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This market is tough and requires real elbow grease. Time to take charge and be a real badass if you wanna succeed and thrive in this market.
Three Things You’ll Learn in This Episode
- What you should be looking for in this market.
- Why you need to be an investigator in real estate.
- How you can be a badass in this market.
Resource
The Listing Advocate (Earn more listings!)
Transcript:
So how do you track new business, you constantly don’t have to chase it. Hi, I’m Mike Cuevas to real estate marketing. And this podcast is all about building a strong personal brand people have come to know, like trust and most importantly, refer. But remember, it is not their job to remember what you do for a living. It’s your job to remind them. Let’s get started
What’s up ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the real estate marketing dude, podcast. Oh, my goodness, folks.
You saw the title the show, I mean, you just gotta be a badass, you gotta be badass right now, that’s the name of the game. Because times like these are times when you have to double down. Business isn’t as easy as it was 20 months ago, 24 months ago and 90% of you have never seen a shift in the in your careers yet, because we haven’t had one since 2012. And we riding on this market. And there’s not a lot of people out there telling you what to do when the shift happens. So that’s sort of been the theme of our show the last few months here, actually, last few episodes, what do you do in this market, and we want to try to add as much value as possible. So we get pitched be on the show every day, guys. And I get a lot of cool stories. And the one that we have today is very cool. And I thought it’d be very appropriate to have on the show, especially with market conditions, because I think some of you need a kick in the ass. And I think she’s going to be able to do that for you today. So without further ado, I do want to introduce my guest. She’s got quite a compelling story. And she’s a badass. So properly introduced. Miss Stephanie Boyd. How are you, Stephanie? I’m great. Thanks for having me, Mike. Why don’t you tell everybody? Who are you? Where are you from? And
what are you known for? Well, let’s see. I am from a little town in California called Sacramento, we have a new state capitol.
And I am a
I like to joke that I’m a teenage grandma. So I started out as a single teenage mom years ago. And I was always kind of a rebel and uh, just kind of did things my own way. So I went ahead and started college at 16 got my first kick ass job as a criminal investigator, just as I was turning 21. And I just walked straight out of my college career into a very heavily male dominated career of law enforcement, criminal investigations, where my job was to go into the ghetto and interview all the murders friends and families, and or whatever other crime my client was charged with. So I was representing the defense. And
people would always ask me if I was armed as I went to these interviews, and I definitely never was, I thought about carrying a concealed weapon. But I just really always relied on my wit and charm to get me in the door to make friends with my
adversaries, I suppose you could call them.
And so that experience really trained me quite well to join the world of real estate when I decided to get my real estate license in 2000. And join my family’s real estate company. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that Gort door knocking didn’t scare you too much. Um, no. While it has, there have been times where it’s not my favorite thing to do. But I’m sure everybody goes through that. But as far as being scared to it, or timid or nervous to knock on that door? No, because nothing is worse than,
you know, a victim behind the door of some terrible crime that I have to talk to. So if I don’t have to deal with that, and I’m just dealing with the homeowner who may or may not want to sell their house or refinance or whatever the case may be. Much less stress much lower risk involved.
I mean, yeah, people hardly ever
Yeah, I mean, like, in so many people right now and look at the industry is tough right now really is I mean, talking about my mortgage broker friends, and I mean, they’re getting crushed. Oh, yeah. They’re and they’re and, you know, everyone’s just when you get down a little bit like this, on the other hand, like, you know, look at your former job. I mean, we’re looking at like cool houses and stuff, and then people are getting down on themselves. You’re having to deal with like, people, I witnesses murders, you know, like, that’s just probably a great mindset to have to tackle this industry. Because right now it is tough.
And so you just went from being a criminal defense.
Researcher, attorney, investigator, investigator
To frickin go and write into real estate? And what kind of those skills you still use today? Because that’s pretty cool. I’ve not met anybody who’s gone into that you can almost be like your real estate detective.
