Today’s track: Satisfied — Catching Flies
Make money so you can walk out of situations you don’t like.
That’s the whole reason. Not the spreadsheet. Not the cap rate. Not the number in the account. The door — being able to leave a job, a partnership, a client, a room, without doing the math first.
I’ve been doing this since 2013 and I’ve never heard it put better than that.
Here’s what gets in the way, and it isn’t money.
Most talented people lose because they’re too embarrassed to be seen wanting something. They want the reward without the exposure. The upside without the cringe. They want to be undeniable while still being approved of by people who have never built anything.
The ones who win usually have some abnormal relationship with embarrassment. They post more. Ask more. Pitch more. Take public swings. Keep going after somebody laughs. From the outside that looks shameless. From the inside it’s just somebody who stopped asking permission.
In this business, the embarrassment has an exact shape. It isn’t a feeling. It’s a piece of paper.
It’s the offer.
Let me explain how we actually do this, because I think it’s the most useful thing I can tell you today.
When we go after a property, we send a letter of intent. An LOI. That’s just a written note that says here’s what I would pay and here’s how I would structure it — before anybody signs a contract, before anybody is committed to anything. It’s a conversation starter that happens to have numbers on it.
And we usually send two of them at the same time.
The first is a cash/hard money offer.
The second is a seller financing offer. That means the seller doesn’t get all their money at closing — they carry the loan themselves and get paid over time, with interest, like a bank would. For a lot of sellers that’s actually the better deal. They spread out the taxes, they keep income coming in, and they don’t have to find somewhere to park a big check.
Two doors instead of one. Nobody has to say yes to a number that feels like an insult, because there’s a second option sitting right next to it that might fit them better.
The success rate on that has been really good.
But somebody has to actually send it. And that’s where most people stop.
Sending a lower offer feels like telling somebody their house isn’t worth what they think it’s worth. Asking about seller financing feels like admitting you can’t just write the check. Sending an LOI on a house that isn’t even for sale feels like knocking on a stranger’s door.
Every one of those is a chance to look stupid in front of somebody whose opinion you decided matters.
I send them anyway. I’ve had listing agents laugh at me, cuss me out. I’ve had my own clients go quiet when I tell them the number I want to put on paper. Some of those come back. A lot of them come back sixty days later, when the seller has had time to sit with it. When time and circumstance changes.
Think about what the other habit costs somebody over a career. Not the deals they lost. The deals they never put a number on.
Let me show you why the embarrassing offer is the correct offer right now, and I’ll keep it short.
I pulled our numbers this morning. Jefferson County, single family. There are 2,355 houses on the market. Two summers ago there were 1,446. We are selling almost exactly the same number every month that we were then — right around a thousand.
But last month, 723 people went under contract. Last July it was 999.
Two hundred and seventy-six people who would have signed didn’t.
That’s not a crash and it isn’t a boom. It’s a standoff. Sellers haven’t come down — houses that sold in July went for about 98 cents on every dollar of their original asking price, same as a year ago. Everybody is holding their number and waiting for the other guy to move.
Sellers are already bending, they’re just doing it quietly. Nearly half of American sellers this spring gave money back at closing to get the deal done — 46.2%, the highest Redfin has ever recorded. Inspections are back. Repair credits are back. The take-it-or-leave-it era is over. And investors bought fewer houses this spring than any spring in five years, so there’s nobody standing behind you at the table bidding you up.
The market is handing out permission and people are still too embarrassed to ask.
Somebody on this list is going to write the offer that gets laughed at this week and close on it in September.
Make money so you can walk out of situations you don’t like. You have to be seen wanting it first.
📊 Yesterday’s poll: “Be honest — how do you feel about your CPA?” — “They’re fine, wouldn’t rave” took it at 42.3%, then “actively shopping for a new one” at 23.1%, “I do my own taxes” at 19.2%, and only 15.4% of you would refer yours in a heartbeat.
Fifteen percent. So roughly 85% of you are lukewarm, going it alone, or already looking — and now those 130 referrals in two days make a lot more sense to me.
When's the last time you made an offer you were embarrassed by?
With Enthusiasm,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company
Schedule time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind — book me here.
PS: The 30-year came in at 6.69% on Freddie Mac’s survey last Thursday, the highest it’s been since July of last year. I told you Monday it was down to 6.51% — it didn’t stay there. The inflation report lands this morning, so we’ll see.
One thing worth knowing: loans built for investors are actually cheaper right now than the loan a regular homebuyer gets. Rental-property loans are starting around 6.12%, which is below what an owner-occupant is being quoted. That’s backwards from how it usually works, and it won’t last forever. If your pre-approval is six months old, throw it out and get a fresh one.
Here’s where to point it:
PSS: Trump is proposing a capital gains tax cut ahead of the midterms, and there are two pieces worth knowing.
The first is called indexing. Right now, if you buy something for $100,000 and sell it five years later for $200,000, you pay tax on the whole $100,000 gain. Under this proposal, what you originally paid gets adjusted for inflation first. If prices rose 20% over those five years, your $100,000 basis becomes $120,000 — so you’d owe tax on an $80,000 real gain instead of a $100,000 paper one.
The second piece is the one that’s ours. He’s also floated exempting the sale of any home worth $2 million or less from capital gains tax entirely. In this market, that’s very nearly every house in Louisville.
More details are expected soon and nothing is law. But for perspective on how big this would be: the last real cut to capital gains taxes in this country was 2003. Every change since has gone the other direction. Twenty-three years, one direction.
PSSS: We were thrilled to add another seasoned agent to Winner Realty — Wendy Zolnowski. I’ve known Wendy well over a decade. She’s incredible at design and staging, and she’s looking to do more flips and BRRRRs moving forward. Did I mention she’s an Aussie? Happy to have her. And be sure to say hello to Colleen at the New Albany commissioner’s sale Thursday!