Transcription:
Chris Drayer (
All right. Greetings all 20 of you. Thank you so much for joining us. This is awesome. If you'd like to bring it in, we're gonna do, make this super casual because it's a small group, even though we have the mics and the lights, so feel free to come up forward. Plenty of wonderful seats up here. They're actually the massaging leather ones, so pretty fantastic. I'm Chris Drayer, CEO of Evaluate, and, you may see on the seats some envelopes. if you open those up, there's a link in there that you can follow, now or later, and you can set yourself up with a borrower retention, assessment appointment. So, if you'd like to do that, we'll talk more about that later. But for now, I'll let these guys introduce themselves, Jason.
Jason Frazier (
Sure, I'm, Jason Frazier. I'm the EVP of Growth for Lead Pops, but I'm also a strategic advisor to Lender Price and Victorian Finance.
Jay Voorhees (
And my name is Jay Voorhees. I'm the founder of JVM Lending, and we're a very tech forward lender because we don't have loan officers and we can get immediate tech adoption with everything. So our entire operation is automated in every way possible. Thank you. Awesome. I have a biased crowd here.
Chris Drayer (
So then, Molly McKinley on our team is going to be out with a mic. There she is. And so we're gonna ask questions and just Yeah, raise your hand flag down, Molly. and we'll get some, some feedback from you. Is, should we sit?
Jay Voorhees (
Yeah,
Jason Frazier (
Do it.
Chris Drayer (
Awesome. So let's kind of take this conversational arc, on a past, present, and future. Like what was working from a data standpoint previously that was really kicking ass, and then what's working now and where do we think it's gonna go in the future? All right. Yeah. Jason, you wanna start.
Jason Frazier (
Sure I mean, I think honestly, when you're looking at it, I think the data data hasn't really changed. I think the difference that I see between data being utilized in the past and today is needs to be highly focused on signals, right? When you ask any normal CEO of a lender, or service provider or whatnot, and they think of data, they're thinking of spreadsheets, data, birth dates, maybe some buying habits or whatnot, depending on what data you're looking at. But I think ultimately you have to be intelligent about your intelligence, right? And so you gotta look for signals. And signals could come in all forms of fashion, and you're only gonna get that data, but data's not enough. You actually have to have some business intelligence built into it so you could read those signals. Because at the end of the day, our industry is really built on reactive, especially with marketing, we're reacting to everything, whether it's a loan anniversary or someone did this, or we're gonna do that, you really should be nurturing all the time because those clients are your clients before they even know who you are. So, you only know that through signals, so that way you could be at the right time and the right place because the consumer journey is no longer linear like it used to be.
Chris Drayer (
And describe what a signal in your world looks like.
Jason Frazier (
Well, it also, it depends on, again, the data set, what you're looking at. But if I took on, like when I was doing consumer direct and I was looking at buying habits, or if you were looking at when Facebook, before you were in the special ad category, when you could actually look at what people were doing and they would tell you, Hey, this person's a renter and maybe they have some credit card debt, and maybe they went on Amazon and and bought some things. Then they paid down some debt on their credit card and a few other things. And, then you could use, predict a predictive analytics engine to say, Oh, this person is probably thinking about selling their house. Okay. Right? Or, this person's thinking about buying downs selling, they have kids in college. So, you take all of that data together and that in essence creates signals so you can then form the right message at the right time.
Chris Drayer (
Jay, how about in the past for you? what have, what have you seen that has really worked well?
Jay Voorhees (
Very similar. So we did a very good job of mining data similar and also attacking our data base. When I think of data and we do a great job of staying in front of them, we send out about 30,000 emails a week, and we do everything possible with ad targeting and you name it else. But what I've seen is, over the last six months especially, that's just staying in front of your database is no longer enough. And even relationships no longer enough. What's become more, more preeminent, especially with our average loan amount at our market of being about $700,000 is interest rate. So before, if you mind your database efficiently and stayed in front of your clients, you were king. You could keep them coming back to you no matter what. Now we're seeing much more aggressive rate shopping just cuz the nature of the market and because there's so much more competition. So, we love the way it was working six months to a year ago. And right now it's a much tougher proposition.
