Maria Coutu & Christina Tatum: Atlantic Coast Title and Escrow

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Christina Tatum  0:30  

Hey, this is Maria kutu and Christina Tatum of Atlantic coast. Title and Escrow. If you are looking to improve your real estate business, you need to be listening to the real estate excellence podcast with our good friend Tracy Hayes.

Podcast Intro  0:40  

Welcome to Real Estate excellence making lasting connections to the best of the best in today's industry, elite. We'll help you expand your circle of influence by introducing you to the leaders in the real estate industry, whether it's top agents who execute at a high level every day, or the many support services working behind the scenes, we'll share their stories, ideologies and the inner workings of how they run a truly successful business, and show you how to add their tools to your belt now, please welcome the host with the most Tracy Hayes,

Tracy Hayes  1:12  

today, we have a special show today for our listeners. I have an amazing Title and Escrow Company here in Jacksonville. The two partners are both attorneys who come from two different law paths to join together. What I want to focus today is digging into these two very intelligent, entrepreneurial women and how they run their business, not only internally, but marketing and as well in this competitive area of Title and Escrow. Let's find out how they differentiate themselves and really wow the buyers and sellers, typically the last stop in the home buying and selling process. So let's welcome Maria and Christina Tato of Atlantic Coast title at escrow. I totally apologize that, because, you know what I said to myself? I was sitting here typing, actually, to put the little thing on the screen that the listeners you can see, if you're watching Facebook live right now, you can see that, and I was spelling, I'm make sure I spelled your name correctly, yeah. And I said, Oh, I gotta ask as soon as Maria come in, because I always forget there's always somebody that hasn't right. When you started, I said he didn't verify my last Exactly. It's definitely All right. So how do you pronounce the server? It's kutu, kutu.

Maria Coutu  2:18  

Technically, it's kutu, but I cannot say that, so I just say kutu. My father in law says,

Tracy Hayes  2:23  

so almost like without the, oh, just, just, yeah, tutu, yeah, okay. Is that an islander name? What is? What is French Canadian? French Canadian, okay, all right, I would first, my first thing with that would be like some Pacific Islander, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  2:40  

Kutu. Okay, all right, we'll just call her Maria.

Tracy Hayes  2:44  

But ladies, welcome to the show. And you know, obviously, you know real estate agents is 99% of who I have on, but I like to bring on occasional we had cursed on for a little while ago, a few weeks back, but you guys are working with the agents, and we're all in the same industry, and a lot of times we're after doing a lot of things similarly, right? And then obviously you guys come from two different law backgrounds, based on what I could tell of what you guys got to say. So I want to start off the show from where you from to what went you went into, into the different law practices, to now going in the title in escrow. So I'm really curious how you guys did that, and obviously, how you met and join that. I'm sure the listeners, they give a little background. And then I want to just, you know, turn in and talk about business, how you guys are running your office, and what separates Atlantic coast from the other title companies, because it is very competitive. And then we'll talk about some of my pet peeves. As a lender towards title companies, I have a very short list of approved title companies. So let's make sure you guys can get on that list. All right, so Maria, let's start off. Let's start off with you. I know you ended up at Western Carolina. Where are you from?

Maria Coutu  3:52  

I'm from Murphy, North Carolina, so the mountains of North Carolina. So right above Blue Ridge as everyone through covid blew up and went to her vacations, yep. So right over the North Carolina line, I'm from, and then I went to Western Carolina for college, and was there for, what is that, four years, and then moved down here for law school.

Tracy Hayes  4:10  

So you specifically came to Jacksonville to come to the Florida coastal

Maria Coutu  4:15  

Yes, yep, yep. So they offered me the biggest scholarship at the time, that wins April weekend. I pretty much had already committed to a law school in Chicago, and I was dead set. I was dating someone at the time that went to Butler in Indiana, and it was close. And I was like, Oh no, I'm going to Chicago. And I came down here on April weekend, and it was so I was like, I don't know. I think I could live in Florida for a little bit. And so ended up making that decision and moving down.

Tracy Hayes  4:39  

Oh, I can, you know I did well, because when I first started my career was with Quicken Loans, and I'd follow my now wife to Michigan. And yeah, that's a different cold. They're coming off those lakes. And yeah, that's, it's a different, different lifestyle. So you initially, if I you went with one of the big law firms, or ended up with one of the at one of the big law firms here in town, you're. Welcome to mention my one. If you want to, you can, but into, what's the terminology I want to use into civil litigation, personal injury, yeah. Personal Injury, civil Yeah. Civil litigation. Is that when you, when you went to Western Carolina and in, I think was poli sci major, right? It was probably, I mean, was law eventually, always on there? Is that something you decided later?

Maria Coutu  5:19  

I've always wanted to be a lawyer from the very beginning, I'm one of seven kids, so we grew up, obviously, with not much, because there were so many of us. And I always wanted to be something that I knew I'd always be able to provide a nice life for I don't know what kind of law I wanted to do. Always was intrigued by the real estate side of law, but when I got into law school, I obviously I've had a job my entire life, since I was my entire adult life, since I was 15. And so when I started law school, I obviously had to get a job right away. The first firm that hired me was a personal injury firm, and I ended up working for them all through law school. And so that was the experience I had. And so I got a job immediately after, I took the bar with the personal injury for a firm, a smaller one over in San Marco, and then I ended up going over to fair and fair. Obviously that everybody knows the signs everywhere. Loved radio, yes, the ads are much better. They've definitely, they're on the up and up, for sure. But I loved working there. Loved the people. I loved editing Chuck. They gave me every opportunity. They support everything that I needed to move up with in their company. Their company. It was just that area of law was just a little soul draining for me, like I just couldn't, couldn't keep doing it. It was too much.

Tracy Hayes  6:30  

So, you know, everyone gives it, gives it a bad rap and everything. There's two sides to every story. I mean, everybody you know, if they are, you know, knocked down by somebody, if you want to use that word, or in a car accident, whatever it is, you need to get, you know, brought back whole right? That's what insurance is for. Yeah, exactly. And, I mean, I guess really can it? Can it wear you down? Because I think the stereotypical thing is that the lawyers in a lot of the insurance companies are basically a lot of times in bed with each other, in the sense of coming to some of these agreements being done, because they try to settle a lot out of court. You try to

Maria Coutu  7:07  

settle a lot out of court, for sure. So I worked in, like the pre suit, where you tried to settle a lot out of court for the first couple of years. I did civil litigation the last few and the actual litigation where we're actually filing the lawsuits and moving forward with it that way. And you're right in a sense, like it is definitely there are good things and bad things about it, but it is a business. At the end of the day, it's a massive business, right? And so, you know, the insurance companies are spending the money just to make things go away, but obviously they're sometimes not doing the right thing. And that's why all these lawyers have jobs, because they're not doing the right thing.

Tracy Hayes  7:40  

Well, their job is to save themselves money, and your job is to make your customer get whatever that may be. Yeah, it's

Maria Coutu  7:46  

just, it's super hard, especially when it's on paper, because humans aren't on paper, and so it's just something where you're fighting the same battle every day. And so, you know, now, I don't people don't necessarily cry at my closing table,

Maria Coutu  7:59  

ruining my life, or anything like that, right? It's a much better, better area

Tracy Hayes  8:04  

of law, for sure. Okay, Christina, let's jump over to you could, because your LinkedIn was that's not up to speed, but we're gonna get it there. Where are you from?

Christina Tatum  8:12  

I'm originally from Virginia. Moved down to the outdoor Atlanta area. I was a new girl in middle school, but I graduated high school from a little town called Hiram, right outside Atlanta. And then I went to Georgia State University, transferred over to the University of West Georgia, and then my husband and I came down to Florida, similar to Maria, for me to go to law school in Jacksonville, because they

Tracy Hayes  8:32  

so did you go to Florida coastal or did you go? I did scholarship as well. Yeah. So is that where you guys? Did you guys meet there? Is that? So this summer,

Christina Tatum  8:39  

she moved down. I was going into my third year of law school, and we met before Maria was going into her first so we were actually friends prior to

Maria Coutu  8:49  

so we met through mutual friends, like, two months before school started.

Christina Tatum  8:53  

I actually met them or met Maria the weekend that she met Steven Coutu, my husband. He was also an agent.

Maria Coutu  9:00  

I was on like a date, like a second date, with my husband, and we were going to meet some people that he worked with, and they were friends with Christina and her husband. Okay, so All right, so I've known them all the same time. I've known summer of

Tracy Hayes  9:10  

2011 This is 2000 This is 2011 Okay, so both of you take different paths. Now, you did have a fun fact we were talking about on your bio. I did. Yes, you did. Christina lived in Mexico, studied law in France, hiked the Swiss Alps has backpacked through Europe. Tell us a little bit

Maria Coutu  9:27  

about that. I definitely took advantage of my school year. So I lived in Mexico for a summer when I was an undergrad with a family. It was really, really cool experience. And then when I came into law school the summer after my first year, I spent the summer turning and it's called, oh my gosh, it just lost me. We were in France. I can't think of the name of the town, but we lived in France, and so every weekend we would fly and hike the Swiss Alps, Italy, just backpacked and stayed in hostels, right? So, really cool experience.

Tracy Hayes  9:56  

I mean, just, you know, I think many of the people might be listening. Have kids. But how can someone look that kind of adventure up? I mean, I think the average person, obviously, time goes right on by, but I've had a couple people have had similar type experiences where they've been able to go sees for a semester, or something like that. Where do you find stuff

Maria Coutu  10:16  

like that? Just the school. It's just whatever programs they have available. Just take advantage of them, for sure.

Tracy Hayes  10:21  

Yeah, yeah, I really regret, unfortunately, was because, well, parents and then, of course, you know, you can get sued for anything. So I, you know, when I'm old enough to remember in high school where you did, like the German exchange, my sister took advantage that I took the basketball team every other year, went over to Europe and played some games and did some home stays and that sort of thing during spring break and stuff. And unfortunately, I think, you know, our world has restricted that the schools aren't so, you know, wanting to be part of that anymore, you got to go outside the school to actually participate in programs, which I think every kid needs to, every American kid needs to go somewhere else. But yeah, I think my real personal rant there so both. So your choice of law, what again, you know, hers kind of came just by. She got hired. She was just looking for a job and walked into it. And let's learn this part of law. How about yourself?

