Fred Glick, a Broker, Real Estate Realist, and Founder of Arrivva, holds a stellar track record with over $2 billion in residential transactions while grounded in a lifelong passion for real estate. René Pérez Jr. is an adept Broker and Pricing Savant, who specializes in strategic problem-solving and long-term growth.
Join them in the We Fixed Real Estate podcast by Arrivva, where they share expertise and insights about the dynamic real estate landscape. Arrivva, a leading real estate and mortgage brokerage, caters to buyers, sellers, and mortgagees with love, integrity, and a transparent fee structure. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, Arrivva is transforming the real estate landscape, one happy client at a time.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Take notes as Fred and René guide you through the crucial steps of the final walkthrough
- Get expert insights on handling last-minute issues and transactions post-walkthrough
- Learn when to act, negotiate, and avoid common pitfalls that come with price drops
- Know how crucial reserve studies in condominium financing is
- Discover how listing agents leverage offers that incite bidding wars, create urgency, and maximize sale prices to turn the market in their favor
- Learn how leveraging buyer broker rebates, like those offered by Arrivva, can save significant costs upfront in real estate transactions
- Explore the complexities of building affordable housing amidst zoning obstacles and legislative delays
In this episode with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr.
From mastering the final walkthrough to understanding the nuances of price drops, join Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. of Arrivva as they delve into crucial property buying tips that will turn the table in your favor.
Learn how to handle last-minute issues, the impact of reserve studies on condominium financing, and the strategies behind shopping offers to maximize your buying power. Tune in for invaluable insights to help you navigate the complexities of the real estate market, ensuring a smooth and successful home buying experience here on the We Fixed Real Estate podcast.
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Fred Glick on LinkedIn
- René Pérez Jr. on LinkedIn
- Arrivva
- Redfin
- Fannie Mae
- Freddie Mac
- Lennar – New 3-D printed homes
- TikTok – Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo on Housing
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We’re here talking with Fred and René. Last week, we talked about what to do during the open house. Today we are talking about what to do with the final walkthrough. You’ve gone through the whole sales process. And if you’re listening and wondering where you are, you’re on We Fixed Real Estate. Fred, what’s the good word?
[00:00:18] Fred Glick: Oh, the good word today is sunshine. Beautiful day here in Los Angeles and probably all around the country where everybody’s sweating. So those with humidity a little more than us here in SoCal, but it’s still nice.
[00:00:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It is good to rub it in a little bit.
Cause I taught, I was down at the Harbor in San Diego at my brother-in-law’s retirement party from the Harbor Police. Two of the people just flew in from North Carolina. It was like 107 there, they were telling me. And the cicadas were like knee-deep and…
[00:00:51] Fred Glick: Sounds pleasant, really. It’s going to improve the price of real estate there, for sure.
And René, you’re on the road. Where are you driving?
[00:01:00] René Pérez Jr.: I’m just in the middle of traffic. So I’m going to use, my word of the day is, “Everything in life is borrowed.” I have a rental car which is, it’s been a pain. So it’s always, it’s always nice to just have things that you own versus having to borrow things.
You know, instead of, in terms of real estate, in terms of, instead of renting, buying stuff, right? So when you’re buying things, right? Before you buy them, you want to look at it to see if it’s actually what you were expecting to get. You know, even if it’s a small purchase, like through Amazon, right? If something’s broken, you go return it, you know, you’re not going to accept it, or you accept you, you ask for a discount or a refund or whatever it might be. The same thing with the house. With the house before you close on a property. Anytime between one day before you close to maybe a week before, by contract, you’re allowed to go into the property for a walkthrough.
Now, what does this mean? This means that you’re going to go check out the house to make sure that it looks like how you were expecting it. Now, this doesn’t mean that everything that is staged was going to be in the house, because everything has to be attached, right? So, and that’s a part of the contract.
There’s a bunch of, obviously, I’m going to overgeneralize here, but there’s always cases where sellers leave behind items that they want to just give to the new owners or furniture that they leave behind. But for the most part, everything should be in writing in terms of what you’re going to receive at the end of the purchase.
One of the biggest things and why we wait till the last minute to go for the walkthrough is because staging is still at the property and that can damage the property. Now, for properties that are above 2 million, a seller is not going to go and damage the property. You know the walls and, and take all the copper wires.
I mean, I’ve just heard horror stories about how the sellers, you know, they leave no angry notes and they break stuff. You know, most of the time a seller just wants to move on. They’re moving on to retirement. They’re going out of state, whatever it might be. So hopefully if you’re purchasing a property, you’re not dealing with sellers who are angry that they sold the property.