Chris Drayer (
So, what's the hurdle? What do you have to overcome to, if it's not about, or if it is about price, what's the, what do you have to overcome?
Jay Voorhees (
So marketing used to be largely involved just sharing valuable information. I blogged every day. We send out good newsletters, People love what we send. But now it seems like rate is almost everything with our high end borrowers or our lower end borrowers and our texts and Arizona markets is not quite as important. But in our Bay area market in particular, rate is everything. So, we really have to market rate, which requires us to use technology to become low cost producer. And that's what we're focusing on very heavily right now.
Chris Drayer (
And, for the crowd here, what markets are you in besides the Bay area?
Jay Voorhees (
A Bay area in Texas are our primary markets. We also in Arizona and in Massachusetts as well.
Chris Drayer (
And your markets?
Jason Frazier (
38 states right now, but, Atlanta? I would say the Southeast, Yeah, primarily.
Chris Drayer (
Does anyone want to jump in on that? Are you seeing different signals? Are you seeing different trend as rate king right now driving those buying decisions? Raise your hand for Molly and she'll come up to you if you want to jump in.
Jason Frazier (
If would like to see a show of hands of people who still want to say that they're not selling rate. Okay.
Chris Drayer (
Zero. Okay. That was zero. Just in case you guys couldn't count through the room. That's awesome. Okay, so going back to this signal and working the entire database, the database in your world is just people that you've worked with in the past. Is it, separate? Is that separate from say, leads that you've purchased and haven't transacted with or?
Jay Voorhees (
We never purchased leads, so we'll reach out and do marketing, digital marketing. We have a very powerful website with tremendous SEO presence. So we get a lot of organic business that way. That's something I recommend everybody to do. It took us a long time to do that. But we have a very powerful website with great SEO presence, like I just said. And that brings in about 25% of our leads. The rest of our leads come in primarily from referrals from real estate agents and from past clients. And that's the way we nurture our business. Cuz we played the purchase lead game for a while, but it was so competitive it didn't work out that well for our model. And we still do quite well with bringing the leads in. The issue for us is just keeping them, because everybody's so rate sensitive, even though our rates are very low for a mortgage bank,
Chris Drayer (
Ha has competition for leads, in the last six to 12 months. Increased or decreased?
Jay Voorhees (
Well for on the purchase lead front, I mean, Jason would know better than I, but I think it's increased. I mean, we tried to play the purchase lead game through bank rate a couple years ago. I remember when the market was similar to what it is right now. And that was just brutally competitive. I couldn't believe it and I can't believe people could compete in that arena. And
Chris Drayer (
And thus the shift to bringing in house
Jay Voorhees (
Entirely in house. We've always had that primary focus where we bring in all of our leads through referrals.
Chris Drayer (
Similar, different?
Jason Frazier (
I would say it's the same. I agree a hundred percent with Jay about a website, especially blogging. cuz because here's the thing is that we rely on everyone else to feed us our deals, right? We, we don't, we focus more on people we don't know than the people we do know, right? Right. And Jay obviously has a log, dialed in process to convert those people that he does know in his database and not go on purchase leads. The problem with purchasing leads, if you look, we've all seen the ads, we've all seen everyone post. But at the end of the day, if everyone's giving you 16 leads are not hard. Right? I just wanna throw that out there. Getting leads is not hard. Getting prospects is difficult. Getting customers right? That's what you want. Leads are not hard to get, but you need to go out there and you can only do that by owning the traffic. And you can't own the traffic if you're paying Zillow, paying realtor.com paying. And again, I'm not, not digging on on those things. I'm just saying any of that can change at a heartbeat and you have no control. And then what do you do if you've built your entire business on a channel that you have no control over, then what do you do? So the only way you do that is, Jay has the perfect example, and I get your newsletters and they're awesome. is, and I got this way before I met you, is you have, you have traffic that you own through your newsletter that's one to one people come to your website seo. That's stuff that you could absolutely control, but you can't do it through purchasing leads because those are rental relationships. They're not deep relationships like you do have in your database. So, it's important to focus on that.
