Selling without the Traditional Realtor

John Harcar (00:01.132)
All right, hey guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harkar, and we’re here today with Ralph Harvey, and we’re gonna talk about skipping that traditional agent in the process of selling your home. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X your business. And it’s putting you in front of the right people, having the right tools and resources to help build the business you wanna build and live the life that you’ve always wanted to live.

Ralph Harvey (00:12.057)
you

John Harcar (00:30.358)
Ralph, welcome to our show.

Ralph Harvey (00:31.981)
Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us and giving us this opportunity to reach out to your audience.

John Harcar (00:37.89)
Definitely. No, I’m super excited to talk about, you know, skipping the traditional realtor. I mean, there’s a lot of our investors out here that that might be selling their own properties or maybe using realtors. I don’t know. But before we get into the weeds of all that, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit more about you, you how you got into real estate, you know, what got you here?

Ralph Harvey (00:57.689)
Okay, so you know got out of school and you know Didn’t know quite where I was gonna go what I was gonna do wound up in a restaurant industry Until I was basically 30 years old or so 31 maybe and Started kind of moonlighting in real estate the last year and a half or so that was in the restaurant industry and knew that you know wasn’t going anywhere’s there that it was just you know Eeking out a living and not doing great at that quite honestly

John Harcar (01:09.228)
Okay.

John Harcar (01:23.448)
Hmm.

Ralph Harvey (01:24.695)
always had an interest in real estate, bought my first property when I was 22 years old. And by the time I was 25, I had two properties. So we were, always had our foot in real estate to some degree and then just finally decided that, taking on debt, working all kinds of weird hours of restaurant and went full bore into real estate and mortgages. So when I first got in, I was all mortgages and very little real estate. We now know what happened in 07, 08.

John Harcar (01:51.258)
wow.

Ralph Harvey (01:54.281)
And so when that kind of the dust kind of there, the mortgage stuff kind of went by the wayside a little bit and the real estate kind of took off. Then and I was a full service traditional real estate. That was my everything I’d been doing up to that point. Listen, Freedom was a company that my partner owned at the time, and he was going through some changes in his life. And he approached an attorney that was a friend of mine about doing some things in the company and ultimately.

John Harcar (02:07.491)
Mm-hmm.

Ralph Harvey (02:23.673)
He and I met and I went up buying the company from him and that’s about nine years or so ago now. I bought the company from him and we were only in Florida at that point and he stayed around. My partner Jim is all tech. mean he can build the world from a tech standpoint. mean our CRM, all of our software is custom for us. So it’s pretty cool to have that. He exited the business. He stayed around just to help with the tech stuff as a contract person for me.

John Harcar (02:29.112)
wow, okay.

John Harcar (02:40.43)
Okay.

Ralph Harvey (02:52.609)
I got an opportunity about a year in of owning list of freedom to go to Alabama. Some people I was working with investors that was working with needed some help in Alabama. So I went there. Then they kind of turned on some people in Tennessee. So I went to Tennessee and then I got the bug and then it was just go to state to state to state. So we sewed up the Southeast in the next year and a half or so. My partner who’s building who at the time was not a partner was building this tech to support those states.

John Harcar (02:59.982)
You

John Harcar (03:08.227)
Yeah.

Ralph Harvey (03:21.017)
wanted to come back in, saw where we building to. And then when I got about 13 or 14 states, we got serious about coming back together. And so he did come back in as a 50-50 partner. And when he came in, I think we were 14 states or something like that. We went from 14 states to 48 states in 18 months. So that was a lot of late nights, a lot of hard work. I shouldn’t say hard work, but a lot of time and putting papers together and filling this all out, going to various states, know, because you got the multiple levels of doing that with them.

John Harcar (03:31.019)
Okay.

John Harcar (03:47.532)
Yeah.

Ralph Harvey (03:51.585)
So that’s done. So we are licensed and operational in 47 states. We have the ability to work in Colorado. We’re not actually working in Colorado right now. We’re in process in Alaska and Hawaii’s got some unique laws that we got to find the right person to work with us there. We haven’t found that right person. So if anybody knows a broker in Hawaii that wants some part-time work, turn them on to us. We’ll be happy to hear about them. We need a broker there.

