The Alimond Show
Welcome to The Alimond Show --join us as we share our entrepreneurial guests' stories, uncover their secrets to success, and explore the unique paths they've taken to build thriving businesses in our community.
In each episode, our host, Aliyah Dastour, sits down with a diverse group of local business owners, from the corner cafe to the boutique shop, from tech startups to family-run enterprises. We peel back the curtain to reveal the trials, triumphs, and transformational moments that have shaped their entrepreneurial journey.
Discover the passion, perseverance, and innovative thinking that fuels these businesses, as well as the challenges they've overcome along the way. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur seeking inspiration or simply a curious listener interested in the stories behind your favorite local spots, The Alimond Show has something for everyone.
Our guests share their experiences, insights, and valuable advice that can empower you to turn your own dreams into reality. We discuss topics like marketing strategies, customer relationships, community engagement, and much more, offering practical takeaways you can apply to your own business or career.
Join us every week as we celebrate the unsung heroes of our local business community and explore the vibrant tapestry of entrepreneurship in our area. Tune in to The Alimond Show and get ready to be inspired, informed, and motivated to support and nurture the businesses that make our community thrive.
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The Alimond Show
Emrah Dilsizoglu - From Legal Career to Mortgage Innovator and CrossFit Champion
Curious about what it takes to navigate the dynamic mortgage industry while balancing a passion for fitness? Meet Emrah Dilsizoglu, the brilliant mind behind Value Mortgage and a CrossFit enthusiast. In our latest episode, Emrah shares his fascinating transition from a legal career to pioneering a mortgage brokerage that prioritizes quality and personalized service. Learn how his extensive background in international finance and real estate has shaped his vision for the company, and get the inside scoop on the innovative Foreign Nationals Loan program that’s making waves in the U.S. housing market.
Discover the importance of flexibility and attentive service in mortgage brokerage as Emrah reveals how Value Mortgage partners with various banks to offer tailored loans and competitive rates. Listen to Emrah’s passionate advocacy for understanding borrowers' stories and providing financial guidance, ensuring even first-time homebuyers find the right fit. With a focus on meticulous attention to detail, avoiding the impersonal touch of loan processors, and future plans to integrate AI technology while expanding the team, Emrah's approach is redefining industry standards.
Beyond the realm of mortgages, Emrah’s commitment to personal excellence shines through his dedication to CrossFit. Since 2018, this fitness journey has earned him the title of the fittest Turkish man in his age group, showcasing the power of persistence and self-improvement. Emrah’s story is a testament to the benefits of diversifying interests and striving for excellence in all areas of life. Tune in for an invigorating conversation filled with practical insights, inspiring personal anecdotes, and a roadmap to achieving both professional and personal success.
My name is Emrat Dilsizola. My business's name is Value Mortgage. We were founded in 2023. We offer full-service mortgage loans for residential and commercial borrowers.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And now tell me a little bit about how you got into your industry. Like, is this something you've always planned out for yourself as a kid, or how did this come to be?
Speaker 1:As a kid? No, but I practiced law for 20 years Since 2004,. I've been practicing law and the biggest, I would say, curiosity I had towards money and commercial markets was in finance and home and real estate. And real estate and that sort of like surfaced in different areas. I actually was part of infrastructure deals. I was part of some real estate deals and I helped my clients when I was practicing law towards getting their loans or compliance if they were a company. So there are some involvement that I have been a part of during my practicing years. My curiosity peaked when I saw the market actually behaved in a very specific way after COVID and it was very interesting because the home prices went up, the interest rates went down, so it was a seller's market and a buyer's market, interestingly, and that just like piqued my interest towards mortgages and how I can support that industry and because I do have a lot of knowledge around servicing clients, I wanted to use that knowledge towards having people buying new homes.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And now you are a loan officer, but you just opened up your own business. Is that correct? Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:Correct. So I am a loan officer by default. I actually started mortgage business as a broker owner and a company owner of a broker and a mortgage loan officer, mortgage loan originator. So those two things were not really different for me from inception. It was always about okay, I'm going to open up a broker and then I'm going to be a mortgage loan officer for that broker and I'm going to hire more people to join me to sell loans together. So that was the plan and that's basically the first phase that now we're in.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And then you practice being an attorney overseas. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:That's correct. I started overseas. I moved to the US in 2016 through a client of mine and they actually required me to be here for some projects that they had going on. So I started practicing international law predominantly after that point and finance was always part of that, but correct. I practiced law and then nationally overseas in Istanbul, Turkey, and then internationally in Washington DC, and then that morphed into opening up a mortgage brokerage over time, Amazing Love that for you.
Speaker 2:And now tell me about some of the changes that are happening in the industry. About the foreign what was it, the foreign?
