A senior realtor in the Minneapolis market, Rhonda Wilson, joins the show to talk about real estate in 2022 and strategies for clients to win negotiations.
Rhonda explains that it’s difficult for buyers to get units; clients need to be prepared and have a good downpayment. She also shares some statistics from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors (MAAR) and National Association of Realtors (NAR). She discusses how real estate agents get more inventory in the market as well as supply and demand issues. They also talk about seller tactics that are drawing interest from buyers.
Reuben mentions that many homeowners skipped home inspections in the past year. While Rhonda needed to convince sellers and buyers to get an inspection and not to buy a house that is not inspected, she highlights that it’s more time and cost effective. Further, she explains why getting a home inspection is a win for both buyers and sellers. Rhonda proceeds to discuss the things she does and recommendations she gives for sellers in getting the best appraisal and buyers to win the bid.
Contact Rhonda Wilson at 612-860-0189 or visit Coldwell Banker Realty at cbrealty.com.
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is a transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be slightly incomplete or contain minor inaccuracies due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Bill Oelrich: Welcome everyone, you’re listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name is Bill Oelrich, alongside Tessa Murry and Reuben Saltzman, as always, your three-legged stool, coming to you from the Northland, talking all things houses, home inspections, and anything else that’s rattling around in our heads.
[music]
BO: On today’s episode, we are excited to welcome back Rhonda Wilson. Rhonda is a senior realtor in the Minneapolis market, she’s been doing this for a very long time. She has her license with Coldwell Banker Realty, she specifically offices out of the western side of the Twin Cities market, Wayzata, and we wanted to check in with her and get an update on the market, what’s 2022 gonna be like as compared to 2021? And so, she kinda sets us straight about what she’s seen in the market, but as the conversation went on, we found out about a new strategy that she’s using to help her clients win at the negotiation table. Everybody knows that we’re in a seller’s market, and there’s a ridiculous amount of offers that are coming in on any of these houses that are in great shape in the market right now, but Rhonda has figured out a way to help her clients win. So, I hope you enjoy the conversation. We loved having her on the program. Enjoy.
BO: Rhonda, we are glad to have you back with us. It’s always a pleasure to get to spend some time with you. And we are so curious for a market update, what is going on in the real estate world right now?
Rhonda Wilson: Okay, well, it is crazy. It’s crazier than it’s ever been in my years I’ve been in the business. And even back when the foreclosure period, that was really hard times, that was hard to sell properties, and now it’s the exact opposite. You are… There’s so many multiple offers and it’s really hard for buyers, very hard for a buyer to get, and it’s even… It’s not even just in certain locations, it’s everywhere, it’s even rural areas and people are buying cabins and everything. And you have to be prepared and you have to have a good down payment, because sellers want buyers that are gonna close. And when you have multiple offers, they pick the most likely buyer with the highest… Likely to close buyer with the highest offering price. And they might try 10 different offers before they finally get one, and some of them just give up. So it’s very difficult.
RW: I was doing some market statistics for you guys, and the places that are the most reliable for us to go to are MAAR, with Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors, and that… It’s a local thing, and then there’s NAR, which is National Association of Realtors. And just to put it in perspective, for MAAR, in our market, in last… In 2021, 6.1 million sales, and they’re expected for 2022 to be 6.4. And the number of average offers on a house is 3.8, overall, 3.8 offers. So, most sellers can expect to get multiple offers. And then from the NAR, National Association of Realtors, we had… The median sale price for our area here went from 305 to 339.9, $340,000, that’s a big jump in one year, from ’20 to ’21. And so, people who do get to buy a house end up enjoying appreciation and we hope that it hangs around, I don’t know if it will, and then there’s the… What’s now a new term called exburbs, instead of suburbs, it’s exburbs. Exburbs, E-X-B-U-R-B-S is the new term for going out rural, and those people are enjoying the same increased price.
