The Keith Andrews Podcast

VA Loan Hacks for Veterans and Service Members | Mark Kong E17

• Keith Andrews • Season 1 • Episode 17

Share episode

Welcome to Episode 17 of "The Real Estate Junkie" podcast. This week, we revisit a valuable segment with Mark Kong from Episode 4, focusing on VA loans. Mark, a West Point graduate, Army officer, house flipper, real estate agent, and now broker/owner of Evolution Mortgage, shares his deep knowledge about VA loans. Whether you're an active duty service member or a veteran, this episode is packed with essential information to help you navigate the VA loan process. Learn about credit score requirements, loan limits, eligibility, and much more.

Connect with Mark:
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/markkong916
Email: mkong@evolutionmortgage.com
Website: https://evolutionmortgage.com/

Find Motivated Sellers with PropStream
Perfect for wholesalers, investors, agents. Find sellers, get contact info, more. Try for free!

Connect with Keith:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamkeithandrews
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamkeithandrews
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@iamkeithandrews

Interested in the Colorado Springs Real Estate Market?
Explore Alpha Zulu Realty—Colorado Springs' #1 Investor-Focused Realty. From A to Z, we've got you covered in acquisitions, sales, and property management. Visit https://www.AlphaZuluRealty.com today.

What is the lowest credit score I need to have in order to qualify for a VA loan? It depends on who you talk to, right? If you give Veterans United a call, they say minimum 620 credit score. Okay. The thing is every lender is allowed to have their own overlays. Is there a minimum VA credit score? No, there's not. There's not. I've got three Welcome to episode 17 of the Real Estate Junkie podcast. This week, I've been busy hosting a family reunion, so I pushed out our original guest to next week. Today, we'll be revisiting a conversation we had with Mark Kong, a VA loan expert from episode four. In that episode, we covered many topics, but his insights on VA loans were so valuable that I've clipped out that segment for this episode. Mark graduated from West Point, served as an Army officer, became an active duty house flipper, got his real estate license, sold homes, and eventually became a loan officer starting his own company, Evolution Mortgage. Whether you're an active duty service member or a veteran, this episode is packed with essential information to help you navigate the VA loan process. So let's dive into the conversation. and learn from Mark all about VA loans. One misconception is you once you buy with VA, you know, you can't buy VA again in the same city. Well, you know, I had a deployment in there and that's kind of a great reason to purchase again. Right. When you deploy when I deployed that became a rental and you know, and then I bought again. Did you have to refinance? No. So you had enough remaining eligibility. You did. Wow. OK. They were. They were both, you know, not luxury homes. So yeah, if I had bought in one fourplex, you know, in Colorado Springs, I probably would, would have been tapped out on eligibility. Eligibility is always limited by the county loan limit of the county you're moving to. So you could be tapped out on eligibility because you bought in Colorado Springs and the county loan limit is $726 ,000. However, if you move to San Francisco County and the county loan that there's a million. Now you've just opened up a little bit more eligibility. So now you have 300K basically. Correct. Essentially of purchasing power. Yeah. So the other thing with eligibility is it's actually limitless until you use some of it. So if you have full eligibility, you could, if you qualify, buy a two, three, four million dollar VA home, let's say in Colorado Springs, and the VA will insure all of it. And the funny thing is like the interest rates keep getting better, right? The county loan limit in Colorado Springs is $726 ,000. When you go conventional and you go above that county loan rate, you buy conventional, you know, at 800K, that rate gets super unfavorable. You know, that rate for conventional, you know, under 726K, like that might be a seven and a half percent right now. And when you go jumbo above that county loan limit, that turns into an eight and a half. or eight and a half with points. Like it gets very unfavorable and these are just hypothetical terms, right? But I just trying to show the difference in deteriorating pricing when you go jumbo with conventional. Well with VA, when you go jumbo above that kind of loan limit, your rate just keeps on getting slightly incrementally better, at least with us. So the rate I'm able to give someone for a$3 million VA loan is actually slightly better than rate for a 700K VA loan. So I tell people it's very important, especially people that are doing very, very well as veterans, you know, maybe, you know, they're dual income, whatever it may be, and they want to buy a million dollar home. My suggestion is make sure you go ahead and restore your V eligibility, get your V eligibility back so that you could buy your dream home with a VA loan. Because for multiple reasons, it is the best product. Also, there's no debt to income per se limit on the VA loan. You know, we are closing VL loans that are 70, 75 % debt to income. It goes off of residual income calculation, which is just completely different than it is income. So residual income calculation, we just have to prove that, you know, let's say a residual necessary residual income is $2,000. Well, if someone's take home pay is 10,000 and all their debt is 8 ,000, then