Speaker 1:Foreign nationals loan.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Yes, talk to me a little bit about that and why we should know more about this and who is qualified and all of that Right?
Speaker 1:Thank you, that's a really good question. So I think overall the interest rates are high right now and people say that it's a good idea to wait. So let me comment on that a little bit, because I think there's a lot of misconception and misunderstanding in the market what waiting means, right. So back in 1977, people decided to wait because the interest rates were around nine and they had to wait 22 years for the interest rates to go down below five. It's a long time, it is a very long time, but during that time the appreciation of the homes that they could have bought went up 180% right. So we're waiting for something, but what we're waiting for is not really that obvious. That isn't that apparent.
Speaker 1:So once you're in a market of a seller's market so that we call it nowadays because the sellers have a very low, I would say, supply and the demand is very high off of the people those are trying to buy homes, there isn't enough inventory, so the houses actually sell for above purchase price, above asking price, 90% of the time. So that's very unique to this time and during these times even the supply is very, very the people those are actual buyers go out there to buy and they do buy a home and then they compete. But think about a scenario that actually the interest rates go down and now more people wanting to buy. That's not going to make the inventory go up immediately, so the inventory is going to stay low and the demand is going to be high, so you're going to end up paying so much more than you would nowadays, right? And there's the summer rush and the schools and everything is now over. Now it's going to be more of a seller's market throughout the summer. So before that hits, it's actually essential for people to be considering to find a home that they like and we make that happen for them in terms of which product, which loan product would be more appropriate for them.
Speaker 1:The second part of the question I think overall the banks don't like risk, but there isn't any other way for them to make money without taking risk.
Speaker 1:So there is a calculated risk in a program that we developed together with one of the banks that we're working with. It's called Foreign Nationals Loan and that's basically to bring foreign investment into the US throughout home buying practices, right? So overall, that summarizes as a tourist visa holder, foreign national, wants to buy a home with a mortgage in the US as an investment property. They have to have a home in their home country, they have to have a tourist visa for the United States and they should have bill payment consistency in their home country. And if they actually achieve these three conditions, they can buy a home with 30% mortgage down payment, which is very good.
Speaker 1:There were programs like this before it was around 50% down payment but we actually came up with a new program that facilitates the investment to be coming into the US more so than before. So it's now possible for any type of foreign national. As long as you don't have a visa status that allows you to live in the US, that allows you to pay taxes in the US, then you can be part of the foreign nationals.
Speaker 2:So it's just for the tourists that those are trying to invest in the US and for that they don't need to have a credit. Is that correct?
Speaker 1:They don't need to have a credit. They that correct they don't need to have a credit. They actually should not have a credit, because if they have a credit, that means they have a financial history in the US which is not really allowed for this type of loan.
Speaker 2:Okay, wow, I've never heard of this actually, so you said that this has happened before. It's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:It did so again, the risk calculation and the amortization is different nowadays because we do want to bring more capital into the United States, so I think some banks are a little bit more aggressive than the other ones. But yes, there were some programs and there are still some programs outside of this that allows foreign nationals to buy a home. But the way that we did it was a little bit more streamlined and a little bit easier condition, so we're happy with it and then we hope that it's going to be a huge hit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I hope so too. That's amazing. And now talk to me a little bit about how you are marketing yourself out there for people to be aware of your services and help bring in new potential clients, or just to help educate the current ones that you do have.
Speaker 1:Right, right, very good question, thank you. So marketing is very interesting, especially when you're very focused on the quality of the service that you're giving. Right, because that's very hard to explain other than just giving the experience to the people that's waiting for that service. So what we do is that we definitely make sure that we do a lot of referral business. We do a lot of hey, share your comments with us, how did you like to, how was your experience, how did you like working with us?
Speaker 1:And then we do a lot of mouth-to-mouth marketing, so to say. We try to explain, like, how we help people. We reach out to our own personal network and we reach out to our realtor network. So we don't advertise or we don't really put up a flyer somewhere and try to get people to borrow from us. We never did that and I don't think that we will ever do that, because our service quality is targeted at a different level and when you have that high of a service quality level as a target, you just need to put people through that experience for them to really see how different that is from any other experience they would have.
Speaker 1:So we do a lot of referrals. We do a lot of real estate agents, buyers programs. So we do a lot of help in and out with the real estate agent and their portfolio of clients so that they have an easy time and they have a streamlined time for them to be borrowing from us, rather than having to advertise and having to really have a lot of people walk into the door and really try to understand how many of them you can really help. But we're more on the quality versus quantity side and then we say okay, even if we have five borrowers a month, that's fine, because we're going to be giving them a great service so they can talk about us and that that marketing effort goes towards our quality efforts rather than ad spend wow, I really love that.
