RE: Real Estate Podcast

Ben Harang (00:00)
Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to another episode of RE Real Estate Podcast. I'm one of your co-hosts, Ben Harang Joining me today is Clint Galliano. Good afternoon, Clint. How you doing?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:11)
I'm doing wonderful, Ben. How you doing?

Ben Harang (00:14)
I'm doing terrific, man. Glad to hear it. Not raining today. Gonna get some rain, but that's the cycle of life, I guess. So what are we talking about today, Clint?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:22)
All right, so today we're going to be talking about real estate myths that people still believe in South Louisiana. And we're here to bust those myths.

Ben Harang (00:32)
myth busters. Before we get started like, subscribe, comment, and share help us grow the channel. Now we got that plug out the way Clint go ahead.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:39)
All right, so things we're going to cover is flood zones to fixer uppers. We're going to break down the biggest myths that home buyers still believe, and especially here in South Louisiana. those are the real, I guess, real estate myths.

I want to say myth conceptions because there's a book that I read when I was a child that was called Mythconceptions So I hang up on that word. but if you think that they're the truth, they'll kind of cost you some time, some money, and some peace of mind worrying about it. So first thing we're going to start out with is...

Ben Harang (00:59)
Yeah.

It's a myth conception. All right.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:21)
that you can't buy a house unless you have 20 % of the purchase price to put down.

Ben Harang (01:27)
You mean I can buy a hundred thousand dollar house if I don't have $20,000 in the bank plus closing costs. I can, I can really do that.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:35)
You can really do that. I kind of thought that everybody knew that that wasn't the case anymore, but within the last, I'd say three months, I've run across at least five people that didn't know that that was the case. And I was shocked. ⁓

Ben Harang (01:37)
I'm amazed.

Mm-hmm.

It's not that

it's a bad idea to put 20 % down. It's just you don't need it.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:55)
Oh no, no, you can still do it.

Yeah. So why don't you tell us about the origin of that 20 % myth?

Ben Harang (02:03)
Well, the banks and the savings and loans back in the day wouldn't lend you money without 20 % down. You went to a local bank or savings and loan and they told you you needed 20 % and you needed 20%. And then the federal government got involved in ensuring government backed loans and they loosened up on a down payment so people with less cash could be able to buy a house.

And something developed called the FHA, the federal housing authority, think is what it stands for. And with that loan product, you can put down as little as three and half percent. if you do it that way, there's something called MI and PMI, mortgage insurance and private, ⁓ mortgage insurance. And that is to cover the defaults made by people.

that borrow money under those programs. So there's also the rural development of VA and they'll package those loans and sell them in a secondary market to investors and it's backed by the mortgages on the single-family dwellings and they can recycle that money over and over and over again. So that was one of them. Why don't you talk about the rural development?

in a VA,

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (03:15)
So the VA loans don't require any type of mortgage insurance. The full faith and credit of the United States government, Veterans Administration covers those. So if a veteran does default on their VA loan, the government is responsible for it. The mortgage insurance is there to...

protect the lender or whoever owns the loan at the point if the borrower does default on the loan. Rural development, it basically works the same like the FHA. couple of quirks, I don't think that, well actually I'm not clear on if the mortgage insurance ever goes away on a rural development loan.

I know on FHA, if you put down more than 10 % down payment, then after you get to 20 % equity in the home, and that's either by paying down the loan balance or by appreciation of the home value, then you can get rid of the mortgage insurance. But if you put down less, then it's on there for the life of the loan.

Ben Harang (04:27)
You'd have to refinance it to take it off and then you have the closing costs again

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (04:29)
Correct.

Ben Harang (04:30)
So I'm going to just comment, Clint does more VAs than I do. But if you're eligible for a VA loan, I'm going just tell you it's probably the best option for you. And just because they are willing to lend you 100%, that mean you need to take 100%. If you have cash to put down, you can finance however much you want. the interest rate is more competitive.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (04:31)
Correct.

