Real Estate Duo Shares Insider Tips on Foreclosures, Pricing, and Market Shifts

Joel Freis (00:00)
This was a property had a squatter there. He’d been living there and we got rid of possession, which is a court order to take over the property. And then next day it caught fire. Coincidence? I mean, who knows, but we had a, luckily fire department got there, put the fire out right away, but now we have to assess it to see what kind of damage it has and kind of go from there.

Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Denise Madan and Joel Freis, is a licensed real estate agent team based out of South Florida, but doing deals in a lot of other places too. So we’re going to get into their background and kind of how they got into the business. Thank you for being here.

Denise Madan (02:09)
Thank you so much. We’re happy to be here.

Kristen Knapp (02:11)
Wonderful. Well, I’m curious how both of you guys started your journey into real estate.

Joel Freis (02:11)
Thank you, appreciate it.

Denise Madan (02:17)
Joel, you want to start? Well, I always let Joel start first.

Kristen Knapp (02:20)
Hehehe

Joel Freis (02:20)
So we were both working at a remax office and Denise was more luxury type of agent. And then my background was doing bank owned properties, foreclosures, and the market started to shift a little bit. And the broker suggested like, you know, you two would get along great. I think our Denise trying to get an REO wants you to see if you can collaborate. And we did and she had a hedge fund company she was working with that I think we had to do

350 BPO’s which is a broker price opinion in a matter of like three days. And that kind of started the journey. And I think that happened. They unfortunately didn’t win that bid. And there was like three other times we had to do it. They finally got the third and our partnership just took off from that. And with the REO market changing and has dwindled down over the last five years, we’ve gotten back more into the retail side and investment.

Denise Madan (03:06)
.
Kristen Knapp (03:12)
Amazing and what makes you guys work so well together?

Denise Madan (03:13)
Okay.

Joel Freis (03:16)
I think we trust each other. it’s where a lot of partnerships fall short is one thing. So you’re out working me or I’m out working you and you’re not carrying your load. We both know like, this week you might end up doing more than me or I might do more than you. And at the end of the day, it all equals

out and you can’t nitpick over little things. You just gotta have faith that each one’s gonna deliver their part.

Denise Madan (03:37)
Yeah.

Joel Freis (03:42)
and be honest with each other and just keep moving forward.

Kristen Knapp (03:45)
Definitely, and I feel like that trust probably has built over time with so many deals under your belt.

Joel Freis (03:50)
Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Denise Madan (03:50)
⁓ yes, yeah it does. It does. I sometimes I mean sometimes people think that we’re married even though I’m much older than Joel, but they think we’re married because it’s a.

It’s a really good match. mean, we complement each other and you know, he can answer my sentence or I can just say to him and he does to me, what about that listing? And immediately one of us will know exactly what listing and you know, we’ve sold so many properties, but we’re just so in tune. And I think that’s what gives us the strength that we have.

Kristen Knapp (04:23)
That’s amazing. Yeah, I think that it’s really difficult to find people that you work so well with and to find somebody, seems like very, it seems like it happened very serendipitously. That’s amazing.

Joel Freis (04:34)
Yeah, yeah, it’s worked out well. It’s been a benefit to both of us and you know, you can’t be happier.

Kristen Knapp (04:39)
Yeah.

Yeah. So you were originally with REO or you were doing REO properties. Can you tell us just a little bit more about that and how you built that business up?

Joel Freis (05:35)
Yeah, definitely. So, know, REOs is real estate owned for anybody that doesn’t know it’s bank foreclosures and 2007, 2008 market crashed and there’s opportunity. You either start doing short sales or you start doing, you know, bank owned properties or you got out of the business. And I was fortunate enough to get in with a few banks, asset managers and did a lot of broker price opinions to kind of get my foot in the door.

And it just kind of took off from there.

Kristen Knapp (06:04)
Amazing. And then what about you, Denise? How did you kind of get into that world? Through Joel, it sounds.

Denise Madan (06:08)
Well, I was, thank goodness. ⁓ It was sort of like by accident, thank goodness I was really doing retail like Joel mentioned. I was just trucking along, enjoying it, but really loving the business. And I had a client that was trying to buy a foreclosure property and they really wanted it. And one day the asset manager called and said,

Joel Freis (06:09)
But no, Denise actually got in on her own, you know?

Kristen Knapp (06:12)
Okay.

