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Mastering Real Estate and Life Balance: Roger Malech's Journey

• Courtney Twiss • Episode 53

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What happens when a top 1% real estate producer with over four decades of expertise decides to share his secrets? Meet Roger Malech, a revered real estate veteran and fifth-generation Santa Clara County native who has not only mastered the art of real estate but has also balanced his career with a passion for philanthropy, family, and hobbies like motorcycles and baseball. Roger invites us into his world, sharing how creative solutions and unwavering integrity have been his guiding principles, even during challenging high-interest periods. Discover how Roger's journey has been about much more than just property transactions—it's about learning from failures, adapting to change, and understanding that real estate is a means to an end, not the end itself.

We further explore the intricacies of real estate transactions, diving into the complexities of assumptions and "subject to" agreements, with Roger offering valuable insights from his extensive career. As he reflects on his decision to step back from the industry, Roger underscores the importance of prioritizing life beyond mere financial gain, a lesson many strive to learn. The episode also highlights the significance of genuine relationships, as Roger illustrates how building a supportive network and forming lasting friendships with clients can create a thriving cycle of trust and referrals. With the support of his business partner Christina, Roger's story is one of balancing professional achievement with personal fulfillment, encouraging listeners to enjoy the journey and find joy beyond just striving for success.

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Speaker 1:

And welcome back from Hawaii too, by the way.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Yeah, it was a good time.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. Yeah, I love Hawaii.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's fun. There are a lot of chickens on Kauai.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

There are more chickens than palm trees.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to episode number 53 of Now Making Moves in Real Estate. Today we are joined by a real estate powerhouse, roger Malik, a fifth generation Santa Clara County resident with over 40 years of experience helping buyers and sellers achieve their dreams. He's a master negotiator with deep market expertise. Roger's motto is experience, integrity and action. This is evident in every deal that he does. We love this kind of stat in our little group. He's a top one producer, 1% producer worldwide, a Realtor of the Year winner and has been voted Best Realtor in Morgan Hill four years in a row. Beyond real estate, roger is dedicated to philanthropy, family and adventure, passions for motorcycles, fishing and baseball. I'll have to talk more about that. For sure. Today we're diving into tricks to creating longevity in the business, open-ended interviewing and the power of integrity in business. So let's meet Roger. Welcome, roger.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

We're excited to have you.

Speaker 2:

I've been looking forward to this for a while now, thank you, thanks for having me. We're excited to have you.

Speaker 1:

I've been looking forward to this for a while now. Thank you, yeah, we're glad you're here, and we do need to give a shout out to our colleague, lenny Sharp, because you're friends with Lenny. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and your connection with Lenny as well.

Speaker 2:

I met Lenny years ago at a church here in Morgan Hill. They lived in Morgan Hill and since then we became very quickly became friends he and Teresa, and my wife Sarah and I have become friends and we've traveled together. We've stayed at each other's house. When they come to Morgan Hill or the San Jose area, they typically stay with us, stayed at each other's house. When they come to Morgan Hill or the San Jose area, they typically stay with us. I've actually hired Lenny a couple of times to do my real estate in Oakhurst and Mariposa. He actually sold something that Courtney dumped on me. No, we love it. I'm kidding, that's my humor coming out. So, yeah, no, lenny's a great guy and has become a really good realtor after many years in high tech and then getting into real estate later in life. So very, very proud of him, for what he's doing is kind of his second go round in his twilight career here. So it's kind of nice.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's been fun to see his trajectory. I think this year he is on fire. I think his Bible is higher than his best year ever and he'll close it all by March, I believe.

Speaker 2:

Not surprised, not pretty good, and one thing I know about Lenny is he will not stop in March, even though it's just, it'll keep going, and so it'll be a phenomenal year for him, I think.

Speaker 1:

Well, he had you as a mentor, which let's dive into that a little bit more. I mean over four years in the business. That's a long time. You've seen a lot of different changes in the industry.