Anyway, so in the walkthrough, what you’re looking for is basically you turn on all the lights, you know, and then I’m going to give you like a step by step of when I go into a property. You’re turning on all lights, making sure that everything is functional. As you walkthrough the house, there’s also a bunch of buttons and switches.
I don’t know what these switches do half of the time, but the sellers who have lived with the property for 10 years, they do. So the idea is to go through the entire house, take pictures of everything. That you might have questions about so that then can collect a list of questions that the sellers can answer.
So we’re turning on all the lights. You are then taking pictures of all the switches. You’re looking at windows if windows are broken, right? And if they weren’t broken from the beginning. Now at the same time, and I just kind of started talking, you are looking at stuff that is different from the disclosures or the inspections.
So, a person can’t go back in and say, “Well, this was broken, I want the seller to fix it.” The seller is not going to fix things that were already apparent in the seller questionnaire, in the inspections, or that you were going to be easily able to see from the beginning. So, you’re looking at anything from broken windows, broken mirrors.
Now, from this last walkthrough, I actually did a walkthrough a couple days ago. We walk in there, and the oven light doesn’t turn on. It’s a simple fix. You can connect it, but it’s, there’s always something, but there’s a toilet that’s leaking. We weren’t expecting that to be leaking. There was a pipe that was leaking.
So you want to, a good walkthrough, you’re turning everything on. You’re opening the faucets and the sinks, the showers to make sure that there’s enough pressure on for the water. You wanna make sure that there’s hot water as well. Usually, I mean, again, there’s always going to be an easy solution to things most of the time.
But you want to just make sure that before you close, you find out if there’s some issues. The backyard, we’ve been to the backyard where we were expecting green grass. And then there’s a hole that’s just like brown because they didn’t water it before closing. So, the point is, you, as a homeowner, you’re going to have things to worry about.
That’s just the pride of homeownership. Something’s going to break. But! When you receive the property you want to get it as you expected it. So, well, hopefully, that kind of gives you an idea. Obviously, if you look at it one week and then two weeks later, there’s always going to be something different that you catch. So that’s what you want to be really thorough within the house.
So I think that was pretty much a good general concept of what to look at from a walkthrough. About anything you want to add
[00:06:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You went to a walkthrough last week, weren’t you?
[00:06:21] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, I was Yeah, so, I mean, we do walkthroughs, I mean, every couple weeks or so, and another thing about a walkthrough is they’re not necessary, so if you’re purchasing a property and you’re fine with the way that you think it’s going to be expected, you can just go ahead and waive it, right?
You don’t have to go see the property again before closing. But generally, if you’re a first-time homebuyer, you can just kind of want to see it one more time. And at the very least, you’re measuring.
[00:06:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: When I bought my house, it was now 14 years ago. It was a flip.
The person flipped it. And I really just, they fixed some of the termite damage and stuff. But I didn’t do a final walkthrough. And I’m not sure how the home inspector or all the inspections didn’t catch it. But there was no power in my big room. No power on any of the outlets. So I immediately had to, when I moved the first night, I had to call an electrician and he’s like, I can’t see how there’s even any power.
[00:07:16] Fred Glick: So your agent didn’t get back to the other agent and make them do it?
[00:07:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: No, because it was already closed and
[00:07:23] Fred Glick: It doesn’t matter. If there was a fraud involved, you could push it, and, you know, that’s the other thing. If you don’t see something and there was an intent not to do something, or to destroy, you have grounds. You can go after the seller for that.
[00:07:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I should have, I should have, but it was a, it did not reach.
[00:07:43] Fred Glick: I’m just saying.
[00:07:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s water under the bridge now, but it cost me about 800 that night that I didn’t want to spend.
[00:07:48] René Pérez Jr.: The whole idea is to do it as soon as possible, right? Because that’s true.
That’s why the walkthrough before closing, because once the seller receives the money, you know, good luck, you know, getting them to be super quick. I remember, so for this walkthrough, for example, I told the seller’s agent, like, “Hey, look, there’s a pipe leaking.” And we stopped closing. The handyman immediately went to the house within two hours to fix the pipe. Now we closed it. Yeah.
[00:08:18] Fred Glick: I was just gonna say there’s good agents and bad agents, but continue on.
[00:08:22] René Pérez Jr.: Oh, of course. Yeah. But then, so now, I mean, we closed. So then we got that fixed and we closed. Now when we went to go get the keys, we realized that when we flushed the toilet, somehow we missed that there was a leak behind the toilet.
