Navigating The Mortgage Landscape: Empowering Your Homeownership Journey

Stephen S. (00:03.502)
Welcome to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs and service providers If you’re joining us for the second third or hundredth time welcome back And if you’re joining us for the first time you’re in for some immense value either way I’ve got Greg Hamby in the studio today and we’re gonna talk about his experience as a mortgage lender He had a stint as a land man in the oil and gas industry as well. And now he’s focused on helping veterans

investors and first time home buyers to secure their loans and get into a better situation. So we’re going to hop right into it. But before we do, just remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers and real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5x their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. That being said, Greg, welcome to the show.

Greg Hamby (00:54.455)
Well, that was awesome. Thanks, Stephen. Happy to be here.

Stephen S. (00:56.854)
You bet man, I’m super excited. Well, I’m glad you’re here. Tell us a little bit for our audience and even for my sake, I saved this question for right now, but what, I know you had kind of a split in your career, right? Where you were in mortgages, got out and you’re back in it now. Can you just give us a little bit of background on how you got into real estate and specifically the mortgage space in the beginning and then what led you to where you’re at now?

Greg Hamby (01:25.379)
Sure, that’s an interesting question. born and raised a native Texan, I won’t go into all those details, but didn’t have a lot of direction, didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I was younger, right? I’m sure that’s not uncommon. I mean, you every now and then you meet somebody who’s like, I’ve been wanting, I wanted to be a doctor since I was six. Now I’m a doctor, I’m like, great, cool. But I never knew what I wanted to do, right?

went to college, finished college, still didn’t know what I wanted to do, figured I wanted to do something in sales. I did. I got into recruiting doctors in healthcare, you know, people in healthcare, mainly doctors, right? And it paid pretty well, but I absolutely hated it. And I hadn’t even been there a year. And I lived in Dallas back then and I worked in Las Calinas. Anyway, I was at

I was at a gym and I was complaining. I was complaining in the sauna after my workout to somebody I knew about my job. And there was a guy that overheard me and he’s like, man, he started asking me a lot of questions. And he said, I think you’d be a perfect fit. I’m a manager at a mortgage company. Won’t you, won’t you get my card when we get out of here and call me tomorrow. And so anyway, I went in, went through interview, panel interview, met with the vice president.

And I got hired and went through their training program. It was a big national call center. It was in Dallas. Company doesn’t exist anymore, but it got my foot in the door. I really liked it. Started making money. Realized it was helping people. We did a whole lot of consolidation loans. That company actually did a lot of second mortgages. And they went out of business. And then I went to work for a small mortgage bank in North Dallas.

did a lot of, started doing a lot of cash out refinances, worked with people with bad credit, really bad credit, and saw that it was helping people, right? Like turning people’s lives around, completely transforming their financial situation. It made me feel good. And then that was really my focus, like in the first half of my mortgage career. During that…

Greg Hamby (03:45.763)
12 years or whatever it was, I maybe did one or two purchases and I thought it was a terrible experience and I was like, I don’t like dealing with real estate agents, I like dealing directly with my client and that’s it. And so then I was out, right, for at least 10, 10 or 11 years, worked in oil and gas and when I decided I wanted to come back,

It’s totally different, right? Everything changed because I got out like with the meltdown, right? 08, 09, huge debacle. Everything fell apart. Come back. All the rules are different. Subprime lending doesn’t exist anymore. mean, we have non QM, nothing like it used to be. Like if you call me now and tell me you have a 500 credit score and you want to buy a house, I’m like.

Okay, good luck. mean we could do an FHA loan with 10 % down, down to 500, but people that need FHA usually don’t have 10 % down, right? So…

Stephen S. (04:41.614)
Sure.

Greg Hamby (04:42.691)
We know how to make loans work. love, I now love doing purchases. I really enjoy the realtors I work with. We try to truly partner up. And I mean, we help anybody, right? We help people that have bought their third home, that have turned their others into investment properties that are really starting to know what they’re doing. But I mean, we help a lot of first time home buyers and do a lot of FHA loans and we do a lot of VA loans.

