Financial Wellness Today - Episode 2

2025, it seemed like it was slow rolling, and then it just went like lightning speed. I don’t know. The older I get, the faster it seems to be going. I hear that. I want to talk a little bit about the new year.

New year debt trends and counseling basics

As a nonprofit credit counseling agency, it’s always the time when we get tremendous spikes of people reaching out for assistance. The simple fact of the matter is, look, I’ve been with Cambridge Credit Counseling for 20 years collectively, been in business since 1996, so 27 years and running. There are certain times of the year where people actually recognize that something needs to be done about the debt that they’ve accumulated, especially in today’s economy with everything costing more, people using credit cards. 16 trillion, and we haven’t seen the holiday numbers of what was added on yet because people typically use credit cards, overspend a bit. A lot of the advice that we give is to say to your relatives that maybe this isn’t the year that I can spend all this money on gifts, but people still do it anyway, and they still kind of get overwhelmed, so usually that happens where they’re overspending and using credit cards.

95%, and in high risk, 29% to 32% interest on credit cards, it’s really making it difficult for people to get the debt down. This is a time of year where the statements will start rolling in next week and the week after showing the balances and the interest, and it’s a very good time, and I’m glad that we put this show together because this is one of the reasons that we do it, is to try to put some exposure out there to things that are available to people to get some help if they need it. That’s great, Gordy. I know that I spoke to a lot of people, and after the holidays, a lot of people just started racking up credit card debt for the holidays. I know now’s the time to teach them the right way to start paying it down.

Yeah, and the basics for us is the reason I’m very, very excited about our guest today because we’re going to talk about mortgages, which is obviously a very important piece of financial wellness, but it’s not a great idea to get involved in having an asset like a mortgage when you’re already burdened in debt, so for the audience, the quick basics of how we help people is the credit counseling is free, so if you feel overwhelmed and you need to contact us to just get a counseling session to talk to a counselor about your situation, the very first thing we do is say what’s going on, how do you need help? People tell us they’ve gotten into some situations, and then we do a budget. It’s the first thing that we do to take a look at the income and expenses, and for those out there that don’t like the word budget, because for some reason, people feel like it’s a controlling word, we now call it spending plan, right? The money’s coming in, and we’re going to spend it on households, groceries, energy, entertainment, everything you can possibly imagine in a household budget that’s an expense with the income that’s coming in, and then we try to take a picture of offering advice of where there might be some things in that spending plan that might need to be looked at, need to be adjusted, and in the new year, the perfect piece of advice that we give when we talk to people is about really tracking the income and the expenses through what’s called journalizing, so every receipt, pick any day, usually the first of the month is good because you can do a month and it’s easy, but you can do this any time where you start from a 30-day cycle, save every receipt, jot every piece of income, get it positioned on your spending plan, and then take a look at what you have left over for savings, and then look at some of the areas where you might be able to curb spending. So that’s what we do in counseling, and then if the credit card interest rate is high, we have a debt management plan where we work with every credit card company there is to reduce interest to an average of 8%, lower payments by about 25%, and then have people debt-free in about 48 months on the average, and if people are behind, very, very big key piece here, if people are behind on their credit cards, one of the benefits we get is getting them back to a good standing from the creditors after two or three months of good-faith payments to the programs so that the creditor will give them that benefit of bringing them up to a good standing.

Perk plans and hero benefits network

So this is a time of year where our programs sought out, needed, and we’ll leave some information at the end of the show for people to contact us in that regard. Now, PERC plans. Obviously, another piece of the new year of savings when we’re talking about spending plan is PERC plans. Tell people a little bit about your platform and how you help people save money. So PERC plans for me started back in 2005, and I’m actually in the mortgage industry, and it was really started out as a way of just generating mortgage leads.

And what it’s done is over the years, it’s evolved into a full-blown out national affinity program built through the real estate industry. And right now, I mean, we currently have millions of members around the country that we’re marketing to. But what’s really exciting is that we’ve got some really large groups that are getting set to go live in 2005 that we had signed up a couple months ago. And, you know, we’re just starting to introduce it a little bit to some of their members. But, you know, over the next week or so, we’re going to start going live, you know, adding a couple more million lives to the platform.

And the other side of it, too, are the types of perks or and services that we’re offering through the platform. We’re very financial heavy in the beginning part of the platform, from the real estate side to financial wellness to student loan refinancing that all fits in together, especially in this world that we’re living in right now. But even the additional perks that we’re starting to offer through travel, entertainment, health and wellness, we’re building an entire resource section on mental health and addiction that a lot of people are very, very interested in. So that platform is starting to, I guess, really find its way at this particular point. And then about six months ago, give or take, we launched a new platform called Hero Benefits Network, which is exploding nationwide.