So at that point, it’s like, well, they’re still, it’s still something that was, you know, bad with the house. It’s not like my buyers destroyed them immediately. The toilet, right? So, I mean, and now at this point, it’s been about 48 hours between getting the handyman. I mean, the handyman is actually probably at the house now. Right?
[00:08:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, you still haven’t closed.
[00:09:00] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, we closed. Right. But what I was trying to get at is a difference in timing, right? When we weren’t closed, the handyman was quick, you know, I mean, the agent was also quicker and making sure that they got there to fix the items so we could close. Now that we’re closed, everything’s a little bit slower now.
I think this is a really good agent that we’ve been working with because she’s been on top of it. I mean, she even, she actually just sent a message right now saying like, “Hey, I removed the pictures on the MLS.” And as far as I know, I, we didn’t have to like ping her three or four times to do it.
[00:09:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: She just did it without even us asking. So, but still, we’re closed now. Things are a little bit more slower. There’s less money on the line right for them. Now, of course, they’re still working with you. And Fred, you brought this up too. I had no idea as a, as a home buyer. I thought once they handed me the keys, the house was closed. Anything now is my responsibility.
[00:09:54] Fred Glick: Theoretically it is your responsibility. But as I said before, if there’s some kind of a if they knew that they messed up the house in some way, shape, or form they’re responsible for it. So that’s, that’s really what it amounts to.
[00:10:10] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay.
So you do close, is the first course to go back to the selling agent or go back to your buying agent to say, “Hey, I just figured out…”
[00:10:17] Fred Glick: Go to your own broker, and they’re going to contact the other agent. That’s the idea.
[00:10:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay. Yeah. I made all the mistakes when I bought this house. It was even, it was even a dual agency that because they hadn’t listed the house yet. And it was…
[00:10:36] Fred Glick: Okay. Dual agency. Remind me. We’re going to have a whole long discussion about that on a future podcast. It is the most evil thing in real estate. And because of the NAR settlement, it might become more prolific. So we have to put out the warnings about dual agency.
[00:10:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So I actually got screwed. The house I sold in Half Moon Bay was bought by the agent. It was a dual agency that sold my house. And then I went 10 years later, I bought a house here in San Diego and I bought a house and the buyer’s agent was working with a seller’s agent within the same firm.
[00:11:16] Fred Glick: Yeah, and there’s differentiation between working within the same firm and having the same person represent you.
But, you know, let’s skip over this because this is my big thing of, it’s just.
[00:11:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Next week, tune in. Well, maybe not next week because it’s 4th of July, but next week, tune in and we will go do a deep dive on dual agency. There we go. Moving on. Any last comments on the final walkthrough?
[00:11:45] René Pérez Jr.: There’s always going to be small stuff. To end this once you do the walkthrough, you make a note of things that were wrong with the house that you were not expecting. We’re going to then go back itemize things. Make a list of how much the cost is to fix this, or whether, like, it actually is not disclosed. And if it wasn’t disclosed if it was not part of the inspections.
Then we go back and tell the seller like, “Hey, you need to fix this, or we won’t close, or give us an amount for us to take care of it after closing.” Right? So then that’s where a potential secondary negotiation is. Now, obviously, if there’s a small screw in like the wall where the painting was going, it’s like, that’s being super geeky.
It’s for the larger items, right? Like a toilet that’s broken. A screen that, you know, it was just destroyed from the move-out, right? And Fred, you were going to say something.
[00:12:45] Fred Glick: Yeah, I want to talk about money. So, if money has to exchange hand between seller and buyer, if you have time, do it through the mortgage and the system, which is a credit towards closing costs.
Which is it’s the most ridiculous thing. Everybody in the mortgage business knows that you’re giving credits for repairs, but you must list it as credits, or towards closing costs. So, if you’ve already finished that off and you have nothing left, technically, it is absolutely illegal on the settlement sheet.
The CD to give a credit of any kind, or even to pay a 3rd party for stuff. So you just got if you’re, especially after you close, you just got to set up a Venmo account and get the money for it. So it gets a little scrawny with how it’s done, but it’s better. The seller does it or the seller pays the electrician and the electrician just comes.
Don’t put it on trying to, you can’t put it on the closing sheet. That’s the last thing.
[00:13:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You know, I’m kind of surprised that I mean, when I did mine, it was like 30 days. And by the time I finally got to closing, I was weary. I was so tired of dealing with all the different back and forth and.
[00:14:02] Fred Glick: Oh, every client is.
[00:14:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And then I just, I just wanted to close. I’m like, I’ll deal with it later.
