Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Ken and Ed's main podcast. Today is going to be just to warn all of you out there, Ed and it's got an edge to him today. He. He came in hot. He's got. He's got beliefs, he's got opinions, and I think we're gonna hear about all of them today. But today's episode is going to be unpopular opinions. Unpopular opinions. I'm gonna start, and I'm probably gonna get crushed by a lot of people, but I think that it's okay to put mayonnaise on an Italian hoagie from time to time. I don't think there's anything wrong with putting mayonnaise on an Italian hoagie. There's a lot of purists out there, and I'm a purist in a lot of ways, but I don't think there's anything wrong with it. And I also think pickles on a cheesesteak is absolutely unacceptable.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Well, while you were talking, I went on to my phone, and when everyone unfriend Ken Jordan.
Do not use mortgages. Do not use him for anything. Anyone that puts mayonnaise.
It's. It's, like, sacrilegious.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Dude, look, I don't taste early.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: I. I mean, I think we're to have to go on the podcast the Skinny with Joey Marlino. Yeah, I think he's gonna have to be the one to lay the law down.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: If you got it in there, I would clear my schedule for Joey Merino. I. I would, you know, open up.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: I'm 25 years removed, man.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah, you. I think you're legally obligated not to reach out to him. Right.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: All right.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: And we were talking earlier. Tell me. Tell everybody what your unpopular opinion is. And I'm sure if there was people, it would comment on this podcast. We get some. Some opinions, we gotta share. What you would say to me, yeah.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: This is going to shake some stuff up. But first, I want to let everybody know I coach a lot of great human beings, a lot of great agents. Ken coached me last week. I needed one of these. I literally listened because he knows better. And I went and I ordered a real microphone. So I'm very coachable. I'm very proud of myself. I hope that.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: I hope that it helps and. And the listeners will tell us if what was happening was. My audio was loud, and I. I couldn't get the audios to match. It sound like I was screaming and sound like you were in the other room. So quality of production has just Gone up, I think.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Yes. All right, cool. All right. So the unpopular opinion, right, it's gonna ruffle feathers and I'm gonna be a little extra edgy today. All, all in fun. But I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of real tours. As I forget that the author's name used to make fun of that name. Real tours are going to text, email, comment saying, you should never do that. That is horrible.
And I'm just gonna put it out.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: There, go for it.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Take the overpriced listings and this is how and the why. Code of ethics. We have to be honest. So the way that this sounds. And I'll tell a couple quick stories, one years ago, one recent that lays it on the line. Number one.
In fact, let me just tell the story, literally. Address, 1403 Pine Rock Road East Goshen.
Four bedroom, two and a half bath, Colonial. Beautiful. Like, oh, my gosh, the knockout. But it's a 550 neighborhood. I go on the listing appointment. 550. He wants to list at 725.
Right. And even back then, I knew to collaborate with the sellers. It's their house. Listen to me. It's their house. It's not ours.
Today they have as much information. Now, they might not be right, they might not be accurate, but they think they are because the consumer now has a lot of information.
So this whole, whole thing with. Listen to me, I'm the real estate professional. I do this every day is not going to work.
So I want. And especially new agents. Listen to this.
I go in, I said, here's all the evidence. What it shows is this where. This is where it should be priced. But it's your house.
Somebody may come and look at, at your house and say, hey, this reminds me of the home that I grew up in in Las Vegas.
I'm gonna buy it for asking price and I'm paying cash. There's no appraisal, there's no this, there's no that. I explain all the appraisal challenges and everything. If somebody were to pay this and financing. All right, get it, get it. And by the way, if anybody wants to hear this explained more in detail than the 15 minutes we give ourselves, themselves, I'm all for it.
I care deeply about real estate agents making great living and feeding their families and being ethical and being moral and being the gurus back in the day. And some still that stand in front of the room, which, by the way, some of them, the last home they sold was 1982 to their mother, right?
And that's just. That's the truth. And you'll hear things like, well, Mr. Seller, seller, I'd rather walk away now than disappoint you later. 1403 Pine Rock Road.
