This is a special episode! We recorded it in front of a live audience at the University of Houston with special guest host, Hank Moore. Hank has been shaping our culture for a generation, and is a living legend in many spheres, including the Non-Profit sphere. Listen to this episode as we discuss how important it is for agents to be committed to giving back to the communities they serve.
Real estate agents, more than any other profession, are intimately linked to the communities in which they do business. It is therefore imperative that we make our businesses about more than just making money for ourselves. A portion of our profits should go back to the community in the form of philanthropy. It's good for the community and it's good for your business.
If your agent can't name at least one charity that they personally support through their work, you should start looking for another agent!
Outdoor living spaces are a huge attraction, especially in areas like Houston where the weather makes them useful nearly year round. In this episode, we interview Deedra Chavez from Bello Domani Outdoor Designs.
Deedra has been in the industry for many years and has a great eye for design. She designed the outdoor living space in Karen and Kevin's backyard and we have been referring business to her ever since.
Deedra shares with us some of the most popular features and upgrades available on the market today, like high efficiency pumps that allow you to greatly reduce the energy cost of running your pool (roughly $15 per month). She also gives us detail on our favorite pool upgrade, the in-floor cleaning system. While we absolutely love this upgrade, there is one... let's call it "unexpected feature" that the system brings to the pool experience. You'll have to listen to the episode to find out the hilarious truth!
We also hear about some of the creative things people are doing by mixing fire and water features with outstanding results. In the episode, you'll also hear about the outdoor living feature that provides an average 130% return on investment.
If you're a new agent, you will likely be approached fairly quickly by an experienced agent who wants you to join his/her team. They pitch it to you as a great deal for you because they have a steady flow of leads from all of their existing marketing efforts, and for a cut of the commission, you can almost immediately start making some money and learning the ropes.
All of that sounds great, and it would be great if that were the whole story, but sadly it's not. Frequently, your responsibilities under this team agreement begin to sound like a job description. Okay, that might be fine for people who need a little structure in their business. If you're in to that kind of stuff, knock yourself out. But the one thing that is common in these team agreements is something I simply cannot condone:
On top of the requirements for you to spend a minimum number of hours prospecting for leads for the team, if your prospecting does turn up a qualified home SELLER, you are required to hand that lead over to the team leader for him/her to handle.
THIS IS NEVER OKAY.
While it does take a lot of work to help a client sell a home (which you can learn about in Episode 10), it's far more time intensive to represent a buyer because of all the driving to showings (and working around your buyers' schedules) that you will have to do. The team leader will try to justify this by telling you they're sending you all the buyers listings, but wait a minute, you're paying the team leader a cut of all of your commissions in exchange for those leads, you don't owe them your sellers too!
Why is this bad? There's a damn good reason the team leader wants to represent sellers (and only sellers). After selling their home, what does a seller need immediately after? That's right! A new home! Typically sellers provide their agents with two transactions, a sell followed by a buy! Sellers are also typically much lower cost clients to acquire, especially if the seller comes to you because you represented them on their original purchase.
DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR SELLERS, FOLKS! A seller that comes to you as a repeat customer is your reward for doing a great job for them the first time around and for continuing to be in touch with them after the sale.
Put yourself in the place of a couple who find a great rental on Craigslist.com. The house was beautiful, it was in a great neighborhood, and it was being listed below market! They were happy with the pictures they saw in the ad, so they called the number. The landlord said there had been a lot of interest in the property, so if they really wanted it, they'd have to make a decision quickly and send in their application and application fee quickly, so they did.
A few days later, they got a call from the landlord to let them know that of the 7 applications that he'd received, he'd chosen their application. Of course they were very happy and eager to know what to do next. The landlord said he was about to go out of town on vacation for a week, so if they'd just mail money orders constituting first and last month's rent and security deposit, he'd meet them at the house on the day the lease began to deliver the keys.
