Skyrocketing Home Insurance Costs in 2024: What You Need to Know

00:00:13 - Mike Mills
Hello.

00:00:13 - Mike Mills
Hello everybody, and welcome to 2024. I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday and is ready to get back to grind. I know that I am because I couldn't wait to get those damn kids out of my house and out of my hair regularly. Speaking, of course. Welcome back to the Texas Real Estate and finance podcast. I am your host, Mike Mills, your friendly neighborhood mortgage banker here in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. And today we are going to be discussing an issue that everyone is facing, whether you're in real estate or not. And right now, I don't know that there's a ton of attention on it in the corporate media space, which is why I'm bringing it here to you today on my tiny little podcast that could and that's the rising cost of insurance. Now, I'm the first to tell you that I really don't pay attention to my insurance premiums, hardly ever. They just get auto deducted from a bank account each month. And I couldn't tell you what I'm paying off top of my head either way. But I do know right now that it's a lot, especially because I have a teenage driver that just recently hit the streets. But today we're going to focus a little bit more on how it affects housing and people's ability to qualify for homes in an already critically unaffordable housing market. And this is just piling on. And if you haven't been paying attention to this, then you should. But we aren't talking small little increases. This is pretty significant. But before we get started, I'm really trying to grow my podcast significantly for 2024 and I'm asking for your help. This thing takes time to schedule, produce, publish and all that kind of stuff. And the more subscribers I get to the podcast, the more likely I can to continue adding content to what we bring you each and every week. So it would really go a long way of reaching our goal of 4000 subscribers by the end of 2024. If you could share this with everybody inside your network, I appreciate all of you that listen and reach out to me and let me know that you've been loving what we're doing here. And the more people we can get on board, the bigger we can grow. So tell a friend for your good friend, Mike. Really appreciate it. Now let's get into it. So my guest today is a 25 year plus veteran of insurance to tell us what the hell is going on with the insurance bill right now and how can I keep my costs as low as possible. So please welcome my really good friend Brad Bingham to the show.

00:02:24 - Mike Mills
Hello, Brad.

00:02:25 - Mike Mills
Let me flip you on there. What's up? How are you, man?

00:02:30 - Brad Bingham
Another day, another dollar.

00:02:31 - Mike Mills
Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. So let's just kind of get right into it and we'll bounce around to a couple of different spots. So what the hell is going on? I was reading something the other day and it said this was. I don't remember if I saw. It's a Wall street journal, something like that, that said in 2022, insurance premiums on average went up about 21%. And compared to 2021, where they went up, or, excuse me, in 2023, they went up 21%. My years are getting all screwed up at the first year, and then in 2022, they were up 12%. So just in the last two years, we're like 35% higher. So what the hell is going on?

00:03:06 - Brad Bingham
You're probably looking at national averages.

00:03:08 - Mike Mills
Yeah, these are national in Texas.

00:03:09 - Brad Bingham
It's probably worse than that.

00:03:10 - Mike Mills
Okay, great. Good news, good news.

00:03:13 - Brad Bingham
Unfortunately, we all live in the same world where we have young drivers that are starting to enter our policies. If we could have done this ten years ago, we would have been much.

00:03:20 - Mike Mills
Better, would have been much nicer.

00:03:21 - Brad Bingham
Yes, but man, the biggest issue is just availability. When we went through the crunch during COVID insurance companies burned up reserves. When you burn up reserves, that eliminates you. I'm sorry.

00:03:36 - Mike Mills
No, you're good.

00:03:37 - Brad Bingham
That eliminates your availability to be able to write insurance. And so what that means is when an insurance company writes a policy, in order for it to be secure, they have to have reserves.

00:03:46 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:03:46 - Brad Bingham
And so for auto, we have to have a dollar for every auto premium we write for home. I'm going to ballpark. It's four or $5.

00:03:54 - Mike Mills
Nobody's auditing you. You'll be all right.

00:03:56 - Brad Bingham
When we write a homeowner premium, if we put a dollar premium on the books, we have to have $4 in reserve. Okay, I'm going to tell you, in Texas, you're probably better off at six, $7 in reserve just to be able to pay losses. But it's required to have the four or $5, whatever it is. If you don't have that, then you're not an admitted carrier in Texas, which means if you go out of business, your customers are up what creek with the path?

00:04:20 - Mike Mills
Yeah, shit creek. It's fine. Again, we're not broadcasting the five year olds. It's fine.

00:04:25 - Brad Bingham
So most of your big carriers are admitted carriers, so they live by the guidelines. And so when our reserves go from, let's just call it 40 million to 20 million. That makes it where we can't write insurance unless it's a really good customer because we don't want to take up our availability.

00:04:45 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:04:45 - Brad Bingham
Does that make sense to what?

00:04:47 - Mike Mills
So you only have limited slots?

00:04:48 - Brad Bingham
Essentially we have limited slots.

00:04:50 - Mike Mills
You don't want to write it to somebody that is going to have a bunch of claims if you can figure that out.

00:04:54 - Mike Mills
Right. All right.

00:04:55 - Brad Bingham
So availability is one of the biggest issues right now.

00:04:58 - Mike Mills
Okay?

00:04:58 - Brad Bingham
We've had carriers pull out of Texas. We've had carriers that have just completely shut down. Quit writing business, all your small guys.

00:05:05 - Mike Mills
Do you know who's pulled out of Texas specifically?

00:05:07 - Brad Bingham
Oh, man. When you say pull out, that would mean they're non renewing customers.

00:05:11 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:05:12 - Brad Bingham
I don't know of anybody non renewing customers yet.

00:05:15 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:05:16 - Brad Bingham
When I say pull out, they're not writing new business.

00:05:17 - Mike Mills
I got you. So they're not adding to their portfolio.

00:05:19 - Brad Bingham
You go shop your premium and you used to have probably 1015 companies that would write a policy in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

00:05:27 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:05:27 - Brad Bingham
We're going to talk about four specific counties right now because Dallas, Tarrant, Denton and Colin are the ones that are having the issue. And it's all driven off of wind and rain, wind and hail. Okay? And so when you have these availability issues, you go shopping. Used to you get ten different quotes back. Now you're getting two, three maybe. And those companies are like, well, we're not going to write your business, right? And they're like, well, why not? Well, if you're not the cream of the crop, they don't want you right now because they don't have the availability for you.

00:05:56 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:05:58 - Brad Bingham
This will all get fixed when we build our reserves back up. But right now, while reserves are tight, we're going to reduce the number of claims you can have had in the past. And that's why when I did the podcast with Cody and Eric, claims are such a big deal, right? I mean, if you don't have pristine credit and very few claims, you're not getting new homeowners insurance right now.

00:06:19 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:06:20 - Brad Bingham
So you're stuck with what you're paying. And if you go up 40, 50%, you're going to have to eat it and it's not fun right now. Wow, this all will get better. But right now, I would tell you, we're probably Allstate is very, I'm going to say on the forthcoming of things. So we're always up front. When we have rate increases, we're typically the first to take them. But what happens is when everybody's up shit creek. We're paddling back up creek because we've already weathered the storm.

00:06:48 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:06:48 - Brad Bingham
And so right now I feel very strong. That November, December, Allstate's kind of turned the corner here. We did take a recent rate change, which was a single digit rate change compared to the double digits we've been having. So when you see a single digit rate increase, you're like, okay, we can sustain this. That also tells me things are turning around, right. And so hopefully that's the last rate increase we have. I call it 2024 because everybody's renewing in 2024, but hopefully that's the last auto rate increase. Homeowners, man, with the availability issue we're having right now, and the number of carriers that are not in the marketplace right now, taking active new customers.

00:07:31 - Mike Mills
We'Re.

00:07:31 - Brad Bingham
Probably going to be in this for probably another six to twelve months, I would bet.

00:07:34 - Mike Mills
Really? Yeah.

00:07:35 - Mike Mills
But when prices go up, they don't often come down, right. Unless you're dealing with.

00:07:42 - Brad Bingham
Usually never come.

00:07:43 - Mike Mills
Right. That's what I'm saying. So you're saying that we're going to come out of this as far as no more big hikes, right? Not necessarily that it's going to get significantly cheaper, but cost drives all this, right.

00:07:53 - Brad Bingham
If cost comes back down, the premiums will have to come back down because we're all regulated. The state commissioner is not going to sit there and let them rake in record profits every year and not bring rates down. So if cost comes back down, rates will come back down.

00:08:07 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:08:07 - Brad Bingham
Now to the 30 to 40, 50%, probably not, right? Our cost has gone up, our labor has gone up, everything's gone up. We haven't put our head in a hole thinking nothing's going on right now, right? So once we get through this storm during COVID we had a supply issue. The supply issues are getting fixed.

00:08:27 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:08:28 - Brad Bingham
And so once you fix a lot of the supply chain and the log jam, everything else is going to fix itself out.

00:08:36 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:08:37 - Brad Bingham
And so that's all kind of working itself out. But for homeowners, man, I've been in this, like she said, I think this is my 25th year starting in January. I went through the mold crisis in 2000, 2001.

00:08:49 - Mike Mills
Oh, that mold crisis. We all remember that one.

00:08:51 - Brad Bingham
Dude, look, prices doubled overnight. We went from four hundred dollars to eight hundred dollars, right? And everybody's like, oh, my gosh. Now, the average homeowner premium, I'm going to tell you, you see them come across your desk every day. They're 3000, $504,000 average annual premium with a lot of those are 2% deductibles. I completely for my 25 year career have steered people away from 2% deductibles.

