Negotiation Secrets: How to Build Stronger Client Relationships in Real Estate

John Harcar (00:01.699)
All right, hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Briana Allred. And what we’re gonna discuss, obviously besides her experience in business and in real estate, we’re gonna talk about where’s the market going? She gets a lot of, is it a good time, is it a bad time? So we’re gonna dive into that. But remember guys, at Investor Fuel,

We help real estate investors, service providers, I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their business. And we do that by providing the community, the tools and the resources to grow that business, to help live the life you wanna live. So Briana, welcome to our show. you coming on here. That market question is something that we get all the time. Like you said, it’s always on people’s minds. Where is this all gonna go?

Briana Allred (00:43.009)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Briana Allred (00:50.029)
Yeah.

Yeah.

John Harcar (00:54.467)
Before we get into that piece, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about you, know, kind of your background in business and real estate and what brought you to today.

Briana Allred (01:03.371)
Yeah, yeah. So my husband and I started investing in real estate before we even got married. It’s been over 15 years now. And I was very conservative when we first got married and he is very not conservative. yeah. I mean, he works in the financial world and he said, you know, every

John Harcar (01:21.967)
He’s let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go. You’re like, hey pump the brakes

Briana Allred (01:33.621)
you know, million billionaire that I know invest in real estate. And that’s what we’re going to do. So I was like, all right, you know, buckle up. And so we started right in with our first property. We bought it. We rented it out, bought another property and it just kind of went from there. And we’re not your average investor like where we’re looking for quick fix and flips. It’s more like we buy something. We may live in it, fix it up.

John Harcar (01:55.961)
Mm-hmm.

Briana Allred (01:59.892)
you know, or buy something and fix it up, rent it out for a while and sell when it’s a good time to sell. And I think that’s the hard thing about sometimes with fix and flippers when they’re moving so fast that maybe it’s not always a good time to sell, you know, so they have to kind of pivot and figure out ways to rent and things. But we did that. That was great. And we’ve been doing that. So about what has it been almost eight or nine years now? He told me you need to get licensed.

And I was like, yeah, because he couldn’t. It was a conflict of interest with his current job. And so he said, you’re it. And I was like,

John Harcar (02:28.951)
Why?

John Harcar (02:38.968)
What is it to sell your properties or what was the of the reason why?

Briana Allred (02:42.38)
So yeah, he’s like, are doing enough real estate that it makes sense that we need to do this for ourselves. And I was like, okay. And that was actually the intent when I got licensed was that I was just gonna do our own real estate. I had no intent of growing the business or anything like that at that time. And it just naturally happened, I think, because I’m a pretty type A personality.

to the point, a straight shooter, you know, I’m not a lot of fluff of like telling people what they want to hear. It’s more of this is how it is and you you take it or leave it. So it grew, You know, my business grew, it’s great. It’s grown by referral. And then, yeah, so we’ve continued to kind of go on our journey of investing. I’ve managed to just help a ton of people. I’ve…

added parts to my business, because I think that it’s beneficial to my clients, like staging. I have my own personal stager that help consult people. And I have a huge network of construction people just from our own jobs that we do that we’re also able to help other people with all their projects.

John Harcar (03:55.147)
So you added some other verticals basically in your business. Yeah, that’s awesome. If you ever watched any of my podcasts, you know that I like to go back. There’s always a question I always like to figure out. Was there anybody in your past prior to meeting your husband and all that, was there anybody in your past or in your family that was in real estate, that flipped homes, that was a realtor, any of that seed that might have been planted subconsciously back in the day?

Briana Allred (03:58.239)
Yeah, yeah, it’s been great.

John Harcar (04:24.352)
to make you guys go, let’s do Realistic.

Briana Allred (04:28.235)
On my husband’s side, I would say no. I think that he just got that bug from his industry. On my side, also no realtors, but my father owned a carpet store. He was extremely handy and I grew up watching him build our family home. know, so I was, I told my husband when I married him, said, I need someone as handy as my dad because he can fix anything.

John Harcar (04:49.346)
Hmm, okay.

John Harcar (04:57.934)
There we go, the father lay in for so see it, but that is the seed. I mean, that kind of was that seed that you saw that you were acclimated to that. It didn’t scare you, right? So that’s good references to look back. So awesome. So when you guys started doing the real estate and buying stuff and what were some of the struggles, right? What were some of the things in the beginning that you guys just kept running into walls on or had to do workarounds for?

Briana Allred (04:58.206)
Yeah.

Briana Allred (05:09.088)
Yeah.

Briana Allred (05:22.611)
Yeah, yeah, I think that when you’re being your own landlord, you know, that comes with its own things to overcome, you know, people that maybe don’t pay their rent or bring in animals, they shouldn’t and all of all of that we’ve done all of that, you know, or things are left in much.

