WCI #45: Interview with Curbside Real Estate

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast.

Where we help those who wear the.

White coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011. Here's your host, Dr. Jim Dahli.

Welcome to podcast number 45, an interview with Curbside Real Estate.

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Thank you so much for what you do. Your daily work matters and I know sometimes it's exhausting or you feel like you didn't make a difference, but you're likely listening to this on your way into the hospital or into your clinic or on your way home, and chances are that there's been some difficult things you went through today. Just remember that there are people that are grateful for what you're doing out there, even though you may not feel that you're making a difference every single day. Here at the White Coat Investor, we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get ready for the conference next week. While this podcast won't run until March after the White Coat Investor conference in Park City, we're recording it about a week before the conference. So it's a little bit crazy around here right now, but we decided to do something pretty interesting with the conference. We're actually going to record it, both video and audio, and make that available to listeners and readers to check out after the conference. A lot of people weren't able to come. The conference filled within six days of U.S. making it available and within one more day we had 180 people on the waiting list. So I know there's a lot of pent up demand to listen to these fantastic speakers that we've got coming to the conference, but this will be an opportunity for you to do it not only cheaper and in your own home than going to the conference itself, but also to do it at your own convenience on any device you please. So there will be more details to come on that, but watch the blog and the newsletter to learn More about how you too can take part in in the Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference. Our quote of the day today comes from Fred Schwed from Where are the Customers Yachts? Who said like all of life's rich emotional experiences, the full flavor of losing important money cannot be conveyed by literature. You cannot convey to an inexperienced girl what it is truly like to be a wife and mother. There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin by words or pictures. And it's so true. A lot of people don't realize that until they've been through their first bear market. But losing money really is more of an emotional experience than a rational experience. The more rational you can make it, the better. But don't pretend that you are a robot when it comes to losing money until you've been through your first bear market. Today on the podcast, we've got Peter Kim from Curbside Real Estate. Peter is not only sponsoring this podcast, but also has become an important partner here at the White Coat Investor. And so I think we're going to talk with him today and ask him not only the easy softball questions like I often do with podcast guests, but he can get into the difficult, nitty gritty questions about physician home buying and loans and that sort of thing. So welcome to the podcast, Peter.

Great. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. I'm an anesthesiologist. I live in Los Angeles. I've got a wife and two kids, but I'm originally from the East Coast. I'm from Baltimore, Maryland, and I did all my schooling out there until I met my wife and she kind of dragged me out to the West Coast. And yeah, I'm currently practicing a little less than full time, but I spend most of my time doing that and a good portion of my time I focus on this business, Curbside Real Estate.

Well, it's really fascinating, I think, to watch doctors combine their practices with an entrepreneurial pursuit. Tell us about Curbside. Why did you start Curbside? What did you think was missing in the marketplace?

This all started with my own difficult experience in buying a home. I shared a little bit of my story on my website, but my wife and I, she's also in medicine. We were both doing residency together. We both graduated together and kind of had this dream of buying a home. We didn't know where to start. We started kind of looking online and next thing you know, we found ourselves in an open house and we found the home of our dreams. The Problem is that we didn't know what to do next. And we found a lot of difficulty. I mean, we didn't have. We had huge problems finding a loan. We had difficulty with the actual home buying process and all the contract work. And we found that there was nobody there to help us out. And once we got through the whole process, you know, I felt a great sense of relief, but I felt, okay, I need to spare my friends and my other colleagues from going through the same thing. And I'm just one of those guys where, you know, you find out something, you want to share it with the world, especially if it's something difficult, that's tough, and you don't want other people to go through it. So that's kind of how I felt. And I reached out to a few friends and colleagues, and I told them, look, if you're thinking about buying a home, here's the process, or here, just come talk to me. Give me a quick call, and in 10 minutes, I'll save you hours and hours of time and a lot of headache. And so that's what people started doing. They started coming out to me, talking to me, taking me out for coffee, talking to me on the phone. And I started walking them through the process, and at the end of it, they said, look, it was so much easier. Thanks for explaining that to me. And then next thing you know, some of their friends started calling me, and this thing started building. And all of a sudden I realized maybe like the same way you started your website, you know, you had something to share and you felt like other physicians needed to know about it, and that's how it started for me.

