Start With A Win - Providing Homeownership Resources to Veterans with VAREP

Starting point is 00:00:00 Every day is filled with choices. You're here because you're choosing to start with a win. Get ready to be inspired, learn something new, and connect with the win nation. And Adam Contos, CEO of Remax. We'll start with a win here in my COVID studios at Fort Contos here. Looking across the screen at producer Mark. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing a little stuffy, you know? Oh, just a little stuffy today. I'm feeling great. It's not that thing going around, is it? No, it's not, thankfully. But every time I sneeze or cough, everyone's looking at me like, what do you got? It's just the cold.

Starting point is 00:00:49 No fever, nothing. Just a little stuffy here. We got a lot of fires, too. I don't know if it has something to play with it here in Colorado. It could be. We get a lot of smoke at my house. Yeah, the smoke, the weather's changing, the leaves are falling. I don't know. We'll say it's that. We're not going to mention this COVID thing or anything like that.

Starting point is 00:01:09 You look good. It's it's no, thank you. I try. Keep drinking your tea, buddy. Okay. That's what I will do. Hey, I'm excited for today's episode. You know, it's veterans day and you know, uh, you and I both love veterans. We have lots of veteran friends. And so today on the show, we're going to interview some guys from VA Rep. There you go. There's a great intro. So we have the two founders of VA Rep here, Sun Nguyen, who's the co-founder and president of VA Rep, served in the US.S. Navy, and Dustin Lewis, realtor and other co-founder with VAREP. So what is VAREP? It is a Veterans Association of Rural State Professionals, V-A-R-E-P. It's a nonprofit, 501c3, HUD-approved housing counseling organization, and their mission is to increase sustainable homeownership, financial literacy education, VA loan awareness, and

Starting point is 00:02:07 economic opportunity for our active duty and veteran communities. So welcome, guys. Great to have you here. Thanks, Adam. Thanks for having us on. Thanks, Adam. Thank you. So why did you guys start this program here, this association?

Starting point is 00:02:22 It's a really cool cause. I served in the Marine Corps. I love this. So I'm pretty excited to have you on. Why did you start this? What was the impetus behind this? When I got out of the Navy, I started working in real estate. And when it came to buying my first home, I remember that journey well. And it was a seed for VA rep years later, just my experience. And when I bought, I didn't really know anything about the VA loan when you get out of the military. I mean, as the Corps, the same way.

Starting point is 00:03:03 I mean, back in the day when we got out, it was, what, sitting there for three days? And we weren't there. We were there physically, we weren't there mentally. So a lot of the stuff they told us, it didn't stick with me. And I don't particularly recall them mentioning anything about the VA loan and home ownership. So when I got out there and it was my time to buy a home, even working in real estate, I really knew nothing about it. So I went and purchased my first condo in San Diego, and I didn't use the VA loan. And Adam, the reason why I didn't use my VA loan was my lender said, Son, you're better off with an FHA loan. And I come to find out later that my lack of knowledge, shame on me for not knowing, and that's even worse since I was in the real estate industry. But shame on my lender for not for steering me away from it, so to speak. Right. And so, I mean, the FHA loan is great. But for those who serve, the VA loan is the best.

Starting point is 00:03:54 It's something that we as veterans have earned and probably should at least be consulted with and presented with the option instead of being told that another option is better. So with that, fast forward about 10, 12 years. During the meltdown in 2008, Dustin and I were business partners. We met over sushi. And so we had a real estate business relationship going. I approached him. I said, you know what? I told him my story. And I looked around and the housing crisis. And I looked around at our big brothers and sisters, the other trade organizations out there, and they were serving a lot of great communities. And I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, I wanted to give back. Who are you, son? You know, what do you do? Who do you want to serve? And so, you know, it came back to me pretty quick that Asian by birth, but, you know, veteran by trade. And so I Googled and I Googled and nothing came

Starting point is 00:04:53 back. No hits came back to organizations specifically made for veteran homeownership. Now, there's a lot of them out there for veteran homelessness, but not sustainable home ownership. So with that said, based upon my experience, I looked at Dustin and I said, you want to join me for this wild ride? And we formed it in 2011, got our 501c3 status in 2012. And here we are. That's awesome. Great story, San. And I think a lot of people, especially a lot of veterans, can relate to that. I didn't know about the VA loan originally and the certificate of eligibility and how any of that works. But you're right.

