16W Media Group Presents The Branding Highway Podcast
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors.
16W Media Group Presents The Branding Highway Podcast
Navigating the Mortgage Maze with Katie the Mortgage Lady
Ever feel like your mortgage lender is just running numbers instead of understanding your unique situation? Meet Katie Weldon – branch manager for Annie Mac in Apollo Beach and self-branded "Katie the Mortgage Lady" – who brings a refreshingly human approach to the mortgage process.
With a background spanning real estate, restaurants, and corporate sales at Xerox, Katie leverages this diverse experience to take what she calls a "consultative approach" with her clients. "I'm more of a therapist than a mortgage lady," she laughs, highlighting how emotional the home financing journey can be. This philosophy has earned her over 900 glowing online reviews from grateful clients.
Katie shares invaluable insights about today's challenging mortgage landscape, particularly addressing the "golden handcuffs" dilemma – homeowners with historically low interest rates (3% or less) reluctant to sell despite having substantial equity. She reveals how strategically using that equity to eliminate high-interest debt can actually improve monthly cash flow, even with today's higher mortgage rates. Her transparency extends to warning Florida homebuyers about potential property tax increases that can shock new homeowners a year after purchase – a crucial detail many lenders overlook.
Having recently relocated from Massachusetts to Florida's South Shore area, Katie discusses how she maintains clients in both states while building her presence in the local community. Her personal branding strategy differentiates her from corporate mortgage entities, recognizing that clients form relationships with people, not companies. Most importantly, she emphasizes her "no surprises" approach – providing detailed estimates and explaining trade-offs between rates and costs so clients fully understand what they're committing to.
Ready to work with a mortgage professional who treats you like a person, not a number? Visit TeamKatie.com or call 978-751-1934 to experience the difference a truly consultative approach can make in your home financing journey.
Residential Mortgages for purchasing or refinancing 1 - 4 unit properties and condos for primary, secondary, or investment use.
www.teamkatie.com
Welcome to the Branding Highway podcast, where local businesses meet the community and share their unique stories. Let's hit the road with your host and voice of the podcast, Mike Sedita.
Speaker 2:Hello out there and welcome. You are entering the Branding Highway. I am your guide to this trip, Mike Sedita, and I am joined today by Katie Weldon. She is the branch manager for Annie Mac in Apollo Beach. Katie, how are you doing this morning?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great, thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad to have you on here. We never know where we're going to find guests for the Branding Highway podcast and we just happened to stumble across you at a networking event at a church of all places, so it's excellent to have you on here. What we like to do is just take business owners, help them get noticed in the community, and you do a very high frequency type of job with numbers and homes, and it can get emotional and everybody gets crazy. So we wanna make sure people know that you're just Katie, the mortgage lady and that you're here to help them with their mortgage.
Speaker 3:So exactly, that's exactly it. And I jokingly say I'm more of a therapist than a mortgage lady.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sure you are, I'm sure you get everybody going. Oh, but that that one late credit card payment, it didn't really mean anything and I just you know, I'm sure that you've got plenty of stories that we will dive into here. But before we get started in that, because we're going to go deep, deep here in this podcast tell us first and foremost what's your business, what's your specialty, and a little bit about Annie Mack.
Speaker 3:Sure. So my name is Katie Weldon. I also go by Katie the Mortgage Lady, so I have a cute little logo of me holding a house with some money flying out of it and everything, and I've been doing mortgages for this year. We'll make 13 years, lucky number 13.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's been. It's been a journey. I kind of showed up by accident a little bit. They created a position for me because I had a background in real estate. I was a realtor with my father up north and then I was in restaurants and worked for Xerox and sales, so they loved that combination. So I love having that combination because it's given me all the tools I need to help take a really consultative approach for my clients. We specialize in working with first-time buyers, but because we've been doing it for a while, we have gotten a lot of repeat clients and it's not hard to find what people have to say about me online. I have over 900 reviews online, which is great for my client.
Speaker 2:I know I should really work on that, don't you think, mike? We've got to get a few more, we've got to get over the thousand, the thousand mark.
Speaker 3:So I'll be there before I know it for sure and that's what's funny is I actually lost like almost 300 reviews when I left an old company seven years ago, so I would be way over that.
Speaker 2:So we got to let me ask you this question then. So is that why you kind of brand, you know, katie, katie, the mortgage lady, as opposed to, specifically, the business?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely, because it's I'm 100% commission, so very similar to a real estate agent, and it's really me that you're getting more than the company I align with, but the company is important too. So that's really why my brand is the way it is, and it's the team Katie brand, now that I have a team behind me, because there's a certain skillset that I'm great at and other things that I don't want to have to deal with.
