Fred Glick, a Broker, Real Estate Realist, and Founder of Arrivva, holds a stellar track record with over $2 billion in residential transactions while grounded in a lifelong passion for real estate. René Pérez Jr. is an adept Broker and Pricing Savant, who specializes in strategic problem-solving and long-term growth.
Join them in the We Fixed Real Estate podcast by Arrivva, where they share expertise and insights about the dynamic real estate landscape. Arrivva, a leading real estate and mortgage brokerage, caters to buyers, sellers, and mortgagees with love, integrity, and a transparent fee structure. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, Arrivva is transforming the real estate landscape, one happy client at a time.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Debunk the myth that property values always go up—and learn why timing your purchase matters
- Compare the pros and cons of yard signs: marketing tool, neighborhood awareness, or security risk?
- Discover strategies to fight buyer fatigue and find out how to stay competitive without overpaying
- Get practical moving advice plus safety and reliability tips
- Understand the potential crackdown on Section 8 housing: what landlords and tenants need to know
In this episode with Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr.
What do today’s buyers and sellers get completely wrong about home value?
Fred Glick and René Pérez Jr. of Arrivva break down the biggest misconceptions they see in the market every day. From flawed beliefs about property appreciation to overlooked moving costs and misunderstood pre-approval strategies, they expose the traps buyers fall into—and how to avoid them.
Plus, they go head-to-head over property signs and share sharp takes on the future of affordable housing. Whether you’re buying, selling, or just watching the market, this is the episode you didn’t know you needed.
Resources mentioned in this episode
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:20] Fred Glick: Rayza, when she put in that location today and she said more is coming up.
How do you know more is coming up? What’s going on?
[00:00:31] René Pérez Jr.: Because, I mean, if you’ve been following the market, Fred, there’s a lot more inventory in general.
[00:00:37] Fred Glick: Yeah. I really haven’t on in that area. I mean, is it just that area or general?
[00:00:41] René Pérez Jr.: No, just in general. Like there are a lot of houses, like, I mean, if you look at the graphs of what’s in the market, you know, like year over year, I mean all that’s generic, but we’re now at like 2019 levels. Right? So…
[00:00:58] Fred Glick: Of inventory?
[00:00:59] René Pérez Jr.: Yes.
[00:01:01] Fred Glick: But we’re still getting the buyers, at least in the higher-end stuff. So the lower-end stuff is slowing up, that’s for sure. But the Bay Area, everything’s higher.
[00:01:11] René Pérez Jr.: That’s why people, people always hate salespeople that tell them like, “Oh, it just goes up,” because it doesn’t.
[00:01:19] Fred Glick: Long term. Very long term. It’s all I talk about so it’s all that matters when you buy a house, as to the value of the house. I know you’re sitting and looking on Redfin or Zillow every day to see what the estimate is, but it only matters the day you buy it or the day put it under contract, the price you pay, the day you need to refinance and get it appraised and the day you sell it. ‘Cause that’s what you’re selling it for.
Other than that, it doesn’t matter. It can go up and down and all around and people worry, “Oh, my house is worthless.” Yeah. But if you still have a job, you’re still paying it, you’re gonna be there 20 more years, it’s gonna go back up. So yeah, it’s the importance of the value of your property and when it’s important.
[00:02:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s not timing the market, it’s time in the market.
[00:02:10] René Pérez Jr.: Which the problem is like, yeah, if we can wait 10, 20 years to sell, cool, I made the money. But you know, if you’re a year and a half owning your house and lose your job sickness, something, and now you have to sell, then you’re down 50, 100k immediately.
Especially because when people see you sell a house a year afterwards, odds of you making any money are pretty low because people are like, “Oh, what’s wrong with the property?” Not, “Oh, hey, the person had an emergency.” They’re gonna say, “Oh, what’s wrong with the property?” Unless it is an obvious flip. But even then, flips always go wrong.