Exactly. Yeah, really. And during my career as an investigator, the thing that got me interested in real estate Well, other it was my family’s company, of course, but I would call my mom a lot to have her help me stock people through real estate records. So she had access to all the property, the tax records, she could find the owners, if I had, like, a guy was looking for who didn’t want to talk to me, I’d find out who his landlord was, and go start putting the pressure on his landlord. And so it kind of did translate rather nicely into a real estate detective job, which is kind of what we have to do now in this market is a bit of sleuthing around. Yeah, find those distressed properties. Yep. See what kind of solutions we can help come up with, you know,
I think you hit the nail on the head right there, folks, if you’re not paying attention, when these markets shift, like there’s going to be distress, I forget whose I think it was on our show. More, maybe I was on someone else’s show. But someone just pass along the data about the 60 to 90 day lates that are coming down the pipeline. And that was in Phoenix in particular, but they’re the highest that we’ve seen in quite some time. And that’s just sort of the writing on the wall, like the rates are still going up, the cost of living isn’t going down. And it’s something that you could be you should be concerned with, right. And if this economy and the stock market does what I think it’s going to do, but my you know, that’s my opinion, people are going to be having problems, but she’s focusing on distress, I’m doing the exact same thing. I think that the distressed market is where it never fails. There’s a reason why other real estate investors are just sitting at the on the sidelines, salvat tating, waiting for the shoe to drop. What’s your opinion on that? Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think a lot of them are over extended, and they’re either salivating or crapping their pants.
As they lose it, you know, because
a lot of these folks went out and bought multiple properties when rates were low, and now, you know, for whatever reason, I mean, obviously, COVID did a lot of weird things to the economy and to jobs and moved a lot of people out of their office buildings and commercial properties to go work remote, and companies folded and everything else. So you know, a lot, there’s definitely investors waiting to lap up the rewards of that. And then there’s also equal numbers of investors losing their shit, because they’re overextended and they can’t make the payments on everything, they’re not getting the rent that they want, for the first time in years in my market here in Sacramento, rents are actually starting to go down over the past six months.
So, you know, it’s, everyone’s gonna start feeling the crunch. And the, you know, unfortunately, hopefully, everybody that could qualify for their first time home went out and got one were when rates were in the twos, and they’re just going to sit there, which it looks like they’re doing because there’s no inventory in that market.
And with rates in the sixes and sevens on those purchase prices that are already high, you know, a lot of first time buyers are just really priced out of the market. But
definitely,
investors are waiting for prices to come down. I mean, if we see a repeat of what happened after the subprime mortgage meltdown, you know, we’re gonna see, prices come down significantly, they’ve already started to they pretty much returned to their pre pandemic levels here, you know, they shot up during the pandemic, really.
And they’re about, you know, I mean, it varies based on neighborhood and zip code and everything else, you know, but we’re, we’re coming down to the pre pandemic levels and as I mean, that’s what the Fed is trying to do with their rate increases is basically crashed the economy, they have to bring the prices down.
Literally, he literally said we need to crash the real estate market, like out of their mouths, guys. Yeah, they’re trying to raise the rates because they need it to slow down. Remember, like the real estate markets 25% of people directly or indirectly employed the United States. some way shape or form? Yeah, title rep builders, contractors, everything’s tied to real estate, so much of it.
But so, I hear you’re saying I think
being and you’re also in the lending world, too, just so everybody knows she gets the real estate on end of it, but she also understands loans and mortgages.
and under things and what I’m hearing you say is that you’re focusing on distressed.
Yeah, a lot of people need to bail out one way or another. I mean, the banks are getting bailed out right and left, and who knows how that’s going to affect and trickle down to the rest of us. But essentially, a lot of people are going to need a bailout. And so you can, you know, find distressed properties,
through the physical signs. As you drive around, as you walk around in your neighborhood, title companies can get you those lists of data,
to find the pre foreclosures and everything. And then it’s just really about making relationships with those people.
