Contingency In Real Estate: Why Clear Communication Is Important With JD Esajian

Contingency in real estate is when something depends on a certain event happening before that contingency can be released. In this episode is JD Esajian, a Project Manager at CT Homes discusses with Jeff Rutkowski how you can communicate with clarity. Proper communication is key for faster contingency removal. Thus, better efficiency at closing deals! When you know how to communicate and negotiate properly with your agents, buyers, and sellers, you’ll have greater success in real estate. Tune in and learn how to close more deals!

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Contingency In Real Estate: Why Clear Communication Is Important With JD Esajian

We have an incredible episode with our resident expert, JD Esajian. You’re going to be learning some incredibly high-level material. Wait until you know what he has to say about Tracking Contingency Removals. I’ve never heard any other investors share this. It’s going to be a game-changer for you and your business. Before we get into that, I want to bring the word of the week, which is Contingency.

A contingency in real estate is when something is depending on a certain event happening or occurring before that contingency can be released. When you make an offer on a piece of real estate, typically, you’re going to put down a deposit, an escrow, whatever you call it in your state. You’re going to have certain contingencies that will protect that deposit. Most commonly, you hear an inspection contingency and a mortgage contingency.

Let’s say you have a seven-day inspection contingency. Once that contingency is removed, then your deposit will become hard. Meaning it’s nonrefundable at that point or maybe it’s a seven-day inspection, then you have a 21-day mortgage contingency. After the 21st day, that deposit goes nonrefundable. Don’t be afraid to get offers out there because when you have contingencies, it will protect you and be able to give you a second look at the property before you make that final decision. Let’s get into it and welcome to the show, Mr. JD Esajian.

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I am joined with our resident expert, Mr. JD Esajian. What’s up? How are you doing?

What’s up, Jeff? It’s so good to be here. I’m excited about this episode. We got a ton of great info to get into. I’m feeling good.

Whether you’ve done zero deals or a hundred deals, you can continue to improve your business.

What’s new and exciting in your world?

My son is getting older and that’s fun. It’s keeping us busy. We’re cranking at CT Homes, which we’re going to talk about. Things are good. How about you?

Things are good. I bought a new house, as you know, in California.

Congratulations, by the way. It’s a great spot for you and the family.

San Diego Market is on fire, but we did good. Thanks to you. There are some things we’re going to talk about in this episode. The last time we were together, to me, that was probably the best episode we’ve ever done. It was a solid show. On August 18, 2021, it was aired and it was focused on how to get more of your offers accepted and how to buy more homes. One amazing stat that you shared was, prior to the pandemic, CT Homes was getting maybe 1 out of 20 or 22 deals accepted.

It’s 25.5, to be exact. We don’t track metrics around here, Jeff. You know that.

During the pandemic, it’s 1 out of every 14.0286 is unbelievable. Most people are saying, “It’s so competitive. I can’t get offers except that you increased that.” If you’re having all the problems to get offers accepted, go check out that episode.

It is competitive. You’re right but if you say, “I can’t get my offers accepted,” that’s an excuse. That’s maybe real for you right then but if you read that show that you’re referencing that we did, you’re going to get more properties under contract.

A good friend of mine once said, “An excuse is a reason wrapped around a lie.” What do you think about that?

That’s deeper than I expected. When you said wrapped, I was thinking euros because I’m hungry but what you said is very true.

There’s another one. “If you say it can’t be done, you should get out of the way for the ones that are doing it.” That’s another good one there.

The market as we know is always changing. You can say, “I can do this with what the market is doing,” but the reality is we own 36 CT Homes in San Diego County. We’ll sell over $60 million in real estate just in San Diego County alone in 2021. By reading shows like this, the knowledge that we’re sharing and certainly in this episode we’re going to do that, you can improve your business. Thinking of another quote from a completely different genre, “What is a master but a master student?”

That’s a quote I heard from a gentleman named Neil Peart, who’s no longer with us. He was the drummer for Rush, arguably the greatest rock drummer of all time but even throughout his career of being one of the greatest drummers ever, he always learned and took lessons in musicianship and drumming so that he can continue to evolve his craft. That’s what this show allows investors to do. We’re talking about things that didn’t use to happen but are happening and what we’re doing in the market. Whether you’ve done zero deals or you’re doing 100 deals, you can continue to improve your business.

