Real Estate, Sex & Gossip

Real Estate Revelations: The Good, the Bad, and the Creepy

• Paul Locatelli & Brian DeDiego • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Who says real estate can't be a side hustle? Join us as we shine a light on the realities of the real estate industry, figure out why social media is a must-have tool for every real estate agent, and explore if a thrilling venture like the California market could be your next move. We don't just talk big; we bring you valuable insights.

Get ready for a wild ride as we navigate the mortgage maze, exposing large portfolio lender pitfalls, and discuss real-world strategies to secure your loan. You'll hear us dissect the sacrifices of homeownership, the impact on mental health when a significant chunk of your income is tied up in housing, and the latest scoop from the NFL. Yes, we even managed to fit some sports in between all this real-estate talk!

We delve into how market comprehension is key to safeguarding your interests, whether you're a buyer, seller, or an agent. So, pull up a chair and lend us your ears as we take you on a real estate rollercoaster ride!

Speaker 2:

for the fucking beginning that's a good start, I thought we had a good start last time I was worried about it right now. This is the real estate sex and gossip podcast brought to you by local tv and a real hanumanian. And brian screwed up. We restarted the podcast. I thought it was gonna suck and I think we just did a better job.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, there's like 10 minutes a lot of bullshit. Now it's like I gotta rethink.

Speaker 2:

My brain hurts. Oh yeah, wait, wait, I forgot. Explicit, explicit, explicit, fuck, fuck you. Your. His therapist was you 175. Yeah, yeah, I'm motherfucker. You guys been so busy.

Speaker 3:

We're shitty at social media oh yeah, that's pretty much covered everything you guys all missed oh, that's pretty good stuff, but I think we let's go right back into one.

Speaker 2:

I'll do the. I'll do the full disclosure. I screwed up on recording right out of the gate there and we went about two and a half three minutes of, I think, gold. I think that is un. I don't know if we can ever reach that level again.

Speaker 1:

We can talk about it again.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I really think that was the one. That was the one that gets us a million followers. What?

Speaker 1:

we said right there.

Speaker 2:

I can tell you that no, but that one thing you said which I can't remember now. I think that was the thing his fucking therapist owes me.

Speaker 1:

I don't say five bucks, I'll compound compound interest explicit, explicit plus so I mean quick, you know recap.

Speaker 3:

Brian was asking us, you know, are we tired? Are we just tired from the market, the changes, the alcohol?

Speaker 1:

business age, age age.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, my back hurts right now bad, as my kids call it, weed juice business real estate. I just I was commenting on Thursday. Last week I went and saw my therapist, tom western he said say hi to Paul, yeah you fucking guy.

Speaker 1:

I'm a son of a bill so I was just interest.

Speaker 3:

Over seven years I was just telling him I felt depleted just because of everything we've got going. And yeah, it's, it's. I haven't felt like this in a long time, to be honest with you. So I was. So we talked through a lot of it and you know it's, it's funny. I was talking to a mutual acquaintance, paul, and I know a guy named Craig Lockwood and we were talking at the volleyball game Thursday and he's like you know, craig's getting ready. His wife says time to go back to work. Yeah, he's been off for a year. God bless him, lucky bastard. And he was talking about you know, he's like I just want to do the right thing, you know, and we're all older now. And I said, no, I understand, I go. I told him I was tired and he started laughing and I'm like Locatelli. I'm like, yeah, I mean the fucking guy, I'll call me still at six o'clock and worry me, ask me what the fuck I'm doing how am I making money?

Speaker 2:

you know like I don't know like that happened in the last week oh, yeah, all the time well what he's not saying yet.

Speaker 3:

At Craig Lockwood's house I always just get up like early in the morning play with Legos because I was bored in the closet, by the way Craig said he made a very clear of Paul is in the closet by himself playing with Legos wait again, was the Legos.

Speaker 1:

Like this other comment within the last week no, I haven't played with Legos for a while, so we?

Speaker 3:

were just talking about the Buell podcast, which is a good one. We're gonna get it up, everybody, yeah, the quick cliffnotes version is we've been doing this.

Speaker 2:

We've been doing I do a lot of these other ones. First time that we've uploaded one and we got a warning that it was an explicit podcast without us stating it was explicit. So it's hung up, we'll get. We got a Buell podcast. That was great. It's in the universe out there. We'll bring it up what's fucking explicit so?

Speaker 1:

who I can't know, but we were also talking about. So, like George Carlin's terms, yeah, right could we do it?

Speaker 2:

can we do the seven words? Are we? Are we old enough to do the seven, george? The ones you can't say like on radio, it's it's cock, fuck shit mother. No, it's not mother, come on shit. Wouldn't bitch be one? Bitch feels like it would be one. Don't you remember that Paul? No, it was a bit that, george Carlin, I think in the 70s or 80s old comedian. I remember him. But he did it and it was kind of controversial because there was some things you could not say like publicly on the radio or tv.

Speaker 1:

And he said him, he said the, he said the words oh, I'm sure there's a couple words that you guys have not said, that I'm not gonna say but anyways, going, going back to um, so we'll get the Buell one up and then the bridge.

Speaker 2:

Before we realized we weren't recording was um, it just been. We were talking about social media and how it's kind of hard to keep up on a little bit and you guys, yeah, because people have been asking and why?

Speaker 1:

why we're not on there again? You know, showing her stuff, giving some, you know, educational stuff, some fun stuff beep got them shit piss, fuck, cut cocksucker, mother fucker intense.

Speaker 3:

Wow, that was back in the 70s.

Speaker 2:

It's still funny, though. You almost said it is good. You almost said it's good as Carlin, do it one more time, do it one more time.

Speaker 3:

I can't repeat those words. Do it, oh my god, home and get bit slapped, oh.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad you said it, not me you know what, though?

Speaker 2:

hey, you know me too, but you delivered that well that was excellently done.

