HousingWire’s Brena Nath sits down with industry veteran Greg Sher for an on-the-ground conversation recorded during MBA Secondary at the NYSE and in the heart of Times Square. They dive into the significance of physical presence at major events and how visibility drives momentum in housing media and mortgage lending.
The interview pulls back the curtain on HousingWire’s content strategy, including upcoming initiatives at The Gathering in Colorado Springs. Greg reflects on the power of video, the responsibility of thought leadership, and why now is the time to show up and speak up in housing.
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00:00Greg share the man who needs no introduction I would say okay industry aficionado technically
00:14managing director at NFM lending honestly I feel like man of the industry at this point is really
00:21what I think I'm excited about for the podcast for this interview but also for the insights that
00:26you're seeing in the space we're live right now at NBA secondary how is the energy things that have
00:33stood out to you so far I think people are excited about the new administration change believe it or
00:38not Bill Pulte seems like he's going to be very collaborative and I think we're getting some
00:44clarity on some issues and it's an exciting time to be in the business I know a lot of people feel
00:49like the headwinds are strong and insurmountable but I just want to remind everybody that every
00:54time we've been in one of these periods it has been the precursor to something phenomenal on the
01:01other side and this will be no different the question is when is that going to occur like
01:05when are rates going to go down to that you know Logan area of six percent that he says is going
01:10to completely change the game he talked about that at the economic summit yeah that housing wire held
01:16and but I don't think it needs to go that low yeah I think we saw that when rates bump down 30 basis
01:23points a couple of months ago there was a lot of activity just in a 24 to 36 hour period we have a
01:29lot of inventory on the market now you know and that keeps growing I think the litmus test for the
01:35market if rates stay high we could be in for some kind of a pretty significant correction if rates do
01:41come down 50 basis points or so I think that that could spur activity and keep home prices where they
01:47are but the forecast is not unbelievable for housing prices I mean it's 20 percent three years ago four
01:55percent last year MBA is saying two percent this year and so we're heading towards flat in 2026 so
02:02the trajectory isn't great what could turn that around again is lower rates you're in a lot of
02:07these conversations too with whether that's administration people are also mainly executives in
02:12the space what are they thinking how are they approaching it what you just kind of laid out has a
02:17couple paths to it okay we do go down to the sixes or we don't what happens in the industry how are you
02:24seeing people hopefully ensure that they either take advantage of this that kind of bottom this
02:30time how are you prepped what are you doing in order for the market to ship that way or it doesn't
02:34happen and so what is the impact there if the industry whether that's the impact technology
02:39could have the impact of like looking at your bottom line how what are the shifts you have to
02:43make so given those routes how are industry leaders in the conversations you're seeing preparing for
02:47that it's a great question so I do have an opinion on this so thank you for asking I mean rocket is a
02:52it's a major disruptor at this moment and they've got a massive head start on everybody else and they've
02:57been doing it for a long time and the acquisitions are really impressive and they've got you know
03:03Varun and a great leadership team so look none of us are going to catch up to rocket right now okay and
03:08they're literally lapping the field every single day and and that's okay what IMBs and other smaller
03:14mortgage companies need to be doing and I believe most of them are at this time is just focusing on
03:18stuff that they can control cost to produce outsourcing making sure their headcount is where
03:23it needs to be integrating AI where they can to smooth out the friction in the process and again lower
03:29the cost to produce and what I think is going to happen is you're going to have the haves and the
03:34have-nots so you're going to have you're going to have the companies that are focusing on those
03:38things that are you really have their eye on the ball that are doing enough to create this bridge
03:44between where they are now and where rocket is but the companies that don't and and believe it or not
03:49there's still many companies out there that don't have any AI and I would say one out of every two
03:55companies are not used they have no use case for AI at all I don't know if they're hoping that it goes
03:59away I don't know what their hope is yeah but um it's not going away yeah and so what I think is
04:04going to happen is the companies that are doing the things that I just mentioned will stay in the
04:09game and then the third-party vendors are going to start to catch up with rocket and and at that point
04:17they're going to give the companies that are still around the tools to close the gap and that's my
04:23opinion on you know that topic and I think that most companies that are still around right now are going to
04:29be in it for the longer haul but make no mistake everyone's looking at the economics right now of
04:35their own institutions and I think there there are a lot of legacy owners in our space that are it's
04:40gut check time right now like everybody thought it would be better two three years ago and here we are
04:44still in this blaze not sure how much longer it's going to last so I mean I know quite a few CEOs that
04:49have had conversations with other CEOs about potentially merging and uh nevertheless it's an interesting
04:56time and I know you have the AI summit coming up yeah uh shortly and I'm really looking forward to
05:00that last year was phenomenal but just think about all the strides that have been made since then
05:04what's the date of that again I gotta book my flight August 12th don't miss it right you know