Christina Tatum  11:16  

So I grew up in a first responder family, and I always wanted to be a criminal let's state Attorney, so I actually went to law school, dead set on becoming a state attorney, and then flipped through an internship and actually wanted to do criminal defense with juveniles, and so that's what I did. So I started out public defender's office. Absolutely loved it, but similar to Maria, I was very passionate, and it kind of wore me out because I was so emotionally involved in all my cases, and it was very, very difficult. And so I ended up leaving that teaching at the law school. I was professor there for a little bit, and absolutely loved that as well, working with the students. And then I had my first baby, and the market took off. And Maria said, come on board. It's been the best decision

Tracy Hayes  11:58  

you can go home with five most of the time, except for the last couple days of the month. Yeah, I can just imagine, yo, I see, I think Kristen Lunsford is involved with the juvenile detention center. You probably seen it with the jack's real producers. And there's a group of people go down there. I've heard some of the stories out of there. I could just imagine, yeah, some of them are just heart wrenching. Yeah, you know, how do you you want to reach out? But then, you know, you'd have to reach out to all of them, right? I mean, how do you just, you know, what do you do?

Christina Tatum  12:26  

Right? It's very, it's very benefiting, though. I remember, I was working on the Christian Fernandez case, and he was a 12 year old accused of murder, and Angela Corey, who was the state attorney at the time, wanted to put him away for life. And Melissa Nelson, who is now the state attorney, who is fabulous, it's just, it's just a really tough thing to have to have to go through and see these children who weren't necessarily given what we were given in life, yeah. And it's just, yeah, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  12:51  

yeah, their circumstances, yeah. It's funny you mentioned because I don't know how I got it. So some video popped up on my youtube link talking about this boot camp down in Miami, where they bring in some of these younger, first time offenders that have done something pretty significant, right? And they run them through. It's like, there's only a couple left in the country where they do this, but they it's like a military boot camp for 18 months or 16 months. I think it goes on, and they, if they can make it out, they can get their sentence reduced. But they literally are, I want to say beat on not physically, but beat on mentally. And there is a lot of physical running and just physical activity, right? Just really breaking them down, yeah, is what their structure talk about. That made me think of that video I was watching. It was interesting. I didn't realize that actually existed, but it does wish there was more of it for those give them, because I think it would wake him up. So she is only for the younger, younger offenders. All right. So we talked about how you meet, so both of you go your separate ways. What? What gets you Maria interested? Because you you really started the company in 18, if I saw that correctly. What gets you interested in title?

Maria Coutu  13:57  

So we were on a trip up in New York visiting one of our good friends that we went to law school with. He actually, at the time, had just moved back to New York, but he had been living in Naples for a couple years, and he was doing title, and I was up there just complaining about my job, and only I don't want to do this anymore, and, you know, all the things. And he was like, we you should go into title in Jacksonville. And I was like, What's title? I had no idea. We'd obviously bought a house, but it was for some reason I remember reading a mail away closing, I don't remember why, so couldn't have tell you anything about it, but and so Christina's husband, Tyler, is a loan officer, and so he was like, yeah, there's a massive gap in our title industry in Jacksonville that is not necessarily connecting the real estate agents to the title. He was like, as you have said, as a lender, you guys sometimes have to ride the waves with some of the title companies in our area. And so I was like, Well, let me look into this a little bit. And then just did a bunch of searching. And then I just started spending all my days off, whatever days I had off, of my hours at night, just researching it and learning and doing, like continuing education, Joy. Into all the groups I could. Through the Florida Bar, found an underwriter. They then, you know, taught me everything that I needed to know when it came to the legality of it all. And then Chris, the person I was speaking about, he was like, Yeah, I'll, I'll help you, Get you, get you going, because he knew a little bit more about it. He kind of mentored me through at the beginning of it and just sink or swim. Quit my job and started it.

Tracy Hayes  15:21  

So, yeah, so he obviously was gesturing towards what I talk about. There's only, I mean, I have more fingers on my hand. There are title companies that I would personally recommend. And it's that disconnect in the process, and me, from my my side is when I have a contract customer who's somewhat excited, they haven't gone through their buyer's remorse yet, and that type of thing that's still a couple hours away. So my job is obviously get the loan in motion, the faster that I can get your numbers, which now there's technology I've been doing this 17 years, or we had to call and get, you know, and now to properly disclose, I want to disclose at your numbers, because that way they're your numbers. You have to own them. And we're not worried about, you know, making changes, having to redisclose because Dodd Frank, you know, the whole process now for us, and disclosures every time something minor even changes. And then, you know, getting them to go in there, they only have to E sign those but, but the sense of urgency, yes, and that is the first turn off when I get a contract, is to call a title company, and I even email them over the contract, just in case the agent hasn't given it again. And how well, well, we're busy, we'll get to it tomorrow, when I know it only takes 10 seconds, because I can tell you, there are title companies, literally, I've gotten it back in 10 minutes. Yeah, yeah, where you're just talking and, boom, here's our numbers. How we format. It shoots out, yeah. And it comes, comes over. So that, that's my little pet peeve there. But the also, I truly believe, you know you're sitting down, that's the you're the guys are the last people to really formally finish everything off like you said you didn't remember really how you closed. So how do you make that rememberable? That you are rememberable.

Maria Coutu  17:11  

That's the biggest thing that Christina and I pride ourselves like, that's where we shine. That is where we shine, and that is how we get the agents that close with us, and that's how we keep the agents that close with us, and that's how we keep the lenders that use us as well for whatever business they can get to us, is because our communication is, I don't personally, I don't think anyone else probably matches it. If anyone needs me, they can reach me on my cell phone at any time. They can text me, they can email me, probably a little bit of a detriment to my family, but I'm always accessible.

Tracy Hayes  17:40  

You're still growing, you're still young, until you get this big staff, and then you have other attorneys that can

Unknown Speaker  17:45  

handle it. Yeah.

Christina Tatum  17:47  

The thing though, is that we definitely pride ourselves on even though we are reachable, we are the only contact the entire transaction. So whether it's a refinance or the purchase, the buyer, seller, lender, Agent speaks with us directly. There is no middleman, there's no processor, there's no receptionist. Granted, we have someone that greets you at the door when you come into your closing, but we handle

Maria Coutu  18:07  

what she means is we have those people. We just, we have those people. We just, all the communication is through us. So that's the difference. Is, Tracy, you're sending us a CD asking us for those fees like it's me or Christina that are shooting those back over to you. But we obviously

Tracy Hayes  18:22  

have you slide just a little bit this way, this so you're centered on that camera. Good. That's better.

Maria Coutu  18:26  

Good that way. You know, things are still happening. You know, back in the day when I was the one that was ordering every single estoppel and shooting every single email and doing, you know, all the surveys and all that kind of stuff. Now we do have that staff that helps us, but the sellers, the buyers, the real estate agents, the lenders. Every person's point of contact is still through us.

Christina Tatum  18:44  

We're handling the file, so when they question, we're able to give them an answer immediately, instead of having to call the office and speak to some money.

Tracy Hayes  18:51  

Yeah, oh, so and so's got that file, right? Let me send them to your voicemail.

Christina Tatum  18:57  

Just our name on the door, like we're the ones who are actually completing the file.

Tracy Hayes  19:01  

So your your friend told you there's an opportunity there in the gap. That's Sarah Kurt Stein with House scan. He talked about the same thing, but in home inspections, yeah, the human relationship and not just throwing this report in front of somebody and saying, Yeah, hey, you know this is all things wrong with your house. He's explaining it. So obviously the stereotypical good I'm gonna go to stereotypical. So you guys can debunk me. The stereotypical vision of an attorney is that they oftentimes are not relational. You guys probably know better word than me, yeah. So when you started, was that, you know, I think you just, I mean, your focus, that you were going to make it, make this different.

Maria Coutu  19:47  

We were going to make it attorneys that are accessible. So that's the thing, is that some people, as you know, don't, don't care if there's an attorney at the closing table. Personally, obviously, we think they should,

Tracy Hayes  19:56  

well, so order doesn't require, they don't require. Exactly,

Maria Coutu  20:00  

exactly. So some people, they do. And so our biggest thing was to say, hey, we we're a title company, so we're not just coming at you as a law firm. Some people feel away about that, but we're attorneys that operate and run this title company. Every single ask is through us. And so with that, we market ourselves to all of our agents, like, Hey, if you have a legal question, if you have a title question, if you have a this person's driving me crazy, can you walk me through this question like they're always able to reach us? So that's kind of what makes us a little bit different. And our biggest thing is that we're not charging all the fees those the law firms that we have noticed tend to do. So we just keep it really simple, and we haven't ever increased our fee. Our closing fees always been the same since we started in 2018 started in 2018 we have no plans to change that. Our communication has stayed the same. The busier we get, we just add more support staff. And so I think I don't know if the

Tracy Hayes  20:51  

answer, well, your that your attitude was so my my question that I'm going for, for the listeners is, Yo, did you have to change your attitude is not the right word, approach, approach, yeah, to your approach. To, you know, you brought up in school. And I imagine a lot of attorneys kind of are, again, lack of better descriptive words, a little dry, is a stereotypical right? But now you guys are going, Oh, here's an opportunity where I can shine with my personality and my law degree.

Christina Tatum  21:22  

Yeah, that's, yeah, I feel like there's two different sides to it. So yes, we have to turn on our legal brain, but then we also have to turn on the other side. Whereas, I think where we're a little different is that Maria's husband, as we said, is an agent, a real estate agent, and my husband is a loan officer. So we we see how much work goes into it, and we see sometimes a CD has to come in to get balanced at 9pm before 8am closing the next day. We're not going to dictate that and push it. We're going to go ahead and balance it that night and make sure we get the closing package out and everybody wins. And so I think just knowing that, we need to be a team player.

Maria Coutu  21:54  

And yeah, as you said in the very beginning, like title is such a competitive industry, there's so many title companies in this area that we are out there and people are meeting us and they're like, hey, these girls are cool. We're not having to deal with all of the hoopla to get in touch with them. We're able just to reach out to them. They're not stuffy. They'll do events with us. They're going to talk to my clients. They relate to my clients. This is great, and so that's something that we try and push a lot is that we like to align ourselves with people that care about the same things that we care about, because, as we've said, we put so much time energy into these transactions that we want to make sure that it's for people that appreciate if that

Christina Tatum  22:34  

makes see the difference and see the difference. And that's paired to other title

Tracy Hayes  22:38  

companies, the seeing the difference. We're going to keep drilling down on the scene. The difference part took this quote off. I think this is off your website, a boutique title company, concierge service, personalized attention,

Christina Tatum  22:49  

yeah, so I had an agent text me last week saying, Wow, I feel like I'm your only agent, and that's our goal. We want every lender and every agent to feel that way. Yeah, anytime they have a question, anytime they needed to reach us. I mean,

Maria Coutu  22:59  

yeah, it's not lost on us that we would not have any business if they didn't go out and get the business first, right. That is it. The lenders went out and got those refi those agents went out and got those clients, they got those contracts like, it is not lost on us that you're then handing the baby over to us to get it through the finish line,

Christina Tatum  23:15  

and we want to make you guys look good, yeah, extension of your team and you trust your transaction.

