A (2:36)

Now, how is that different than the way we're set up right now? It kind of explained the way the MLS works currently.

B (2:41)

Currently, yeah. So when we sign a listing, we have to input it into the MLS within 24 hours of the listing date, period. Right. Compass is saying, well, if a seller comes to us and doesn't want it in the MLS for whatever reason, they should have the right to do so. Right. If they want to pre market the listing to other people within just the Compass brokerage, for whatever reason, the seller should be able to to do so. Right. Right now we don't really have any choice as a broker but to comply with our local mls, because that is the way that we just do business. Right. We're subject to the MLS rules and regulations. We have to do it their way. And then also Zillow is, you know, making sure that every single property goes into the MLS because that's where they get their information from.

A (3:30)

Right. So you got all the brokers that get listings. The brokers have agreed to belong to associations at the local, state and federal, national level, or federal level, where they all agree to play by certain rules. The properties go into the mls. The MLS gets to make rules like you have to have a picture, you have to have a price. There's all that you have to say, the square footage or something like that. They have all these rules of how they go in. And then you have online portals like Zillow, Redfin, realtor.com and they show what is in the MLS to the overall public, which is how most people look for homes. I think Zillow is probably the most well known, but there's some others. Now those big companies make their money by selling information from the people that go to the site. So you go look at a house on Zillow, you say, tell me more about this home. And they go, great. We'd love to tell you more. What's your phone number and email? We'll send you some info. And then they sell that to a Realtor who buys it from them to contact you about, hey, can I sell you this house? Not my favorite part of the industry, but that's what we got right now. The problem is, I see it is these big companies like Zillow, like Redfin, like Realtor Compass, is one we're gonna talk about shortly, that basically came in and started buying brokerages and buying agents to join them. They came in with the Wall street money and they kind of just absorbed everything. You don't need to go to the agents to see the house. You go to the website. And now that these website companies know the power that they have, they're starting to join forces and pool their resources. And we're getting kind of a battle between two big players. And whoever ends up winning this battle is going to control the way that real estate is bought and sold. Sad thing from my perspective, because I like when you called Bob from ReMax, or Fred, the family Realtor, and you had his business card on your refrigerator and somebody said, like, hey, we need to sell our house. Oh, we'll put you in touch with Fred. And that was the way business got done. It doesn't look like that's going to be the case for much longer. You're going to be going to one of these big portals, and every agent's going to have to hang their license with that person or they're going to buy their leads from those people. But whatever it is, it's sad that we're sort of watching the shift away from the mom and pop into the huge conglomeration. But before we get into the details of it, share with me who the two main players are in this battle that's starting to emerge.

B (5:50)

So the two biggest ones, and it was just originally between Compass and Zillow fighting their fight.

A (5:57)

Yeah, let's start there. Sorry, explain what the fight was between Compass and Zillow originally. That's a great point.

B (6:02)

Right? Yeah. That goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where Compass was saying they wanted to have the flexibility to sell the property in any way that the seller deemed was in their best interest. Right. Zillow was basically saying, hey, the seller's best interest is to put it where everybody can see it, because that's going to be what nests them, the higher price. Those were the two arguments. You know, both have their good points, but basically, a couple weeks ago, Compass announced that they Were going to be partnering with Redfin. Now, Redfin has, you know, a large online presence, not Zillow, but pretty close. They're like the second largest home search platform that there is. And they said that through Redfin they will have Compass and any of their other anywhere brands because Compass also owns Better homes and gardens, century 21s under their umbrella. You know, there's a bunch of companies, Atlantic, Sotheby's, you know, a lot of these companies that you would know of are under their brand. They're going to have the ability to market their properties on Redfin before hitting the open market is basically what they're saying. It's like a coming soon or pre listing. It's going to be available through their site right now. Zillow was very quiet after this announcement and a couple of weeks later, it was actually earlier this week. We're recording on the 19th of March right now back on, I believe it was the 17th, Zillow announced that they're doing the same thing with Keller Williams. And I am still trying to wrap my head around it because Zillow is really taking that stance of, hey, once you sign the listing agreement, it goes in the MLS and it goes everywhere. To see right now Zillow is working with Keller Williams to do the same thing. And just today I was on social media following the CEO of Exposure. They just announced that they're partnering with Homes.com and one other brand that I can't remember off the top of my head, but another one of those portals, it was realtor.com that's what it was. Realtor.com and homes.com to do the exact same thing. So you see a lot of these big companies partnering with these big portals to allow flexibility to the sellers to sell the properties in more ways than just the traditional MLS and go everywhere type of model.

