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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Kristen Knapp interviews Tony Candalino, known as Tony the Mortgage Guy, a mortgage broker with Certified Mortgage Planners in Central Florida. Tony shares his personal journey into the mortgage industry, driven by his past experiences with homelessness and a passion for helping others achieve homeownership. He discusses the importance of investment properties, the differences between working with a mortgage broker versus a traditional bank, and current market trends regarding interest rates. Tony emphasizes the need for a comprehensive financial picture when advising clients and offers practical advice for navigating the mortgage landscape.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Tony The Mortgage Guy (00:00)
Yeah, so, you know, we’re hearing a lot of stuff in the news about, interest rates are coming down and guess what they have. So we’re really excited about this opportunity as we come into the end of this year and the beginning of next year.So I think we’re in a really unique and interesting window, and it may only be three to six months where interest rates are come down, but the buyers haven’t flooded into the market yet. So we still have the ability to negotiate with sellers for price or for concessions for closing costs and get the low rate. But as more and more buyers start to realize this, I think more and more buyers are going to come into the market and it’s gonna flip from a buyer’s market back to a seller’s market.
Kristen Knapp (02:12)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Anthony Candalino who’s a mortgage broker at Certified Mortgage Planners and they’re in Central Florida. Thank you so much for being here. And you are known as Tony the Mortgage Guy. Do you prefer Anthony or Tony?Tony The Mortgage Guy (02:23)
Absolutely, it’s a pleasure.I prefer Tony because usually if somebody’s calling me Anthony that means I’m in trouble somewhere.
Kristen Knapp (02:35)
Tony it is. Well awesome. Well we’re gonna get all into kind of the landscape of the market and you know maybe common questions you have about borrowing money which will be awesome. So let’s go back to the beginning. How did you get in this industry?Tony The Mortgage Guy (02:50)
a couple of things, you know.When I was in high school, I was homeless. so, helping folks own a home has been my kind of passion ⁓ recently. was when my senior year, my parents split up and one went to Pennsylvania, or we were in Pennsylvania, one went to Wisconsin, one went to Florida, and I stayed in Pennsylvania. I thought I was smarter than I was, and ⁓ it said, I could do this, I could live on my own. And I did graduate high school, but it was not fun couchsurfing
for half my senior year, but ⁓ just not having a place to live really created a passion for what I do right now. So, and then recently, like obviously I had a whole life since then and about 10 years ago, my sister-in-law said that you need to get into this business. And that’s when I reignited that passion. And again, like 10 years ago, we got into this and it’s been ⁓ no holds barred ever since.
Kristen Knapp (03:46)
That’s amazing. So you had a passion for it when you were younger and then you’ve kind of reignited it now.Tony The Mortgage Guy (03:53)
Yeah, I mean,I think the reigniting of my experience in the past was kind of what helped me reignite the fact that this is something that I want to do for other people. I don’t want people to have to go through what I went through. So ⁓ yeah, that’s what really drives me every day to make sure that everyone can own a home.
Kristen Knapp (04:10)
Yeah, I mean that’s a really great story and passion to have. It comes from the heart for sure. And you also have some investment properties as well, correct?Tony The Mortgage Guy (04:20)
I do, I do. So, you know, I think my biggest regret in my…home buying experiences as ever selling a home. So I bought and sold homes several times and then after my third time of selling my home, I realized, well, if I just kept those homes and rented them out, I’d be way more wealthier than I am right now. So ⁓ at that point when I made that realization, I said, well, I’m never selling a home again. ⁓ now when I buy a new home, I keep it, I rent it, whether it be long-term rentals or Airbnbs, we’re doing a couple of those too. So yeah, that’s been my
my evolution in owning real estate.
Kristen Knapp (05:47)
Yeah, I mean that’s a good perspective on it. I feel like everyone has different goals within the real estate investing world, but I think that there’s a lot to be said about buying and holding for sure. Would you get into that before you started being in the mortgage-broking industry?Tony The Mortgage Guy (06:03)
Yeah, well, no, actually, I think getting into the industry is what made me realize I should have never sold my other home. So it’s been over the course of the last 10 years that I’ve been able to acquire more and more properties and knowing the different ways to get them financed and know that, you know, you don’t always have to have a ton of money down to be able to own investment property. So it’s just in the way you structure it and the way you plan things ahead of time to be able to do that.Kristen Knapp (06:31)
Yeah, I would love for you to drill into that a little bit, because I think that’s a very common misconception. ⁓ Yeah, just kind of expand on that, that you don’t need that much money down.Tony The Mortgage Guy (06:42)
Well, obviously, if you’re already a seasoned investor and you’re just looking to straight up just buy another investment property, ⁓ then the typical 20 to 25 % down does apply. However, there’s a lot better strategies at doing that if you plan ahead to where, okay, the next house I’m going to buy is not my forever home. I’m going to live in it for a year, maybe fix it up along the way, and then look at buying my next home, and then I’ll turn that into a rental. And that’s kind of how we’ve kind ofAcquired properties now now I’m doing doing a little bit differently where we’re buying buying things at 20 % down but the first few if you just Typically get with you know get in a normal lower down payment mortgage You know three to five percent down live in it for a certain period of time and then that next Property you’re looking to purchase will be your new primary residence and then you look to and Rent that next prop the old property out and I think that that’s a good strategy to go now It’s not as fast but
But typically building wealth is not fast. So you want to make sure that you’re planning this out years ahead of time.
