Len 0:02
Welcome. My name is Len Lane, and I am the founder and president of Brokers for Life Inc. and we are Dominion Lending Centers in Western Canada. The topic of our podcast will be about what we consider to be Real Life Mortgage Solutions.

Len 0:19
Welcome back. This is one of the sessions that we’re doing on the legal system and legal opportunities for clients, realtors, you know, just to make the process simpler. My guest today is Reuven Gorsht, and he is with a company called Deeded. Welcome to the show.

Reuven 0:39
Hey, Len, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Len 0:42
And you’re in Toronto this morning. Are you?

Reuven 0:44
I am, yeah, just working from home today. Cold, cold, snowy day, so trying to stay warm like yourself.

Len 0:52
Yeah, exactly. So, so maybe let’s talk a little bit about how Deeded came about.

Reuven 0:58
Absolutely. So my background has all been in technology, but for the last decade or so, I’ve been building technology solutions for the real estate space. So built a company called Move Snap, before Deeded, that helped realtors and their clients essentially manage all the aspects of moving, and we ended up selling that company back in 2019 and sitting there scratching my head thinking about what’s next? I happen to buy the house that I’m in now, and I still remember sitting on the driveway with my wife, and we had the moving truck organized for that afternoon. We even had company coming over the weekend, and we’re just sitting there in a car waiting for our lawyer to give us a call and say, hey, you know everything went through. You can get your keys and start moving in. The call did come in, but it was basically the lawyer saying, hey, you know what, I’m missing a document, and unless I can get that document in my office in the next 45 minutes, you’re not going to close. So two lessons learned. One is never close on a Friday, because I did, I made that really, really bad mistake. And number two is I knew exactly what document he was talking about, but I had packed it that morning on the moving truck. So is that on? First thing we packed was that document box on a moving truck. So again, never, never do that. Always keep your documents with you on moving day. But needless to say, that whole experience really turned into a nightmare. Very quickly. We ended up basically living out of a hotel room. All our belongings were hijacked. We had a huge bridge loan, which we then got a big fat bill from our lender for additional interest. And, you know, and I woke up the next week, once we actually, you know, settled in and all that stuff, and looked at, why is closing so disorganized? Why did I have a bad experience? And I went out, talked to mortgage brokers, talked to real estate agents, talked to home buyers like myself, and found there’s a lot of gaps that the experience hasn’t been modernized. The technology that exists in the industry is about 30 years old, and it just didn’t fit with, you know, today’s modern consumer. We’re all, you know, on Amazon and Uber we get instant information and feedback. And that’s where the idea kind of sparked, and we ended up launching in March of 2020. I think everybody knows what March 2020 is known for, and got got into it right as the pandemic started with a concept that was to go virtual. You know, here we are today.

Len 3:32
Interesting to see that my worst fear for my client is, is ever that that they’re, they’re ready to move in and they end up out on the street, basically. Which is what happened to you, of course, right? It’s like your other house is sold, or you’re buying a house and your rent, you were renting, and the landlord said, No, we’re not extending that. You now need to, you know, you need to find a hotel or something. So, I we’ve had very, very few over the years just on that, knowing what kind of grief that’s going to cause for our clients. I think that’s a key point. So, expand on that. So Deeded came along? What? What kind of service levels did you plan to have when you began?