I take the listing, the overpriced listing. I sell it, represent him as a buyer. I list the neighbor's home because I sold it and I think three weeks and yeah, we had to reduce the price. It ended up selling, by the way, for 565. So I was wrong. I wanted to list it at 5, 550. I was wrong.
Sold for 565. Represented him.
Listing agent, buyer's agent, neighbor's agent. And I had four additional transactions that came in because of the open houses that I had sold there. And then God knows how many sign calls I got where. Like that. Those are the tangible numbers. I don't know the intangibles, the tangible numbers was 100, $140,000 in income in about 90 days. Might have been 120 days. Right. So who's the smarter? Real tour, the one that acts ethically, honestly, and gets the business and is. You know, when I did the brokers open, every agent that comes for a free hoagie that does not have mayonnaise on it was saying it's overpriced. I don't care what you think. Think like I'm in the business to sell homes, to put my sign in the ground. Especially now. It's marketing, right? It's everything you got there.
So that was then, just recently. And a lot of this depends on a lot of different things. Geographically. I referred a piece of business out in a part of the United States that's. That's under great demand.
For every one house, There's a legitimately 30 sellers. I'm sorry, 30 buyers, right. My referral agent went in and wanted to list it like 150 grand below what the seller did.
Seller went with another agent, sold in one day for a little below where the seller wanted to list the house at cash. No appraisal, no inspections, no nothing.
Who's the smarter agent there?
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Let me ask you a question. I'll play devil's advocate here. So in this current market, right, we know that inventory is an issue. We know that there's competition on a ton of properties.
Does your philosophy stand up in a market where there's a ton of inventory when there's, you know, when buyers have the pick of the litter and they just get to go and look at 10 different houses and, you know, does. Is this a Is this a market strategy or is this a fundamental strategy?
[00:08:28] Speaker B: You can't reduce the price on a listing that you don't have.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Good point.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: That's it.
And again, I'm not, I'm not here waving a flag saying I'm right. Listen to me. The cool thing about being an independent contractor is you get to choose as long as it's ethical how you want to operate your business.
That's a beautiful way to live life. It's a beautiful way to operate a business. My statement would be, you cannot reduce a price of a listing that you don't have.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: So, so let me ask you this then. And this is, this could be coming from like an unethical perspective and maybe this is where we need to be clear about what you mean by that. I, I've Talked to, in 22 years, I've talked to a lot of real estate agents. Right. So I, I, I'm my family, you know, is, is in the real estate business. So, so kind of came up in it in some respects.
Do agents purposefully over commit to the buyer in an effort to get the listing to, to follow the similar strategy? You can't reduce a property you don't, you don't, you don't, you can't reduce a property you don't have a listing for. You can't get leads from open houses, you can't get buyers from the houses. Is the gem that brings all the people together.
How do you feel about people going in and convincing a seller to list with them because they could sell it for hire, knowing full well that there's no way it's ever going to sell for that they just want to control the listing. And is there, is there A, is that ethical? B, is that different than what you're talking about? And see, is there hazards to that?
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Totally different than what I'm talking about. Number two, it's definitely unethical. So I would show the evidence and say the market says, never say, I'm saying this, the market is saying this is where your house would sell at.
Okay. However you think it should sell here, I'm not. God want to help you.
By the way, I'm going to ask you, I'm gladly going to list the price here. You're going to sign a document saying that Ed Fordyce with Exp.
Showed me my brain's not working right now, showed me information and evidence and he recommended a list price or whatever it is.
I'm going to protect myself where no one could ever accuse me of buying or buying a Listing. It's called buying a list.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah, totally unethical.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: You're a scumbag. You should lose your license.
Especially if you're. If you're taking advantage of like, an elderly couple or someone who's down on their luck.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: I told you he was edgy today, folks. I told you he was edgy, and you're right.
So let's talk a little bit about ego then. And because I think that where you're. The kind of direction that you're going with this is in my business.
