whether you want to build a portfolio of 20 homes, whether you want to buy multi-family homes, commercial properties, or you just want to buy a primary residence, at the end of the day, you got to find the home, you got to buy the home, you got to decide if it's a good deal, you got to close on it, you got to fund the purchase unless you want to buy it with cash, which I'm guessing most people don't.

So maybe let's jump into that process and kick off with just someone who's like, "I'm not really sure what I'm doing." You've been an agent. Let's talk a little bit about that process of partnering with someone to help you go through this process instead of just trying to wing it on your own.

And when that makes sense, or maybe when it doesn't. Yeah. And if you're going to buy a property, you don't know much about it, you definitely want to use a real estate agent in the beginning. And when you're buying, here's something people don't realize, you don't have to pay your agent.

If you're buying a house off of the MLS, this would be any property you see off Zillow or Redfin, something like that. The seller has already predetermined a certain amount of money they are going to pay the buyer's agent for bringing you to the property. So you have a lot of questions.

There's paperwork you're not going to understand. You don't know what the process is. It's intimidating. You find a real estate agent and I'll add, they're not all the same. There's good agents and bad agents. There's good lawyers and bad lawyers, good doctors and bad ones. You really want to find somebody who's good at what they do.

They can take a lot of the fear that you have right out of it. It's amazing when you take this scary process and there's a person like me that does this so often it's boring to me. Like, "Oh, another one of these. I've walked this path so many times." It's definitely not scary.

So that's something that every person who wants to buy a home should know right off the bat. Find a buyer's agent. They're going to answer a lot of the questions that you're going to have and they're going to protect you in ways you didn't even know that you needed to be protected.

And maybe we can go through what the actual escrow process looks like or the process from start to finish of what to expect when buying a home if you'd like. If you're a little bit more experienced, you bought homes before, one thing that people will look at, especially in a competitive market like ours, Chris, we just realized that we're neighbors, we live pretty close to each other, probably I can power in some change away, is you can go directly to the listing agent and you can say, "Hey, I will let you represent me on this deal, but I'm going to need some kind of an advantage.

I need you to get my offer accepted over the other people. Or I'd like a little bit of a discount on the price if you're getting to represent me here." So there are people who buy a lot of real estate that has said, "Hey, I don't think I need my own buyer's agent, necessarily.

I still need someone to handle the paperwork." But they go right to the listing agent, they look for an advantage. And that is pretty popular in the Bay Area, where most listings are getting several offers on all of them. Yeah, actually, I have bought 2 homes in the Bay Area and both times I've used the seller's agent.

So we can talk about that a little bit more because I have some thoughts about it. But maybe rewind a little. You said, "It's important. Not all agents are the same. You got to pick the right one." Obviously, not everyone lives in the Bay Area. So you're not going to be the perfect agent for everyone.

How does someone find that perfect agent? First thing to look for, find a person that sells a lot of houses. A lot of agents don't. In fact, most agents don't. I'd say 90% of agents sell a couple houses a year or less. And it's unpopular to say this. The agents get angry because they're offended right now.

"Just because I only sell 2 houses a year doesn't mean I'm not good." Okay, I know. However, tell me anything that you do twice a year that you get really, really good at. In general, that's how life works. If you snowboard twice a year for your whole life, you never really get that good at snowboarding.

Or it takes you 20 years before you're as good as somebody that just snowboarded every weekend for the whole first year that they got into it. Repetition really does develop mastery. I talk about that in the Burr book that I wrote. So the first thing I look for is an agent that sells a lot of homes, period.

The next thing I want is an agent that owns real estate themselves. At minimum, they got to own their own house. But ideally, I want them to own investment property. It gives a completely different perspective when you've bought a home and you believe in it. And you just get a different set of goggles to look at real estate through.

I don't have any kids. I love kids. We were talking about that before the show. But each of you as a dad, I am sure, sees something different when you look at a kid than I do. I don't immediately freak out when they start putting something in their nose.

I haven't had enough experience of seeing how that could go wrong. Rob has seen some of that. So he's going to have a much different emotional response to that marble or that Play-Doh getting a little bit close to the nostrils. Real estate agents that own real estate have that sixth sense.

They can recognize that's a bad neighborhood. That's not the right tenant. That's not the right floor plan. That's not the right structure. You really want to go to this house that may not look as pretty in the pictures, but will be a better deal. The third thing that you want to look for is an agent that understands the financial component of real estate.

Many real estate agents are geared to cater to their clients' emotions. They want to be liked. They're very high on as an eye on the disprofile. This is how they make their money by being likable. Most people reach out to the agent who's the nicest, the friendliest, the warmest.

That doesn't mean they're the smartest. So when you're having conversations, I always want to hear agents that are approaching real estate from a financial perspective. I want to hear them telling me, "This is the part of town that's being redeveloped. This is the next up and coming area. This is where all the money is going into.

This is a property that would function as a rental if you moved out." Even if that's not necessarily what you're looking for, you just want to buy a home. If your agent sees things that way, it is very good to hedge your bets in the future because you never know when you have more kids, need more bedrooms, get a new job, want to move for some reason.

You don't want to be locked into a situation where it's hard to sell that home or it can't be used as a rental property if you want to leave it. David, let me ask you something. Does the requirement of having an agent that owns real estate, is that as important if you're just buying a primary residence?

