What you need to know about Mortgages in 2021 | Interview with Mortgage Loan Expert Shashank Shekhar

In this episode of the Home Selling series on the Behind the Renovation Podcast, I am interviewing Shashank Shekhar, loan officer and CEO of Arcus Lending.  Shashank has been named the #4 broker in the country. With a 2020 production of $364 million, Shashank has continuously raised industry standards. In addition to being on the cover of National Mortgage Professional magazine, he is an Amazon bestselling author, is frequently quoted by national media, and has been the keynote speaker at major conferences around the country. He is also the creator of MLO Master Class, a leading training platform for loan officers.

You can find Shashank on Instagram @shashank.redemption or visit arcuslending.com

If you’re in the process of selling your home or preparing your house to sell, this season of the Behind the Renovation podcast is perfect for you.  Over the next few weeks, I am interviewing industry professionals and related businesses for the Home Selling Success series to help you understand what home selling and buying look like in 2021 and how you can prepare yourself for the good, the bad and that elusive virtue called patience. 

Transcript

Alice: Welcome to the podcast, Shashank. Thank you so much for joining me. 

Shashank: How are you doing?

Alice:  I'm well, how are you doing?

Shashank:  Great. Looking forward to it. 

Alice: Yeah. So as we know, the real estate market is hot, hot, hot, and, so it'd be really interesting to hear from your perspective, how that's affected the mortgage, the lending side, and how homeowners should be preparing for that process because I think it could be very daunting, but it's a major piece of the entire process, right? So even before we do that, can you kind of just explain what that mortgage process looks like right now for folks. 

Shashank: Sure. Of course. And talking of the hot real estate market, Alice.  I mean the US markets and most of the major markets have been hot for a very long period of time. And I mean, of course, you see some cyclical movement here. The winter can, could be, a little slower in some of the markets and the spring and summer could be super hot, but overall you'll see for several years now since we started the recovery around 2011, 2012, is that we have had a solid seven, eight years of various strong growth in real estate prices. So just wanted to point that out to our audience here is that, even though we kind of see that it's steaming up quite a lot, but we haven't seen a similar trend for almost seven, eight years now. 

Talking about the mortgage process. The process itself has not changed because of the pandemic. I mean the process itself remains the same. There are other than minor variations here and there, there are situations that I think the biggest change that has happened with the mortgage process is that a lot of appraisals can be done with what is called exterior only. So you don't have to go inside the house and do the inspection for the home. A lot of inspections can happen outside. Depending on the price range, there are some qualification parameters. So that's a good thing, both for home sellers and the home buyers, because I know a lot of home sellers do not want people to come inside the house right now because of the COVID and other concerns that they might have. 

But overall, the process, the way it works is that if you're thinking of buying a home, is that the first thing that you would want to do is to get yourself pre-approved, and what pre-approval basically means is that you're making sure that the house that you're looking for, or the price range that you're looking for, that you qualify for that price range. 

You don't want to go into, especially in a market like this, when it can take months before you're able to get, say one of your offers is accepted, right. and then to realize that I don't qualify for this mortgage because of one reason or the other, that's a lot of wasted time and emotion, right? You don't want to do that. So that's the first step that you do as a home buyer and even as a home seller, that's something that you should be as strongly looking for while considering the offers from buyers, because why allow someone else to get into a contract who was not fully pre-approved. And once you get pre-approved and then look for a home with your real estate agent, once you get into contract, then it's typically about a 30-day process.  From there we look, we verify some of your assets and income documentation, we order an appraisal to find out the value of the home, work with your closing agent, like your title, escrow, or closing attorney to work on some of the title papers, and then get you, hopefully, get the keys to your home that you have been looking for for so many months in this market finally that in about 30 days. So that's how the mortgage process looks like. 

Alice: Okay. So when you're saying the appraisals can be done from the exterior, so they don't actually have to enter the property. How does that work when you actually want them to see what some of the features are in them, some of the upgrades have been in your property? How does that work? Do they just take photographs or a video, or do they judge it by that? Or that's not even a consideration. 

