Tune in today as Lance, Rob, and Adrian interview Thea Ranney. She is the owner and organizer extraordinaire at Thea’s Organizing Services (TOS) in Portland Oregon. She’s the mastermind who makes the magic happen! Find out how she uses her passion for organizing to help others set themselves up for success and lasting comfort.
Episode 64 Transcript

Thea Ranny 2 of 3

Adrian Schermer   00:02

Hello future millionaires and welcome back to the get rich slow podcasts. We are your hosts Adrian Schermer, Rob Delavan and Lance Johnson. Good morning, gentlemen.

Robert Delavan   00:11

Good morning.

Lance Johnson   00:12

Good morning, everybody.

Adrian Schermer   00:14

You can find us online at Apple podcast, Spotify, audible, Amazon music, YouTube, Stitcher and other streaming platforms. So feel free to use the one that you like the most or check us out on YouTube if you want to see our smiling faces. Today we are entering episode two of three, Thea Ranney and her business thea’s organizing services. Morning with Thea, how’re you doing?

Thea Ranney   00:35

I’m doing great, how are you guys doing?

Adrian Schermer   00:37

Very good, thanks for joining us again. So, thea’s organising services as an organising business, there’s many facets to what tier or level that can be in your life, we’re going to get to know a little more about her business and what sets her apart in the market and for those who are on the video, we get some great visual aid sometimes we try to add some of the stuff in the show notes as well as we continue to hone up our podcast as a whole but the this before and after just speaks volumes. It’s a garage for those just listening but it’s the classic garage full with you know piles of boxes. This has happened to me before too, you get a little bit of a mess and then you’re like, I have nowhere to put something so you just start stacking it and stacking and then one day your garage…

Robert Delavan   01:26

Door going into the house…

Adrian Schermer   01:27

I mean you don’t even want to open your garage door you don’t want your neighbors to see this…

Robert Delavan   01:35

The picture’s worth 1000 words in that sense for you listeners, you know I’m going to rub salt in the wound but yeah, this is fun to look at is the before and after of thea’s work, it’s pretty incredible.

Adrian Schermer   01:47

Some of these on your social media to Thea if someone wants to just check out this picture so yeah, check the show notes, you’ll get a link to Thea’s…

Thea Ranney   01:52

If we have permission from our clients, they are on social media most definitely. The organized mind is such a good book. So psychologically, this book is amazing. It’s very technical. So if you’re not one of those people who are like, really into technical things, it’s not for you. But the organized mind is a book that literally shows you and teaches and explains how our brains have organized information from caveman status until now, like human language, that’s just a form of organization. We had to organize these thoughts and find a way to do that and we did that by naming things and using words. So everything that we know is actually organization, we just don’t know it and this book kind of brings that to light.

Robert Delavan   02:48

That’s a fun one. We’ll have to check that out and we’ll add that to our reading list on the associated websites.

Thea Ranney   02:55

Please do, it’s great.

Lance Johnson   02:59

All right, let me kick this off. So what’s the number one question you get to asked by your clients?

Thea Ranney   03:07

Where do I start? How do I start? There’s so much stuff, I don’t know where to start and then I come in and we just start and run, and how do you do that? So not everyone needs…

03:21

[Mixed Voices 03:19]

Thea Ranney   03:23

Things can be overwhelming. It’s real, especially when it’s your own stuff. That’s no joke. It is even my own stuff, when we were moving. I’m like, oh my god, let’s just hire an organizer because I don’t want to deal with it and it’s one of those things even for us dealing with our own stuff. It sucks, you guys it’s real and so, if you’re working on your own and you’re doing your project the way to answer this question, and how do I start? Start, that’s all you have to do. There’s no wrong way to do anything in regards to organizing there’s just not, stay in one room. Do not be like, oh, I’m gonna do the whole main floor. No, that’s my job. Your job is to stay in one room. Do the things that are in this room. Always start with removing all of your trash first. That is the biggest hindrance, the biggest thing that’s going to be on your way after you remove all of your visual trash, throw some boxes together, some large boxes and start sorting things clothes with clothes, purses, with purses and wherever space that you’re organizing, all of your glasses together, all your plates together, start organizing sorting your things and then work through a purging phase. If you’re trying to do trash sorting and purging at once, which is what most people do, that’s where the serious overwhelm factor comes in and that’s when everybody stops and that’s when you get like the garage that we just ended up seeing and by the way, the biggest factor of it’s not running out of places, places to put things in, you’re just setting it down. It’s you’re looking for something you have made inaccessible to you and you’re pulling everything out in front of it and as soon as you see the thing you need, you grab it and you go without putting any of that stuff back. That’s the biggest cause.

