KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Unlocking Mortgage Revenue Share and Nil Opportunities for Real Estate Agents

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Summary:In this episode of Realty Funnels, host Kevin Cahill interviews Eric Balbi, President of Oak Tree Funding Direct. Balbi discusses current market opportunities, emphasizing that high-rate environments favor buyers due to reduced home price competition and lower overall purchase prices. The conversation centers on a compliant mortgage revenue-share model (Oak Tree's RELO program), allowing real estate agents to become loan officers and lawfully earn revenue on transactions. Balbi details how agents can leverage these earnings for marketing, gain direct LOS access, and unlock W-2 benefits like healthcare and 401(k) matching.

Welcome back to the Realty Funnels podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Cahill, and I'm honored today to welcome Eric Bulby to the podcast. Eric is the president of Oak Tree Funding Direct, a very large mortgage bank headquartered in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Eric, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me, Kevin. It's good to see you. Great to be with you too. Thank you. Let's give everyone a little bit of an opportunity to understand who you are, where you are, and what you do. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Eric Boldie. As Kevin already mentioned, I'm the president of Oak Tree Funding Direct.

I was brought in to build out the retail model at Oak Tree. They've been a non-QM lender here for about 30 years, specializing a non-QM. My previous life, I owned a company called Ameri First Financial, and now here working with my buddies over here at Oak Tree Funding. Really good group of guys over. And you've been in the industry. for 30 plus years. So you're not a new person into this industry. You've seen a lot of changes.

Seen it all. That's why there's no hair on top of my head anymore. Well, what are you seeing as some of the most exciting opportunities right now in this mortgage market, 2026? You know, to me, there's really two major things that I would say are exciting. The first is the industry as a whole has forgotten how to sell. And if you can just focus on what is the value proposition today? Because I think a lot of people think it's all about the interest rate. And I think that's a dangerous place to be in. They think, well, I'm going to wait until rates drop. And when they drop, then I'll buy. Well, when rates drop, prices go up, you don't save any money. So when you can learn how to articulate that buying, when rates are high, is actually the best time to buy because then you can always read demands.

Whereas if you wait till rates go down, you're just paying more for the house. Payments the same. So I think that's a big one. And the second is the industry has been changing much like the college sports industry has changed. So it used to be college athletes, you can get a scholarship, you can get room of board, things of that. If you were really, really good, you got cash under the table, which was illegal, but sure our top eight sports athletes were doing it. Well, now in college sports, you get NIL money.

So now if you're really good or you're in the right sport, you can actually get paid to stay in college, which I think is amazing. And that's what I see that we're doing here at Oak Tree, which is building a complete ecosystem for the real estate agent. To me, the real estate agent is the quarterback of our industry. If you know anything about NIL money, football gets the most. Quarterbacks at the position of football get the most, and agents are the quarterbacks of the real estate.

the world. So they can now get NIL money, say, we're not athletes, but by coming in and partnering into the mortgage industry, you can get effectively what is NIL money. And that should be a marketing budget to help you go out and market grow your real estate business. If you're doing two to four transactions, how do you get to four to eight? If you're doing 10, 12 transactions, how do you get to 20? You're already doing 20. How do you get enough transactions to grow a team? The opportunities in our industry are endless, and I believe it's more so now than ever because so few people know how to adequately sell in today's market. There's so much opportunity right now. I agree with you 100%.

You know, the skill of selling is not often built when the market is frothy and the market is bubbly. and people who back in 2004, 2005, if they could fog a mirror, they were getting alone. Well, more recently, from 2020 until about 2024, we had all these people who could suddenly work from anywhere. They could work from home, and that meant they could live anywhere. And what might have been sort of a softening market in the middle and to the end of 2019, suddenly with COVID in 2020, there was a resurgence in the real estate market where people were wanting to buy getting out of expensive cities, getting out of California, getting out of whether it be Manhattan or New Jersey, and suddenly they could work from a condo on the beach in Florida. We saw a whole lot of that activity which has sort of dissipated. And when as a real estate managing broker, when I was coaching real estate agents through 2004, 2005, 2006, and again, in 2020 to 2024, I felt like some of these agents felt they were top agents when they were just really well-timed order takers who weren't building those skills.

I could not agree more. When rates are in the twos or the threes, I don't mean this to be derogatory towards anybody, but at that point, you're more of an Uber driver. You just have to go pay people up, show them homes, and hope that your contract gets accepted. Today, it's how do you show them value in owning real estate? And I always find it weird.