Speaker 2:So Right, listen, listen, I will tell you I deal't want to have to deal with. Right, listen, I will tell you. I deal with small to medium-sized business owners every day and one of the biggest shortcomings to the entrepreneur mentality. It's a pro and it's a con. Entrepreneurs think you know, I got to do it all, but really, a good entrepreneur the best ones that I see are the ones that say, look, this is my lane, I'm good at this lane, I'm going to stick to this lane. And, when they have the resources available, bring in the people to do the things that they're not good at, because all that does is detract you from revenue generating activity. And why would you want to do that?
Speaker 2:So a couple of great things as a marketer, as someone who's been doing this for 15 years the branding of, you know, katie the mortgage lady, or you know, or Team Katie, or however you're doing that Absolutely brilliant. I love that. And then you know diversifying, or delegating, if you will, the services there. That's great as well. So I'm thinking of the timing 13 years, that's like around 2012. So you came.
Speaker 3:Oh, you know what? Then it's 12 years. I'm way off. It was 2013.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know what. Then it's 12 years. I'm way off. It was 2013. 2013. Even that, though, but you still kind of you, didn't? You came into. You were probably doing real estate around the time. I mean, it could be the emphasis of why you switched, but the real estate market is crashing 2008, 9, 10. And then you didn't have to deal with any of that from the mortgage side, but you, you know, you kind of came in after that. So what has been the biggest? And so you're from we won't talk about you being from Boston and I'm a Giants fan and you're probably a Patriots fan.
Speaker 2:We won't get into any of that the Giants fan so I don't know, at least you married up, at least you married up, drives the jeep, so you'll love him. He goes and he's a Giants fan you guys are great guys. Didn't even know he sounds like a great guy, so so how long have you actually been here? You started doing this in 2013. Have you been here the whole time doing this?
Speaker 3:No, I moved down from Massachusetts almost two years ago. A little over two years ago I was in Yep and I moved on a whim. I just was like Florida. I feel like I'm meant to be in Florida, which is kind of crazy because all of my business was up north, so I just said I'm going to do it. I work remotely Most of my clients since COVID. I didn't really meet with them in person. I go up every couple months and meet with my realtor partners. My business is predominantly in Massachusetts, so I've spent the last couple years really focusing on maintaining my business there and now I'm ready to get out in the community because I was very involved up there and I really love being involved in the local community where my clients are, and so I do loans in Florida and I have for a while. It's just I'm building more of my presence here because up north everybody knows and trust me already.
Speaker 2:Well, completely understand that. I mean one of the if there is positive things out of a pandemic, and you know all I's such a, it's such a a better. There's such a better highway not to use the branding highway pun but there is a highway of communication that occurs where you don't need to be in Massachusetts anymore, you don't need to fight the winter anymore, you can enjoy living in Apollo beach or, you know, in South shore area and still be able to service those clients and now, in the process, building up your client base here. So it'll start to.
Speaker 1:It'll just start to kind of double dip?
Speaker 2:Do you? You know? Do you? You moved down here? Was it like? Was there a like a light bulb, like, was it just like? You know what? For me, when I moved to Atlanta, I got tired of shoveling snow in New Jersey and I think at one point, like a child, I threw the shovel down and stomped my feet, went back in the house and said I'm just not doing this anymore. And within three months I was gone. Was there anything like my temper tantrum?
Speaker 3:Not a temper tantrum. What happened was I was attending some trainings down here in Clearwater and I was down in Florida like three times in one year and I just I came back one time and I just said to my husband I think we're supposed to move to Florida and he was kind of like, yeah, okay, sure, I'm like count me in, you know, and he's from upstate New York and we lived in Massachusetts and I was in Massachusetts for 40 years.
Speaker 3:So, it's not like I lived in different places and I was used to traveling around. My parents were there, my sisters were there, my friends were there, my business was there. It literally was just a pull. And there's so many things that came from the move to Florida that I never would have even embarked on. I'll give a couple examples. I was at the Tampa Improv, which is called the Funny Bone now, but I was on stage. I did a 12 minute comedy set through this. It was like an entrepreneur challenge, which was really cool. I've always wanted to go on stage and do comedy Not not permanently not open comedy, but nothing crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it wasn't anything crazy, but um, but I was on the on stage at the tampa improv, which I never would have part, I never would have participated in had I been up north. I did it because it was near me and I was like you know what? This is something I wanted to do, um, so that was really cool.