On moving day, they showed up and wondered why there were other moving trucks on the street. It turns out that the person they'd thought was the landlord actually didn't own the property, and the real owner had no idea what had been going on. The scam artist had made the same promises to 7 different callers, and had made off with roughly $80,000 in money orders that had been sent in to cover rents and security deposits. Even worse, the scam artist had all of their personal information from the application and stole their identities, opening credit card accounts in their names!
It's scams like this that underline how important it is to have a real estate agent working on your behalf, even if you're renting a home or apartment. Their services are completely free to you, and they have access to resources that will help to ensure you're never the victim of a scam artist. Listen to this story and more in this episode!
In this episode, we welcome Nicole Normandin to the show to talk about Stuff The Sleigh, the charity we are benefitting at the upcoming live event on December 14.
In the interview, we learn about her, and her personal connection to the mission of Stuff The Sleigh, which benefits pediatric cancer and hematology patients.
Nicole gives us a behind the curtains look at how Stuff The Sleigh delivers its services and what it takes to manage and grow a Non-Profit organization.
Finally, she shares some gripping stories about the children that have benefitted from Stuff The Sleigh.
Don't miss this episode!
Not all offers are the same. There are many ways a crafty buyer can hide costs in their offer that reduce the overall value of deal for you as a seller. This is one of the many reasons why you need a competent, detail oriented agent looking out for your best interests in your transaction.
In this episode, we delve in to some of the nooks and crannies that make up the offer and walk you through your options when you're selling your home. For example, did you know that your buyer's source of financing can have an impact on the total amount of money you end up with in your pocket? I didn't know that either until we recorded this episode!
It's been a frequently repeated position on the podcast that the barriers to entry into the real estate business are far too low, and that results in a lot of unqualified people getting their licenses. These agents frequently get frustrated with how difficult it is to be consistently successful as agents. They frequently take these frustrations out on their fellow agents by making transactions harder than they need to be.
In this episode, we tell a number of stories of agents who refused to maintain their professionalism, and in the process ended up costing their clients money. The upshot of these stories - as an agent, it is your JOB to be professional and dispassionate so that you can act in the best interest of your client at all times.
As real estate dorks, we enjoy watching HGTV (well, 2 out of 3 of us do). There are some great pieces of information you can get out of watching the many great shows on the channel. For example, you can get a very good idea of what styles and finishes you like in homes, and you can get a great idea of what kind of layouts appeal to you.
However, while watching any television show, it's important for you to remember that pretty much everything you see is scripted, and only about half of it is true. For example, on renovation shows it's pretty common for the contractor to give a cost estimate on the spot after eyeballing the house for 2 minutes. This will not happen to you in real life. Furthermore, the prices they quote differ greatly when they are on camera versus how they would answer to you in real life.
Enjoy this episode as we delve in to our favorite HGTV (and other channel) shows and point out the things you should be taking with a grain of salt.
Karen and I have our shows that we watch together to unwind. One of our favorite shows is "Adam Ruins Everything". The show, hosted by Adam Conover is a mainstay on our DVR because it shows the hidden side of many things that we just take for granted in our culture.
A recent episode entitled "Adam Ruins Housing" piqued our interest because, obviously, we're in the business. Before we watched the episode, we saw a preview of it on Facebook, and had a conversation with some friends about some crazy statements that were made in the clip.
After the episode aired, we knew we had to do an episode to rebut the half truths, misstatements, and outright lies that were told about the real estate industry in the first 6 minutes of the show. Listen in as we share the details of the conversation we had with one of the actual sources cited on the episode. Spoiler alert: His study actually stated the opposite of what the episode said.
Jen and Mike finally made the decision to stop being renters and become homeowners. They were excited! They both knew they had great credit since they checked their credit rating with a free credit reporting service, so they called an agent and started shopping. They saw some great houses, and some not so great houses. In all, they went to 30 different properties before they found THE ONE.
