Top Jacksonville Beach Realtor

REE #270 Transcript

[00:00:00] Beverly Hecht: There's so many rewarding experiences when you help a family get a property that they love and their children are happy. Or you help an elderly person transition out of their home that they've lived in for, you know, 30, 40, 50 years into either assisted living or with a family member. I mean, there's so many rewarding experiences and it just, I just love helping people and I love meeting people and I mean, it does more for me than sometimes I think it does for them,

[00:01:02] Tracy Hayes: Welcome back to the Real Estate Excellence podcast show that brings you inside the minds of Northeast Florida's most driven, most consistent, and most client-focused professionals in the real estate game. Today's guest is proof that discipline, loyalty, and lifelong learning will take you far in the business. She's a Jacksonville native who remembers when her coastal hometown was still a quiet surf town, and now she's selling the Beachside lifestyle to new generations of buyers and investors who want in on the Florida dream. After a career in IT sales, she made a leap into real estate nearly 20 years ago, raising three children as a single mom while building a business rooted in honesty, service, and grit. Whether helping a growing family upsize or guiding a seller through the next chapter of their life, she treats every deal as personal, and that's why so many of her clients become lifelong friends. A Chairman Circle Gold producer, she's backed by one of the most respected brands in the country and still believes in sharpening the sword—constantly attending trainings, engaging with her community, and representing the beaches with pride. Active in the Beaches Town Center Merchants Association and her church of 1122, she's not just a real estate agent, she's a leader, a local, and a rock for those she serves. Let's welcome to the round table, Beverly Hecht of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Network Realty.

[00:02:36] Beverly Hecht: Thank you for that wonderful introduction.

[00:02:39] Tracy Hayes: Well, you provided a good bio, so it helped put it together. I'm glad you came on, glad you made the trip over here this morning because I think it's going to be great to share your story. You've been through, you know, 20 years—that puts us back. September is my 20th year anniversary being in the mortgage business. So we've been through some different markets and to go back—where I think a lot of agents out there, as we were just talking about, they've only been in the business 2, 3, 4 years and they jumped in. And yeah, the market has changed a little bit, but the houses are still selling. Whereas in 2008, 7, 8, 9, you know, things came to a halt.

[00:03:31] Beverly Hecht: Correct?

[00:03:32] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:03:32] Beverly Hecht: Don't tell anyone that. I'm just kidding.

[00:03:34] Tracy Hayes: So, parents just got relocated and brought you to Jacksonville or what?

[00:03:37] Beverly Hecht: So my mom was actually born in Atlantic Beach. She was one of 11 and she met my dad who was in the military and he was stationed at Mayport Naval Base. So that's how they met. He was from Minnesota. They went back there. Once they got divorced, my mom came back here because, you know, we had so much family here.

[00:03:53] Tracy Hayes: Right. I'm going to have you grab that mic and just pull it towards you there a little bit. Yeah. There we go. Good. Okay. Yep. Perfect. I'd like to kick off a little bit, and I think it's so important, because so many agents did something else. We do have some great agents that are 22, 23 years old in town that I've met that are amazing—that they found real estate early. But we also have some great agents who take their experience from previous careers and then implement it in real estate and really take off. So tell us a little bit about what you were doing, you know, as young Beverly. She's 18 years old. At that time, what did you envision yourself doing?

[00:04:32] Beverly Hecht: I envisioned myself being either an attorney or an architect. But growing up at the beaches, I mean, the ocean is in my blood. I love where I live. Very fortunate. Jacksonville is a FinTech community. And I was always—I always worked for large corporations. I started off working for Atlantic Bank, which was a privately owned local bank here. Worked at the beaches. And then I transitioned into—I started working for AT&T Universal Card. They were the credit card division. And met—started working with Enterprise Integration. So they did all the IT technology and support for Universal Card. So I started that relationship and they offered me a job, making a lot more money. And so I said, sure. Never been in sales before, but I've always, you know, wanted to try it.

[00:05:00] Beverly Hecht: Right. And it was wonderful. Met a lot of great people. I'm still, you know—I feel very fortunate that I come from a corporate background where there were methods and procedures, there were things that you followed, there were time commitments that you made to clients to get back with them. Right. So I feel very fortunate that I have that background and experience.

[00:05:41] Tracy Hayes: That's interesting—because I didn't see on your LinkedIn any college noted on there.

[00:05:45] Beverly Hecht: Yes, I did. So I started—I got my associate's degree from Florida Community College.

[00:05:49] Tracy Hayes: Okay.

[00:05:50] Beverly Hecht: And then I started—I was going to UNF and I had planned to be an elementary teacher just so I could have the summers off and holidays with my children. And I thought, you know, it's great and I would love to teach children, but I'm going to take a huge pay cut. So when I was working at AT&T, they actually paid for me to finish my bachelor's degree.

[00:06:15] Tracy Hayes: Oh good.

[00:06:16] Beverly Hecht: With Southern Illinois University. They flew in instructors. We met at the Mayport Naval Base. That's back before all the, you know, all the craziness to even get on the base. So I finished out my bachelor's degree there and they paid for everything, which was wonderful.

[00:06:31] Tracy Hayes: Wow. Excellent.

[00:06:32] Beverly Hecht: And I missed it by about a month to actually start a full ride to University of Florida in their master's program. They brought professors into Universal Card. But I was just finishing up my bachelor's, so I missed that. But otherwise, I'd—

[00:06:46] Tracy Hayes: But what an interesting time because I think there's still a little bit out there, but not to the level—I mean, literally, they were hiring non-college grads and helping them get their degree and moving them through their corporation. You know, my wife was fortunate enough, when she graduated from Florida State—Alltel at the time, Alltel Wireless—they would pluck a handful of each class of top people and they would move them throughout different channels of their company so that they would learn the entire company and then hopefully be future, you know, executives eventually. And that sounds—I don't hear about that anymore. And just like you, you went through where they were really giving you a lot of value by providing you a free education.

[00:07:31] Beverly Hecht: Absolutely. Yeah. And I was fortunate because I worked my way up into management and then I started working in the HR department. So I did all the training classes for new associates. I did the new hire orientations. I did career development classes. And so that's why they paid.

[00:07:50] Beverly Hecht: 100%—because it was workforce education and development. Right. A bachelor’s degree.

[00:07:51] Tracy Hayes: I think today they worry about people leaving. But again, I think that's a weakness of management too, because they have to realize—just like in real estate, and we'll talk about brokerages—if the broker isn't adding value to their agents, agents are going to find another broker that does.

[00:08:05] Beverly Hecht: Very true.

[00:08:06] Tracy Hayes: And that’s corporate America as well.

[00:08:07] Beverly Hecht: It is. So we used to, you know, all the people that I worked with at AT&T, some of them were a little complacent because they knew they were always going to have a job and they had great benefits, great retirement. But then it became employability. So it’s like—what do you bring to the corporation to make them want to continue to invest in you? Right. So yeah, the corporate world changed a lot.

[00:08:29] Tracy Hayes: So you gestured a moment ago. You know the structure though—that you, you know, you come in, you were doing your job, they were training you, you were going to these trainings. But what do you think are some of the intrinsic things? Because there’s some young people—and the reason why I say this is because I think a lot—we have a lot of young people who go on to college and they don’t even know what they want to major in, which is, that’s reality. I mean, no—they want to explore the world out there. It’s, you know, the ChatGPTs now, the AI—there’s so many different things that they can do. I think we’re actually going to go back to a period of time where we’re going to see a lot more not go to college, because—I see an ad almost every day, I think it’s on Facebook or Instagram, talking about how so many of these high school students are using AI to create businesses.

[00:09:16] Beverly Hecht: It’s incredible. And they’re doing it from their homes. So they don’t have to go anywhere.

[00:09:19] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. And now they lack, I think, what we would agree—our generation—and somebody said to me, it might’ve been my wife the other day, she said, these sub-30-year-olds, you know, when you pass them or something in the hallway or maybe you’re going out the store or something, you hold the door open and—or they hold it—you say thank you or whatever. They don’t even like look you back. Or you just walk—You know, I’m a person—when you pass someone in the hallway, I make eye contact and kind of give them a nod. I may not know who they are, but I’m absolutely acknowledging they exist.

[00:10:00] Beverly Hecht: Yeah. And I don’t know if you have children, but I even look at my three children. So my oldest daughter is a doctor. She has two doctorates. She’s doing telemed from home—very successful. My son has an IT degree. And then my youngest daughter, who’s in her late twenties—I’m having to like coerce her into finishing her degree at Florida. She is a nurse at Mayo, but it’s like—do this, get this done. Like, why are you procrastinating?