Speaker 2:

So we to catch up a little bit and we'll kind of drift, because I enjoyed that conversation. That was, um, that was left. There is the social media conundrum on business in particular. I think we went over a couple people that are clearly making money doing something very specific unboxing cards, um, you know, scratcher tickets. There's a million different ways specifically to make money, but I think we were kind of getting the point. It's kind of hard to translate all the way to business sometimes right.

Speaker 1:

I want to see you know, like real estate agents, how do they make money doing social media? Just put themselves out there, tell them how great you are, great, wonderful, but are they really making money off of social media? Or is the guys who are selling the platform for all these realtors that are making the money to help them on social media? Well I just there's a.

Speaker 3:

There's a company out there that helps realtors do all the social media for 99 dollars a month, right, they do everything, yeah, but I just read men's health, it was pretty interesting about influencers, yeah, and they had actually the top 25 influencers in the United States, how much money they do make. Yeah, um, there's one there it was a woman, um, and it was her. Her subject was more in relationship type stuff, um, which I was like I read them all. It was interesting. But they're now talking about what they're calling the non-influencers, where they're. A lot of these people are getting paid for products they actually don't believe in and then, now that they got money, they're now coming out as influencers and saying, well, look, this is not really the way I would. I would go. So it's a.

Speaker 2:

It's a like a big internal controversy of what's going on right now that they were talking about you know where I eventually land on it from a business standpoint, and this would be for anybody, I guess, as far as even like small artists or people that are using it is the way I kind of palette. It is that remember the old days like this is going all the way back. You go, go down to kinkos, get 2000 copies, put them on windshields, maybe get 2000. What you're hoping out of that is maybe six people, you know. You know there's going to be 1500 thrown away. There's going to be 400 thrown in the backseat of cars. Maybe five, seven, ten, fifteen people look at it and you get.

Speaker 2:

You get the two or three sales you need. So it cost you nothing to print that. It cost you nothing get it out there. And if you can get one sale in that model of a couch, let's say, let's say you're a furniture, yeah, then that I feel like that might be the social media game. You got to take your, your personality. You don't need a hundred thousand likes, you need two, five, ten, twenty people connected, right yeah, but you're not going to do that today.

Speaker 3:

Brian, you got fentanyl on those fires oh. I read on tiktok is you? You're not allowed to touch any of it it's a terribly dated reference.

Speaker 3:

I'm sorry about that, but it's true really you know I, today, I you know we're it's funny we're we're talking about gas bringing on, but we are a real estate podcast also, and oh we are. I don't think you and I really talk much about real estate, but I think this is actually important with the state of just the mind of agents, the reality of how many agents are actually working, how many have left the business what was right there that just I sent you a video of the showing agents running out of the business.

Speaker 1:

It was something going downhill. That was so funny. I came it was a. It was a bike, it was a bike race and it shows all these guys just crashing and dying and falling over because all the agents are leaving the business, because it's gotten harder yeah, let's, let's just stay right on there, because I think that's one of the the topics that you guys talked about.

Speaker 2:

It's, uh, that we wanted to talk about today is, you know, tough times ahead, not only for established agents. Yeah, it's tough, but new agents are just caving in. You know new agents that maybe because, of the COVID-19 agents, that, uh, that kind of that ran into a game when it was hot oh yeah, those.

Speaker 1:

Those people are just like you know. Some are probably doing well and I can't not speaking for all of them, but they don't know what a tough market is. Like we said, we've been in a tough market. I mean I started in 2001, seen it go up, seen it go down, seen the crash, seen the ups of it, and now it's like it's back to work. You just can't get zill leads. And oh, I got a zill lead and I'm ready to go again. Why don't?

Speaker 3:

you talk about real quick. That's a good point. Um, the agent you did speak to, we were not going to name that agent or the company no, but they've been getting zill leads for a year and yeah, he finally got one.

Speaker 1:

He's a good one and then a bad one. It's been a year so far wow and it's like, really, I mean, that's, that's what you're excited about, zillow. It's like people, you're in the fucking business to help your friends, family, co-workers right. Get into something that they are going to spend their most amount of money on in their life. And you all you care about Zill leads and people you don't even fucking know.

Speaker 2:

Answer this question for me from a layman's standpoint, like outside the industry. I guess the confusing part for me in a market like California a tough market overall is is real estate, being a real estate agent, a side hustle for people, should you know what I'm saying like there's a lot of jobs, there's a lot of teachers, I know that have summertime jobs. There's a lot of, you know there's a lot of. I guess it'd be almost akin to maybe in the old days, like a professional athlete that would do another job. Can we talk about that a little bit from, like, a naive standpoint? I have a lot of friends that struggle in the real estate business because it's just these huge gaps in between income.

Speaker 3:

Well, I can give you a quick quote on the income, if you want, right now. Yeah, so stats.

Speaker 1:

Oh, here we go.

Speaker 3:

Well, I like stats.

Speaker 1:

I'm emotional. He likes stats, oh, stats don't lie. Yeah, they do they like. You can manipulate them on the scheme you can.

Speaker 3:

You can manipulate stats, I'll start with that. But you've got 2022 to 2023. So, just right now, our stats only through the association, only good through July, okay for 2023. So if you take the current inventory from, let's just say, june, in 2022 was 304 single family homes. In 2023 is 301.

Speaker 3:

So there's there's no different. I mean 1%. We want to get technical, yeah, but there's no difference. The sales were higher, Also in 2023. So I'm scratching my head, but the days on market are practically starting to double. And so I'm running through some of these stats and they're just kind of mind boggling. But so when I go back and I took a large picture from January through June of 2022 to 2023, versus just a month or two the inventory is higher, which we expect. The prices there hasn't been a huge fluctuation, but the days on market have doubled. So what that tells you right now, for people that like stats and looking at things, things are taking longer to sell. Sellers are not necessarily as much in a hurry, but we are seeing price reductions higher inventory, higher prices, but we're now seeing reductions and they're coming. The market is in the market. It's speaking when I'm, when I'm reading these stats. And so for agents, if you look at it, and if you look at we have like 1500 agents in our county, okay, and my gut is at least 10 to 20% of them are going to be gone. Okay, they will be gone after this cycle that we have through here.

