Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: Good morning and Merry Christmas, everybody. Hope everybody is having a fantastic start to the day and looking forward to a great weekend. Great week if you are traveling. 3.3 million North Carolina, North Carolinians I should say, on the road in the next week, so be careful. Do not text and drive. That is what the co-pilot is for, right?

Keith: That is right.

Jason: Yeah. Or the kids or whatever, but just take your time. You are going to get there. It is going to be just fine. The key thing is does not matter who gets there first. No award. Grandma is still going to have the food. The pie is still going to be good. Even if it is a little cold, it will not matter. The fact is you just got to get there. So it is just a good, why do not you this year, you start off the car with just I am going to relax. I am just going to take your time. We are in no hurry, No, leave an hour early if you need to. Right?  Just settle down.

Keith: Well, if you are going today, you have to take that approach. They say today is the single busiest travel day of the year. So if you are if you are in the car today, listening to the show, you definitely want to just, yeah, take a breath.

Jason: We could just chant in some yoga, if you need it or whatever, yeah, we are just going to take it easy. We are going to be real chill. I am not going to get too nuts today, not going to put coal in anybody’s stocking or anything like that. So we are just going to be a nice, smooth, easy ride. We will hang with you here for the next 30 minutes and get you most maybe part of the way where you are going or whatever. But just be careful and take in the time, too. If you do not have small kids, see if you can get around them. Christmas and kids, small kids is, there is nothing better. Just the expressions and the excitement and the joy and all that. You cannot help but be happy and smile, being around kids in that three to seven year range, something like that. It is just, it is just fun. And so if you can get around some kids that way, that would be awesome. Enjoy yourself. Of course, you got teenagers, all their teenagers. God bless them.

Keith: My 10-year-old thinks she's a teenager.

Jason: Yeah, right, exactly. But just grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax. We are going to dig into some emails today and just some of your questions that have come in here this past couple weeks. So Keith, hit it off. What do we got lined up today?

Keith: Alright, so we got an email. I think this is a really good one. So let's get your opinion on it. Alright, Jason, let's jump into the stocking right now. We will call the email stocking.  Does that work?

Jason: Yep. All right. Let’s do it.

Keith: So Mr. Bramblett. We are going to be retiring in October of 2020. And we want to downsize. Pretty common thing. When should we put our house on the market? They would like to have everything wrapped up by the end of the year. They are concerned with the election taking place. They are kind of concerned about the market. So they want to get the house gone. They appreciate you. They appreciate listening to the show. Thank you, Jeff and Mary.

Jason: Cool. Yeah. So this is, many people are going to be retiring. And then of course, you throw in the election. And of course, we are talking about next year, they are retiring next year, not by the end of this year. They would need a miracle that most people would not be able to pull off to get it done by the end of this year. So next year, but it is good that they have a plan and that is the key. So congratulations on the retirement, first of all, and thank you both for the email. I definitely understand your concern in an election year because everything is hyped up in today's media world. It basically consumes everything from outdoor media, to TV to radio to everything, and so we are going to be bombarded with an already, probably will start to be bombarded with those things. So what I have found in this election cycle so when it is the re-election of a president, I always say start early. There is just something about the buyer uncertainty, if you will, and toward the end, and of course right when you are thinking about retiring or doing this in October, we will start to see a slowdown in August. Typically, when the kids go back to school in a reelection year like this, we are going to see somewhat of a slower than normal market where we usually have a pretty good rebound coming right back into the school year. It is just that uncertainty, what whether it is good, bad, indifferent, it really does not make any difference. It simply some people's just the excuse they needed to not do anything. Some folks are really scared. There is a gremlin around every rock, right? And so you have that percentage. And then you have some folks that just do not want to be bothered with getting involved in all that. So it does slow down the real estate market. Now there is always still going to be home selling. It is not going to go to zero, or anything like that. But if I was planning a big event, and I had the deadline of having it completed, by the end of the year, knowing that there is an election coming, I would move my timetable up. And I would probably look at getting on the market probably June at the very latest. I would recommend let's get a plan together, so we can meet with you really in February or March to come up with a plan to make sure that timeline is still good. No new curveballs have been thrown and that is the other thing is, as we know with elections, there is there is always a surprise lurking around every week, right and things to take you on a rabbit trail, to get you off a rabbit trail. Whatever it may be. It is a free for all in the media.

Keith: Here is a question. Because there are some concerns, does that offer deals potentially for buyers at that time? If you know you are going to buy, you are relocating, is there potentially better deals at that point?

Jason: If you find the right paranoid person, yeah, for sure. But you can pretty much find one of those today. Yeah, so it may be, I do not know, maybe the reason for the paranoia is more amplified. But there are people that we deal with every single day that think the world is ending today. And of course, those people have a different level of motivation. Mainly out of fear unfortunately, and I have seen them discount their homes. I have seen many things over 20 years. A long time ago in the Cardinal, which is a subdivision in Greensboro, there was a mass exodus out of there. People were leaving so fast the market was tanking. The homes were selling at ridiculous prices because of the fear of FedEx. And FedEx was going to come in, they were going to fly hundreds and hundreds of planes over their homes every day. The homes were not built for that type of airport noise and conditions and all the other scientific data you could come out there with, and people panicked, and people fire sold their home. And unfortunately, now hindsight is all for nothing. Really the activity has not really increased that much. There are not hundreds of FedEx planes flying even 10 years after they were supposed to be flying. And so that paranoia kind of got contagious, and people panicked, and they sold, and nothing really ever happened. It is kind of the same thing. We will see. It has happened every reelection cycle, presidential reelection cycle I have been in. There is a lot of hype. There is a lot of paranoia. Did it really change real estate market now? It really did not. Maybe just a little bit of a lag in sales, but we did not really see any repercussions in home values or anything like that. Because the election of a president does not change interest rates and it does not change the human American person of wanting to own a house. Just because your guy wins or your guy loses, what are you going to do? Live underneath the overpass? No. You are still going, somebody might, but it would be your choice.

Keith: Hopefully not.

Jason:  Yeah, right. But you still have the desire to want a home, want shelter, want a better place for your family. None of that is going to change. No matter what happens in November next year, but there is still, it is really, it is the rubberneck effect. It is the wreck is not even on your side of the highway.

Keith: Exactly.

Jason: Yet your traffic is backed up. That basically the real estate market in an election year. Really nothing that goes on in the election is going to change, and it certainly does not change real estate quick. It may change it, but it may be three years from now with policies or whatever, but we slow down to look, but there is really nothing there. The wreck not even on our side of the lane. And so but we would like to meet with you. I would say June at the latest. Get an early start. Get prepared, get the house sold, and we would love to meet with you guys. February, March will be perfect.

Keith: All right. Why do not we answer another email here?

Jason: Alright.

Keith: It says Jason. We listen to the show every week. We would love to hear more about your 72-hour offer program that you have. They comment how much they liked the new billboards and TV commercial that they are seeing everywhere. And he says one marketing guy to another great job, Bruce.

Jason: Okay, good deal. Well, Bruce, appreciate that. And, yeah, it is amazing. We are a real estate sales company, but really we are a real estate marketing company. Really, at the end of the day, you pay us for our marketing services and our negotiation skills. Because really anybody can go put a sign in the yard. That is nothing. That is what we call that order taking.

Keith: It does not work well either.

Jason: It does not really work well. It is all about the experience. You can go, everybody has done it, we went to a restaurant, the person walks up,  and likewhat do you want? What kind of service is that? There is no experience there. It is like burger and fries. Thank you very much. As opposed to someone coming in and educating you and telling you and explaining to you and sharing not only what they like and what other customers like and it because most people today, a big part of our going out to eat is entertainment.

Keith: Right.

Jason: It is not just eat food. We could do that at home and more people probably should and looking at your budgets, but that is a whole other show. I will leave that up the Dave Ramsey, but it is that experience that we crave when we go out to eat. We do not want to just to be another meal. We want it to be amazing, right? And one, it is not cheap. It is expensive to go out to eat. It is. You got three, four people, it is 60, 70, 80, hundred bucks, and when I was in the restaurant business that was a really expensive place. Now it is like just your normal everyday place.

Keith: It is more expensive.

Jason: It is amazing. So the 72-hour program, really, so I saw a need in the market we have, we do have and still have, and it is going to continue to grow. A wealth of owners that do not want to go the traditional route traditional, traditional route meaning putting their home for sale and allowing the marketing system to bring in multiple buyers and give them options and show their property and all that. They just do not want to deal with it. They do not want to deal with getting ready for the showings, being on high alert and all that. They really just want the convenience of selling and being done. Like, here is what I have, what will you give me, and that is different than the traditional way and our traditional marketing plan does not, what we are looking for as many people through the door in the shortest amount of time that create the highest demand. But there are some owners out here that just do not want that. They are just not looking for that particular type of service. They actually are willing to pay for the convenience of not having the home shown and just not dealing with all the stuff they have to deal with.  Selling a home is no fun. Moving. I am sure Keith can attest, not like something you want to do every weekend.

Keith: Well, and what if you get transferred to your job and you got to be out in a hurry and you have got this house and you are trying to deal with it from seven hours away? Sometimes it is worth it just to be out and moved on.

Jason: It is and so our typical client or typical person that we are seeing that are inquiring about our 72-hour or taking advantage of it is they have a tremendous amount of equity. Most of the people we are talking to they have actually made more in real estate. So from their first house, the second house, the third house, the fourth house, they have made money every single time. And this house actually, when you look at the numbers, was free. Because the equity that they gained from the other 3, 4, 5, 6 homes they sell paid for this house. So they are like, it is not even my money. It is just free money because I made this in profit from all the other homes that I have sold. They do not want to give it away, and it is not a giveaway program, but it is a convenience program. We will always be able to sell the home for more than what one of our investors will pay under our 72-hour offer program. But there are still a good portion of people that just, we talk about convenience all the time. If you are driving down I40 today, and you just get the hankering for some coffee, you are going to pull up the side of the road and buy a cup of coffee. And some of you are going to pay six, seven bucks for the cup of coffee. Because of the convenience of it is right there off the highway. Or you go into the convenience store and you buy a 16-ounce soda and it is whatever, $2.50 or whatever. Well, you can buy probably, I do not know, at least six to 12 sodas at the big box place for the same money. Right?

Keith: It is no different than hiring a kid to come over and cut your lawn. Because you just do not want to do it and it is worth $35 a week to just be done with it and not mess with it. We do that all the time.

Jason: Yeah, wash your car, whatever it is. Those conveniences that we, going to a restaurant. We could stay home and prepare our food a lot cheaper than 60 bucks. Right? But we pay for that. So it is just an option. What we found is there is a growing number of, especially our baby boomers, retirees that they have a paid-for house, they have a lot of equity in the home, and they just want a different option than the old traditional route. And so our 72-hour program is perfect for them. We give them a quick option. They know what that number is, then they can make a decision. Well, that is acceptable or no, it was not what I thought it was going to be. Let's just go to the traditional route because they were going to go the traditional route anyway, if this did not work. So it is really a no-lose situation. Now, I will say the investors do have certain criteria, so not all homes are going to qualify for that program. I would say about 99% will, but we do get some doozies, Keith.

Keith:  I bet.

Jason:  Oh buddy.

Keith:  I have seen a few of them.

Jason: Oh, buddy. I had the most interesting house. This has been 15, 20 years ago.  I could not find really good any good information on this house. And I go down and look at it and it is a single wide trailer. But they did an addition stick built.

Keith: They did not get a permit for that did that, did they?

Jason: I am pretty sure they did not get a permit. But the interesting thing was they stick built the exact replica of the 15x70 single-wide trailer on the back side of the single-wide trailer, and then it was a step down, so it was a sunken addition. And I did not sell that house. I did not list that home. I did not even try to sell that home. I do not even know if you could finance that property actually. So we do get some very interesting things. So one of the things that if you have done an addition, yes, they are going to ask, did you get a permit? So, like I said, about 99% of the properties are going to qualify. There are some out there that they will say no. Sometimes it is location because we do cover such a big territory. There are certain, if you are 15 miles from anything, we typically see that that is not a home that they are interested in. But it is an option. Worst-case scenario is they say no, and you are no different than you were before. So it is just a an option to consider. So as you are cruising down the road, relaxing, enjoying the day thinking about all the great activities you are going to get into, we are going to take a quick timeout. Let you listen to a few commercials, pay some bills. We will be back in a minute with your questions and emails. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

Welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Wishing you guys Merry Christmas. Hope everybody is relaxed, taking their time getting where they need to go. Remember, there is, I do not know, 3 million people going to be on the road this week. So, you are doing great.

Keith:  Most today.

Jason: Most today. You are almost there. Maybe you are sitting in traffic and you are like, I hate traffic and I hate this guy on the radio. You have only got six more minutes. You could do anything in six minutes. Stay with us. You are going to be fine. We got a few more emails we are going to dig into. Go ahead, Keith.

Keith: This one says Jason, we just moved to the area and they are learning their way around. We found your real estate show by flipping through the radio stations one Saturday and they have become big fans. So we believe that we will be here for five years but probably no more. Where should we look to buy to ensure that we can sell and not lose money? We lost money the last time we sold and do not want to make the same mistake. Thank you, Rob andTiffany.

Jason: Okay, very. I bet you they were here, stuck in traffic and flipping the channels, and of course, they landed on us. But Rob and Tiffany, welcome to the Triad, and we appreciate you did find us on the radio, and you can check us out. We are on many, many of the cable TV stations as well. You can catch some of our commercials there as well. And a picture is worth 1000 words. So you get to, you can tell more of the story faster on TV than you can on radio, right? Because you have the visual. So I am less time but more impactful. Maybe. I do not know. We will see. But this is a really, really good question. This is a question that many people I believe that are probably listening. wish they would have asked this question before they got into the house is what is the impact if I am only going to be here for three years, four years, five years, what I consider a short amount of time?

Keith: Right.

Jason:  Five years when you get to be my age just is not as long as it used to be. It goes much quicker. And so, five years is just really fast. And so, what we have to look at is, well, what does the appreciation look like and really in the Triad in the last 10 years, it has been pretty flat. So if you bought a home in the last decade, you kind of can relate to what I am talking about. Obviously, Rob and Tiffany moving here from a different location do not, but what we are going to do is pull multiple sources of data. But more importantly, we are going to look specifically about the area because it is the Triad. So that is a big area, we got to actually get that micro down considerably. It could be as specific as the subdivision you are looking at, or if you are not looking at subdivision, the area, the geographical area, and we very well could tell you that the best thing to do is to rent. I know I get a lot of kickback from other people in my profession, like what are you crazy? You are in sales. What are you telling these people to rent for? Because if they do not, they are going to lose big time or get stuck. And so one sale is not going to make a difference at all in our world. We want to make sure we are setting people up to succeed. And I have told many, many people over the years, yeah, just rent and of course, then the kickback is, well, but I am just throwing my money away. The benefit to throwing your money away in rent is you know exactly 100% how much you are thrown away every year.

Keith:  Yep.

Jason: Because you have a lease agreement for a specific amount of money for a specific amount of time. And so if my rent is $1,000 a month, I know for sure if I make my payments on time, I am throwing away 12,000 bucks. I am not throwing away 12,001 and I am certainly not throwing away 20. But if you buy a home, there is no guarantee of any of that. There is no law that says, hey, you bought a house, you got to make money. If it was, we all deserve a really big refund from like the last crash, right?

Keith: That is right.

Jason: Big time, some folks hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. We just have to use good wisdom. We are going to run through all the statistics, look at all the data, your timeframe to make sure we come up with a plan that is best for you. And a big hint to this is it, a lot of it has to do with the length of time you finance the house. We will get more into that at our meeting. But that is a key critical thing that we look at is what type of finance you are going to be doing, what is your down payment, all those things can make a really key indicator. So everybody be safe. Relax. Take your time. That is six minutes went quick, like I told you. See, I never lie to you. Enjoy your Christmas, everybody. Have fun. We will be back here next week. Right before the new year. You are listening to the Jason Bramlett Real Estate Show.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

Click here for link to podcast

Jason: Good morning and welcome to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Hope everybody is having a fantastic week and your weekend is off to an excellent start. We are going to pick up from last week's show. We kind of got a little series going on here about, well, getting the house ready, but alternative ways in which to do that. And of course, when should I update my house? That is where we left off last week. We are going to dig into that. Should I hire someone? Should I do it myself? And of course, that question is going to get answered. The quick answer is, well, maybe if you know what you are doing. We are going to get into that. And then do I need a permit? A lot of work gets done that needs permits, and a lot of work gets done that should have had a permit and maybe you fall it, well, you are going to fall into one of those two categories. So we are going to talk about permits, and are they necessary, what is the point? It is a simple repair to do. Why should I have to get a permit?  We are going to talk about that, especially when it comes to selling the house, which is a key thing. So all that and your emails, your questions is coming this way. You can give us a call at the office at 553-0796 or go to JasonBramlett.com.

Keith: So we left off here last week, and I think this is a great place to start. We were talking about if you have got one of those houses that maybe you have got some carpet that is out of date, maybe a couple of paint colors that just are not appealing.

Jason: Right.

Keith: Do you lower the price of the house do you fix the house?  It seems like lowering the price at the house might be the way to go. I do not know. Talk a little bit about that.

Jason: Yeah, it would seem on the surface that hey, just discount the house. Hey, if it needs $5,000 worth of whatever you perceive it needs and you do not want to do it, I am going to lower the price, five grand and everybody is happy and all that wonderful. Maybe not. And the reason being is about 80% of the buyers out here today, whether they are moving up or first-time homebuyers, but it also we are seeing the boomers coming down. They do not want to mess with anything. They want that turnkey ready product, which is why you are seeing new construction go through the roof as far as demand. Because even the boomers that actually did a lot of fix up, they are like not this one. We are done, especially the spouse.

Keith: Why do it twice?

Jason: Right, why do it twice, or that is just said they have done it on every single home. And now they are financially in a position where they are just like I am not doing anything. I just want to relocate my clothes, and I am done. And that is it. And they do not really want to move or change anything, I guess I should say with the house. So when you remove about 80% of the people, you also remove the demand on your home. Two things are going to happen. It is going to take a longer time. So, a longer time, though, typically means even a lower price, the longer it is amazing to me. With the market and the technology that we have the day, so we actually get people that will email into the office and they are like, hey, the house has been on the market for 42 days. What is wrong with it? And it is like, nothing. It is just 42 days on the market. And three years ago, that was like, no big deal. Average time on the market is still actually right around 120 days. So the fact of the house on the market 42 days, it is not out of line. Perception, it is way out of line. And what is interesting is how people’s search behaviors have changed over the years. And now with so many different portals out there, so many different websites, if it is not fresh and new and just hot off the press, then it is like, something is wrong with it. It is really interesting.

Keith:  Listen, I am guilty. My wife and I did the same thing. I started looking. We looked at everything in the first couple weeks. But then once we kind of excluded a bunch of homes. all we did was look at the five new homes that were posted every day and never even bothered to go back.

Jason: And never went back. We see it when we see it time, you are in that camp, or were in that camp for sure.  The longer it sits out there, so you have reduced the number of people that are going to put eyeballs on it because you have not really updated it or done the changes that need to happen.  You diminished your buyer pool, and to Keith’s point with behavior the way it is now, you could end up like nobody looking at your house. Yeah, for the simple fact that you have only got a, let's just say you have got 20 new people in your price point entering the market a week. That is only 20 eyeballs. That is typically not enough. Nowhere even close to enough to create the demand to get what you want. So if you are struggling or have struggled, maybe you had your house on the market before and everything has kind of fizzled out, we got to go back and look at well, what is the product that you have to offer? Are people satisfied with it? And maybe it is time for a change.  We look at these allowances, that basically is what we would call someone giving an allowance, that I do not want to fix it up. I will give you $5,000 off the house. The issue is typically the allowance always costs more than actually doing the work.

