How Real Estate Agents Are Playing You With This Trick With Fred Glick and Chris Gustavel of Arrivva

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

• Uncover the controversial tactics behind underpricing homes—what’s really at stake and who benefits
• Explore the hidden complexities of RESPA and how its guidelines might change your approach to real estate
• Discover how to craft buyer strategies and what tools to use
• Compare key real estate websites(Redfin, Zillow, and Realtor.com)—what makes each one unique and how to use them to your advantage
• Get the latest on regional trends and the optimal timing for selling
• Understand the key distinctions among property types and how these differences impact your next move
• Discover the difference between Realtors and licensed Brokers, and who you should trust better

In this episode with Fred Glick and Chris Gustavel

Think you know how real estate works? Think again.

Join Fred Glick and Chris Gustavel of Arrivva as they pull back the curtain on some of the most controversial tactics shaking up the real estate scene. This eye-opening episode challenges the status quo, explores ethical dilemmas, and dives into under-the-radar trends that could impact your next property decision. Discover how technology is reshaping strategy, why understanding industry roles matters, and what you should really know about navigating today’s competitive market. Tune in to get the insights you need!

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• René Pérez Jr. on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• Who Pays What in California
• Fidelity National Financial
• ChatGPT

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Welcome to We Fixed Real Estate with Chris Gustavel and Fred Glick.

And we’re chatting today about this rampant underpricing in the Bay Area?

[00:00:31] Fred Glick: Yeah, well, we’ve moaned about this before, and especially up in like El Cerrito, it’s rampant ’cause there’s two companies up there.

‘Cause one started doing it and then the other did it ’cause they had to. So the idea is you have a house you know is gonna sell for a million and a half. Just, you know, that’s comps and agents gotta have an idea where it should go unless goofiness sets in or you know, everything craters. But what they do is they set the price at 950.

It’s like, huh? Here’s why. And it now there’s an article in the Mercury News, which is the San Jose newspaper, and this talks about a Berkeley and at Sunnyvale examples, but the story is, it’s really at least twofold. Number one, what the seller’s agent says to the sellers, “Look, we’re gonna price this really low because then we’re gonna get a lot of people to come in and it’s gonna build and people are gonna get all excited and emotionally, and we’re gonna run the price up. You’re gonna get more money because of this.”

Okay. Here’s the reality. 98% of the people either don’t qualify, they’re looky lose, or they have agents that don’t understand the pricing and they bid something stupid like a million on a 950 listing that’s gonna go for 1,000,005 thinking they have a chance.

They absolutely do not. They’re wasting the buyer’s time, the agent’s time, and it’s just really obnoxious. Second reason they do it. What the agents are looking for in open houses is new buyers. What’s the first question? “You have a buyer broker?” And if they say, “No.”

“I’ll be your buyer broker here, sign this exclusive contract and, and, you know, and the seller’s gonna pay the…” Such a bunch of crap. Google translated is…

So I would love to just have listings where there are no open houses. You have to show me a fully underwritten preapproval or proof of funds in order to even see the house. Because in the end, there’s only two or three people who are really involved in the final negotiation. You know, they get, “Oh, we got 68 offers.”

Yeah, 65 of ’em are worthless. You got the three people who would’ve been 1,000,005 anyway had you not done this. And it’s just, it seem, it’s finally catching up that people are getting pissed off. It should be illegal. It’s it, it’s totally unethical, but the realtors seem to just, “Oh, wow. Yeah, for marketing purposes,” and blah, blah, blah.

[00:03:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It seems like there’s also a third -. It’s like bragging rights that all of our listings go from so much above the listing.

[00:03:38] Fred Glick: I’m sorry, I totally forgot about that one. They go to the next, the next perspective seller and say, “I got 700,000 over asking price.” But the seller never asked, what was the asking price reasonable? So, you know, if we were syndicated that every house that every seller was, whoever thought about listing a house would listen to us, then the, then this would end. But unfortunately, we don’t have the reach and the generic realtors. They don’t, they play the game. So, you know, another reason to hate realtors.

And just as a note, we are not realtors, we are brokers. We are licensed in the states we’re in to conduct business. We don’t have to be a realtor. You do not have to be a realtor in order to practice real estate. It is a trade organization, just like the National Rifle Association is a trade organization.

You know, and you join it, you pay a fee. AARP trade organization. Okay? So we don’t get anything out of realtors. There’s zero reason to be in it, and we don’t want our $1.6 billion judgments against us. And there’s a bunch of lawsuits still in the background, kitty. So hang in there. So. Since we’re talking about compliance stuff, there’s another thing that I wanted to bring up and, and make clear to people so they understand the word RESPA, R-E-S-P-A.

