In an industry where complexity often stands between consumers and homeownership, this episode—“Click, Close, and Qualify: The Future of Frictionless Home Financing”—features mortgage innovator Jeff Bode, President and CEO of Click n’ Close, who’s leading the charge toward simpler, smarter lending. Jeff shares how his team is transforming the borrower experience through eClosings, day-one certainty, and powerful down payment assistance programs like SmartBuy and shared appreciation options. From his early adoption of digital closings to his knack for finding underserved market niches, Jeff’s story is a masterclass in reinvention and relevance. Whether you’re a lender, broker, or housing advocate, this episode offers timely insights into building a more streamlined, accessible future for mortgage lending.
[David] Listeners, I’m really excited about our guest today because as a mortgage lender who’s been in the business for 51 years, I admire people who find their way to reinvent themselves and stay relevant to what’s going on in the industry today and today’s guest, Jeff Bode, who’s the President & CEO of Click n’ Close, who has been a part of a Mid-American Mortgage and has had a great story. I just met with one of his generals Jeffrey Raich, and I was so impressed with how Jeffrey talked about Jeff Bode. I go, I know Jeff Bode, we gotta have him back on the podcast. So, Jeff Bode, it’s so good to have you back sir. I respect you so much.
[Jeff] David, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
[David] You have been an icon in our industry for a long time, and I’ve thought we would cover briefly a little bit of your journey when you started the industry. I think it was in 1981, if I recall correctly and then walk us through what you, your journey to where you’re at today.
[Jeff] That’s a long time. But yes, I started in 1981 in a savings loan in Western Oklahoma. I worked for a couple of savings and loans, and then the industry savings loan industry in Oklahoma just crashed 83 and 84, and I moved down to Texas in 1986 and with that, I had a joint venture with a little bank in Frisco, Texas. Unfortunately they’d already made all the bad loans they needed to before I even got there, and they eventually failed and while that happened I ended up buying a brokerage company that was part of a company called Custom One. It was Mortgage One, and I acquired that, had the employees, and then I put some additional capital in and made it a mortgage company, very small mortgage company and we built that up on a retail basis. Got our FHA warehouse lines, all, the typical broker to banker solution and then in when I saw DU come about, I thought that’s a great opportunity and we decided to get into the TPO business and, utilize the DU underwrite and something really fortunate happened. We were using, it was Contour software and Calyx point, one of our loan officers saw that and said, this is pretty good, or no, I went to a Fannie Mae seminar where they were rolling out DU and I said, we’ve been trying to do this, but it is so clunky to use our software system. They said, help, this is Calyx point that we’ve been using on the demo, and I thought that was really slick. So we called Calyx point bought eight licenses of it and made that work and we called the owner, or actually just called their helpline and said, boy, it should be nice if they, it did these four or five things and with that, the owner of Calyx Point flew into Dallas and sat beside my loan officer that was going through that stuff and pointed out if here’s what it’s missing and a couple weeks later they gave us a software. That did that. So that was really impressive.
[David] Now that, there’s a really good point right there on that part of the story is you look at successful people, they fly in to meet with their customers when they hear of an idea and I just wanna underscore that a lot of people are saying, how can I be successful? I would suggest that you need to go in and become a part of, seat next to your customer and that’s what he did. Calyx point, obviously was wildly successful for so many years. It faded from existence, but kudos for you were making the switch.
[Jeff] Yeah and that really worked out well. And you know what was funny that later on, a couple years later. Calyx was working with Flagstar to roll out lenders in point, and they had done a great deal of work and I guess Flagstar was changing their operating system and Calyx said we need somebody to do this with and they remember those conversations we had and said, how would you like to be, the lender in first lender in point, and we didn’t have a whole lot of capital. It cost us about a half million dollars to build out the process. We did that didn’t have much cash left. But did that, and it was just, that was such an easy system for a broker to be able to such an easy system to use. It really was and we were able to just grow rapidly and it was bizarre because as soon as the new version of Calyx Point rolled out, they saw our name in there and we got tons of calls. Fortunately we weren’t licensed in California, so we couldn’t take advantage of it all, but that was pretty amazing.
[David] So Jeff, you then worked with Calyx Point, but you continued to reinvent yourself and what I think is so interesting, what was your mindset of how, why you would what were the opportunities, what was going on in your head? I’m trying to get our, give our listeners insights into why you were able to reinvent yourself, whether it be moving to Calyx point in the early days of that to doing the different things that you’ve done. What is it about the way you’re wired that it causes you to be willing to shift? How many people get stuck?