[00:10:26] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:10:27] Beverly Hecht: She’s just like—and then she’s spending all her money not in productive ways. So it’s really very frustrating because she just got off my payroll recently, and now it’s like—hello!

[00:10:37] Tracy Hayes: You’re not going to be 20-something much longer. So, hello!

[00:10:40] Beverly Hecht: You gotta like step up to the plate and be a productive adult in society.

[00:10:44] Tracy Hayes: And I think it’s going to be different. I’m sure you’ve probably dealt with buyers now in this generation—you know, your daughter’s age—who, you know, they’re making money, so now they’re looking to buy their first house and how you’re dealing with them. So, since we’re kind of on this topic and you’ve been in the business that long—I mean, you’ve dealt with buyers I’m sure who are retired, to now some of these new generations. What have you found yourself—you know, in your corporate experience, in sales—on how you work with these different clients and the, I think, the different generation? Because, you know, a 25-year-old in 2005 is different than a 25-year-old in 2025. You know what I’m saying?

[00:11:24] Beverly Hecht: Absolutely. Yeah. And I just think of like a current scenario. So I’m working with this—I don’t want to say older—but, you know, they just celebrated their 50th anniversary while they were here and they own like a—

[00:11:37] Tracy Hayes: That’s maturity. Yes.

[00:11:39] Beverly Hecht: A mature person.

[00:11:40] Tracy Hayes: Yes. Their 50th wedding anniversary. Okay, that puts them in their seventies.

[00:11:44] Beverly Hecht: Right. But they don’t even look that age. You know, and it’s just so amazing how much they’ve accomplished. And they’re so knowledgeable and they’re so—they’re very responsive. And then I see some of these younger—there are some younger, more mature adults—not like my daughter—that they’re saving. That is a goal for them, to invest in real estate. Real estate is where most people make the most money—the biggest return on their investment is in real estate. So it’s interesting because they need a lot of handholding, but I love that. So, I mean, I feel very fortunate that I can work with people of all ages, all backgrounds, all experiences, and help them through that process. Because even this older couple that—they have a beautiful oceanfront condo in Hilton Head, they’ve got another condo on the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia, and now they’re buying a condo here just to have somewhere to stay while they travel here to watch their granddaughter play soccer. And it’s amazing. But they still—they don’t understand this environment. They’re like, “We’re used to, you know, condos in Hilton Head, they sell in a matter of hours.” And they’re like, “Why is this condo here on the market for like 30 or 60 days?” So helping them through that process, and then, you know, it’s a totally different environment. And Jacksonville is so large and it’s hard for people to understand. Like, they wanted to go all over to kind of explore—where’s the best place to buy? And you try to give them as much information as possible to help them make an informed decision.

[00:13:20] Tracy Hayes: We’re in a very unique—well, I think every place has its uniqueness, right? I grew up on Cape Cod. That’s unique. That’s kind of like Hilton Head, sort of—not really—because every, you know, it’s a very small community. Everyone knows each other. Jacksonville, although a lot of people do know each other—especially if you’re actively out like we are doing business and you’re interacting—you get to know a lot of people. But the uniqueness about the geography of our area, there’s, you know, the schools in Duval versus schools in St. John’s or Nassau or Clay—you know, that type of thing. Do you want to be near the water or—there’s, you know, great properties on the—

[00:14:00] Tracy Hayes: —river? Will you, you know, hey, the ocean's too expensive, maybe the river's your option. If you are active—which this is—I think our geography provides a community for active people. Whether it's running and hiking trails, whether you like to go canoeing, I mean, whether you're a boater or a fisherman. There's all these types of things that you can do—an endless list here. I think the only difference—because I did grow up—I spent about almost a decade in Northern Virginia. Obviously there's a lot of historic stuff there. We have a lot of history here, but not like Virginia does. But we have great places to go boating. That's what we like to do. We boat on the river, we go tubing, we go to St. Augustine because we like to go out and put the boat on the beach and that kind of thing. But that person coming down from Minnesota doesn't understand that geography and so forth. What are some of the things that you do to try to draw that out of them? Because I think it’s very important to understand, you know, what are their needs and desires and those kinds of things outside of the home?

[00:14:58] Beverly Hecht: Absolutely. So I work on our relocation team and one of the things I always offer to people that are relocating—I ask them, what are your priorities? Do you want to be within a certain distance to your place of employment? Is that important to you, or do you work from home? And I also take them on tours, because I actually work in Nassau County, Duval, Clay, St. John's, and Flagler. So I go from Amelia Island, Yulee—which a lot of people that relocated with Amazon, they wanted to be in Yulee because all the schools are rated A’s and it's a 20-minute drive. And then you've got River City Marketplace for shopping, and then the whole Fernandina/Yulee/Amelia Island area for the beaches. There's so much to do. So I take them on tours because it is overwhelming to them and they're not sure where they want to be. But I've had people that—the husband relocated here to work for Walmart off Phillips Highway—and their children only wanted to go to Fernandina Beach High.

[00:15:57] Tracy Hayes: How do they know anything? Do they have cousins or something going there?

[00:16:00] Beverly Hecht: Because they played baseball and so they made some connections with that whole community. And so he was willing to drive 45 minutes each way just so his kids could go to the school that they chose to go to. So it is interesting. You really do have to drill down and ask them a lot of questions because it is overwhelming for them. But when I do the tours—and I will show them houses or I'll show them what's available—because Jacksonville is so large. Over 800 square miles. So it's hard for them to—but sometimes it's driven by the schools. And even if they don't have school-aged children or they don’t plan to have children, I still tell them that from a resale perspective, you're going to have a larger target audience for your home if you're in a good school zone. So, you know, it's all the different things to take into consideration. But some people do—they want to be by the water, they want to be by racquetball, they want to be by golfing communities. I've got a gentleman right now that just wants to buy a second home. But he wants me to look at like 12 different golfing communities. Find out if they have a heated pool in their amenity center, find out if they have clay courts or if they have hard courts. So there's a lot of other things that, you know, they're taking into consideration.

[00:17:16] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:17:19] Beverly Hecht: So it gets pretty intense. You gotta have some spreadsheets.

[00:17:21] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. It is—like, that’s gonna cost extra.

[00:17:25] Beverly Hecht: I have a hard time saying no.

[00:17:26] Tracy Hayes: What's very interesting about what you're talking about—this particular person, you know, hey, doesn't want clay courts, wants the pool heated at the amenity center and so forth. I was just on a phone call yesterday—actually a high school classmate of mine who has been doing websites for agents for as long as you and I have been in the business. He's got a huge client base and we were talking with another gentleman who I've had on the show, who’s doing an AI home search. And part of the depth—and this is where people say, “Oh yeah, Zillow's gonna have it”—yeah, and it takes a lot more. Because this is the type of stuff—they want to be able to go online, go into ChatGPT and say, “Hey, find me a community in Jacksonville in this area that has—I like to play on clay tennis courts, it's got a heated pool, less than five-minute ride to the beach,” or something like that. That's the type of information they're trying to raise the AI home search to. And it's not as easy because obviously—where is that information at? It's gotta go on. And if it’s not really mentioned or put out there—maybe there’s only one website that ever says anything about that community having clay tennis courts—you know, so that’s where it’s coming to. And to help out hopeful—so hopefully in two to three years someone’s going to be—he’s going to be doing that. So give me just a second—yes, clay tennis court, pool, boom, boom—and you have, you know, two or three communities that might pop up.

[00:19:00] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. That's some crazy stuff there. I'm going to try to bring back the question I had before I made that statement. When working with buyers coming from out of town, have you done any things that were sight unseen? Because we mentioned military relocation—sometimes these people can't get here all the time to come see houses.

[00:19:11] Beverly Hecht: Well, normally I’ll do a FaceTime video. Yeah. So I do that a lot. And I have a gentleman right now in the military and—

[00:19:12] Beverly Hecht: —Jacksonville Beach, where he's lived before apparently, years ago. But then he, you know, he's also worried because he would like to be as close to the ocean as he can.

[00:19:20] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:19:21] Beverly Hecht: So I've looked at—I've shown him several oceanfront condos via FaceTime. And then, you know, with all the SIRS and everything else that's going on, he also wants to know, are there going to be any special assessments? So trying to drill down and get those reports and get communication—and a lot of times, they don't know if there’s going to be special assessments. They know that there may be one, but they have no idea how much that may be. So there’s a lot of—

[00:19:58] Tracy Hayes: He’s looking at condos? Or when you say special assessments, are you talking about just regular community fees?

[00:20:03] Beverly Hecht: Well, when they go through those reports to verify the structural integrity of the particular condo building—

[00:20:07] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:20:08] Beverly Hecht: So they have to determine what do we have to do to bring it up to code? And then, you know, are we going to have to give a special assessment to our current homeowners in order to accommodate that?

