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16W Media Group Presents The Branding Highway Podcast
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors.
16W Media Group Presents The Branding Highway Podcast
Oliver Orlicki: Charting a Course Through Real Estate Evolution, Mortgage Mastery, and the Heartbeat of Homebuying
Join the ranks of informed homebuyers and real estate enthusiasts as Oliver Orlicki of the Orlicki Group shares his treasure trove of industry knowledge with us. Together, we traverse the transformative landscape of mortgage brokering, where Oliver's bespoke concierge service shines amidst the sea of automation. We delve into how a personal touch and in-depth client education can make all the difference in securing the right mortgage, especially in today's complex market.
Embarking on a journey through time, we reminisce about the seismic shifts in financial services post-9/11, sail through the refinancing surge, and anchor at the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the real estate sector. Oliver's odyssey from the world of stocks to the terra firma of home loans spotlights the resilience required to navigate these tumultuous waters. The conversation captures an insightful comparison between the real estate and mortgage markets' ebbs and flows, enlightening both seasoned investors and curious novices alike.
The episode also casts a spotlight on the broader real estate horizon, breaking down the implications of recent NAR rulings and their ripple effects across the industry. We unpack how these rules shape the roles of agents in markets teeming with opportunity, like Tampa Bay, and what that means for buyers and sellers. Capping off our chat, we shift gears to revel in the joys of sports, travel, and the small moments that stitch together the fabric of our lives. Oliver's journey through the peaks and valleys of real estate is more than just business—it's a mosaic of passion and perseverance.
The Orlicki Group is inspiring much needed change in residential financing. Our focus is on relationships, which often get overlooked in this industry. We provide a tailored experience that gives our clients and partners the knowledge, attention, and energy they deserve. It's an honor to be a part of your life's most important financial decisions.
As a local independent mortgage broker we specialize in finding the best loan for you. We work on your behalf, not the bank and we are focused on finding the lowest rates in the country, we provide more loan options, more flexibility and we offer faster turn times. We are not tied to only one bank or lender but instead we shop around for the loan that will best fit your needs. We are rooted in our community, we’re here for you.
The Orlicki Group - https://www.orlickigroup.com
Our Social Links – https://linktr.ee/orlickigroup
Book Your Free Mortgage Consultation - https://calendly.com/oghello/mtgintro
Call The Orlicki Group - (813) 302-1616
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Mike Sedita.
Speaker 2:Hello out there. Welcome to episode 152 of the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Sedita. Today we have the pleasure of being joined by Oliver Orlicki. Sorry, I almost messed it up. I was looking at the name of the company Oliver Orlicki of the Orlicki Group. He's the co-founder. Ollie, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:I'm doing amazing. How about yourself, mike? I'm doing pretty good, I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 2:This is kind of our like. We're going to break down the fourth wall here like Deadpool. This is our remake of a podcast during some sort of like what do they call that Electronic like? Probably it was a cyber attack somewhere that caused our whole podcast to go up in flames, but we're taking two here to try to get your information out there so people know what you do, just so you know what we do in the community. So the Good Neighbor podcast was started in 2020 as a way for businesses like yours to get their information out to the community when everybody had to be socially distant. Now, four years later, we have podcasts in Denver, atlanta, philadelphia, of all places, and we're here in Tampa and it gives me an opportunity to talk to guys like you and find out what makes you successful. So first off, tell us a little bit about the Orlicky Group and what you guys do.
Speaker 3:I absolutely love to. So my name is Oliver Orlicky. I'm the team lead and co-founder of the Orlicky Group. My wife, allison Richner, is my business partner. The Orlicky Group is a bespoke concierge mortgage brokerage based out of the Tampa Bay area. So I've been in the mortgage industry since 2001. I've been a broker since I started in the business and have never looked back. We started during COVID, like yourself, when we realized that the mortgage experience has become a very gametized experience. There's very little interaction between the borrowers and the people they're working with. So we really want to make our borrowers not feel like they were a social security number and a name. We really want them to feel like that. This is a relationship and we're a relationship business. 95% of the business we do do are referral based referrals and from our real estate agents and past customers. So we are trying to not reinvent the wheel, but we're trying to make the wheel run a lot smoother. We hold our clients hands from contract to close.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, from the sounds of it, it really sounds like you're like the anti and I don't like to name drop other businesses on the podcast but like you're the anti-rocket mortgage right, we are. I'm not just going to see an 800 number and call an 800 number, fill out a fill out form and get a list of approval potentials back. It's going to be hey, let me learn a little bit about what your background is, Let me you know, understand your pain points, so we can make the process go smoother 100%.
