Home Financing for Global Impact with Harlan Accola

This faith and finance podcast is underwritten in part by Movement Mortgage.

Movement provides residential home loans in all 50 states. Founded in 2008, amidst one of the biggest financial meltdowns in American history, Movement set forth on a mission to create a movement of change in their industry, in corporate cultures, and in communities. So that a portion of their profit creates a long term positive impact in communities, both close to home and around the globe through the Movement Foundation and Movement Schools. It all comes back to their mission to love and value people. Learn more at movement.com slash faith. dot org.

The company arose with a mission to do things differently. Arlan Acula joins us today to talk about it. Then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000.

This is faith and finance biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Well, it's nice to have our friend Harlan Acula back with us. Harlan is with Movement Mortgage, an underwriter of this program. Harlan, welcome back to the broadcast.

Thank you, Rob. Wonderful to be here again. Harlan, we've been looking forward to this conversation because you're going to give us a little bit of the history and mission of Movement Mortgage.

And it really is a fascinating story. So take us back. How did Movement get started? Well, there's no question that Movement should not have succeeded. They started at the wrong time during the housing crash. The world really didn't need another mortgage company.

In fact, many of them were going out of business. But Casey Crawford took a look at it very differently as he does most things. And Casey said, just a minute, if there's all of these things that are being done wrong in the market, why don't we do it right? And he looked to a mentor, Toby Harris, who is still with the company in his role as someone that is helping Casey work together with him to create a mortgage company that not only would do a better job at taking care of their clients, but would give back to the communities and give glory to God, not to the owner of the company.

I love that if you're going to start a company, you might as well do it with that at the heart of it. So what role did Casey and Troy's faith play in this decision to start Movement? Well, even though Casey was successful before he ever came to the mortgage arena, he was a NFL football player. And when that career ended, he grew up in Washington, D.C., and he had seen a lot of poverty and pain throughout the country when he traveled to different football stadiums that he played in. He wanted to help the poor and the disadvantaged, the least of these. And one of the things that he said and that he's talked to all of us about is, hey, it used to be that the Christians were the ones that built hospitals and schools.

And why did they stop doing that? I think we should be the ones that are the catalyst for that. We shouldn't expect the government to do it. And Casey has always had a deep concern about the children because he knows if in the beginning things start right, they will end up better as those children get older.

And if they don't have a chance when they're young, things are not going to turn out the way that they should. And then he also started a love works program where we all help each other. And we have over 4000 employees. We all help each other when with money that's deducted from our check that will help others in difficult times. And then we also do Grace Works, which is grants that we give throughout the country to hundreds of organizations in the markets that we work in. And so that's really those were all things from the beginning that if we're going to we're not only going to take care of our clients, we're going to take care of our clients and their children in the markets that we work in.

Yeah, well, and that's certainly been the case. We'll talk a little bit later in our time together about the Movement Foundation and the amazing work that's being done there. You won't believe how much work has been funded in the name of Jesus through the Movement Foundation. But before we head to this break, Harlan, what makes Movement Mortgage different from most companies? Well, in order for us to be able to make profits so that we can donate money and give to all of these very important causes, we have to make money at and be good at what we're doing, because people are not going to do mortgage with us just because we're nice people and just because we love Jesus. They need to have mortgages done better and faster at, of course, a fair and reasonable rate. And what's really different is that everybody was concerned about making a lot of money prior to 2008.

And Casey saw that and said, let's forget about the money. Yes, we have to do that, but let's take care of our people, our clients first and make sure that we're doing the right thing for them. And let's just make sure that we do it better and faster than anyone else. And that will cause other people to want to come work for us that maybe work for many of these other companies. That's exactly what happened.

Yeah. Well, folks, it's an incredible story of a mortgage company that was started at the wrong time, right in the middle of the 2008 housing crisis. But God has blessed it at its core is about loving others and serving them well in the mortgage industry, but also using it as an engine to fund kingdom advancing work.

Harlan Akilah here today. We're talking movement mortgage and we've got more to share with you just around the corner. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Stick around. God has entrusted his finances to you and we at FaithFi have designed our FaithFi app to help you live, give, owe and grow with that perspective. Our FaithFi app is the leading biblically based finance app. You can manage your money, get top biblical financial resources and interact with a community of like minded believers where you can ask questions, get answers and share what you're learning.

