#76 - Funding the Future: Smarter Lending for Senior Living Move-Ins with Mark Maimon - From Leads to Leases - Senior Living Marketing and Sales

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Reverse mortgages, maybe becauseof marketing, maybe because of
lack of other products or other creative mortgage, people trying
to find ways to help seniors in ways other than reverse
mortgages. They've kind of become the
default because people don't know any better.
They think senior mortgage, reverse mortgage or sell your
home. And it seems like people don't

(00:20):
really know that there are otheralternatives, which is why we're
here is to raise awareness aboutthe other options.
What if you're next moving was only stalled by misinformation?
Today's guest has created innovative lending tools that
are helping families say yes andsaving the millions in the
process. Welcome to From Leeds to Leases

(00:40):
ACCR Growth podcast that helps senior living providers
transform their complex challenges into opportunities.
Listen in for stories from industry leaders, innovative
strategies and insights, and with our expertise, learn how to
increase occupancy faster, Guaranteed.
Welcome back to another episode.From Lease to Lease is the

(01:01):
podcast that dives deep into thesenior living and senior care
industries, bringing you insights, strategies, and
stories from the experts at the forefront of innovation,
leadership, and care. I'm your host, Jerry Vincey, CEO
of CCR Growth. For those of you who don't know
about us, CCR Growth is a full service marketing and growth
agency exclusive to the senior living industry.
And through this podcast, I'm here to guide you through the

(01:22):
evolving landscape of senior care, exploring the innovations,
strategies, and leadership insights that are shaping the
future of the industry. So whether you're a provider, a
caregiver, or industry leader, this show is here to help you
make informed decisions and create meaningful impact.
So today's guest is Mark Myman, Senior vice President at
Luminate Bank and the founder ofMyman Mortgage Team.

(01:43):
Over the past two decades, Mark has closed over 2 billion in
loans, but what truly sets them apart is his mission.
He's disrupting the senior lending space by helping
families access capital without selling their homes, leveraging
creative tools like trust loans,bridge loans, and equity lines
that cater to the realities of aging.
He's also the host of the On theMark podcast, which I love,

(02:06):
where he educates families and professionals alike about
smarter, more compassionate lending.
So welcome to the show, Mark. Thank you, Jerry.
It's great to be here. This is, this is a very
interesting topic. I think there's a lot of
question marks for, for people when it comes to the financial
side of, of senior living and, and how to access, you know, the
right level of care that somebody might need.
So I want to just first talk about why this work matters and.

(02:29):
What do you think's broken abouthow most families are advised to
pay for senior care today? I think it's primarily who's
advising them and what their qualifications are and families
not seeking out proper advice from all the professionals that
should be weighing into these decisions.
So in my opinion, should be financial advisor, should be an
estate attorney, a tax accountant or advisor, along

(02:53):
with potentially a real estate agent, the resources that the
community may have. So it's really kind of all hands
on deck, but often times what happens is the the family is
relying on one person for adviceand that person may have a
specific specialty that doesn't encompass all the other aspects
of it. So just getting, getting the
proper advice and having the right financial team around you

(03:15):
is really, really important withthese big decisions.
Not getting your advice from Uncle Jim.
Everyone has an Uncle Jim, Yeah,but you shouldn't always listen
to him if he's living. In a trailer, definitely not.
Right. One thing that I've seen for
years, maybe not so much now, but in in the past was all about
reverse mortgages. There's all those ads on TV, you

(03:36):
see it constantly plastered everywhere.
And that kind of became the. Default.
What is the risk in that? Well, it's, it's one product
that may be a good fit for certain situations, but not
others. So for example, if you're, if
you work in a community and you want that person to move into
whatever it is, assisted living,memory care, a reverse mortgage
isn't an option because they have a requirement that you have

(03:59):
to continue living in the home in order to maintain that loan.
So there's there are actually a lot of things that kind of
exclude people. But reverse mortgages, maybe
because of marketing, maybe because of lack of other
products or other creative mortgage, people trying to find
ways to help seniors in ways other than reverse mortgages,
they've kind of become the default because people don't

(04:21):
know any better. They think senior mortgage,
reverse mortgage or sell your home.
And it seems like people don't really know that there are other
alternatives, which is why we'rehere is to raise awareness about
the other options. You told me last time we spoke
about how selling your home could cost you millions.
Can you share an example? I can, yes.
So we had a placement advisor who called us.