Speaker 2:You really know, like, how your marketing strategies work for you, because it's different for every business, right? Some people are very social media heavy, but yours is more of like mouth-to-mouth and having that connection and experience with them and I think one thing to add.
Speaker 1:There is that because brokers are set up differently, right, some brokers are brokers in a bank, for example, or some mortgage loan officers are in a realtor's office. So those are very different setups. Mortgage broker companies are actually intertwined with a lot of different banks at once. So we're not really a client of the bank. We're not really. The bank is not our client either. So we look at it from the lens of the borrower and we get a lot of different rates from all these different banks that we work with, and then we try to provide the best rate to the borrower in that specific situation. So I think we see ourselves a little bit on the borrower side. That's why the borrower centricity, or the client centricity, means a little bit more to us than anyone else that's in the mortgage industry.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. And now, why do you think people should come to you, your mortgage business, what makes you stand out and what will you offer them? Because you know there's like a lot of businesses. But here's an opportunity for you to make yourself stand out and talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 1:Right, right, absolutely, these questions are fire, thank you. So two things, I think is the title of that answer right? One is the variety of banks that we work with. We work with over 25 banks that we can sell the loan products for, and that gives us very much of a flexibility when we're looking at different types of rates in different types of situations. For example, if you're a first-time homebuyer, there's a loan called FHA. So if you're trying to borrow an FHA, you might want to go to an FHA wholesaler or a bank that we work with that is known for their FHA rates and FHA process handling, right. So we select those underwriters specific to that situation and we have that flexibility because we have so many underwriters in our system that we work with. So that would be one, and the second part maybe in like two-staged answer, for the second part is going to be the variety of the banks will give us so many different types of rates that we can get for that specific borrower and when we go into the qualification of those rates, we actually come up with a very creative way of looking at things.
Speaker 1:Instead of, okay, this person does not have the credit, this person does not have the income. We actually see it from the lens of the borrower. We listen to their stories. We try to make it happen. If it is financially feasible and viable and regulatory possible, we actually work with them for them to be fitting into one of the programs. So we advise them quite a bit in terms of financial stewardship so they can get. If they're not qualified today they can actually be qualified in the future or in a given day and overall I think that puts the borrower in the center of the process rather than they're just like a person that fills out a form and then we push, press and then the process sort of like walks itself out. We don't really look at it that way. It's too transactional for us that way. So we do listen to a lot of stories and then we make sure that the products that we're offering is befitting to that story and vice versa.
Speaker 2:I love that. No, I like that connection you make. It's not just, like you said, a transaction. It's more about like listening to them, getting to know the person and seeing how you can help them, or help them attain that in the future, possibly. So I think that's a great strategy. And where do you see yourself in five years? Maybe are you planning to expand. Maybe I don't know if you currently how many employees you have right now, but maybe expand on that as well.
Speaker 1:Right. Currently we have three, so we're super small. But the good thing about that, I think, is, again, we focus on quality. So we don't really use loan processors, for example, which is kind of like a good thing and a bad thing for the borrower. A good thing, somewhat of a good thing, because there's someone that's kind of constantly like uploading documents or like trying to help the borrower. But even a better thing is that we actually do that ourselves. So we don't use loan processors.
Speaker 1:I know it's counterintuitive for a business to grow without using processors, but the quality is so important to us and if we actually delegate that task to someone else, things get lost in translation and we sort of miss maybe a deadline or a detail that's very important to the process. We can't risk that, for the time being at least. So we're not really trying to reach to a certain volume. We're trying to keep the quality that we reached. Keep the quality that we reached. So within the first year or so, we're always going to be like looking at this specifically, keeping the quality at a certain level without delegating any tasks to others. But the second and the third year and on, within the remainder of that first five years, our goal is to expand our team to 20 mortgage loan originators and hopefully reach to a volume of $600,000 in commissions a month within that first five years. So that would be the goal so far.
Speaker 1:How it worked out for me in my career is that every decade there is a different focus. So the first decade was practicing law and the second was a little bit practicing law and tech sales leadership. So there was another like different type of genre of things that I did, and then the third decade. Now it's the mortgage brokerage business.
Speaker 1:I love that so the fourth is going to be something different, but this is what I will be doing within the next 10 years or so. So I do have a longer term plan for the mortgage business that has a little bit more technology into qualification of the individuals. Rather than people qualifying them, maybe an AI engine could qualify them. So there are some plans to move towards that kind of initiative, but at the same time, we can't really disregard the regulations. That's asking us to get the loan application, for example, to provide a loan estimate for that loan application. So there are some regulatory limitations in terms of how we switch to that kind of a technology, but it definitely could be possible, um, especially when we're seeing like everything is moving to ai nowadays yes, it is, um.