And there’s nothing more fun than doing VA loans for fellow veterans and especially if somebody’s got 100 % VA disability and they’re not paying property taxes. I mean, it is really sweet to, and I always leave it for a surprise, right? Show up to closing and see them get a check back from the title company. Biggest one I’ve seen so far was just a little over $7,400 back. And the guy literally jumped up and down and started screaming and cussing in a good way, right?

good way but he was like he looked at his girlfriend he’s like we going on vacation

Stephen S. (05:48.418)
Wow, that’s incredible. Now, how did you, when you got into the mortgage industry and obviously you’re a veteran yourself and focusing on some of those VA loans, especially like with the 100 % VA disability, what are some things that veterans don’t actually realize that they have access to through that?

Greg Hamby (05:49.677)
So.

Greg Hamby (06:10.395)
I think there’s a lot that people don’t realize. People that are like, well, I can’t use my benefits because it was only in the reserves or the National Guard or whatever. It doesn’t matter. So if you served, you should have eligibility, right? Unless you were in…

for very short period of time and got out with a dishonorable discharge or something really unique, you have eligibility. You can buy a home without a down payment. And then on the flip side, I think some of the misconceptions is that

They hear zero down payment and sometimes people think that means I don’t need any money. I don’t need any money at all. You know, the government’s gonna pay for it. Well, yeah, I mean, that’s not the case, right? You don’t have a down payment. There’s still closing costs. And if you’re not, you have an escrow, right? Like everybody’s gonna have to pay at least a year upfront of homeowners insurance. Even if you’re 100 % VA disability and you don’t pay any property taxes, that’s great. That’s gonna save you a bunch of money.

Stephen S. (06:54.562)
Hmm.

Greg Hamby (07:19.045)
at closing in every month on your payment, but you’re still gonna have to pay upfront 12 months of homeowners insurance. And these days that’s gotten pricey, right? But everybody also has to put down earnest money, right? Forget about down payment, right? So that’s almost 100 % of the time, 1 % of the sales price. So let’s say the average sales price is 400,000, you need at least four grand.

Stephen S. (07:30.254)
Hmm.

Greg Hamby (07:48.643)
And then you’re have to pay for your your appraisal Which those have gone up, but they’re between 650 and 800 dollars and you don’t have to have a home inspection, but

It is a terrible idea to buy a home without having a home inspection, right? So that’s going to be another $375 out of pocket. The good news is like, you know, your earnest money, your option fee is going to come back to you at closing. It’s going to count towards your total closing costs. So in the case of a veteran with no money down, and if you’re not collecting for property taxes, and I mean, we’re in a buyer’s market, right? It’s become a buyer’s market. So sellers are contributing to

closing cost. We had a young lady who is 100 % VA disability. She’s a teacher now here in Houston. She bought a home in February. She had to put $3,000 down in earnest money. She got a check back at closing for $4,000.

The other thing that we do with a lot of people is we have someone who’s part of our team who’s a credit expert. like with that particular lady on her loan, she worked with her and she didn’t have a lot to fix, but her score was horrible. So we started that loan.

We have a handful of lenders that will do manual underwriting, right? And her credit score was literally 543. So yeah, we were not getting automated approval, right? About halfway into her loan, most of her conditions had been cleared, but we were still waiting on the appraisal. The appraiser was taking his sweet time, but we still closed a couple of days early.

Greg Hamby (09:38.475)
The credit lady had worked with her and she was able to pay some of her credit cards down and take care of another little, peddling little thing, but it made such a huge difference. We re-pulled her credit and she had gone up to 632 within a very short period of time. So I picked that loan up, sorry lender, picked that loan up from that lender, moved it to another lender, and we closed early and she went from an 8.

0.125 rate that was costing several thousand dollars because when you have really bad credit You get the highest rate on the rate sheet and that rate is not always what we call par in other words She was having to buy to get that interest rate

Stephen S. (10:23.107)
Hmm.

Greg Hamby (10:23.669)
So we were able to get her down to 7 % and she got $4,000 back at closing. So we really try to work with our buyers and give them the best situation in the timeframe we have. I mean, if she’d been under the gun and it wasn’t gonna work, we would have closed it where it was. But instead of her having to pay about…

$3,800 out of pocket at closing she got $4,000 back so Honestly, I think you know if it come down to it She probably would have been willing to push the closing back a little bit. I mean that’s us what? $7,800 difference right in your pocket in your budget so

Stephen S. (11:06.808)
Right.

which is nuts. What are some of the things that you do yourself personally that like differentiates you from other LOs that have, you know, like the same access to the same products and stuff? What are some of those unique things you do?