RW: So even if you try, you get more house for the money, a bigger house, a bigger yard, if you go rural, but it’s still, relatively speaking, expensive. So it’s really hard for buyers. And I work both buyers and sellers, and the name of the game as a real estate agent right now is, I want listings ’cause they sell and it’s easy, fairly easy. Buyers, you have to go out and show ’em all these properties and write several offers, and so, I’m always trying to figure out, how can I save my time and my client’s time and not go through the pain of a buyer not getting a house? So, I have come up with some things that I do for buyers and things that I do for sellers to get the most money for the seller and for the buyer to be the successful one to get it. I could share that with you if you guys are interested in that information.
BO: Well, I’d like to ask you a question about the sellers, what are you able to do with sellers to kinda coax them into putting their house on the market? ‘Cause we’ve heard about this inventory crunch, and it feels like until a seller puts a house up for sale, we’re never gonna see this log jam pass or break loose. So, how…
RW: Yeah, that’s…
BO: How do you as agents get more inventory on the market? What kinda…
RW: Well, that’s hard because if you’re a seller, you’re gonna sell your house, but you’re gonna replace it and make another purchase, you’re in the same boat, you’re gonna experience the same thing, and nobody likes to over-pay for something. Some people, some agents I’ve heard, and I think it’s a good idea, is to have a seller list a property contingent upon them being able to find a property. So, a buyer would actually give them a purchase agreement, but it’s like a reverse contingency where the seller can back out if they can’t find something, that’s one idea. Some buyers, if they really want the house and it’s a great house, they’re willing to take that chance, but there’s a likelihood that that seller might not get a replacement house and then they cancel the purchase agreement and they’ve lost time and maybe the interest rates have gone up. To get a seller to sell, some of them want to, because they know they’re gonna get way more than they ever dreamed they would get, but if they’re replacing it, then no. So it’s hard, it’s hard to get inventory. We talk about that in business meetings and stuff, and it’s… How do you motivate a seller?
BO: Do you believe, prices are at an all-time high, do you think there’s a bubble in the market? Or do you just think it’s supply and demand issues?
RW: Well, nothing lasts forever. We all know that, right? So something could happen that would make it change. I don’t think it’s… I’ve always maintained that housing is a necessity. It’s one of those things that we’re always going to need, food and housing. So it’s a commodity that will always be popular. So from an investment standpoint, if they’re… Just like buying in the stock market, if you buy for the long term, then you don’t mind the ups and downs. Real estate is a really good investment for most people, unless they keep buying and selling, and try to play the market. So, I don’t know if I answered your question or not, but…
BO: One of the questions that I have is it feels like this inventory crunch has been going on for several years, probably two or three years at a minimum. And I would think the market would respond, and when I say “market”, I put air quotes around that, like whatever… Builders or developers or somebody would bring to the market a solution that would help break this log jam that I’ve talked about. But for an older, somebody my parents age, who are in their 70s, they’re not moving out of their house. They’ve decided they’re gonna go down in this house. My dad would like to downsize but frankly, it’s gonna cost him as much or more to downsize than it would be to just to stay in his new house. Why hasn’t the market responded with more inventory?
RW: Well, it all begins with new construction, truthfully, that’s what drives this. And it’s too expensive to build, to get the land. And I noticed an interesting thing, the city of Minneapolis used to… They now allow in certain areas and with a certain width of lot, you could tear down a house and put up a town home. I sold one that’s three put together, and there’s two… So you don’t… ‘Cause the lot’s not wide enough to have more than that, but they’re allowing that. And so that’s interesting. The one I sold had an elevator in it, so anybody of any age could live there. But it’s really expensive. So that’s a little bit of a solution if you can fit more housing on one lot from a savings standpoint, but it’s really expensive to build anything now. It’s the shortages and the uncertainty of the cost of materials and availability is really hard. It always has relied on new construction and when new construction’s down, that’s when you get the log jam.
Reuben Saltzman: Now Rhonda, I wanna ask you a little bit about our world as home inspectors. We’re super concerned about people being able to get into houses and get them inspected because that’s our life blood. If people don’t get home inspections, we don’t work. And we’ve seen a lot of people skipping the home inspection. It happened a lot last year, and it doesn’t seem to have let up. I thought it was just kind of a temporary thing that was gonna go for a few months, but here we are well into 2022, and it doesn’t seem to have let up. Are you seeing the same thing?