A (8:22)

So when you say to do the exact same thing, what specifically are you referring to?

B (8:26)

Pre listing. So they're going to be able to market on these platforms, their sellers properties before hitting all of the other platforms and having the big MLS exposure that you see today. Because right now when you listen to mls, it goes to every single site that we just mentioned, right? It goes to homes.com goes to realtor.com goes to Zillow, goes to Redfin. It hits all, all of those at the same time. And the feeds of all of the brokerages that have an IDX feed on their website, it automatically goes everywhere. But now Compass agents can have exclusive, exclusive listings just on Redfin, right? For a Period of time. And then the EXP agents are going to be able to be exclusive on homes.com. they're going to be exclusive on realtor.com for a period of time. And the same thing with Keller Williams now on Zillow. So now they're trying to pitch a benefit to the sellers that hire agents from these brands is kind of. And honestly, I think it's just a fancy bell and whistle that they're using as a little marketing thing to say, hey, this is why we're better. When both you and I know. And almost everyone listening to this podcast knows more exposure gets you more money. And if that's your goal, the model we're on right now is the best one. Right?

A (9:45)

Okay, let me see if I understand what you're getting at here. There are brokerages which get the right to sell the house. This would be the Keller Williams, the Caldwell Bankers, the Compasses. Then there are online portals, which is where everyone goes to look at the house. That used to be the same place. So nice. You would go to the place to look at all the houses. That was the broker and the agent you're working with. With. We're now seeing a fracturing where brokerages are sort of picking a portal and saying, you get access to our listings before everybody else does. And Keller Williams picked Zillow, exp picked holmes.com and Compass picked Redfin. Am I more or less. Is this accurate what you're describing? Okay, so instead of having everyone go to one place to see the homes, we're sort of reversing what we did to make the mls. So the way it used to work, this was long before our time was you would go to a broker to see their listings. You would go to Coldware Banker, be like, what you got? And then you would go to century 21 and say, what do you guys have? And you'd bounce around all the different brokerages. And so that was like the way real estate was done. Then the brokerages said, hey, this is silly. Let's put all of our listings in the same place. We'll call it the Multiple Listing Service, because we're all going to join it. And that way, if you have a buyer, you don't have to worry about losing your buyer to Century 21 because they didn't like any of the cold or banker houses. Your buyer's agents can still get paid wherever they take their buyer to. And if they happen to keep it within your brokerage, cool. But if you don't have anything that buyer wants, this way the buyers didn't have the hot between brokerages and cite a very short agreement if they sign one at all, but was kind of smart. We are going backwards. We're like, hey, we used to have unity, now we're fracturing and we're picking sides. You've got the Lannisters, you've got the Starks, you've got. What's another Game of Thrones person that I'm not thinking of? You got another house out there that I can't remember the name of and we don't know who's going to win. Now my assumption here, Chris, is the reason that you want to put your listings on a portal instead of the MLS is because people have to come to you to get it. Meaning you have a higher chance of double ending it before it goes public. Is that your understanding of what motivates this?

B (12:17)

That is there's also another portion that motivates us and you talked to it a little bit, you know, earlier, you have Wall street money at play right here, right? So you know, regardless of what these people say, they serve the shareholders, right? So they're going to try and make some game changing announcement that's going to make their company more appealing. Right. So keep that in mind. Also, these partnerships help other companies. So we've been talking about Compass and Redfin. While there's another player at play. Rocket Mortgage is also part of that partnership. So now if there's exclusive listings that Compass puts on, Redfin will now Rocket Mortgages, that preferred lender as well. All of these companies are getting the lead and they're profiting off of that client generated through that lead in multiple ways through these multiple companies. Right. That are all public traded. Right. So there's that incentive Zillow has, Zillow home loans, right? So now you're, you're, you're funneling the lead into your pipeline and you have more control if you have something exclusive to offer. And I think that that right there is what the shareholders would love to see. They're like, they're attracting the client and profiting in multiple ways and these companies are helping each other bring more relevance and, you know, more services to this one client which is going to help keep them in that pipeline. Right? So home or not homes.com exp and the partnership between them and homes.com and realtor.com I have not found anything yet on a lender being involved in this, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple of days it's announced there's a Lender partnering on this too.

