From Calls to Contracts: Mastering the Home Buying Process With Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. Of Arrivva

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

• Explore the art of effective real estate communication 
• Discover the importance of well-prepared contracts and how to avoid costly mistakes
• See how to handle ethical dilemmas in real estate, including disclosing potential environmental hazards
• Understand the nuances of walkthroughs and what buyers should verify before closing
• Dive into the ongoing strength of buyer broker commissions and how they impact the market
• Learn why a fully underwritten pre-approval could be the key to winning a competitive offer
• Gain insights on how market context influences competition and how to navigate deals as the holiday season approaches

In this episode with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr.

Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. of Arrivva take you behind the scenes of real estate, revealing the essential steps to navigating the home buying process. 

From debunking the outdated reliance on phone calls to breaking down the importance of clean, well-prepared contracts, this episode offers expert insights on what it takes to succeed in today’s real estate market. Dive into the ethical dilemmas agents face, the quirks of real estate contracts, and the importance of fully underwritten pre-approvals in securing your dream home. Tune in for tips on mastering communication, avoiding costly mistakes, and staying ahead in a competitive market.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• René Pérez Jr. on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• Slack
• Redfin 
• Zillow
• EMF Meter

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Welcome to We Fixed Real Estate. Sitting here with Fred and René, having a heated pre-podcast meeting discussion about calling. Is the phone dead, Fred?

[00:00:10] Fred Glick: Yes. Okay. So here’s my issue and here’s my solution. And actually, I want to say from the beginning that some agents have actually appreciated this.

So in real estate, these people have since the dawn of the invention of the telephone in the real estate business have just called up, “Hey, what’s going on with your property?” Or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or the best one, “Tell me about your buyers.” And I still get that one, which is completely illegal.

My answer is always they’re fully qualified and here’s our fully underwritten pre-approval. Period. But these people want to call because it’s a social situation. Real estate agents are looking to, a lot of them, most of them, make friends with you, go around and go to open houses with you, and, “Oh, this is the kitchen.”

I swear to God, I’ve heard this, “This is the kitchen.” Really? The thing with the stove and the refrigerator, I thought it was the bathroom and I was going to be in the freezer. I mean, literally, this is what they do. We look at this as a business. Yes, we want to be friendly and we want to be professional with you, but we don’t need to make friends, but these agents are on clicks. There’s all the little realtor meetings. And that’s why they have the local associations and they have this meeting and that meeting in this party and that party, it’s like, no, this is a business. You want to get together? Fine. But their whole thing is every one of them calls each one of them.

And then guess what? We work with, René and I work on every deal. So therefore the two of us need to know everything. So I’m on the phone with somebody, and for some reason I don’t recall something, and René doesn’t know about it, and then he calls, and it just gets to be a cluster. You know what?

So we just sent him. “Hey, just email us your question.” Here was a simple one. It’s like, “Well, why is your buyer wanting a closing date in 2 months instead of recent?” And I just wrote back, “Hey, he’s got capital gains. He’s paying cash and he doesn’t want to cash them until next year.” So it’s simple things, but they still want to call. Calling is they think it’s the only way to do it.

So they can have a conversation with you. Must be honest. We don’t want to talk to them about our buyers.

[00:02:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Agent to agent calls.

[00:02:27] Fred Glick: Agent to agent.

[00:02:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You’ve got a person buying a home from you. You’re going to talk to them.

[00:02:33] René Pérez Jr.: Well, I actually counter that as well. I’m actually going to agree with this on with Fred here, I mean, you know what?

I understand plans when we get on the on the call to understand like how the offer is going to be written, but there’s a lot of things where like if you just click on the link that we send you, you get your, you made your question answered, right? It’s like, oh, it’s simple. Sometimes it’s simple questions as, “Can we go see this house?”

Like, we don’t need to get on a phone call to discuss how we’re going to go to these houses out, right? It’s like, tell me when you want to go see the property and we’ll schedule it. So, even with, I think it’s to buyers as well, but it’s mostly agents, right? Who do want to call for every little thing. It’s just a difficult, it’s just difficult to know when you should and when you shouldn’t answer the phone, because sometimes it’s, it’s going to help the negotiation, right?

Whenever you do answer the phone, you get to learn a little bit more about the agent. I like to answer the phone because I know that there’s a lot of times where you can feel agents out and that’s how I typically know whether we need to go incredibly more over list or if they’re just fishing for offers because I can hear her and I can feel their anxiety over the phone.

