Matthew Maschler:
Welcome to the Real Estate Finder Podcast. I’m Matthew Maschler Real Estate broker with the signature real estate companies@realestatefinder.com is my website and Real Estate Finder is my brand. And it’s the, the name that I call my team of agents, my awesome agents team. Awesome. The real estate, the Agents of Real Estate Finder. And this is our 58th episode. We’ve been doing this a little bit over a year. Every week we bring this podcast to you from the pod Popularized Studios in Boca Raton. Recently opened up offices in Palm Beach Gardens in Miami, and they will soon have a podcast studio near you. So if you’ve ever wanted to podcast, please reach out to our friends at Pod populi and they can set you up. You can podcast about whatever you like. I podcast about real estate. I also podcast about, well, people say it’s wrestling.
I have the Matthew Mania podcast. It can be wrestling, but, you know, we talked about the Red Lovers Club last week. It could be charitable, it could be anything I want to talk about. That’s why it is Matthew Mania. But this is the Real Estate Finder podcast. We’re here to talk to you about real estate and when I opened it up this podcast, I, I didn’t know if I was talking to agents or customers or people who want to buy or sell real estate. Not always a hundred percent sure what my audience is, but really I can. It’s my show. I can talk about whatever I want. A lot of times what I do is I answer questions that the real estate customers, buyers, or sellers of real estate have, or some of my agents have. We have new agents and experienced agents on the team.
And so one of the things I wanted to do is talk to my agents today. Hopefully my agents do listen to my podcast. It would be a a ways to that you work for me and don’t understand these issues. And you can’t ask me follow up questions, which I’m always happy to talk about. But I wanna talk to you today about something special that we have at the Signature Real Estate Companies. You don’t have to be a, a team awesome real estate finder agent. Any of the 1500 or so signature real estate agents have access to a team of managers. If you have any questions, any issues, any stumbling block blocks, if you’re stuck and don’t know what to do next or just wanna discuss something we have at Signature a manager named Sarah. And now Sarah is not a person.
It stands for signature Agent Resource and help. And there are four ways of contacting Sarah with your real estate questions. So you can call, there’s a, a phone number that you can call. I’m not gonna give out the number because it’s really only for signature agents. I don’t want customers or fans of my she calling, but there’s a customer. So from Monday through Friday, during business hours, nine to five, it’s actually even a little bit extended. Ben Sha, the broker, will answer the phone a couple hours before and after nine to five. So if you have a question, you call up the Sarah helpline and ask the question, you’ll get an answer. If you don’t wanna call, you wanna speak face to face we have a Zoom room contact Sarah. We have a Zoom room.
You can, there’s always a manager again, Monday through Friday, business hours manning the Zoom room, and you just go on, say hello and ask your question. And as much as I can answer my agent’s questions, and I’m pretty experienced, I find myself either calling or zooming with Sarah, you know, not every month, but every other month or so. If I have if I have a question much more often than that, I go on the website, contact sarah.com, and there has all the resources for agents, all the links to the to the websites that you need to be a real estate agent. Video downloads of all of the classes that we teach at Signature, the Monday morning meeting, the Wednesday coaching, and all the monthly classes and seminars offered at Signature and, and all the, and tons of other resources on the contact Sarah dot com website.
And finally, by email, 24 hours a day, you can email Sarah and ask the question. Now, as someone who receives the emails I, I joke around that there’s a, actually two books that can be written from these emails. One is you know, if you compile some of these questions and the answers, you could have a really amazing guide to real estate. Every, you know, every question and, and an answer and come up with a, a database or a wiki, or an amazing guide to real estate because I know personally I learn a lot from from listening and reading all of these questions. A question came in yesterday that the the buyer the buyer wanted an attorney review provision in in their contract. And I was able to point out to the to the agent, wasn’t, again, wasn’t one of my agents.
That if you go to episode 12 of the Real Estate Finder podcast, I, I talk about it in length what what that means. And usually it’s a customer from New Jersey. New Jersey is used to a an attorney review where the attorney reviews and then actually cancels the contract. It’s a strange system, and I explained in episode 12 and to this agent yesterday that it comes from the real estate agents versus the lawyers and the unauthorized practice of law. But in Florida, you don’t need an attorney review provision because all the Florida contracts are approved forms from the Supreme Court. So realtors can use the approved forms for their contracts, and it’s not deemed the unauthorized practice of law. The as is contract is cancelable for any reason by the buyer. So if the buyer, buyer wants an attorney to review the contract, they simply vote it to their attorney and have their attorney read it.