[00:05:17] Chris Gustavel: RESPA.

[00:05:19] Fred Glick: RESPA. It’s a RESPA, not a Vespa. Exactly. You can’t ride RESPA. RESPA is Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, and what it’s saying is RESPA grants buyers, let’s remember the word “buyers,” the right to select their own title company for the transaction even if the seller or the agent prefers a particular one.

All the time, you’re gonna see, “Oh, well, it’s customary that the seller orders the title in this county.” And there’s actually a website, it’s called who-pays-what-in-california.

And you can see in the counties who pays what. So in, let’s use Santa Clara County, or Cupertino and San Jose are. The seller pays for the escrow fee, the title fee, and the transfer tax the county transfer tax. So normally they pick the escrow company. Northern California, I sort of don’t have a problem as much as I do other places because everyone up there uses a combination of escrow title and they’re all about the same fee.

And you know, if it’s a legitimate company, it’s fine. The problem happens in Southern California. So this Buddha, which I’ll explain later, it involves, and it’s hopefully tomorrow, over 3 million, let’s just put it that way. The, we put our offer in we put for Fidelity National, who we like to use in Northern California, which is combined escrow title.

But we got countered with their escrow company that this Compass agent wants to use and so back and forth. So fine. We did it. You know, we don’t wanna rock the boat. We wanted to get under contract. That’s what we’re so worried about. Ends up we got an estimate of what the fee would be from our Fidelity National, and the escrow fee was $1,750.

Okay. You know, that’s kind of the number. This title company, this escrow company, not title, escrow. ‘Cause it’s separate title and escrow. Escrow company wanted to charge $9,000.

[00:07:51] Chris Gustavel: For what?

[00:07:53] Fred Glick: And not even. Exactly. And not even do as much work because the way they do it is, “Oh, we go, you know, X dollars per thousand.”

So they do it based on the sale price. I said, “What’s the difference between a $3 million House and a hundred thousand dollars house that you’ll do?” And the answer is absolutely nothing. But they ba

So my buyers and I both paraded them and got them to give us like a $3,800, $3,900 discount. We’re still paying too much.

[00:08:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Didn’t they have just done the $1,700 one?

[00:08:34] Fred Glick: No, because we’ve already, we’re already under contract and it says specifically in the contract that we have to use these people. So I’ve actually done it where in the middle of the transaction we’ve switched escrow companies.

‘Cause the other thing is don’t just sign their contract. They’re gonna send you a contract, their escrow contract, read it, throw it to a ChatGPT and and tell it, ask it, “What’s bad for me?” And they’ll show you. They’ve waived everything. You can’t sue them for anything. They could a hundred percent screw up and there’s not a thing you can do about it.

But they were also licensed under the insurance commissioner. So you know, like today, I saw that a title company was giving out free drone photos for agents who used them. And you know, they got caught. That’s why I’m bringing you up RESPA. You can’t do anything. No. A real estate agents. No, I can’t pay you any referral fee if you send me someone to do a mortgage; it is a billion percent illegal. So just stop it.

Stop it. Stay in your own lane or get a mortgage license. So this stuff is rampant and I’m putting it out there for the consumers. Just be aware of this stuff. Anytime a company owns their own service company, be it mortgage title, escrow insurance, brokerage, anything.

Get three other estimates before, do not agree to use their in-house people. We do mortgages too with, along with real estate. But you know, we disclose that. We disclose what our fees are, and you know, our rates are significantly lower to most people ’cause we charge a flat fee over wholesale, whereas everybody else charges a percentage over wholesale.

So you get an eight, $8,000 mortgage, you know we’re gonna be better. Even if they’re getting better pricing on wholesale. So. I don’t wanna take up the time to talk about that, but that could last for hours.

I think a lot of people might be scared to negotiate like that escrow contract, thinking that it’s just gonna cost them the house over some legalese. We know about you, you’re a disruptor or something like that, to the extent of, and the deal didn’t go through that we were, we were working on. But the fact was, you know, we wanted to use our own escrow company. And these guys probably, I don’t, I can’t prove this, probably getting some kind of incentive, you know, the escrow company’s got Dodgers tickets, they don’t keep records of who they gave ’em to.

So I’m sure it’s that kind of game. But, you know, unfortunately, I don’t have the CFPB behind me, but I do have the state of California, attorney general, banking departments and department of real estate. So.

[00:11:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So it’s all, it all ties into like arming yourself when you go to market.

And we were talking earlier about, pre-show, you showed me this really cool buyer strategy sheet that you can use AI to kind of craft your game plan.

