How Real-Time Housing Data Reshapes Title & Mortgage | Ep 25

Changing processes is never easy for anybody. And if you're a good salesperson, you're going to fight any changes, kicking and screaming, because if you have a good flow and it's working for you and you're making good money, why go through the pain of disruption? In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Shamil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation. With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve. Get ready for a transformative journey.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Talent Agents Podcast. I am your host, Mo Shamil, CEO of Alltech National Type. Today, we're joined by a visionary in the real estate and mortgage media space, Diego Sanchez. He's the president of HousingWire, one of my favorite newsletters or magazines or media outlets in the industry in real estate space and mortgage. Diego's leadership at HousingWire has been transformative, focusing on providing timely insights and data that help professionals navigate an industry-facing rapid change.

From rising interest rates and tight housing inventory to the impacts of the recent NAR lawsuit, Diego's perspective will give us a powerful view of the trends and disruptions shaping the future of real estate, mortgage, and the title industry. Diego, we're very excited to have you. Let's dive in. Welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks so much, Mo, and an honor and a pleasure to join you today.

So you've held key roles in the real estate and mortgage sectors before HousingWire. Could you please share with our audience a bit about your journey and what initially drew you to the housing industry and what keeps you passionate about it? Yeah, I have an interesting journey. I started in B2C media, working at companies like Men's Health and Travelzoo and MSN. Built up a lot of media experience, how to grow audiences, how to monetize audiences.

And then about six years ago, joined HousingWire. It was my first business media experience, and it's been incredible. This industry is, I think the best word for it is it's wild. It's a wild industry. I thought it might be like a really boring job working in business media, but it is anything but boring.

The industry is really interesting. There's a lot of disruption. There's some really cool companies. There's some really interesting people that we can cover. And so it just has all the elements of an industry that is really exciting to cover from a journalistic perspective.

What motivated you to take on the role of president at HousingWire, and how has your previous experience influenced the strategic direction you're setting for the company? This job came about because of a relationship that I developed with our CEO, Clayton Collins. Led an investor group to buy the company back in 2016. And he did that without any media experience. So he bought a media company with no media experience, but he really wanted to grow.

It was really important for him to grow. And him and I struck up a friendship at industry events, media industry events, and just kept talking about what would it look like for me to join? I have all the media experience. Clayton has a lot of finance and marketing experience. What would that partnership look like in trying to grow a housing media company?

And we talked for two years. Ultimately, I thought it was a really good place to maybe wrap up my career. I've now been here at HousingWire for six years. I think I'll be here for another 10 or more. It's a great business.

It's a great company from a journalism perspective. We're doing really interesting things with data. So I just love it. We've been growing a lot over the past six years, both organically and through acquisitions. And it's just been really fun.

It's a really good partnership with Clayton, and we've built a really good team. That's awesome. Reflecting on your career, are there particular moments or challenges that stand out as shaping your approach to leading in the fast-evolving real estate media space? Yeah, there are a couple of experiences that I could share. One that goes top of mind is one of my first leadership experiences was when I had just had, or my wife had just had our second child.

And so I had one son who we were potty training and another newborn. All while I was trying to take over this team inside of a company that was really trying to turn around its fortunes. And so there was just a lot of work. And I'd always thought that it was important to have work-life balance. And that's when I really discovered that balance is really difficult for someone who aspires to lead a company and also wants to be really involved with his or her family.

And so I'd lost that concept of balance and started thinking about it a lot more as like work-life harmony. And really trying to make sure that I enjoyed what I did when I was working, because I worked a lot. And made sure it didn't impact negatively what was going on at home. Because when work is not fun or it's a really difficult time at work, that really does impact your life as well. And at that point, I really decided that I wanna work on what I wanna work on.

I like being more of an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur at companies. And that's how I wanna run my career. And that'll make me happy in my career. And if I'm happy in my career, I'm gonna be much happier in my life. Absolutely.