[00:20:17] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:20:18] Beverly Hecht: Because they don’t have the financial—

[00:20:20] Tracy Hayes: Because we—my wife and I own a half a dozen condos ourselves. And we do, you know, help other—you know, she helps other people find people to rent their units. And I don’t understand why they went three floors. We're not five to ten, you know? Okay, now we're looking into, you know, that kind of structural thing going on. But I think one of the problems—and I really wish they would push this through—I know they tried to ease off a little bit on some of the regulations recently because condos took a, you know, kind of a bath. But I think we’re still looking at like some crazy amount of inventory of condos that are for sale. But why they started requiring that for three, you know, your standard three-floor condo—to me, I think it was a bad move. If they went to four floors, they would probably take half the condo inventory off.

[00:21:00] Beverly Hecht: Very true.

[00:21:01] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. But brings up, obviously, the insurance. What have you—you know, recently—you know, I think probably the last 18–24 months—when working with clients as far as insurance, what's your—I have my belief and I've talked about it on the show many times—but how are you handling that? Because that’s become an affordability issue.

[00:21:38] Beverly Hecht: Very, very true. Because I’ve sold several condos in Sea Place in Atlantic Beach, and you know, so every condo association is going through these massive increases in insurance. And I mean, some of it, like you said, it does make it cost prohibitive for a lot of buyers. They could afford the condo, but then when you look at the $1,000 or $1,200, $1,500-a-month condo fees, they’re like—I can’t do it. So it is very difficult. I have several—

[00:22:04] Tracy Hayes: I was talking more just your regular homeowner’s insurance. Even on the single-family homes—it’s gotten crazy. Now the whole thing—I think what really throws a lot of homeowners off too—is like, oh, the roof is 10 years old. Well, someone moving from up north—they’ve probably never replaced their roof, you know, unless a tree fell on it. And to come down here and now the roof is 10, 11 years old, so now there’s only these amount of insurance companies that will do a policy on it ‘cause it’s more than 10 years. And how that kind of—that throws them off.

[00:22:36] Beverly Hecht: Well, and I speak from personal experience just recently. So I have a brand new roof. It's a year old. I have a brand new water heater—it’s not even six months old. And my HVAC is six months old. And I just got notification that my insurance is going to double. And I had two 4-point inspections done—

[00:22:56] Tracy Hayes: How long you been in the home?

[00:22:58] Beverly Hecht: 27 years.

[00:22:58] Tracy Hayes: 27 years?

[00:23:00] Beverly Hecht: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:00] Tracy Hayes: And they—this is the information that’s out there right now?

[00:23:03] Beverly Hecht: Yes.

[00:23:04] Tracy Hayes: People don’t realize—they know how old your water heater is ‘cause they gotta go by and get a little permit from the county, and that’s public record. And they can—they have access to that.

[00:23:13] Beverly Hecht: Well, and I did a 4-point with House Scan and paid for it myself.

[00:23:17] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:18] Beverly Hecht: That wasn’t good enough. They had to come out and inspect my property as well. And they looked at the connectors for my washer and dryer, and one had a little bit of rust or corrosion on it. I had to replace all that. And then, you know, some of my pavers were separating. I had to redo all those. I mean, it's getting pretty intense.

[00:23:36] Tracy Hayes: Wow. Who’s your insurance company? Should I say? That's kind of—that’s the thing. I think that’s gotten—well, Florida’s known a high level of fraud. And then the statistic is out there—we have more legal cases having to do with insurance than like the rest of the 49 states combined. So they’re working on that under—that in Tallahassee—to kind of rectify that. But that’s put a lot of, obviously, you know, pressure on the insurance companies to come up with like—crap like that. Excuse me.

[00:24:08] Beverly Hecht: Well, and I think we’re negatively impacted by things that go on in South Florida, of course. I even look at areas like A1A. So why do they allow these properties to be rebuilt on dirt that has already—

[00:24:23] Tracy Hayes: You know, been washed away once.

[00:24:24] Beverly Hecht: Washed away—once or twice.

[00:24:26] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:26] Beverly Hecht: You know, so why don’t they—

[00:24:29] Tracy Hayes: I think a lot—I assume a lot of them are self-insured. Someone’s paid cash, so there’s no mortgage company saying, hey, we need an insurance policy on that property.

[00:24:38] Beverly Hecht: So you’re going to build a $2 million house on the ocean on a road that’s probably going to wash into the—

[00:24:43] Tracy Hayes: Ocean—very possibly, statistically. You know, it’s funny, ‘cause we go boating. Matter of fact, this past Sunday we got the boat at St. Augustine because we’re part of the boat club. Go down to just cruise down to Matanzas. And I had a family member tell me—she probably doesn’t listen to my show—but four or five years ago, it had to be—I was thinking about it as I was cruising back. You know, you’re coming up the Intracoastal Waterway and you're looking at all the houses on the Intracoastal Waterway and stuff like—and she goes, “Oh yeah, in five years this will all be underwater.” That was their thing. And statistically—yeah, we’ve been kind of blessed in this area from the front. We’ve never really—knock on wood—been hit directly. The Gulf Stream keeps the hurricanes kind of moving offshore. Never been hit, you know, truly directly hit massively by a storm here. So—or at least it’s been many decades. Someone probably in history can probably come back and say, oh yeah, back in 1950 it happened. But, you know, it’s just interesting because Florida’s put themselves in this position. And I think basically the bottom line to our conversation here is legislation needs to clean it up somehow.

[00:25:00] Beverly Hecht: Absolutely. Because I think there’s a huge level of fraud. I know—

[00:25:00] Beverly Hecht: —California, so I've done numerous. He wants to be in that little small segment of—you know, there was a hailstorm years ago. They replaced like 70% of the houses, replaced the roofs, 'cause the contract guys were going by and they were going up saying, “Yep, you got hail damage.” And then, you know, if the insurance company didn’t just write it to say, “Okay, yeah, go ahead and replace the roof,” everyone else got in their—whatever legal battles—you can force the insurance company to move forward. Well, I mean, you're looking at $30,000 roofs on average. And what are you paying for insurance for the year? You know, how long is it taking to recover all that?

[00:26:23] Beverly Hecht: Yeah. And I see a lot of people—a lot of companies—that prey on the elderly. And that really bothers me. You know, from the roofs, from the trees that, you know, are going to do damage in a storm. It’s very sad. It does need to be regulated much more than it is.

[00:26:40] Tracy Hayes: All right, I'm going to ask you—so we'll switch pace here a little bit. We’ll get off the boring insurance part. But it’s important. I think, you know, now as I talk to every—as soon as you get somebody under contract, you need to be calling the insurance company. Because they have that information that you were talking about on your property. How old’s that water heater? How old’s this? And is that going to become—especially someone who's tight on their debt ratios—that could disqualify them. 'Cause we used to just wait until the last week before closing and say, “Okay, we’ve done everything, we just need the insurance policy.” Okay, make a phone call and you had it in a day. Right now, you really need to like get the insurance person involved up front.

[00:27:14] Beverly Hecht: Absolutely. Especially when it’s an investment property and they—you know, there’s no seller’s property disclosure. “We haven’t lived in the property, so we don’t have to disclose anything about it.”

[00:27:23] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:27:23] Beverly Hecht: You don’t know what’s happened.

[00:27:25] Tracy Hayes: Right. You are—almost November will be 20 years in the business. What’s the biggest shift you’ve seen in the Jacksonville Beach and St. Augustine markets since 2005?

[00:27:37] Beverly Hecht: Well, prices have just gone up exponentially. It’s funny, ‘cause—so I’ve always been very intrigued by real estate. So when I was in high school, way back then, the Times-Union and The Beaches Leader used to publish everything about every transaction—every real estate transaction. That, and then babies and then deaths. But you know, back then—even some of my friends, we still talk about it today—it was such a small, close-knit community. Everyone kind of knew each other. But, you know, I could have bought a condo back in the early 80s on the ocean for $70,000. I’m like, that’s crazy. That’s so much money. And now I’m like, what an idiot—I should’ve bought ten if I could have afforded it. But yeah. A lot of areas have gotten cost prohibitive for people. Like if you sell at the beach, that’s the sad part—like a lot of my friends that live at the beach—yeah, they could sell and make a great profit, but where are you going to go?

[00:28:35] Tracy Hayes: Right. That’s going to be anywhere near the environment they’re currently in. Well, especially some of the existing homes—you know, where I’m at in St. Johns County—the square footage that I have, if I tried to, you know, go, “Hey, well I want to move closer to the beach,” or “Hey, let me move out 210, a little further to Nocatee,” I would get half the house.