Shashank: Really good question. And just understand that exterior only is an option, it's not mandated. 

Alice:  Ok.

Shashank:  So if you, as a seller or even as a buyer, if you think that this home is somehow superior to some of the other homes, that neighborhood, you may choose not to pick exterior only and say, why don't you go inside because I think we can get an extra 20, 30 grand because of the upgrades that have happened in the house. So it's totally optional. You don't have to do that, but even if it's done exterior only, appraisers are allowed to take the upgraded pictures from saying something like MLS. So they can go look at the listing and then see what are the upgrades and the improvements that the house has had and can potentially account for that into their evaluation. So that's an option. 

Alice:  So you do you feel like the pandemic has affected the mortgage industry positively or negatively?

Shashank:  Okay. It has, I mean, negatively in the sense, because the entire change was so much, the mortgage industry has been kind of used to working from the office. You had this big desktop, multiple screens because people are used to working with 10 documents at the same time, 20 different websites. And all of that infrastructure kind of went away because you had to work from home where probably you working with one single laptop, but kids are screaming around you so, from that infrastructure perspective, I think there was a lot of change. And, and for some people that was a big change because maybe they always worked on large and multiple desktops and everything else and that, I think to an extent in the beginning, at least the productivity went down a little bit, as the companies were scrambling to find more laptops and laptops, as we know, I mean, they're almost sold out. There were very few laptops to be had. The delivery time was longer. And, and so that really increased their term time on closing. Not to mention that the industry itself, had to account for almost three times the regular business because the rates were so low, a lot of people were refinancing. And so all of that capacity issue and infrastructure issue, all of that meant that borrowers had to wait months before closing, at least on refinances.  Thankfully on purchases, most of the lenders were still kind of prioritizing that and we're still closing on time. Appraisals became a big issue as we were talking before, is that I mean, the people did not want the appraisers to come into the home. And finally, thankfully, the agencies came up with a guideline where in most cases we could get an exterior-only appraisal that wasn't an option on most jumbo loans, unfortunately so those interior appraisals still had to be done. What I also think is that just in terms of mindset, more people are open to more borrowers open doing more online and digital mortgages, which wasn't the case before. We were seeing a trend of more and more people opting to go online. But I think that was accelerated over the last 18 months because the last 14, 16 months is because you did not have an option. Like even if you wanted to you could not just walk into your bank or could not shake hands with your loan officer. It was what it was. You had to do everything online and digital and zoom and phone calls and everything else. So from a mindset perspective, more people are now open, to be working on an online digitized mortgage kind of a place, and then finally, from a real estate perspective, which I'm sure a lot of people would have seen is that the cost of construction has gone up dramatically, because of the supply chain issues, because of the fact that factories are closed and not just in the US, but across the world, it's a pandemic, it's a global phenomenon. And so that has pushed up the cost of construction, which has pushed up the cost of the home itself and that has impacted the inventory because a lot of people are not, do not want their homes to be in the market. Don't want people to be entering their homes right now, and they're just uncomfortable with the entire situation. So all of that has contributed towards much now than what it was say, 12 months back. now, the markets have seen 20, 25% year-on-year increases. So I think those are some of the biggest changes that I've seen during the last 14, 16 months, Alice. 

Alice: Do you feel like since now, we're kind of coming out of that situation and people are a little more comfortable, they're a little more aware, there's a lot more education and information available to us. Do you see this industry moving more towards digital going forward, versus going back to how it was before, where it was more of an in-person process? 

