Latest / Connor with Honor: AI, Real Estate and Real Life / How do buyers and home sellers get into trouble using the online systems to search for and valuate?
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: Good everybody.
- 0:01SPEAKER_00: I am Connor with Honor, your host, local real estate agent here in Santa Clarita Valley, Connor with Honor at Compass Real Estate.
- 0:09SPEAKER_00: Santa Crita Valley is going to be the next city just north of Los Angeles.
- 0:13SPEAKER_00: So we share the northern border of Los Angeles.
- 0:17SPEAKER_00: That's shared with our southern border of Santa Clarita.
- 0:20SPEAKER_00: So we're the home of Magic Mountain.
- 0:22SPEAKER_00: Maybe that'll give you some logistical reference.
- 0:24SPEAKER_00: In addition, we're probably, I don't know, about 50 minutes from the beach, 5-0.
- 0:31SPEAKER_00: So not a bad place to be.
- 0:32SPEAKER_00: And also comfortable driving or commute distance from Los Angeles, which is something that people look for a lot when we talk to them about their reasons for moving, why they've been looking into the Santa Crita Valley.
- 0:46SPEAKER_00: I'm logging in now.
- 1:02SPEAKER_00: Kids are involved.
- 1:04SPEAKER_00: Kids need schools.
- 1:05SPEAKER_00: So a lot of them have given me the intel that they're moving from Los Angeles, where the schools are great if you're able to pay for private.
- 1:15SPEAKER_00: Coming out here to Santa Clarita, we do have a lot of blue ribbon schools, a lot of highly ranked schools on great schools.net and so on.
- 1:23SPEAKER_00: Them seeing that, they would rather come out here, spend their money on real estate in this market than spending money on real estate elsewhere in Los Angeles.
- 1:32SPEAKER_00: Coming out here and uh purchasing real estate and being able to be in a great school system where they don't have to put their children in private, where their taxes kind of take care of the schooling themselves, the school itself, and so on.
- 1:45SPEAKER_00: So that's where they kind of like to be.
- 1:47SPEAKER_00: One of the things we're going to talk about today as we close out March, we're Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022.
- 1:53SPEAKER_00: So that's 322, 2022.
- 1:56SPEAKER_00: It's about 3:44 p.m.
- 1:58SPEAKER_00: I want to discuss searching for real estate and some of the systems that are in place out there and some of the things that you should watch out for if you're a home buyer, also a home seller, because on the other side of it, for sellers, there's much uh a very a big push to have automation done in real estate as far as home valuation goes and looking at the values of residential real estate.
- 2:23SPEAKER_00: One of the things I will say, a couple different things.
- 2:26SPEAKER_00: If you are somebody that's looking to purchase residential real estate and you have somebody doing that searching for you, there's a couple different ways to have that happen.
- 2:36SPEAKER_00: And I'll get into that.
- 2:38SPEAKER_00: And the other thing we're going to talk about is those automated searches, because that's something that seems to drive people a little nutsy, and a little nutsy from the point of view that they're so different.
- 2:48SPEAKER_00: Because I can look and I can see a hundred thousand dollar difference between systems out there that are evaluating value by address based on recorded sales prices, and they don't take into account a lot of the upgrades and changes that have happened in a specific specific residence, those numbers can actually equate to having an even higher sales price than what the system is saying that the home is worth.
- 3:17SPEAKER_00: But in order to really evaluate it, it's important that you have that consummate professional.
- 3:22SPEAKER_00: So I'll get into that as well.
- 3:24SPEAKER_00: Right now in Santa Carita Valley, so this is going to include the cities of Castac, Canyon Country, Acton, Saugus, Newhall, Stevenson Ranch, and Valencia.
- 3:34SPEAKER_00: So all through the six Santa Cruita Valley cities, excluding Aqua Dulce and Acton, and we have those, we'll have those put up here this afternoon.
- 3:42SPEAKER_00: But we have 178 total homes for sale.
- 3:46SPEAKER_00: Of those, we have 27 of those residences that are coming soon, not available as of yet, but 27 that are on their way to becoming available.