Go to FaithFi.com and click the word app to get started. We're grateful for support from Movement Mortgage, who provides residential home loans in all 50 states guided by a mission to love and value people and a goal to redefine the mortgage process. Movement seeks to help others achieve their financial goals. You can find out more at Movement dot com slash faith. Movement Mortgage LLC supports equal housing opportunity and MLS number 39179.

For licensing information, please visit NMLS consumer access dot org. Great to have you with us today on faith and finance with me today, my friend Harlan Ackala. Harlan is with Movement Mortgage, an underwriter of this program. And, you know, some of the stories behind our underwriters don't get told.

And today is one of those opportunities for us to share with you why we've selected Movement Mortgage as our underwriter in the mortgage space. And it's bigger than just the world class service and opportunities they provide through their mortgages. It's how through that company there being the hands and feet of Jesus to bless so many. And Harlan, you were sharing with us before the break the about the founding of this company by Casey Crawford and Toby Harris at the wrong time during the 2008 financial crisis.

And yet God has blessed it. It's now one of the largest mortgage companies in the nation doing incredible work in the name of Jesus. Why do you think the company has grown so dramatically since its founding in 2008? Well, there's a number of different factors, but I think the significant thing is, is anybody can cast a vision, but there's very little you can do by yourself. You have to build a team. Casey, of course, understood that being in football and the importance of an entire organization in order to win a Super Bowl when he was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And so he cast this vision. And I can say for myself, I've been successful in the mortgage business in the reverse mortgage space and ran an entire team.

I could have really went to work anywhere because of the things that I offered in our team offered. But many people like myself followed the vision and said, we want to be a part of what Casey is doing, because his whole goal is that we exist to love and value people. And because he had such a great vision and because everybody wants to be a part of that, that has that same heart. Many people followed that vision.

And because he was taking care of clients after the fact, servicing a majority of our clients. And I believe also, quite frankly, that God blessed what was being done because it was right and it was what was needed at the time. And I think that once you establish that, there's a lot of people that want to jump on the same boat because they know the direction that it's going.

Yeah. Well, it's amazing to me as I travel the country and speaking and just traveling from my work at Kingdom Advisors, you know, I'm seeing movement mortgage in cities across America and the footprint really is massive now as movement is one of the leading mortgage providers in the US. But one of the exciting things that's happening through the company is its charitable outreach arm called the Movement Foundation. We talked about community impact, and this is one of the keys through the Movement Foundation. So talk about some of the issues that the Movement Foundation is confronting. Well, first and foremost, when you check out MovementFoundation.org or MovementSchools.org, Casey started with the charter schools in disadvantaged areas, because we know that it is important to start at the beginning because that's where the poverty cycle and the crime cycle and so on has continued. When he found out that South Carolina was building prisons and deciding how many prison cells to build based on the number of third graders that didn't know how to read, he said, why don't we do something about this?

Why don't we educate people so that the third graders can read to eliminate this problem? So his passion to do the schools were now up to the seventh charter school, over 1,500 students changing their lives and also involving their families, teaching their families about everything from simply money to housing to what they can do to get out of the poverty cycle. And the Movement Foundation goes beyond that. That's the primary thing that we start with. But we give to local communities across the country, food banks.

We are in all 50 states. And one of the big things that we do also is involve our employees of not just giving money, but doing vision trips. One of the people that are part of my team in the reverse mortgage team just got back yesterday from Thailand. He's not a practicing Christian, but he is profoundly impacted by going over. And we're working with a local charity over there that is saving kids from sex trafficking.

And he was there for a week helping those children and encouraging those children and playing games with them and sharing things with them. That is what Movement Foundation does. That is way beyond just sending a check to somebody.

Yeah. Well, the amount of money that's been given away is incredible. Tell us how much has gone out through the Movement Foundation and then specifically, how does someone getting a mortgage with Movement contribute to those efforts?

That's probably one of the most important things and why I decided to land our team at Movement. I think when Casey started and they were doing, you know, five, six loans a month. Now we do 20 billion a year. And he said, I'm going to give half my profit to the foundation and give away half my profit. No CEO does that. I mean, some people say they're going to give away one percent or whatever.