A (14:00)

This is interesting. So the old model was kind of like the client was the hub of a wheel and you could go get your loan from that person. This person's your real estate agent. This person provides the home warranty. You kind of shopped around or your real estate agent said, I like this preferred lender. This is who I like to use for home warranty. I typically use this home inspector. And you didn't have to take their advice, but if you trust your agent, it was easier to be like, okay, cool. The agents had value that they were offering because they knew the good home inspector versus the bad one. They knew the home warranty company that would actually pay and answer the phone. And if they're more experienced, they had more value. This new model is less like the customer being at the center and having options and. And it's more like you are being unwittingly pulled into a pool. You got the Exp Homes pool, you got the Keller Williams Zillow pool, you got the Compass Rocket Mortgage pool. And when you're in that pool, they're going to hammer you with all of the services that they also own. So you get, you get sucked into the Compass pool. Rocket Mortgage is going to be the first one to give you a loan and they're going to market it with them. Like, hey, if you're also buying with Compass, then you're, you earn this special fancy loan thing that we're going to give, like home builders will often do. Now, it probably won't be any different than you'd get somewhere else, but it will look different because they can mark up the price and put a little strike through and then give you a better price. And then they're probably also going to say like, hey, if you do this thing with us, we'll get you a discount on your home warranty. Or we'll include a home warranty if you buy with us and they'll pay the home warranty out of their side. If it's going to be like Walmart where you go to buy a pair of shoes and then you're like, oh, they got food. I could grab some food when I'm here. Oh, there's also sleeping bags. I could get some linens. Oh, Chip and Joanna Gain have a section in Target. I could go get that thing where they're like, we got you. Let's sell you everything we possibly can before you leave. This is the new model where people are chasing after the consumer and instead of offering what they do best, they're like, it's convenient, just get it all right here. Don't have to think about it. And the value of being educated and understanding the stuff that we talk about, it's still valuable to people that do it. But I think there's gonna be less and less people that care. They're like, why? I'm already on Amazon. If I can order my stuff and I can also get a home mortgage from Amazon and I can also look at homes on Amazon and I can also buy my car on Amazon and like they bundle it all up for me, I can get my insurance through Amazon. I'm afraid that's what it looks like we're falling into. Instead of the individual mom and pop insurance provide mortgage officer, home inspector that took pride in what they do, now they're just a cog in a wheel of a corporate machine. You're a home inspector and you work for this division in this pond and you just go out and you half ass it and you phone it in and then you're like, here's your inspection. I did everything I was supposed to do. You don't have a relationship with that person. You're not going to be sending them referrals. You're not going to be talking to them. You don't know your insurance person. It's going to be exported out overseas. That's what every time a company goes corporate happens is. They go, good. Send all of our customer service to the Philippines. Make them punch through a phone tree for 45 minutes before they can talk to a person. They'll just give up and they'll leave us alone. It'll force them online where they use our chat option. And once they do that, we can just have AI chat with them. We don't have to hire a person. And the process of buying a home like everyone is so excited about, we're getting rid of realtors. It's going to be horrible. It's going to be the process of dealing with bots and virtual assistants as jobs in America leave. And I'm not super thrilled about it, but I do think that this is really important to talk about. I just went on a pretty long rant there of what I see this working into. But you actually know more about this than I do. You're staying on top of it really hard. Do you think that there might be a angle that I'm missing? In my perspective?

