by Andy Florance | Aug 1, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
The high-volume RE/MAX real estate agent and former “Survivor” contestant broke down how he manages his time to build a fast-growing real estate business at ICLV on Thursday.
HAPPENING NOW! At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. JOIN US VIRTUALLY.
Hungry, exhausted and demoralized, Quintavius Burdette’s team had suffered defeat after defeat in the reality TV contest “Survivor.”
To earn food, they had to break their losing streak.
That’s when he dug deep, he said, and channeled the same determination that had proven crucial in building his real estate business from nothing into a multi-million-dollar revenue machine.
“I made it my business to make sure that as hungry as I was, we were gonna eat that day,” Burdette said. “At some point in time, you have to make the decision, that [if] you’re gonna have everybody around you to eat, they gotta see you take the first bite.”
Ultimately, Burdette’s team bounced back, and he ended up in the final six group of contestants on the 46th season of “Survivor,” which aired earlier this year.
On Thursday at the Inman Connect real estate conference in Las Vegas, Burdette laid out the combination of high drive and rigorous time management that he said has become the foundation for his success.
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL INDEX SURVEY FOR JULY
The former athlete and reality show contestant and current RE/MAX agent said that his time management in particular has been crucial.
Every week has 168 hours, Burdette said. And he uses this number as a starting point for how to plan out his time on a typical week.
Burdette told attendees to tally up how much time they plan to set aside each week for sleep, exercise, taking care of children, and social activities. Subtract that number from the 168 hours. Then allow for another “40 hours of BS” — time wasted due to distractions, interruptions or otherwise unproductive time.
The number of hours that remain, he said, should be an agent’s primary focus for maximizing the growth of their business.
“We have to figure out how to be successful with our remaining time,” Burdette told the audience of real estate agents, brokers and other professionals.
In addition to this time-management system, Burdette also scores himself daily based on a set of achievements that help his business keep churning.
A contract is worth 4 points, he said. A listing agreement is worth 2 points in his system. Showing a buyer a home is worth 1 point. And a meeting with a potential customer looking to do business within 90 days is worth a half-point.
That last one, Burdette said, is his favorite type of point to rack up. It helps him project his business activity 90 days out and know that he’ll keep an active stream of revenue.
Notably, closings are not incentivized under his point system.
“The worst thing that can happen to your business is [for] a closing to happen and you don’t have anything to replace it with,” Burdette said. “Detach yourself from closings.”
Email Daniel Houston
by Chris Pollinger | Aug 1, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Kamini Lane spoke to the crowd at Thursday’s Inman Connect Las Vegas on industry perception and the prevalence of part-time “slashies.”
HAPPENING NOW! At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. JOIN US VIRTUALLY.
A glut of inexperienced and part-time agents, paired with a string of negative headlines and confusion caused by antitrust litigation and settlements, has driven trust in the industry to new lows, Coldwell Banker CEO Kamini Lane said Thursday.
Lane spoke to a room of industry professionals at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on the final day of Inman Connect Las Vegas about what her team is doing to rebuild trust in agents and the industry at large.
“We are at an all-time low when it comes to trust and, frankly, confidence in our industry and, unfortunately, a questioning of the value that real estate agents provide their clients,” Lane said.
Lane said the influx of licensed and inexperienced agents came during and after the COVID real estate boom, as home prices spiked and low interest rates drove demand for homebuying across the country.
“To be sure, those people were responding to the market need,” Lane said, “but I don’t think it was the same level of experience that this industry had been known for in the past.”
Photos by AJ Canaria Creative Services
Lane focused on the inexperience and part-time mindset of many agents. To highlight her point, she brought up the gig economy nature in her hometown of Los Angeles, where it’s common for residents to be a writer-slash-barista or server-slash-actor.
She gave that type of worker a term — slashie — and said real estate “shouldn’t be an industry of slashies.”
“This should be an industry of professionals who take this very seriously, who operate with the highest level of integrity,” Lane said.
Lane said Coldwell Banker hand-picks agents who work for the franchiser.
“It’s not a question of building an infantry,” Lane said. “There’s the phrase ‘recruiting wars.’ I don’t think of it that way. We’re not fighting a war; we’re not building an infantry. We really want to have a collection of the best professionals in the business who fit with our culture.”
