What They Don’t Tell You About Home Closing Delays With Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. Of Arrivva

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

• Hear top tips and pro strategies to avoid common delays in the home closing process
• Learn why thorough walkthroughs and proper escrow amounts are key to avoiding last-minute issues
• Learn how tariffs and market conditions are reshaping construction methods, from 3D-printed homes to sustainable materials
• Find out how to navigate fluctuating homeowners insurance costs, especially in fire-prone areas
• Get insider scoop on Arrivva’s new partnership with Taskrabbit and the ability to pay with cryptocurrency for added convenience

In this episode with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr.

Closing on a home isn’t always straightforward—unexpected issues can throw a wrench in the process. 

Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. of Arrivva break down the most common closing delays and how to avoid them. From lender approvals for credits to last-minute walkthrough surprises, they share expert strategies to keep your deal on track. They also dive into how tariffs and market shifts are reshaping real estate, the rise of 3D-printed homes, and why homeowners insurance is becoming a bigger challenge—especially in fire-prone areas. Don’t let delays derail your home closing. Tune in for expert insights!

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fred Glick on LinkedIn
• René Pérez Jr. on LinkedIn
• Arrivva
• ChatGPT
• FortressFire
• Taskrabbit

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Fred Glick: René. You don’t look like a plumber.

[00:00:03] René Pérez Jr.: Actually it was a really cool thing. I just figured, you know, one, first of all, a day before we closed to get a handyman to go check on a sink, it’s just a headache, right? It’s like, even if the sellers are really good and do you want to help out and give the house to the buyers in great condition, it’s just not likely not going to happen. So I figured you know what let’s ask my boy ChatGPT how to fix a sink and yeah, I gave ChatGPT a few pictures and I asked it things like, “You know what this is not working and I know how to operate this one.” And, “How should I pull the lever without breaking it.” And it just took a sink apart and I fixed it.

So that’s pretty good.

[00:00:46] Fred Glick: There you go. That’s you know real estate brokerage 2025.

[00:00:53] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Full service.

[00:00:54] Fred Glick: Yeah. AI saved the day, you know, because when people don’t realize, let’s say you find someone something at the last minute and you want a thousand dollar credit from the seller, well, guess what? The request for the credit has to go back to the lender.

The lender’s got to put it through the computer. The underwriter is going to sign off on it. It’s not an automatic thing you can just give out a credit anymore. So these are, these are things and luckily we have them.

[00:01:23] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. So that was something that I, that I was talking to one of the, to the buyers, right?

It’s like, look, “I know you sign later today, but even if you’re signing later today, the seller’s already signed. So then the sellers would have to resign your paperwork. So there’s still going to be some form of delay and every time that they bring out a notary, they want to charge a couple hundred bucks.” Right? So it would still create extra costs either way. So yeah.

And I was in sometimes, you know, buyers and sellers, they want to just, the, they can just deal with it out of outside of escrow and doing Zelle and Venmo. But that creates another issue because the whole point of escrow is to have a third party that makes sure that everything is resolved.

So there’s, a part of the real estate process is a bit kind of off. I think in the perfect world, we should do it where you close the transaction, you do the walkthrough, you keep like five grand on an escrow, and then have like a week in the house. And user to kind of take a look at the house and make sure that nothing’s wrong.

And then if something major comes up, it’s like we, as agents, we’re not liable for that. And like, “Hey, look, like who screwed up here.” I’m sure there’s, there’s reasons why we don’t do that. People just want to move on, I guess.

[00:02:41] Fred Glick: Yeah, exactly. And they need the money or the lender wants to get involved.

And if you have an escrow, it’s usually one and a half times. And it’s just. In theory, it sounds great. In practice, it’s just crazy, but, you know, try to do your walkthroughs as soon as you can and try to get your sellers to move out as soon as they can. So you can see an empty house, but

[00:03:03] René Pérez Jr.: Well, the walkthrough itself is it’s also a pain of a form because it is not an inspection, but the walkthrough is just you going through the house and getting the home as you would have expected for the most part. So it has to be, it’s like a baseline of as long as it’s nothing incredibly major, you can’t really use something wrong with the house to renegotiate.