Keith: Yeah.

Jason: The other thing is, if you do the work, then you create more demand because now you have a bigger audience of more people that want to see your house. So doing the allowance actually is kind of the double whammy. You lose in the fact that you are isolating a good percentage of the people that would even consider buying your house. Plus, most people do not ever agree with the amount of money you came up with. It is interesting over the years, especially dealing with new buyers or first-time buyers. Most people have no perception of what anything costs. I can remember years ago showing a young couple a house and I need a new carpet. And it did. And he thought was going to be like 15 grand. And I was like, man, I could carpet the whole block almost for $15,000 in this particular price point. It is almost like whatever you come up with in the amount of money, the perception is, it is never enough. So it always is going to end up costing you more. Now, you may be one of those owners that just want to sell as is, and that is fine. But the marketing strategy for as-is is totally different than just putting the house for sale on the market. There is actually a method to the madness for an as-is, take it or leave it type sale. We do not handle that the same way we are going to do with somebody that is looking for that retail number, somebody who wants to get the most money out of their house. There is no right or wrong decision. Really what it comes down to most of the time is convenience for the seller. It is what they want to do. We do not care either way we can sell the house in any condition in any price point in any way that you want. But our marketing strategy changes, it is night and day and how we are going to present that home and market that home between having a home that is very modern, updated, ready to go, or something that has maybe missed a couple generations updating, and we have had some of those over the years. So what we have to do is look at what is your goal, what is your timeframe, and what you want to accomplish. And if it is all about price-driven economics, then we have to create the product that the most people are going to be interested in. You get the most people through the door, you create the higher demand, you will get a higher price. Then we have to take a look at all those things. So owners have to make those decisions. We have a plan for them, and it does not really matter to us, but we just need your guidance on, hey, I want to squeeze every dollar I can get out of this house or I just want to move and do not really care.

Keith: You mean burnt orange is not moving houses anymore?

Jason: Interesting. In some very, very few neighborhoods. We sold a house earlier. I guess it has been a year ago, every single room in this house was a different color. Every room and I am not talking like we went from beige to darkish beige to lightish beige. I am talking extreme burnt orange to plum to Duke Blue to whatever, extreme colors and I thought, oh my goodness. But location, location, location. It was in the best school district in a price point in which there was not much inventory. And this particular owner well, they were able to get through that. That does not work for every house though. Truthfully in 20 years, it may be the one.

Keith: That was the one.

Jason: It may be the one. It is kind of interesting, but it was some good friends and I laughed because I was like, holy smokes, what in the world have you guys done? Anyway, it worked out, but really it did come down to location, location. And there are there are certain homes in certain locations that can just get away with less or more however you want to look at it because of that location.

Keith: Well, you mentioned projects, and clearly painting is one kind of project or putting in carpeting is another kind of project, but what kind of projects are we talking about? Knocking down walls putting on roofs?

Jason: This is not the way to demo your house. Maybe your friend's house but not your house, but it does look cool on TV when you are busting through the wall.

Keith:  It is fun.

Jason: Yeah. Typically, most guys that rehab want to take things out in big pieces, not little bitty thousands of pieces. So big ticket items. This is where we see some challenges with remodeling is these houses in that 16-20-year range. They have a unique obstacle in the fact that that next owner knows they are probably going to be the one that is going to end up putting that roof on replacing the heating and cooling systems. And those are not hundred-dollar items, right? These are thousands of dollars that they are going to have to put out. So, houses with older HVAC systems, with a roof that is 20 years old, they present additional challenges. They may be the difference between selling and not selling depending on the price point. It is interesting in real estate, Keith, a lot of people we were talking about this at one of our team meetings. Consumers shop based upon the price of the house, and they negotiate based upon the price of the house. But at the end of the day, the price of the house makes no difference at all. Because everybody lives on what their monthly payment is. It is how much it costs per month. When you went to get a mortgage, you did not go at it looking at it like, okay, I am going to stroke a check for $250,000. You looked at it as hey, how much is this going to cost us per month? Does it fit into our family budget?  It is kind of a teeter totter, if you will, because psychologically what we know when we look at it, and what we do is we negotiate 5,000 or 10,000 or $20,000 off the price, but it really means nothing because your monthly housing allowance is your monthly housing allowance.  Most people get caught up in big chunks of money, when and with interest rates the way they are today, $10,000 is 50 bucks a month. It is not a lot of money.

Keith: It is a great point because we live week to week and month to month. We do not typically live year to year or 10 years to 10 years. We just do not look at it in those terms.

Jason: No, not at all, and of course, I will maybe get some flack over this or some people may disagree, but if you look at interest rate, it does not matter either. It matters in that it only dictates how much you can afford to buy. But in 1982 interest rates were 18% and guess what? People still bought homes.

Keith: But you are right. I checked the interest rate every single day because I wanted to know how expensive of a house I could afford and still be comfortable.

Jason: Yeah. But comfortable within your monthly,

Keith: Right. Within my monthly budget.

Jason: Yes, absolutely.

Keith: Every time that interest rate went down a little bit that meant I could afford a little bit more.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. It is also a great test of figuring out who owns the asset, right? I kid people sometimes because they talk about how great of investment their personal home is, and I say great, yeah, stop paying for it. And then you will get real clarity on whose asset it is. Yeah, because when the sheriff shows up to lock you out of your asset, you will figure out oh, maybe it is the bank’s. Maybe it is not actually mine. Right? Unless you can, again now kiddingly, if you can get the kids to start, if you can get somebody else to pay for it, hey, then that is an asset and by all means, we got to look at what is the true purpose in buying a home. But getting back to the meat of this is really what should I do? What can I afford, and where is the best place to put my money to ensure that my house is appealing to the right amount of people? Big ticket items, those do impair some houses and we have to look at those. But now the good thing is, is if you got a new roof, and let's just say your house is 18 years old and you are in a neighborhood, everybody’s house is 18 years old, but you are the guy with a new roof. Your house is going to whip everybody.

Keith: That is, a huge thing. It is the first thing I asked.

Jason: Absolutely. Because you realized that, hey, that is not a $100 item if something goes bad, right? And of course, obviously roof leaks and all that create all kinds of other problems and nightmares and all that. And of course, if you are buying in the summer, the most important thing you want to know in July is does the air conditioner work and does it work well, and how old is it? Sometimes those bigger ticket items will weigh over, trump out color and carpet and all that type of stuff because those are more things that we kind of like to have this color of wall. But come July and August, air conditioning is typically not optional. We have got to have it in our society today. Most people do not really even open the windows in the south.  We go straight from heat to AC, and there are not many people that actually even open the window. I cannot tell you how many houses we sell, and we asked the folks, one of the questions we asked in our interview is everything okay with the windows. I have no clue. I have never opened them.

Keith:  It is probably true.

Jason: It is something we hear a lot of. We have to look at these things.  Floor coverings is another one that is a big one as we are talking about carpet and different types of things. At the minimum, you want to make sure your carpet is clean. And get it steam cleaned or whatever you want to whatever process dry, wet. There are 100 different arguments on that. The trend is getting away from carpet. Most homes, new construction, you are either getting all hardwoods up and down. Luxury vinyl plank, something that is getting away from carpet. It is just a fad, if you will, right now. And, and maybe it is allergies or maybe it is upkeep or whatever it may be. I do not know. We go through these trends and these changes, but right now carpet is not the most popular thing.  We see a lot of owners investing in different types of floor products, which does appeal to more people. Again, if you are going to make a change and the money is similar, go with a product that is going to reach more people. You really have to think like a retailer when you are selling your home. What can I do to get the most people through my door to create the most demand, which typically leads to a better price?  Those are the things that we go through in our information interview we do with you, we go through all the pros and cons and we look at is this a good investment, should we do this, is their return, and we look at every single aspect of that. We are going to take a quick timeout. We are going to go pay some bills. You listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. We will be right back in just a few minutes.

Welcome back to The Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. So we are digging into all things real estate, but really what should I do in order to get my house fixed, up ready to go, appeal to the masses, all those kind of things. We talked about some big-ticket items and now let's talk about maybe some small ticket items.

Keith: Well, funny story. And again, this is all really fresh to me because I bought my home about three months ago or so. When we first started looking at homes, the minute we would walk into home, my wife would immediately go gold fixtures, we cannot buy this house. I would be like are you serious? That is $400 to fix, right? That is not a reason to not buy a house. And then funny enough, the house that we found must have been actually perfect because some of the fixtures actually are gold.

Jason: Right.

Keith: Or have gold in them and she kept every day she tells me after the holidays you know we are going to replace those right?

Jason: Yeah, there you go.

Keith: Is it that big of a deal with everybody?

Jason:  Yeah, it is like I got your Christmas list. Do not ask for anything because we are getting fixtures, right?  

Keith: Imagine if I put fixtures in her stocking for Christmas.

Jason: There you go. Hey, she would probably absolutely love it.

Keith: Let’s be honest.

Jason: Again, it goes back to appealing to the most people. Just to Keith’s point, it did not appeal to his wife. It was just a quick turn off. And if you go look at the trends, so I always tell folks. If you do not know what to do look at furniture magazines, go to new construction, model homes. And they are all putting in everything that the masses want. They have got all the research done for you.

Keith: That makes perfect sense because they have spent tons of their own dollars to research the market and figured out what should be there and that makes a ton of sense.

Jason: I will promise you. You will not go into any new construction model home today and see it tricked out in brass. It is just not going to happen. They may have a brass instrument in there somebody is playing, but it is not going to be on the door handles, I will promise you that. The reason why, it does not appeal to the masses anymore, and they want to create the most demand, and how you do that is you give a product that they want, and this is actually something that most homeowners could do. You could tackle a couple of doors every night you get off work. You do not have to do the whole project in one day. You just pick a door or two. Most homes have anywhere between 21 to 23 doors. So in a couple weeks, you can knock out the whole entire house. They are pretty simple. You need a screwdriver. Now if you cannot use a screwdriver, then just do not do it.

Keith: No, not a good idea.

Jason:  Not a good idea, but it is not that difficult.  You can really spend a little time, and it is going to cost you most the average house cost about $7-800 to change out all the hardware, change the hinges, the knobs and all that. So not tremendous, but it really, really changes the overall look of the house, and it is some of the best money you can spend in getting that house updated. Now, when you get into plumbing fixtures and those type of things, we always recommend a plumber do that. Not because you need a license to change the faucet, but because the last thing you want to do is be getting ready to sell your house and then you end up flooding the whole thing.  

Keith: I was going to say you might need a license and some other things to fix the damage you do.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, That is right. Yeah, after the after the ceiling collapses into the first floor, you are going to be thankful that you actually got someone that knew what they were doing. Those are key things. Those are key things. So, do you need a permit is something to think about, too. There are certain things that have changed in homes that you do need to get a permit. Now I know a lot of folks will argue about this. It really was not as big a deal as it is today. But now the banks are looking for this stuff.  If you have got a house that is 30 years old, it probably does not have the original heating and cooling system or the roof. And one of the questions that may come up is what when you change out the heating and cooling system, did you get a permit? A lot of things have changed, like, the type of Freon that you put in a home now is completely different than what it was 30 years ago, and there are some pretty significant changes that have to happen there. So does everything need a permit? No, and we can have that conversation. Not on the radio, but there just are some things that are red flags. Basements are huge right now. Every bank is looking at the basement going, okay, was this finished when the house was built, and who finished it and was there permit and did there need to be a permit? These are questions that really people or the banks want to know, especially if they are using that as collateral. Right?  If you have got XYZ builder extraordinaire built a home, but Joe the homeowner handyman did the basement and the quality is not the same, it could make a difference in their collateral, right, as far as the quality goes.

Keith:  It can bite you down the road.

Jason:  It could, and so these are questions that we ask, not because we are going to make any major decisions, but we need to be able to handle objections as they come. So we are going to talk about those things. But permits, it is simple. Just check with your local county or city and they will tell you actually, if you need a permit to do it. It is just a basically a tax that you pay, but it is just part of playing ball these days. So you can get more information on our website and go to Jason Bramblett dot com. You can always call the office if you have a question. We can get you in touch with the right people. It is 553-0796. We will be back here next week. I hope everybody has an awesome weekend and we'll see then.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason:  Good morning and welcome to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving. You've enjoyed. Well the bird the family the friends the football of course, or maybe not depending on who you were pulling for. And then of course you survived Black Friday the what is it cyber? Monday is

Speaker 1: that , yeah, I think it is

Speaker 2: my house is seems to be cyber every Flippin day at least that little smile and truck is always dropping off stuff. It seems I moved two months ago. I did not take

Speaker 1: Amazon Prime long to find it figuratively. They probably found you quicker than the post

Speaker 2: office no question about it.  but today we are going to dig into really how to get that house sold that no one seems To want this is so this time of year.  we have to to Big months in which we feel the frustration of owners June for whatever reason is a big month when owners have attempted to sell their house in the spring and it did not work out and so they start , they call us and say hey could you could you help us and then November December is another time the , they are kind of regrouping replanting for the new year. They had a house on the market maybe through the fall and they are realizing they need to make a change and so we are going to we are going to dig into maybe what some of those issues are and and really in order to know what it is that you need to accomplish. You need to think like a buyer. You need to think like what it what is that consumer looking for? And so we are going to look at every single thing that the buyers will have kind of have on their wish list or checklist this year.  and and what you also figured out is just lowering the price Denmark and and we see that time and time again, and there is Incredible price decreases going on and yet no results are following that there is a big clue in there. And so we are going to dig into that because that is a frustration. It is worked in the past and yet the owner now is going what's the deal? ,  used to be that if you you could attract someone in with price and they would bite and now, , you're lowered the price on your home 30 40 50 thousand dollars over the course of a year and nothing. Nothing, and there is a reason why and I think we have got the answer for you. I know we have the answer for you.  you can stay tuned we are going to dig into all that of course your calls and emails. You can go to Jason brown.com. Click on that email icon. Shoot us a message over happy to answer that or give us a call the office 5 5 3 0 7 9 6 so with that Bring It On

Speaker 1: All right.  here is my question. We have talked about this on the show before you always talk about the need for kind of a plan A A Plan B. Plan C because no one really knows ultimately what is going to be the the magic, , that makes it go so I have got a house maybe it is been on the market my realtor had a plan a and for whatever reason good bad planning hasn't worked and unfortunately like we talked about there is not a plan B in a pricey.  I need a plan Jason. How can you help us? What are you going to do to fix that

Speaker 2: issue? Yeah, so,  that there is a there is we look at Trends two main Trends are key. We have talked about a many times on the show here and  for most owners going back,  for 20 years now, , if you did not have a house that may be appealed to a certain home buyer. You could  entice them in lower the price make a discount whatever and and typically hey they jump on it what we are seeing now is well, it is just it is just not the case and those buyers are nott willing to kind of They are not willing to take your bait. If you will, you cannot really dangle a carrot. , I was seeing some some, , $50,000 discounts in the marketplace and it is still not a big enough incentive to grab somebody's attention. And so, , there is two ways to look at that. Wow. The house is really really overpriced or Price does not matter. It is not price. It is the product and that is what we are going to dig into today. And it is really just this buyer is we We do not live in a generation of fixer-uppers. We do not live in a generation where people do do things. This is a disposable world. We live in the TV's broke. We throw it away and we go buy another one, , we go to the big box or well, maybe we did not go to the big box anymore we go to  prime or whoever and online and just let it rip and push a button and golly by 3 o'clock tomorrow. It is there and done. , it is kind of crazy.

Speaker 1: You mean I thought I need watching HGTV. I thought everybody was a fixer-upper. Now,  you you it is interesting.  as the

Speaker 2: shows have become more popular less people are doing it. And so and for a good truthfully for a good reason statistically, I think it is somewhere around anywhere between 15 to 18 percent of people can visualize a space or a room without seeing it. It is so it is a very small percentage of people. Typically very much,  right brain thinkers and and , they are artsy people if you will, I think that is right brain, right right right left whichever one of the two.  what it is the one that I do not have how about that? And so I fall into that category I can visualize it once I see it as I do not have to see it in that house and said that see it somewhere but a lot of people cannot do that. They cannot walk into a home with your furniture in there and figure out what their skin is going to look like and and so sometimes for those It is it is easier to sell a vacant home. They cannot get past that and the other thing is they do not have the skill set to do this and  and and 20 years ago, , people would take this stuff on they would do the painting The updating.  there used to be building programs in the market right here in the Triad it was , basically Sweat Equity the Builder would take the house to a certain level and then like if you wanted you could come in and paint and work off some of your down payment,  those Is do not exist anymore, but there were there were people willing to do that. Like hey, I can save money by coming in and  slopping this paint on a wall myself, even though it looks horrible. I did it right it is mine. It is I had a piece in this and and that is when away and it is went away in a big way. And so now we have owners trying to and attempt to entice people with price discounts and they do not want it. They want the finished. Act and so you see this wait list of new homes and this is why the finished product new construction is going to do very very well in the future and it is not because everybody wants a new home. It is just they are not going to find anything existing in the market place that is going to meet their criteria and they are going to migrate toward new, , they are just going to migrate toward it.  and it is kind of nuts.  whether it is  the noun,  the down Incisor, it is interesting to so the people that have actually done The Sweat Equity in the past. , , the guy that is bought three four five homes in his first house was the Fixer-Upper if you will kind of how I , how I got started. I just went in there and started, , figuring things out right and but that does not exist anymore and the downsizer is like I have been there done that or the t-shirt and I am not doing that again. I cannot tell you how many times Talk to empty nesters and they want to get out of the big home and they want to buy another one and and almost verbatim out of the out of the typically. The husband's mouth is I ain't fixing nothing.

Speaker 1: , like I have been there done it

Speaker 2: I am I want this house is going to be turn key ready,

Speaker 1: but I can see that if you've got , it is me to do it one time and maybe it is quite it is cost efficient as well. The first time you do it, but you reach a certain point where you're like, I just do not want that hassle.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and  it is It is significant. That is one of the biggest changes I have seen in the role.  , I am really it is like ninety-nine out of a hundred down sizers that were talking to her. Like I am not fixing anything. This is and they and a lot of them actually are migrating toward new construction as well. And so it is going to be interesting to see what happens with some of these homes. But ,  look they paid their dues, , , and they are not going to do it again.  so we have that additional National Demand on that type of product plus the younger generation interestingly enough is wanting the same type of product. They do not want to do so you got this this this fight in the middle and this is why if you have a quality updated home it is going to sell and sell very quickly. And if you are in the situation where you're like, hey, I have got a great house but it is not selling then look around. What is it? What are you offering is it? Dated is it the brawn paint colors the wrong generation? And of course, this is when we typically will get yeah, but Jason, I do not want to paint because I do not know if the like it. Well, here is what we know for sure. They hate what you

Speaker 1: have tried something different.  you probably cannot go wrong with anything

Speaker 2: different than what you have your, , even if you chose it wrong, you're still on the same boat. And here is the thing if

Speaker 1: you hire us will help you and we'll get we know

Speaker 2: what paint color they are looking for. We know what's in style. We are talking to Bill are too. Buyers and Builders, but we are talking to buyers every day.

