VA Loan Myths & Mistakes Explained by Byron Brown

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Show Summary

In this conversation, John Harcar interviews Byron Brown, a seasoned real estate professional and military veteran, focusing on the importance of VA loan awareness. Byron shares his journey into real estate, the challenges he faced, and the marketing strategies he employs to reach military clients. He emphasizes the common misconceptions surrounding VA loans and provides valuable insights for veterans looking to utilize their benefits effectively.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Byron Brown’s Website
    • Byron Brown on Facebook
    • Byron Brown on Instagram
    • Byron Brown’s Phone number: (858) 331-2971

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Byron Brown (00:00)
  Biggest misconception is that people think that the VA home loan is entirely free. Now, if in my case, when I bought my home here in Forney, my builder gave me a $20,000 credit. My realtor gave me a $12,000 credit. I ended up ending, I got my, earnest money deposit back. I actually did not have to pay a dime, but I had to come up with that $5,000 earnest money to
  put down. So it wasn’t free, but it ended up being free. Not everybody’s gonna do that. We have VA lenders out there that will tell you, hey, let’s get your closing costs paid by the seller. A seller does not have to pay your closing costs.

  John Harcar (02:44)
  We’re gonna talk about a topic that is near and dear to him, something about a VA loan awareness, there’s a lot of misinformation out there and he wants to make sure he clears the air. Byron, welcome to our show.

  Byron Brown

  Hey thank you very much, thank you for having me.

  John Harcar
  Yeah, thank you. And once again, thank you for your service. Thank you. Excited to talk about this. mean, I think that and I have heard a lot of conversation around VA stuff and some of our different meetings and masterminds. But before we kind of get into weeds of all that stuff, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about you, kind of your journey in real estate or what brought you up to today?

  Byron Brown

  Alright, well first of all, know, again, my name is Byron Brown, 23 year military vet, 12 years with the US Air Force, 11 year with the US Navy, retired chief. Been in real estate for about 20 years, okay. I’m a licensed realtor out in California, I do a lot of business in San Diego, which brought me to…

  going into mortgage and you know, took a VA class one day and all of a sudden fell in love with that, you know, a passion of educating our military service members and properly using their VA home. So that’s how I got into it. And ⁓ it’s been a, it’s been a, it’s been a ride.

  John Harcar (03:33)
  Okay. I like to dig a little bit deeper. That’s what I’m supposed to do. I always think that when someone, you know, talks about real estate, there’s something in the past that might have been planted that seed, right? Nobody just up and says, hey, real estate with all this stuff that was outside. Was there anybody that as you grew up, aunt, uncle, maybe when you’re in the service and you know, maybe one of your fellow servicemen were in real estate. I mean, what was really that seed planter for you?

  Byron Brown (03:51)
  Thank you.

  Well, you know, when I first bought my first home back in 1996, I, myself and my spouse at that time, our realtor took us

  Byron Brown (04:54)
  to go ahead and show us each and every house. All right. And when we closed and this individual, she did not care about her commission or anything. It was service, straight service. And that inspired me because I love service. I love to serve. You know, I have a tagline, I serve those who serve and serve. And she served us and this was patient and everything.

  And this is inspiring me. was like, I remember talking to her, I really want to get into real estate. that inspired me to go ahead and get here. So every time that I’m able to help an individual with their buying a home or doing a loan and I’m able to serve them and I see that smile on their face that, you know, they have to achieve that, that right there is more than anything to me.

  John Harcar (05:31)
  Mm-hmm.

  Got it.

  So you were out in San Diego. Is that where you were stationed?

  Byron Brown (05:39)
  ⁓ actually I was in the Moreno Valley. So I was stationed at Marksville for bass at the first time. Yeah. So, so I was in the air force at that point in time when I bought my first home.

  John Harcar (05:42)
  okay.

  Got it. So you go out there, you get your license, you start doing, you know, some real estate deals. How long did it take you to get your first deal? And what were some of the challenges of breaking into that that you experienced?

  Byron Brown (06:01)
  Yeah, it took me about a year to get my first deal. And the challenge is, man, look, and when people don’t know what you do or who you are, and you’re not putting yourself out there. Like I’m a prior military recruiter, so I always used to tell my recruiters, hey, you can’t be a secret agent in your office. No one’s not going to know who you are.

  I had to learn that early in real estate is that, I can’t just come up, show up to the office, go to a meeting and all, and magically think a deal is gonna jump out and land it in my hands. That’s just not how it works. And I think there’s a lot of realtors that think that. People are like, well, I want ⁓ a company to give me leads. I want this. No, you have to go out there and go get it. And if no one knows what you are doing, no one knows that you’re doing real estate or doing mortgage, they’re not gonna, because they’re gonna go with who they see and they’re gonna go with who they know.

