- 2 days ago
On today’s episode, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler talks with Bill Dallas, chairman of strategic advisory firm Dallas Capital, about the importance of relationships and diversified products in the current housing market. Dallas is an industry vet who has been responsible for the leadership and growth of companies including First Franklin, Heritage Bank of Commerce, Ownit Mortgage Solutions, InterThinx, MindBox, Skyline Home Loans, Cloudvirga and Finance of America Mortgage. He will be speaking at The Gathering in Austin April 27-30.
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The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each mornin
Related to this episode:
HousingWire | YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXDD_3y3LvU60vac7eki-6Q
More info about HousingWire
https://lnk.bio/housingwire
Want to attend The Gathering? Click here for your exclusive HousingWire discount.
https://events.housingwire.com/the-gathering-2026?promo=HW10
To learn more about Total Expert visit https://www.totalexpert.com/
The HousingWire Daily podcast brings the full picture of the most compelling stories in the housing market reported across HousingWire. Each mornin
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00:09Welcome, everyone. My guest today is Bill Dallas, chairman of Dallas Capital, a strategic advisory
00:14firm and an industry vet who has over his career been responsible for the leadership and growth
00:20of companies, including First Franklin, Heritage Bank of Commerce, O-Net Mortgage Solutions,
00:25Inner Thinks, Mindbox, Skyline Home Loans, Cloud Virga, and Finance of America Mortgage.
00:31We're going to talk about what it looks like to win in this current market. And honestly,
00:35it's like a masterclass in pivoting and seizing the opportunity in a time of some chaos in our
00:40industry. Before we get started, I want to thank our sponsor, Total Expert, for making this episode
00:45possible. Bill, welcome back to the podcast. Hey, Sarah. Glad to be here. Great to have you on. And
00:54to have you on, get to talk about, you know, there's just a few things going on in the current
00:59market. So I'm so glad that we could get this timing, right? Me too. I think it's appropriate.
01:06And I think, like you and I were talking, I think the risks of the market have doubled,
01:12if nothing else. I think when we started talking about doing this, I thought the market,
01:17like maybe most people, we were in a pretty good time in mortgage. Maybe the risks in general were
01:24two to three on a scale of 10. Now I think it might be a eight or nine on a
01:29scale of 10. And I think
01:31we got to take note. I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts on this because it's one
01:34of the things I've been talking about is like, it's tough to run a business when things are changing
01:40so fast. And we have seen, you know, we've been in wars before, we've been in conflicts before,
01:44really long-term ones. This one's a little bit different because of the quick changing nature
01:50of things. So I would love to pick your brain a little bit. Let's talk about this current housing
01:54market. Let's talk about what you see those risks as. Yeah, I think, I think the obviously
02:02the volatility, mortgage people are getting pretty used to the volatility of interest rates and the
02:08up and down movement. I think there's been a lot of praying going on over the last few years that
02:13rates would just drop. And I think the overall, it's the biggest mistake that mortgage execs
02:18are making is that they actually think that rates matter and they don't really. And I started in the
02:25business and build a big company when interest rates were 20 and now interest, and I've seen
02:31interest rates go to two and now we're at six. So I think there's a lot that you can learn.
02:38And I think the war and the two wars that we're dealing with are really similar to certain times.
02:47And I think what we could tell the listeners is sort of how you could take advantage of the
02:52opportunity and then avoid the pitfalls that are going to be, I think it's a very dangerous time in
03:00mortgage, but it's also for a mortgage banker and an independent mortgage banker, really opportune time.
03:05And I always found that when interest rates dropped, the banks took over and the bigger companies took
03:11over and I wasn't able to take market share or be effective in growing my business. But when things
03:19got confusing and difficult, I could really take advantage of it. And I think that's what I'd like
03:25to share with them. Absolutely. So can I dig in a little bit on when you say dangerous, what does
03:30that mean to you? Well, I think you could lose the whole shooting match of the company
03:36in a day, right? By trying to shift everything, I'll liken it to a ship a little bit. I mean,
03:46if you're in
03:48tough waters, right, and things are tough, right, you're just trying to keep it straight
03:52and trying to go into each wave as you go, I think what happens sometimes is people panic
04:00because, and I'll liken it to March of 21 and COVID. You were out of business in the early part
04:08of March. I mean, a lot of people were panicked. And by the end of March, it actually was the
04:15greatest,
04:16probably one of the greatest markets that mortgage people have ever experienced.
