Power Up 2022 With Real Estate Agent Connections By Alice Zen Adams

 

Real estate connections are important if you want to have strong listings and properties. Power up 2022 with Realtor Alice Zen Adams as she shares how you can find and keep those real estate connections. Learn how to be the first contact when an agent has a deal. Discover what listings to request. Plus, know what the one thing you shouldn’t rely on an agent for is. All that and more in today’s episode of REI USA.

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Power Up 2022 With Real Estate Agent Connections By Alice Zen Adams

My name is Alice Zen Adams, and I am here in the Arizona market. I have been a licensed agent since 2005, but I moved out to Arizona back in 2017 from Tennessee. I want to chat a little bit with you about how you can work with real estate agents and make those connections to power up your business and make it boom in 2022. Does anybody have any idea how many licensed realtors there are across the nation? There are over 1.5 million realtors nationwide as of December 2021. Is that not crazy?

The top three states, by far and away, have more than the other states. Florida has got 213,000. That’s the number one state for the most licensed real estate agents. California has 211,000, and Texas has 146,000. I’m here in Arizona, and it’s closer to the 60,000 mark. With all of those contacts, whatever state you are in, you should be able to make some connections and friendships and do some deals together in 2022.

There’s plenty, even if there are some that don’t have time for you or maybe your personalities did not click. There’s enough to keep looking and talking to them. To find an investor-friendly agent that you click with, you might even talk to as many as twenty. Some of them are too busy or say they are going to do it, and they don’t. I would encourage you to keep looking and make it happen.

As there are so many investors as well, it’s important that we can figure out how to be the first contact when an agent has a potential deal. As an agent, I can tell you that there are calls every week. Every week, somebody is saying, “I’m an investor. Can you send me some deals? What do you have? I need to buy in the East Valley in this price range.” There are tons of investors, but I don’t call any of them back. I have a couple that I work with that came to me and said, “Here’s what I can do for you if you can do this for me.”

It’s important to see it as a give-give relationship. When you are working with leads that are not likely going to be a deal for you, refer them to your agent. It looks good on you. You still provided that seller a solution. You are also helping out your agent by doing that. The script that we use as an investor to get agents up to the property is here. It says, “Mr. Seller, this looks like a property we would be interested in. We rely on our real estate agent to give us an as-is value for the property.”

 

When she comes out, she can go over our different programs. That might be a cash offer, creative finance, seller finance type situations, or whatever the agent has the skills to do or that you have taught them. She can present those different programs and any other options you might have. Is Monday or Thursday better for her to stop by? What we found is when we left it more open where they are still like, “They are going to still make me the cash offer, but the realtor is going to come out and take a look at the property,” it’s much easier to get that appointment set up.

When we talk to sellers and say, “I don’t think this is a cash deal. It’s not something we’re interested in. Do you want to list it?” The answer is always no. To get the agents in the door, we like to leave that open. She’s going to present all the offers. We still give her the cash offer so she can present it to that seller as one of the options.

Even if it’s not going to be in the ballpark they want, that can be turned over and turned into a listing, “We could get you another $30,000. You want to look at the possibility of listing this property where we can get it in front of all the buyers on the MLS.” This script has been helpful, and it did change the number of appointments we were able to set by leaving it more open. Where else can agents help? It comes off nice to be a full-service company for your seller. A lot of times, they want to sell to a cash buyer, but they still need help finding somewhere to move to. Everybody has to have a house.

Even when we are buying their home for cash, we still want to find out where they are moving and if they already have assistance with that. A lot of times, we can refer those buyer leads over to our agents. The big question that usually comes in is, “Can I get paid from these referrals?” Licensed agents are not allowed to pay referral fees per se but what they can do is pay you a marketing fee as they pay Zillow or Realtor.com for leads.

For me, that fee is typical $1,000, but it’s negotiable and something that you can discuss with that agent. It’s not a ton of money, but it’s $1,000 to put back into marketing, whether direct mail or the dialer for your calls, every little bit matters. When they get that big deal or that house that needs a lot of work, you are going to be the person they think about because you have been doing business with them.

Let’s talk about what listings you can request your agent to put you on an automated drip or an automated email for. Some of these seem very easy. I already knew that, but I have one for you at the bottom that’s a special one. We like to save searches for back on the market. Those are sellers that thought their property was sold, and for some reason, it falls through. Maybe it falls through a couple of days before closing, and they need that property to sell to buy their new house.

We like to get emails of the back on market properties and look at the expired listings. Maybe it’s something we reached out and they are fed up with the showings and why it did not sell. There’s some issue because this market is hot. Everything is selling. There’s pre-foreclosure and short sale. Those are people that may not know their options. Those are great opportunities for creative deals, meaning that with the right paperwork, you might be able to pay up what they are behind and take that over sub-to or subject to the mortgage.

Pre-foreclosure and short sale are big for us. Days on market over 60 days is a long time to be on the market here. That means that something’s an issue. They are overpriced, but maybe the house needs a lot of work. There are expired listings. One of my favorites that most people might not have thought about is to have them say the search in the areas where the seller per square foot sold as higher with a smaller square foot house in a large lot.
[bctt tweet=”To find an investor-friendly agent that you click with, you might have to talk to as many as 20.”]
I have a couple of rehabbers that buy from me. What they are looking for are 2-bedroom and 1-bath homes or what they can add an addition to. It’s got to have a large lot and a smaller house to start with. It can’t be in an area where the cost to build does not have a spread from what it sells for $1 per square foot. You might have to think about it for your city. I would venture to say that every city has an area like this where you have got small and older homes. There’s room to build on and that extra bedroom, master suite, bathroom, or whatever it might be.