I mean, we can talk of the hundreds of flips that are happening. And especially with new construction, you see a lot of new construction then people try to overprice them and then they’re on the market for a long time.
[00:03:03] Fred Glick: There’s a house in Silver Lake. It’s a one bedroom, one bath, small house on a nice street.
These guys bought it for 1,200,000 a year ago, and they’re trying to sell it for 1,500,000. I don’t care what you’ve done to it. A one-bedroom is not going to increase in value by $300,000. Okay? In one year. I don’t care what the market is like, it’s a one-bedroom, you know, a four-bedroom and a 12-school district. Yeah. Everybody’s gonna be killing each other. But a one-bedroom? Dude, not happening. So, they had their agent got the biggest sign I’ve ever seen with their name on it. It’s like doesn’t sell the house.
Here’s a good debate we can have, signs. Okay? You see signs in a neighborhood, you know, houses are for sale. Our theory is a little bit different. The sign is mostly about ego. Number one. Number two, letting the neighbors know that you’re selling the house. Because in the old days, “Oh, I see all your signs. You must be a great agent and everybody uses you.” And then there’s just have it out there, even if it’s in like a place that nobody drives by they have, they have a sign. Why?
But our idea is, especially on a vacant house, we don’t wanna sign on it. We don’t, you know, if you wanna find out about a property, and you wanna go to an open house and all that, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna go in Redfin, you’re going Zillow, you’re gonna type the address in.
You’re gonna put it in as an appointment for yourself, and you’re gonna use Google Maps and find the place, right? What do you need to sign for? Yeah, there’s those weird things. If it’s in a weird place and you need, hey, the house is down this alley and not that alley, but a standard single-family house, it’s like, I don’t put up open house signs. It’s like I don’t want people to know who aren’t looking for a house that the house is available to be robbed.
Number one, that the house is available, that they can just come in open house. You know, these companies have these signs out on major roads, open house this way, this way, this way.
And the dudes who are, you know, criminals, they’re sitting there like, “Yeah, let’s check this place out.” They go in, “Hey man, this is nice stuff.” And of course, based on the fact, you can’t discriminate against anybody, even though you know they’re gang bangers, you know, and you could see the bulges in their pants with a gun. But you can’t discriminate against ’em because you know, they’ll roll in with a cashier’s check and be able to buy the house. And you don’t want a discrimination lawsuit.
[00:05:57] René Pérez Jr.: And you don’t think criminals can’t see an open house even if there’s no sign?
[00:06:02] Fred Glick: They gotta work a little bit harder.
[00:06:04] René Pérez Jr.: You have to press one button. No, come on. That is…
[00:06:07] Fred Glick: No, I’m talking about just driving around and seeing an arrow to an open house. It’s like, “Hey. You’re not invited.”
[00:06:14] René Pérez Jr.: When you’re marketing a property, you want to market it to the best of your ability, and that includes signs, that includes building up the open house.
You know, something that we always tell our buyers, and we, and you tell people this in the intro call, is go to the beginning of the open house so you can see how busy it is. And if it’s busy, you know that it’s gonna be competitive. Oh, well, guess what? If you put signs and you see neighbors and looky-loos going to the property, what does that do to the listing, Fred?
That makes us out, there’s more people. And so that it looks more competitive, that you’re helping your sellers. So come on, this is ridiculous. This just, you’re not wanting to do the extra work because it is more work to put signs on the streets, and it is more work to spend on the marketing of, “Oh, someone stole my signs outside,” because I mean, yes, that does happen. Right?
[00:07:04] Fred Glick: So no, this whole idea that you’re stopping thieves, if the thief is gonna steal your property, like they’re gonna do it regardless. And also bring me the data of how many broken into properties happen because of the signs? Well, there you go. We’re gonna have a listing on Divisadero in San Francisco, which is a busy street.
[00:07:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh yeah.
[00:07:28] Fred Glick: But I can’t wait to put out, I don’t know, a 40-foot sign, René? What do you think? Maybe a banner across there?
