The Ins and Outs of Mortgage Rates and Listing Prices: Score the Best Deal Every Time! With Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. Of Arrivva

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

• Discover what factors determine mortgage rates
• Get tips on building relationships with financial institutions and accurate rate comparisons
• Know the importance of a fully underwritten pre-approval
• Explore a unique angle on real estate with a discussion on the role of paranormal consultants in the industry, and how such factors can influence property transactions.
• See how listing strategies can manipulate market dynamics and what that means for you whether you’re buying, selling, or just interested in the state of real estate
• Understand the inaccuracies and biases in the home appraisal process
• Learn about the role and rules of the California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS) and how it impacts both agents and buyers
• Fred shares a specific case where commission restrictions raised ethical and potentially legal issues, prompting intervention at a higher level

In this episode with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr.

Join Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. in dissecting real-time mortgage rates and uncovering the truth behind misleading listing prices, home appraisal biases, and inaccuracies. The We Fixed Real Estate podcast breaks down every detail with complete transparency.

Discover how every minute counts in securing the best deal, and learn how to navigate unexpected obstacles like discriminatory commission practices and inflated property valuations. Whether you’re a seasoned investor or a first-time homebuyer, buckle up for invaluable insights that will empower you to conquer the complexities of today’s competitive real estate market.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• René Pérez Jr. on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• Arrivva Real-Time Mortgage Feed
• Redfin 
• Zillow
• California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS)
• Chat GPT
• Claude

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Welcome to We Fixed Real Estate with Men in Black as the theme song. Then we have Fred in outer space and René with a fly shirt. How’s it going, René?

[00:00:10] René Pérez Jr.: Good. Good.

[00:00:10] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So, you know, let’s talk about mortgage. I am always following it. And I do subscribe to the Arrivva real-time mortgage feed. And the last three weeks in a row, I’ve gotten an email from Arrivva telling me that my prospective rates have dropped. And you can get the same feed too. Just go to arrivva.com and fill out.

[00:00:31] Fred Glick: Arrivva.mortgage

[00:00:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Arrivva.mortgage

[00:00:34] Fred Glick: Go there directly. Yeah.

[00:00:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Go there directly and get real-time rates. Well, let’s talk about real-time rates. Mortgages are dropping.

[00:00:41] Fred Glick: I used to every day at 8:30 in the morning at worst have on CNBC and hear the latest CPI, PPI, all those employment numbers.

I used to do it religiously and I also used to be on CNBC too. So it was a whole thing anyway. And then, you know, that’s after that 8:30 numbers, basically when Fannie Mae and everybody else sets their rates. So the rates come out based on news. It’s really, you know, economic news. It’s basically, if there’s no inflation, that means you need lower rates.

If there’s high inflation, you need higher rates. If there’s low employment, low employment, I’ll do it that way, you can be okay and keep rates stable, but if unemployment starts going higher, you got to drop rates. So there’s all different reasons why things happen and it moves the market mortgage-backs.

They’re called mortgage-backed securities. They trade just like a stock does. Every minute of the day, these mortgage-backs are traded and, you know, big pension funds by them. You can buy your own mortgage. And then the rates come out at 11 o’clock ish Eastern Time from each of our lenders and the portal would update.

If you put in a request at 11:15 or 10:45 yesterday’s rates at 11:15, you get today’s rates and actually those yesterday’s rates have expired already because we get kind of in the dark side of the moon. Hey, that’s yeah, right up there on the moon. So what they’ve been doing lately is, you know, if you’ve been just peripherally listening, is that a word? Listening to the news you know, things have been getting quote-unquote worse and better, meaning inflation sort of kind of coming down.

The thing is, they didn’t see the inflation rates staying this high. And I mean, everything costs more everything and transportation’s been a big bugger and been expensive and gas prices. The reason the gas prices are high is because we can’t produce enough gasoline, okay.

[00:03:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I thought the US is the number one oil-producing country?

[00:03:03] Fred Glick: But we are the number one exporter and we export crude, okay. So the prices are high because we just can’t get refined quick enough because of all the refineries that went down after Covid and to start them up. I don’t know what the actual reason is, but I’m sure it’s money and time and they have to balance supply and demand. So, that’s why prices are up. That’s it.