[Jeff] As an entrepreneur I’ve always been, my mind doesn’t turn off. I don’t think I’m any brighter and probably not as bright as most people in the business, but I’m always thinking about it and how do I do something better, easier, smarter, take advantage of a particular pricing execution opportunity I can, it just, the mind never turns off.
[David] Yeah, that’s good. When your mind is, there’s different things that go on in different people’s heads. Some people are seeing opportunities, other people are seeing fear. Obviously you are recognizing opportunities. What are some of the inflection points as you continue to tell us about your career path that a lot of, for example, one of the things I read in your bio, you were one of the very first companies, first independent mortgage lenders in the nation to implement the e-closing, the electronic closing, as well as e-notes. What, how is it that you seem to catch on when that has been one frustrating late to adopt the adopted technology?
[Jeff] It made sense to me that when Dodd-Frank came about rand we had to have the intent to perceive document signed and I thought that’s gotta be signed electronically. We’ve gotta deliver, our electronically in order to keep the process moving and going faster. I thought since we’re doing that, why don’t we just move to E-close and it occurred to me that the thing about E-close, it’s not what the consumer wants particularly, they just want everything correct and on time. But it did help allow us to get everything correct and on time. One of the things that you have with an E-close process is we actually load all of our documents up into our closing system. Prior to that, we were actually emailing a link to the title company to get the closing docs that our document prepared put together, but it might not have had like the tax return information on it that they needed to sign, or a letter of explanation that they provided us that they didn’t sign or whatever document and we found that we were having problems with our title companies. Not that they were bad, but we were sending them emails to sign these documents an hour before closing. They’d already printed everything out and they were going to have those documents signed. They didn’t go back to check and see what we just thought of at the last minute and we had found that going back and chasing down those documents took a tremendous amount of time and that was a big lift for us and the consumers liked it better anyway and ultimately the title companies, they didn’t like that back and forth business either. They wanted everything in one package to be signed, and we actually got the borrowers to sign those documents. We just left them that was prior to the promote online notary solution, but we left everything that had to be notarized in our closing package. The title company printed that out, got those notarized as well as the deed that they filed. It was just a pretty easy, slick process for us and, it was just better communication for lack of, lack of having to communicate is where it was.
[David] It makes a lot of sense. Now you’ve evolved into Click n’ Close. How did that happen?
[Jeff] In 2022, I looked at the industry and thought, oh man, this is going to be rough. I think interest rates had already moved up and I thought they’re gonna head up further and I really didn’t want to be running a retail operation at that time because I’d been through that before. That there’s just not enough that you could do to provide, to give a loan officer to be better than everybody else and they all wanted to be better than everybody else.
[David] It’s your expense.
[Jeff] Yes. I guess that’s typically the case and my thought was, why don’t I just do wholesale? Because we had our down payment assistance product already put into place, and that I could see that as a winner going forwar d. Typically in, in down times that, people don’t have the in down times in this industry. But people that have money have already financed, right? The ones that don’t have money are looking to figure out how to buy a house even though they might have the income. We thought that was a good niche product and we’d started building that in 2020 and had it ready and it was I shouldn’t say perfected. We’re never, we never get anything perfected. I don’t know who does, but I don’t know.
[David] Not technology. It’s moving too fast.
[Jeff] Yeah and our solution was to have that available and to market that on a wholesale and then correspondent basis. It’s pretty impressive. But if it’s more impressive to meet who you’ve been able to attract into your organization, you got guys like Jeffrey Raich who are just quality human beings. What is the key to your recruiting and being able to attract seasoned professionals like Jeffrey? and his wife, by the way, as well, Jeffrey’s on the TPO side. I believe his wife’s on the correspondence side, if I’m not mistaken.
[Jeff] Yeah. She’s wholesale and Jeff is correspondent.
[David] Oh, is that okay? Jeff’s correspondent. Okay.
[Jeff]I think you just have to hire the right people and let them, actually Michael Lima was the one who brought Jeff Raich in and I’d known Jeff for years. I never thought to ask him, there’s just, there’s so many people that you know and you respect that are out there in the industry and you just never realize that they may have a change of life that things need to, that they would like to make a move.
[David] Yeah. A big shout out to both Jeffrey and his wife. They were in Cancun at the lenders One conference that you guys are members of as I am, and it was really great to get to know them. I just think the world of the two of them, so quality people like yourself. So, what is the vision of Click and Close then?
