Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over or 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now, welcome inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King :
Welcome back to the second in our special series of ICE House podcasts, by connecting people with opportunity, our companion conversations with the featured cast of ICE's new, Make The Connection global marketing campaign. And let's ponder for a minute, the America Dream, perhaps the greatest opportunity for which this magnificent expanse between the Atlantic and Pacific is known.
Josh King :
In the 20th century and now well into the 21st, the American Dream has often been conflated with owning your own home. Now, there's a lot that goes into a definition of the pursuit of happiness: quality education, good health, the freedoms enshrined in our constitution. That's all part of it, but a house allows you to invest in something tangible, bricks and mortar, and over time, a source of equity and a measure of financial security. It's also the greatest nerve-wracking, anxiety-creating financial commitment a family or individual is going to make in their lifetime.
Josh King :
If you've ever taken out a mortgage, you know what I'm talking about. You're sitting in that closing room of your lender, a pen and a massive pile of paper documents in front of you, and 30 years of obligation, greeting you as you exit that antiseptic space, along with a sore wrist from affixing your signature on all that paper. In the midst of all those forms you've signed, assorted costs and fees that add substantially to the final tab for putting the keys to the front door in your pocket. And yet from that purely financial perspective, you've now given yourself a level of protection from near-term volatility and some important ballast for your retirement. And even on a deeper level, homes are more than just an asset or an investment. They're also the physical representation of what connects us to our families, the pivotal and private space where we do most of our living, loving and learning.
Josh King :
During COVID, many of us became intimately reacquainted with our abodes, spending time renovating, reworking, and redecorating while still, others looked outside or online and explored new horizons and places to call home. In September 2020 in an article in Fortune magazine by Sean Talley, Sean chronicled how ICE's Founder, Chair, and CEO, Jeff Sprecher, and its President, Ben Jackson, were leading the company toward a new horizon, modernizing the way we get our mortgages and hence realized at least part of that American Dream. In effect, Sean wrote, and I'm going to quote here, "ICE is making a gigantic wager that first, Americans will soon be getting most of their home loans online in one of the biggest fintech upheavals ever. And second, that ICE will be both the first mover and the leading provider."
Josh King :
That's from Sean's piece. It's written on the back of ICE's $11 billion acquisition of Ellie Mae, a small, but sprinting software provider that automated the origination process for banks and brokers. ICE entered the mortgage industry with a bank. In 2016, it acquired a majority position in MERSCORP, the mortgage industry's national electronic loan registry. In 2019, it added Simplifile, the largest e-recording network to that portfolio. And then, in 2020, Ellie Mae. The nation's leading origination software served as the pivotal final piece to help electronify the end-to-end mortgage process. The prize, ultimately, it's going to be reducing that mass of pile of paper and reducing the excess cost between finding that home on Zillow or realtor.com and putting the front door key in your pocket.
Josh King :
The three businesses now under the ICE fold, connect one's disparate parts of the manual time-intensive mortgage process into an elegant solution that now touches almost every mortgage in the US. The thesis behind ICE's foray and mortgages is a tenant that runs through ICE's DNA. Take an analog, an opaque process, make it transparent and digital. ICE Mortgage Technology takes that ethos and brings it into one of the largest and most personal transactions that a family or an individual is going to make. Making the process of buying a home easier and more digital, not only benefits the businesses that originate these loans, but shaves time and costs off for the purchaser, making that process that much smoother, simpler, less expensive.
Josh King :
This past weekend, ICE held its first in-person experience gathering in Las Vegas since before the pandemic. It's the mortgage industry's biggest conference. It used to be held under the Ellie Mae banner. And during his keynote, Joe Tyrrell, ICE Mortgage Technology's President, he shared data points that underscored what that road to home ownership looks like for so many Americans. There are more than 44 million renters in the US and 72% of them, according to a Pew survey, have home ownership as their primary goal.