Reuven 4:14
Yeah, that’s a great, great question, Len. So we had, you know, got a team, a small team together, with kind of one sole mission, which is, how do we make this entire closing experience, so if you ever you know bought or sold a home or refinance your mortgage, most of your transactions will end up in in some lawyers office somewhere, whether it’s a lawyer of your choosing or not. So we started really thinking about what, what does that experience look like in the 21st century? Because, again, we found it was just antiquated communications. Communications were lagging. There were no systems to really avoid the situation that I’ve been in, which is to predict that a closing will happen, or documents missing, or, you know, there’s something going awry. So, we started with, with that, with that end in mind, of course, you know, the pandemic helped us a lot by everything went virtual, and that enabled us to, you know, service consumers, not only digitally, but virtually. So you’re not ending up in that lawyer’s office signing your documents. You can literally sign those closing documents from anywhere. And in fact, when you’ve got multiple parties buying a property, it’s even more helpful because they don’t all have to be in the same location. When one can be in an office, one could be at home, could be on vacation, etc. So Deeded really ended up combining. We ended up combining two components. One is the human component, which is realizing that no matter what industry we’re in, in this case, the legal industry, we are a services company. We’re a customer service, customer experience obsessed company, which means understanding the journey that a home buyer like myself is going through, like you mentioned, all that anxiety and fears coming to life, and even if they, even if they don’t come to life, there’s a there’s always that fear and doubt. It’s for most people, it’s the largest transaction in their lives. So really aligning our entire strategy, and that means our team to have empathy, to understand that for us, it’s a transaction. We do 1000s of them. For the homebuyer, it’s an experience. And they’re always, you know, they’re always concerns, and there’s always doubt. So really, how do you make them feel like we’re there for them? No question is, no question is a dumb question. I always say the dumbest question is the one you didn’t ask. The other aspect of it, Len is, is putting technology on top. Because obviously, you know, we’re, we’re in a world where technology is, is proliferating everywhere we’ve got AI now, and technology does two things for us. One is it allows everybody involved in the transaction to be on the same page, so closing that communication gap. And by that, I mean, everybody with that uses Deeded has essentially a tracker, and you know exactly what’s happening with the closing and believe it or not, there’s about 100 some odd steps that we track. And in the second aspect is, of course, technology is best when it manages all these steps in the background, letting us know, for example, hey, the lender is fantastic, as they are sent the wrong document, so we better go and request the documents so we don’t have to make that call to the homebuyer, letting them know that there’s a delay, right? So that’s what we’ve, you know, that’s what we’ve put together, and it’s, it’s been, it’s been an amazing ride. So far, we are still continuing to build and invest and learn about areas that are pain points, both for industry professionals like yourself, as well as homebuyers, and we’ve received tremendous feedback from the entire community.

Len 7:58
Yeah, it’s, just looking at your FAQ and things like that in on your website, which is a great website, by the way. So I’m sure that people are asking, so do I really still have access to a lawyer?

Reuven 8:12
Absolutely, in fact, we get that question a lot. You don’t only have access to a lawyer when you use Deeded, Len, you actually have access to our entire team. And that’s what we found is the other bottleneck is, you know, oftentimes, your real estate lawyer, most of them run in small practices. It’s usually a lawyer and a paralegal or law clerk. And of course, you know, as we know, real estate mortgages are very seasonal, right, like we, you know, we get really, really busy in the spring and summer, and then, you know, months like now, January, February, things get a little bit quieter. So imagine a lawyer’s office gets overloaded on, you know, in May or June, and it’s difficult to reach that lawyer. We’ve got an entire team that both clients and industry professionals can access and typically get a response to within minutes.

Len 9:01
Right, and that’s the key. I definitely talk with our lawyers and saying, Well, what is it that you really do? Because we know the paralegal or the legal assistant did 90% of 99% value of the work, and the signing is just done with the lawyer itself, right? So it’s good that people can actually see that process happening as their file goes through your office, right? So everything is virtual. Majority of it, obviously, what? What type of security have you put in place?

Reuven 9:29
Security is first and foremost, top of mind for us. In fact, we’re the only company in the space that has received something called SOC2 Certification, which is one of the highest certifications you can get for privacy and IT security in the industry. In fact, we have to certify every year and to make sure that we’re up to standard. The other aspect of it, Len is again coming back to dealing with a platform like Deeded, as opposed to maybe individually with, you know, smaller firms that may not have the IT infrastructure, as we know, you know, I just got one this morning, a phishing email or text that’s asking for my personal information. Obviously, this is a high value, high anxiety transaction, and we want to make sure that it’s as secure as can be. So we’ve got protocols on our side. We’ve got all sorts of systems monitoring the transaction for potential fraud, ID verification, all that sort of stuff as well.

Len 10:29
Yeah, and it’s huge. We’re actually getting spammed real hard on our info@brokersforlife email at the moment, so to the tune of probably 20 a day. So I got my tech guys, who are in Romania. They’re actually working on it as we speak. And it’s interesting, what, how hard it is to stop it right? It’s as simple as that. So the platform itself, so what, what all can the client expect to see in there, and what, what shows up as what’s being tracked?

