Category: Podcast Episodes

Lexi Belland Perez of The Belland Team at Lepic Kroeger in eastern Iowa is 27 years old and closed almost 20 million last year in production. This year she’s on pace to close over 30 million! In our conversation Lexi talks about the importance of being present, proactive and involved in your community – that’s the marketing strategy her team had utilized to become the top team in her area!

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Lexi Belland Perez can be reached at 319-530-1055 and thebellandteam@gmail.com.

---

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the best social media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country. And her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. She’s so confident there’s a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose. Keeping it real listeners receive a special discount so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the show

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real largest podcasts made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment we’re going to be speaking to a young superstar 27 year old named Lexi Belen of the Belen team. I’m so excited because she’s just crushing it in eastern Iowa. Before we get to Lexi, I want to remind all of our listeners of a couple of things. First of all, thank you for continuing to support and listen to our show. We’re coming up on our 100 and 50th episode in the next week or two. We couldn’t do it without you and we appreciate every one of you who listens. But please remember we could use more listeners of course we have everyone out there goes and tells just one other real estate professional about our show we double our listenership and could do more episodes for you So please think of one realtor that you know that could benefit from listening to the the interview we’re about to do with Lexi and share the podcast with them. How do you do that? Send them to our website keeping it real pod.com You can stream every episode we’ve done and also we have links to videos we just started adding video. So if you want to watch this episode as instead of listening to it right on our website, it’ll take you to our YouTube channel and you can do that as well. And lastly, follow us on Facebook. We have so much great content on there every single day we post an article that we find online dedicated to helping you grow your business. In addition to that we also post video recordings of all of our episodes while we’re recording them live want to see what it’s like a few minutes before we get started and want to hear me screw up and ask questions before we actually go alive. That’s what we do. So follow us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and other than that, thanks for continuing to listen. Thanks for continuing to support our sponsors and telling a friend and now on to our interview with Lexi Belen of the Valentim.

Today on the show we have Lexi Belland from Lepic Crager realtor from the Belen team in Williamsburg, Iowa at age 27 Lexi success is no accident. This business has run in her family for generations and comes very naturally to her fresh out of college she dove in headfirst. After six years in the business her and her team reached almost 20 million in production in 2019. Actually 19 point 8 million. She is extremely passionate and committed to educating mentoring and supporting her clients. She truly has a passion for what she does and is just getting started and I should share her production goal for 2020 which is 30 million and she’s already done like 8 million a year today, which is insane. Please visit the Belen team.com. That’s B E L L A N D. Team. And welcome to the show Lexie.

Lexi Belland 4:04
Hey, thanks for having me. That was quite the introduction. And one thing I do want to say is, if you’re a new listener, and you’re an agent, this is a super resourceful outlet. When my sister and I are my mom and I when we’re on our way to a listing appointment, we have this blasting in our car, gives you motivation gives you ideas you can hear from other realtors. So if you’re not subscribing, we highly recommend it.

D.J. Paris 4:30
Wow, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And this is a real honor for us. Because I’m here in Chicago and it’s so nice to hear that people from all over are benefiting and also willing to spend time with us. I know how busy you and your team are. So I know this is something you probably don’t have time to do but but are finding time to do it. So so thank you on behalf of the listeners. So let’s see. I know this real estate is not new to your family. Although you are relatively new to the business. I mean not much anymore, but six years in, but tell us a little bit about how you got started.

Lexi Belland 5:04
Yes. So my mom’s been in real estate almost 25 years. So she was a huge influence. For me, that was one of the main reasons or how I got started and interested in it. But also my dad is a builder. So, um, you know, I’ve had homes in my background, you know, careers with homes forever. So I always kind of knew, you know, most realtors, this is their second or third career. This is my, this is all I know, you know, I started in 2014, at Lepic, Kreger realtors, and this is the only company I’ve ever worked for. So this is all I have really known. So I, you know, like, I wanted to get started in real estate right at 18. Right when I graduated high school, that was my plan. So I sat my mom and dad down, like, Hey, this is what I want to do. And I got shot down really quickly, because they were like, hey, no, you need to go to college. Like that’s not really an option. So I went to college, I’m at Iowa State University. And I really wanted to get done quickly. So I could get going like, you know, I just that was my passion. Because I did fall on my mom for like a few years in high school and stuff, taking your pictures, inputting listings, that type of thing. So I graduated early, I graduated in three years. And so during my last year, I got my real estate license during my undergrad, because I literally wanted to graduate and the very next day started selling so I graduated on Friday, and I had my license by Monday. So it was like perfect timing. I was really excited to get started. And it’s kind of funny, because my senior year of high school, I won a scholarship through the Iowa City area Association of Realtors. And so you have to go and give a, you know, a little speech thanking the Association for the award. So you know, I’m in a room full of Realtors, you know, saying, hey, you know, thanks for this scholarship, they want to know what your plans are. So I said, you know, I’m going to go to Iowa State University, and I’m gonna come back and sell real estate. And you know, it was kind of a quiet room right after that. And I don’t know if they like, didn’t believe me one or they’re like, great, more competition. But three short years later, I literally was basically competing with everyone in that room that day. So it’s kind of unique how I got started, because it’s not like how most do so?

D.J. Paris 7:29
Well, it seems like you knew exactly what you wanted at a very early age. I mean, when I was 18. I mean, I went to college, and I didn’t even know my senior year of college. I was like, I’m graduating. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing. Like that. And tell us a little bit about about the geographic area that you represent, because you are not in a major metropolitan area.

Lexi Belland 7:52
Yes. So we’re in like a rural area in our populations, 3200 people. So very small town probably compared to you, but it feels plenty large for me. And we have like Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines like their surrounding like Iowa City is only 20 minutes away. So it’s a happiness skip. But there’s something about small towns and I don’t know, if you have been in small towns, I take pride in living in a small town because, you know, you learn a lot about yourself. Like it just there’s more one on one. Even though I know majority of the people and in our community, I’m still meeting new people every single day, and I’m working with brand new clients that are new to town. And when you’re passionate about the community you live in, it’s easy to sell Williamsburg, we have so many large town amenities that other surrounding communities don’t have this size, we have a great school district. So it’s really it’s not hard for me to sell Williamsburg. And I’ve gotten quite a bit of my clients that, you know, if you compare it to, you know, Johnson County, you’re getting a lot more house for a lot less money, and you’re getting more one on one in school districts, you’re paying less property taxes. I mean, I could go on and on and on. But I’m because I’m passionate about Williamsburg and real estate. It just I feel like I can really draw people to this area. So that has helped grow them,

D.J. Paris 9:19
even if Yeah, I mean, even if you were working in Chicago, and we’re one of the largest markets, I think we’re the second largest real estate market in the country, or third largest, maybe Yeah, your production would still be in the very top 1% here in Chicago. So I think that is so fascinating, because again, I live in a big city. And I often think about brokers who live in more rural areas and I think Wow, that must be so much more difficult simply because the population numbers and you are proof positive that you can have this huge expanse of career at a very young age by being extremely passionate and and the fact that you I mean I grew up in a moderately sized City is about 100,000 people, but I went to school. So I have you beat because I went to school in a very rural area to eighth grade, there was a town of 800. So I can appreciate the small towns, and that was in central Illinois. And so that’s kind of my upbringing as well. And I’m always amazed at, you know, Purina, where I, where I went, the one of the top agents, there is I think he was with Keller Williams, anyway, doesn’t matter. But he does almost 200 sales a year, and his average price point is like $160,000. And like, he just crushes it on volume. And that’s, you know, and then you come to Chicago, and somebody might do with $3 million sale, which, of course, is rare, but it happens. And so, you know, you can have success, and in any size environment, and I love the fact that how passionate you are about about your area, because I think you have to be and you have to really love it and, and be so excited to support people buying and selling in that area.

Lexi Belland 10:59
Yeah, definitely. And the thing is, like, you know, a lot of agents in the surrounding communities like that are larger, obviously, you can sell sometimes 15 houses and reach a pretty good, you know, like, we have to close over 100 properties to get to that, you know, so we have a lot more transactions going on, which is more clients more juggling of the, you know, like that type of thing. So it’s something that like, I think, bigger areas, maybe take for granted a little bit like sure, you know, we’re doing 100 Plus transactions. Yeah, so it’s each in, you know, in my year to date, so in 2020, my cheapest house I’ve sold this year is going to be $29,000. And my most expensive this year has been 570,000. So Wow. It’s a huge range, wide range of clients and inventory. So

D.J. Paris 11:53
I mean, you’re doing a closing every three days. Like that’s incredible.

Lexi Belland 11:58
Yeah, it seems like more than that. But

D.J. Paris 12:03
wow, I mean, amazing. And I do want to talk about about this a lot. Because you as a younger person in the business, although I don’t even like saying that because you’re one of the most successful people in certainly I’m sure in your in your market, you you guys have to be one of the top teams, if not the top team. And I want to talk about, you know, at 21 when you started, what were some of your approaches, because we have a lot of listeners who are new to the business or maybe who are younger, who are struggling trying to figure out even in a city as big as Chicago, how do I make this happen? And we have millions of people, right, and you guys don’t have millions of people, but you were still able to carve out this amazing niche for yourself. Can you talk a little bit about like, what did you do when you so day one, you got your license? How did you start to build the business?

