KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Real Estate FEAR Factor: Dealing with REAL Problems and Mind Games

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Welcome to Uncommon Real Estate, where it's all about finding creative solutions for real estate agents and investors. In exclusive mastermind conversations with some of the brightest minds in real estate, you'll learn how to earn an extra six figures a year. Don't follow the herd. Be Uncommon. Here are your hosts, multi-millionaire real estate agent and investor, Chris Craddock and Jeff Safright. Boom. All right. Welcome to another episode of the Uncommon Real Estate. estate podcast. I'm your host Chris Craddick. And today, we are going to talk about one of my favorite things, which is how to solve problems and keep deals on track. In order to build wealth, wealth is the key here. Here is what wealth is. It's when your money works harder than you work. To build wealth, what you need to do is be good at your job. And if you can't get a deal to

closing, you will never be able to build wealth. Wealth. Walth gives you free. freedom, poverty gives you lack of freedom and even the choices that you have don't end up being great choices when you do not have the financial means to make better choices. So with that said, we are going to dive in today on how to solve problems. We are discussing some of the big issues that we have come across that I'm coming across with my agents, that we're coming across with Rita. that we're involved in every single day. I just had one last night that I was roped into where there was a miscommunication between when the seller thought the rentback ended

and when the buyer, when the contract actually said it ended. And the seller thought he had until the middle of March. And the buyer, the contract actually said that the rent back is over on March 1st. So it created this. massive hubbub. And so the big key here is we need to get to the crush of the problem, figure out what the reason was that it got as emotional as it did instead of us just coming to a solution that worked, right? Everything we talk about, interest rates, when buyers just say,

oh, I don't want to talk, interest rates are too high, I don't want to talk about it. Why? When sellers, when buyers say, oh, I don't want to get into a bidding war, I'm out, Why do they say that? They would rather rent, you know, then have an interest rate that is at 6% when renting interest rate is at 100%, right? It's illogical, but they're still moving that direction, right? When they say, I don't want to get into a bidding war. What does that mean? They're afraid to compete on our property with somebody.

Why is that something that's so scary, right? You've got to understand the psychology of it. And once you understand the psychology, of it, that's when you can move into what the real problem is. And once you get the real problem, you can solve that real problem. So let's jump into a couple basics to understand in problem solving. One, the problem people tell you is sometimes the actual problem, but most of the time, it is not the real problem. Here is why. I learned this when I was on staff with the church as a pastor many, many, many years ago.

When people would leave a church or people would tell you the good reason, and then they wouldn't tell you the real reason, right? There's good reasons and then there's real reasons. The good reason is, oh, I feel more plugged in at the church down the road. And the real reason is they got in an argument with somebody at the church, and they're not friends with them anymore, and it feels awkward every time they're there. So, yeah, they feel more plugged in. but it was this argument.

But nobody wants to say, oh, I'm leaving because I got into an argument. The same thing's true in real estate. We don't, nobody wants to say what the real reason is, but that's when we dive in and really get a good understanding of it. So let's talk about what the real reason is. The bubble's going to burst. People are, they're saying, the reason that they don't want to buy real estate is because the bubble is going to burst.

Well, historically, you look at real estate. And even in 2008, right? the biggest crash in the history of all crashes other than the Great Depression, during that 10-year period, real estate was still up as a national average, which is just, it's just nuts. So when you think through why people are afraid or why people say they don't want to do something, it comes from fear. And here's one of the keys. If you can understand that fear creates a fight or a flight mechanism, People will either back off and say, oh, I don't want to get an obitting war because they're afraid of what might happen, the unknown, or they're like, let's fight, let's go and do it. Or like fight is not always good.

Like last night, one of the people, he, the fear mechanism created a fight mechanism where he just wanted to come at me really hard when I was trying to solve the problem for him. And it was because of fear. And here was the fear. he was moving into his new house on the first, which means he didn't think he was going to be able to have the moving company there in time. And so that meant, oh, my gosh, what do I have to do? Do I have to move out of the house? Will I be homeless for a few days? Well, I have to get a storage shed and then try to move stuff into storage and then move it out. Will it be on the front lawn?

What am I going to all of this anxiety because of the unknown? And so when you can take the unknown and make it known, you can get rid of fear. Think about the boogeyman. Why does everybody, why is people afraid of the dark? Because they can't see what's there. It's the unknown. And when the lights come on, it becomes known and fear goes away, right? That's why kids want to sleep with their light on, right?