Speaker 2:

I've seen a lot. It's been 43 years this April and I've closed a thousand two transactions so far. So you know it's 25, about 25 a year, which is a decent amount. And when I started, interest rates were the week I started interest rates were 20.5% and of course that was the height and then they dropped about 18, stayed at 18 for a while. I didn't know any difference, but we did do a lot of sales. Back then I did a lot of creative things, like lease options. We did some sales with what we call wraparound financing, or back then, before the law changed, you were able to sell a house and leave the loan in place without the danger of it being called due by the lender. That changed shortly after I got that business. So yeah, we did a lot of creative things.

Speaker 2:

I think it helped me later in life to put transactions together in a tougher market, right. So I think I've been through at least three cycles. Maybe we're in the fourth cycle now, I don't know, but it's been the ups and the downs and how do you transcend those big swings, right? And so I've learned a little bit. Certainly I've made quite a few mistakes. I think it's interesting. I think when you read bios, it's very interesting that they're all the positive things. I just think it'd be almost like a Saturday Night Live skit if you did a bio of all the other things, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Can you imagine Roger Malick couldn't make his house payment for three months in a row and realized that a great way of coping was to drink himself to sleep every night? Roger claims having a transaction fall through going home, throwing up and taking a nap at 4 in the afternoon and sleeping all night. You know what I'm saying. So we all have those kinds of stories, right? So, with 42 years of the business, you have to know every anyone who knows human nature knows that it's.

Speaker 2:

It hasn't all been rosy and I, I, I was thinking and praying about what, roger, what do you have to share? Really, what do you have to share right now? This, this guy who's been in the business since before we had the internet, right? What do you have to share?

Speaker 2:

And I think the biggest thing is, there's a lot of failures in this business, and they will train you to be a better realtor, to be a better husband, father, friend, business person and maybe, more importantly, to be a more whole person in life as a whole, because, let's face it, real estate is a means to an end, but it's not the end itself, right? So you know, that's maybe what I've been focusing on the last 10 years is what do I have to give back to the community as a whole? And I think it's more about boy, do not get too focused on the failures. They will, you know. The flower will grow out of that, that cow pie, right. So let's focus on that. I don't know how we got there, but we got there well, you know generations in the business.

Speaker 1:

You certainly could have given up, especially with. You know the trying behind that you described with the high interest rates, and so you certainly could have given up. What do you? What do you? What made you stay in the game?

Speaker 2:

I love the business. I think I love almost everything about it. When I was younger I loved it more. I love the challenge. I love the friends I met. I love the relationships. I love the freedom.

Speaker 2:

Although it's almost a misnomer in real estate they say that if you're not careful, real estate will suck the life out of you. It'll take everything you have to give Any kind of sales maybe. I love the money. I love the whole way it's structured, the whole thing.

Speaker 2:

So failure was not really an option for me. I did have safety nets. I was able to borrow money from my dad to make ends meet for the short while. You know when times were tough, things like that. So it's just too fun for me. It was too fun to give up Now. And aside, I just want you to know that I've decided to hang it up this year, not because it's no longer fun, but because I have other fun things I want to do. That real estate would maybe cramp a little bit. So I have the benefit of being able to retire after all, this time with the means to have a passive income that can allow us to do that. But boy, the biggest thing I will miss is the fun and the friends in the business. I'm trying to figure out how do I just show up to an office meeting and a tour meeting every Wednesday? Anyway, with that being said, there's not a lot about the business I don't like.

Speaker 1:

I was going to say you're going to be riding off on your motorcycle, huh.

Speaker 2:

A lot of that, yep, a lot of that. I got 10 grandchildren. My wife still likes me, so we're going to spend a lot of time together and I've got books to write and poetry to do and a lot of things that I think are going to require me to be a little more still than I am now.

Speaker 1:

Well, congratulations on all that, because not a lot of realtors plan for retirement in a way that they can really retire, and so it sounds like you've been able to do that. I mentioned passive income. Maybe you could share with our listeners what you've done to have that safety net while you go ride motorcycles and hang with your wife and grandkids and rhyme. People don't necessarily plan for that in this business, so what have you done?