[00:03:26] René Pérez Jr.: I don’t know. Where are you looking at? Gas prices, because gas prices have been going lower for the last few weeks.

[00:03:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I was going to say San Diego, they’re 4.79. Yeah, I know, but everyone in Texas is going to laugh because I think it’s 2.95.

[00:03:38] Fred Glick: Yeah, I mean, and it’s getting into summertime, so this is good.

So we’re probably producing more. I don’t keep track of it day to day, but I’m sure there’s oil dudes on YouTube, TikTok, everywhere. Twitter.

[00:03:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Boone Pickens is no longer around, though.

[00:03:57] Fred Glick: No, no more Boo.

[00:03:59] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Is one of those dudes on CNBC I used to listen to.

[00:04:02] Fred Glick: Yeah. Yeah, he was just a good old oil man. I mean, it’s just classic oil guy, you know, kind of the J. R. Ewing

[00:04:10] René Pérez Jr.: I mean, you know, we’re talking interest rates. People are always trying to find the lowest interest rate, and they have like six, seven banks. And I think people have to, first and foremost, realize that interest rates are going to be changing every day. Secondarily, before you’re even looking into homeownership, “Okay, where do I have most of my funds?”

Why? Because odds are that wherever you have all your other accounts, you’re going to be able to have a better rate there because you have the relationship discount, and it’s going to be a really small fractional discount, but as everybody is always trying to jump as to find a better rate, odds are the big bank that you’re with that you have that checking account with is going to give you the best rate. That’s just the bottom, right?

[00:05:00] Fred Glick: Here’s one thing you have to do if you’re going to check rates, take an hour at one day and then get all the rates at one time so you’re in the same market because you can call on Tuesday and call somebody else on Wednesday. Rates changed. So now, you know, the first guy might sound better than the second guy, but the first guy went up just like the second guy did, so see what I mean?

It’s like asking a different stock price on a different day. That’s exactly what it is. So keep that in mind. Just get the same day. And of course, let me throw in, you must get a fully underwritten pre-approval. We couldn’t get somebody into a property today because the seller’s agent wanted the pre-approval.

The underwritten one, yep, which is, hey, I respect that a lot, especially for a property which is not going to have an open house. It’s an investment. You got to bother tenants. You don’t want to waste your time with any buyers. Right? Exactly.

[00:06:03] René Pérez Jr.: That’s a problem of, it’s a general real estate industry, so one of the biggest speeches on how agents are trained is agents are trained to say, like, “Hey, like, don’t ask about qualifications. Your job is to build rapport. Your job is to go and show homes.” Well, that’s affecting the industry because then agents are taught to waste their time to spend time with their buyers instead of telling buyers and educating them.

Like, “Hey, like, I’m not going to show homes until you’re actually prepared to buy homes.” Which would actually drop the price of all these commissions, right? So it’s all kind of packaged together. But that’s something that has to change, right? Like a good agent should be able to tell their buyer, “No, we’re not going to go see that property unless you have the funds to be able to purchase.”

Right, because it’s a job, right? We, I mean, we’re not, you know, just volunteering for funsies, right? I mean,

[00:06:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. You don’t wanna take spot on. They’re thinking about redoing their kitchen, so they want to go tour some of the latest.

[00:07:00] Fred Glick: Yeah, it’s fine. Go to the open house. Yeah. We don’t get paid until the close of escrow, so, you know, we’re working for free until then and deals fall apart at the end. I mean, it happens.

[00:07:11] René Pérez Jr.: Which most in the industry, you get it right, like you get it that it’s not always gonna work out, but

[00:07:16] Fred Glick: Oh, by the way. Speaking of that, we had a deal in Venice where the buyers, the sellers didn’t do an inspection up front. Of course, we did an inspection. Our buyers found a lot of mold, freaked the buyers out and they reneged on the car.

I mean, they didn’t renege, they got out of the contract, they got all their money back and all that. So a property we’re going trying to go look at today, the agent realized it was us and said, “Oh, you’re the dude to got out of the deal.” Or something like that. It’s like, really? And I wrote him back. It’s like, “No, I’m protecting my client.”

My client didn’t want the house. What am I supposed to do? Shove it down their throat. You know, what a weasel.

[00:07:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Or hope they don’t discover the mold? You did a favor.

[00:08:01] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:08:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It would have come out midway through the deal anyways.