So we're programmed in this pattern from the time where little is when we don't know, it creates fear. And then when we have fear, we either run away from that or we fight. And either way, it's probably not the best way solution there. So Jeff has joined us today. to see your pretty face, Jeffrey, Saferight? Man, sorry, sorry I was a little bit behind. Got caught up with something, but yeah, I'm here. Cool.

We're talking about problem solving and essentially where it all comes down to is figuring out what is the fear. And the fear is almost always, always, always tagged because of an unknown, right? Like even people with control issues, people that want to like get crazy and anxious about stuff because of control issues. The control issues come from fear, and the fear comes from the unknown. What happens if I don't have control here?

And so if we can understand how to make the unknown known for our people, we can get rid of the fear, and then we can get rid of emotion. And we always know that when emotion goes up, intellect goes down. So we want to get rid of that emotion. So with that said, Jeff, how about a couple of the objections? Let's just take a couple of objections that you've heard. I had a couple here in my notes, but I'd love to hear some real-time objections that you have heard

when you met with people either for buying or selling or whatnot. Let's look and see what is there a reason for giving the objection and then how can we get to the crux of that and solve it? Are we talking like pertaining to today's market current situations? Anything. Anything where you've had any sort of clashing where somebody says, I don't. want to move forward because of this, that or the other thing. Yeah, any of those reasons. Okay. Well, I'm dealing a lot right now with working a bit as an agent investor, right?

So I'm working with with investors that have long-term buying whole properties that they're looking to sell. Some of them are wanting to sell for cash, right? And they want cash right they're willing to give up equity because they want the cash right away, right? Unfortunately, they're not properties that are going to sell for cash. And it's just not a good profile fit because for whatever reason. And one of those big reasons is who wants to buy an investment property that has a tenant that's not paying their rent? They don't want to list it. They don't want to do this. They don't want to do that because they got tenants that are in their night. For me, I think it's when when a person feels trapped, they're also more emotional.

So if they feel like they have limited options, they have no options, they're feeling cornered. The bank's calling them wanting, wanting their mortgage to be paid. They're trying to call their tenant, the tenant's not answering. And so that kind of creates this kind of cornered, trapped feeling where their emotions run high. They're feeling protective, right? They may want to withhold information because they feel like that's a way that they can protect themselves. And so I'm actually dealing with two different clients in a similar situation to this right now. And the first key is to understand the situation because you're not going to know that. Right. So if Chris has a rental property and he's contacted me to pay cash for it, and I know it's not the situation, I have to figure out why it's so

important for Chris to get a cash offer. And so that's the first thing that we have to figure out. Now, on this end, if they're coming to me asking me for a cash offer, they're expecting me to be the buyer. So two things that I've found that really helped to calm a landlord or a property owner in a situation like this is just to simply say with a level of calmness, that look, I understand you're looking for a cash offer. I do work with a lot of investors, so let them know that there is a bit of hope, right? But just say, look, I'm probably not your buyer for this situation because it just doesn't fit the profile of what we're looking to pay cash for.

And that right there, like immediately brings down their defenses and it allows them to open themselves up a little bit because I end with. But let me understand your situation a little bit more because I do work with a lot of investors that love paying cash for properties. So let's them know that I'm not the one to help them, but I am a potential way out, right? So then they may share a little bit more, and they may say, well, look, we got a tenant here.

They may help share the situation. Then I'm able to help them understand, give them a level of education. I don't if you want to say good luck, because I don't think it's luck, but I have, I do really well when I educate people. So when I start to educate people,

that allows them to, again, just relax, it gets them out of their emotion, it gets them to start thinking intelligently, so that we can then come up with a game plan. For an instance here, I just kind of explain why investors don't want to buy properties with the tenant in there that's not paying their rent. And now we're good. Then we can go ahead and say, look, let's look at it. You're in a really stuck situation here, but there is a way out.

There are some things that we can do. And then we just go through those options. So one is to like almost disengage yourself as the answer, as the immediate answer is like the low-hanging fruit answer, but then to give them hope that you can provide an answer, right? Because when you give them that opportunity to let them know that you can provide an answer, now you become an ally. Now there's like almost this inherent like partnership that forms to where you can work together. Then when you find out all this information, then you can bring yourself back in as the solution as well. Once we get through this,

then we can help you do that. And then you can start talking about those options. And now there's been such a level of trust that's been gained there, a level of confidence that's been gained there because obviously you know what it is that you're doing. Is that, give me some thoughts there. I think that's the key there. So understanding like you were talking about when people feel trapped. So here's how we boil down. And this is how we solve problems. And so I want to remind everybody, this is how we solve problems.