they have 2 ,000 of residual income. And the VA will say, okay, that's good to go. And that might maybe 60 % debt to income or 70 % debt to income. The other thing about VA loan is when it comes to three -plexes and four -plexes, conventional loans have the stricter debt to income limits. And for three -plexes and four -plexes, the FHA self -sufficiency test never came up in COVID, because it was 2 .5 % rates. But now that rates are in the sixes, sevens, eights, most threeplexes and fourplexes are not passing what's called the FHA Self -Sufficiency Test. And the gurus don't talk about this when they make the TikTok reels. And so everyone's like, just buy a threeplex or fourplex with FHA. Well, most of them don't pass the Self-Sufficiency Test. So if you have eligibility as a veteran and you're looking to buy a threeplex or fourplex, there's a huge pool of buyers that just don't exist anymore. And the other thing is for realtors, if you have a veteran buyer who's interested in a three -plex or four -plex, that's like a very hot leap because you're really only competing against investors. Your other like first time home buyers who are looking at house hack and stuff, your conventional, most of them don't qualify and it's very, very hard to do. Now, Fannie and Freddie just dropped their requirement. It used to be 15 % down. for three plus four plus, they've just dropped it to 5%, but still with the debt to income limits and PMI, it's very hard to qualify. And so - Because the PMI is also gonna jack up your payment and then DTI is gonna be even harder to get through. Correct, so it's just because they dropped it from 15 to 5 % doesn't necessarily open up a huge pool of buyers. Yeah. And so the, you know - You do need to have reserves. So if you have a young lieutenant who has no reserves and wants to buy a three plus four plex, can't do it. You need six months of reserves. However, is that just for conventional or that for VA too? That's for VA. Okay. Yeah. For conventional, the reserves are a little bit different. But if you have a veteran buyer who has reserves and is interested in three plus four plex, that's a really eligible buyer, more so than an FHA and conventional buyer. Yeah, and obviously there's a lot of veteran buyers in the Springs But it's really interesting because right now they're only competing against in my mind. They're really only competing against other investors Yeah, so my my daughter Joined the Air Force three years ago Got married so they're a dual military household. Awesome. They they just got done buying their second home So they bought the first one using her VA Then they bought another one using her husband's VA and now and they're living in that one now. So they're renting out the first one and now they're already okay. Well, let's get ready for three because they're literally leveraging the VA to kind of get their start in real estate. If they both have eligibility left in the counties they live in, can they combine that eligibility together to go buy a third one? Once they hit that one year you know, required. Yeah. Regardless of whether they hit that one year or not, if they have a circumstance that is a good enough argument to buy again, they don't necessarily even have to hit that one year, right? Let's say they got a, a short notice PCS orders to a new duty station six months later because of a career move or whatnot, right? Like there could be a million reasons. Also, let's say, you know, They had twins, right? And they want a bigger house, right? That is an eligible reason to buy maybe even three, four, five months later than your initial purchase. So, you know, when you close a VA loan, generally it's, I intend to occupy this property for at least one year, right? But there's a myriad of reasons why that could change. The important thing to make sure it's not mortgage fraud is to make sure that intent was there at the time you signed. Got it. What happens after that is, you know, life happens. Life, life's crazy, right? You don't want to build a pattern of trying to, to skirt around the rules. I don't think, but again, deployments, having more kids, bad traffic, wanting your commute to short. And there's, there's lots of reasons that are valid. Okay. So within VA loans in a scenario like this, there's joint entitlement and joint entitlement could be a veteran and non-veteran. can purchase a house together using the VA loan. And essentially we have to come up with a down payment to cover eligibility gap if it's veteran and non -veteran. And then if it's veteran and veteran, that's considered split entitlement. And we can use your daughter's remaining entitlement and your son -in -law's remaining entitlement to do a split entitlement VA loan. And... The way to structure that, it just all depends on the numbers, but let's say house number one was 300 ,000, house number two was 300 ,000, and they're moving to a county where the county loan limit is 726 ,000. So they each have essentially remaining purchasing power entitlement, let's say, of around $426 ,000. So they could buy a house at 800 ,000 and put $0 down by using both veterans remaining entitlements. They could go over that and they would need to come up with a 20 % down payment of whatever the gap is. Of whatever is over that amount, right? So it's not 20 % of the 800 or whatever the price of the home is. It's whatever that's not covered under their current entitlement. Correct. So if they together, you know, had, you're exactly correct, an entitlement remaining of, you know, 500 ,000 and they're buying a house at 600,000 that gap of 100k is what they'd have to cover so they'd have to cover 25 % of that 100k gap $25 ,000 I'm a