real estate

Best way to get top dollar

by John Rice

It’s sort of a given that almost any house is going to get multiple offers, but how do you get buyers to do even better than the offer they submitted?

Common these days is the quickly becoming old school way of having a deadline for submitting offers. That makes it easy for the realtor, but doesn’t really give the buyers much motivation to get an amazing offer in as quickly as possible.

What I like to do is have the deadline, but add that the seller reserves the right to accept their ideal offer at any point prior to that.

This does a few things: 1. It gets you an offer in hand fast so that when realtors ask “Do you have an offer yet?” you can say yes! 2. It usually gets at least one buyer thinking they might get the house if they throw out a crazy high offer. Sometimes this works if the offer is higher than the seller and I expected or if it is that high and cash. 3. It also helps you if you don’t get more than one offer at all…..but more on that in a minute.

If I have more than 3 offers, I will let the realtors who sent the offers know I have several offers and I will highlight some of the best terms. You have to have 3 or more offers to do this though since each realtor knows what their offer was. I might say “I have 3 offers, all over list price, 2 of them waived the home inspection, etc. This lets realtors know that somebody has a better term than they did on their offer. I usually can get realtors to revise their offer with more competitive terms.

From here it is mostly waiting for the deadline.

But what do you do if you only have one offer and it isn’t that good? Well, a few hours before the deadline, you call up the realtor with the only offer. You let them know that you are willing to cancel the remaining showings and not wait for the deadline if they agree to whatever counter your seller wants to make. I have NEVER had a realtor not take me up on this. If you wait until the deadline and then try to counter, you have lost all leverage because they know they had your only offer. There has to be the fear that one of those remaining showings could be the buyer who outbids them.

So that’s it. It has never failed me and unless every realtor in town reads this, it will be our little secret.

Good John Rice vs. Evil John Rice

by John Rice

Sorry to be clickbaitish with the title of this post.

There really is a Good John Rice and there really is an Evil John Rice. Both are realtors too.

(I am the Good John Rice by the way!)

How do I know this? Because I often have to prove I am not the other John Rice. When you are a party to an FHA or VA loan transaction, the underwriter has to submit everybody’s name to see if they are on the Naughty List of banned people. You get on this list by doing something shady. Once you are on this list, you can’t be a party to FHA or VA transactions again.

It was about 17 years ago when this first came up. Back then, just about every time I sold a house where the buyer was using FHA or VA financing, I had to give my social security number or driver’s license number so they could verify I wasn’t Evil John Rice. I started putting my middle name on the contract for FHA and VA sales and that helped a little bit.

I hadn’t had to prove I am not him for quite some time, but it happened again this week. I had to write an email stating I am not Evil John Rice of Lake Providence Louisiana……which is better than my social security number or driver’s license number floating around out there with half the mortgage companies in town.

I hope I never meet this Evil John Rice. He has caused me to prove I am not him for my whole 17 year career. I might punch him right in the nose if I ever get a chance, lol.

Here is a letter I had to write to an underwriter several years ago. I decided that I should at least have a little fun with proving I am The Good John Rice.

Off to a great start!

by John Rice

You know two of the absolute best parts of being a realtor?

One is making friends with your clients and the other is when they call you back to work with them again.

If the past couple of weeks is any indication, my 2022 is going be a really fun year!

I’ve got a client/friend I don’t get to see all that often who needs me again. We have had Indian food for lunch twice to discuss the plans. It is always nice to get to see people face to face after mostly keeping up online.

I have another client/friend who is leaving town. I will miss them. We have had so many good times and drank a lot of coffee over the years.

I woke up this past Saturday morning to a text from a client/friend. It was actually my own contact information, so I figured she was probably trying to send it to somebody she knew. Sure enough, once I got out of bed, I got a text from her mother wanting to see a house that had just come on the market. I have met her mother before and really liked her. Her and her husband bought the house and now I get to help them out. I absolutely LOVE it when I become the Family Realtor and get to know everybody.

I closed a house for some out of state sellers who I have worked with a few times. Unfortunately one of them is in poor health. I did everything I could to not only make it a smooth transaction for them, but I also tried to handle some things along the way so I didn’t need to bother them. One of those was a home inspection repair. We only had one item on the list, which was an HVAC thermostat problem. I sent my HVAC person over and told him to do whatever is needed to satisfy the buyer. Then I paid him for it. I only filled the sellers in after it was all said and done since I didn’t want them to have to deal with it. I wasn’t expecting to be repaid, but they insisted. After the closing, they sent me a nice gift and a card. They wrote “John, please accept this small token of appreciation for all the extra help you did every time we needed you! Thank you for being not just a realtor but a wonderful human being. We really appreciate you and everything you’ve done for us during this difficult time.”

Reading that card meant so much to me. I remember when I was in my early 20s, I was as lost as anybody that age about what I wanted to with my life. I really enjoyed helping people out back then. Stuff like helping people move, shoveling their snow, pet sitting, dropping off/picking up people at their mechanic and such. I remember sitting in my basement apartment on Redding Road thinking “I wish just helping your friends was a career“.

