Shop the House, Not the Rate: How to Win in Any Market With Fred Glick Of Arrivva

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

• Uncover the truth behind recent mortgage rate drops and what it means for refinancing today
• Hear how one client’s refinancing story reveals hidden pitfalls like prepayment penalties
• Get the inside scoop on Rhode Island’s new luxury tax law and why Bay Area bidding wars tell a bigger story about hot markets
• Learn how a decades-old debt nearly derailed a property sale and why title reports matter more than you think
• Find out what happens when condo approvals stall your mortgage and how to protect your deal
• Explore why “shopping the house, not the rate” is the smartest way to win in any market

In this episode with Fred Glick

Forget the headlines, this episode of We Fixed Real Estate will change the way you think about buying and refinancing. 

Fred Glick of Arrivva reveals why chasing mortgage rates could cost you the home you really want. From a surprising refinancing win to Rhode Island’s bold new tax law, bidding wars heating up in San Francisco, and a shocking title report that almost killed a deal, you’ll want to hear it all. Plus, Fred tackles the ultimate buyer’s dilemma: wait for rates to drop or strike now? The answers may surprise you and could save your deal.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• Jennifer May on LinkedIn
• Live Mortgage Rates
• We Fixed Mortgages®

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Welcome to We Fixed Real Estate. We’ve got an action-packed episode here today.

[00:00:25] Fred Glick: Oh boy.

[00:00:25] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We are gonna be talking about mortgage, Taylor Swift, San Francisco and of course the Reddit of the Week. Fred, talk to me about mortgages. Rates have really changed in the last couple of weeks.

[00:00:36] Fred Glick: Yes, they have.

So I heard that someone finally got to the president and told him, stop doing what he’s doing, especially with the tariffs. ‘ Cause the only way for rates to drop is to not have inflation. And so after, you know, good amount of time. He finally kind of realized that. Then last Friday we got some ugly employment numbers.

And guess what? The rates dropped like a rock. So I had this client sitting around. He had a, I’m gonna say 750,000, I’m sorry, 850,000 loan. He was paying 6% on a 30 year fixed, but he was looking to do, what we were trying to do is get it to five and three quarters with no cost to him on a 20 year.

So he was gonna cut, you know, at this point, eight years off his loan he just got a couple years ago. So when the rates came out on Friday, before they came out, I pinged him. I said, “Dude, this is the day.” So when I looked at the rates, all of a sudden I got five and a half with him paying about 500 bucks, but he’s gonna pay that upfront for the appraisal anyway.

So he didn’t have to build on his loan and now he’s got an even better deal. And we might have, we should have even looked at 15 year, which is even better and closer to five. So, you know, you gotta look at the monthly payment. Obviously it’s gonna be higher, but if you got six and a half or above, look into refinancing now.

Just get it done and here’s the story so you’ll understand it. When you refinance, when you sign the note, it says there’s no prepayment penalty. I think I said this last week. But the loan officers are gonna tell you, ” Oh, you gotta wait six months to refi.” But you know what? That’s because the money they use to pay for all your closing costs are provided by the lender. And the lender doesn’t want to get screwed out of this money if you keep refinancing them every week.

And so what’s happening, the lenders have said, “Look, if they refi within six months, we don’t care. Through who? Through what? Anything. You have to pay that money back as the broker.” So that’s why everybody waits six months. But you know what, it’s not gonna make a difference. If anything, rates are gonna continue to go down. I don’t know how quickly. It depends what happens with the tariffs and pricing. But if we continue on what we’re doing now, on the anticipation of the tariffs, more people are gonna get laid off.

There’s gonna be less jobs created. Hence the economy’s gonna slow down and then the Fed’s going to lower or hint that they’re gonna lower the Fed funds rate, which the market sees that. The anticipation of something happened, not the actual event. Make sure you understand that, and I’m happy to go into detail on that.

When the anticipation happens, then the rates are gonna go down, so you gotta follow it every day. We have something that most people do not have, which is live interest rates on our website. Arrivva.com/rates. There’s no need to call the loan officer every day. There’s no need for them to call you.

