Keeping It Real Podcast • Secrets Of Top 1% REALTORS ® • Interviews With Real Estate Brokers & Agents

Erin Spradlin from Erin and James Real Estate talks about her own podcast Erin and James Podcast. Erin describes her journey into real estate and how she got involved in the business. Erin explains how the medium-term space renting works and emphasizes the importance of regionalizing the advise on investments. Next, Erin discusses remote work and the opportunities it brings in the investment world. Erin gives a tip on how to use AirBnB Try Before You Buy to help you decide where to invest. Last, Erin discusses her book “American Nomads: Finding and Renting to Remote Workers”.

Buy Erin’s book American Nomads: Finding and Renting to Remote Workers here.

Subscribe for Erin and James’ podcast here.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Erin Spradlin can be reached at 719.491.4949 and [email protected].

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with author and top producer Aaron Spradlin. Before we get to Aaron, just a couple of quick reminders. Please tell a friend I think of one other real estate agent that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Aaron and send them a link to our show. Easiest way is to send them right over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com which they can stream every episode we’ve ever done right from that website. Or if there are a podcast listener, just have them pull up their podcast app and do a search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. Also, please leave us a review. So whatever podcast system you’re using, for example, iTunes, or Spotify or Pandora, feel free to leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show. We really appreciate it. And as always, we say thank you for continuing to listen to us to support us and to keep us going so we can keep producing more episodes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and now on to our interview with Aaron Spradlin.

All right, today on the show our guest is Aaron Spradlin from Erin and James real estate in Denver and Colorado Springs. Let me tell you a little bit about Erin Erin Spradlin works with investors in Denver and Colorado Springs. Her niche is the furnished medium term space which caters to people that need a furnished rental for more than 30 days. Not only is she an ambassador of this trend for her clients, she’s also published a book on the topic, which is called American nomads finding and renting to remote workers. By the way, if you look in the show notes for this episode, you will see a direct link to Aaron’s book so please go check it out and buy it now. 14% of Airbnb guests one now this is interesting. 14% of Airbnb guests want 30 Plus day rentals. Right with with so this is the rise of the remote workforce. And the trend is growing fast. So Erin helps her clients find properties and tenants for this model, which is the reason that we wanted to bring her on the show because I was not familiar with this particular model, please visit Erin at her website, which is Erin and James and Aaron is E r i n So Erin and James real estate.com. Aaron, welcome to the show.

Erin Spradlin 3:29
Thank you DJ that was such a thorough intro. I appreciate it. And also clarifying that my name is E ri n instead of Aaro n which is sometimes sometimes those people rarely have. So I appreciate that. And I’m so excited to be on the podcast. I love the podcast. So Oh, thank you. Super excited to be a guest.

D.J. Paris 3:47
We should also mention before I forget, and I just did and so I’m so glad you said the word podcast because you have a podcast as well. Could you tell us a little bit about your podcast?

Erin Spradlin 3:57
I do. So it’s called Erin and James, Colorado Springs real estate if you Google that we should come up podcast. But we focus on Colorado Springs. And honestly we focus a little bit on Denver to just because a lot of our buyers just want to be in Colorado, they’re open to different areas. And I have lived in Denver since college and now I’m back in Colorado Springs, which is where I grew up. So we feel like we know both communities really well. And since we’ve been in business, depending on what our investors or our homebuyers want, we will point them in either direction.

D.J. Paris 4:29
Wonderful. And by the way, you can also get to Erin and James, the Colorado Springs podcast from their website, which again is Aaron and James realestate.com. And we will also in the show notes. There is a link directly to Aaron’s podcast. So please check that out and subscribe as well. So I will re welcome you to the show because I forgot about your your podcast. But I am really interested in talking about your business model. But before we get to that, we’d love to hear about your journey into real estate. So can you tell us about how you initially got involved in real estate and sort of what that looked like and how, how you’ve sort of transitioned now to working exclusively with investors.

Erin Spradlin 5:09
Yeah, so we, it was an interesting journey, I think kind of followed a lot of people’s in the sense that it wasn’t necessarily the plan. But both my husband and I were in marketing, and we had a background in marketing, I specifically worked for a small marketing company that worked for other small companies. So I had a lot of exposure to small businesses. And it was always a dream of mine to do that. My husband, so my boyfriend, now husband, at the time, in 2014, we were dating but we weren’t ready to move in together. So we were spending a lot of time together. So I decided I’m just gonna put my place up on Airbnb. And it’s crazy. But 2014 was kind of early days, Airbnb, at least, at least for Denver, there weren’t like a ton of options. And so I had put it up. And I thought, you know, if I just make 400 bucks a month on this, I’d be happy about that. And it would cut down my rents. And within 30 minutes, I just had $100 listings or $100. Sorry, reservations. And so then, you know, it was just crazy, we actually ended up doing Airbnb arbitrage where we were renting other places and renting it out, we promptly decided to move in together, because the money was so insane that we’re like, okay, we can do this. And then, long story short, because we were making that kind of money, we thought that there were probably other investors or real estate people that want to make this kind of money. And that would be interested in the laws around Airbnb, because they were rapidly changing. And it’s a city to city thing. So we both put our jobs within a month of each other, which was kind of wild. But even though I didn’t always see myself in real estate, I was wanting to own my own business and real estate seemed like the fastest vehicle and Airbnb seemed like a good niche for that. And as it just worked out, we absolutely love it, we think it’s a really great job in the sense that you know, their strategy involved, it’s a good income, and then also, it actually makes a huge difference in people’s lives. So it has a lot of the elements and a job that you would actually want. And I think we’re four and a half, five years into it. And it’s awesome. That’s the best decision I’ve

D.J. Paris 7:16
ever made. Wow. And did you ever have a traditional sort of realtor business where you were working with just normal non investment clients, you know, retail buyers and sellers? Or are people buying and selling the primary residence or, or have you always sort of been in the investor space?

Erin Spradlin 7:33
No. So we still do. So I would say, you know, 2525, to 40% of our business is just standard buyers and sellers, and then 50 to 60%. As investors, I think we’ve always been investor heavy, because we’ve done a lot of education and SEO and written a lot of articles for bigger pockets, and just been in that scene for a long time. And so those clients have been great to us, and they tend to be repeat clients. And, you know, there’s also a little bit of intimidation around those clients. So I think if you feel comfortable in that space, and you know, I think a lot of those clients too, are looking just for someone to double check their numbers or someone to talk to because it is scary, when you’re making a huge financial decision. For your family or for yourself, you want to make sure that like, a lot of times it helps to have a second set of eyes or somebody that’s a partner with you on that. And so I feel like that’s we provide that for clients. And I think it’s something that people are investors respond to,

D.J. Paris 8:28
for sure. And you had mentioned bigger pockets. And I only just want to pause for a moment because a lot of our audience may or may not yet be familiar with bigger pockets as a resource. But what bigger pockets is, is a great sort of a subscription based forum model. They also have podcasts and books and lots of resources. But basically, they’re a hub for learning about all things, investments and chatting with other investors. It’s really the place to be for the best education, you could probably get around learning about investments because it’s people who just kind of live live investments all day, chatting back and forth. So there’s like a social aspect to it. And then it’s really kind of a no brainer, if you’re looking to really get into that space. It’s I don’t know of any other resource that’s as vast so and we’ve had we’ve had some of the bigger pockets guys on our our show in the past. So for anyone who wasn’t familiar with that, and you’re interested in learning about investments, and I’ll ask Erin if she there’s any, you know, things she wants to add to that, but I would encourage everyone to check it out. It seems like a no brainer.

Erin Spradlin 9:33
No, absolutely. I always tell people I think your description was better. I usually tell people like face. It’s like Facebook for real estate. So it’s a great way to network with other people. I actually think too, you know, they’ve been very heavy in the investing space for a long time but my guess is long term. It will just become a real estate resource and I think you’re even starting to see that so I think it’s a good space to be in regardless if you’re in real estate and then I know Millie and acres is also kind of making a push, as well, and I’m less familiar with them. But I do think it’s interesting because you’re starting to see articles are starting to see them enter that space as well. Yeah, so

D.J. Paris 10:11
just to pause this for a moment and just mentioned another great resource on the non investment space. So the two best communities I found for realtors to hang out. And it’s not just realtors, but but the vast majority of people who listen to our Realtors to the show. Again, bigger pockets is awesome for investments. Anyone who does investments, who’s a realtor is probably already familiar. But if you’re not check it out. And then as a more traditional realtor labcoat agents is just insane. So check them out as well on the retail space there, you can find them on Facebook. But anyway, back to Aaron. So. So tell us a little bit about Aaron and I were chatting beforehand. And it’s particularly interesting because I myself am not, I’m not an a real estate investor. I mean, I own a place, but I live there. So I wouldn’t call that an investment. I’ve always thought it was funny that people can sit, people will put their primary residence in their asset column on their, you know, on their balance sheet. But it’s not really an asset, right? Like, it’s only an asset the day you sell it, and then and then and then you have to live somewhere else. And unless you’re renting or something, you don’t probably get to bank all of that money. So I’ve never really thought of primary residence as investments. Of course, we’re talking about, you know, I guess it could be your primary residence, if you also have other units there and you’re renting out other prop, you know, part, they call it, you know, the, you know, house hacking or multifamily investing. But can we just just let’s just go through because you Aaron has a very particularly interesting thought about investments. So, and this is just one little minor point that I wanted to have her discuss. But we were talking beforehand about cash flow. So investors tend to want to look at long term investors not fix and flip, but buy and hold investors, right? They are typically looking at cash flow. So they want to see, you know, net, at the end of the month, like you were saying you were making 400 a month, that’s pretty good cash flow. But right now, we’re kind of in a weird spot with where we are in the housing market, and a lot of stuffs appreciated. And so Aaron was sent over some, some math, a really simple math that said, you know, if something’s appreciated, you know, $100,000, well do the math on how long you you’d have to make that up in passive income. And you know, and it could be, you know, 15 plus years before you see that same return. Are you starting to have those conversations with investors who were buying hold, who are now thinking maybe I should cash out?

Erin Spradlin 12:47
Definitely, I mean, I think for the last two or three years, it’s been a big conversation locally in Denver, and Colorado Springs, and not just for myself, but for a lot of real estate agents. And I think the frustration has been that traditionally, the rental model. And the way to have a good investment is to have really high cap rates and high cash flow. And that just does not work here up and down the front range unless you’re doing a short term rental, and you’re managing it yourself or a medium term rental and managing it yourself, then that might

D.J. Paris 13:15
just pause you for a sec, because what you just said was really important. And so short term and medium term, we’re not talking about 12 month leases here. Now we’re talking, what do you define short and medium term as

Erin Spradlin 13:27
so a short term would be like 30 days or less. And traditionally, what you think of as Airbnb VRBO, and then a medium term, typically what we see is still furnished, but it’s for the 30 days or more. And that usually, you know, it’s what happens is people will come in definitely this summer, we’re seeing more just 30 day 60 Day rentals. But a lot of times these people actually will end up renting for six months or a year. But they initially come in with, you know, month to three month lease and go a little bit longer. And that’s what we mean by that medium term space. And so if you’re managing either of those yourself, maybe you can cashflow in this market, but if you’re doing long term rents, you have a property manager on it, it’s really it’s very hard. And so as agents, sometimes it’s frustrating, because people will come in and say, you know, I want this and then and then you go through three months of them saying the numbers just don’t work. The numbers just don’t work. And it’s like, yes, they don’t work because the rents don’t the rents have not matched the mortgages yet. But the point that, you know, you and I had been talking about before we started was that, you know, if you go to the Midwest or somewhere, you can have good cash flow, they’re gonna have 400 $500 A month cash flow, but traditionally those houses don’t appreciate a house that was 30,020 years ago is 30,000. Still and this would be like Tulsa ish area. Where as you know, and I mean, I don’t mean Chicago basically, is what I’m saying. I’m talking about Kansas, Oklahoma. This is like that. However, so people will think okay, that’s a great investment. I mean, 405 I’ve $100 a month in cash flow. But in Colorado for the last couple of years, we’ve seen close to $100,000 in appreciation every single year, or, you know, in a bad year, or 50,000, or 25,000. But if you take that one example, of 100,000 in the year, if you did that in Colorado, and you have that appreciation versus the same investment or similar investment in Oklahoma, that’s $500 a month, it would take you 16 and a half years of $500 a month to get to that 100,000. So just trying to talk to people about how to think about investing differently, and maybe to question some of the advice that we’ve always taken as gospel, it just might not be relevant anymore. And I felt that way, too, when I first started investing, and was in the short term space, some of the clients that I would work with, it was like, No, my dad and best and he says a multiplex is the only way to go. And you know, this is an it’s got to be long term rents, and it was like, You should really be looking at the Airbnb numbers, because they’re stronger than that they’re gonna appreciate you’re gonna make way more money. And you don’t necessarily need a duplex to do that. So just trying to speak to people that like, yes, it’s always been done been done this way. But there’s potential for a new way to think about it. And I do think you’re starting to see that more. And the other and the other thing I just to add, one more thing is that I think a lot of real estate advice, sometimes that you hear is national real estate, investing advice, and it really should be regionalised. Right? Like, the investment that you would have in Colorado is very different than the investment you would have in the Midwest. So just, you know, depending on what your goals are thinking about it, and, and the best way to go about doing it.

D.J. Paris 16:43
The other thing that’s kind of neat about the Airbnb model, aside from the fact that, you know, they’re going to do a lot of the marketing for you, and just, you know, some some of the headaches around, you know, figuring out who’s a good tenant, you know, for the short term, or midterm now is that, and I, you know, I’m so sort of like this, this wouldn’t have occurred to me, because maybe I’m just not very logical. But I, my thought was, oh, if you’re renting out your property with via Airbnb, it’s going to create more wear and tear because there’s more turnover. And the I’ve heard the exact opposite from investors that there’s actually less wear and tear, because people tend to treat places they’re only in for a couple of days, or maybe a week a lot better than they might treat a place that they’re living in for 12 months is have you found that to be true, or is that not always true?

Erin Spradlin 17:33
No, that’s definitely been my experience. And I think the medium term space as well, I always say, you know, people have a fear of tenants. And, you know, I just personally have not really had a bad experience with a tenant. And I think some of that may come from the fact that I have been in the medium term and short term space. So I haven’t, you know, I’ve had one tenant that started as a medium term, and I think he stayed for 18 months, but still, he took care of the place impeccably. And, you know, I just I have not knock on wood. But I have not had a bad experience with tenants. And I do sometimes wonder if that’s if part of the reason for that is because of the short and laces.

D.J. Paris 18:12
Yeah, it’s very, it’s very interesting. Well, let’s talk about remote work. So tell us a little bit about this trend in just so the workforce and how this has been an opportunity for you on the in the investor space.

Erin Spradlin 18:24
So this is a topic I feel extremely passionately about, I think investors should really be paying attention to, I kind of think it is the next it is the next step for Airbnb and you’re seeing Airbnb talk about it. The stat that you actually quoted in the beginning with the 14%, Brian Chesky has come out. So the CEO of Airbnb has come out and said, you know, it took us 10 to 12 years to get to 14% of people, 14% of our guests that wanted 20 days or more stays. But in the last two years, that’s now bumped up to 24%. So almost a quarter of their rentals are 28 days or more. And then you’re just that’s remarkable, right? And in two years, right, and I’m sure some of that is the pandemic but that’s going to that’s going to continue and I think when you look at Airbnb, I think they believe that too, because there’s a page dedicated to 28 day or more stays, but there’s also a page dedicated to it’s called try before you buy but it has to do with Tulsa remote and some other communities where they are trying to get remote workers to pick their communities to live and that’s because remote workers typically have $100,000 or more in salary. And places like Tulsa believe they’re going to spend their money in Tulsa and potentially stay and make the city better. So it’s a really good investment for them. So the try before you buy is a whole page on Airbnb dedicated to these different cities that are making offers to remote workers to come in. And it’s the space we’ve lived in for a long time because we We had Airbnb investments where we were doing Airbnb on it, but the laws changed or we just burned down on it. And so we ended up flipping to saying, Okay, we’re not going to sell the furniture, but we’re going to keep these rentals for, but we’re just going to make it 30 days or more. That way, we’re still complying with the local laws, but we can have these shortened tenant certainly says, and it’s just been amazing, the tenants are great. They, they don’t pay as much as the short term renter, but they definitely pay more than a long term renter, and they’re just easy to work with, you typically don’t hear from them a lot. They’re, they’re professionals, and adjust, we found this model to be very easy, and I’m passionate about this, because I think in the future, you’re just going to see more and more and more of this because of the remote work becoming more of an option for people.

D.J. Paris 20:48
Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I imagine if if the if the demographic say that people who are exploring these kinds of opportunities, maybe going to another city for a month as try before you buy via the Airbnb sort of program. These are, as you said, if the if the demographic say that these people make, you know, on average, at least 100 grand, yeah, you get these are probably people that you would put in the professional category that, you know, have, you know, maybe there’s a they’re not coming into party for the weekend, and then leave. These are people that are really thinking about Where’s where’s my life going to take me and, and is this is Topeka, Kansas, the place I want to be for that. And so there’s there’s all these communities and cities that are really eager to get this remote workforce. Because I mean, the genie is sort of out of that bottle, the pandemic forced that hand. And, you know, we’ve seen it here in Chicago downtown, we have these beautiful, wonderful, the cityscape, that these beautiful office buildings that, you know, I don’t know what the occupancy is anymore, but it’s still, I imagine they’re struggling. And so I don’t know how many employees I would be very curious to see in the next two years, how many of the what percentage of the people who, who worked remote during the pandemic are still working remote I, I don’t know if it’s going to be 50% or 25%. But whatever the number is, it’s going to be a lot of people working from home that are now thinking, Oh, I can I can work anywhere. And

Erin Spradlin 22:17
yeah, and I think there’s, you know, a generational divide there, too. They’re saying some of the older population wants to go back and the younger population does not they’re saying 33% of the workforce is threatening to quit if they’re brought back. And so I think what we’re seeing is that, you know, there’s kind of two different ways of people doing this. So there are people that are just traveling to different cities in the US that they had a curiosity about, and just living, you know, for two months in Denver, two months in Seattle, two months in LA, whatever, trying to decide where they might want to live, or just having that experience. And then there’s also people that are moving into communities that, that you know, they want to live somewhere and check out the community and then decide what neighborhood they best want to buy in. And so that’s the try before you buy aspects of Airbnb. So like saying, like, come check out the community don’t buy a house yet when you don’t necessarily know what neighborhood you want to be in. And I think it’s interesting too, because the remote work is that’s absolutely pushing it. But in the past, you know, people thought of this as the traveling nurse model, or the corporate professional model, and that’s primarily who we rent it out to before COVID hit. And then also, just as a side note, when COVID hit, there are also a lot of people that wanted did not want to spend COVID in their house with their spouses. We actually that some people that were maybe on the brink of divorce, and this is like a separation period. And so that’s also another subset that we get sometimes these high skilled,

D.J. Paris 23:47
yeah. Or they were just in a high risk environment at work. Maybe they worked at hospitals, and it made sense for them to not be at home with their spouse, because there was just contamination issues and infection. And so yeah, that’s very interesting.

Erin Spradlin 24:02
Absolutely, we didn’t, we didn’t have anyone like that. But some of my clients that I actually have a client that had a place she had just bought in Michigan, right before this whole thing happened. And they were, you know, really worried they weren’t going to be able to get anyone but when COVID Had they flipped it basically into a rental for people, yes, that you know, didn’t want to endanger their families and their families were vulnerable. So they would come and stay there or they would be in quarantine, basically, and then go see their families. So very interesting how this has changed things.

D.J. Paris 24:35
Yeah. And again, I’ll be very curious to see what percentage returned to a traditional nine to five same office every day. Life. And I Yeah, it’s funny because you think like, okay, maybe the employer gets slightly less production because out of out of the employee, because maybe they’re working from home and the more easily distracted, there’s not as much structure. So I think we could logically make that argument that they’ll be less productive, but the also saving on office space, the employer. So you know, it probably nets positive for a lot of businesses, not all businesses, but certainly a lot of them. And so as those numbers start to become more evident and Published and Promoted in the work of sort of the, you know, the business world, it’ll be very interesting to see how long people now stay in certain markets to live. Or if there’s just a, you know, people typically maybe who are single, or don’t have children or are newly married, and have the ability to sort of travel around more and spend 30 days here or there. And I know you guys have obviously, that’s your your whole model, you see tremendous amount of people doing that. I am curious to talk just for a moment about I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about pricing, because right now with so much appreciation that we’ve seen, and we hear more about it, I think with primary residences, but in the investor space, are you finding it more challenging these days to make the numbers work? Because you know, prices have appreciated? Or is it in your market? Is it still possible to find some of these, these properties that and you know, and make them cash either cashflow positive, or, you know, good sort of shorter, shorter term investments,

Erin Spradlin 26:21
I have only found it to work in my market, if you are doing a furnished rental, either short term or medium term, I’m not finding it working with the long term, if you’re buying anytime recently, we’re also seeing people also buy places and then rent out rooms to individuals versus the whole house. But again, in a furnished space and, and then also taking out the property manager, especially with the medium term, I think with the short term, it’s harder, because you have to have a reliable cleaning crew all the time and stuff. So trying to do that out of state can be challenging. I think with the medium term, I have strongly discouraged my clients for being an any kind of property manager because I’m like, you just need a good relationship with one handyman, one cleaner, and then a Smart Lock. And that takes care of a lot. And you know, and then as you go along, you’ll get your systems down. And this is something I’ve talked about a lot in the book with checklists, and how to think about how to write your leases a little bit differently, and what the insurance product looks like and things like that. But I just think that, you know, we we self manage all bars, because we just haven’t found it to be a big issue. Whereas I would never self manage a short term. Because I think it does require a lot of you. But I think you know, the long term. I don’t know, I think it’s really hard in Denver and Colorado Springs right now to have, you might break even. But I don’t think you’re gonna do it with the 5% expenditures and things like that. So it’s just, it depends on you know, what you’re going for?

D.J. Paris 27:50
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s so interesting, though, because it seems counterintuitive to people maybe who aren’t in the investment space to think short term and medium term rentals typically don’t require property management, or, you know, a professional property manager, third party property manager, but you’re absolutely right. My sister has a property in in Tampa, she lives there. She has an investment property that’s very close to where she lives, and she does short term and medium term rentals, just like yourself. And yeah, she I go, Oh, who’s your property manager? And she’s like, Oh, you we don’t need one. And they’ve had it for years. They go she she goes and checks it out every you know, every few weeks just to make sure things haven’t you know, completely, you know, gone to pot. But she’s like, No, you don’t, I don’t need anything. She goes, I just need a great shoe. Like you said, I have a great handyman, I have a great cleaning crew. And that’s pretty much an Airbnb sort of takes care of the rest. I mean, it’s it’s really remarkable. And I wonder almost if property management companies are starting to, you know, feel some pressure to compete in that space. But so, so the pricing, you’ve seen increase, has there been more competition from investors trying to do to, you know, sort of grab these properties? And has that driven prices even further up? Yeah, I

Erin Spradlin 29:09
think I just read something. There’s a lender here that we follow. And I think you had an article saying that 30% of 30% of properties being bought in the last 12 months were cash, and quite a few of those were investors. And so I think, you know, I guess I think it’s kind of hit or miss, right? Like it depends on the investor. I think in some ways, we’ve benefited from this with remote work because when you can live anywhere, a lot of people want to live in Colorado or they want to live on the coast. On the other hand, it’s gotten so expensive that if you again believe or ascribe to that cash flow that might turn you off because you’re not getting get that in this market. So a lot of times to what we’ll see is people that actually do buy as a primary and then they house hack. They have the basement or something where they rent it out and you also find people that are buying now because they just don’t believe in the long term. Um, that they’re ever going to be able to, you know, if things continue to go the way they have been in two or three years than buying a house and Colorado will be totally out of the question. So they’re buying now living house hacking or, you know, accepting of the fact that if you if they are going to do a long term rent, that they might not cashflow on it, but eventually they’ll have a house in Colorado when they’re ready to retire.

D.J. Paris 30:20
Yeah, it makes sense. And also to there’s, you know, with this medium term, rental, remote sort of opportunity, as I’m thinking about it, from our listeners perspective, you know, these, these are going to be people you know, who are professional, who are highly skilled, and are sought after in whatever field they’re in. And if they’re able to, if their family situation allows for this, and their work situation allows, they’re going to be able to be mobile. And this try before you buy thing is a really good idea. And so as a realtor, you might start to want to have these conversations with your clients to find out what their future goals are, right? I think that’s a huge opportunity. Because, you know, you can start talking about these things. And and as a result, if, if the client is now saying, we may want to sell our primary home here, and now we never thought we were always thought we were chained to, you know, Chicago or wherever. But now, now we those chains maybe don’t exist as much. And so we’re going to explore other opportunities. So as the realtor, I might think, oh, gosh, I’m not going to lose a client. But I think the realtor can still help with directing these clients to check out other cities and towns and say, Hey, I’ve got some ideas for you. But also, eventually, those, those that couple, that client may, and probably will purchase somewhere else. And so that’s an opportunity to refer business to a realtor in another state and city. So I think that’s a huge opportunity is really starting to build your network of people you want to refer to, like, learning about other markets, which I know is daunting as a realtor to think I have to know about my market. And now I have to sort of understand other markets. But what really all you have to understand is, where do people in your market go? Either for the winter? Where do they tend to vacation? What cities are close enough by that are really attractive? Maybe they’re more affordable, and start to talk to them and say, Hey, what is your long term plan? Here? I am your realtor. And even if you move to another city, I still want to be able to help you. So anyway, I know I just went on a bit of a rant there. But I was curious. I was just thinking as you were talking, I’m curious if you see those kinds of opportunities for traditional realtors who have clients that maybe leaving town?

Erin Spradlin 32:44
No, I think that’s great advice. And we have really strong relationships with a realtor in Austin, and then also one up in the mountains, because we don’t serve the mountains. And so those relationships have really paid off. I also just think in general, clients, even I, you know, this is something my husband’s been very great about it. I feel like I have adopted more last couple of years. But I think clients really respond to you just being humble and a resource. And even if it’s not going to pay off for you now. People remember that and they have goodwill towards you. And it shows back up maybe in three years, maybe it’s not an immediate thing, but just helping people in educating them. They I’ve just found people like that, especially in something as as intimidating as investing right with you can really help them, especially for first time investors, like really help them feel good about it and talk to them about a lot of the like a lot of the things they’re afraid of that they don’t want to admit and say this is totally normal and stuff, but also to your point having those relationships and referrals and other cities. And something I would recommend to other real estate agents is to go onto the try before you buy page for Airbnb and see what cities they’re talking about. Because those cities are going to have remote workers that need furnished houses. And so it might be a real opportunity to buy up in those communities and have a furnished rental because you know, and I actually would pay attention to the ones on the Airbnb page, because I think a ton of cities are are starting to launch these and not all of them will be successful. And my guess is that Airbnb has really vetted, which ones they believe will be successful.

D.J. Paris 34:21
So Erin just gave a really, really good piece of advice. And I just want to I want to I want to double up on it. So what she said was go to and we’ll link to this in the shownotes. So go to the Airbnb, or just Google Airbnb try before you buy it comes up. And what you see there is a little description of kind of what that means, you know, medium term rentals, you know, space 30 plus days, I think is kind of their definition. And also it shows all the communities that they are kind of rolling this out. And so Aaron just gave a really great piece of advice such as maybe as investors, you know, you’re thinking about your local market, but this remote workforce thing is likely not going away. So look to see what communities are participating in Airbnb is nice enough to show you exactly the the communities that are participating in this, like Topeka, Kansas, I think is on the list that we mentioned. So this is an opportunity for you as an agent, to then say, you know, I’ve been reading a lot about this try before you buy model of Airbnb, you know, Mr. or Mrs. Investor. And I know we’ve we’ve traditionally focused here in our local community, I want to talk about this, and I want to start thinking about opportunities for you and other other areas. And then as the realtor, all you really need to do is find other realtors who who focus on the short and mid term rentals in those markets and develop relationships with them. And hopefully start you know, passing, passing leads back and forth. But you can also do that locally, too. So if you are an agent, who, you know, maybe you’re an agent in Topeka, and you’re like, I don’t really want to play in this investor space, because it’s not really what I do. I like working with, you know, first time homebuyers who they just going to buy for their primary or whatever. Find somebody who does this locally or in other markets. And boy, that’s there’s just tremendous benefits to you, as the agent don’t have to know everything I imagine. Aaron, you probably get referrals from other realtors who say, you know, this is somebody that is right in your wheelhouse? Can you take care of it for me?

Erin Spradlin 36:17
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know, I so I always had something called the orange theory theory, which was basically like, if you’re looking to invest somewhere and you’re starting to see orange theory be there or Whole Foods or Starbucks, it’s like, you don’t need to actually do your own research or demographics they have done for you. They’re not showing up for no reason they’re not dummies, they’re there for a reason. And I think it’s the same thing with this Airbnb and try before you buy I’m like Airbnb is that they have done the research to see who’s doing it right and who’s not. And so I think that the logic kind of follows there. And I remember one time, my husband was timing, I think this is so funny that he said, you know, McDonald’s does hundreds of 1000s of dollars in research for real estate and Burger King does $0 And they just follow wherever McDonald’s, be the Burger King, and then and just benefit off of the big companies that have the money to figure out where you should be.

D.J. Paris 37:15
It’s such a smart thing I went to Santa Fe about maybe 15 years ago with my mom, just a little father, mother, son trip. And we it Santa Fe is a wonderful city, if anyone has been there, you’ll know just how beautiful and lovely it is. But it’s a relatively small city, it’s not as big as you might think. But there are two whole foods in Santa Fe and which is shocking for the population. And then you kind of go like, Oh, a lot of wealthy people live here, like, and then again, this is 15 years ago when Whole Foods was really just a wealthy person’s grocery store. And it isn’t so much that way anymore. Although it’s still can be of course, but But I thought, Oh, this is a place that is is is definitely growing and their population is increasing. And, you know, so so the point, that point is very good. And so again, yeah, go to the Airbnb website for try before you buy it, and just take a look at those communities and very least, find another realtor out there who specializes in short and mid term rentals and start a conversation and say, Hey, I’m going to start talking to my clients about your community. Can we ever jump on to like a three way call with my clients? Who are investors? Or can I just start passing leads over to you and again, boy, what a tremendous amount of value you have just brought to your aid to your clients without really having to know much about those particular communities. up real quickly, before we wrap up, I definitely want to get to the book, which we talked about at the very beginning, but not not enough. The book is called American nomads finding and renting to remote workers is exactly what we’ve been talking about this whole time. Can you just give us a little a little bit more information on the book?

Erin Spradlin 38:47
Sure. So I mean, it’s interviews with people that have done it’s checklists that cover it. Just different conversations about how you might find these renters out, you know, Airbnb is going to have it but there’s also other websites that we’ve used for a long time that we find to be strong that take lower fees than Airbnb how to think about insurance, how to think about, you know, what a remote worker would want in their space that might be different than than your standard renter. And then also, the difference between a remote worker that’s a single a couple or a family because identify, you know, I have a girlfriend that just did it for eight months, and she was talking about a kitchen is so important for the family. And then also privacy because you have to get away from your kids a lot, you know, to to maintain, you know, business calls and stuff. I was shocked to see that nobody was doing second screens, and then also just talking about how you would advertise your particular like a lot of people say that they’re good for remote workers, but then when you look through the listing or whatever, it’s like well, there isn’t a private space, there isn’t a second screen, they’re not talking about Wi Fi. So just talking about the different ways that you really want what you want to put up front and how to think about these people and just I just really studied who remote workers were and I really studied what they would want and then pulled checklists from our experience and things that we’ve found that have really streamlined it so that things aren’t falling through the cracks. And it’s just, it’s just been really easy. And I am, like I said, I’m passionate about this, because it’s been very good to us. And we really like those kinds of clients, or those kinds of tenants. And our clients tend to as well.

D.J. Paris 40:23
Yeah. And if you are an investor, and you’re want to play in the in the in this sort of work, remote workforce space, definitely upgrade your internet speed to, you know, a fast connection and promote that in you know, and I don’t know what else. Yeah, yeah, make sure that maybe it’s a screenshot of the actual uploads and download speed. But like that, I know, for me, that would be absolutely critical. If I were to, you know, do remote work, I would, I would, is embarrassing. And I would hate to like ask the owner, can you run a quick speed test and send it to me, but I don’t know, sort of, I would need that.

Erin Spradlin 41:00
Yeah, and also put it in your listing. So the speed test here is for this, and we’re happy to provide that for you. On an EndNote. Two, I’ve done an interesting, a lot of people that can travel singles and couples, they don’t have kids, but they have animals that they are very serious about. So being pet friendly. And if you have a fully fenced in yard, that will make your ratings go through the roof. That is a hard thing for remote workers or all renters to find on Airbnb. And so that’s something where again, in my interviews, it was just coming out like finding a place that was pet friendly, was a real limiting factor. So I think you can charge more for that. And I definitely think for the demographic of remote workers, a lot of them care a lot about their Furbabies. So being accommodating to that.

D.J. Paris 41:44
Well, the book again is American nomads finding and renting to remote workers. Also, everyone go look in the show notes for the link directly to the book. And you can purchase it there. Also check out Aaron’s website, which also has links to her podcast, which is Erin and James again, era n and James realestate.com. That’ll also be in the show notes era. And this was such a fun conversation. And it’s really funny just to pull back the curtain a bit on our show we get because there’s so many real estate investment podcasts already. I mean, there’s dozens and dozens of them. A bigger pockets, of course, is probably the best example of that. But we have specifically not really talked much about investments since we we started and we get pitched by publicist every single day talk to my investor client who wants to come on your show. And we almost always turn it down simply because we don’t think our audience would would find as much value in that as they could if they went to like BiggerPockets web podcasts. But this has been so wonderful for our audience, I really want to thank you for making investment stuff fun to talk about. I really do appreciate it. And I love the fact that you’re so passionate about this remote workforce sort of trend, which likely isn’t going away anytime soon. And there’s just tremendous opportunity there. So Aaron, thank you on behalf of the audience for coming on and sharing with us that this knowledge. And on behalf of Aaron and myself, we want to thank our audience for continuing to listen and support our show before before you sign off from this episode. If you’re still listening, please follow us on Facebook, go to facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and hit the follow or the like button. And you’ll get all of our episodes. And we also post an article every day about how agents can grow their business right on our Facebook page. And and please just tell a friend about the show. Think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this great interview with Aaron and send them a link right to our website. If they’re not a podcast person, just send them to keeping it real pod.com Or if they are podcast person, just have them pull up their app and search for keeping it real and hit this subscribe button. Aaron, thank you so much.

Erin Spradlin 43:51
Thank you, DJ. This is so fun. Thank you. Awesome.

D.J. Paris 43:53
Well, thanks everyone for listening and we will see you on the next episode. Thank you

David Rosen from The Rosen Team with Douglas Elliman Real Estate talks about how he got into real estate and how he built his business. David and DJ discuss the importance of customer service in the real estate business. David talks about the letters he sends to potential clients to get to know them and how this helps build the relationship. David also talks about the videos he and his team use for listings. Finally, David talks about how you can provide value to your clients.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

David Rosen can be reached at 917.524.9680 and [email protected].

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with David Rosen of the Rosen team from Douglas Elliman in New York. Before we get to David, just a couple of quick reminders. The best way to continue to support our show is to tell a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from top producers like David and send them a link to our website, you can find us at keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, I think we’re over 300 episodes at this point can be streamed right from that website or just have them pull up a podcast app on their mobile device and search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button. And second, please follow us on Facebook every single day we find an article that’s written online specifically designed to give real estate agents tips about how to grow their business. And of course we publish all of our podcast episodes there as well. So you can find [email protected] forward slash keeping it real pod or just go to Facebook and do a search for keeping it real podcast and you’ll find us and now on to our interview with David Rosen.

Alright today on the show we have David Rosen with the Rosen team in the Douglas Elliman in New York City. Let me tell you a little bit about David David is regularly included in the America’s best list of top brokers in the state and city and is also among the top 1% of brokers at Douglas Elliman real estate, which is the largest residential firm in New York City, a native New Yorker he and his family live in Crown Heights Brooklyn. With over 17 years of sales past clients have included actors supermodels the president of Google Ventures, the defense minister of Germany, and the President of Danny Meyer’s Restaurant Group, I actually just read it a thing about Danny Meyer’s, just before we got on, I’ll have to mention. David is also an avid investor in his own business, he uses his art school background to constantly challenge the way in which he communicates about his business. In doing so he’s negotiated excellent deals for both buyers and sellers. Please visit David at his website, which is the David rosen.com. And you can also follow him on social media. Go to the David rosen.com. Scroll to the bottom you’ll see all of his his social media accounts and he has all sorts of amazing videos, which we’ll talk about here on his website. David, welcome to the show.

David Rosen 3:51
DJ. Thank you. Thank you very much.

