How we give a homebuyer the money to buy the house & uncover the best way to power it!

Transcript of the video is below

Joe, thanks for the introduction. Glad to be here, guys. It’s a great opportunity to partner with a company like Reach and really unlock homeownership and wealth. Most people, if we look at it from an 80,000‑foot level, where are they getting their wealth? A lot of it is in real estate. As the demand for real estate increases, or the demand for homeownership increases, unfortunately I don’t see values changing a lot.

A little bit of my background: my background is in mortgage‑backed securities, banking, secondary markets, and those types of things. As a servicer—this is paper that we write, we service, we hold—we were able to notice certain patterns. When we noticed these patterns, we saw a lot of our customers adding renewable‑energy financing after they moved into a house. There were pros and there were cons. When it was done correctly, there were a lot of amazing things. When it was done incorrectly, it caused some problems.

So for us, we stepped back and said, “Let’s rethink home buying.” Real estate has been done the same way for the last 10 to 15 years. In that time, the cost of homeownership has increased. It’s not just mortgage rates. The cost of homeownership—banks are used to PITI. As real‑estate agents, 95% of everybody just asks, “What’s your rate? What’s your mortgage payment?” A lot of people skip over taxes and insurance, but even more skip over utilities. What they don’t realize is the hidden buying power that has been sitting right under our nose.

What I’m going to show you is how we unlock some of that buying power. How can we cover down payments, cover some closing costs, and literally not change a homebuyer’s total monthly housing budget? We’re going to keep them in the same housing budget and yet unlock essentially 100% financing.

Let me share my screen here. Somebody give me a thumbs‑up if you’re seeing this. Still loading… there we go. Still loading, still loading—how about now? We good? Got it? Okay.

I’m going to cover that new appraisal form coming out in November. We’ll talk about HERS ratings. We’ll talk about energy efficiency. We’ll talk about a couple of things. Housing budgets are made up of more than a mortgage payment and an interest rate, yet the average homebuyer doesn’t know what to shop for except that mortgage rate and that housing budget. Banks are qualifying homeowners based on PITI—you’re going to hear that term all the time—but we’re ignoring this part of homeownership.

We’ve seen the cost of infrastructure rise. How are utilities going to pass on the cost of infrastructure alone? We have an aging infrastructure. We’re seeing utility costs rise. That’s making homeownership more expensive. As Joseph mentioned, as an agent today there is buying power trapped in all sorts of different places. One of the ways homebuyers should be shopping today is: how are they going to decide how to power their house? Is it more affordable for them to buy power from a utility, or to own it themselves?

That’s where the new product Reach is rolling out is really going to help people uncover the best way to power their house. The buying power I talk about often is very simple: what is the utility bill? If we got rid of their utility bill, how much more house could they afford? A $300 utility bill—how much more could they afford? So how do we apply that? What do we do?

In this example, these two people have the exact same total monthly payment—same housing budget: PITI plus utilities. Yet one person borrowed $41,000 more. They have the same mortgage rate, same term, yet they borrowed $41,000 more for the same amount of money. That is the ability to unlock buying power. How do they do it? We’re just showing them it’s more affordable and effective to shop how they want to power their home.

So that’s a simple math equation for us. How much buying power is trapped in a house? What is the cost of the equipment to replace that—meaning, to get rid of that utility cost—to determine if a homebuyer should or shouldn’t do that? For example, a $300 utility bill has about $50,000 of buying power. When you strip out a lot of the BS, the cost of solar is a lot cheaper than what many of the people knocking on doors are trying to sell. When you buy solar after you’ve moved into the house, there are a lot of financing fees; you’re going to pay all sorts of crazy different things.

So you have the utility, you have the wholesale cost of solar, and there’s leftover buying power. We just turn that buying power into down‑payment and closing‑cost assistance. For you as an agent, what is the problem that we solve? This program can help you unlock potential homebuyers who either: one, don’t have enough savings for a down payment; two, have a savings account but are nervous to buy a house because it would liquidate their savings; or three, people who just want to be savvy, maximize their investment, and be smart about what they’re doing.

As a homebuyer today, in 2026, you can finance the same house multiple ways. You can either put a power plant on the roof when you buy it, or you can continue to pay the utility. When given the choice, for the same monthly payment, would you rather have a power cost that’s flexible and will continue to rise, or would you rather own the power equipment—the equipment to manufacture the electricity your house needs—and benefit from the cost savings? When they see the numbers, it becomes a no‑brainer.

We looked at 2024 and 2025 and asked, “What was the most popular mortgage?” Ninety‑five percent were conventional loans. So, if we compare apples to apples: 625 credit score, $330,000 sales price, $330,000 appraised value, 5% down. There’s the loan amount, interest rate, mortgage payment—principal and interest plus MI. There’s their $200 utility bill.

If I’m buying traditionally, I’ve got to come up with my 5% down and maybe a little bit of closing costs. I’ve got to come up with $23,000 to buy this house, and my payment is going to be about $2,400 a month. Or, if I want to, I can utilize the wasted buying power in there. We’re going to take the money they would have spent on financing fees, and Reach contributes that toward the closing costs and down payment. We give them a slightly bigger loan amount, same interest rate. They’re going to have a slightly bigger mortgage payment, but we’re going to reduce their utility bills more than we increase their mortgage payment, including the cost of renewable energy inside of it.