It sounds like a big part of what you do is connecting relocating doctors with a good realtor. Why do you think that's so important?

I mean, I think having a good realtor is extremely important. I mean, I've been through so many transactions now. There are definitely people who come to me after having the difficulty of working with realtor that they don't trust and they don't like. I mean, I think a lot of people are upset with the real estate industry right now because the incentives don't seem aligned. Right. I think you've mentioned this before, but a lot of these agents, it just seems like they're just focused on the transaction, and they might not even have your best interest at heart. But I don't believe that's always the case. I've worked with enough good agents now that I know that there are people who can advocate on your behalf, especially when it comes to haggling with price, making sure all the things are done right in the house before it's handed off, and ultimately protecting you in the process. And I think that's really what a good agent needs to do and should do. Yeah.

I think some of the criticism probably comes from the fact that their fees are based on the price of the house, which means, you know, you might be paying 10 times more to buy a house in California as you would a house in Indiana. And I think that's probably a big part of people's frustration, even when they're getting, you know, great service from a realtor.

Yeah, no, I can understand that. And that's something that, who knows, may change in the future. It's kind of similar, I guess, in a lot of ways to certain financial advisors who get a straight percentage of what you make. You know, whether you make, you know, you have 100,000 with them or you have a million with them. Ultimately that's just what the business is like today. And the important thing is to really find good people, you know, in spite of the, you know, size of the home that you're buying, that will pay you the attention that you deserve.

Yeah. Do you think those in high cost of living areas are more likely to be willing to negotiate their percentages, or do you find that it's really kind of because they also live in that high cost of living area? They really aren't.

Yeah, that's what I usually found to be the case. I found that a lot of people are not really willing to negotiate that price. And you're right, they're also living in those high cost of living areas and have the same issues with their own housing, taking care of their kids. So it kind of all falls in line, in my opinion.

So how, how does the process work? If somebody comes to you, they're. They're moving from Baltimore to California and they want to find a good realtor. How does the process work?

Well, they usually reach out either through our website or, you know, they're welcome to give us a phone call. And what we do is we try to be more of a consulting type service. And I think that's the really reason why we call it curbside real estate. And it's kind of a pun or play on words of the curbside consult. Right. In medicine, where we're there to try to act as almost like a professional, professional opinion and we're not there just to connect and off you go. We really try to make this a relationship. We get to know you, you call Us, we spend some time with you on the phone, getting to know your particular situation, what stage you're at, what you're looking for in a home, the reasons why you might be buying a home. And we're happy to go through the whole rent versus buy scenari with you. Oftentimes, you know, there are times when people come to us and the answer is, you know what? I think you should wait for a while. We're not, we're not afraid to say that, but once everyone, you know, you get it all packaged together, we feel like we have a good understanding of what your goals are and what your needs are. Then what we do is we find that right realtor for you in that area. Again, who might know, you know, has worked with physicians before and, you know, we can go through that whole vetting process. I can explain that to you. But yeah, we connect you to them and we see if it's a good fit. And ultimately we are over. We actually also act as, again, continued consult throughout the whole process. Again, it's not just connect you and go. We're happy to be there with you to answer questions and whatever needs that you might have in the future, we're there with you. Now.

Tell us about that vetting process. How does that work?

Well, we've come a long way since when we first started vetting. It started from, you know, people that I've actually personally done transactions with. And now that we're nationwide, obviously that can't be the case, but we start with our own network. We ask people if we don't have somebody in that particular area. We ask our network of lenders and realtors, we say, hey, do you know anybody in this area that is used to working with physicians and would be a great fit for one of the clients that we have? And so we start there, and we like doing that because firsthand referrals are always the best. Right? Because those people are putting their own reputations on the line. When they recommend somebody they know they have to do a great job and they've got to give us somebody good. So we start with that. And if we don't find anybody there, you know, what we usually do is, you know, I have an association of realtors that I'm part of a national association. And so I start reaching out to people on that list in that area. We spend some time with them, checking out their online reputation and profile, what transactions they've done. We spend some time on the phone with them just to make sure they do understand what's important about working with physicians and understand these physician loans in particular that our clients often use. And we'll give the type of service that we expect from them. And once they kind of pass all these different standards and qualifications, that's when we ultimately make that connection.