(04:43):
We had a meeting with her about opportunities working together
and she said God, I wish I had met you 3 months ago.
For her client who was 97 years old, had bought her home 50
years prior for $15,000 is in Orange County, California.
So you can imagine the property values have gone up quite a bit
over 50 years. She sold her home to pay for

(05:05):
care. She was 97 probably needed let's
be generous, maybe three years worth of care.
Sold her home and ended up writing about $1,000,000.
Check to the IRS for taxes, for capital gains tax.
So had she financed that transaction and the need for the
the money to pay for care ratherthan selling the home, that

(05:27):
$1,000,000 or at least the majority of it then would have
gone to her family and her heirs.
I mean, could have paid for kidsand grandkids and great, great
grandkids education for years and years and years.
But instead it went to the IRS. So understanding that's what
we're talking about, having all the right advisors.
This family had a real estate agent who is advising them and

(05:49):
they called the real estate agent to sell the home and the
agent did their job, but they may not have been aware that
they were selling the home at a time where the senior was going
to be subject to a maximum of capital gains tax.
And, and that's what they did. But they talked earlier about
having the right financial team around you.
Had that family engaged with an estate attorney, they would have

(06:10):
called this out immediately. Had they called us, we would
have called that out immediately, but they could have
financed their way through it and probably walked with the
vast majority of those funds that are now in the IRS's hands
are not coming back. So those are the types of things
that kind of motivate us to continue to get the word out
about, you know, how to approachthese types of situations to
engage the right advisors, what loan options there might be

(06:32):
rather than selling the home or at least delaying the sale of
the home until after the senior passes, where if this family had
done that, the capital gains taxwould have been pretty much
completely wiped out. Yeah.
I mean, I think a lot of families they, they see the cost
of the entry fees and their first at their first go to is
always to sell their home. I know, you know, that's
obviously where kind of the reverse mortgage concept came

(06:54):
from. What are the other key products
that your team offers that solvethat move in affordability
crisis? So it's just different ways to
be able to pull equity out of a home.
That eliminates some of the disqualifiers for reverse
mortgages, but also just provide, in my opinion,
sometimes a better solution. So some of them are equity lines

(07:14):
of credit where if somebody wants access to funds but
doesn't necessarily need all of them right away, we can do
those. And all these programs have
unique qualification criteria because if you try to just do a
regular loan for a senior, the problem that you'll constantly
run into is that that traditional underwriting is very
much driven by income. So seniors obviously aren't, you

(07:35):
know, running a they're not, they're not starting a new
business or running a side hustle out of the second
bedroom. You know, they're past those
days. So their income is usually
limited. So the products that we have are
really designed to focus on other parts of their financial
profile or the amount of equity that they have in the home and
other criteria to be able to help them actually get approved.

(07:57):
Because if you don't have these types of underwriting guidelines
and you just try to put them through the standard criteria,
they're oftentimes going to failand get declined.
And we have lots of situations where that's happened before,
but the the products range anywhere from equity lines of
credit. There could be bridge loans for
short term needs, like for seniors who maybe you know, need

(08:18):
money to fix up their home before they sell it, if that's
what they're choosing to do. Or if they need to pay for an
entry fee at a CCRC type of community or need short term
financing, bridge loans are a great solution.
And then there are others that will allow them to cash out
equity from the home, use that money to pay for the mortgage
and the care that they need, butbe able to qualify without

(08:40):
having to document employment orincome.
So there's a lot of different variations of it.
They're all, they all have theirown benefits and, and drawbacks.
And our goal is to try to help the the family find the one that
meets their needs the best. And reverse mortgage is one of
those many options. But again, a lot of times people
just automatically default to a reverse mortgage without knowing

(09:03):
that there's other alternatives.So that's that's where we can
come in handy for for those families.
Is there something specific in your underwriting process too
that caters to older adults? There are, yeah.
There's different niches depending on the program.
So the 11 I mentioned where you don't have to disclose
employment or income, it eliminates the income issue that
seniors often have and you can pull out a a pretty good

(09:26):
percentage of the equity of yourhome, which is one of the
downsides of a reverse mortgage.They'll usually only let you
leverage around half of the value of the home.
So if you already have a mortgage or your home is not
tremendously valuable, it might not you might not get out enough
to actually pay for for your longer term care needs.
There are some like one of our HELOC products allows us to look

(09:47):
at any retirement assets that the senior has in their name and
we convert those assets into additional income.
So we had a situation recently where we did that where a senior
had been denied for three other equity line applications and
really did not want to do reverse mortgage because she
already had a mortgage at 3% reverse mortgages.

(10:07):
Right now is the time of this recording or you know, in the
910% range. So her financial advisor
fortunately she had a good one, didn't want to convert that.
But because we were converting the IRA money that she had in an
account into additional income, it allowed her to qualify for
the line of credit that she had been denied for elsewhere.