Shashank: I do not see us going back. I mean, there might be some people who might feel again comfortable with the fact that they are, again, able to in-person process and everything else, but a lot of trends have accelerated so much that there is no going back on it. and, and you will see that more and more people will be open to not meeting their loan officers in person. I mean, we had a lot of remote notarization, even for the closing docs. A lot of closings were happening remotely, which is, which is the fact that I mean, a lot of the states came up with the regulations where they were hesitating earlier. Now we have almost 42, 43 states in the last count that allowed some kind of remote notarization, or touchless closing as you would like to call it where you don't have to be, in presence of a notary.  And even if the notary is there, you can work on your own touchpad. The notary could be working on their own touchpad and you don't have to be signing at the same time, in person, both of them together. So all of those trends have accelerated quite a lot. There is no technology. We have seen in Silicon Valley, We see that every day. Once it starts actually accelerating, there's no going back. It's not as if we started ordering food from door dash and ordering food from Amazon prime and suddenly one day like, oh, you know, you leave all of this and we'll just go back to doing what we were doing 10 years back. It never happens. It's just, we find it more convenient. and we just get used to it. Yeah. I mean, once we started using the remote control on our television, we were not looking for that button on the television ever again. 

Alice:  Yes. We will kill ourselves looking for the remote and not stand up to actually turn on the actual television. 

Shashank:  Exactly. See, that's just a mindset change that happens once you are used to the easy, you don't want to go to the hard. So, no, I don't see that trend going back and we will see in fact, even more, and more digitization and an online experience when it comes to mortgages. 

Alice: Very interesting. I was actually listening to an interview that you did with someone else. And you were talking about a program that you're working with right? Called the Rachel, is that moving towards that same kind of direction where it's, it's not so one-on-one, you're able to access information on your own. 

Shashank: It is. It's very interesting. So, Rachel is a conversational platform, Something like Siri and Alexa is, we call it conversational AI because it learns from itself, right? It's artificial intelligence, like Siri learns from itself, Alexa learns from itself. And we have been used to siri and Alexa now for 3, 4, 5 years. So, what the digital human does is that it takes the same kind of conversation to a different scale in the sense that Siri and Alexa are audio formats. Right. We don't see Siri. We don't see Alexa. They don't, but Rachel is a digital human. So it has all the capabilities of Siri and Alexa, but it's in a human form. So it looks more natural, more human. So to say, and you can converse with, with Rachel. The one big difference for Rachel is that she was made specifically for the mortgage industry. 

So she can answer your mortgage questions like, Hey, should I take 30 years fixed or seven-year arm, Alexa, Siri may not be able to answer because they are not made specifically for the industry. So Rachel has all the good elements that you see in Siri and Alexa say, but it's also has a lot of mortgage intelligence that they don't have. And we, I mean, I personally think that's the next level of conversational intelligence that there is, and, and it makes everyone's experience much easier. You can come to the website. It's more human. you can have fun. I mean, Rachel can tell jokes. It can do calculations for you. Your kids can do math homework with Rachel if they want to. So it has all the fun elements, but it also has all you can track your loan and status. Rachel will be able to tell you where your loan is, what kind of interest rate you're on. So, we are still working on it. It's a new technology and we are trying to improve it. But, we were the first one to create it in the mortgage industry, not just in the US, but across the world. And, and so, yeah, we are very proud of the creation and trying to make it easier for our customers to work with us. 

Alice: That's amazing. Man, I tell you.  So are we somehow working our human people out of a job at some point? 

Shashank: So Rachel actually does not do anything to remove a human employee. It just helps improve the experience of our borrowers so, our clients. So instead of waiting, instead of sending an email and waiting for someone to respond, instead of not being able to know the answer at 11:00 PM in the night, Rachel will be able to help you with that. So it's more about improving the experience than about trying to take somebody else's job. And because it's a 24-7 world now, and not everyone wants to wait until say your loan officer or your processor wakes up and goes to work at 9:00 AM. And that's where Rachel comes down. 

Alice: I agree. I just had somebody calling me at 10 o'clock last night. I'm like, why are you calling me at 10:00 PM on a Sunday I'm not answering the phone. I need a Rachel. 

