EP 612 - Providing A Nationwide Full Service Title And Virtual Closing Concierge With Michele Chochrek-Ransons

This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host CEO of We Close Notes, Scott Carson.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure Show. As always, Scott Carson, Excited to be here today. And I've got another special guest that I go back a few years with. She is an amazing individual, has a passion for working with real estate investors, lenders and all sorts of buyers and sellers out there, not only just where she's located, but all across the country. That's why I wanted to get her on the Note Closer show here as a resource to all those out there in Note Nation who are looking for some resources and what we can dive into in a little bit here with what she does. But she's a mortgage industry veteran for 30 plus years. Her tenures include senior management, IT vendor management and sales at several mortgage lenders. Currently she's the VP Vice President of National sales with Vantage Point title and one of the few people I've had at my Mastermind who I think got a speeding ticket on the way to show up to speak to my Mastermind members at one point. So. But we are honored to have our friend Michelle join us here. Michelle Chandrak from Vantage Point Title out there. And you're just absolutely sorry. Michelle Shashik Ransom. You've been married since we last spoke, actually. Congratulations.

It's actually been three years, but I finally said, I guess I should put my real name on there now because no one will know me by the other name.

So our names become our brand. Is that when you change it?

And let's just say Chalk Rook is a little unusual. Let's just say that's all right.

Hey, that's what makes you unique. So Michelle, good morning. How's everything going these days for you?

Great, great. It's the new normal. But we're trugging along making changes. But everything's going really great now you're.

Working it not be so abnormal for you guys compared to some other title companies because you guys are used to working with investors from all across the country, not just locally where you're located. And you're in Southern California, right, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, I'm in southern Orange county, so Mission Viejo, but we are nationwide, so yeah, definitely used to working Nationwide Anywhere, everywhere, brick and mortar, wherever is required. And then our corporate headquarters is in Clearwater, Florida.

Okay, there you go. Very nice. So let's talk about maybe some of the misconceived notions that maybe some people have about working with a virtual company, a virtual title company. Because you probably get a little bit of that too, don't you? A little bit. Like why I need somebody local when you really don't.

Right, right. Well, the beauty of technology is really where we succeed. The other part is many of our clients start out in one state, but they may have clients that move or they may have clients that want to buy a house in another state or they want to buy a pool of loans that is all over the country. So in those local area loves, which we get it, we have actually some clients who still stick with their local area for the local area, and then we do everything outside of that. So it's not really a one size fits all. It's really a customization based on your needs. So that's the beauty of our centralized operation. No matter where you're at, as you grow, you keep the same team and you continue to grow. And it's a standardized process.

So that's, that's really nice versus having to. Because not every title company understands note transactions on a regular basis or working with multiple assets or funders, wiring in and a variety of different things to get a deal closed.

Right, right. There's a lot of different things in each state. And it's hard when you go outside your normal territory. Then you got to go find someone. Right. So then you're out kind of hunting around with friends you may know, saying, hey, who do you know? And that kind of thing. And believe it or not, we get a lot of broker business from broker blogs from a lot of my clients who will say, hey, this is who you should use. And so it's a nice way to do it. But it's important to know that local companies sometimes don't always have the best technology answers either.

Yeah. If they're. They haven't upgraded to the 21st century, especially with what's going on right now, you need technology these days, right, Michelle?

Right. Right. The other part is integration. So we do integrate with many LOS systems out there. On the note buying side, that's not as predominantly a big deal because that's a different model. But the nice thing again, if you're in Texas and you buy a pool that has properties in Oklahoma and Georgia and California, you may not have those resources to be able to be able to take care of those transactions where we can build that for you and standardize the process.

So let's talk about a little bit some of those processes or procedures that you're working with people that are buying assets, whether it's notes or REO's out of state. What are some of the services that you guys provide?

Vantage Point Title is a nationwide title, escrow and closing company as well as default. So not only can we help you and we also have some partnerships with a couple of valuation companies. So if you're looking to get a value on a pool, we can help you with that. It is something that we have a great partner in curiosity, so we assist with them, they do that type of thing. But from a title, escrow and closing, we can handle any part of that. So that is not only the buying, but also the selling. So some of your investors buy, fix and hold, but some of them are buy, fix and sell. So depending on what their real, you know, what their plan is of each pool, we can adjust based on that.