D.J. Paris 3:54
I was so funny. So you mentioned Danny Meyer’s I just read literally minutes before we started that he is I don’t know if you’ve seen this as like breaking news, I guess that he is requiring people to bring in vaccination cards I think even not at all of his restaurants. But he’s basically basically saying if you if you want to die in here, we’d like you to be vaccinated we’d like you to show proof so he’s like the first big restaurant or to say, this is kind of the way it is will be very interesting to see how people respond to that. But I applaud his courage that is a very courageous thing.

David Rosen 4:27
You know, I met that client the way I’ve met most of my clients, which is simply from having listings people come in, you know, you meet them and whoever they are, that’s who they are. Right. And so we worked with them on now a few transactions not Danny but you know, the C C level executive insurance. And I’ve been to a few Danny Meyer’s restaurants myself, so of course it’s a real treat, but you know, I read his book. I think it’s called setting the table and some business book and it’s filled with great nuggets and he is A genius not only a genius chef, but one of the things he says in that book is that whenever he Danny goes into a restaurant by himself, which he has done in his life, you know, of course, hundreds or 1000s of times. He always is very focused and mindful on how the staff treats a diner whose dining alone. And I think that we all can relate to what it’s like, going to a restaurant by yourself. Yeah, never like you and me that we can remember the time before cellphones, and right, it’s almost a harrowing experience. You’re gonna go sit there by yourself, and everyone’s gonna look at you, how come you don’t have any friends?

D.J. Paris 5:42
I remember when I first graduated college, I went ended up working for Anheuser Busch. We were doing, I was a marketing guy. So I traveled all over the country, helping these local distributors, you know, with their marketing efforts. And it was kind of like the circus coming to town because I would bring all this cool stuff, and they would from corporate and they would get to use it and you know, whatever events they were hosting. And so I often ate alone. And you’re absolutely right. This is pre I mean, I had a cell phone, but there was no internet on it. It was, you know, it was I had a beeper, actually, and a cell phone, which is, you know, shows you how old I am. But I remember I would I would think that all the time, it was like, Okay, what book Am I gonna bring with me? And, you know, like, it was always just a little bit embarrassing, even though it shouldn’t be. But But you’re absolutely right. So I’m sorry, I interrupted your story. Go ahead.

David Rosen 6:27
No, I mean, and that’s the thing. So Danny would would make a big point of that, if he was going to be at a restaurant by himself. And they treated him well, of course, he was going to bring friends back. And of course, he’s Danny Meyer’s, if he’s bringing friends back, or he thinks your restaurant is excellent. Well, that’s a, you know, thing you want if you’re in the restaurant business, and I guess how it translates into our business is that, for example, if you were to Google real estate agents in New York, you might find me at the top of that list, because I’ve done a lot of marketing and SEO over the time. And I actually get a call more than once a day, from somebody who found me on Google. And this is what it sounds like. David, I want to know if you have people looking in fill in the blank, South Carolina, Virginia. I have a timeshare in Orlando, you know, you name it, you can’t imagine it’s someone who’s thinking outside of the box because they want to sell their home. And yesterday, I showed it to a woman who’s got the most amazing home in Virginia. And and of course, I don’t know anyone that’s going to help her hypothetically, you could say, well, maybe she I would be able to find another broker and give a referral. And that’s a possibility, of course. But sure. But you know, I get calls like that are people who want to rent very inexpensive apartments are people on Section Eight housing vouchers, maybe their tests, all of those calls. And every time I think about the Danny minor Meyer story about dining by herself, and that’s what those people are, in some cases, if you treat them excellently good things will happen. And that’s sort of the standard that I’ve always held myself to.

D.J. Paris 8:11
Isn’t it amazing to as somebody as successful as you’ve become, and customer services? Is everything we everyone listening? Of course, we all know that. But isn’t it always shocking how low the bar is, can be set for other agents, right? We, we all know that it is always remarkable. I once I once interviewed one of the top producers here in Chicago, and like, there’s about 44,000 realtors. And she’s like, maybe number five out of so she’s a big deal, and a super nice person. And I said, What do you think you do differently than everyone else? And she goes, Well, I know I’m not smarter than anyone. So it’s not that. And I know I don’t I mean, I work hard. But I don’t know that I work that much harder than every one. So I don’t think it’s that she goes, honestly, she goes, this is kind of embarrassing to say, but I just return every phone call. And I call every one of my clients before they feel the need to call me. In other words, if I’m working with somebody, and even if we’re in the process of buying or selling or renting or whatever, I don’t want them to have to call me and go, Hey, what’s going on with with my current situation? So I said, Okay, well, yeah, of course. And what else do you do? And she’s like, that’s pretty much it. I thought, you know, customer service is just everything. And your point is so well taken that you have this great SEO, and you’re getting these phone calls, and they’re not always phone calls that are going to land lots of business, but you still spend time returning those calls and speaking to those people and helping them and I imagine that has only really been beneficial overall to your career.

David Rosen 9:42
You know what it is absolutely, DJ and what the way I see it is that you know, every time you step up to bat, you want to be able to hit the ball. You know, every time you get on the court, you want to be able to hit the shot. So you’re always going to bring the same, you know, game to the arena And that’s what it’s always got to be. Why should you have, you know, a D game? Like, why should you show up? You know, never not looking good. You know, this is gonna sound awful. And if I was the younger version of me, I would have never said this. And if my young son hears this someday I think he’ll be embarrassed. But I want to tell you something. And once upon a time, I was a waiter, and, and I was a waiter in midtown Manhattan. And there was an amazing watch store. It’s still there. It’s called torno. But they move locations. But anyway, I would walk by it every day. And I look in the watches, and I was obsessed. And then finally, I ended up becoming a real estate broker. I moved to Phoenix. That’s where I started my career. I was there for seven years and moved back to New York. Anyway, when I was in Phoenix, I made enough money to buy a Breitling, you know, fancy.

D.J. Paris 10:49
Oh, sure. Yeah. Amazing. Watch.

David Rosen 10:52
I bought it at that. torno. And and, you know, it was cool. It wasn’t, you know, it had some character. And then I, you know, sort of leveled up one day in the future, and I had an omega is more expensive, and it would have rubber band, and it was fashionable, and it was cool. But what I realized having a Breitling and an omega, is that what the best one is a Rolex. And now I have a gold Rolex. And the reason I have a gold Rolex is not because it’s fashionable, says something about my character or anything. Because no one in the world doesn’t know that a gold Rolex symbolizes wealth and success. And that’s the whole damn point of spending more than $1 rather have a Casio or a gold Rolex

D.J. Paris 11:37
opinion. Yeah, no, it’s a really good point too. And and this, you know, I think what what we’re talking about too, is treating a real Realtors business as an actual business and thinking about it as a business owner. And that’s been, in my experience with the successful agents we have at our firm, and then all the agents we’ve interviewed for it for the show. It that’s really I think, a lot of times the distinction is I’m not just a realtor helping buyers and sellers, and renters and investors. And yes, I do that. That’s what I do. But I run it like a business. And I think about, you know, like you said, you’ve put money into SEO so that you do show up organically when people are searching for there’s a reason why you do that there is a business reason for that. And it’s it’s for lead generation, and it’s also for branding, and a lot of other amazing benefits. So let’s actually let’s start at the beginning, because I’d love to hear how you got into real estate before you became the success that you are today. So tell us so you started in Phoenix? Is that my understanding?

David Rosen 12:38
Well, yeah, so I was I went to art school, and I graduated. And at my first job out of art school, it was right after 911. And the job market wasn’t great. And apparently, you know, being an illustrator wasn’t a great career path to begin with. I don’t think I realized that in time.

D.J. Paris 12:56
What kind of what kind of illustrator did you want to like

David Rosen 12:59
Illustrator that really wanted to be like a fine arts painter from the 1700s.

D.J. Paris 13:04
Wow. Like impressionist painting, and you wanted to be an impressionist are

David Rosen 13:10
very, very Yes, like very realist like neoclassical realist style, or like other stuff to kind of like graffiti. I didn’t have a whole big plan. I just was drawing pictures. Yeah. So there I go, graduate 10s of 1000s of dollars in debt, drew a lot of pictures and my first job was Dunkin Donuts. My fourth Job was a waiter at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan at Manhattan. It was a stop at Whole Foods along the way, right? Delivered groceries with a degree find you and and so of course, that’s when I became a real estate broker. And I worked for a cousin of mine. And we moved, he moved me to Avondale Arizona, he had done a seminar on how to make a ton of money flipping homes, and okay, kind of It’s his birthday today actually had a cousin Adam. And he was my mentor. And he had bought about 10 homes in Phoenix, this was 2004. And he bought them with $1,000 a pop, there’s $1,000. And when he closed on each one of them, they were up about $100,000 in equity in that year, amazing. And he only had to put up no money, basically. And he didn’t just do that himself. He actually sold about three or 400 homes and all these new home subdivisions with this other guy. So I moved out there, I was a waiter. My prior experience was you know, casual fine dining. And, and, you know, I pretended I was a construction expert looking at all the inspections, the walkthroughs and I learned a lot and we sold 1000 homes, probably in the first few months there, you know, and this is unbelievable, because, I mean, it was literally if we would do you know, we would work with developers and like send out to his client list. Like we have this opportunity and everyone thought I’m gonna you know, make Good fortune. And for that year they did. I mean, of course, we know how that story ended. But in that year, it was a good year to be in that business, and even the next year and the year after that, and then I got into flipping homes myself. So I was 24 years old, I was in a strange land, and it’s a totally new world. I had no friends, no connections. And so I really became enmeshed in the business. And, you know, I learned a lot. And so that was great for three years, and then the market crashed. And then I lost all the money, I’d made a man having the money when I got out there. And then I had less money because I was also, you know, owed money. And, and then the next three years, I learned about short sales and property management some more and, and we sold about 160 homes and a property company that I started with a mortgage lender, who I you know, met through business networking, and and then we were able to successfully sell that company. So that’s like seven years in Phoenix, in, you know, 20 sentences. But it was an amazing time. That market is doing great. I love it there. I mean, it’s a gorgeous place to live a lot of people from Chicagoland, you know, and yeah, now the places like Phoenix and sure nothing like New York, then I come back to New York, my stepfather was, in the last years of life, I wanted to be close to my family. And, and I don’t regret it, obviously. And it’s been a great experience to here in New York, you know, you don’t I don’t own the brokerage, instead of being at 100% split, owning the brokerage. I’m here at a company where they take, you know, different splits and they take from most of the realtors who might be listening to us. But you get a lot for that.

D.J. Paris 16:39
I would Yeah, they have a well established brand. tagless element is the number one firm in New York. So there is a reason why could you do your own firm? Sure, of course, you could. Anybody could. But they’re providing I imagine tremendous value to you.

David Rosen 16:55
Yeah. And so when I when you’re right, they are. And when I arrived back in New York City, I worked. I met this guy through the Tom Ferry coaching organization. And I’m, I’ve been a Tom Ferry coaching client for over 10 years. I’m in the team plus coaching now. And I met a guy named Josh Rubin, who was himself pretty successful, but not at the top of the Echelon like he is today. He is now among the top few brokers in New York City. And when I joined him, he had a smaller team and I was I became his assistant. And I worked with him for four or five years. And when I joined his office Million Dollar Listing, New York hadn’t started yet, but the people in that office included Fredrik Eklund, and John gums his partner, Leonard Steinberg, who went on to be the first guy at Compass. Holly Parker, Raphael De Niro was in that office. Other guys who, you know, might not be known nationally, but the new is literally the number one selling office in the country. And I just stumbled back into it as this guy’s assistant not knowing nothing. And I learned the New York City Market. And, you know, I didn’t know the nuances of this market like I do today. And it’s a very complicated market. But the things that we talked about in the beginning, like, you know, returning people’s phone calls, I knew how to do that.

D.J. Paris 18:26
So So what’s it like for you know, all again, we have we have listeners from all over some of them of course, rural, some, some live in more urban environments. New York is such a complicated places, as you mentioned, for real estate, we know its pricing is is is very challenging, their rentals are challenging, there’s, there’s always inventory issues, and then there’s lots of co op boards. So there’s that to deal with, as well. It’s a challenging market, I would think, or an intimidating market, at the very least, and tremendous competition from all the other agents. How were you able to like distinguish yourself, and what do you think sets you apart from and again, being that you got to be lucky enough or created the luck yourself to be in an environment with lots of other really amazing people who went on to even bigger and better things? I imagine you picked up a lot of great just sort of habits and strategies from them?

David Rosen 19:25
Well, it’s always it’s always a mission and I’m certainly not there yet. And gosh, you know, COVID really knocked us back a bit, not just professionally, but like personally in a lot of ways, but good things came out of it. Um, I would say that you know, the, the most important thing to remember is that, you know, I’m not the biggest fish at all right? So you always know that and that’s a good thing. I mean, right. You know, who wants to be the top of the, you know, the top person and then you can never succeed you can never grow, you know? I’m doing better than I did. But there’s so much more to do. And, and generally speaking, you know, whatever that looks like, is a matter of your own effort and defining your own goals. But things I did differently included, you know, really having my own brand. And I started that with a website called applesauce. I thought that was clever. It’s great. And honestly, it wasn’t that clever. I mean, maybe it was it has some people following me, you know, now it’s the David rosen.com. You know, I, you know, I tried to be cool with the Breitling and the omega and now it’s just the Rolex. But, you know, I tried a lot of things. And I didn’t all work. I’ve done parties that were like a CBD infused private dinner, which was fun. I love volleyball game, I’ve, you know, I did a Mother’s Day manicure event with a psychic. You know, I love that. It all of that make me money? I don’t know, honestly, I don’t know. And I say that if you zoom out, the trajectory has been like this more or less. Yeah, I can. So, um, and that my personal like, you know, position, both in the marketplace. And you know, in terms of where I’m at, has gotten better, because of things like that, I think, yes,

D.J. Paris 21:21
you have a tremendous amount of fun in your business, I can at least that’s the what’s coming through. And I think that too, is probably helps when times are tough, because as maybe a more creative person with your background. And you know, the schooling, which obviously, you’re an artist, as well, being an artist and a business person are two very unique skill sets, very distinct skill sets, right. So the artist is more free thinking, creative doesn’t like a lot of confines and structure. Although I can’t speak for all artists, obviously. But But generally speaking, we know artists types, and we know business types. And, and usually they’re not super connected, but you have been able to, to to do both. And I think that is really remarkable. And I imagine that creates a lot of fun in your business because you you get to be creative, and do these cool ideas and events.

David Rosen 22:12
Well, this is going to shame me and and humbled me, but there was an Oscar Wilde book that I read in college, I think it was the Portrait of the Artist, Dorian Gray. And I’m not saying I sure even read the whole book. But I remember this one line. And it says he, you know, the main character says, artists are boring people. Great artists are boring people, all they do is obsess about their art. But almost a second rate artists are incredibly fun and interesting people with a wide range of, you know, skill sets and knowledge bases. And maybe I wasn’t a great artist, maybe that’s why I became a real estate agent. But as a second rate artists, you know, I’ve, I’ve had my, you know, my hat and a lot of rings or whatever. And you know, you get to meet a lot of people and try a lot of stuff. And I guess, you know, and not be afraid of failure. And I think that is within our real estate industry. Right? If you look at Barbara Corcoran or Dottie Herman, the CEO of Douglas, Elliman, they’re, you know, you could you could bet that they will make a social media post every, you know, 30 days that says something like, what defines you is getting off the ground or whatever, something like that, you know, yeah, and that’s, of course, resiliency is the key to success in business. But, you know, art teaches you resiliency, because if you care about doing something great, and then you don’t do it great. And you just try it again, that’s that’s a good bit of practice. And then I see so many of the agents that are on my team, even they’re afraid to call people maybe, you know, or I’m afraid sometimes all the time. I’m make my calls follow up deal with this issue. It’s not easy, and doesn’t get easier. But, you know, that’s where the, the experience comes in, which is just like, what’s the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is you do nothing.

D.J. Paris 24:12
Right? That’s actually that’s, that’s worse than being hung up on boards, or having somebody say, Stop calling me because at least then you could move forward from from a rejection, and it never happens. It never never happened.

David Rosen 24:27
They always want to talk to you. They’re always fun and friendly. I just got a referral today from a guy who I remember when I first met with them and they interviewed other brokers and they ultimately hired me to sell their home. It was the video the listing video that I sent to your producer actually the with a drone and I yeah, looking for the home. That was a really fun one. But that guy was like super scary, you know, just like super powered finance guy, you know, one at a price that he would never get to sell his home. But we ended up doing the Deal and like, you know, he put all these barriers in the way. And it was scary. And luckily, I have a team, I think, going through this with friends that are your colleagues is great, you know, the company culture, the team culture. And, and and, you know, we got him through an I have a buyer letter, you know, that’s the most effective marketing tool that I do, or at least among them.

D.J. Paris 25:26
Can you share it? Can you? Would you mind sharing a little bit of that?

David Rosen 25:30
Oh, man. Yeah. So the biggest, you know, source of my income is probably past clients and referrals. And then the second biggest, isn’t my farm, those of us in the real estate profession know that a farm is when you like, mail to a certain building, and I’ve, you know, I have certain farms, but I don’t have a huge market share, unfortunately, in either of them, and they’re decent sized farms, and I could certainly improve, where I have been more effective. The events are helpful, the social media is helpful, Google’s helpful, but these these buyer letters, which are legit, you know, I meet tons of buyers, I have about 20 listings at any time, and, you know, maybe 10 are in contract interactive, we get, you know, X leads a week through each one. And then people want to find the home. New York City doesn’t have a ton of inventory, like you mentioned before, and we never have I mean, it’s always the tight market. So it’s completely valid to say to so and so I’ve got a buyer and I work with you know, I have a follow up boss CRM. So I’ve got a lot of buyers in there, maybe about 10,000. And we send these letters, they’re, they’re targeted, you know, if I’m sending a letter to two bedrooms with washer dryers with good views, and Lincoln Square, you know, I mean it, but then I’ll send them as many of them as possible. And then I use certain psychological elements to actually get a good response and the main one I do. And DJ I mean, I hope

D.J. Paris 27:00
I see you hesitating. I don’t want you I don’t want secrets. There’s

David Rosen 27:04
a book, there’s a book called start with no, that I read recently, that I came through a lot of other you know, people say read this read that, like basically Chris Voss and the book never split the difference. Yeah. This guy’s book Start with no, I think his name is Jim camp. And he’s no longer with us. But he’s a corporate negotiation trainer. So the first line of my I have a buyer letter says, I also don’t like receiving solicitations in the mail.

D.J. Paris 27:32
Yeah. So basically, what you’re doing is you’re overcoming an objection before the objection comes up. And this way, there’s really, it acknowledges it affirms a person’s objection. So they feel good. And then it allows them just a little a little, it gives you another few seconds before they may throw it in the trash. Because they’re like, alright, yeah, I’m annoyed too. Let’s keep reading.

David Rosen 27:57
Yeah, and that’s the biggest, best, the biggest source of new people. You know, there’s always the people, you know, but how do you meet the people? You don’t know? Yeah.

D.J. Paris 28:07
I love that. So So basically, you know, you’re sending letters to owners saying, Hey, if you ever want to sell, I would love to talk to you. And right now, what a great opportunity, because and I don’t know how much things have appreciated in New York City at the moment. I know here in Chicago, everything’s appreciated quite a bit. And so those those letters will be very helpful to homeowners here in our local market. And I imagine I’m sure things have appreciated in New York as well. So I suspect that those letters are very popular currently. What a great idea. I you know, it’s funny, we’ve done over 300 episodes, I’m trying to I’m racking my brain trying to remember if, because there’s a lots of different farming letters and people have have shared some of those that might be that little sort of objection handling that you do at the beginning. I don’t know that anyone’s ever, ever shared, or the if I have a buyer thing in and of itself I’ve not heard of, so I appreciate you sharing. That’s a really, really great idea. And I want to talk about some of your videos too, because this is really, from a creative standpoint, I’m, you know, I’m sort of a writer, I’m a marketing guy. I’m not an artist. Unfortunately, I don’t have that skill set. But I appreciate really cool marketing and you have done this in the visual medium with some of your your video blogs, do you mind sharing some of what you’ve done? Just because I think our audience would be in by the way, you can see all of this if you just go to the David rosen.com But do you mind sharing some of the ideas that you had fun with?

David Rosen 29:38
Absolutely. So um, you know, again, none of this stuff DJs coming, you know, they don’t wake up in the middle of the night necessarily and just say I need to do this. So kind of that is how it ends up happening. But before the middle of the night, waking up with inspiration, there’s been seminars, other people’s stuff and so you know, So Seth Godin, who I think is speaking at the Tom Ferry Success Summit is someone I’ve listened to he wrote a book called all all sellers are liars or something like that. And then they cross out the word liars to storytellers. And another guy I listen to a lot is Daniel Pink. And sure, I think the the impetus for all the marketing on a macro level is simply that you do something that appeals to the, to the right brain, we’re talking about emotions, you know. And, and, and that it’s a pattern interrupt is not what you expect, I get 100 emails that tell me the percentage, the sales increase on a week by week basis. And I know that not one of my customers gives a darn about that. Right? So when I did the series, like I have a trivia show called New Yorkers know, highlights different neighborhoods. And I have a series that I just finished called, if I was the mayor, where I talk about pretty like interesting and radical ideas like parking at fire hydrants, for example, why can’t we park in fire hydrants, you know, have more parking? And then if and if there was an actual fire, they’ll just smash up your car. Okay, that’s the risk. That’s the risk. Yeah, not a lot of fires. So you know, people need parking. So that’s one idea, or I love it. I had some other weird ideas like building an underwater laboratory with a seawall to help protect New York City, which I know that’s not going to necessarily happen. But okay, did your real estate agent send you a video talking about building an underwater laboratory with a flood wall to protect? You know, the city? No, I know that. So you know, something different. And then with New Yorkers know, I worked with a great production team called Hallelu productions, who, you know, work with a lot of good people, not just real estate people, but like, you know, very professional production value, and they helped me script it a bit. And, you know, the, the, the facts are interesting, that history is interesting. And in New York City, like Chicago is a compelling place. And most of us have no clue where we live anyway. Like, I know that I’ve learned how much I don’t know. And of course, it’s just staggering. You know, all the things I didn’t know, I’m, you know, lived here for 30 of my 40 years. So, you know, I have fun with it, like you said, and, and, you know, that that makes customers see me as a real person. And what’s the point of marketing, if you’re a real estate broker, the point of marketing is to get people to hire you to list their home, that is the literal point of real estate sales business, is not to get buyers listings, get you buyers, your job is to get listings. With listings, you can do a whole lot, as we all know. And so I’m gonna go deep, I’m gonna go hard on forging new relationships. And once I meet those people, I have any little snippet of information, compelling them to continue to think of me, as someone who has a pattern interrupt who has something to offer them, so they don’t unsubscribe, and I, and I can see who opens my emails. And those people, including people in Chicago, are some some very impressive. Business people, in some cases,

D.J. Paris 33:25
have you found that since you have worked with high level business executives, you’ve worked with celebrities? Have you found that working with people who who have, you know, some some notoriety in either the business world or the entertainment world is that it doesn’t require a different set of skills versus like a first time homebuyer who is not in the public eye? You know, are they? Is it different to work with, with people at that level? Or is our it’s everyone really kind of the same?

David Rosen 33:58
I gotta be honest, EJ, I think it’s not. I mean, you got to, you know, you gotta have confidence in yourself. But if you approach everything you do with integrity, it’s going to be the same thing every each and every time. So, you know, when I worked with, you know, XYZ person, yeah, it was fun, you know, and it was a good story to have. But ultimately, you know, a few things that I’ve learned. One is nobody ever, you know, is looking within their budget. Everybody always wants something that cost more. Yeah, doesn’t matter what their budget is, you know, you think they’re looking for a $5 million homes gonna make them happy that $5 million buyer wants a $12 million home. The $15 million buyer wants a $70 million home, just like the $200,000 buyer wants a $250,000 home right? And that’s and the richer they are depending on who they are, the harder it is to maybe get them to be Like, you know, wow, this is what we can get for this, um, it’s really about what’s motivating them to sell, or buy. And and I think that what you learn about very successful people is that, you know, and what I try to teach the people on my team is, you know, they don’t have a lot of time, they don’t want to hear you, you know, talk their ear off about things that, you know, like, don’t pertain to them, you know, keep it short and sweet and simple. And, you know, and they’re looking for that, and they can pick up on it, you know,

D.J. Paris 35:37
definitely, I’m sorry, I wanted to go back real quickly to your, your newsletter idea, because this is something that and again, we’re, you know, certainly we’re not here to criticize anyone’s marketing efforts. And I’ve, we have agents at our firm that send out, you know, through various systems, they may, they may be using, you know, a monthly email newsletter about real estate, and you know, the markets up, it’s down, inventory, is this, whatever. And you’re right, really, nobody cares. The only people that care are, of course, the people that are looking to buy or sell at that exact moment, maybe, maybe they care, maybe they’re still just going to delete email. So we would always say, well, at least they’re seeing your name before they delete it. And that inherently, I guess, is a good thing. But to then go a little bit beyond that to say, but I want to create content that people don’t want to delete, that they might actually enjoy. Like, you’ve done videos on how you would address the homelessness issue in New York, you’ve done really interesting comment that

David Rosen 36:32
was very controversial, you know, a lot of I imagine, yeah, a lot. I got one nasty reply from somebody who said, You’re heartless, and you’re an asshole. You know, you seeing this as a business proposition, I have responded to that person. So I respond to everyone. And I got a very warm reply from someone who ran a Homeless Advocacy Program is I don’t know if you remember me, but you sold my neighbor’s home. And I did remember them. And of course, I knew that I sold their neighbor’s home, and maybe they’ll sell one day. And of course, homelessness is a major issue. But you know, and this in on that subject, my wife sister happens to be involved in that industry, for lack of a better term for the city of New York, she isn’t supportive housing. But yeah, like, nobody wants to talk about homelessness, and it’s a big problem. But, you know, the next thing that I’m doing is something else that you’re not supposed to talk about. The next series of videos I’m going to do is on schools, and here in New York, we have a rule that you’re not supposed to tell people, if they if the property is zoned for a certain school, because of the variations on the law, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get into a certain public school, if you live in a certain place, we can say that, you know, you can look at this website, you know, there’s ways of couching it, but you know, we’re, it’s sort of a redlining type thing. So nobody to know that brokers know anything about schools, including me, and I’m a new parent. And so I thought to myself, well, maybe there’s something here. So I’m gonna go deep with, like, a real big, you know, thing on schools, you know, I’m not going to say, PS one is better than PS six, hypothetically, but I am going to try to, you know, do as much to educate myself and others about, really the school system in New York, which because of these rules, people don’t talk about, and, you know, to your other point DJ about, like, you know, maybe not everyone’s interested in this thing that that I do, but like, think about all of network television, you know, people can make an awesome TV show, maybe it’s on Netflix, or whatever, but not everyone’s gonna like it. Everyone’s gonna like what I do, not everyone’s gonna like every restaurant, but I don’t care, maybe someone will like it.

D.J. Paris 38:47
Right? And, and I think maybe even what I think is most interesting is you have a point of view. Oftentimes, agents are unwilling to create marketing material, or just to have a point of view in the fear of, you know, I don’t want to offend, I don’t want it and I know you’re not intentionally trying to offend anybody, but or maybe you are,

David Rosen 39:10
but you can’t, but it’s hard not to sometimes it’s,

D.J. Paris 39:14
especially now we, you know, we it’s a very, very, very sensitive society we live in at this point, you’re in America. But I love the fact that you’re saying, Hey, here’s my point of view. And if you like it, that’s great. And again, you’re a very nice person. So I suspect, you know, you don’t get a tremendous amount of negative feedback. But just having a point of view about something is the perception of an intelligent individual. So the perception of somebody who says, you know, I have an idea here, and it might not be the best idea, but here’s what I’m thinking about for for example, that homelessness or you know, an underwater seawall, right, yes, maybe that’ll never happen. But here’s my thought about it. And you really, it’s funny from a psychological perspective and audience goes, well, that’s kind of interesting. thing like we think about great broadcasters, they, you know, well if you’re like a newsman, you don’t maybe have to have a point of view because you can just report the news. But for everyone else, you know, the really successful ones have a point of view and you have a point of view and not just about non real estate related issues, you have specific thoughts about real estate too. And you’re willing to share that. And I think that is because you’re willing to do the deep dives and learn, like you were saying, I didn’t know about Tribeca, and here, I live here, and I really don’t know that much. Now, I’m going to do a deep dive and I’m going to talk about, you know, schools and whatever areas you’re gonna focus on, boy, I think how valuable you already know how valuable but think to our audience, how valuable would that be for any new parent in or somebody thinking about starting a family in that market to understand how the PS school systems work, how it works, where you live, and just even from an informational perspective, that is way more exciting to me, then, hey, by the way, the markets up 15%. Again, that may not apply, I think, that might not be as interesting too.

David Rosen 41:02
I’m all about like, you know, Andersen windows, and, you know, granite countertops and subway tile backsplash, but you do this for long enough and you realize that you’re not going to get ahead by having the same you know, two pitches. And that’s I guess, the, you know, you have to know that stuff too.

D.J. Paris 41:24
Of course, you got it, you got to know your numbers and your firm is such a professional organization that they are a white glove firm that is is the best of the best. Is it Douglas Elliman? So this is this is where I think what you have such a unique sort of value proposition because you also with your with your art background get to be more creative than maybe a traditional agent might might think they should be. And I think that that probably just enables you just to have a lot of fun. So you have this great mix of ultra professional white glove, and we’re going to do some fun stuff too. And I imagine that has has been any. And again, I’ll say it, but if you’re not watching this episode, if you if you end up watching it on YouTube, or on Facebook, you’ll see David is just smiling the entire time he is a genuinely happy person. And he loves what he does. And and I it’s such it’s such a fun to interview you. But David, I should mention for everyone listening who might not be a realtor, or but who may be just a resident of New York and is interested in maybe working with someone like you either renting, buying, selling investing, what is the best way that somebody who’s reaching out wants to work with with you? How should they get in touch with you?

David Rosen 42:34
The best way is to call me or email me or on my website, David rosen.com, you’ll be able to find those things. If you Google David Rosen, you will find me. Very proud of that. Because it used to be if you Google David Rosen, you find the character and scandal. Who’s David Rosen. I’ve gotten that dude, I may be on your Google. I don’t know. And that might not always be that way. But the David rosen.com, or my phone number, can I just share my phone number, please, please do a 212-965-6051 That’s my office line. You could call me [email protected]. I’m hard not to find.

D.J. Paris 43:22
He David is everywhere. And you know, I again, from a marketing perspective, you’d really and he’s got a newsletter, too, you can subscribe to his newsletter right from the David rosen.com. And I’m going to subscribe because 808 We have 800 agents at our firm and I wanted to tell them, look at what this guy is doing and look at how much fun he’s having. And and also in a professional way. And you know, look at his his success. And again, it’s not just marketing. David is obviously an incredibly effective realtor. And if you are in the New York market, the New York City Market and and you know, elsewhere, near there, if you’re looking for a top agent, David is one of the top agents in New York, and you should absolutely reach out to him and he will take excellent care of you. And he does, he does get back to people that is very important to him customer service. So David, I really appreciate your time today. This was this was so much fun for us. And I hope our audience tells other people about the show. In fact, if you want to help support us, just everyone listening think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing from this great conversation with David and send them a link to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com can stream every episode we’ve ever done right from the website in case the person you’re sending to isn’t a podcast person, no problem. Just go to our website, they can listen, if they are a podcast person, have them pull up whatever app they’re using subscribe search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button. So on behalf of our audience, we want to thank David for taking time out of his incredibly busy day. We know how busy you are to spend time with us and on behalf of David and myself. We want to thank the audience for continuing to listen and support our show. David thanks Thank you so much. This was such a pleasure. And boy, I’d love to have you on anytime in the future too. So we’ll have to stay in touch

David Rosen 45:06
my pleasure, DJ, I look forward to, to continuing the conversation. And I can’t help but look at you and your office and think about all the amazing food I’ve eaten in Chicago. And one day after I lose this COVID 30 pounds I put on I’m going to come there with my kid. And we’re going to have some, some pizza.

D.J. Paris 45:26
You know, what’s funny is I think, and I don’t know if this is still true, it might have been pre pre pandemic, but I might have still been now but anyway, I think Chicago technically has more Michelin starred restaurants than New York, which, which, which normally is not the case normally beats us. But so I just had to throw that little jab. We are both very lucky food wise, you guys have great food. We have great food, and both great cities to live in as well. So if you’re in the Chicagoland area, come say hi to me, if you’re in New York, goes in Tribeca, go say hi to David. He’s a wonderful, warm person. And David, thank you so much for being on the show.

David Rosen 46:00
Thank you, DJ, appreciate it, man.

Welcome to another episode of Coaching Moments With Ryan D’Aprile from D’Aprile Properties!

Ryan discusses the importance of self-discipline with your time and how that will positively impact both your personal life and your business. Ryan talks about how identifying and planning a few key activities will create the most growth in your business. Ryan explains the importance of calibrating the visual flow of your business so you get a real picture of the current situation. Last, Ryan and DJ discuss the importance of coaching.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Ryan D’Aprile can be reached at 312.590.6416 and [email protected].

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And today is our monthly coaching moments series with Ryan de April. Now, if you’re not familiar yet with Ryan, or if you’re just new to the show, Ryan comes on every month to give our listeners and our viewers a coaching moment and a coaching session. So let me tell you about Ryan Ryan Gabriel is a progressive thought leader focused on providing for his agents and his staff at depot properties. His strengths are his motivational skills, his coaching style, and his dedication to training. He has 14 offices throughout Chicagoland. And he’s also in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan with hundreds and hundreds of top producers. Deborah properties is a coaching company with eight strategic coaches who work week in and week out with every agent individually focused on business planning, coaching, and accountability. If you’d like to take your career to the next level, or if you’re just not getting the attention you need, please check out depot properties visit D APR properties.com. For more information, welcome once again Ryan.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:01
What’s up DJ? How are you, buddy?

D.J. Paris 2:03
I’m good. I’m good. We should mention that Ryan is so dedicated that he is actually travelling between offices, and he’s doing this from his car and the sound is is incredible. You’d never know that. But that is just how dedicated you are to, to fitting us in and your busy schedule. So we thank you for that.

Ryan D’Aprile 2:20
Yeah, no, it’s actually great to know that this works and the sound quality is there. So because I’m in my car lot, going from office to office, so good times.

D.J. Paris 2:31
Yeah. And so what you know, I know, I wanted to ask your opinion about something that I see happening. I mean, you know, the firm I’m at, we have hundreds and hundreds of brokers so so does your firm, and I met, I wonder if you’re hearing this a lot from agents who maybe are struggling at the moment, I’m hearing a lot of people being frustrated with what’s currently happening, what’s right in front of them. You know, they’re saying, hey, inventories, low places are selling too quickly, my buyers, you know, are really frustrated. So that means I’m frustrated. Only the people that get listings are really having success. And it seems to be a lot of them focus on the immediate sort of situation, which, you know, may or may not be what’s really happening in the market, but how a lot of realtors are thinking about it. And I think that maybe people are getting a little bit stuck in that mindset of like right now it’s so tricky. So I’m, I’m only focusing on right now.

Ryan D’Aprile 3:34
I mean, that’s what everybody does do is focus on just the now. I mean, it’s really the the leaders, the industry leaders, the thought leaders, and whatnot that are that are futuristic and forward, focused. And so I think that’s one of the biggest things in it having accountability and coaching is to give you the full picture of what’s going on, because what you just described, we could have those types of struggles in every different types of market, just a different look. But they’ll always be there. I mean, I saw a saying the other day I posted it in our channel, group page, internal group page the other day, it’s happiness is not I’m gonna I’m gonna butcher this but happiness is not the existence without problems, because problems will always exist. Happiness is being able to face your challenges with a positive attitude. And, you know, the challenges will always be there, I think, you know, in the, in the now, what we’re seeing is I actually see inventory creeping up a little bit. Oh, right. But I also think, you know, this is the first holiday true holiday that our country has taken since the pandemic. And so I have seen a lot of people just kind of even myself just taking a break and turn it off and in the real estate business that it should have been full throttle ahead and coaching a loan officer. It isn’t, you know, this is The $80 million you’re producing loan officer and, and he’s like my, I’m worried and like Don’t Don’t be worried, you know, it’s it’s enjoy the break, it’s going to be a shit show here in three, four weeks and only those who are prepared like you are prepared are going to be able to reap the benefits of it. And, you know, it’s interesting as coaching another individual this morning goal will do 26 million this year and on pace to do 26 million. It’s funny how the top producers come to coaching consistently day in and day out. And always get a holistic picture of what their business looks like. And, and some people reach a level of business and they plateau, they could get so much farther, if they’d be willing to take a step back, get out of their own way. And let somebody else just look at what they have going on and dialogue, you know, the producer has with today, you know, again, goals do $26 million feel pretty confident though, he’ll hit it. But, you know, it’s so busy in writing contracts and listing agreements and working with buyers and sellers. You know, it’s even said, you know, I’m lucky that we actually pause, do this for an hour. Because if, if I don’t feel obligated to me, and do this, I won’t do this. And like yeah, and here we are, we talked about minding the gap. That’s what I’m going to coach today on and talk to you about. It’s like, if you don’t mind the gap right now, you’re not you’re not going to hit your goal.