Rob Delavan   05:07

Oh, I feel personally attacked by that

Lance Johnson   05:10

Okay, now one thing my wife got on is actually is pretty funny, as I told my wife about your services when you joined BNI and then we started watching some of those shows of organizing and one of the things they say is you, you almost have to remove everything, get rid of the trash, sort the stuff and then you could look at the space in a different manner, like, I see that, you put before and after you put for the tools, you put a section over there, that’s all together and hangings and then, you can see the bins were turned differently for space and then the cabinet on the right is turned a little bit and or the doors closed and you almost have to bring everything out and then kind of, they say go back, what’s your emotional attachment to this piece? You know and then where does it go in your organization, but you almost have to remove everything and then start putting it back organized and then you’re left with those things that clutter space, but like, you don’t have an emotional attachment, you haven’t used in 10 years and you have to make some hard decisions about whether or not to get rid of it, to donate it or to organize it.

Thea Ranney   05:15

Exactly and, you know it’s one of those things, a lot of people, they end up looking at their space and you’re right, if you remove everything from the space, you do get to see it with fresh eyes and get some different ideas. The one thing that’s really challenging is when people are like, oh, well, I have this tiny amount of craft stuff. So I want to have this whole big crafting zone, when in reality, you don’t craft a whole lot but instead you have a whole bunch of tools that need to be dealt with. So instead of trying to make this huge space for something that you have very little of what you want to do more of you need to make the space for the things you have a lot of that you’re keeping and try to keep those reality goals in check a little bit, which is why like in the picture we had to go out and buy organizers to install on the wall for all of his power tools and then we had to install an entire pegboard system and have it extremely detailed laid out because he does electrical, he does plumbing, he does this and anyone who does a lot of different varying types of work like that you understand that those tools are very different and so being able to break things up properly to make your life easier is a really important part of organizing for sure.

Lance Johnson   06:32

And I love in the pictures if you go back to the picture is the clock and dustpan, are the same in both pictures.

Thea Ranney   07:57

Oh, yeah, we got to leave something that’s just recognizable.

Adrian Schermer   08:02

That’s awesome. I love that, all right, Thea my question for you is, what is your clients number one fear?

Thea Ranney   08:18

So, there’s two actually so and they’re very much equal. So I get two main fears whenever it comes to working with a client, the biggest one obviously, is judgment. A lot of people absolutely fear judgment. I’m working with a woman right now. She is amazing and if you went into her house, beautiful, pristine open floor penthouse. If you went to her house, you would think that it was Pinterest perfect. Because if you don’t dive into the cabinets, or the drawers or anything, that’s what it looks like. It’s very minimalistic, almost like a stage type of feel, beautiful house and we’re going through yesterday doing some of her purging and obviously, there’s not piles of things anywhere or anything like that. But we’re going through cabinets, pulling things out and I’m like, Okay, do you want to keep this? And she’s like, yes. Does that make me a hoarder? No, it doesn’t not in any way, shape or form. So, there’s a big stigma of like hiring an organizer and it being just this big judgmental thing. It’s not, I’ve literally seen houses from the outside splitting at the same work because they’re so full of things like you can’t show me anything that would make me judge you. So that’s a big one. The the other one I hear a lot is, I don’t want you to make me get rid of my stuff. That’s fine. That’s not my job. My job is not to make you get rid of your stuff. My job is to organize the stuff that’s important to you that you want to keep and have it actually feel important to you. I relate it to kind of like kids is rooms right? You go in there all their stuff is on their floor. Something that they got that’s extremely important to them is on their floor under their bed, under shoes and muddy shoes at that and all the things and you go in there and you’re like, well, we need to get rid of this, obviously, it’s not important to you. It’s the same kind of concept. But what we do is we make sure to take that thing that’s been on the floor and been tarnished, that you want to keep and we make sure that it’s actually important to you and we keep it up to where it can be taken care of.

Lance Johnson   10:22

Is there ever a situation where like, in some of the houses that are being built, there’s so economise, there’s like no storage and it’s like you accumulate all this stuff over time. Like, it’s always amazing when I was in college, I go with one carload and at the end of the college year, I have three and a half car loads because every game every time I came back and then you’re like, holy crap, how do I get all this stuff home now or I’d have to actually rent the storage because I know what you back in college and there’s like houses like is as big as my house is when we moved in and I had no storage and then I did a remodel to the house that created some storage space for us to store Christmas stuff, you know Halloween stuff, kid’s stuff?

Thea Ranney   11:18

Oh, yeah and that’s a big part of things as well, especially, I mean, obviously we start going into houses that are, you know, 100 years old back, then we don’t have a lot of stuff. So there’s zero storage and all of those types of houses and the fact of the matter is, you can always embellish the lack of storage there is, there’s always going to be another way. The problem is that normally when we go into a house or we’re moving into a small apartment, which is another huge storage issue, right? We look at a closet that is a coat closet that has one bar and one shelf and we’re like, okay, so what can I do to make that work, I might be able to just put like a shoe rack at the bottom or something and that might help a little bit. If you guys have five people on your house and all of your coat closets are supposed to be stored in this space, one rod isn’t going to be enough. Let’s raise it and install another one down below. So now you have two racks to be able to hang all of your jackets and your coats and it’s about repurposing the spaces that you already currently have for organizing and for storage. You have to repurpose them. We’ve had some clients where we’ve had, where I mean we’ve brought in construction crews before and built closets. We’ve built pantries before, whatever that needs to be done to emphasize and embellish the storage is already there, and we’ll do 1,000%.