Denise Madan (06:33)
Hey, I can’t find my agent. Can you help me? And I’m like, sure, of course. You know, my client really wants the house. He goes, OK, so we’re going to do cash for keys with this client. I go, sure, great. No problem. And like a few seconds later, I’m like, what is cash for keys? I had no idea what that meant. That one property, I learned so much. He had me doing so much, but it.

He was with another company. He just told people, hey, I found a really good agent. You can rely on her. And one day he calls and says, hey, I’m going to a new company if they like you. I think Joel and I at that point just might have started to dabble trying to work a partnership out, but we hadn’t really done anything until he said, if they like you, you’ll have a lot of business.

Kristen Knapp (07:24)
Mm.

Denise Madan (07:24)
So what,

five years went by, they really liked us and we had a lot of business.

Kristen Knapp (07:29)
Wow, that’s amazing. you know, you’re kind of growing through the South Florida market, but you’re also expanding into some other, you know, know you’re expanding into Georgia as well. Tell us about the Florida market and what makes it so special.

Denise Madan (07:40)
Ciao.

Joel Freis (07:41)
So with the Florida market, mean, this is where we’ve been, me my whole life, Denise probably her whole adult life. And like I said, Denise is originally doing high-end properties in South Florida, there’s an area called Pinecrest and kind of managed that. So it’s very high-end. actually sold the Wayne Wade’s house when he got divorced. She was a third time to try him, right? So the divorce, the court still pointed her as the agent and got it sold.

Denise Madan (07:59)
It.

Joel Freis (08:05)
But Miami is in South Florida, a vibrant area, especially the last five years since COVID. So many hedge fund companies have moved down this way. There’s been a lot of money coming into the area. Like most of the country right now, we are starting to see a correction of the market, seeing longer days on the market for properties. And it’s just the flow of the business. It’s just part of the business. But even on the downward market, Miami is still

Denise Madan (08:07)
.

Kristen Knapp (08:31)
course.

Joel Freis (08:34)
You know, who doesn’t want to live in Miami, right? It’s sun, beaches, great weather. So it’s just staying busy.

Denise Madan (08:38)
Yeah, and it’s

and it’s still affordable. I mean, for most people in other parts of the country, for people that live here, it’s become very expensive. But for people in other parts of the country, it’s very affordable. And I think Joel and I are blessed. We because we did so much.

foreclosure business, we have people calling us always, hey, do you have any properties? People love to fix and flip. So we’re a little bit unusual in that way. Usually if you’re a residential village or people don’t call you for fix and flips because usually they’re a lot lower in price. That doesn’t mean you can’t have million dollars, you can, but usually they’re four or $500,000. So that’s where we’re blessed, I think, because

Way to go from the low end as high as you want to go.

Kristen Knapp (10:03)
Wow. Yeah, and I imagine there’s probably different mentalities with both. Talk about kind of like the range of the properties that you’re selling.

Joel Freis (10:11)
You to start, Denise?

Denise Madan (10:12)
Okay, well, let’s see. have up in the Jacksonville or St. Augustine, I always get them confused, but we have vacant land up there and we’re selling it for like $25,000. And then you come further south and we have a property on the West Coast that we’re selling and it’s an REO, it’s a fixer-upper.

Kristen Knapp (10:25)
Mm.

Denise Madan (10:36)
And that’s like in the $700,000 range. And then we just got a couple of other properties that are REOs, but now we’re expecting, we were talking to someone the other day that has a $2.2 million home that wants us to help himself. So we really have a range of properties, which also I think most agents have been doing this a long time, find this exciting because…

For the most part, our job every day is to look for new clients if they’re not calling us to look for new clients. And then when you have a variety of properties to sell, it makes your day more interesting. You’re always on the go. You’re always, I gotta do this, gotta do that. So I think it’s for us, we’re never bored, and we always have something to do. I think Joel just had to an inspection the other day.

Kristen Knapp (11:16)
Yeah.

Great. ⁓

Denise Madan (11:30)
It was, had to get the sheriff involved and there was a little fire that he had.

Joel Freis (11:36)
Yeah, yeah, so the REO

market died off quite a bit. We are starting to see it come back a little bit. It’s not gonna be like anything like it was in 2010, 2011. This pool of loans, hedge fund of purchase, there was called reverse mortgages, where those that don’t know, senior citizen would take out a loan that they don’t repay, and then when they pass away,

The bank either takes it back or if there’s enough equity, the family can resell it or refinance the property.