You see it on different companies. He said, I'm going to give away 50 percent. So far, Movement Foundation has given away three hundred and seventy seven million dollars. Much of that with employee participation. When somebody does a mortgage with us, every company makes a profit on your loan. Half of that profit is going to help that sex trafficked child in Thailand or that hungry boy in Guatemala or that student who's struggling to get ahead in Charlotte, North Carolina. So it's not just about doing business with us and the profit is going to help the owner or the shareholders make a lot more money. At least half of everything is reinvested into the communities that we work in and abroad. Yeah, that's really helpful. Share a few of the success stories, Harlan, because it's always fun to hear how this is working itself out in people's lives, specifically around the Movement Foundation.

Yes. The the first thing is, is that the big thing with Movement Foundation, as I mentioned, is the schools. We have test scores that are four times higher than schools in the same area that and we provide them free. There's been thousands of grants of ten thousand dollars each that we give in different locations. We have built community centers, which are really churches throughout Central America, over a hundred of them. The grants to when people need water. There was money that flowed into North Carolina when the hurricane hit Asheville. Every time something like that happens, there's all of these grants that all of the movement employees vote on.

Because as you mentioned, we're the hands and feet of Jesus. And as our employees see that there's a need here or a need there, like there was in North Carolina, like there was in Arizona when things were so hot that we got water out to the homeless people. We just partnered with a company that was already distributing water to the homeless people in Phoenix and then made sure that we were getting that out so that people weren't dying of the extreme heat last summer. Those are the things that make a dramatic difference for real, not just writing a check that you don't really know where it's going.

Yeah, that's helpful. And this work on the part of the Movement Foundation isn't limited just to the U.S., is it? No, we've like I said, Thailand is just where one of our employees were to help over there. We've worked in Haiti not recently because of some of the things that are going on. But clean water in Uganda is a big effort. In Kenya and several different places in Africa, we've worked with education and health care. Guatemala is a really big deal with some health care issues and what we do locally there as well.

And India, very, very few places in the world that we haven't touched. Excellent. Well, folks, it's a world-class mortgage company and that's why we've selected Movement as our underwriter in the mortgage category. But when you work with Movement, you're also funding the incredible work Harlan just shared with us here in the United States and around the globe. Harlan, thanks for your time today, my friend.

Great to be with you, Rob. Folks, if you want to learn more about Movement Mortgage, go to movement.com slash faith. That's movement.com slash faith.

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800-525-7000. We'd love to hear from you today. You can call right now. Let's head to the phones. To Arkansas we go. Hi, Pat. How can I help you?

Hello, Rob. I'm 61. I am currently doing about a two-hour round trip drive to work. So we're going to be selling our house and moving closer to work, church, the grandkids, the whole nine yards. So my question today is we're going to sell this house. Does it make more sense to purchase another house or maybe rent?

Yeah. So in terms of your plans here, you want to move closer to your job. You're selling your home. How quickly do you feel like you're going to be ready to identify that next home? Pretty quick.

I'd say six months or less. Okay. Yeah. You know, I think the key is, you know, can you time these things up? I mean, this is always the dilemma when we're selling and buying a house. And what you don't want to end up with is two mortgages and all of a sudden, you know, the housing market goes sideways on you because, you know, we find ourselves in a recession and people are kind of hunkering down and, you know, now you've put yourself in a bind. And so, you know, I think one option might be, and again, these are challenging, but you could, you know, buy your new place with a contingency.

Sellers are less likely to accept those, but it's, you know, becoming more common now that we move from a raging seller's market to a buyer's market as the inventories are building. So that's one option. Second option is you could sell your place and have an option to rent it back for a period of time. So the idea would be you sell it, but you go ahead and agree as a part of the terms that, you know, you're going to get three months or four months or whatever it is to rent it back. You stay there and then you become, you know, laser focused on finding that next property, you know, paying cash or at least rolling, you know, those proceeds over into the next place. And, you know, you're off to the races at that point and that way you've avoided moving twice and, you know, which obviously is costly. Third option is, you know, you go ahead and sell it, put the money in savings and then, you know, find a short term lease or rental, perhaps something furnished. Maybe you put everything in a, you know, a storage facility and that kind of thing.

