Keys & Credit
The no-fluff real estate and mortgage podcast that helps you make smarter moves with confidence.
Hosted by Realtor Bill Jerikovsky and Mortgage Lender Barb Miller, this show cuts through the jargon and industry hype to bring you honest, practical insights on buying, selling, and financing homes. Whether you're a first-time buyer, seasoned investor, or just trying to decode your credit score—Bill and Barb keep it real with bite-sized episodes.
💡 Real answers. 🙅♂️ No sales pitches. 🏡 Just straight talk on homes, loans, and everything in between.
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Barb Miller NMLS ID: 329237
Guaranteed Rate, Inc. dba Rate, NMLS #2611
Bill Jerikovsky RE/MAX RESULTS
This Podcast is edited and produced by Kody Hughes - Focal Point Media
FocalPointKody@gmail.com - 320-224-9828
Keys & Credit
The Hidden Value of Open Houses: Seller Benefits and Buyer Opportunities
Real estate open houses have earned a questionable reputation in recent years, with many wondering if they're just an outdated tradition or actually worth the effort. Bill and Barb tackle this question head-on, revealing how open houses serve as crucial market feedback mechanisms that can save sellers months of frustration.
"When people walk into the house, I can hear straight from the market – the market is the people," Bill explains, describing his "instant open" strategy that gives sellers immediate feedback on pricing, presentation, and positioning. Rather than waiting weeks to adjust course, this approach allows for nimble responses to market reactions within days of listing.
The duo doesn't shy away from industry criticisms either, particularly the practice of agent substitution at open houses. When sellers hire a specific agent only to have a different team member host their open house, it creates a knowledge gap that can cost real opportunities. As Bill bluntly puts it, "That's one of the shittiest things an agent or team can do." They offer practical advice on what questions to ask when interviewing listing agents to avoid this common pitfall.
Beyond traditional open houses, we explore the power of broker opens – targeted events that multiply a property's exposure exponentially by showcasing it to agents representing numerous potential buyers. This insider strategy can effectively market your home to hundreds of buyers through a single well-executed event.
For buyers, open houses offer advantages too: immediate access to financing information (especially when lenders like Barb attend), opportunities to view properties without scheduling formal appointments, and a pressure-free environment to envision themselves in the space. The hosts share how these events often serve as the first battlefield in negotiations, with casual conversations revealing motivations and preferences that become powerful leverage later.
Whether you're a first-time home seller, an experienced investor, or simply curious about real estate dynamics, this episode offers valuable insights that challenge conventional wisdom about open houses. Subscribe to Keys and Credit for more straight-talking, no-fluff conversations about navigating today's complex real estate and mortgage landscape.
0:00 Welcome to Keys and Credit
0:24 Are Open Houses Overrated?
3:14 The Truth About Agent Substitutions
8:42 Broker Opens: The Hidden Strategy
16:29 Navigating Low Ball Offers
21:20 Multiple Offers and Pricing Strategy
Welcome to Keys and Credit, the no-fluff, no-nonsense real estate and mortgage podcast. I'm Barb, your straight-talking lender.
Speaker 2:I am Bill the no-bullshit realtor Today we're talking about sellers Woo, there are sellers involved in real estate Open houses and if we should do them or not.
Speaker 1:Are they overrated?
Speaker 2:That's right or not. Open houses are they overrated or not? What do you think?
Speaker 1:I don't think they are. I think they're fantastic.
Speaker 2:I think so too. I love open houses. I think they're great. Why so you go? You've been to actually quite a few open houses with me.
Speaker 1:Broker opens Invited me to some of your broker opens that opens up the house to the public for them to be able to come in take a look at it, maybe without their agent, maybe their agent's busy, but they're still working with that agent, but they're able to take a peek at it to see if it's even worth for them to schedule a showing.
Speaker 2:So on a list side, so let's flip it from buyer's agent to list agent to seller's agent. Okay, so on a list side, I do what's called an instant open. Every single listing you'll see of mine it starts as a coming soon or a live status. On a Wednesday, it goes Thursday, friday and either Saturday or Sunday we do an open, because when people walk into the house I can hear straight from the market the market is the people. If we have it priced right, if we have it looking right, if it's smelling right, I mean we can tell within the first three days if we need to change something, versus waiting two months or whatever Right.
