‘Real’ Real Estate Advice You Won’t Hear at Open Houses With Fred Glick and Chris Gustavel Of Arrivva

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

• Hear what freeway noise means for property value and what you can do about it
• Learn how San Francisco’s zoning changes might finally speed up permits and help legalize additions.
• Uncover the condo law that could stall your mortgage, and wildfire insurance hurdles every California buyer should know
• Explore why a well-priced Seattle home isn’t selling and what that says about today’s market
• Get smart tips for first-time buyers looking to avoid bidding wars and overpriced “turnkey” listings
• The truth behind “Now is the best time to buy” and why that advice could cost you big

In this episode with Fred Glick, René Pérez Jr. and Chris Gustavel

What aren’t agents telling you at open houses? 

Fred Glick, René Pérez Jr., and Seattle agent Chris Gustavel of Arrivva reveal what really matters when buying or selling a home, but rarely gets said out loud. 

Why could a great-looking property still be a nightmare deal? What law could tank your condo’s value? What zoning change might reshape San Francisco real estate? And why is “now is the best time to buy” such a lazy pitch? Tune in for sharp takes, overlooked red flags, and advice you won’t hear from the usual real estate script.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• René Pérez Jr. on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• HowLoud
• Jubilee Homes
• We Fixed Real Estate Episode With Jubilee Homes

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Welcome to the latest episode of We Fixed Real Estate, Drew Hendricks here with Fred Glick, Chris Gustavel and René Pérez premiering a new property today.

Fred, why don’t you tell us about it?

[00:00:29] Fred Glick: Alright, take a look at this property, everybody. It’s about a 3000, a little over 3000 square foot house. An amazing condition. Meticulous owners. Got a swimming pool and a gigantic backyard, which I kind of can’t see back there. I picked the wrong picture.

[00:00:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I see a big one.

[00:00:48] Fred Glick: It’s actually behind the pool, so unfortunately I picked the wrong picture to talked about it. But anybody see a problem?

[00:00:59] Chris Gustavel: The freeway

[00:01:02] Fred Glick: Exactamundo, that is the 210 freeway. This is in Arcadia. So the people who own it now have been in it for many years, I think like 20 years, 25 years, something like that.

The previous owner, the person they bought it for was the guy who worked with Albert Einstein at Caltech. So there’s a possibility that Albert Einstein has been in this house. Giving an extra value. His aura is still there. But they’ve loved it. I mean, yeah, there is noise from a highway.

We also have another listing up in Northern California and San Jose that’s right off the 280. I mean, literally. Like 50 feet from it. So inside the house, no problem. Everything’s got, you know, solid doors, double pane windows, it’s great in there. And you get outside, yeah, I mean, it depends on the time of day.

Rush hour’s actually not bad, because everybody’s going slow, so it’s a beautiful thing. But, you know, the middle of the day, the truck’s going at 60, 70 miles an hour. Make a, make some noise. But we’re looking into a couple of things. One being that, I don’t know if you can see it in there, but there is a train line that runs there, the Metro.

And if you’re within a certain number of feet from the metro and your noise decibel is above, I think it was 72, they allegedly have a grant program that they’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars towards building your own wall. So that’s pretty cool. So we’ve emailed them. We’re still waiting to hear back.

But that could be a cool thing. Also, we’re getting a guy out there to just literally give us a price to put up some, whatever. We don’t even know what he’s gonna recommend.

[00:03:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Looks like there’s a lot of nice trees back there though, that are…

[00:03:10] Fred Glick: Oh, tons of trees.

[00:03:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: There’s really, look like the views blocked from the freeway.

[00:03:14] Fred Glick: Yeah, you can’t see the freeway. As a matter of fact, behind all those trees, there’s about 10, 15 feet of actual just ground and there then is a wall. So it’s just the wall didn’t go high enough. That’s really what it amounted to. So they built it but didn’t test it or something, or the test was wrong before they built it.

So it’s a great house. It’s in Arcadia, Arcadia School District, which is really, it’s like 9 out of 10 on Redfin in great schools. So it’s a cool house, but you’re going to probably get it for, if this was, you know, three blocks away, it’s probably a three and a half million dollar house just because of the location.

