You Can “Steal” a House, Even in This Market 💰 😏

Brock's newsletter | march 21st, 2026

You can “Steal” a House, Even in this Market.

By steal, I mean you can get a great deal. Like, significantly under-market. It's not common, but they're out there.

I know it doesn’t seem that way – everyone wants what everyone wants – and at the good houses (designed/staged/well/under-priced) the opens are packed, the agent says “we are expecting 10-20 offers,” and there is no hope for the eternally frustrated homebuyer.

And logically, there is no reason to think you can buy a house for less than full market value.

My colleague Moses Kagan broke this down for apartments on his new and very good newsletter (subscription recommended). He talks about the perception that there is no “alpha” in the real estate market. “Alpha” is an investing term for the spread between value and price, which is your profit as a trader. Investors are always "chasing alpha."

How can there ever be a competitive edge in Los Angeles real estate, when buyers outnumber sellers, and everyone has the same information?

Everything should simply sell for for what it's worth, and not a penny less, right?

Well, maybe.

If the following was true:

every single house gets thoroughly prepped for sale and listed in the MLS
every potential buyer can easily access all information, including written description, pictures, maps, floorplans and obtain information freely from an informed and transparent real estate agent
every potential buyer can see the actual home in person, either via private showing or at numerous public open houses
the Realtor in charge of the sale is reachable, transparent, and presents every offer objectively to the seller, who chooses the best one

Does all the above happen on every house?

Oh God, no. Let us count the ways.

Here are some examples of what we have seen, just in the last year:

The sellers just take the very first offer they receive because they think they have to or they “just want it gone”
Agents leave off key facts in the MLS, such as, strangely, not mentioning that there is a second, similar sized house on the same lot (true story)
The house is listed as 2 bedrooms when there are in fact 4 bedrooms, or some variation thereof
Most baffling one: the agent lists the house but then plays hide-and-seek – no one can reach them by text, phone, or email, so everyone gives up and moves on BUT we just send in an offer, and lo and behold, it gets accepted.

And there’s a whole second category of homes that are just mis-marketed or the agents botch the roll-out:

the staging is ridiculous and turns off half the buyer pool
the house isn’t cleaned or the owner/tenant belongings/furnishings are insane
the house “can’t be shown without an offer,” which is no big deal but most buyers pass
there are no open houses – many agents can’t be bothered setting up private showings so most buyers don't see it
it’s just a bad roll-out – the house gets listed but the agent can’t show it for two weeks for whatever reason, and by the time it’s ready the buyer pool has moved on
the home is listed as “tenant-occupied” but the tenant is moving out and that part somehow got left off
the home is overpriced, sits on the market for 6+ months, and the seller takes an offer way under list price without offering that new number to the public first

I could go on and on.

This is why we tell our buyers: get in your car and see everything in person and don’t be afraid to write an offer. And fast.

The big distraction is because buyers often think the real estate market is transparent and fair and so they waste their time chasing other strategies.

One of the most common ways buyers think they can get deals is finding something “off-market.” We get 10 junk texts a day from flippers asking if I have any off-markets.

The non-ultra-luxury “off-market” market is minuscule. And honestly, most sellers who list off-market want a BIGGER number that they know they can't achieve if they go to market.

Another giant waste of time is contacting sellers who aren’t listed. I know flippers who send 5 to 10,000 postcards a month to homeowners and get maybe 2-3 good leads.

What I’ve learned in 25 years of selling real estate is that the best deals are on the MLS and hiding in plain sight.

99% of the time, when a seller wants to sell, they call a Realtor they know and put it on the market.

Your opportunity is in the fact that the Realtor they call has never sold a house, sells two houses a year, or hasn’t sold a house in ten years….and they botch the roll-out, mishandle the offers, misprice the home, or market it incorrectly…and you scoop it up for a song.

Trust us, it happens.

Also, as much as we like all this stuff when we are representing buyers, don’t be the seller who gives their house away by hiring a numbskull.

I always feel a little bad when I see it happen, because sellers will never know by “using” their Aunt Kathy to sell a home because they wanted to hook her up, it cost them 25%.

Oops.

Anyway, happy hunting out there.

We're preparing to list 13 more homes this spring, and you're not going to get a below-market deal on those. But we may just be able to help you find those deals hiding in plain sight. Reply to this email to start looking (plus, I always love reading your responses).

-Brock

P.S. We listed 3 new-build homes in Altadena and 2 of them are sold. Don't sleep on Altadena.