That's really nice. And then the valuation model are those BPOs, AVMs. What's the breakdown?

Yeah, the partner that we have does everything. So that includes nationwide AVMs, nationwide BPOs and nationwide hybrid appraisal and true traditional appraisal. I think that piece is going to be going away, you know, or at least very modified, down to a much smaller pool of loans that are going to need that. But the nice thing about them is they have a little bit of everything. So you basically can do everything from checking out a pool where you don't want to spend a lot of money, and then when you actually buy it, you get some other harder facts, I should say.

Are you guys also working with. I'm just throwing this out there with owner finance buyers and sellers who are maybe looking for a mortgage loan origination to help them out there with the sales as well.

Sure, sure. And we can help you with. The beauty for me especially and our company as a whole is that we've been in the industry long enough, probably don't want to always admit, but we know a lot of people who do a lot of different things. So if you're looking for whatever you're trying to find, I have someone who I know in the industry, like you, Scott, I'm sure that can help you to do whatever you need. We have people who are always looking to buy assets. So if you bought an asset now, you just want to sell it, you know, even in a bulk transaction, you know, people who want to do that owner financing, all that stuff. I mean, I have a ton of friends. In the last year or two, we've really pushed trying to get out there with the broker community. So there's those people. And so we really are kind of a full service company with whatever you need. I mean, VantagePoint's biggest asset is really service. In the last year we created a new team called the White Glove team. And basically that's for anyone who has loans, does orders with us from really like 10 orders to like less than 100. Sometimes those people get lost in the big companies and they don't get the service they deserve, you know, that type of thing. That's not really our model. We instead created this team so that the experience for even the smaller clients that we have will still have a great experience. And I can tell you I'm kind of a little bit weird. Every month end I send an email to my clients going, just check it on you, how's it going? And Yesterday I got 10 different emails from 10 different clients saying the White Glove team is doing such a great job. I can't believe it. And you see it in the numbers, right?

Right. Well, and that's the thing is we grow as entrepreneurs. A lot of us are figuring things out our first couple deals and as a note investor, we've always told people, okay, buy 1, 2, 3 notes, you're going to learn more about your systems places. But when you go to that second level of buying 20, buying 30 assets, as you get more comfortable your systems in place, it does. It can be kind of a paperwork or email nightmare trying to collect things from 20 different sources, you know, trying, okay, I gotta have this stuff now. My clarify, okay, who we set it now to to clear this up or how to close and having like you said, a loan or a closing concierge with the White Glove team, we actually.

Have another group called title concierge which helps on the selling side with realtors. We created that group so that today realtors have a transaction coordinator, most of them that kind of does all that, like, hey, you didn't send in this or you didn't, I don't have the appraisal yet or whatever. Our group actually does that for the realtor and the only thing that we ask for, we actually give that service away free and that is that we get the title escrow closing. So basically a realtor, if you will, for any of your people that have realtor relationships, they can kind of have that piece no longer being paid for by them, right? We do that for them. So we check not just the title stuff, but actually other things as well.

That's awesome. Now where do you think the market's gonna go? I mean, you got started when you're two and the beautiful thing is you've been through a couple ups and down transactions and people that have been just around for the last four years don't really don't know what we experienced a decade ago. You know, with your Spidey sense and your thumb on the pulse of the market, like you see coming from the valuation side, the mortgage side and the title side, where do you think it's going to be in six to 12 months?

Well, if I had that, I could be a multimillionaire, right? I buy something, then I go get.

Something in Vegas longer than one night then, right?

