How H-1B Layoffs Are Already Moving Home Values

Drew Hendricks00:28

Welcome to the latest episode of We Fix Real Estate. Drew Hendrix here and Fred Glick. Fred, how you doing?

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761500:35

Groovy man. It’s summertime. Everybody enjoying themselves and

Drew Hendricks00:40

I wish I was as groovy as you. I’m gonna start today off with a rant. I just got a rant right now.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761500:45

Go for it, dude.

Drew Hendricks00:47

If you were been listening to the podcast, remember that they’re putting sidewalks out in front of our like on on my street, a two mile

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761500:53

Right, right, right.

Drew Hendricks00:54

Long strip of sidewalks. And I’m like, what would it do to property values? And they were looking slick as they were getting closer to our house. I found out today our block is the only block in this two mile strip that isn’t getting new sidewalks.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761501:10

Why?

Drew Hendricks01:11

We’ve got 60-year-old di dilapidated asphalt, but they are technically sidewalks because our block was the only block that had existing sidewalks, even though they’re cracked and asphalt-y. So now when someone drives down sunset, they see beautiful sidewalks, beautiful sidewalks. Then we have our dilapidated section, and it’s that’s gotta be destroying the property value.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761501:35

I got a great idea for you. So here’s what you do. You get a sl get a sledgehammer and a bunch of your neighbors. You literally sledgehammer the entire part that’s terrible, take it with a backhoe and put it into the middle of the street so no cars can go up or down the street. I think that’ll get somebody’s attention.

Drew Hendricks01:53

Yeah, that would definitely do it. I talked to the guy, he’s like, Yeah, the budget only called for the areas that didn’t have existing sidewalks. So and these some of these other houses got

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761502:02

Okay. Your tax dollars pay to repair the sidewalks?

Drew Hendricks02:06

Some of these other houses got full retaining walls, perfect looking like retaining walls in front of their yard. They actually got their front yard regraded, their d driveways look new. Ours still has the same cracked asphalt.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761502:21

Time to talk to your city council person and come to their office.

Drew Hendricks02:24

I did.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761502:25

Bring bring asphalt to their office, you know, bring cracked

Drew Hendricks02:28

I did this.

That’s how I spent my morning and it was like, “Sorry, no budget,” which is the get out of jail free card for city council members.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761502:38

Take it out of your salary, dude. Believe me.

Drew Hendricks02:41

Jimmy Bull.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761502:42

Believe me, any municipality’s got money sitting around. There’s reserve accounts. There’s stuff. So, you know, all these guys want to get their mistresses on the payroll. There’s money, okay? So

Drew Hendricks02:53

Yeah. That was that that was my rant. That was my rant.

So if you live in an area where you are the city did everything for all the neighbors around you, except for you, you’re not alone.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761503:04

Yeah, well now I guess Drew’s running for city council.

Drew Hendricks03:09

So that was my rant.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761503:09

No. Yeah, and that

Drew Hendricks03:09

Let’s let’s let’s get back to that peaceful groovy

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761503:12

That hurts your property value because you look like, you know, the slums.

Drew Hendricks03:16

Uh-huh.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761503:17

You know, based on the risk. So contact the taxing authority and say, you need to reduce my taxes.

Drew Hendricks03:24

Yes. So this is Vista California for everyone that wants to investigate. And my house is the easiest one to find. It’s the one that doesn’t have sidewalks.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761503:29

There you go. No, I would apply to find out how well to get a clawed agent to write the proper letters, to complain about that, and to get your taxes reduced while it’s still ugly because it could take years. So there you go. Another use for AI.

Drew Hendricks03:49

Well that’s

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761503:49

There you go. Somebody vibe code as a website, put in your address, and send all kinds of complaint letters to everybody. It’s a beautiful idea.

Drew Hendricks03:56

Talk about vibe coding. What about that guy on TikTok we were talking about?

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761504:00

God, so there’s a lunatic on TikTok. Yep, I know there’s more than one.

But this dude, he takes his microphone from his attached corded headset.

And he puts it up to his mouth like this.

Dude, you don’t have to do anything now. We can just laugh at here’s what I did. I hooked it to this and hooked it to that and made it go this and did that and you don’t need agents anymore now. You got all the d

Drew Hendricks04:32

I guess you’re ranting too. So what was the

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761504:35

It’s like, really, dude? Well, you forgot a few things. Like, once you find the property, how are you going to get into it? How are you going to make a physical offer with the proper forms? Do you know about getting disclosures and inspections and how you do that? I mean, the guy, it’s kind of cute, and for an investor, generic investor, tech bro, dude who wants to build all this, but he’s talking about getting rid of.