00:09:16 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:09:17 - Brad Bingham
It's not good for you when you have a claim. It's only good for you now.

00:09:21 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:09:22 - Brad Bingham
And so you have to do a math equation. In the old days when I would change somebody from a 1% to a 2% deductible, it would take you seven, eight years to save the difference in your deductible. So little math here you have $1,000 deductible. I bump it to 2000 and you're saving $100. It's going to take you ten years to save that difference in deductible.

00:09:39 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:09:39 - Brad Bingham
If we're all on the same page, then the math used to be seven to eight years.

00:09:43 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:09:43 - Brad Bingham
Now when I go do a change for somebody's deductible from 1% to 2%, they can recoup that difference in two to three years much quicker. Some of them are four to five years. So we always do the math equation for them and we put it in front of them and say, hey, look, when was the last time you had a roof claim? I can tell you, you've been with me ten years. It seven years ago on this policy.

00:10:01 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:10:02 - Brad Bingham
So if every seven years you have a claim and you save your deductible every three years, you tell me what the best thing to do is. Now the other side of that is when the claim comes, you better have seven grand in your pocket.

00:10:15 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:10:16 - Mike Mills
You got to have the money to be able to handle it.

00:10:18 - Brad Bingham
So it's a double edged sword. We're going to get hit with hail at some point in Texas.

00:10:23 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:10:24 - Brad Bingham
Is it bad enough that makes you need a new roof? Maybe not.

00:10:28 - Mike Mills
Well, I was reading, so where this kind of kicked off for me a little bit is I was reading in several places about it because they were saying, obviously the percentage of increase. But some of the things they were attributing it to were, first off they had significant amount of weather events that have been ticking up for whatever you want to attribute that to. But they have been ticking up and especially in places like Florida.

00:10:53 - Brad Bingham
I don't mean to cut you off, let me kind of jump in on that real quick. Because one thing happened for us in 2022. We had to renegotiate what we call reinsurance.

00:11:03 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:11:03 - Brad Bingham
And most people don't understand what reinsurance is, but when we had the massive wildfire in Hawaii, do you think all state and farmers and state farm. Do you think we paid all those claims?

00:11:11 - Mike Mills
No.

00:11:11 - Brad Bingham
Heck, no. We paid our portion, just like you do. Your deductible, call it a deductible.

00:11:16 - Mike Mills
And then there's a bigger insurance.

00:11:17 - Brad Bingham
We buy an insurance policy from the big guys.

00:11:19 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:11:20 - Brad Bingham
And so once we hit our. I don't know what you call it, 300 million, 200 million, whatever, they set their limit at, then the reinsurance kicks in. In 2022, the cost in Texas for reinsurance for Allstate went from 444 million, 444,000,000 to 1.2 billion for one year. So it tripled in a one year period.

00:11:43 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:11:43 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:11:44 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:11:44 - Brad Bingham
So when our cost continues to go up, the cost of roofing, the cost of labor, the cost of everything continues to go up, and it just multiplies.

00:11:53 - Mike Mills
Then that gets passed on to the.

00:11:55 - Brad Bingham
It gets passed on the consumer 100%.

00:11:57 - Mike Mills
Yeah. Look, that's the way it works, man. Again, good or bad, that's how it works. That's how it works. Well, and that was the thing. It was talking about weather events, and it was saying that in 2023, that we had. Well, if they went back about the number of storms.

00:12:14 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:12:14 - Mike Mills
Like the average had been for years, maybe like five.

00:12:17 - Brad Bingham
I think we hit our number in August 10.

00:12:20 - Mike Mills
It hadn't been much. And the way they established these events were anything over a billion dollars, is what they were looking at. Any damages that were incurred? Yeah, it was like, over a billion dollars. And in 2021, there were 18, I think it said. And then in 2022, there were 25 that had occurred. And, of course, you had the wildfires in Hawaii in 2022, and then you had the. And then in 2022, you had the hurricane in Florida, which was like a six. It was like the second most expensive destructive event in the history of the country. It was like $65 billion. And that they say these weather events that keep causing. But it's not just because of the increased weather events, but it's also because the cost, like you said, right. The cost of everything has gone up was completely different.

00:13:03 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:13:03 - Mike Mills
Because of inflation. Because inflation has driven the cost of everything up. So they were saying just a standard run of the know tornado event or hail event in the midwest was now a billion dollar event because of how expensive everything has got.

00:13:17 - Brad Bingham
Just look at Mansfield.

00:13:18 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:13:19 - Brad Bingham
When I started in Mansfield 20 years ago, there were a bunch of cows around here, right? Those cows aren't there anymore.

00:13:27 - Mike Mills
They're rooftops.

00:13:28 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:13:29 - Mike Mills
Thousands of homes.

00:13:30 - Brad Bingham
If we have a hailstorm that came through Mansfield that hit a bunch of farmland is now hitting rooftops. It's costing us more.

00:13:37 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:13:37 - Brad Bingham
And people don't talk about some of the semantics that the growth is really what's.

00:13:42 - Mike Mills
Oh, no, absolutely. It was talking about how Florida specifically, because it was talking a lot about Florida and that there had been an immigration over the last five years of like 950,000 people or something like that to Florida. And again, you have more houses, you have more commercial buildings, you have more people, you have more things to insure. So when everybody's moving to a high weather place that you're having hurricanes and floods and all kinds of stuff that's rushing through there, you're going to have more claims because it just costs more money to do that.

00:14:11 - Brad Bingham
I count my blessings every day. I'm not an insurance agent in Florida or California.

00:14:14 - Mike Mills
Well, I mean, a lot of pulling out.

00:14:16 - Brad Bingham
I was just going to say, you think our availability issue is bad here? Yeah, go to California.

00:14:21 - Mike Mills
Yeah, it's really bad.

00:14:22 - Brad Bingham
Go to Florida.

00:14:22 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:14:23 - Brad Bingham
The difference is in those two states is everything's so heavily regulated.

00:14:29 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:14:30 - Brad Bingham
When we go to take a rate increase, we have regulators.

00:14:32 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:14:33 - Brad Bingham
And the regulators are there to make sure our rates are justifiable, but also to protect the consumer.

00:14:40 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:14:40 - Brad Bingham
And so they're between a rock and a hard place because we need 30% increase. And the consumer is like, that's absurd. You can't give them 30% increase. Well, do you want them to stay in business? Do you want to have that same insurance company to be able to give you insurance? And so it's a really tough situation. So you get New York, you get California very heavily regulated. California knows they're in a problem, right?

00:15:03 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:15:04 - Mike Mills
Well, they just raised their taxes.

00:15:05 - Brad Bingham
Their politicians know that insurance is becoming an availability issue and it looks bad on them. And so they are changing their stance towards the insurance company to be able to allow them to take some rate increases. And they've recently allowed some rate increases that are substantial rate increases that are necessary. But I personally think, unfortunately, the other parts of the United States are paying for some of those states that aren't allowing them to take the rate.

00:15:30 - Mike Mills
Absolutely.

00:15:31 - Mike Mills
No.

00:15:31 - Mike Mills
I mean, it's spread across everybody. It's not just hit that. I'm going to pull that mic a little bit closer because I know you like putting things in your mouth. You're going to be fine. Just get a little closer. You're fine. But no, yeah, it's absolutely spread across everybody. I mean, that's just how it works. If you're a national insurance company and you're doing business in 50 states. Well, then if you take hits in certain states, you're going to bleed it across everybody else. That's just the nature of business. Again, good or bad, it's just how that shit works.

00:15:56 - Brad Bingham
The good thing we have for us is Texas is such a big part of everything to every insurance company. I think for allstated, maybe 20, 20% of the company comes from Texas. I mean, our premiums here are huge, right? And so they're not going to pull out of a market that is too important to them. Of course they're going to figure it out. They're going to get with regulators, they're going to get with politicians. They're going to figure it out.

00:16:19 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:16:20 - Mike Mills
We have a massive gdp just in the state of Texas. They're not going to 100%. The big carriers aren't pulling out of here.

00:16:25 - Brad Bingham
We can't reduce the cost, right. We can do everything we can to reduce the cost. And sometimes when you see claims, you think they're being chintzy. They're doing their job to try to keep the fraud. They're trying to keep the. You want to talk about fraud, man? The liability claims on bodily injury, just go do a little research on that. Everybody talks about the car parts, the roof parts, this and that. Go look at medical liability claims.

00:16:48 - Mike Mills
Really?

00:16:49 - Brad Bingham
Ever since COVID all these traveling nurses, they make a lot of money now, right. And all that cost is bogging it down. And when that happens, every accident, I mean, go turn the radio on for ten minutes and tell me how many lawyer commercials you get.

00:17:03 - Mike Mills
Yeah, there's.

00:17:04 - Brad Bingham
In ten minutes it's probably going to be ten.

00:17:05 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:17:06 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:17:06 - Brad Bingham
And so they're all begging for the free dollar, right. And when you get hit, you're entitled to this, you're entitled to that, right? Well, in my world, the only thing I'm entitled to is get and going to work.

00:17:17 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:17:18 - Brad Bingham
And I'm lucky if I have that job, but that's up to me to keep it.