- 3:58SPEAKER_00: I can show you those.
- 3:59SPEAKER_00: I'm going to put a new system in place.
- 4:01SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is send me a text message or email.
- 4:03SPEAKER_00: I can get you on the list so you can see those properties every time they pop onto the market.
- 4:09SPEAKER_00: Now, having said that, you come to me, you say, Hey, Connor, I want you to look for real estate for me.
- 4:14SPEAKER_00: Great.
- 4:14SPEAKER_00: Then what are you looking for?
- 4:15SPEAKER_00: And you give me the intel that what you're looking for.
- 4:18SPEAKER_00: Then we have other discussions.
- 4:19SPEAKER_00: You know, what's this property going to be used for?
- 4:21SPEAKER_00: Is this primary residence?
- 4:22SPEAKER_00: Is this something that you're going to only be in for a short time?
- 4:26SPEAKER_00: Are you a big traveler?
- 4:27SPEAKER_00: Are you going to be here locally?
- 4:28SPEAKER_00: You're going to have your family in place, or a family, or people with you in the house.
- 4:32SPEAKER_00: Who are those people?
- 4:33SPEAKER_00: You know, what are they doing in life?
- 4:34SPEAKER_00: You have kids, so on.
- 4:36SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure that everything kind of fits.
- 4:38SPEAKER_00: So if you're going to have kids, you don't want to go to any one of them in public school, you've got to look at the school.
- 4:42SPEAKER_00: If you have people in your house maybe maybe more elderly that like to walk a lot, or maybe you like to walk a lot.
- 4:48SPEAKER_00: It'd be nice to have you close to the pasalls, which is a Valencia's a master plan community.
- 4:54SPEAKER_00: In the Santa Cruita, though, there are lots of paseos.
- 4:57SPEAKER_00: Those pasos are walking paths, biking paths, running paths.
- 5:01SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people use those because they're able to use these paths to give themselves some semblance of a workout, yet not get involved with traffic and vehicles.
- 5:12SPEAKER_00: So instead of being on the sidewalk next to a road, you're on a fenced bicycle path or walking path.
- 5:19SPEAKER_00: Some of them are in close proximity to large roadways and such.
- 5:25SPEAKER_00: But a lot of them kind of run behind up into the mountains.
- 5:27SPEAKER_00: Very beautiful.
- 5:28SPEAKER_00: And you'd be hard pressed to find anything better by design anywhere else here, especially in Southern California.
- 5:35SPEAKER_00: So it is really, really neat.
- 5:37SPEAKER_00: These are the questions though that we ask.
- 5:39SPEAKER_00: So when they're coming into the area, they don't come in blind and they have an idea.
- 5:42SPEAKER_00: Plus, that allows me to do that search that we talked about for real estate in the best way possible.
- 5:48SPEAKER_00: Now, when I'm searching, I'm looking at everything.
- 5:51SPEAKER_00: So we'll have a discussion about Melaruz tax.
- 5:53SPEAKER_00: And yes, it exists.
- 5:54SPEAKER_00: If you're not familiar with what Melaruz is, it's a tax on real estate.
- 5:59SPEAKER_00: And it was started at the beginning for the home builder.
- 6:02SPEAKER_00: Home builder didn't want to pay it, so they said we're going to divvy this up by numbers of residences.
- 6:08SPEAKER_00: And then after we divvy this up, each of the residences, when they purchase this house, it's going to come with this extra tax, a supplemental tax, if you will.
- 6:17SPEAKER_00: So if your normal tax base in Los Angeles County, which it is somewhere around 1.25% rough numbers, a little up, a little down, but right around there.
- 6:25SPEAKER_00: If that's where it is for, and I will say most residences built before 2000-ish, even 1990-ish, 1998-ish, in that area.
- 6:39SPEAKER_00: So you got the 90s that kind of started to develop and got kind of big towards the end of the 90s.
- 6:46SPEAKER_00: And now it's really big.
- 6:47SPEAKER_00: Now most new builders have the Melaruse.