04:19So I think don't panic, first of all. And second, don't shift the entire ship to one side or the
04:30other. I think the important thing is knowing that these, I think these markets leave clues to
04:38executives. And I know from, and I'll just, I'll list three of them for me, right? Because like I was
04:46saying, I changed the entire focus of my company over a period of time. And it was as a result
04:57of
04:58really a couple things. But in 1990 and 1991, we had the Gulf War where Iraq invaded Kuwait and
05:06interest rates backed up over 10, shut the thing down. Then at the same time, you know, as we sort
05:13of
05:13morphed into 1994, the Fed raised interest rates unknowingly, Greenspan raised rates six times,
05:22almost seven times. So the Fed funds rate goes from three to six. So interest rates are all over
05:28the place. I remember at First Franklin, I was at, I was doing a billion a month in October of
05:3693
05:36of 30 year fixed rate mortgages. And by January or February of 94, I was doing a hundred million
05:43dollars of HELOCs with RFC. So it's, I think this is a similar market. I guess maybe the one
05:54that I see, and I wouldn't say it's the great bond market massacre, but at the end of the day,
05:59I think everybody was moving the ship to the left side where interest rates are going to maybe be
06:06flat or down. And I think we have no idea what's going to happen going forward, right? It could
06:14continue to go up. The Fed could be focused and reserved on just the same platform that they
06:21currently are, where rates should rise a little bit. We don't know what inflation is going to do.
06:26We do know that the, the, the similar ones in 03, the U S invasion of Iraq and then the
06:32Gulf war.
06:33And today it's all about oil and oil will have some effect on the consumer and the like. So I
06:40think from a, from a mortgage company standpoint, I learned a lot. And I think what we should do is
06:47dig into it a little bit just to see what we should, what I would recommend if you're running a
06:53mortgage company or for a successful, um, loan officer, what we should do.
06:58I love that. Let's do it. So your, your first thing was don't panic.
07:02Don't panic thing. You know, it's like, let's take the long view. So I would love to, to get some
07:07more real practical things. Like what does that look like when things are changing so fast?
07:11Yeah. It, I think you build your, what I learned was that mortgage bankers are all agency
07:18driven and they're pretty much purchase driven. So when that market's hot, right? Things are good.
07:27I mean, that's what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Jenny may want us to do. We, we provide financing,
07:32high LTV lending. We're pretty good at it. Banks don't like FHA pretty much in VA. They don't really
07:40like the agencies in general. So if you look at what's happened, we've gone from about a 30% market
07:46share coming out of 08, where the banks dominated to a 70% market share today for independent mortgage
07:53banks. I think the two things that you have to worry about and our opportunities as well, are the
07:59banks are going to reemerge with Basel three and I, and they're going to come back into the market.
08:05And we should talk about that. But I think what I learned most from this is I, I think you
08:11need to
08:11build your mortgage company for all markets. And that means you have to be, you have to always
08:19have non-agency. You have to have HELOCs. You have to have now, because we've, we've basically said
08:28there's two types of loans, QM and non-QM. You have to have Q, non-QM. Non-QM really are
08:36two great
08:37products. HELOCs and IOs, interest only loans. So what I learned was, okay, I'm an all agency shop.