Tracy Hayes  23:21  

So, so let's that kind of brings me into like, so the process you, you've, you're coming from, she's coming from the criminal side, and doing some teaching, you're, you're coming from the civil, civil side, yeah. But now title is the operational part, how it's how it flows. Now, obviously, I want to talk about when you first started and how you evolve to where you're at right now. As far You know, you guys talk about how you guys are pointing the sword, so to speak, you're you're making all the communication with that client. I guarantee someone, as there's another title company, wherever they are out in the country, going, Oh my God, these two ladies, it's gonna be crazy. They're never going to be able to grow. Because if they want to be the point of contact, it's just, they're just gonna be stuck where they're gonna hit a lid.

Maria Coutu  24:04  

Yeah, we don't need the biggest title company. We just want to be the best. Yeah, that's our. Yeah, that's our. Biggest thing is that as we have grown, because we have grown, because back when I started this thing as a little baby, it was literally me, and I had a conference room, and I had my office, had a little lobby, and so I did everything from start to finish. It was just didn't even have an assistant yet.

Tracy Hayes  24:23  

Well, David started his same way, just like that. If you listen to his podcast, he was just him for like, the first year or so. Yeah, we were hired.

Maria Coutu  24:30  

Mine was the first year and a half. And then, you know it. So I did it, did everything. And I know I don't want to necessarily do that stuff again. It is tedious, and it's a lot, because there's a lot because there's a lot of things that go into these and making sure everything's done correctly and timely, and then obviously closing to get pushed and moved up. And people have lives and so things happen. But yeah, it's going from, you know, doing all that to adding in support staff and then bringing Christina on, and it's literally just trial and error. Like we've learned a lot of things we've succeeded in a lot. Lot of things. We failed in some things, and we've just learned through it all. Like this last year has been a really big learning experience, just because, obviously the market was so great for a couple years, and then covid, and so getting back out there to market again last year like that was an interesting, you know, just turn just because it's just, you know, we got to keep up, because it's title is I

Tracy Hayes  25:21  

am seeing right now. And actually I was, I started to do a little video yesterday because I, as I invite you guys to the podcast is private page where I'll share different things that I'm doing, or someone's coming on, or if I always like to get my if there's something I learned about real quick to get it out to my internal peeps. You know my former guest, but what I wanted to go with, that she's now, I just made myself lose that thought. Sorry about that. Oh, I do that because I'm listening to you and want to get it. Let's, let's go with this, this question here, Christina, go with this one when you're doing title, explain to the audience, because really, you know, the agent is doing one thing, yeah, they've got a contract. You know that they don't have to be a lawyer, obviously, they take up, I don't know it's like 60 some hour class and some CE credits to get a contract filled out, a mortgage loan officer, little bit more, they got to take a little, probably a little bit more. I don't know if it's more difficult test. It doesn't our entry is low, right? But when it comes to title and attorneys, because you guys are actually telling us that the lender title is clear. Now, of course, why do you have entitle insurance as well to back you up? But obviously you don't want to be someone who's claiming title insurance all the time and making those claims, but the weight that's on you in doing a lot of things that Maria was just talking about doing that back end work, how important it is to have an efficient, competent title attorney.

Christina Tatum  26:45  

Yeah, so. So your question is, how we do title explain

Tracy Hayes  26:49  

the importance of the things that you're doing for someone who like others, I think a lot of people, because you guys, they only see your face a lot of times for the 45 minutes, maybe half an hour, sometimes at closing that they don't realize all the back end stuff that gotcha expand on.

Christina Tatum  27:03  

Yeah, so when they get the contract over to us, obviously, we look it over, we go and put the title search in, get that back. And I think what a lot of people don't realize is, when you purchase a house, you want to make sure there's not an IRS lien or a personal lien, or all the things, or there's an issue with the survey that they're going to have to figure out, you know, after closing. And so that's our job is to make sure that title is clear and that they're not going to have any issues moving forward after closing.

Tracy Hayes  27:29  

So when it comes to the title insurance, you know, obviously a lot of people are, why do you have Why do you have title insurance? Well, I'm going to let you guys answer that. Why do you have title insurance?

Maria Coutu  27:38  

Title Insurance, this insurance for your deeds, protecting your ownership, insurance. Ownership interest. Yeah, it protects you against third party claims. But you said, but you said, the title was clear. It is. So there can be, you know, a crazy uncle that comes out of the woodwork that says, hey, I put that fence in that he never paid me six months ago. You know, that kind of thing. So protects you against third party claims in the future for things that happened in the past, that maybe weren't recorded or maybe weren't done correctly, or, God forbid, got missed in a title search, that kind of stuff, like we have seen that happen before. So it's just just protecting your ownership, right? I mean, this property you're spending

Tracy Hayes  28:10  

well, so well the lender, the lender wants insurance, yes, because we don't want someone who the uncle or contractor that did work previous they would actually have, technically first spot on the lien, and lenders don't like anybody to be in front of them. From that standpoint, the importance of owner's title insurance, I'm sure you're asked this consistently. And I'm sure when you guys go do lunch and learns and train of what you're doing, the importance of of the owner actually having a policy, the owner's policy, I mean, it's

Christina Tatum  28:39  

just assurance. It's like life insurance, you know what? I mean, God forbid something pop up in future. You just want to make sure that you're

Maria Coutu  28:45  

covered. Yeah, and in our surrounding counties,

Tracy Hayes  28:48  

well, so All right, okay, that's the attorney's answer. Okay, that's your but you facts tell stories sell, right? So tell me a story. Guys say, if you get to get take a second, think about E from a title insurance thing. Yeah, we like to say, like, give me a real life story, because I'm sure you guys been doing it. You've been doing it long enough that something has

Maria Coutu  29:09  

come back. No, I'm gonna knock what I don't really know. Yeah.

Christina Tatum  29:13  

So we there was this one situation, but it's fine. It got taken care of, but it was the sprinkle smile. And so what happened was, back in the day, a mom deeded the property to her two sons. The two sons passed away. The surviving family of one of the sons wanted to sell the property. It was a Fizbo, and come to find out the family of the other brother had half interest in the property, so they corrected it. New deed proceeds were sent over, and everything was fine, but because, because they had, yeah, because they had the title policy, they were older, probably brought in for very experienced attorneys who took care of it and it didn't cost.

Tracy Hayes  29:53  

So the title or anything actually helped them. Takes time and money. Yes, they handle all of it.

Christina Tatum  29:59  

Yep. Right? So that's a really long story, condensed and well,

Tracy Hayes  30:04  

that can happen to anyone. I mean really, and it comes down to it,

Christina Tatum  30:08  

and there's so much fraud going on right now. Yeah, the vacant land fraud is

Maria Coutu  30:11  

absolutely insane. Vacant

Tracy Hayes  30:12  

land for let's talk about it. Tell us to give us three

Maria Coutu  30:15  

different instances, and with just us specifically handling them. So I can't even imagine how many is actually happening in Jacksonville, but yeah, it's just vacant land. We get the contract. I mean, we every all three times it's been when they've gone out to do the survey and a neighbor has called the rightful owner and said, someone's out there serving your property. And obviously the owner has found somehow that either called the agent or somehow gotten our information from the survey or something and calling us and saying, I'm not selling my property. Yeah, someone's just impersonating them.

Tracy Hayes  30:45  

So when you got but when you guys are doing that title search, that should be popping up, that's Mr. Smith owns, and not Mr. Jones, right?

Christina Tatum  30:53  

Well, this person, Mr. Jones, yeah, wow. And a lot of times it's a mobile signing,

Maria Coutu  30:58  

yeah, they're like, We love a notary work, so you need to send a notary to us, or we have a

Christina Tatum  31:02  

notary in our office. Just send us the docs. Yeah, wow, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  31:05  

So, how does so what? How can someone protect themselves? I mean, they don't. They now they're because I know they're. I haven't heard it recently, but over the years, where they talk about these guys going on and somehow getting into manipulating the title. Maybe they're talking about what, exactly what you're doing. But isn't there, isn't there, like, a like, LifeLock does your credit. Isn't there a pause also, does the ads for it?

Maria Coutu  31:29  

But we have never gotten any kind of bulletins or anything that like that from our underwriter, so I don't really know how those play out, you know, I don't know. Christina, yeah, so, I mean, the only thing I can think of is just be a prudent home landowner, and just make sure, you know, you have someone always there, like, have some kind of sign there, like that.

Tracy Hayes  31:43  

Well, especially if you're not actually living in the property, all three of them,

Maria Coutu  31:47  

in my instances, have all been an elderly person that do not live there. The sales price is usually the kicker. All three of them were lots somewhere at the beat that were selling for under 300 so every time I got one, I was like, how they get this deal?

Speaker 1  32:03  

This is a really good price, so that I would have bought that if I knew about it.

Maria Coutu  32:08  

This deal falls through. I'll call him, but no, it's, yeah, that was, that's really the biggest red flag is usually the sales price that's a little bit less. But it's been, it's been a lot, so it's definitely prevalent.

Christina Tatum  32:21  

We were just talking to Mike the other day in his office, and he was dealing with, right?

Maria Coutu  32:25  

Yeah, he was one of the vacant ones. Yeah. So amazing, amazing.