Speaker 3:I mean 35% of our customers are first-time homebuyers. They've never been through this experience and you know Rocket Mortgage is Rocket Mortgage. They close thousands and thousands of loans a month and you know they throw a bunch of stuff up against the wall and hope it sticks. You're talking to usually people in call centers across the country that are no offense to Rocket are beginner-based mortgage professionals. I've been doing this for over 23 years and you and I spoke about this on the last podcast.
Speaker 3:I've been through some crazy market cycles. I went through the housing crisis in Florida. I went through the financial crisis. I've been through COVID, so I've seen the ups and downs of this market and it is a pretty bananas industry to be in. We are now coming out of the highest interest rates we've seen in over 40 years. Things are starting to gently but slowly stabilize, which is nice. Rates are starting to finally drift down, but home prices have shot through the roof, especially in the Tampa Bay area it's funny is so I I've owned mad agency for years and at one point, my small little agency.
Speaker 2:At the time when this occurred, we were working out of my partner's basement and we ended up getting to do an rfp for a client who had a huge agency and the huge and you know I'm not going to name, drop the name, but they're one of the bigger agencies in the united states that does media and they had put a fresh out of college, zero experience putting together a marketing plan person on this account. And when they put their plan together, they put options for this company to take that didn't know, no longer existed, like basically they needed to do certain trade magazines and they just rubber stamped this proposal based on a previous proposal and put actual options that were no longer available. So for the longest time, our pitch became the same thing that you're talking about with us. Yeah, we're not the big mega company that has all these bells and whistles, but we're lean, we're mean.
Speaker 2:You're getting two people who have done this for a long period of time and know what they're doing and have seen the things like you've seen with the markets. You're not going to get the D team, you're going to get the A team when you come to us and that's what you're getting, and it's that. That's what I think a lot of people in today's day with technology is great. There's so many great things you can do with technology, but what I think a lot of people are starting to yearn for is that personal touch and personal connection to interacting with businesses that they're going to do business with, and that's got to be a big component to what you guys do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean you're not just a name and number to us. You know, we literally take you through the process, we educate you, we answer questions, we provide information. You know it's not just you fill out an application, you give us a bunch of documents and go out and shop for a home. We're in a volatile market, we're in a crazy housing market and the economy is crazy right now. So we hold literally the customer's hand from the point of where they call us to the point of when they close and then we service them afterwards.
Speaker 3:Most of our clients come to us when they're buying second homes, third homes, when they're graduating, when the kids are graduating from school and they want to step down and buy something smaller, when their kids are buying places. So, all those things being said and done, we like to really. You know there's no one shoe fits all in this business. It's not like, you know, you're a 1099 employee and this person's a W2 employee and everybody fits within the same box. Everybody has their own goals and objectives and the biggest thing that I think a lot of people in my industry look at people is as a commodity. Mortgages are a commodity, but it's really a relationship just like anything else.
Speaker 3:You mentioned your previous life. You were into stock brokering and stuff like that. We all sell money and we all sell the same money. It's how that money is delivered to you in the process and the experience that you have and the reason why you're talking to me and the reason why we get a lot of our business. You can Google us, you can find us on Zillow. We have 800 five star reviews for a very, very small company, which is extraordinary and it just shows on our expertise, our process and our handholding and everybody seems to appreciate that and that's why they come back to us and they send their friends and family and so forth.
Speaker 2:So let me ask you this for you personally have you tell us a little bit of your background? Have you always wanted to be like a finance guy? You know, were you always like more? Hey, listen, I want to put people in homes what were you doing? How'd you get here?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I went to university of Florida, go Gators. I was a mass comm and journalism major I was. I'm a diehard sports fan to the core and I wanted to be, the next Dan.
Speaker 3:Patrick or Keith Overman, espn you know, I saw myself. I see myself watching ESPN and SportsCenter and I wanted to be that guy Started looking for jobs when I graduated college and realizing you have to be a one in a million to make any money in my business, unless you want to start writing papers and obituaries and covering high school baseball in small towns and not like there's anything wrong with that but it just wasn't my cup of tea.
