by Juston Martinez | Feb 27, 2026 | Industry, New Agent, News Feed, newsfeed, Uncategorized
A tactical guide to generating predictable listing volume—even when the market won’t cooperate.
By Texas Ally Real Estate Group
Most agents don’t have a listing problem. They have a pipeline problem.
They know they need listings. They know listings are the highest-leverage activity in real estate. But when you ask them what their system is for generating listings consistently—month after month, regardless of motivation or market conditions—most don’t have a clear answer.
That gap between knowing and doing is where production dies. And in 2026, the margin for error is thinner than ever. Inventory is finally rising (up over 10% year-over-year nationally), which means more sellers are entering the market—but so is more competition for their attention. The NAR settlement has rewritten how buyer-agent compensation is communicated, putting listing agents at the center of new conversations about commissions and value. And home prices have moderated, with national appreciation slowing to roughly 1–2%, meaning sellers are more cautious, more informed, and more likely to interview multiple agents before choosing one.
The agents who win in this environment aren’t the loudest or the flashiest. They’re the ones with a repeatable system that runs whether they feel like prospecting today or not.
This article lays out that system—from the mindset shift you need, to the daily activities that fill your pipeline, to the specific lead sources that produce the best return on effort.
First, Understand Who You’re Talking To
The 2026 seller is not the same person who panic-listed during COVID or casually threw their house on the market in 2021 expecting 15 offers by Friday. Today’s sellers are deliberate. Many have been sitting on historically low mortgage rates for years, waiting for conditions to feel “right.” Life events—job changes, divorces, growing families, retirement—are what’s finally pushing them to move, not fear of missing out.
They’re also doing their homework. According to NAR’s Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, roughly two-thirds of sellers found their agent through a referral or by using an agent they’d worked with before. That means the vast majority of listing decisions are made before a seller ever Googles “top real estate agent near me.” They’re asking friends. They’re remembering who sent them a market update last month. They’re hiring the person who stayed in touch.
This has a direct implication for your strategy: if you’re not already in a seller’s consideration set before they decide to list, you’re starting from behind. The work you do six months before a listing appointment matters more than your presentation at the table.
Think in Stages, Not Transactions
The most common mistake agents make with listings is thinking about them as events—something that either happens or doesn’t. In reality, every listing is the result of a process that moved through stages, whether you were conscious of it or not.
A useful framework looks like this: Prospect → Contact → Conversation → Nurture → Appointment → Listing Signed → Closed. Each stage has a conversion rate, and those rates are where your real leverage lives.
For example, if you need two new listings per month, you might need to set four listing appointments (assuming a 50% close rate at the table). To get four appointments, you might need 20 meaningful conversations. To have 20 conversations, you might need to make 60–80 contact attempts. And to make those attempts, you need a database of 200+ prospects you’re actively working.
This isn’t theory—it’s math. When agents start tracking their pipeline stages, two things happen almost immediately. First, they stop feeling like listings are random. Second, they can diagnose exactly where their system is breaking down. Not enough appointments? You probably aren’t having enough conversations. Enough conversations but no appointments? Your value proposition needs work. The pipeline tells you what to fix.
Your Sphere Is Still Your Best Asset (If You Actually Work It)
There’s a reason every experienced agent preaches sphere of influence, and the data backs it up year after year. NAR research consistently shows that approximately two-thirds of sellers choose their agent through a referral or a past relationship. Agents earning over $100,000 annually report that roughly a third of their business comes from referrals and another third from repeat clients.
Yet most agents treat their sphere like a storage unit—full of stuff they know is valuable but never actually open. The fix isn’t complicated, but it does require discipline.
Start by building a real database. Not a phone full of contacts, but a CRM-managed list of at least 150–300 people you can contact with intention. Categorize them: A-list contacts are people likely to transact or refer in the next 12 months (past clients, close friends, people who’ve mentioned moving). B-list contacts are people who know you’re in real estate but haven’t signaled intent. C-list contacts are acquaintances and wider network connections.
Then implement a contact cadence. For your A-list, this means a monthly phone call or face-to-face, a monthly market update personalized to their neighborhood, a quarterly in-person touchpoint (coffee, a client event, dropping by), and one to two handwritten notes per year. For your B and C contacts, a monthly email with genuine value—not a generic newsletter, but something useful like a local market snapshot or a piece of advice—keeps you top of mind without being intrusive.
The key word is value. Nobody wants another “Just checking in!” text. Send them something that makes their life better, answers a question they didn’t know they had, or demonstrates that you understand their market.
Pick a Farm and Commit
Geographic farming—choosing a specific neighborhood and becoming the go-to agent there—remains one of the most reliable long-term listing strategies. But it only works if you pick the right area and stay consistent for at least 12–18 months.
