Mortgage Strategies and Tips on Elevating Property Values With Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. of Arrivva

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

• Fred and René break down the real estate game like it’s a sports match, spilling some fascinating secrets
• Digging into which historical periods they would choose for real estate and the wild hurdles they see coming up
• Getting real about the practicality and potential market appeal of installing indoor elevators, especially stair lifts, in homes
• Investment and market potential of outdoor elevators, particularly in hilly landscapes
• Factors influencing mortgage rates and practical tips for homeowners in the current market
• Benefits of a “no cost mortgage” and how homeowners can save money in a declining interest rate environment
• Complexities of fixed rates versus adjustable-rate mortgages, and get practical advice for refinancing and home buying
• Arrivva shares insights into the challenges they faced in Texas due to licensing requirements and MLS restrictions, urging reconsideration of policies
• Fred and René tackle a quirky question, ‘what three tools would they bring to sell a property on a desert island?’ Check out their wild picks!

In this episode with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr.

We’re taking a unique approach, blending it up with AI, real estate, and a dash of laughs. Join guest host Drew Hendricks for a riveting chat with Fred Glick, Broker, Real Estate Realist, and Founder of Arrivva, along with René Pérez Jr., Salesperson, and Pricing Savant. They’re diving into everything from how real estate stacks up against sports, time-traveling through historical real estate eras, to innovative solutions like indoor and outdoor elevators transforming and elevating property values. 

Gain valuable insights into the mortgage market, refinancing strategies, and the challenges faced by Arrivva in Texas. Tune in for a blend of expertise, humor, and real estate wisdom! Don’t miss out on the insightful discussions that promise to unveil real estate realities and provide valuable advice for homeowners, buyers, and sellers alike. Elevate your real estate knowledge with the We Fixed Real Estate podcast!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Drew Hendricks here. I’m the host of the We Fixed Real Estate podcast. Today we have Fred Glick and René Pérez on the show. Fred Glick, the real estate guru.

[00:00:10] Fred Glick: Oh, I hate gurus.

[00:00:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: He’s not a guru. He’s not a guru. Fred Glick, a cantankerous real estate professional.

[00:00:18] Fred Glick: Much better.

[00:00:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: René Pérez, the real estate savant.

So today on the show, so last week, if I catch you guys up, we had Bard on the show. We kind of Google Bard, we were doing some AI stuff. And I kind of had a funny idea that I was going to create a fake debate and pre-train ChatGPT to be a gold star realtor and ask three questions and see how ChatGPT would respond as the gold star realtor.

And then see how Fred and René respond. But got to tell you guys, ChatGPT was not behaving correctly. It was not cooperating. Sometimes, no matter how like, charismatic you want it to be, it just, it was poor. So

[00:01:02] Fred Glick: It’s still developing.

[00:01:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s still developing. I pre-trained it that you’re a superstar relator.

Please respond in 20 seconds. So, and so I asked the normal questions and they were really boring. So I decided to ask it three interesting questions, which I want you guys to ask. I want you guys to respond to this thing.

[00:01:18] Fred Glick: Okay, cool.

[00:01:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We’re going to get into some important stuff. René’s going to talk about some elevators.

René’s I mean, Fred’s going to probably wax poetic about Texas, but first let’s ask some really interesting stuff here. In your opinion. If the real estate industry could be compared to a sport, which one would it be and why?

[00:01:38] Fred Glick: Currently?

[00:01:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Currently.

[00:01:44] Fred Glick: A sport. I would say rugby.

[00:01:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh. Very good.

[00:01:52] Fred Glick: It’s just everybody beating up against each other, running all over the place, throwing things backwards. Perfect for the real estate industry.

[00:02:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s good. What about you, René?

[00:02:03] René Pérez Jr.: I think I’m going to go with a non-sport here and I’m going to be like cheerleading, you know?

Cause everybody wants to look pretty. You want to do dance, then they’re all a little too nice sometimes. Yeah.

[00:02:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s good.