Lexi Belland 12:49
Yeah, so this is kind of funny. But the first thing I did was I bought a pair of fake glasses, I don’t need prescription or anything, but it was like, Okay, I feel like I look older. And I don’t wear it anymore. But I got, I got a pair of glasses, because it made me look a little bit older. But that is a challenge as a young entrepreneur that, you know, people they want to see experience. And, you know, everyone started from scratch somewhere. So my situation is a little bit different in the sense of I had my mom to lean on. Sure. Um, so, you know, I really had her expertise, you know, she guided me throughout the entire thing. But, you know, even though she had her sphere of influence, I knew that I needed to build my own as well that I couldn’t just follow along with her and, you know, maintain, I wanted to grow my business and our business. And I wanted to make a name for myself. And so my biggest thing was, and I understand when you first get started, you’re not going to have a bunch of marketing dollars to throw around. But I did market myself everywhere that I possibly could. So like my face was on everything, Billboard car, in high school gyms. every social media platform, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, like everywhere that you can in some of those things are free. So it’s like, try, you know, figure out what your best, you know, return on the investment is so it was just figuring that out. And I think this is really hard for new agents, but to promote yourself so to your friends, to your friends, friends, to your family, to your coworkers, to your old coworker, you know like anyone that you know that you can reach out to and this is also kind of silly, but you know, right when you get started you’re not familiar with the assessor website and all that. I mean, I remember my first week, I was like waking up at 6am and I would grab the phonebook and and I would go through every name, get their address, get their phone number, enter them in my database, I now have a database of 2000 plus people and I’m Sending mailings to them, like, it just, it didn’t just happen. Like, I also have to be a hustler, like, and if you want to be successful in this business, you have to hustle. And you have to be available. So our slogan is any house anywhere, anytime. So we pretty much say that we’re available. 24/7. So I, because I’m promoting that, I want that to be true. So I tell them, give me two or three times that work best for you and I will make it work. And so last night working until 10 o’clock the night before 930, you know, I’m out doing offers back and forth doing showings like, this is the prime time. And even in the winter, like setting myself up for success, I have to be a go getter. And I think community and my clients have realized, like, I’m going to give it 100% Every single day. You know, we all have our good days and our bad days. But that’s the nice thing about working on a team is I have I have my weaknesses, I my strength, my sister has her strength, you know, what we’re good at is what we’re doing. And what we’re specializing so with a team, you know, I have three two other people to bounce ideas off of. And, you know, they’re telling me what I need to work on, you know, we have weekly team meetings where we’re saying, Okay, we could do this better. And, you know, what, who are we missing? What are we missing? What could we, you know, how can we establish ourselves even more. So, getting started is always going to be tough. And when you’re young, like looking back, and like, Oh, that was such a bad idea that I would have started at 18. Like my parents were spot on with that saying no. And so it was really good to you know, just kind of market myself, that’s the best advice I can give to somebody new is a if you can get on a team, get on a team, like, you are going to learn so much from that. And like, I can’t believe the amount I have learned in six short years. And, you know, I credit that to my mom, for sure. Because, you know, she was working more hours than she was because she had to train me, you know, I’m going to every open house. But again, it just doesn’t happen overnight. So putting that time and effort in. I mean, if you’re gonna be a hustler, you’re gonna have success.

D.J. Paris 17:14
Well, you just said so much in about the last 10 minutes, it’s it’s a lot to unpack. And I sort of want to just go, I want to go back to just a couple of things, because it was really very impressive. You said a lot. Number one, you talked about farming you’re like and farming as as a prospecting tool, meaning you were reaching out to people you didn’t know, people in the phonebook who you just went, you know, and sent them items of value. And you also talked about, you know, making sure the people you do know, your sphere of influence is recruiting for you too, or, or a better way to say it is advocating for you. Right, so Brian Buffini talks a lot about this in the Brian Buffini stuff as he goes, your contact list is not your client list, although that would that’s nice if it happens, but those are your advocates, those are the people that want you to succeed. So make sure they know to tell everybody they know about you know about who you are and what you do. And sounds like you were doing pretty much everything. But you’re also advertising, right, you were putting your face on billboards and bench backs and in high school gyms, and probably you were probably just really not just your face was a meshed in the community. But I imagine you were very present in the community, I suspect you’re out and about and easily seen and found.

Lexi Belland 18:27
Yes, and like joining you know, local organizations, volunteering, you know, we’re in Big Brother, Big Sister, you know, there’s so many ways that you can get involved joining clubs, local clubs, joining your chamber, like, there’s so many opportunities, it’s all on how bad you want it, you know, you can’t make somebody show up. And even though this is not an eight to five job, I’m here, my sister would disagree. I’m here every day around 830. And then I pick up my kids right before five. And then my husband gets them. And then my husband has them, especially in the springtime, my husband has them basically like, all night, you know. And then weekends, my Sunday I have open houses from 11 to four, you know, like, and I’m not saying like, you know, I make time for my family too. But, um, you know, when winter can be a little bit slower. That’s when we’re like, we’re doing my family vacations. And you know, I’m spending that quality time with my family. And I want them to grow up and know that like, I gave it my all and that my parents are hardworking and like, they need to see that. And that’s what I saw growing up. And I feel like that instilled in me. You know what I wanted in it. It drove me to be a better businesswoman because of that.

D.J. Paris 19:49
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think that the you’re leading by example, right? And you’re going to you know, you sort of just hope that when your kids come of age they’re like Have those same values and same work habits, because at the end of the day, and you and I both know this, it’s, it’s usually not the most talented person who’s the most successful, it certainly could be. But it oftentimes is just the person that works the hardest, and also work smart. But but the idea of hard work and discipline is something that in this industry particularly is difficult for a lot of people, because there isn’t really built in accountability. And you have, a lot of people we’ve interviewed on the show have real estate coaches for that exact reason. They’re like, you know, I need somebody to check in with me on a couple of items that I struggle with, to keep me on track as well. So I love the idea that, that you have built this discipline into your practice, and I’m sure you probably see it mostly as discipline. There’s, you know, it’s, I’ve interviewed a ton of people who, you know, top producers who just say, that’s really what it is, is I probably just outwork, and it doesn’t mean they don’t have balance in their life, they have great home lives, they have great social lives, in addition to having a great business life, but they’re like, you know, I treat it very seriously. It’s a real thing I show up on time I leave, you know, after all the work is done. And I just keep going.

Lexi Belland 21:07
Yeah, definitely. I mean, it can be hard to find that balance. But the nice thing is with having a team, you know, my sister, Kylie, she might take one night a week, and then I’m the next night, and then our mom’s the next night. So, I mean, we with that’s another aspect of the team where it’s like, everyone’s giving it their best effort. And with it being family, like, I don’t have to question that one ounce. And that’s the other thing that holds you accountable to is if you’re on a team, especially with family, you know, if they’re not taking like a day off, or they’re going to be there every day at eight, like I want to be there, I want to show up, and I want them to know that, like, I’m giving it my all. And I I’ve never had to question between either of them, like, you know, are they giving it. So that’s the nice thing about accountability with a team is, you know, if you’re on your own, like, and you don’t show up for a day of work, who knows, you know, no one even knows about that, right? It’s like I have to teammates that I don’t want to disappoint. And so it’s like, I’m gonna show up, I’m gonna be present, I’m gonna give my 100%. And we’re gonna sell some real estate.

D.J. Paris 22:18
Talk, you talked about a lot of different marketing strategies that you did when you started. And I imagine you’re still doing a lot of those. What I’m really always interested in what doesn’t work or what didn’t work for you. So I definitely want to find out what what’s what’s working today. But what did you try over the years that really wasn’t successful? Only because it might help some of our listeners who might be thinking of doing something similar?

Lexi Belland 22:41
Yes. And that’s kind of a tough question. Because sometimes you don’t always know like, 100% Hey, what is working? What is not sure? Like, I had previous, you know, like, you do coffee mugs? Like, sure. And it’s like, Are you being Are you is that that visible? And like? I wouldn’t say that there’s any like one thing that I’ve done that I’m like, Oh, that was a total waste, you know, sometimes, like on Zillow, all by a zip code. If like, it’s slower, and I know that zip code, the markets booming at that time, and then I’m like, Was that really worth it? Like, did I really hit that many? You know, like, for what I’m paying? Is it worth the amount of work that’s being put into it? Like, honestly, the it’s hard for me to say what exactly isn’t working? Because I feel like a lot of my stuff, like it just kind of comes from everywhere. And that’s like, one of my first question is like, where did you hear about our team? How did you find out about us? If they show up at my open house? Like, did you see this online? Did you see this newspaper? Did you drive by, like, you need to figure out what is working? I try not to focus on like what’s not working? Right? So I don’t necessarily have an exact answer for you for that. But, um, I don’t think I

D.J. Paris 23:57
think the hands I think I think you did answer it. You basically said, you need to ask people when they show up, how did you find out about me, and you’ll find out pretty quickly what’s getting the best return, right? And if it’s, Hey, I’m the I’m the Instagram person. And that’s where I post everything. And that’s where I get a lot of hits from then you you’ve put more energy into that. Or if it’s, Hey, I saw your Billboard, and your billboard was really great. And, you know, it could be anything. But yeah, I think you just said something really important, which I didn’t want to gloss over. Which is you need to ask your clients, how do they find you? And you know, it’s a simple question, but I bet most most agents probably don’t ask it. So it’s a great, great suggestion. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about social media because I know this is a big, big deal for you. And I know you guys, you do all of your own social media and you would, a lot of our listeners might think, okay, at the level of production that your team is at, maybe they outsource it, maybe it’s just easier to give it to someone else and they can get that done. Since you guys are so busy and you’re posting two to three times a day sometimes but you’re doing it all yourself or your team is doing it. Is that Is that right?