Very cool. Now, you mentioned you're now nationwide, but I suspect you're stronger in some geographic areas than others. What do you think are your strongest geographic areas for hooking people up with highly qualified realtors?

Well, our strongest area is definitely close to my house, close to my home. Right. In Los Angeles. This is where it started and this is where I have a strongest network of referrals and probably clients. I mean, this is a word of mouth business for the most part. So it helps when I've helped some people in a certain area. It kind of seems to spread and grow in that area. And we've been really fortunate to be able to do this over the last couple years. And it seems to be focused in a lot of the major cities. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York. Certain other cities like Atlanta now are coming. Really? Atlanta and Chicago are coming up quite a bit. But we've also helped people in small towns, rural areas. And at this point, we've hit most states in the nation at this point.

Very cool. Now, what else does curbside do besides realtors? I mean, do you do relocation companies, moving companies, mortgage referrals? What other branches do you have besides referrals to Realtors?

We're still growing and as the needs come up, we try to do as much as we can, but we haven't gone to moving companies or anything like that yet. We do do mortgage referrals. And again, just doing this over time, we've got to know a good amount of lenders as well in this space. A lot of the lenders are people that we've seen on your site that you trust. And we've referred to that a lot. And we've gotten to know them. We make those connections if they need as well. Right. We also have started connecting some people to investment properties as well, too. Some people have trusted us for their primary homes. That has gone well. And a couple years later they want to either buy an investment property or rental property somewhere. And a lot of times they come back to us to see if we can help them find somebody.

Very cool. Now, curbside's a business. You know, you're not running a nonprofit or a charity here. Tell us a little bit about how you get paid. How do you make money in this business?

You're right. It isn't a charity, but it's also not my primary source of income. So we've tried to make sure that we do get compensated for our time. I built up a team at this point, and so it's not just me. So I have other people that are relying on some of this income. But number one, we don't make any money off of our lender relationships like any of these lenders that we refer people to. We don't make any money off of that. And we like that because we feel like we're not incentivized to send people one way or another when it comes to that. And so we just want to try to help people get to the best loan possible for them. But in terms of the realtors, the way we've set it up is that they pay us a small portion of their commission to be part of our network, and I think that's a normal piece of what they do. I mean, realtors are. Marketing is a huge part of their business. I mean, I'm sure you get. You see flyers, right? You get flyers, you see park benches, you see billboards out there. I mean, they'll gladly compensate us to have access to our network of qualified physician clients. But of course, we don't just let anybody in just because they want to pay us. I mean, at this point especially, we've grown this network large enough, and it's selective. We can be extremely selective about who we choose to be part of that.

Let's talk a little bit about your social mission. You're more than just a business out there. This social mission called Giving shelter. I'd like to learn a little bit more about that. Can you explain how that works?