[00:02:18] Fred Glick: And the flip just doesn’t work sometimes. And you can be the pyramid collapse. Oh, when the pyramid collapses. It’s perfect.

[00:02:26] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of pyramids using the real estate business.

[00:02:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So, I like the parallel in there. And René you’re looking great today. – all you guys.

[00:02:35] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, that’s why I finally put the camera on you know.

[00:02:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You guys gotta just switch to YouTube if you’re listening to this audio, that’s a fine look.

[00:02:43] Fred Glick: He’s very handsome and he’s single girls. So he’s got a girlfriend, but you never know, right?

[00:02:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Curious to hear what,

[00:02:51] Fred Glick: Don’t edit that part out.

[00:02:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, no, we’re not editing. This is, this is raw here.

[00:02:57] René Pérez Jr.: Look, I don’t have a ring in my finger. Okay.

[00:02:59] Fred Glick: There you go.

[00:03:01] Drew Thomas Hendricks: There you go. René at arrivva.com guys, girls.

[00:03:04] Fred Glick: No girl listened to Beyonce about you. Put a ring on it. Yeah. There you go.

[00:03:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So the boring ChatGPT response, even though I told it to be charismatic and it’s kind of, kind of similar to Fred’s about the real estate industry is just like soccer.

It’s fast-paced, strategic, and every player has a crucial role, just like

[00:03:21] Fred Glick: That’s boring.

[00:03:22] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And quick thinking leads to goals and real estate, swift decision making, and teamwork leads to successful deals.

[00:03:29] Fred Glick: Got that. That is nauseating.

[00:03:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So here’s the next one. Time travel. Imagine you have the ability to travel back in time to any historical period.

In what era would you choose to practice real estate in? And what unique challenges do you think you would encounter at that time period?

[00:03:46] Fred Glick: If we go backwards to the real estate industry, basically, the public was screwed even worse, and it was even more mystical, and nobody knew what was going on, and gatekeepers were in charge. Oh God, no, I wouldn’t want to go back in time to be an agent.

I want to go forward in time, about five years, and it’s like automated.

[00:04:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: A little more technology, AI’s caught up.

[00:04:13] René Pérez Jr.: How about you René? I think, I think I want to go, I mean, I think I’m going to be boring here, but during the gold rush, you know, the truck all the way to California, you know, Oregon, finding out where the place to be at, to build, you know, the, you know, the tool stores for the gold mining and all that stuff.

[00:04:35] Fred Glick: Yeah. Yeah. Well, they didn’t have mortgages back then. I don’t know how anybody bought anything. Who knows? I really don’t even know anything.

[00:04:44] René Pérez Jr.: Well, they trade, right? There were some people who would just like find chunks of gold and just trade their gold.

[00:04:50] Fred Glick: Trade it for land. Yeah.

[00:04:51] René Pérez Jr.: No. So that’d be fun.

[00:04:53] Fred Glick: I think there were deeds back then.

I don’t know. Like when you get title insurance, what title insurance does, it guarantees you that the seller of the property is really the seller and everything that happened in the past is correct. Like John Doe sold it to Mary Smith in 1921 and all that kind of, they go all the way back in time. So it’d be interesting to see on certain properties how far back in time they can go on it.

[00:05:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I think they do. You always see those TV shows where the guy’s waving the deed in the chain of custody.

[00:05:27] Fred Glick: Or hug the dude. Great. Wasn’t recorded, but that’s okay.

[00:05:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So ChatGPT did live up to their answer here.

[00:05:37] Fred Glick: Go ahead.

[00:05:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Gold star realtor, “Traveling back I go to the 1920s. It’d be like stepping into the set of the great Gatsby.

See the area of luxury, grandeur and unprecedented growth. The challenge is no Internet, no modern tech, just pure charisma and networking.” 1920s for ChatGPT.

[00:05:56] René Pérez Jr.: I mean, you know, and to be fair, I mean, when you, you know, back in the day, you had to work harder, right? Because you couldn’t sit down on your computer and just like find out what the property that’s been sold.

