Wire fraud rears its ugly head and strikes one of Karen's clients.

Karen and Kevin dive deep into the dark underworld of property taxes when they uncover shenanigans being played by a new home builder aimed at increasing the tax assessments on houses that had already been sold.

After enlisting the help of a local journalist, they end up face to face with a surprisingly helpful representative of the Harris County Tax Office.

We normally tend to try to steer clear of discussing politics because frankly, the topic sucks, and it's not entertaining to hear people bitch and moan about what's wrong with the country.  After all, if you want to see a change in how our government works, you should run for office and do something about it instead of complaining.

This week, we bring you an example of just that.  Jon Rosenthal is a personal friend of ours who has put himself out there to run for a seat in House District 135 for the Texas State Legislature.  Regardless of your political stripe or affiliation, we think you'll enjoy the conversation we had with Jon, and we wish him nothing but success!

If you live in his district in Cypress, TX, we hope you'll pull the lever for Jon in November.

Where have we been?  That's a good question.  Listen to this episode to find out what caused our long break from the show and what you can expect for the future.

In today's episode, we interview Joseph Gozlan from EBG Acquisitions.  Joseph is a multifamily investments specialist. Leading group acquisitions of over $11MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 156 units with 97 additional units currently under contract and growing.

In our conversation, we learn more about multifamily properties, how syndication works, and how individuals can participate in these investments with their retirement dollars.  

Joseph is also the author of the book, "The Real Estate College Fund", which helps first time investors recognize the advantages and risks of investing in real estate, and offers ways to mitigate those risks.

Also in this episode, we cover some listener feedback that proves that Kevin is (occasionally) right!

It's been a long time since we published our last episode.  Too long.  In today's episode we catch you up on the series of unfortunate events that have kept Karen and Kevin away from the mics for so long.

 

Karen closed on a transaction she's been working on for quite some time, and shares the ups and downs of the transaction.  Listen as she shares the blow by blow of the negotiation and how it played out.

Having an agent who will negotiate hard for you and protect your negotiating position is crucial, and so many agents throw their clients under the bus in the hopes of closing the transaction quickly.

Today, we bring you an interview with Aaron Moore of Smart Zip.  Karen recently became a client of Aaron's because they do some pretty impressive things with applying data analytics and applying it to real estate.

In this supersized episode, we talk about what we did leading up to and in the aftermath of the arrival of Hurricane Harvey.

I don't think we need much more of an introduction than that.

From time to time we like to welcome other entrepreneurs on the show to talk about their businesses and their own real estate stories.  This week, we welcome our friend Eric Dolan, who in his career has been in the Army, the Oil & Gas industry, and is now in business for himself.

As the owner of the PostNet franchise in Tomball, TX, Eric shares a number of stories about the challenges and rewards of starting his own business.  He talks about lessons he's learned and some interesting people he's met along the way.  He also walks us through the process he used to select his commercial storefront location.

If you have any printing, shipping, or mailing needs, we highly recommend Eric.  He will take GREAT care of you.

The stated purpose of this podcast has from the beginning been to generate content that would eventually become a book.  As we've stressed in the past, if you want a job done right, you have to hire a competent professional to help you.  We believe this with real estate, and we took our own advice when it came to writing the book based on this show.

We've been doing this for over a year now, and we have hired Brian K. Wright to ghost write our book for us.  In this episode you'll find out about Brian's background and why we think he is uniquely qualified to write for us.  

Brian is also the host of his own very successful podcast, Success Profiles Radio, we recommend you give it a listen.

In this, the 10th and final Client Commandment, we cover the basics of the Closing Disclosure, and the things you really should know about before you sit down at the closing table.  We bring you up to speed about the things you should question, and the things that really are normal.

We also get in to some story telling about a home warranty company that really needs to be called out for being sleazy.  Enjoy the fireworks!

This week, we rebroadcast for you our mutual favorite episode, our rebuttal to the Adam Ruins Everything episode on real estate.

Since Kevin is traveling internationally, we are broadcasting this "best of" episode from our archives.  

We will return next week with a new original episode.

Have you ever met someone and knew almost instantly that you were going to get along great with them?  What about the opposite, where you almost instantly know you are NOT going to get along? 

Much of that first impression comes from the communication style of the sender and the receiver. This week, we welcome back Tinja Anderson-Shiery to the show to talk about the 4 major communication styles.  She reveals to us what our styles are according to the test we took.  Nobody is all one style, rather we are all blends of the 4 different archetypes.