- 6:51SPEAKER_00: I do know Toll Brothers, give them a shout out.
- 6:54SPEAKER_00: They did some new housing that uh they weren't charging for it because they paid it.
- 6:58SPEAKER_00: Some builders pay it, some don't, but at the end of the day, it's a builder's option.
- 7:03SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them are not.
- 7:05SPEAKER_00: They're just pocketing that money or well, doing whatever with that money that they would normally, not normally do, but they have it now.
- 7:13SPEAKER_00: And they pass that on to the people that are purchasing the residential real estate.
- 7:17SPEAKER_00: So we explore that, we explore HOA, you know, what do they do?
- 7:20SPEAKER_00: How much is it?
- 7:21SPEAKER_00: Some communities out here have more than one HOA.
- 7:23SPEAKER_00: Some people that I talk to, they don't want to have anything to do with an HOA, and I tell them that's going to be tough.
- 7:28SPEAKER_00: Most residential real estate in Santa Clarita does have some kind of homeowners association.
- 7:34SPEAKER_00: Most new housing anywhere in Southern California has some kind of homeowners association dues.
- 7:40SPEAKER_00: They do a lot of things.
- 7:41SPEAKER_00: It's hard to really see sometimes visually what they do because maybe there's no kids' playground or no lawns or flowing green belts or lots of planted areas, you know, that are outside of the local ownership there, stuff that they do.
- 8:00SPEAKER_00: Again, sometimes there aren't those areas.
- 8:02SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there are large brush clearance areas, so you can see where some of that money goes.
- 8:07SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a gated community, so there's a guard in place, so you can see, okay, you've got to pay the guard.
- 8:12SPEAKER_00: And then, but all of them have some type of an enforcement mechanism for the most part.
- 8:17SPEAKER_00: So what that means is if in this neighborhood your neighbor uh decides they're gonna Madonna up their house, they're gonna paint it black and orange or whatever it is she did with hers back in the day in the Hollywood Hills, that they're gonna be able to put a stop to that.
- 8:34SPEAKER_00: So there's an enforcement mechanism, and they do it by via fines, and then they can even get really nasty past the fining.
- 8:42SPEAKER_00: So that's what they do, which is more of something that's really kind of unseen in the enforcement area.
- 8:47SPEAKER_00: But some people call and say, you know what, Connor?
- 8:50SPEAKER_00: I lived in an HOA.
- 8:51SPEAKER_00: I had a shed that I put up that happened to be a public view, and they came over and they threatened to fine me and all this other fancy stuff.
- 8:58SPEAKER_00: I get it.
- 8:58SPEAKER_00: So you don't want an HOA.
- 9:00SPEAKER_00: So we'll do those searches as well.
- 9:01SPEAKER_00: So when I do the search, I put everything together via your parameters.
- 9:06SPEAKER_00: There are some items in there that aren't mandatory.
- 9:09SPEAKER_00: So there are there are spaces in here.
- 9:11SPEAKER_00: For example, bedroom count's mandatory, bathroom count is mandatory.
- 9:16SPEAKER_00: Meloruse tax is a question, but maybe the agent doesn't know, maybe they didn't do their due diligence, nor do they do the research, maybe they're new and they don't know how to, or maybe they're from outside of Santa Crita Valley, listing real property out here, and that particular seller hasn't listened to my my video about how to, oh, you should only hire local agents.
- 9:37SPEAKER_00: That's gonna sting a little bit.
- 9:39SPEAKER_00: But maybe they didn't hear that.
- 9:40SPEAKER_00: So now you have this piece of property that gets into escrow where the buyer has no idea it has Melaruz.
- 9:45SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're using a non-local agent as well, and then comsi, com sa, then what happens is they get into escrow, they find out the Melaruse tax is$700 a month, and they say, ooh, no way.
- 9:57SPEAKER_00: So they pull out.
- 9:58SPEAKER_00: And they get everything back, of course, because they'll find that out early, hopefully.
- 10:02SPEAKER_00: And if not, that could be a problem.
- 10:04SPEAKER_00: But hopefully, they do find it out early, and everybody on the other side of the transaction is understanding.