It’s completely automated. Every time rates change, you’ll get the new rate, and then you’re get at a point where you say, ” Hey, I’m ready.” Boom. Click the button, apply online. Fill out your application. We’ll run your credit. We’ll run you through Fannie Mae’s DU or Freddie Max LP system. Lock your rate, get done.

I mean, we lock ’em as quick as. And sometimes the markets actually change really quick. We had a day, we’ve had days where we’ve had five rate changes. So what you see is live at that particular second, but that might shut down. So just be careful of that. But, obviously, we’re gonna make sure you agree with what we’re locking in for you before.

[00:04:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah, yeah. But that is a great realtime story of what has been a recurring theme on this podcast that when the Fed actually lowers interest rates doesn’t mean that mortgage rates are going down. Oftentimes…

[00:04:42] Fred Glick: They go off on those days, knew they were gonna do it.

[00:04:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s just like a stock. Sell it on the news.

[00:04:47] Fred Glick: Sell on the news. Exactly.

[00:04:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So it’s really these, these trends such as high unemployment, low new job creations, they create that environment where interest rates drop and given your seasoned knowledge, you’re able to like capitalize on that. And you were able to take your client from what a, from what I’m hearing, is like a 30 year at a six point a half percent to a 20 year at a five point a half percent.

[00:05:10] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:05:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s amazing.

[00:05:12] Fred Glick: Yeah. Beautiful.

[00:05:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Advice to people. If you’re in the news, don’t just wait for Jerome Powell to say something.

[00:05:18] Fred Glick: No.

[00:05:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Keep an idea for the, actually the sentiment and go check those live rates.

[00:05:22] Fred Glick: Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, has nothing to do with the day-to-day interest rates. Period. So.

[00:05:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Very interesting.

[00:05:35] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:05:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I’m sure everyone that heard the name at the start, how does Taylor Swift fit into all this?

[00:05:42] Fred Glick: Real estate taxes.

[00:05:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Ah, Rhode Island.

[00:05:46] Fred Glick: Rhode Island, which we’re not licensed in and nothing against Rhode Island. I got fabulous pizza. But what they’ve done is they passed a law that says if you don’t live here as your primary residence, your real estate taxes are gonna be categorized as second home or investment.

And guess what? You are gonna pay more. And you know, Rhode Island had all these incredible, beautiful luxury resorts and homes that these people, the 1890s Gilded Age people. You know, that was, their place to go is Rhode Island. And those big places are still there and there’s a lot of other nice big places there.

So it’s great real estate along the water. So they might as well take advantage of people have more money. So Taylor Swift’s not hurting from this, trust me. And most billionaires wouldn’t hurt from this, but they bitch about it. And that’s why we got the tax law now that we got, because billionaires bitched about it.

[00:06:53] Drew Thomas Hendricks: But it is a very low, I mean, it’s a tax on $1 million homes and above.

[00:06:58] Fred Glick: Right.

[00:06:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Which is, I mean, I guess we’re all seasoned. Being in California, that 1 million is not all that much for a home.

[00:07:03] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:07:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It feels like it should have been a $10 million house in above.

[00:07:07] Fred Glick: We’re on an island in California. I mean, literally. With prices and numbers. I mean, it’s, you take somebody you know, lived all their life in small town in Kansas and they come out here and see what a million dollars buys.

[00:07:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Talk about being on a virtual island. Let’s talk about the market in San Francisco. Heating up.

[00:07:24] Fred Glick: It’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, so. I’ll give you the example I was gonna talk about, but I just thought of something else. My barometer for San Francisco real estate is one thing, one thing only. That is one bedroom condos in the Embarcadero in that area and Soma and, ’cause there’s a lot of them. We had a buyer submit an offer yesterday. Cash, clean, waive everything, full price. Well, they got another offer that’s pretty similar to that, so they’ve actually put out a count, a multiple counter offer. So those things are going above market now. There’s that much demand. San Francisco is crazy. So the next one I wanted to talk to originally is house out in Richmond, but far out.

