Everything Nobody Tells You Before Buying a House (The Real Closing Checklist) With Fred Glick of Arrivva

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

• Why most buyers plan the closing day completely wrong, and what they should be doing instead
• The post-closing checklist almost everyone forgets (and how it can cost you time, money, and stress)
• How to navigate buying and selling at the same time without costly timing mistakes
• Why closing timelines vary dramatically depending on where you buy
• The key differences between wet and dry closings and how they impact your deal
• What some agents aren’t telling you about escrow and title costs
• What outdated systems and poor communication are still costing buyers and sellers today

In this episode with Fred Glick

Buying a home doesn’t end at the closing table — in fact, that’s where most of the chaos begins.

In this episode, Fred Glick of Arrivva breaks down the complete post-contract checklist that most agents never share with their clients: from why you should never schedule movers on your closing date, to the hidden escrow markups that are quietly draining sellers in Southern California. If you’re buying, selling, or relocating, this one will save you money, time, and a lot of headaches.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• TaskRabbit
• Fidelity National Title
• First American Title
• WFG National Title
• Schedule a call with Fred

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:18] Fred Glick: This week in We Fixed Real Estate.

[00:00:22] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Fred Glick and Drew Hendricks. Figuring out what people don’t usually talk about.

[00:00:28] Fred Glick: Yeah, you know, we’re thinking about what to do on this podcast.

And it came to my mind that I always work in a certain way. I don’t play golf anymore, but if you play golf out there, you’re gonna know what I’m talking about. If the pin is on the right side, you want to hit your, your tee shot on the left side, so you have a better chance of getting close to the pin. So then you tee off from the right side, so it gets to the left side and the left side, close to the pin, and you make birdie.

[00:00:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s my problem.

[00:00:55] Fred Glick: Same way with. There you go. Same way with anything in a project management situation, which is what we do for our listings by the way. We call it project management. ‘Cause it is, you work backwards into things. So you’re thinking about buying a house, you know nothing. You’re starting from scratch and you start getting things like you find out from people like me that you need a fully underwritten mortgage pre-approval.

So you get that done, you’re ready to go. You get instructions on how to see houses that open houses and private showings, what to look for, how to ai the inspections and learn all about this. And you know, I’m here to help you as a guide with all that. But then you get under contract, then you do all the things that you gotta do.

But then there’s a lot of things that are gonna happen once the escrow closes. So let’s talk work backwards. First of all, you’re gonna have to move, usually the cake. So the first thing I want to tell you is do not schedule movers for the date you’re supposed to close. If you’re supposed to close on the 26th, take it the 28th.

Wait a couple of days. ‘Cause the reason is, stuff can go wrong. Okay? Some guy forgot to sign some form and he can’t get it to the next day, and they can’t start the funding until they have, there’s, there’s crazy stuff that happens. Just realize that it might happen. So schedule your movers at least two days after closing.

That’s real important. You also wanna schedule the changing over of the utilities kind of at the last minute when you know you’re gonna close. So if you’re gonna close on the 26th and everything’s going good, on the 25th is when you contact the utility company to change everything over to your name.

Remember, we, what we do is we send out a form to the listing agent and give them all these questions about stuff like this, who the utilities are with, the contact information, who the, who you can get internet from, cable, which you can probably Google, but it’s just nice to know what they know.

Trash day, what day do you have to put out the trash cans? Things you didn’t know before, but you gotta know. And I ask them things like, who’s the landscaper that you use? Who’s the local handyman? A bunch of stuff like that. Just so you have these people that are familiar with the house ready to go.

You don’t have to use them a hundred percent, but it’s just nice to know where these people are. Now when it comes to movers, we don’t get involved with that. ‘Cause that’s your personal thing between you and the mover. But you know, you’re gonna shop around. And this is for a lot of things, we do it for inspections, but you can use it for things like movers.

Use something called Taskrabbit. Or taskrabbit.com. thumbtack.com. On Taskrabbit, see if I have the URL handy, I believe it’s Taskrabbit.com/arrivva and you get $15 off. So there you go. And, you know, interview these people. Obviously, if you can see online, Google reviews, not their own reviews.

I never, never use reviews that are on anybody’s site that’s not cited from Google, that you can’t get from an independent third party because they could just make them up. But the movers are important. Changing over your mail, you can do it online, you can do it at the post office. If you have businesses that go to your address, you need to move the addresses to the new address.

Go to the post office because there’s different things you have to do. You have to give ’em a credit card for like a dollar. It’s all crazy. But investigate that because that might have changed since the last time I did it. But don’t forget to do that. And then you’re gonna change your drivers license.