Chris Drayer (
It's literally in our world, in our language, it's renting versus owning.
Jason Frazier (
Absolutely. Right. And it, and you have to be able, like, we always talk, we talk about that in the industry for everything else except for our own business, right? Yeah. So, you have to, you have to own your traffic, you have to own your database. But, but instead of focusing on all these other things, cuz generally our, our industry gets an idea that you get a lead, it's like a deal on a platter knowing that, and I did consumer direct for two years and I could tell you that's a 9 to 12 month cycle usually. Right? And same with purchase leads. Now they're not hard to get, it's just the fact that with, housing prices being where there are rates being what there are, what they qualified for, 12 months ago or six months ago, when they're waiting for the bottom to fall out right now, now they can't afford that. And so it's just, it, it's there. You just have to be a little bit more, creative on how you're gonna convert the them.
Chris Drayer (
So the creativity is kind of where I want to go to next. Let's talk about the creative things that you've done, through this last, 12 months to stay on top of the business. And maybe it was some groundwork that you did lay previously. Yeah. Or maybe it's something brand new that you're testing out, in less six months. Do you want to speak to that? Like
Jason Frazier (
The Sure, I'm also a coach for next level loan officers. And so what I coach my loan officers on a hundred percent is hyper local marketing, right? Because at the end of the day, we're all selling the same stuff, right? FHA, VA, U S D A, refi purchase, jumbo non qm, give or take, right? And we're all selling the same thing. So how do you really stand out? How do you be a differentiator in that? And so what I tell my loan officers is blogging, YouTube, start talking about the local market because people aren't one, understanding this is nobody wants a mortgage, right? Even though my shirt says I love mortgages, but nobody wants a mortgage. No one wakes up saying, Oh, I wanna be a hundred thousand dollars a debt. I wanna, I wanna do all this paperwork. I wanna open up my taxes and everyone to someone I don't know. No one wants that. They want the home, right? So as a as mortgage professionals, we need to be focused on selling what people actually care about, which is the community they're gonna live in, where their kids are gonna go to school, where they're gonna do their shopping, right? And the home that they have. and sometimes rate doesn't matter to a certain extent when you're doing that. And so the messaging has to be about where they're gonna spend majority of their time. And that's the home and the market. So, I've had great success with doing hyperlocal videos, having them doing hyperlocal content, which is restaurants with business. And look, every business owner will open that up. Every agent would be happy to go and do an interview with you, talk about a local business. And I like, I've done this and get, 2000 views overnight because that's what people are searching for. We gotta focus on intent, right? No one goes to Facebook to look for a mortgage, right? They go on YouTube to search for a mortgage. So why not add that to a community like, hey, I live in Alpharetta Georgia, get a getting a mortgage in Alpharetta Georgia. Why don't you do a video about that and then talk about the community, right? But then also do, hey, living in Alpharetta, Georgia, moving to Alpharetta Georgia, cuz that's what people are searching for. So at the end of the day, we need to stop thinking about we're not the audience. Stop creating content for yourselves. Create content for the people that you're trying to convert. So
Chris Drayer (
So, It's no longer talking about rate in his world. It's talking about the basics of home ownership and the things that we really, the consumer, the end consumer, the the initial keynote was talking about the same, same type of thing. Right? Let's get back to those basics of what the consumer wants.
Jay Voorhees (
Exactly. That's the same game we play. Exactly. So we, provide as much value add information as we possibly can through our newsletters and our blogs and everything else. And consumers love it. However, we've discovered with our high end clients, like in the Bay area, even though they love it, they come back to us, our open rates on our blogs and our newsletters are extremely high and we get compliments nonstop. They still will leave us if there's a big rate differential. And, so as creative as we can get with our marketing as still as ineffective compared to some of the banks that have one word in their marketing, 4.5% and that's what First Republic and the Bay Area is doing right now. They just market that one rate. That's all they have to do. There's no creativity, there's nothing else. It's just, here's our rate. Right? And that's what we've seen be more and more effective over the last six months because borrowers are just simply much, much more rate sensitive. And, but again, it's the higher loan amounts under about 300,000 bucks. I have a lot of acquaintances in different markets where they seem to be doing quite well without the rate competition when loan amounts get below that level.