John Harcar (04:17.612)
Yeah, yeah, I might have a resource for you. But yeah, anybody who’s listening, if you’re in Hawaii, give them a call. Were there any specific states that were like a pain in the butt, right? Like a lot of extra paperwork, a lot of extras. I mean, outside of maybe Hawaii being one of them.

Ralph Harvey (04:32.185)
Yeah, well, Hawaii’s just got a unique thing where you have to be in, you have to have a physical office on each island that you’re working on and you have to be in that office at least once every 30 days. It’s protectionism, right? They don’t want a lot of people from the mainland coming over there and stealing their business. I get it. But the, you know, the hardest states out there really were basically Nevada and Arizona, believe it or not. And it’s just that they have some weird ways of communicating and some very specific little tiny things that they want done.

John Harcar (04:38.667)
Okay.

John Harcar (04:45.774)
Right.

Ralph Harvey (05:00.063)
And I mean, they make sure every I is dotted, every T is crossed twice. I mean, they’re really kind of crazy about it, but we got through it. We’re licensed area, we’re successful in those states. but those are two of the harder ones. It seemed like us being on the East coast, the further we went West, the more odd the requirements became and what we had to do. So.

John Harcar (05:19.308)
Got it. What were some of the challenges or the pushback or you got when you were trying to start it and grow it and do all this?

Ralph Harvey (05:27.459)
Well, the pushback is when you get to certain areas that are maybe less populated areas or smaller markets and we come into that market and all of sudden, you know, we join a certain MLS system or whatever the case is and we get, we’re starting, we have no business, right? And then three months in, we have 10 or 15 listings in that one MLS system. Well, all of sudden people start, so how do they do that? They’re not gonna be here. They’re not local. They’re this, they’re that. So oftentimes,

Not so much anymore because we’ve been around for so long, but we would get called in front of the MLS committees and they would roll us out there and they would ask us questions. And the first thing I would ask is, it’d this environment where was remote and I never go to these places. And they would ask how we could do this job and all this kind of stuff. I’d just say, listen, I’m gonna reverse the question on you a little bit. How many of you guys order from Amazon or Chewy or other online services, the Shave Club or whatever the case is on it?

And I’d ask them raise their hands and inevitably everybody would raise their hands and said, so you’re okay with Amazon and all these other companies taking your money from far away places relative to where you’re at. And you’re okay with doing that knowing that your buddy or your friend or your relative has a store down the street or around the corner that you don’t go to because that saves you time and money. And you don’t even think about the effect that it has on the local store that’s around you. You don’t even think about that. And you’re okay with that. But now that it’s come to your industry,

John Harcar (06:46.35)
Wow.

Ralph Harvey (06:50.889)
and we’re here and we’re giving people a different option and some people are choosing this option, you now have concerns about it. So when you put it in that context, they kind of all take a break and it gives them an easy place to think. And we move on. They still don’t like it, but we have to understand it at least at that point.

John Harcar (07:05.002)
Right. Right.

Have you ever had any like negative email from realtors? Like what the hell are doing? You’re taking my business. I mean, I didn’t know. I was trying to figure out how not to not to be like, you know, hate mail or, or, you know, those type of things. But I’m sure you’ve gotten some of that.

Ralph Harvey (07:13.849)
Negative emails, negative reviews, Facebook posts. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, we get it. We used to get more of it. And over the time that we’ve been doing this and the reputation we’ve developed, we get less of it. And I think we’re more accepted out there. And the thing, when a realtor will have a constructive conversation with me, I’ll use my hamburger analogy with them. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King.

John Harcar (07:26.712)
Sure.

Ralph Harvey (07:42.381)
They all exist on the same street, typically within a few blocks of each other. And you’re gonna get a hamburger, fry, broil, or square, you’re getting a hamburger. You get to make the choice. So you want to fry it, you want to broil it, or want to square it, there’s a place for you. But it’s the same piece of crappy meat no matter where you go, and it’s just cooked differently. Well, when you come to real estate, up until companies like RStart, we’re not the only game in town, but up until companies like RStart, you could choose Remax or Century 21 or…

Crylike or any other brands out there, I’m not picking on those guys. But they all, aside from the logo and the colors, they all had the same product. They all had the same service. To this day, they all have the same product, they all have the same service. So, only thing you’re doing by selecting a realtor or a real estate agent from one of those companies is that’s your personal choice. You like that person that you’re dealing with. They work the way you want, they communicate the way you want. But you’re not buying that brand, you’re buying that person who happens to be affiliated with that brand.