- 10:11SPEAKER_00: But there's a danger.
- 10:13SPEAKER_00: So whenever I send properties out, I establish with the client how they want them.
- 10:17SPEAKER_00: Do they want them hot off the press right away when I see it, or do they want it after I do my due diligence and scrub them?
- 10:24SPEAKER_00: It's going to depend on what the client's looking for.
- 10:30SPEAKER_00: And in most cases, they want them right away.
- 10:32SPEAKER_00: And if there are two people searching, one of them may be busy at work all day long, but the other one might have a little bit more flexibility in their schedule if it were, as it were, if it is.
- 10:43SPEAKER_00: And uh that being the case, then usually they'll say, hey Connor, just send them to me.
- 10:47SPEAKER_00: I'll look at them and and then uh hit you up one at a time or give you a group of them.
- 10:52SPEAKER_00: We can go schedule a time for it.
- 10:54SPEAKER_00: So that time then I'll start the work.
- 10:57SPEAKER_00: I just don't want you to get uh involved or fall in love with something that could potentially be detrimental to your finances.
- 11:08SPEAKER_00: Maybe the HOA is way too expensive, you know, maybe it's three, four hundred dollars a month.
- 11:12SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's not something you factored in.
- 11:14SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're doing a search that only allows for a$50 HOA.
- 11:19SPEAKER_00: Now, if there's stuff that's built in there maybe being listed by agents outside of this area where they're not answering the HOA amount question, then you fall in love with it on paper, and then all of a sudden you can't really get into it because the affordability uh uh thing rears its ugly head, which does happen quite a bit.
- 11:37SPEAKER_00: But that's how that search could be conducted, one of those two ways.
- 11:41SPEAKER_00: And of course, online you're gonna find a lot of properties.
- 11:45SPEAKER_00: Some of those are games, so be wary, that does still exist.
- 11:49SPEAKER_00: A lot of them are not, but there is still no overseeing overall enforcement mechanism to the real estate syndication websites.
- 11:59SPEAKER_00: Anything that's operated by a licensed realtor, we have to obey a whole different set of rules.
- 12:05SPEAKER_00: Well, we have rules to obey versus the syndication sites.
- 12:10SPEAKER_00: They they're kind of just running the show, and they are doing a very good job, but in a lot of cases, you're gonna run into information that could be bad.
- 12:19SPEAKER_00: So, what I would suggest is you find that consummate local professional, you contact me, and you let me run the data on properties that you find within any of the online portals that you and I haven't discussed previous.
- 12:32SPEAKER_00: You'll find out that a lot of those properties are having or showing that they're available when they're really not.
- 12:40SPEAKER_00: So that's those dangers.
- 12:41SPEAKER_00: Don't give up who you are, don't share any of your personal information online, don't give it up when you're going into an open house.
- 12:48SPEAKER_00: I know the seller's gonna request your personal information, but realistically they could they could care about your email and your phone number, whether you're working with an agent.
- 12:57SPEAKER_00: That's the agent that wants that information.
- 12:59SPEAKER_00: So know that going in.
- 13:01SPEAKER_00: I was at an open house this weekend, come to find out, then I've talked about this in the past.
- 13:06SPEAKER_00: The agent of the open house was not the agent with the listing, it was someone else, somebody from their office, somebody else that's trying to build their database.
- 13:15SPEAKER_00: Something you should be aware of is that happens quite a bit.
- 13:17SPEAKER_00: If you think you're going to go into an open house and run to the actual listing agent, it's not that common.
- 13:23SPEAKER_00: But as I always say, tell my clients, and as dear old dad used to say, you definitely always have, want to always have your own representative, your own attorney, not sharing the attorney with the person suing you or the person you're suing, your own lawyer, you know, that sort of thing.
- 13:42SPEAKER_00: You also want your own real estate agent because there is somebody that's on the seller's side built in via contract.
- 13:50SPEAKER_00: So you want your own agent that's going to stand on your side 100% of the time.
- 13:54SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about the sellers out there looking at these property valuations, finding out what their home is worth.