[00:07:34] René Pérez Jr.: In those cases, I mean, at the end of the day, it’s what the seller wants. Right? I’m always going to tell the sellers that I think that this, the sign will help the property because it’s a marketing thing. I mean, you know, even if it’s one person, you always want that small marketing. But if the seller doesn’t want it, they don’t want it. Right? So yeah, it’s about them hearing both points.
So for this one, I mean, I don’t know where to put the sign, honestly, because it’s like a…
[00:08:01] Fred Glick: You gotta attach it to the building up the second floor.
[00:08:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Hang it from the window?
No, you gotta drill it into the brick. I would say one good thing about signs is the people, our friends are buying this house down the street because I saw the sign go up and gave ’em a call saying, “Hey, I just noticed this thing went on. This listing just came up.” And they went with their agent and toured it that day and put an offer in. And they might not have gotten it if I hadn’t seen the sign. ‘Cause they were having buyer’s fatigue. And it kind of stopped looking at Redfin.
[00:08:36] Fred Glick: That’s a problem. You know, everybody’s gonna be a little bit different.
You’re either serious, you’re not, you’re hanging in there. You’re maybe, you know, there’s everybody’s got so many different…
[00:08:47] Drew Thomas Hendricks: You would think the agent would’ve called them too? Like the agent knew that that was coming up exactly in the price point that they were looking at? I shouldn’t have been the one that is actually telling him that this house is
[00:08:57] René Pérez Jr.: Oh yeah. But I think that’s a whole idea of marketing, right? We don’t even know what’s gonna work. But you try different things. And you know, something that we always talk about is location, location, location. Well, as a consumer, we wanna live where our friends live, where our family is, right? And more often than not, our family is gonna do a lot of the work for us.
I mean, that’s also a lot of why we don’t, we don’t overcharge, right? Because we realize that, you know, in this day and age, the consumer is getting help by other consumers, right? So the agent didn’t do a lot of the work. So like for your friend, you know, used whatever agent they worked, they used it for, I mean, that the agent deserved 2.5% commission, 2% commission, whatever they ended up charging.
Well, depends on how much they negotiated for the buyer.
And did they get a fully underwritten pre-approval, you know, amazing. Which also doesn’t matter, you know, I think…
[00:09:56] Fred Glick: That I’ll disagree with you.
[00:09:58] René Pérez Jr.: In a huge market where people can buy cash, right? And they can show the proof of funds. It’s a cash. Like, it’s also case to case that we can put the contingency if it’s a super hot market, you wanna have a fully underwritten pre-approval. It’s always the best practice to have a fully underwritten pre-approval but to dismiss an agent just because he didn’t have a fully underwritten pre-approval when a lot of buyers just don’t want to do it.
You know, if they keep losing houses, they’ll eventually learn why they lost houses. So, yes. But in a lot of the markets, I’m pretty sure in the market that Drew is, there’s people who put every contingency in the book on offers.
[00:10:41] Fred Glick: Yeah, where it’s not busy and not competitive offer, you know.
[00:10:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I wanna shift back to something we talked about in the pre-show, just for a second here.
So this morning we all woke up. Trump comes out and says he’s gonna reactivate Alcatraz Island again and make it the most notorious hardened prison in the country. Yet it’s sitting right off the San Francisco Bay. Let’s just entertain theoretically that that actually happens. What’s gonna happen to the Marina District and some of the higher-end areas now that there’s a prison transport thing going on?
[00:11:15] Fred Glick: I’m sure there’s tech people wealthy enough to have their own military force on top of their house. You know, checking and making sure nobody is swimming from Alcatraz to San Francisco to come and, you know, steal everything in their house and their entire family. And what else? I mean, it’s just so…
[00:11:40] Drew Thomas Hendricks: People are a lot better swimmers than they were in 1936 too.
[00:11:43] Fred Glick: Yeah, but that current’s pretty nasty and there are sharks, so if you’re that stupid, go for it.
