Do Realtors Think You’re Stupid? Here’s the Hidden Truth With Fred Glick of Arrivva

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

• Dive into the latest developments surrounding the National Association of Realtors (NAR) lawsuit
• Fred challenges traditional commission structures in the real estate industry, examining the value proposition for buyers and sellers
• Fred shares insights into his unique marketing approach by starting a website called iwillnotcheatonyou.com, emphasizing his commitment to ethical conduct and his avoidance of dual agency
• Discover the keys to successful real estate transactions as Fred unravels the importance of context and professional guidance
• Explore how infrastructure failures, like the recent bridge collapse in Baltimore, could affect the local housing markets
• Join the discussion on the case of Shani Mott, showcasing the perseverance of individuals in seeking fairness within the real estate realm
• Fred emphasizes on the impact of heavy rain on real estate transactions

In this episode with Fred Glick

Join Fred Glick, a seasoned Broker, Real Estate Realist, and Founder of Arrivva, as he delves into the latest developments shaking up the real estate industry. 

From dissecting the implications of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) lawsuit to critiquing traditional commission structures, Fred offers candid insights and practical advice. With anecdotes, reflections on market dynamics, and discussions on pressing issues like ethics and consumer protection, the We Fixed Real Estate podcast provides a must-listen for anyone navigating the complexities of the housing market.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Welcome to We Fixed Real Estate. Today we have Fred Glick.

[00:00:04] Fred Glick: And that’s it.

[00:00:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s it. Fred, that’s it. René is off-selling and Fred is here to shed some light on a few things that have been going on.

[00:00:12] Fred Glick: Yeah, he’s somewhere. But in a few weeks, he just told me this, he’s going to Columbia, but he’s going there to panhandle for gold.

I swear to God, that’s his vacation. I don’t know. He did it as a kid or something. So this is, I don’t know. So I’ll let him explain next week.

[00:00:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Sounds exotic. I’m thinking, I guess, gold country in California.

[00:00:44] Fred Glick: It’s pretty easy. Yeah. He just drives up and you’re there. So, but still.

[00:00:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: A budding Parker Schnabel.

[00:00:50] Fred Glick: Digging for gold. He’s going away fortune and feeling and someday he’ll pay, anyway.

[00:00:59] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. He could be on the next gold rush.

[00:01:02] Fred Glick: There you go.

[00:01:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So, I’m meeting with Parker Schnabel. You guys are doing well, I think.

[00:01:08] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:01:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Anyways, so let’s see, last week we were really shedding some light. We’re coming off the tail end of your media blitz. National media blitz. Talking about the NAR lawsuit. And what’s the update? What’s going on?

[00:01:24] Fred Glick: Still utter confusion. Still everybody freaking out. There’s realtors. All they’re trying to do is figure out how they can get around it, but the idiots don’t understand. A. It’s not approved by the court. B. There’s going to be more lawsuits.

They’re already active in a lot more lawsuits. C. And this is the big one. The United States Justice Department has not decided what to do. And it’s great. I think it’s great that all these people are coming up with these loopholes and do it as closing cost credit and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The Justice Department is the one who’s going to have the real answer.

And they’re just listening to all this. They’re reading it all on Reddit and TikTok and wherever else. And they’re just going to say, “Oh, loopholes? Okay, we’re closing them all.” Too bad. The whole idea is the buyer pays the buyer’s agent, the seller pays the seller’s agent, and you request the seller add the amount of the buyer broker fee to the purchase price.

That’s the way they want to do it cut and dry period done end of sentence every other little way to do it. Oh, well, they can pay towards their closing costs and then be baby. It’s just going to be a joke, but anyway, you know, it’s a developing story. So you know.

[00:02:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The latest seems to have some clarity and they’re just letting everybody kind of have some fear and uncertainty.

[00:02:58] Fred Glick: And I’m going to title this whole thing. I’m going to give this entire stuff a title. The title is, “Do Realtors Think You’re Stupid?”