(10:28):
So it's little niches and programs and we work with a lot
of different lending sources that all have different
solutions that can be applied tothe needs of seniors.
And that's that's where, you know, we are the experts in
trying to figure out how to navigate it based on the
individual seniors profile. And then there's also options

(10:49):
where a family member might be willing and able to cosign,
where we can use the adult child, for example, as a
cosigner on the loan to be able to help them tap into some of
the equity in their home as well.
So there's lots of different solutions.
Family dynamics, play in, financial means play in, credit
score may play in. And sometimes seniors aren't,
you know, if they're having memory issues or not, haven't

(11:11):
been great about keeping up withtheir bills.
So there are lots of different factors that we look at to try
to determine which one is actually the right fit.
But the good news is that we have lots of different solutions
that we can kind of pick and choose and match the client
profile, the senior profile to the right type of loan for what
they're looking to do. And I'm assuming you work with
senior living providers specifically within the sales

(11:33):
process of that. If their goal is to get people
to move in, they're going to tryto help them get their assets
together so they can make that happen.
How does that that work with if a provider comes to you?
Yeah. So we do, we work with a lot of
them as well as relocation companies that support, you
know, the the process of moving into a new community.
And the main benefit to the community is obviously they're

(11:55):
trying to raise occupancy. And imagine you have a senior
who's coming to you, but they they have these reservations.
I don't want to sell my house. Let's say it's assisted living.
I don't know if I'm going to like it.
I want to keep the option to to keep my home, but if I don't
sell it, I don't know how I'm going to pay for care, right?
So that person now becomes someone who's interested in your

(12:17):
community, but may not move in because of financial constraints
or issues or just wanting to leave their options open.
So, so the idea is that you turna maybe into a yes, right?
And you raise that occupancy, you raise the percentage of
likelihood that that senior and their family are going to agree
to move in because maybe you're providing a different solution

(12:38):
and changing the narrative of sell your home so that you can
move in to maybe, well, keep your home.
So you have an option. Obviously, we think you're going
to love the community, you're going to stay here forever, and
maybe you sell your home later. But it lowers the stress level
for seniors and their families who are already going through a
major transition. So to try to force them, force

(13:01):
them in quotes to sell their home at the same time, it's
really stressful part of that process.
So we try to eliminate that so that we turn more maybes into
yeses and then obviously raise the occupancy from there.
I would imagine there's not a whole lot of operators out there
doing this. I'm sure grand scale, there's
probably a lot, but in a in a specific area, I feel like this

(13:23):
is a competitive advantage that one community might have.
It certainly is. Yes, it certainly is.
And it's changing the narrative.I know I said that earlier, but
it really is. It's the other.
You went and met with another community.
They're saying, well, sell your home, but they're not may be
thinking along the lines of well, there's capital gains tax
implications. There's the implication of not

(13:43):
being able to move back if you don't, if you try assisted
living, for example, and you andyou don't, it's not for you for
some reason. Or maybe you have decided you
want to stay at home now. It just it takes away those
options. And with seniors, oftentimes,
you know, especially the aging population now, which I consider
to be kind of like a buy and hold slow and steady type of

(14:05):
generation, they don't want a lot of changes.
And it's also because it's so stressful.
You know, they don't want to be forced to make a bunch of big
decisions all at once. Like if they can take it in bits
and pieces. Then again, they may say yes to
a community and moving in. Whereas if they have to do all
of that, they have to sell theirhome.
Not only will it potentially delay the timing at which they

(14:26):
can move in, but it just causes a lot more stress and may make
them say, you know what, this isjust too overwhelming,
Overwhelming. I'm just going to stay home.
And then you don't get that unitrented and that's that's where
the occupancy can fall off. But I agree it could be an
absolutely competitive advantage.
And we've seen some communities actually offer incentives to the

(14:48):
senior and their family to say, well, there's costs associated
with bridge loans, For example, maybe what we'll do is we'll
give you half a month of rent asa credit, and that helps offset
some of the costs associated with bridge financings.
Sometimes communities are getting creative, especially
when they have a lot of units orif it's a new community that's
just been built and they need tofill a bunch of rooms and units.

(15:12):
And sometimes that's a creative strategy that they can use to
get people again to put in thosedeposits, to be able to raise
that occupancy at a faster pace than they would if they were
relying on just conventional means of trying to attract
people. Well, I think that's really
appealing too because I know within the next decade or so we
have 13 to 14,000,000 baby boomers exiting the housing

(15:35):
market and you've got so many developers right now are
building these luxury retirementcommunities.
But there's this entire middle market that's going to have to
come up with a solution. And I think taking the equity
out of their home to pay for their their long term care needs
is going to be the way to go. Yes, having having solutions
like this makes makes the most sense.

(15:57):
It does, and it and also, if youlook at the population that's
aging now, like I said before, it's a buy and hold generation.
Many of them have owned their homes for 30-40, fifty years and
they've stayed there, which alsomeans they're probably not in
great condition to be sold, right?
Unless they've done a renovationreally recently, which the
stereotype is that, you know, there's still green carpets and

(16:19):
yellow walls and things that like are not going to be
appealing when you go to sell a home.
And the products that we have can be used to actually pay for
those renovations to try to sellthe home for more money.
So there's a lot of creativity here.
I think when communities engage with us and they really
understand and see the the challenges that seniors and

(16:40):
their families are going throughand how this could just relieve
stress. I think stress relief is a big
deal in the sales cycle in my opinion, and taking away that
lever of having to sell your home to move in here, that's a
barrier of entry and a big one, a significant.
One that's huge, yeah. So I agree with you that that

