Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Tim Tacl Co-Founder / Sr. Loan Officer at DNVR Lending

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

After earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the United States Naval Academy in 2009, Tim Tacl served for six years as an Officer in the US Navy. He left the military service in 2015 and started his civilian career working on the Strategic Partnership team with Vail Resorts. After working and learning about corporate marketing, partnership contracts, and client relations for a ski season, Tim was ready to find a career that re-aligned with his core value of service to others and giving back to the community around him. Surprisingly, he found that residential lending offered him just that.After six years working for a traditional correspondent lender, Tim again felt that something was lacking and that there had to be a way to give back in a bigger way to not only his clients but his community as well. This led him and his two co-founders, Abby McDaniel and Jerre Allyn, to create DNVR Lending. His goal and vision for DNVR Lending is to offer clients the best rates in the market while not compromising on the superior client experience, he has built a reputation for providing.Learn More:https://www.dnvrlending.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-tacl-8603b387Elite Real Estate Leaders Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/elite-real-estate-leaders-podcastSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-tim-tacl-co-founder-sr-loan-officer-at-dnvr-lending

Welcome to the Elite Real Estate Leaders Podcast, brought to you by Trailstone Insurance Group, bringing you interviews with the best real estate and mortgage professionals, empowering you to understand the current trends in the housing market so that you make the American dream your reality. Enjoy today's episode. Welcome to the Elite Real Estate Leaders podcast. Today we have with this Tim Tackle, who's the co-founder and senior loan officer at DNVR Lending. Tim, welcome to the program. Great. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

You are welcome. So I want to hear all about what you do and how you do it and who you do it for. But get us started with your story, background, and how did you get into the industry? Yeah, thanks. Kind of probably not the most traditional way. I was an officer in the Navy for about six years. served out in San Diego from 2009 to about 2015 and then decided to make a switch, get out of the military, took a job actually with Bale Resorts, their corporate headquarters in Broomfield.

Did that for about 10 months, and a good buddy of mine, Joey was doing loans. He was getting on the Navy and was joining a team and was pretty much said, And hey, I know you're not super happy there and come join me over here. And I did it. You know, and it was a little scary jumping into a commission only job from, you know, six years of Navy getting a paycheck every two weeks. Same thing with, you know, working in a corporate position. But yeah, haven't looked back since.

Yeah, so talk a little bit about that. There's two transitions that I am sensing there. One, from military to civilian life. And then two, from your salaried position to a whole other industry that's commission only. So what was the transitions like and how did you deal with kind of the ups and downs and tenuous uncertainties that went along with those? Yeah, it's a great question and probably more relevant for today's market, you know, just being a down market and not having the volume that we're typically used to.

So I'll touch on the military transition. And I mean, I went to the Naval Academy, joined so four-year university, which is all pretty much just being in the military. So from about 18 to, gosh, 20-something, all I knew was military and that lifestyle and that structure. So getting out of the military was a big transition just adjusting to, I always tell the story of, you know, my first weekend at working at Vail Resorts, I was going to Austin for. my buddy's birthday. And in the military, have you ever leave, if I call it leave, you know, taking the leave to go somewhere, you know, have to go out a certain radius from your base, you have to put in a request, you have to let all your senior leadership know where you're going. And so I met with my manager the day before I was leaving. I was like, hey, so I'm going

to Austin. Is there anything I need to sign or like check it out with anything? Or like, I looked at me funny. I was like, well, have fun in Austin and, I mean, show up to work on Monday. So, that was, welcome, welcome to civilian life. Yeah, exactly. So that shift and that mentality of, you know, I guess that freedom was a newfound joy for me. So that was a big transition, just that military to civilian. And I really appreciate my time at Vail Resorts and allowed me to grow and learn. I was on a marketing team there.