Lexi Belland 25:04
Yes. So we do everything, social media wise advertising in house. So it’s hard sometimes when you start that to kind of like, give control to someone else, like, I’ve been doing it for so long that like, I know what I want to post about type of thing. And it’d be hard to just like outsource it, and I see so many Facebook pages and that you can just tell that, you know, someone else is doing it. And they’re very generic, like, I want to try to be as raw and real as I possibly can. The thing I do struggle the most with and agents, you know, everyone probably does a little bit is posting just the accepted offer the accepted offer the new listing, I sometimes run out of like, things to post about, especially in smaller communities, there’s not as many like events going on or so I do struggle a little bit with the sense of posting accepted offer, you know, new listing, but I will say your marketing is working when people are talking about it. So I get a lot of people coming up to me, like, Oh, I saw you sold that house, and like the only way they would know I sold that house, right? Because I haven’t even put the accepted offer sign up. But I’ve put the posts on Facebook, or Instagram or Twitter. So I know, you know, we get a lot of people asking do you do your own. And we do. And, you know, that’s one thing I learned at Iowa State was marketing and how that can make or break your company. And so, um, you know, and I want to be the best in our area, you know, I want to be the best on online. And so, you know, posting those two or three times a day, I just would like to expand more than just the accepted offers and the new listings. We do like giveaways every once in a while we’ll obviously holidays, and then like local sporting events we post about, but again, like I definitely could improve in that area a little bit too.

D.J. Paris 26:58
I have a suggestion for you, if you if you’re interested. It’s a suggestion you already know, but I’ll mention it anyway. Yeah, reach out to local businesses and say, hey, you know, they probably know you guys already. Hey, we’d love to, you know, if it’s a business you want to promote and that you appreciate your service or product, say we would love to promote you do you have a coupon that we could offer our you know, social media followers or a giveaway? Maybe you even you know, spend the money yourself for that. Or they’ll just maybe even give it to you, but then you’ll promote them. And of course, it promotes you guys as well. But that may be something to consider, which I’m sure you’ve already thought to

Lexi Belland 27:32
do. Yes, no, that’s a great idea. But yeah,

D.J. Paris 27:35
I think we’re gonna start a new feature on the show, you just inspired me this is a really big deal. You just inspired me to to create help a top 1% producer, and I think we’re going to start it with you. Just because it just came to me. If anyone has ideas for Lexi and her team about what works it aside from just posting on social media about, Hey, I just sold this wonderful home and, and those kind of things, send your ideas to us or to her and let’s get a lot of ideas. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna do help a top 1% producer, which everybody needs help, right. So that’s the whole point. And what a great, what a great answer about the social media, what’s working for you guys. So that actually brings us to a couple of listener questions. So let me see one second. So you talked about Zillow, and I want to just one of our listeners happened to ask this exact question. Nicholas asks, What are your thoughts about buying internet leads?

Lexi Belland 28:28
So Zillow is really the only like online investment buying leads that we do. And it depends which month you asked me. But, um, for the most part, like, we get a lot of visibility from it, it’s the number one buying was website even though Realtors aren’t big on Zillow. And, you know, they don’t have the best track record for that. I still like it, because it’s an outlet and outlet that my buyers like to use, and if they like to use it, I need to be present on it even though I might not agree with, you know, people calling on properties that have sold months ago and they just haven’t updated it I you know, like, that’s where we’re gonna invest our dollars because I know that’s where the buyers are coming from, you know, we see it all the time, the amount of you know, likes and leads we get from it is outweigh you know, like what we make from what we pay for it. You know, like we it’s working for us, but we get calls daily on, you know, people wanting us to pay for leads and they have a lead ready for us right now. They don’t do any of those. So yeah, I read Zillow is really the only one that we’ve ever invested in.

D.J. Paris 29:48
And it’s really sounds like more of a branding thing for you than anything because you’re right. They have I think it’s over 200 million people. It’s maybe more than that might be like 300 million people go there a month, or whatever it is. Uh, but yeah, you have to be present there, whether you’re paying for it or just getting a lot of reviews there or whatever the strategy is, but to pretend that it’s not important, I think is probably not a wise idea. And obviously you feel the same way.

Lexi Belland 30:13
Yeah. And to piggyback on the reviews, is, that is one thing like, because we are investing in Zillow, after every transaction we send out please review us on Zillow, we have almost 100 reviews. And so the odds of them picking us is going to be a lot more considering we’ve taken the time we’ve gotten the five stars we have almost 100 reviews. You know, like if you’re going to pay for it, you need to work Zillow, you know, when we get a lead. You know, when we get that lead, it is sent, you know, we contact them within the first 30 minutes of getting it. So we’re not letting it sit on the email cycle through three days later respond. We’re working Zillow, because that’s what we’re paying for. And if I’m paying for it, it has to work, or I’m not going to pay for it.

D.J. Paris 31:02
Great answer. Okay. Another question. This is a woman from Delaware named Lee, who says, As a woman, how do you stay safe when meeting with clients who you’ve never met before? This is a good follow up to Zillow, because there’s going to be times when you meet people as a result of Zillow, or another outlet where they see maybe they see your billboard. And by the way, you know, that’s something that also now that I’m just thinking about, it probably comes up a lot. So how do you deal with that from a safety perspective?

Lexi Belland 31:33
So our company at Lepik, Krieger realtors, when we get a phone number, we can send it on to our company, and they can do basically like a limited background check. So we send over the phone number, they can give us, you know, their name, their address, you know, a lot of history on what properties they’ve purchased, what they’ve sold, any felony, you know, like, it’s very detailed. So if I’m ever in question, I’ll send it to them. And like say, they told me their name was this, well, the phone number is linked to a different name or a different address. So I mean, in smaller towns, you know, a lot of people that you’re working with, but I mean, we cover all of Eastern Iowa, it’s not like we’re just in Williamsburg, or we’re in eastern Iowa, we’re in Cedar Rapids, we’re in, you know, we kind of go all over this area, a pretty big area that we’re covering. So my sister or my mom, like, if we’re not comfortable, then multiple of us go together on the showing, or we’ll do that background check. But, of course, everyone has their stories and the sticky situations you’ve been in. And it’s been questionable, and you probably shouldn’t have gotten a loan, but you had to. But for the most part, we do a pretty good job on, you know, and if you’re not on a team, take a guy in your office like, yeah, you know, somebody is willing to go with you, you don’t have to go alone. And, you know, if you ever do, um, you know, the hair stands up on the back of your neck, like, call or like, don’t go or, you know, like, listen to your instinct. And I feel like that will help along the way. But I really haven’t had too many situations where I felt uncomfortable. So it’s, I’m pretty fortunate in that aspect.

D.J. Paris 33:21
Great, great answer. And good suggestion, too. And I bet a lot of people are going, I wish my firm had a, like a phone number lookup background check. And so those services do exist. And you know, if your firm doesn’t offer that, I’m sure it can be done at a relatively inexpensive price. Like look online, there are lots and there are apps you can have on your phone for emergencies. And there’s lots of ways to stay safe, but certainly something to always, always keep in the front of your mind. Okay, one last question from our listeners. Janae I think I’m pronouncing that right. Janae from Idaho asks, I’m about the same age as you also in a somewhat rural area, but my friends are still mostly renting. It’s hard because I’m younger, and I have a tough time finding buy or sell clients. Any advice.

Lexi Belland 34:12
So I would say like when I first got started, it wasn’t like, I had a ton. You know, I was still like 21 years old. So your friends weren’t buying either. Yeah, so it wasn’t like, Hey, I could reach out to all these leads that were in the market to buy but the nice thing is, is right now, you know, she should be at the time where like Millennials are purchasing and that’s our generation and so more should be coming. But, you know, I have clients of all ages and that’s the other nice thing about our team is you know, we all you know, like Cindy works better with certain clients. Kylie works better with her age, you know, like we’re all in a different. We bring in different clients. We have different ages, but really, as long as you can sell yourself and your work ethic and your company in your business, you should be able to get a client at really any age, I think it’s just getting out there. And you also have to remember that the way you’re marketing has to be suitable to all different age levels. So the newspaper, like, that’s not probably one that you think about right away, because it’s one of the least effective marketing strategies, but the newspaper is where 60 and over are looking. So you still have to be present there. And then for social media, the biggest buyers are the millennials and the Gen X, like, then you need to be on social media. So just hitting and getting involved with that will help. So you know, we’re involved in a golf course, or, you know, being on the chamber or being in small little groups, you’ll meet people of different ages, and you’ll make that connection, and they’ll start to trust you and get to know you, and they want to use you with your real estate services. So I don’t think you can just focus on one client group, you kind of need to hit all. And as you know, I would say this last year, our referrals has grown incredibly, because, you know, that’s my thing is like, I want them to leave that transaction. And I want them to think like this went smooth, so smooth, it was perfect. You know, like, I want to make it as smooth and perfect as it possibly can be that they’re gonna tell all their friends and family about it. So we’ve definitely got the most referrals I’ve ever gotten. And they do say after like five years is when you should get that repeat business or the referrals. So that is definitely helped.