08:45I'm getting the shit kicked out of me. Now I need to build and I'm going to build forever the
08:51ability
08:52to do both. And I'm going to have that ability in capital markets. I'm going to have that ability
08:57in the way I roll out products. I'm not going to be, if this ever happens to me again,
09:03I'm going to be ready because I just, that was the major key learning. And if you look at mortgage
09:10bankers today, we're totally reacting to just coming out of an agency market where we did a ton
09:17of refis. And then we weren't ready. And I kept telling people, and even at Finance of America,
09:23we shifted immediately to what I thought the market was going to be. You have to be in HELOCs. You
09:29have
09:29to be in reverse. You have to be, you have to be able to offer some products that are different
09:35for non-owner occupied and all the things that have basically cropped up. Mortgage bankers have
09:42lost their way when it comes to, they just become so focused on agency that they forget about the rest
09:49of the market. Really interesting. So when you're preparing for all markets and these different
09:53products, does that mean you hire differently and you know that you have, you keep those people on
09:58even, even if that part of the market isn't really booming? Yeah. I think the, you know,
10:02the key to probably any mortgage banking firm is don't get too far over your skis with overhiring and
10:09not. I think coming out of COVID, we all did that. I think we learned that lesson as a mortgage
10:16industry. And then suddenly we got so many loans that we had to ease our way back into adding a
10:21bunch
10:22of staff. I think the problem that mortgage has there is that it's cost to produce the loan
10:28has gone from about $2,000 to $15,000 a loan. So people can't be the answer. So I think
10:37what we
10:38learned was how do you keep the EKG, the number of people flat and still be able to grow the
10:48business
10:49or shrink the business without some massive layoff or something else that you have to do? Because
10:54culturally, it's just a terrible thing to go through. And almost everybody has in mortgage
10:59has PTSD here. I mean, we all have been, we've all had our companies. I mean, I was like the
11:05first
11:05company on the implodometer in 05, right? Where I shut down Own It. And why? Because it was going to
11:15blow
11:15up. Luckily we did. But at the end of the day, it's painful. It's not anything that's fun, right?
11:22And so the message I think is, I think if you do this properly and you set your company up
11:30to do
11:30agency and non-agency and be prepared in our markets, those two things don't require a lot
11:36of change. But it does require that your product development team, your capital markets team
11:44and your investors are already lined up and you've given the, and you have a, you have a set of
11:51products that fit when that market shows back up. And we're just totally unprepared. I mean,
11:58people run around trying to sign up companies to do HELOCs and they're trying to find banks and
12:03they're trying to do this and they're trying to do non-owner occupied. If you look, I mean,
12:08these clues were out there a long time ago with peer. And if you look at mortgage, the value of,
12:15I've always said this to my clients is that, look, you've got leases, liabilities and loan officers
12:21and nobody wants that stuff, right? It's just, it's a, it's an expensive thing, right? So you've sort
12:28of become the last dynamite shop of owning stuff that nobody wants. Look at where all the value has
12:34gone. The value of mortgages have gone to non-agency, RTL, these rehab transition lending,
12:42huge, right? Fix and flip, non-owner, right? Huge. I mean, the agencies have always kept us in a box.
12:50We're a purchase owner occupied, single family, one to four people. They hate cash out. They don't
12:56really like, they don't really like refis at all. They don't do seconds. They don't really do IOs
13:02and they have a very secular view of their own guidelines. And now, and so when you look at this,
13:09you have RTL, fix and flip, you have peer-to-peer with Lending Club, Prosper, Upstart,
13:16you have SoFi, you have Figure and Helox, you have HEI contracts coming out with HomeTap,
13:22Unison Point, and where are we? We're the stupid mortgage guys. So what I'm trying to tell my
13:31people is just be strategic and make sure this market will give you the opportunity to build
13:40the capabilities to survive any market in the future. And one of those, and probably the biggest,
13:46is making sure your entire product, your company is prepared for all products at all times.
13:54I think that framing is really interesting. And you started off with that saying, yeah,
13:58like this is dangerous, but it's also, that's when you have the opportunity, right? And almost
14:02anything, this is where you get your opportunity. You can take your shot. So really interesting that
14:07you feel like that's, that's where we are right now. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's a layup market.
