Latest / Connor with Honor: AI, Real Estate and Real Life / Santa Clarita open houses update how I would hire a real estate agent and real estate lender if I were not selling homes in 2025

Transcript

Santa Clarita open houses update how I would hire a real estate agent and real estate lender if I were not selling homes in 2025 · Connor with Honor: AI, Real Estate and Real Life

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Agent and real estate lender that you actually choose to help you throughout your real estate endeavors.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Good day, everybody.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Connor McIver.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about what's happening today.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We are at the 9th of August 2025.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you some inventory numbers.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a seven-day snapshot.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: We can look backwards, and then we'll talk a little bit about real estate agents and lenders.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, present company excluded, we'll explore it as if I'm looking to buy or sell a house, what I would like to look for when it comes to hiring a real estate agent or a lender, giving you some of my background and advice, being I was a cop for way too long.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I hope everybody's fantastic.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so let's get into this.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So currently we have 800 and I just clicked off that screen, of course, 804 total active listings on the market for sale.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've watched that number change up and down for the past several months.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, last year we were about mid-fours.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're over 800.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: We are watching, though, is those listings aren't staying that long on the market.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: We do have an increased days on market time frame, however.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So right now it's taking anywhere from 40 to 60 days to sell a house, to actually get them into escrow, but it also depends on pricing strategy.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on if it happens to be a unicorn type property, meaning it's incredibly special and it really stands out against everything that has been sold and potentially is already on the market that might have some kind of competition factor in with that particular listing.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Those listings don't last very long.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers have a very high regard for those.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as you're having your agent advertising and market it correctly, you should be fine.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you should be able to sell that particular residence way before the statistics, way before they start to show their faces where it's going to take you longer to sell that property, maybe more in line with the normal time frame.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Coming soon listing seven.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Seven properties have been listed in the coming soon realm of the last seven days.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You want to see those properties?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: You have to hit up an agent.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: They have to email those to you.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: They can't be publicized in the world for sale.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not going to see those on the syndication sites.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I built a system, Santa Clarita Coming Soon.com, Santa Clarita coming soon.com.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say Clarita like that because if I don't when I'm transcribing these videos and sticking those captions on there, it says Clara, but it's Clarita.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, you shouldn't go to SantaClarita coming soon.com and I'll be able to send those to you.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you have an agent, though, please stay loyal.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to pick off anybody's client, but they should be more than happy to send you those.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like they have to go out and plow a field to be able to make it happen.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a few clicks of a mouse, and it'll be so.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: 76 new listings have hit the market in the past week.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: 92 properties have had their prices changed.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the new listings are up a bit, price changes down a bit, but again, the market's very dynamic.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: When I see numbers that start to remain the same and start to increase over time, that's when we should report on those, i.e., property declining, property listing sales being reduced, and those then going under where the past sold properties have been.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely something to report.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're not seeing that factor.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're watching as real estate listings are still continuing to sell at higher values than the past.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not much, but they are.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're either even or a little bit above where the past properties have sold.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not seeing any decline in our real estate market here in Santa Clarita.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: You look at the news on the wire online, you will see that properties in the Midwest, slower areas, areas that are not next to metropolitan cities with a very high level of livability.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You see those areas starting to decline.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're not seeing that right now.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to take a major interest rate deduction, reduction to change anything in the overall market.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it could be enough to spare off a couple things, not only on the seller side, because they're holding those golden handcuffs, they're keeping them sitting in the same space because they have an ultra-low interest rate.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're watching as then the buyer drive will probably increase there.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll have more listings for sale.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: But a heightened buyer drive, the question is going to be is there going to be enough to eat up any extra inventory?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because the extra inventory above and beyond our numbers now would actually cause a depression in the real estate market, but it's going to have to equate to that.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the lenders, if I'm looking for a real estate agent, let me give you this.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking for a real estate agent.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see where they are online.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Personally, I'm probably not going to go to those systems that people are paying for to get leads and advertisements.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's because, well, it just takes money.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be good at what you do, you don't have to have a great following.