Select a neighborhood of 300 to 1,500 homes with a healthy turnover rate (ideally 5–8% annual turnover). Look for areas where no single agent dominates more than 20–25% of the listings—there’s room for you. Avoid areas where one agent has locked down 40%+ market share unless you’re prepared for a multi-year campaign.
Your farming activities should layer on top of each other: monthly direct mail (market reports, just-sold cards, neighborhood-specific content), door knocking when you have a new listing or recent sale to share, hosting open houses in the farm area, and providing hyper-local market data that no national website can replicate.
The goal isn’t to be known as “an agent.” It’s to be known as the agent for that neighborhood—the person who knows the comps cold, who can tell you what the house three doors down sold for and why, and who shows up consistently whether they have a listing there right now or not.
Expired Listings and FSBOs: High Effort, High Reward
These two lead sources get a bad reputation because they’re uncomfortable. Calling someone whose listing just failed, or approaching a homeowner who specifically chose not to hire an agent, requires thick skin. But the upside is significant: these are people who have already decided to sell. You’re not creating demand—you’re redirecting it.
Expired listings are sellers who wanted to sell, hired an agent, and it didn’t work. Something went wrong—pricing, marketing, market conditions, or the agent’s effort. Your job isn’t to pitch. It’s to diagnose. Lead with questions: What do you think went wrong? Were you getting showings but no offers, or was traffic the problem? Did your agent recommend any price adjustments? These questions position you as a problem-solver, not another salesperson. Follow a structured cadence: call on day one, follow up on days 3, 7, 14, and 21. If they haven’t re-listed by week four, move them into a long-term nurture sequence. Many expired sellers re-list 60–90 days later after the sting wears off.
FSBOs represent a shrinking but still valuable opportunity. According to NAR’s 2025 Profile, FSBO transactions have dropped to just 5% of all home sales—the lowest share ever recorded. And FSBO homes sell for a median of $360,000 compared to $425,000 for agent-assisted sales. That’s not a coincidence. Pricing, marketing reach, and negotiation expertise matter, and that price gap is your most compelling talking point.
When approaching a FSBO, don’t lead with “You need an agent.” They’ve already decided they don’t. Instead, offer something useful: a complimentary pricing analysis, insight into what comparable homes have sold for, or help understanding how the new buyer-agent compensation rules might affect their sale. Build trust first. The listing often follows within 4–6 weeks.
Your Online Presence Is Your 24/7 Listing Presentation
Here’s something that surprises a lot of agents: NAR data shows that fewer than one in ten buyers and sellers found their agent through a website. The internet didn’t replace referrals—it became the place where referrals get validated. When someone hears your name from a friend, the first thing they do is Google you. What they find determines whether they call.
This means your online presence doesn’t need to be a lead generation machine. It needs to be a credibility machine. A few fundamentals go a long way.
Start with your Google Business Profile. It’s free, it shows up in local searches, and it’s where your reviews live. Ask every satisfied client for a Google review—this is the single highest-ROI marketing activity most agents ignore. Then focus on producing consistent, educational content. You don’t need to go viral. You need to demonstrate expertise. Topics that resonate with potential sellers include pricing strategy in a shifting market, how to prepare a home for sale without overspending, what the current buyer pool looks like in your area, and how the commission landscape has changed post-settlement.
Publish this content wherever your audience already is—your website, social media, email newsletters, even short video. The format matters less than the consistency. One valuable post per week beats a burst of five posts followed by two months of silence.
The Daily Discipline That Makes Everything Else Work
Strategy without execution is just a wish list. The difference between agents who consistently generate listings and those who don’t almost always comes down to daily habits, not annual goals.
A productive daily rhythm for listing-focused agents looks something like this: spend the first 60–90 minutes of your workday on prospecting—adding new contacts, making calls, sending personalized follow-ups. This is your “money time” and it should be protected from meetings, emails, and admin. Log every interaction in your CRM. If it’s not tracked, it didn’t happen.
Weekly, review your pipeline numbers. How many new prospects did you add? How many contact attempts did you make? How many conversations turned into appointments? Identify where the bottleneck is and focus your energy there.
Monthly, send a market update to your entire database, review your conversion rates across the pipeline, and adjust your approach based on what the numbers are telling you. If your contact-to-conversation rate is dropping, you might need better scripts or a different approach. If your appointment-to-listing rate is low, your presentation might need work.
None of this is glamorous. It’s not a hack or a shortcut. It’s the accumulated result of showing up every day and doing the work that most agents know they should do but consistently avoid.
What the 2026 Market Means for Your Strategy
The current market creates both challenges and opportunities for listing-focused agents. NAR economists project a roughly 14% increase in existing home sales this year, driven by job growth, rising inventory, and gradually improving affordability. Mortgage rates have settled closer to 6%, which is enough to bring sidelined buyers back into the market. Early 2026 data already shows strengthening buyer demand and rising new listings, suggesting the spring selling season could be significantly more active than 2025.
