How To Find Success As a Realtor with Landon Chase | Episode 34

Summary

Summary of "How To Find Success As a Realtor with Landon Chase | Episode 34" on The David Greene Show

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Introduction

In Episode 34 of The David Greene Show, titled "How To Find Success As a Realtor with Landon Chase," host David Greene engages in a comprehensive and insightful conversation with Landon Chase, a rapidly rising real estate agent from Arizona. Despite having only 13 months in the industry, Landon has already achieved remarkable success, ranking as the top agent in Arizona and seventh nationally with eXp Realty. This episode delves into Landon's unconventional journey, his strategies for success, and his philosophy on integrity and client relationships in real estate.

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Landon Chase’s Background and Early Entrepreneurship

Landon Chase shares his entrepreneurial roots, beginning with his early ventures in buying and selling classic cars. Starting at the age of 14, Landon sold his first car, a 1980 Chevy Blazer, for a substantial profit by enhancing its marketability through better marketing and presentation ([05:47]). This early experience honed his skills in negotiation, deal-hunting, and marketing—skills that would later translate seamlessly into his real estate career. Landon's motivation was partly driven by financial challenges during his upbringing, as his family was involved in full-time vocational ministry, which imposed strict financial discipline. This environment instilled in him a resilient, problem-solving mindset and a commitment to ethical business practices.

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Transition to Real Estate and Initial Success

Transitioning from the automotive industry to real estate, Landon emphasizes the importance of leveraging skills acquired from his previous ventures. He highlights that real estate offers greater scalability and financial leverage compared to car sales. Within just over a year, Landon has not only sold numerous properties but also built a sterling reputation based on character and community trust. He attributes his success to a deep understanding of the market, active engagement in negotiations, and a genuine desire to serve his clients' best interests ([12:09], [16:07]).

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Core Strategies for Real Estate Success

1. Client-Centric Approach and Integrity

   Landon underscores that success in real estate is rooted in integrity and genuine care for clients. Unlike tactics often seen in other sales-driven industries, he prioritizes the client's needs over his commissions. A notable moment in the discussion is when Landon explains his approach to advising clients on financial decisions without personal gain:

   "I gave them advice that didn't benefit me because it wasn't the right thing for their family because I care more about that person than I do about getting a commission." ([16:07])

   This client-centric approach not only fosters trust but also generates valuable referrals.

2. Efficient Lead Generation and Relationship Building

   Addressing the common misconception that lead generation is solely about numbers, Landon emphasizes the quality of relationships over the quantity of leads. He believes that being a trusted advisor within specific communities—such as local neighborhoods, hobby groups, or cultural communities—yields more meaningful and lasting client relationships than broad, impersonal lead generation methods. He states:

   "People pick up on that. They tell their friends about that." ([12:51])

   Landon’s strategy involves deep immersion in community activities and consistently providing value, ensuring that he remains top-of-mind when clients are ready to buy or sell.

3. Strategic Negotiation Techniques

   Landon elaborates on his nuanced approach to negotiations, distinguishing between low-ball offers and strategic positioning based on market conditions. While he admits to enjoying the thrill of low-ball offers under certain circumstances—such as purchasing properties that have been on the market for an extended period—he also recognizes when higher offers are necessary in competitive markets. He explains how he tailors his strategies to each unique situation, ensuring that his clients receive the best possible outcome without compromising their needs:

   "Sometimes it's not about the price point. It has something to do with the price point depending on the seller." ([16:07])

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Maintaining Reputation and Community Trust

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the importance of reputation in real estate. Landon asserts that maintaining integrity in every transaction is crucial, as word-of-mouth within tight-knit communities like Arizona can significantly impact an agent's success. He shares experiences where his honest and respectful dealings not only secured deals but also strengthened his standing in the community:

"Your reputation is everything. If you don't have that, you haven't." ([24:46])

Landon’s involvement in community initiatives, such as working with the horse community in Cave Creek, demonstrates his commitment to building genuine relationships beyond transactional interactions.

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Handling Client Expectations and Market Realities

Landon addresses the common challenge of aligning client expectations with market realities. He emphasizes the necessity of educating clients early in the process to ensure they are prepared to make informed decisions without feeling overwhelmed. By setting realistic goals and providing comprehensive market insights, Landon minimizes the need for extensive property viewings, allowing clients to confidently make swift decisions on desirable properties:

"A lot of agents don't frontload correctly, they end up helping clients get to see what's on the market... you have to be ready, locked and loaded because your competition is going to take you out." ([36:23])

He introduces the concept of understanding the "croc brain," "midbrain," and "neocortex" to effectively communicate and lead clients through the decision-making process, ensuring they feel supported and confident in their choices.

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Building a Supportive Team and Leveraging Resources

Landon highlights the importance of building a robust support system, including mentors, reliable lenders, and efficient transaction coordinators. By delegating administrative tasks and focusing on client relationships and market analysis, he ensures that every aspect of the transaction is handled meticulously:

"I have an amazing transaction coordinator that does most of the stuff that would take me the longest." ([65:43])

This strategic delegation allows Landon to maintain high standards of service and scalability in his business operations.

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Navigating Industry Challenges and Future Outlook

Towards the end of the episode, Landon reflects on the evolving real estate landscape, acknowledging the influx of agents and the increasing role of technology. He insists that only those who consistently provide genuine value and maintain high ethical standards will thrive:

"In Arizona, with our price points, you're getting paid pretty well, but for what? What did you do?" ([73:04])

Landon encourages agents to engage in continuous self-reflection and adaptation to meet the demands of modern real estate markets, warning that those who fail to evolve may be replaced by more tech-savvy or value-driven counterparts.

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Closing Thoughts and Advice for Aspiring Agents

Landon concludes with practical advice for aspiring real estate agents, emphasizing the importance of mentorship, continuous learning, and building a strong professional network. He advocates for a balanced approach that combines market expertise with a sincere commitment to client satisfaction, ensuring long-term success and a positive impact on the community.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "You are the reason you succeed or don't succeed, not your brokerage." ([12:09])
• "Your reputation is everything. If you don't have that, you haven't." ([24:46])
• "The only thing you have control over is yourself." ([44:53])
• "Real estate is a people business, and if you're not a people person, you're in the wrong business." ([63:22])
• "Add value to people's lives, that's the only reason you're going to get paid." ([44:37])

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Conclusion

Episode 34 of The David Greene Show offers a wealth of insights into what it takes to excel in the real estate industry. Through Landon Chase’s experiences and strategies, listeners gain a deeper understanding of the significance of integrity, community trust, strategic negotiation, and continuous personal and professional development. Landon’s meteoric rise serves as a testament to the power of character-driven success and provides actionable lessons for both new and seasoned real estate professionals aiming to elevate their careers.

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Connect with Landon Chase

For Arizona residents interested in leveraging Landon Chase’s expertise in buying or selling a home, you can reach out to him via his website LandonChase.com or follow him on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Landon is committed to maintaining an active presence and providing valuable real estate insights and services to his community.

Transcript

[David Green]

Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate, the show where we cover how to build wealth in real estate with no fluff, no BS and no sales pitches. I'm David Green and I've been doing this for over 10 years. I've seen the ups, the downs, and everything in between. This is the show where we pull back the curtain and show it to you, too. So if you want to build wealth through real estate or you just love learning about it, you found your home. What's going on, everyone? Welcome to the David Green Show. We've got Real Talk Real Estate and today's episode is pretty amazing. I sit down with Landon Chase, the top agent in Arizona who has only been selling houses for 13 months. And in today's episode with Landon, we not only talk about how he had such a meteoric rise, but we talk about how it's the quality of his character and his reputation amongst the community that made a huge impact in his ability to be this successful. And we pull back the curtain and share what goes on in the world of real estate that if you're not in Egypt, you might not know. Today's episode is entertaining, it's informative, and it's fun. And if you've ever wondered what it's like to be a real estate agent, you're going to get to hear a conversation between two agents, getting into details about how to talk to clients, things that clients don't know, ways to negotiate deals better, how to set your expectations correctly, what types of deals you can write better offers on, and how to make the process of buying a house a lot less painful. Landon is a super bright guy with a great future ahead of him. He also talks about how he used some of these strategies to buy a house for himself at significantly less than the asking price. By the way, it ends up appraising for more than what he paid. So if you've ever wondered what it's like to be a real estate agent and you wanted to know what it's like to work a day in the industry, you're going to love today's show. And if you are a real estate agent, you're going to find yourself inspired with actionable and practical tips that you can use to improve your business today. And we're going to get to Landon soon. But before we do, a quick reminder. If you'd like to be featured on Real Talk Real Estate, head over to davidgreen24.com Ask where you can submit your questions to be featured on a future show. And if you like today's show, Please do me a huge favor and make sure you leave us a five star review wherever you're listening to the podcast, whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and make sure you're subscribed to the show so you get notifications of future episodes. Please enjoy this candid conversation with rising superstar, humble character, an all around good guy, Landon Chase. Landon Chase, welcome to the David Green Show. We're here to talk real talk real estate. Appreciate you being here, man. Let's start things off with just a little description of who you are and how you got into being a real estate agent.