Speaker 2:

A lot of well. First of all, I believe that real estate is the best investment you can get into. I'm sure people have made more money in other things, but for a realtor to invest in real estate is natural. You see something, you buy it. It's a good deal. The Airbnb thing happened. I ended up buying two Airbnbs, I think within a year of each other, one in Mariposa, one in Oakhurst. I've got a lot of other real estate.

Speaker 2:

Real estate gave us the ability to retire with a decent passive income. I'm very busy managing those properties and we've got include all the partnerships, quite a few partnerships 20 or 30 pieces of real estate. Some of them are minor partnership interests, but I ended up being either on the boards or the manager of all of those and so that's a lot of fun. And that's one of the reasons it was easy for me to choose to retire was because I still get to dip my feet in that pool of the real estate investment game, which I love. We'll probably end up doing some flips. We've done flips, I like flips. I like development small subdivisions.

Speaker 2:

Now in California with SB9, I think it's so ripe for little two-lot splits in areas that are covered by that overlay. A lot of people don't know what that is. Look up SB 9, Senate Bill 9, and you'll see that in many areas you could take one lot and split it into two lots without all the ho inheritance that allowed us to just add to what we'd already done, and so that's I'm going to say fortune or blessing. That wasn't earned. And I worked every day in real estate, probably six days a week, for 40 years. There's a lot of sacrifice. You know that, and we didn't spend a lot of money while we were making money.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a key, because the average realtor probably spends 110% of what they make, because next year is going to be that much better. And when you have a little dip, you learn very quickly ooh, wow, I should have saved more. I should have saved more, I should have invested more, I should have set aside more. Somehow. I love buying real estate because it requires you to save. Oh, the house payment's due. I got to pay that. I can't lose it. So instead of taking that trip or buying that new car or motorcycle or whatever, you got to put money into the rental. So I think it's a good long-term plan.

Speaker 1:

I could not agree more. One of the rentals he bought was our very first Airbnb. My husband and I we love that.

Speaker 2:

We love that. And we actually were able to partner with friends who had never had rental real estate before, but always wanted to but were afraid, and so we were able to partner with them and they're happy we're in the game. Real estate's long-term yes, we're in the game. Real estate's long-term. That was absolutely unknown in the 80s. When I got in the business. Come the 90s or even late 80s, people thought it was a short-term investment. But it's not. It has to be long-term. If you think you're going to buy, then sell in two or three years and make a lot of money, you might get lucky, but chances are you're going to pay your closing costs and be left wondering what happened. So think of it as long-term right.

Speaker 1:

That's good advice. I kind of want to circle back to something you said early on about creative financing. I was curious in your market if you or any of your agents have done any of those subject to loans, because we haven't seen a lot of that in our area and I'm very curious about them. I think Kyle did one recently, but I'm not very knowledgeable on it. Are you, regis?

Speaker 2:

I've done quite a few of those. Initially they were the lender could not call the note due and payable. That was within the first year of my career, and then that changed. It was the Welland Camp decision. I forget which decision it was, but anyway it gave the lender the right to call the note due and payable.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so you either can do a formal assumption, which typically you do with a VA or an FHA, but if you're doing a subject to, what that means is the borrower is still on the hook for the loan, but the property is the collateral. And if you transfer title from the borrower's name to the new buyer's name, there's an issue you've got to deal with. One person's on the hook, but the other person's property is up for collateral. And so there's ways to deal with that, so I've done them. The most common way is to do what we call a wraparound or an all-inclusive trustee. They are legal, they are ethical.

Speaker 2:

Unless you buy a piece of property and get a loan with the intent of doing that, then you're committing lender fraud, which is something I would never be a part of. Then you're committing lender fraud, which is something I would never be a part of. So you know it's rare. Typically I've done it with family members or super good friends, because I get nervous with other people. Because here we are bringing people into something where it's right for a problem. The buyer doesn't make the payment, the seller who wants to be released of the property he's got his credit, he's got to. He got his credit at risk. So he ends up either having to make the payment or you'll look a buyer and it can be a mess right. So I don't recommend it. I would say for certain deals it works.