But it is funny. So I have a stepdaughter who is very new to the mortgage industry and she is a senior loan processor at a large organization that many of us know. And I'll shout out to them, but for her it's super busy, right? She's just slammed and she's like, oh my gosh, they all think this is the land of Milky. It's gonna be like this forever. And I go, look, what you need to do is realize save your money while you can because things could change just that fast the other direction where, you know, depending on things like elections, things like other things that are happening in the world unfortunately impact us. I have won a couple of bets so far with my friends about lowered interest rates because they all said, no, no, no, I still think we're going to get another rate reduction before the end of the year. So that's going to help a lot of people be out there open to buying. So for the note buyers that are out there buying houses and fixing them up, I think that's going to help people. The reverse side of that is the underwriting piece of it has gotten a little tighter, Right. A lot of those programs that were out there that were for all of us who want to call it non QM, which makes me chuckle. I came, my background is 9 years at a little company called Ameriquest. So for all of us who don't hold that against me, but we just change the name and then act like it's a different thing. It is a little different. You know, it's got more sensible underwriting with it. But a lot of those non QM products have gone away. Will they come back? We'll see. Some of that might rely on cfpb But I think rates will go down still. That opens up more people to own homes. I have seen that the market, at least in California and many other areas, the values have kind of either stagnated or dropped a little bit. I mean, we can't go back to where properties are worth. Every property in California is worth a million dollars. How many people can afford that? Right. So I think that will continue to happen. There's a lot of variables that add into what's going to happen. I think rates will go down. Anyone who hasn't refinanced will if you have an opportunity to buy something. If we can get some of these programs that have A less than 20% down, I think that opens up a new revenue stream for the young people out there to buy homes. So hopefully that will happen. And I think, you know, we're going to see a drop off. There's no doubt at some point. So at some point we will not. And the real hard part of that is anyone who's refinancing the 2% rate, the odds of turning them again in six months is kind of slim. So it's going to rely on new buying, new owner, new, you know, new home buyers coming into the market.

Yeah, we had a. With a mortgage banker on our webinar note night in America last night, everybody Rich Mason there out of Irvine, California, talking about how, hey, it's a great time to be buying because you're gonna. You're still seeing a lot of deals and anything happen, you know, that stuff falls through. Those mortgage originators who have some non QM on their books that they can't move now can be opportunities as more people forbearance or source people default out there, you know, because we're going to see them increase default rates. Agree to that, right?

Yeah, yeah. There's no way, especially in California, based on the way that we have dealt with reopening, that we're not going to see. To be honest with you, I'm surprised that the forbearance and all of that is as low as it is right now. I think there's a lot of people that haven't gone through the process yet or in the middle of it, and those numbers are going to go dramatically up. I mean, you can't take, in California, for instance, you can't take three quarters or say half of the people here work in some type of food capacity, whether it's people who deliver food, people who provide the food to all these huge hotels that are not opening until 2021. I mean, I have a friend who works in food service, pastry and all that type of stuff. And his big clients are like, you know, the Ritz Carlton and the Irvine Hotel and all these places that are not opening until 2021. That's going to impact that whole servicing portfolio for many, many lenders.

So, yeah, and it's, it's all across the country in the service industry. And you look at like what hotels Hilton announced, I think they were at 30% occupancy worldwide. You know, that leads to a lot of layoffs. Not only just the food, but obviously, you know, housekeeping, maintenance.

American Airlines announced they're not gonna serve alcohol anymore, except for in first class. Wow, that's gonna be a big hit to all the alcohol. I'm like, how hard is it to hand out a bottle? Right?

So I'm getting it to go.

Yeah, it's a little scary there for all of us who kind of enjoy a cocktail coming back.

Oh my gosh. You know, that's the thing. So many different things are happening. It's a macroeconomic issue on a microeconomic scale in so many places. So many different places are hurt. I mean, I look at Orlando, you know, in Florida, or as I call it, God's waiting room. These people working at Universal or Disney or on the cruise ships, I think that's gonna be the new ground zero for a lot of defaults and foreclosures. Whereas like it was maybe Flint and Top Flight Mortgage back up in Michigan years ago for a variety of issues out there. But the thing I want everybody to listening here out there is if you're looking at a variety of different assets across the country and you're looking for somebody to be a central focal point for you guys, I want maybe the hub for you to help get some things done. And you've got. I wanted to bring up a slide that you guys will be able to see in the video. If you're listening to this, I would definitely go back to our website or go to our YouTube channel, check out the slide. But I wanted to share this because you were great enough to send it over to kind of how outline some great things that you guys are doing. Kind of. I kind of call it your four tiered approach to things, you know, and you want to, you want to walk through this a little bit, Michelle, for everybody out there.