D.J. Paris 36:37
Yeah, amazing. God, again, so much good information, in that in that one answer. I have really one final question for you. And I know this is a huge passion of yours. And I you know, I’m not a Producing Realtor myself, but we have lots of them at our own firm, we have 650. So I suspect that this is something that even our Realtors are struggling with. But you have a really solid process for which is how do you stay in touch with your clients you just talked about? Hey, it might be five years before they need me again, what do you do to stay in touch along the way.

Lexi Belland 37:15
So yeah, that’s very important to me to stay in touch. Because I do want them to use me again, I want to be there forever realtor, not just there one time, and I want them to tell their friends and family about me. So um, you know, if they’re new to town, I’ll meet them for coffee sometimes. Now, keep in mind, it just depends how busy we are at the time and when you close, but I tried to like meet them for coffee, some clients will have over for dinner at our house. You know, every Thanksgiving, we deliver pies. And so we get 200 and some plus pies and we go and deliver them to their houses for for Christmas, we’ll do like a gingerbread house for Halloween, we drop off pumpkins, just am checking in on them. When they have a baby, we send them a baby book, when they have their birthday, we send them a birthday card, like just the little bit of contact that you can make. And it’s not all out of like business, you know, I genuinely do want to know how how they’re doing right after having their first child. And it’s not just for business purposes, it’s, it’s also to stay connected, you know, I want to meet them for coffee, how are they adapting to our community have they met people this is ways you can get involved. You know, if they’re needing daycare we have, here’s the daycare providers, you know, just like little things anywhere that I can help them after the transaction, I’m going to do and so I honestly have a lot of friends that were strangers when I met them, and are now some of my best friends because I have stayed in touch with them. And I you know, I want to be involved even after the transaction too.

D.J. Paris 38:54
Yeah, and it sounds like the majority of your your touches we’ll call them are personalized, and really about the individual more than real estate, like, Hey, I’m going to make sure that they get a card on their birthday and when their children are born, etc. And around the holidays, we’re going to do a drop by and give them a little gift. And those are all I always say it’s it’s the personal touches that win the game. Certainly you need to be competent, of course at at the job, but afterwards, you know, you got to stay in touch. And the easiest way to stay in touch is to know as much about your client as you can, so that you can then have all these data points of like, okay, I know so and so’s birthday is coming up. So we’re going to do something for that or, you know, that’s that’s awesome. And I suspect that’s where a lot of broker or real estate agents struggle is just knowing what to do and it’s like, well, how much do you know about your clients? If you don’t know they’re having a baby? You can’t celebrate that with them. And don’t wait for them to tell you because you’re probably not you know, first of mind when it comes to it’s a big life event but you need to be you need to be staying in touch so that you do know about all these things and it’s obviously you guys Eyes are doing an amazing job of that. I just realized to everyone on your team has Alaska has a first name that ends with the e sound. So it’s kind of cool. If you guys ever want to rebrand, you could be the eighth. And let’s see what we think of we add one other Oh, and I want you to know to like, how is talk to us about how the business is going? How is the market going for you? Right now in 2020? Has that things changed at all in the last six years? Is it is it easier now? Is it more challenging as the role of the realtor changes, it’s stayed the same? What’s it been like for you?

Lexi Belland 40:35
So role of the realtor has changed a little bit in the sense of, you know, like, we’re doing a couple appointments, where it was like, before, it felt like, you were just going to their house or getting it list, and you’re putting it on the very next day, whereas now it’s like, two to three appointments, a buyer consultation, like I take pride in educating my clients on, this is what you can expect. first time homebuyers are blind, just as I was, you know, they don’t do this every day, they don’t know how the transaction works. So it is my job to sit them down and say, Okay, here’s what it looks like, these are the inspection costs that the offers contingent upon these things, and just walk them through the transaction so they can kind of piece it together and learn as we go. But before, you know, I meet them at the house, and you know, the process was described later. And then on selling side, you know, sometimes we would just take a listing the day of now it’s I’m prepping them, we’re walking through each room and saying, okay, remove this furniture piece, it’s too bulky for the room. You know, we need more walk space, we need natural light, we need scent, we need smell, we have one first impression, we need to wow them the second they walk in. And that goes with pictures too. So online today, you know, everyone is looking at your house online. So we have to wow them on the internet. And, you know, they see one picture they don’t like and they’re not scheduling the showings. So we have to wow, that we have to let them picture what’s in, you know, not necessarily the items in the home, but picture their own things in the home. And so I feel like it’s changed a little bit in that sense, the market is super good. Right now, we have 23, sale pendings right now, you know, we we’ve closed on roughly around like three to 4 million and a half, we’re right around 8 million contracted to close. So it’s definitely a busy market, our team is growing. So this June, we’re going to be adding another realtor to our team. So we’re really excited about that. And so, you know, our, our hope is that we’re going to be the best team, we’re going to grow. Our clients are going to grow with us, we’re going to be there forever realtor, and I can guarantee that our team is going to be the best. And we’re going to provide that customer service that no one else, you know, with, with three or four agents on a team, you’re getting three or four agents for the price of one. And so, you know, we’re going to bring that expertise to the table. And we’re going to hustle and we’re going to get your house sold. And we’re going to find you that perfect house when you’re going to look so

D.J. Paris 43:12
by the way, I Yes, you are. And I want I wanted to sort of piggyback on that by asking you a question if you’re willing to share? If not, I’ll just answer for you. Would you be willing to tell our listeners because you’re the first team or realtor from Iowa that we’ve had on the show? And we have? I mean, based on our demographics, we have listeners in Iowa who are realtors, you are not the only listener? Do you mind sharing how you how you got booked on our show? Do you do you mind sharing that?

Lexi Belland 43:40
Um, so I, I started listening to podcast got really, you know, like, at the first of the year, everybody is on this kick that, you know, like, I make myself a goal every year and it’s always huge. And my mom and sisters are like that is way too much. Like, just be happy with this. And I’m like, No, we need to grow. Like, I want to get as big as we possibly can which within reason. But um, so you know, this year, I said, like, I really would like to see us hit 30 million. And if we don’t hit that, that’s fine, but I want to do everything in my power that I can to try and get there. So at the beginning of the year, I started listening to motivational podcasts because, you know, I, every day I want to wake up, you know, get that positive energy and then it just pushes me out the door and I’m ready to sell. And so, you know, I was looking up real estate podcasts and I found yours. And so the first one I listened to was Go Go and

D.J. Paris 44:37
Oh, yeah. And she’s also in a rural area in Michigan.

Lexi Belland 44:42
Yes. And hers was so good and it was like spot on it was everything that I you know, that I was thinking about and even though you know like she brought on a lot of stuff that I’ve thought about but like haven’t really put into action. And so when you know then I catch myself at Every listing appointment, I’m going to I’m just like, well, I got 20 minutes in the car, like, I’m not going to listen to the stereo. So I’m listening to these motivational podcasts. And when I go to the gym, I’m, you know, I’m on your podcast, because I’m getting more experience and hearing, you know what those agents have to say, and so anyone who is listening right now, I highly recommend that you do subscribe. And when you do have that drive time, or you’re at the gym, and instead of, you know, just listening to music, if you can grow your business while doing that, and educating yourself, you know, we all can learn more and more every single day. And obviously, that helps us all in our business. So that’s kind of why I got started on it. And then once I got started, I was like this, you know, I loved it. And so it was just it worked out perfectly.

D.J. Paris 45:50
Yeah, I mean, we got we got a message from from Alexi who said, I have to I need to be on the show, I want to be on the show, I am a perfect fit for your show. And it’s funny because we get messages daily. But this one was so passionate, and so sincere and and, and impressive to us. And I wanted to sort of let the audience peek behind the curtain a bit, because that’s how people get things done. They boldly take action. She goes, DJ, you have to have me on your show, I have a lot of great things to share. I like the show, I want to be on it. And we we just said fine. It was just an immediate Yes. And and I think that says a lot about who you are and how you build your business in general. And and we’re so honored to have you on the show. Because you’re not afraid to go out and ask for what you want. And I think that’s a huge thing that especially younger realtors have a hard time doing. And, you know, you came to us and said I want to be on the show. And we said we got to have this person on the show. She’s amazing. And we didn’t even know you. And so I just want to, to sort of credit you and honor you for having the courage not not I mean, our shows not not that big of a deal. But just to have that have that passion and the confidence to boldly take forward steps, right. And obviously that’s helped you build your business. And it’s the reason we’re talking today and I couldn’t be more thankful for you. Because not only you know, I don’t know if this will necessarily benefit you directly to being on our show, but it benefits our listeners so directly and so we really want to want to thank you and I want to note tell everyone out there who is in Could you mention the areas you do service and and you know the major communities because I want every one of our listeners who is a member of those communities to reach out to you if they’re looking for another realtor. Can you mind sharing that with our audience?