  So that is why, you know, that was my obstacle is that no one knew and I didn’t know how to really put it out there because 80 % of your job in real estate and work is just being a marketer. So I had to learn how to market myself.

  John Harcar (07:03)
  Got it. Okay. And how did you learn to do that? Did you join a brokerage? Did they kind of guide you? Did you just kind of pick it up from whatever you can find online? I mean, how did you learn how to get out there and really expose yourself? Get that exposure.

  Byron Brown (07:16)
  Believe it

  later on, and as I went in with my military career and I got into recruiting, recruiting, military recruiting taught me how to market. right, because we’re taught that in our school is how to go to businesses and go to people that have your sphere of influence. Just going out, but the main thing for me, man, the best thing is talking to people.

  John Harcar (07:23)
  Okay. Got it.

  Mm-hmm.

  Byron Brown (07:40)
  You know, you can put stuff on social media, you can do this, you can put an ad out there and pay for that. But when someone, your front side in front of someone handing them a business card, hey, look, if you know anyone that’s looking to buy a cell or if you’re looking to buy a cell yourself or if you want to go through the mortgage process and you need some information, hey, I just want to give you this card here to let you know that I’m here to help. And sometimes, a lot of times people will remember that when you came up to them and talked to them.

  You have to also know that you have to have the courage just to go ahead and ask. A closed mouth doesn’t get fed. So that’s what I learned, you know, and I learned that from, from Navy recruiting. A lot of people think Navy recruiters just sit in front of their office and, you know, fancy government cars. No, no, there’s a grind to that work there. Cause you know, we’re the frontline people that are putting people in the military. So it was like, I didn’t never know that military recruiting was going to really help me out later on in my real estate career.

  John Harcar (08:12)
  Yeah. Yeah.

  Yeah

  Right. Yeah, I I’ve done it before where you know, like, know, the whole, you know, makes let everybody know what you’re doing, you know, I’ll be in the grocery line, especially if it’s a really packed grocery time, right? And I’ll be checking my phone, my wife would be like, Hey, what are you doing? I’m just talking about that house that we just remodeled. We made that thing. Man, it sold for so I like say it loud so everybody can hear that someone’s it’s hey, buddy, you have a house to sell my chance. So that’s awesome. So

  Byron Brown (08:42)
  Ha ha ha.

  Thanks.

  John Harcar (08:58)
  You’re getting into groove, you’re getting deals. What took you from San Diego to Texas?

  Byron Brown (09:03)
  Well, first of all, I got moved to station out here. And then I was going to go back to San Diego. I was going to go back. But there’s a lot of opportunity

  John Harcar (09:06)
  Okay.

  Byron Brown (09:47)
  coming back out here, you know, got a job and everything and then that’s when the mortgage thing kicked in and you know, there’s a lot of people that I know a lot of guys that I retired with and I retired and that’s retiring from the Navy and from the Air Force that are moving to Texas. So those were opportunities for me to go here and talk to them and educate them about the VA Home Loan. So it’s just a lot of opportunity that and Texas is really, really, really good for veterans.

  really really good you know because you know number one especially if you’re 100 disabled you don’t have property taxes or you’re you’re getting so much of an exemption where you’re not paying as much um so and i mean a lot of good things as far as like hey you’re you’re um you’re getting a huge discount on your your car your car registration so there’s a lot of good things for veterans here in tapetoo stone yeah so you definitely have to come here and take advantage of

  John Harcar (10:35)
  Not benefits.

  Okay, so what type of marketing are you now doing? Are you really targeting to that military community around installations? Are you just doing some wide blanket stuff? I mean, what are you really targeting?

  Byron Brown (10:50)
  Yes.

  So I have a brand, B Brown Group brand, but in that brand, I have what’s called B Brown Military. So that’s one half of what I do, where that specific division of the B Brown Group markets to the military. Okay, I have a separate website. Everybody wanna know at bbrownmilitary.com. And that is a specific website for our active duty and veteran individuals, all right? Now the B Brown Group, it goes to more market towards the…

  John Harcar (11:09)
  Okay.

  Byron Brown (11:22)
  non-military, we’re getting into other stuff, but really my key focus right now because I serve in the military is actually marketing to the military. So what am I doing? A lot of social media coming on podcasts like yours to kind of not only bring awareness to the military, but also bring awareness to your podcasts. So it kind of works two ways. putting out short videos.

  John Harcar (11:39)
  Yeah.

  I love it. I love it.