You had to go and connect with people locally, you know, and that’s why that’s why you have like that old commission system, right? Because it was harder. There’s, there is more work.

[00:06:15] Fred Glick: Yeah, now it’s streamlined, you know, I mean. Anyway, interesting

[00:06:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Let’s have a little exercise. I had to share with everyone. So now, now into the meat, René, talk to me about elevators.

[00:06:30] René Pérez Jr.: Well, okay, I’ll start by prefacing by saying that everything that goes up must come down, right? So, you know, as you get older, climbing up the stairs, it gets hard. And we get into a lot of phone calls sometimes. Whether it’s a seller that’s getting older, they realize that it’s getting harder for them to walk down the stairs, put groceries up and down. And their partner, maybe they, their, their husband or wife, passed away, it’s a big house, and they want it downsized, and they don’t, you know, they don’t want to deal with a lot of, like, the commitments of cleaning, and, et cetera, et cetera, and the most common thing is the stairs.

So anyway, there’s there’s a lot of different things, right? It’s one, it’s a cleaning. It’s too much of a big space. But the other one is the staircase. So it’s like, yeah, they can sell the house, but then they downsize, they find out they don’t like where they live, they find out that they’re missing their old house.

So instead, you know, of just telling people to sell their house and get rid of it, you know, there are a bunch of different indoor elevator. Even from mechanical lifts to actually full-size elevators where you can, if you’re on a wheelchair, you can go inside and lift up. So, it would seem and people think elevators and oh, they’re expensive.

You have elevator, elevators that cost from the range of 6, 000 to obviously 40, 000, 50, 000, right? You have these mechanical, and I’ve talked to a few people about this, and even here in San Francisco, these mechanical stair lifts installations that cost 6, 000, 14 steps, we can go 14 steps up, and with one curvature.

So, and the quote for that is 12, 000. Actually,

[00:08:19] Fred Glick: That’s that we usually see, like, in a commercial on the first half. Daddy, get dad -.

[00:08:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s exactly what I’m talking about.

[00:08:31] Fred Glick: Here’s the thing about that. There’s a lot of new construction of townhouses. Where since they can only be 14, 15 feet wide and they have to put a garage in, they put a garage in and maybe there’s a little room on that floor, but everything you bring into that house must go up to the second floor.

So I’ve said to people, even, you know, young people with kids, get one of those stair lifter things because you’re going to have packages. This is the kind of thing you can even augment. It’s a flat and you can put all your packages on there.

Why, why do you have to carry them up? And it’s just something that’s simple. So 12 grand is a lot. And I’m surprised a lot of the new home builders don’t offer that and don’t offer elevators.

[00:09:12] René Pérez Jr.: Well, and here’s the thing, right? Like you, you look at it as a big expense. There’s these companies that, you know, even though you spend that money, let’s say that for whatever reason you need to get rid of it, or you’re going to sell the house, you can actually sell it back to the company, you know, so they’re going to give you some of the money back as well.

So that’s something that, like, when you move to a different place, you’re still spending money, right? So,

[00:09:35] Fred Glick: Is that 12, 000 include installation?

[00:09:40] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:41] Fred Glick: Oh, okay.

[00:09:41] René Pérez Jr.: And that’s actually on the higher end, right? There are some, so I did talk to some people who quoted 6k on installation, right?

The product, you know, a little bit different. Just different tiers. Now, if you’re in a wheelchair and you can’t get from, it’s hard to get from the lift to the wheelchair, you know, you have all these, you know, compressed elevators that are also battery powered, right? Because one of the fears is that you know, lose power.

And what do you do then? Well, you don’t have to worry about that because they actually have an interior battery that can work up to like 10 times before, before it needs electricity.

[00:10:16] Fred Glick: Yeah, a friend of mine just built a new house and back in the suburbs of Philadelphia and he he works on a wheelchair and he completely designed it so that he can get up.