Speaker 3:

And if you look at the number of sales that we had and I took those sales and I actually took condo and single family and in 2022, from January to July, there was 1189 sales. So we multiply that times two because there's a buyer's agent and a seller's agent, so there's 2378 paychecks, okay, for seven months. And then you take that was 2022. And, sorry, you take 2023, it went from 2378 down to 1650. Wow, Okay, that is a substantial drop, Right. And when you look at those and you look at the days have doubled on the market. There's 728 less paychecks going through 1500 agents. So in 2022, when the market started to shift just a bit, yeah, the an agent was getting paid every two months. Now I'm just using generalities. At 1500 agents, some of us got paid more, some got didn't get paid at all, and then in 2023, it's now every three months. That's tough.

Speaker 1:

So you look at it, you're going wet, you're going from so the question is is you, are you a part time agent? Yeah, he's asking. No, some of these agents are part time, you know, because their husbands or wives are doing other jobs. My dad was their part time agent, yeah, so you know he did great because he was a teacher, right. And then he'd sell one or two, three, five, 10 houses and kill it there too, right, right. I have not been a part time agent. I've been here in Freckin since 2001,. Kicking, busting my balls, working my butt off, yeah. And it's so funny when these people come in and say, oh, it's so great. It's like, well, you got the taste of COVID life Right. Now you're going to get taste of real life, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Oh, I like that COVID life versus real life.

Speaker 2:

No, it's a good t-shirt. Yeah, it's not bad. There's no t-shirt I can make. I think what it is, though, what it looks like to me it's like it's so similar to and I think you guys might be in an industry that is more subject to sort of like rumor in your window hysteria. You know little news clippings like you know. You know the world time entity. You know whether it be the magazine, whether it be landscaping. There's not a lot of emotion in that. Now we feel it is like a we're more like a battleship. When the economy changes, some of our HOA contracts, commercial contracts, might change super slow. You wouldn't even know we're moving. You guys. Stock market crashes on a Thursday and it can affect the housing market perception for much longer than that. Because you is that fair to say that you guys feel that Okay.

Speaker 1:

That's a big time. Yeah, I mean right now lines of equity. When people were trying to get, you know, pull out. They were talking about pull out lines of equity. A couple of years ago, yeah. They were down to 4%. You know 3% Right Now they're hard money. It's 9.75.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, Sanctuary's County Bank, I'm just went up 10 and a quarter. What Open your statement. Oh fuck, we love, we love Doug at Sanctuary's County Bank. He's everybody, but we told me he's a hard money lender.

Speaker 2:

now it's 10 and a quarter right. What 10?

Speaker 1:

and a quarter. 10 and a quarter. Yeah, oh fuck.

Speaker 2:

It's, it's, it's ruined Paul's day. You were like this was live, hold on, hold on Breaking news, or wait. We have a better one than that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. So you know emotionally.

Speaker 1:

How am I going to accept it? I accept it. I'm going to go to somebody else for now and go to hard money. Person getting 9% loan.

Speaker 3:

Hard money is looking good.

Speaker 2:

I've worked in that business before too, and a little bit of it.

Speaker 2:

If you're in the game, like if you're in the game full time, then you can't have a euphoric spending spree when you get a commission. That's simple. I've been on that other side of it before, where, if you the stats that Brian said I think are the I'm a stat guy also and that's fascinating to me because that's how I would sort of basically live on that and create a budget for myself personally as a full time real estate agent. If I was, I would know, looking into 2023, 2024, we better look at paychecks every three to four months, whatever it may be on the an error on the other side of it, and then you can survive all of this. If you basically know what the market's telling you it's going to do, then no, you're not getting paid every six or eight weeks, you're getting paid every 12 or 16 weeks, and that's fine if you know it or can anticipate it beforehand a little bit, because you're still going to make the sales if you're in the game. If you're in the game.

Speaker 2:

But it's just going to be stretched Right and you know there's.

Speaker 3:

You know I was talking to a young kid and you know he has a listing which I know he's super excited to get and it's way overpriced. It's never going to sell and you know I mean his clients are completely upside down. Yeah, you know, and I you could hear the excitement in his voice because he's got a listing. So you know he's going to have an opportunity to sit out there and meet some people and hopefully grab a buyer and use this listing where he can make a sale. But he's, you know you got to be careful pricing things where you're headed because you, it's, it's we've talked about this a little bit before, but it's about psychologically one being honest with your clients and saying look, here's the reality of the market and this is what's going on. You, you can't use data from a year ago, right?

Speaker 2:

Well, let's stay right there. I'm going to transition to your question, the other prompt that we had for this thing. It's perfect that you're leading into it. So now we know the. That might kind of like. That's interesting, that standpoint, I think the data is important. But now we get to the people that are listening. How can people buy in this market?

Speaker 3:

I mean there's, there's a lot of clever, clever ways to buy. I mean there's many programs that are out there and you can hit Paul up and he's happy to go over 7, 5, 0, 9, 7, 9, 5.

Speaker 2:

Well, we can do. We can do one better. I think we get about it. Right now. It's still like in the 100, couple hundred people listen to this and so as you guys talk about these ways, feel free to talk them and then I can put them in the the notes of the podcast links in the podcast. They can actually go back to you guys or do some research on creative ways to kind of get themselves set up. So what are some you know like to answer the question what are some strategic ways for people to buy right now?