Speaker 1: They are telling

Speaker 2: us every single day. Here is what we are looking for. Here is what we are looking for. Here is what we want. Can you find it? No does not exist.  we have to go make it happen. Right we have to take an existing product and and transform that into the product that the buyer wants and that is where a lot of frustrated owners are right now. It used to be that you could just put your house out there take it or leave it. I ain't doing nothing. But that that is not the case anymore. The way that that generation is is already left us and , you thought you talked about how things change and how quick change happens these days boy. It is changed.  this demographic of buyers is really changed exponentially quicker. I think than then probably what the market even realized. And so now we have this whole entire wall of buyers out here to like yeah, we are ready, but you do not have the Of force, it is a it is an interesting place. We are in right now.

Speaker 1:  if I am hearing you correctly assuming you had the big crystal ball, the Jason Bramblett then the Magic 8 Ball the magnets are you I love these people and you sure you shake it up. Absolutely you're thinking that as we move into the future that discounting the price is not going to be as effective as it is even currently I do not think you gotta

Speaker 2: , for some people you cannot dangle a big enough carrot out there.  it just you just Cannot so it is I am I am already seeing that it is not enough now for sure. I am already seeing the results were already getting that feedback. , the other issue we have is this younger generation. They do not even want the product that most of the boomers are offering

Speaker 1: they do not even want it.  even if it was like free, I do not

Speaker 2: want your 5200 square foot

Speaker 1: house. Tiny homes, right? ,  Well, it is it is it is

Speaker 2: rooms of which are not used and so, , I would suspect in the next 10 years and it could be sooner but I'll say I'll give it 10 you it will be very difficult to find a house playing with a formal dining room minute. I'll most probably impossible because it is it is the most it is the least used room in a

Speaker 1: house, , I wouldn't have I wouldn't never have thought that until you just said that because I'll be honest in the house that we just bought. We have got a nice dining room and we got a nice table in there and we used it on Thanksgiving. Yes quite honestly will probably use it on Christmas. Yeah, we'll probably will probably use it about four times a year and the other times it'll become where my daughter's book bag and all of my wife's sports stuff goes and and it'll just become a dropping zone. That is what it is. Yeah,

Speaker 2: right it is because because that tables at the perfect height to drop anything you want on it,

Speaker 1: right? Is true it is 

Speaker 2: it is a it really is a more starting to see that Trend so it may take longer than 10 years, but I would suspect in the future. We just we won't see it. , come on think about if you're an empty nester.  really you and your wife going in and saying that your 12-seat dining room table to have you no dinner. No, you're sitting in your disgusting nasty chair that you've moved 40 times,

Speaker 1: right? Writable it is comfortable. Yeah,  and you're sitting in front of the

Speaker 2: TV or whatever. It is not everybody but that percentage so used to be that 70% of the people ate in the dining room. And now it is probably 20% of the people. There is always going to be a percentage of people that are traditional and they do that and that is awesome. And if that is your lifestyle fantastic there is a buyer out there for that product, but it is becoming less and less and less now what we are looking at is how do we recreate the space? What? We use this room for we do not really need a actually do not even need an extra bedroom because people are having less less children. What can we multi-purpose this this room into what can we use it for? ,  buyers are looking for actually smaller homes with higher-end capabilities more Tech,  cameras are going to become the norm, right and in homes, not necessarily even from a security standpoint, but just communication I like , I want to I want to talk to my wife I could just pull up my security camera and it is got a microphone on it and have a conversation right? I do not need even pick up the phone.  we can just , talk back and forth through through the home Computing system, right? And so I

Speaker 1: mean, I do not know it is almost

Speaker 2: like go watch, , whatever. I guess Star Trek,  from 20 years ago and that is kind of where we are it is not it crazy that mr. Spock was right all this time.  now if we could just teleport people as

Speaker 1: if that'll be Have them be the one I want to especially when you're looking for

Speaker 2: when some people just suffered from , 12 hours of travel for Thanksgiving that whole teleport thing would be

Speaker 1: sweet. , how much more I would vacation if I could just teleport myself on a second like to California or Arizona.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, but you got to deal with, , TSA and security and all this stuff.  it is it is the it is the world we live in so but these everything's in a cycle. , it is just the way that we it is just The way that it works, but , here is the crazy thing if you think about changes, , the this generation does not want these big 5200 and half a million dollar homes. And and it is not what they are looking for. They are looking for something more techy more simple and smaller the average home prices went are I am sorry home sizes went from 3,200 square feet the 2,700 square feet. It is coming down. It is coming down for two reasons Young Generation wants a smaller more Tech house. And of course Boomers do not want as big Home therefore you're going to see it shrink, but here is one thing that we , you look at Trends.  in the 80s, what was the most popular house? It was the most economical home to build the split foyer. You could buy one pretty much all day long for 60,000 bucks. Right? It is not really something that it is not pinging on most people search right now, , it is not like hey if I could just get a split foyer because it is a cannot know we do not think about those things money's cheap. And therefore having cheap money also makes a difference you go back to the 80s when interest rates were away above 10 to buy a home.

Speaker 1: Right? Right. , it is literally unimaginable now if

Speaker 2: interest rates and housing with the 10% whatever you think your house is worth just cut it in

Speaker 1: half it at least it'll eat you wouldn't truthfully there would be no more sales David a v just the everybody be like, okay. This is it. Yeah.  this is it forever. You

Speaker 2: know now could it gradually go? Yeah, but if it made a you think about no matter what the house price is, it does not really matter because people live on what they can afford per month, so it does not make any difference what the the price of the house does it matter. The people that were that were living on a $1,500 a month housing allowance are still living on a $1,500. A month housing allowance. The only thing that is changed is the product but not because of the 1500 a month is because what $1,500 a month will get you and now it will get you a bigger house. And and so but it is still the same amount of money no matter what per month and so the price really does not matter. It is it is just what you get for that money. Anyway, we are going to dig into more of these shifts and transitions. Announcer you're listening to the Jason Bramblett Bill. Stay show. We are going to take a quick timeout will be back. You can go to Jason Brown what.com to get a copy of all our podcast will see you back here in just a

Speaker 1: second.

Speaker 2: Hey and welcome back. You're listening to the Jason Briella real estate show.  before the break we were talking about though, the shifts and the changes and all the different things that go on with real estate today. And and what people are looking for it and maybe you do not have the product that somebody's looking for and you've got to make changes. You've , we have figured out that the DIY person even though it is a popular on TV, and there is plenty of shows look at I See a lot of the younger generation actually taken some of this stuff on maybe from a demo standpoint but not from a refix standpoint and let's face it some of you that are taking this stuff on really do not need to I know I , I am not your favorite person when I come over and tell you that your paint job is horrific, but let's just face it your paint job is

Speaker 1: horrific. And and even if you

Speaker 2: watch the shows, you'll notice that the people that do the DIY we are In construction and they had a

Speaker 1: talent for that. They

Speaker 2: weren't , Bobby working in the tech support team that decided to pick up a flip and Hammer it would start whacking on the wall. All right,

Speaker 1: or they do not do the work as you said they yeah, they demo it. They break it. Yes fix it. But you notice they have the professionals come in. Yeah and truthfully and

Speaker 2: if you really know anything about demo and construction and those things part of the And they have the brain that professional in Professionals in is because they demo the house with sledgehammers.

Speaker 1: That is not the way the demo, . No, it looks great on TV. It is

Speaker 2: awesome right busting through the glass and all that stuff.

Speaker 1: That is really not smart demo though. You're creating a big old mess for yourself and most of the time you end up breaking more things that you did not really want to do. Maybe your

Speaker 2: shin for one thing. , , they do not they are probably will be an episode one day of all the people that have been injured,  on these reality TV shows like, , I slung the hammer but it flew out of my hand and smack the cameraman right in the right in the jaw or something, , but anyway the breakdown in all this stuff is we are seeing a shift away from the DIY the people that that that really are are those type of Fixer-Upper folks. There is again, this is not going to apply for everybody. I look at the big shifts. In the masses though.  proportionally we are seeing less of this. We are seeing this, , think about this think about what we are doing in school today it how many how many kids are taking wood shop. , how many how many how many kids are learning how to weld, , , all of these trades are slipping out of  Traditional School and you got to go to a special trade school now and and so  what has happened? Here? We are we got to generation right now what we have the least amount of electricians plumbers and hva see workers that we have ever had.  if you want to get into an amazing opportunity those three Fields,  it it is incredible. I I call on these guys all the time in realistically some other voicemails will say look, we are booked three weeks four weeks five weeks six weeks out. Yeah, leave a message and basically We'll get back to you when we can we get back.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and and what a great thing in a

Speaker 2: terrible thing all at the same time, right? Yeah, because if you have something that really really you did not want to wait, , two months for that stinks. The other thing is there is a lot of there is a lot of missed opportunity because what will typically happen is some person is not going to wait and they are going to attempt to do this on their own not and not a good idea, especially if you're dealing with electricity. It is it does not forgive you easily when you let  when you us up, right so think about those things.  if you have a house in which you're struggling to sell that is where we can step in and help you out and we have been able to transform homes through our systems and our sales processes and , we can we like I said, we know exactly what the buyer is looking for in sometimes these things do not cost a tremendous amount of money, but you have to know where the start and you have to have a game plan. Maybe you figured out in 2019 that whatever you were offering is not. In what people wanted and price did not matter. That is who we want to talk to you.  if you've struggled through 2019, give us a call 5 5 3 0 7 9 6 or you can go to Jason Brown what.com next week. We are going to dig into more of this in our Series, so we'll be back next week about have an awesome weekend will see you then. Be safe. Talk to you soon.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: Good morning. Hope everyone is having a great day. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Well, I am sure everybody is well, hopefully recovering from a wonderful awesome Thanksgiving Day. Maybe you did the Black Friday shopping. God bless you is all I can say, but maybe your eyes just hurt this year from the online shopping you No. Hey, I tell you what, Keith things have changed man. It is hot. It is a neat time that we live in my wife still does the Black Friday thing?

Keith I am awful. I have not even started my Christmas shopping yet. That does not like it starts on Cyber Monday. And then last for like a couple Yeah. Yeah. And so, ,  Callie it is just so easy. Now, you go online you are sharp.  90% of what you can buy has got free shipping. Yeah, you get a personal valet to bring your Off to you how about that program just wrap it for me because my skills are not phenomenal.

Jason: Do that there is probably a I would not be surprised. There is a button you can probably click this says hey you want this wrapped? I can guarantee you there is. But it is crazy how things work today.  You think about you got online shopping, you have free shipping, you got Ubereats. You do not even have to go get your food. They will bring you your Big Mac or whatever it is. It is an interesting time. I was actually talking to a gentleman that that runs a company that somewhat similar to that and I was surprised the demographic that actually uses that service and let's just say it is not the affluent. It is you are paying for a convenience. It is amazing.

Did you hear the new one? You can now hire people to actually come and put up all your Christmas decorations. They show up a few weeks before Christmas. They put them all up they cover the house and they come back after Christmas and take them all down for you. Yes, I need to get their phone number. That would be awesome. Actually. Yeah, that is probably it is kind of like cleaning your gutters money will spread right.  Hey, we are going to dig into all the changes going on in real estate today as well.  We got some answers to the questions. You have been sending in through email and from phone calls to the office. And, of course, you can do that any time go to Jason Bramblett dot com. Click on an email icon shoot us a message and if it is something that is beneficial to the community or a repeat question. We always share those on the are course. You can always call the office to 553-0796. Hey grab that scrap left over piece of pumpkin pie, put you a little a la mode on the side, sit down and relax, and we will dig into real estate.

Keith: We got an email, and I like that we got this email because the things we were talking about last week, I learned quite honestly, I had never heard of these things.  It says Jason, Into the show last week made a mistake of hiring a free agent to sell my house. Thank you for talking about this as I believe most people do not realize that this is really working against them. Keep up the great work.  love listening, Joe.

Jason: Yes. Joe, hey, first of all, thanks for the email and thanks for listening to the show and you are correct most owners really just, they do not even realize they are making the mistake and so just to clarify a free agent is not one that is selling your house. House for free is this is the like a sports analogy free agent. It is an agent that is free to do basically whatever they want. We are going to kind of dig into that. I will explain that a little bit further. But if you missed the show last week, you can go to Jason Bramblett dot com. It is archived on there. We have the audio and the printed out written version of the note so you can kind of go through that, but the real issue is the system is actually broken, and it has been broken for a long time has been broken probably. Forty years and the main reason, this issue happens with this free agent of this agent that is going to use your home to sell other properties is. It is really the ease of entry into the real estate business. It is not that difficult to say this is one of the most inexpensive businesses to get started in that you could work out of your house. You can basically spend almost nothing on advertising. You are not going to sell a lot, but you can do three, four, five real estate transactions in a year probably with just people that you may know. The issue is that when you do something so rarely you never get good at it, right? And so it is like a golfer. If you only play golf three or four times a year, you are never going to be Tiger Woods, right? Yeah, and you are never going to be Jason day. You are not going to be on the tour. You do not have enough talent to pull that off. It takes relentless practice, and it is the same that is true with real estate. You just cannot be good at something when you do not do it very often and because it is so easy and inexpensive to get into this business. We get a lot of people that dabble. You can probably look at some of your home improvement projects and see what the quality of dabble looks like. Right? It is not pretty well most of the time so it is too many agents too many owners not really knowing the right questions to even ask. That is that is another one. Sellers typically lead off with this question is how much can you get me for my house when they really should be asking is if you show my house to a buyer, can you show them another house like mine if they do not want it? That is a better question because that answers a lot of different things. That leads into our kind of free agent explanation. Is that agent that you hire if they have the ability to take anyone that s called or inquired about your home and walk them down the street and sell them another home. You do not have an exclusive dedicated listing agent. You have a free agent. Agent in which is going to use your home as bait or whatever to get people to call and they will sell them anything. That is not necessarily in your best interest, right? You hired them to do what sell your home be fully committed to selling your home and by having that carrot dangling out there the fact that they can sell anybody’s house. Well, it creates an issue. It creates an issue for the seller and then that use of representation that they thought they were getting. Well, again it goes back to are you asking the right questions? If you said if they said yes to that then you hired yourself a free agent and unfortunately, it is a big deal because human nature is that we are going to take the easiest possible way out, right? We do not like confrontation and how that affects you is if I got a buyer that comes up with a complaint about your house and I do not like confrontation. I have to deal with the confrontation of that buyer. But here is the other person I have to deal with confrontation of the owner. Going back to sake Ethan's like a Keith. They do not like this about your house. it key says I do not give a rip. Well, if you do not set that expectation properly going in you have to deal with these objections. You have to deal with these complaints and what we find is human nature. When you hire a free agent, they do not deal with them. They just take the people down the road. To another house because that is easy. Hey, you do not like this house. No problem. There is six more within a half-mile the same square footage almost the same color. Probably the front door is different. We will just say you that one. But that is not in the best interest of the owner in the business sort of the owner is to overcome that objection. When you have things that are easy and allowable, that is what people do they migrated to well what is less pain just go down the street selling their house, right? One reason that that is the biggest reason. We just do not even allow it at Jason Bramblett Real Estate that is not an option. We have dedicated listing agents. That is what they do. They cannot even work with a buyer. It is not allowed that way. They are totally 100% focused on selling your house and that is a huge, huge difference. It is certainly not popular. I can assure you that for sure. It is not the I would say some of my folks that are in real estate with me do not particularly like that about our company because we point out an obvious flaw in the system and most real estate companies are and or real estate agents do not have an answer to that. They do not have a rule that says or they do not have a policy within their company that says hey you can only do X and that is it. We differentiated ourselves in the fact that our listing team is just that they are going to work with the seller the seller only and then we have a dedicated team of agents to work with buyers. You cannot work with the same person and do both within our company. We separate out your experience that Keith when you purchased and we find by removing that carrot from that agent the owner or client just gets a better quality experience. They get a better result and there is never any question about who's working for who. What is funny. It seems like a lot of these things. We always joke that a lot of the maintenance things we talk about in the show is go back to your gutter about yeah, right, right, right. It seems like all of these other things the route thing is communication because if the agent isn't forced to be honest with you and tell you the things that you need to do to sell your home, not only do you not sell your home, but arguably when you do sell your home is going to be for a lot less money because you did not address the things that needed to be addressed and whether it is them not communicating that they are showing other houses or we have talked about communicating with other agents before it all goes back to just being straightforward and communicating

Speaker 1: It is key number one thing and setting up the proper expectation most owners just they just do not know what to ask. That is that is the tough piece. That is just that is just like with real estate. Okay.  If you sell three to five houses a year, I am sorry. You probably just are not doing a good job. And it is not that you are doing anything intentionally wrong. It is just you do not do it enough right the even have a clue, right?  Truthfully if you sold three houses in the spring and then the next two houses you sold that were in the fall, our real estate forms change in July. Every single July they change and every single September, October, November. I get offers into our office from other real estate people with the wrong forms. They are using the last year's the previous dated. It is unfortunately some of them do not even have a support team within their company. And so they are they are googling the find the form because their company does not provide them with a form to use.  Sadly, I have received offers on our some of our properties that were using forms that were 5 years old and not even in the like stratosphere of what we do now, right? And so it is it is frustrating on all parties especially us that do it every single day, day in and day out when you are dealing with this this type of in experience when you do not even realize oh the forms changed. Yeah, every July like clockwork, right? Yeah. 

Keith: Well, it is a me. I look it is amazing to me. I was blown away last week when you explained this. I am glad you took the time because I really do think this is a great warning and I think it is a great question for buyers and sellers and everybody to be aware of what is going on. Jason: Yeah. It is something that for sure needs change within our industry and just too many owners fall into this trap, and they do not even know it. Again, it goes back to they do not even know the right question to ask to even figure out that there is an issue right? It is like well, this is the what I thought the this is the way it is always been done. Yes, but it does not mean that it is always right just because this is the way you did stuff like in the North does it mean when you come to the south right you do things this way?  Yeah, it is a little joke there between me and Keith.  I will leave it at that. But anyway, owners just do not sell enough homes to even know what questions to ask think about this most people have either never done it they have never sold a home how they have not done it in ten years. Yeah, right think about everything is changed in 10 years, especially with the real estate downturn, the recession the crash and all that.  all the are different and all the rules have changed so well, so go ahead.

Keith: I was going to say so now I know like the one of the most important questions I can ask when I get started but this is one of the beautiful things to do in the show with you. If you have done this for so many years that you have heard probably every single question and every single experience you can possibly imagine you have run into in your time of doing this what are some of the wrong questions at Sellers.