Speaker 2:You got to be a dude man, you got to do your 10,000 hours, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3:So I got into financial services straight out of school, took my Series 7, got licensed up and started working for at the time American Express had a financial planning division that I started working for that I moved over to MetLife, was literally making probably 1,000 cold calls a week to call old what they call orphan leads people that were either dead or having claimed their insurance money. I would go to their spouses or their kin and I would say, hey, listen, we have this money, let's reinvest it. 9-11 hits and I'm in Tampa, florida, sitting in my boss's office about to pitch a huge insurance policy and we saw the planes fly into the World Trade Center and at that point in time the markets crashed but rates came down because everybody was moving their assets out of stocks into bonds and interest rates started coming down and we're talking rates were in the double digits. So when we talk to people now with 6% 7%, they're like wow, that's high. When I got in the business we were at 10%, 12%, that's high.
Speaker 3:And I realized a bunch of my friends were getting into the mortgage industry. They're like I'm working a third of the hours making three times as much money. And that's where my mortgage career started and I started literally with a phone book, a pencil and a pen and my boss said call all the A's and you would just call through. And this is when refinancing really started getting big. And I was just making literally a thousand phone calls. I, you know, got my teeth kicked in 990 times, but the 10 times I got the yeses are the best things in the world and you know, it taught me to sell. So that was my kind of intro into the mortgage industry.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny, that's what keeps you coming back. Right, it's the 900 no's or hang ups, don't call me, or whatever. But then when you get that one person that you're able to help and it kind of restores your faith and recharges your battery to do another 900, you know what I mean, like that's. I mean the numbers aren't that extreme, but the nice thing about the mortgage side of it versus being a stockbroker is when you're making those hundred calls a day as a star, 120 calls a day as a stockbroker. It's hey, mr Smith, you know my name's Oliver. You know I have this great investment opportunity, I'd love to talk to you and you're trying to separate that person on the other end of the phone from their money so that you can play with it. You know you can put it in the market right with the mortgage side of it it's the opposite.
Speaker 2:It's like hey, mr smith, this is oliver, you know I have some great opportunities with rates to help save you money or get you into your dream home or your vacation home or your investment property or whatever it is. It's a tangible thing that you're able to connect them with, to help them again. Same pot, same pot of money, just the way you shifted around and I just think, for me, looking at it, I would rather talk to a guy trying to give me a mortgage and give me money to do stuff with than a guy who's trying to take my money away and go play with it in the market.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm giving money and you're trying to take money, so it's a softer call. But the industry has been great to me. I've been super successful and I'm one of the top 100 brokers in the country on an independent mortgage side of things. So I'm an independent mortgage broker. I don't work for a Wells Fargo or a Rocket Mortgage or these big guys. We are literally a small bespoke team of six people and I've grown my team organically. I've been through the cycles that we talked about earlier. We adapted technology very early, ran things virtually for a while. When COVID hit, we were prepared to run things virtually and this is when people were going to look at houses. You couldn't literally tour a house during COVID.
Speaker 3:So, you had a real estate agent wearing gloves and a mask, walking through a house with a phone, sight unseen, and people were literally buying half a million dollar properties. Coming to guys like me, I'm like, hey, I found a property, I live in Colorado, I'm moving to Florida because of the weather, because of COVID restrictions, I want to be out and all of a sudden here we are, you know, doing loans in the twos and threes. So it was definitely a paradigm shift. But, you know, we came out of it. A lot of people in my business didn't and you know, last year we've seen half as many people in my industry fall to the wayside and we've survived. And not only have we survived, we're growing, we're adding additional states and we're getting really, you know, a lot of momentum behind us.
Speaker 2:Well, you know it's funny. Is markets like that really like coming out of markets like that, the people that are left are the people that you know, are the people that have staying power. Like, look, you deal with a ton of realtors, I deal with a ton of realtors. There's two types of realtor in the world. There's realtors who get that closing check and go party for three weeks, four weeks, run out of money and then are sweating how they're going to get to the next closing. And then there's realtors who understand this is a business and it's growth. This is how I do it, this is how systemically I make it work. In that market, the one and dones fell by the wayside.
Speaker 1:It's funny.
Speaker 2:I lived in Atlanta in the mid-90s. Everybody was getting their real estate license because the Olympics was coming.
Speaker 2:And the market was going to be such a booming market. It didn't actually pan out to be that way, but I was working for a bank at the time. I was in my 20s. I got my real estate license just to have it. I hated real estate. It just doesn't work for me. It's too long, it's too drawn out, it's driving people around in a car. It just wasn't for me. But you could separate the people who know how to do it from the people who don't buy a market, like we had, because the people who aren't built for it end up falling out pretty quick listen.