So HousingWire covers a range of topics across real estate, mortgage and title industries. From your perspective, what role does the title industry play in the current housing ecosystem, especially as regulatory pressures and tech integrations grow? It's really interesting. There's a big difference between how important title is and how important title is perceived to be, right? It is a really important part of the home buying transaction, the home selling transaction.

It's what happens at the end. It's bringing all the players together and getting the home transaction across the finish line. And the transaction to buy and sell a home is so complicated. And there's a lot of stuff that's left for the end. But when I bought my first apartment, I didn't even know what title was.

Title was this weird room that I went to at the end of the transaction where I sat around signing these big documents for three or four hours. And so the perception out there is that title is pretty obscure, but it's actually a really important part of the transaction. We're having this conversation before the recording that we as an industry don't do a very good job of relaying what we do or the importance of our value. Yeah, I think it's really important to talk more about the value of the transaction, especially as you look at some of the chatter out there about title being too expensive. There are a lot of pilot programs that look at title alternatives, and they're really focused on the cost of title.

And I think a big part of that is the industry, like you said, just hasn't done a good job of describing what the value proposition is. So the title industry is historically cautious about adopting new tech due to regulatory demands. What emerging technologies or shifts do you think have the potential to disrupt the title industry in the coming years? I think it's already happening to quite a bit. And I think the pandemic really sped things up.

When it came to the digitization of documents and e-signature process, when I think back to that first apartment that I bought and the mountain of paperwork that went back and forth and all the trees that we probably had to chop down to close that transaction, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to have that much paper involved. And so when I sold that apartment in 2022, it was a little better, but I would say there was still a lot of paper. And even though this technology is not new, I think it will continue to get integrated into any part of the home buying transaction that is very paperwork heavy. It just makes sense, right? Like why stare and compare documents?

Why have people sign paper when e-signature can be more secure? So there's just a lot of rationale behind making those changes. Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest area. And then the other area that I think a lot about, because I've now done it four or five times for various transactions, is just e-notary. So not just with home buying and home selling, but in general, why have to go hunt down a notary public, especially if you're getting to documents in the middle of the night, we're all busy people, being able to notarize something electronically just makes all the sense in the world.

Absolutely, and let's shift gears and talk a little bit about real estate and something, a topic you guys have been covering like crazy the last couple of years is the NIR Commission Lawsuit. How do you see teleagents potentially adapting their workflows or strategies to support agents or brokers navigating these changes? Yeah, that's a really interesting one. If you think about the home buying transaction, a lot of times the buyer's agent is a quarterback of all the various pieces. just makes all the sense in the world.

Absolutely. And let's shift gears and talk a little bit about real estate and something, a topic you guys have been covering like crazy the last couple of years is the NIR commission lawsuit. How do you see teleagents potentially adapting their workflows or strategies to support agents and brokers navigating these changes? Yeah, that's a really interesting one. If you think about the home buying transaction a lot of times the buyer's agent is a quarterback of all the various pieces that are happening in that transaction.

So a lot of times the home buyer decides to work with the lender that the real estate agent refers them to. If they get an inspection, they tend to work with the inspector that the real estate agent refers them to. And it's the same with title, right? The title industry, a lot of your sales process is trying to get real estate agents to pick you when it comes to the last part of the transaction. And I think that there is potential within our settlement, and we've already seen this happening over the past two years of this very difficult housing market.

There's potential for a lot of marginal real estate agents, folks that just do a couple of transactions a year to exit the industry. There's not a great reason to pay all the different fees that you need to pay to be a real estate agent and to have a CRM and all these other technologies that you need to be a successful real estate agent if you're only doing a couple deals a year. And I think there will be a little bit of a flight to quality when it comes to real estate agents. And so for title, the key to me is making sure that you're aligned, your referral partners are the agents that are going to win when it comes to this shakeout. Awesome.

