For Richard Thorpe, Divisional VP of the Reverse One Team, reverse mortgages are a wide open path forward — for the clients who use them, the loan officers that can close them and the entire CrossCountry Mortgage portfolio. In this episode of CCM Talks, he’s sharing how his team is growing the reverse game and supporting LOs who want another way to say yes.

Hey everyone and welcome to CCM Talks. I'm your host Nicole Perrone. And today we're coming live from Miami talking to Divisional VP of the Reverse One Team, Richard Thorpe. Rich, welcome.

Richard: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Thanks for coming today. Well, we're excited to learn more about reverse mortgages and get your perspective. So we appreciate you shedding some light on this very important product that we have here at CrossCountry. You've spent nearly two decades in the reverse space. What keeps you passionate about it?

Great question. You know, it evolves. In the beginning, the passion was making a living and making money was a great, a great provider for my family and everything like that. And over the past ten years or so, it just evolved into changing lives. And really, that's what this product does. You're out there, you're helping seniors. They don't know where to go. They're trying to retire and they start running out of money and we're there to help them. There's a there's a product out there that can help them make a difference and help them keep going and stay in their home if they want to stay in their home or make a move and retire more freely.

Nicole: I like how you’re telling it just how it is. It evolved, right? It's a great business to get into, but to start to really feel passionate about that, that product specifically that you specialize in it's meaningful.

Richard: Absolutely.

Nicole: We were just talking about that. So why did CCM decide to invest more in the reverse mortgage business?

CCM is the number one retail lender in the country. I think it's 1 in 35 loans or something like that that an originator does, and it's a CCM loan. They've got every product imaginable out there already: New construction, Non-QM rehab, fixed rates, adjustable rates and, you name it, it goes on and on and on.

The reverse mortgage is yet just another tool in their arsenal that the CCM originator can use to go out there and sell. Nobody wants to say no. You don't want to be out there talking to a borrower and they're looking for reverse, and you don’t want to be able to say you have to go to another lender. I can't do that. So CCM is all about just growing and becoming bigger and bigger, and we're here to help.

I always say we're an all-around player. Which I absolutely love. And I think it's so critical. I know many of us don't specialize in reverse, but we leverage your team and your loan officers and leaders for help. And it's important. When you need it, you need it. So we're really glad to have that product. What's the best success story that you've seen from a reverse client?

I'll tell you, it's about maybe 6 or 7 years ago, there was a gentleman named Alfred, we'll call him. Wife passed away like, two years earlier. His property was not doing well. It was in distressed and everything like that. The roof was leaking. He was a bit of a hoarder. Had problems with stuff all over the property and everything like that. Landscaping, yard was a mess and we went in there and he had no money to fix any of it. Right? He was depressed. You know, he lost his wife a few years earlier.

So we were able to help him out. We found a construction company to help, and the fact that they had no money, we were able to fix the roof, fix everything inside prior to closing. No money out of pocket for him. And, when he came to closing, great. We went there. We paid the construction company at the closing table with the proceeds. We gave him a nice lump sum of money and a line of credit. At the very end, about a month after the closing, he sent the picture to us, and it was him sitting on top of his brand-new green and yellow John Deere tractor, saying, it's all mine. And he's able to mow his lawn again.

Nicole: Oh that's amazing.

Richard: Really great story.

I love those post client pictures. Right? When you get them, it's like, you know, you realize how much they really appreciated what you've done for them. To us, sometimes it's a another transaction, but to them it changed their lives in many instances. How can LOs get a little bit more comfortable discussing the reverse product if it's not something that they've done throughout their career?

Sure. So it's been a big change for me in my career here. In my past businesses, I've been hiring reverse salespeople to go out there and originate reverse mortgages. I come to CCM, we have 4,000 plus loan officers all over the country who don't sell reverse. So I've got a small team that we brought in who was there to assist the forward loan officer out there. So you're out there. They’ve got the relationships. They've got the financial planners, the realtors, the attorneys, the accountants. They have all those relationships and they're getting referrals every day.

Our job is to teach them to notice when a reverse mortgage opportunity comes about. Give us a call. Go on the landing page, come to our website, shoot over the information and then we will handle the transaction for them, soup to nuts. They will remain the loan officer on record. They'll be the loan officer license loan officer of record. And we will handle the whole transaction. Help them through. Talk to them if they want to learn more, they can. We have a certification process if they don't want, if they want to be the one originating it and speaking to the borrowers directly. We have got two classes for that, and then we have biweekly trainings throughout the year for everybody to join whenever they want to learn more about it.

Nicole: That's here. You know, if you're a loan officer here today and you haven't yet taken up the opportunity to learn more about Reverse One, Reverse One Team, certainly they can reach out too. Does everyone kind of have their specialist or their person that works in there?

Yeah. So I have 16 reverse specialists right now that are assigned out to all the different branches. We're growing, I'll get it up to about 25 or so. But yes, every branch is assigned a reverse specialist and we're there to help them as much as they want. Or if they want to be involved more, we'll let them be involved more. If they want to just give us the name and number and we run with it, we'll do that for them as well.