I, I’ve had an attorney read a contract, you know, after it was signed, and it was a little bit too late, right? If, if you’re a buyer or a seller of real estate and you want an attorney to read your contract, simply vote it to the attorney and read the contract before you sign it. Not against it. Some people think you don’t need a lawyer. In Florida, there are times when, when it’s needed, and if you decide you want a lawyer, simply forward the lawyer the contract and have them read it before you sign it. But don’t sign, but you don’t sign in Florida a contract and then expect to have the right to have an attorney review it and to be able to cancel it if the attorney doesn’t approve it. In New Jersey, that is the system because the the attorney approval is what makes makes it so that the realtor can write a contract and commit the unauthorized practice of law.
But they’re very interesting questions, and that question does come up from time to time. So it’s good to have a resource. Also on the flip side, sometimes the questions are so dumb. I mean, and people say, you know, the only dumb question is the question not asked, but I’ve seen someone say like, what is the address for the office? And if you read the email, the person has their email signature with their name, name of the broker and the address right underneath their name. And I literally replied to the person check your email signature, the email that you sent in, what is the address? And then you, you signed it with your name and address. So it’s literally on your email that you just sent to us, your addresses right there. Also, you can look at your business card, your business card has your address on it.
So yeah, there’s no such thing as dumb questions, but you wouldn’t believe some of the questions. And then for some people out there who think maybe you know, we get frustrated at Sarah you should see some <laugh> some of the questions were asked. So don’t email Sarah and say, can somebody call me? Right? I mean, if you want to talk on the telephone, just dial the Sarah phone number. You don’t have to email Sarah to say, will somebody call me? You can simply call or go on the zoom room. We don’t need a long story. We don’t need to know that you’ve been looking at houses for, for years. And then they, they made several offers on houses, and then they finally got this one approved. Generally, that’s not relevant to the story. You’re just, just ask us the question. You don’t have to give us the long, colorful backstory of how you met the customer when you have a question about the inspections.
All right? So ask a precise question and let us know which party you represent, right? Do you represent the buyer or the tenant? Do you represent the seller or the landlord? Sometimes you ask a question and say, you know, you know, the, the, there was an inspection and then the inspection revealed these problems. What do I do? And, and I can’t answer you. Cause I don’t know if you’re the representing the buyer or if you’re the seller. So you can start the email with, I represent the seller, or I represent the tenant. And avoid pronouns like he or she, or they say the names I rep. Because if you say, I rep, you know, I represent the seller. He had the inspection done, and then she wants a credit for this. And I don’t know if, if, if we’re still talking about the seller, if we’re talking about the inspector, right?
Is he the inspector? Is he the buyer? I, I don’t know where we are in this story. So say you represent the seller. If the inspector said such and such, the buyer’s agent replied such and such, right? But if you start with he’s, and she’s, I’ll get very confused. I will not know which who you’re talking about. So say who you represent and then be clear. And you can say the seller’s agent every time. Don’t say she, right, or don’t, or, or, or, or the inspector. So I know who you are talking about. Very important about title title agents. We talked a long time ago, we had Bob Schwartz on the show. We talked about title companies. Title companies are the companies that issue the title like Chicago or Fidelity. They have representatives or agents lawyers or or title agencies that that will write the policies or sell the policies and then perform the closing or do some other service in their office.
But the local title office isn’t a titled company. It’s a title agency. Okay? That’s a, a very particular nitty gritty. It’s, I’m not gonna, you know, hold people up on that. But in the contract and generally the, the offer is written by the buyer. So the buyer has the pen and controls, controls the offer in the terms. There is a, a, a paragraph that says who the escrow agent is. The escrow is the deposit, first deposit, maybe second deposit. Who is holding that deposit? And and, and you name who the escrow agent is. Now, very often it’s a title agency, right? And so when we represent a buyer, it’s signature, we’ll very often put signature title as the escrow agent. Later in the contract, there is a, a closing agent. The closing agent is not named in the contract, but who pays the closing agent?
The buyer who picks and pays the buyer or the seller is in the contract. So if the listing says that they would like XYZ title to be the closing agent, that doesn’t mean that they have to also be the escrow agent. So when we talk about the title agent well, title C, if you tell me Penguin title is doing the closing, I don’t always know if penguin title is the escrow agent or the closing agent. And the terms in the contract are escrow agent, closing agent. So to my agents going forward, let me use escrow agent or closing agent. Don’t say the title company, the title company said that there was a lien. No, the closing agent said that there was a lien. So let’s use escrow agent and closing agent. Let’s not use Title agent because title agent’s not a defined party in the contract.
And let’s try not to use title company either, because you could have a situation where the closing agent is Penguin title or XYZ title, but the title company that their writing Title four has an issue with, with alene. So you can have multiple parties being the title company, the local to closing agent, and and the escrow agent. And they all have title in their name. So it can get confusing that way. So we said always say who you represent. Always say the pronouns, let me know if it’s the escrow agent or the closing agent. Offers, when the buyer writes an offer they fill out all the terms, they submit it to the seller. If the seller wants to accept the offer, they can sign it. Now the offers accepted. If there’s a counter offer negotiations back and forth, eventually you result in an executed contract.