visual person so if someone's listening to this and not following I apologize I I like to whiteboard things, but hopefully that's not too complicated Yeah, that's I mean this is this is really good stuff. So let me ask you this And I know this, I've used my VA loan, I want to say like five or six times, but I regret it. And the reason why I say I regret it is because every time I reuse that VA loan, I sold the house that it used to, that I used to have on it. And I walked away from what is now probably triple the price that I bought it for. So I always regret when I sell, like I'm, I'm a believer in you make money when you buy real estate, not when you sell it. That's just how I do it because I'm into rental properties, but I wanted to talk to you about that because I Know I can refinance out. So let's say the house that I'm in right now, which it is I purchased it with a VA loan if I was to refinance my house right now So free up my VA loan. I can then use it to go buy another property, correct? Not necessarily and that's one of the biggest misconceptions with VA loan among you're kind of veteran players who've been on the block. It encompasses restoration of the VA loan. And this is what so many people and loan officers really jack up. And just to challenge your point a little bit is I wonder every time you sold, because it was primary residence, right? In most of those instances, you probably didn't have to pay any capital gains tax on that appreciation. And so I wonder, right, because if someone owns a property two years, you could sell and essentially not pay any capital gains up to 250 or 500 if married. And so I guess my only challenge to that would be, you know, with that cash, I'm sure you went and bought more rentals, continue to build your portfolio. So I wonder what the opportunity - No, actually I didn't because that was before I had any sense on - So no, that was just like, you know, moving from one place to another over the years. Gotcha. And not realizing that, man, I should be just holding onto these properties versus selling them. I actually did refinance a VA loan one time, like out of the VA to free it up to buy this house that I'm in right now. But that's the only time that I actually did that. And I got my eligibility back so I could buy the house that I'm in now. But that was the only time that I actually Refinance to get it back the rest of the times I lived in a house for a couple years, you know small two -bedroom needed more space Sold it bought a three-bedroom. And yeah when I did when I made those moves I was just walking away with that cash and not investing it in real estate like I should have been Yep, so Depending on how your restoration was done If you refinance right now to conventional You may not be able to go use your VA again Really? Correct. Yeah. And I could look it up for you right now, actually, if you want. We could cut the cut it out for a sec or cut the show for a second. Maybe we could do that afterwards. That's interesting. Why? Explain that a little more. Yeah. So there's a stark difference between basic restoration and one time restoration. And one time restoration is once in the veteran's lifetime and it's a golden ticket. Okay. So to back up, let's talk about my scenario. When I left Colorado Springs, I ended up selling both properties that use VA entitlement. When the veteran sells or disposes of a property, they could then do a basic restoration and get that entitlement back with no asterisks. Yeah. That's what I did. I'm pretty positive that's what I did. Well, that's what you did for most of them. Yes. So most of them should have been a basic restoration. Yes. If those two properties I kept and I refinanced to conventional, but the veteran me, I retained those properties. So on title, it's still Mark Kong. Once those are both refied to conventional, I cannot do a basic restoration if I still own them. I can do a one time restoration and I could pull that trigger only one time. And so if I did a one -time restoration, I would get all my restoration back right. And then I could go buy a third property using my VA entitlement. Let's say that third property is for 800K and it taps out all the rest of my VA entitlement. Well, now that I've used that, even if I now refi that to conventional five years later, I cannot get my eligibility back because I've used my one -time restoration. As long as I retain that third property, that third property is the one that my entitlement's tied to. So if I retain that property, I'm never getting my eligibility back. Whether it's conventional, et cetera. Even if it's paid off in cash, if I retain that property, my entitlement's used. If I sell that third property, I can now do a basic restoration again. So there's always a way to use your VA loan again, depending on what you're willing to dispose of. But it's the one -time restoration. A lot of people don't distinguish it. And there's a misconception among, especially a lot of military, specializing realtors that's just like, buy at every duty station, you know, keep buying every duty station. That's not feasible. And a lot of people think, well, if you just refight a conventional, you could keep buying at every duty station. You can only do it once. You can only do it once is what you're telling me. You can maybe do it five, six times. It depends on the loan amount of the houses, right? Because I could buy four really cheap houses and then pull my one -time restoration and then buy three more cheap houses. So it all depends on the loan amounts. versus the county loan limits. So it can go more than one time, but that one time restoration, that card could only be pulled once. Okay. So let, let, let