Every ceo, every agent, every team leader every broker, has got to look around the corner to see what's coming if they want to make good decisions, not just about their business but about their life. Today, i've got the man who can help us understand the nine most important trends in 2022. So you as an agent you as a team ridge, you as a broker, can make better decisions and i'm going to press them hard for the whole bunch of questions. So jack miller from t360, what's up man, how are you doing tom and uh hi there to everybody in the tom ferry audience? It's a real pleasure to be here today.

Well, i appreciate it buddy so so jack for the people that maybe don't have perspective on. You know why you and staphon are such a magical partnership. Give them just a little insight on your background and then let's tear apart these trends, sure yeah. My personal background.

I came out of franchise industry and i started. I worked for gary keller directly when he was building his organization back in 2000 to 2005 and then i've been a franchise owner. I've run an independent brokerage and i've. You know personally sold real estate, so i i get it.

I've been in the chairs of many of your listeners and have worked with a lot of very high level brokers and owners over my personal career, and then stefan and i partnered up about eight years ago to build a support system for really high growth. Brokerages high growth teams, people that wanted to have business, they have business questions about where's the industry going right and how do we stay ahead of the curve and stefan comes from a long history that he has over 40 years in leadership in the industry. He's built very large organizations or organizations as big as 35 000 agents, so uh. So there's a lot of a lot of lessons learned from all of his years in management and leadership, and so we got together to make it practical to say how can we turn this into something that a a leader can use in their business every day and To guide themselves to where they want to get to right, i would say beyond practical um, you guys also make it actionable and that's like you know, for me, as a as a a business coach as someone that, like yourself, works with a lot of ceos and You know has lots of conversations with people.

You know i. I devour the trends report every year. This is the 17th annual right so 17 years of mapping out. What do we need to know and understand to be relevant to be ahead of the curve to thwart some dangers, because you guys have certainly been great about, i mean go back, didn't you guys have the danger report? I think that was yeah yeah, the national association of realtors, commissioned us to study the threats to the industry and then out of that, we developed the danger report, which catalogued what we thought were the most impactful threats for the next three to five years to the Industry and the trends report has a similar philosophy.

We think if it's in the trends report, it's a topic that we think is impacting the industry now and will continue to impact the industry for several years. So it should be on your executive agenda. If we wrote about it, i agree so uh so for my agent friend, that's listening or my team leader or team ridge or you know fintech peeps, and you know tech, peeps and everybody else. Um, i'm going to hit jack with just rapid fire questions about every one of these trends.

If you want to go deeper, you should buy the buy. The book go to their website. Get yourself a copy, be, like you know, be like me, just get it on. Every single year and just devour it right like if you walk into my office right now, jack, you would literally see them all lined up from beginning to end and they all have the same thing little stickies dog ears and notes where i was like.

Oh i'm going to take that and i'm going to synthesize it or i'm going to go test it with my audience to see you know, can we get the kind of response we want? So it's been a it's been a beautiful gift to the industry and especially to me, so thank you. All right trend number nine going from the countdown nine down to one. I think, there's only nine trends this year. Thank you for a little less reading.

Uh is the impact of new construction, so jack ivy zellman and i were chatting recently. She said there are more sticks in the ground or houses in process today, as we're recording this more than we had in 2004 five and six, not combined, but each year collectively, everybody is complaining about inventory. Well, it's about to hit him in the face. What does an agent or team leader need to understand about supply chain, the inventory that's coming and how should they best prepare their buyers and sellers? I think you asked four questions in there, but i'll give it to you straight.

So this chapter we evaluated what's happening with the housing shortage, the fact that we are in a housing shortage, because i think a lot of buyers and sellers that your you know, all of your audience is probably listening to are saying: hey. Are we in some kind of weird bubble, the prices keep shooting up and what's going on and this chapter i think really the number one reason for an agent or a team leader to go through. This is to understand the inventory situation and how real it is and how sustained of a housing shortage we are in and how it's going to continue to last for years, like all of the construction being done, is not going to solve the problem for about a Decade, even at the level of construction, we're doing, we haven't returned to anywhere close to to balance. So so it's uh part of this is to help people understand.

This is going to be the new normal for a while uh we're we're not seeing no the home builders just can't build fast enough and they're not going to be a little fast enough to get us out of this. Do you guys cover it all? You know what we're seeing with the kkrs of the world and all these other funds that are buying everything they get their hands on on the 250 to 400 000 buy box in every sand state because the cash flow and the rents and the appreciation the taxes Are such a huge advantage? Do you guys cover that uh? We we talk about it internally. We don't write about it at length in our trends report, because that's that's more on the investment portfolio side, but i think there's some things to be learned from that. There's a reason they're buying because they recognize the inventory situation that we're in as well and they they know that if they buy and hold they're going to do well because of the asset appreciation that they can experience and the demand for housing.