Yeah, yeah. So basically this is the title concierge part. Actually, I thought it was sending you. I have a different title send you as well. This is title concierge. So this is on the Purchase side, this is the piece that we were talking about where you can literally hand us your purchase transactions. And we do a lot of the things that you're maybe paying for as a realtor that get done. So we do contract review with that. The communication between the buyers and sellers and the agents and the lenders, inspectors and appraisers. There's a lot of stuff that we actually help in that purchase transaction when any of your note buyers might be looking to sell. And then the other part really is the latest thing that we've started doing with all of the COVID and all that is the Ron closing. So Ron is remote online notarization right now we have about a little. I think it's a little more than half the country allows for Ron. Ron has been around for, I don't even know, maybe two or three years. We've been talking about it as a company to our clients, but everyone was afraid to put their foot in the pool. You know, they wanted someone else to jump in first. So no one was really doing it. The other part is really the investor side, right. Who's going to buy these loans if you do them this way with COVID and all of that? The people that were on the fence. Many states like Arizona, I'm trying to think of the other few that have just jumped in, have gone to allowing remote notarization. I'll use California as an example. We're what was considered a hybrid state. So some documents you can sign electronically. The other ones you still sign a wet signature. If you have states where you're in, where Ron is not acceptable, which I'm sorry, I'll send you, Scott, another slide that shows all the states that today accept that we do what we call rin, which is kind of a modified Ron notarization. What that can include, because it depends on your borrowers and how they want it done, we can drop the package at their doorstep. Then the notary goes back to their car in the driveway of a sort, logs into like a zoom, like we're in now. They do a quick scan of the room, make sure no one has a gun to your head making you sign anything. And then they sign all the documents as if the notary was right there. Which they are like at the driveway, right. Or some people are having the notary meet them in the garage, whatever the case may be. But the RON and even the rin, the beauty of Ron, if I had my operations manager on today, he gets so excited about talking about Ron because not only does it almost eliminate All QC issues like you can't accidentally forget to sign up page. You can't sign incorrectly on one page and the other, it checks all of that stuff and then when you're done, it automatically uploads in into the system. Everyone who's supposed to get a copy of the document package gets it. No more FedEx. Although, you know, waiting for something to show up. So Ron, he just can't even say enough about how excited he is about the whole thing. Just cuts out so much time. The borrowers and the members we work with a lot of credit unions as well, they love it. And then the other part is always, we always want to make sure, you know, we are the largest privately held title escrow and closing company. What that gives us is we work with all the largest underwriters. We write more paper on Stuart than Stuart itself. But what we pride ourselves in is that we look across the country, wherever your deals are, and we try to get you the best title insurance policy with the, I don't want to say with the best pricing, let's say, because we all know it's about costs come into play with everything. So it's important for us. And the beauty of us is we're not just pushing you to the one that's our company because we're the underwriter. The other thing that helps us is sometimes you have some deals that are a little hairy. We could go to multiple different underwriters and talk to them about, hey, what can we do to clear this up? It makes it a lot more advantageous for our clients to be able to have that multiple stream. And then of course, Gap insurance is always part of our thing. People are always concerned about that during COVID because they're like, okay, how is it going to take so long? Some of the county recorder's office were closed for, you know, Lord knows how long and some of them may not still be open. So the delay is there. So that's one of the other things that we really pride ourselves in as far as making sure that we get that stuff done. The other part that's not on this slide is we do offer bundled fees both on the refi and the purchase side. So the nice thing about that is you have a standard fee across the country. So for instance, right now in a purchase side, we do 375 on each side for a non attorney and 475 on each side for an attorney. And that covers everything except for the title premium itself, state and county recording fees, and any state specific fees that might be out there. There are some kind of weird ones, but. But it covers the mobile notary covers Ron, all of that.

