Stewart in the Studio

E14: A Forward Look at Reverse Mortgages

Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today for another episode of Stewart in the Studio. Today, we have Rob Awalt with us. Rob is with the Allegiant Reverse Services group within the Stewart Lender Services family of companies.

Rob, welcome to the show.

Marvin, good to see you this morning.

So, Rob, tell us a little bit about yourself and, how you got, into this space, a little bit about Allegiant Reverse Services.

Yeah. Sure. I was in the, ten thirty one exchange business and crossed over with quite a few title companies. One of those title companies decided to recruit me over when we sold our company and brought me into the title business. And I was doing local business in four counties, around the Greater Sacramento market, and, that included Ford and commercial mostly. And had a small branch that was doing some business with a local company in reverse mortgage back in the early days.

And that company was purchased by Financial Freedom, which at that point was by far the nation’s largest reverse mortgage lender.

And they asked us to come along for a ride. It’s really how that happened. We were really getting to be content experts, and as they grew, we grew.

And that grew into about a hundred and fifty people, and it got to a time where we had to make a decision or I had to make a decision which direction I wanted to go. And right around that two thousand six era when everybody knows what happened in mortgage two thousand seven, eight, it made it easy to get to a split off and do a stand alone on the reverse mortgage side of things. You just saw the opportunity to grow and also become nationwide.

And so we founded a company in two thousand eight and had a chance to get off the ground for eight years there and then pivoted over and started Allegiant River Services in two thousand sixteen.

And, luckily, we were able to bring a lot of experience with us. And with that, a lot of relationships and a lot of customers that we’ve been doing business with now for twenty years in the industry, and we became specialized. And that’s where we are today.

Talk a little bit about Allegiant Reverse and your position in the industry.

Marvin, we’ve had a philosophy from day one, which is we take care of the borrower.

And the mantra that we have is if you take care of that borrower, your client naturally gets taken care of in the process. If you’re focused on that end user, which is a senior, a protected class, we always like to talk about that, moms and dads and uncles and whatnot. And to be good in that space, you just have to realize how many extra touches and how much more care it takes to take care of those transactions.

They last about twice as long as a forward transaction, a sell or a or a refi.

So there’s a whole lot more time to touch that file and assure folks that things are being handled. And I was if anybody knew the industry, I said, walk our floor and listen to our people talk. You can tell when they’re talking to somebody. That is one of our borrowers. You just hear by their kindness, by their patience.

Rob, tell me a little bit about your notary network that’s especially trained for the reverse space.

The notary is a very vital piece of what we do. We have a very deep notary network of of folks that, have done and been tested and trained on reverse mortgage documents. But, really, it goes back to what we talked about from the very beginning, Marvin, is they know when they’re walking in the door, it isn’t going to be a forty five minute sign here and get out the door, that it’s going to be a little bit longer process. We want them not knocking on a a senior’s door unannounced.

There’s all those little extra touches that take the transaction, make the transaction last a little longer. We’ve seen plenty of title companies and notary companies and stuff that fail in this space because they hear that, but they don’t listen to it, and they don’t apply it to their business. And, again, there’s not a lot of transactions done in this industry. Right?

I think we’re averaging about three thousand transactions a month nationwide.

There’s not a lot of opportunity for failure in that, and it’s hard to get into the space a little bit because trying to get traction and trying to get enough volume for it to make sense. I could see why you it it’s it’s hard to apply all those other things. And we’re fortunate enough to where we’re entrenched enough that that we could apply all those and and not deviate from it.

Yeah. No. That’s great, Rob. I love that level of care because, like you were saying to me, if my mom were to get a reverse mortgage, you I would want to make sure that she had the utmost experience in that, that it was carefully explained, that the person was taking their time.

And I think that sort of ties in with a lot of folks wanting to age in place. We’re seeing the demographics change. I think you already alluded to that with now sixty two and up often are more technology Yeah. Literate and adept.

So you’ve got the demographic changes. You’ve got the changes in the industry that have happened over the years as reverse, and now the home equity conversion mortgages are more standardized. Talk about where the industry’s been and where it’s going.

I think, really, it’s two things. There’s reverse, as it was, everybody was dedicated to space. There wasn’t a lot of crossover.

And and now, obviously, with the economy the last couple years, you have lenders that are looking at the reverse space saying, hey. What’s going on over there?

And they’re looking at this now as another tool in their tool belt to go to market with. And they’re either acquiring some reverse lenders or in a lot of cases, they’re requiring experienced reverse folks to come into their shops and then educate their lenders and their loan officers. Here’s another option for you. And, again, the value add of that is, as if you’re an active listener, you know when this is an opportunity for a reverse person because they say things like, what are my options? I have a lot of equity in my house.

I don’t want big payments. I want to remodel my house. My house needs, some renovation.

All these different things are opportunities now for folks on the forward side to go, this is a candidate, and we have the tool. And maybe a year or two ago, they didn’t have that tool.

But that makes perfect sense. Home equity conversion mortgages or HECM, loans, What’s the difference between that and what we used to call reverse back in the day?

It’s the same thing. It’s equity in reverse, the HECM. Right? And, really, what’s transpired in the last, several years is, you know, the proprietary product. Finance of America, Longbridge, others have come out with their own products, a proprietary product, and it has a lot more flexibility in it. It has the ability to extract more money out of your house as well, so more value.

And that’s where the evolution on the reverse side of the aisle has really been. And I think that they’ve focused into that agent in place. Because, again, everything that happens in our space, I think that people have to step back and think about it in your everyday life. Again, if your folks live in a two story house and they’re getting some age on them and they wanna age in place and have the ability to have some money to have somebody come over and help them with their cooking or whatever it may be a couple days a week or as time goes on, they need actual care.

Or they wanna convert a dining room into a living room because getting up and down the stairs is not a good option.

This is where they’re going to access that equity. And, again, there is a lot of, house equity in the sixty two and over demographic. I think the latest I saw was something around fourteen trillion dollars.

So much opportunity there. And with lenders looking to get into the space, obviously, you’ve been a leader in the space for years on the title and closing side, making sure that, seniors get that white glove treatment. Rob, if lenders wanna get in touch with you and learn more about the space, whether they’re in it today or looking to get in it tomorrow, how are they gonna get in touch with you?

Our website is pretty comprehensive and gets you into all the right people. We have a client solutions department that monitors that and grabs onto it and makes instant interaction.

And we also look at it as coming in let’s have a conversation because it is gonna be an educational thing. And we work with all the lenders, and that have wholesale divisions. And most of the people that you’re talking to may not be a direct lender. It may be more of a wholesale opportunity, and we could say, or who are you working with? There’s a Longbridge. There’s a Finance of America. There’s a Mutual of Omaha.

We have specific teams to match you up, with and folks in, at those companies that that they’re probably familiar with. I would probably in essence, if you’re already in the space, talk to who you’re doing business with and ask them about us. Maybe get a referral that way or an an opinion about us from those folks that you may trust because you’ve been working with them already.

One more question for you. Loan officers who are in this space today, I believe you have a lot of property data tools, a lot of research tools, things like that that can help them. Can you just touch on that briefly?

Our client solutions department, head by Adan Gutierrez, he joined us about nine, maybe ten years ago. He does probably three or four trainings a month. That is a great access point, and you could look at his library of stuff that he’s done already and access that depending on where you’re at in the process. If you’re new to it or a ten year veteran where we probably have something that that that fits your need.