It’s gonna ask you if you want to register to vote, so it’ll re-register you in that area. And you know what? Check the area. If the area is 95% of one party, register with that party no matter if you agree with them or not, because they’re the power and control. In the general election, you can vote for any anybody you want, but.

Or in California, vote, register independent so you get no junk mail.

[00:05:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mm.

[00:05:35] Fred Glick: That’s another way of doing it. So you got that. Cable, obviously, you gotta set that up in advance and get the number of days and find out about the boxes. Internet, same thing. Don’t have them send the box to the house 10 days before you get to the house, especially if nobody’s at the house. Ask them if you can pick it up or to send it to you at your old address just so you’ll have it and you can take it with you.

So again, it matters who you use and you know the details are with them, but, I saw, and this is a sideline in Los Angeles, what’s the name of the company? Begins with an S, can’t think of it.

[00:06:22] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Simple.

[00:06:23] Fred Glick: I can’t remember. But anyway, they’re tearing up the streets and putting fiber down.

[00:06:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, wow. Yeah. Also check for fiber. I just got fiber in my neighborhood and immediately.

[00:06:31] Fred Glick: Oh yeah. Good. Yeah. So fiber’s coming more and more, so check on that. God, I can’t remember the name of this company.

Anyway, so it’s the little minutia. Depends on the type of person you are. Sending out an email to everybody you want to know you’ve changed your address. Don’t send it to the people you don’t wanna know, don’t want to have. Postcards are always nice to send to certain people if you like, you know?

But yeah, when you get in there, the other thing you want to do, the other reason you want to delay the closing a little bit is you want get a super cleaning, just soup to nuts. It’s the only time you’re gonna be able to do this without anything in the house.

[00:07:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mm.

[00:07:19] Fred Glick: Just get it. Just walls, mopped everything.

Just make it as clean as possible. Move the refrigerator, clean, backer, refrigerator. Get a real total, total cleaning gun, either by yourself or hire somebody or a combination of both. And then put things down. You know, make sure everything’s clean before you put it in the house. Keep an eye on the movers.

Like I was talking to a client of mine. She said the movers were walking on the rug bringing stuff out, and she said to him, why don’t you roll the rug up first before you put the stuff. It’s like these guys are not the brightest. They can pick up an entire room with one finger and spin it around and drink water at the same time. It’s amazing. But they don’t get kind of, you know, they don’t think about.

[00:08:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Sure.

[00:08:13] Fred Glick: Keeping things clean and what’s gonna happen. So there’s a lot of little minutiae you have to worry about be, you know, before you physically move in and all the little details of getting into the house. Trying to think if there’s anything else.

No, I think that’s about it.

[00:08:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, what about when you’re actually, yeah, well, my question is how do you time the selling of your house, moving out of your existing house and moving into the other house with the two different escrows closing?

[00:08:42] Fred Glick: That could be an issue. What you want to do if you’re selling, you usually want to try to get a lease back or rent back for a couple of days.

[00:08:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:08:52] Fred Glick: So you have to figure that out with your agent or agents if you have two different ones for buy and sell so that it’s gonna work for you. So you’re going to have a little extra time. California’s pretty easy to get a couple extra days. It’s pretty normal. Back east where there’s, I’ve been used to people closing at 10:00 AM and buying the new house at 2:00 PM and having the trucks, you know, sitting there waiting to move into the new house. So it’s, it’s kind of normal. A good story I have about that: there was an, I was selling my property and the seller, the buyer was having some kind of stupid issue. “Oh, well you don’t have everything out.” I mean, we were like 98% on it.

He wanted to hold like a $10 million escrow. So I went back to the, the condo and I came back to closing. I came back to closing with my cat. I put a cat on the table, said, “Here’s my collateral.” You can hold on to him until I’m out of the house. Guess what? We closed in five minutes ‘Cause his lawyer was allergic to cat.

So bring your pet to closing if you have a wet closing. Whereas here in California, nobody, sellers and buyers don’t see each other. It’s interesting how that works, where you sit down at the closing table and you have the agent. Each agent, each buyer and seller, the title person who does things, maybe the mortgage guy shows up, maybe somebody has a lawyer.

[00:10:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Really?

[00:10:24] Fred Glick: It could be a whole, as they would say in Yiddish, a whole mishigas. 

[00:10:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Really?

[00:10:28] Fred Glick: But most of ’em are happy because, you know, buyer and seller, “Hey, you know, my neighbor down the street’s really nice. They’ll watch your house. They have a key. You know, be careful of streets. He’s a little wacky.” You know, they have nice conversations most of the time.

