From Soldier to Loan Officer: Nate Carver’s Inspiring Journey in Lending

Dylan Silver (01:31)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show, I have an Army veteran served as an officer in the 4th Infantry Division and today, a lender with Premier Lending and host of the Between Two Doors podcast based out of Pensacola, Florida by way of Texas, Nate Carver. Nate, welcome to the show.

Nate Carver (01:56)
Hey Dylan, thank you for having me on your show. I appreciate it.

Dylan Silver (02:00)
Absolutely. It’s great to have you. I always like to start off at the top by asking folks how they got into the real estate space.

Nate Carver (02:08)
Yeah, it’s never something you start off with as a goal for life and ⁓ I was uber driving and my last, literally my last passenger was a mortgage broker or banker. He owned a mortgage branch back during the refi boom and we were just talking. It was a very long ride and he said, hey, why don’t you come ⁓

once you go get your license and come work with me. And ⁓ I quickly learned how to spell mortgage and ⁓ I’ve been doing it like almost all over five and a half years now. And it’s been a fantastic journey.

Dylan Silver (02:54)
You know, I had a similar story about getting my real estate license. I was wholesaling and someone said to me, well, you you’d have more credibility if you became a real estate agent. So I said, yeah, I mean, how much can it be? So I looked it up, it was like X amount. I want to say it was like $500 to take the test. But little did I know that it’s really like $3,500 to become a real estate agent because you got to go to school and then you got to take the test and then it’s this and then it’s this and then broker fees and then.

MLS fees and the next thing you know you wake up and you’re $3,500 deep and you’re like well now I got to sell some houses and I know for the Loan originator RMLO. It’s a similar thing. How how intensive was it to become a loan officer?

Nate Carver (03:28)
You’re committed.

So I thought the course is – it’s reading intensive. There’s a lot of manuals. And of course, that stuff changes from one administration to the next, one Congress to the next, and even at the state level, right, so that all that stuff is constantly changing. So as a lender, you’re having to renew your license every year. It’s like 20 hours. That’s not that big of a deal.

The thing I found interesting was they really played on your your your your attention to detail In the on the test because they would do triple negatives ⁓ Like you know Do not not not run across the street. Okay, does that mean run across the street or not run across the city, right? And so they did that a lot on on a lot of the in that you know that weeded out a lot of people

Dylan Silver (04:20)
I do know.

I’m running. Yeah.

Nate Carver (04:35)
⁓ to be able the inability to catch that so that was it

Dylan Silver (04:39)
You know, for me,

when I ⁓ the test was so I have mixed reviews of this, but I stand by this. The Texas real estate exam is so hard that anybody who passes that, even if you don’t sell any homes, I have more respect for you because as a a wholesaler, as a wholesaler now, but specifically as someone who used to not have a real estate license, I kind of thought like all these people have real estate licensing in Texas. You know, I don’t know how many homes are selling. How hard could it be? Turns out it’s quite hard.

Nate Carver (05:03)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (05:09)
You have to understand mineral rights. You have to understand, you know, farm and ranch. You have to understand everything else about contract law. The contract is like 12 pages long. By the way, learn everything about the contract law, but you’re not an attorney, so you can’t use it. And then Texas specifically, exam is so different from the other exams that I’ve had brokers, you know, from New York, from other states who’ve told me that they took the Texas exam and they didn’t pass. So, I mean, I now have more respect for people who take those exams.

Nate Carver (05:36)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (05:39)
But walk me through what was the first six months and the first year like in the lending space once you got licensed.

Nate Carver (05:46)
So I was really lucky ⁓ in part. ⁓ I got in during the refi boom where for the first year I didn’t, I wrote refinance loans every day all year long and I never did any purchasing. So on one hand I was doing really great, on the other hand I had a lot to learn and I didn’t know I needed to learn. ⁓

the market demands were I mean I’d wake up I’d start writing refinance loans and by the time I clocked out at six seven o’clock at night I didn’t have any room left no more bandwidth to go do anything else but you know go back to sleep so um that all changed right when the refi boom disappeared and a lot of lenders got out of the business I was one of those lenders that

fell in love with what they were doing. was like, I’m going to figure out how to stay in this space. I’ve got some coaching and got a, you know, and just partnered up with a lot of really great people in the industry that are trustworthy and knowledgeable and willing to point me in the right direction and answer questions. And so I’m, that was very fortunate, probably

I would say the best decision I ever made was getting some coaching in the industry. It still pays off to this day. And ⁓ I did this transition. It took me about nine months to get out of that or to create a business out of nothing. ⁓ And then from there, it’s just been, okay, well, what new tools can I apply to my business? What design conversations to have?