[00:08:05] Fred Glick: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:08:08] René Pérez Jr.: So sure, the agent took it a little bit too personal. But on the other hand, it’s like at the end of the day when you’re buying a house, it’s going to have issues, right?

That’s why you take the inspection out. You price out what it’s going to go worth. You price out what it’s going to cost. I mean, a house having mold should not be necessarily the reason why you don’t buy it. It’s like, okay, you find out why it happened, how much does it cost? Because, I mean, there’s not a lot of, you can’t find a house in every corner, right?

So, you can’t just be picky and want the new construction house with every single bell and whistle that you’re looking for. Like, hey, you know what? How much would it cost for the mold inspection? And, look, I think from your end, like, you see an agent that’s a weasel. I see an agent that, you know, got back to me and said, “Hey, alright, our sellers want to fix it. We got a mold inspector out, we’re getting it.”

And then the buyers, you know, still don’t want to buy it. You can’t really do much from them. So I think buyers are also going to always find excuses to get out of contracts when they don’t want to get a house. I think it should be easier for a buyer to just say, “Hey, I didn’t like it.” You know.

[00:09:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: What’s the craziest thing you’ve heard from a buyer trying to get out of a house, like wrong type of grass planted in the front yard?

[00:09:21] René Pérez Jr.: Hmm. Let me think about that one a little more. I mean, you got one on top of your mind.

[00:09:27] Fred Glick: No, nothing really comes to mind. We’re pretty good with you know, talking with our clients before we make offers.

Yeah, these, you see them, the mold might be removed, but we don’t know the source. There might be a leak somewhere, you know, so then it’s a bigger job. So that’s what my clients were worried about.

[00:09:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Was a remediation. Yeah. I guess if you’re in the middle of the Sunset District in San Francisco and it’s always foggy, you’re going to probably understand where the mold came from.

[00:09:59] Fred Glick: Seattle.

[00:10:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Seattle. Yeah.

[00:10:02] Fred Glick: Hello. This is actually in LA.

[00:10:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, yeah, there you got it. Yeah, there’s might be some questions.

[00:10:08] Fred Glick: It was Venice. It was near the beach.

[00:10:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s close.

[00:10:10] René Pérez Jr.: No. And I mean, yeah, I mean, it’s one of those things where it’s like, wait, you have to find out the, okay, if it comes back, is it under warranty? Can I get the full house, you know, remediated? So, yes, I mean, it’s not just like a one-size-fits-all, but that’s the cost of home ownership, right? You have to figure out what’s going to happen. It can happen to any house that you don’t have mold in, it can come back.

I’m thinking one of the things that it hasn’t happened that much, and I would want to find a consultant for this would be for a paranormal consultant. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but someone’s saying that they think that they felt a weird aura in the house after visiting it, and visiting the house again. An idea, like I would want to like be able to have the, and one of my vendors, one of our vendors, like a paranormal consultant to go to houses. And like, clean them out, you know, from any spirits.

[00:11:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Séance in a, I forget what.

[00:11:15] Fred Glick: A simple Google search pulls up, find a paranormal investigator in Los Angeles. There’s one with 4. 8 stars. There you go. You guys will add it to our Slack channel.

[00:11:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: New partner connection there.

[00:11:29] Fred Glick: Yeah, we’ll connect you with the best paranormal investigators in LA.

[00:11:33] René Pérez Jr.: I wonder why I couldn’t find one earlier. I didn’t really spend a lot of time in it, but it’s like when it’s one of those things where it’s like, why not?

[00:11:41] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Weird presence would be a good way to get out of a house, but you always wonder.

[00:11:46] Fred Glick: Yeah. I, you know, I don’t know if there’s a Ghostbusters addendum in the forms library, but.

[00:11:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, no, that’s another thing where…

[00:11:58] Fred Glick: It’s contingency.

[00:11:59] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s something to bring up to a listing agent when you really want to push.

[00:12:04] Fred Glick: We’d like to do the part. Well, you know, when we’re in a situation where there’s no other bidders and you’re just trying to buy something and we put in a mortgage contingency and appraisal contingency inspection contingency, we’ll throw in the paranormal.

[00:12:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Passing paranormal investigation.

[00:12:20] Fred Glick: I can’t wait to do that on a form.