So let me ask you for first-time home buyers, like, it's very exciting to be buying a home, but it also can be very scary. How can someone who is the first time on the market buying a home prepare for that process? Like what is, what are some of the key points that they should keep in mind 

Shashank: Sure. I mean, let's see, you know, I've written two books, on first-time home buyers. I've written, I don't know, hundreds, if not thousands of blog posts specifically on that topic because, I think they need more help than any other kinds of clients and that's why I have, I just have a stronger feeling about helping them. They need more hand-holding and they need more guidance. Once you have bought a home a couple of times or refinance, I mean, you understand the process a little bit.  With first-time home buyers, I think working with the right partners I think is very important than the other kind of buyers. And by the right partner partners. I mean, choosing the right real estate agent and choosing the right mortgage lender could be 80, 90% of the work done because they are the ones. 

If you find the right people to work with, then they will work with you to find the right home and find the right mortgage. If you get that process wrong, then I mean, you've lost half the battle already, is that either you don't find the right thing or what you get is not what you should have paid for so I think that's the first step. And that may sound very vague. Is that, how do you find the right partner? How do you find the right real estate lender? The good thing is that it's 2021. There's a lot of consumer review sites that you can go to. Of course. I mean, the first step could be just checking with your friends and family. If they've worked with someone that they like, you might like the same person as well. If that's not the case, then you have the Yelps and the Zillows and the Facebooks and the Googles of the world where the consumer reviews are there for everyone to see. 

So, choose that very carefully. Don't rush through that process because if you do that correctly, then most of the work will be done by them. Anyway, they are the ones who are guiding you, advising you, coaching you during the entire process. And the second thing is that before you get into the shiny stuff of looking at home, and I know it's more glamorous and sexier to look at the shiny and you are in that side of the business Alice, you know what I'm talking about That's, that's the more glamorous part of it. Nobody wants to go through the boring numbers, finance mortgage, part of the process. I understand we do the boring part, right? The real estate agents get to do the sexier parts, look at the shiny countertops and the chandelier, and then hardwood floors and all that. 

But understand that that's, as you rightly said, that's, I mean, I'm not trying to minimize one versus the other, but that is the more important part of the process. If you haven't figured out your finances, not just from the perspective of how much you qualify for, but also how much are you comfortable making the payment. Sometimes you may qualify for more, but you may have a, I don't know, kids' tuition to pay for, or something medical, your parents to take care of. We don't consider those as debts, but we guide you. If you find out about that, you have those kinds of obligations, we'll tell you, Hey, you might qualify for a $600,000 home, but maybe you want to stay at under 500,000, given the other obligations you have. Or if you have any red flags, we'll help you clear all that. So I think even more important once you've taken care of that and have the right real estate agent to help you along the way, I think you're half done, as they say, that that's a great start to the process. 

Alice: Yeah, No, I absolutely agree. And like you said, sure, you could qualify, but if you're so stressed, once you get the property that you can't even enjoy it, then it kinda defeats the purpose. For sure. 

Shashank: Absolutely. Especially for first-time home buyers. I mean, there's a lot of emotion that's going on. The first thing after the dopamine rush that you get into buying a home, shouldn't be, the next one should not be the cortisol, the stress of, oh my God, what did we, what did we sign up for? That shouldn't be the case. 

Alice: Yes, exactly. So now what about when you're,, okay, here's a scenario that I run across quite a bit. So when you're buying a home, you know, obviously you're advised not to make major purchases. Don't use your credit because that's going to affect how you qualify for a loan, but at the same time, if you're not a first-time home buyer, you're selling a property so that you can buy another property. Sometimes that property that you're currently living in needs some upgrades and renovations before going on the market. Now, how should they handle their finances in that situation where they do need to, you know, if they don't have the cash readily available, they need to be able to get funds to fund that particular renovation project so that they can sell their property for top dollar while still making sure that they're not overdoing it so it looks negatively on their, on their financial reports. 