The demand for housing is not going down. No, no fun fun fact we're in this great debate around. Are we in a buyer's market or a seller's market? And of course, everyone listings go oh sellers market. We actually believe we're in a buyer's market, so jack ready.

If you sold your house two years ago, was that a good idea, or was it better to sell it today, so it was probably better to sell it two years ago and buy something else and then you'd have whatever additional. Where you go, that that makes it a buyer's market, because the job is to buy low and to sell high, that's right right and we know we know that, based on the fundamentals here, we have a supply demand problem right, so you're gon na. So if you can find a better asset that you think will appreciate more, you should buy it 100. It's been fascinating to watch just the uh, how it makes some people's eyes cross when i say we're in a buyer's market they're like there's no inventory, i'm like wait.

We sold almost seven million houses last year. We just don't have inventory that's sitting anymore. It's up and it's gone it's up and it's gone to the tune of you know: seven million houses in the u.s, but let's go to number eight number. Eight is the residential real estate media landscape.

So you talk about inman housing wire, you guys, and so many others, ris media. Why should an agent even care so part of what we wanted to do and no one has ever studied the media landscape in real estate from what we could find? We looked around. We said: has anybody ever looked at the media that we're consuming as an industry, and i think in the context of the greater national conversation about media - and you know its accuracy and does it have bias? And things like that, we felt that this was an important year to cover it and say: let's look at the media channels and, let's understand their business model. How do these guys make money you know? Are they do they take sponsorships? Are they, you know 100 paid content? Are they 50 paid content, because that should influence, how you treat that media source and understanding what's paid content? What sponsor content? What's editorial what's objective and what is neutral so that we did this a little bit as a as a service to the industry, we're going to turn the camera around we're going to point it back at the media landscape and just say: let's talk about that because It is important if you're making decisions in your business right you should.

You should rely on good information and just knowing, if an information that you're getting is sponsored, is we feel like it's an important piece. I agree and you and i both know the old line is uh headlines do more to terrify than they do to clarify. So you know reading beyond the headlines and then am i reading sponsored content. Am i reading something that's clearly paid for in selling a product or service versus hey? This is a down and dirty actual report on what's going on, which is why i love your guys stuff.

I want to ask a backup question, though i am a huge advocate for agents becoming the media company in their local marketplaces. What are your thoughts on that? I think it's a great strategy. I mean the the goal that you have as a real estate. Professional is to be the trusted source for your people, and so we have we have.

We actually talked about this in our one of our programs. We we say you want to monopolize the minds of the people that are connected to you, so they just automatically go to you for real estate concerns and media is a very powerful way to do it. You know being in front of them regularly becoming a trusted source of information and then that's how you get business from people. They say you know what so-and-so has always told me straight about.

What's going on with the market yeah, i'm going to refer you to that. Yeah, okay, one of the things you guys did this year, which i thought was interesting. She talked about this thing, just called perspectives and one of the perspectives was the traditional real estate model, and my question for you is: is it dead? So this is a great question and it's something that we have a lot of fun talking about, and we have. We definitely have, by the way, some of those big companies that have a lot of money coming into our space they're, pretty good yeah, they're, pretty good compass compass, who you know friends, clients like all these big major companies, especially ones that have written we're all clients Of ours, but like let's face it like there's still a traditional real estate company, traditional splits and you know, yada yada yada, and that's what you mean by traditional, i'm assuming right, exactly yeah is what we think of as like a full-service traditional brokerage.

That has some kind of graduated commission split plan, and you know that way of doing businesses, so our industry, if you look at the history of industry and staff, has done such groundbreaking work here. Studying change in our industry. Our industry is not an industry where a new competitor comes in and displaces all of the old old competitors right. Ours is an additive industry where it's like.

Oh, when re max came into the scene boy, everybody thought that was really disruptive and you know to the extent they tried to kick dave linear out of nar and said you can't be part of this thing. So but what happened was is re max and and the desk be commissioned structures exactly and others yep yeah, because it became another option in the real estate agents world same thing with keller williams, same thing: we're seeing today with exp, so the the new models don't Eat the old ones, they just add more options on the shelf for agents and then in the new new stuff. That's coming out for consumers. We have these blended mortgage brokerage all in one stop shop.

Those are just creating more options for the consumers as well. So this is an industry that likes creating new options, but we don't see these new options destroying the old ones. You can still run a great traditional brokerage in this country and we know we have access to a lot of these companies and we get to see their financials and there's some very healthy ones out there and that's that's not in question yes. Well, i know we're i've got some.

Some pointed questions around some of these new models which we'll hit in a minute, but let's go to number seven. I love all this number seven branch managers magic and how to find it jack. This has been an issue um that i've dealt with for at least 25 26 years every ceo, every owner, i've ever talked to ferry. How do i find more managers right, and especially with the managers comp changing starting about a day? You know a little over a decade ago during the global economic meltdown, the comp model has changed dramatically for managers.