John Harcar (08:23.886)
John Harcar (08:36.408)
Right.

Ralph Harvey (08:41.335)
So there’s now there’s more, there’s tons of things out there from iBuyers to limited service companies like ours to full service companies to true concierge service companies that are out there. So there are some differences that are being developed in there. It’s slow coming still. I’d like to see it speed up and get those differences more defined out there. But, you know, we’re a limited services company. We’re going to do what’s required by law and what we contract for with our sellers.

John Harcar (09:02.701)
Hmm.

Ralph Harvey (09:11.321)
on their properties and we’re going to give as much control as we legally can give in that very state by state, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, we’re going to give you as much control as you possibly want and need in order to help facilitate a smoother transaction for yourself and the highest price and to meet your needs as a property seller, whether it be a mom and pop that are selling their home for 20 years or whether that be investors still missing 10 times a month.

John Harcar (09:37.262)
Right with the whole change in the realtor Commission’s whole deal. I mean has that Uptick to your business and you seen a maybe a reflex from it. No doesn’t affect it at all

Ralph Harvey (09:50.339)
Well, I think there’s still a lot of flux in the industry. It’s settled in large part, but there’s still some confusion out there about it. You know, we’re seeing people have kind of more or less settled back into the old way of doing things just with an extra piece of paper or a sideline communication, if you will, on it. But we are seeing some sellers out there that little more savvy where they’re just saying, like, we don’t ask our sellers to commit to a buyer’s agent commission.

In our contract, the only thing you’re going to commit to is what we’re going to get paid as the listing company on it. We ask our sellers, are you open to the idea of paying a buyer’s agent? And if so, that’s all we want to know. We don’t want to lock you into a certain percentage or a certain dollar amount or whatever the case is. We want to see the offers come in and make the request with the offer. So if you’re $100,000 property, you’re offering $90,000, you want 3 % commission, well, a seller can say, I can…

John Harcar (10:35.952)
Right.

Ralph Harvey (10:46.233)
take 90,000 but I can’t pay you 3%. You get me to 95, I can pay you 3%, you get me to 96, I can pay you 3%. And they can use that as negotiating tool. We’re finding a lot of success with that. We’re finding a lot of empowerment from the sellers in getting that. And our sellers understand this at a higher level than many realtors do. Realtors out there, not to bag on realtors because I am one, we all suffer from this, including myself. We have preconceived understandings of how something should work.

John Harcar (10:48.814)
Yeah.

John Harcar (11:03.373)
Okay.

John Harcar (11:08.844)
You

Ralph Harvey (11:15.331)
So when a new thing comes into it, we have a hard time taking a new thing and just judging it for itself as opposed to what we’ve already learned. So what we’ve been doing for years, and I think that’s where it struggles. When we explain the concepts to sellers, they seem to get it and understand it and gravitate towards it lot quicker. When we explained it to agents, then there’s a lot of sometimes back and forth before they kind of understand it get it or whatever the case is. But the tide is changing for all of us up there. But I would say overall that the

John Harcar (11:23.116)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (11:41.378)
Yep.

Ralph Harvey (11:45.785)
You know, the NAR settlement is maybe a slight bump for us, but I wouldn’t say it’s a major bump for us in there.

John Harcar (11:51.606)
Yeah, and I think too, you’re seeing the more progressive realtors be more successful versus the people that are stuck back in the regular, they’re not open to talking about other strategies with their sellers, subject to those type of things. Why would someone, maybe I don’t want to use a realtor, right? I’ll just go for sale by owner. Why would I use you versus just doing that on my own?