And basically, the way that works is if you’re in the military or veteran, law enforcement, firefighter, EMS worker, healthcare worker, educator, even their support staff, government worker, nonprofit, or even union worker, if you go to buy or sell a house, we will literally reward you with an average of anywhere from three to ten thousand dollars that we just give you. That’s awesome. It’s all given through a national network that we have of real estate agents, mortgage companies and title companies that each donate a percentage of their commission back to the hero in a way of giving back. This is all public servants, right? 501C3 nonprofits, firefighters, paramedics, unions.

Yeah, the other side of it, too, is that we actually do counseling for all of our realtors, mortgage and title companies. I know a lot of companies out there actually have to pay for training, for counseling and coaching. We actually offer it to all of our members at no cost. So we do these training sessions every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, depending on we’re doing. I believe it’s title companies are on Monday, mortgage companies Tuesday and real estate agents Wednesday.

And that’s starting to take off also. So, yeah, we’ve been keeping pretty busy. That’s awesome. And in the body of this podcast, we will put everyone’s contact information and a summary of all this so that people know how to reach out. I know for employers, a lot of them don’t have benefits like this.

So when you’re able to offer employer additional benefit for employees to save money, it’s just like Cambridge getting into an employer. Most employers don’t have counseling when someone’s having a debt problem. And statistically, one in four people in the workplace struggle with debt problems. And it comes with cost to the employer. I think 500 billion annually is the statistical amount that it costs employers when people are struggling in the workplace with debt problems.

So, you know, I think one of the other important things to mention, too, is just a little plug for our financial wellness today podcast is that we’re actually setting up webinars now individually for a lot of our corporate members. We just signed up and got a commitment last week from probably one of the largest hospital groups in the South Jersey area. They’ve got about twelve thousand employees. And one of the things that really pushed them to sign with us on the hero program was the fact that we’re able to do webinars for them on financial wellness. So we’re in the process now of getting some dates and times for them to start promoting our financial wellness services directly to all their employees.

You got to remember, all their employees can be the people working in the cafeterias. Absolutely. The doctors, the nurses. I mean, all these different people, you know, just because you’re a doctor doesn’t mean you can’t get a little advice on financial wellness. Yeah.

And, you know, you want to offer the benefit of student loan refinancing. On the flip side of that, a lot of public servants have availability to be qualified to get those loans forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Platform. And just what you said, a lot of people misinterpret like if you are working at a public school, it’s not just the teachers that have that access. It’s the administrative professionals. It’s the personnel, the custodians, the people that work and are employed by the school or the state.

They are eligible just by the employment. And then we have to look into other things. But again, that’s the purpose of this show. We have so much to talk about. We’ll never be short of content.

And before we introduce our special guest today, one of your examples, the three of us just did a financial wellness webinar for a union group, and it was phenomenal. People need the information. They need to constantly know there’s resources to talk to. And even though it seems basic, the budgeting thing, as an example, it’s not just about the skill. It’s about the support and the habits of getting into following up and doing all the work it takes to really manage the money you have coming in and that’s going out.

Introducing guest Jay Tolisano

And today, we’re going to talk about mortgages. It’s probably the single most important investment that consumers will make in their lives. And I’m grateful that we’re able to have Jay Talasano from Cross Country Mortgage. Jay is the senior vice president of production. And again, Jay, before I let you rip away here on a couple of things, I’m very grateful that you have invested in being a guest here and working with us because collectively, we’ve known that a triangle like this is very important in financial wellness of talking about some very important pieces that actually make consumers successful.

So, you’ve been full-time with Cross Country for seven years and four months. Is that correct? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me on, first and foremost, Gordon.

Gordy, I really appreciate it. And it’s content like this that definitely helps consumers and those folks that we serve out there move forward. And some of your highlighted data points are just eye-opening and people need to hear them and people need to hear how they can be helped. So, thanks for having me on because obviously, that’s what we’re looking to do today, right? So, yeah, almost seven and a half years with Cross Country Mortgage, the number one retail distributed lender in the country, the number one distributed retail lender in the country.

That’s incredible. And again, just being in the counseling business and being in this space for a long time, it’s very important to speak to people in the industry that, number one, are effectively knowledgeable in things that are changing constantly in the mortgage space, the actual industry itself, the market. When people before COVID or during COVID, the interest rates were so low and now they’ve risen. And in my lifetime, rates have gone up and come down. And in the late 90s, they were much higher and people were accustomed to it because they were low for so long.

People now are shocked at where the rates are, but it doesn’t mean you need to be afraid. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make the investment. And we’ll get into some of that with you. But relationship building is important. And on this show, we pride ourselves with the guests we bring on because of trust and expertise.

So to give the listeners a little bit of understanding just about you, tell us a little bit about who you are. Yeah. So I’ve been in the mortgage industry now. This is my My 24th year, which is absolutely crazy to think about. Prior to that, I was in pharmaceutical sales for just a few short years after graduating college.

