Want to Survive California Real Estate? Start Here With Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. Of Arrivva

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

• Discover the recent changes to landlord-tenant laws in California
• Find out how you can finally turn your on-time rent into credit-boosting power
• Uncover the hidden struggles agents and tenants are facing in a hyper-competitive rental market
• How are rising construction costs affecting California’s housing market?
• How is wildfire insurance affecting affordability? And why is this crucial for anyone looking to buy in California?

In this episode with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr.

Get ahead of California’s real estate curve with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. of Arrivva in this can’t-miss April 2025 special of We Fixed Real Estate! 

Learn about tenant protections under new laws, how rent reporting can raise your credit, and why agents steer clear of renters. Plus, hear their takes on rising construction tariffs, insurance pitfalls, and what it all means for renters and buyers in California. Tune in now for expert advice to power your next real estate move!

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• René Pérez Jr. on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• Thumbtack
• The California FAIR Plan
• clients@arrivva.com
• Hoodmaps.com
• biltrewards.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:15] Drew Thomas Hendricks: We are on We Fixed Real Estate with Fred Glick and René Perez. We have a kind of a special episode today we decided to turn to our friendly AI agents to scour the internet and come up with the latest, hottest topics shaping California real estate in 2025.

And according to ChatGPT, the number one topic for April of 2025 is new California laws that we are reshaping the landlord-tenant dynamics such as security deposit deductions, rental payment reporting, and fee transparency. Fred, tell me about this.

[00:00:50] Fred Glick: What’s really funny is I go through these TikToks and I see all these guys say, “Here’s the way you wanna buy rental property. Only buy them in red states. The regulations and the blue states, they’re insane. The rental restrictions insane. The limits of what you can charge insane.” But California does these things and they sound insane, but they’re actually helping people as opposed to landlords. And that’s the difference. So here’s the thing, everybody’s experienced this.

They go and they move from a property and a landlord, they move three states away. The landlord sends in this report and they knows this very well. “And we had to paint, we had to change this, we had to do that. You left this dirt.” And they have no proof. They didn’t need to prove it. But this year things changed.

It’s like if you wanna deduct anything, you better have, you know, a full video and a camera and timestamped and everything. And it better be right, ’cause you can’t deduct anything without showing it visually.

[00:02:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Photographic evidence now. But that ties along with Arrivva, with been trying to bring transparency back into the real estate market.

So for me, this seems like a good thing.

[00:02:12] Fred Glick: Yeah, I mean, we’re on the side of the buyers and sellers. There’s no doubt about it. We don’t care about the industry and all the crap they wanna do. Or you know what’s interesting? And the realtor said, realtors have always said, and this has been for years, that their number one thing is to help home ownership.

But that includes investors, and investors and homeowners are kind of contrary things. And then you get down to a tenant level, they’re not there to protect tenants even though they do rentals. So it’s, you know, pick a side and be honest about it. And you know, that kind of thing. So this is what we do and instead of, you know, having beautiful videos and pictures of us being in beautiful locations and telling about how great we are and how we, we’ve been a resident of this area for 42,000 years, have seven dogs, and you know, it’s just give us your value.

You know, you’re not worth two and a half percent on a couple million dollar listing. I mean, it’s just, no.

[00:03:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The second point there is actually that rental payment reporting, whereas previously you get dinged if you failed to pay your rent, but you really didn’t get any positive kudos to rent score, payment history. And now tenants must be offered the option of their positive rental payments reported to cred credit agencies.

[00:03:37] Fred Glick: Right, but the landlord’s allowed to charge from, I think it’s $5 to $17 to be able to put you into this. There’s some on that number, but they charge you for it.

So, I mean, if you’re on Bilt credit card, they report you for your payments so you don’t have to do it through the landlord and it’s free. Bilt’s great card. I’m not getting any money from them, but you pay your rent on it and basically they’ve set up a bank account to wire in your MasterCard or Visa payment.