Speaker 3:When you can pick fruit up off the ground, it's easy to eat the fruit. When you got to climb up the tree with the ladder, get pricked by all this you know the stickers on the tree and all the bugs and everything that's going to infest it. To go to the top of the tree and pick the apple and bring it down, that's tough and especially now with what's going on with the whole NARS settlement, you're going to have a lot of agents leaving the business because, yeah, it was really easy just to pick up buyers, take them to a house sight unseen and make yourself a nice big five, six figure check and that's come to the end and I think it's good. It's going to cleanse the industry. It happened to us. It's going to happen to many industries across the country as we get more technologically advanced and customers get more savvy.
Speaker 3:Our average customer, by the time they come to us, has already looked at five or seven houses online. They know what they want and they're coming to us going okay, now I need the money to buy it and most of them don't have real estate agents. So guys like me that I have a team of referral partners that we send our deals to, we pre-qualify and send them out. And yeah, those days of just doing one or two deals a year, I agree with you and it's the same thing that happened in my industry, and it's just. This is a business that is rapidly changing. We're in a world with AI and technology and social media and the internet.
Speaker 3:And so many people are going to die. You know the school teachers and the. You know people that were doing this part-time. They're going to be out and you know what. Good riddance, because I'll tell you what. I can't tell you how many times they've cannibalized deals on the other end and their clients. Hey, my mom, my best friend, my brother's friend, this person, in reality, you need to work with a professional.
Speaker 2:And I say that to just bring it up and kind of hit it home and you could correct me of what I'm getting wrong you mentioned the NAR settlement. So I've been talking to real estate agents about this because that happened. It's got to be at least three months ago or so. It may have been at the end of last year. So what this settlement is actually saying, people, is that if you're a real estate agent, there's no more going to be buyer's agency anymore. It's really only going to be the listing agent has the house and sell the house.
Speaker 2:So the reason I know about it is because what I do in my communities with my publications, I only deal with affluent homeowners. So, talking to realtors, trying to get them to understand, you want to be in front of these homeowners because that's now the only pond to fish in. It's just. There's no other lakes for you. They're all drying up and I honestly, honestly, oliver, I truly don't think a lot of real estate agents understand the severity of what that's going to cause for their business, because when I explain to them you want to get in front of the homeowners now as hard and heavy as you possibly can they're kind of like yeah, you know, I don't know, I'm just not going to, I'm just not ready, and that's how I could tell the ones who get it from the ones who don't get it. But I mean, that's, that's essentially what that NAR ruling is correct.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's. It's essentially buyers now have to either pay their agents to show on properties or their buyers agents have to negotiate with the seller to cover their commission. So you're going to have a lot of buyers that are going to be unrepresented in this market, that are going to do their own research. Come to a guy like me and I always recommend hiring a professional realtor. There are so many things that go unnoticed.
Speaker 3:But, when I say professional, I mean somebody that does it full time, not somebody that does one or two deals a year. You want somebody as an advocate on your side and we're in a very tight market Inventory, especially in the Tampa Bay area. It's one of the hottest housing markets and has been for years, and the projections are property values are going to continue to go higher, even as rates start coming down. The lower rates get, the more pool of buyers is going to be available to purchase a limited amount of inventory and as a buyer's agent you need to know that inventory. You need to know what's out there.
Speaker 3:But in reality the sellers do control it now and the people that are listing their homes, they have the key to the kingdom and that's why you're seeing a fundamental shift in the amount of buyer's agents moving to listing agents and you're going to see the likes of Zillow and realtorcom.
Speaker 3:Those things are going to have to adapt because they make millions and millions and millions of dollars on buyers going through there and guess who? They get their information from MLS who's MLS covered by NAR. So in reality, that whole shift of how people are going to shop for homes is going to change. It's supposed to take effect in July. They haven't finalized it yet. So a lot of people were interviewing a lot of the top agents in our industry just to get not only content but to educate ourselves. My personal opinion if you're out there shopping right now, go out there and buy a house before this all hits, because it may cost you an additional 2% to 3% of your purchase price, and the average home in the Tampa area is over four hundred thousand dollars now, so you can do the math.