Jason: Yeah, for sure, and the interesting thing is there is really it is very repetitive and want one. Because human nature we are really all not that different truthfully. There are enough differences to make us unique though. I will tell you that but really, yeah, it is just it is just kind of the same old stuff. Off the top of my head one of them that comes to mind is a lot of times in it depends on the type of market.  In this market, where things inventory is low, things to have the perception that are selling pretty quick. We will hear this. Will you discount your commission if I buy my next house with you? Well, okay, that sounds good because the perception is you are going to you are going to save money, but really what I would caution is never use the same agent to that used to sell your home to buy never have the same person in that transaction and there are several reasons for that. But one of them is that it is the theory of the dangling carrot. I cannot get the big carrot until I sell the little carrot. Right? Right. And so you are just you are just setting yourself up for questions that do not even need to be asked down the road formula most part. I cannot tell you how many times we explain our business model and how we work and the fact that we do not do the free agent thing, and we do not allow our listing agents to work with those owners to buy another home. Part of the We came up with this program and we made this decision as a company is we heard over and over again, even if the they did not make a complaint and they did not file a grievance or they did not contact an attorney. I cannot tell you how many how many sellers of said we just had a not a good feeling after it was all done. It was fine. We think we got what we were supposed to get but looking back we wondered if maybe we could have got a little more for our house innocent it maybe they could not have, but it said that little seed of doubt that they have and so I am a pretty much a common sense guy. I am like, hey, well, if we remove that whole entire fear and that whole entire doubt that is an easy thing to do. Well somewhat easy. It is industry-standard not easy, but from a company standard. It is not out knotted it was just a decision for us to make. But that seller on our side never has to worry about could I have gotten more peace of mind is worth a lot peace of mind is worth a lot. Again it is amazing. Sometimes this is 10 and 15 years later and they still just talking about it. Yeah, you can sense that little bit of doubt that they have. That is really one of the main course. That is the commission question is typically the wrong look there are plenty of discount real estate companies out there. If you do not want a lot of service and you want a cheap whatever hire them. But do not go to a company that is more traditional and ask them for a discount because it mean to be like going to Ruth's Chris and saying hey, I want 20% off the steak. They are going to show you to the door or going to show you the chicken. Right? One of the two. They are going to say we got hey, we got chicken on the menu for guys just like you. Right?  There are three or four more questions. We are going to get into this. Let's do this. We will take a quick timeout. Maybe you have got a question. Maybe you got something comes up go to Jason Bramblett dot com, shoot us that over an email and we will be happy to answer you. Give us a call at the office have 553-0796. We will be right back. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

All right, you are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. We are back. I hope everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving. We were digging into some things that questions that really the that I owner may not know to ask and so we got a couple others that kind of come to mind and one we do here. This is another one that comes up is how many houses have you sold in my neighborhood? and to be I was with you that in today's world. That is really it is an irrelevant question. It does not matter anymore. It used to prior to the internet prior, to search engines, prior to all these other things. But to be honest with you whether the agent sold one house in your neighborhood are they have sold all the houses in your neighborhood. It really does not matter in this day and age and time with the how technology works systems work the information that people have available to them even the Consumer outside of real estate professionals. It really does not make any difference and and truthfully if you were going to hire the best absolute best real estate agent to sell your home. You'd hire the on-site agent in the neighborhood that sold it to from the very beginning that worked for the Builder because they know more about all the houses through than anybody but truthfully with technology. It just does not it just does not make any difference. This is a big one. This is one that we see it. Definitely top A-list asking that Agent to come up with a price for your house horrific idea. Absolutely probably the worst person you can ask to help give a value of your home would be the real estate agent not because they may not know what they are doing. They may be dead on to the penny, but trying to get the price of the house from someone that is trying to get your business. Maybe not the best idea right? Maybe not the best. Use of wisdom. And so what we find is, , it is really just not that hard. , I do not mean this to disrespect our listeners are owners, but you guys are pretty much an open book, right? We come out to the house. , there is really about four or five questions. I need to ask and I can figure out in like no time at all exactly how much you want to get for your home and you didn't even tell me the answer I can tell through body language. I could tell through excitement on your face the the the voices. Elections that you have when we talk about certain numbers,  you are horrific at poker.  just give up and going to work and and so there is good agents out there. They can figure this out too and buy them guessing the price that you want to hear in order to get their sign out in the yard is not a win for you getting the right price is key. Okay. And so where we find this to be an issue is not in the the They got the wrong price, which most of them did over 60 percent of the houses expire the first time on the market because they were priced too high especially in this kind of Market when everybody's all hyped up because although real estate's back and everybody's getting rich and I am going to cash out and I can sell my house for ,

Speaker 2: 30 grand more than it was ever possibly

Speaker 1: worth only to bring that price all the way back down and you can see this like, I just ran a report think we put four hundred and forty houses. On the market a week or so ago and like 390 of them had already reduced our price right?  that is a pretty big swag. If the agent was right in the price. Then why were y'all lowering the prices seem like

Speaker 2: part of the game though nowadays does not it kind of is a game it

Speaker 1: is and so what I would recommend is is do not ever get the price of your house from the real estate agent hire a third party independent person that has no bearing at all. All on what the price is

Speaker 2: like an appraiser, , the great thing about

Speaker 1: an appraiser is there their fee is fixed,  exactly how much you are going to pay and they do not give a flying rip what your house is worth. It does not matter if it is 200 Grand or two million dollars. They are going to get paid the same amount of money. They have no additional incentive Past coming up with that value at all.  these are things to think about so as you are enjoying your pie and choking down your turkey sandwich probably. Now think about these things when you go to hire someone we have an entire list and of course, we'll continue with our conversation here next week, but you go to Jason Brahma.com. Give us a call the office 5 5 3 0 7 9 6. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy your weekend. Be safe out there and we'll be back here next week.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: Good morning. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Hope your Saturday is off to a fantastic start. We are digging into all things real estate today. And of course, we are going to dig into do  who is working for you? That is a question when you went to sell your house. Did you hire the right agent? These are questions that you need to know, especially if you are thing about hiring one in the future. Maybe you hired a free agent instead of actually a listing agent or someone to sell your house. We are going to dig into what does that mean? What is a free agent never heard that before? Well, you will get educated today as we walk through this process and we have some wonderful information from our state government that I will share with you. It will not we are going to save it to the end. That way you do not crash your car go to sleep on me, but it is very interesting in how some of these agency Ships are set up.  if you plan to sell your house in the future, you want to make sure who you are hiring what they do for you, and we are going to dig into all that and your calls your questions. You can go to Jason Brown would.com or give us a call five five three zero seven nine six at the office Keith. Good morning, sir. I hope that everything is well with you today. I getting over the cry, but that is alright, it is it is that time of year is the season right it is that time of the year. It is what we deal with crud in real

Speaker 2: estate.  this Seems like an obvious answer, but I guess I need to ask this because I do not know. I hired a guy to sell my house. He works for me,

Speaker 1: right? Yeah. Well, so there is one way we could put that through the test. The key is let's do that. Let's put it to the test.  most owners, , really when considering to sell their house. They think well, I am going to hire an agent obviously some house no question that is done.  the issues this in 22 years of being in the industry and what I have seen and what I have experienced in watching the Street all across the nation not just here in the in the Triad is some sellers actually hired what we call a free agent. Meaning that agent is free to sell that buyer. Anyhow, they want to buy kind of like your neighbor's house.  yes, you hired them to sell yours, but that agent is free to do just that they can walk down the street and sell any home to that person.  so here is the downside the issues this they called about your home. They wanted to see your home. They went to your house. It did not meet their criteria and instead of trying to figure out how to fix that. They simply take the easy route walk right down the street and just sell on the neighbor's house free agent. You wanted an agent that was going to fight for you. Yeah, right you want an agent that was going to overcome objections and complaints and all these issues and that is the When we see, , it is not that they are bad salespeople. It is well, a lot of them are just not trained to deal with objection and how to overcome it and how to get through that. , it could be as simple as . Hey, we want a house with hardwood floors and your house has carpet and the free agent instead of overcoming the complaint of the eject objection. Really they are just going to walk them down the street and show them a house that has hardwood floors get a sale get the commission and move on and The sad thing is many times not even really seeking your feedback and you've probably read comments like this. If you ever sold a house in the past, you may remain s and think back to this is , just not what they wanted needs too much updating. These are very vague non detailed,  responses in in did anybody dig in and find out what the opportunity was there? , it could be that what they should have come back to I said, okay great. Well, here is what they do not like.  if we give you an offer that says you will do this then we will pay X like hey Keith take your carpet out of your house put hardwood floors in your house is sold. Yeah if I need to sell my house if I have got a if I got a pony up

Speaker 2: $1,000 to fix a simple objection to get my house sold. I might do

Speaker 1: that and we have some owners that would pony up $10,000. Yeah, depending on the price range of the home, , and , and we will get sometimes. Well, I am not spending $10,000 to do this. But yet they do not they do not work through that objection properly or they do not even get the opportunity. They did not even know that that was an option for them. And then what do they do lower the price 20 grand?

Speaker 2: Well, you see lots of money on that. Yeah,

Speaker 1: you lost money on the deal. But but unfortunately some owners do not even know this so,  after look at this,  for 20 years and teaching all across the United States and and really how to overcome this stuff what you got to look at it is it is the free agent issue. , if you hire the company what you are looking for really is hire a company that does not allow that listing agent to work with buyers. And when that happens, the only way that agent gets paid is if they sell their home. Okay, and so well, this is why 15 years ago Jason barely real estate. We set That Into  into process.  we have dedicated listing Specialists that do just that they only get paid. Aid if they sell your home and we never fall into that trap of free agent I is a listing agent cannot take Keith down the street and sell them my neighbor's house. I am not allowed to I can only overcome those objections and complaints and sell the home for my owner. That is the only way in which I get compensated most owners. Do not do this enough to know the even even though The questions to ask under an assumption. They think well, I hired this agent to sell my home. That is what they are going to do. Not even realizing that they are a free agent in which they could sell them. Anyhow, so you got all these people calling in inquiring in about your home you get there and it is instead of selling and overcoming the objection. They just take the easy route like oh, I know Street there is a house right down around the road. I will just , it is got the hardwood floors already done by this one. I No matter what now, is that is that what the owner wanted? No, they wanted someone that was going to be there and was going to fight for them. They wanted someone that was there that was going to make sure that they had their full representation at all times. That is what we decided to do 15 years ago at here at Jason Brown real estate. That is why we are a hundred eighty degrees different then most all the companies that offer this free agency situation.  is there a difference A hundred percent difference. You better believe it big

Speaker 2: time that explains a lot because when and full disclosure, I purchased a home recently and used you guys and the agent was completely committed to us now clearly. We were the buyers not the sellers in this instance, but he was committed to us 100% and did not have to have the split

Speaker 1: loyalties. Absolutely and and that is and that is key. The other thing too is if if that agent was let's just say that agent was a free agent and they were working they were actually able Two lists homes, but in your case, it was Dave and let's just say Dave had five listings for sale. If Dave is out showing you property. He's going to take me to his listings or

Speaker 2: orderly who in the world is working on

Speaker 1: selling those homes if he is doing his proper job and he's giving you his full undivided attention as an agent and out here showing you property. What about this five other sellers who sell in their homes, right? It ain't it is not Dave he's working with you.  when you Have undivided attention, you can't fully focus on a task.  our listing agents only get paid when they sell the house for the owner. Therefore, they are under percent focus on that and they are not distracted by  out showing Keith property because that takes time effort energy, right and if I am focused on working with you and your wife, I can't be working on selling your home. It is Impala can't be doing two things at once right now. It

Speaker 2: does not and again it is completely even if I am  in my situation if he had five homes listed and he's only in the fight to sell his five homes for me. He's not going to show me the home. I need job does not work for either side.  I do not know. Why do not why do not all other real estate agents do this. That seems to be the best thing for the customer.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Well, we are going to talk about that. We are gonna dig into that and we have news

Speaker 2: from the state of North Carolina about this

Speaker 1: very thing that we are going to talk about but I am going to save it to the end because well, it is legalese and it is well it is the state and , like I said, I do not want anybody crashing her car but it is an issue in its in and here is the thing. Here is the downside with our product people have either never done this or they haven't done it in ten years. They do not remember they do not they do not know the questions to ask and they operate under assumption and you can't assume that the person you hired is fully a hundred percent,  working for you the you may have hired a

Speaker 2: Asian I just again it just does not make sense.  it sounds great for the agent, , because but your I am paying them for representation.  if I wanted to go to a restaurant and and walked in  he could just for whatever reason if I do not like it take me to the next restaurant and give them my money it just does not I do not know. I just do not understand why anyone would hire that situation because it is

Speaker 1: split. Yeah. Yeah. Well,  and that is just it so yeah good good analogy association with things we do more common like restaurants you go out to eat, right?  think about that what owner wants his prospective buyers walked right out the door to his neighbor's house or , what what restaurant guys going to have that happen, right? , it is like no it is never that is a hundred percent. No, do not do that and yet that is how the industry is set up.  you see that the free-agent is just it is really it is just there to free to walk right down the road and sell that person another product.

Speaker 2: It is great for them. Maybe not so much for you.

Speaker 1: Maybe not so much for you,  and sometimes yeah, we'll just leave it at that. Yeah, it is not and and that is exactly why it is our company policy that we do not do it that way.

Speaker 2: It is funny when I first started working with you guys. I saw that clearly on your website. It was , it was literally right in front of your face was clearly put up there and did not really understand it. But now I do so, that is obviously a huge deal. That is a really big deal. What else do I need to look for? When I am selling my

Speaker 1: house, absolutely so in North Carolina, we also have this agent. Well we call it do agent, , meaning that they can work with the owner and the buyer equally sounds like a great plan. Right?  I have the home listed for sale Keith in is  family comes up. We want to buy it. Oh, you do not have an agent. Alright, I will work with you. I will represent you. The problem is with dual agency as you are going to see here in a minute as we walk through this. There is a problem. The problem is is that agent now cannot offer any advice to the owner or the buyer they have to be what they call a neutral basically they can fill out the paperwork. Well most of the time when we hire an agent to sell our home we did not hire them to fill out the paperwork.

Speaker 2: , you can't pick that you can probably find easier ways to fill out the paperwork.  the issue is like you and I have talked that if you've bought or sold a home it Hasn't if either has never happened or it has been 20 years since you've done it, I needed the expertise. Yeah,  I can find a lot of different people who could fill out paperwork. Yeah. I need the expertise on what's a good offer. What's a bad offer? What should I be asking for? What can I ask for? That is the stuff. I needed to

Speaker 1: know absolutely and that is that is exactly what people are looking for. They are looking for that expertise and advice and they want it from someone that they know has their best interest at  at all times and so  where we find this issue? It is like okay if this cup of coffee here, if I am going to sell this cup of coffee in your the owner you obviously want the highest price for the coffee. Right? , that is just a given right and but if I am also working with the buyer under dual agency, yeah, they they pretty much want the best price how in the world. Can I achieve the highest for the owner and the best for the buyer and I am selling the same cup of coffee

Speaker 2: now because the other side wants it

Speaker 1: cheaper no. Matter what right or the or the owner that I am equally represented once the most and so I am in this Catch-22 this nightmare of I can't do a good job of this. It is impossible. , that is what we feel yet the state allows this practice of agency the other issue with this type of agent is  equal. Well if I am originally I would be the listing agent first.  I went to  your house there was no perspective buyer at that time because I did not even know if I was actually going to earn your business, right? I told you whatever you wanted to hear you agreed you love my price. I showed up with these fantastic numbers that I just pf8 which is,  pulled from the air and singing and dancing. And you said man, I like your smile go for it. No buyer. But yet at that time. You told me hey Jason. Is the deal really we are in a pretty major financial hardship as a matter of fact, my spouse is leaving me and my dog just died both of the same week. That is all in the same week. And so we've got , it is the country song, right? We all know the country song and here is the thing under this agency relationship. All that information needs to be shared equally with all parties. And and so this is an issue.  here I told you I was going to read you what the stasis. Oh really. Here you go. Here is the deal. State of North Carolina. This is what they stay although the laws and rules by which dual agency is practice have not been reviewed to any significant extent by the courts. Theoretically a dual agent owes full range of agency duties to both principals owner buyer. This creates practical problems for the Dual agent regarding such matters as disclosure of material facts, especially confidential information about the client. In advocating for the clients North Carolina Real Estate Commission. Do you see the issue there? I love this one line. It is do agency is practiced but it has not been reviewed in any significant extent by the courts. Do  what that means folks? Nobody's got sued yet. That is all that it be someday someday. Matter of fact, I am told there is some money sitting down in Raleigh in a fund for the lucky person that gets R name selected.  if anyone ever gets sued we will actually be able to figure out finally in the state in order to North Carolina. Is this even legal if there is again it is the practice is allowed but there is been no test. What is a test Court law right? It is good times is North Carolina. Where do amazing it hasn't come up at this point. It is it is absolutely amazing. It is all in this world where we Sue over everything. Early, so it is kind of crazy. And so why is it allowed? Well, I am , just hey, sometimes you just gotta is what it is. It is pretty simple big box real estate companies would close our be crippled instantly if that rule changed and the reason being is because of their survival, they they survive on the fact that they have to sell their own product under this way. Why because they are in the Dual agency trap in and so if they couldn't sell their own product, they would close and of course, , well big business big attorneys, right? They got the lobbyists. They got everything that they need and well they influence lawmakers and lawmakers haven't made a law that says no yet. They just said well, we'll just see what happens. Keep doing it until somebody gets sued Here Comes Here Comes, right? It may be there. Who knows but , It is politics and with all politics do what everybody does follow the money. It is all in the money.  you need to be educated. You need to understand. Did you hire a free agent? Do you have a dual agency situation that you are unaware of and you need to make sure that you have the information out there,  do agency actually is is not allowed in a lot of States North Carolina just happens to be one where it is.  make sure that you understand. If you are getting a free agent or a dual agent and ask the right questions, that is what you need to know.  you go to Jason Brown a.com get more information. We are going to take a quick timeout will be back in just a minute. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett real estate

Speaker 2: show.

Speaker 1: Hey and welcome back. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett real estate show. I hope your Saturday is going great. I hope that all those cars in the ditch aren't real estate agents that just freaked out about what we just talked about on the

Speaker 2: radio. I want to talk about this some more because yeah, just honestly it blows my mind. It blows my mind that it both goes on that, , if I am trying to sell my home literally. mebody can come in there and say they are working for me and give me this presentation make it all pretty and make me feel like they are working on selling my home. But at the same time if my home is not absolutely perfect and meets every demand they are just going to walk them out of my home and take them to another home that maybe is closer to their fit.  in that scenario, my home has to be perfect or I am not going to get a great offer. Right? How did that I'd I can't believe that is

Speaker 1: allowed. Right? Right, right. And so where it comes in is that is where you have to have that exclusive. Civility you need to make sure you hire a company or a team of people like our company that where we've already figured it out. We do not allow that that just does not happen with our company our dedicated listing agent. The one that is working on your home cannot be compensated in any way unless they sell their home and they are not allowed to take that buyer that called on your house or emailed in on your house or showed up a what? Ever at your house and walk them down the street. Our goal is going to figure out how in the world. Can we make this work? How can we take whatever objection or complaint that you have about this home and get the get the owner at least an at-bat a swing right as opposed to just saying? Oh, I know one. That is right down the street just got exactly what you are looking for.

Speaker 2: Well, it is so true to because ultimately each, , each agent wants to make money and if there is an Easier path for them to make their money if somebody brings up. I do not like the color of the wall. He can either go. Well, why do not we ask the the seller if he put in a $500 pain allowance so you can do these two rooms and we'll get it knocked out or he can just go for houses down the street that has the color of blue you like. It is easier and less time consuming for him to go down the street and not sell your home and sell somebody else's you are right.