14:13You keep watching the market, right? And it's like, it's, confusion is the absolute best thing
14:22to happen to an independent mortgage bank, if they can do the right things. If they can't,
14:29right, their history. So interesting. I always think of confusion and volatility is the thing
14:34that's just so bad for mortgage. Well, you look at, I, it's the greatest thing to happen to an
14:41entrepreneur or a person that runs the business. And if you really think at, so I think the common
14:46knowledge now is this, I'm going to say it's a game, right? It's a, and I'm so competitive
14:53that I think that's why we always win, right? We, and I think, I remember the scouting report
14:58for me as an athlete was, he's not the fastest guy, not the top, but every, every team he plays
15:04on
15:05wins. So why do you win? Well, in this case, I'm going to make it a game. You have one
15:12-stop shop
15:13thinking going on, right? And this huge consolidation with scale on this side. And on this side,
15:22you have little teeny independent mortgage banks on, on the right side, without capital,
15:28without scale. And they are, I think you, if you look at the deals that have been done,
15:37I'm not going to go through them all. And you know, you guys can chronicle them. It's, it's real
15:40estate plus mortgage, plus servicing, plus title. I get to keep the customer and you lose. And all
15:47this consolidation continues, continues to happen. So you've got, and then on the other side,
15:52the independent mortgage banks are just focused on origination. Who owns the customer relationship
15:59will win. And relationship is, um, starts, I think the problem with originators and I'm going to,
16:15it's not all right. We've got, we've probably got two tiers. We've got the top people that probably do
16:21this really well. And then you've got the rest of us who have been raised in a refinance market
16:28where rate loans just showed up. So I think the industry is shifting and the game is really
16:34fought between the transaction-based model and a relationship-based model where I think, I think
16:42what I would say to loan officers is if you're not talking all the time about the lifetime financial
16:48client, when you first take your application and trust, then you're not going to win because
16:56the value drivers today are recapture, repeat business referrals, uh, cross-selling. And
17:02because we don't do anything, we just do one transaction. We got two problems. We do one
17:09transaction, a 30-year fixed rate loan, a long-term loan, and we pay everybody just on that transaction
17:16via Dodd-Frank. So personally, you've got to change your compensation structure in some way
17:22to incentivize people to somehow offer other products or stay connected to the client. And
17:31mortgage companies have struggled to do HELOCs, to do other products and do other services. We don't
17:38have deposit relationships, so we don't see them all the time. So if you lose the customer, you lose
17:44your most, you know, your most trusted asset. And, and so I think convenience wins the first
17:53transaction, but trust wins the next five. And I think mortgage bankers have to continue to play to
18:02their strength. And I think to some extent, technology, um, zoom calls, phone calls, not seeing the client
18:13that removes us once again, from that intimate relationship that we once had, not, not only with
18:20our referral sources, but with our loan officers and loan officers with their clients.
18:25And, and I get that, but like, okay, so you look at like what real estate agents do to nurture
18:30their
18:30clients and you go, wow, compared to that, what, what you see on the mortgage side is so little,
18:35but compared to what they get paid. So, I mean, if you're, if you're on the mortgage side,
18:39you've got to hustle. How do you have the time to be nurturing all these clients when you're getting
18:43paid so much less than your typical? Yeah. I think, you know, all these guys have loan officer
18:48assistants that are ineffective. Use the LO, use the loan officer assistant, use your system, use AI,
18:57stay connected, but don't, you know, you've got to have an, you've got to have a six month and annual,
19:03you've got to have checkups. It's all in how you present yourself at application,
19:08right? And I think that's why I say rate doesn't matter. I mean, I always say when somebody calls
19:14me and they talk about rate, I said, man, are you out of your mind calling people to talk about
19:19interest rates? You should be talking to yourself. This is the largest single decision that you'll ever
19:23make. You need to have a trusted advisor alongside you because this isn't just the transaction.
19:30This is how do you manage that loan? How do you manage your house? How do you manage wealth and
19:35create long-term wealth? If you want to go talk about rates, call 15 other guys.
19:41You know, you want to talk about the effectiveness of owning a home and building wealth. You want to
19:48talk to me. So, you know, you talked about the consolidation we've seen and, and the alliances.
19:54They're also just, it's not, you know, you think about a compass now has an alliance with the
19:58Rocket, Redfin, Mr. Cooper, whole thing. In this new configuration world, are you worried about the
20:06little guy? Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's a scale war though. I think it's a relationship war.
20:11I think owning the customer matters more than owning the transaction and owning the scale side.