Speaker 2:Wait, like not to get, not to get into your shrink, into a shrink mode here. But do you think the fact that you're in this new city, you, you don't know anybody, you're not going to stumble into your neighbor's cousin where you're up on stage? Do you think that part of it plays into it? Like, look, I'm in this new place, nobody knows me, what do I care, I'm just going to go do my thing. Was that kind of.
Speaker 3:I didn't think about that Cause actually I was part of a group called board of advisors, which was a high level mastermind here, and so I actually had a lot of people come and watch me, so a good group, probably like seven or eight of them. And I say that's a good group because that's a lot of people to watch.
Speaker 2:I don't even think I talked to other than doing a podcast in business. If I'm not doing business, I don't talk. I talk to my dog. I talked to. Norman is the only person I thought.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, so I did have people come, but it was. It was just organic, like I felt the pull to move here. And then all these chain of events. I attended an event here that made me embark on other journeys too, which was just really interesting. So it just really was a pull. I just was like I'm supposed to be here and I don't know why, and so we moved to Wesley Chapel for a year and then we ended up in Ruskin and bought a house here last January.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I live in Wesley Chapel, I record from Wesley Chapel. So what made you go from Wesley Chapel to Ruskin?
Speaker 3:A couple things. I go down to Sarasota a lot with a group that I'm part of, so I liked the Ruskin area specifically because it was in between Tampa and Sarasota and I was going to both of those places, still very accessible for Orlando for flights. I was traveling a lot and the prices couldn't be beat. I mean, we got a six bedroom house with a pool for under 500. And I was like sold, this is awesome and so just, it just worked out really well and we really like it here.
Speaker 2:Okay. So yeah, because that is one of the things. Wesley Chapel is beautiful. I love it here. It's just getting even, I mean, it's crowded. It's crowded down there, I mean, but it's getting super crowded here and the prices of real estate are going up and, like, from a commercial real estate standpoint, there's no real mom and pop places up here because Pasco County it's just really really expensive for commercial real estate per square foot. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes on and it's very cookie cutter, but I do like it. I mean, anything and everything I could possibly want is within a few miles.
Speaker 3:We loved Wesley Chapel. It really it was just the accessibility of where I was going all the time to make it easier, you know, access to that, all the airports, because there's St Pete and then Lakeland it just it just felt like such a great center spot. So we really focused our our focused our search around here. So it worked out really well. We really like it and, like I said, could not beat the price of the house with what we got, okay.
Speaker 2:So then, speaking of that, well, first question before I get to that. So I'm assuming your dad still does real estate up in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3:Yes, he's still a realtor. I haven't gotten him down there yet. You haven't got the trickle down yet. You haven't got the trickle down yet. You will, don't worry, they're going to come in like November and like March.
Speaker 2:And they're going to be like, oh, this isn't so bad, so you'll get that. The other question I have is six bedroom house. I mean you and your husband have what? A soccer team. No.
Speaker 3:So we have two girls. We have a 10-year-old and a four-year-old. And then we have an au pair who lives with us. She's from Brazil, so she helps take care of them. She is fantastic. And then we have a home office, because I was working out of my house up until August. So I cause I wanted to figure out where I wanted an office and everything, and now it's a guest room too, and then we have a playroom for the girls too, so we were looking for a five bedroom.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, so you have an au pair. I'll have to get more details on that. When you and you and your husband and I hang out, we'll have to go up and get the details Um so where is your search criteria?
Speaker 3:Okay, let me tell you, she's gorgeous. By the way, our au pair is gorgeous. She's the best All right. All right, I don't know where her credentials are, buddy.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'm willing to take on that kind of extra smoke in and around where I live. So uh and I'm, I'm just fine with that. It's not. I don't know if it's worth the smoke, but bravo to him. I mean I'll give him. Now, what does he do for a living?
Speaker 3:So he actually so he worked for maintenance at a community for assisted living and he just left his job about a month ago and came to work with me. Oh, so he's going into business development.
Speaker 2:The business is going well. So let me ask you this the office, your office location, because I was just driving back. I play basketball at Wellspring on Monday nights and I was just driving back yesterday. There's so much construction on 41 that's going on. Are you in and around that area or whereabouts?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm right near Apollo Beach. I'm on Apollo Beach Boulevard, like, if you're going to like, there's some restaurants, finn's Circles that are really popular.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're going that way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm right there, so I'm right off of 41, very accessible.
Speaker 2:So we have a running joke in our house is one night. I said hey, my girlfriend and her son. I said you want to get a pizza? And she said oh yeah, there's the best pizza, it's the best place. I said okay. She said it's called Apollo, apollo pizza. Like right there down by fans and whatever. I said great, you know. Her son's like yeah, I'm down with that, let's get that. She calls and orders a pizza and we go to pick it up and we walk in and we're like hey, we're here to pick up a pizza for Mike. The guy looked at us like I had five heads and I'm like no large, so I call her. So where did you order the pizza from? And she starts looking up the number. She ordered a pizza from Riverview Pizza, which was like 20 minutes away and had been sitting there forever.