The franchise is also focused on providing up-to-date training on the post-settlement rules and regulations and adapting to changes that will continue happening up until and after Aug. 17.
That training includes encouraging agents to have conversations with clients about value and compensation early on in the relationship and to be transparent about how the agent will be paid.
“We very much believe that it is in a seller’s best interest to offer compensation to a buyer’s agent,” Lane said.
She said Coldwell Banker was encouraging agents to move past the mindset of acting as gatekeepers of data and information, which was more traditionally a role for agents 20 years ago, she said.
“Having value that is seeded in any sort of gatekeeping of data is just not relevant anymore,” Lane said. “There has to be a long-term lens on building a relationship with an individual, with their family.”
Lane said agents need to shift into the role of financial advisor who guides clients through complicated transactions, looks for ways to make them simpler, and builds long-term relationships that can last multiple transactions.
“The role of the agent will continue to push into this path of providing this expertise and making that transaction simpler and being at the center of that incredibly complicated transaction versus doing tasks that can be done online or spending time on things that can be done by artificial intelligence, for example,” Lane said.
Email Taylor Anderson
by Verl Workman | Aug 1, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
HAPPENING NOW! At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. JOIN US VIRTUALLY.
Elevated mortgage rates and home prices have had a chilling effect on home sales, but would-be homebuyers may face a host of other complex problems that they’ll need help from real estate agents and loan officers to navigate.
From the rising cost of building and insuring a home to the burden of property taxes, “we’re seeing an onslaught of these types of costs that make it more difficult to afford a home,” loanDepot President and CEO Frank Martell said. “So making the right decision on what home you can afford, getting the right mortgage — all those things are becoming increasingly more important.”
In a wide-ranging discussion at Inman Connect Las Vegas Wednesday with Era Ventures partner Clelia Peters, Martell said he sees technology making life easier for agents and loan officers — not putting them out of work.
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL INDEX SURVEY FOR JULY
“I think we’re all at an inflection point,” Martell said. “There’s a lot of change coming down the pike and I think we have to take a deep breath and try to figure it out.”
In addition to commission lawsuits and changes coming under the implementation of terms of the National Association of Realtors settlement, real estate professionals are also keeping a wary eye on artificial intelligence and other technology.
Martell — who before taking the CEO reins at loanDepot in 2022 was at the helm of real estate data, intelligence and analytics giant CoreLogic — also serves on the boards of Compass and SmartRent Inc., so he’s heard the argument many times over the years, and isn’t buying it.
“When I came to the industry 25 years ago, one of the first meetings I had, somebody came to my office and told me there were going to be no more real estate agents … and clearly that hasn’t happened,” Martell recalled. “I think we’re at a very exciting point in time where we’re going to have different tools, different data and different platforms to enable the real estate agents who are fronting the transaction to add more value. And I don’t think that’s something that’s going to be disrupted, certainly not in my lifetime.”
While home prices have “escalated dramatically,” there’s also an onset of new factors contributing to affordability challenges, he said.
The rising cost of homeowners insurance and property taxes has made homeownership more costly — even for those who own their homes free and clear.
While lenders require homeowners who are still paying their mortgage down to have homeowners insurance, a recent analysis by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) found that 14 percent of homeowners who don’t have a mortgage aren’t insured.
For those who do have a mortgage, lenders “have a tremendous issue” if a homeowner loses their insurance policy, Martell said. Force-placed insurance policies often protect only the lender, and it’s homeowners who are stuck with an insurance charge paid on their monthly mortgage bill, the CFA noted in its report.
With regulators turning their attention to so-called mortgage “junk fees,” lenders are “kind of stuck between the rock and the hard place” when a homeowner can’t afford insurance, he said.
State-run collectives are a potential short-term solution, but in the long run, Martell thinks public-private partnerships may be required to make homeowner’s insurance less of a burden.
“I think there are a lot of good intentions to get people into homes and promote affordability,” Martell said. “But a lot of the policies that we have in place today are the inverse of that. They’re driving higher costs. They’re driving higher complexity. And, you know, there’s a million examples at the local level, the county level, the state level and the national level.”