Dylan Silver (07:27)
Yeah.

Nate Carver (07:38)
You know, what value adds do I bring to the table when I’m working with realtors or investors or attorneys or financial advisors? There’s a whole list of people that you can be a real partner with in the lending space. And then ultimately, how do you best take care of the client, the person essentially buying a house or even selling a house? I’ve got some tools there that I help implement with realtors.

Dylan Silver (08:05)
You know, when I think

about the lending space in general, I have had so many lenders on the show here, all different types of backgrounds, know, teachers, military, people who’ve gone from never thinking about real estate to buying a home and dealing with a lender and then thinking about like, hey, I could do this. I saw this person, I could do it. And one of the things that struck me is, and specifically now that I’m a licensed realtor, the lending portion is the most important part.

Nate Carver (08:16)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:34)
because you don’t get the house without the loan. So when things are going great, things are going great. I mean, I’ve talked to people who got in before the crash in 07, 08, and they were like, yeah, everyone had money. But then when things take a downturn, I’ve talked to people about like post Dodd-Frank and what happened and so on and so forth. Things are way trickier. And then also you see like an attrition, you see a thinning of the ranks, you see

Nate Carver (08:41)
Right.

Yeah.

Dylan Silver (09:02)
A lot of lenders maybe go, fortunately, doing something other than lending because things are harder, right? Whereas I’ve seen with real estate investors, I’ve seen it right now. I’m in ⁓ DFW. We were talking about how you’re from outside near, near McKinney, I believe, or Abilene, right? And ⁓ the, the trend that I’ve seen is a lot of people who are going from fix and flip to new build, or people who maybe have, I’ve seen it this way too, people who

Nate Carver (09:09)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (09:31)
on the investment side and they can’t do Airbnb any longer so they might do corporate housing or long term. And so they have that ability to pivot. But with lending, it’s a little bit trickier. It’s a little bit trickier because it’s not like you can just invent products out of thin air. Although we are seeing, you know, new products all the time like DSCR for instance.

Nate Carver (09:49)
Yeah, yeah, there’s a well, just to add another layer to that, you know, the current administration is looking at doing a couple of things. The CFPB may be going away, maybe certainly has been defunded. And then you’ve got ⁓ they’re calling the big, beautiful bill. There’s a lot of changes in that that just got approved. ⁓

And then there’s a push to move Freddie May and Freddie Mac out of conservatorship. What all that means is that there’s a lot of opportunity coming, a lot. And so if you’re an investor, if you’re looking to buy a home, period, there’s going to be a lot of opportunity. And so as a, you know, looking for a lender partner, I look at it like this, realist, you know, finding real estate, that’s fun and sexy, you know.

Dylan Silver (10:55)
I’ve that.

Nate Carver (11:18)
Whether it’s your first time home buyer or you’re buying an investment property, but the lending part, the paper and documents, if you get that piece down right, it’s going to save you tens of thousands of dollars ⁓ in the short term and in the long term. So ⁓ partnering with the great lender is a key piece. ⁓ And then that lender staying on top of his craft. ⁓

Being aware of what’s out there as a lender I network and so The the I had 167 different investors different products each investor has their own specific unique Requirement and that’s you know You get away from Fannie Mae and the further away you get away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You get a lot more

liberties on what you can and can’t do and so especially with the dscr it’s a fantastic product that’s Fairly new again on the market, but things kind of come and go, you know They fall out of favor because of the market pressures or what have you and then they come back and then you’ve got lenders that are ready to work on that or apply those loans and know how to do those

It’s a fantastic loan, especially if they’re done in-house. So I think it’d be a really fantastic loan for a borrower.

Dylan Silver (12:48)
Nate, I want to pivot a bit here and first I want to ask you about in-house lending. almost, I would say, not all, but almost all of the lenders that I talk with are brokering the loans, but they’re not lending on it themselves. And I think a lot of people may not even be aware that this is happening.

