Your Guide to Monthly Payment Assistance Programs

John Harcar (00:00.912)
Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Philip Ganz. And what we’re going to talk about today is affordability. Hot topic around the nation. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and really all entrepreneurs 2 to 5X their business by giving the tools and the resources to build the business you want to live to, or to have to live the life you want to live. So Phil, welcome to our show, man.

Philip Daniel Ganz (00:29.078)
Hey man, thank you so much. It’s an honor to be here and help out America.

John Harcar (00:35.684)
it. Love it. and I’m looking forward to talking about the affordability piece. mean, I think that’s something that’s always been on. It’s on people’s minds a lot lately but before we get into all that, why don’t you introduce yourself to our audience? Let them know kind of you where you came from, how you got into real estate or mortgages and you know what got you here.

Philip Daniel Ganz (00:53.55)
Alright, well, you know, I’ve been doing mortgages since May 7th, 2001. I had never imagined I would ever do mortgages. I started off with the glorious position as telemarketer for a fabulous mortgage company that’s no longer in existence and we request mortgage. So, you know, I joined, you know, self-prime lending, you know, right at the beginning.

John Harcar (01:08.752)
Hmm.

John Harcar (01:15.544)
Okay.

Philip Daniel Ganz (01:23.278)
before it really took off, right? I mean, it took off really, you know, four, five and six, but I started May 7th, 2001. And I’ll never forget that day that I joined AmeriQuest Mortgage. And I’ll tell you why, because people want to know because they actually didn’t want to hire me, my manager. I had a great manager, his name was…

John Harcar (01:23.534)
Yeah.

John Harcar (01:41.178)
Why is that?

Philip Daniel Ganz (01:50.296)
Paul Kelly, I don’t know what he’s doing, it’s not mortgages right now, but Paul didn’t want to hire me. In fact, the way that they trained you was this trainer that’s probably famous now, Dale Vermillion. And you’d go into a booth and you’d watch some tapes. And I remember what he told me.

John Harcar (02:05.582)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (02:12.706)
He says, two people walk in, one walk out. I’m like, what is this? Like the karate kid? But yeah, I was there and I was…

John Harcar (02:18.638)
No.

Philip Daniel Ganz (02:23.714)
You know, I did this training and it was for two days just watching basically a tape of someone explaining that if you’re trying to help a customer what you cannot do is mention what the interest rate was. Obviously because you had to sell benefit because the rates were terrible and it was just horrible, right? Like it was a terrible experience. I’m like, what is this? But at that time…

John Harcar (02:47.843)
Right?

Philip Daniel Ganz (02:51.086)
I was actually not a loan officer. was only a telemarketer. So I had the pleasure of just like, before all this wizardry technology, I was making like 300 calls a day, dialing, which is really hard. Old school, on the phone.

John Harcar (03:02.831)
Jeez.

Old school, yeah.

Philip Daniel Ganz (03:10.99)
So it’s cheating. don’t know if people can do 300 calls a day with technology, but that’s what I was doing was from, I wouldn’t even get up, you know, seven or eight in the morning till, you know, eight at night, nonstop every day. No breaks.

John Harcar (03:27.565)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (03:30.254)
I mean, I didn’t take much breaks. I’ll tell you that I was pretty, pretty focused. And that’s, that’s how I kind of like started my career. And it progressed to loan officer there. did extremely well. And then I became a branch manager. did well. And then I was tired of that. And I, and I became a, um, give him a mortgage broker.

John Harcar (03:42.265)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (03:53.774)
Which I really loved at that time. company was called Partners Mortgage. was a great company, but the technology kind of wasn’t there yet. If you’re a mortgage broker, so who’s okay? And then the company got bought by a mortgage lender.

John Harcar (03:59.248)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (04:13.164)
which was a company called Mortgage Network. They were a good company, but then that was the year 2007, so they basically were gonna collapse. Then I was the first hire of a company on the East Coast called, or second hire, guaranteed rate, people now know them. But they were not there when I joined in 2007, and I gave them, they’re very smart company, the owner of it.

John Harcar (04:31.929)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (04:39.214)
Very smart guy. My boss, think now is the former boss, is now the CFO, Nick. And a super smart guy. And then I was lucky three years later or two and a half years later to join a company called Fairway Mortgage. My boss is Dave Wachowski. He’s now, I think, president of the East Coast. By the way, I’ve always done well picking the right managers. It’s very important for anyone that’s like…

John Harcar (04:45.112)
Okay.