And the good thing about that is that costs nothing and it, and they probably do an ACH, so it probably costs the next to nothing. Wells Fargo’s been complaining about they’re losing money with it. But still all the Bilt points and the Bilt reporting, I mean, it’s free, so.

[00:04:35] René Pérez Jr.: Well, I mean getting a Bilt card, nice and great if you’re able to. Now, if you’re in your early twenties, I mean, back when I was in my early twenties, I got like 10 credit cards, right? Easy. They just, I applied to something and they would give it to me. These days, if you’re in your early twenties and you try to apply to anything, if you can’t prove that you have an extensive credit history, you’re not gonna get the credit card. I’ve seen plenty of my friends who just don’t get the credit card. So even though it’s a nice incentive, you know, the people who actually need it are not gonna get those.

[00:05:09] Fred Glick: Yeah. I mean, of course. But instead you’re gonna have to pay your landlord from five to 17, 18 bucks or whatever.

[00:05:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I just had to look this up to those people that don’t know what this is. It’s the BILT credit card that it allows you to earn points on rent and through your credit card.

[00:05:29] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah.

[00:05:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Go to biltrewards.com.

[00:05:32] René Pérez Jr.: There’s a few different options.

Bilt is probably like the best one that’s around that I’ve seen. I also don’t get paid for it. You probably should get paid for it as a little referral there. But a little

[00:05:43] Fred Glick: Set up an affiliate link, quickly.

[00:05:45] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah.One thing that I wanted to mention about the, the new rental laws is that apart from not only verifying the damages at the end of the lease, part of the new law is that you actually have to, before you rent out the unit, you have to provide images of what the unit looked like before. Right?

So it’s like, you know, it sucks because a real estate agent, and this is something that, you know, when Fred and I were looking into hiring agents, we were like, “Okay, well, maybe we can get the new agents to work on leases.” Right? But the problem is that there isn’t really any money on the leasing. Because let’s say that the typical rate for me to help you find a rental, “Okay, well, I’m gonna help you if you give me a month’s rent.” Right?

Or maybe even a half month’s rent. Well, even in San Francisco, let’s say I’m helping you find a $4,000 place. One, are you as a consumer, gonna wanna pay me $4,000? But two, if I am helping you look at 50 rentals and you keep losing on the rentals, as an agent, do you really wanna work on those deals?

It kind of doesn’t really work out. Right? So you would have a lot of the maybe new agents who are inexperienced helping you get rentals, but also the consumer not wanting to pay. So what end ups happening in the rental market is that you don’t get a lot of the assistance on how to get a place.

And if you’re young and you’re inexperienced, well guess what? You go to a rental property and you don’t realize that, “Oh, I should take pictures of X, Y and Z. I should document that things are broken.” So there isn’t really like a, you know, someone out there watching over you. I mean, and even if you’re like a college student, right?

Sometimes you’re going from the East coast to West coast. And you’re just lost in that kind of sense. So, you know, a lot of landlords take advantage of the consumer not knowing.

The same way with that agents taking advantage of consumers that don’t know what they’re doing. So now that’s what’s happening, right? You’re fixing the rental market in that aspect, and it’s transparent, right?

[00:07:59] Fred Glick: I wanted to just talk generically about the market. I mean, when you say to yourself, “Hey, I wanna rent an apartment or wanna rent a house,” where do you go? There’s no place to just go because you have 52 million websites that claim to, you know, have great rentals, but you’re gonna miss some because you don’t go to another site.

And it’s not the old days where we could do a thing where we just scrub everything, you know, pull in one data. So you have to go to 7, 8, 9 different sites to find things. ‘Cause there’s property management companies out there that only put their stuff on their site. Smaller ones, you know, that they don’t, just don’t know how to do it.

Then there’s the bigger companies that are syndicating everywhere.You gotta think about that and that’s goes right with your thing about service. And would you pay, you know, going to a new city, would you pay, let’s say $2,000 to have one person be like your concierge, your rental concierge, where they, you know, find they get appointments.

