Building Smarter, Paying Less: Smart Real Estate Tips for 2025 With Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. Of Arrivva

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Discover why luxury homes are being leased instead of sold, and the potential financial benefits behind this trend
• Explore the bureaucratic hurdles and lengthy approval processes that complicate real estate development
• Learn about the emerging trend of rural property development and affordable housing solutions
• Get expert strategies on reducing property taxes in 2025
• Understand how higher service fees in real estate may not necessarily lead to better service and why transparency and fair pricing are key
• Fred and René address the lack of transparency in agent fees and misaligned incentives, such as inspectors being pressured to avoid reporting issues

In this episode with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr.

Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. of Arrivva tackle the biggest questions and trends shaping the real estate market. Why are luxury homes being leased instead of sold? What challenges make building in prime locations so difficult? Could rural developments and cement-printed homes be the future of affordable living?

This episode is packed with insider real estate tips for 2025, from cutting property costs to exposing hidden fees and challenging rising commissions. Get ready for fresh strategies and bold insights that will transform how you navigate the market in the year ahead. 

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• René Pérez Jr. on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• Inspectify
• Farm Ownership Loans

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Welcome to the next episode of We Fixed Real Estate. Just back to one real estate thing that weird housing complex that no signs, they finally put up this stupid-looking banner. It looked like they printed out at Kinko’s, Stonecrest Estates. It says 19 luxury homes with rentable ADUs.

And then it on both sides of it, it says now leasing. It doesn’t say even say for sale. What are they going to lease out all the ADUs then try to sell the houses? Or are they only going to lease?

[00:00:32] Fred Glick: No, if they’re saying now leasing, they’re going to lease everything.

[00:00:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: They’re going to lease 19 luxury homes in 80 years.

[00:00:38] Fred Glick: Yeah. They get 20 grand a month or something. I mean, it’s probably so.

[00:00:41] René Pérez Jr.: What is it called?

[00:00:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Stone Market Estates Vista, and there’s like no website, nothing on there, just a phone number. Looks like some guy in a company in Rancho Santa Fe bought it, bought the land for 4 million, and now there’s 19 single-family homes, with just a sign saying, “Now leasing,” which is very surprising.

[00:01:03] Fred Glick: I mean, you’d probably go to the city and pull things, they had to get approvals, and all that kind of stuff, if you really wanted to find out. That’s just pathetic. Or maybe they’re not, maybe on purpose, they’re not trying to advertise it well because they want to quietly rent it to people who they know through a network of CEOs or something to keep the riffraff out.

[00:01:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I’m wondering if that’s why I brought it up and just to ask you guys because it almost seems like there’s an underhanded thing like it’s rather than flooding the market with 19.

[00:01:41] Fred Glick: Okay. We just started the podcast.

[00:01:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: 19, 3 million homes. Is it better to rent them for a year and then resell them as the leases run out?

[00:01:52] Fred Glick: Who knows what’s in their brain, but there’s a million things that could be happening. Maybe the guy’s a rich guy and he just wants to return on his money and does all this rental property and God forbid he has to sell his cells. That’s a good area. Good market. Maybe it’s a company that’s raised a ton of money, some kind of VCs.

“Hey, we’re going to buy this land. We’re going to build these houses. We’re going to rent them out. you know, so we know we’re going to get a return monthly on income. And here’s how, you know, the numbers work. And plus the value is just going to keep going up.” Because here’s what I’ve been saying all along. I say to everybody, the land is the land is the land.

So you’re never going to be able to build a large amount of houses in a piece of land that’s already developed where people want to be, you have to go farther out, and pretty much going farther out, is longer commutes. There’s nothing there. They have to develop things. It’s in the desert. It’s in a mountain. It’s in a, you know, just places that people don’t want to be because basically all the land around San Francisco and Los Angeles, it’s done. You know, there’s no massive parcels. I mean, that’s why Toll Brothers and all those guys are way up at the amusement park in, I forget what town it is, but they’re far away.

[00:03:13] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Tracy?

[00:03:15] Fred Glick: No, no, no.

[00:03:16] René Pérez Jr.: Vallejo.

[00:03:19] Fred Glick: Yeah. Well, not Vallejo. I’m talking about in SoCal.

[00:03:24] René Pérez Jr.: Oh, in SoCal.

[00:03:25] Fred Glick: Yeah. And when you go up the five. I can’t remember the name of the town up there, but…

[00:03:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Santa Clarita.