[00:03:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, the kinder, gentler friend.

[00:03:13] Fred Glick: Yeah, because you know, this is, there’s still, so there’s so many of them that are so anti-consumer, they don’t care. They just want to align their own pocketbooks and the fake ads. I, you know, I keep mentioning this woman who I keep following all the time on TikTok, who’s a consumer activist that we put her thing in a couple of weeks ago.

No, no, no. And she’s in Pittsburgh. Oh, is she? Oh, yeah. But she’s a she’s on TikTok. She’s a consumer activist. Her handle is laterwendy. L. A. T. E. R. W. E. N. D. Y. Go follow her. Yeah, she’s fabulous. No, she’s not in Austin. She’s in Pittsburgh. We’ve had, you know, I told her Crosby sucks, and then she comes after me, and you know, it’s Flyers, Penguins fights, so it’s fine.

Anyway, so she’s been great. She’s been following it. She contacts people. She’s been talking to the New York Times about stuff, and the former president of the realtors who got in trouble with sexually molesting somebody allegedly and fired them and the realtors have been fighting the New York Times to not run the story and the Times says, you know, screw you guys, we’re running it.

So. Who knows? We just do our thing, you know?

[00:04:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, well, I gotta tell you, I was at a networking event last night with a couple of realtors and they were kind of uncertain. But the common theme was that they’re worried about not getting paid. And what I don’t understand, like, one of the comments was, I worked my ass off for six months, the house didn’t sell, I get nothing.

[00:04:52] Fred Glick: Yeah, well, that’s the business. It’s a straight commission. We do that too.

[00:04:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You just have a fixed fee.

[00:04:58] Fred Glick: Well, let’s put it this way with what we do and charge the flat fee and give the rebate right now. We have enough customers that if we lose one, it doesn’t bother us. Plus we’re not the kind of agents that run around with people, you know, let’s take all day Tuesday and look at five houses and have lunch.

And, you know, they have to change the way they do it and go to open houses. Then come back to you with what they really want. So they don’t know how to do, your say. I just thought of this. Here’s what they’re terrible at, time management. This is what we’re really good at. You know, René and I, it’s two brokers.

We work with absolutely everybody on every deal, as opposed to being part of a team. And they give you to somebody who’s like, just got their license six months ago. And the whole concept of what they do is just, it theoretically to them works, but it really doesn’t be able to do this correctly, at least in my mind.

So we’re just going to keep doing our, what we’re doing and charging a reasonable fee, whether there’s a rebate or not, whether the sellers paying or not. I mean, we’re also dealing in higher end properties. So, we’re not dealing in the 200, 000 dollar houses and that’s a struggle for some people to come up with 6, 000 dollars.

It’s a buyer broker fee. That’s a pain. Yeah. And that’s why you do it. We add it to the sale price. It’s not going to affect the appraisals. So. It’s not going to be that big a deal. It really isn’t, but they’re just, ah, but the interesting thing will be to see what they’re going to put in the form that says, if it all says, and it will, you have to get a contract in writing in advance, showing what you’re going to get paid.

So they’re going to start still putting in two and a half percent on a million-dollar deal. We’re still way ahead of the game. So. We’ll change our advertising to tell people what our price is, as opposed to talking about rebates if there’s no more rebates. And it’s, it’s price and service.

[00:07:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The rebates was your creative workaround to this flawed double commissions thing and so getting paid 2 percent to do paperwork.

[00:07:24] Fred Glick: Speaking of that, so I got a good story for you. This is how freaking greedy these people are. Compass agents, two of them, because they’re a team or something. Oh, and all these names of the Judy Smith group at Compass and sometimes the Frank Smith associates, but they really work for Caldwell Banker.

You know, they put these team names. It’s nobody cares. Nobody knows. Nobody says, “Oh, my God, it’s the Tom Smith group.” It’s just personal marketing crap. You know, we don’t personally market ourselves. We market our company because that’s what it’s all about. I could care less. And my picture isn’t somewhere, you know, but these people with their hands on their hips or their arms folded back to back, you know.