B (17:59)

No. I do think that overall the movement that we're seeing across a lot of industries is how do we make it easier for the consumer A lot of agents have tried to do this and a lot of agents have been successful in doing. If you have a great agent, you know, you go to your agent for any referral under the sun. If you know your agent is worth their weight in gold, they, they've got the right contacts, right? These large corporations now are coming in, trying to be that type of one stop shop now. And just like David said earlier, if you can go to one place and get all your services taken care of, you may not care about getting the best deal because it's so easy and streamlined for you. I would not be surprised if some of these companies start to merge some of their systems and back end processes together to make it extremely easy for the client to use all of their companies and very hard to bring someone from the outside in. So if we start seeing that, you'll know that that's their goal is to streamline it and make it easy. And then anyone that partners with them, like for example, if you go to, let's just use an example of, you know, the Compass, Redfin and Rocket, right? If you use a Compass agent, you have this fancy portal through your Compass agent that works really well with the Rocket mortgage app, right? They're integrated. You get all the updates for your transaction in one spot. But then if you go to, I don't know, bank of America, it is an absolute nightmare. It's separate. Your Compass agent isn't going to communicate well with this person, blah, blah, blah, because your Compass Agent has five other clients that are all using the AB and it's in one spot and now it's different for the agent. And we all know a lot of agents are lazy. So if they got to go somewhere else to provide the service, they're going to drop the ball and they're going

A (19:51)

to force you to download the app on your phone to communicate with them. You're not going to have a phone number person to text or call. They're going to make it a system. Like, hey, this is all the things that person has to do. Do you ever get good customer service? The minute that something goes corporate? I can't. Like Airbnb did this and they ruined their company. I don't know in my life if I've ever heard more people angry at a company than people are mad at Airbnb right now. They've just like trashed their entire reputation so quickly. And the first thing they did to do that was they shipped their customer service overseas and they introduced AI. And now the guests realize, oh, I get away with whatever I want. There's no accountability at all. And it's turned into the purge and you just have no recourse at all. And people are super unhappy about it. Before it went public, when it was just a company that was like a startup and it was doing well and they had human beings that were Americans that were working inside of the company, if you complain, they were like, oh, no, we don't want unhappy people. We don't want the reputation that we don't support our members. Let's fix your problem. The minute that it went public, it's just like, oh, we just saved 20% of the bottom line by getting rid of all these jobs and shipping overseas. And if you don't like it and you're a host, I don't care. We got too many houses on our platform anyways. We need the, the, the travelers. We don't need you. We're going to side with them every time. We don't want them going to Verbo. We don't care if you go to Verbo. Verbo doesn't have enough people looking right. As long as we control where the client comes in, you do whatever we say. That is the same thing that is going to happen to real estate sales when we get a winner out of this big battle. Okay? Whoever wins will control where people go to buy a house, and then they can say whatever they want. Do we want to use agents? We choose what agent you get. Maybe we make the agents hang their licen with Compass. You have to come here because we're the place everyone goes to to look for homes. So if you're not a Compass agent, you're not going to be able to sell anything to anybody. You're not going to be able to show them any homes. Oh, you don't want a rocket mortgage? Well, then we're not going to be able to offer you the commission that we agreed on working on. It's going to have to be something more. Oh, you wanted to pick your own home inspector or your own home warranty, or you wanted your title company because you know them and you trust them. That's too bad. You have to use a title company that we own or you're going to be penalized in some way. And when you go to complain about it, they're going to say, I don't care. It's not my problem. We went public, we made a whole bunch of money for the shareholders. We are doing great. If you had a bad experience, where else are you going to go? We killed all the competition, by bringing everybody into our pond, we sucked all the water out of the other ponds. The other ones dried up and died. There is no competition. We will do whatever we want. That's what's happening with Airbnb. That's what's happening with, like, a lot of the things that are kind of going on in the world. You know, you just think about, like, the last time you ordered furniture, you probably had to order it because furniture stores are going out of business, or they're ridiculously expensive because they don't get enough business that comes in. We're all sitting on, like, IKEA furniture, held together by those, like, cam locks and little screws that you put in with an Allen wrench. It sucks. This is like, well, this is all the stuff you have. You go to stay at some property, and you're not staying in furniture that somebody took pride in building. You're. You're sitting in some stupid thing that came in a flat box that was put together because we all want the convenience. So I know it's kind of dark. It's depressing. I don't like that America is moving down this path of like, let's just sedate you. Let's just give you the cheapest thing. Let's just give you the free thing. Let's just get you high on processed foods and get you high on reels and ruin your attention span and ruin your ability to focus and just make your brain say, what's easiest? What's easiest? Like, we're all just like Robocop, scanning for the downhill road. What's the easiest way to go? Right? But what. What brings joy out of life is watching yourself progress. I got better at this thing. I struggled with this movement and CrossFit, and I got it down. I improved my time in the race that I was running. I lifted more weight than I thought that I would be able to. To lift. I. I ran faster than I thought. I got really good at selling this product. I learned all about this car. I. There's so much joy that comes out of the excellence that you can achieve by doing things. Feels like we're trashing that within the real estate space. So what is your advice on how agents themselves that have sort of done it a certain way forever, which is our own fault?