Lexi Belland 47:44
Yeah, so we cover pretty much all of Eastern Iowa we’re on to multiple listing services. So we’re part of the Iowa City area Association realtors. We’re part of the Cedar Rapids Association of Realtors. So you know we really cover a large area Cedar Rapids, Ely, Swisher, you know, Iowa City, Williamsburg, of course marinko All around we can cover so we you know, we are still growing our business. So if you have real estate needs, we definitely want to assist you and I know that we’ll give it our 100% effort.

D.J. Paris 48:18
And if you are looking to hire the Belen team, the best one of the best ways is to go to their website, which is the Belen team.com. We’ll be putting a link to that in the notes and do you mind sharing your email address and or phone in case any clients want to contact you directly?

Lexi Belland 48:34
Yeah, pretty simple. Our email address is just valentim@gmail.com My phone number is 319-530-1055 Feel free to check us out on Facebook, which is the Belen team with Lepik Kreger realtors and then we also have Instagram that we’re very active on which is also melon Diem. So we would love to have you follow us.

D.J. Paris 48:55
And we’re going to be posting links to all of those social media outlets as long as well as the face of sorry as the website as well. Lexi, thank you so much for being part of our show. Thank you for reaching out to us from from, you know, your area, we are so grateful that you found the show and are here providing value to our listeners. And I know this will be one of our most listened to episodes so I appreciate you. And we also want to tell everyone who’s listening if you’re a realtor, and you think there’s other realtors that you know that could benefit from listening to people like Lexi, please tell a friend all you have to do is send them to our website keeping it real pod.com Please also follow us on Facebook which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we post links to all of our episodes every single day we find an article online designed to help Realtors grow their business. We post that and then we also do video recordings of all of our episodes like the one you might be watching right now if you’re not listening, you’re probably watching it on our Facebook page. So we post those live in real time. So you can watch a little behind the scenes and see us actually speaking in real time. Again, Lexi Belland, thank you so much from the Belland group from the Valentim, rather, at Lepic Crager. Realtors, and in eastern Iowa, congratulations on all your success. It’s incredible what you’ve done. We have 46,000 realtors in Chicago and I don’t know that anyone as young as you has had the most amount of success even among the realtors here and there’s obviously a lot more of them. So you’re really crushing it. It’s really an inspiration to everyone who’s listening and and on behalf of the listeners, thank you very much.

Lexi Belland 50:35
Yeah, no, thank you so much for very grateful that we had the opportunity to come on and talk and thank you

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Marlene Rubenstein and Dena Fox of the Rubenstein Fox Team at Baird & Warner are a top 1% team in Chicago. In addition, they’re also top 1% in Chicago’s North Shore and also top 1% at their brokerage. In our episode this dynamic mother-daughter team leaders discuss how they built their business and continue to evolve to meet the needs of their clients covering the suburbs down to the city. They discuss how they pre-market and front-end load so that their properties can sell before hitting the MLS. Their energy and dedication are infectious and it’s no surprise why they’re at the very top in production and customer satisfaction.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Marlene Rubenstein can be reached at 847-565-6666 and rubensteinfoxteam@bairdwarner.com

Dena Fox can be reached at 847-565-6666 and dena.fox@bairdwarner.com

---

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the best social media training program on the planet. Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country. And her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. She’s so confident there’s a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose, keeping it real listeners receive a special discount, so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount, and now on with the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcasts made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and guide through the show. And if you’re new to the show, welcome aboard. If you are a returning listener, thanks for continuing to support our show. And a couple of quick announcements before we get started with the Rubenstein Fox team from Baird and Warner, it’s a great interview, you’re going to love it in just a moment. First, tell a friend, the best way you can support our podcast is to share it with another realtor that you think could benefit from hearing from people like the Rubinstein Fox team, and hearing about what top producers do to grow their business. So just share it with one other realtor that you know out there. Second, please join our Facebook page you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod what we do on there’s a couple of things. Every single day, we post an article that we find online dedicated to helping real estate agents grow their business. And of course, we post links to every one of our episodes. And now in addition to both of those things, we’ve added a third feature where you can watch our videos being recorded live. So we stream them live because it usually takes us a couple of weeks once we record them to actually produce them into the format you’re listening to now but you can actually watch a kind of a behind the scenes making of if you tune in to Facebook and you’ll get notified because when we go live, Facebook will notify you so you can watch it there. And that’s been really a lot of fun for our listeners. So follow us on Facebook once again that’s facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and as always, you can visit our website to stream every episode we’ve ever done, which is keeping it real pod.com Thank you for continuing to listen and now on to our interview with the Rubinstein Fox team.

Today on this show, we have Marlene Rubenstein and Dina Fox from Baird and Warner, Marlene and Deena are cofounders of the Rubenstein Fox team on Chicago’s North Shore and the city. This mother daughter do have a team of agents working with them giving this top producing team the ability to help buyers, sellers and renters from the city of Chicago all the way up through the North Shore and beyond. Whether it’s luxury real estate starter homes or renting your first apartment, Marlene and Deena are your go to for all things real estate. They are not only top 1% producers in the city of Chicago, they’re also top 1% producers in the Chicago suburbs, North Shore and specifically and also top 1% at the company they’re at which is bird and Warner’s they are by the way, one of our most requested guests since we started this show. We’re super honored to have them please visit their website which is Rubenstein Fox team dot Baird warner.com. I’ll post a link to that in the show notes. And welcome Marlene and Dina.

Marlene Rubenstein 4:02
Thank you.

D.J. Paris 4:04
Thank you guys, this was this is a really big honor for us to have you on the show. And Marlene, I would love to start with you and tell have you tell our audience, our listeners how you got into real estate.

Marlene Rubenstein 4:17
So my family, my father was a builder and in my family if you walk to work, and no one in my family really spoke English well my family every single aunts, uncles, cousins, mother and father, they were all Holocaust survivors. So my dad would build the condominiums. My mother had exquisite taste, she would decorate them and I would rent them for the most part. My dad did a lot of rentals and he built a lot of downtown Evanston. And just like any other child, I never listened to what my parents told me so I went into retail and opened and trained salespeople all across the country and then started a public relations and marketing company did the askers for many years and And I had these wonderful children that I would see, but I was always working. And so one day, I just thought, This is crazy, right? Like, I’m going to get my real estate license because I would walk every morning and I’d say see that house, it’s going to sell see that house. And it was just in my blood. So I chose Baird and Warner because I liked their commitment to community because at the time, I joined them at a public relations and marketing company where I married international retailers, because I liked retailers with a culture. And I married them with philanthropy. So I did a lot of philanthropy and Dina and I are very involved. I found that the women’s board the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, I’m very involved in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. So I liked that pulse. And I liked Berna Warner’s commitment to community. So I joined Baird and Warner, I joined their board of directors for their goodwill network, because that was interesting to me. And while I love real estate, you know, for me, I’m a bit of a workaholic. Right? So I hit the ground running, I love what I do, because that’s just my personality. And Deena is a twin. And so they often heard me talking about it when they turned 21 I’m like, you know, you gotta get your license and clean up. I actually was in New York one day and a client wanted to look at a house almost on the lake and Glencoe. And Dena had just gotten her license. I’m like, Dean, I need your help. And they loved her. And at the time, she sold my most expensive house.

D.J. Paris 6:30
2121

Dena Fox 6:33
It was a little bit after that, but not not far off. It was I was out of college. I think I’m okay. 22

D.J. Paris 6:40
Yeah, that is incredible. What a great story. And by the way, we should mention, Deena not only is a twin, Deena has twins herself. So Right.

Dena Fox 6:51
Twins and and a two year old, wild ride in my house.

D.J. Paris 6:57
So Tina, tell us about tell us about or I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off. Go ahead. No, no, it’s

Marlene Rubenstein 7:01
okay. So like, what I love about real estate is, I just love family, right. So the most important thing to me is family and our clients sort of become our family. But I adore my children, right, have a wonderful relationship with them. And they’re a whole lot smarter than me. And so, Dena will tell you a little bit about her background. And I kept saying to her, God would be my dream one day, but I’ll let you talk about your background. Yeah, so

Dena Fox 7:25
my background is in finance, I was in investment banking for a number of years out of college and, and then went into corporate development for discover and help them launch their home equity loan business. And like my mom said, I had gotten my license when I was in college. And was, was looking for a way to be more client facing again, at but also, you know, kind of round up my skill set, I felt like, as a business person, you need to have both finance skills and sales skills. And I felt like I had that finance and data skill set, but really had never learned how to sell or negotiate and my life. And anybody could tell you that that is the number one one of the number one skill sets that my mom has is that she you know, can sell a shirt off your back. So I figured nobody else, you know, better to learn from them than her. So I joined her in 2013. And and, you know, really followed her and did everything with her for the first six months to learn how she did what she does. And even though like she mentioned, mentioned, I had been I’ve helped her a little bit here and there beforehand. It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t an actual career for me at the time. And so nobody better to learn from than her. I mean, you really, you still need a mentor in this business. And once I had, you know, the those six months under my belt and felt a little more comfortable, I started working with my own clients and really hit the ground running from there.