John Harcar (05:39.543)
You

Briana Allred (05:45.425)
worse condition than you’ve rented them in. And so we’ve created parameters of like, okay, we know anytime we rent something, we’re probably gonna have to paint and carpet it, you know, like, just build that into your cost, know that that’s just gonna happen. And so we don’t get upset about stuff like that, and can be the kind of landlords we want to be.

John Harcar (05:48.213)
Mm-hmm

John Harcar (06:06.55)
Yeah, and that’s one of the biggest thing about landlords is you got to take into those costs like, okay, I’m gonna have XYZ amount of profit a year, but I got to take into account, I’m probably gonna replace the carpet, right? I probably have to paint stuff like that. How did you guys, it sounds to me like it’s just through the trial and error part, but how did you guys learn all this? Did you seek out any mentorship or any coaching or did, you know, how did you learn to how to do these flips and all this stuff or, you know, rehab the houses?

Briana Allred (06:15.74)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Briana Allred (06:31.952)
Yeah, no, we didn’t actually like, I mean, for me, my mentor was my husband, you know what mean? Like, he was just so like, I’m gonna get in and figure it out. And then at some point, he was living out of state quite a bit for his job that it was me, you know, and so I had to jump in and figure it out and learn by trial and error. A lot of it was trial and error, you know, and then pulling in our

dubs and learning from them as we went along because we have some great partners we work with and they’re kind of like friends now, you know, that we can call them up and be like, Hey, what do you think’s going on here? Can you help us kind of navigate it? So that’s kind of been our path.

John Harcar (07:12.386)
That’s awesome. I mean, that’s the best way to learn, right? You get in there and you get your hands dirty. then that leaves me, when someone answers that to the next question, tell me your biggest oops. Tell me when you guys were doing something on a house or what was that? yeah, I shouldn’t have done.

Briana Allred (07:15.143)
Yeah.

Briana Allred (07:21.866)
Briana Allred (07:28.862)
You know, when we decided to build our first monstrosity in a mountain, we hired a bad builder. And that was that is the oops that we are still paying for. And so we have learned so much by trial and error. Yeah, yeah.

John Harcar (07:38.286)
Mmm.

John Harcar (07:50.988)
Yeah, mean, learning to vet people better probably. know, really finding more out about them.

Briana Allred (07:57.606)
Yeah, yeah, no, really. And we thought we did a good job. But we’re like, wow, you know, maybe sometimes our read on people is not that great.

John Harcar (08:05.422)
Or try for referrals, right? Maybe referrals might have been better. Or was this a referral?

Briana Allred (08:08.297)
Yeah.

We, well, it was a referral, but it was from a subcontractor that we used. And we did try to check references, but the hard part is when they don’t have anything online, when they give you references, they’re only going to give you the best references, right? So it makes it a little bit difficult to vet somebody. So is it worth paying extra to find those people that have the honest reviews online and everything? Yeah, probably.

John Harcar (08:23.436)
Yeah.

Of course, yeah, of course.

John Harcar (08:40.492)
Nugget. There’s a nugget guys, take notes. No, that is huge. I mean, you really have to vet because, you and even if someone does have an online presence, they can mask themselves so easily, make it appear there with or not. So you got your license, is your husband still working in finance, I think you said? Okay, so you guys are just doing that. This is kind of like a side time thing. Is there any ever gonna be a time when you…

Briana Allred (08:40.521)
You know what mean? It’s probably worth it.

Briana Allred (08:59.974)
Yep. Yep.

John Harcar (09:06.882)
do the whole, you he leaves that and jumps in business with you guys and you just go full time.

Briana Allred (09:12.921)
No, he’ll probably always stay in what he’s doing and I do this full time. You know what mean? So this is my full time and then that’s his full time and he helps wherever he can.

John Harcar (09:17.442)
Yeah, yeah, you do it.

John Harcar (09:23.678)
Awesome. All right, so let’s talk about you. You got your license. What is your are you part of a brokerage? Do you own a brokerage? What’s your team look like?

Briana Allred (09:31.355)
Yep. So I’m with equity and I’m not a part of a team. I have my own team of people that I use and I focus on residential only. when people, have a lot of clients come to me for commercial and I have a great referral partner for that. you know, residential is where it’s what I know. Yeah.

John Harcar (09:52.655)
Yeah, that’s awesome. So let’s talk kind of a little bit about what our topic was. Where is the market going? mean, a lot of people ask that because I’m in the real estate space and it’s a tricky question. So I’ll ask you, where’s the market going?

Briana Allred (10:08.241)
Yeah, yeah. So I think for this year, it’s going to be pretty stagnant. And it’s kind of hard to say because a lot of it is hinging on what are interest rates doing, you know, everybody’s kind of waiting for them to drop and what does that look like. And I think through what most economists are saying is pretty good going to be pretty stagnant throughout the rest of the year.