I mean, it’s in the fog. No doubt about it. It’s an old house. It’s set up as a duplex, but it’s got two monster heaters that are, you know, gigantic and it’s got all these lines coming out of it that are full of asbestos. I mean stuff, you got a hundred grand before you get in there. It’s got like no appliances.

It just. So it was listed at like, 1,299,000 we bid like 1.4. And I got an email from the agent who I met, and he said that the offer that they accepted, which was cash, clean, clear, and all that was well above the seller’s expectations.

[00:09:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Wow.

[00:09:03] Fred Glick: Not just above. Well above. It hasn’t hit yet. I’m surprised. I thought it would’ve closed quickly. But we’ll let you know on the next podcast.

[00:09:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Once in…

[00:09:14] Fred Glick: The bottom line, if you’re interested in San Francisco, now it’s back to cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And thank you Mayor. I mean, he is, the dude’s just come in and done stuff, you know? So love it, love it. But the lines are gonna get bigger at Ferry Building and, you know, that’s the best place in the world.

If you ever wanted to go on a food, oh my God, go to the  Ferry Building on Saturday mornings in San Francisco. Way in the back, there’s these guys that do these smoked fish.

[00:09:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh. I love too.

[00:09:49] Fred Glick: To die for, I mean expensive, but I mean really good. They do these sandwiches, the open face sandwiches, which is unreal. And then way in the front, there’s a guy that sells this rotisserie chicken, but he also sells these porchetta sandwiches that are also to die for. So there’s two places to go eat the San Francisco Ferry Building and there’s all the fresh produce. I actually know some of these farmers, have been going there long enough.

[00:10:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oysters. Last time…

[00:10:16] Fred Glick: Yeah. 

[00:10:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And what’s that? What’s the Vietnamese place? I, for some reason, I forgot the name.

[00:10:21] Fred Glick: Slanted fricking Door. It’s gone. Dude, it’s gone.

[00:10:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So I was, I went to the original Slanted Door when they first opened, when I was living there, and it was like 10 seats.

[00:10:33] Fred Glick: It’s great. I never got there, but I got, I used to go Slanted Door all the time, every time I was in San Francisco. I love the place. Pandemic closed it. They opened another one in the East Bay. I haven’t been to that one, but they said they were not coming back to the Ferry Building. And then on top of that, after they announced they weren’t coming back to the Ferry Building, the owner died.

Yeah. So I don’t know what’s going on. They were talking about putting another one back in the mission near where the old one was. I don’t know the plans now, but I’m sure you know, they have the recipes down and, but it’s unfortunate he didn’t get to see it. Sorry, I forget his name.

[00:11:13] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Sorry to hear that, man.

[00:11:15] Fred Glick: Wow. Great food. If you’re in the East Bay, I think it’s in Dublin. Don’t quote me, but Google it. There we go. We got food reviews today.

[00:11:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So, yeah, San Francisco’s hot. I’ve got a note here. Revisiting old mortgages, why would somebody revisit a 40, 50-year-old mortgage?

[00:11:34] Fred Glick: So you’re selling a house, okay? And they run the title report some, most of the time, you know, at least that here we run it when we list the property, so we know what’s going on. I had a buyer who we looked at the report, we didn’t think of anything. They got the place under contract, and then the title escrow person calls me and says, ” Well, there’s two mortgages on here.”

One’s from the Bank of Marin from about 40 years ago. And they can kind of trail and figure that out, but it didn’t say that it was satisfied, but they could work on that one because it’s an institution. But then there was a $40,000 loan from Jane Doe personal person. And it’s like,it was between 40 and 50 years old.

So Fidelity National, their thing is after 50 years, they will still insure it. The real estate agent on the other side, the listing agent said, “Oh, well, my company will remove it ’cause it’s over 40 years.” Okay, fine. You know, I’m not really that concerned. But what we, what the agent also told me is, “Oh, well there’s a person who was a descendant, who is the executor,” or something like that.