So as a homeowner, would you like to pay 5% down and have a $2,400 payment, or would you like to have all those costs covered and still have the exact same payment, only now you own the power plant on your roof? When given that opportunity, most homebuyers say, “Yeah, that’s pretty much a no‑brainer.”

What this program does is give a homebuyer the money to buy the house and, at the same time, in the exact same loan—not a separate one—give the homeowner money above the sales price and appraised value to cover renewable energy. We bundle those together in the same loan. We do an escrow holdback, so when they close on their transaction, everything is installed afterward. That’s important because the seller has no say; nothing happens to the house until the homebuyer’s loan is closed, funded, and they’ve taken ownership. After that, Reach comes in and installs solar.

In that financing, Reach has agreed to contribute toward their down payment and closing costs. Together, it’s our program plus Reach that really unlocks this buying power. The diagram you’re seeing is the old way it was done. Traditionally, a homebuyer would find a house, sign a purchase contract, a loan would get done, the builder or seller would get paid. A couple of weeks, months, or years later, somebody knocks on their door: “Hey, you should have solar.” They’d sign a solar agreement, pay for financing twice, and then solar would get installed.

All we’re doing is combining those into the same transaction. We’ve already done the due diligence. We know the data. We have the data and the credit profiles and parameters on the likelihood of people making their payments on time. Energy efficiency, done right, increases loan performance. Again, we’re fighting the rising cost of homeownership. We’re trying to squeeze every dollar of affordability that we can.

Our loan does just that: it takes renewable energy, packages it into their mortgage, and now the total cost of housing is one payment. There’s no extra lien, no extra loan, no extra lease. They own solar free and clear. Because they own solar free and clear, as Joe mentioned, an appraiser can give value to the home for that. Leased solar or solar with a lien—a fixture filing, a UCC‑1—an appraiser can’t give any value to that. This way, an appraiser can give value to it. As much as they’re adding solar, they’re literally increasing the value of the home right out of the gate.

When it comes to the value of their home, the new form is the UAD 3.6 form. Inside that, Joe gave a great analogy with Carfax and miles per gallon. Homeownership is about more than just purchase price. For years, we’ve focused only on acquisition cost—the purchase price. But homeownership is purchase price plus operational cost. Just like owning a car: how much are you paying for the car, and how much does it cost to run, drive, and maintain it—miles per gallon.

When we worked with Fannie and Freddie on these appraisal guidelines, energy efficiency needed to be factored in. It will literally be on the third or fourth page of every appraisal. It will factor in and begin to quantify the energy efficiency of a house. Again, if you have two homes sitting next to each other, one has a 0 or 20‑dollar power cost to operate and the other has a 300‑dollar power cost, which one is more valuable? If you have two Suburbans sitting next to each other, one gets 100 miles per gallon and one gets 8, you’re probably going to pay more for the Suburban that gets 100 miles per gallon.

The reason this is important is that when we analyzed how long it’s taking people to save up for the perceived down payment, there is a cost of waiting. Here are two markets: one in Florida, Spring, Texas (Houston market), and the Tampa market. As demand increases, the price of a home increases. If it takes someone three years to save up for a house, at a 3% appreciation rate that house has gone up $25,000 in their attempt to save. What we see homebuyers doing is they can never get caught up. The cost of the home is outpacing the rate at which they can save for that perceived down payment.

By unlocking this wasted buying power—money that is either going to a utility company, making the utility company rich, or that could be redirected if I add a power plant on the roof and include it in my mortgage—the money that would have gone to a utility company now goes toward paying down my mortgage and unlocking homeownership faster.

As much as this might feel complicated or confusing, it’s really simple. What we’re able to unlock for a homebuyer is zero money down and potentially zero cash to close. There are closing costs—we’ll cover that in a Q&A at the end—but, simply put: zero money down, potentially zero cash to close, and a lower power bill. How do we lower that total cost of housing?

Across many markets—this is a fascinating one in Hillsborough County—there are 159,000 people who can afford the median home. The average age of a first‑time homebuyer sits in this demographic block in Hillsborough County. The number of people coming into home‑buying age is going to do nothing but grow. I hate to say this, but homes are as affordable now as they’re going to be in the next decade. It is what it is: demographics, supply and demand. Everybody has been waiting for something to happen, and it’s not happening. People are getting off the sidelines.

How do we help people who can afford the median home? You still have to be able to afford the payment. For those who have gotten a recent raise, paid off some debt, are tired of their landlord changing things on them, and finally want a place of their own, this is a way to help those homebuyers so you can get them into housing.

In short, by unlocking buying power—money that’s going to the utility company—we’re turning that around and giving it to homebuyers. We’re helping them increase affordability by lowering their utility costs more than we might increase their mortgage, and unlocking the chance for homebuyers to start building wealth through real estate.

And with that, Joe, Joseph, I’m sending it back to you.