me just, just for the listeners that are out there, see if I get this right. So let's say my entitlement was $500 ,000. Okay. Right. I bought a house for $500 ,000. So it's completely used up. If I was to sell that house and pay off, basically pay off that loan, I would get my full entitlement back to go buy another home, correct? With no asterisks. Yep. With no asterisks. And that's a basic restoration. And that's a basic restoration. And I can do that as many times as I want. So in a 10 year period, I could buy 10 homes. As long as I'm selling and paying off that loan, every single time I get my full restoration back, right? Correct. Okay. However, if I... don't sell that home and I just refinance out, I can restore that entitlement and I can go buy another one. But after that, if I tried to refinance that second home, I wouldn't be able to buy a third home. Is that correct? Correct. And I've seen loan officers mess this up. I've had a buddy of mine, I told him, hey, you know, he had a four plex in Colorado Springs, bought VA. It appreciates refinances to conventional. Couple of years later, he buys, you know, house and cottage VA that maxes his entitlement. I know I did his one -time restoration because he retained that first house. And another lender was telling him, yeah, just we'll refi you at a conventional investment and go buy with your VA again. And then this loan officer was like, you know, I get a refinance and I get another purchase. It's two deals. And I told him, no, it's not going to work. And, and this loan officer, you know, had 20 years experience, probably close hundreds of VA loans and still didn't fully understand how restoration and entitlement works. Ended up where I just really encouraged my friend, I was like, go above this loan officer because they can close the first refinance for you. That's not going to get stopped. The only thing that's going to get stopped is when they apply to the VA for your new certificate of eligibility, it's going to come back as a fat no. So I just, this loan officer was just kind of, you know, blowing smoke and maybe he just didn't know the rules around it. And so I discouraged my friend, Hey, skip the chain, go talk to his boss, talk to his boss's boss, because this is your loan that you're going to refinance from a low rate to a super crappy rate on the promise that you'll have your eligibility back. So you got to, and so he did. And they're like, yeah, no, that's not going to And so there's there's officers out there that are considered VA experts that all their realtors think they're VA experts that shouldn't be even licensed. Wow. One thing I did want to ask you is because you sectioned out triplexes and fourplexes, you didn't mention duplex. Is there a different requirement on the duplex as far as the VA loan is concerned? For the VA loan? No. The reason why I sectioned that out is for competition reasons. So my point with three -plex and four-plex is VA buyers have a distinct competitive advantage for three -plex and four -plex because of actually an FHA requirement. The FHA self -sufficiency test only applies to three and four -plexes, not to duplexes. So my point being is if veteran is bidding on a duplex, they may be competing with a lot more FHA first -time buyers versus for three -plex and four -plex, In my mind, most of their competition is only other investors. It's not going to be an FHA loan because the self -sufficient, especially with today's rates, self -sufficiency is going to be hard. It could, but probably not. Yeah. Got it. Got it. This year, this year I've had one deal that's passed an FHA self -sufficiency test and it didn't pass off the bat. What we had to do is get the seller to buy down the rate with 10K of buy down. Okay. We had to shop the insurance. to multiple, multiple insurance companies to get the insurance quote down with a super high deductible. Okay, and all this time we're just trying to lower the PITI. So it passes self -sufficiency, right? And so we're lowering the PITI by buying the rate down. And I'm talking, we bought the rate down to the lowest rate on the rate sheet. We couldn't go any further. There's no lenders that even offered a fatter buy down for a better rate. And then on the other hand, we had to fight with the appraiser. to get to change, you know, and we're just praying because the appraiser could have told us kick rocks. And it wasn't me, it was the borrower. I can't do this with the appraiser, but the borrower's, you know, trying to get the appraiser to change the rental amounts, because it goes off the rental amounts on the appraisal from, you know, let's say 800 to $900, right? So on this side, we're trying to lower the PITI, on this side, the borrower's, and he was successful in the appraisers, like, you know what, kind of listen to the argument, listen to some rental comps, and he... redid the report, which is very rare to a higher rental amounts. And so that only passed kind of by luck of the draw, if you will, or a appraiser who's willing to redo the report. And that's what we had to do to even barely pass self -sufficiency. And that was one of many this year. And a lot of people just think, FHA three-plus four -plex, boom, let's go. And it's not that simple. It's really in my mind, VA buyers don't know the luxury they have when it comes to purchasing and controlling a big portion of real estate. True. And you know what? I really hate the FHA loan honestly, because of not just the self -sufficiency test part, but that PMI that will never go away until you refinance out of that FHA loan. At least with a conventional loan, you can once once you know, the home is appreciated. You can contact the bank and