So really good to see kind of how a company, a Fortune 500 company at a high level operates kind of not on the sidelines, but, you know, as a part of their marketing team. So that was really cool. And then that transition from Vail to being a loan officer, that salary position, obviously it was super scary. You know, anybody that's been in our industry or has gone into a commission only role, whether it's real estate title or loan officer or just sales in general that has no base. There is a, there's a certain, you know, scarcity or I guess fear there. I guess scarcity too. How many deals are out there? How do I get those deals? How to capitalize on that? How to make myself stand out amongst the thousand other loan officers that are trying

to do the same thing I'm doing. But you just, I know, kind of find your guru, find out how you interact well with people or not. And that's what I tell our loan officers is, you know, don't look at other people that are doing well as, you know, a good model. but don't try to mimic them because you try to mimic them, it's not going to come out as original for you. And that's something that I really had to learn and apply for me,

being in a sales role and finding myself, not as Tim, the military guy, but now Tim, the civilian that's working in loans. So it was like anything, it takes time to build that book of business, build that trust with people,

those referral partners. And again, I would say kind of find your voice and how you interact with people. people and how you resonate. So you know, I would say there's another aspect of trust that you were dealing with, which is you trusted your friend that urged you to come make the transition. And you, you trusted that the industry would be, you know, profitable. You trusted that they would give you some guidance, that it was a good move. And then like you didn't see 19 steps in

front of you. You saw, you know, two steps in front of you or one. And, you know, you just had that trust to go. Let's just put one foot for the other. Learn as I go. Constant never ending improvement. So I think that's a really interesting juxtaposition because now that's what you are asking your clients and borrowers to do is look, you guys might not have bought, you know, many, many, many houses. So trust me, I've got your back. I'll teach you. I'll guide you. And that kind of has come full circle. Definitely.

I mean, that goes towards buyers, you know, borrowers that we work with goes to real estate agents, you know, for them to trust me with, you know, their paychecks, really. you know, a client is a paycheck for them and it could be multiple paychecks and multiple referrals, you know, that's a weird way to say it, but that's truly what it is. Yeah. So I look at that, you know, like you just said, every step, you know, is a learning opportunity.

So, hey, did this transaction go perfect? Yes, great. What did I do well? Here's what I did. Well, here's what made it perfect. Did it not go well? Yes, here's what didn't go well. And here's how I adjust.

to make and learn from that. Yeah, huge because you don't want to make the, not even mistake, but you don't want to have the hiccups or the struggle or the stress the next time. So how could we make it that much smoother so that the next time you address whatever the struggle was, it's not even, you know, an issue. So that's huge. So talk a little bit about the kind of programs you guys have. You know, you work with buyers, buying a home.

You work with borrowers and looking to refinance due debt consolidates. home improvements. What are the kind of services that you offer? Yeah, good. Another great question. And I'll take one step back to my lending journey as well to answer that question. So when I got transferred about Avail, went to work with my buddy, who worked at Fairway. So stayed in the correspondent model for about seven years. And then last year, 20, last year, yeah, July 2020, me and my partners, Jerry and Abby left, our company that we were at. It was a correspondent lender and started our own brokerage. The big thing was the market was changing and we saw the market was changing and we kind of saw the riding on the wall

that some of these bigger companies will be slower to move and adjust and pivot and be flexible. So we poked around to try to find what was going to be the next best thing. And so we've landed in the broker model. And that's where we are now as DNVR lending. And the cool thing about being on the broker side is we have access to I mean you could have hundreds of investors if you want but they'll probably cut you off if you don't have so many business so we keep about 10 to 13 investors and really what we're looking at when we're looking at investors and we're making sure that each investor will have one thing that they do really really well whether it's a DSCR loan for investment properties whether it's a two or three K loan for rehabs so VA FHMFHM

So we try to make sure that we're signing with investors that are going to give us value and that we can use them for certain items. Condotel is a big thing that not a lot of lenders lend on. We have a great condo tell investor. I'm just closing one today, actually, for our property up in Keystone. $2 million purchase, condo. It's not a condo, but they look at it as a condo tell. So no problem with them, we can close those a condo tell. So that's really great for us.