- 14:01SPEAKER_00: Had a couple reach out yesterday that I've worked with in the past, great people, wanted to get an idea.
- 14:07SPEAKER_00: And so I pull up all the regular stuff.
- 14:09SPEAKER_00: You know, I'll pull up, uh, let me look here.
- 14:11SPEAKER_00: I got estimates of I, I got uh Zillow, I got Redfin, I got Realtor.com.
- 14:15SPEAKER_00: I use a Realtor's property resource as well.
- 14:18SPEAKER_00: I have SmartZip, Remax, and eAppraisal.
- 14:21SPEAKER_00: So I'll I'll run all those systems and I'll capture screenshots of what it says about the residents that I'm running.
- 14:27SPEAKER_00: I do all that without having to register, put my information in there.
- 14:30SPEAKER_00: I don't get bombarded with spam email from those systems because I do it within the purview of anonymity so they don't see who I am.
- 14:41SPEAKER_00: I don't give up any personal information.
- 14:43SPEAKER_00: I don't get involved with the teasers that they'll send me as far as on the screen, you know, these pop-ups that'll say, you know, we'll sell your house for free, or we'll sell it for, we'll pay you money to sell your house, or, you know, we'll give you whatever it is to sell at Maserati, whatever.
- 14:58SPEAKER_00: All this is this is all just uh window dressing, so stay away from it.
- 15:02SPEAKER_00: Once uh I send all this, then I also send the MLS comps via link.
- 15:07SPEAKER_00: So then that allows me to pull other residences within close proximity, and I'll actually build uh CMA for that, a competitive market analysis, and I'll put that together as well.
- 15:20SPEAKER_00: So they'll see their house.
- 15:22SPEAKER_00: Uh typically there'll be historical pictures there, how it was back in the day, uh, the last time it sold, and then uh I'll get from them changes, if in fact we're to that point.
- 15:34SPEAKER_00: If not, I'll just do a very raw run.
- 15:36SPEAKER_00: But I'll have an idea because realistically, unless they diamond tuck everything and you know, just re-totally revamp everything with some of the most expensive high dollar items, you're not gonna get dollar for dollar out of even that kind of exchange or change in the residence.
- 15:53SPEAKER_00: More than likely, we're gonna be looking bedroom, bathroom, count, and also square footage to gauge the the price of that residence or the value therein as we compare it with others.
- 16:02SPEAKER_00: With the others, we're gonna see you know other things that they have.
- 16:05SPEAKER_00: Subject residents may have a pool.
- 16:07SPEAKER_00: We'll look for pools in the other ones and then adjust accordingly to find out what a pool adds to a property in this particular market.
- 16:14SPEAKER_00: So I'll get all that research done, package everything together, and I'll send it in a nice format where they're actually able to look at it themselves, clickable links, pictures, you'll see, you'll be able to see the property stacked next to each other, dates of closing, what was paid, what type of financing was used, was it cash, was it some kind of financing?
- 16:33SPEAKER_00: Did they have a lot down?
- 16:34SPEAKER_00: Did they have a little bit down?
- 16:36SPEAKER_00: And what type of loan programs were used.
- 16:38SPEAKER_00: It could be veterans administration loans were the biggest use as far as loans go.
- 16:43SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's FHA, excuse me, FHA, maybe it's a conventional buyer that had that 20 or better percent down.
- 16:49SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was some other version of conventional, and maybe, of course, as we talked about, was cash.
- 16:53SPEAKER_00: And then we can see what the prices were, what the actual list price was versus the actual sold price, and that gives us a good idea as well, because we see in this particular market, Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022, we do see properties selling for considerably more.
- 17:10SPEAKER_00: Then they're listed for sale in some cases.
- 17:12SPEAKER_00: Some cases on that comp workup, I can do that for a buyer as well.
- 17:16SPEAKER_00: We can go look at residential real estate and get an idea of what that trend looks like, and if in fact that trend is still prevalent and in that particular neighborhood.
- 17:24SPEAKER_00: So let's say I move out of Santa Clara and I go to Simi Valley, I'm showing houses there.