Well, speaking of growing, I don't think we should move forward without asking if someone does want to join the team or does want to do reverse mortgages here at CrossCountry, what would you say the differentiators are doing reverse here versus at another company?

So the management team for Reverse One consists of about six people. Combined, we have over 200 years of reverse experience. That's all we've done together. I would say that about 4 or 5 of the people on the team, I've been working with since the 1990s, we've been with the same company and going, moving around and staying, staying together and building reverse mortgage companies. So we have what it takes here. We're ready for you and your clients, and happy to help.

Nicole: Experience makes all the difference and certainly helps diversify our team's product set, which is amazing. What's your proudest accomplishment in the, in the 30 years of lending?

Proudest accomplishment I would say my last company was a startup. We went from zero employees. They hired me in charge of sales. I hired the very first sales rep. Over the course of ten years, we grew to 120 salespeople. We're doing 300 loans a month, a 100% reverse mortgages. That's all we were doing. And growing. We became the number two lender in the country. And yeah, I was pretty satisfied with that. I'm glad I'm over here now. So now the new goal is to go make this number one more reverse mortgage company in the country.

That's amazing. I mean, coming from a recruiting background and recruiting here, I know how hard that is to build a team like that and to make them that successful. So congratulations. That's a big accomplishment. What excites you the most about the future of reverse here at CrossCountry?

Opportunity, really. It's again, I'll say I've never been at a company like this where it's so enormous with 4,000 plus loan officers and just the best of the best. I've worked for a bunch of different companies, but I've never experienced salespeople like there is here.

I mean, there's loan officers doing 60, 70, 80, 90 loans a month. And the opportunity that excites me is none of them are doing the reverse, and we are growing every single month. We're adding 2 or 3 loans to our funding table every single month. We've got it up to about 50 units a month. Our goal is to get over 200 soon enough. So really, it's just it's just a growth opportunity we have right here. And to continue to help all the salespeople grow their business.

When you think about reverse as like a piece of the pie, what percentage of the overall mortgage market is reverse?

Richard: Oh my goodness. It's minuscule. It's like 2%. Like if that 2% of the business out there.

But as a loan officer, we should be thinking, okay, well, maybe somewhere between 2% and 5% of my business should be reverse as well. It should be a part of the conversation.

Absolutely. The stats out there today are that roughly 40% of all homebuyers today are over age 55. Think about that. And it's an even higher number for the people selling their homes. So the opportunity is there. And you really don't want to be thinking about getting a 60- or 70-year-old person, a 30-year mortgage. They don't really want a 30-year fixed rate mortgage at this point. So when you get a client in front of you and you hear that they're of age 55 or older, just think reverse. Maybe it'll be a better opportunity for them. Better opportunity for you. And we'll go on to originate a mortgage that will help them for the rest of their lives.

Nicole: Yeah. Make sure it's a tool that's in the toolbox. Right? That you're not leaving it on the table. And now you guys also offer the ability for a specialist to come out and help with CE credits. Is that right?

Absolutely. So we have a whole department for financial advisors and for realtors, where we can offer on a national level. We have, a monthly webinar and we're doing CE classes for financial advisors, and we're doing state approvals for realtors where we'll come out and we'll do CE for realtors and give them full presentation on reverse mortgages and HECM for purchase, because, yes, you can purchase a home with the reverse mortgage.

Most people don't know about that either. And we can get in front of your realtors, share that opportunity with them, and then hopefully you're going to get yourself a lot more business, both in the forward business and reverse business.

Well, that's huge. If you haven't leveraged the Reverse One Team to go out and to open, this is a door opener, right? This is something that you could use as an opportunity to knock on an FAs office and say, hey, let us give you some credits. You need them anyway and you can learn about this incredible product and our team.

Absolutely. Yeah. And as far as the Realtors go, you know, CE is lovely and everybody needs it, but once they get in there and they start hearing us talk about it, they understand the mortgage because it is a misunderstood product. Once they understand that, they end up getting the reverse mortgage for themselves, even. And that's the real door opener. And then you've got a real relationship being built there, and they're going to be true to you and referring you the rest of their life.

Right? Absolutely. Well, I think that that statistic in and of itself, 40% of homebuyers are 55 years or older, talks about just going maybe there's just this aging population of people that are purchasing homes and a demographic we can't forget about for sure.

Richard: Absolutely.

Rich, thank you so much for joining us today. Is there anything else you want to leave the team with before we sign off? I just I hope everybody just remembers and thinks about when you're talking to their borrowers out there, that CrossCountry Mortgage does do reverse mortgages. We're here to help you. And we'll help your clients find the home of their dreams the same way you're helping them.

Nicole: Thank you guys for joining us on CCM Talks. All the information will be below I believe in the show notes. If you have any questions for Rich or the Reverse One Team, let's reach out to them today.