E337 | Nicole Merriman on Compassion, Creativity, and Going Above & Beyond – PTNC Know Your Speaker

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Paper Trail podcast.

Today I'm with my rock star real estate agent who helped us out of.

I'll call it a little bit of a jam several months ago.

Nicole Merriman with Exp Luxury.

Nicole, how are you today?

Hi.

I'm doing great, Chris, how are you?

Good.

So I'll add a little backstory to this and then we'll roll into Nicole and.

And her experience as an agent, how she got into it.

But I just want to start with.

For anybody who is in the note investment space, an agent, if you take a property back, is as important or more important than your servicer during the servicing or your attorney during that whole process.

They actually are more important because they set the price, they set the potential, have potential buyers.

They.

They are so critical and I think it's often overlooked.

So I wanted to share that going into this recording because we're going to talk about everything Nicole did for us and what we appreciated compared to some of the things that we've seen in the past.

So with that being said, I've talked you up already a lot.

Nicole, why don't you tell people a little bit about how you got into being an agent, because I found this story pretty interesting.

In regards to what.

Why you got into this space.

Well, thank you.

So I am in the Las Vegas area and Las Vegas is huge for hospitality.

So I envisioned that was what the rest of my life was going to be like.

Hospitality industry.

During COVID that slowed to a stop.

We were the last people to go back to work.

I was saving up to purchase my own house and Las Vegas.

In the Las Vegas industry, we have an agreement with the IRS based on the tips coming in during COVID that slowed to about, I'd say, five to ten dollars an hour.

So I didn't have any proof of income yet.

I had cash.

The place that I was renting was sold from underneath me.

Just, you know, I was on month to month, 30 day notice and the place was gone.

So as a single woman with showing no income for the last two years in a stack of cash, I went to apply for rentals.

I applied to maybe five, six different places and property managers were increasing application fees.

Multiple applications on properties we were getting denied.

Uh, I asked my dad if he could coach sign for me because he had the income, and he said, nope, you're on your own.

Figure it out.

Um, so the last place that I went to, I had a stack of cash.

I put it on the counter.

I said, please, you're my last hope.

Let me rent this place.

Please.

Um, and that's how I ended up staying in Vegas.

And I promised that I would get into the industry and try to make a change so agents would stop taking advantage of people during crisis.

Crisis.

So a.

That is an awesome story, and it kind of, I think, reflects in regards to your personality and style.

And how we got connected was we had a foreclosure property in Henderson, and it was a larger property, a seven figure property.

And it was a property where instead of using a third party company that finds a local agent, I went online and just started messaging people who had listings in that area.

And I probably messaged seven or eight agents.

And Nicole, you want to guess how many actually replied to me?

Oh, man, Chris, I thought I was the first person you messaged.

How many?

Go ahead.

You.

I think you were second person I messaged.

You were one of two to reply.

And I remember the conversation we had of you're like, oh, I'll go stop by the property.

I'll go do this.

I'll go look at that.

And, you know, it's pretty much occupied.

And I was like, wow, this person's like, you know, wants this listing.

You know, sometimes there's agents who are like, oh, okay, another listing.

Then you wanted it.

And one of my kind of backgrounds that I think I mentioned this to you in the past is like, no, we joke how we do due diligence on everybody.

And, you know, so I started looking.

I'm like, okay, who is this Nicole Merriman person?

And you know what?

I remember one of the first things I mentioned to Larissa was, you know, I'm like, oh, we got to hire this agent.

You want to know what it was?

The reason I wanted to.

I'm going to take a guess.

Was it my motorcycle?

Yes.

I saw that.

I saw Nicole races motorcycles.

And for, you know, people, you know, I'll call it the ones where, like, you're going around a corner, like 100 plus miles an hour, where your knee is like a half inch above the ground.

That's what Nicole does.

So we're just like, damn, she does.

You know, then I know you worked hospitality and everything else, but, you know, I think one of the things that we appreciate.

And I'll let you talk a little bit more about, you know, kind of, you know, what are some of the first things when somebody sends a listing to you or wants to get interested in listing.

What are some of the things that you would consider common sense?

Because I think common sense is not so common in regards to.

Now, if somebody sent you, hey, I'm considering listing my property at, you know, 123 Main Street.

You know, what are some of the first things you do as an agent?

First thing I do is pick up the phone and call.