(17:01):
this is probably the wave of thefuture and people's have so much
equity in their home. I don't remember the exact
statistic, but we're at a point in time where people have never
had more equity in their homes across the country.
And we're coming off of a fairlysharp rise in property values.
But again, these seniors have owned their homes for decades,

(17:22):
so they've benefited from that equity.
Now it's just a matter of putting that to use in a
creative way to be able to age the way that you want to age and
also not to short change yourself on the level of care
that you think you need or the type of community that you want
to move into. If it's a little more expensive,
but you have the equity to pull on from your home, you can't say

(17:44):
I quote, UN quote, can't afford the extra whatever $2000 a month
for this community versus the other community when you're
sitting in a house that has a million dollars, $2,000,000 of
equity. There is a way to make that
happen for people. It's just you just have to know
the tools and and the communities need to know the
right questions to ask to just identify those opportunities.

(18:05):
And then obviously we can engagewith them to help the families
figure out exactly what that would look like.
But that's the communities that we see being most successful
with us are asking questions about, you know, when someone
says I can't afford this, well, OK, we understand.
Do you have a home? You know, like that's a great
first question because in many cases the answer will be yes.

(18:28):
And then if do you have equity in the home many times again,
yes. So it's just a matter of kind of
slowly but surely leading them down the path to understand that
this is a potential option. And then referring them to to a
mortgage team that is qualified to have these conversations with
them and help them understand all the implications of
different ways that they that they could approach it.

(18:48):
I definitely see the value bringing this into the sales
process And then what's the say advantage bringing you into that
sales process earlier? What does that do for?
Well, I feel like when you know,the move into a community is an
emotional roller coaster, right?First you get to the point where
you think you might need to be somewhere else other than home.

(19:10):
Maybe home isn't safe anymore oryou know, your level of care
needs are higher once you get, as you get further into that
thought process, if you're starting to build resistance and
build resistance and all these thoughts are building in your
head about why I'm putting myself in the seniors shoes at
the moment. Starting to think, oh, this is

(19:31):
stressful. This is getting more stressful.
The longer you let that issue fester and whether it be
financial or emotional or whatever it may be, the harder
it is to break down those barriers.
So in my opinion, if you get in with the family to have those
conversations earlier on, you'regoing to not allow that
emotional roller coaster to playout as long So the earlier you

(19:54):
can provide these types of options and solutions.
They might say, I have a concernabout the financials.
Well, we have a potential solution.
It's not oh, I'm worried about my money.
I'm worried about my money. I've been dealing with this for
612 months. No one's provided any solutions.
Imagine you're the community that now says, hey, there are
options. We have a relationship with a

(20:15):
company that can help you navigate this.
That can be a huge sigh of relief and and again, a
differentiator for those communities as opposed to others
who will just allow that stress to grow and hope that the that
the senior and their family willstill say yes.
One thing that I see communitiesdoing a lot to they they're
either advancing funds or they're covering the entry fees
internally. Why do you think providers

(20:37):
should stop doing that and what's the alternative?
Well, it's, it's a drain on resources, on financial
resources because imagine you'rea CCRC with just make it up
here, a half $1,000,000 entry fee and you're doing that for 10
families, right? That's a lot of money.
That's $5,000,000 that you don'thave access to, to do whatever

(20:58):
you want to do. Maybe you're renovating part of
the complex or you know you haveother you want to invest in
technology or something like that.
You're giving the families this money, this beautiful gift, very
generous of you, but maybe a little over generous because of
what it actually keeps you from being able to do if the families
were able to give you that money.

(21:19):
So in my opinion, as the consumer, that's really your
responsibility to find a way to pay for those things when the
service is being provided and when you're, when you need to
pay for the care or the entry fee, whatever it may be,
shouldn't be on the on the community to front you that
money, even though they do it sometimes because they again,

(21:40):
want the family to say yes and to move in, move them into the
community, get them settled. You know, you're going to get
your money eventually, but it can put a significant financial
strain on the communities. And the more you do it, the
worse it is. So, and how do you, how do you
manage that? Do you only provide it to a
certain number of families at atany given time?

(22:02):
Or, you know, how do you manage for that cash flow of not having
access to potentially millions of dollars that you're
rightfully due? And because right now we're in
an environment where the real estate market may be softening
and turning into more of a buyer's market.
Homes are not selling as fast. So you're putting yourself at
risk for a longer period of timefor potentially a large sum of

(22:26):
money. And what happens if, you know,
the senior passes and all of a sudden the property's stuck in
probate? Now you're talking months and
months and months, but obviouslythe senior had already moved in.
So it's, it's just really trickyto provide those.
It's very risky for the communities to be able to front

(22:46):
that amount of money. Even if it's just assisted
living and they're providing, you know, $10,000 a month for
three months, still $30,000 thatyou don't have to pay your
employees and pay for your, the,you know, all the logistical
materials that you need and foodfor the residents.
You know, it's still a lot of money.
So I just think it's an unnecessary risk that