For agents, this means more potential sellers will be entering the market—but many will be nervous. They’ve been watching from the sidelines and they want to know their home will actually sell, at a fair price, without sitting on the market for months. Your ability to communicate market conditions clearly and set realistic expectations will be a differentiator.
The post-settlement compensation landscape also creates a new conversation at the listing table. Sellers now need to understand how buyer-agent compensation works outside the MLS, what offering (or not offering) buyer-agent fees means for their home’s visibility, and how to think about commission as a strategic tool rather than a fixed cost. Agents who can navigate this conversation with confidence—rather than awkwardness—will stand out.
The Bottom Line
Generating listings in 2026 isn’t about finding a magic lead source or mastering a new technology. It’s about building a system that puts you in front of potential sellers consistently, delivers value before you ever ask for their business, and runs on discipline rather than inspiration.
Work your sphere with intention. Pick a farm and commit. Don’t ignore the uncomfortable lead sources like expired listings and FSBOs. Make your online presence a credibility asset. And above all, track your pipeline and do the daily work.
The agents who thrive in this market won’t be the ones waiting for listings to fall into their lap. They’ll be the ones who built the pipeline six months ago—and kept filling it every single day.
Sources & Further Reading
• HousingWire: Rising Inventory Brings Balance to the 2026 U.S. Housing Market
• NAR: 2026 Real Estate Outlook — What Leading Economists Are Watching
• J.P. Morgan: U.S. Housing Market Outlook
• NAR: FSBOs Reach All-Time Low, More Sellers Rely on Agents
• NAR Settlement FAQs
• NAR: Compensation, Commission and Concessions
• HousingWire: 8 Ways to Expand Your Sphere of Influence in Real Estate
• HousingWire: Early 2026 Housing Market Gains Traction
by Juston Martinez | Jan 8, 2026 | Industry, Investing, Market Trends
If you spend enough time watching markets, you eventually stop focusing on day-to-day price moves and start paying attention to longer patterns and what tends to move first. For me, silver has long been one of those assets — not because it’s a prediction machine but because it often reacts early when deeper pressures begin building in the system.
Right now, several of those pressures appear to be converging.
Key Takeaways:
- Silver has surged ~150% as supply deficits enter fifth consecutive year
- Bank of America outlines scenarios where silver could reach $135-$309/oz
- Extreme paper-to-physical ratios amplify price volatility, especially when markets demand physical delivery
- Real estate and precious metals respond to similar monetary forces
Why Silver Is Worth Watching
Silver occupies a unique position in global markets. It isn’t purely a monetary metal like gold, and it isn’t purely an industrial input like copper. It sits somewhere in between.
That dual role makes silver especially sensitive to:
- Changes in monetary policy
- Industrial demand cycles
- Physical supply constraints
- Shifts in investor confidence
When silver moves sharply, it’s often responding to multiple forces at once. That’s what makes it useful as a signal — particularly during periods when the broader macro environment is unsettled.
Recent Price Action as a Signal, Not the Story
Silver’s recent price surge has been substantial, moving from roughly the $30 range in early 2025 to highs in the $80s – representing gains of ~150% before pulling back modestly later in the year. Moves of that magnitude are unusual and rarely occur without broader macro stress in the background (see recent silver price data on Trading Economics: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/silver).
This doesn’t mean silver prices themselves are the story. More often, sharp repricing reflects rising concern around:
- Liquidity conditions
- Currency stability
- Debt sustainability
- Demand for assets outside purely financial systems
Silver tends to respond quickly because it sits at the intersection of all four.
The Structure of the Silver Market
Another reason silver behaves the way it does has to do with how it’s priced.
Most silver price discovery occurs in futures and derivatives markets, where “paper” claims on silver trade in volumes far exceeding the amount of physical metal that changes hands (some estimates suggesting ratios exceeding 100:1 or even 300:1). This structure is standard in modern commodities markets, and my suspicion is that it may be getting used as a lever to moderate pricing. There are many instances of big banks manipulating markets, and it’s not a stretch to see these bankers use every tool at their disposal (see how much JP Morgan was fined here at Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/jpmorgan-pay-920-mln-manipulating-precious-metals-treasury-market-2020-09-30/) The paper instruments can expand and contract on a dime, and flow in to meet sudden ebbs and flows that happen.
In some ways, the paper silver market functions like financial leverage; it enables liquidity and efficient price discovery, but when fundamentals shift sharply, the same structure that provided stability can amplify moves in both directions. Price moves become sharper, and markets adjust faster than many participants expect, that’s where the leverage analogy becomes most visible.
That dynamic often makes silver one of the first places stress shows up.