To me, real estate's often like the stock market. Everybody jumps in when it's taught. And that's actually, I'm not saying it's bad. There's never a bad time to get in as long as you're looking at the long term. but it's way better to get him in the market flow. And the same thing. In real estate today, you can get a house cheaper than you could in 2020. Now, not cheaper payment.

I will concede that the payments are higher because rates are higher. But this is an easy math equation. Anybody can do it. If you have an amortization calculator, you don't want to take me my word, go in and plug the numbers in. You will see that this is factual. Every half a percent of interest is 5 percent buying power. So every half a percent, you see the rates drop,

because America are payment buyers, not price buyers, you see an increase of value of homes by 5%. So right now, rates are in the low sixes. If you saw rates go to the fours and everyone jumps in, you could expect to see housing prices going 5 to 10%. Now, that means if you waited, you didn't really get a savings. If you bought the rates are high, now they drop, you can refinance. You've got a savings. In fact, you might have enough equity to get rid of mortgage insurance on top of saving. the money on interest. But if you waited, you've got no such value. And then again, take it

into whatever market you're in, I'm in the Phoenix metropolitan area. So you can say here the average sales price of the home is right around 450-ish. Rates drop 2%. That's 20% on 450. That's $90,000 in equity that you give up if you wait for rates to go out. So I spend a lot of my time trying to educate and teach people how to explain and articulate this to the general population. Because all the general population here says rates are going to go down and then they think, well, I'll just wait. And that's the worst possible scenario you can do. Waiting for rates to go down means you get no savings. You get no savings. Well, not only that, everything that you said, I know it to be 100% true. But just think about it. If you're thinking of waiting until the rates

go down, you know you're competing with all those other buyers who are sitting on the fence waiting for rates to go down. I can't tell you how many wonderful conversations had with investor clients who cleaned up in 2010, 2011, 2012. They were still gobbling up these opportunities. We're in one of those moments again where if you're thinking about upgrading, if you're thinking about buying more home, if you're thinking about investing in, say, multifamily property, apartment buildings, now might be the time that you've been waiting for.

And if you're sitting there thinking, I'm just going to wait for rates to drop, you know you're going to pay more for that property and compete against so many other investor buyers for that property. If you're looking at your own primary residence, you might be outgrowing your two-bedroom, two-bath condo, and now you need a three-bedroom or a four-bedroom home. And you're thinking, oh, I don't want to get rid of my two and a half percent interest rate mortgage. Well, you can be buying that home at an amazing time right now. And if you simply waited for interest rates to drop, you're going to be competing for all the homes that are available against all those other buyers who are like you waiting.

Yeah, the scenario you just gave, again, you can do the easy math. If rates drop by 2%, if you're selling a condo that you go long, as long as it drops, it's the same. And it's really not because if you're buying up, 20% of, say, 600,000, 120 is much different than 20% of 400,000, which is 80. So when you're moving up, it's especially painful if you wait. If you wait. I agree. Well, I love what you were talking about in terms of NIL for people who aren't necessarily following Big Ten football, name, image, likeness.

This all comes out of numerous lawsuits where, you know, some of the top college football players, some of the top college basketball players were seeing their exact name, image, or likeness being used in commercials on video games and seeing no benefit of their personage being portrayed in these advertisements or in these commercial endeavors, now these athletes have that opportunity. And the reality of it is for real estate agents who have been referring loans to their favorite lenders for years and years and years, you know, they couldn't really, because of RESPA compliance issues, they couldn't really receive anything of value for that referral. But now, according to or because of some of the laws that have changed nationally in 2022 and are which are now

much better understood and tested and we know exactly what those laws are in fact intended to do real estate agents have an opportunity to benefit from the influence that they already have the work that they're already doing where they can now lawfully earn money for doing the doing the work that they were already doing, you know, contacting the loan officer, helping facilitate putting that paperwork together so the lender has what they need, the purchase agreement, the helping the buyer get their financial information, you know, their tax returns over to the lender. And then just communicating, hey, the home inspection's already done.

We're at a point now where we've negotiated all the home inspection issues. Is it safe for you to go ahead and order an appraisal, safe for you to order flood insurance certification? All that work that real estate agents were doing simply because they want to make sure the deal went through smoothly, you've put together an entire system for those agents to lawfully get properly thanked for the work that they've been doing anyway. Yeah, so the key, you brought up the term that I hear the most when I talk about this program is how is this rest of a complaint? And the easy answer to that is RESPA governs third party kickbacks. So I made the joke earlier about if you were really top tier athlete, somebody was giving you cash into the table. Like I went to ASU, that's where I graduated from.