Starting point is 00:05:35 It is an amazing benefit to people that have served and been honorably discharged from our armed forces. I mean, it's a thank you know, it's a thank you. It's a thank you. And there's some huge benefits to exploring that. Like you said, it may not be exactly the right combination of the terms and the interest rate, but at the same time, shame on you if you don't look into it, right? It's a great thing to know. Dustin, let's jump over to you real quick here. What are you seeing

Starting point is 00:06:09 in this organization as far as the impact you guys were able to create in the real estate space? How is that kind of measuring up to the effort you guys are putting in and how do you feel as a real estate professional when it comes to being part of this? Yeah, I think kind of add on to San's story is that what I saw when he bring this to me is I could echo the fact that the real estate practitioners, at least in the market I was in, most of them didn't understand the VA loan benefit. It was the grandfather's VA loan, and it's no longer your grandfather's VA loan. A lot has changed. A lot of questions about appraisals and things like that. So, you know, when we were talking, we realized that there's a lot of misnomers. It's not necessarily,

Starting point is 00:06:51 you know, that people are purposefully pushing veterans away from that benefit, but it's that they're not being educated properly. There was nobody out there telling them, this is how the product works. Also being a civilian, not knowing what a veteran went through, right? And now learning about TAP and learning about the exit program and the lack of education, stuff like that. So it was good for me as a civilian and a real estate practitioner to learn these things, to learn the culture, the military culture, which is a huge part of VA rep and our national conferences and getting together and getting to hear those stories. But the impact has been huge. You know, today, if you want me to give

Starting point is 00:07:33 you some numbers, we're getting prepped for our national conference that we do every year. So we always pull our stats. I mean, I can give you some stats and impact. You know, and to preface, our focus is the real estate community, teaching and equipping veterans, or I'm sorry, military focused real estate practitioners, lenders, realtors, to go out and help veterans directly, right? So that's the end game. It's the boots on the ground to help the veterans that need the help. We have right now 36 chapters in 19 states. We have over 7,000 members of VA rep that are real estate practitioners. About 70% are veterans themselves. The other 30% are patriots, what we call civilians who care in our organization and are giving back their time in these chapters. So today we have a program called VA Rep Cares. We've helped over 2,000 families with financial assistance with, you know, anywhere from financial to filling

Starting point is 00:08:32 needs during Christmas, you know, helping with rent, all different things. We've given around $70,000 in housing grants to veterans who are looking to purchase their first home. We've done over 130 veteran housing summits. So think of your home buyer education fair, but being a HUD housing counseling agency, we put those on and we get experts in the room to help. 610 industry educational events. So we have certification courses, we have classes that are going on all the time on our chapter level, as well as podcasts like this that we're on right now. So we know what does that lead to in impact directly, we track these things being a HUD Housing Counseling Agency. So over 6,000 low to moderate income housing counseling inquiries to date and over 2,000 LMI and veteran

Starting point is 00:09:28 families that have been helped through our housing counseling program. So whether it be them ending up into homeownership or even coming from homelessness, we've got stories of veterans who were homeless and then ended up getting into homeownership going through our programs. So those are just some of the stats and numbers, in fact. Wow. So I have a question for you. You look at the, and we have a lot of real estate agents that listen to this podcast. You look at their perspective and maybe they have or have not heard about VA rep. How could they get? And what is the benefit to being a realtor and working with this program? I think that, well, first and foremost, there are a good amount of REMAX

Starting point is 00:10:15 agents. So big shout out to you and your agents that are part of VA rep at the local chapter level, whether it's just a general membership or whether they're on our local board of directors for each chapter. They are participating, but if they are not and if there's not a chapter nearby, they can go to our website, varep.net, and they can click. If there's not a chapter there, they can inquire about starting a chapter. or if there is a chapter, they can go and reach out to the local board of directors, and they can participate. I can't emphasize the impact that that will make within, not within their own lives, being able to take their passion to serve the local military and veteran communities in many different ways, but also in the lives that they serve. So whether it them going and doing a VA rep cares event, feeding the homeless, whether it's collecting blankets, you know, when it's cold to participating in educational fairs or fundraising so they can help local veteran families.

