga- given up on and been like, “Hey, whatever that bank was telling me, I’m- I’m never gonna hit that, you know, I’m never gonna be able to get my credit up that high. I’m never gonna have that much money to put down because I’m renting. I’m in this rat race. “Well, if you have another option and you have somewhere that you can go to get all those options, it really is a perfect analogy, likeGame changer. Going into a system like, you know, Travelocity or Expedia or whatever and hitting a button and getting everybody’s stuff, or you just go to one place and one place only. And not only areit- it could be more expensive, but also your- your options of timing aren’t there for you, right? Yeah. Half the time I pick flights, it’s more on the time. The time’s more important to me- That’s right. than necessarily the cost is, because I wanna make sure I’m there at a certain time or I wanna make sure that that works for my schedule, and I would rather pay a little bit more to get there-and get there on time, get there at the time that works for me, then take this layover thing here or there, whatever, h- maybe there’s a delay, you know, and now all of a sudden I am, I missed what I needed to be at. Right. And that time for you is product fit or underwriting guidelines- Mm-hmm. for the borrower, right? Or for you as a loan officer. Um, and I wanna be clear, this doesn’t mean you need more staff to support you. It actually m- it’s the opposite. We see guys like Adrian Webb come over. He had a team of 5 before he came into, into the broker world. It’s wild. He’s taken that down to just two and he’s still doing 60, 70, $80 million a year. Yeah. And I j- same thing with you. I mean, I think you’re well over 100, 120, 130 really a, a staff of just 2. Mm-hmm. Frank has the same staff now that he had when he wasn’t even doing $80 1000000, right? Like, and he’s working smarter, not harder. Like, that’s the difference. Like, Adrian went from 5 to 2, but he’s working smarter, not harder. He’s not compensating for the 3 people he doesn’t have on his team anymore. He’s able to do a lot more loans now with the same staff because our investors have gotten better. Like, let’s call it what it is. The wholesale, the wholesale investors make it really easy. They support you. They want your business, so you’ve got account executives constantly extending a hand- Yeah. and saying, “Hey, how, how can I help you win this deal? How can I help you close this? Uh, what can I do to make your life easier? “And we leverage that and it, yeah, it makes the whole process more efficient. You don’t have to learn 50 different systems to work with 50 different investors. You leverage your resources and the support that they’re giving you, and they get it done for you. I think that’s where you’re gonna see the biggest shift in, and I think you’ve already seen it, and a big part of why the percentage has increased on our end over the last few years is ’cause rates went down, uh, rates went up, right? So production went down. Well, these companies have massive overheads. A lot of people who do not originate loans or even work onMassive, massive. I mean, these people are making tons and tons of money. Well, who has to pay for that? consumer. The consumer has to pay for that. So they’re not getting the best rate. You know, the whole, like, model that we have is the best rate that we can get you with the best speed and service with as little staffing as possible to be able to handle it. And when we go and, and production picks up, well, nothing’s gonna slow down because our investors have 9,000 employees that they pay for- Right. that they have to underwrite the files. I remember when rates were really low and we had some competitors in our area, and I’d get calls from clients like, “Hey, you know, I’ve been trying to refinance with this place for 90 days. “And they just, it’s not that they didn’t qualify, they just didn’t have the time or the staffing to be able to do it. So what are they doing? They’re trying to hire. Hire, hire, hire. Well, rates go down, now they gotta fire and lay everybody off. And it’s, I know when I was trying to grow my team, trying to bring somebody on us sucks. Yeah. ‘Cause you have to take time outta your day to train them, to get them up to speed, to, to a point where nowSo if you can take a team instead of having tried to run 5 people and this one leaves, that one leaves, they think they can do better somewhere else, you’re constantly having to try to refill those positions or production goes down, you gotta lay somebody off that was good. Now production picks back up, you gotta try to hire somebody. That person’s already been picked up by somebody else. Now you’re starting over again. And it’s this just terrible rat race of trying to keep up with what the market’s doing. And when you have a lot of help, I mean, you can do, in my opinion, on the broker side, with, with literally no help, nobody else on your team, just yourself. And you have, you know, processing that process the loans. But you, y- I, I could do probably 20 loans a month myself without having a team. Yeah. If I only dedicated my time. I, and I don’t only dedicate my time to originating anymore. We have all this other stuff that we do all the time now. But if that was it, I could do that without a problem because of technology and the, the ease of everything. It’s very quick. It’s very simple to do. You get over to processing and they run with it. You don’t need a massive team to do 20 transactions a month. I want you to know, or I want this, the audience to know that not all brokers can do that. Not all brokers have that technology. No, absolutely not. Not all br- not all brokers have the training and support to get you to the place- Some brokers don’t even have processors, so that- Right. that’s tough, where I mean, I can’t- Where you could-I’m not gonna say you could go do 20. You could- Yeah. but 20 would be a lot to try to do it all, all by yourself. But without any LOAs, without any, you know, people, you know, just get it over to processing, I was doi- I mean, before we even had as much operations, I was doing 20, 25 with Kevin just disclosing my loans, that’s all he did, was just disclose them. Files. Just that. Machine right there. They didn’t have, uh, LOA, didn’t have anything. It, it’s, but people just get so, “Oh, I need this, I want this. “I’m like, “Why, why do you need all this staffing? It’s only gonna cost you more money. You know, or yay, the company pays for it for you. Great, what do you think they’re doing to your rates or what they’re paying you, right? “But people just are not effective and, or they don’t wanna work hard enough to be able to, you know, operate at a, at a lesser staffing ’cause they just wantHow many loan officers come over from retail and you’re like, “What