So the real estate industry currently faces challenges with high interest rates and low housing inventory. What insight does HousingWire or Diego specifically offer on how these factors are reshaping the housing market, especially for the first time homebuyers? Yeah, it's just been a crazy market, really for the past four years. The COVID boom in the housing market was exciting in a lot of ways but probably a little bit unhealthy when it came to the housing market. The inventory that was available just got so low that home prices shot through the roof, affordability went way, way down.

And now it's even more tricky because home prices haven't really come down that much or at all. But mortgage rates have gone through the roof. So there's really a double whammy on affordability with high home prices and high mortgage rates. And really, I think a lot of that ties back to this hangover that we have from the really low supply of homes available for sale that we have for years. We're still not back to historically average levels of inventory.

We're still historically pretty low when it comes to inventory. And in the past you would typically see when mortgage rates shoot up like they did last year, home prices would either plateau or even go down a little bit. And a lot more people would reduce the price on their listings. And we just haven't really been seeing that. There are a couple of markets where we are starting to see that Florida and Texas.

But Florida is a unique circumstance because they had two pretty terrifying hurricanes in two weeks. And so there's a reason why things are wonky in the Florida housing market. And Florida is also dealing with really high home insurance costs and other costs. And the inventory has definitely climbed during the course of the year. But in general, if you look at the national housing market, it's still pretty difficult, right?

You've got those high home prices that haven't really come down that much. You've got still pretty low inventory. And then we're still dealing with, even though mortgage rates went down recently, they're still pretty high compared to those 3% rates that we had for a couple of years. Absolutely. Let's shift gear here to the mortgage industry.

Something I'm a little passionate about, reducing costs. I've been a big push forever to reduce mortgage production costs. Lenders always complain about how much it costs. What technologies or process changes do you believe are most promising in terms of helping lenders and title agencies manage costs while keeping services of high quality? Yeah, absolutely.

I think artificial intelligence, it's a big buzzword, but I actually think there's a lot of substance to AI when it comes to the ability to do more with the same amount of resources. We cover a lot of the mortgage companies in the industry. Really, Housing Wire was founded as a mortgage media company and we've expanded to real estate and title over time, but our strength has always historically been in covering the mortgage beat. We've seen several big lenders and servicers really beef up their technology, including AI, over the past couple of years. You look at what's happening with their revenue and they're able to grow revenue without growing their team size and that's because they're incorporating technology into parts of the process that involve a lot of paper, a lot of stare and compare, a lot of regulations, and they're using technology to bust through some of those sort of bureaucratic processes.

A company like Mr. Cooper, they recently reported in their earnings pretty remarkable revenue growth and they haven't added to their team in years. So they're growing revenue, they're growing their top line without growing the team and that's because technology and AI are making them smarter. You talked earlier about paperwork and how when you did a lot of closing, it was a lot of paperwork. This is my opinion and I'm sure lenders are aware of this, but going fully digital, literally lenders drive that, not title companies.

Clearly in my opinion, knowing how much things cost, especially from the post-closing end, I truly believe lenders can probably save 10-20% in their cost going fully digital. The paperwork you were talking about you signed earlier, somebody from a title company has to grab those documents, do some quality control, then send it via FedEx to get to somebody, touch it again, do quality control, then ship it to servers being fully digital with a click of a second, everything is perfect. The quality control is 100%. Then within seconds it's already ready to transfer to a secondary and that's, in my opinion has been a huge savings and I'm not sure why. Some lenders adopted it digital fully like I think Rocket Mortgage is one of them.

But I don't know why it's been in the back burner for some reason. I don't get it. I think it has to do a lot with inertia and what your sales force, the loan originators are used to and comfortable with. Changing processes is never easy for anybody. If you're a good salesperson, you're going to fight any changes kicking and screaming because if you have a good flow, it's working for you and you're making good money, why go through the pain of disruption?