You know, three most important things in real estate. Location, location, location. This is it. First buy, first set of people that came in to look at it, loved the house and just couldn’t, couldn’t deal with the outside. But we had more people in an open house yesterday. They really didn’t complain.

And it was Sunday, it wasn’t bad. You know, but the idea is if you have, if you’re looking at a house like this, go back different times a day, different days, just to make sure. And we told them that we want them to be comfortable and not, you know, buy the house and then complain about it later. But it’s about a 30,000 square foot lot so it’s enormous.

You could have a sort of kind of see it back here, it’s actually even bigger, but between the pool, there’s a pool house and the yard. I could see like 50 screaming kids at a birthday party. It’s perfect for it, you know? So, or just, you know, have your own musical festival there.

I mean it’s, you know, so it’s the end of a cul-de-sac too.

[00:05:15] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh wow.

[00:05:16] Fred Glick: And right down the street from Santa Anita Racetrack. So if you’re into race cars or horse racing. But yeah, that’s, I kind of wanted to just mention it and mention just the fact that it may not be as bad as you think, so don’t not see it if you see something that’s near a highway.

There’s also a website that we’ve used a lot. I mean, it’s a generic algorithm. It’s called HowLoud, howloud.com kind of gives you an idea. It gives a score and it separates it between noise from traffic, general noise and aircraft. So if you don’t think you’re in a flight path, you might be in a flight path of a house you’re looking at. So.

[00:06:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. That’s interesting about noise, like I, being in San Diego in Point Loma I grew up outside of the flight class, so we couldn’t hear it, but it was always a toss up, whether you wanted to hear like continuous freeway noise or that, every 15, 20 minutes airplane noise straight over your head.

[00:06:24] Fred Glick: Got it. It depends how high it was. I mean, there’s some people, I sold a house to a guy in San Jose, literally right on the flight path of that, the airport going north. And he says, “I like airplanes. It doesn’t bother me.” So… And it really ends up being white noise after a while ’cause you get used to it.

This is, you’re gonna hear it every day. It’s just that kind of a thing. So anyway, that’s my story on houses near highways.

[00:06:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: No, a lot of interesting points to consider. My sister just bought a house right on the flight path. I think the planes are maybe 300 feet above her, above her house flying directly over.

[00:07:06] Fred Glick: You live in the airport?

[00:07:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, she’s in Point Loma. It’s just right on the other side of the fruit of the runway station.

[00:07:15] Fred Glick: It’s crazy where literally they’re flying above the houses and then have to drop down that approach is nuts.

So, well anyway.

[00:07:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Let’s talk about San Francisco and some of the easing up of the zoning laws.

[00:07:31] Fred Glick: Yeah. The mayor’s doing some cool things. He’s proposed some new legislation to basically streamline things and stop this three years for getting permit stuff. We love it. I mean, we haven’t seen the effects yet. We haven’t had any properties or people who are gonna be doing stuff, but it will really change San Francisco to make it better and easier.

And there’s, there’s a lot of unpermitted stuff. So I could see down the road once they get it stopped and cleaned. They may start looking for more  unpermitted things and at least get some revenue from that. You know, there’s the old, this used to happen in Philadelphia too, where you just do it.

Because the fine and the slap on the wrist is not as a big deal as submitting the permits and waiting forever. So they might even, they should even put some kind of moratorium on it. You know, we’re not gonna, as long as it’s done, but to code, you know, we’re only fine you a hundred dollars or something.

I mean, just to get everything straightened out. ‘Cause we always have buyers, “Oh, I saw it says it was  unpermitted. Oh my God, I can’t buy this house. I’m not gonna get a mortgage,” which is not true. And we did a, somewhere on our blog or somewhere you’ll see a NotebookLM podcast about it. And I think we talked about it for specifically San Francisco. No, we did it for California. Generic. It’s kind of all the same, but, you know, LA hasn’t done this, but if San Francisco’s successful, maybe we’ll see something happen in LA.

[00:09:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You would think the area around the Palisades would kind of takes

[00:09:21] Fred Glick: Oh, well that, that special zone kind of thing there and Altadena.