Speaker 2:So, we laugh and we go. So now, whenever we have pizza, we call Apollo Pizza Riverview Pizza that we're getting Riverview Pizza. So it is a running joke every and we go. So now, whenever we have pizza, we call Apollo Pizza Riverview Pizza that we're getting Riverview Pizza. So it is a running joke every time we go down Apollo Beach Boulevard to get something to eat that is the recurring joke.
Speaker 3:They have a really fun. I don't know if you've ever been to Apollo Pizza on their bingo night. Bingo night, it's so fun. A local realtor hosts it and she's hysterical and it's it's music bingo. So they play songs and you kind of like boogie a little bit and then you just job away the songs and they give out bingo, though it's not like trivia or anything like that no, they do trivia as well, but this is bingo.
Speaker 3:So you get a bingo card with all the songs and when the song plays oh okay, I got it okay.
Speaker 2:So it is kind of like trivia. You got to know the music, to get it to, you got to have the right. She tells you what the name of the song is.
Speaker 3:So I have the ones like that and I'm like I don't know the name of this song Like that I would fail at. But she's like, oh, this is Running man from this person, oh my gosh, and makes it really easy.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you it's they're playing Now. Look, I'm an idiot savant when it comes to like movies and like lines from movies, and like I'm so dumb with that. I wish I could have been a lawyer had I been able to retain the amount of useless information in my brain on sports and movies and music. If I would have just applied it to law, I would be like I would be like the top litigator. But we're singing these songs and the lyrics are up there. I'm like I don't know the lyrics to any of these songs, like it's so bad, like I'm and I have the microphone. I'm like somebody else here. Somebody else take this microphone. It's terrible, but that's cool. What night is that over there at Riverview?
Speaker 3:It's on Tuesday nights, tuesday nights?
Speaker 2:I'll have to check that out for sure. So you're, are you heading there a little behind the fourth wall here?
Speaker 3:No, I'm actually doing a finance class with Wellspring right now, so they have the Finance 101.
Speaker 2:Oh, are you teaching some of that as well?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so I wanted to see kind of their perspective on financials, because obviously I'm on a different side of it Right, and so I was really curious to see what they had to say.
Speaker 2:All right. So let's get into some of the stuff here. Like right now, I deal with a lot of realtors, I deal with a lot of mortgage people. There's a lot of that stuff going on. The big snag, if you will, with mortgages from where I see it and I'm going to let you debunk misconceptions of this is real or not is the majority of the people that are in their home pre-2022 have a 0%, three percent, four percent interest. If you got a mortgage, if you refinanced during covid, it was like zero, like point five, whatever the number was. So like a lot of those people are sitting there, even though they've got a boatload of equity in their house, and they're saying look, my, my payment is x currently. Yep, the market has gone up. So if I'm going to get a comparable house at a 6.5% to 7% rate, my monthly payment is going to go through an extra $500 to $800 a month. So is that currently still what is bogging down or snagging the market from really getting off the ground?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I definitely see that as an issue. Still, I left a 2.99% interest rate in Massachusetts. I had an $800,000 house and my mortgage was less than it is now.
Speaker 2:What are?
Speaker 3:you doing, but you know what it was worth it, and so and here's the thing what? What I see with a lot of people right now is a lot of discretionary debt credit cards, personal loans. What people are not taking into account is they're spending way more monthly than if they sold their house, cashed out that equity, paid down a lot of their debts.
Speaker 2:They could afford the extra money on the mortgage.
Speaker 3:They don't even realize they're thinking because of all this, I'm pulling money, I'm pulling money, I'm pulling money. The only thing they have is the equity in their home and a lot of my clients I really look at. So, like I said, I take a very consultative approach. That's not how every lender approaches it, but that's just how I've grown my business and that's how I like to do things. So I'm always looking.
Speaker 3:I'll have someone come to me and they're like oh hey, I want to buy a house, I want to put this amount down, I want to get my mortgage to this. And I'm like well, let's wait a second here. Have you thought about what it would look like if, instead of putting the extra 40,000 down, you put it towards your debt and freed up $2,000 a month? And they're like can you do that? You absolutely can. So I'm always looking at and there's certain times it doesn't make sense right? A car loan? Yeah, it's going to free you up for a little bit, but not long-term. So I'm having those conversations and I'm saying listen, this is going to pay off your car loan, but remember, in five years you may need a new car, so you can't bank on that.