Sure. That's a big part of what we do, and I'm so excited about it. There was. There was a point when this business started growing again. I just started just to help some friends and some family and started growing up and taking up more and more of my time. And yes, I was making a little bit of money from it, but again, it's maybe easier just to work as a physician. And so I talked to my wife about it and some friends, and I decided if I'm going to do this, it has to be something a little bit bigger than just something monetary. And at that time, I just read a book by the founder of Toms Shoes. I don't know if you know their. Their slogan, but for every. Every pair of shoes that they sell, they actually give one shoe away to someone in need. And so I was really motivated by that. And I said, look, is there a way to do something like that with this business? And so I looked into different possibilities, looked into different things, and I, you know, I just, I just made a decision. I said, for every home purchase that we're a part of and help with, we're going to make sure we affect the life of one child in need. And obviously I have my own children and you know, I definitely have a heart for that. And so that's what we've done. We set up a few different nonprofits that we partner with just to make sure that happens. I mean, one of the major things that we've done is that last year we were able to build an orphanage to house kids that were normally on the street. And we're able to help provide shelter, education, water and these kind of things and access to a really structured system to really try to break the cycle of poverty in that area. That was one and another one that we started doing actually just this past couple months as well too, is we really wanted to focus on empowering and kind of again, empowering, teaching kids a skill or a trade that would allow them to again, kind of be self sufficient on their own. And so we partnered with this other company called Zoe. Angel House is the name of the first organization. And the second organization that we partner with is called Zoe. And what they do is they go into a lot of times, war ravaged areas where there's a lot of like aid. I mean, in terms of like, they're getting a lot of support and aid. And what they try to do is that they try to actually build that place up economically by, you know, taking kids. We have an academy of 80 to 100 kids. Actually, our academy specifically has 85 kids in it. And what they do is over the course of three years, they teach them a trade, they teach them a business, they give them business skills and teach them how to manage their finances and then at the end of the academy to give them a microloan if they need to launch their businesses. And this is something that we feel strongly about because again, it's just to help break the cycle of poverty in that area. And with both of these different nonprofits, we've been able to just affect the lives of so many people through this business.

That's pretty exciting to see what you're doing between your practice and between your businesses and between these really charitable pursuits. How do you balance your entrepreneurial pursuits with your practice?

Well, that's a good question. As I mentioned before, I have a family, I have two kids of my own. And I try to be active outside of work, so it's not always easy. But I've noticed that sometimes when the busier you are, the better you get at organizing your time. And a lot of things have fallen by the wayside that probably I wasted a lot of time doing, like watching tv, just doing things that just don't really do a lot for my life. And so I make sure the good thing is I'm an anesthesiologist. It's different than being in certain other fields. I think that allows and lends itself to being able to pursue some of these other things outside of medicine. So I do have my full time job, but outside of that, if I'm not spending time with my family, I'm able to find time with doing Curbside. And what's really helped me, to be honest with you, is building a team around me and that's really allowed me to continue to grow and build this business.

Tell us about that team. Tell us about your staff there at Curbside.

Sure. Again, I feel so fortunate to have the team that I do. My main partner in this is a woman named sue. And I knew her because she's actually the wife of one of my co residents and she had reached out to me because she had a particular interest in real estate, she had a particular interest in social mission work. And she said, look, is there something that I can do to be a part of this business? And that's actually when the time when this business was really starting to grow and I felt like I needed help. So in a way it was like a prayer answered for me. But she actually has a perfect background for this. I mean, she is a certified financial planner. I mean she has a cfp, so she comes from that background. She also has a real estate license and also she's the wife of a physician. And so she has all that and she has the perfect background to help me in this business. And she's been amazing. And I think people who have talked to her on the phone and spend some time with her know that she's just an amazing resource and is looking out for them. And also I hired someone named Jess, who's an administrator, who to kind of help me out with some of the administrative type stuff in this business. And again, that's allowed me to kind of focus on, on some of the bigger things and really without them, I could not run this business.

Sounds like I should have gotten sue and Jess on the podcast instead of you.

Yeah, they help me out a lot.

Very nice. All right, well, I gotta ask you some hard questions or I'm gonna hear about it from my listeners. So I'm gonna give you at least a couple of these that aren't, you know, softball questions. A lot of people, including me, have been critical of this philosophy, this move to a new part of the country, swoop in on a three day trip and buy a home. You know that so many doctors do. And some might accuse your company of facilitating that by making buying a home too convenient. What's your response to that criticism?