[00:12:25] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’ll be a good one. So I’m going to turn the conversation because something really timely came up in my personal life. My mother-in-law had a fall last week.

[00:12:33] Fred Glick: Oh, yeah. How is she?

[00:12:34] Drew Thomas Hendricks: She is now and she lives in a house. She’s doing well. She’s back at the house, but she lives in a 2nd story and she doesn’t have a staircase.

She has to go outside of her house up the stairs to her 2nd story which is not sustainable. So we are now heavily into finding a lift ASAP. We had conversation on this channel.

[00:12:55] Fred Glick: Yeah. René.

[00:12:57] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, it’ll have to do with the, I mean, how the house layout. I mean, ideally either there’s a, I guess the circuit is from the outside. Is that where she can,

[00:13:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: She pulls her car straight into the garage and she used to have a staircase there. She took that out because to have more space in the garage. So we literally just need to cut a hole in her floor and the lift can go straight up into.

[00:13:23] Fred Glick: Yeah, I’m sure whoever sells the lift is going to come out and do the whole investigation, whether they can do it and permitting.

[00:13:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I will keep you updated because I am going today and we’re having a lift person come in.

[00:13:36] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah.

[00:13:37] Fred Glick: So this is, this is one of the reasons why there’s not enough supply. Okay, now we’ve added to, you know, mom can stay in the house. She just gets some kind of a lift up to the second floor.

[00:13:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: She’s been coming. Yeah. And we’re now, even though, I mean, it’s a feature to allow her to use the house, but I can now see how, what a big feature it is. Like if she pulls in, she can put all our groceries in the lift and go straight up versus having to make two or three trips.

[00:14:05] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:14:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, There’s new construction townhouses that I see all the time where they could have where they the 1st floor is all garage and then a staircase, maybe a room in the back if there’s enough space, but then you go 2nd floor, you know, kitchen and living room, 3rd-floor bedroom. That’s kind of the layout. This is with, like, Lennar did this in,

[00:14:27] René Pérez Jr.: Toll Brothers.

[00:14:29] Fred Glick: Yeah, Toll Brothers, it’s done. And I always say to them, “Why don’t you put an elevator in here?” Because, you know, how is, you know, a couple comes home, they just went to the supermarket, they got eight bags, they got two kids and a dog. It’s like, it’s a pain in the ass.

[00:14:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:14:46] Fred Glick: To get everything up the steps, including kids and bags, just make it easy. Or you could do kind of a, you know, a dumb waiter type of thing that goes up along the wall, something to help people just shlep their stuff up.

[00:14:59] René Pérez Jr.: Drew, are they checking you for the guy coming in for a quote? Or what’s the

[00:15:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, my wife’s been down there for the last four or five days.

I’m not operating under full intel, but I think it’s a free quote down here.

[00:15:12] René Pérez Jr.: Okay. Yeah, cause I actually, I mean, one of the articles that I have in there, it’s a bunch of different companies that do that. So I mean, what we tell, what I always tell buyers whenever they’re trying to, like, really make sure they get the most cost-effective contractor in or service or vendor or whatever, it’s you, especially this for a lot of times for termite, right? But it can work for any other process. You get one quote, and you don’t have to have 10 people come in, you show it to other companies, right, to see like, “Hey, is this a competitive, transparent quote, or is someone else overcharging me?”

[00:15:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:15:50] René Pérez Jr.: It could be a good idea. Once you get one quote, just send it over to one of the few companies that I have in there as well. And, you know.

[00:15:58] Fred Glick: Yeah, we’ll share this link on, the.

[00:16:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, the show notes, but share it with me, we’re in immediate need, especially one that like turns the floor, turns into the lift. Like when it goes back down, you can’t really see it except for the track.

[00:16:14] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. And if there’s any companies, yeah, I mean, if there’s any companies, I mean that listens to this podcast that are doing elevators.

I mean, a lot of the times, companies offer like referral bonuses, which kickbacks are illegal, but a lot of realtors still take them, you know. Us as a company, we don’t take any referral fees. So we can, we actually can just take that price back down to the consumer. I mean, we also be a conversation where we speak with them and say like, “Hey, because we’re a real estate professional…”

[00:16:45] Fred Glick: We don’t need the 50 bucks.

[00:16:47] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, exactly. That’s why we can just give them the money back.