The lack of housing supply is another driver of affordability issues in many markets, and Martell thinks builders will have to construct about 6 million homes to restore the balance of supply and demand.
“That’s a decade, if we really put our shoulder into it, to fix that issue,” he said. “I don’t see any real plan on the horizon quite yet to deal with that. And if we’re six million short, that’s going to drive up home prices and a lack of shelter for people.”
Shifting demographics is another challenge for the real estate industry. The average first-time homebuyer is “31-ish” years old, but because people are waiting longer to get married and form households, Martell sees “a gradual aging of the first-time homebuyer.”
Most first-time homebuyers are nonwhite, come from “all kinds of different educational backgrounds,” and are increasingly likely to be gig employees rather than W2 workers, Martell said.
“A lot of homebuyers are either Latino or they’re Asian — English is not their first language,” Martell said. “Mortgage and real estate is really an English-driven platform, and that becomes an issue as that progresses. So we need to be ready to help on that score.”
While Martell said he’s heard a lot of talk about whether Realtors should also become mortgage lenders to augment their incomes, he “would recommend thinking long and hard before you do that.”
Mortgage lending is “a very complicated, highly regulated industry. So if you want to get into it, you better be prepared for all that.”
LoanDepot has 1,000 loan officers in local markets “that have deep relationships with many, many agents, and I think that that long-term relationship means everything,” Martell said.
“I think both the agent and the loan officer are so integral to making a successful transaction. That relationship is very key, and we work hard to try to keep that relationship going and support the real estate agents.”
At the end of the day, Martell said, “Real estate agents are the key value driver in this industry, and they’re enabled by all this other technology and data. All buying is complicated, and you need that human touch, so that will not change.”
Get Inman’s Mortgage Brief Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly roundup of all the biggest news in the world of mortgages and closings delivered every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe.
Email Matt Carter
by Chris Drayer | Aug 1, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
HAPPENING NOW! At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. JOIN US VIRTUALLY.
Realtor.com CEO Damian Eales didn’t mince words during his Inman Connect Las Vegas session on Thursday. The CEO took direct aim at CoStar Group CEO Andy Florance’s claims about rival portal Homes.com’s performance, urging audience members to take what they hear with a “packet of salt.”
Eales pointed to an advertising challenge Realtor.com parent company Move filed in July with the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division as an example of CoStar’s alleged deception. The challenge took issue with CoStar’s “Homes.com just reached 156M monthly unique visitors” and “Homes.com now has DOUBLE Realtor.com’s traffic” claims, which were based on Homes.com Network traffic — not Homes.com traffic alone.
Homes.com has since updated its ads to highlight the site’s sole traffic figures, although the NAD ruled they can still use Homes.com Network figures with “explicit disclosure.”
“People in this room thought that their brand and their listings were appearing on all of those URLs,” he said. But quite frankly, I encourage you to go to all of those other 16 URLs, like Land.com and Apartments.com, and search for your brand and your listings.”
Eales went on to question additional claims Florance made about the number of views Homes.com members get on the listings, saying that he tracked the difference in listing views on Homes.com, Realtor.com and Zillow. A listing for an $830,000 apartment in Los Angeles has 300 views on Zillow but 14 million views on Homes.com.
“I mean, please, the population of LA is less than 4 million,” he said. “Who are these people [viewing the listing]? And why hasn’t the property sold? You know, sometimes if it seems too good to be true, perhaps it is. I think that customers should really challenge the claims that are being made.”
Although many of the headlines Realtor.com has made this year have been related to its beef with CoStar, Eales said the company has dedicated a lot of time to championing buyer agency and helping the industry navigate coming changes with commission policy. The CEO highlighted the portal’s “111 Reasons” campaign that highlights the tasks buyers’ agents handle during a transaction — an important move as some homebuyers grapple with the upcoming decoupling of commissions.
“[The campaign] came from inspiration from our customers and from [multiple listing services] who were saying, ‘Hey, we’re getting hammered here,’” he said. “The profession of buyer agency is being questioned by the media, it’s being questioned by lawmakers, and we need help to demonstrate the value that buyer agency brings to consumers.”