Speaker 1:  yeah, like you could like that. Yeah. Oh, hey. I was just in the neighbor's house down the street. They just painted the whole house neutral last week done. Yeah. It is just perfect neutral blah color that you are looking for

Speaker 2: and the kick-out the kicker of it is and you are right what might have cost five hundred or a thousand dollars to have a home that guy's going to come back to you and tell you have to lower your price by $10,000 because it is not selling two months later. Yeah, and you are gonna get lost 10,000 instead of a grant

Speaker 1: in really what we need to make sure is that owner has the option and so what happens is what I have seen across the nation in North Carolina after doing this for 22 years is I have seen Unfortunately agents, just well what's easy have the card conversation are just walk across the street down the road drive a half mile down the street and just show them another houses sell that which one has less confrontation for the agent. It is easy. Just go show them another house, right? But that is not who you hired. You did not hire the free agent that can sell anything or how about this using your home as a loss leader. Like hey, your house is a shiny beautiful thing. It is so stupidly overpriced, right but it Great and people show up and you will not get realistic on the price.  I will just use your home to go sell the other seven to get you in the door to get you in the door. You do not think that happens in business. How about a grocery store? You ever heard of a lost leader, right? You see it every week will make nothing on this but we know when you come in the store, you are not just going to buy the hohos, right? You are going to walk out with milk in the chips and the salsa and everything else that we make a tremendous amount of profit on. There is no secret as to why the milk is always in the back of the grocery store. Right and most of them if you pay attention, what do you walk through the chip and the cookie and candy aisle to get to the milk condemned? It is all planned all the time all the time and so is your home our has your home been used in the past as a loss leader something to think about these are just questions. You need to ask when you go to sell your home. Is that person in fact, Working for you. It is not that they are working against , it is just that they are working for themselves easier. Yeah, maybe you would for themselves. Well again, it goes back to free agent. Right if we use Sports analogy. What's a free agent do he can do whatever he wants. He does not have a contract right where the money is he goes. There you go. And so that is what we see in real estate.  anyway, hey, you can get more information by going to Jason Bramble.com. You can give the call give us a call to the office of five five three zero. 0 7 9 6 and if you have questions about any of that get with us, we'll see you next week have a fantastic weekend. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett real estate

Speaker 2: show.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason:  Hey, good morning. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. We have some good stuff lined up for today. Hopefully you have survived the first touch of winter, I guess, if you will.

Keih:  I do not think that is a touch.

Jason: I do not know.

Keith: I do not know what that is.

Jason: It is milk sandwich season here in the South, right?

Keith:  I guess.

Jason:  So it has started. We maybe got a little flurry. Maybe you did not. Maybe you just thought you saw, you wanted to see the snow so bad so you thought you saw it, whatever the case may be, this past week. But hey, it is finally here. I guess it is that time, right? It is Thanksgiving. It is Christmas. It is winter again. It is going to be here.

Keith:  Again, I think it is just we have got spoiled because it was 97 –

Jason:  Right.

Keith: -- in like the second week of October. That is what it was.

Jason: Definitely. That is true. We do have the quick turnarounds here. Who knows it could be, I can remember being at the beach in December and it is like almost 80 right here in North Carolina. It can change the great thing about weather North Carolina if you wait just a little bit it will change. There is no doubt. So anyway, we are going to dig into everybody a lot of people been asking me about new plans, new construction. What should I do? When should I get started?  We are going to dig into that a little bit today. When should you build or should you even build going to just find out is that smart? Is that a good decision, bad decision? Is it right for me? Who should build my house? Should I do it myself? Should I get a, what's the right word I am looking for here? The track home-type builder, production builder, or should I get a custom home builder? What are my options out there? Then these on-site agents when you go to these open houses and things that these new construction neighborhoods who are they working for? Are they work for me that is buying the house? Are they working for the builder and all those things. We are going to dig into that. How about scams? Could I get the scammed buying a new house? Well, we are going to touch on that, and you make the determination. But who would scam anybody in the south? Nobody.

Keith:  Nobody. Come on.

Jason:  Nobody would do that. But we are going to talk about it and maybe a few little horror stories we have to share too, even though it is past Halloween. There is always some good drama in real estate. So we are going to dig in all that, and of course, if you got questions you give us a call at the office anytime about building a new house. It is 553-0796 or go to Jason Bramblett dot com.

Keith: I like this topic when my wife and I decided we wanted to own a home, the clear path was to go look for a home that somebody else had built and mainly because I think, to us, building a home seemed overwhelming because we did not know a lot. So this topic really interests me.  Who should be looking to build and is building a smart move as opposed to just finding another?

Jason: Sure. Yeah, and it is good that you recognize that because some folks do not. They force things, if you will, that they are really not prepared for and it can be yeah, it could be a barrel of fish hooks.

Keith: I do not watch enough HGTV to build a home.

Jason: There you go.

Keith: I just do not do enough.

Jason: But the really the two kind of go hand in hand.  We will dig into that. So who should really buy a new house and that is really the question at hand. The type of house is also very important in addition to it being new. So first-time homebuyers with little or no money really should lean more toward new construction or a newer house, probably not custom-built simply because in custom-built there can be a big swag in variances and cost overruns, and you make what you feel like is a little change like hey, let's move this wall 3 inches. Yeah, that can add up to thousands and thousands of dollars. So if you have a limited amount of money, custom homes may not be really the best option, but a newer house certainly is something you should consider. The other thing with custom homes is typically they require much larger deposits.  Your production-type home builder, what they realize is they only build XYZ, and they do not make a lot of modifications. They do not do that because they know that house if you do not buy it will fit a lot of other people. Right? And they are not going to get stuck with this unusual, trapezoid-looking craziness that you have dreamt up in your head. It is going to be a house in which many, many, many families could move into. But if you are wanting to something much more custom, these builders will require a bigger deposit, and they should because they are custom doing this to your taste, your liking, and therefore they are adding risk, right, and that risk, well, just like everything else, they want to minimize that. How do they do that? Get more of your money. So that is why I say a custom building may not be for everyone. It can be. But here is really the key. If you do not have a down payment, if you do not have or a limited down payment, then the question really becomes is should you even be buying a house at all. The sad thing is we are already starting to see a shift in the market. We are already starting to get calls where people are upside down in their house that need to sell and it is not because the housing market has really changed a whole bunch or home values have dropped significantly. It goes back to what did you put down on the house? And typically it is nothing or very, very little. And if you put nothing down in your home and you have only been in it for 18 months, it has not appreciated enough to get you to zero. It just has not. It takes about 10% of the value of the home to get it sold in any market between real estate fees, closing costs. Buyers may need closing costs. Whatever the case may be. But to move is going to cost about 10% of the value of your home and the bottom line is the money's not there. The appreciation is not there. So you need to know that going in. You need to know before you buy. You have to have that plan to stick around long enough, especially if you put no money down. No money down means you should stay a really, really, really long time, right? If you know you are going to move in five years, you really do not want to do a 100% loan. That is just all there is to it. And you may not want to buy a new house because you have limited control as to what happens with that house price. Sometimes there are built-in price increases that the builder is doing and that could help you. The downside is you are always competing with the builder. Let's face it.  If I am selling my house to Keith and Keith is like well, I could buy your three-year-old house or for the same money or just a few thousand dollars more, I can go get one brand-new from the builder with all new warranties starting at zero day one.

Keith: Yeah. Makes sense.

Jason: And your warranties are almost done and over or they are done and over. It might cost me what $5-6,000 whatever it may be. Even if it was $10,000, what does it cost you? $30 more a month to have a brand-new house that nobody has ever lived in.

Keith:  It is worth it for the warranty.

Jason: It is worth it for the warranty. That is typically what we see most people would migrate to that. So you need to be careful. Here is the thing. If you are broke, you do not need to buy a house period. I guess there are no periods in life and there is no matter of facts, but this is kind of a matter of fact. After 20 years, I am going to go all in and say this. If you are broke, you need to own a house because what happens is the house owns you and you have no life.  So save your money. Rent really, really cheap. Rent below your means and save money and get out of debt and save a nice big down payment or even do something even better. Maybe you only finance it for 15 years as opposed to 30.  22 years in this business. I have yet to see a short sale or foreclosure on a 15-year mortgage. Zero, not 1. Now there probably is one out there that I do not know about, but I have dealt with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these things, and they have all been 30-year notes. Most of them have been FHA or VA. Why? because it is the least amount of money. A few have been conventional, and none have been a 15-year mortgage. They have always been the 30-year product. So if you do not have the money, take your time, patience, relax. I know time does not wait, but you going to have to put the pedal to the medal. Work two jobs, work three jobs, save more money, whatever the case may be. But if you are not going to listen to me, which could be a few of you, and you are going to buy a house anyway, buy a newer house if you do not have money. Because you want those warranties there to protect, to provide that protection. So the great thing about North Carolina, if you buy a new home, the contractor, the builder you get the home from, is required to give you a one-year warranty as a minimum. All right from the builder. Then if you buy a new house, typically, your systems, so your heating and cooling your appliances and all those things, also have manufactured warranties, and those can typically be anywhere between three to five years. They kind of progress down, but at least you have something. Right? You have some type of warranty there, which is a good thing to have when you do not have money. What you do not want to buy is a 17 to 21-year-old house with everything original because sure as the world something is going to break, and you are the guy that is going to get to replace it like the heating and cooling system that will cost you five to seven thousand bucks. Right? And that is okay as long as you have planned for it, right?  Everything else that could go initially wrong, your homeowner’s insurance would probably cover because that means something really unusual or bad happened. So the less money you have do you want to look at a newer product? You do not have to be brand-new, but it definitely needs to be a newer product because the likelihood of something going wrong is, well, less. That is just it. Just like you are preparing for your first Thanksgiving out here, right?  Some of you guys are getting ready to do that. Hey, you got to use wisdom.  Do not go deep fry your frozen turkey in the garage. Right? We got to have a plan and we have to have a good plan. We do not want to just jump in out of emotion, right, and that is what I see. A lot of folks do unfortunately, is making those decisions based upon emotion. So the other person really considering buying the house is the tough thing is they just can't find what they want. And we are with limited inventory out here, they cannot find what they want. They cannot find the perfect house. So what they feel like is guess what, I am going to build. I cannot find what I want. I am going to build it, and that is fine. But you need to make sure you are financially ready to do that. What I love to see, of course, 20% down in the 15-year mortgage is almost bulletproof to have any kind of economical thing that you cannot control. Derail you. But here is the other thing about real estate. You have to live somewhere, right? Yeah, most people's option is not going to be Keith, I am living in this four-bedroom, three-bath house, 2-car garage in this amazing subdivision, or I am moving under the overpass. It is one of the two. No. We are going to live somewhere. Right? We are going to put shelter out there and we are going to move our family into something.  Since you have to live somewhere just stay. Time fixes most everything in real estate. Maybe you got transferred. Okay. Now I have got as the driving 10 minutes to work. I got to drive an hour. Drive the hour. It is cheaper than selling the house if you are not financially ready to do it. Right? Or maybe you are not financially ready to buy one and you are forcing yourself to buy a house. You just need to put up with the hour drive. It is not forever. It is just for a time, but you need to do it you need to sacrifice and do that.

Keith: It is called adulting.

Jason: It is called adulting. There is not even a class.

Keith:  It is not any fun.

Jason: It is not. But it is the crappy decision we have got to make. Right? Yeah, it just is real, but sometimes when we force things, we do not like the repercussions. It is kind of like the conversation when your mom or dad said Keith, I told you so.

Keith: Yeah. That never happens.

Jason:  That never happened, right? Yeah. So now you can look back and you have got a person that you can say hey Jason told us this might happen. We should have just kept on driving. Do not drive forever, but come up with a plan. Right? Save the money. I do not know. Have a garage sale, work the second job, whatever it is you have got to do to set yourself up.  The downside with success, there is an old saying right, you will pay the price. You will pay the price of succeeding or you will pay the price of failure. It is still a price paid. What I see sometimes is folks get impatient. They push things that do not really need to happen and they end up overwhelmed. They are really kind of upside down in that house before they even got started because the new payment put such a financial burden on them that everything else became harder. Right? And believe me. I love to spend time with family. I get it if you are driving an hour or hour and a half or whatever it is to get to work and that is tough. And I know that it is, but you can make even worse financial, stupid decisions by forcing something. Here is the thing. If you make a bad decision and you can't pay the mortgage, you get to move anyway, right?

Keith: You are moving somewhere.

Jason: You are moving somewhere, and you are not moving really under your control because here is what I know for sure. When that sheriff shows up and he has got that piece of paper from the judge in his hand and says, hey we are here to change your locks because you are leaving

Keith: There is a lot better chance you are going to the overpass in those conditions then if you go on your own.

Jason: And here is the thing. They do not really like make an appointment for that or call you and say hey, on this day, we are throwing you out of your house. Not really throw you out, but lock you out of your house. Now, I will say that it takes a long time to get to that point. You have missed a lot of payments. Think about it guys. You have not paid your mortgage in five months. How many more months did you think it was going to be before you got the knock on the door? Right it is going to happen. Making good decisions, it is where we need to be in life. Like Keith said it is that adulting thing. Right? Just take your time and get a plan, and I promise you if you just put it on paper that is a big win right there. Just writing down your goals and where you want to be and we can walk you through that and we can help you through that. I do not care if you are a first time homebuyer or custom built home. We see a lot of custom build homes foreclosed on simply because the cost overruns were more than they thought. They ended up borrowing more than they thought, and they dug a bigger hole.  I am not talking to folks that are out here buying hundred thousand dollar homes. I will promise you we have the same issue five, six, seven hundred thousand dollars. Really the most horrific market that we have is as far as you talk about losing money over a million. It is unbelievable how many 2 million dollar homes sell for a million? Now I know most of you do not have sympathy for those folks, but it stil affects our housing market. So we are going to do this. Well, take a quick timeout. Go pay some bills. We will be back in just a minute. But if you are thinking about building or buying a new house, do not go anywhere. We got more stuff coming up your way. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

And we are back. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. So I appreciate you listening. Hopefully everybody's got a fantastic weekend going on. We are talking about new sale or new home sales. Should I buy one? Should I not? Should I build one? Should I not? Is it better to get a new house or an older home and all those things? How does the warranty factor in and all that? And then well then there is the other side of the coin that we need to get into Keith, and that is who is looking out for who. Right?

Keith: Well, okay. So let's just say I take your advice. My family walks into the sales center any subdivision in America. You name it. There are lots of them around here. We meet somebody. We meet a sales rep. Well, who does she work for? Is she going to represent us? Is she representing the builder? How is how does that relationship work?

Jason: A good rule of thumb, just like the quick little acid test, if you will, is whois paying her or him?

Keith: Follow the money.

Jason: Follow the money. There you go. And typically what we see is that representative sitting in that model home is, they may not be getting the salary, but if they are, who are they representing? Now inNorth Carolina, we do have disclosure rules.  That should be disclosed to you before you say anything.

Keith: That seems kind of important.

Jason:  It does seem important. It is so important the state of North Carolina came up with the brochure that all real estate agents are supposed to share with the public at first substantial contact. Now first substantial contact is a debated point in time. Here is the thing. You do not want to be telling anyone about your plans until you know who they are. Right? Because well just like the police say anything, you say can and will be used against you. It is just like if you were going in to negotiate you would not want to tell the other side your strategy. Right? That very well could be what you are doing. It cracks me up. But some people in the public do not feel that real estate agents are a needed service because I know I can do it myself. I bought this and that and whatever and I am a great negotiator. I know how to hold my cards and whatever. And there is some truth to that. You may not say the wrong thing. But here is the thing. Your body says everything.

Keith: Yeah.

Jason: And what you do not fake well is body language. Right? Let's face it. You are not going to walk into the model home like the guys on World of Poker, right, with a hood over your head and dark sunglasses on so nobody can see your cards, right?

Keith: That would be awesome.

Jason: If you do, you might get a visit from,, I do not know the sheriff right? Because that person's going to be a little freaked out. Right?

Keith:  It is worth a try.

Jason:  Yeah. A lot of people think oh, I can hold my cards close to my chest and I do not show it. I won't say anything I am not supposed to. Remember go back 80 years, 60, 70, 80 years, and we were entertained by television with no sound. How? Body language. And what you do not fake well is your body language. That is where the benefit of a real estate agent comes in. They  are that third-party negotiator insulator that separates what? Not only your mouth, but your body language from the transaction.  I do not care what you buy. If you want to buy a dump, it does not matter to me as long as you know you are buying a dump. I am perfectly fine with it if you are. If you want to buy a two million dollar amazing home, great. As long as you are perfectly fine with it and you understand what your body it does not matter to me. I am not living there so I could care less either way.

Keith: True story.

Jason:  I have no emotion in that at all and you have got a hundred percent of motion in it, and there is a tremendous amount of value in me being able to insulate you from that stupidity, if you will. When you walk into that model home or you walk in to meet with that builder, then you got to realize it they were there representing the other side, and anything you say, but also what you show can be used against you from a motivation standpoint. Is that to say that those builders are crooks? No. That just says that you are really horrible at poker, man.

Keith: They are doing the job.

Jason:  They are doing their job, right? They are there to get you in a house and they are there to, well, build the best house that they can and of course, there are things that we get added on to houses that we do not need. Right? There are upgrades just like your car that has 47 dials and digits that you do not even know what to do with. Right? Same situation. So if you are thinking about buying a house or building a home, go over to Jason Bramblett dot com. We will be happy to walk you through that. Everybody have an awesome weekend, and we will see you here next week on the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: Good morning. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.  So from Ghost to Santa and just like that, it is Christmas. Well, maybe not for all of you. Certainly not for me. Maybe some of you guys share in the same thing, but it is obvious where the retailers are focused, which is what we are actually going to be talking about today. Is your house focused on selling? Can a customer even tell that you are in actually the season? And some of you that have homes for sales but it really just does not look like Christmas or really any purpose at all behind what you are attempting to do. So perhaps you are that owner and you are who I am talking with today.

Keith: I thought we started celebrating Christmas back in July or so. Isn’t that when they put out –

Jason: I think that is right. Yes, it is like Santa, firecrackers, Fourth of July, all that kind of fun stuff. Well it is how it works these days right, Keith?

Keith Yes. So using my common sense approach, you are basically saying some homes do not appear to be trying to sell.

Jason: Well, yes.

Keith:  Okay, then I am confused now. Explain that, please

Jason: Yeah, so they are selling but it is like fool's gold. The deal is this. Well really they are just fooling themselves and not the buyer. It is like this. You got a retail store and it is out there and it is just screaming Christmas is here. Everything is out there is Christmas. They do not put Easter stuff out, right? Okay, because it is not the message. So, people would walk into that store and say jeez, what in the world is going on. I thought this was a Christmas sale. Right? The product does it match what you are saying, and even worse if you say come in and see our great supply of Christmas stuff and all this and you are like come here, check this thing out. It is going to be awesome. And then all you have is a little bit of tinsel out. It is going to be a huge letdown. Right? It is a piece of Christmas décor, but you are not all in, and your product isn't lining up with your message and some owners out here are doing the same thing when they are attempting to sell their homes. So yeah sure you have signed up. You have got the house for sale, so to speak product, but it is not meeting the buyers’ needs. So your product basically, or the value that you are putting out there, is not matching up with the buyers’ wants and desires. And so you have to think like a retailer in order to get top dollar or even get it sold actually in today's market. And some owners are just basically they are going to get whiplash basically when these things change like the market is we are seeing a correction. We are seeing some shift and it is going to happen pretty fast. Truthfully, I have been looking at the numbers and it is like it may have been even quicker than it did in 2008. We are seeing a transition. We are seeing a shift in downward pricing and we are seeing homes stay on the market a little bit longer. So all of that stuff is compounding and of course, then you got the fourth quarter on top of that. But here is the other thing we are seeing. Homes that are prepared for the season, their homes that are prepared to sell are selling, and they are not just sitting back, watching the traffic go by. You have to take that action to create the product that the buyer wants if you are going to get top dollar and that is the key thing. Really just kind of get your head out of the sand.

Keith: Well, it makes sense. Whether you are selling retail or you are selling a home, the more focused you are on the buyer and the more specific your message is to that specific buyer then the better chance you are going to have to make a lot of money and sell stuff. So it makes sense. But what does that look like from a visual standpoint?