I think that because lenders tend to be so dominated by their sales force, by their LOs, I think that can lead to some inertia when it comes to changing technology. But you look at companies like Rocket, you're absolutely right. Not only you're cutting down on paper and time spent, but just think about like all the mistakes you cut out of the product. You're not losing a page when opening an envelope and a page doesn't fall out as part of a digital process. So there are a lot of things that can go wrong when you're shuttling paper around that like you said, if it's fully digitized, you don't have to deal with all those steps.

Yeah, I don't know what I have to do to make that message louder. It's going to make everybody's life easier. We've been talking about it for the last 15-20 years. Things are moving so slow. Slowly but surely it will happen.

Because you look at some of these companies again, these big companies that are able to grow their top line without really growing their expenses because they're investing in their technology infrastructure. And so people who admire those companies and want to be like those companies will slowly adopt their practices. And they're going to have to compete. So HousingWire has become a trusted resource in the housing industry. What future initiatives or areas of focus do you see helping HousingWire continue to meet the evolving needs of real estate, mortgage, and title professionals?

We are really focused on data. So we made an acquisition almost two years ago of a company called Altos Research, which provides, and you might be familiar with Altos. Yes. We actually have a lot of title companies as clients of the platform. And so Altos provides real-time housing market data for every zip code in the country.

And so if you want to know what's happening in your local housing market, we've got the proprietary data that helps you understand that. And ever since we acquired Altos, we've been working to integrate Altos data and other proprietary data that we have at the company into our journalism. When we write about what's happening in the national housing market, it's okay to write about it factually and write a story about it. But when you can integrate that data into your journalism, it's a lot easier to understand what's happening in your local housing market. And so we've been working to integrate that data into our journalism.

And so we've been working So if you want to know what's happening in your local housing market, we've got the proprietary data that helps you understand that. And ever since we acquired Altos, we've been working to integrate Altos data and other proprietary data that we have at the company into our journalism, right? When we write about what's happening in the national housing market, it's okay to write about it factually and write a story about it. But when you can integrate that data and just show in the numbers and in data visualizations what's going on, it makes it so much more powerful. It makes the journalism so much more powerful.

And so we've just been getting better at being data journalists, at data visualization, and working with other partners to ingest more data into HousingWire. So we have a great partnership with CoreLogic, and they have an incredible amount of data. I think they've got over 100,000 data sources coming into their data lake. That's pretty crazy. And then we also have a partnership with a company called Poly that gives us real-time locked mortgage rates.

And mortgage rates are super important to what's happening in the housing market. So we're just going to keep doing more and more of that and helping our audience understand the data, analyze the data, visualize the data, and even in the future, do things like if you see a chart in a HousingWire story, you can save that chart to your own personal dashboard and follow that data over time. So we love data. We're going to keep diving more into data and analysis of data. Who's the economist you have in the HousingWire podcast?

Mushyani? You're probably thinking of Logan Motoshami. I listen to every episode he's on. They're entertaining and very... He's entertaining, but he's really smart.

Absolutely. 100% since he started writing for us in 2018, it's pretty remarkable how well he forecasts the housing market. So we have Logan, and then actually when we bought Altos Research, the president and founder of Altos Research, this guy Mike Simonson, joined our company and he's still with us. He actually is doing a lot of research for us. He does a weekly video on YouTube about the housing market.

He does monthly webinars about the housing market. That guy knows housing market data really well. Have you been here with that weekly podcast? He also has a podcast. So we've got two really good and fairly well-known housing market analysts, and we're actually doing a housing economic summit in late February.

And Logan and Mike will be two of the featured speakers there, and we'll have other major economists from the housing industry. And the reason we're doing that event, again, is we're just really into data. We think it's a really powerful part of telling the story of housing. That's awesome. Can't wait to attend the event.

I'm sure it'll be very informative. So Diego, what inspires you to lead in such a competitive space? And is there any advice you would give to others aiming to make an impact in this industry? Yeah, so I've grown to really love the housing industry. I think it's a really important part of the economy, and it's a really important part of our day-to-day lives.

