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When the First Responders Leave: Who Helps Put Your Home Back Together?

A Between Two Doors conversation with Christina Hester and Zach of CSI Clean Scene Investigators There are some phone calls you never expect to make. A family member has passed away inside a home. Someone has been injured. There has been a crime, an accident, an unattended death, a serious hoarding situation, or another event that has left a property unsafe or contaminated. The police arrive. Paramedics come. Perhaps the medical examiner becomes involved. Eventually, everyone leaves. And then you look around and realize: The house is still there. The scene is still there. And someone has to deal with it. That was the question I wanted to explore when Christina Hester and Zach from  CSI Clean Scene Investigators joined me on  Between Two Doors . What I learned was that crime-scene and biohazard remediation is about much more than cleaning. It is about helping people begin putting the pieces back together. “The Police Don't Clean This Up?” That was probably one of the biggest su...
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FSBO Selling Your Home Yourself? Here’s a Free AI Tool That Can Help You Sell Smarter

By Nate Carver | ProLending Mortgage | NMLS #2004738 Selling your home yourself can be appealing. You know your property better than anyone. You may already have an idea of what you want for it. And by selling  For Sale By Owner (FSBO) , you may be looking for greater control over the process and potentially reducing some of the costs associated with selling a home. But there's another side to selling a home yourself. You become the marketing department, lead coordinator, appointment scheduler and first point of contact for every potential buyer. Your phone might ring while you're at work. A buyer could find your property online at 11:00 at night. Someone might drive past your FSBO sign while you're having dinner with your family. And every missed call could potentially be a missed buyer. That's why I've partnered with  JennyJenny.ai  to provide homeowners selling their properties themselves with an AI-powered FSBO assistant. And when you access it through my FSBO P...
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Location: McKinney, TX, USA
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A Huge VA Loan Guideline Change Could Help More Veterans Qualify for a Home

Sometimes a few words buried deep inside a lending guideline can make a tremendous difference for a Veteran trying to buy a home. That just happened. Effective August 25, 2026, VA revised  VA Pamphlet 26-7, Chapter 4, Topic 7 , changing the way certain  non-medical collection accounts  are calculated when qualifying for a VA home loan. And this is a big win for Veterans. What Changed? When a Veteran has a non-medical collection account without an established payment arrangement, VA requires lenders to account for that collection when calculating debt-to-income ratio and residual income. Previously, the guideline instructed lenders to calculate a monthly payment using: 5% of the outstanding collection balance The revised guideline now calls for: 5% of the outstanding collection balance ÷ 12 months VA's revision became effective August 25, 2026. That little “divided by 12” can make an enormous difference. Consider a Veteran with  $12,000 in non-medical collections ...
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Location: Texas, USA
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Beyond Rental Houses: How Investors Can Start Building Wealth Through Commercial Real Estate

What if your next real estate investment wasn't another rental house? What if it was a retail center, office building, commercial lot—or even a building where your own business occupies one suite while other tenants help pay the mortgage? Commercial real estate can open an entirely different world for investors. But it also requires a different way of thinking. On this episode of  Between Two Doors , I sat down with Texas commercial real estate professional  Bruce Norwood  to talk about what investors should know before making the jump into commercial real estate. Bruce entered commercial real estate in 2019 after a long career in corporate sales, merchandising and account management with companies including Nabisco and Coca-Cola. His interest in commercial real estate developed while working as a regional manager and interacting with commercial brokers around the country. Today, Bruce has been involved in more than  $220 million in real estate transactions . And one...
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Location: McKinney, TX, USA
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Veterans: Your Certificate of Eligibility May Tell Us More Than You Think

If you're a Veteran thinking about buying a home, you may have heard someone mention your  Certificate of Eligibility , commonly called a  COE . But what exactly is it? And why does it matter? As a fellow Veteran and VA Loan Specialist, the COE is one of the first things I want to review when helping another Veteran explore buying or refinancing a home. That's because your COE can tell us quite a bit about the VA Home Loan Benefit you've earned. What Is a VA Certificate of Eligibility? Your COE helps establish to a VA-approved lender that you meet the applicable military-service requirements for the VA Home Loan Benefit. But that's not the only useful information it contains. Depending on your circumstances, the COE can help us understand: Your VA home-loan eligibility Your available entitlement Previous entitlement that may already be in use Your VA funding-fee exemption status And, in certain cases, your monthly service-connected disability compensation That last one ...
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Location: Pensacola, FL, USA
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Why Boring Bookkeeping May Be One of the Best Things You Can Do for Your Business — and Your Next Mortgage

If you own a business, here's a question that may make you a little uncomfortable: Do you really know what your numbers are telling you? Not how much money is sitting in your checking account today. Not how much revenue you brought in last month. Do you know what your business is actually earning, where the money is going, what expenses are quietly eating into your profits—and what those numbers might look like to a mortgage lender? On this episode of  Between Two Doors , I sat down with  Kasi Taylor, founder of Boring Bookkeeping , to talk about something that may not sound exciting but can have an enormous impact on entrepreneurs, Realtors and self-employed homebuyers: Clean, organized books. And as Kasi likes to say, bookkeeping really should be boring. “If it fills you with anxiety, or there's something exciting happening in your books, it means something's not aligning.” That's a pretty good definition of successful bookkeeping. From Teacher to Entrepreneur to “The...
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Location: Sherman, TX, USA
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Meet “The Riding Realtor”: Randy Akins on Harleys, Real Estate, and Serving Wise County, Texas

A motorcycle can tell you a lot about a person. For some people, it represents speed. For others, it represents adventure. For  Randy Akins , better known as  The Riding Realtor , it represents freedom, reflection, and a chance to slow down enough to appreciate the road. Randy does not simply pose beside his motorcycle for marketing photos. He incorporates riding into his real estate business. He rides to closings, carries his drone in his saddlebags, and uses the motorcycle to reach properties throughout the country roads of North Texas. For him, riding also provides time to clear his head, pray, reflect, and take in the scenery.  That combination of motorcycles and real estate made Randy a natural guest for the  Between Two Doors  podcast. But as our conversation unfolded, I discovered that Randy’s story is about much more than Harleys and houses. It is a story about military service, keeping your word, helping families, embracing country living, and finding w...
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Location: Wise County, TX, USA
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