And I had a lot of friends who played on the ASU basketball team, and they were sponsored by Nike. And so the way the athletes at ASU would make their money is they could walk in and grab any shoe they want. And so I could go down to the store and pay $100. and pay $100 for a pair of basketball shoes where I can go to my buddy if he'd walk in and come out with a brand new set and I'd give him 50 right so that everybody had their little ways that they would get around it if you were top tier athlete and they were giving you the benefit but now that they can everyone's doing it well you technically always could as a real estate agent be an employee of a mortgage bank or a mortgage broker it was never a prohibition against the key was could you be the agent of record and the loan officer record on the same transaction. And it used to be that on conventional loans, non-QM loans, Jumbo loans, there was never an exclusion. In fact, California was one of the very first states where this became popular. This was back in the 80s and 90s because everything in California was broker.

Most everything was conventional. There wasn't a lot of government loans going on. And so it's always been a component you could as long as you were doing the proper steps to ensure that you're being in a paid commission. Well, today you can become a W-2 employee of Oatree. You can get your L-O license and FHA put out a mortgagee letter on December 15th, 2022, where now FHA does allow you to get paid and be the lender and the loan offs are the same transaction.

There are still some prohibitions. You can't do it on VA loans or USDA loans. And you can't do it in the state of Utah, the state of the state of the state of the Louisiana they have specific state prohibitions against now it doesn't say you can't be a lender and you can't be a loan officer you just can't be on the same transaction so if it's one of your customers that's refinancing and if an FHA or a VA for that matter you can do it so there's ways around and of course you can always find the person that you want to refer business to and maybe they refer business to you back to you i say maybe because if you say

it's mandatory then yeah that's a rest of the violations you're giving something in exchange for something in return. But the key is being an employee, the company, and doing the appropriate work to be compliant on the mortgage side. And then, of course, it's always about disclosing, making sure your customer is aware that you are their loan officer and the real estate. If you're trying to do it and be sneaky and you don't want them to know, yeah, that's a problem. But as long as you disclose, no problem once in. It's so exciting because I've always wanted to do things precisely right and beyond reproach and such that if ever I had to stand up in front of a judge and a jury, I'd be able to very easily explain my actions.

And for so many of the years I've been a real estate agent, I just never touched the mortgage side of it because there were too many restrictions and prohibitions. I just didn't want to even brush up against anything that was inappropriate. However, I've been waiting my entire career for a business model to come onto the scene similar to Keller Williams Realty, EXP. We see it now with LPT and Real Broker and Epic. This is such a phenomenal opportunity. Tell me, how did you first come up with this notion?

Who were you talking to? where did you come up with this notion like this is a really great way to grow a mortgage banking operation? So as I tell the story, I hope everybody knows I'm brand diagnostic, but I happen to over my career work a lot with Keller Williams. And Keller Williams was the original disruptor of offering the seventh tier of profit share. And so I had worked a ton with Taylor Williams. Still do work a lot of Keller Williams. And one of the people I met at Keller Williams was also a gentleman by name with Gene Frederick. And Gene Frederick had left Keller Williams.

11, 12 years ago now, and he had gone over to EXB, really before people knew who XP was. And he actually told me I should pay attention. It was going to be great. I should have listened more. I didn't buy any stock. Back then, I think it was, you know, Bucker. He made it. Money who had been under a dollar share.

I wish I would have paid better attention. But we sat down. This was back in 2018. how to change the rule and we rolled this out at my original company Ameri First Financial and and Gene was a big part of helping me put it together and so since then we've worked a lot of really big names that uh with the expe that have helped mold and build the system that we're now presenting today and so it was really just looking at the models and saying the fastest growing real estate companies of the nation right now or either profit share or revenue

share and incentivizing their people to help them grow their business. And I think it's a genius because everybody in this business, it's a small world when you really get down to it. Everybody talks, everybody shares, everyone thinks they have a secret. It's funny, I'll get a phone call from somebody and go, I'm going to go over to X, Y, V Mortgage Company because I heard they have a brand new product that may have exclusive and nobody else has it. And I'm like, yeah, that'll last a week.