B (24:27)

The.

A (24:28)

I'm just going to buy my leads off Zillow. I'm not going to learn how to lead gen. I'm not going to talk to for sale by owners. I'm not going to call expireds. I'm not going to have a database of people that trust me, I'm just lazy. I'm going to wait for Zillow to send me a lead. I'm going to work it. This is going to be shifting a lot. What's your advice on what people should start doing to prepare before it comes?

B (24:47)

You want my real advice for the agents that are lazy?

A (24:50)

Yeah.

B (24:52)

Start looking for another job. And I know that's a pretty bold statement, but real estate is going to get more difficult. If these companies are successful in doing what they're doing, they're putting up more barriers in the industry to overcome. So already we're looking at ways on when we have these, you know, pre listings on the sites that aren't going to be showing in our MLS system. How are we going to work with the companies that have these pre listed? Because we can still, we can still take a buyer to them. At the end of the day, we can still take them and offer. Yes, it's not going to be their typical system, but we're going to make sure that we are keeping an eye on inventory that's just outside the mls. So. So a lot of agents right now, they just put a buyer on a portal in their MLS that auto emailed listings out to them. But guess what? Once these companies start getting these listings up, you need to be keeping an eye as an agent on all the other sites now, because there's going to be stuff on Redfin that doesn't pop up on this portal. There's going to be stuff on Zillow that doesn't pop up on the portal. There's going to be stuff on homes.com, realtor.com they're all going to have slightly different inventory now. And if you want to effectively serve your clients, you need to be paying attention to those things. And I don't think they're going to make it easy for outside agents to keep track of that. So my advice is, if you're lazy, start looking for another job, because real estate's about to get harder.

A (26:24)

Well, I'm thinking some people may be thinking, all right, I'm just going to go hang my license with whoever wins and I'll just work the leads from there. That's the typical downhill response. Right. But the way that that works, you're not going to have like a mentor that's like teaching you how to do sales. Nobody in the corporate world thinks that way. What they do is they figure out some way to measure your performance without talking to you. They get a computer to do it, they look at a screen or they have AI look at it and say, fred's our best guy. Then Bob, then Cindy, then Mary, then Louis. And they have an algorithm decide, give as many leads as we can to the top guy. And then when he's capped, then the guy goes here and they create a structure that you figure out how to close. Or you just get nothing. And if you look around like, well, how am I going to learn? How am I going to get good at this? No one cares. In the old way, you were at the office, maybe you brought some food to the potluck. Maybe you had a great attitude. Maybe you volunteered to help other people. And so somebody saw you and was like, hey, let me help you with how you figure out how to write this contract. Or did you know you can't do it that way. You got to do this. You sort of had a family atmosphere. A lot of the time that everybody encourage each other. It's probably going much more to the cutthroat corporate. I just do myself. Or you don't even see them because you work from home. You have the company app. It's like Uber boom. Chris Lloyd asked about this property. Here's his phone number. Call him from the app within this much time or you lose the lead. And then you got to be able to sell Chris or you lose it. Do you think people are going to operate with integrity if they know if I don't get a certain number of sales, I'm not getting a lead again? No, Not a chance.

B (28:04)

No.

A (28:04)

All this is going to do is bring sliminess to the forefront of selling houses. Yeah. And I will say this, though, here's a positive little light. If. If our predictions are true, there is no better time to be learning from podcast than now because this might be the only place that you get anyone that gives a about learning and teaching you how to do your job. This might be the only place that you can listen to information about protecting your clients, how houses work, what you need to know, what scripts that you can use to help someone you know. You were on a call last night with the agents coast to Coast Real Estate, literally running them through. Here's some objections you're going to get when you do all these things is talk about your answer and making them practice that you're not going to get that.