  Byron Brown (11:46)
  I’m having fun with it right now because it’s like, kind of rebamped it and said, hey, let’s focus on getting the brand out there. Let’s go ahead and get the front side of everybody else. A lot of people that are working this business and trying to go ahead and find that next deal. All right. And when that deal doesn’t come because you don’t have the patience and it’s just like, my God, man, it’s two weeks and I don’t have anything in the, I don’t have a deal yet. I switched my mindset to say,

  John Harcar (12:01)
  Yeah.

  Byron Brown (12:11)
  Let me go out there and let everybody know who I am. And then the deals are gonna come. Okay. So that is kind of how I’m doing everything right now. And then going to networking events, going and getting in front of realtors, getting in front of people. If I’m in an airport and I start talking to someone, I’m handing a business card. I have to order business cards constantly, cause that’s what I’m doing. Just talking. I do actually, I do. I do have.

  John Harcar (12:33)
  Get a digital one, man. Get a, you know, get one of those, just show it. Okay. All right.

  Yeah.

  Byron Brown (12:41)
  Sometimes though people want that paper in hand though. ⁓

  John Harcar (12:43)
  true, true. It’s some,

  some that’s a little trustworthy. That guy went a extra mile for actual paper one nowadays. Um, now who’s doing all this marketing? Is it you? Is it, do have a team? What is, what does that all look like for you right now?

  Byron Brown (12:50)
  That’s true. That is true.

  I,

  you know, between myself and my broker, man, my broker, man, I work for first class real estate. And then I, you know, on the mortgage side, I work for Barrett financial. So I have an individual there on the, on the broker side for the real estate who was helping me out with the marketing. I’m having a relationship with a, with a ⁓ title or title rep who does free, you know, does free marketing for me. So all of my videos that I do, a little shorts.

  John Harcar (13:09)
  Nice.

  cool.

  Byron Brown (13:22)
  I go out there, we shoot a ton of content and then we just put it out there. right. And that’s, know, we put it out information as far as the real estate and also the mortgage process. as far as, know, but everything else I’m really just doing it myself. It’s great. What an iPhone can do for you in a video, you know, people, people spend thousands and thousands of dollars on marketing that does no more different than what you can do to spend a couple of hundred bucks and not even that.

  John Harcar (13:26)
  I love it, it’s awesome.

  ⁓ you ain’t lying. You ain’t lying.

  Not even that.

  And it’s more genuine. It’s more real. It’s like, you know, I, I equivalent it to like a podcast, right? If I’m talking, if I send you a bunch of questions and you jot the answers down, he pre-freight, you already know it’s not as genuine as just talking, right? As, having that conversation. I feel the passion. I hear the passion, ⁓ for VA’s for the military for,

  Byron Brown (13:50)
  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

  Absolutely. Yes.

  John Harcar (14:56)
  You know, we talked a little bit before we got on here about the awareness of the VA home loans. You had mentioned that there’s a lot of people coming out and getting into and tapping into that pool, but giving misinformation. So why don’t we talk for a few minutes on kind of why is it really important? What are some things that VA homeowners are being told that is untrue? And what are some truths that you want to you know, you want to share?

  Byron Brown (15:01)
  Mm-hmm.

  Well, first of all, people are being told that they can use the VA benefit to buy any type of property and that’s simply not true. All right. They’re also being, you you can only purchase really either a condo that has to be approved by the VA, a town home. You can buy a single family home. You can buy a new build. You can also buy a manufactured home that is

  on a foundation. so those are some of the VA home. The biggest thing for me is there’s real estate agents that are giving information about the VA home loan. That’s not true. For instance, I had a realtor that put out a video and I had to actually call her because we worked together and told her it was wrong information. And it was like she had went and said that

  you can get your down payment waived or get your down payment rolled into your loan. All right, you up using a VA home loan. The VA home loan does not have a down payment. Yeah, so I was like, where did you get that information from? You know, I had to call her. Where did you get that? And it’s people that will watch that and then someone will watch that and come to somebody like me and say, well, hey, I can get my down payment rolled. You don’t need to get it rolled into the loan because you don’t have a down payment.

  John Harcar (16:19)
  Right, I didn’t think it even had a down payment.

  Byron Brown (16:35)
  The biggest obstacle that I have is people that are not qualified to talk about the VA home loan or people that are not qualified to talk about loans, talking about loans. A real estate agent is not qualified to talk about mortgage. I had a realtor go and gave a VA, gave a veteran, quoting them rates. You say, dude.

  John Harcar (16:48)
  Mm-mm. I’m not qualified to talk about mortgage, man. I buy in Flip House. I’m not qualified to talk about mortgage.

