What's New With MoXi Going Into 2023?

Video Transcript - (Speakers: Alex Koper & Anthony Young)

Anthony: It is Anthony Young over here at MOXI and I'm taking a very special opportunity to talk with our CEO, Alex Koper, about some common questions that I'm getting from my clients concerning buying real estate in Mexico. Very happy to have Alex set some time aside today to answer some of those things.

Alex: Well, awesome. I'm really excited to be here. Thanks so much for setting this up, Anthony. This is going to be fun. I don't often get to hear every day what are common questions that clients and potential clients have about what we do, so pretty excited to hear about those.

Anthony: As far as the upcoming year ahead, what's in store for MOXI? Any special things scheduled or what are you seeing out there in the landscape?

Alex: Yeah, great question. Well, so for the year ahead at MOXI, I think we're focused on continuing to serve more and more customers. I think a lot of people don't necessarily know we exist, and I think as soon as they find out, they really see the value and we are excited about welcoming new people into the MOXI family, new customers into the MOXI family. And I think there are two primary areas where I'm excited about the continuity or continuing to see that growth. One is the home buyer. We talked about that mindset shift and people really wanting to make Mexico a second home, or a place for their rental investment holdings.

The other is in existing owners. We talked much earlier in this conversation about some of those constitutional amendments that happened 30, 40, and 50 years ago, and Americans, US citizens have been buying property in Mexico all that time, and for a majority of that time, didn't really have access to reasonable financing. And so they paid cash, but they hold these properties right now and essentially assume that there's no liquidity they can get out of them. And in these interesting market economic conditions that we're in today, I think a lot of people value having liquidity out of an asset that they previously thought was illiquid. I'm excited about continuing to get out there and talk to folks, current US citizen owners of property in Mexico know that we have a refi and cash-out refi product.

On the refi or the non-cash out refi side, I would say there are folks that have purchased new construction property from a developer maybe in the last few years. Again, didn't know MOXI existed, or maybe we didn't exist back then and they have financing in place, but it has a big balloon payment. And imagine your exciting dream home or second home or investment property that you bought in Mexico and you have this huge balloon payment hanging over your head. And so it's exciting to be able to offer long-term, 25-year financing to those kinds of customers, pay off the developer lien, take out a mortgage that's fully amortized, a non-exotic mortgage that's fully amortized over 25 years, with the potential to deduct the interest in the US. I think that's pretty exciting.

From an overall reach perspective, we've almost two and a half times our volume in 2022, than we did in 2021, which is cool, so we continue to have that upward trajectory and momentum on our growth rate, which is really cool, so I'm excited to continue that and also excited about the work that we've done historically and we'll continue to do in bringing automation and digitization to our process. As we talked about a little bit earlier, got to sign all your documents with blue, ballpoint pen, and that's a requirement and it is and some of those customs are things I hold a lot of regard for and deeply respect.

But I also think there's an opportunity for US citizen clients who are purchasing or refinancing property in Mexico, to do so with a much easier time, easier cycle time, in a much more digital manner. And so I'm excited about the enhancements we've made and continue to make as far as engaging new customers and helping customers go throughout the loan cycle and/or legal property transfer process, in a digital manner, and to really improve the security of those transactions. You're not mailing paper documents back and forth, you're not even emailing them necessarily, you're uploading them securely. I think that's another area where I'm really excited about what we're going to do next year.

Anthony: Thank you. I would certainly think with, you were talking about utilizing equity in a home that some of these homes that have been owned for years and years and years, those people would want to capitalize on that and perhaps even reinvest in another home or more than one or two, why not grab another one, market's hot.

Alex: Absolutely. Yeah, I think those are some common... You would know better because you talked to so many more of our customers than I get to. But yeah, I think absolutely maybe they want to make some improvements to the home. Maybe they just want some liquidity out and want to park it and have it safely for a rainy day. Maybe they want to pick up another unit in their development. You hear it all the time. People that move to Mexico part-time, all of a sudden have all of these new friends that want to join them at their property or maybe their family and so they want to buy another unit, another house or the rental returns are really, really attractive.

We continue to see rental rates and rental occupancy climb, it's a pretty magical trajectory as far as the average daily rate and the occupancy across many of the markets we lend in. And so those returns are exciting and folks want to take liquidity out of an asset they already have and buy another one, so we have the opportunity to serve them on both of those, to do the cash-out refinance of the existing property as well as the purchase of the new one. Yeah, really cool. Good points.