That's unique. Yes, yes, definitely. And it allows us to be very nimble in this market where we can help a wide stroke of investors for some homebuyers, second homeowners, yeah, VA, so veterans. I don't know if I would say I have a niche. I probably say VA is my niche just because I have a lot of VA friends or veteran friends that use the VA loan. So I've kind of, you know, become that.

of, hey, Tim, is really, really great at VA loans. And that's just because I do a lot of those. But, you know, being on this side, we're dabbling a lot more. And, you know, in a weirder market where how do we help borrowers get into homes through different programs? You know, there's nothing. I want to make a comment slash question, but I don't want it to sound like, oh, anyone can do, you know, plain first-time homebuyer or whatever because those are standard traditional type loans. But what intrigues me is you mentioned condo-tel and we don't need to go.

into the weeds of that program, but that's a unique program. And I do not think that a traditional quote unquote bank, you know, captured lender type of a lender would be able to do many of those things. So when you mentioned you guys are a broker and correspondent lending and that opens up the flexibility and freedom that you guys have to place special and unique type of programs, right? So that, that to me sounds like it's a really huge win for the realtors and the clients that you're working with. Definitely. And for, you know, for this purchase, this cond hotel, which you're looking at loans, as you guys know, loans come in, you know, various levels of risk. You know, you mentioned it. You know, the plain Jane W2, great income, great assets. I mean, that's just a pretty simple loan, right? I call them the null loans. But when you start looking at how do I offer more, you know, whether we use a DSCR debt servicing, you know, coverage ratio loan, where we're, we're we're not using income.

You know, that's great for investors that might own four or five LLCs or businesses that don't show a lot of income, but they have a lot of cash and they want to purchase. That's a great option. And using, you know,

a condo tell where, you know, I've, this is the first time I've ever been to be able to close a, you know, condo tell in my almost eight years of lending. So the great thing, too,

about that is, you found the secret, the secret way to, get them in there. And my thought would be, you know, now that you found that outlet, let's really expand that out and find out who else needs that and get the word out because too many times you hear, you know, oh, we just can't do that. And you hear no, but you guys are finding a way to make it happen. And that's really an exciting prospect. Definitely. And I've, you know, this was not an easy loan. It's the one that's freshest on my mind. So I usually talk about

the most. But we did go, you know, a great thing about the side of the industry that we're on is so we went with one investor, you know, again, from everything we looked at it wasn't a con hotel, started going through the process. They called it a con hotel. So we had to take him and move them to a new investor, which is the investor that we're using now that they're like, hey, we don't care if it's a con hotel. So again, going back to what makes us different, how do we stand out? How do we help many people, that's the one way we can do it is we can find that solution for you. We're not stuck with just, here's what we have and this is all we have to offer. It's what do you need?

Let me go see, let me go talk to our investors and see who has a program that will fit for your client's needs. And if we don't, if we're not signed up with them, we'll get signed up them quickly. I love that you described. Sorry, Mike, I just wanted to add it. And I love that you describe the risk of the loan because I don't hear a lot of lenders describing loans as risks, right? You know, I'm in insurance and we talk a lot about risk, but people don't realize that loans are risk too. And investors look at these loans as a certain level of risk. So when you explain it to them like that, you know, what do these higher level risk loans come with?

They come with higher rates, right? And we're already in a high rate environment, which, you know, will ebb and flow regardless. But I think it's important to explain it that way. And anybody, you know, listening in or even industry professionals just talking about it as a risk, I think is so, you just hit the nail on the head there. So I really enjoyed that you threw it out there as a risk. Yeah, I talked to that all the time with clients because those questions come, hey, why does this rate change with this? Hey, my credit scores here. You know, my friend on the street got this interest rate for a similar purchase. Well, like, well, it's all about risk,

all different levels of risk. You're like, why can't I get the same rate well? So many other do it. And we can't disclose things about the other borrower or other people, but, you know, when you have differences in credit score, in income, in whatever, and if the loan to value is so, you know, much tighter and different, all of those are elements of risk. And I think that that helps to explain why things can be different from one loan or one program or one, you know, borrower to another, because really that's a huge observation. Risk is, you know, like the, you know, impact. For sure. And that's, I mean, that's what most people just want to know. They want to strip down layman's terms. What does this mean? How does this work? And, you know, I've only used people around me for loans.