So the reason why I tell you that is 99% of my career has been in financial services by way of mortgage, helping people buy, sell, renovate, and refinance residential real estate. e. originating loans for clients, but I also lead and manage a group of salespeople that are fantastic as well. And I love doing that because it keeps me sharp and it helps them grow as well. So that’s kind of a little bit about me and my role here at Cross Country.

Most important thing to me, Randy, I’m gonna turn it to you in a second. I wanna tell you, Jay, and I don’t mean, we don’t pretend here on the show with these things that need to be faced in financial transactions. Sometimes the mortgage industry has had some trouble with brokers and how they handle people and not educating people. The one thing I wanna make perfectly clear to this audience is, that’s why I love working with you and your team because trust is a huge piece in this transaction. And the work that you guys do and the way that you’ve helped people that we’ve done together in different circumstances is truly admirable.

And I think that’s one of the most important pieces in dealing in a mortgage transaction is knowing that you can trust the people you’re working with. So I appreciate the work that you guys do. And it’s, again, I’m very grateful to have you on here to help educate people on the state of the mortgage industry. Yeah, no, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

And real quick, I wanted to give, you’re mentioning education and I wanna give a quick plug for my Homebuyer education class. It’s on Zoom. m. the second Tuesday of every month. You can be listening in your car.

You can be sitting at work or at home or wherever you’d like to be sitting. And I educate for about 45 minutes with Q and A on home buying and on how real estate and mortgage works at a high level. So I wanna promote that monthly Homebuyer education class because whether you’re thinking about buying in 2025 or 2026 or 2027, it really doesn’t matter. Jump on, get some education. And if you do end up closing with us, you also get a $250 credit as a result of that.

Yeah, in the bio of the episode here, I’m gonna put all that information. And so when we distribute out the show, it’ll be in the body. Because there’s nothing more important for people to put on their schedule, especially if they’re at that time where they’re really looking to start to make a move there. So I’m looking forward to it. And I’m gonna attend the next one as well.

We had talked about that. So I’m looking forward to joining you. Excellent. Jay, let me ask you a couple of questions. So obviously working with cross country, the number one retail lender in the country is a privilege to be able to be working for such a good company in the mortgage industry today.

What makes working with the Jay Talasano team and cross country, what makes it work so well for the clients? Yeah, well, I mean, listen, you’re partnering, candidly, my brand that I’ve built over 24 years, with the cross country mortgage brand. And the cross country mortgage brand is one that is, again, national lending in all US states and Puerto Rico. And when I started here back in 2007, I’m sorry, not 2007, 2017. 5 billion in production.

Mortgage market trends and rates

And I think this year we’re gonna close out, don’t hold me to this, but like 35 billion or more, right? So we’ve grown tremendously as an organization and my team has also grown tremendously. We take very, very good care of our clients. We communicate at a extremely high level. That is like one of our pillars is communication.

We communicate at a very, very high level. And the reason being, and I’m sure you guys know this, in anything that we do today, communication really isn’t great, right? Like, let’s be honest. If you have to get on the phone with your credit card company, you’re gonna be probably waiting for 20, 30, 45 minutes. If you have to get on the phone with an airline, 45 minutes, right?

So we pride ourselves on a very quick response time and quite candidly for new incoming clients, I want someone on my team to get back to them in 15 minutes. I’d love to say five minutes, but sometimes we’re all on the phone and that’s almost impossible. But communication is super important. So the partnership of myself and Cross Country Mortgage together and with my team being here, helps us do the best for our clients. And just to give you guys quick insight into our team, our team closed out 2024 up 24%, okay?

I have people who I see in my neighborhood and friends who say, oh man, you must’ve had a really bad year last year. Absolutely not. We’re up 24%. Why? Because of the team and because of the advice and the trust and the relationships we build.

Let me give a little proof on that because we’re in the industry of helping people when they’re struggling. We do foreclosure intervention. We do first-time home buyer. We do reverse mortgage counseling. In this shift, and I’m gonna ask you to talk about the market in a minute, because with the shift from COVID, with the interest rates, the market has frozen up a little bit.

And it’s my understanding that since the rates gone up in the six and 7% area, the industry has lost over 100,000 loan officers that have left the business because of one reason or another. But really what it comes down to is people weren’t able to make the earnings that they were used to. And what that shows about you and your team being up 24% is what that really means is the strong and effective survive. And it sounds like with cross country and with your leadership and with your team, that’s why you’re still thriving. Yeah, so the number of non-renewed licenses, Gordy, is somewhere around 100,000.

