Real Estate Real Fast

In this episode of Real Estate Real Fast, Aaron Jistel discussed the market trends of 2022 and 2023. Sales were down 25% in Austin, Texas compared to 2021, and values are likely to continue decreasing in 2023.

Price drops are becoming more normal, and we can expect home values to decrease by 10-15% on average across major markets.

AirBnB prices will likely drop and vacancies will increase. Builders will continue to target first-time home buyers with incentives.

Home sellers should focus on their local market and pull out all the stops when listing a house.

Mike Singletary is an investor who has been in the business for eight years.

He specializes in outbound marketing lead generation and believes that the “burn the ships” mentality is important when transitioning into investing.

Mike recommends telecommunication marketing (cold calling and texting) as the best way to generate leads, and suggests hiring and training people if necessary.

In this episode, we’ll learn more about investor lead generation with a focus on outbound marketing, creating an effective outbound sales team, using data for sales and marketing, and more.

Connect with Michael Singletary on LinkedIn

Investing in owner financing can be a great way to build wealth and generate passive income.

However, navigating the complicated process of finding and closing these deals isn't easy.

Brandon Smith, who has over 13 years of investing and lending experience, specializes in owner financing and has developed a successful system for sourcing deals and minimizing risk.

In this episode, we'll learn more about his approach, how he finds and closes deals, and best practices for working with banks and private investors.

Connect with Brandon Smith on LinkedIn

If you want to sell your home during a down market, you’re going to need to be strategic about how you list your home.

There are lots of things you can do to get to a successful close but is everything that you spend money on worth it?

What can you focus on to maximize your success as a seller at the lowest price? What do you need to prepare before listing your home to be successful?

We’ll dive into how to make your listing more competitive and maximize your success as a seller with Julie Daniels, Director of Operations at ListingSpark.

Many buyers are exiting the market because of higher rates. But is that the right decision in the current market?

Despite rising rates, there are a lot of advantages that are coming into the market for buyers. Sellers are also willing to offer concessions.

So if you’re a buyer, how do you buy in the current market? What mortgage options should you be looking out for? What can you expect in the market in 2023?

We’ll dive into everything you need to know about current rates and loan products, with Justin Hrabovsky, top 1% mortgage lender.

New construction builds are becoming more challenging in the current real estate market. With shortages, shifting demand, and more, there’s a lot to consider when building new homes.

What can you do to have better margins when it’s time to sell a new house? How can you better prepare for any cost and demand changes?

And if you’re feeling tight on budget, how do you balance cost vs quality?

We’ll dive into how newer builders and investors can navigate the changing market with Greg Naughton, Owner of Magnets REI with 22+ years experience in construction and 10 years experience as an investor and builder.

• What are the primary challenges of building new construction in Austin

• Follow ListingSpark on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

In Austin, the biggest challenge for new construction builders is dealing with the land development process with the city of Austin. Even though there have been challenges with COVID, shutdowns, shortages, reduction in workforce, etc., the land process with the city is still the biggest challenge.

“First of all, there's the whole COVID era the last two years, which has added a level of challenges above and beyond what you would normally run into and face—shutdowns, factories, reduction in workforce, and so on.

But you know, I'd say all of the challenges here, could be rolled up into one major category. And that's navigating the process, the build process, the land development process with the city of Austin.”

The timeline for new builds can vary depending on the time it takes to acquire permits. To have the right expectations, go into new builds thinking it will take the process about one year. The two biggest hurdles are waiting for the demo permit and waiting for the building permit.

“Just trying to get a permit with the city can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. So if you're buying a property or you're going to scrape it, first, you have to go through a

The real estate market is ever changing for buyers, sellers, and investors. With pullback from everyone, you need to make sure you have the right strategy when approaching the current market.

Should you be offering concessions if you are a seller? Should buyers still be staying in with current interest rates?

What can you be doing to sell your house faster? And what can we expect from the Texas real estate market in 2023.

We’ll dive into how the current real estate market is affecting buyers, sellers, and investors with Ellen Steele, a Realtor with ListingSpark that has had over $10M in sales in the last 12 months.

• How buyers, sellers, and investors are adjusting to the current real estate market

• Follow ListingSpark on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

As the market shifts back to the buyers, sellers are having to make more concessions. Many buyers are adding up projects that need to be done and taking that off the list price. Sellers need to focus on taking care of any minus points to maximize their sale price. Even though there’s been pullback from buyers, sellers, and investors, first-time home buyers have found this market great to enter.

“What we've seen when buyers are coming in is that they are taking any projects that need to be done, anything that they see, and they're just subtracting that off of the list price. So pricing a house, if it's not perfect with amazing features, updated white kitchen, beautiful countertops, buyers have been offering less which is frustrating for sellers.

I'm recommending to my sellers to complete any projects that you have to do, painting, trim, kitchen, you know, light updates in the kitchen if you can. Bathrooms are also super important. Outdoor living is also a big area that people are looking at right now too.”

It’s important to remember that no one knows exactly what rates will look like in the future. Backing out of the market because you expect a lower rate in the future is also a gamble. Rates might not go down for a while so if you have a rate that you are comfortable paying, consider it because rates might go even higher and never come down to your current rate offer.

