Tag: Real Estate

  • Sign Your Own Checks

    Sign Your Own Checks

    We all need advice, but don’t turn over control.

    I saw an article about Kathy Ireland last week, which said she was suing her longtime business managers. The suit alleges they used a power of attorney she’d granted them to take out loans and open credit cards in her name, and quietly ran up something like $100 million in the process. Ireland says she only found out about this when she and her husband were trying to help one of their kids buy a house, and the mortgage application was denied.

    Probably not much fun to wake up thinking you have a 9-figure net worth, only to find out you can’t cosign on a smaller mortgage.

    I also saw a press release where the managers’ attorney called the suit frivolous. So who really knows? I don’t pay a ton of attention to the news, but maybe one day we will see how it shakes out.

    You see it all the time with athletes on a smaller scale. They sign on with a management firm, give them too much authority and trust, and find out one day that all their money is gone.

    It’s a good reminder that handing someone the pen isn’t the same as getting good advice.

    We all need advice in some areas. So get advice. Get a lot of it. But if the person advising you tells you it’s easier if you just let them handle it, that you don’t need to be bothered with the details, it’s time to find a new advisor.

    Anyone who is my client knows the deal. I will put in the work. And I’ll get you the info you need (good and bad). I’ll explain to you the pros and cons of whatever decision is on the table. And try to help you get where you want to be.

    But you’re going to be the one who makes the decision. And the one who signs your name on anything.

    You don’t need to know everything about your land or your business. You just need to be the one who’s still deciding.

    P.S. Most landowners who request an MBR Land Reality Check aren’t planning to sell. They simply want to know where they stand before they ever need the answer. It’s recent comparable sales, current market activity, and my opinion of what a reasonable buyer might pay today. No obligation to sell. Is it a bad idea to know?

    [Request Your MBR Land Reality Check]

    P.P.S. If you want more like this, I write regularly about land, markets, and what’s happening with growth here in North Texas.

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  • Everyone But Me

    Everyone But Me

    As it turns out, not everyone.

    I never got into gaming.

    But it felt like everybody else had a console, a headset, and a whole second life happening on a screen I wasn’t looking at. My kids, their friends, plenty of adults…even some older than me. So I made an assumption and never questioned it.

    If everybody’s playing, somebody must be making a fortune.

    Then I read something about Microsoft and the Xbox recently.

    They have spent billions building games, buying studios, and chasing market share, only to discover that popularity and profitability aren’t the same thing. From the outside it looked like an easy business. From the inside it was far more complicated.

    It’s a good reminder that what “everybody knows” is often just the part everyone can see.

    Land works the same way.

    If you own property anywhere near the DFW growth path, you’ve probably heard the stories.

    A neighbor sold for three times what he paid. Somebody got bought out for a data center. A family down the road suddenly became millionaires.

    Those stories spread fast. Before long, they become what “everyone knows.”

    Sometimes they’re even true.

    The problem is that they usually don’t tell you much about your property.

    Land values can change from one road to the next. Sometimes from one side of the fence to the other. Access, utilities, topography, floodplain, buyer demand, surrounding uses, and dozens of other factors can push one tract well above or well below the one everyone keeps talking about.

    That’s why I think there’s a difference between hearing what land is worth and knowing what your land is worth.

    Most people don’t need that answer today. You’re probably not considering selling. You may even plan to never sell.

    But when life changes, a health issue, an estate, a buyer calling unexpectedly, or a family decision, that’s a terrible time to discover you’ve been relying on local folklore instead of current market information.


    P.S.– Most landowners who request an MBR Land Reality Check aren’t planning to sell.

    They simply want to know where they stand before they ever need the answer.

    The report includes recent comparable sales, current market activity, and my opinion of what a reasonable buyer might pay today, without any obligation to sell.

    Is it a bad idea to know?

    Get It Here


    P.P.S.– If you’re not interested in a Land Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and North Texas growth, you can subscribe to my occasional emails below.

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  • We Don’t Decide With Our Brains.

    We Don’t Decide With Our Brains.

    We Decide With Our Guts and Hire Our Brains as Lawyers.

    There’s a genre of video that shows up online every election cycle.

    Someone reads a quote to a stranger on the street. Says a politician on the other side said it. The stranger nods along, agrees with every word, maybe adds their own commentary about how reasonable it sounds.

