Your Life Simplified

Tips on Home Buying and Selling (29:21)

April 23, 2019

Many of us have heard the adage about location being everything when it comes to real estate, but what else should you be thinking about? We invite real estate agent Mike O’Dell on to the show to discuss key decision points from both the buying and selling side. From strategic approaches on coming in with an offer on the buy side, to how to handle lowball offers on the sale of your home, Mike shares his experience on what he has seen work in the industry.

Transcript

Brian: Hello and thank you for downloading another episode of Your Life, Simplified. My name is Brian Leitner, and I’ll be the host of this podcast. At the time of this recording, it’s spring season and that means the home buying and home selling process has begun. I know when I was driving through my neighborhood early this morning, I realized the amount of homes that are beginning to come on the market. It’s a really interesting and exciting time. And when you think about it, your house is probably one of your largest investments. So, making that decision to either purchase a home and sell that home could be a difficult decision, but could be one of the most important decisions that you make within your financial life. So, today to join us on the show, we have Mike O’Dell, who’s a real estate agent here in the Greater Kansas City region. Mike, Thanks again for coming on the show today.

Mike: Thanks for having me, Brian. Happy to be here.

Brian: So Mike, before we get started, did you always know you wanted to be a real estate agent?

Mike: You know, I don’t think growing up, I woke up every day saying I want to be a real estate agent, maybe a basketball player or something like that. But, my family has been in the business for 25 years. In my late high school years, early college years, I knew it was something I eventually wanted to do.

Brian: That’s terrific. And so how long have you been doing this?

Mike: I’ve been doing it for 14 years.

Brian: Excellent. So do you work with your family as well?

Mike: I do. We’re kind of a big dysfunctional family. I work with my mom, dad, wife, brother and my aunt and then some people who aren’t related, but we’re all basically like a big family.

Brian: Wow. Well, a family who works together stays together, right?

Mike: That’s right. That’s right. For now, anyway.

Brian: So again, thanks for coming on. Let’s just start with the home buying process. And I know that there are a lot of listeners who have purchased homes in the past, or maybe they know other individuals who are about to go through this process. How do you get started? I mean, when you think about the mortgage process, maybe at a high level.

Mike: Yes, the home buying process, you need a plan, right? And step one would be figuring out your finances, figuring out what you can afford, what type of loan program you should be doing, who you should be working with. There are many different lenders around town and the country that may be great for their own different reasons. So step one is finding out financially what you can afford when you should do this. And again, being aligned with the right person is huge for that.

Brian: So the first step in the process is to figure out how much you can afford before you actually go out there and begin looking in the marketplace. Right?

Mike: Absolutely. Yes, that’s step one for sure.

Brian: What do you do next?

Mike: After you find out what you can afford, then you want to find out where you want to live. In Kansas City, we have a great metro area. There are lots of great places to live for different reasons. You know, are you interested in schools, location, proximity or walkability to something? Where do you really want to live? So that’s probably step two is identifying where. And then obviously step three is, do you want a home? Do you want a condo? Do you want something maintenance provided? Do you want one story, two stories, three stories. So, there are a lot of pieces to that but tailoring to what you want.

Brian: The old adage in real estate is location, location, location. I assume nothing’s changed.

Mike: Yes, it’s really important. And location, location, location is different for every person. So, your location to you is going to be important, to me is going to be important, and for everyone else, it’s going to be important. So yes, that is 100% accurate. It’s different for everybody.

Brian: You mentioned the different types of buying a home or buying a condo. You spend some time in new builds as well, correct?

Mike: Absolutely. I mean, the home buying process, the contractual piece of it is pretty similar what you’re doing, whether you’re buying an existing home. If you’re building a home, that brings with it a whole new set of people to the process, and who is managing that and who is representing whom. And so absolutely we can guide you from step one of, what you want, to building a home or, if you’re going to take an elevator up to a condo that’s been there for 50 years. It just depends.