Because a lot of these people, they think they’re professional phone callers, but they really aren’t, and that’s, I think that’s the problem.

[00:03:50] Fred Glick: It’s the only way they know is the thing. And you know, it’s, as time goes on, we’re in a litigious society. And it’s a, he said, she said, phone call’s not going to do it.

You know, we have Slack channels that we deal in, so everything’s in there. We actually record our initial call with, well, we do a Google Meet to talk to a prospective buyer or seller, or even for a mortgage. And then it’s there. We all remember it. We dump it in the Slack channel. So we want to be incredibly transparent and our communications through Slack, you know, I’ve gone through all this, I’ve never seen another agent have a Slack channel. They just don’t get it. They’re still communicating with texts and emails with their owners. And…

[00:04:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You could also do a huddle on Slack too. So you do that.

[00:04:42] Fred Glick: Absolutely. Oh, we do. We do them all the time. Hey, let’s have a huddle and talk about what we want to offer.

And here’s some, you know, this and that about it. And then the agents also get off on just, you know, texting a million things. It’s like, they want us to answer everything all the time we have on. Now you can’t stop texting. I mean, we’ll get to it if it’s important, but it’s like, she’s telling me her feelings and it’s like, we’re dealing with a contract.

I mean, and don’t get me started on how bad your agents submit contracts. Here’s what I want you to do. If you’re searching for an agent, ask them to fill out a contract for a property that’s, you know, you think you’re going to want to do and see what the contract looks like. Okay. You’re not going to sign it.

You just want to see how they prepare it. It’ll scare you. Some of that stuff is missing, dates are missing.

[00:05:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: How do the average person knows it’s missing though?

[00:05:42] Fred Glick: Because it’s a logical fill-in-the-blank contract. It’s pretty easy. Or send it to somebody, send it to an attorney friend who does real estate. And just to see, I mean, we’re happy to do that for people.

We pride ourselves on getting contracts done right. Cause we understand what’s going to happen down the road. And it seems like these agencies just throw these people out there and don’t check their work and, you know, clean it up later. And that’s why their errors and omissions costs. And by the way, if you’re an agent looking to go somewhere, and you have to ask the question, “How much is my errors and omissions going to cost me if I join your company?”

And what you’re doing is paying errors and omissions based on the previous people of how terrible they were. So that tells you about the manager who doesn’t teach them how to do it and or doesn’t check the work. I mean, for example, are, you know, is like nothing. We’ve never had a claim knock on, knock on everything. And if you come and work for us, you don’t have to do paperwork. We do it all because then we know it’s right. And we screw it up, that’s on us. So it’s like, it’s another thing about agents. I mean, all these agents who do these terrible contracts have the most beautiful pictures of themselves holding it or like this, and it’s a JPEG inside their Gmail accounts that they’re sending out. And it’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to see this on every email you send.” It’s just, it’s just so 1994. I mean, it’s just, it’s awful. I’m bitching and yelling, but I mean, you really got to check out who that person is.

It’s more than just their worth they’re going to tell you about. Well, if they got worth, show you how good they can do a contract and how clean it’s going to be. And what are your negotiating skills? What would you do if this situation come up or that situation comes up, you know, really put them on their heels because people don’t know what questions to ask because the agent wants to take on the entire conversation and tell you how great they are.

I mean, we’ve gone through this with some, we had a, we have a seller now who, it’s crazy listing and it’s actually under contract, but he was kind of, you know, it’s been a long time, the house is kind of a mess, but he was still shopping for other agents. And what he realizes we were taking care of him and there’s just saying, “Oh, you didn’t use a local agent.”

And that’s such B. S. I mean, if you don’t want a local, if you need a local agent to sell your property, how come they’re accepting our contracts when we’re representing buyers and we’re not from that local area? So, and what would you need a local agent to bring in an agent from far away? It’s the buyers who look on Redfin and Zillow and see the property.

And that’s when they make offers and go see properties. It’s got nothing to do with you being a local agent as a listing agent. I will, I will total, I’m blue in the face if I keep going on this one. So now, let me take a breath. René?

[00:08:52] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, I mean, you kind of stole a lot of my conversation there.

[00:08:56] Fred Glick: Sorry, dude.

[00:08:57] René Pérez Jr.: Here’s the thing, it’s about the transparency of purchases, and I do think that there is a lot of value in talking over the phone. So I do want to make the note that, you know, I mean, all of our clients, they want us to get on the phone with the other agents, but here is a nuance that I want to bring up a lot of clients want us to be on phone calls with the other agents, because they have heard articles about how a good, what a good agent is going to do. Right?