    Then the interviewer reveals who actually said it.

    The person on camera backpedals. Gets flustered. Sometimes gets mad.

    We watch that and think: what a rube. Didn’t even evaluate the idea on its own merits. Just heard a name and reacted.

    Here’s the part nobody likes hearing. That’s not a them problem. Everyone is prone to this sort of thing.

    We decide with emotion first. Then we go looking for the reasons. Most of the time we don’t even notice we did it in that order, because the reasons show up so fast it feels like they came first.

    Car salesmen have known this forever. Their whole job is getting you to want the car before you’ve priced it out and started the paperwork. Once you want it, you’ll find your own reasons the payment makes sense. Even though it’s more than you said you wanted to spend just a little earlier.

    It’s not just dealing with salesmen. It’s most of what moves us, all day, every day, if we’re not paying attention.

    I can tell you it’s smart to have a real handle on your finances. I can tell you that if you own land or commercial property, it makes sense to know roughly what it’s worth, what’s selling around it, what the county or the highway department is planning nearby. Not because you’re doing anything about it. Just because things change, sometimes fast, and it’s better to know than not know.

    You’ll agree with all of that. Nobody argues with it.

    And most people still won’t do anything about it.

    Not because it’s hard. Because of what happens in your chest the moment you think about picking up the phone.

    If an agent calls about your property, most people’s first thought isn’t “great, information.” It’s a mental preview of getting talked into something. Buzzwords. Pressure. A conversation that ends somewhere you didn’t want to go.

    Or it’s the family part. Land that’s been sitting in the name a long time carries more than a market value. Selling it, or even looking like you might, comes with a conversation you’re not ready to have with your brother or your kids.

    I know because that’s the same thing that runs through my head when it’s my property.

    None of that has to be true here.

    Looking isn’t selling. Nobody has to know you looked. You’re not committing to a conversation with your family, a listing agreement, or anything else. You’re just getting the numbers so you’re not guessing later, when guessing costs more.

    Give yourself permission to look. That’s smart to do, and you don’t have to go further.



    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but you liked this one, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

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  • Being Impressive Can Be Overrated

    Being Impressive Can Be Overrated

    I told this story on here a while back, but a lot of you weren’t reading yet, and I think it’s worth revisiting.

    Not long after the 2008 mortgage crisis, there were vacant lots everywhere and only a handful of buyers. I represented one of the few builders looking to acquire. We sat down with an investment group that was holding lots, to see if there was a fit.

    Realistically, a deal probably wasn’t happening regardless. The timing was wrong, the housing type probably wasn’t a fit, and pricing for builders and sellers was miles apart.

    But this meeting was doomed before anyone opened their mouth.

    The guy leading the investors was sharp. Sharp enough that he couldn’t stand to let it go unnoticed.

    Our builder’s CEO was the same. Two smart guys, both determined to be the one everybody left the room thinking about.

    They weren’t negotiating so much as performing. The rest of us just sat there and watched until the end, then went on our way.

    Not long after, my guy handed acquisitions to someone quieter and went back to running the company. Fifteen years on, that company is publicly traded, one of the biggest homebuilders in the country.

    The other guy didn’t fare quite as well. Overconfidence turned into overleverage, and overleverage turned into prison.

    He’s out now. I won’t be knocking down his door looking to do business again, although you never say never. As a broker you don’t always get to choose.

    Jim Camp writes about “okayness” in Start With No. In any interaction, only one person gets to feel completely okay. Your job is making sure it’s the other guy.

    If my client had just let the other man have his moment, instead of matching him move for move, it may have been different. Not that day, probably. The numbers were too far apart for that. But there’s a real chance we’re doing business with those investors again down the road, instead of never speaking to them again.

    If you remember the old TV show Columbo, he solved every case for the same reason. He walked in looking rumpled and half a step behind, and the guilty party relaxed just enough to talk too much.

    That’s the whole move. You don’t have to be less capable. You just have to stop trying to prove it so much.

    I’ve watched it play out both ways enough times to trust it. The guy who needs the room to know he’s the smartest one in it almost always ends up negotiating against himself. The one who can let that go usually walks out with the better deal, and sometimes a second chance at one he didn’t get the first time.

    Buy the book, and learn the system. It’s not hard and doesn’t require you to become some sort of master communicator or smooth talker (thank God).