[00:14:08] Fred Glick: That’s why you have us because we don’t get it. You’re emotionally involved for these 30 days. Oh, you’re thinking about a million different things, how you’re going to do this, how you’re going to do that. Most people say, “How am I going to make the mortgage payment?”
We don’t need to think about that stuff. So all we’re trying to do is beat up the other side to get you what you want and what you need and what you should have. So whole different world. So that’s, you know, good buyer broker, that’s their job is no emotion. And just get her done. As somebody once said, get her done.
[00:14:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s wise. So talking about emotion and talking about like, let’s move, shift it back to the actual buying process. Cause there is a lot of emotion when you’re seeing a house, you like it. And then the price drops and you’re like, now’s my chance. What are the strategies when you’re seeing houses like actually start to decline in price?
[00:15:02] Fred Glick: All right. Well, there’s two different kinds of price drops. There’s if you’re in, I don’t know. I use Austin, Texas, for an example now where there’s just a ridiculous oversupply of property and price drops because there’s nobody coming to see the place, and they just need to get rid of it. So the price drop means something in terms of the fact that a seller is willing to take that amount because they want to sell, or, you know, you keep negotiating or keep waiting for it to drop some more, you know, so you have to understand your market.
Now we go into the Bay Area Market, for example, and the price drops on something. So it goes from, I don’t know, a 1.8M to a 1.6M. And you say to yourself, “Oh, wow. I’m just going to put an offer in for a 1.6M and get it.” No, that’s not what the agent is doing. Yeah. And a 1.8M, they’re sort of getting some showings, but they’re not getting anybody writing contracts. It was slightly overpriced because this is probably where the seller said, “I want a 1.8M.”
“Okay. Okay. Yeah, no problem. Sign right here.” And they screwed it up. So, what the agent then tells the seller is the market has changed, interest rates and, you know, they make up anything just just to you know, make it seem like something happened outside of what they can control.
So they take it down to 1.6M, but what their idea really is, is they know it’s worth 1.65M or 1.7M. I’m just making up numbers here. So what they’re trying to do is then get more people interested. It’s like, “Oh, look at the price drop. Wow.” Okay. That’s what they want to do.
And now they want to, you know, you say to her, “Hey, I want to see this property where they have an open house. We can go to the open house.” Or, “Hey, let’s just submit an offer right now at 1.6M.” Well, guess what? You submit an offer at 1.6M right then and there, it’s going to be ignored.
Why? Because it just dropped. So the idea is they want to spur people to come. They all don’t just come in day one. It takes a few days. You want to have another open house at a fresh price. Maybe you do another offer date. That’s when the bidding starts. And don’t think you’re getting it for 1.6M.
They’re going to want more. They’re going to have predicted that they’re going to get more.
So be, be cognizant of why they dropped the price and what they’re trying to accomplish by dropping the price. So again, you got to know your market. So that’s. René, add anything?
[00:17:42] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. Well, one thing I wanna add is just like sometimes I don’t want to sound like if I’m just being really mean, you know, but it’s like sometimes buyers think that they’re the only person that thought of this amazing idea.
It’s like, “Hey, I saw this price drop. I’m the only one that’s looking at this house. I just did a huge price drop.” Right? So, like, as soon as there’s a house that makes a price drop, there’s other agents that are calling the seller’s agent. Saying like, “Hey, I have clients that are interested,” blah, blah, blah.
A lot of people are flaky and they don’t actually put in offers, but if the agent sees that that price drop is doing the effect, once you get that first offer, they’re going to shop the offer, whether you’re the first person to make the offer. There’s other people looking at that stuff. So just remind people, like, it’s a process.
People tend to get emotional, and that’s where the, where the overbidding happens, right? Even if there’s going to be a price drop. And this, obviously, every case is different. There is, there are houses that even though they do a 200 price drop, it should be dropped to 400. Right? But you have to understand that there was definitely a fight between the seller’s agent and the seller saying like, “Well, you’re dropping it so much. I’m not going to take that offer.”
And the agent telling them, “Well, if you drop it, then I’m going to get offers, and don’t worry. I’ll get the higher price anyway.” So the agent’s not going to be able to go back and say like, “Oh, well, we got this one. We should take it.” It’s going to be hard for the agent to be able to, you know, also drop because the seller’s agent also wants it under contract.
So it’s not like they’re going to be working that hard anyway. That’s the cynical reality of things, right? But the point is that even if you think it’s going to be worthless, or you can get it under contract for less. It needs to be on the market at least two more weeks after a price drop for it to have an effect, a psychological effect on the sellers.
