- 03:49 – Clarice purchased her first home in 2010 with guidance from Corwyn J. Mellette.
- 09:11 – Clarice is passionate about helping the next person achieve homeownership.
- 13:17 – Building trust with clients and educating them is important for agents.
- 22:50 – Agents should seek education to provide accurate information to clients.
- Contact Number: 843-303-5786
- Email Address: CBrown@exitlowcountry.com.
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exitstrategiesradioshow/
- FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/exitstrategiessc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
- Website: https://www.exitstrategiesradioshow.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelette/
CORWYN:
Do you want something more? More meaningful moments, opportunities, deeper relationships, and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you said yes to any of that, a career in real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for. Guiding people through one of the most important decisions they ever made. The purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative. Exit Realty’s revolutionary compensation model, training, and technology provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call Exit Realty Lowcountry Group today at 843-619-3005, that’s 843-619-3005 or visit join.exitlowcountry.com and make your exit today.
Good Saturday morning guys welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies Radio Show hey I’m your host Corwyn J Melette, that broker and owner of Exit Realty Lowcountry group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. So guys, hey, look, I know we do y’all know how we say we know we always deliver it to you a particular way. But our mission here is very simple. That is to empower our community to financial literacy and real estate education guys, that is what we do. We are legacy building wants you to be putting our hashtag on things when you are making moves and making a difference, not only for you, but for your children’s children, so forth and so on. You know, the word tells us and that’s what we want to listen to when they hear to. That’s what we’re doing. So guys today is– I love these moments, right? I call this our ‘resident expert’ series. So I love to bring our agents who are here in our office who are local in the field, and have them give you their perspective on what they’re seeing on what buyers, sellers and anyone else who may be considering anything related to real estate should have on their mind should be considering because guys, oh, so much misinformation out there. We’re talking about that a little earlier. So many people are here who are telling you things that they do not know that are unfounded, simply because that is a belief or of a speculation or other rumor that fuels the misinformation. There’s so many within our communities suffer from so we want to work to change that narrative, okay. We want to make sure we’re giving you professional advice, delivered professionally by professionals, want to put all of it together, right want to make all those things happen. But I want to give a quick shout out to our listeners, guys, you’ve been with us for a while they ride with us, quote unquote, from monkeys going all the way into the coasts, but those who listen to us around the globe on our podcast, who tune in faithfully every week, watched our social media live releases of our episodes. You guys are the true rockstars guys, and I really appreciate it. And I love you. So look, let’s get into it. Guys today. I’m very humbled to have with us Clarice Brown. Clarice is a new agent with us here at the office. But may Clarice go back a little ways. Let’s look at a little bit. So we’re going to talk today about what it is that she is seeing, her experiences and why she does this. So Clarice, thank you for being on the show with us today.
CLARICE:
And thank you Corwyn. And it’s truly an honor to be here. And I’m a new agent with Exit Realty Group. Just personally, I want to share my experience on the real estate side. Well, purchasing my own home, I should say. I started looking back in 2008. And I was a little bit nervous single mom living in an apartment based on income. And I receive a flyer from my old job stating Hey, you know, you can go to your first homebuyers class. And I came across Mr. Corwyn Melette, which is now my broker. So he had the class that Saturday, and it was very engaging. And I just loved the opportunity. Still a little bit nervous. He answered all questions. That class was pretty much fully packed. I knew that I had to make a change in my life and for my family. And so took the effort and initiative to start taking care of with my finances, paying off bills. We’re gonna go budget here. I still have two children. And then I came to him April 2010. And I was like, Hey, I wanted to buy my first home and I need your help. and he’s like what I said, everything’s gonna be just fine. He walked me through the homebuyer’s process, everything with the builder because I gotten a new construction. So I closed back in July 6 of 2010. And Mr. Milena has been in my life ever since. And I’m here now, and I want to help the next person when I went through. So bye, guys.
CORWYN:
That was not scripted. That was not a commercial. But that’s real. And I appreciate that. I’m always humble, inquiry is one of the conversations happened not too long ago was about the opportunity to be a part of someone’s story. Yes. So let me go back. And let me ask this, you know, you are a native Charlestonian. Yes, yes. Born and raised. Yes. So tell us about that. What did you take from, if you will, that upbringing that encouraged you to be on this endeavor now?