Speaker 3:

People yeah, I mean, so we're assuming we have somebody straight across the board with average credit yeah, decent job, things like that. You know, what a lot of agents are doing is they're they're putting videos out showing, showing the difference, which we can't do in this market in terms of you know, I just saw one from one of our competitors saying oh you know, buy a million dollar house and but wait, it's now worth 900,000. They showed the lower interest rate. They showed today's higher interest rate and, look, you're saving money, right. But when you look at the stats, no, those sellers haven't reduced the price of that house yet. They're seeing reductions, but not to the tune of 10%, offsetting the interest rates by two to three points. It's just that math isn't there yet. In Santa Cruz County, you know, in Santa Cruz County, in terms of buying a home one, it's it's having to write people behind you, it's it's finding stuff that's on the market and it's finding stuff really that's off the market that not everybody is about price.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 3:

They're not. You run across a lot of sellers and they've said look, I'm concerned about people coming to my house or I'm concerned about just being personal and quiet. And I understand my fair market value is this I'm willing to sell my house for why? I'm willing to leave some money on the table for somebody if they're willing to come in. I've heard stories like that.

Speaker 2:

I mean you do you live in a neighborhood? We're relevant. We just we just bought one, right? So what would you consider to go backwards again from a from people that are listening that I think a lot of people are intimidated by even jumping into the game. Like what would you guys kind of consider average credit? Like what would you consider like a good profile for somebody buying locally? Like what's a? What's a? What's a good average income, combined income, average credit, so that they can feel like they're in the game or something if they don't have it to work towards a number.

Speaker 1:

I mean, it's kind of funny to say that, because I have a client that are buying right now and they have great credit, they have great income, plenty of assets. But sure enough, bank of America gave them a good loan and now they don't. Now they don't want to give it to them because it's too good. It's too good for the loan, oh they want.

Speaker 1:

They're basically kind of resending the offer, but he's high up there so he pushed them pretty, pretty well. But he backed himself up with the Chase bank because he has money there too. So he's helping. He's pushing the banks against each other. Now Good yeah, and because he had, he can do that. So people that don't have that kind of collateral can do a couple of things. They can say if they own a house right now, do I keep my house, do I rent my house out? Do I leverage that house, and will the rent cover it Right or just sell it outright? So it's just, it's just trying to find out what's the best situation for each person. I mean, you know when, when you're borrowing that money at 10 and a quarter percent now shit right that.

Speaker 1:

That changes everything you might have to sell. Cause I tell people if you don't sell, do not sell your house, keep it, rent it, cause that's equity, that's value, that's money, that's free money for you in the future. But if you're trying to buy, buy up now, you might have to sell that house because of the way where the rates are right, you could buy the rates down with.

Speaker 1:

You know meaning you pay a point, which is, if it's a million dollar loan, it's 10,000 bucks. You know easy math, you know, but you better be in that house longer than seven years right, right it's it's, it's math when we sit down with people, it's math.

Speaker 3:

We run it, we run everything and say, look, let's take a five to seven year scenario and we'll run it with all the points.

Speaker 1:

If you're living there for longer than 15 years. Yeah, pay point, don't pay, you know right figure that out. But you got to understand worry cause you pay all that money up front. You ain't getting that money back if you refi.

Speaker 3:

Right, I'm going to let out some anger cause. Paul brought up a really good point that I don't think a lot of buyers think about. Yeah, Bank of America and Wells Fargo Wells Fargo got caught in COVID what these banks do. So if you're a buyer listening to this podcast, listen to your agents, whoever you guys are using, and and you need to talk to a minimum of two to three different lenders. And if you're looking at one of those large portfolio lenders Wells Fargo B of A I'm calling you out because you've done this. Yep, they run these programs that are sweet and what they do is they're getting people to open accounts and then come in and apply for these mortgages, I mean, and their rates are substantially lower when they do this Way lower, and so what happens is they flood and they take the market. Well, they can't close any fucking loans.

Speaker 3:

I mean, I had a few sellers that got caught and I said, screw you, Wells Fargo, you fucking bring me a Wells Fargo pre-approval letter. You're not getting a counter. And because they were not closing loans, they were putting it out there and they were sitting in a system for 30, 60, 90 days.

Speaker 2:

So explain that to me, because that might even catch me. When you say so, you get a pre-approved, basically, and they can't close on a pre-approved loan.

Speaker 3:

Yes. So I mean we can give you an example. On the west side, over on Mission Street, somebody came in with a Wells Fargo loan Market at that time was like 4.5% interest rate. Wells Fargo had this quote teaser rate out for everybody at a 3.65, something like that.

Speaker 3:

So, of course, if you're a buyer is not educated or an agent that doesn't have great relationships across all type of lending, the buyer is going to go grab that 3.65. They're going to make their application, they're going to open up their bank account, run their credit, do the appraisal and that's just going to sit in underwriting because the reality is they can only pool so much money and loan so much money based on these interest rate pools. They do Right and they just they grab, they just grab the market and then they're not closing. Well then what happens? That buyer gets kicked out because another buyer is coming in. They're never going to get their 3.65.

Speaker 2:

It's like airplanes overselling seats in a way, exactly that.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, Southwest.

Speaker 2:

I think you might be saying something I like I wouldn't not being in the game, I wouldn't know about the back end of that. I wouldn't know about that part of it, because I think, if you're, I've never been kicked out of alone, and so I think that's an interesting Part of it where you know, you always kind of hear these underwriting nightmares, you know, and you hear that I've not been in one, but that might be interesting for people to hear, that what you just said, that they wouldn't see that coming, it's a pattern.

Speaker 1:

It didn't see, it didn't happen in my client had no clue is gonna happen him. I mean, and they were asking him questions that they shouldn't even asked him. I mean, bank America was so bad. They were reading off numbers and he asked him where'd you get that number? She didn't even fucking look at his bank statement, wow.