Brian: In general, the folks who you work with, how many homes do they see before they’re actually interested in buying one? Obviously you want to show them more than one or two, but is there a sweet spot?

Mike: You know, again, that’s a great question. It’s all over the board. It truly is. I’ve been with people as recently as this week, that first day out, and you think you’re window shopping. “Hey, we’re not really ready.” And you fall in love and you bought the second house you’ve ever seen. We’ve had that happen before. And then I’ve shown people for, I think my longest right now is three years that I worked with somebody who was actively looking for a home.

Brian: Three years. You still answer the phone?

Mike: You answer the phone, you know, they are awful nice people, so that helped. And that was well over 200 homes that we looked at through that process. So it really depends. I would say the average is probably eight to 12 homes people look at before they buy.

Brian: The reason I really asked that question is because when my wife and I went home shopping about eight years ago, and I viewed about five to 10 homes, and I think she looked at about 120.

Mike: That’s usually how it goes. One person is more dominant than the other and then you bring in the other person and just make a decision.

Brian: So how do you determine whether you’re getting a good deal or not? Obviously there are comps that people look at. There are different ways of obtaining information. I mean, what can you teach our audience about that?

Mike: You know, a deal is defined differently to everybody. So if a deal means you want the lowest price possible, that’s one way of measuring a deal. If a deal means you want to live in a specific neighborhood because there’s nothing for sale and that’s where you want to live, you know, how are you going to win that one house that’s for sale that can be considered somebody getting a deal. So yes, there’s all kinds of data now with the internet you can find out what, I can find out how much money you have in your bank account with the internet right now.

Brian: That’s interesting.

Mike: It’s crazy.

Brian: That’s scary.

Mike: Yes. But, you can find out there’s so much information when it comes to values and everybody has a different opinion. So, we measure that, and we make sure you know what you’re getting. Hey, this house was listed for one day. There are no comps to support the price, but there are 10 people who want it. You know, Brian, if you want that house, it’s going to take this to get it and there’s no data that support that it’s a good deal.

Brian: Right.

Mike: So that’s the hardest part, really trying to get people to define what a deal is to them or are they trying to move from point a to point b? Are they waiting because they want to make the best financial decision on paper, which, like anybody, the real estate market is hard to guess. Where is it going to be in five years? You know, we don’t know. We know historically it’s gone up, but we don’t know where it’s going to be. So you just try to give the right advice and you know, home buying’s emotional. People get their head set on something and all of a sudden they want it. And it’s our job to make sure that we’re reeling them in and not going crazy, which, in these markets, coast to coast, people are doing right now.

Brian: Those are excellent points. Obviously supply and demand is going to dictate and, at the same time, anytime you’re making a large purchase, the amount of emotion. You know, science tells us this, right? But the amount of emotion that’s behind these decisions, it’s overwhelming. And I think there’s a saying out there that the emotional intelligence will supersede actual intelligence every single time.

Mike: That’s very factual when it comes to home buying, it ends up almost getting in the way, but it plays as big a part as anything in the processes, the emotions.

Brian: So, if someone were to be buying a house right now, and let’s just make up a number, they’re buying a house for half a million dollars, just to use a round number. What do you generally, if that’s what the ask is, what’s the rule of thumb and what insight could you give us to, or what should you go in with? What should your first offer be?

Mike: It depends on the situation of the house. Depends on where you are nationally location-wise. But you know, people always say, a 10% discount, right? And a half million dollars, that’s a lot of money. That’s $50,000. And people all of a sudden say, you know, do you price a house at $500k expecting to get $450k? Nationally you don’t. Nationally homes are selling right now, and I don’t want to throw out stats because it’s different everywhere, but they’re selling within that, you know, zero to 5% range. If we go nationally, probably in the half-million dollar range. Ok? And I don’t know that for sure, but that’s generally an idea. So a discount of anywhere from zero to 10% is a lot, but zero to 3% is probably more likely. And again, that’s more of an opinion than a fact. But in what we see daily is the discounting is not very much for a home that’s been on the market 30 days or less. 30 days or more, more discounts are happening.