Nate Carver (13:04)
Yeah, so ⁓ The more complex so here’s how they move money around the country, right? So you do you do an FHA conventional VA loan? That lender that structures that loan is going to sell that to a big box bank and that’s how they move money around the country That’s how we keep from having credit crisis So when you look at unique proper loans like a dscr

⁓ Those investors or those lenders are looking to offload that loan product to somewhere else whether it’s a warehouse loan and some other ways of doing that and so That when they do that that means they’re not going to write the loan they may take a loan application But they’re not going to write and get all the documents. They’re going to basically sell up front this loan to somebody else

There’s no transaction, but they’re putting the loan to another lender that is equipped to write that loan and fund it. And when they do that, they’re brokering the loan to somebody else. There’s points associated with that. And either those points will be baked into the loan or they’ll be added to the loan. And it’ll be a line item on your closing disclosures. ⁓

If you have someone that’s writing the dscr and others types of loans in house, there’s no points No, no points then then yeah, then if you were buying down the interest rate, which is always an option on any loan But you don’t have yeah, so you end up being able to as an investor I have seen i’ve seen not counting not the points for the interest rate. I’ve seen the points for the transaction be as

Dylan Silver (14:38)
You’re saving money.

Nate Carver (15:00)
little as a point and half, I’ve seen it go over three ⁓ on loan estimates that have been brought to me. that’s something to be aware of.

seen all kinds of stuff because it’s not RESPA. Generally you don’t have to deal with RESPA compliance. so there’s…

Dylan Silver (16:01)
Now

our points one interest rate percentage or is it something entirely different?

Nate Carver (16:07)
Something entirely indifferent. So point – how do we get – not getting the leads on this one. So basically the lender decides how much – how – what – so let’s say they look at their interest rate in eighths of a full interest rate point. So from six to six and an eighth, they may charge – pull a number – $1,000 to go

from 6 and 1 8th to do a buy down of the interest rate to 6. That’s not a full point. A full point would be one interest rate. it’s not really, I I guess you could figure out an equation of how much would it cost to go one whole interest rate lower if you were doing a buy down. But I see that. I won’t say I never see that.

Usually we’re talking about bringing down an interest rate about a quarter point half point usually ⁓ And that’s that’s not quite There it’s not going to be a full point buy down like a full interest rate buy down to get to that

Dylan Silver (17:13)
Ryan.

I want to pivot a bit here, Nate, our rooster’s going off in the background here, and ask you about the regionality of lending versus being able to lend across state lines. I think a lot of the lenders that I talk with are lending all over the country. But as an agent and as someone who works a lot with wholesalers, I also think that there’s a lot of understated, not emphasized value in being a regional lender who has a strong presence in a specific area.

Nate Carver (17:26)
Okay. I hear that.

Dylan Silver (17:54)
with with market knowledge of that area as well. I don’t often hear people talk about that, but I’m curious to get your perspective. I mean, you’re out there in Florida now, but I know you’ve got the Texas background as well.

Nate Carver (18:08)
Yeah, so I hear okay, there’s pros and cons to all of that and I’d say the old school lending old school lending was you you lent you lent in like a 60 mile radius of where you lived ⁓ pre-covid post-covid everything changed and the lenders

A good example, I’ll just use it myself. I’m licensed in five different states. And in those five different states, I really focus in geographical areas. Florida, for example, where I’m at now, I focus in Northwest Florida, in Central and South Florida. ⁓ Texas, I focus in North Texas. I know the areas because I listen to my, I talk to my real estate agent partners. I know what they’re hearing or what they’re experiencing. Is it anecdotal?

Maybe um I don’t control what the markets do but I do know my product and you know I can you know how to manipulate the product To help get someone into owning that property um so that that’s where I Defer from doing it the old way of being But I I want to be known as the mortgage mayor of my area Uh, you know, you know, I want to be the guy that people think about

they’re thinking about mortgages in my area and I am but what’s my area? ⁓ It’s a bigger pie. As long as you have access to information you could pretty well define your own area I think. ⁓

Dylan Silver (19:34)
Sure.

Mortgage Mayor,

is that trademarked? Someone’s gotta trademark that.

Nate Carver (19:53)
Nobody needs trademark that I heard that I think I heard that from Steve Kyle’s he’s a a he’s in the lending space in Bardot

Dylan Silver (20:01)
That is phenomenal mortgage

mortgage mayor. I don’t know if you can get any better than that. Nate we actually are coming up on time here. Where can folks go if they want to learn more about premier lending or if they want to reach out to you.

Nate Carver (20:14)
Yeah, if you’ve got questions and want to explore investing or buying a home or options when it comes to real estate and making your your dollar go further natecarver.com n-a-t-e-c-a-r-v-e-r This is my website. All my links are right there. Social media links are all right there my phone number 972-832-5761 you’re certainly welcome to call or text me

And I will help build you a clear mortgage plan whether you’re buying your first time home or you’re looking to refinance or buy other properties. I’ve walked the walk and talked the talk. I’ve done investing myself, single family to multi-family. it’s a wonderful way to accumulate wealth.

Dylan Silver (21:08)
Nate, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Nate Carver (21:11)
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Dylan.