So they’re pushing through stuff ’cause you gotta get a whole house built for people who don’t have anything in a fire. You know, it’s a thing.

[00:09:34] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Now for those people that aren’t quite as savvy. Explain it more in simple terms. So you’re going to buy a house and you figure out that there’s a, I don’t know, a bathroom that was, like the house was a three bedroom, three bath, but really was only on paper, three bedroom, two bath.

What does the buyer have to look out for there? And is, should the seller consider permitting it retroactively? How does that work?

[00:09:58] Fred Glick: Well, you could go in and plead mea culpa and then you get the inspector to come out. And as long as it’s done by code, fine, you know, they’ll just slap you with a fine, usually, usually.

But if you didn’t do it by code, you’re gonna have to rip it out if they see it.

And they say, “No, rip it out, do it again. Get the permit and do it right.” So if you’re gonna have that situation, maybe you call in an independent plumber, or as part of the home inspection.

“You think they did this right?”

The home inspection’s already done. Contact the home inspector.

[00:10:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mm.

[00:10:36] Fred Glick: And maybe even pay them to come out just for your peace of mind, just to see if it was done right. ‘Cause they don’t see, you know, you can’t see behind the walls.

[00:10:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: If it’s  unpermitted and you’re a buyer coming in, can you still, you can still buy the house unpermitted, but the city knows that there’s something unpermitted there. Could you?

[00:10:58] René Pérez Jr.: So talking in practical levels, right? You know, you as a person, I mean, you’re busy. You have your own problem. So let’s say that you’re trying to buy a property that’s in the market.

That’s as something  unpermitted. Usually the way it works is someone complains about the  unpermitted item, or the city does a walkthrough in some cities, like, in some cities near Berkeley, for example, it’s common for inspectors to sometimes go into the open houses, right? So if it’s, the biggest risk is when it’s on the market.

When it’s on the market, someone finds out that you have something  unpermitted. When that happens, then it’s up to the sellers to bring it back into up to code, right? And that’s in San Francisco, we’ve had a surge in that, right? Where someone reports it, and again, it’s usually when someone complains about it, so be nice to your neighbors, right?

But the reality is that once you own the property, let’s say you have something that’s not up to code, you really have to piss someone off for someone to go in there and check on your property.

And I don’t know the exact rules. I’m pretty sure that you can’t just, some random person can’t just go into your home and say, “Hey, I need to check your permits.” So that’s not really, I mean, there’s just so much stuff that, you know, people are busy with that that’s just not a realistic thing for it to happen. But the biggest risk is when it’s on the market.

Right? And that’s, you don’t wanna increase square footage, right? You don’t wanna, I guess when you’re putting your house on the market, sometimes you have the square footage from the county records, right? And then you take photography that shows that there’s a bigger square footage. Well now you have two separate accounts of size.

Some sellers say like, “Oh, I wanna put the higher square footage.” Now the liability with that is if you know as a seller that you have something  unpermitted and you put it on the market, those buyers might start questioning, “Hey, what’s going on here?” So if those buyers then go and ask a whole bunch of questions to the city, it might raise some alarms at the city level. Right? And that’s when things happen. That’s when things get a little bit more crazy and hectic.

Maybe it wasn’t a complaint, but it was just a buyer who was doing their due diligence and they find out something was  unpermitted.

[00:13:17] Fred Glick: Here’s another thing to look out for. So let’s say you interviewed five agents before you listed a property and you gave it to, you know, number four. But agent number two was really pissed off that you didn’t give him the listing. He knew you had unpermitted stuff in the house. So don’t mention anything unpermitted the first time you talk to an agent.

[00:13:42] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Hmm.

[00:13:42] Fred Glick: Get it narrowed down a little. Make sure he’s not, you know, she’s not gonna turn you in for that ’cause just outta spite.

[00:13:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh. ’cause they didn’t get the listing?

[00:13:54] Fred Glick: Exactly.

[00:13:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Ah, that’s a good tip.

[00:13:57] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:13:59] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. And that’s hard. So a lot of times when sellers, and you can’t blame sellers for wanting to do their due diligence in picking who they’re going to sell their home with, a secondary issue with doing that is before you’re opening your home on the market, make sure that you don’t share your address.