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, so my name's Landon Chase. Love real estate and I loved it along long before I became an agent. And I think that's a really important thing that we'll draw out later in the episode. But got into real estate last, let's see, five or six years before that, I have bought and sold 100 cars. So that helped me tremendously getting into real estate, all classic cars, selling to other countries. And I started when I was 14. The first car I sold internationally, I was 15 years old. So that was, yeah, that kind of got me into the whole investment mindset, looking for deals, hunting for that diamond in the rough, learning to negotiate, learning to negotiate with people 30, 40, 50 years older than me and treating them well. A lot of the shows I was watching were just these hardball negotiators that treated people terribly. And you don't ever win a negotiation if you treat people terribly. You might think you won, but you didn't. So, yeah, I got into, I think, the money world through cars. I love buying and selling cars, working on old cars. And then as I got older, I needed to scale up. And you, you can make the same amount of money doing way less in real estate because of leverage, the size of deal, the risk you're taking. So yeah, jumped into real estate the last few years. I have an amazing wife and a newborn baby boy named Indy. We love him. He is wonderful and smiles all the time. And he also is a future real estate investor. I'm just working on him. Seeing enough of your podcasts, so need to start getting more of these out here. David.

[David Green]

So did Indy let you get any sleep last night?

[Landon Chase]

Last night he was, he was only up from like 1 to 3am and then 5 to 7am so he got some solid sleep last night.

[David Green]

All right, well, that's awesome. I did not expect you to tell me that you started off selling cars. So is this a thing where you would go on auto trader and look for a deal and you'd buy it for less than the Kelley Blue Book value. And you're buying equity here. Like, how did you get into this world of buying in, fixing up cars and selling them?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah. So I grew up, my dad always loved cars. He's amazing with them. He always had like 10 or 15 cool cars at any time. So I had this like, desire as a little boy of like, I want to buy and sell cars. Every car I'm ever driving is going to be for sale. I just like had that in my mind. And so when I was like 14, I saw a car on the side of the road. It was a 1980 Chevy Blazer. And I bought it for $600, drug it home, sold it for 2500 three weeks later. And so all I did was market it better than the guy that was selling it. He was selling it to a street corner where maybe a few hundred people were driving by. I took that car, I took it home, I took pictures of it, cleaned it up, made it look beautiful. I never drove it because I was 14. Made it look beautiful. Posted on Craigslist, ebay, offer up all the things and sold it very quickly for $2,500. And I was rich as a 14 year old. And then I got the bug for investing and it never stopped from there.

[David Green]

So did you invest that money back into like another car?

[Landon Chase]

Yep. And so came the next hundred. So, yeah, literally I just kept buying cars. I'd find them on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. You'd buy it somewhere where the desired client isn't looking. So like finding something on Facebook Marketplace. At the time, there wasn't a lot of guys looking for cars to flip on there. So I'd find an old Ford station wagon, buy it, and then I'd clean it up, fix a few things. Not too many because a lot of people go way overboard when fixing cars. I'd fix a few things and then make it pretty, take great pictures of it, market it well, throw it on ebay and I would sell it. I've sold cars to Australia, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands. I think one to Israel. It's. It's wild. So I'm like this 15 year old in the middle of nowhere, Washington, selling cars to other countries. And it's just about marketing. It's about marketing better than the last guy finding something locally and finding the market internationally. So it was wild. And I look back on it and I'm like, I've met 14 year olds and I was weird. That is not a normal thing to be doing at 14.

[David Green]

So where do you think that desire came from? Like where most 14 year olds are going to be drinking Mountain Dew and playing Call of Duty and watching cartoons or Dragon Ball Z. You're thinking about money. Did you just have like a more mature mindset? Were the oldest child, did you have financial hardship when you were young? Where did that desire come from?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, so I was the, the fourth of five. My parents got into full time vocational ministry so there was a lot less money involved in our life. And I have one other story to tell you about the first house I helped my parents buy when I was 10 years old. But we can come back to that. But they were incredibly, they were incredibly hard on me with money, which at the time I was very frustrated with because I had seen them buy my sister a 66 Mustang for her first car when she turned 16. But with me finances were different and I think they learned some lessons along the way way. And they decided we are going to be very hard on Landon. And it was the best thing for my whole life. I lived at a Christian kids camp where I wasn't able to be employed because my dad ran it and there was some board rules. So I lived there, wasn't allowed to be employed. My parents said you can't go get a job and we're not buying you your first car. And I was like, well, this sucks. And I was very frustrated for a few, for maybe a few weeks. And I was like, all right, I gotta solve this problem. And you'll learn that about me through this is. I love problems to solve. And this was a big one. But I was like, I'm figure it out. So I ended up buying and selling some small things and then I ended up buying and selling for that first Chevy Blazer. And then I was just off to the races where by the time I was graduating high school, I bought and sold a 1970 Mustang, fully restored, sold it to a guy in Australia and helped pay for college. Like it them forcing me to not work for money, not go and get an hourly job and save 8 bucks an hour and try and rack and stack cash that way was the best thing I could have ever learned. Because it's the rich dad, poor dad concept. It's don't trade your time for money. And so I would spend eight hours on a car and I'd make three or four grand and I'm 15 and I was like, oh, I'm not going to go work for eight bucks an hour. Are you kidding me? And So I guess it was out of a little bit of a challenge, my parents kind of threw the gauntlet down where I was like, all right, I'm gonna figure this out and I'm gonna figure out how to pay for a car, because I want a car and I also want to serve in ministry and I want like, I gotta figure out how to do this in a way where I'm still God honoring and I'm not lying, cheating or stealing. And I helped people the whole way through. I would find cool cars that I could help get into the hands of somebody that truly appreciated it. So I felt like I was doing a service every step of the way. So I don't know if that answers your question.

[David Green]

It's really good here. Something I want to highlight about it. I think one of the problems in American culture today is we treat young people like they are helpless babies, not children or young men and young women. Like the standard of what we expect out of young people today, it just personally, I think is ridiculously low. We'll talk about 25, 26 year olds and say, you're still young, you got your whole life ahead of you. As if that justifies stupid decisions that are very harmful and not good. Right? And you come along and you're an example of, here's a 14 year old could be described as a young man in some cultures, could also be described as a child, just depending on how you want to do it. But you're acting and making decisions and using mental faculties as a young man, an adult that is not as good as a grownup, who doesn't have the experience of a grownup, but is completely capable of doing exactly what you just said. And I think when you expect more out of people and you maybe support them and how to do it, people will surprise you with what they're capable of. Even younger people. And I don't think it's healthy that we treat 12 year olds, 13 year olds, 14 year olds, 15 year olds like they're incapable morons. Like, I know another gal, Brandi Salazar, and her kids have already flipped houses before the age of 14. They run short term rentals as a 12 and a 13 year old now. Her mom oversees it and helps them, but they're doing that work. And I just. For everybody listening to this that has kids or if you are a teenager, don't put a low bar on yourself and say I want low expectations when you could expect a lot more. Now obviously this set you up to go on to be much more successful. Is it Fair for me to say that you are currently ranked as the top real estate agent in all of Arizona.

[Landon Chase]

Yes. Yep. Number seven in the country for exp. So it's wild. And I started 12 months ago.

[David Green]

Okay, that's amazing. Now, how long have you been a real estate agent for?

[Landon Chase]

All of. 13 months.

[David Green]

Okay, so 13 months in, you're the number seven agent in the country for, I believe, ZXP right now. The biggest real estate brokerage in America.

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, Yeah, I believe that's correct. Very innovative brokerage. We don't have any brick and mortar offices. It's an honor to be part of them. Would recommend for any agents out there looking. There's a lot of great brokerages. I think a lot of. Sorry to get on this tangent. I think a lot of agents constantly change brokerages because they think that's going to solve their issue. And I. I think your brokerage has very little to do with your success as an agent. Um, I think it's a placebo and there's so many great educational things that keep transferring, but I think it's just a distraction from the real problem with a lot of agents. It's your brokerage. Is not your. The reason you're not succeeding. You are.

[David Green]

That's really good.

[Landon Chase]

My little soapbox.