[00:16:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: This is We Fixed Real Estate in action. We are fixing it right now, actively down here in San Diego. Let’s talk about Redfin estimates versus the list price.

[00:17:03] Fred Glick: Okay. It’s like it’s back and not that it ever left, but it’s just getting worse.

So an agent goes into a seller and says, “Look, I know your property is worth 900, but here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to list it at 699 so we get lots of interest.” And there’s people there who can figure out how to stretch to be able to make it. And this will make a bidding war and blah, blah, blah.

Guess what, guys? We see this all the time. El Cerrito, it’s just pathetic. You can’t even list the property because everybody does it. But if it’s too good to be true, it’s not true. Okay? Don’t even bother going to those open houses. You’re wasting your time. If you’re a buyer at 700 and that’s all you can afford, don’t bother.

Even 750. If you know, the Redfin estimate says 915. You know, it’s so much above. Because when you stick your sale price, your list price in Redfin, usually their algorithm kind of goes to around that number, a little low, a little higher. When it sticks to it being a couple hundred grand above, then, you know, it’s the game and why wait time.

And why help this agent try to get more people and try to drive the price up. But guess what? In the end, you don’t drive the price up.

[00:18:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: No.

[00:18:27] Fred Glick: Maybe there’s five people at 915,000 who love it. They’re going to bid. Yeah, and they’ll bid above that. They’ll bid against each other and you’ll have exactly the same amount without wasting people’s time.

[00:18:40] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Now, hypothetically, what would happen? The person lists the house, like it’s 700. Redfin’s got it at 915. It’s a slow week. Well, no. What if someone just comes in and says, 695 you’re asking price, all cash, no contingencies? Do the person, they don’t have to accept that.

[00:18:57] Fred Glick: We’ve had buyers that want to do that. And you know, they get laughed at. We tell them.

[00:19:03] René Pérez Jr.: What happens is agents have expectations for a hugely above list offer price. And when we submit list price offers, then they yell at us for saying like, “Oh, didn’t you look at the comps?” And so we’re put in a position where. Okay, like there’s a list price.

[00:19:20] Fred Glick: Didn’t you look at the comps?

[00:19:22] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, it’s probably the only industry where you can’t buy something at the list price. Like, usually if you listed that price and someone’s willing to buy at that price, you have a sale.

[00:19:31] Fred Glick: We ain’t selling bananas is what I always say.

[00:19:34] René Pérez Jr.: I mean, the other option isn’t, you know, doesn’t solve the whole issue.

Right? So let’s say that there’s a house that’s worth a million dollars. So you listed at a million dollars and okay, it stays, it stays for two months. So then what? How do you do that? What do you do there? You know, at least if you had the offers from when you had the list price at 700 to wanting a million, you can tell them like, “Hey, look at the comps. I want a million.”

[00:20:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, yeah.

[00:20:01] Fred Glick: Exactly. Be aware out there and don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your agent’s time. If you have the kind of agent who likes to go around with you to open houses and whatever, I mean. And agents don’t fall for this either.

[00:20:15] René Pérez Jr.: No, I mean, it’s just simple, right? Like if you see a house, don’t look at the list price, look at the house that’s sold next door, next door.

Now I know Fred loves Redfin, but the best website to really look at this is actually Zillow, right? If you look at, if you go on Zillow, instead of just Zillow giving you the comparables, it actually gives you the house that’s sold right next to the house it’s in the market and the entire block, right?

[00:20:42] Fred Glick: It’s like, recently? The most recent one or something?

[00:20:45] René Pérez Jr.: Anything. No, it doesn’t, to find, yes, for accurate comps, you want to look at, like, the last 2 months.

[00:20:53] Fred Glick: 3 months. Yeah.

[00:20:54] René Pérez Jr.: But you also want to find out what sold 3 years ago. Right?

[00:20:57] Fred Glick: Yeah.

[00:20:58] René Pérez Jr.: I mean, there’s no, I mean, at the end of the day, it is an investment, right? So you wanna see, okay, how much did it sell for last year?

[00:21:04] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mm-Hmm, .

[00:21:06] René Pérez Jr.: If there’s a house that sold last year for a million, should you offer 2 million this year? You know?

[00:21:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. As a consumer, I have to say, it makes me feel better to look at Zillow versus Redfin. It might just be my house, but Zillow’s always a couple hundred thousand more than Redfin.