Just look up agents, look at their histories, right? Look at the reviews before contacting people. If you are contacting five, six agents and they all know that you’re selling a property, that’s going to hurt you in terms of negotiation, they’re gonna want to ask about your story. Every agent’s gonna want to learn about your story.

And if you don’t pick them, now they know what means a lot to you. Now they know how they can, you know, compete and get to your emotions. So you have to be really careful with that, and that’s something that people don’t really think about on their

[00:14:49] Fred Glick: Yeah. Good point.

[00:14:50] René Pérez Jr.: So.

[00:14:53] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s a really good point.

One more thing on this permit. So like not all, kind of two questions. What’s the most common  unpermitted thing you, you tend to see? And then the second question is like, all permits aren’t created equal. There’s like some permits are just really minor details, whereas there’s a huge, there’s permits that are huge details that really impact the property price.

[00:15:17] Fred Glick: Well I kind of see mostly like adding a small room, you know, made an empty space into a room. So you just add adding electric and maybe a window. The other thing are bathrooms, thrown a bathroom together. Those are probably the two major things. And yeah, every city’s gonna have different permits for different things.

You know, a big city like San Francisco is gonna have a specific plumbing department, electric department, whereas you go in a small city, they may just have the building, you know, department and that’s it. So they just deal with that. So that’s the kind of thing that you have to look at on each individual city.

[00:15:59] René Pérez Jr.: One of the most troublesome ones you do see is things like decks, just because decks create a city hazard. I mean, a bathroom that’s content properly, I mean, yeah, maybe you’re gonna get more mold than you would have, and you can create, if not routed correctly, you can create fires, right? So that’s one thing.

But a deck someone can fall more easily if they’re not the right procedures. Maybe it’s not, it’s extended to, to too far out, right? That creates a danger. So that’s usually what people are fined the most for, I’d say. Cities like Palo Alto, you can’t build decks, right? So if you go to a property that has a large deck, they’ve either been grandfathered or they kind of know someone.

[00:16:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Why can’t you build a deck in Palo Alto?

[00:16:48] René Pérez Jr.: I mean, you’re allowed to build the really small decks, but extensive decks where you can actually use the outside, you can’t.

[00:16:57] Fred Glick: You’re talking like off a second or third floor, but you could build, say, a slab as a patio. You just can’t build a deck.

[00:17:05] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. Yeah. I meant like a second floor deck.

[00:17:09] Fred Glick: Yeah. Well, that brings us to SB 326 and SB 721, but mostly 326, which has to do with condominiums. First question you ask when you’re looking at a condominium to the listing agent is, “Is the condominium all good with SB 326?” Doesn’t matter if the unit you’re looking at has a balcony or not.

What that law is, is these condominiums have to get inspected, inspect the decks. And if you didn’t do it, you’re never getting a mortgage. We’re going through this hell with this. The problem is the management company, it has been just evasive and they finally gave what we needed and we finally got it cleared.

But it was the whole pain. This was supposed to be done at the end of last year and they, they still haven’t done the physical work, but they finally got the bids and things like that. But yeah, condominiums in California, SB 326, that is question number one. ‘Cause even if, again, there’s no deck in your property and it’s only on one unit, another side of the property, doesn’t matter.

It will shut down the whole mortgage process until it’s done. It’s crazy. We think it’s like, “Wait, it’s got nothing to do with our unit, so who cares?” You know, but they’re worried about, “Hey, you’re gonna have a special assessment. How much it’s gonna be? Will that affect the condominium fee?” So Fannie Mae is the pain in the neck about it now, starting in Florida.

Florida’s an, that got extended, I think, to another year. But all those have to be. And that’s part of why values in Florida, it’s one of the reasons, in addition to everything else, have collapsed. So condominiums are very slow to move. I mean, we have a buyer looking at one this week, 240 something days on the market, in San Francisco.

You know, San Francisco’s starting to come back, but still a condo is still, people are scared. People were seeing the fees going up because they have to. There used to be these people would buy, and I’ve always said this for years, don’t buy the cheapest condo with the cheapest condo fee.