Jason:  The seller basically is going to get feedback from the buyers and hopefully take some action there. But the comments kind of go like this. The house is okay but. What they are focusing on is the but part of the equation. And by the way, if no one is looking at your house, that is also probably the greatest feedback you can get. If you are out there saying hey, look at this display, which are the pictures of your house and what you are offering is so bad or it does not line up with what they are looking for, they are just not going to look at all. They are just going to keep on cruising by the properties. It is okay but does not really work. The house is dated, and it just means your house is not lining up with that today's buyer or their tastes or their wants or their desires. So you have got to change it, and that is really all it is. It is just supply and demand, but you got to change your supply, the product, of your but I do not want. If it is hey, it is the wrong color, the wrong style, the wrong light, stain, whatever it is. It could be countertops, appliances, heck, it could be the grass seed you are using. If you could be anything, but that is what you need to look at. And what we are looking for is commonality. Are we seeing the same things over and over and over, and what we want to do is get past the wrong, wrong, wrong, all the time and work into getting what is there. So what you are saying is really I am not committed to the season. You are selling Halloween in December and it is not lining up with the buyer. It is not lining up with what they are looking for. The good news is we actually know exactly what buyers are looking for. We have thousands of data points for selling hundreds and hundreds of houses a year. We are getting that feedback and you do not have to make the wrong decision. That is what we can do. We can actually walk you through we can instruct you and how to get that house ready to sell and to sell it for top dollar and it is really truthfully it is just that simple. It is not difficult.

Keith: It sounds easy. Clearly. I also hear ching-ching in my head when we start talking about updating and grass and different stuff.  The question is if I am going to put that money into the house, am I going to be able to get it back?

Jason: Right. And here is the quick answer, Keith. No. How about that?

Keith: Wow.

Jason: It is just the answer everybody wants to hear

Keith: It is honest though.

Jason: Invest money and do not get it back. Well, it is just reality. You will get some of it back, but the perception is we have a lot of owners that want to put money in and they want to get a hundred plus percent, and it simply does not work that way in real estate. There are some circumstances in which it can. Typically, when we are seeing multi-generational changes. So if you are going from a 1960s kitchen the 2019, okay. Yes, you will get an ROI. But you were not even in the millenia. Right?  The avocado green appliances were a dead giveaway.

Keith: The burnt orange couch. I am going to get rid of that?  Are you kidding?

Jason: Exactly. If you are making light-years of transformation then yes, but, and there is great data out here on all this stuff and where you put your money. But we do look at the highest possible return you can potentially get, but we also look at the realization of you are not going to get a hundred percent of your money back. But what you could get is your house sold. And that is a big difference between not selling and sold depending on your reason and why you need to move. Not everybody has the same motivation to sell. Some people it is a like to and some people is a must. You have to do it. If you make the right changes, if you do get the house into the buyer season and give them the product that they want, it will sell, and you will get the traffic. So it is just like this. If you want to lose weight, you got to stop eating hohos, It is really that simple.

Keith: For me, it is potato chips, but yeah.

Jason: I am guilty. I am with you. That and cookies for whatever reason. Those two things are like Kryptonite.

Keith: It is the salty stuff.

Jason:  It is.

Keith:  Here is the thing. I do not like to point the finger at anybody. I really do not, but in some cases is the agent not doing their job?

Jason:  It could be. Yeah, we will keep the finger pointing down. But in one regard, I would say yeah, a hundred percent the agent did not do their job in telling you really the truth that your house has no chance to sell. Some agents believe that they win by getting the sign in the yard and that's how they are trained unfortunately. They are going to figure out whatever you want to Keith. They are going to make that music, make it sweet sounding to your ears, everything that, agreement, and all this great stuff and then voila, you have signed the paper. You have got a sign of yard. Your house is for sale, but the bottom line is you have got no prayer or chance. But what they should have really said was no, it is not going to work out right now. This is not the product at this price that the buyers looking for and that's a hard conversation. People do not like to hear no, and some people do not like to say no. Unfortunately, in our industry, there are some people that are just desperate to get a sign in the yard of whatever they got to do to do that and unfortunately, it just does not work. Here is a question though. If the agent is not doing their job, and let's just give him the benefit of the doubt and say they have done or lived up to their expectation. The real question is not why that one agent is not showing your house. There 6,500 of them. Why aren't the other 6,499 showing your house, right?

Keith:  Yeah.

Jason: It is easy to blame the agent from a seller or owner standpoint when things are not going your way, but you really just next to expand your grasp of this and say hey, why isn't anybody showing our house? Forget our guy. Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we hired wrong person. But all these other people have access to our house. Why aren't they showing it? It is pretty easy. It is ugly, and people do not have any interest.

Keith: But here is the thing. If you cannot hear what you need to do to your house to get it sold, that is on you because not every house is the same and sometimes you are going to have to make, as you put it, updates or some changes and if you want the house sold, that's the truth. You can put it on the market, but if it does not sell what good is that to anybody?

Jason: Absolutely. There is no HGTV show out here like change your house to 1920’s Victorian right?

Keith: It is called rustic.

Jason: Yeah, rustic. Yeah.

Keith:  Shiplap and –

Jason: It is called not sold is what that's called actually. And maybe your house is not ugly. For all you people that are going to send me e-mail, and I love your email. Please send it, but maybe it is the price. Maybe the price, maybe market is telling you right now your price does not align with where it is. Real estate is this. It is always this. It is a price war in a beauty contest. You could be winning one and losing the other. You have got to win it both. You got to be the best looking at the best price and when you are both of those things, you will win every single time. The issue that we see a lot of times is people do not want to do both. They want to either be well, they want it whatever price they want, but they are not willing to win the beauty contest. And that is a key thing. So if you are losing at one, you are really losing at both.  And an overpriced, outdated house has no chance of selling in all markets, hot or cold. It does not matter. Even in the good old times they say those were back in ’02, three and four, when you get breathe and get a loan, there were still foreclosures. At a time in which there was no inventory, construction was through the roof, anybody could borrow any amount of money just by telling somebody how much they made, the qualifications were non-existent, there were still foreclosures. Why? Because those homes did not meet what that buyer wanted even in a market in which it was bananas. It seemed anybody could buy a house even in that time there were still foreclosures. Why? People could not meet the criteria of price and quality. They lost in both or lost in one, and when you lose in one, you lose in both a lot of times. So there is a lot more to the house in just sticking it out there for sale.

Keith: You bring up a really interesting point because I think that for a lot of people their homes are personal. You had your first Christmas there. Your child grew up there. You have all those memories and to you that's important and special, but the people coming to look at your house do not have those memories, and what you are describing is a competition. You are really in a battle or a competition. You do not stop to think well, there is 2,000 other homes on the market in this area and it is a competition between us. You just think about the personal stuff in your home.

Jason: That is the one of the first things we want to do is managing the proper expectations. We really coach owners. When you put your home for sale with us you actually turn your house over to me. It is no longer yours. We have to remove yourself from it. Because the only way that you can really get the most money or make the most logical and best decisions is to remove emotion. And I will be honest with you, a lot of people have a hard time with that. That is the power of a great real estate agent. I have no emotion in your house at all, zero, none, and by not having any emotion in that I can make good quality business decisions because I am not carrying around Johnny's first steps, the time that Katie took the marker and scribbled all over the wall

Keith: That green chair. We cannot get rid of that. That is because what we sat there and watched TV every Saturday. We cannot get rid of that.

Jason: The time when Johnny, caught the garage on fire. Yeah, all those things that make a home and make it memorable and they are awesome. And what we want to do is we are going to take the great stories, maybe not Johnny burning down a garage, but we want to take the great stories and share those stories with those new potential buyers. But you have to remove yourself from that in order to get past. It is the letting go piece, and it is a challenge. The longer you have been in the home it is. It makes it more difficult for sure. So that is what we can help you do but not only that, but we can help you get the most money in the shortest amount of time by having a plan, having a system. So let's do this. Let's take a quick timeout. We are going to go pay some bills. We will be back. You can always send your love and your hate mail. Not that anybody would do that. Send the hate mail to Keith. I will just take your

Keith:  I will filter through that for you.

Jason:  Yes, you will.  Jason Bramblett dot com or call the office 553-0796. We will be right back.

Hey and welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. So hopefully you ran off and got your potato chips and your hohos, since we are going to fix your real estate problems, not your diet problems. I know that is what probably me and Keith will do after the show today. Go enjoy some of the festive foods that are available out there, which are always awesome this time of year. We have got Thanksgiving coming up and all those things. We do want everybody to have a fantastic Thanksgiving. If you have questions anytime, go to Jason Bramblett dot com shoot us an email or give us a call at the office, 553-0796.

Keith: Sometimes we get a situation and I will use one. Maybe I got a new job, and I am moving and my wife is moving and we are packing up and listen, I get what you are saying that we need some updates and do some things the house, but maybe time is an issue or we just do not have the ability or just cannot deal with all of that.  We just want to sell the house and be done with it because we got other stuff we got to do.

Jason: Understood and you can do that. You have got to have a system and a plan. Not every single real estate company has a plan for that type of situation and that's something we recognized 10-15 years ago. The one-size-fits-all program for selling a home just does not fit all. It just does not work. We had to come up with different options and different things. We have done that. We have got an amazing structure of investors all over the place, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash ready to buy maybe your house. The thing of it is we have the resources. It does not necessarily mean that it is going to be right for you, but it is certainly an option in which we can we can dig into and take a look at. Maybe that is you. Maybe you are that guy. Just the fact of having strangers walk through your house, open houses are just, the cleanup or—

Keith: It is a lot of work.

Jason:  Yeah, it is a lot of work.  Maybe you got small kids and or your schedule. You work 16, 18 hours a day, and the last thing you want to deal with is getting the house ready to show. Or maybe you do not even have the option. You have got relocated, transferred, and you have got to move fast and you just need it to be done. We have got options for you out there. You can definitely sell if you want to sell now. You have to understand that these companies are in the business of buying the properties not to lose money. Okay?

Keith: Makes sense.

Jason: Alright, so we had to have a simple common-sense approach to this. Right? If they are going to do all the things that you are not going to do to fix up the house to get it ready to appeal  to the retail, to the masses, then they want to be compensated for that.

Keith: Sure. That time.

Jason: That is it. They are going to buy your house as is, so that means you do not touch it. You just basically agree to a price and leave and move out. You get your money. You are off to wherever. You are taking the yellow brick road. And they are going to come in and do all that fix up, do whatever it is to get that home in the current condition to win that beauty contest. Hey, that's their goal. That is their plan or they are going to keep it as a rental. Some of them keep them long term, but the reward to you and the reward to you is you get the house sold very efficiently, very quickly with is least headache as possible. The rewards to them is hopefully they have done all their numbers right and the market still is going to be good and they are going to make money. That is what they want to do. There is not 9 HGTV shows out there that are like this, right? You have got to think about that. Not everybody has to be a foreclosure to do this. Right? You do not have to be in a downward spiral, losing position to sell. This is a convenience play. If you simply do not want the aggravation of the traditional route of selling your home,  again open houses, strangers through the house, all the prep, the getting ready to doing all that, if you just want to omit that and want to real nice convenient way to sell this could be a great option for you.

Keith: Well, what I think is kind of cool is in the months that we have been doing this show is it is about options because you are right not everybody's situation is going to be identical. Some people can sit on the home for 11 months, right? That is fine. They are just willing to take the best offer. They can sit. Some others will go the traditional route. As you've talked about some, what if you work in the military and you have been re-stationed and you are gone. You got to get out right now and maybe you do lose a little bit of money in that deal. But there is something about time and effort and all that.  The fact that you guys provide options. I think that's really important.

Jason: Because we recognize that it is the one-size-fits-all just does not work for all and we have situations right now. We have owners that have built a home and so we inherited the house from another real estate company it did not sell. They had plenty of time and now they have no time. It went from hey, we are like going to have two mortgages here.

Keith: It is amazing how time just runs out all of a sudden.

Jason: Yeah. It is like you are watching the hourglass and you are like, okay, we are good. We are good. Okay, we are not good anymore. Right? And so now they are looking at these double payments, and then of course, if you are truthful to your insurance company, vacant home insurance is not cheap.

Keith:  I had not thought about that.

Jason: Oh, yes, tremendously different price. Try probably a three to four times the amount that you are paying now.

Keith: It makes sense because so many more things can happen to the house while you are not in it. So much more damage can happen when you are not there to catch. It makes sense.

Jason: Absolutely. And for those that have vacant homes and you have been out of the home for more than 60 days, and you have not disclosed that to your insurance company, just so you know, you are paying a cheaper amount, but you do not have any coverage. Okay, so your claim is going to be denied. All right. So yeah you may get by with it. But if something does happen to your home, you are going to have some issues with the insurance company. It is better to tell them to get the right policy to get what you need. If this sounds good to you, this sounds like hey, this is maybe a convenient thing. You are going to see, I do not know, a couple hundred of our billboards around the Triad that we have put up everywhere, and so it is called our 72-hour offer. If this is something that you are interested in, we will come out, take a look at your home. We will get all the necessary data we need to send that to our investors, and they will make an offer. Now not all homes will qualify, so if you got a $2.2 million dollar house that is very unique, I can assure you they will not consider that. It is a big risk, but if you have a home in a subdivision and you just do not want to mess with all the hassle of getting it ready to sell go to Jason Bramblett dot com, and we can get you that information. Everybody have an awesome, awesome weekend. We will be back here next week. You can hit us up at Jason Bramblett dot com or 553-0796. We will see you then.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: Good morning. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. I hope everybody's doing great. I'm sure you are all still out there on your sugar rush. Hey, don't you kid me. I know you dug into the kids’ bags. It is just what we do as parents this time of year. It's just hey, it's it reminisces us back to when we were kids and of course if we're smart, we take all the good stuff. Right, Keith?

Keith:  Well, half of the bag she doesn't like yeah. Why would I let it go to waste

Jason: You can't. Absolutely. I'm with you. But I will say it does it does seem to be there's always a certain flavor in whichever everybody migrates to.  Right?

Keith: I just want to be wasteful.

Jason: There you go. You can't be wasteful. Hey, it is the best quarter of the year as we've talked about many, many times. Most real estate agents out there working those winter jobs are working that new gig, whatever it is they're doing, and so hey the tide rose, and then it fell, and it must start over. That's why I love the 4th. In the fourth quarter, the quality agents remaining are the best in the business and actually just deals are so easy to do. Everybody's really on top of their game. It is a wonderful time of the year to sell or buy a home the fourth and the first quarter. But maybe you did not to get your house sold in 2019. Maybe didn't work for you and you need a 2020 plan to get it done. That's what we're going to dig in today. And although the 2020 plan is delayed, it's not what you wanted to do. You still have that of a plan and so we're going to dig into that. The other thing too is still not too late if you want to get sold in 2019. It actually can still be done, but you do have to move pretty quick because, well, time is running out as they say so whether you have a want to get a plan together for 2020, which we're going to dig into or you are still looking at 2019, give us a call. You can go to 553-0796 or Jason Bramblett dot com. Shoot us a message, and one of my team members will reach out to you. We will get an appointment set up.

Keith: So let's say I want to sell my house and I'm looking, I'm kind of eyeing into 2020. How far out really should we be looking for a real estate agent ? How early should we reach out to you? Let's say I want to sell in Spring of next year.

Jason: With all things, planning is key, and in my opinion, the sooner we get started, the better. Really what we want to do is meet so we can give the owners an action plan and show them exactly what it is that we have planned and what we want to get done and get it in full swing so that you have a step-by-step action plan that is going to be part of what maybe you need to work on and get done.  One of the number one questions we get, Keith, every single day is could someone come out and help me figure out what I need to do to get ready to sell my house. Some of those things can happen very quickly. Your house is great. You just need to tidy up, clean up, declutter. Whatever. Some of them are new roof, HVAC shot, you got leaks. You got mildew, mold. Your foundation is cracked. There are all kinds of different things. We want to get into really just to get a list of actions. Together for both parties what we'll be doing and what you will be doing, and we don't want this to be a hurry up list. The worst thing in the world is to make a quick decision and then you are frantic running around trying to figure this out and you're under a time crunch when really there's no need to do that. I see so many people work themselves in a tizzy and it is just really if you just started a little earlier come up with a plan and then you have a an action list to follow, it removes all the frantic and the headache and the worry and all that stuff. It's just having a place to launch to get ready and a time frame, and now we have a common goal that we're working toward both parties. That's what we want. We want to have it to be fun but also to be stress-free, which is a good thing.

Keith: So what spring is, I don't know, maybe six months away something like that. You're telling me you'd like now is when we should be reaching out if we're if we already know we're going to be selling next year.

Jason:  I like to give word pictures. This is one thing my team is like okay, what's the word picture of the day? Well because it's what we relate to. We have got to remember in real estate. I tell the team every single day. Remember these people have either never done this –

Keith: Right.

Jason: - or they haven't done it in ten years and so they don't remember. Just like your wedding day, your kids first day of school. Think about this your college or your high school graduation. It was yesterday. It seems like last week. Time flies. It's a cool thing in that, here I am 22 years later in this business and it feels like I just started last week. That's how quick time goes. It does. It's amazing how to pinch myself and say really it's been 22 years selling real estate and that is amazing to me. That's how quick things go. Thousands of houses ago and yet it seems like it was just yesterday. We have owners looking out three to five years and asking us is it too early to meet, and no it is not the fact that spring, think about this spring 2020 or spring 2025. It doesn't matter to us. There is a plan in which we can walk you through because as your home ages different things change and different things that we need to do. There's really no need to wait actually. There's really just no need to put it off. If we come up with a great action plan, whether it be you want to sell in the spring of 2020 or down the road, it really doesn't make any difference. We're not going anywhere. We're going to be around and so if you have this plan, it's not too early. And so that it is a, what's the right word I'm looking for? Pitfall of real estate unfortunately because most people have the perception is I don't need to call the real estate agent until I'm ready to do something. And unfortunately, most real estate agents will put people off because of that. Well I can't do anything for you now, so why should I do anything at all? And that's real short-sighted. Now some of them are realizing because well, I don't even know if I'll be in business in five years. So why would I even want to talk to you now? I can assure you we will be in business in five years, and we want to talk to you. We are excited to talk to you. But's the difference between providing great service and just being an order taker essentially. Planning is key. No, it is not too early to get out there, and let’s sit down and talk.

Keith: Let's say okay, let's go into the assumption that I do want to sell my house. I'm thinking spring 2020 is kind of my goal. Clearly, if the house needs a roof or something that is going to take some time and you want to jump on that so that you've got that done before there. But outside of those big major kind of fix things, what are some of the other things that you can help somebody start preparing for if indeed they want to sell their house six months down the road?

Jason: Yeah key number one thing is we really want to get the goal down, and we want to get that goal on paper. Having a written plan as powerful. If you don't like that don't take it up with me, it goes back a long, long way. So way before Jason and as a matter of fact there's even some scripture to back that up if you really need the, if you feel like you need to get in tune with God,  as a matter of fact, he even wrote the Ten Commandments on paper or on tablet, I should say, in stone. And so yes, it is important. There is something powerful about writing it down. I think Napoleon Hill said a goal not written down is nothing more than a wish. Right? Because it rarely happens, but when you write it down it becomes kind of etched and it's got a date and it's memorable. We'll create an itemized punch list that really concentrates on what you need to accomplish over the next 90 or 120 days. And yes, it is 90 or 120 days until spring. It's really not that far.

Keith:  When you think about it, I guess you’re right.

Jason: It's going to be here like ready or not here I am.

Keith: It just doesn't seem like November because it seems like it was 97 only couple of weeks ago.