CLARICE:
Well, I always wanted to own my own home. When I was growing up, I was on John’s Island and live with my grandmother. And I always saw that people were owning their own homes, my grandmother didn’t, we were renters. So even though I lived there on John’s Island, I knew I wanted my own home. But at the time she passed on, and I decided to get an apartment. Because at the moment, it wasn’t economically in my future to purchase a home at that time, over the years. So you go visit your friends and your family. And hey, hear that, oh, there’s so and so bought a home, Megan bought a home and I’m like, gosh, I want to be in that same position one day with my family. And also with my children being older, I want them to have the same values. My daughter purchased her own home under the age of 30. And now my son, I’m praying that he does the same thing. And I also have grandchildren and I want them to understand that there’s opportunities for them as well. Every generation, there’s more opportunities. And I want people to understand that with us being realtors, we’re here to assist. I was on the buyers end and now I’m on the realtor side. So I know what it actually takes it to learning and progress. But I want to be there every step of the way to help any family based on your income to pursue the dream of homeownership.
CORWYN:
So you make this decision to getting in. And we’re in an interesting time. So outside of the industry, we’re in an interesting time, we’re in a time and a season where people are not valued. The consumer tends not to value the professional, we social reels, TikTok, all this other stuff, just make it so that people take clips of information and believe that to be the full story, and they act upon it. So what is different about like your approach and moving forward into business? What are you doing? Where are you focused that goal you’re trying to serve? Ultimately, what is the greater good that you’re after?
CLARICE:
I’m trying to capture the community as a whole. The times are different. As you can see, the interest rates are at a certain level, people are not feeling confident about home buying, especially with the prices of the homes increasing. We want people to feel comfortable with a realtor, you don’t know what we go through, you have to be in our shoes, but at the same time, we want you to build that, we want that trust, we want you to have that communication level open. And feel free to ask any questions because as you said Corwyn with TikTok, Facebook, you can see something great for 30 seconds, but you don’t know what’s actually going on. Behind the scenes you see sold here or closed there. But how did it get to that point. And you don’t know if you had to negotiate this place or you have to worry about if the finance level fell through. There’s so much things that takes place in the steps to homeownership. So we as realtors, we want to make sure that you’re comfortable, know everything that you need to know, we’re not to here not to hide anything, we just want you to make sure that you’re happy and find the home of your dreams.
CORWYN:
So what drove you and so for our listeners. Full disclosure, no employees are recognized and see a passion within. So this conversation, this phase of it is let’s put that on the table. Ultimately, you are very driven to empower people by owning their own homes. That was a mechanism that you spoke of, that you leveraged in turn to feel more secure, to start to create and build generational wealth. And you want to see this happen for so many other people. Exactly. So your driver that keeps you going on this is what what is it that you believe outside of maybe what others believe as to why you should keep doing this
CLARICE:
and really believe that I have a passion for it. And before I bought my own home, I was just talking to people about, hey, you need to own your own home, you need to own your own home, I ended up doing it. Even through the years, when the rates were great. The prices were right with the homes. I was trying to encourage young men and women to go ahead and seek homeownership. That’s the thing to do. A lot of people are not going to take that opportunity, when you think that they would, it might take some time, but I still let them know that, hey, you know, I was just sliding in one of my friends a picture of a house or show them stuff about home repairs, where I let them know what the interest rates are looking at. I wasn’t even in the market at that time with being a realtor. I’m just like talking to my neighbors next door, telling them hey, you’re renting, why don’t you talk to the homeowner and see if you can go in and purchase the home. But I’ve been doing this for a long time. And I feel that my commitment to it, that will actually help you to understand the importance of this not just for yourself, but for your family and years and generations to come.
CORWYN:
So I love that basically been an age before he was even if you’ve been looking at, you need to own this or that. And the third, because you understood it saw the value and the benefit of it. Yes. So let’s get around to I’m always intrigued by the different perspectives. And sometimes I get when I asked this question of agents, but let’s talk about or if you could voice like what you’ve seen so far, what are some of the fundamental challenges that buyers are having in this current climate? And technically, you might have already said some of that, but what are some of the challenges that you’re seeing for them? And then I’m gonna flip the coin? And what are the challenges you’re seeing for the sellers?
CLARICE:
Okay, so the challenge that you have to build our clientele and everything. To me, I want people that I just trust, I want to build that communication. And that’s sometimes it can be a little bit nervous, although I am a people person. But at the same time, you just want your buyers and clients to be comfortable with you. And to understand that this is a scary process, and you’re not alone in it. So definitely, that’s something that I wanted to share. And at the same time on the buyers end, they might be thinking about, well, I can’t afford it my income, my credit, do I have too much student loans, that I just purchased a car, that how’s that going to impact me? Or I wanted to go ahead and buy some new furniture. So there’s a lot of things that takes into play. They may say, Oh, this home is too expensive. What happened to the homes that were $99,000? Or $150,000? Why now that that same home is almost $400,000? Can I actually– what do I need to do to get there, I feel like the buyer may have already given up before they even started the process. So we just want you to understand that this baby steps with this is something that you just can’t just run into and say, Hey, I’m gonna buy a home, we have to educate you, and get you to understand what’s really going on, and how we can help you.