So I don't know what, you know, my competition, how they sound on the phones. But for us, you know, we really try to make sure that when we're talking to borrowers, we're going through that with them of here's why this is this, right? Here's why the credit score looks like this. Here's a loan to value. What does that mean? How does that apply to your credit score or to your interest rate? So, yeah, it's, I mean, it sounds easy, right?

Loans sound easy. Real estate sounds easy. I think people get into it thinking, oh, I see my friends that do it and they're doing well. I can do it. But when you get into the, you know, like you said earlier, the vanilla loans, yeah, anybody can do those. You know, those are super easy. Let's talk about this thing that just came to my mind, which we're all related to risk. And I think that unrealistic expectations or something like, tell me the rest of the story kind of comes into play here.

Like you have a borrower that's halfway through the process with you. And then all of a sudden they start flaking and not calling you back and like, oh, I'm going to find something else because they look at this rate. And then they're like, oh, I can get a better rate over here. Well, all they saw was something on a website or something at the surface level. But they think it's better. But it's really not because you guys have gone in and gone, oh, we can get you this rate because. And then there's this risk level number one, this risk factor number two. And this is your rate.

well, if you jump and go over to this other one and get two, three weeks in, now you might have lost this and you can't come back. So I think that being able to understand the full picture is really important. For sure. Yeah. And I think that's part of being the professional on the front end, right? You know, when you get a borrower, don't be a menu taker. Just, you know, go through the motions. So dive in. What are their needs? Because, I mean, we've all been there. we're listening, whether it's your partner or your friend or a client, and you're listening, you're listening, you're trying to give feedback and you keep missing the mark, but you're really not listening.

So we try to really listen to what our clients want. You know, they're saying, I want this and this and this and you're delivering that, and they're still not happy. Well, it's probably because you're missing something that they're really not saying. So if you take a, you know, a couple of seconds, strip it down and find out what they're really looking for. Is it really rate or is it service or is it walking you through? or you need to show your value. Hey, here's what happens.

Here's what makes me different. Yes, I tell my clients all the time. We're not the lowest. We're not the highest. You're always going to find the lowest interest rate online. Go online right now. Go to box.com or Costco.com and find a lower interest rate. But what you're not going to get from them is something that's getting into their calls.

We all say this after hours on weekends. You know, we'll see it happens on Saturday and Sunday. Get that pre-approval. You want those numbers run on Saturday or Sunday? That's what we will do. You know, if you have a lower. appraisal, what does that mean? How will we go to bat for you to help that appraisal either come back in at value by doing a reconsideration of value or renegotiating?

So, you know, like you said, everybody, you know, you can go online and find a lower rate, but if you don't show your value, you don't show what makes you different, then, you know, your clients are going to flake on you. And some people do just want the lowest rate, right? And you can't win all those, but for the most part, if you show them the value, they're going to stick with you. Also, when your clients are searching for someone and they're just looking at rate, they're very rate sensitive. We all know those ones, especially in this high rate environment, but what they're not understanding is that that level of risk that they have can be discovered late in the loan process, and that can change their loan terms. That can change their rate.

And you don't have somebody very experienced looking at their situation up front, you know, those things get discovered late in the game or even getting careful. getting the loan canceled all together and, you know, losing your earnest money, all sorts of crazy things that I've seen happen. And I'm sure you've seen Tim. It's like just nightmare situation. So it is so important to find someone like you who has experience, who knows what they're doing and can stop those problems from arising late on in the loan process. So I think that just goes along with everything you said too. Yeah, definitely. Hey, Tim, what do you see in trend-wise, you know, like as far as the types of business being out there?