Josh King :
As part of our behind-the-scenes series of ICE's Make the Connection campaign, we wanted to represent the very human process of finding and buying a home. So on a frigid January day in Montclair, New Jersey, we spent time with Egypt Sherrod, the award-winning realtor and CEO of the Egypt Sherrod Real Estate Group. Egypt's best known for her HGTV series, Flipping Virgins, but now, during her distinguished career in front of the camera, she's created hundreds of hours of programming about making the American Dream possible. Finding one concise message to bring her work to life was for us a pretty challenging task. Her career spans the gamut from radio music director to realtor, to the stars, to the star of her own television shows.
Josh King :
In the ICE ad, even on that freezing day in Montclair, Egypt radiated warmth, greeting an architect and a contractor on the lawn of a suburban home, just like she does in her home base in Atlanta, which is also the home of ICE's headquarters. Egypt's called Atlanta her home for almost a decade. Georgia's capital remains the economic and cultural heart of the Southeast US, but it's also under going tremendous change as newcomers move down to the ATL in search of its welcoming business climate, its burgeoning arts and entertainment scene, which you see as a backdrop for so many TV and film productions. Egypt's line in the campaign captures the idea that opportunity is making the dream of home ownership a reality, and her past and career model, the spirit of those words.
Josh King :
From the first house that she transformed in Newark to the ones that she works on with her husband today on HGTV's new show, Married to Real Estate, the dream of home ownership has never felt more like reality. Our behind-the-scenes conversation with Egypt Sherrod is coming up right after you hear once again, ICE's Make the Connection ad featuring Zak Brown, who you heard in conversation with us last week and now Egypt and others, who you'll hear in the weeks to come. Take a listen.
Speaker 3:
Connecting the opportunity is just part of the hustle.
Speaker 4:
Opportunity is using data to create a competitive advantage.
Speaker 5:
It's raising capital to help companies change the world.
Speaker 6:
It's making complicated financial concepts seem simple.
Egypt Sherrod:
Opportunity is making the dream of home ownership a reality.
Speaker 8:
Writing new rules and redefining the game.
Speaker 9:
And driving the world forward to a greener energy future.
Speaker 10:
Opportunity is setting a goal.
Speaker 11:
And charting a course to get there.
Speaker 12:
Sometimes the only thing standing between you and opportunity is someone who can made the connection.
Speaker 13:
At ICE, we connect people to opportunity.
Josh King :
So let me set the scene for you. There's clumps of snow and ice all over the lawns and sidewalks of Montclair, New Jersey, the ICE ad crew, the gaffers, camera operators, lighting techs, and sound engineers are hurtling for warmth around Director, Ahn Vu as she watches Egypt and the extras in the scene nail their blocking in lines under overcast skies. Meanwhile, I'm in a van along with Stephanie Dobbs Brown and our colleagues from Prophecy by Prosek, the agency we're working with to craft the campaign. When Ahn says cut for the last time, Egypt and I walk up the Montclair street to another camera setup, where we sit down on stools in the open air to talk about the larger meaning of opportunity is making the dream of home ownership a reality. Here's my conversation with Egypt Sherrod.
Josh King :
You were so composed during hours of standing outside in subfreezing temperature, how did it feel today in Montclair, New Jersey?
Egypt Sherrod:
You know, what's so funny, you thought I was composed and I was actually frozen. I love what I do. And I recognized that having these types of opportunities are really blessings. And so even on the rough days, even when you have to stand outside, you got to always think, it could be worse. I could be a Victoria's Secret bikini model in 15 degree weather. Instead, at least I get to wear a coat.
Josh King :
Let's focus on the ad that we just did and this key line that you had in the ad, opportunity is making the dream of home ownership possible. I mean, this almost defines your entire career.
Egypt Sherrod:
It really does.
Josh King :
What does that line mean to you?
Egypt Sherrod:
It really does. I've watched so many families go from, a level of insecurity, wanting, having the dream of home ownership, but being the first in their family to ever even explore the possibility of it. And then I watch those same people get to the closing table and just ball crying because they realize they accomplished something. And they had the opportunity. We all have that same opportunity to recognize the dream of home ownership. I love what I do. I love educating people about wealth and about real estate. And the truth is, much of our wealth is built through real estate. It is the foundation of wealth. And so in and of that is opportunity.