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the reviews reviews can be manipulated.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So to be on those systems, really, the price of admission is only money.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: To be able to score those locations, you want to see where your agent happens to be organically.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: You want to see where they happen to be by work and sweat and tears.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: What is the content that they're producing?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm looking for an agent, I don't want to see them, you know, showing me their latest vacation pictures, which maybe you're that way.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you love to see people that are super successful, and that's all they talk about is the great time they had in Nicaragua.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if anybody goes to that.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, but anyway, wherever they're going on vacation, Aspen.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's throw that one out there.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're not.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's not something you're looking for.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're somewhat like me, I would be looking for somebody that has a very good internet exposure and they're talking about the market, what's happening, what are the dynamics?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: What should a buyer be looking for in this market?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: What should a seller be considering in this market?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then breaking down the different parts of the process.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: At some point, if you're going to be borrowing money on a house, you're going to need a lender, real estate lender.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Who should you use?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Should you go to your bank where you have all your money stored away or whether you get your direct deposit there?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Should you go to a credit union?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't actually have a credit union, but maybe you're uh someone that says, you know what, I'm going to go check out Logic.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to go check out these other credit unions because I've heard you can get a better deal on certain things.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then go check them out.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a good option for you.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or should you be using a mortgage broker to borrow money?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's a better option.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you're only going to know who's going to be the best in those games by getting net sheets.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing with agents.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, agents and lenders, you're going to pay for what you get.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So there could be a cost to have something where you would end up paying less of an interest rate, but maybe the origination fee might be a little bit higher.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you know that by looking and comparing those different entities, whether it's a lender from a credit union, mainline bank, mortgage broker.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you from a nimbleness, a nimbleness place, if that's a word, what who's most nimble are going to be the mortgage brokers.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: They pull on all sorts of sources of money.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking for model mortgage here in Valencia, that's a great resource as well.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to their website, Model Mortgage Planning, and check out them and get an idea on what those interest rates cost.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Also, they have a cool interactive chat bot you can play with on the website that will answer questions and then, of course, give your information to somebody else.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you have the right one.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to know those people.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're fantastic.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Selfish plug.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that is Model Mortgage Planning in Valencia, California, or Santa Clarita.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's something that I would look for.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: You need to first decide who's going to be your best choice.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then also what's their availability factor.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Most agents are available pretty much anytime, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, whether they're on vacation locally or not, or they should be.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand, well, everybody gets time off, not in this business.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a uh if you're a cop or a fireman, yeah, you get time off if you're not working overtime.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I get that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you're an independent business owner, yeah, probably not a lot of time off, especially if you care about your business.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the other thing, going back to the agent side of it, if you're going to be hiring somebody, let's say you're going to come to yours truly, that's me, Connor McIver, you're going to come to me.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Who are you going to be working with?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it me, or am I going to pawn you off to one of the people that work for me, one of my buyer's agents or one of my people on the listing team?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to be working with me.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: You come to me, those people get their own people, or those people get people I don't know and don't want to work with me.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: But you need to find that out going in.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're hiring John Smith agent or Sally Jones agent, and that's who you're hiring, make sure that they're going to be that part of the process, they're going to be with you.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if during the process they have a transaction coordinator, most successful agents do.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: More than likely, they're going to be sending you information.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: But your agent, your contact point, should know this.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: They should know what you're getting and they should be able to explain it to you and maybe even give you a heads up.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's an escrow question or a lender question or some other part of the process, some other entity within the real estate transaction, those people are typically better versed at answering questions pertaining to those items.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: For example, escrow.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I might be able to be a little dangerous when it comes to escrow, give you some information.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: But truth be told, you should go to the source.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm more than happy to set that up, even on the three-way conference call.