Because as soon as you close a deal, everyone knows where it's what everybody can go get it. The people who are buying the loans, they want to buy a lot. It's not like they want to keep it secret. And they like, oh, it's only our buddies who are going to have access to this. That's not the way the mortgage back securities model or business works. So there's never anything secret. If you build a good organization and you tell people about it, you should get paid. Because those same organizations, if it's not you, then that means they're out hiring recruiting companies or recruiters.

They're going to pay somebody. Why not just pay the people who are actively living? and working within the model. It's actually genius. Gary Taylor originally coming up with it, Glenn Safford, then take it to the next level, and then all these new players that are jumping in. It's actually the right way to do business,

because I know everyone in real estate, say, would you rather have a lead or would you rather have a referral? And the answer is always referral, right? Referrals are lay down cells. Someone else has told them how wonderful you are, and you just have to come in and do what you do best. A lead, you've got to grind,

you've got to call, you've got to follow up, you've got to call, you've got to hope, you got that between when you talk to them, they didn't talk to somebody else, and did they go online, and now they're talking to four people. Completely different ballgame. It is so much stronger to pay your own people a piece of the pie when they recruit people in. And so I think it's been a genius model. So grateful that the owners of Oak Tree are willing to do it because it really does.

It changes lives, which is what's good for all of us. You can come in and participate in that, I'm going to call it the NIL money for now. You're in Relo. you're getting paid and that leads to your marketing that generates another deal and it becomes how often can you rinse and repeat i'd argue you know two to three times a year at least but then you get rewarded for building by telling your friends hey if you're not happy at xyz or a bc mortgage company come take a look over here it gives you something that we can win in together and i know a lot of people like to be at win-win scenarios this is truly a win-win scenario not just for the

people you know but if you're an LO and you want to help an agent do more business of a market if you're an agent you want to help other agents do better help them market if you're an agent you want to help your LO do better this system as you grow it you've got to have loan officers who're going to help do these loans so bring your loan officers in help them get more business and now it's not just the deals you send them but you're going to recruit agents and then send their deals to your loan officer so if you really love your loan officer get them in the business and help drive people to them I think it's absolutely brilliant. It's so perfectly timed because now we have the regulatory

environment that fully understands and allows for this opportunity. As a team leader, as a managing broker, as somebody who spent over a decade recruiting real estate agents, oh, give me anybody who you know as a real estate agent, I should talk to that person. Let me credit you for making that warm introduction. Let me recruit them over, put them into your profit share or revenue share organization. It's so easy for me as a recruiter to talk to those warm leads and just explain what we're doing, help them understand the opportunity, rather than just picking up the phone and grinding all day long trying to find somebody who doesn't know me, doesn't know anybody at my office. It was always so much.

easier for me to hit my net recruiting numbers each month when agents were just setting me up. It was so much easier. Yeah. Way better to work referrals. When I was newer to the business back in, oh, 1999, I got my license, 2000, 2001, I was already growing my business and my influence in Cleveland, Ohio as an agent. And I was bringing a bunch of agents into my local company. It was a great company. I enjoyed that company. I love the leadership of that company. Never got a dime. Never got a thank you. Never got a plaque. Never got a dinner out. But I wanted those people to be in a good environment. I wanted those people to be supported by good leadership. And I knew that was all true. But I never got any benefit of their success. I never got a thank you for helping the managing broker of that branch office achieve her numbers.

I felt like when this opportunity came around, when I was in 2003, I was like, oh, you mean I can get more than just a, oh, hey, Kev, thanks for bringing in some talented powerhouse people. Count me in. And here we have that same opportunity inside of Oak Tree funding where I as a real estate agent can help introduce you to some amazing loan officers.

I can help introduce you to some fellow real estate agents who see the opportunity to help their clients with the work that they're already doing. I get thanked for it. The person, the real estate agent who is used to doing all those tasks anyways can now get compensated for the work that they were doing simply to serve their clients at a high level. Genius. It's funny you bring up the getting paid for it because it's the exact. same thing when you're doing a mortgage. I often joke with agents and I ask them the question, have you ever had a deal you sent to a loan officer and something went bad? All the time. I have 90% positive response for you. Oh yeah. Well, who's the first person they call