B (28:50)

At.

A (28:50)

At most, what you'll get is some AI robot that's like a screen that goes. A commonly asked question by our guests is, how many square footage is the house? One way that you can answer this question. Yeah, the old real estate question. Right. You're just going to get some like, like Fox News blonde. That's like an AI thing talking to you, saying, here's what you can say. And then how long before you're not even using a person anymore? They're asking all their questions of AI and then the doors can be opened with a code and there's a ring camera and you just show your license and you go look at a vacant house and. And agents like, oh, we're just talking ourselves out of our job because of our addiction to laziness. And I'm not a fan of it. That's why I wanted to make this podcast with you today. I want to talk about what agents can expect and what they can do. Now, would you agree that if it does get bad, the agents that are good, that are confident, that are knowledgeable, it. They stand out? Right?

B (29:50)

Yeah, absolutely. If you're staying up to speed on what's going on, you're going to figure out how to successfully conduct business. And I may have a unique view on this. I look forward to disruption in the industry because I do believe we have a lot of underperformers and we also have a lot of agents that don't do their job effectively. We have a lot of unrepresented clients as a result. And realtors in big part get a really bad name overall because of it. Right. So I'm not opposed to a thinning of the herd, you could call it, of agents. And the ones that are left are better. I think that would be better for everyone, Buyers, sellers, and then also just the agent to agent interactions that happen behind the scenes. Because another thing that y' all don't know about many times when you're buying and selling a house is how often if you're working with a good agent, your agent is coaching the other agent on the other side how to do their job. You don't realize that, but a lot of that happens. And it makes me sad to say how, how common that is. Yeah.

A (31:03)

Give me some examples of how you see this playing out.

B (31:07)

How, how I see this whole lawsuit and partnership.

A (31:12)

I'm, I'm Bob, the first time home buyer and I pick Joey, the really nice realtor, who wears a suit and smiles a lot. He seems really like me. He's really friendly, he's always agreeable. And I told him I want to buy a house and I asked him what price I thought that I should write it at. And he took a minute, then he got back to me with the number. And I was like, well, you're the professional. I guess I'll do it. What's going on behind the scenes with Joey and the other realtor that I, Bob, would never know if they weren't listening to this podcast?

B (31:43)

Yeah, absolutely. So let's just say you said Joey the realtor is the name.

A (31:47)

Yeah.

B (31:48)

Yeah. So Joey calls up the listing agent, right? And says, hey, my buyer's very interested in your house. Really want to make it, you know, a deal. They love the fact that it has this. They love the fact it has that. They told me that it was their favorite house all day, and there was no other house that they were interested in. And they want to make sure they get this one right. So they've just exposed everything about their client, what they love about it, the fact that no other listing even compared to this one, and they want to make that house like. They want to make sure that they get it right. Yeah, exactly. So now it doesn't matter what the offer is. The listing agent knows the buyer really, really wants that house. If you hire the agent that knows what they're doing and say, hey, my buyer's really interested in the house, I took a look at the comps. I'm having a hard time figuring out, you know, where you came up in the listing price. Could you please send over some comparable sales so that I can take a look, so we can make an offer that's fair to both parties. That conversation is completely different. I never exposed the. The intentions of my client. I never told them that it was the best house. It was the favorite one. I'm downplaying a little bit. I'm leaving it open, leaving this. Leaving the ability for the listing agent to second guess whether or not there's another house that they're looking at. Because when we submit the offer, instead of immediately getting a counter with whatever the seller wants, now the listing agent is taking it, saying, hey, this agent knows what they're doing. This is the only offer we've had in a couple of weeks. We need to make sure that we, you know, take everything into consideration and acknowledge the fact that this offer could leave the table if we counter. I want the listing agent to go back to their seller with that. Not the, hey, this guy loves the house. Let's counter him back with $10,000. They're definitely going to take it, right?

A (33:40)

Yeah, that's great. What about when you're in contract and the inexperienced agent is like, oh, I got a home inspection report, and it's Bad. And rookie buyer agent says to the listing agent, I saw the report. It says the house needs a new roof, that the plumbing is outdated and leaking. The electrical system needs to be replaced. The foundation is terrible. It's falling apart. What can we do? What do you think that listing agent tells rookie buyer agent to tell his clients if the buyer's agent doesn't know any better?

