How Do I Sign New York Banking Document

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what i always tell people is as a consumer when you're going to go out and buy a tv for your house you study it online you look at all of the different aspects of every different tv you then shop price you'll then travel 20 miles to get the best deal because as consumers we want what we want for our money when it comes to title insurance which is protecting what's probably the greatest financial asset of someone's entire life people pretty much seed that control to their return [Music] welcome everybody to the cassandra properties podcast we have a value-packed episode for you today we're going to be speaking with michael holtmann he's the ceo of hallmark abstract service a company he started with his wife linda back in 2008 we're going to dive into the really the deep details of something that is a part of every real estate transaction but most of us don't really know the ins and outs of so i'm really excited for today michael thanks for joining us how are we doing we're doing great james and thank you very much for having me it's a it's an honor i've i've seen your podcast episodes and you do a great job at one point in one of them i think you're a year end you said you didn't know if you were cut out for doing podcasts yeah um i i i i knew i wasn't cut out for them this is uh you know really out of my comfort zone i'm not i'm not someone that at least historically was really comfortable getting in front of a camera and you know certainly not you know producing anything that was going to the masses but we're having a blast man we're really we're finding that the guests are are having a good time we're able to communicate and get the message out we're having fun you know i've got to tell you well that's the bottom line and when you watch something you can tell if someone's having fun or just going through the motions and you can tell you're having fun so that's that's half the battle well thank you very much i appreciate that we're gonna folks we're gonna dive right into the title side of it but we're also going to talk about the philanthropic efforts of michael and his wife because he's a part of something that hits home for me it's very special to me and we'll get into why but he has put together something that's quite remarkable absolutely requires us to to talk about in in depth as we move along but let's start first with give us the history i mean you you're you're out out there in long island you've got a location on fifth avenue in manhattan quite a lot of success how did you get into the title industry it's actually an interesting story james and uh you know it goes along with your book of overcoming adversity of dealing with it of facing it and then you know hopefully coming to a solution so uh in 2012 let me go back a little bit further so you know i went to business school i was a wall street trader i was a wall street bond analyst my wife was on wall street she was a bond analyst and also a bond trader through the years you know i dealt with mortgage-backed bonds so i kind of knew knew the ins and outs of title to an extent you know i knew its importance to the industry over time my wife went to a family business which was hard money residential construction lending wow and they would be collateralized by land and if there's anything more important than title insurance there you know i don't know what that is so you know she was very well versed in title insurance i actually i would say after i was a bond trader i became an equity trader and then in the early 2000s i started a commercial mortgage lending company so once again title insurance was a key aspect of that so then we got to 2008 and 2008 as uh you know i don't have to tell anybody was a it was a horrendous time my commercial mortgage lending company from a friday to a monday was no longer viable yeah my wife being a hard money residential construction lender in the most illiquid part of the real estate market with not necessarily a level borrowers you know they were in trouble you know the bank pulled their credit their uh warehouse line so 2008 found us both with non-viable businesses and two girls in college wow it's done at home and we needed to reinvent we needed to and quickly you know we we didn't have the you know 2008 we also lost all our money or the the vast majority of it so you know it was a time of of really hustling figuring out what to do and then implementing the plan we had actually met someone who had been working at a title company who didn't like the way that her the owner was doing business we hired her and from there it's you know the the uh some of the obstacles early on were were fairly significant because the best underwriters didn't want to take you on at that time they were actually getting rid of people the lawyers don't want to use secondary underwriters so it was a you know it was a dance 12 years later we've we've done better every year and uh you know here we are well that that's that's tremendous and uh god bless you for the tenacity and and staying with it and reinventing yourself was there any other tie-in from the family and it it all centers around real estate was there anyone else in the family that was involved in real estate in one way or another or did it just happen organically well her father started the company he had sold the business he'd actually done the duct work in the sears tower in chicago oh wow he sold the company and he was looking for something to do this is it was actually a great business 50 ltv you're collateralized by the land he used to say nothing could he used to say the only thing that could go wrong is a nuclear bomb hitting long island and i guess you could say that 2008 was uh similar to a financial nuclear bomb so without a doubt