[00:11:45] Fred Glick: Yeah. So we’re playing, I was playing around with this. It’s the first time I used it. I threw in literally everything that I knew about a property. The Redfin listing, the disclosures, the inspections the Zillow listing.

‘Cause Zillow does something very cool now. It kind of gives you a, most of the time I’ve seen it, sometimes it doesn’t, an offer strategy, it tells you this is a, you know, a 99% seller’s market, you’re gonna need to go like 12% over. Or it’s like, you know, this is a buyer’s market. You can go 50,000 under.

Kind of just gives you a ballpark idea. So I threw all that in, started my prompt, restarted the prompt over and over again. And it gave me a buyer strategy sheet for this house up in Washington, as a matter of fact. Yeah. The hundred-first Avenue that we lost.

[00:12:45] Chris Gustavel: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:12:47] Fred Glick: Okay. So.

[00:12:49] Chris Gustavel: What did it say that we could offer for that? Did it tell you?

1, 2, 6, 5, which is 3.3% above list. Hmm. I think that’s too low, though.

[00:13:00] Fred Glick: And we’re doing, we’re doing a cash offer. We’re waiving inspections. Waiving appraisal, seven to 10 days to close. Nice and clean. Yeah. It was a little low. It went for more. ‘Cause I think we even offered more.

[00:13:12] Chris Gustavel: Yeah, we did. It went till close to one four, if not in the one fours.

[00:13:16] Fred Glick: Yeah. So is this thing any good?

[00:13:21] Chris Gustavel: I wonder, did Zillow have a price for that house? An estimate for that one? Do you remember?

[00:13:25] Fred Glick: Yeah, but I don’t remember. But those algorithms are kind of,

[00:13:30] Chris Gustavel: Yeah, I can’t really trust them.

[00:13:31] Fred Glick: That’s part of the problem with those algorithms, especially for the houses that are listed lower, like we talked about in the beginning of the podcast, because it skews the algorithm to say, “Oh, well ,they only need this. It must be ugly on the inside or something.” Zillow doesn’t know without going to your house.

Or Redfin likes kind of, excuse me, kind of the same thing. So you just have to be really careful, and that’s another reason to use an agent. Because they have more of a feel for the market. You can come in and make offers, but do you really know what’s going on? You can see the comps and we don’t, there’s no like special comps that we use.

But there’s things other than the comps. It could be a three-month-old comp, but now the traffic, ’cause it’s nicer out, is bigger. You’re gonna have more buyers. There’s still less inventory. You just don’t know. There’s so many factors involved. And here’s the other thing. I think René’s mentioned this, where we’ve had houses where, you know, one sells, I don’t know, make up a number for 2 million, a nice house in great shape, and the crappy one next door sells for 2.2 because it’s the neighbor who wants their parents to live there and they’re gonna pay extra. So you just don’t know the situation. You don’t know the other buyers. That’s the one thing we have no idea about: who the other buyers are. If we lost a house around the corner the week before, that’s pretty much the same.

And there were 28 offers, we know there’s 27 losers. So we know it’s gonna be competitive again, but that’s kind of, sort of, kind of the only way to tell, but quiet and ChatGPT. Have some fun.

[00:15:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: This prompt’s great. And Fred, can you share that prompt with us? And we can put it in the

[00:15:22] Fred Glick: Yes, I can. I’ll have to dig it outta my ChatGPT thing.

[00:15:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Dig, dig it out. We’ll put some polish onto it and show people where to put the links.

[00:15:32] Fred Glick: And there you go.

[00:15:34] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Create your own buyer strategy and or work with Arrivva to create, create a custom.

[00:15:40] Fred Glick: Yeah. And we’ll do it. I mean, we throw everything in the AI just because. We don’t a hundred percent depend on it.

But it’s good to see, like I threw a package in today for a house in San Francisco. They look really nice, and it ended up there with about 20 grand worth of stuff, but it was a $4 million property. So it’s like you’re waiving inspections ’cause they’re already done. Not asking for any credits, and it’s gonna go for above list.

[00:16:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:16:08] Fred Glick: That market, I mean, you know, if we were in Florida for a condo, it’s like they’re giving them away.

[00:16:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Just like with everything in AI, it helps further the conversation around along. And it also helps give you a laser-focused into one possible answer that allows you then to create your own custom answer.

So it’s super useful.

[00:16:27] Fred Glick: Yeah. Yeah. But don’t a hundred percent depend on it. It’s just nice. Other information.