[00:08:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: People sitting on your face on a bus bench?

[00:08:20] Fred Glick: Just stupid. You know, let me speak about the bus bench. I used to have a thing. I think I still own this website. Do you? What was it? I will not cheat on you. And I wanted to put that I have, iwillnotcheatonyou.com. And the idea was we don’t do dual agency. So I just wanted to put that in the picture of a good looking guy and good looking girl, and that’s it.

And that would be my real estate ad as opposed to, “Oh, number one in the market,” you know, “I sell houses.” Whatever. So, anyway, I’m not going to dray along with this. So let me talk about this. So I, I used to live up in Palo Alto and I had friends across the street who subsequently now are moving away and wanted to sell their house.

So his wife found these two compensations and they did a whole presentation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, five percenters and why their value and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and her husband. You know, kind of he let her do it and he kind of didn’t think about it and then he got the contract. She signed the contract and then the DocuSign went to him and said, “Wait a second, isn’t Fred from across the street? He’s in the business. Let me ping him. Let me see what’s going on because because this is nuts. 5%. It’s crazy.”

So he pings me and it’s like, you know, I tell him the reality is tell him what we do. And it’s great. The very next day. He says we had a friend of ours who we talked to a couple of weeks ago, casually, but now that she really wants to just buy our house and we’re just going to negotiate a price.

And you know, just, we just need somebody to do the paperwork. So they went back to the Compass girls and they said, “Well, there’s a lot of still things to do, blah. And we’ll do it for 2%.” It’s a $4 million house. They wanted $80,000 to do fricking paperwork basically. Not put it on the market, not have to host open house, nothing, nothing.

So we’re doing it for a flat fee of 9750. And his wife was like, “Oh my God, Oh my God. So it’s like, we’re saving them 70, 000 dollars.” They’re not your partners. And by the way, this brings up something in my mind on TikTok. You remember the four guys, Chamath Palihapitiya, and all his friends who do that. Well, they’re on there again about complaining about, “Hey, I bought a place for a million and I saw I’m selling it for 1,000,001, but the agent wants $60,000 are cutting 60% of my profit.”

It’s insanity and it is people, it’s insanity. No matter what they say to you about their, their value, nobody’s got a value to do this. I mean, I’ve always thought about people who are doctors, four years of medical school, six years of residency for surgery or whatever, and they’re making nice money.

And if you look at it, if you know, how could these real estate agents expect to make this giant amount of money compared to what a doctor has gone through? People in tech, you know, you went to MIT and Berkeley and, you know, you learned all this stuff and you’re building these amazing things for major corporations, but, you know, these realtors should be paid more?

[00:12:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. That’s a, you bring up a point there because I think a lot of people go to the full service thinking that the realtor is going to hold their hands, almost take on the impression of a therapist, but you’re better off hiring an actual therapist to guide you through that, the home buying process and all the trauma that it may be rather than depending on a realtor, you’re going to get more for your money.

[00:12:45] Fred Glick: Exactly, you know, you’re buying a friend for this percentage and oh, we want to be friends. Of course, they want referrals and, you know, it’s a whole system

[00:12:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Or contract an interior decorator or somebody that is like, because you’re going to, you’re looking for a particular house. That’s going to certain fit a certain design and interior decorator, a designer. I mean, there’s a lot of jobs out there that might actually give you better guidance.

[00:13:12] Fred Glick: There’s, you know, when we don’t, we don’t know anything else. It’s like, when we see an inspection and somebody asks us a question about the inspection, we say, call the inspector. Yeah. We might have an opinion on it, but that’s not what we do for a living.

So we make sure to get the professionals out there. So it’s

[00:13:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Talking about professionals. What are that all the, I mean, everybody seems to have an opinion about real estate. Everyone talks to their friends. Everyone’s just an authority of some sort.