Debt, Monetary Policy, and the Search for Stability
Zooming out, it’s difficult to ignore the broader backdrop.
Sovereign debt levels — particularly in developed economies — are historically high. Monetary policy has oscillated between tightening and easing in relatively short order, and confidence in long-term currency stability has become less absolute than it once was.
In response, some countries have explored ways to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar for trade and reserves. This trend toward diversification doesn’t mean the dollar is disappearing, but it does suggest a world where capital is more actively searching for alternatives when uncertainty rises. Compared to literally any other countries’ offerings, U.S treasuries are STILL the best available in that category.
Hard assets — especially those with limited supply — tend to benefit in that environment.
Supply Constraints Are Not Theoretical
Unlike financial assets, silver supply cannot be expanded quickly.
Global mine production has hovered around relatively stable levels while demand has continued to grow. Industry reporting indicates that silver markets have experienced persistent supply deficits of 100+ million ounces for multiple consecutive years, driven by both industrial use and investment demand (see analysis at CarbonCredits.com: https://carboncredits.com/silver-price-hits-64-as-supply-deficit-enters-fifth-year-prices-may-reach-100-oz/).
For a long time, industrial consumption absorbed much of that imbalance quietly. What’s different now is that investment demand has increasingly layered on top of already tight fundamentals — an environment that tends to produce volatility rather than gradual price adjustment.
What Institutional Analysts Are Saying
While extreme price targets should always be treated cautiously, it’s notable that some mainstream analysts have begun outlining scenarios where silver could reprice substantially under certain macro conditions.
Bank of America’s Head of Metals Research stated that while gold may act as the primary hedge, silver could, under specific ratio-based and macroeconomic scenarios, top out as high as $309 per ounce (reported at Kitco: https://www.kitco.com/news/article/2026-01-05/gold-will-be-primary-hedge-and-performance-driver-2026-silver-could-top-out).
This isn’t a forecast — it’s a conditional scenario. But its existence matters because it shows that discussions about higher silver prices are no longer confined to fringe commentary.
Resources, Processing Capacity, and Geopolitics
Geopolitical decisions are rarely driven by a single variable. Energy security, trade routes, domestic politics, and strategic competition all play roles.
That said, access to resource processing infrastructure still matters.
Venezuela is widely known for its oil reserves, but it is also rich in mineral resources. According to reporting by the International Business Times, JPMorgan Chase underwrote approximately £6 billion in financing for a U.S.-based metals smelter plant within hours of U.S. legal actions targeting Venezuelan metal assets, highlighting how control over processing infrastructure can move quickly alongside geopolitical developments (International Business Times: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/jpmorgan-funds-6-billion-smelter-plant-hours-after-us-seizes-venezuela-metal-wealth-1768359).
This doesn’t prove that precious metals were the primary motivation behind any specific action. But it does illustrate how metals, refining capacity, and strategic resources remain part of the broader calculus — especially during periods of global uncertainty.
A Historical Lens
The closest modern parallel may be the inflationary period of the 1970s and early 1980s.
That era was defined by rising debt, delayed policy responses, and a long process of restoring confidence through tough monetary decisions. Even then, stabilization took years — not months.
Today’s circumstances are different in many ways, but the lesson remains: monetary shifts unfold over long timelines, and early signals often appear in places most people aren’t watching closely.
What This Could Mean for Real Estate
Real estate doesn’t exist in isolation from these forces.
Loose monetary policy tends to increase liquidity and aggregate demand over time. Unlike the pandemic period, builders have had time to catch up on supply, reducing the likelihood of another extreme shortage-driven price spike.
Still, periods of economic uncertainty often reinforce interest in tangible assets. That can show up as sustained demand and increased transaction volume — even if price appreciation is more measured than in prior cycles.
In that sense, real estate shares more in common with precious metals than many assume. Both respond to the same monetary forces, both have supply constraints, and both attract capital during periods of currency uncertainty. The main difference is liquidity and transaction costs, but the underlying dynamics are remarkably similar.
Final Thought
None of this is a prediction carved in stone. Markets are adaptive, and policy decisions can change trajectories quickly.
But when multiple indicators — silver price action, supply constraints, debt expansion, institutional commentary, and strategic resource developments — begin pointing in the same general direction, it’s worth paying attention.
Silver isn’t the destination.
It’s one of the earliest signals.
And in complex systems, early signals tend to matter.
by Matt Carter | Jul 9, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
Real estate is changing fast, and so must you. Inman Connect San Diego is where you turn uncertainty into strategy — with real talk, real tools and the connections that matter. If you’re serious about staying ahead of the game, this is where you need to be. Register now!