me? Because I referred them. We go, okay, so we've established you're willing to work for free. Don't you think if you're going to deal with problems, you should get paid for it? They call it hazard pay for a reason. Right. And then they go, yeah, I should get paid for dealing with. problems that that that sounds right well you should the other thing that's unique about it i want to throw two things in that are unique about number one uh if you don't know us already or if you think for some reason you're the you're the anomaly and nobody else is still in your pain uh the number one complaint agent to loan officer is i can't get the loan officer on the phone they work so hard to get me to send them a deal but now they won't pick up the phone when i'm

calling that and i just need a quick answer i need to know that the appraisal get over is the appraisal in is it in underwriting did you talk to them and did they fill out the application where's my pre-qual right there's so many things that you you know you brought this deal and they don't seem to have the same urgency that you have and it's not they don't it could be they're waiting for something from the customer it could be that they're in a meeting they're not trying to ignore you but most of the time it's because as loan officers we're back out trying to find our next deal we have to go sell this the same as you do so you got to go knock enough doors and make enough phone calls to get some of the send us a deal.

And so that's, it's this, so a lose-lose scenario. When you do this, it kind of morphs and changes it in two ways. Number one, if we as agents recruit enough other agents to work with our loan officer, then they don't need to be outselling. They can be sitting down and providing the best service that they've ever provided in their lives. But number two, you're an employee of the company. You have full access. You want to know if the appraisals in?

Click in, log in, look at it. You want it? PDF it. send it to wherever you want to go you want to know it's an underwriting you can never be lied to again you'll know if it's an underwriting you want to conditions are go in look at the condition lives you'll know everything you want to know now you don't have to you still under one-off take care so feel free pick up the phone call send a text whatever you need to do but you now have access like i used to joke with my agents all the time seem like every christmas someone

needs to talking on christmas morning to see if their customers that were closing at the end of the year their appraisal come in and of course I'm trying to have Christmas with my children I never pick up my phone on Christmas that's one of the few days a year that I say no I'm with my family well you don't have to you know that now just log in that one day a year look did the appraisal made the underwriting conditions where are we at you get full access second unique thing for those you who are the real estate business and you don't have access to benefits in our program once you get up to where you're earning an average of five thousand dollars a

month, you have brought it as a full-time employee access to group health care benefits, which have no pre-existing condition issues, and you get access to a matching 401K. So two things that you historically don't see in the real estate business, if you work and grow up to it, and $5,000 a month, it sounds like a lot, it's really not that hard. Depending on what your sphere of influence is, some people can do it in short order. Some people might take a year or two, but at least you're building towards something that can give you access to those things. which is a game changer for a lot of people. I can't tell you how many real estate agents that I've

coached over the years who are going without insurance. And it's terribly risky. The market is challenging them. They're struggling in whatever way. And they're choosing to put off or defer some very appropriate payments. And that might be one of them. Here is an opportunity for a real estate agent to earn that type of benefit for work that they're already doing anyway. Yeah. We're not doing the program right now that are working their butts off to get up that $5,000. Both of them are dealing with cancer and both are spending between $8,000 to $10,000 a month on treatments.

I hate hear on the stories about it and trying to help them get up to that level so that they don't have to bear that burden. Well, we're going to help them get to that level with just, you know, the network. And as more people learn about this opportunity, which I like to call it the mortgage revenue share opportunity, to me, it just sounds exactly like what it is. Here's an opportunity for not profit share, but revenue share from the business of issuing mortgages and real estate agents are W2 employees of Oak Tree funding. they're referring over to your team of incredibly capable loan originators and processors and underwriters. This is work that they're normally doing anyway whenever they're working with a buyer client. Now they have the opportunity to get paid on it.

They can reinvest in their own marketing and their growth. But then also as a benefit, they get this health care and matching 401k grant. It's really going to be a game changer. I think it's going to be a life changer for a lot of agents who haven't had this opportunity previously. I agree with you. I want to stand up, say amen, and hallelujah, and giddy up, let's go. I could not agree more. What I'm excited about as well is that this is an opportunity for real estate agents to attract loan officers and real estate agents

Oh, and influencers, people who could direct loans to oak tree funding, perhaps they're a real estate coach, perhaps they're a marketer, perhaps they're somebody who owns a local small business that gets a lot of foot traffic through the door every month and is known, understood, loved, trusted, those are opportunities where exponentially we could be growing a network of people who are sending loan opportunities to tree funding. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because sometimes when we start talking about this, because the program is reloads. You think of real estate, you think of loan officer.

