Beards on the Street
Parry Ward and Aaron Pehrson, two Real Estate agents in Salt Lake City, Utah, with a team at Century 21 Everest called "The Luxury Agency". Beards on the Street is two seasoned agents chatting about Life Experiences, Love, Family, Friends and of course the Utah Real Estate Market conditions. Parry and Aaron primarily focus on a system coined "My Top 50" based around showing up for the people in there sphere consistently and with purpose.
Beards on the Street
Beards On The Street - Episode 35 - Real Estate Revelations and Alaskan Adventure: Inside the Mortgage Machine and UWM's Spirited Saga with a Splash of Team Antics
Embark on a backstage tour of the mortgage world as we recount our eye-opening visit to UWM's impressive headquarters, a place where history meets innovation on the old Pontiac production grounds. Feel the electric vibe of their 7,000-strong team, thriving in a space where working remotely is left out of the equation. The cherry on top? A candid chat with the UWM CEO, now at the helm of the Phoenix Suns, who walked us through the company's remarkable journey from a modest dozen in a grocery store annex to a leading force in the industry.
Then, buckle up for anecdotes that'll have you chuckling and nodding along. From our colleague Jen Morris, the 'uber bandit' with her Uber escapades, to the warm welcome we gave our adventurous new team member Travis—whose leap from Alaskan paddle boarding to real estate is as refreshing as his beloved cold plunges. We're sharing the inside scoop on the mortgage process that's as efficient as an assembly line, peppered with team spirit and the personal tales that make our industry human, relatable, and, dare we say, fun!
Music, music, hey, hey, hey everybody, welcome to Beards on the Street. Morning guys. Morning A-Ron was chasing after some kids this morning, so sorry for the little bit of, but he's got dad duty man, that's important.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it's the one day a week today I got to see him. Oh well, that's important. Yep, well, and it's the one day a week this today, I got to see him oh well, that's, that's even more important.
Speaker 1:So I agree, dude, that takes precedent over this, even though you stress me out I'm stressed right now, but we're here, all right. Yes, we're here all right, all right. So, uh, sorry that uh missed everybody the day after Thanksgiving, but uh, we're back in the saddle and rocking and rolling. Uh, it was a nice little break. I hope everybody had a fantastic. Uh, uh.
Speaker 2:Thanksgiving yeah, turkey day. Yeah, turkey day. Got to spend time with all your families as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got a. I got to drive for three and a half hours to go get my mom and take her back and spend the day with her. It was perfect.
Speaker 2:It made her Thanksgiving, I'm sure of it.
Speaker 1:Oh it did. Yeah, she was supposed to go north with a brother, but it didn't work out, so there's no way mom was going to stay home alone.
Speaker 2:You know what? And right move, because they talk about times, right, right, how many more times?
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that's legit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know we're kind of talking about that with my dad right now yeah, it's, it's family time, man.
Speaker 1:It's important. It's important, all right. What's going on with you, dude? What have you been doing? What's life you and? I went off to a pretty fun training this week it's so funny because, uh, uh, uh, george saw me and he's like oh, you look a little better today than you did yesterday. I was a tired boy man. I yeah, I crawled in bed early last night I was done.
Speaker 2:It was uh. It was a lot of fun, though. It was super impressive what they got going on at.
Speaker 1:U uh uwm so, uh, let's, let's talk about this. Uh, uwm is a mortgage broker or broker, right? Uh-huh, uh, wholesale lender, wholesale lender. Back in, uh, detroit, michigan, and uh, uh, their campus guys, let's talk about this first. So where they have their business is an old car manufacturing Pontiac. It's a Pontiac car manufacturing campus. I mean, like, literally, when we went from building to building, it was in a bus on the campus. It was really cool, it was amazing, and you'd go into these big, huge, I mean you could tell at one at one point, these big, massive warehouses that they probably had, you know, uh, conveyor lines and all kinds of stuff, uh, that just full of desks and people 7,000, 7,000 people and they do not do anything.
Speaker 1:Remote Everybody's on site.
Speaker 2:Everybody's part of their culture, their vision. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:It was seriously really, really cool. I've got a few pictures. I didn't take any pictures of the actual like all the people that work there and all that Went out with a great crowd of people. Here we go. Let's check out this one. The guy in the tan suit happens to be our account rep. His name's Joey Really cool kid man Liked him and he's a team lead where he's at and we got to just boogie back there and hang out. I'm just filtering through a bunch of the pictures and showing off what went on. I mean, when we first got there, we walked into this room this picture shows it kind of behind it and it was 500 people a conceit probably or 1,000, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean a massive massive hall that was just slam-packed. It had bleachers in the back and chairs all across the floor and it was packed.