RW: Oh, absolutely. I have to convince people that they need to have an inspection. And so, I talk to my clients as buyers, I have a consultation with them before I put them in my car, and I do the same thing with sellers, and that’s one of my… I feel is a very important criteria. So if you’re… That you are willing to have an inspection, no matter what, you should not spend this much money. For most people, it’s the biggest investment that they are ever making, and then they just buy it without an inspection, ’cause they want it so bad. To overcome that, I used to, I still do, but when it wasn’t a seller’s market, I would have all my listings have the seller do a home inspection. And that way we know what we’re selling, we know what it’s worth, we know if there’s any big problems and it just saves time and money, and the buyers love it, and it keeps them from having an inspection done when you have a really good inspection report and they feel like you’re really disclosing everything.
RW: They’re not afraid to buy and it brings more money to the seller. Now, I’ll flip to today, where I try to convince the seller to have an inspection, and then they come back and say, “Well, what if we don’t… What if the buyer doesn’t require one?” Then I’ve spent money on the inspection and I’ve disclosed stuff that I didn’t know before. And so, kind of hard to argue with that, but I tell them to do it anyway. Now, I’m on to something that is working really well for me, and that is coaching my buyers that, “You’re gonna be in this sea of offers and who knows how many there’s gonna be, and you still do not buy a house without an inspection.” And it’s hard to do, because maybe the house goes on the market on Friday and offers are due on Sunday at noon, and there’s no time for anybody to have an inspection because there’s 50 showings on the house and you can’t have an inspection while people are looking at it.
RW: And so, I at least make a call to my favorite inspection company and see if I can get an inspector who’s willing to do it at some time when there aren’t showings. And this is… I’ve done it four times now, and all four times, we got the house. And the sellers are actually… You need to get permission, but the sellers are like, “Well, okay, sure, if it’s not impeding our showings, yeah, they can have an inspection.” So we go do the inspection and then it’s a take it or leave it thing. You don’t ask for anything, but at least you know if the house is decent or not. And all four sellers, and this has been in the last year that I’ve been able to convince buyers to spend the money on a home inspection for a house they have… They don’t even know if they’re gonna get, all four times, we’ve won in the multiple offers. And they’ll see sellers who want… They really don’t wanna sell their house without an inspection. Most people don’t, they’re like, “Gee, I wonder if I might get sued later or something, because there’s something wrong with the house and I wasn’t aware of it or whatever.”
RW: But it’s a phenomenon I’m still studying that… At least those four sellers say, “We’re really happy,” and they said, “Well, thank you for spending the money on our house, I guess we should pay attention to that buyer.” And the most recent one I did, and we weren’t the highest price, but the seller told their agent, “Call her back and tell her, ‘Here’s how much you have to beat. Just give… We want those buyers to buy it, and if they’re willing to come up to the price that is the highest one on the table, we wanna sell to them.'” And my buyers did, and we got it and there were 22 offers on that house.
Tessa Murry: Wow.
RW: Yeah. And so we got a second chance to come up with… To meet the price that they were looking for, and everybody’s happy, including the seller, because I’ve been able to get… Not every buyer, obviously wants to spend the money, but if you really like the house, you’re a fool if you don’t spend the money and take the chance.
RS: So to summarize, it’s like one of your secret weapons you got, Rhonda, is you tell your buyers, “Look, bite the bullet, get a home inspection before you have the offer accepted, get it done at some time that’s gonna work for the sellers, sneak it in there and it’s gonna make your offer that more attractive. And it has worked for me every single time we’ve ever done it, we’ve got our offer accepted, even if we didn’t have the best offer.”
RW: Yeah, yeah, that was a fun one, and if I got four in a row now, I’m gonna keep doing it ’cause it’s a way to win, how many houses do you have to look at, how many offers do you have to write and get heart broken? Let’s be serious, let’s show a seller how serious you are, and that… I think that really speaks to the seller.
BO: As opposed to a letter that tells the owner how much you want to buy their house. You’re putting skin in the game here and we’re not coming here to negotiate, we wanna have a clear picture of exactly what we’re getting, and I think that’s fair.