Lance Johnson   12:44

Yeah and there’s a creativity to that and obviously Thea you have it and it comes from you know, you do something 1000 times you usually get pretty good at it

Thea Ranney   12:54

I tell everyone I have great spatial awareness and that’s kind of the best way that I can put that…

Adrian Schermer   13:02

How are your Tetris skills?

Thea Ranney   13:04

I have a Tetris gone on me, I haven’t decided where, I haven’t decided how it’s going to look yet but I am absolutely getting Tetris God with Tetris tattooed on me somewhere, it’s going to be a thing, it’s gonna be great.

Adrian Schermer   13:16

I love it, I think this is so important and there’s a huge mental health factor here. You know, I read this article to tie these things together. I read this article about how if you have a traumatic event, like you get in a car crash or something or someone passes away, people who played Tetris within the 24 hours after had a better mental organizing basically, it helps their mind do this. So when you talk about these fears, it’s kind of to overcome the initial fear, the shame and everything that comes along with having a messy space like this. But then the joy that seems to follow for your clients, I think is fantastic. So you get that other side of it to the fear and then the…

Thea Ranney   13:54

Oh yeah, I call it mental freedom and clarity and that’s exactly what it is and a lot of people they’re like, oh, God, you know, I’m just not the person who can be Pinterest perfect. Good, most people aren’t. Don’t be Pinterest perfect. It’s like living in a staged house. It is unbelievably difficult, especially if you have children. You can still be organized and have chaos around you and all of the things but it’s how our brains internalize that organization. Everybody is different. Every person functions differently inside and outside of their home. The trick is to start making how you function start working for you. That is the biggest trick by far and it’s just taking a look at your positive habits and embellishing them, same with your space.

Lance Johnson   14:43

Okay, so Thea for networking and growing your business, what do you do and how do you do it? Drop it on us

Thea Ranney   14:52

I am very loud and obnoxious. I consider that to be a very good thing and my biggest goal on networking, honestly and growing my business is to find people that are loud and obnoxious. So I mean, 2020 happened hit and what all did we have to do? I had nothing to do because I’m a service business. So I did nothing but network and talk with people and there’s a difference between just talking with people, meeting them one time, getting names, oh, what do you do? How’s that that’s nice, but then you never hear from them again, that is not networking. In my opinion, it’s not. I’ve met with all kinds of people like that and I can’t tell you a single one of their names. The way that I network is I create friends, as much as possible, I don’t want to meet you once, I want to meet you twice and if we can meet one of those times over a drink, awesome, that’s how I’m gonna get to know you really well and see who I can actually really push you to because energy is everything. So getting to know people how they really are, for me is super important. BNI has been huge, absolutely huge. I absolutely love our BNI chapter because we’re all loud and obnoxious and I love that and I think that’s an extremely positive thing,

Lance Johnson   16:07

We have our moments.

Thea Ranney   16:12

But yeah, just being able to build friendships with other business owners is the biggest thing in the world and that’s how we grow our business and have grown our business. It’s how I get phone calls from all different types of people saying, oh, this realtor referred me to you, never heard of them. Awesome, let’s keep going and so and that’s kind of how that works. So creating positive relationships with people without word spreads, even if you don’t have that relationship with them, you’re super positive person with a great connection with this person that I’m close with. So you’re good and that’s kind of how that spectrum of the world works.

Lance Johnson   16:54

The transition of rapport from, one person to the other, it’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s like the piece of tape that you can’t get off your finger and all of a sudden, the next person has a right. This concept of, you know, knowing and then actually, what I’m hearing you say it is, then you actually start to, as you get to know them, you regardless of what background people are coming from, you get to know them, you’re focused on business and growing each other’s business, then the liking and the trusting are just a natural follow up of that.

Thea Ranney   17:27

Absolutely, I mean, it’s a natural following and then I mean, obviously the others what I do and Rob with what you do, as well, we deal with a million different types of personalities. I am not going to fit everybody’s type of personality and that’s okay. But I know other organizers that will and that is the important piece, knowing the people that will fit the people that you know and that is that other important piece.

Adrian Schermer   17:59

Wonderful, thank you so much, Thea, where can we find you?

Thea Ranney   18:03

Oh, again, everywhere. So I am on Facebook. I’m on Instagram, both of which if you type theasorganizing, you’ll find me and then our email is a great way to reach out to me as well as phone, text, I’m cleaning communication. So [email protected] is my email, feel free to send me an email or give me a call, text or anything on any one of our social media platforms.

Adrian Schermer   18:33

Excellent and as always, you can find Rob Lance and I check in the show notes. You’ll get a link through to our websites. You’ll also find theasorganizingservices.com that link there and hopefully you can jump on the social media at least and see some of these before and after pictures, which are fantastic. Roi-fa.com/events is where you can find out what we’re doing locally. We’ve got a bunch of stuff coming up sipping mingles, we got to learn and grow on August 12th, summer bash on the 20th and there’s some photos with Santa a little later on November 12th and Thea thank you again for being here with us to explore what it means to run a business like yours. I hope that our listeners have gained some valuable information. I know I certainly have learned a lot about what you actually do and what kind of impact it has on folk’s lives. Next episode, we will explore where you’re headed next. This is part two of a three part series. The next one will be the last and we’ll kind of close out figuring out what the future looks like for you and your organizing services company.