It’s very important to either let us know if it’s an offer or if it’s an executed contract, because things change. Things are different because once a contract, once an offer is accepted, it is now contracted, is now legally binding when it’s just an offer and it hasn’t been accepted, it’s not binding. So time periods don’t run, right? We submitted an offer. There’s a five day inspection, right? And, you know, we submitted an offer on Thursday. There’s a five day inspection. Right now, it’s Wednesday. I’m trying to figure out the times, but I don’t know if the offer was even accepted. It’s not five days from when you submitted the offer. It’s five days from when the contract is executed. So if the contract is executed, don’t call it an offer, call it a contract. If the contract is not accepted, it’s not executed. Don’t call it a contract.
Call it an offer, even though it’s the same piece of paper, even though the title of the paper is as is contract, if it’s not executed, it’s an offer. If it’s an executed, if it is executed, it’s a contract. So let us know where you are in the negotiations. Let us know if it’s an offer or a contract. If you have a role in the transaction different than representing the buyer. Let’s say you are the buyer, right? You and your husband are buying a house, and you’re the real estate agent for the buyer. Don’t say, don’t ask me a question and say the, you know, does the buyer have to do this? Or, or that because that extra role that you have can change things. It obviously has to be disclosed. If you are buying or selling for your own interest, you, you do have to disclose to the other person that you’re a licensed real estate agent.
But it does make a difference if you are a party to the contract. You know, there are times when we’ll, we’ll have a question and I’ll say, listen, you know, the buyer didn’t breach a contract. The sellers in breach a contract. You can’t answer that question that that person has to talk to a lawyer. You know, your customer has to talk to a lawyer. This is a legal question. That’s not a question you can answer. But if I’m actually talking to the person that is the buyer I’m gonna use, I might use different words. But I’ll say, you should not talk to the buyer at this point anymore. Your buyer has to talk to a lawyer. And then the, then the person will still email me back questions, and we’ll go back and forth. And it’s like, stop. Please stop asking. You need to speak to a lawyer if you were a party to it.
If it’s actually you, and you’re not telling me that, it becomes very difficult for me to understand what your question is or what what you’re talking about. So if you’re buying or selling for yourself or for your mother or your sister, or we’ve had a situation where there was a, a problem between the buyer and the, between the, the listing agent and the seller, and it resulted in a lawsuit between the agent and the seller. We didn’t know that the seller was the mother-in-law of the agent. Had we known it was his mother-in-law, maybe we wouldn’t have went to a lawsuit, right? We’re not gonna, we’re not in the business of assuming people’s mother-in-laws, right? You can sometimes family has, is treated a little bit differently. But for two years, this thing went this, this argument, this what do you call it?
This, this, this litigation went back and forth without us knowing that we were suing one of our agents’ mother-in-law. So that was super uncomfortable. So if you are a party or have another role in the contract, please let us know. All right? So to my agents out there please do not hesitate. Please reach out to, for, for us to help my agents. Please feel free to cc me along the way. I want to know what you’re doing. I want to help you. I want to catch you when you fall and when you, when you make mistakes. So please reach out to me if I’m not available, please reach out to contact Sarah. So hopefully that helps you. If you are not a signature agent and you would like to become one, if you think that this resource in and of itself is a good enough reason, which I do, and you wanna leave whatever firm you’re with, and you wanna join us at the signature Real Estate companies, and we would love to have you, I would love to have you on the Real Estate Finder team.
If you know anyone that just got their real estate license please have them reach out to me if they want to get licensed. We, we have a school. So we have a school to get people licensed. If you are licensed, we have training and help for you to launch your career. And if you’re an experienced agent and just want to either work with me or work more or sell more, or let us take your business to the next level, we would love to have you on the Real estate finder division or at the signature real estate companies. And I just wanna tell all my agents I love you and I love your questions. Keep coming. I really want to help you. You are not bothering me. Email me, email Sarah. And yeah, let’s sell some real estate, because it is almost Thanksgiving, and that means the snowbirds are coming back and people want to escape the cold up north, and they want to live in Florida.
And we will see this winter a very, very strong selling season. So we want to help you make a lot of money and sell a lot of real estate this winter. Thank you for joining us on the Real Estate Finder podcast. I’m Matthew Mash, broker of Signature Real Estate Finder, a division of the signature real estate companies. You can find me@realestatefinder.com or on Instagram, Twitter, social media. Just shout out the window as one of my old agents used to say, shout out. Shout out the window and just say, I need the real estate finder. And we will help you find the home of your dreams.
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