So so, what's the solution here and why should an agent care so the the reason why, first of all, if you are growing an organization, you probably already care yeah yeah you're, if you're running a team, if you're running a team, you care yeah, absolutely absolutely so I think you know from that perspective, we're always looking for people to lead organizations and branch managers are at the they're at the the nexus of what happens in a local office with an agency yeah the tip of the spirit. The reason the agent cares is understanding. What kind of leadership and support they're gon na get because they're, probably gon na, get it from that branch manager? It's probably going to be the person that they'll interact with the most outside of the you know. The agents that they're working with on other sides of deals they're going to be calling and talking to that branch manager for support coaching help, backup all those kinds of things and so understanding that landscape, we think, is important.

In the chapter, we talk about the kind of the career life cycle of branch managers and where you know where they are in different places, and that might influence you as an agent like. Do you want to work for a person, who's kind of starting up? A new thing and is building a new company, or do you want to work for an established, uh manager, who's done, who's, managed, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of agents successfully. You know what what is your persona for that? What do you want? What will help you? The best um it's been a while, since we've done the research and i'm curious, if you guys have um when we would survey, you know, agents and clients of ours. Okay, you left why right number, one reason always was i left because of the manager.

Why did you join the new company i joined because of the manager and then culture, marketing, tech support, blah blah blah and usually five or six with splits? We always think it's always splits and again i have not done this survey in a while. Do you have any updated data points for us on that like? Why do they go? Why do they come so when we've interviewed people it's it's almost always come down to something related to people or culture or fit like, and then then then, the commission structure comes in later and it kind of provides the backup support to say. Well, i'm not i'm not working with people that are really supporting me very well. I'm not you know, i'm not getting what i need in order to do my business yeah and i could go somewhere else and i could maybe save some money.

You know so it almost becomes a secondary, reinforcing point to why they should move, but it it's usually. If an agent is happy making good money getting supported, well, they usually do not move. That's unusual be unusual for them to move just for money, because then you'd lose all that you lose that that's hard. It's hard to find that i uh.

I have a client who paid his brokerage last year, a million bucks and some people will hear that and they're just like, oh but well. Obviously you could figure out. He made a lot of money, he's on a really high split and, and every one of them will say the same thing. Well, i should switch because if i went to company x and i'm like well before you do, let's break down everything that you're going to add on as a cost.

So it's kind of like when it's always about the money, then it's just always about the money. I think it's always about people. First, culture money in shekels can be figured out. But if you don't get people right, you don't get culture right.

You don't get support right. Who cares yeah? We would totally agree if people will join for money. They'll leave for money and people that are long-term successful. This is a relationship business.

This is a business where right people are going to invest in your career as an agent and if you're, a leader, you're going to invest in other people, and that's that's what you should be looking for. Is people willing to invest in you yeah and then people that you can invest into? I guarantee right now, jack, there's somebody's like fairy screw. You like it's you wan na, because because for some people, you're right, it's just about the money right and that's. Okay! That's! Okay, for them now number number six, the technology, consolidation wave right all these acquisitions that are happening and i'm watching the same thing, you're you're, seeing which is fascinating at the end of the day, all this tech, what's it really going to do for agents going forward Like if we really can hit one button and generate the lead, go through the funnel get the appointment, do the transaction? Have it all work out like everything that everybody's dreaming about like? Is it really gon na happen? What are your thoughts? We're we're in a race for efficiency, tom.

You know that that's where time is right now, yeah we're in a race for efficiency. People want their time back. They want to focus on the areas that they most enjoy and are best at spending time, which, for most agents is with clients, is actually serving and working with their clients and all you know, there's a good news part of this with all this technology consolidation. It's actually very good news.

We now have technology that is mature enough. That can actually do the job pretty well, and now we have companies that are big and financially well-backed to come in and say we're going to put these things together to make your life easier. As an agent or to make your life as a team leader, more manageable, where you're not diving into 20 different systems to try to make your business happen, the average agent uses about a dozen systems today to run their business and that's a lot of logging in And out of a bunch of different stuff right, it's uh! It's so interesting! Because again you know i've been doing this, for you know 32, going into 33 years and, like tech used to be a fax machine right and now you look at to your point - you know 12 15, 18 apps on an agent's phone running their entire business remotely Um, i just think it's going to be interesting to see you know at the end of it all like in most industries. Are we just going to see microsoft that owns a bunch of stuff google? You know what i mean like the two or three major conglomerates that basically suck up like what look at what realtor.com has done right, like you know, even though they sold off top producer at one point, they kind of own a bunch, and you look at what Fidelity did over the last three or four years they went out bought.