And I think that there’s a lot of misconceptions and a lot of articles that one, might be clickbait and two, have started based on a really, really bad negotiation tactics, right? Because more than an agent does on the phone, if they have not been trained and for whatever reason, I’ve spoken to agents that have been in the industry for 20, 30 plus years.

And they love to tell me just like Fred likes to say, like, “Oh, I’ve been in the industry for 30 years.” And they still make these mistakes. Right? There’s a lack of training on phone conversations and phone procedures or best practices. So it’s, I think the reason that Fred and I really work together is because we understand that for the most part, we want to have everything in writing. Right?

I’ve been in the industry long enough where I do make sure that it’s really, really limited to when I do get on the phone, but sometimes I do see when there’s texting back and forth. Where it’s like texting for 20 minutes where a 45-second conversation would have finished the call. And that’s the thing, right?

Like the flexibility of like, what’s efficient. I mean, you see how in the United States, there’s going to be a, a Department of Government Efficiency, right? And sometimes, in the pursuit of efficiency of like not getting on a call, it becomes inefficient, right? So that’s where like you really need to figure out like, what’s the middle ground of efficiency?

Because it’s like, you know what? Sometimes you get on the phone because your agent’s in a phone call. A lot of the times there’s been messages where even with our own clients, they feel like we’re yelling at them, but it’s just because its text loses translation. You’re not able to kind of give the nuance of personality of a voice.

And that’s why AI won’t, won’t really be able to replace humans because you can’t really do that with a, with the LM. Right. That’s what I’ll finish.

[00:11:17] Fred Glick: Eventually we’ll be like, how from, what’s that movie? Yeah. 2000.

[00:11:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, René, you’re brought up probably the best point of what I emphasize in our business, sometimes a phone call can cut through 30 emails of bullshit, especially if the, especially if the email gets derailed or the text message gets derailed and suddenly people are misinterpreting what you’re saying. That’s the number one time that the phone, you got to hop on a call.

[00:11:47] René Pérez Jr.: Yup.

[00:11:49] Fred Glick: No, I agree. There’s times for it, but I mean the majority of them, you know, just ridiculous, but…

[00:11:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, if you’re using the phone call to like sell, or you’re using the phone call to kind of like ingratiate yourself to the person that gets tired real fast.

[00:12:03] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. I mean, the most common phone conversation that I get from agents is, “Is the home still available?” And it’s just like you could have, like, Fred hates this call. I appreciate it just because I do them too. I send a message because if a house is on the market for 20 or 30 days, most often than not, there might be negotiations in place, right?

There might be an offer that was accepted, but it hasn’t been changed to pending. Right? So I think it is important for an agent before they waste our time touring to make sure that the home is available, but calls like them, they don’t need to be on a phone call. They can be a technical saying like, “Hey, is the home still available? I have clients who have not viewed it, but want to see if there’s no offer accepted.” That’s it.

[00:12:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Wouldn’t the MLS be updated? I can’t think of…

[00:12:46] Fred Glick: What happens, the MLS doesn’t get updated until you put the deposit down. So that could be two or three days.

[00:12:52] René Pérez Jr.: It’s well, it’s a best practice, right? So one way of using the MLS is to, once you accept a contract, you immediately change the MLS to say contingent or pending.

But I, one of the best practices for agents is that the contract’s not really a contract until there’s money involved, right? So once they’ve made a deposit, which usually takes either one to two, three days, however long it takes for, you know, a buyer to submit the escrow, then it’s like, okay, it’s a real purchase.

We know what’s going on and then change to contingent or to pending. Some agents then are sneaky and they it’s accepted, but because it’s contingent and it might fall out of contract, they don’t change it, right? so in those cases, it’s you know, it’s we never know when someone actually accepted a contract, but they’re trying to be sneaky and you know, we can’t really do anything to control that.

But for the most part, once someone has accepted an offer, it takes a couple of days for them to change.

[00:13:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I can see now why you’d be getting so many phone calls. Cause you never know. Yeah, is, are you guys holding in your back pocket? Just in case someone else puts in an offer because it’s not…

[00:14:02] Fred Glick: And there’s nobody, there’s nobody policing this stuff, by the way.

So agents get away with whatever they get away with. We had one that didn’t put it as pending until seven days. It’s like, really, even though the deposit was made, well, the inspection’s not done, they said. Well, you know, so we’re reporting to the MLS. So it’s crazy. Anyway, moving on.