Josh King :
I mean, you've often described yourself using multi hyphenates that include entrepreneur, property expert, business owner, mom, television and radio personality, best selling author. How do you introduce yourself to other people?
Egypt Sherrod:
I'm E. And you said multi hyphenates. I think that's so funny. I never thought about it, but I guess I truly am. Like, even my last name is multi-hyphenated. You just don't know the other part.
Josh King :
You spent a lot of your life in career in the New York area before moving to Atlanta. How does it feel to be back?
Egypt Sherrod:
This is a little bit surreal to be back. My family lives in South Jersey. I met my husband in New York. I worked on 34th and Park for over 13 years. And so my family and I moved to Georgia about a decade ago to create this new phase of our life. But to come back, I'm starting to have flashbacks of very fun years and some things that if anyone ever knew, I might have to bribe you not to tell publicly, but it feels good. It still feels like home to me. Yeah.
Josh King :
Your family's no stranger to real estate, Egypt. You've got several brokers in your ranks and even convinced your husband to get his license. What was your family growing up like? And what do they do for a living?
Egypt Sherrod:
My family is amazing. We're very close-knit. In my family, we range from the medical field, whereas my brothers are both pharmacists, my sister is a nurse to real estate agents, real estate brokers. My dad is a commercial real estate agent. He manages shopping malls and my uncles, almost all of them are in residential real estate. And so, for us, Thanksgiving dinners were like pass the house on Brown Street. I mean, pass the turkey. It's kind of integrated and embedded in the core of who I am, but we're a family, just like any other.
Josh King :
You bought your first piece of property, if I'm right, in Newark, New Jersey. Why was owning property so important to you at that time of your life?
Egypt Sherrod:
I started to recognize that everything I've been told as I was growing up was actually true. You know, it's like you grow up in real estate and everybody preaching to you, what you should do with your money. And naturally as a kid, you rebel and you go the completely opposite direction. So as I started to really earn money and invest, I realized everything they told me was right. And so after I flipped my first house in Newark, New Jersey, I was hooked. I definitely was.
Josh King :
Who did you look to for advice when you were doing that first renovating and flipping? I mean, you're just a kid basically buying your first property. How did you figure out what to do?
Egypt Sherrod:
I think when we seek, we shall find. And the minute I kind of got out there and started asking questions and educated myself, I found a mentor who was also doing the same thing. His name was [Ulisis 00:13:38]. I wish I could find him now, but he taught me the ropes as far as real estate investing. But then I turned back to my uncles, Uncle Terry. He owned his own real estate brokerage in Philadelphia at the time. He coached me through the rest of it and he's the one who advised me that, "Maybe you should get licensed because you have such a love for it. I can see it glowing in you. I think you'd enjoy also being a real estate agent." He was right.
Josh King :
In 2002, you became a licensed real estate agent and began selling houses for some of the biggest celebrities. What made you get involved in real estate from a professional standpoint, at that point?
Egypt Sherrod:
I was already a personality in New York City for many years, which was fantastic. It was fun. You meet people, you walk the red carpets, but at the end of the day, you're still an employee of someone else's. I was still helping to build these other companies. I had to start planning forward. And I suggested everybody looks at not just the now, but what does your now next 10 years look like? What is your next 20 years? What's the end game? Because whatever the end game is, you should start mapping out your life now. And so for me, I knew that I couldn't be in the nightclubs forever. Well, I guess I could, but I don't really want to be, but what was my next thing? And I really enjoyed educating people about real estate. And so that's why I started mapping out my life to move forward. I will never retire, ever. Why? Because when you love what you do, it doesn't feel like work.
Josh King :
I mean, you started out in radio, then you segued into real estate and then sort of back into entertainment with that HGTV show the Property Virgins. How did that opportunity come about?