Speaker 3:

And I can tell you personally I got a. I got a rate at two and a half percent from Wells Fargo. Okay, I'm not gonna get into a lot of details, but I'm part of their.

Speaker 1:

Premier rap and all that Retirement the lender fucker.

Speaker 3:

The lender didn't even know the fucking loan program.

Speaker 1:

Wow and.

Speaker 3:

I didn't even qualify for that particular loan program. He didn't even know it. After I had to pay for an appraisal. Yeah, and that lender, unfortunately, because he was referred over to by one of our financial advisors. I mean, he lost probably 10 to 15 loans that month as soon as this word got out. He was taking applications, not even understanding his own product. I had to explain his own goddamn product to him.

Speaker 2:

So how do people protect themselves from that?

Speaker 1:

You say just multiple good, good agents, you got your agents should talk to you to go see a Little bit. I can't even talk right now. I'm thinking about that 10 a quarter percent. I'm gonna be fucked up mortgage broker. Oh mortgage broker. Thank you mortgage broker. Go find a mortgage broker and talk to them. You know the big banks are not there to help you, even though you think they are, they're not right. They're not there to help you, there to take your money and collect fees.

Speaker 2:

You generally this. They're fee collectors and their moneyholders and and yeah, they're not your. So a little bit better luck with local banks Overall, or is it? Or is it still? You want to kind?

Speaker 3:

of just if I'm a buyer today. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go call. I've got two or three mortgage brokers I use and I'm gonna call them and I will call portfolio institution and and ask and see you see where they're at. But you know, when you talk to the mortgage brokers they all know a lot of them are full of crap too, because they can broker through them and make money on the backside of that loan and they're not doing it because they're not closing them.

Speaker 2:

Okay, let's we keep skirting around. I think this is one of the problems in the community is is. I think we we sort of still run over the people on the sidelines. Some of the locals that have lived through their whole life Don't see a pathway to ownership in this town are really frustrated with with the world as it exists, you know, and there's a tremendous amount of animosity, but we've all got some semblance of some friend that's basically second, third, fourth generation and they're beginning looking to be the first one that can't seem to find their way To home. Ownership in Santa Cruz is is there a path for people on the sidelines like that? And and we maybe even stretch the concept of it Do you start and maybe start laddering up outside of your preferred circle of buying, move a little bit farther out than kind of ladder your way in? Or is there? Is it? Are they just screwed? I know it's a tough question but it's. But you know it's real situation is different.

Speaker 3:

It is real Right, we got, I got friends that have moved out of the area, that can't afford a bio mayor, it's the topic of conversation.

Speaker 2:

underneath all of the statistics of what's being sold, we, you know, we, we understand all of it and it's buyers, a buyer, the markets, the market, and I get that part of it. But is there a pathway for somebody with you know they're, they're, they're even good to better than average credit, with with a with a decent income?

Speaker 3:

Yes, to find a way, but teachers, teachers, the teachers have a path, they have special programs, okay.

Speaker 3:

But again, I was working with the teacher over at Westlake and when I looked at this program that I think it was Zuckerberg that was putting out, which, again, hats off to them.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for setting up these scholarships and these programs, that they're amazing. But when you look at the fine print and I had to sit down with my clients and I'm like, look, so what they basically did is they were going to match their down payment of 10%, so it's going to be 20%, but that program is going to take part of their equity down the road, right. And so when I sat there with my client saying, well, look, by putting 90% or getting a 90% loan, 10% down, you're going to have an added fee of mortgage insurance. It's going to cost you another 4 to 500. So this program is saving you $400 to $500 a month, plus the added 10%. It was a million dollar home, so another 100 grand, right. But here's the flip side, where you flip the cards If you sell the home and this house goes up to 300 grand, you just lost half your equity. Exactly, that goes back to the program, right? But those are programs to get people's foot in a door where they may not care.

Speaker 2:

It depends on your intention, right, if your intention is just to live locally, you know, and whatever may be. Again, it's almost goes back to the conversation we had about being an agent. If you see the landscape ahead of you and you kind of understand all the numbers by having a good agent, what the what, the risks and what the benefits are of the deal, and you go in with I guess for the classic eyes wide open, then then it's an option.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I just I think when a buyer comes in, we sit down with a buyer and explain look, here's the market today, here was the market two years ago. This is what we see. Maybe the market here is the interest rates. And just run the scenarios for him hey, if you bought this house in 2021, this is where you're at. If you bought the house in 2023 today, this is where you're at right.

Speaker 3:

Like Paul said, there's three to one interest rate buy downs where they're teasers, right. So if rates are at 7% today, you can get the first year at five, next year at six, then your 27 through 30 is at 7%, right. And some of those are great for people because they're like, hey, you know what, I'm actually going to be getting a promotion in the next 12 months. So every buyer situation is different. But if I'm a buyer today, I'd go sit down with my agent, look at what the past is showing me, what today showing me what we think the future is. And then, what do I need? Like you said, you need good credit. So, to answer your question, you need 660 credit score or better if you guys are going to want to be considered an a buyer, meaning you're going to get the best of all interest rates right. Okay, yeah, you need to save for a down payment. But you know you can use your retirement, you can use gift funds from your family.

Speaker 2:

I was gonna ask that because that's another one that I think generationally start getting into a different bracket where guys like us have a lot of friends that now they've been working or they've been stashing it away, they've got their, their retirement. That is that a usable asset? Yes, okay.

Speaker 3:

And your parents are a big usable asset in my opinion. I mean, I'm I'm getting ready for my kids, yeah, right. So am I going to help my kids get into a home? Absolutely Totally, my parents help me, Absolutely Right. And so I think when you sit down with somebody and you actually just lay this road out, you have 10 lane highway. You don't know, you might go down lane three, you may be going down lane six, you don't know. But I think if a path is laid out for you and you want to buy a home and you're not ready today but you're like I really want to buy this home in six months or a year from now, yeah, we can make it happen. There's programs that may fit your needs, may not fit your needs. Talk about down payment savings, the right property that you like. You said you may need to go a little bit outside. You know we got people that love to buy in capital. They can't, or?

