The Bay Area Housing Market Is Getting Crazy Again With Fred Glick of Arrivva

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

• Why the Bay Area and other U.S. housing markets are suddenly so competitive and what it means for buyers
• How early spring bidding wars are shaping prices and offers across multiple regions
• The critical steps buyers must take to prepare before even making an offer
• Why standard pre-approvals can cost you your dream home in competitive markets
• Insider strategies for navigating open houses, avoiding mistakes, and working with buyer brokers
• How interim financing can help you close faster and win deals
• Why insurance approval is now a must-have before submitting an offer

In this episode with Fred Glick

The Bay Area housing market is heating up fast, and early spring is already brutal for buyers.

In this episode, Fred Glick of Arrivva breaks down what’s driving early spring competition across multiple markets. From packed open houses and aggressive bidding wars to why pricing low is a strategy (not a bargain), Fred explains what buyers are up against.

Dive into why most pre-approvals fail, how transparent mortgage pricing really works, the risks buyers overlook with insurance, and how interim financing can win deals. A must-listen for buyers who want to compete and win in today’s ultra-competitive housing market.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• Arrivva Mortgage
• Rhino
• Live Mortgage Rates

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:15] Fred Glick: Hey, everybody. Welcome to We Fixed Real Estate, where you’re gonna learn stuff about real estate. You might not learn anywhere else, and hopefully it’ll get you more educated so you’re better at buying a house, getting a mortgage, and all that kind of stuff. So I’m Fred Glick, and that’s Drew Hendricks, who’s the host of this thing, but I decided to take over the introduction.

He’s a little sick, but he’s fine. So. Take it away, Drew, for whatever you do next.

[00:00:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That was quite the introduction. You must have.

[00:00:47] Fred Glick: Thank you.

[00:00:47] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Done CNBC at one point.

[00:00:49] Fred Glick: I was, and if you Google Fred Glick on CNBC, you’ll see me eyes and jackets and talking with the likes of Maria Bartiromo and Mark Haines and the whole crew I was on for about 15 years.

It was a lot of fun.

[00:01:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s incredible. That was that before Maria went crazy.

[00:01:10] Fred Glick: Yes. This was before Maria went, went off to Fox and got a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs. But yeah, she was nice. I met her once I went up to New York and I actually did a shot from, from the New York Stock Exchange right outside.

So that, that was pretty cool.

[00:01:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s awesome.

[00:01:28] Fred Glick: So, yeah. So there you go.

[00:01:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Awesome. So today you are gonna give us an a Silicon Valley update. I hear…

[00:01:36] Fred Glick: There we go, kids. Cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Important words today because it’s back. So we had all the rain in bay Area, LA around Christmas and New Year’s. And then about two weeks in things finally settled down and we had, you know, you can look on your app and see a week of sunshine and 65 degree weather.

So people were probably like, “Oh, thank God I gotta get outta the house. This is crazy. Okay, I’ll go look at real estate.” So instead of waiting till after the Super Bowl like they normally do, they start coming out in drawings. You know, and it’s, now we’re back to the insane things in good school districts, that’s the key here, that are going to get multiple offers.

And it’s not just Silicon Valley. I had one in Bellevue, Washington yesterday where the list was 1999999. My guy bid 2050 plus no waiving of the buyer broker fee. So it was kind of, well waiving the buyer broker fee. So it was really a 2.1 offer and the agent called me up, said, “We have 14 offers and we have a whole bunch of them north of 2.3.”

And my guy was like, “No, I’m not going there.” So same thing in the Bay Area. There’s a lot of offer dates tomorrow, the 20th of January. And I’m curious to see what happens there. There was some last week, but the graphic in open houses is busy. Even, even down here in LA, I was just showing a house that’s on a cul-de-sac, but across the street from a police station where, you know, anything could happen 24/7. So that’s why it’s a little deterrent.

It was just a cheap, what I call Home Depot rehab. They went to Home Depot, got the stuff and put it out. You know, they said they had 45 people at the open house yesterday. It’s priced at like 1.4. Oh, and my favorite story was there was this adorable Santa Monica two bedroom, one bath house bungalow.

Very cute. I mean, you look at pictures, it’s adorable. My clients said they’re going there. I said, “Count the number of millennials with Erewhon juice cups.” And they said, and they got back to me and says, Yo”u’re right. There were three of them.” Did I know my millennials are at Erewhon. So. Yeah, so it, it’s crazy out there.

So now, here’s the things you have to do to be prepared for this market. First of all, you are not negotiating price. The seller is dictating price. If you look on Redfin for the at the address, scurry down, not all the way to the bottom, but I’ll say about three quarters of the way down, which is really nice of them.