[Jeff] The thought is that we would be a digital process and I think we’re getting close to that. We’re building our own point of sale inside of a mortgage machine. We’ve been using Blend for, gosh, four years. No, probably about six years. They do a good job, but we’d like to take that further so we can have our third party wholesale customers utilizing that and taking advantage of day one, certainty and aim, and giving them instant approvals and a better process along with the digital closing, with the remote online notary, and the e-notes. So everything’s, wrapped up in a really tight package and easy for the broker with great pricing.
[David] It’s interesting when the name Click n’ Close, you implying a much more streamlined process, if I understand and has that been realized, Jeff?
[Jeff] I think parts of it have, and obviously whenever we had the E-close process back when we were Mid-America, I do think that really was beneficial and I think the title companies would say, yeah, that was. That was great, and I think we were probably, a year or two ahead of everybody else before they embraced that.
[David] One of the other things you’re famous for is finding niches. I’ve always been impressed with the niches. One of them is the down payment assistant program that you have, we as a result, I met Rob Chrane. Who is with a Down Payment Assistance Resource group and he is just, he started this years ago, slaved away at this thing with a vision to help people get into homes. I love the vision where I got hooked on this industry. It was 51 years ago is helping someone get into a home that everyone else didn’t think they were qualified for. I got ’em into it, and we’re still friends to this day. The very first loan I did, I’m still friends with the people 51 years later. That’s what we could do in this business, and I was impressed with Rob’s vision to help people get into homes and so you’ve locked onto that and you’ve created a program and built systems around what Rob is doing, and I think you call it your with zero out of pocket or what’s the name of the It’s the Smart Buy. Click n’ Close Smart Buy. Talk about what you envision there and how you’re working with Rob.
[Jeff] We figured the smart byproduct was a great name for be because they didn’t have to have a down payment and actually we’ve got some solutions with a smart byproduct with a shared depreciation, which actually has the borrower paying less money out of pocket to close and having a lower payment than they would had they gone a traditional down payment assistance.
[David] Oh really?
[Jeff] Yes. What we’re doing, the Redco, the investor, they actually get a share of the appreciation on the property by subsidizing the interest rate. So it gets the borrower qualified, but then they have to share.
[David] That’s such a brilliant move. That is, did you come up with this?
[Jeff]We did.
[David] And how did you find the investor to work with you on that?
[Jeff] We’ve been working with Redco prior to that, and we’ve actually helped Redco. With their investors that, utilize the, acquire the opportunities for the shared DEP appreciation. But one thing that we found on this shared depreciation, unless the appreciation exceeds 5% per year, the consumer is still better off cash flow wise, even at the end of five years by taking advantage of this and part of it is a function of how the securities are trading right now. I think everybody’s a little nervous that interest rates or the investors that buy loans are nervous that interest rates will drop. So they’re really don’t pay much of a premium and generally most lenders have at least a three point margin to, to close a loan, so there’s really not much of a premium price so that costs the borrower a whole lot more in rate, and we’re actually able to buy that down three points and put it into the shared depreciation.
[David] Wow, that’s and you’re making this available to those that are brokering loans to you as well as those that are corresponding with you. Am I correct?
[Jeff] Right now? Yes. Yes we are. Okay, good.
[David] Having the two channels, I wanted to be sure that was the case. Now, are there any DTI debt to income restrictions on this program?
[Jeff] We wanna make sure that borrower sticks. We’re trying to keep it at about 50%. We’ll make some exceptions and frankly the underwriting engines are pretty, they’re fairly picky on that. They don’t, once it gets over 50%, you’ve gotta have some other things going for that file to make it work.
[David] What are some of the other products you’re working with, like manufactured housing, I think in our conversation is you’re doing a lot in that particular area.
[Jeff] I wouldn’t say a lot, but we make that available on our, on all of our products.
[David] Yeah how does the shared appreciation, that really appeals to me, especially when you’re looking at being able to get a lower payment and you’re giving them something in the appreciation of it. But what a great way to get people into homes. How long does someone have to be in a shared appreciation program before they can refinance out?
[Jeff] They can refinance out whenever they wish. Okay. The second mortgage requires that they share the equity after five years, and that loan won’t be released until that five years is up. But they can, we would subordinate the first mortgage that wouldn’t be a problem.
[David] We should probably get into how that the the shared appreciation program works. It’s a second mortgage program. And so you have your first mortgage and the first mortgage, presumably we would go through you on that. So that’s a pretty standard program, but the shared appreciation comes as a result of the second mortgage. Get into that a little bit more, in a little more detail.