You know geek, you know uh real geeks and, like seven other, like sync, and all these other companies is that the winning solution, if i was listening this right now and i'm a broker owner, should i be thinking about aqua hires buying my own building my own. What's your perspective, so we're seeing that these companies that are acquiring and actually trying to put platforms together, i think they're much more purposeful today, tom than at any time ever, and i do think we for major platforms we're seeing that sort of consolidation where there will Probably be among major brokerage platforms, three or four big players, that kind of control most of the market, and you can just watch what lone wolf is doing or what moxie is doing, and you can see it, you can see it coming now. The challenge is: this is a really innovative industry. This industry likes to come up with new stuff new marketing stuff, new ideas, so there's a very healthy market of startup companies and little firms, building really cool things and for realtors to use to stand out in the marketplace and that's not going to go away.

And, as a matter of fact, it just continues it's going to accelerate, so i think it's, i think, we're actually in a healthy situation where more options are being created and the well-resourced people coming in and buying things and putting them together really have that goal of Providing more and more of a one-stop shop, so i think benefit is net benefit is probably mostly to the agent in terms of efficiency and productivity. Now i don't know you say: build versus buy and boy what what a conundrum um. I can tell you that you know our firm does a lot of consulting in that space and we are spending more time. Unplugging broker, built systems or home built systems right and putting in place.

You know, systems that are professional products that are managed like a professional product is right, like we're spending a lot of time doing that right now, because it's pretty hard to build and maintain a significant product. I mean it just takes a lot of money in today's. In today's uh uh tech landscape to do that so so we're seeing more we're seeing more buy and partner than we are build. I wouldn't build out, but definitely more buy and partner right now, yeah i've, uh i've invested in nearly 90 different startups and - and i can tell you like the number one question is talk to me - about your management team and your ability to scale and have you Done it before and what's going to be different about this one, and you know, because i mean you, you got probably get the same thing: hey ferry.

I i created the crm, it's the world's greatest crm on the pro on the planet. I'm like go watch any of my content. My favorite crm is the one you get for free that you should just use because they're all the same with my a few minor variations right like it's a it, is an interesting spot. Okay, this is the one i wanted to get to.

I was so excited about back on perspectives, perspectives on real estate brands, and you mentioned all three of these companies, and i got to give a shout out jack to my dad. My dad and i are chatting one day and he's like who wants to kill exp, and i was like keller williams he goes and who who wanted to kill. Keller williams, i'm like re max, he goes that's been, the industry goes who wanted to kill re max. I said century 21, he goes that's it.

He said you just covered all 45 years of my real estate career in three or four answers. So i i mean i was up for all my friends that are watching that are with all those brands. I'm not busting. Your chops, we talked about it earlier when you, when you look at the perspectives of real estate brands, and you see what all these new companies are doing with these new models like what do you think is next for real estate when it comes to a brand Standpoint, what is what's missing in the market? Well, that's a good question.

Uh. You know we've seen we've seen exp come out and do incredible similar following color, where they've done a really great job of capturing the mind share of the agents like they've done, a fantastic job there and we've seen compass working to capture and capture more of the Consumer - but i think i think, what's been missing, you know, is the integrated where it's like. Oh, we've got the agents and the consumers we're able to really appeal strongly to both audiences and bring more and more in, and i think for that we address it in this in this report. More of the integrated services more than one-stop shop, making it really a great experience for the consumer, which is very very hard, which is why we don't necessarily have it today.

You know, so i think that that's the that's the trend line. You say: what's the trend line. Well, some companies are really great at getting the agent mind share. Some companies are really working on or getting better or maybe quite good at the consumer mine sure.

So how do we put those things more and work together? Yeah, who do you think, is if you go back in the history of real estate and i'm putting you on the spot here? Who do you think did it best on both or who do you think is doing it well today on both well? Some of our legacy brands did very very good work here so and you've named some of them. I mean, i think, re max did incredible work in consumer brand identity, but it followed century 21 in uh brand identity. So this the foundation has been laid. There are some companies in our industry.

If you look back in history and say when people thought of real estate, you know in the 80s, what did they think of and a lot of people thought about century 21 and about remax? So there's very good examples from our history of companies that have done well in those areas and then you flip over and say: okay, people are now really focusing on making systems that work really well for agents and that's where you're looking at the exps and the Fathoms so many of the companies that you know that do well at this they're already in the list, they're already ones that we all know and they're just trying to get to that next level themselves and how do they? How do they make it through yep? You know what i love about this industry and jack. There's there's so many things, but one of them is the optionality right that there's a different sandbox for everybody right, find your sandbox play in it play with the people you want to play with and go help a lot of buyers and sellers, and it's all going To work out just fine um, but i love it, i mean i look around the industry, you know i love too all the independents right, the the people that are willing to you know i'm jack miller real estate like here we go right, you know and they They make a mark and then sometimes they become west foster and long and foster. Sometimes they become jim weikert right i mean like they literally become these monster, iconic brands and they inspire me. They john l, scott lennox, scott right.