Who knows what the final tally will be? But the point being is, yes, the amount of originators that have been in the business has decreased tremendously. A lot of people jumping ship. And or you have people that are still licensed that have gotten a second job. So of those that are licensed, how many of them are actually full-time in the mortgage industry?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But when I started in this business, Gordy, back 24 years ago, the owner of the firm that I worked with said to me, when times get tough, the pie shrinks, the opportunity, but the amount of people eating from that pie also shrinks. And it’s exactly what we’re saying, right? So opportunity is less, but also the amount of people that are trying to tap into that opportunity is less. S.

consumer debt and the word budget and people don’t like budgets. First of all, I wanna say that I call it survival number. What is that number that I need to make every single month to cover my bills, right? And obviously I wanna make more than that so I can donate money and save money or what have you. But the bottom line is over the last few years when things were really, really good in 2020 and 2021, you saw loan officers buying super fancy houses, buying super fancy Porsches, buying all kinds of crazy things that they shouldn’t have bought, right?

Take me 15, 20 years ago, that was me, right? I’ve learned and I’ve changed and I see a lot of people that haven’t. So I love this business. I love waking up every morning. I love helping clients.

And my team absolutely follows along exactly with that mindset. Leadership, man, and congratulations on being able to report that success during what seems for others as a troubling time. So what’s the market at? Again, we’ve talked in the past about headlines and the news, and unfortunately people rely on that kind of stuff, but we all know a lot of it is just hype and trying to make people react. But let’s talk about the reality of the market.

Where are we at? Sure, so the reality of the market is that the housing market, from an appreciation perspective, right? Home price appreciation is still growing. We definitely have people out there that are talking about the housing burst and the housing bubble and this, that, and the other thing. But I’ll just give you a quick statistic.

6%. 5%, okay? 5%, those two numbers from valid sources. The home prices went up last year. Let’s just call it, on average, 4%.

And don’t hold me to that number, but if we take those two pillars, let’s just call it 4%. You know, the reality is is that interest rates right now are, call it, cresting 7% or even a little bit higher. The low point for interest rates was around September 18th of 2024, where we might’ve been in the fives or at 6%. And I’m talking, you know, 30-year fixed. From that point to now, mortgage rates are back up.

The one thing that we notice, and this is not we as in cross-country mortgage or Jay Talasano, but the one thing we as a industry know is that when interest rates come down, the amount of buyers goes up significantly, okay? And there are statistics out there that when rates come down 1%, the amount of demand goes up by three to 5 million buyers. The reality is we do see that, okay? But what we’ve also seen, so, you know, talk about the summer we were at seven, September we were at six, now we’re back to seven, right? In September, when rates dropped, we saw a ton more activity.

Why? Because people are like, oh my gosh, rates are down. Let me go get pre-approved and try to buy a home. But guess what? As rates have gone up, the activity is still there, right?

It might have come down a little bit, but it hasn’t come down a ton. So let’s just assume that over the next year, you see home price appreciation of 4% again. Now, I will tell you, if you haven’t seen, there are a lot of predictions on home price appreciation. I would say the majority are around the four to 5% range. 8%, but let’s just say that rates, that home price valuations go up by five, let’s call it 5% to keep it an easy number.

If you were looking at a $400,000 house and you don’t buy it, you’re gonna be looking at a $420,000 house, right? So you’re gonna lose that $20,000 upside right there by home price appreciation. Yes, interest rates are high, but if you can afford the payment, if you can afford the payment, don’t worry about the rate. If you can afford the payment, why wouldn’t you buy it today, pick up that appreciation and refinance when you can, right? Because let’s be honest, rent is all what?

It’s all interest. Your rent payment is 100% interest. You’re never gonna get that money back. You’re not building any wealth or any equity for yourself. So why not jump in now if you find the right house, if you can afford it, and if you’re not selling in one year, I always say, if you’re gonna sell in one year, it may not be the right thing to do because you’re gonna have sale costs.

But that’s kind of my perspective on the market, and that’s what we’re seeing right now from interest rates and activity perspective. I think one of the things that I recognized in just helping people through the span of this change is what has made people like clam up a bit about not being necessarily interested to buy or sell is that I think we got so used to the fact that you could get a much bigger house with a payment when the rates were lower. And sometimes people don’t correlate the two, but you just kind of made the point where, what’s the payment going to be for the size of the house that you’re looking for? And because people were spoiled for a while and being able to get a bigger piece of property slash house with a payment, now that rate brings it where the payments that they could afford is just a smaller house in some ways. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I mean, listen, I think the biggest thing that drives a residential real estate transaction is emotion, right? If you think about a commercial transaction, let’s say Gordy, you are a client going to look to buy a commercial property, a strip mall. Yeah. Are you going in there emotionally driven or are you going in there financially slash business driven? 100% financially slash business driven.