00:17:21 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:17:21 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:17:21 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:17:22 - Brad Bingham
There's no entitlement in this world, but we're teaching everybody there's entitlement. And these attorneys are really bad right now. The liability part of it, I guarantee you, when you talk about inflation and you say that we peaked out at 9.45, whatever the percentage was, the insurance inflation two years in a row was over 30%. So 2022 and 2023, you're talking 30% inflation for insurance related issues. Where do you think your premiums are going to go?

00:17:49 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:17:50 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:17:51 - Brad Bingham
There's nowhere else for them to go.

00:17:53 - Mike Mills
Yeah, well, this is on a bigger thing, and I don't really want to go farther down rabbit hole on this one.

00:17:59 - Brad Bingham
We could get there real.

00:18:00 - Mike Mills
Yeah, I know we have those private conversations on our own. And this isn't an Allstate thing or a state farm thing or insurance thing. This is any large company thing is they're beholden to shareholders. And so therefore, the thing that is not going to suffer is their profit. Their profit is not going to suffer. They're going to keep it up. And if they can get it higher and they can raise it, then they will. You know what I mean?

00:18:27 - Brad Bingham
Well, look, we went nine quarters with losses.

00:18:30 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:18:30 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:18:31 - Brad Bingham
Yeah, we understand losses. They're going to recoup those losses.

00:18:35 - Mike Mills
Yes, they are.

00:18:37 - Brad Bingham
And so talking about the reserves, right. I mean, these big insurance companies went from billions of dollars. We lost tens of billions of dollars in reserves, which has caused this log jam of availability. I can't tell you how heartbreaking it is. I'm not joking. My staff goes to a beating every day.

00:18:57 - Mike Mills
Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

00:18:58 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:18:58 - Mike Mills
You guys get beat up because you all are the boots on the ground that's having to deal with the customers that are pissed because you told me the story about ladies that have called, old ladies that have called you, and they're on fixed incomes and they can't afford this kind of boost, and you're having to. What do you tell them? Because this is another thing that I don't think a lot of people understand fully is, and I think it's the same. Everybody. But you can clarify for me, but Brad Bingham does not control the premiums that you pay for your Allstate. Dude, I got a magic wand in my pocket, budy. Right. I wasted on my premium every day.

00:19:32 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:19:32 - Mike Mills
So you are just passing on and trying to explain what the company is providing. And this is the same.

00:19:38 - Brad Bingham
I'm an educator, Mike.

00:19:39 - Mike Mills
Yes. So talk a little bit about just so everybody understands how this works, because I don't think everybody really fully gets it. And this is the same, I think, pretty much for everybody, for every insurance company, that there is not just Allstate farmers, liberty mutual, all of them, the powers that be from above, send down your pricing.

00:19:55 - Brad Bingham
Here's what you can ivory tower.

00:19:57 - Mike Mills
The ivory tower speaks. And then you can now, and this is where you can really get into the weeds. For me, here is the Ala carte part. Because it used to be you'd get this and this is what you got. And that was it. And now, because the cost has gotten so out of control, and companies are trying to adjust for it. Now they're pulling coverages out. Now they're taking things away to make the number look better, but you're losing coverage.

00:20:18 - Brad Bingham
Agents are doing that. Companies.

00:20:19 - Mike Mills
Well, that's what I mean.

00:20:20 - Brad Bingham
Agents, they give you the options if you have a good agent. I'm going to tell you, being an agent 25 years, I think now, is more important to have an agent than it's ever been.

00:20:29 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:20:30 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:20:30 - Brad Bingham
Because you can navigate through this insurance rabbit hole all day long. Just this morning, I was going to be late this morning, I had a friend from school call me. His daughter goes to school with Aidan, and he calls me up like, man, my wife shopped all day yesterday, and they've got all my records wrong, and they've got all this jacked up. And I was like, let me just run a quote for you, right? It took me ten minutes. The stuff that all these people are telling him on his record or not on the record. And we write the policy for him in about ten minutes, right? And he's like, why don't we just call you yesterday? He goes, we went through all this. We sit down and wendy goes, isn't Aidan's dad an insurance agent? Why don't we call him? And they were pulling their hair out.

00:21:05 - Mike Mills
Literally pulling their hair out.

00:21:06 - Brad Bingham
Yeah. And so it's rewarding to be able to help people. And right now, we're saving people big money. I mean, it's not 2030, $40. Sometimes it's 200, $300 a month.

00:21:18 - Mike Mills
Oh, no, I've sent you multiple people that I've gotten quotes from other places, and I get the number, and I'm still adjusting myself to quoting this stuff. Me, too. I'm not quoting insurance, but I'm just trying to give them a ballpark on what it's going to cost.

00:21:30 - Brad Bingham
That's part of your job.

00:21:31 - Mike Mills
Yeah, my ballpark is way off these days. I've had to correct that. But then I send them over to you and, yeah, it's $1,500, $2,000 less in many cases. I mean, we had one recently where the client, I guess they had a claim, or there was a perception of a claim that the property had, which is. That's a new thing, right? Where now, if you're buying a house and that house has had claims on it previously, as the new owner, you can be held to the insurance on that. In certain companies, at least.

00:22:03 - Brad Bingham
Certain companies, yes, certain companies. They can set whatever guideline they want.

00:22:07 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:22:07 - Brad Bingham
And yes, that does happen.

00:22:09 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:22:09 - Mike Mills
Which. That blew my mind. I couldn't believe that, that this particular.

00:22:13 - Brad Bingham
Company, I don't want to say it blows my mind because it could happen to me tomorrow.

00:22:15 - Mike Mills
Sure.

00:22:15 - Brad Bingham
Right now it doesn't.

00:22:16 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:22:16 - Mike Mills
Right now you don't have to deal with it, but it doesn't mean you won't in the future. That's correct. But anyway, going back to how to look at coverages. So explain how they used to do it versus what's happening now more and more in the industry with the Ala carte method and how they're breaking it down.

00:22:29 - Brad Bingham
It's not a ton different.

00:22:30 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:22:31 - Brad Bingham
When we sell a policy in my office, we sell what we would buy.

00:22:34 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:22:34 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:22:34 - Brad Bingham
So when we're doing a quote, we're putting on there what we would buy right now, when we go through the quote with the customer, I tell them, look, this is what we put on here because this is what we would purchase. But it's your choice whether you want it or not.

00:22:45 - Mike Mills
Got you.

00:22:45 - Brad Bingham
So if you want to take off the sewer backup, which is $90 a year for the best coverage, take your $90 off a year.

00:22:51 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:22:51 - Brad Bingham
If you need it, I'm going to document. You told me to take it off. Yes, we had this conversation. Yes, but I'll take it off for you. We'll save you the $90. Okay. So, yes, we do have control over those types of things, but your policies are going to come with a dwelling coverage, a structure coverage, your contents coverage. You can get replacement cost or non replacement cost. If you get non replacement cost. If it's not more expensive, substantially buy replacement cost.

00:23:18 - Mike Mills
Explain what replacement and non replacement cost is.

00:23:20 - Brad Bingham
Replacement cost is very simple. You buy a tv today, five years down the road. It was $2,000 when you bought it. Now it's worth $200.

00:23:26 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:23:27 - Brad Bingham
Actual cash value policy, which is not replacement cost, is going to pay you $200. Replacement cost is going to pay you 3000 if it costs 3000 to go replace that same tv, buy it today.

00:23:37 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:23:37 - Brad Bingham
So buying new, buying used.

00:23:39 - Mike Mills
Right. Got you. Okay.

00:23:41 - Brad Bingham
So I see these policies come across my desk all the time. And your structure, your roof substantially needs to have replacement cost.

00:23:49 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:23:50 - Brad Bingham
If you put a 2% deductible on non replacement costs, you're not covering your roof.

00:23:53 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:23:53 - Brad Bingham
And the insurance company would love you.

00:23:55 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:23:55 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:23:55 - Brad Bingham
Because 65% to 70% of your rate is for your roof. So if I can exclude that out of your situation here, don't you got.

00:24:03 - Mike Mills
Like a silent mode on that thing? Those guys blowing up all over the place.

00:24:11 - Brad Bingham
Replacement cost is super important.

00:24:13 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:24:13 - Brad Bingham
And when it comes to contents, if you don't have it, you have a claim. A $50,000 claim can become a $10,000 claim very quickly because they will depreciate it.

00:24:23 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:24:25 - Brad Bingham
And so when you're saving $89 a year, don't take the $89, buy it.

00:24:31 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:24:32 - Mike Mills
Well, it goes back into the whole thing. That was always the case where if it sounds too good to be true and it's significantly cheaper, again, we had another client who had gone with another company or looked at them, and we had reviewed the policy. And you realized on the roof, which blew my mind, that they didn't have the replacement costs for the roof, which is why the premium was so much cheaper. And you had tried to explain the client, and I can't remember, do they end up going? I think they ended up staying. I can't remember because the price. Yes, I know the cost was so much less, but that's the type of stuff. And that's where the agent part comes back into such a big play. Because. And I tell this to anybody that I work with, and when we talk about insurance, because I talk about it all the time, is, if you're going to do your car, I guess I still don't agree with it, but if you're going to do the Geicos in the 1800 of the world, the progressives. Fine, whatever. It's your car.

00:25:26 - Brad Bingham
I shaved for you last night. I trimmed the beard because I didn't want to come in here.