And I think that's what I did.

I called you back, and then you said you would contact me later, text me back right away, and so that you'd contact me later.

And then I looked up the property to see where it was.

Then I looked you up, and I. I just, you know, do do a little rundown to make sure this isn't a waste of time or a fake lead that's coming in.

And I saw the property and I was like, wow, this is beautiful.

This has a lot of potential.

It looked beautiful.

So that's the interesting thing is a picked up the phone and called, which again, trying to get an agent to respond.

I don't know if it's just me and people don't like me, which I know people don't, but just getting a response from people sometimes is so challenging.

And you were a very responsive.

You also were very upfront in regards to, hey, I don't know what this property.

Without knowing the interior condition, I can't tell you what it's worth.

So you weren't giving us a number to, say, 2.5 million without seeing it, which some agents do to get a listing and then come back and say, oh, I thought it was in this condition.

So that was another component that was really interesting about this.

And so let's tell a little bit more about the story, because this one was craziness throughout from the moment we foreclosed on it, which we almost had it sold prior to foreclosure, but then we foreclosed on it.

And do you remember the time you called me because we filed an eviction and you were meeting the borrower over or somebody over at the property?

Do you remember this?

I do remember that, yes.

So why don't you tell a little bit about this story?

Because this was just mind blowing.

As a lender, like, oh, man, what do you do?

Well, Larisa reached out to me and said.

And asked me to get in contact with someone named Evelyn.

Evelyn was not the.

Maybe we should cut that out because she's a minor.

Her name.

Yeah, we'll cut that out.

So, okay.

Yep.

So Larisa had contacted me and she had given me a name of somebody to get in contact with at the property and see if I can get any information.

The name of the person she gave me was not the bower.

The borrower.

The name of the person she gave me was not the borrower.

Oh, my gosh.

I can't say it.

Okay, let's try it again.

Try it again.

Go ahead.

Okay, so Larisa had gotten in contact with me, and she'd given me the name of someone to try to talk to or try to get in contact with to get some more information.

The name of the person she gave me was not the borrower.

The name.

And.

Okay, so Lisa had contacted me to try to get some more information.

She gave me the name and the phone number of somebody to try to get in contact with about the.

About the property.

The name of this person was not the person on.

On my gosh.

Borrower stuff today.

Yes, the borrower.

The borrow.

Okay, say.

Was not the owner.

Was not the owner.

Okay.

The.

So Larisa.

Larisa got in contact with me, and she gave me a name of a person to try to reach out to.

I had called.

This person was not their own, the owner of the house.

So I asked her for a little bit of information.

I asked her if I could maybe stop by and see the house.

And first of all, I wanted to be really, really sensitive because, you know, the family is getting foreclosed on, so there might be some negative or, you know, there might be some animosity.

Yeah, okay, deep breath.

There might be some animosity.

So I wanted to be really careful about how I approached this situation.

So I met.

I met this person at the property.

She said that she was running a little late from school and she would be there shortly.

I figured she went to maybe UNLV or csn, one of the universities out here.

When she got home, she told me that she was coming from her high school.

So this person was actually a minor, a junior in high school living on the property.

Her.

Her dad was currently incarcerated.

Yeah, he was currently incarcerated.

She was very polite.

She showed me around the house.

I reached out to you and Larisa, and I believe you stopped the foreclosure process.

We had foreclosed.

It was the eviction.

So we were evicting her.

Yeah, we were evicting her as a tenant because we had already foreclosed.

And it was, I think, right around, like, Labor Day, where we basically said, okay, eviction was going to happen on, like, September 1st or roughly around it.

And then you Reached out and was.

Told me this, and we're like, okay, I'm not evicting this person.

And I think I'll let you tell a little bit more about the property and the condition.

Actually, I think she was keeping it a little better kept than her family was.

Yes.

So another thing, in Nevada, if you don't have a tenant agreement in place, then you can basically just call the police and, you know, get rid of people who are squatting on the property.

So you guys were in every right to foreclose and evict whoever was on the property.

Yet I think compassion was a big player in all of this.

So when I went to the property, she was very thankful that we were working with her.

We were being kind to her.

We were letting her stay while her mother found a place.

She.

When.

When I came in, she had a special needs brother and she was taking care of him.

She had the entire house clean, was wiping things down, offered me, you know, a cold water.