[00:03:33] Fred Glick: Santa Clarita. Thank you. And this is like,

[00:03:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Did you ever see the Santa Clarita Diet with…

[00:03:37] Fred Glick: Oh, yeah. Yeah. There you go.

But that’s the point. You have to go far out and it’s a tri commuting, you know, from there to downtown LA every day.

[00:03:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:03:49] Fred Glick: It’s nuts. It’s totally nuts. So there’s nowhere else to plop a thousand houses.

[00:03:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That actually, making houses makes sense. Cause then if you figure you’re a guy, you’ve got a lot of money and you want to advise, get some ring come investment properties rather than having them scattered all over the place.

Now you got 19 sitting right here in one place. Makes it easier to manage.

[00:04:11] Fred Glick: Okay. And the thing is people pay 20 grand a month or whatever they’re going to pay. I’m just making that number up. They’re a little more responsible and they got seven 80 credit scores. You don’t have to deal with, you know, some crappy credit scores and people have problems making it, you know, it’s just, it’s a different market.

It just, there’s no real heavy management to it. It’s easy to manage, you know, so make sense as a business model. If you’re going to be in real estate, you know, do it, do it so it’s easy because real estate management, it is an awful business and I’m involved in it and it’s an awful business. I mean, it’s just, everybody’s different.

You got to deal with personalities and, you know, and it’s, owner doesn’t want to pay money to fix something, but it has to be fixed, or they don’t want to do, they want seven bit, you know, and the tenants are screaming at you. No.

[00:05:10] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Talking this through, that is what’s happening there. That’s, it seems like a good investment then. It also explains why it took them four years to build it.

[00:05:18] Fred Glick: Well, it takes you four years to build. I mean, your coastal commission for starters. Remember every time you change something, every single you know, your city, your county, the state, the federal government, the coastal commission, everybody’s got to approve it.

So you got to start from scratch every time. And, oh, we don’t meet, you know, unless it’s every three months or something.

[00:05:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And the entire grading washed out during the storms.

[00:05:42] Fred Glick: Exactly.

[00:05:43] Drew Thomas Hendricks: They graded the road. They graded all the hillsides. And then we had that really rainy winter. And then suddenly there’s a four foot trough going right down the middle of the road. And all the little grades were broken. So they had to re fix that.

[00:05:57] Fred Glick: Yeah, construction ain’t that sweet and easy.

[00:06:01] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So let’s see. So this is the first of the year we’re jumped into an informal podcast on why someone might want to build a large complex and rent it out rather than selling each individual home.

[00:06:12] Fred Glick: Yeah. I mean, one of my things, you know, while we’re talking about this on the subject, cause I keep pushing it, but without a lot of detail, so something floated by my email today, a Redfin link on a back on the market, it’s like five acres in Joshua tree for $41, 000. 2, 000 feet away was electric. If you wanted to get it, I’m sure this is obviously a cost.

Allegedly, there’s water and you’d have to put in a septic system. So, you know, it is buildable. And I always love the idea of these cement-printed homes.

[00:06:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah.

[00:06:56] Fred Glick: And just they’re fireproof, their rainproof, their earthquakeproof. I mean, they’re just monsters. And it would just be cool if you wanna play with real estate development that won’t, you know, knock your socks off. So you can buy a piece of land like that for 40 grand and prove it for another 50 and build the house for a hundred.

You know, and then rent it out and do whatever. It’s an interesting concept that actually pencils out. So, the flip side of the 19 units in the fancy neighborhoods is this is how you do it out there. And it’s, you know, or anywhere in the U. S. where it works. The other thing that I’ve been watching on TikTok is these people buying farms in one way, shape, or form or leasing them out. Say you’re into horticulture, you want to grow something, you find a farm, these small farms. The idea is these people are 70, 80 years old; They just can’t do it anymore. You say, look, you got 20 acres; lease me 10 acres for $500 a year or something like that for the first year and just let me plant.” The guy’s probably thrilled.

He’s just getting money. Maybe that pays his real estate taxes for the year. This was up in upstate New York where it’s, you know, nice for three months for growing. growing But still, it’s kind of really interesting. This is getting into, to be a cottage industry. And you know, there’s different things you can do with options on the whole farm; You can cut them in on a percentage. There’s a million things you can do. And then there’s this other guy that popped up that, the USDA has some kind of a hundred percent financing for people to help them start a farm. I don’t know anything about it, but it’s just really cool is these new little things.