John Harcar (05:05.359)
Sounds like it. Sounds like you got the right people in your corner.

Philip Daniel Ganz (05:08.078)
Switching companies, the biggest thing they miss is you got to get the right jock. You’ve to have the right whole, like, you’ve either not only the right company, you need the right manager. And that was always, in fact, I actually had interviewed at Fairway twice. The first time.

You know, I joined Dave right away because I’m like, yeah, this guy’s going to win. Dave, very successful guy. He ended up going from loan officer branch manager to now president of a fairway, believe East Coast. He’s done very well for himself. Probably the guy.

Knows there’s more and you know, I, uh, you know, and I had gone in, you know, from loan officer to having the number one. Oh, was nothing in fairway in the beginning. was a 4 million or $6 million loan officer. I, you know, and I went from there to closing 40, 60 million. Then I became a branch manager. Did I close like 146 million in purchase? We have the number one branch in New England. I think we were closing with five, 600 million a year.

And then I decided, you know what? want to move to Florida. That’s true story. wanted to, you know, was, you know, four or five years ago, I was at a Super Bowl where Tom Brady came back to meet the Falcons 28 to three. And I was, I was there. You know, when I was coming back from the game, you know, a lot of people were excited, but I was sad because I like, why am I leaving this Florida thing? had the buck.

John Harcar (06:24.616)
huh, huh.

Nice.

Philip Daniel Ganz (06:40.046)
So, you know, I really wanted to figure out a way to get to Florida, but I didn’t know how. But it was determined in the next 12 months, so I, you know, I was the top in the world, to be honest with you. was making a million dollars a year, had a branch closing over $500 million a year. I was married at the time.

And I took a big chance to really try to grow and do something different. I didn’t want to be a guy at a bar saying I could have, would have, should have, right? So I wanted to try something new. was just bored, you know? And so I moved to Florida, moved to Key Largo, Florida, which was, I had known the place because of my father-in-law, but it’s a really bad place to do mortgages, as I quickly learned.

John Harcar (07:08.441)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (07:30.263)
Ha ha ha.

Philip Daniel Ganz (07:31.15)
I got to tell you there are no mortgages. And you know the problem with like retailers, and I’m just going to wrap here with you for a second, is that like there’s like areas, right? Like you’re like of an area. You’re not in an area. Like they don’t want to tell you this, right? But all retail companies are kind of the same. If that wasn’t the truth, then why would you need area and regional managers? That’s an area, right? If you’re regional manager of New England, New England

John Harcar (07:33.273)
Right?

John Harcar (07:45.807)
Mmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (08:01.104)
as an area like in the New England Patriots, right? And so you always have in retail like overlaps and fights and because people have like areas, right? And so, you know, I really couldn’t, you know, grow or pick an area that I really like probably would have, you know, they were very successful in South Florida.

John Harcar (08:22.063)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (08:23.494)
and that would have been an impossible market. And so, you I had switched in companies to movement mortgage and ultimately it didn’t work out there. Good people, just, you know, it didn’t work out. I think, you know, I was lucky enough where, you know, kind of, I saw the vision of where things were going in the industry.

John Harcar (08:52.111)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (08:52.878)
And where that really was, was the wholesale channel. And you know, one thing that we really had, we had a big advantage over people, is that we actually own the most popular websites in the state of Florida. So we generate a lot of leads like Make Florida Your Home and you know, other great websites.

John Harcar (09:09.923)
Hmm, right.

John Harcar (09:15.918)
Right.

Philip Daniel Ganz (09:16.462)
And the reason why I don’t always want to say like all of our websites, you know, certain things is that, you know, people, you know, they, they get jealous and, know, and I don’t want to deal with people that they get jealous. It’s craziest thing you’ve ever seen, but we get a lot of leads. us say we own a lot of websites. get a lot of leads. Sometimes it’s better to, uh, sometimes it’s better just to fly under the radar in life. don’t like that. I’m not really a confrontational guy, right?

John Harcar (09:34.628)
Got it.

Philip Daniel Ganz (09:46.146)
You know, right away we started a way to grow the right people.