I have a good friend of mine who opened a logistics company years ago. He was killing it. He was up in the Bay Area sitting with two individuals. One net worth is about $600 million and the other one is $800 million. I asked him, “What’s the biggest takeaway from talking with them?” He said, “They’re lifelong learners. They’re talking to me way below them. They want to learn and try to find one thing to take to the next level.” That’s what we’re here for. We are here to empower your purpose through financial education. As I mentioned in the previous episode with JD, we focused on buying properties. What we’re going to get into this episode is your systems, your refined sales and liquidation strategy, also known as sell them quicker for more money.

It’s the ability to make more money in any market. When we talk about refined sales, we’ve sold a lot of homes for a lot of years. At CT Homes, back to being a lifelong learner, there are always things to improve on. What we’re going to talk about is the latest and greatest of what we’re doing. There’s a deal we’re going to look at that we’re selling. A hundred thousand dollars above what we originally pegged as the sales price when we bought the home. The market has helped a little bit of that but what we’re going to talk about with regards to selling properties also helped, whether you have 1 offer or 15 offers, depending on how you’re selling your home, there is a way a systematic way to go through and help everyone have a better experience and ultimately, as an investor, be able to make more money.

That’s where we’re going to get into, whether you’re in wholesale, rehab, whatever it is. If you want to sell them quicker for more money, pay attention and take some notes.

You’re reading the right blog.

Let’s get into it. There are lots of points to go through. This one may seem relatively simple but vital that’s clear, honest communication, which would seem like a no-brainer but it’s not the case in most industries.

If you’re not willing to honestly communicate, you’re already behind the eight ball. If you’re not willing to talk with someone face-to-face, if you’re able to do that or verbally, you’re not going to do well. Meaning, if you want to try to negotiate and communicate with the agent via text, it’s not the way to go. We’re talking about picking up the phone and communicating clearly. Whether it’s a buyer market, a seller market or a neutral market, you want to as the seller because we’re talking about selling homes, give the other person, the buyer or the agent as much information as you ethically can. Put their client or them in the best spot to write the strongest offer.

Let’s look at a property that we renovated. There is a house that we didn’t buy a shed. It’s a house in an area of San Diego County and town called Ramona. It’s under an acre of property. This is what it looked like when we bought it. It has a lot of land and the home was pretty destroyed. I’ll get into the inside here in a second and then we’ll look at a few after pictures. The reason I’m showing this is we’re selling this home. We had over 40 showings on this home and almost a dozen offers. That sounds great and gives you a lot to work with. You can wash your dishes and, at the same time, wash your clothes.

If you are reading this episode, you got to jump over to the Facebook page or YouTube channel. You can see these pictures.

The home was in disrepair. There’s no doubt about that. What it looks like for the new couple that is buying this home is this. This is the first-ever dirt bike track that we’ve ever put on a property. We had all this space in the back, rather than just go ahead and mulch it or leave it as dirt. I, growing up, always wanted to have a dirt bike track in my backyard. With that, we decided to go ahead and compact an area of the backyard and put a little turf back there, even if the buyers of this home, we thought, didn’t want a dirt bike track in their backyard. What it does is it gives you a vision and it creates a motion. We’ll talk about this more.

The sales process is more about emotion than anything else. When Ted, the agent that wrote one of the offers on this home for his client, called me and said, “How many offers do you have?” I gave him an honest answer. I don’t remember exactly how many we had at the time that he called me but the reason that I did that is because I wanted him to know and tell his client that if they want the home, there’s other competition. I give them an idea of where that pricing is, too because if they want the home and they did want the home because they’re buying it, I want them to have as much information that this is nice. Look at this thing aside. It’s unrecognizable.

Where that fridge is where the washer and dryer were a moment ago, I explained to Ted, “We’ve got X amount of offers in this range but this is important. My job as the seller is to find the best buyer for the home. Ted, sometimes that’s a combination of price but it’s also a combination of terms that your client’s right and, as importantly, how good the agent is that’s representing that buyer, which is you.” What I’m doing there is I’m being clear with what we’re looking for but I’m also selling him and us on why they should work with us as a seller. We’re going to talk about qualifying questions later but sales, as you know is influence, emotion, asking good questions, having something that someone wants and delivering a great experience.