- 17:28SPEAKER_00: I can do that same work up there to kind of give us an idea what the historical trend is in that neighborhood.
- 17:34SPEAKER_00: And it might be that those houses weren't selling for hand over fist above those list prices.
- 17:40SPEAKER_00: But again, when you finally the smoke clears after the offer's been written and so on, it could be that that particular case they are going to be selling for more.
- 17:49SPEAKER_00: But it does seem like inventory, well, it is the case, inventory is very low, and there are still quite a few buyers out there, even with the uh higher interest rates.
- 17:59SPEAKER_00: But again, rumor is there's gonna be in the sixes by the end of the year.
- 18:04SPEAKER_00: That's a lot.
- 18:04SPEAKER_00: We'll have to see if that actually happens.
- 18:07SPEAKER_00: And it's all gonna be relative because depending on the amount of inventory, depending on the sellers out there in that drive, it's gonna be dependent on how property prices settle when the interest rates do start to go up.
- 18:20SPEAKER_00: And that buyer drive, what that looks like, if there are enough buyers to continue the process and move through real estate, then there won't be an issue.
- 18:28SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see those prices continue to increase.
- 18:31SPEAKER_00: If the interest rates go up and that halts buyer movement, because now it's cutting into their affordability factor, where if they're at 4% interest today, can qualify for 900,000.
- 18:45SPEAKER_00: The interest rates go to 500, excuse me, the interest rates go to 5%, they might only be able to qualify for$800,000.
- 18:52SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's$100,000 less.
- 18:54SPEAKER_00: So they just cut out a lot of real estate that has been listed for sale.
- 19:00SPEAKER_00: So if that trend overall envelops the market, then we're gonna see property prices start to relax and in some cases reduce.
- 19:08SPEAKER_00: In some cases, sellers won't be able to sell.
- 19:10SPEAKER_00: Some cases they're gonna not have enough equity to even break even if we see this kind of an adjustment in real estate.
- 19:17SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but it is something to watch out for.
- 19:20SPEAKER_00: I would hinge the other way.
- 19:22SPEAKER_00: I don't think interest rates are gonna get as high as that, that has been rumored.
- 19:26SPEAKER_00: But again, we never know.
- 19:27SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, we have to see what kind of new inventory is going to be added to the market.
- 19:31SPEAKER_00: Here we are about to close out March.
- 19:34SPEAKER_00: I do know that mid-March it kind of starts, April, May, big months, big, heavy hitting months for additional inventory on the market.
- 19:40SPEAKER_00: Could be the case that that's what's gonna happen here coming up.
- 19:44SPEAKER_00: We'll have to keep you posted.
- 19:46SPEAKER_00: I know I have some coming up as well, so please stay tuned, and I will keep you on the cutting edge of real estate and news.
- 19:54SPEAKER_00: I am Connor with Honor.
- 19:55SPEAKER_00: If you go to Connorwithhonor.com, you'll see my YouTube channel.
- 19:58SPEAKER_00: When you get there, would you hit that notification bell and subscribe for me?
- 20:01SPEAKER_00: I guess not in that order, so hit subscribe and then hit that little bell so you're notified when I do a new release.
- 20:06SPEAKER_00: I also uh have a nice shooting cadre if you're interested in that, and finally uh coaching, trying to help folks out there make the best version of themselves.
- 20:15SPEAKER_00: Happy to help with that also.
- 20:16SPEAKER_00: Everybody be safe.
- 20:17SPEAKER_00: I am Connor with Honor.
- 20:19SPEAKER_00: If you need to talk, I'm here, 661-400-1720.
- 20:23SPEAKER_00: Always a pleasure, folks.
- 20:24SPEAKER_00: And uh, we look forward to talking with you soon.
- 20:26SPEAKER_00: Please share this, and I would be honored, of course, is my name, Connor with Honor.
- 20:32SPEAKER_00: Be safe.
- 20:32SPEAKER_00: We'll talk to you very soon.
- 20:33SPEAKER_00: Take care.