You know, making friends with your mailman. And he keeps, I mean, my mailman lets me know everything that’s going on in my neighborhood mark, with whose lives in their house who’s about to go down. He chats with people all over the city. And so it’s my little secret that I trust with my mailman to find out. Here’s the link who I need to go talk to, you said something that I’m not sure if you guys picked up on. But it’s true. This is a real problem right now is with the rates at like, what what are they? What’s the rates today? Seven? I mean, it depends on, you know, borrower paid Lender Paid, but yeah, with no points, no fees are in the sevens with 7%. And all these people who locked in and just in the last year and a half, two years ago, locked in at what 2% 1.75 on investment properties on a 15 year loan I did at the height of the pandemic, how big of an issue is this, in your opinion, because no one can move, like, you’re not going to be able to replace that if you replace that property, you’re gonna end up with something less desirable than probably fit your lifestyle today. I mean, unless you’re downsizing,
or moving majority Fornia. I mean, that’s where a lot of painting, you know, but what’s interesting in my market is we’re not seeing the inventory reflect a mass exodus, but people are still continuing to talk about this mass exodus, people are still, you know, the markets back east in oh, what he Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Tennessee, you know, Texas, I mean, the less popular places people are still finding affordable deals out there. But the more popular places prices have come up in response to people leaving California and heading out, down south slash East.
But we’re not seeing huge inventories as people continue to leave here. So I guess they’re renting out their houses for high rents, even though the rents are coming down, they’re still you know, relatively unaffordable for most people, you know, $1,800, for a two bedroom apartment in Sacramento, my son moved back to Ohio recently, to rent a two bedroom apartment for 795 or something, maybe 695. So, you know, it’s three times more to just pay rent out here. And, of course, the housing prices are high, much more than that. So in other things, she said, guys, as she says, she’s focusing on people’s problems, she’s not focusing on her transaction, count her commission count, she’s not sitting there tallying up the sales board to see who’s number one this month, she’s focused around helping people that have problems first and foremost. And I’ve been the last few shows, we’ve been saying that, like focus on serving others, first and foremost, focus on the problems they have, and be the one that could provide that solution to those problems, because that’s what makes you different. Anyone could sell a house, but markets like these are hand to hand combat, you got to be able to go and know where the deals are going to be. And I highly agree with that. Focus on the investor niche, not only just the people who are selling, but the investors who buy because that I believe is going to be a big niche and anyone who’s gonna stay in that market stay in that niche over the next 1218 months. I think you’re gonna you’re gonna take territory, I think you’re gonna take brand, and you’re gonna succeed very well in this market. The ones who are gonna get their ass kicked are the ones who got their ass kicked in 2007. And those are the ones who didn’t adjust. And there was a whole lot of them. And they didn’t they didn’t adjust to reo. They didn’t adjust to short sale. They just kept on being the traditional agent waiting for John and Jane to come down the house. Have a kid and move out to the fucking suburbs. It’s not how would these work in these markets? Not saying don’t market your database. I’m all about that market, your database stay in front of that network. Generate that business when it comes. Just be ready. But in first of all in terms of niching down all in on distressed Yeah, what is maybe what is this?
Measure A well, so a lot of areas, it depends on your regulations, but there could be taxes owed on the property. So in California, you have to go five years without paying your taxes before it goes to a lien sale. But in Texas, they only wait 12 months, you didn’t pay your taxes were selling your house, you know.
And other states have like tax lien certificates. So you go in and you invest in you buy these certificates that you get a certain amount of interest on and some of it’s quite high like 24% interest in, oh, I don’t remember which state but
so
then you’re kind of gambling on whether this person is going to pay you back or pay the county back, or whether you’re going to get to buy this house and evict this person and take their property from them with the tax lien certificate. So there’s those there’s foreclosures, there are landlords who didn’t get any rent for two years during the pandemic. So this is happening more and more, I think where, you know, the all the moratoriums have now ended.
Tenants are, you know, I mean, I think they’ve been paying rent again for a while. But there’s been a backlog in the court process in the eviction process in the foreclosure processes, all of the chickens are coming home to roost for a lot of these properties. So how big do you think that market is? Like from those moratoriums and all that, like, is it gigantic is it I mean, I hate to be doom and gloom, but I think it’s gonna just get bigger and bigger. Because a lot of those investors are in Adjustable Rate type of situations with their mortgage on this properties. There’s just so many factors out there that are unpredictable. And just the jobs, the inflation, this, all of these unprecedented conditions are like coming together. And I don’t see how it’s not going to be worse than 2008. I would love for someone to convince me otherwise. But the banks collapsing is not a good sign. There’s just so many things that point to disasters, catastrophe. I don’t disagree with you at all. And it’s I laugh to keep refreshing, it’s just, I want to, I want to be all unicorns and rainbows and everything. But um, yeah, it’s, I think it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. And I think people have been saying that for a while. And it’s still true that it’s going to continue to get worse before it’s going to get better.