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  • What’s Good For The Goose…

    What’s Good For The Goose…

    Sometimes I need to remember to follow my own advice.

    If you’ve been reading here any length of time, you know I like to talk about how putting things off isn’t smart. It’s understandable why we do it. We’re avoiding something we think will be unpleasant. But usually we’re better off facing it now, because the unpleasantness doesn’t shrink while we wait. It grows. And half the time you find out the thing you were dreading wasn’t worth the dread.

    We all know it’s a bad idea. We all do it anyway. That includes me.

    I run another site called hiswordtogether.com. It helps people stay on a Bible reading plan that gets you through the whole thing once a year. If you’re interested, you can check it out at the link.

    When I started the site late last year, I also reserved the .net and .org versions of the name. Ever since then, up until last week, there was an item on my to-do list to point those addresses to the main site.

    It had been there so long I stopped noticing it most of the time. When I did see it, I’d think about how I needed to get it done, then immediately start getting nervous about doing it. I’m not the most tech-savvy guy around, and I’d start picturing what happens if I click the wrong spot and take all my sites and my email offline.

    Again.

    That’s happened before. Inconvenient doesn’t cover it. Support got me through it, but when you don’t know how to explain what you did, it’s not exactly fun.

    So I kept trading the low-key annoyance of seeing it on my to-do list for the sharper worry of “what if.”

    Last week I finally did it. Logged into my registrar, four clicks, done. I spent something like a hundred times more effort avoiding it than it took to just do it.

    Nothing in my life is visibly different now, except I feel a little silly.

    I bring this up because I see the same thing happen with landowners, just about a different kind of click.

    You know it’s smart to have a read on what your land is worth and what’s happening around it. You’re probably not selling anytime soon, maybe not ever. But you also know that not knowing is its own kind of risk, the kind where you find out too late that something changed.

    What stops people isn’t the info. It’s what they think asking for it will cost them. Call an agent for “just some information” and a lot of them hear that as an invitation to start walking you toward a listing appointment, whether you asked for one or not. So people skip it. Same as I skipped four clicks for months.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It gives you real market data, a heads up on what’s happening nearby, and whatever else might be relevant for your property.

    All without pressure to list, or having to sit through a buzzword-filled presentation. And it can be requested in a couple of minutes, or less time than it took me to fix my domain issue.

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  • Sometimes It Just Works

    Sometimes It Just Works

    A few weeks ago one of my clients who’s worked with me over 20 years called and asked me to help him find something pretty specialized. I don’t take that sort of project on all the time, but I did it for him.

    And I’m glad I did.

    I ran a search that day, which flagged two properties. One was basically a perfect fit, so we made a cash offer and closed it yesterday. Less than 30 days from the initial phone call to the closing table.

    Sometimes it just falls into place.

    Thanks to Amin and Perry, listing agent Bill Benton, and the folks at Texas Pioneer Title for making it all go as smoothly as possible.

    When I say as smoothly as possible, I mean everyone was on the same page from end to end. A willing buyer and seller working to get it done.

    But it’s still real estate.

    Even after close to 30 years, it seems like something I’ve never seen before pops up on almost every deal. So you never really know if it’s closing until after it’s done.

    That happened on this one too, but we got it done.

    I don’t do much buyer representation in the way a lot of agents do. For several reasons. I keep my eyes open, and if I see an opportunity I usually know who to take it to. But doing a dedicated search for a specific thing for a specific person, not nearly as often.

    If they were all like the one that closed yesterday, I might change my mind.

    We found exactly what he was looking for, got it under contract quickly, and closed in less than a month.

    Every week I look at hundreds of properties. Most aren’t worth talking about. Some are. And every so often one comes along where my first thought isn’t:

    “Who’s selling this?”

    It’s:

    “Who do I know that should see it?”

    A lot of times I have an answer immediately.

    Sometimes I don’t.

    Wrong area. Wrong deal size. They just bought something else. Whatever the reason, occasionally I end up looking at something I think deserves a closer look and don’t have the right investor to send it to.

    I’m trying to fix that.

    If you’re an investor and would like to hear about opportunities when they come across my desk, click below and tell me what you’re looking for.

    No obligation. No pressure. Just a way for me to know who might be interested when something survives the first round of filtering.

    Is it crazy to think you might want to see the deals I see?