[00:11:49] René Pérez Jr.: You know what’s interesting, and I think I’ve said this before, there’s actually a race that happens like every summer where they charge you like, it’s like a thousand dollars to get part of this race.
And they have a bunch of lifeguards and there’s a whole bunch of stuff, but people do it as a, as a game.
[00:12:06] Fred Glick: Good for them.
[00:12:07] René Pérez Jr.: And they’re able to do it. So
[00:12:08] Fred Glick: I wanna see Trump swim from San Francisco across the Bay to Alcatraz for the grand opening. You know, he’s in great shape for 150 or whatever he is, but
[00:12:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, Trump aside, so the prison.
[00:12:27] Fred Glick: Dude, just leave it alone. He’s just making noise. It’s never gonna happen. Can you imagine trying to put back together things so that it works and they closed it because it was too expensive.
[00:12:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. I don’t think it,
[00:12:46] Fred Glick: It had very few cells for the number of people and the technology and everything they had to have there and feeding and how you’re gonna get it there. You got boats that’s gotta run to there and that costs more money. It’s stupid.
[00:13:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The other, I mean money-making things with all the national parks, it makes some of the most money per square foot that any national.
[00:13:10] Fred Glick: Yeah, I think 16 million a year or something. Yeah.
[00:13:13] René Pérez Jr.: I mean if any answer you made into housing, into condos, I mean that solves your housing presence right there.
[00:13:20] Fred Glick: Well, they’ve been doing, trying to do that on Treasure Island for about 400 years now, so they’re finally getting it together. Can you imagine having to start the environmental impact study? It’s, I mean, come on. They didn’t do the environmental impact study when they originally built it in 19XX, you know, I mean, the pollution there, the.
Can we please stop talking about this? Because it’s just so stupid. It’s just so stupid. He’s just needs something to make everybody say the name. That’s all this is.
[00:13:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, I think it adds to the uncertainty and doubt that’s out there right now, and maybe a good time to buy a house if everyone’s kind of sitting on the fence waiting for something to happen.
You’re talking, the inventories are up and you know. Maybe the right house is the right timing right now.
[00:14:12] René Pérez Jr.: Well, everybody wants to buy, everybody wants to get a deal. Right? I’ve never got on the phone with a new buyer and they’ve said like, “Oh, I don’t care what we pay for a house. We just wanna get a house.”
They’re usually like, “Oh, well I really wanna get a house, but I want a deal.” Well, guess what? Where there’s so much uncertainty, when someone else is scared of putting an offer, when you see that there’s a couple houses next to each other, that’s when you probably are gonna get the deal. A relative deal, right?
Obviously, you’re not getting a deal of 20 years ago. If you really wanted a deal, it was 20 years ago. That’s just how it is. But it’s like, yeah, you don’t wanna buy once things settle and interest rates are lower and after Trump isn’t president, because hey, guess what? That’s gonna be too late. You know, you’re gonna talk about another 250K, 300K. And even if there isn’t, right? People forget about the opportunity cost of owning a property. Right? Changing rentals and, “Oh, I got an increase in my electric bill because I couldn’t put solar panels.”
[00:15:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Right. It’s out of your control. Right? So, and you can’t really do something like you can’t do anything about the rentals. Right? You’re gonna spend five grand on moving expenses because that’s how much it costs.
Realistically, if you wanted to go out of a place like in San Francisco. I don’t of other locations, but I mean, we’re renting a U-Haul and getting the movers and I mean it adds up.
[00:15:46] Fred Glick: Yeah, so definitely should be budgeting for moving costs and not just your friends a U-Haul and a couple pizzas and a couple six packs, you know.
[00:15:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s a great topic or a great point on budgeting for moving and what level of moving do you want. The white glove, where they pack everything up for you and unpack everything? Or are you gonna rent the U-Haul? I mean, what could moving costs run for like a normal, like four-bedroom, three-bath house, 2,500 square feet?