yeah so it uh so he was involved definitely he was the uh the consilieri of the uh organization actually he's the ceo so for the benefit of the audience we've got a pretty wide birth now with with who we speak to through this podcast i just want to take a moment to go back and explain to folks exactly what you mean by a hard money lender on vacant land and new construction transactions so in essence folks what linda would do is if you're a builder and michael jump in at any time and let me know if i'm moving off script here if you're a builder and you wanted to purchase a piece of property to build what were they residential were you doing one family homes two family homes one family for the most part okay so you have a piece of property let's say uh for 500 000 that you want to purchase uh linda would provide the service instead of going to a traditional bank and going through a very extensive and very painful process from a document perspective of getting qualified and the time period it would take traditionally you were talking about easily 60 to 90 days to get an approval if i if i might jump in for one second sure because they didn't typically lend online the land would typically be free and clear so they would get be collateralized by free and clear land wow they would fund the construction money and the construction loans would be paid in increments so when the foundation went in they would get paid when the what do you call it the framing the framing there you go when the framing was up they'd get paid so actually most of their borrowers would not even qualify for a traditional bank if they deal made sense they would actually get an approval overnight you know they had people who would go out look at the land they would know the areas and they would lend an amount commensurate with what a house should be in that area it was a very clean business the only thing better than doing a deal where you're financing a portion of the land and the portion of the construction is when you have the land free and clear and you're financing just the construction so to give the audience some perspective i did a deal many many many years ago people hear hard money lending and uh they may get the wrong impression i paid 15 plus three points so it was 18 but the deal was such a good deal and there was so much room in it but i had to act quick i had to mobilize and i had to close it was i think two weeks or a three week deal we're going back quite a ways but hard money was the solution for me it was uh back then it was victor freudman for those in the audience who remember victor did the deal for me and like i said 15 interest there was a eight month minimum on the the loan that i had to pay back and uh three points but there was so much room in the deal and because i was able to perform as quickly as i was with the support of victor that we did very well with it so you guys would come in you would provide a first position mortgage on the land right and then uh you did you said work and place loans so dry wells go in tranche goes out foundations go in a tranche goes out framing goes up but tranche goes out so that the builder can pay their subs the loans because they had a federal exemption with 2 a month with no points you only paid as you drew money down so that if you could get in and out of the deal in nine months it was actually much cheaper than fifteen and three because the fifteen and three you're paying on the entire amount from the right so it was a good they were in demand yeah and there's still a place for that you know good question there's still a place and i think with where we're headed in the market unfortunately i think that there's a a tsunami of foreclosures coming and uh banks are going to be looking to dispose of paper very quickly and there's going to be you know if you had money or like they like to say on wall street if you had dry powder you know in 2008 you could get some phenomenal deals tremendous deals and it's going to be the same this time i sold the deal for i believe banco popular was was on the note and capital one i think it was a syndicated deal was two buildings that were maybe 90 percent complete the face value or par value of the notes combined were 25 or 26 million we sold the the notes for 12. the sell out between the two buildings when it was all said and done was over 80 million unbelievable so there's some some opportunity coming folks you've heard me talk about it i'm going to say it again keep that power to dry because i do believe in 2021 there's going to be some unique opportunities so let's get back to to the primary reason that we're here today title insurance if you could really start with the absolute basics right what is title insurance okay so title insurance unlike most insurance so most insurance you buy health insurance you're insuring yourself against something that may happen in the future homeowners insurance again something that may happen in the future all insurance for the most part is forward-looking protecting you against something that may happen title insurance is one of the few that looks backwards and what it does is go back takes the piece of property the home and goes back it could be 50 years and looks at every mortgage every assignment every fine every whatever it is that's on that property and you're basically going back and you're making sure that when your buyer is closing on that deal that they have good clean clear title to that property because i mean at the end of the day that's what they're paying for they're paying a title insurance premium to ensure that nobody can come in and say hey you know what i have a mortgage on that property i have a prior lien so we protect buyers from that type of situation and those types of situations actually occur a lot more frequently than one would expect so