[David Green]

So 13 months in. Top agent in Arizona. You're acknowledging here that you, as a person are the reason you succeed or don't succeed, not your brokerage. I've said similar things. It's not about where you get your leads. I think a lot of agents are on this lead train where they're always asking, how do I get a lead? How do I get a lead? Where's the leads? And if you're not a real estate agent, a lead is someone that we in the business would look at as someone who wants to buy or sell a house. And a lot of agents will pay money to get contact information of people who are likely to want to buy or sell a house. So if you've ever been on Zillow or realtor.com and you click the button that said, tell me more about this house, and you put your information in. You, my friend, just became somebody else's lead. And somebody paid money to get your information. BiggerPockets does this. Lots of different websites do it. It's actually a very common model to give somebody free content to get them to sign up for something, to then sell their information to somebody else. Now, Landon, where are your personal leads coming from?

[Landon Chase]

A variety of places. I would. I would back up real Briefly on that of the. It doesn't matter. I don't think it matters where you get or it matters where you get your leads, but it matters the type of person you are, if you are a used car salesman, that you need this sale or this person to buy a house for you to pay your bills at the end of the week, you have. There's something that's just on the edge of your breath that people feel and they sense and it's about you and it's not about your client and people that breeds. I mean, people pick up on that. They tell their friends about that. The. The thing that has really helped me be successful as an agent is I'm good if I buy or sell. If I don't, I do not. I'm not in a position where I have to buy and sell. We've got our own investments, we've got other things going on where I don't have a used cars carsman, car salesman's mentality where I'm convincing people to buy things that aren't good for them. Because it might help you in the short term to be manipulative or push people to buy something or sell something. That's not the best for them, but it does not help you in the long term. I was talking to a client the other day, potential client, and they have a 2.75% interest rate on a great house. And they were really considering, do I rent? Do I. Do I go buy something? Do I sell this? Da, da, da. And I gave them advice that didn't benefit me because it wasn't the right thing for their family because I care more about that person than I do about getting a commission. It was not. I could have given them very counter financial advice that would have benefited me, but that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to help people. And if they know that and they believe that referrals will come your way, if you are in it for these people, and I believe they refer two people to me because they knew I was giving them an advice that wasn't sound for me, but it was sound for them. So I think if your clients know you care and love them and you also have a great understanding of real estate, I think that's the foundation you need to build a brokerage, a real estate career on, is caring about your clients.

[David Green]

Hey, you. Yeah, you. I just want to take a quick minute to say thank you so much for listening to Real Talk Real Estate. Taking a quick break from the interview with Landon Today, for today's show sponsor, coast to Coast Real Estate is my real estate brokerage where agents can hang their license. I get training from me and my leadership team. So if you're a real estate agent and you like what you're hearing in today's show, you want better leadership, better systems, better guidance, and better knowledge, send me an [e-mail] Remember the E at the end of green and let me know you'd like to know more about coast to Coast. Landon, what would you guess is the number of real estate agents in the average person's phone? Like, if you just, oh, my God, sister. How many agents do you think that person knows?

[Landon Chase]

Oh, it's got to be at least a dozen. I mean, I think. And if you have a real estate friend, you know they're in real estate, like, it's got to be somewhere between six and 12. Every person's got to know six to 12 agents. And I agree.

[David Green]

Yeah, yeah. So the issue you have here is when you get your license, you may think you have a database of 500 people that are going to use you. You don't. You have 500 people that you are now competing with the other six to 12 people that they have in their phone, and they're being contacted by all of those people also when there's someone who wants to buy or sell a home. And so what happens when you get into this world is that you've got to be the top person for every single one in your database that you want to use you. And then we have to ask the question of, well, what does it take to be the top person? And you just mentioned it takes a good knowledge of real estate, the belief that you have their back, that you're going to do what's in their best interest. Can you list some other qualities that you think real estate agents need to have if you want that person to call you instead of somebody else when it comes time to buy a house?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, I think things like integrity, knowing that you. They know that you care more about them than you do about a commission. I think a big thing that I've realized is a lot of agents, I mean, you, you definitely know this, don't know what they're doing. And it's like, I think it's 67% of agents have never invested in real estate. They might own a home, they might whatever, but they've never invested in real estate. So for me and my circle influence, my friends, the people that know me, I've been investing in Real estate. I understand real estate. I've made decisions that have played out over years and people have watched that. So your credibility doesn't come when you get a dang license and a certificate from the state. You're not credible. You know a bunch of laws that, an acronyms that you're never going to use ever in real estate. I mean you might, but I won't. I have got a great team of people that, that help me on that side. But your credibility does not come from a certificate. Your credibility comes from your character, your expertise, the hard work you've done to study the market, to understand the market. Yeah. And being able to deliver. I think right now when I show, when I get a client that wants to buy a house, the most I've showed homes, like taken people out for showings, I think is twice. Most of my clients I do so much research on the front end and, and pre negotiation looking at the deal and I bring it to them. I only most of the time need to show homes once and we go under contract and rock and roll. And I don't waste their time and I don't waste my time. But there's a lot of lazy agents out there. It's like let me set you on up on a drip and it'll be passive and you ping me if there's a good house. People don't know what they're doing when they're buying their house. It's their biggest financial decision they will ever make and they're coming to you for you to instill confidence and to be the, their, their guide through this process. And agents are, want to sit in the back seat and drink their latte and relax and hope that this deal comes together. I would have lost most probably half my deals if I would have been passive in the deals. I was very active, very active in the negotiation, active with the motions. There was a double ended deal I did where buy, sell, where the whole thing was blowing up over interest rates, money down, this, this whole dance. And I got involved with the lender, I got involved with my client, talked through. It's like sometimes you're doing counseling for these people, helping walk through emotions and because it's the biggest financial decision they're ever gonna make and they want to know they're doing the right thing. And if you can't instill that confidence in people, good luck. In the real estate market you, you gotta be the confident one. You gotta be the one that has their best interests in heart. And yeah, I've just found that Doing that. It has led to some great deals. It's led to a lot of trustworthiness in the community I'm in. And yeah, it's worked out well. It's worked out.

[David Green]

So words getting around. Someone has a good experience with you, they tell other people within that community, they're more likely to come to you.

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, yeah. I think everybody's had a bad experience with an agent, I mean, which is very sad. But good, good experience with agents is just few and far between. And people get into real estate thinking it's going to be easy and it's not. It's, it's definitely not. And it feels like I'm in Arizona and it's like everyone's plan B here is to be a real estate agent. And it's like the only other job you can get is a Starbucks barista. And you're also a real estate agent. Cool. That's going to really instill some confidence when your client rolls through the drive thru and says, hi, yeah, come on.

[David Green]

So real estate agents in Scottsdale are the equivalent of actors in Los Angeles. Everybody goes there and says, I want to be an actor and until then I'm going to work as a waitress or a waiter.

[Landon Chase]

Totally, yeah.

[David Green]

Now one of the things you mentioned was people in the community are going to spread the word and they're going to come back to you. How important do you think it is for a top producing agent to have a specific community or communities of people that all know each other versus shotgunning themselves across a whole bunch of people on social media where there isn't word of mouth of a specific community?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, I think it's very, very important. I think whether it's your church community, if it's a hobby group, you're part of a car community. One for me is just the neighborhood I live in. Everyone in the neighborhood knows me. We bring Christmas gifts to everybody, cookies, we meet the, the sweetest old lady is 90 years old and we talk for three hours in her living room and have a great experience there. So it's, I mean it's being personable, it's being having community, it's having credibility. But yeah, I'd say it's vital make sure you are known in a community, you know people and that people trust you. Because the way you live your life, it speaks volumes. If your car's a mess, you drive a beater, you're never dressed well, you don't keep your life in order. Why would somebody trust you with the most important financial decision of their life? They're not gonna what?

[David Green]

Yeah, yeah, that we talked about. The quality of person you are is how that person who has 12 agents in their phone makes their decision. They're going to go with the one that they think makes them feel the most comfortable. So you got to be that thing. If you don't operate with integrity, if you're not going to sit and talk to somebody for three hours because there's nothing in it for you. People get that vibe and they're like, well, I'm not going to use Landon. I'm going to use the person who does do those things. Something else that you made me think of when you were talking there. When I ask top producing agents, how are you getting your clients, it's almost always from a specific community. Someone that speaks Mandarin, that says all the Mandarin. People come to me. Someone that's very popular within the Russian community and all the Russians are going to them. Somebody who is in a car club like you said earlier. And everybody in the car club is using that person. One of the top producing agents in my office is a barefoot water skier. And so he's on the lake all the time and. Or on the river. And everybody that water skis knows Mike. And so everybody in that area, when they want to sell a house or buy a house, they go to Mike because they all talk about Mike is the guy you want to use. There's something strategic about that that's very wise that you mentioned. Like, even a church community, the people in the church are going to share their experience with you is great. And most of us, when we ask a question like, hey, like, I need to buy a car, if you told me, david, you got to go talk to Terry over here. He's going to take care of you. He's the best one. And I have a good experience with Terry. I'm probably not going to keep looking. I don't want to talk to seven different people. Most people are that way. How have you been able to tap into that within your business? And how much effort do you put into maintaining the reputation that you have so that those referrals keep coming back?