(23:07):
communities need to take on. And in my opinion, the better
solution is if if you want to provide financing option through
a lender like us to be able to, to pull out that money from the
equity of the home, then you eliminate that financial risk.
And maybe if you feel it's necessary, you provide some sort
of financial incentive where youhelp cover the cost of the

(23:30):
financing to make it more palatable for the family.
But that's a way to offset having to front half $1,000,000,
for example. That's a that's a pretty easy
trade off if you're, you know, maybe giving them $5000 in
credits versus having to front them half a million seems like a
pretty good deal to me. Yeah.
Have you ever seen a? I'm sure there's been instances

(23:53):
where somebody's financed for anentry fee or, or to get into a
community and then got the loan and then decided at the last
minute that they didn't want to do it.
What happens in that situation? So bridge loans are naturally
designed to allow to be short term financing.
We usually by that point the closing costs have been paid.
If somebody has actually closed on the loan.

(24:14):
Now there are options where you can get the approval for the
loan, but not actually close on it until there's an immediate
need for that money. So you can kind of mitigate
that, although we don't want people to apply for loans that
they don't intend to actually take, of course, because that's,
you know, a waste of their time and money.
But, but you can do that in those circumstances where you're

(24:36):
still a little unsure, you're still negotiating the final
terms or something like that. But let's just say they've
already closed on the loan. They've incurred some of the
costs, which will be usually netted out of the loan itself.
So they're not having to come out of pocket for that because
they're designed to be short term loans.
You could immediately pay that loan off if you choose to, or
you could keep the money and invest it and have it help you

(24:57):
generate, you know, interest income or whatever, depending on
what you invested in, where it might be growing at a faster
pace of what the mortgage is actually costing you.
Because not all of our loans areare have to be short term.
Some of them could be theoretically carried for 30
years. So if we know that a family is
still a little unsure and they're either going to put that
money toward an entry fee or if they don't end up moving into a

(25:20):
community, then they might just keep the money invested so it
grows overtime and allows them to pay for care over a longer
period of time because they've now tapped into the equity of
their home to be able to do that.
You could kind of use those funds for either.
They're one. I know a lot of families, do
they wait too long to explore financing as an option?
Do you think that's just lack ofeducation, exposure to those

(25:41):
options or is it something else?And what are the consequences
when they delay like that? Yeah, I think it's financial
paralysis or emotional paralysiswhere they're not literally
paralyzed, but they're just kindof frozen because they don't
know what to do. And no one's really clearly able
to outline it because there's, again, so many different
professionals that we think should be involved.

(26:03):
So that takes a little bit of time.
But when people don't prepare, what sometimes happens is their
medical condition deteriorates to the point where they may have
less options to choose from specifically because maybe they
have now entered to a level of care where they're not
physically able to sign on theirown behalf.
That usually negates some of themore conventional options that

(26:27):
we try to place people in because the terms are better.
So if you wait too long and you're physical and mental
capacities diminish, that can affect what loans you would be
eligible for and generally meansthat you're going to not have as
good of options as you would otherwise.
So that's why I always say startearly.
If you're not sure you need the money right away, that would be

(26:49):
an argument for like a line of credit type of product where you
have access to the equity, but you're not actually paying
interest until you actually borrow the money.
So that's why, again, different solutions for different
situations. If you wait too long, you may
negate your ability to get a certain type of loan that will
be far more beneficial for you than no other options that might

(27:11):
be available once your your condition deteriorates.
Families too, I often don't feelconfident.
They want to feel confident and not guilty about using equity
for care. Well, the families look at the
real estate and they say that's going to be mine.
When? When the family.
Yeah, yeah. Like went away when?
Mom and dad passes away. Yeah, that's my inheritance
exactly, you know, and that's where the finance, where the

(27:33):
family dynamics can play in. But it's tricky because
sometimes people feel very strongly about that.
Well, don't touch the house, that's mine.
I don't want a loan on it, you know, when you're not around
anymore. But the reality is that the
senior still needs to pay for care.
And that may be their primary means of being able to do that.
So what are, what are your alternatives?
You're going to put the senior in a basement unit with no

(27:55):
windows or are you going to use the home for care so that they
can live comfortably through their final days?
But the family dynamics there are definitely a factor.
So what we often tell people andand we see this play out often
is that people look at real estate as completely different.
They don't look at it as an investment like they do an IRA

(28:18):
or other type of investment account.
Even though your home, even though it is your home, it's
where you live, it's still an investment.
And it can be used in a strategic way, whether you're a
senior or or otherwise, to be honest, where you pull the
equity to pay for certain thingsor to build your real estate
empire. If you're looking to to buy real

(28:38):
estate for investment purposes, there's lots of different things
you can do with it. But it is an investment just
like an IRA or other type of account.
Sometimes it's people's most significant investment.
So if you pull out a little bit of the equity and you have to
take a loan in order to do that,to be able to pay for the care,
to be able to do things that I guarantee you the adult child

(28:59):
who's jockeying for position on that home certainly probably
doesn't want to payout of pocketfor the shortfall for their
parents, right? It doesn't sound like those
aligned with each other if they're jockeying for position
on the property, but then they're probably not going to
want to pay, you know, out of their own pockets.
So it's just it's a paradigm shift.
Again, it's a matter of changingthe narrative and making people

(29:19):
think outside of the box a little bit to understand that
real estate is an investment just like any other type of
investment. And there are ways to tap into
it to be able to use that as potential actually a better
alternative than turning to the family members to all chip in to
be able to help pay for the care.
The care needs are going to be there.
You know, regardless, you've gotto find a way to pay for it.