You know, appraisers are, A lot of times can be the bane of our existence. Right. Like here we are, you know, the market says that if this is what a buyer is willing to buy for and this is what a seller is willing to sell for, then that makes a transaction. Right, Right. And that's how the market has worked for ages. However, when it comes to financing, right now, there's a third party that says, whoa, whoa, whoa. I get that you're willing to buy it for that. I get that you're willing to sell it for that. But if we're gonna create leverage, if we're going to take on risk, then we need to make sure that the house is the appraised value of the property, not the market value, but the appraised value of the property is how we're going to make that decision. Now, fortunately, appraised value and market value often match up. Sometimes appraised value is higher than market than what it's sold for. Right. Because of the comparables. And that's a word that a lot of people hear. Comps. You have comps that are comparables and comps that are competition. Real estate agents worry about competition. This is what else is listed for sale. We as lenders, worry about comparables. This is what has already sold.
And you would think that those two worlds marry up beautifully. I've experienced appraisers whose ego gets in the way where I've been doing this for 40 years. And there's no way a house in Springfield, twin in Springfield's ever gonna sell for $400,000, because they're stuck. In 1980, they paid 40 grand for their real home. And they're, they're, you know, they'll be damned if they think that little home today is going to sell for 280. Right. And, and does that happen in the real estate side with agents who get stuck in their preconceived ideas of what a neighborhood is, quote, unquote, worth? And do you think that that leads to some of the conversations that we're talking about where. Where. Where a seller's not being given the collaborative effort because the ego of the agent, similarly to the ego of the appraiser, is kind of like out of touch.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: 1,000%. 1. 1,000%. It does, because especially agents. I'm going to say agents, especially the ones that have been in the business for 15 years or more, they, including me, are conditioned a certain way with a belief system. Now, thank God, I continue to break my own pattern. I continue to look at what's real here. I continue to look at the real stories. I continue to look at and question topic agents. How did you get that listing? Why did you take that listing knowing it was over? Like, I get the, The. The sex. The data.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Data.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: The data.
Just like, what's really going on? Like, we're real estate agents and mortgage professionals. We shouldn't even be able to use the word data.
[00:15:05] Speaker A: Well, all right, so then how. How, as someone who has been in the business for 15 years or more, what are some of the things you can do to combat? Like, because. And the other thing is, it's a blind spot. A lot of times it's a blind spot. It's something that you don't even know you're doing right. You don't even know. You have these preconceived notions.
You know, what are some of the things that agents can do from. From a mental standpoint to help make sure that they're reflecting and seeing that they do have a blind spot or work to make sure they don't develop a blind spot in that area?
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Number one, change your belief system. Everything evolves.
So we're. We're agents are still operating because they were trained, and they're literally like, this is neurology. Their neurons fired and connected with a belief system that were the ones that control the market. We have the information. So subconsciously, they're probably operating. Like, why would you disagree with me? I'm. I'm the professional. Right. By the way, this isn't just in real estate. I have a back injury. I should be like, my back. My MRI is the MRI of a paraplegic. The old surgeons were like, this is urgent surgery. Not emergency, but urgent. The young guys were like, dude, let's do some blood work. Let's look that you're a healthy guy. Are you in any pain? No. Then surgery is the last thing we would do because they have evolved. The older surgeons are stuck in their old way. Oh, there's a disc. It's in your spinal canal surgery. So real estate. Same thing, Same thing. Let's go over options. Mr. Or seller. Let's collaborate. Based on my 20 years of experience, this is what you can ex. You can expect.
But just know that if you list it here, I'm recommending here. This is what you can expect.
Right? And I'm on your side, Mr. Seller. I'm going to represent you at the settlement table no matter what. But here's a ninja selling. I'm in charge of the purchase process. Ken, you're in charge of the decisions.
That's gold. Take that. I'm going to say that again.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Ken, write this down. Write this down.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: Write this down. I'm in charge of. Ken, number one, I'm on your side. Right? Let's go over the options to sell your house.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Right?
[00:17:40] Speaker B: And we're going to, we're going to use your price. We're going to look at the evidence together. Right? Keep something in mind. Kent, just to put you at ease, I'm not here to sell. Sell you on anything. I'm in charge of the process.
Pause. You're in charge of the. All of the decisions. I will not be making any decisions for you.