It was perfect. Great curb appeal, great school district, close to work, and had more than enough room for their growing family. The kitchen and the living spaces were exactly what Jen had always dreamed of, and Mike could already see himself relaxing in the built in man-cave. Before putting in their offer, they calculated for themselves what the loan payment would be and decided that it would be a stretch, but it would be worth it! So they put in their offer, and after a little negotiation, they agreed on a purchase price of $350,000. They took their executed contract to their local bank where they'd been customers for years, and put in their mortgage application. They went back to their apartment and immediately started boxing up their things. Sure, it would be several weeks before they would actually move, but they were excited!
A few days later, Jen's phone rang. It was Chris, their Loan Officer. "Jen" he began, "I'm not sure how to break this to you so I'll just say it - you and Mike can't qualify for the loan on the house." "How can that be? We both have great credit, we both have full time jobs!" "That's all true, but there's a lot more to your financial picture than good credit and employment. I'm afraid the best you can qualify for based on the information in your application is a $300,000 purchase price."
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This is a scene that plays out far more often than most people realize, and when it does happen, it's crushing for the people in Jen and Mike's shoes. Not only have they wasted a lot of time looking for and falling in love with a house they can't afford, but they also will have their perceptions of all of the future houses they CAN afford tainted by the experience. This is why it's so important to contact a Loan Officer before beginning your home search.
In this episode, we welcome Clay Bohannan, Senior Loan Originator and Partner at Encompass Lending Group as a guest host. With Clay, we dive into the many details of the mosaic that makes up your full financial picture.
In this episode you will learn:
Recently, Karen was representing a set of buyers who found a house that they really liked. It was in the neighborhood they wanted, it was exactly the right size for their family, and it (almost) fit their budget. Truth be told, according to the data on other similar homes that had recently sold in the neighborhood, it was overpriced by about $20,000.
In this episode we wrap up the Kevin interview. You'll learn of the triumphs and failures that shape who he is today. You'll also learn who he thinks would win in a fight between Spider-Man and Batman, and what his life would be if Star Wars had never been made.
Karen and Kevin discuss part 1 of Getting To Know Kevin. In this episode, you'll learn about what makes your host tick. We cover his formative years through college. After listening to this episode, you'll have the answers to the following questions:
How much money did he make selling candy to his classmates in grade school?
Can Kevin dance?
Why did he join the Air Force at the ripe old age of 27?
The answers to all this and more in this episode.
This is part 2 of 2 of Buyer Commandment 2.
From helping you avoid questionable design choices to helping you save big money on your new home, your Buyer's Agent is a key component of your new home build, and his/her services are completely free to you! What a great deal!
It's common knowledge that if you're going to buy an existing home, you are more than likely going to need an agent. What isn't as common knowledge is that agents are absolutely essential when buying a new home from a home builder too!
Think about it - everything the builder does and says is intended for a single purpose: to get the most money out of you as possible. When you deal directly with the builder, and worse yet, you use the builder's inspector, lender, title company, etc, there is literally nobody in the transaction who is looking out for your best interests.
Enter your real estate agent. A properly trained and experienced agent will be your advocate throughout the entire process, and will provide you with the information the builder doesn't want you to know. For instance, how much the house is actually worth based on comparable properties in the area. Buying a house that isn't even built yet? Your agent can provide even more value! Best of all, the services of your agent are paid for by the builder - AT NO COST TO YOU!
Listen to the episode to learn all the details.
In the interest of limiting the length of our episodes, this is Part 1 of 2 for this Commandment.
In this episode, we did a deep dive on Gil to learn a little more about what makes him tick.
Does little Johnny really need his name painted on his wall? Do you think black mold is attractive? Want to know how to safely prepare your home to sell for top dollar?
Join us as we delve into seller responsibilities about cleaning your house, beefing up curb appeal, taking care of necessary fixes and working hard to get your home sold. This episode is a follow-on to episode 10 where we covered what your agent will take care of to get your home sold (spoiler alert - it's ALOT more than you think).