Speaker 2:

smaller outside, or smaller, like I think they have to, kind of two different concepts, which is like you might have to kind of like that word ladder up. I think I've had a lot of friends that have had luck. One of the pathways here is that ladder up, which is which is a condo, which is, you know, a bigger condo, which is a house, which is in the other planes, patiently, strategically, playing the game at the right time that they're in and then they're out at the right time. And they're in at the right time, they're out the right time and their, your expectations might have to change a little bit.

Speaker 3:

Oh, I don't care how much money you have. I mean conversation I had years ago. When I sit down with a buyer, it's like it doesn't matter how much you have, what are you willing to give on? Yeah, I mean, you're buying. You're buying in California, let alone you're buying in Santa Cruz, one of the most expensive places to live, just because of the beauty and everything else. But what are you going to give on?

Speaker 2:

That's exactly it and you have to make some hard sacrifices to. I think you need to that that part about putting it away, especially for the down payment. I think people want to have their cake and eat it. They want to kind of continue live in their lifestyle with their trips, with their, you know, with their boats and accessories and things like that, and have the house. But sometimes something's got to go to give on that you do.

Speaker 2:

You eventually do have to give a little bit. Where you're like I'm gonna, I'm gonna. The commitment has to be bigger than the want if that makes sense. Like everybody wants a house, but then it's like an athlete, you got to commit to it, boy, this is a real life real estate podcast.

Speaker 3:

Today, boys, this is our first one. I know it could be boring for some of you out there, but really yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean, there's people. We have friends that sell their house, said they'll never buy again. They're gonna rent Right?

Speaker 2:

Well, there's, there's, there's a whole different podcast as far as not great for you guys, but I think there's a balance in there where I think you know, now we're getting into like investment properties and things like that and what's you know, there's, I think it. I think the bottom line from what I've seen is, like you know, just from a, from our standpoint, this is Stacey and I's life kind of one renting and or owning we try to keep it between like 19 and 20, 3% of our incomes. For that we can live the life that we want, so we don't want to spend over. As I'm talking about, whether it be a mortgage or renting, that's the number and the rest of it shakes down that way, because I have a lot of friends that are living that 4050, 60% world for their mortgages in their housing and then then it becomes more of a mental health crisis.

Speaker 3:

Sometimes right, I mean the average yeah. I bet you the average in this county is probably 38 to 45 percent Easy dude right. And that's a. That's a. That's a big number. I tried talking to my kids about this and she's just she don't want to talk about it, she don't give a shit about this. They don't want to hear that.

Speaker 2:

But I think there's a part of this. I don't think it's. The reason I don't think this is boring is because I don't. I think it's very hard to talk about this, that let's say dinner with your friends or coffee with your friends, going like man, I don't know if I can do it, I don't know if I can make it here, because that's like a humbling thing to say. So it's easier for us to say it and know, within anonymity, talking about people that are in the struggle, trying to find it, because the rest of it, the boring part of this podcast, is when we're talking about million and $2 million houses being sold, because you're like that's just not me. There's the people that live in this county that listen to this podcast and might share this. Are the people that not necessarily in the buying market, but are probably having a conversation with somebody that's trying to get in there, like you got to talk to these dudes. Because there's what I'm saying is, I think there's a lot of creative ways to do it if you got the right agent.

Speaker 3:

I mean there is, yeah, absolutely yeah. I mean there's, there's a lot and we and you know, and the reality, we're not two in our horns but we hear a lot too. I mean, right, we hear a lot, what's going on and what's coming on, and you know, and of course we just kind of shop it through through our list first, right.

Speaker 2:

Before anything, I'm going to break some of this with. We're going to break the. I got one more question on real estate, but I want to break it up with just some breaking this will be the real estate, sex and gossip part of it. The gossip part of it sex might be hard to get to today, but it's. The gossip part is just more of the daily news and see if you guys have any thoughts on some stuff I saw pop up on my phone. Um, did you guys watch the Jets game last night? Aaron Rodgers, yes, Do you give a shit about football? I love football.

Speaker 3:

Um, I missed it. Uh, did you watch a little bit, I watched it.

Speaker 2:

I watched the whole entire offseason.

Speaker 1:

I didn't actually see the first four. I didn't see his first four plays and I missed that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, they. Just in summary, the entire NFL. Uh, you know the the, the business of the NFL, the entire offseason was Aaron Rodgers. Oh, it was all about Aaron Rodgers, aaron Rodgers going to the Jets restructuring a $60 million deal to work in Everything set for September 11th. Giants play on Sunday at at Metallands. The Jets come in and play the next night. Rodgers carries in the flag on 9, 11 and on the fourth play blows out as Achilles tendon and that's the end of his probably his career. God you think so.

Speaker 1:

At 40. That's a huge comeback, right.

Speaker 2:

Jets just sucked a $50 million dick.

Speaker 3:

It's over and more and more. No, no, no, it's guaranteed. They got guaranteed money. That's what I'm saying. The Jets sucked it.

Speaker 1:

Jets sucked it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's yeah, but it was uh, it was, it was, it was, it was it was, it was, it was, it was, it was it was.

Speaker 1:

That's that's he's still going to make more money off of that. They're going to use this thing to sell a fucking number eight, like you wouldn't believe Fucking. I just watched the get up this morning. Mike fucking went crazy this morning. Not the guys that have a fucking heart attack. Oh yeah, the Mike Greenberg on Mike Greenberg on get up is a lifelong Jets fan in his whole off season's been.