Declining mortgage rates and a surge in for-sale listings had homebuyers scrambling to apply for mortgages last week at the fastest pace in more than two years, according to a weekly survey of lenders by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
But mortgage rates are on the rebound again as investors who fund most home loans weigh how a strong June jobs report and the Trump administration’s threats to impose new tariffs in August might affect Federal Reserve policymakers’ willingness to cut rates.
Applications for purchase loans were up by a seasonally adjusted 9 percent last week when compared to the week before, and 25 percent from a year ago, the MBA’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey showed.
“Mortgage rates moved lower last week, with the 30-year fixed rate decreasing to 6.77 percent, its lowest level in three months,” MBA Deputy Chief Economist Joel Kan said, in a statement.
After adjusting for the July 4th holiday, demand for purchase loans came in at the strongest pace since February 2023.
“Homebuyer demand is being fueled by increasing housing inventory and moderating home-price growth,” Kan said. “The average loan size on a purchase application, at $432,600, was at its lowest since January 2025.”
Active listing inventory was up 28.1 percent in June to a post-pandemic high, according to Realtor.com, and home prices have come down by at least a full percentage point in nearly one-third of the 100 largest U.S. housing markets tracked by ICE Mortgage Technology.
After spiking in April following President Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement, mortgage rates were trending down during June on hopes that trade negotiations would forestall implementation of additional “reciprocal tariffs.”
Mortgage rates on the rebound
Rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgage came down from 6.92 percent on May 21 to 6.64 percent on July 1 — a drop of nearly 30 basis points, according to rate lock data tracked by Optimal Blue.
Although the Trump administration pushed back plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on July 9, mortgage rates are on the rise again as the White House sends warning letters to countries that will face higher tariffs on Aug. 1 if they don’t make trade deals.
Nearly two dozen countries including Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia have received letters from the Trump administration so far, the Associated Press reported.
At 6.74 percent Tuesday, rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages are up 10 basis points from July 1. A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point.
Tariffs are a concern to investors who buy mortgage-backed securities that fund most home loans because of their potential to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, rekindling inflation.
The Trump administration has been pressuring the Federal Reserve to lower short-term interest rates, and demanded that Fed Chair Jerome Powell resign.
But after cutting short-term interest rates by a full percentage point at the end of last year only to see mortgage rates go up, Fed policymakers have said they’re waiting to see how the Trump administration’s tariff policies shake out, and what impact they have on the economy.
At 15.8 percent, the effective rate of all tariffs already in place is the highest since 1936, and will push prices up by 1.5 percent, according to a June 17 analysis by The Budget Lab at Yale.
Job growth and unemployment
The Fed is wrestling with its dual mandate to maximize employment while keeping inflation in check.
According to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 147,000 jobs in June — 37,000 more jobs than forecasters had expected.
Job growth cooling
The July 3 report pushed mortgage rates and yields on government bonds up, as it gave Fed policymakers more leeway to wait until September to lower short-term interest rates.
There are even doubts about a September rate cut. The CME FedWatch Tool, which tracks futures markets to predict the probability of future Fed moves, on Wednesday put the odds of a September rate cut at 71 percent, down from 94 percent on July 2.
But in the long term, job growth is cooling, and forecasters at Pantheon Macroeconomics are calling the recent rise in rates “nonsensical.”
Much of June’s job growth, they say, was due to an artificial construct of seasonal adjustments that calls into doubt estimates that state and local government jobs grew by 80,000 last month, including 64,000 education jobs.
With downward revisions of monthly job growth from initial estimates averaging 29,000 since January 2023, “underlying job growth probably was close to zero,” Pantheon forecasters said in their July 7 U.S. Economic Monitor.
Unemployment trending up
Pantheon forecasters expects the unemployment rate to rise from 4.1 percent in June to about 4.75 percent in Q4, which they think would motivate the Fed to cut short term rates by a total of 75 basis points at its final three meetings of the year.
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by Marian McPherson | Jul 9, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
Real estate is changing fast, and so must you. Inman Connect San Diego is where you turn uncertainty into strategy — with real talk, real tools and the connections that matter. If you’re serious about staying ahead of the game, this is where you need to be. Register now!
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
That’s the sound that startled Houston-based Realtor Ricky Gonzalez out of his sleep in the wee hours of July 4.
“We were in Kerrville for the Fourth of July and to celebrate my friend Mark’s birthday. I arrived around 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., and it was just kind of drizzling. It wasn’t flooding or anything like that,” he said. “I stayed up pretty late, up to at least, like, two o’clock. We went to bed, and then Nash, the dog, was barking. He was pawing at the door. We noticed it was around 5:43 a.m., and we were like, ‘Oh, go to sleep, Nash.’ Eventually, my friend Bert woke up and checked on Nash, and when he opened the window, he saw his partner’s truck floating away.”