Speaker 2:Well, but the other part of it too is I mean, there's two things you said there that are great is when the interest rate? Because I'm going to say when, not if, but when the interest. All those people that are sitting in their homes because they're saying, hey, I pay three percent or two percent interest, now I don't want to sell it and go buy something and be at 7% or 8%. If that interest rate comes back to about 5% or 4% now those people are going to say, oh, maybe now I can downgrade or do what they want to do, so there may be more homes available, but the reality is they're actually moving into another house too or they're going someplace else. It's just going to put more buyers in the market.
Speaker 2:It is so crazy and I saw this happen with the auto industry when the internet came out. So like there used to be when I was a kid, you would go to the newsstand and get there were like these auto trader books and they would have them classified. It was just a book full of first you see the sports cars.
Speaker 2:then you see this, then you see that, and the internet arrived and all that was gone. And then, not only was it gone, now I can take that same 1996 Camaro and I can now put it into Kelly Blue Book and actually have access to see exactly what it's worth. So it's only worth three grand, but you're asking 10 grand Now. The whole negotiation, the whole process of car buying became a research game instead of a phone buying, and that's what this is going toward.
Speaker 3:I mean maybe not on a bigger scale but it's that same thing, right.
Speaker 3:That's a great analogy. I mean you want to go buy a BMW, you can put it in and find 20 dealers. When I bought an Audi, I leased it, I shopped 20 different dealerships. I literally took the quote, sent it out to all 20 and literally let them compete for my business. That's exactly what's happening in our industry the mortgage industry is people are going out. They're becoming savvier.
Speaker 3:Going to your local bank or your credit union is no longer a thing. Sitting in front of you know Mary Sue, who's going to sit there and walk you through. That's not happening anymore. They call guys like me. They call guys like me. They call guys like Rocket because it's easy, they go online, they're easy to access and people are doing their research. Like you said, you don't have to schlep to the magazine stand. And the same thing used to be for home buying. You would get classified ads in the real estate section would be where you look for homes, or you hired a real estate agent. Now you have Zillow, now you have Realtorcom, redfin, all these other aggregator websites. You literally, as a consumer, can type in four bedroom, three bath, you know three, three, six, two, nine and find a list of homes. Call a guy like me be pre-approved and within 24 hours viewing that house. And we have some customers that literally within 24 hours of looking at the house, are buying that house. It's nuts and I mean. It's moving that fluid right now.
Speaker 2:I mean you think about this, like, let's think of what the what buying a house was in. Let's see it's 2023. Let's see 2000,. Let's say 1993. We'll go back to 30. You used to have to. Hey, I want to buy a house. Okay, you see a house in the paper with a realtor's name, or you know a realtor. Hey, I'm going to go to Oliver. He's my local realtor. Hey, can you? I'm looking for a four bedroom, three bed. They plug it into mls in their little back office they're hitting oz computer. It punches out a list of names. They say, okay, now I'm going to take you to see these couple of homes. Let's look at what these have. And then you or you have maybe if you were lucky, some pictures on the mls.
Speaker 2:So then you go and you look at those homes and you're driving around doing all that stuff. Then, well, are you pre-approved? It used to be at least it was getting that way when I was doing it in like the mid 90s like, are you pre-approved, you have a pre-approval letter. If the smart realtors did that or else people would just walk around, they'd shop and window shopping for houses. Now it's exactly what you said that whole process is eliminated. I want to go right now red fin, five bedroom, five bedroom, four bath, tampa Palms. I want to stay under $800,000. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It gives me the four listings. Do I like them? Now I can take a video tour through them. I mean the process is so streamlined.
Speaker 2:The big part of it is your side of it is. Having the money to fund the project is what it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and credit's getting tighter right now. Credit's getting tighter because there's less inventory. We have unknown economic situations ahead of us. Nobody really knows what's going to go on with the economy and, as interest rates went from 2%, 3%, 4%, now we're just below 7% for well-qualified buyers on 30-year fixed mortgages, Mortgage payments have jumped significantly.
Speaker 3:So people that were looking at homes two years ago and I get probably the number one question we get is do you think it's a good time to buy a home? And every time I sell somebody, yes, don't try to time the market, Don't try to time interest rates, and if you bought a home any time prior today, there is a very high probability that home is worth more than what it was then. And that's what people, especially in Florida. They hit the housing lotto. People were buying houses in 2019, 20,. Those houses are 40, 50% more exactly. And you know, for all those people out there that have these unbelievable amount of equity, deploy that equity. Use it to reinvest, go buy an investment property, start a business, fund your kid's school, whatever it is, because, at the end of the day, equity is equity man, whatever it is, because, at the end of the day, equity is equity man and so many people are just sitting on a treasure trove of what they can be using out there to get their lifestyles even that much better.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny, the same saying I've heard it from I've interviewed probably two dozen mortgage guys, countless realtors. The same thing gets said over and over again in this market over the past, I don't know, 18 months before this market it was the your house goes on the market, have an open house by monday, we're going to take, we're going to take offers and if you're not even 20 grand over with cash, you're not even getting a call back to say sure right from that market to this market and the same thing I hear over and over again is marry the house and date the rape.