D.J. Paris 6:37
I have this almost exact experience in an unrelated field, at least once a week. So I have a I have a personal trainer, I’m fortunate enough to have one and the reason I bought are the reason why I pay for one is well because I won’t go to the gym on my own I am embarrassed to admit that it’s feels defeatist and you know, I’m a little but but the reality of it is it’s just not in my wiring as much as I would love to not have to pay for a trainer but I was thinking about this as you were talking about face seeing what’s right in front of you that may seem problematic and getting stuck there and not you know, doing a larger picture holistic approach and, and I realized I do this with my with my personal trainer, where just yesterday I was in there and I wasn’t feeling particularly good. I hadn’t slept a lot the night before. And she puts me through an insane workout where we go to failure on every exercise, it is very challenging. And I went in there and she goes how you feeling? And I she asked me that I’ve been with her for over a year. She always asked me how I’m feeling and sometimes I feel good and sometimes I don’t yesterday, I didn’t. And she goes okay, well what happened last night I said I just didn’t get enough sleep she Okay, she was okay, by the way, let’s get started. And we just we just go straight into it. And I realized boy that I’m so glad that she’s there to get me past my immediate sort of funk of not feeling very good. And I know that realtors can get caught in that as well where you know, they have a some sort of negative experience they send out to you know, 1010 offers and they get there the you know, they just get beat on all of them right now, that happens and it’s easy to get caught in that funk. And then just kind of let it stop your your forward motion. And I know that that’s probably the best reason for me to have a trainer is even though I feel like crap. She’s like, Okay, that’s great. Now let’s do some push ups. So it helps keep me just in Oh, yeah, I just gotta keep you know, making the donuts every day.

Ryan D’Aprile 8:29
Yeah, you do. And you know, that’s the double edged sword about our business. I’ve said it before, it’s, there’s such a lack of structure in our in our business. And, you know, most most people self destruct, and they self destruct in so many ways they self destruct right before they’re about to make it. A Gen Xer loan officers get to a certain level and they’re feeling success, and then they self destruct, or thoughts and worries and concerns of things that they didn’t think about before that were new challenges and didn’t realize these challenges are actually challenges they’re receiving because they’re at a higher level than they’ve ever been at before. And you know, it’s actually I can tell you, it’s not easy being a being a coach, because you can’t do it for these individuals. And you know, you get set up times you could do the workshops, you do sessions you hope the best for them. But you know, the amount of people that just self destruct and how much success is psychology, it’s actually positive psychology and finding happiness in what you’re doing and whatnot, and how important that is. It’s really, man, it’s really intriguing. It’s, it’s, it’s really interesting, like, you know, I look at our organization, okay. And you know, we are right around 2011 We decided let’s, let’s grow a real estate company, let’s just Ryan get out of sales, stop selling focus on attracting agents to your company and coaching them and the differentiator was gonna be we’re gonna be a coaching company, we’re not gonna be able to Brewing Company and as you obviously know, this business is all about recruiting, right the real estate brokerage business and, and and you know, you look at our organization you know, individually owned organization you know we’re not P E or VC firm backed. And there are huge players that are private equity backed I mean, you know, you look at Compass, right private equity now public and app properties in our area here, huge venture capital backed organization, Coldwell Banker owned by Realogy, right, publicly traded company, these companies are out to raid other real estate brokerages and recruit their people. Sure happens all day long. And, you know, that happens to us till and and I’m not complaining about it, when I’m saying to the agencies that every year our company has grown from 20 to 35 to 40%, huge growth, we’re up 57% over last year. All the meanwhile we are getting it packed, day in day out by corporate raiders trying their best and being successful at sometimes taking our people away from us. But why are we successful? Besides that? How do we continue to do that? Well, because our teammates are salaried employees come to work five days a week, six days a week, they follow a routine structure that I’ve set up for them, and that their manager set up for them. And because of that, because of all of the adversity we’re going to come in, we still continually have explosive growth. And 11 short years, you know, we’re, I think the 84th largest independent brokerage in the country with zero debt, zero bank lending, zero private equity, zero VC zero funding. But it’s not that it’s easy. And it’s not that I don’t have defeat every single day. It’s not that I’m heartbroken and to feel like you know, you meet somebody, you coach them up, right, and then you never see him again, it’s like, well remember me, right. And I have those heartbreaks, too, just like everybody else. But but I’m disciplined. And my behaviors, me as an individual, and, culturally, our support team together, we’re disciplined in our daily activities in our daily actions. And because of that, I have all the time in the world for my wife and my three daughters. Yeah, I have all the time in the world to do the things that I want to do for myself, maybe around a golf here or there. I have all the time in the world to run four different companies and start a software company on top of it. Because I’m disciplined. And because I’m disciplined with my time, is I actually have all the time in the world. And I have success because of it. So you know, the trick to our business as a real estate agent, not as a coach or not, as a broker owner, but as a realtor or loan officer, which is essentially 100% commission based role, right? You’re eating what you kill? How do you set yourself up? How do you set yourself up to be habitual? What do you what are you doing? What tools do you have? That should be your number one priority? Right there, your number one priority. And what I wanted to talk about today, in today’s coaching is the mind in the gap. So I’m going to probably, I’m going to pivot off this part of the discussion. But for you know, for our listeners, again, you know, you can have all the adversity, all the challenges in the market, man, you do the same things day in day out, right? It’s these little things that can add up, you get a compound factor, you

get a snowball effect, it actually gets easier. I’m I’m not gonna lie. It is. Listen, my business is complicated and what we have and all the people we have, but our growth is easier at this point. Because we’ve been doing it now for 10 years, we’ve gotten to our tipping point. And there are going to be agents that maybe they don’t do what they need to do, but maybe it’s been five, six years and they’re experiencing growth. Yeah, of course, you’ve been in it for a while you built a baseline brand for yourself, it’s going to be easier. But are you working at a peak level? Are you working at where you want to be? And are you actually working less than making more coaching brings that to you? It truly does. But at the end of the day, 20% of the population or less, are going to choose to seek out that and do it 80% Or more or not. And that’s just it’s a solid dice goes. If that’s even saying how the dice goes, but so

D.J. Paris 14:21
yeah, and I just wanted to put a cap on what you just said, which was, you know, spending some of your free time constantly thinking about what is the what are the few activities and it’s usually a few that as a listener, as a realtor, as a mortgage lender, whoever’s listening here to doesn’t really matter what profession you’re in. But what are the few activities and it’s probably between three and five. You know, what are those act major activities or they seem minor, but that create the most growth in your business. And if you can identify those, then you can start prioritizing and by the way, there is going to be things you need to do beyond those three to five things. But what are the three to five things that if I did these consistently, no, regardless of what’s going on in my life, or my job or whatever, that over a year to three years are going to create the most growth. And I think most most people probably just haven’t done that exercise. I know I struggle with it sometimes.

Ryan D’Aprile 15:21
Well, it’s it comes out, you know, and that’s why I created this dashboard. And it’s all based on the Toyota manufacturing model. And based on Kaizen and Kanban, Kaizen meaning continuous improvement, and Kanban, meaning visual flow, and most people just don’t actually have the right technology, to visually see where their businesses and to visually see the real excitement three to five is probably the one or two things that you need to do that will mean, there are 10 things in your business you’re gonna have to do. And that’s actually doing the business that’s like being an employee, there’s 10 Things you need to do write to get the job done. But there’s one to two things that you need to do to be a CEO of your business that’s going to move the needle, most of us will work as an employee and do the nine to 10, busy work, things that are mindless, not strategic, not thought provoking, not forward thinking, and very few of us will do the one to two things consistently, day in day out. And those one to two things are actually probably not the most fun things to do, they actually take willpower. And that’s why, you know, coaching is such a cottage industry, in our, in our businesses, because because, you know, agents are not employees, they’re independent contractors. And so, you know, I could tell my employee when to come, when to go and what to do, they’ll have more free time to make a great living, I have to get real estate agents, I have to get loan officers to understand hey, buying, come here, do this, do that. And you’ll be the, you know, you’ll be in charge, you know, in charge of your life, you’ll be you’ll have all the financial freedom and, and more time with your family, so on and so forth. But it’s, you got to you got to show that to them. But let’s move off that let’s talk about minor gap. Is that Yes. All right. So and the reason why I want to talk about minding the gap is Oh, first off, Where’d I get the term Mind the Gap, right, I get it from London when I was studying abroad and, and they underground, the tube, which is their subway, right. And when you get on the subway, they say Mind the Gap, which is basically the gap between the platform and the subway train that you step on? we’ve ever been to London before.

D.J. Paris 17:21
I have I actually when I was in college, we went as a family and I bought a mind that the gap T shirts, because I thought that was I don’t know why I thought that was so interesting. But of course, we did write the subway once or twice that I remember, you know, that’s that’s a phrase that anyone who’s who’s who’s written the tube knows about.

Ryan D’Aprile 17:41
Yeah, so we have signs, you know, internally that we post and whatnot, that this time of year coming in August, Mind the gap. And here’s what the gap is. And this comes into the software where we’re talking about, you know, we have, we track your goal. And we forecast where you’re going to be by the end of the year, then we track your close, we track your pending, we track your active, and then we track your warm prospects only in this particular bar chart. And the gap. All right, the gap. And there’s a couple gaps, the gaps a difference between your forecast and your goal. So the agent house coach, and this morning goal is $26 million. And the forecast is $24 million. Okay, if visual bar chart there, that looks pretty good. And the gap is only $2 million. Correct? Yeah. So what are we going to do to mine that gap, so that we come in and we hit our goal, right? Now, I’m going to also say something for our listeners here because the whole purpose of coaching, and, and and, and what we do here is self awareness, you need to be aware of yourself, because you are your biggest competition, you are your biggest challenge. And I we all tend to self destruct and we got to understand what motivates us. And there’s two things that motivate us pleasure or the avoidance of pain. And the majority of us are motivated by avoiding pain, not pleasure.

D.J. Paris 19:07
And we and I want to just really quickly talk about that for just a moment. Because this is really important that this is an important distinction that people really need to think about is we all think that we’re more motivated by pleasure, however, and maybe some of us are, but the vast majority of us if someone was chasing us with a knife are going to run a lot faster than if somebody puts you know, a pot of gold out in the distance and says run to this pot of gold and it’s yours. I would bet if we compare that side by side, I know I’m running a lot faster. The guy chasing me.

Ryan D’Aprile 19:39
Yeah, that’s it’s the truth. And you know, and you can take it from angry industry and look at loan officers and I talked to them about communication or about the loan process with both listing and buyer’s agent. And I say what an amazing sales call it doesn’t do anything. When I tell them hey, what a way to avoid a painful loan process because there’s 28 Other people You’re relying on as a lender, right? The title company, the home insurance company, the home, the condo association, the borrower, the borrower’s employee, you know, and in so many loan officers just back and they’re, they become victims of the loan process. And then the NFB and punching bags, when really it wasn’t even their fault. It’s the other parties weren’t cooperating to get the information at that time. So what I’ve learned to do is to coach loan officers on Hey, you want to avoid pain, call these agents twice a week and a form of what’s going on in forming the listing agent that the condo association hasn’t gotten back and the listing, Attorney listing agents attorney, the attorney for the seller hasn’t sent you the dial back, they’ve been requested three times, not only will you create a better will not only will you avoid the pain, right? And nobody’s yelling at you what happened, they’re all informed. So that’s what’s gonna motivate them. But then the byproduct of is they created a relationship with a listing agent, they had no idea where they were. And they did a good job now the listing agent made by chance if they have a great auto flow program and they’re doing lifelike real estate agents are supposed to be doing life flow. Now they get another referral partner out of it this shit simple. I mean, it’s beyond simple. But what’s what’s maddening is the the distractions that we have on day to day and how we prioritize things that just are not important. And we focus on the negative and not the positive. And it’s, you know, again, it’s it’s not it’s not easy, but it’s so god damn simple to be successful. So common back to nine, the gap, okay, coming back to mind of the gap. So the particular agent, we’re talking about $26 million goal, said $24 million forecasted. So the gap is like $2 million. That’s great. It’s August. That’s not you know, hey, we have three more months left, I say we have three more months left, because you guys, I truly believe you have August, September and October. Once those ones are over, you’re pretty much over for the year. You write a contract in November, December? Pretty good chances closing in 2022.

D.J. Paris 22:06
Yeah, you might get lucky here and there. But by and large, it’s yeah, you’re you’re done by that?

Ryan D’Aprile 22:11
Right. So you know, the dashboard. You know, our dashboard will then show you Okay, well, here’s what you’re at pending and closed. And for this particular agent, they’re at $15 million pending and closed. Okay, but now the gap is a little bit bigger. Because the forecast takes in consideration. Your active buyers, your active sellers, as well as your warm prospects totals up brings them to $24 million. You follow? Yep. But what about those active buyers and listings? Are they priced? Right? Are the buyers actually going to buy I already have an inventory issue where they’re actually want to buy, but most likely, they may not buy till next year when inventory increases. So now we gotta mind that gap. Okay, so we have to do that. And that’s why we talked about the dashboard here. And this is a podcast, which is kind of funny, because we’re speaking we’re not seeing here. But visual flow is so important. You got to see this stuff. And most agents have this written on it, yellow pad. Most agents buy CRMs that are going to give them Google ad works. And they’re going to give them SEO, all that stuff is completely mostly irrelevant in this business. It tracks agents who I’m going to get fancy website with the CRM, and I’m going to be able to do search engine optimization fine, but you’re never going to be Redfin and Zillow, and search

D.J. Paris 23:39
engine. And not only not only are you not going to be Redfin and Zillow, you’re not going to be Coldwell Banker, you’re not going to be Berkshire Hathaway.

Ryan D’Aprile 23:48
But those guys are at the bottom of the barrel. They’re at the bottom of the pile, compare those two, and those end up in the consumer is looking at those two and then we’re calling the agent that they have a relationship with, right? Like I’m telling you those those two, those two sites are not threats. Zillow is a vendor to us. Redfin is a quote unquote, disrupter that, you know, is is capable of losing, you know, $100 million year over year in the CEOs ethos is that real estate agents don’t provide value, right? So you know, as long as there’s investors willing to dump money into this thing, and then to work at free, but I think eventually, their philosophy may have changed say, why don’t we just sell leads? But that’s a whole other conversation. Sure. Right. So so, you know, most of the CRMs they have bells and whistles that are distracting, but unfortunately, DJ that’s the shit that people buy.

D.J. Paris 24:35
Okay, well, sure. It’s shiny, it’s exciting. It seems easy. And it takes the broker away from from what they really what we’re talking about is interpersonal connection. And, you know, those are usually the way that the vast majority of buyers and sellers choose a realtor is based on interpersonal stuff. Not so much. Yeah, go ahead.

Ryan D’Aprile 24:57
It is and also visual flow con Bob Keegan from the Toyota manufacturing system Kanban visual flow. So all of a sudden we’re we’re on a CRM and we’re dinking around with the next email marketing piece. But we’re not looking at our active buyers or sellers. What’s it’s totally and recalibrating? Are they really going to close this calendar year? And we’re looking at my warm prospects, my colds, my cools, going to my warms and seeing my 90% Certain this warm transaction is going to close by December 31. Given that it’s basically August 1. I mean, I know what is it September or July 22 right now. But you know, by the time you you, you push this podcast out, it’s probably August 1, right sometime around there. And again, okay, well, now we got three months of the year left. So we have to mind the gap. But I’m telling all the listeners here, like this is what every top producer in any industry is focused on, you set a goal. And you look at that goal, you know, he showed on a daily basis. And then you look at the activities that you’re doing in your CRM, your dashboard, whatever you’re using, needs to be able to track those measures. That’s the one or two things that you need to do. But coming back to mining the gap. So we have this particular agent and the forecast is saying $24 million, or goals $26 million. They only have a $2 million. Gap. Right? Yep. So then you dial it back, you say well, wait a minute, though. They’re at $50 million pending in closing. So $24 million, minus $50 million is helped me with my math here. Dollars. Yep. Yeah. So now you got a $9 million gap. So then we go looks at Well, wait a minute, though. They got $3.8 million in active listings. Okay. And we have, we have $2.2 million of warm prospects. Well, 3.8 2.2 put together is 6 million. Yeah. So that is where and I might be off my number. So I’m driving a car. That’s where the $2 million gap is coming from? Okay, so it’s $7 million? Because, yeah, what’s nine minus Yeah, it should be a seven. they’re active, they’re active, and they’re warm, could be between the two of them should be $7 million. So the first thing you need to do is you got to go through those active buyers. And if you have an inventory issue, you’re lying to yourself. Right, you’re lying to yourself if you haven’t been as active clients and not as prospects and, and categorize as cool. So they’re not going into your forecast. So you got to first go through and calibrate that. And then same with your warm prospects, you have, say $4 million of warm prospects, but you haven’t talked to three of them in a month and a half, you’re lying to yourself, you’re absolutely lying to yourself. And so with this particular agent, we went through a calibrated it. Okay. And after we did the calibration, we found that the gap went from 24,000,020 6,000,020 4 million, right. The forecast, the forecast went down to 22 million hours, no big deal. Now we got a $4 million gap. And then the question is, what do I do from here? What do I do from here? Which is a great question. And that should be your focus. Now, what do you do from here. So now, our combine our visual flow, it’s up to date, we calibrated it, it’s July calibrate, it should go to three weeks working on our business, we go back to our snapshot and calibrated again. But you gotta get you got to get dialed in and tighter and tighter as the end of the year comes on us. And guys, it’s going to be like that and just snap my fingers. If you can’t tell what that was. It’s the end of the year is going to be here before you know it. And now we’re talking about what’s going on in 2022. So this particular agent has a $4 million gap. Okay, a $4 million gap between their goal and where they are because they said yeah, these active buyers and the sellers, they will close before December 31. And I watched that agent take three or four clients and move them out and make column prospects for stone flow with them to still work with them. But they’re not lying to themselves and they’re not going to have an inaccurate forecast. And so they say okay, so now what do I do? How do I make up the bridge? How do I bridge that gap? How do I mind the gap from my forecasts are 24 million

are now 22 million, so I can hit my goal of 26 million. My formula our isn’t perfect. Now let’s go to your prospects tab. And they had 93 prospects all with different temperatures, majority of them work cold, not certain they’re going to hire me or cool certain they’re going to hire me but close next year. And then a handful of them were warm, which again, you don’t put a prospect in as warm unless you’re 95% Certain they’re going to close in that calendar year. And now that we’re in moving into August, I say are you 98% You know, so it gets tighter and tighter. So they have less people that are warm. So what do you do? You do not let three weeks go by? You do not let three weeks go by where every one of those 90 Three people have not heard from you on a social basis, check out what’s going on with them in Facebook, you see what’s going on LinkedIn, Instagram, tick tock, I don’t give a shit. What the social media platform is, people are broadcasting their lives out there, okay? And you find out what’s going on with them, you send them a text, a personal handwritten note is send an email, or better a direct message, commenting on them and asking them how they’re doing, and trying to create engagement back and forth. People will hire their friends as a real estate agents, period. Okay, they’re gonna look at market leaders, and they’re gonna look at friends and relationships, people hire people that they know, like and trust, you will become a market leader. If you penetrate your network, you will become a market leader, if you brand yourself through Autoflow and external branding techniques, which we’ll talk about at another time. But coming back to the mind and the gap, you gotta do that nice got 93 people. Three weeks, no more and even this top producing $26 million you’re producing loan officer had leads in there that they haven’t talked to since February, March and April. Okay. And the AHA oh shit moments like yeah, oh, shit. And by the way, it looks like you’re at 24 million. Now you’re 22 million. And those actives, and pendings actually have to close. So you take those out shit you might be at? Well, you are you’re right. 16, you’re at 60 million. Now. It’s like, wow, now I’m aware. And like, wow, this is so good. Now I’m aware visual flow combine where most of us are flying blind. Most of us can’t even tell us. What do you forecast this year, I don’t know I did 10 million last year, I should do 10 million this year, show me I can’t I just know. And that is flying by the seat of our pants that’s acting as an employee, not as a CEO of a business CEOs don’t work that way. I don’t work that way running my four or five different companies and any other CEO doesn’t work that way. And when I was a real estate agent, as CEO of my $40 million a year production business that I ran, I was crystal clear on my forecasts and where I was. And that was what I did first. And then I went and showed houses, I went and did a listing presentation over a kitchen table, and fluffed pillows, and worked with photographers to get good pictures. I did all that stuff after I focused on my business. So what’s the second thing we can do to mind the gap, after we go to the prospects tabs? You guys go to your closed tabs. And I want you to look at every person who bought a home from you. Okay, not a seller, I’m talking about buyers, listings will generate two leads an active listing to generate two leads, every active listing should generate two leads for you. But every closed buyer should generate at least two referrals for you. But you got to do it right. And if you’re not getting two referrals from your previous clients in the past four months, there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with your past buyers, it’s what you’re doing that is wrong. And you as a real estate agent should not let two weeks go by for at least eight months, where a previous buyer doesn’t hear from you. Because every time somebody buys a home, the only thing they’re going to be talking about and doing is talking about at home. That’s right, right. And every person in your network that’s not a real estate agent

knows, at least for people who want to buy or sell a home every year for the ones that actually bought a home and use you they’re the ones that are most aware because they’re speaking about it. And therefore their networks as well. We’re thinking about doing it till now if you do it right, and you’re in flow with them every two weeks for at least eight months. You’re gonna get all those referrals and that gap is gonna get closed. And it’s going to seem mindless to you. And what I mean by mindless, okay, would it mean? I think it might just kind of flat tire. What would it mean? Well, I just ran over a curb as I was turning when I think about mindless is another particular agent. Different agent will glide right into $24 million this year. And the mindless is every time I coach. It’s I gotta add three more contracts. I gotta I gotta add four more closings. I gotta add five more prospects. But that is the only thing that this agent does. He does live flow with his network once a quarter he did when he was first starting once a month. He does not let three weeks go by with any one of his prospects not hearing from him. And he is in his close tabs for the previous 12 months. And those buyers hear from him every other week. That is not mindless. That is intentional. That is as Angela Duckworth says in her book grit That is deliberate practice. That’s a CEO of a business. And everybody looks at his business just comes from we do. He’ll do 95 transaction assurance. He’s not a team. Well, yeah, I mean, the business comes to him. And it almost seems like it’s mindless. But he’s deliberate in his actions. And he can visually see in his dashboard, what’s going on, and he knows what he can do to move the needle. Now. He’ll lose a week here and there. And it’s summertime. And it’s, you know, that Fourth of July was two, three weeks ago, and I talked to him a week and a half ago, he’s like, I haven’t done shit, and I don’t care, I’m taking a break. Good, you’re entitled to you can, and he knows, comes the last week or the first week of August, he just gets right back in. And it’s it’s the water just flows right away from him just flows, because how intentional he was how focused he was on his deliberate practice, year after year, after year after year. And quite honestly, the needle moves so much quicker for those individuals. So that’s mining the gap, DJ, I hope that helps without any visual, but I think it’s a podcast, most people just listen, this is just for the benefits of Facebook viewers. But I’m not, you know, being visual here for you. But I hope I was able to paint a mental picture for you in the audience. Here.

D.J. Paris 36:23
You were. And I think this idea of us always remembering whatever sales position we’re in that people want to work with people they know like and trust, but know like and trust has to be continually earned. It is not an automatic after you help somebody buy their first dream home, it certainly lasts for a while there’s a honeymoon phase where that person is going to, if they liked you, they’re going to talk about how great you are. But as Ryan Ryan said, it’s really important to have a structure that doesn’t allow for the interpersonal stuff to fall by the wayside, which is easy to do, when you’re in the middle of whatever’s hitting you in the face at that particular moment, with maybe a challenge with another client or just the conditions of the market. And you Brian, you brought up a lot of great things, but figuring out how to not let your previous clients, your current clients, your prospects, you know, it’s easy to let them fall away. I mean, I can’t I can’t even imagine what percentage of buyers still hear from their existing agents. You know, a year after the sale I and certainly even within the first year, I don’t think they’re getting communicated with every two or three weeks, the vast majority of realtors are not doing that. And if every realtor just did that, could you imagine what their businesses would look like? If that’s all they did? And no other changes? That’s all.

Ryan D’Aprile 37:52
But yeah, I mean, you most again, and this is maybe to motivate our listeners share to avoid pain. Most real estate agents act as employees, they don’t act as owners of business, they’re not strategic. They were training me employees, they act like employees. And always they’re telling him what to do. So that doing it, right. And then all of a sudden, here’s the avoidance of pain, trigger hair that I’m trying to coach on. Now they’re back to being employees again, because he couldn’t be self employed. And so if you get into this business, and you act like an employee, you’re going to be somebody’s employee, again, really fast. That’s just the cold, brutal truth, maybe that will be a motivator for you to do these things and, and have the right tools and technology and the accountability partners, to keep you focused on what you need to do. And all

D.J. Paris 38:35
of these things, they can appear overwhelming because they seem so task focused, and there’s so many tasks to complete. And yes, it will feel like that at first, when all of a sudden you start structuring. Okay, every day, I’m going to comment on 10 of my previous clients posts on you know, on Instagram, I’m going to you know, and I’m not going to do it in an inauthentic way, I’m going to be authentic, but I’m going to go through and and then oh my gosh, that seems like I gotta do that every single day. And it’s like, well, yes, just like people who exercise have to exercise you know, most days to stay in reasonable shape. And you have to watch watch your you know, your food and everything else that you’re doing for your health. But, but But this, these are the things that as you start to develop muscle around the discipline, they really become quite just routine. And part of your day is going to be you know, commenting on people and reaching out to them and checking in and right now, there is not a problem, maybe there may not be a better time to be reaching out because there’s so much going on. Anyone who owns a home that you know whether they’re a client or not deserves a phone call from you and say, Hey, did you know that condos in your area are up in price by 10%? over last year? I don’t know if you’re thinking of moving but if you want I can run you a quick quote and see what you know what your place might be worth today. That is an amazing reason to call somebody. It doesn’t have to be a real estate kind of reason to call them but boy, there’s a lot of great real estate reasons or calling people who own a home and say, you know, I don’t know if you’ve read fired in a while. But it might be time to take a look at that, you know, that’s a great piece of value that you can provide. These are easy things that you can do, but you have to systematize them. So you don’t wake up one day and go, maybe I should call some people about refunds. Or maybe I should comment on you know, you need to know every day what what those calls look like, and then it just becomes way less overwhelming. And I’m sure you would agree with that, because that’s how you’re able to sort of manage all of the complexities of of your businesses is you have structure, you know, what you’re doing every day, you know, what moves the needle, and then you just execute that. And then there’s probably a lot less stress at the end of the day.

Ryan D’Aprile 40:34
Yeah, and as a real estate agent, I focus purely my connection with them purely on social stuff. I just keep it social. So it doesn’t feel like work to me. And it doesn’t appear to them. Like I’m selling them. I just ask them how they’re doing what’s going on. They they posted about their spaghetti and meatballs last night like wow, that looks good to us. You know, I’m gonna send a message and I’ve been posting on their Facebook page I’m sending a message. Hey, that’s bugging me both amazing. We’ll make that tonight. Hope all’s well tell Sally I said hi. Or they just posted a new Labradoodle or their their grandkid graduated kindergarten, their son that dress graduated high school, whatever it might be. I’m keeping it pure social, my Autoflow my postcards every week, my my email marketing, excuse me, my postcards every month, my email marketing, real estate reports twice a year, that’s going to tell them what I do for a living. My daily contact is going to say hey, I’m your friend. I’m going to create the bond tight net bond between them. And then for those of you and I’m going to use this to wrap up the call if that’s okay with you, DJ Yes, permanent to an interview I got coming up here in Naperville here at three o’clock. Um, but that’s pulling into my house this morning. And I think I told DJ, you before we got on the call I you know, I’m a road warrior in the summertime, right. So I drove in from Lake Geneva last for this today. This morning. I drove in from Chicago, from Lake Geneva to Chicago. And when Chicago to my house in Western Springs, I had to grab something. And on the way out to Naperville. That’s pulling in Western Springs, I saw my young neighbors. It’s funny how quick life goes by I was a young guy with three young girls on the block. Just yesterday. Now my wife and I were 45 We have 17 1514 year old and I have to you know, I think 33 year olds that moved in next door to us. And you know, they’re plant flowers and they have their baby swaddled, they just let a baby two weeks ago, and they have another two year old girl. Just meet these folks and do things every time a home sells at the median price of $333,000 $1,000 is pumped to the economy. And this $80,000 is pumped in economies anything from commissions as real estate agents, loan officers, home inspectors, Attorney title, Home Goods, Home Depot and so on so forth. And it’s pulling in. They got all this landscaping and they’re doing it themselves. Right. And I think yeah, that’s I get it. Yep. And they had a dumpster in front like, yeah, there’s, there’s a ton of money going in this house. I’m home improvement stuff. And you know, every time we sell a home man, we are adding to the economy, we drive the economy. But the interesting thing about is, life goes on. I mean, life goes on. And here my wife and I are 45 We’re, you know, I feel like I just graduated college yesterday, right? And now I’m, I’m, I’m not the old guy on the block. But we’re the older folks on the block. And they’re the younger kids on the block who we were yesterday. And that cycle continually goes on and on and on. And there’s 330 million people in United States. And there’s 1.6 million realtors and the National Association of Realtors, and NAR came out and said only 50% of them transact. Right. So that means there’s only 800,000 Real estate agents. So if you take 1.6 6 million real estate agents and divided by the 330 million people, there’s a half a percent, right. And then if you take the 800,000 of them that are actually selling, okay, that’s only a quarter of 1% that are selling. So, as I look at these people, I’m like, there’s business everywhere, all the time. But everybody is just so stuck and tunnel vision living in now. It got to pick your head up and you got to look around, you should be tunnel vision in your activities. That’s what you should be tunnel vision. But when you’re trying to look for abundance and all the stuff that’s happening, right, you’re talking DJ, you know, I sound like like, like a grandpa and I and I say this, you’re talking to a guy that was four years in the business. When 2008 came along. He had a wife and three kids and I was the only income. Guess what? 2008 2009 2010 guys? I made a ton of money, selling real estate, putting money selling real estate, because so many people quit. So many people left the business. But guess what, the business didn’t go away. There was there was tragedy going on. There was a meltdown. But homes are selling, people were buying homes. And guess what, I was facilitating it, make it more than enough to have a wonderful lifestyle for my family. But all I did is I focused on my actions in my activities. So anyways, I’m gonna wrap up with that I hope minding the gap helps our listeners, I would like anybody who listen this, you know, if you’re confused, or you have a question on it, listen, really listen to this thing again.

I mean, the key to learning is repetition. And I’ve been coaching now for 11 years, and I’m repeating the same thing over and over again. And my $25 million, my 40 my $55 million individual producing agents, my $70 million and 100 million dollar individual Matt team, producing loan officers, they come in time and time and time again, to hear the same shit out of my mouth. Because they know it’s what works. And they gotta keep it top of mind. If you want to be that top 20%, you got to focus on these basic things that we’re talking to learn some of the techniques of the mind the gaps, give the technology that’s out there to show you your forecast your goals, the track where you are to track what you’re doing, that’s the only thing that matters, you stay focused on those daily actions, then your annual goals will come in, right where you want them to be at the end of the year, every year.

D.J. Paris 46:19
We should also tell mention to that you don’t have to do it yourself. There are coaching options available. There’s obviously in the real estate industry, in the mortgage industry, there’s a lot of coaching companies. And you know, you don’t even have to necessarily hire a coach that way, if that’s not affordable, because you can get an accountability partner, who maybe is in the same office of you as yours, or somebody who’s in the same industry who, who wants accountability, but having third a third party person, take a look and tell you in writing or you were just saying really the same things over and over again. And isn’t that you don’t bring new things to the table. But the fundamentals are the fundamentals. And they typically don’t change. You know, John Wooden, the famous UCLA coach was all about fundamentals. He said I don’t look at the scoreboard, it doesn’t matter. He was the winningest coach in NCAA history. And he said I literally don’t look at the scoreboard, I don’t care. And it was all about fundamentals, you know, and so, you know, we all we all need a third party to help us stay on top of those fundamentals. Whether you hire a trainer or coach, whether you have an accountability partner, whether it’s your spouse, it could be anybody. It just can’t be you, you know, for everything.

Ryan D’Aprile 47:32
Exactly. Absolutely. So Mind the Gap, guys, it’s it’s August, right? And you got three months left, you know, what’s your goal, but you forecasted that? What’s your gap? Dig in, you can either, you know, you can either go about it and look at where you’re at and measure activities where you can fly blind. I’d rather take the former than the latter.

D.J. Paris 47:54
flying blind is just an increase in anxiety, fear, anger, is your going to feel less than control, you will be a less happy person if you’re flying blind, and your business.

Ryan D’Aprile 48:08
Yeah, yeah. And it’s and it’s how most people choose to run their business. And at the end of the day, I tell everybody, you know, I started this in coaching and coaching, it’s your choice. It is all this comes down to the choices you make, it’s your choice. Most people unfortunately choose to find blind. And the great thing about it, is you have the ability to change it.

D.J. Paris 48:27
Well said and great place to wrap up. So for everyone who is listening, if you are in the Chicagoland area, or perhaps you live in Wisconsin, Indiana, or Michigan and your real estate agent or a loan officer, and you’re not getting the support and the coaching and you know all of the tools that you need to really take your business to the next level, check out depot properties. And they have various companies, but the easiest place to find sort of their central hub is Depot properties.com. And I’ll put a link to that here in the show notes, of course. So you know, if you’re looking for a coach and your firm doesn’t offer that, or you just want a firm to help you with some of what Ryan mentioned a few times on the show, which was called auto flow, which happens to be, you know, systems that he’s created to help automate some of the marketing and some of the touches that can be done that, you know, just take time away from agents doing other things. They offer a lot of that. So definitely check out D APR properties.com If you’re an agent and just want to see what other options exist out there. They’re an amazing company and they have great great employees, I’ve got to tour their their headquarters. It’s really super impressive. They just have a lot going on. So definitely check them out to April properties.com. And of course, before we go please to help us continue to grow and support the show tell a friend I think of one other real estate agent or loan officer anyone sort of related to this field that could benefit from hearing this coaching episode with Ryan and send them a link to our website. Easiest way to do it, just send them over to keeping it real pod.com In fact, we have all of the episodes category buys out right on the homepage. So if you scroll to the bottom, and you just want to hear all the Ryan coaching moments you can do that you don’t have to search through and and find them and the 300 Plus episodes that we’ve done, so please send them over to keeping it real pod.com that helps us continue to reach more people. And we can continue to do more episodes for you. So, Ryan, as always, thank you so much for continuing to be such a valued guest on our show guest host or co host I should say, and boy, I love sitting and listening. And it’s it’s always it’s, it’s energizing for me in my own business to now think about okay, what do I need to forecast? Well, I need to look at my forecast for the rest of this year as well. So thank you for that gentle reminder as well. So, as always, we will see everybody on the next episode and Thanks, Ryan. Thanks EJ.

Welcome to the July episode of Learn With A Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate!

In this episode Joel the importance of being a mentor to your clients. Joel emphasizes his long educational sessions he does with his clients as an important part of his business. Joel explains “adverse market fees” and how this fee has impacted the refinancing market. Joel gives a tip on how you can reconnect and provide value to your old clients. Last, Joel talks about the partnerships he’s looking to build with other agents.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Joel can be reached at [email protected] and 773.654.2049.

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Joel Schaub at guaranteed rate. As a realtor it’s important to partner with only the most trusted name in mortgage lending. Joel has 1000s of satisfied clients and gives $1,500 of his commission back to your buyers on every closing. He is known for his ability to close even complex deals start to finish in only 14 days to learn what 1000s of others already know. Make a note to call Joel at 773-654-2049 or email [email protected] Guaranteed Rate is an equal housing lender licensed in all 50 States Consumer Access Number 2611 And now on with the show.