Speaker 1:

For highly qualified individuals on both sides sellers and buyers I guess would be to lower the risk.

Speaker 2:

Yes, for sure, and a lot of communication.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's say I'm selling a house for $500,000 and I owe $250,000. You want to come in and buy it from me. As a subject to, you would need to make up the difference in the value versus the loan. For the cash down payment I would stay on the loan, but you would be making payments and I'm assuming I would have some sort of proof of that regularly as part of the contract. Yeah, until it's paid off or refinanced or sold.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, on a straight subject too. That's exactly how it works.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And the lender has the right to call that note due because title has transferred. So the biggest risk is the lender says give me the money and then the buyer has to figure out how to come up with that additional $250,000. The reason people do subject dues right now is because the interest rate on the old loan is 3.5% and the new loan is 6.5% or 7%. So you have to make sure that buyer can qualify. I think you should make sure that buyer can qualify for a new loan, yeah that makes sense, in case it gets called due.

Speaker 1:

Okay, thank you, because there's been a lot of talk about it and had a client ask about it recently and I was up front. You haven't seen a lot of about it recently and I was, you know, up front. You haven't seen a lot of them around here and that I have to do a little more research and hearing about water, exactly.

Speaker 2:

I used to manage a branch for a large commercial brokerage, a large national commercial brokerage, and they would not allow us to participate in these. And I get why it makes sense. There's certainly risk that Now, when we had all those low interest rates all those years, we never heard of them. Why would we right? But I got to tell you. I just did an FHA assumption For the first time I've done an assumption in maybe 30 years $700,000 loan on a million six property and it was at 3% interest rate.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

So it took 90 days but the buyer qualified and we were able to do a straight assumption. 90 days, but the buyer qualified and we were able to do a straight assumption. So that's a pretty cool thing. And if someone has an FHA loan any agent has an FHA loan on a listing and it's low interest rate. Check into the assumability of it. I think it's a huge marketing benefit to advertise that, especially with a higher balance loan.

Speaker 1:

Exactly Because it's kind of like the subject to where the buyer would have to have enough down to cover the difference in value to the loan. You would think it was amazing. Yeah, Think about the difference in that payment of what it would have been from 3% to maybe 6.5%.

Speaker 2:

I think it's $2,000 or $2,500 difference. It's huge.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that is huge Congrats. That's a win. Well, it doesn't really sound like you're going to retire. I'm sorry, this does not sound like you're actually going to retire. I think you know.

Speaker 2:

My brain's not.

Speaker 1:

I don't know about that.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's going to happen. Many people can't believe it. I've had more than one person try to talk me out of it. They can't believe. You know, I built a business that in an agricultural term I have an orchard with a lot of low-hanging fruit, right, that's kind of what I've always wanted and I got there and now I'm leaving and they just can't believe it. What I've always wanted and I got there and now I'm leaving and they just can't believe it. And the truth is, I've come to understand that there are things in life um greater than or more important than especially given the season of life than than earning money or selling real estate or doing whatever it is we're doing.

Speaker 2:

And it wasn't an easy decision, right? But once I made the decision, I asked myself three questions, and this is getting. I wasn't intending to talk about this, but I think that's where this talk is going. First of all, I said, if I won the lottery tomorrow, would I stop working? And the answer is yes, in the sense that I wouldn't sell real estate, because the difficult part of real estate is dealing with unhappy people or struggling to get this deal closed. I would not want to do that anymore, right? So the answer is yes.