[00:16:14] René Pérez Jr.: Well, let’s say at the cheapest end, right? You’re getting the 15-foot U-Haul, for example, right? And yeah, you can get it for like $200. But then you’ve gotta account for the actual mover. So if you don’t have anyone else, if it’s just you, then you could probably do a move for a four bed, three bath for 300, 350 bucks. That’s from city to city.
[00:16:42] Fred Glick: Yeah. Do all the small stuff and then get somebody to bring over the big sofas and stuff, that kind of thing.
[00:16:48] René Pérez Jr.: I mean, yeah, I mean, if you hire someone for even a small stuff though, you’re paying at least $500 from these third party companies to, because they charge by the hour, but it’s only, you have to do at least two hours, and then it’s two people that you have to hire.
Right? So they’re at the like a $60 hourly range. Of course, if you get someone from Home Depot, and might get a little cheaper, but then the problem with, you know, getting the cheapest from like Home Depot is you don’t know these guys. You’re moving out.
[00:17:19] Fred Glick: They drop stuff. There’s nothing you can do. You don’t have insurance.
[00:17:23] René Pérez Jr.: Or you’re talking about thieves.
Well, guess what? You know, what if they know exactly where you’re moving out and where you’re moving into? That to me is really scary. So you wanna go with people that are licensed, at least to have a company, then you know where they’re from here.
[00:17:37] Fred Glick: Here’s my other questions. A lot of those guys at Home Depot are not citizens. And are they there or are they gone? Like the workers who are picking fruits and vegetables, they disappeared. Is there anybody left at Home Depot to hire?
[00:17:52] René Pérez Jr.: Oh, no. They actually are. So, a funny story. When I was in LA last weekend my friend works at, next to the Microsoft office. And next to the Microsoft office in Santa Monica there’s a Home Depot, and I was dropping my friend off because we went for lunch and I parked right in front of the Home Depot and there was like 10 guys running up to me because they thought that I was there to, you know, hire some of them. So, no, the Home Depot people are still there.
[00:18:24] Fred Glick: Okay, so ICE hasn’t figured that out.
[00:18:28] René Pérez Jr.: Well, ICE is, I mean, I saw a raid the other day at like a club, I think it was like in Florida, right? And it’s like, okay. I don’t think that ICE is necessarily going to the Home Depots and to grocery store and things like that. I think, you know, I think it’s…
[00:18:50] Fred Glick: Shouldn’t have said that. Give them an idea.
[00:18:53] René Pérez Jr.: I think the administration for, as racist as they are or whatever they are, like, they know that we need construction workers, right? They know that we need farmers.
[00:19:02] Fred Glick: They don’t care it seems. That’s the problem. And I’d love, I can’t wait for the numbers to come out next year as to how much we lost because they scared everybody out of the country. Or they deported them. And how much in economic dollars, tax dollars that we lost. And it’s just like…
Anyway, but we’re here to help you buy and sell houses and do mortgages for you.
[00:19:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And talk about political climate out here. I mean, it’s really these political climates that’s driving decisions. So it’s important.
[00:19:45] Fred Glick: Yeah. It’s causing values to go down in certain places. I mean, there’s no doubt about it.
FHA used to be basically, if you’re sort of okay to be in this country, you get an FHA loan. More detailed like that. I used to say back in the 90’s, Saddam Hussein could get an FHA mortgage, which he could.
They didn’t care at all back then as who? No diplomatic anything could care less. They were just doing loans and they weren’t, you know, it’s not like they were getting tons of defaults either. So this will now make less buyers. Would help. No.
[00:20:25] René Pérez Jr.: Actually it’s one of the news that actually just came out today, or either yesterday, was that Trump is trying to get rid of Section 8. So.
[00:20:34] Fred Glick: There’s too many investors and too many Republican investors who are not gonna let him do that. Guaranteed…
[00:20:42] Drew Thomas Hendricks: A recap on Section 8.
[00:20:45] Fred Glick: Rental assistance.