Hey, welcome to another episode of Keeping it real in the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show as always, and today, once again is our monthly series are one of our oldest monthly series and our most popular monthly series called Learn with a lender with Joel Schaub from guaranteed rate. Now, Joel is vice president of lending at guaranteed rate, he’s got to that level for basically what he does for clients, which is he specifically gives back part of his commission every time back to the buyer. Now, last year alone, Joel gave back almost $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with him, which puts Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide. Now out of 400,000 loan officers in the country, Joel is currently ranked number 137. And last year, he closed 535 transactions, his highest amount ever. And then and that was for almost 200 million this year already or only towards getting towards the end of July here. But already he has closed 383 transactions for 155 million. This is you know when we bring on partners on the show, we want people who are true experts in their field. Of course Joel is now if you are looking for a loan officer, we cannot more highly recommend Julie’s the very best we’ve ever worked with Joel can be reached at Joel. So here’s his email [email protected]. Again, Joel [email protected]. Or you can shoot him a text message or call him at 773-654-2049. Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel, welcome once again. Hey, thanks

Joel Schaub 2:39
so much for having me on DJ, really great to be here and all those accolades. That kind of even impressed me when I hear them. But I’ve told you this before none of them numbers matter. It’s all about giving back. And actually having the agents get something from every time they tune into keeping it real. So congratulations on your success and doing this for so long. It’s it’s impressive,

D.J. Paris 3:02
thank you, it’s fun, because we it’s funny, like in the last couple of months. And just to pull back the curtain slightly. On our show, we we I talked to Zonta, who’s our producer, if you ever reach out to our show, she’s usually the person that that contacts people back, whether it’s a guest or and all of a sudden I said design and we need to get more more more sponsors. And so we kind of started to come up with a plan. And just so happened that as we were trying to formulate our plan to get more sponsors, not not people like yourself to bring on the show, we you know, we would never want to change that. But just people, you know, advertisers and things. And all of a sudden, we have now started getting a flood of advertisers, basically tech companies, mostly who want to advertise on our show. Now for our episodes, of course, we only talk about guaranteed, right? But what’s very exciting is to your point is it took about five years of constantly really pumping out the content. And now all of a sudden, of course, we have a much larger listener base, mostly due to our guests providing such incredible content, Joel, of course, like you do every single month. And so Joel is a living example of just discipline, hard work and consistency. This podcast is is really nothing other than me doing this every single week for many years. It does, it does work. This is a relationship business. And people are gonna get hooked on, in our case, our content from our podcasts and Joel’s case how his partnerships that he builds with real estate agents. In fact, we were talking offline just before we started and Joel said, you know, I really used to focus almost exclusively on refi. As he goes, I now focus most of my time on building partnerships with other realtors, which has obviously been very successful for you,

Joel Schaub 4:43
DJ last week and agent asked me something very similar to what you were just talking about here, which is how do you get to a point where you’re doing 50 transactions each and every single month, right? And it’s just consistency. So I speak

D.J. Paris 4:59
you know, And Joel is on his way back. So we lost you, but you’re back. So

Joel Schaub 5:05
I’m mortified when it connects like that. Now, but I know that you handled it while I stepped away.

D.J. Paris 5:11
We’re gonna fix it in post. So not a big deal. I kept the live viewers entertained. While we were waiting, so no big deal it happens.

Joel Schaub 5:20
Okay, well, I’m going to tune in to see if you juggled or what you did while I was gone.

D.J. Paris 5:25
I did juggle.

Joel Schaub 5:27
But the question here, I literally had an agent DJ that asked me last week about when you were talking about the numbers, right? How do you close 50 transactions a month? And I mean, if somebody else doing the work? And the answer is no, I actually speak to every single borrower, and I help them. And when, when I went through that with them, no matter what you’re doing, you’re always busy, right. But it’s important to find somebody that’s one step above you, and then mentor them. So if it’s somebody in your office, if you’re right now doing two or three transactions a month, and you want to build it up to five or 10, find somebody that you can mentor, or that can mentor you so that you can take it to the next level. And then what I also said was just like, anything, when it comes to like a podcast, or being a realtor, the barrier of entry is low. And the reason you’re successful, and the reason that we’ve become successful is just one thing. It’s consistency. It doesn’t happen overnight. You’ve built this by doing it every single time the same way.

D.J. Paris 6:32
You’re exactly right. And I suspect if I were to ask you, do you consider yourself to be you know, the very smartest or the the best loan officer on the planet? Or people might ask me, Wow, you’re really good at podcasting. I’m like, I don’t know that I’m so good at it. I just know that I do it a lot. And I get guests who who probably provide much better content than I could. But I don’t think of it is it’s not just because I’m naturally skilled at communicating. In fact, as a podcast host, I’d be better at listening than I would should be talking but but the reality of it is, is I just do, nobody else is doing it this much. And and again, yes, there’s a little bit of skill involved. And you of course, have tremendous skill. I don’t want to take away from that. But your consistency is really the key to your success, I think if I don’t want to speak for you, but I know that that’s a big factor.

Joel Schaub 7:25
It’s experience, it’s just doing it repetitively. So it’s literally no you’re not insulting me at all, my skills are only okay, what made me to the level where I could do it was putting in the time and creating a plan. And the plan was to go after purchase business and be different. And it was about creating a brand. So that people recognized the brand, because there’s a lot of lenders and just like all the realtors out there, there’s a lot of competition. So differentiating yourself staying consistent, and doing the one or two things that actually provide value back to the clients versus trying to be everything to everybody. So the big core thing that I do is long education sessions right up front with clients. And even if you’re not great, you can be an educator. And that takes you so much further than any sales course, any tips and tricks on how to get people to do things doesn’t work that way, if you can provide value and learn what you’re good at and what you can teach, that’s how people are going to listen to you as the expert. And so the same way. So keeping it very consistent and doing it repetitively is going to be better than any kind of like sales course that you could ever take to try to get people to do what you want them to do. And that’s not the way we operate. And you know that

D.J. Paris 8:49
I do and and I’ve had firsthand experience working with you and your team. And it is truly remarkable just how well oiled and professional. You guys are specifically around education. And I think that’s, you know, your major differentiator. Of course, lots of loan officers are out there 400,000 in the country. And I wonder what percentage of them? The the client would say, boy, they really, really not? Did they give me a great rate, because lots of loan officers can do that. But did they educate? Do I know what’s going on? Do I feel confident in this closing? Do I feel like I’m not in the dark? But I wanted to talk about which of course, you know, you guys do a great job of but I did want to talk about what’s some pretty exciting news on the refi side, which has to do with a fee that was introduced during the pandemic to help offset you know, some of the costs that the banks were incorporating, and that fee is now going away. So could you mind sharing just a little bit about what that means? Um, how to and how to talk about it if you’re a realtor.

Joel Schaub 9:52
Yeah, this week alone rates are drastically lower than they’ve been in months and months, especially on the refinance. transactions. Last year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enacted a adverse market fee. Okay, effectively overnight, it meant that a $400,000 loan was 50 basis points more expensive to originate and all the banks pass that along. Thank you banks, pass it right along to the customer. So what does that mean rates didn’t go up a half a percent, the cost to get a specific rate went up a half a percent and points. So a $400,000 loan costs $2,000 more the next day. And all banks did was baked that into the rate. So effectively, rates went up on refinances last year, right. A week ago, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac overnight without warning said that fee is now gone. And most banks now originating loans going forward, saw rates dropped by an eighth or a quarter point overnight. Okay. So how is this an opportunity? We’re realtors, right? If I’m a realtor listening, I’m not necessarily so concerned with what a client has once they own a house, but you should be. It’s a real opportunity DJ. And if I was an agent right now, and I had an extra hour or two, I would create a list of all my clients that had closed and simply call them and say, now that we’re closed, it does make sense for you at least to call back the bank that did the mortgage and see if you can refinance to a lower rate for free. Okay,

D.J. Paris 11:33
yeah. And you’re, you know, you’re saving, like you said on a $400,000 loan, that’s, that’s, you’re saving two grand and closing in those refi fees. That is a substantial amount to refi. And also, by the way, oh, you’re Yeah, you’re getting a better rate, possibly.

Joel Schaub 11:51
Because last year, do J, you’re exactly right, people bought before. And rates were really low last year, but a lot of borrowers found when they called their bank, that they weren’t eligible for the rate that everybody else was getting, right because of that adverse market fee. So it meant that borrowers that were buying homes last year, were seeing rates under 3%. But consistently, the refinance rate was above that. And it costs a lot of money. So a lot of people sat on the sidelines. Now’s the time, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. And right now, for the next couple of weeks, we anticipate these rates being below 3%, on average, across the board, even for refinances. So if I’m an agent, I’m making some phone calls, and it’s going to do one of two things. One, it’s going to keep you in touch with your past clients, which is a big plus. Okay. Your tell them, the big secret is calling their bank and not asking what the lowest rate is, okay, calling them back and asking what the lowest rate is, but then asking, what rate can I get? If I pay no closing costs? What’s the true no closing cost rate? And that’s where the banks will say, okay, I can get you down 150 or $200 a month without paying any fees. And that’s the real secret, there’s always a rate that’s probably lower than what you have now, where you don’t have to pay anything at all. No appraisal, no title fees, no processing fees. And if that saves you over $100 a month, it’s worth the paperwork to sign and get a lower rate. It wasn’t available before. Now it is. Yeah, it’s

D.J. Paris 13:27
pretty remarkable. And the amount of work that it takes for a current, you know, loan holder to refi, as is not not a term, if, unless there has been what major life event changes, it’s usually a pretty simple process.

Joel Schaub 13:43
Banks make it hard. But that’s why show back to the person that helped you. If you don’t have the right person, you can definitely reach out to us. But refinancing DJ is really simple. As long as you’ve continued the job, and you’ve made the payments on time, it is a few pieces of paper that do need to be signed, updated income and asset statements. And a lot of times they don’t even need the appraisal NOW. So there’s a lot less that goes into it. Okay. The second thing, remember, I told you there were two things right. A second thing would be hopefully that just by reaching out, they say, you know, thank you so much for the information. My brother, you know, Jim and Susie are getting ready to buy a home, I’d like to introduce you. So it’s that consistent touch. If I’m an agent, and I have time on my hands, and I know a lot of us don’t. But call blocking setting time just to call back your past clients and it sounds like this. Hey, Kevin, you know, it’s Joel, I know that we closed a year ago. How are you? Good. I’m sure you’ve probably seen it in the news, but rates are down right now on mortgages. So I think it might be a good time for you to reach back out to the mortgage guy who helped us close this deal. And see if you could save some money. I don’t know if it’s right for you or not. But I wanted to pass that along to. It’s as simple as that you’re connecting and you’re adding value And that helps right DJ.

D.J. Paris 15:02
It’s, it’s really just that simple. It does help. And I’m just going to make up a number here, but I would guess 99% of Realtors do not do that. Maybe, let’s we can be generous and say 95%. Maybe, of Realtors don’t. But it’s probably almost 100% Don’t. So this is a really an amazing tip. Because we all know that, you know, we think, okay, that transaction is closed, it’s been three years, I don’t really want to call them and say, Hey, are you thinking about buying or selling right now, which of course you can do, but a lot of agents are not comfortable with that call because it feels salesy. It feels not as authentic. But like Joel said, at the very beginning of the call, if you have some knowledge or some education to provide to them, you never have to ask for the business. Although you can always ask if you want, but education cuts through all of that discomfort, because you’re just literally saying, Hey, I just thought about you, here’s a possible opportunity. And Joel made it set it really well saying I don’t know if this is right for you or not, but it’s worth a phone call. And again, the only thing, there’s no negative that can happen. There’s only positive even if the homeowner just goes now we’re good at the moment, they’re gonna go well, that was nice of our of our agents to think about us after the sale,

Joel Schaub 16:15
a few minutes of time DJ on a phone call, where you’re not getting anything from it, and you’re not expecting anything from it. So you’re not calling saying, if you know anybody wants to buy or sell call me right, that line is all played out, what you really want to do is actually be in their best interest, care about them a few minutes to say I think it makes sense for you to call the mortgage bank back could really be a benefit, because you never know who they know. And the more you can stay in touch with them with these little nuggets of value, they’re going to remember that and when they move, they’ll remember you. Or if their brother or sister or family member is looking to buy or sell, they’re going to refer you. Because you called without any dollar amount in mind, you’re not trying to make money. But you got to set a time, you got to set the time aside, okay, and it has to be you it can’t be your assistant. These don’t have to be long calls. And it’s even good. If you even got a voicemail just leave the message saying there’s no need to call me back, I was just thinking of you, I’m sure you heard the news about rates being down, now’s a good time to see if you could save some money, call me if it ends up happening.

D.J. Paris 17:26
That kind of thing. It’s it’s such a simple and it’s it’s really oftentimes, you know, the best ideas are the most simple. That’s what outcomes razor, I think is what that’s called. But but the idea is that you know the consistency, so you can’t, you can do it once and you’ll you might get some benefit. Maybe somebody will call you back and you know, say oh, by the way, I have another friend who needs your help. But But consistency. So do you have to do it every month, oh, maybe not a phone call every month, I don’t know, maybe you could but think you know, you have to create a structure and say every however many months, every three months, I’m going to be calling them with some idea or some education or whatever timeline you think is appropriate. But you have to track it. You have to you have to have it scheduled. And you just have to do it. And you’ll find it’ll take time. It might be two years of doing this. And then all of a sudden, boy, the you know, the referrals and other opportunities will just keep rolling and just like it did for you and your business drawl. It’s worked out like that here at our podcast as well. So consistency education, really are the two keys consistency and education.

Joel Schaub 18:34
We in our group right now we’re already planning the 2022 closings, right? So there’s two types of business, right? It’s what we’re going to do right now to get new transactions in the door. And it’s also what we’re doing today that we know will result in closed transactions, six to 12 months from now. And that is what we just talked about. These type of phone calls right now aren’t going to result in deals today for you. These are the planning so that you are busy in the times where it’s not so busy. Okay, taking the time so that you can block and make calls to people that already know like and trust you. Okay, if you close the deal, they know you. Hopefully they still like you. And if you did a good job, they trust you. Okay. And that’s how right now we’re doing 20 to $30 million of closings every single month consistently at that level, because of what we did six months ago, and the month before that is planning for the future. And a lot of people just focus on what they’re doing today. So I challenge everybody to call block, put some time aside, and you don’t have to change things overnight. Everybody always underestimates what they can do in a year. And they overestimate what they can do in a week. I’m gonna call everyone I know in a week. No, you’re not you’re not gonna you haven’t done it before. You’re not going to do it now. Set small blocks aside and make a few phone calls and get comfortable. And you’ll see you’re really Providing value and now you’re providing something that’s relevant, timely, and in the news rates are down. Did you know this is how it could benefit you. And I guarantee this will result in new deals for you if you’re an agent.

D.J. Paris 20:14
And I recommend everyone who is listening, who is, of course, a realtor to pay attention to rate to lending news, you know, you can subscribe to all. So there’s lots of websites that will kind of give you a daily briefing, and here’s what’s going on. And most of the time, it probably won’t apply to a realtors direct business. But the reason I knew about this, this, you know, refi rate removed, being removed, officially next month across all institutions that Joel’s company’s already removed it is because I pay attention to the news and I don’t have the time I look at it, I don’t know what I’m looking at. But this one caught my eye. And so as a realtor, you might, you don’t always have to wait for our episode to give you these kind of tidbits you can do what what I did was just, you know, do a little Googling and set up some alerts around mortgage news so that you get notified because your clients probably aren’t buyers and sellers, your homeowners are not probably paying attention to lending rates, once they move in there. They’re sort of done, they’re moving on with their lives, they’re not thinking about it. But you can think about it as a realtor and stay in touch and give them it gives you a reason to reach out.

Joel Schaub 21:18
There’s one site on the internet that’s an unbiased behind the scenes for mortgage that a lot of realtors, check out, okay. And it’s called mortgage News Daily. Okay, so it’s just as simple as mortgage news daily.com. And it’s free, you’ll be able to look and see what people in the industry know. It has very good news feed so that you can pick up on things that you can when you’re driving people around, it’s important to have stories, people connect with stories, and what’s better than true life current things that are happening. So I encourage everybody, it’s a free plug. They don’t pay me. But I’ve been subscribing to them and checking them out daily, I get an email from them mortgage News Daily. It’s the behind the scenes that gets quoted on CNBC and CNN etc.

D.J. Paris 22:08
So it’s not the prettiest looking website, but it is probably the best aggregator of mortgage Articles More it that’s what I use, do I use mortgage News Daily, I look at it for about five seconds a day I scan to see if there’s a headline that I understand because a lot of it’s really industry specific, but I but that’s how I knew about the rate being removed by the Fed. So very exciting stuff. So realtors, you know, just it just doesn’t mean you have to study things for hour a day, just spend half a minute, knowing what’s going on in the world of lending. Of course, in the world of real estate, I started making these these one minute videos, which I just started doing for about what’s going on in the Chicago market. Because I know that even our own Realtors probably aren’t looking at this, this the you know the the market stats. So I started creating 62nd videos because our agent said, Hey, could you give us a little bite sized tips. And so we’ve only done about three of them so far. But you know if I can do them for a year, my my want to get my our agents hooked on this content. So get yourself hooked on someone’s content, whether it’s this podcast or others. Joel, of course, is a great resource to all realtors who want to partner up and actually help build their businesses together. Can you talk just a little bit about sort of the partnerships that you were looking for with other agents?

Joel Schaub 23:30
Well, a lot of people have literally heard me on over the last several years, and they actually have tested me they’ve reached out on a Saturday and I’ve answered and I’ve replied to emails just helping them with nothing in return, where they say, Hey, I got a situation with this current lender, what should I do, and I help them through that. But we’re licensed in all 50 states, I focus primarily on just north of a dozen states so that I can keep the licensing and be up to date on taxes and transfer fees, etc. So I can speak intelligently. But if it’s in a state that I personally don’t handle, I have a staff of people that handle all 50 states. And right now the partnerships quite literally, if you don’t have a mortgage partner, you just have somebody that you’re giving deals to, they should be helping you. Okay, they should either be helping you on CO marketing, spending money on your lead sources, helping you on your open houses, it’s got to be a real partnership. And I know a lot of lenders out there saying Don’t say this, but they should be spending money on you. Okay, RESPA compliant ways where they can contribute money to either your marketing campaigns or your open houses. And that’s what a real partnership is based on. So I never go to agents and ask them, send me your deals. I like to learn what they’re doing to get business and figure out true bonafide ways that I can add value, whether it’s writing a check, or helping them on open houses or creating marketing events. There’s a lot of ways that a real estate, mortgage professional teamwork go together. So if you don’t have somebody like that, and you’re working with somebody right now, ask them what they’ll contribute. Because right now the lenders are busy. And they should have money. I know a lot of people on my team personally reach out to agents and help them on a lot of the different campaigns that they’re working on. And they should be willing to, and if they’re not move on, find a lender that will help you. Okay, it’s got to be a two way street.

D.J. Paris 25:29
If you’d like to work with Joel or reach out to him for any reason, and you should definitely email him at [email protected], or send him a text or call him directly on his phone, which is 773-654-2049. And as Joel said, guaranteed rate is licensed in all 50 states. Joel himself works with about a dozen states, but he can pass you over to someone else in the event that you need more expertise in a state where he is not primarily focused, but they can guaranteed rates awesome, they did my most recent purchase, and I couldn’t, couldn’t more highly recommend them. Well, Joel, what a great episode once again, and as before we leave, we want to just remind everyone the best way you can help support our shows to tell a friend, think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Joel and send them a link to the show best way to do that just seminar website, which is keeping it real pod.com. Back, if you scroll down on the homepage, you can see all of the different episode categories we have, including learning with a lender with Joel shop, and you can actually see all of adult shop episodes right there in case you wanted to go through and binge listen to all of them, which you may and you probably should do, because every single month, we don’t really talk about rates much at all, we really just talk about ideas that Realtors should be implementing to grow their business. That is the purpose of the Learn with a lender series, even though of course, Joel is not an agent, but he works exclusively with agents. And so he is always to so much great content in there. So go back and listen to those old episodes. And you don’t have to pay much attention to an episode two years ago that where we talked about the rates, because that may not be applicable now. But if you just wait a little bit in the episode, you’ll hear a great tip. So go back, tell your friends about the show, keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up a podcast app and search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button once it comes up. And of course reach out to Joel You know, definitely he and his team are exceptional. They’re great. And I say this a lot but we get pitched a lot on this show to bring other lenders Of course, lots of lenders would love to get in front of our audience. We of course turned them all down because Joel is is the best we’ve ever worked with. So check him out [email protected] or call him at his number that we provided. Joel, thanks once again for being on the show. And we will see you next time.

Joel Schaub 27:53
This was really good. I know we added a lot of value was great. And I’ll see you again soon DJ thanks for all

Chris Jones the Founder of Guerilla Realty talks about how his family business in real estate started and how he helped grow the business. Chris talks about his own company and the set of free tools they offer for realtors. Chris presents their free tools like Listing Cake, Fizbonanza, and Nerdsheets. Last, Chris talks about their 15min hack to get free leads from Zillow.

Pipeline ProTools offers a promotion with the code DJPARIS.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Chris Jones can be reached at 910-670-7733 and [email protected].

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with Chris Jones of Gorilla Realty who’s going to be giving you all sorts of amazing cutting edge technology tips to help you get more real estate business for example, a quick little hack of for Zillow of how to get free leads, which is very exciting. So stay tuned. Before we get to Chris. Just a couple of quick reminders. Number one, please tell a friend think of one other real estate agent that could benefit from hearing from top producers and tech gurus like Chris and send them a link to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, you can stream right from your browser. Also please follow us on Facebook you can find [email protected] forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we push every episode we’ve ever done onto our Facebook page, we also post a daily broker tip to help you grow your business. So again, that’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod as always, thank you for continuing to support and listen to our show. We couldn’t do it without you. And we are grateful for you right now and forever. And now on to our interview with Chris Jones.

Hey, today on the show, we have Chris Jones from gorilla Realty and also from pipeline Pro Tools. Let me tell you a little bit about Chris. Chris is the founder of Gorilla Realty who is building the world’s best marketing engine for realtors. We believe he believes real estate is the greatest business on Earth. But all agents know that getting consistent clients is difficult. And what gorilla Realty does is makes marketing foolproof for agents no matter their age experience or niche. He teaches amazing webinars that have been featured by NAR the close one of our partners, and CNN among others. Learn more about Chris at gorilla realty.com And I’m gonna spell that is g u e r i l l a realty.com. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming

Chris Jones 3:49
on. Thanks so much. I’m a I’m a huge fan of the show. And it’s awesome to be here.

D.J. Paris 3:55
We I appreciate that. I’m a huge fan of what you’re doing, Chris and I were just talking before we started because this is a pretty unique episode for us where our listeners a longtime listeners, of course, know that you know, traditionally 99% of our episode episodes are talking to top producers and saying how’d you do that? How do you become successful, we rarely get to talk to marketers who aren’t specifically out there producing real estate but creating tools for agents now we get pitched by all sorts of tech companies that have tools that they want to promote to realtors, but very rarely do I actually ever get to talk to a marketer directly. And that’s really what I do as well in a different way. So I’m really excited to talk with with Chris and this is really just again, a very unique episode for us, which is really exciting for me. I love talking to top producers but I really love talking to marketers, I think even more. So Chris, tell us a little bit about your journey into the world of like real estate tech.

Chris Jones 4:52
Yeah, so you could say that real estate is the family business. So growing up my dad was in automotive repair of all in histories. So he owned, he worked his way up from being a mechanic, all the way up to owning several transmission franchises. Wow. And around the time that I was in high school, I think that the emotional drainage was too much like it’s the job where you can do everything is perfect, everything flawless. And at the end of the day, all your customers still hate you. Right? Because they’re mad that their car’s broke. They’re paying for it. And of course, it’s always an unexpected expense. Right?

D.J. Paris 5:28
It’s happened to me. And not only is it of course, unexpected, it’s also the most expensive, unexpected op, you know, think for anyone who’s had a drop transmission or somebody who needs to repair it. We all know the pain of that. And hopefully for those of you that don’t know it, you hopefully won’t experience it. But is it expensive, unexpected thing so I can understand now, nobody is going to like, you know, your dad’s business, even though it obviously keeps the car is brought in. Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Jones 5:55
So you’re really good at it, but just realize that he didn’t want to do it for the rest of his life. He’s entrepreneurial. He’s always been this or that. And he had a, he had a friend here in North Carolina, worked for century 21. He said, Matt, that’s my dad’s name met with your business background, you would do great in real estate. And so he decided to take the plunge. And he signed up for pre licensing courses. And you don’t mind my dad, but he’s an extremist. So he’s extremely everything. And so while he was doing the pre licensing course, he was also devouring every single thing that he could get his hands on, on how to grow your business, how to be a great real estate agent, et cetera, et cetera. And so he was reading every book that he could get his hands on taking every seminar books on tape since 2002. When there still were books on tape, right? Sure. I remember riding in the car. I was younger back then. And he’d be listened to this book on tape. And so he’s an extremist. So everything that all the coaches and gurus were recommending that agents do to grow their business at the time. He did it, but he did it like TEDx. So they said, Oh, you’ve got to, you know, call your closest friends once a month, or 30 closest friends once a month, he called 300 people once a month, right? Why? Or a neighborhood of at least 100 houses, he fired a neighborhood of 1000 houses, right? And you got to do direct mail pieces. You know, he did 10x. And he did all of this. And yet, coming from the business it you know, he was making, you know, comfortable six figures coming into real estate, he The truth is he just fell flat on his face. And this is while just just hustling, working 80 hours a week, and everything that everyone said, and just none of it was working for him. And so he said, You know what, before I just decided this whole experiment was a mistake. Let me go out on my own terms, if I’m gonna go out, right. And so he said, When I left the automotive repair business, the thing that I was doing that was working really well for us was just posting simple online ads through like Google AdWords. And there was people to a landing page where I could capture their name, phone number and email address, and then call them up and see if I can help. Right? And so he did that. And overnight, and this is 2002. When no one was doing right. Nobody was doing that. Yeah, unheard of. Right. So he did that. And overnight, he went from famine, to feast like more business than you know what to do with ended up growing a team. This is what he liked. By this time I was I was just getting into college. It took him like two semesters, he said, You know what, Chris, forget about that whole college thing. Why don’t you? Why don’t you come work for me. And so I did, I dropped out, never looked back and got into real estate, and then helped him recruit and grow large team. We had 100 agents, that’s, you know, not much in some bigger cities. But here in North Carolina, is a massive team ended up growing their own business. And all along, he had this germ of an idea that if you could take what he did and make it Cloneable, right. That’s an idea for a great coaching and software businesses. That was the germ of the idea that that my brother and I eventually took and founded gorilla Realty with.

D.J. Paris 8:59
It’s a great story. And there’s there’s a lot to sort of just even digest in your father’s journey there. And, but it is it is interesting, because ultimately, at the end of the day, and this is not of course, this is a known expression, but they say prospecting solves all problems. And it’s probably true in most businesses, maybe all businesses, but certainly, you know, your father was trying everything and then ultimately landed on on sort of a more tech forward model. And but a pretty simple tech forward model, right, like small ads on online to a landing page. And really, the idea is capturing that person’s information and then you can market to them really until they unsubscribe or until they tell you to buzz off. And so it’s it’s it’s still a great I mean, it’s Zillow has essentially the same model, right? I mean, there’s so many different tech providers that that really focus on on customer acquisition and then just capturing information and then of course, marketing. And then what I think you’d have done which I have not seen any other tech firm, specifically around in the real estate realm really do or at least due to the scale that you guys have is you guys have created a series of tools that are completely 100% complimentary, that Realtors could actually use. So typically in the sort of real estate tech space, almost everything that that is really useful is subscription based, you know, maybe there’s one little free tool that you get some functionality with, but then, you know, there’s an upsell and and of course, you guys obviously have have a subscription model as well. But the vast majority of your tools are absolutely complimentary, which I love. And you guys have created a number of them, and you continue to create them. So can you tell us a little bit about you know, Gorilla Realty and some of the tools that you guys the tool set that you guys offer?

Chris Jones 10:49
Yeah, so my, my personal favorite, I’ll lead with that one is a tool called fizz bonanza. So obviously, you’re familiar with the idea of using for sale by owner listings as leads, right. So you ever name number and, and real quick because you said this, but you said prospecting solves all problems. And that’s really the foundation of our company is that if you have a name, and a number of somebody that you know, is likely to be under contract for the next 105 days. And we can talk about statistically why we know that but then that’s gonna solve all problems for you, as long as you’re willing to pick up the phone and ask yourself, How can I deliver some value to this person. And then it’s just a numbers game from there, right. So if you if you call enough of them, you make contact with enough of them, and you have the right strategies, then you’ll never go hungry in real estate. But my favorite tool is fizz bonanza. So we all know for sale by owners, they obviously want to sell their home. And we know that statistically like 60 to 70% of them are gonna end up getting frustrated before the process is over. And they’re gonna hire a realtor, right? So they’re great source of leads. But it costs like 100 $200 to sign up for one of those subscriptions that sends you the leads every month or whatever. And so we realize you know what most of these listings are first, you know, they’re available online somewhere, either public, it’s public information. But the problem is, is that it’s really time consuming to go and collect all that data. And then you have to update it. And so we decided, let’s build fizz Bonanza, where basically you log in, you enter your zip code, and then you choose a radius 510 or 15 miles from that zip code. You say, hey, just show me all the For Sale By Owner listings within this area. And we automatically grab name, if it’s available. It’s not always but phone number, address listing price, how many days on market, et cetera, et cetera. And then you can download from, you know, from CSV and upload it to your contact management system or your CRM. And, and yeah, so just a free source of leads. And we just added a new feature where you can subscribe to the search so that it actually emails you once a week with all the fresh leads that got listed that week.

D.J. Paris 12:43
And which, by the by the way, the fact that you’re offering that complimentary is your the I am sure the only service doing that, because there are so many subscription based services that do exactly that for like you were saying, you know, 100 or 200 a month to get those that exact data. So where can they just just to make sure that that our agent, everyone knows it. By the way, fizz bows are really interesting. So Chris just said something that I just want to go back to about about FizzBuzz. Because Fizbo, for sale by owners, for all of our listeners, you, you may have just had an emotional reaction to hear the word Fizbo. Or you might have thought, oh, I don’t want to talk to those people. They’re mean, they hang up on me. They, they, they don’t want to work with realtors, and I Oh, this is a scary phone call. And I’m gonna just you know, get screamed at. And maybe, of course, but but but ultimately what Chris just said is really important is that the, you know, more than half of them ultimately aren’t able to do it ultimately themselves and end up hiring somebody. So we know that that’s true. So sometimes if even if there is a little pain associated with with making that that outreach, ultimately, half of the more than half of those people are going to choose somebody because typically and the most simple reason for this and there’s lots of reasons why people can’t always sell their home on their own, but they probably are just overpricing it right. That may be the most simple way as everyone overvalues their property. We as Realtors know this about our clients, we as Realtors do this for our own property. And so fizz bows are really great leads, they’re just a little tricky. But that isn’t to say that you shouldn’t consider them considering that most of them, more than half of them are going to end up choosing a realtor. So how would they find this tool?

Chris Jones 14:23
Cool. So it’s Fizz bonanza.com, which is fic Bonanza, just a little play on the slang Fizbo. I’m sure you’ll put a link in the show notes, but we won’t check it out. It’s 100% free. And it’s my personal favorite tool that we’ve that we built on last year. I’m really excited about because you mentioned pricing. And so the next tool that we’re going to launch I don’t know if it’ll be launched by the time this episode goes live, but it’s going to be bulletproof CMA. So this is a process we’ve been teaching for about 18 months now that we’ve really gotten dialed in, but we’re going to launch a full scale right now it’s a calculator you can download it nerd sheets.com which is an app that has Basically a briefcase of all of our best real estate calculators, but that deserves a tool of its own. So bulletproof cma.com is going to be my next favorite tool. I cannot wait till we launch. It’s in production right now or in development right now. And we can talk about that if you want.

D.J. Paris 15:16
Yeah, let’s let’s talk about it. So what is what is bulletproof CMA going to do that traditional CMAs struggle with or aren’t able to do.

Chris Jones 15:24
So, this isn’t gonna apply to everyone. It’s gonna apply to a lot of people and I’m gonna hurt some feelings. I’m gonna step on some toes. Oh, that’s okay. Good. I love that. The old traditional CMA method that everyone learned in real estate school are that your broker taught you? It sucks. Okay, agreed, mathematically, it makes no sense. And the truth is like, and here’s the let’s be clear about what the methodology is that I’m talking about. It’s where you get three active comps, if you can, right? If you can find enough, you get close comps, again, if you can’t, if there’s enough, and then you throw out anything that you don’t like, right? Anything that pushes the number in the wrong direction should point out and you call it an outlier, right? You call it an outlier. And then if you’re really hardcore, you might apply some kind of weird voodoo like, millage or finishes or lot size or whatever. And you’ve convinced yourself that you have this like mathematically statistically accurate pricing method, right? You don’t, okay, your sample size is a total of eight properties, which means your margin of error statistically, is going to be well over 30%. Okay. And so really, you’re basically drawing a number out of a hat, and you’re just going almost solely by feel, right. That’s what most agents do, and more art than science. It’s more art than science. And I think what most agents won’t, won’t admit is that they’re not really comfortable with this Mellon methodology. They always kind of feel like, Did I do it? Right? Right, I’m just gonna go with it, right. And they fake it till they make it. But there actually is a good methodology out there that you don’t have to be a math genius to figure out. So what we do is, first of all, we want as many comps as humanly possible. So we want to get that sample size as large as possible, so that our margin of error is very low. And so we actually use three different methods. And then we take an average. And from that we establish a reasonable range of value. But we use the adjusted baseline method, which is where you take a baseline value, it could be recent professional appraisal, which are more common than Realtors admit, you know, like people get refinanced all the time, you could have a professional appraisal that’s less than five years old, and you could adjust for appreciation, right? So it could be a professional appraisal, the last time the house sold, or it could be a tax assessment, I know that depending on the market that Texas has, it may or may not have any bearing on the actual value of the house, but here in North Carolina is actually pretty good. Pretty good measure, okay. And then you calculate appreciation, something else realtors are afraid of right. So we have a appreciation calculator that you can get it nerd sheets.com, and you’re gonna go into the MLS is really simple. You take the subject property, and you run a search for all homes that are like that, right? 10 years ago for one year, right? And then you do it for last year, right? And then you tell the calculator, how many years you’re calculating appreciation for it. And it’ll use reverse comp, because how do most Realtors calculate appreciation? Right? They’re like, well, homes, this neighborhood used to be worth 200,000. Now there were 220. So we had 10% appreciation over five years, we’re going to call it 2%. Sure, right. And that’s not accurate at all right? Right, use the that’s not how appreciation is calculated. So this calculator uses reverse compound appreciation to give you accurate appreciation down to 100%. So super, super accurate. And anybody can do it because the Calculate the calculator does the work for you, right? And so again, you can get that calculator at Narcisa calm, but once you have appreciation, then you can you know how much time has elapsed since that baseline value is established. And you can add appreciation. So that’s just one method. Okay, so that’s one comp, but then we’re going to get active comps, but we’re going to get at least a minimum of 12. I think that if you’re not getting at least 12, that you’re not going to have a great CMA. And so oftentimes that means going outside of this subject, subdivision or neighborhood, right. But sample size is way more important than how how a like the properties are, right? So when you’re looking for comps, you can add and it’s not always geographically based. So you have to you know, use your expertise as a realtor, but it’s like when people don’t move to this neighborhood. What What neighborhood do they do they move to and so you’re just going to add subdivisions until you get to the appropriate number of comps and then finally we do close comps. But this is for me, this is my rock solid base. Right? So close comps, there’s nothing more accurate than this is what houses actually sold for. Right? The problem is most realtors will never go back more than three to six months because they say oh well, houses weren’t worth as much, you know, more than six months ago as they are today. Right? But the cool thing is that we just calculated appreciation down to 100%. Right? And so this calculator or bulletproof CMA calculator takes your your average close comps and no matter how far back you search, and I’ve done searches where I went back 48 months to get the right number of comps, right. It’s going to automate typically add the appropriate amount of appreciation down to the very day. Okay? And then it’s gonna take an average of all three of those methods. And then it’s gonna establish a reasonable range of value, low end, average and high end. And then basically, based on the sellers tolerance, how long they are willing to let the house sit on the market, we’ll choose a price based on that methodology based on that reasonable range. Does that make sense? It really does.

D.J. Paris 20:23
How long? Do you anticipate it taking per comp or per CMA to run? You know, what’s the what do you think the timeline is from start to finish?

Chris Jones 20:33
I actually, even in a webinar, it’s called the bulletproof CMA. And I’ll actually halfway through the webinar, say, Okay, I’m gonna do one live. And it takes 15 minutes, and I just literally walk them through a subject property. And a lot of people think I’m just going to continue using the old broken method, because it’s easy, and it’s kind of comfortable. But as long as you have a calculator that’s going to crunch the difficult calculation in the computations for you. The most important thing is being able to understand it, by the way, when you take this into a listing presentation, right? So you mentioned fizz Bo’s, a lot of times they’re overpriced, right? Because they’re gonna go look at the Zestimate, they’re like, Wow, my house is worth that much less listed, right? And so a lot of times overpriced, but you bring this data in, your credibility is through the roof, right? So you’ll be able to show them look, we literally took every method under the sun, these are the three most well known methods for for valuing a house, we took an average of all of them. And here’s your reasonable range of value at max, here’s the high end of where we can list your property. And no questions asked, like, they already know, okay, this guy knows his stuff. Obviously, I’m just an amateur.

D.J. Paris 21:37
I love it. And will this be? Would this be a complimentary tool? Or is this a subscription model.