D.J. Paris 9:07
What was it difficult for you to make that transition from the corporate world to real estate?

Dena Fox 9:14
Good question. Yeah, it wasn’t it was actually one of the things that she warned me about the most, for a number of different reasons, I would say one is that I’m a very a type personality and being in finance or working with a lot of like minded people, very educated. And, you know, I frankly, I’ll be honest with you, it was a bit of a pride thing for me coming into real estate, I felt like I was you know, well educated and there’s there’s not very high barriers to entry to get into real estate. And, and you know, it’s there. There’s a range of the type of realtors that are out there in terms of professionalism and how they conduct their business. And that was definitely a challenge for me in the beginning. Um, but I learned that it was a way for me to really differentiate myself by having the background that I did and having the skill set that I did, because it was, you know, quite unusual for somebody with my background, and frankly, at the time, somebody my age to be in the business, I mean, when I joined in 2013, it was not nearly as dominated by, you know, young millennials like me as it is now.

Marlene Rubenstein 10:25
It’s true. When you joined, I remember, an agent in our office commented that the average agent was 52 years old. So and that was, like eight years ago, right? What’s the statistic, you know, today, and in the beginning, right, people wanted my experience, but they wanted her know how, which is funny, because where she really thrives and where she’s extremely skilled is in, in the numbers, like she is a fact. And precise person, like, if you want, if you’re dealing with an analytic type person, that’s completely do not. And that’s something that’s interesting in this business is you need to know your client, right? You need to know, do they want to have a good time, because we love to have fun, because they’re gonna become a part of our family. For us, we say that. And we live with us. And that is, there’s only one thing that we care about, at the end of the day is the relationship. Because the relationship rules, right, like our clients become our family, we have people, I’ve always done a lot of RELO, because I love Chicago. So I love to show the architecture. And I like to take people on tours, and really show them our town is such a great city. And people that have moved here from all over the world, and they don’t have any family. So we become their family. And they join us for holidays. And, you know, our team members, you know, one of our team members is from Guatemala, and she’s like, I had so many invitations for Thanksgiving, I didn’t know where to go. That’s what we’re all about is relationships. Yeah. 100%.

D.J. Paris 11:58
Yeah. And what you guys have done is truly remarkable, and not just specializing in the North Shore, which is, which is where, you know, one of your offices is, but you also have have expanded all the way down to the South Loop. And for our listeners who aren’t located in Chicago, this is a wide area. And I really want to learn more about how you decided to create those specialties, how you brought on agents that could assist in those transactions.

Dena Fox 12:30
Yeah, so when, when I partnered with my mom, she actually was already doing that entire area, from the city to the suburbs. And so what we decided that I would run our city business, and she would run our North Shore business. And, and at the time, you know, we were doing a couple a couple million maybe in the city. And I want to say maybe when I joined, it was around 4 million or so and and now we do closer to 20 million in the city. And it’s been a huge growth area for us. And, and so the way that we do it, I mean, a lot of our clientele are first time homebuyers. And then first time sellers. And so either people that are selling and upgrading to a bigger place in the city, or they’re selling in the city, and we’re helping them buy in the suburbs, because there’s this constant bridge between the North Shore and the city. And so they’re very complementary markets took for both of us to work in. And we’re able to use our expertise in both those markets to better serve our clients. But it also helps because we work with renters too. So we really, we start our relationship with our clients when they’re renters. And then when they meet, you know, then maybe they meet a spouse, and they move into a bigger rental with another spouse. Or they Yeah, and they decide that they want to buy their next place. So it really starts, you know, on the at that age on the on the rental side and goes all the way up. But then the other side of it is we help people in the suburbs downsize and or to ranches, or condos in the suburbs, or it’s two condos in the city. So it’s this constant back and forth. And we found, especially with how the market has shifted in the last couple of years, it’s incredibly important to have the knowledge of both markets because for example, home sale contingencies have come up a lot again, and when we have our own sellers in the suburbs, and the majority of their buyers are coming from the city, we can advise them about you know, whether or not their condo in the city is priced at the right point or if it’s something that we think is actually going to sell and something that that they they should accept or not. So that’s been very, very beneficial to us is that we’re really able to help our clients at every stage of their life regardless of where they are going, because we we do cover these two complementary markets. And we represent the, you know, the two sort of extremes of our clientele. I’m a millennial, and she’s a baby boomer, and you know, millennials are huge drivers in the market right now.

D.J. Paris 15:18
Yeah. Wow, that is that’s so impressive. And I love the fact that you are also doing rentals, because that’s the start of the relationship for a lot of people is their first introduction to working with with a broker, and then hopefully, you know, they stay with you throughout their entire lifetime, assuming they stay in Chicago, and, and they, maybe they do that dual migration, you know, and they’re younger, and they maybe they’re ready to settle down and have children and they want to move to the suburbs for you know, for a lot of reasons, they move out there you guys help them and then when they possibly move back after the kids, you know, go off to college, or they retire. So he’s so smart. And can you talk about, you know, cuz you guys have two offices, which is really helpful as well. You have one here in Lincoln Park, you have one up in the north shore? How often? Are you guys traveling yourself? Do you do like to stay local? Or are you? Are you just out and about always? So how does it work?

Dena Fox 16:14
It’s a good question. So I hold my license in the Lincoln Park office along with two other agents on our team. And then my mom holds her license and our Highland Park office along with three other agents on our team. And so one of those agents does both the city and the suburbs. So it’s pretty split 5050. And then we have a full time licensed assistant, who, who lives in the city, but and goes back and forth between our offices, but as mostly, I would say in the Highland Park office, as well as a transaction coordinator who works more remotely. So we in terms of the back and forth, I do it almost every day, to be honest with you. I moved from the city to the suburbs, almost three years ago. And originally, my client base was probably 80 to 90% City clients. And now because I live up here, and a lot of my, my former clients and friends and colleagues are moving up here, my specific database of clients is about 5050. But I have a number of listings in the city and a number of buyers in the city as well. So I go back and forth almost every day, which is why that office is hugely beneficial is we, you know, we’re able to keep stuff there. We’ve got great support there. And, you know, it’s a place that we can, you know, go and take care of some work when we have a gap in between, in between any of our showings or client meetings.

Marlene Rubenstein 17:46
And it’s it’s a neighborhood, we know, like going back to the city, we could go back and forth three times a day. That’s nothing for us, right? Because we live our life in a car, we live our life on the phone. So what does it matter where we are right. And prior to real estate, I owned a store on Oak Street and founded Oak Street council. So I know that neighborhood and then I had a public relations and marketing company all along downtown. So again, we know that area really well. So for us driving back and forth was nothing. And one of our clients in the city relative to rentals was always the Four Seasons Hotel, we’ve just this natural relationship with them. And they bring recruits in and out. So rentals are part of that. And very smart. I think I want to just go back to something about rentals that Dina said is one of the biggest mistakes agents make is they get kind of arrogant about what they’ll do what they won’t know. Sure. And frankly, rentals are annuities, right. Like they renew every year and and as Dina said, you know, they need a partner, they need a spouse, they meet a friend, right and they trade up. And that trading up is part of real estate you trade off. And then you trade down and meet people climbing the ladder you meet people coming down and how you build those relationships really matter. But

Dena Fox 19:03
our rental clients have been a huge part of our referral niche, enormous. I mean, we just they refer us to other renters even sometimes they find something on their own because you know, we were so helpful to them. They still refer us other people. And we have agents, an agent on our team who just converted a rental into a $1.6 million buyer.

D.J. Paris 19:22
Right. So amazing. Yeah,

Dena Fox 19:24
I mean, it’s we just we’re not short sighted with that

Marlene Rubenstein 19:28
great point. I would say the same thing about RELO. The reload business has changed a lot. It’s more mouth to mouth, word to word. But reload business. I was the number one reload agent because I love showing Chicago like I love nothing more than getting somebody in the car and showing them the architecture of Chicago because it’s our city. It has a heartbeat. And again, this is more than buying a house right? It’s an introduction to our city, to our arts, to our culture to the theater. There’s just so much about it and there’s so much beauty to see plus I remember that as agents, we have to hold our ethics dearly. So we can’t, we can’t steer anybody into any neighborhood. Nor would we ever. We can’t talk about schools. So when we move from community to community, whether we’re doing an architecture tour, or we have a reload agent that doesn’t know if they want to live in Wilmette, Glencoe Highland Park or Lake Forest, you know, we’ll have lunch in one suburban coffee and another and then we’ll drive around, and we start to feel the pulse of what makes them comfortable. So there’s a reason for it as well as a joy. Right? You know, are they city people? Are they urban people or they suburban, you need to learn that personality, and we learn a lot in our car, we spend a lot of time with people,

D.J. Paris 20:45
ya know, wow, well said. And I just love the fact that you guys are willing to work in not only multiple geographic areas that you truly know, well, whereas a lot of brokers will take listings, in areas they don’t know, because they’re maybe too scared to say that they don’t know, or they don’t want to give up the client, even though they could earn a referral commission, you guys actually know these areas extremely well, which enables you to really separate yourself from a lot of other brokers out there, because you not only know the North Shore, you know, all the way through the city, and you have the experience and and also the systems in place. And I know Dean has been a really big help for you in developing processes and systems. And I would be curious to could you can you talk a little bit of Deena about the processes you brought into place when he started working with your mom?

