Jeff Cruz Team at Guild Mortgage

09/05/2026

Where do divorce settlements go wrong?

Not in the courtroom—
In the blind spots.

Real property decisions are often made based on assumptions:

“They’ll refinance later”
“The income will qualify”
“The structure works”

But without validating those assumptions against lending reality, many agreements become unworkable after they’re signed.

This creates unnecessary risk—for both the client and the professionals involved.

A CDLP® brings financial clarity into the process before decisions are finalized—so the outcome is not just agreed upon, but executable.

If you’re advising clients on real estate in divorce, this is a critical perspective: https://bit.ly/41mKzaj

09/01/2026

A client tells you she just needs to keep the house. It usually arrives before the intake is even finished, and it sounds like a clear instruction rather than a question.

The Divorce Lending Association's September briefing argues that it is the wrong question, and I think the argument is right.

Not because keeping the home is a bad outcome. Because "how do I keep the house" has a binary answer, and a yes gets recorded as a win. The briefing's point is that yes is not one answer. It is at least three:

Yes, you qualify. That is not the same as yes, you can carry it. Yes, you can keep it. Here is what keeping it costs. Yes, and here is what the same dollars would have done instead.

In my experience only the first one gets tested before signing. The other two show up in year two.

The better question the piece proposes is forward-facing: how does this house fit into the life I am about to live? That one does not resolve to a yes or a no. It resolves to a design, and it opens four inquiries that determine whether a settlement holds.

Worth reading if you have housing questions open on a current file. It also covers how to raise the reframe in the room without it sounding like a refusal.

https://divorcebriefings.com/4yedAmL

If you have a file where the housing question is still open, I would rather look at it now than after the decree is entered.

08/27/2026

You read that right. You put 1% down, and we'll cover the other 2%. Start building your equity today with Guild.

08/25/2026

If you've hesitated to bring a CDLP® into a case because you weren't sure it was big enough to warrant it, this is for you.

There is no minimum. A case can be one question about whether your client can qualify on their own income. It can also be months of analysis ending in testimony. Same credential, same standard of care, entirely different work.

You are not expected to scope the engagement before you refer. Scoping it is what I do first.

What I'd rather avoid is the version where the question goes unasked because the case didn't seem to justify a call.

08/21/2026

5.0 star review received on Experience.com for Jeffrey Cruz by Jerome G - Chantel Fritz was awesome!!!!!

Click to see all 620 reviews of Guild Mortgage - Jeffrey Cruz, Branch Manager | NMLS # 225971

08/20/2026

Guild's servicing team monitors your existing customers and notifies them on your behalf of any refinancing opportunities, so you can keep the ball rolling with your relationships. Your customers come back to you—not to a call center for you to lose business.

08/18/2026

An engagement with me can take twenty minutes. It can also run for months and end with expert testimony.

Same credential. Same standard of care. Entirely different work.

The work is built in layers: from a few answers early, before assumptions harden, all the way to testimony on the stand. Which layer a case calls for is set by the circumstances of the divorce, not by the credential.

What damages clients isn't starting small. It's the mismatch: a quick answer standing in where the case needed full mortgage capacity analysis, or a trial fought over housing feasibility with no qualified expert in the record.

You don't have to figure out which layer your client's case needs before you call me. That's my job.

Send me the case at whatever layer it's in.

Read the full article: https://divorcebriefings.com/Layers

08/13/2026

It's possible to purchase a multi-unit property with a minimum of 5 percent down! This option could offer different financing terms, lower upfront costs, and even the opportunity to use projected rental income to increase buying capacity.

08/12/2026

5.0 star review received on Experience.com for Jeffrey Cruz by Martha V - It is always a pleasure to work with Jeff and Chantel. They make everything go smoothly. We asked to close sooner and they absolutely did!

Click to see all 618 reviews of Guild Mortgage - Jeffrey Cruz, Branch Manager | NMLS # 225971