20:17I do think one-stop shop can win on convenience and the independence can win on, on the trust factor.
20:24But I do think the future of mortgage is not just origination. It's customer retention and lifetime
20:31value. So when you, it's always the battle, the war that we're fighting is always about controlling
20:41point of sale. And so if you think about these deals that have been done, they're done to try to
20:48bring together those components. I'm telling you, this has been tried 15 times in my lifetime.
20:55I started talking about one-stop shop in 1981. Wow. And there's still no one-stop shop.
21:03And I think consumers may not want one-stop shop. They may want best of breed.
21:11And that's what I've always told clients is, you know, personally, I don't give all my money to
21:17one person to manage, right? I have a group that manage stocks and bonds. I have people that manage
21:25real estate. I have people that do this. You know, I, what you're looking for is the quarterback.
21:31What you're looking for is the person to help you coordinate all those things. And I think it,
21:37while it may be nuanced, if you look at what's happened in our business is the sale of servicing.
21:48So almost everybody, because our costs are so high, has to sell the loan. And generally,
21:55sometimes we sell it to a competitor, right? So I think in what I've learned in capital markets
22:02is you've got to be careful about who your partners are on the second side. The second piece is we've
22:09basically given away our only asset, which is the MSR. So you've got the Bayviews and you've got
22:16the Freedoms and you've got PennyMax and you've got people all over the world, Rice Park Capitals,
22:23who just come into the market and they just want to buy the MSR.
22:27What's their biggest concern once they buy the MSR? Retention. Right? How do I, how do I,
22:35and all of these companies, I won't say all, the ones that are in the space do a pretty good
22:40job of
22:41trying to steal the client from you. The ones that are not in the space that are MSR struggle. And
22:47most
22:48correspondent buyers of MSRs struggle to get more to 10 to 15% retention or recapture.
22:54So I think they're going to, they're going to continue to get better at it. And we have to
23:01get better at it. I also think mortgage bankers should develop a strategy around retaining their
23:06servicing. I don't think you have to retain servicing to retain the client, but you do have
23:12to have a connection so that you're, you're, because with opt-in rules and all that stuff,
23:18how do I even contact my client legally? Right? So all of that has to happen. And I tell you
23:25when I,
23:25in 94, when the shit at the fan and interest rates went way up and we had to shift,
23:32I shifted forever. There wasn't a company that I didn't, wasn't involved with from that point
23:39forward that didn't do agency well, and didn't have this non-agency and HELOC and all these other
23:45products and things set up. I think the other thing that, that has sort of morphed into the
23:51mortgage industry and it creates problems, uh, is owner occupancy. I mean, mortgage banking,
24:01since I, I mean, I, I started the largest fraud detection business in the space. So,
24:08and why do we do that? Because you were purchased loans based upon occupancy and, and income and
24:15asset fraud. So how do you, how do you manage this as you move? I mean, most people, if you
24:23own
24:23multiple homes, which one's your house and with, with the way the world's changed, you now have
24:30flippers. You now have non-owner occupied. You have all these rehab lenders. You've got a whole
24:37industry. It's probably close to 30 or 40% of volume in a lot of ways that we just let
24:42move
24:43away because we don't understand non-owner occupied. And we don't understand, we don't traffic in
24:48investors as independent mortgage banks. Well, RTL lenders do. So do fix and flip people. So do all
24:55these other people, right? So why are we not dominating that business? So learning, and that's
25:02what I mean. When you set up your capital market, you have to be able to do owner occupied primary
25:07one to four simple agency stuff, but you also have to have strat strategies and build out the
25:14capabilities to do all these other products at finance of America. We had three different companies,
25:20right? We had far, we have our, we had a reverse business at fam. We had the original mortgage
25:27business, which was owner, which was both retail and wholesale and retention to servicing. And then
25:35you had FACO, which was our business to do fix and flip and all these other things. What I tried
25:41to do
25:41is bring it all into one so that everybody could offer these different products. It's, it's not easy,
25:49but it is available and it's a lot of volume. So let's talk about the banks coming back into the
25:55mortgage business, right? You mentioned the fact that they left at different times and they come
25:59back when the market shifts. What do you think of the recent changes that it could encourage banks?