So you’re looking at the rate of return, right? For someone who is buying a single family or a condo or multifamily as a primary residence, it’s pretty emotional, right? The excitement of buying, et cetera. And also along with that becomes the emotion of, oh my gosh, rates are at 7% in 2021. I could have had a rate that was 3%.

You could have, but you didn’t buy and we can’t go back to those times. Right. So are you just going to keep pushing your goalpost out until rates come back down to 3%? You can do that. They may never come down there and you also may be paying $100,000 more for the same house.

Well, I think there’s a reason why residential real estate brokers tell people bake an apple pie before we do the open house. And when people walk in, they smell that apple pie and with commercial, there’s no baking of apple pies. They want to build a business, be profitable and make it work. So I totally get it. Absolutely.

Line of duty death benefit program

So go ahead, Randy. So Jay, I know, let’s talk a little bit more about cross-country mortgage. I know that cross-country, I mean, one of the reasons that, you know, I have my license at cross-country is, first of all, they believe in the affinity market. Second of all, they have products and services that, you know, a lot of other companies have, but then they also segment other products or services that maybe nobody else has. And I know, especially working with the HERO program, you have something called Line of Duty Death Benefit.

And that is a huge interest to a lot of the groups that we’re talking to on the HERO program. You know, whether it’s the military groups or the police and fire. So explain to us a little bit about that program and how cross-country is continuously looking for new products and services to make sure that, you know, they stay number one. Yeah, absolutely. The Line of Duty Death Benefit is something that we launched, I believe it was last year in 2024, or maybe the end of 2023, but it is a fantastic add-on to call it 90% of the loans that we do.

There are a few that we cannot couple this product with for various reasons, but 90% of the financing that we do, which is going to apply to most of your first responders, Randy, is this Line of Duty Death Benefit that we can add on. We’ll call it as an ancillary, but super important product that will protect the family of the first responder in the event of death. All on duty. Okay, so I think about the gentleman here in Connecticut that unfortunately and tragically was struck by a vehicle, a state trooper on 84 and was killed immediately. Okay, if he had a product like what we’re talking about and he may have something outside of mortgage, he might have life insurance or I’m sure there are benefits that these guys and gals get anyway.

But the line of duty death benefit tied to the mortgage will pay off a first responder’s mortgage up to $525,000 within four weeks so that the remaining spouse is not left with that burden or is not left with 525,000 of that burden. So if they had a $600,000 mortgage, they may still be left with 75,000 on that balance, but we’re gonna pay that off in about four weeks. Yeah, and then if that was the case, they could refinance that small balance and have a very nominal payment, right? Yeah, and or Gordy, like typically they have another benefit that they can use to cover that extra 75,000. No, that’s incredible, wow.

But it’s a huge thing. There is literally no cost to the first responder. Your interest rate isn’t higher, there isn’t an additional closing cost, none of that. We at Cross Country pick up the cost of it and it’s a fantastic benefit. I don’t know why anyone would choose to not come with us if they’re a first responder quite candidly.

No, look at the spirit of that. The Hero Benefit Network, all of that is geared towards taking care of our heroes, right? And that shows Cross Country’s dedication to adding something in, God forbid a tragedy happens that the family is taking care of to at least cut some burdens, which is tremendous. So that’s really incredible. Yeah, it’s just what it is, Gordy, it’s one more benefit that we’re looking at to giving our heroes.

And by working with the best of the best that’s out there and making sure that the products and services that they have to offer to our members is the best, then it’s a win-win for everybody. So congrats to Cross Country for coming up with that program. Yeah, especially when it doesn’t cost you anything. Exactly, when it doesn’t cost you anything, exactly. All right, so obviously the show is rolling along here and before we get to that point where we’re gonna have to end the program, it’s very important, I think, for you to talk about the line of products that are available for people at Cross Country Mortgage.

Mortgage products and common myths

Sure, so quite candidly, guys, we have basically any product under the sun that you need to buy a residential mortgage, residential property with a residential mortgage. I mean, really, I can confidently say that because in the last two years we added new construction loans. That’s a piece of the puzzle that we really weren’t doing here at CCM a few years back. But we basically have everything from your first-time buyer to your person that is needing a reverse mortgage that’s over 62 years old, okay? So from that first home until basically you’re at the end of your life cycle with a home, so to speak, we can handle anything in between.

So right now we are working on a pre-approval for someone who is self-employed. And you guys know, self-employed folks usually write off a lot of their income. But we have products that we can utilize for self-employed individuals as long as they own a certain percentage of the company where we can actually underwrite them based upon their gross revenue, okay? But ironically, on this same transaction that I’m talking about, it’s an investment property. So if we can’t qualify them on our self-employed product, we can go with our investment qualifying loan.