That’s very important. If you don’t start out of the gate that way and look for the best buyer, great agent or what you feel is a great agent, long-terms, great price then the transaction is never going to start out on the right tone. I could talk, which I won’t do, for the next 45 minutes about that communication right there because we have a whole system at CT Homes for qualifying agents and buyers independent of what their numbers and terms are on paper. How many houses have they looked at? Have they beaten out on other properties? They understand what the market is doing.

If this is the first home that this family looked at, they’ve never offered anything else. They don’t know what they’re in for. That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be a good buyer and won’t buy the home but in the market that we’re in, we want someone that’s somewhat seasoned and understand what it’s going to take to get the home. They’re going to be willing to remove contingencies faster, may close faster and going to be less picky on a home inspection. It starts out of the gate with how you communicate.

In business, it takes a long time to build a good reputation. But you can destroy it overnight.

What are some things that you would see outside of price that would disqualify an offer? From the agent standpoint, from other terms, what are the things that would concern you outside of price?

In this market, which is a strong seller’s market, if someone wasn’t willing to either waive an appraisal contingency or have an amount of money that they felt they were comfortable bringing above an appraisal. Certainly, in this market and seller’s market, lots of times, people need to write an offer that is above what someone is asking for. This is the case with the home that we’re talking about here. From a seller standpoint, if someone’s willing to put that on paper but they’re not willing to pay that number if it doesn’t appraise them, why are they putting it on paper?

I’ll ask an agent that question. That’s one thing, an extended amount of time on their inspections. In California, our standard contract has seventeen days but if you’re writing an 18-day close or a 21-day close and you have 70 days inspection, there’s something that they’re concerned about or something that I want to flush out before we go into contract with that person. Those are a couple of big ones. Independent of price and terms, a lot of it is what I hear from the agent. For example, we’re talking about asking qualifying questions.

If an agent calls on one of the properties that we have for sale, I’m asking them questions to have them sell us on why we should work with them. “Ted, I have your clients looked at other homes.” “Yes, they have.” “Can you tell me how many and how that experience went?” This is a great question here. “There are other homes on the market, Ted. What was it about our listing on San Vicente that your clients fell in love with and spark them to write an offer then stop talking?”

Ted or the agent is going to say something that sells you on why you should look at their offers seriously or they’re going to fumble over their words like, “This is the first house they looked at.” Depending on what they say that will steer us and should steer us in the direction of understanding if they’re a serious buyer or they’re the right buyer for this home.

We could spend all day on that episode. You’re touching on so many powerful things over there. Number one way to sell something is not sell it but have them sell you. That’s exactly what you’re doing right there. I love it. Talk to me about this. Every offer gets a counter offer. Let’s unpack that.

Depending on where you’re at, you’re probably going to get in this market multiple offers. It could be more than one or a lot more than one. It could be 2 or 20. If someone takes the time to write an offer, we feel they deserve to get a counter. It will be more work for us as sellers even if the offer is low. The reason that it’s important is whether they tell you or not, they respond to that counter or not, agents will appreciate that. It’s a respectful thing to do. If they wrote an offer that was significantly below where the house is worth, you never know where they’re going to get to.

Not only that, they deserve to get a counter if they put an offer on paper. I can tell example upon example of times where we counted everyone. Not only did a person come up significantly but even when they didn’t, the agent called and said, “We appreciate that you countered because my client has written offers on other homes where they didn’t even get a response. Thank you.” Now they have a better experience, they didn’t even buy a home from you yet but then they call you back on another listing that you had and another property that you renovated. They remember that.

I’ve had that happen too. It’s a courtesy thing and a reputation thing. In business, it takes a long time to build a good reputation and you can destroy it overnight. I’m not saying that if you don’t counter someone, you’re going to destroy your reputation but it’s the right thing to do. When you get more than one offer and someone spends the time to do that, send them a counter back because you never know where they may get to.