This was a property had a squatter there. He’d been living there and we got rid of possession, which is a court order to take over the property. And then next day it caught fire. Coincidence? I mean, who knows, but we had a, luckily fire department got there, put the fire out right away, but now we have to assess it to see what kind of damage it has and kind of go from there.

Denise Madan (12:18)
Okay.

Kristen Knapp (12:24)
it.

Joel Freis (12:25)
As far as the gamut, anybody looking to get an REO right now is very tight. I’d still focus more on retail sales. It’s usually higher commission, higher price points. They’re both good, right? But if you can help a family get into a home, first time buyer, stuff like that, it really makes you satisfied that you helped someone accomplish their dream.

Denise Madan (12:48)
Yeah.

Kristen Knapp (12:48)
Yeah,

I imagine that’s one of the most gratifying parts of the job is really helping people in their next stage of life.

Denise Madan (12:54)
Yeah. And those. I’d say those people you really develop a very special relationship with too, because you’re there for their very first home. This is their dream. know, everyone dreams to have their first home. Why pick a fence? And that relationship just goes on for years. it’s very special.

Joel Freis (12:54)
Definitely, Whether it’s downsizing or getting her first home.

Kristen Knapp (12:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That’s amazing. And I understand like what makes you two very special is you’re very good at pricing. I would love to hear more about your strategy with pricing.

Joel Freis (13:26)
So basically, it’s years of experience that one thing with the REO business, we do what’s called broker price opinion, very similar to an appraisal. And you learn how to do what’s called adjustments based on square footage or you have a four bedroom home with a pool and maybe your comparable doesn’t have a pool, so you make an adjustment for that pool. Where prior to the foreclosure business, we’d kind of look at a neighborhood, look at comps.

Unless you were actually trained on it, you never thought of really making adjustments. You’re like, well, most of the homes are selling for $500. This one’s going to be $500. Or you’ll see agents just throw the house up on the market and then later come back to the seller and say, well, I guess the market’s changed. We’re not getting the price we thought we would. So knowing how to make adjustments, you know, as a new agent or an older agent, if you haven’t gone through some type of course like that, I it really helps, especially

Denise Madan (14:57)
Yeah.

Joel Freis (14:58)
what we’re going through now, right? A market shift where we are seeing price adjustments. So if you can get it priced right from the beginning, you’re actually gonna net the seller more money,

Denise Madan (14:58)
⁓

Joel Freis (15:07)
because it’s sold quicker and you’re not doing what we call chase the market. It’s hard to get a seller to believe that sometimes, right? They don’t want to, who’s gonna pay more than what you’re asking? They’re always gonna beat you up on price. But if you can learn how to deliver that to the seller and educate them on where the market’s going, it makes a big difference.

Kristen Knapp (15:11)
Right.

Denise Madan (15:26)
Yeah. Yeah. Kristen, know what’s frustrating for us sometimes? mean, Joel and I really, since we know we’re good at pricing, we’ll go in.

Kristen Knapp (15:26)
Yeah, I imagine it’s very important to partner with a realtor that just really understands the market because I think there’s a lot of information being sprung out at people where they’re very confused about what the market actually looks like.

Joel Freis (15:39)
Definitely.

Denise Madan (15:49)
We might say to the seller, you can put it up a little just to test the waters, but this where we should be. And we’ve lost a few listings because other agents go in and if they say, I can sell your home for 50,000 more or whatever than what we had shown them.

And then it’s frustrating for us. So we watch that listing because we don’t like to lose. We’re very competitive. We don’t like to lose. And I’m telling you, nine times out of 10, that darn property sold for exactly what we said. And we could have had it sold months earlier, but people want to believe their home is worth more than it is. So that’s another part that sometimes is frustrating for us.

Kristen Knapp (16:20)
you

Totally, and I mean it’s important for you guys to stand your ground in your business and you know not compromise so much on pricing that you’re compromising what you actually believe the house will sell for.

Denise Madan (16:44)
Yeah, for sure.

Joel Freis (16:45)
Exactly.

We’re not doing anyone a favor. If you put a lot of coaches used to say call by the listing, you don’t come in promise a high listing price, high sales price to get the listing. And then you you time up six months or one year listing agreement and you’re beating them up on the price. Well, I the markets change or I guess this happened doesn’t do them benefit or really the agent, you know.

Denise Madan (17:07)
Yeah.

Kristen Knapp (17:08)
Definitely.