There’s a reason for it. That means they haven’t put any money aside for reserve. So guess what? One day you’re gonna get a phone call, you know, give us 25 grand and you’re gonna go haa, haba, haba, haa. So, you know, if you would’ve paid $15 more a month, this wouldn’t, for 10 years, this wouldn’t have happened.

So that’s the second thing they ask. Do they have a reserve study recently? And check the reserve study and it’ll show you kind of how much they have to collect for the reserves and see what it is on the budget. But yeah, I mean, condo prices come down when the condo fees go up. So that’s kind of always the seesaw. Condo fees come down, maybe it goes up a little bit ’cause it’s a give and take that way.

So add that into your mortgage payment so you know what the total amount is compared to a single. So singles, you don’t worry about it. So.

[00:20:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Definitely seems like there’s a lot more to understand when purchasing a condo. So you wanna really try to find the right agent that can help you navigate that process.

[00:20:34] Fred Glick: Yep. And also mortgage person, as you probably know, we do mortgages, so you know, we know what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are looking for.  So, you know, even when listing a condo, you know, you have to go with the seller and explain all these things. If you are looking to list your condo and the agent doesn’t ask you about SB 326 or the reserve, that means they have no idea. Which only means it’s gonna be a mess later. ‘Cause you’re gonna list the property, take the pictures, blah, blah, blah. Somebody’s gonna come, I put an offer in and then you find out they can’t get a mortgage. So you’ve wasted your time completely. I mean, we took, the house that we had the problem with, we actually took it off the market ’cause it was no sense in and having it on the market.

[00:21:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Until they can resolve the issue. So yeah, condos have their own challenges, but single family homes have some others. And talking about wildfires now and how…

[00:21:29] Fred Glick: Oh yeah, there’s a new, we are taping this on, I’m still calling it taping.

[00:21:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We’re recording June 16th.

[00:21:39] Fred Glick: We’re recording on June 16th.

Tomorrow there’s gonna be new maps that are coming out of wildfire issues in the state of California and where, you know, the orange and the red are gonna be on the maps. So just a big reminder is look for insurance before you even put a bid on a house, just make sure you can get it insured.

And if you can’t get regular insurance, we’ll call it, you’re gonna go into FAIR Plan and you gotta see what the price of that’s gonna be. And that’s gonna, that’s not a hundred percent coverage. Doesn’t give you everything. And then you gotta buy a separate liability policy. So check with your insurance people ahead of time and realize if you see a lot of trees in California, it’s gonna cost you more for insurance, basically the way to look at it.

So we’ve already done it for this house and it’s gonna be FAIR Plan.

[00:22:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Is this one you’re looking at behind you right there?

[00:22:35] Fred Glick: Yeah. ‘Cause all the trees, close to Altadena, you know, you can’t see it, but there’s mountains right behind there, so plenty of woods. And you can see a lot of trees behind the 210.

[00:22:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, you would think with all the greenery there, it would make it a little less for wildfires. But I guess it’s still consumable.

[00:22:59] Fred Glick: It’s nice burnable wood. Leaves burn, flare out. It’s horrible.

[00:23:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, what about existing homeowners that may have lived in the house for 15 years or so? How would they be impacted?

They could just lose their insurance?

[00:23:15] Fred Glick: Yeah. I mean like State Farm blew tons of people off and then you gotta go get FAIR Plan or somebody else. AAA has been pretty good. We’ve had some success with them. Who else are people getting? I know Geico for a while. I don’t know if they’re still in the market.

But there are, you know, normal companies that you start out with. You might have to shop around a little bit. Everybody’s the same price, so FAIR Plan ’cause it comes in the state.Not much you can do about that.

[00:23:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Very good. Chris, what’s top of mind for you today?

[00:23:54] Chris Gustavel: You got me off guard.

[00:23:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I know. I was intentional.

[00:23:59] Chris Gustavel: Trying to wake me up. Trying to sell house in Seattle.

[00:24:03] Fred Glick: Right. We’ve been nursing this house and it’s a great house.

[00:24:06] Chris Gustavel: Yeah.