Speaker 2:It was a sports complex. It was an old basketball sports facility that they had taken and converted into their big mass training facility.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, we got to go in and sit down and hang out and listen to. At the time I didn't know it, but it was the actual CEO and president of UWM. That guy, I mean really, really sharp guy, and his brain. You could tell his brain was going so fast. He was having a hard time keeping up with his words. Smart guy. Same guy just bought the Phoenix Suns. Just so you know they started in. What did they say? A garage or somewhere?
Speaker 2:What was it? They started in the back of an old grocery store. Oh, that's right, 12 people 12 people.
Speaker 1:They have 7,000. They're the largest wholesale lender in the United States, I believe they said the largest wholesale lender in the United States, I believe they said.
Speaker 2:The thing that I kept kind of impressing me was the idea that they don't have any retail ability. So, like the guy that we met, one of the other, you know, area managers basically and he let us know that they do not have the ability to even give their own parents loans.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what he said to us.
Speaker 2:They can't get a mortgage there because there's not a retail presence.
Speaker 1:So you know, you take the other one, the Rocket, which is their competition. To explain this to you guys, because I didn't get it for a minute, but basically Rocket Mortgage has their own shops. You see them, retail places where you can go in like a bank and get a loan.
Speaker 1:Consumer can go direct and they're competing with brokers, that's competing with their same people that they're trying to wholesale their product to, and UWM does none of that. They're 100% zero retail. So they're not competing with their own people. And when we first got there, we were kind of discussing amongst the group of what their motivation was, because, I mean, we're trying to figure it out why would you bring a real, why would you do that? And and the expense? I mean, guys, they, they paid for the flight, they paid for our hotel room, they paid for our transfers, uh, uh, back and forth to the to the place. Um, I mean, it wasn, wasn't cheap.
Speaker 2:You figure, I know you looked at my my fly with 1000, some 1100 bucks almost to get out there.
Speaker 1:And there was more than 500 people there that they paid for, and they do this every second week. It's insane, but anyways. So we're trying to figure out what their end game is. Why, why, why do they want to reach out to their guys, there was builders.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, obviously there were. There were a number of different mortgage reps there, and then, of course, a ton of agents from all over the world, I mean all over the United States. I mean we saw people from Texas, california, vegas. Vegas, I mean Florida. Texas, california, vegas, I mean Florida. Yeah, so here's what our take is, here's what, after the message and after sitting and hanging out and listening to this all the speakers, what it came down to is these guys. Basically, they are wanting us, as agents, to know that they're vested in us and they're vested in us being successful and they're vested in us having the products that we can provide to our clients to give them the best experience and to cover every need that they have. Is that pretty good?
Speaker 2:Jeff Kilburg. Yeah, I mean they pulled back the curtain, they showed us process, they helped us understand underwriting when they send out closing disclosures, things like that. All of it in an effort to help expedite the process, because sometimes in the markets we're in even still the market we're in right now if you have the ability to write an offer that can close faster, that can perform, which alleviates risk and some of that headache or hardship that can come in some of these transactions, that just makes this a more successful transaction for the consumer.
Speaker 1:You know what really kind of opened my eyes to actually what it is that they're accomplishing there. Because I mean, you see all these people and they say, okay, this is underwriting this whole entire section. Right here, I mean hundreds of people. Is the underwriting, the length? Okay, this is underwriting this whole entire section. Right here, I mean hundreds of people is the underwriting, length of people is underwriting. And then these are account executives and these are this and that and and when we were doing the tour, um joey said to me he's like, okay, these guys right here, what their job is is when a file comes in, they actually this isn't the underwriter, this is the pre-underwriting. So basically they have this whole massive group of people that all they do is go through that file and and everything that guy verifies employment all day and verifies he does everything so that when that file hits that underwriter they look at it, make sure everything fits where it's supposed to fit and they're done.
Speaker 1:It's like an assembly line for mortgage. It was crazy, yeah, because they've got people backing up people backing up people and their team camaraderie and they had the funniest names for the teams you know right on the desks and it was pretty cool, man, it was really cool.
Speaker 2:I'm glad I went. Yeah me too.
Speaker 1:Even though I was one tired Jose yesterday.
Speaker 2:You know what, though, but I have complete confidence if the load's going to UWM.