Like the same kind of thing. I think there's just a place for everybody. The key is finding your place. Well, that's what attracted me to this industry as a technology person.

That was my background. As i came in, and i said wow this is such a flywheel entrepreneurial activity right in its entire history, and it you know, is one one of the few that is left where you can make a very high income, which i know you work with very high Incomes in your programs - yes and uh, and you and it's relatively easy to enter you - don't have to go, spend eight years in school and drag around two hundred thousand dollars in college loan debt. In order to do very well for yourself in this industry, and that's that's kind of what that's kind of what the united states is about - that's the american. I agree low barrier of entry, high failure rate sign me up.

Do you know what i mean like sign me up? Let's go okay, number five co-star andy and the squad got a lot of buzz early on, but i'm not here much and my note literally this is, you know, you know not rousing my friends over there should agents even care, and do you actually think rich barton Cares so yeah we do, we do think he cares. We do think, and we do think the industry cares and the reason is what you're watching is you're watching a giant coming into a space. They've never been before right and they have so much money and so many resources and they can pencil out the numbers just the way we all can and say. This is residential.

Real estate is such a big industry and they see it they're, not they're they're masters. Over in their domain and commercial and they're looking at residential and saying, we think we can go get that too, but their initial moves are you know: they're they're experimenting they're figuring out how to even move in our space right. So people say oh well that didn't work and that didn't work out well, okay, but they've got several hundred more billion dollars to spend on figuring out what is going to work right and they own some good assets. At this point i mean they bought some good.

They bought some good tech, maybe not the best tech in the world, but they bought things that were pretty solid and they have ambitions to do more. So i we, we think, agents need to know about it, because this this is like you know, i mean how many times do we say? Oh, you know, zillow is you know, they're they're they're, these outsiders coming in, like we love to say that in this industry we love to discount these people that want to come in and play in our sandbox. We say this is our sandbox. You don't know anything about understanding.

Why are you coming in here, and this is no different? I think people want to discount them, which is why we wrote the chapter we said. Look, let's really understand this company. We think that leaders in this industry will need to understand. We do think agents will need to understand them too, as they begin to make more and more offers into the space yeah one thing's for certain.

If you haven't done your background check on andy, he is maniacal man. He is like if he gets obsessed about something, i'm not saying it's elon musk level go to the moon or go to mars. But, like he's intense he's, a competitor he's a true competitor. He wants a warrior yeah, he wants to win and he's gon na fight really really hard.

So i do think i do think zillow is thinking about them and do you think people say leadership. Positions are thinking about them because they know that, because andy has that personal reputation and the company has that business reputation, i think that i'm going to go on a limb here, jack. I think that they should just buy redfin fire all the agents or give them trilogy and then have that asset, because if they were in the game like that, it would be pretty ridiculous, really fast, going back to buy, build right like they're buying these smaller companies And then trying to make them substantial, why not take out one of the giants? Well, they're on it they're on a learning curve they may decide to. They may decide to move in that direction.

Right crazier things have happened. You know, remember: zilla bought trulia right. I mean it's, we know it's an option: okay, number, four real estate and the great reshuffling right how the pandemic impacted real estate, consumer migration and its habits, and as we sit here and we record this jack, i can't help but think i don't like the phrases Like this is the new normal right, i i truly see if you study pandemics, it's about a two-year burn on average, if you go back in history, so as we film this we're a month or so away from that from that two-year mark, we see normalization throughout Europe, but there's no doubt it had massive massive impact on housing, how we do business the way we operate the way we view the world a lot of bad and some good. So the question is: what's next, so we we accelerated trend lines that we were already on because of the pandemic.

We were already on a work from home trend line. We were already on a trend line where people were looking at secondary communities that were less expensive and even states that were less expensive we were. Are we've been having people moving from california to texas, which is where i live yeah? You know for forever yeah what the pandemic did was it it just pushed them all those things it made all those things happen so what's coming. Next is more of that now that we've accelerated that trend we're going to see growth in secondary tertiary communities, we've seen incredible growth in vacation home rental market like those kinds of articles, because people are saying look if i could work from anywhere, i want right, i'm Going to move to places that i really love to be, you know i don't have to be tied down to where i thought i needed to be in order to have my job.

So those those trend lines have just accelerated and you know valid for the agent who's thinking about their career and where they want to focus and specialize. You may not have to duke it out in the traditional playground of your major metro market. You can go pick areas and colonize those areas and say this is an area where i see people are coming and moving and going to be i'm going to become the master of that new domain, and that's really. The message of the great reshuffling is that people are making different housing decisions now that are enabled by these trends that were accelerated by the pandemic, and we can all learn from that.