Tracy Hayes  32:31  

And I get yo really when we is there any sort of protection or stop point where, if you didn't get a call from the real homeowner, that

Maria Coutu  32:42  

that's the thing is, if we would have, and rightfully so. You know, if a seller lives out of state, they're like, hey, need to send notary to me. They could have a fake driver's license. It then goes, obviously, on that notary's license. And imagine these deals are cashed. Majority of them, I think, have been captured

Tracy Hayes  32:54  

because, I imagine, because, I mean, the lenders we do are do, yeah, we're doing, you know, of course, obviously we're pulling credit. So some layers of it's

Maria Coutu  33:02  

not the buyers that are fraudulent sellers, right? You guys are

Tracy Hayes  33:06  

just at them. Yes, that's right. That's right. That's thinking about that way. So yeah, the seller, what's the seller? What? The only thing you're doing is getting their driver's license when they come to sign their paper, they

Maria Coutu  33:16  

are all three of them have been a Zillow lead in some way. So that's one thing I'm telling everybody, is obviously these leads. We know these agents are working hard on these leads, and it's just kind of hammering them and just trying your best to just feel them out, to make sure they're real people who they say they are, that kind of

Tracy Hayes  33:32  

okay, so now, or this is, this is going to a slight tangent, but I had Tracy Hawkins, the safety lady, on a couple months ago, but it was back in December, and she was talking about, you know, how agents, before they show houses and stuff, they should use forewarn as one of the products that's out there as others if they were using because she said, even on the sellers, of course, you're thinking, hey, I don't want to go walk into a seller's house, but this is a vacant lot, so you feel safe, right? Yeah, I'm in a vacant, vacant lot, and there's no way they can, you know, pin me in a corner in a room or something. So you probably, you're thinking, you're you're free, but in your case, you're thinking, you know, a couple of things, things line up under priced Zillow vacant land. Might want to do a little forewarn on that.

Maria Coutu  34:16  

Yeah, for sure, any vacant land that we get from now on is I want to talk to the Son, the mother, the brother. I need multiple forms, and at that point we'll obviously alert the notary too, of any kind. I wonder

Tracy Hayes  34:27  

if these guys are swift enough to actually go in and find the properties that do like, yeah, just have one person versus a family. Or maybe obviously, obviously, you start going to probate, you start digging deeper, you know, maybe someone's past this. I've talked to these

Maria Coutu  34:40  

people on the phone to, like, you know, vet them and, like, ask questions about, like, you know, hey, I need your email so I can send over this blah, blah, blah, all these things. Answer me. They answer the phone. They say their name, like, it is good. It's good, yeah, so it's scary.

Tracy Hayes  34:57  

Hey, folks, this episode was produced by streamline me. Media, the number one media company for helping brands generate content that converts. I knew I wanted to start a podcast to reach more people and bring value to the world, but I did not have the time or the knowledge. Streamlined. Media became my secret weapon to building my show. They handle all my back end work, production and strategies to keep my show going strong. If you're in the real estate business and looking to make content that generates more leads and brings in more revenue, check out the streamline media link in the show notes and discover how partnering up can supercharge your path to real estate excellence. All right, one of the things I like to do with the podcast is inspire. So I want to go with each of you and answer this in your own way. Obviously, Maria, you started the company initially. What were you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, you're still in the legal field, so you still feel somewhat comfortable because you're still wearing your attorney hat, but something totally different in what you were doing. And obviously, I'm sure there was a lot of, you know, fear, you know, or confidence. Confidence is another word that is often brought up. But what were some of your challenges? Like you said, you worked by yourself for the first year and a half. I mean, yeah, tell us about some of the challenges that you had just getting started. And then, you know, getting your your name out,

Maria Coutu  36:17  

that was definitely the hardest part, is just doing that. So I I don't have any kind of marketing background, and I'm not the kind of person that just loves to go in a room and talk to the people in the room gotta, like, pop my Yeah, literally, I would call like, I need someone to go,

Unknown Speaker  36:35  

which my husband is the people list of people,

Maria Coutu  36:40  

which makes him successful in his right? So that was the hardest thing is getting up, and I would just tell myself, I'd be like, Okay, if I want something different, I have to go out and do something different, literally repeat it to myself, like the whole drive over to wherever I was going, you know, you know, just go in, and all I could do is show people who I was and just tell them what I offer. And, you know, it just got really lucky. All it took was one deal with every single one of our agents. There are a couple of them were, you know, every now and then we'll get some from the buy side. They're like, you guys, knock that out of the park. Like, I'm gonna send you my next contract. Or, in the beginning, it was just, I just had a cold call to people, or I had to lean on whatever contacts that I had. So funny looking back.

Christina Tatum  37:17  

So I was her biggest cheerleader when she was beginning. And she would send me the logo and be like, What do you think about the logo? What do you think about the logo? What do you think about this? And then I remember when she was starting out, she would spend her Saturdays going to open houses, just meeting agents, and just walking up and

Maria Coutu  37:30  

introducing herself, and they'd all laugh at me back

Christina Tatum  37:35  

she ended our grand opening party, and like, I was like, doing the decor. And I had no idea that one day that I would come over and join her, but I just remember I was so proud. Yeah, there's a

Maria Coutu  37:45  

lot of boots on the ground. But,

Tracy Hayes  37:47  

well, I mean, yeah, I mean, so you open houses on Saturday, just and you started creating opportunities, which was getting out of your

Maria Coutu  37:53  

comfort zone, yeah? So luckily, yes, without a doubt. So that was super tough. Luckily, Christina's husband was super successful loan officer at the time, so he was able to get me in with some of the agents that he knew. Obviously, all he can do is say, Hey, this is Maria, and then I would have to take it from there and actually be like, I can do this. So, you know, opening that door and then leaning on contacts that we had, because Tom and Christina are our best friends, and so we knew them since 2011 so their friends were also our friends, and the majority of them are loan officers, too. So really, all the loan officers in our friend group are definitely the reason that, you know, catapulted me to being able to even meet people and getting people to give me a little bit of street cred. So, you know, give me a couple minutes of their time, and then just some of our biggest agents were literally cold calls, just giving them a call, and they actually answered, and they either met me for coffee, or they just sent me a contract, and they've been with me, you know, for the star six year now. So it just, you know, I just had to put myself out there.

Tracy Hayes  38:48  

All right, Christina, so she sorry, you're cheerleading her on. Eventually you get to point, you're, you're busy enough and say, Hey, will you come in? Yeah, join me, yep. All right, so now you're jumping out into the pool of unknown you're seeing. What her Jon said makes you somewhat comfortable for what you doing. But what are some of the you know, in the sense of, you know, you're doing some you're teaching mostly at this time, am I correct?

Christina Tatum  39:11  

Okay, well, we actually had our kids six weeks apart, and so I definitely had a longer maternity leave than Maria did. She was basically still working from the hospital room 30 minutes after I had that's terrible. And so she reached out, she said, Christine, I'm getting busy. Like, are you interested? And so I was still on maternity leave, and I said, Absolutely. And I feel like it was a very easy transition, just because at that point, like she said, My husband had been in the business for 10 years, and a lot of the agents were, like, family and friends, and I knew a lot of people, and I kind of would hear them well, granted, most of them were pretty much already closing Maria, but it was just a very easy transition, and I was already in the real estate world. I feel like every day, through Him and through Maria, that it was fun to jump on board.

Tracy Hayes  39:53  

All right, so we're mid 2019 ish areas like, Yeah, somewhere, 2019 sometime, yeah. All right. So you're working through this process. She comes on. Now, you got two of you in the office. What are, because I feel entrepreneurs, and haven't been out there. Well, I mean, the loan officer is an entrepreneur too, so it doesn't, you know, we're out there trying to, you know, make relationships, trying different, new things and so forth. What are some of your growing pains? What are some of the, you know, some of the marketing things that you're doing, I mean, the open houses, did you start to see fruit from that? Or some of the was cold calling better? What?

Christina Tatum  40:28  

We didn't do anything in the beginning, just because the market

Maria Coutu  40:31  

took off. I was

Tracy Hayes  40:33  

flying demand. Oh, yeah, we were, yeah. I was very

Maria Coutu  40:36  

luckily, a 2018 I had, you know, I was hitting the ground, feet on the ground. But then I luckily took off pretty quick. We, we were really top three in our of our underwriter in the state of Florida for the last four years. So 2019 just in 20 Yeah. It was really 2019 Yeah. Then was over 2019 so really was 2019 and 2020 obviously, interest rates happen to everybody. And so it I just took off. And so Christina came in, and it was like, I need help. So I was teaching her at night when I had time, like it was

Christina Tatum  41:09  

just, I feel like we work really well together, because Maria is definitely like the man in the relationship. And so, I mean, and so what works well for us is when we first got started, like, I love doing closing, I love meeting people, and so Maria was kind of just the boss man, like keeping things running, and I was getting those five star reviews in the closing. So until, of course, things started to slow down a little bit, and now we kind of have our agents that we work with, but it was fun. Yeah, so

Tracy Hayes  41:35  

you were lucky enough to a wave came and forced you at a high volume, because obviously, when it's to get started and you're not doing the volume, you don't make enough mistakes to move forward, right? You're, you're learning, but you don't know. But I think, you know, we all agree, failing forward is the greatest learning process. Yeah, for sure, yeah. Well, or just, you know, you're able to go to closing. You know, you have enough closings through the day that nine o'clock you're like, you know, for some reason I didn't really click with those people. I need to, you know, I need to come in with a different attitude. And also, you're back in the next room and you're closing, and now you do it a little differently, and you learn how to do it a

Maria Coutu  42:11  

little better, right? Yeah, because obviously, the docs are the same pretty much across the board, right? So, you know, within reason. So the closing itself is just figuring out the personality of some people. And as we all know, some people just refuse to give in

Speaker 2  42:27  

every now and then. I mean, but usually I'm gonna get it about 20% and I'm like, All right, I was gonna,

Tracy Hayes  42:35  

having been to a number of closings yet. So one of my pet peeves of being with some of the ones I would not, I don't remember their names. Lot of them are law firms who are trying to do closings, but they're doing all these other things, yeah? And all of a sudden, the attorney shows up sign the paperwork, and he doesn't even really know what he does, yeah, he's, yeah, you know, he's practically reading it versus, you know, go down, you know, brag about the action title. He's one of the ones, if you want to mirror somebody. I mean, he knows in and out, right? We know some other title companies, and they're sitting there and going that flow. So you're you like doing the closings when you're going in there, what is your mindset and goal? Obviously, to sign the paperwork. That's the obvious, but to make yourselves different, because I really think that's, that's where I suggest the real estate agents go, who's going to give you that closing that will be rememberable?