[00:28:55] Beverly Hecht: Yep.

[00:28:56] Tracy Hayes: For what I have there—for even what I could sell it for. I mean, is that—and that’s been a change in the market. I think, you know, from the standpoint of a lot of buyers, I think—would you agree—for almost a good decade, moving internally within the area was going on a lot. 'Cause rates were so low. They’re like, “Oh, I have three—maybe I got three and a half—but I can move closer to my friends. I like that community. I’m gonna—” People were—there’s some people that were moving every two to three years. But there was a lot more local moves. We’re not really seeing that, especially because so many have such—you know, it’s definitely a sub-5%, if not a sub-4% interest rate right now. So that kind of local move is like—“Eh, I’m not gonna jump on that.”

[00:29:30] Beverly Hecht: Well, like my daughter—so she’s under contract. We just got her under contract with a Dream Finders home. But she had to go to St. Augustine because she had to have a five-bedroom. So she’s getting a five-bedroom with a 3.5% interest rate—for $527,000.

[00:29:49] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:29:50] Beverly Hecht: She couldn’t buy a little small house at the beach for that. But then I also see a lot of people are staying in place because of that. So I was showing houses in Queen’s Harbour on Sunday, and it’s incredible how many homeowners are doubling the size of their house by adding on and totally renovating. And so they’re staying in place because of those rates or because they can’t find anything that—they could sell and make a good profit on their house, but like we said, where do you go? You’re going to have to go further—either out to Green Cove—

[00:30:22] Tracy Hayes: Yep.

[00:30:22] Beverly Hecht: —Middleburg, where it’s booming and there’s a lot of new construction. Or you’re going to have to go, you know, in small little remote areas—maybe Callahan, Yulee.

[00:30:28] Tracy Hayes: If I was pre-kids and, you know, again, you’re buying your first house, right—you’re getting in. You know, to go out to Green Cove—because when that expressway is put across there—and it’s supposed to open in 2030 and they say everything’s on time right now. Of course, we’re five years out. But it’s already opening up because they already have that side almost finished over there. But people—developers are already jumping on the land now. The good thing is they bought the land really cheap. If you get in there now, you can actually afford it. By the time the expressway goes in, you’re going to have some decent equity.

[00:31:01] Beverly Hecht: Yep.

[00:31:01] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:31:01] Beverly Hecht: Well, and I have a client right now—she owns a—I sold her brother’s house in Middleburg and I’ve got her house in Middleburg on the market because she’s like, “I don’t want to be in this environment anymore. I’m so used to this small, little quaint—kind of like we had at the beaches—small little quaint area. Everyone knows each other,” you know, and now, I mean, it’s being invaded. And she’s talking about all the roadways, all the construction with DOT. She’s like, “I want to go to this little small area of St. Augustine where I can just walk to the beach and walk to some restaurants and not have craziness.” And I’m like—

[00:31:34] Tracy Hayes: You’re going to spend—well, I mean, St. Augustine Beach doesn’t have any new roads going in.

[00:31:38] Beverly Hecht: No, it does not.

[00:31:39] Tracy Hayes: It does not. You get—yeah, and you definitely have all that. The price point is a little different.

[00:31:44] Beverly Hecht: Very different.

[00:31:45] Tracy Hayes: For sure. Let me get a good—right now, obviously we have a lot of agents. I don’t know what your numbers are—if you want to share them, you’re welcome to do that. The inventory’s growing. What are you finding from a negotiation standpoint? What are some tactics or some of the things—maybe you have other agents that are listening right now—some of the kind of the intel that you like to gather before you start negotiating? Whatever it may be—whether it’s a repair or a price point, initial offer. But obviously the market shifted. Where we had very little inventory—we’re getting 10, 20 offers on a house—now, there are some houses that are still getting multiple offers, not as many. But we have twice as much, if not three times the inventory that we did just 24 months ago.

[00:32:29] Beverly Hecht: Yep. Yeah. And I try to tell both sellers and buyers—we are now in a buyer’s market. So the Redfin May 2025 report came out—we are one of six cities in Florida that is in a buyer’s market. There are almost 15,000—and that was a couple of weeks ago—homes for sale. That’s 6,500 buyers in the market. So that is 120% difference. Huge.

[00:32:54] Tracy Hayes: How do they figure out how many buyers are in the market?

[00:32:57] Beverly Hecht: I’m not sure how Redfin collects that data. I’m assuming they—

[00:33:00] Tracy Hayes: Are they—I wonder if they’re picking up people clicking online or whatever—looking at homes—and they can look at the IP address and say, “Oh, we only have 6,500 IP addresses in there.”

[00:33:12] Beverly Hecht: Maybe they speak to mortgage—

[00:33:16] Tracy Hayes: —say how many people are pre-approved right now?

[00:33:19] Beverly Hecht: Yeah, and submitting applications. Because they do track—recently, applications are up, which is a good thing. But it's a buyer's market. So, you know—and like the lady in Middleburg. So she owns her house, she also has a condo that she bought last year—has not moved into it. She's bleeding there. I'm like, I know you don’t want to sell it for less than what you paid for it, but you're continuing to pay a monthly condo fee of a thousand dollars. So you're losing money there. Let’s get these—sold, both of them—so that you can buy what you want. And hopefully you can make up for some of that on the buyer’s side, because it is a buyer’s market.

[00:33:56] Tracy Hayes: That’s a funny thing I think I find interesting about people—when they actually look at what has gone on. You know, they buy a house for $250,000 and if they bought that house back in 2020, you know, in this area, they might be able to get somewhere in the $400s for it, right? I mean, almost $200,000 in equity. Maybe it’s a little bit more—it’s possibly there if they’re in the right area. They bought new construction when the neighborhood just broke ground, they got a good deal, got in—it's money like—it’s not money they went and hourly worked for. It’s money that accumulated while they were just eating and breathing and doing their daily things. And when it comes down to something like this, like you’re saying—she’s obviously—there’s a lot of sellers who are like, “I gotta get this amount of money.” Even though, you know—it’s one thing if your mortgage—you know, if you did a VA loan for 100% and you’re upside down—well, you’ve gotta get that amount of money or you’re coming out of your pocket. I can understand that. But those who got unforeseen, unpredictable equity—it’s like, hey, if we drop the price 20 grand, we might actually have people come in here and look at it. They're like, “No, I gotta get that number.” What is it in their mind that—

[00:35:11] Beverly Hecht: And I do—I have a client right now. I love her to death. I mean, love her. And it’s like you said—it’s in her mind. So she sees what some of her neighbors' houses have sold for and she's like, “My house is better than that. I have this, I have that.” I'm like, “Well, but all your bedrooms are upstairs. People don’t want that. You do have a beautiful home, but it should be priced at $875,000, and you have it over a million. That’s why you’re not getting the showings. That’s why.” Because people are buying something very similar—and you see it as inferior to yours—but buyers are looking for square footage, amenities, and price. Everything’s price-driven right now—

[00:35:51] Tracy Hayes: Unless you’ve just got that perfect house in that perfect neighborhood on the perfect lot that multiple people are going to make offers on, and it sells—under contract within a couple of days.

[00:36:01] Beverly Hecht: And I’ve had something like that. Like I listed one in E-Town and it went under contract in five days. And some of the people within the community that were trying to buy—because they were either renters or they’re going through a divorce and they had to buy another house—they’re like, “This is overpriced.” Well, apparently it appraised. And we were going to have multiple offers, but we got one so quickly—within five days. And it’s already—

[00:36:24] Tracy Hayes: Have you had a low appraisal anytime recently?

[00:36:26] Beverly Hecht: I have not, thank goodness.

[00:36:27] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, I haven’t heard any from the lending side—anything that we’ve had to deal with—low appraisals. And you know, I was working a deal actually supposed to close next week. She needed a little bit of seller concessions. The seller said, “I gotta get this amount of money,” because I think that’s pretty much what they got in it. And, you know, we bumped it up and—problem getting the appraisal? Came in exactly, you know, where—You’re not finding appraisals that are going out there saying, “Hey, we need $500,000,” and they come and say, “Oh, that really—the house is worth $520,000.” The appraisers go out there and say—they’re conservative and say, “Oh, $500,000 is the price point. Yeah, that’s a $500,000 house.” You might—$520,000 was the price point—they probably still would’ve given you that. But they obviously—they’re conservative from that standpoint because they’ve gotten their necks cut off too from that side. They’re under a microscope as well.