So it’s a really like murky page and it’s on its own, like it’s kind of worthless to an extent. So that’s the other issue, right? And then, secondarily, a part of the walkthrough is that sellers don’t even have to, like, the house doesn’t even have to be empty, so it’s like, I would love to do the walkthrough seven days before we close, but there’s usually staging and, or the sellers are still living in the house, so then you can’t actually go see the entire house. So that’s the other thing.

[00:03:59] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You can’t see it without furniture in there either?

[00:04:02] Fred Glick: Correct. Right. You have to have everything out before you can really do it, because, you know, you can do it before, but if they scuff up all the walls and break a banister, and you just, you know, you’re walking, “Oh, my God.” So, you know, it’s nothing that AI is going to solve.

So, except fixing a little plumbing.

[00:04:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Apparently it fixed plumbing. How did it go? How did it go that long to the last minute?

[00:04:27] Fred Glick: The sellers didn’t leave out so late last night.

[00:04:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, I see. So yeah, it wasn’t even anything you’d notice until they were gone.

[00:04:36] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. And you know, when you live in a house for a long time, you become complacent about the little things.

So it’s like, if you have three bathrooms, like there’s one sink that you don’t really use and hey, it drains slowly, but it’s still functional.

[00:04:53] Fred Glick: Well, it’s good for a listing agent to kind of go through with their sellers. “Hey, you’re moving out, but we got to make sure everything still works. So a week beforehand, let’s check the sinks. Let’s check the plugs. Let’s check a little of this, a little of that, just to make sure there’s not an issue. And if there is, you get a handyman out and fix it.”

[00:05:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Complacency. For sure.

So I’ve got a, my side door going into my courtyard, the French door, the handles completely loose. Like it’ll just come off, but we just know how to open the door so it never bothers us. But whenever it comes over visits, first thing they do is rip off the handle. Every time I’m like, I’m going to fix that.

[00:05:36] Fred Glick: Just fix it.

[00:05:37] Drew Thomas Hendricks: But another week goes by and I’m just open it just fine. But that’s exactly something that would happen. Complacency.

[00:05:43] Fred Glick: It’s like Nike, just do it, just fix it.

[00:05:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s what my wife would like me to say.

[00:05:48] Fred Glick: There you go. There you go.

[00:05:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It is kind of funny though, to watch everyone come over and pull the handle off the door, they really think they broke it.

[00:05:55] Fred Glick: Make it its own TikTok channel for handles to come off. And there you go. I’m sure it’s wonderful.

[00:06:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Handles as awkward as my intros. This is We Fixed Real Estate.

[00:06:07] Fred Glick: Hey, there you go. Three minutes later, you know, we had a cold open. You know, just like Saturday Night Live. It’s, we are not the Saturday Night Live of real estate and I’m not Chevy Chase. Anyway, other things in real estate going on. It’s tariff day. I don’t know where the markets ended up, but they started ugly.

There was some kind of temporary deal with Mexico. Three o’clock, Justin Trudeau was talking to Trump. So I don’t know what happened.

Well, this is not a political show, but it does have political ramifications.

Lumber, lumber, lumber, Canada lumber. This as crazy as it sounds, I think is actually, it would be a good thing to stop the lumber coming in from Canada because it would force people to start building cement, 3d printed homes that are fireproof, waterproof, earthquakeproof. Well, it’s going to be cheaper. Lennar’s already done it. They’ve done one or two different developments, one in Texas, and I believe one in California. So it works and, you know, get Toll Brothers to stop building the 4,000 square foot house that they stud out. I mean, it’s just insanity. So, you know, maybe this wake some more people up into alternative ways of building homes that are going to be better and safer.

The air quality of, switching a little bit back to L. A. the air quality is still moderate. It’s not as bad as it was. It was funny, we have a listing we’re getting up in Altadena, which is a town just South of where all the fires were.