Christina Tatum  43:24  

I think the easy part, though, for us is that we're the ones who handle the file, so we know that CD inside. Now, if they have a question about escrow, if they have a question about homeowners insurance, we're the ones literally sealing the envelope and mailing out the check, right? So any questions they have, I mean, like I said, we're the ones who handle the transaction, not processor, so we're able to answer those on the spot for them. But not only that, like closings can be fun, they don't have to be stuffy, even though we're attorneys. So it's just making sure that once they get done with the closing that everything is super understandable, that they understand kind of where, where to go from, from there. We explain homestead in great detail. We explain portability, which I feel like a lot of title companies don't, yeah, and that's, that's a huge kind of benefit for these homeowners who are selling at home, and then can get that savings on the taxes in the future.

Tracy Hayes  44:11  

But what do you, I mean, just personality wise. I mean, what do you, what do you try to get them to laugh? What is your I mean, I think

Christina Tatum  44:17  

you need to know your audience. Yeah. Beginning, Maria would make fun of me because I would look up the sellers. I want to know who they

Unknown Speaker  44:21  

are on Facebook, because

Christina Tatum  44:23  

depending on who they are, I'm going to kind of mirror that. You know what I mean? It's sales tactic, 101, and so, and we do closings with a lot of really cool people. I mean, if I'm, if I'm sitting down with the CEO of fanatics like I'm going to be talking about sports. You know what I mean, right? So I think it's just being super relatable, while also breaking down the docs to where everything they're signing, we're telling them what they're signing. We're not just kind of pushing a paper across and asking for their signature.

Maria Coutu  44:50  

And it's leading into it that I feel like makes our closings really good is we don't like to say no. Obviously, if there's something on title, we need to say no to that's happening. But whatever those people. People need, like, that's where the ease comes into it is, hey, you know, we to pick up our we have a newborn. We only have one hour a day that he's awake. Can we come at that time? Yeah. I mean, saying yes to that, like, our office is a really cool office. Yeah, our office, you know, we always have music. It's, we're just always vibe. But it's just, I don't know, we're just not stuffy. We're fine. Everything leading up to it, hopefully has been easy to them, other than as we know, the mortgage process can be stressful for a lot of people, so we try to just get it to the point and be like, All right, we're gonna knock out these 500 pages real fast and just kind of, yeah, not as serious with them.

Christina Tatum  45:35  

Maria raised a good point as far as making it as easy as possible. So with our sellers, of course, with lenders, we can't do it or with our buyers, but with sellers, they have a newborn. Newborns don't like to travel in car seats. They're screaming. It's stressful for the parents, we'll actually sign them online, and we don't charge them for this, so they're able to sign with us from the comfort of their home. And we do this a lot with our military sellers or out of state sellers. So it's just a really cool,

Maria Coutu  45:57  

yeah, we do everything in house. So a lot of that we've learned because, as we've said, we got a loan officer and a real estate agent as spouses. So we see what all the other title companies are doing in some way sometimes. And so meet them, yeah. So we were buying out anything. What are they doing? But our biggest thing is we, we do it all. So when it comes to, like, the remote online closings, we found out, like, almost every title company farms them out. And I'm like, why it takes which

Christina Tatum  46:22  

is crazy. Takes which is crazy, like, why would I want a stranger dealing with my sellers? Like, I don't trust them. You know what? I mean,

Tracy Hayes  46:28  

we do all that. Or they're not spending time, and they don't know anything about the fun. Yeah, something go wrong?

Christina Tatum  46:33  

I want them looking at my face when we're signing the docs

Maria Coutu  46:36  

online, and our office is at the beach. We understand that some people the beach is like a foreign country. So if you know, if they're over here and they're like, we can't come to the beach, we'll send a notary out to them, like, we, we don't, we make it easy, like it doesn't have to be hard. And that's what also makes our real estate agents happy, is when their clients are happy. Goes back to the fact that this is their deal. We'll just help. We're helping them close it. Well, I

Tracy Hayes  46:58  

mean, it takes a lot of stress off the agent. I was listening to one of my podcasts. It was Miranda. Came out Tuesday, yesterday, so I always listened to the full show on riding the car and, you know, just talking about, you know, again, the being accessible, being when they call that's, you know, you we put that out there. I put that out there, you know, because they're calling you at 730 at night. There's a reason, and they're stressing out. And now, hopefully, as they get more mature, as a real estate agent, yeah, they learn how to handle those things and call us at eight o'clock next morning. Hopefully, yes, I don't know if that, but there's always a new one coming in the

Unknown Speaker  47:34  

pipeline, but were there at some point. So we get it.

Tracy Hayes  47:37  

But the more pressure you can take off them, you know that. You know, they're they worked really hard, they want to get this to closing, and they know that's payday, yeah. And, you know, if it gets pushed out a day, then, you know, whatever. But if, obviously, you're making it convenient for them by going to the customer and getting it closed on time in, you know, in the customer's home, where it's more comfortable for them, they're already comfortable because they're in their own house, right? Yeah, yeah.

Maria Coutu  48:01  

We have one agent that pretty much only does visits in green Cove springs. I don't think I've ever met one of the sellers, because every single one is either, you know, remote, online, notarization, or they have someone go out to them. And so it's, you know, again, we just, that's our job is just to kind of make it easy for them. But I was just gonna go somewhere with that, and I forget where I was going.

Tracy Hayes  48:22  

Oh, I forget where I was going, green Cove. You need to open an office in green Cove in the next decade. I can guarantee.

Maria Coutu  48:28  

I know, I know that's our and we've toyed and that's it. Our thing is making it easy, like we've learned, as we've been talking about this whole time, is trial and error. We've learned so much in the last six years that, you know, everything that we're doing now so tech friendly, like all of our buyer and seller forms are all like a digital form that they fill out, like secure forms that we're paying, you know, companies to do all their technology, technology stuff, so that everything stays secure and private. And you know, all emails, everything is just super easy. All communication with us is easy. The closings are super fast. We have the binder that people can do online now, that pretty much everybody's doing now, I think just so many things to where it's just, we just

Christina Tatum  49:06  

don't say no to anything. I mean, I think the biggest compliment is we still have lenders and agents reaching out to us because they're having to close with another title company, because they're on the buyer side, or whatever it may be, and they're saying they won't draft a POA for us, so we're drafting it, not getting paid for it just because we want our agents to be successful. Or, like my husband had one the other day where the title company refused to set up the mobile signing. They said, We don't, we don't do this. The buyer has to figure this out on their own. So, like, we helped them just because, and that's something that we

Maria Coutu  49:33  

learned trial and errors. Because I used to do that back in the day. I was like, you just need to find a notary. Blah, blah, let me know when you get them. But I learned very quickly that by not having a notary service that I'm using a nationwide one. Docs are getting messed up. I'm not getting docs back. So we, you know, we learned that through trial and error like so we handle all that stuff.

Tracy Hayes  49:51  

No, I mean, when I obviously, the first 12 years I was in the business, was call center all over the nation. One time I was licensed in May, is 21 states and cool. Can they talked about them running down to the Detroit airport with all the FedEx packages and literally, sometimes throwing over the fence to the guys to get them on the plane that was going out that night. Yeah, from the technology standpoint, how do you guys, because I imagine, like, just like lenders or the real estate agents, there's a lot of shiny things out there they want to throw at you and do your job a little easier and so forth. But also, like I said, the mobile notary thing, the technology over the last whatever amount of years, is getting better and better every day. Law states are changing some of their laws and so forth on that. How do you guys stay in front of that? Are there title company conferences? Do you is there a journal you read to kind of, you know, get some of this insight, because I can't believe it all comes to your husbands.

Speaker 2  50:52  

That's a little bit of credit. We're the we're the one with the boots

Tracy Hayes  50:56  

on the ground down here, just learning what other title companies are doing in other places.

Maria Coutu  50:59  

Honestly, our real estate agents, we're not just saying that, like, they really are our family, like, I like, two of our best things that we got are from one of our real estate agents calling me and saying, Hey, this blah blah blah is doing this and sending me a link. And I'm like, Okay,

Christina Tatum  51:11  

we have we're not going to be outperformed, yeah, and if it's just something

Maria Coutu  51:15  

that we don't know, then we figure it out. But our underwriters, amazingly, work with Old Republic, and they send us information. Older public only works with attorneys. So that's why a lot of it's not super common for it's not a super common

Tracy Hayes  51:27  

older public is the is the insurance? Yeah. So imagine their added value to you is to keep you guys up to

Maria Coutu  51:34  

speed Exactly. Yeah. So they'll send us out stuff every now and then that other people are doing, but they do a lot of business in South Florida, and as we know, that's a whole different beast. So yeah, they do give us some information, but really it's just our agents being like, Hey, I just saw this. This was kind of cool. We should look into it, and we'll kind of do it. But everyone in the in, you know, the circle, is pretty much all doing the same thing. The thing, the biggest thing that makes us different than everybody, is just the personal touch, the concierge touch, and that's how we buy communication. All of our stuff is because if they need us, they can get us.

Tracy Hayes  52:06  

Are you finding the you're you're going out to these socials, or you meet a new, new agent? Are you finding a lot of them? Open for suggestion to give you guys?

Maria Coutu  52:18  

You mean, like, open for a new title?

Christina Tatum  52:21  

I mean, I think it depends who the person is. Yeah, some people have really lasting relationships with title companies and we respect, yeah, that's what we want to build.

Maria Coutu  52:30  

Yeah. My, my personal opinion on that matter is, every now and then I'll have you'll be like, How can I refer people to you? And it's the biggest thing is there has to be that personal connection with the real estate agent. It's very, very rare it has happened where someone has just sent me a contract that said, hey, you know, I saw your name. It's totally out of the book. Oh, your website looked cool, like you sent me a contract. I mean, this probably happened twice, like hardly ever, usually is, hey, you know, real estate agent Christina Tatum told me you were great. So I'm going to send this over. Can we go get coffee? To me? There always has to be that human connection with title, just because it goes back to this is their baby, this, this agent. It might be the first deal they've closed in six months. So, like, it's a really, really, really big deal to them.

Christina Tatum  53:09  

And I think if they just close one with us, then yeah, all it takes, yeah, they immediately see the

Maria Coutu  53:13  

difference, yeah. And so yeah, this thing for us is just that we're it's all a team, like, if, if they're not successful, we're not successful saying, like, we're just trying to add to their team, like they just need to look at us as a team member with them, and that is how we treat them as well.

Tracy Hayes  53:26  

All right, so from from a marketing standpoint, who makes the marketing decisions? Are you guys jointly doing that, or seen

Unknown Speaker  53:33  

as our creative director?

Tracy Hayes  53:36  

So we she's good at Canva. We

Christina Tatum  53:40  

have a company out of Charleston who does our marketing, but we need to get better at, yeah, we putting more out there.