Egypt Sherrod:
You know what's weird, is it really, the way it all sewed together, I could not have designed it at all. I was a radio personality, as I mentioned. When I got into real estate, I had the opportunity to go back to radio and I said, well, I'll do it just to build my business because now I have this huge platform where I can speak to a city about my real estate business. And I started to interweave and incorporate all the crazy things that would happen at some of my investment properties. I had a tenant who flushed her hair weave down a toilet and it backed up a waistline. It cost me $17,000. I thought it was skunks on the basement floor. I mean, so I would incorporate these stories on the radio.
Egypt Sherrod:
A casting director for HGTV called me live on the radio. Thank God opportunity really does knock more than once sometimes, because I hung up on him thinking it was a prank. And he called back and said, "No, don't hang up on me. This is the real deal. We want you for our show." So that was the start of a new career, television for me. Like I said, it was nothing I could have planned for myself.
Josh King :
And for you, opportunity has knocked a couple of times because you're also the star and executive producer of another HGTV show, Flipping Virgins. It's clear you're not afraid to get your hands dirty and work with the property owners, taking sledge hammers to walls, pulling out appliances among other jobs. Now this is not for the faint of heart. So other people who may look at any of the houses on this beautiful street and decide, well, I can do a lot of work on that, what should people really be mindful of?
Egypt Sherrod:
The ugliest house on the street is the one you should go for. I've walked up and down all of these streets now, as we've been filming here and I see gorgeous house, gorgeous house, and I've heard people say, that's mine. That's the one I would pick. And I'm looking down here on the corner at the one with the roof falling in that looks like it has some structural issues, that's the one I'd pick because that's the mother load.
Josh King :
The book that you published, Keep Calm... It's Just Real Estate: Your No-Stress Guide to Buying a Home, what's the most stressful part of buying a home?
Egypt Sherrod:
The most stressful part for some people is really getting over fear. It's this false evidence. It's an acronym for false evidence appearing real truly. And so many people just cannot get off the fence, but once they do, they realize it really, it's not scary at all, which is why I started my kids early. For instance, my nine year old just purchased, well, we purchased for her, but it is hers through our trust, her first investment property. And she's managing it and she's going through the entire process of watching it be built to furnishing it, to renting it out, to everything because what we want is for it to be second nature. Just like going outside to ride her bike, real estate, because it is important as far as building our wealth portfolio should be second nature to so many of us. For me, just educating my clients and getting them off the fence is the hardest part sometimes of real estate process.
Josh King :
The shopping, the physical stuff, the design, the construction is all one thing, but ICE is in the mortgage business through its ICE Mortgage Technology unit, all the paperwork, all the legal parts of it. Have you seen, since you first started 20 years ago, that part of the industry evolve from really analog and piles of paper to a much more automated process?
Egypt Sherrod:
I think technology is our friend in this business in so many ways through going through, applying for a mortgage, getting through underwriting. Could you imagine the times before email? How did you get all your documents to the processor? How did you respond to all of the requests in the mortgage process? For me, I started selling real estate before there were lock boxes, which meant we actually had to go to the offices and pick up the keys. So technology, again, is definitely our friend and has simplified and created so many opportunities in this business that we could have never thought possible. For me to just witness the evolution, it can get a little scary sometimes because it starts to move so fast, it really does, but I'm enjoying it because I feel like an OG.
Josh King :
And another big change, more recent than technology is a couple years ago COVID-19 came, the pandemic hit the real estate market-
Egypt Sherrod:
So true.
Josh King :
But it created a lot of opportunity in some ways. People looked at their lives in cities, decided to move out to the country. What's your take on what has happened to the real estate industry and the marketplace since the pandemic?
Egypt Sherrod:
Let's just be clear. The entire world has changed. The way we do business has changed. The way we interface has changed since COVID. What it has done is it has forced many of us to get super creative, it's forced many of us out of our shell and a lot of us back into our shells as well. When I look at how the landscape in my business has changed, let me just illustrate this for you. I would never miss a client closing, period. Whether it was mine or one of my agents, I'm at every closing. Why? Because that's my stamp. I was heartbroken to have to miss closings because lawyers, the attorney officers, weren't letting anyone except the signee in the office. And then they got creative. They started doing curbside signings. Then they started doing Zoom signings. So again, we find a way. No matter how the world changes, how the business evolves, we will always find a way.