Maybe you restrict the number of appointments, you know, we’ll show you, we’ll do video appointments with you. We can go around and do that. Save the videos so you have ’em for later. For somebody else who might wanna look at something similar. It kind of gives you an idea of the grade of it. You know, there’s a business for younger people getting into this business to do this rental concierge business.

And then you have, you know, you can arrange for people to do repairs, people to come in and paint. Go through our Thumbtack link where you get $15 off the first service.

[00:09:38] René Pérez Jr.: But see, that’s why I hate commissions. That’s why commission, the commission system should be broken because, “Hey, I’m a new agent.” So are you saying like, okay, if I’m a new agent, who gets paid the $2,000? Is it at the beginning of me helping you look for a place?

[00:09:54] Fred Glick: Okay, so let’s put it with our Arrivva brain. Hey, it’s a flat fee. It’s due the earlier of when you sign a lease or let’s say 60 days, maybe that’s the model. I don’t know. I’m just throwing it out there.

[00:10:09] René Pérez Jr.: No, and so I’m talking from the viewpoint of like, let’s say I’m a new agent, right? Or just in general. I mean, I’m just trying to think. I’m just trying to expose like why could the commissions should be abolished and people should be paid by the hour.

Right? Which I think will one day happen, but, so these agents that are new and because there’s so many different sites, you as like, if I’m looking for a rental, like yeah, I’m using someone, but let’s say that I find out that in Craigslist I find a rental and I just find it myself.

Now that person that has been helping you, you know, look at 20 different units and recording videos, now that person doesn’t even get the $2,000? Why would I

[00:10:51] Fred Glick: No, here’s the thing. No, no, no. ‘Cause this person has to do everything. Meaning, hey, you found something on Craigslist, but you’re gonna give it to your agent. ‘Cause your agent’s gonna check things out for you. They’re gonna make sure the owner of the property’s really the owner of the property, the one who’s advertising it, they may even see if there’s any spoofs against it. You know, they’re working for you as an advocate. So, you know, like a buyer broker does, this is a rental broker.

I’m inventing a new job title, and if anybody really is interested here in doing it in California or Washington, ping me. I mean, we can develop this together, but the idea is complete service for a flat fee. Yes. It’s quote-unquote a luxury item because it’s, you know, it’s gonna take time, but for those who don’t have the time to do it.

You know, it just might work for them. Somebody who understands the neighborhoods and the commutes and, you know, what does this person like, “Oh, you don’t want to be down there. You wanna be closer to here. If you’re gonna go out and party every night, and here’s the best pizza spot.” You know, it’s more of you’re getting a local guide slash agent, slash investigator, slash just, you know, first new friend in the city. So there is a market for it. I don’t think it’s, there’s a market to develop this kind of a situation.

Oh, and also a second thing I was gonna bring up, going, flipping back to what we were talking about with the photos. So now you have to decide as a property manager, are you gonna do this internally? Also, how are you going to keep track of them?

You know, you gotta organize it in files, and dates and timestamping. Is this something you can do? You know, if you’re a big company and you’ve got a lot of stuff going on, your internal guys, you wanna use them fixing things, not taking pictures. But have a company that sets up that has a flat fee, there I go to my flat fee again, to come in and take pictures the day before somebody moves in and to take pictures the day after somebody moves out and they’re just on call and you just go to there. You just have the assignment, your paid X, and you know, that’s another thing. Or make a deal with a property management company, you’re charging ’em a flat fee.

You do some storage, can even make a website for it. One page site.

[00:13:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Definitely something to consider if you’re looking to buy a second income or a rental property. I mean, you’ve gotta keep things a little more and order than you might have previously.

[00:13:32] Fred Glick: Right? If you live in LA and you own a house in Salinas, you’re not gonna come up there just to take the pictures.