Brian: Sure. So now that you know how much you want to spend in terms of the house itself, you may know the general location. You want to be within a radius of work or whatever that might look like. How do you really get to know the market itself though? Like the location in which you want to live, what resources are out there that people should be thinking about?

Mike: So, there’s so many great online resources nationally. You go out and you can find every rated school, you can find anything of value. You can find where the closest grocery store is located. You can find everything through, again, Zillow, realtor.com, greatschools.com. There are all of these incredible resources. But really what we found is that’s a starting point. That’s kind of, you know, buying a car is, you go online and you look at what you want, and you go to a dealership, you drive it, you feel it, you touch it to make sure it’s what you want, you know, and that’s kind of the case in real estate. Wherever you want to live, you can probably figure out the general idea. A lot of times when people come in, and we start physically touring them the area, they think they wanted to be in one place, and they end up in a completely different spot. That probably happens 60% of the time as people may say they want to live in one spot and want one particular kind of house. And when you’re actually in a car driving around, and you go to the school and maybe you didn’t realize that there was a park right next door that you’d love.

Brian: Sure.

Mike: And your wife thought that was the school you didn’t like, for example. It happens all the time. So that’s why the online resources are fantastic for data. If you want data of test scores and all of the different things, they’re phenomenal. But really what we’re finding is you’ve got to be here. You have to get boots on the ground, you’ve got to be toured by somebody to offer opinions. You know, the people who are experts in where they live usually have pretty good advice of, hey, here’s why I live here. Or here’s why I used to live here. I wish I lived here. It’s usually a pretty strong point of reference.

Brian: And if you’re working with a professional who knows that area, they already can know about the schools, because they’ve had these conversations, they’ve done the research, and you make an excellent point. Online resources are a great resource, but you truly need to hit the streets, because you’ll identify what else is going on in that neighborhood that you don’t necessarily see online. You get a sense for the community as well.

Mike: Absolutely. In a house, you know it’s not like a pair of shoes. If you get a size 11 in Nikes, usually you get it every time. A house is so different, because you can see all the pictures and think you love it. The majority of people who come to us with a house, with pictures that they are in love with, they don’t normally buy that house. It ends up being a house that maybe they didn’t want to look at because the online wasn’t quite what they thought it was, and they fall in love with it because of other reasons and that is as true of a statement as I can give. And that happens all the time as people get all excited, they walk in, and they didn’t realize that it backs to the highway. Or they didn’t realize that the neighbor’s house is hot pink, or things like that.

Brian: It’s kind of like the stories you hear of people who are on the dating websites, and they have a picture and then when you go ahead and see that person, it’s a little bit different.

Mike: Yes, absolutely. I think that’s a great analogy.

Brian: So Mike, let’s say maybe you’re in a competitive situation, you don’t even know exactly where you stand, but you can go back to my half-million dollar example. Are there tips and tricks as it relates to what else you could be doing besides you know, meeting the purchase price and continuing to bid that up, but if it gets aggressive, what are the other things that you can do maybe from a nonmonetary perspective? Any suggestions there?

Mike: Yes, you kind of already touched on it, it’s emotion here. Emotion is involved with both the seller and a buyer. Some people are selling for good reasons, some are selling for bad reasons, some are selling their mother’s house that they grew up in, and they’re moving on to another place. So, there are so many different things and emotion is huge. So, while monetary is important, that usually wins, 95% of the time. But a lot of times personal touches do. Sometimes, normally in our marketplace, you don’t meet, buyers and sellers don’t meet. They don’t get to know each other. But sometimes they do. And if they do that, it helps most of the time. But then personal touches, a family picture or a letter. You’ve got to be careful with that from a legality standpoint there, depending on where you live, there’s some legality on fair housing acts of what you can and can’t do. So, I’m not telling you to just write a letter and give a story but consult your trusted advisor on that. We’ve seen it help; it can help. And it definitely, again, it takes that, it puts a face on the name and brings that emotional connection even if maybe you’re not the strongest offer dollar wise.