Thea Ranney   19:36

Awesome, looking forward to it

Lance Johnson   19:38

I look forward to it and thank you for listening to our audience.

THE GET RICH SLOW PODCAST

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

CATERGORY: REAL ESTATE

Adrian Schermer:

Hello future millionaires and welcome back to The Get Rich Slow Podcast. We are your hosts, Adrian Schermer, Robert Delavan and Mr. Brilliant at the basics, Lance Johnson. Good morning gentlemen!

 

Robert Delavan:

Good morning, happy to be here.

 

Lance Johnson:

Good morning there, Adrian. Good to be back. Back in the saddle

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yes, back in the saddle. You can watch The Get Rich Slow Podcast, or I should say you can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music, as well as a few other platforms that are smaller. We are also on YouTube if you’d like to see the video, and you can follow along with the presentation that we have with some slides showing what we’re attacking. And today, this week, we’re gonna talk about some… seller credits and I want to start this off by talking about a big win I had with Rob’s team. We were doing a purchase. We had a first-time home buyer, which is always awesome. They really wanted to have a seller credit to assist them with closing costs. We’ve talked about this before, you’ve got your down payment, but seller or closing costs can be something that especially first-time home buyers don’t necessarily expect and it’s great if we can have the seller pay for that. We’re going to chew into that a little bit more in the episode. But in this particular case, we had someone with an accepted offer. It had a $10,000 seller credit on it. We actually got a little bit more because of some needed repairs on the property after the inspection, which…

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm-hmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

…is a whole episode on its own. But the property still also appraised for 10,000 over the contract price.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mmmhmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

And we’ll dig into this a bit more what that really means, but I’ll tell you, the end result is that this client effectively won $20,000 thanks to excellent negotiation and just the way that seller credit works you know? They bought the house, the seller paid for $10,000 of their closing costs, and it’s still appraised for over.

 

Robert Delavan:

That was a killer deal, and we can use the term “won”. I prefer to say that it was leveraging what the market will allow right now. And this is winner 2023 so… But yeah…

 

Adrian Schermer:

Mm-hmm.

 

Robert Delavan:

…it was a total win. I mean, the clients were ecstatic with getting a new house and having less cash out of their pocket through this process.

 

Lance Johnson:

And just think about it a year ago, you know, interest rates are down coming out of a great market during a pandemic, which, whole separate episode.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm-hmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yep.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm-hmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yep.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right.

 

Lance Johnson:

And people were paying 150,000 over asking price, having to come in with money because it wouldn’t appraise, and you feel like a win because you’re getting a seller concession, which we haven’t seen for a while.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right.

 

Lance Johnson:

What a change from a year ago.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Lance Johnson:

you know, just great.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. We all heard the stories, right? 10, 20, 30, 50, 100,000 over market value houses selling for.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Adrian Schermer:

The demand super, super high, and this is kind of one of these advantages. There’s always a win, right? Like there’s no, I don’t want to say there’s no bad market, but it’s true. It could be bad for one party or the other, but generally, you know, it’s a matter of negotiating advantage, right?

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, exactly. So this will be a fun episode. Today’s episode we’re going to focus on buyer credit and seller concessions as you guys probably are already kind of figuring out. We do work on a Realtor.com article that we’re pulling from, that just had a advice, sell, what are seller concessions, that sort of thing. So we have a baseline there and that’ll be linked in the episode disclosures and so forth. But we’re looking forward to this, this episode and we’re going to dive in a little more. Throw it to the next slide Adrian. So What we’re really going to cover is what is the seller credit and seller concession, how to use it, cap amounts some stories. Lance is I think gonna pick our brains a little bit and then we’ll round robin it. The biggest thing to know with these seller concessions is they create a win-win for the seller and buyer. Even though the seller’s giving something up. There’s definitely some advantages in this market and we can talk about that, and like I said, we’ll be working through some scenarios.

 

Lance Johnson:

Great, well, let me kick this off, and you guys are both in real estate, right? Adrian in mortgage and Rob in real estate and construction and property management. What is a seller credit for people that don’t know? Kind of dumb it down for people like me and just make it simple, and what is a credit versus a concession? And talk us through that.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Great. So the first one, seller credit, seller concession, sometimes called buyer credit as well, although it’s a bit of a misnomer, all the same thing. The seller is paying for some of the closing costs and it’s an allowed process. You’re not allowed, a seller can’t contribute usually to say a down payment. There’s rare cases where that’s allowed, usually between family members, but they can contribute to the closing costs, which are, especially for folks doing a lower down payment, can be as much as their down payment in some cases. So it’s a great way to cut down that cost and the accessibility to that potential buyer. And

 

Robert Delavan:

So examples,

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah, so what are some of the costs associated that they can pay down? So, you know, like things that I know about are points and, you know, there’s prepaids, so, you know, if you’re having your real estate taxes paid for, and insurance, there’s actual costs associated based on the rates. So walk me through some of the things they can and can’t do.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, absolutely. For most lenders, you’re going to have a flat fee that we charge in order to do the loan itself, and that’s how we keep the lights on, we keep everybody paid. Points themselves, you can have a cost for buying a lower than what would be considered market or par rate. That could also be a credit, although at this time in the marketplace, we’re generally seeing more of a cost for given rate being a more popular option. We’ve got state and government recording fees, title costs, including title insurance and the cost to file all of that paperwork. It could be a notary cost if someone’s going to come out to you, and it’s also, as you mentioned, the impounds. We’ve got taxes and insurance. You’re going to pay the seller for the remainder of the year that they had paid for the last time taxes were due. You’re going to pay for your first year of homeowners insurance, and in the case that you have an escrow account that… Part of your payment each month is going to include 1/12th of your taxes and insurance. That escrow account is going to be set up with a two month buffer, because we know taxes and insurance are probably gonna go up year by year, and then enough money seeded so that as you make your first payment, you’re on track. That 1/12th of taxes and insurance is going to be, you know, added to a pile that already exists so that when taxes come due in say, October like it is here in Oregon, there’s going to be enough money in there to make that payment. And as I mentioned that cost I have seen that hit 3% or even more of the transaction in many cases. Your mileage may vary and state to state. You’re certainly gonna see a big difference. I remember when I used to do loans in New York Super high property taxes that amount of money could be a serious chunk of change

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

And then also walk through, well, and maybe you don’t see these as much, Adrian, but on the, you could also call a credit or concession would be like repairs, and that would be the condition of the house. Just to use a few examples, let’s say certain types of lending require you can’t have any exterior paint that’s peeling.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Mm-hmm.

 

Robert Delavan:

So let’s say there’s some repairs that would be needed and required by the lender. There’s also just the normal inspection items. Let’s say there’s radon, you know, high levels of radon coming up from the crawl space or the basement and that needs to be taken care of, mitigated and you know, that’s a couple thousand dollars typically in our market. Something like that where, or, hey, there’s a rotted deck or the roof is leaking or I mean the list goes on and on and on. Every structure has its issues, even brand new construction. there are always things. So there’s also ability for concessions for repairs in addition to the traditional closing costs that you already laid out.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, absolutely, and any of those that are paid directly to a vendor, like we’re having the roof repaired by a roofing company, those don’t count within the closing cost bucket. So they won’t hit any of the closing cost limits because there are caps on what percentage of the purchase price these concessions can be, depending on the loan type, and I’ll chew into that in a second. But as you’re mentioning, Rob, you know, sometimes we get this “Hey, the floor is damaged” – “Well, we don’t want to repair the floor before closing, it’s gonna take two months for a floor guy to get out. We want to close now. So that repair is gonna be a thousand dollars. Why don’t we give that in the form of a seller concession?” The Seller is going to pay a thousand dollars with your closing costs that frees up a thousand dollars in your pocket when you go to closing, and then you can use that to your discretion to get that repair done, and I believe actually in our example even We had that $10,000 seller credit initially. I know that we grabbed another couple thousand in that sort of, it’s that inspection, right? You do that inspection, the scratch and dent special. It reminds me of like bringing your dad or your uncle to buy your first car. If they’re good, they’re gonna run over that and go, hey, is that a little scratch on the fender? You gotta knock some money off the price. Same concept here, but applying…

 

Robert Delavan:

Right, right..

 

Adrian Schermer:

…it in a way that saves you money at the right time.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right. Yeah, that’s a, that’s an interesting, which actually nicely segs us to question two, and Lance, let’s see, you could target, you could target Adrian or I on that one, whichever dealer’s choice.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, yeah, I mean, I did have a follow up question on the, you know, it seems like one instance is it’s around the repairs and they can, you know, the inspection, and then on other instances, it’s, you know, there could be a gray area there. So there’s negotiations, right? Like, so the floor could be 1000 could be 4000 depends on how, how deep you want to get in. So if there was flooring in a bathroom and you have to get to the other sub floors and stuff like that and there’s rotting and mold and stuff, it could really amount up, and so that’s where real estate agents like yourself have to go in and say, okay, you know, here’s a high end, here’s a low end. Obviously the seller wants low end, the buyer wants high end. There’s a negotiation and that’s… Sometimes an arm length transaction is helpful, right? So you can take the emotion out of it and stuff.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, let me ask that. So how do you use the seller credits, both the seller side and the buyer side of the transaction? Scenario one, offset the cost of repairs of a home inspection, which you guys were alluding to. Sweeten the deal for an on-the-fence buyer. So a buyer likes the house, but not sure if they want to make it. Maybe the numbers are at their top end. Incentivize buyers to stay in the deal when there’s lots of competition in inspection. So it seems like competition really kind of sets if you have 10 buyers and they’re negotiating, you know, we saw where there was no concessions, but now that inventory is greater and now things, you know, interest rates are higher, there’s less buyers, that now you’re starting to see some of this stuff. And that really has a mark on. the credits of the seller side.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Lance Johnson:

So why don’t you guys speak on that?