CORWYN:
So it’s interesting that you should even talk about that because it is easy in the current climate to be discouraged before you even start. So for our listeners, I want to put this out there too, because I watch so many times as misinformation and or jaded information is given to people in social media on those platforms. The reality is that, while there may be an ideal income to buy the ideal size, or priced house or whatever, in any given market, the reality is that there’s variances within that meaning, if you’re looking to buy the median income price home in an area, which for the Charleston area, we’re getting quickly to the half million dollar mark, if you’re looking to be in that price range, then you need to have a certain income to qualify. And newspaper articles will tell you that it’s just been some recent stories along that vein is housing now is being recycled as a mainstream headline again, but on the other side of that agents oftentimes tell you that as well, you got to make this much money to be able to afford a house or what have you. And the truth of the matter is variable. There is no one size fits all. So ain’t just like you know that you know what, you might qualify for downpayment assistance, you might qualify for this particular program that will give you a lower interest rate that increases your affordability. You might be able to do this you may have funds available in reserves a savings or something that you can use and apply towards a purchase. And that completely changes the dynamic and that person’s narrative. So their story is different. Everybody’s story is unique. So we want to make sure listeners that you understand that. Now, Clarice, my next question gets off into that realm of what you ultimately want to accomplish. What do you want to accomplish? In helping buyers and sellers, there was a magic wand and we could wave and all of a sudden the world was right, as you believe. What would that look like as it relates to real estate? Wow, that’s a broad question.
CLARICE:
It is, the home price is not going to go back to what it used to be. So that’s one thing that I would love and interest rates to help more. But we just honestly, my ideal thing is educating any person, any client that I encountered, and letting them know what they would need to do, because it can be a lengthy process, just like Corwyn stated, you may have residuals somewhere that you can use to put down for a down payment. So people don’t realize they can even use their 401K from the job and don’t even have to pay it back. That’s an investment into your future. There’s just a whole realm of things. I mean, that I can think, in reference to this.
CORWYN:
So you’re working with a few different buyers, a couple of people that are in that realm of okay, we’re probably gonna buy and sell and definitely not mentioning anyone by name, but you’re finding like, what has been your experience? Is it a lot of nerves, is it a, what events, a lot of different scenarios that you’re running into was that kind of what your experience has been?
CLARICE:
Yeah, some of my clients, they are in a position to purchase. But at the same time, it’s the interest rate that kind of scares them. They’re used to where they were a couple of years ago, which was under 3%. And right now we’re in the six. So it takes it to a different level, especially when you’re trying to, you may have to sell this home in order to purchase the next home. And even on the buyer side, if you know this your first time, with maybe the downpayment, just finding the resources to use in your home buying process, it can get a little bit nervous, that definitely is a process, and we are here to help you.
CORWYN:
So that is interesting. That’s interesting, because people, you know, rates went up, a lot of people believe that home prices would decline because of it. And we have seen different so because pricing is still where it is most people that got in with three, and whatever percent interest rates actually have accumulated a significant amount of equity. And some of them are looking to apply that equity either as a principal reduction, or otherwise leveraging that equity in the next transaction to offset the cost and bring quote unquote, the cost of homeownership down a little bit further. Now, for those who don’t have that situation with equity, already built baked into a property they’re selling, they’re having to come out of pocket for that. And those are the ones that have been maybe struggling a little bit more, you think
CLARICE:
That’s pretty much it. That is the case. But Corwyn stated, we do have programs so we can get you with the right broker. And that broker will educate you on what opportunities are available to you. And for assistance, where you can maybe buy down the rate or downpayment assistance, or maybe no money down, but the broker will be the one to educate you on every opportunity that is available for you.
CORWYN:
Perfect, perfect, perfect. So this is a different approach, we’ll come around as a back end of the market. And I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it. But there’s so many people nowadays, who are discounting the value of having their own professional within the transaction. And for someone who practices who has been used, we understand the leverage because there some to be blunt, transparent, that won’t put any effort the energy won’t do is one of my business partner says the brain damage necessary in order to figure out how to assist and help someone they’ll look at it merely on face value, your credits, dish income, this is what you’re trying to do. And those two things don’t match. And we haven’t figured this and we don’t know a way and we’re not gonna look for a way to help you leverage one or the other, not both in order to get you to where you’re trying to go. So because of that, then consumer confidence is down so consumers don’t value the professional as much as they once did. But what is the true value you believe, of having your own professional, of having a realtor or real estate agent because not all real estate agents or realtors, we’ve said that before we’ll keep telling you that always check, verify that they are a real tour for you call them one because that’s a trademarked term, but what is the value of having a realtor you believe in the transaction? What is the benefit to the consumer?