00:25:28 - Mike Mills
Looks like the caveman I know. So I don't agree with it. But fine, if that's what you need to do. But when it comes to your house, you have to have an agent because there's so many moving parts to it. And those business models are built. So the 1800 callers are built to make it complicated. They want to make it very difficult for you to make a claim. They want you to have to talk to ten people. They want you to have to remember six different numbers that you're going to have to give them every single time.

00:25:54 - Brad Bingham
I think you're wrong. I think they want to make it simple, but they don't want to give you coverage. Okay?

00:25:59 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:25:59 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:25:59 - Brad Bingham
So they'll get you on the hook with that 2% deductible or non replacement cost, and then you'll come in the agent's office and we'll go through the policy with you and like, do you know what you bought? And they're like, not really. I'm like, they didn't go over your coverages with you? And they're like, well, no, they just told me what my price was, and I'm like, well, you know, they didn't give you this and they didn't give you that. And if you have a roof claim, it's $9,000 out of your pocket. They're like, no, we never discussed that. I'm like, I don't know how these people sleep at night.

00:26:27 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:26:28 - Brad Bingham
Yeah, I take my melatonin. I sleep pretty good at night.

00:26:30 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:26:31 - Brad Bingham
But it amazes me when I see this stuff. And unfortunately, we are creatures of me, me. And if I can pay my bills today off of your ignorance. Ignorance, then a lot of people will do that.

00:26:47 - Mike Mills
Happens that way often.

00:26:49 - Brad Bingham
I tell people all the time. I'm like, look, I'm not for you. Maybe this is the right person for you.

00:26:53 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:26:53 - Brad Bingham
Because I might know. And so it's been frustrating the last two years. I've pulled a lot of hair out. I've got a lot of gray hair. I feel really bad for my staff because they take the beating every day, and then they got to put a smile on and sell the next customer. It makes it very difficult, but they do a very good job. They're very educated. Having a staff or having an agent to you that's not educated is no good to you. They're just another salesperson.

00:27:22 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:27:22 - Brad Bingham
If they can educate you, fantastic. But if you can't get educated from your insurance agent, you need one. That will take the time, first of all.

00:27:30 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:27:31 - Brad Bingham
And when it comes time for a claim, I tell people all the time, call me first with a $9,000 deductible. If we got $2,000 worth of repairs, don't file that claim because it stays on your record forever.

00:27:42 - Mike Mills
Because once you file it, it ain't going nowhere.

00:27:45 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:27:45 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:27:49 - Brad Bingham
I don't think that the policies have really been cut down. I think the agents are starting to say, hey, I'll take this coverage off because it's cheaper. And people are just looking for cheaper right now.

00:27:58 - Mike Mills
Yeah, whichever. I mean, everybody is. Everything's getting more. I mean, look, according to the news, the economy is doing great, we're all billionaires, and the stock market's through the roof, and crypto is going bananas. But yet it seems like the general person seems to be struggling a little bit. But, yes, everybody is trying to cut costs. They are trying to minimize things as much as possible. But again, what you guys do that a lot of companies don't do is it goes back to the education piece because, look, I tell people and agents that I work with all the time. We do this job every single day. People buy houses three or four times in their life, right? So when they go through this process, it's not something that they've gone through many, many times before. So you have to re educate them the entire time because there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of stress involved with it. But it's a big transaction, and people, when I talk to them, are generally willing to listen because this is a big deal.

00:28:50 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:28:50 - Mike Mills
It's harder for you and your staff because, look, I hate insurance. As far as I'm concerned. It's just like Susan never comes to talk to me.

00:28:58 - Brad Bingham
I hate insurance.

00:28:59 - Mike Mills
If she ever wants to talk, I'm like, I don't care, just do whatever. But y'all do a great job of walking through stuff with the clients and making sure that they understand every piece that's covered. And why? Because if you don't understand it, I guess the good thing is you don't need to understand it every single day of your life. You just need to understand it when these premiums are coming up and renewing. But you got to ask questions. And unfortunately, the common consumer is more interested in cat videos on TikTok than they are about finding out what kind of coverage they are protected against so they don't lose their ass in six months when they get a health saved $100. They saved $100 a month. But it's that short term gain kind of a thing that you don't feel the long term hit. But you all do a great job of explaining that to people and walking them through it, which when you go to the non agent models, when you're dealing with the 1800 folks, they're not going to do that. And more often than not, if you.

00:29:55 - Brad Bingham
Don'T ask the question, they ain't answering it.

00:29:57 - Mike Mills
No.

00:29:57 - Mike Mills
And they're paying their call center guy $10 an hour and they have a script in front of them and they're answering the question.

00:30:05 - Brad Bingham
He doesn't have a license.

00:30:06 - Mike Mills
He has no license.

00:30:07 - Brad Bingham
He falls under the mothership license.

00:30:09 - Mike Mills
He's been doing it for about six months, maybe until he may be at.

00:30:14 - Brad Bingham
Home in his underwear, right?

00:30:15 - Mike Mills
Yeah, probably. But that's where it comes to a point where you have to make sure that when this is such a big, it can be such a big impactful thing. And unfortunately, hopefully, it's not. What do you all say? Nobody cares about insurance until you need it or what is that, like a lawyer? Yeah. Nobody cares about it until it happens and you have to get it. But it's important. All right, so let's specifically talking about real estate. If you were talking to realtors, and I know you work with a lot of agents here in the area as well, but what would you tell agents today? Because here's the problem that we're running into, that we see more and more and more. I know this, so I mitigate a lot of this up front, but I hear horror stories now and they're coming up more often is somebody finds a house, right. And when I qualify somebody for a mortgage, more often than not, not all the time, but they're close on their numbers on what they can qualify for, because if I tell them they can get this, they want to go get that.

00:31:12 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:31:13 - Mike Mills
So we're tied on numbers sometimes, and we're trying to keep our payment within a range because that's what we qualify on, is a payment, not a purchase price. And into the payment goes their principal and interest, it goes their taxes, it goes their insurance, it goes their mortgage insurance. Well, I know the mortgage insurance because it's easy to figure out once we pick the house, I know the taxes. It's very easy to figure out. And once we know what their terms of their loan are, that's really easy to figure out. So those three components.

00:31:34 - Brad Bingham
But you're throwing a dart in the dark at the insurance price right now, 100%. There's no more calculation. You could just say, put this calculation in there and come.

00:31:44 - Mike Mills
No.

00:31:45 - Mike Mills
And especially because credit plays such a big role and even former claims now that I have no knowledge of, there's no way that I could possibly know.

00:31:53 - Brad Bingham
May not even be your claim.

00:31:54 - Mike Mills
Yeah, it may not have anything to do with them that's going to hit this. I'm running into like, okay. And I've heard people call me and say I was fine, I was qualified, everything worked out. I went to go get my insurance on this house, and it was $7,000 a year. It was $200 more a month than they had told me, and now I don't qualify for the house. What am I going to do? Have you run into this? And what are you telling agents to every day? Okay, so what's your guidance to the realtor crew out there on what to do about this?

00:32:22 - Brad Bingham
Well, so when this all kind of started, I've got my network of people and I picked up phone and called and I told them, I'm like, look, first thing you do when you get a property, know you're pre qualified. You know that?

00:32:31 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:32:31 - Brad Bingham
Pick up the phone and get an insurance quote that day.

00:32:34 - Mike Mills
Immediately.

00:32:34 - Brad Bingham
Immediately.

00:32:35 - Mike Mills
Don't wait till last minute.

00:32:36 - Brad Bingham
Don't wait till last minute. Don't get outside your option, period.

00:32:38 - Mike Mills
They'll wait. Connor has to know where we got all the gray hair. Look, I just have gray hair here. I'm beautiful and pristine. Up on the top.

00:32:45 - Brad Bingham
That's funny. You got kids. You'll be there one day.

00:32:47 - Mike Mills
Oh, yeah, he's got them. They're showing up on him. It just shows up in different spots.

00:32:52 - Brad Bingham
He's a jokester.

00:32:53 - Mike Mills
Yes, he is.

00:32:55 - Brad Bingham
You distracted me.

00:32:56 - Mike Mills
Oh, sorry. So you're talking to realtors about getting that quote right away.

00:33:00 - Brad Bingham
Get it right away. Ask the questions. Do you see any claims on the property? Do you see any insurability issues? Have the roof inspected. We've talked about this with Cody and Eric all the time. Have the roof inspected.

00:33:12 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:33:12 - Brad Bingham
If you're an insurance, I'm sorry. If you're a realtor, do the due diligence for your customers on the listing side.

00:33:18 - Mike Mills
Either way.

00:33:18 - Brad Bingham
Yeah, buyers listing, I don't care if you list a property, have a roofer come out and get them a report.

00:33:23 - Mike Mills
It's free. They don't usually charge you 100% and.

00:33:25 - Brad Bingham
Any roofer is going to jump to go do it for you.

00:33:27 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:33:29 - Brad Bingham
But as a buyer as well, first thing you do is do your inspections. But send a roofer, not an inspector.

00:33:35 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:33:35 - Brad Bingham
Because the roofer is going to tell you a little bit different. An inspector is going to tell you, is the roof functioning when it rains? Does the water shed.

00:33:43 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:33:43 - Brad Bingham
And that's pretty much every roof.

00:33:45 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:33:45 - Brad Bingham
But a roofer is going to get up there and say, do you have prior damage? A new roof is always going to be cheaper for you to insure because it's less risk.