And we were trying to get some information from ’em, but they weren’t helpful. And I said, “You know what? If a person is out there and knows that $40,000 is owed. Get it cleared. We’re not closing without it. Okay?” So once you know that someone exists, you can’t ignore it. If we couldn’t find them and it was over 40 years, maybe I’d move it to the other company and, you know, wouldn’t be too worried about it as long as my buyer knew about it. But you know what, I pushed it. This agent was kind of pissy about it. ‘Cause we had to extend closing like 30 days. What are you gonna do. So…

[00:13:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: What’s the current ramifications of that? There’s a 40,000 debt on the property.

[00:13:34] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:13:34] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And there’s someone alive that still is obliged to that debt?

[00:13:38] Fred Glick: They claimed that years ago that the owner of the debt wrote a little note. You know, it’s satisfied, but who has the paperwork? I mean, you have to record the dissolution of the mortgage, the satisfaction of it. In the same place that you record the mortgage. They gotta know how it comes off.

So my escrow company’s working on it. We’ll have more to report later once they finish it up.

[00:14:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s why you need to pick a legitimate, serious mortgage broker that understands how to navigate these things.

[00:14:11] Fred Glick: And real estate agent.

[00:14:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And real estate agent. You don’t wanna DIY your own mortgage?

[00:14:16] Fred Glick: No, not on title.

[00:14:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Talking about DIY. Let’s go to Reddit Question of the Week. ‘Cause a lot of people turn to Reddit to help answer their own questions. We’re talking about the condo.

Mortgage company delayed my closing because of condo approval. What are my options?

[00:14:35] Fred Glick: Your options if you didn’t have this problem were to first make sure that the condominium is approveable. Okay.

It doesn’t have to be fully approved with your lender, but your real estate agent needs to be smart enough to check to make sure this is a condo that’s going to be okay. Getting the documents is from the property management company. Sometimes they are a fricking nightmare. We hate them more than anyone in the real estate industry because they just have no timeline.

They don’t care, and they overcharge. I know property management companies that got into the condo management world and just got out of it. ‘Cause it’s insane. The people on condominium boards have basically nothing else to do and this their highest amount of power they’ll ever have.

Believe me, the worst thing you could do to yourself is get on a condominium board, just don’t do it. It’s cliquey. Just about all of them are the same, but occasionally we run into, I have one in San Jose that was fabulous. It was small 19 units, run by themselves, knew what they were doing.

It was great, but I had a big one that screwed up on the SB 536 balcony stuff. Never did it. It was due the end of last year and just never did it. And we all thought it was done. We had a contract, everybody thought it was done. It wasn’t. So the idea is prepare before you make an offer, know about the condo.

It, they delayed. You know what, you’re gonna have to ask. I don’t know what’s in your contract, but you have a mortgage contingency. If you didn’t waive the mortgage contingency during the contract period, you still have that mortgage contingency, but now you gotta extend the closing date. So you just gotta negotiate that one.

But the idea is you don’t want to get in this position to begin with. You want to have an approved or an approvable condo. And to know what all that is, there’s a lot of different things about how many people are in the condo are owners, how many, how much money do you have in reserve? What was a reserve study done in the last three years? In California, did you do your SB 536 balcony stuff? Goes on and on and on and on, and.

[00:16:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: No, you brought up two big points there about the reserves. That is a constant theme in this podcast. Make sure that the condo has the reserves before you buy the condo. And also that balcony thing was a surprising thing to me about the fact that your balcony might be okay, but if,

[00:17:09] Fred Glick: Or even if you don’t have a balcony.

[00:17:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah. You may not have a balcony.

[00:17:13] Fred Glick: We don’t have a balcony in this property. But it’s still affected ’cause it affected the entire condominium. And you know, is there gonna be a special assessment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there’s always questions about that stuff.