John Harcar (10:33.421)
Mm-hmm.

Briana Allred (10:34.712)
I am afraid that if we see a drop in rates, we may see a spike in the market, you know? And we’re kind of on this trajectory right now where home prices, they say nationally, it’s slightly still a seller’s market, but in my local market, I’m seeing it pivot. You know, I’m seeing buyers have the upper hand. I’m able to do much better negotiating for my buyers for closing costs.

John Harcar (10:54.797)
Yeah.

Briana Allred (11:03.303)
buy downs, repairs. Some sellers are still stuck in COVID pricing in their brains.

John Harcar (11:09.784)
Yeah, a lot here. I a lot in Boise here for sure.

Briana Allred (11:14.248)
Yeah, yeah. you’re and so bringing them to reality of like, your home is not worth that, you know, you are not going to hit the market and have five offers, that’s just not going to happen. And they start realizing it when their home sits, you know, which is hard, you know, for people to kind of conceptualize the value of their home. And then also, I’ve had a lot of people where they bought at the height of COVID. And maybe their value has gone down a little bit. And that’s kind of hard. Also,

So helping them navigate, like I’ve had, I’ve helped more people talk to them out of listing their home because I’m like, you don’t have the equity yet, but you will probably in the future. You just need to hold this longer. You know, that, that quick turnaround time didn’t quite work in your situation. So let’s figure out how can we rent it? You know, what are some other options for you to hold this until it’s a better time to sell unless you want to sell it for a loss, you know, which.

John Harcar (11:57.805)
Yeah, wait it out.

John Harcar (12:11.798)
Right. No, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Briana Allred (12:15.929)
no, so it’s hard for people to hear.

John Harcar (12:18.122)
It is. mean, especially we’re investors, we come in and obviously our goal is to buy at a discount. Do you work with investors that might come in and say, hey, you know, I can pay you more if you’re willing to take payments over time. I do like a seller finance type of thing.

Briana Allred (12:34.317)
Yeah, that is the way the market is shifting. I have done I’m in the center of one right now. And pros and cons about seller financing. Pros are like, if a seller is willing to be that landlord, they need to know it comes with the risks of they are the landlord or they are the lender. They are the lender that if something goes wrong, they are responsible for claiming and doing the foreclosure process and everything like that.

And in Utah, I’ve been told by some people that we’re pretty friendly on that front, hiring right representative that it’s a process, but then you run the risk. Do people trash the home in the meantime? Taking that into consideration, how long are they willing to hold it? I am seeing longer seller financing terms, like 15 years, which is a long time. As a seller, what are you doing in 15 years? Nobody knows. Do you really wanna hold it that long?

on the buyer’s side, if the seller is not paying off the mortgage and stuff, then they have to be willing to understand that they’re taking on some risk there. That if a loan gets called due or something like that, they have to work together to maybe get the buyer a loan to cover that amount. So there’s a lot of consideration in seller financing. I feel like some people do it really whimsical and just think it’s this magical thing that just, you know.

John Harcar (13:53.71)
Yep.

Briana Allred (14:03.277)
works out, but there’s risks.

John Harcar (14:03.395)
No, that’s 100%. That’s 100 % is it. But I think what it really comes down to is being, you know, forthright and transparent to your seller, right, of what’s going to happen, how the whole process goes. Because there have lately been a lot of loans being called it. I’ve been seeing out there on subject to deals, right, where, you you, but, you know, I don’t know, do you work with people where they’re, you know, not

Briana Allred (14:14.501)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

John Harcar (14:27.566)
They’re making you mentioned the seller not making I mean the yeah, the seller not making the payment to the mortgage. We do it through a third party third party servicing company stuff like that to where that that that’s kind of mitigated. Yeah. Okay.

Briana Allred (14:35.972)
yeah, that’s gross services. Yeah, so not so much it’s whether their base loan is paid off or not, right? Cause then the lender can call it due if it’s not. So if the buyer’s not bringing enough of a down payment to pay off the seller’s full loan amount, then that loan could be called due and the seller needs to understand that. And then what happens then? You know what I mean? Like you all of a sudden are faced with paying off this loan. The buyer’s faced with like,

John Harcar (14:45.206)
Okay, right.

Yes, right, right.

John Harcar (14:57.196)
Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Briana Allred (15:04.613)
I mean, of that responsibility to, you know, to help with that process with how it’s written.

John Harcar (15:06.868)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love creative finance deals. I’m not really a fan of the sub two part where there’s a mortgage involved. I like the straight seller financing on a free and clear property. Those are the greatest. And I think sometimes those solve a lot more problems. Because even if you’re doing a regular sub two, you’ve still got some issues with that person. Maybe that’s why you’re doing it, because they’re in a financial pinch or something.