Shashank: Yeah, really good question. So it depends on the scenario, Alice.  If they are sure that they will be able to sell this one before buying a new one, then it doesn't matter so much. So, for example, if they have equity in the home, they end up taking, say, a line of credit to pay for the renovation of the home. Let's say that's $50,000 because they'll be selling the home and they'll be paying off all the mortgages. That's there on the property. They shouldn't be too worried about it because that's paid off. Yes, it will show as one extra credit inquiry because the lender must have done a credit inquiry on that one, but that loan is taken and that loan is paid off. That's fine. The problem happens when people are keeping that home and somehow trying to use a line of credit to use as a down payment on the new home.  First, because it’s a seller's market, right. I can send that home easily. That shouldn't be that difficult, but finding a new home might take a longer period of time. And we don't want to be homeless for that while, or we do not want to be living in a rental apartment. Short-term living, et cetera, et cetera. So we don't want to do that. Then it becomes kind of a problem because now you're trying to get a line of credit on the current home, which means you have new debt, new payment. And we look at something called debt to income ratio. The more debt that you take, your income stays the same, that's not changing, right? And that could mean you will qualify for a lesser home on a new property. And again, and I keep repeating that, but working with a great lender is important in this case because sometimes people do all of this before they go to the lender. 

And it's sometimes too late because they've already accrued all the debt and they don't qualify for all that, but if you involve them early in the process, they can guide you. 
That's the best way of doing it. Like for example, even in loan amounts, like even up to say $2 million purchase, we do a 10% down payment loan. So you may not have to pull a line of credit from your current home, as long as you have 10% down to buy the new home. And then you can go and sell the home and pay down your mortgage on the new home. So, there are things called bridge loans or, or cross-collateralization where we can lend on two properties at the same time. So there are different options. It's just that most lenders, don’t have access to all those options. So they're limited, or they may or may not be aware that there are other lending options out there. But, yeah, I mean, if you work with a good lender, they, should be able to advise you on that. 

Alice: Okay. And is there an option for, so if you're purchasing a property that you know is going to require some work, is there a loan that's available that will loan you greater than what, just what the asking prices or whatever your purchase price is, will they loan you additional funds that will help you fund those projects that you need to do once you physically own the property? 

Shashank: yes and no. So yes, yes depends on the price ranges. So there are a ton of renovation loans that will fund, I wouldn't say a ton, but a couple of renovation loans that will fund the home. The FHA has something called a two or three-K loan. That's a renovation loan, Fannie Mae has had something called a renovation loan. Some of those loans are limited by the loan amount that they will offer. So for example, if you're buying in the San Francisco bay area and your home costs a million and a half already, and you want another 3-400,000 on top of it, that might be difficult because FHA and Fannie Mae do not lend to loan amounts of that size. But say, if you're doing that in a market like Dallas, Texas, or I don't know, Charlotte, North Carolina, then maybe yes, because the homes might cost you 300,000, you need another $50,000 to renovate. And that shouldn't be a problem. 

But there is also some called construction loans. I mean, for the minor renovation, you may not qualify, but if you're doing something of a major renovation, then you can get a construction loan, which actually funds in most cases up to 80% of the future value of the properties, not at what you bought. If you bought it for a million, you think after the renovation, this house could be worth 2 million. I mean, you can get up to 1.6, which gives you an extra $600,000 to use towards the construction of the home that you want to get in to and in some cases, if you have private banking relationships with some banks they might be willing to lend based on the future value of it, but they're not mainstream programs, these are very expensive homes. 

Alice: Okay. So basically if you live here in the bay area, you're kind of screwed. 

Shashank: Yeah. A lot of loan programs that are the loan limit because the government had several loan programs. It's just that they have loan limits beyond which they won't fund. 