Chris Jones 21:41
So this is going to be free. And actually, the calculator that I mentioned, is free, right? Now, you just have to go to Nerd sheets.com, which is an older, older app that we built. It’s 100% free, but it’s got all of our calculators in it. But it lets you download a really cool Google Spreadsheet. But we’re going to take that spreadsheet and turn it into a full blown app, it’ll be available at bulletproof cma.com. That’s awesome.

D.J. Paris 22:01
And you know, for our listeners, or viewers who might be thinking, Well, Chris offers all these great tools, you know, for free, what’s in it for him? Well, ultimately, he does have a subscription model for a completely unique service as well. So I really would be remiss without talking about that as well. So Chris, tell us a little bit about, you know, your your premium model.

Chris Jones 22:23
Yeah, so, pipeline Pro Tools is our flagship product. And it is a collection of software. But I don’t like anyone to think of it as software or tools, I prefer to think of it as a marketing engine. Right. So real estate is and you mentioned this in my my bio real estate, I firmly believe is the greatest business on Earth, right? It’s the only business where you can be a hairstylist, yesterday, or nail tickets or or truck driver yesterday, earning maybe $40,000 a year. And tomorrow, you can get your license. And suddenly, uncapped earning potential, I’ve literally seen it where someone goes from being a nail tech to earning $250,000 In real estate, right. And along the way, you build the ultimate talent stack. So you are going to learn contracts and negotiations, you are going to learn finance, you’re going to learn all kinds of math and business, you’re gonna learn sales and marketing, you’re going to learn it. All right. And so just in terms of, you know, in terms of setting you up for different careers, or different roles, there’s nothing better than real estate. So it’s a fantastic business, but every realtor eventually is going to discover the big problem is that getting consistent clients is really freaking hard. And usually it’s easy in the beginning because like your your answers and your cousin doozy then you realize I can’t manufacture more family, right. And so getting consistent clients is really hard. And every realtor is essentially left to their own to build their own marketing engine from scratch, right. And it’s kind of like, you know, if you were I wanted to drive a car, and we had to build an internal combustion engine from scratch just right, but luckily, somebody a long time ago, I don’t know if this Henry Ford or some other dude gets credit for it, but somebody made it a Cloneable process that can be manufactured all over the world, right. And so that’s what we want to do. We want to make good marketing this lines of clients, we want to make it Cloneable. So that any agent, any market can just turn the key and instantly get client after client after client.

D.J. Paris 24:21
So tell us a little bit about exactly what pipeline Pro Tools does. Like what are some of the features and you know, as a comprehensive marketing solution for agents,

Chris Jones 24:29
yeah, let me give you like the 30,000 foot view. So if you were to if you were to join Pro Tools today, what you would do is you would log into your dashboard, the first thing we want to do is figure out your lead number. And I’ll try to describe what that is. So lead number is a number that we assign you. That’s basically you said good prospecting solves all problems, right or prospecting solves all problems. And I 100% agree with that. We’ve analyzed literally 1000s of different businesses and what we are real estate business. What we found is that there’s always one key predictor of what your income will be. Right and it’s the same Whether you’re a lousy agent, or a rockstar agent, whether you’re a new agent or a veteran agent, it doesn’t matter. This is like the great equalizer. And that number is the number of qualified sales leads that you bring into your pipeline every month. Right? And so, first thing we’re gonna do is figure out, Okay, how much do you want to earn in real estate and let’s, let’s work backwards and figuring out how many qualified sales leads you’re gonna have to bring into your business every single month. In order to make that dream a reality. Let’s like break it down to the constituent ingredients, right? So we will go through a really simple process. There’s another calculator, by the way that’s available at Nerd sheets, there’s all kinds of great resources, and they’re all free. But we’re going to basically figure out, okay, you want to earn six figures, let’s break it down. What are the what do we know about your market? What’s the median sale price? What’s your average commission side? What’s your effective company split? And once we figured all that out, we’re going to break it down. And let’s just say you’re dramatically number is like, 42. That’s really common number, okay, we’re gonna say, Okay, we need to, we need to get 42 names and numbers of people that we know are going to be under contract in the next 105 days, which means they’re entering the search phase of the buying cycle. Yeah. So they’re getting close to where they’re actually going to need a realtor. We don’t we don’t believe in like nurturing business for like two plus years, right? It’s good way to go crazy, good way to hate your life as a realtor. But anyway, so you would log in, you would, you would set up your lead number, right, and then someone on our success team is going to hit and these are licensed realtors that actually still do business, and, you know, and use Pro Tools to do it. And they’re gonna hand you what we call playbook. And the playbook is just our terminology for your go to trick so everyone needs a go to trick in real estate to line up clients. Right? And so, in fact, a lot of people found out that their go to trick didn’t work anymore after COVID. So like if you go to Joe’s open houses, that was a punch in the gut, right if you’re going to trick was cold calling expireds. I have a good friend Aaron Witten Steen. You should interview him by the way.

D.J. Paris 26:51
I know Aaron very well. Yeah. Okay, cool. So

Chris Jones 26:54
Aaron, witness team, New York state declared a state of emergency. And nobody could cold call it was illegal to cold call for like over a year. And I would I would I would message them all the time as hey, if they lifted it. Yeah. He said, No, I’m still illegal. And that guy is a Jedi Master at taking expired listings. But suddenly, his go to trick is gone. Okay, yeah, so you need to go to trick and I always recommend that you stack playbooks so that if one of your go to tricks ever stops working, you have plenty of others to fall back on. And so we’re going to hand you a playbook based on your goals and whether you want to be listing focused or buying focused or whatever, I’m gonna hand you a playbook, which is just a simple step by step formula that you can walk through to go in lineup clients so that you can hit your lead number this month, and then you’re gonna go to work. Make sense? Absolutely. And that’s Pro Tools in a nutshell. And it comes with software back end and, and little, you know, lead origination tools so that you can actually capture the phone number, when it’s important, comes with a great website so that you’re never losing somebody just bouncing off the site, we always want to get their name, phone number and email address, we also capture a lot of CMA requests, obviously, since the bulletproof CMA is a big part of our marketing.

D.J. Paris 28:01
Yeah, and it’s such an interesting tool. And we should also mention there’s there is a money back guarantee, which I am such a big fan of, for any real estate technology that they really are putting their, their, their integrity on the line and saying, Hey, we’re giving you what I believe it’s a 60 day trial, or 60 days, not trial, but a 60 day money back guarantee. So really, you know, again, it’s one of those like, what do you have to lose? And what I love too, is that we’re not talking about necessarily long term nurturing, although that certainly is great as well. But that’s not really what you guys focus on. You’re like, how do we capture the faster deals, people that are already out there searching and are in that position of ready to start maybe even making an offer very shortly? So makes makes perfect, perfect sense. So yeah, we should mention the website while people are listening is pipeline pro tools.com. Definitely great to check out. I also wanted to ask you about your Zillow hack, because this is something that I think is a really interesting idea. So you tell us a little bit about generating Zillow leads without buying Zillow leads. Yeah,

Chris Jones 29:10
so every, every realtor is familiar with this frustration. Right? So you, you take a new listing, or maybe you don’t, but you take a new listing, and it goes live on Zillow, and we all you know, you you click it and refresh it and make sure that all the pictures are lined up, right and you’re like so excited because your listing just went online. And then and of course the page is always changing. But then you like scroll down a little bit you’re like through and it’s got like a listing of like five agents that all appear to be for all intents and purposes, they appear to be the listing agent. Sure. Right. And so, obviously Realtor you join any realtor network or facebook group Realtors talk about this phenomena all the time, right? It’s super annoying. And the reason why is because you know Zillow is charging for ad space for that agent. And so what we do is, is whenever we do that Put a listing online and this is Zillow is changing all the time. So sometimes it’s available sometimes not, you just got to check where you are okay? But what we would do is we would edit our Zillow listing with a really simple call to action so that we put ourselves in front of the lead rather than these agents that are paying, you know, the Zillow premier money, right. And it’d be a really simple like, almost hard to see, but it was like right in the perfect spot. And it’d be a simple call to action, something like for a full video tour, text, this unit code, tada, love that. And the cool thing is, is that Zillow doesn’t mind because we’re delivering an amazing value, right? We’re developed, you know, we’re delivering a, you know, just more value. We’re not like saying, Hey, call us for, you know, call us to use this as your realtor, right? Just delivering value. But we always capture a real phone number, because you can’t text from a fake phone number, right up on it. So we catch real phone. And so we thought, how can you make this even better? And how can we teach this strategy to people that don’t have listings of their own? And then one day, it dawned on me, I said, you know, we love fizz bows. And we’ve never really had a great value add to offer to fizz bows. And so we started working on this on this strategy end up working amazing. Well, we got it really dialed in. And basically, the way it works is that so we’ll download a list of fizz bows, I like to use fizz Bonanza to do that. Sure, I’ll call up the first lead. And the important thing about this is that this is highly tactical and surgical. It’s not, it’s not like just sitting on your phone, you know, with the headset, you know, like a geek just like calling for four hours a day, right? This is a very low volume approach. Generally, you can get a win from just making like two to three phone calls, right? And we test this all over the country comes back and they say, Yeah, I only called three people before I got it. Yes. So here’s how it works. So called the Fizbo. And it was, Hey, my name is Chris. I’m a local realtor. And I was wondering if I could come by and take a video of your house. And they’re like, you know, they’re a little stuff, but they

D.J. Paris 31:56
sure because because by the way, you’re the 10th realtor to call them but you’re the first one to offer this particular, you know, sort of thing that that they now have to consider.

Chris Jones 32:05
Right? And they’re like, Well, I’m not a post of video, per se, but I am opposed to realtors, right? Take a video and so they’ll always ask and right. And so we used to say, well, we get out of town buyers all the time, and I like to have a video so I can show them and just saves us a trip and saves you you have an unlock for your house, your house for for someone that’s not really interested. But now everyone has the ultimate excuse, right? COVID most buyers, most sellers don’t want some stranger putting their grubby paws all over everything, right? Sure. Well, you know, with, you know, obviously, with COVID-19 I have some buyers that don’t want to go in and you maybe you don’t want strangers in your house. So just want to take a video. And generally they’ll say, Yeah, I guess I don’t mind. And I always offered to say out, you know, I’ll send my realtor card, you know, just to prove that I am who I say I am. And so you’re protected and all of that. But then they say yeah, I guess I don’t mind. And I said great. I’m gonna get started tomorrow. And here’s the most important part of the strategy that people always overlook. Whenever you say you’re gonna get started tomorrow, do it tomorrow, right? So I know a lot of realtors are a little on the flaky side. They’re like, eventually get to it next week. And by the way, this person will never list their property with you ever. Because you already basically broke your first promise to them, or you show that you’re a flake. Right? So I get started tomorrow. And I go and I take a just take my iPhone, right. So I take my iPhone, I take a couple of snapshots. i When whenever you take videos, make sure you like turn the phone. What is it called? Landscape mode? Yes, yeah, turn it on its side. And I take a bunch of photos and short like 10 to 15 second video clips. And then we have a free app, I’m sure you’ve seen it called listing cake. So listing cake allows anyone to go Listen, kake.com allows you to take these clips and create amazing listing videos in 60 seconds or less. And you can actually do it from your phone. So you can go to listing kake.com from your phone, you can upload them, you can organize them in the order that you want them to appear. I just did this for a listing a couple of weeks ago, organize them the way you want. Choose an overlay just got like your information on it looks super polished, you look like a pro movie producer, even if you know nothing, okay, choose background music, and then download the final cut. And what I do is I call back the next day and say, Hey, I made a video. And I think it came out great. Like, first of all, your house is beautiful. In fact, I’m curious, why are you even selling in the first place? Right? And this is where you know, they’re going to tell you what their motivation is. And it’s not really important what their motivation is, but it is important that you key into so you know, you know, sure, right? So then I say Well, look, the video came out pretty good. Do you want to see it? And of course they’re gonna want to see it. Yeah. Oh, and see you get it. A lot of realtors. Like why would they want to see it? They live there, or they live there. It’s like, it’s like if you took if some photo photographer took photos of your kids playing soccer and then was like, Hey, do you want to see the photos? Of course you want to see and like there’s your baby. Okay, it’s the same with your house. So they say yeah, so look, I’m going to email it over. And by the way I wanted to mention to you

I don’t know if you notice but on Zillow, there’s a bunch of agents listed on your page and I know you’re listed for sale by owner but your informations like all All the way down at the bottom. And trust me, every Phil for sale by owner is like, totally aware of this problem, right? And they’re just as frustrated by it as other agents are and say, Yeah, you know, it really, you know, really, you know, pisses me off or whatever? And so I say, Well look, there’s a, there’s a really simple trick you can use to get in front of the buyer, so that they’re contacting you versus contacting realtors. Is that something you might be interested in? And they say, Well, sure. And so we go to free photo branding.com, we brand it with, you know, like we talked about with the call to action. And we say now we can do it one of two ways, we can either use our text auto responder, so that when somebody texts for a unit, you know, a full video tour, it just automatically sends it over and saves you a bunch of work. Or we could put your information so they’re calling you directly. Now, some people prefer to use ours because it is automated. And then you’re not like being woken up at 3am to text somebody back the video tour. But we’re equally comfortable with either direction, right? 90% of the time they choose to use ours, right? Sure. Now we’re flipping this this for sale by owner listing. So it doesn’t even matter whether they ever list with us or not. Okay, because you guys get the leads, because we get the leads, okay, and generally we’re brilliant, that is brilliant. It’s a steady drip of maybe like two to three leads a week. It’s not, it’s nothing that’s gonna like suddenly make you rich overnight, but it is legit leads. And now we can afford to ask for nothing in return, which is the real secret. So what I do is once a week, I’ll just check in and say, Hey, I just wanted to check in and see how the sale of your sale of your property is going. And this person is super impressed by you because your marketing is on point. Okay, you’re you always keep your promise you do exactly what you’re saying you’re gonna do, and they’ve gotten some amazing value from you. Right. And so when they eventually do get frustrated, which remember 60 to 70% of people do so the first time we did this Tommy was her name was she was the owner of the property. Within two weeks, she actually I didn’t reach out to her for she reached out to me and she said, Chris, we get really frustrated, what would you do if you were in my shoes? And everybody knows that’s like, literally the best listing lead that you can get is when somebody’s pressure, they say what would you do if you’re in my shoes. So the rest of the session, we took the we took the listing, and we got that process super dialed in so that we could teach it as a, you know, a Cloneable strategy?

D.J. Paris 37:11
Wow, I have never, in all I’m just scanning my memory to think if I’ve ever talked to somebody in 11 years of being in this field, who is used for physical. So basically, what you’re doing is creating a virtual open house for fizz bows in a sense, exactly. That’s exactly without ever going to the property other than to take photos without disrupting the seller and trying to convince them that to list with you. And you’re also providing a tremendous amount of value because you’re passing those leads over to the seller as well.

Chris Jones 37:45
Yep, that’s exactly right.

D.J. Paris 37:47
That is that is a really, really insightful smart approach that I suspect has not been done before. So I love that. Because what what those Fizbo owners are getting are a lot of phone calls from realtors, because lots of companies sell those leads, because there’s a huge market for Fizbo leads. And they’re just getting calls saying list with me list with me list with me. I’d like to come by I’d like to drop off paperwork, I’d like to blah, blah, blah. I don’t know that there’s a lot of Fizbo calls that are saying, hey, you know, we have this, I’d love to just shoot a quick video because I get a lot of buyers who aren’t going to be in the area who are going to want to see a tour of this

Chris Jones 38:24
right when in fact, most Fizbo scripts start with a lie. Hey, I have a buyer can I bring them by? Exactly. I can’t believe that in our industry that we like, people wonder why realtor is not the most popular profession in America. That’s why right, because we’re literally trained to liars. Like there’s gurus and coaches out there that teach you to lie to your customers.

D.J. Paris 38:41
Right? Yeah. Yeah, they would do that too, with with with Craigslist leads. So one way to get apartment listings rental listings would be to call people who are posting their own Craigslist leads and start with a lie and say, Hey, I have I have a renter that’s interested in this unit. By the way, are you willing to pay me a commission if I bring you the renter, and they sign a lease blah, blah, blah. Now there’s, there’s a way to save that almost exact same thing. Without that lie. You could say I am working with people who are always looking for places like this. And but there are lots of agents that will just start with the actual lie and just go out well, it’s a little white lie that there’s

Chris Jones 39:18
like a there’s a deeper principle here like, like I’ve never listed rentals or you know, or apartments or condos or anything like that. And so I’ve never used a script like that. But I would almost guarantee if an agent who’s who’s targeting an apartment complex, or a condominium listing, I almost guarantee that if you ask yourself, Okay, what can I do for the seller, that will bring him some value, and ask nothing in return, if they most people aren’t willing to do the work up front. They want to get the listing and then promise them to do the work. Right. But if you were willing to do something upfront that offered amazing value that maybe benefited you in some small way, right. But if you were to if you were to wrack your brain, I guarantee that there’s a strategy there. You got to ask yourself, you know, most Realtors They aren’t willing to do things that don’t scale, right? So everybody wants to put their customers in a, you know, a messenger, chatbot, right, or an email drip sequence or a text sequence, and then they just want to set it and forget it. And the truth is the best marketing is marketing that doesn’t scale where you’re just out there providing value one on one, especially in this business. So

D.J. Paris 40:20
yeah, well, it is still a one to one business, it’s it is still a, you know, people have have built systems to scale by taking some of the interpersonal stuff out of it. And hats off to those companies and individuals and in teams that that have figured that out. But the the highest margin stuff is always going to be one to one, well, not highest margin, sorry, the highest close probability is always going to be one to one. But it’s also it is also difficult, but that but that’s the thing, too, is scaling doesn’t necessarily have to mean volume of activity, it might just mean, you know, the quickness to get to the close. And, and by doing that through more interpersonal ways, which is, which is really your whole system, all of your systems, in fact, your entire business is based around a very similar principle, which is provide value upfront, in this case, to agents, and so that agents can provide value to their clients. And then, you know, over time hope that that, you know, some of those people transfer into premium subscribers, which obviously, you have no problem doing. But it really is one of the the most sort of generous models I’ve seen in the real estate tech space, which I’m sure you already know, because most, most tech companies and real estate just just want to push you immediately into the premium services where as you like, have a whole litany of free products, and you’re still developing free products, because ultimately, that drives up your social proof agents get hooked on your content, which is really not any not dissimilar from what we do on our podcast. I mean, our business model is not that dissimilar, we don’t have a premium product, we have advertisers, advertisers are only going to show up if we have good, you know, good good listeners and viewership numbers, and they’re only going to show up if we provide amazing value. So we’re really doing very, very similar things, you guys have built a much more successful business at it than than my little podcast, but I think it is it is such a great value to the to our listeners and audience and, and just to pull back the curtain just slightly and I said this at the beginning, but we do get calls from and not call so much because we don’t have really have a phone number for the podcast. But we get lots of emails, lots of instant messages from every tech company out there because they want to get in front of our audience and we turned down almost all of them. Chris is a really unique individual who we think is providing so much amazing value that we want to promote his business because we think it does a lot. And so we encourage everyone who is listening to to go to gorilla realty.com Again, Gorilla not spelled like the like the animal but more like guerilla marketing so

Chris Jones 42:58
we don’t do a lot of audio stuff, but it just occurred to me never name your business a homonym right so especially if you’re going to be on podcasts or you’re going to do radio makes it makes it difficult.

D.J. Paris 43:10
I’ll do one even better for you never name your podcast a name that has already been used by about four other podcasts so stupid me discovered that oh like a year and that’s how out of 300 You realized Yeah, yeah, I’m like hey, because I would just tell people search for keeping it real and they’d go which one and I go so and I can’t change it now and the name is dumb anyway I really should change it but but thankfully we’ve risen above all of the other real shows I think they’re all like defunct out and they had nothing to do with real estate anyway. But so I I completely understand but gorilla realty is g u e r i l l a realty.com. And there probably is a gorilla Realty the animal gorilla Realty which is not Chris’s company. So so find the keeping it real podcast that’s, that’s that I am hosting DJ and find gorilla Realty with a Gu e r i l l. A. But Chris, this has been so helpful. And I do want to also mention that we Chris and I, we haven’t figured out exactly what this is going to be. But we do want to offer a discount to the keeping URL podcast listeners and subscribers for the premium service that Chris offers. So we have it for pipeline pro tools.com. And by the way, go to pipeline pro tools.com. Check out their services. What they offer is so incredible. We talked about it a bit on the show. They also have a 60 day money back guarantee. So really, how can you lose, but we’re going to offer some sort of discount. We haven’t figured that out yet. So if you’re listening to this through a podcast app, not live on Facebook at the moment, just look in the show notes, and we’ll have the offer in there and a direct link for it. So, Chris, thank you again and again. Let’s mention Chris has two websites that we want you to visit guerrilla realty.com and also pipeline Pro Tools Calm, there’s tons of free tools here on both websites. So definitely check them out, get hooked on Chris’s content, consider subscribing to their premier service. And again, just think about agents. You know, the hardest part of your business is likely the marketing client acquisition, you’re busy, you know, servicing clients, you’re busy doing all of that step, all of those steps. And that’s probably seven out of the eight hours of your, you know, if you’re, if you’re working eight hours, days, that’s seven hours of your day, find a system that can automate some of this and the things Chris has mentioned in this in this episode, again, it sounds like I’m almost being paid to promote Chris, which I have not, but I am so impressed as a marketer, as somebody who who’s a marketer, I am really, genuinely and authentically impressed with with what you offer, so I could not be bigger supporter of your business. So pipeline pro tools.com is the premium model again, we’ll have some sort of offer. So check out the show notes or just reach out to us and, and we’ll, we’ll send you what that information is. But Chris, thank you so much for being on our show. Really appreciate your time. I think what you’re doing is remarkable. And even the Zillow hack alone, which also is kind of a Fizbo hack to is is just brilliant, and what a smart idea. And anyone can take that and immediately run with it. I’m so on behalf of the audience want to thank Chris, for coming on the show and talking a little bit about these tools, making them available to our audience. And also on behalf of Chris and myself. We want to thank the audience for sticking around listening to the show. Yeah, and we would ask that everyone just do two quick things after visiting guerilla marketing, guerrilla Realty and pipeline pro tools.com. Also tell a friend about our show, think of one other agent that could benefit who’s maybe marketing isn’t as where they want it to be for the real estate business, and send them a link to this episode. Easiest way to do that, just send them over to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done is streamable right there. Or if they are a podcast, subscriber to other shows, have them pull up that app search for keeping it real pod, or just keeping it real look for the one that says DJ, that’s me, and hit that subscribe button. And I should also mention our Facebook page, which just today, Facebook and by the way, they come on our show once a month, so I need to ask them about this. But Facebook corporate just today sent us a notice saying all of our episodes are now going to automatically be featured in on our Facebook page. So this is a new thing that Facebook is offering to sort of integrate with podcasts. Yeah, it’s brand new. So go to facebook.com. And I don’t know if it’s live yet on our on our on our page. But it will be if it isn’t today, hopefully in the next week. But facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot. I mean, we post all of our episodes anyway. But you’ll be able to literally go to a tab in Facebook on our page, and it just has all of our episodes automatically listed there. So yeah, it’s just kind of like I’d never thought about Facebook doing that. And as soon as they got the email I went, Oh, that makes sense. So facebook.com forward slash keeping it real, Chris, thanks again for being on the show. And we will see ya we’ll see everyone on the next episode. Thanks, Chris.

In our July episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties she talks about a new exciting development in Lake View which will be announced shortly. Carrie shares statistics on the real estate market in Chicago. Carrie emphasizes that it’s a great time to be a buyer as there’s less competition in the market at the moment because of vacations. Carrie and DJ discuss supply-chain issues and how the increase in the wood prices has impacted the prices of renovation and also buyer’s decision making. Last, DJ shares his marketing tip for July.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Carrie can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 312.961.4612.

Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here.

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by prac tina.com Are you tired of not receiving enough leads from social media prac Tina will help. prac Tina’s easy to use low cost system helps real estate agents outperform their local competition, connect with more homebuyers and become the face of real estate in their area by simplifying social media marketing. prac Tina automatically informs your audience regarding new properties, open houses, and price changes on any and all of your listings. You can also reach specific new clients based on their location and interests, which will help your ads be seen by the right people on Google, Facebook and Instagram. And best of all prac Tina provides you with your own dedicated marketing specialists that will work with you one on one keeping it real listeners will receive a $50 credit by using the coupon code real. Learn more today at practice tina.com That’s pra si t i n a.com And now on to our show

Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show today. On the show is our monthly series The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from the Carey McCormack Real Estate Group with add properties here in Chicago. Carrie is a top 1% producer with over 20 years of experience helping buyers, sellers and investors. In fact, in the past 12 months out of 44,000 real estate agents here in Chicago. Carrie is currently ranked number 14 in production. She is a true superstar and an expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors and luxury properties. She also works with a lot of developers and is often chosen to represent their high end developments, including the one that I just purchased and live in. So she is everywhere. And everybody knows her and we’re so excited to continue continually have her on the show and she’s been with us for years. Please visit Carrie at her website, which is Carrie McCormack R e.com Carrie McCormack rt e.com. And also definitely follow her on Instagram, which is at Carrie McCormack real estate. Carrie, welcome once again to the show.

Carrie McCormick 2:26
Thank you and I’m excited to share I can’t give too many details yet because it has not been announced. We have a new exciting development coming in Lakeview, it’s going to be 18 Amazing single family homes. The location can’t tell you anything about it. But we’ll be able to announce it I think in about a week or two. So for anyone that works in the luxury real estate or luxury, single family home market, please reach out to me I’ve got something really amazing and exciting coming in the Lakeview neighborhood.

D.J. Paris 3:01
And these are you said townhomes or single family homes. Oh, wow, wonderful. Well, there’s and there’s never that much construction like view because it’s so just built up. This is very exciting.

Carrie McCormick 3:11
It’s very exciting. So there’s your little sneak peek of the day. But you know, stay tuned and feel free to reach out to me if you’ve got someone looking.

D.J. Paris 3:21
And yet actually Carrie was at the building that that I live in now this morning, but I was not there. And so we weren’t able to say hi, but we’re talking virtually now. But yeah, tell us what’s going on in the Chicagoland market since you’ve got your ear to the streets at all

Carrie McCormick 3:36
time. Low. Absolutely. It’s really been a you know, a fun kind of reporting year on the real estate front. Will June, March June 2021. I gotta remember what year we’re in really March the 11th straight month for double digit increases. So it’s still flying, it’s still busy. The median price of homes, believe it or not, is up 20.4% From June of last year. So 20.4% is a huge number of an increase in one year in Chicago believable and your inventory still remains low. We’re at 2.6 months, which it’s down from just you know, June to June. So June of last year was 3.9 months. And now we’re at 2.6. So it still indicates a tight inventory. And then median prices are up so we’re still moving strong. For the month of July though July has been a little bit slower. And we’re hearing that across the board and all different markets. And the reason is, I think is because people are vacationing Yeah, it seems like every other person I talked to is on vacation. Things are opening up people are enjoying a little bit of the summer months weddings, graduations, again the travel so we’ve seen a little bit of a slowdown for the month of July, but as my manager said to me, he said, You know, we’ve been going 150 miles an hour, we’re going 120 miles an hour now. So it’s definitely not slow. It just, we let off the gas a little bit, if you will. So, so take advantage of it, everyone and just, you know, give yourself a little bit of time to breathe. But I do anticipate that August, September, October, rolling right into the end of the year, we’re going to be busy again.

D.J. Paris 5:26
Yeah, I was at an event, an in person event last night here in Chicago with about 150 realtors. And I it seemed to be the general consensus. When I asked agents, how their business was going. They said it’s finally slowing down, but not in a bad way. But in a I can catch my breath way. Right. So I was it seemed to be a general sort of calm, calmer. Realtors seem to be more excited to breathe a bit. So let’s, yeah, so let’s see the market is so we have people on vacation. I guess that means it’s probably a good time for buyers right now. Because there’s maybe not as much competition people aren’t as active we putting in offers. Are you seeing that as well?

Carrie McCormick 6:12
Absolutely. And I said this on the last podcast when we spoke is it really is a good time to be a buyer right now, just because there is less competition out there. So just the multiple offer situation is not happening as much, you just don’t have that organic competition happening. So yeah, it’s a great time to still be a buyer. slim pickings on the inventory. So we’re going to expect to see more coming in August. But what’s been interesting is I feel like outside of a real estate broker, I feel like I am a furniture broker. Because with the supply chain being so backed up, you know, when you walk into a home, and they’ve got a beautiful outdoor seating area, or a beautiful living room set, when people are making offers, we’re now including some furniture in our in our offer, because again, if you’re buying a home that’s got a fabulous roof deck, and you don’t have furniture to order that is going to take months, you’re not going to be able to enjoy your back until next year. So I’ve been negotiating and brokering a lot of furniture, which is interesting.

D.J. Paris 7:22
Do you do? Yeah. And I can appreciate that, because I’m dealing with with some of those issues as well. Thankfully, my outdoor furniture came in. So I could enjoy it this this season. But I know that if I had purchased if my if the property I’d purchased was not a new construction. If there had been previous owners, I might have thought about that. And I guess that’s a great opportunity for agents really on both sides to think about being making things more competitive by saying, hey, you know, we’ll throw in the furniture or we want that furniture, let’s say let’s add it to the to the contract.

Carrie McCormick 7:56
Yeah, it’s, it’s very interesting. And yeah, let’s

D.J. Paris 7:59
talk. So what what about, you know, in the same idea of supply chain issues, and again, I, I’ve got my outdoor furniture has been delivered, but some of my interior furniture is some of its delivered, some of it isn’t. And I get these emails all the time from these furniture companies saying we have supply chain issues. We know it we’re working on it. Thanks for your patience. What about on the renovation side? So, you know, we know there’s a wood shortage or, you know, wood prices are certainly going have been through the roof for the last year. So how is that affected? renovations?

Carrie McCormick 8:32
Yeah, so it’s been really tough renovation. Can you hear me? Oh,

D.J. Paris 8:39
I think we lost you. Let’s see, I think we might have the mic got switched maybe.

Carrie McCormick 8:47
Can you hear me?

D.J. Paris 8:48
Hmm. Can you see if you can switch the microphone under mute? Or the little up arrow where it says select a microphone

Carrie McCormick 9:01
Let me see.

D.J. Paris 9:02
We’ll fix this in post production. So no big deal.

Carrie McCormick 9:07
What am I switching? Oh,

D.J. Paris 9:13
perhaps it’s me. Hang on. Do you hear me? All right, Carrie. I think it’s me one second. My apologies. I don’t know why. I don’t know why I’m having an issue. One. Sorry. Sorry. One second. It’s me, not you.

Sorry about that. That was me. He was not your child. I don’t know what the issue was. But can you hear me now? Yep,

Carrie McCormick 9:42
I can hear you. Okay. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 9:43
I can hear you. Sorry about

Carrie McCormick 9:44
that. Okay, so we’re gonna start with Can you patch all this together? Yeah. So you asked maybe go back to asking the question about renovations.

D.J. Paris 9:57
Yeah. So I know that with the woods one shortages, that, you know, there’s been massive delays in in getting lumber and how has that affected renovation time? Yeah.

Carrie McCormick 10:11
So I mean, that’s a great question. And really what’s happened is people are pausing or being a little more cautious and careful buying homes that need the renovation, whether it’s a bathroom renovation or a kitchen renovation hardwood floors, just because they know that trying to get workers in right now is so difficult. And again, there’s a long lead time and doing that.

D.J. Paris 10:36
Yeah, we we’ve, I’ve been experiencing very similar things. Are there any types of

Carrie McCormick 10:42
DJ Hang on one second? Because this

is it for me, guys? There’s a little button. That looks like top up top down. Okay, just sit in a car. Turn it on. So I have a convertible and it’s pouring rain.

D.J. Paris 11:06
Oh, just started pouring. Okay. Oh, I’m sorry. Oh, no, I owned convertibles for 10 straight years. And I cannot tell you the number of times I got rain. So or my car got rained on. So

Carrie McCormick 11:20
I’ve got so much stuff in my car. Oh, I just didn’t even think about it.

D.J. Paris 11:25
Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve been there. I’ve been there.

Carrie McCormick 11:29
She’s gonna go do it. Okay.

D.J. Paris 11:33
Grab some towels.

Carrie McCormick 11:38
Thank goodness for an okay.

D.J. Paris 11:40
So we’re talking about a timeout renovations and which renovations you know, you’re What are you talking about? What are what are your clients asking renovation wise right now? And what are you suggesting to them?

Carrie McCormick 11:52
Yeah, so renovations are tough right now. So I am advising my clients that if we know we’re buying something that needs bathroom renovations or kitchen renovations, again, it’s a time thing you know, you the supply chain is is taking weeks to get it done. So you have to have patience. And I do foresee from a seller’s side that if you are selling a home that is in need of renovations, you’ve got to at least give a little bit of a discount on the house, you know, because again, time is money for people and you just you know, they need to know that every buyer is not going to be open to you know, doing all these renovations. So it is a tricky thing with the supply chain right now. I mean, I’ve had people order dishwashers or refrigerators, washers and dryers, and again, their weeks and week leave weeks lead time. So it definitely is a conversation that we have to have before someone purchases. Also, from an inspection standpoint, that’s also become a little bit of an issue. So for example, if you have an inspection on a property, and it needs a new roof, or it needs tuckpointing, or new furnace, or whatever it is, again, the lead time to get this stuff done is taking so long that some of the sellers can’t get it done by closing. So we have to escrow for for it. So again, part of our job is being brokers, you know, is educating, advising, and making sure that our buyers and sellers are positioned properly.

D.J. Paris 13:19
Are there are there some buyers where you’re encouraging them to sort of deal with the imperfection of a particular room? And then wait until the supply chain issues seem to seem to be corrected? And lumber becomes more readily available? And it’s cheaper? Maybe next year? Or are you You know, I’m just curious. And those kinds because I wonder if that’s pausing some buyers from making offers going well, I really need to fix this stuff up. But maybe it’ll be three for six months,

Carrie McCormick 13:52
everyone’s got their different threshold, I have zero patience. So I am one that I would pay for something just to have it done. You know, so that’s just it, it just depends you got to have patience or just know you’re gonna pay a little bit of a premium if you want to have it done now.

D.J. Paris 14:08
Wonderful. Well, I here’s my marketing idea for the week or for the month rather. And it’s really based on something you just said I had a different marketing tip and then you said something at the beginning that I thought was pretty profound, which is that prices on average have have risen about 20% Here in the Chicagoland area. And so knowing that if I were a Producing Realtor, but I was maybe not as busy this month because people are you know, things have slowed down just a little bit and in general, I might be reaching out to everyone I know who owns a home and just saying hey, by the way, Mr. And Mrs. Owner, it you know, Ben depending on the type of property I do a little research first to make sure that I was you know about to give them a reason to talk with them a legitimate reason. I would say you know homes in your area have appreciated by X percentage. Has anyone read On Any, any updated comps for you, I’d be happy to do that and send it over to you. I don’t know if you want to sell or not. But I always know as a homeowner, I would like to know what my place is worth. And most homeowners probably aren’t checking, you know, the Zestimate on Zillow very often, and we know that that isn’t always super accurate anyway, but maybe making a proactive phone call to every owner. I mean, it’s such a simple idea, but maybe not the worst idea when homes are up 20% And as a really big number. The problem of course is then they’re like okay, well then I gotta buy something that’s appreciated. 20% Well, okay, yes, that’s possibly a challenge. But maybe they want to rent for a few years, which again, is probably you know, that’s also a very difficult thing. But it starts it’s the beginning of a conversation and maybe more importantly, whether they ever sell or not, they’re going to feel that the agent really cares about them in this thinking about them.

Carrie McCormick 15:50
I’m going to do that. As we speak when we’re done with this call. I’m going to start making some phone calls. I liked that idea.

D.J. Paris 15:57
Yeah, and again, I suspect it’s not a lot of people who are going to want to sell but boy it’s a that’s a good phone call to make because hey, did you know your home is worth a little bit more than it was a year ago quite a bit more cash if I made 20% in the market on my you know my investments every year I would that would be the best year I’ve ever had. So to know that homes have appreciated like that is a very exciting thing whether or not they move it’s still a fun phone call. And certainly a great opportunity just to remind people that the you know that you exist and that you’re around and you’re thinking about it, so love it. Love it. Awesome. Well, I know we probably patch this together in the final edit but Kerry’s poor car got rained on she has a convertible and so she needs to raise out and address her car that is filling up with water. So thanks Carrie. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’m sorry, sorry about your car getting rained on I know that I’ve been there. So that’s why I don’t like convertibles anymore because I’m not I am not responsible with getting the the top but I’m

Carrie McCormick 16:58
starting off on a great foot with this car so

D.J. Paris 17:02
well anyway we appreciate your time and we appreciate you you soldiering through even though your car is getting filled up with water. But as as always everyone please visit Carrie she by the way, you can reach out to her if you have questions as as an agent. And also if you’re a buyer or a seller or renter and investor somebody that is looking to work with one of the top Realtors in the Chicagoland area. Carrie would love to chat with you. Her and her team are excellent. They’ve been doing this for 20 plus years. Everybody in Chicago land knows Carrie in the real estate world because of how professional and excellent she is. So reach out to her. So Carrie, what’s the best way somebody can reach out to you?