Speaker 2:So open houses aren't only for bringing in buyers, which of course, that is true. If some people they don't have an agent, they drove by, they want to see it. Oh my gosh, we want to buy this house, don't have an agent, they drove by, they want to see it. Oh my gosh, we want to buy this house. Or they have an agent and they're busy oh my gosh, we want to buy this house. But for me, as a list agent, for one, I get to talk to people. It's may or may not like talking to people, go figure, um, but I get to hear from the market right off the bat if we've done it correctly, or not now on a lender side, open houses when barb's there.
Speaker 1:With the open house, you have direct access to finance, to finance, to find out there, like I mean, what would my payment be on this? You know, uh, what kind of financing could I get on this house? Because the house might like, if you're a veteran and you're trying to buy with va financing, maybe this house is perfect for you and it would be up to va standards, or maybe it wouldn't right, or fha standards, or, and it takes away the wonder.
Speaker 2:So if someone comes into an open house and it's their first week, say it's their first week shopping, right, they just got pre-approved or maybe they're thinking about pre-approved, they think they're ready, they come walking in and this is the house. Like it, love it. Leave it like like it, love it can't live without it like it, love it, can't live without it. And barb's there. They're like. You know what we love this house. How do we do this barb? How do we do this? And she'll explain to you right there right there.
Speaker 2:This is how it's done. This is what we're going to need. This is what your payment could be, you know, once we get through the process, depending on price and terms, all that good stuff. So, instead of wondering and waiting and wishing, we're right there, and so here's a question. This is something that you and I just are kind of adamant about. Do you turn into a pushy salesperson?
Speaker 1:Absolutely not, absolutely not, because a lot of people will come through and they're maybe already pre-approved with a lender and it's likely someone that I maybe know, since I've done this for quite some time.
Speaker 2:So but then I will say you know what?
Speaker 1:make sure, make sure you tell your lender you know this, this and this about the house. You know, like you mentioned, that you're pre-approved for FHA, but don't forget to tell them about the back stoop or make sure they're aware of this or that Right or FHA, but don't forget to tell them about the back stoop or make sure they're aware of this or that.
Speaker 1:Right or FHA, VA, USDA standards, things like that, Because really, I come from a place of just happy to help, so, whether I'm getting the business or not, I'm here to ask questions and help you navigate through the process. And they're going to remember that.
Speaker 2:So, when it comes to open houses, most I don't want to say most ours are welcoming um. They're not a sales tactic.
Speaker 2:They're not to bring in um buyers for the agent or customers for the lender, anything like that as a list agent for me and anybody that's listed with me knows, and they can vouch for this, it's an instant open. I want to know if we're doing things right. I don't want to wait, I don't want to wonder, okay, and then if that buyer comes in that likes it, loves, loves, it can't live without it, was that right, nailed it, yeah, okay, um, we're there, right, we can, we can lock it in that day you know, if there's not multiples on it um but also too.
Speaker 1:I mean we're, we have it open for the sellers, so we're working for the sellers and this is an added benefit to the seller Like, hey, there's going to be my lender there as well to answer any questions, but you've also got another person in the house when we have strange buyers walking through it.
Speaker 2:Think about that. So a lot of people too. They think an open house is a bunch of strangers running around all over the place. We usually keep tabs on them pretty well. Oh gosh, yeah, over the place. Um, we usually keep tabs on them pretty well. Oh gosh, most of them are engaged with us one way or another, you know, um, and if they're not, I can hear them, because kids are always, I mean, single family homes. There's kids everywhere. You can always tell where they are, what they're doing. Um, but a lot of sellers are nervous to have strangers in their house. Yep, so here's here's, here's one.
Speaker 2:Let's dive down this rabbit hole. What you do? Let's take off our agent lender hats real quick. Say you were listing with me. You called me, said Bill, I want to list my house with you. We sign up, everything's great. We go through all the contracts. We go through the 60 pages line by line. Do what we're supposed to do. I say we're going to do an open house, an instant open, on Sunday, sunday, okay, and a different agent shows up to open your house. Oh, that would be strange, that would be weird.
Speaker 2:Now you have a stranger in your house and other strangers looking at your house, right, that I don't like. I think that is one of the shittiest things an agent or a team can do. That's going to piss people off too Well.