[00:21:21] Fred Glick: Their bad algorithm is better than the other.

[00:21:24] René Pérez Jr.: It is house to house. I think Zillow just likes your house more, Drew.

[00:21:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:21:30] René Pérez Jr.: No, I mean, there’s a house right now that’s listed at 1.69. And there’s a comp that’s held for 3 million, three months ago. Right? And it’s just like, this house is going to go for above 2 million easily.

And it’s, and it doesn’t show up as a comp. Yeah. Right. But if you open up in the last couple of blocks on Zillow, you see that sold recently. That’s how I do a lot of more backend research, right? Like what sold like right there in that block.

Yeah. Especially when you’re dealing with neighborhoods where there’s not a lot of turnover, right? Okay. Like, okay there’s a, the house that’s really specific to that same view that’s by the beach. Okay, it’s sold three years ago for two million. Well, odds are that you have to be in that ballpark of two million, even if it didn’t appreciate over the last three years, even if you take into account for the appraisal. It’s not, it makes sense, right? There’s some logic attached to it.

[00:22:34] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s the trouble in my neighborhood. Cause they’re not consistent homes. They’re all older homes, 50, 60 years old.

[00:22:39] Fred Glick: And they’re all different.

[00:22:40] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Kickass. Some of the homes are just beaten down and you saw a beat-down home. It doesn’t really bring it. I guess theoretically it brings down all the kick-ass homes, but

[00:22:49] Fred Glick: No.

[00:22:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It makes it really hard to do it. It makes it really hard to get a pump.

[00:22:53] Fred Glick: No, not at all. Because the appraisers actually just adjust a real appraisal is done. They adjust it for the conditions.

[00:23:00] René Pérez Jr.: There’s no such thing as a real appraisal.

[00:23:02] Fred Glick: They know the sale price before they do the appraisal.

[00:23:05] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah.

[00:23:05] Fred Glick: We had a guy, we wanted to price something on our listing that we taking and we asked them for an appraisal and the guy said, yeah, tell him what the guy said.

[00:23:16] René Pérez Jr.: So I won’t bring up their names, but I hired one of the most well-known Bay Area pre-appraisers.

He goes on a bunch of these like, conferences. He’s at in men as a speaker. So, you know, we paid top dollar for this appraiser. Right? And he appraised this property for over a 100K to what it had sold two years ago. Right? And their whole goal, I mean, he just told me that it was really hard to, it was really hard to look at the neighborhood and to press it out.

But at the end of the day, it’s like, he appraised to a million dollars. The house you know, universally would sell for that price, but he was looking at the fact that he had sold last year for 900. And he wanted, and appraisers wants to just make us happy, right? They will be,

[00:24:07] Fred Glick: That’s what he said. That’s the key. I want to say, “Oh, I got it real high for you.” You know, it’s like, no, I want the value of what it’s going to sell for to the public. I’m not about, I don’t give a shit about how high it is.

[00:24:23] René Pérez Jr.: The idea is to tell to tell sellers like, “Hey, look, we appraise it and it’s a million dollars. It’s a hundred more than what you pay for.”

[00:24:31] Fred Glick: Part of the realtor cartel book, how to do things. It’s just, and we fixed real estate. All we did is be honest and transparent.

[00:24:40] René Pérez Jr.: Well, and I mean, the problem is that if you’re a first-time home buyer and someone gives you a disclosure for an appraisal, you’re probably more easily convinced that the appraisal means that you should bid that price.

[00:24:53] Fred Glick: Right, exactly.

[00:24:55] René Pérez Jr.: You know, sometimes there’s agents who get under contract, and the house, you know, appraises higher than what it’s sold for. And there’s agents that say like, “Oh, we just gained equity.” And that’s not really how it works.

[00:25:09] Fred Glick: No. And equity is only important on these three days: the day you buy it, the day you sell it, and the day you need to praise it for a refinance. Other than that, it doesn’t matter what your house is worth. As long as you’re making the mortgage payments and you’re comfortable there and everything goes up and down.

You’re going to own it for 20, 30 years. Who cares what it’s worth this week? But people have this fascination. They got to know what’s my house worth. What’s my house worth? What’s my house? Your house is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. And that you’re not going to find, you know. You can get a generic idea and feel good that it went up, but you know.