Chris Drayer (
So there were six, what was it, 6.1 million, purchases last last year. I, someone can yell at me, the numbers close to their on way off. But, the projections for the rest of this year are where right now where do you, where are you seeing
Jay Voorhees (
The total of about 5 million for the year that I just read. Yeah.
Chris Drayer (
Right, So that's, it's definitely a downturn, but it's just a reset of back to 2018, 2000.
Jay Voorhees (
Exactly yep.
Chris Drayer (
So, it's not the sky is falling or it is the sky is falling.
Jason Frazier (
To me I look at it as a different, different market and with, when you have shifts, you have opportunities. So I think it's just getting, look, I think everyone needs to stop focusing on comparing the last two years. Those are unicorn years. They're not gonna happen all the time. Stop waiting for the refi, savior to come around. It's just, it may not cut. Look, something could happen. We don't know about the refi, save the re I just made it up. Right? But, so it's just one of those things that, you really gotta, you really gotta look at the dynamics of today. And that's also having educating your consumer talking about, Hey, can you afford this? Do you want this home? Do you wanna live in this community? Great. At some point, as they always do, if you're, and you have to ask questions, right? Like, how long do you plan on living here? I plan on living here for 15 years. Great. Then, then historically rates will come down. Can you afford this right now? If something happened, would you still be able to afford it? Yes. Then let's do it now. And when rates come down, or I'll do a refinance. So like, it really is just having that conversation without forcing him. But like to Jay's point, when we talk about like selling rates or that, first world of marketing is don't waste your time selling the unsellable. If they, if their number one priority is rate, then it doesn't matter seeing a dance add free tacos, it doesn't matter. Like it's just, it's not going to happen. Well, I don't know, maybe tacos might be a little bit too far, but, but either way, like that's what you really gotta focus on is, I think we got lazy the last two year and I mean that kindly, but like lazy the last two years because you could just kick a can down the road and run into 15 refi possibilities. But look, I mean, I think on average we tend to do about 5.35 point million trans, 5.5 million trans real estate transaction in a given year. It's running at 1.3 to 1.5 trillion. Yeah. So we're just getting back to the equilibrium honestly, if you think about from what, 2016 to 2019 or 2017 to 2019. So I think you just have to compete and we're still doing deals. I know at loan officers that yes, they're not doing 20 units a month. They're doing 10. Yeah. And that's still great, you know what I mean? So the deals are there houses in my before no houses were coming on the market now I got 10. Yeah. So people are still selling and it's all market driven.
Chris Drayer (
And it's not, They're not trying to buy out of, in Aspen, right? Yeah. They're not buying on the coast right now as they're not buying those second homes, at inflated prices. They're buying for their family.
Jay Voorhees (
But I was gonna add to you, you mentioned earlier if the sky is falling, and I'm gonna say the sky did fall about halfway to the ground when the refi boom ended. So we have way too much capacity in our industry right now too. So that's what's hurting too. There's so much competition because of all that excess capacity and then the big banks have come back into, and they're competing much more aggressively too. So, the sky fell another quarter way to the ground because of that. So it's a pretty, aggressive market right now.
Chris Drayer (
For sure, The people are, that are moving right now are moving for the exact same reasons, that they have been moving since the dawn of time, Right? and that's where evaluate works is in that, in that sphere. Sure. Where, where people are, we call it the, this is cheesy, you guys can laugh if you want. But we call it the data ds. and you may know some of these. So death, divorce, diapers, diamonds, diplomas, downsizing, discretionary income, the daily grind, dumpsters, right? These are the things that cause people to move that hasn't changed. Those people are still gonna move. That 5 million plus that we're talking about that are gonna move this year are still out there. And so using data to find those people, to have those conversations, to get the ball rolling is I think what we're talking about and where we are in the present, those people are still going to be moving.