You know, worldwide, things are not good. The
the central bank, introducing a digital currency very quietly concerns me quite a bit.
Saudi Arabia and Iran making friends over in Syria and trading for gas and Chinese currency is a bit concerning. So you know, all of these things, really, if we’re honest, point to a real problem of the currency collapsing. And nobody knows what happens when the currency collapses, because they’ve been propping it up for so long. They’ve been bailing out these banks they’ve been, and we’re paying for it at regular tax paying US citizens, we’ve been paying for it
the whole time. And, you know, it’s they, if you want to know the truth, it pisses me off to talk about this 4% inflation that we’re at, and we want to get it down to 2%. I don’t know if you listen to Jerome Powell’s comments out, it sounded like maybe did he mentioned the 2% target inflation rate about 19 million times? And, you know, is he talked around it and basically threw in there how we’re gonna have to crush this thing to get to that. But if you really look at inflation, as it practically applies to our lives, like I don’t know how they get this 4% number, because if you go into the grocery store, and Safeway, things are like 50% higher than they were a year ago. Yep. Gas is, you know,
$2 higher than it was three years ago. A guess that’s almost 100% inflation and what I’m paying for gas, the housing market, just for a quick example, my first house I bought in 97, for a little over 100,000. And it’s worth a little under 700,000. Now, so that’s 700% inflation over those years, between then and now in the housing market. So where are they? You know, I don’t exactly understand their math
With these inflation numbers, but it’s exponentially worse than they want to admit that it is. It’s I agree a
few months ago, we’re you know, that’s what once they start raising the rates I’ve seen same same things like I’m more worried about the affordability issue. But it’s so odd because there isn’t an inventory issue. Yeah, technically, we think there should be an inventory issue. But we haven’t seen a huge inventory issue. I mean, in surplus, I mean, you think we’d have more properties coming on the market, more things happening. But yeah, there’s still tight inventory levels. But then yeah, you’ve seen all these other outside circumstances that are there. And you know, what we’re talking about here, guys, we’re focused on affordability, affordability. And that’s where the problem solving thing comes in. And how you can use it as an advantage during this time, because if what we’re saying is, is what if what we’re saying is accurate, where you want to agree with us or not, there’s gonna be a shortage of agents that know how to take on these types of properties and get people out of these situations. And that skill is going to get you paid if you take time to develop it. Definitely. And just being creative and thinking out of the box, meeting your neighbors, making relationships with people. One way that I get a lot of action is through my volunteering efforts. I meet other volunteers, and guess who has time to volunteer, people who are retired or who have, you know, good income, stay at home moms,
you know, comfortable people who have time to spend a day, a month or a day a week or whatever, at volunteering, Meals on Wheels is one place that I spend some of my time, and I just do some outreach in the community working with other agencies, nonprofits, churches, who are also trying to come up with solutions to solve the homeless problem, which is a huge crisis in California, I’m sure you’re aware.