Speaker 2:Well, but part of the problem on I mean, we're being real is those people then pay that credit card debt off. It saves them. And then within six months they're like, oh, I need to go on vacation and they put three G's on that and then it builds back up and then they're stuck. I mean I get what you're saying, cause look, if I have 20 grand in credit card debt and I'm paying 27% or you know anywhere from 15 to 30% interest which is a whole other political discussion we could get into on this, you know, in this podcast but if I paid that off and then I don't have that 20% interest or 15% interest, I'm only paying 7% on that additional money. It still saves you money there, so I get that part of it.
Speaker 3:Well, and a lot of people are in so deep for because they've been relying on it through COVID and for three or four years. So I always have those conversations. You know, listen, I've racked up credit card debt more than probably most people. I've been in that situation where I paid it down and with a personal loan and then racked it up again. Now I have a personal loan and a credit card. I had a short sale on my house years ago about 15 years ago so I really like to make sure people know the payment they're getting into, that if we're paying off debt that they know.
Speaker 3:Listen, I want to set you up for success. What is your plan to avoid using these credit cards in the future? And I make suggestions, right? So one of the suggestions I make because people don't want to necessarily lose the history or the availability if something comes up like something urgent. But I tell them put something automatic on it Netflix your gym membership, something that's automatically paid, and set each one to pay off the balances every month. So not every credit card allows that, but most of them do, and that's something that's really helped me stay, because when you don't see it, you don't think about it.
Speaker 3:So, by setting up the payment of the whole balance every month. I know, oh shoot, I need to make sure I keep this at a certain level, Otherwise I'm going to be in trouble.
Speaker 2:You know, I think the biggest thing for me when, when I moved to Florida, like, look, I lived in New Jersey, taxes are through the roof, as they, I'm sure they are in Massachusetts, depending on where you are. Like, I lived in a house that was built in 1953. It was 1800 square foot. Now my view was the New York City skyline, which was very nice. My taxes were like $14,000 a year, you know, a whole, a little over a grand a month just in taxes, and I wouldn't I mean I don't love that, but it wouldn't have been so bad if I actually had services that correlated to that amount. The services were terrible, the community it just wasn't great.
Speaker 2:But then I moved to Georgia and Georgia everything is county structured, so like there is no like kind of here how you have the Hillsborough County Police, pasco County Police, all that stuff, but everything was county driven, so there was no municipality taxes or any of that stuff. So I went from an 1800 square foot with 12, $13,000 in taxes to a 3000 square foot house and my tax bill was $2,700 a year. So I was like, wow, this is like totally different world. But I think the thing here that got me was and I should have known, known better. Like when you're looking at houses and you're on zillow or realtor or redfin or whatever you're doing, and it's showing you that tax number. That tax number is based on that last sale price, what it was assessed on that last sale price. So if you buy a house from somebody, and the previous owner, so I'll.
Speaker 3:So I'll give you an example once you're done.
Speaker 2:I didn't mean to interrupt, that's kind of what I'm getting at like. Okay, so somebody, the I buy the house from this previous owner who's had it for 25 years. They paid 30 grand for it and now it's worth 500 grand. There's that massive gap. So the number I'm seeing on zillow as soon as that. First, you know, whatever it is that adjustment of wherever the escrow adjustment is, your payment goes, you know, jacked up and then it just went up a thousand dollars.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I knew so. Our, our previous owner, was a disabled vet, so he was exempt from taxes, only paid the cdd, and I thought I did the calculation right based on the city, but I wasn't adding the cdd yeah which was like about two grand or something.
Speaker 3:So that's another one CDD I mean we've gotten to the same spot, because what happened was our payment went up $500 and then our escrow deficit gave us a $500 a month and it literally went up a thousand dollars. And so I have those conversations with my Florida clients because I'm like, listen, like new construction, right? Um, when they have a seller who has lived there for a long time or is a disabled veteran or has any sort of kind of break on taxes any veteran really they're going to feel a difference. And so I tell them listen, call the town, ask them what your taxes are going to be, based on what the sale is. They'll give you.
Speaker 3:I can look up the tax rate too and determine it for a client. And I tell them listen, we're approving you because we're basing this on what it currently is, but in a year you're going to have this and you need to be prepared. So it's a benefit now, because everyone's like, well, why is my payment going to go up? I'm like, well, would you rather just pay it all now? You can.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can start paying it now Start putting it in an account now, and no one wants to do that, of course. But then when they call me in a year, it's like we have the conversation. They're like, oh yeah, you're right, we're okay. Thank you, because it's a big deal.