The drizzle that lulled Gonzalez to sleep just hours earlier had transformed into a raging river surge, carrying four of his friends’ trucks several miles downstream. The remaining truck was lodged into the lower level of the Airbnb, with a few load-bearing beams keeping it from breaking through to the other side. Upstairs, Gonzalez and his 12 friends were frantically gathering coolers, pool noodles and floaties — anything that could help them float in case the river began to swallow the second floor.
Ricky Gonzalez
“We just went into survival mode. We all started assigning each other different tasks,” he told Inman. “I said, ‘Okay, let me find an attic.’ The reason I was looking for an attic is because, obviously, Houston, we’re familiar with flooding due to [Hurricane] Katrina and all of that. I was scared that the water was going to rise, and I wanted to make sure we could get onto the roof. I was prepared to bust through the attic, if we needed to.”
Fortunately, Gonzalez located two large windows in the attic that his housemates could use to climb onto the roof. He kept the attic door open, directing everyone to be ready to evacuate if the water reached the balcony. Amid the calls to emergency personnel and the Airbnb’s owners, who narrowly escaped their RV during the surge, Gonzalez paused to FaceTime his sister and offer what could’ve been his last goodbyes.
“Next door to our house, there was a one-story house, and I didn’t see it anymore. It was gone. I could hear people screaming from the river. I don’t know if any of them made it,” he said. “I particularly called my sister on FaceTime several times just to let her know, ‘Hey, this is where I am. You have my location, but in case I don’t see you…’ I was kind of giving my goodbye.”
For more than two hours, Gonzalez and his friends were trapped on the second floor — waiting to be rescued.
Their ordeal finally came to an end when Gonzalez popped his head out of a window, attempting to show his sister via FaceTime what’d happened to the cinderblock fence that surrounded the backyard. By then, the surge had subsided, allowing a nearby family, Leo and Paula Garcia, to spot Gonzalez and help them leave the Airbnb, which was at risk of collapsing.
“They saw me hanging out the window, and they waved at me. I waved back and went to the front of the house,” he said. “They said the house was pretty beat up and that we needed to get out. Thankfully, by then, the water was waist-deep. Even though the water was still rushing, they helped us make a line of 13 people with five dogs, which we carried out.”
The Garcias drove everyone to their home, which had been spared from the worst of the flooding, and cooked breakfast. Afterwards, the Garcias drove Gonzalez and his friends 65 miles to the San Antonio International Airport so they could rent cars and find lodging for the night.
“We spent the night in San Antonio and the next morning, in our rental cars, we drove back just to assess the damage,” he said. “I left my keys inside my car, so I just wanted to see if I could find them. And thankfully, we found one of the cars about, you know, two, three miles down river, and then I was able to get my keys. It was just crazy to see all of what was underwater. The house was about 100 yards away from the river, so it was crazy that the surge went that far out.”
Gonzalez has had little time to decompress since returning to Houston, as he spent Saturday night doing two interviews with CNN — the network had noticed an Instagram video Gonzalez posted about his experience. Since then, another 60 to 70 global news outlets have reached out to Gonzalez for interviews, but he’s turned them all down.
“I just don’t feel like getting on camera and doing all that again,” he said. “It really didn’t hit me till [Tuesday]. I was lying in bed and just going back and looking at the videos I recorded during the flood. I could hear the fear in my voice. I was trying to stay calm, but I could hear the fear. I wasn’t even speaking correctly, and I was cursing a lot, just because I was like, ‘What is going on?’”
“And then seeing the death count go up to above 100, man, like, I don’t know … This, very easily, could have ended very differently for us,” he added. “There was another story that I heard of a group of friends who were on a balcony, just like we were. There were fewer friends, but they got swept away. And I told my group of friends, ‘This could have been us.’”
Despite the immeasurable loss, which includes nearly 120 deaths and 173 people still missing, Gonzalez said he still sees a sliver of light.
“Despite all the craziness around this world and the hatred, [that family] was quick to take us in. It proves that people still live their lives full of love and share that with others. There are people still doing the right thing,” he said. “My mom would always say, ‘You never go wrong by doing it right.’ I’m just grateful for the people who saved us.”
Gonzalez said he’s contacted the Airbnb hosts and the family who helped him and his friends escape. Both parties are safe and sound, and he’s figuring out ways to repay their kindness and help the wider Kerrville community.
“Having just recently gone through losing my mom, and I know search and rescue is happening, but there are a lot of people who will need to pay for a funeral. That’s something no one ever really talks about or prepares you for. And I want to help. My friends want to help. So we’re figuring out a good way to help those families because funerals aren’t cheap, especially when you may have to bury multiple people.”
In the meantime, Gonzalez said he trusts that the real estate community, as they’ve done many times before, will step up and support affected families.