RW: Everybody calls them love letters, we’re strongly encouraged not to do them anymore because we can break their housing laws, unintentionally send a picture of the family with your letter, and now you’re just telling the seller, oh, this is a family, “Oh, look at the cute kids, we wanna pick them because they have these kids” and that’s a protected class, whether or not your familial status is a protected class. So we’re encouraged not to send them anymore. How do you send a message to a seller more strongly than, “I like your house so much, I’m willing to just put my money into an inspection”? And inspections, good inspections are expensive. So it works for me. [laughter]
TM: It’s really interesting to hear that, Rhonda, ’cause I think I’ve only heard personally of agents and buyers that are using the strategy of forgoing the inspection to make their offer stronger. So it’s interesting to hear your perspective on that…
[overlapping conversation]
RW: Yeah, it’s like everybody wins. ‘Cause the seller doesn’t have to… Oh, the other thing you have to do is promise the listing agent that you won’t disclose to the seller any of the material facts that you learn from the inspection because you have to… Then the seller has to disclose them, and so I won’t tell you anything that I learned, unless it’s something that is life or death. Like there’s carbon monoxide or something that the seller would need to know right away, I won’t tell you anything about it, we’ll either take it or leave it, so it protects the seller and there’s no harm done.
RS: That’s really smart.
TM: Wow. That is… Yeah, ’cause that seems to be the biggest protest that sellers have to that is like, “We don’t wanna know what’s wrong ’cause we don’t wanna disclose it to anyone else in the future, but if you’re guaranteeing that it’s not gonna be a problem, we’re still gonna take the house, we just wanna know…
RW: That’s right. Yeah, yeah.
RS: And on the flip side too, it’s like if you have that inspection done and then they decide, “Oh, there’s $100,000 worth of work here, and we don’t want to submit an offer,” it’s like, all we’re gonna tell the seller is, “We’re not gonna submit an offer.” And that’s it.
RW: Yeah, yep, that’s right.
RS: We’re not gonna tell them all the stuff that they need to disclose later on. Yeah.
RW: Absolutely, that’s absolutely right. Yeah, so that’s working well for me. I’m gonna keep doing it. So let’s see how it goes, yeah.
TM: Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Wow.
BO: Are any other agents around your office employing the same strategy?
RW: You know what, during our sales meeting on Tuesday, I mentioned, ’cause they wanted to know, “Well, how did you win with 22 offers?” And so I told ’em and I had three of them come up to me afterwards and say, “How did you do that again?” And I’m spilling the beans here, but I just… I don’t care if other people do it too.
RS: Nobody listens to this anyway, it’s fine.
RW: [laughter] Well, they should. You have all kinds of good information. I found some information, I was looking to find out how many offers are submitted that are not contingent upon an inspection, and according to MAAR, it’s 19% of the offers that are accepted, ’cause we don’t know how many that are submitted ’cause those people didn’t win, so that never becomes of record, but how many accepted offers come in with no inspection contingency, and it’s 19%, and I would guess it’s more than that actually in some markets, because it’s that and escalation clauses. I hate those things, but…
BO: How long have they tracked that number, Rhonda?
RW: How long have they tracked it? Is that what you just said? Probably, it doesn’t say from when to when, it’s only giving me the current, they never used to track it, I can tell you that. So I would say less than a year.
BO: I think that’s where I was going with this, is just, it’s an indication of how tight everything is, that suddenly this key metric is being tracked that’s never been looked at before, and it’s at 19%. That’s quite a high number. I’m pretty shocked by that.
RW: Yeah, one out of five.
TM: And how many houses do you think don’t even go on the market, they’re not even technically listed that they’re sold to someone who knows someone or… I mean, does that happen a lot, too?
RW: It used to be more. I would say now sellers are going, “Hey, there’s no way I’m gonna get multiple offers if I just let one person look at my house, and they give me full price.” Most sellers wanna go on the market and have their house get… Yeah.
TM: Competition, yeah.
RS: Rhonda, got a question for you. What do you think about this method where you hear some home sellers pricing their house quite a bit lower than what they really know is market value, just to generate interest. And we all know that nothing generates interest like interest. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
RW: Yeah.
RS: And it creates competition. What do you think about that tactic? Is that worthwhile?