05:09in the thick of school starting you want to get your education also on AI so we're all going to be
05:13learning together at that time I would say and you just naturally you know ahead of that direction
05:18I think is great but you look at to your point we had rocket at the gathering last year and they
05:25revealed a you know their new technology on stage about the power of AI and it's only continued to
05:31grow they've had acquisitions they have growth you know that team is kind of drilling in and
05:35conversations that you and I have had now I'm like okay you have rocket you have these big players
05:40how do you compete with that these big players are you know getting big what are the other people
05:44what does the future person look like what does the future LO look like how do you stay strategically
05:49competitive I think there's one answer to that you get to the consumer faster quicker before anybody
05:56else and that right there is the holy grail so whoever masters that is going to be in the driver's
06:01seat for the next five years and beyond and that's largely what rocket is trying to do you know the
06:06real question is how important will being ingrained in the communities continue to be from city to city
06:13town to town how important will it be to know where the coffee shop is and you know where the best
06:18schools are and the playgrounds and things like that to me you know I'd like to think I'm old school
06:23that that's going to remain really important I don't think rocket's making that bet necessarily I
06:28think they think and they may be right that if they could just deliver a streamline dependable
06:33process that touches every facet of your finances that that will be enough to have people
06:39maybe not put so much importance in where in in whoever's selling them alone yeah being right
06:46there in the community and that's a they could be right to your question on how things are going to
06:52change I'm seeing some incredible modeling right now around AI voice bots and it's moving very very fast
07:02so I've heard several examples of real examples of consumers having conversations with chat bots
07:10and the bot overcoming objections like literally I heard one the other day where the consumer's like
07:17yeah I'm good and then this this voice like work them through like oh tell me why you're feeling that
07:22way and so by the end of the conversation the consumer's like you know what I'll take the call and
07:27they went to a live transfer to a loan officer and we're just in the infancy right now we're literally
07:32in the top of the first inning nobody out and uh it's moving at such light speed there's a lot of
07:37money pouring into the space right now so I just can't wait for the AI summit I'm so excited about
07:42it I'll definitely be there for sure that's uh can I just say something about housing wire yeah I'll
07:47receive it do you mind no please continue don't what what I love most about what you guys are doing
07:52is that you're you're helping us identify the blueprint for all of these answers there's never
07:59been anyone in the space and I've been in it 27 28 years who has worked so feverishly hard to help
08:06everybody find the path and find the way and just the amount of intellect and knowledge and experience
08:12that you guys bring to the table at every one of these conferences it's just mind-blowing to me and
08:16I really appreciate it I just want to thank all of you for for all that you do because we we get a lot of
08:21our answers in the work that you're doing and that's an incredible partnership thanks for that
08:26it's really that collaborate it's you know it's between our it's our partners our attendees our
08:31team all of that coming together to create that science and magic no and in the other and and you
08:37know you talk about partners let's talk about vendors for a second because there's this idea that
08:41all vendors and and it's depending on where you are like some vendors are in your face constantly like
08:47oh you know buy this but so respectful at at your events and and collaborative and just the the
08:53relationships and we need them like the third party I just told you oh my gosh I just told you how I see
08:58this thing unfolding yeah like I'm relying on the third party vendors to come in and close that gap
09:04between where we are and where rocket is so to me third party vendors are the unsung heroes of our
09:10industry and creating the needs that you just said I think they're having this conversations with people like you
09:15other leaders and saying where is the need where can we step in to help you be competitive and
09:21actually challenge this you have this notion in the industry right now that there's technology but
09:26it's still just as expensive as ever to get a mortgage but that narrative is going to get questioned
09:31and so how do we take that how do we drive forward um and expect our technology to not always be like
09:38that actually make a difference help us with this lead funnel help us with carrying the loan to the
09:43the right person who has an active borrower by the time it gets to it sounds like the loan officer
09:47they're ready or they're more interested
09:49they are I think mortgage companies need to do a better job of uh keeping an eye on the tech bloat
09:55like all of our tech stacks are only utilized by 10 percent or so yeah so I mean there's so much
10:00excess and then now there's so much overlapping too I mean I literally we literally are have
10:06year-long contracts multi-year contracts with vendors that do the same thing like everyone's got
10:12market intelligence right now and so as we talk about the idea of survival and keeping an eye on
10:20the cost to produce it's really important that mortgage companies pay very close attention to
10:25their tech stacks and and a lot of that has to do with tightening up the vendor management
10:30I can't tell you how many times uh our vendor management or I'm not I'm not putting our vendor
10:35management department down but look it's we're in a very busy business like everybody's focused on just
10:41making sure that we can survive right so it's hard to keep your eye on every single ball really got
10:45to tighten up the governors on what kind of contracts come in like loan officers feel like they need to