folks it's not just the glaring issue of a mortgage that was missed or a lien that was missed there are instances where there can be a complex chain of title and in a state with an executor and and documents weren't signed properly and now where we could be 20 years 30 years like michael said we could be 50 years later and somebody wants to contest it and say hold on a minute wait that that's not what we had agreed to back when this was in the state and they can actually file a claim against your property so title insurance at that point kicks in and provides protection for you the purchaser to ensure against any claims that may occur uh on the property so i can give you a quick example of what can happen where we'll tell one of it doesn't happen often but we're we will where we will tell our client the buyer we don't think that the deal should be completed because they basically be buying a lawsuit there was a husband and wife who owned a house joint tenants with reister survivorship the husband owed a lumber yard a certain sum of money the lumber yard got a judgment and sold it and in lieu of the judgment they took half the house so they were 50 owners and the wife was a 50 owner now if the wife died first because it's joint tenants with rights of survivorship they would get the house if the husband died first they would get nothing because the wife would get the house in any eve the wife did die first so now these the third party is the owner of the house and they're going to sell it to my client however they had never advertised the fact that the judgment was being sold the heirs had never had a chance to speak so basically if our client bought the house they're basically buying the potential for an heir to come in at any time and say you know what that whole thing was done wrong and i am the owner of the house so an interesting situation of how situations can arise so what about things like forgeries previous forgeries or deed not being recorded properly does title insurance protect against those types of things also well here's the situation there could be a title claim for those things as a title company we can only know what we can know let's say a deed was never recorded we have no way to know that we can only know what we know but if there was a forgery then in fact they would likely be have a valid title claim right in that case the underwriter would be responsible you know if it's something that we miss as a title company that's where our errors in emissions insurance comes in but we've been fortunate in 12 years to never have a valid title claim that's a badge of honor we wear very proudly without a doubt so folks for those of you that don't understand well what does that mean if uh you know it's not that they got lucky they've got underwriters that are going through your title policy and they're looking for these types of exemptions that would have to be called out and addressed prior to closing correct correct okay so most folks go in and they speak to their attorney and it just appears on their closing statement and this is what title is and you pay it and that's the end of it but does that have to be the end of it do you have the right to select a title company as the purchaser yes you do so you know one of the things i spend a lot of time doing as owner of the company is trying to educate people as you said title insurance is not something anyone really thinks about it's not on anyone's radar they go in they hire an attorney the attorney at the closing says write a check to abc title company and they do after bitching about how much the premium is uh which happens what i always tell people is as a consumer when you're going to go out and buy a tv for your house you study it online you look at all of the uh different aspects of every different tv you then shop price you you'll then travel 20 miles to to get the best deal on the tv right because as consumers we want what we want for our money when it comes to title insurance which is protecting what's probably the greatest financial asset of someone's entire life people pretty much seed that control to their attorney part of the education that i i tell people is and it's regardless of who you use for title is one who's the underwriter of your policy you know as i mentioned early on when we first started we were on with secondary insurers in the financial crisis unfortunately a couple went out of business so people who had bought title insurance from those companies are uninsured wow which is why today we only underwrite through the largest and best capitalized insurance companies out there because like with any insurance you pay the premiums they're good at taking the premiums but i don't know if you're a seinfeld fan but they're good at taking the reservations not so good keeping the reservation they take the premiums but when it comes time if you do have a claim you want to make sure that those people can pay the claim who the underwriter is is definitely a key then there's uh the aspect of the title bill so you'll get a title bill when you give uh you sign the contract your attorney will send the contract to their title company and they'll send you back a title bill the premium is going to be the same regardless of who you use but there are other fees on the title bill that could be different so the premium is is fixed is that is that it doesn't matter who you go to that's a that's a set calculation correct and does it go by state uh well where in new york it goes yeah each state has a different schedule so in new york the premium varies by the price of the house or the price of the commercial building the other fees on the bill what they call the junk fees the ancillary fees you know the the searches the patriot search the uh municipal search all of those things the the title closer fees do