RW: Well, I think you’re drawing in the wrong buyers. You’re getting buyers… If somebody’s gonna price something at $400,000 and it’s worth $425,000 or something like that, maybe it’s okay. But if it was worth $450,000, you’re gonna get the $400,000 buyers. They do serve a purpose because they show up and create that interest you’re talking about, but when it comes down to really picking a buyer, they may not qualify for it. So what I do, and I think I’m doing the right thing, is I tell sellers, “We have to price your home like an appraiser would price it because your buyer is probably gonna have an appraisal. We have to worry about that, because then all the buyers… Other buyers are gone and we have this winning buyer, and the house is sold for way more than the asking price.
RW: So what are we gonna do if the appraisal comes in low?” And if you’ve got the house priced where you know fairly certain, there’s never any guarantee, but that… Because you compared one stories with one stories, and you did the things at an appraisal, which I won’t get into, but you put on your appraiser hat and you say, “Okay, here’s what I think it will appraise,” then that price is on you, seller. And if you’ve overpriced it, and it doesn’t come in high enough, then maybe the buyer has the right to ask you to lower your price. But if the inflated price is because of demand and…
RW: Hey, I wasn’t asking $450,000 for this house, I was asking $400,000. And you’re the one who asked, or are willing to pay $450,000, I want you to put your money where your mouth is. And if the appraisal comes in low, you need to make up the cash difference in down payment, so I don’t have to lower my price. And we call that an appraisal protection clause for the seller. And if you’re a really smart agent, you make sure that your buyer has the cash to do that, if that’s what they’re gonna do and you prove it to the listing agent. You provide a letter from… Or a bank statement that says, “Hey, they actually do have extra cash for down payment than is stated in the purchase agreement.” That’s another way to win is, are you gonna close? Is it gonna fall apart or not? You want to make sure it’s not. So, if that makes sense to you guys.
BO: Is that a new terminology or is that new terminology that’s been…
RW: Yeah, and it’s called other things. I call it, and a lot of people do, an appraisal protection clause. You’re protecting the seller from having to come down in price when the appraiser shows up and says, “Well, that was fun for everybody; fun for the seller to get this big price, but it’s not real, and we’re not gonna lend on it.”
BO: So I call that being bankable, right?
RW: Oh, sure.
BO: A house has to be bankable. Anything you’re buying… If somebody’s gonna give you credit or money based on leverage, it has to make sense in their portfolio, otherwise they’re not gonna do it. And if it doesn’t make sense, yeah, you can bridge the gap, but then they might ask you, “Well, why are you over paying so much?” Like what sense did that make?
[laughter]
RW: I know, it’s true. I mean, it is true. I mean, why are you? Because you have no choice if you wanna buy a house, so… There are… We don’t have the same issues as we did back when… In the foreclosure days, when there was lender fraud… Anything appraised, no matter what. And now the appraisers are highly scrutinized, and they mean business, too. You won’t be an appraiser for very long if you mess around, so you need to be able to produce a report that is credible for the lender and… The appraiser does, and if the buyer wants to pay more, they have to come up with the difference.
TM: Are you seeing a lot of buyers then, Rhonda, offer more than what a property is appraised for and they’re paying cash? Is that happening a lot in this market?
RW: Am I seeing a lot of cash buyers? Is that what you mean? Instead of financed buyers?
TM: I guess… Maybe that’s a two-part question. Are you seeing a lot of offers that are going over the appraised value in their closing, and is that cash buyers, then, doing that?
RW: So when you have a cash buyer, there is no appraisal unless…
TM: Okay.
RW: The cash buyer requests one. But I think what you’re trying to ask is… The appraisal happens after you’ve already agreed on the price with the seller, then the next step is the appraiser comes. And then, if it doesn’t appraise high enough and you have a problem, then the calculation, if you put 20% down, the lender goes into this with a… I’m gonna use $100,000 to keep the math simple. If it was a $100,000 sale price and the down payment was 20%, then the lender’s planning on lending $80,000, and if it only appraises it $90,000, the lender’s only gonna lend 80% of the appraised amount, not the sale amount. So now you got a problem… 80, you know, whatever that number is… I’m not keeping [chuckle] the math simple, but 80% of $90,000, the appraised amount. So then the buyer has to come up with that difference… Their down payment, plus, and it’s less than $10,000, I’d have to… If I wasn’t sitting here doing this, I’d have…
BO: No… You’re right, but there’s a gap they have to cover and they’re gonna have to cover that with cash…
RW: Yeah.