(29:42):
Yes, you can still inherit the home, but that this is again one
of the areas where reverse mortgage may not be a good
choice if you want to hand that home down to your family because
that reverse mortgage has to getpaid off if the senior either
passes away or moves out of the home.
So that family member who may betaking over the property may not
be in a position to qualify for their own mortgage and therefore

(30:05):
they would be forced to sell thehome.
So some of our products can be handed down in the event of, you
know, an estate situation can behanded down where the heir to
the property can assume the existing mortgage and continue
paying it without having to qualify for a new loan.
So again, these are the little nuances with the lending that we
do to understand if a family wants to pass down that

(30:28):
property, then we know almost for sure that a reverse mortgage
is not the right solution. So that's that's where our
knowledge and expertise comes invery helpful for families and
understanding the nuances because little details like that
make a huge difference in the family legacy planning of what
they what they want to do with the home.
How do you think the senior living sales team can help with

(30:48):
the family dynamics in that casetoo?
Well, it's not easy to navigate those strong feelings about what
people are owed and maybe some, you know, difficult
interpersonal relationships between siblings where I should
get more than you. And you know, I did this, I did
that. So they're very difficult.
My general vice has tried to notget involved to a degree.

(31:11):
But but when it comes down to it, if you know, if they have a
home and let's say that's going to be a shared asset between
siblings that would inherit the home after the fact, it's just
again, changing the narrative and saying, listen, this is an
investment. There are ways to pull equity
out so that you don't have to physically pay out of pocket to
pay for the care. Let's put mom and mom or dad's

(31:35):
needs first to be able to allow them that investment in the real
estate is their investment, not yours.
It will be yours eventually, butright now it's theirs and they
need it to pay for care. So it's just, I think the way
you phrase it to families and getting them to look at, well,
what's the alternative if you don't leverage the home, where's

(31:56):
the money going to come from forthem to be able to age the way
that you want them to age, right?
Is it going to come out of your pocket?
Are you going to like that? Probably not.
Maybe we should leverage the home as a means of being able to
to accomplish those goals. Looking forward to, I mean, what
do you think's the next frontierfor financing senior living?
What aren't we talking about yetthat we should be?

(32:18):
Well, I think these alternative options to reverse mortgages are
going to become more mainstream.That's my personal mission is,
you know, the story that I told you about the family that paid
$1,000,000 in taxes unnecessarily, that should never
happen. That's a failure of education
and resources. But I think obviously the aging
population is growing and and growing fast, right?

(32:40):
We all know the silver tsunami and the the baby boomers are
coming and they're going to needcare.
And people are living for longerand the cost of care is rising.
So you're going to need more andmore and more money to be able
to age the way that people want to age.
But at the same time, the home has probably built up inequity
at a fairly similar pace to the cost of care.

(33:03):
So I think it's a matter of changing the narrative and
continuing to just provide options to people.
Financing your home is not goingto be the right option for every
person. It's just not.
Some people have means beyond that that they don't need to
finance. Some people have an aversion to
financing, whatever it may be. So it's not going to work for
everybody. But I think just being able to

(33:23):
provide more options to familiesso that they don't feel that
stress of the move into senior living and also selling their
home. Or maybe they just need to move
into senior living for like a handful of months to get a feel
for it and then feel comfortableselling their home.
Just reducing the stress level Ithink will play a big part in
this. But there's going to be more and

(33:45):
more and more of it. And so if we're looking at it
from the community perspective, if you have more and more people
interested in moving into your community, you want to say yes
to as many of those people as you can.
So if you're providing alternatives that your
competitors are not even aware of or talking about with
families, the the senior and their families are going to come
into your community with less stress on their shoulders and

(34:09):
feeling more confident that there are options for them to
consider as opposed to just having it all just be a concern
about, well, how are we going topay for this?
So limiting that stress, I thinkcan't can't be understated as to
how valuable that is as a benefit to the senior and their
family in general. It's just a good thing to do,
but also for the sales cycle to be able to encourage more

(34:31):
families to feel comfortable saying yes.
That's the ultimate goal for thefor the communities.
I know we already talked about the one family that lost $1000
to $1000 lost $1,000,000 to the IRS.
Is there a particular story thatsticks out to you where
financing actually helped changethe outcome?
Yeah, there was. So we had a recent case, I think

(34:54):
I, I touched on it briefly abouta senior who is referred by a
financial advisor. He she needed access to about
1/4 of $1,000,000 of equity fromher home, obviously wasn't
working anymore, had been deniedby several lenders for he locks.
And you know, had she gone into a reverse mortgage, she would
have run out of money within probably 3-4 years, right?