Brian: Or maybe putting yourself in a situation where you know that that seller is going to be at a particular event and then just having to bump into them and creating a relationship from that perspective.

Mike: Oh, we, we’ve had it happen from, for example, the Home Depot paint store where people are buying paint, and they’ve gotten to know each other and figured things out. Or lines at grocery stores and restaurants and dots being put together.

Brian: It’s competitive out there, right?

Mike: Hey, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. I’m a firm believer.

Brian: Thanks again for downloading this episode of Your Life, Simplified, produced by Mariner Wealth Advisors. At Mariner Wealth Advisors, we are here to serve as your advocate. We help people chart a course to reach their personal and financial goals so that they can have greater peace of mind that may lead to a more fulfilling life. We do this by always putting our clients first because as fiduciaries, we’re required to provide guidance that’s in the best interest of clients, not in the best interest of a company or shareholders or anyone else. So, as you listened to this podcast and have questions about maybe your own financial situation or would simply like a second opinion, or even you have an idea for a future podcast, please go ahead and email us at [email protected].

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So as part of the home buying process, you need to understand how much you can afford. You obviously want to work with a mortgage lender. Most people are getting into a mortgage to buy a home. Where do you start? Where is maybe the best place to get that mortgage?

Mike: I’m a firm believer in relationships. Again, who you know. Who do you know, who does somebody you know trust that they’ve gotten a mortgage with? In our marketplace and nationwide, that is still something, loans are becoming a commodity. You can get online, you can press a button and you can be approved for a loan and you can go through the process virtually. I’ve known people that have done it, they’ve had success doing it. There’s all the companies we’ve heard of. All you have to do is turn on the TV or radio. You can hear them all day long. What I don’t know is when there’s issues, what I don’t know is how those are handled at the last minute when maybe there’s a document that wasn’t signed right, or maybe there’s something that was incorrect on an application or maybe there’s a thing that should not be something that derails the deal. But how is that handled?

If you’re with the right person, again, whether it’s your local bank. Now, most of those banks have mortgage divisions so you can walk in, you can meet somebody, you can talk to them. They’re there every day. You can get to know them or maybe somebody you know is familiar with them, or there’s the lenders or the brokers that are also usually local, wherever you live and people you know. You can go see them, you can hand deliver your information to them and you can get them on the phone in a second if there’s an issue. There are so many resources. Don’t be sold on advertisements of rates and fees. You get what you pay for. You hear all these deals online. Usually when you call, it’s not what it is. If you hear a rate at 2%, it’s not accurate. You have to go with what common sense is and if there are things being advertised that aren’t real, trust me, it’s not what it appears to be. So, believing in a relationship on the mortgage side is extremely important, in my opinion.

Brian: So Mike, those are great thoughts around the home buying process. But what about the flip side? What if you are selling a home, obviously you want to put your best foot forward, you want to make sure that your house looks as presentable as it possibly can. There is probably a laundry list of things that you need to do to bring it to market. So, what are your thoughts as it relates to what to fix, what to enhance, the rate of return on some of those investments, knowing that you’re going to take this property now and sell it.

Mike: Sure. You know, when selling your home, what you do up front, you’re going to get a return on the back end. And some people don’t want to do as much up front, and want to sell it as is. Some people are willing to spend money on a multitude of things. Again, you can cosmetically make it look better. You can make the landscaping, put some new mulch down, plants and flowers. Touch up the paint, call it a day. That’s going to help. Okay. But then you go further. How old is your roof? How old is your furnace? How is your air conditioner? Is it all in working order? What price point of home are you in? Is this a first-time home buyer price point or just somebody who’s buying their second or third home? If you’re in the lower bracket, the expensive stuff’s more important.