For them to say, “Well, you know what? Yeah, it’s still not working. I’m not getting offers. Yes, seller’s agent, you were right. It’s overpriced. We, if we actually want to sell, we should lower the price.” Right? And at that time, well, the seller then has a different option. Do I continue marketing it for less money or do I just rent them?
Right. And that’s a, that’s a secondary question. There’s some sellers that if they don’t get their number, they’re just going to go remove it from the MLS and put it up for rent. That’s kind of my,
[00:20:11] Fred Glick: Yeah, especially the high-price markets, the sellers are able to afford the mortgage payment and the taxes.
It’s not a big deal. But, you know, somebody is in a market where prices are falling and jobs are being lost and yeah, maybe they can’t. So you got to, you got to know who your sellers. Google the sellers, find out about them.
[00:20:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: He brought up two scenarios. One would be like a declining market like Austin that has an oversupply of inventory where you might be able to get that house right at the lower price drop because,
[00:20:47] Fred Glick: Oh, I’d even go lower.
[00:20:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Then he could actually go lower and bid down there. And then there’s an instance like San Francisco where it’s a psychological move on the seller to start a bidding frenzy because everybody now sees a deal. What are the couple of these key indicators? I can think of like a house been on the market for a year and then it drops.
That may be a sure sign. He should bid lower, but what about an instance? And I see this sometimes where a house just gets taken off the market. Then 2 weeks later, it’s put back on, but you can’t tell that the price is, the average person can’t tell that the price has changed.
[00:21:21] Fred Glick: Well, allegedly, you should be able to because you can see the history in Redfin and all that, but it depends on the multiple listing services to what you could use.
[00:21:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: In Pennsylvania, couldn’t see it.
[00:21:32] Fred Glick: Or in Texas, you can’t see it somewhere. Yeah. That’s why you need a buyer broker who can figure this out. You know, but also there’s value, “Hey, that’s worth 350, 000 to me. I mean, I like that.” You know, things go off the market temporarily for different reasons, but the days on market calculation cannot be changed unless it’s, you know, off the market for a long time.
And everybody’s got different things. 30 days, six months, who knows, 90 days. So you can look at the days on market. That’s the thing that counts. And why has it been on the market for 143 days? You know, there’s always a reason, always.
I was looking at a condo for somebody up in Seattle, and it was just a lot of days on market. And then I wrote an email to the listing agent. And because it’s a condo, as you’ve probably heard me saying before, do they have that reserve study in the last three years for Fannie Mae requirements? And he said, “No.” So no wonder, you can’t put mortgage on the property. So this listing agent’s a complete idiot. He’s not going to do anything about it because he’s just ignorant.
So if I were up there and really wanted to push it, I would get to this owner and say, “Look, this guy’s an idiot. This building is an idiotic. You have to do this people.” And when he also said, “Oh, this was like a big thing. Oh, the president of the association runs the association. They live in unit 4.” It’s like, yeah, so well, they’re not running it right because they don’t know these, on these private condominium situations where they don’t have an outside company that knows what they’re doing. You’re just screwing yourself on these condos because
[00:23:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Explain the reserve requirements to people that may not have listened to that.
[00:23:27] Fred Glick: The big quasi-governmental organizations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who give out all the mortgages basically in this country, whose guidelines are followed by basically everybody, have said, “If a condominium does not have a reserve study within the last 3 years, we won’t do the loan.”
What is the reserve study? That is a study, obviously, by an outside company that figures takes the entire condominium. Let’s take a standard building. So you’re going to have, remember, you own from the walls in. So everything walls out—in the hallway, the roof, the facade on the front, the doors on the front door of the place, the elevators, anything and everything eventually will have to be replaced. So there’s a calculation made. Okay. In 25 years, you have to replace the roof. And at that time, it’s going to cost 100, 000 dollars. So you have to take that and all the other things and bring them back to a number that every unit is going to have to come up with as part of the monthly fee so that when all these events happen, you will have the money to make the repairs. Pretty standard stuff, you would think, but most condo, you know, everybody are, “Oh, I want to buy that condo because the condo fees only 100 dollars.” Well, there’s a reason it’s 100 dollars because they maybe had nothing in reserve.
And so one day, everybody gets a phone call. “Hey, 30 grand, please.” You know, it’s just, preventing that stupidity from happening. So these condos that don’t do it, they can’t get financing. There’s a couple of other stipulations I won’t go into on what the condo has to do, but that’s the main one. So if you don’t do it, you don’t get the money; it’s that simple. You can probably find some subprime, you know, high rate company that will do it with a lot of down payment, but not to get you a real normal mortgage rate, it’s just not going to happen at all.
