The Off Market - April 10, 24 Edition

Welcome to Off Market by Goliath Data

The insider's guide to off-market properties.

If you’re new here and wondering why you’re receiving this, it’s probably because you interacted with one of our posts on Facebook or Bigger Pockets. If you’ve returned for another edition, welcome back! As a reminder, we break down the latest real estate data, give commentary (and hot takes) on trending topics, and provide resources to help you close more deals. Let’s dive in.

General Update

Automated skiptracing is live and so is PDF data parsing (yay!). We’re in the final stretch of integrating with one of the top OCR providers to process image files and we’ll be turning code violations live for everyone in the next day or so. Outside of those items, the engineering team is heads down on integrating Versium, to further enhance the skiptracing options on our platform and putting the final touches on merging several data sets that will enable us to access every parcel, physical address, layout, and zoning classification for every property in the US.

On the GTM side, we’ve been spending more time with title companies, hard money lenders, and real estate team leads. The early conversations have been especially helpful for thinking through our go-to-market strategy. We have a few exciting meetings coming up over the next week or so and will share an update as soon as we can.

Real Estate Data

Highlights

• 30 YR Fixed-Rate Mortgage: 7.34% vs 7.06% last week (source)
• Mortgage Applications - Purchase: -4.74% WoW, -22.77% YoY (source)
• Mortgage Applications - Refinance: +9.88% WoW, +4.36% YoY (source)

Real Estate Commentary

The latest CPI data is in. We saw an increase of 0.4 percent in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, the same as in February. Over the last 12 months, the all-items index increased 3.5 percent before seasonal adjustment. Given the latest data, the economy is still considered to be “heating up”, and as such, the Fed is now less likely to lower interest rates. We’re still at low unemployment (3.8%) and the economy is humming along. If rates remain where they are, will buyers still show up in droves for the spring/summer market? Only time will tell.

Real Estate Commentary

Ban on Charging Buyers for Lender Title Insurance

Long story short, the CFPB is considering banning the practice of charging buyers for lender’s title insurance. In my humble (and biased) opinion, title insurance is a complete scam—especially for the consumer. Consumers are forced to pay to protect lenders from potential financial loss from defects in title to real property and from the invalidity or unenforceability of mortgage loans. It’s something that could only be conjured up by title company lobbyists who wanted to make a buck. Shocker.

NAR Settlement

By now you’ve definitely heard about the NAR settlement, and if you haven’t, we hate to say it, but you’re probably living under a rock. While it's true that the commissions buyers and sellers agents make were always negotiable, that typically was not communicated. The major concern we’re hearing is from realtors on the buy side, who will now need to negotiate their cut. And as such we’ve started to see a shift in realtors from the buy side to the sell side, and we suspect that will continue. But considering 50%+ of realtors didn’t transact on a single property last year (according to the NAR), adding more agents to the sell-side certainly isn’t going to help things.

Commercial Real Estate

If you’ve read any of the headlines recently, you know that commercial real estate has been characterized as a “bomb” ready to go off at any time. While some sectors, like downtown offices, have faced challenges, others, such as neighborhood retail and mixed-use, have thrived. Let’s be clear, vacancies in office spaces certainly are a risk, however, the bigger risk is a lack of flexibility from banks. Banks are holding developers' and owners’ “feet to the fire” and are failing to provide flexible payment terms and repayment schedules—meaning the owners who are likely upside down on their loans, are barely treading water. The true unlock here is deferred payments until refinancing becomes a more palatable option.

Partner Spotlight

To all the realtors out there who are tired of paying 10-50% fees to their broker, listen up. We’ve partnered with Atllas to help you find and represent more buyers and sellers. They offer a flat-rate brokerage model: you pay a once-a-year fee that comes out of your first sale, and not a penny more—regardless of whether you close five, ten, fifty, or even a hundred transactions. For the average agent, that's a savings of tens of thousands per year. For top agents, that’s a savings of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, per year. Talk about a game-changer. If you’d like an intro to their team, let us know.

Resources

Off Market Podcast: Carrie McCormick, Top 1% Broker w/ Over $1.5B in Sales

This week we dropped the second episode of the Off Market podcast, featuring Carrie McCormick, a top 1% broker with over $1.5B in career sales. Carrie began her career in the securities market with E-Trade during the dot com boom and later found her stride in the real estate space, first as a Sales Manager, and later as a National Sales Manager for one of Chicago's largest & most well-respected development companies. Tune in Here.

Goliath BYOD

Last week we launched Goliath BYOD, the first-of-its-kind data parsing, cleaning, and enrichment tool in the market. You upload CSVs, XLS, TXT documents, and even PDFs to the virtual portal. We’ll ingest all of the data you provide, enrich it with missing information (owner names, mailing addresses, zoning classifications…etc.), and automatically prepare it for processing in skip tracing software. You can learn more here.

The Closing Bell

As always, thanks for reading! If you need introductions to investors, wholesalers, cash buyers, financing (EMD, double closes, rehab…etc.), or title companies you know where to reach us.

• Austin & Max