[00:14:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Moving on. Well, that was fascinating. That was educational. Got to know what’s this other thing we’re talking about.

[00:14:32] Fred Glick: I have an ethical issue. So I want to bring it out, out to the public. So we have these buyers who saw this house a few months ago with another agent, but that doesn’t matter.

That’s not the point. They call us up and they say, “Hey, we want to get it.” They actually took it off the market and the buyer calls and signed a contract with them. And then we go back to the agent and say, ” Hey, our people are interested in doing an offer. They’re real, they’re cash. They want to get in and just have one more look.”

And the agent gets back to me and says, “The seller, the wife is just getting home from having brain surgery for cancer and needs to recover. And their goal is to move to San Diego as soon as they can.” Whatever. So here’s the secondary part of this, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. The property is in El Segundo, and if you look at a map, go to Google, Google Maps or Google Earth and look at El Segundo.

You’ll see it’s right next to a couple of things. The Los Angeles International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, the ARCO, or I forget which company, refinery. They take in, we see boats out, I don’t know, a mile or two who plug in the oil that they’re bringing in from wherever, and that oil is going underneath the ocean into this plant, and it’s being refined, and there’s also a very, very large electrical power station.

So, these people have been living there a long time. So let’s just make the generic assumption that this woman has brain cancer because she’s been living near an airport, been living near an oil refinery and been living near this electric plant. I mean, that’s a triple whammy. And I’m saying to myself, well, first of all, do I try to use this as leverage in negotiating? And the thing is about the buyers is they’ve lived in the area free for years. Guy grew up here. So he knows the story with the property and the fact that this woman came home with brain cancer, but he still wants to buy this place. You see the ethical conundrum that I’m in?

[00:17:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You know, it’s like just tell him. But I think have they proved it? Is it? Or is this hypothetical?

[00:17:09] Fred Glick: No, it is completely not proven. But it’s just like if you got the chance to live near these three things or not…

[00:17:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Would you?

[00:17:20] Fred Glick: Exactly? So I’m in this ethical conundrum. But you know what? I mean, he has said over and over to me. I’m not worried about it.

I’m not worried about it. It’s like, “Okay, dude.” We’re going to give him all the disclosures. Everything is going to sign everything. The Natural Hazard Disclosure should be really interesting. The NHD as it’s called because that describes all the crap that’s wrong. It’s like in Northern California, it tells you, especially if you’re in the peninsula, it’s going to tell you, you know, not that you’re going to die from an earthquake, but how you’re going to die from an earthquake.

In other words, anything in the flats, like, I don’t know, San Carlos along where the 101 is, you’re going to get sucked into the ground. You know, it’s like, that’s how you’re going to die, as opposed to being up in the hill where everything is just going to collapse and it’s going to, you’re going to roll down the hill and die.

So it, it’s California, welcome to disaster city, but this one’s a little more than a normal thing. So I’m just throwing that out there and we’d love to hear anybody’s responses to this, so…

[00:18:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I mean, mine is it’s a free market. I mean, people can buy the house wherever they want if they understand the risks.

There’s probably a good chance that the house is already discounted from other neighborhoods that aren’t near the airport.

[00:18:40] Fred Glick: Oh, yeah, it’s worth, I don’t know, 150 less than the next town down, which is Manhattan Beach. The same house was there. I mean, easily, because that’s where my comps are coming from, because there’s not many comps in El Segundo. El Segundo, two years ago, was the international champions of Little League Baseball, by the way, if we all remember that.

[00:19:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I think I do.

[00:19:05] Fred Glick: So, I guess these kids are all roided up, you know?

[00:19:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay, now I pissed off El Segundo.

[00:19:11] Fred Glick: Nah, nah, nah, nah, just kidding. Kids, no, I mean…

[00:19:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Would you give the same ethical dilemma if someone wanted to buy their house next to high voltage power lines and EMFs?

[00:19:21] Fred Glick: Ah, let’s talk about that. Hang on a second, kids. I have a visual. This is worth it.

[00:19:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. I think I know what you’re showing me.

[00:19:30] Fred Glick: There we go.

[00:19:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The EMF transmitter or measuring.

[00:19:35] Fred Glick: Measuring. Yeah. Okay. So it can turn it on and, so that’s my reading for being near a computer. Obviously it’s going to be ugly.

So yeah, take this with you, especially if you’re going to go to a property that you have this situation. Matter of fact, I forgot to tell, we have a client interested in a couple of properties that have these in Fremont. But go there and see that. And probably, I’m going to say it should be part of the inspection.