He’s three stories. As a matter of fact, I have to check with him to see what it costs. But the thing is great. It’s easy. It works. So he backs himself in. It’s perfectly, there’s actually anchors there if they need it to hold on to. So it’s just a great way for mobility and not having to sell.

[00:10:48] René Pérez Jr.: And there’s different tests where there’s, there’s cable, there’s a cable elevators, the traction elevators, the vacuum elevators, there’s a whole bunch of sets, I know it can get complicated.

There’s just, it’s just going to be dependent on your house. But when people ask like, “Oh, what should I do for prepping my house for sale?” Like, let’s say that you don’t need that and you’re still selling your house, I’d say, you know what, if we’re going to spend 10K on fixing up the house. You know, if you’re going to spend like 3K and fixing the garage and painting the, you know, whatever you call it, what’s the, what’s the garage paint that you use in the bottom?

[00:11:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The epoxy.

[00:11:19] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. Yeah. The epoxy.

[00:11:20] Fred Glick: Well, the epoxy is the cover, but yeah.

[00:11:22] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. So look, if you ask me like, “Oh, what should I do?” Well, the garage is like three grand to paint epoxy a new floor. I’d say, you know what, instead of doing that, I myself, I’d say, you know, do the garage instead, do the stairs instead, twice the price, but you can actually market this house has a stairs for older people who can’t walk, right? Much. And that’s, that’s more marketly, it’s more value than saying, “Oh, look, the garage is pretty.”

[00:11:49] Fred Glick: Unless, unless it takes away from the luxury of the house, say everything looks beautiful and then you have this stair thing, you know, there’s some people get weird about it. It depends on the house for sure.

[00:12:02] René Pérez Jr.: So with all of these systems, you can always remove them, especially with the stair lifts. Yeah. We can just say, “Hey, if you don’t want it, we can remove them.” It’s just for, you know,

[00:12:12] Fred Glick: Because you’re bolting it into the studs and you can just take it out and spackle and paint.

[00:12:17] René Pérez Jr.: And even if you’re not getting the actual lifts, getting quotes, how much would it cost to actually do it? Doing the legwork for the sellers? And that’s going to be a major advantage in the process.

[00:12:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And for a shameless plug to Arriva, it’s a perfect way to use the rebate.

[00:12:33] René Pérez Jr.: Mm yeah.

[00:12:35] Fred Glick: There you go. Beautiful thing. The other thing is outside elevators. So, I had a house at 73 Ensenada in San Carlos. And San Carlos basically is down in the flats off of, right off of one on one and all that, but then you go up the hill and I know I rode my bike up and it’s nasty. So we got to the top. So the way it was is the person’s house was here along the street and then about up here was this.

It’s just a piece of land that’s flattened out and you got to see this beautiful thing. But to get there, it was 47 steps. So you know, if you’re athletic, if you’re young and you’re old and whatever, you can get up, up and down. Great. But say you want to have four people up there, you want to bring cocktails and whatever.

It’s a pain. So that’s why we actually looked into getting one of these elevators. And I can’t remember the exact website. It’s like hill hitchers or something. You guys can Google it or we’ll find it out and throw it in here later, but it’s like a, a hill lifter, something like that. There’s all different kinds.

They do it for commercial and residential, but the residential one is basically a cabin, not a cabin, a cab that goes up and then you open it up and you get there. And it ran for like the 47-step thing. They ballparked it at about 150, 000. So it sounds like a luxury, right? Like, well, there’s more to it.

They have to go into the, they’re putting these things into the ground. They have to go down. They have to do footings. It’s a lot of work and make sure that it works.

[00:14:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You live in a hilly area, like the pen, the peninsula in the Bay Area and the house price is four to 6 million. Right. But here’s the thing is just going to allow you to take advantage of your whole property.