Wow, that's really good. That's really. That is awesome out there. And you know, with the online notarizations, how effective has you seen that with virtual recordings at the county? I mean I see more and more counties going to and accepting online recordings.

Right, right, right. And that takes the thing that used to be three or four days down to like 24 hours. You know, it's boom, boom, boom. The Ron stuff is really the way now that so many people have jumped in because of this. We think that's gonna stay, I mean, very similar to the valuation side. So many people are doing some really unique things. I know Clorocity, I actually did a BPO with them on our house that we have in the mountains. And literally they give you an app and you take your phone around and take pictures of all the rooms and then you log in and you put what room is each one and then they send it to an appraiser and they do it that way. So there's all these ways to avoid you having to have someone in your home exposed to whatever they might have last went to. So those things are all pluses for the industry and I think that those are the changes that we're going to continue to see. And although it was something that started based on this, I think it will remain.

Yeah, there's definitely some innovation going and people learning how to pivot and expediting things. Anytime you can try to bring technology into it, most of the time it makes a whole lot easier and simplified and does away without things. People could literally be across the world closing on a transaction in 20 states, getting things Ron notarized and secured without having to do anything from their vacation and do mostly a lot of probably from their own cell phone, right?

Yeah, there's a lot of things and that has been going on for years. When you look at like USAA and people that are a military based type of lender, those people I think have already embraced that. But that's primarily happening on the people who are portfolioing loans. So they don't have to worry about the investor side because they keep it themselves so they don't have someone to approve them doing it. Whereas now a lot of the investors are going, okay, we get it, it's important, you know, that's we are seeing. But then again, I think there's a little tightening on the underwriting side to. What do you want to call it? Solidify the transaction to make sure there's nothing funny going on, you know. And again, I'm sure there'll be some tweaking here and there, but I think that it's something that's gonna stay for quite some time. And we're excited about Ron and Rin. I mean, the feedback we've gotten from the borrowers and from our clients is nothing but like this is amazing.

You know, right now on the note side of things, we're buying a performing or non performing note. You guys do provide the, like the O and E report where we don't need.

Oh yeah.

A two owner report. And then if somebody's working with multiple investors to fund a portfolio, you guys can also set up an escrow account where it's a certain, you know, an escrow account where people, multiple people are wiring in versus to my checking account.

Correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we, I think we already do that. We work on the default side and in the servicing side with quite a few. We actually created the loss mitigation and the deed in lieu process for one of the top 10 lenders in the country. So they liked it so much they were like super excited about it all and said, okay, forget it, we're throwing our stuff out.

But that's a beautiful thing.

Always a nice treat.

You're like, okay, it's always a beautiful thing. I didn't even know that. You should have reached out to me beforehand.

Hey, see, that's what happens when you don't see each other for a while.

That's right. Because that's the thing. I always joke, I was talking to somebody else in the desk like, man, you know, it's great to hang out and see it. But we usually, we see each other a lot of times more often halfway across the country. Not in our home state or home cities.

100%.

At the peak of it, I was seeing more people on the road more often than I see my next door neighbor.

Oh, that's for sure. I mean, and now it's such a weird environment that we don't really see anyone other than just like occasionally there's a LinkedIn thing somebody does or something. So we'll get back to the normal. But I don't want to say I'm sure you miss traveling. You never stay home, so.

Well, you know the beautiful thing, in the last five years we've done most of our workshops online. I mean, if I was in the last, really the last two or three years, I slowed down kind of my speaking schedule and was doing traveling more so for just fun or going to look at assets, taking vacations or, you know, going to events and killing two birds with one stone for a RIA Club meeting or an event the same time. So, yeah, it's. You know, we've embraced this virtual aspect for a few years now. It was funny when we started doing it five years ago, people were like, oh, that's not gonna work. And now we get phone calls from all the. Oh, a lot of people like, hey, can you help us a little bit, give us some ideas on this virtual stuff? And I'm like, okay, it's. It's basically the same thing. 90% of. There's a few things you don't have, but you can still kind of replicate that online if people will just buy a webcam and a microphone or turn on that in their laptop and be good to go for the most part.