Speaker 2:

Number two do you have the means to retire financially now, which is a rare thing, I realize, and so, fortunately, we were there. So, yes, I, we have the means to retire and have the same lifestyle we have now? Yes, we do. And number three was a big one that took me about three months to come up with. Cause I? I kept wrestling with this, and that was if you received a diagnosis or your wife received a diagnosis, would you be sorry you didn't retire earlier? A diagnosis, and that's in quotes, that's you know the biggies, right? You have a time. Someone tells you how long you have left to live. I would simply be sorry I hadn't retired earlier. Regret that. And so, once those three were yeses, it was then an easy decision. Am I retiring too early? Quite possibly, but I'm not retiring too late.

Speaker 1:

That's what I was going to say. You can always be a yack. You can always work again if you decide.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think there's other ways to do a similar thing and make in real estate and not deal with the transactions. I think there's other things I could do. You mentioned other investment opportunities and flips and being involved in the.

Speaker 2:

I love the mystery and the puzzle and the Rubik's Cube of real estate. It has never ceased to thrill me. Everything about it thrills me. I'll stay up until 2 o'clock in the morning working on a deal that just doesn't seem to make sense, but there's got to be a way it works, and so I think I have the benefit of starting in that really rough market where we had to do that, I mean lease options. Who needs to do lease options right, using easements instead of subdivision, lot line adjustments, lots that you can't, can't build on. Well, if there's a lot next door, maybe you can buy the place next door and do a lot line adjustment and you've just created equity and value from something that is legal and anyone could could do with the right knowledge, right? So anyway, all that is still very exciting. I don't see myself at that at all knowledge right.

Speaker 1:

So anyway, all that is still very exciting. I don't see myself at that at all. Well, I think we can relate to that with our, our merge with the xq really, 20 years in the business. I was also looking for a what's next and different ways that you know we could diversify and that's not just staying in production indefinitely. As we've mentioned on many episodes, it's hard to get off that treadmill sometimes. So congrats like it's very exciting for you, roger.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, congratulations to you. I think that's a great parallel analogy, I agree.

Speaker 1:

So real quick, before we go do you have a team that's going to be able to, that you're going to refer your business to, or what's the makeup of your organization?

Speaker 2:

When I was gosh fairly early in my career, I listed it. I listed one investor owned 28 condos in Morgan Hill and I competed and got the listings, which was like such a thrill Well, how does one guy do 28 deals? So I ended up hiring an assistant, and that was in 1987. And since then I've always had an assistant, and my most recent assistant I call her a business partner, because assistant doesn't even come close to describing what she does. So her name is Christina. I'm referring all my business to Christina. Christina will probably partner with another agent or maybe have her own assistant.

Speaker 2:

I don't think there's any way we can do the kind of or they can do. See, here we go, we right, I'm still in it. There's any way they could do the kind of business that I think they will be able to do with referrals and their own means without help, and so maybe two of them work together to close 20 to 30 deals a year. And then I feel good with my clients being taken care of and my friends, because most of my clients, 99% of my clients have become friends and 50% of my friends have become clients, and so it's a friend game and one of the things I wanted to make sure anyone listening understands if you're new in the business or even been at it for a while. Change your mindset to doing transactions or making sales. Change that to making friends. When I go on a listing presentation, you know what my number one goal is Make a friend, make a connection. So when I can see them at Safeway and say hey how are you guys doing?

Speaker 2:

Whether I get the listing or not, I think that takes a lot of pressure off. I think it's how we're wired as humans I want to be surrounded by friends, and if those friends choose to do business with me, great. And if they don't, we're still friends. That's okay, right.

Speaker 1:

I still prefer someone to you. That's how I always look at it too. I might not be serving this buyer today, but rest assured I've done an overwhelmingly good job and developed a connection and relationship with this person that, at minimum, they would feel comfortable in referring their friends and family to me. So it goes past the people that you may or may not be able to serve. You need referrals.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it seems to take the pressure off because, especially when you're newer or you don't have any business or you're struggling, I've got to go out there and make a sale, I've got to hold an open house and I've got to pick up a buyer and you can sense it, right, People can sense it. It's like they say dogs can sense it. Right, People can sense it. It's like they say dogs can sense fear. I think buyers and sellers can sense that kind of. I need it right, and if you're there, hey, I'm just here to I had a friend once who she was in real estate.