And they’re going to have something that says, “Market insights.” And it’s gonna show you this slider between buyer’s market and seller’s market. So if it’s all the way near the end of seller’s market, it’s gonna be crazy. It’ll give you an insight of like how much above market things have been going for and how many days they stay on the market. But it’s not accurate to the property you’re looking at because that’s past history and it’s only getting worse. So in about three weeks a month, this is gonna be really accurate if the market continues like that. So be prepared. Know you’re gonna have to pay more, whether it’s a hundred thousand, 200,000, half a million. Look at the sale price, the offering price, the list price.

There are some agents out there, realize this, that are gonna price it low, much lower than what they anticipate getting. And that’s because of one reason. One reason only. They wanna spur interest. Get lots of people to come to the open houses so they can say, “Hey, do you have a buyer broker? I’d be happy to be your buyer broker.” That is the only reason the agents do the open houses, period. That’s it. Hundred percent and you’re gonna be bugged by this. Do not sign anything with any of these people. Do not sign anything at all. There is zero reason on open house to sign anything with anybody about anything.

Use your buyer broker who’s going to be able to get the disclosure package or have the connection to the agent to find things out and also get information down the road if it comes to it, like offer dates or things about the property that they add. Northern California, it’s wonderful. We’re gonna get the disclosure packages nine times outta 10. You’ll know in advance what’s going on. Here in LA it still drives me crazy. They don’t do that. They don’t give anything until you sign a contract. So just know that and don’t sign anything.

Also in an open house, don’t have them remember you, especially by name, because if there is a multiple bid situation and they see you’re up there. They may, you know, go back and give you a counter that’s higher than the other people. ‘Cause they know you want it badly. So be careful that don’t make friends with the listing agent. You can ask them routine questions. Don’t act like you like the house. Just get out of there. There’s some agents that’ll follow you around, which is obnoxious, but don’t talk about it. Try your best to do this ’cause it’ll help you in the end. Excuse me. Okay.

The preparations, and again, I’ve talked about this four to 5 million times, but you need at a minimum a fully underwritten pre-approval. You cannot get it, and I want to stress this ’cause I have one situation now. There is no broker, no mortgage broker can give you a fully underwritten preapproval from them.

Like, I don’t say, I don’t give out Arrivva fully underwritten preapprovals. You’re fully underwritten. No. I use companies like Rocket, Rocket issues the form. I give the buyer that form it’s rocket. We’re just the broker. Any, any broker claims they can give you a fully underwritten preapproval is 100% lying and you should tell the state banking commission about it.

Because here’s the thing. Brokers are divided basically into two categories. Ones who use Rocket and ones who use a company called UWM, United Wholesale Mortgage. I know for a fact that United Wholesale Mortgage does not do fully underwritten pre-approvals. Rocket does. So any broker who is using UWM, this is what they’re gonna give you. They’re gonna give you this BS letter, said, “Oh, we’ve had underwriters check it out and everything’s fine.” No, they have it. So it’s 100% a lie and you can call them on it and then switch brokers because you don’t wanna deal with these people and they’re ethical or were not.

Another thing you wanna do when you’re searching for interest rates, and this applies if you’re buying a house or refinancing a house, is you want to get something that’s real in terms of a offer for what you have. Like if you work with us, you can go to our website or arrivva.com/rates. There’s the live rates. I have nothing to do with it. I don’t manipulate it. It just comes from the lenders and they show the lenders, they show you the best price for each rate.

I can also do this thing called loan sifter, which only is wholesale mortgage broker or banker I can have, it shows me again. I put in a scenario, it shows me what the, at the each rate, what the best price is from what lender. I share those with clients if they don’t go online.

You need to tell the mortgage person you’re dealing with, you wanna see the actual live quotes. They can do it. They can go into Rocket or UWM or any of their lenders, and it’ll show exactly based on your scenario, what the live pricing is.

[00:09:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, yeah.

[00:09:50] Fred Glick: And have them send that to you. It’s not anything that they can’t, there’s no reason that they can’t.

[00:09:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And is this semi live pricing or is this live pricing?

[00:10:00] Fred Glick: Oh, it’s live. It’s live.

[00:10:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So you can sign up, just so everyone heard that ’cause it’s quick. Go to slash rates, arrivva.com/rates and you can sign up for live mortgage rates and you can actually get email notifications and notified should rates change, which is super helpful.

[00:10:17] Fred Glick: Right. And it’s at least once a day. ‘Cause there’s some lenders that are live overnight pricing, but only until, I think it’s 8:30 Eastern Time. So 5:30 in the morning and then the prices change.

[00:10:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Right. So they’re not live like the ticker symbol where you see ’em vacillate everywhere.

[00:10:37] Fred Glick: Correct. But the market’s open 9:30 to 4 Eastern Time and it’s live, so same kind of thing. So you’re looking at it during the day. You say, “I love this rate, I want to get it.” I need you to make an application, then I can upload it to the lender. We have to run credit, we have to run Fannie Mae DU approval, and then we can get you, get you done.