[00:13:41] Fred Glick: Yeah, shut them out. Say, thank you very much. Don’t listen to them. Every single deal has completely different, my favorite word in the world, context. So I want you to, when this gets made, have them just splash the big word, context, context, context. So let me give you an example. We had this buyer and nice people, and they wanted to put an offer in on a property in South Bay, in a competitive situation like everything else is down there, and a great school district, and their price was low and this was their first deal.

And, you know, on the 1st deal, we’re kind of going to give you some slack. So you understand it and then you see how badly you lose and then you understand the market. You either stay in or get out, which is what we found. But there’s other parts of the contract. One of the parts of the contract says you have to give, it’s prefab written that you give the escrow deposit, which is 3 percent of the sale price within three days.

That’s great that it’s pre-written in there, but the reality is everybody’s submitting an offer and the listing agent and seller expect it to be one day. They don’t want to take the house off the market. I’ll let you think about it for three days. Get the deposit in, you know, we tell our buyers, you know, be prepared, make sure it’s in an account that you can wire.

This guy was so out of it. “Well, my friend bought 3 years ago and he said 1 day is ridiculous.” And this guy was like, arguing with me for half an hour. There was nothing, you know, when he was complaining that you’re trying to manipulate me, it’s like, no, we’re trying to help you. We’re trying to make you do what everybody else does.

Because remember this, you’re not negotiating with a seller in a multiple-bid situation. You’re going against the other buyers. They’re your competition. So you have to at least be on par with some of these conditions. Oh, and the other thing he wanted to do was an appraisal condition. Nobody does that because as many of you have listened to this before.

No, the appraiser gets a copy of the contract before they do the appraisal. So they know what they have to shoot for 99 percent of the time. It comes in unless it’s just totally outrageously ridiculous, but they can make what are called time adjustments. So that’s how they get that number. He wouldn’t do that. He wanted a 7-day appraisal contingency.

So he’s got the 3-day and the 7-day. Well, basically, the agent looked at it and just threw it to the bottom of the pile. It’s like, he’s not competitive. We told him that.

[00:16:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The agent can’t wait for 10 days for this guy to, they’ve got people with one day.

[00:16:44] Fred Glick: Yeah So it’s like we’ll never tell, we’ll never tell somebody to not write an offer but you gotta get into the game. It’s like you’re in the minor leagues when everybody else is in the major leagues, but

[00:16:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And that’s in the South Bay with everyone. Just a super competitive market. Maybe the 3-day wait might be okay like, if you’re in, like, I don’t want to say a place, but like, California, where houses are on the market for 2 years.

[00:17:10] Fred Glick: Merced, Merced’s a little tough now. So, yeah, we can negotiate anything in Merced. That’s the whole point. It’s the supply and demand features indicate what you’re, how you’re able to submit an offer. And if there’s nobody else offering, yeah, we can do whatever we want. We do a two-year mortgage contingency or whatever. So yeah, it’s just like, stop listening to your friends, especially three years old. It’s like, seriously, dude.

[00:17:38] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:17:39] Fred Glick: It’s just, just crazy, crazy, crazy.

[00:17:42] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I guess, so at any point of the time, if there’s multiple offers, you’re competing with the buyer in certain situations where the market’s slow and there’s no offers coming in. Then you are kind of with working with a seller because the sellers wants to sell that house.

[00:17:54] Fred Glick: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:17:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And again, like I said, context, the context of what you do where.

[00:18:01] Fred Glick: And if you have an agent, it just writes an offer, you know, no matter what you say, that’s a terrible agent, especially in a competitive market because they don’t understand it. So, you know, we do our homework, we figure out the comps, we talk to other agents who’ve had recent sales or recent pending sales.

We get whatever we can extract out of the listing agent. You know, there’s a way to do this, and we have a formula, and it works.