you can get the PMI removed. You cannot do that with an FHA loan. It's stuck there forever until you refinance it. And I think that's just that's that's horrible. That's a big chunk of your payment every month. Well, FHA definitely is not for like you're more savvy people. So the other thing about that that monthly mortgage insurance with FHA. is it's the same regardless of credit score. So if someone's to buy a duplex or four-plex, 5 % down conventional, they're going to pay PMI still, but it's not going to be there forever. But more importantly than that, that PMI correlates to their credit score. Got it. OK. If they have a 750 credit score, their PMI for conventional is going to be much better than if they had a 580 credit score. But for FHA, that monthly mortgage insurance is the same regardless of whether you have an 800 credit score or a 600 credit score. So again, it's not the dog on the FHA. And for honestly, for low credit individuals just trying to buy a primary, FHA definitely serves a purpose. But when the gurus talk about FHA for investment purposes, it's definitely more limited than. then people will advertise. Well, definitely being a veteran and having the VA loan is definitely, you're one step ahead of everyone else. So let's talk a little bit more about the VA loan as far as you mentioned credit score. What is the lowest credit score I need to have in order to qualify for a VA loan? It depends on who you talk to, right? If you give Veterans United a call, they say minimum 620 credit score. Okay. The thing is every lender is allowed to have their own overlays. Is there a minimum VA credit score? No, there's not. There's not. As a broker, I have access to lenders that will go down to a 500 for a VA. Okay. And I saw you're paying a price for that though, right? Well, each lender is going to have their own credit buckets and rates that correlate to those credit buckets. So yes. Someone with a 505 credit score is not going to get the same rate as a veteran with a 680 credit score, but it is feasible. Now, some lender could say they could do a 480 credit score VA loan. Also, another good question is what's the max VA loan amount? Well, there is none. The VA doesn't dictate a max loan amount. If there's a lender that'll fund a $35 million VA purchase, according to the VA handbook, it would be VA insured. Now, each lender again has their overlays. And we actually want to dive into overlays a little bit here, but most lenders, their VA max loan amounts about 3 .5 million. So if someone asks me, Mark, what's your max VA loan amount? I usually, instead of giving them a long answer, which I'm happy to do, I usually just say, hey, for most of my wholesale partners that I work with. And I work as a broker because that's where I believe I get the best rates. But... For max VA loan amount, I usually say 3 .5 million, but if I needed to find a lender that would do a 5 million VA loan, I could probably do so. So speaking of overlays, every lender is allowed to have their own overlays. And the reason why I think this is important is because some lender might deny you for VA loan at a 60 % debt to income, but another lender might be okay with a 70 % debt to income for VA, as long as it passes residual. The other thing is these overlays, lenders can also apply them to their assumptions. So I may qualify a veteran for a 70 % DTI loan. However, all these lenders have very low incentives to process these assumptions. And assumptions are something that's super hot right now. You've done them for your clients. But a lender may be approving loans, out the gate new loans, regardless of DTI, but they may put a 41 % DTI overlay on their assumptions because as just a way to just to block them because they're making no money on assumptions. So might as well just deny as many as possible. Right. So, and realtors don't know this and realtors will just say, the lender denied the assumption. They broke the law and it's like, well, what lenders can't do is they can't just not receive a 1003 mortgage application for assumption. they're required to process assumption paperwork. They could be slow, right? There's federal laws on the timeline in which they need to receive that application and either issue a conditional approval or a denial letter, but they could just put overlays on it that are super unfavorable to pretty much deny the majority of assumptions or as many as they can. And we also talk secondary financing. A lot of lenders and people are like, I know a lender that'll cover the gap and do a second loan for the gap. Well, the VA handbook says that that second lien has to be assumable. So is this second lender making a small second loan assumable? First of all, probably not. And if they are, can that first lender just deny it for an overlay saying that they don't allow secondary financing? Yes, they can. Right. What I dislike is a lot of the messaging around, this loan's assumable, this one's assumable. Has that agent even contacted, has the borrower even contacted the current servicer to see what the requirements and overlays are for that assumption? As a listing agent, I think if you're going to advertise assumability, one, clarify what that gap is between the purchase price and the sale amount. First of all, that's almost never done, but please do that, right? Second of all, have your seller, contact the servicer and figure out the process step by step for assumption, right? Oftentimes it starts with like a limited power of attorney so that new borrower could even contact the servicer. And then also what their requirements and their overlays are for that assumption process because their overlay again might be 41 % DTI whereas no one