[00:08:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That ties into this cottage industry license that’s new post-COVID in California where food producers.

You can actually produce food out of your house and sell it at farmers markets, and it’s all legal and licenses versus…

[00:09:08] Fred Glick: Very cool. So do you have to go through testing of the food?

[00:09:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I think it’s just up to a certain amount. I was watching a bread documentary and all these guys started making bread in their basements.

Another thousand loaves a day, but they started through that. I can see if you lease some land, grow some peppers, or whatever, you could have your cottage industry salsa from homegrown peppers.

[00:09:28] Fred Glick: There you go.

[00:09:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Brainstorming a new business.

[00:09:30] René Pérez Jr.: And then that would actually be, and maybe that would let you be qualified for the USDA loans.

[00:09:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: To help build out that lease. Maybe.

[00:09:38] Fred Glick: Maybe. Maybe, maybe. I’ll send you these links. I saved a few of them. You can maybe throw it into the video.

[00:09:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, that’s interesting.

[00:09:48] Fred Glick: And what do they call it on TikTok when you splice something in?

[00:09:53] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Stitch it?

[00:09:54] Fred Glick: Stitch it. That’s it.

[00:09:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Stitch it in.

[00:09:57] Fred Glick: Yes.

[00:09:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s a, that’s an interesting idea and a way to tell people, like if they’ve got the land, find someone that can use it.

You don’t need to sell all of it.

[00:10:07] Fred Glick: Yes.

[00:10:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Just make sure it’s utilized, a portion of it.

[00:10:11] Fred Glick: Right. Exactly. Or, you know, sell it to the kid, give a hundred percent financing and have a life estate for yourself, which means you get to live there for the rest of your life. And then everything reverts back to this guy, this kid when you die, so another idea.

[00:10:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We had a friend that got one of those, the guy, the house came with the person living on the next to the lake and they bought it with that guy there, knowing that they couldn’t do anything.

[00:10:42] Fred Glick: Yeah, but you wanna meet the guy and you know, see if you’re,

[00:10:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, they met. Yeah. He bopped on down. But he’s 81, it could be another 21 years.

[00:10:52] Fred Glick: Could be, could be. , Now is when we insert the commercial from the vitamin company.

[00:10:59] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yes. and the lift company.

[00:11:04] Fred Glick: The elevator’s still, still doing well.

[00:11:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, it was a game changer for my mother-in-law. She has restored her whole life and now she’s got physical therapy, but now she’s just using a truck crap from the downstairs to the upstairs.

[00:11:16] Fred Glick: Okay, so here’s what you have to do. Get over there with your phone and video her and get her a gig with the elevator company on social media. There’s another thing, you know, review product reviews from actual people over 50 is a big thing now, allegedly. So…

[00:11:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Kicking off entrepreneurship in 2025.

[00:11:38] Fred Glick: I’m telling you, you know. You know what, if you listen to your podcast, you know, what we bitch about all the time and that just continues. Okay. We do have some great stories, but we’ll save them, but here’s some other stuff. You know, it’s real estate is broad and the minutia of it, but things like the elevators, they’re just fantastic.

And that is what’s making prices of other homes go up because there’s less supply. And that’s why grandma can live there another 20 years. She wants to live in the house. Older people have enjoy a routine and they don’t want to break it. They don’t want to change it. This keeps them in the house. They have the elevator.

It’s a beautiful thing. And they liked staying there and their friends can stay there. So what used to be 10 years ago, five years ago, even, you know, the people in their eighties, they all moved to wherever and they all move in with their kids or move out because the house is too much, it’s too much for mom.

Now it’s like, they can have cameras up everywhere and you know, they can talk to mom. What was that thing Facebook came out with? It was like this big, it was like a video chat thing.

[00:12:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:12:53] Fred Glick: Probably not. That’s another thing. I did see a TikTok of like the crap that Google dropped this year because they do come out with some goofy products.

[00:13:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s the thing. You got to keep testing it. Apple,

[00:13:07] Fred Glick: They can afford to come out with the goofy stuff and not worry about making money.

[00:13:13] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, Apple just discontinued the Vision Pro.

[00:13:16] Fred Glick: Oh, they did finally.

[00:13:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Which means maybe in about 10 years. Because remember they had the Newton, which was the precursor to the iPhone and the iPad.

The Newton never really made it.