Speaker 2:

This is the year, all about. On the clock. It lasted all of about 13 minutes that whole game. It was three plays of them, but that was that's it. I, I walked, I wish I saw him.

Speaker 3:

I had to pick up kids and so I walked. I walked in and, um, I saw her and Rogers in a boot and my son, chase, is like, who is a? It might have broke his ankle, a bad sprain. I go, dude, that's as Achilles if he's in a boot and he goes no, no, they said it's an ankle.

Speaker 2:

And then this morning I heard Achilles, you go on an X, which is Twitter, but X, you go on X, and there's some slow motion video. If you've ever, if you want to see an Achilles tendon rolling up, it's on there.

Speaker 2:

It's slow motion and it's on there and it's, and it's not for the, not for the faint of heart. And then the other really trending one this morning I saw was have you seen that dude that was like 3000 feet down in that tunnel that they carried him out? No, that that. That rock climb, not rock climbing, he's a tunnel fucking dweller. He basically went down. He goes down 2500, 3000 feet and he had a medical emergency down there. I'm talking like caverns, like like barely any crawl space, zigzagging back down to the bottom of the earth, and he had a medical emergency. He took them like two weeks to get this dude out. Two weeks, Two weeks, Because they had to go inch by inch somebody in front of them and he was like bleeding out down there. They sent him down IVs, all this stuff.

Speaker 3:

But the big breaking is I wanted to get to I know the big breaking one, I didn't watch it.

Speaker 2:

This was at the Capitol Heart Wine Festival. Well, it's troubling. It's this one, this one's really upsetting to me.

Speaker 3:

There's a creeper in our town.

Speaker 2:

What do you mean? Well, you haven't heard. No, this is. This is bad. So I, you know, I work the Capitol Heart Wine Festival with my buddy Nelly and I've had a really good time till Sunday afternoon. I was made aware by I think I guess I'll be fair to call him because of the victim advocacy, I won't say any names or anything like that, but a young girl came up to me and said that she was at a stoplight with a friend and a creepy old man has been taking pictures of them.

Speaker 3:

Yes, it's actually trending right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's trending on Yahoo, it's trending on CNN that somebody in Santa Cruz is taking pictures of young girls from his car. Yeah, brian, you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3:

I do, I was, I talked, actually talked to this young girl. You did, I did, and you know I'm like, can you describe this person? And she's like he's a creeper and he was taking pictures of me. Yeah, but what's really weird is I actually got that fucking picture on my phone sent to me from the creeper. You did I did so.

Speaker 2:

so this is this is breaking news. So we we can close this up because I've been upset about it. But you're saying you can close out the case today. I can close it out and I feel, since we can protect the victims, but the perpetrator I feel like we have no such regard for. Not at all. Are you comfortable saying who that person was? Who sent you the picture?

Speaker 3:

I know the number it came from, that's for sure. The number.

Speaker 2:

Okay Well, I don't know if we want to give that out.

Speaker 1:

Well, I know you, you're not People might people might.

Speaker 3:

What's wrong? You joined in the conversation now. Well, you can't fucking give out a number.

Speaker 1:

Why can't?

Speaker 3:

I no. How would you feel if that was your daughter and someone took a picture? Well what would you do? Answer the question Well what would you? Do Well, okay, If that when it tell you sitting on a corner and some fucking old creeper takes a picture of her, what would you do?

Speaker 1:

Was it a good picture?

Speaker 2:

You, son of a bitch. Explosive explicit Brian. Just say it, I can't take it anymore. It's fucking you Locatelli. It was you, locatelli.

Speaker 3:

Did you not take a picture of two little girls on the corner? Answer the question.

Speaker 1:

Answer the question Answer the question.

Speaker 2:

Locatelli. Answer the question. Did you or did you not?

Speaker 1:

Did you or did you not take?

Speaker 2:

a picture of two young girls on a corner.

Speaker 3:

That's a yes or no fucking question to you, wasn't me.

Speaker 2:

I'd like to treat the witnesses hostile.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, I took a picture of Brian's fucking daughter catching school. So it took a picture instead of going big.

Speaker 2:

That's the whole story.

Speaker 3:

Didn't you love her when you were talking with her?

Speaker 2:

So Paul was playing truant officer. Paul was playing truant officer. I saw Brian's daughter fucking.

Speaker 3:

You guys could see the fucking look on Paul's face when we're talking about this, like I fucking miss something that's trending.

Speaker 1:

I was like what the fuck are they talking about?

Speaker 2:

Well, this was all hatched at the art. Brian and I did this on Sunday. We're like, let's do this live on the podcast. We'll expose him. That was beautiful brother.

Speaker 1:

That was beautiful. That couldn't have been better.

Speaker 2:

So you're driving down the road, you see.

Speaker 1:

Brian's daughter and you're like, oh, she's cutting, she's cutting school.

Speaker 2:

You can't leave school. No, regardless. Sometimes people have half days, not on Tuesday.

Speaker 3:

And it was Monday and Santa Cruz. I have early days on Sunday, but go ahead, Paul.

Speaker 1:

Keep telling your story Monday, Tuesday.

Speaker 2:

Kind of hero. You were being a hero. Yeah, I was like, hey, what's your daughter doing at school so fucking early? Did you roll down your window? You know her Very well. Yes, did you roll down your window and say, hi, they were just staring at me to the pictures.

Speaker 3:

Again, you're out there, visualizing Magical creepers fucking in their car Just taking pictures of little girls on the corner.

Speaker 1:

I was in my dump truck too.

Speaker 2:

Well, let's circle around. I got one more. We're going to circle back around to this and that was really good.

Speaker 2:

We're going to finish out a really good. That was fucked up. Yeah, that's good stuff, but actually that'll be now. I'm not going to say that I'm not going to qualify as a part of our podcast, but it's. We're going to finish on what I think is our first full real estate podcast and the question is going to be this is is this? I know you've been talking, we've been in a cycle and overall the macro is something since 2001. But I think there's references to 2008, 2009. We're in something right now. Is there a frame of reference for brokers and for or for agents rather, and for buyers to this market right now? Is there a comparison or are we just in something new right now?