  • The First Step Is Usually the Hardest

    The First Step Is Usually the Hardest

    I remember being told growing up that it takes less gas for a car to idle for a few minutes than to shut it off and restart it. Something about wear on the starter too. I heard the same thing about lights. About computers. If the goal was saving energy, you were often better off leaving things running than flipping them on and off.

    Might not have been true. I’m not an electrician or a mechanic, and it was a long time ago. So even if it was true then maybe it isn’t now.

    Beside the point anyway.

    I read something recently noting that the hardest part of most tasks isn’t the task itself. It’s going from not moving to moving. Once you’re in motion, momentum does most of the work. The whole fight is getting off the couch.

    Once you see that, you can use it against yourself, in a good way. Can’t get motivated for the gym? Make a deal. You’ll get dressed, drive there, walk in. If you still don’t feel like it once you’re inside, you can turn around and go home.

    Do this enough times and you’ll find you almost never leave.

    Just getting started was the whole battle.

    I use this at the office too. There are some projects I have that I don’t look at every day, but are large and have lots of moving parts. When it’s time to pick them back up, they’re overwhelming enough that putting them off a little longer feels reasonable. Which would just make it worse.

    If I commit to ten minutes, just one small task like sending an email or reviewing what’s left to do, I almost never stop at ten minutes.

    If anything I end up with the opposite problem. I get moving and don’t stop. An hour turns into four, and something else I meant to get to that day doesn’t happen. I’ve started setting alarms just to make myself quit.

    The same thing happens with bigger decisions too.

    If you own non-residential real estate, it’s probably a real chunk of your financial picture. Worth knowing what it’s worth, and what’s happening around it that affects that. Not because you’re looking to sell. Usually the smart move is waiting, unless you’ve got somewhere better to put the money or a reason that forces your hand.

    But it’s better to have the information and not need it than to need it and not have it.

    Most people never get the information. Getting started feels like a bigger thing than it is.

    And there’s the barber problem. Ask a barber if you need a haircut and you already know the answer.

    Call about your land looking for information and you end up on the phone with a salesperson telling you all the things you need to do that happen to be very good for them. So people put it off.

    It doesn’t have to go that way.

    It takes about two minutes to request, and it shows up in your inbox a few days later.

    No pressure, because there isn’t a pitch waiting on the other end.

    You don’t have to be ready to sell.

    You just have to be willing to know where things stand.

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  • The Sun Is Probably Coming Up Tomorrow

    The Sun Is Probably Coming Up Tomorrow

    Most people wake up these days and, they already know the world is ending before they’ve had their first cup of coffee.

    Used to be you’d flip on the morning news. Maybe Good Morning America. You’d hear some bad news, sure, but then there’d be a segment on a dog that learned to skateboard, or some heartwarming story about a kid raising money for his neighbor. You’d get the weather. Somebody would laugh too loud at something that wasn’t that funny.

    Now people roll over, grab the phone, and start scrolling. And the algorithm figured out a long time ago that outrage keeps you looking longer than a skateboarding dog does. So that’s what it feeds you, nonstop, before you’ve put your feet on the floor.

    Right now it’s the war that was going to end but now it isn’t (oh wait, yes it is, never mind it’s not). Gas is either already too high or about to get worse, depending on which story you read first. Or we’re living in a dystopian nightmare. It’s exhausting, it’ll ruin your morning or your whole day before it starts if you let it.

    But it’s always been this way, just maybe not quite as much in our faces.

    Just a few years ago we were all going to die. A sizable number of serious people were saying civilization was a few days away from coming apart. We’re still here.

    Before that, a particular election was going to send everything straight into the toilet. Whichever one you’re thinking of, someone said that about it. They all came and went and things are moving along. Most people would never even notice a difference if they weren’t told about it.

    Before that, the housing market had crashed and the same people who swore the crash wasn’t coming turned around and swore it would never recover. It recovered so much that now those same people say nobody can afford a house.

    Before that, terrorists were going to get us all. Hasn’t happened yet.

    Before that, the oceans were going to swallow everything if we didn’t figure out how to control the temperature of the sun. Still waiting on that one too, Al.

    Before that, nuclear holocaust by 1985. Wrong again.

    Before that, economic malaise was all we had to look forward to. Until things started growing so fast the 80s were known as the decade of greed.