Ninja selling.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: And, and it's interesting because there's also an aspect to the, the other side of it is undercutting. Right? Like, like, that's also not that you say buying the listing or, or listing it. Because if you, if you list it low, right. A $500,000 property, if the, and we're just going to throw easy numbers out there, $500,000 profit. The, if the, the, the commission is 3%, that's $15,000.
Well, if I list it for 490, my commission at 3% is not that different. Sellers out to 10 grand, but the real estate agent's commission is not that different.
So, so, so you. That, that's where, like being a professional, you have that obligation not only to, to, to, to really push the envelope from. When it comes to price. Right. Without being unethical, but also not listing it too high without being unethical. It's really, it's, it, it is a fine balance for agents. And I, I, I commend the good ones for being able to walk that line and make sure that they're, they're, they're getting the, the most for their seller and at the same time meeting their seller's needs. Because we all know that an overpriced listing. One of the challenges with an overpriced listing is that it might sit for too Long. Right. And if it sits for too long it becomes stale. Like if is that a real thing? You know or you missed out on other opportunities because your house didn't sell in time. Right.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: And that's all explained by the way.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Like I a listing agent and I never sidestep that head on. Let's look at all of the possibilities based on my 20 years of experience what I've seen pros and cons. Right. Like literally going down those pros and cons. I, I want to make it clear I'm not. I'm not here saying to, to buy listings price them no 000 this is my fear Mr. Seller and Mrs. Seller. This is what I've seen in the past Mr. And Mrs. Seller. Because you want to pay down your debt on your student loans and your credit cards over here you want to get X amount out of sale your home.
Well one has nothing to do with the other. Just know that. So you know right now the evidence is telling us that your home should be under contract in a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month. Average days on market is. But forget average days on market. You're taking something that's here. Let's look at what. What's really selling out there. And again you get to make the decision.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: I'm here to guide you. I'm the captain of the ship.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Let them be unreasonable if they want to be unreasonable. Because, because your idea of unreasonable is coming from pre potentially frequency nurtures for data. Right. But you never know. Right. And and so. So. So to wrap up here we're going to go a little bit higher up a little more universal in our, in our. In our final thoughts but with regard to new neurons connections with regard to belief systems with regard to how do you break old habits and have thought habits. Right. Habits aren't just smoking or, or, or scrolling or whatever. Like you have bad thought habits. How do you break those preconceived notions? How do you maintain a high level of creativity and willingness openness mentally to learn and collaborate with people instead of getting stuck in your ways. What are some techniques?
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Hire me as your coach and do all your mortgages.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: That's a great. I think we should end there. And that's a great answer.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: So. And I'm not kidding about that.
Collaborate, mastermind with great human beings that just happen to have a real estate license.
Fine. And again I'm not saying I'm right. I'm saying this is what works for me. Find out what method light your soul on fire. What Gets you excited about the business that you're doing.
And go do that and be okay with where, what you decide, how you decide to operate.
That's it. Like, if what I'm saying, you're just like, oh, my. It's literally making you want to vomit. Don't do it. It's not. But also be open to what would my business look like? So, like, I could give you an example. Like, in my old or in my heavy recruiting days, I'm always.
I'm looking at speed and I'm looking at. I used to call it the seduction of recruiting. And I'm giving away a very simple secret here.
The thing that I did differently than most people people is I actually made offers for agents to join our company right there on the spot.
Say, I'll follow up with you later.
I didn't say I used a Chris V. Hey, would it. Would it seem silly for me to make you an offer to join our company? Because my goal is to either have you get a raise where you're at or join my company.
And I literally, sometimes I wrote it out on a napkin. If I didn't have a laptop or something with me, I would write it out on napkin. The seduction of recruiting. No one was doing it. So I always believe be different.
Have you interviewed other agents? Yeah, and they said I should list here.
Why are they telling you where to list? Your house. Your house, right?
Bam. That agent doesn't have a shot.
Very competitive these days.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: There it is. Stay cured. Stay open minded. I love that last line. Why are they telling you what to list it for?
All right, Appreciate it, Ed. Let's see what kind of firestorm we blew here. We'll catch up soon.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I love it. Disrupt the market, baby. Let's disrupt the market.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: There it is.