CLARICE:
But being a realtor we are very professional and We value the ethics. Being your realtor, we want to build your trust. And we don’t want you going to a closing without us, we don’t want that, I definitely encourage you to hire a realtor. Because doing it on your own is not the best way to go. You want to make sure that realtor we’re confident and what we do, we want to make sure that your best interest is 100% is our is we are going to have you at 100% of our best interest. We want you to understand that there’s a lot to the process. And with you not understanding it, we have to explain it to you. We want to make sure that you totally understand and aware of everything that can and cannot happen. We don’t want you to be blindsided. And that’s our job that we need to do, we want to take that burden off to you. And we take on that burden. Because we understand, we will go and fight that battle for you that war, we have that war not our clients, we just want you to understand that. So we’re going to be here every step of the way, no matter what it takes to ensure that you get your home.
CORWYN:
So I’ll share this because, you know, it goes along the vein of echoing what you just said along with. To be frank, unfortunately, it continues that narrative of just the misinformation that is out there. And I just recently spoke to a consumer who has an approval for a VA loan. And they believe because someone told them this, that the VA will let them buy a more expensive house and give them a lower payment to payment they will and I’m like, Well what what your payment is based upon what you find the house and the rate being able to utilize a VA loan, you’re going to save some money, but you’re not going to buy the full 100 or $500,000 house for the price of a $300,000 house as far as the payment goes within the same program. And just the amount of the feverishly argued with me in regards to it. I’m like no, well, they just give you the money so that you can and I’m like no, that’s not how that works. So there’s such misinformation out there so many consumers that even in the affordable housing round, we were talking about this early as well, the different programs and people don’t know what’s available. And even agents oftentimes don’t know what’s available, or what’s working and what isn’t. And they in turn misinformed people. So making sure that you’re working with someone who knows who goes to get the information if they have a deficit of knowledge, versus just making an assumption, or arbitrarily giving their opinion about something that they’re not educated on at all.
CLARICE:
That’s true, because we did have that conversation. And I personally don’t want to give my clients any type of misinformation. And I feel that having my broker, which is you, I have to come to you because I don’t want to say hey, well, that information about the VA is correct, when it’s actually isn’t. So we’re feeding miscommunication out into the community, because if I’m going to tell my client that my client is more than likely would have shared that with this person, the next person, and then it goes, and it’s just as a whole wheel cycle with this. We’re here to educate the community on what’s actually going on. We can’t just give you false information. We don’t want you to have false information if we have to build that trust. And it’s about things change daily within the real estate world. But at the same time, we are committed to learning everything that needs to be learned about if the criteria has changed. Or if there’s funding available, we have to be the ones that sit there for the training, or speak to our broker who’s been through the training and educate us so that we can educate our clients.
CORWYN:
So Clarice how can people get in contact with you?
CLARICE:
Well, it’s SoldByClarice. And my numbers 843-303-5786. Or you can reach me at cbrown@exit lowcountry.com.
CORWYN:
Awesome. It’s awesome. That’s all Clarice’s, your tax coding, that is so look here for your listeners that like to play around with technology. Looking at it, you just got textcodes, so you takes to this number 85377 Again, 85377 soldbyclarice all one word, text that phrase to 85377 and you’ll get all the Clarice’s contact information.
CLARICE:
That’s right, and I’ll give you a call or it text immediately.
CORWYN:
I love it. I love it. So listeners guys, look we’ve had an amazing show today. And I’m so grateful for Clarice for taking time out of your busy schedule to be Here with is wants you to reach out. So I want you to bombard her with text messages, phone calls, and the like, I want you to make sure that she knows that she is valued, because she has committed. I’ve known her for a while. And what I’ve known consistently is this one thing, which is she is extremely heart connected to people. That’s what she does, she works within the community, she shows up, she puts her hands to the plow she and she ain’t asking where it’s going, she just said we just need to push. So So and I love that. Because that level of commitment to help and serving people does not exist at all. So for those of you who are, quote unquote friends of the show, I want you to reach out to I want you to encourage her, and I want you to connect with her. I want you to connect with so please make sure that you do so. So Clarice, thank you for taking time out again to be on the show with us today. And thank you everyone for listening. So our listeners, y’all know how I feel Y’all know what I say. Y’all know I always put the two of those things together and I give it to you this way, which is I love you. I love you. I love you. And we gon’ see you guys out there in those streets.