I don’t know if the inspectors do that or not, but you may want to ask them. But it’s called an electromagnetic radiation tester. So every real estate agent should have one of those.

[00:20:25] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And where’s the one?

[00:20:27] Fred Glick: Yeah, this was like 30 bucks. I think.

[00:20:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, wow. Okay. It’s cheap enough.

[00:20:30] Fred Glick: I mean, yeah, I mean, you can get fancier ones for a couple hundred.

I don’t know what the difference is, but at least you get an idea if you’re going to be sitting at your swimming pool and there’s like 50 gazillion bits of radiation on, you know, it’s a problem.

[00:20:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Everyone should have. I mean, every agent should have one. But if you’re looking at how those houses and it’s somewhat important to you, 30 dollars is a small price to pay to just walk through the open house and see what the heck’s going on with the EMFs.

[00:20:57] Fred Glick: Totally. And we can put a link in the channel here for some, you know, one of them.

[00:21:01] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. That’s a handy, makes you look like a pro going through the open house.

[00:21:05] Fred Glick: Very cool. I got my beam me up Scotty device. I feel like I got a nerd going through it.

[00:21:14] René Pérez Jr.: That’s okay. René, do you carry one EMF detector? I have someone, I have one and I actually gave it to one of our clients, a while back as a, as a little gift, but yeah, I have a whole bunch of gadgets that I’ve bought over the years.

I have like a little device that checks if there’s like a beam, forget what it’s called.

[00:21:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: A Stud finder?

[00:21:37] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, I think that’s what it is. I think that’s what it’s called.

[00:21:40] Fred Glick: Yeah. Stud finder.

[00:21:40] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. Because you know, like, yeah, it’s kind of, it’s kind of easy to hit on the walls and figure it out, but you know, that device is kind of cool. Beeps really well, I have one of those.

[00:21:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Moving houses it’s hard, especially if it’s faster. There’s no way you can do it.

[00:21:54] René Pérez Jr.: I mean, I have like three measuring tapes around the car, like one in the front, one in the backseat and a whole bunch of…

[00:22:04] Fred Glick: And there an app on your phone too.

[00:22:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: What about a voltage tester?

[00:22:10] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, that one I keep in the front as well. I mean, it’s, here’s the thing, right? So talking about volt, voltage testing. So one of the, I think, one of the things after right up before closing that buyers want to do is a walkthrough. I’ve talked about the walkthrough before, which is you’re expecting, you’re going to go check on the home to see how it is.

And you’re mostly expecting it to be the way that you saw it during the open house. And if there was an inspection period during the inspection period, right? And the biggest concern is if it was staged or if there was furniture from the sellers that they didn’t break any doors or windows or that the appliances don’t work as expected, right?

It’s a lot of what was expected. They’re not giving you at the end of closing a new home. Right? And, sometimes there, it has been where buyers, you know, go in with their volt, with their voltage meter. And it’s like, that is an inspection item, right? That’s the reality of it.

And sometimes buyers find out that there is like one plug that doesn’t have power or that it’s not functioning the way that I expected it to work, but the problem is that that’s something that is more of an inspection item, not a walkthrough item, right? The walkthrough item is to really magnify the main things of a house, a broken window, a door that doesn’t, that’s not open, being able to open or close it, that you expect it to be able to open and close it.

Sometimes there’s a, there’s EV chargers. You know that the sellers didn’t pull those EV chargers, the doorbell, there’s a lot of ring doorbells or any of the smart doorbells. That’s the stuff that you’re looking for a walkthrough, right? But if you’re waiting for the walkthrough to check on those items for electrical, there’s might, there might be some disappointing disappointment there.

So that’s something, that’s an inspection item that you have to verify. You have to make sure that the inspector went through the entire house to go check on that all the plugs work. If it doesn’t, you know, someone during the open houses, every buyer should have a voltage meter. They can make sure that the, that there’s running, that there’s power running throughout every outlet.

[00:24:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. You might not want to check every outlet, but you might want to check to see if it’s actually – volts.

[00:24:20] René Pérez Jr.: Well, yeah. Yeah. And I think there’s actually, there’s buyers who want to go through every single outlet to make sure it works and I can’t blame them. Right? But that’s an inspection item. It’s not a walkthrough item.

[00:24:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Now you mentioned this ring doorbell. I mean, what is the assumption that something like that would convey?