Speaker 1:You have to run that by the cellar Right Like, hey, I'm on this team. There's five of us and one of the five of us might be doing the open.
Speaker 2:A lot of times they don't. They'll just show up say here you go and that agent I went like that as a seller, could you imagine. So you gave all this information to the agent you signed up with. You gave everything you need to sell the house to this agent, and then this stranger shows up. Doesn't know a damn thing about your house it's probably his first week on the job, right doesn't know how to keep tabs on people. Doesn't know how to hold a conversation. That's not what you signed up for, that.
Speaker 1:So because you're also wasting your seller's time, because it's a lot for a seller to get their house prepared for the open and then go do something for three hours or two hours or whatever it is, and give their house up to a stranger yeah, and then if they have children, right having sold houses, that's kind of a big deal that would be a big deal, and that's so I've went into opens as a agent preview, right for my buyers, or whatever.
Speaker 2:I'll walk in and I'll ask the agent hey, you know, foundation wise, give me some information on the phone. How old's the roof? Um, how long have they been here? Have they done any improvements to the basic? Yep, you know I'm gonna buy a house questions and you get, I don't know. I'm just filling in. I'm sorry, I'm just here because the other agent couldn't make it. What good does that do? So on that note, that open house was pointless because they could have lost.
Speaker 1:Say, a buyer comes in, they wanted to buy the house, they wanted some information, and that agent said I don't know, I don't know, I don't know they're not coming back no they're done, they're going to the next one, right, right, I mean I they're not going to follow up with the actual list agent, they're not going to take the time to do that because they were there.
Speaker 2:They were there for that information. That information wasn't available, they moved on yeah, right so that's. That's one part that is detrimental to the houses.
Speaker 1:Well, that's another thing that our listeners need to think about when they're hiring an agent to list their house. You ask those questions Are you going to do an open house? Yeah, and who's going to be doing the open house? Who am I?
Speaker 2:So when I hire this guy on a billboard, you know who am I getting Right and is it going to be that same person? I had a client five years ago, maybe six years ago, in Mora. He called that agent, right, he wanted to talk to that agent and somebody else showed up. He's like you know what I get it? Okay, you're a big company. Somebody else showed up and gave him the song and dance, the sales song and dance, and then he was going to go. He's going to do the contract signing and he wanted to do it in person. Some people like the in-person stuff, which is fine, we'll bring him to the conference room sign him. He went to sign up and it was somebody else. Now he's on the third different person with this company that he wanted to talk to this guy.
Speaker 2:Um, and he fired him. He said absolutely not, there's no way. Who am? There's no way. Who am I going to get tomorrow? Who am I going to get the next day? So he called me. I showed up, we talked, we went through the house, called me back, we signed everything, called me back, we got everything ready to go on the market open house and he was ecstatic. It was the same guy. Yeah, that's a big deal.
Speaker 1:It is a big deal.
Speaker 2:You hire Barb, you hire Bill, you don't hire barb, and then get so, and so well, you have a team, but it's always barb.
Speaker 1:Right, you always get barb and, like I say, there's some real estate teams and that works as long as it's all disclosed on and who's on the team say they know them.
Speaker 2:You know I mean so one guy shows up and they know that this guy has so and so and they were there with them. They've been introduced. They know it could work just fine. It's when they blindside them, yeah, or they turn into a transaction, yeah. You can usually tell when you have a transactional agent. Right, you know, I just need as much business as I can. I don't care about what you're doing, I just need right nope, we're here for relationships relationships.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there we go. It's building relationships um. Let's see broker opens. This is what the public doesn't know about oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So a lot of times, uh, an agent will list a house and then they'll have skew hey, can I do a broker open? And what that means is your agent is going to invite their friends that are realtors into your home licensed realtors from different agencies as well, not just the agency they work for to come and maybe lunch will be provided or something like that usually in two hours, three hours, something like that and they're going to give feedback and that's another great way to find out if you're priced right. It's a wonder.
Speaker 1:And why you'd want other agents to come in as well is they're working with buyers, and the reason why they would even come is maybe they have a buyer that's looking for your three-bedroom rambler in Maura on acreage or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:And instead of so a regular open house, it brings in the public. Okay, so you'll get say, on a good open house, I've had as many as like 10 or 15 families through. Okay, on a broker open, you'll have 10 or 15 agents through that are representing lots of people so that broker open.