26:04I mean, they're meant to encourage banks to come back into the mortgage market.
26:07So if you, I'm going to, a history lesson, right? I'll go all the way back. So if you take
26:12the 80s,
26:13the 90s, 2000, 2010, 2020, and where we are, right? And you just looked at all of those.
26:19There's a different group of winners every 10 years in mortgage. So who's won over time? Banks,
26:27SNLs, independent mortgage banks, brokers. Then it goes banks, SNLs, independent mortgage bankers,
26:34Wall Street, banks, SNL. So when you look at it, why does that happen? Well, you change laws. So coming,
26:42I mean, in 08, 09, Wells Fargo had a 40% market share. Wells Fargo, one bank, not banks, a
26:54bank.
26:55So the rest of them struggled and they had a 70% market share. We had a 30% market
27:00share. So what's
27:01happened to allow us to go to 70 and them to go to 30? Well, they got slaughtered by the
27:08federal
27:08government. And they changed their capital ratios in such a way that they encouraged banks to never
27:15do a loan, a real estate loan ever again, right? So where does that hurt us? Warehouse, another buyer
27:24of assets, right? And just being a competitor, right? So I think we sort of think that we've
27:34inherited the 70% market share. We're going to win forever. No, you're not, right? This shifts.
27:41So how will the banks come back? And it's Basel III. So the changes in Basel III, which put us,
27:48put banks into the penalty box, basically it now phased in through 20, I think 2027. It was a three
27:55year phase in, or maybe 28. And it basically is going to allow banks to hold MSRs,
28:04in an effective way. It'll allow banks to now warehouse us. And it'll allow banks to do whole
28:12loans. And I think what you're going to see is you're going to see the emergence of, you're going
28:17to see that 30-70 split begin to change. I mean, I got a couple bank clients and they make
28:24as much
28:26money gross revenue holding the loan as our people make warehousing it, holding it, selling it, and
28:35selling and servicing. Why? Because their cost to warehouse is that low compared to ours. We as
28:44independent mortgage banks have to have banks to borrow in order to just floor and do our business.
28:50So I think, I think I'm going to say that this is going to be the decade of the reemergence
28:59of banks. Now, how will they reemerge? There's opportunity here. Look, the biggest opportunities,
29:07if you follow my career, I sold First Franklin three times. Who'd I sell it to? Banks.
29:17The biggest buyer is a bank of a mortgage company. Now, what do banks not like? They don't like
29:24leases, liabilities, and loan officers. They like, they like a platform, right? They, they want to
29:32generate assets as quickly, as efficiently, and everything as they can. I think that the emergence
29:38of the banks is going to, they're sort of a, I'm going to call them, my daughter used to call
29:44friend, frenemies, right? We want to keep them close, but we want to also distance ourself and
29:50kick their ass because we're really competitive people. I don't think they're going to run into
29:55retail. I think that's where they're going to end up trying to acquire retail. So what it gives
30:02mortgage bankers is the opportunity to have a partner. So how would I do this? I'll tell you what
30:08I do. What I did was I just nestled up to a couple bank partners who I thought might actually
30:15enter mortgage or want to reenter mortgage, right? And whether that at the time was National
30:21Citibank or whether that was Merrill Lynch or Bank of America or Nation Star, which all of those
30:30companies I knew wanted to be in mortgage lending and had been, but they just had, because of Basel
30:40and the law changes had just run for the hills. So I think, I think, and banks will want, if
30:48you look
30:49at the Guild and Bayview transaction, right? Those are, it's sort of, that's artificial, right? Because
30:59you've got an MSR holder and you've got a retail public mortgage bank. They buy each other to try
31:05to synthetically do this, right? Retain the client, blah, blah, blah, right? Okay. Hasn't really ever
31:12worked. Doesn't mean this won't. Banks want to do that. Banks want to keep a customer and sell them
31:19other products. That's really what they want to do. Okay. Who better than the trusted originator or
31:28trusted company to act that actually has all these relationships. So what we started doing
31:34was we didn't talk about our loan volume. We didn't talk about our branches. We didn't talk
31:39about the number of people we have. We didn't talk about the number of loan officers we have.