[00:24:38] René Pérez Jr.: So that’s actually part of the contract, right? There’s a section that says like, we’re expecting the EV chargers, any smart devices, like even the Alexa’s, like sometimes those can convey with the house.

Especially if you live in the Bay Area where everything is tech-centric, there’s a lot of smart homes, right? Even like projectors, right? The projectors that might be attached, some cost over, you know, 4, 000, 5, 000, 10, 000 dollars even. And it’s kind of hard to remove them from where they put in the, on the ceiling of the home. So…

[00:25:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s a 400-dollar projector on there when the home toured of 10, 000 dollar one.

[00:25:14] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. So you kind of want to keep a, keep an eye on like what you expected that to be and you know, sometimes the sellers, they have some emotional attachment to whatever device they have, and it’s more of the, you know if they’re replacing it with a new device, that’s kind of at the same, with the same parameters, right? But yeah, that’s all, everything is part of the contract in terms of those smart devices.

[00:25:38] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Talking about contracts, what’s the strangest item you’ve ever seen someone request to convey?

[00:25:45] Fred Glick: The thing is about the contract, it’s for things that are attached to the property.

Anything other that’s not attached, like flower pots, furniture, or anything like that, if you’re getting a mortgage, I’m leading up to the answer to your question. But if you’re getting a mortgage, it has to say that all this crap, all this furniture, whatever it is, is conveyed at no cost. Because if it’s doesn’t say that, the lender is going to come back and say, “Well, you need to value every item and get a professional value it.”

And then whatever that value is, you have to take that off the sale price. And most agents don’t know this. They don’t have a clue unless they’re in Florida selling condos and they’ve done this for years and it’s all the same. So they learned the first time. But you’re you’re not asking it like if the hot tub is attached, you mark that there’s a hot tub.

There’s actually a spa checkmark in a contract and trying to think of sort of something that was crazy with a hot tub that they tried to convey. And I can’t remember what it was something like all of the, all of the accouterments to the hot tub and included like rubber duckies and stuff like that.

Or I remember something goofy like that, but we try to keep these things under control. You know, we know what’s going to happen with sellers. We know what’s going to happen if we represent buyers, you know, but…

[00:27:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: What do you do with like animals? Like, something about a house with a fish pond and it had a bunch of Koi in it.

[00:27:33] Fred Glick: Ah, the Koi pond is physically part of the property. The water and the fish are chattel. I mean, they’re not part of the property because it can be easily removed. So yeah, I do remember having these and we would, you know, say, “All fish convey with the property at no additional cost. Or sometimes people take the fish with them.

[00:28:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I would think so. Some of those quite can be very pricey.

[00:28:03] Fred Glick: Exactly. So you got, you got to say, I want this one. That’s 12. 3 inches. Mark the fish. I want these 4, you know, you can take the rest.

[00:28:15] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Or they might purchase the fish separately and use their rebate to purchase the Koi.

[00:28:21] Fred Glick: There you go. Another use for a rebate, by the way, our rebates are alive and well, because 95 percent of the deals we look at all have a buyer broker fee. I wonder why? Can you say conspiracy? Can you say, oh, it’s I can’t wait for the Justice Department to chime in. It’s still ridiculous.

[00:28:43] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Who’s going to jump in and chime in on that?

[00:28:48] Fred Glick: The current Justice Department. I don’t think Congress or former congressman gets is going to put this high on his priority list.

[00:28:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, we can hope.

Commissions are still strong and going strong.

[00:29:04] Fred Glick: I mean, we had an offer the other day, 28 offers in Fremont.

They were paying two and a half percent. Why? Why? Nobody has the answer for it. We do them…

[00:29:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The house the default commission costs at 6%. I was just kind of fooling around with the levers on, on what, you know, the house.

[00:29:24] Fred Glick: And they’re actually a brokerage. So that’s pretty interesting.

[00:29:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, I don’t know. It’s in there. If you look at the house and you’re like figuring out how much you would get, if you sold your house.

[00:29:32] René Pérez Jr.: Well, you want to hear conspiracies. I’ve noticed, you know what? I hadn’t seen that part on Zillow. That’s probably the complaint that I have from Zillow, but I do give props to Zillow because they seem to be the only, I guess, what would you call it? Marketing MLS? What would you call Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, Fred? What would the name of that be?

[00:30:01] Fred Glick: They’re syndicated websites.

[00:30:02] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. So I gave Zillow, props for being the, pretty much the only syndicator that I’ve seen that has the previous list price and sale price of a home that’s been in the market for a long time.