That’s thinking long-term reputation. Going back to the clear and honest communication, you’re shooting straight and you’re letting people know where we’re at. I love how you’re building a sense of competition. A good agent is going to communicate that to their clients. A lot of people look into this property and the natural response is, “How do we make our offer more competitive?” That’s going to strengthen the contingencies, waive the appraisal, maybe even inspections as well.

It’s a little bit easier because, as a seller, we’re calling the shots but that’s going to change. The principles that we’re talking about on this show can be applied to whatever the market’s doing. Let’s say that I have no offers on the home that I showed, which wasn’t the case because we got offers fast. We’ll role-play a little bit here. You call me up, Jeff. You’re an agent. You’re calling for your client potentially interested in writing an offer. You don’t know this but I don’t have any offers. Ask me, “JD, I saw your listing on 123 Main Street. Do you have offers yet?”

JD, Jeff Rutkowski here.

Jeff, how are you doing?

I’m doing well. I’m calling on your listing here on 123 Main Street.

It’s a beautiful home.

We showed it to clients. They’re interested. They liked it. I’m thinking about riding an offer. How many offers do you have in a home?

We’re expecting offers here quickly. We’ll review offers as they come in. The faster you write an offer, the faster we can get a counter back to you. Let’s say you don’t have any offers. You can say, “No, I don’t have any offers.” You can communicate a little bit differently and say, “Yes, we’re expecting offers.” As a seller, we’re always expecting offers. I’m not saying to lie to the person on the phone. This goes into some NLP and proper communication. Saying, “We’re expecting offers,” is a different way of saying, “No, we don’t have any offers yet.” It’s true.

You’re not putting the house for sale unless you’re expecting an offer.

In a seller’s market, many times, we have offers pretty quickly, but when the market changes and someone asked, “Do you have offers?” “Yes, we’re expecting offers.” That helps create urgency and momentum towards someone writing an offer faster.

You mentioned this when acquiring properties, where if your offer is not accepted, always make sure you get into the backup position but on the flip side of selling the house, you’re going to accept an offer but then you’re also going to get an assigned backup offer in place. Let’s talk about that.

We got done with the summer Olympics from supposed to be 2020 but they were in 2021 in Tokyo. If you watch any race, the person leading the race typically charges a little bit harder to the finish line if they have someone on their heels like sprinting as an example. The person that’s in the lead, if they want to win and someone is right behind them, they’re going to run faster. If you have someone else signed in, backup behind your primary buyer and that primary buyer and agent know that, if they want the home, they’re going to charge a little faster and stronger to the finish line. They’re going to remove contingencies a little faster. If not, you’re going to flush it out.

The best thing is if that happens, you have another buyer right behind them, so you don’t waste time. You may not even have to go back active on the market. That’s the philosophy. You’re motivating, incentivizing and pushing everyone along towards a faster closing because there’s someone right behind them. Depending on the communication, if the agent and the primary buyer calls me dragging their feet a little bit, I might nicely remind them that we have a signed backup. If it’s at the same price, I’ll say that. If it’s not, I won’t bring that up. That helps motivate everyone. Whether an agent is good or you find out an agent is not as good as you hope for that’s representing the buyer, you want to motivate and lead them towards the finish line and that’s the closing.

You’re guiding them where you want them to go. You’re accepting the primary offer, but you’re also letting them know, “We have this backup in place. If you don’t perform, we’re moving out.” What does that conversation sound like?

If we sign a backup, if we have one, the next time I talk to the agent, whenever it’s reasonable to come up, I’ll let them know, “I want to let you know that we’ve got a solid backup buyer that we’ve signed and they’re interested in the home. I hope that we don’t need to go that route. I wanted you to know so that we motivate everyone to get to the closing process faster. We’re going to do everything on our part to close on time or before. We hope and expect that you and your buyers do the same thing.”

Depending on how it comes up in the next conversation we have, I’ll let them know that. The power of it is to have it but it’s also to let other people know that it’s there too. On their home inspection, they may be a little less apt to create a long list for you if they know that someone else wants the home. It also solidifies their decision to buy the home because other people know that it supports their decision to buy it because other people want to buy it too. It makes them more confident, especially in a seller’s market where people are paying more than advertise many times. It helps support their mental and emotional decision to buy the home.