they charge for this that and the other thing they can vary by hundreds of dollars what we usually advise people is whoever it is you're using for title get a second opinion you know you get a second opinion on everything get us you know when you're going to do renovations on your house you don't go to one guy you go to three guys right and you don't necessarily choose the cheapest but get an idea of what the job is worth same thing with this and if somebody came to us for a second opinion and our bill was lower in cost they can go back to their attorney and say look at this go back to the title company and tell them that they need to adjust their fees wow so uh that's something that uh i can guarantee you most of the the folks in the audience didn't know it took me a couple of years in the business before i realized this so folks basically what michael is saying here is outside of the fixed cost for the premium which is going to be the same no matter where you go so first of all you have a right to go where you want to go you can go out you can price shop this the additional fees the the pickup fees and the title review fee and the title closure fee and all these other fees that michael referred to as junk fees are negotiable so make sure that this is something you're taking uh a close look at because they add up and they add up pretty quickly now are there any fees that go beyond the closing or is everything paid is this something that you pay every year every month is this a one-shot deal the title insurance is a one-time premium you pay it once there are recording fees that are included in the closing we take care of everything though whatever title company takes care of everything and you're done money's like there could be monies held in escrow for various things but for the most part when you're done with the closing you're done if you're in the process uh when is it appropriate to start shopping around for title i mean literally you could do it before you even find your subject house but your time as soon as the contract signed typically the attorney is going to send it to the title company but we actually have software and i i had sent um the link to becca where somebody can put in the price of the house that they're looking to buy the mortgage amount that they're looking to get and they'll print out a title bill so before they even go to the closing table they can get an idea of what their title fees should be you've got a really great calculator on the site too uh that folks can go in and play around and get a really good estimate on not just the title cost but the closing cost what's the website address for folks that want to reference that uh hallmark abstract llc.com got it you're making this payment you're closing your deal is there any other um so for example let's say it's you you own the house you let's say you took out a 30-year mortgage okay and you're now in year 31 you've been blessed you've paid your home off or your property off what happens in year 31 or 32 or 35 does coverage end at the time that the notice paid off no coverage does not end the coverage for the lender so when you take a when you buy a house there's a lender's policy and an owner's policy the owner pays for the owner's policy and the lender will require a policy protecting them your owner's policy is there for the lifetime of your ownership the lender's policy if the mortgage is satisfied obviously they no longer need the coverage and the coverage there will lapse but your owner's policy is good until you are until you sell the house so in short folks again just to boil it down for the audience at the closing table because the bank is funding for you eighty percent ninety percent in some cases a hundred percent sixty percent whatever portion that the bank is is providing for you in the cap stack they need to also be protected now they need to make sure that there's no claims against them so you're actually getting two separate policies now the buyer is paying for the bank policy also yes the buyer pays for the bank policy as well so you know it um but it again it in context of what you're paying for your house so i'd run a uh you have a house for sale at 25 midland avenue i'd run a sample bill based on a million 725 purchase price a million 232 mortgage 30 down so the owner's policy is a little over six sixty eight hundred dollars and the lenders policy is about twelve twelve hundred and seventy five so those that's the price of those two policies for that house at midland avenue so and those are the fixed premium prices okay okay so how long does the process take from uh the point that you're retained how long does it take and what actually happens how do you pull the searches what does that whole thing look like okay so we have third-party vendors we use who actually go to the records and get us the abstract of everything there is to know about that com about that property with coving it's been a struggle in uh most uh most towns and counties and some worse than others you know we uh the town of smithtown on long island they don't even answer their phones in before covid if somebody came to us with an order they would typically the attorney would typically have a completed title back within a week which is well well before the the deal is going to close so lightning fast actually that's really really fast yeah so the the information we get from our third-party vendors we have a a title officer who reads it assimilates it and then creates the title policy and she is uh we're very fortunate to have the person that we have she's a gem depending on who you have doing it depending on you know the speed with which you can do it i mean i think it's not unreasonable to think that somebody should have a whatever company you're using i think a two-week window pre-covid should be