And the investment qualifying loan only qualifies you based upon the monthly expense of the property and the monthly rent of the property. So, Gordy, if we were buying a two-family house, you may not be able to qualify when you take into account all the other expenses you have, okay? But this product would allow you to, let’s say, take 100 Main Street in the town you live in. And if the mortgage payment is 2,400 and your rent is 2,400, you would qualify. And by the way, it can even be tighter than that where the rent is actually less.

But we have these products for all of these categories. And as a matter of fact, this is called the non-QM category. Our non-QM growth as a company in 2024 was absolutely staggering. I don’t have the specific number because I don’t run the group, but it was up, I think, thousands of percent, okay? This morning, I was reading an article on Housing Wire about 2025 is going to be the big year for the non-QM product.

And what I love about cross-country mortgages, we are literally always a step ahead, okay? So I read that article and I’m kind of sitting there on the treadmill kind of chuckling because I’m like, yep, we’re already 12 to 18 months into attacking this market because it is a market that people need help. Self-employed borrowers, they do need help with financing homes. So back to product, first-time buyer, self-employed, investor, renovation, construction, reverse, debt consolidation, home equity line. What else can you think of, guys, that you wanna ask me about?

But we really do have it all. I actually have a question and then I wanna see if there’s a couple of myths you’d like to bring up and maybe put to bed. But people get confused with down payment assistance programs. Can you kind of like overview how you are eligible for something like that? Sure, excuse me.

So down payment assistance programs, there are down payment assistance programs, everything from the local level, in other words, the town, right? So I live in the town of Fairfield, Connecticut. At times, the town of Fairfield, Connecticut may be offering some down payment assistance, okay? You have the local municipality level, you have the state level, right? So you have the state, like so for example, the state of Connecticut, we have a bond program called CHFA, the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority.

That is also a down payment assistance program, okay? Cross-country mortgage has multiple down payment assistance programs. The qualification and eligibility can be affected by a few things. It can be affected by your income. It can be affected by where you’ve lived.

And it can be affected by what type of property or what area you’re buying in. So for example, we’ll use the state of Connecticut program. They have their standard down payment assistance that’s been in effect for forever and ever and ever, okay? Let’s just say that someone’s buying a house. They will give you the down payment assistance to buy the house so that you’re actually not taking very much out of your pocket.

And that is basically in the form of essentially a loan where you are paying it back, okay? But it is assistance, which allows you to really basically take nothing out of your pocket. The state of Connecticut also has what’s called the time to own funds, which they’re giving funds to these buyers, which is forgivable over a 10 year period, okay? And you’ll never have to pay anything. The big but is you have had to have lived in the state of Connecticut for the last three years, okay?

And you can’t even live in the state of Connecticut for like, let’s say you lived in the state of Connecticut for 20 years, and you moved out of state for three months and moved back in state. Your clock starts all over when you move back in. Got it. So they’re very specific on that one and that one. So across the country, because I know folks may be listening to other parts of the area, you know, it’s going to vary by the local municipality and then the state.

So when the loan originators will help the customer find out what they’re eligible for, I’m assuming. Absolutely 100%. And I’ll tell you guys, I’m going to be 100% transparent with you. I know the CHFA program at a very high level. If someone is coming in and they need that product or that program, one of the folks on my team is super versed on it.

And I just bring him in. He literally works with me every day. And I just bring him in and say, hey, can you help Gordie out? Here’s what he’s looking for. Here’s what he’s looking to do.

It’s just not my personal area expertise, but it is our team’s expertise. That’s what a team is, right? Tom Brady wouldn’t be the GOAT if he didn’t have an offensive line and a system that brought people in to help him get all of his stats, all of his Super Bowls, etc. Correct. All right.

So if there’s a frequently asked question or myth when your team talks to people that you’d love to say to the world right now in our market today, what is it? Well, I can come up with definitely quite a few, but I’ll go over a few. One is, Jay, I think I should wait to buy a house. Okay. Why do you think you should wait to buy a house, Gordie?

Well, because interest rates are going to come down. We covered this earlier, but I want to just bring it back up to the top. Yes, interest rates may go down. And when interest rates go down, what happens? More buyers come into the mix, right, Gordie?

Yeah. And when more buyers come into the mix, what happens to home prices? They get pressure, right? If you, me, and Randy are all going to bid on the same house and multiply that times 10, there’s 30 offers on a house, it’s going to drive the price up. Because typically the seller is maybe not going to go at the highest price, because there might be some strings attached, but something higher than the lowest bid, right?

So it’s going to put pressure. So why wait? There really are very, very few reasons as why someone should wait. Okay. The second one would be, I don’t want to go talk to a mortgage professional because I don’t want to get my credit checked.

And you being in the credit business, you’ve probably heard that a thousand times or more. At Cross Country Mortgage, we are going to pre-approve you with a soft credit check. And I’m going to caveat it with nine and a half times out of 10, because there might be a small percentage of our loans that we have to do a hard check, but it’s very, very few. So 95% of the time, we are pre-approving you on a soft credit check, which means there is no hit or ding or effect on your credit. That is a huge one.