Yeah. Well, it's a big deal. Social media and videos and all that. I think I sent you some stuff. You know, my daughter just started her own company doing that kind of thing too. So getting your name out there, branding and videos and social media and all that is really important. And Vantage point is stepping up in that game as well. We're trying to get more stuff out there. We work with a lot of the top 10 lenders, and a lot of people know us, but, you know, I've been here, gosh, it's just turned three years, so it's hard to believe. Time flies when you're having fun, but, you know, you're still considered. You're still out there trying to, you know, to get. Talk with people and remind them what you do.

I guess if there's anything that's a pet peeve of yours or your staff that new investors or investors do, they kind of drive you bonkers. And that's something that they could change relatively easily. What is that? And if it's a long list, let's cut.

Yeah, no, no. I'm like, what? All of our clients are perfect. What do you mean? Nobody does anything wrong. You know, I think the biggest challenge is always. There's always a bit of a rush initially. Like, let's, you know, we have this. We got to get it done. Da, da, da, da, da. Then we go, okay, we run, run. And my group wants to, you know, kick me because I'm like, they're going to do this. They need to get done right now. And then, you know, then it's kind of like weeks and weeks go by. We understand that sometimes it's. You don't Always get to pick the timeline you think it's going to happen. We all have things where people say this is going to happen and then it doesn't. I think the biggest challenge we ever have is communication. And I think that that is it in a nutshell. We try to make sure that, number one, before someone starts with us, we want to have them have a conversation with our operations team to talk to them about what they do, how they like things done. Because what happens more often than not if we don't have that initial call, things happen and then they're just ticked because you're not doing it the way I like it. So we don't know that. We just kind of proceed in the way that we do it. If you have something specific, you know, something as silly as I want the CPL letter the minute you send me the prelim. Right. Or whatever the case may be. We don't know that unless you tell us that ahead of time. We try to get that information out of people, but usually after the third or fourth deal, we try to get on the call again and go, okay, what went? Right. What could we improve upon? And then kind of go from there. So I think really communication is the big thing. Just, you know, being able to say, this is what I need, this is what I want, this is what I like. Right?

Yeah, exactly. Now you guys both, you're doing commercial deals as well as residential deals too, Michelle?

Yeah, we do commercial and residential. We have a great gal that runs our commercial division who's been in the industry for many, many years. We also do, you know, some kind of unique commercial stuff where say that you are the intermediary between the buyer and the seller, but you're doing a bridge loan for them. Right. So you want to make sure that everything's in line because you're going to give them some short term financing for them to ultimately sell off. We act as the title policy reviewer and communicate to the buyer and seller what the bridge loan lender wants. So we actually do a review and then we get the stuff from the appropriate people to make sure that that bridge loan goes through and everything operates effectively. That's awesome commercial stuff.

So, yeah, I think we're going to see a lot more commercial defaults before that fall into the market versus we see a lot of residential stuff taking time and forbearance or double forbearance agreements and things like that too.

Yeah, I don't, you know, the hardest part for this change or the COVID thing is I think it's Twofold. It's services and it's property. From a property side, I think many people are looking at the same way that the Ron thing, right? They thought nobody could go home and work because they won't work. They won't get their job done. So we don't want you to all work from home because we don't trust you. You're going to be, you know, playing video games or something. Now that everyone's at home and volume is high. On the mortgage lending side especially, people are still doing their jobs and getting things done and breaking records, company records. Right now. They're like, wait a minute, how much space do we really need? Maybe we should just leave those people at home then. We don't need that space. The same thing goes with services. I mean, from a woman perspective, many of my friends have all kinds of different services that they used to get. And now not having them for three or four months, they're like, I've learned how to do my own. Whatever, whatever, you know? So those people that they used to go to are like, uh, oh, I got my first.

I know a few ladies that were happy. I know a few ladies that were happy when the hair salon opened back up or the nail salon opened back up for sure.

I can tell you that I wouldn't have done this video a week ago. It's pretty bad. When your mother says to you, I think you might have more gray hair than I have. And I said, seriously, your whole head of hair is great and I'm gonna have to beat you soon.

Sorry, mom, you're not getting a Mother's Day class.