[00:37:13] Beverly Hecht: Yeah. And I tell people too, because I don’t think they always understand—that they can pay a higher price for a property if they really love it and ask for concessions to buy down their rate. And it’s much more advantageous for them in the long run to do that. And so you’ve got to show the numbers. You’ve got to give them data that they can understand and know that they’re making those—

[00:37:37] Tracy Hayes: Let’s dig into a little bit of some of the things that you’re doing that have proven to your success. I imagine over 20 years, you’ve tweaked a lot. You’re not doing the same thing you were doing in 2005—and definitely, probably, definitely not doing the same things you were doing in 2008, for those who survived. I mean, and let’s—if we can just pinpoint that time period—what do you think—obviously 2005 was still—the markets were hot, kind of—I don’t know if you—maybe you could call it like 2020, 2021, maybe. I mean, values were going up way too fast, from that standpoint. But also, we get that halt and, you know, 2007, 2008, 2009—it’s ghost town. What are some of the things you did to survive through that period?

[00:38:19] Beverly Hecht: Oh, it was tough. So, being a parent—a single mom of three with no child support—I got two other jobs. So I was doing real estate nights and weekends. And Berkshire didn’t really want me to do that, but out of necessity, I had to. I had to get another job where I could provide benefits—health insurance—to my children. So I was working around the clock and trying to raise three kids and take them to three different places, and they were in three different schools. So it was tough. Yeah, it was very stressful because I had always worked for large corporations and large organizations where I had medical, I had dental, I had all—you know, everything I needed and a constant paycheck. So there were many nights I didn’t sleep, but I was like, “Okay, how do I do this? How do I make this work?” And, you know, I just struggled through it.

[00:39:05] Tracy Hayes: Did you get into the short sales? Did you get into foreclosures? You dug in—

[00:39:08] Beverly Hecht: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:09] Tracy Hayes: —because I mean, anyone I’ve had on that’s been through that period of time, nobody knew really what to do. I mean, banks had dealt with foreclosures, but not at the volume that they had.

[00:39:19] Beverly Hecht: Yeah. And even today some people are like, “I only want to look at foreclosures.” And I said, “Okay, fine.” I mean, I’ve dealt with plenty of them. But in the past, people were like, “I only want to see them. And you know, this one’s been on the market for 300 days, so I think I can get a really good deal.” I’m like, “There’s a reason it’s been on the market for 300 days. There are some either major issues or—” So, and I still show it to them. And I talk it through with them and kind of get that line.

[00:39:46] Tracy Hayes: I don’t think people realize the amount of money that’s out there. With technology now especially, you have money coming from all over the place. It’s not just local money. Investors are coming into an area—especially like ours—which I think you would agree, there’s a lot of people sitting on the sidelines right now. And I truly believe that if we were doing 5.875% on a 30-year fixed right now, it would be a feeding frenzy. And it would be back to 2021. People would be like, “Oh my God, we gotta grab it. We gotta do it now,” because there’s just so many sitting on the sidelines ‘cause they’re hearing that 6.5%, 7% or more, and they’re like, “Woo—we’ll just stay away from that.” But that little trigger is going to set off—and the investors know this. And the money’s coming from all over the globe. And they understand—if we’ve got a foreclosure or a house that’s been on the market for 300 days—

[00:40:51] Beverly Hecht: Yep.

[00:40:52] Tracy Hayes: —obviously, I guarantee a flipper’s already been over there, has already checked it out and said, “For the price you want, for the work that needs to be done—it ain’t gonna happen.”

[00:41:00] Beverly Hecht: Right. Yeah. And I try to help people understand that too. I mean, our market is so vibrant, and that’s why investors are coming here. They know that they can get a good return on their investment if they find the right property. And I get investors calling me every single day.

[00:41:05] Tracy Hayes: Just looking to see what you might have coming on the market?

[00:41:08] Beverly Hecht: “What do you have? What do you have? I need something—I need some properties.” Right. “You and 500 investors that want to, you know, steal something.” But, you know, it’s hard to work with them because I don’t want them to take advantage of people. And sometimes, you know, of course, that’s what they’re looking to do.

[00:41:25] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. And I’m going to segue this into an agent, but I think—new people, new investors in it—you have to kind of break down like, “Okay, what is your goal? You plan to live in this house for two—or is this a two-year turn and buy another house, rent this one out?” Or, “Do you think you’re going to get the equity in two years?” What is your goal there? And I talk to a lot of people and what I found is—you need to ask them, “How long do you really see yourself in this home?” Because some of these people are sitting there nickel and diming over $5,000, and they plan to live in the home for 30 years. Like, “What are you worried about that for?”

[00:42:00] Beverly Hecht: I know. I know. And I never try to talk derogatory—

[00:42:04] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:42:05] Beverly Hecht: —to them. But like you said, it’s—in the overall scheme of things—it’s not that much money. I’m not trying to—I never want anyone to think that I’m trying to make them overcommit to something that’s outside of their price range or it’s going to cause them stress. Because you don’t want that in your life. But, you know, I try to politely, politically correctly tell them, “This is going to be $30 more on your monthly payment. This is what you really want. Why are you fighting this?”

[00:42:36] Tracy Hayes: Right. I imagine you’ve been in the business now—what are you saying to some of these people who are kind of on your buyer’s list? You know they want to buy, but they’re like, “Oh, rates are too high,” and so forth. What are you saying to them to create a sense of urgency? Like, “No, this is actually the time to buy.” What kind of conversations are you having there?

[00:42:53] Beverly Hecht: Well, I do have the conversation about—instead of worrying about the price that you pay, ask the seller for concessions to buy down your rate. And what most people are thinking right now is—in two or three years, I’ll refi. Or even in a year, depending on what the rates do.

[00:43:12] Tracy Hayes: The savvy ones—

[00:43:13] Beverly Hecht: Yeah. So if this is the home you really want and you love it and it checks most of your boxes—I mean, and I explain also to people that whether you build or you buy existing, you’re probably going to get about 80 to 85% of what you really want. I’ve never seen anyone get 100% of what they’re looking for. It just doesn’t—that doesn’t happen. But if this is the area you want and you love it—or if it’s close to family or friends or whatever—what’s another 20 or 30 dollars a month? Don’t go to Starbucks one day.

[00:43:42] Tracy Hayes: Exactly. Yeah. Really. Exactly. Then we cut the Starbucks out.

[00:43:45] Beverly Hecht: Yeah.

[00:43:46] Tracy Hayes: But I think the really good, savvy agents can get in there and kind of create that rationale with them. Because I don’t think people realize—you and I realize that, right now, it’s a buyer’s market. So they can negotiate whatever—the price, some paid for closing costs, whatever—they can negotiate dollars. And if the rates do drop, that price of that home, that negotiation’s going to go away. Because the demand of all those people on the sidelines—they’re going to have other offers.

[00:44:30] Beverly Hecht: Yep.

[00:44:31] Tracy Hayes: And so if you’re sitting around going, “Hey, I don’t want to buy right now because the rates are high,” well, wait—because the price is going to be higher in a year, or whenever the rates settle down a little bit.

[00:44:36] Beverly Hecht: Well, and I explain to people too—you’re not going to get the perfect storm. You’re not going to get low rates and—

[00:44:40] Tracy Hayes: —low prices.

[00:44:41] Beverly Hecht: —low prices and the home you want.

[00:44:43] Tracy Hayes: Yes.

[00:44:44] Beverly Hecht: So, you know, you’ve got to decide—what’s your priority? What are you willing to do?

[00:44:48] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:44:49] Beverly Hecht: And if you really—like I had one client—it was funny because it was an E-Town home, and the wife loved it. She only got to see it via FaceTime. The husband was there, and we got into a multiple offer situation in a matter of a day. And I advised him what he needed to do. We did an escalation clause. Sometimes, if you really, really want it and you’ve got good money down, then maybe you waive the appraisal, maybe you waive some things. Maybe you make certain concessions.

[00:45:19] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:45:20] Beverly Hecht: But the wife said, “If I lose this house over $5,000, you will never hear the end of it.”

[00:45:24] Tracy Hayes: That’s true.

[00:45:25] Beverly Hecht: So he’s like, “Okay.”

[00:45:26] Tracy Hayes: You love the wife. Very good, very good.

[00:45:29] Beverly Hecht: You know, it’s all about your perspective.

[00:45:31] Beverly Hecht: If you're gonna be there for even five years—normally if you're there three to five years, you're gonna make a good return on it.