She.

She was very.

Just so appreciative of the kindness that everyone extended to her.

And wasn't there a prior when the house was listed that somebody had gone through and was like, oh, this is the same house?

Because they had chickens and dogs and other animals on the property as well?

Yes.

So once we didn't find this out until we got into escrow, but there was.

Well, we knew there was some animals from talks of the neighbors around the property.

You know, it was a horse property.

It was zoned for.

It is zoned for horses.

We didn't know that they were keeping chickens in the crawl space, the crawl spaces in the basement.

So once we got into escrow and how much can I disclose about this?

As much as you like.

Okay.

I don't know what the.

I don't know what the rules are, but there was.

We had an inspection done and nothing was found in the crawl spaces.

Everything checked out.

I mean, there was.

There was a long list of everything else on the inspection report, but crawl spaces seemed fine there.

I think there was a little bit of, like, leakage from the irrigation system that we had corrected.

We got into escrow pretty quick.

I think from list to accepted offer.

It was 11 days or eight days or something like that.

It was pretty quick for.

For full asking price.

After the renovations, the buyer asked to meet at the property so he could show his children the.

The property that they were going to be moving into.

When I showed up and I met the buyer's agent because it was pretty unconventional for them to ask to see the Property again, while we were in escrow during this.

This due diligence period.

You know, they had been to the property a few times already.

They walked around the crawl spaces, and he was taking pictures of things and like, all right, come on, we gotta go.

You know, he had his own inspection report done.

Well, he had messaged his inspector and sent the pictures that he had taken with his cell phone.

And there.

There was a picture of some eggs.

And he said that he had seen the property before.

He knew that there was chickens in the crawl space.

Here's some eggs.

Here's evidence.

Had them included in this inspection report, which is very unethical.

And then threatens to get an environmental inspection if we didn't comply with his asks and.

And threatened to pull out of the deal.

So we would have to just.

He's basically playing real estate agents.

So he threatened to pull out of the deal and threatened that we would have to disclose it on the SRPD Once he pulled out, I called his bluff and I said, listen, this is really unethical what you did.

We can throw this entire inspection report away.

So that's that, and then we close the deal.

So we, you know, did close the deal, which I think it broke the sales record for that area.

Now, between.

So the story with, call it, the tenant was.

We gave her additional time because she was moving in with a friend.

And then she cleaned out, got everything out but the property itself.

I remember when you went and walked through, it was.

Oh, boy, it was dated.

It had, like, bright yellow and orange walls.

And Nicole was basically telling us, look, you can sell it as is, but you're going to get maybe like a little over a million dollars for it because nobody's going to want to come in and do all this work.

So we end up finding a contractor, which, lo and behold, I found the contractor.

I don't know if you know the story.

I actually put a job ad on, like, LinkedIn or indeed looking for a construction manager.

And as part of that process, Christina reached out and says, hey, I used to work for xyz.

I can manage this.

And then I reached out and she went and walked it with angel and then came back and was like, hey, look, I can do the entire job if you want, with my husband for this price.

And we had gotten some other quotes, and.

And the other quotes were significantly higher than their quote came in.

And those.

A lot of other quotes.

I think, again, look at the property and they just see dollar signs.

And so we end up reaching an Agreement with another party.

But what was great about this relationship and one of the things that I give Nicole kudos for was now being some eyes and ears for us, which most agents don't do to go check in on the property.

How's it look?

What's the.

What's it look like?

For example, getting it completed near the finish line, making sure it's cleaned.

And I don't know how many times you probably had to clean it for us as well because it got dusty again.

Nicole also is very handy on electrical, so she fixed our garage gates on the property or assisted as an agent.

You helped us with the garage doors and finding a vendor.

You found a pool vendor for us.

So I mean, everything you did was well above and beyond what a typical agent would do, which is very appreciative.

And if you can find an agent like that, it's.

You hold on to them and make sure that a.

Anyone ever asked for somebody, it's like this is who you use because they basically your mindset in my mind was this property is mine as well, and I want to see it through and get it to the finish line.

Which you did.

And at times also I was like, screw the buyer.

Let's just walk.

Because he was trying to hold us hostage.

Remember the other buyer who.

How many times did that guy go out to the property?

Oh, yeah, some guy got on a plane.

He called me when he was on a plane and said while we were still in coming soon.