00:33:52 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:33:53 - Brad Bingham
If I have a brand new roof compared to a ten year old roof, we get a marble sized storm. A brand new roof is going to live through that storm. A ten year old storm could beat that up. The premium is going to align with the risk. You got a higher risk. We're going to pay a higher premium. So if there is damage there, work with the buyers and the sellers. Make it a collaborative event and educate the people.

00:34:16 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:34:16 - Brad Bingham
We're not doing this because we hate you and we want you to put a roof on. There's reasons for this, but find your home.

00:34:23 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:34:24 - Brad Bingham
Let's get your home under contract. Let's get your insurance taken care of, then we can handle it all in the background after everybody's run records and we have less claims, blah, blah, blah.

00:34:31 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:34:32 - Brad Bingham
There's not an insurance company out there that doesn't want a brand new roof.

00:34:36 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:34:36 - Brad Bingham
Yeah. So if you can just communicate really well with the other agent, everybody knows the same situation we're in here. Let's work for a common goal here. You know what? Educate your consumer what a 2% deductible is, right. And if they're okay with a 2% deductible, I hate to say that I'm okay with it, but if the math makes sense nowadays, I raise my deductible.

00:34:58 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:34:58 - Brad Bingham
I did the math and it made sense to me.

00:35:00 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:35:00 - Brad Bingham
I can afford it. When it comes time, I don't want to afford it, but I can.

00:35:03 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:35:05 - Brad Bingham
So to me, if you just get back to the education part of it, right. As an insurance agent, as a realtor these days, there's a lot more to educate people about. Yes, there really is.

00:35:17 - Mike Mills
Well, now they're paying attention because the cost is so much different, too.

00:35:20 - Brad Bingham
100%.

00:35:21 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:35:21 - Mike Mills
Well, and even on the seller side, when you're listing a home, if you get the roof checked out and you get it inspected, as an agent, I guess you could say, well, I'm opening a can of worms. If now this roof isn't going to be insurable and my client's going to have to make a claim.

00:35:36 - Brad Bingham
Get it?

00:35:36 - Mike Mills
That's what they say. But what you don't understand is that it's going to come up either way. If the roof is bad enough when you either in the inspection, sell the.

00:35:45 - Brad Bingham
House one time or you want to sell the house five times.

00:35:46 - Mike Mills
Exactly. So it's like, those are hard conversations, and those are things that you have to talk to your seller about and say, hey, look, this is something we need to do.

00:35:53 - Brad Bingham
The good realtors have the hard conversations.

00:35:55 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:35:57 - Mike Mills
And it makes it a challenge. But if you have that conversation, it takes all the stress out of everything going forward. And on the buyer side, if you're not getting the roof looked at ahead of time and you're not getting it inspected before you get out of your option, period, then when you go to try to get insurance on that house, either a, your premium can be through the roof because the, no pun intended, because the roof is so bad. Or are they still doing the, they come out a month later after you close, and then they're like, oh, yeah, you're not insurable. Is that still happening as well? So explain that.

00:36:29 - Brad Bingham
I mean, every insurance company is going to inspect what they write.

00:36:31 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:36:32 - Brad Bingham
And so inspections used to happen before closing. And so we would know before closing. Well, the guidelines for underwriting in Texas, I think, is 90 days. So an underwriting period starts when the policy starts 90 days. You have an underwriting period. As long as you inspect within that 90 day period. If it doesn't pass inspection, you can get off the risk. Once you pass that 90 day period, you're on the risk.

00:36:55 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:36:55 - Brad Bingham
If they don't pay their premium or you come back out on a new inspection and they got some issues on a different inspection, you could non renew for those types of things. But once you're on that risk for 90 days, you're on it. So that inspection happens in 90 days. We got a bad roof. We got some rotten siding. We got some, whatever the broken window, whatever the issue is, the insurance company comes back and says, until this issue is fixed, we're not going to insure the property.

00:37:19 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:37:19 - Brad Bingham
So they give you a time frame. Now, what we're seeing a lot with a lot of these carriers are trees. Trees are becoming a large issue.

00:37:26 - Mike Mills
Really?

00:37:27 - Brad Bingham
And so I'm sure some of your realtors, if they watch this, they'll come across this, or they've been across this like, man, I know what he's talking about. So some of these insurance companies, if you have trees that overhang the roof, ain't going to write you a policy. Really stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

00:37:41 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:37:41 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:37:41 - Mike Mills
So you haven't come to look at my house yet, have you?

00:37:45 - Brad Bingham
Allstate's not this way.

00:37:46 - Mike Mills
Okay, great.

00:37:47 - Brad Bingham
Now, if the trees are rubbing the roof, different story.

00:37:50 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:37:51 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:37:51 - Brad Bingham
But if it's overhanging the roof line, some of these insurance companies are getting off the risk. And it's absolutely ludicrous.

00:37:58 - Mike Mills
Really.

00:37:58 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:38:00 - Brad Bingham
There's another. For people that can't get insurance, there is a safe place. It's called the Texas Fair plan.

00:38:08 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:38:09 - Brad Bingham
We haven't written the Texas Fair plan mold crisis. We wrote a lot of Texas fair plan because of some availability issues like we're having now. But one of my staff, Joanne, was talking to the Texas fair plan the other day because she was doing a quote. The coverage is not as good as a normal policy, but they will give you coverage so you can get closed if you want to buy that house. She's talking to the fair plan lady and she's like, man, we've never been this busy. We're writing hundreds of thousands of policies. We've never written this many policies. And it's because there's no availability. They have gone up and up and up and on rates. Coverage is not what it is on a normal homeowner policy. But they're just throwing them on the books right now.

00:38:45 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:38:45 - Brad Bingham
Because if you've got two or three claims, you don't have an option.

00:38:48 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:38:48 - Brad Bingham
It's the fair plan.

00:38:49 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:38:49 - Brad Bingham
So we'll stick you with a fair plan. We will mark you for when those guidelines change to call you. Or if, let's say your claim was three years and now it's five years, we can write you, we'll move you away from the fair plan over to an Allstate policy. But that's our only failsafe right now.

00:39:06 - Mike Mills
Do you say the fair plan is a national thing?

00:39:08 - Brad Bingham
It's a state.

00:39:09 - Mike Mills
It's a state protect. Well, I know that there were, and I'd seen that in the article I read, too, that there were like Florida had a state option and they were coming up with these. But I mean, I'm assuming that those are more expensive.

00:39:21 - Brad Bingham
Not necessarily. Coverage isn't as good.

00:39:23 - Mike Mills
Coverage is not good. Okay. So you're just paying more out of pocket if you have, you're probably paying.

00:39:26 - Brad Bingham
The same for less coverage.

00:39:27 - Mike Mills
Got you.

00:39:28 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:39:29 - Mike Mills
But it's something, it's something, it's something.

00:39:31 - Brad Bingham
That, it will get you closed on the house.

00:39:32 - Mike Mills
Right. That's not nothing, but the expense is still there. All right, so if you have a seller, get the roof inspected, if you are a buyer, get the roof inspected, because all of this stuff is going to impact your premiums. Now, are there certain coverages when you're looking at any kind of insurance costs, especially as it relates to a house, are there things that you absolutely have to have? Are there things that you really don't need, maybe or extra, that fluff that people throw in there. It's like what you have to have.

00:40:01 - Brad Bingham
Is what the mortgage company tells you you have to have.

00:40:03 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:40:04 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:40:04 - Brad Bingham
Wind and hail, usually not more than a 2%. Some of them let you go to up to 5%.

00:40:08 - Mike Mills
Depends on the borrower. They actually loosened to the restrictions on that quite a bit. They'll let you go pretty high now. They'll let you go higher on deductibles if you can prove you have reserves. So if you have money in the bank that you can cover the coverage, then you can do it. I got lost again, just the types of, specific types of coverages.

00:40:28 - Brad Bingham
So as long as the lender is okay with it, there's no things you have to have all policies are going to come with a dwelling coverage. They're going to come with other structure coverage. If you take the other structure coverage off, it doesn't save you any money.

00:40:39 - Mike Mills
Well, okay.

00:40:40 - Mike Mills
Instead of have to have, I'm really more asking like from Brad's point of view, what do you need? Goodness, what do you not want to not have?

00:40:46 - Brad Bingham
Water damage.

00:40:47 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:40:47 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:40:47 - Brad Bingham
You want wind and hail, obviously you want replacement cost, you want water damage.

00:40:54 - Mike Mills
And what does water damage cover really? Because does it cover pipe bursting in your house?

00:40:59 - Brad Bingham
100%.

00:41:00 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:41:00 - Mike Mills
Is there something that it doesn't cover? I guess it's not flood.

00:41:03 - Brad Bingham
Depends on what you consider water. You got different levels of water. You've got some policies that have water, full 100% coverage. Some of them limit to 5020, 5000. They'll put a limit on your water coverage.

00:41:15 - Mike Mills
The amount of money?

00:41:16 - Brad Bingham
The amount of money. Most all policies cover a sudden and accidental discharge of water. A pipe breaks, your hot water heater bust, the line comes out, sudden and.

00:41:26 - Mike Mills
Accidental discharge of water, that is the.

00:41:29 - Brad Bingham
Term from the policy.

00:41:30 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:41:32 - Brad Bingham
Then you have policies that don't cover what they call a seepage and leakage. It's been seeping for a period of time. I don't know about it. Not covered. It's not sudden and accidental. There are companies that have endorsements for that. If it's affordable, buy it.

00:41:45 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:41:46 - Brad Bingham
If it's not available, you can't get it.