That's a good question. We do get that. We do get those kind of increase every once in a while where people just want to buy in, swoop in, buy a home real quick and get out. Now if we were just a purely transactional company, that would be okay with us, if we just connected people and that was it. But that's really not what we do. Like I mentioned before, we spend a lot of time with each of our clients to get to know their needs and what they're looking for. And we try to offer some, some advice when needed and when asked for and we really get to know them. I mean, for example, I'll tell you a recent person that actually called us recently. There was, there was somebody who called us and, and he was about to start his residency in neurology and he also had a fiance who is about to start a residency in dentistry. And they were coming to a certain area that they didn't know. They were also planning on getting married in the following year and starting a brand new program. They had like $500,000 in student loan debt, no family in the area, really, no other connections except that they were just going to start residency in that area and they wanted to do that exact thing. They wanted to go in part, move it to a new part of the country, swoop in, buy that home and use it for the residency. Well, you know, if we're just again, a transactional business, we said, ah, sure, here's a, here's a real estate agent here, just go on your way. But honestly, we got to know them a little bit and we, and honestly, our advice to them was, look, think about, you know, you're getting married, you're having all these changes in your life, you don't know the area, there's no harm in kind of waiting, taking your time, get, you know, spend six months, spend a year there, figure it out, you know, focus on the things right now that you have at hand. And then maybe buying a home would be a good idea. And again, this is just our advice. Ultimately, if people want to do whatever they want to do, like, we will support them and try to try to make it as easy as possible, but in their case, they decide to do that. When they decide, okay, you know what, that's a great idea. We're going to sit, we're going to wait, and we're going to find out what happens after we get married. And, you know, we start our residencies and our business, start our residencies and see what goes on. And so we're happy to do that. We don't try to really push people in one way or another, but we ultimately try to equip them and educate them to make the best decisions that they can. So that's what we try to do. So honestly, if we make the home buying process too convenient, that's not a bad thing for us. I mean, we actually try. That's what our goal is, to make it super convenient. But what we don't try to do is, you know, put people in a bad situation. And, you know, that that involves us getting to know them.

Well said. Well said. You know, it's interesting. I've been talking and blogging and interacting with, you know, graduating medical students and residents for a long time with this burning desire to buy a house. And the truth of the matter is I can't talk a lot of them out of it, you know, and so you might as well make it as convenient as possible for them to do so if they're, if they can't be dissuaded from buying a home, even at those times in life when maybe they're. They should at least give it serious consideration to rent for a while. Here's another question for you. A lot of people are also critical about using a Dr. Mortgage for similar reasons, because it encourages people to buy before they're ready, before they have a 20% down payment in hand. For instance, many new attendings and virtually all residents fall into a category where they couldn't buy using a conventional mortgage. Are you really doing them a favor by encouraging them to buy? How do you deal with your conflict of interest with regard to physician mortgages?