B (34:11)

Oh, well, houses this age, I mean, it's an older house. You know, I've been doing this for so many years. You'll hear that one a lot. I've been doing this for so many years. A lot of this stuff is real common. Just make sure that the buyer knows that no house is going to be perfect. Right. And now rookie buyer agent goes to their client after being coached by the opposing council, hey, yeah, this is an old home. A lot of this stuff is normal, blah, blah, blah. Well, when it comes to me, I don't have that conversation with the listing agent. I consult the buyer and say, look, XYZ is wrong with the home. Yes, it's an old home. This stuff is totally normal. We see this a lot on different homes. I'll show you other inspection reports if you want. Right. But this problem right here, the fact that this roof is on its last leg is definitely an issue. You may not be able to get insurance on the home unless this is addressed. Right. And then this foundation issue is relatively significant. I have seen this in many other houses. We definitely need to fight for this. I go to the listing agent, hey, I've discussed with my buyer all the details of the home inspection report. I made sure that they understood what was normal for this age of home and what was not. Right. We are asking that the roof gets addressed and the foundation gets addressed, and that's it. If we can fix those problems, we're good to get to the closing table. Right. In the first situation, the buyer's agent listened to the listing agent and consulted their buyer with the advice that the listing agent gave the buyer's agent. In mine. I controlled the situation and came to the listing agent with a resolution saying, hey, if you get the seller to do this, we're good to close. It's a completely different conversation.

A (35:54)

That's really good. I don't think anybody really understands that that is what goes on behind the scenes. And what's even more sad, if we see these big conglomerates creating pools or ponds, I think I called them. What happens when the listing agent works for Compass and the buyer's agent works for Compass and they're Both held accountable by Compass, who controls the leads and decides what they get their way. How much influence is that going to have over the conversations they have with who are supposed to be their fiduciaries?

B (36:24)

And it's not supposed to, but we all know that just trusting everybody to be honest all the time is a. Not a great model.

A (36:33)

Yeah. So give me some examples of how you see that could have a negative impact on the industry.

B (36:38)

Well, to be fair, I think it's going to be very similar to the first situation that we just talked about on the home inspection. At the end of the day, if they're controlling the transaction, they have a seller on the line, they're going to do everything that they can to keep that transaction together, even to the detriment of the buyer. They've established a relationship with the seller. They already have the buyer locked up. They're going to get that home sale closed because they're just going to have a whole lot more control. They're going to be able to workshop the story a whole lot better. And I do believe that we may have an increase in unrepresented buyer agreements. So for example, in our local mls, you don't sign any paperwork offering a certain amount of commission to a buyer's agent like some other MLs, but you do sign with the seller how much you would pay the listing agent if they worked with an unrepresented buyer. So in our listing agreement, you know, they could sign X percent to list and X percent to work with an unrepresented buyer. Now if that buyer comes unrepresented to this whole transaction, now they're not represented at all whatsoever. But Compass or Keller Williams or Exp, whoever's double ending it now has the commission that would have gone usually to both sides, usually comes out to a very similar amount. Right. You have that on both sides. You have the loan that you're making money off of. And I wouldn't be surprised if other companies started jumping into partnerships. Home warranty companies, home inspectors, contracting companies. I'm sure we will see growth in that regard.

A (38:20)