Speaker 1:Exactly Like, literally, literally, like I don't know why you'd take it anywhere else.
Speaker 2:Flying out there. I'm like the last thing our loan officers want is us giving the opinion of what they do for their job. Right, right.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. You know we use Cynthia over at Inspiro for quite a few of our deals and she's been touting off and telling us how awesome and efficient and I mean saying stuff that I didn't even understand that I do now. You know, I'll be honest with you, I've never really paid a whole lot of attention to the mortgage side of the deal, because that's not my, that's not my bag man, it's not my not your lane, you know I'll, I'll do my job, you do your job.
Speaker 1:But it actually was really really cool to have to to now have that knowledge, to know exactly what the process is, and yeah, I mean it was pretty cool experience. I do have to say it was and it's open to to everybody and anybody. So, trav uh, get on their list and go do it it's.
Speaker 2:Aren't you going in january?
Speaker 1:I don't think so sean is on the one you should go. You should look into it, like today and get on the one that sean is going to go okay, sometime in january, because they still they still have spots open. So you fly out, you're there for the conference for the whole entire day, like it started at 8 o'clock in the morning, went until probably 6 o'clock at night. You know, we flew out, they took us to dinner which I'm sure they probably do every time and then we had the conference all day and then, you know, basically we had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day. So it was home in bed and back home. So really quick trip, but man.
Speaker 2:One little fun fact when you're traveling, I mean if you're traveling with Jen Morris.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She is an uber bandit she's the uber bandit, so anybody who's in it.
Speaker 1:Jen, you can't deny. So guys, literally we stole First. First time we stole it she was with us.
Speaker 2:I'll.
Speaker 1:I'll take the blame for the first one because I just walked out and got in the guy's car and we're actually driving away and he starts telling me names that wasn't us and he starts laughing because it has never happened to him.
Speaker 2:You know how you're supposed to verify it's the exact scenario and the only way you could ever get, I mean, be scared about an Uber ride Because you don't really know who the guy picked you up, but usually it's all digital. You know who they are.
Speaker 1:Oh, our guy. He was giggling. I was laughing at him because he was giggling, because it was so funny to him. So, anyways, we stole somebody's Uber and then the morning we were coming back home we had set up Ubers the night before for that morning and I'm watching my phone and it says the dude's there and I walk out and Jen and her crowd are there and they get in the Uber, and then my Uber never shows up, but I can see it going over to the freeway and getting on the freeway and clicking along. So, jan, I don't know. We need to do some research into this.
Speaker 2:She swears. They verified, dave.
Speaker 1:Right, oh my gosh. Oh, fun times, man, fun times.
Speaker 2:Well, hey we need to talk about who we have here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who is this cat?
Speaker 2:yeah, we're we're excited about this guy we are way excited that's our he's the newest addition to to our team all right, here we go.
Speaker 1:Guys, got to show you this man. This is cool, bam. This is our new uh team photo with uh mr trav. Uh, tra Travis joined our team within the last week and we are so excited to have you on our team. Dude, you're a hard-working son of a gun and you get it, and I know that you've. You're really leaning into our VIP 50 process which, by the way, is starting to kick butt for Shauna. Oh heck, yeah, big time. So welcome, dude. Thank you, happy to be here. So tell us a little bit about you, buddy.
Speaker 3:So I'm from Alaska and I've gone back and forth from Alaska to Utah the past few years. I moved back to Utah in 2020, so I've been here for about three years now. This last time around.
Speaker 1:So you decided what a couple years ago to get, to get into the real estate, right yeah so I was working with the cruise ship industry in Alaska.
Speaker 3:I had a paddle boarding excursion and that's awesome. Covid kind of shut that down, so we went from 10 ships a day to zero and it was a good time to sail.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I moved down here and met my new wife like a month after I moved down, so that was good.
Speaker 1:And Trav has a beautiful family. He just for Thanksgiving he went down to Texas where his folks live and he was posting all kinds of really cool pictures with not only his immediate family his wife and kids but his extended family, which was really cool, dude, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no. So I pretty much. My plan was to become a pilot. I was looking at loans, going to get my fixed wing and then become a commercial pilot, and right as I was getting the loan figured out, I pretty much found out that I would be gone like 20 days a month on average for the first 10 years, and so I really didn't want to be gone that much. How many kids do you have between you and your wife? So I have two step-sons and then one baby.
Speaker 2:My cool man.