“I look today and we're at like 7.16 or something like that. I sold a lot of houses at 7% in 2005 through 2007 or six and a half percent

The Texas real estate market has come crashing down. Or has it?

Days on the market are up, home prices are down, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Is that the case for all major Texas housing markets? Or are some doing better than others?

What should buyers and sellers be doing right now? What should they expect in this housing market?

We’ll dive into the state of the Texas real estate market with Real Estate Real Fast host Aaron Jistel.

• Peaking into the Fall 2022 Austin housing market

• Follow ListingSpark on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

The Austin market has cooled down significantly since 2021 and early 2022. There is more inventory available and home sales are down. Even though the market has adjusted it’s still a high demand market with 2.9 months of inventory, well below a balanced market of 6 months of inventory. And housing prices are still up!

“In August, the median home value in the greater Austin metropolitan area was $496,000 and that's up 5%. New listings are down 6%, so there are less homes coming onto the market than there were this time last year.

And for a lot of reasons, that's actually a good thing.”

If you’re an Austin home buyer, there is a lot of good news. Even though there is a market correction going on, the current rate of new homes does not match the growth in Austin. Combine that with the fact that the cost to build homes in Austin is still high and you get a market that’s still worth investing in.

“From simple economic terms, our demand is still. Higher than what our supply is going to be able to accommodate. That's a good thing if you're going into a recession to know that you are going to have this surge of demand that's gonna continue, that is gonna help our housing market. In 2008, Austin and a lot of parts of Texas came out relatively unscathed.”

Austin is not the only market that’s behaving relatively well compared to how the housing market is trending. Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston,

Home inspections are a critical part of real estate. They impact both buyers and sellers and are key in negotiations and identifying any problem areas in homes.

Even if you’re buying new construction, you should be using a home inspector.

For most buyers and sellers though, they don’t know what they should be looking for in a home inspection. What kind of issues will an inspector be looking for?

And if the inspector finds issues, what needs to actually be fixed? Is there anything you can do to better prepare for future home inspections?

We’ll dive into home inspections and walk you through everything you need to know with Clayton Bailey, Owner of Green Scene Home Inspections.

• What Clayton and Green Scene Home Inspections do

• Follow ListingSpark on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok

Clayton is a third-generation home inspector. His business, Green Scene Home Inspections, has been in business for over 15 years and has inspected 10,000+ homes. Not only does Clayton have a home inspection business, he also creates courses for buyers, sellers, and realtors around home inspections.

“We're coming up on almost 10,000 houses that we've done as a company, in the 14, 15 years that we've been in business. We've got 13 inspectors spread throughout Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio. We do a fair amount of houses a month and absolutely love it. I also teach for American Home Inspector Training. So I teach for a national home inspections school that teaches home inspectors. And then I also teach CE classes to real estate agents as well. So they have to have that state continuing education to maintain their license.

So I travel quite a bit across the state of Texas going to different places to train home inspectors.”

A good inspector can take that 30-40 page document and coach you on what you should really get fixed and what’s worth negotiating with a seller. Getting a home inspector first is important because they can identify big issues where you might need an expert to come in and take a look.

“Typically we get contacted right after the contract is executed and they say, "Hey, you're, you know, we're in our option period and you got to go." So we're usually the first ones to get in. The benefits of having that first is so that if we find something going on in plumbing or electrical or HVAC or whatever, then you've got time to get those people in there to look at that.”

When the market was high, most buyers were only interested in the big issues. Now they

Building a real estate investor business is tough. You need to have the right people, the right processes, and the right tech to scale.

Even if you build everything right, things will still go wrong. The market isn’t always constant and you need to be prepared for shifts.

What should you do if the market goes down? How can you stay ahead as a real estate investor?

We’ll dive into how to source below market real estate deals, how you can grow and scale your real estate investing business, and how you can adjust to the shifting market with Dustin Ellis, CEO of Tallbridge Investments.

• How Tallbridge works for real estate buyers and sellers

• Follow ListingSpark on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

Tallbridge works as an intermediary between buyers and sellers. If you’re a seller looking to quickly sell a property, Tallbridge can work with you to cash out that property. If you’re a buyer looking to get a property at a reduced price, Tallbridge can help you connect with the right properties.

“We provide a personalized service to help owners sell their property to a vetted network of cash buyers. So from a seller's perspective, if you prefer not to use a traditional method through a real estate agent, perhaps because the property's in a rough shape and you don't have the cash or time to fix it up before you list it or perhaps there's some sort of financial distress or perhaps you're seeing an increase in foreclosures and are in need of quick cash.

If you're a buyer or investor and you're looking for an investment property at a reduced price and you want to get on our buyer's list, let us know what your buy box is and we'll definitely be willing to have that conversation and help sell you something as well.”

If you want to scale your business as a real estate investor, you need to be aware of your spending. Make sure you’re not spending on things you don’t need right now. You also need to get serious about forecasting and budget if you want to scale well.

“To scale a business, you need cash. I think two ways to do that and that is to increase your revenue and to, and to stop spending as much of what you're making. Right.

I would say for us, part