Probably have a property management company, but worst case is hire somebody to take pictures. Another reason?

[00:13:45] René Pérez Jr.: Well, I think the bottom line is that. Done are the days of like, “Hey, I watched, TikTok or Reel. Let me just become an investor.” Is you probably should talk to a professional so that they tell you what you’re missing in terms of the regulations that exist, especially even if you’re in a red state. Yeah.

[00:14:04] Fred Glick: You just reminded me of something that’s driving me crazy today on TikTok. This guy has this spreadsheet. And he is just going through the spreadsheet, but the beginning is you could buy this 12-unit apartment building, and here’s the numbers, you know, and he buys ’em in really, really bad markets. He forgets to tell you the reason these things are so cheap️ is because they have a tough time finding renters who are able to pay decent amounts of money. So he’s forgetting all that and telling you about the market,️ but, “Here’s the numbers, and you can get your money back within two years.” That’s why we need real estate commissions to shut this stuff down. They’re literally hawking properties they don’t know They’re showing you a technique, but they are really are showing you an existing property, and they’re not licensed. It’s getting outta hand. Yeah. As so as I agree. And we’re gonna move to topic number two and actually did a little, I did a little reverse ru on you. So that was actually the third most timely topic according to ChatGPT for flat fee, California-centric real estate topics. Number one, most relevant topic in April of 2025, tariffs, supply chains, and California housing. The 2025 construction cost crunch. To put some background here, in March of 2025, the administration introduced new tariffs on construction materials such as lumber, steel, and aluminum.

[00:15:33] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And these tariffs are potentially significantly increasing the cost of building in California leading to a slow down. So given the heightened sense and they’re causing bill builders to delay projects and potential home buyers are facing higher prices, how can flat fee real estate models offer relief to buyers and sellers?

 You can use your rebate to help upon some of the improvements that might be higher now.

[00:15:57] Fred Glick: No, no, no. I look at it completely different. That’s why I couldn’t come up with anything. This is the chance for alternative methods of building to start. I mean, so you can’t get lumber from Canada because it’s too expensive.

Well, guess what, kiddies, we have the technology already.

[00:16:15] René Pérez Jr.: What I was gonna say in terms of tariffs is people seem to think that, I think in the, the last four days we’ve had people say, “Oh, well I think the market is slowing down and with tariffs there’s gonna be less buyers.”

Ironically, every single one of those buyers is like, “Hey, I’m gonna write an offer on this property.” So there’s that disconnect of, “Oh, I’m the only one that’s gonna make an offer on the property. The tariffs are affecting it.” So I think there’s that kind of mentality right now when at the, when the reality is that the tariffs are not affecting the big markets of Bay Area, Seattle, Los Angeles, the money’s still there. And yes, Nvidia is down to like $90, but you know, be before the split, you know, it would be like a, at the five or $10 mark. Right? So the appreciation is still there. So people are still with enough money?

[00:17:12] Fred Glick: No, there’s the Chinese made those advanced chips. That’s, that’ll hurt.

[00:17:17] René Pérez Jr.: Yep.

[00:17:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The other part is it does according, so I actually asked ChatGPT how flat fee real estate can help in this rising costs. And basically it says it’s a one, it creates a constant, whereas a traditional model, rising commissions based on the home sale price, this kind of detaches the real estate transaction from these rising costs.

[00:17:41] Fred Glick: We do a lot of new construction, especially with this one builder. And they are pretty high end and pretty high price, but they want to offer us, and I think they’re down to 2%.

Like, okay, fine, we’ll take it. So you know, you got a $4 million house from them, that’s $80,000 of money, you’re getting over $70,000 back on a new construction house from us. And you know, it’s nice to do that, but I don’t know if you’ve heard me before, but what I was trying to say is I’m looking forward to this as a way for the world to reinvent itself on how they build houses. This is the time 3D cement build houses and 3D machines are gonna get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.