[00:14:33] Fred Glick: So, so we had a client looking in, Oakland in the hills, that area, and they found a house and they were concerned that, oh, I don’t know, getting up all these steps and hills and all that. And then I told him about this elevator and they said, wow, that’s really cool. And thinking about it, you spend 150 to add it to a property.

It’s got to increase the value of the property more than what you’re going to pay for it. Because now you open up a whole different section of being able to have more, more different people. Even if it’s not there, you can go and you can flatten up a piece of land up at the top or something or just get to a hiking.

Whatever it is on the individual property, definitely, definitely adds value to the property. It’s, you know. It’s detail-oriented. It takes time and it takes money, but it’s pretty cool thing that it’s out there.

[00:15:25] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, I mean, and it’s a risk, right? I mean, that’s why we always talk about, like, how much will this house go for if you’re looking at a house that has flat land in the back, you know, you know, that’s going to go higher because you don’t have to deal with expenses like 150 K in lifts.

So, yeah, I mean, if you don’t have an option and you, for whatever reason, have a house that has a huge hill and you don’t have access to it. You know, it might be worth looking into that, especially if, if you have a lot of equity in your house. You know, I think it’s like, why not do so, we bought it 15, 20 years ago, but when you look at, oh, how much is this house going to go for, you know, is it doesn’t have access for the backyard.

Is it accessible in terms of not having to climb stairs up and down, because that’s what’s going to that’s what’s cheap that’s what changes how much bids and how it’s going to get.

[00:16:16] Fred Glick: Or if you got a lot of land you just bring in a lot of dirt and build your own ski slope. Yeah. For you billionaires, here’s some ideas.

But it’s pretty cool. Jumping out of that and into something else is mortgages, and if you need to get a mortgage for this. So to give you an idea right now, the rates have dropped and they’ve dropped because of two things. Number one, inflation. Inflation is slowly disappearing. Meaning, when there used to be 50 ships sitting outside Long Beach Pier you know, waiting to get in because there is very little inventory.

We had all this inventory problem, so they raised the prices because there’s less inventory. But now, no problem. Get in and out. Stuff comes in. China is thrilled to sell us stuff. Their economy is hurting. So what’s happening is inflation is coming down. But we still have a decently strong economy. There’s still jobs.

There’s still kind of little of this, little of that. Yeah, here and there, there’s going to be issues. There’s going to be layoffs. Well, like in tech industry, if you’ve seen it over the years. They lay off people, but those people get other jobs because they’re super qualified. So it’s just a revolution of where you’re going to go for your next job as opposed to, “Oh my God, I can’t get another job.”

Like for example, in the Philippines, there’s been, they’ve been back office people for years because they speak English. That’s the biggest thing about them. But now AI, I have a person I know in the Philippines said all their friends are getting laid off because of AI. Copywriters? Forget it. Don’t even bother trying to get a job.

And on top of that, they have, you know, earthquakes and rain and snow. I mean, like, poor Philippines is getting hammered. I don’t know really where I was going with this, but

[00:18:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: They are evolving because a lot of our team is in the Philippines and we’ve been enabling our copywriters with ChatGPT and helping them evolve more towards directing and editorial standpoint.

[00:18:34] Fred Glick: Got it. So anyway, the general economy. So everything’s going to be a little more streamlined. And so maybe the jobs go down a little. But the bottom line is the Fed has no reason to raise rates, but they don’t have any reason to lower rates. And by the way, the Fed does not control mortgage rates. It’s just the Fed funds rate.

[00:18:53] René Pérez Jr.: That’s a big misnomer.

[00:18:56] Fred Glick: Oh people, the Fed raised the rate. Did your rates go up? No, because everybody knew the Fed was going to raise rates and they raised rates two weeks ago. You know, people don’t understand how that works.

[00:19:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: How does it works? It seems to be some sort of correlation because the rates went up and mortgage rates went up and Fed rates went up.

[00:19:14] Fred Glick: Yeah, but it’s the, all the bond market, the mortgage-backed security market, which is where all the mortgage rates come from is what’s going to happen in the future? Is there going to be inflation? If there is, then the rates are going up. To stop the business and slow business down. That’s the whole reason they do raises in interest rates.