Kristen Knapp (07:50)
Of course, and I think that your industry, what’s so interesting about it is it’s very creative. have a lot, you can look at a lot of moving pieces and it’s not really a transactional type business. Can you talk about maybe the difference working with you rather than something like an institutional bank?Tony The Mortgage Guy (08:11)
Yeah, so there’s a lot of different businesses, types of mortgages and mortgage brokers and…different institutions that offer mortgages out there. You’ve got, you know, you’re walking the door type banks and you’ve got your online lenders and then you got me. So when it comes to your walk in the door type banks, I think that it’s important to realize that they don’t have to have the education that someone like myself has to have to originate a mortgage. All they have to do is register their name on a website. then, so typically they don’t know how to originate a mortgage. They’re a banker, right?
Number one priority is to accept money or be a depository. They do mortgages on the side. It’s kind of like a side business to them. So then what they typically will do is, okay, well fill out this application. Let me collect your documents and then it’ll go in a file somewhere. Here’s a pre-approval letter. Let’s and then they just kind of throw that out there to see what’ll stick. And then when they find a house and get under contract and that contract comes back to that ⁓ registered loan person, they just
Take that file back out put the contract in it and mail it off to Indiana somewhere where some real-own originator Will have a chance to look at it to originate the mortgage Here’s the problem is that typically they don’t know what they’re looking at to see what speed bumps they may have through those documents and through that application to handle that stuff up front and a lot of times and I’ve been the recipient of this as well where like They get to three or four days before the closing and all of sudden that blue they
they’ve got a denial and it’s not a conversation it’s just a letter and now they’ve lost their earnest money deposit they’ve lost their appraisals and inspection money and there’s nobody to talk to to explain even why this has happened to them so that’s a lot of experience now don’t get me wrong walk in the door tight banks if you’re a cookie cutter you know borrower that’s got great credit and
W-2 job, been there for 20 years and you got plenty of money, they’ll find a way to get you, know, those are the easy ones.
And that’s what they’re doing. They’re kind of just scraping the top, getting the easy stuff out of the way.
or taking advantage of those things and they don’t have a care in the world for the people that just don’t fit in their box. Where as someone like myself, when I review those documents up front, we’re gonna look for those possible speed bumps. I’ve been doing this almost a decade now and I know where the speed bumps are so I’d rather tackle that up front so that when we get to the point of being under contract, it’s a smooth, referable process all the way through and it’s a happy experience.
Kristen Knapp (11:27)
youTony The Mortgage Guy (11:29)
So that’s kind of the experience with a walk in the door type bank. But then you’ve also got your online lenders, right? Now, there’s a lot of talk about AI in this industry right now. And there’s some fear going around in the industry of, oh, AI is going to take all of our jobs. And it has taken some jobs. I still believe that when you’re making the largest financial decision that you’re going to make life to date, it’s important to have somebody you can pick up a phone and callEven if it’s 8 o’clock on a Friday, right and you’re not tied to a 1-800 number typically real estate happens after the 9 to 5 hours So if you don’t have someone that you can call on an in an evening somewhere or throughout the weekend your hamstring, right and So that my fear is a lot if too many people start going to this AI thing our industry could suffer drastically
Kristen Knapp (12:24)
Yeah, mean, isn’t right all the time. It definitely has its flaws, especially, you know, it’s still the beginning of AI. So I totally agree with you. Right.Tony The Mortgage Guy (12:32)
And it’s only as good as the information you put in it. Andtypically, when you do a mortgage application, you don’t know exactly what they’re looking for. It says, OK, how much do you make a month? Well, does that mean net income? Does that mean gross income? Do I take out my child support? Or do I take out taxes? There’s so many variables that AI just cannot ⁓ figure out.