A furnace and air conditioner or roof, windows, things like that, are important to the younger generation. Even though they don’t physically see it or think about it because they don’t have checks to write. Okay. They can’t write $5,000 if their furnace goes out. Whereas the mulch and the flowers, they say, we can do that.

So again, it’s case by case, but it is extremely important. I always say you want to detail your home like you detail, your car. If you clean your house, whether it’s baseboards, blinds, kitchens, all the details that you don’t do every day. It makes such a difference, because when somebody walks in, the first thing they say is this home’s well-kept and well-kept doesn’t mean updated. It just means it’s well-kept. It’s not beat up. It’s detailed. And people love that more than they do some of the updates. So again, depending on where you are across the country, depending on where you’re living, there’s going to be different opinions. But the more you do up front, and that’s not always writing big checks, but the more, little things you do will pay off either in how quickly it sells or what it sells for. Really important.

Brian: You know, the other thing they say when you walk into a house, and you’ll see this on some of the TV shows, is, this house has great bones. Can you tell me what the heck that means?

Mike: You know, it’s kind of like great bones or vintage. Great bones means it’s structurally sound and probably needs a little updating. That’s a good sales word. It says, hey, you know, if you were to spend a little bit of money on this house, it could be great. There’s nothing structurally wrong with it.

Maybe it’s got a few new pieces to it. But that’s a good cover up I think for something that’s maybe not as updated as people would want it to be.

Brian: So, thinking through some of the improvements that can be made, if you are going to really invest some money, where is the best ROI? Right? Is it the kitchen, the bathroom, the roof?

Mike: Cosmetically, it’s kitchens and baths. Kitchens and master bathrooms really seem to, to get your best ROI. If you’re going to spend some money before you sell your house to update, then yes, but pick those spots now. Don’t update your kitchen if you only have money to do a kitchen or a roof, and your roof is shot. Thinking, oh well, the kitchen would be nice to have so people forget about the roof. You’re going to end up doing both.

If you have one choice and, you have the money, and the systems of the house are in decent shape, a kitchen’s a good spot. You have to be careful. Everyone’s got their own opinion, and remember you’re not doing it for you, you’re doing it for the marketplace. So just because I may like blue tile, the marketplace may not like blue tile. We’ve seen a lot of mistakes of people making it too personal when they’re trying to sell their house.

Brian: Excellent points. You mentioned cleaning, and you want to make sure that sort of a pops so it looks like it’s well-kept. What about hiring stagers? What does that look like? Do you guys do that?

Mike: Absolutely. And a lot of times whether you stage it with your own furniture, or you bring in furniture or you bring in detailed pieces, which could be bedding or linens or certain things just to make the house flow. You know, I would say how you want the house to tell a story and the minute you pull up to the house, what’s the neighborhood like? A lot of people like a cul-de-sac. They love that. Then they walk up to the front door, and front door means everything. So if your front door, if the screen door doesn’t work or the front door is chipping, fix that. People like the color of the front door. And then you walk into the house. What’s the first impression? Okay. If you walk into your house and something bothers you, it’s going to bother the people you’re selling it to.

So fix that if you can fix it. You want the house to tell a story. Okay. The stagers can come in and make sure that the furniture is positioned. So one, it is photographed correctly and two, as you’re walking through the house, it flows. Is there a chair? Should the chair be here or there? Is that couch too big for the room? Should those linens be white? Real Estate 101, if you look at the stagers and designers, white linens for some reason with the right colors and bed sheets and comforters, white shows well. It’s a clean, clean, neutral. Again, it has to be the right house to have white, but that’s a pretty common theme.

Brian: And then you as the seller, I would imagine, pay for that stager and whatever it is that they offer?

