Texas Real Estate Bible Podcast

Wire fraud rears its ugly head and strikes one of Karen's clients.

Karen and Kevin dive deep into the dark underworld of property taxes when they uncover shenanigans being played by a new home builder aimed at increasing the tax assessments on houses that had already been sold. After enlisting the help of a local journalist, they end up face to face with a surprisingly helpful representative of the Harris County Tax Office.

We normally tend to try to steer clear of discussing politics because frankly, the topic sucks, and it's not entertaining to hear people bitch and moan about what's wrong with the country. After all, if you want to see a change in how our government works, you should run for office and do something about it instead of complaining. This week, we bring you an example of just that. Jon Rosenthal is a personal friend of ours who has put himself out there to run for a seat in House District 135 for the Texas State Legislature. Regardless of your political stripe or affiliation, we think you'll enjoy the conversation we had with Jon, and we wish him nothing but success! If you live in his district in Cypress, TX, we hope you'll pull the lever for Jon in November.

Where have we been? That's a good question. Listen to this episode to find out what caused our long break from the show and what you can expect for the future.

In today's episode, we interview Joseph Gozlan from EBG Acquisitions. Joseph is a multifamily investments specialist. Leading group acquisitions of over $11MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 156 units with 97 additional units currently under contract and growing. In our conversation, we learn more about multifamily properties, how syndication works, and how individuals can participate in these investments with their retirement dollars. Joseph is also the author of the book, "The Real Estate College Fund", which helps first time investors recognize the advantages and risks of investing in real estate, and offers ways to mitigate those risks. Also in this episode, we cover some listener feedback that proves that Kevin is (occasionally) right!

It's been a long time since we published our last episode. Too long. In today's episode we catch you up on the series of unfortunate events that have kept Karen and Kevin away from the mics for so long.

Karen closed on a transaction she's been working on for quite some time, and shares the ups and downs of the transaction. Listen as she shares the blow by blow of the negotiation and how it played out. Having an agent who will negotiate hard for you and protect your negotiating position is crucial, and so many agents throw their clients under the bus in the hopes of closing the transaction quickly.

Today, we bring you an interview with Aaron Moore of Smart Zip. Karen recently became a client of Aaron's because they do some pretty impressive things with applying data analytics and applying it to real estate.

In this supersized episode, we talk about what we did leading up to and in the aftermath of the arrival of Hurricane Harvey. I don't think we need much more of an introduction than that.

From time to time we like to welcome other entrepreneurs on the show to talk about their businesses and their own real estate stories. This week, we welcome our friend Eric Dolan, who in his career has been in the Army, the Oil & Gas industry, and is now in business for himself. As the owner of the PostNet franchise in Tomball, TX, Eric shares a number of stories about the challenges and rewards of starting his own business. He talks about lessons he's learned and some interesting people he's met along the way. He also walks us through the process he used to select his commercial storefront location. If you have any printing, shipping, or mailing needs, we highly recommend Eric. He will take GREAT care of you.

When it comes to pricing your home, the market really, truly doesn't give a shit about two things that are probably really important to you as a seller: * What you owe on the house * How much cash you expect to get out of the sale (for whatever reason) We opened this episode chatting about the state of the market in Houston, and why it's not going down as many people believe. In fact, recent sales figures for the overall market seem to indicate that the market is still strong, with inventory still below the level of what is considered a "balanced" market. That means if your house isn't selling, it's not because of a poor marketing job, it's probably because it's priced too high for the location and condition. Many people have an idea on their heads about how much money they expect to put in their pockets after their home is sold. Typically, this number is influenced by how much they owe on their home, how much money they need for their next house, or just flat out what the homeowner thinks it's worth. The reality is your buyer doesn't care. Your buyer doesn't care how much your mortgage is, or how much money you need for your next down payment, or what you think you should get. All the buyer really and truly cares about is whether or not they are willing to pay what you're asking. If not, your house isn't going to sell, no matter how much righteous indignation you feel. Your agent's job is to be an expert in the process of selling the home; To keep you out of trouble; To make sure all of the moving pieces fall into the right places at the right time; And yes, to make sure your home sells for as close to the contract price as possible.

The stated purpose of this podcast has from the beginning been to generate content that would eventually become a book. As we've stressed in the past, if you want a job done right, you have to hire a competent professional to help you. We believe this with real estate, and we took our own advice when it came to writing the book based on this show. We've been doing this for over a year now, and we have hired Brian K. Wright to ghost write our book for us. In this episode you'll find out about Brian's background and why we think he is uniquely qualified to write for us. Brian is also the host of his own very successful podcast, Success Profiles Radio, we recommend you give it a listen.

