Cary started his career in mortgage banking in July 1985. He became a producing branch manager in 1990 and has been in both roles ever since.
As your home loan advisor, he is genuinely interested in your financial success. Understanding your financial goals, he can build a personalized mortgage solution for your unique needs. Cary will keep you informed every step of the way to give you peace of mind about your new home.
Cary has a deep understanding of the local housing market and can originate loans in all 50 states. He loves to build and maintain relationships. Whether you are coming back for a refinance or you’re a real estate investor looking to expand and diversify your portfolio though leverage, Cary can help you get to your goals.
Episode Notes:
Narrator This is The Norris Group’s real estate investor radio show the award-winning show dedicated to thought leaders shaping the real estate industry and local experts revealing their insider tips to succeed in an ever -changing real estate market hosted by author, investor, and hard money lender, Bruce Norris.
Bruce Norris Hi, thanks for joining us. My name is Bruce Norris and today we have a special guest Cary Pearce. Cary Pearce is the branch manager of Flagstar Bank. Cary started his career in the mortgage banking business in July 1985. He became a producing branch manager in 1990. And has been in both roles ever since. As your home loan advisor, He’s genuinely interested in your financial success understanding your financial goals, he can build a personalized mortgage solution for your unique needs. Cary will keep you informed every step of the way to give you peace of mind about your new home. Cary has a deep understanding of the local housing market and can originate loans in all 50 states. He loves to build and maintain related relationships. Whether you’re coming back for refi or you’re a real estate investor looking to expand diversify your portfolio through leverage, Cary can help you get all of those goals done. So Cary, welcome to our show.
Cary Pearce Thank you. Glad to be here.
Bruce Norris And I apologize for missing our earlier time.
Cary Pearce No problem.
Bruce Norris My goodness. So, you’ve been around for a long time. So, I kind of wanted to go back in time a little bit in 1985. What were interest rates, and why did they feel cheap compared to the years previous?
Cary Pearce Well, when I started in 85, I think rates were around 12 and a half 13%. And yeah, we were doing a lot of them. Sale prices, obviously were a heck of a lot lower. I mean, our average sale price was only 115, 120, maybe back then.
Bruce Norris Yeah. But 12 and a half was going rate. But that had come down from 17 because I had refinanced the house at 17. Four years before.
Cary Pearce Yeah, like, what was it 1980 when they got all the way to 20%?
Bruce Norris Yeah, it was 81. I was in the business and I decided I was going to be a full time real estate investor. So, I wanted to access equity in my home, which was free and clear. And it’s really, it’s really a bad day when your wife cries when she signs loan docs on 17 and a half. I can tell you that.
Cary Pearce Yeah, well I closed. Actually, I must have been an adjustable but I closed my first house purchase on my birthday in 1980and it was an FHA loan at 12 and a half.
Bruce Norris Wow. 12 and a half. Yeah, that was right before they started going crazy. Volcker was probably not in the position yet, or certainly hadn’t done what he was about to do. But I was Yeah, at almost the peak of the interest rates. And I’d had to decide do I go get a job again? Or do I go after this being real estate for full time? What What was interesting 12 and a half percent at the time. Didn’t feel high?
Cary Pearce No, it did. You know what’s interesting, though, back then that I remember, on almost all of the government offers FHA and VA that the buyers were writing, it was standard back then for the seller to pay three points for the buyer. It was written into almost every contract.
Bruce Norris Yeah, that’s that is interesting, because that’s no joke of a clause when you’re dealing with a I mean, 115 grand house, you’re paying $450 in costs. That’s a that’s another realtor being involved for sure.
Cary Pearce Exactly.
Bruce Norris But, you know, that’s it was interesting to the VA least in the business that I was associated with the VA, the VA buyer was really one of the main avenues of selling houses at the time.
Cary Pearce Yeah, obviously, we did a lot of them. We did a lot of the VA no no’s too.
Bruce Norris Sure. Well, when it got harder to sell, they became a priority client. So, you’re going okay, we can sell, we can sell it for, at full price. We’re going to eat a lot of costs. But so what you know, at least we’re done.
Cary Pearce Yeah. So it doesn’t mess up the comps because they’re selling at market price.