    Eventually something is going to get us. That’s just the nature of things.

    But until then, you’ve got a life to live. And a morning to get through. If you spend it marinating in whatever disaster the algorithm decided you should be upset about today, you’ll make worse decisions, be harder to be around, and see problems everywhere, including in places that are actually fine.

    Here’s a pretty decent rule of thumb: if someone says it’s different this time or we will never recover from (insert problem here), they probably aren’t worth listening to.

    There will always be a reason to run and hide, if you just look for one.

    But the sun’s probably coming up tomorrow. Plan accordingly.

    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and how to think about both, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

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  • The Big Deal Isn’t Harder

    The Big Deal Isn’t Harder

    Early in my career I spent months working a deal. Drove the area, ran the comps, found the right buyer, got it closed. Made about a thousand dollars on it.

    I was working with my dad at the time, so he saw all of it. The driving around, the dead ends, the slow grind toward a buyer. He told me I’d done everything right, worked it the way it should be worked. Then he told me something I didn’t fully get at the time.

    He said it isn’t any harder to work a big deal than a small one.

    I argued with that a little in my head. Surely the bigger deal has more moving parts, more zeros, more ways to mess it up. More people who’d notice if you got it wrong.

    He was right and I was wrong. (Don’t tell him I said that.) The work is close to identical. Find someone who wants to buy, someone who wants to sell, put them together and get something done that leaves everyone better off. What changes is the number at the end, and that number doesn’t ask you to do anything different to get there.

    Most of what makes the big version feel harder isn’t the deal. It’s you. You start adding weight to it that isn’t actually there. Bigger feels like it should require more, so you tense up, slow down, second-guess yourself in ways you never would on something smaller. The deal didn’t get harder. You did.

    It applies to most things, and most people never test it. Making two hundred thousand a year isn’t meaningfully harder than making forty. It’s a different set of habits, different deals, different conversations, but it isn’t five times the effort or five times the stress. People assume the bigger number requires being a different kind of person. Mostly it just requires not getting in your own way at the size you’re currently working.

    People spend years circling the smaller version of something because it felt safer, only to find out later the bigger version asked the same of them. If not less. They just hadn’t been willing to find out.

    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

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  • The World As It Is

    The World As It Is

    Some people spend a lot of energy being offended by things that were never about them.

    Someone says something careless. Or acts a certain way in public, or online, or at work. And someone else sees it and decides it was aimed at them personally. Now there’s a problem to solve. A wrong to correct. A wound that needs acknowledging.

    A lot of times the other person wasn’t thinking about them at all.

    People are self-absorbed, although usually in ordinary, harmless ways. They’re worried about their own day, their own bills, their own kid’s homework. The comment that landed wrong, the look that seemed pointed, the rule that felt unfair. Most of it is just noise other people are making while they live their own lives. It only becomes about you if you decide it is.

    Obviously I’m not saying bad behavior doesn’t exist. People are rude and small and unfair plenty. As the saying goes, some people are just jerks.

    But there’s a difference between noticing things and letting those things ruin your day, or organizing your life around the idea that the world should have treated you a certain way and now owes you something for not doing it.

    That’s exhausting. And it doesn’t change anything. Whatever happened still happened. All that’s changed is you’ve spent the afternoon carrying it around.

    The people who do best are the ones who deal with the world as it actually behaves instead of how they wish it did. And move forward accordingly. That doesn’t mean you can’t be disappointed at times, but it happens to everyone.

    This is one of those concepts you see everywhere once you notice it for the first time.

    A seller looks at their property and decides what they want it to be worth. Based on what they put into it, what they need out of it, what the neighbor claimed his sold for at the mailbox. None of that is the market. The market doesn’t know what you need and doesn’t owe you a number.

    You can list at an unrealistic number you wish were true, but I don’t recommend it. Buyers will simply ignore you, politely or not, and the property sits.

    You can price it at what the market will actually pay, today, with the buyers who actually exist, and move forward. Or you can wait. And maybe later things will be more to your liking.

    Both are real choices. Waiting for the market to come around to your number may be the right call. Nobody knows the future, but in north Texas land has tended to rise over time. If you’re not in a hurry, or don’t need to sell, it might be the best choice.

    But the market isn’t being unfair to you for not acting like you wish it would. It isn’t being anything. It’s just being a market.

    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.