What I’ve noticed from Redfin and from other websites is, let’s say that a house did not sell in June and they relist in August. There’s no history of the changes of list price or anything. And Zillow is actually keeping those, that information, which is really valuable for the consumer, right?

To figure out like, “Hey, how has the market changed? What are the expectations? Has there been any change?” And it’s, I don’t know, it’s I think that also kind of makes it harder for a consumer to be able to do a lot of the work themselves, right?

[00:30:53] Fred Glick: But they got to, yeah, so they got to come to us or their agent and look in the multiple listing service and see what’s in there.

[00:31:00] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah.

[00:31:02] Fred Glick: Which is, you know, it should be just out there and transparent, but that’s the choice of the individual websites because I don’t think it’s required by the MLS, but it should be.

[00:31:15] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, I mean, that’s the biggest value of MLS though, right? It’s a, if you have the data to showcase what the past offers have been or list price, right? So…

[00:31:27] Fred Glick: The other thing you don’t know is how long it might’ve been off market before it went on market. So it could be forever these sites, crazy, crazy, crazy.

Anyway, let’s get to one last thing.

[00:31:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. What’s on the top of the mind for you?

[00:31:47] Fred Glick: Last month we had this one buyer and he refused to get a fully underwritten mortgage pre-approval. I mean, he just refused. We found out why, because his best friend’s in the mortgage business, but he really was shopping him and somebody else.

Ends up he goes under contract and we’re fine and he ends up going with, not with his friends. So he didn’t want to waste the credit or something, you know, whatever. But yesterday we had a different situation. We had buyers, we took them on as buyers. We told them get a fully underwritten pre-approval.

They had previously gone to somebody who said it’ll take a month. Said, “No.” They were doing a jumbo loan. So and actually they’re, they’re doing a conforming loan. So we could have done it in 48 hours, but they, we sent it to one of the big banks who was a little busy and didn’t, didn’t get it finished by the time there was a deadline.

So we put the offer in with like a, it was coming up on the weekend. So we, they told him we’ll have it on Monday. So we did a four or five-day, I forget mortgage approval. We put it, you know, the regular approval subject to the fully underwritten. We wrote them and said, “Look, it’s not going to be a problem.” Blah, blah, blah.

They ended up being the highest price and lost out because they didn’t have the fully underwritten mortgage pre-approval.

[00:33:15] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh no.

[00:33:17] Fred Glick: They couldn’t waive all the conditions. Yeah. And the risk was that they would lose, they didn’t, if they waived it. And for some reason the lender didn’t do it, they would have lost the 3 percent of their sale price, which is their escrow deposit.

And it was like, you know, a million, 4 million, 5, whatever it was. It’s a lot of money to just throw away with the idea of getting a house. Now he’s going to get the fully underwritten, they said now Friday, so he’ll be in good shape going forward. But to all of you who don’t want to get a fully underwritten pre-approval, there’s the lesson. Get it.

You’re going to have to go through the approval process anyway. You can, you know, when you get under contract, you go back to the fully underwritten mortgage company and their rate is, you know, quarter percent higher than somebody else. You can go to the other company or make two applications.

Nobody says you can’t make two applications. It might cost you some money for an appraisal on both, but, you know, it’s and we’ve had people who do 2 applications and decide, like, 5 days before. So it’s a little bit of a pain. Sometimes the escrow companies charge you a little more for doing double work, but the mortgage companies, which, you know, whatever, but we can’t stress it enough.

We’re not here to just hear ourselves talk. This is the real world thing, especially we still have Fremont. Now again is the epicenter of Looney Tunes, Cupertino, Looney Tunes. If you’re going to buy in a Looney Tunes location, gotta be super prepared. And even the fully underwritten doesn’t work sometimes.

You’re going to get beat out by cash deals. That’s why we have our cash offer program. Anyway, I’m talking to him blue in the face about it. So, but we can’t make you do it, but if you’re going to be that against it and you want to buy in Fremont, we can’t even, we can’t even represent you because we know we’re going to lose.

Why would we write contracts where we know we’re going to lose? So F-U-M-P-A, FUMPA, fully underwritten mortgage pre-approvals do it.

[00:35:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. No, it makes entire sense. You’re not going to go into a, you know, a game without being prepared. You want to win it, especially in a hot market, unless you’re…

[00:35:40] Fred Glick: Going to play tennis with a racket. Yeah. You can hit it off your hand, but you know, doesn’t work.

[00:35:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Good advice. René, last thoughts?