Alice: Okay. Understood. Now, what are some trends that you're kind of noticing right now in the buying market? Is there something that's happening that people should be aware of and is this is going to affect their buying process 

Shashank: In terms of, you need to be looking at trends from the financing perspective, the home prices perspective itself. So you will see, I mean, we talked about the fact that the home prices are, at the highest level that it probably has ever been, and that's a little bit to do with COVID. But I was saying that these trends have been there over the last eight, nine years. So these are not new trends. So even though you might see a little bit of softening of the price, once the market opens and production starts, and we hopefully have a little bit more lumber and, and construction can, can get in full swing, but understand that we are not building tiny little things. We are building homes, which means it could take months. I mean, some are even saying may be years before we are able to catch up to some of the demand that we have. 

So it's not going to happen tomorrow that we'll start seeing major softening of prices or something. so that's one thing that you need to understand because a lot of people are like, we should time the market when the home prices go low, that's when we will buy it. I mean, you could not have timed the market in the last 18 years. Every month that you were not buying. You're probably paying more. I mean, I think I saw a joke or a meme somewhere, which was like the real estate was talking to the borrowers to the potential buyers. And they were saying the real estate agent was saying that, if you want to look at something that is in a higher price range, I'll bring you to the same home tomorrow. 

Alice: That's a good one. That is so true though. Everyone keeps saying, oh, I'll wait until the frenzy subsides. And then, but especially around here, I mean, I know around here in our area, it never does. Like, like you said, it dips a little bit, just cause it slows down a little bit but then, for the most part, it's just been consistently on the rise and I don't see that changing. I mean, if a pandemic can't slow it down, what else would, what would slow it down 

Shashank: Yes, it won't. And that's what I tell my clients as well, is that look, I can get it wrong for a couple of months here and there. Maybe even, I mean, maybe we didn't have a bad couple of quarters or something, but if you buy something new, I mean, you are guaranteed some of the best return on investment that you can get in five, seven years down the road. Add to that. The fact that $500,000 is exempt from capital gains. It's probably the best investment you can make. Even if you're primarily looking at real estate as an investment, which I am not a huge fan of because if you live in that house, there's a lot of emotional value that you get just from owning the home and your kids, having friends in the neighborhood and being able to go to schools, all of that additional factor. 

But if you are looking at just from an investment perspective and imagine you can put 10, 20% down, but you get to keep a hundred percent of the upside of the equity. I mean, you don't get to do with apple stock. You can’t go to wall street and say, Hey, can I only put 10% down on the apple stock, But when it goes up, can I keep a hundred percent of it? You can't do that. 

Alice:  Good luck with that, buddy. 

Shashank:  Good luck with that. And there's no exemption on the capital gains on anything that you make there. And that's what first-time homebuyers need to understand is the fact that especially if you can get in early if you can get in the late twenties, early thirties and get into, especially again, premier, a place like Silicon valley bay area, kind of a place, whatever kind of home that you are able to afford. I mean, you'll be glad you made that investment five, seven years down the road that you've been able to build in equity. So I think that's what it is. It's a form, of course, it comes with a lot of emotional benefits, and builds that sense of community. I mean, it builds a sense of neighborhood. but also, I mean probably the best investment your money can make. 

Alice: Yeah. Well, I mean, how many of us have looked back at homes that we first purchased like 20, 30 years ago and said, dang, I wish I would've kept it as a rental. Think of the equity that you would be able to reap from now. I mean, I think my first home was $150,000. I'm sure that same property now, I haven't looked, but, I'm working with a client that lives in that same area and it was a townhome. I think they're going to be putting theirs on the market probably in the eight to $900,000 range. I mean, it's insane. and I know other parts of the country don't see that level of return, even if they are in a strong market right now, but here in California, it's amazing what happens over a one-year period, let alone ten. 

Shashank: No, absolutely. I mean, just the dollar appreciation is just mind-boggling what you can get. 

Alice: So stay put, and I think somebody else just said, that if you move out of California because you know, you get a lot of those folks who, oh my God, California is so crazy, I'm leaving. But as we had talked about, in another interview, like if you leave, it's a one-way ticket, don't expect to be able to come back and, and afford, and even like fathom buying your same house back for, you know, one and a half percent return increase in price. It's so crazy. 