Bruce Norris Yeah, that’s right. So, okay, 85 to 90 pretty good years. I mean, so when you join the party, there was going to be five years, four or five years of really solid upside.
Cary Pearce Yeah, we bought our second house, wife and I together in like August 1990, somewhere there abouts and bought from a builder up in Riverside. And at that time, we took a nine and a half, six or a seven year fixed for nine and a half.
Bruce Norris Okay.
Cary Pearce And refied a couple of years later, down to seven and a half as the market kept coming down and then ultimately sold that place and bought again.
Bruce Norris What was, I guess what I’m going to try and chart is the mood of the buyer during this, these timeframe. So, from 85 to 89 equity literally exploded prices almost doubled in that five year period. So, what was the borrower’s mood toward extracting equity? Do you remember a lot of that being refi’s? Or was that not?
Cary Pearce Yeah, it was mostly refi’s. We didn’t have HELOCS back then at least not at the mortgage bank. I was at a time. So, it had to be a cash out refi if they were going to access the equity.
Bruce Norris Okay. So, there was, but they also were lowering interest rates probably by refi.
Cary Pearce Yes.
Bruce Norris Okay. So that’s, that’s really interesting. You know, when you’ve been around the business, as long as you have, you’ve seen, you’ve seen the cycles, and the, like, the borrower habit, if you will. So, let’s now let’s go into the 90 to 96 or 97. That was a gradual downturn for California real estate. What was what was the lending world like? Because you had a fair amount of foreclosure start participating in inventory?
Cary Pearce Yeah, we still had a decent volume, you know, we obviously had enough to stay alive. But it wasn’t going gangbusters. You know, obviously, the REOs put pressure on the market, HUD and the Bank REOs. But, you know, we still had a fair share of business coming in.
Bruce Norris Yeah. Was the, was the borrower generally refiying lots of equity out during that stretch of 85 to 89?
Cary Pearce I don’t think so. Too much back then. I mean, most of the refunds, I think back then were mostly rate term.
Bruce Norris Right. So, they were just lowering the rate when they got a chance.
Cary Pearce Yeah.
Bruce Norris That makes perfect sense. All right. So, now let’s get into the 2004 and five and 2006 era. So, prices were exploding. Yeah, crazy, crazy numbers. You know, we went from, I think we went up 300%, from where we ended up in about 1990. So, 180 to 540. And so the attitude of the borrower at that point, was to be aggressive with their equity, or…
Cary Pearce Very much. So, I mean, we had, as you know, part of the reason they caused the crash was all the crazy loans that were going around, you know, up till 07. But, you know, as an example, one of the best ones I can give you is I had a guy across the street from me, who pulled cash out of 2 non owner properties in San Bernardino. And he got 90% on a non owner cash out, which was unheard of at the time, but it was subprime loans. And he went and bought 12 units in Utah, with that money.
Bruce Norris Wow. That, yeah, see, that’s the thing that you when you have a history of the mortgage world like you have and you see some of these things going on, did your company try to steer clear of the crazy, of the crazy loans?
Cary Pearce Well, at that time, we had just been acquired by New Century who was the second largest subprime lender in the nation. They were closing for a billion a month, I believe. And when when everything came to a halt, you know, they were a reap set up. So they have to pay out all the profits to the shareholders. But when Wall Street stopped buying the loans, they were out of business in two weeks. Completely out of business.
Bruce Norris Wow. Yeah, that was the change. I remember going into Trademark Realty at the time we were renting space from Roger. And I remember hearing that like the subprime lending world was done. And I remember saying that to the realtors and they were just ‘What do you mean?’
Cary Pearce Yeah.
Bruce Norris And like you said two weeks later oh my gosh, the whole world…
Cary Pearce Like you said your seminar I mean lenders out there what, what do you put in for income on the stated income loan? So, whatever we need, you know, I mean, we didn’t do a whole lot of that ourselves. We tried to do the no doc loans because we have a conscience.
Bruce Norris Right.
Cary Pearce I mean, a no doc loan, you’re not lying. You’re just paying they don’t ask for income you don’t give them income.
Bruce Norris Right.