 

Robert Delavan:

And that’s a big piece of this. Adrian, you’re gonna have your take on this from a lending side, and that’s really gonna then kick into kind of the third piece we wanted to look at is like the caps and so forth. But yeah, Lance, you’re exactly right. The first two scenarios here are similar in that we’re not really dealing with you’re dealing with repairs, you’re dealing with sweetening the deal. Number three is where it really starts kicking in, competition and so forth. But it’s market trends. So the first scenario is just, hey, this buyer, they’re looking at a, and remember, we’re in the Portland market, just building out a typical scenario that we’ll see a $400,000 home. And it just, that the deck is going to cost 20 grand to redo. You know, and the roof needs to be repaired. It’s, you know, 10, 15 year old roof and it hasn’t been well maintained. Well, that piece, your typical buyer who’s kind of entry level, first timer, that sort of thing, they just can’t afford to pay closing costs, down payment, all that sort of thing, and do all these repairs on the house. They just can’t do it. So that’s the piece where the seller from the get-go is just gonna disclose, hey, guess what? This roof isn’t great. We’ll make sure you give a roof cert or do repairs or replace, you know, depending on how bad the deck is, that sort of thing. So make it so that there’s not as much dollars out in that time where that buyer is most vulnerable. Which is when they’re buying the house, you know? They’ve saved every last dollar that they can possibly come up with, begged, borrowed and steal to get that down payment. Especially the first timers.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, it seems like it’s a moving target where they go in and it’s a  $400,000 house. Some cases the price might have gone up a little bit, maybe not so much anymore. It’s stayed flat. But then interest rates go up by the time they close or lock in their loan, and now the payment’s 400 bucks, 300 bucks more than they anticipate when interest rates were rising on a month-to-month basis. So… Yeah, and you know, top end is top end. Nobody wants to feel house poor. So,

 

Robert Delavan:

Exactly, exactly.

 

Lance Johnson:

yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

So that makes a big difference. Another piece, and this was in this article, that we referred to and have in our disclosures here, is basically just being in a position to like sweeten the deal for that buyer that’s picking your house versus the one up the street. “Hey, we’re gonna do a new deck” or, more common. “We’re gonna certify that the HVAC system is in good working order” per manufacturer specs. We’re also going to provide a home warranty so that…

 

Adrian Schermer:

Oh yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

…if in the first year, if the washer dryer or HVAC or any of the systems within the house that would be expensive to replace, for think appliances and so forth, that those sorts of things would be covered for that buyer. So it’s just like, kind of more of an incentivization. “Hey, pick our house versus the next guy. We’ve done more due diligence upfront.” The third scenario, and I really want to give you guys a chance to kind of comment on this, is this is where you’re really like at that point where you’re almost through the inspection period, this buyer knows that it’s getting to the point where it’s really a buyer’s market and they have the opportunity to go to a number of other properties, or at least they’re presenting that they can do that, and they’re like, “ah I don’t know”. When there’s competition in the market for that buyer. and more sellers than there are buyers, let’s incentivize them, not just like sweeten the deal up front, like a, “hey, we’re gonna offer a home warranty”, like scenario number two, but number three, we’re actually saying, “hey, we’ll go ahead and replace that roof”. Because that was the big sticking point, or , you know, something to that effect, which actually gets the deal closed. You never know the situation that the seller is in if you’re representing the buyer, or at least. You try to find out as much as possible and it’s amazing how often you’ll actually get the story. But if that seller really needs to sell and there’s a certain piece like a $15,000 roof, why not rep for the buyer, push for that, and get that done? And you know, the seller says hey, “you know we’re getting our $400,000 price point, but really it’s 385. It’s a $15,000 roof. Let’s get that done.”

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

because we want to close

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

so It’s just that, it’s exploring the dynamics almost of the negotiation at that point.

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting from my, I often will get in a meeting with clients where they’ve been up to bat three times in a row, especially when the market was, you know, interest rates are low, and you had to put $100,000 in the Portland market just to get the house.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right, above right?

 

Lance Johnson:

And maybe they didn’t have that cash and they had to come in, and so they were always number two, number three. And so there is and this is probably a segment we should do there is the art of locking down the, the property because you can do all the planning you want but if you come in two, three, four and, you know, we’ve seen it where people are frustrated. They want to get in the house…

 

Robert Delavan:

Yup.

 

Lance Johnson:

…interest rates are rising and yet you know they, they come in, you know at some point in time we should talk a little bit of the art of locking down a deal.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, Yeah.

 

Lance Johnson:

…and there’s a way to do that and use the inspection to figure that out.

 

Robert Delavan:

Absolutely.

 

Adrian Schermer:

To negotiate that bit. Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, that’s a really fun one. Just a teaser for that episode. I’m actually writing that down now for another episode here soon. Thanks for that idea, Lance. Is really trying to figure out what the other side wants. And it was amazing how many times when it was crazy competitive, where we’re representing a buyer, we’re not the highest, but we’d still get it. Rather than just throwing 100K over list price at it. How about 70K? but we’re not gonna ask for this or this or this, or we’re gonna give you time or other things that are important to them.