My number one referral source, God rest his soul until he died, was a gentleman who owned the big old tire store. He had 3,000 people a month that came through his store, whether buying tires, getting oil changes, tuneups on their cars, what have you. And he'd been in business for 35 years. In fact, when I was a kid, I used to play a lot of Italy's basketball. His big old tire store was always my sponsor. That's how I knew him to bring him into the theme, into Relo. And he just put up a cardboard cut out of himself and said, you trust me with your tires and your oil changes for however many years.

trust me to do your mortgages. And they would even tell him, well, Jim, what do you know about mortgages? He'd say nothing, but I don't know how to change oil either. I know how to hire the right people and ensure that you're taking care of. I am the ones of insuring that you're going to take me. We take them no different than when I sell you tires. You know if there's a problem, you come see me. Same thing in mortgages. And then we just make sure he always looked at. So yeah, it can be anybody who's an influencer, who has a sphere of influence for you. It's, it really can go anywhere. It's really just so exciting. You've been at this for such a long time.

What is your impression of the next 12 months, the next 24 months, not in terms of interest rates. Nobody has that crystal ball. We can't predict that. But just in terms of how a real estate agent, how a loan officer can make the most of this next 12 or 24 months. So I actually think I always have a crystal ball. I don't know if you know that's about me. And I always think it's a 50-50 chance I'm going to be right. So I want to start off before I go to this next spill.

I am politically agnostic. I don't like any politicians. I think they're all dirty. I think they're all corrupt. So I don't mean to offend you. If you're a hardcore Democrat or you're a hardcore Republican, I'm not. I'm in the center. I talk to Democrats.

I talk to Republicans. I can see both sides. But I don't trust a single politician because I know when I donate money to somebody, I expect that they're picking up the phone and I'm doing it for something on my half not for them and if I'm that way then I assume everybody else is the same way so to really become a politician you're making promises that you're gonna break to summer that's my person you so as I say this I don't want you to think I'm pushing one side of the other because I'm really not so I would ask the question of you

all right I'm not said a question about my state more as a state Donald Trump like him or hate him the one thing that I think he's always focused on is himself I'm not saying he hasn't done good I'm not saying he hasn't done bad but if you know anything about him he's the art of the deal he is always looking for a special way to do things if you go all the way back to his first presidency he was talking about putting the united states into a negative yield curve in fact you went on to go very deep and he said there's really three safe places to put your deposits in the world you have germany switzerland in the united states or germany and switzerland are already in a negative yield curve they do not

pay interest, they charge you interest to protect your money. And Donald Trump said, well, we're the safest place in the world because there's nobody better than America. Why are we paying a return? And I believe he will eventually do that. Everyone thinks that he's pushing the Federal Reserve to drop rates. Understand that the Federal Reserve has not controlled mortgage rates and control the federal funds rate.

Now, that can indirectly affect mortgage rates. Mortgage rates are really called the Tenure Treasury. Well, if he puts us into a negative yield curve, that will put rates in the twos, potentially in the ones, depending on how negative he decides he wants to go. Now, why do I say he would do that? Aside from he wants to leave a legacy that says he made Ameri First great again. And if you can get that real estate cycle going and everybody's jumping in and everyone's trying to buy, then he can take credit for it.

It's his legacy. But most importantly, Donald Trump's assets are made. mainly real estate. So if you want your real estate to be worth more money, what do you do? Get those rates down. Get the rates down. Now, if you do it while you're president and you sell your assets while you're president, he's going to go to jail.

But he will wait. He's not stupid. Donald Trump, like him or hate him, art of deal. He is going to figure out a way. And this is what I would do if I was him. And I'm not saying there's some big conspiracy theory. I just go, if I have the power that Donald Trump has, and I had the asset empire that he has,

and I have the ability to put us in a negative yield curve, and have it look legit, because we're saying this is the right business decision. I would do it, right? I know enough about myself that I would do it. So I would wait until I'm like six months left before I leave office so I can watch it go like this, and then I would sell six months after I leave office.

Because the salary, reality is if rates go low again, it's going to create another huge hockey stick in real estate. If we're not, that's dangerous. It's incredibly dangerous. We haven't had a market correction since 2009. Right. For almost 20 years. It used to be you see marked corrections like every seven years.

Yes. We're going to have a 20 year that had a huge hockey stick during COVID. It was already going good. Then we had hockey stick. Now we kind of leveled out. We've even dropped a little bit. We get a second hockey stick. There's only one place that's going to go after that.