Cary Pearce You’re just looking at credit and equity in the property. So, those we felt a lot stronger about but the true no docs, there are a lot of lenders doing them.
Bruce Norris As a, as someone in the business and you looked at this going on what was your, what was your attitude about what’s, what’s next could be not good?
Cary Pearce Yeah, what was really also popular back, you know, 05, 06 was the option ARM, which I’m sure you’ve heard of that.
Bruce Norris Of course.
Cary Pearce I personally, I only did one of those loans and the client had to beg me to do it. I just did not feel good about putting people in that loan when, when it’s got reverse amortization, and they’re going in with low down, we’re going to end up upside down in the house. I just didn’t, didn’t like it.
Bruce Norris And the interest rate changed pretty radically after…
Cary Pearce Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. They got into this ridiculously low payment that maybe 1.5 or 1.9%. But instantly, they’re negative, or negative interest adding to the loan down.
Bruce Norris Right, and then they want to change, they had a real, maybe a payment that was actually double what they started with, or some crazy number.
Cary Pearce Well, a good example of that is a friend of mine, he asked me to do a loan for him, and I wouldn’t do it. But he bought a brand new house in Riverside, zero down, stated income, he’s a self employed guy, he did that option ARM with a super low intro payment. And then once it adjusted, the payment was almost doubled. He couldn’t make it, he can’t handle it, he ended up losing the house.
Bruce Norris Wasn’t the assumption that the red next refi would just be there?
Cary Pearce Yeah, that’s what everybody thought the depreciation was still going to keep going gangbusters. And so they thought, you know, how can I lose? I’ll be fine.
Bruce Norris Yeah.
Cary Pearce Then we all saw what happened.
Bruce Norris Yeah. And they weren’t, they weren’t as borrowing on one house. There was a guy that met me after I did a talk about the California crash. Just as a club talk, so I was, you know, talking for 45 minutes and raised the idea that this could go down. And he met me with a 63 property page that had minus 20 grand equity or minus 20, grand payments, after rents.
Cary Pearce Wow.
Bruce Norris And he was perfectly comfortable mentally, because he just thought he could refi it, or he could sell it and make millions of dollars. That was, that was the attitude toward the debt at the time.
Cary Pearce Yeah, I remember that. And, you know, going back a little earlier, I remember somewhere about 93, gentlemen here in Riverside that did a lot of flips, in addition to you. He towards the end there actually was paying to close escrows just to get rid of the properties and get rid of the payments. You know, so he was basically negative in the whole to get rid of those properties towards the end.
Bruce Norris Yeah, well, getting out was probably good, really good idea, especially if you’re talking about 06, 07 because that was a that was just going to be a drop. And it was so fast, because we are still in the flipping business. So, when we bought an REO say 2008, we actually subtracted 20%, about off of the price, thinking we’re going to hold it for six months, and the retail number will be 20% different than what it is right now. Yeah. So, that was…
Cary Pearce What we did. Go ahead.
Bruce Norris I said we weren’t, unfortunately, we weren’t disappointed. That was an accurate number.
Cary Pearce But when we were doing the majority of our flips, thanks to your push. This was like 97, 98 Most of the houses we bought back then were around 65,000 and we were selling them for 130, 235.
Bruce Norris Right.
Cary Pearce After, you know, fixed up, you know, we we’d average probably 30 to 40 grand a house, making them super nice. So, that they would sell super fast.
Bruce Norris Right.
Cary Pearce But we did a flip about five years ago, the highest one, and I was a little nervous at the time. The wife bought it for 270, here in Riverside, over on Luthor, and she actually sold that thing for 390. So, I was I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it.
Bruce Norris Yeah, there’s, there’s some cycles to pricing. Sometimes you just kind of shake your head and go, I can’t believe that that’s actually occurred. And California is, you know, we’ll cover this in a minute. But you know, we’re certainly there again, at the prices, some of their places that are bringing, you kind of shake your head and go, Okay, well, that’s a little higher than I ever I ever thought there was. This is kind of a funny story. We used to teach the boot camps out of the office in Riverside. And to do some research, I would always plug in Okay, show me homes in Moreno Valley under 100. When we started doing the boot camps, there was lots of them. As time went by, okay, under 200. We hadn’t done a boot camp in a while, and I was just curious what I would get. So, this is probably 2004 or five, and I said 200 or under and there was nothing.