Speaker 2:just put that house out to hundreds of people, yeah, instead of just the few families that came through. Yeah, right, so broker opens. Um, they're not well known to the public because a lot of people don't do them. We do, yep, right, you do them a lot with the A-team too. We can mention the A-team in here because they're worth mentioning. We're not going to name names or anything, but you know who you are, but they do them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It puts it out there to a lot more people, even though it doesn't look like it, if that makes sense right, you know right, but when I hear an agent say open houses are worthless, open houses aren't worth my time or I'm busy on saturday and sundays too busy to do an open house or an open house is just so the neighbors can see yeah, or so the neighbors can see which.
Speaker 2:I had one. So here's an open house story. I had one in columbia heights. Um, we listed it same thing. It's an open on the mark. Couple days, open it up and the people that built the house in 1974, oh how cool would that?
Speaker 2:be. They come walking in. They're older, you know, they're silver haired and they're super nice and me being me, not pushy, not salesman I asked you know how they're doing it? They've been looking along if they, if they have an agent one of the first questions I have to ask and they said you know what, bill? We're just here checking it out because we built this house. I'm like, oh, you know what, hang on all day. And they sat there for the entire three hours. They went out by the fire pit, they kicked their feet up. I brought them some water. I brought them some water. That was just that's super cool. It was super cool to see.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like that song the House that Built Me.
Speaker 2:I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:It's a country song.
Speaker 2:You probably don't listen to country I don't tie fly fishing stuff either, just saying Miranda Lampert sings it. Anybody notice? The book behind Barb says something about fly fishing. Oh no, it's up there, you can see it. It's up there, you can see it. It's up there, sorry. What's wrong with fishing? Nothing's wrong with fishing. Okay, how many times have you Went fly fishing? No, how many times have you?
Speaker 1:fly tied. Well, we do have fly tying kits. My kids do tie flies.
Speaker 2:I don't even know where we went.
Speaker 1:What were we talking about? The people that built the house. So sometimes, when those people show up, not only are they sitting there for three hours enjoying the house that they built, you know, 35 years ago, they're going to tell people about it oh yeah right so well, and they're also going to tell you oh yeah, and, by the way, uh, depending upon when they sold it to open the garage door, you kind of got to do oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Did you know about the secret compartment that we put in here 35 years ago? Yeah, right, and and maybe your sellers don't even know that right, or maybe they're downstairs digging up you know gold they buried there when they first built the house, because they're broke you just never know.
Speaker 2:You just never know. I doubt it, but maybe um. Open houses are very important, not only for sellers. They're important for buyers, they're important for list agents, they're important to learn to market. Broker opens are important for all of us. For one, we get to see what everybody else is listing at. We get to talk about it, see if we can change it, because we do negotiate well, and they're going to also, uh, back to broker opens.
Speaker 1:Other agents are going to come in and they might say hey, you know, I would move the couch here, or maybe how your staging is. Maybe that needs to be changed a little bit, because it's always good to get lots of different ideas right and you can start negotiating.
Speaker 2:Think about that If you have a buyer say you're in an open house or broker open for $350,000 and you have a buyer at $349,500. You're like you know what? This would look really good at $349,000. And you just start laying that foundation for when your buyer's coming to check it out. And that's negotiations start way before an offer gets put in. With me I don't know if that's with you Because you're a chief negotiator.
Speaker 2:That's because I'm a chief negotiating expert. But when you're talking to people, even open houses, when I go into opens and I know my buyer wants to maybe put an offer in, I'll start negotiating right away. They won't know it. You just start picking their brain, figuring out closing dates, what the seller's doing, where they're going, try and get their motivation. See, I mean, what kind of terms they look at. I mean if you get some of these people talking, they will tell you their life story.
Speaker 1:Right. Or maybe they'll say something like well, the seller, they're really nervous about where they're going next, so they maybe need to line this all up with their closing on the sale. We have contingencies.
Speaker 2:We have a new house showing up. Our new house is being built. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff and you could throw that in there. Say, you're in multiple offers and you went to an open house and you know they're building they need a fluid close date. They need some certain stuff in their offer. That you know because you talked. Put that in. You are now at the top of the list.