00:41:48 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:41:50 - Brad Bingham
And then you've got, let's call it drain water issues. Okay. Most of your drain water issues are typically not covered. Your pipe bust under your house because it's a drain and it wore out over time, it collapses. That's typically not covered.

00:42:03 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:42:04 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:42:04 - Brad Bingham
But if you have a supply line that comes to the house, you get a slab leak. We have to go below the slab to fix that. Most policies cover that. Some policies don't cover that.

00:42:12 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:42:13 - Brad Bingham
So foundation coverage can be important. Most of the time. They reroute those issues now instead of busting foundations. It's a lot less expensive to fix those issues now. But when the insurance company had an open pocketbook for them, it used to cost 15,000, $20,000.

00:42:25 - Mike Mills
Wow.

00:42:25 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:42:26 - Brad Bingham
Now you can get it fixed for two to three grand.

00:42:28 - Mike Mills
Oh, so things are getting cheaper in some places.

00:42:31 - Brad Bingham
No, it's just there's no coverage for it.

00:42:32 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:42:32 - Brad Bingham
Insurance is not paying.

00:42:33 - Mike Mills
Yeah, the insurance isn't paying.

00:42:35 - Brad Bingham
And so foundation coverage, if you can get it, if it's affordable, get it. And then as far as sewer backup coverage, you see that on policies it's part of water damage coverage, but it originates off of your property from a sewer line. The city line backs up into your house, and it can happen. It's not fun. It's nasty.

00:42:56 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:42:56 - Mike Mills
Nobody wants sewage in their home.

00:42:57 - Mike Mills
No.

00:42:58 - Brad Bingham
And so some of the policies cover that. Some of them don't. We have an endorsement we put on every one of our policies. If you don't want it on there, I told you it's $90. Take it off if you don't want it. I put it on there for $90. I offer it to you.

00:43:09 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:43:09 - Brad Bingham
So other than that, all your policy is going to cover your fire and your theft and the normal, basic perils that your policy comes with. So you're buying a homeowner policy in Texas. There's no magic piece of coverage that you really want. You just want your roof covered. You want it with replacement costs. If you're willing to take a two or 3% deductible, that's your business.

00:43:31 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:43:32 - Brad Bingham
If you can afford it and you're okay with saving the premium on your insurance, save the money.

00:43:35 - Mike Mills
Yeah. Well.

00:43:35 - Mike Mills
And especially if you understand, if they explained it to you, if you're aware of what they're telling you to do. Are you seeing any? Shady is the wrong word, but are you seeing any?

00:43:47 - Brad Bingham
100%.

00:43:47 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:43:48 - Mike Mills
What are you seeing?

00:43:48 - Brad Bingham
Deductible. We will talk to people. We'll do a quote. It amazes me. We'll do a quote for a customer, and we'll pull them up in the system. They've gotten five Allstate quotes today.

00:44:00 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:44:01 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:44:01 - Brad Bingham
And I'm like, folks, if you buy the same coverage and the agents do the things the right way, the same way, all the same price is the same.

00:44:08 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:44:08 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:44:08 - Brad Bingham
So don't waste your time calling on ten agents. But the people that do, and they'll find an agent that puts an age of roof as a 2022 or 2023 when it's a ten year old roof, they're going to save them some money. And so there are those agents out there that will do that.

00:44:21 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:44:21 - Brad Bingham
We do quotes all the time. The other staff gets into our quote, they change our stuff, change our age of roof.

00:44:27 - Mike Mills
Even within the company, they're getting.

00:44:28 - Brad Bingham
Oh, man. Some of our biggest competition is within the company. That's crazy. And then they go to a 2% deductible, and they don't even have a conversation. They're just cheaper.

00:44:40 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:44:40 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:44:41 - Mike Mills
Because that's what they want. Their magic wand.

00:44:42 - Brad Bingham
And here we are. We're cheaper.

00:44:43 - Mike Mills
Hey, look, I experience it myself. That's just what they see, and that's what they like. They like less money.

00:44:47 - Brad Bingham
That's right. So right now, for my staff, it's really frustrating because they do a quote, they work very hard. They work on commission, right. Not straight commission, but part of their compensation.

00:44:57 - Mike Mills
Part of it, right.

00:44:58 - Brad Bingham
And so they do a really good job of educating and selling a customer. They call another agent, they change our stuff. They tell them we did it wrong. And all they did was change the age of roof or put a 2% deductible. And so we call those customers back and we tell them, hey, are you aware you bought a 2% deductible? And you would be shocked how many say, we didn't even discuss deductible.

00:45:19 - Mike Mills
They're like, what do you mean, what's deductible? What's a deductible?

00:45:23 - Brad Bingham
Well, don't you pay the deductible? No, sir, that's your responsibility. So that makes it very frustrating, especially for my staff.

00:45:31 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:45:31 - Brad Bingham
We lose business over somebody else being cheaper because they're not doing the right coverage. I tell them, do it the right way. Sleep good at night, take care of your customer.

00:45:39 - Mike Mills
Yeah, well, and again, if you're explaining it to them and you're showing them, and you're telling them why they need it and all that kind of stuff, and that's where I experienced that on my business, too. It's like if you walk through everything with them, then at least when they're going to shop you to talk to somebody else, they're going to ask the right questions. If you're telling them this stuff, they're going to say, okay, what's my deductible? Do I have this coverage?

00:45:59 - Brad Bingham
Mike, I love working with lenders like you, because when you send it over to me, right, and the quote on the homeowners is $250, and their competition is quoting them $100 a month. I'll tell them, I'm like, so why don't you call that guy back and ask him where he's going to get that $100 a month insurance at?

00:46:14 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:46:15 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:46:15 - Brad Bingham
Well, we could do a 5% deductible. I'm like, well, can you afford a 5% deductible?

00:46:19 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:46:20 - Brad Bingham
Pay that money. When you set the expectations for us legitimately, it makes everything easier. But when they got to go, explain a $250. My insurance is 350. I quoted you $100. How do you get yourself out of that?

00:46:32 - Mike Mills
Yeah, well, I'm not quoting 250 anymore. Now I'm like at 300 these days, it's like blowing my mind. I know, man. It used to, I would say your insurance. Now I'm like, look, my conversation used to be insurance is going to fluctuate depending on the carrier you use, but it's not going to fluctuate much. Maybe 25, $30, not dramatically, but use whoever you want, whoever you feel comfortable with, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But now I'm like, look, I don't know. Here's about what I think it's going to be. But you could have claims, the house could have claims depending on the carrier you're providing. This is the thing I'm telling them now. The one thing I will tell you that you need to do is whoever you pick for insurance, make sure that they explain everything that they're covering and what they're doing for you. And if they don't, then run away as fast as possible and talk to somebody else.

00:47:15 - Brad Bingham
Good advice.

00:47:16 - Mike Mills
Because it's just that hard conversation, man. There's so many moving parts now that it's just unbelievable. So on a consumer side of things, obviously credit. So talk a little bit about that, but things of that nature. What can an individual do to make sure that they're have a relationship with your agent?

00:47:36 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:47:36 - Brad Bingham
That's what you can do as a consumer. Because most of them, they look at us as a commodity.

00:47:41 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:47:41 - Brad Bingham
They really do. And I like to know, like call.

00:47:44 - Mike Mills
You and have a beer.

00:47:45 - Brad Bingham
They're welcome to.

00:47:46 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:47:47 - Brad Bingham
I have coffee at the office. My door is open all the time. I'm at the office most of the time.

00:47:51 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:47:53 - Brad Bingham
Yes. Why not? Why not know who you do business with, right. I had a guy that was having a roof claim the other day. He was having some difficulties with it. I went out to his house, I sat down living room with him while the adjuster did his thing. And he looked at me and he's like, Brad, I've never had service like this. I can't do that for every customer if you're down in South Texas. But if you're local and I can help you, I'm going to help you.

00:48:17 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:48:17 - Brad Bingham
Have an agent that you have a relationship with. If the agent knows you, they're going to want to go above and beyond to help you out.

00:48:24 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:48:25 - Brad Bingham
And they do everything they can to connect with you. If you don't connect back, it's on you.

00:48:29 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:48:30 - Brad Bingham
And so have a lot of customers that have great relationships with me. They don't want to deal with my staff. That's a problem because I have very good staff. I pay them very well for what they do and they're fantastic at it.

00:48:42 - Mike Mills
They want to call you, but they.

00:48:44 - Brad Bingham
Want to call me. And I'm okay with that. I've got my cell phone on me. You know that they call me, we have conversations. Joanne or Courtney or one of the girls is like, Brad, they just want to talk to you. And I'm like, I'm okay with that.

00:48:54 - Mike Mills
That's fine.

00:48:54 - Brad Bingham
Just get a number, I'll call them back.

00:48:55 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:48:56 - Brad Bingham
So just have a relationship. And when things do change, I tell my girls all the time, they just want to know why.

00:49:05 - Mike Mills
Right?

00:49:05 - Brad Bingham
It is our job. Things have changed. We know why. They don't know why. Let's explain to them why. So just like what we're talking about here today, have these conversations, and our conversations have gone from on renewals, from two, three, four minutes, taking the payment, doing this, doing that.

00:49:20 - Mike Mills
Half an hour, 45 minutes.

