The REA Story

Prior to 2000, Kevin Freels, the developer of REA was a web developer for a local lender. He had been in that position with that company for three years, but as web services became more automated and many inexpensive tools became available, his services were no longer necessary. In January, 2000 he was released from employment due to “cutbacks in the IT departments”. This was nothing new. The entire tech industry was going through a bust and there were three times as many tech people as there were jobs.

His step-mother had been the senior vice-president of that company and had previously left to open her own business as a broker-owner. After many months she convinced him that he should come to work for her. She would train him as an originator and he would manager her small network in his spare time.

Soon he was originating loans. He enjoyed structuring the loans and even working with his clients, but one thing he could not stand was “prospecting”. His company provided him with 3 telemarketed leads per day, but even those he did not like to call since many weren’t really interested in loans, but were harassed for their information by the telemarketer. He didn’t like meeting groups of strangers or walking into realtor offices. In short, he was a tech person in a field that required a people-person to succeed.

He wasn’t ready to give up though. he figured that if he could find a way to get customers to call me, instead of me calling them, he would have something.

Well, that turned out to be easier said than done and by December of 2002, he was about to throw in the towel. He was surviving, but not really getting ahead. He had left his step-mother’s company to work on his own from home for Carteret Mortgage Corp. He was in the middle of the greatest refi boom in history and figured it was just a matter of time before rates went up and he would be broke.

Then one day he was browsing online and he saw this neat little concept. Business card CDs. As a tech person, he really liked that idea, but then what would you put on it? He toyed around with several ideas and finally settled on a collection of mortgage tools and tips that a customer could use.

The first run of these was really awkward. He simply put the stuff together and the user had to browse the CD and click on each item they wanted. As he toyed with it though, he thought of building what was essentially a website on a disk. By April, 2003 the Real Estate Assistant was born.

He started by simply burning a few CDs and putting up flyers in laundrymats and grocery store bulletin boards. (He still does this!) Shortly thereafter he started getting just a few calls here and there. What he found interesting was that even several months later, he would get calls from people who had his software! There were even people who would call to ask questions that had received their software from a friend or family member (since it is designed to be copied and people are allowed to do so). It wasn’t making him rich, but it was definitely making enough of a difference for me to stay in the business.

By October 2003, people in his company had started to notice what he was doing. A few LOs had even spoken with customers and found out that they had received the software from him and had given them a copy. He started getting occasional emails from people asking him to make them a copy.

Rather than go through all of the trouble of building a website, he decided to simply list it on ebay. He really didn’t plan to go into the software business. The software sold rather well and he found himself spending a good deal of time answering the same questions over and over again. Also, each time he sold something on ebay, they took out additional fees. One of the most common questions was “why don’t you have a website” which was a perfectly decent question considering that he was selling a product that was written in HTML, the programming language for websites.

So in December, he decided that he needed to put up a website. Unfortunately, he was in the process of relocating his home and office to Princeton, IN from Evansville, IN. He had a house he needed to sell and the house he purchased needed many repairs. His solution was to take a website he had designed for someone else several years ago and modify it quickly to fit his needs. He put the website up in January, the same month he moved, and MortgageSalesTools.com was born.

In March of this year he decided to revise the pricing, the website, and the software. He put up a message board for purchasers to share ideas on the use of the software.

He soon found it too difficult to manage the software business and work his full time job in the mortgage business as well and on August 11, 2005, sold to Melissa and Shane Smith. Shane is a mortgage broker and an REA customer while his wife Melissa runs the MortgageSalesTools.com business.

MortgageSalesTools.com is now located in Nashville, TN.