You’re gonna see higher condo fees. And with higher condo fees, it’s gonna be lower prices. Look at Florida. I mean, it’s just the way it is. But flip side is San Francisco, we’re having bidding wars on condominiums, on one bedroom, condominiums. So it is crazy out there, but just check it out before you make an offer. That’s really the bottom line.

That’s great advice. So, let’s see, as we’re wrapping down here, where do we see the market going now we’re in September. Current, current political scenes about as bonkers as it has been. You think people are settling down and just like, we gotta start living and stop worrying about what might happen. If you’re smart, you will. I mean, I hear this stuff, but I don’t worry about this stuff. I mean, there’s people I talk to and everybody worries. What are you gonna do? You know, you can’t stop the day to day. You gotta live your life and there’s people out there fighting for you and you have to kinda let them do it. And it’s, there’s just so much noise. I mean, it’s just, the noise is hysterical.

[00:18:25] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Easy to get consumed by all the, all the chatter and all the, noise that we get bombarded by.

But in reality, you need to find a place for you to live. You need to find your section and not worry about maybe next week rates are gonna be lower. Find the rate today and then get the next rate tomorrow and don’t worry about it.

[00:18:42] Fred Glick: Don’t shop the rate. Shop the house. Okay. It’s not about the rate.

I mean, it’s sort of about the rate, but that’s, you got, because you’re gonna wake up every day, you’re gonna get up, you’re gonna do things in the house, you’re gonna leave, you’re gonna come back. And you gotta imagine yourself having that life and that house. Period. That’s what it’s all about here.

It’s like, you know, with Omar, who was on last week, and we said this, his wife said to me, if I get, if she gets this house, I’m, you know, the greatest here. ‘Cause she loves it and she loved it. And they got an ugly rate. So, you know, thank God he can afford it. That’s the other thing. But in six months we’re gonna refi him. Because he’s gonna be out of his situation and it’s gonna be all better. And by then it’ll be in the fives. So…

[00:19:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. To all those people that are like, “Well, I’m gonna wait till start looking for a house once the rates come down.” Well, the rates in housing prices are pretty much correlated as rates come down, housing prices tend to go up.

[00:19:39] Fred Glick: There’s people just like you saying the same thing. So if everybody comes out, rates hit five and a half tomorrow, everybody says, “Oh, let’s go to an open house on Sunday.” There’s 10 times as many people, and guess what? Price goes up and up and up and up and up. Day one of college economics, you learn the first things, two words that are important: supply, demand.

[00:20:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yes.

[00:20:05] Fred Glick: Supply demand. That’s it. That’s what drives prices up. Demand. High demand, low supply. People with all these 3% rates, they’re not moving. Most of them. People who like living where they’re living, they’re not moving. Kids who go to school locally, parents aren’t moving, they move to another school district, so there’s not as many houses. It’s that simple. It’s really that simple. So.

[00:20:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, do what’s best for you. Shop the house, not the rate.

[00:20:37] Fred Glick: Exactly.

[00:20:38] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s the parting words for today on We Fixed Real Estate.

[00:20:42] Fred Glick: And we fixed mortgages too.

[00:20:43] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And we, yes, we are fixing mortgages, but you can also do a variable mortgage too.

So.

[00:20:48] Fred Glick: Yes you can. We variable with mortgages. It didn’t get, doesn’t come out right. And just last, it is refi season. Arrivva.com/rates. Get all the rates you can click on. Apply online. Apply online. We never have to talk. We’ll be in a Slack channel. You know, the last thing I wanna do is have sales talk with you.

You know, I just, too busy.

[00:21:13] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah. I’d rather chat about restaurants and the latest hockey scores.

[00:21:17] Fred Glick: It’s not a hockey season yet.

[00:21:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, it’s coming.

[00:21:20] Fred Glick: Let’s get into football. Let’s get football. It’s due.

[00:21:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

[00:21:25] Fred Glick: Yeah, and the four important words about football.

Dallas sucks. Go Birds.

[00:21:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: On that note, this has been another episode of We Fixed Real Estate.

[00:21:37] Fred Glick: Fly Eagles, fly on the road to victory.