Maria Coutu  53:48  

Yeah, I had a website that I started back, obviously, in the day, and it was fine. It was did its job, and I liked your website. So this is a new one. So yeah, we hired this company to read, I love our website now, but the one that we had before wasn't, it was okay. And I had a buyer's a I had a buyer that hired an attorney out of South Florida who was just grinding my gears. And so I was like, I gotta see what this guy looks like. And I looked him up, and his website was amazing. And I was like, Who made this website? And so that's where I got the information. And we found them. They're out of Charleston. We actually ended up having mutual friends, but they only marketing for attorneys. They only do marketing for attorneys. So they did our website, and they manage all of our social so as we all know, we're in such a social, heavy community, so we'll, we'll post when we can, but they just keep those, you know, the routine posts going out, just to kind of keep us in people's feet and stuff. But that is one thing that because we are the one in communication with everyone, and that's not something we have so much time

Christina Tatum  54:43  

to do. And I feel like we'll constantly have little tips. We're like, oh, this just happened. We need to remind our agents about this. We really need to get better about hopping on and, yeah, not caring about if it's a perfect real just getting the information fair, yeah?

Tracy Hayes  54:57  

Well, I Yeah, the stereotypical things. Oh. They expect you to spend the money on the perfect reel, right? Some, some people don't, versus getting it out there, I can imagine some people having that stigma, but I don't think it's I mean, I work with all these agents too. They just want the information, right? And they really, really love it if it comes directly from you.

Maria Coutu  55:15  

Yeah, yeah. We, we've done pretty good in the last year. So for our events, we, we like to shower our agents with attention and

Christina Tatum  55:23  

love to throw them apart.

Tracy Hayes  55:24  

That was my next question. Yeah. So how you have the formal marketing? Yes, the website and so forth, versus your if we call more like informal, the events where, where's your focus and goals?

Christina Tatum  55:36  

One of my favorite events that we did, it was not about us, it was all about them and just helping them get the business. Because, as Maurice stated, without them and we're nothing. And so we got each of their logos, and we got a bunch of swag and

Maria Coutu  55:52  

marketing materials, like mailers, door hangers, like water bottle things, personalized

Christina Tatum  55:56  

tissue papers. When they put gifts together, it was all about just setting them up for success.

Maria Coutu  56:01  

Because, yeah, so it was just something that was like, Hey, we have an open bar, we have good food come and then we have swag bags for you to stack full of,

Tracy Hayes  56:09  

which are personalized swag bags

Christina Tatum  56:12  

with our marketing, yeah, something that we've

Maria Coutu  56:13  

asked them. And a lot of a lot of the realtors struggle with the marketing stuff. And like, knowing which works, and like, oh, do I need to spend 200 bucks on this? Like, is it worth it? And, okay, is it worth it? And, okay, let us spend the 200 bucks. Yeah, mail them out to 50 people. You know, put your card in. That's all you got to do. We already had stamps on everything. I mean, literally, just go and so that was something we did last they really enjoyed that. Yeah, one of our events, we did a bingo fundraiser for Mayport Elementary. We just wanted to do something different, because all all of our people have the education coming at them from their broker, from different title companies. You know, everyone's lenders were lenders, people

Tracy Hayes  56:48  

that aren't even really qualified to do it. But anyway,

Christina Tatum  56:52  

our Christmas party is probably our

Maria Coutu  56:54  

biggest event of the year. But yeah, so

Tracy Hayes  56:57  

Well, you know, of all that type of stuff, what where do you feel is, is the best return on investment for you may is it? Is it a Christmas party, or is it more of the more intimate setting with just a handful of agents, you know, doing the nice swag bags for them with their some market their own marketing materials?

Christina Tatum  57:14  

No, everyone always tells us, yeah, we did. All of them thoroughly enjoy our Christmas party. Yeah.

Maria Coutu  57:20  

So we do Santa, we have Santa come in. We do it. We rent out the whole coop, the whole restaurant on like, for a brunch with that. We've done it two years now.

Christina Tatum  57:27  

And we hire a professional photographer, and so they're able to get their kids photos with Santa, professional photo, so that they can use it for the Christmas cards that they want. We have an open bar food. It's just a really good time

Unknown Speaker  57:37  

Atlantic Beach. Yeah?

Tracy Hayes  57:38  

No. I mean, there's only, there's one agent that I know, she Kelly bellow with Keller Williams. She does least she did before I had her on the show. That was her thing. She invited all her past clients. Had the place so they could get all their Christmas cards, and then you could actually, actually, I don't know if she was doing it, but I was like, so could they actually right there at your place? Like, go ahead and order them and be done. When they left

Maria Coutu  58:02  

and went, they came in, like, within a week. So then we would just send it to them, because some people don't need the cost, so you're

Christina Tatum  58:08  

actually having them printed for them, no? So we send them their digital photos so that they can just, you know, create their create their own, yeah,

Maria Coutu  58:14  

but just for, like, a social post or something, but, yeah, but a lot of our agents don't have kids, and they still come just because it's so much fun, yeah, yeah. But to answer your question, I mean, we really do see a big return in all of them. Bingo was fine. That was our first one. We didn't see a huge return with that, but we were able

Christina Tatum  58:29  

to pause, yeah. So we just wanted to do

Maria Coutu  58:30  

something different. We're like, Let's do something fun where it's not like us to spark and title down.

Tracy Hayes  58:34  

So are you doing something different for the for the agency we've been working with for three or four years, five years, versus the new ones. So I do you do?

Maria Coutu  58:42  

We probably put swag aside when the sizes come in. We were

Christina Tatum  58:50  

having a really good year, 2021 right? We would get them, like, personal, like, like, you got Joey? Oh, Jags jersey, Jags fan, even though we didn't realize it was Yes, oh, he's superstitious. Yeah, superstitious. And then it was Robert Lawrence's first year, and it did great. I was like, Oh, was

Tracy Hayes  59:04  

it the jersey? Well, so many of the Jags are gone after their first contract, so it's hard to but no, yeah, hopefully that'll change.

Maria Coutu  59:11  

Yeah, we definitely used to, I know, one year we sent mothers say flowers to all the moms. Yeah, we did Father's Day gifts that year too. Just depends on the quarter, how busy we are, whatever. But you know, it's if it's a birthday present, like if we randomly say, hey, it's so and so's birthday next week. If you know, if we see it, yeah, we'll

Tracy Hayes  59:27  

try and do so, all right, so here's, here's a thought that came to my mind, but it's been there before I see because I'm watching what my other mortgage loan officers are doing as far as marketing. And of course, more of the females are on social media, I think, than the males, in all respect, even real estate. Unless you're Josh Rogers, they take Josh Rogers out of doing all his videos, the males go, you know, down quite a bit from a female standpoint. Do you find your Are you bonding more with the females and doing. The more social thing versus the male real estate agents. Do you or do you guys even think about that? Is it? Because one of the things, one of the groups is there is a huge unfortunately, well, we divorce is roughly 50% there's a lot of single moms out there. They like to bond again. That is a strong thing that I see in the groups that I the agents that I see. Are you seeing it when you have these socials, more often you're getting the women showing up than the guys, because you are ladies. Or do you even? Does that even?

Christina Tatum  1:00:30  

Uh, I will say this. We're so close with our agents that their families. We're all so close with we know when we send out Christmas invites. I'm not just gonna send it to Jason Brown. I'm also gonna send it to Stacy Brown. Not that I don't trust men to look at their emails, but yeah, not really.

Maria Coutu  1:00:46  

I feel like it's a good I mean, we do have a couple that are husband and wife teams, and usually the wife will come to the event just because the husband doesn't really like to do too many events, that kind of stuff. But I don't fault them for that, you know, if anything, it's just something for us to be letting them know that we're appreciating them. And yeah, you know, but no, I don't notice it too much. I mean, we have, we have had some agents every now and then that'll make a comment, like, you guys want to go play golf, and I'm hoping I'll pay for your round of golf. Just send

Tracy Hayes  1:01:13  

me the invoice. I received a sponsor golf tournament. If I go to a golf tournament, it's because I'm bringing an agent. I'm gonna spend the four hours.

Maria Coutu  1:01:20  

Yes, back in the day, I used to do all the golf tournament, it's like, oh, those were such a thing too.

Tracy Hayes  1:01:25  

They can be a drag out when they go five or six hours, yes. TSD, oh, actually, actually, one of the questions in here we've been talking about, what strategies your company used to build and maintain positive relationships, like we've been talking about that. This is one of some of the chat GPT questions we talked about the technology change a little bit. Can you describe a particular complex real estate transaction your company has handled, and how are you able to navigate to a successful conclusion?

Maria Coutu  1:01:49  

We close people in Japan all the time. That's pretty hard. One complicated. Some complicated ones, I'm trying to think about them. A probate, obviously, and probate is always tricky, but

Commercial  1:02:01  

I feel like that people

Christina Tatum  1:02:02  

that's, that's what we're good, yeah, we've had people get married on the way closing. The agent didn't know. The lender didn't know. I'm like, Oh man, but no, I think that's what we're really good at, is still simplifying it and, yeah, making it difficult.

Maria Coutu  1:02:16  

We get the information from them right off the bat. Yeah, again, it's coming right to us, right? So it's not as if it's going to my processor and she might get stuck on the desk for a couple days. Like, didn't tell me that we had a, you know, the buyers trying to do a POA, but it's a VA, and they're not legally married, so they're not going to let them do it until the day before, you know what I mean. So it's like, we usually get ahead of the stuff pretty early, but, you know, we've seen all the things.

Christina Tatum  1:02:37  

Like, HOAs can be fun sometimes, yeah, like they need to re side or, yeah, I

Tracy Hayes  1:02:43  

had, you know, because previous to coming here to loan Debus with the builder's lender, and that was one, you know, of course, they were building the house, so it months, or whatever, and I said to him, I said, Yeah, we can do this if you're married, and he had a girlfriend, and they're like, can you guys get married? And before closing, like, yeah, okay, I'll pre approve it.

Maria Coutu  1:03:00  

Oh, we have. I've had that happen too. I've had that happen where I don't, I didn't ask any questions. But they were like, we were a good guy.

Tracy Hayes  1:03:08  

Have you had a situation where a seller is you get to that 11th Hour and not wanted to proceed? We have

Maria Coutu  1:03:15  

had that happen a couple of times. In both times, the buyer didn't pursue anything. I think both of my instances. I don't know if you, I think you maybe had one.