Basically, we’ll pay your rent for you. Investors love it. You gotta meet the criteria, but what are you saying is poor people, screw you. Exactly what he said.
[00:20:58] René Pérez Jr.: The thing is that there is a lot of stuff that happens, like, but the thing is, it’s a coupon for people who, you know, don’t ever have to go back to work ever again. Right? There’s no policing of using these tickets in a proper way. ‘Cause yes, there’s a lot of people that say you’re a single mother, you know, after a divorce, you don’t have a good paying job. You can help the family. Great. Section 8 helps you get that rental, but then there’s no time limit, right?
So forever it, I mean, 15, 20 years, you get to keep it, right? You just get to reactivate.
[00:21:35] Fred Glick: I think there’s income limitations. I think there is some safeguards. I don’t know how good they are. But.
[00:21:41] René Pérez Jr.: Which is a bit problematic, right? Because then you tell people, “Oh, don’t earn more, because then you’re gonna lose the housing.”
So it incentivizes to you not to get out of poverty.
[00:21:51] Fred Glick: Yeah. But they also, with welfare, there’s only certain periods of time you have to do certain things. So, you know, we’re not here to give the answers, but it’s like, yeah.
[00:22:01] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah. No, but the whole thing is that I do think that it comes from a, from a point of like, there’s a lot of fraud.
[00:22:07] Fred Glick: Yeah.
[00:22:07] René Pérez Jr.: One thing that happens, right, that let’s see the landlord, because again, the landlord gets a Section 8 tenant. Then the landlord, the tenant says like, “Hey, can you just tell Section 8 that you’re gonna charge, you know, let’s say $3,000, but then you’re only really charging 2000, so you can just give me the cashback.” So then a lot of cash.
[00:22:27] Fred Glick: They do assessments on. They don’t allow for inflated
[00:22:32] René Pérez Jr.: Who policies it?
[00:22:34] Fred Glick: Basically the market’s going to police it if you think about it, because you know, nobody’s gonna come and do that. And then they have their guidelines. I don’t know the details. That’s a whole nother thing.
And I’m sure we can get somebody who’s a Section 8 expert and we’ll have ’em on a podcast. So that’s a good one. Especially for investors.
[00:22:57] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Especially this time next week, Section 8, the conversation’s progressed.
[00:23:02] René Pérez Jr.: Yeah.
[00:23:03] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Right now he’s just proposing it. We don’t know. Propose it on the same day as Alcatraz.
So he’s got a good thought process.
[00:23:13] René Pérez Jr.: He likes to talk. I mean, talk about good marketing, he has great marketing.
[00:23:18] Fred Glick: You know what he should do instead, make a Coachella-like event there and charge out the wazoo, it’s government property.
[00:23:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Hmm.
[00:23:28] Fred Glick: That would make more sense or more nonsense, but yeah. Can you imagine running boats from, you know, the ferry building and just having a party and having Lady Gaga there or something like that.
[00:23:45] René Pérez Jr.: I thought you wanted to stop talking about Alcatraz, but.
[00:23:49] Fred Glick: No, it’s, you know, the highest and best use for real estate. Okay, so here’s the question. What’s the highest and best use for Alcatraz? It’s not housing. The concert venue? Yeah. Who knows?
[00:24:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I think you can rent it out, can’t you? For a function.
[00:24:06] Fred Glick: Somebody did. I remember that years ago. Some startup. It’s like Facebook or somebody like that did it. But yeah. Yeah. So there we go.
[00:24:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, very interesting.
[00:24:22] Fred Glick: Put the White House there.
[00:24:25] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Pardon?
[00:24:26] Fred Glick: Move the White House there.
[00:24:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, there we go.
[00:24:29] Fred Glick: Or as Nixon did, the Western White House, he had his place in San Clemente, you know, Trump get out his place in Alcatraz. Kind of perfect. There you go. Perfect.
[00:24:41] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Well, on that note. I’m not sure we have anything today, but another episode of We Fixed Real Estate.