Do you weight that a lot heavier for people that are looking to buy investment properties? No, it's the same for a primary residence. Let me tell you why. The first house I ever bought, my agent did not own any real estate. And I bought this house in the very end of 2009, great time to buy real estate like you were saying, Chris.

My agent did not tell me that the property taxes in that area had special assessments assigned to them and were much higher than the normal property taxes. In fact, they ended up being about $250 a month higher. So I was expecting $300, they were $550. Now I was buying this as a rental property, but even if I had bought buying it to live in...

And again, I remember at the time, the total mortgage was like $1,300. So bumping it from $1,300 to $1,550 was a pretty significant chunk. It's like a 20% increase almost in my overall payment because they overlooked that property taxes were higher. Now, agents who own real estate themselves would be familiar with the fact that property tax bills come.

There's more expenses than just your principal and interest on your mortgage. They would see angles like insurance can increase in this area because it's in a flood zone. I really think she missed it because she had never paid a mortgage on her own. She never had her taxes and her insurance escrowed into her mortgage payment.

The next time I bought a house, it was with an agent that had been selling houses for a very long time and sold a lot and owned a lot of real estate herself. And as we went through the process, she educated me. You don't want to buy in that part of town because you're going to pay extra money to get the better school districts.

You don't want to buy over there because the taxes are higher. You don't want to buy a house like that because with that kind of a roof, your insurance is going to be a lot higher. I learned so much about investing in real estate just from the person that was getting paid to help me.

It was like free advice and free knowledge. And it really gave me a different perspective of what to look for and what to avoid. I love it. Okay. So I just sent a link to you. There's this guy in Northern California. Maybe you know him. Stanley Lowe. Number one agent in Northern California for 10 years.

Looks like and is commonly described in San Mateo County as the Asian Elvis of real estate agents. And so when you first said, "Look for someone who sells a lot of houses," I was looking at... I know this guy. I get the flyers in the mail. He sells all the houses.

High volume, high throughput, not just low income property, all kinds of price ranges. Does that mean that if I were looking for a real estate agent, would he be the right guy? Should I consider him even though it might not feel like someone's personality? Maybe that's not the personality I would want as my real estate agent.

But do the numbers speak more than a personality? How do you think about that? And if anyone's curious, greenbanker.com is this real estate agent's website. Green without the E. He's got it down. I will say that. The marketing, the cowhide blazer, and the big circular glasses. I mean, I'm in, personally.

That's funny. That's because I'd be running the other way the minute I saw this. So he does sell a lot of homes, I'm sure. And so he probably does have some experience. My gut would tell me as someone who has worked with a lot of clients and knows a lot of realtors, this is probably not someone who's actually going to be representing you.

He's going to have staff that are going to be handling a lot of it. You're not going to be talking to Stanley. And he's going to likely make up for a lack of negotiation ability and focus on saving you money or making you money if it's a listing with his personality.

So he's a great marketer and the top producing agents are always the best marketers. This is a problem in our industry. The best agents don't make the most money. The ones that are best at getting the phone to ring make the most money. But that doesn't mean that they're the best when it comes to representing you.

So you want someone that sold a lot of houses, but maybe you don't necessarily want the person who markets themselves as the person who sold the most houses. And so it's that sweet spot of maybe like the 60th to 90th percentile, but not the very top. There's a lot of things people fall for.

I sell the most houses in this neighborhood. Realtors will use that as a way of saying, "I'm the best. Don't fall for that." It makes sense to our perspective when we're listing the home. "Oh, you sell all the houses in the neighborhood. You know how to get me top dollar.

You just don't realize until you think about it, the buyers don't care. The buyers don't care who's selling that house. They are never going to look at who the listing agent is when they're writing their offer. They just care about the house. The buyer's agent needs to know the neighborhood.

The buyer's agent needs to know the amenities. When you're looking to buy somewhere, you want an agent that knows the area very well. When you're looking to sell, it will never matter how many homes in the area that agent sold. In fact, the only reason they sell a lot of homes in the same area is they put their sign in all the yards and then they go, we call it farming, knocking on all the doors and meeting all the people, getting their name out there.

They're just able to utilize a listing to build leverage to get more. But there's no competitive advantage when it comes to representing a seller if you've sold other homes in the area. I wanted to add one thing to that. Well, hey, it sounds like if they're putting signs in everyone's yard, it sounds like they're good marketers, which goes back to what you were saying.

But I did want to say that one really important piece to agents, just from a consumer side, and as someone that relies on agents pretty heavily, is them having a really thorough Rolodex of vendors that I can use to help me run my properties, whether I'm living in it or not.

If I'm buying a short-term rental, for example, I know I need a contractor, cleaner, landscaper, pool maintenance person, pest control, and probably a plumber, electrician, and all that type of stuff. So when I'm calling a realtor, and this goes into how many houses have they sold, if they've sold a lot of houses over the last 5-10 years, they probably have a pretty thorough Rolodex.

I mean, outdated term. If they use the term Rolodex, maybe they're not with it. But if they have a very big contact list of all these different vendors, that's what I'm personally looking for in a realtor. Because a lot of the times, I really need a firsthand referral to know that I can successfully either live in a property or execute a rental.