There are tons of safe searches that can be set up. The agent can put down how often you want to get those once a day or once a week. We get them every day. It’s part of the morning routine to look through those properties and see if there’s anything we’re interested in. That’s why you are still drinking your coffee in the morning. Another way that we like to set up searches, so we receive the emails of new properties is to use keywords.

These keywords are verbiages that are used in the remarks where it says, “Gorgeous 4-bedroom and 3-bath house.” If any of the keywords you have asked for those houses to be sent to you are in the remarks, it will pull those and send them. There are hundreds of words you can use here. Some of the more common ones are cash, TLC, and foundation. If it’s got a foundation or a structural issue, it’s not going to be able to sell to a retail buyer. It’s going to be cash buyer-motivated, estate or inherited.

There are lots of words. It might be fun to think about some you could put in there that other people might not have. Does that make sense on keyword searches? The agent will go in and say words in the public remarks, put cash, TLC, foundation, or motivated, and you will receive those listings. This is the big one, in my opinion. This is where I feel a lot of people get tangled up and have some trouble.

The one thing that I do not like to rely on real estate agents or anybody else is the value of the property or comping the property. A lot of times, they can go right in. It’s automatic. Push a button, and the MLS spits out comps. Even on our tax records side in Arizona has got a comping feature. I find that what it does not know how to do is look through the pictures and say, “This one was not fixed up.” If it had been fixed up, maybe it would have sold for $30,000 or $40,000 more.

It’s pulling in comps that are not going to be in the same condition as when a property is rehabbed. I like to make sure that the investors that I work with, students, and as well as myself are able to pull those comps, make sense of them, and feel solid about it before moving forward. I also think that sometimes houses can be comped with nicer properties. Agents get paid when a property sells.

We are supposed to have the best interest of the client at hand. Sometimes comps can be pulled from higher-end neighborhoods and not be true to what the house is worth when you get done with that particular property. Realtors can send you comps but verify them. You will want to check out the recently sold. Here, we try to do it in 90 days because the market is appreciating so quickly. Check out the finishes that are used and make sure that the property is in the same or similar neighborhood.

The other thing in the super hot market is you will want to look at the pending properties. If the prices are increasing, we have a lot of investors here that are banking on that. They know that by the time they are done with the rehab in 3 or 4 months, the price of the property is going to be up from where it is now. To me, that’s hard. I don’t like to flip properties when I can’t see the value already, but very much it happens. There are investors that are taking that risk.

 

When we see the pending property selling at $20,000 or $30,000 more than the closed, we go ahead and put notes in there on that as well. There are about 22 non-disclosure states. What that means is that when you go to look up the sold price of the property, it’s going to have a dash or a blank. You are not going to be able to see it on PropStream, Zillow, or anywhere else that you are looking at your recently sold.

If you are in one of those states, you are still going to need to look at those sold properties. You may have to ask your agent to look it up and let you know what it sold for. Also, I don’t find it a big deal to call the listing agent. I ask them very straightforward, “We are thinking about flipping a house in the area. It’s similar to your property on 123 Main Street. May I ask what it sold for?” Most of the time, they will tell you.

If you are not able to reach the listing agent and you are still not knowing how to get value for a property, what you can do is look at the price history on Zillow. It will show you what it was listed for as well as the date that it went pending. If it’s sold or closed within 45 days, I make the assumption that it’s sold at the list price. You may want to do something slightly different. For me, we make the assumption that it sold at the list price. As long as we have more than one comparable, we can see, “This sold for $200 a square foot. This was $210. This one is $206. It’s going to be in this range.”

The issue is if you have got a comp that’s $250 a square foot and everything else is in that $200 range, there’s a reason that it sold for so much more. Sometimes if you start digging, you will find out there was a casita or an ADU, a separate residence, or maybe it had an inground pool. You may have missed that. I like to get free comps within about $10 per square foot of each other. You will take the $1 per square foot and multiply it times the square feet of the house you are looking at to get the ARV or the value on it.

On Zillow, when you scroll down below the property, you can see there’s one listed on December 21st, 2022, at $369,000, which is $189 a square foot. Six days later, on December 27th, 2022, right after Christmas, that went pending at $369,000. This is Texas. This was a Houston property. They have blocked out the sold price, but this is where you can find the information to help you comp your properties if you are in a non-disclosure state. Even if you are in a disclosure state, you will be able to see the sold price there and if it went over the ask price or not.

 

Important Links

• Alice Zen Adams
• Zillow
• Realtor.com
• PropStream
• REI USA – Facebook group
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About Alice Zen Adams

Alice Zen Adams is a successful real estate investor, educator and licensed real estate agent in Tempe, Arizona.

She started real estate as an investor friendly agent in 2005. After working with investors she moved into wholesaling herself. In the process she’s had her hands in all manner of real estate transactions including fix and flips, creative deals, and short sales. When the market tanked in 2008 she opened Foreclosure Care and negotiated short sale transactions for sellers and agents alike. In 2016, she started working for a national recognized education company as a Mentor Advisor. She has helped 100’s of new investors learn the ropes and make the next step towards financial freedom.

Her superpower is the ability to break down real estate education into actionable steps. Her favorite parts of real estate are the psychology behind talking with sellers, data analysis, contracts negotiation and when a client gets his or her first deal.

Currently Alice lives in Tempe, Arizona with her chihuahua Fluffy. She invests locally as well as virtual markets in Alabama and Ohio.