[00:45:33] Tracy Hayes: I just—I always said I should have been a psychology major. 'Cause you know, you kind of have to walk—people sometimes get in this lane like, “Oh,” they’re in the weeds. “What’s the rate? What’s the rate?” Okay. That’s going to change. It’s high right now—whether it's seven or seven and a half. You’re gonna hopefully refi in the next 24 months. Hopefully that’s going to happen for you. That’s what everyone predicts. Now, of course, we’ve been predicting that for the last two years. 'Cause I remember not too long ago—it was two, almost two years ago—spring, two years ago, some very influential person in the mortgage world that a lot of mortgage people pay—like, it wasn’t the Market Distillery, but like Market Distillery gives you information—they give mortgage people information. And he was talking about the rates dropping into the fours—like back in the fours—two years ago, after they had just—in 2022, it was May of ‘22—when they started to go up very rapidly. And obviously that’s never come to fruition. We haven’t gotten back below six since then.

[00:46:27] Beverly Hecht: And I don’t see that ever happening again.

[00:46:28] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Think not.

[00:46:29] Beverly Hecht: Maybe five. Yeah, but three or four?

[00:46:31] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Well, from September 2005 until basically November, December of 2008—the rates were, if you could get five—if you tipped 5.875—oh my God. But they were 5.875 to 7.25. That’s where they were before, you know, everything. We’ve artificially, unfortunately, for a decade there, got everyone trained in that low, low interest rate thing.

[00:46:50] Tracy Hayes: Let me see what good question here ChatGPT has for us... Oh, here’s a good one. Because I wanted to get some tips for the agents out there that are listening. I know we’re seeing—in the mortgage world—loan officers fall out, go back to corporate careers or whatever. I imagine that is also happening as well. We just don’t know until the renewal—they don’t renew and the agents are out. But I think when 70-something percent of the agents didn’t even write a deal in 2024, it tells us a lot right there.

[00:47:26] Beverly Hecht: It does. Yeah.

[00:47:27] Tracy Hayes: That they’ve—a lot of them have moved on, type of thing. What are some of the things you think, you know, if you’re a new agent—you don’t have a 20-year book of business—but you’re, you know, maybe you’re in your first two or three years, you’ve done a couple dozen sales hopefully. What are some of the things they should be doing right now?

[00:47:42] Beverly Hecht: Well—and we’ve talked a lot about this—because buyers don’t really want to sign that buyer rep agreement before they really know who they’re going to be working with. I mean, potential buyers should be out there looking for testimonials. They should be finding out who is having success in the market. But a lot of the newer agents want to do open houses. Because—like in one of the Market Distillery groups—I was just in one of the masterminds—they were saying a lot of buyers are coming, and they’re interviewing the agents at that point in time. And you can make a great connection. You could start interacting with these buyers that are currently active. They want to purchase in the near future. And you have the opportunity to make a good connection with them—provide them with data and statistics and be there for them—without them being forced to sign a buyer’s rep.

[00:48:35] Tracy Hayes: Do you think that buyer’s agreement is actually scaring buyers away?

[00:48:38] Beverly Hecht: A little bit. Or maybe the person who presented it to them originally—from making the decision on who they want to work with—because they feel like they’re committed. But I always tell people too—and I always have—you can sign this, but if you at some point decide that you don’t want to work with me—I used to get flack for this, but whatever—but I’m not going to force anyone to work with me when they’re making the largest purchase they’re ever going to make in their lifetime. So I tell them that—you know, all you’ll do is send me a communication or let me know that you’ve chosen to work with another realtor. I would never force you into working with me if—

[00:49:16] Tracy Hayes: Everyone that I’ve talked to has that same attitude. When I had David Kinn on, we were talking about—you know, he was into the—he called that the first agreement, which was like, “Hey, I’m going to just go show this one house,” or “Work with you for this one weekend,” as like the dating—that was the dating agreement. Before—every agent I’ve talked to kind of has that. So I’m wondering if some of these buyers are getting—the only reason they’re really learning about it, ‘cause I think the majority of people weren’t really paying attention. You and I are in the business, so we were paying attention to it. If they weren’t looking to buy a home last year, but now they are—that news has kind of died down quite a bit, and I don’t think—they weren’t paying much attention to it. So now they come in, someone jumps in front of them and just does a really bad job at presenting that buyer broker—scares them.

[00:50:13] Beverly Hecht: Mm-hmm. Then I can see them being, “Oh, hold on a second. We need to move around here.” And buyers are now not as reluctant, I think, because they know it has to be done. I mean, I would just have—if they want to see one property and they’re not ready to make a commitment—then I have them sign a non-rep agreement because I’m super, like exponentially, risk-averse. I have had buyers tell me, “I’ve been seeing properties and no agent has made me sign a buyer rep.” And I said, “Well, that will not be me.” And I’ve had to leave properties. I mean, I had one gentleman that I showed up and he would not sign it. And I said, “Well, then I’m sorry—I can’t show it to you.”

[00:50:48] Tracy Hayes: Right. Right. You’ve got too much invested.

[00:50:50] Beverly Hecht: Absolutely.

[00:50:51] Tracy Hayes: It would not shock me that—because people realize—who’s policing it?

[00:50:56] Beverly Hecht: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:56] Tracy Hayes: Ourselves. That’s what I heard from some people—not this past, you know, because there was a big thing in Washington here recently. It was the one a year ago. And literally someone kind of brought that up, like, “Who’s policing this?” And someone brought up and says, “We’re policing ourselves.” And a little laughter came about the room. Because they realize there’s no fly on the wall that’s, you know, checking that.

[00:51:21] Beverly Hecht: Well, see—I heard that there are people kind of now shopping.

[00:51:23] Tracy Hayes: Yes, they are. Yes.

[00:51:25] Beverly Hecht: If they want to come into the—

[00:51:26] Tracy Hayes: I had someone do that to me one day. I was showing a property in Atlantic Beach. It was a townhome, and my buyer was with me in my car. And this other car came up—it was a man and wife—and they’re like, “Hey, can I see that house real quick?” And I’m like, “You can, but I’m actually with a client.” But I tried to explain to them the buyer’s rep. And they’re like, “Oh, we don’t want to do that.” I’m like, “Well then, I’m so sorry. You’re going to have to sign that for someone—for a realtor—to show that to you, if they are playing by the rules and—

[00:51:53] Tracy Hayes: Right. You think that was a test?

[00:51:55] Beverly Hecht: It felt like it.

[00:51:56] Tracy Hayes: You felt it?

[00:51:57] Beverly Hecht: Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I was like—you know, in the past, I was always like, “Oh sure,” and I’m like, “Yeah—no. Time out.”

[00:52:04] Tracy Hayes: Alright. So I’m working with putting all my data in the ChatGPT—all the transcripts and everything. I won’t get into the story—but I’m—how AI is learning. And don’t ever believe what it’s telling you. Like when it says, “Hey, yeah, all the data’s up to date for all 269 of your episodes,” and it gives you a link—you better check the link and make sure it actually is all filled out. ‘Cause it’s creating this huge metadata spreadsheet.

[00:52:31] Beverly Hecht: Interesting.

[00:52:32] Tracy Hayes: And what I found out—it would come up and say, “Yes, you have everything updated from episode 1 through 269.”

[00:52:38] Beverly Hecht: Okay.

[00:52:39] Tracy Hayes: So then I went and added something—or I was cleaning it up. I wanted some transcripts from different episodes because there’s stuff still missing. And it’s like, “Oh, you need to upload the whole spreadsheet you worked on last week.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” You gave me this link that said I had 1 to 269. Oh no—that only had one episode there.

[00:52:59] Tracy Hayes: Oh yeah. So it tells me—it’s still working. I’m working on this for three days. It tells me it’s actually still working on putting it together.

[00:53:00] Tracy Hayes: So you really have to double check. Don’t assume that it’s telling you the truth. I—I actually told it, “You lied to me.”

[00:53:06] Beverly Hecht: Right. How’d it—?

[00:53:07] Tracy Hayes: Of course, it apologized.

[00:53:08] Beverly Hecht: Yeah, apologizes, right.

[00:53:09] Tracy Hayes: But anyway, I want to put a talk together. I want to put a book together of every one of the—that—of all the stories of everyone. 'Cause everyone comes with this, whether they're single moms, you know, working through 2008, and you know, having to survive—working with all those types of things. But I—one of the bottom-line things is, I believe—I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book Grit by Angela Duckworth.

[00:53:31] Beverly Hecht: I have not.

[00:53:32] Tracy Hayes: But Grit is a—and I had it in your intro there. I don’t know if you had it in your bios, but it knows that, that's what I’m thinking. So it adds “grit” in there because every real estate agent has a level of grit. If you have not—if sleepless nights, if you have not cried—or customers that have, you know, prayed a lot—whether you wanted to punch a hole in the wall after dealing with some people—you know, we’ve all been knocked on, as we do in life. But real estate agents—obviously, you know, we're focused on that. So part of the talk—and I was doing some reading on TED Talks and stuff—and it's kind of that little catch to have at the beginning. I call it the LLC. Obviously, everything in the world—Limited Liability Company—no, you have to Love, Laugh in the Chaos. Love, Laughter, and Chaos is the truth, in my experience, in life, of dealing through hard situations. So the first question of “Love” is very easy: Why do you love real estate?