We just wanna make sure you’re gonna be able to go through with that price and then we can get you the live price. But push people who don’t give you these things live. I think like Wells Fargo has their pricing live on their, on their website. The big banks do that. So. But it’s these mortgage guys who are like, will say, “Oh yeah, I can get you a 4.5% no points.”

You know? And then because you haven’t found a house, they can’t give you a rate that you can lock in. And you know, by the time you find a house, they say, “Oh, the market change, it’s five point a half and three points,” you know, so, hello. Anyway, back to mortgages.

So once you have that fully underwritten preapproval, there’s a second level to this. We have an interim financing program. I haven’t come up with a fancy name, but basically what it is, is they take your approval, you get with, let’s say us or Wells Fargo or whomever, you make a full application, they underwrite your loan based on the income and assets because it’s federal law if they have to, then they say, okay, we’re gonna give you an approval.

That approval says we’re gonna close the loan in 10 days as cash. And we guarantee to the seller that if you don’t show up for closing, the lender will show up and close. It’s better than a cash approval because there’s a lot of deals out there where the people are gonna pay cash. It depends on the seller.

It depends on the agent. They may want the cash deal as opposed to a mortgage, even though you’re fully underwritten, they’re just worried something may happen. So this is a great deal. So you close in 10 days, you pay a fee of 1% of the loan amount, plus 5750. And then at the close of escrow, you then go out and get a loan from whomever you want to pay off their loan.

They’re gonna put a first mortgage. And by the way, those fees I just talked about are totally tax deductible on a purchase. So anyway, you go out,

[00:13:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Is 5750 the Arrivva fee or is that the

[00:13:06] Fred Glick: Yeah, that’s our, that’s our broker fee. So they charge one point, we charge 5750.

[00:13:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay.

[00:13:13] Fred Glick: So you go out, you refinance, you get rid of their loan because in the interim, every day you use their money, it’s at an annual rate of 9.9%, which is ugly.

So you wanna get rid of that. So it’s a great program just to put you maybe over the top. If there’s three offers, all the same price, your cash, they’re fully underwritten, you’re gonna get that deal. So we’ve been really successful with it. We only kind of need it in this time when everything’s cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and we can do it in Washington State, California, Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

So I’m not too familiar with how crazy it is in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, but I know it’s crazy here in Cali and in Washington and especially it is about the great school district places, there’s still plenty of junk out there on the market. You know, it’s a little bit of a trickle down from the, from the 10 school districts to the fives that maybe even there’s a little burdening, first time buyers trying to get in.

I have some first time buyers VA up in Washington state for 700,000 houses, and even they’re getting kind of priced out and boxed out by multiple offers.

[00:14:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Wow.

[00:14:32] Fred Glick: So it’s happening. Happening all over the place. We knew it would. It’s the quote unquote spring market, but it’s, this is the late winter, early spring market. We’ve gotta rename it. So.

[00:14:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, global warming. We’re having earlier springs.

[00:14:48] Fred Glick: Yeah. So here’s another thing you have to do to be prepared to make an offer. You have to make sure that you’re able to get insurance on the property. So important things to try to find out the age of the roof, if it has knob and tube wiring, and if there have been any claims of insurance claims on the house in, say, the past three years, because these are like the big things with, with the insurance companies.

I also heard about, I have a person going under contract in Westlake Village in Ventura County, and every agency he’s called has said you need this special kind of water shutoff valve. So there must be a problem either in the neighborhood or in that particular house. So the insurance companies have data, they have tons of data. And they share it. Because, so they each won’t have problems.

So that’s why you have to get your insurance broker to, you know, let you know that they can insure it and what it’s gonna cost before you put an offer in. And it sort take them one day to do that. It’s not a long process. If it, the only thing they can do is FAIR Plan. We have that guy Mike, who’s interviewed and we can check it out with Rhino Insurance, R-H-I-N-O, rhino insurance.com/Arrivva. So he knows it’s coming from us. He’s been able to get people to not have to go with FAIR Plan, but, and also FAIR Plan doesn’t cover everything, doesn’t cover liability, so you’re gonna need a separate policy also.

So it’s something to look into and be prepared, so you know that’s the craziness. Even in a non crazy market, you should be doing all this, but the crazy market, don’t even think about looking for a house, you know, until you do. Like, I had somebody call me today, “Hey, we saw a house yesterday, we haven’t gotten the mortgage approved and their offer date is tomorrow.” and I said like, “I hope you don’t love this house ’cause it just can’t be done that quickly.” And you can’t just put in a mortgage contingency without having some kind of a mortgage approval.

[00:17:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Hmm.

[00:17:05] Fred Glick: You know, and if you, let’s say just get a apply online, like I can run your credit, run the Fannie Mae DU, I could take a look at your docs and say, “It looks okay, but it’s not an underwriting approval.”