[00:35:53] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. Well, my last thoughts were going to be a little market update about an offer that we made this week. And you know what? I think one of the issues with saying like, “Hey, one offer had 26 offers,” is that it’s all really just home-to-home, right?

I refuse to make the general assumption that just because one house received 26 offers that every other house in the entire Bay Area is going to be that competitive. Right? Sometimes it’s just street to street, right? Where, you know, on one side of the street, there is a sewer that, you know, that you can see from the backyard or that there’s just no backyard, right?

So it’s just like, it’s really case to case. So I, that’s part of what a good agent should do is, you know, figure out why that house was ultra-competitive. Right? And sometimes you do have to deal with the fact that some agents are not going to be transparent, right? Some agents are going to be bluffing about how many offers they received.

And, you know, sometimes a lot of the offers are because there was a gimmick in the pricing structure. If a house is going to sell for two million dollars and they listed it at a million, well, of course, you’re going to receive 30 offers because people think that they’re going to get the deal of the century. Right?

So I think it’s all, you know, I mean, Fred, I don’t think said this in the entire episode, but it still boils down to context, right? Of every residential transaction. So, we are working with deals right now. We’re getting them for either right at list or even slightly below list.

So there’s again, every house is case to case.

[00:37:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Really? Do you see prices dropping a little bit right now?

[00:37:38] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. I mean, you have markets like Miranda where they do have the great schools, but things like, buyer insurance and, you know, for buyers, you know, it kind of pushes away the values a little bit downward.

I think Oakland is still, being hurt by market conditions, San Francisco, really, there’s a lot of pockets that are not selling a lot of them. Things that would have gone for two million that are still in the market after 60, or even six months now. So…

[00:38:12] Fred Glick: Yeah, parts of Los Angeles for sure, quieting down, the Hollywood Hills never really picked up after the mansion tax.

[00:38:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:38:22] Fred Glick: So that, and it trickled down even to the lower prices, parts of Orange County are sitting quietly. You know, the bottom line is single family houses and good, great school districts, they’re going to move. That’s still not going to be a problem. Parts of San Diego. Hey, how about that block of San Diego that you were talking about. Are they still all for sale there?

[00:38:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You know, another one just came to the market right next to me. They finished fixing it up. Everything’s going about six houses sold on my street and it.

[00:38:57] Fred Glick: Okay. So it’s picking up.

[00:38:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: They’re in pending, but they’re, the ones that have closed have all gone right around list price, maybe a few dollars below.

But yeah, it seems strong, at least where I am. But…

[00:39:10] Fred Glick: Yeah, well, now we’re coming up on Thanksgiving and between Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl. It’s usually pretty quiet, even though we’ve done deals on Christmas Day in the last three years. It’s just, you know, it’s here or there, but the buyers are slowing down.

Everybody’s getting into holiday mode. And then hopefully we get some rain in January, rain and cold. And, you know, that slows it down and it picks up around February. So…

[00:39:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: But as it picks up, it’s chance stars picking up at a higher price. It’s picking up in a more heated environment. So this lull stage might be a time to find the home.

[00:39:48] Fred Glick: See, you figured that out. That’s what we’ve been telling everybody. You know, everybody we’ve talked in the last couple of weeks, we’d say, “Hey, it’s a really good time that you called.” You know, of course, we still have 28 offers on a place because it’s Fremont, but, you know, maybe we have 15 offers instead of 28.

I remember with 28 offers was 27 losers. And probably half of them had no idea what was going on with terrible agents and submitting, you know, contingent contracts. So, you know, you figure a third of those buyers are super serious, know what they’re doing people. So that’s your competition.

Remember this. In situations where there’s more than one buyer, you’re not negotiating with a seller, you’re competing against the other buyers. You have to make yourself look prettier than them. It’s a beauty contest, you know, and if you’ve come out and say the right things and do your talent right and look good in a dress, you’re a winner.

I mean, they don’t have those things anymore, do they? But you know what I mean, I mean. So…

[00:40:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I do know what you mean, but it’s all going to be on paper because of anti-discriminatory fair housing. Can’t just dress up an address and write him a letter.

Exactly. On that note, this has been another episode of We Fixed Real Estate.

[00:41:08] Fred Glick: Yes, it has. And you didn’t screw that up.

[00:41:10] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I didn’t. It almost didn’t seem like it was done.

[00:41:12] Fred Glick: Yeah, it was wrong. Let’s do it again.

[00:41:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: See you guys next week.

[00:41:17] Fred Glick: Okay. Cheers.