Ralph Harvey (12:16.409)
It’s a lockout effect. there’s not a great way to market your property as a for sale by owner that’s gonna be easy and without a lot of pain in doing it. So if you put your house for sale by owner, you’re typically gonna put a sign in the front yard, put a Facebook ad up, maybe a Craigslist ad up, maybe go to a for sale by owner website, but that’s where you’re stuck there. You don’t have anything beyond that. the realtors have, realtors as a whole,

really don’t have a lot of tools in their bag anymore. And they don’t have knowledge. We were the keepers of the knowledge until the advent of Zillow and Real Estate Comm and those other things out here. So really a lot of times the sellers are more educated and buyers more educated than the realtor is in a lot of ways. I mean, there’s some exceptions to that, of course, but a lot of times the buyers and sellers are just as well armed as what a real estate agent is in the transaction. The benefit to having a realtor, in my mind, comes down to one thing, the MLS.

John Harcar (12:54.917)
Ralph Harvey (13:16.633)
So as soon as we put your property on MLS, well now we put you in every storefront that’s possible. You’re on Realty.com, you’re on Zillow, you’re on Trulia, you’re on HomeSearch, you’re on Movado, you’re on all the local realtors that have you on their websites. And it doesn’t matter what brand it is, pick the brand that’s in your market, you’re gonna appear on their websites and all the other ancillary sites that are out there. So my question to you as a seller would be, would you rather be on one or two store shelves or would you rather be on every store shelf?

So, you and that’s what, you know, you go to Shark Tank and that’s what a lot of times the Shark Tank people, you know, they’ll say they’re, you know, I can put you on every, every shelf in Walmart and Target and Sam’s Club and this one and that one and stuff. And that’s really what you want. The more exposure you have, the better chances you are of selling your property, the more interest, the more eyeballs you get on it, the better thing it is for a seller. I don’t think there’s anything denying that. And that’s really what realtors do. We put your property.

on the MLS, it syndicates out from there to all the possible places it can go, and then we wait for buyers to come in.

John Harcar (14:17.35)
Okay, so kind of walk me through the process, right? So I’m, you know, I have a property in Indiana and I’m in Boise and I don’t know realtor out there, but I want to sell this property. I don’t want to pay a realtor. I come to you. What’s, are the steps?

Ralph Harvey (14:32.377)
Go to the website, listwithfreedom.com. Go there, there’s three packages to choose from. The cheapest one is $89, the most expensive one is 395 bucks. Choose one of the three packages. Once you make that purchase, it will take you through a seven-step process to sign up. If you’re a true investor and you’ve done, you know the language and stuff, the real estate and everything, you can get through the process in about 20 to 25 minutes. You’ll get through that process. Once you’ve completed that…

then we will automatically, the system’s all automated, so we’ll send you an automatic DocuSign session that will be unique for your property. As much information as we can harvest from what you’ve given us, we’ll go into those documents so you’ll have to duplicate your efforts. Usually that takes somebody about five minutes to get through the DocuSign process, so about 30, let’s call it 40 minutes on the high side. You can spend about 40 minutes from credit card to completion. Once you have that done, then that creates a task for us to do. We’ll get it listed for you.

John Harcar (15:05.207)
Mm.

Ralph Harvey (15:27.563)
If it’s done by five o’clock Eastern time from the seller’s part, we’ll have you listed the same day. If it comes in after five o’clock, we’ll do our best. Worst case scenario, be there tomorrow morning. As soon as you make that credit card purchase, you’re gonna be assigned to one of our listing experts. One of those listing experts will call you within a couple hours. They’ll give you a call, walk you through the process, answer any questions you have, go over any concerns you may have.

John Harcar (15:37.742)
Mm-hmm.

Ralph Harvey (15:54.585)
just better define things for you and give you a true picture as to what’s going to happen. They’ll walk you through the entire listing process. They’ll be by your side until the day after your property gets listed. Once the property is listed, maybe there’s a typo, maybe there’s something that didn’t appear the way you wanted to. If it’s vacant land, oftentimes the coordinates will show up wrong on it. We’ll get that fixed on it. That’s a common issue. So we get that fixed and everything and then you’re in the marketing phase of it. We will support you via an email campaign that will come out to you.

John Harcar (16:12.654)
Hmm.