“We’ve launched two editions of that, in which we’ve demonstrated the 111 reasons why it is important for consumers to get independent buyer agency when making the biggest and most leveraged purchase of their lives,” he added.
Beyond homebuyers, Eales said he hopes the campaign gives regulators and lawmakers valuable insight into what buyers’ agents bring to the transaction. This is especially important, he said, as the Department of Justice monitors multiple real estate antitrust cases, including the Aug. 17 changes connected to the National Association of Realtors’ settlement.
“It is clear that this administration and, I think, all administrations in the future, would want to reduce the cost of buying and selling homes,” he said. “And there are many ways that you can do that. We would argue that looking at commissions is one way, but there are a lot of others.”
“Taxes are another area that should be examined, as are the regulations and red tape associated with building new homes,” he added. “But in terms of commissions, yes, they have clearly signaled that they expect to see a more efficient marketplace and downward pressure on commissions, but we haven’t heard anything from the [DOJ] where they have suggested that they wish to do that at the expense of consumer protections.”
Eales said “there is still a great deal of confusion” about how to handle upcoming commission changes, but he believes the industry will find its footing and that consumers will continue to see the value of buyer brokers in the years to come, with “agency being preserved.”
“People still need a lot of help on both sides of that transaction,” he said. “We argue that independent representation is better than being represented by the party who’s representing the seller. But ultimately, that’s the consumer’s choice.”
As he eyes the future, Eales said Realtor.com is dedicated to providing agents with quality, high-intent leads and creating industry-leading products that benefit buyers and listing agents. The CEO highlighted Advantage Pro, a platform he called the predecessor to Homes. com’s “Your Listing, Your Lead” promise, Real Choice Selling and Listing Toolkit.
“Listing Toolkit is where we work with agents to ensure that they have the best listing capability in market, and then we ensure that that agent is presented to active sellers on our site through a consumer product called Real Choice Selling,” he said. “That’s where we provide a choice of agents, which consumers will then choose. We’re not selling advertising. We’re selling new listings to listing agents and performing incredibly well.”
Realtor.com’s buyer leads program, listing products, and rentals partnership with Zillow will yield dividends for the company, he said, with revenues projected to rise 50 percent in the year ahead.
Email Marian McPherson
by Lillian Dickerson | Aug 1, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Despite an improvement in housing affordability, property sales continue to decline. Pending home sales dropped 5.7 percent year over year, Redfin reported Thursday.
HAPPENING NOW! At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. JOIN US VIRTUALLY.
Despite improvements in housing affordability, homebuyers are showing little interest as property sales continue to decline.
Pending home sales have dropped 5.7 percent year over year, the biggest decline in nine months, Redfin reported on Thursday. Mortgage-purchase applications are down 14 percent or 2 percent week-over-week.
Although it is becoming more affordable to purchase a home, prices and payments are still near record highs.
The median U.S. monthly house payment was $2,667 during the four weeks ending July 28, according to Redfin, the lowest level since March. Falling mortgage rates and sale prices are causing payments to decline.
The weekly average mortgage rate sits at 6.78 percent, down from May’s five-month high of 7.22 percent. The median home-sale price is down nearly $4,000 from its early July peak at $392,563.
Redfin agents report that some prospective homebuyers are waiting to learn the outcome of the upcoming election before purchasing a home.
A lack of desirable listings has also contributed to the decline of home sales.
New listings have shown the smallest increase since November, up 4 percent year over year. With nearly two-thirds of homes sitting on the market for 30 days without going under contract, it is fair to say that listings are not matching buyer expectations.
The small increase in listings can also be attributed to limited demand, though Redfin agents have seen a demand for turnkey homes in desirable neighborhoods.
Agents expect sales to pick up as mortgage rates are projected to decline. In comments yesterday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell dropped hints that the central bank may be ready to cut rates if it sees the economy weakening in the months ahead, possibly as early as September.
“Local buyers are still worried about affordability, especially since wages haven’t caught up with home-price growth and inflation has cut into their budgets,” Boise, Idaho, Redfin agent Nicole Stewart said. “But now that rates are declining, some fence-sitters are getting off the fence.”
Email Richelle Hammiel
by Ginger Wilcox | Aug 1, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Learn how this California-based broker-owner went from unpaid intern to agent to independent brokerage founder
HAPPENING NOW! At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. JOIN US VIRTUALLY.