the hell? Did you work in this business for 20 years? You know nothing. “it’s wild to me. You know nothing. Yep. Because you just always had somebody doing everything for you. You were just a face. And that to me is crazy, like wh- And that gets old real quick. I didn’t have that. Like we, well I had to learn how to do every piece which made me better because now I, I can look at something in 2 seconds and get an answer. I don’t have to go and have my team go to get an answer for me, to go to this person, to go do all this, and I have to have these people just to keep things moving. But if you know what you’re doing, you don’t need all this staffing. I think we’re gonna see a big shift with rates coming back down. We’re gonna see volume go up. Everybody’s gonna refinance, cash out, rate and term refinance. What about those middle sized IMBs, right, this is a question for you, in your opinion. Are they gonna be able to ramp up for the volume? Like this is something that, you know, we at Milestone don’t have to worry about adding one more processor or 2 more processors or more underwriting. We have 9,500 support staff at UWM. We have, you know, 50 other lenders that we work with that can, they’re already staffed up waiting for this business. They’re waiting for this volume. They can handle it. They have the technology. We didn’t have to invest in the technology. We didn’t have to invest in the people. We’re not laying anybody off. We’re not having to go into a hiring mode. I feel like that, in this next, you know, uh, let’s call it 12 to 36 months here where it looks like it’s gonna be, you know, a kind of refi and purchase heavy, I think r- the broker channel is positioned, and Milestone obviously on the broker side, and we want everybody to come to Milestone, but the broker channel is just positioned so well for that growth that I think that we’re gonna see the market share go from that 29 to 30% to 35, 36% in the next 3 years, which doesn’t sound like a lot,but, you know, being in the industry for everybody who is in the industry, that 6, 7, 8% increase is huge over, you know, the course of 12 to 36 months. I mean, how many ret- uh, retail loan officers could you f- go and talk to, and from when times are good with refinances to now, that their process didn’t change, how much money they were getting paid, their rates compared to the rest of the market, you know, in comparison, their staffing that they had for help, they all them cut. Their, their compensation went down. Their support staffs got cut. They went from my own processor, my own underwriter, to them sharing it with 10 other people. You know, that affects your business, you know? And, uh- And, and that goes back to the control piece. Yeah. As a loan officer there, you have 0 control over that. In our model, you have complete control over how you’re leveraging those resources and what you have access to and what you don’t. Yeah, I mean, we have people that have their own LOAs and their own processors because they run a big enough team, they wanna have that for that ease. We, you don’t have to have that. You don’t have to have any of it, really. We provide enough of it that you don’t need it. But if you want, you can go have it. You know, we just brought on somebody as his own processor. Okay. Come on over. There you go. Like, you can have them if you wanna have them. And if you don’t wanna have them and you wanna keep your costs low, I mean, if you’re not killing it out there and you’re doing, you know, 5 loans a month, like wh- why do you need all, all this support and staff, you know? Come, it’s a, pretty much our system is set it and forget it, you know? You, you put the basic stuff in, you get it over, and the team just runs with it and that’s all taken care of through the company, you know? Not a lot of broker shops have that. And that’s how you do 30 plus units a month. Yeah. It actually might have been higher some of those months. I gotta ask Kevin. I think we would actually hit over 40 a few times. Just a machine. There, it’s coming. Yeah. Oh, it’s definitely coming. I see the pipeline. There’s, uh, some pretty, pretty exciting numbers coming in the, in the pipe. We’re gonna see some, some loan officers here do some incredible production over the next couple months. Yeah. Uh, that’s super exciting. One thing I wanted to tell you, Craig, uh, one of the best parts of my job, we were talking about pricing and just, you know, the, the margins that are built in to the, the, the IMBs, i- it’s doing an apples to apples price comparison, and sometimes from the exact same investor, and seeing the difference between their pricing and our pricing. And I just light up every time I, I see that we’re 200 basis points better in pricing versus, you know, what i- a loan officer is seeing with an independent mortgage bank. And i- y- you just know right at that moment, like that light bulb goes off for them. “I’ve been bamboozled this whole time. “They’re working their ass offs to try to get deals in, work relationships, go do all that work to then get the deal to then just get shopped out on it, and they can’t control it and they can’t do anything about it. And then they lose, they lose- That’s frustrating. confidence, right? Yeah, you get beaten down. And that confidence is, in sales, it’s everything. When you have knowledge, wh- when it’s, when you’re in a transparent model, you know exactly what you’re getting. You know that what you’re selling is the most competitive in the market, that translates to confidence. That confidence means that you’re going to be able to build trust with people, and once you have their trust, then you get the sale. And it works 100% of the time and I think, I, well, I know that’s one of the reasons why you’re so successful. I know that’s why when we, we talk about loan officers that have come into our model and doubled production year over year from what they did in, at, with the independent mortgage bank, it’s confidence, it’s systems, it’s speed, it’s providing the better, uh, th- the better service, right, and experience for the borrowers and, and referral partners. It’s all of that, but it starts with confidence and it’s knowing that it comes from selling the most competitive rates, knowing that you’re gonna get it done on time. Sean, thank you for coming all the way out here from, uh, Washington. I know you’re busy out there. You got a family. We really appreciate you coming out and spending the time and keep building Milestone. If you’re, you’re out there, you’re a retail loan officer, you’re looking for another place to go, you’re doing 25, 50, $100 million dollars, reach out to Sean Lee. He’s, uh, he’s more than happy to jump on the phone call with you and go over all the, all the things broker. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Thank you.