[00:13:25] Fred Glick: Well, once they figure out how to put it out for 500 bucks and compete with Meta’s thing,

[00:13:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That would be it. Then

[00:13:32] Fred Glick: it’ll be back. That’s all.

[00:13:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Did you ever try the Vision Pro, René?

[00:13:37] René Pérez Jr.: No, I thought it was really gimmicky. The, my other wishlist item is the Meta glasses. Cause those, then you can actually do like even open houses.

You don’t have to like look good recording things. They can just record like the traffic of the people.

[00:13:51] Fred Glick: Oh, yeah. Here’s the thing. You can get away with wearing them. I can’t because I have prescription glasses.

[00:13:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mind blown on Christmas day. So we were we have our Christmas chili and my uncle on my, on Brook’s side, he’s blind.

He had degenerative eye disease and now he’s been legally blind for the last two years. He had this pair of Ray-Bans on and I, looking at a book and turning the pages and the glasses were reading the book to him.

[00:14:19] Fred Glick: Wow.

[00:14:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And then you could say like whatever meta maybe it’s those Meta glasses that René’s talking about.

[00:14:24] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah.

[00:14:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Tell me about my surroundings and it would say you were looking at this crowd of people and this is the yard that you’re looking at. It’s a game changer for him, for Mark. It was amazing. I mean, now he’s a meadow or order me an Uber.

[00:14:43] Fred Glick: And there it goes. It’s only going to get better. It’s the AI gets better and better and better and better.

[00:14:49] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. And you can take the calls on too. And yeah, they’re nice.

[00:14:53] Fred Glick: Oh, they’re like, how much did it cost?

[00:14:56] René Pérez Jr.: They’re like 300 bucks, 300.

[00:14:59] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s not bad. And I can tell you, I had those glasses on for a minute or two, listening to that book. And it was, if I was blind, I’d never take ’em off.

[00:15:08] Fred Glick: Pretty much. What else in this world do we want to talk about?

[00:15:11] René Pérez Jr.: So, actually one of the things that I am working on is and the big thing as we’re starting the 2025 season and taxes is, you know, the easiest cheapest way to lower your taxes is by buying a property and not paying the buyer broker directly on the sale purchase. So that’s like probably going to be the big push that I’m going to do.

I’m finishing up my, my newsletter to push it up on LinkedIn.

So we really explained the nuances of that. Cause I mean, I’ve had people who think like, “Oh, well, no, I don’t want to increase.” Cause paying your buyer broker, if you have a lot of money, it sounds good, right? It’s easy. You’re taking a mortgage, then you might have to increase the mortgage amount to pay your buyer broker.

But Fred and I have run the numbers and it makes sense to increase the mortgage amount even if you don’t have the money to pay, pay out of pocket. And it still comes out to lower your property taxes and the actual interest that you pay month to month to just be pennies on the dollar. So it’s more cost-effective because you can always lower down your mortgage, but you can’t lower your sell price. Your sell price your sell price, right?

So that’s actually the big thing that I’m really thinking about. And yeah, I mean, we go over like the review of 2024 junk fees right, getting rid of all these junk that we pay month to month on extra, you know escrow and inspectors. I actually just saw a article about like how inspectors actually have incentives to not say anything about the property. That’s wrong. Because if they do, then the agent might lose a deal. And then the agent might not sell, might not send them, send clients to the inspectors because they got it or bad inspection report, right? So the incentives are misaligned, right? And it’s something that we wouldn’t really think about.

So I think as we move into 2025, asking the question of like, does your broker get referral to all these 3rd party inspectors and home insurance and all that because

[00:17:25] Fred Glick: “How many times have you used this home inspector?” To the listing agent. That’s a question to ask them because we use a company called Inspectify that picks the inspectors, basically. We have no allegiance to anyone. We have no allegiance to handyman because everybody thinks “Oh, you know, you must have a handyman.” Well, you know, no, because we obviously we’re all over the place, but still you want to pick your own people. This is not what we do for a living, you know, and if we had people they might be busy for six months, that’s the other problem. So this way, hey, you pick it, you do it, go to Thumbtack, go to TaskRabbit; some great places to find people and it just makes more sense.

[00:18:08] René Pérez Jr.: Well, you get lazy.if you have your own people, you kind of get lazy, right? And you’re not double-checking them and verifying whether they’re actually the best cost-effective for your clients.

So that’s also kind of harmful. Like, yes, maybe you, I do think it’s a strength to have like your own people. You know, when I have a handyman around that I can get you same day to go see a property, that’s, it’s amazing, right? It is a game changer because then you don’t have to worry about having a five-day inspection or waiting until next weekend, which can make you lose a deal.