And we'll get into a problem that I dealt with last night. And Jeffrey and I can workshop it. When you feel trapped, the reason you feel trapped is because you'll, like, what happens if this happens or this happens or this happens? I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills. I don't know how I'm going to do this. And then what happens? Then what happens? Then what happens? And then you go down that road. And so that's where you're talking about the ally as like when you make the unknown known, then you can calm it down and then help them get through the path, right? When a, a seller feels like

there's all these home inspection items that are on there and the buyer has sent it over, they feel like, oh my gosh, they're just trying to take advantage of me. They're trying to give me the house away. What happens if I don't have enough money to do the next things that I want to do? All of this stuff like that. And the buyers are thinking, well, man, how am I going to move into a house? How am I going to get this done, this done, this done, this done? Like, how am I? How am I?

And it's all this unknown of how you don't do stuff. And I'll add one more thing in the book, getting things done, which if you ever want to be more, I guess productive, you got to check out the book, getting things done. And one of the things he talks about in there is the brain dump, right? And it was so powerful because when I read that book, the whole brain dump idea was incredible because I was carrying so many things that I had to do in my head. So I had some on the calendar, some written down, but like most of it was in my head. And so I just always felt stressed because I'm like, oh, what if I forget this?

What if I forget? What if I forget? And then when you do the brain up and you just wrote it down, I still remember, I think it was around 57 things that I had to get done. So it was a lot of things that I was trying to carry in my head. But when I wrote it all down, all of a sudden I could take a deep breath and say, oh, man, this is doable. I can figure it out. I may take days to figure it out, but I can get it all done versus what happens if I forget this? What happens if I forget this listing appointment? What happens if I forget this to bring this for the listing appointment?

What happens if I forget to call this referral? So it just brings it all down and then you can have, then you can create a plan. Yeah. Yeah. So I think just speaking in the generality of it, I'm a very, I like to think that I'm a very rational kind of, what is it, brain, right? Is that like just logic is the way that I approach things. And to be honest with it's the worst way to approach disagreements with your spouse.

You're like, this just makes sense, right? Okay, that's going to get you in a doghouse real quick. Same thing goes with a seller, right? So, Chris, your earlier mentioned of the home inspections and this and that, the other, and they're just like, if you try to just use logic or reasoning, that's going to immediately put them on the defensive. And so we have to, we have to start with empathy, right? We have to start with empathy.

You got to start with, yeah, I definitely understand. Like, that makes sense. Make them, let them know that you're, on their side, right, getting back to that kind of being allies. And then once you get there, then we can start talking about, okay, so yes, so we can go as is because that's one of the main things, especially in our area, everybody wants to sell as is, right? But we know, right, that if if a buyer or a buyer's agent looks at a property and it's as is, what does that typically tell you? Definitely tells you. Yeah, there's something wrong with it, right? Like, we're just trying

offload this thing. We don't have any confidence on ourselves. Like, things are not good. And that's where you can say after you build that empathy and you develop that relationship and you become allies, then you can ask that question, be like, look, after you sell this property, this house, we're going to be moving, right? You're going to move into your next place. Right. So if you see a property that says they're selling as is, what's that message going to tell you when we're looking for that next property? And everybody pretty much was going to say the same thing. There's probably something wrong with it. they don't want you, they don't want to deal with it and say, look, that's, that's the key right there. When we, that's what I was telling my, my sellers, look, when we go as is, we're telling buyers,

we don't have confidence in the structural integrity of our property. And we don't want to have to deal with that. And so we're going to lose out on more money that way than we will if we, if we just let people come in and do their thing. and in addition to that, this is where, this is why you're hiring me. This is where you start to develop their confidence in you because, look, there are three negotiations to a home sell. There's the price of the home.

There's a home inspection. There's the appraisal. Those three things more often than not will have to be negotiated, especially if you're selling at the top of the market. And so then that's where you start bringing your own value add in and asking them to ride with you. And that's a great key to really be able to sell yourself as well because, again, you're educating them through the process. Yeah, absolutely.

And so with that said, I'll just share last night when I recognized what the fear was of that seller, I was able to say, hey, look, I've got, we've got a mover that does so much business from our company. We'll just call him. We'll get him out there. He's there right now. He literally is there right now. I was like, we'll get him out there tomorrow. I'll ask him to move around, whatever needs to be moved around, so that you can get moved in at the time frame that'll work.