[00:16:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And you brought up a unique point on the prompter, like I had it search Redfin, I had it search Zillow, I had it search realtor.com in it. It said, evaluating these nuances. Maybe you could give us like a deep dive into, as someone researching all these platforms, how they’re different, which one you prefer, like why Redfin versus realtor.com?

[00:16:52] Fred Glick: What I’ve been looking at, we had a client who is, let me read this verbatim, “We’re seeing more results than Redfin on realtor.com and we like that they don’t delete the photos after the property sells.” So what that means is, okay, here, here’s bit of information. If you’re selling your house or you’re the buyer, really, is what it is, ask the listing agent before closing to remove the pictures off the MLS.

If they don’t do it or forget to do it after it closes, you can contact Redfin and you can contact Zillow and ask them to remove it. I don’t know if you can do that with realtor.com. You may, because I’ve never looked into it, but it’s an interesting thing that he pointed out. They’re taking a look at the inside without having to go there.

Yeah. Maybe a few years old, but it kind of, you know, if they haven’t, that doesn’t say, you know, brand new renovated house, you’ll be able to see it. So realtor.com may be the place to go to just to see the pictures.

All the data is exactly the same from the MLS feed. It’s the little nuance extras that Redfin and Zillow do.

Like I was talking on Zillow, they do that pricing strategy. Redfin is gonna give you, they kind of hide it now, but what’s going on in the neighborhood, and is it more seller or buyer? Who’s going to benefit from this house in that market? So there’s a little thing. So. Stick them all is really. But you know, stick the one that you’re comfortable with and get alerts. You don’t need to get alerts from all three ’cause they’re all gonna be the same.

Zillow may have a few new constructions. Zillow may also, depending on your market, have a for-sale-by-owner listing. So that was the thing with that guy in Boulder who listed his house and then bitched Zillow and then he changed it.

But, no, just keep the searches going that way and just stick to one to tell you what’s going on and the rest for more research.

[00:19:01] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s interesting. Out of practice, do you routinely just have the people remove the images at the end of escrow?

[00:19:08] Fred Glick: We automatically send an email to the listing agent 48 hours ahead of closing, asking them to have ’em removed for our buyers. That’s just part of our automation.

[00:19:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It seems like there would, I can’t think of a good reason why you’d want it to remain up other than historically going, “Look at how much we’ve changed our house.”

[00:19:29] Chris Gustavel: A lot of them keep them up.

I was just looking at my house, actually, and it still has the pictures up.

[00:19:35] Fred Glick: But it’s the old furniture. It’s not your furniture.

[00:19:37] Chris Gustavel: No, no.

[00:19:38] Fred Glick: So the info they get are the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the washer and dryer. I mean it’s, you know, it’s not a big deal, but,

[00:19:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, depending on security, if you’re trying to case out a house.

[00:19:51] Chris Gustavel: Yes.

[00:19:52] Fred Glick: Yeah. They got a nice dishwasher.

I’m going in there. I go get that. So you have the right to the privacy. Let’s just leave at that.

[00:20:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So Chris, how’s the Great Northwest?

[00:20:03] Chris Gustavel: I think it seems to be picking up here, don’t you think, Fred?

[00:20:06] Fred Glick: Oh yeah, it’s getting busy. Crazy. There’s no inventory. That’s the thing. And you know, especially in the desirable areas, but, you know, the pied-à-terres are back a little bit, so the condos have come back a little bit downtown. The rental market’s still good there.

[00:20:29] Chris Gustavel: Yeah.

So, and the weather’s. No, no tornadoes.

[00:20:34] Fred Glick: No more tornadoes. That was last week.

[00:20:38] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You guys had tornadoes last week?

[00:20:40] Chris Gustavel: Well, they said we might and nothing happen at all. So it’s typical Seattle. They claim something major is gonna happen, and it never does.

[00:20:47] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Are the daffodils in bloom yet?

They’re just starting. Yeah. That’s gonna be beautiful.

[00:20:52] Chris Gustavel: Yeah.

[00:20:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So, what it’s lack of inventory are people, you think people are in a wait-and-see mode.

[00:20:56] Chris Gustavel: In my neighborhood, I’ve been noticing stuff popping up more. So I don’t know. I mean, this is the perfect time to sell something in Seattle in the spring, so.

[00:21:06] Fred Glick: Yeah. April, May, June, definitely the peak. We have a listing coming up in Burien.

[00:21:12] Chris Gustavel:  Burien.

[00:21:15] Fred Glick: I’ll never get that right.

It’s a small house. It’s a two-bedroom. Dude, we’re gonna get it cuter when.

[00:21:22] Chris Gustavel: Yes. Much cuter.