Realtors and brokers because of this. Well, you know what? All he’s doing is going on to Realtor.com and Redfin and all that would basically have the same information. So it’s

Drew Hendricks05:14

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761505:15

Like just set up a search on Redfin for certain properties. That’s all. You know, he’s got it. What’s a good deal? Well, you know, here’s the problem. There’s no national database of what everybody pays for rent. You can

Drew Hendricks05:29

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761505:30

Kind of get an idea. We used to scrape Craigslist to get an idea. 

Drew Hendricks05:34

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761505:34

My first, one of the first websites I came up with gazillion years ago, with a friend of mine I played ice hockey with who works at Palantir, who’s got, you know, he’s Sheldon Cooper. I mean, he’s probably got like a 300 IQ. We came up with this idea where if you didn’t know where anything about a city you were moving to this.

We scraped Craigslist and we basically took the rents in different

Drew Hendricks06:05

Hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761506:05

Areas and then color-coded it. So if the code was if the color was red, you’ll know those are the lowest priced apartments. If it was green, it was the highest priced apartment. So without giving crime statistics, this was kind of telling you the good areas and the bad areas to go.

Drew Hendricks06:27

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761506:28

It was pretty simple. It was pretty fun. was called Rent Scoper. Rent Scoper.

Drew Hendricks06:31

Rent scoper.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761506:33

I still have the URL. I don’t know I don’t know what I’m doing with it. And I think I still have Homescoper. the infamous homescoper that we have all screwed up on

Drew Hendricks06:40

Is that the predecess home scope or

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761506:44

Facebook. Yeah. It’s another story. But you know, there’s stuff out there that’s you know, this guy’s cuckoo for cocoa puffs. But he also his his TikTok

Not only does real estate, he’s doing everything you can vibe coach.

So, you know, maybe one thing’ll be good,

but you know, beware of stuff like this, ’cause you don’t really need to do this to find this stuff. I mean there’s enough out there. So

Drew Hendricks07:12

And it’s also the thing about vibe coding is it’s very easy to get a something that looks like it works. But once you do once you delve into it and have to do

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761507:18

But it does yeah, you still need somebody to take you home.

Drew Hendricks07:21

the the final functionality for it to actually work the way people expect it to, that’s where it takes

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761507:27

Right time.

I call it third base. In the baseball analogy, it’s you it gets you to third base. You’ve hit a triple. Guess what? Somebody still has to hit a single to get you in all the way to home, you know? So you’re always gonna need somebody who knows what they’re doing to tweak it afterwards. I’m sure six months from now we’ll look silly saying this, ’cause everything’ll be perfect, ha ha ha in the AI world. But now it’s

It’s you’re right, it’s crazy ’cause I don’t code. So I start coming up with this stuff and it’s like then I say, Hey true, dude, I got this and then he just laughs at me. So

Drew Hendricks08:07

No.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761508:08

Yeah, there’s a lot of people like us. 

Drew Hendricks08:09

Yeah.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761508:10

But there’s you know, selling the sizzle. 

Drew Hendricks08:13

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761508:14

This is the AI sizzle time. look what I coded. But be careful out there, kids, especially if you don’t know anything.

Drew Hendricks08:23

Absolutely.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761508:25

For sure.

Drew Hendricks08:27

We were I’ve got don’t really have a great transition from AI other than all the new jobs that have been created for H one B one visas and how that’s affecting the job market as far as the inability for those people to come on over here.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761508:42

Yeah, northern Dallas, north of Dallas is where there was a ton of people who moved who had H one V H one B visas. If you don’t know what they are, it’s basically a visa that allows someone from another country to come in and work for, you know, a company that will sponsor them.

Drew Hendricks09:04

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761509:05

And if for us and what’s happening is a lot of people are getting laid off.

Values in North Dallas are going down because of it.

And these people need to find new jobs and new sponsors, let’s put it that way,

Drew Hendricks09:17

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761509:17

in thirty days. So you can’t just, hey, I I I qu you know, I’m not working for the I don’t know, Dell. Let’s use Dell. They’re in they’re in Dallas. and you have to go get a job with somebody big enough to be able to sponsor you on an H one. You can’t just say, I vibe coded this thing last night and let me start my own business.