Speaker 2:That is the thing over, because you could always refinance the home. Find the house you love, stop screwing around. Buy it now, get in on it while you can, so that you have a chance to start to build some of that equity. Everybody's fear is it's going to be 2006, they're going to buy a house that's inflated and all of a sudden the market's just going to plummet. The they're going to buy a house that's inflated and all of a sudden the market's just going to plummet the way it did and they're going to be upside down and stuck in that house for the next 10 years just until they can kind of recoup it, even if the market did dip. I think that was an unprecedented time in history for that to happen. But you know.
Speaker 3:I don't know, it's an election year.
Speaker 2:I don't think anything crazy is going to happen with the economy in an election year. I agree, it's always kind of like everybody just kind of treads water waiting for what's going to happen. And then in November, when whatever happens happens, then we kind of start to see those paradigm shifts. That thing's just going to start to go in every direction.
Speaker 3:I'm going to take that last snippet of yours and put it on my socials, because you exactly summarize exactly how I feel. So many people are sitting on the sidelines now and I respect that and I understand. I'm not here to tell anybody how to spend their money or not, but the longer you wait and you can mark my words, the more expensive it's going to be.
Speaker 3:In 2007, six, seven and 8 were a whole different story. You had a bunch of very aggressive lending going on 100% stated income loans and so forth. The average borrower now has a 730 credit score and there's over 20% equity in their home. So even like you're talking about, even if the market corrects 10%, they're still sitting there in a great position and you're going to continue to see that. And the problem is hedge funds and investment firms are buying up 40% to 50% of the single family residents, especially in the Tampa Bay area. There's a big article that just came out talks about that. Now you've got guys that have a unlimited checkbook that are going to buy up the inventory and going to drive prices even higher.
Speaker 3:And once that you know that's already started happening and that's why the rents are so high, because they can control the market. So you know, if you're out there, you know people. Like I said, if you're out there now shopping, my advice you like something, pull the trigger If it's a little bit beyond your budget. You know, spend the extra little money a year from now when rates do come down and they will come down eventually Refinance that property and build yourself some nice equity. And listen, you pay yourself 100% interest when you own a home, when you're paying somebody else's mortgage, you're renting a house, you're giving them free money, essentially, and they're just building their equity. So again, we have so many people are sitting and waiting and waiting, waiting. And if I can leave you with one thing don't wait, call, call a guy like me, call your mortgage professional, get out there and start shopping, because when rates do come down, prices are just going to move higher because there's going to be more of you out there shopping for the same product.
Speaker 2:So, listen, we spent almost 30 minutes just talking about the conversation is so good that we're just talking about what's going on. I mean, I know you said you're a sports fan, but you also said you're a Florida fan, so I don't know how those two go together necessarily. I mean, maybe you know those Aaron Hernandez days, but tell us a little bit about what you like to do for fun.
Speaker 3:Sure, I love to travel. I'm a big foodie. I don't have any kids, which is fine. You know we're finding more of us out there that don't have the kids but I'm big yep, big into sports. I like my wines and I love to eat well and traveling. And I like when I don't work, I'm big into it's funny, I geek out on financial markets. I'm just, I'm very. I love how the economies work and all the things that are going on and just what is going on in the world right now. It captivates me and it just makes me want to read and learn more. And now, with AI coming out, so I'm big into technology as well. But sports is by far my number one thing. I'm a huge football fan. Sundays are sacred to me, from one o'clock to seven o'clock, parked in front of a TV, watching seven hours of football.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a couple things. First off, we'll touch on. You're a foodie. What is your on-death row? What is the last meal?
Speaker 3:That's a great question, man. That's a tough one. I would probably have to say a lobster and a filet mignon, a little surf and tear, a little surf and tear, all right, that's not a bad choice.
Speaker 2:I can give you that one Vacations Best vacation you've been on in the past five years. Where was it and what made it great?
Speaker 3:Amazing question. We went to Greece, santorini, for our anniversary.