In this, the 10th and final Client Commandment, we cover the basics of the Closing Disclosure, and the things you really should know about before you sit down at the closing table. We bring you up to speed about the things you should question, and the things that really are normal. We also get in to some story telling about a home warranty company that really needs to be called out for being sleazy. Enjoy the fireworks!

This week, we rebroadcast for you our mutual favorite episode, our rebuttal to the Adam Ruins Everything episode on real estate. Since Kevin is traveling internationally, we are broadcasting this "best of" episode from our archives. We will return next week with a new original episode.

Are you a police officer, fire fighter, teacher, or EMT? If so, you qualify to get your house for 50% off of list price by buying it from HUD! This week, we explore a source of potential homes and investment houses that most people don't normally think of. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD for short. When a bank forecloses on a loan that has been guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration, the government makes the bank whole and the house ends up in the inventory of homes owned and offered for sale by HUD. If you'd like to browse the properties they're selling, you can find them all at www.hudhomestore.com. Keep in mind though that you have to submit your bids through a licensed agent, and if your bid is accepted, you have very little wiggle room as all sales are "as-is, where is". For this reason, we recommend that you lowball your offers. If you don't hear back within 1 business day, you know your offer was rejected and you can resubmit a new bid if you like or move on to another house.

David Letterman had a recurring segment on his show called "Stupid Pet Tricks". Similarly, we are introducing "Stupid Agent Tricks" as (probably) a recurring topic on the show. In the episode, we discuss some of the "sinners" we've run in to recently. We talk about the latest abomination from the brokers, gurus, and sales coaches who think the BINGO card pictured here is a great way to motivate their agents to do something they hate - make cold calls. Can you imagine yourself *hoping* to get cussed out on a sales call just so you can win this game? We also talk about one recent example of agents we both encountered in the past couple of weeks who don't know the rules of the industry in which they operate. Finally, we explore some of the ridiculous lengths that Karen has had to go to keep her deals from falling apart because of lazy/incompetent agents on the other side.

If you know an entrepreneur, they'll tell you that being in business for yourself is a pretty lonely existence. Many people say they want to own their own business, but only a small fraction of people actually do, so it's difficult to find other entrepreneurs who understand the struggle. For this reason, we are using the platform of our podcast to connect with and give exposure to entrepreneurs in our community that we vibe with. This week, we highlight Daniel Johnson, one half of the Hanigan and Johnson orthodontics practice in our local community. Through his practice, Daniel recently built a commercial building from the ground up. Daniel also tells his personal story, touching on his missionary work in South America, his military service, and how he found his partner to start his practice shortly after orthodontics school. Karen and Daniel have a number of things in common, which we explore in the episode. They are both triathletes, and they both use their businesses as a vehicle to give back to the communities they serve. You can find Hanigan & Johnson at www.straighttooth.com or you can call the office at 832-777-7001.

This week we celebrate our 50th episode by finishing our conversation with Tinja Anderson-Shiery. In this episode, we cover the remaining two communication archetypes, Analyticals and Drivers. Both Karen and I scored very high on the Driver scale, so you'll learn a little something about both of us by listening to this episode.

Have you ever met someone and knew almost instantly that you were going to get along great with them? What about the opposite, where you almost instantly know you are NOT going to get along? Much of that first impression comes from the communication style of the sender and the receiver. This week, we welcome back Tinja Anderson-Shiery to the show to talk about the 4 major communication styles. She reveals to us what our styles are according to the test we took. Nobody is all one style, rather we are all blends of the 4 different archetypes. Why should you care? Knowing the nonverbal cues of each of the types will help you to adjust your communication style to suit your audience. This is a practiced skill that will benefit people in all walks of life. The conversation was quite long, so we split it into 2 episodes. In this first half, we discussed the Expressive and Scientist archetypes. Next week, we will finish the discussion by covering Analyticals and Drivers. Enjoy!

When we were homebuyers, it was irritating to us that our agent wouldn’t answer certain questions that we thought were perfectly reasonable. Now that Karen is an agent, we know exactly why he wouldn’t provide direct answers to what we thought were simple questions. Questions like: If an agent were to provide a direct answer to any of these questions and others like them, they would be putting themselves at risk of running afoul of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, sex, national origin, or religion. The best your agent can do is to provide you with places to do your own research and answer these questions for yourself. It’s unfortunate, but this is what your friendly neighborhood real estate agent has to do to stay on the right side of the law!