Often maligned, usually misunderstood, rarely fully appreciated. There is a lot that your Homeowner Association does for you. In this episode we discuss the positives and negatives of HOAs with Pam Bailey, President and CEO of Chaparral Management group.
"Nosy neighbors. Busybodies with nothing else going on in their lives so they get into everyone else's business in the neighborhood. What does a Homeowner Association do for me other than tell me what color I can paint my house?"
This is a common question that real estate agents hear. Instead of trying to answer this question ourselves, we enlisted the help of the foremost authority we could find on HOAs, Pam Bailey. Pam is the CEO of Chaparral Management company, which since 1985 has helped HOAs operate on a day to day basis. She is also heavily involved in the lawmaking process with the Texas state legislature. Each year when the legislature is in session, Pam is in Austin advocating on behalf of HOAs across the state to ensure that new laws don't adversely impact the HOAs or the communities they serve.
Pam was very generous with her time, covering the specifics about how HOAs operate, and how they improve the value of the communities they serve.
Join as we discuss Seller's Commandment 1: “Thou shalt not be surprised how much work it takes to sell thy home”. Karen, Kevin, and Gil talk about the process Realtors follow and the amount of work a good Realtor will do in order to successfully sell your home, and earn their commission. Listen as we go through a high level process for preparing your home, writing up and reviewing contacts from listing to closing. The art and talent required to write up listings, market your home, and produce photographs that present the best view of your home for the active sale process. Remember, a good Realtor needs your full participation and assistance to properly prepare and sell your home.
In this episode, we interviewed Vickie and Briana Colascione. Vickie is Karen’s client who also happens to live a few doors down from us. While we were taking a walk in the neighborhood with our kids, we ran in to Vickie and Briana and started to chat. Briana told us a story about a conversation she overheard between a real estate agent and a client that confirms some of the content that we’ve already covered on the podcast: there are some really sleazy agents out there, because the barriers to entry to the industry are too low. I won’t spoil her story here, you’ll just have to listen to it.
Karen, Kevin, and Gil sit down with Rick Hartley, Executive Director of the 100 Club in Houston, Texas, and learn about the truly worthy work that this nonprofit organization does and has been doing since 1953.
Help us support this charity by participating in the Police and Fireman's Assistance Program. Every transaction made with Karen or Gil through this program will result in a $250 donation to the 100 Club.
Not all mortgages, and not all mortgage lenders, are created equally. There is a misconception in the marketplace on the part of buyers who believe that all banks will provide them with the same basic loan plans given their credit profile. Nothing could be further from the truth!
In reality, loan terms and their associated fees can vary greatly from lender to lender. When it comes to mortgage lenders, bigger isn't always better! Smaller lenders have much more flexibility with respect to the loan programs and terms they can offer to their clients. They even have quite a bit of flexibility with respect to providing discounts on fees.
Kelly Chavez, a Loan Originator with C&T Mortgage, joins us to shed some light on the sometimes intimidating mortgage world. Kelly can be reached at 281-787-2243.
Karen and Kevin interview some of Karen's most recent clients and discuss the drama that unfolded as they accidentally found their dream house. After going to extraordinary lengths to secure the contract, Matt and Alisha were faced with a huge problem: now they had to sell their house - and FAST!
Having the right agent on your side really does make a huge difference! Listen along as they tell their story and all of the drama that surrounded their transactions that landed them in their perfect home.
We also announce the inception of the Teachers Assistance Program. Details at www.texasrealestatebible.com.
In this episode, we do a deep dive on Karen. Who is she? How did she get to where she is now? What does she miss most about being a kid? Where's Waldo? All of these answers and more in this episode.
In general, "bait and switch" marketing is at best unethical, and in some cases illegal. Yet it is pervasive in the real estate industry.
In this episode, Kevin and Gil discuss the despicable practices that are common in the industry and which contribute to the negative impression most have about real estate agents.