It’s usually pretty pleasant, but every once in a while there’s a nasty one. So wet closings they’re called, meaning the money is there. Whereas California, you sign the forms on Monday, they fund it on Tuesday, recording on Wednesday. It’s a whole runout process as opposed to just wiring the money and the documents to the title, and then they just give everybody checks and they record. So it’s an interesting process and it will change when there comes blockchain.

[00:11:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah. So I didn’t realize that in the East Coast, the buyers and sellers meet. Like here…

[00:11:20] Fred Glick: Yeah. In a lot of states.

[00:11:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I’ve never met this seller when I bought a home.

[00:11:24] Fred Glick: Right. Because they use escrow companies.

Whereas back east, it’s just the title company who does all the title and escrow work, you know? And back here, well, even though you have title companies that do title and escrow at the same time by the same person. It’s still, it’s because of the dry closings.

That’s why. So.

[00:11:42] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And that’s easy.

What about Midwest? Like is there a dividing line?

[00:11:46] Fred Glick: Like every state is different. Even New Jersey is different in that. Southern New Jersey uses title companies. Northern Jersey uses attorneys. I mean, there’s no law, it’s just the way they’ve been doing it.

It’s like with me here in Southern California, these agents want to use their own escrow companies that tie into a title company. And they charge ridiculous amounts of money in cost per thousand. Whereas, you know, I use just a title company, Fidelity National, or can use First American or WG Title. I mean, there’s a bunch of them. And they charge a much lower price. Their agent down here is not helping the buyer and the seller.

[00:12:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:12:29] Fred Glick: They’re screwing their sellers. “Company we’ve been using them for 30 years.” You know.

[00:12:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Brought up a really good point that we shouldn’t gloss over. If you’re trying to relocate from, you know, New Jersey to California, or California or New Jersey, you need to familiarize yourself with the whole home buying process ’cause it’s not gonna be the same.

[00:12:50] Fred Glick: A hundred percent.

Ask your agent. Go into detail. What’s the deal? How does this work.

[00:12:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And how is it different? You can also ask, you can also ask your favorite ai, how is home buying different in Southern California versus New Jersey? What do I need to know? There you go. Then ask the agent and then you’ll come in.

[00:13:09] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:13:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: A little bit, a step up, more informed and.

[00:13:13] Fred Glick: Or ask the agent, “Hey, I heard that in Southern California they use separate escrow companies. Why are you doing that for me as a seller? Can’t you use a combined escrow title company, which will save me thousands of dollars? And why are you using these people?”

It’s a repetitive situation, whereas the title company can do all the work. And it’s gonna cost me less, so why should I pay more? And why did you pick these people out to charge me more? Knowing that there are cheaper options out there.

 Unfortunately this won’t get to every, every seller in Southern California, but the sellers should start asking these harder questions. And unfortunately, most of ’em are older. They don’t know to ask any questions, they’re just trusting.

And Susie from, you know, Coldwell Broker has been doing, you know, had been her friend for 50 years, and Susie still has an AOL email account and only wants to talk on a telephone.

Don’t get me started. Don’t get me started.

[00:14:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I have to really commend AOL for being so persistent. I still probably have four or five clients that use AOL email addresses.

[00:14:31] Fred Glick: It’s just scary.

[00:14:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: They’re not in the technology space. I mean, they’re in the, like the therapy space.

[00:14:36] Fred Glick: Anybody in the technology space using AOL should get out of the technology space.

[00:14:42] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Unless you wanna be ironic.

[00:14:46] Fred Glick: Oh. I don’t know. I can’t answer what their protocols are for security, but can’t be as good as having a Google Workshop account. So, or even a basic Gmail. Get a Gmail at least.

Here’s what drives me crazy too, while I’m on the subject, and if you’re listening as a buyer, or a seller, this will sound more like a bitch than, than a reality.

But it is a reality. Real estate agents who work for a company, take our company, Arrivva. I give everybody an email address. It costs me 12 bucks a month. But this way, all the corporate email is in there. It is by law that you have to keep every single communication between anybody that has to do with a transaction.

And if you’re using your Gmail account, Susie, Susieqrealtor@gmail.com and you work for Compass 27 or somebody, and you leave and you go to Coldwell Broker. And there’s some problem with, with a deal that Susie was involved in, and Susie, “Oh, I delete my Gmail.” I don’t even, it’s like, no lady, it’s against the law.

You can’t do that. You can’t delete the emails. So they have no control. So all these, especially the big companies, they, they don’t care. They just let everybody use Gmail, AOL, whatever.

[00:16:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s amazing.