Speaker 1:Yep, like I'm super flexible with our close date. Yep, we don't have to be out by the end of the month.
Speaker 2:And they just it could be the wow factor. Be like wow this guy really knows what's going on. Yeah, and that's just from starting negotiations, starting talking right off the bat. Open houses.
Speaker 1:Right. Open houses are important. That's why you'd hire a chief negotiator like Bill.
Speaker 2:And a super fantastic lender to be there with you to answer any lending questions.
Speaker 1:But can I ask one question on the sell side? Yeah, how would you navigate through a low ball offer with your seller?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right. Imagine that, say, you listed at 300 and someone came in at 250. Yeah, I know, I always say, put the shoe on the other foot.
Speaker 1:I know Because everybody.
Speaker 2:So when you're a list agent and a buyer's agent, like I am, you put on multiple hats and multiple shoes every day. So I always tell people when a low ball offer comes in, put the shoe on the other foot because we're looking for houses. That seller is looking for a house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and they looked at that next $300,000 house and they're wondering if they can get it for $250,000. Okay, so if that offer comes in, you can't take it as a shot to the ribs. You can't assume that somebody's trying to cut you down. That's where they wanted to start negotiating, right, okay.
Speaker 1:So there's a happy they're trying to start a conversation with you. They're trying to start.
Speaker 2:So maybe that's all they have to offer, right, right. So you send them a counter offer. They'll say you know what? This is all we got, okay, so you move on. No big deal. Sometimes people that's all they have they're giving. It aren't always bad. Sometimes low balls can get up to where it needs to be for everybody. If you think about that, you know. And on a lender side, how many times have you seen us do that?
Speaker 1:oh yeah you know, oh yeah, a buyer will say, well, I think I'm going to offer him 250 on this 300 and I'm like, okay, well, it's always worth a try. Uh, if you can't get what you don't ask for. But be prepared, they may say no.
Speaker 2:Because it's been listed for a day.
Speaker 1:But if the house has been listed for 90 days, that sounds very recent.
Speaker 2:as a matter of fact.
Speaker 1:But if the house has been listed for 90 days, oh, you've got super negotiating power.
Speaker 2:Why not try? But some of our buyers that are approved at $350, $400, they're looking at $450s and they're thinking they're going to cut them down. That might be tough because it's on the market for a day or two. I always tell people to stay in their pre-approval, oh yeah, Otherwise they get mad.
Speaker 1:Well, they're going to love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like it love, it, can't live without it. Right, and they can't afford it, right they can't afford it.
Speaker 1:And then they are also looking within their range and they're like but it's not as good as the ones up here. Well, but you can't afford the ones up here.
Speaker 2:That's where the lowball offer comes in. Right, they're trying to get something that they've seen. They're out of their range. So if you come back and you just start yelling, you know this is ridiculous, don't bring in buyers that can't buy it, blah, blah, blah, blah you could lose your seller a bunch of money. If you come back and say, hey, let's talk about a counteroffer, let's talk about different terms, maybe we can put closing costs on top.
Speaker 2:There's a thousand things you could do with a lowball offer. Sometimes it's just no, you know what, this is all we got. Sometimes we get it up to where everybody's comfortable and everybody's happy. You go to the closing table and everybody's high-fiving, right. That's where lowball offers can get to. So, yeah, you don't want to cut those out. Even and even in an open, say we'll go back to open house here. Say you're an open house. Someone comes in and says, oh, this is listed at 350, I'd only offer 275. Okay, well, we know that a 275 offer might come in. So as those people are walking through talking I'm listening to things that they like to start counter-offering.
Speaker 2:Well we really like the land. We can't find this house anywhere. You know the location is right next to the school that we want to get into all this good stuff. So 275 comes in from Joe Schmo and their agent I know who it is. I'm like well, we'll counter. Just make sure they know this is right by the school they're looking for. You're not going to find another one like this, you know, and you start beating them back. Negotiations start right away, right away. So low balls are fine, I've done it, you know I got. I have clients that want to start super low and we throw them in there and the agent calls back and says hey, can we negotiate? I'm'm like let's try. You know, most of the time when we get a counter offer they're gonna go oh, we got a counter offer. Right, that means we can negotiate, so we're not out, you know right.