The whole method’s going to get better of how it works. And we’re gonna, we don’t need the lumber anymore.

[00:18:41] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Of course, innovation, which is great.

[00:18:43] Fred Glick: Yeah. This may bring on a lot of innovation in a lot of places.

[00:18:47] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And this segues just perfectly into the number two hottest topic according to ai, which is wildfires, insurance, and the real estate market. California’s growing crisis. And how are these rising insurance costs affecting home affordability in high risk areas?

[00:19:09] Fred Glick: Right now, FAIR Plan is basically the way most single families in these higher areas are getting covered. You know, we suggested to someone to look in the hills, Oakland Hills and Berkeley, you know, the hills up there.

You know, but told them in advance, your fire insurance is gonna be insane, but the prices have come down enough. Because these people can’t sell the houses. You know, it’s not in the great school district and all that, so this is more, you know, more secluded, more deep. I mean, it’s gorgeous up there, but it’s not like your single family is in Cupertino. They’re still gonna be a little expensive, but they’re not gonna be as insane as somebody up at, you know, in, what’s the name of that town? Santa Cruz? It’s up in the hills. No, no, not along the, water, but,

[00:20:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, Scotts Valley area.

[00:20:09] Fred Glick: Yeah, Scotts Valley.

Yeah. We have a client looking down there now, and they’re only able to get FAIR Plan and it’s pretty expensive. There’s a lot of trees that can burn. That’s the problem. Another thing. So before you even, let me give you the absolute, absolute gospel. Before you put an offer on any house, you have to make sure that the insurance is doable.

And go the extra step. Don’t just do an online thing, “So yeah, we’ll insure it.” You have to talk to someone, say, “Hey, here’s the address, are you sure it can be done?” So.

[00:20:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Doesn’t the mortgage company involved in that because you, they’ve gotta be sure that you can have enough insurance.

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

That’s why you’ve gotta get insurance. I mean, you can buy a house for cash and not get insurance.

[00:20:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, I see. But if you are fully underwritten and pre-approved, it doesn’t mean you’re fully pre-approved for that particular home if you can’t get insurance.

[00:21:06] Fred Glick: Exactly. Because they’ve approved you, they haven’t approved the property.

Which is the property itself. They do an appraisal, they wanna make sure it’s decent, livable and if it can be insured, ’cause the insurance has to be written in a certain way, there’s certain minimum standards. The bank has to be shown as, you know, that they have their lien recorded and the insurance company knows it to put it in simple terms.

 It’s important. The worst case is you do a contract and you do a contingency for insurance. And some of the agreements are written that a contingency for insurance not to exceed an amount of. That’s something you can always add.

[00:21:53] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s a good pro tip. I mean, if you’re worried about it, that’s a, we always talk about contingencies and waiving ’em all, but that may be one you want to think twice about waiving, especially if you’re in a high risk area.

[00:22:03] Fred Glick: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Anywhere in the country, I’d tell you to do this just because. We don’t know what’s in the brains of the insurance companies in the area. And who knows?

[00:22:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It could be fire here, it could be a floodplain, it could be, you know, on the side of a cliff.

[00:22:23] Fred Glick: Exactly. Or it could be in a nice, flat, suburban community and there might be some underwater streams you don’t know about. And I, no idea.

[00:22:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You never know.

[00:22:36] Fred Glick: Check. Get a good insurance person. So in April, 2025, that was the top three topics. We’re gonna revisit this every month or two and see. Oh, this is good.

Here’s a question for anybody still listening to this, and you can put it in the comments of wherever you are or email us at clients@arrivva.com. Two Rs, two Vs. We’re trying to sort of develop our own feed of listings. Like Redfin and Zillow and Century 21 and all that.

