Subscribe via:
Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel podcast, host Michelle Kesil speaks with Jason Sharon from Home Loans Inc. about his journey in the mortgage industry, strategies for leveraging debt to build wealth, and the importance of authenticity in business relationships. Jason shares insights on helping first-time home buyers, navigating investor loans, and overcoming challenges in mortgage transactions. He emphasizes the significance of understanding clients’ goals and maintaining a structured approach to business operations.
Resources and Links from this show:
-
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (00:00)
Absolutely. So one strategy that I’ve used dozens of times to help people accumulate, so we’re talking about investors, let’s say we’re talking about investing into real estate and into investment properties, income producing properties.is using a combination of loans to take equity from your primary residence and buy investment properties with that. So let’s say you’ve got $152,000 equity in your current primary residence. And let’s say you have no investment properties whatsoever right now. So you’re just wanting to get into the investment property realm.
Michelle Kesil (02:08)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone that I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Jason Sharon from Home Loans Inc, who has been making serious moves in the mortgage space, helping people find the best deals for loans. So excited to have you on the show today, Jason.Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (02:30)
Thanks, I appreciate it, I’m honored to be here.Michelle Kesil (02:33)
Yeah, of course, I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re helping people lower their interest rates and find the best solutions for saving money and bettering their home. So yeah, let’s dive into all of that. First off, for people that are not familiar with you and your world yet, can you give the short version of what your main focus is?Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (02:57)
Sure, my job is to find people loans to purchase property or to refinance their existing property. Licensed in seven states, basically all the southeast. If I’m not licensed there, I can find somebody to refer you to and I don’t make any money on referrals, but my job is to find people money. I joke that I put people in debt for the rest of life. I consider myself a debt manage, debt manage, no.Debt advisor, not a financial advisor, I’m not, but how to advise people on managing their debt in order to grow their wealth.
Michelle Kesil (03:28)
Amazing. Yeah, I would love for you to expand on that how that debt is able to produce more wealth in people’s lives.Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (03:37)
Absolutely. So one strategy that I’ve used dozens of times to help people accumulate, so we’re talking about investors, let’s say we’re talking about investing into real estate and into investment properties, income producing properties.is using a combination of loans to take equity from your primary residence and buy investment properties with that. So let’s say you’ve got $152,000 equity in your current primary residence. And let’s say you have no investment properties whatsoever right now. So you’re just wanting to get into the investment property realm.
I had a gentleman that had a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of equity in his primary residence. He did not have any real, he did not have a significant amount of money in his checking savings. He had a decent amount in his 401K, but nothing appreciable in checking savings. But he had a ton of equity. So I did home economic credit and got him $200,000 out of his primary residence. So now he’s got $200,000 sitting in his account. He’s paying interest on that, ⁓ prime plus.
or whatever rate it was.
And then now I taught him, I said, this is gonna sound weird, I’m a mortgage guy, I’m telling you to go buy a property with cash. He’s like, you’re telling me to go get cash. I said yes, said, because here’s why. We’re gonna cross collateralize that property and buy even more properties by leveraging that free and clear property. So what he did is he went, spent $200,000 on a single family detached home that he now owns free and clear, put a renter in it, he’s now making
200,000, think it was right, it 2,500 bucks a month. His HELOC payment, I think was 1,000, so he’s cash flowing 1,500 bucks a month on that property, which is great. But now he’s got $200,000 worth of equity sitting there, not working for him, he’s just cash flowing a little bit, he’s cash flowing on that property. So then we cross-collateralize that property, put a $150,000 lien on that property.
use a factor of five to one, he then went and five times 150 on that, because you go up 75 % LTV, won’t get worried about the details there, he went and bought a $650,000 property, again with no money out of pocket, and that $650,000 property was a quadruplex, so four doors on that.
So now he took money that was sitting there doing nothing for him, equity in his house, and now has five income producing leases with no money out of pocket.
Michelle Kesil (06:59)
Yeah, that is a valuable strategy. I love that example. Thank you for sharing that.So what have been some of your main keys to keeping your business to run smoothly?
Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (07:12)
So I was in the military for 20 years. I was a nuclear engineer. So I’m the nerdiest nerd you’re gonna have on this podcast. You turn off the lights, I probably glow green in the dark. My wife probably sleeps with a sleep mask because I grow, anyway, I joke with all that. I took that discipline from my 20 years as a military nuclear engineer and I applied that same concept.Michelle Kesil (07:17)
HahahaHahaha
Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (07:37)
to my company. So I have a ⁓ 70 page standard operating procedures that define exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why to do it with a checklist for every single milestone in a loan. From the time that you become a potential client for me to 10 years after you close a loan with me, all that has checklists and exactly what needs to happen, who needs to do it, and how it needs to happen.Michelle Kesil (08:01)
Yeah, absolutely, that’s so important to have that structure and discipline. What initially got you into this space? It’s a big shift from the nuclear stuff.Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (08:13)
I it’s the same story could be for anybody in sales, is usually it’s an accident. Way back in the day, was a part-time real estate agent. I got out of that because I got transferred to the military and then…Michelle Kesil (08:19)
If any.Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (08:28)
when I retired from military, I’m like, you know, maybe I’ll get back into real estate. But I’m like, I don’t want to put people in my car and drive them all weekend and all that kind of stuff. So was like, you know, maybe I’ll get into mortgages or maybe I’ll get an insurance. So I called up my old buddy that was my go-to mortgage guy and no real estate agent is successful without having a go-to mortgage person. That’s sharp. And I called my go-to mortgage person from way back when I said, hey, what do you think about me getting into the mortgage space? And he said, well, come on in, let’s talk about it. And then I worked for him for three years.Wonderful, wonderful three years. We’re still buddies, but after three years, I went off and started my own company. That was seven years ago, so I’ve been doing this for a decade.