We got a few more here but before we move on, as always, I want to make everyone aware reading that anytime you’re interested in learning how to get started in real estate, there’s a link at FortuneBuildersShow.com that gets you a free ticket to a one-day virtual event with Than Merrill, a part of the leadership team here with JD, to teach you how to implement this stuff and how to make it a reality.

What’s a master but a master student? You get more information. You learn more from us. There are not a lot of educators to none out there that are doing over 100 transactions a year like we are at CT Homes and teaching you the secrets, which are not really secrets because we’re helping to teach you how we’re doing it.

Investing in your education in the right place shortens your learning curve.

I got to get signed off my chest, JD. I got to vent a little bit here. In this show, I do a live Q&A. Someone asks a question, “What’s the best way to get started? Where do I start?” My answer was, “Get a mentor, a coach and education.” Somebody wrote in the comments. His name was Jay. I won’t put out his last name but he said, “Give Fortune Builders more money.” It pissed me off.

I could understand how that would feel that way.

What are your thoughts on that?

My thoughts are you can go out and figure it out on your own. It’s going to take you longer and costs you a lot more than investing in your education. I can tell you how I know that because I tried that route too. I know you have. The reality is investing in your education in the right place. Believe me when I tell you because we’re doing it every day. Fortune Builders and CT Homes are the right places. It’s going to shorten the learning curve dramatically. We’re not even done yet. It wasn’t what we did years ago. This is what we’re doing now.

When I get done with this show, I’m going to sell more houses. We’re buying another house. What we’re teaching you and what we’re going over is the latest and greatest of what we’re doing. You’re going to invest in your education one way or another by the time you lost money or you invest with a company like us that’s doing what we teach.

To me, this is bigger than real estate. I don’t care what area of life it is. Even still, we connect with them once a year. When I got married, I looked around for who do I think has the most successful marriage. I took them to dinner once a month. What can I learn when I had kids? I did the same thing when I want to get in shape. It’s a principle. There’s no other way to shorten the learning curve. When we’re offering these classes like that, if you’re interested, check them out.

If you’re not, don’t. If it’s not us, go somewhere else and find somebody else that’s doing 100 homes a year with $1 billion in commercial assets. You’re going to be looking for a while. I feel better now. Clear and honest communication is important. All offers get countered. It’s beautiful. We’re getting a signed-up backup position and helping everyone to the finish line faster.

Do you like that Olympic example? I thought about it when I knew we were getting ready to have this show. I’m like, “That’s a good analogy.” I don’t always have those good analogies like that but I had to use that one. I can’t wait to share it. It’s in my back pocket.

We’ve talked about you tracking contingency removal. Let’s unpack that.

There are times in a contract where people like to use the phrase, “Put their money where their mouth is.” Those are contingency removal points. In most contracts, the common ones are you have some physical inspection contingency removal, appraisal contingency removal, alone contingency and then there’s a full contingency. In the market we’re in, sometimes people waive some of those contingencies but whatever contingencies you have in the contract, you want to make sure you know when those are and what the buyer promised they would do happens.

For example, if the first contingency is an inspection contingency that was supposed to be removed on a Monday and you don’t get them because you did your part but they just don’t remove it until Friday, you’re telling them, “I can do what I want. I don’t need to close on time and honor the contract.” That’s not exactly what you’re telling them but that’s the message that you’re sending across. The reality is that’s what was agreed to. In contractual business, you want to make sure that people follow those.

At CT Homes, we have a system for this. I cover it in a lot of detail, like the office as an academy, which you know is our two-day class where I pull the red curtain back behind what we do at CT Homes, even deeper than we’re going on this show. We track those. We have templates for emails that we send when we send them and automating them. A couple of days before that contingency is due, we remind the agent that it’s due. The day of, we remind them.

As an example, this happened on a different property than the one I showed you. There was a full contingency move for a house we’re selling in San Carlos on Blue Lake here in San Diego County. I expect the full contingency to get removed. I remind the agent the day before and I text, “I want to check-in. Today is the day.” He knows that I know that. Throughout the day, I’m reminding him, then he sent over a text with an additional thing that his seller wanted us to agree to, which was an aversion of what we had already agreed to before.