And people need to remember this and come to us because you don’t want to wait until you get to the house and decide you want to put it in a bid to start shopping for a mortgage or getting pre-approved. How long do the pre-approvals last for? So that’s a great question. Your credit report is typically going to last for 120 days. Your pay stubs may only be good for 30 or 60 days.

And your bank statements as well. But the reality of the situation is people also make that a bigger deal than it needs to be. It’s not that big of a deal, right? So good question. But I think the biggest one to talk about is how long does the credit last for?

But again, if we are re-approving you or re-pre-approving you, we can pull a new soft credit pull. So there’s never going to be an impact to your score. Got it. So I would say those are the two biggies. And then I would say after that is really going to be talking about our self-employed products that we talked about earlier.

I can’t get a mortgage because I’m self-employed and I write off all my income. Well, no, you probably can, right? We’re doing a loan for someone right now that’s worth a significant amount of money, but they want to take a million or two out of their property that they own. They’re worth a significant, I want to repeat, a significant amount of money. But if I look at their tax returns, I can’t qualify them for anything.

Understood. Yeah. But when I look at our self-employed product, they can qualify for almost anything. So they go from not qualifying for anything to almost qualifying for anything. This is the simple point of it all.

If you’re interested in buying a home, the worst thing they could do is start with one of your team members, get some questions answered, position what needs to be done or what needs to be looked into, and then find out what they’re eligible for. And again, that’s why I love having you on because of the trust that we have in your team and cross-country mortgage that they take care of consumers. And some people may not be ready and they’re going to find that out. And some people might have eligibility that they didn’t even have any idea that they might have access to. So the bottom line, I’m sure, is to talk to a loan officer and start putting your opportunity together based on knowing what’s available to you.

Yeah. So I just comment on that real quick. The only thing that’s going to cost you as a consumer is the time you have to spend with us to get your application and get your supporting document. That time might be in total one hour. Okay.

So if you have to spend one hour to get qualified for the largest financial decision of your life and to not be stressed out when you buy a house and to make sure that you’re and to make sure you’re buying the right house and that you’re not upsetting your emotions, right? Because what happens is like this is so yesterday, six o’clock, I get a call from a realtor. This is last night, six o’clock at night, call from realtor. Hey, I just showed a house to someone. They need to get their offer in by 12 tomorrow.

They haven’t started their mortgage application. Do you know how many times I hear that? I hear that a lot. m. on Sunday night.

m. Monday, right? So they’ve got to apply. They’ve got to get us their documentation. We have to crunch the numbers, figure out how it works.

We’ll do it. But think about how stressful that is versus if they started last Monday. Oh, God. Wow. Right?

Closing remarks and contact information

Yes. So spend a little time to keep your stress level low and set yourself up for success. The purpose of this show, sage advice, big transaction in people’s lives. So I appreciate all the information you brought. Ranney, do you have any more questions for Jay today?

No. I mean, I think we covered a lot of who CrossCountry is, who Jay Talasano team is. I think we pretty much covered a lot of it today. I’d love to have you on again in the coming months just to kind of give some update. Obviously, things change.

They come and go. You can’t ever have enough time for us to talk about getting people real information rather than holding on to myths and things that might prevent them from actually moving forward with the transaction and an asset that all people should have at some point in their life. So again, I completely appreciate that you’ve come on to work with our audience to give them this great information. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you guys having me here.

Shows like this and content like this are going to help the general public. Whether you’re buying a home or not, whether you have credit card debt or not, because or credit challenges or not, right? Because you always know someone who is in that situation. Absolutely. So if I listen to this podcast and then I can share an idea with my family member, I’ve now just helped them.

So this is fantastic, guys. Absolutely. And before we let you go, you want to let people know how they can find you. And I’ll definitely put all of this in the summary of the show so that people know how to get in touch with you. But why don’t you?

You also offer it so that people know how to get in touch. Yeah, so, I mean, listen, the best way that, the best way to get in touch with me is literally to call me because someone is always all over my phone, my text, my voicemail. So that’s 203-913-4832. And then otherwise, just, you know, go to your web browser and type in Jay Tolisano Cross-Country Mortgage, and you’ll find me there. You will always get someone who will help you and who will guide you.

And, you know, we wanna take great care of you. com. com, that’ll forward to all of my online presence. Awesome, I’ll make sure I have that all in the bio of the show. And again, Kent, thank you enough for joining us today.

This is incredibly important information. And I’m grateful, again, to be able to work with Randy to bring guests that are trustworthy and that are so knowledgeable to help consumers really cut to the chase when it comes to making some big decisions. So thank you so much for joining us. Look forward to working with you on the future webinars we have coming up. And again, this war to help people with financial wellness will never end.