Michelle Kesil (08:59)
Bye.Amazing.
And where are you like, what are you focused on solving or scaling to next?
Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (09:49)
So there’s a couple different aspects that I’m focusing on there. I love first time home buyers because there’s such a tremendous need for home ownership. The average homeowner has a net worth of 44 times the net worth of the average renter. And that’s 44x, right, 44 times, not 44%. It’s not like if you have net worth of 100,000 renter, the average homeowner’s worth 144,000. No, 44 times.is the average net worth difference between a renter and a homeowner. So it’s tremendous, it creates generational wealth. What I find even more fascinating is that the average kid that lives in a house that’s owned has a grade score of one letter point better than the average kid that lives in a home that’s rented. So that stability.
of being in a home that’s owned, a home that’s rented has a tremendous effect on the future of America and the kids’ education. And therefore, we get better leaders, we get better technicians, we get better engineers, we get better doctors from families that own their home than somebody that’s a lifetime renter.
Michelle Kesil (10:57)
Yeah, absolutely. So do you work with a lot of investors as well? I know you mentioned previously some strategies with the investing. But yeah, is that something that you’re targeting and working with in your areas?Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (11:10)
I do. ⁓ I say it’s probably about 20%, maybe 18 to 20 % of my loans are investor loans. And that could be the strategy that I talked about with that earlier. It could be someone that just wants to purchase and finance an investment property with a normal conforming loan. It could be someone that wants to use the rent from the property to qualify and not use their personal income to qualify. Maybe they have a bunch of investment properties and they write off a loss on everything so they can’t do it.Maybe they want to use bank statements to qualify. So there are a number of tools that are outside the box thinking to help people acquire investment properties. One out of five loans that I do, and I’ll close 15 to 20 loans here. Our company will close 30 to 40 this month. So I’d say one out of five are investment property loans every month.
Michelle Kesil (12:05)
Amazing. Yeah, that is really big for supporting those people. Are there any sort of common hesitations or obstacles that people maybe face that you educate them through so that they can get the best result with ⁓ their housing and their finances and loans?Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (12:27)
The typical first conversation I like to frame as a discovery call or a meet me, I meet you call, because not everybody wants to work with me. I don’t want to work with everybody. So we kind of have that first call of, hey, here’s how I work. What are your goals? Here’s how I can help with those goals. Here’s how I work. And part of that is understanding their finances and are they ready to do either to become a first time home buyer or they’re ready to be a move up buyer or they’re ready to get in the investment world.investment side of it, if you want to concentrate on that, is generally the bigger the down payment, the better terms you’re gonna get, the better terms you get, the better cash flow that property is gonna create for you. Now I do have the ability to do, to finance a property that’s gonna be underwater on cash flow. Terms aren’t as good for that, but if your long-term goal makes sense, then we could do that loan. Like I’ve got one loan that’ll close, I think October 10th-ish, person’s buying a condo,
as an investment property and the perspective rent on this property is not as great as what they initially thought.
But their goal is to rent this out for two years. He’s gonna retire from up north and then they’re gonna move down here to the south and occupy that as a primary residence. So they’re gonna lose a little bit money on this deal every month, but long term they’re gonna be able to acquire the property they want overlooking the beach, where they want it, and have it basically be pretty much paid.
by a renter for a couple of years until they settle here. So every scenario is different and I need to understand what the client’s goals are, what their current finances are and see how we can make that work for them.
Michelle Kesil (14:49)
Yeah, that’s so important to make it work for each individual situation. So let me ask you this, everyone has those moments in business where things get real, maybe a deal goes sideways or you have to pivot fast. Would you mind sharing one of those moments that you’ve experienced and what you did to overcome it?Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (15:10)
So that could be every single mortgage in America, every so time. Even the little old lady that’s fixed income, social security, annuity, 800 credit score, 30 % down, there’s gonna be something that causes a hiccup in that file. And it’s probably not her, it might be title, it might be insurance, it might be the Homework Association, it might be the appraisal, it might be the comp, there’s gonna be something. So it’s a matter of getting ahead of it. ⁓Michelle Kesil (15:13)
Right.Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (15:37)
I am in the guidelines.every single day. I’ve been doing this for a decade and I still get in the guidelines every day and I preach this to the sales reps that work for me. You’ve got never be too cool to answer your mama’s phone call or to go open up the guidelines. You’ve got to get in the guidelines every single time. So I had this one particular loan. It was actually a friend of mine. He had been a friend of mine for a decade and he was selling a house and buying a new house and he was buying way over what he should have been doing. It worked but I’m like, Ray, do you
really want to be doing this, oh I gotta buy this house. Okay, so fast forward, we’re almost done with the file and the title work comes in and on the house he’s selling there’s a big lien on it and won’t get bored people with the lien but he didn’t know about this lien that he had acquired, it was a legit lien, of about 20, 30 thousand dollars years ago. He had had that house for a decade.