00:49:22 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:49:22 - Brad Bingham
I mean, you just look at the timeline. You've been on phone, like, goodness gracious. But when you get them, they're appreciative. They get it. They understand. And they may shop you, but they may not shop you. And if they shop you and they're not saving 200, $400, they're going to be like, Brad's worth every penny of that. Yeah. And so as a consumer, to me, just knowing your insurance agent, having a relationship with them, I got customers that drop by and bring us cookies and brownies, and it's just because they enjoy when they pick up the phone and call us and they're having an issue, we can make that go away for them.

00:49:55 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:49:56 - Mike Mills
Well, obviously having credit, better credit gives you a better premium in most cases. When you were talking earlier about making claims, right? Well, I have insurance. I want to make a claim. It's like, well, hang on. Let's figure out first how much that claim is going to cost you having that relationship.

00:50:14 - Brad Bingham
If you have a claim, pick up the phone, you call your agent, say, this is what I got going on. What is my coverage?

00:50:19 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:50:19 - Brad Bingham
And we're not adjusters. We can't tell you you're covered for this, you're covered for that. We can't tell you you have coverage for a claim, but we can tell you what your perils, your policy covers. So we can determine if it's possibly likely it's covered or it's not likely covered. If it's not likely covered, don't file it.

00:50:33 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:50:34 - Brad Bingham
Then we can go over your deductible. We can figure out how much damage you got, you don't have to file a claim right now. You can file it tomorrow, you can file it a week from now. Do your due diligence to make sure the claim is worth it to you financially, because if you have certain types of claims on your policy, you're going to lose a claim free discount.

00:50:50 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:50:50 - Brad Bingham
So there's an impact to your policy plus your deductible. If your impact is $6,000 and it costs you $5,200 to fix it yourself, I'm going to advise you to fix it yourself. You can do whatever you want. You can file that claim, but you're going to save yourself $800 over a three, four, five year period. What do you want to do?

00:51:07 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:51:08 - Mike Mills
Well, okay, so you said the no.

00:51:09 - Brad Bingham
And that's why the credit situation comes into a big factor.

00:51:12 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:51:12 - Brad Bingham
What they're predicting when they use credit is not your credit worthiness.

00:51:16 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:51:17 - Brad Bingham
They're looking at your claim potential.

00:51:21 - Mike Mills
Okay.

00:51:21 - Brad Bingham
So if I have a $6,000 claim or $5,200 claim and my immediate out of pocket is 3000, but over the five year period it's going to be $6,000. Somebody in a financial need is going to file that claim.

00:51:35 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:51:36 - Brad Bingham
Somebody who's not in a financial situation or need is going to probably pay that out of pocket if they take advice, if they understand things, if they're educated.

00:51:44 - Mike Mills
Got you. That's what the credit is going to do. Okay, I got you.

00:51:48 - Brad Bingham
It's not, is your credit good, bad? Are you going to file a claim?

00:51:52 - Mike Mills
Are you going to file a claim? Do you have financial hardship?

00:51:55 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:51:55 - Mike Mills
Well, I mean, you get enough data with stuff, they can predict things pretty darn accurately now. That's crazy. We talked about insurance costs are not going to keep going up, hopefully after these reserves are put in, but if more weather stuff, we got a lot.

00:52:12 - Brad Bingham
Of reserves to build back, buddy.

00:52:13 - Mike Mills
Yeah, there's a little while, but is there anything else that's coming on the horizon that, you know, that'll ease some.

00:52:20 - Brad Bingham
Of this, or is it, man, what I think is going to happen and it's already happening. I've got family that's independent agents, so I know what's happening in the independent world. They don't have anybody to write insurance through right now. Yeah, they got about two or three carriers that they can write insurance through. If they got trees over the roof ain't happening, buddy.

00:52:38 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:52:39 - Brad Bingham
And so what is happening is instead of giving the customer the option to raise deductibles, farmers is renewing their customers at one and a half percent deductibles automatically.

00:52:50 - Mike Mills
There's no option.

00:52:51 - Brad Bingham
Travelers new business is 2% deductible now automatically, automatically.

00:52:56 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:52:56 - Brad Bingham
And so when these people are shopping their insurance and they're not having the conversation, you have a $4,000 higher deductible. But you're saving $400.

00:53:08 - Mike Mills
Actually, it only went up $50. It didn't go up $400. That's really what it is.

00:53:15 - Brad Bingham
And these companies are real. When they have a big rate increase, they'll raise deductibles in their renewal. And so typically, if you raise your deductible, your price would go down considerably. Right. When you get your renewal and your price went up $200 with a higher deductible, you're like, oh, $200 isn't bad, but, oh, now I got a $7,000 roof deductible.

00:53:31 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:53:32 - Mike Mills
But they don't usually know that.

00:53:33 - Brad Bingham
They don't look at the paperwork, right? I never look at when you file the claim and the roofer comes out and the roofers look at your stuff, he goes, you know, you got a $7,000 deductible. And they're like, what's a deductible?

00:53:43 - Mike Mills
If there's one thing that I would recommend to everybody is have a Brad in your life. Because if you're like me, who's NID, my father in law's favorite three letter word, which is not into details, insurance is certainly one of those things that you need a Brad in your life to pick up the phone and go, what is this? I don't understand this. Can you explain it to me? Because Brad's a nerd when it comes to insurance and he dives.

00:54:07 - Brad Bingham
I'm just experienced.

00:54:08 - Mike Mills
Yes.

00:54:10 - Mike Mills
What is.

00:54:11 - Mike Mills
Connor says there's too much paperwork. Our policy is like 99 pages. I know, man. It's too much. It's just a lot, man.

00:54:16 - Brad Bingham
You're not an attorney. Don't try to read it.

00:54:18 - Mike Mills
No, it's not. But again, goes back to the importance of having a good relationship, which is why the agent model is so much more beneficial for you. And again, I think it goes back to when everything was cheaper, right. And there was 50 different carriers and everybody had options and whatever else it was, you could probably get away with just having a cursory situation and not really paying that much attention to it, just renewing because you could go to somebody else, give you a cheaper deal, and they're all the same. But now I think it's even more critical because there's been so many changes, and the cost has gone up so much. And the impact of when you make a claim now is going to be significant going forward. That if you don't have somebody that you can pick up the phone to and sift through all the bullshit and the minutiae of what it is, which insurance is absolutely that, then you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. And I don't think that I have my wife that handles this stuff, and I have a Brad, so I don't have to worry about it as much. But just seeing the cost every day of dealing with my clients and seeing what they are running across when they're trying to purchase these homes. I mean, look, a $400,000 house.

00:55:28 - Brad Bingham
Not small, man.

00:55:29 - Mike Mills
No, it's big. A $400,000 house insurance premium, now it's gone up. It's almost $300 a month. And that's for somebody with pretty good credit, with a good situation overall, which 24 months ago was $200, I was confident I would tell people, if you're buying a house between 200 and 450, your insurance premium is going to be about $200 a month. I have a script in my head could be 215, it could be 220, but it's not going to be 500 and it's not going to be 50 unless it's a brand new roof. And now I'm like, I don't fucking know. I mean, I have no idea.

00:55:58 - Mike Mills
It could be Mike.

00:55:59 - Brad Bingham
I don't know. I don't know until I run the numbers. Gosh, we look at them and some like, God, I hadn't seen a premium like that in a long time. That's a pretty good premium. And then we're like, how in the hell are these people affording this? Yes.

00:56:10 - Mike Mills
And you find the little things that you're like, oh, this is why you've pointed out a few of those to me when I've sent people over to you. It's like this person had this particular claim. Or again, the reason that price on this premium was so expensive with the other companies because there was a claim on the home. And I'm like, that blew my mind. Because you can't control it as an individual on the weather. But we're being penalized now.

00:56:34 - Brad Bingham
They don't care, Mike.

00:56:35 - Mike Mills
I know they don't care.

00:56:36 - Brad Bingham
They can right now.

00:56:36 - Mike Mills
They don't care.

00:56:37 - Mike Mills
They don't care.

00:56:37 - Brad Bingham
They don't care.

00:56:38 - Mike Mills
Yeah. The bad part about it is that when there is less competition, when there's less people in the market that are being able to offer a particular service, then costs are going to go up.

00:56:52 - Brad Bingham
And that's what happened with reinsurance, too. When we went from 444,000,000 to 1.2 billion, we lost carriers out of Texas that weren't doing reinsurance in Texas. Yeah, we talked a little bit earlier about what caused a little bit. I don't want to get into politics, and it's not political, but I think.

00:57:08 - Mike Mills
A lot of this stuff.

00:57:09 - Brad Bingham
No, this is me.

00:57:13 - Mike Mills
We have these conversations.

00:57:14 - Brad Bingham
I dig into this stuff. I'm like, where's this stuff coming from?

00:57:16 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:57:17 - Brad Bingham
And I think a lot of this world now is run on speculation.

00:57:20 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:57:21 - Mike Mills
Well, everything's emotion and speculation.

00:57:23 - Brad Bingham
We were talking earlier. The last two years, we've had really bad storms. Well, you know what? If you go back over 100 years, I guarantee you can find three to five year periods that we had really bad storms.

00:57:32 - Mike Mills
Sure.

00:57:33 - Mike Mills
Right.

00:57:33 - Brad Bingham
We had really bad loss years. And so when you watch some of these articles, read some of these articles, you watch some of the news articles that they put out. I try to watch them all. I try to read them all. So I just want to see what's being set out.

00:57:47 - Mike Mills
Sure.