Christina Tatum  1:03:23  

I mean, I've had situations where it's a couple getting a divorce and they're kind of fighting over proceeds, things like that, which you want to kind of tackle ahead. But I don't think I've ever had one where the seller

Maria Coutu  1:03:34  

mine, where the seller ponied up all the money they'd spent on the inspection, appraisal and stuff, and so the buyer went down. Was fine with it, but I've helped my agents that are closing other title companies walk through that and get them to different people that can help represent but yeah, that's never fun when the sellers do that,

Tracy Hayes  1:03:51  

something that I haven't had it recently, but obviously when I was in the call center, did a lot more volume and in so you come across the divorce situations, not divorced yet. Type of thing. Or you get that situation where the that, well, now divorced couple, but they're still on the loan. Yeah? Attorney, for whatever reason, allowed the spouse who wasn't getting the house to still quick claim the deed without having the other spouse refinance it out of the other spouses. Yeah, we're in. I mean, obviously you guys didn't deal in the divorce world. What I mean to me, I was like, that is really poor legal advice, in my opinion, we

Maria Coutu  1:04:31  

so I think what happens is, once they find sign that divorce decree, everyone's like, done. I'm pissing out. And so those couple of things that have to happen after the fact sometimes don't happen. I just had it happen last week, where the family law attorney had the quit claim deed, but didn't know they had to report it. In their defense, they don't do this. So, you know, I mean, it was fine. I got it recorded right away, but it was She's had it for two years, so luckily, it wasn't that big of a deal. But, I mean, we've had it before where we've had to do skip traces on spouses, sometimes spouses, sometimes we had.

Christina Tatum  1:05:00  

To play detective, and we found one. We were tracking a guy in Virginia Beach. Yeah, we finally found him, got the detour and got a signature on it say, God and save the deal. Yeah. But nobody had his contact information. Nobody knew where

Tracy Hayes  1:05:12  

I've had that situation, yeah, where people kind of okay, where's the spouse I don't know. I haven't talked to years. Yeah, it was.

Maria Coutu  1:05:19  

I had one with one of our top agents, and I literally had to pay a private investigator. Private Investigator to find the spouse. And they found her, yeah, and she signed,

Tracy Hayes  1:05:26  

interesting, yeah. What would happen if you I mean literally, if they could not find that other spouse and without a death certificate or anything like that, what can what can you do? There's really nothing you

Maria Coutu  1:05:36  

can do, because you're not allowed to legally alienate anyone's homestead interest at all. Like, even if you have a prenup, there's no way to get around it. So they were married, and they lived in that house, and it was homestead they have to sign unless they are declared dead interest. There may be some family law loopholes of that I'm not aware of, but that is from my understanding

Tracy Hayes  1:05:54  

how they can exhaust some sort of investigation that shows that this person's not on the earth anymore that they know of.

Maria Coutu  1:05:59  

Yeah, conversation we have to have all the time, because people will be like, Well, I'm I'm on the mortgage, and I'm like, that's great, but you're both on the dean or you're married. You got married and you guys both moved into that house. It's theirs. So it's tough,

Tracy Hayes  1:06:13  

is it? Is it right? When you say, you know, a couple gets married that the one spouse already owns a home. As soon as they actually do get married, they're now technically, even though they not, might not formally be on title, but because they're now husband and wife, that property that was formerly owned that they probably now live in most cases,

Christina Tatum  1:06:32  

if it's their primary, if it's an investment,

Tracy Hayes  1:06:36  

is not the case. Yeah.

Maria Coutu  1:06:37  

Okay, so it just depends on what their actual occupancy is on the HMM.

Tracy Hayes  1:06:41  

So because I imagine you probably run across that sometimes you do the title search and the spouse is not on there, because they got married after that, but now they're getting divorced, and they still own that house. This question, yeah, I didn't go through to find out that they actually got married

Maria Coutu  1:06:54  

somewhere, and tweak it. We got it. We have to go through all the anger. Sorry. We got to call Betty and got a sign. And she's like, she's not signing anything. I'm like, she has to sign up.

Tracy Hayes  1:07:02  

This is one I get often, is the parents wanting to put their kids on the title didn't answer that one versus doing the legal trust or whatever. You know, I'm sure you guys will, you'll go through the legal jargon with with me. What is the actual proper way they should do that if they want their kid to you.

Christina Tatum  1:07:20  

Mean, if they're 18 and they're living in the property, let's say they're in college and they're buying

Tracy Hayes  1:07:24  

a lot of questions, well, most of the parents are older, right? The parents are older, so the kids probably not in college. You're probably your guy's age and and they, they're putting them on there, not realizing, I say, Okay, you realize you, you, you're putting this, that person on there. They're not contributing to the house in any way, shape or form. They're a minor. You're on the you're putting a title. If that person now gets married, right? And now really can cause

Maria Coutu  1:07:49  

gonna be the kid's primary residence, unless they're living there. You can be an owner

Tracy Hayes  1:07:53  

parents or parents are primary, yeah, they add the kid to the title. Kid lives wherever, right? Kid gets married. Spouse would not have claimed to the not

Maria Coutu  1:08:02  

necessarily, unless we're going through like an inheritance and that kind of stuff. So that may get a little tricky there, and that's a different ballgame, different attorney. But when it comes to whenever a parent asks me that I'm all, I always tell them, we just need to do a life estate deed, and that's where, when they pass it goes to the child that while they're living it's fully their home

Christina Tatum  1:08:21  

because they refi, we don't have to deal with getting the child. That's where

Maria Coutu  1:08:25  

I usually talk about, like, do you want this your son or daughter to have to give you an agreeance on anything you do on this property? And like, no, and I'm like, one, you just need to probably still get a dress done if you want to just keep it that way. That helps it out a lot. Or does your life estate deed. The problem with the life estate deed is, as you know, the lenders, underwriters don't typically like them too much, so usually we have to quit claim.

Tracy Hayes  1:08:44  

I don't think I've ever come across one, at least, at least the one that they brought to my attention. I may have handled

Maria Coutu  1:08:49  

it the back and I sometimes they'll the lenders will be okay with them, but usually, the lender, same as in a trust, they'll usually make us quit claim out and then quit claim back in and close the refi, which happens. But just that's the only thing I ever say. I'm like, if you know you're not refinancing ever and you refinancing ever, and you just want to make sure that they don't have to go through probate, then the life

Tracy Hayes  1:09:06  

estate is easy. I never, never say never, right? Yeah, Murphy's Law.

Speaker 3  1:09:09  

I know these interest rates might get down to two and a half again,

Christina Tatum  1:09:12  

but sometimes it's smart. Sometimes they add, like, I said, like, we've dealt with a lot in Gainesville University of Florida, they'll buy, like, a condo for their kid to live in while they're in college, good investment property, and they put them on the deed so that they can homestead and save money on the tax side of it, so that they still have the primary residence. They're saving taxes on that one. And then their child able to homestead the property they're living in their college town, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:09:34  

So, yeah, yeah, no, that because, because it was they got rid of it years ago, where they would allow I think, when I first started in oh five on a whole, they change it where they were allowing parents to do that, but from a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac kind of cracked down on that. Them buying, basically getting primary residence status on a really your kids primary, not your primary, you know, type of thing. Yeah. They started to crack down on that.

Maria Coutu  1:10:01  

Yeah, we dealt with it a lot in 20 interest rates, almost mark right 21 when, you know, everyone needed to put those cash offers in. We dealt with that a lot because the parents were buying the house and then the kids were refinancing it afterwards. So that was really, really big in 2021 it's, I definitely haven't had a situation in about a year on it, though, but it was really big because then people wanted to refinance and get taken off for tax reasons and all that stuff.

Tracy Hayes  1:10:22  

But so the agents that are listening here at this point, you've got to you sometimes you'll run across these, I don't say they're being difficult, but they're not really thinking through these buyers and sellers putting kids on, not putting kids on, that sort of thing. To, you know, take five minutes and give you guys a call. And let you guys explain you can do it. But yes, these are things that can happen.

Maria Coutu  1:10:46  

They need to talk to us. Yeah, you talk to a loan officer, because while they're wanting to help out their son by putting him on that, you know, that deed, when that son goes to buy a house in five years, he's got to deal with that when it comes to his debt, to income and all that kind of stuff, even though, you know, his name might be on the mortgage or all those things. So while we can go through the legalities of it, they obviously want to make sure they're fully informed on how it could affect their kid and them, right? Because if they have to sell, obviously, some people get older in age, we got to deal with Medicare money

Christina Tatum  1:11:11  

in their account. There's all these. It also affects, affects their student loans. To realize, Oh yeah,

Maria Coutu  1:11:16  

there's lots of questions. But avoid it

Tracy Hayes  1:11:19  

if you can. But I think, but I just the point the agents that are listening out there, listening out there don't think you're going to lose the deal by going to these ladies for a little, you know, education on that, because what the worst thing can happen is they do get so many years down the road, and something does happen, and because they made that decision uninformed, now it's caused angst, and they're not going to call you back, Yeah, because even though you as a real estate agent, were not involved, you were part of the deal, and they're going to save face knowing that you know they made a mistake and weren't you didn't educate them, they're not going to go back to you say, Hey, you didn't tell us about that. Can you tell us about it? Now it's too late. Yeah?

Maria Coutu  1:11:55  

Yeah, that's something that just triggered in my mind. One thing that we always have to point out to our agents, too, is when one of their buyers is buying a house that's been homesteaded for a long time. Oh, yes. Like, that's something that I I personally, I mean, Christina does it too. Is I always and I'm like, Hey, their tax triple next year, just so you know, so that they can go ahead and have that conversation. Because the first phone call they're making in the next year is the agent, yeah, then they're gonna say, call you, and and the lender is gonna be like, Well, why, why do you fill out this escrow sheet this way? And I'm like, well, we can't, you know,

Tracy Hayes  1:12:26  

blah, blah, blah. Well, it's funny. So yesterday, the St John's board was, had Facebook Live, had Eddie creamer on talking about just this thing, yeah, and yeah that he literally had someone's taxes went up, like $3,000 he said $3,000 a month. And then they came a point like, oh, you know, of course, you know the some of the buyers are borrowers, are going, well, I just want escrow. Well, it doesn't mean you don't stop, you stop paying your taxes, whether we're collecting them or not, we're just collecting them on a monthly basis for you. But yeah, this whole thing because if, if the other thing was, if they bought a home as a second home, there's a 10% cap, was that value's gone up, so great, and now they want to come down and homestead it. He said he had a number of cases where he basically explained to him said, Hey, if you homestead this, it's gonna go through the roof. You're better off just, you know, in taking the 10 the 10% cap right now, then you're gonna get a real sticker shock when those taxes come in.