Well, we hope we're not encouraging them to buy for sure. And you know what? Ready. We really try to get to the heart of what ready means for them. And again, I think every person's situation is completely different. I mean, you get somebody who knows they're going to be in residency for five to seven years has, you know, has a good understanding of the home buying Process knows their, you know, knows that they can afford these payments and really understands what they're getting themselves into and possibly even has a good exit. You know, they have a good exit strategy. Perhaps they decided, oh, you know what, we're gonna keep that for rental later, or we have family in the area and these kind of things, then that's a different story. Then we're. We're more than happy to kind of help with that situation. You know, there's a person who just wants to buy and knows that they want to move in two, three years. A lot of times again, we can't stop anybody from doing what they want to do. But we try to offer some sort of advice and practical advice and offer that education. Now, the 20% down, I don't think that's a magic number per se. That means that you're ready to buy a home. I mean, I think that's. That number is pretty much set by the bank to protect their interests. Right. And that's shown by, if you want to put down less than 20%, they. They usually offer you something called. Well, they make you pay something called PMI or private mortgage insurance to really protect their interests, really not yours. Right. But I could just tell you example, when my wife and I, we wanted to. When we finished our fellowships and we were just a few years out of practice, we wanted to buy our own. Our own home here in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, we didn't have that 20% down. So the only way we could buy a home was with, you know, a little bit less than that. And. But we looked at the market. We knew exactly where we wanted to be. Our jobs were very stable. We knew we wanted to be there for a long time. Our families were here. Well, my wife's family was here. We knew this one particular area was growing, a growing community, and we knew that interest rates were pretty good at that time. And we felt that, sure, we're going to put down a little bit less than 20%, but we're in this for the long haul and we can manage any sort of swings in the housing market because we're happy to be here. And so we decided to make that leap at that point. And we're so glad we did, because honestly, two years later, we would have priced out of this market. And now, five years later, I mean, our home is essentially worth double. But at the same time, we're not going anywhere. And so if the market does take another dip, we're fine with it. But I think it's all about knowing and being well educated on the process and knowing that, you know, it makes sense for you and your family versus that magic 20% number. So really that's what we try to get to the heart of. And I think if people are ready at that point, sure, whether they want to put down 5, 10, 15, as long as they kind of understand the process ahead and understand those risks, I think people aren't necessarily in a bad situation in terms of the conflict of interest that you mentioned. Again, we know that medicine is a small world. I help friends, colleagues, and I definitely think it's less than 6 degrees separation. Everyone knows somebody who knows somebody in this world and I'm still working as a physician and so I feel like I'm putting my reputation at stake whenever I help somebody buy a home. If I put somebody in a bad situation, connect them, you know, help put them in a poor loan or, you know, work, connect them to a poor realtor with a really bad transaction, I have a feeling it's going to get back to me somehow, not just through the business, but through somebody who knows somebody. And so I really feel like I, again, this is a long term game for me where I feel like again, I'm not looking at just one trans, but one person, one client. I'm trying to, I know that if somebody gets treated well, it goes well for them. They're also going to tell 5, 10, 15, 20 more of their colleagues and friends. And so really I'm just trying to develop good relationships, get people to have good experiences. And I know that ultimately in the end it's going to pay off in some way. And you know, if it just helps the social mission, that's a huge part of what I'm trying to do too. So really I hope that this conflict isn't there for me and I've really tried to mitigate that by just helping whoever as much as I can.

You know, it's interesting I put you on the spot a little bit with that question, but truthfully, that question could have been directed at me as well. I mean, I have advertisers that do doctor mortgages on my website. And the way I've kind of justified that in my mind is that there are times that people have a better use for their money than a down payment. Putting 20% down does earn a certain amount of return and that you can get a lower rate and lower fees and more options on your mortgage. But if you're also carrying around 7% student loans, sometimes that's a much better use of your money. Or if you're not maxing out your retirement account. Sometimes that's a much better use of your money than a full 20% down payment. And so I think sometimes it does make sense for people to buy with a doctor mortgage. And it's especially nice, I think, as you mentioned, in California, because not only do you worry about being priced out of the market, but when you buy a house in California, you also lock in the taxes. And basically, just because the home doubles in value after you buy it, your taxes don't double in value in California. So it's really a pretty unique real estate market out there sometimes.

All right, all right.

Do you have any horror stories that have happened to physicians that using your company would have prevented?

Well, I was trying to think about this, and, you know, I do remember getting a call about a year and a half ago by somebody I actually did residency with, and he called me kind of frantic, and he explained the situation to me. He was in escrow. He and his wife found, I guess, what they thought was their dream home. And they were in escrow. They walked into their local bank, and that person promised them, oh, yeah, I can get you a loan. And so they went through this process. Ultimately, turns out two days before the loan contingency was up, or where they have to basically forfeit the deposit, you know, moving forward in the transaction, the bank basically just told them, you know what, Looking at it again, sorry, we can't really help you. So basically, two days before they had to decide whether to go forward with this house, they were out of a loan. And really they had no sort of help at all. And they called me frantically trying to figure out what to do at that point. To be honest with you, it's a little bit difficult two days before, but. But you know what I did, I did try to connect them to a few people. I have some people that I know can work in a pinch, can help them out. Unfortunately, in this situation, it didn't work out. It was just too late in the process. The sellers weren't being very cooperative and extending these deadlines and timelines. So unfortunately, they had to pull out of the house. Of course, they were really upset and these kind of things. And the sad thing is I feel bad because I know them and they know me and they knew I was doing this business. But I guess if they had come to us before, we would have been able to easily tell them, knowing their situation, that that bank wouldn't be able to provide a good loan for them. And so in some ways, I just felt like, they were a victim of, like, the shiny ball object where that bank was just flashing some sort of shiny ball in front of them. And fortunately, they followed it. And unfortunately, they couldn't get into their home. So, in fact, I think they're still looking for a home today, unfortunately.