Shashank: It is. And you're right. You, if you're a California homeowner, can technically move to any part of the country, really, because you will not get that sticker shock, but try to come back to the same place. Even if you were a Californian before you will indeed get a sticker shock. Oh my God, I lived in the same house, same neighborhood for this. And then now this, this costs that much. So, yeah, that's going to be a challenge for sure. 

Alice: For sure. Now, is there anything that's happened over this past year that you just thought you would never imagine in a million years, that this could happen that beyond the actual COVID situation 

Shashank: all of us know something that happened that we imagined that will never happen, never happen in a million years. But I mean, if you, if you think about it, Alice, I mean the COVID itself was of course not something that anybody thought of, but, and, and I'm talking away from probably the mortgage real estate world right now. But the fact that the New York Times came out with an article very early during COVID and said, typically for a virus like this, it takes almost about 18 years to produce a vaccine. so 20, 30 years later, about a couple of months later, they said the best-case scenario, you can produce a virus for a vaccine like this will probably take eight to 10 years. The fact that we were able to create not one, but at least two or three different vaccines, within almost eight, nine months of us being fully aware of the virus and not just created it, commercially made it available.  It started actually giving the shots in people's arms within that time period. 

I mean, the COVID itself was once in, I don't know, a hundred thousand years kind of a thing that nobody thought, but even more is, is what the scientists and the doctors and everybody responsible for doing this we're able to make it happen. And that's a once in a million thing, like out of all the viruses that humans had seen over hundreds and thousands of years of evolution, we will not be able to get a vaccine out in nine months, even for something like a flu kind of influenza virus, which is not even that serious. So to me, I mean, what blew my mind is really that, I mean, if you were to ask me that this is something that anyone knew. I'm not even from the scientist community, but when doctors and scientists and they were like, this is just unbelievable what the world was able to do, especially here in the US of course, because now we are talking about even being able to vaccinate like four or five-year-olds, which is just crazy to think about the fact that within 12 to 18 months, we have been able to do that. 

So, I mean, this is, again, this is not that show, not that platform, but I mean, huge kudos to everyone who made it happen. Really 

Alice: No, I agree. I never really thought about it, but you're right. It did happen in a very, very short period of time and they were able to roll it out very quickly. And it just goes to show that even though people think something is impossible, it's never impossible. It's like breaking world records. Like my daughter's a pole vaulter now. Right. I look at records of what people have done and at what professionals like Olympians were able to jump a certain height, but now, you know, there are high school students jumping those same Heights because somebody raised the bar. And so everyone's trying to beat that bar, you know, literally, but Yeah. Running the five-minute mile or whatever, you know, nobody thought it was possible until somebody did it. And now everybody's beating that time over and over again. So it's one of those things that if we actually put our minds to something, anything is possible, and you've got the collaboration of like the brightest people in the world, you know, figuring out, okay, we need to come up with a solution because this is, this is bad. 

Shashank: Yeah. And that gives, so for the future of the human population, that if we, we find something that nobody knew anything about had no clue, and we can find a possible solution within a year's period. Then, I mean, we shouldn't of course be complacent in the future. But the good thing is that there are some really smart brains out there who are able to, and the entire world works together on this. That's amazing too. I mean, because you're right, and that works for really anything. I mean, I know that that's at a very different scale, but, whether you're buying a home, selling a home, or something, I mean, especially for home buyers right now, it could seem very daunting. It's something that's there, but sometimes you just need to persevere. I mean, there are some people who need to make 12, 13 offers before they finally get one accepted. If the home is that important for you, then in some cases you have to fight harder. It is what it is, but, but once you get in, then you can reap the reward of the equity that you build in and the emotional benefits of owning a home. So yeah, from that different level. But I think it makes sense. 