Starting point is 00:11:23 That's how those are just some of the ways and some of the benefits that they get by being part of the local chapter. But as far as the general membership, as far as VA Rep National, obviously their membership, what they get is the quarterly, we have a newsletter that's informational and educational

Starting point is 00:11:41 that helps their business grow. We have a lot of great informational articles in there that they can use as added to their tool belt of resources. They get to participate and actually, you know, walk the halls of Congress once a year at the political. I mean, at our policy conference and actually advocate some of the positions to remove the barriers for veteran and military homeownership. So they do a lot of cool things, Adam. I love this so much, Sone. And you and I kind of, you know, we've had that military indoctrination. And Dustin, you have done such an amazing job of helping the military community from the patriot community. So for a real estate agent, obviously real estate agents are out there

Starting point is 00:12:33 looking for buyers and sellers, people to help fulfill the American dream through homeownership. And talking to a veteran, we live heavily on trust, don't we? I mean, there's a lot of trust, a lot of reliance on, okay, you're here to help me, and so I want to do business with you. How does that kind of play into this? Because that's the first thing I think of when I look at an organization like this is, this is a bunch of people that I could sit down and, you know, like you guys have sushi with or have a beer or share some war stories or just have some fun with knowing these people care. How does that fit into the culture here? Tell me about that. Yeah. And culture is a perfect term, the affinity, right? So being part of an organization where

Starting point is 00:13:24 you're able to give back. I mean, I've heard it and Sons heard it countless times, specifically veterans coming up to us and saying, you know what, I was looking for something to get involved in. I'm in real estate and that's great. And I help my clients, but I was looking for something to get involved in that I can give back and be back into that brotherhood, that camaraderie. So when you put service first and you seek to be able to give back to people and then you're putting it in such a focused way like VA rep, you know, it helps the heart. But then it also it does help business too right because if you're giving back and you're focusing on the veteran community you end up becoming you know one of the people in the community people can trust

Starting point is 00:14:10 and say hey if i have an issue with the va loan or if i need help with you know financial literacy or anything like that they know who to go to you know i like to add to that as well and this is something that uh dustin you know as a civilian in the VA rep culture, we have veterans like myself and you, Adam, and then we have Dustin as a civilian, but wants to give back, so we call them patriots. And so in our organization, if you're a patriot, you learn as you're a part of VA rep, you interact with veterans and you learn the lingo, you learn the abbreviations, because God knows there's a bunch of abbreviations that we go by, right? And you learn Marine speaking short, choppy sentences and Air Force or, you know, love their food, you know, gourmet. I'm just teasing. And, you know, but those are the things

Starting point is 00:14:55 that I think that a, and, you know, that a patriot can be with our organization and that could actually add to their rapport when they are serving the military and veteran community. And one of the things that I hate when someone who's not a veteran comes and they try to speak the lingo and try to act the culture, but when they really don't know anything, I'd rather them be themselves, right? And I would teach them. But I think the heads up for the people that are a part of VA rep, they already know and are already integrated and that just totally helps them out. Yeah. And I hear a lot of times civilians come in and they're asked, you know, did you serve? Were you in the military? And I hear civilians all the time try to justify, you know, here's why I didn't serve, right? And I'm like, stop it, right? That

Starting point is 00:15:41 doesn't go anywhere. You got to, what are you doing today? Right? What are you doing today to give back? And that's why I tell the civilians in the organization, I said, stop with that, you know, commentary, tell them what you're doing today. Tell them I'm proud to be involved with an organization like VA rep or the Legion or VFW or Wounded Wars or whatever it may be, right? Start giving back. This is your opportunity to serve. Oh, totally. I mean, such great points here. The fact that you weren't in the military does not mean that anybody thinks anything less of you. We all have to give back to our communities in a different way. And some people choose to do it that way. Some people choose to do it other ways. But bottom line is we all have to take care of

Starting point is 00:16:19 each other as Americans, as citizens, as people in the real estate community, because that's really what the real estate community is about is helping people. It's very heartwarming to hear how you really, I look on your website and your materials, you lead with service. And that is just, that's so important. And you mentioned training a couple of times. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the aspects of training that people could look forward to? Because agents, you know, realtors love to learn so that you can redeploy those things and build your business and help people. What kind of training do you have? There's many, many levels of training. So if we go from the chapter level, the chapter does education,

Starting point is 00:17:05 we have certain hurdles that we ask the chapter to meet every year. Education is one of them doing lunch and learns things like that on the chapter level. We have like we mentioned before, we have podcasts where we'll interview the VA, we'll interview different segments in the industry that deal with veteran housing issues. We've had the VA on. We've had HUD on, even talking about HUD-VASH. In fact, our conference, we're going to have HUD-VASH, SSVF. We're going to talk about suicide awareness because we do have a program in regards to