Jay Voorhees (
Yeah. Which is why we're big fans of reevaluate. We use you for our own database. And we also as a big pitch when we develop real estate agent partnerships too, is we sell that as well. So we're big fans of reevaluate for Exactly that reason though. Thank you for that. Appreciate it.
Chris Drayer (
Are, you looking at that customer life cycle, differently now than you were previously? Or is that sort of in your ethos?
Jason Frazier (
Well, I think again, it comes back to messaging is like you, at the end of the day, a goal for every lender, every loan officer should be customer lifetime value, Right? For the most part. We're like, Oh, we got that deal. It's $5,000 commission. Let's say, I actually want $150,000 value of that relationship and then X how many people are in my database. Yeah. And so I think, that life cycle one is having data that helps so that you can talk to them in the right way. But it's also asking questions. You mentioned like the D's, right? Right. Same thing is like, how many times when you know someone was, Oh, why does someone wanna do a refi? Cuz the save money, it goes deeper than that. It's one of those, that's why. And so if you're messaging and the data that you're using, and I'm putting it out there, if I'm competing with everyone and everyone's like, Hey, lower your monthly payment, cool. But if I put messaging out there, lower your monthly payment so that you can start saving for college, lower your monthly payment based off of all the reasons why someone actually gets a refi. That messaging will win out over the generic stuff that we put out
Chris Drayer (
There. Anyone want to jump in at this point? Raise your hand and Molly will come, come find you with questions or comments on here. So here we go, Molly, up front please. So it's this idea of switching from a linear process of get the lead work until it closed. Now it's done, throw it away or work it until it's dead. Now it's done. Versus a customer lifestyle, customer life cycle on lifetime value.
Audience Member 1 (
Quick question. What was the d in, dumpster? Like what, what's that motivator?
Chris Drayer (
Yeah, it's not uncommon to find, So on the real estate side of the coin, real estate agents have been known to drive neighborhoods looking for dumpsters because when there is a dumpster in the driveway or out in the street, that is a strong indicator. Not all the time that there's a high propensity that that address will be turning over soon. They're remodeling, they're throwing away trash to move out of the place. Grandma died, whatever it is that there's a correlation with dumpsters and moving.
Audience Member 2 (
With Covid, Aren't there other things that are motivating people to move because they can work anywhere and so they're looking for homes with offices and things like that?
Jason Frazier (
Oh, Absolutely.
Audience Member 2 (
what all are you seeing as far as, covid moves?
Jason Frazier (
So it, really depends on the market. So we saw that a lot in Atlanta. From Atlanta proper to more so we have other, none of these cities are gonna mean anything to we have coming. And even a little higher. But it's like when I no longer have to drive in Atlanta traffic, I could live, an hour away and it's not a big deal. I get taxes are better, a lot more land bigger, house better schools. And so, and then you obviously seen the news stories and what have the, if you look at the migration from a California New York, a New Jersey, and some of these other states that were a little bit more restrictive, and the ability to remote, it's like, man, I don't longer have to do the rat race anymore. I was was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. So I know all about traffic and being packed in to with with everyone in the housing prices and going over the mountain to try to commute in. And it sucks cuz you're spending three hours in the car a day and you just got three hours of your life back times five days a week, times 50, two weeks a year. And you just realize that it's a better quality of life and that's why you see such a response to the companies that are want that return to work, and it, which is funny because I think what we found is that we actually still can be efficient and do our business by not working in an office even though there is value of having people together. So I think everyone's still finding their way and with the labor market being what it is, companies will find out. I think that the biggest, if you look at commercial, I don't know about where you guys live, but where I it's vacant, vacant, vacant, vacant, like, five per or sorry, like an 85% or 90% vacancy rate. And so, there's a lot of commercial opportunity there as well.