[00:24:07] Fred Glick: Two bedroom, one bath with a basement and a garage. It’s clean. The sewer is perfect. Absolutely perfect. And it just, we get, you know, it’s priced right. We get a showing here and there, so I, and it’s just north of Burien.

If you all know where that is.

[00:24:29] Chris Gustavel: It’s Burien. Burien.

[00:24:30] Fred Glick: Burien. Yeah. I never pronounce that right. But it’s Seattle.

[00:24:34] Chris Gustavel: It’s actually like West Seattle. It’s a really nice neighborhood. It’s less, I mean, it’s priced. You can’t find hardly anything in West Seattle for under a million. So I don’t, it’s just kind of weird.

Maybe it’s just kind of a busy street, even though it’s not that busy. Yeah, it’s a clean, cute house.

[00:24:53] Fred Glick: If you have anything to do, it’s, how far is it from the airport, Chris? Drive? 15 minutes maybe?

[00:24:58] Chris Gustavel: It’s like 20 minutes. 20 minutes. Yeah.

[00:25:00] Fred Glick: 20 minutes. Okay. So I’m gonna come up with an idea. Get it out there.

There’s these places near big airports, hubs, that airline personnel, here’s an idea. You live in Sacramento, but you’re, you know, you work for Alaska and you’re, you have to go out of Seattle is where you’re getting most of your flights. So what do you do? Sometime you got an 8:00 AM flight, you can’t fly in that morning and just get on board.

You have to come in the night before, and that’s not at a cost to the airline. That’s at your cost. So what people have done, matter of fact, years and years ago, I helped flight attendants set up two of these near Philadelphia, they’re called crash pads. Maybe they changed the name of them. And she set it up with, you know, her having a room.

But the other room, she had set up bunk beds, like two sets of bunk beds. So she kept four people and the people kind of rotate in and out. They got a closet, they were able to lock stuff up. It’s a communal kitchen. They’re all work from the same airline, so they can all, you know, bubble mites with each other about, you know, complain.

So this may be a really cool thing to do as a, if you’re an airline employee, have this as a crash pad, so you make money from it every month. So it’s, you know, Airbnb before Airbnb, but just specifically for airline personnel. Maybe you’re work at Boeing late nights and, but you live up in northern part of Washington and you work during the week, you know, come in, couple people who do that, and you put this house together and run it out like that.

So there are other ways of doing this and making money from it. So it’s just a thought. ‘Cause, you know, we tell people we can do a buy down mortgage and let me explain again what a buy down is if I had two real estate agents ask me and I can’t believe they asked me. So if today the rate for a 30 year fix for this house is six point a half percent with no points, what they let you do is say in year one you could have 4.5%.

Year two, you can have 5.5%. And then year three through 30 you get 6.5%. So it’s called a 2-1 buydown. Pretty easy to figure out what that is. So it’s a temporary buydown. So they charge 2%, and this is ballpark, 2% for the first year and 1% for the second year. So it’s like 3% of the loan amount is the cost for this thing.

And what you can do is you have the seller pay it. So you do that where you have the 2-1 buydown, you get the four and a half in first year, five and a half in the second year. You can refinance this at any time. It might be rates drop to five in year two, you’re refinance it, you never get to the six and a half. So it’s not an adjustable, it’s completely fixed. You do have to qualify based on the six point a half percent rate. So you can’t, it used to be in the old days when you qualify them on the four point half, which is great and added more buyers, but it’s just another way of doing it.

The second thing, financing wise, it’s out there, the 7-year ARM are now coming back. We locked somebody in on a condo in San Francisco. That was three eights in rate lower than the 30 or fixed. So that was really good. So start asking about 7-year ARM ’cause you’re gonna refi it at some point in seven years. To, especially at a large loan amount.

So there’s, but this house in Seattle and maybe next week we’ll put that up as the picture. Give you a tour of it. You can go to arrivva.com and search properties. It’s on there. You’ll see it was listed. So anyway, René, you were there? Anything you can add about 35th.

[00:29:06] René Pérez Jr.: It’s a house for a younger person who can’t afford the 1 million plus house, right?