Speaker 2:Well, that's why I bring it up. I mean, that was probably the biggest thing from a real estate standpoint, Like all of a sudden you get your next mortgage payment.
Speaker 3:For sure, and that I don't like to get licensed in states that I don't do business in because they all have their little quirks.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I was going to ask you too is and help me understand. I mean, I know you know, look, I know you're Katie the mortgage lady and I know you have your brand. Are you specifically only offering mortgage programs through Annie Mac or like if you someone comes in like, can you do? Is there a VA option?
Speaker 3:Is there an FHA? Annie mac is a lender. We have va usda. We do florida housing. Um, there are certain programs with the city of tampa that we do. We do conventional loans. Okay, yeah, we do down payment assistance.
Speaker 2:But if somebody doesn't qualify through annie mac, you're that, you're kind of stuck.
Speaker 3:You got to go, they got to go traditional options, so people who maybe don't show enough income on paper, or someone an investor buying a house who doesn't want. Yeah, we have. We have lots of stuff.
Speaker 2:So we literally just BS about Apollo pizza and trivia night and bingo night for 25 minutes. I want to just get into a little bit really more about you. So when you and your husband aren't, you know, hanging out with your au pair and the girls, do you guys like? What do you do for fun? Do you take the top off the Jeep and go off-roading? Do the girls like to play with Barbies? Does your husband like to play with the girls with Barbies? What's going on?
Speaker 3:So yeah. So I mean we love to get outside when we can. I definitely work a lot, but we're going to the casino this this week Thursday night, we're doing a little overnight at the casino, and I took Friday morning off and I'm excited about that, adults only, obviously. Adults only. Yeah, we're going to stay overnight. I don't know pair, what am.
Speaker 2:I talking about.
Speaker 3:Of course, adults only. I know it comes in handy all the time.
Speaker 2:We can't get an au pair. My girlfriend has a 15-year-old boy. That would not be a good situation to have.
Speaker 3:No I feel like that's bad news, that's a bad situation. Yeah, so I love a good farmer's market or flea market. We love it.
Speaker 2:You said you go down to Sarasota and stuff a lot. Have you ever gone down to like Detweiler's and all?
Speaker 3:that, oh yeah, I love it. If you like the farmer's market and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, we have a really great co-op here called Cypress Creek Co-op, which is awesome, and they have these huge boxes. If anyone's listening in local to the area, if you don't know about this, you need to. But we buy this box for like $35 and it's like all these veggies for the entire week and it's awesome and everything is locally sourced and fresh. So the boxes change based on what she's getting in and it's awesome.
Speaker 2:So I actually Give them a plug and then share this podcast with them and tell them they got to give me a couple extra boxes Cypress Creek Co op.
Speaker 3:It's awesome. We love it there.
Speaker 2:Cypress Creek Co op. If you're listening and you're watching this podcast, you owe Katie, the mortgage lady, a box or two. We'll send you out on the side. So one of the things I always like to ask because, as an entrepreneur myself being an entrepreneur and talking to entrepreneurs there's always that moment where you're like I don't know if I could do this, like when it hits the fan and you're thinking to yourself like you know, all my, all my chips are pushed in. I got to kind of make a decision. Am I in or am I out? Where has there been a time in your career where you've just said you know what, I'm not sure if I'm going to make it. What did you do to kind of turn it around, to come out the other side, to be where you're at right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I would say that was probably like a year or two ago, especially with moving down. It was like you know, rates were high, business was slowing down because people weren't moving as much. I'm in a new area, not around my business partners, and I was like, okay, what do I want to do? I was doing coaching as well, and so I was like, do I want to do? I was doing coaching as well, and so I was like do I want to coach? Do I want to do mortgages? And it turns out I just really love doing mortgages and I love coaching, but I really want to stay in the mortgage segment. Like I get separated from it. And I helped some other people in business and I'm just like I just love the real estate industry and my knowledge and I know that I'm not like everybody else and I'm like I'm hearing that from my clients again. So when I built a team, I made the mistake of letting my team do a lot of the things that I still really should have been doing.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've ever been through that as a business owner, they let go a little too much when?
Speaker 3:you outsource something and you're like, oh, I shouldn't have outsourced that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So when I left my previous company, they had all my clients and because my team had contact with them, you know they were able to get a lot of my clients to stay with them or go forward with them on new loans. And I realized like, oh my gosh, I did myself and my clients a disservice, right, and like I'm really happy for the guy who stayed there and he has great relationships and stuff. But it was tough at the time, right it was. It was a struggle and this, this was a few months ago too. But this all kind of led up with moving down here and I had to ask myself, okay, what do I want to do in my business? What's going to make me successful? How can I help my clients? And I've really focused in on that over the last couple of months, cause I am at a newer company and my client reviews are like back to where they were before.