Chris Drayer (
Yeah In Denver area, I know the commercial space downtown is around under 50%. vacant still workers are not returning to the numbers that they thought to they're definitely working.
Jay Voorhees (
San Francisco is the worst market in the country right now. It's absolute ghost town. Cause it's not just cuz Well tech, most of downtown San Francisco was dominated by tech, filling those offices and they were the most remote group there is. And they all moved. And Covid really warped our local market too, cuz all those tech workers came from San Francisco, moved out to the East Bay where headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. And it really inflated the market out there. And that's still the case to this day because they're able to come out there work, but they still wanted to be close enough to their employer to go in every now and then. They didn't want to go to another state. So, they came out to Walnut Creek, Danville, those East Bay corridor. Yeah. And that really, really warped the market.
Chris Drayer (
So We're seeing on the downward trend of those, covid oriented moves. Right. And we're, we're coming back to normal. Yeah. from the reason that people are moving is what is what we're seeing. But that kind of brings us, I think, in this conversation too. How about the future and where we're pointed to in the future, and how we see using data to market to people and what's gonna move the needle, in the next 6 to 12 months?
Jay Voorhees (
So I hate to be a broken record, but I think it's gonna stay. Right. So it's not so much data per se is technology. And so we are focused extremely heavily on technology and also moving, a lot of our labor overseas to virtual assistant. Something else we're very skilled at. And we actually have Tammy Richards helping us here. She's one of the preeminent experts in the whole field. And so one of the things we use right now is candor. I'm sure a lot of people here are using candor too to underwrite our conforming files. And it's turning out to be very effective. And I'm, delighted with how efficient it's become and Tammy is telling us they're gonna be able to roll it out for a much more complex jumbo files. So that's the key. You want to figure out what kind of technology you can use. Cause the data we think we have figured out, we know how to bring the leads in. We know how to do everything else. We just wanna make sure we retain all that business we're getting by being able to offer a low enough rate. And that's gonna come down to lowering our costs through technology and virtual assistant
Chris Drayer (
Help. So saying that again, lowering the cost via automation and efficiency.. And some outsourcing.
Jay Voorhees (
Yes absolutely.
Chris Drayer (
So not doing, not building everything in house.
Jay Voorhees (
Yeah Exactly.
Chris Drayer (
Not Doing everything in house.
Jay Voorhees (
Well we can, we'll do it in house, but we'll use technology to do it in house. So we'll have a lot of technology partners like what Tammy offers in order to lower our costs and Right. We will not be able to compete unless we do do that. And I think mortgage banks that aren't on that bandwagon are gonna be in a world of her. In fact, I don't think that I know it. Yeah.
Chris Drayer (
Yeah okay? Yes. next 6 to 12 months.
Jason Frazier (
And I think one thing that we have to do as an industry is stop being a people problem solving industry and be a technology solving industry. And what I mean by that is our industry tends to throw people at problems and challenges. We just saw it the last two years. That's why everyone is just getting shot out a cannon now because it just doesn't pencil anymore. And I get it. But what I see is we like, Oh, we did all this stuff the last two years we didn't like it's not patting yourself on the back. We, didn't do it because we wanted to. We did it cuz we had to. Right. With demand. Right. And so what I would say now is that right now there should be a hyper focus on innovation and automation and technology not removing the human technology is not to replace, it's to enhance the experts and the professionals. And that's what we need. Our industry, every other industry does that in some form or fashion, but for some reason we think we're different and we're not. But had companies started focusing really on technology, Candors an excellent example of that. Then we wouldn't, the expenses would be, sorry. Cause it costs money to fire people gotta understand that it costs money for everything that's happening right now. That's why you see a lot of lenders struggle. I think, what was it, two months ago or a month ago? the amount of companies that were actually profitable, was I think like 52% of the industry. Everyone else was like losing 80 basis points alone. Right. And so that isn't sustainable and you only do that through making the right investments in automation and technology. But also understanding is that we can't get that twisted. You cannot mistake efficiency for effectiveness. It may be efficient for us, it may be efficient process, but it may not be effective in the long term. So that happy medium is to that win diagram is you got efficiency, you got effectiveness right there in the middle. That's where you need to focus on and that's where you need to build
Chris Drayer (
Efficiency, effectiveness, automation, outsourcing. Okay. Any more questions? in that, in this spirit there? I really, I believe in what you're saying and I think that that is the future. I see, automation and, intelligence driving, a plan, right? So that's obviously we believe very strongly and using data to drive, action. Right? That's the key. So let's find those customers in their customer life cycle where they're more likely to be moving and then send them the appropriate message Yep. So that a human can, work with them and bring the deal in, bring that prospect back in.