Like, we all need shelter. And buying a home is still the American dream, right? So being active in that space and covering that space, it's just really interesting and fun, and definitely helps me get up in the morning and get excited about each and every day. I'm also pretty competitive, right? And so I want HousingWIRE to be the premier destination for housing professionals to get their news, their data, their analysis, their research about the housing market.

When I think about my week and plan out my year, that's what I'm thinking about. We want to be the number one. We want to be the Bloomberg of housing. I think you are. In my book, you are, so.

Oh, I appreciate that. I think as far as advice goes, I think it's really important to be passionate about what you do. It's really hard to fake interest or enthusiasm. Absolutely. And so when I hire, I only look at a couple things.

I look very little at the brand names that are on the resume. For me, it's all about enthusiasm because you really can't teach it, having an entrepreneurial spirit because that's another thing that you really can't teach. And then that love of learning, being a lifelong learner, especially for a company like HousingWIRE, we're making acquisitions, we're growing organically. There's always going to be new opportunity coming along. If you're going to come to my company, or I think if you're going to join our industry and compete with HousingWIRE, you got to have that passion and that love for learning and that entrepreneurial spirit.

Absolutely. Do you have a favorite quote? I don't really have a favorite quote. I have a lot of speakers that I really enjoy listening to. Barack Obama has always been very inspirational for me.

And so I'll sometimes rewatch some of his speeches. Dr. Martin Luther King has very inspirational speeches that sometimes I'll put on and listen to if I want to be inspired. But I listen to a lot of podcasts. That's the way that I get inspired.

I listen to podcasts about housing, about media, just interviews with interesting people. And that's how I get inspired with content that's out there. That's awesome. How about a favorite book? All-time favorite book or favorite book you read recently?

Yeah, so I'm going to pick a book that a kid's book. My boys are a little old for me to read to them now. They're 12 and 9. But ever since I was a little kid, I've always loved Where the Wild Things Are. I think it's such a great book.

I love this little kid who goes on this adventure and a little bit of a quest. And he's a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. Like he definitely doesn't do things according to the book. And so I just, I love the character of Max, I love his adventures, and I loved reading that to my boys. Diego, thank you so much for sharing such invaluable insights on today's episode of the Talent Agents podcast.

From understanding the evolving role of the talent industry in the complex market to exploring ways, professionals can stay ahead of disruptive trends. Your expertise is invaluable to our audience. For our listeners, be sure to check out HowsInWire for the latest on these issues and to follow Diego's work as he continues to drive innovation in real estate media. Don't forget to subscribe to the Talent Agents podcast. And for more industry insights, you will see you in the next episode.

Until then, keep pushing forward and leading with purpose. Thank you so much, Diego. I appreciate you. Thank you, bro. Well, Diego, thank you for sharing such invaluable insights on today's episode of the Talent Agents podcast.

From understanding the evolving role of the talent industry in the complex market to exploring ways, professionals can stay ahead of disruptive trends. Your expertise is invaluable to our audience. For our listeners, be sure to check out HowsInWire for the latest on these issues and to follow Diego's work as he continues to drive innovation in the real estate media. Don't forget to subscribe to the Talent Agents podcast for more industry insights. And we'll see you next episode.

Until then, keep pushing forward and leading with purpose. And that's a wrap on today's journey with Mo Shamil from the Title Agents podcast, reminding you that mastering the art of innovation is key in the title industry's fast-paced world. If you're finding it tough to keep up with the changes and challenges, remember you're not alone. Our calendar is open for you. Find the link in the show notes and let's connect.

Make sure to hit subscribe to not miss out on strategies that elevate and insights that empower. Together, we'll navigate the future of the industry. I look forward to our next meeting in the upcoming episode. Keep pushing, keep innovating, and see you in the next episode.