You know, and you might have a submit an offer subject to a two day approval just to get fully underwritten approval done. You know, it, it just all depends and that’s why you gotta talk to responsible mortgage people who know how to get this through and know how to get it done. Wow. I’m tired.

[00:17:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That was a deep, deep dive.

[00:17:40] Fred Glick: Yeah, and I think we should end it there. I mean, this is like just like an alert podcast of what’s going on in the particular market right now. I mean, I could go on and on with this little thing and that little thing, but I wanna give you things that you can actually use and especially use in this market.

[00:17:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. So you have the interim financing at 5750, and what’s a, just a traditional mortgage through Arrivva.

[00:18:04] Fred Glick: Oh, we, that’s our flat fee.

[00:18:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, that is. Okay.

[00:18:07] Fred Glick: So how mortgage pricing works is we all get wholesale rates from all of our lenders. So I have like five who I trust and use. And every lender, every broker gets the same.

And then what they do is they add their fee. We add 5750. We are I think the only company in America that does a flat fee on mortgages, I could be wrong, but I’ve never seen anybody else. Everybody else does a percentage, so they’re going to do at least 1%. So if you’re getting a 700,000 mortgage, you’re probably charging $7,000.

[00:18:42] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay.

[00:18:42] Fred Glick: So ask them, go ahead and ask them what’s your margin over your wholesale costs? What’s your buyer, you know, buyer paid, I mean, lender paid fee. And if they go blah, blah, blah, “Oh, we have the best rates, don’t worry about it, and we’ll give you the run.”

[00:18:59] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay?

[00:18:59] Fred Glick: Because that means they’re charging two and a half, so they can’t, if they can’t be honest and transparent about what their fee is, you’re gonna see it anyway on the closing sheet, closing disclosure.

So might as well be upfront about it. So that’s why we’re super competitive, especially in the, what they call jumbo conforming. Kind of the eight something to 1,209,000 depend. It all depends on your area and what it is. So.

[00:19:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s, it’s fascinating. And when, and just to recap, it’s in a super competitive market, that’s when someone should try to look into maybe some of this interim financing? Versus just,

[00:19:41] Fred Glick: They need to get their fully, they need to get their regular fully underwritten preapproval first.

[00:19:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: No matter what.

[00:19:46] Fred Glick: Once they, no matter what, because when we submit for the approval for the interim financing, we have to have that preapproval.

[00:19:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay? So get your duck, get fully underwritten, then let’s, then you’re going out looking at houses.

And if you’ve got a hot tamal that you need to bid on today, you’re fully under your written, then you can start looking at interim.

[00:20:07] Fred Glick: Yeah, the interim takes about 24 hours to get approved. They’re pretty quick for the basic approval, so without documents, just your mortgage application and the, credit report which we have to run and that mortgage approval, so.

[00:20:22] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay. And is this the same as a swing loan?

[00:20:26] Fred Glick: Swing loans have to do with selling, buying a property before you sell a property. So it’s sort of different swing in bridge loans. They’re temporary financing, we do those also. This company doesn’t, there’s a variety of ways they do it. So yeah, if you need the bridge loan, be able to buy a house before you sell, it’s important to get that approval. So.

[00:20:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay, that’s clear for me.

[00:20:54] Fred Glick: There you go. So now he’s got a foggy head ’cause he doesn’t feel good. It’s clear to him. So it should be clear to everyone.

[00:21:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yes. I’m off to go drink some soup.

[00:21:07] Fred Glick: Good idea. And guys, tea, I know I had the flu, tea, and water. And just keep liquidating yourself and nasal spray.

And if you do one of those nasal clearance thingy dinghies. And just

[00:21:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Like the neti pot.

[00:21:25] Fred Glick: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s creepy. Anyway. You gotta do it. You gotta do it. But that’s kind of it. And just rest. There’s nothing you can do. You’re gonna have a big cough, lingered for a while. Ask them for the nasty cough syrup. In the old days, codeine was what they give you for coughs and it was great. It got rid of the cough, but now you can’t get it. So.

[00:21:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Unless you’re in Canada.

[00:21:50] Fred Glick: Ah, there you go. Worth flying to Vancouver. So. Yeah, so just take care of everybody and wear masks, especially if you’re flying or even going into an airport. It’s just, there’s germs from around the world.

[00:22:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, yeah.

[00:22:08] Fred Glick: So. Crazy. Anyway.

[00:22:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Good. Wise words.

[00:22:14] Fred Glick: This has been a special episode of We Fixed Real Estate, the Silicon Valley and Bellevue insanity continues, and I’ll throw a little LA in there too.

So you know, it’s the school district thing and so good luck out there.

[00:22:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Good luck, everyone. See you next week.