  Byron Brown (17:02)
  This is what you can do. This is what your payment is going to look like. You’re not able, you’re not the one that’s supposed to be talking about that. The biggest misconception is, that a lot of veterans and a lot of military think that they don’t have to go through a normal mortgage process when they’re doing the VA home loan. I put out a video and say, let me be, let me be honest with you. All right. There is cost when it comes to the VA home loan. That’s biggest, the absolute

  John Harcar (17:18)
  Mm-hmm.

  Byron Brown (17:28)
  Biggest misconception is that people think that the VA home loan is entirely free. Now, if in my case, when I bought my home here in Forney, my builder gave me a $20,000 credit. My realtor gave me a $12,000 credit. I ended up ending, I got my, my, my earnest money deposit back. I actually did not have to pay a dime, but I had to come up with that $5,000 earnest money.

  John Harcar (17:56)
  Right.

  Byron Brown (17:56)
  to

  put down. So it wasn’t free, but it ended up being free. Not everybody’s gonna do that. We have VA lenders out there that will tell you, hey, let’s get your closing costs paid by the seller. A seller does not have to pay your closing costs.

  At the end of the day, there’s closing costs when it comes to the VA home loan. So even though you don’t have a down payment, there’s other costs. So people need to be educated on that and people need to be prepared. You cannot buy home.

  and you got $5 in your bank account. Okay, you can’t do that. Well, there’s a lot of people that think that they can because you have realtors out here, you have other people out here that are, they’re trying to promise the son and can’t even give you a drink of water to go with it. You know what I’m saying? So it’s like, you need to be educated on the proper information in the process of doing a VA mortgage. So, and I’m very passionate about that. I want everybody to be set up for success.

  John Harcar (18:27)
  No.

  I could tell and I love that. So let’s say, you know, I’m a veteran and I’m thinking about using my VA. What are the first couple of questions I should ask, things I should do to get onto the right track?

  Byron Brown (19:01)
  Well, the first question you need to ask is this, all right? Am I qualified? All right? Because I have dealt with a lot of veterans. I’ve dealt with a lot of people that are not qualified, even though they spent time in the military, that we need to go ahead and verify that. So first of all, we need to verify your time of service, all right? I’ve had a lot of military reserves that come up and they may have did 90 days of service, but it was for training. They’re not qualified, okay?

  So we have to go ahead and find out if you’re qualified to use the benefit. Number two, it’s always good to go ahead and have someone run a complete process, all right? Because it’s one thing to have a conversation. We need to know where you stand financially and credit wise, all right? Number three, the biggest thing you wanna ask someone is how much do you think you’re gonna be making off of this loan? Why? Because people, there’s mortgage lenders that will charge you fees.

  on the back end and you don’t even know about it. But then when you end up paying that closing cost, a brunt of your closing costs is paying that mortgage lender. For instance, you sit up here and you see that there’s a 3 % origination fee. That’s the fee that this individual charged you to do their law. All right, so if it’s 3 % and you’re buying a $500,000 house and you end up having to fork up 15 grand or even the 15 grand is coming from maybe the…

  John Harcar (20:05)
  their feet, yep.

  Take your time.

  Byron Brown (20:23)
  the seller giving you a credit, it’s going to your loan officer. Why are you making 15 grand off of me? And so there’s a lot of times people do that to hide stuff. And it’s like, you have to go ahead and you have to go ahead and ask these questions. And then mainly ask about the process. What is it that I’m gonna need? What is it that I’m gonna need to do in order for me to go ahead and get this loan process going?

  John Harcar (20:47)
  Cool.

  Awesome. Well, that’s a ton of information, man. And I’m yeah, I could tell you’re passionate about it. And I’m glad you’re getting the awareness out, right? You know, helping people. If there are ⁓ folks that are listening on here, maybe they’re working with veterans or maybe they’re veterans themselves and they want to acquire with you about using the VA loan. What is the best way for them to get in touch with you?

  Byron Brown (20:53)
  All right.

  Okay, the best way the best way go ahead and call me my phone number here is eight five eight three three one two nine seven one You can go to my website be brown military com be brown military agent com be brown military agent com Okay, so get definitely go there. I put out a lot of information You can hit me up on Instagram as well and be proud I put out a lot of information on Instagram

  So definitely those are ways that you can definitely reach out to me.

  John Harcar (21:37)
  And then we’ll put all the stuff in the show notes. So guys, you’ll be able to get in touch with them either one of those ways. Byron, man, I want to thank you again for coming on here. I want to thank you again for your service and your passion to really bring this awareness. Guys, I hope that you guys enjoyed the show. Hope you got something out of it. And if you are in that VA situation or you work with them, reach out to Byron. He seems like a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of information. Byron, thank you again. And guys, hope you enjoyed the show. Cheers.

  Byron Brown (21:47)
  Bye.

  Thank

  you very much.