Reuven 11:03
Great question. So, so ultimately, we’ve digitized the entire experience. So it really starts from a handover or referral from a broker like yourself, or maybe a real estate partner or even a lender, and generally, that handoff happens by an email introduction. And I think anybody that’s closed on a property probably has 150 emails sitting their inbox. And you know what great, but email is not a great tool when, again, you’re keeping track of hundreds of steps and milestones and documents. So the first thing that our platform does is allow the borrower or the home buyer to go through an experience where we digitally, hand hold them, step by step and explain what to expect, what’s needed, what documents do we need, why we need them, and essentially, what we find is once they get through that onboarding, takes about 15-20, minutes, now they’re into the experience. Now they kind of understand what, what’s happening from their own language. Again, we’ve kind of looked at it from, you know, the language that happens in the industry. For example, you know a lot of brokers use internal language like mortgage instructions or commitment and we know Len, you know you’ve been in the business for a while, a mortgage instruction to a client means absolutely nothing. They don’t know. They don’t care. So we’ve translated those and again, make it a point to educate the client so they understand, hey, you know what this is an important milestone that means that your lender is confirmed, that they’re ready to land, and we’re just satisfying some conditions, and it’s only going to be a couple days before you know you sign and you get your money in the account. So again, everything we have in our in our platform, is really designed with with that one sole purpose, to put everybody at ease so they know not only what’s going on, but what to expect next?

Len 13:02
Yeah, and that’s funny, you talk about the jargon that we use in our industry. I’m running a training program for new agents and and even though there was four pages of definitions and things like that, they still wanted to know more about what actually what we’re talking about when we say, LOE, right? So letter of employment, things like that. It’s a common terminology for you or I or people in the industry, but to educate the client on that, you have to educate the people that they’re dealing with as well, right? So that’s great step, because I wrote out one of my agents says he has 150 acronyms that he’s written down in the six months he’s been here. And I’m gonna like, oh yeah, I guess there could be that many. But I’m sure on the closing side too, you know, they, they’re, you know, talking exactly that, what? What are mortgage instructions, right? And obviously, that’s a lender jargon as well. So there’s kind of two or three languages going on all the same time, right? So, so obviously a disrupter. The concept is, is is good for just about everybody, by the looks of it, there’s options for, you know, closing, refis, and transfers. Are you seeing much of that? That needs, needs? Lawyer, we’re seeing a lot of that go through FCT, of course.

Reuven 14:19
Len, it really depends on the situation and the in the desired client’s experience. What we find is a lot of a lot of transactions, especially nowadays. As we know, you know, rates are changing. Market conditions are changing. And most importantly, people’s situations, their personal home situations, or financial situations, are changing. So people are not transacting because it’s fun to do. They’re refinancing to consolidate debt. They’re refinancing to pay off bills. They’re maybe selling their property because they can’t afford the mortgage. So what we find is more and more people are leaning towards leveraging a lawyer or leveraging platforms like Deeded, which do have phenomenal lawyers as part of our platform because of that legal advice. Because they may have questions. And generally, yes, you can use a title company, as you mentioned, and they’re great businesses, and it’s very, very economical. So most of the time, a lender might pick up the cost, or it might be a few 100 bucks cheaper than a lawyer, but what a lot of people actually don’t know is you’re foregoing any legal advice, and you’re actually waiving your right to legal advice. And again, let’s put it, let’s put that few 100 bucks in context of this is a massive transaction that has impact in people’s lives. They want to understand what they’re signing. They want to understand what the implications are. Should they, you know, have an issue with with payments a few years down the road? Should the interest rate environment change? And I think those things are always a trade off in terms of getting that level of service.

Len 15:55
Yeah, you know, and then just again, looking at your website, and had never thought that this would be an option for somebody, but you can do independent legal advice—ILA in our industry. So, that’s an interesting concept. To do it that way, as opposed to two lawyers in the same office, which sometimes is still a conflict, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe talk about how that can help with clients.

Reuven 16:18
Yeah, so independent legal advice, or ILA comes in in certain situations, and again, most of the time for private deals, they’re required, they’re required when, when there’s a separation, or someone’s coming onto title and off a title, and it’s really just a it’s a legal tool to make sure that every party in the transaction has separate legal representation and is getting the right advice. And again, you know, you’ve got different situations. People are signing on to private mortgages, all of them have slightly different terms, and they’re not as standardized as you know, going to borrow money from a CIBC or TD and, and the onus is ultimately on that borrower to understand what they’re signing. And a lot of times, I think Len we’ve seen the legal packages could be, 50-100 pages and, and you need that professional to decipher and give you unbiased advice.