Drew Hendricks09:39

huh.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761509:39

You know, you can’t just hang your hat on that and that’s a problem. So in Northern California, are we looking at that? Are are there people getting laid off? You know, it happens. The the industry’s transitioning to more AI. And I think people who have a background in tech and coding are switching their own brains to be able to work in the AI space.

as opposed to I don’t know HTML or whatever they they were they were working on. So

Drew Hendricks10:14

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761510:14

keep an eye on that because if there’s a tremendous amount of people getting laid off who have the H-1B visa and can’t go to another company, you’re gonna see them wanting to move. So that’s and then your values are going down. And if you’re a buyer, that’s the time to jump in.

you’re a seller, you’re not gonna get as much money. So i

Drew Hendricks10:40

I see, yeah.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761510:41

i it’s kind of that simple thing.

Drew Hendricks10:44

So you take a kinda keep your eye on the news and see when like Meta has mass layoffs in the Bay Area, there’s a good chance that there’s a lot of people that’ll be looking for another job so that they can keep their sponsor.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761510:58

Right. Or two or three months from then, you know, you’ll see more houses come on the market.

Drew Hendricks11:03

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761511:03

I mean it’s summertime,

you know,

it’s it’s quiet.

Not a lot of new listings coming up because it’s the summer. I mean, we’re seeing a drop in just generic activity, buyers, sellers, everything.

Drew Hendricks11:13

Mm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761511:15

It’s summertime.

Drew Hendricks11:15

I can definitely tell from site traffic and stuff and just general searches in the market that the things

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761511:22

Mm-hmm.

Drew Hendricks11:23

are simmering or settling. Just it’s just people are outside having

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761511:25

Yeah. Again, price reductions.

Drew Hendricks11:28

fun.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761511:29

The price reductions have started. The agents are I. I love this. Now, can somebody make sense of this? We requested disclosures and inspections on a pr generic property. We’ve told them the agent our our client went there on an open house.

Three days after they get the disclosures inspections, they they send me an email. Are they interested? Are they writing an offer? yeah, because you sent an email, they’re gonna write an offer now. The follow-up

Drew Hendricks12:01

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761512:02

is just it’s crazy. You know, I

it’s what we deal with. 

Drew Hendricks12:10

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761512:10

We deal with the insanity. But you know, the seller tells them, follow up with those people because you sent them a disclosure. Well, what good is that? What good is following up?

You know, someone answer me that question because yeah, forgot about that. 

Drew Hendricks12:26

Yeah.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761512:26

Again, this goes back to the listing agents thinking the buying agent is their partner to help them sell the house. And a little bit it is, but if the buyers have no interest, you know, like my buyer said, we hated the layout. So how

Drew Hendricks12:41

Uh-huh.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761512:41

Are you gonna fix that? You know, except with a sledgehammer.

It’s just silly stuff. This is the little silly stuff we deal with. You guys are probably bored by this.

Drew Hendricks12:50

I’d be s I’m surprised that a selling agent would even just assume you’re not doing your job by following up with your clients. Like you don’t you have

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761512:56

Yeah.

Drew Hendricks12:56

So you have so many clients that you don’t even ask them, are they interested in the house? Do you want to write an offer?

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761513:01

I don’t ever ask anyone if they’re interested. I tell them maybe there’s a deadline, but they’re gonna

Drew Hendricks13:07

huh.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761513:07

tell me. They’re gonna come back. I have clients that come back. my god, I love this house. This is great. Let’s work on doing it. I said, okay, let’s get prepared.

Make sure you have a fully underwritten pre-approval. Let me say that again. Make sure you have a fully underwritten pre-approval. and then go through the steps, review things, review the disclosures, inspections, and we’re we’re working on getting Claude within our Slack channels to

Drew Hendricks13:34

Yeah.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761513:34

Once we post it and then you can hit at Claude and it’ll summarize and do all the things we do. So we’ll let you know when we get that done. It’s work in progress. Wanna make sure it’s right.

Drew Hendricks13:47

Yeah, that’s gonna be great.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761513:49

Yeah, it’ll be super and make life easier. So anyway, that’s that’s my rant.