Speaker 2:I do want to touch on the point that you kept saying quality a lot throughout this. I really, I really find that that's um impressive, because it's always about, like, more make, sometimes more quantity than quality. So I really just want to let you know that I think that that's awesome, that you're putting a lot of, like, your attention to that and the people that you're doing business with and the people who you employ, like I think that is amazing.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that and I think that's a school of thought right. So when you look at the things that you could do for your client, you just need to first create a great model for them and then you can replicate that. But if you try to extrapolate from where you are immediately to more volume, you might not reach to an ideal state for any of your clients. So it's very, very important for us to model that first and then maybe expand from that point on.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And now, on a lighter note, who are you outside of all this work that you're doing Like? What do you like to do to unwind and relax?
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:If you even have time.
Speaker 1:There is so much going on in my personal life too, but I'll summarize.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I have four kids and a very, very beautiful wife that I love spending time with. So that's sort of on the lighter, lighter note. On the second lighter note, I would say the biggest thing that's going on in my life is CrossFit. Okay, I would say the biggest thing that's going on in my life is CrossFit.
Speaker 1:Okay. So you know there's two types of people that you would definitely know what they do, how they are in the world on a day-to-day basis. One of them is the CrossFitters and the other one is vegans. Okay, so, if you're a vegan and a CrossFitter, you would never stop talking about those two things, but I have to tell that'm a crossfit, because that's that's what we do.
Speaker 1:So I've been doing crossfit since 2018. Uh, it's been pretty rewarding, like in terms of health, how you feel, how you go about your day, so it's very, very nice to to have that kind of like unwinding um hour that you spent during your day. Yeah and um, I I trained too hard, I guess, and I got good, and in 2022, I became the fittest turkish man in the world, if you could believe it wow, really, are you just being like?
Speaker 1:as you can see, it's been a while stop it. But uh, it was, uh, it was very, very uh, I wasn't even aware that I was. Uh, I was there but, um, I'm 44, 43 years old, about to turn 43. And uh, back then I was 40 and, uh, I didn't know that I was competing in a specific age group. So when you're in a specific age group, you get like a compare with the other people those are doing CrossFit in your age group yeah uh, so I just finished the workouts.
Speaker 1:This is during the global crossfit open. That happens every year. Okay, so I finished the workouts and I checked the leaderboard and I was. I was the fittest turkish man of my age that is awesome, which was very interesting congratulations to that so much.
Speaker 1:Last year I was second, which is kind of a bummer. This year I couldn't really focus on training and get ready for the competition, so I didn't measure myself that well. Yeah, but next year I'm trying to go back and reclaim that crown, hopefully okay, I wish you all the luck on that, hey, second's not bad for not being as prepared.
Speaker 2:You could have been fourth, but still, we want that number one spot right yeah, I think I'm not really built to be okay with being second.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, maybe it's a good thing, maybe it's a bad thing, I don't know, but I always strive to be the first, if not the first, the best at what I try to do, what I do.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's good to motivate you even harder, right.
Speaker 1:Yes as a sign like no, I don't want second For sure it does fill me.
Speaker 2:All right, and now for my final question. If you could leave our listeners with any advice or anything that's in your heart, anything that's been on your mind that you want to share, it can be in regards to anything. It doesn't only have to be about your business what would that message be?
Speaker 1:Right, so I grew up while I was brought up by two judges, right, and my parents are judges and uh, I was sort of born into the space of law, right and uh, that was very good for me, because I actually am very interested about law, like I am, I love to learn, I love to read, and that that took uh quite a bit like of of getting used to when I think of like doing something other than law, right, so it took some courage, took some additional work, uh. But uh, adding varieties to your, to your day-to-day, to your life, is never a bad thing, you know, and getting good at something is always good, but not really depending on that. One thing that you get good at is always a better option for the future years of your life. So that's what I did I added variety to my life.
Speaker 1:It would be incredible for people to just like try new things and then try to figure out if they really are passionate about those new things that they're trying, and maybe get professional in a couple of them or semi-professional in others, and just like have different types of hobbies throughout these efforts. That actually gives a lot of fulfillment to people and that makes people happy when they're going about their day, and I wouldn't say that the professionalism that you should be bringing to any type of conversation or any type of effort has to be less because you're trying to do more things. You just have to have the right mindset. You just have to have the same mindset when you're approaching to different types of different genre of things that you want to do. So I would say do different things, do them seriously, do them while you're having fun, try to get better at them, try to test yourself, don't slouch, don't don't give in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Always, always, try to get better and hold yourself to it. You know, it's not really about someone else coming in and telling you you should be get better at this. You should be getting better at that. Tell that to yourself, because that's what, what you're going to feel the most happiness out of it. Awesome.
Speaker 2:That's well said. Thank you so much for being on the podcast and for sharing your time and your stories and wisdom with us.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.