[00:16:15] Fred Glick: But it’s, it’s unprofessional too. That’s another question. And smart sellers should ask, “What’s your email address?”

And if they don’t give you their corporate email, you know, think about that. Why aren’t they doing it? What are they game? Are they playing? How hard is this to do? So I’m bitching again about minutia, but they kind of need things. They really do, and it all adds up.

[00:16:41] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, that minutia is one of those sure tail lines that you’re not dealing with someone that has the technology or the skillset. They may be a people person. You don’t need a people person, as we’ve all seen. I’m just joking. You don’t need, you need someone that knows the details and can actually do project manage through the transaction.

[00:17:01] Fred Glick: I’m trying. I’m looking. Well, I became carless about two weeks ago, so I’ve been living in LA without a car.

[00:17:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I thought you was living in LA in a car.

[00:17:12] Fred Glick: There’s a lot of people doing that too. So I’ve had some Waymo interesting experiences, and I’ve gotten some free Waymo’s because of it. So that’s been fun and it’s nice to have Waymo and my God, if you’re a woman, please, if there’s Waymo’s available, take a Waymo, not an Uber or Lyft.

Oh my God, there’s no creeps. Anyway, so I start looking for cars and you know, you gotta call these stupid car dealers, and they all have the same format of their websites. Only you can, you can’t ask ’em a question, you can only give them your contact info, and then you get just the same person.

I don’t care who they are, they’re all trained the same to be, “Oh, I’m your best friend. Oh, how? Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to? And hey, are you local?” What the frick does that matter? Okay. “Oh, we want to get you in here for a test drive.” It’s like, no, really? Is that the way it works? It is like I ask questions about warranties or something, car dealers get AI to answer questions about your inventory. It’s not hard. Okay? Stop having these salespeople who just annoy people.

[00:18:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Hmm.

[00:18:29] Fred Glick: They’re hated. They’re absolutely hated. And a friend of mine asked me, “Who do you hate more real estate agents or car dealers?” I said, “You know what? Car dealers still win.”

They haven’t changed what they’re doing in 60 years. I’m telling you, it’s, it’s pathetic. And it’s like I said to the guy, like, “Dude. I don’t need to be your best friend. You don’t have to ask me those friendly questions. I’d just like you to answer the question. If I’m interested, I’ll come in, I’ll test drive it. I’ll make the decision myself.”

So you don’t have to ask, you don’t have to go through the script that, that your sales manager gave you. Just throw it out with me ’cause it’s not gonna work. I’m not gonna give you the forwarding answers that you want me to give from your forwarding questions.

Okay guys, everybody. I don’t sit here and bitch all day. I get work done, but I’d like to have, the things I bitch about, if they could go away, I’d be even more efficient.

[00:19:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah.

[00:19:24] Fred Glick: And that’s why, let me just announce if you’re calling our main number that you get off the website or got from some site, you’re going to get Amy. Amy is our AI receptionist. Now Amy doesn’t know everything yet, but she’s gone to know and just make it easy. There’s no need to really talk right up front when you just have questions.

That are answerable by text or email or by an. So start thinking like that everybody, it’s gonna get more and more like this in your world and you’re just gonna have to deal with it.

So learn to deal with it. But you know.

[00:20:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Right now, Amy can help you schedule a call. Amy can answer questions about buying a home general questions. So yeah, she’s probably quicker than dealing with a customer service representative.

[00:20:14] Fred Glick: Exactly. So. I appreciate it. If you really, really, really, really, really think you need to talk to me, you, Amy can let you know that she will alert me in two minutes.

Because there are no emergencies in real estate. There are only deadlines, okay? You have an emergency 9 1 1? Okay. Some people call me and, “Oh, I have to talk to Fred right now.” No, you don’t. You know, they’re all excitable, or this is the way they’ve been doing it, or they’re just pushy, but I’ll, but then I will text you.

To say, “Really, what is it that you really want to talk to me about?” And then you’ll say something and then I’ll say, “Okay, here’s the answer.” And then you never have to talk to me. You know? So let’s keep talking to people who want to talk with each other. And in business, use the ai. That’s what it’s there for.

It’s here to help. We’re only here to help.

[00:21:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You’re to insist in a lot, making sure that you spend your day having more important conversations.

[00:21:14] Fred Glick: Exactly, exactly. So to get realtors to understand this, it’ll take a millennium, but…

[00:21:22] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:21:22] Fred Glick: We’re gonna do it anyway.

[00:21:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We are doing it.

[00:21:25] Fred Glick: Yep. Yes we are.

[00:21:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well.

[00:21:27] Fred Glick: Okay. That’s enough of We Fixed Real Estate this week.everyone. See you next week.