Long story short, he said he had the full contingency removal ready to send if I get this signed so I signed it because it was something we had already agreed to. It’s not important on what it is. I sent it right back over. I don’t always want to work at past 10:00 on an evening and many people don’t but I want that contingency removed so I send it back. We got the contingency removed because it matters. When you promise and that’s what a contract is that you’re going to do something, we’re going to do our part as a seller. We expect and make sure others know that we expect that they do the same thing. Those are little check marks that get people to the finish line faster.

For those of you reading, maybe if you’re not familiar with what a contingency is, common ones are for inspections mortgage contingencies. When those are removed, your deposit goes hard. It becomes nonrefundable. In many states like California, it’s an active removal. Not just the date passes and it’s passive. It’s tracking those contingency removals, letting the agent and the buyer know you’re aware of them and following upon them.

Not expecting everyone else to get them signed off. We’ll list our own homes because I’m an agent but lots of times, investors have another agent lists their home. Don’t expect that agent is going to be as diligent, as detailed or as urgent about these things happening because they may not be as you will know. It’s our job.

I got to ask you a question, JD. If a buyer in nowadays’ market gets an offer accepted below the asking price with an inspection contingency, not waving the appraisal with renegotiating things that come up on the inspection, they have to have a pretty high level of negotiating skills. Do you agree with that?

What you’re describing sounds very similar to the situation you went through with the Home Depot a few years ago.

No, I wasn’t thinking about that but now that you say that, that’s exactly right.

I shouldn’t use the word luck. You’re right. You did an excellent job of securing a great property for your family. It’s using principles that we’re talking about.

I just wanted to get that on record. Let’s keep going. Moving buyers to other inventory. Making an offer on one listing doesn’t work out. For whatever reason, we’re repositioning hopefully through another spot.

As an investor, if we have other homes that we own like at CT Homes, we have 36 homes. Not everyone has that may understand. They might have more than that. If you have other inventory that’s coming up, anyone that doesn’t get to buy one of our homes, if they have interest in it, we always want to talk to them about, A) What they’re looking for, whether you’re talking to the buyer or the agent. It doesn’t matter. If we have something else that comes up, we want to move them over to that property.

For example, there’s a neighborhood here in San Diego, one that’s called Serra Mesa. We have a ton of homes there that we’re renovating. When we list a home in Serra Mesa, we get a lot of interest but we’re only going to accept one offer and maybe a backup but only one person is going to buy it. We want to move them and find out what they’re looking for, square footage bedroom, bathroom, price and then give it to the agent.

They didn’t get the offer accepted but make them feel special and be able to go back to their buyer with something else to show them, “Unfortunately, we didn’t get our offer accepted but good news, this same seller and the quality of work that you saw in the home has another home across the neighborhood or across town if they’re willing to look at other places.” It puts you as a seller in a position to give them more opportunities and potentially if you have an off-market inventory, which is valuable in any market and the seller’s market.

Agents must love working with you.

That’s why we have so many great reviews online. It’s not because of our logo or we’ve been in business for an X amount of time. It’s because we do the things we’re talking about to give them tools to do their job better.

The phrase comes to mind, “A ton of feathers still equals a ton.” It’s a lot of little things you’re doing systematically, consistently from when the offer comes in all the way through.

It’s years’ worth of trial and error, success and not success, and then you continue to refine and adjust. What I’m talking about now will be adjusted tomorrow and be adjusted next month because we learned in the market but it’s building up towards giving whoever you’re talking to on the other end, whether you’re buying or selling. Everything that you can to put yourself in a position to win but more as important, they give them a position to win so that you help enough other people get what they want like what Zig Ziglar said, “You get what you want.”

We got one more here, the strongest buyer versus the highest price.

A lot of that has to do, like when we talked to the agent for the first time. For a bit, I give them some credentials about who we are and what we’re looking for. At CT Homes, we always look for the strongest buyer, Jeff. That’s a combination of price but it’s a combination of terms and also a combination of you as their agent and your clients in general. We are looking for the strongest buyer. We hope that coincides with the highest price and the strongest terms but the reality is it doesn’t make sense to accept if you don’t follow the tools that we’re talking about here, except the highest price and then get through 20/20 some days of escrow or closing time and then head back out.