(35:18):
And she was pretty healthy. So, you know, she was in good
shape, but the concern was just having access to the equity
because she was feeling stressedabout the fact that she was
liquidating funds, right? That's what you do, right?
You work, all your years of working are meant to build up
the investments and everything and resources that you have.
And then you retire and then theerror starts getting let out of

(35:40):
the balloon and you start to deplete those funds.
So it's very stressful to watch those funds depleting.
And if they're depleting at A ata rapid pace, that's accelerates
the stress that you're that you're having.
So I think just having access tothat quarter of $1,000,000 put
her at ease to know that she nowhad a longer runway to be able

(36:01):
to accommodate whatever life throws at her.
And so those cases are really rewarding for us because first
of all, she had tried and failedwith several other sources.
A reverse mortgage for her made no sense whatsoever.
Having a rate at 3% currently and exchanging that for 9, you
know, tripling her interest on that money and just having so

(36:22):
many, so many limited options with reverse mortgages and so
many things that she did not want, her financial advisor did
not want be able to come throughfor that family was very
rewarding. We do all types of mortgages,
not just for seniors, but by farthis is the most rewarding work
that we do because it literally changes people's last years on

(36:44):
earth and the families and the legacies that they leave behind.
And the advice we give could have a dramatic impact on how
much money is left over to pay for kids tuition, you know, for
their grandkids and great grandkids.
I've been the beneficiary of my grandfather, who was an
immigrant in the early 1900s andbought real estate that's still
in the family and it's now benefiting people that he never

(37:09):
even met, you know, people in our families.
So I think real estate can be very powerful if it's used in
the right way. And so that's that's really what
drives our mission to get the word out there.
Most people don't know that these options exist.
And I feel like it's my job in part to raise awareness.
And that's why I appreciate you having me on today is to, to
expand the, the awareness of, ofwhat's out there and what

(37:31):
options are there for families to benefit everybody.
This is a win, win, win for anyone involved, the
communities, the seniors, their families, their legacy.
I mean, all these things can be impacted with the right advice
and the right advisors. If you have all those things in
place, I think you're going to make really good financial
decisions. And that's honestly what drives
us to do what we do every day. You're providing such Peace of

(37:53):
Mind for everybody involved in that process, too.
I mean, you think about scams and theft that are targeting the
elderly at $30 billion or something was lost in in the
last year alone to that. Yes.
Being able to be in a space where you, you know, you know
you're doing good and, and a family can trust you with, with
this process, that's got to be such a load off for them.

(38:14):
It is, yes. And, and trust is a big factor
in lending in general, but especially when you're dealing
with seniors and their families,there has to be a level of
trust. You have to be patient, you have
to go slow. You can't try to rush people
into it, which is like the biggest complaint about mortgage
people in general that they're trying to sell you on something

(38:34):
on the dotted line. Let's you know, let's lock your
ray, let's do this, let's do that.
So it has to be, in my opinion, if you're dealing with someone
who does lending in the seniors face, has to be somebody who's
patient, has to be somebody who's knowledgeable about all
the different aspects of taxation, estate planning, You
know, do you have the property in the trust?

(38:56):
Like all these things matter, but you have to have somebody
who has a well-rounded knowledgeof all those different
components. Because if you miss 1, you might
be giving bad advice when you think you're giving good advice.
And so that's where my team and I really shine is understanding
all those components to how to advise a senior and that's, you
know, that's really what we pride ourselves on.

(39:17):
I. Mentioned the the podcast at the
top of the show. How is hosting your show on the
mark help advance your mission? Well, it's, it's a platform to
be able to raise awareness. So one of the beautiful things
about podcasting and social media and, and whatnot is that
it's social, right? So we broadcast it to our

(39:37):
network of people that we know, but there's a lot of people we
don't know, right? So we interview somebody and now
all of a sudden we're helping promote to our network and their
network. So it's kind of like overlapping
clusters, if you want to look atit that way.
We're now our message is gettingamplified to the people within
that person's network. And then maybe somebody in that

(39:58):
network says, that's a pretty interesting concept, I'm going
to share it with somebody else. So just the podcast itself can
be shared. But what we usually do is we'll
we'll post stuff on social mediathat then can be physically
shared very easily with a click of a button.
To other people that might have interest in it.
And so it's been a great way forus to just get the word out
there about these different products.

