← Your Daily Real Estate Podcast with Tristan Ahumada
Your Daily Real Estate Podcast with Tristan Ahumada
Episode 859: 300M Sq Ft is Dying: Stop Being a Professional Door Opener
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The agent who helps their client build wealth gets referrals for life. That's not a theory. That's a pattern. I've watched play out over 22 years in this business. The agents who figured out how to have the money conversations without being a financial advisor, obviously, without overstepping, without turning into something they're not. Those are the agents who stopped chasing leads a long time ago. Their clients just call them. Why? Well, think about it. They're calling them for everything they think about. Not just for real estate, but for life. For help over here. For help over there. Hey, somebody just died. Hey, I just gave birth. Hey, I need to downsize. I need to upsize. Hey, what do I do with my equity? And today, I'm going to show you how to be that agent. This is your daily real estate. It's a podcast. It's. It's a show. I'm Tristan Elmada, and I've been doing this for now, two years, maybe a little bit over. And if you find this useful, please subscribe and share it with someone who needs it. There are 300 million square feet of empty office buildings being converted into apartments across the United States right now. That's not a future thing. It's happening today. Your clients own property and markets being reshaped by this. Most of them have no idea. And that's exactly where you come in. This episode isn't really about commercial conversions. It's about the kind of agent you decide to be. Most agents stay transactional because that's what they were trained to be. That's what we were taught. Get the listing, close the sale, move on to the next one. In fact, some coaches still teach that. Now, that makes you a commodity. Every discount brokerage, every algorithm trying to cut you out of a deal is aimed directly at the transactional agent. Now, you're easier to replace when all you do is process paperwork and open doors. I mean, you've seen how some big software companies come in and they try to interrupt you because, I mean, some agents just do that. The fear holding most agents back from the wealth conversation is overstepping. And I hear that often. It's like, stay in your own lane. Tristan, what are you doing over here? No. No. So the people who start thinking outside of the box, who know they have a lot more to learn, can jump into other lanes while remaining true to who they are. Now, they think talking about equity and appreciation and investment strategies is crossing into financial advisor territory. It's not. You don't need a license to say, hey, your home has appreciated significantly. And I want to make sure you know what your options are because guess what, you don't get paid from any of that. Right? You're just being a equity homeowner, whatever it is, at the time advisor, and you're helping in this process because now they're going to go to you for important things like this. Now that's not financial advice, by the way. That's what a trusted advisor does. And since you're the one who put them in the home, I would expect you want to stay in touch in different ways. A real estate agent as a wealth building vehicle is exactly what you're an expert in. I think that that's what we should all do. This is how we should all think, right? Real estate as a wealth building vehicle. Now here's where most people miss the opportunity. If your client bought a home in the last five years to 10 years in almost any market, they're likely sitting on significant equity with no plan for it. A client who bought at $400,000 and is now at $700,000 has $300,000 they could be working with. Well, you know, realistically, no, there's a percentage, but still, you get the point. They probably don't think about it in the way that you're going to present it. They just live in the house. One question changes a lot, though. Have you thought about what you want to do with the equity you've built? That's it. That question opens a conversation that most agents never start. The ones who start it become indispensable. Think about this. And I use this a lot. When I have these conversations, I always go back to the garage. And I think of companies that started their business in their garage. And the one I use the most is Apple, Steve Jobs, Wozniak, they started Apple in a garage. And I think your home isn't just a place where you can start a business. You. It's a place in some cases for some people to be able to use some of those funds that they've grown into this home that they've built, to be able to build another dream. And sometimes they don't know how to do that. And that's where you become indispensable. And if you have the clients who are renting or stretched on their primary. A duplex where the tenant helps pay the mortgage changes people's financial lives. And if that's not a pitch, that's a specific actionable reason to pick up the phone. You're not selling them really anything. You're giving Them ideas. And part of that is thinking about your job differently. You're showing them something they couldn't see without you, and I think that's indispensable. Now back to those office conversations. When 300 million square feet of commercial space converts to residential, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It changes foot traffic, walkability score, and residential demand in the surrounding blocks. Some of your clients own property within a mile of one of these conversions and have no idea what it means for their home or what it'll mean in the next few years. Now think about this. You're also watching all these AI data centers, and I don't know if you're in one of those areas, but what does that mean for the homeowner? Are you calling your database and saying, hey, you've seen the AI data center. This is what it means. Or, there's an AI data center coming into our place. This is what it means. Those are reasons to call. Again, not a sales pitch, a service call, something like, I've been paying attention to what's happening with the office conversions in our area, and I want to reach out because it could affect what your home is worth over the next few years. Now, in our area, we don't have any data centers, but we do have conversions. We have a mall, and part of it is an outdoor mall. And that outdoor mall area is kind of dead. The indoor does too, pretty good. But the outdoor one, guess what they're going to do? They're going to convert it into townhomes, condos. And not a lot of people in our area know that. So we bring that up in conversation. Right? And in the same way you're going over this and, hey, this may affect your home value, this may affect other things, and there may be other opportunities. Do you have 15 minutes to talk? If you're texting them and that's how a call gets returned. You text them, they call you. All because you're approaching this very differently. Now, here's the part that trips up a lot of people. You don't have to explain anything you don't know. I'm not having you go into Claude and try to be an expert in the next hour. Right? I want you to truly understand this. And as you do, then you can have great conversations. But if you don't listen, you're the connector. Run a CMA on a past client's home and call them with the number. I was pulling comps in your neighborhood and I noticed your home has appreciated over X since you bought it. Now you could say, hey, I was running some numbers for the neighborhood. Your home on Zillow's worth this. Your home on Redfin's worth this. Whatever it is, I want to make sure you knew that in case things change or your plans have changed. That's the number, right? And that's a two minute call. It's a quick text. And that makes you look like the most attentive agent they've ever worked with. And if they've been working with you for a while and you do that, well, guess what? You're showing up like they expected you to show up. And if they want to talk about reinvesting or whatever they want to do, you don't need to explain the tax code. Just say, great. There's a strategy called the 1031 exchange, which, by the way, all real estate agents know. And if you don't, you should know. But let's continue. That can defer capital gains if you sell and reinvest. I work with a great attorney, cpa, whatever, that can walk you through this. Because guess what? I'm not an expert on the tax law, so I'm not the right person for those conversations. But I can just connect. You're the person who knows the expert. That right there is the key. This is why we created our Local Legends Directory. And in the same way here, it's the Local Legends Directory, but on the finance side, on what to do with your home, that's your role. You want to be the expert that connects all of the pieces. Damn. Tristan knows everybody now. That's a reason to reach out. Right now you've got to get a little bit more creative when it comes to this because your job isn't just opening doors and giving the value of their home. It's really connecting to the community and connecting to all of the other possibilities that are out there from the equity or from their situation. The transactional agent gets one deal. The agent who shows up with, I would say, valuable information, who connects clients to real opportunities, who treats the relationship like it exists between transactions. That agent gets a client for life. And I think that's what we need to shoot for. So make one text, make one call today. Call. Call your past clients, your sphere. Pull up the CMA on the people you know who own a home. And look, don't do 20 a day. That's too many. That's too many. Maybe do one a day practice. If you do one a day, that's seven in a week. You get a gist of it, right? And start with text. But think about this. You connect with people slowly. You start giving them value, and they start calling you back. And then, more importantly, you fig out what's working and what's not. It's not a pitch, just a number and a question. And you see what happens. I'm Tristan Almada. This is your daily real estate. Thanks for tuning in. I'll talk to you tomorrow.