Dena Fox 21:34
Yeah, absolutely. I’m, you know, I’m a very methodical vertical thinker. And so that’s how we sort of balanced each other out because she’s more of the creative outside the box type of person. Whereas I’m much more more in more in the box, and like a methodology to everything that we do. So I streamlined a couple of our processes one was working with with buyers. So what I did is I created a buyer consultation packet that we use with all of our first time buyers, and frankly, some of our repeat buyers just to have a reminder of how the process works. And what I do is anytime I you know, get referred or somehow get in touch with a new buyer, I sit down and meet with them in person, or if they’re on a state, we set up a separate phone call before we start seeing properties. And we walk through the entire process. So I have, I have an entire written out explanation of what happens from when you go under contract when you close, as well as all the categories of closing costs that they can expect, because I think there’s two very big surprises that I find with buyers. One is that they don’t realize that there’s closing costs, in addition, right down payment, and two, they don’t realize that they don’t have to put down 20%. Right. And so, you know, it’s our job to educate them on that. So, you know, it talks about what the different closing costs that they can expect the categories and general ideas that they know, there’s a whole flowchart that walks them through the process as well. I show them what, what a blank contract looks like. And we go page by page about what what the contract is, because what I have found is that in this day and age, we and we do it too, we use DocuSign everybody signs electronically, and they just tab right through, right, they don’t read, right, don’t read it. And you know, it’s our job to make sure that they know what they’re signing. And so even though we always offer to go through it with them a lot of the time they’re like, No, we’re good. So at least I know that I went through it with them on the front end. And in addition to that, just giving them tips on do’s and don’ts, if you’re getting a mortgage, you know, in terms of keeping your financial status, you know, status quo, and what type of documents they would need in a, you know, in order to get a pre approval, as well as we give them like a list of our preferred inspectors and we educate them on what a home warranty is. So I really made that whole whole packet that we use with our buyers, and it’s been really beneficial to, you know, to our buyers, as well as the agents on our team in order to educate their clients on what the process looks like. And so on the flip side for sellers, we have a really defined pre marketing strategy that we use that that we really, again wrote out and created a process for, you know, once I joined the team and basically what what we do is, you know, we learned that in, in the market of, you know, everybody having access to so much information and people using Zillow and Redfin. But consumers these days are able to see it all on their own. Anything that’s on the market, they can they can get that even go into the tax record sometimes on their own. They’re very savvy. And and so you know, and real estate has become a Poppy for a lot of consumers too. And and so what we what we do is we focus a lot on how to provide value through off market listings. And, and so we pre market our properties before they go on the market through a number of different channels, we’re part of the top agent network, both for the city and the suburbs, which you need to separate memberships for and again, is really beneficial to have both those memberships for our listings and for our buyers. And then we also use the private network of the MLS, we do reverse prospecting. We do coming soon signs on our listings as well, which we were one of the first to do this. I want to say maybe five plus years ago, when when it was not it was considered a taboo to be putting up a coming soon sign.

Marlene Rubenstein 25:52
I think we’re not afraid to be a trailblazer. She’s not kidding you about that. We work a lot of heat for that.

D.J. Paris 25:59
What Why was there a problem around coming soon signs? What was the stigma around that?

Marlene Rubenstein 26:04
Well, the biggest issue is that Realtors don’t like to not know about. Right. And while we respect that our goal is to sell the house and do the best job that we can for sellers. And frankly, where she’s going with this is you need a trial run. Right, right, because everybody thinks you’re you’re selling someone’s largest investment. So everybody thinks that their house is worth more than it is. And we frankly, will have that conversation. Like you will learn as you’ve already learned, she runs our business with her head because she’s so smart. And she’s so detailed and methodical. I run her business with my heart. Right, I have to listen, I have to feel it. But the reality is, is that a seller is very emotional.

Dena Fox 26:54
Right? So Escalon, right. So yeah, so through all of these different channels, it really gives us an opportunity to do a trial round on our listing. So sometimes it’ll just be for a couple days, sometimes it’ll be indefinite. But what it does is if there’s ever, you know, a difference in what we think the price should be, versus our clients will say, look, let’s try your test your your price point off market, we’ll test it. And let’s see what feedback we get. Let’s see what activity we get. And if we’re not able to get it under contract, and we’re not getting the anticipated activity and interest that we would like, then let’s make an adjustment when we go live on the market. And so it really gives us the opportunity to give the best first impression possible when we go live, whether it’s price, whether it’s condition, whether it’s figuring out accessibility, because those are really the three key items that drive the market these days. And and then you know, so it does, it allows us to make adjustments as needed. And it also allows them to get their place ready if need be. It also helps with a convenience factor. So we work with a lot of clients that have young kids. And once we activate that listing, we don’t want to have to say no to showings, it’s a lot easier to manage those showings when it’s not on the market. And it also gives it a certain exclusivity. So that was like coming back to what I was saying before. It’s a huge thing to be able to offer up to clients and buyers, that you know everything that’s on but you want to know what’s not on the market. Yeah, we’ve talked about, we equate it to like when you’re walking into a clothing store, and you see everything that’s out on the racks, but there’s a box by the cash register. So agents got in there starting to unwrap, like you want to know what’s in that box. It’s the same type of thing. And we do it a lot with our buyers as well. I mean, we between the two, I want to say on average, we sell probably six properties of our own listings off market every year and at least another six that we represent buyers on every year. So and it’s you know, it’s a big, it’s a big part of our business. But I put up a sign and one of our listings and Highland Park in the fall and within 15 minutes, I had people wanting to come see it. And we sold it literally immediately. And thing where you know, either we’ll be driving around or we’ll see something pop up or with our relationship with agents. We’ll hear about something off market and we’ll get

Marlene Rubenstein 29:20
right we went and saw something last night we wrote an offer on it. We’re the second person to walk through the door and they were just getting ready. Because the other thing is that we spend a lot of time getting our properties ready. Sometimes they gotta be painted, they’ve got to be organized. We bring in a stager, we work with a handful of vendors that, you know we’re trying to intrude with because if we have a vendor and somebody has a criticism about them, we won’t use them again because that’s really our representation. So we have this, this tool belt we call it of people that are just amazing and that we can rely on and that we trust because our clients trust us and that’s critical.

D.J. Paris 30:00
Yeah, wow, you just you guys just said a lot I actually want to, uh, one of our questions that I was going to read from our listeners has to do with staging. So good time to bring this up. So we had let me find the question, Dan, in New York, a listener in New York says, with luxury listings, what percentage of the Innit we really do this with all listings. So with your listings, what percentage of the time do you stage the home? And do you use a professional staging company? You mentioned you do? Or do you ever do it yourself?

Marlene Rubenstein 30:32
So we are big believers in you need to do what you do best. So, as a sideline, whenever we sell a house, we have somebody talk to a tax attorney, because that’s not our specialty. We’re the mortgage lender that we work with that, you know, people talk to them about financial terms. We stay out of what we’re not professionals. Okay, but we have a great group of professionals. To answer your question about staging, you only have one opportunity to make an impression. And it is critical that you use all those tools to get there because to be penny wise and pound foolish. It’s no longer the moment

sorry, is no longer than millennial pardon me the baby boomers point of view of let’s price our house up here. Because if you price your house near your there are three ways to price a house today you got to be at or under market, or in order to drive multiple offers multiple sales, but you got to be ready. So yes, we would only work with professional stager and we work with painters and stagers and organizers. Because different homes need different things we worked Yeah,

Dena Fox 31:46
we have relationships with a number of different stagers and I would say, the vast majority of our vacant listings, we will have staged because the problem is, is when it’s vacant, it ends up selling at a discount, because you see everything you don’t have heard to distract from the right, smart scuff marks or the Nicks. And so it’s it’s almost more of a distraction when it’s vacant, because the room sizes all look smaller. And it just the condition of it doesn’t look very good. And so it’s I mean, that’s really, really important element of, of selling a property is to make it look its best.

D.J. Paris 32:23
Yeah, that’s it. We’re in the Instagram world where everyone wants to see everything look perfect. And even our dinners and and especially the homes you walk into it used to used to be many, many years ago, there was some, you know, opinions that no leave the home, leave the rooms empty so people could visualize their stuff in there. And that is just not the way it is anymore. Now,

Marlene Rubenstein 32:46
no, but what’s interesting relative to visualizing is you have a lot of tools of the trade today, right? You can virtually stage a wall color, you could change colors, right? Correct. And that’s that’s very important. However, again, Virtual Staging isn’t real staging. So it’s different. It gives you an impression, because most of your buyers are looking online at night, but you didn’t multimedia, you need video, you need aerial pictures, you need videos, you’ve heard me photographs, you need floor plans, like I think that’s the other thing is we don’t open a door on a listing without spending nearly $1,000 At a minimum, because we spend so much money per listing, because either it’s right, either we’re the right team for you. And we got to make your house right, because there’s a partnership. So I think sometimes sellers are afraid to spend money. And agents are afraid to spend money. This is a business and we run it like a business. And we have very high overheads because people have very high expectations. And so we don’t want to disappoint them.