“The real estate industry is very close-knit,” he said. “I’ve had amazing Houston Association of Realtors and Texas Realtors leaders reach out, check in and see how they can help,” he said. “The Texas Realtor Relief Program is a great place to start, but it’s going to be a long road to recovery. You can donate, you can share resources and, sometimes, just being a listening ear can mean a lot.”
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by Matt Carter | Jul 9, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
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Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac weren’t informed in advance that they would be required to sign off on loans qualified using the new VantageScore 4.0 credit score algorithm, mortgage industry insider Christopher Whalen said Wednesday.
Because rating agencies and bank regulators aren’t prepared to work with the new score either, Whalen said he expects lenders will be slow to make the switch to VantageScore 4.0 — a credit scoring algorithm developed by the big three credit bureaus to challenge the FICO Classic score now used by most mortgage lenders.
Bill Pulte, the director of Fannie and Freddie’s federal regulator, announced new rules for evaluating borrowers who apply for conventional loans backed by the mortgage giants on the social media platform X Tuesday.
Changes to those rules were mandated by Congress in 2018, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency had been working with lenders for several years on implementing them.
But Pulte’s announcement appeared to depart from the carefully laid-out plan previously put forward by the FHFA.
The FHFA announced in 2022 that it had signed off on VantageScore 4.0 and a new FICO score, FICO 10 T, for future use by Fannie and Freddie. Under a timeline proposed in 2023, lenders were to move from the current Classic FICO credit score model and start using both VantageScore 4.0 and FICO Score 10 T by the end of this year.
But Fannie and Freddie abandoned that timeline on Jan. 16 — four days before President Trump’s inauguration — with no explanation.
In announcing on X that Fannie and Freddie would be required to start accepting loans evaluated using VantageScore 4.0 on Tuesday, Pulte caught mortgage lenders by surprise — and left them wondering exactly how the new rules will work.
The Mortgage Bankers Association issued a cautious statement welcoming the move, saying Pulte’s proposal “could help to accomplish the goals of added competition in the credit score space and reduced consumer costs, if implemented correctly.” But the trade group said there are “numerous implementation questions” that need to be addressed in order to realize such benefits.
Because the FHFA didn’t issue a formal rule or issue a press release Tuesday, mortgage lenders were left wondering:
- Will lenders be allowed to submit loans reviewed using only VantageScore 4.0, or will Fannie and Freddie also require FICO Classic scores currently in use?
- Are there still plans to allow Fannie and Freddie to accept loans scored by the new FICO Score 10 T?
- Will loan level pricing adjustments (LLPAs — fees charged by Fannie and Freddie according to borrower risk) be different for borrowers scored by VantageScore 4.0?
- Are private mortgage insurers (required by Fannie and Freddie when borrowers put less than 20 percent down) ready to back loans scored using only VantageScore 4.0?
- Will investors in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) — the ultimate source of funding for most mortgages — treat loans scored using VantageScore 4.0 the same as loans scored with FICO Classic?
Rating agencies, banks and investors still use FICO Classic, Whalen said on X, and “there is no track record” of how mortgages evaluated using VantageScore 4.0 or FICO Score 10 T will perform.
(In December, Fair Isaac announced that Cardinal Financial had sold the first batch of government-issued mortgage-backed securities to include VA loans qualified using the FICO Score 10 T. More than 21 mortgage lenders use FICO Score 10 T for non-Fannie and Freddie loans, the company said at the time.)
Whalen, an industry veteran with connections at Fannie and Freddie, is chairman of Whalen Global Advisors LLC. His past experiences include senior research positions at Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Carrington Holding Co.
“This ill-considered decision by Pulte will force buyers of loans to come up with a ‘transition table’ for Vantage 4 to FICO 10, but such attempts will be imprecise,” Whalen posted on the social media platform X Wednesday.
The FHFA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not respond to Inman’s requests for comment.
The National Association of Realtors welcomed Pulte’s announcement Wednesday, saying it will allow mortgage lenders to use VantageScore 4.0 “alongside or in place of traditional FICO scores” when assessing borrower creditworthiness.
Pulte — who, after being appointed by the Trump administration to lead the FHFA, purged Fannie and Freddie’s boards of directors and made himself the chair of both companies — claims allowing lenders to use VantageScore 4.0 will help more renters qualify for a mortgage.
Bill Pulte
“Today, we allowed for RENT payments to COUNT toward qualifying for a MORTGAGE,” Pulte posted on X Tuesday. “If ‘Obama’ or ‘Biden’ did that (they didn’t), it would be nonstop news coverage. When President Trump does it, very few people report it.”
But FICO Score 10 T also considers “trended credit data and additional data such as rent, utility, and telecom payments, which are not currently considered as part of the Classic FICO score,” Fannie Mae noted in a January update on plans to transition to the new scores.
The move to require Fannie and Freddie to accept VantageScore 4.0 is a victory for the big three credit bureaus who developed it — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. VantageScore claimed Tuesday that implementation of the new score will boost the eligible pool of mortgage applicants by 5 million borrowers.