Ralph Harvey (16:24.537)
Every few days you’ll get an email from us letting us know that we understand where your property is in the marketing cycle, what to expect, what you should have had happen, what you should get coming up next for it, what you should do if you’re not getting activity or if you’re not getting showings or whatever. Give you all these recommendations that’ll come out that we’ve developed a timeline for all that stuff to happen so that it keeps you informed, it keeps you thinking, it keeps you not just sitting on a shelf saying, you know, it’s been two weeks I haven’t had a showing.

John Harcar (16:52.536)
Yeah.

Ralph Harvey (16:52.909)
So we tell you what to do, what some of the issues could be and how to handle it. And we always invite you to talk to us. So every state has a broker and those brokers are available to be spoken to. I wouldn’t say on demand, but within a reasonable amount of time, if you ask to speak to a broker, then you can speak to that person. Once your property gets an offer on it, we’ll help you through the offer. We’ll help you with communication. We’ll help you with…

John Harcar (17:04.929)
Okay.

Ralph Harvey (17:21.209)
counteroffers, help them prepare, get them back over, whatever. If you have questions about, you know, customs or things that could be maybe wrong in a transaction, then we’ll help you with that as well. Once you get into a contract, we have a contract, you know, everybody knows transaction coordinators. We have a staff of transaction coordinators. That’s all they do is work from contract through closing. And they’re there to work you through the entire process. So they’ll communicate with realtors, title companies, attorneys, mortgage companies, appraisers, inspectors, whatever needs to be.

John Harcar (17:47.928)
Hmm.

Ralph Harvey (17:50.775)
in order to see your transaction go all way through to closing. So it’s pretty much, it’s a virtual full service deal that you have here. the benefit to us is that you’re gonna pay us typically a couple hundred dollars at the time you list a property. When it sells, if you choose our lowest level package, we charge a half a percent of closing. If you choose any of other two packages, a quarter percent of closing.

John Harcar (18:00.632)
Okay.

Ralph Harvey (18:16.505)
So we’ll get paid that but we’re gonna support you all the through it. You’re have all the disclosures you need, any updates you need to them, any contracts you need, whatever the case is, we’re gonna be here to help you and make sure you have all the documents and everything you need. When you need them, not like a week later, whatever the case is, it’s all done as you need it.

John Harcar (18:30.002)
Right. OK, these listing experts, OK, and let’s just say I don’t know how to evaluate a property. I don’t know how to tell you the value of it or figure that out. These listing experts in each market is do they kind of help walk you through that type of stuff? Because I know for some people they’re like, I want to sell it, I don’t know what to sell it for.

Ralph Harvey (18:49.401)
Yeah, the listing experts will not do a CMA for you, but they will if you want a CMA, they will let us let it be known that you want to CPA to the proper people on our team that will then prepare that for you. The brokers that then will prepare those CMAs and get those out to you so you can justify the price of the property and look to see what your competition is out there. You know, a little if somebody wants to do it on their own, I mean, for me, what I tell people is just go to your local county property appraisers website.

John Harcar (19:00.014)
Okay.

Ralph Harvey (19:19.097)
and look up your property that you want to sell and on that page, some place there’s going to be a link or button that’s going to take you to all the recent sales. Now, it’s safe to assume that most people understand, you know, the streets and stuff around their property so they’ll be identify them and then you can see those properties and compare them and that’ll give you a great, great, great way of without having to do anything other than just go there to do it or prop stream. A lot of investors use prop stream and you get a lot of stuff out of that. That seems to be a little bit below market a lot of times with prop stream, but you can see

John Harcar (19:40.109)
Right.

Ralph Harvey (19:49.367)
real-time data there at no cost to you by just going to your local county website, property appraiser website.

John Harcar (19:55.49)
Got it. Okay, and then what do you think are some of the mistakes that people are making when they’re trying to sell the property on their own that you guys can help alleviate or you’ve seen or come across?

Ralph Harvey (20:06.076)
Overpricing. Overpricing, the most common logic with this is that we’re going to overprice the house so we leave ourselves some room to negotiate. I said earlier on that buyers and sellers were very informed. Well, that’s true. Well, buyers aren’t going to negotiate fake dollars. So if your property’s worth 150 and you want to sell it for 200, well, they’re not going to negotiate from 150 to 200. Those are fake dollars.