Josh King :
We've been seeing some really interesting coverage of what defines the home buyer of today. And millennials who you'd think would've said, I don't really want to own more property, I want to have a light footprint, they're actually leading the way in some home buying. How's this generation different when it comes to buying and selling homes, do you think?
Egypt Sherrod:
Millennials have come up in an age where they have everything at their fingertips. Literally, it's an appendage. Our telephones are now attached to our bodies it feels like. And so they have this influx of information, data, knowledge, these communities online, where they can get answers instantly. Whereas it would take some of the previous generations, a lot of time to sort of evolve and gather information in a way that they felt confident to make a move. Millennials have no hesitation. They figure out the information they need and then they move on it. And they're also very well planned. Millennials have led the way probably for the last five to six years in real estate. They've got this alive. And so I lie and say, I'm a millennial. If anybody asks, I'm a millennial.
Josh King :
Well, I would say that congratulations are in order because whether you're a millennial or not, you are bound for a new project. You and your husband are having a new HGTV show, Married to Real Estate is going to follow you and him as you navigate your professional and private lives, as well as helping clients find homes. What spurred you to work on a TV project together?
Egypt Sherrod:
Again, it was fate because during the pandemic, being a real estate broker, who also has three children who had to be homeschooled, I'm in the house. My husband, who is a general contractor also is being called out a lot, but we got to find some sort of balance here where we can work, we can entertain, help people find humor in all of this, if there's any humor to be found. So what we did was take our lives on social media. Literally, I had done a social media post where my hair was standing up, I had a sweatshirt on, makeup was smeared on my face because I'm homeschooling and I got a phone here. And I just took that online to say, look, I'm human. We're all going through this together. Can we laugh through it a little bit?
Egypt Sherrod:
And it sort of spurred and went viral and turned into a show and HGTV picked it up, which was, "We love your lives. We love your family. We have a history with you, and this is really what you do. Let's bring it on TV." So we're grateful for the opportunity. We're welcoming everybody into our household. We're called the Jackson Five. I literally married Michael Jackson. His name is Michael Jackson. I am Mrs. Michael Jackson. It's us and our three kids and all of our family who are also incorporated into our business. My uncles are partners with my husband in his general contracting business, Jackson Draper. My cousins, my nieces, my uncles are also part of my real estate business. So it really is a family affair with us.
Egypt Sherrod:
And what's great is I'm also one of the executive producers of this show, so it was important to me to be authentic. So when people say, well, how are you doing it all, the television, the business? It's because the cameras are there, but we're not really, it's not like this. The cameras are there while we do what we do, which is why I think folks are going to love it because there's just so many moments of humor and insanity.
Josh King :
Over the holidays, I'm watching a new movie on Netflix, Aaron Sorkin, Being the Ricardos, the story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I mean, do you take any inspiration or ideas from the legacy of this husband and wife duo that really created television history together?
Egypt Sherrod:
It's so great that you mentioned that because I sat there and watched the whole thing. It's not easy to spend every waking hour with the person that you love, even when you have to talk business, because we literally have to say to each other sometimes, okay, babe, take off the marriage hat. Let's put on the business hat. So we can compartmentalize things in a way that everything still maintains a sense of balance. If I take anything away from it, just secretly to myself, I definitely can relate to Lucille Ball. I drive my husband mad. You could tell she drove Desi mad. Drive mad, but that's, what's kept us going for 18 years because otherwise it would be boring.
Josh King :
Your business and your life is based in Atlanta. Atlanta has become such a hot bed of television motion picture production. What are your thoughts on where that market in the Southeast generally is going versus where we are here in the Northeast.