I’m sorry, Arcadia, not Altadena. Altadena is where the fires are. Arcadia just South. And I went there, I have this device that shows you what the air quality is. And it was actually pretty good. As crazy as that sounds. And that was last Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday of last week. So the air quality is getting better in Los Angeles.

So that’s good. But now all the work begins, hopefully, they get all the toxic stuff up and the permitting and the rebuilding, and everything will start. I mean, PCH is still closed down for a lot of it and slowly, slowly recovering. That’s my on-the-ground Los Angeles report for the day.

Thank you very much.

[00:08:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: From Southern California or from San Diego, I was up hiking in the mountains this weekend. I can say it was, it was very clear in San Diego, but we didn’t have nearly the fire situation. There’s actually a lot of snow on the trail.

[00:08:57] Fred Glick: Really?

[00:08:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The last weekend. Yeah.

[00:08:59] Fred Glick: Yeah, we’re getting some nasty weather coming in.

I’m up north. René, is it raining up there or started?

[00:09:05] René Pérez Jr.: It was supposed to be raining until like Wednesday, but it’s just cloudy right now.

[00:09:10] Fred Glick: Yeah, it’s supposed to get massive amounts of snow at Tahoe. So the good news is when it all melts, there’ll be a lot of water later, but it’s raining Wednesday, Thursday.

[00:09:23] René Pérez Jr.: I’m going to Sacramento tomorrow. I wonder if I should just drive to the snow and go to Tahoe.

I just, I don’t have any snow tires.

[00:09:38] Fred Glick: Yeah, I was going to say, you don’t have change and you don’t have a four-by-four, everybody and their mother’s going to be up there skiing. So,

[00:09:47] René Pérez Jr.: Well, not during the week though. I would hope.

[00:09:49] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Doesn’t the Tesla auto drive in the snow perfectly?

[00:09:51] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, I would, I would think so actually.

Well, there’s more, it has more power, right? So, I’m sure it doesn’t really mean the chains.

[00:10:02] Fred Glick: In its last words. I don’t need no sinking chains.

Yeah, that’d be funny. Let’s see. Drew, You want to talk more about elevators?

[00:10:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The lift is about to come in handy because my mother-in-law is going back in for another round of back surgeries. This time we’re trying to keep her positive. It’s like she’s prepared. Last time she couldn’t go anywhere, so they had to go to, you know, assistive facility.

Now she’s going to be able to at least go straight back to her house. One of the best things you can do is, is your, is this aging in place is considered if you’ve got a two-story home, consider the feasibility of installing a lift rather than, and then not a lift, just, I mean, you can do the cheap version, just outside your staircase that you see those.

Like old granny lift elevators, but this one just goes straight up and down like a normal elevator. And it had a ton of value because she, just the other week we were, I was doing a lot of house chores for her, that I could have been doing at my house by restoring the handle. But she had a bunch of dirt that she needed and some plants that she needed planting.

And we use the elevator to just take it up to her backyard because otherwise, I’d have to truck it up through the stairs.

[00:11:21] Fred Glick: So yeah, there you go. Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing. Beautiful thing. All right. Well, we don’t have much else going on. We’re actually busy. I’m about to write a contract in Venice.

So the big question is homeowners insurance. Let me run. This is kind of the last thing. So we have that buyer in Arcadia. Not Altadena, Arcadia. She went to get insurance and what was interesting, they said, “Okay, you have to have a FAIR plan,” which we thought, but she got the estimate for FAIR plan. The house, they’re only going to cover 410, 000.

Now, remember, you know, you can have a 2 million property in California, but it’s mostly land value. So 400, 000, you know, they do expert square foot kind of thing. And yeah, that’s probably enough. And they’re only charging her like $350. It’s like, wait a second. We better go back to somebody because we have somebody who’s settling on a 2, 2. 3-ish house up in Danville and they’re getting charged like 3, 700, which is still not bad. I don’t know what the value of the property was, but still can’t be, you know, close to the 2-3. It’s maybe 700, 000. So she’s going to check. She’s going to make sure that that’s what it is.