[00:18:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And this, like, because they’re accepting the, maybe an offer with just a one day versus waiting for this guy to come around with three days, that has nothing to do with equality or fair housing. It’s just the get your offer in because we’ve got a bid on the table.

[00:18:44] Fred Glick: And he has the money in the account because we get, I have his statements. I can see that he’s got the money in the account. What’s the difference? The difference is because his friend says that that’s the knockdown. Okay. So his friend is, I asked, is the friend in the real estate business?

No. So we’re day-to-day in the real estate business. Why do you think we keep pushing this? It’s there’s, it’s not going to hurt you. It’s just, you write a check, you know, you wire the money the first day, not three days. Crazy, crazy, crazy, but anyway, he’s not our client anymore.

[00:19:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s important. I mean, so few agencies will take will be picky. If you’re a good fit, it helps everything just run smoothly and being able to figure out. No, you’re not a good fit for this.

[00:19:33] Fred Glick: And the majority of our clients are great. They get it. They understand they get the documents we need. I mean, we love these people.

It’s the way I am, you know, just get it done. Do it right. Do it right the first time and everything goes smoothly. You know, you throw the monkey wrenches in and the monkeys are loose.

[00:19:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:19:54] Fred Glick: Or something like that.

[00:19:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So much is going on. Before that, how’s this bridge that fell over is going to affect the housing in Baltimore?

[00:20:05] Fred Glick: Yeah, I mean, I’m sure I went over that bridge when I live back east, but I can’t remember where it is, but we’ll just have to trust Pete Buttigieg right now to figure it out.

[00:20:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Because I remember I was in San Francisco when they had the earthquake and the Bay Bridge and the whole infrastructure of the city was just crippled.

I mean, crippled. It really affects the market ’cause if you’re commute, you had to go all the way around the bay to get to where your job was. You’re gonna have to either down south or down north.

[00:20:36] Fred Glick: Right.

[00:20:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And it took years to figure out.

[00:20:40] Fred Glick: I know. Think about it. It would have been great if we had worked from home at that point and, you know, internet and, you know, but this was about 1989. So,

[00:20:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, while, we’re on Baltimore. Let’s talk about Shani Mott.

[00:20:55] Fred Glick: Yeah. This is a horrible story all around. So this woman, Shani Mott went to a lender called loanDepot to do a refinance of her house in Maryland. And an appraiser came out and appraised the house, like, 75, 000 under what a conservative appraisal would have been for the property.

She’s African American. Well, she sued, she sued loanDepot. She sued this appraiser and you can Google it and read about the whole story. But the horrible thing is this woman died and she, but she fought the thing in court. She wouldn’t take any pain pills. She was on respirators. I mean, it was horrible what she did, but she is.

I mean, this woman’s, we should have a statue for her. I mean, she’s amazing. loanDepot finally just set. Obviously going to pay her a state, whatever amount it is, but it’s like, what is the fricking difference? Everybody’s money is green. Who cares? All she’s going to be, you know, the loan could have got done and then she just made payment.

I don’t understand these people who, and now this appraiser is still fighting it in court and has a GoFundMe page to fund and, you know, claiming I did the right thing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he’s got all these Cheerio people. Yeah, you go for it. And it’s like, really? don’t get it. I don’t care what planet you’re from or color you are. You know, get me the documents to do what we all say to do. And here’s the money. It’s just, it’s just horrible, horrible, horrible.

[00:23:01] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So, she won a lawsuit. How long did that go on for?

[00:23:05] Fred Glick: Oh, I, I don’t remember the exact time, but it was a while.

Obviously, the wheels of justice run slowly. Speaking of wheels of justice, that Sam Bankman idiot gets 25 years. What a goofball. That hairdo.

It’s like, this is the guy who was like beaten up in high school and he said, I’m going to make zillions and get back at all these people who thought I was a douchebag. And yeah, you’re a douchebag.

[00:23:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Apparently all the inmates love him. He’s giving them good crypto stock tips and helping them with their taxes.