Starting point is 00:17:37 that too. But then we also have certification courses. So we have our prime course is the MBHC. That's the military and veteran housing certification. It's our own course on wrote it with the team. And so it's, it's a eight hour certification. Some states are seven, some states are seven, some states is eight. I believe we're in, we have CE in 12 states right now. And it's, you know, it's great. It's great information. It starts out as a matter of fact, chapter one is about rate, rank and respect. It's about military culture, right? So we teach

Starting point is 00:18:10 them that, then we teach them the VA loan in detail, and then we finish it off with writing the best VA offer for real estate agents. So it's a complete course. That's a great course. We also have a shorter course on the SCRA, the service member civil relief act. We have one, one on PCS, know your orders. And, you know, it goes on our quarterly, or we're trying to make it monthly now for 2021. We have a podcast series. We call it VA rap. Right. And so we have that, and we have have subject matter experts on. I think the last one we had was with the Blue Navy. The Navy Blue Water Act. So just lots of great content that we and us at the national level and the chapter level just love to get out there to the practitioners

Starting point is 00:19:01 to just seriously continue to arm them with the right resources to use. Yeah. And let me say with, he mentioned the Navy Blue Water Act. So, you know, in the industry this year, a lot of people should be aware, and if they're not, we're helping them become aware that there is no cap on the VA loan now. That bleeds two things together that we're involved in policy. We're in DC every year, and we were involved in policy. We're in DC every year and we were involved in that. Our legislative committee was heavily involved in that legislation. We got asked to the table to help them figure that bill out. And kind of a benefit that came out of that was adjustment to how the VA loan works and the cap no longer being there to that loan. So we do,

Starting point is 00:19:44 we've done education on that and have the subject matter experts on to talk about it. Great information, great value for real estate agents and for veterans. So this is a great program. I can't encourage my listeners enough. Go check it out, varep.net. I was just on the website.

Starting point is 00:20:02 It's fantastic. There's a lot of really good information as well as some reminders of how we need to treat ourselves and others and understand our mental well-being and things like that. So I have a question I ask everybody that is on this show. It's called Start With A Win. So we would like to know from you gentlemen, how do you each start your day with a win? So for me, it's weaponizing myself in the morning. And so the weaponization of for me, would be to focus on my body, my being my spiritual connection, my balance, my connection with my family, and then business. So body,

Starting point is 00:20:45 move my body, get a workout in and sweat. Being, connect with God, you know, read scripture, do my devotions, you know, write about it. Connection with my family, show them gratitude, send them letters, you know, make sure I'm connecting with the kids before they leave for the day. That fills my emotional tank. That gives me a lot of power in the morning. And getting all that done, it's all surrounding me, getting myself ready for the day. So then I can go out and I can be of service to others.

Starting point is 00:21:16 Yeah, for me, it's similar to that. When I wake up in the morning, probably hit the snooze button about two or three times. And then I get up, uh, thankful that I'm alive in one piece, but I immediately go to my calendar and I look what's on tap that day. You know, for me, I'm, uh, just highly laser focused, right. And saying, okay, so these are the, uh, three appointments for appointments that have this day. Am I prepared for that? And if I'm not, how do I get myself prepared quickly for that? And most of the time I am prepared for it. When I go, I want to go over

Starting point is 00:21:48 again in my head as I've taken, you know, doing my morning routine, taking my shower again, getting ready and for the day. So those are the specific things. And if I can leave my house in the morning feeling that I am equipped with the right resources and prepared to face the day, then I'm good. That's my win. Awesome. Son, Dustin, thank you so much for being on. Start with a win. We appreciate all you guys do.

Starting point is 00:22:15 Son, thank you for your service in the United States Navy to our country. And thanks for all you guys are doing for our community of veterans, as well as the real estate community itself. So we appreciate you being on here again, everybody check out VAREP.net. Well, thank you for having us. And thank you, Adam, for your service in the core. Yeah. Thank you, Adam. Thanks for letting us share our message on here. And thank you for listening to Start With A Win. If you'd like to ask Adam a question or tell us your Start With A Win story, give us a call and leave us a message at 888-581-4430. Don't forget to go onto iTunes and subscribe, write a review and rate the show.

Starting point is 00:22:56 And for more great content, head over to startwithawin.com, follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, start with a win.

Start With A Win - Providing Homeownership Resources to Veterans with VAREP

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.