And I’ve met 10s of people and then 10s, of reifies, and business with the networking that I’ve made through volunteering. And one other interesting market I’ve noticed is,
so I’ve got some marginal borrowers who have marginal credit, but what they have is job history. And so I had a friend, slash client call me frantically talking about how our 401k is losing value. And she’s been on her job 33 years, and she wants to take as much out of her 401k as possible, and use it to put a down payment on a house. And therefore, in that way, she’ll be able to get her payment to what she can afford. Because normally, this would be an FHA borrower three and a half percent down,
you know, but with these prices with these rates, we need to figure out a way to somehow come in with more than three and a half percent in order to hit that affordability that we’re talking about. And so the way that she’s going to do it, is to buy a house, you know, a 300,003 50 house and put 150, down out of her retirement, so she only has a $200,000 mortgage. So, you know, this type of creative solution, I mean, it’s out there, but a lot of people, they don’t want to risk that retirement, they’re,
you know, they’re not comfortable with that. But in this instance, people are watching their retirement accounts lose value. And, you know, who knows what’s going to be going on by the time you’re actually ready to retire. And so a lot of people feel like the risk is worth it to go ahead and take the money and run and at least you know, that you have a house to live in, in your retirement, and maybe you’re going to be getting less of a pension, but maybe that, you know, will equal out in the long run as you secure your financial future through housing. So maybe they bought a property with it, you know, I think maybe people, I mean, there are lenders who definitely still want to do loans out there, even though the guidelines are tightening, even though credit is bit crunched, you know, they’re, they, they don’t want to go out of business, either. They want to find borrowers to get them into these loans. So I’m seeing my wholesale lenders coming up with new products, home equity lines of credit that they never offered. I mean, those were out of style for years after the subprime market crash and everything. So a lot of, you know, new products, there’s just a lot of different solutions coming up the pipeline. And as we, I mean, we have to try to proceed as though it’s not going to be complete doom and gloom and then prepare for the worst in the back of our minds, you know,
I don’t think that the solution is to just crawl in a hole and wait for the apocalypse. No, you got to keep fighting every single day. You got to be a badass. Yeah, you got it. You got to keep on going. I mean, that’s what this business is. It’s not always easy. You know, it’s not and neither is any business neither. And you guys, aren’t you guys aren’t salespeople, we’re business owners, ultimately brokers jobs and to put money in your pockets yours. So you know, you have to go out there and win the business. And sometimes that’s going to be going after distressed market buying data realizing 60 to 90 day lates. History, knowing where distressed is that starting to network with a lot of divorce attorneys probate,
foreclosure defense, there’s a lot of strategic relationships you could get in. But look, every single thing that we’ve talked about today focused on problem solving those, what I want you to get out of the show, is focused on being the world’s best problem solver. And you won’t have a client problem, because people will be coming to you to solve theirs. So don’t overthink this business be the real estate problem solver. She’s the real estate detective, you’re gonna be very high in demand. And regardless, you still gonna have a business at the end of the day. So adjust with what is out there, you listen to what we’re saying, adjust the business people still move, okay? People have babies, people still die, that means people still move. So as long as that happens, and people are having babies and people are dying, which last I checked happens every day, there are still gonna be people moving. But who is moving is what we’re saying is probably going to change the people who are stuck in their homes at that 2% rate, well, they’re not going to be as likely to move anytime soon. Then the ones who are just, you know, missed their first mortgage payment,
or just lost their job, or missed their first car payment, or have high credit card debt. Those are where a lot of the investors are concentrating their times, I can tell you, that’s what we concentrated our lead generation efforts at. And it’s just, that’s where I believe the opportunity is gonna be if you’re gonna chase trends, if you want transactions in the next coming months.
Focus on the problems. It’ll be there any closing thoughts? You have Stephanie?
Um, well, I like to always remind people that if you’re the smartest one in your friend group, it’s time to go out and get some new friends. So it’s really nice as we go along, that everyone loves to listen to us and hear our words of wisdom and everything. But if you want to learn and grow, and come up with new ideas, you really have to go out and find people that are smarter than you to hang out with. So, you know, join some networking groups, find some new smart friends, and they will make you smarter, and more of a badass. Absolutely, what if they want to follow you, website or anything you want to give them? I’m Stephanie boy.com. And I’m on all the usual places, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or those usual places figured out tick tock yet, but I hear tick tock is where you could go wild and get, get people come to your website and all of your other social media, so I haven’t gotten into it yet, either. Just
not anymore. I have a couple of videos, but I just have it. I’m gonna say I’m too tired. But try to figure it out. So look for me on tick tock in the future. Thanks, folks. Thank you for coming. And thank you for listening on an episode of the real estate marketing dude, podcast. Folks, visit our site, visit our software, check it out. It’s called referral suite.com That’s referral suite W S W. E E t.com. Visited if you’d like to mark your database stay in front of it. We make referral marketing, very freakin simple and content creation. Very simple. All you got to do is give me a couple hours a month and you will be everywhere all of the time. Thanks again for coming on the show. And thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe, follow us on our channels. And we’ll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. Awesome. Good times. Thank you for watching another episode of the real estate marketing dude podcast. If you need help with video or finding out what your brand is, visit our website at WWW dot real estate marketing dude.com We make branding and video content creation simple and do everything for you. So if you have any additional questions, visit the site, download the training, and then schedule time to speak with the dude and get you rolling in your local marketplace. Thanks for watching another episode of the podcast. We’ll see you next time.
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