Greg Hamby (11:21.395)
Sure yeah, yeah, honestly, I think it comes down to You know to service caring the relationship Doing what’s best for the client right a lot of people do this just for the money or you know, maybe they do care but Maybe they charge a little more right

And we may not be the cheapest, but I do what’s best for the client. We are a broker and a correspondent lender. So often as a correspondent lender, so if you’re a broker, you’re locked into a comp plan, compensation plan, right? So most of our loans we close as a correspondent lender, which means you’re not locked into a comp plan.

Well, some people look at that like, that means I can make more money, right? I look at that as I can be a lot more competitive. I can give you a better deal. And of course, know, since it’s on a percentage scale or we call it points, Most brokers are, I don’t wanna get too heavily into this, but their comp plan is 2.75, 275 basis points, right? So.

Let’s say, like I’m working a purchase right now in San Antonio and it’s a conventional loan. Well, if I was just brokering that loan and I’m gonna get paid 275 basis points, he’s gonna have terrible interest rate. I’m actually doing his loan where I’m making one point, 100 basis points. He’s extremely happy, it’s very good interest rate. I might adjust that a little bit and I’ve talked to him about this to where…

Basically would make a point and a half that I would give him a point towards closing or I mean, sorry half a point So it would contribute $3,000 towards his closing cost out of out of our Profit right and I would still make make you know my one my one point my one percent basically

Stephen S. (13:28.27)
Yeah, for sure. Now, why do you do that in that type of situation? Like, what makes you decide to do that?

Greg Hamby (13:34.051)
To the client. Yeah. So I mean, you know, I probably wouldn’t do that if it’s a $300,000 amount, right? So it’s kind of subjective. He’s buying a $650,000 house, putting 5 % down. It’s good for him. It’s good for his agent. It helps my relationship with that real estate brokerage. And I mean, he’s super happy, right?

I know that he was shopping me and so I mean I think I basically won the bid if you want to look at it like that.

Stephen S. (14:09.388)
Yeah, for sure. No, that totally makes sense. Yeah, I wanted to like some clarity because I didn’t know that was actually a thing. now with with what you’re doing. Yeah, go ahead.

Greg Hamby (14:17.741)
Well, if somebody works, not to interrupt you, but if somebody works in a retail shop or for a bank, it’s not a thing. It’s not possible. If somebody works for a broker, they can set their comp plan lower, but it has to be consistent, right? So then they’re stuck.

Stephen S. (14:24.813)
Hmm.

Greg Hamby (14:38.037)
in most broker shops like I looked at this the other day with a big wholesale lender and they were saying like 88 % of all their broker shops are set at like 2.75 and then there’s a small amount at like two and a half and then two and a quarter and then two points and then 1.75 and they were like there’s nobody out there you know there’s like there’s two people she was telling me there’s two people out of thousands of loan officers that do business with them that have set their comp plan at one

So as a correspondent lender if I’m offering that guy and I’m charging him one I’ve beat them, right? so they don’t even have a chance because

When you pick your comp plan and you’re a pure broker and that’s all you do, you can change it, but you can’t change it more than like once or twice a year. You can’t say, I’m gonna charge two points on this loan and then tomorrow I’m gonna charge two and a half on this one and next week I’m gonna charge one on this one. You can’t do that, like you’re stuck.

Stephen S. (15:43.65)
Hmm, what are some of the mistakes you see?

Greg Hamby (15:45.603)
And we are recruiting and hiring, by the way, if somebody finds that that payment, you know, that structure, you know, attractive, reach out to me because we’re hiring. So.

Stephen S. (15:59.65)
There you go. What are some of the mistakes you see people making when they’re coming in to get some loans? Or what are some of the things that someone could maybe avoid that would help them be in a better situation?

Greg Hamby (16:13.631)
I think before and during, I think the best plan of action is to just get with us and do a full application and let us, you know, we’ll talk through it. If there’s been some bad stuff, right? It’s best to have a conversation and maybe do an application, but maybe not pull credit right away.

You know, people are always worried that when they fill out the application, because it’s online, is it automated? Does it pull my credit right away? A lot of people assume it does. It does not. I mean, and the cost has gone way up, right? Recently. You know, two years ago it was $30 to pull a TriMerge. Last year it went to 60 and now it’s close to 100.

Stephen S. (16:37.998)
Hmm.

Stephen S. (16:46.978)
Mm.