31:43We didn't talk about all the shit that's in mortgage. The, what I call, it's like a daycare,
31:49right? That you got to manage. What I talked about was a platform, how the platform actually worked,
31:56why it was better than anybody else's and why they needed it. And I also moved into wholesale.
32:04Right. Where I, and I started, if you know me, I mean, I was one of the founders of Camby,
32:08Namby,
32:09right? I started promoting, you know, broker business long before there's United Wholesale
32:15and Matt Ishba, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It's like, it doesn't really matter, right? Brokers
32:21are a great outsourced way to do products and do originations and mortgage bankers could easily do
32:29that, right? They just don't, a lot of them don't know how. They didn't think that wholesale had value.
32:36Wholesale is much easier to grow. It also does products faster, quicker, better than retail.
32:45It's, it's easy. It can be nationwide. You don't have the comp plan issues because wholesale reps
32:53are not licensed, right? I can pay them by product. So there are advantages that you have to play. And
33:01in 1994, I went to all wholesale, right? I went to multiple products. I went to selling non-agency,
33:11little, very little agency. And I dominated for 10 years, all off the war and recession.
33:20I feel like this, I feel like this is gold for our listeners. Honestly, Bill, this is,
33:24this is such good stuff. And what you just said too, they want platforms, but they also want that
33:28relationship. I feel like that's a theme here, right? It's like, you've got to have the relationship.
33:33Yeah. It's a, it's, I don't think you want to say that servicing plus retention is totally the new
33:39battleground. I think, um, I have a, I have a school that I started and we were just talking
33:48about it, uh, with, I was talking about it. I'm going to stay sports for a second with a football
33:53coach. And he's all talking about X's and O's and recruiting and how you get players, blah, blah, blah.
34:01And I just said, look, dude, you have to play to your strategic advantage. So what are our strategic
34:09advantages, right? Where we are, what we do, our school, blah. Now let's start there. And I think
34:17what I, what I try to do with my clients is take inventory, right? And then do a gut check.
34:24Where the heck are you? Do you have any errands in here? You got any air in here? You got
34:28air in the
34:29tank? Uh, cause what do you, what gas do you have? How, cause this isn't easy, but it could be
34:37one of the greatest opportunities of all time. And banks, if you want to sell your business or you
34:45want to monetize it or find a capital partner, a new capital partner group is going to show up.
34:50They're called banks, right? And so it's a frenemy. And, and so as a mortgage company,
34:58I started really focusing on my relationships with the capital markets. So I moved, I was sort of
35:06distant from product development and, um, inside capital markets every day. And then I just went
35:15to hell with that. I'm jumping in with both feet. And so I bought my box as well. You know,
35:21we had
35:21built clues and desktop originator. And so I, and we started doing pricing engines. Why? Cause pricing
35:30engines are pretty important. Right. And today you look at OB or loan sifter or poly or all these
35:36different players that are in the market. It is essential. So I think what I tried to do is once
35:43I jumped in, I then said, I am in charge of, and my capital markets team, I began to build
35:50out and I
35:51built a whole new division called product dev. And then product development, I managed the queue,
35:58right? I managed the queue, not okay. I buy a branch. This branch tells me I got to sign up
36:04Massachusetts, blah, blah, blah. And then I got to go here and sign up this. Stop it. Stop it.
36:10Be strategic in what you want to do. You need an IO because interest only loans are going to be
36:17cheaper
36:17than 30 year fixed rate loans. You need HELOCs. You need non-QM. You need non-agency because jumbo is
36:26going to come back. You also need to do agency better, but don't cannibalize business that can
36:33go on the other side and, and be able to roll that out. So as we did that, my investor
36:39relationships
36:40improved at Fannie, Freddie, and Jenny, my relationships approved. One of the things that I was maniacal
36:47about was subservicing and servicing and then retention of my client, right? How do I do that?
36:54How do I help my broker? And how do I help my loan officer retain that relationship? The whole focus.