Mike: Again, it totally depends. A lot of times, you know, with certain real estate companies, we come in and we offer free staging services. We don’t have furniture though. So we will stage your house with your stuff all day long. We’ll move it, we’ll tell you what to take out and what to bring in. We can bring in furniture, but if you’re renting furniture, we have stagers who come in with the actual furniture. It just depends on the situation, who’s paying for it and how it’s paid. It’s different depending on where you live.

Brian: Thank you again, excellent points. So, the house is on the market now. You’re selling it for X. You get that first buyer or the first opportunity. They come in and they are significantly coming in underpriced. I mean you’re getting a low-ball offer. How do you manage that?

Mike: The first thing in setting expectations with the client is, what’s the market? Is your house in a desirable area? Is it going to sell quickly? What’s your expectation? And the real estate professionals should have an idea. We don’t know for sure, but we should have an idea, hey, this is going to sell in a minute with five offers, or we’re being aggressive with the price. You know, it just may sit for a little bit. So that’s step one. But if you do get the offer, it’s just, again, it’s taking the emotion out of it and then getting both parties to understand what we’re trying to accomplish here. Some buyers, the offer’s low, and we try to convince the seller that their house wasn’t worth what it is. And sometimes a low offer brings a seller back to reality that says, you know, my house isn’t worth what I thought it was.

Sometimes an offer’s just thrown out there because he got the buyer who says, I’m deal hunting. I’m only going to buy a house on my terms. We always get, “Oh, I don’t have to move.” Usually when people call us they call us for a reason because they want to move. Nobody usually has to move. I mean some people do, but you’ve just got to manage expectations. You have to put both parties together, get with both agents, figure out what are we trying to accomplish. Is the seller set on their price? Is it a fair price? Is the buyer set on theirs and is there somewhere, I don’t like to say meet in the middle. That’s a poor negotiation strategy. But for representing the seller, we want to meet where the seller’s goals aren’t. If that’s not the right buyer, you have to know when to move on as well. You can’t hold on to the wrong buyer, the wrong offer just because of fear you won’t get another one. There’s got to be a plan for that.

Brian: Makes sense. So, Mike, earlier you talked about, it’s all about who you know, right? I think we all know that when we’re looking for professionals, you’re looking for that trusted resource and that person you can partner with, but let’s just say, you have three individuals who are real estate agents within your circle of friends. What are the key questions that you might want to ask each of these individuals to make sure that they’re not only working in your best interest, but that you’re going to click with them and that they’re credible and things of that nature?

Mike: You definitely want to know who you’re working with. And again, if you know the person from a referral, but you want to do your homework. You can find things online, websites, certain things. You want to ask the questions. How many homes do you sell? In our world, it’s a joke you know. Everyone’s number one. Right? Number one at something.

Brian: That’s what the brochure says.

Mike: Exactly. You want to make sure you get real answers. How many homes did you sell personally? Not the company you work for, not the group with the 65 people that you’re under. How many did you sell per day?

How many were you involved with the x’s and o’s, the negotiations, the pricing, all of those things. It’s a really important question. What’s your staff like? Am I working with you or am I working with other people in your organization? Are you the one taking the pictures, or do you have a professional photographer who comes in? Are you the one making my marketing pieces or, how does that look? And that’s really, really important. But that’s also the baseline of our business. Anybody who’s a professional has a plan for that and should be able to execute it very, very well. Again, everyone wants to know about commissions. They ask what do you charge, right? Commissions are all over the board, and each market is different. We’ve all seen the online things of, discount, sell your house for free, do it for 1%, do it for a flat fee. And those people are out there and, some of them are having a lot of success. Again, ask the right questions. What are you getting for what you’re paying for? Are you a full-service brokerage? What are you getting for that? And anybody who’s charging, whether it’s a discount fee or a full fee, should be able to explain in detail why they’re charging the fee that they’re charging. And it will either make sense or it won’t. And that’s where it’s, everyone has to make a living in doing what they’re doing. And there’s a lot of different ways in the real estate world to do that. But it’s important to know, if you’re charging a commission or you’re paying somebody a commission, what are you getting for that commission? And if somebody can’t articulate that, you may not have the right person.