[Landon Chase]

Oh, I mean, your reputation is everything. I mean, if you don't have that, you haven't. I mean, give up for sure. If I. If I don't have integrity in every deal, in every interaction that I have, it. I mean, it is a very short fuse before. I have no credibility, especially in a place like Arizona. As big of a place as it is, It's a small town. And, yeah, I think Another community tangent. We've gotten really into the horse community here, and there's not a lot of great agents in that space. And we. We have a horse rental. We have a property that we house hack on. We live on that property, and we rent out our main house. And it's generally the horse tenants that are moving from out of state. They come there, they use our horse stalls. And we're really flexible with our lease terms with them. Like, whenever you find a house, let me help you. I'll show you around the community and introduce you to some people. And I've gotten three or four great deals through that process as well. House hacking. Huge shout out to that. I know you're a big fan of that, but if I don't maintain that integrity with the people that are renting from me, with the people that are in my community, the word gets around. And you're just a cancer at that point in the community. And even if somebody's working with you, if they hear something about you down the road, it's so easy to change agents. It's so easy to just jump ship, like. And the next deal, I'm always like, all right, I got to handle this deal, because they're going to do another deal down the road. We did so on the horse community. We had a friend or some people we met through a Facebook group in the horse community, moving here from out of state. They wanted to rent from us. We didn't have availability. So we're like, hey, I'm new to real estate. It was like, my first month or two. Let me go show you some rentals. And we took them all over town, showed them some great spots up. And it's called Cave Creek, Arizona. Great spot. I didn't make any money from finding Marin.

[David Green]

I really like.

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, it's amazing. Love cave.

[David Green]

Oh, there was a crazy. Sorry to cut you off. There was a crazy storm when I was in Cave Creek. It was, like, one of the craziest storms I've ever seen within five minutes. Wild lightning, an absolute monsoon of water. We were recording on YouTube and that storm hit. I remember going outside and not filming it. Maybe I'll see if I can find something in my phone to, like, put on YouTube how crazy that storm was. I was like, I thought we were in the desert. What is. Where's all this rain coming from?

[Landon Chase]

The storms here. It's wild. But I helped them find. They actually rented two places that day. I made a little bit of money, but it was like. Like, the guy was even like, hey, Are you gonna make any money here? I was like, no, But I'm just glad you guys are moving the Valley. And I want to help you guys and want to stay in touch and come to find out. He's a huge apartment developer and I'm now just a year later, helping him with a big deal around the corner from where they got rentals. But most agents would throw their nose up at helping somebody find a rental. Like that's not something in Arizona people are helping with because there's not, there's not a benefit. So I like to operate under. I give without expectation of return. I have no idea if it's going to work out well for me. But honoring people, treating them well, it generally comes back. So that's not why I do it. But it works out well.

[David Green]

Well, when I was starting my real estate agent business, I didn't do as good as you did in 13 months. I mean, people thought I was a phenom and you're making me look lazy. I remember every client that I had. I wasn't trying to just close that deal. Of course, we all want to close the deal, but I was always thinking about, after the deal closes, are you going to tell everyone they need to use me? I was thinking about, I want a business for 10, 20, 30 years in the future with these referrals that are coming back. So when that client's driving you nuts, when they're a head case, when they're spazzing out and you're talking to them at 9:30 at night, trying to make them feel confident or whatever, you're always thinking, I want your referrals in the future. And I think with the agents that fall into the transaction type approach, like, hey, I'm helping you to get my paycheck and then I'm done. You may win that battle, but you'll lose the war in your career. You're not going to get those referrals. They will tell people, you don't use this agent. They weren't very good, versus you have to use this agent. Is that something that you think maybe your personality or your character are just conducive to because you do like to serve and you do like to talk to people? Do you think you're just like made in a lab with the perfect traits to be a top producing agent?

[Landon Chase]

I. I don't think so. I think I probably have a more natural proclivity towards it because I grew up in ministry and in church. I want to bless people, not take. But I think really I looked When I went in to be an agent my first year, I said I'm going to plan on making no money. I'm going to invest in relationships, I'm going to invest in people. If I do get deals, I have no problem. I've helped people with so specifically first time home buyers. I love helping them. Like if I can, if I can credit some money back for closing costs, if I can buy home warranty, if I can, whatever I can do to make it work for them, they are just investments. I most of the people I've been mentoring for years, a lot of these first time home buyers in finance, in real estate. So it's so exciting to see them jump in and buy a home that I don't care if I make any money, which most agents aren't there, but I'm going to get referrals, whatever. Like that's not what I'm doing it for. But if you bless people and treat them well and go into your first year not thinking you're going to make any money, you're in a great spot. Most people can't do that. But if you can figure out a way to get a little Runway, maybe it's three months, maybe it's six months. I think the reality is most agents don't make money their first year. But if you can just plan on blessing people and investing, look at those, all those first deals as huge investments. You're faithful if little, be trusted with much. So I'm going to invest in these people and do my very best, go the extra mile. Treat that little condo deal like it's a multi million dollar deal. I mean just plow the field, do everything you can to make it a smooth deal. Treat them like, like they're a luxury client. It's gonna work out well. And that's how you should be treating them. Like. So be really good stewards of what you get. Treat them well and don't be in it for the money, especially to begin with. Like I think that'll come. But it's not why you get. It's probably why most people get into real estate. I get that. But if you have that mindset, people smell it, people sense it and it makes people uncomfortable.

[David Green]

Yeah. If you say to yourself, well, I'm only gonna try when I have a $9 million client because then it's worth it. When you get the $9 million client, you're not gonna have any repetition or experience with what you're doing and you're gonna screw it up. When you treat Everybody like a $9 million client. You get enough repetition, enough experience, you start getting some negotiation confidence. You start getting some experience of recognizing where things are going to go so you don't drop the ball when they give it to you. That's just. I love that you're pointing that out. You got to treat everybody the same because just the experience of getting a transaction under your belt as a real estate agent is so valuable. It doesn't happen that often, I'd say. What do you think most agents close like one to three deals a year?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah.

[David Green]

Yeah.

[Landon Chase]

Somewhere in there. Yep.

[David Green]

Yeah. It's not a lot. So most people that say, I've been a real estate agent for 10 years, I have 10 years in the business, they probably sold 10 to 30 homes if, if that. Right. That's. We're doing that on our team like every month. We're doing more than that. So just someone saying how long they've been in the business doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be good at it. It's literally how many times they've done it. You also said something earlier that I don't want to gloss over here. You mentioned that there's a lot of clients that you will show one or two homes to and they will write an offer. I need you to explain to the people who are listening, who are not an agent that think I need to see more than one or two houses before I can make a decision, as well as to the real estate agents who would love to do this, what is your process? Let's pull back the curtain and have Landon share. What are you doing to prep people so that they feel comfortable pulling the trigger and writing an offer on a house that they've seen when they've only seen one or two?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, absolutely. So often I'll have an initial meeting with them and just what are your goals? What is, what is the purpose of this purchase? Is this a first time home buy? Is it? Where do you work? I really get to know them and I don't go into it like, hey, I'm a one shot, one kill, like that. That was never my intention, but I don't think agents do nearly enough work on the front end to get to know their clients, to get to know their desires, their wants, their needs, the purpose of the home, the price point, all of that stuff. So I especially in the first time homebuyer category. And first time homebuyers can be very difficult because they don't know what they want. But that's where leadership as an agent Comes in. A lot of agents are solo independent operators. You have to be good at leadership when you're, when you're an agent because you're leading the people that are looking at the homes and you are guiding them through in a very important decision. So I'm going to get all their criteria in depth, as much as possible, all their wants, desires, and then really understand why they think they want to be in certain areas. And then sometimes I'll challenge that and be like, all right, we can do this and this, and we could end up in this area closer to your job or this area closer to your church or your family, like, let's let me challenge and any of these ideas. A lot of agents just go with the flow. Like, oh, the client's always right, the client's always right, but they don't always know what they want. So you really got to have some of these conversations on the front end to dig in, to understand because they've never bought a house a lot of times, or they've bought a house 10 years ago or. Yeah. So you really understand them and then you really do a lot of research. You go home, I go home. My wife helps me a lot. She's amazing. She's a very detailed person. And we just throw it up on the TV screen. We do tons of research. We find like three to five good candidates. And so when I say I show homes once, I'm taking them to three to five of the best homes that I could find close to their criteria in one day. And so then I show them all. We talk about how quick certain homes will go on the market, how long they've been on market. Negotiating is in Arizona. It's not always low balling. Sometimes it's how do you get your offer accepted when there's 13 other ones and most competitive offer situations I have won, I think 8 out of 10 I think I've won out on. And a lot of that's your lender and yeah, your team. We can talk about that later. But you gotta be able to win out those negotiations. So negotiating isn't always low balling. People think that at not true. Sometimes just getting the deal done. But yeah, so I get to know your client, get to know their wants, desires. And you often have seen way more homes than them. So you can predict what's going to work for them probably better than they do. And if I, if I am struggling with their vision for a house, I'll show them one in that area, that house type, whatever, and then I'll show them an option that I think would be better for them. And I'm not pushy with it. I'm just presenting options and presenting. What does this deal practically look like for you? And. Yeah. So does that. Does that answer your question?