Alice: Yeah, no, I agree. I actually have a client who is expecting to pick up her keys today at her new home. She had to try seven times before she got the home that she's closing on today. So it is challenging, but, and then it sucks when you don't get the house that you wanted or you thought you wanted, but I think sometimes people want a house so bad, they're just willing to put an offer on anything. And ultimately you end up with a better house because you didn't get that house. So I think that's another way to look at it also that sometimes, you know, rushing and putting an offer on just anything and everything doesn't necessarily benefit you in the long run and something better will come along. So the right house will find you and you will find the right. So on that front. So is Rachel like on your website, can you tell us a little bit, I was very interested in that. I thought that was so amazing when I was hearing you talk about it earlier 

Shashank: She is, or, or it is, I'm not sure I should be calling it she. That's what I always get confused about. Yeah. yes arcuslending.com, if you go there, then there is a link to talk to Rachel and a peer. You should be able to, try out and see how she converses. But, it is very interesting. The kind of thing that can be done is basically taking a lot of conversational artificial intelligence. That's there in some of the other forms like Google assistant or Siri or Alexa, and just taking it, using it in a human form, which makes it more human. So to say, Rachel has a personality of its own. So hopefully people like her and find conversing with her entertaining and most importantly, informational as well because at the end of the day, we are trying to build a human element, but we are also trying to educate people on the mortgage process. 

Alice: Great. So if I was just interested in learning any information regarding, so if I'm starting out and I have no idea, I could just ask her questions and she'd be able to give me some, 

Shashank: Yeah. Ask her questions. Like, how do I get pre-approved, what kind of loan program should I, should I go for it Yeah. Ask her those questions. And then, and we have built-in analytics where if she's not able to answer questions, then we learn from that. Like, what are the questions that are being asked to her, which she is not able to answer? And then we build intelligence. And the good thing about Rachel, the digital humanities is that once you teach her something 20 years down the road, she will still remember. I mean, try to do that to your employees or kids and they forget them like three seconds later. Right. So it's a one-time training. 

Alice: Yeah. That's coming in and out of my head all the time. That's what I tell my daughter. Okay. If I tell you something, you need to act on it right away, because I swear I will forget. So don't make me have to try and remember, and then it'll randomly come back into my brain, like five hours later. I'm like, dang, I need an AI brain. Well, thank you so much for Shashank. Where can people find you online? 

Shashank: So Arcuslending.com, That's my company's website.  mortgage blog.com is where I blog and there are over 500 blog posts on that website and the ability to get rate quotes, download guides. So there are several other tools, calculators. So not just blogs, whether you're a first-time home buyer, investment buyer, repeat buyer, whatever kind of a home buyer you are, you will be able to find tons of resources on mortgageblog.com. 

Alice: Okay, great. And the books that you mentioned earlier specifically for first time home buyers, is that available on your website, or is that it on Amazon Where can we find those 

Shashank: That's on Amazon, the book is called my first home. It actually made the number one list on Amazon bestseller when it was released. it has received some serious critical acclaim. And so, yeah, go ahead and grab a book. It's what I think it's $10 or something as a first-time home buyer that, I mean, not bragging, but must be the best $10 you can spend. 

Alice:  Absolutely. I will put all this information in the show notes. So if you didn't catch anything that he was saying, it'll be in the show notes. So if you're watching this or you're listening to this, it'll be available to you. Thank you so much, Shashank. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a super busy guy. Oh, and one more thing. I was going to say you have multiple locations, right? Your arcus lending office has multiple locations now, you're not just here in Silicon Valley. 

Shashank:  That is correct. We are licensed in 25 states now, and we have physical offices in 12. So we have 12 different branch offices, really From New York to New Jersey to California, it's pretty much coast to coast. I mean, the states that we are licensed in do almost 85% of all mortgages in the US. So I mean, so pretty much anywhere that you're looking at, we will, should probably have a license there. We are trying to open in Hawaii. So we are not there yet.

Alice: Where would you be? Would you have an office in Hawaii? Are you hiring somebody? 

Shashank:  We'll talk about that later. 

Alice: It's going to be virtual. That's the way we're heading.  All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. 

Shashank: All right. Take care. Bye.