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

So that’s actually a lot of fun.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, cool.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Absolutely.

 

Lance Johnson:

The third question, what are the caps on concessions that a seller can contribute to the buyer? So, you know, there’s limits, right? You just can’t go right this check out. So, why don’t, Adrian, maybe you take a look at that there, what kind of caps are there?

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, yeah, and here’s ones for the, this is one for the show notes or, you know, if you’ve got a pad of paper this is the moment to grab some data for you. So the cap is, and these are based off the purchase price of the home, so the first one, three percent for a conventional loan with a loan to value above 90% in other words that you have a 10% or lower down payment then the seller concession can be no greater than 3% percent of the purchase price Once that loan to value exceeds that 10% down payment, so between, in this case 75.01% to 90%, it goes up to 6%, and then with a 25% or greater down payment, it’s going to go to 9%. These are for conventional purchases as a primary residence.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

If it’s an investment, it’s capped at 2%. For FHA loans it is 6%. So that’s a big one. There’s a much higher seller credit available for those FHA, which is really popular with first time home buyers. So sometimes that can be an advantage there. It’s 6% with USDA as well, and then one of my favorite types of loan, the VA, the veterans loan is capped at 4%, which is awesome. Cause that one can be up to 100% financing, zero down.

 

Robert Delavan:

Mm-hmm.

 

Adrian Schermer:

A veteran therefore can also on top of that get a seller credit for up to 4% of that purchase price and in many cases that is well more than your typical closing costs and we have a bit of play there with closing costs because as a loan officer we’ll often use this term – we talk about “soaking up” closing costs. If you have a 3% seller credit, but your closing costs without points comes to let’s say 2 and a half percent. You might soak that extra up by buying extra rate. I did that when I bought my house. I had a bit too much left on the table. And that’s the thing about the seller credits. If you don’t spend that money, you don’t get that money. If your seller credits $10,000 and your closing costs is only 9, that 1000 is just, the seller is just going to get to keep that money. You don’t get a check at the end and it cannot go towards your down payment. So generally we try to go a little bit over, so we have some spill-over there on the closing costs, that you’re going to pay that spill over just to make sure we’re making the most of it. Rob, I know that we have also used that for paying out mortgage insurance, which is a whole nother episode, but you can pre-pay your mortgage insurance effectively by buying it out so that it’s not part of your monthly payment. There’s a number of different strategies. You mentioned home warranty. There’s some great ways that if there’s leftover on the table, that should be a discussion with your lender to figure out what’s the best strategy for, specifically, you.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right. And there’s some very simple language that we generally use if we know we’re going to be in that range, where there’s probably more closing cost concessions than we would necessarily use. Let’s say, you know, even with a rate buy down and all of the prepaids of, you know, taxes, insurance and and title insurance and so forth that we talked about in the first part of this episode. It’s only $9,000 and we got, and we were able to negotiate 12, and let’s assume all the repairs in the case. That’s $3,000 that would not, if you write that contract a certain way, that’s $3,000 that you could leave on the table on behalf of, the seller just says “oh, okay, closing costs were only 9. I offered 12, but you didn’t have 12.” So you don’t wanna be in a situation two days before closing where you’re scrambling.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Absolutely.

 

Robert Delavan:

But there’s a very simple language you can use that says, in essence, the closing costs of $12,000 right up front in the event of an overage on closing costs that will not be utilized, a seller agrees to still provide that in some other way, and that basically, and there’s some language cleanup there, that’s not exactly how we say it in the documents. But basically it makes it so that that seller can’t say, “oh, hey, thanks, you didn’t use it so I get it”

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

So I There’s always things you can do, for example, like repairs or you know upgrades or what have you. So, and Lance, we’ve had those conversations before, you know, with folks that we’ve worked with across the board referrals with all of us, and the last thing you want, although every once in a while there’s a scenario where somebody’s like “you know what? I don’t really wanna buy it down” and they get it down to like maybe a couple hundred bucks and they’ll leave a couple hundred bucks on the table. But you certainly don’t want to leave a couple thousand bucks on the table.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

 

Robert Delavan:

So that’s the key.

 

Adrian Schermer:

And so for our audience, I want to just paint this scenario, you know, one last time here. Let’s say we have three houses on a block, right? They are identical houses. They are all, as far as the market is concerned, worth about 350, right? We know that there can be a swing there. So these houses might be able to appraise for more, but that’s what they’re trying to sell these houses for. Now, I own one of these houses and I decide that I’m going to put mine up for 360, but I’m gonna advertise it that I’m giving a $10,000 seller credit. For me, as the seller, that is the exact same amount of money when I get to closing. My check is going to be identical at 360 with a $10,000 seller credit, as it would be at 350 sales price. But for a buyer, let’s say this is a, you know the typical two, three bedroom starter home, someone probably is gonna be buying this with 3% down payment. 3% down on 350 is $10,500. If you give me a $10,000 seller credit, and I’m expecting to pay that in closing cost, you just cut the amount of money that I have to come to closing with in half.