reasonable yeah i would say it's more than reasonable um you know we've come up against uh many instances where believe it or not we're you know we've cleared conditions with the bank we're ready to go to a closing and we we often hear back they're still working on title or title hasn't been cleared yet which we work when we get a deal that has any issues you know there's a uh there's a mortgage that was never satisfied or you know whatever it is we we work to alleviate the attorney's need to do as much as possible so that when the attorney gets the title it's for the most part as clear as we can make it sometimes the attorney so we have a saying our tagline or one of our taglines is we've never been to a closing where the title wasn't cleared and while that on the surface obviously but um you know we work to get it done and to take as much off the attorney's plate as we possibly can because obviously they're they're busy so i have to ask and and this will tie into covid so we've invested very heavily in technology over the years um you know we had seen pretty early that the disruption was going to be profound um digital assets for us have become woven into the the you know the very fiber of everything that we do here as a company you guys have a pretty slick app i wonder how much of what you do has been disrupted by technology can you talk to the audience a little bit about what technology you are deploying and how does that tie into the title world years ago maybe it was three years ago or four years ago they started talking blockchain yeah and they started talking about how the blockchain was going to destroy the title industry and or take over and and i had written articles about it at the time because first of all the the counties and towns are broke unless they enlisted the help of a third party information that they would have to put in the blockchain is so vast and far-flung and who is providing the information that's put in the blockchain that i can rely on anyway long story short i didn't think that technology was going to be a disrupter and and to date it has not been so when uh when covid hit immediately we started as a firm figuring the way to do a remote closing you know whether it was docusign with zoom with you know all whatever way we could figure out so that closings could still take place and it took a little while for the industry as a whole for underwriters to accept it many banks would not accept it you know many more many lenders would not accept uh virtual notarizations and actually some of the solutions were extremely low-tech to cover drive-by signings going to somebody's house sitting outside their screen door and watching them sign through a window we have attorneys where you know we we had we have a closer who would go drop the package off in front watch through the window as things got done i mean it's uh it's been a project of innovation and really having to think outside the box you know thank god cuomo or uh governor cuomo enacted the executive order allowing for virtual notarizations yeah that not happened it would have been a big problem as far as other technology you know we have our our app that allows buyers and sellers to figure title bills uh by versus cell analysis i mean it's we developed that in conjunction with a third party because in our mind it was a great tool for you the real estate agent for the real estate attorney for the mortgage broker for the home buyer for the home seller you know to figure out information about a closing that otherwise they're they're pretty much in the dark about yeah we thought it was a uh that kind of technology is a great tool without a doubt are the municipalities online much are you able to source a lot of the data online or do you still have to send folks let's let's take covert out of the equation for a moment or do you still have to go down to the county clerk and do a lot of this manually or you do or even if not manually you know a lot of stuff is online accumulating it putting together the package we do still for the most part send people to to the counties whether they're doing it virtually or in person in person is very difficult of the borrowers staten island is really the only one who's not on the um the electronic filing yep yep and i i know all about it actually the uh when i i did that cle i mentioned at st john's the head of the building department in staten island was there and she was great good stuff yeah that's good to hear you touched on something earlier that i think is is fascinating and i wanted to expand upon it a little bit for the audience michael talked about blockchain verification and there's a lot of chatter and there's a lot of noise out there in the industry about being able to through blockchain verification eliminate the need for a title policy just to give some context and some perspective here essentially what those people are proposing is that if something can be verified with such surety that you wouldn't need to insure against any type of a claim you would have to have i i don't even understand the genesis of where they came up with with how this would apply there would have to be such pristine information that would have to have been relied upon from the most untouchable sources to like i don't even get and there's a lot of chatter about blockchain verification a lot of people get excited about oh we can we can possibly get away from title premiums folks pay your title premium okay this is something that um of all the things and all the ancillary places where we can pick up a couple of bucks along the way through a real estate deal right title insurance is not the place you want to play around you need to i might add neither is the attorney you know people i can't tell you the number of people who say you know what i this attorney's two thousand