[00:25:47] René Pérez Jr.: My point was more that agents lead buyers to believe that if the house appraises higher when they’re under contract that they somehow gained value.

[00:25:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Like they did a good job.

[00:25:58] Fred Glick: Yeah. And we got you the house for cheaper than yeah.

[00:26:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, I’ve got to know here about the CRMLS commission.

[00:26:11] Fred Glick: Okay. So, we will put this in the show notes. I was, we have a buyer who wanted to buy in Orange County, a single-family house. And she gives me, you know, the address I go to the multiple listening service and start reading all the information, and then the agent notes, and it says that they will only pay a commission to a member of the CRMLS only. Yeah. Well, you know this is what the seller wanted because they want a local agent who understands. Blah, blah is the first answer that I got as to why. I said, “I don’t think so.” First of all, what the MLS actually is, people don’t realize this, is an agreement to pay commissions. That’s all it is.

So, if I’m a member of the MLS in Los Angeles that’s tied in with CRMLS, and I’m a member in the Northern California MLS, which is tied in with CRMLS, I have a commission agreement with agents in CRMLS, so they can’t restrict it. And I also tell her, “You know what, you’re also trying to steer people to only use those agents and those agents are the only ones that can make the commissions. You’re discriminating.” I mean, I laid it out of five different things. So she finally got back to me and said, “Okay. Just bring me the offer and you’ll be okay.” It’s like, she was giving me an exception, but she did say, “Oh, all the agents do it here.” Well, as soon as I saw that. I sent it to someone. All every single email. Everything she said, the MLS everything. And that someone has referred it to the justice department.

[00:28:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, wow. This is coming down. Now, is CRMLS, is that the main big one or is that?

[00:28:13] Fred Glick: It’s one of the, it’s the biggest geographically in California, but most people belong to the L.A. Or the one in South Bay.

[00:28:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So that would be the true local agent, the one that belongs to this L.A. one or the

[00:28:29] Fred Glick: CRMLS is all over the state.

[00:28:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:28:32] Fred Glick: It’s all just crazy. So I hope the Justice Department sends them a cease and desist because here’s the other thing, I sent into the MLS that I looked it up on that, “Hey, this is a problem.” And they said, “Okay, we’ll forward this to the MLS.” Never heard a peep from CRMLS.

Mr. Attorney General, that’s another piece of evidence that they’re trying to hide this process, or they condone it.

[00:29:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, another way that real estate needs to get fixed.

[00:29:07] Fred Glick: Oh man, just seriously.

[00:29:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So we’ve gone through the whole episode and we haven’t even talked about context.

[00:29:15] Fred Glick: Everything is context.

[00:29:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, where context matters. I’m trying to work it in. I’m trying to work it in.

[00:29:21] Fred Glick: I know, I know. We like it. I got my context t shirts. I don’t have them on today, but maybe we change it. We love context. You know, we heart context.

[00:29:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: All that matters is context, even with the mold, like, the type of mold you have, what is the context of the mold?

[00:29:39] Fred Glick: Exactly.

[00:29:40] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It could be the end, end all, be all, or it could just be a small fact.

[00:29:45] Fred Glick: Show me the context. There we go.

[00:29:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: See, we worked it in. We might as well end on a high note. What’s your last thoughts there? René and Fred.

[00:29:56] Fred Glick: Oh, you want me to go first? Oh, speaking of, because you’re speaking early on why people get out of deals. In regard to the home we just placed an offer on, we learned there was a recent death in the house, and my kids are freaking out. This happens, you’re supposed to disclose if anybody died in the house the last 3 years in California.

So, and I don’t know that they do that anywhere else, but, top my

[00:30:26] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Perfect chance for a paranormal remediation.

[00:30:31] René Pérez Jr.: Okay, first of all, actually, I was going to say something that could put us on heated water. So I won’t say this, but

[00:30:38] Fred Glick: Okay, well, you’re not saying it as Arrivva. You’re just saying it as René. You’re not liable.

[00:30:45] René Pérez Jr.: No, I’ll just say it offline after this. But what I will say is that

[00:30:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Now everybody’s listening. It’s going to go, “What the heck is he going to say?”

[00:30:51] Fred Glick: Nobody listens to this podcast. Come on. Just say it.