You know, right now our company is about 10 people and we’re just about to bring in an operational guy and it’s really exciting. You know, one thing like why we did wholesale besides the price advantage, people are like, do mean? I’m like, have you ever been to Costco? Like seriously, you know, much of price advantage Costco has in the supermarket, or Expedia has over Marriott. I wanted a price advantage. wanted a product advantage.

John Harcar (09:53.59)
I was gonna ask, what does your team look like now?

John Harcar (10:07.769)
Hmm

Philip Daniel Ganz (10:19.018)
And realistically, I wanted to help out middle America. See, some of the people said they want to help out middle America, but only when they campaign. I wanted to help out middle America 24-7-365. I wanted to have every down payment assistance program there was priced the best, super competitively, to help people out.

John Harcar (10:33.081)
Yeah.

John Harcar (10:43.821)
Well, let’s talk. mean, let’s talk about that. That’s our that’s our topic, right? Our topic today is affordability. So tell me about it.

Philip Daniel Ganz (10:47.148)
Yeah, a bit into it.

Philip Daniel Ganz (10:54.498)
So here’s the way I work in affordability. Today I’m going to break this down for people. You’ve got two different buckets. One is down payment assistance. The other is monthly payment assistance. You’ve got to figure out what you need. You don’t get both.

In fact, the reality is when you do down payment assistance, the rates aren’t as good as if you do like not down payment assistance. Usually like the same or little higher compared to like the wholesale rates. Retail like the rates are really never as low as wholesale. And no matter what industry, I’m not talking like retail, just in any, in anything you do, wholesale is always less than retail. You pick it. It just, it just like is. Okay. And so.

John Harcar (11:29.305)
Right.

John Harcar (11:37.24)
always.

Philip Daniel Ganz (11:41.802)
you

You know, when you look at like, say, month, like down payment assistance, you’re to get the assistance, the down payment, which is really needed versus say monthly payment assistance. But I’m going to focus it on the down payment assistance because that is what middle America is struggling with and even up America. mean, it’s people can’t save because of inflation and how expensive things are. You know,

Now, people said before that they can’t save. There’s no money to save. There’s left over.

John Harcar (12:22.051)
Everything costs too much. Yeah.

Philip Daniel Ganz (12:24.014)
So there’s two types of kind of like down payment assistance also. When I look at it, you go like the state programs. if like here in Florida, you got hometown heroes, Florida bond, Florida TBA, you have those, they give the county programs. And then you have like what I call the native American program. So why do you got a native American? There’s Chinoa, it’s arrived home, which is poor.

of the Thule tribe because realistically to create down payment assistance there’s only two ways you can you either have to be a nonprofit and you ain’t gonna do it if you’re nonprofit or you gotta be a Native American right and that you can’t do it because look you probably you probably can but the most popular right now I feel like is that the Native Americans which I don’t get because like some of the people

John Harcar (13:05.935)
Bye.

Philip Daniel Ganz (13:23.888)
little skeptical when you do the Native American down payment assistance. And I get so crazy because people will go into casinos that are owned by the Native Americans, no issue, and then pull the one-armed bandit, which we call the slot machines. But they’re great programs. I do a lot of the FHA down payment assistance.

John Harcar (13:39.959)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (13:47.862)
It’s either 3.5 or 5 % down payment. And if you do the 5%, then it’s typically a little bit higher rate. You either get forgivable or non-forgivable. And people are like, well, I definitely want forgivable. Well, then you’re going to pay a little bit more on the rate. Nothing’s free in life. OK?

John Harcar (13:59.344)
Okay.

John Harcar (14:07.19)
No, no, by no means.

Philip Daniel Ganz (14:09.23)
Yeah, if you want my advice, I’ll tell you what I would do. I always do the three and a half percent. I like it a little bit better because you pay a little bit less. The other thing that like consumers like have to kind of know is, that like typically these loans to get the best deal, you will have to take advantage of the FHA seller concession, which is like 6 % of, you know, 6 % seller concession. the maximum. And you’re going to get comfortable. What is this? Explain what is.

John Harcar (14:34.495)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, sure.

Philip Daniel Ganz (14:39.184)
a seller concession is, it’s like, say you buy a car and it’s $25,000 and there’s $3,000 of state fees. The dealership will then sell you the car for $28,000 and roll the fees into the law. It’s the same concept. I’m buying a home for $300,000. 6 % of $300,000 is $18,000. Now I’m buying that for $318,000 and now I can roll in all my fees.