 

Robert Delavan:

Right.

 

Adrian Schermer:

And that’s a huge, huge deal to have another 10,000 bucks, right? You’re moving into your first house. I don’t know, you wanna do some paint. You wanna just have a buffer. You wanna maybe pay someone to move your stuff for you instead of harassing your friends again. It’s such a difference maker, and so we saw that becoming more popular when the market shifted. that people were actually offering it right up front. Hey, I’m on board with the seller credit and I’m gonna help you with that. We also saw it applied to two-one buy downs. This is another whole separate episode. I’m not gonna dig into the meat of what that is, but a two-one buy down basically gives you first year and second year at a reduced interest rate. And there’s no free lunch, right? So we know that there’s a cost upfront for that and that’s probably what’s paying that, but there were a lot of sellers also offering a seller credit to help absorb that cost, and what that meant for the buyers was a lower payment for the first few years of homeownership where you are potentially worried about you know hey is something gonna break? Do I have a nest egg that I need to save back up? I’m spending all my money buying this house, what if something happens two months down the road, and I don’t have a warranty?

 

Robert Delavan:

Right.

 

Adrian Schermer:

This is the kind of thing that can ease one of the biggest stressors for buyers and Rob you hit the nail on the head. I mean we talked about negotiation, one most important things is asking those probing questions and finding out what are the pain points for your potential client here, and for a buyer, especially in a marketplace of what is typically a starter home or a first time buyer typical home, then that’s huge.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah.

 

Adrian Schermer:

That seller credit can change, massively change, how easy it is for them to get access to this home.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, and the fun part about this is really where I’ve worked with, you know, on the financial side. It’s all about cash flow. It’s all about, you know, preserving cash for when you need it, having contingency plans, you know, those sorts of things, and basically having a similar message where you’re putting your client in a position where they have margin.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

And that’s really what these closing costs and concessions for a buyer especially provide, and then for the seller, it’s, hey, if you’re savvy about it, and you’re strategically positioning yourself, your house is going to sell, and the next two in a competitive market for sellers, there’s more sellers than there are buyers so the next two up the street aren’t going to sell, and yours is, assuming the product is the same.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah

 

Robert Delavan:

So that’s where it gets..

 

Adrian Schermer:

and in that example, I gave nothing away. I make the same amount of money. So it can be very brilliantly applied that way.

 

Lance Johnson:

It seems like you actually limit the extra negotiation after the deal because there’s limits on the percentage.

 

Adrian Schermer:

That is also an exce… that’s an awesome point, Lance. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, again, seller perspective, now you can’t wrap in that inspection. We’ve hit that ceiling before. You find something in the inspection, hey, the carpet needs to be fixed. Well, I’m not gonna fix it and hey, you’re at your limit for seller concession anyway, so, sorry, there’s nothing left for me to give.

 

Robert Delavan:

So it gets, there’s a lot of hints and outs on that, and yeah, that’s a great point Lance. It happens quite a bit where it’s just like, well, we can’t really do any more other than this unless you actually go in and replace that, you know, carpet or roof or what have you.

 

Lance Johnson:

Well, this has been a great episode. So give us your final thoughts there, Rob, on this episode.

 

Robert Delavan:

Well, we appreciate you guys listening. A lot of this stuff is high level. I will say that, what do you say Adrian, almost every time? “Your mileage will vary.” Frankly, every single personal situation is different and we have to be very…

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yes,

 

Robert Delavan:

…careful about that, that we’re speaking in generalities.

 

Adrian Schermer:

a lot of nuance here.

 

Robert Delavan:

and concepts. So yeah, it’s gonna be different for everybody, but this is the fun part and there’s a lot of conversations that we end up having specifically with our clients about these concepts. So we do have some exciting future episodes in the works. I think we touched on a couple here. We’re looking forward to having some more guests on the podcast too, so stay tuned for that. And that’s.

 

Lance Johnson:

And I think we’re going to try something a little different where we’re going to try to do a Round Robin type round table with eight or nine different people and get into some meteor issues. So we’re going to try some of that stuff. So we’re excited for this year’s podcast. And we’re really kind of getting into our stride.

 

Robert Delavan:

Yeah, that’s gonna be really fun, especially if we, like you said, get into the meat of it, right?

 

Lance Johnson:

Yeah.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah.

 

Robert Delavan:

So, I’ll finish this up on our websites, Adrian, and let’s sign off here.

 

Adrian Schermer:

Yeah, absolutely. You can catch us on our sites. It’s going to be in the video description. We’re going to have links to our individual sites, as well as The Get Rich Slow Podcast site, where you can also request to be a guest or send us some comments. We love reading through what you folks have to say and what you’re interested in seeing next. That’s also where you’ll find the work cited. We’ve got that realtor.com article that does a pretty good job of explaining some of what a seller credit is and that’s it for us!

 

Robert Delavan:

All right, thank you guys.

 

Lance Johnson:

Thank you guys.

 

 

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