[David Green]

No, it's great that I. So you're proving that you're loading up the front end and it's not magic. You're not twisting someone's arm to make them buy a house they don't want. You're actually, as I'm listening to you, I was thinking about a book I was looking to grab. Have you read Pictures, Pitch, anything by Oren Cloth Landon?

[Landon Chase]

I don't think so. No.

[David Green]

It looks like this right here. And the name is a little douchey, so I wasn't a huge fan of it. I never read it because I didn't like the name. Incredible book. We interviewed him on Bigger Pockets podcast. The. The book is about how you can sell somebody on something. And he talks about how before anybody makes a decision, they. The stimulus of what they're facing has to go through three stages of their brain. The first is called the neocortex. That is the part of your brain that tells you, this is gonna kill you or this is gonna hurt you. It's why everybody's first impression is bad. So you meet a new real estate agent and you say, hi, I'm Landon Chase. And they go, oh, you're. You have commission breath. You just wanna take my money. It's always the first thing that someone's gonna think. You have to overcome what he calls the croc brain, or it's often called the amygdala. Because your first assumption is always, this is bad for me. And the idea is, if the first assumption you had wasn't this is bad, we would all be dead. When you hear a twig snap in the woods, you need to assume it's a tiger. You can't assume it's Santa Claus coming with early Christmas presents, for sure. The next part of your brain that processes information is called the midbrain. And this part basically takes that set of stimulus and compares it to all the other things that it's seen within a similar social setting. So a twig snapping in the woods might be more scary than a twig snapping at a birthday party when you know somebody's hitting a pinata or something like. Like that. And the third part is called the neocortex. And this is the part of your brain that analyzes things from a logical, rational perspective. His. One of the points he makes in the book is we all make the mistake of communicating with the person we're talking to from the neocortex, because that's where we are not recognizing. They're still at either the crock brain or maybe the midbrain. And they're not ready for the logic of why it's the best house. Now, I found this is very helpful for real estate agents or real estate investors because we typically skip the midbrain. Most people understand that the crock brain's important. You meet a new person, you're smart enough to know. They're not gonna know me. We need to get to know each other. I gotta talk to this old lady for three hours to get her comfortable with me. That's what you're doing is you're smoothing out the croc brain as she's trying to figure out, can I trust this young man that I don't know, or is he gonna rip me off because she doesn't know you from Adam? The midbrain is the part we always wanna rush through and get right to the neocortex. And so when agents don't frontload correctly, they end up helping clients get to see what's on the market, which satisfies the midbrain. They want to look at all the houses that are available to them, and that way they know what the best one is by taking them out in their car and driving them around. And they end up showing 40, 50, 60 houses before the client feels like my midbrain is happy. I've seen them all. Now I know this is the one that I want, and it's not good for anyone. It's the same with investors. When I'm new in a market and I haven't seen what's out there, and you bring me a house you say is a great deal, I don't know that it is, because what if these things are everywhere? I don't know that it's one in a million. Especially if you haven't told me that this is very rare and you see them all the time. But when I feel like I've seen a lot of deals in that market, when you bring me something below market price, I jump on it right away because my midbrain is satisfied quicker. Right? So a lot of when you're making decisions, you're trying to figure out, how do I get my croc brain happy, how do I get my midbrain happy, how do I get to the neocortex as quickly as possible? Because that gives me a Competitive advantage. And when you sit down and you go over all these houses, part of this is that your midbrain knows this is the best deal for the client because you've looked at all of them and they trust you. But I bet you that you're also showing them, hey, this is what's on the market and look how quickly they sell. This is part of like a presentation you're giving or a conversation you're having where you're explaining. You don't get to drag your feet in Scottsdale. You don't get to drag your feet in these hot markets. These houses go fast. So we need to be ready, locked and loaded because your competition is going to take you out. And you had mentioned that. I just wanted to kind of explain for the people who may think, well, he just sounds like he's lazy. He doesn't want to take people out. No. In the time it takes you to go show 10 houses, the house they want literally could have been bought by somebody else. Do you have anything you want to share, just like how your process works under that framework?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, I have a really great mentor that one of the best things he taught me in real estate was showing the data. So we pull comps when you're going to list a house, but we don't do as good at, I don't think agents do as well at pulling comps when you're helping somebody buy a house in the sense of how long will this house last? How often do these houses come available? So if we want a house in this area at this price point, at this number of bedrooms, it's a once a week deal. There's going to be four this month. Or it's a once a month deal. If we don't get this one, we can wait till next month, no problem. Or it's a once a year deal. And it's like, hey, you need to jump on this, like, and I'm always honest about that stuff. And I think it's a very helpful metric for people to realize, like, okay, if not this one, what are we waiting for? And I think what you called out there, showing somebody 40, 50 homes, you're basically, you're trying to catch them up to your knowledge level. And that's not leadership, like, that's teaching, which I teach all the way through every step of the way. When I do a real estate deal, I'm over explaining, but I, they know I've got it. They know that I know what I'm doing. I'm showing them the right things. I'm instilling confidence in leadership through this because they didn't want to go to school to be a real estate agent. They don't want to be. They're not in the market to be an investor. Like, it's my job to do that. And I mean, I think, quite frankly, that's why commissions are getting cut and all kinds of things out there is because it's a bunch of lazy people that like ordering Ubereats, don't leave their house, often dress poorly, don't wash their cars, and they don't know anything about investing or finances or what an interest rate is. And they give people bad deals and bad advice. And so if agents cared more, we wouldn't be running into these kind of problems because we would be delivering on our duties as an agent. Agency isn't a thing, it's just a paycheck is what it's starting to feel like for some of the people out there.

[David Green]

One of the things I'll tell the agents on the David Green team or in the one brokerage, for the people that sell houses there, is when you respect the way that the human brain makes decisions. There's a crock brain, a midbrain and a neocortex. You are actually making yourself a servant of your clients. You're operating in the way that they need you to and you're putting them first. And coincidentally, it makes it easier for you when you try to force them to buy the house because you said so, or you scare tactics. If you don't buy it, you're never going to get a house at all. You're going to pay way more. You might in some cases get the person to go into contract, but then you have the worst escrow ever because they didn't feel comfortable when they got there. They want to back out of it. Oftentimes they do back out of it and then they switch agents and now all that work you did was for nothing. And then they get bitter. This is a common process with real estate agents. And then you get phrases like buyers are liars and you can't trust these people at all. And then when I say, well, tell me what your process was like. It's horrible. They didn't sit down with the clients at all. They didn't figure out what they want. They didn't ask the clients any questions about the process. They just put them on a drip. Said, what houses do you like? Said, do you want to write an offer? Don't even answer their phone unless the person's texting Saying, I want to write an offer. Then all of a sudden you're getting red carpet treatment. Like you said, this is very common in the world of real estate agents, and it's why I think we have such a bad reputation. It's part of what I think led to the Sitzer Burnett fallout. For those that don't know, this is the recent lawsuit where real estate brokerages were sued for MLS collaborations. And now it's coming out where you have to negotiate your commission with your agent ahead of time instead of just letting the seller pay for it. What advice do you have for agents that are stuck in that bidder cycle where they're upset with clients for wasting their time and they think it's something that the clients need to change, but the clients are sitting over there like, I can't trust any of these agents anymore. How do we reconcile this?

[Landon Chase]

If you're going to be a victim, quit. Just get out. And if you want to take responsibility, take responsibility. Realize you're the only thing that can get better. I'm sorry, I just. I don't have a lot of.

[David Green]

I love that line. You're the only thing that can get better. That's the only thing you have control over. Right?