Speaker 2:You know.
Speaker 3:It's just like people really feel. People are asking me where can I leave your review, where I had to beg people before I'm like can you leave a review?
Speaker 2:Don't forget.
Speaker 3:People are busy.
Speaker 2:It was no offense, it's just now that People only want to leave reviews when they want to complain.
Speaker 3:Most of the time, I know, but that's what's crazy, that's human nature Right. People are begging me right now.
Speaker 2:Over the past three months they're like tell all your friends yeah, I mean honestly, katie, that is the one thing that I think you know is hardest for people to grasp. Like, okay, so, unless I'm giving away gold bars, like if that's my product, that I'm giving away gold bars, hey look, you know. Or if I was a drug dealer, like one of those two things, like having clients line up for the product, that's that right. But nine times out of 10, people are lining up for you, they're lining up for your person. Now you got to have a skillset, you got to bring value, you know all that stuff. And and most of the entrepreneurs I talk to I mean not everybody, let's be honest. Not everybody thinks they have a skillset that they might not necessarily have, but the majority of them do. They have an offering that they provide, but people are buying people. You had said it earlier in the conversation about using that consultative approach. That should really be the only approach.
Speaker 3:I'm with you there. I will say, in mortgages it's just not as common. You know, I'll have people come to me They've talked to. I had one guy he literally applied with eight different lenders and he's like Katie, I think I should become a mortgage lender because they're awful and you're the only good one I found out of the eight and I'm like thank you.
Speaker 2:It's such a silly thing. Making somebody not feel like a number Yep, it changes the entire Making somebody. It's such a silly thing. Making somebody not feel like a number Yep, it changes the entire dynamic, and that's. You talked about it. I mean, I get business from people like I, literally waiting to jump on with you. Today I get a text message from somebody saying, hey, one of your clients said you really helped them. I am trying to do this. Can you help me Now? Word of mouth is great. Now I'm an advertiser so I'm going to tell you the benefits of why advertising is better than word of mouth. Not better it's.
Speaker 2:There's differences to why advertising is different from networking. But you know, having that confidence where you know you're, you know you're good at what you do. You convey that and people gravitate towards it and they want to be a part of your sphere. They want to be in your circle because they're like this lady knows what she's talking about. And you have an advantage because of the real estate background. You get to see both sides of it. There's a really good mortgage lady here that I know from an old networking group. Great lady, she did real estate for 15 years. It was kind of like I'm getting burnt out on this. I want to shift to this, but it's a knowledge base that you just can't create.
Speaker 3:You have to actually live it to have it Right, and I've done so many loans, so I've done well over 2,000 loans. So the thing is, with mortgages, every loan is different and yeah sure you're going to get a cookie cutter. Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, you have 800 credit score.
Speaker 2:You want to put 20 down and you have yeah, where are those?
Speaker 3:great, okay, that's not very common, right, right, you know, um, and I have some clients I've worked with for a month or two months just to get them to qualify, and they're like our other lender ghosted us and I'm like, yeah, I know why, it got hard, too much work, and they're just like moving on to the next thing. And that's fine. Um, but, like I love a good challenge, I love loan takeovers. So I always tell realtors right now, do not let a deal die, don't let a deal die in this market. And people are just letting them die. Someone's approved with Rocket Mortgage. They get denied. They just move on. It's like do not let the deal die. There's no downside to having someone check it out. Everybody involved wants the transaction to happen and I have all the information. I can tell you if this is good or not.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's the other part. You know, like doing media buying and brokering, I'm on two sides of a transaction. I'm on a client side and then I'm on a vendor side, whatever if it's a TV station, radio station, et cetera, You're in that same boat. I get that part of it. But you're on the side of the getting the loan for somebody but also needing the relationships with underwriting to be able to have the conversations that need to have happen. That, if you're taking it over from a rocket or whoever else, would kind of let it go. So that's, that's a big thing. Start to wrap this up. People that are listening and people that are going to see this and hear this. What's the one thing they need to know about working with Katie, the mortgage lady, over whoever else is out there? What separates you from everybody else?
Speaker 3:There's no surprises. We really do our best to minimize the surprises. So I send all of my clients a cash to close estimate with a sample monthly payment of what it would be based on a property. I always have them give me an actual property so that I can base it on numbers and say this is what we're looking at for this particular property. And here's why Because people need to see things. You can tell them over the phone hey, your payment's going to be $2,400. But then they get scared. Right, hey, your payment's gonna be $2,400. But then they get scared. Right, they get an offer accepted. You're like Austin, your payment's $2,400. And they're like whoa, whoa, whoa, wait what it's like. Yeah, that's the payment we went over in the beginning. So I see I, I send everything in writing.