37:02And then you start, then I started looking at who I sell the loans to.
37:06I'm not going to sell the loans to somebody who's going to compete with me.
37:10You know, I'm not going to do it. It's not happening, right? So stop it, right? And do,
37:18and then focus on what you really think you can control because I think in capital markets and
37:26in product dev, the product queue, almost every originator I talk to will tell me they need
37:33something. Either it's a DPA assist or a, or a one, I need a construction one loan. They don't even
37:45know what it is, right? And, oh, by the way, every time I've rolled that out, I've done one loan
37:50in that with these guys. So how you manage that queue and what it is, how you add these other
37:58products,
37:59products. That was my starting place. And then over time, I really got good at it. And then it's
38:06like, how do you prep your infrastructure and your, your platform for these products? How do you teach
38:14them how to sell it? Right? Because most people don't, most retail loan officers, they're just,
38:24they just meet a client. And I said, yeah, you just meet a client and you need to, you need
38:29to
38:29stop talking about conforming, not agency jumbo. And we just have products and we just do loans.
38:36And we are agnostic to the investor and the different things. They will clearly drive people
38:44to products that are more profitable for them. And you have to, you have to teach them how to do
38:51what's
38:51the best product for the client. Right. And that comes back to your retention and your relationship
38:58with the whole day and their lifetime value. Yeah. I mean, it's so, it's so cool because they
39:03don't have to do a lot. It's not like we have to, that's what I was saying. You don't have
39:07to
39:07move the ship all the way to the right or move the ship to the left, but you clearly have
39:11to think about
39:12navigating the ship a little differently. Right. And that is, I think products, forget your rate
39:19obsession and build a company for all markets. Incredible advice. I so appreciate you sitting
39:25down with us. We have, we had more to talk about. So that just means Bill, you have to come
39:30back
39:30and talk with me about some of the other stuff, but I've really enjoyed this today. Huge value to our
39:36audience as, as they're going through a difficult time potentially, but also seeing like, this is where
39:41this, where careers are built. I remember you know, you saying that in, in 2020, like this is where
39:47you, you, you can really make a difference. Well, I think even with housing wire, right. With you guys,
39:53what a cool thing to buy housing wire and to grow a business. You know, basically I,
39:58my expertise is helping entrepreneurs grow their business and how they do that. So when you watch
40:05people do it, it, it always has a similar process to it. I think what I love about where the
40:14market is
40:15today and where I think, well, I guess I'll, I'll circle it back and say, we have such great opportunity
40:24right now in this confusion. The risk is going to be not doing it well or moving it totally one
40:35way
40:35or the other. So add these capabilities and know your competition, know who's coming back into the
40:44market. And I think you'll be able to strategically, um, navigate it pretty well. I know I'm excited
40:52to be at the gathering. You know, I haven't been there since you guys have redone it sort of right.
40:59And, uh, I'm excited to come and I'd love with people. If you are a listener and you'd like
41:06what we're talking about, just come up and say, I like what you were saying.
41:11And I'm interested in doing something and doing this. Yeah. I'm more than willing. I'm not your
41:17competitor. I used to be, I'd probably kick your ass too. But at the end of the day, I think
41:23at the,
41:23I want to, I want, I want to try to make sure that, that people who want to do this
41:30and do it well
41:33have the, have the right partners and expertise in order to actually do it because, you know,
41:39sound bites are good. All that stuff's good. But when you get into the day-to-day of creating
41:44product dev or creating new products or doing this or trying to make that out, it's like, oh God,
41:48now I've got, I got to manage all these people. And by Tuesday, when the rates change, you'll be
41:54off into some other, you'll be like another squirrel chasing something else. Love that, Bill. We're so
41:58excited to have you at the gathering. Um, listeners there, there'll be a, uh, code in the, uh, if you
42:04look in the show notes, you can get a discount, but at full price, it is going to be well
42:08worth it.
42:11Bill Dallas would be worth it. I'll buy you a drink. I'll buy you a drink at the gathering
42:16or we'll go for a run or we'll have coffee or something. All right, Bill, thank you so much
42:22for being on and we will talk to you again soon. Great seeing you.
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