[00:54:36] Beverly Hecht: I think it—I mean, I’ve been interested in it since, like I said, since I was 18. But it’s so rewarding to me because you get to—I love meeting people. I love, you know, getting to know them, and you know, they become my friends and we’re on social media and I get to watch their families grow up. And I get to—like I had, on the way here this morning, I had a client say, “How are you doing? I miss you. I just want you to know that I love my house so much.” And she said, “Can we have lunch sometime? Because I’d really like to see you again. I’ve missed you.”

[00:55:00] Beverly Hecht (cont.): So it's like, you know, there’s so many rewarding experiences when you help a family get a property that they love and their children are happy. Or you help an elderly person transition out of their home that they’ve lived in for—you know—30, 40, 50 years into either assisted living or with a family member. I mean, there’s so many rewarding experiences. I just—I just love helping people. And I love meeting people. And I mean, it does more for me than sometimes I think it does for them, you know? Like, I just feel so good for them. And I’m so happy when they’re happy.

[00:55:42] Tracy Hayes: Well, you know, you just made me think about, you know, we think about in life—who do we deal with that actually has a—and I’m not going to say unbiased, because I think family members—family members can be negative. Friends can be negative. You know, and because there’s always a little level of—whether it’s competition or jealousy or whatever—in the relationship around you. But when you go to a real estate agent or you go to a doctor—you would hope the doctor would say, “Hey, I’m having this pain,” or whatever. “What do you suggest?” And they give you a solution, and they actually fix it. Now, unfortunately, I think our medical field has gone into this, like, this whole meds thing—and like, keep you on meds forever—because that’s how they get paid, right? Where the actual real estate agent has an end goal—that 30, 60, 90 days—find you a home, close. And to sit there and think that you got paid for showing houses—yeah, we would—we’d figure out a way to show more houses if they paid us for every house we showed, right? You would try to show them as many houses as possible. But that’s your goal—is to really get into their situation, into their pains, into their needs—and then help them find a solution.

[00:57:00] Tracy Hayes (cont.): And I can’t think of another professional that actually has a true buy-in or true commitment to their customer. And I’m—there might be somebody who’s listening and saying, “Well, I do this kind of sales and I—that’s the way I work.” Well then, you’re probably pretty good. But a good real estate agent—they’re dug into this. As Patty Ketchum said, “Everyone wants a roof over their head.” Everyone wants a roof over their head. That’s exactly right. So we know the game is going to end—whether it’s 30, 60, 90—we’re not in a rush. We know there’s going to be an end game. Our goal is to get that high—to find them that right home, listen to them, and put them in there. And then they look back and go, “Oh my God, you listened to me.” Because not many people are listening to each other right now.

[00:57:44] Beverly Hecht: And that’s my goal. I want them to be happy. I don’t want anyone to have buyer’s remorse. I don’t want anyone to make a forced decision. It’s not about the money to me—never has been. And my prior broker that I’ve had for 15 out of the 20 years I’ve been here at Berkshire—he used to always say, “Beverly, you give too much of your money away.” I’m like, “I can’t help it.” Like, I—it’s better for me. I feel better if I can get something—give it away.

[00:58:09] Tracy Hayes: Like you do staging and stuff like that? Or that you—you spend out of your pocket?

[00:58:12] Beverly Hecht: Well, some of my commission. Or I’ll pay for things for them or, you know, just something to help them get the home that they really want. Right? You know, so it’s not about—I don’t call anymore to say, “Hey, how much are you paying? How much is the seller willing to pay for—?” As long as they’re willing to pay something. And I’ve had to give up some of my commission in order to help them make the transaction come to fruition. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. It’s rewarding for me to help them and to make sure that they’re happy in the end.

[00:58:41] Tracy Hayes: A hundred percent. You brought up an interesting thing there—before I segue into the “Laughter” part of my LLC—because you brought it up, I want to jump on it real quick. When the buyer broker agreement basically became required last August, that was a discussion. Are we going to call the listing agent? What is the listing agent—what are you going to say? And so everyone kind of has their little twist on how they want to handle it. There’s two or three different ways to handle that, whatever. Now that people have done enough transactions here—we’re almost—we’re 10 months into this—are people pre-calling and asking on your listing, or are you pre-calling, or are you just making the offer, asking and seeing what they say?

[00:59:23] Beverly Hecht: So initially I was calling, and there are still people calling me or texting me and verifying. But I don’t anymore—depending on the price point. Depending on what either the seller’s agent has already told me that the seller’s willing to offer—I just try to do what I need to do to make it work for the buyer.

[00:59:44] Beverly Hecht (cont.): So if I know that—and there are agents that, you know, they’ll have a buyer broker signed for 3%, and then the seller’s only willing to pay two—well, I don’t ask the buyer for that difference. But a lot of realtors do. And that’s their business. And that’s the way, you know, they conduct it.

[01:00:01] Tracy Hayes: Or the seller in that case—'cause seller’s only offering two, the buyer’s asking for three...

[01:00:05] Beverly Hecht: Well, that's what their buyer broker said—right? Because 3%, and the seller—I come to find out—the seller's only paying 2%.

[01:00:13] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:14] Beverly Hecht: A lot of agents will charge the buyer that 1% difference because they committed to 3%.

[01:00:17] Tracy Hayes: Right. Well, and I’ve heard situations like that too, especially right now because it is a buyer’s market. So if the buyer’s agent is saying, “Hey, my people said they’re going to pay 3%, you’re going to pay it to close this deal,”—yeah, you need to go revise your listing agreement.

[01:00:33] Beverly Hecht: Right.

[01:00:34] Tracy Hayes: Because that’s what they would have to do.

[01:00:36] Beverly Hecht: Yep.

[01:00:37] Tracy Hayes: And that’s negotiable—everything is. That’s totally negotiable. But it’s just interesting, the different—now that we’ve gone through it enough—because I think a good portion, I can’t say all—I mean, just from what I’m hearing—a lot of the sellers’ agents were like, “Hey, make an offer, and then I’ll take that to them.” And if they’re willing to pay that because you offered versus, you know, taking off the price and then asking for more to the buyer’s agent, you know, they’re going to negotiate because they’re going to do the calculations and see what they’re going to walk away with, and whether or not they’re okay with it.

[01:01:08] Beverly Hecht: And sometimes—make the offer. Like I had a scenario about six months ago—actually, the woman who called me this morning to have lunch—her house. We made a really strong offer. And I’ve known the listing agent, seller’s agent, for years. And so she knows the way I conduct my business. She knows, you know, that I’m going to follow through, we’re going to have checks and balances. And so she called me back and she said, “You wrote a great offer, and the seller wasn’t originally willing to pay 3%, but they’re going to definitely pay it.” And we got it closed really quickly. Everything went perfectly.

[01:01:46] Beverly Hecht (cont.): So a lot of times, it depends on the agent too—if you know them, if you’ve worked with them, if you know that, you know, they’re a committed agent, they have a strong buyer, they’ve gone through the whole process to make sure that—and they’ve done their due diligence too.

[01:01:55] Tracy Hayes: When they make the offer to say, “Yeah.” I mean, the value of that home—I mean, we can go $20,000 light, but they’re going to take it away from somewhere else.

[01:02:00] Beverly Hecht: Yep. That’s right.

[01:02:01] Tracy Hayes: All right, the “Laughter” part is a little unique. Some people get this—The difference is, I believe we go through life—you’ve had some trials and tribulations, even non-real estate—we just all do. We’ve all done something stupid, or we’ve been dealt with, you know, what we consider a bad card. I believe it’s just—he’s leading us down a path to teach us something somewhere. We—whether we learn it that day or we learn it ten years later, we learn. But we are now at the point that we laugh—like you just did—when a curveball is thrown at you, a tough negotiation, or maybe someone—maybe you don’t win a listing agreement, or—the biggest fear is one of our friends or family does business with another real estate agent or another mortgage person, right? We kind of—we take that, right? Take that hit. But now we laugh about it because we’ve been in the business long enough.

[01:03:00] Tracy Hayes (cont.): Can you tell us a time when you really had—or a story that you can kind of reflect back to—a time when you were dealt a situation, and you go, “You know what, I had this happen five years ago, and I got through that. I’ll handle this, no problem.” And you kind of laugh about it, and then you move on?