Speaker 2:Um just that covers you too. I mean that's smart, it's a smart business. It covers you too, because then in three, you know, in in 30 days, when you're getting close to the finish line, they can't say you never told me it was going to be Right.
Speaker 3:People start to freak out. I'm like this is a document signed, this is what I sent on this date. And I try to be very transparent and I will say, in my opinion, not all lenders are. They're just like oh well, let's focus on the payment versus the rate. Or you know, and maybe you're paying high closing costs, like are there reasons you should pay high closing costs to get a better rate? Sometimes, but not always. So I'm explaining that to people. I'll ask them questions hey, what's more important for you, a lower monthly payment or lower closing costs? Because then I can kind of figure out, based on what your needs are, what we do. Right.
Speaker 2:Different Right. Yeah, I want no closing costs and I want no payment Right Both different Right. Yeah, I want no closing costs and I want no payment. No problem, I talk to people about this all the time. If it's if it's cheap, it's not good, and if it's not good it's generally cheap and you have to pick which one you want.
Speaker 3:You know, like everything has a cost, right, so there's a cost to a lower rate. If it's a local bank that maybe doesn't do mortgages, all the time, it's going to cost you probably sanity. I that maybe doesn't do mortgages, all the time it's going to cost you probably sanity, I can tell you. I worked with a local bank to refinance in 2019 because I was switching companies. I was like I'm just going to do this with my bank. It was brutal. It took like three and a half months and I'm a mortgage loan officer. I know all the documents you need and it was brutal and it wasn't their fault. It's just how they did business. And so I always tell clients listen what. And so I always tell clients listen. What's it going to cost you? Is it going to cost you time? Is it going to cost you money or is it going to cost you energy? But chances are a low, low rate is going to cost something.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I mean, listen, that's the conversation I have every day is like look, as a small to medium-sized business owner, you do HVAC for a living. Do you know how to do marketing? Do you know how to do marketing? Do you really know how to do marketing? I mean, no, I go on social media Well, that's not marketing. I go to networking event Well, that's really not marketing. I mean, it's a form of marketing, but it's not advertising.
Speaker 2:How many pay for people to do the things that you don't do well, so they do them well Help your business globally grow. The hardest thing for me on my end from this is really getting business owners to understand that, well, just like paying your mortgage payment, it's an expense. When you pay for marketing, you're paying for it. It, yes, it's an expense in your monthly budget, but you really need that expense and need to look at it as an investment in your business if you truly want to grow. And and that's that's usually the biggest obstacle I would think the same thing with you when people see that payment, like you see that house and they're like it's got every bell and it's got every whistle and it's got everything I want.
Speaker 2:Oh, but 2400, I mean400. I mean, every bell and every whistle is probably closer to 3,400 at this point, but you know okay well, which bell and which whistle do you want me to take off to get you down to here, or do you want to pony up some cash? It's got to be one of the two, absolutely. So I'm listening to this conversation with you and I'm like you know what. I just need to go out and get a mortgage. How do I contact you to get started?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so people can go to my website, which is teamkatiecom. It's T-E-A-M-K-A-T-I-Ecom and that brings you to book a call with me. You can call me on my cell phone, which is listed on there, or you can do an application, depending on the situation. We also do soft credit pulls, so we can just peek into people's situation If they're like they kind of want to sell, but I don't know where that puts me. No problem, we can peek in and just see what their options are. Or they can text or call anytime.
Speaker 2:And what would that number be? Katie, you would need that 978-751-1934.
Speaker 2:So, folks, if you're listening to this, the thing you need to know about Katie the mortgage lady is she's got attention to detail. She is going to have a consultative approach with you regarding your finances, because you need to know what you're in for it is. It's the single largest investment you're going to make throughout your life. Now, if you're like my girlfriend, you'll buy one every three years and move around and keep moving companies in business, or it'll be the place that you grow your family, get an au pair and do everything that you need to do in that one spot. If you need that, you need to go to teamkatiecom or call 978-751-1934. Katie the mortgage lady, thank you for taking a ride down the branding highway with us today. I hope this was enjoyable for you. It certainly was for me, and we'll see you soon.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoy your ride down the branding highway. This has been a 16W Media Group production. Don't forget to take the next exit at 16W Media Group production. Don't forget to take the next exit at 16W. Visit 16WMediaGroupcom If you want to be part of the journey. Reach out to info at 16WMediaGroupcom.