Turns out that was a viable option after all!

I took my own real estate advice and bought a car

by John Rice

I’ve been wanting to get another car for a while now. Anybody that knows me knoooooows I am a very sensible, practical guy in all aspects of my life other than when it comes to cars.

This year was probably my worst. I mean, I should probably make a YouTube channel about the stupid decisions I make when it comes to cars. I don’t keep them long. I spend a lot of money fixing them up then get bored and sell them for cheap.

I sold a newer Porsche that just didn’t do it for me anymore. I was thinking of getting one of two BMWs since BMWs are my all time favorite cars. One was practically new. The other was an older one. I tend to like older cars better so I went with the older one. After doing some modifications on the car, the engine blew up. It was worth nothing. Meanwhile, used car prices have been going crazy. The other car that was on my radar earlier this year was now worth at least $10k MORE! I really wish I had just bought that car back then. I would have saved the money wasted on the one that blew up and also saved on the other one too…..but no, I took the most foolish route because for some reason I throw out all logic when it comes to cars.

All of this has been really upsetting to me. I mean, I wish I had just bought earlier. I don’t like the current prices of the car I now want. They are hard to find. I don’t even know if now is a good time to buy since who knows what the market will be like next year. Will prices go up? Will they go down??

Then it dawned on me.

I was doing the same thing a lot of home buyers are doing, which was just being paralyzed with confusion and being mad that I should have done something sooner and can’t seem to get what I want now.

What do I tell my buyers who are in this same place? I tell them yes, you could have or should have bought sooner but you can’t go back in time. Yes, it is a frustrating market but it is the only market there is. Yes, prices could go up or down but in addition to usual market issues like supply/demand and interest rates, we now have inflation to think about. Let’s say prices drop. If you have a mortgage, you are paying that loan back with deflated dollars due to inflation so it’s sort of like you are also paying less and less over time. If prices go up, you are also still paying back that loan with deflated dollars so you are coming out ahead.

So, for the first time in my life, I have taken my own expert advice and pulled the trigger on a 2020 BMW M2 in my favorite BMW color, Alpine White. (Sorry for the picture. The dealer is putting on new tires and getting the car cleaned up for me so I don’t have it yet……which feels even more like buying a house since I have to wait to actually get possession of it!)

Should I buy if I know I won’t keep the place for long?

by John Rice

Back when the market was bad, I would always tell people not to buy a house unless they did not know exactly how long they would own it. If they knew they would only be in town for 2-3 years max, my advice was to rent. Same for “Kiddie Condos” too where a parent buys a condo verses renting an apartment or paying for a dorm for 4 years.

Back then the only variable was the housing market. Inflation was flat. Today is a LOT different. The value of the property AND inflation are both variables that are poised to benefit you in this situation. All the major players are predicting both housing prices to continue to rise and inflation to rise in the near future. That’s a double bonus for you and really for anybody buying any asset right now. Buy now at today’s lower price and pay it back with deflated dollars through a mortgage. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Many people seemed to enjoy my last two posts about my weight loss journey. I’m thinking I might include a little bit more stuff that’s going through my mind these days. I’ve gone through a lot of changes and unfortunately I’m now old enough to want to share my experiences and wisdom gained along the way.

Growing up, I always had a lot of anxieties. Sometimes they would be really debilitating. Couple anxiety with a mind that never turns off and it gets worse. I know a lot of people with what is now called high functioning anxiety. I am hoping this helps them.

I think two things helped me out the most.

The first was that I was able to train my mind to separate my perception of reality FROM reality. When I would get anxious about something, I would tell myself “Okay John, this is what you FEEL is happening but this is what is REALLY happening.” It sort of switched my response from being emotional to logical.

Then I realized that most things that make you anxious are either things in the past or the future. We all tend to dwell on either since I sort of feel in general, humans suck at being in the present. If I was anxious about something in the past. Maybe dwelling on some awkward social situation where I worried if I said the wrong thing, I would just try to learn from it and go on, making the next awkward situation easier……because guess what, I can’t undo the past! For future anxiety, I would just try to focus on the present and remind myself again that how I feel about it is totally different than reality and reality always wins. If it was some sort of performance anxiety, I would make whatever I needed to do as basic as possible. That seemed to make it a manageable task. I still do this if I have a super stressful day ahead of me. If I wake up and have to take 3 different clients out to see houses, negotiate a repair list, write an offer, have a closing and otherwise have a crazy busy day, I might just tell myself “All you need to do John is drive around with people and look at houses, make a few calls and do some paperwork.”

I really think like any obstacle in your life, you need to realize YOU can train yourself to control your mind and your responses to things. It isn’t easy and it isn’t quick because you are basically battling yourself. Just slowly do these two thing and you will find your anxiety level decreases.