Now, just as an aside to listeners, the reason why I've got Peter on here and why we're talking about Curbside Real Estate today is I am frequently asked for referrals to good Realtors. And the issue with Realtors is it's not so much like a student loan refinancing company or physician disability insurance. It's a very local business. Even with financial advisors, a lot of advisors can work all over the country. And so I've had difficulty filling, figuring out how to refer my readers and listeners to good real estate agents. And so I found that this just simply. We don't have the bandwidth to go into this business to be able to vet Realtors all over the country. And so we've had a lot of them come to us and want to advertise on the website, you know, even though they're only really offering services in Houston or Baltimore or wherever. And so we decided, well, maybe the best way to do this is to outsource it, to partner with somebody else that has the bandwidth to do this legwork to go out and evaluate real estate agents and be able to get you guys into the hands of somebody that's good, to be able to get your referral to somebody good, even though you're moving all the way across the country. And so that's why how I ended up working with Peter and Curbside here is to try to provide that connection for you and that ability to get you somebody good even though you don't know the area. However, like, with all, you know, partnerships and affiliate agreements that I have with anybody, I've tried to also work out a special bonus with Curbside Real Estate for you guys. So if you go through the links on the website or on the show notes for this podcast, that you'll be able to get a special bonus, a special deal. And so I've worked out work this out with, with Peter at Curbside. And can you tell us a little bit about that and what's the bonus they get and how they get it?

Sure. I mean, first of all, I'm so excited to partner with you. This is, you know, again, the service that's as close to my heart, and it's actually a free service, and I want people to understand that it's an absolutely free service to help connect you to these people and spend some time with us. Now you can, people can do it on their own. I mean, people have talked to me, they said, can I, can I just go find a realtor on my own? I said, and I say absolutely, you can absolutely do it on your own. But what we offer is a free service for you anyways and hopefully saves you some time. Right. And hopefully saves you time and money in the end of the day. But the cool thing is on top of that, yes, we've partnered with you and partnered and we've agreed that, look, not only, as you know, not only is this a free service for everyone and especially for your listeners, but on top of that we want to give a hundred dollar bonus to, to each of your listeners just to say thank you. And you know, we hope that if the experience is good and everything goes well, that they'll continue to share that, you know, share our name around with people and yeah, it'll look good on everyone. You, me, and hopefully the listeners will have a fantastic experience. I consider that a win all around.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's the best way to run any sort of a business is you want it to be a win, win, win, win, win. You know, the realtor wins because they get more business. You win because you're also, you know, involved in there. I win because there's a partnership and the listeners win because not only are they not paying any more for their typical realtor fees, but they're getting connected with somebody good that's worked with other physicians that's used to the unique financial issues that physicians deal with and you know, and don't have to just hit the Internet trying to find a realtor out there in whatever new city. They're going to tell us a little bit about how early in the process somebody should contact you at curbside.

Sure, that's a good question. We have people coming to us extremely early in the process to extremely late in the process. And obviously we would prefer that they come to us earlier rather than later. And we encourage people to come, reach out to us as early as they're thinking about it. If it's on their mind. That's not a bad time to reach out to us because we like to provide education about the process. We like to help people put everything, you know, in place and have it all ready to go before they buy their home. I think the last thing that we want people to do is kind of feel rushed about making this decision. I mean, it's probably the biggest financial decisions of their lives. So we want people to be well prepared going into it, and so we encourage people to come to us at all parts of the process. Whenever you're thinking about it, feel free to give us a call. We'll spend some time with you and we're happy to do so.

Thank you very much and thank you for being on the show today, Peter. We really appreciate you taking time out of your obviously very busy schedule to give our readers a little bit more information about this service that you offer and that now, through our partnership with you, we offer as well.

Cool. Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

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