Carrie McCormick 17:41
I always tell people to call me on my phone gals. 23129614612 you can text me you can email me whatever you prefer, I’m always available.

D.J. Paris 17:52
And you please visit her on our website Kerry McCormick our e.com You can find all of her information there and links to all of her social profiles, but in particular, please follow her on Instagram. She has an amazing Instagram account. It’s a real model for what agents should be aspiring to in their social media and Carrie does it all herself. But you can find her on Instagram at at Carey McCormack real estate. Carrie once again, thank you for being on our show for four years now. And we are so thrilled to have you and for everyone listening we want to thank you for continuing to listen and support our show. Please tell a friend think of one other real estate agent that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Carrie and send them a link to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done can be streamed right there. Carrie, thanks so much. And we’ll see you next week.

Carrie McCormick 18:41
All right, bye bye.

Toby Fernie from Coldwell Banker in Monterey describes how he transitioned from teaching into real estate. Toby also discusses how being bilingual helps his business. Toby talks about his niche in helping teachers in the Monterey area buy properties and also describes how he built a seminar for this purpose. Last, Toby talks about how his business has evolved in the recent years.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Toby Fernie can be reached at [email protected] and (831) 233-0586.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Today’s episode is brought to you by Oakley sein.com Realtors across the country choose Oakley sign.com because they offer the widest selection of high quality, affordable custom real estate signs backed by a Best Price Guarantee and free design services. Whether you are a new agent, opening a new office, transforming your brand identity or simply need fresh signs to work for your market. Oakleys real estate and design experts produce signs you will be proud to display. Get 50% off your next custom sign order when you go to Oakley sign.com forward slash keeping it real or use promo code keep it real at checkout. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re gonna be speaking with Toby Ferny from Coldwell Banker out in Monterey, California. Before we get to Toby. Just a couple of quick reminders. If you’d like to support our show and help us continue to grow, the best way you can do that is by telling a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Toby about how they became successful, and send them a link to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com On that website, you can stream every episode we’ve ever done. So even if the person you’re sending our website to is not a podcast person, no worries, they can just play any episode they can. They want to right from the browser. And also please follow us on Facebook you can find [email protected] forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we have every episode we’ve ever produced there, we also have daily posts that are going to help you grow your real estate practice. So again, that’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Thanks as always for continuing to listen, and we can’t appreciate you enough. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you and now on to our interview with Toby Ferny. Today on the show, we have Toby 30 from Coldwell Banker in Monterey, California. Let me tell you a little bit about Toby Toby started his real estate career in Boston, while studying at Boston College became a realtor in Boston for five years. After that he switched careers and spent 10 years teaching elementary school in Boston, but not just Boston, also Panama, Spain, Singapore and California. Now close to four years ago, he decided to re enter the real estate field full time, and he now works at Coldwell Banker in Monterey. As a former teacher, he’s made it his goal to help as many local educators find affordable housing to prevent teacher turnover in his community. He’s helped over 20 employees of Monterey schools purchase a home in the last two years. Now, while he helps clients, of course outside of teachers purchase and sell homes to his proudest accomplishment in Monterey, California is one of you know, working with teachers because it is one of the most expensive and exclusive counties in the entire country. So he is trying to solve a problem that is very serious, which is how do we get educators to be able to afford housing in this super expensive area. And that is why we are so excited to have him on the show. Please visit him for visit Toby at his website, which is living in Monterey california.com. Toby, welcome to the show.

Toby Fernie 3:54
EJ Thank you for having me. It’s an honor to be here. I’m a big fan of the show. Well, we

D.J. Paris 3:58
are I am a boy, thank you. That’s very nice. And at work. I’m such a big fan of of your whole mission. And Nisha was actually just telling the couple of the other guys here in the office Senate, because I do interviews all the time. And I rarely go around saying I got this really interesting interview coming up because they probably don’t want to hear about it to begin with. But also it’s not usually ever sometimes it’s a lot of the same stories over and over. But we were really intrigued by you in particular, because of this problem that I never thought about which we’re going to get into which is how do you keep teachers wanting to stay in areas that are largely unaffordable or certainly more expensive than what maybe their compensation would would allow for? But before we get to that, definitely want to hear a little bit about your story. Of course we just held told a little bit about it. But can you tell us a little bit about your journey you know from from when from Boston all the way to to Monterey.

Toby Fernie 4:55
Absolutely. Yeah. So I started back in Boston College. A friend of mine, he was an upperclassman, and he had been doing real estate for a number of years there. And the way that Housing Works at Boston College, most people only get three years of housing. So every single person, you know, for the most part, has to go off campus for at least one year. So most people, you know, go off campus during their junior year. And it’s one of those things where, you know, there’s about 10 different streets where people were looking for, for houses and apartments. And so I got started doing real estate there, did real estate for about five years at the office. They’re mostly rentals, but then also gotten to some sales as well, as I started my teaching career for a couple of years in Boston before doing some some international teaching.

D.J. Paris 5:48
Yeah, it’s amazing. I think Boston, oftentimes, outside of the people that live there that know this, of course, but for the rest of us, you know, we hear a lot about Southern California, and even Northern California, and, of course, New York and some other areas like that, as being of course very expensive, we Boston often gets overlooked. And it is one of the most expensive places to live with certainly buying a place but also even renting, It’s so insane there. So I imagine, you know, now that I’m thinking about, it’s like, oh, you actually were already in one of the more challenging, you know, cities to, to sort of find housing for people. And now you’re, of course, doing doing very similar thing. But you know, you were a teacher, and you got to teach not just in this country, but you went, you went to some other other places, including, gosh, you went to Central America, you went to, you know, to the you know, Western Europe, Eastern Europe. And tell us, you tell us a little bit about those travels.

Toby Fernie 6:48
Yeah, so my main goal after I’d finished college and was was teaching in Boston was I really wanted to get fluent in Spanish. So I went to a seminar, a housing, not a housing, excuse me, a teaching conference with a company called Search Associates, and that was in Boston, and schools from all over the world come in and do interviews with with teachers there. So when I started out, I only applied for for Spanish speaking countries, I ended up getting a job in Panama and teaching there for two years. You know, is that a time I was young, no, no kids, no, no mortgage payment, anything like that. So I wanted to travel. My parents were thankfully able to help my brother and I do some travel with them when we were kids. So you know, we got the travel bug from them. I studied abroad in Italy when I was in college. And so I was always interested in wanting to travel again and do some work abroad, too. So started for two years in Panama, and got pretty good at Spanish when I was there and wanted to keep improving my Spanish. I’ve always kind of been interested in Italy, in Spain, that part of the world. So I went and taught in Valencia, Spain for three years. These were all at international or American schools. So it was teaching in English to students that were, you know, either English speakers or wanting to learn English. And then I did one year teaching in Singapore before coming back and teaching at the International School of Monterey, which is what brought me to California and eventually, how I transit transitioned back into real estate here and here in Monterey.

D.J. Paris 8:28
Wow. Well, I have I was when you were mentioning Singapore is really off topic. But I’ll just really quickly mention it, I actually got a chance to I was in Singapore, just coincidentally, about maybe 12 years ago, during Chinese New Year. And I was visiting, I was actually I was on a trip to Bali at the time, and on the way sort of back stopped over in Singapore for three, three nights or four nights. And I of course, that’s such an amazing city, because it’s the cleanest, I think it’s still considered the cleanest city in the world, or certainly one of because they have very strict rules about about littering and things of that nature. Of course, everyone knows about gum and all of that, but, but I remember that’s also I remember Singapore being a very exclusive, seemingly, you know, probably challenging place to live, as well. But I remember when I was there for Chinese New Year, which was really cool, just coincidentally was there during that time. It was the most it was it was like a million people in the streets. It was the most behaved group of people I’ve ever witnessed. And I went, boy, nobody’s like throwing bottles and screaming and you know, and it’s like, oh, they’re not allowed to do that. That’s right. And I thought boy, some of those rules might might be helpful over here, but but it was it was the most polite. It was the largest polite New Year’s Eve celebration I’ve ever been a part of. And it was it was really the I loved Singapore. It was fun. I don’t I don’t know that. I don’t think I could afford to live there but, but it was really, really beauty.

Toby Fernie 10:00
Yeah, it’s expensive to but that’s I mean, that’s one of the things I love about travel right is getting those those cultural experiences to just end the ended up in Chinese New Year in Singapore and yeah, you know, it’s once in a lifetime experience to do things like that. Right. So yeah, you know, I’m glad to be back in the States and love it here in Monterey, but, you know, cherish those memories that I have from from the time working in teaching abroad.

D.J. Paris 10:25
Have you curious about being bilingual? Which I’m assuming your Spanish is still quite strong? Being that you teach International at an international school as well? Do you? Do you’d work with Spanish speaking clients? Are you able to? Are you fluent enough to be able to meet their needs?

Toby Fernie 10:42
Yeah, you know, the interesting thing about my Spanish was I never really did much, you know, formal formal schooling where I had, you know, vocabulary and verbs and practice like that. So most of the Spanish that I knew was more conversational. But when I came back here, that was certainly an area, you know, I wanted to be able to work with Spanish speaking students, parents that were Spanish speaking. And it’s certainly something that I try to incorporate into my business, working with Spanish speaking, clients who are looking to purchase homes, was certainly a bit of a learning process to learn all of the specific vocabulary in Spanish when it comes to, you know, mortgages and buying homes and the contracts and things like that. But yeah, certainly feel comfortable working with, with Spanish speaking clients, and there’s a lot of people in the area that are looking to purchase homes, whether it’s here in Monterey, or other you know, the surrounding towns that are Spanish speakers.

D.J. Paris 11:39
Yeah, what a great tool to have, as well to be able to communicate with, you know, non natively English speaking, people. But what I am most interested in learning about is this amazing niche that you’ve carved out. And I know it’s not exclusive to your business, you do other things, too. But my mom was a teacher, so I can, I can really appreciate appreciate the struggle of this, which is Toby had a very unique struggle, or sorry, not you particularly but but teachers in the Monterey area, if you’ve ever been to the Monterey County area, you know, just how beautiful and gorgeous and expensive it is. The challenge, of course, being how to teachers live there and continue to work there. And apparently, there’s a real issue in that county to keep teachers there, because it’s just so cost prohibitive. And you decided to, to sort of look into that and figure out how do we reduce turnover? How do we keep these teachers, you know, happy in their homes here, and, you know, being able to live, you know, within their means, in an area where I wouldn’t think most of us could live within our means. I think that is such a interesting problem. But it’s it’s a problem that I’ve never heard talked about. And I love the fact that that that’s your Nisha, do you mind just giving us a little primer on sort of what the problem is, and, and how you’ve started working with with clients to solve it?

Toby Fernie 13:00
Yeah, absolutely. So when I first came back to Monterey, was my 10th year of teaching. So I actually, you know, started there’s, there’s steps for teachers where, you know, each year your salary will, will go up, and I was on step 10, being my 10th year as a teacher, and, you know, I’m being new to the area, I was renting a one bedroom apartment, not, you know, anything that was extravagant. And the salary that I was earning was not enough money for me to live here is losing, you know, hundreds of dollars every month, just on on cost of living. And so, you know, I knew it was something that wouldn’t be sustainable for me moving forward, which was, you know, in part why I switched back into working with real estate. And when I started real estate, a lending partner of mine who I’ve worked with almost exclusively for the last, you know, three or four years, I mentioned to him that this was something that I was really passionate about wanting to help teachers, teacher turnover is a serious problem when it comes to, you know, student learning, you know, staff, you know, getting to know one another getting to know the curriculum, it’s difficult for teachers, it’s difficult for administration. So it’s really an impacts the entire community. So when I was speaking with my, my lending partner I mentioned to him, you know, I’d love to be able to do something that can help teachers afford to live around here. And there was unfortunately, due to COVID. The the funding is not available, but there was a downpayment assistance program that was available for teachers, firefighters, police officers in the entire state of California. And it was something that I as a teacher had never heard of. None of my friends who were teachers and my former colleagues had ever heard of it. So I kind of made it my mission and my goal, to share this information out with people who are interested in purchasing homes. And that’s kind of how I started here and Real Estate was working primarily with teachers and, you know, I still is a big part of, of the business and clients that I like to work with and help because, you know, I’m a former teacher, and I am passionate about helping people in that field, which I think, you know, really connects to and relates with my clients.

D.J. Paris 15:17
Yeah, it really, really does. And I imagine that had to be a really interesting moment to hear from a lender or something that you as a teacher had never heard. But also your colleagues in that in the education profession didn’t know about either, or at least, the ones you spoke to didn’t weren’t as familiar. And I suspect a lot of the agents or the realtors in your area also probably are somewhat unfamiliar with, which is like such a great opportunity to educate customers, or clients, future customers about sort of what this is and how this works. And I, I’ve always said that, why not? It’s not something brilliant thought I’ve come up with, but I’ve said a lot on the show and other agents have said the same thing is, you really need a great lending partner. Because if you have a great relationship with somebody who’s really comprehensive and knows, sort of knows they’re there, the different options for financing, oftentimes, agents are just not as up to date on on those some of those, you know, different grants and different programs that make it affordable for veterans, or, in this case, you know, teachers, which you said, you know, at the moment is not being offered because of COVID. But, you know, so how did you then so but you still have an education problem, right? You still have? How do I get people to know about this, right? Because they don’t know what they don’t know. So how did you go about educating the educators about this program? What was sort of the process there of saying, Hey, there’s this thing that you don’t know about that exists? What was the what was the way that you were able to share that information?

Toby Fernie 16:53
Yeah, so I tried to incorporate my past in history as a teacher and I started doing a home buying seminar for educators. And I was lucky enough to get connected with Monterey schools, and the the superintendent and the communications director there were fantastic. And they are passionate about helping their teachers and keeping good teachers in the area, too. So we started doing about every three months, three or four months, we do a home buying seminar, and it’s for the entire Monterey staff. And so I started with the lender that I mentioned, the two of us do the the presentation together, I do more. So the real estate side, you know, talking about the difficulties with increasing rents around here, increasing costs of homes, they’ve gone up about eight to 10% a year since 2008. Last year, they went up about 30%. So, you know, if you look at the the rising cost of homes, and then also the rising cost of rent every month, you know, it is one of those kind of you know, you’re you’re in trouble in both directions, right? Because, you know, the cost of rent might be, you know, cost prohibitive, if it keeps going up. And then you know, a number of years from now, teaching salaries don’t often keep pace with with the cost of living. So I’m more so did the real estate side of it. And then my lending partner, as you mentioned, so important, I think it’s the most important partnership that you can have as a realtor to be able to share that if you’re working with buyers. And so he did the lending side of it, you know, talked about, how do you get yourself pre approved, you know, what’s that process look like? And we were shocked to find out the number of people that came to our seminar, who just assumed that they couldn’t afford to buy a home that day, oh, they worse? Yeah, that they had, they had never gone through the pre approval process to see if they could afford to buy a home. So sure, you know, our message there typically as our, we would encourage you to just go through the pre approval process, see if you, you know, have the proper credit score enough money for a down payment. And, you know, for many of the teachers who we’ve worked with, if it’s a you know, single teacher, dual income, you know, two teachers working together, or maybe it’s one teacher, you know, who is partners with somebody who’s not a teacher, you know, a lot of those people left the seminars with the confidence that yeah, this is something that we’ve wanted for a long time and we can make it happen.

D.J. Paris 19:22
It really what I’m so impressed with is you identified a problem that was even greater than the teachers themselves finding housing, which, of course, is the most obvious problem. But this actually is a bigger problem, even for administration, who now has to constantly hire re staff reteach the, you know, processes of a particular school district or school itself, and you’re able to come to them and say, I think I might be able to help you with your problem, and the same time help teachers with housing, their own housing problems. And, you know, I can only imagine that those kinds of phone calls To set be able to say, Hey, can I come into, you know, this school or this district and do these seminars? That’s a pretty attractive offer for, you know, the administration to hear they’re like, Oh, good, somebody’s on our side, somebody’s helping us versus I am sure you are not the first realtor to ever call them and say, I would love to do a first time homebuyer seminar for your teachers, I think with your particular background, and also you’re solving even a, you know, a different problem. And on top of housing for teachers is keeping them wanting to stay in the area. I imagine that that had to be pretty well received by administration, or, or am I wrong, and you had to sort of, you know, keep knocking on the door until they let you in?

Toby Fernie 20:41
Yeah, it was a little bit of both. So for Monterey schools, the response from the superintendent and the communications director was almost immediate, I think I got an email back and, you know, 10 minutes later, and they said, Yes, we’ve been looking for something like this for a very long time. You know, we do care about the well being of our teachers outside of just the profession, right, it’s, you know, you have to be able to live here, you have to be able to afford to live here, it’s not just a matter of, you know, going to work every day, or you’re gonna find a different profession, or you’re gonna find somewhere else to live, right. So it was a win win situation in the fact that, you know, it was a benefit to the teachers to learn about this, it was a benefit to the school district to start doing the seminar and show, you know, this is something that we care about, we’re looking out for our teachers, it was also beneficial to me as a, as a new realtor to kind of have, you know, a group of people to get in front of and share my story. And, you know, I kind of speak teacher, if you will. And so I think it, you know, it helps to be a former teacher and say, you know, I get it, I was in your shoes four years ago, and thinking, can I afford to ever buy a house here? Or can I afford to live here? You know, do I need to find a different area to live a different job to do. And, you know, being a teacher, it’s helpful to be able to explain this, you know, to other teachers, and, you know, help them understand the process to, you know, unfortunately, I have reached out to a lot of the districts in the area, not just Monterey, since I, you know, I do serve some of the other areas. And that was, that’s been a bit more of a challenge and a struggle, you know, they’re not getting responses or, you know, following up, you know, five to 10 times before I hear back from somebody, and there’s actually somebody whose role, I won’t mention the school district, but their role. The title is teacher retention. I reached out to him and I said, Hey, you know, we have this program that’s been really successful for Monterey, we’d love to run it in your district, too. And the response that I got back was No, thanks. Not interested. So, you know, it’s, I think, you know, if people see the benefit of it, and how it’s, you know, looking out for teachers, but sometimes people just kind of get stuck in the in the day to day, right. And they’re, they’re very busy teachers are very busy administration, you know, they’re very busy too. But yeah, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve tried to reach out to a lot of different districts. And, you know, I wish it was something that, you know, every district all across California had,

D.J. Paris 23:18
well, and this problem isn’t specific ly, you know, regulated to relegated rather to just educators, right? There’s a lot of different professions that, you know, are going to struggle with a similar issue, which is, how do we keep our employees here, you know, close enough to where they are willing to commute in, to where they can still have a decent standard of living? And oh, yeah, we happen to be in this like, super, you know, expensive County. So for all of our listeners who think, Well, I’m not a former teacher, and, you know, I don’t have this particular situation that I could really solve for, oh, there’s lots of professionals that have this problem. And, you know, this is something that you know, you what I would encourage, and I’m sorry to interject in the middle of Toby doing such a great job, but I would encourage you to talk to some lending partners, and really say, hey, what programs exist out there right now that would help, you know, people who, who might not maybe buy their first home, who, you know, might be experiencing some sort of challenge, whether it’s financial or social or whatever, really educating yourself. I mean, that’s how you became educated about this. And then you were able to, to say, oh, there’s an opportunity here to to solve for this problem. But you know, and you also live that problem as well. So I just I love the fact that you’ve done this and, you know, sadly, that that program, I guess, is not currently being offered. But it still does apply to this idea of first time homebuyers. And, you know, look, I’m sure everyone listening would love to just do million dollar listings all day and of course, who wouldn’t? But if that is Isn’t your current situation and you are looking to work with renters that may become buyers? I have always thought that what a great opportunity, even if you’re even if the person is only renting for the next, however many years, being there guide through the rental process and helping them find apartments that are suitable for their needs, but also help get them closer to that goal of homeownership. Do you? Do you do rentals as well? Now? Are you predominantly just in this on the sales side?

Toby Fernie 25:28
Yeah, my office is almost exclusively sales. You know, I do have people that reach out to me or, you know, people from seminar other teachers that, you know, the school that I used to work at, sometimes they’ll reach out to me and say, Hey, we have a new teacher coming to town, and I’m happy to share, you know, my ideas and information with them. And, you know, but I think, you know, you were talking about the idea of listeners, right, have, you know, um, you know, maybe not many people that listen to the show are former teachers, but to your point of the idea of finding a niche, I think that a lot of people who are realtors, there are some people who go straight into real estate outside High School in college, but a lot of people that are in the industry did something previously. So if you’re a former, you know, nurse, firefighter, police officer, teacher, whatever it is, trying to, if you are interested in setting up, you know, a niche and a group of people that you care about, and you really want to help them, you know, trying to find out, you know, what is that group of people? And how do I connect with them? And how do I, you know, share this information with them. And, you know, the area that I live in, there’s many homes that are here that are multimillion dollar homes, and there’s so many Realtors here that work with, you know, higher end clients, and they’d like to do a couple of sales a year with some some more expensive homes. And for me, I would rather help, you know, 10 Teachers buy a $600,000 house, then, you know, sell one $6 million house because, you know, I just connect better with, with teachers. And I think, you know, while I do work with people outside of teachers, too, you know, it’s easier just to relate and, you know, you feel something additional when you see somebody getting the keys to their first house, and that they might not have thought was ever a possibility. Exactly. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 27:25
I come from the, the IT world in particular, around healthcare, I worked at a, I worked at a firm before being in real estate where I was, you know, T shirts, and shorts and sandals kind of company. And it was a lot of young people. And I was there for many years. And we had about 150 people there, most of which were under 30. Even the owners were just in their early 30s At the time, and it was a kind of a young hip tech company that did not pay particularly well to younger, you know, right out of college graduates. So most of the work staff was workforce was in the probably mid 20s, I would say and they were they were competence. I mean, I don’t know everyone’s compensation, but they seem to be compensated, okay. But but they certainly weren’t, you know, earning a premium to work there. And I can’t remember anyone ever coming into our office and saying, hey, I want to do a seminar about buying a home, it just wasn’t even something I would have thought about. Because I didn’t know it was even an option. And so if you’re listening and thinking, well, like Toby was saying, everyone has not everyone, but a lot of our listeners are going to have either previous careers or we know people in other careers, and you can talk to you, you know, if you don’t have an opportunity, like what I would do if I were practicing real estate, I mean, I’ve been doing this long enough to where no, I think I still would do it today, if I was if I was actually practicing real estate, first call I would make would be to my former company. And I would call every other tech firm that I’m familiar with in the space that I we played in, and I would say, hey, I want to help your employees, you know, and this will help possibly stickiness with your company, because Chicago is also a relatively expensive place to live. So you know, this, this would be the path to homeownership. Nobody ever did that at the firm I was at and we had 150 people there. And I guarantee our HR director would have said that would be awesome, come and do a lunch, because it makes her in this case, it may well make her look good to the company to that she’s bringing in this value. So I don’t want to harp on that harp, I don’t want to step on this too much. But I really think there’s a huge lesson here. You know, whatever your background is, and if you if you went into real estates, you know, straight, you know, from when he became an adult and you don’t have a particular past, talk to your friends, talk to other clients and say, hey, you know, do you think there’s an opportunity for me to to do some education for people in your field? Do you think people would be interested in that? What are the problems they’re facing? And then you’ll you’ll and then talk to a lender and say, Hey, do you have any things to do to address these problems? So anyway, I think we’ve made that point. But I am so impressed with with you and And we should also mention, by the way, how difficult it is to be a realtor in Monterey, California. Toby was sharing this before before we got, we went live. This is incredible. I mean, absolutely incredible, in an unfortunate way, so to speak. But it is truly remarkable. It is just just such a bizarre area of the country. It’s such a beautiful area. But there are how many homes sold a year at how many realtors in Monterey?

Toby Fernie 30:25
Yeah. So, the year that I started, there was 1400, home sales and 1500 licensed realtors. So, you know, I’m not I’m not Matt Damon from Goodwill Hunting. But if you if you do that math, it’s it doesn’t add up very well. And especially since you know, some of the top producers are probably selling, you know, 20 to 30 homes a year. Right. So yeah, I got to think that a large portion or percentage of realtors are doing zero to one sale a year. Maybe they represent themselves in purchases, or just work exclusively with friends and family. But yeah, it’s it’s a difficult market, there’s a lot of people that are looking for, you know, selling the five $10 million home. So that’s an area and a market. That’s that’s pretty flooded. You know, in here, right? Everybody’s trying to connect with those with those buyers and sellers. So yeah, I think sometimes people get drawn into the idea of wow, look at the commission that I could earn from a for sure. And dollar house, right. And then once they get into it, right, I mean, my first six months, I did one sale, right? So it’s just, it’s, it’s pretty difficult to get started. And every single realtor, you know, says the things like Oh, I love where I live, which I do love Monterey. And you know, every realtor says, I’m the hardest working realtor, which you know, I am the hardest working realtor here in Monterey. But i That’s why I tried to find that niche to your point is, you know, something that would be separate and differentiate me from from other realtors in a market where it’s, it’s, it’s very flooded.

D.J. Paris 32:04
And it’s also the market you’re going after is also a really smart market. In addition to all of the problems it solves, or sorry, all the solutions that you’re offering to solve for these problems. But it’s also a market that other realtors are probably ignoring, because of the just sort of the, you know the demographics of your area. So it’s really just I’m so impressed with it all the way around, because it’s really going going into something that solves a lot of great a lot of problems in a really productive positive way. And it’s also there’s not as much competition I’m guessing in the sense of, you know, teachers probably aren’t getting a lot of those, you know, opportunities to to learn about about homeownership. So while I’m so impressed with this well, Toby tell, let’s talk before we totally get off the idea of of the sort of helping teachers thing I would love. Just to explain to our audience, you know what those numbers were? So you said, Hey, in your first six months, you really did one sale, which I think is still pretty impressive. But once you did your first teacher seminar, can you tell us about sort of what happened after that?

Toby Fernie 33:12
Yeah, so the first six months only did did one sale and was working nights at a at a restaurant and bar, as many Realtors do when they’re first starting out. And then yeah, I think around six months in might have been when I did the first seminar with the lender. And the first seminar was was very, you know, not not very well attended. I think we had 12 RSVP, and maybe two showed up in the end. Sure. And then the second one that I did actually was the most attended seminar and we had 70 people that attended. Oh, yeah, we were we were quite surprised. I don’t think we had enough seating where we were we had initially planned for so yeah, and then so my, this the six months after that did ended up doing for sales, which were all as a result of the seminar. And then the year after that ended up doing nine sales, which, you know, were a combination mostly mostly ended up being from the seminar but some from you know, open houses and from referrals and things like that. And then, you know, in 2020 ones, the first six, seven months of the year have ended up 14 sales that are you know, sold are in contract right now.

D.J. Paris 34:40
Congratulations. And again, we’re in a you’re in and you’re in a market where there are a very finite number of homes and an almost infinite number of realtors. So it’s it’s the average realtor is doing less than one deal a year and it’s not like well, there’s 40,000 realtors and half of them are just doing it for now. There’s only 1500 You know, for 1500 realtors. So it is a very, I mean, that is really incredible. So congratulations on that success. And I just think I just think you just perfectly hit so many of the things that as a marketer, I’m impressed with, but just, you know, you identified problems, you came up with a unique solution, anyone after people that, you know, are largely being ignored, you know, in the realtor space, and you’re creating solutions for them. But of course, you don’t only work with with educators you work with, you know, all different types of people. But, you know, tell us a little bit about, you know, sort of how your business has evolved. Right. So I know you were you were doing seminars, obviously, maybe, are you still doing seminars? Because I know that the funding program has changed. But are you still doing our seminars, still a big part of sort of your, you know, your presentation to the public?

Toby Fernie 36:02
Yeah, we still have been doing seminars via zoom, the last the last year. So yeah, we still do about every, every three or four months. And I think the thing that I’ve learned this, this last year and a half with with COVID, is that if you’re a realtor, you really have to find multiple sources of generating business, right? Because if you’re somebody who almost exclusively relied on open houses or door knocking, you know, a lot of those in person changed. Yeah, that you’re not, you know, nobody’s answering the door during the middle of a global pandemic. So, yeah, I think you really just need to diversify what you’re doing, I don’t think that you should, you know, there’s 100 different options that you could do as a realtor to try to generate clients, I don’t think that you should choose too many, I think that you don’t want to be, you know, a jack of all trades and a Master of None, I would recommend choosing, you know, three to five sources that are going to be your areas of generating business. And, you know, some of it needs to be the same person, whether it’s, you know, open houses, door knocking seminars, you know, whatever the situation might be, for doing it face to face, and if you will, maybe the, you know, older versions of real estate, if you will, that, you know, we’re kind of the only options in the in the, you know, 1980s or 1990s Sure, but then also trying to diversify, and whether it’s through social media, you know, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, you know, whatever it is that you’re choosing to do, I think that you need to pick three to five that you really enjoy doing, you’re passionate about, you’re consistent with it. And it’s something that, you know, allows for you to if there is in time, when you can’t do open houses, well, then you can lean into those other sources. And, you know, I think if you’re just only focusing on one area, maybe you’re somebody that has a lot of expenses every month, you pay 510 $1,000 into Zillow a month, or you know, some of those other sources, right like that, it can really put a lot of pressure on a realtor to try to do a certain number of sales every month. And if you’re, if you’re not able to do that, then you know, that’s why there’s such speaking of high turnover with teachers, there’s, there’s such high turnover when it comes to real estate agents.

D.J. Paris 38:29
Yeah, it’s, that is very, very true, it’s a tough position, where you have to basically run every part of the business and be a realtor as well. And it now there are some firms that you know, help offset some of those responsibilities. But most of the agents I talked to, regardless of the firm that they work at, end up doing, you know, 95% of the job themselves, because that’s the nature of the job. And client acquisition is arguably the most challenging part for probably all of the listeners are, you know, unless they’re really at a high level and then they have other types of problems. But I think you’re right is picking picking a few avenues that you’re excited and passionate about is and that solves a real problem. And you know, we would all love for the phone to just ring with referrals all day and and certainly once you get to a certain level of your business hopefully that that that happens. But until that time, or maybe you never stopped prospecting I’m not sure but seems to be that most of the agents I talk to you no matter how successful they are never stopped prospecting but the idea of really figuring out you know, how do I make this work is is a challenge and that’s why we’re so grateful to have somebody like you on who really solved a very difficult problem for yourself in addition to the you know, the problem is okay, this is not a very realtor friendly area. This is a difficult spot to to stake your claim and and to be to build a business because there’s just not a whole lot of property to go around and a lot of competition, and you, in a way sort of created your own market, which I think is really couldn’t be overstated. I think that is a really, really important point is you decided to create something that solved a whole bunch of problems that were, like we said earlier, kind of maybe being ignored or just not even really known by the realtor community in your area. So I could not be more impressed with with with you. And, and we should also mention, by the way, again, we’ve talked a lot about, you know, Toby’s you know, working with with educators. He of course, works with all sorts of different buyers sellers, and also can offer some some some guidance there with with renters. But we’ve also had mentioned that you have another challenge, and this is not as unique to your area, but certainly, boy, this isn’t really a big number is that Monterey has appreciated it what about 30%? On average, is that was that right? Or do I have that right? In the last 12 months?

Toby Fernie 41:05
Yeah, it was close to 30%. Since since last year. And since the since 2008. Homes have gone up about eight to 10% a year. So yeah, I mean, last year, obviously very unique market and interesting. Real Estate Market all across the country. Monterey seemed to be an area where there was so many buyers moving from San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, that were able to work from home and maybe wanted to be a place with some more outdoors activities. And so there was a I think the last four or five buyers that I’ve worked with have been from San Jose, San Francisco or Los Angeles, because it seemed like a lot of the the people that were moving to San Francisco and San Jose and doing, you know, cash offers over asking price 10 offers on a house. We’re starting to see that in Monterey.

D.J. Paris 42:03
Hmm. Yeah, it makes sense. You have people that now are more mobile because of the work at home experience that so many companies to hear me. So how are you? Good. Oh, we’re back. Great. Well, I was I was just Well, yeah, gosh, so thanks. We totally will just Kate went out for about 10 seconds there. But it’s perfect timing, because we were actually going to wrap up. But what I would like to to let all of our listeners know, whether you’re a realtor or in a different profession, obviously, hopefully this has been helpful for you, our listeners, but also we want to mention that if you are somebody that is wanting to work with the hardest working Realtor in Monterrey, which is Toby, what is the best way that somebody can reach out to you whether they’re looking to buy, sell, rent, invest? What’s the best means of communication with you?

Toby Fernie 42:55
Yeah, so I tried to make it easy for pretty much everything that I have, whether it’s my websites, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, it’s all just living in Monterey, California. So the website’s living in Monterey california.com. And that’s my Youtube, Facebook and Instagram, too. If you want, you can send me an email at Toby tob y dot Ferny fer ni [email protected]. I do you know, often have clients that are looking in other parts of the country to used to live in the Midwest and the East Coast. So quite a few people that I do connect with there for referrals. And so if you have anybody that’s moving to the area, be happy to help them out as best as I can. Awesome. We’ll

D.J. Paris 43:43
find Toby on his website. Again, that’s living in Monterey california.com. Or you can email him at Toby dot phirni. And that’s fer n [email protected]. Sorry, I think I said Tony, instead of Toby Toby dot for [email protected] will of course put those in the show notes. Toby, thank you so much. This was such a fun interview. For me. Personally, I got really charged up with this particular conversation because of you just such a unique, you’re really such a unique realtor, and we’re so grateful to have you on the show. And and as your star continues to rise, I am sure we would love to have you back at some point to talk about how things continue to evolve in your business and in your clients lives. So uh, thank you so much. On behalf of the audience, thank you for your time. We know how busy and it is right now for realtors. So especially somebody like yourself, who’s done so many sales this year, it’s so impressive. So thank you for that. And also, on behalf of Toby and myself, we want to thank all of our listeners and viewers for continuing to support our show. Please tell a friend think of one other realtor that could benefit from listening or watching our show and send them a link easiest way is to send them to our website which is keeping it real pod.com can stream every episode we you’ve ever done right there, or just pull up a podcast app haven’t searched for keeping it real. Hit the subscribe button. Toby, thank you so much. And

Toby Fernie 45:07
to be here, yeah, appreciate you having me and I’d be happy to come on again anytime.

D.J. Paris 45:13
Awesome, and thanks to everyone and we will see you on the next episode. Thanks, Toby. Thanks

Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.

In this episode, Chris Linsell from TheClose.com discusses the withdrawal of the US Justice Department from the settlement with NAR on antitrust. Chris continues to emphasize the importance of being open and having conversations with your buyers/sellers and explaining the processes by being transparent. Last, Chris and DJ discuss how certifications and accreditations can help you better position yourself in the market.

To see NAR’s recommendations on certifications, click here.

To read Tracy Hawkins’ article on the importance of becoming a safety expert, click here.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Chris Linsell can be reached at [email protected].

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by low Ensign, looking for cutting edge designs and unparalleled support and fast turnaround for all your sine needs. Low and sine has you covered. They produce for sale signs, directionals writers, open houses, anything you need. Signs are produced within three days of being ordered the fastest turnaround time in the industry. Best of all, when you call low and you get a live person ready to guide you to choose the best looking and most effective sign for your real estate needs. Visit low insign.com That’s LOWENS ign.com and find out why top Realtors trust their listings with Lowen and now onto our show

Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show and today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lynn sell from the closed.com. Now this is a partnership between keeping it real and the clothes.com. And let me tell you about the clothes now the clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals. They cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology and team building strategies. From the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Please visit the closed.com That’s th e Cl O S e.com And subscribe to their newsletter so you can be notified every time they publish an article with us as always is Chris Lindh sell. He is a staff writer and real estate coach for the close. Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead gen transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. Chris has been part of hundreds of real estate transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his community theaters. Most recent production. And Chris Welcome once again to keeping it real. We’re so excited to have you.

Chris Linsell 2:24
Yeah, thanks for having me back. Glad to be here. Summertime baby. Um, last summer.

D.J. Paris 2:30
We were just talking about fishing. So I got tripped up a little bit when I was reading your intro because I went oh, we were just talking about these. What were the names of those giant flies that you were just telling me.

Chris Linsell 2:41
So I spent a lot of time with the Blue Ribbon trout streams of Michigan. And right around this time and the June middle of June two beginning of July, the hexa Genia bugs come out at night they’re these massive insects that are like the size of like a Twinkie from from tip to tail kind of thing. And come out at night the fish go crazy for on that thing, the biggest the biggest crowd out of the water that you’ll see all year. So yeah, I’ve been standing the trout streams late at night catching big fish and drinking adult beverages and enjoying good time with my fishing friends. So other than spending time waxing poetically about the real estate market. That’s where you’ll find me these days.