But also, most people don’t borrow from banks anymore. So it used to be 20 years ago, every, the bank was the only place to go for money for your business. Now it’s a different story. Go to a VC, become a partnership, things like that. So it’s, it’s a whole different way of stopping and starting economies. So, anyway, they just go on anticipation.

And there could be a report that comes out at 8:30, another report comes out at 10 o’clock, and you’ve got two different sets of mortgage rates. So rates, think of mortgage rates as a stock. You know, you want to  buy  Google’s, the Alphabet stock. Well, it’s going to change every minute.  

You know, mortgages, it’s not that volatile, but I’ve seen three, four changes in a day. Every once in a blue moon, it’s a lunatic day, but they’re going to change and they change every day. So if you talk to one company on Monday and then talk to another on Friday, you can’t compare them because you talk to them on two different days as to what the rates are.

You have to get it the same day, kind of in the same time period. If you can. But what we’re seeing now is I’ve even had some of my customers call me back, say, “Hey, I want to refi.” We say, “Okay.” So you have to plan your refinance. Let’s just play with some numbers. Let’s say you had bad luck and you got an 8 percent mortgage just because it’s the only thing it was available to you.

So now you want to refinance, but what you want to refinance to is what’s called a no-cost mortgage. And I’ll tell you why. Especially in a declining era like this, because rates are lower, and I quoted somebody today, I think it was like six and five-eighths on a 30-year fix, a little bit of rebate. So, if you, let’s say we find you seven percent, and the lender is going to pay money to get you seven, for you to get seven percent.

Whereas if you did six and five-eighths, you don’t have to pay anything for it. Seven is money back, but the money back can only be used towards closing costs. So the first thing you got to do with your mortgage purchase, figure out what the costs are. Let’s say it’s, and, and when I say costs, and this is important, only the things you have to pay for, like title insurance, lender fees, appraisals, recording fee, notary fee, you know, real hard costs, the one-time costs just to do that transaction.

You can add in interest, real estate taxes, and insurance because you’re going to pay those regardless of what mortgage you have. So put those aside look at the actual cost so if I can give you seven percent with a three thousand dollar lender credit and your closing costs that I mentioned are three thousand dollars.

That’s a no-cost mortgage. So you come down from eight to seven. Also, look at not just doing a 30-year, but look at a 25-year. It’s the exact same price, but it forces you to make a little higher payment to get the loan page down a lot quicker. Here’s the other thing in six months to a year, you’re going to do another no-cost refi because the rates are going to slowly continue to go down.

So don’t go and pay three points and get 6 percent now, get seven now do it again. And maybe at that point, a 20-year or a 15-year will be available and the payment kind of makes sense to you as the rates go down because those rates are even lower on the 20 and the 15. So really work at doing these no-cost refis because it just makes a lot more sense over the long term and slowly you can get down to a point where you can get that 15 years.

That’s your last refi. Your 15 years and then you’re done. There’s also 10 years available, but they’re kind of rare nowadays, but. Anyway, that’s what’s going on in the refi market. And, you know, you just got to do it right. ARMs are still not any good because the fixed rates are better. We’re still in what’s called the inverted curve.

Google that kids and you’ll see what that is. But basically, short-term rates are higher than long-term rates, like bid funds rate, the prime rate, very high. But do you ever see the prime rates? I don’t know. What is it now? It’s higher than 30 or fixed. Anyway, I can give you the economics lesson or you guys can google it or ask ChatGPT your part.

[00:24:01] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So when does the inverted yield curve, when does that curve re, how does it reset to where one would normally?

[00:24:07] Fred Glick: What’s going to happen is the short-term rates are slowly coming down. Like Feds not going to raise when your treasuries get lower, probably gonna take another year, just ballpark.

[00:24:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s fascinating. So, yeah, it’s just, and there’s no rule of thumb, like

[00:24:25] Fred Glick: Zero.