[00:21:22] Fred Glick: Get everything out of it. I love to go from, you know, looking at their house full of stuff. I mean, they’re just moving to a larger, not much larger house, but more spread out.

But, you know, seeing all the junk lying around and whatever. And then after it’s prettied up, it’s just, it’s just nice to see it prettied up.

[00:21:43] Chris Gustavel: Yeah.

[00:21:44] Fred Glick: Good, clean, painted, blah, blah, blah. And we also do all the inspections up front, so we’ll correct things, see what happens, and then we’ll we’ll talk about it when it’s listed on the podcast.

We have a bunch of listings coming up. Townhouse in San Jose, a condo in San Jose, a condo townhouse, and I, I should call ’em condo flat or townhouse. Condo. ‘Cause just so everybody understands, a condo is not a, it just doesn’t mean it’s an apartment. There could be a single-family condo. Condo is the way you own the property.

Single-family town home flat. Those are the type of properties, but everybody confuses it. “Oh, is it a single family, a condo, or a townhouse?” There’s townhouses that are condos.

[00:22:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay.

[00:22:37] Fred Glick: So it, it’s stupid how the real estate industries has buried themself into this, and it goes into the minds of people.

But look at the physical structure, then look how the ownership is.

[00:22:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Now, how would a, how would the single-family condo ownership be? It’s owned by third party, or?

[00:22:55] Fred Glick: No, it’s a condominium, which means you are allowed to live in that particular property, but you’re a member of a condominium association and you have a percentage interest in the entire development.

[00:23:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So you might have a, you’re a hundred percent interest in it.

[00:23:10] Fred Glick: Doesn’t matter if it’s an apartment or a house, it doesn’t matter. It’s owned the same way. It’s ministered the same way. So sometimes townships or cities or counties tell you if you wanna build this single-family development, it’s gotta be a condominium because you gotta collect your own trash, you gotta do your own water, or whatever.

Maybe you know. Well, anytime you see a development that has a living unit above or below another living unit, it’s automatically a condominium. ‘Cause that’s the only way you can own that property is as a condo. Yeah, you can do a co-op, but forget co-ops for now. Realistically, it’s a condo, but you see a bunch of townhouses.

They could be. Let’s look at a row house in South Philadelphia. You know the Rocky movie, “Hey, how is doing?” All these row houses, they’re individually fee, simple owned houses. There’s no association, there’s no CCNRs, there’s nothing. They’re built in 1950. Nobody knew from that. Come out to California and stuff’s built in the seventies and the eighties.

The cities wanted you to have an association and collect your own trash and all that kind of.

[00:24:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I’m familiar with that in San Francisco, especially in the Sunset District, where a lot of those houses share common walls. It’s gotta, get good friends through your neighbors if you have to replace a common wall.

[00:24:36] Fred Glick: A fence. Yeah. Or fence. That happens. But anyway, what was it? What were we even talking about? Did we get off?

[00:24:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We were talking about the preferred platforms and how.

[00:24:50] Fred Glick: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:24:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Research all three of ’em. And then the security concerns of leaving your inside shots up.

[00:24:56] Fred Glick: Up from your house. There you go. And we got onto property ownership variations. So just, just do your homework, kids.

[00:25:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Do your homework and eat your beans.

[00:25:10] Fred Glick: Yeah, eat your green.

[00:25:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Any other big topics of conversation on the tornado bat?

[00:25:16] Fred Glick: Nobody on the West Coast seems to know what Broccoli Rob is.

[00:25:20] Chris Gustavel: I know what broccoli Rob is.

[00:25:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I know what broccoli Rob is. We don’t find it.

[00:25:24] Chris Gustavel: You can’t eat it. Hard to find though.

[00:25:27] Fred Glick: Yeah. Can’t find in any stores.

[00:25:29] Chris Gustavel: I’ve seen it in restaurants a lot, but not in the store.

[00:25:31] Fred Glick: It’s Rapini is another name for it.

[00:25:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Anyway. I love that.

[00:25:37] Fred Glick: Well, random whatever.

[00:25:40] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And any favorite new watermelon water as we’re wrapping up this show?

[00:25:44] Fred Glick: Nope. Same old, same old. And they still haven’t sent me any.

[00:25:47] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So Renee’s off the show today so we can talk about food and Fred’s latest drinks without him.

[00:25:57] Fred Glick: I don’t know why it gets mortified by watermelon juice, but it’s got a lot of abilities to hydrate you.

And it’s natural sugar. There’s no sugar added. That’s the first thing you should look out on any label, sugar added. It’ll freak you out. Just see it and then get rid of it. Just don’t buy it. 

[00:26:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, this has been another episode of We Fixed Real Estate and food talk…