And that really like helps. People are like, wow, that’s a lot of like fees. But that allows like what essentially happens is that allows the broker or the lender to, you know, offer a much lower rate because then they can make their commission or buy down the rate.

John Harcar (15:24.697)
Mmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (15:25.294)
with that extra money. If you don’t do it that way and say, Phil, I’m going to just do like a 3%. Your rate is going to be much higher. Take advantage of the 6%. That’s why, why a lot of people fail with that. The other recommendation I would like tell someone is on that program is to make sure you provide all your documents to the loan officer. This isn’t a program where you want to mess around with. They got to see

your last two pay stubs, your last pay stubs of 23, 24. So you break down that overtime, you break down all that bonus. And that’s really important. So I do a lot of that. You can get to the state programs in comparison, like Hometown Heroes, it’s fine. But the problem is they either run out of money,

John Harcar (16:14.607)
Mm-hmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (16:17.492)
Or the money isn’t enough. And that’s the big issue. You’re like, what do you mean? Okay. The average home price in Florida is $374. Well, the bond program gives $10,000. That doesn’t cover like all the down payment that someone would need and the home prices are going up. So they’re not catching up quick enough of what they can offer for the down payment. You’re like, well, what about the hometown heroes? That’s like our number one program. Programmer runs out of money so fast. Like all the time.

John Harcar (16:35.247)
All right.

John Harcar (16:45.569)
Yeah.

Philip Daniel Ganz (16:46.99)
And like, it’s like a Black Friday sale. It’s like, it goes away. so because like originally started off, you had to be like police, fire, or like in the army or something, or a nurse. And then like they open it up. We’re in a world of opening up to everyone. So we open it up to everyone and boom, you’re gone. So, you know, I think I do a lot more of that program than probably any other. And then when you look at monthly.

payment assistance. Let’s have a Freddie Mac home possible and Fannie Mae home ready. And those have lower rates.

They really do substantially less. So you can afford more. But the issue that a lot of people are having is that on those programs, have to be 80 % of the area medium income limit. And in a lot of areas, that doesn’t get you anything for a house. So you’re like, what the hell? It’s like offering something that doesn’t exist.

John Harcar (17:32.207)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (17:46.807)
Yeah, true, true.

John Harcar (17:56.025)
So what, I mean…

Philip Daniel Ganz (17:56.11)
The other program I want to bring to people’s attention that not many people know about, but I’m going to help out every law officer and person right now of the program they should know about 2025 that could save one deal this year. And that program is called the Earned Equity Program. Okay.

And this is what you need to know. It’s actually through arrive home. Now there’s certain investors that like work with arrive, which I recommend as a mortgage broker, right? Like I work through some of these investors to gain access, but here’s how it works. Okay. First, like it works like it, like it says earned equity.

But it’s like a better version of a rent-owned. And it’s hard to your mind around this. So let me break it down for you. Say you buy a home at $300,000. The Tule River Tribe, OK? They’re going to buy that home.

and they’re going to put it in their, the title and their name, but you’re going to sign a contract with them. And that contract says you can, you can assume their mortgage and buy it for the price that they bought it for, which is 300,000. So say five years goes away and your income finally qualifies. You can buy the whole for 300,000, even though it’s worth 525, you have no way.

You’re like, well, what happened to the mortgage balance? Because the mortgage balance, even though it’s over 40 years, what happened to that? The mortgage balance went down. You’re like, no way. And it’s such a brilliant program. But I tell everyone, it’s only a matter of time that every year your income is more likely to qualify. You’re like, well, what do you mean? With that $300,000 house,

Philip Daniel Ganz (19:56.11)
30 years ago, you could have bought it for 18 grand. But eventually, even if your income stinks right now, it’s so low, we’ll qualify. The other thing is why it’s good is that, check this out, income qualify.

John Harcar (20:00.106)
Yeah, a lot cheaper net.

Philip Daniel Ganz (20:16.365)
You can qualify with a 1099. You’re what do you mean? You’re a realtor. I’m doing one right now for a realtor. The realtor has that three 1099s for $10,000 a month. So $30,000 over the last 90 days. Right? They get a 1099. Right? Their income taxes for the previous years, say what? I made $2,000. You’re like, no way. Yeah.

You’re giving them a loan, no problem. Because they can qualify off 1099. See, most people in our world take the self-employed and they stick them in a bank statement loan. This is true.