Drew Hendricks13:52

Yeah, you’re like the job the job as a buyer’s agent is to be like the Sherpa, helping people navigate that market, the project manager of the buying the house, not selling on a particular house. The only thing you’re selling them on is that they need an underwritten pre approval, otherwise they aren’t gonna be able to get the house. Any house they want.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761514:12

Yeah, and I had a it’s nice guy, a little older, and he’s got a house, he wants to buy a a new house in different location and he’s just gonna get a line of credit on his current house to use to buy the next house, and he just hasn’t done it.

And he said,

Drew Hendricks14:30

Mm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761514:30

My wife really liked this house. Well, we can’t put an offer in because she can’t approve the funds. So, okay. So, you know, gotta really stress, get the financials taken care of. That is number one. I tell people before they don’t even look at Redfin and Zillow, go get approved. 

Drew Hendricks14:48

huh.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761514:48

And then you can, you know, it’s like put your bathing suit on before you jump in the water. There’s a summertime reference. So yeah.

Drew Hendricks14:51

Yep. That’s good.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761514:56

Again and again I say that and you know, I get offers from people on listings where I I had one where there was an email from a loan officer saying that they were okay and thinking that was good enough. It’s like

God, there’s so many stupid agents out there.

Drew Hendricks15:12

Maybe back in nineteen fifty five.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761515:15

Yeah. I mean it’s just ridiculous. No proof of funds either. Offer was, you know, two hundred and fifty thousand under the market value of a house that was priced perfect. You know, it’s like, what do these people think? yeah, because you sent that in. Yeah, we’ll sign it. That’s beautiful. Can’t wait.

Drew Hendricks15:34

Yeah.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761515:36

This is what I deal with, people. This is why you pay me the big bucks, the flat fee big bucks. Because I gotta

Drew Hendricks15:41

Yeah.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761515:43

Swim through these kinds of people. You know, it’s crazy out there.

Drew Hendricks15:45

Yeah. Someone’s gotta navigate it.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761515:47

 And these are the things you don’t see as a prospective buyer or seller, and how you negotiate with these people and how you deal with these things. There, because there’s just a lot of craziness. But anyway. Moving on. What else we got? I know what.

So there’s always a an issue when there’s a house with solar panels. Either if it’s leased,

Drew Hendricks16:14

Yeah.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761516:15

Either if it’s leased or if it’s purchased, you still gotta deal with some kind of crap because there’s what’s called a UCC, Universal Commercial Code lien that’s put on a house when they put on the solar panels if it’s connected to something.

Like you may have bought your solar panels, but it still has to be connected to your own backup and sold to the grid. So the grid now has a piece of this. It’s a nightmare. Every deal is completely different, every company is completely different. These current solar companies, especially Tesla, are a nightmare to get a hold of. So before you sell a house, start dealing with the solar problem.

Because you’re gonna have to deal with it anyway, because it’s on the title. 

Drew Hendricks17:06

Mine. Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761517:08

So the title and you can’t get title insurance unless it’s cleared and transferred over and perfectly done. But anyway, in Europe somewhere, I think it was Sweden, they came up with a brilliant idea. They put solar panels between the rails on the train tracks,

Drew Hendricks17:29

Mm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761517:30

and so they were able to power.

not only the trains from it, but

Drew Hendricks17:35

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761517:36

they were able to export the power and literally power houses with it. It’s like w you know,

Drew Hendricks17:42

that’s great.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761517:43

it’s fantastic idea. And the other thing is, you know, this guy kept talking about every parking lot should be built with solar panels above it. And, you know

Drew Hendricks17:52

yeah. And in China they

have the reservoirs have solar power over it so they don’t it stops the evaporation. California should have it all the way up and down the canals. All through central Cal the Central

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761518:04

I didn’t even know about that. That’s brilliant.

Drew Hendricks18:07

Valley, imagine how much heat is there. If they could put solar panels on that whole five hundred mile stretch of canals, they could power most of everything. And you wouldn’t get the evaporation.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761518:18

Okay, this war with Iran caused the prices to go up, get the oil pri let’s get the hell out of the oil business. Okay? But these guys are so powerful and spend so much money with our with with clowns who will just do their bidding for them to suck every bit of oil out until there’s no more left, which is I don’t know, a hundred years from now or something. But it’s like, dude.

It makes no sense. It just it’s it it’s over. You know, we’ll let Exxon get into the solar business. I mean I’m sure they are, but get in bigger. Do it right. You know, we this is America. We’ve got gigantic resources, a gigantic country. It all makes no sense. So what the one of the other things I want to push, and it’s in the California legislature now, is plug-in solar.

so you basically take this solar panel, you put it on your balcony in an apartment and you plug it in and it reduces the amount of usage from the regular electric that you’re using and it powers up through solar. There’s a

Drew Hendricks19:31

Really?