Jason:  This is true. This is true. Right. Yes, exactly. Just like just like you've been planned exciting events, think about this. Again, a word picture, a wedding, right, or the trip of a lifetime. You planned it. Okay, and so most owners elope when selling their house. They wake up and say yep. This is it. Let's tie the knot, and basically, they have really not put any preparation into it. And I think you all agree a wedding elopement and a well-planned out, thought out wedding are two entirely different events. It's not that the outcome could be the same. You're married, but the experience is a lot different. Right? Is there anything wrong with either? You can decide that. I don't want to get into those things. But here's what we know for sure. If you plan, you will always have a different result than if you fly by the seat of your pants. Unlike weddings, when you elope into real estate, it can be really expensive. It's actually the opposite of a wedding. Typically, a well-planned wedding is an expensive wedding.

Keith: Yes.

Jason: As opposed to the elopement. In real estate is just the opposite. If you elope it is actually can be very painful. It can cost you a lot of money. Of course, you got a hundred octane worth of stress because you made a quick decision, a rash decision, and the mistakes cost thousands. So you don't really save anything by eloping in real estate. We want you to really come up with a plan and we're going to help you do that. We're going to look at your goals because our timetable doesn't make any difference. It's your timetable that we need to look at. Then here's the thing. You can pace yourself, you can address the items in the issues as they come up, which is awesome and it will save you a tremendous amount of money and time, and of course time, we know, is the most valuable commodity that we have. So the first thing we're going to discuss is that goal. What is the purpose of the move, and this really will establish the action point now, here's the key and this is imperative. You need to have a Plan A and a Plan B. I see so many times that we meet with sellers that have had their homes on the market, they only had one plan, but that plan didn't work because –

Keith: Yeah, what happens?

Jason: Right because you're talking to us. So if your house was for sale and you took it off the market or it expired off the market, then you're into plan B by default. It wasn't your intention. It just happened. We actually are going to deal with walking you through what is plan A and what is Plan B, and we were actually going to have a specific plan for both and that way we're not sitting around shrugging her shoulders.  The sad thing is Plan A was exactly what they wanted to hear most people that are selling their homes they gave their spiel, if they will, the real estate agent, and that plan a sounded so good. But what really ended up happening is they eloped and they just jumped in fast, really with no plan or no Backup Plan B. And when that plan failed well, boom. It crashed. It burned, and now what? Now they're hurt. They are derailed, they're frustrated. We are going to look at Plan B because Plan B is smart, and it's also reality. What we need to look at is there is, Plan A is perfect world situation, but many times we are blending the two. Okay, maybe the house doesn't line up with the goal of Plan A working out, and we need to look at a hybrid here. But at least we're going to talk about it, and we're going to look at it. When the world blows up and Plan A doesn't work, you're not sitting there just scratching your head. We are going to walk you through that process. Educated decisions always, always, always trump just going out here and winging it, if you will. We have conversations like okay Jason, as you said, I see this happening. The reason that they see it happening is because we've set the proper expectations in our Plan A and Plan B and it's a clear path. They can actually see through the transition. Okay. This is what you said, and now I see the result, or I see this shifting or I see this happening. Put it this way. If you've ever hired someone without a plan normally you're asking this -- so now what? Right? All we talked about was Plan A and I don't see that Plan A is working out. So the question that the client has is now what? And if you're asking so now what, then there really was only a Plan A that was discussed. There was no backup plan. There were no expectations set as to if this perfect world situation in which you want doesn't happen then what. And that is a real conversation that you've got to have.  You've got to have that conversation to say okay, if the stars and moon align and everything's great then Plan A is all you need. But how often does that happen? And to not plan you are just winging it.

Keith: And one of the beauties of using a company like yours is, look, I'm sure that there are a lot of great real estate agents and they all have great intentions, but the fact that you guys have been doing this for so long, have sold so many homes, have been involved in this, when you're putting these plans together, it's very easy for you to see the likelihood of this happening and this happening and six and seven down the down the path. It's not that another real estate agent doesn't want to do that. They just don't have the same level of experience as you guys do, which is great and creating those plans.

Jason: The great thing about, there's I saw this, I think I can't remember who said this to me, said, was talking about experience. The great thing about experience is experience comes from poor judgment, right?

Keith: You messed it up the first time.

Jason: You messed it up the first time so now what to do. Right? Having witnessed that for 20-something years and listening to the stories of our clients that come to us and share the concerns and issues and frustrations that they have had when they had a Plan A and it didn't work out. It really doesn't take rocket science to sit down and go wow, okay, well, here's what we've got to do. We've got to look at every option. A Plan A, a Plan B. Even if and we certainly come up with the best plan first, but as things transition, and there are some things that happen that are outside of your control, and you need to know that as well. Like maybe your neighbors lose their mind and that can affect the sale of your home.

Keith:  Sure.

Jason: There are certain neighborhoods in Greensboro that sell differently than others. And Winston-Salem is the same way, and High Point is the same way. Sometimes it is what is happening around you. It has nothing to do with you, but it has everything to do with you. And of course, now with as fast as the word and media travels, what happened two or three blocks over sometimes can affect you just as much. Or maybe even something that happened in the school and that school affects how many neighborhoods and systems and areas. There are a lot of different things that we can look at. We look at all the what-ifs, and we come up with a plan for every single what if there is so that you're never coming to me and saying so what do we do now? You already know the answer. We just go to the playbook.

Keith:  Makes sense.

Jason: Here is what has happened, and now here's how we transition. So we're going to do this. We'll take a quick timeout. We're going to go pay some bills and we'll be back in just a minute. You're listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

And we're back. You're listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. So we were talking before the break about having a plan, and Keith, it is so important. Here's what I tell my team as well. No plan is still a plan. Right? It's a bad one. It's just like when we talk about, we're to talk to him about sales numbers and the different things and zero, it is still a number.

Keith: Yeah, it is not a good one.

Jason: It's not a good one. It's not one you want to see on the board, but it is still a number it is. So having a plan is crucial.

Keith: All right. We've got Plan A. We've got a back-up plan should A not quite go as well as we had hoped. Now what?

Jason: Yeah. Again, back to my word picture because it is radio and you just well, sometimes you got to paint a picture.

Keith: It is what we do every day.

Jason: You have to show the canvas, right? In my prior world, I was a chef, and so every great chef has learned to prepare. If you watch the cooking shows, you'll notice that they have everything that they need in front of them. I won't say right but we call it mise-en-place. Right? You got your mess in its place. Okay, and so you'll notice that on the shows that cooking shows that are like timed race challenges, they don't have any ingredients in front of them. Right? They're running all over the kitchen to get whatever they need to get. Right? It's chaos and it is crazy. That's the best example I can give you. If you don't have your recipe right, then the outcome is never going to be what you want. So if I gather my recipe and everything I want to make beef wellington, and I have all the right ingredients in all the right places, as I prepare that dish, as I go through the recipe, there is absolutely no chance in the world my beef wellington is going to come out Chicken a La King. It just won't happen. Right? Some of you just throw everything in the pot and what do we call that? We call it potluck. Well, there's not much lucky about that sometimes.

Keith: It doesn't sound like it.

Jason: In other places they call it schlopp. Right? You just threw it all in there and it's just whatever, and it looks weird. We'll put it on top of rice. How about that? If I have the recipe to sell your home and that starts with knowing what your goals are and what the purpose of the transition is. That purpose of the transition may be Jason I just got transferred, and on this date, I have to be in Tennessee. It's not a want. It's a must. It's going to happen. What I really don't want is to have this home lingering behind me for XYZ amount of time. That is a specific plan in which we need to come up with for that owner. And we have the step-by-step recipe to do that. It may be that I have a little more time. There's urgency, but it's not as urgent as I've got a report somewhere by a certain time. However, maybe by XYZ the end of May I do want to be moved to Florida or whatever the case may be. Some of you have gone ahead and made the move. And now what you have left in North Carolina is this boat anchor of a house that is sucking the life out of your monthly budget because you're making two payments. I would presume that wherever you moved to the other state you'd probably didn't move underneath the overpass and so there's a cost to where you are. Now there's a double expense. Now I'm paying my mortgage in North Carolina, and I have my new rent or mortgage at wherever I am, and it in it's hurting. Every single month I write that check there's pain involved. I need that pain to go away. I need that pain to go away sooner than later because yeah, I love Dave Ramsey. Beans and rice and rice and beans, but I'd like to have a choice in the matter.

Keith: You might be living under that overpass if you don't get rid of that.

Jason: This is true. The situation I know definitely can be difficult for all different types of situations. Sometimes it can be very simple, but not having to plan really is what separates a professional from the novice, and when you don't have a plan that's where things start to really go off the rails. We have a saying at our office - luxury is an experience, not a price point. If you are one of those owners and you have a home priced somewhere in that 250-500-thousand dollar range in the Triad area, we would love to talk with you and come up with our Plan A and a Plan B for you to walk you through that. You can go to Jason Bramblett dot com to get more information or call our office at 553-0796. That's 553-0796. Everyone have a fantastic weekend. We'll look forward to making your plans ready to go for 2020. We'll see you next week.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: Good morning and welcome to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Hope everyone is having a fantastic Saturday. A great weekend planned I am sure, and of course, we've got excellent and awesome things to do right here in October all over the Triad. Whatever it may be that you have got going on, festivals, fairs, Church outings. You've got all kinds of great stuff happening. We are going to dig into well all things real estate here in just a few minutes. You may be getting planned and ready and started and looking down the road toward the holidays, and one of the planning activities you might have is thinking about getting your house ready to sell. So we're going to talk about what you could do now, but also digging into plans for the spring. There's no better time to get ready for the spring then now. It is, believe it or not, in the next few weeks, if you put your house under contract you actually will be closing in 2020. How crazy is that? It doesn't even seem possible, but it is right around the corner. Sixty-something days to the big man in the red sleigh showing up. It's going to be all kinds of good times and good fun. Today we're going to continue with our series on getting your offer accepted, and for our owners out there, how to choose the right offer. If you got a selection and multiple-offer situation, which one do you choose? Joining me in studio, Mr. Keith is here, doing what he does, making me sound good, and bringing the great questions. Good morning, sir.

Keith: That is not hard. I like this topic because my wife and I, we are about six weeks now into our new home, and an apparently we picked the, I don't know if it's the right house or if it is the wrong house because every time we bid in a house, it was us and for other people.  So if you're not us, if you're the first with the house, how do you deal with it? If it's not just the highest offer what is important>

Jason: Well, it is always who can get across the finish line for sure. It would seem on the surface that the highest offer certainly would be the obvious choice. Sometimes we get blinded by that number and so that's really what we work with our sellers. Really, there's many, many reasons why somebody is selling a home, but I will tell you and in 22 years of selling real estate, I rarely see price as really the leading indicator. Most people don't call us and say hey I know I can get the most, the highest price. I want to sell.  No, it's never that actually. It's always something different. We get people calling us every single day just like clockwork to say, hey, here's the reason why. Usually prices are not even close. It actually is not even in top three. Owners will basically, hey we've got a problem. We need to sell the house to achieve this goal. We've got to relocate. That's a big one that we deal with all the time. I got to be somewhere. I got to be in Texas by December 10th because I got a new job and that new job is not waiting on you. It's going to happen, and you need to be with the one to get there. We have my spouse passed away. Now, it's something we do here. It is one thing that does happen in this world and they need to downsize. They need to relocate. The house is empty, and the kids are gone, and we got all this extra house that we are not needing. We don't need to heat and cool it. We're ready to downsize. It is the empty nester syndrome. I lost my job. That's a big one.

Keith:  That is a tough one.

Jason I lost my job, and I need help –

Keith:  It happens.

Jason:  -- and that's a crisis. When we've got to move quick. The other downside to that is sometimes that's a twofer.  I lost my, and I'm getting a divorce. Sometimes it can be a twofer in that one. But divorce is something that does happen, and we have to help the spouses through those situations. Positive side is we have outgrown the house. We've had a couple babies. Everything is shrinking. I'm convinced that each kid needs about a thousand square feet for the debris that they bring into the life. It is unbelievable, especially with grandparents.

Keith: Listen, I know my daughter needs at least. My daughter does not travel or live lightly. I will tell you. She is 10 and she's all over. She's taking the whole house.

Jason: Yeah, it's amazing. It's like they've looked at the four walls of the room and they're like, nope, not enough.

Keith: That happened to us? I swear.

Jason: Yeah, it is amazing. You throw a couple kids in there and man.  How about this? I got a promotion. Hey, that's excellent. I got hey, I need a bigger house, bigger, better things. I got a promotion. Things are, as they say, we are a moving on up and they want to do that. The kids are going to another school and we need to be closer. We are tired of the commute. We are tired of driving back and forth. We are retired now, and we want to downsize so that we can travel. We want to see the world. These are the reasons that I hear almost every single day, and really not one of them has anything to do with the price of the house. It all has to do about the pleasure or the pain that we're seeking in what we are wanting to move forward in our life.  We need to downsize. We need to relocate. We need to take advantage of the job opportunity. So when we are looking at this multiple offer situations really it's the one that solves this goal that really and also has the highest surety of going through is the one that we want to look at. It's not just price. It is so easy to become blinded by that price. But price really never actually solves any of those problems.  The only thing that solves any of those problems is the house selling and that is a key thing. So most offers, it's interesting. Most of the time when you're in a multiple offer situation it is just a few thousand dollars typically at the end of the day that is really separating these offers We are not talking about million-dollar swags here. We're not even talking about $10,000 swags. Sometimes we're talking to hundreds, four, five, six. hundred dollars. But typically, it's a few thousand bucks.  Put it in perspective. In today's money, think about this. Do you really think like, look at some of the really wealthy people in the world. I'm pretty confident to say that Warren Buffett didn't go oh man. Hey Keith, I got $2,000 more from my house. So cha-ching, I'm a billionaire, right?  Bill Gates didn't reach his level of wealth because well, let's face it didn't get because of that $2,600 more that he may have got. That didn't get him to the next level and sometimes we get short-sighted on that. We look at the entire offer in comparison with your goal and the reason that you are selling, and sometimes it is the highest offer that is the best. But I do find most of the time it is not. It is not necessarily the highest in price. This is where having a great real estate agent that can really dig in and do the due diligence that can help you find the best one. This is really where their weight is worth the gold that you pay in the fact that yeah, they could bring you options and options is always a good thing. Three offers is better than one typically. Now, sometimes it's one offer and it just makes sense or it's the one offer and it's the only one you have to deal with. But typically, in today's world of multiple offers, the best real estate that we have out  is simply just one that is going to stick and it's going to help you reach your goal. And that's the key. That's the reason you're selling is to reach that goal, whatever that may be for your family..

Keith: So these are all kind of generalities. Can you give us a specific example, maybe walk us through the process of making a good decision on this?

Jason: Absolutely. I will give you an example John and John and Betty we will say.  Name protect the innocent or is it the guilty. Maybe it is the guilty. I don't remember as well. Probably both. Yeah. But they did have a house in Oak Ridge, and they needed to sell. And the reason in my eyes, they were building a home at the coast and really what they were looking at was to get it sold and the timing to be right and everything was, they had a plan. They had a Plan A. Well Plan A didn't work because they had their house on the market for six months. They had no offers and just a very few showings. Their agent was really only focused on one thing according to them and which was lowering the price. Every single time that they went to talk about a game plan, what they could do different, how we're going to get people through the house, how are we going to get this sold in time? It always came back to lower the price, lower the price. Just as a side note lowering the price is not a marketing plan. That's you're chasing down something which is never a good place to be. So this was extremely frustrating for them.  You've hired this person to get their advice the agent assured them that the price was right, and they were going to bring a lot of people to the house and they would get it sold in no time. Well, no time was six months, and nothing had still happened. They felt basically that they were trapped. What they really fell into was the trap of they got their listing bought. Some of you don't know what that means but that's real estate slang for basically that agent had told them whatever they wanted to hear in order to get their sign in the yard to get the listing. Unfortunately, this happens way too often. Really what happened is the market spoke back and said no and so at the end of the day unless that lets the agent is writing the check for the house, they're really not guaranteeing you anything. The market is going to really dictate that. A good agent is able to look at the market indicators and tell you what it is saying. It's going to forecast that out. There really was no plan at all other than to get the listing, which job accomplished. The problem was is it didn't do anything. It did not help them get out there. So basically, they slam the sign in the yard. They put a bunch of free advertising out there that they you get when you just stick a home in our multiple listing service and nothing else was done. Now even in a hot market, you still have to be very proactive in pushing out your message. If you just sign up for what's free, then you're just being reactive. You're just dealing with whatever comes at you. That's not a great offense. That's not a great offense at all. You want to really be proactive there. As a matter of fact that system, by doing that, it actually only works about 30% of the time, which means a 70% failure rate. You can you can check with any real estate agent the in the area and that they can pull the multiple listing stats, and they will be able to show you that that system just doesn't not work. You cannot just stick a sign in there and hope that everything is going to go away is going to happen. So what happens with old John and Betty? Well, they see the fact that well that beach house may be slipping away from them, and they are getting very frustrated and they want to get to the coast because the house is almost done, yet not happening. They agreed to hire us and what was great about that is we actually did get that house sold. Help them get onto the coast. But here's what we were able to do. We were able to produce multiple offers in just a couple weeks. And how we're able to do that is because we are aggressive in pushing out that message instead of being reactive, very proactive. When you take a proactive stance you control what is coming back to you as opposed to just waiting and seeing what is going to happen, you go out and make something happen. And so you have some control that. Here's the thing. We got the offers in. What happened? Like most folks, John went straight to price. Hey biggest number wins, right? It's just almost human nature.

Keith: Yeah.

Jason: It is and as a matter of fact, his exact words were obviously we're going to go with this one. It's the highest. Not so much. What we had to do was we had to work through each one and so here's where the diligence of a good agent pays off. We reached out to each one of the banks and then spoke with the lenders.  Now not every lender’s qualifications or their due diligence to issue a letter is the same that says you're approved. What we did is we went through this due diligence process and what we found out was two of the offers really the mortgage company really hadn't done their homework. Basically, they had a conversation and the people said that they could do this, and based on that information, they whipped out a letter. Problem is nobody verified anything.

Keith: Oops.

Jason: The other two offers that we had, and we spoke with those the banks there, the lenders there, they actually went a step further. So not only did they get the information, they verified the information. They pulled the credit. Everything was in a line. And in this case that was not the highest offer. What we looked at is if any of these were going to be to the finish line, which one is it going to be? Which one of the four? Well two were dismissed really quick because really no due diligence had been done. They were going to basically do their due diligence while they had the house taken off the market. But what if the answer would have been no or something different three weeks down the road? Doesn't help the seller at all, right? And so we wanted someone that had, we did not want to be that learning curve. What we did is we went with one of the other two offers, and it was very clear that the bank had vetted out the people properly and that is all part of what your professional real estate agent needs to be doing. We want to have conversations with every single lender that the buyers are making an offer on the house so that we can verify and vet these things out. In this case, on the surface, the highest offer looked like it was the best but actually it wasn't anything. It was really just paper because nothing had been verified. Essentially, they had a conversation, and I'm sure went something like this. Keith, if you're kind of sort of something like this telling the truth. We're good.

Keith: That's interesting because, I won't name the bank, but when we went through trying to get pre-approved, we went through about 10 days, two weeks of we need this, I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this, and constantly back and forth with our banker and honestly, I just assumed that was law or what banks did. I didn't realize that there were different policies from one lender to another lender as too how the scrutiny of how they look at your qualifications.

Jason: Yeah. So the qualifications are pretty much the same once you get to hey, we are going to give you money, but getting it started, not the same. There are some that will just have a simple, they operated on everybody tells the truth.

Keith: I wish that were true.