BO: And it better be in their bank account, otherwise…
RW: And there are people who turn themselves into cash by going into their retirement accounts and writing a cash offer and close and then they turn around and refi right away, and pay back within that time. So they don’t have to pay tax and penalty on borrowing from their IRA. I would never do that, but there’s a lot of people doing this, there’s lots of cash buyers out there, and I think that’s one way they’re doing it.
BO: I think when you think of cash buyers, I think of these big private equity groups that are buying up houses, but are they really super active in our market or are these cash buyers, just as you said, somebody’s liquidated an asset so they could be a cash buyer to give them more leverage in this conversation?
RW: Yeah. When prices aren’t so high, this is sort of related, you’ll get some investors that will hire a real estate agent to go out and write offers on… Just find me five houses, and they write an offer contingent on five houses, and nobody knows that this investor has written other offers and the investor doesn’t come to the house, the agent just goes and picks them. And then they always have a contingency, an inspection contingency in there, and so once the offers are all accepted, then the investor shows up and goes and looks at them, and then if he doesn’t like them, he cancels the purchase agreement, and that’s a real bummer if you’re a seller that fell victim to that because you just wasted time on the market thinking it was sold and it wasn’t really, it was just a chance of selling, but you didn’t know. That’s not fun. Those have been out there in the past. I haven’t seen… I don’t think they’re out there now, ’cause the market’s too hot.
BO: In all your years doing this, would you describe this market as the most unusual that you’ve been in, like maybe the last two or three years, or how does it fit into your career overall?
RW: It is the hardest and most heartbreaking market, it’s all about buyers, buyers are who drive our market, and if they can’t get housing, it starts with first-time home buyers. And then the other level is new construction, which usually they aren’t… A first-time home buyer doesn’t usually buy new construction. But if first-time home buyers can’t buy a house to eventually sell and have be replaced those turnover… First time home buyers live in their home for about three years, and then their lives change and they can make more money, and then they get replaced with other first time home buyers. But it becomes unaffordable, then that’s when you get… Things will stall. So we have to… I don’t know how long this is gonna go on, but the first time home buyers seem to be affording it, but at some point, if we’ve had between… We had 11.4% appreciation in the Twin Cities last… In 2021. And in the 2020, it was 8%, and those two added together are over 20%. And if you compounded it, which is what you really should do then it’s even more than that.
RW: So to have somebody have to pay 120% more a year and a half or two years later, I mean it’s good if you bought and you have equity, it’s great, ’cause you could have some instant equity, but it’s really hard to jump in the market.
BO: Even if you have that equity, you have to live somewhere, so either you put it into rent or you put it into another property and it’s just transferring that equity.
RW: Yeah.
BO: It’s such a… The balance, the game of balance here is really interesting because you have banks, you can’t go too high because you’d have to get a loan, or you… It just… There’s so many moving parts in here.
TM: Are you seeing a lot of people that can’t afford houses and can’t… Their offers aren’t being accepted, are they… What are they doing? Are they renting then and…
RW: Yeah, that’s why rents are so high, ’cause there’s people who can’t buy and they give up and then they go commit themselves to a one-year lease or something, and rents are out of this world. It’s really tough to… Nobody’s really winning, unless you own property that you’re selling and it’s your principal residence and you probably don’t have to pay capital gains tax and you’ve got some place else to live, it’s a great time to buy for those people, but if you have to replace your property with something else, you’re just subject to the same as the buyer.
TM: Vicious cycle. Yeah.
RW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard. It’s really, it’s hard. I’m sorry, it’s like I would have… I had… I hate to say this, ’cause I work with all price ranges, but somebody sent me a lead for like somebody could spend $200,000, and I just know that I can’t find them anything that they can buy for $200,000 in the community they wanted to buy in. And so it’s like I would… This isn’t me, I usually wanna help everybody, but it’s not worth my time ’cause I know it’s not a happening thing.
TM: Wow. What would you say the price point is now then for a first time home buyer?