Speaker 2:

She was a top producer and her husband was a United Airlines pilot and this was back in the 80s. He was making big, big, big money for the 80s and she was doing really well. And I said, Pat, what is your secret? I was a kid. What's your secret? She said you know what my secret is? I don't need the money. I said how's that a secret? Because people smell. If I did, I thought but I do need the money. What do I do? She said fake it, Make a friend, Just make friends. Okay, and that actually was huge. That's probably one of the reasons I didn't get out of the business, because I wasn't done making friends yet. Right, so you know, good, Overnight I become wealthy. No, Not. So you know, good, overnight I become wealthy.

Speaker 1:

No, not by any means.

Speaker 2:

You know it was a rough go for a while, but I can tell you this regardless of how it ends, the journey has been such a blast, such an incredible fun time, even the dark times. I had a woman who stood by me. I have kids, grandkids, friends, pastors, and I was like it has been the most incredible journey I could ever wish for, way greater than I would ever have hoped for.

Speaker 2:

I never thought about that and looking back now at 64 years old on the last 43 years, wow, what an incredible blessing it was to live this life with this career thing. It was to live this life with this career. I'm going to say more than 50% of those years were escrow to escrow behind on bills, but it was unbelievably fun. I was able to separate the need with the living. Anne Lamont you guys know her, she's a writer. She wrote something. She actually quoted someone else, I forget who she quoted. She said as we get older we go from striving to being and we must all learn that there's a time to set aside striving and take up being. And in the striving I think I learned to be a little bit and I love that, that the be present, be with people, enjoy life, take trips here and there. It's not all about the real estate deal, right, all about the real estate deal when I was working.

Speaker 2:

Guess what it's all about work. I still show up at 8.30 every morning to the office until maybe sometime in June when that doesn't happen anymore. But when I'm home I want to be home, so I'll either turn off my phone. I haven't worked weekends in. I don't know how long I haven't done open houses in 15 years. When I had kids at home, I would always say I'm home for dinner every night. Some nights I would go back out for a listening presentation, because back then we didn't have any other way to do it. We had to meet with them in person, and they were working. Nobody was working at home, so we had to meet with them in person and they were working.

Speaker 2:

Nobody was working at home, so we had to meet with them either on the weekend or after hours. So those boundaries are really, really, really important. We've talked about longevity a little bit. That's how you get longevity is super clear defined and boundaries that you hold. Fast to boundaries that you hold fast to. It might be something like I will only work one day a weekend, or I take Mondays off regardless.

Speaker 1:

Well, roger, I so appreciate you coming on and us getting to pay tribute to you and your 43 years in the career as a realtor. I think it's amazing what I heard and you can tell me, michelle, what you heard. But to sum it up, have fun, make friends and set boundaries, and then you're going to set her success.

Speaker 2:

I think that's about as close as you can get to a boiled down version. Yes, I so appreciate you guys having me on and letting me share. I have a deep love for this business and the people of this business, and now I get to include you guys as my friends and I appreciate what you're doing. I think it's very helpful for people who are wondering what's this about. Be yourself. Everybody's personality is different and you're going to find a niche that works for your personality. Don't try to be exactly like you know whoever you're following. Right, we have our own thing.

Speaker 1:

Well, I hope you have a great retirement party. That's all I'm thinking. My wife has a retirement party so's all.

Speaker 2:

I'm thinking It'll be Brian White's life as a retirement party. So yeah, it will be, Thank you.

Speaker 1:

All right. Thank you, roger, it was a pleasure meeting you.

Speaker 2:

It was a pleasure. You guys Thanks a lot.

Speaker 1:

Go and our YouTube station Now Podcast for Real on YouTube. Make sure you subscribe and follow. If you want to drop any comments to Roger or us, we will definitely make sure to respond and give us a review. We appreciate it. Yes, Bye for now. Thanks, friends.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, guys, you.