The credit bureaus maintain files on consumers, tracking their debts and repayment history — information that’s fed into credit score algorithms developed by FICO and VantageScore to generate credit scores.
Fee increases by both Fair Isaac and the credit bureaus have been a source of frustration for lenders and their clients. But Pulte also backed down from the FHFA’s original proposal to move from tri-merge to bi-merge credit reporting, which would have allowed lenders to pull credit scores from two credit bureaus instead of three.
TransUnion had opposed plans to move to bi-merge reporting, claiming that using only two credit scores “will often result in an incomplete and inaccurate picture being painted of a potential borrower — particularly if a consumer’s most favorable set of credit data is the one that gets excluded.”
In a blog post last month, MBA President Bob Broeksmit characterized tri-merge reporting as “an anachronism from the days when there were significant disparities in coverage by the credit bureaus.”
Broeksmit said the MBA has been studying the feasibility of using a single credit report to score government-guaranteed loans, an approach that “would mirror that of most other consumer finance markets, including home equity loans and auto loans – which have seen success with this structure.”
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Email Matt Carter
by Lillian Dickerson | Jul 9, 2025 | Industry, News Feed
With the partnership, RLTYco CEO and cofounder Briggs Elwell will join the association’s board, and agents who subscribe to RLTYco will also have access to AREA membership through the company’s suite of services.
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The American Real Estate Association (AREA), an alternative that emerged last year to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), has partnered up with real estate services company RLTYco and made one of its cofounders a board member, the companies have informed Inman.
With the move, Briggs Elwell, RLTYco’s CEO and cofounder, will join AREA’s board, giving the company further insights into agent needs and giving AREA industry insight from a seasoned veteran who has been active in a variety of real estate endeavors.
Briggs Elwell | RLTYco
Elwell said the partnership came about because of a shared vision for the future of the industry.
“The alignment of efforts [by] us to provide services to the agent community and then the efforts of what Jason [Haber and Mauricio Umansky] were doing with the American Real Estate Association was just incredibly logical because we’re both working in the same talent pool, same industry and we’re just really aligned at the overarching goal of bettering the community,” Elwell told Inman.
Jason Haber, cofounder of AREA and a Compass-affiliated agent, said that as the trade organization ramps up for a period of expansion, they were looking for leaders who would help drive growth, and Elwell seemed like a clear asset to add to the team.
Jason Haber | Compass
“We’re at a point where we’re ready for our next phase, which is going to be rapid expansion, and when we go into expansion mode in this next phase, who do you want helping guide you?” Haber said. “Who are the players to help make you this nationwide hub to bring together people who may have differing opinions on where the industry needs to go, but share the same belief that there’s a lane for us to operate outside of NAR — not in competition with them, in some ways in collaboration — but to create our own voice and to say, ‘Here’s what we think is best for the industry. Here’s what we want to put out into the public square. Here are the things we can be doing better.’
“I think by bringing in someone of Briggs’ caliber, you’re going to see us attract a full swath from around the country of talent, both at the executive level, meaning CEOs, general counsels, people in the C-suite, to the agent community as well, that’s hungry for new voices to help galvanize and organize the industry.”
Elwell started off as a licensed agent and spent a significant portion of his early career working with New York City developer Related Companies, where he worked on the firm’s luxury rental portfolio. He also led small- to mid-size brokerages in New York City before launching RLTYco with Daniel Kennedy in 2021.
Because of his location in New York City, which does not have a multiple listing service (MLS), Elwell said he has never been a Realtor.
Mauricio Umansky | The Agency
“We’re excited to partner with RLTYco and welcome Briggs to the board,” Mauricio Umansky, cofounder of AREA and CEO of The Agency, said in a statement. “Agents deserve to set themselves up for success with resources and knowledge that are sometimes elusive based on where you are and how you choose to hang your license, and I’m a big fan of the work that RLTYco is doing.”
With the partnership, agents who sign up for RLTYco’s services — including commission advances, legal and tax assistance, and a healthcare marketplace — will now also have the option to become a member of AREA at a preferred price, which is yet to be determined. Haber told Inman that dues for a base membership are $20 for 2025, but 2026 dues have not been set yet and likely will not be announced for several months.
“I’m very excited to help push across the direction and efforts of the association,” Elwell told Inman. “But because of [this] relationship, we’re going to offer all the members preferred pricing, preferred access to things that we roll out as we build the company.”
RLTYco is also prepping to launch RLTY Blue, which is a benefits program tailored to real estate agents, akin to something like the benefits W2 employees receive through their employers or those received through certain credit cards, the company said. Earlier this year, the company raised $20 million in a Series A funding round.
Email Lillian Dickerson