Brian: Well said. Thank you. In any industry there’s an opportunity to get a deal or to pay less on a transaction and an absence of value. That’s a conversation to be had, but the reality is you’re talking about a real financial decision here. You don’t have too many opportunities to do this in life. And so when you do what you want to, do it right, you want to do it with the right people.

So Mike, as a side note. I mentioned the bones of the house from some TV show that I watched. It was a TV show based on flipping homes and things of that nature. I mean, you watch any of these shows?

Mike: I’ve seen them all. I can’t say I rush home to watch any of them. We definitely get a lot of questions. There’s been a couple of the shows that have come in our market, and we’ve had clients you know, apply to them and things like that. I haven’t appeared on one yet, but you never know. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Brian: So, just outside looking in. How many of these are successful because you see folks that may not be professionals in the business and they get into it and you’ll hear stories. “I flipped this home, and everything’s been great.” I’ve got to believe that is not the norm, right? If you never hear about the disaster stories.

Mike: Real estate is an attractive business. A lot of people want to be in real estate because there can be big margins in flipping houses and buying property and selling it or a rental portfolio, or even, as a real estate agent, there’s a lot of really successful real estate agents. What people don’t realize, is seven out of 10 real estate agents are out of business within 12 months.

Brian: Wow.

Mike: So, there are very few people who make a living. The average real estate agent in the country makes less than $30,000 a year.

That’s because there’s so many people with licenses who are part-timers or aren’t professionals, and that’s great. It’s a great hobby. If you want to do it, it’s a great license to have if you have a reason in your business, but a true real estate professional, just like a true mortgage professional, as somebody who is making a living doing it, it’s what you eat, sleep and breathe. And it’s what you’re an expert at, or a trusted advisor, I should say. And that’s the difference. You need to make sure you’re with the right people who are doing that. I know, before I was in the business, I needed the advice. If I was buying a house; I don’t know what I’m doing. Same with buying a car. I don’t like buying cars. I like somebody I trust helping me buy a car.

Brian: Right? Like all important decisions.

Mike: Absolutely.

Brian: It’s great to have that advocate for you.

Mike: Absolutely.

Brian: So, Mike, before I let you go, we ask all of our guests the same question and it’s, what’s the worst financial decision you’ve ever made?

Mike: You know, there have been a lot of them, but the worst decision is probably not listening, at a young age to truly saving a good portion of what you make. I know that’s probably a cliché answer, but it’s true. You know, you’ve been in a business for 10 or 15 years, and you look at whatever level income and all of the sudden you say, well, I’ve made a lot of money and where’s it all gone? You know? And that’s probably the…I wish the 23-year-old me was here right now and I could have said, hey, if you would’ve just done what a few people told you to do, where you might be in your late 30s. And it’s just interesting. Not interesting, it’s factual. It’s not anything to ponder. It’s a fact. So that would be the biggest mistake is maybe not being as diligent as I should have been at a young age making a living.

Brian: You’ve corrected that thus far though.

Mike: That’s right.

Brian: Listen, I would imagine there are a lot of people, including myself, who are in that same camp. The fact that you’re on track now and if other folks maybe that have a little bit more time on their side can organize their financial situation and be in better shape for it in the future, is terrific. So, I really do appreciate you being here. Appreciate the tips. I think our listeners will get a lot out of this, whether they’re buying a home, selling a home, know somebody who is or they’ll likely do so at some point in the future. So, Mike, thanks again for coming on the show and thank you to all our listeners for downloading this and listening to this episode. And as always, if you have ideas, suggestions, or topics for future shows, please go ahead and email us at [email protected]. Thanks again for listening.

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