[00:12:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Is it the deductible? Like you just have a $100, 000 deductible?

[00:12:50] Fred Glick: Something like that. I only looked at it briefly, but it was there’s nothing crazy on there. So it’s the insurance, it’s still going to be an issue. Check on insurance before you even put an offer in in areas that are any have lots of trees and possibly catch on fire.

So, that’s the bottom line if you’re in a fire zone. There’s also a form now that we’re using and let me see if I can find it exactly here. Yes. It’s called fortressfire.com is the website and it tells you all about the risk of the individual property when it comes to fire. Especially in fire-prone areas, it combines satellite imagery, machine learning, advanced physical methods, provides an objective data on property-specific vulnerabilities.

So, definitely worth looking into just you know, it’s, it’s crazy out there with this stuff. So.

[00:13:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mortgage rates? What are we doing? What are they doing? They’re coming down a little bit. I saw

[00:13:56] Fred Glick: They came down, they went you know, it’s, it’s still about the same as it was last week and the issue today was, you know, what I thought the bonds would do a little better because of all the sell-off in this, inbox and crypto and the dollar got stronger. So probably people were buying dollars as opposed to buying bonds. But the problem also was that if the inflation happens, it’s not an inflation that the Fed could beat up on meaning, you know, raise interest rates and slow down borrowing and slow down business. It was just a straight tariff and that’s what they were worried about.

And if they lower rates and the unemployment got uglier, then you have that combination of

[00:14:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Stagflation.

[00:14:52] Fred Glick: Oh, it would just be horrible. So you just got to keep an eye on it and, you know, see what’s going on. So,

[00:15:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, that brings up two points that we have not really publicized.

So if you’re still listening, which you should be. Arrivva, you can now pay with crypto.

[00:15:10] Fred Glick: Yes.

[00:15:11] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Reach out to Fred for a link and even more value. We’ve got a new Taskrabbit partnership. You can start saving on each one of your Taskrabbit tasks, like fixing plumbing, but René won’t be doing it.

[00:15:24] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s just a, it’s just a pain to find people, right?

And it’s hard to just depend on, you know, on Yelp or just referrals from friends. So Taskrabbit has a really good marketplace where they’ve vetted people. They’re licensed. And you can check on their hourly rate and such. And so with Taskrabbit, we have a referral code, $15 off the first purchase.

And then, obviously, once you meet up with the consumer with the, with the clients, you can kind of tell them, “Okay, I also need this. How much would you charge?” And, you know, it’s still, there’s still going to be some form of negotiation with them. That’s like with everyone. I mean, even, and this is something that I, that I do tell clients, they always want referrals to landscaping and roofs.

And I mean, the list goes on and it’s with contractors, you can’t just depend on a good referral because just because he did a good job on our past deals, doesn’t mean that they’re going to do the same great job on a future deal.

[00:16:36] Fred Glick: Yeah, here’s the problem with that. A lot of their employees are not citizens and they’re, they’re not coming to work.

So that’s another problem. We’ll see what happens here because of that. So that’s still isn’t solved. And also these guys, good guys who do work are busy. They may not be able to get to it for six months because they got rear four jobs ahead of them. So that’s the other problem. So, you know, there’s agents or other people they’ve used, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out this way.

Kind of give everybody a shot. And I’ve used Taskrabbit for assembling furniture. I did a yoga class once. So there’s a whole bunch of different things. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s pretty cool.

[00:17:23] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I didn’t realize it did classes and stuff. Oh, I gotta look it up. Well, I will be looking up cause we will be promoting it soon. You got a little, you’ll hear.

[00:17:33] Fred Glick: All right. I think that’s, we’ll let everybody go. Keep it short and sweet today. Nothing much to bitch about.

[00:17:40] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Lot of excitement this weekend, and we all know that Philadelphia is going to win.

[00:17:49] Fred Glick: Exactly. Go Birds.

[00:17:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Go Birds. It’s been another episode of We Fixed Real Estate.