Cary Pearce Yes.
Bruce Norris And then 300 and under, and there was like a mobile home, like two properties under 300 grand. So, in my head, I actually thought well, they must have really improved the area. So, I drove out there and nothing had happened to the area cars were still parked on the grass and it still felt uncomfortable if you were there in the dark, but the price had gone completely nuts and you know we’re, we’re there again. I wanted to ask you about the attitude of the borrower going back into that boom cycle. 04 to 07, what was their attitude about accessing equity constantly?
Cary Pearce It was still going on. I like the classic example, my neighbor across the street, you know, he was pulling money out of his investment properties to go buy more investment properties. Everybody had the attitude that, you know, you can’t, you can’t go wrong was real estate, you know, it just gonna go up up. Let’s just get more of it. But sadly, he ended up losing, I think a couple of those properties in Utah.
Bruce Norris Well, that was actually the next question that, did they contemplate the possibility of a downside. And you’ve already answered it at the time?
Cary Pearce That he got into a situation like the guy who explained where his payments were, the rents weren’t enough to make his payments. And he was, you know, over five grand a month in the negative. And he just didn’t have the income to cover that.
Bruce Norris Yeah, and I think he probably they all just thought, well, this is going to go up, go up and up and up in value. Susie Leivas does our taxes. So, she’s always been a good barometer, barometer to talk to after tax season, because she’ll have the mood of the participant, let’s say. So during the cycle, it was everybody’s refunding at least two or three times and buying toys.
Cary Pearce Yeah. Oh, yeah. We didn’t do a lot of that.
Bruce Norris Yeah, so that was, that was a lot of the business. And then, you know, all of a sudden one and ended, you know, when you have a price crash of 50% in a couple of years. That’s, that’s crazy. So, the fact that you survived in the loan business, what, who were you lending to?
Cary Pearce We, I mean, there’s still people buying, there’s always people buying, so we just, you know, when the refi die out, you know, we have to be in sight with the realtors that we work with to make sure they don’t forget about us. So, we never forget about our Realtors, you know, we always market to them, primarily. And then we just take the refi that come when the markets are up and down. But we always try to focus on purchase. And over my career, I would say the purchase business has been on average, in most markets about 70% and about 30 refi. But in a high refi boom, obviously, it’ll go 50/50.
Bruce Norris Right. 2019 We, we took a look at what was going on. And it felt like it was kind of peaking in price. We had, I look at the charts and say, Okay, we have unbelievably good charts. Nobody’s in foreclosure, there’s no REOs to compete with the the market. And we had very little price movement in 2019. And I actually thought, Okay, we’re, we’re probably going to have a flat period or a down period, if we can’t go up with these charts. If we have any negative charts, it’ll, it’ll be a negative impact on price. And then all of a sudden the pandemic happened.
Cary Pearce Right. None of us ever saw that happening. And 20 and 21. were our two biggest years ever, at least for me personally.
Bruce Norris Yeah, that would make perfect sense because I mean, the amount of times you could refi the same house and save money would probably be every six months. Pretty easy.
Cary Pearce Yeah.
Bruce Norris Were people doing that?
Cary Pearce Yes, definitely.
Bruce Norris Okay. Yeah, that makes, that makes perfect sense. I don’t know. Did you get into the I want to do a room addition to my house thing? Or is that how they did a refi. And they had some cash, and they did some of those things?
Cary Pearce We did a lot of that. But most of the people would pull the cash out and then start the project. Because obviously we don’t want the house torn up and we’re trying to do a loan on it.
Bruce Norris What was the attitude, was the attitude different reifying as far as pulling equity, was it different in 2021 and 2020, versus the boom that we had were 2005 and six and seven? Was there an attitude of more being more conservative borrowing from your house?
Cary Pearce On? No. I mean, we had a lot of people starting to buy second homes out of state in the last two years that we hadn’t seen before. You know, many people pulling the cash out of their primary residence and going off to Tennessee or Arizona or wherever and buying a second home.