Jason Frazier (
Well that's how you're gonna win because everyone else is gonna do exactly what we've always done all the time. Right. Be different. Right. Stand out. You cannot stand out by doing the same thing as everyone else. Right. And a lot of people are gonna just use the data to do the same thing. But if you actually use data intelligently, that's when you're gonna get to them first. And that's where the, that's where the ball game is.
Jay Voorhees (
Agreed. And no matter how good your technology data gets, you still need somebody to communicate with the borrower. Cause they want their handheld. Yep. That's what we're discovered interestingly with our super tech oriented clients in the Bay Area. That, they make three, $400,000 a year. They're very sophisticated. They have master's degrees, but they still want their handheld throughout the front end of the transaction. So the key is, after we spending all that time on our end to hold their hands, we wanna make sure we retain those clients.
Chris Drayer (
Is that gonna last? I mean that's, that's where consumers are today. Is that gonna, is that gonna last?
Jay Voorhees (
I Think it will because of the size and the importance of the transaction. There's just so many questions. There's a lot more complexity behind a purchase transaction that consumers just aren't aware of and they wanna have those questions answered.
Chris Drayer (
So you can automate up to that handshake and then.
Jay Voorhees (
Exactly. And then you have to have a very skilled, consumer interface, a person that does the handholding.
Chris Drayer (
Excellent further questions guys. Awesome. So that's, I think a pretty good picture of where we've been, where we are, to today and kind of going forward. And I guess with that, I'll let you guys add final, final comments here.
Jay Voorhees (
I'll just repeat what I've been saying. So I don't wanna get away from data too and reevaluate. So the value adds are key. So that's again why we use reevaluate. Cause we can share that kind of information with our agent partners and we're gonna continue to share valuable information using all the data we cultivate. But I'm just hyper focused on technology. Cause I think that's the only way to compute in the future because rates are gonna get, become more and more of a factor, especially as loan amounts continue to climb. And so if you don't embrace tech in every way, you're not gonna be able to survive throughout the long run.
Chris Drayer (
Yep. And and when you say you're not gonna be able to survive, how many agent or how many, originator contraction are you thinking if we're at 575 is the last number I heard?
Jay Voorhees (
I think we'll see about a 50% contraction yeah.
Chris Drayer (
In what period of time.
Jay Voorhees (
Time over the next couple years. Yeah,
Jason Frazier (
I agree with that. And just to add to what Jay was saying earlier, is that I think what Covid taught us, I think everyone maybe, and even myself included, might have thought like, hey, we're ready for that full automated technology driven. And I think what happened with Covid is when we all got locked down and we stopped having that human interaction and all the technologies there, like in fact we, that's even been enhanced. But I think people have then realized we're not ready to cut off complete human interaction. You do need, no matter where you come from, you want that human interaction. You wanna feel comfortable being able to, to ask a question doesn't need to be like the whole time, but you want to be able to have a human to talk to. And I think we all just like, look, we get enough, Zoom calls enough, Hey, you're on mute. Like, as we've said that how many times like now we really need that human interaction back.
Chris Drayer (
Excellent. Well thanks very much Jay. Jason, very much
Jason Frazier (
Appreciate your time. My pleasure. Thank
Chris Drayer (
You very much guys.
Jason Frazier (
All right.