Speaker 2:The water's incredible right.
Speaker 3:It's like literally jumping into an aquarium pool. It's about as blue as can be. The people are incredible. The food's amazing. It's like it doesn't seem like it's a real place on Earth. It really doesn't. You walk everywhere, it's literally just this cliff walking down. I mean, it's like if you like octopus, they literally pull the octopus out of the water, slap it up onto a grate, cut the tentacles off, put it on a grill and you're eating that thing six minutes later. So it's incredible.
Speaker 2:All right, so that covers the trip and the food on that one. Now let's just slide into sports. If you were ranking them in order, I'm assuming NFL is going to be number one.
Speaker 3:College football two.
Speaker 2:College football. Two, Three is baseball or basketball.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would do NBA, college basketball, then Major League Baseball. I'm a hockey guy, listen, I'm from New York, so I'm a hockey guy. Listen, I'm, I'm a. I'm from new york, so I'm a diehard rangers fam, I'm a mix giants mets rangers. But you know, I lived in. I was in the tampa bay area at the time when the lightning won a couple of their stanley cups, so that was incredible to see a florida hockey team. Yeah, when you know the razor, an incredible team. And I was fortunate enough to be there when the Bucs won some Super Bowls.
Speaker 2:We definitely have a couple things Okay so Giants, knicks, devils but I'm Braves because all my friends were Yankees fans. I did like the Mets when I was a kid, but when they traded their whole team away after 88, I kind of was done with them.
Speaker 2:But I will tell you some of the stuff on my walls here over here, we have Michael Strahan Up here. Stuff on my walls here. Over here, we have Michael Strahan up here. You can't see him as Eli Manning. I had to switch him out. I had Saquon Barkley, whose name we don't mention anymore, that's unfortunately. I had DJ down here. But I said you know what, I got to go with some traditional old school stuff because the new school stuff just wasn't working when it. What was your first giant experience?
Speaker 3:oh man, that's a great question. I lived in westchester, new york. My grandfather took me to a giants playoff game in 85, right when lt was coming out, and it was like the old school phil sims days, like that. Bill parcells was the coach, okay, and I've just I've been a giants fan ever since and you know it's been painful to be a giants fan, as you know.
Speaker 2:For the past couple of the past decade, past 10,. As you know, for the past decade, the past 10 years.
Speaker 3:right, you know we had those two incredible Super Bowls where Eli beat the Patriots with. You know Tyree's catch and a couple of just amazing plays. But I don't know, we'll see. You know Daywell's got an interesting team. I'm not the biggest Daniel Jones fan. I hope we draft the quarterback in the draft and we'll see where we go this. This year we got a great pick up in the defense with Burns. I think the Giants are going to be alright. We're going to have a great defense again, which is what we've always built our team around.
Speaker 2:I think the division is going to be tough. Washington's gotten better. Dallas is always going to be tough, but losing the playoffs Philadelphia's good, but I think losing their center is going to affect their offense more than they're making it out to be. I'm not anti daniel jones, I like daniel jones. I think the poor kid has like david carr syndrome where he's been shell-shocked so badly from the terrible offensive line, offensive line, yeah, so I mean some of that.
Speaker 2:I you know I'm on the same page, but I will tell you my very funny first giants experience. I'm a little bit older than you. The first giant game I went to, the giants moved into the meadowlands in 76, I believe, and my first game was 1978, when I was six years old. The Giants were playing the San Francisco 49ers and San Francisco's star running back was this guy who used to play in Buffalo named OJ Simpson, and you may have heard of him. He was involved in a scuttlebutt in the mid-90s. Um, so my first game was going to see OJ Simpson for the 49ers and those teams were bad. Those Giants teams were bad. Lt came in in 81, totally turned it around. Um, but it's funny, I was listening to Chris Sims on the radio and thinking about Phil Sims when I was a kid. 1979 he was drafted. He lived in Lynnhurst, new Jersey, right next to a friend of my dad and knew I was a huge Giant fan.
Speaker 2:I had this. It wasn't even a real picture. Like the way stuff was done back then. The 70s are like this anomaly of history everything was done. Weird. I had an autographed picture. It wasn't an eight and a half by 11, it was like a five and⁄2 by 11.