That's valuable for everybody and there's no doubt when you think about two um: i'm gon na make this statement and it'll ruffle some feathers, but the ease of generating leads today, whether through acquisition or you know just traditional marketing or or more relevant. You know online marketing. The ease of it today does allow that person to say you know i want to move from hubidoville to ding ding ville. Let me go on zillow.

Let me go look at realtor.com. Let me go look at all the different. You know like all home light and everything else and say well, can i buy some of the leads? There bam, i'm in the game. I can do a referral fee model and then i can slowly migrate over like we're seeing that level of it takes courage but ease right ease today, where people really get to make those choices.

I see it in my own client base that one of my clients opened up a brokerage because he wanted to live in utah, but he has a huge successful. Massive market share single office team ridge right in southern california, but he wants to live over there right and he's running both wildly. He said: hey the pandemic, helped me man we're doing zoo meetings here we go. Do you think that do you think that trend changes? Do you think zoom and what we're doing right now in a podcast scenario, in zoom versus face phase? Do you think that goes away, or does it become the quote-unquote new norm or the way we do business? I think people have accepted this as a valid way to do business that it's more convenient for many people that allows people to stay closer to the things they care about, like their families.

If you are, you know so i, and and to you, know, live in utah and own. A business in southern california might have been something really weird 20 years ago for sure, but today very accessible, very doable. So it has so many benefits that. Why would we go back? Why would we do it any differently if we can do those things our company, the entire time i've worked with stefan i've lived in texas and he's been in california, our entire all of our senior team.

We have 30 people that work for us they're all over the country, so we were virtual going into this, and so we for us it was natural, but we think that more and more people just this - this is just it offers so many benefits. Why would we give it up yeah we're seeing it um, especially like really high densely populated massive traffic areas, which sounds like like every place in the world um, but a lot of clients that have said they're, giving options now to their sellers? Mr mr seller, before i come over, why don't we do a zoom session? Where i can walk you through the process? You can show me the house. We can do a deep dive together. You know we could do it at four o'clock in the afternoon.

We can do it at one o'clock, whatever's convenient for you. This is how i'm doing it now then we show up then we measure then we photo. Then we blah blah blah and they're like they were crushing. During the pandemic, i mean we were on zoom uh, starting in 2017, with all of our clients.

So when the pandemic hit, we're like just get your own zoom account and start inviting buyers to buyer consultations. Invite you like do your meetings this way and they were all like. Oh yeah, we've been doing this with my coach for the last like four years. We got this.

I think a lot of them are just going to continue it and then we'll get face-to-face and we'll do all that stuff, but i think people will use face to face more strategically yeah like oh. This is something where i want to show up in person right, but i can already tell it's already impacting service delivery. At homes like we did a, we installed a whole home generator recently yeah the uh, the person who did our quoting and everything never set foot on the site. I walked around with my phone with him on facetime.

I showed him everything he didn't have to. He didn't have to schedule to drive out here he's not even in texas. He just looked at everything and said i can send you the quote and get it done, and so why would real estate be any different for a lot of for a lot of scenarios? Like it's, it's there's, there's no reason: yeah yeah big shout out, so i'm gon na give you the flip side of this, and i know we only got a couple left so uh. The flip side of this is, i see a lot of companies struggling with maintaining culture right because some companies, mine included, we are a oh, hey jack, come here, let's whiteboard this out.

Let's you know, let's, let's huddle, let's go walk the lake at my orange county office. Let's go walk the loop at my dallas office and there's something about that energy that has been displaced by all this. I think we need to look at. How do we get that back because i think that's going to be a growing trend going forward? How do you have massive connection and community in those whiteboard moments when it's not? Let me check on slack is jack available, oh he's, booked all day.

I can't get him for five minutes, yeah. No, it's it's for sure, but put that in context. We were already in an environment tom where brokers and leaders were struggling to get their people to come into office and meetings already right. That's where we well! That was our start position, is most of the industry had sales team meetings that were not well attended.

People were not doing that, and so what was the answer of that? You have to be high value proposition today. There has to be a big payoff for people to do whatever it is whether it's show up to a virtual thing like this or come into your office, so the focus on making those experiences, quality and then creating opportunities to have that cultural connection. That team connection becomes much more deliberate. I found that myself and my wife during the pandemic period.

If we had people over, you know you had to really plan you had to figure out. Where are we going to be outside? Are we masking? Is there going to be a fan so that kind of deliberate social thinking is now important to leaders and is important for agents thinking about how they want to move and how they want to work? I i concur. Okay, the real estate financing revolution. You know i'm a fan of this because i'm an investor in one of these crazy companies actually about five of these companies.