And so you’re self-employed and you got to put down minimal 10 % most of the time, 20%. If you do 10 % your rate isn’t as good. They don’t tell you that. So you’re like, what happens? So now your business is true. Your business, had a hundred grand in the bank, you had 200 grand in the bank, you lose all your money in your business and it goes down. Then.

John Harcar (21:01.25)
Yeah, no.

Philip Daniel Ganz (21:14.198)
And I’m not joking, lot of investors and lenders will ask your CPA to write a letter that taking out all your money won’t negatively affect your business. I got a question. What business in America, when you take out all capital, does it not run as well? Like, of course, this is why you need Shark Tank. What’s the moral Shark Tank? Let me give away my company for a little bit of money, right?

John Harcar (21:23.535)
All

John Harcar (21:30.893)
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true.

Philip Daniel Ganz (21:40.666)
And it usually some major companies go there like Poppy to Soda company got about Pepsi 3 billion or the doorbell ring didn’t get bought, could have gotten bought. But there’s all these companies that people want to be, you know, so it’s a great program because you can buy a home with three and half percent down. yeah, by the way, the minimum FICO score is 500. See on FHA, the minimum FICO score to put three and a half percent down is what? 580.

John Harcar (22:04.089)
Mmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (22:10.52)
no way and you can be one day out of bankruptcy in this. You’re kidding me. And you know what people say, this is too good to be true. It’s not.

John Harcar (22:14.489)
Wow, man, we could probably.

Philip Daniel Ganz (22:23.31)
There’s a lot of people, oh yeah, by the way, they also do a 50 60 DTI. You’re like, what does that mean? That means say you made $10,000 a month, say you made 120,000 here, $10,000 a month, your front end ratio, they’ll let you go up to $5,000. Your back end ratio, is your mortgage and tax and insurance plus all your debt can be more than 6,000. You’re just going to put all these people in trouble. No, because this loan is really geared to helping the self employed people out.

John Harcar (22:28.932)
Mmm.

Philip Daniel Ganz (22:53.444)
It’s also geared to where you have a deal that falls apart. People don’t want to talk about this. You have a deal that falls apart on FHA. Think about it. In America right now, more people have second jobs and more people are hustling, doing Uber, doing third jobs, fourth jobs, bonus income. And say you have an underwriter and he says, it doesn’t qualify. For whatever reason, at the last minute, you’re just deals that.

It’s a 62 DTI. The deal’s over. But you know what? You can put them in a home. You get their equity proof. You can save the deal. it’s unbelievable.

John Harcar (23:30.862)
Yeah.

John Harcar (23:34.393)
Cool.

We don’t.

Philip Daniel Ganz (23:37.538)
They still own, they have the rights to the home. Yes, it’s not, the title’s not there, but who cares? Because if you sell the home for more, you get all the profits. So it’s not a real rent to own. It’s just a way for the Tule tribe to make their money and for you to make your money. That’s it. And people just don’t know about this. And I think it’s a reason why.

John Harcar (23:40.495)
Yep. Yep.

John Harcar (23:48.003)
Got it, Philip.

John Harcar (23:57.781)
If, well if people, if people.

Philip Daniel Ganz (24:02.22)
And this isn’t like a JFK conspiracy theory. The reason is I think if people knew about… What?

John Harcar (24:07.235)
We gotta, yeah, no, we gotta wrap it up here. We’re running out of time. And I apologize. I know we could talk about this forever. Yeah, if people wanna get a hold of you and talk more about it, how do they get in touch?

Philip Daniel Ganz (24:14.094)
Alright, let’s go! We were good!

Philip Daniel Ganz (24:21.038)
Call my cell that number 617-529-9317 or 617-529-9317. My name again is Philip Gans, the G-A-N-Z. can have me on Instagram or LinkedIn, Facebook, and I’m here to teach, mentor, and help you win the 2025 and beyond.

John Harcar (24:41.487)
Perfect.

John Harcar (24:49.571)
sounds awesome. Man, thank you so much for I mean, like I said, there’s so much we could still talk about if we had long enough time, we’d be going forever. But I hope everybody else got a good you know, got had had a good time on this episode and learned a lot took some I mean, that equity program. I mean, that sounds I’m gonna have to reach out to you talk to you more about that. But I hope everyone enjoyed the show. We’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.