Greg Hamby (17:00.053)
I tell you, I’m not just running around pulling people’s credit left and right, because every time I do now it’s almost $100. So, what they can avoid is…

You know, obviously, make all your payments on time, but you may or may not want to pay something down or off. It might not be beneficial. And if it’s pulling away from the money that you have for down payment and closing costs, it could be detrimental, right? The other thing is, if you have accounts paid off, don’t close them out. Don’t close them out, keep them open, because if you pay something off and then close it out, your credit score is gonna drop.

Stephen S. (17:38.242)
Yeah, you know, it’s so funny you say that because that is actually something that even I myself had sort of learned somehow or I feel like I had known it at one point and just forgot about it. And I was really excited.

in the last couple months because I just got to a point where I had enough saved in kind of like our auxiliary fund where I’m like, I can go pay my truck off, right? Now I don’t have to my truck payment anymore. Just had a fourth baby, right? My wife is in a small SUV. It’s worked for our family. Thanks, I appreciate it. But so we’re in a smaller SUV, mid-sized SUV really, a Pilot, right? But now we’ve got

Greg Hamby (18:15.927)
Congratulations.

Stephen S. (18:27.918)
three kids in car seats and we’re like, this is no longer functional. And so, so we’re like, you know, we should probably go and get you a new vehicle. And so I’m thinking to myself, I’m like, man, I’m about to pay the truck off. Her car has been paid off for, you know, years. And, but we got to go get a new one. And I’m like, well, at least I could pay the truck off and then it wouldn’t be as bad because we’d still only have one car payment. But then it hit me and I, and I was like, you know what? It actually would probably be smarter.

for me to go get her car first, then pay mine off because that way my credit won’t drop, you know, 30 points when I pay my truck off before we go get another load. So if it’s gonna drop regardless when I get that new one, I might as well wait to pay mine off.

Greg Hamby (19:07.48)
Yeah.

Greg Hamby (19:11.522)
Yeah.

Greg Hamby (19:16.578)
Yeah.

Stephen S. (19:16.586)
Until we get her a new one. So that’s one of those things like I think that you’re mentioning there that people aren’t cognizant of of like This is why your mortgage mortgage officer is why your realtor says do not celebrate by buying a house And right before closing going and getting a new car because that will screw the whole deal up

Greg Hamby (19:33.963)
It will. And if you want new furniture in your home, if you’re gonna finance it, wait until after you close. Always wait until after you close to buy anything big, Like car, furniture, anything. Don’t be charging a bunch of stuff on your credit cards. Don’t be opening new accounts. Don’t be closing accounts. And then clearly, before, if you’re thinking about buying a home,

Don’t change jobs, especially do not, like if you have a W-2 job and you’re employed and you want to become self-employed, you want to open a business, great. Buy the house first because they’re going to look for two years of tax returns as you being self-employed. so if…

Stephen S. (20:16.813)
right.

Greg Hamby (20:23.363)
I mean, I’ve seen this so many times. Of course, there’s nothing you can do, right? When somebody calls in, you know, want to buy a house, I’m ready to buy house. Great. You know, and you start asking questions and they’re like, yeah, I’m making a ton of money. I just opened my new business like three months ago. And I’m like, really? Like, were you employed somewhere else before? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, until I just quit my other job like, I don’t know, two months ago in my grade. Yeah, we’re to have to wait at least a year.

at least a year of bank statements to put 20 % down. Or if you want a regular conventional loan, FHA loan, it’s gonna be two full years of tax returns. If you want 3.5 % down or 5 % down, right? If you’re good with 20 % down, we can do a year’s worth of bank statements.

Stephen S. (21:04.737)
now and so

Stephen S. (21:13.784)
What are some of the benefits that people might not know about of the more you put down, such as like with property insurance potentially, PMI, things along those lines that the higher you put down, the lesser other of those things may be. What are some of those more unknown things until you like actually start the process?

Greg Hamby (21:30.563)
Sure, sure. Well, private mortgage insurance is going to be required on a conventional loan unless you put 20 % down, right? Do you have one particular lender that in some cases it’s not there with 15 % down? But I wouldn’t bank on that, right? Because most of the time it’s 20%.

That is just a fee that protects the lender, right? It’s insurance that protects the lender in case you go into default and they foreclose on you. It makes sure that the lender doesn’t lose money. And people say, well, it doesn’t help me at all. I mean, they’re not going to give me the loan without it. So in a way it does. You know, with FHA, it is always required. It doesn’t matter how much you put down.

Stephen S. (22:19.406)
Sure.