Speaker 2:It was like this long, narrow picture of Phil Simms with his blonde hair and his bowl cut and it was, in all practice, whites and it was signed to me. Mike, thanks for being a fan. Phil Simms. Nice, we had a flood in my basement, like two years later in New Jersey, and the picture was gone To this day. I'm going on 52. It still haunts me because you can see all this crap in my house.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I've been a Giants fan through thick and thin Giants won in 2008, the Plaxico Burrows catch for the touchdown. I had like 50 people in my house and I was living about three miles from Gi stadium. Oh, when he caught that ball, my whole block, every neighbor, was out. It was crazy. It was like one of those things you just don't forget. So that's a game at some point. I know you do like being in front of the red zone channel. I do too. It's the best.
Speaker 1:And I'm a fellow.
Speaker 3:It's to the box box, so she ropes me into going out there and frying I'm a fellow jersey, my god myself, I was born in morristown, so that's uh okay.
Speaker 2:So so you're morristown, you're out route 80. I actually this is like a you know where the sheridan tower is right of course yeah, I had my senior prom there. It was very, very cool when it was going on. It was only a few years old at that point, but yeah man, I know that area really well, I've driven past there a lot. A girlfriend from high school went to Mars Knowles, which is right up in that area.
Speaker 2:So small world? Definitely a small world. So listen, oliver, let me ask you this, To wrap it up if I'm looking to get a mortgage, if I'm looking to get a mortgage, if I'm looking to buy a house right now, the first step is calling you to make sure I have the funding. How do people find you listen to this podcast, watching it? What's the best way to get to you, to get the ball rolling?
Speaker 3:sure easiest way is we call us at 813-302-1660. That's our main line. Somebody will pick up that phone, schedule a call with us or you can go to our socials. It's the T-H-E or Licky Group, O-R-L-I-C-K-I-G-R-O-U-P, and I'll put this all, send it all to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll have all this in the when we publish.
Speaker 3:Google or Licky Group and we're all over. You know we're very highly ranked Google, but we have an online application. It takes 15 minutes to fill out. Once you complete an application with us, we schedule a consultation and I'm not just going to ask you some basic questions. We spend a good 45 minutes to an hour. We dive deep, dig deep. We want to make sure we write you a pre-approval letter. Besides that house appraising and inspecting, you're going to be able to close on that property and we know our guidelines, we know our products. So easiest way to get in touch with us socials, online phone call, text message. We're available anyway. We're not a bank. I'm not open nine to five. Real estate's a 24-7 business. We're available on weekends. We realize a lot of people shop on weekends, so we'll always have somebody you can talk to. I've had clients that were purchasing, that are living in Tokyo, buying Florida property. I got up at 3.30 in the morning to conduct a consultation to do it. So we are 24-7.
Speaker 2:So that brings up a good point, though. If someone is buying a house in Dallas, texas, or Atlanta, georgia or Roanoke, virginia, they could still come to you. The money's good anywhere.
Speaker 3:Well, we're getting there. So licensing's changed a little bit since back in the day. So now there's called the NMLS. It's a national licensing system. So before you used to be able to lend pretty much anywhere. Now you've got to be nationally licensed, go through a bunch of you know, accreditation, get all your licenses by the end of the first quarter. Second quarter we'll be licensed in about 12 states. We just recently added Tennessee and we recently added Pennsylvania. We're going to be adding Georgia, texas, colorado, arizona, south Carolina. We do. We have a lot of clients that have either retirement homes in those areas. So right now, primarily, my focus is on the Florida market. Florida, all right.
Speaker 2:So, folks, if you're listening to this, before you start looking at Redfin or Zillow and get your hopes up on that $900,000 dream home, it's important for you to know what you can actually afford, what your buying power is, how much you make, what your credit score is, how much you're going to put down in about 15 minutes worth of diving deep to make sure we understand, or Licky Group understands, where you're at currently before you go start looking at it, Because I'm going to tell you right now if you're a home buyer and you go look at a $900,000 home and you can only afford a $400,000 home, you're going to be really disappointed in the features that you are not getting.
Speaker 2:So you want to make sure you're looking at the right home that fits your budget, fits your needs, and the way to do that, the first step, before you do anything, call 813-302-1616. You will get a hold of the orlicky group. They will walk you through the process. We will include all of the socials and websites and all that stuff in this post when you're seeing it or listening to it. Oliver orlicky, thank you so much for being a good neighbor man. Thank you so much for being on the good neighbor podcast mike, it was a pleasure man.
Speaker 3:Appreciate you having us go giants, babyants, baby. Go Giants man.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast PASCO. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnppascocom. That's gnppascocom, or call 813-922-3610.