[00:25:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Interesting. René, I want to go back to one thing that you talked about when we were talking about your best, your bidding strategies when the price drops and you make an offer, you mentioned that they would shop it around.
Talk to me about what that means.
[00:25:49] René Pérez Jr.: Well, so the worst that can happen as a listing agent is for you to have a listing and no offers in hand. Without an offer in hand, I can’t offer for a higher price for my sellers. Right? So me personally, right? If, as long as we get one offer, I go back to everyone that went over to the open houses during the weekend, everyone that has a request for disclosures.
And I tell them “Look, we have an offer. If anyone is interested, please tell us because we’re going to ratify soon.” Ratify, meaning we’re going to get under contract. And it’s just a general psychological fact that people get FOMO, right? You want that FOMO to kick in. You want people to say, like, “Hey, well, you know what? I actually did like it. I was just kind of hoping you could maybe just wait to see if I could find something else. But you know what? Let’s make an offer on it. I don’t want to lose it.” I mean, and you’re hoping that the first offer is pretty good. That’s where like, it doesn’t really matter, right? The fact is you have an offer and the other person that’s making an offer or that could make an offer doesn’t know how good or how bad the other offer is.
So it’s at the end of the day, it’s going to be speculation, right? We don’t know if there is an offer. I mean, I myself, I would never go and tell people, “Hey, we have an offer when we don’t have an offer.” Cause then we would look stupid if we can’t actually get under contract. Right? And it’s just, you’re going to get caught lying.
So sometimes, you know, I get on the phone with agents and they say they’re expecting an offer or blah, blah, blah. And it’s just like, well, that general script is not going to do anything for me. Right? Like I, you have to be truthful about it. So that’s why whenever someone makes an offer, all of a sudden there’s another offer that comes in.
Even if the house is going to market for two or three months. Because that’s what a listing agent should do, right? You should go and figure out how you can get more money than what you already have. Now, of course, every seller is different. Sometimes a seller says, “Hey, you know what? We received this offer. I want to move on.” They get scared and they say like, “I don’t want to lose this offer. Let’s just get it on their contract.” Sorry?
[00:28:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: They’ve got selling fatigue. They just want to be done with it.
[00:28:04] René Pérez Jr.: Exactly. Yeah. So the worst thing that can happen is that seller fatigue.
Right? And, again, it just depends on who the seller is it depends on if they really need the money or not as well, right? So that’s what shopping the offer is. So, like, it’s going to other agents asking if they’re interested. And sometimes I get, you know, when I’m on the phone with agents, sometimes I’ll say, “Well, yeah, I have a client who’s interested, but they want to submit an offer that is 200k below list.” And most of the time. I’m just going to be like, “No,” you know, like I’m a little different in that regard.
Like, I don’t want offers that are going to be garbage, right? That are going to be with, you know, someone that doesn’t have a mortgage pre-approval that are going to be like heavily under list that is much lower than what I already have. Because the idea is not to have like five offers that are useless, right?
The idea is to have offers that are going to get you under contract. Sometimes, and that’s where the game continues, right? Like sometimes when the offer is shopped, you’ll get other offers. Sometimes you won’t. And then it’s whether the seller wants to take that price, try to negotiate for a higher price or just wait for something else.
And I don’t know what the right answer is, right? There’s no perfect answer, but the fact is you do have an offer in hand and if you need the money, there’s other things that you can put your money in quicker, right? Than just waiting for something else. People sometimes for, it’s like when you, you know, when you put a house for rent, right?
Sometimes people ask like, let’s say 4, 000 for rent and it just stays in the market for like three months before someone takes it. Imagine if you were to just price your rental for 3, 500 or for 3, 200. Immediately someone would have rented it. So you would have gotten the same amount of money, if not more, like just pricing it better.
It’s the same thing with like selling. Like we have people who have you know trying to sell a property for four years because they want their number. Well, they pay taxes every year and it doesn’t matter if you, you know, have really low taxes. You know, let’s say that you’re paying twenty thousand dollars a year for taxes.If the house sits in the market for three years, that’s going to be close to—I mean, that’s a 60K right there, right?
[00:30:14] Fred Glick: So it’s that insurance maintenance, everything else.
[00:30:17] René Pérez Jr.: The risk. Yeah, exactly. And the risk of it getting, you know, put in danger by someone breaking in because it’s been, you know, vacant for a long time because of fire happens, whatever it may be. Right? So let’s say like by having a house on the market, you’re at least and I’m 20k for taxes is I think really low, but let’s say for instance that is the case. You’re looking at a 100K for three years, right?