10:50have it I've got to have this you know sign this and so it's very important to have multi layers to
10:58that approval process so that you don't end up looking up and having five systems that do even two
11:04systems that do the same thing um is is a burden and so that is an area where the industry
11:11could do a better job nfm on my company you know needs to do a better job and we are largely but
11:15it's the problem is all of these contracts have different termination dates right so if you're
11:23locked up into something where you've got another 24 months and you see some a better product hit the
11:28market you're stuck yeah you can't do anything yeah so you really have to make sure you're doing the
11:32homework really diligently up front to make sure this is a partner that not only has something that I need
11:38right now but that has a leadership team that's going to continue to innovate yeah yeah you touched
11:45on the themes that have all of us very um excited to bring these conversations today I summit August
11:5112th I repeat it here it's important to to say it again and it's those themes of like onboarding the
11:56themes of the tech stack the things of how do you make sure you're getting the roi around it but also
12:00where are the points that things are getting interesting like where's the technology headed a lot of the ai
12:06summit in 2024 focused on what is ai here let's lay the foundation let's lay the framework whereas
12:13this year we're drilling down a little bit more into here are the use cases that we're seeing here
12:17are how it's applying and all those themes what else before kind of we wrap up greg did you you know
12:22would you share and touch on that people could stay tuned for look forward to whether it's on the
12:26technology space seeing you at the gathering coming up yeah I'm looking forward to that as far as ai is
12:31concerned um there there's a company that was first to market this is a great example I'm not going to
12:36mention any names but there was a company that hit the market a year and a half two years ago that got
12:40a lot of traction a lot of signups because they were the first in well this particular software doesn't
12:45do anything to move the needle for sales and so it's basically just a place where you dump and store all of
12:52your company documents where there's a use case for it it's great so your hr manuals um your guidelines
13:01um payroll dates you know um sometimes a scenario desk like all these things are here
13:07the winners and losers will be to me determined by what systems can generate sales
13:15right and so it's great to have something that houses all your documents maybe that saves you a little
13:20bit of time knowing it's all in one place to me that's just what the intranet is like we have an
13:24intranet most companies do right i mean that's what that is we've just moved it all somewhere else
13:29what we've done at nfm is we we've we have a partner called inside.ai i-n-s-y-d-e.ai
13:36and what that does is it it marries the los to the crm and brings it into this ecosystem so that loan
13:44officers who largely don't use any technology that we have they depend on other people or they're
13:51never in it they can sit in one place at one dashboard pull loan data in and then create
13:58actionable things on the marketing side by tapping into the crm and again they don't ever have to leave
14:04the space and so things like that that can generate tangible sales and ring the register
14:10that's really really crucial to get back to the original question that you asked about
14:16what are companies doing to survive as companies think about ai i would not sign up with anybody
14:22that is not generating sales for you and your company because we there's enough expense and we
14:29have enough expenses what can ai do to not only lower cost to produce but bring in sales especially
14:35on the retention side which is what i just described you and we're doing that like we had a day
14:40where uh you might remember like a month ago rates went down pretty substantially for about
14:44a 24 48 hour period we had one of our branches uh as a result of this ai tool that marries the crm and
14:51the los sent out a bunch of alerts with quotes to all of their past clients locked i think 137 loans
14:58wow in a 24-hour period over 30 million of volume generated from this ai tool that's powerful that's so
15:03powerful and like look back you don't have to look back many years to know that that's so far above
15:08that's just from where they've come yeah that's just a little glimpse though yeah ai is the it's
15:13going to be so revolutionary everyone needs to open up their eyes and understand it's not going
15:17anywhere yeah yeah it's here to stay those are great collets what i appreciate from all of this is
15:25it's taking this ai word and pulling it back down to tangible takeaways that you can deliver action
15:31on everything you just said if you're taking notes sitting here thinking okay i see those use
15:35cases this is how i want to take and those are the same type of um strategies thinking framework that
15:42we use for building our agendas okay whether the ai summit the gathering people sitting here can say
15:47okay i see how greg's approaching this a market he's talking high level but then drilling it down
15:51we want people to leave our events with that same type of thing which is why we appreciate you having
15:56on the stage greg um so i thank you um always good our relationship goes back to um i know the days
16:01you've launched forward thinking when it comes to social media to now see how you're approaching ai
16:06so thank you for the conversation it's a pleasure can't wait to see in a few days at the gathering
16:10i'll be on stage with jennifer beastin who's just a fabulous producer who has over a hundred
16:15thousand followers on youtube and generates two to three hundred million a year and loan volume all
16:20through her youtube channel which is another great example great example of how is someone doing
16:24this consumer direct how are they reaching the consumer what are they doing with that consumer
16:28um for sure and what does that system look like going forward we did it thanks greg thanks for
16:33the invite it's amazing what it's amazing what can happen at a bar you know thank you so much