Len 17:18
True. Yeah, and that that is when I hadn’t even thought to use your service for that, because we see it all the time. It’s like, again, like I said, two lawyers in the same office, is to have that ability to send someone to say, okay, here, go here, because this will be, truly be independent legal advice will be, would be quite helpful. You know, what do you see in the future? For you, it’s a growing business, I’m sure. Do you, what are your long term projections about what will happen with this part of the industry?

Reuven 17:48
A couple couple things. I think the more conversations we have and the more transactions we close, we see that both the the professional community, so the mortgage brokers, the realtors, lenders, are gravitating towards a digital-first, user friendly type of experience that quite frankly, didn’t, didn’t really exist before. We didn’t have this decades ago. And really for a couple reasons, Len, one is the realization that from a professionals perspective, from a mortgage broker perspective, I think you mentioned most of your business comes from referrals, but there’s been, just got a survey came across my desk this morning. So 80,000 homeowners were surveyed by this company in the US, and 87% of them have found their mortgage product through referral or someone that they’ve used before. And and I think it’s, you know, it’s a staggering stat, because I know that, you know, we’re in an industry that quite often likes to chase that shiny new toy and say, okay, look online. Leads are great, and I could do a lot of marketing and advertising, whereas, you know, we know that the real, the real opportunity comes from not only, you know, building relationships over time, but providing great value and great service. Because let’s face it, everybody can provide a rate. Everybody can provide a product. The very, very few people in this industry, both realtors and and mortgage brokers, really think about orchestrating a great experience that not only creates a great outcome for their client, but most importantly, if you’ve ever you know been to a great restaurant or great hotel, you know that at your next family dinner, you’re just raving about this place, right? So what we want to do, or what we want to continue doing, is providing such a great experience, because we’re in the last mile of your transaction, right? So no matter what you know, Len, if you curate an incredible experience, you’re rolling out the red carpet for your clients, and something happens at the lawyers office. If I say the lawyer’s 15 minutes late for the appointment, guess what? They’re not going to your client’s not going to remember it was the lawyer. They’re going to remember the experience of dealing with you, and that chance of referral is just going to diminish and diminish and diminish. So we’re actively putting a lot of our time and effort to to make sure that the industry understands is how important the closing is, and the fact that it’s a reflection on on your brand, and a huge chance again, to capitalize on that 87% of clients will come back to the same broker if they’ve had a great experience, right?

Len 20:37
Yeah, and I, we tend to teach that it’s not, don’t, if you’re a transactional broker, you’re going to spend your whole life chasing business, right? Build the relationships, give them a good relationship, good experience, as best you can. You know, there’s always something comes up, not always, but a lot of times there is something comes up and and that change. You know, just thinking about 2020, how so many of the big banks would not accept DocuSign,, right? So it’s like that changed. We figured, no, maybe when, once it’s kind of over, they’ll claw that back. But they haven’t because they realize the value of it as well. For them, it’s, it’s a quicker turnaround for documents, the quicker, more efficient way for us to, you know, complete their files for them faster. So we were always, we still have the odd one here and there that needs a wet signature. Say what colour the bank is, but their logo is red. But they, but more and more of them have have stuck with that now that the reality is that virtual, online is the way that it’s going to be going forward, and doesn’t look like that’s changing anytime soon. So your service is something that obviously, on the cutting edge, it’s great to see that there is a disruptor in the industry, I guess, if you want to call it that, that more and more law offices, like I said, are just one or two or three people doing real estate, and that that doesn’t quite cover it these days. You know, especially with there’s more things to go through than than there almost is when we put the package together to start the deal. Right?

Reuven 22:19
Right.

Len 22:20
Yeah. Anyways, I’m going to thank you for your time today. Everybody can find them at Deeded.ca. Pretty straightforward. You deal in Alberta and Ontario, I believe?

Reuven 22:29
Yeah, we do.

Len 22:30
Yeah. So licensing in both of those. Two of the bigger markets, materials may be slowing down, but Alberta doesn’t seem to be at this point yet, even a 10% tariff not going to make a big bunch of difference, by the looks of it, with lots of construction and stuff happening in the province, so. Anyways, want to thank you for your time, Reubven, it’s a great service that lots of our clients, I believe, are using already.

Reuven 22:53
Fantastic. Great to be here, Len, and again, appreciate the opportunity.

Len 22:57
Thanks for listening today. I hope you found the information that we provided to be useful in your mortgage journey, and remember, you can always find our associates at www.brokersforlife.ca/associates. Have a great day.