[00:30:54] René Pérez Jr.: It’s fine. You have to wait. Yeah. I mean, this stays online forever. I know if anything knows anything about technology is. Actually, that’s going to be my end and a point is if you’re going to be in the public arena, doing things in public, know that everything is going to stay there forever, right? We’re living, I mean, there’s this Microsoft.

[00:31:14] Fred Glick: Shut your phone off before you get drunk is basically the idea.

[00:31:17] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, no, but I mean, there’s this, the co-pilot that Microsoft just released, right? Where they can capture everything on your screen.

[00:31:25] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I saw that. That’s scary.

[00:31:26] René Pérez Jr.: And it’s just like the biggest thing that you can hold on to yourself is that idea of privacy. Right? So if you’re sharing things, just know that it can always come back and bite you. Right?

[00:31:38] Fred Glick: Speaking of that, I wanted to ask you, you might as well say this, somebody got into the, like the Pentagon papers of Google to find out how their algorithm works. Did you hear about that?

[00:31:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The documents were leaked. They don’t know if they were leaked intentionally, but

[00:31:54] Fred Glick: That’s what I was kind of thinking because they’re going to a whole new thing.

[00:31:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, it wasn’t that they didn’t hack into the Pentagon. It was in the, it was in the comments on some of the open source things that they accidentally released.

[00:32:07] Fred Glick: Ah, okay. Well, I call them Pentagon papers because they were, you know, major.

[00:32:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. It’s kind of like what everybody knows. I mean, the weird part of that, the weird part of that confused me the most was the, the domain match penalty. So if you bought the domain best mortgage and you just had a site talking about best mortgage, best mortgage, best mortgage, it’s probably going to look like a bullshit thing because it’s not tied to a company.

So they’ll probably demote that because you’re just basically buying it, the domain exact match works. When it actually is in line with all the content in your site.

[00:32:42] Fred Glick: So if you bought best.arrivva, best.mortgage and it went to arivva.mortgage and talked about mortgages and didn’t say the word best, it’s better than what you were saying.

[00:32:53] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s all that in con. Yeah. I mean, again, it goes back to quality content. Links matter. There was a little bit of an underground thing about between what they say and what they’re actually doing. And it’s hard to tell from that document.

[00:33:06] Fred Glick: Right. And now with that AI thing, and I, believe it or not, I haven’t gotten it yet. So I haven’t really seen it.

[00:33:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Have you seen this stuff going on Reddit with people like asking for like Google’s AI-written answers?

[00:33:19] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, I’ve seen that.

[00:33:20] Fred Glick: No, I haven’t seen it. Oh, I bet they’re crazy. Claude‘s been fun. I’ve been using that.

[00:33:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s legit for business writing. I saw a matrix and I should put it in the show notes on the best, best AI language model for each use case.

And yeah, Cloud came up for like business writing, like that type of stuff, proposals, Chat GPT is better for I say coding, but yeah.

[00:33:49] René Pérez Jr.: I’ve been trying to code something for a while and I can’t get it to work, so maybe I just suck at using ChatGPT.

[00:33:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I feel like I suck more using ChatGPT every month.

[00:34:00] Fred Glick: But I think what I’ve heard or what I see in the TikTok thing is people saying, “Hey, take your competitor’s website, put it in there and it’ll write the code for you.”

So that, I think that’s more of what people were doing with that code-wise.

[00:34:15] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah, no, I code-wise, I’ll put in the whole PHP code and say, “Hey, what’s wrong with this?” Or we’re getting this error and it’ll suggest, it’ll fix it, or I’ll need to, especially for nerds, if you’re writing regular expressions.

Which is like a way to do for redirects and stuff to like search out different files. ChatGPT writes regular expressions super well.

[00:34:42] Fred Glick: There you go.

[00:34:43] René Pérez Jr.: Nice.

[00:34:44] Fred Glick: And on that happy note.

[00:34:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:34:47] René Pérez Jr.: Until next time.

[00:34:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We fix coding.

[00:34:49] René Pérez Jr.: Nice.

[00:34:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. So I guess the show’s over guys.

[00:34:54] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. Okay.

[00:34:55] Fred Glick: All right. That’s it. We’re leaving. Goodbye.

[00:34:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Talk to everyone later. Bye bye.