And we wanna know what you really look for besides the basic information and the pictures. ‘Cause everybody does that. We wanna, you know, have the walk score, the school scores, the sound score. And we’re thinking about doing something with mortgages, like make it real, tie it into today’s mortgage rate, as to what it’s really gonna cost. If you’re locked in today with insurance somewhere, we get an API for insurance rates, that would be great. We’re looking into all this. We don’t have this. And the real estate taxes, that one and a quarter, and if there’s a Mello-Roos, be able to put it in there. So we’re trying to do things like that so you can get some real numbers.

And also click to make an appointment through us. It might be on open house, you’ll be able to tell, but if you need a private appointment, you’ll click through to us. But we still have to talk to the other listing agent. So unfortunately there would be no way to do it. Anyway, what more would you possibly want on a listing?

We would love to publicly put all the disclosures, that’s one of our things. But that’s the whole industry and privacy and all that kind of stuff, but at least a link for the public to get the disclosures without having to get them from or through an agent. So when we list. A property. We have its own website.

And on that website you can as a consumer, make an appointment. We do have some restrictions we’re gonna ask you for, that you are who you are and these are just for the empty homes. And be able to click on a link that you can register and then receive all the disclosures, all the inspections, just like a real estate agent would do for you.

But we like giving it straight to the public. We don’t care who downloads it. You know, you have to put that you’re a buyer or an agent. You register that way. That would be great.

[00:25:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: What about like social listening tools like Nextdoor or something where you get a kinda a litmus test of the neighborhood because

[00:25:28] Fred Glick: Yeah, you see as agents we’re not allowed to talk about, you know, the neighborhood itself, if it’s safe. But some kind of neighborhood, a link to something.

[00:25:41] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, because you’re then it’s third party. You’re just pulling in the neighborhood zeitgeist of that area. Like a social court.

[00:25:52] Fred Glick: And a link to Hoodmaps.com. That’s my favorite. René found that one somewhere.

[00:26:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: What’s Hoodmaps? René.

[00:26:02] René Pérez Jr.: Hoodmaps is, you know, one of the,

[00:26:05] Fred Glick: Go to it and put it up on the screen. Come on.

[00:26:07] René Pérez Jr.: You don’t want to discriminate, right? Because discrimination is a really really bad thing. But at the same time, if you’re moving from the East Coast to the West Coast, where do I move? Well, Hoodmaps actually markets, microclimate of that section of the town.

[00:26:22] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yes. So I got my area here and the north of me is, “Only speak Spanish.” Right above that’s, “Teen pregnancy.” Then we have, “Bland suburbia.” Oh, I see. They cut it down real.

“Jazz in the park.”

“Grannys, get down.”

[00:26:39] Fred Glick: It’s pretty funny. You know.

[00:26:41] René Pérez Jr.: It shows the, you know, that have been gentrified, things like that. I don’t know how up to date this website is.

[00:26:48] Fred Glick: Yeah. Well, okay, so back when my friend Jeremy was in college, he was actually, on my hockey team at Wharton. He was in Wharton undergrad, and I played for the Wharton hockey team.

So what we developed together, he did the tech and I came in with helping him somehow. We made a heat map from Craigslist. We exported all the rentals from Craigslist and figured out the location and took the location versus the price. So basically if it was red, you know, that was the really cheap rentals and the purple was the really expensive rentals.

And you could see if you were moving to a town you didn’t know where was allegedly good to live and quote unquote, safe, this kind of gave you an idea. So we, we’ve come a long way data. He’s like the head of something at Palantir. Okay. So you can find him on my LinkedIn. But he’s a Penguins fan, so

[00:27:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Hoodmaps.

[00:27:53] Fred Glick: Hoodmaps.

[00:27:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Now, you know. We’re outta questions? Those are the top three. We tackled them. And more and more, so I’m gonna say that this was the last episode, not the last, this was the late, we just finished this episode. We are now ending.

[00:28:11] Fred Glick: Okay. I want Drew’s greatest hits this week. This is it. We have enough. Ugly. Well, it’s just Northern Seattle is all that is. So anyway, got enough annoyance.