After that, it'll drop. After that, it'll drop. So if you go on the premise and say, I'm buying a house today, again, I'm just going to go with easy numbers to make math easy in my head because I'm not as young as I used to be. If you bought a $500,000 house, that's a 6% rate, and rates drop from 6 to 3. That's a 30% increase, 30% on $500,000 to $150,000.

Buy a house goes up 150,000. Race drops a two. Now this is where some people will make stuff and start going on. I'm going to try and time the market and I want to sell that house before it drops. There's actually to your point, there is no true crystal ball. It may not drop for four or five, six more years down the road. So don't get stuck in that. I'm going to try and time the market.

But what you could guarantee yourself is if you got that rate and you refinanced it, so you might say 500,000, maybe you're doing FHA, three and a half percent down, something low. drops 30% now you refinance it. You're not only to have the interest savings, but now you got rid of mortgage insurance because you've got this huge increase. Now you have a very affordable home. So if the market crashes, you're still in good sense.

If people get all messed up on, I just got lost equity in my house, I want out. No, it's about affordability. Correct. If you've got an affordable home, the person doesn't have an affordable home is the person who buys

500 to $600 to $650. You bought it $500. You have $150,000 spread. Even if it drops from $500 to $300, you still have an affordable house. Because chances are when you're buying at $300, rates are back up at $6. So 300 really means you're back to $450.

Would you have walked away from a house for $50,000 in negative equity? You shouldn't because it costs $50,000 to sell a house anyway. Right. So you're actually hedging yourself against the market. Now is the perfect time to buy. Rates are still. And it's funny, everyone says they're high right now. go in research and go, what was the average rate over the last 60 years?

You go, like, man, 6% is an amazing rate. We feel it because just a couple years ago was in the twos. And so that pain is there. But trust me, now is the time to buy. I believe that Trump will eventually push the rates down. He talks about it all the time. He wants to have his legacy say he was the number one president of all time. I laughed when I watched it.

I don't know if anyone else on this, listen. and it was an NBA fan. I loved watching Victor Wem and Yama play because he wanted to tell the world. He was the best, and he did not shy away from now. He didn't win. He wasn't the best,

but he didn't have any lack of confidence to tell the world. He was the new man in Sheriff in town. He should be the new logo. He's going to do this. My favorite video clip during the NBA finals was when I never remember the other guy's name, but he starts playing. He's like, I'm in your head.

Here's a young kid already being aggressive and cocky and telling the world he's the best. That's Trump. Right. You've never seen anything better than this. You've never seen that. It's funny because it's probably 25% true and 75% embellished, which by the way, every good storyteller is.

If you ever have been around a storyteller, I consider myself a story teller, that fish I caught 20 years ago was probably 12 inches, but today it's 16. Yes. That's just the way it goes. Trump is a fantastic storyteller. but he wants the narrative, whether it's true or not, he wants to be able to point back and go see what I did for the economy. And dropping rates will do that for our economy.

There's no question about it. Eric, this has been such a great conversation. I really appreciate the opportunity to have you on the Realty Funnels podcast. I want to give everyone an opportunity to learn more about mortgage revenue share. They can learn about the oak tree real estate, loan officer program, Relo. You can go to MortgagerevenueShare.com. If you're a lender, we've got a similar site for you,

mortgagerevenueshare.com slash lenders. But if somebody wants to reach out to you directly, what's the best cell phone number where they can just pick up the phone and actually talk to you? Yeah. So, love you. I have definitely a cell phone guy,

480-797-6092. As you can imagine, I'm in meetings most of the day. If you just send me a text right before you call, I can let you know if I'm in a meeting or what time I'll be available. If I don't pick up, don't be offended. I'll usually respond back. Hey, in a meeting, I'll call you as soon as I'm done. I do return all calls the same day, with the exception if it's after 9 o'clock,

from 9 o'clock to 10 o'clock is when I promised my wife I'm a husband to her. So my wife gets up only one hour a day of my time, and that's the time. So after 9, you're not going to get me your staff to wait until tomorrow. And then if people want to reach out to you, email is a good option as well, right? Yeah, email as well. So E, Bolby. Bowlby is spelled B-O-W-L-B-Y at Oaktreefunding.com. Well, this has just been a fantastic conversation.

I'm so excited for what we're building out together with this mortgage revenue share opportunity for real estate agents, for loan officers. Eric Bolby, Oak Tree Direct. Thank you so much for being on the Realty Funnels podcast. Thank you for having you. Had a lot of fun. I hope to come back again. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret.

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