[Landon Chase]

The only thing. And those are the only agents that are going to turn the next corner are ones that take responsibility, deal with reality, and do something. And if. If you're not going to treat your clients well and do the extra work and do what the other agents aren't going to do, you're going to be replaced by some digital buying resource that's way cheaper than you because it's providing more value than you, because it can at least tell you what the interest rate is and the cost per month in the price per square foot. Like, that's the reality. If you're not more valuable than whatever the next technology is, get out, because you're not going to last. You should figure out another career. But if you want to add value to people's lives, that's the only reason you're going to get paid. You get paid for adding value and helping people.

[David Green]

That is really good. I promise everyone. You don't have any home buyers or sellers that wake up that morning and say, you know what would really make my day? If I could waste an agent's time. People do not think that way. They're just as frustrated as the agents are. And also, I would say there's no agents that wake up that day and say, you know what? I want to be completely inept at my job and I want to fumble this thing terribly and make sure people hate agents. It's what I think the key is. Exactly what you said. It's taking responsibility for being better and asking, well, what could I do differently that would make this person feel more confident trusting me, get them able to move quicker. And maybe that's why people listen to podcasts like this, so they can gain some of those skills. What other advice do you have for agents to help them prepare so that when the right house does come up, they're ready to move and their client can write the offer that they need to write? Because you mentioned earlier, a lot of people think negotiation is throwing out low ball offers and hoping that they stick. But in, in a market with a house that's sitting there forever, that's a legit strategy. It's been on the market for 200 days. See how low you can get it and if you can convince the seller to take your offer or you catch them at the right day, that does work. But that's when you're competing with the seller in a hot market, when there's seven other buyers for that house, you are not competing with the seller. You are competing with the six other people that want that house and may want it more than you do. How do you help your clients understand that they can't just write a low offer and you can pull a rabbit out of a hat to make the seller accept it?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, and, and don't get me wrong, I love low balls. I mean, I bought our, one of our houses and I wrote six offers in two days and got it like 25% under what they were asking. It was amazing. And it was middle of summer here and been on market for 100 days. I got offered 100 grand more than we paid for it the next day from the neighbor who thought it was way higher price. So I do love low balls. I'm a sucker for low balling. But it's not the move, especially in the first time home buyer market because there's so many programs, there's so much movement in that price point. In Arizona, they go overnight and they. I mean, literally one of the deals we did had 15 offers and we got ours accepted and it wasn't the highest one. So a lot of times it has nothing to do with the price point. It has something to do with the price point. It depends on the seller. But so I have a great team. One of those is my lender. And encourage everybody. David has a great company. There's a lot of great lenders out there, get to know them, have a variety, because I have a variety that I pull out for different situations that I'll refer for my clients to. My favorite one can close a deal in eight days and that is the one that is just money for getting these first time homebuyers done. Because we can do a condo, which a condo is more complicated located with all the HOA docs, do a condo in eight business days. And I can make the same offer as an all cash offer because I can close so quickly and people will jump at that. And if you're willing to lead your client so you never want to do this, it can be risky where, all right, we're not asking, we're going to take the house as is. So I do that on lots of the deals where we are fighting for it. We're taking the house as is. I'm not waiving the inspection. At least in Arizona I can do that. I'm not waiving my inspection, period. So I explained to my client, if there's something major, we can back out where we could still ask for a credit if we want to hold this deal together. So we waive inspection, we make a solid whatever the offer we can make, the best and highest we can make with the best terms we can make. So if we can waive the inspection or rather take the house as is, if we can get it closed quickly, if we can do leaseback, if that's what the client needs, whatever we can do to sweeten the deal that's non monetary. Can be hugely helpful to get something to get yours to stand in the front of the line of offers rather than the back of the line. And yeah, I've had really good luck with that. Is that, is that answering your question?

[David Green]

It's a big piece of it. Yeah. It sounds like when you were talking earlier, you were mentioning that you're not just negotiating with the seller. Sometimes you got to negotiate with your own client because their expectations are unreasonable. Right. So they hear the story of, well, you got a house for 25% less than what they were asking. Do that for me. You're like, all right, well, I did that on a house that's been on the market for 100 days. It's ugly as sin. The thing's hideous. It smells horrible. Oh, I don't want that one. But you see that pretty one over there in the really nice neighborhood that's like moving. Ready? I want you to do it for that house. They don't quite understand that the way you lowball is by buying a house nobody else wants. When you're buying a house everybody else wants, there is no secret strategy. There's no love letter you're going to write. The sellers just want what's in their best interest. So you have to be that. Now, one of the ways you mentioned doing that is just what you said, you maybe don't always adjust the price, you adjust the terms, but then they're going to be afraid that they don't have an inspection contingency. So when someone's in one of those markets, which, if we're being frank, these are usually the markets that make the most money, the hottest markets have the houses that are appreciating the most and the rents that are appreciating the most. And over the next five, 10 years, they build the most wealth, but they're hardest to get into. The markets that are easy to get into usually don't have a lot of movement going on. And so the prices don't go up and the rents don't go up and they're not as good for long term generational wealth building. What are some of the ways that you help mitigate the risk that a client is going to take on if they have to waive an inspection contingency, shorten a period to do it, pay more money, etc.

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, so I have, I have yet to recommend completely waiving inspection contingency. We just write in terms which a lot of agents don't know this. You can just write in the terms, we will take the home as is, we will not request any repairs. I didn't go down to my offer part where I said that we were gonna waive inspection and mark anything there. Inspection period is as normal. We're just not gonna ask you for anything. We're not gonna nickel and dime you. Which gives a agent a lot of peace in the deal. But like I did one deal, we did that exact thing. We said we're not asking for any repairs. Turns out there was a foundation crack. So I called that agent and I said, hey, just letting you know we're going to back out of the deal or if you guys would be open to a credit. I know we said we wouldn't ask for repairs. If you'd be open to a credit, we can keep this deal together and still close on time. And we got four or $5,000 credit for that and we moved on. We were good. So I am not a big proponent of waiving the actual inspection, but saying you're not asking for repairs and nine times out of 10 that's worked. We haven't had to ask for repairs. But it's all expectations with your client. It's, hey, there are going to be a laundry list of little things on an old house that you're going to have to fix. All you're doing is saying, hey, I'm not going to ask you to deal with 18 little things on the house. If there's something major we can still get out. But for whatever reason that's really helped with agents is, but also, or with clients and getting deals under contract. And then the other thing is having a great relationship with the agent on the other side. I had a deal that the single reason we got it accepted because they got way more offers after ours went in, was because I had such good communication with the other agent and they knew that I was going to deliver on exactly what we said we were going to deliver on. And she wrote me this long text and my, my client, after we bought the house and got it and everything, they framed the text and gave it to me. They printed it out and framed it because it's so funny. They said, the only reason we're accepting this offer is because you seem like an agent that's going to be great to work with all the way through. I felt great about myself. But so it's, it's, there's a lot of parts of being a good agent. It's your interactions with the other agent. It's how you lead your client, it's how you set expectations. Expectations is everything. If you tell your client, yep, we're going to go in low ball every property we'll lowball 15, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, okay, sometimes that works if they're an investor and they're looking in the, like the investment type properties, like you said, the ones that need a lot of work. But if you're in that cute condo in downtown and it's a great neighborhood, you're not doing that. Correct. So it's.

[David Green]

Unless you're in 2010, when everything is for sale and it's all sitting there forever and you're in a recession and you can't find any buyers that are pre approved. And those that are pre approved are scared that if they rent it out, the tenant's not going to pay their rent, you just have a whole new set of problems. In those cases, you can throw lowball offers out. But I, I think one of the issues that investors get into is they want the perks that come from a bad market with the security that comes from a good market and vice versa. And it's never going to happen. You have to take on the challenges of that specific market. And on this podcast, we like to pull back the curtain and tell people about. This is what goes on behind the scenes that you don't see if you're not a real estate agent. And you mentioned something earlier about a request for repairs. Can you describe what a request for repairs is and what people need to be wary of as a buyer in a hot market where a seller can kick you out of contract when they make an extensive list of repairs that they want done?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, we, yeah, I think as buyers, we can all of a sudden get like, oh, it's a buyer's market. You get a little. It's almost like you're a little bit entitled. Like, well, I should get a perfect house. And you ask the seller to do 85 things. I had one deal like this where we there it was non negotiable. We asked for like 37 things. And I felt terrible submitting it. And it was only because this is.

[David Green]

What goes on behind the curtains when you tell your agent, hey, I need these 37 things fixed on the house or I don't want to buy it. And the agent just sits there with a blank stare like, okay, anytime you hear them say, we can do that, you need to hear what they're really saying is, I can't tell you no, but this is a really bad idea. I love that. Right? So you're hearing this and you're just like, oh, you're putting me up in front of the firing squad right now with this 37 request document. So, yeah, explain why that's something that you don't want to go do. How the sellers are going to feel when they hear that.