Kristen Knapp (12:57)
100%. It’s a huge benefit of working with someone like you. And I know that something that you’re really good at is your flexibility. So you’re able to really help people in their unique situations.Tony The Mortgage Guy (13:08)
Yeah,so I mean, being at Certified Mortgage Planners, allows me to not only, you know, we do some private money lending in-house where we service it, but 90 % of the stuff we do, we’re able to shop around 39 different lending institutions on the wholesale side of the market, which a lot of times gives us the ability to be better priced than most other lenders out there, especially your walk-in-the-door type banks. So yeah, that’s a huge benefit of being that, you when I have that flexibility.
Kristen Knapp (13:38)
And you know, you’ve been doing this a while and you’ve seen the market kind of shift and change. I’m curious just where you think we’re at right now. I think there’s a lot of, you know, information being thrown around. People are a little confused. So what’s your perspective on the market?Tony The Mortgage Guy (13:53)
Yeah, so, you know, we’re hearing a lot of stuff in the news about, interest rates are coming down and guess what they have. So we’re really excited about this opportunity as we come into the end of this year and the beginning of next year. You know, the common misconception though, when it comes to interest rates is that when the Fed lowers interest rates, it has nothing to do with the mortgage industry. They’re talking about lowering credit card rates and car loans and, now HELOC’s home equitylines of credit, the Fed only controls short term interest rates, not mortgages. Mortgages are controlled by how mortgaged back securities are traded on the bond market. now while some of the same things that create the effects in the ⁓ when the Fed reduces rates, some of the same things that causes that will cause our rates to come down too, but it’s not a direct effect. So it’s kind of laugh chuckle when someone comes to me and says, well, the Fed dropped a
You know, 50 basis points, should my rate drop a half a percent? Well, no, I’m sorry. It’s something different, OK? However, I think that we’re really in a unique situation right now where interest rates have come down and the buyers haven’t flooded into the market yet. Now, we know what happened when buyers flooded into the market. You know, what was it, three or four years ago, right? What happened to prices then, Kristen?
Kristen Knapp (15:09)
Right.Yeah,
well, yeah, you’re right. mean, we’re definitely, it’s cyclical. Yeah.
Tony The Mortgage Guy (15:20)
They’re skyrocketing, right?So I think we’re in a really unique and interesting window, and it may only be three to six months where interest rates are come down, but the buyers haven’t flooded into the market yet. So we still have the ability to negotiate with sellers for price or for concessions for closing costs and get the low rate. But as more and more buyers start to realize this, I think more and more buyers are going to come into the market and it’s gonna flip from a buyer’s market back to a seller’s market.
Kristen Knapp (16:33)
Totally, and I mean you hit on something where there’s no perfect market. It’s either interest rates or it’s competition. ⁓ There’s no perfect situation, but you’re right that we are entering kind of a really unique window.Tony The Mortgage Guy (16:46)
I agree, yes, 100%.Kristen Knapp (16:48)
Yeah, that’s so interesting. you know, as you help people through this really, you know, in a lot of cases, this really big financial purchase that means, you know, maybe it’s someone’s first home or, you know, obviously it’s someone’s biggest equity asset. How do you guide them through that? And what do you look for in people that you work with?Tony The Mortgage Guy (17:13)
So there’s a difference between a mortgage planner and…just someone that writes loans. we truly believe in looking at the entire financial picture for folks. So you may do an application with us and couldn’t be approved for $500,000 and we may get together on a zoom meeting together and look at our, you know, your total financial picture and realize, hey, it may not make more sense to put 20 or 30 % down on this home when you’re carrying a lot of consumer debt. So we’ll talk about those things. We really want to
be, you know, look at the whole financial picture. So if if if I think it’s better advice to say, hey, let’s put less money down on the home. Let’s pay off some of this high interest consumer debt that you have. And now now we’re reducing monthly outlay as a whole. That’s something that we do as part of our process. And I think that that sets us apart from a lot of other lenders that are just looking to close alone. Right. We want to be your lenders for life. We want to be your mortgage advisor for life. This is the
Kristen Knapp (18:14)
Yeah.Tony The Mortgage Guy (18:19)
financial decision and the largest piece of debt that you’re going to carry in most cases life to date. So we want to make sure we’re looking at that whole picture.Kristen Knapp (18:28)
Yeah, and you touched on the fact that you guys, you go really deep into something rather than just making it a quick transaction. I’d love for you to talk about the benefit of that as well. Because I think a lot of people are maybe concerned about, well, I just want to get this done now.Tony The Mortgage Guy (18:44)
Yeah, yeah, and enough for nothing. I lose a lot of business that way because some people are just and our attention spans are short nowadays. We got all these phones that are just dumping dopamine into our systems and everything’s ⁓ fast action and quick, you know, quick to get that answer when it’s really important for us to do that more longer term financial plan and.Kristen Knapp (18:54)