And it went from like super angry and super upset to, okay, all right, sounds good. Well, let's talk tomorrow after I talk to the mover. And all of a sudden, the unknown became known, fear went away, and then he had a path forward. And it just, the whole thing got fixed. But that was the problem is figuring out how do you make the unknown? Like, how do you do that?

And how do you figure out what is making them spend, right? That's the other big piece. Like, what's making them spin out? I don't know that this goes along with it. I think it can. One of the things that you're saying there, and I love our moving vendor, but being so tight and so close with your vendors that you have a good confidence that they're going to call you back,

are they're going to answer the phone when you call or they're going to respond to you when you reach out to them. There is nothing that sells a potential client better than when you make that phone call. Look, look, our moving company does so much work and does so much business for us, I can assure you that I can get him to move this schedule for you to make it the most convenient on you. Okay. In fact, let's go ahead and call him right now and let's see what he has to say. So I did this role play the other day with our team that was really, really, really crazy. is we talked about what happens when a seller, when a buyer finds mold in a basement, right? Sometimes they should walk away from the house, right?

But a lot of times it's fixable, right? Everything's figureoutable. But what is all the stuff that they talk about? They're like, oh, my God. So I asked everybody, I'm like, what is the buyer thinking? And Kelly was like, her response was, if I keep my babies here, my babies are going to die. Right? And I'm like, yes, like it's somewhere along that continuum. And so then we said, okay, going back to what you're saying right here, what do you do to make somebody feel better? And here's the script. And I'm telling you, if you understand this script, it will change everything. Because somebody said, we have a mold, a mold person that we can put you in touch with. No, that doesn't do it because they're still like, hey, or no, first they said, we could get a mold person out here. Okay. The thought in their mind is, where am I going to find this small person?

Are they reputable? Are they in the yellow pages? How can I guarantee they're good? But what Jeff said is, if you change that to say, I've got somebody, let me call them for you, then they don't have to worry about talking to somebody asking the wrong questions, making sure all the other stuff. I've got somebody. They come recommended.

So they already are recommended, right? Unknown becomes known. We'll get them out here. But then their thoughts are, well, what happens if they miss something? And you know what? What we're going to do is, we're also going to request and make sure this is done as well. We're going to have the air tested so that we can count, like, so that they can make sure that there's no mold in the air.

Everything's been removed. There's no mold in the air. Then if that comes in at a price that's acceptable to you or to the seller and we can get this done, then with absolute certainty you're walking into a house that has been cleared by a reputable, licensed, mold remediation professional. So the uncertainty becomes certain. And what Jeff said is, I'll call them for you. I get them on the phone for you.

And that is so much power. Never, never, never say, hey, we'll call somebody that does this. Say, I will do this for you with somebody that I trust or comes referred by some high level people. Absolutely. Because throughout the whole process, you're selling yourself, you're selling your team, whatever it is that whatever your strength is right you're selling that and so now when we go and we say i have somebody because you've already been selling your strengths that somebody is all that's

generally speaking the only recommendation you need that that right there is a testimony and a testament in and of itself and if you can call them right there in the spot and they answer that even makes it more appealing because because not only do you have a team but you have a team of people that that are responsive. And I just always wrap that back to say, look, we do so much business that our people are going to put you at the front of the line because they want, because they,

they appreciate our business. And again, when you do that stuff, it's rare that you're going to lose an opportunity. And it's almost always, if not always going to calm their nerves. Right? Because they're going to have to deal with the situation anyways.

you're providing an example that you're the expert that knows how to take care of it. If you got mold in your house, the mold's already there. You got to deal with it. Now I look like I know how to do it and it's no big deal. Yeah. It's awesome. All right, Jeff. We're at the end of the hour.

Take us home, brother. Awesome. Hey, friends, this does conclude another episode of your uncommon real estate podcast with the host Chris Craddick, myself, Jeff, Saferight. If you're on the podcast, wherever you are, you know, you know where you're at. Give us a review. Give us one, two, three, four, five star. Anything in between there. Leave a comment. Let us know topics that you'd like us to discuss. People like us to have on things that have been helpful for you. Just give us some feedback. We appreciate it

all. We appreciate you. And we will be back next week, same time, same place. Doing it again, helping you level up and do what you do. Have a great weekend. Talk soon. Bye. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Uncommon Real Estate. Subscribe to the podcast to stay up to date with the latest mastermind conversations from Chris, Jeff, and other uncommon real estate industry leaders. If you love this podcast, please write us a review, and to fast-track your real estate career, go to chriscratic.com.