Jason: Yes, of course, they do. Sometimes it works out just perfectly. Everything is exactly like what the people said and there is no issue. And sometimes that is a relationship between the bank and the person that's borrowing the money. I find with real estate you got to realize people have either never done this or they haven't done in 10 years. When you don't borrow money at this level for a decade, what kind of relationship could you actually have? We find more so than not most buyers don't have that relationship. But because we were able to create the options for the owner that is the key. They were able to choose the best offer that got them to the coast and that is the key thing. So we're going to do this. We're going to take a quick timeout. If you'd like to head to the coast or the mountains or whatever it is, or if you're just stuck and tired of not seeing the results you need, get in touch with our office at 553-0796. Jason Bramblett dot com, and we'll be back in just a few minutes.

And welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. We both were digging into multiple offers how to get that accepted, how to just really dig down and find out which is the best offer and what we have found is the best offer that is the offer that sticks that will help you achieve the goal and not necessarily the highest price every single time.

Keith: I'm willing to bet that you could tell some very interesting stories. Of course, with all the names and all the particulars covered up, but you've probably seen just about every scenario, every pitfall, everything that can go right or wrong with an offer. You've probably seen things I can't even imagine. So what are some additional concerns outside of that that you have when multiple offers on the table?

Jason: I can assure you of 22 years of being in people's homes, I have seen things in which nobody's eyes should see. Yeah for sure.

Keith: I saw a few and I only looked at 7 homes. I can only imagine.

Jason: Right.  And you actually were on the edited version of the of the triangle. Hopefully you were. Let's look at scenarios are the best. All I can give you is real-life stuff that we've dealt with. What if the highest offer that you had actually was a well-qualified buyer? And in this case the offer was above asking price. Now, we have to look at the probability of the house appraising for that amount. So we've got a very well vetted out buyer. They are excellently qualified. We've tested everything, but they've offered above asking price for the house. What if it didn't appraise? Banks are set up this way. They're going to loan you money on one of two scenarios -  the purchase price or the appraised price, whichever is the least of the two. If you agreed to pay 310 and the house only appraised for 300, where's the $10,000 coming from? There are three options that we deal with in that, and one is the buyer can actually pay the difference out of pocket. So that buyer could bring an additional $10,000 to the closing, and everything moves forward just fine. The seller could actually lower the price $10,000, or number three the deal falls apart and the house goes back on the market. Obviously, that's not a great plan. If you actually looked in our multiple listing service every day, you'd see homes going back on the market, and most of the time it's not anything other than the wrong offer was chosen. Some real estate agents, I should say, will blame oh well didn't praise. Well, yeah, but how many options did you have? Did anybody vet out the options or did you just go with the highest price and it didn't work out. Here's the thing. The seller got sucked into the price. And essentially what I find is a lot of times the agent didn't do their due diligence. It really shouldn't be any surprise for a professional real estate agent if the house is not going to appraise, you have the visibility to see that. Of everybody that is surprised, it should be the agent that is the least surprised that out of everyone because you have so much data at your control. That's where you can give good quality, sound advice there. The downside is money's cheap to borrow and just because it's cheap to borrow and you're willing to have an extra $60 a month on your payment doesn't mean the bank's going to sign up for the extra $10,000. Right? Because rates are so low.  Really $10,000 cost you nothing, but $10,000 is still $10,000, and that's how the bank is looking at it. They're not looking at $60 a month. That's what you're looking at. The little number. They're looking at the big number meaning how far upside down are we or could potentially be on this house if things go sideways? We just had this situation in Winston-Salem. We've got two offers very, very quickly on the house. Both of them above asking price, and when we vetted out the offers and actually spoke with the lenders, what we discovered is neither buyer could even pay a dollar more than the appraisal or the asking price, whichever was the least of the two. So that became an issue. We ended up actually declining both offers, and both offers were for more than asking price. Some people would say, well you're crazy, but they weren't going to stick, and there was no way that it was going to happen. We had so much demand on that on the house. There was no sense in setting up ourselves to fail. So in the next 48 hours, we actually got two more offers and one of those offers was excellent. Well, well qualified buyer and the difference was they had the capital to be able to pay the difference if that house did not appraise for the purchase price, and that made all the difference in the world for the seller. They were able to get the most money from the house with the buyer that could give them the most surety that it was going to go through.

Keith: Makes sense.

Jason: That is just patience and experience and taking the time to vet all those things out. So if you are struggling or have struggled to get your home sold, get in touch with us. It's Jason Bramblett Real Estate. You can reach us at 553-0796 or go to Jason Bramblett dot com.  Everybody have a great weekend. We look forward to seeing you back here next week right here at 9 a.m.

Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show Podcast 

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Jason: Good morning, Triad. You are listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Hope everyone is doing great today. Enjoying the, well, fine weather we've had least for the past week. The temperature has finally taken that toll. We've dipped down just a little bit and thank goodness. We finally got a little bit of rain it is. Always has been way, way, way overdue for sure. So today we're going to be digging into multiple offers and how to exactly get that accepted if you're a buyer and how to keep that together if you are on an owner on the selling side, and what you may do to make your offer stand out, especially when that pile of offers can be somewhat deep, if you will, and really just coming up with a win-win situation in which you can push to the top, or if you're the seller how we can get on common ground and make this deal go through. Sellers need to be careful out there. There's lots of temptation just to go with what appears to be the highest price, and we are going to talk about why maybe the highest price may not be the best offer. And then home buyers, same kind of situation. You have got to be ready because it is a competitive market. I had an agent earlier tell me on one of our properties that her people didn't want to get in a bidding war, and I thought well right now, if they're in this price ranges are probably not going to be buying a house because, not necessarily, it's a bidding war but it is a war to get your offer accepted. So we're going to throw some stuff out there to see if we can help you get through the minutiae of real estate in the Triad. Joining me in studio is Keith doing all the things that he does making me sound awesome, right?

Keith:  I don't do a whole lot.

Jason: Yeah. Well you do more than you think it is. It is much appreciated. That is for sure.

Keith:  No problem. This is a great topic. I'll be honest with you. I want to make sure that we didn't screw it up. I'm going to assume we didn't because we used you guys.  I will be honest. So we just bought a house here a couple of months ago, and I'll be the first to tell you that the houses is that we identified that would work for our family sometimes they would be on the market for a day, two days. We make an offer, and we be the third offer in. There was not a home that we made an offer on that there weren't multiple offers on. So outside of obviously just pay more money, what can you do to make your offer stand out when you're looking at a house that four other people want?

Jason: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and I'd say it's anywhere between four to ten at this given time. We just had a house that we put on the market last week, and we had 33 people through that home in two days saying. So you have got 32 people out there that are disappointed.

Keith: Right.

Jason:  Right. Now, the only thing I'm thinking is wow. I wish I could build 32 of these houses, right, because obviously there's a demand for it and this is this is a tough thing in which we're dealing with. But in certain price ranges here in the Triad, it is tough. The first place you really need to look is really with the agent you hire is key, I think. One of the things that we train on every week is really how to overcome these objections, but really the big thing is how you really need to communicate. Communication in these multiple offer situations is huge. I'm still amazed at the number of agents that we deal with that want to text and negotiate and not just have a verbal conversation.

Keith: It is so impersonal.

Jason: It is and it's not like we're selling coffee.  It is a it's a big deal.  This is a this is a huge purchase for our clients or it's a huge asset that we're selling, and I think it just needs a little more, just a little more enthusiasm the other than a text message.

Keith: Well, you can gauge just based on what the other agent, how they react, you can gauge where you're at and you can also potentially overcome an objection immediately before he has a back and forth with someone else.

Jason:  Absolutely. Absolutely and so, text message, it does it does have a its place. But really this is one of the biggest decisions most people are making in, in my opinion, you just text because you're lazy. You really need to well, I don't know. There's really just no other word for it. To me, it's just being lazy, and you really need to get out there. There is a time when texting is okay, maybe if you're verifying something, but not through negotiation. Communication is really the key to the offer on both parties on both sides. So, you need to pick an agent that is going to pick up the phone and talk with you, and really I would say the way in which they're communicating with you is probably the way in which they're going to communicate with the other side. We get into this adversarial, like the seller is the enemy or the buyer is the enemy, and that's not the case. It's got to be a mutual meeting of the minds to make these things happen. It is just interesting to see how things have changed since this whole world of tech. Just this week, I've got somebody that I actually am personally helping buy a home. Not something I do all the time, but in this case, it was a personal friend. They reached out to me, and so I called the other agent and she was just like wow you called. She's had a lot of activity, but everybody is emailed or texted. I said, yeah, I just wanted to have a conversation and what I wanted to learn is what is what is the best way to set up this offer, so it is mutually beneficial to really all parties? She's like we had 20 people look at this house and nobody has called, and I thought man that is, it's kind of its kind of sad for our industry really. But why was I calling? I wanted information and I wanted it more than just through obviously a text or an email. I really wanted to hear what are the seller’s plans? We have this idea that people put their house on the market and they want the most money in the shortest amount of time. That is true sometimes, but that doesn't work perfectly for every single person, situation. What I wanted to hear is what would be the best offer based upon what the seller needed. Just because the seller put the house on the market doesn't mean they can be out in two weeks or 30 days or sometimes even 45 days.  What is it that we could do to figure out what's the best timeline and that's what she shared with me. She said look here's what's going on, and actually in this particular case a fast closing really wasn't going to benefit the seller at all. As a matter of fact, he would make him have to react and kind of increases his tension through this process to really have to move fast. And so, the idea of well let's give them a really good offer in a short timeline actually would have been a detriment, but we would have never known that had I just picked up the phone and asked the question. What would work out the best? Now we can match our offer and our timeline based upon what the goal is that the seller has creating a really good situation for both parties. It would give my folks more time and obviously gives the seller more time. I realize that not every situation just works out the way. I realize some people got to be in the house tomorrow because well, they got a job transfer. Maybe they had another the house under contract already, and the deal fell through and now their timeline is even shorter. So there are certain situations where okay, maybe speed is the key, but having that conversation. Of course, if speed is the key then you really probably need to look at houses that are vacant. Right? Because obviously nobody's living there. You can move in tomorrow more than likely as far as the owner is concerned. So you need to match the type of property up with the situation. If you go into a home and you can tell they have been there for 35 years. It is packed to the gills with every kind of knick knack under the sun, for you to deliver an offer and asking to be out in 15 days probably is not going to be realistic for somebody packing that much debris with them. Right?

Keith:  It is going to be tough for the seller

Jason: It is definitely going to be tough. We really just want to find out what the best offer is going to be for that seller. How can we do that? Through having a great communication and there's a lot of other terms in real estate other than just price. I know that's something that people concentrate on, but we have sold a lot of homes and I've seen our owners take offers that were less money because other terms fit their needs more so than the price. They were willing to actually take less money because maybe these people would wait 90 days to close. All those things are up in the air and all those things can be to the benefit of one party or the other.

Keith: I am not going to lie. I hear what you're saying. It is a little counterintuitive. I always would have figured the highest offer was going to, more often than not, seventy, eighty percent of the time, be the one that's selected. But obviously we're going to communicate well because that's going to be really important. But outside of that, what can we do to make our offer stand out?

Jason: The key thing I think is is really time is is always critical unless the house is vacant. But we really got to find what's the purpose for the move.   That is a key thing. Why is the person moving? Buyer and seller. What is the purpose of that? Is it something that is let's just say somebody's downsizing and they have been there for 35 years. It's going to be difficult for them to, after 35 years, to say goodbye to the house. I can assure. At 35 years, they are emotionally 100% bought into this property. It's going to be a tough for them to probably downsize into something else. We tend to collect a lot of stuff. The longer we stay in a property the more we jam it full of things. Right? We've looked at situations where the owners downsizing so much that they're only taking like 20 percent of the furniture with them. They went ahead and put the house on the market and now the big stumbling block for them is holy cow, how am I going to get rid of all this stuff in x amount of days. We create this kind of hypersensitive situation where now they feel like they're under the gun to do anything because well, their whole entire world is changing it after 35 years. But by talking to the agent, we can actually work out a way in which maybe we can remove that stress and give them more time to get rid of everything, give them more time to close. We've had a situation where we got an offer accepted that I know for sure was not the highest offer, but the buyer just said look, you take whatever you want. You just leave the rest for us to deal with and basically will take the burden off of you. Well, that was such a huge relief to that seller and the convenience of the buyer was going to deal with it that they took less money for the home and the simple fact that they didn't have to fret or worry or get all in a tizzy of attempting to get rid of their stuff. You would think oh, that's not that big a deal. Believe it or not, a lot of the places you make donations to these days, they get pretty picky. They won't just come take anything.

Keith:  Take it all.

Jason:  Yeah, right and, yeah, I guess in certain areas you could put it out on the curb. That's true. But you got to remember these are people's personal items that they've kept for 20 and 30 years. They don't consider them trash. Even though you met you may. You may not consider it of much value. They kept it all those years for a reason, right, as personal attachment. And so it's tough to say goodbye to some of that stuff and the fact you're making that life change. So we have partnered with some great ministries throughout the Triad that can come in and help out. But in this situation, the buyer just said I will remove this burden from you. I will take the burden of getting rid of whatever and maybe they wanted some of the stuff. But whatever they didn't want, they took it on themselves to get rid of it and that was enough to push their offer to the top. But that never would have happened without great communication and having a conversation. Sometimes it's just as simple as getting on the phone talking to the other side. It doesn't have to be this adversarial situation. I think we watch too much of that HGTV, and it's always you pay the most in the shortest amount of time. But we got to realize that that is TV. It's not reality, and so you've got to look at all those things. Most owners are stressed about the move just as much as the buyers are, but if you can work through your offer and figure out what the stress points are and blend into your offer a way in which to remove some of that stress from the seller, it's gold for everybody. But that's really got to be done verbally. It needs to be an open dialect, open communication. And so, obviously this radio show would be a lot less informative and fun if I just text out the message. Right?

Keith: Well but see that's such a great example because that's a really creative solution and that may only be the case for one out of a hundred different people, but you're never going to learn that through a text message. You're not going to learn that through an email. If you don't have an honest one on one conversation, you're never going to be able to come with a creative solution like that.

Jason: Well, and how many times have we all, I'm sure, have not only received an email in a completely different tone in which the sender intended it. Right? Because we read it in the mood and or attitude that we are having at that particular moment. Likewise, I am sure we have sent emails out in which we did not mean anything by it whatsoever. Like here's some information for you, and then the response we get back does not match the really the attitude that we had at all about sending the email. They read something 100% totally different into that.

Keith: And then you're going to have a phone conversation to explain the text message and email.

Jason: Hopefully you do. Hopefully you do. Hopefully it doesn't escalate into hey, what are you talking about? I didn't mean this or this and this but oh, by the way, since you have this attitude with me –

Keith: Because you went there.

Jason:  Here is a little bit to you. We see it time and time again. It's all over the Internet. Hey, if you need an acid test for this just go to Facebook, right? You see these banterings of things on social media and that's the missing piece. I was a contract chef for many years, but a hundred years ago I should say, but I had a military account. I was chef at an Officers Club and even back then I was like, wow, one of the biggest hindrances I saw within the military and communication was everything had to be a written memorandum. The problem was is that memorandum came out sometimes to be like a threat and it wasn't the intention at all, but nobody would just pick up the phone and talk. Everything had to be official written letter. You think that would be oh really good communication, but no, it actually ended up with more strife, more issues, more problems that it created because just let's just talk. That whole face-to-face meeting. I guess, love or hate him, but this is one thing that I guess Dick Cheney got right. Right? He never did anything in writing. It was always face to face. Now, he may have doe it for a totally different reason, but the bottom line is he understood the value of that communication. All right. So while we are giving you some information to ponder, we're going to take a quick timeout. Go pay some bills. Think about those messages that you send out. I think this is a real live scenario that pretty much everybody can dig into and understand. But we're going to come back and make sure that you make good decisions going forward and will help you get the right offer presented We will be right back in just a few minutes. You're listening to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show.

And welcome back to the Jason Bramblett Real Estate Show. Before the break, we were talking about communication. And obviously I'm stumbling over my words, so I'm not communicating well. Getting away from text, getting away from email when you're negotiating a real estate offer and contract, verbal communication is key, and we just want to give you some tips and some tricks and some ideas. It is really not tricks. It's just good old-fashioned let's just talk about it. That is it. That's all we want to do.

Keith: Well, here is the question though. Let's be honest. There are a million agents out there, and a lot of people do a lot of good work. Love you guys. But a lot of people do a lot of good work. How do you pick out an agent that's going to find that important to do those things for you?

Jason:  Absolutely. There are 1.3 million of them to be honest with you. There is a lot. There is a lot and so communication is key. And really the test I think you've got to look at is how does the agent communicate with you?   Can you relate to them? Do they understand your situation? Do they understand your goals? Or do they just simply it's just these quick one line texts and or emails and that's where, what I find is  the canned email, the canned text communication, Typically, if they're communicating with you, their client, that way, then they're certainly probably going to communicate with the other side or the other party, whether it be seller or buyer. It is just a really good indication of how they're going to negotiate. So you want to look at whether someone has good communication skills, but also the person that really just asks the right questions that digs in and finds out yes, you want to buy a house, but what is really the purpose of the house? Because a house is just shelter, right? But what are the other pieces? Well, really, what's the most important to me is I want to be less than 30 minutes to whatever. Really what is the most important for me and my family is that we are in this school district is a number one. Actually, what I find is most of time the house is really number 2, 3, 4, or 5 on the list of things that someone's trying to accomplish in their move. All these other things actually really move to the top of the list and we're really kind of looking just for the best house option that helps them reach the other goals. But you will never know that unless you ask the right questions. And so yes, we're in the real estate business. We sell homes, but really what we do is we solve the problems that are in front of the house. The house really becomes the anchor point of solving the other issues, but you've got to ask the right questions to know that.

Keith: So let's flip the script a little bit. Let's say I'm selling a house and I'm one of these lucky people have got that right price range, just this house that everybody loves, and now I got 15 offers. Now what?

Jason:  When you ring the doorbell and it goes cha-ching.

Keith:  Careful what you wish for.

Jason: Yeah, right. Exactly. And so, most sellers go straight to the price and price obviously, it's important. Psychologically, there's nobody out here that goes wow, could I hire you to sell my house for as low of price as possible? Right? It doesn't exist. It doesn't happen. It's always it's always most is typically key. But then again, it goes back to is most best? So this is something we work on every single week in the office. And I basically walked the team through this. Just because you get above your asking price doesn't really mean that everybody's going to agree with that number like the bank, which is, you have got to realize 90% of the homes that are purchased in America used a loan. They aren't paying cash. Only about 10% of the transactions are cash. So if there's another party in here involved the bank, and they say hey, well, it's fine that you and Mr. Buyer, Mr. Seller, you agreed to this. However, we've done our own research. We've had an appraisal done, and we find that our number is this, which is lower than what the two of you agreed upon. Right? Why is that a big deal? Well, it's a huge deal for the seller because if you get blinded by this big top number of price, it does not mean it is going stick. We run into this situation right now in this multiple offer situation where yeah, to pay $10,000 more in price, it's only 50 60, $70 or more per month in payment. It's $10,000 to the bank.

Keith: Right.

Jason: Big number. So it's a little number for you, but it's a big number for the bank. That is why they have these provisions set up in there. So good communication is key, but we also need to make sure that we're choosing the right information we're going on. If you want to get more information about how to properly buy and or sell a home you can go to Jason Bramblett dot com, and we will be happy to get you that information. You give us a call at the office 553-0796 and we'll see you back here next week.