A couple inside here do consumers care as much about a one-stop shop experience. Do they really care so what they care about? Is they care about having a good experience period? Yes, it isn't necessarily the one-stop shop and you have to you - have to bear in mind a lot of the consumers that are entering the real estate marketplace today. There's some generational shifts that are happening where you know, agents are working with people, they're, first-time home buyers from a highly digital generation, and so they don't have this preconceived notion of. I need to buy or sell a house, so i'm going to meet with an agent.

They don't have that they have an offer that came in their mail from a brand that they recognized because they've seen it advertised that says: hey, we can save you some money or we can make you an offer where you can buy and sell. At the same time, so they're not evaluating it through the industry's filter or lens, and so that's the that's the opportunities we have, people that are learning new ways to transact for the first time that it's new to the industry. Maybe but it's it's going to be their first time for them or early in their real estate, buying career yeah and then on the flip side. You have consumers who have been buying and selling real estate for a while, who are looking to save some money and they can see that they can they're they can be enticed by those offers.

Now is everybody going for that, not necessarily yeah, but if you had a, if you had a relationship with a mortgage company, you had great service and you'd liked it and they reached out to you and said: hey. We can save you probably five thousand or ten thousand dollars on your next transaction for the person, that's mindful of the dollars involved in selling their homes. Yes, that's something they'd listen to so i i. I think we need to pay attention to these companies, and i know you're you're invested in several of these we've been tracking this for a while.

We've been working with companies like this for a while, and we think they're here to stay now what they look like in five years. That's up for debate, but we think that there's too many of them and there's too many of them that are showing traction in the markets that they've gone into in in a substantial way. Let's divert and let's talk about um eye buyers and sell through rates a lot of them that are in that space, and you know i don't know, i'm sure you read mike del prete. I saw something this morning.

That said, you know january was a booming month for eye buyers, and i was i was not shocked right. What does boom mean? You know i have to. I have to dig into the data. So if you're, a mike del, pretty fan, do that, but i think about those guys, i think about you open door being sort of the last.

You know big stallion in the in the race and then i think about um all the power buyers. The easy knocks knocks and there's so many of them now. First of all, congratulations to all of them because it looks like the next four years could be good for them. The question is like like: how do they get the word out like no like? I don't talk to any agent that says: oh yeah, i use easy knock all the time and and i'm an investor in easy knock for the record, so the ceo's gon na hate me even saying this but, like i don't see them saying like, even though they're Killing i never hear an agent go.

Oh, you know. I had the scenario where the person wanted to get the cash out and i got them to cash out that we went bottom house and we used easy knock and it was like you know what i mean and literally right now, like i'm gon na get i'm Gon na get hate email for this, but, like sorry, buddy, what's going to drive that phenomena, tom we think is these companies are solving some real problems. They are they're, saying: look, we know it. We know you don't want to sell your home because you're going to it's going to be tough to buy and you have to sell first and buy later right, let's just eliminate that, let's just make it so, where hey we'll put you on our line of credit, Go write a cash offer.

You can sell your home later, we'll give you we'll give you the makeup and difference, and it's not going to cost you a ton of money. You look if you do. We've done the math on these i've personally gone through the mathematics on these. These are very compelling offers to the consumer.

Financially, they save people a lot of money and they get them in a home that they want now they allow them to shop now versus have to worry about selling and then shopping right, which is such a such a headache such a hassle, and i'm not just Talking about eye buying, i'm saying: look: go shop, we're going to list your home we're going to get the most money possible for it and we'll you know we'll take a one percent fee and we'll give you the rest of it back when it sells. I mean that's a phenomenal offer, it's a major major hassle, saving and - and you know what is this generation about? What are we about right now, we're about immediate gratification, the ability to say look, i'm a qualified, financially qualified, i own a home. I, if i sell it, i have plenty of money, buy my next home. Why can't i go shopping right now and these companies are saying: yes, you can yeah what's going to change the dynamic in the aging community and i have a story about talking.

We talked to our brokers about this. The agent community is when they start losing listing presentations because of that when they say you know i was going to list with you, but so-and-so said i could just go shopping right now. What i really want to do is shop. You didn't come in with a menu of services and say to me: here's all the how about hey, i can buy your house, i can list your house, i can also help you fix and you know fix it up.

If you want, i have that vehicle or i can make it a no-brainer to get 75 percent of the cash out. You go. Buy a house. Here's my menu of services, there's some of these things, tom that i think in five years we're going to look back and just realize.

Oh, that's now standard operating procedure like the cash offer on the next home for a truly qualified buyer who owns a home. Why shouldn't they be able to make a cash offer and move when they want to, like that? That just seems like, like they have the money, it's just this hassle of this transaction, to get it out of the house. They currently own. So there's some of these things that we think are just going to become table stakes in the industry as more people adopt them, so don't write them off and it's not all about the eye buyers.