Hey, I'm coming to see the property right now.

I'm on a plane from la.

And I was like, who are you?

What's up?

What's going on?

Do you have an agent?

He says, yeah, yeah, but she's out of town.

I'll be right there.

And I was like, well, that's, that's not.

You know, we need to talk to your agent.

And I had talked to his agent and she's like, yeah, we're.

We're trying to work on boundaries right now.

I apologize.

And that's the one who visited like four different times then thought the property was going to fall down.

And yeah.

So came with a level.

And I said, you're more than welcome to get a structural inspection.

Yep.

So, yeah, we've had.

It was an interesting journey, say the least.

And I mean, even through, like you said, the closing and just kind of.

That managing that whole process because nothing was.

This was not a cookie cutter listing or sale from.

We had to get it renovated.

You know, we were trying to schedule timing to get it renovated.

Then at the end, basically, you know, we waited till the end on the H vac and then decided to fix it.

And then it's like the contract is like, oh, yeah, it's done.

When it's wink, wink, it's not done.

He was still wasn't there.

I don't know if you like, you know, went and hid in a corner and cried some days or went and drank a bottle some other days for some of the stresses that went on through this one, but it was a very unique experience.

The buyer's agent and I.

There was one phone call, it was probably about an hour and a half, and both of us were about to cry together trying to keep this deal together.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, it was at the end of the day.

Oh, then we had the appraisal.

Because the appraisal.

So the appraisal did not come in at the offer price originally.

So what I again appreciate where you went well, above and beyond was the simple fact that, you know, you went and you started pulling comps and basically firing away at the appraiser.

Basically, like, this is not a correct comp.

This, use that, Use this.

And end up getting us, you know, basically, you know, if there was, you know, a differential of X, you got us back to, like, 60% of where we needed to be.

So.

Which it was a lot.

The Tidewater, it was a VA loan.

And I'm not sure if they're even supposed to disclose that, but that's what he told me he was in at.

And that was due to a comp that they took into consideration that was 6.8 miles away.

And the reason that I included that is because, I mean, that land out there is.

Is huge.

They're on, you know, massive acre lots.

But there was a.

A house that was 6.8 acres away that had almost exactly the same structure.

It had the two wings, the two primaries, the front porch, everything and aerial view looked identical to the property that we were selling.

And that property had sold at 2.2 million.

Was this property like the craziest or hardest sale that you had?

It was not the hardest sale, but it was probably the craziest sale sale.

The hardest sales are usually sellers that have nowhere to go with pricing.

They.

They can't.

You know, they're overpriced.

They know they're overpriced, and.

And they can't come down on pricing.

It's.

It's frustrating for them because they're just.

Just hoping and praying that it's going to sell.

Meanwhile, they're.

They're paying, you know, property taxes still and.

And keeping the power on and just digging themselves a hole.

I think that's.

That's the most difficult transaction, personally.

Y.

Okay, looking back, is there anything you would say either we, Larisa and I, or my team or you would have done differently?

Maybe.

Maybe a backyard barbecue.

I really wanted that, but I'm kind of glad we didn't, because I think everything went perfect.

Yep.

Yeah.

I'm sitting here thinking about it, and, I mean, we basically got to the price we wanted.

We probably fought, probably added a little bit too much stress back and forth a little bit with the seller in regards to some of the things of trying to come to an answer on.

But for us, I think the, like, you mentioned that whole inspection issue and trying to use that and hold us hostage kind of just put us in a very defensive mindset of everything they do.

We just got very gun shy about in regards to trying to agree with them to anything, because they literally were trying to pull a fast one over on us and try and, you know, get additional monies off the property or whatever the case may be.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well.

And that transaction, I'm definitely glad I was representing you and not the buyer.

Their agent seemed like she was about to fall apart, and we actually bonded over that.

And, you know, I made a friend.

Yeah.

What's one thing, you know, if there's a takeaway, if anything, from that whole experience, it could be never work with Chris again.

What's one experience that you would take from this?

I think I hold everybody to your standards now, honestly.

Yeah.

Compare everything to this deal and just.

Yeah, I think that's it.

You're my ideal client, and I'm so happy to have worked with you, and you set a really high standard, so.

Thank you for that.

And one thing I'll mention that, you know, outside of this property, because I will share this story as well.