Greg Hamby (22:26.115)
when you pay it down below the 80%, it won’t go away. With FHA, it never goes away. You have to refinance out of it into a conventional loan or a non-QM loan or a VA loan. I don’t know why you’d do a FHA loan if you have VA, but anyway. I think another misconception a lot of times with veterans kind of jumping back, well, we’ll go ahead with FHA, right? Is a lot of times people say,

Stephen S. (22:31.074)
Hmm.

Greg Hamby (22:54.657)
I’m not a first time homebuyer. And I’ve even heard realtors say this. yeah, my client can’t get an FHA loan. I’m like, why not? Do they have one now? Well, no, but they bought a home before. Who cares? Doesn’t matter. You know, you could have bought five homes before. You could still own a home currently and buy a house with an FHA loan. There are rules on that one.

You know, if you have a current FHA loan and you’re going to buy a house in the same area, you can’t do that. It has to be over 100 miles away. Meaning, you know, like, hey, I’m being relocated or there’s a reason. But just because you want a nicer house in your same area, then you’re going to have to use a conventional loan or another type of loan.

But if you have a conventional loan, I mean, you can buy, and you want to move, you can buy the house across the street using an FHA loan. That doesn’t matter. With VA, another misconception is that you can only have one VA loan at a time. But you can have two. You can have two at a time. And there is no distance. In fact, they usually don’t.

look at or care, know, are you moving up or down in price. I had a retired Colonel last summer that bought the house behind his, you know. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the amount of eligibility because VA doesn’t have a loan limit. They’ll go into what’s considered jumbo loan limits, right? They’ll go up to probably about three or four million depending on the lender that we work with. But

Conforming loan limits matter in this case, which probably for Dallas down here in Houston, it’s $806,500. That factors into a formula. It’s not dollar for dollar, but your two loans, there’s no way it can exceed that, right? There is a formula and it’s pretty close. So like I have a friend, he currently owns a home with his VA loan.

Stephen S. (24:56.269)
Mm.

Greg Hamby (25:04.419)
He bought it for $300. It goes with what eligibility you use, not how much he owes now. He owes $290, but it wouldn’t matter if he owed $100. They’re going to look at the $300 price that he bought it at. He wants to buy another house now for $650. That’s not going to work, right? If he was buying another house for $350 or $400, we’d be good. I think when I plugged him into the spreadsheet, it was like $427 or something that they would let him.

keep his current VA loan and have a new one. But the fact that he wants to buy so high, we’re going to have to refinance his current loan into a conventional loan. And then he’s going to have to, then he can use his VA loan to buy the new home with no money down. So.

Stephen S. (25:51.736)
Mmm. Gosh. So there’s rules and there’s rules about almost every scenario. It’s almost like every scenario is different.

Greg Hamby (25:59.553)
yeah, yeah, yeah, because the guidelines are like, you gotta do this. And then it’s like, but here’s an exception. Right? So that’s how underwriting is.

Stephen S. (26:08.536)
totally makes sense for sure. Well, Greg, Greg, we appreciate you joining us today. If anyone wants to learn more about you or what you’re working on, where should they go for that?

Greg Hamby (26:20.035)
Well, the name of my company is Your Favorite Lender. So we have yourfavoritelender.pro. We have a YouTube channel. I don’t know that that’s going to be super helpful, but you can reach me at 713-824-3473. That’s my direct line. Email is Greg at yourfavoritelender.pro. Website is great, right? Yourfavoritelender.pro.

I’m on Instagram a lot. If you want to see my stuff, I have a bunch of videos. have explanations, tips and tricks. You can DM me through that. It’s just Greg.Hamby. We are part of EaseMortgage, but we are allowed to advertise in my company name, which is your favorite lender.

Stephen S. (27:04.936)
Well, there you go and all seven million of our listeners are not gonna give you a phone call so you you did it to yourself Now anytime somebody drops their phone number on there, that’s what I tell them Hopefully you won’t get that man. We don’t have seven million yet, right? man. Well, Greg, thanks Yes, sir. Well, thanks for thanks for joining us again everyone I hope you enjoyed today’s show if you got as much value out of it as I did I know you’re gonna be off to the races. So we’ll see you on the next episode

Greg Hamby (27:10.211)
Call away!

Greg Hamby (27:18.691)
Yeah

Greg Hamby (27:23.019)
Yeah, you’ll be there soon.

Greg Hamby (27:35.14)
Thanks Stephen.