But at the same time, you know, you want to get your own third-party services because, just because they worked well in the past for me, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to work well for you in the present time. So yeah, that’s the biggest thing of mind, to me. And I mean, I think we’re pretty scarred on this last deal where escrow companies, they want to charge $10, 000 for a service that other companies are offer for a thousand. Right? Well, it’s crazy.

[00:19:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That goes beyond white glove.

[00:19:21] Fred Glick: Yeah, they came down from 10, 000 to like 7950 or something, probably killed them to do it.

[00:19:29] René Pérez Jr.: And they were like,

[00:19:29] Fred Glick: Oh, that’s a huge deal. So what? They gave us these reasons like made no sense. So it’s the way they’ve been doing business for years.

It’s the same as the realtors not telling you what they made. They’re all party to each other, you know, they’ve been going out for years. So we’re trying to end that too.

[00:19:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Savvy. René just said, learn all those line items, figure out and deal with somebody like Arrivva that is able to go through these line items and help it make sense to you and show you where you can save and where typically people pad their deals.

[00:20:12] Fred Glick: You know, the line that the realtors like to use is you get what you pay for. No, you overpay when you overpay, you know, that, that works sometimes, but not in real estate transactions.

[00:20:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I think it works in retail. You get, or it works on the house. You get, if you buy a crappy house, you got a crappy house, but you’re doing a transaction or you buy a crappy car or you get what you pay for when you’re buying a handbag versus a knockoff.

But when you’re dealing with a transaction that has to be legally set up and binding, correct is the only way.

There’s no premium correct.

[00:20:51] Fred Glick: And, you know, again, transparency and treating people right and charging a reasonable fee. It’s just, “You get what you’re paying for.” I’ve heard that. It’s just like really lame.

[00:21:02] René Pérez Jr.: I still look, it’s one of the things that we can all think about as consumers in the U S we all know this, and actually Fred knows probably the most because he’s the oldest here, but it’s like, it used to be the norm to pay like 10 percent in tips and then while I was growing up, the norm, like for just generally good service was 15%, right? And yeah, you could do 20 if it was amazing service. I mean, people, a $100 tips all the time just because it was great. And then now it’s like every point of sale, like little device has like 20, 22, 25, or even 20, 25, 30 as like the normal tip and the new generation thinks, “Oh yeah, 20 percent is the minimum you should for tips.”

And it’s just like, well, it’s just, it’s just really weird. Like things just increase just for the sake of increasing. But it’s not like better service, right? You’re still getting the same service. So no, we’re overpaying.

[00:22:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I mean, I was at one, I was at a restaurant the other day, and the top level on the little choices was 30%.

It was 30, 25, and like 22. And then you start to feel bad about having to go in to give a custom amount, but you shouldn’t if their only choices are that.

[00:22:24] Fred Glick: Especially if they’re standing up. It’s getting something for you. All they’re doing is putting in the computer and somebody else is making it.

[00:22:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Our big thing is buying a beer. You go to a microbrewery, a beer is a beer is a beer. It’s always been a buck a beer. You shouldn’t tip 30 percent on a 10 beer. I mean, so yeah, that’s, that’s one philosophy I try to stick to a bucket drink at a brewery.

[00:22:49] Fred Glick: There you go.

[00:22:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I did have a sneaky one though. I went to the buck of beer and when I put my one in, it turned to a 10.

So people thinking they’re going to do 1-0-0, and suddenly they gave them a hundred dollar tip. So there’s even ways that game in that.

[00:23:07] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. Well, and so that’s like, I know a lot of people don’t, you know, have 10, 15 transactions of homes, but so you, so you don’t, you don’t see the percentages of commissions as something out of the ordinary. But when you look at like your general life and how like we have all these microtransactions that are overpriced just for the sake of being overpriced, then you can realize like, “Oh, yeah, it’s wrong.” You know, it’s not that you get what you pay for. It’s more of just salespeople wanting to be salespeople and just getting paid more, right?

[00:23:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Very interesting. Well, going into 2025, we’ve got some great topics on the calendar for the next couple weeks. Got to tune in next week to figure out what it is. No surprises or only surprises. And once again, a fantastically awkward close to another episode of We Fixed Real Estate to those that last long enough to hear it.

[00:24:07] Fred Glick: Exactly.