We've had Nicole provide us some other properties that we've looked at in the area, and unfortunately, none of them came to fruition.

I think we kind of got hosed on that one in the golf course area, I won't name the street, but that the agent basically sold, got under agreement in house with dual agent or whatever it is, then fell back out, then got it back under agreement again, which.

That was a really weird property.

I remember the green carpet, but the one that just always sticks in my mind.

And we chuckle, but I actually feel bad was there was a property that Cole went to look at how many cats lost count?

Honestly, I mean, it had to 40, maybe 40 cats on the property altogether.

Yeah.

And the listing photos online literally had, like, interior pictures with, like, stacks of, like, kitty litter.

Like, just the five gallon buckets of, like, kitty litter.

And then there was, like, photos of everything.

And one of the things I remember is, like, the hoses.

And it's like, oh, that's where it's like CPAP machine.

Because my husband has trouble breathing, I'm like, oh, well, 40 cats.

I wonder what the problem could be.

But basically, it took you how long to wash the smell off of your clothes after that experience, I was.

I don't know if it was like a ghost smell, but I think the next two days I was smelling cats.

You know, as soon as I came home, I threw some of the clothes in the trash, I threw some of it in the wash, and I showered and cleaned myself and stayed home the rest of the night because it was pretty traumatizing, to be honest.

The next two days, I was smelling cat.

You did put an offering for us on that.

I wrote the offer.

She did write the offer.

Said like, she's like, I'm never going in that property again.

Like, oh, we'll get Christina to go.

She'll go in there.

So.

And then there was that other property you walked out was half under construction, which you walked with Christina and Angel.

And I actually felt, you know, you guys had such a good time walking that property and all the knickknacks and everything.

I'm like, sends me a video of it.

I'm watching it, and I'm like, wow, I wish I was there hanging out with them, going through these construction walkthroughs.

Because that was a unique property as well.

Correct?

I think there was two of them.

There was a construction one that was.

I mean, the place was half built.

I had been looking at this for months, and, you know, we finally pulled the trigger on it.

And I went over there.

It was.

It was a mess.

And then there was the other one with the basement where angel was just having the time of his life, going through everything, saying, I think this guy was a Russian spy.

There's all this, you know, video equipment, and this basement was bigger than they had it listed on the mls.

There was this board up, and we kind of pried it open, and there was a whole massive room back there full of antique video equipment.

And Radio stuff.

Oh, and had the vinyl albums that.

Oh, yes, I have that for you.

I'm bringing that to the conference.

Okay.

That one ever sell?

I think it did.

I think it did.

I'll have to check.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was actually a great property, that.

And we had that one designed where.

Oh, we got a pool at the pool house because it had all that extra side yard.

But the pricing at that time, you know, kind of didn't make sense.

So if it was an owner occupant, it was real quirky layout because it, like, stepped up to one area, then like step down into a kitchen and step down again.

So it was really weird.

I remember that one.

But, yeah, I forgot about that one.

So, yeah, that wasn't updated since the 70s.

I think it was built, and it hasn't been renovated since.

It's like stepping into a time capsule.

Capsule.

Well, as we wrap up this episode A, I do want to thank you for coming on.

Two questions.

How is the Las Vegas market right now, overall?

Are you seeing an increase in listings?

Is more a buyer's market, seller's market, where you see things headed, and if people need an agent in the area, what's the best way for them to contact you?

So I think it's more of a balanced market right now.

We see home prices.

We see a lot of price reductions.

I think a couple weeks ago, I looked at how many price reductions there had been, and there was about a thousand of them for homes that had been on the market.

And this is.

This is needed in every market.

You know, we need to see this.

It is balanced.

There is still.

There is still sales going on.

Things are pretty steady.

There's more room for negotiation.

I think at this point, the best way to reach me would probably be by phone.

You can call or text.

And we'll have that in the show notes so people can reach out.

So, Nicole, thanks for coming on today and look forward to seeing you in the very near future because for people listening, we actually physically have never met, so that'll be awesome as well.

Yep.

What a week and a half now, right?

Yep, Exactly.

Looking forward to it.

So if you're in.

If you're in the Chandler area.

Yep.

We will be seeing you September 18th to 20th in Chandler, Arizona, at the Paper Trail Conference.

So thanks for coming on, Nicole, and for everybody listening, make sure to catch us on the next episode.

Thank you and take care.