And there are some sellers that stay in the market for that long, especially in like the premium market right there where sellers want their 25 million dollars price. You know if you would have just sold for 20 million, you would have saved all those taxes. I mean, you also have cleaners in there. I mean, you’re paying for staging, right? There’s other expenses to it.
[00:31:09] Fred Glick: And the other idea is, what can you do with the money? If you know, you can put it in the market and make 10 percent or something else that made the money there, as opposed to trying to make the money in the real estate market from consumers, one consumer, or one group of consumers that are going to buy the house. So it’s a very small, small market, especially for the super expensive stuff.
[00:31:31] René Pérez Jr.: We’ve had people to lose deals for $5,000. You know, they either won’t go below $5,000 or higher $5,000. And it’s just like, I know we’re lucky to be in markets where it’s like people are making offers in the millions, but you know, in the big scheme of things, $5,000 should not be something that’s, you know, stops you from purchasing or selling. Your buyer. Yeah.
[00:31:54] Fred Glick: Yeah. I was going to say the beautiful thing about us is you have the buyer broker rebates that is available to you to use, even if it’s five grand. So reduce the buyer-broker commission by five grand and you got a deal.
[00:32:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yep.
[00:32:09] Fred Glick: So that’s why you use Arrivva.
[00:32:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And absolutely. And in the scope of a 30-year mortgage, a $5,000, what does that equate to? $5 a month?
[00:32:19] Fred Glick: Yeah. It’s nothing.
[00:32:20] René Pérez Jr.: Maybe, but even looking at it from another perspective, right? Let’s say you’re losing a deal for five or $10,000. And let’s say you’re not going to find a house that’s similar to what you’re looking for for another month or two. If you’re going to open houses every weekend, that’s your life that you’re changing.
You know, in terms of, of what you’re doing on Saturday and Sunday, right? And I mean, even if you priced out your Saturdays and Sundays to be like 250 bucks a day, it adds up pretty quickly, right? In terms of your lifestyle.
[00:32:54] Fred Glick: And another thing I tell people is like, look, yeah, you’re going to pay five grand more than you wanted to today, but it’s not about what the value of the property is today, the only times going forward, it’s going to matter is when you refinance and need an appraisal or when you sell it. And if you’re going to sell it in 20 years. What’s 510 grand? I mean, it’s not going to make a difference.
And especially in a crazy market, like, in Northern California, where they’re not, there’s no more land to build a gigantic amount of houses that people are going to want that are not way far away from places like Cupertino, you know. So there’s nothing going to like arise. They’re not going to have another, another level of land or something, you know, exactly. So think about it long term. It’s not the fact that you got a deal. I, you know, I’ve had buyers. I want to make sure, you know, they want to make sure they were able to tell all their friends, they got a deal. It’s not about that.
[00:33:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You brought a new development. There may not be any new development in the Bay Area, but there is a lot of new development in the there’s been some new efforts through zoning and Wally.
[00:34:07] Fred Glick: Oh, yeah. Oh, well, if I think I mentioned this, but I’ll mention it again, so last year, the California legislators passed this awesome law that said, if you have a single-family house and you are allowed to build an ADU on it. You can build the ADU, and then you can make a two-unit condominium out of the property and sell off the ADU, you know, for a reasonable price to do a one-bedroom ADU, maybe three, 400,000, as opposed to trying to buy a condo for 800,000 with massive condo fees.
And it’s a beautiful idea and a beautiful thing that’s going to improve the number of affordable houses available. The problem is 2 things. Number 1, the way the legislature passed that law is each city in California must approve it. Guess how many cities have approved it?
[00:35:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: None.
[00:35:04] Fred Glick: Exactly. That’s problem number 1. Problem number 2. There was all this thing and those who follow this in California know about building near the railroads and, you know, it’s a great idea and all that. But the problem is zoning. So you try to get something zoned correctly and then approved and go through the process. You know, people contact us in Northern California and say, “Oh, I want to buy land and then build a house.”
And they say, “You got 3 or 4 years to wait?” Because that’s how long it takes. It’s absolutely ridiculous. So. Actually, the federal government has been doing something about this. Believe it or not. Yes, the government does things. And one thing that the Biden administration has been pushing is to get all these idiotic municipalities to move faster on zoning.
And they’ve had a few that have been fine. There’s a TikTok, and we can put the link into it where the Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, I hope I’m pronouncing his name right, talks about it. And they want new construction. They, we know there’s not enough houses and, but you got to do things on the local level and then work out from them.