Briana Allred (15:18.821)
Mm-hmm.

Briana Allred (15:33.091)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Harcar (15:35.542)
Where is your business going? What are your goals? Where do you want to take this? Do you want to grow a team? Are you just really cool with kind of how your business looks?

Briana Allred (15:44.621)
You know, it’s funny because I’m still, I’m not at that point where I’m ready to release the reins to other people. I like to control and educate my clients in the process. And I know that’s not the best thought to always hold your business. You know, I’m well aware I’ve gotten all the Tony Robbins things, know. But I very much, I like the educational part.

John Harcar (16:04.098)
Right, right, right, right, right.

Briana Allred (16:11.147)
I like to be involved, I like to protect my clients, I like them to make educated decisions and if there’s something that I don’t know in the process, you better believe I’m gonna dive in and do hours of research and figure it out for them and say like, here are your options, these are your risks, so they know what they’re getting into.

John Harcar (16:29.76)
Is there any, know, for someone that’s looking out, you know, looking to buy or sell any property right now or invest, Are there any, is there any advice you would give them in the market right now?

Briana Allred (16:39.245)
Yeah, yeah. So I think buyers are so worried about interest rates that they may be missing an opportunity. Now, always remembering that the market’s going to fluctuate just like the stock market. And sometimes when it’s low, you just have to not look at your candle until it comes back. You know, but yeah, but.

John Harcar (17:00.398)
yet. I’ll put the blinders on.

Briana Allred (17:04.032)
If you are savvy and willing to pivot and figure out how to hold things until it’s the right time, could be a good, it’s a good time to get in. You know, I’m having better negotiating power and when those interest rates drop, if they drop, could you be losing out on this opportunity? And then something that’s cool too for Utah specifically, like Salt Lake area, we’re gonna be getting the Olympics. You know I mean?

And so I’m like, dang, get in here and see what you can buy because we got the Olympics coming. That’s going to be an influx of everything. So I’m kind of holding on to some of my stuff, hoping for that little jump there. Yeah.

John Harcar (17:39.745)
yeah. yeah.

John Harcar (17:46.024)
Yeah, if you have an Airbnb around that time, that’d be fantastic. When are they going to Salt Lake?

Briana Allred (17:53.668)
34. Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure if I’m remembering right, because I’ve been thinking about some of my real estate.

John Harcar (17:54.824)
wow, I didn’t know they picked them that far out. Like picked the location that far out.

John Harcar (18:04.108)
That’s awesome. So I like to ask this, know, before we kind of close out in your experiences and your, your, you know, your, path and your journey, what do you feel are some of the keys to your success? Right? What tools, things that you really felt helped you maybe just keep going or just continue to grow.

Briana Allred (18:26.403)
I think on you, honest and genuineness of how I do my business. You know what mean? When I do a transaction with somebody, I don’t think about this is a one time moment. I think about, how am I gonna feel in five years when they wanna sell? You know what I mean? Like what is our interactions? How do they feel that I’ve treated them, educated them? I want every one of my clients to be set up for success.

And I think that transfers to them wanting to refer to me. No.

John Harcar (19:01.782)
I love it. And I think that’s even more important as the whole technology thing continues to grow and grow and grow and it gets really cold. You know, I think that human that that that rapport that that interaction that that community is so much means can help your business be so much better.

Briana Allred (19:23.105)
Yeah, yeah, I care about him way beyond the transaction, you know.

John Harcar (19:23.85)
I love it. I love it. So OK, so just in case folks listening on here, you are doing your business in Salt Lake, right? OK. OK.

Briana Allred (19:32.695)
Yeah, all the surrounding areas, Salt Lake to Park City to Davis and Utah County. Yep.

John Harcar (19:38.062)
Okay, why are you the realtor that we choose?

Briana Allred (19:42.167)
because I’m going to take care of you. Definitely going to take care of you and do what’s in your best interest.

John Harcar (19:48.878)
I love it. Sincred and to the point. Any last words you want to say to our audience?

Briana Allred (19:55.331)
If you have any questions, call me. I’m happy to chat about the market.

John Harcar (19:58.55)
Yeah, and I was going to ask, what’s the best way to reach out to you?

Briana Allred (20:02.019)
My phone number, I answer pretty well. 801-634-7508. Anybody can give me a call.

John Harcar (20:10.223)
Perfect. Guys, we’ll put all that information in the show notes. So if you want to reach out, please do. Briana, thank you so much for coming on here and talking with me and spending time talking about your journey. Hope everybody at home enjoyed it. I know I did. I know there were some nuggets that I took notes on. And you guys reach out if you have interest in buying some property in Utah. Guys, hope you enjoyed the show. We’ll talk to you soon. Thanks again, Briana. Bye bye.

Briana Allred (20:32.844)
Yeah, thanks.

Thank you.