dollars but i got a guy who'll do it for 9.99 it's like you're buying the most expensive asset of your life why wouldn't you go with a guy who who does real estate for a living and who's going to ensure that there are no issues i i it's hard to understand no you get what you pay for right plain and simple this is not a place folks to play around you want to make sure that you're using a well-seasoned well-versed attorney and that you're going to is it still the big three michael is it the big three insurers that are out there uh you got stuart you got old republic first american and fidelity fidelity the big four yeah um you want to make sure that your your policy is being underwritten by one of the big four as michael had mentioned earlier it can be quite a nightmare if you're you're going through a different carrier and you wake up one day folks are out of business title is is that's the that's really the key that unlocks the security for you uh in these investments so well is title is vital title is vital i like that good stuff so kovid yes um it's turned our industry upside down uh it's had a really profound impact in in how how we do basically everything every step in the process but especially on the marketing side are there any other things that you've seen uh impact on the title side with covid or is it limited to to what we had talked on earlier you know what it's pretty much limited to the mechanics of of a closing you know that's been the largest single factor that's impacted the r industry i mean i know with real estate it was like in-person closings versus virtual closing uh showings and it was you know how do you show an apartment if you can't take someone there to look at it so our impact was was i think much less impactful than for the real estate industry as a whole so we actually sold um during covid our first listing where the purchaser never set foot in the house until the closing it's amazing it really is the technologies out there are so sharp and so neat that um you really can get a fully immersive experience and if you if you have the matapor tours it's pretty remarkable uh we're actually contemplating we had talked about this a few episodes ago uh we're actually contemplating making it a requirement before we let someone in the home especially during you know all this craziness that they must have gone through the virtual tour because it becomes a re-show at that point right that's how accurate they are so yeah no question but you know what technology-wise surveys by drone are starting to get more common so that is a that's one other piece of technology that has come into play it was it was kind of been played before kovit but you know uh a drone survey is quicker can be cheaper very cool yeah very cool so you've done some out of the box things we're gonna get to the fun stuff now folks we've covered the important stuff and the value so you've done your fair share of charity work and given back in some odd ways everything from the polar bear plunge to boxing and rappelling off a 17-story building can you talk a little bit about the passion uh some of these events what drives you and then i want to get to the heroes to heroes foundation great so polar bear plunge my oldest daughter had donated bone marrow and she was wow she was a an advocate for she was doing a um a fundraiser and as a way to build awareness i decided to do the polar bear plunge with my son i know a pr guy who got me news 12 and the daily news so it worked out fairly well it was hard to breathe in the water but um you know what it was a it was a good experience i when i got to about 50 i started stepping out of my comfort zone a little bit more so the boxing uh i was at a uh at a networking event and i overheard someone talking about the long island fight for charity and i thought it sounded great so i signed up i've raised 17 grand for uh some great long island charities god bless you i trained at the glen cove boxing club which um you know it's a real boxing club down a dirt road you know not a no-frills club but it was and the the main event was the monday of thanksgiving five years ago at the hilton long island in the ballroom with 1200 people in the audience and it was a again outside of my comfort zone in a big way wow so what what drove you to to do this have you always been been passionate about this is this something that as you've gotten more comfortable and enjoyed more success it's evolved to tell me a little bit more about it because it's fascinating no i've always been charitable but in terms of going outside of the comfort zone to to engage in that charitable work it's kind of again man i don't know why but kind of like at 50 i i started doing that and uh it's been great my next thing is i think i'd like to skydive for a charity uh well we would be happy to be a participant on the donation side i'm not a fan of jumping out of perfectly safe airplanes i'll stay grounded back my shoot i think i think it's wonderful and i think that you know i had um a friend who he's become a friend he was a a colleague who is very very much uh involved in charity his name is cory shifter and um he's a dynamic guy he's you know i tell him he's kind of the face of staten island he's he's out there at these events and he as you've done he does out of the box things right it's not just your uh your normal charity any charity is wonderful and appreciated but he took it to a different level as you have um and it inspired me um it inspired me to you know we do something called the season of giving here every year now where those types of things are impactful in many many ways beyond the actual event or the actual work that you're doing for the charity it really is inspirational i applaud you for it i think it's wonderful and uh please keep it up because we need we need a lot