You can’t have a macro answer to this. It’s a micro answer. And the guys are on the zoning boards and been there for years. And, you know, they don’t know from anything. I mean, my big thing is I love the cement 3d houses. I mean, you build a house in a day or 2. I mean, it’s insane. Lennar has been doing it.
[00:36:43] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s literally rock solid.
[00:36:45] Fred Glick: Yeah, literally. So we got to get our act together to do these kinds of alternative building methods, push the zoning, have a little more density. You know, it’s just ridiculous at this point. And the affordability, it can be great if every 3 out of 10 houses in the Silicon Valley had 80 use that they were able to sell in the 4 dollar range, we’d have a lot of happy firemen, policemen, nurses, you know, who could live close.
You know, it’s not going to be for a family of 5, but I mean, it’s something it’s to get somebody started. Then you’re going to build equity from there. Those things will keep appreciating and then you’ll sell it off to the next person when you move into the single-family. So it’s just. We got to do it. We absolutely have to do it.
It just makes total sense and keep people working and keep pushing the economy and there’ll be, you know, everything that blossoms out of there. So it’s a beautiful thing.
[00:37:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I’m all for that.
[00:37:52] Fred Glick: There you go.
[00:37:54] René Pérez Jr.: Was this a small propaganda clip to vote for Biden?Is that what I’m hearing?
[00:38:00] Fred Glick: I’m just reiterating what the Biden administration has done.
Okay. We’re not going to, we’re not going to endorse anyone here on our podcast because that’s not our thing. We’re just here to talk real estate. And if another candidate had a great idea, I’d mention that, but
[00:38:15] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It is about the ideas and that’s so important. Idea lost in the ideology.
[00:38:21] René Pérez Jr.: Did anyone see the debate yesterday?
[00:38:24] Fred Glick: No, I didn’t bother. It’s just really…
[00:38:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We’re going down the, we went as well vote as Brooke Mueller now.
[00:38:31] Fred Glick: Here’s the thing, people are just gonna vote philosophy. They’re not gonna vote for the person. They either agree with what the Democrats say, or they agree with the Republicans say. That’s it, that these elections are as easy as that. So all the advertising is going to make the people who are on one side of the other, get them out to vote, period. That’s as simple as this political thing is. Everything else is just entertainment. Nothing else really matters. So that’s why I don’t even bother looking at any of this stuff. It doesn’t matter day to day. But people love this stuff. Political commentary is big business
[00:39:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It is.
[00:39:10] Fred Glick: I ignore it. I’m more worried about dealing with idiot listing agents.
[00:39:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We are here to fix real estate, not politics.
[00:39:19] Fred Glick: For sure. For sure.
[00:39:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: René, last words is that, well, hopefully, it’s not your last words because you’re driving. Has the traffic cleared?
[00:39:28] René Pérez Jr.: I’m parking the car here and I’m returning my rental right now. So these are the last words for my rental.
[00:39:35] Fred Glick: Yay, finally. Are you getting your car back?
[00:39:37] René Pérez Jr.: Not just yet, but I’m returning it because I should be getting it like Monday or Tuesday.
[00:39:43] Fred Glick: Got it.
[00:39:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Fred?
[00:39:46] Fred Glick: All right. My last word is Brooke Mueller. Who’s Brooke Mueller?
If you don’t know, she was married to Charlie Sheen. She was an actress, and I actually met her and Charlie in Malibu, and she was going to sublease a unit that I was in. So now, Charlie was a nice guy, by the way. Sub leasing an apartment you can do it.
But there’s some precautions, you know. She was all gung-ho gung-ho I’m gonna do it and then she just disappeared off the face of the earth. Well, she’s being questioned now in the death of Matt Perry. I don’t know anything about it, but
[00:40:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Stretch.
[00:40:34] Fred Glick: Yeah, it’s interesting.
[00:40:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Hashtag True Crime, look it up on TikTok.
[00:40:40] Fred Glick: There you go, it’s my big L. A., you know, celebrity sighting.
[00:40:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Gotta keep your finger on the pulse.
[00:40:49] Fred Glick: Yeah. Well, I think that’s about it, so.
That’s all we got for now, because next week, well, next, next, next time you see us, we got some good stuff. Dual agency. We’re going to talk about reload. We’ll also talk about reload companies.
[00:41:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s going to be spicy. You guys are gonna have to join in, stay tuned for the next episode of We Fixed Real Estate. Have a good rest of the day, everyone.