Bruce Norris That’s interesting. Now is that because they think they will eventually move there? That’s just…
Cary Pearce Yeah most of them that’s their plan, you know, until it once they retire, working locally that they want to move off to those states but they wanted to secure the house now while the prices were still within their budget, you know, affordability.
Bruce Norris Okay. Well, there are a fair amount of people that shifted to a lower, let’s say, not a 30 but a 15 year loan.
Cary Pearce We did do a lot of that taking people out of 30s and putting them into 15 Just trying to shorten that time for retirement so that the house would be close to paid off once they did retire.
Bruce Norris Right. Yeah, it was is one of those very unusual opportunities. If you wanted to borrow money that you’d have to would, you’d have to look at a chart and go, I guess if we’re ever going to do that it would be now.
Cary Pearce Yeah.
Bruce Norris So what was the odds of somebody getting an adjustable loan back then?
Cary Pearce Over the last three years, I have not done one adjustable, you know, I can probably go back 10 years and say that I haven’t done an adjustable loan, I just put in my first one last week, a client’s buying a second home in Michigan. And what happened early this year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made changes to second home pricing, it used to be priced the same as an owner occupied loan.
Bruce Norris Okay.
Cary Pearce Where you could get a second home for the owner lock rate. Well, they realized too many people were buying second homes and their risk was going up in their minds. So, they started adding all these price level adjustments. And now they’re priced the same as a non owner loan. So, the clients that I just got for the Michigan property, a 30-year fixed was going to be 7%, and around to two and a half points. And he got a seven year fixed for 5% at about a half a point.
Bruce Norris Okay. So, now let’s take a look at 2022. And what percentage of the lending businesses is gone? And what percentage of now what is the ratio of purchase to refi?
Cary Pearce Refi’s are down over 70%.
Bruce Norris That’s all? That’s all?
Cary Pearce I mean some, in some lenders cases, it could be more, because there’s some lenders out there that all they did was focus on refi’s.
Bruce Norris Okay.
Cary Pearce But we’ve always been heavy purchase oriented here. So, I mean, but our business is still down by over 50%. Overall.
Bruce Norris Yeah.
Cary Pearce And the majority of that is the revised that are gone.
Bruce Norris Right. Okay. Do you see that being a long term trend, as long as interest rates are pretty high?
Cary Pearce Anybody’s guess at this point. I mean, we’re hoping I think I introduced or told you about Barry Habib. He’s the guy that we follow out in New Jersey, that gives us his insight on rates. And this was after your last seminar. But he has since put out a report that he thinks rates could get back under five, by the end of this year, maybe the beginning of next year, he actually thinks rates will come down. So, that was encouraging. And if that’s the case, I think that’s going to help us.
Bruce Norris Oh, I’m sure it would, you know, we’re in this ,we’re building houses to sell. And they’re still selling. That’s what’s, that’s what’s going on. So, these aren’t flips. These are new builds that have gotten finished. And so we have, my son just got a full price offer on one of his homes. We sold two or three houses last with suitable offers on one of them. So, still, there’s still buyers in Florida. And I’m sure buyers in California. If interest rates are five, you know, you’d need a very short chart to be disappointed at 5%. Would you?
Cary Pearce Yeah.
Bruce Norris So, it’s all recent history. That five is awful. But take a look at 1980 to now and you go okay, wow, that’s…
Cary Pearce Yeah, five is very reasonable. Even, six is still reasonable.
Bruce Norris Yes, it really is. And maybe, maybe it just takes a while for that to warm up and go, Okay, well, that’s, that’s okay. That’s normal. You know, what’s also good, I’d like your opinion on this. I don’t own any rentals in California. But in, in, I don’t know, rents have gone up a lot there. In Florida, the rents have gone up so much, that a payment at five or 6% interest is equivalent to rent in the areas that were specking houses.
Cary Pearce Yeah, when we were at three, three and a quarter, you can still say that about California, it was cheaper to buy the house than rent. But now that prices have gone up even more, and now that rates are up over five, you know, that does the math doesn’t work anymore. You can rent cheaper than you can own.
Bruce Norris But there’s, but there’s still advantages to owning. So, it may not be such a dichotomy that you go, Okay, well, I’ll never own because when you have a payment, you have a principal reduction too so yeah, my payments more, but I’m getting, getting, I’m getting equity gain each month.