Why should you care?  Knowing the nonverbal cues of each of the types will help you to adjust your communication style to suit your audience.  This is a practiced skill that will benefit people in all walks of life.

The conversation was quite long, so we split it into 2 episodes.  In this first half, we discussed the Expressive and Scientist archetypes.  Next week, we will finish the discussion by covering Analyticals and Drivers.

Enjoy!

When we were homebuyers, it was irritating to us that our agent wouldn’t answer certain questions that we thought were perfectly reasonable. Now that Karen is an agent, we know exactly why he wouldn’t provide direct answers to what we thought were simple questions. Questions like:

• “What are the demographics in this area?”
• "How are the schools here?”
• “What are the crime statistics of this neighborhood?”
• “Is there a church nearby?”
• “Is this a nice neighborhood?”

If an agent were to provide a direct answer to any of these questions and others like them, they would be putting themselves at risk of running afoul of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, sex, national origin, or religion. The best your agent can do is to provide you with places to do your own research and answer these questions for yourself. It’s unfortunate, but this is what your friendly neighborhood real estate agent has to do to stay on the right side of the law!  

This past week, Karen was down for the count with a stomach bug.  As a result, Kevin pulled double duty with the kids so Karen could just be sick.  For this reason, we had completed zero preparation for the show, but we are committed to (not just interested in) releasing something every week, so we hit record and went with it. Our conversation took a few twists and turns, but we ended up having what we thought was an important and meaningful discussion about an autoimmune disorder that our family is about to start dealing with.  Yes, this podcast has "real estate" in the title, but not every episode has to be about real estate.  This podcast is also about the people behind the microphones and our real, actual lives. We hope you enjoy and can connect with us as we share our challenges with you.  Don't worry, it's not all heady content, we also discuss our upcoming plans to return to the Houston Roller Derby and our kid's participation in her swim team.

Get ready for a wild one!  Karen blows off some steam in this episode.  After spending a lot of time and effort with a client, she was dismissed by the client with no explanation.  Obviously it's the client's decision as to who represents them, but it's basic common courtesy to explain your thinking to someone who has invested a lot of time and money into helping you find the perfect home for you, and who now will not be paid for it.

Real estate agents are people with families too!  Consider this: Most people go look at houses after normal business hours and/or on weekends.  That's time people normally spend with their families.  Every hour an agent spends with you is an hour they choose to spend away from their family.  So yes, it's the right thing to do to offer an explanation so to why you're terminating your representation agreement.

You might say, "Well, that's the lifestyle the agent chooses by their choice of profession."  True.  It's also true that wasted time is just a part of the cost of doing business.  However, none of that is an excuse for you as a client to be rude.

Look, we get it.  This industry is filled with real estate agents who will beg, badger, plead, and otherwise devalue themselves just to get your business.  That's not Karen or any of the other agents who we have in our referral network.  If that's what you want representing you, there are plenty of agents out there to choose from.  However, if you want to work with someone who is authentic and real; if you will respect their time as much as they will respect your transaction, we want to hear from you!

 

While this podcast is primarily focused on real estate, we do take time to tell stories about our lives from time to time.  In this episode, we share the struggles we have had this year with our kindergartener dealing with a bully at school.  We thought it would be helpful to share this story if for no other reason than to give other parents the benefit of our experiences, and some things to look for with your own kids.

We also chatted a bit about Karen's new fitness regimen, which she's having great success with, and we take a moment to celebrate Kevin's latest flag football adventures in his work league.

 

Most people are familiar with the idea of crowd funding.  Sites like Gofundme.com and kickstarter.com have helped some really great ideas get off the ground and brought in to reality.

This week, Nathan Roach, the CEO of MassVenture.com explains to us how the laws in Texas have recently been changed to enable a crowd funding spin to be applied to real estate investing.  Through the platform, individual investors can invest as little as $500 in the projects they have curated for their members.

This week we sit down with Don Leonard.  Don has been in the real estate industry for 34 years, giving him a wealth of knowledge and expertise in real estate.  Don has hosted two radio shows in Houston about real estate, currently teaches at the Champion's School of Real Estate, and has had his own broker's license for 18 years.

Don sits down with us this week to swap war stories and offer some advice on some specific questions Karen has about a deal she's currently working.  Don also shares with us some of the details of a coaching program he is hosting entitled the Nature of Real Estate.  If you're an agent looking for a different way to do business than cold calling, door knocking, and publicly begging for business, then you're listening to the right podcast, and you should consider this coaching program.