The thing that scares me, Chris, is if you're a shady buyer's agent or a shady listing agent, you can close a deal. You're probably not getting a lot of referrals coming your way. No one's going to refer you business. Within a couple years, you're washed out. It's very hard to stay in the industry. Therefore, the. The scariest person to trust is the brand new person. Doesn't mean they're bad Means they haven't been vetted out yet. They could be bad. You're dealing with someone been doing this for a long time. They, they might be an idiot, they might be dumb, they might not be knowledgeable, they might be lazy. They probably haven't been burning people for years or they wouldn't have had enough referrals to get by. Unless they're an incredible salesperson. I don't trust those people either. Because usually if you're super, super salesy, you don't have to be knowledgeable. It's like if you're wildly attractive, you're probably not very smart. You don't have to use your smart muscle very much. I look at salespeople the same way. But if you're a regular person that communicates authentically and you've been doing it for 15 years and you're selling a good number of houses, you're probably more or less a good person to use. It's going to be tough to get taken advantage of by them. That's because of capitalism and how referrals work. But if there's one pond and all the buyers and sellers go to one pond, and the pond manager controls who gets those leads, you can have shady agents that close deals and rip off their clients. And the pond owner doesn't care. The pond owner is beholden to shareholders. They're not a fiduciary to those people. The pond owner is like, you better close this many. And whatever you got to say to do it, you got to get it done. Because if we don't close them, then you know, my position could be replaced by the board of directors. And if you have a bad experience, normally you tell everybody, don't use that person. Who are you going to tell? They don't get their referrals from you. They get them directly from the pond. It's sort of like you're forcing everyone into one doorway they have to walk through if they want to buy or sell a home. And whoever controls that doorway controls the entire experience. And if it was a benevolent, wonderful, God fearing person, I wouldn't be as worried about it. We don't ever see that happen in this industry. We see every time someone accumulates too much power, they become corrupted by it and the whole industry sucks. And who knows what's going to happen. So now is the time to tell your database, you gotta trust me, guys, you gotta call me. When you want to know what a house is worth, you gotta call me. You gotta resist the urge to take the easy road and go look it up yourself or go sign up for some software that, you know, cuts me out of the deal. You don't understand when they cut me out and I'm your bodyguard and they're like, you don't need a bodyguard. Their bodyguard takes a nap. Sometimes your bodyguard is lazy. Your bodyguard, you know, he's got paid for a whole week of work. You didn't get attacked once. Do you really need them? What happens when your bodyguard is gone is the enemy comes out that was there all along. Wrong. That's what I'm worried about. I want the people protecting the clients that we need protecting the clients. And I think you're one of the good ones, Chris. You're a good egg. I say that all the time. I really like the way that you do look out for people. What's your thoughts just overall on what you'd like to see in the industry as we're waiting to see how these things shake up?

B (41:33)

Well, one of the things that we're doing is we are following this stuff very closely because I'm, I'm just a believer that you can't change the industry as one person, but you certainly can adapt to it quicker than anyone else. So one of the things that we're doing here at Coast to coast, keeping a close eye on how this is impacting our local market. And I advise all agents to do the exact same. You need to understand how it's changing, when it's changing, and how to effectively provide the best service to your clients despite all the changes. At the end of the day, the seller wants to sell and your buyer wants to buy. Figure out how to make the deal happen. Regardless of how it's marketed, regardless of where it's marketed, just figure it out, plain and simple.

A (42:16)

All right, what if somebody is a licensed real estate in the state of Virginia and they're listening to this right now? How can they get a hold of you if they want to learn more about working with you, your team and the brokerage Coast To Coast Real Estate?

B (42:27)

Absolutely. Please shoot me a DM on my Instagram. Chris Lloyd underscore Real Estate. And that's Lloyd ll O Y D And then you can also reach me at my email if you want to send me. Email chris.lloyd again. That's lloyd@clrt.com Would love to have a discussion, show you what we got going on here at coast to Coast. And we are looking for agents across Virginia. And can I even put a city in here, David? There's a specific area I really, really want an agent because we have some opportunity out there. The Danville, the Danville, South Boston, Halifax area. We really are looking for an agent out there. So if you're an agent out there, you listen to the show, you want to learn more about us, we'd love to chat with you.

A (43:17)

All right. And if you are a broker from a different state and you like what you're hearing here and you want to be part of what we're talking about as opposed to where it seems like it's going, basically Darth Vader and the Empire are coming to ruin everything and we have a rebel force that we're trying to stand against this. Go to david green24.com use a chat option to get a hold of me. Or even better, go right to Chris, who is also a broker, and say, hey, I kind of want to learn more about what you guys are doing to see if I want to be a part of it. I want to keep things as authentic and honest as long as possible. We're looking for people just like that so that we can bring agents in from those states. Chris, thanks for joining me today. Really appreciate you and appreciate your time, everybody. If you like this and you want to know more about it, if you check out the YouTube video at, on my YouTube, just search for avid green24, you should be able to find it. Or you can look for the David Green show. Find it there as well. And make sure you stay tuned in next week for real talk. Realtor.