[Jeff] Yeah. The second mortgage piece is what dictates the terms on the shared appreciation. So if they close on that combined loan they have to share that appreciation later on. But I think the interesting part about it is just analyzing the cash flow. We’ve got a calculator we have on our website that somebody can look and see, okay, based off of this appreciation in rents or this appreciation in the value of a home, here’s where I’m gonna end up and virtually every time, unless you have inflation or appreciation exceeding 5%, they’re way better off with the shared appreciation.
[David] Oh, absolutely. Especially in this market where it’s not exactly appreciating, most areas are not appreciating right now. That’s right. Where do you see some of the market going? What are some of the new trends? We get into your crystal ball a little bit because you’ve been very successful in guessing where the markets are going and made some wise moves in the past.
[Jeff] One thing I’m seeing in the secondary market solution is the Ginnie Mae TBA market is really, doesn’t have a whole lot of opportunity. You’re seeing just the VA loans in there, right? So spec pools is where it seems to be the big beneficial solution. As a matter of fact, over 65% of our loans go into specified pools, either low balance loans, the down payment assistance loans, rural housing loans, they, they’ve got some feature about them that they won’t prepay as fast as just the regular FHA solution and that’s been a nice opportunity for us. We get a little better price, a little better execution on those loans as, as we securitize them.
[David] Yeah. Jeff, I just compliment you in how you have been able to continually morph and shift with market conditions. You are, you’ve got a great company. How could people learn more about your company By going to your website assuming Click and close?
[Jeff] Yes. Yes. That’s it. And, just do business with us.
[David] Yeah. Start out. The nice thing is you can do business on both a broker basis and a correspondent basis. Any, what is the minimum requirements? I’m assuming a broker, as long as they’re in business and good standing, there’s no real requirements other than just you’ll pick other than is there a net worth requirements for a broker?
[Jeff] I don’t think we have any for the broker.
[David] Yeah, I did think, but for a correspondent, I’m certain you must have some requirements.
[Jeff] You’ve got the minimum FHA requirements that are out there and we’re primarily a government lending shop. We hope to make a change, sometime late this year, early next year by virtue of some technology that we’re gonna roll out our new point of sale. We think that’s gonna be very valuable. That would make us competitive on those products. Right now UWM and Rocket make it so easy for their brokers to do business. We wanna be able to compete with that.
[David] Yeah. It’s important that you be able to do it’s in order to stay in the game, but I’m confident if anyone will, you’ll figure out a way to do it. That’s right. Yeah. Jeff, thanks so much for taking time outta your busy day to join us today. And listeners, I just wanna encourage you to get to know Jeff, take a look at his LinkedIn profile. We’ll put that in the show notes here, and also a link to Click n’ Close. I love the Smart Buyer Program, the smart buy program, as well as the smart shared appreciation program. These are real niches listeners you could use for your business. Jeff, thanks for being with us.
[Jeff] Thank you David. It’s my pleasure.
[David] You bet.
Important links:
About the guests:
Jeff is Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President of Click n’ Close, formerly known as Mid America Mortgage. Having been in mortgage banking since 1981, Bode founded and ran the original iteration of Mid America Mortgage in 1989, during which time he also became the first lender to develop an interface inside Calyx Point. In 2003, Bode sold Mid America to Aegis Mortgage and focused on developing Mortgage Machine, a proprietary loan origination system (LOS) and creating a tax lien business, which originated the highest amount of loans of all single-family tax lien companies in Texas in the first two years. He re-entered the mortgage market in 2007, and in 2010, he purchased Schmidt Mortgage Company and reorganized its operations to incorporate the loan production of another mortgage operating unit he managed prior to the acquisition, resulting in the re-emergence of Mid America Mortgage in December 2011. Mid America Mortgage was the first independent mortgage lender in the nation to implement electronic mortgage closings (eClosings) and electronic promissory notes (eNotes) throughout its retail, wholesale and correspondent divisions. In 2022, Mid America Mortgage sold the majority of its retail lending division and rebranded to Click n’ Close.
Under Bode’s leadership, Click n’ Close has become a pioneer in the digital mortgage space. Click n’ Close is a direct-to-consumer, ultra-secure digital mortgage platform to get home buyers from application to closing within two weeks. With just a few clicks at closing, Click n’ Close puts keys in the home buyer’s hand in 15 minutes or less.