I share too much.

Great stuff. Great stuff, as always. That's the beauty of it now. Oh, hilarious stuff. I forget you talk about the working remotely. I think I saw an article the other day where Google has given every one of their employees $1,000 to work from home. Go buy furniture. Go buy what you need to set up your office in your house, your apartment. Embrace that aspect of things.

I know two companies where the CEOs have all said, we're going to keep 80% of our staff at home and not bring them back because it's so much easier and it's cheaper and all of that stuff. So they are definitely moving in that direction for a lot of them. Which, fortunately, I have a really good friend also who deals on the commercial real estate side and all of that. And that's not good news for him.

Well, you look at that, you've got the bigger box stores that have always been struggling the Retail Armageddon, I guess you could say, where the malls are really struggling and then all The Macy's, the JCPenney's have been struggling for years. And you've got, you know, if you're going to be in that commercial space or you're, you're on you own, that stuff, you've got to get creative in some sort of pivot. I imagine we're probably going to see a lot of executive offices, smaller offices pop up at some of those places. You know, we've got a few friends out of Dallas, they're looking at some of those bigger box stores and maybe turning them into climate self, you know, self storage facilities or maybe even turn them into, you know, executive lofts of some sort. Trying to drive into apartments and taking a commercial spot that maybe is not your ideal spot, but at least turning into a rental of some sort to help try to go with the flow that's going on.

Right, right. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out at the end and how much commercial availability is out there once everything goes. Because again, like you said, isn't it, is it Amazon or Google that turned one of their buildings into a homeless shelter or something?

Yeah, yeah, I don't think it was Amazon. I think it was Google though.

Yeah, Amazon. He used to be accounting all his money.

Yeah, we saw that here in Austin actually. The city actually reached out to some hotels that and turned them into homeless shelters to help with the social distancing the homeless. Here in Austin we had the hotels.

Too, but that's a catch 22 on that one. So, yeah, the commercial side will be different. The residential, I think that you think about all these large companies that are out in the industry now buying assets, not necessarily in bulk, but not bulk, if that makes sense, where they're just going around the neighborhoods and saying, hey, don't bother fixing your property. I'll come in and do it and I'll buy it from you for X and then turn it around and sell it again. So we see that happening, probably will continue to grow in that space now that Zillow's joined and all these other companies that are suddenly wanting to get in the mortgage industry. We'll see, see how many of them are around in another year. As we all know, we've seen people come and go.

And yeah, when I saw that, when I saw Zillow start to do that, or even Keller Williams getting into the purchasing side of assets, or hate to say it, but even Amazon for a day, for I think Four hours had a real estate purchasing part of their website up before they took it down last year. So be what he has up his sleeves at Amazon to kind of Bezos is willing to do and looking to do things. So that's the thing. I think we've all talked about how the virtual remote side is a beautiful thing. A lot of people didn't think that that's gonna consolidate a lot of things. A lot of realtors, mortgage brokers as well for things. So. And that's where it's important that you're marketing and you have really a book of business that you're reaching out to on a regular basis because I think you're gonna see a tightening up of professionals in those spaces. What do you think about that, Michelle?