It's not all about people that are trying to buy the home and flip it. That's not what we're talking about we're talking about, making that whole transactional piece efficient by the way. That's what consumers want. They just want it to be easier and if you can tell them go shop now you can use our checkbook and write whatever you need to write and we'll worry about the details on selling your home.

Later i mean that's a phenomenal offer, i'm looking at this. You know like just re-glancing at all the you know, underlying notes that i have and all these companies that i know and a couple that i invested in and i'm like. One of them needs to say we're going to spend 40 million next year on tv. We're gon na spend four million dollars a month on google and i think whoever does that is gon na win, because i look at all these players and i think they're they get lost the way some agents get lost in a sea of sameness right or worse.

In these guys case, they just don't get hurt about they just like you know, but there's an opportunity for agents in this. Of course, go go partner, be they're not going to buy tv advertising. You can be their tv advertisement for your neighborhood. Your clients, like you, be the person that go, gets the market share and can use it to drive your sales volume and use it to make better offers for the people you know hey, i can help you buy and sell and save you a bunch of money.

I mean that that that will get your your email to come in and they'll get your phone to ring. That's the thing you want right yep. I think you know for uh again, you know sorry easy knock but like i'm, a huge fan of this company they're blowing up right and yet, if they got agents engaged with that menu of services, that's all it is, and you and i both know 75 of All the deals are done by the top 25 of all the agents in the country. So it's not like you have to get every one of them.

You don't need. You know. Phyllis new agent, phil new agent. You need like the upper echelon and you get a percentage them and they're like hey, i can buy the house, i can list the house, i can help you put some money into the house and i'll take it out of the commission at the end, or you Know close of escrow or i've got this other solution.

They do that, if you're watching right now, if you're not doing that, i just think you're you're, not providing all the potential solutions or optionality for a consumer and if you're not doing that, are you as relevant to them, especially the person. That's on their phone. Doing research before you got there yeah absolutely one last thing: one last thing: you know we surveyed our broker group. We had our broker mastermind last month and uh.

We put this on the list. We said. Let's talk about this, i did not know how it would go tom because i was like you was like i don't know. People are talking about this.

We surveyed we had about 30 brokers there. I think all, but two or three of them had done multiple deals with one or more of these companies in the last 90 days like they all had, they said. Yes, i have agents doing it. I have people using it.

I have some people doing this and they had a variety. They shared their experiences, but we think you know if we asked that question a year ago. We would not have gotten an answer yeah. I agree.

I agree i i agree and i'm an investor in a couple of them, so i do believe in it, i believe, in the model: okay, private, equity omg. This was such a f for me, as an investor i was like oh yeah. I know that company - oh yeah, i remember that deal. Oh, i should have invested in that one that one you know.

Why did i say no to that deal right? Why should an agent understand why private equity is coming in? Why they're buying all these companies? Why they're so fascinated by it and and do you think, we'll see more specs and more ipos in residential real estate or in fintech related? You know residential deals in 2022. Well, i think all of this is going to track how the market is doing and how we're doing in our global economic recovery. And as you know, if things are staying where they look like they are today, then i don't see why we would stop. We are seeing more companies in real estate.

Go public, go ipo, are doing things they're acting a little bit more like the tech companies in terms of how they approach the market and think about the market. Listen! If i was an agent and you're coming into this industry today versus say 20 years ago, the likelihood that you might get shares of stock in the company that you are joining or that you have other alternative means and compensation right. Is it it's it's night and day 20 years ago it didn't exist. It wasn't a thing that we had some profit share programs, but today the likelihood that you could join a company and be compensated via the growth of the company in the stock market is pretty high and it's not just one company there's many of these companies.

So that's part of what we're seeing is that wall street private equity uh. All of these you know money entities are seeing how real estate can be corporatized professionalized turned into another giant services business. Where we're going to have. You know a lot of ways that people are making money from this service business, including ownership in the companies themselves.

I agree and i'm not going to touch on the last one. I want to go a totally different direction. I am um, i'm really spending a lot of time. Studying blockchain really since peter diamandis introduced me to the concept back in like 2015-16, and then you look at blockchain, you look at crypto.

You look at the gains from crypto the impact that's having on residential real estate and others with a lot of wealth, and then you look at nfts and of course, my goodness, let's put our oculus on. Let's play golf in the metaverse together. All these things are happening, and i know it's going to be. The 2023 trends report got ta, be in the top three or four right, if not number one.

What do you think right now? What should an agent understand be looking at knowing today, as it relates to blockchain crypto metaverse, all this and more yeah? Some of these things are going to have more of an impact sooner rather than later, because it's a lot. It's a it's a bunch of different things, kind of all happening at once, related to the fundamental uh innovation of blockchain right. So blockchain is this underlying technology. It's going to touch a lot of the tools we use, eventually, some of them sooner than others right.