Ben Harang (04:56)
The requirements are less stringent because they want to get veterans into a house, which they deserve to be able to get into a house. So if you're eligible, it's probably your best product. There's a misconception or a mythconception like Clint says about the quality of a VA buyer when they're buying a house from the seller side. And there's nothing, nothing at all wrong with somebody.

making a VA loan to buy a house. For whatever reason, some agents have in their mind that it's less advantageous to the seller if there's a VA loan, where there's nothing different to the seller concerning a VA loan. The two restrictions that I can think of are the buyer can't pay for the termite certificate or the WDIR and they

can't pay out of pocket for a buyer's agent's compensation. So if that's worked into the, they can now, okay, okay. So there's really an insignificant difference on accepting an offer with a VA loan versus FHA VA or conventional, which we haven't talked about in a rural, FHA rural development and conventional as compared to a VA loan.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (05:45)
And actually they can now.

Ben Harang (06:08)
So that's one of those other myth conceptions.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (06:11)
Yeah, so touching a little bit on what Ben said, if you don't need to do a 100 % loan, depending on your finances, the more equity you can have in the home, whether it's putting money down to buy equity or buying at a discounted rate to market value, the better off you are. Because ultimately, you're going to

If you're not building up equity and say seven years, 10 years down the line, you go to sell. Uh, and even if the appreciation is flat and the home doesn't increase in value, you're, you know, you, you may not make any money at all, you know, or even if it's minimal, you're not going to make a whole lot of money. So the more equity you can get, whether it's buying it or, you know,

forcing it through upgrades, moderate upgrades, not black interior paint with red pin striping or something like that.

Ben Harang (07:05)
Yeah.

You don't

want a black and white checkerboard Clint?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:12)
funny thing I had a dream one time of ⁓ a kitchen that was all black with red trim.

Ben Harang (07:14)
I don't want it.

My first house had red cabinets, avocado green appliances, and red linoleum sheet vinyl with a red brick pattern. Wild. You know, typical early 70s house. But I didn't buy it new, so I'm not that old. Close, but not that old.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:19)
Really weird.

guys.

Yeah.

All right, let's move on to the next myth. All right, and that one is, well, flood zones mean you can't buy that house.

Ben Harang (07:41)
All right. You want to talk? Talk.

I don't want to buy a house in a flood zone.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:48)
Yeah, I think we may have touched on that one a little bit.

Ben Harang (07:50)
We have,

I think it's worth touching on it again. ⁓ You want me to take it are going take it?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:54)
always.

Go ahead and take it, Ben.

Ben Harang (07:58)
All right. So the flood zones, the country is divided into designated flood zones. There's no such thing as property, not in a flood zone. What people probably mean when they say that is they don't want to buy a house in a flood zone that requires them to buy flood insurance as a condition of the mortgage. And if you get a FHA, VA,

Rural development or conventional loan is backed by the federal government. It's a requirement that you buy flood insurance if you're in certain designated special flood hazard risk zones. That's a mouthful. Find out where flood zone it's in, give it to your lender or your insurance agency agent to where the insurance agent will give you the zone, give it to your lender and they'll tell you whether or not you need to buy it.

We were both Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes for the most part and Lafourche is under the old set of maps with flood zones C and X and B not requiring flood insurance. Terrebonne Parish, flood zone X is not required. Everything else is required. So just understand the idiosyncrasies of each parish that you're in.

I tell people all the time, we were in South Louisiana. don't rely on a federal government to say whether or not your house is going to flood. go ahead. If you can afford it by the flood insurance, whether or not you're required to buy it. and if you're to buy a house, you may want to right now get the flood insurance transferred to you because if not, you go out and buy it again. It goes straight to.

what's referred to as actuarially sound rates, where the policy that's enforced right now may be below those rates with an 18 % a year increase until it gets to those rates. So you may have four or five years of ⁓ premium discount until it gets to the higher rate, if you buy new when it goes straight to the higher rate. So that's my story on flood zones, Clint.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (09:47)
Yeah, and the main thing to take into consideration is when the seller purchased that flood policy, as long as they purchased it prior to, I think, October of 2020. Does that sound about right? 2020 or 2021. Somewhere around there, whenever they went over to risk rating 2.0, if they had that policy in effect prior to then, then you get the discounted

Ben Harang (10:05)
Yeah.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:11)
rates, know, they're grandfathered in, I guess, not really grandfathered, but they had the lower rates before they changed the whole pricing schema for premiums.

Ben Harang (10:19)
Right.

they didn't increase it on people that already had it force completely. They limited to only an 18 % increase a year until it got to the rate they really wanted to charge you.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:30)
Yeah. And so main things to remember is it's about risk management. You know, so if there's something that happens and, know,

I don't like the phrase thoughts and prayers, but my thoughts and my prayers are with the people over in Kerrville. Things like that happen every 40 or 50 years over there. Not necessarily that bad. That was just really bad timing ⁓ over there, but those types of things happen. you don't want to have your house torn up from a flood or...

Ben Harang (10:54)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:01)
Ultimately without any kind of protection because you're on your own because the homeowners insurance isn't going to cover it

Ben Harang (11:07)
Right. And some people decide to self-insure and you know, if the house is paid for, you're not required to have a flood policy. You can certainly take on that risk as a mature adult. And if it floods and you don't have insurance, you just have to deal with it.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:24)
that is a

valid approach and it could be cheaper in the long run.

Ben Harang (11:28)
Right, right. Another thing to think about, if you do decide to buy flood insurance and it is not required as a condition of your loan, do have your insurance agent not add your lender to the flood policy. Because if there's a loss and they're not on it, it's between you and the National Flood Insurance Program.

If you have a loss and your lender's on it, even though they're not, don't require you to have it, you have to get their signature on any loss check, any claim check before you can deposit it. And then it can act like they're going to dole it out to you periodically as you make the repairs. They don't have anything to do with it. If you're not required to have it, if you decide to have it, that's between you and the NFIP. I don't know if I made that clear Clint, can expand on that if you, if you want to.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (12:15)
No,

mean, that's a really good point. And we talked about it a little bit on one of the other episodes. We had friends, family, and clients that after Hurricane Ida came through, that more or less the lenders were holding our insurance reimbursement checks hostage. And so the...

Ben Harang (12:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (12:39)
the homeowners were sitting there kind of in limbo waiting to get the check signed off on so that they could pay their contractors for repairs and the contractors were waiting to get paid and not wanting to do any more work. the less, or I should say the more you could avoid all of that, the better off you are. And so if you're buying it outside of a requirement from your lender, they don't need to be involved.

Ben Harang (12:52)
It was, it was a vicious cycle. Right.

Okay. All right.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:04)
All right,

next topic, I'm going to go ahead and take that one. ⁓ Does estimate, or any other online valuation, is accurate? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. ⁓

Ben Harang (13:07)
You can have that one.

If it is, it's

a luck of the draw if it is accurate.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:18)
So I want to say I saw a statistic a couple of weeks ago that 24 % of the time, a Zestimate is accurate.

Ben Harang (13:29)
That's probably higher than I thought. So 75 % of the time they're wrong.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:31)
Yeah, exactly.

That's like one in four.

Ben Harang (13:37)
Yeah, that's not even a good baseball batting app.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:38)
So. ⁓

Not at all. And this goes, and we're jokingly only using the Zestimate, but they're the most widely known automated real estate valuation tool that you can find online. There are some others that may or may not be more accurate. We have one also, but it's not accurate in every situation.

Ben Harang (13:52)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (14:03)
It all depends on what's being put into it and what they're calculating that from and how they're adjusting it and how they're tweaking it. You know, just as an example, our valuation tool, I figured out that a big part of what they use is the assessed value of the property to come up with the home valuations. So we have a thing in Lafourche Parish called Senior Citizens Frozen Assessments.

Ben Harang (14:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (14:29)
And so that means that they don't assess the property anymore after they get the assessments frozen. And if you go, what's that? Yeah, they don't reassess it.

Ben Harang (14:34)
They don't reassess it. They don't reassess it. the assessment

value stays frozen ⁓ until the house is sold.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (14:42)
Correct. So in other words, their taxes

don't go up. And so if it sits like that for 15 years, then for that specific property, because of that, I was able to tell that that's what they use as a major component. that particular house I was looking at was showing the valuation $100,000 less than any of the other houses in the neighborhood.

And so it's little things like that that throw off these numbers. And I look at these Zestimates on rental properties just to see what they say. And every week or so I'm getting a different number for no discernible reason that it's either jumping or dropping 200, 500, $1,000.

Ben Harang (15:09)
Mm-hmm.

And some, it's,

and sometimes it's not a $500, $1,000 change. Sometimes it's a significant increase or decrease, um, for no apparent reason. So, um, the automated stuff, if you don't have local knowledge of where the house is, it's extremely difficult to pinpoint a price. Uh, that's one of the most difficult things we do, I think is decide which

Which, which comp is actually comparable, which sale is actually comparable, whether it's location, whether it's condition size, age, all of those things matter. And in a, tract built DSL D home subdivision, it's easy. You get a one off house in an old part of town where they have nice houses and not so nice houses. You start looking for comps and it just, it grows ahead of its own.

So for them to sit back and do it online without any local knowledge is just, when they get it right, it's an accident.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (16:23)
And some of the other things that make the AVMs or automated valuation models unreliable is that they don't know what maintenance you've kept up with or not kept up with. They're assuming that everything has been maintained. Everything's been kept up. They don't know that you remodeled your kitchen. They don't know that you remodeled your bathroom, that you put in granite.

all marble in the bathroom and put in a $20,000 marble shower. They don't know any of that. they, you your house might be worth that $350,000 while everybody else is worth $280,000. You know, but they don't know because they don't see inside your house.

Ben Harang (16:54)
Mm-hmm.

No, in

Right, right. And nor do they look at the comps, the pictures of the comps that they're using. They don't know how updated they are or not updated.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (17:13)
Yeah, they didn't develop an evaluation model for for listing photos of properties sold. They look at the stuff that they readily have access to public information.

Ben Harang (17:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I think we hit the automated evaluation models are not accurate at all.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (17:32)
Yep. All right. Next topic. Or I should say, next myth conception.

Ben Harang (17:37)
Yeah ⁓

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (17:39)
I think I'm gonna

wait for the prices to drop.

Ben Harang (17:41)
Okay, I'm gonna take that one. Right now, it depends where you buy a house. Prices can be soft, prices can be firm. But if you wait in rent, unless somebody's giving you a place to live for free, and you're living in mom and dad's basement for free, you're paying rent somewhere. So you're living for free or you're paying

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (17:43)
All right.

Ben Harang (18:03)
Uh, landlord Larry's note on his apartment complex that you're living in. Um, if you buy the house, you're going to pay your note rather than landlord Larry's note. And you're to wake up 10 years down the road, uh, however long it is. And there's a pretty good chance you're going to have some appreciation. Um, you're going to have a pay down on the principal.

So it's almost like a forced savings account. And if you sell it, then you're to go to a closing and you're going to get a check for 10 or 15 or $20,000. Had you been in landlord Larry's apartment, landlord Larry would be getting his note paid down. the doesn't matter if it's, if you buy at the top of the bottom, would all rather buy at the bottom.

but you need a place to live. It's not like living is optional and it costs to live somewhere. So even if it costs you something when you sell a house to live, it's probably cheaper than had you been paying landlord Larry his note.

So anyway, bye bye when you need the house.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (19:08)
So a little more detailed take on this. I'm kind of a little wary on how I say this because I saw somebody comment on a thread saying, a real estate agent is going to say it's always a good time to buy. And well, and then.

Ben Harang (19:25)
Okay. That's what I just said.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (19:28)
The thing is, is that it's true. And so here's the factual reasons why. All right, first off, there's this thing called inflation. All right, and so what inflation means is that every day the dollar is worth less and less. You know, there's a lot of people online that are complaining about, well, back in your day or back in grandma's day when they bought a house, it was cheap.

They could work their job and they bought a house and they could afford it and everything. So there's a couple of things going on there. One is that the dollar was worth a lot more. And two, the standard of living was a lot lower. People were happy with a two bedroom, one bath house and raised five kids in it. And everybody lived with that and dealt with it. And there was a black and white TV.

Ben Harang (20:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (20:19)
with a remote that was the youngest kid that would run from on side of daddy's recliner chair to the TV and change the channel and also adjusted the rabbit ear antennas for that.

Ben Harang (20:27)
huh.

And if they were really uptown, they had a rotor on an outside TV antenna to point it to the radio station.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (20:34)
But I was too fancy for me.

So, but

the point is, is that if you wait, that means that not only are you, there's some opportunity costs that are being missed in waiting, or I should say opportunity costs that are building up, but you're also having in general housing prices go up because the dollar buys less.

Ben Harang (20:58)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (21:00)
So to buy the same house tomorrow, I mean, not literally tomorrow, but figuratively, it's going to be more expensive because you're paying with cheaper dollars. So you got to have more of them to buy the same thing that you could have bought today or last year.

Ben Harang (21:15)
Right.

And another way to look at it is once you make the loan, every year you're paying it back with less and less valuable dollars. So you're paying for what you bought and the, your note doesn't change, but the dollars you're paying it back with and inflationary times are less valuable than they were when you bought the house. ⁓ and

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (21:24)
That's right.

cheaper money.

Ben Harang (21:37)
If you live in with in landlord Larry's apartment, he's, he's going to raise the rent to cover the loss of the.

of what the dollar can buy. So you're going to see the increase if you're renting. You'll never see the increase other than the insurance increase if you bought. That principle in interest never changes. Unless you have a...

⁓ what's the word I'm looking for Clint? An adjustable rate loan. An adjustable, yeah. So they adjust the interest rate every three or five years. So that's the only way it would change. But if you get a 30 year fixed loan, the principal and interest will not change for the life of that loan.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (21:58)
Adjustable rate and mortgage, yes.

And then the other thing in our area in South Louisiana, while we do tend to follow the national trends, our response time is a lot slower and it's nowhere near as dynamic. So we don't fall as far, we don't climb as fast or as high.

Ben Harang (22:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

our, our peaks and valleys are less as opposed to higher and lower. okay, Clint. And next one, Clint, I got a home inspection on my house and I found that after move in, it's not a perfect house. What's that about?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (22:35)
Home inspections.

Well, home inspection isn't a guarantee that your house is perfect. It's just a statement of observed facts on the condition of your home. How's that?

Ben Harang (22:53)
I, it's an unbiased view of the house you think you want to buy. and if you pay attention to the report, you will absolutely see that it's not perfect. brand new house is not perfect. There'll be fewer issues with it, but it's still not perfect. ⁓ I'm dealing with one on a large home that has, it has some issues that we just got the inspection report in and we had to back up a little bit. There's some things they need to do before we get it on the market.

that was exposed that were exposed by the home inspection and it's better to know now than when somebody goes to buy it so when somebody buys this house it should not be any surprises so

That's about all I can say about it. It gives you an unbiased third party view of the house you fell in love with.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (23:35)
Yep, and some of the things if they're a hazard or need to be repaired, we can ask the seller to repair them. It's not guaranteed they're gonna repair them, but typically if it's something that's gonna be called out or flagged in the loan requirements, depending on the type of loan, then there's a good chance that they're gonna repair it.

Ben Harang (23:56)
And I'm I'm a deviate just a little bit on that. Speaking of the home inspection, when you buy in a house, get the home inspection and the appraisal done at the same time, or as closely as close as you can. So if any renegotiations need to happen, you can renegotiate both of them at the same time and move on. The last thing you want to do is have a home inspection and have problems renegotiated. Seller agrees to it. And then the appraisal comes in at a different number.

and you're starting back from square one. So get them both done, do it one time and get to the closing table. All right, I'm off myself, box Clint.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (24:30)
Yeah. All right. All homes appreciate and value.

Okay, so I'll start out on that one. ⁓

Ben Harang (24:36)
Okay.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (24:37)
Generally, yes, but and the but is it depends on where they are. It depends on how well they were maintained. It depends on a whole bunch of different factors. You know, there's some really nice houses down in Chauvin that you can put whatever price you want on them, but because of

Ben Harang (24:42)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (24:57)
basically just the reality of where they are and changes in insurance and flood insurance pricing and all that. It's unreal what you wind up having to, you know, it's like we've dropped price on the house I've got listed down there and the, you know, full cost insurance on it is

Ben Harang (25:00)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (25:23)
having you insure it for four times the list price.

Ben Harang (25:27)
And it just changes some laws to where you can insure it for a stated value rather than what they perceive to be the replacement cost as long as your lender allows it. So there's some options. Yeah. There could be some insurance options that will lower the premium if you're willing to accept more of the risk.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (25:40)
And that's the thing, the lender has to allow it. Yeah.

Yeah. the, you know, so situations like that, and the biggest one is maintenance. If you don't keep up with the maintenance, you know, or you have some type of disaster or whatever that happens, the house isn't going to be worth what it was before.

Ben Harang (26:06)
Deferred maintenance will eat you alive if you let it get ahead of you. It feels like you're always fixing something at your house. Well, fix it. Because if you don't fix it, it doesn't go anywhere. And at the end of the year, you're 12 things at one time instead of one thing a month.

So just get it done.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (26:21)
All right, ⁓ next one. Go ahead.

Ben Harang (26:22)
The appreciation

value, personal story, I bought my first house. I was underwater in that house for 10 years. The first 10 years I owned it, I bought it at the peak of the market and the bottom fell out. When I sold it, I sold it for $14,000 more than I paid for it 14 years later.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (26:45)
a year. ⁓

Ben Harang (26:46)
$1,000

a year hell of a deal. but my point is it did catch up unless you need to sell it within that timeline. That could be a problem. But at the end of the day, my next house I bought with basically the same dollars I spent 14 years ago because there was very little appreciation. So it, at the end of the day, you need to live somewhere and you better off buying a house than renting it.

And we can actually put you in that house cheaper, Clint, then you can go rent an apartment. You can't get in as fast maybe, but we'll get you in cheaper than you paying the first and last month plus a damage deposit. I've seen people get into a house for less than $400 cash total. It does happen. So, all right, I'm off the soapbox again. Keep me on point.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (27:22)
It happens. It happens.

All right, next Myth Conception.

You don't need an agent, just use the listing one.

Ben Harang (27:32)
Hoo hoo!

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (27:33)
I'll let you take that one, man. That one's near and dear to your heart.

Ben Harang (27:36)
Yes,

it is. Yes, it is. So the listing agent knows the seller. They may be friends, they may have just met, but they have a relationship. You have no relationship with the listing agent. And there are times when it makes sense, maybe, if it's more of a transaction without any negotiations. But if you're going to negotiate against a licensed real estate agent,

Even if they're not very good, you're going to lose. If they're good, you will lose your shirt in the negotiations. Just don't do that. If you want to call them and get some information, get a price, those kinds of things. But when it comes down to going to look at the house, writing the agreement, negotiating for you, don't use the listing agent.

It just, I feel bad sometimes, you know, people don't, don't understand. tell them, go get an agent. Well, no, we don't need an agent. We're to just buy the house. Well, it's not, it's not that simple. and we have a fiduciary as a listing agent to the sellers. The buyers have a buyer's agent have, has a fiduciary responsibility to the buyer. I tell people, maybe not in my lifetime, but it's coming.

We're going to have the end of dual agency, which is when the buyer uses the listing agent because it's not advantageous to the buyer. You think you might save some money, you're not going to save any money. You can end up losing the negotiations. And you may not even know you lost. That's the crazy part. So go get your buyer's agent. Sign a buyer's representation agreement. You're going to be better off even if you have to pay the fee. Okay.

Third time I'm off my soapbox.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (29:07)
You just hoppin' from one to the other.

Ben Harang (29:09)
Don't do it. It's just I feel bad sometimes, you know, and I'm not doing anything wrong. It's just They don't they don't understand that we do this every day and they do it once in their lifetime or twice and they think they can they can go toe-to-toe with us and Just we we we protecting our client and it's just not fair so

All right.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (29:27)
All

right. So we've been yapping for a while here. So we'll go ahead and wrap things up.

Top takeaways I'd say is that real estate's local and it's personal and it's better when you have a guide. It's a much more enjoyable ride. Unless you know what you're doing and you do it on a regular basis, you're better off with help.

Ben Harang (29:47)
Absolutely. you know, and if you have any questions, I know we, we, we talk about our experience, but that's what, that's what allows us to do what we do and do it. Well,

Call us, text us, email us, leave a comment in a video or in a podcast and ⁓ we'll see it and we'll talk about it. But if you have any questions, we want to talk. It doesn't cost any money for you to call and us have a 15 or 20 minute conversation. You kind of get a feel for who we are. I get a feel for who you are. We might be able to help you buy a house. Who knows? But if you don't make that call, we'll never meet. All right, Clint, I'm done.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (30:23)
All right.

Yes, indeed. All right. See, I think I've only said yes, indeed once.

Ben Harang (30:25)
Yeah,

think that's the first time you say it in this episode

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (30:30)
Yep. All right.

So everybody go out, like, share, comment, subscribe. Go to RERealEstatePodcast.com. You can find the video, you can find the audio, and you can also share it with your friends. You can ask a question, anything you need. It's all there. You can find Ben's website. You can find my website.

It's all right there at rerealestatepodcast.com. think next episode, we're going to talk about the people behind the process, who you might run into while you're buying a house.

Ben Harang (31:03)
that you never knew existed even.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (31:05)
Some of them, that's the case. It's like, the heck do they do?

Ben Harang (31:07)
All right, have a good one Clint.

Why we need that?

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (31:12)
Alright man, have a good one man.

Ben Harang (31:13)
See you later.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (31:14)
Bye bye.