He just completely forgot about it. It was a silent lien, so he didn’t have to make a payment or anything like that. So now we had to come up with, he was gonna use that 20, that’s called $20,000. He was gonna use that $20,000 to pay off debt and to make his, in order to make the debt-to-income ratio work on the purchase that he was acquiring. Well, now $20,000 of assets are gone. We had to figure out how to make this work. So I went through, so at this point it’s a debt-to-income ratio issue.
How do we make that debt to income ratio? How do we solve that? So first is pay off debt, but we were gonna use the money from the sale to pay off the debt. Well now, we don’t have that money. We’ve got to increase the interest rate, opposite buying points, getting points, using those extra points to pay off, to use that to cover the closing cost.
use a closing cost to pay off what we were gonna use for closing cost to pay off the debt. Go strip insurance down.
won’t board your users, but there’s about 40 different things I could do with an insurance policy to strip that insurance down to get the insurance significantly lower, which then reduces debt-income ratio. There’s some things you can do with a tax certification to get the taxes down. So there was a number of moving parts that I had to do in order to get debt-income ratio down whenever we all of sudden lost $20,000 worth of assets in the file. That can’t be done in every file, but I have done similar things
a couple dozen times over 10 years whenever you run into a debt-to-gain ratio issue.
Michelle Kesil (18:03)
Yeah, absolutely. Sounds like a challenge that you are able to have those solutions to conquer. So that is always important. Awesome. So when it comes to growing your business, whether that’s through networking or creating just new relationships, what are some things that have made the biggest difference for you?Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (18:26)
I figured out a long time ago that the real currency in this world is authenticity. There’s no trick, there’s no secret words, there’s no script, there’s no, it’s just being yourself. ⁓ And sometimes that costs me deals. There’s people that I’ll start talking to them and I’m like, hey, this is what I need. I closed one deal.Michelle Kesil (18:34)
Mm-hmm.Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (18:52)
last month that was one of the most difficult deals I’ve ever done in 10 years and I told him, I said, the only way you’re getting this house, and he had already been declined somewhere else and it was such a bad experience that the real estate agent that was on the previous deal refused to work with his client. Again, he’s like, don’t want any, do this client, he can go find another agent, I’m done with him. I told the client, like,If I say jump, you don’t say how high. You jump and then halfway up say, Jason, is this high enough of a jump? That’s the type of compliance that I need from you if you really want this house because your loan is going to be one of the most difficult loans I ever close. Some people won’t take
Won’t want that type of discussion from somebody but if you are difficult loan and I say I can do it I will do it, but I need you to to So I need
people that are okay with me being authentic. I am a little bit rough, I’m 20 years military. Vast majority of my loans are VA loans. So veterans generally are okay with that, this was a veteran. But as far as what I do, mean, it’s just being myself. Sometimes that’s a turnoff, but I think most people appreciate it. I really do think that as a currency in today’s world is authenticity.
Michelle Kesil (20:08)
100 % I agree with you. Relationships are everything in this space and yeah, I think it’s like the most important asset, especially when you’re in this business for the long term vision.Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (20:22)
sure. People are making, they could be a $100,000 decision. I’ve got one loan that’s closing on Friday that’s a $1.1 million loan. People are making million dollar decisions and trusting me to be the debt advisor on a million $1.1 million decision. You have to be, whenever you’re making these big decisions, you have to be picking somebody that knows their stuff. You don’t want to be picking somebody that you found on the internet that…is in a call center, you want to find someone that has hundreds of reviews and really knows their stuff.
Michelle Kesil (20:52)
Yeah, absolutely, those kind of decisions are so important to do your due diligence and connect with that person, see what they know and yeah, how they can really be of support through this big process that you’re in.So before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, collaborate, learn more from you, where can people find you?
Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (21:16)
Sure, ⁓ as discussed, my name’s Jason Sharon. You find me on all the major social media platforms. HomeLoansInc.com is my website. I can’t believe I got that lucky to get that website, HomeLoansInc.com. I have the easiest phone number in the world to remember. My phone number is 843, that’s South Carolina, 843 LOWRATE is my phone number, 843 LOWRATE.Michelle Kesil (21:41)
Perfect, well listen, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective, so thank you for being here.Jason Sharon – HomeLoansInc (21:47)
Absolutely. Honored that you have me.Michelle Kesil (21:49)
And for those listeners tuning in, you got value, make sure that you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators just like Jason who are building real businesses and we’ll see you all on our next episode.