Are you receiving Inman’s Broker Edge? Make sure you’re subscribed here.
Name: Max Fitzgerald
Title: CEO, co-founder
Experience: 9 years
Location: California, Arizona
Brokerage name: Craft & Bauer Real Estate Co.
Team size: 55 agents
Sales volume: $454,000,000
How did you get your start in real estate?
After graduating college, I had a general interest in pursuing real estate as a career, but I wasn’t interested in joining a big-box brokerage to be a traditional residential real estate agent. I had a greater passion for building businesses and learning the ins and outs of the real estate industry as a whole.
I knew this would only come from hands-on experience in a smaller brokerage environment. I was able to break into the real estate industry as an unpaid intern at an independent brokerage in Los Angeles, Manhattan Pacific Realty.
During my time as an intern (and eventually as a licensed real estate agent), I learned everything from the inner workings of the financial operations of a brokerage to the pros and cons of different commission split structures, to how to be a good leader (kudos to my former broker, Richard Haynes), to scaling a business. This was the knowledge I needed to be able to take my next step as a real estate professional, which was starting my own brokerage.
What’s something you know now that you wish you knew when you started?
The ability to say no to clients. As a newly licensed agent, it’s hard to be selective about the people you choose to work with. As a young real estate agent, I was hungry to build my business to its greatest scale. As a result, I ended up working with everyone I could, including people who didn’t have realistic expectations about buying or selling property.
As I progressed in my career, I was able to narrow down my client list. Instead of working with everybody and anybody, I focused the majority of my day-to-day efforts on my closest clients who were actively buying and selling. This allowed me to not only strengthen my pre-existing relationships with these people but made my time that much more efficient.
The biggest point to newer real estate agents is to go broad and wide at the beginning of your career, and then start to hone in your day-to-day efforts as your real estate practice matures.
Tell us about a high point in your brokerage career
I’ve had many highs and lows in my real estate career, but there is one moment in time that sticks out as a highlight. I started my real estate career as an unpaid intern attempting to soak up all of the knowledge about the real estate industry. After a few months of being a licensed real estate agent (and many more months of being an unpaid intern) I ended up putting my first deal together.
I was representing a buyer who wanted to purchase a single-family home in Manhattan Beach, California, for its development potential. While my buyer was working through due diligence, it was discovered that this particular home sat very close to the neighbor’s lot line. So much so that it was unclear if this home could be torn down and rebuilt by my buyer.
At this point in time, I was about 10 months into my career and had been living off of savings. If this deal didn’t close, I was out of money (and probably out of the real estate business).
After an agonizing few weeks of due diligence with architects, contractors, and surveyors, this lot ended up clearing the neighbor’s lot by three inches, and my buyer was able to close on the property. That commission from my first sale allowed me to not only stay in the business but gave me incredibly valuable experience.
What’s your top tip for freshly licensed brokers?
As with any sales position, the effort that someone puts into building their real estate practice is directly correlated to the results they get out of it. The freedom and day-to-day flexibility this career offers can be both a gift and a curse. If someone is a self-starter with great time management skills and a people person, that individual would have a great foundation of skills to work off of.
However, building a sustainable business is all about consistency — especially through the ups, the downs and the uncontrollable. Having the ability to pivot your strategies with buyers and sellers based on current market conditions, interest rate fluctuations and macroeconomic factors are all characteristics of excellent real estate professionals.
What makes a good leader?
A good leader has the ability to be empathetic with the people that they are leading. Whether those people are members of their team, their employees, or their peers within the industry. Having the ability to not only connect with people on an emotional level, but to understand their strengths, their weaknesses, and their overall “why” allows someone to lead at a much higher level.
It’s also essential that good leaders are great communicators — especially to the people who are following them. If the vision and direction of an organization is understood and accepted by everyone within the organization, then it becomes much easier to lead. Disorganization and lack of communication leads to people feeling left in the dark with no sense of direction.
As a leader, make sure that you are confident with your overall vision, you understand the “whys” of your agents, employees and staff, and the members of your organization have an overall sense of direction of the company.
Email Christy Murdock