[00:24:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Rates drop 1%, you should refinance? Or if the current rates X percent more than your other one?

[00:24:33] Fred Glick: There’s been this old thing. Oh, if it goes down 2 percent to it, well, that’s great for 75, 000 loan. If you got a million-dollar loan, half a point with no cost, you’re saving decent amount of money.

So you got to work the numbers. There is no, do not look at how much an interest rate you can save. Look at the monthly payment. Cause that’s what you write the check. That’s what you get the money drafted out of your account every month or nobody writes checks. Does anybody write checks anymore? I don’t know. Maybe. But yeah, look at the money, look at the dollars. Don’t look at the rates. That’s all.

[00:25:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Stage advice, René got any comments on that?

[00:25:16] René Pérez Jr.: I hope, I hope we see 3 percent rates. I hope we see that again.

[00:25:21] Fred Glick: No, we don’t. Here’s the other thing, people. Okay, so, you’re looking for a house. And you say, oh, I could find a house now, but the rates are too high. Well, I’m going to just wait till the rates come down.

Well, guess what? More people now qualify to buy a house when the rates come down. So you’re going to have more buyers and guess what’s going to happen to the price? Supply and demand. Price goes up. The idea is to buy with a high rate at a lower price. Then when the rates go lower, the values go up.

[00:25:53] René Pérez Jr.: I wasn’t saying, oh, I want to buy when there’s 3 percent interest rates. I just want to say, I hope that people who have 7 percent interest, who are buying at the 7 percent interest rate, can buy, can refinance at 3 percent later on.

[00:26:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:26:04] Fred Glick: Right. But also what’s going to happen at the 3 percent deals, more sellers are going to come out because, okay, I’m okay to sell cause I have my 3 percent mortgage currently, but now I could buy a new house and get the 3 percent rate. So it’s could bring havoc to the market.

[00:26:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s too bad they don’t have like a transferable mortgage.

[00:26:24] Fred Glick: They tried that years ago, but you know what? The mortgage industry wants to do every, a new loan on every, everybody. So they make money. VA loans. We just closed the deal in Olympia, Washington, where the people assumed someone else’s 2.625 percent mortgage. Now remember, it doesn’t have 30 years left on it. That’s another cool thing about this.

[00:26:47] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, wow.

[00:26:48] Fred Glick: So they keep that payment. I’m going to make up. I think they were there five years. So now they have a 25-year mortgage at 2. 625. It’s fabulous. It took 60 days though. VA assumptions take a long time.

There are certain FHA loans.

[00:27:06] René Pérez Jr.: And it’s not just, VA loans. You can also do assumable loans for FHA as well. But again,

[00:27:11] Fred Glick: Right there, FHA loans used to be just fully assumable with nothing. But years ago, they changed it. You have to qualify for the payment. Same thing on the VA. You have to qualify. You go through an underwriting process.

On conventional loans, on adjustable conventional loans, some are actually still assumable, but the VA is the great thing and you don’t have to, you don’t have to be a veteran. I’m trying to remember. Oh, if you’re not a veteran, the VA, you know what, I’m not going to speculate on this. I can’t remember the rules, but check on it.

If you can buy it, assume a, I think you can assume a VA mortgage if you’re not a veteran.

[00:27:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So then do you either pay cash for the surplus? Like since they got the mortgage, you pay cash or you get a second mortgage which is a far less amount than financing the new mortgage. That’s smart.

[00:28:03] Fred Glick: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:28:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Learn something. Ask.

[00:28:08] René Pérez Jr.: Ask.

[00:28:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, I’m going to ask about Texas. Talk to me about that. We had talked in the pre show.

[00:28:14] Fred Glick: We are licensed for both real estate and mortgages in Texas and our broker that we have, she decided she wanted to go another way, a different industry actually. So we’re going to be getting a new Texas broker.