more of that in this world today so no question really interesting which um took me to the to the heroes to heroes foundation so again i was at a at a business club in the city and a woman was sitting across from me doing work i asked her what she was doing and she told me about the heroes to heroes foundation through spirituality and a reconnection to faith saving combat veterans at serious risk for death by suicide who were suffering with moral injury and you know she told me the statistic of 20 vets a day take dying by suicide and that was an amazing 20 vets a day 20 plus and kovit has been you know the loneliness and solitude of kovid has exhausted get exacerbated the problem big so yeah i mean that's an amazing statistic right so it's shocking you know these guys come home you see the uh the people who have physical injuries that's that's easy to see but the people who have unseen injuries you don't know you know you don't know what they're going through and you know moral injury is an interesting thing you know i don't know are you familiar with that no i mean basically it's it's you've done something that's so abhorrent so against everything you hold dear you know and one example is you know a guy who was with his platoon and and a guy approached them with his 10 year old son and he gave the 10 year old son his gun and you know this this vet had to kill the 10 year old and then he killed the father and you know you think about how do you get that out of your system you know it's not something someone's going to talk to me about but the crux of our mission is and it's non-denominational we sent teams of 12 vets to israel the birthplace of religion and you know there they find the strength to reconnect with their faith and it's it's amazing so this vet who killed the 10 year old it was coming out of the holocaust music going through the holocaust museum where he realized you know what he did wasn't an atrocity it was part of his job as a soldier and he's with us today and and uh you know healing so it's we've sent over 300 vets it's in a phenomenal phenomenal charity you know i had a podcast i think it was last week where we talked about the spending bill that was recently passed and i was pretty animated and and pretty upset about some of the things that were included in the bill you know and this is the kind of of stuff that that brings it home there is so much money available in this country and there is so much waste in this country the unimaginable sacrifice that our servicemen and women endure doesn't get talked about nearly enough correct it doesn't get the attention that it deserves and we we quite simply don't take care of them the way that we should and i can speak from experience here my grandfather landed on d-day and this guy's tough as nails this is a guy for those of you who know grandpa joe and we love grandpa joe um he stormed the beach he marched through europe and he pretty much never talked about it um as he's gotten older he's now 96 years old my son recently had a project for school you know who was his hero and and he had picked my grandfather um and he still can't talk about it you know he he gave some some short answers and he he did what he had to do to help my grandson out but he's still so profoundly impacted about what happened when he was overseas um and they're not taking care of the way they should be you know what he came back and he's he's legally deaf from the shelling um when he had served and some of the things they deal with over there trying to get care and get treatment it's it's it's unbelievable it really is unbelievable you know you think about you know i had mentioned you know you you would ask me if i had served and i and i didn't but i appreciate so much what these guys do and did that it's my responsibility you know i didn't have to serve because they did my kids didn't have to serve because they did and you know we owe them an incredible debt of gratitude and you know like your grandfather the woman's father who started this charity her father was in battle of the bulge and he was second day normandy but you know never talked about it and in those days ptsd was not something that was you know it wasn't a thing yep but you know i can't even fathom what your grandfather saw and did and had to deal with so god bless him well i appreciate that and um i appreciate you for what you're doing here um just give the uh website no i i apologize folks i'm uh i'm getting a little choked up when i talk about my grandfather as you said and uh the sacrifices he's made so please by all means share the website how do we find the heroes to heroes foundation and how do we find hallmark right so heroes to heroes is heroes to heroes dot org that's the website for the charity and hallmark abstract service is just hallmark abstractllc.com great anyone has any questions about title insurance it's our pleasure to answer them whether you use a different firm or not it doesn't matter well folks uh at the the bare minimum i urge you to go check out the website uh we played around on it as i had said there's a really neat calculator there uh one of the questions we get all the time is what are our closing costs going to be so i urge you to go check the calculator out it was very easy to use very easy to navigate definitely check out the website michael thank you very much we really appreciate you joining us today please extend our appreciation to linda all right um keep up the great work man this is really good stuff you know what the pleasure is all mine you're great and you do a phenomenal job thank you very much appreciate you everybody out there um we're turning the page here on 2020 and into 2021. um you know let's put this sucker in the rear view mirror and uh upward and onward folks thanks everyone appreciate you and stay safe [Music]