I think that when looking at a property, we start being really optimistic about what we’re gonna be able to purchase, and we have a really high filter on prices. So I think that if you’re looking for a property just in general, don’t discredit homes that are much lower than the price range that you’re looking for, because that’s probably what you’re actually able to afford and what you’re more comfortably able to afford.

And, and I say this, I mean, I know we’re talking about Seattle, but in Palo Alto, for example. We bid on a property that was listed at 4.5. The winning bid was 5.5 mil, cash. That was from last weekend. Now there’s a house a block and a half away that has that, that needs work. That needs a new kitchen, new flooring, just new paint all overall. You could probably get to get it perfected with 200K or so.

And its been the market, no competition for almost two months now. And I told buyers like, “Hey, you should go buy that one instead. You don’t have to be in a bidding war.” But a lot of the times people are really picky about that. They want a ready to move in property. Right?

I do say that if you want to be in a market where you don’t overpay, you should really consider buying the property that doesn’t scream, “Hey, it’s ready to move in. Hey, it needs a little painting, new floors, new kitchen.” Because you’re better off making it your own home, making the updates yourself, being able to take the time to not overpay for those upgrades. And, you know, being able to just actually afford it at a slower time period. So, I think that’s what it, that’s what it boils down to.

I think the people that go there, it is a property that, you know, it is a not fairly upgraded home and people are just,

[00:31:07] Chris Gustavel: It does need a lot of updates.

[00:31:08] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah.

[00:31:08] Chris Gustavel: Yeah. I think you’re right. If it was totally had to updated kitchen and bath, it would’ve been gone. But you’re right. People are looking, they’re not seeing the value in doing it themselves.

[00:31:18] Fred Glick: Yeah. We should get some expert from IKEA to give us a price on what it would cost to upgrade the kitchen and bath.

[00:31:24] Chris Gustavel: Yeah.

[00:31:25] Fred Glick: Gave an idea. So.

[00:31:27] René Pérez Jr.: And there’s room for expansion too. I know that some people like the idea of an attached garage, this probably doesn’t have an attached garage, so that is something.

It is something that you could look into. And that, that in itself, if you buy the house without the attached garage and then add it yourself later on, that’s.

[00:31:53] Fred Glick: Okay, so, ’cause it rains in all the time, so this way you can park in the garage and walk.

[00:31:56] Chris Gustavel: It doesn’t rain all the time. Stop.

[00:32:00] Fred Glick: More than LA, that’s for sure.

[00:32:01] Chris Gustavel: I don’t know, it’s just something about that house.

[00:32:04] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s what it is, right? People are really attracted to location and just the lifestyle of homes. If you’re paying to buy a property, you usually want the garage.

You know, we see houses in San Francisco, for example. Beautiful Victoria remodeled houses. But if you’re paying $2, $3 million, you want a garage.

[00:32:26] Chris Gustavel: Yeah, for sure.

[00:32:27] René Pérez Jr.: Even though this house is below a million dollars, once you start becoming a buyer, you kind of want to have a garage.

And I 100% would always rather an attached garage than having to walk outside. I don’t care what the weather is.

It’s

[00:32:42] Chris Gustavel: almost more like a workshop. You know, someone use it as like a workshop because, ’cause it’s not attached, you know?

[00:32:48] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, yeah.

[00:32:49] Chris Gustavel: But, oh well. Someone will buy it. Someone might.

[00:32:52] Fred Glick: Yeah. We’ll get it sold.

[00:32:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I’m just looking at it online here. It’s a beautiful looking house.

[00:32:58] Fred Glick: Why don’t you share your screen and show everybody. Well, since you got it up there.

Yeah, there it is. There it is. I mean, it’s a cute house.

[00:33:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:33:09] Chris Gustavel: There’s also a couple other houses right around the corner that have been sitting also for a while, so might just be the neighborhood.

I don’t know.

[00:33:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, beautiful. That’s little backyard.

[00:33:22] Chris Gustavel: It’s a cute, it’s a cute starter house.

[00:33:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, yeah.

Yeah. They painted it. I mean, it’s freshly painted, so yeah. Happy to help you. Well, let’s talk about like, when is the right time to buy and should realtors just shut up about telling people now’s the time to buy?