Egypt Sherrod:
Atlanta is undoubtedly the big city of the south. When you think of film and television productions, naturally people think of LA. They think of New York. Atlanta was not one, just a few years ago, that would be high up on the list. But when we look at the amount of productions we've turned around and the interest, you look at the real estate market and that's a direct reflection of the influx of people who've moved from all over the country because they see an opportunity. We still have an opportunity to have a balanced life because it's a big city, but it's still suburbs all around within 30 minutes. So you can have a piece of property, you could have a few acres and a beautiful house that would cost you two and a half million dollars on the West Coast. If you came up north you could get a $600,000 house that would cost you $3 million up north. So you can still have your piece of the pie in Atlanta. I'm the ambassador, by the way.
Josh King :
If people still have to live in a place like Montclair, New Jersey, beautiful neighborhood, that it is, there's so much of a focus now on making houses more energy efficient using technology more. What's some of the advice that you give to new homeowners as they're doing a renovation about getting the most out of their own homes, technologically?
Egypt Sherrod:
Technological, you know, that's really good because that's not what people tend to think about. When they think about, okay, how do I update or upgrade my house? It's often interior design, all aesthetic or it's kitchens and baths, which are still super important if you're going to pour money into your house, but a more inexpensive, convenient and popular in demand way to go is to make your home a smart home. And there are ways to do it that don't bust the bank and you don't have to pull out drywall to do it either. You can change the locks to your door. There are a series of them that you can now operate, where you don't even have to carry keys around. So you can do that. You can change out all the lighting systems in your house as well. So if you're in Italy, you can turn on the lights in your living room. And now you've got another added level of security as well. There is so much technology surrounding making your house a smart house that I suggest people look into that. And especially with millennials, that's a popular one that adds value.
Josh King :
You are also a life coach and a motivational speaker. You have your own series, Ignite Joy with Egypt Sherrod, where you work with people to help them thrive. What led you to that additional line of work and how does it ignite joy?
Egypt Sherrod:
What led me to that line of work? It's very interesting because that was also birthed during the pandemic. I think it's been a reflective time for a lot of us. Pressure busts pipes, but it also reveals diamonds sometimes. And it was through me, working on myself to find more balance in my life. People have often come to me, again, to learn about real estate, real estate investing, teach me about flipping, teach me how to create multiple streams of income. And what I have learned is while that is important, what's most important is creating multiple streams of joy in your life because having one and not the other is going to put you in a very sad sack place. So if we can inject joy in everything that we do, then we can sustain.
Josh King :
As we wrap up here on this very cold street on Montclair, New Jersey, Egypt, in 2008, you founded the Egypt Cares Family Foundation, which enriches the family structure and focuses on providing resource to provide families with support on their journey to financial literacy, health awareness, education, better communication. Why is financial literacy central to the work that the foundation does?
Egypt Sherrod:
I think knowledge is power. Matter of fact, it's a fact, knowledge is power. The more we know, we do better, and we can create generational wealth. When we sit back and look at some communities who unfortunately, they don't come from trust funds. They don't have 401(k)s. They don't have Roth IRAs. They were never taught about how to make their money work for them. So when we can have those kind of conversations and teach our children from youth up, how to make every dollar that they earn work for them and generate more, then now, we are empowering people. So for me to have these free financial workshops and go to schools and teach kids how to do vision boards and financial planning, that is a joy of mine. So it was really a labor of love. And again, when you love what you do, it doesn't feel like work. So there you have it.
Josh King :
So Egypt, whether financial literacy or home ownership, you are bringing opportunity to so many people.
Egypt Sherrod:
There it is.
Josh King :
Thanks for sharing a little bit of that in this role that you have in the ICE ad.
Egypt Sherrod:
I appreciate you. Thank you so much for having me.
Josh King :
Great meeting you.
Egypt Sherrod:
You too.
Josh King :
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Egypt Sherrod, award-winning realtor and the star of the hit HGTV series, Flipping Virgins, Property Virgins, and now Married to Real Estate.
Josh King :
If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @ICEHousePodcast. Our show is produced by Stephane Capriles with production assistance from Pete Ash, Ken Abel, Ian Wolf. I'm Josh King, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates, make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