Speaker 1:

No, it's. What's funny is I'm going to say it's a normal market, but even old agents think it's 2019, 20, they're like, oh, we gave you all the disclosures, you should remove all your contingencies. Well, no, I get time now with my buyer to look at stuff and to figure it out. It's like, why are you trying to push me around like you were in 2019, 2020, 2021, where you could? Now it's like your mindset has to go backwards a little bit before you even like this was a thing by removing all contingencies in two fucking seconds, right, and you don't get to look at that. So I can't wait for the lawsuits to come out, because they're going to come out on some of these houses where people had to remove all contingencies and they're like I didn't get a chance.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

I will. Even though I was against 20 agents, I still didn't even get a chance. Do you see that, brian?

Speaker 3:

I'm going to say, for the first time in my 32 years, I got a lot of confusion up in my head what this market is right now Really do, and that's that's scary for me to say, because I usually have some kind of grip of what's going on. But what Paul, what Paul saying is spot on. I mean Absolutely. He's a veteran.

Speaker 1:

It's spot on you got to have time because people feel like it's funny. Some people like I just got a house, maybe now I was working with these guys for two years and we just got a house. And then they're they're rethinking. Did we go into low even though we went down 200 plus grand? Do we not look at all the disclosures? Do we not do this? Do we not do do that? It's like we did everything, we looked everything, but it's like now the buyers have to understand. They're like, oh shit, I just got a house finally, getting beat up for all these years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I got a house, yeah, and now I got a little time to look at it and look at everything closely enough, right? So to me it's more like it's big it's. To me it's normal.

Speaker 2:

I mean it might be in a maybe it, maybe it's. I think we've spoken about it a little bit here and there and I really have this Feeling because I follow the market more than I do the, you know, real estate market but there's a tremendous from an economy standpoint, from a market standpoint I'm talking about stock market and investing there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty even from experts right now. God you, if you watch, like you know, listen to Bloomberg, you watch like the, some of the, the shows in the morning Is it a recession? Is it a soft landing? How there's just tremendous uncertainty Financially right now in the markets and I can't see how that wouldn't somehow jump over to your guys's biz.

Speaker 3:

I mean I like I said I told you I'm yeah, I'm guess I'm just like those stock analysis right now and I it's hard and I, you know, I got contacted and you know, look at the fork, if you look at the foreclosures, which we didn't even talk about a year ago, two years ago, no, the reality is, you know, some in our office just picked up a short sale. Foreclosures are happening, a group that did about 80 million bucks and foreclosures, they're back in, they're hitting it, they're hitting a pavement again.

Speaker 2:

So I think that's like a huge mix of everything now from a standpoint that kind of goes right over my head. What are you talking about?

Speaker 3:

So when the foreclosure market came, some people this that's what they specialize in. Some people specialize in short sales agents.

Speaker 1:

I mean, that's all they do Okay and so they were.

Speaker 3:

They've been extinct. They were like bear sleeping. They were hibernating because the market was so good. Well, they're out of hibernation right now because they're. Their radars went off, where their Dobbler, if you would went, went from one to ten on the foreclosures, meaning they're real now, right, and so they're back.

Speaker 1:

Somebody can't pay the mortgage.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I understand that part. They're back in the market right, no, and one time I. The thing I think it's almost worthy of us talking about next time Maybe in the small real estate parks will probably have a guest on is the. You know the business of foreclosure and I understand what it is, but the actual kind of lurking infrastructure of Administration of foreclosure mark foreclosure market like and and again within there, just like everything else opportunities, you know Opportunities and somebody else's circumstance.

Speaker 3:

There's absolutely, yeah, absolutely there's gonna be opportunities, for people are looking and you know. But the other side of it is is where my brain goes is because if you look at the foreclosure market that we had before and now, it's not the same because loans are structured differently. People how to have jobs, people you know how to have good income.

Speaker 2:

So it I have all this Gray in my brain right now of everything that's going maybe what we do is we process that a little bit and we we put a pin in it Till next month when we go back and maybe we'll talk on our texturing a little bit. Maybe what we can do on this podcast and that can lead into some social we kind of go all the way through here is Sort of do some infrastructure and some you know Blueprints for people how to handle these markets, how to take advantage of a market like that. That might be super tangible to people where You're giving them some insights on an unpredictable market.

Speaker 3:

Do you want to bring? I mean, should we bring another realtor on? I'm just thinking out loud, that's totally opposite of you and I Paul. But no, but I mean in terms of there, if they've got their success and they do things differently.

Speaker 1:

It's a great perspective.

Speaker 3:

Any thoughts on? I mean, I guess we're throwing this out to the world too. Is there any thoughts on a local realtor here in Santa Cruz County? You guys would like to here come sit at this table?

Speaker 2:

I don't, but I love the idea because it's a ball or move just to basically have somebody else on.

Speaker 2:

And get a perspective here and kind of have just an open that's for you guys figure out like somebody that Can give, bring a different perspective in, because I think you guys are too confident enough guys that who cares? It's like just in the market. It's somebody in the market that's probably gonna survive the 20% decrease that you're talking about. That's been. I think it'd be really good to bring somebody on. That's been like you to seen it all seen, seen decades of it. Don't know where we already. We already shot one down and one proposal went up and it got shot down as quick as it started.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no way.

Speaker 2:

Now I want to know not a million years.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 2:

Creeper. Fuck shit explicit Next time boys. Great, you got a. He got Paul flustered. Hey, between the 10.25 and the creeper, we really kept him on his heels.

Speaker 3:

We fucked this whole night up. Watch out, kimmy's gonna come home and beat you explicit fuck.