So if your property’s worth 150, maybe you price it for 159, maybe 169 on the real high side on it, then you maybe can justify it because you’ve done all these upgrades or you’ve got those improvements or you’ve got a superior this or superior that. But most people, most properties you’re see out there are gonna sell for about 96 to 97 % of their true value on it. But you’re not gonna sell for 97 % of 200,000 if the property’s worth.

John Harcar (20:41.601)
huh.

John Harcar (20:50.168)
true value. Yeah.

Ralph Harvey (20:56.505)
150 you’re going to sell 145 oftentimes when you over price it you drive people away from you They don’t take they don’t take you serious They don’t come see your property and also you wind up taking them you wind up You know experiencing the cost of the time of just holding on to their property longer as opposed to just pricing it right and getting it sold

John Harcar (21:13.878)
Yeah, makes sense. But let’s say someone doesn’t want to pay anybody to sell. Like even I’m not going to pay you guys to sell my house. I’m a dude on my own. What advice would you give to someone that is going to sell their property on their own? And there’s no way to turn them either way.

Ralph Harvey (21:28.121)
Yeah, no, that’s fine. There’s people like that all over the place that want to do that and that’s perfectly okay. There’s a lot of people that are successful doing it. But statistically speaking, 92 % of the properties get sold with a realtor, but you could be one of those 8 % of the people. You just have to understand what that means and you have to have a marketing plan that’s going to work for you and put it up for sale by owner websites. Get a list of realtors in your area, email blast those realtors and get them to let them know you’re…

cooperate with them or work with them on whatever the case is on the buy side, know, Facebook and other social media platforms and correct lists and the like, put it out there as much as you possibly can to get it done. But that’s really what it is. It’s just getting, you you’re gonna have to just be a little bit more aggressive about how you’re gonna market it. And you’re not gonna get the, the one thing that they’re not gonna get for sale by owners, never gonna get at this point, know, Zillow takes for sale by owners, you can do that as well.

but they’re not gonna get those power syndications. if they wanna make a price change, well now you gotta go to Zillow and do it, you gotta go to FSBO and do it, you gotta go to Craigslist and do it, you gotta go to Facebook and do it, so you gotta, it’s all these things that are then manual and process and time consuming. But that’s okay. So there’s DIY people out there all over the place, and that’s perfectly okay if that’s what you wanna do. Yeah, so we get that whole thing.

John Harcar (22:25.838)
home.

John Harcar (22:39.726)
Yep.

John Harcar (22:48.468)
It’s a value of time, right? How do you value your time? Do you want to spend the time doing that or do you mind paying a couple bucks? mean, 89 bucks doesn’t seem too much to even a couple hundred bucks to pay somebody. Ralph, this has been an awesome conversation. How could people find out about you, List With Freedom, et cetera?

Ralph Harvey (23:08.547)
Well, they can go to listwithfreedom.com. You’ll see a little bit about me on there. If you want to look me up elsewhere, you have a realtor profile, realtor.com on Zillow. If you follow RealTrends, who ranks the top agents in the country, you can go there and look me up on there. I’ve been ranked in the top two or three agents in the country by number of properties sold and by total volume for the last, I don’t know, six or seven years. I’m not participating this year, guys, because it’s just a vanity type of thing.

John Harcar (23:28.376)
Let’s go.

Ralph Harvey (23:37.293)
really it’s not about me. It really isn’t about me. It’s about the system that we have here. So I’m just a regular guy that wears a t-shirt every day. It’s about the system that we’ve built that can handle massive amounts of volume to get it done as opposed to my individual skill.

John Harcar (23:55.982)
Awesome awesome. Well guys, I hope you guys took some notes Hope you guys got some of the nuggets that he talked about on here If you do have properties that you want to sell and maybe don’t want he’s real to Reach out to him. I mean, it sounds like a great program and I hope everybody enjoyed the show today, know, ralph Thank you again for coming on and we look forward to seeing you guys on the next one. Cheers

Ralph Harvey (24:15.287)
So I appreciate it.