RW: 350, depends on the community. 350, which you’d probably sell for about 375 or 400. And some first-time home buyers, if they’re the dual income earners in there, they come in at the 500s, so.
BO: That’s incredible. That’s… Wow, Rhonda, you can hear it in your voice. I mean, we can see you and we can kind of see it, you’re… We can see the empathy that you have for these people. But I just feel your pain because you just wanna get started. I mean, forever in this country, home ownership has been a massive feather in somebody’s cap, and it just doesn’t feel as attainable as it once did.
RW: Well, the other thing is, you have to be available. I mean, if you’re not available, ’cause offers are due on Sunday at noon, and it’s like, “Okay, well, whatever you’re doing, you better take your buyer out and make sure they see the house that they want to.” So it’s hard. I’m not complaining, it’s good in this weird world with a pandemic that real estate is so successful right now, it has been through the whole thing. It’s odd, very odd.
BO: It’s just… It’s fun to get your perspective because you watch TV and you think real estate works one way, and then it probably doesn’t work that way at all. Thank you again for coming on.
0:31:24.1 RW: Yeah, my pleasure.
BO: It’s always fun to get a market update…
RW: Absolutely. Yeah. I feel like Debbie Downer or…
BO: No.
RS: No.
TM: We’ve got an affordable housing crisis in this country, and it seems like it’s just gonna get a little bit worse until it starts getting better, we just… We’re not seeing enough new construction coming around or affordable rentals or anything like that, it’s just… It’s like, buckle your seat belts people, ’cause our prices are going up in the Twin Cities, and they have been, it seems like for years, and we don’t see an end in sight.
RW: I agree, Tessa, I totally do. I have a kid, I’m trying to find her a house and I’m really picky with her, so she might fire me, I don’t know. I’m kidding.
TM: She’s extremely lucky to have you.
BO: I’d say, she can live anywhere, just not in my basement.
[laughter]
TM: Well, she’s in good hands with you, Rhonda…
RW: Oh thanks, Tessa.
TM: If you can’t find her a house then I don’t know who could. So…
RW: Oh, you’re so nice, thanks. Well…
BO: Well, Rhonda, we’re gonna probably put a wrap on this…
RW: Okay, great.
BO: Why don’t you go ahead and tell everybody your brokerage and how people can get a hold of you, and we’ll link this all up in the show…
[overlapping conversation]
RW: Oh, okay, sure. Okay, okay. So I’ve always worked for the same company, and that is Coldwell Banker Realty, and I work out of the Wayzata office, although I mostly work at home and on the road, but still… My phone number is 612-860-0189, and I’m rwilson@cbrealty.com.
BO: Thank you. And thank you again for all your time. It was good…
RW: Well, you’re welcome, and I love Structure Tech. [laughter]
TM: We didn’t pay you to say that, did we, Rhonda?
RW: I know, I’ve used it for years and nobody else because you’re so awesome and you’re not paying me to do this either. I just love you guys. You can edit that out if you want or leave it in but I have…
BO: I think we’ll leave it in.
RW: Nothing but glowing reports for you guys. You help me be successful. So. Yeah.
TM: The world needs more agents like you, though Rhonda, and it’s really inspiring…
RS: Amen.
TM: To hear your kind of new tricks that you have with getting buyers to do inspections in this market.
RS: Yeah. Thanks for sharing.
4 RW: Yeah, you’re welcome. Yeah. Well, I hope it helps somebody else. Even an agent could call me because, not that I know it all, I don’t, but it is… Most of them say, “How do you get people to pay for an inspection? And it’s like, it’s not hard, they just… You talk to them and they do it, so I don’t know.
BO: It’s not what you say Rhonda, it’s how you say it, that’s the…
[overlapping conversation]
RW: Oh thank you. Thanks, Bill. Well, this was fun.
BO: Okay, everybody.
RW: Thank you.
[overlapping conversation]
BO: We’re going to put a wrap on today’s episode, you’ve been listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name is Bill Oelrich, alongside Tessa Murry and Reuben Saltzman, spending some time with Rhonda Wilson today. Thank you, hope everybody enjoyed it. Take care, we’ll catch you next time.
RW: Great.