Speaker 1:So it's gonna be lower than the list price.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be higher than what they low balled. But they're excited because now they got some money off, right right, I could talk about this all day. What else you got. I mean this, this is, I mean, I like that stuff you Do you get a lot of lowball offers Every single house that you have will have lowball offers, every single one, any listing that you have.
Speaker 2:If you don't have a lowball, unless you're in multiples, sure, if you go into multiples, they're all going through the roof and it just gets weird. I mean, the weird stuff happens, but if you're on the market for say, a month or two, low offers are coming Almost every show.
Speaker 1:So let's reverse that. Let's just say there is multiple offers on your listing and you're representing the seller, and there is, you know, 15 offers. How do you navigate through that?
Speaker 2:Through the 15 offers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that is so much fun.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we'll go. I had one in Lindstrom, linwood, lindstrom. We had, like I think, 18 offers total on that one.
Speaker 1:How Linwood Lindstrom we had like, I think 18 offers total on that one in $48.
Speaker 2:How do you even keep that straight? It's a process.
Speaker 1:I'm sure Probably every offer has a folder.
Speaker 2:So these ones Spreadsheet Old school, they weren't into spreadsheets, they were into paper pen. So I had a stack of stuff but I had my spreadsheet over here, sure Right. So when the offers come in, I usually do it by price, and there was so talk about multiples here. So there was one. An agent came in and he said you know what, bill, we're going to put the biggest price on it as we can that my buyers are pre-approved for because we know and this is the agent talking we know it's going to have to come down with appraisal. That offer went to the bottom of the stack because everything in there meant nothing. Right to the bottom of the stack because everything in there meant nothing. Right, if that makes sense. So he was completely lying, just trying to get to the top. Give them their big, you know rose-colored glasses, because they have this big, huge number, when he knows it's coming down so okay, we'll keep going with all these offers.
Speaker 1:But what do you mean when you say it's all going to come down with appraisal?
Speaker 2:okay, so say our viewers might not know what you're referring to.
Speaker 1:You have a listing at 500 grand. Okay, median price is going up, so 500 is getting pretty normal.
Speaker 2:Say you have a listing at 500 grand. Okay, median price is going up, so 500 is getting pretty normal. Say you have a listing at 500 grand. Someone offers you 600 in multiples and they waive every other term. It's just 600, but it's financed with Federal Housing Administration. We'll say FHA. So you accept the offer, say this is great.
Speaker 2:Fha comes in and says hey, we're only going to appraise it at 525. Now we have a $600,000 offer, a $525,000 appraisal and an FHA escape clause that states that if this property appraises lower than the purchase price, it has to be renegotiated or canceled. It's in every contract for FHA, if your agent don't tell you that they suck. So that agent knows it's coming down. That's what he did. He knew it was coming down. He knew the appraisal wasn't going to hit the price, so he didn't care. His buyers knew that. They didn't care. Unfortunately, they had me on the other side paying attention. Okay, so I knew what he was doing.
Speaker 2:So that went to the bottom of the stack, right, there was another one that was close to that price, but it was cash. With cash it doesn't matter. There's no appraisal. That's why they say cash is king. So if there's a three say, a $500,000 cash offer and a $500,000 FHA offer, okay, that cash offer is taking it because there's no bank, there's no lender to deal with, it's just close. There's no appraisal, any of that stuff. So it all depends on terms, price financing. A lot of times the people okay, because there's people in this industry that we know are going to be difficult, lenders included, not rate. But there's one that rhymes with Wells Fargo. If they're a pre-approval, that counts right. It rhymes with Wells Fargo, it's not actually Wells Fargo. If they're pre-approved with Wells Fargo, they're towards the top of the pre-approval list. They're pre-approved with Wells. Terms are exactly the same. And then Barb with rates is there. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Because, you have a reputation of actually doing what you say. Wells Fargo has a notorious reputation of never closing on time. Right, look it up, that's the truth. But if you have an agent that doesn't know that, they won't be able to see through that stuff, right, right? So when it comes to the 18 offers, it was hours and hours and hours of sorting and on my spreadsheet- so what you're telling me is the highest offer, the one that said it's not always the best.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Never, never. The highest offer is not always the best offer. Sometimes the terms are better than the price. Right If you're. If you can close in two weeks with cash and no appraisal, no bank, and you're out of there and you're moving to florida right on a cash offer and you lose 10 grand, or you're in it for 45 days with fha. You know the appraisal is going to knock it down. What are you taking? Cash? Cash right, or there's no inspection, cash, I mean. But anyway, so that the multiple offer stuff, my spreadsheet, coincided with the stack of papers that they wanted to see. Okay, so when joe schmo up, I seen them on spreadsheet. I knew what their terms were, their financing, were inspections, anything in there? I knew it right there instead of trying to sort through. So we would actually. And then that guy that said here's this highest price. I explained that situation to him. They said put it in the trash. They didn't even want to look at it. They're like you know what this guy is a cheapskate. He's a liar.