(40:19):
Like I said, most people have noidea that these options are even
there, including financial advisors and the state attorneys
and people that work in the senior space.
This has not been a commonly used tactic.
That's why we're trying to change the narrative, why it's a
big task ahead of us to do that and to raise awareness about
something that people aren't really talking about or know

(40:41):
about and aren't familiar with and comfortable with yet.
But that's partly why we do the podcast is to raise awareness.
We interview thought leaders in different parts of, of senior
living and, and beyond and financial planning and you know,
just financial literacy in general.
Because I enjoy talking about it.
To be honest, I learn as much asI teach on these sessions and I

(41:03):
really enjoy it and it makes me better at what I do to interview
other people who are focused on their aspect, whether it be an
estate attorney or a tax accountant or somebody.
I always learned something new on each of the sessions that we
do. And that's it's, it's an
educational opportunity for me as well as the audience. 100%
I've spoken with so many leadersin in this space now and I

(41:24):
learned something new every single time.
It's been such a gift having this opportunity.
My last question for you is, what is this work taught you
about aging, about dignity, or about money?
A lot that it's not not all about the pursuit of wealth,
it's about a lot a lot of peopleare very driven by the legacy
that they leave behind and a lotof that is money.

(41:47):
Thoughts around money is very much driven by your childhood
and the era that you grew up in.And sometimes those barriers are
very difficult to breakdown because they been built up over
and reinforced over so many years.
But I think the key really is, again, having the right advisors
who can help you see things froma different perspective is so

(42:10):
critical. But what what has been somewhat
surprising to me is how deep those financial thoughts and
practices go within each individual person and how they
are shaped by their upbringing or their era or whatever it may
be. Depression era, people think
differently than people who wereborn, you know, 20 years later.

(42:30):
It's just a whole different mentality.
So I think the, the legacy planning and how important that
is to people and how to understand on the mortgage side,
how to cater to that and to be able to help people understand
that they can still leave a legacy even if they take a loan
against their property. But the importance of the legacy
is, is something that I not underestimated, but it's nice to

(42:52):
see that people care about thosethings.
You know, that it's not just allabout money, but also the
intertwining of family dynamics into the loan process.
And just the the thoughts behindtaking a loan has also been
pretty eye opening for us where we could have a perfect solution
for a family that then one of the adult children puts a veto

(43:13):
vote in and and then it doesn't happen, even though it's clearly
the right solution because of maybe their own dynamics around
money and disputes with, you know, siblings or other
relatives that maybe potentiallygoing to inherit part of that
property. So family dynamics and legacy
are are two very powerful factors.
Absolutely, Mark, thank you so much for such a great

(43:34):
conversation and sharing all your insights today.
I really appreciate it. Absolutely, Jerry.
Thank you for having me and and yeah, hopefully we'll, we'll
continue our dialogue for sure. Absolutely, absolutely.
So where can our audience go to learn more about your work or
explore financing options for their residents?
Sure. Financial professionals in the
senior space can go to a website, financingforseniors.com

(43:58):
that will lead you to our website as well, which is Mark
meiman.com MARKMAIMON com and there's all sorts of resources
there. But financing for seniors is a
great place to start. We have information for all
different types of professionals, whether they be
senior communities, state attorneys, a tax attorneys,
whatever it may be, that's specific to their needs and the

(44:21):
the types of conversations that they're happening that they're
having with their clients and their families.
So that's a great place to find us.
All right, excellent. All right, so as we wrap up
today's episode, I want to extend a huge thank you to you,
Mark Byman, for joining us and sharing how your work is
empowering families and supporting senior living
communities alike. Mark, your commitment to
disrupting outdated systems and educating families is exactly

(44:44):
the kind of change our industry needs.
So if you want to connect with Mark or learn more about his
team's lending tools, all the links are in the show notes.
As always, we hope you found this episode insightful and
inspiring. And don't forget to subscribe to
our podcast on your favorite platform.
And stay tuned for more episodeswhere we continue to explore the
evolving world of senior care, covering everything from
innovative care models and leadership strategies to family

(45:07):
support technology in the futureof aging.
And also remember that from lease to lease, this isn't just
an audio experience. We're also a video podcast.
So if you want to see the video versions of our episodes like
the one here with Mark, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube
or Spotify channels. I'm Jerry Vincey, CEO of CCR
growth. Thank you for joining us on From
Leads to Leases. Please like, subscribe and share

(45:28):
this episode with anyone who might find it useful.
I'm truly grateful for your timeand attention.
So until next time, lead with strategy and with heart.
Chat with you again soon. Thanks, Mark.
Thank you. Thanks for listening to From
Leads to Leases. Are you ready to fill your rooms
faster and increase occupancy? Visit ccrgrowth.com to learn

(45:48):
about our Senior Growth Innovation Suite, a proven
system to generate highly qualified tour ready leads,
accelerate sales and reduce acquisition costs.
Let's connect and turn your challenges into opportunities.
See you next time.

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#76 - Funding the Future: Smarter Lending for Senior Living Move-Ins with Mark Maimon

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#76 - Funding the Future: Smarter Lending for Senior Living Move-Ins with Mark Maimon