Well, I’d love to hear from you guys just some lessons you’ve learned being in the industry and having so much success. What’s something that you thought or you wish you learned earlier on in your career?

Denise Madan (17:20)
This one’s a silly. Here’s the silly one. To have a real good database app so that when we put our names, addresses, phone numbers, they never get mixed up. That’s one of my pet peeves right now. We’ve been working together maybe eight years and we’ve both been working, what, almost 25 years and I get crazy. So I would have loved that.

Joel Freis (17:20)
I’ll let Denise start.

Kristen Knapp (17:23)
You

Denise Madan (17:47)
I think we both know to stay in touch with our database, so we’ve been really good about doing that. The other thing is, I know Joel and I, when we have little hiccups, we say to ourselves, we have to remember this. Like we just had one where the seller asked for a net sheet.

Joel’s really good with numbers, so I always ask Joel, will you do the net sheet on this? And he goes, sure. Put the net sheet down, gave him the payoff for the mortgage that I was told, put it in, great, sent it to the seller. Thank you so much. Everything looks great. I think he did three more net sheets for the seller. At the end of the day, the seller never looked at her payoff to make sure it was what she said.

It was wrong and it came back on us and we’re like, this is the number you gave us, but we didn’t have anything in writing. It was verbal. So we both said, now we’re not doing that. From now on, we’ll do a net sheet. This is the different expenses you can expect minus your payoff for your loan. Look at your payoff and then you can do it because it comes back on us and we’d worked so hard on that property.

And that was definitely a new lesson for us.

Kristen Knapp (19:07)
Yeah, no, I think that’s very practical advice. I think it’s very important.

Denise Madan (19:11)
There’s more. I can’t think of another one. I’m sure Joel’s got. We’ve recently had a couple that we go. Let’s not do that again.

Kristen Knapp (19:14)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

Joel Freis (19:16)
Right.

I think the biggest thing as any agent is the sooner you start working on your database, keeping it organized and staying in touch with them, the better off you’re going to be. There’s new agents, got to prospect, you got to look for that business. But then if you can start working on building that referral business, it’s going to make a huge difference for you down the road.

Kristen Knapp (19:39)
Absolutely. Yeah, I imagine building up a referral business. It’s challenging. That’s one of the hardest parts is really growing your network.

Joel Freis (19:45)
Definitely. you can, you know, in the beginning I used to do what’s called BNI, which is Business Networking Institute. And we have a weekly meeting with plumbers, electricians, know, attorneys. So if you can do anything like that, Chamber of Commerce in the beginning, that really helps, you know, get your foot in the door and just keep it, you know, once you build that database, keep it going. You got to keep feeding it, you know, and constantly make contact, you know, don’t just put them in there and forget about them, right?

You gotta call them up, maybe some invites, people call pop-buys, pop-buys with a little gift, but just staying in touch and being able, they’re a go-to person, right? Even if you’re not doing mortgages, maybe their rates drop, you wanna refer them to your preferred lender. Hey, listen, I know you’re not thinking about selling, but rates just drop. Maybe you can get a refinance and save on your monthly payment, stuff like that.

Kristen Knapp (20:36)
Amazing. Well, I think this is really good advice, really practical advice for somebody starting out for sure. So tell everybody where to find you and how to work with you.

Denise Madan (20:43)
Go Joel.

Joel Freis (20:44)
So we both have similar emails. It’s our first name at our full name.com. So I’m Joel at JoelFreis.com. Denise is Denise at DeniseMadan.com. My last name is F-R-E-I-S, so Joel Freis. If you Google either one of our names, you’re gonna see us all over the internet. you’ll be able to find us that way.

Kristen Knapp (21:01)
Amazing.

Well, it was so, yeah.

Denise Madan (21:03)
And have a team,

Kristen and we have our team name is the All Florida Home Team. So if they find All Florida Home Team, they’ll be able to find us as well.

Joel Freis (21:13)
Exactly.

Kristen Knapp (21:13)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here. I really encourage everyone to check out Denise and Joel. look like, I mean, you guys seem like you’re doing such great business and such a variety of different properties. I think people could really benefit from reaching out to you. So thank you again for being here.

Denise Madan (21:28)
Thank you. Appreciate it. It’s great. Thank you.

Joel Freis (21:28)
Thank you, appreciate you having us on.

Kristen Knapp (21:30)
Awesome. And thank you everybody for listening.