00:57:48 - Mike Mills
You got to know what's going on.

00:57:50 - Brad Bingham
Global warming is to me, a speculation, and it's what's driving a lot of these premiums.

00:57:58 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:57:58 - Brad Bingham
Catastrophe type stuff.

00:57:59 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:58:00 - Mike Mills
I mean, even the global warming term, it's more climate change, but there is a narrative that's out there that's pushing for the idea that this is being caused.

00:58:12 - Brad Bingham
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I don't know.

00:58:14 - Mike Mills
My opinion on it from what I've seen is that there is certainly a change occurring. I don't think there's anybody that would argue that there is changes occurring now. Whether it's cyclical by the nature of the planet, whether it has something to do with things that are out of control or whether it has to do with human induced causes, that's the part that is left up with a lot of conjecture. And nobody really knows that's the bottom line, is that nobody really has an answer to that question if they just wouldn't be speculation.

00:58:40 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

00:58:40 - Mike Mills
No, that's why it's changing. But the climate is certainly adjusting and it's affecting certain parts. What's really happening? I mean, it is getting warmer, but now we have more trees and more, it's greener than it's been in a very long time. So in a lot of ways, it's a benefit. It just affects certain parts of the country and certain parts of the globe more so than others because of these weather events that are changing. And anytime you're going through some kind.

00:59:06 - Brad Bingham
Of, whether it be specifically coastal areas, heat of the water.

00:59:10 - Mike Mills
Yeah. Whether it be natural occurring or whether it be human induced, which I still don't know that we certainly play a role.

00:59:17 - Brad Bingham
We're not going to figure that out today.

00:59:19 - Mike Mills
Yeah, well, I'm saying we certainly play a role, but I don't.

00:59:21 - Brad Bingham
I'm going to go get in my car. I'm going to drive home.

00:59:23 - Mike Mills
I know. I don't think it's really. Well, I drive a Tesla and they're like, oh, you're environmental guy. I'm like, no, I like it because it's like driving a spaceship. But if you look at what it takes to get a battery out of the planet, it's pretty unenvironmentally friendly, just like driving a car. So there's no good solution for it. I have an agent of mine that she's a vegan, which everybody does their thing, but she just does it for health reasons. I have another friend that's a vegan because they're concerned about animals and I'm like, well, that's great, but you realize when they churn up a soy field that they're killing ground squirrels and insects and everything that you could, like there's more death and debauchery when it comes to it. So we all have our little platforms we want to stand on or whatever, but the reality is none of us really know what is going on.

01:00:13 - Brad Bingham
And that's my whole point. This is all being baked into speculation, correct? Yes.

01:00:17 - Mike Mills
Right.

01:00:18 - Mike Mills
Yes.

01:00:18 - Brad Bingham
And when you triple my premium and.

01:00:20 - Mike Mills
You'Re telling me because it's climate change, then I need to drive my Tesla and stop driving a car with gasoline.

01:00:24 - Brad Bingham
So to me there's a little bit of a call it agenda. I don't know what I want to call it, but when you start moving speculation into an actuarial based business, you're cooking books.

01:00:39 - Mike Mills
Yes.

01:00:40 - Brad Bingham
To me is what you're doing.

01:00:41 - Mike Mills
Yeah.

01:00:42 - Mike Mills
You're raising costs, just at loss. They're going to your fault.

01:00:44 - Mike Mills
Right.

01:00:45 - Brad Bingham
Don't speculate that we're going to have major hurricanes because this year was a really calm hurricane season. Yeah, it really was. We didn't have a whole lot of hurricanes. Now, the wind and hail was bad, right. We had bad wind and hailstorms, but we didn't have the major hurricane.

01:01:00 - Mike Mills
Yes.

01:01:00 - Mike Mills
Right.

01:01:01 - Brad Bingham
We did have the nasty wildfire.

01:01:03 - Mike Mills
Yes.

01:01:03 - Brad Bingham
And that was horrendous.

01:01:06 - Mike Mills
Well, that was calls from lasers out of the sky, though, you know?

01:01:09 - Brad Bingham
Hey, look, the.

01:01:11 - Mike Mills
No, no, this wasn't aliens. This was satellites that beamed down Elon Musk's fault. Heat waves. Could be, I don't know, that saved all the billionaires, didn't burn any of their houses down, but got everybody else. No, there's a lot of crazy stuff there, but one of these days, I'm going to have a conspiracy podcast that everybody would tune in. Yeah, I keep my crazy at a minimum on this usually. This is stretching it for me with you, dude.

01:01:38 - Brad Bingham
I tried to avoid you when you asked me to come back on. I'm like, he's coming up on 100. I want to be the 100.

01:01:45 - Mike Mills
We're close. Actually, I got to start say that I got to plan that. I got to make that a little bit more of a bigger deal. Maybe I have a couple of people on and we'll go for a couple of hours. Although I might do 100 and really start. Maybe we'll drink and then I'll say.

01:01:58 - Brad Bingham
Maybe we could break the Tito's out.

01:01:59 - Mike Mills
I'll never have another listener again because everybody will stop.

01:02:02 - Brad Bingham
Maybe you'll get more listeners.

01:02:05 - Mike Mills
That guy's insane. Conrad's gonna. You might be on the show with us, Conrad. It might be like you, me, Brad and Cody, and we'll all just sit around and drink whiskey and get drunk and talk about conspiracy theories.

01:02:15 - Mike Mills
I don't know.

01:02:15 - Brad Bingham
We do this after hours.

01:02:16 - Mike Mills
Yeah, well, I mean, it'll have to be. I don't know how to do that. Maybe I won't do that. I won't do that one. Live that one. We won't go live. We'll do it.

01:02:24 - Brad Bingham
We can edit it.

01:02:25 - Mike Mills
Yes.

01:02:26 - Mike Mills
That way at least I can cut out some stuff. If it gets really gnarly, I'll just put. Put that one on the seven more podcasts.

01:02:31 - Brad Bingham
We're probably talking May.

01:02:32 - Mike Mills
We're talking.

01:02:35 - Brad Bingham
Start playing the party.

01:02:37 - Mike Mills
Try February, bro. I mean, I do two a week at this point, so, yeah, we're going to get there real fast. Your first for the are? Well, actually, Katie Jane was my first for the did because she was out of school and it's hard to get know around the holidays, so we did our teen finances one. So she was my first guest, but you are my second.

01:02:56 - Brad Bingham
I saw the prelude to it, but.

01:02:57 - Mike Mills
I didn't get to see, so. Oh, it was riveting. She just loves doing it. She was so excited about coming on.

01:03:02 - Brad Bingham
I'm sure she's a kid in today's world. Where's the camera?

01:03:06 - Mike Mills
No, I'm being incredibly sarcastic. No, she hates it. Oh, yeah, because I get her involved in this. She wants have nothing to do with this. Like her friends will sometimes, like, I heard your dad's thing, know, friends, parents or whatever. And she rolls her eyes.

01:03:19 - Brad Bingham
I watch these realtors that put their.

01:03:20 - Mike Mills
Kids in their like, oh, God. She is not happy about it, but.

01:03:24 - Brad Bingham
They only want the camera when they're in control.

01:03:26 - Mike Mills
That's absolutely correct. And especially when it comes to talking about money, she's like, if we want to talk about Harry Styles or the arctic monkeys or whatever, all she knows.

01:03:36 - Brad Bingham
Is dad's got plenty of money.

01:03:37 - Mike Mills
Grey's anatomy or whatever it is, it's running out. These.

01:03:42 - Brad Bingham
Though.

01:03:42 - Mike Mills
You got to do some more loans. Make that happen. All right, well, I'm glad you brought up the hundredth episode because I got to start planning that. So I guess I got to make that something of a deal.

01:03:50 - Brad Bingham
Really trying to hold out.

01:03:51 - Mike Mills
Yes. Well, now that it reminds me, I'm appreciative. All right, well, we're an hour in, so we're going to wrap this up. Brad, thank you so much, as always, for coming in, doing this with me again. More than anything, the number one takeaway from this is get you a friend in insurance. Get you a Brad. All right. Find you a Brad that you can call Brad or just call mean. If you're here in DFW, call Brad.

01:04:16 - Mike Mills
All right.

01:04:17 - Mike Mills
If you're anywhere else in Texas, call Brad. He'll help you. This is the one thing I will.

01:04:22 - Brad Bingham
Say that not all of Texas is having this issue. It's really the area.

01:04:27 - Mike Mills
Yeah, well, because we have so many people that come in here, too. Yeah, the weather, too. But anyway, let's see, I got my market update coming again on Tuesday next week. And then next Thursday, I am going to have a special guest. I made a change recently, employment wise, and I'm going to bring on CEO of my new company that I'm with. We're going to chat about a few things regarding our company, but talk about the market in general. He's a pretty sharp guy, obviously. He runs a billion dollar mortgage company, so he's got a few things that he understand. Band. So we're going to talk kind of dig in a few things there. So stay tuned for that one. That'll be next Thursday.

01:05:05 - Brad Bingham
And then have some brains to navigate this market the last few years, man.

01:05:08 - Mike Mills
He'S managed to survive. We're all trying to tread water, man. Just keeping our head above. So thanks for everybody that stuck around. We'll see you next week. And, Brad, always appreciate you, man. And we'll see you back around. 100 episode coming up.

01:05:21 - Brad Bingham
Coming up.

01:05:21 - Mike Mills
All right.