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, that specific deal, we had already gotten a fair amount of money off and we had more of a verbal that we weren't going to nickel and dime them. We didn't write in the contract or anything. We were going to be reasonable. And then we became very unreasonable. And like I said, so what you're.

[David Green]

Saying is, sorry, you told the other agent, hey, if you accept our offer, this will be cool. Like you said, your rapport with the other agent is very helpful. You use that rapport to get your client into contract and then your client.

[Landon Chase]

On a hot deal, first day on market, great deal, best thing they'd seen. And so it was. I felt like I lost some of my integrity in that moment because it's, it's difficult when you're executing on your client's desires, you want to. You assume they're as reasonable or integrous as you are. And that can be really difficult. And so, but sometimes as an agent, all you can do is say, all right, I will do it. Because in that situation, there isn't a choice. I'm submitting that request, and they can say no. And the other person, they were contingent on a deal, so. So they didn't have a choice and they did it. But that has been the one out of 100 for me. That's not my normal. But it's very uncomfortable. Like, if you're thinking about buying a house, listen to your agent. I mean, find a good agent. And if they're a good agent, trust that agent that they're going to lead you in a good way, in a way that's going to get the deal done. And treat others with respect. Because when you go to sell your house, you're hoping somebody treats you with respect. And it. I mean, if. Yeah, it's just not very fair. It's not very. Everybody wants a peaceful transaction. I feel like in every deal I've had, there's been like a hostage negotiation point where it's like, all right, I got. I gotta make this happen on both sides because everybody's got their gun up right now, and this is about to not end well. And I can see why so many agents. Deals drop out, because I have. I've been negotiating since I was 13, 14 years old, so it comes more second nature to me. But if you have an unreasonable client, it becomes very stressful for your agent trust. If you find a good integris agent, that they're giving you the best possible information in that deal and informing you the right way. Because if you don't trust your agent, might as well just go do the deal yourself.

[David Green]

And that's a disaster too. When people try to go for sale by owner, they try to do it without agents. It's. Unless you have a wild discrepancy in leverage. You have somebody who's like, I got to sell the house tomorrow and I don't care. I'll take whatever you give me. Anything outside of that. Those. Like you said, everyone's got their guns out, the bullets start flying. And I think it's because no one really understands the big picture. They just understand their perspective of it. So the buyer is thinking in their head, it's unreasonable to have me buy your house with all these things wrong with it. You, as a seller should be providing a house with these 37 things fixed. And the seller is saying, I took your offer on day one when I could have held out for something better. I could have created a bidding more. You're lucky that I took your offer. And every house has these problems. Why are you freaking out about all these little things? Both sides have a perspective that they think should be different. Both sides don't trust the other one. And then when you get into that mode of not trusting them, your crock brain comes, comes in and says, you're trying to rip me off. You're trying to screw me over. The seller has the option of saying, screw you. I'll put my house back on the market. The buyer has the option of saying, I will back out and not buy your house. And you're in a bit of a standoff. Now, you mentioned the seller was contingent on buying another house. What that means is if they had kicked your buyer out of contract, they would have lost the deal they wanted. So they were kind of stuck over here where they had to put up with it. But if that hadn't been the case, you're saying they would have likely told the buyer to go kick rocks. I'll put my house back on the market. I'll sell it to somebody else for more. Your buyer would have been out the money they spent on a home inspection, the money they spent on a home appraisal, and they would have been back on the market looking for something else. And guess what? The other houses you're looking at, they're going to have those same 37 things are going to be wrong with them, because most of the time you're not buying a brand new house.

[Landon Chase]

And that was a great lesson for me to learn on setting expectations with my client. Because inspection reports, oh, my gosh. Is like, okay, these 93 things, great. Um, so I, I've learned to very much explain what's coming and explain what's normal. And if something really abnormal happens, that's where I clarify. This is very abnormal. And I'm going to tell my client that, But I'm going to set expectations that, all right, your home's from the 80s. It's going to have these things and these things wrong with it. We can get down on price, or we could go full price and then maybe we'll have some more wiggle room. But in this price point, they go too quick. They're not going to have a lot of leverage. There's so negotiating is knowing how to meet the. Your buyer, the seller, the market, all those ingredients together, putting them together to get A deal done like you are pulling all these parties and dynamics together, market conditions, to hopefully get a deal. And if you're not understanding where the market's at, where your clients at, where the seller's emotions are at, what's their situation, you can't help your client very well because you. You got to know all the ingredients to be able to have a good end result because you're dealing with people. Real estate would be a lot easier if it didn't involve people.

[David Green]

That's 100% true. But then we wouldn't have a job because AI would be able to do it for us, which is what I have to tell my agents all the time whenever they complain about people, people, people. I'm like, yeah, it sucks. And that's why we get paid, because we got to be able to smooth out those emotions. We have to be able to communicate what they didn't understand. And I think, Landon, that's one of the reasons you're good at this, is you are good with people. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to the David Green Show. You've heard Landon and I talking about lenders. Well, guess what? I've got a mortgage company that will take care of you. The one brokerage is the one brokerage that does it all. If you're looking for loans for conventional real estate, primary residences you want to live in, and investment properties, hard money loans, rehab loans, all of it. We've got the best programs in the country. Our loan officers are trained by me and meet with me weekly to make sure that they're hitting the highest standard of excellence. You can check us out at the One Brokerage Comm or send me an email at davidgreen24.com and I'll connect you with one of them personally. So if you're using a different company to finance your real estate, you're crazy. Let's get you off the crazy train and on the road to success. Send me an email and tell me you'd like to know more about the one brokerage. I think the top producing agents need to have a motor. They got to be able to talk a lot. They have to be good communicators at getting people to understand things. That's one of the reasons that I don't think I stayed in production that long is I don't like talking to people that much. I like solving problems, but I don't necessarily like.

[Landon Chase]

You don't like talking. I'm a little thrown off right now. What are we doing?

[David Green]

I don't mind talking when I'M talking to somebody when I have to listen to what they're complaining about. I get it. Yes.

[Landon Chase]

Oh, that's clear. Okay, okay, okay.

[David Green]

Because sometimes it just feels like you're never going to get out of it. My motor couldn't last as long as I think someone like yours does. They can. You like human beings. You genuinely like getting to know people. You have a very, very impressive personality that's helped propel you to where you're at. What do you think about agents who do say things like, I just don't like people. Like, do you think they should be real estate agents? If that's the perspective they have?

[Landon Chase]

No. I don't know who led them astray. I Like, it's not a plan B. Like, it shouldn't be your. Like, it shouldn't be. Well, like, I didn't make it in business, so maybe I can be an agent. Like, it's not like that. You need to have a deep care for people because you're never going to last. If you're a manipulator or you don't like people, you're in the wrong business. Real estate is a people business, and I guess it's probably less common to be a people person and understand investing numbers, finance, market data. That's probably the sweet spot for an agent that's gonna succeed is if you care about people and you understand the market and investments. It can be a challenge. So, no, I think there's far too many agents that are in the marketplace that just shouldn't be. And that's. It's okay to accept, like, hey, I shouldn't be an agent. I'm not cut out for this. Because you just end up switch. Like, I think those people just switch brokerages way too much. They complain. They're all in the Facebook groups right now. Oh, my gosh, the Facebook groups are hilarious. With all the. The NAR settlement, all this stuff. Complaining, complaining, complaining. I was like, you know what you could do with all this energy? Go meet with some people. Be a good friend. Be a mentor to somebody that needs to learn about finances. Do something.