Cary Pearce You got to look at the investment. And that’s one of the things that Barry pointed out in some of his talks that, you know, if you’ve got a borrower who buys you know, let’s just say a half a million dollar house and put 50,000 down well, their investments 50 and if that home goes up 5% a year, you know, in a couple of years, you know, they’ve got 100% return on their money, not counting the principal reduction. So, no, it’s still a good investment.
Bruce Norris Yeah, I mean, that’s, you know, I, I want to own my own house. I mean, that’s just embedded in me for ever , I still remember with some emotion me cutting my grass for the first time. And I actually, I actually felt like a man, I was like 21 years old. And I felt like I had join, join the adult world. I’m cutting my own grass, no equity. My, my windows don’t open, but hey, I’m a homeowner.
Cary Pearce I remember the exact same feeling it closed on my 20th birthday. But I did have a buddy from high school, we bought it together. But still, you know, we were so proud to say, hey, we’re 20 years old when we bought our own house.
Bruce Norris Yeah. Well, you know, you know, you know, five, working on California crash, and I think, okay, price is really going to take a hit. And I live in on Piedmont, which at the time was probably going for 1,000,002. And I thought, obviously, it would be good time to sell. So, I called up and tried to be a renter for one conversation. And the guy fortunately asked me a good question. I told him, you know, I’ll pay you a year in advance, not your typical renter. And he goes, Oh, that’s great. I’d like to ask you a question. He said, Do you have any pets? And there was a pause. And I said, I’m so glad you asked me that question. Because I remembered why I owned it was, so no one got to ask me that.
Cary Pearce Right.
Bruce Norris I if I want to pet and want to pet if I want to paint the house purple, I can do that. So I was worth that home ultimately sold for 500 grand less than the peak. And I could care less, I would still rather do that. And do, would do it again. Just because I want to own that’s exactly where I’m at you know,
Cary Pearce You don’t have to ask anybody for permission or, you know, whatever. It just you do what you want to do.
Bruce Norris Yeah, to me, that’s, that’s just being part of like the American dream. That would be I wouldn’t want to go home without having the key to the door of the house I own that’s just embedded in my, in my heart, you know?
Cary Pearce Exactly.
Bruce Norris Yeah. What is the bio, excuse me. What is the owners feeling about staying in the house, because he’s got such a great loan.
Cary Pearce Right now the people that are calling us for getting money out, it’s not making sense for them to touch those 3% loans. And a lot of them are under three, you know, there’s some that are two and seven eighths, two or three quarters. So, what most of them are doing now is just doing the HELOC to get access to the equity.
Bruce Norris Do you think their intention is to sell or to stay?
Cary Pearce I think most will stay. I mean, obviously, there’s certain situations that come up.
Bruce Norris Sure.
Cary Pearce You know, divorce or whatever loss of job, layoff, but most of the people, you know, that have those low rates, you know, are planning to stick around a while.
Bruce Norris Yeah, that’s, you know, that’s really what I you know, I didn’t know what the answer would be. The, my assumption would be that there’ll be a lot less inventory for sale, unless there’s a circumstance where their life changes, okay, I lost my job, I’m gonna go to Tennessee to get a new one. And prices are cheaper there anyway, so I you know, I can afford the five or 6% rate, I can see that occurring, but I really think there’s a great percentage of the people that have those loans that probably are just saying we’re good, we’re staying.
Cary Pearce Right and I’m one of those people you know, luckily I did an adjustable loan back in 2005. And at the time, it was a five and three quarter five year fixed loan and ever since that five year ended rate has gone down, I ended up at two and three quarters you know, the six year and I haven’t touched that loan since and I haven’t had to.
Bruce Norris Wow.
Cary Pearce So, and what we’re now we’re building equity, you know, a couple 1000 a month going to principal, so, you know, we’re just gonna sit tight.
Bruce Norris Okay.
Cary Pearce And most likely will probably.
Narrator For more information on hard money, loans and upcoming events with The Norris Group, check out thenorrisgroup.com. For information on passive investing with trust deeds, visit tngtrustdeeds.com.
Aaron Norris The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669. For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.