But, you know, I think the key is you don't, you know, try to, in terms of the selling of the existing property, you just don't want to get stuck with two properties. You know, I think the other factor here is just the economy, you know, but from my perspective, that's kind of a losing proposition. I mean, will rates be lower 12 months from now than they are today? Yes, we fully expect they will, but they're probably not going to be much lower. I mean, we're not expecting to get out of the, you know, the fives next year. And so could you be a point lower than what you are today? It's possible, but, you know, I don't think expecting, you know, the housing market to decline.

I think, if anything, we're going to see a slowing of the appreciation of houses, but probably not any kind of meaningful decline. So, from my perspective, if you could find a way to do it and minimize your number of moves, you know, that would be far more advantageous than any kind of benefit you would derive from waiting it out, hoping that you'd be in a, you know, a position to buy something less expensive. Does that make sense, though?

Yeah, it makes complete sense. So, I guess outside of the timing issue, your recommendation would still be to go ahead and purchase another home, better off than retiring or renting at this age. I'm 61, going to work until 70 or willing, but you still think purchasing would be the best bet.

Yeah, I mean, it's not for everybody, so let's talk about that for a second. What kind of equity would you be pulling out of this property, and what would you be looking to spend where you're moving? Have you done some digging around over there? Yeah, so we'll clear between 160 and 170. We'll walk away with that. We certainly can't replace what we've got when we're moving, but we're at a stage of our life where we don't need that anymore. So, our goal would be to have a low mortgage at the very least. Okay, yeah. And what do you think you would need to spend to get what you're looking for once you move?

Probably three and a quarter. Okay, yeah. And what is your mortgage today? The IOW 220 on it.

Okay, got it. So, yeah, you're thinking about maybe end up with a $175,000 mortgage after you said you'll clear 161, but you're going to have some expenses, obviously, related to the purchase of that new property. So, $165,000, $175,000, so that brings your mortgage down slightly, perhaps at a little higher interest rate, so maybe you're not saving a whole lot. But as long as you can fit that into your budget in this next season of life, I like you all continuing to own that home and working toward paying that off as close as you can over the next decade between now and the end of your work life. And as you transition to what God has next for you, you guys could perhaps further downsize or just ride that out as long as you build that into your budget. But I think owning something that has the ability to continue to appreciate as long as you can service that debt, which it sounds like you can, you're doing it now, you're going to hopefully get a little bit of a reduction in the overall expenses, maybe, you know, the carrying costs and utilities because it's a smaller place, but also a little bit smaller mortgage, maybe with a slightly higher interest rate. You know, I think that makes a lot of sense versus you just transitioning to a straight rental at this point. Gotcha.

Well, that's exactly what I was looking for. Awesome. Appreciate your call, Pat. Excited for you guys as you get a little closer to your job.

I'm sure that'll take a lot of pressure off and save you some money just in terms of fuel costs. And I'm sure you'll be thrilled about that. But call anytime, sir. Thanks for being on the program today. We appreciate it.

Tampa Bay, Florida. Hi, Kevin. Go ahead. Yeah, quickly, I have a $250,000 settlement coming in. And I understand I have to speak to a kingdom advice, kingdom financial advisor. But I wanted to know in the short term, and besides my giving to church, where should I park that money for some short term gains? Yeah, well, I would just put that in something that has FDIC insurance where you're not, you know, essentially putting it at risk. The good news is that you can still get four and a half percent on high yield savings right now. So if you go to bankrate.com, you know, I'm looking at it right now for high yield savings with 250,000 of FDIC insurance.

I'm seeing four and three quarters, 4.5, 4.55. I mean, that's a phenomenal return. And I know that might not be there for a year. But, you know, if you were to put that there for, let's say, six months, you'd get $5,500 while you're meeting with a certified kingdom advisor and getting ready to invest it. So that'd be where I would go.

Does that make sense? Yeah, what was that website again? It's bankrate.com. When you click on high yield savings, you'll find who has the best high yield savings accounts as of November 2024.

You can see how they're rated in the five star rating system, whether or not they have any monthly maintenance fees or minimums, and then you'll see their yield as of today. Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right, Kevin, thanks for your call today. God bless you, my friend. Folks, that's going to do it for us. So thankful to have you along with us today on Faith & Finance. I'm Rob West. A big thanks to my team today, Pat, Sandy, Devon, Jim, couldn't do it without them, and everybody here at Faithfi that makes this happen. We'll see you next time. Bye bye. Faith and Finance is provided by Faithfi and listeners like you.