[David Green]

That's an amazing point. Yeah. There are way too many agents. If somebody is listening to this, that is not a real estate agent. We probably have five times as many agents as what the market actually can support, for sure. Maybe. Maybe more. There's just way too many of them. And so there's not enough business to go around. And then the wrong personalities are in this. I think that's why we had the settlement in the first place. Is no one likes real estate agents and we've sort of done it to ourselves when it comes to transactions. I think you've done a great job sharing a few things that go on behind the scenes that someone who's not a real estate agent might not know. What are some other things that people who are not real estate agents should know about what the process is like when you're negotiating or once you go into contract, or what expectations you should have? What are some tricks that you've learned for helping get people into contract or helping keep contracts alive that someone would benefit from that doesn't live in Arizona that can't use you as their real estate agent that you've seen working in the business for all of 13 months now?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, I'm an expert obviously, like every other millennial real estate agent. But no, I have. I would say one of the biggest things is get yourself a killer mentor. Obviously podcasts like this are like a mentor. Books are like mentors would encourage you consume as much content as you can. Cause you're gonna find tips and tricks and then get an in person mentor. That's been a huge blessing to me is I have a great guy that he was my agent before I became an agent and then he has been cheering me along all the way through this and been giving me tips and tricks. Cause in some sense like first year, I'm not faking it till I make it. I know a good amount about real estate, but I don't know everything about being a real estate agent. And I could instill a total lack of confidence if I didn't exude confidence in it. So I have a great mentor that helps me through that. I think practically there's a lot of great things you can do in deals to get them under contract. I've made when I understand a market and I understand the value of something, there's been a couple of times where we've offered over asking and that can be really scary for a client. But when you say, all right, we're going to offer ten grand over asking and, and that's, oh my gosh, that's so much money. Hey, it's going to cost you $42 a month to pay for that 10 grand. Would you rather have this house and $42 a month more because you're, you're financing it, it's not like you're paying for that extra ten grand. I think a lot of agents don't understand that either is if you understand a market, you see an undervalued piece of property or where comps are far out justifying the price point, you, you just make the offer, ignore the list price, make the offer you need to make to get the deal. That's a fair market price and I have had it appraised. Every single time I've done that I just bought a house for ourselves and it over appraised by quite a bit. I was shocked. And yeah, I think understanding that you can finance over asking, you can finance credit that comes back to you to pay for closing costs and pay for a lot of things in a deal crediting for those that don't understand pulling back the curtain. It's so I'm making an offer. I want to offer 10 grand over asking, but I want that 10 grand back at closing to pay all my closing costs because I'd rather have less cash out of pocket. I'd rather keep my ten grand and pay $42 more a month than pay an extra ten grand for closing costs. So I often will wrap that into the loan and that helps my client. The seller generally doesn't care. Sometimes it's not the most positive thing. If it's a house without other offers, it's pretty easy to get that done. Their only concern is is it going to appraise? And I'm always very confident I get I can get something to appraise because as an agent a lot of agents won't work with appraisers. They won't get involved. They're very like I'm going to sit back and just see what happens. That's another value I add is I'm going to say if I'm ever at all hesitant on the price point, I'm going to send that appraiser 4, 5, 6 comps that prove the value is better than what we're making an offer at. So I know the house is going to appraise. Every time I'm talking with the agent, every step of the way I'm talking to the lender to make sure the deal goes smoothly. I'm making sure a lot of times for these first time home buyers, something I've really helped to the first time home buyers jump into the market. There's so many programs out there where the government's gonna pay your down payment or match your down payment or I had a client that just got a I think $35,000 grant to help with their down payment. There's some amazing programs and that will help a first time homebuyer jump in a lot quicker. I've had two first time home buyers and they have put five grand and seven grand into the deal to buy their first house. That's it. And that is mind blowing for these young people. Like educating people that you're not spending 100 grand to buy your first house. You can spend very little, your payments can be a little bit higher, but interest sucks right now. So plan on doing some sweat equity, raise the value of the home and refinance when rates come down and you're going to be in an amazing spot. So I'm a big believer in the. Less cash out of pocket is often a good move, especially in this kind of market. But you got to educate people on all of those things, explaining all of those things so that when you get into the higher pressure moment and here's the deal, this is the one we got to do. I don't want to get a whiteboard out and explain all this and convince them because then I feel like a salesman. But if I'm prepping them ahead of time on all that, then when it's like, oh, this is the situation we talked about, like, let's do it, let's go, then they're super excited. And sometimes clients have to miss out on a few deals. All right, we made an offer. Our offer came in last. Like, that's just reality. Sometimes that has to happen a few times for them to come to reality of like, okay, we're going to make the strong offer to get the thing that we know we want so that we can get into a house. So every deal is different on how to practically get them done. Yeah. I think your lender matters a ton. Build great relationships with lenders. Yeah, Yeah. I think mentorship, figuring out the tips and tricks in your local area is super important. I have an amazing transaction coordinator. So what a. I don't know if all agents know what that is, but a transaction coordinator does most of the stuff that if you're good at selling and good with people and good with market data, you're probably not good with paperwork. I'm awful at paperwork. That is, I'm going to do a disservice to my client if I do it. So I have an amazing transaction coordinator that does most of the stuff that would take me the longest. And she makes sure every eyes dotted, every T is crossed, everything's done right so that we never have an issue and I can focus on getting more clients, serving my clients well, agent relationships, all that stuff. So I don't go into this like I'm going to act like I've been here for 10 years, not act like it's my first year and I need to do everything because that's not how you scale business. You scale business by building a team, investing in your team, caring about your team, building good relationships so when push comes to shove, you can make it happen. And yeah, yeah, hopefully that answers your question.

[David Green]

Yeah, that's, that's great. Just the idea that you can save some of your cash and you can finance it, especially when you have low rates. This was even more of a no brainer when you were in the 3, 4% interest rate. Oh yeah, you could borrow another $10,000 and add it to the loan. Instead of putting $10,000 of your cash in, save that $10,000 and remodel a bathroom. Save that $10,000 as reserves for bad times. Save that $10,000 to buy your next property. Whatever the case would be. It's very hard to come by 10 grand. It's much easier to come by the 20 bucks a month or 30 bucks a month that it's going to be to finance that $10,000. Especially when properties are appreciating and rates are low. So that's the thing, like you said, if people don't know that that's a thing they can do and their agent isn't telling them, listen to this. Now they can go tell their agent that is something that they want. If you could change anything about the industry of real estate agents, what would you change?

[Landon Chase]

I think the industry is changing what I think probably has to be changed to fix what I think needs to be fixed. I think agents that don't deliver for their clients that are, that aren't actually doing the work, they're all about to be weeded out. We're going to lose more agents than we've ever seen in the coming market. The whole thing's going to change. I think we're going to see tech get involved. We're going to see different types of brokerages. I mean it is a huge shakeup. But you talk about efficient market theory like that's what's happening right now is if you're not a guy that or gal that provides value, you're no longer going to be in real estate. Because those people can't just get a free ride because they're friends with their person they met at a coffee shop and they're just going to skate through the deal and get the deal done. You're going to only get deals and you're only going to get paid if you're providing real Value. Because like in Arizona, with our price points, you're getting paid pretty well. But for what? What did you do? Like ask yourself, I would be very self reflective as an agent. After every deal, what value did I provide? Did I get a deal done that no one else could get done? Did I help guide my client to a great house? Like be self critical on how could I have done better and how will I do better the next time? We don't need a lot more self esteem in the industry. We need a lot more self reflection and self ownership. We cannot be victims in this next season or agents won't make it. It's not going to happen. I love that the whole, the whole.

[David Green]

Ethos of don't listen to your haters. As if there's this whole contingent of people that wake up and evilly rub their hands together and say, how can I hate on a complete stranger today for no reason. If you have a hater, it's probably something you're doing that isn't that great. In fact, I think it's wise to start there and assume my tone wasn't good, my approach wasn't good. Rather than just dismiss any kind of negative criticism as hating, look at how there might be an element of truth in it. And if that is true, even your haters can become your teachers, they can become your mentors. You can get better. Doesn't mean that you should live in fear of criticism. And it doesn't mean that every form of criticism you should take to heart. But you should start there. I always do. There's legit criticism about me in the Internet and oftentimes I read it and I go, you know what? There actually is some truth to that. I could do this better, I could do that better. And that is the process of self improvement that you just described. And if you do that, if every time something goes wrong like you described earlier, you then make that part of your process with the next client. You will get better as a real estate agent, you will get better as a real estate investor, you will get better as someone who manages wealth. And then you will have more wealth come your way because you're a more trustworthy manager of it. Landon, just want to thank you for your time today and also congratulate you on your meteoric rise. You're an example that it's not time in the industry that makes you successful, it's the quality of human being that you are and maybe an element of being in the right place at the right time and then capitalizing on it, which I think you've 100% done, and I just want to congratulate you on that. For people that live in Arizona that would like to reach out to you to help you buy or sell a house, how can they get ahold of you and where can they follow you?

[Landon Chase]

Yeah, I'm. I'm on Facebook, Instagram. My website's Landonchase.com My wife keeps it very up to date, so I'm very grateful for her at Landon Chaser. So you can find cute pics of my family and some real estate stuff and follow along with my car projects at my social media. So would love to meet you if you're in Arizona or. Referrals are great, too, for agents. Just if you've. If you've got a friend moving out of town, you can help them find an agent better than they could find and you'll get paid. So that. That's a fun hack. Fun fact. Fun hack. I learned this year as well. So, anyways, yeah, find me on all the social media, head over my website. I've got my contact info there.

[David Green]

All right. Thanks for being here today, Landon. We will do this again.

[Landon Chase]

Sounds good. Honored to be here.