Speaker 3:Yep, but yeah. So, like right before my wedding, I ended up meeting with my wife's one of my wife's best friends, and he was in real estate, so I got talking to him and it just seemed like a good fit. He was home every night with his family, which was something that was really important, that's. Alex right Yep.
Speaker 2:Alex, he's a stud.
Speaker 3:Yeah, something that was really important. That's Alex, right? Yep, alex, he's a stud. Yeah, so got into real estate because of him and I'm about two and a half years in now.
Speaker 1:Good for you, bud. Yeah, trav joined our team and we're so excited and he's right now in the building process of putting his VIP 50 together and getting it cranking. So any of you out there that uh, that uh are going to start getting phone calls from him. If you happen to run across this, uh expect it. Trav's going to call you up and he's going to get super real jiggy with it and and and be a lot bigger part of your life. That's right, right, yep. So he, he shows up this morning and he's like dude, have you ever heard of these cold plunge things? And I was like no, what do you do? Go to a lake and jump in a lake.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I see them. It's like you know the cold plunge challenge, but this is actually a thing that you buy like a hot tub, but it's a cold tub, Did you see?
Speaker 2:the Lifetime ad. There's one that just came out this morning. Sent me a Lifetime is selling a cold plunger for $179. What, yeah, An actual. It's like a.
Speaker 1:Well, the one his parents bought is way more than that.
Speaker 3:I can tell you it doesn't keep it cold, though does it? I don't know.
Speaker 2:It probably just holds a lot. It's probably just the basin, yeah usually on those ones you gotta it's like it's, it's like a it's.
Speaker 1:It's like your paddle board that you pump up and it holds, it, holds it yeah, I mean it has a point and say like three or four of the of the things that you were talking about, that that it does. Yeah, so, um, no idea until he just started showing me.
Speaker 3:So my parents bought one, so we started doing one every morning. We had it set to about 40 degrees and we would do about four minutes in the water and there's all kinds of benefits it's supposed to increase. Andrew Huberman talks about it. I was telling you about Huberman, yeah, but it increases dopamine for 2.5 times higher than baseline. For five hours after it burns a bunch of white fat, it builds your brown fat, which is the good fat around your organs. There's a whole bunch of other scientific benefits I don't really know about, but it's good, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean he was saying that the it, it, it, it increases your dopamine, which that's the feel good thing in our body, right, right, and and it takes it to a I mean it's fast, it takes it to a big time high. So it's almost like you're high but you're not, because it just you have so much dopamine and then it starts tapering off for what you said 1010, 15 minutes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the hours, hours it peaks really high and then it tapers down over the next four hours, but over the five-hour period you're supposed to have an average of 2.5 above baseline.
Speaker 2:Holy cow, it does a lot like intermittent fasting. When your body fasts your body, it goes into. I can't remember the name of it, but it's reaction, the healing reaction point of your natural system, and cold plunging puts you in like that again the fight or flight, the sympathetic and it it's got to be way faster than the fasting thing, because I mean, this is like immediate and it's four minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tell them about what you were saying the difference between working out and the and four minutes in these, in these cold tubs.
Speaker 3:So I can't remember the exact study, but it I'm pretty sure. If I'm mistaken, it was like comparing 30 minutes of cardio versus four minutes of cold plunge and it had greater fat burning and weight loss effects than the generic cardio.
Speaker 2:Cold water. Your body heat is energy. It's burning carbohydrates, right. So when you get in cold water, it pulls all of your heat out of you and then your body has to do all this stuff to rebalance. And, yeah, it's, and you're supposed to.
Speaker 3:You're supposed to get light, so it raises your core temperature quite a bit, but you're supposed to allow your body to warm up naturally, like not go take a hot shower or something like that. So, oh, it was about 40 degrees there and then outside also, so I would go stand in the grass and then you kind of just let yourself Slowly warm up and slowly.
Speaker 1:I guarantee you my wife is going to not buy into this. She's always cold.
Speaker 2:I have several friends that have the actual refrigeration. They're like the white tub out in the backyard.
Speaker 3:The plunge. Is that what it is? Okay, there's the plunge on the plunge XL. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it looks like a hot tub. It's got a circulation thing. Jets the whole bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my, it's got a circulation thing. Jets the whole bit. Yeah, my parents got the chili goat. It's similar to the plunge, but it keeps the temperature at whatever you want on your phone, like on an app.