Speaker 1:Don't even want to deal with him.
Speaker 2:Integrity is very important, very important, very important. Yep, there we go. Now we got some time into that one. What else you got? I keep going, I keep going. Multiple offers yeah, on a lending side. What happens if someone offers more than they're pre-approved for? Thinking it's going to come down, but it doesn't.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not really going to work because we're going to have to get your loan into underwriting and underwriting's not going to approve it if your price is too high and there's, 99% of the time, a financing contingency. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So if the purchase price is higher than the pre-approval price, you guys will just take away the financing, right? It can't be financed, right, right, something to look for in multiples. The lender's opinion, or pre-approval, is important too, because if Barb says it's $350, we put an offer and say $370. You know what Barb? It's going to appraise lower Barb's going to go not happening. Nope, it's going to appraise lower Barb's going to go not happening. Nope, don't even try it. There's no point. You know, right. What was the next question? What did you have?
Speaker 1:What pricing strategies actually work. On listings Stop looking at Zillow, oh why Zillow sucks? What's wrong with?
Speaker 2:it. Zillow is a sales tool. Zillow is a feel-good machine. Zillow makes you feel good about your house when you're looking at it to maybe get some weird inflated value. The market is correct. Zillow is wrong. Realtorcom mostly wrong your assessment is wrong.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say that. What about the county tax bill? The county assessor is wrong.
Speaker 2:He's always low. They're always a few years behind. Zillow is inflated. So the reason Zillow is bad, say pricing strategy. If you use Zillow as a pricing strategy, they want you to call them.
Speaker 2:So if your house is worth $500, zillow is going to say it's worth $700,000. Give us a call. We'll put you in touch with an agent that will list it for 700 grand In three months. You're dropping down to 500 because the market is not going to buy your house. No, it's overpriced. We say all the time. The only reason something doesn't sell is it's priced wrong for the market. It's in Plain and simple. Plain and simple. Look at any house that sold in the past 200 years. It sold because it was priced right or it sold because it dropped to the price where it was priced right.
Speaker 2:So, if you dork that for one, you're going to drop to usually lower than a price that I would suggest, because the market's going and the market I usually mean people the market's going to think there's something wrong with your house because it's been on there for 30, 40, 60 days.
Speaker 1:Right, and now people are going to lowball you right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that lowball's coming right. So now you might get up to the price that I suggested at first. But think about it If you price it right, you go into multiples and then it goes up if you do it right Not all the time.
Speaker 2:But pricing strategy is important. If you go off Zillow and county assessment is usually low, so that will usually drive multiples because there's going to be people scrambling for this really nice house. That's priced at five bucks and it's worth 500 um, so there's a lot that goes into pricing it, but don't go off the internet. Call someone who actually knows what's going on you know an interview.
Speaker 1:An interview, yeah, make sure they're going to get back to you.
Speaker 2:Call you, respond to your emails what people need is important, so my first question to them is what do you need to get out of it? Because some people need to get that $300,000 paycheck and if their house isn't bringing it, maybe it's not the right time to sell your house, right, instead of trying it making it look bad. If you try again next year, it's still the same house. It's still going to look bad because people can see it and that you had it listed last year. That's what I'm saying. They can see that. That's what I'm saying. They get to see how that was listed last year.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot to the listing part that we should go into in a different one. I'm going to call that the end of episode nine. Good job, Barb.
Speaker 1:Good job. Thanks for tuning in to Keys and Credit, where the only thing inflated isn't the market, it's your knowledge. If you found this helpful, share it with a friend.