[01:03:08] Beverly Hecht: Hmm... trying to think of one that I could tell and not, you know—

[01:03:12] Tracy Hayes: Not—you don’t have to use names. You don’t have to use names. Just kind of give us a 30,000-foot view.

[01:03:17] Beverly Hecht: I don’t know. I think, um, sometimes you cry. Sometimes you laugh and you cry. But, um... like, not a good one comes to mind that I’ve really had a lot of laughter about sometimes. Well...

[01:03:29] Tracy Hayes: So what was a good setback? You’ve had a—have you had a setback that—

[01:03:33] Beverly Hecht: Yeah. So one of those deals that—a couple months ago, I was working with a buyer, buying a condo.

[01:03:37] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:38] Beverly Hecht: And wow, he was a struggle. Lived in Orlando. He’s buying it for his daughter, he said—but then it was really for himself, and he wasn’t sure, but...

[01:03:46] Tracy Hayes: Oh, a wishy-washy one.

[01:03:48] Beverly Hecht: And trying to get data and information and documents from him. And, you know, so you start—you kind of start making up little stories with the lender you’re working with about...

[01:04:00] Tracy Hayes: Uh-huh.

[01:04:01] Beverly Hecht: ...what we like to say, we can’t say. And—but yeah, it is—

[01:04:06] Tracy Hayes: The smell of fraud comes up. You’re like, “What is this?” He’s not really giving me the whole story. Weird stuff. Is he buying it for your daughter? Buying it for yourself? Come on, bro.

[01:04:13] Beverly Hecht: But then there was some other weird stuff. Like, he was telling us one thing, and it wasn’t really, like, adding up as far as his funds and how he was getting it. And then he had someone else in the background doing some strange stuff. But we just, you know—you kind of laugh about it and you think, “You know, this too will be over, and we will get a small paycheck.” And so, you know, and hopefully we won’t have to work with them again.

[01:04:36] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. I mean, everyone’s had that story—the wishy-washy—'cause we deal from the lending side. It’s like, “Dude, they’re gonna find out. So you need to tell me now and you can close on time, or they could find out later and embarrass you.” Where—how you want to do it.

[01:04:48] Tracy Hayes (cont.): On the “C” is “Consistency.” What would you say—you know, whether it’s maybe something you’re doing recently or something you’ve been doing for the whole 20 years—but something that you do consistently today that you feel moves the needle in your business?

[01:05:03] Beverly Hecht: Well, I use AutoFlow. You’ve probably heard of AutoFlow and the LoLo gifts. But one thing I try to always do is—I always have, like, a little—my heart’s in it for the children too. You know, because I always get them a little separate gift. You know, something they can go to Target and buy themselves, you know—something little for their room.

[01:05:20] Beverly Hecht (cont.): Right. And then for the holidays, like for Easter and Halloween, I send the children, like, ice cream gift cards. Then for the anniversaries—

[01:05:32] Tracy Hayes: So you can go back into your past client list, and you're consistently reaching. Interesting.

[01:05:36] Beverly Hecht: And then also, I will—the anniversary month of when they bought a house—I’ll send them like either a $25 gift card to Home Depot or maybe HomeGoods and say, “Happy Home Anniversary,” you know? So I keep in touch with them.

[01:06:00] Beverly Hecht (cont.): And—like the other day—I was showing a house and two doors down was a client I’d sold a house to two years ago. So I knocked on the door. I’m like, “Hey, you remember me?” They’re like, “Hey, Beverly!” I said, “I just wanted to drop these ice cream cards off to the girls.” So little things like that—just trying to keep in touch. I’ll do some client appreciation events. And it’s kind of hard because I’m in so many different places. I try to move around where the location of the event is. But just trying to keep in touch with people and letting them know I still care about them, I still think about them.

[01:06:42] Beverly Hecht (cont.): A couple months ago, there’s a lady and she lives by herself. And so I just sent her a card and just said—it’s part of the Ninja process—about keeping in touch with people. And I sent her a card and said, “You know, I just really appreciate you. I’ve sold you two houses.” You know, she’ll invite me over and we’ll have some wine and cheese and just talk. And when she got my card, she called me and she said, “You know, you just made my day. Like, I don’t get a lot of mail.”

[01:06:46] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:48] Beverly Hecht: And—

[01:06:48] Tracy Hayes: That you thought of her.

[01:06:49] Beverly Hecht: Yep.

[01:06:49] Tracy Hayes: You took a few moments to think about her. It’s interesting with the kids, because the kids don’t—they love getting mail. Well, one, the kids like it. But the kids remember who gave them that.

[01:07:00] Tracy Hayes (cont.): And—and then, so we know their ears are always perked up. As much as you think they’re not listening to you, they’re hearing what Mom and Dad are talking about, you know, and all—“Hey, we’re gonna buy another house.” Or, you know, the term real estate agent comes up—your name’s gonna come up. ‘Cause they want that next game.

[01:07:15] Tracy Hayes (cont.): That’s not a bad tactic right there. That’s really good. Did we miss anything? Is there anything you’d like to add?

[01:07:22] Beverly Hecht: I don’t think so. But I feel very honored that I’m the first person—office first—here.

[01:07:26] Tracy Hayes: This new studio—yeah. Hopefully we’re in this longer than the others. We’re gonna do a couple tweaks in here, but, yeah, this is—we’ve got some—um, I don’t know if you know the St. John’s Business, Faith and Family? BFF, they call it. Jessica Swearingen with Ponte Vedra Realty—she’s part of that. And then she has a girlfriend of hers. They do a huge group of women business owners—

[01:07:48] Beverly Hecht: Oh, wow.

[01:07:49] Tracy Hayes: Real estate agents, all—every—they’ve huge following. But they’re gonna start doing their podcast in here with us.

[01:07:54] Beverly Hecht: That’s cool.

[01:07:55] Tracy Hayes: Actually, tomorrow we’re gonna do the first episode. So we’re excited about having them in the office and bringing the business people in. Each, you know, each month they’re just gonna do one show a week type of thing. But, you know, we’re excited about that and where it’s gonna lead to.

[01:08:06] Beverly Hecht: That’s wonderful. So, question for you—

[01:08:08] Tracy Hayes: Oh, okay.

[01:08:09] Beverly Hecht: Being in the industry for 20 years, what do you see in the immediate future—in the next year—with rates?

[01:08:15] Tracy Hayes: I think right now, our president’s being held hostage by the Fed. The signals are there, but if you listen to all the media channels, they will tell you “tariffs, tariffs”—we’re gonna have tariff inflation. We are bringing in billions of dollars. I don’t know if you know—Trump—I know he exaggerates sometimes what is true—but there’s money being brought in by these tariffs.

[01:08:36] Tracy Hayes (cont.): What caused inflation was us spending money. We’re now bringing in money, and they think the tariffs are gonna drive up the price of goods. Well, that’s gonna be a form of inflation. Well, I was listening to this one individual—and I’m buying into this thought.

[01:08:50] Tracy Hayes (cont.): Nike, for example, just to use hypothetical numbers—he said it costs them about $10 to make their sneaker over in Thailand or whatever. Well, they come over here and sell it for 120 bucks. The reason why they sell it for 120 bucks is because people are willing to pay at an optimal level—the $120. So if we go put a tariff on there and it costs them $2 or whatever more a sneaker—well, let’s say even $10—they’re not gonna raise that price from 120 to 130 because it’s going to then cause the consumer to go, “Ooh, that price point’s a little too high. I need to look at something else.”

[01:09:28] Tracy Hayes (cont.): They’re still gonna sell that sneaker because it’s at its optimal sales price that you and I as consumers see as a value at $120. 130, 140—we’re like, “Oh, maybe, maybe we go look and see what else is on the shelf.” And I truly believe that is the way it is. ‘Cause we are talking—they like to act like it’s all this... a lot of—we’re talking pennies on the dollar for a lot of these goods. And it’s not even all the goods.

[01:09:57] Tracy Hayes (cont.): So I really feel we’re getting a really negative, you know—the talk from the media who are using talking points. And I think our Fed chairman now—we’ll find out—maybe he’ll prove me wrong, but they don’t think he’s gonna do anything. They’re meeting today and tomorrow—they’re not gonna do anything.

[01:10:16] Tracy Hayes (cont.): And I think, with the inflation down where they want it to be, but they’re still not pulling the trigger ‘cause they’re using the tariffs as excuses.

[01:10:23] Beverly Hecht: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:24] Tracy Hayes: And that’s all they are. I think this is an excuse. So that’s my two cents. Appreciate you coming on.

[01:10:31] Beverly Hecht: Yes, thank you so very much.

[01:10:33] Tracy Hayes: Thank you. Bye.

[01:11:00] END