And not rate or, you know, market because at any given time, no matter when someone listens to this podcast interview, rates may be high, they may be low, they may be in the middle. I mean, they fluctuate throughout the year. You can't do anything about that. But what do you see trend-wise? You mentioned condo tells. Are you seeing people, you know, buying those kinds of properties for investments for long-term? What about short-term rentals? You know, things like that trend-wise.

Yeah, great, great question. So, I mean, I think earlier in 2023 this year, we saw, you know, two-one buy-downs, two-one buy-downs, one-o-bidowns were really hot and heavy. And then rates kind of dipped came down and those went away and then rates went back up. So the trend I'm seeing is those two-one buy-downs through two-one buy-ons are back again. That's, you know, not anything new for the last few months. but there was a period where, you know, you weren't getting those seller concessions to do those loan programs. So definitely seeing that tick back up and stay steady. I'm seeing a lot more of

these, what we call non-QM non-qualified mortgages. So there's DSCR loans or, you know, they have some no income loans out there on the investment side too. So a lot more of those, a lot of investors on R& are getting creative with down payment assistance. programs, you know, we have a few investors that have, you know, put 1% down and you can buy a house. So I think the big trend right now is how do we make housing affordable for people, right? And it's high rate environment, you know, a slowing economy. So higher home prices. So I think that's the big trend I'm seeing is, especially from the lending side, in real estate side, how do we make it affordable for borrowers to get into the market still in a high rate

environment. And that's a lot of conversations we're having of it's kind of weird, right, as a lender to talk about a purchase in the same time, talk about a refinance, because our goal is always to put you in the best lowest rate we can, right off the bat. So it's just a different market. So yeah, I think that's the big, the big trends I'm seeing. I'm starting to see a lot more second home and investment activity. So I think now that the economies, somewhat stabilizing. We're kind of seeing a good trend of where we're, or just a trend of where we're going to be going.

I think there's a little bit more investors that are getting savvy of like, hey, I can get in, get an investment property at a good price while I might have a higher interest rate. And that just goes, same thing with, you know, normal conforming conventional borrowers. Like, hey, I can get in this market and get a good price of a good house. Yes, I'm going to have a higher interest rate, but I'll take care of that down the road. Or I'll utilize one of these loan.

programs that gives me a lower rate for the first two, three, one year. That's where I think the folks that are utilizing that are going to see the fruits of their labor, you know, a year for now when rates dip, which they will, they always do. And there's going to be that flood in the market. And those rates with lower rates, there's going to come high purchase prices. You're going to have to go a bit over asking. It's going to be really competitive. You know, I can get seller concessions. So I guess that's another thing I've seen a lot of, you know, a lot of seller concessions. You don't have to, you know, give up the farm to get into a house now. You can go in like a normal healthy market and say, hey, I want 10K of seller concessions to fix this.

I want to come in asking. I don't want to go 60K over asking. I don't have to do appraisal gap coverage. So it's a weird. Every market changes, right? In a low rate environment, it's healthy because there's a lot of buyers in a high rate environment. It's healthy with low buyers, but the transactions seem a little bit more even. So, does that help?

You deal with what you have in front of you. You make the wisest decision. You get the best guidance and you move forward and don't look back and say, what if you constant and never ending improvement? And I think that's the takeaway there. So Tim has been a pleasure talking with you. If someone is interested in reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way that they can do that?

Yeah, you can email me at Tim at dNVR lending.com. You can, I don't check LinkedIn that often, but I probably will after this podcast. I should be better at that. My buddy is like, hey, I said just something that today. I'm like, man, I haven't looked at that in a while. So probably get a little bit better at that. Email is the best. My cell phone is 303, 514, 6194.

So text, call. Yeah, visit our website. We have a pretty cool website. and we're adding states every couple months. So we're trying to grow our reach in the nation. I think we have about eight states right now. So I'm hoping to get that up a little bit more this year. I do love your website, by the way.

I will say that. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, Abby. As other co-founder, she is the brains behind all the marketing and has really just knocked out of the park. Well, that. Awesome. Well, Tim, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Yeah, thank you guys for having me.

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