And we’re glad to be in the long haul with you. Thank you guys, really appreciate you having me on. Take care, Jay. All right, Randy. So another amazing show.

I am so excited for 2025. It’s just so invigorating to speak to an expert that has just a wealth of information in a transaction that people are really concerned about, especially, again, I always get to the news headlines. They do damage to make people think that things are worse than they are. And when it comes to this transaction, it’s all about working with someone you can trust and that knows how to help you be positioned in the best place possible when making a purchase like this. Yeah, there’s no question about it.

I’ve known Jay for a lot of years and it’s an honor to be working with him and his team. Again, hugely important transaction in a person’s financial wellness journey. And we’re gonna be glad to have Jay back on again in the near future. So before we close up the show, you wanna tell people how to find you, how to learn more about Perk Plans? Yeah, a couple of things.

So first of all, you can contact me anytime at 609-471-0365. com. It’s also a great way to get me. com. At the same time I’m saying that, just a little plug for our financial wellness podcast.

We’re doing a lot of financial wellness webinars now for organizations that are out there. So if there’s any organization that is interested in setting up a financial wellness webinar for their company, give us a call. We’re happy to do one individually and customize one just for you. Absolutely, you and I have started that trend of working on these wellness webinars. And the perfect part about them is, it really covers the scope of everything that you would need to know you have available to you.

From the basics of financial education of budgeting, like we talked about earlier and journalizing spending, knowing about your personality type when you spend money. Those are all good pieces of information that people get to know. And for employers, the benefit is showing your employees that you care about them, right? This is a huge topic. People go to work to make money and to be successful and to feel financially free.

And that comes with some work and it comes with some education. And I also look at it like it’s a coaching of sorts where even though people are doing it, we’ll get people that come on the webinars and say, hey, I just wanna let you know that I’ve been working very hard at this and you’ve reinforced the work that I’m doing to get to the place I wanna be financially. So it could be that type of person. It could be a person that is just struggling and has been struggling and just trying to keep everything in order, making bill payments on times when the budget’s tight, that just realized that there might be some resources that they can use or turn to to get assistance when they’re in that kind of trouble. And even Jay had talked about, someone’s gonna know someone.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that someone listening to the show needs some of this, but they probably know a family member or someone that has voiced some kind of concern, some kind of need, some kind of wish, like I wanna be a homeowner someday. And that’s why continuously providing these resources is very, very important for consumers out there that are trying to get better at being financially well. Yeah, completely agree, Gordy. And yeah, I look forward to next week. Next week, we have a pretty cool guest to talk about cybersecurity.

God, that cybersecurity, man. If there’s anything that we’ve learned and it’s only getting worse, if we’ve looked at the history in the last couple of years of major companies that you know have the money to invest in being cybersecure, like the Citibanks of the world and Target, Experian, right? That’s an important conversation because I don’t think people recognize how important it is to be tuned in to making sure that you’re as secure as you can be. Again, some people take the attitude like, well, if they want my information, they’re gonna get it, right? If they can get it from Citibank, they’re gonna get it.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything we can to try to protect our information. And more importantly, if something does happen, know what steps to take and what’s available to get past it and get through it. So definitely looking forward to that. And before I go, I wanted to leave my contact information. And again, another great show, Randy.

Looking forward to next week. org forward slash Gordon dash Oliver. org. I’m happy to talk to anybody that is in need of help. If there are employers out there that would like to speak with Perk Plans about adding that benefit, or would like to speak to me about adding counseling and other services and workshops, you can contact either Randy or myself.

All of that information will be in the bio. And next week, again, we’re going to talk about cybersecurity, probably not a single more important topic about protecting your information. Especially if you’re going to be buying a home, you don’t want to let something like that get in the way of it because somebody has stole your information and caused problems. So we’re going to have a special guest on next week to talk about that. org.

We’re happy to have you on if you’re an expert in the industry to talk about things that will help the consumer. Until next week, this is Gordon Oliver with my co-pilot, Randy Nemiroff with Financial Wellness Today. ♪♪ The information provided in this podcast, Financial Wellness Today, is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial investment or legal advice. We are not licensed financial advisors and the content shared in this podcast should not be considered personalized advice or a recommendation to purchase, sell, or invest in any financial product or service from guests that we have. On the show, listeners are encouraged to consult with a qualified financial advisor, accountant, or legal professional before making decisions based on the information provided.

All investments and financial products involve risks, including the loss of principle. The opinions expressed in this podcast are for those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of the producers or affiliates of Financial Wellness Today. We make no guarantees about the completeness, reliability, or accuracy of the information discussed. By listening to this podcast, you acknowledge that neither the hosts, guests, nor the producers are liable for any actions taken based on this information.