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I don't want to talk to you.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a question about escrow, we can three-way it, and I'll have you talk to them directly.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's you, me, and the escrow officer, because sometimes there's other questions that come up as part of your train of thought when it comes to asking escrow for the answers.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to give you something, and then something will fall back on the real estate end of it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now I get to answer that question.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we finish everything, and none of your time has been wasted.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's all been very used very conservatively.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Your time is very precious, as is mine and everybody else.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for somebody, the syndication sites, it's easy to pay for placement.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And some of these cats pay 40, 50 grand a month to get leads and the return on investments there.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: My mission in life is to have people understand that that's a pay-to-play system versus getting and looking and seeing.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can go there, see where that agent is elsewhere.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Look them up on Google, look them up on your Chat GPT, whichever large language model you happen to be most favored of.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Put in their name, see where they are, find out what they're writing about.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: What are they talking about?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is it about the latest vacation in Borneo?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it about the real estate market?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: What to expect, what the numbers look like, what how to watch out for good lenders, how to watch out for good inspectors versus bad inspectors, what time frames are, how can you get your best deal and protect yourself versus getting ripped off and getting taken for a ride?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is a local lender better or a lender that's online that serves all 50 states in some mega lender, in some mega lender world, watch out for that too, because the accountability portion is very much lacking in many of those cases.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: What if it goes sideways?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is there somewhere you can go bang on somebody's door and say, hey, listen, Jack, that's why I have a local office.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can come bang on my door and say, hey, listen, Connor, that's super important to me, at least being part of my generation.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think for most people, especially when you have such a high-ticket item like real estate, takes you at least 30 years to pay off.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: In most cases, if you're getting a traditional real estate loan.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then with that, not only does it take you 30 years to pay off, but you know, you're spending, you know, upwards of a million bucks here in Santa Clarita Valley to buy something.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So because of price point length of time, length of ownership time, yeah, I want somebody that I can hold to a higher standard, somebody that's from Santa Clarita, if that's where I want to buy, versus somebody from Long Beach if I want to buy in Long Beach.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to get referred to those agents, if you find somebody that speaks your lingo in a particular area, you like their code, you like the way they talk, they present themselves, you like what their core ethical stance happens to be, then hey, hit them up and say, listen, Connor, um, I'm not buying in Santa Clarina.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want to buy something in Long Beach.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know anybody like you in Long Beach?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And while they might not look like me or sound like me, I will make sure that they have the same tenants and code and core mission statement, these sorts of things that really add value to my clients as well as it, you know, adds value to me.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the bottom line.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I would be looking for in a real estate agent.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Again, the syndication site, your Zillows, your RedFens, your Realtor.coms are great.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, trade organization aside and all that, that's fine.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: But they are pay-for-placement sites.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Even the review sites out there, you can get on there, pay a few bucks, and you can be scored pretty high on those systems, depending on which one you're looking at.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So be wary with that.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: I would call the agents that you find in the organic searches and then do your investigations.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going on the syndication sites, pulling names of real estate agents and lenders, plug that in too.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: See what they're talking about.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Are they using themselves?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are they speaking to a camera?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is it all Hollywood?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you like that sort of thing.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: But get down to the bare bones of it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Connor with honor.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for watching.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: We will see you in tomorrow's broadcast by about 10 o'clock, 11-ish.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I get the video placed at Santa ClaritaOpenhouses.com.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I do one every single day.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to do a Zoom call, I love that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We can talk about your real estate desires, needs, and then we'll strategize together and we'll make a determination as your best path.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: What's that best course of action that you're going to be taking?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get a plan put out there.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we'll have it documented, and that's where you will start your process.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's going to be buying something or selling something, that's hugely important today to be prepared to embark in this real estate journey.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Connor with Honor.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Knowledge is power.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh G.I.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Joe said something.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: What was it?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and knowing is half the cure.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot what it was.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Being prepared.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I'm Connor with Honor.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you in the next one.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching.