$100,000 Mistakes Home Sellers Make Before Listing | Gina Mullen

Today we are joined by Gina Mullen, founder of Gina Mullen Real Estate Group. Gina Mullen has been recognized by Real Trends and D-magicines as one of the top real estate professionals in the DFW area. She's also, her team and her, are also recognized as one of the top real estate companies in the entire nation. So we are thrilled to have her here and we're going to take a deep dive into the seller side of the market today. So if you're thinking about putting your house on the market and selling it, are you already have it on the market? This conversation is for you. So Gina, welcome. Thank you so much, Robert. Thank you for having me. Before we jump into the questions, I would love to hear a little bit about you and how you got to this industry. What made you the beast you are today? Sure. So I was actually in the legal industry for 20 years and I was a board certified paralegal. In the last 10 years of my career, I ran a high volume litigation department. And so that gave me really good negotiating skills and gave me a really good knowledge base for contracts. And also I think sometimes what gets lost by real estate agents is if this ever were to go into a courtroom, how it translates when it goes into the courtroom. So for me, one of my jobs when I'm working with people, whether sellers or buyers, is to protect them legally as well. After my legal career, we moved out to Denver. I sold my business because at that point I had a consulting business and I was consulting with multiple law firms to make the more efficient and productive in their litigation department. Sold that business stayed home for 10 years. And what I did is I swapped out working full time and getting paid for that to volunteering at my son's school 40, 60, 80 hours a week. And so when we moved back here, my son went to a private Christian school and just spent all of my time there. And when it came time for him to get a college, he was my last one. And so I needed something to do with my time. And I had a friend that was in the real estate industry and she said, I think you'd be really great at this. She said, because you're honest, she said, which is very hard to find. And you say what you mean and you mean what you say. And that will go a really long way in this industry. And so I said to her, well, give me some time to think about it because I hadn't really pondered what I was going to do. But my husband's in oil and gas. So we moved eight times the first 12 years we were married and we were young. We were in our 20s. And I realized now that, you know, they were not great real estate transactions and they should have been better. So I entered real estate really just wanting to serve people and to help them in what is for most people the largest financial transaction of their lives and to really save them from having a bad real estate transaction and to make sure that they're protected legally as well as making them feel like they are in the loop all the time and they have all the information they need to make an informed decision. So that's how I ended up in real estate and it's been very rewarding for me. More than a decade, right? More than a decade. Yes, we're going on going on year 12. And so our goal is that we will have a significant positive impact in people's lives long after our real estate transaction is complete. I have a question. This wasn't even one that I wrote down, but you said something going back to the legal side of it. You know, I've bought and sold a few homes over the last 20 years that we've lived in. I've never had a legal issue. How often? Because you said you were talking about the legal side of real estate. How often do you see a legal issue? I don't know if there's a percentage wise or how often that happens. But is that something that's common? I wouldn't say that it's common, but it's not uncommon. And one of the phrases we used to use in the legal industry all the time is it's not a problem until it's a problem and then it's a big problem. And so when something does happen, it can usually blow up pretty quickly. And that's when we see that go into the legal realm at that point. And so our goal is to make sure that we do everything we possibly can so it does not ever head in that direction. But if I had a guess, I would say that probably less than 10% of transactions does that happen to? However, when it happens, there's a disruption to life, there's a financial cost. And I do know one of the statistics is that 80% of post-closing lawsuits are due to what is believed to be a cellar non-disclosure of an item. An issue with the house they knew about that they didn't disclose. Correct. Or they knew or should have known. That's another legal phrase. New or should have known that there was an issue. How can you prove somebody should have known something? Well, I'll give you for instance, this was a conversation I was having coming in here today with somebody who had a transaction years ago. And these are the most the this part is the most I guess common lawsuit disclosure or lack thereof would be one of the most common. So there was a person that I know who sold a home after they sold the home and after on the day of closing, they left them a list of all of the things that they needed to be aware of in the house. All the little nuances that houses have. And one of the things that they put on there is that every now and then the dishwasher gets a smell of mold in it. And here's how you can get rid of the smell of mold. Well, the buyer of that home nine months later pulled out the dishwasher because it broke to find out that there was mold all behind the dishwasher in the wall. So that seller thinking that they were doing a really great thing for the buyer and leaving a tips and tricks list actually alerted them to the fact that there was an issue of mold in the dishwasher. And the seller really should have had that checked out before they went onto the market. So now we've got a statement from the seller saying that they were aware that there was a mold smell in the house. There was mold behind the dishwasher and there was a lawsuit that was filed in order to recoup the monies that were needed to remediate that. That's great. I wouldn't have even thought about that. I would have thought I was doing a service. I don't know if I could have been said anything, but I think I thought I was doing a service for somebody. Absolutely. So let's let's fast forward. So you're selling the home or you're getting ready to sell the home. What are the non-negotiables that you would tell a seller they you have to spend money if you spend money in these areas of your house. It'll either hold its value or it may even get you a little bit more money. What does what does that look like? Sure. So this changes of course as the market shifts and we've been in a buyer's market for a while. But the last six months and especially this year's busy season has been such a heavy buyer's market that our team has some non-negotiables now that we call that our part of our success formula and one of those would be a pre-listing inspection. What we really want the sellers to do is have the house inspect it before we go in the market. According to Texas Law, we have to provide that inspection, any inspection that was done on the house in the last four years has to be provided to the buyer. That can sound really scary to the seller. However, if we have an inspector come in that we know and we trust who inspects the house and lets us know what's going on with the house, then we can repair items before we go in the market or determine what our strategy is going to be when a buyer brings their own inspector in and asks for that to be done. What that cut does is it cuts down on the chaos during the option period and the option period is when a buyer performs all of their inspections. That's usually five, seven, maybe 10 days. And so when you find out about something really big with the house and all of a sudden you're like oh my gosh, I need foundation issues or I need a $50,000 roof, then having to make a decision what to do with that. Even if your option period is let's say 10 days, you may not have all the information from the buyer until day eight. And then you've got two days to figure out how you're going to handle this really big thing. So what we're telling sellers is have your pre-listing inspection and let's go ahead and figure out what you're going to do now versus a random buyer bringing in a random inspector that we don't know and then telling us what's wrong with the house. It puts us more in control of the information and it allows us to protect the value of the home by addressing these issues ahead of time because once a buyer has an inspection and even if small things get flagged up, if there's multiple small things buyers in today's market are perceiving that as issues and in their mind it decreases the value of the home. So we're trying to prevent that ahead of time. I've got multiple follow-ups on this one I think. Okay, so let's start with the buyer's market. You said there's a strong buyer's market now and excuse my naive today on this but is that good for sellers? What does that mean? Because when you say it's a buyer's market it means they have tons of options out there. They can they've got their pick of the litter I would think. If it's a strong buyer's market does that mean there's just an influx just an overflow of houses to the market so they they even have a bigger pick of the litter? So historically yes but the nuance that we have in the market right now is inventory has increased over what it's been the last couple years but it is there's still not a lot of inventory and yet what we're seeing is it's still functioning as a heavy buyer's market meaning that buyers have the power and control in the market right now. So the National Association of Realtors put out their 2025 statistic last year and there was 40% contract fallout across the nation and that means that 40% of contracts terminate it. So four out of every 10 contracts terminate it and the number one reason was over repairs. So these are items that we're keeping track of as a team to make sure that we have all the information we need on how buyers are showing up in the market and our job is to help the seller overcome those objections before they're ever brought up which is one of the reasons we do the pre-listing inspection but the other thing that we do is buyers do not want a project right now and because they have the power and control they're either waiting for the perfect house to come along or the house has to be priced in such a way that they can do all the work that they want to do and they still want equity in the house after they've put the money in for the work that they want. So we're going in and we're having a walkthrough with our stager who's also an interior designer and determining what needs to be done in the house that will give us the most bang for our buck. The last thing we want is a seller deciding on their own what needs to be done to the house because usually those are things that bother them, but not necessarily the things buyers think are important right now. So we'll come in sometimes a year before a seller is going to put a house on the market and walk through and say, "Okay, here's what we think you should do." And these are the things that are the least financial output that will give you the most bang for your buck. Now, sometimes, you know, like painting a whole house for instance, that could cost $35,000. However, the return on that could be an additional $125,000 in listing price. So we won't recommend anything unless we know there's a return on there. But it also could not, it doesn't have to be a straight up financial return. Sometimes it could be that it's going to reduce the days on market because it's going to show better than another home that's on the market. So it's not always a dollar amount on the rate of return. Sometimes it's, you know, some of these other factors that we look at that help, yes, seller get through the market right now. Going back to the inspection, have you ever, are, do you have any statistics that show that having the seller go ahead and pay for a pre inspection that it increases the probability that a buyer stays in and buys it? So since we've been using this as a non-negotiable for our team, we have our own experience, which is so much better than, you know, some other person pulling a data set and telling us what that is because our experience is hyper-local to our market. So we know how our market is performing with that. Anytime that we've had a pre listing inspection, our repair negotiations go much easier and right now in a heavy buyer's market, well, let me go back a little bit in a regular neutral market. What usually happens is buyer and seller negotiates and everybody walks away feeling like they lost a little and they won a little. In a heavy buyer's market, the seller is walking away, sometimes feeling like they lost way more than the buyer did, but that's how it performs in a buyer's market. So what we're trying to do is get ahead of that so that we can provide the buyer with what you know, the inspector flagged up in the house. And sometimes what we're seeing is buyers are waving doing their own inspection because we've had one done before we even went on the market. And so it saves our seller a lot of the emotional distress that happens during the option period, as well as, you know, financial amounts. Because again, we're in control of the information because, you know, you can bring an inspector out and maybe the inspector is the brother and love of the buyer. And that inspector then may tell them, we may have a foundation that's performing properly, could it be upgraded by using peers in a foundation? Yes, absolutely. We're in Texas. We have active soil. That absolutely can happen. But there's nothing wrong with the foundation. However, inspector flags that up. Now all of a sudden, we have to have a discussion about the foundation. So we're going in and we're having a pre listing general inspection. We're also having a foundation inspection and a roof inspection. So that way we also know whether we've got a big ticket item that needs to be taken care of. So we just had a listing where this is right before we made it mandatory. They decided not to have a pre listing inspection. They thought they had really good homeowners insurance and they needed a new roof. They're deductible with $66,000. And they also had not full replacement costs. They had depreciation on the roof. And so no matter what kind of roof they put on there, the insurance wasn't going to participate at all on the roof because they're deductible was so huge. This caused so much chaos during the option period that the seller said to me, I would not have put this on the market right now if I had known about this before I went on the market. And so again, the rate of return, because now we're using part of the negotiation was we had to use the buyer's roofer. That was something that they were very adamant about. And my sellers had a time deadline because they were contracted on another home. So again, sometimes the rate of return is not always necessarily a financial, but they would have ended up needing to repair a lot less during the option period because once the roof gets flagged up, then the buyer's like, okay, well, what else is wrong? And then they start to become more adamant about the other things that need to be repaired. And they lose control. And they never even want to thought to, if I was a seller, to pay for the inspection beforehand. But it is pretty smart because then you have the opportunity or you have the, I guess, probability or chance that they won't have their own inspection because you've already done it. That is correct. We just had that on a contract we executed last night. They are waving, having their own inspection done because we use a very well-known inspector and so a lot of agents know who they are. And they just waved that entirely. And so today, the discussion will be, is your buyer open to ending option early? Because that's the only time during a contract. The buyer has the unrestricted right to terminate, meaning they can terminate for any reason. So today, the conversation and negotiation will be, how about we end option early since you're not going to be performing inspections, which is a huge bonus for the seller. You know, I'm going to switch gears and say that your world of real estate and our world of investments, they intersect a lot. And over the last six years since COVID, we've seen the market do some crazy things in your world and in our world. I know for us, people got very spoiled, as you know, over the past five or six years, of extremely low interest rates. I took advantage of them too, if I get in the house, we find us, and doing two and a half, three percent. Now, you and I also know that that's not the norm. But now interest rates are higher and you have people going, well, I want to wait for lower interest rates. I want to wait for lower interest rates. And we tell them, look, if you're waiting for three percent, that's probably not going to happen. We've also got a new Fed chairman recently. So interest rates could adjust. They may be favorable to lowering interest rates because of what's going on. If it happens, I think we could see a dip from your six and seven percent mortgage rates to four and a half, maybe five. I guess I have two questions for you. One, do you think interest rates are going to shift the buyer and seller's world in your market? Will it help the sellers out? Or will it lower inventory for buyers? And the other thing is, and you may, this may be long winded, how do you retrain your buyers and sellers from what it was like in COVID? Because I know that in COVID, my wife and I thought about listing our home just because we knew that they were flying off the market before, or they were flying off, they were being bought before even hitting the market. People were offering when they thought it was going to be listed. And they were offering top dollars. So how do you retrain somebody's brain to think this isn't four years ago? Sure. So one of the best things we have is we've been tracking mortgage rates for a little over 50 years now. And mortgage rates just like anything else are cyclical. And the first time in all of that time that we've had three or four percent interest rates was when we had them during COVID. We had never seen interest rates like that before. So in 1980, prime interest rate, depending on where you were in the country, was between 18 and 22 percent. And my husband and I purchased our first home in 1993, prime interest rate was 12 percent. And what we see with the progression of this cycle is that interest rates go up and then they come back just a little, but they don't go back to the rate that they were before. Then they go up and they go past where they were previously just a little and then they come back, but not to where they were before. We're seeing that already, right? We dip down to five. We were at seven. We dip down to five. Now we were back up right around six, five, six, seven again. They're predicting that we're going to go. I did. I sure did. That's killing me. And so we'll go past seven percent is what they're projecting. And then we'll probably come back down six point two, five, six point five, but we're making this normal progression that we have seen cyclically with the mortgage rates. And so the projection is, is that a year from now, we could be sitting at eight percent interest rates or seven, five. Even with a new Fed chair. It depends a lot on what they're going to do. And we don't have a crystal ball. So neither you or I can tell anybody definitively what's going to happen. But we've got 50 years of historical data that tells us regardless of who was sitting, the sitting president was and regardless of what the economy was doing, we follow this cycle no matter what. And we're trending upward. So I do believe that that's where we're going. It's for me, the Fed chairman is going to be how quickly are we going to trend upward? And I hope that it won't be quickly. However, I will tell you, it's six and a half dozen of the other because when the interest rates are higher, the market values don't increase as quickly. And so it does all balance out in the end. There's always this little sweet spot. So let's take right before COVID started. Interest rates had dropped, but the craziness hadn't started yet. So the people who purchased then and purchased atlast price were just a little bit under and purchased with a four percent or three point five percent interest rate. That was the sweet spot. The sweet spot was not the middle of the COVID market when people were paying $200,000 over for a $600,000 house with a three percent interest rate because what did you really win there? So that's the conversation that we're having. And with sellers, the conversation we're having is I think everybody can agree we had a lot of unrealistic gain during the COVID market. And we have a lot of sellers, even at the luxury level, three, four, five, eight million dollar listings where they have 86% market value gain on their home. We have to give some of that gain back because it was unrealistic and unsustainable. So we've got 86% market value gain. Maybe we have to list it 80% market value gain and sell it 76% of market value gain. But where else could you have put your money and gotten a gain like that in the short amount of time that they've owned the property? So that's the conversation we're having with sellers right now. I already know the answer to this question, but I'm curious on your take on it. I know personally just from many years ago that the real estate agent that you use is important. But why? Well, I just had a seller asked me during a listing presentation. He said to me, "I'm going to interview other agents and I go, 'You absolutely should. You need to get all the information you need to make the most informed decision and part of that comes with interviewing.' And he said, 'Well, what's the number one question I can ask them?' And I said, 'The number one question you should ask them is if they have a P&L, which is a profit and loss statement.' And he said, 'That's the number one question I should ask them?' And I said, 'Yes, because it's a mindset. Somebody who has a P&L is running a business. Somebody who does not have a P&L, they're making hobby money. And do you want somebody who does this as a hobby, listing or helping you buy what is going to be the biggest financial purchase of your life?' So, if we're selling a home, what's the one thing that a seller needs to have in place that would attract multiple buyers? And I have a follow-up question of that because, well, actually, I'll go ahead and ask it. If you get on Facebook right now, you're overwhelmed with videos of real estate agents standing in front of a house, just throwing their hands in there and go, 'Come look at this, butyl house, and they're doing a walkthrough.' I don't remember that existing a number of years ago, virtual walkthroughs with the agent. They're pointing out that things are very, I don't want to say, orchestrated, but it's very just, it's eye catching versus just the basic pictures. Does that matter? So it's definitely curated without a doubt. And it's curated with the marketing strategy in mind of putting our best foot forward, which is what our success formula is built on. What we're finding is, especially with the advent of AI, is anything with video has more of a hit than anything that does not. And so your social media reels, your video walkthroughs. The reason you're seeing agents in it right now is especially because we're entering a revolution where things are becoming more and more automated. We're being advised by marketing, our marketing consultants that we need to humanize our brand. And the more we can humanize it, the better. So instead of walking through a house or having your photographer do a video at the house, and that's the only thing you use for marketing, we're needing to show up more and more so that we can humanize the brand. It also helps to override the algorithm. I mean, if you have something that is a social media reel versus just a static photo post, that is going to get more hits any day of the week. So let's take Facebook, for instance. Different social media platforms are used predominantly by different age groups. Facebook is predominantly used by the over 50 age group. And yet, even at that age, the story on Facebook is seen more than a post is on Facebook. And Instagram, that rate almost doubles. And so we want to make sure that we're getting in front of buyers. And that's how we do it. So we're constantly. There's so much that goes on behind the scenes on marketing a property. And one of the things that we've done is we're creating a client portal into our platform so that as we do all the tasks in the background, our clients can see what we're doing. And our goal is to roll that out by the end of the year because there's things like this. We have a full marketing strategy. We do Facebook ads that are targeted towards businesses that are moving their headquarters to the area. We have specific things that we do with social media that our marketing consultants have told us we need to do to override the algorithm. And our clients never see that. So this client portal will allow them to see all the tasks that we have assigned to ourselves. And as we click them done, they'll be able to see that those are done. So that allows us to show value to our clients. And at the same time, it gets all of our social media in front of as many people as possible. And in front of the right people because if we've got somebody who's moving to the area from California, for instance, there's a certain housing product that appeals to them, especially if it looks like a California bungalow. So we want to get those properties in front of the people that would be most interested in it. So our marketing strategy is absolutely curated for very specific reasons. And to some degree, it is scripted, right? Where I can go on video and I can wing it. I don't have a problem with that. My agents, especially if they're new, they need a script that they're practicing before they go in. And so that they're comfortable. But our goal at the end of the day is just to get the house in front of that one buyer that's going to fall in love with the home and is going to put an offer on the home and buy it. And we don't know where they are. So that could be social media. It could be the networking that I do. It could be the marketing that I do locally. It could be the marketing that I do nationwide. I have a lot of national masterminds. I'm involved in and we're all sharing our listings. But us being the number one state that people are moving to, when I show up in a mastermind, most of the other agents have clients that are moving to my state versus their state. We talked earlier about how you recognize as one of the top 1% real estate companies in the country. I can tell by this conversation why that is, you definitely have, you're definitely tough. And I've known you for a little bit, but you seem very tough. One of our core values at GDS is grit. It's one of the ones I like the most. And I can tell you have a ton of grit. If you wouldn't mind me asking, where did it come from? I don't think it was just the law firm. I don't know. I think certain things happens us in childhood and upbringing is that get us to where we are. I think it's helped with my success. But I'm just curious about yours. The whole time you're sitting here talking, I'm not losing a word. I'm fascinated by what you're saying. And so I think there's something there. There is. We all have a story, right? And so my story, my before and after in my lifetime is when my father died when I was 13. And there was my life that I had before he died and my life that I had after. And after my father died, my mother was not really participating in life. So for all intents and purposes, I was parentless. And I went from this really good kid. I was a nerd in school. I was made fun of all the time. And to this kid who just felt lost. And I didn't do anything bad. It wasn't like I was arrested or anything like that. But I did make some decisions that made my life much harder. And at the same time, I was raised. My dad raised me to understand that when you have obligations, you take care of them. And that was my goal for a really long time was to take care of the obligations that I had created for myself to make sure that I showed up the way I needed to show up. And that made life really, really hard for me. And I have a client who has described me to a lot of people as having grit. And there's a book that he recommends that is entitled that that he says reminds him of me. And I believe that's where that grit came from. It came from not only something that, you know, for whatever reason God put into my life, it did teach me a lot. And it put me into a place where I made decisions that impacted my life. And yet I would not be the person I am today if I had not made those decisions. And I had a grow up fast. My mom was in and out of the hospital a lot. My grandmother was elderly. She was too. So to give you an example of some of the things that I needed to do. At 19, I had my mother in one hospital in Philadelphia. And my grandmother in another hospital, clear across town. And my mother was on a morphine drip. And she was my grandmother's P.O.A. for all of her medical. So I had to go down to Orphan's Court at 19 years old in Gagardi and ship of my grandmother so that I could not only make decisions for my grandmother but for my mother for some very serious medical care. That's not something normally a 19-year-old takes on. That grows you up quick. It grows you up very quick. And that's just one of the many things. My life at that time was peppered with a lot of things that had me figure out the adult world long before I needed to figure out the adult world. And yet it allowed me to participate in life as an adult much earlier on and giving me a lot of experience on having navigate life well. My husband tells me, why do you always look at the 25 different ways something can go wrong? That's how life trained me. But it also helps me in whether it was my legal career or my career as a real estate agent and team owner to help protect our buyers and sellers because that's how I'm constantly thinking. Okay, if we do this, what are the 25 different ways it can go wrong and how do I protect you from that? I love hearing stories about people because when we hire people at GDS, I interview a lot of people and 10 years ago we used to say, what was your GPA? What was this? What was that? Now it's stories like that that make me want to hire somebody because that shows that grit and determination that people have. I want to know the hardships that people have gone through because those are the people that are going to stick around when hard times are going to come again and life's inevitably going to throw at us. So I mean, I think I've known you for over a year and I never knew any of that. So thank you for sharing. I hope you didn't mind. No. What is some of the things that when you're talking to sellers and they're selling their home, they've done everything you asked, but they still don't get what they were truly hoping for. How do you walk them through that emotion? We have that conversation during the listing presentation before they even hire me and then we continue that conversation all the way leading up to go to market. If we're being honest and we have factual data to prove it, if they do everything I ask them to do, we usually end up in the range that we discussed during the listing presentation and leading up to that. Are there times and/or market conditions where that does not happen? Yes, but it is really few and far between. Sometimes what will impact that is if a seller has to get on the market quick because they've identified a house and they have to get on the market quick. Sometimes the seller will opt not to do everything that we have requested of them and we know that going into it. So we're having a conversation on how that's going to impact this as it hits the market. But most of the time if they're doing the items that put their best foot forward and we're pricing where we need to price, we will end up within the range that we initially discussed. But there's always reasons why that doesn't have been getting back to the crystal ball thing. If we all of a sudden have 40 houses that go on the market at the same time we've gone on the market within a two mile radius and that can happen during busy season then all of a sudden we're competing and all it takes is your next door neighbor to list $30 less price per square foot as yours. Then we're having to have another conversation. This is not something we for saw with the data we had when we went to market. This is the range that we needed to be in. Well now that range has changed because not only have they gone on the market now they've gone under contract in three days and now they've closed within 10 days and this is negatively impacting your home and we need to figure out what we need to do moving forward. What's the single best and we can close out with this but if there was a takeaway that you would tell most sellers that are a mindset that they should have when listing their home. The single most important thing what would it be? I think I know you want one thing. I think it's going to be a couple of things. One is that we need to put our feelings about our house aside if we're going to go on the market. It's very hard because there's memories memories and you've put a lot of blood sweat and tears usually into your house right but it is a business transaction at that point and so buyers are going to come in and there's going to be things that buyers want in your home that are not currently there and it is not a personal affront to you in any way, shape or form. It's just how their lifestyle needs to be in that house. The other thing is I think and we do a really good job of preparing sellers for this this year but you know it is a heavy buyer's market. There's no line in the sand that the seller can draw that's going to cause a buyer to change their mind and cross the line between a buyer's market mindset to a seller's market mindset. So for instance if you need a new roof and you're not willing to put on a new roof there were times that we could negotiate maybe a happy middle for that where the buyer would pay half of the roof and the seller would pay half of the roof whatever was left over after insurance that is not happening. You know the buyer will just walk they are very patient the buyer so it's a heavy buyer's market but there's not a frenzy so they're willing to wait for the right house to come along. So if they can't get your house to where they want it to be they will walk and that's that 40% contract fallout that we saw last year. So those are the two things. I do have another follow-up question. Sorry I keep thinking of things as we're talking but you mentioned everybody's moving to Texas, Florida. I mean I guess it's probably still good to be a real estate agent in Texas. We're still selling homeless people are still moving here. Have you noticed a shift in it? I mean is it still is it affecting our property values? Is it holding it up while the market's dropping? I guess is what I'm asking. So the market is not crashing it's having a correction and we get back to that unrealistic gain from COVID and we need for that to happen because we're probably doing better than some of the coastal cities. I know most most recessions start at the coast and move their way in. Correct. Texas is probably holding up I would say very nicely to than the rest of the country. So we watch very closely LA that's usually where it'll start is on the California side and then we see it in New York and Northern New Jersey which Northern New Jersey is just a suburb of New York. Then it trickles down the coast down into Philadelphia and Baltimore in those areas and it gives us usually a six month guide on what's going to happen here but when it happens here it usually does not happen at the same level that it happens everywhere else. It doesn't mean that we don't feel the impact. It doesn't mean that it's not a negative impact. We just don't see it at the same level and that's been going on for a while. So we've seen a softening over the market and our pricing strategy for that has changed. So instead of taking the market value and listing it that this year what we're recommending to our sellers is that again handing back some of that unrealistic gain is we pop just below market value. We don't want to leave a whole lot of money on the table but go on or the days where you can say let's put it out here at this price and test it and see what happens because that is just going to shoot you in the foot with this buyers market and what you see when that happens is eight or nine price reductions. It comes off the market and goes back on two three four times and then it ends up selling for less than it would have if it had been priced right below market value and to be honest when we're pricing like that right below market value we're seeing multiple offers on a lot of our listings for that very reason because buyers are noticing that it's priced at a lesser price per square foot than the other homes in the neighborhood or in the area and it's creating similar to the COVID market where you have multiple interested parties and it's driving the price up regardless of the price point we just had one in Keller that was at a 399 price point that sold for 425 because we had five offers on the property and it was worth probably about 405 410 but by pricing it just a little bit below we ended up selling it for higher than we would have had we priced it in line with market value so that is our pricing strategy right now is to price there in the hopes that we get multiple offers if we don't get multiple offers then the home will more than likely be one of the first to sell for the properties that have hit the market at the same time. So I know we're talking about it's a buyer's market but I'm sure it's still an okay time for sellers especially in this area to sell so if I guess two questions how long is a normal time for a house to sit on a market today right without getting an offer hopefully it's getting shows but without getting an offer and if it doesn't get an offer in a certain amount of time is price reduction always the answer and I think that's an important question that a person with 12 years in the industry top 1% you have I would think probably a better answer than some real estate agents that go just drop the price right that was a marketing strategy that was employed during different markets and in my opinion it does not work we see that in the market all you have to do is pull up you know one of the websites and be able to see that when you just have multiple price reductions after you've been on the market for some time it's not a very efficient or productive marketing strategy. Does it devalue the property at that point because it's a mindset right people are thinking well they keep lowering or it's something must be wrong that's what I would think and the buyers smell blood in the water and so they're like well how low can you go you know and they'll just wait until it gets till the price reductions stop and then they'll submit an offer so and it'll still probably be lower than the price for the price you have it listed for at that point. Correct yes yeah it absolutely and the thing is you you know the beginning of your question was isn't an okay time for sellers list absolutely because again we get back to if you've had 86 or 74 or 50 percent market value gain on your house you're still going to walk away with a significant gain on your house when you sell it's just these are the nuances of the playground that we have to play in now with this market as far as price reductions go ours are very purposeful we are not the team that says when you're on the market for 30 days we're going to reduce to this another two weeks we're going to reduce to that one of the things that we do in our seller updates is we're running the showing report that shows us how many showings houses have had in a similar price range and similar zip code if there are not any showings on houses or there's not any showings in the price point below ours then who are we trying to capture if there's no buyers out there who are we trying to capture so we will do a price reduction that is usually impactful we will not do five thousand or eight thousand dollar price reductions that doesn't do us any good what we have to do is we have to capture how people set up their searches which depending on price point could be twenty five thousand fifty thousand a hundred thousand we don't ever really recommend a hundred thousand dollar price reductions but we've had several fifty thousand dollar price reductions and yet when we have those price reductions then we get multiple offers and we end up you know not a full fifty thousand below where we were initially listed when we end up executing a contract so we have a definitive plan on when we do price reductions but we won't do them just to do them because that harms the house we will do them if we're trying to capture buyers and we need to know that there's buyers out there thank you truly thank you I think I've learned a lot I'm hoping everybody else did too so thank you for coming in I truly appreciate it I love hearing your story is there anything else you want to add as it take away before we close out you know the the market is what the market's going to be and there's always even in a high sellers market like if somebody says I'm going to wait for a sellers market there are cons to that as well and so if it fits your lifestyle then and it's time for whatever reason to sell then it's the time for you to sell and that's a personal decision I think the thing that I'm going to leave everyone with is something one of the benefits that I have is I get to go down with Gary Keller once a month the top 100 agents in the Keller Williams global company get to go down with him and he He has been in the industry a really long time. And he said, "Gone are the days that we can view our home only as an investment." It's not that you want to be underwater, but the average person nationally moves every five to seven years. I've heard that. Hyperlocal, it's three to five years. We were taught-- You say hyperlocal, sorry, what is that mean? DFW. OK. Yeah, not Texas as a whole, but the DFW market. Like they're moving for different houses in the DFW. Correct. Sometimes within the same school district, right? Every three to five years. And so the generations that taught us that our homes should be an investment are generations that stayed in their homes for 30 to 40 years. We don't do that anymore. So I think the best thing we can tell buyers and sellers is we have to make decisions on real estate based on the quality of life that we want and/or need at that time and make a really good financial decision. But it's going to be-- real estate's going to be more driven by quality of life decisions than it is going to be investment decisions. And that's the conversation that we're having a lot, especially with first-time home buyers who are being counseled by grandparents and parents who did stay in their homes for 30 or 40 years. Well, thank you. And I truly appreciate it. And for those of you all who joined us today or in intrigued and learned as much as I did, please like, subscribe, and share this to a friend that you think might find out of value. Thank you for joining GDS Unplugged. I truly appreciate it. Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure and a blessing to be here. Thank you. My pleasure. [MUSIC PLAYING]