[00:23:45] Fred Glick: See, he’s, see, he has a purpose in life. He just didn’t know what it was. Inmate CPA or something.

[00:23:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s pretty funny.

[00:23:57] Fred Glick: Terrible, terrible, terrible.

[00:23:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: What else is on your mind, Fred, as we approach the end of our We Fixed Real Estate show?

[00:24:04] Fred Glick: I feel bad for everybody’s going to miss a nice Easter this year in California and the West Coast, because we’re in a deluge with rain and Saturday and Sunday, so here’s a question. Do you do an open house in the rain in the torrential rain Saturday and Sunday? Probably not.

That’s going to screw up your marketing or your idea having Tuesday as an offer date because none of the people saw it. So it’s going to add another week. So it’s going to look like things are staying on the market longer.

[00:24:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Do you pull the house off and put it back on?

[00:24:39] Fred Glick: No, no, no, no, no. You just can’t do an open house during the weekend.

[00:24:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So we’ve talked before about how for the buyer, it’s actually good to go on an open house during a rain.

[00:24:49] Fred Glick: Oh, yeah. Go make an appointment for Monday morning to see the house.

[00:24:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You’ll stress test it and see what exactly what it’s like. It’s like a little informal inspection.

[00:25:00] Fred Glick: Exactly and just smell, you know, see if you smell any kind of bad odors on Monday after all the rains.

[00:25:10] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I need to figure out what’s happening. I know I’m, we’re supposed to go to an outdoor wedding on Sunday.

[00:25:15] Fred Glick: No, you’re not.

[00:25:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We haven’t heard it’s canceled yet.

[00:25:19] Fred Glick: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That’s very strong tense.

[00:25:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We’ll see first. It’s like they planned their wedding on Easter. It was an interesting time.

[00:25:29] Fred Glick: That’s a little bizarre.

[00:25:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: But we don’t ask questions. We just attend the family functions. That’s all you can do.

[00:25:38] Fred Glick: I hear you kids. I hear you. Well, let’s see. What else? Nothing. Not much. Getting today is, you know, a March Madness game. And I’m sure.

[00:25:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: San Diego State. One of my ultimate. I have two alma mater. San Diego State is playing today. Gonzaga’s playing tomorrow.

[00:25:55] Fred Glick: I was going to ask you that.

[00:25:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Gonzaga is going to have a tough time over Purdue. But they made it to the Sweet 16 every year for the last nine years.

[00:26:03] Fred Glick: There you go. You gotta love that. And start of the baseball season. NHL and NBA playoffs around the corner. So it’s a time of year for people, you know, look at sports and spring break and spring break now. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:26:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I remember it being a lot more consistent back then. Back when I was in, it seemed like everyone kind of went the same week.

Now I’m looking at, I’m juggling it with clients and stuff, and it seems like half the people are on. Half the people are off. I don’t,

[00:26:33] Fred Glick: Yeah, it like one week earlier, one week after.

[00:26:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: 30 percent’s on vacation.

[00:26:38] Fred Glick: Yeah. And but it’s good for places like. Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, who now are able to consistently fill hotel rooms and the restaurants don’t get insane.

If everybody’s off in one week, you know, it would be nuts. They couldn’t handle it all. So for resorts, cruise ships, whatever vacation places, maybe it’s a good thing.

[00:27:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Maybe they were the orchestrating. Well, any, any last words before my famously awkward close. ,

[00:27:14] Fred Glick: No, I mean, we will find out next week from René, but maybe gold panning is coming back.

You know, it’s the next thing after crypto. Yeah. So, yeah. can’t wait until he explains, stay tuned for next week. Yeah.

[00:27:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I wonder if it’s on one of those eco-adventures where he’s guaranteed like X amount, secret ones. Stay tuned next week, people.

[00:27:43] Fred Glick: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:27:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, this has been another episode of We Fixed Real Estate.

[00:27:49] Fred Glick: Thank you. See you, everybody.

[00:27:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: See ya.