If you lose time, you’ll lose money when you could accept the strongest offer that maybe was a little bit lower than the highest price but they’re going to be more excited about buying the home. They’re going to have the least requests for repairs or no requests for repairs. They’re going to rave about you as a seller in your company. They’re going to tell all their friends at the housewarming party about how much they love the home. The agent is going to go online and give you a five-star review. They’re going to bring other buyers to your home.

You hope that all that happens and they’re also the highest price but those are things that I dive into more at the offices of the academy and some of those questions like, “I know there are other homes on the market in Serra Mesa. What was it about our listing?” Those kinds of qualifying questions that got us to understand why are they the best buyer? The best buyer we hope is the strongest price but more importantly, we hope that they’re the best fit for the home.

Out of curiosity, what do you do when the home closes in terms of any housewarming stuff for the buyer or the agent? What are you doing to put the icing on the cake?

I’ll go over it quickly. There are two buckets. You have the people that bought the home and then you have the agent that represented them. For the agent that represented them, the day of or the day after the closing, we have an automated email that gets sent to them asking if they would like us to give them a review online. If you would, in exchange, would you go online and give us a positive review? That’s one thing.

A couple of days after the closing, they get a pretty nice bottle of wine that we send. I’m not going to go into how much the bottle of wine is, north of $50, but they get a bottle of wine. Whether wine or not, they’re going to appreciate that. There’s a nice card that they get with that and a couple of other things. On the buyer’s side, the couple, the individual, the family or whoever it was who bought the home, on the day of closing, we have an email that goes to them that clearly details how they get their keys.

When they’re excited, they go to the house and they can’t get in, that’s not a good feeling. We don’t want the agent to ask us, “How do my clients get into their new home?” We want them to know. They get that. There’s a home manual in the house already that has the colors that the house was painted, their warranties, any warranties that we give them or their appliance warranties. I’ll just touch quickly because there’s a lot. I personally write for every individual that buys a home from CT Homes a handwritten congratulations card. I’ve been doing that for decades. It’s weird when you type a lot than you have to write something.

It’s not preprinted. It looks like you wrote it. You’re actually writing it.

It’s not, “Hey, guys. Hey, dude. Yo.” It’s, “Mr. & Mrs. Jones.” I know what their names are if I haven’t met them. Many times, I don’t. It’s personal to them. It’s to my business cards. It’s a $100 Home Depot card. They get that in the mail. A couple of days after that, we have another secret service gift that we send them and you know what secret service is.

At the inspection that we go to, we find out something unique to them. As an example, a couple of years ago, a couple relocated from Maryland. Maryland is known for having great crab cakes. She told me at the home inspection that they miss Maryland crab cakes. A couple of days after they bought the home, we sent them a gift card for Maryland crab cakes. You’re right. This could be a whole other show because there’s more but those are tattooed questions. Those are some of the things.

To recap here, JD is a refined sales and liquidation strategist also known as, “Sell them quicker for more money in any market.” That’s the only quote that you like by your brother. Make sure I don’t mess it up. It doesn’t matter what the market is doing. It matters what you are doing.

When the market is doing what it’s doing and it’s true. You can sit there and say, “Why I can’t buy homes or I can’t sell homes depending on what the market is doing?” If you fight for your own limitations, you’re probably always going to win. You continue to follow what we’re teaching, get other training and education from us and learn what we continue to do in the market to separate ourselves and what our students do as well.

If you fight for your limitations, you’ll win.

Recapping with clear and honest communication, which all offers are going to get a counteroffer in some capacity. Once you accept your primary offer, always ink a sign back up. If available, you’re tracking the contingency removals, giving them a heads up. “It’s time to remove that contingency.” Moving buyers to other inventory if the house doesn’t fit and then looking for that strongest buyer versus the highest buyer. I would love to hear from you guys who are reading. If there’s anything that you are doing that’s working well for you, we want to learn as well. We’re master students.

As always on Facebook Live, I’m going to do a live Q&A. Any questions you have about this, getting the home sell quicker for more money or any other area of real estate, put them in there. I’ll aggregate some of them. I appreciate you tuning in. Go ahead and subscribe, whether it’s YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or on the audio versions. Share with a friend so we could reach more people. Thanks. See you next time.

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