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761519:31

few states that have passed it, but currently it’s going through the legislature in California. And that that would just be a I mean, the panels will cost I don’t know, a hundred bucks.

You plug it in and it’s

Drew Hendricks19:43

Yeah, they’ve gone way down.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761519:45

yeah.

It it’s a brilliant, brilliant idea and I just wanna put that out to everybody to call

Drew Hendricks19:50

So you can plug it back

into your internal grid.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761519:54

Exactly.

Drew Hendricks19:55

hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761519:56

Yeah, so you can i i it’s a fantastic idea. And the solar just makes so much sense. The sun ain’t going nowhere, kids.

Drew Hendricks20:04

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761520:04

You know, not at least for another billion years or something until it all explodes. But it’s there. It’s there every day. Even through the clouds, you’re still getting rays through it. And it just makes so much sense. And

I I think it was Honda or Toyota. One one of the Japanese brands actually put a solar panel on the top of the car so that it was able to do minimal amounts of things, but it cut down on the power. And

Drew Hendricks20:36

I remember I

Fisker did it, but the Fisker went out of business.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761520:40

Yeah, they’re they’re gone. But anyway, just solar just makes sense. I’m all about common sense as an old guy.

Drew Hendricks20:47

Absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761520:49

You know. It it just it just makes sense.

Drew Hendricks20:54

Think that was a rant filled episode in the midsummer.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761520:59

Yes. One more thing though. Beware

Drew Hendricks21:02

I forgot.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761521:02

of this. Okay. You know, you have

these gutters on your house, and the gutters take the water and usually put it through the d

Drew Hendricks21:12

yeah, I forgot about that. Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761521:13

and and and you know, it drains out and don’t have to worry about it. Or a lot of people take the rainwater and put it in giant vats and use it to you know, take care of plants and whatever.

Well, there was a dude in Oregon who did this. and

he got convicted and sentenced to jail for collecting and using rainwater on his own property.

So these psychopaths in some city in Oregon, and we can put the link up to the TikTok that I found it from, what they say is all the water, rainwater belongs to them, so they can use it as a municipality. That’s their law. But it’s like they don’t have air rights to your house, and in the air is the water.

Drew Hendricks22:12

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761522:13

It’s it’s insanity.

It’s absolute insanity. And they just need to build a bigger water retention thing ’cause I can’t believe they have so much use for everybody’s rainwater. It makes no sense.

Drew Hendricks22:28

And I I can’t believe that a a average home could collect enough rainwater to make a difference to the municipality’s

water table.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761522:35

Yeah, and Oregon, you know, like Seattle area. I mean it it’s rainy up there. So

Drew Hendricks22:40

Mm-hmm.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761522:40

it’s it’s not like they’re doing it in the Mojave Desert, where it’s a hundred and twenty four degrees.

Drew Hendricks22:44

Yeah, and and it wasn’t like this guy had a one acre

pond that he was funneling all the rain water into. He he had a little fifty gallon drum underneath his

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761522:52

Yeah, exactly.

It’s just yeah. So if you had a little lake on your property and the water went into that, can the municipality sue you for retaining that water?

Boy, this is a rant-filled episode. It’s just s just just I know, it just

Drew Hendricks23:09

I I started it off and we never well, if you guys like hearing ramps, this was the episode for you.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761523:15

I hate stupidity and ignorance and annoying people in power that are just

You know,

one piece of advice for everyone out there that I tell all my clients never, never, never become a member of a condominium or homeowners association board of directors. It is the world’s worst thing you could possibly do to yourself. You might as well bang your head against the wall a hundred times instead. It’ll be more pleasurable. Because the people who want to do this.

have had no other power in their entire lives. This is the pinnacle of their ability to have power. It’s insanity. It’s illogical.

Just don’t do it. Don’t do it. The opposite of Nike. Don’t do it. Not just do it.

Drew Hendricks24:14

Well, that’s good advice. I

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761524:16

All

right. We’ve we’ve we’ve annoyed everybody for enough.

Drew Hendricks24:21

Think we’re good. This

has been the latest ramp filled episode of We Fixed Real Estate where Fred and Drew complain. Next look next week’s all about positivity.

Fred Glick CADRE#0150761524:30

Yeah, right. Good luck with that.