[00:33:38] Fred Glick: I don’t have to say anything else. Yes, realtors shut up. I remember in, in the dearth of the absolute worst recessions that we had around 2009, 2010, nobody was buying real estate. I mean, nobody. And you had to be stupid to buy it ’cause everybody knew it was gonna keep going down.

“It’s a great day at Keller Williams to buy real estate. How can I help you?” That’s how the receptionist would answer the call. Yeah. It’s like psychological, but you know, come on, it’s about the numbers, it’s about everything else. But there was this guy on TikTok, he’s from San Diego, and he said,️ “This is a great time to buy in San Diego. We see that home prices have come down️ in certain areas and especially with builders and they’re paying interest.” And it’s like, shut up. You know, because here’s the other thing, a lot of agents and a lot of sellers overprice houses. If the seller thinks it’s worth a gazillion dollars, or the agent, it just bs them into saying, “I can get you this price.” You know, and then it’s like, “Oh, well, the market’s changed and we have to lower it.” So don’t do that. Every house, everything is local. You wanna talk about a specific little area that’s going down,️ and you have good statistics and reasons why, so why is it going to come back? They never answer that question. So they say it’s, it’s going down. It’s a great time to buy. You know, we tell people when you’re looking at a house, especially when you get into these Palo Alto, Los Altos, you know, bidding wars, Saratoga, et cetera. You know, yeah, 2 million is probably gonna go for 2.7. “Oh. I only want to go 2.3. That’s all it’s worth.” Well, that’s what’s worth today.

I asked the next question, “How long are you gonna live there?”

“Oh, this is my forever house. We just having kids and at least 20 years.”

Then what do you care what you paid for it? It’s in the Silicon Valley. It’s the only way to get the house because it’s a land grab. They’re not building any more houses in Palo Alto on a grand scale that it’s gonna drop at the value of everything. Apple’s not going anywhere and Meta is not going anywhere. NVIDIA’s not going, they’re not going anywhere. So, and they’re gonna keep hiring people and paying them a lot of money. So guess what happens?

They still wanna stay there. You know, so yeah, you’re gonna quote unquote overpay now. I’m not forcing you to do it, I’m just giving people the overview. But 20 years from now, you’re not gonna remember what you paid for. You’re not gonna care, and you’re making, these people are making enough money. It’s not gonna hurt them either. Or they can, we can talk about it and go with that Jubilee program with the land.

[00:36:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Our guests from last week.

[00:36:37] Fred Glick: Exactly. So there are some ways to maybe circumvent and get things lower. And remember, when you bid with Jubilee’s program, they do it as a cash offer for you, so you’re in a better position. So anyway.

[00:36:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I know we’re getting to the end of this show, but I just thought of something I was gonna ask last week. They’re doing the land rights, but if I remember about six, seven months ago, we’d had a discussion about air rights.

[00:37:05] Fred Glick: They buy the land and the rights that go with them. So all the real buyers buying is physical real estate. So that’s all they’re getting a mortgage on. That’s all that is. Mortgage to the air rights also go to them.

[00:37:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mm.

[00:37:24] Fred Glick: And this could get, it could get crazy and sophisticated where you’re buying commercial property in downtown Chicago or something.

To get it, to get it cheaper, or see that’s where a seller takeback of, “Hey, I’m gonna hold onto the land. I’ll sell you the real estate living 99 year lease. Under certain terms.” So that could be an effective way of selling commercial property that’s not moving.

[00:37:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mm.

[00:37:50] Fred Glick: To be able to cheapen it, you know, do something where you got a graduated payment schedule. So you know, you pay a thousand dollars in the first year, 2002, 3000. I’m making up numbers, obviously.

But when you own the land, doesn’t matter. You can make up your own terms. So that’s for, you know, an office building where there’s no debt, or the debt is enough to be paid off by the real estate loan, or you have an outside investor come in and take, pick a piece of this land. There’s all different ways of structuring so.

Well, tune in last week to learn more about Jubilee and land rights if this is pursued. There you go.

[00:38:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And I think on that note, this has been another episode of We Fixed Real Estate.