D.J. Paris 3:26
And have you witnessed a fish leaping out of the water to catch one. Have you seen Have you witnessed a fish actually catching a fly?

Chris Linsell 3:33
And oh, yeah, massive. I mean, most of these had most of the spider come out at night. So it’s pretty dark. Yeah, sounds like give me an example. Picture yourself standing in the middle of a river at midnight. It’s very dark and somebody’s dropping bowling balls around you. That sounds like when these fish come out of the water splashing looking for these big flies. So do the flies.

D.J. Paris 3:55
Do they bother you at all? Do they do they run into you? Or do they leave? They leave humans alone mostly, you

Chris Linsell 4:01
know, I don’t want to say because I don’t want to discourage anybody from this amazing hobby that I have. But yeah, you get bumped into occasionally hear about humans. They’re just right. On their way to do other stuff.

D.J. Paris 4:13
Well, that’s funny. Well, I do love trout. That’s That’s awesome. Well, today we and I apologize for getting a little off topic but I’m so fascinated by by this while you were telling me those those hex I’m sorry, said we’re time hexa.

Chris Linsell 4:29
Yeah, we call them the hex bugs. X bugs. Yeah. But they’re a type of bug. It’s a big mayflies, basically the hexa Genia group, but we just call them hex.

D.J. Paris 4:42
Gotcha. So we have cicadas this year, I believe and and the hex bugs right now

Chris Linsell 4:47
as well. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right everywhere against who know.

D.J. Paris 4:52
Well, good for fishing, I guess. Well, I know Chris and I were talking just before we started about what we would discuss today and hope Uh, by the way, if you’re listening live happy Fourth of July or happy post Fourth of July. But for those of you who are listening on your podcast app likely there’s a few, maybe a few weeks that transpired since. But we wanted to talk about some recent news that Chris has been paying attention to, that has not really received a lot of press over the last weekend, which is when this news hit. So Chris, do you mind sharing that?

Chris Linsell 5:24
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So recently, the US Justice Department has withdrawn from a settlement that they had with the National Association of Realtors, over some investigations of antitrust scenarios. And, you know, I’m not on the inside of this. Nor am I have I spoken directly to anybody with the National Association of Realtors. So my perspective on this is certainly that of an observer is an interested person, as a member of the real estate community. But the longer the short of it is the Justice Department pulled out of the settlement in order to give themselves license to further investigate anti competitive behavior. And most of most of us in the industry that are watching this are guessing that that has to do with both the NAR rules for disclosure of commission rates and commission, kind of the way that commissions are populated in real estate transactions, as well as an interesting little nugget about, in some cases, only allowing access to lockboxes, to members of the National Association of Realtors. So, you know, both of these things are, you know, obviously, they have direct application and implication into our daily livelihood. And the fact that the US Justice Department is taking a closer look at these things could be an indicator that there’s some more news to come on this front.

D.J. Paris 7:06
So just to recap, they’re under the Trump administration, this anti competitive or antitrust issue regarding it looks like the big thing is around commission disclosure or the public understanding Commission’s they have reached a settlement. And then now that the the administration has changed to the Biden to Biden’s, you know, regime that that has now been withdrawn. And now there may be further investigation into this sort of these sorts of practices.

Chris Linsell 7:40
Yeah, yeah, that’s correct. And there’s, there’s a lot of moving parts to this. And I think that this is one of those one of those situations where we’re on the front end of this conversation and this story, and there’s there’s likely to be a lot more, especially with Biden’s Justice Department’s focus on antitrust, to follow this sort of thing. But the Federal Trade Commission, recently, a new chair to the FTC, Lena Khan, who is a 32 year old woman who has written some really interesting things about antitrust, specifically with Amazon. And it’s clear that the Justice Department under Biden is not shying away from these conversations. Lena connoisseur is a major proponent of strong antitrust policy. Merrick Garland, who’s now the attorney general is a strong proponent of antitrust policy. So you know, most of the antitrust spotlight is focused on tech companies like Google and Facebook. But you know, strong trade groups like the National Association of Realtors are not going to be immune to that sort of spotlight either. So, you know, DJ and I were talking about this earlier, one thing that realtors and brokers can do right now to be proactive on this topic, is to have thoughtful conversations with their clients about how Commission’s are handled, what what a commission is, how much it how much it likely the dollar amounts will be based on sale prices. You know, where that commission comes from? It’s easy to say to buyers, oh, you know, you don’t pay commission, the seller is the one that’s paying all the commission. Well, you know, maybe on paper, but if you just kind of rearranged the flow of dollars and commissions coming out of the buyers money that they’re they’re using to pay for the house and so there’s certainly an argument to be made that Commission’s aren’t free to buyers, you know that they didn’t have that permission to pay, maybe they pay a lower sale price. So there’s lots of different conversations to be had here. But the bottom line is have conversations with your buyers and sellers. Be open and transparent Do not hide the way that the process works. A lot of antitrust is born out of opaqueness to the process. So be transparent, don’t try to hide how things work. This is the way that the our business and our business operates. So be very clear about that. And then on the other hand, as well have this conversation with your broker and broker or managing brokers have this conversation with your agents, be thoughtful and upfront about the way that your individual business works and say, you know, make sure that the people working under you know, how you operate when it comes to commissions. Because the more people who know about how the process works, the less likely there are for people to have hurt feelings about it. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 10:37
couldn’t agree more. Here’s a little quick quote from the wall, a Wall Street Journal article about this that happened on on the first of July, which basically echoes what Chris just said, which was that the Justice Department sued the National Association of REALTORS last and had come up with a settlement. This was in last November of 2020. And just to quote the Wall Street Journal, because this really summarizes everything Chris just said, or a lot of what Chris said, the lawsuit accuses the group, the group meaning NAR of maintaining anti competitive rules that created an environment in which there was little visibility for home buyers, about the Commission’s a buyer’s agent would earn. So this is something to think about in your practice, individual practice of what are you telling buyers? Are you telling them anything? Are when they ask what is your response? What is your brokerage firms view on talking about commissions? And as Chris said, you know, talk to your managing broker, talk to your firm, and say, How should I be discussing this, and if you aren’t getting a good response there, go online and start, you know, going through some of these forums that Realtors hang out at, and start having these these conversations or, you know, even Facebook groups that you can chat with, with other realtors. But you know, definitely have, think about how you want to present that to your buyers and your sellers. And, and it sounds like transparency is the major issue here. So if you do your part to be more transparent, seems like everyone, everyone wins in the end, because I don’t and I wouldn’t, I would think as I know, when I was a buyer, and what we’ll move on from this in just a moment, but I know when I was a buyer, it was super confusing, because I know everything has a price, or rather has a cost associated with it on top of whatever the cost of what I’m buying is, and oftentimes in retail stuff that’s just built into the price. But I didn’t know how it worked. I’ve been buying things in stores forever. I understand how how profit and margin works in stores, I didn’t understand how it worked in home buying and it was not really well disclosed to me, and I had to ask questions about it. And I suspect a lot of us probably, maybe we just assume buyers and sellers understand how it works. But I would make I would really challenge that assumption, because I know I was 30 years old, and I was buying my first place. And I had no idea. And I had to ask my agent, hey, how do I pay you something? How does this work? And he did explain it to me, thankfully in detail, but I had to ask it. And so I would encourage you just to be in a situation where you explain it first so that your clients aren’t sitting around after you leave the meeting. You know, a couple might be talking to each other going, how does it do we have to pay this person or how does this work?

Chris Linsell 13:28
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the bottom line here, as far as I’m concerned, from an industry kind of analyst perspective is this the ship has sailed, when it comes to the assumption that our buyers and sellers will just kind of go along with whatever we have to say about stuff that that may be the case to some degree, because they’re trusting us as an expert. But we have to remember buyers and sellers consumers in general have access to more information than they ever have before about how the transactions that they’re a part of work. And, again, for better or worse, companies like Facebook or another example is Robin Hood. These companies that offer essentially free services, their business model has shed a light on the fact that there is nothing in this life for free. When you use Facebook, it’s you’re not getting it for free. You’re paying for Facebook with your information. And this is how Facebook makes money as they sell information to advertisers so that they can better position their products. You are paying for that service with something and same with Robin Hood you’re not trading stocks for free you are paying for the broker fees on Robin Hood with you know buy they sell order flow so that other people know who’s buying what and when and how much they’re selling information. Same deal with real estate transactions. It’s a different exchange. But you know, buyers pay for their transaction in a way that that if it’s not completely clear to them, we’re not doing our jobs. So if you want to get out ahead of this stuff, get transparent, make sure that every party to the transaction understands every fundamental step. And you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about.

D.J. Paris 15:22
Awesome, thanks. What a really appreciate your opinion and thoughts on that, of course. And I wanted to also talk about an article that I read on the close just today, which is the most recent article, as of today is the sixth of July, which really caught my eye and I hadn’t really had any seen an article like it before, this is what I love about the closes, oftentimes, that’s what happens, I see an article, headline and I go, ooh, that that captured my imagination, or captured my attention, rather. And so this one, this is written by Tracy Hawkins, who is apparently a safety expert. And the title of the article is called and you can read this just by going to the clothes.com. But it’s in the title, the article is Ken becoming a local safety expert grow your real estate business. So what we thought we would spend the rest of the time today talking about is different certifications and designations that you may want to consider to better position yourself as an agent that isn’t the same as everyone else that has additional skills that can be developed, or, or can be, you know, accredited. And that will hopefully help you better service your clients and even better position yourself from a marketing perspective.

Chris Linsell 16:36
Yeah, 100%. You know, remember, we get real estate licenses, we are essentially qualifying ourselves to offer the same suite of services that literally everybody else who has a real estate license is offering. And so it’s up to us as real estate professionals to figure out ways that we can differentiate what we have to offer to provide value in a way that our competitors aren’t providing them value so that we can show the, you know, our buyers and sellers that were worth working with, and designation certifications, that sort of thing. That’s a great way to do it, if you’re doing it smartly and strategically.

D.J. Paris 17:17
And there’s the challenge, I think, with designations, and certifications, and we’ve probably seen this, you know, certainly as agents, we work with other brokers, or I’m sorry, in Illinois, we call all agents, brokers, but we’ll just say agents, when you’re working with other agents, whether it’s on a transaction where we’re cooperating to try to close the transaction, or we’re just setting up showings, you know, oftentimes, you’ll see in the signature line of another agents email, just initial sort of initials after initials, you know, sort of at some sort of acronym that, that maybe we don’t even understand. So there’s lots of different certifications. And what we wanted to do was just talk about a handful of them that, you know, not in a lot of detail, but just to let you know, of some of the certifications that Chris particularly finds to be interesting and helpful. In your business.

Chris Linsell 18:05
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And actually, I just want to start by calling out Tracy Hawkins article. It’s like, like, since most recent one published on the close today, it’s July 6, but if you guys, you know, if you’re listening to this after the fact, you can go to the clothes and search local safety expert in the search bar, it’ll pop right up. Essentially, one of the things that, you know, like Tracy’s big message here is that you can grow your business by becoming an expert in things that your clients they may not necessarily know to identify, that are important to them, but they certainly are important to them, and just call out a couple of points that she makes here. You can grow your business by just learning about your clients safety and security concerns. You know, you’d be surprised how many sellers are worried about having showings because they’re worried that people are going to take their stuff? Sure, that sounds it sounds kind of, you know, almost paranoid, but this is something that that sellers, definitely worry about, this is something that we can provide immediate value, just by addressing there. And there is there are there are definitely you know, kind of official designations that you can get on just about any topic within the real estate industry. But just by going through training by calling out your expertise in particular realms, like safety is a good example. You are going to build your business because there’s going to be people who are going to gravitate towards those kind of certifications and accreditations even if they are relatively unofficial, that’s still going to help you grow your business. Yeah, and I particularly

D.J. Paris 19:51
love this local safety expert and for just and again, I always think about it from a marketing perspective and and assuming that At your, you know, working with a seller or rather you’re bidding for the business to work with the seller and maybe they’ve met with other agents. You know, one of the things that if you have the sort of expertise or the certification around being a safety expert, is you can build that into your presentation. To say one of the steps that we take before we start accepting showings is we’re going to talk about safety, we’re going to I’m a certified local safety expert, what that means is I’m going to walk through every home of your house, we’re going to have a conversation about you know, every single room to make sure that it’s secure, and that you’re comfortable with the strangers that we’ll be walking through here. Most likely when you’re not here. So we’re going to do this. And here, here’s the steps that that you know, we’re going to take once we get there, again, you know, all things being equal, that sounds really good to me versus somebody who doesn’t address it at all in their presentation.

Chris Linsell 20:53
Yeah, 100% 100%. And, you know, frankly, this is an easy win. This is something that that real estate agents can do without having to adjust the gym of their sale too much. It is just a matter of positioning what you’re already doing, frankly, and then taking a couple of extra steps. That is that is a real easy differentiator that honestly, agents just aren’t doing right now. So those who are taking this extra step, they can really stand out with minimal, minimal extra effort,

D.J. Paris 21:25
right now, in particular is a good time to have a designation like this around sellers, because as most areas of the country, you know, putting a listing up on the MLS is is likely to generate a lot of quick activity, if it’s priced correctly, because of the the, the, you know, limit the limiting inventory that most of us are dealing with. So this is a way to say, Hey, I’m going to put your stuff on you know, we’re gonna get it up and you’re we’re going to probably get a lot of offers. But you know, what’s really most important to me is making sure that this home is secure. While we’re in the during this process. And again, that’s kind of a neat way to position yourself as as a, this idea that I care about your safety is a really interesting take that Realtors oftentimes aren’t thinking about, oftentimes they’re going to talk about I care about your bottom line, I want to get you the best price, I want to help you sell this home as quick as possible. All of those are great, but that’s really common. And if you can add in, in addition to that, some some other sort of here’s what I specialize in. And Chris and I are going to maybe chat about a few of those, in addition to being a local safety expert. But huge shout out to Tracy Hawkins, who wrote this article because it grabbed my attention. And I’m going to bring this one in particular to our, our Realtors here at our firm, because I just think it’s such a cool idea. So thank you for that great article, Tracy.

Chris Linsell 22:48
Absolutely, yeah. And just shout out again to Tracy Tracy is also going to be a speaker at the National Association of Realtors Conference in San Diego this November. I’m excited to also be a speaker there. So if you’re going to be out in San Diego this November, please make sure to check out Tracy. In her session, come on over check out the clothes and my session. There we’re going to lots of lots of important things to talk about lots of good ways that we can grow as professionals and be able to shake our hands and in tell us tell us exactly what you think good, bad or otherwise, live and in living color at San Diego this November,

D.J. Paris 23:25
and how exciting we’re back to doing in person events again. And so for those of you who are thinking about whether you should attend or not, Chris is going to be there. Of course, Tracy, who we’ve been just chatting about, I’ll be slinking around somewhere. And I’d be happy to shake anybody’s hand who might be a listener fan of the show as well. So Gnar is in San Diego this year. So definitely and what I mean what a what a wonderful place to go visit in the fall. In addition, let’s talk about some other designations. And then we should also mention, by the way, I’m going to, there’s going to be a link to this article, as Chris mentioned, right in the notes of this podcast episode. So you’ll see a link there. There’s also a great link on the National Association of REALTORS website, or sorry, a great page that they’ve put together with all the designations and certifications that they recognize. And so I’m going to post that as well in the notes so you can see what what are officially recognizes.

Chris Linsell 24:19
Oh, yeah, perfect. So DJ, I’ve got some we’ve got some other designations. I mean, being a safety expert, certainly there’s some there’s some value prop, right, kind of built right into that. But there’s other designations out there. What do you say you want to you want to kind of pop through a couple of these we’ll chat about maybe do kind of a lightning round style. We’ll talk about, you know, a couple of different designation options whether or not they’re worth it for realtors, what kind of benefit they might have that sort of thing.

D.J. Paris 24:47
Yeah, I’m gonna start I’ll start with the first one and this is one I’m not sure that this is recognized by NAR so I do want to make that disclaimer. It may it may be it may not be I haven’t, haven’t looked into it but it’s one from a marketing perspective I like. And that is the certified negotiation expert. And I think there’s a couple of different variations of it. But but that is essentially the gist of it. And what what it, what it does is teach negotiation strategies for buyers and seller or, you know, buyer and seller agents. And obviously, I would hope that most of us hearing that would understand there’s value there in a presentation to a buyer or seller about why you should work with them as, Hey, I’ve been certified in, arguably, to your bottom line, maybe the most important part of this process, which is the negotiation. And here’s what I here’s my training, here’s what I’ve learned, and oh, by the way, only, you know, 5% of Realtors, probably less than 5%, I don’t know the exact number, but very few, you know, a very small percentage of realtors have that particular designation. And I think that could carry a lot of weight in any sort of presentation

Chris Linsell 25:54
100% 100%. And you know, I’ll just kind of point out as well, for most of your consumers, most buyers and sellers here, when they see certified negotiation expert after your name, or in your signature line, that’s, that’s all the information that they need, they’re gonna get value just from seeing that the vast majority of these people are not going to click through to the National Association of REALTORS website and try to find the designation read about what it takes to get it. Frankly, buyers and sellers do not have that kind of attention span or time and they’re just not interested in learning more other than this is somebody who’s certified to negotiate on my behalf. Great, this is helpful. So, you know, do yourself a favor and think about what is it that’s going to give me an advantage in the eyes of my buyers and sellers, if this is going to do it. And if it is worth my time and my effort to get it. This is a no brainer. I love this one.

D.J. Paris 26:51
Yeah, and I’ll just really quickly just to put a cap on on the certified negotiation expert, let’s say that it is valuable enough to increase your clients bottom line by even let’s just say 5%. Maybe, maybe there’s data that people who have this designation, have a certain you know, you know, higher dollar amount that they that they that they foster for their clients. That’s another reason to market right. So there’s probably some some specific objective data, just like they say, Oh, if you use professional photographers, homes typically sell faster. And for more dollar beef, be careful, of course of what statistics you’re using. And be careful to to, you know, make sure that that you’re not promising things that that aren’t necessarily, you know, going to be but again, as Chris said, they don’t need to ask, you know, what is a certified negotiation expert, or they’re likely to understand that, so we’re looking for things that designations that that, that clients care about, or that really help your skill set. And that’s one that hopefully does both. What What else do you recommend Chris?

Chris Linsell 27:54
Well, I mean, there’s a handful of designations that I think just right off the top of my head, make a lot of sense. One of them I’ll call out here is the SR e s designation. This is a certified or excuse me that certified it is the seniors, real estate specialists, seniors real estate specialist, if you’ve got a market where maybe you’ve got a significant retirement community, or a lot of seniors people over the age of 65. This is a particularly potent designation to have because not only do you get some cred from I’m going to just going to call like I see it here from a a segment of our client population that has the most money to spend and the most, the most capital to sell when it comes to homes. Baby Boomers are the largest cohort of real estate owners in the United States, these folks have homes to buy and sell. If you have a designation that is going to connect specifically with that audience, you are making a good decision. And also as an SRTs. designee, you get listed on the AARP website as a as a direct referral. So there’s a lot of benefits for that particular designation.

D.J. Paris 29:17
And I have an additional reason of why you may want to consider again, senior real estate specialist. If you are looking to network and build professional relationships with other professionals that you know work also with seniors. This is a huge opportunity for you to reach out to financial planners, estate attorneys that special specialized with, with estate planning, you know, and having those conversations and saying hey, I’m looking for an estate planning attorney or a Certified Financial Planner, who also you know, works with seniors. Oh, by the way, I am a senior real estate specialist so I would love to connect with you and start sending referrals, maybe we can share referrals to each other. This is a great opportunity not only to appeal directly to the senior that you’re looking to work with, but to work with some of those professional services that also would value that.

Chris Linsell 30:13
Yep, 100% 100% there’s, there’s a lot of different ways you can slice the value of that particular designation. Another one I’d love to call out here is, excuse me, another one that I would love to call out here is for folks who are interested in representing investors or playing in the commercial space, the CCI M designation that’s certified commercial investment member is really the gatekeeper to top producer status in the commercial landscape. Especially in major metropolitan markets. But honestly all over the place, if you have a significant representation of commercial property in your market. If you want to play big in the space, the CCI n is kind of a must have. The other one of the reasons why that is, is it’s actually not easy to get and people who are active buyers and sellers in the commercial market. They know that to get a CCI M, there’s a significant caution when it comes to application fees and class fees, you have to have a very large portfolio of experience in that space. So people who are active consumers in that space, they know that a CCI a member has put their time in and as cut their teeth, they are an expert on this sort of thing. So if you are in if you want to get into the commercial space, a CCIE am is really a kind of a must have if you want to you know get into the the big baller status

D.J. Paris 31:42
in Chris’s right. So this CCI M again, is certified commercial investment member. And oftentimes, I hear that from even the agents that are firms who are mostly doing residential or exclusively doing residential, saying how do I break into the commercial space, and CCM is a really good designation to earn. As Chris said, it’s not particularly easy, it’s a two, from what I can tell it is a minimum of 200 classroom hours. So this is this is a process this one will take some time. But again, if you are working with residential clients who may occasionally have a commercial need, or maybe you’re thinking of switching focus entirely and going strictly commercial, you would for sure want this, but this will really if you’re still staying in the residential space, most agents who deal with residential are not going to have this. So this is a big thing, you’ll probably have to explain it to your clients a bit more. But again, a great opportunity to call all of your clients, even ones that you’ve worked with in the past on the residential side, and say, Hey, by the way, I just completed my certification for commercial and investment. If that’s ever something that you’re interested in, I feel that I can assist you versus having to refer that to a true, you know, exclusively commercial broker.

Chris Linsell 32:59
That’s true. And you know, the one thing that I will call out here, the one crossover that makes a lot of sense is, especially right now as as what I’ll call retail investment in real estate is becoming more popular. Having a CCI M is going to be a significant leg up. If you are looking to land clients who are purchasing, say income properties on a regular basis, like it’s a dream to have the client who’s like, yeah, you know, bring me you know, bring me residential properties that I can convert into Airbnb s and if they’re within, you know, these certain parameters, I’ll just write I’ll write an offer sight unseen. Like that’s what I’m looking for right now. These are the clients that we want. These are the sorts of like recurring revenue sources, frankly, as as real estate agents that we can really build a business on. If those are the clients that you’re you’re surfing after right now. SCCM is going to be the wave you need to be

D.J. Paris 33:53
great. What else?

Chris Linsell 33:54
What else? How about this? Here’s what here’s what I think that again, it doesn’t apply to every market. But be surprised how often this gets used is the MRP designation, which is military relocation professional. If you’re not familiar with this designation, it is honestly it’s really pretty easy to get there is no volume requirement for it. It’s like less than half a day in a classroom. It’s all I say classroom it’s a it’s a webinar that you have to watch essentially comes from the National Association of Realtors. This designation is like 200 bucks to get and it’s really pretty reasonable. And it is specifically it’s training for agents who serve as military communities. That experience you know, relatively high turnover in their, in their, their populations. And this is pretty, pretty typical when you’ve got like military bases, military academies, Coast Guard academies, that sort of thing. These folks kind of rotate in and out every few years and they often want to purchase homes rather than rent because it makes more financial sense. If you get the MRP designation, you become the front of the line for recommendations from the military establishment that is in your community, as far as who you know who they suggest when they need to buy and sell when they’re when their service members need to buy or sell. You know, I live in relatively rural part of Northern Michigan, we have a Coast Guard facility here, the couple of MRP designees here in our area clean up, I’m postcard business every year, because there are people who just it’s a reliable source of turnover every single year, there are people who are moving in there are people who are moving out. So if you live in a community and active military community or have a military installation nearby, the MRP designation, this is this is a no brainer, easy to get, it’s going to be an easy source of income for you.

D.J. Paris 35:56
And again, thinking as a marketer, this allows you to reach out to some of these if you have a base nearby, or if you have friends that might be serving in the armed forces, and say, Hey, by the way, I’m not just a realtor, I’m a military relocation specialist. And I would love to, you know, speak to some of the people in in that you work with in the military, or I’d love to do, you know, webinars or seminars, I would love to be introduced to more people, this is one of my specialties, that that is a great marketing tactic to then get in, you know, the inside of some of these, these places. So, great, great idea, Chris. I love that. And I know we had one more, which was around a very hot button topic right now, which is around the idea of being green and going green. So if you mind chatting about NARS green designation,

Chris Linsell 36:50
yeah, so na has a green designation that again, it’s really flashy, this is a really great one to have at the end of your email signature. Yeah, it’s super easy to get in. Honestly, this is the reason that I want to call the specific one out is this is a fantastic conversation starter. Because the NAR green designation, like I said, it takes like a day to get it total. And it’s actually free for the first year, you can get this designation for nothing. It’s like 100 bucks a year after the first year, but it’s free for the first year. And if you have conversations happening in your community around energy efficiency around sustainability, if you have conversations around maybe renewable energy or building standards, spoiler alert, these are conversations that are happening in communities everywhere like this is not isolation are not isolated conversations. It is the exception that these conversations aren’t happening, you can put this at the end of your name and you can mark it on top of it. You can say I am a Grenada green designee, an expert in the National Association of REALTORS green fundamentals, that’s going to get you conversations happening. And per deejays point earlier. This also starts conversations with other local service providers in your area that are going to build your network. And I’ll give you a great example of this. We have in my local market. There’s a fantastic green infrastructure company, full disclosure owned by a friend of mine, but he does incredible work on like green roofs on eco friendly landscaping, his company is called inhabitat. He does product projects all over the state of Michigan and all over the country for large developments. And he is hooked up with and refers regularly real estate agents with the green designation because that’s the business that he’s in. So if you’ve got the sort of designation, you get to hook up with these other places in your community that are all working on the same ideals, there is just nothing bad that comes from expanding your network. It’s all upside and it is super easy to get and it’s free. So even if you get it for a year, you realize I don’t get anything out of this. You literally have only lost, you know less than a day of a virtual classroom might as well give it a shot and see what it can get for you.

D.J. Paris 39:20
Yeah, and we know that clients in particular younger clients tend to ask for I really want a property with green features. And this designation will suggest that you have the ability to fit fine those properties maybe more so that someone who doesn’t I’ll give this is kind of a personal example. So and I truthfully am ignorant to why this is but the way it’s been explained to me is I or I’m sorry, I haven’t explained what it is. So I live in a in an eighth, eighth floor building, I guess you’d maybe call that a low rise to maybe a mid rise. And there’s some rule here and we’re in Chicago that To buildings of a certain size or story, certain number of stories have to have a certain amount of green space on their property. It’s usually on the rooftop is where developers put it. I don’t know if it has to be there. So on our rooftop, which has areas for us to sit and relax and enjoy ourselves, we can go up there and and relax. Half of the rooftop is actually an official designated green space. And I will tell you that that is without question. The first thing that anyone ever asks when they come up to a rooftop is well, that is really cool. What is that? And I say, Oh, it’s you know, the city has some sort of ordinance where there has to be a certain amount of green space. Had I had maybe gone through this designation, or even looked into it further. On, by the way, my point was saying this all is everyone goes, That is so cool. I wish my building had that. So this is something that people are thinking about whether they know it or not. And if you have this designation, you can have a better conversation, I can’t have any conversation other than I think it’s a city rule, but I don’t really know. So it’s something to really consider learning more about because I will tell you, people, their eyes go go big when they see this particular thing on my river. But not all of us live in urban areas where we’re going to have greenery on top of roofs, but it’s something that people are thinking about in every part of their life, right recycling now, for example, is pretty much the law, I think, in every state. So you know, we’ve adopted this green mentality is, as I don’t need to explain, we all know that. But to have this designation will certainly not hurt in any possible way, your ability to market to specifically even younger, skewed clients.

Chris Linsell 41:40
Yeah, I mean, the bottom line here, and I think this just goes for all of the designations that we’ve been talking about is there is the time has passed, frankly, the time has passed, that you can just get your license, hang out in your office, wait for your phone to ring wait for your broker, or your managing broker to hand you referrals. successful real estate professionals, if you want to make a career out of this, you need to be constantly looking for ways to differentiate the value that you provide to your buyers and sellers and your community at large. These designations are a great way for you to continue to separate yourself from the pack. And the best, the best way to kind of think about all of this, I guess this is kind of like my summation here is I don’t know if anybody else did this when I was a kid, I love to play blood play catch with a football with my friends. And I want you to picture one kid standing at the end of the field. And he’s just throwing the football back and forth between me and this other kid is just a one on one sort of thing I have got, I’m the recipient of this football. Now I want you to picture 10 of my friends also standing around me. And when the football goes up in the air, we’re all trying to catch it. Guess what we are in a scenario as as real estate agents, where we’re all standing trying to catch this football. And every single time you have a chance to differentiate yourself from all the other kids around you, you grow by three inches. So the more you can stack, your differentiators. And I’m not saying you want to get 12 different designations, but you want to find ways that you can provide value unique to your community, every single time you find a way to provide that unique value, you grow by three inches. And wouldn’t that game be easier if you were a foot taller than all of your other friends, because frankly, that’s what’s happening right now. So find ways to grow, find ways to get taller, so you can catch that football more often.

D.J. Paris 43:46
That’s a really great analogy perfectly summed up and if you’re listening or watching this right now thinking, oh my gosh, there’s so many different designations, where should I start? My advice would be survey your previous clients and say, Hey, I’m working on my professional development right now. And I have a number of designations that I want to, to earn over the next year. I was curious out of these three or four, you know, which one do you think would would have made the most impact on you as a client? Meaning what what one of these do you think relates most to to you? And that I think will help give you a sense of what do your clients what are they looking for? What are they interested in? And Chris is right we can we have seen people who they get a ton of designations, and then it just looks like gobbledygook after their name on their signature line in their email, because it’s just acronym after acronym, you know, in some sort of, you know, long string of nonsensical characters. So talk to your talk to your your clients and say, Hey, I was thinking about doing this do you think that would be would that have impacted how you felt about me? I As an agent you think that would have made you think I was had you know, these additional skills that were important to you. So serving your clients to find out what they’re interested in, because boy, there are a lot of designations, Chris and I really just scratched the surface with five or six of them. There’s certainly dozens more. So talk to your clients find out what’s what’s important to them. Chris, what a great conversation as always, Chris is is just one of my favorite guests that we have on every month. And really, before we go, we’d be remiss to not talk about the clothes.com. And to mention the clothes dot the clothes Pro. So this kid kreski first let’s talk about the clothes and then quickly talk, of course about the close Pro.

Chris Linsell 45:39
Yeah, absolutely. This is this is an easy conversation to have the closed.com is the internet’s best resource for real estate strategy, best practices, technology, reviews, you name it, if you’re a real estate agent, you want to be on the close because we provide you with content nearly every single day practice and just about every day now, new content that is going to level up your real estate business. My my mission, as the senior writer on the close, is to provide new answers to old questions every single day. We’re always asking how do I generate more business? How do I connect, but it was my clients, where can I get new listings? How can I be more effective as a buyer’s agent. These are just examples of the sorts of things that we talked about every single day on the close. So if you’re active in real estate, come over to the clothes.com We have a ton of value that we can provide you right now. You don’t need to pay for anything, please come and just check out the clothes. If you want to know more about what we’re doing and you want to go even further. We have the closed Pro, it’s a subscription service. With the clothes pro, you get access to exclusive courses, including six simple systems to transform your real estate business survive and thrive in a shifting real estate market. generating leads to build long term business. That’s actually a course that is currently in session. Our expert Beverly Ruffner, the conversion queen is her nickname. She is teaching this course right now, with some fantastic results including fantastic live cold calling, if you want to be if you’re a fan of cold calling, or maybe you’re just a voyeur and you’d like to listen to other people do it, come take a look, we’ve got all sorts of cool stuff happening on the close Pro, including this ridiculous resource library that is chock full of literally dozens and dozens and dozens of templates, scripts, strategy guides, you name it, there’s just anything you want to up your business, we’ve got it in the closed pros resource library, you can join the closed Pro, it’s 35 bucks a month, or you can sign up for an annual subscription, that breaks down to just $25 a month. If you were to look at that as a per month cost, really great opportunity, you can you can check it out for a month $35. See if it’s worth it for you. If it is sign up for the annual we’d love to have you. And, you know, we have opportunities for just about everyone, whether you’re single agent, whether you’re a real estate team, whether you’re a brokerage, come to the close Pro, we can provide some value to you and to your agents. And ultimately, our job is to make your job easier. So come take a look at what we’ve got. We want to help you out today.

D.J. Paris 48:18
Awesome. And if you haven’t ever visited the clothes.com, please put that on your to do list. It’s it’s you know, I know. We’re all familiar with inman.com, which is a great source for real estate news. But you know, they’re really prior to the close to my knowledge, I was always searching for a news organization that specifically talks about growing your business, which is part of what this podcast is about as well. So I couldn’t find one and the clothes.com has given birth to that. And there are the best resource that I found online for so make that part of your regular browsing sort of experiences go to the clothes.com. Their articles are awesome. It’s all free. And if you want to participate in the clothes Pro to go deeper, of course, they have that that option as well. So, Chris, Oh, and before we go, please tell me just we asked every one of our listeners to just help us grow our podcast. So visit the clothes.com and also tell a friend about our podcast. Just think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing this kind of conversation that we have with Chris every month and send them a link to our show. Easiest way to do that. If they are not a podcast listener, just send it to our website keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode right from the browser. They don’t have to download a podcast app. But if they are a podcast listener, just have them pull up their podcast app and do a search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button and we’ll be sending them all of our episodes as they’re released. Chris thank you so much. Once again we love that love having you on the show and excited to see you in person this fall at NARA and hope the listeners and viewers consider joining as well and going to watch Chris speak at at National Association of Realtors in fact, Chris speaks all over the country so he is likely coming to an area near you anyway, but if you want to come to dinar this this fall, you can meet us both.

Chris Linsell 50:08
Absolutely. Always a pleasure to be here. Can’t wait to come back.

D.J. Paris 50:11
All right. Thanks, Chris. Thanks to everyone for listening and supporting our show and we will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks, Chris.

Chris Linsell 50:18
Thanks

In our June episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @Properties talks about downtown Chicago and why she believes it’s a perfect time to by a property there. She also discusses the suburban market and why she recommends using the summer months to make offers on while many people are traveling. D.J. and Carrie discuss the importance of building relationships with agents outside of you local area for referral opportunities.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Carrie can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 312.961.4612.

Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here.

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by prac tina.com Are you tired of not receiving enough leads from social media prac Tina will help practitioners easy to use low cost systems helps real estate agents outperform their local competition, connect with more homebuyers and become the face of real estate in their area by simplifying social media marketing. prac Tina automatically informs your audience regarding new properties, open houses, and price changes on any and all of your listings. You can also reach specific new clients based on their location and interests which will help your ads be seen by the right people on Google, Facebook and Instagram. And best of all prac Tina provides you with your own dedicated marketing specialist that will work with you one on one keeping it real listeners will receive a $50 credit by using the coupon code real Learn more today at practice tina.com That’s PR AC T i n a.com And now on to our show

right welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast for real estate agents and buy real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show today. On the show we have our monthly series The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from the Carrie McCormick Real Estate Group with at properties here in Chicago. Now Carrie is a top 1% producer in Chicago with over 20 years of experience helping buyers sellers and investors with their real estate needs. In fact, in the previous 12 months out of 44,000 real estate agents here in Chicago Carrie is currently ranked number 14 in production and she’s a true superstar and expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors and luxury properties. She also works with a lot of developers and is often chosen to represent their high end developments. Now please visit carry at our website which is carried McCormick r e.com. Again carry McCormick r e.com. And also follow her on Instagram she has one of the very best Instagram accounts for realtors we’ve ever seen. So you can find her at Instagram at Carey McCormick real estate again, Carrie McCormick real estate Carrie, welcome once again to the show.

Carrie McCormick 2:32
Thank you as always, I appreciate it. As you can see, for those who are watching, I’m coming live from my car.

D.J. Paris 2:40
Well, we know how busy you are. So you spend a lot of time in your car going around. So what’s going on right now with your business in the market?

Carrie McCormick 2:50
Yeah, so it’s June here in Chicago. So the sun is shining, the weather’s great people are out and about. There’s this new life happening in the downtown area, which we love to see because the numbers in the downtown market have been down, and then they move to flat. So we’re still in the flat zone downtown. So I really do think for those who have a desire to live in the Streeterville neighborhood, the Gold Coast neighborhood River North, really now is a great time to buy. Because again, if you go down there, you’ll see and feel the energy coming back to those areas. And again, Chicago is such a resilient city. And it’ll come back so you now’s the time to get a good deal on the downtown market. So again, I’d highly recommend anyone who wants to live down there or an investment now’s your your chance to buy something at a good value. Suburban market here still remain strong. As I mentioned, we’re here, you know, approaching parents the first day of summer, is it summers? Yeah, it is. You know, the buying market is still tough out there. I’m working with a couple buyers still that’s trying to find the perfect home. But what I would say is, you know, June, July, August, these are big months for graduations, for weddings, for traveling, you know, as people start to go back and live their lives. If you’re still a buyer in this market, I think you’re going to have some luck this summer, you’re going to have less competition, right? Because your competitions at a wedding on a Saturday. So you know get in there, take a look at a home, get your offer in so you can have a little bit of less competition out there. So I think we’re going to start seeing some, you know, some lucky buyers this summer. So that’s my tip to you guys. You know all markets are doing well here in Chicago. So again, if you are a seller, now’s your time, don’t don’t hesitate because this is where the top of the market so I would get your house on the market right away.