Maria Coutu  1:13:20  

Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah. That's something that we see a lot of, and that's something that we always try to, like, provide value to my agents just to help them look better. Doesn't work. Yes. Well, so what is like the

Tracy Hayes  1:13:29  

signal for that, just someone who's been in the home a long time, is that, like, the first

Maria Coutu  1:13:33  

thing we won't notice it. I mean, I'll notice, like, if I'm if the lender notices it. Sometimes that happens, like, sometimes the lender will, you know, them themselves. Will be looking at the tax bill. It's really, it's really low for the region, yeah. Or, like, I'll be doing the seller docs. And I'm like, How is this house of the beach? Only 23 bucks a year, like, that kind of thing. And I'll notice it. I mean, if they

Christina Tatum  1:13:52  

purchased the property, and yeah, 90s or Yeah. So even six, seven years ago, you could see a big increase.

Maria Coutu  1:13:59  

We've had the instances where we've asked the lender, asked the lender and the buyer, like, Hey, do you guys want us to do a high escrow for you so that you don't take the hit later? Or do you want to keep your payment low and just know you're going to have that escrow deficit? Because, as you know, we can do, you guys can do that. So that's another thing that we try to do. Obviously, when it's noticed that way, it just helps people. Because especially the first time home buyers like it happened to me. I didn't think homestead was that big of a deal. But we bought a house back in, you know, 2015 and we were just so we were young. Didn't know. And, yeah, I didn't

Tracy Hayes  1:14:30  

do well. I I've done a lot of new construction, or, you know, good bit of the last three years. And, you know, obviously what we're estimating, those taxes were based off the purchase price. Some of these people were closing, and the values were coming in 80 $100,000 higher, you know, and so our estimates are off. Eddie made some comment about the lenders. Oh, we're, we thought, we think some of the lenders are trying to do it to get, you know, trust me, it's not worth the risk that one deal to approve somebody and then have that house come back. That's not. Good for the lender. It's like a title insurance policy. You claim too many title insurance policy, yeah. Like, are you doing your job? You know? Yeah, yeah. Ladies, do you have anything you want to add here? You know, anything I did not ask that stories that we want to I

Maria Coutu  1:15:13  

don't think so. I mean, the biggest thing that I feel like Christina and I both like to get across to people is just that, while we may be small, we are very mighty, we do, like our like, we just last year where I think we're the first title company in our underwriters history to close as much premium, like, in the short amount of time ever. So, like, we're breaking records, like with our underwriter, which has been amazing, which is

Tracy Hayes  1:15:36  

handling old republics. Old Republic is handling all the whole state of Florida beyond Well, yeah, we only

Maria Coutu  1:15:43  

closed in the state of Florida, so yeah, based on their Florida, Florida, yeah. So just, you know, we're super proud of how far we've come and that kind of thing, but we're still very much the same people that we were in 2018, 2019, I'm still, we're still accessible. We're still still down in the trenches with these agents closed.

Tracy Hayes  1:16:00  

I think you guys fully understand. Like I said, I revert back to Kurt because he, he got in the home How did you how did you get in the home inspection? Well, he said his, he had family that were all in real estate, and they were talking about the horrors of, you know, these home inspectors not being able to be, you know, people friendly, basically explaining that thing. And I think the title is the same way you could find a lot of people do the title, great, but really you want to bring that customer to those not only are doing the title work efficiently, but also are welcoming your customers in. This is a very stressful time. It's, you know, it's exciting, but stressful, you know. And and to come in and and get Christina to get them to smile or laugh or, you know, talk about sports or whatever. Yeah. I mean that that to me. I always felt that, that closing and having sat in some of them, you know, it's like, whoa. You know, how did this customer feel when they, you know, walked out of here? Because it was like, you felt like you were in a funeral.

Christina Tatum  1:16:59  

I feel like, if we don't win them over, like, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  1:17:02  

you know, get them a smile and laugh on their way out. And then there's just talking to just start talking. I was at a great one about a week and a half ago, and everyone's signed, everyone's happy, laughing, talking about, hey, we're gonna move. Oh, I gotta go buy a bed. And, you know, just, it was enough. Everyone was happy, right? I've gone others, and there, just, it was just like, crickets and yeah, and to create that atmosphere, as simple as it sounds, it's very common.

Maria Coutu  1:17:26  

Actually, it is. And that's one thing that we hear a lot, and that's the biggest thing. And for me, I just, I feel like, for all real estate agents, whenever I'm trying to pitch myself to one, the biggest thing is they just need to ask themselves, like, is this title company? Like, what is this title company doing for me? Because at the end of the day, there's a lot of them, and there's a lot of them that do good at their job, and they're, you know, they get the job done. But like, is that title company? Do they have your back? Are they making your clients happy, or it's the closing fun? Are they, you know, holding your sign for you and taking the pictures at the end and making sure the wires are getting done, and it's, you know, post close, getting to your clients on time? Are they explaining that portability, like stuff's all super important, because it's a reflection of you, because you're usually the one that got them to us. And so

Christina Tatum  1:18:08  

my we Yeah, and we've been known to pop a few bottles of champagne. We'd all say no to that. So that's,

Maria Coutu  1:18:13  

this is my biggest thing. And just ask themselves, like, Am I doing the most for myself and for my clients?

Tracy Hayes  1:18:19  

Because every transaction is totally different, and there's a lot of times there's a bump here and there, big or small. You get through it, you get finally get to you guys. And they could still, they could still not be, like, completely happy with what happened a week ago, and find finalizing a repair situation or something. But if they can leave your office with a smile on it, because it's something they for, people will forget that. Yeah, it's that last touch that you have an opportunity. Yeah, I'm waiting for someone. Here's an idea for you, because one of the things I've been, you know, all the video that I do and trying to get some of the agents, because the agents are being told, video, video, and how simple it is just to create a reel. I'll wait for that title company to have that little well, put their logo in the back, have that camera already set up, and let them do it, put them on the spot and let them do a testimonial. Video testimonial, every single client, yeah.

Christina Tatum  1:19:16  

So we have the lighting. We have this sign, yeah. We have everything.

Tracy Hayes  1:19:21  

Video testimonial. It's so, you know, it is one, yeah, it's one thing when you post up. But, you know, obviously Instagram likes video, but actually, someone actually saying it, versus, you know, you reading it off a little Facebook post, yeah? I think would be,

Maria Coutu  1:19:34  

yeah. I know one of our agents,

Maria Coutu  1:19:36  

it's one of my million dollar ideas, yeah, telling me the same thing, is it you guys gotta start to Yeah, well,

Tracy Hayes  1:19:42  

it would help. It would help the some of your agents who are a little shy, I think, because, you know, they're afraid to take that step, but now you're doing it. They're standing there and our customers doing a video testimonial. Now they can take that and post it on their YouTube page or Instagram page and make it look like they did it, but you did that's an added value from

Maria Coutu  1:19:59  

your son. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. We'll definitely try and yeah, get that going,

Tracy Hayes  1:20:03  

because is that too many of them I look on, if you look on their YouTube pages, the ones that do have YouTube pages are generally haven't posted in the year or two years and so forth. And YouTube shorts are big right now, and that's a beautiful thing to sit there and have a log of every closing and every video testimonial through your YouTube short. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Anything else?

Christina Tatum  1:20:24  

No, thank you

Tracy Hayes  1:20:26  

for I mean, we get we get you often wonder at the end there's yo here an hour, 20 minutes or so. And you know, Did I cover it all? But when I actually start breaking it down, we start watching the video. I think you guys got across. You know, your ideology, your personalities and so forth have come across in the air, and hopefully the agent said, We'll see it, and then when we cut it up, I'll send you the full video. You guys can cut it up some more, but I guarantee out of this, you probably could have a dozen reels easily, or just little clips of you guys. So appreciate everyone who is still listening at this point, if you are, but the final question each of you to answer can't duplicate the other ones or ditto, the other one. Is it more important who you know or what you know and why? Who you know, who you

Christina Tatum  1:21:06  

know, absolutely, because you can always find the answer, yeah. And that's what they teach you in law school, yeah, there's always an answer. There's always

Maria Coutu  1:21:15  

three different answers for sure. Yeah, it's all about who you know, especially in our

Tracy Hayes  1:21:18  

industry, in the law field, I mean, you ever think so? You're, they're watching Law and Order or something like that, right, those shows like that. Or what was the old timer? What was his name from Madeline? That's okay, and obviously, well, of course, he was. He's been through so many cases, right? So he's got it all up there. But from the attorney standpoint, there is so much out there that you really just need to know where to go find it, or who to ask and give you directions of where to find it, because there's so much law on the books, no one person can actually, you know, just sit there and spiel that off unless they, they, they've been doing it for 40 years, and already have, you know, been through a lot of those cases, right? Yeah, without a doubt.

Maria Coutu  1:21:57  

And that goes back to the whole when you were asking us those questions, I said that stuff's in a different intern, yeah. And we have no problem. Doing that. We have attorneys that obviously refer those kind of things to different family trust, all that kind of stuff. And that's where it comes to knowing someone that can say, Hey, I know this much of the answer, but I this person gave you the rest of the answer because they've actually treaded that you don't want me doing your trust. Well, I don't do trust every day. You know what I mean. So you want to go to that person that's in their wheelhouse, and you want the person that's staying in their wheelhouse, in my personal and specializes, yeah, that's because they've seen more than they you know.

Tracy Hayes  1:22:32  

They may pay a little bit more for that, but then they're they got somebody who, like I said, is gone a lot more miles down that down, down that path than you have, and can poke all the holes in it and so forth and make sure, because that's why you're doing it right, to make sure you're you're in the proper legal position, insurance wise, and so forth. Ladies, I appreciate you coming on. Thank you.

Podcast Intro  1:22:55  

This may be it for today's episode of Real Estate excellence, but we both know your pursuit of excellence doesn't stop here, to connect with the best of the best and really take your skills to the next level. Join our community by visiting Tracy Hayes podcast.com where you'll meet more like minded individuals looking to expand their inner circle and their personal experience that's available at Tracy Hayes podcast.com you