So one thing about Texas that makes it interesting is if you want to join any multiple listing services you must be a member of the National Association of Realtors. Why? It’s 100 percent restrained to trade. With all the lawsuits in the Justice Department, I’m sure it’s going to clear up, but we really figured it out.

If you become a buyer with us in Texas, we don’t need to be part of the multiple listing service. You’re going to see the properties just like us on Redfin. We don’t look, matter of fact, we don’t even look on our MLS and do searches on there, because it’s all on Redfin, which is the MLS. Redfin’s a great site.

So we go there. People are interested. We know who the agent is because it’s on Redfin. We contact them, ask them all the questions that we need to ask. And it’s fine, and we’ll be able to show property with no problem. But if we want to list the property, we can’t list it anywhere. It’s just absolutely repulsive and ridiculous.

And so Texas Board of Realtors and all the MLSs there, stop it. You’re going to make more money. Hello? I mean, we deal with MLSs in California, Pennsylvania, and they have no problem doing it. They take our money. They’re thrilled to take our money. So why not? What, you know, who has the judgments against them? NAR or us? NAR. Code of Ethics. Right. So anyway,

[00:30:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Looking to buy in Texas Arrivva is your place.

[00:30:07] Fred Glick: Yeah, we’re here.

[00:30:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: As we’re wrapping down this episode and we’re talking about places to buy. I do have to ask the third question that we asked the ChatGPT realtor.

[00:30:18] Fred Glick: There is no third thing, but that’s,

[00:30:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It is a third thing. This is funny. So if you’re stranded on a desert island and could bring only three tools to sell a property, what would they be?

[00:30:31] Fred Glick: There’s no property here in a desert island. That’s the dumbest freaking question.

[00:30:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, the answer is pretty funny. It made me chuckle.

[00:30:38] Fred Glick: The internet, my computer.

[00:30:40] René Pérez Jr.: Oh, I get a Starlink satellite, a map, and a laptop.

That’s all you need.

[00:30:46] Fred Glick: Yeah, that’s about right. That’s it.

[00:30:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I like this one. “Stranded on a desert island, my go-to tools would be a flair for dramatic presentation, an unbeatable sales pitch, and an aura of confidence.” Sounds like a, sounds like a big, big thing. “I’d use the artist’s storytelling to paint a picture of the island and it’s a paradise oasis.”

Sounds like he,

[00:31:10] Fred Glick: I’d give him a C minus.

[00:31:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, Chat was not on, he was a little down this year.

[00:31:16] René Pérez Jr.: You know, I guess if you want to sell an island, you don’t need a Matterport, it’s useless. You want a drone so you can take aerial shots of the house.

[00:31:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I would say a boat.

[00:31:24] Fred Glick: A boat to get home. Tons of food and drink.

[00:31:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: From around the island, that’s a good idea.

[00:31:30] Fred Glick: Helicopter with a pilot, you know, enough gas with a range to get back to, yeah. Alright, Drew, you gotta work on this. Let’s get some better questions.

[00:31:41] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We’re working on it, we’re working on it. It’s a work in progress, people.

[00:31:45] Fred Glick: Next week we can go to Bard. And then next week we’ll go to Claude and, you know, we’ll see who comes up with the best real estate, answers.

[00:31:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Right. Fred and René take on AI. It’ll be a routine segment, just like late night or semi routine.

[00:32:04] René Pérez Jr.: Nice. Okay.

[00:32:05] Fred Glick: Yeah. Or you y’all out there can send us questions.

[00:32:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So yeah, put them in the, put them in the comments. If you want us to ask a question and see if you can trigger Fred to going around.

[00:32:17] Fred Glick: Beat the AI head at the real estate game.

[00:32:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, that’ll be the new segment, Trigger Fred.

[00:32:23] René Pérez Jr.: Oh, that’s easy.

[00:32:24] Fred Glick: That’s easy, right?

[00:32:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, I think we’re done for today, guys. Everyone have a great, great week, and we’ll see you next week.

[00:32:34] Fred Glick: Cheers.