Speaker 1:Um, it's pretty cool yeah, yeah, let's get one for the office right morning ritual no kidding, other than you'd have to see me in shorts and probably wouldn't be so great. I don't know, maybe actually let me down and I would look good. Just pile rocks in the river, other than you'd have to see me in shorts and probably wouldn't be so great.
Speaker 2:I don't know, maybe it's going to be down and I would look good. We could just pile rocks in the river behind the office. No kidding.
Speaker 1:And we'll just get us a little dam out there. Probably the perfect temp, actually Probably.
Speaker 2:Damn cold is what temperature is. Chip the ice away over the area and go for it.
Speaker 1:All righty man. Well, we've got our next uh social coming up. Give us an update on your flip. Okay, let's talk about the flip. So we've we've done all of the demo work on it, um, basically ripped out all the flooring, filled up a full 30-yard dumpster. Believe it or not, we did.
Speaker 1:Matter of fact, I did a little shout-out this morning on social media Blue Mountain Container Dude these guys. So when I started doing my homework, most of the places I was looking at I think it was a 5 or 10-yard container. They came and brought a 30-yard container. I could have up to four tons of stuff in it and it was $360. That's great and that was cheaper than a container that was a third of the size and I could only have one ton of garbage in the container.
Speaker 1:So anybody needs a container. Man, I'm telling you, reach out to these guys from Blue Mountain because they have got it together and I called them. They dropped it off the very next day and I mean they can't say enough good about them. That's awesome. So, anyways, we've got the whole demo done. We've got all the carpeting flooring out. I mean that was kind of a job in and of itself because you've got to take off all the tack, board and staples and pad. I mean it was pretty involved. We tore one bathroom completely out, so it's gutted and we're redoing that.
Speaker 2:You're taking out all the base, mold, base and case.
Speaker 1:Base mold case which changes the whole look. Yep, it's going to be great. Yep, tore out a little pony wall that we didn't want Opened up a little bit better. Yeah, so we've got. I've actually got an electrician there right now rocking and rolling. So as soon as we get done here, I've got to run home and change and head up and get dirty. So, yeah, that's where it's at right now.
Speaker 2:Fun man I'll post some pictures.
Speaker 1:I actually have some now with it completely gutted and I'll do some before and afters and durings.
Speaker 2:So we're actively, weekly, looking at the MLS and we're finding some incredible opportunities out there. So if anybody has a desire to do some flipping, part of what we're doing here is we're gathering contractors, we have relationships in our top 50s of all the different trades and so we also have the ability to help with the financing, to be able to help you acquire the flip on the property. And so if you've thought about doing that or any portion of that, if you just want to invest a little bit and just maybe collaborate with us on a couple, that'd be awesome. I'd say you know, reach out. Uh, dean's gonna start posting some of these pictures and I, we want to. We want to do more of these with our, with our friends and our crowd.
Speaker 1:So reach out plus, we've got I mean we've got guys now that can show you how to take money from your 401k and and put it into to real estate uh, investment properties and and the gain you're going to get on your money is much, much greater.
Speaker 2:Yeah, much greater uh eight percent on 500 bucks a month investment, versus six or eight hundred thousand dollar growing by seven percent a year yeah, there's a huge swing huge swing.
Speaker 1:So reach, so reach out to us guys. I mean we're putting together an actual seminar. I've talked about a little bit before that we're going to start putting out there to have people come and sit down and we're going to bring the experts and make it a great program where you can show up and know how to do it and have the proper people to help you do it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, dip in at your own speed and jump in when you're ready.
Speaker 1:Okay, throwing up here. We've got our mixer coming up on the 14th of December. Guys, this one, we're changing it up a little bit. We're going to do it at the Ice House, one of Dave's places, and we're doing an ugly sweater Christmas mixer. So make sure you bring your ugliest sweater, throw it on Sweet and anybody that does wear a sweater. We're going to throw you into a raffle and we're going to give away some fun stuff. So this one's going to be a fun one. I'm excited about it. Awesome, I think it's going to be cool, dude.
Speaker 2:They've told us to come a little early because there's a hemp cannabis social right before ours.
Speaker 1:So if you want to show up a little early, I plan on getting there midday. I think he said from 2 to 4. And I'm sure they'll have really good brownies. Oh my gosh. Anyways, guys, man, we missed you last week. I'm happy to be back. I freaking love doing this. And Travis, welcome to our team dude, welcome.
Speaker 2:welcome, man.
Speaker 1:We're excited about you, kid, going to go some long pace or good places. So all right, people, I'm out, I'm going to head up and go work on the flip and we'll see you next week.