D.J. Paris 4:53
I was telling Carrie just before we started that and I just reading an Inman article which was very surprising to me. I’m also, of course, in the Chicago market, and all I hear all day from our Realtors at our company, and I’m sure Carrie, you hear the same from the realtors at your company. And of course, your own personal experience is that inventory of courses is the big challenge. And it has been for quite some time with rates being so low, and people being able to afford more and wanting to move because maybe they’re working at home, or they just want to, you know, find a different location. And now they can. And so inventory is been scarce. And of course, any Facebook group with realtors, court, you know, collaborate. That’s really what they talk about. Mostly, it seems. But the good news for those of those of us who are listening or watching who are in Chicago is actually we have twice the amount of inventory, believe it or not than most major markets, which is very surprising, because we typically know our own market, and it feels like there isn’t much here. But if you are in the Chicago area, you should actually feel a little lucky as opposed to other markets where there’s very little. So even though it seems like we don’t have much going on inventory wise, I guess we have more than than the national average. So we’re I guess we should be a little bit grateful for that. But I wanted to just really quickly mentioned my marketing minute and then carry love to get your thoughts on this, because we were talking about this beforehand, because it really goes into what what Carrie was just saying, which is, you know, if you’re looking for an opportunity, and you don’t have, you know, maybe you are struggling, you have buyers and you don’t have inventory, and then you have all these people that you know that own homes, but they aren’t necessarily looking to move or buy, this is a great time to have a conversation with them and in run some comps and say, hey, you know, maybe you don’t even know what they bought their home at. Or you should be able to see that on the MLS. But you know whether you know that or not, odds are their home is appreciated. And so now would probably be a good idea just to call everybody you know, who owns a home and say, hey, you know, have you thought about selling? Here’s what I think we might be in the neighborhood of as far as price wise. And they might say, well, that’s great. But then could I even afford to buy something else? Number one, because prices have increased so dramatically. And also maybe there isn’t much to choose from even though I just went on to say we have more inventory than most, it still feels like we don’t have much inventory. So a good idea would be to at least say, hey, you know, what some of my clients are doing is selling, you know, banking, that profit, and then maybe moving into an apartment for a few years here in the Chicagoland area. We have, gosh, so many really wonderful apartment buildings in all different areas of Chicago and the suburbs. And you know, it’s definitely an idea, and then maybe they rent for a year or two, until the market settles down prices come down a little bit. It’s that old adage with the stock market, you know, you you buy low and sell high. So just an idea now, will people actually do that? I don’t know, maybe maybe not. But I think from my perspective of wow, that’s an interesting idea. I think that’s something that most Realtors probably aren’t saying to their, their homeowners right now. And it’s even if whether they do it or not, I don’t think is really the issue. It’s just you’re bringing value, you’re giving them an idea, and it’ll at least start the conversation. So I don’t know, that was my little thought I was curious what you might have thought of what you might think of that.

Carrie McCormick 8:12
No, I think that’s great. And you’re right, it’s, we we do need. I know, again, you said there’s more inventory than others, but we do need some more inventory in this market. So a rental is a great option for people. And then I’ve talked to some of my sellers who let’s just say in a few years, they were gonna move to Florida, or they’re gonna move to Tennessee or Austin or wherever they’re going, you know, what I’ve done is I said, you know, why don’t you just explore, you know, a little bit in, you know, Austin, Texas, I know, you’ve always wanted to move there. So I’ll connect you with a realtor that I know there. You know, maybe there’s something there for you now, or you can sell, you know, your Chicago home at the height again, even though you might be buying at the height. But it’s a it’s a win win for both of you. So, you know, that’s also my tip to some of the brokers here in Chicago, who also, you know, solely have a practice here is start networking with other brokers outside of Chicago, because as people, you know, have this demand for space and change right now in the world. Not only are they staying here, I mean, they’re, they’re going anywhere, you know, so you want to be able to give full service to your clients. Again, whether it’s here in Chicago or refer it out to someone in you know, for example, Austin, Texas, like I just said, I think that’s going to become very important to help keep continuing growing your business. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 9:34
it makes sense. My parents spent the last winter in Clearwater in down in Florida and to sort of see if they would like it. And then now they’re at the stage where they are renting again this year. They have two down there things are so competitive, even for rentals, you have to book it well a year in advance. You have to pay the entire thing up front, there’s no you know, monthly payment, and so they’re going to be there again this year and then after this year, they’re going to buy a place probably They’re assuming they continue to like it. So as a realtor here, which of course, I’m not really a practicing realtor, but I do have a license, I will find a realtor in the Clearwater area, refer it to whoever that person may be. And then of course, earn that referral commission. So it’s a really good opportunity to talk to everyone that you know, that travels south for the winter, or just is looking to maybe get a second home somewhere else, or maybe retire somewhere. Florida, of course, is very attractive because of the tax implications. And people a lot of times move there for weather and all sorts of reasons. But you should really be talking to your clients and asking them, what are their goals, you know, like, hey, just because they’re not moving their primary residence necessarily, you should probably still be talking to them. So I think that’s great, because people now can, a lot of us can work from home. I’ve only heard of some companies now starting to say you have to come back to the office, it seems to be right now, still, I know. Zillow comes on our show a lot. And I think they’ve said, for the time being, you can still work from home. They’re a massive, massive company. So I know, most companies are still sort of allowing you to do that. So people are looking to explore other areas. So it’s a great time to network with other realtors. And also people might be moving into Chicago, too. And you want to build those connections. So I think that’s an awesome idea.

Carrie McCormick 11:15
Yeah, and I’ve gotten a lot of things. So back and forth, you know, between brokers. So I think that’s important. The one last comment I wanted to make is I do get this question a lot is, you know, is there a bubble in the market? And, you know, no one can predict. I’ve been a broker for 20 years, and it was part of the Oh, wait. And just to remind everyone, it’s a very different market than Oh, wait. So I don’t think that there’s a bubble that’s going to, to occur here. I mean, in Oh, eight it, I mean, literally popped in overnight, right. It just it completely deflated. And while popped, you know, so I guess deflated is a better word to say, I think this market will just naturally slow down. And there’s going to be, you know, no big issue. It’ll just be, you know, just a gradual slowdown, because we’re all going 150 miles an hour right now. So I was saying that the market, you know, in the last two weeks seemed like it slowed down to 110 miles an hour. So we’re still going fast. But there’s just a little bit of a slowdown. But we’ll see what happens. Yeah. And then

D.J. Paris 12:21
I know, you also had a thought about client appreciation. We were Yes. i My nephew just had his fourth birthday this last week. And so I was buying gifts for his birthday. And I asked my sister, what should I get him and she said, Please don’t give them anything. But if you’re gonna get him something, just get him, you know, she had a couple ideas very sort of, you know, just little toys and things. And they have a pool. And I said, Well, he spends a lot of time in the pool, and he’s taking swimming lessons and all of that. And so, of course, not everyone who listens, not every one of your clients is going to have a pool, but a lot of people it is summertime are taking their kids chunk pools, you know, community pools, country clubs, whatever, friends pools, and, you know, might be fun, like, I ended up buying him three different pool toys, I think the total amount per toy was like $7. And so if you do have clients who have kids who are going and swimming somewhere this summer wouldn’t be the worst idea to get them all, you know, a little a little five to $10 pool toy gift, you know, depending on their ages, and, and sending them off and saying, Hey, hopefully you and your, your kids have fun in the sun or some sort of fun, summertime, you know, gift doesn’t have to be expensive, but you know, he loved these sort of cheap pool toys that we got them. And, you know, they they really went a long way. And I was thinking what a great opportunity to not that you have to, you know, buy things for people necessarily to win their business, but it certainly was would be nice, and just a great way to sort of keep in front of your your clients as opposed to just doing you know, a refrigerator magnet or which which are fine, too. But I just thought you know, that’s a real functional gift right now, this time of the year.

Carrie McCormick 14:07
Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. And, you know, again, as we’re all going super fast, I thought about that other day, I’m like, Oh my gosh, it’s already June. You know, it’s like I haven’t talked to some of my past clients who, you know, helped my business and I appreciate each and every one of them and someone had had said this during a speaking event. I can’t remember who it was, but he had said, you know, when you’re you’re married or you have a spouse or loved one, you know, of course you love them. But you know, you wake up in the morning you leave for the day and you go about your business, you come home, you’re mad about something, you go to bed you wake up the next day and you do it again and you know without communicating or saying anything to the other person. Again, even though during the day you think about them or whatever it is, but you’ve got to communicate and I just thought, you know just made me think of you know, I think about my clients all the time, but you know, it’s And months since I even said hello. So just to remind us all to slow down, appreciate those people around us, our clients, of course, fellow brokers, whoever it is, just take a moment and say thank you. So thank you, DJ.

D.J. Paris 15:15
Well, thank you, Carrie. Yeah, it’s a really great reminder. And we don’t You don’t have to make 100 calls a day, even if you just divided up your entire list and say, I’m just going to call three to five people a day. And just ask them how their summers going, see if there’s anything they need, check in with them. And say thank you for any business that they may have given me or referred out. That’s, that’s a huge, easy thing that will always be positive phone calls, right? They’ll almost always be they’ll make you feel better when you’re done. And they’ll make the other person feel better as well. So great upgrade idea. And yes, I had heard, not that I’m a particularly religious person, but I had heard somebody say many years ago, maybe the best best prayer of all is just thank you, you know, which I always thought was, was a really smart thing to be said. So saying thank you is is not probably not said enough, in our society here. So say thank you to everyone that helps you. It’s a great, great way to make them feel better. And also yourself. Well, great. And Carrie, we should also mention for all of our listeners who are here in the local Chicago market, that you are looking for some help for your business.

Carrie McCormick 16:23
Oh, yes, thank you for reminding me. So as my business continues to grow, it’s important for me to support, you know, my clients in the transaction. So I am looking for someone to join my team as a transaction manager. You know, it’s really important that the foundation of our business is strong and solid. So if anyone is out there listening that knows of someone is the perfect candidate, I’d love to talk to you, again, looking for a transaction manager for my business full time.

D.J. Paris 16:54
And would you like them to have a license? Or is it preferred or required?

Carrie McCormick 17:00
Either one, you know, it’s really just finding the right fit. So

D.J. Paris 17:03
it’s, you know, this, I think, particularly two is great for agents that are really looking to get a sense of what is it like to be on a really successful team? And how can I fit into that and you know, you’ll absorb some of you know, what Kerry does to build her business, in addition to helping her grow her business, great opportunity to work with somebody who is already built this 20 year career and has a great reputation in the industry. So if you’re interested in working with Carrie as a transaction coordinator, what’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Carrie McCormick 17:35
Everyone just call me 312-961-4612 My email is Carrie ca RR ie [email protected]. I’m always available also for any questions that anyone has. I love to talk to everybody.

D.J. Paris 17:51
Awesome. And please also visit her website which also has links to all of her social, different accounts, which is Carrie McCormack r e.com. Particularly follow her on Facebook, sorry, Instagram, which is at Carey McCormick real estate. You can find all of that at Carey McCormick our e.com but Instagram Carrie McCormick real estate Well, Carrie, this is we’re almost Yeah, we are officially in summer yesterday I think was the longest day of the year. So people are out and about. And this is a great time to reconnect with your clients wishing them a happy summer. And I hope everyone is staying out of the extreme heat that I know here in Chicago we’ve been having, but hope you’re out and about and doing fun things and continuing to grow your business. We will carry we will see you as always a next month and if anyone has questions for Kerry just reach out to either her or us directly here at the podcast and you can find us right at our website which is keeping it real pod.com You can go back and listen to all of the carry episodes we have them categorized right on our websites. You don’t have to scroll through and look for all the Kerry episodes. We’ve got them organized right on the homepage there which is keeping it real pod.com And also please follow us on Facebook which you can find [email protected] forward slash keeping it real pod Kerry thank you once again and we will see every we’ll see you and all the listeners again next month.

Carrie McCormick 19:14
Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you

Welcome to the June episode of Learn With A Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate!

In this episode Joel describes that there so much more to lending than rates and payments! Joel and D.J. discuss renting vs buying a property and Joel gives three topics to discuss with clients when making this decision. Joel discusses refinancing and how to add value to your clients through taking care of them even years after their purchase. Last, Joel discusses the importance of having a trusted partner in lending in order to help you offer better services to your clients.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Joel can be reached at [email protected] and 773.654.2049.

D.J. Paris 0:00
On this episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by Joel Schaub at guaranteed rate. As a realtor it’s important to partner with only the most trusted name in mortgage lending. Joel has 1000s of satisfied clients and gives $1,500 of his commission. Back to your buyers on every closing. He is known for his ability to close even complex deals start to finish in only 14 days to learn what 1000s of others already know. Make a note to call Joel at 773-654-2049 or email [email protected] Guaranteed Rate is an equal housing lender licensed in all 50 States Consumer Access Number 2611 And now on with the show.

Hey, welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I am your guide and host through the show. And today once again, is our monthly series our monthly series that is extremely popular called Learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Now Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. And he has been doing loans at a high level since 2003. And it’s gotten to that level because of what he does specifically for agents, which is he gives back part of his commission to the buyer on every transaction. Last year alone, Joe gave back almost $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with them. And that put Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all lenders nationwide. And that’s out of 400,000 loan officers, right. He’s actually currently ranked number 137 out of that 400,000 in production. Last year alone, he closed 535 sales. This was his highest amount ever, or 535 transactions, we should say highest amount ever for for one year. And already this year. So we are in almost the end of June. At this point he has closed 329 transactions for 133 million, it looks like he will even exceed what he did last year which is beyond incredible. So if you are looking for a loan officer, we cannot highly more highly recommend Joel he is the very best we’ve ever worked with. He can be reached at a couple of different ways. Number one is to email him, you can email him at Joel at Jay [email protected]. Again, [email protected]. Or you can shoot him a text or call him at 773-654-2049 Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know and they are playing again and you go visit them. So you have probably been very busy. But welcome Joel.

Joel Schaub 2:49
Hey, thanks so much for having me, DJ and all the numbers in the accolades. That’s all fantastic. It even surprises me hearing them sometimes where we’re at. But this is what’s really great is coming back on each and every single month. I love it because we get to give back. And you know me even off the show, this is kind of what I live for is the givers gain mentality where I can help share knowledge, some of the things that I’ve been doing and what I see with other really successful real estate agents. So by tuning in, you’re going to get something out of today’s show. I know that for sure.

D.J. Paris 3:26
Yeah. And I will say, knowing you on and off the air and also having worked with you professionally, you helped me with my loan. And I will tell you that one thing, and I’ve had other loan officers work with me in the past too. So this wasn’t my first experience purchasing a home. But I will say and this is a huge feather in your cap is that Joel was the only and again, us being friends. I almost didn’t expect this to happen because he treated me as if he almost put the friendship aside a little bit and said, Hey, we’re gonna have an education session, I want you to fully understand every step of this process. And I was kind of like Yeah, yeah. And he goes, No, no, it’s really important that you understand this. And it was like and then I took it in and was like wow, no one has ever done that for me before. So I really do appreciate the amount of time you put in to my loan in particular and I know you do that for other people as well because you know obviously other people have have said the exact same thing and it’s why you’re so successful. But so this givers get mentality is just absolutely what you live in. And probably is the secret to your success if there if there if you had to distill it down to one thing, at least it’s certainly one of the top qualities I think anybody in this industry can have. So I am I’m a huge fan of what you do and then coming on this podcast as an extension of that is just always trying to help our listeners and as a result people reach out to you and say hey, I want to work with you. But what since you are so busy and you’re looking to even best your numbers from last year which is incredible. What are you seeing out there are things is as much of The frenzy as they were a few months ago.

Joel Schaub 5:03
I’m glad that you brought that up. And before I get into the frenzy, you’re exactly right. I remember back to our transaction where I literally said, Let’s be educated for a moment, okay? And most lenders are going to go through a couple of the basic same things, rates and payments, okay? But there’s so much more to it. You can afford the payment you can you like the rate, but you actually don’t know a lot of the steps until you’ve done it and had somebody explain these types of things to you. So taking the step back is the last thing I want, as a borrower several months from now just like cursing me out as they write their monthly payment, like, Oh, what did I do, I didn’t understand this. And so if you could just take the extra time, which most people don’t do, which is setting time aside when you’re speaking. And this works the same for agents as well, understanding what the process is going to be. And never assuming that a buyer knows, this happens, when this happens, taking the time to actually educate is what’s going to differentiate you, from everybody who’s just getting into the market, who thinks oh, I can be a realtor, too. Okay, and even if you are brand new, taking the education piece, and being an educator and in the clients corner first is so much more important than selling anything, because people want to buy, but they never want to be sold. And they can feel if you’re just trying to pressure them into something. So taking a step back, going through the education piece, and that’s what we did for you for sure. Yeah, and,

D.J. Paris 6:31
and it really is so important, because anyone can look up rates, anyone can can just get that information. It’s basically public information. And so many websites, you know, talk about rates, and you know, the different conditions associated with that. But the education piece is really hard to find on your own. And even though I had bought a home in the past, I was I’d forgotten what the process was. And even if I were to buy another home in two months, I would have forgotten what we just went through. And I would probably need that education again. So I think that’s a good point, to always, you know, as agents, or if there are lenders, who are also listening to really think about remembering that we know how it all works, because we’re used to it, but our clients likely do need that education. And that reassurance that and there were times actually two that I had to contact Joel because I was freaking out about things. And what had nothing to do with Joel, Joel’s you know, but he was the one who said, You’re, you’re doing great, everything’s fine, you don’t have to worry. And that was really awesome that I could pick up the phone and get that answer because I was freaking out about a couple things that was happening that had nothing to do with with with Joel and his team, but just things I didn’t know. And so that’s it really is important to have a good partner there. So what’s going on in the market is is are things as busy as they used as they were earlier this year. They’re definitely busy.

Joel Schaub 7:53
They really, truly are for both buyers and sellers. But what we’re not seeing is this frenzy of offers on places where a buyer hasn’t even seen the damn house yet. Okay. And I saw a lot of this. And to people’s credit, they were kind of sick of getting outbid. And so there were some very justified offers that came in over asking price. And then DJ, there were a slew of unjustified offers where I would never in a million years have advised my client to come in that far over asking without seeing the home. And in and I saw it when my buyers put in a good offer, and they were just wildly out bid. And they said we lost the home. And I rephrase that I say, well, the person who won also lost, they think they won because they have the contract. But that isn’t necessarily winning. And that’s not the way we want to buy real estate. So now we’re getting back to a point where there’s not too much happening under asking price. But I’m starting to see DJ a lot of offers now come in, where they don’t feel as though they need to come in 25 grand above asking on the very first offer. And in the last couple of weeks alone, I’m starting to see just under asking price accepted on certain deals in certain markets and many different states.

D.J. Paris 9:16
Yeah, that’s encouraging. And I know at at at our firm, the our brokers that are working with buyers, that’s the big frustration, or it has been this year as oh my gosh, there’s so many offers, how do I get noticed? And what do I offer and sometimes the agents would get creative and offer certain concessions. But now you’re seeing things going back, swinging a little bit back more towards the normal side, which is very exciting.

Joel Schaub 9:41
I don’t know if it’s normal, it’s still crazy, but you’re exactly right with the terminology that it’s not over the top. Now in certain pockets. We’re still definitely seeing properties that have multiple offers. The winning offer is considerably over asking price, but at the same time there’s certain air Here’s where the sellers are expecting this. And then they’re coming back to the agent and saying, Hey, where are all my offers, you promised that I was gonna have 10 offers in the first hour on this. And it’s not necessarily happening because there is more inventory. Finally, hitting the market. We’re past COVID, for a lot of restrictions, especially here in Chicago, where properties had a major cap on the number of people that could be in a building at any given time, they weren’t allowing open houses. And it would be kind of a hindrance to list a place in some of these buildings, where you just weren’t going to be able to get people in the door. So now there is some more inventory. Finally, hitting the market, I just think people are a little bit overwhelmed as well, summers here, if they didn’t find the home, they’re gonna give it a little bit of a rest. And it means there’s just a few less buyers, because rates have come up a little bit. A few buyers that say, I’m just gonna wait and more inventory hitting the market. So I’m seeing this coming together. And it’s actually good for both sides, it wasn’t necessarily good that there were so many crazy offers, because you’ve seen that top offer sometimes still never makes it to the table, those people who get cold feet and know is out or Yeah, even with an appraisal waiver, you have buyers right now being asked and your agents listening to us know this for a fact, they can sign all the pages they want saying that they’re not going to come back and have a problem with an appraisal. But anecdotally, I’ve seen a lot of people come back and say even though they signed this and the appraisal came in low, you got a buyer trying to have my seller, lower the price, not willing to do it. You your your word is as good as you know, what you put on paper. And typically some people are willing to break that. You just gotta negotiate in good faith. That’s the way I’ve always operated.

D.J. Paris 11:54
Yeah, I think that’s true. We, you know, I was thinking about rentals, because obviously, the rental market is is really unusual right now. And there’s a tremendous amount of inventory on the rental side. But I think to what I would encourage agents is there’s probably a lot of renters right now that are hearing the news, that is very difficult to get offers accepted, which Joel is now saying he’s seeing things returning slightly more back towards the more normal side, and we’re not there yet, maybe. But now is a great time, I would think to have a conversation with a renter for two reasons. One is, hey, finally, the frenzy has slowed at least a little bit. So there’s more opportunity with inventory has gone up a little bit. And in a lot of areas, thankfully. But also a great time to lock in at a rate that we’ve never seen before. And I understand, you know, we say this on the show a lot. The rate isn’t that important. But reminding that to your clients who especially the ones that are renting, that they could lock into a pretty amazing situation for the next 30 years or you know, there’s obviously other products available. But that is a real attractive thing. And it I’ll tell you for me, I’d be willing to pay more. And maybe even above what my place is worth today to lock in at a at a at a rate right now that isn’t going to change for 30 years. That’s an incredible opportunity. And I think maybe that’s something people look at the prices of homes, and maybe they rate itself but they don’t necessarily think about how that translates. So I thought maybe we could talk about that for a moment.

Joel Schaub 13:33
I had a young couple last week that really kind of explained it to me, I’m inside of it. And I see it but once once I tell you the story of how they came to the decision to buy and actually close last week versus renting and go well, that definitely makes sense. So young couple in Chicago and their rent was $3,000 in the Gold Coast and $3,000 Anywhere isn’t a lot of money to rent, but they can easily afford it. And we just did the math on it in the next three years, it’s going to be $100,000 that they spent. And they went under contract 10 grand above listing. And they they kind of justified it in a way where they realized, I don’t know where property values are going to go. I don’t think they’re going to skyrocket much higher. But I sure as heck don’t think they’re going to plumb it like we saw before. So let’s just say that I did have a downturn and the value went down for some period of time of 50 grand. I’ve still thrown away $100,000 Over the next three years renting and they go down. That’s even me I didn’t really think about it that way until they walked me through and they said, I know I’m going to be in this home for a long time. And if I wait for prices to come down a little bit, when rates go back up to on average four, four and a half percent. The amortization of how much they pay there is so much more than the below 3% rate that they locked in. So hearing some of these things will help you as an agent. When buyers ask, why would I buy at the top of the market DJ? Right? Why I hear everybody’s buying? Should I wait for things to come down? And there’s no real answer for that. But one of the things on financially speaking, that I can talk to is that, with all the money that we’re printing, with all of the stimulus that’s happening in this country, rates will be higher, next year, the year after. And it only takes a moment where it really spikes. And we’ve seen that many times where we think everything is good, and then it goes away. And you don’t know what you got till it’s gone. There’s the song like that, right? There is. Yeah, so rents are not going to be going down anytime soon. See, these markets continue. So if you’re in the position, and you have even a small downpayment, the rates that you can lock into today are going to be a lot better than just continuing to rent. So if I’m an agent, and I’m helping a first time buyer decide should I continue to rent the place, or buy, let me give you three things that I think really would be helpful for you to discuss with the buyer. Okay. The first one is that most first time buyers don’t put 20% down, they just don’t, most of the first time buyers, no matter what banks, they call can get approved for 3% 5% or 10%. Down? Do they get a rate of 2.75 on that? No, they get a rate in the low threes,

D.J. Paris 16:33
which is just incredible, which is that in and of itself,

Joel Schaub 16:37
for 30 years, the rates are in the low threes. It’s not the one that you go brag about. But you’re getting something like that with a lower downpayment. So maybe I don’t have 120 grand to put down, should I have 15, or 20, or $25,000, that will get you into all including closing costs and everything. Okay? The second thing is rents aren’t going to continue, or the rents, I don’t see any markets where rents are dropping, okay. Which means you just do some simple math on what you’re going to pay over the next three or four years in rent. And where rates are going to be at in a couple of years, you’ll realize that if you have the wherewithal to buy something, now, you’re in pretty good shape. Okay. And then number three about being at the top of the market, what if things dropped like they did during the subprime mortgage crisis? Well, I would tell you, it’s completely different. Because on this side of things, what happened to lead up to that drop is nothing like the increase that we’re seeing here today. And here’s why. It takes a lot of documentation to get a mortgage done today, okay? Before, all you had to do is just wave at the camera or come in and fog up a mirror. If you’re alive, you were getting a mortgage. And that meant a lot of people shouldn’t have borrowed that kind of money. Today, it’s different. There’s downpayment requirements, we double and triple check the income deejay, which means there won’t be a massive wave of foreclosures where people don’t have equity in the home. And that’s the difference. Bottom line, I’ll tell you now, we won’t see a massive number of foreclosures, because there’s equity in the homes Unlike before, no money down, couldn’t make the payments. It’s easy to foreclose when there’s no equity in the home. Now we’ve seen an increase in value, everybody had a down payment, it’s really hard to foreclose, when there’s equity in the home, you just won’t do it, you’ll be able to catch up or sell the home for a profit probably before you would foreclose. And that’s the top three things that you can help a potential buyer who’s on the edge, and just give them knowledge. And that’s what they want. Right DJ?

D.J. Paris 18:51
For sure it and I think you know, like you always say that you don’t write the rate on the cheque. And if you’re talking to somebody and say you can lock in, you know, a pretty attractive rate right now. And they go well, that’s fine. But what does that actually mean? having a conversation with a trusted partner, a lender who can say, Okay, so basically, you’re going to be writing this amount on your check every month for the rest, you know, the remaining 30 years. And if they are first time or thinking about becoming a first time homebuyer, do we really think your rents not going to change over that time? Of course, it will. And it would have to it’s just going to just to keep up with inflation, of course, it’s going to and and so you know, to think that they could lock into that and then of course, you know, some some additional possible tax benefits for you know, for the interest on on those those loans is another huge thing. So I think having that conversation with renters in particular is this is the time to do it. You know, especially right now if if inventory is even a little bit, you know, tight in your area, talking to people about hey, let’s talk about what your monthly rent check is. And let’s talk about what you can lock into is Gosh, Oh my gosh, that that’s a conversation that you as an agent could initiate, uh, you don’t facilitate. You don’t have to have all the information, but you have to have a trusted partner that you can bring in that to have that education piece. And Joel is exactly that kind of loan officer, which, of course, is why he’s so valuable on our show. And I think that’s just a good reminder to everyone into, you know, not a terrible time to refinance as well, for people that are locked into, you know, older rates and older sort of conditions. Another good opportunity to talk to everyone who currently owns and find out what their plans are, you know, this, this is not a terrible time to sell a home. This is a good opportunity. And you might say, Well, yeah, but then you’re paying a premium on your next home. Well, sure, but maybe that evens out, and maybe that and again, just to lock in a new rate or to refinance your existing rate, whether you’re moving or not, is just have these conversations, even for people that are like, I’m good. I’m not going anywhere for another seven years. Great. Let’s talk about refinancing. Have you explored that? Is that a good option right now for you? And then you can talk about it.

Joel Schaub 21:04
If I was a realtor right now, DJ, I’d be calling back everybody who bought over the last three years. Yeah. And there’s so many of them who did not put 20% down. And this is the number one refinance I’m seeing right now is refinancing, not just to get a lower interest rate, but to get rid of the private mortgage insurance, okay? People could lock into the same rate, but drop their payment 100 or $200. So if I’m a realtor, I’m just making that extra phone call back to my database. If I know you guys have all the time in the world right now, okay, I’m sure I know, we’re busy. But if I was an agent, instead of doing any kind of dollar piece marketing, what I would be doing is touching the people that I’ve already helped. These are people that know like and trust you. And the conversation is, Hey, Jim, I know you and Susie bought in the last couple of years, I hope places well, if I recall, we bought that property, and we didn’t put 20% down, you should call Scott, remember your mortgage guy. I’m just making up that name, right. But you’re calling back the person who helped you on the mortgage, and asking him, What can I get for a no cost refinance. And that’s what’s important. Most of the banks, they want to charge your origination fees and appraisal fees and all these different costs, that can add up to 1000s of dollars. But you could probably get a lower rate, that’s probably not the rock bottom rate. But within an eighth or a quarter point, it’s still a lot lower than you’re paying now. And you don’t pay anything. So that’s a big thing that all banks do, they just don’t advertise it, they want you to pay in the fees. But if you’re willing to take just a little bit above the market rate, like if the best rate is 3%, you should be able to for no money at all lock in 3.1 or 3.2. And if your rate right now is four, that sounds pretty appealing. Okay? They won’t advertise that. But that’s what you ask for is a no cost rate. What would be the rate? Have you Mr. Banker paid all the fees, and I mean, everything. And that could be a really good move as an agent, just add that little piece of value. And you’ll be surprised, they’ll say, Oh, my sister’s getting ready to buy a home, let me connect you. And that’s what we want here is adding value so that you guys can close more transactions?

D.J. Paris 23:22
Yeah, so it’s a great opportunity for agents. Thank you, that is such a good idea. So it really would be smart for everyone listening, if you don’t have a trusted ello that you’re working with, to tell them say, Hey, this is the campaign I’m going to be doing right? I’m going to be contacting everybody I know who owns a home and who purchased. And here are the sorts of conditions that I’m calling them about? And could I get some data, some talking points, some data points from you? Or do you want to jump on some of these calls with me and have these conversations, that’s a great thing to do to stay busy and to also just learn what’s going on in your clients lives, making sure that you’re staying in touch with them after a sale, so that they don’t forget about you when it’s time either to refinance or to move to a new property. So Joel, thank you that that’s really really great, amazing tip tidbits there and tactics right now in the, in the middle of summer when I think it’s easy to take your foot off the gas, because it’s warm, and it’s exciting. And it’s, we’re out and we most of us are massless at this point, which is very, you know, very fun freeing, but let’s let’s not forget to to contact our clients and staying in touch is the best way to do it waiting for deals to just come to you is is is is I would say almost a fool’s errand. I mean, it happens from time to time, which is incredible. Like, every so often someone just calls me and says, Hey, I want to join your company as a realtor, which, which would be great if that happened all day long, but it very rarely happens. And we have almost 800 realtors in our company. We have to proactively go out and find business just like agents have to go out and find clients. So give find a reason to contact people. And I would say look beyond just the traditional Joel Joel would say this, I think, too is, hey, do you need a mortgage right now, because that may or may not be something that they want to that that call they want, but checking in with them finding out what’s going on with their lives, and then having some reason to talk to them is like, Hey, I was just thinking about you, like Joel said, you know, I know that we purchased before and maybe we didn’t put the full 20% down. Let’s talk about, you know, what we can do right now to to, you know, upgrade the loan, so to speak. So Joel thing

Joel Schaub 25:26
one more thing, though, before we go, I gotta tell you this. Can I add one thing that I would wait right now, if I’m an agent, I challenge you to do this because this is key. Okay, if we’re a real estate agent right now, don’t we know a ton of loan officers that are always calling us saying send me your business? Right? Okay. A lot of these loan officers are saying send me deals. But so you know, certain loan officers think of how valuable it could be to flip it on its head and go back to one or two of these loan officers that, you know, say I’m going to be sending you some refinance people, okay, I have a plethora of past clients, I’m going to be doing a phone call campaign or an email campaign. What can you do in terms of marketing budget to help me a good loan officer, I always say this, you should find somebody that’s not just asking for business but wants to write a check for you RESPA compliant, something that you guys can do together. And this is how you form a relationship, make these loan officers and they won’t like hearing this, but put their money where their mouth is, yeah, I spend money for my agents in RESPA compliant activities such as leads, open houses, things that you know, that they’d be willing to write a check for. So find the people that are really actually in your corner that want to build a relationship, because this is what it’s about right now, getting your deals approved really does take a good lending partner, okay, so find those people that you know, and say, I’m going to scratch your back if you scratch mine. And there’s some good ways to do that. Okay.

D.J. Paris 26:59
And we should mention that Joel is headquartered here in Chicago with guaranteed rates headquartered here. However, they do loans in all 50 states, of course, and Joel can assist as well. So whether you’re a local Chicago agent, or you’re an agent, we have a listeners from all over a lot multiple countries, but certainly in every state here in the United States. And if you’re looking if you don’t have a trusted loan officer that you’re working with, again, I’ve said it a few times already on the show, but it is just the truest thing I could say is highly encourage you to reach out to Joel because every one I’ve ever sent to him. Even people who are peripherally related to me friends of friends kind of thing, have all reported that he was the best that they worked with. And I had the same experience. And he also is, as he said, a partner that helps other agents with their endeavors as well. So definitely reach out to Joel in to see if his team and you have, you know, a mutual sort of interest that you guys can support each other. Joel, what’s the best way that an either a somebody who’s looking for a loan directly or once as an agent who wants to work with a loan officer, like yourself and partner together? What’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Joel Schaub 28:06
You’re listening, you can reach out to Joel JO [email protected]. That’s short for guaranteed rate and so much easier to get the short email address than the long one. So [email protected] Or a simple phone call 773-654-2049. And test me, we really do answer the phone. We are licensed in all 50 states, I have a little more than a dozen states that I actively participate in. And if it’s in another state, we absolutely have loan officers on my team that are licensed in all states to help. And even if we’re not getting business from you, we’re absolutely happy to take a phone call. It’s literally this givers gain mentality. Okay, we want to help out. So I’ve been on the other end of many phone calls from people from this show. And say, I have a loan officer, I really liked what you were doing. Can I just ask you this question about how you’ve done this. And I love it. And they can’t believe that I’ve actually taken the time to return the phone calls and do it. So we’re, we’re just blessed. And I’m always happy to be on the show. And I really hope somebody that was listening here really got something from today’s podcast.

D.J. Paris 29:21
Well, I know they did and and I will tell you to I’ll pull back the curtain a little bit on our show and how we operate because I think this would be pretty interesting. So we get pitched our show gets pitched every single day by publicists, typically, realtors that have something to promote, maybe they have a book they’ve written or they’re on a TV show or there’s some sort of celebrity of sorts. And they asked to be on our show. So we get those all the time and those that we’re very honored to, you know, to get those kinds of emails and phone calls. We also get a lot of emails and and phone calls from loan officers who would love to be on our show because of our reach and how many people look Grace the country that that we that listen to our show. And I will tell you that we have, we absolutely just say no to all of those loan officers, because we already have somebody who provides incredible value on our show. And obviously, you know, Joel, and I don’t have a business relationship with the show, he’s just somebody who is so kind to come on our show once a month, and talk about what’s going on in the lending world and help agents. And so we have to, we turned out all of those requests. And so I’m honored that other loan officers would like to be on our show, but we really have no need to have anyone because Joel satisfies everything we’re looking for, and he can do the same for you. So please reach out to him if you don’t have a great relationship with a loan officer or looking to see what other loan officers can do for you. Or if you’re a buyer, and just looking to explore what guaranteed rate can offer you directly drawls your guy, so just call Joel. That’s his slogan. And there’s a good reason for it. Because that’s the only call you need to make. It’s the only call we had to make on the show to get somebody in fact, Joel Joel reached out to us that that’s who he is. He is a giver. And and that is we’re big, big fan. So everyone out there. We want to thank you for being a part of our show. Whether you’re a listener or whether you’re guests like Joel comes on every month. You’re all considered part of our little a podcast family here. We’re super honored to have you. And we will see everybody on our next episode. And we’ll see Joel we’ll see you again next month.

Joel Schaub 31:23
Well, you failed to mention the biggest thing is I’m on here because I love seeing your beautiful face. It’s really good every time I get to see you. Thanks again for having me on. It was truly a pleasure.

D.J. Paris 31:34
Awesome. Thanks, Joel. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Please real quickly before you sign off, tell one friend about our show. Tell them about this particular episode, and send a link to our podcast easiest way just send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com and they can stream every episode we’ve ever done, including all of our Learn with a lender series with Joel shop. So reach out to Joel he’s great. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks y’all. Bye bye.