youTony The Mortgage Guy (19:10)
You can, again, I lose business to some of these online lenders that just spit pre-qualification letters out. But guess what? Listing agents know that this is not something that they’ve fully looked at when it comes in with some of these online lender names. So we want to make sure that you’re working with a local lender that has gone through all of your documents so that you have that full pre-approval.Kristen Knapp (19:35)
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a really great point. it’s really, I mean, it’s a good point that the work shows. I mean, you can’t really skirt around it. You can’t take the shortcut and expect the same result. ⁓ You know, you’ve given a lot of good advice on the market and kind of just the general mortgage landscape. What would be maybe like a piece of advice that you wish more people knew when they were lending or when they were borrowing? I’m sorry.Tony The Mortgage Guy (20:03)
So again, think working with a local lender is very important. think looking at reviews is very important. I’ve worked very hard to establish myself as the number one reviewed mortgage lender in the central Florida area on Zillow. So there are companies with more reviews than me. There is not a single originator with more Zillow reviews than me in the entire central Florida area. I think we’re up to like 180. Every single one of them, well, let me say this. We have 180 reviews.Kristen Knapp (20:29)
Wow.Tony The Mortgage Guy (20:33)
and 179 of them are five star reviews. There’s always gonna be that one that didn’t have a good experience and guess what? I’m not a good fit for every single person out there. All right, so, and that’s okay, know, however, we are the number one reviewed lender in Zillow in the Central Florida area and I think that it shows. So I think that looking at reviews is very important. Finding a local lender that you can trust is very important. And then finding a lender that is paired up with your real estate agent. So I thinkKristen Knapp (20:36)
Wow. ⁓Tony The Mortgage Guy (21:03)
when shopping for a real estate agent, that’s just as important when shopping for a mortgage person. There was over 17,000 new real estate agents last year in the state of Florida alone, and you don’t want to get stuck with a newbie. So a lot of times when I meet a client that’s not referred to me by an agent, I’m gonna make sure that they’re working with someone that has experience that is a great negotiator that can help them achieve the goals that they’re looking to do.Kristen Knapp (21:08)
Yeah.Tony The Mortgage Guy (21:33)
broker-relator relationship is so important.Kristen Knapp (21:36)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. ⁓ Well, this has been so wonderful. You’ve given a lot of good practical advice and being well researched is so important because I’m sure there’s lot of scams in your industry as well.Tony The Mortgage Guy (21:50)
Absolutely, absolutely. guess what? And I always like to talk about this point. Because everybody says, well, I looked at something online and said rates are at 4.99. And the analogy I like to use is, well, if you had an 800 credit score, Kristen, and I had a 400 credit score, and we both looked at the same page on the website and it says interest rates are 4.99, do you think we should get the same interest rate?Kristen Knapp (22:17)
Right.Tony The Mortgage Guy (22:19)
No, right? That’s an advertisement and that’s just people out there looking to get somebody to click so that they can sell your information to someone like me that can call you and tell you what a real interest rate for you is going to look like. a lot of times you’ll find and I use a newspaper analogy, you know, if you saw it in a newspaper ad and now it’s online of three different mortgage advertisements, one said three nine nine, one said four nine nine, one said five nine nine.Well, which one are you gonna call first?
Kristen Knapp (22:51)
one.Tony The Mortgage Guy (22:52)
The lowestright? You’re going to call the 3991, but which one is probably most accurate? Probably the middle one or the higher one, so be real careful about the advertisements you see online. It’s all clickbait. They’re all trying to get you to click so that they could sell your information. I would definitely make sure that you’re working with somebody local, somebody referred to you by a friend or a family member or somebody with amazing reviews.
Kristen Knapp (22:57)
Yeah, probably. Yeah.Yeah, yeah, mean, great information again. So thank you so much for being here. This has been, I think a lot of people learned a lot. Where can people find you?
Tony The Mortgage Guy (23:27)
Well, if you look up Tony the Mortgage Guy on just about any social media ⁓platform whether it be YouTube or TikTok or ⁓ Facebook or Instagram ⁓ I’m on all those platforms and I actually do a lot of live zoom meetings on TikTok every Friday. So Fridays are my days where I do my zoom meetings with my clients and while I don’t share their personal information I do go live on TikTok to share scenarios and things while I’m talking to those clients. So join me on TikTok live on Fridays ⁓ and you guys can learn something and then
Kristen Knapp (23:47)
night.Tony The Mortgage Guy (24:03)
At the end of every call, answer questions for anyone that’s got mortgage related questions right live in real time on TikTok.Kristen Knapp (24:13)
That’s awesome. That’s so cool you do that. I’m sure people get a lot out of that. Yes. Okay. Well, I really encourage everyone to check out Tony online and thank you again for being here and thank you everyone for listening. Hope you learned a lot. Yeah. And we will see you back nextTony The Mortgage Guy (24:17)
They do.absolutely surprising.