really has that overlay for VA purchases. This last VA assumption I worked with a client on, he bought basically a triplex. It literally took over 100 days. And that was emailing and calling the lender like every single day. He was calling, the seller was calling, I was calling, we were all calling. And it was just, I mean, in the end, awesome opportunity because he got a 2 .75% interest rate, but it just took. forever. So definitely worth it, but I didn't realize that they could have these overlays in place that can completely just shut the whole thing down. So you thinking you're thinking, hey, we're in contract for this house, and we're going to assume the loan, the lender can legally put the brakes on and no, you're not assuming this loan because of their overlay. And they have the power to do that. And the VA can't get in between that in any way. The VA can't force a lender to lend on a deal. Got it. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Lenders are allowed to have their own. There could be a VA lender out there that puts their VA overlay at a 720 credit score. They don't want to lend anything in that credit bucket under 720. That's completely allowable. So there are certain rules that they do have to follow. There's certain rules they don't have to follow. I think the important thing to note here is most lenders and servicers don't have an incentive, financial incentive, then don't get paid to process assumptions. So if you're the owner of one of these companies, how much manpower are you gonna dedicate to a department to process these assumptions? And even being able to call and email the lender is actually a step above some lenders. My brother -in -law did a via assumption and everything was via snail mail. He had to snail mail in a 10 .03 mortgage application. And that took closer to six months to close. We had the same thing, but luckily, a month into it, they transferred the loan to another lender and that lender was much easier to work with. But the first lender we were working with, I kid you not, like the emails we were getting back had to be like chat GPT or something because they were just like completely automated. Every time we'd reach out, it was like we had to start the whole thing over conversation again. We were even referencing the case number and everything. And it was like they responded back with the same generic thing. And it was just, it was ridiculous. They definitely didn't make it easy. And then God though they they transferred the loan and the new lender Was easy to work with and we got it done Yeah, great work by the way. I Yeah, that that's hard to do Even finding that deal for your client. Yeah, I know we've talked a little bit about offline but great work that's very hard to do and yeah, yeah, you know whether in the springs or otherwise would go through that amount of work to to secure a deal for their clients, so Yeah, I mean, it's definitely an opportunity if you can get it because I mean 2 .75 % 3 % interest rate like if you could figure out a way to grab one of those properties up and not have to you know, what is today's rate right now? It's like what it's always really tough to quote right because there's a lot of lenders out there that'll say hey my rate's six and a half, you know, but they're baking in a point. They're making a point and a half. So we you know for us Our goal is to always be kind of half a point to a quarter point better than most lenders out there with the same fees, right? So if they're charging one point, our goal is that if we charge you at the point, we're better in rate by a quarter, half percent. So we've, you know, we structure our company with very low overhead, very low marketing budget. And there's a lot of people out there that, you know, would rather work with a lender, you know, that You know, that's not us. But our goal is there are good agents out there that would rather work with a lender that has really competitive rates than work with a lender that maybe has a higher marketing budget to pass along to them. Because ultimately, typically the clients kind of pay in that bill at the end of the day, in my opinion. Yeah, that's how we structure. And we kind of said, hey, the people that want to use us are the type of people we want to work with. Evolution Mortgage. What made you guys come up with that name? Wanting to be better every day. And it sounds cliche, but the industry is going to change. The company shouldn't say the same. So right now, we're a team of seven. That's going to grow over time. And as things change, right now, the back end wholesale lenders that we have, maybe there's new players that come up on the map in the next two, three, four, five years. So the industry is always changing, it should be changing, we should be changing at a company to get better all the time. There's decisions we made from the get go of like we want to be better, right? So every decision we make is based on getting better to keep that competitive edge for ourselves and for our clients. And yeah, we just wanna continue that moving forward. Awesome, well I definitely commend you guys for that, that's awesome. Veterans helping veterans. There's nothing better than that. You actually gave me a lot of insight on the VA loan stuff I didn't even know. So that's pretty awesome. And I do appreciate that. I will definitely call you whenever I need someone or whenever I need some help. I know you'll always be there. You always have been there. So I really do appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Keith. Yeah, we appreciate you. Thanks for having me on. Awesome. All right, Mark. Well, we'll talk to you soon. OK, take care. All right. Bye bye.