Oh, yeah, I think that, you know, on evaluation side it's already been happening. I don't want to make any appraisers upset with me, but I think that they have kind of backed themselves into a corner of a sort. I don't think it's important for them to be out taking photos because that they have a specific skill set. And I think that photo taking many people can do. So that part's gone away. Then you look at other things that people are saying, okay, if your LTV is X and it's Y, then why do you need to even, you know now believe me, I. For years my first job was working in foreclosure reo and I've seen some really good wood piles where a house used to be. So got to be careful about not getting the right people to take photos and make sure that luckily the camera does have that. Where are you located at really? You know, because those things, there's always someone out there looking to work steel around. You know, there's going to be bad actors in all those spaces. But the same thing goes on the title side. It's shocking to me all the time how many times we get deals, especially now that I'm in the broker community and I'm sure with buying and selling notes and deeds, how many times we run the title on these deals and they are just a nightmare. You know, liens and things were never taken care of. They're from 10 or 15 years ago. It's quite apparent that someone just never did, you know, released or foreclosure or did whatever. And then the people are looking at us getting angry, saying, how come you're holding up this deal? This was 10 years ago. Well, we can't let you have dirty title. Even though the last three Transactions all let it go. That is one of the things we see with some other companies that are possibly the underwriter. And they underwrote the commitment the last time. So they just keep pushing it down the row. And then by the time it gets to us, you know, the people are pissed off because they've already had three other transactions. They don't understand why we're being so particular. So you just have to be careful, and that stuff's going to continue to happen and you will see more and more creative ideas, both on the title side. I mean, title is a little bit hard to be too creative with. It is what it is. You get it either clean or it isn't. But there are things that we can do to speed things up. And that's why we've made White Glove. That's why the closing piece is really important. We try to make sure that we do our job. I'm shocked how many of my clients who go, you mean you're going to request the payoffs? You mean you're going to, you know, you can actually tell us what you think is wrong with the title commitment. So, you know, those are things that I think we're going to have to keep doing, and that requires personal engagement. And those things are still going to be out there.

Yeah, it definitely does. But, yeah, it's an interesting time. I mean, that's the thing. We see that in the note business where people bought a portfolio of notes and then didn't do anything with it because they were busy doing something else or they got sidetracked or thought they knew everything. Like, oh, the note business is different than me buying and fixing and flipping and going that different route. You mean I have to do some that stuff? What?

Yeah, it's always interesting, hey, learning new things each day, that every day if you learn something new, you're 365 days smarter by the end of the year.

So I love it. And that's the beauty of this episode. Everybody that's listening out there is, hey, if you didn't know that there was a company that could help handle your transactions in multiple states, can do remote recordings, remote notaries, and really help you tackle and be a focal point in one spot versus you out chasing and trying to track down other things. You've now got a source there with Michelle here. Michelle, what's the best way for our listeners and people out there that are watching this to reach out to you, to connect with you, see about bringing you guys on, on their team? Vendors.

Yeah, I do have a Facebook Page. So it's under Michelle Chalkrick, I might say dash Ranson's. And just so I'll spell my last name again, C H O C H R E K. I know that. And if you don't find it, just I'm on LinkedIn. And then again, my email is M as in Mary Chakric, C H O C H R e k@vptitle.net so you can always reach me there. And then, you know, I think on the little presentation that you showed, it has my phone number as well. That's my mobile. You can always reach me that way.

Yeah, we'll put all that information in the show notes for everybody. We'll put some links back to it. Is there a website that people go to as well too, for versus?

Yeah, yeah, it's www.vantagepointtitle.com. doing this off the top of my head and all that stuff is there. But it's probably better if they reach out to me individually because it just goes to a general mailbox. They would be like, what do you mean? I don't know anything about that.

We'll make sure that they reach out to you directly on the show notes and stuff like that. But Michelle, thank you so much for coming on here. I know it's a little earlier out there in California there for you, but thank you so much. It's good to see your face.

Good to see you. I know. Nice to see you. Take care and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Yes, ma'. Am. I think we need to. When they finally free up, I think we just need to call everybody we know, like this is good for one massive party somewhere.

You end up in California, let me know.

All right, Sounds perfect.

Southern California, it's a good day to go to San Diego.

Yeah, Seconds of fish tacos out in Mission beach or something like that.

There you go.

There we go. Or at the Pacific Ale House. Pacific beach beach house would be a great place to hang out with as well, too.

There you go.

All right, guys. Well, thank you so much, Michelle. Everybody listening out there, take advantage of the services Michelle is offering up there. What a great way to add a loan concierge, a title concierge for your business. And not only will it save you time and a lot of headaches instead of having to chase down multiple cats, we like to say, but it can also add a really cool value statement to your business. When you're talking with other investors, you're talking with sellers who are selling you assets in multiple states. Oh, we got one title company. We work with one person to sign and notarize everything and really help speed up the time of your transitions taking place. So go out there exactly. Speed that process and reach out Michelle today. So go take some action, buddy, and we'll see you all at the top.

Take care, Sam.