D.J. Paris 33:54
Yeah, I bet it drives you crazy when you see other listings out there, especially higher priced homes that don’t have some of those, like floor plans, or you know, video and you know, maybe they’ve there’s professional photos, but that might be it right? And it probably it’s amazing how often agents either aren’t willing to do that or aren’t willing to have those conversations with the sellers to tell them hey, we have we need to make a great first impression. And we need to do this right.

Dena Fox 34:24
Yeah, everybody does their business differently.

D.J. Paris 34:27
All right. Let’s go to a few other questions that is that I think are related to what we’re talking about. So okay, so here’s it. Here’s an interesting question. This is a guy named Gary and Indiana. Maybe from Gary, Indiana, I don’t know but his name is Gary and Indiana asks my average sales price. I don’t know where he is in Indiana, but he says my average sales price is $250,000. I feel stuck because I would like to service more luxury, the luxury market, but I’m not certain how to find those clients. How should I start any six Questions about breaking into more higher priced, maybe higher net worth clientele or higher priced properties.

Marlene Rubenstein 35:08
So it depends on your market area. Right. You know, like, for instance, we both grew up and lived in Glencoe, I lived in Glendale, I grew up as a child in Glencoe live there, I raised my family there, she lives there. Now, the average price of a home in Glencoe is about a million dollars, right. So our market drives us there. But yet, where we sell higher priced homes on the north shore in the city, so the business is three to $500 $1,000, right? So you can’t to Gary in Indiana, be authentic to who you are, if your marketplace average price point is $250 $250,000. Sorry, I’m missing a few zeros here. You know, in order to train up, you’ve got to be in the right market area. And units are equally as important as dollars, because you have to serve as your clients. But you have to know your market area.

Dena Fox 36:03
Well, another thing I would say is, you know, offer to do open houses for brokers with listings at a higher price point, if that’s where you want to try and build your business and learn about that price point. And try to get buyers in that price point. And then once you start doing a little bit in a higher price point, you can try farming in that price point. But you have to start at somewhere. I mean, I think one of the best ways to either enter or break through a certain, you know, enter the market or break through a certain market is one by having a mentor, which is something that’s this guy could do is he could you know try and and shadow somebody that does a higher price point and to by setting open houses.

D.J. Paris 36:45
We I was thank you both? Both great, great answers there. And I it’s funny, it’s kind of good timing. I was hosting a top producer panel yesterday, and somebody asked a very similar question was, hey, I’m new, I don’t really know what to do. And two of our three, the three panelists, all top 1% producers, like yourselves, said, Oh, you need to be doing open houses every weekend and just beg everyone in your office to do them and keep begging them until they finally let you do it. And it’s you know, you’ll learn number one, how to talk to people about real estate. So you get a lot of experience having those conversations, and you’ll also be able to see how it’s done. So it’s one of those things that even at our firm, we have hundreds and hundreds of agents in our firm, and I tell all of the new ones. Look, we have hundreds of agents, we have lots of listings, go approach our brokers and ask them if you can host open houses most of the time, they’ll probably say yes, maybe not always, but it’s certainly worth a shot. And if you have nothing else to do, what a great way to stay busy and probably generate some some buyer leads along the way to

Marlene Rubenstein 37:47
write but if you’re going to do an open house, have a strategy. Yes. Know your neighborhood, know the inventory surrounding your neighborhood, learn some of the neighbors learn something about the neighborhood. Do your homework.

D.J. Paris 38:00
Yes. Yeah, that’s that couldn’t be overstated. Because it’s actually pretty easy to get an open house, just ask somebody who’s got a nice listing. And you know, maybe they’ll let you but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should do the open house, if you don’t have value to bring to those buyers who are walking in the door. And you need to you need to know at least 10 to 20 things about the house and the area to be able to provide them any value. Otherwise, you might as well not be there. Right. Yeah, so thank you. Well, really well said. Okay, another question. Okay, this is a really good question. So this is Lisa in California asks, how often for luxury listings, do you as the listing agent, have to find the buyer? So she says I have a $3.5 million single family home listed, and it’s priced correctly, but we’re not getting any action? This is my first big listing any suggestions? What community somewhere in California? That’s all we know.

Marlene Rubenstein 38:59
Okay, so the higher the price of the home, the the narrower the audience. Sure. And the more money you’re going to spend to market it. It has a longer lead time. It has more days on market, and you gotta get creative. You really do. So again, it depends on the kind of house is it a lakefront house, you know, today, I would say people want experience. So we were called in on a ranch farm that was a $6 million ranch farm in Colorado and they couldn’t give it away. And they asked our opinion and the realtor was, did a video and spent a lot of money on it saying, this is the living room and this is the dining room and I said, stop. You need to show the horse farm you need to show horses running. You need to show golf you need to show lifestyle. Today people want to know remember when people buy a house, they’re buying a dream. So when you walk in, it’s as simple as setting the dining room table. But when you’re buying a three and a half million dollar house, what’s the lifestyle? How do you share To the lifestyle of both the home, the community and the neighborhood.

D.J. Paris 40:06
Yeah, and I have I have a thing to tack on to that. So that’s a really, really great way to start to start thinking about who, what the clients all that are going to be purchasing this home, what are they looking for? What how do you market to them? And then you could also do some searching assuming in California, the MLS allows you to do this, but see who what other brokers have brought buyers to properties like yours, and have closed deals and reach out to those brokers and say, Hey, I need some help here. Do you have any clients that want to come see this? How would you help me market the property, maybe even partner up? If you’re if you’re struggling?

Dena Fox 40:41
Right, I think you have to be very proactive. And there’s ways to look at what agents are showing what properties and you know, if they haven’t shown yours yet to call them and say, you know, I think this could work for your client? And would it be worthwhile since they viewed these other properties? You know, there’s, there’s so many different ways that you can, you can do it, but you have to be very proactive. And I agree the lifestyle and experience is such a huge part of luxury luxury listings. I mean, there’s a reason that people are are wanting to spend that.

D.J. Paris 41:14
I have a question, so So I have a question around rentals, because I know you guys also work with renters, which a lot of realtors don’t do or don’t really know about or maybe think aren’t worth their time. Obviously, we know that it is worth worth a broker’s time, because you’re living proof, of course. And the question being about, at what point do you have a conversation with a renter, assuming they haven’t bought a home in their in their history? Prior to you working with them? When do you start introducing the idea of, hey, you know, your lease is is going to, you know, this is a 12 month lease, I want to start talking to you about maybe buying a property at the end of this lease and at least go through the numbers and see if it makes sense. Like, do you guys have a process for that? And how do you begin those conversations?

Marlene Rubenstein 42:01
It’s a great question. It depends on the renter. Right? Right. And it depends on the stage in their life. So and it depends on what how much are they spending, right? Because once you’re spending over $2,000 a month, if you think about interest rates, if they’re 3%, or 4%, in a very simple equation, you can equate it to every $100,000 you borrow is $300, right? For 3%. Every $100,000 You borrow could be $400, at 4%. So if you use that equation, and you’re looking at a $300,000, home at 4%, that’s $1,200 a month, right? Plus how much you’re gonna put down? How much can you put down? And what are the assessments? And what are the taxes? On that note, we also have a process where we show properties, we do a spreadsheet for every showing we do so we can say whether it’s rental, or purchase, we can say, you know, it’s more than just what you spend, it’s all the other expenses that go with that. To answer your question. It depends on the person, like when you’re talking to somebody that’s just fresh out of college, right? They can’t think about buying, right? So you got to think about, you know, are you gonna get a roommate? How much do you want to spend, you know, there’s, we sold an investment property to somebody that was so creative, they wanted to have numbers they needed to meet, and they couldn’t rent a duplex for the number they wanted. So what they did is they rented the rooms, right? And instead of getting $1,800, they rent a four bedroom at 600 Each and $2,400. So again, it depends on, on who you’re working with. And I don’t want to keep moving this over. But when you get somebody out of college, you know, you got to get them in the right location, where are they working? Because they’re not going to stay at their first job. Right? And where does they want to be? Right. And then as they trade up, either with a partner with a roommate with a boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, whatever, you know, then there’s different categories. Right, what do you add to that? Yeah, I

Dena Fox 44:01
think it depends on what their sort of general timing is of how long they want to where they see themselves going, which they may or may not know, you know, and, and what they’re what their budgets are like, and you have to feel them out, we really do, I will say pride ourselves and not pressuring our clients. So it’s really getting a pulse for what they’re comfortable with and where they’re at in life and sort of planting seeds for them. of you know, they’ll this is something for you to consider, but we don’t, we’re their advocate and their ally. And so we don’t want them to ever feel like we’re pushing them to do something that that they don’t feel comfortable doing while at the same time. Making sure that we’re helping them think through everything that makes sense for them financially and where they’re at in life.

Marlene Rubenstein 44:50
That’s such a great point. That’s such a great point. Because don’t forget the one thing we’re not talking about is what’s their credit score, right. So today, I would say A, if you’re looking to rent, the best thing you can do is talk to a great lender, like we love Todd Schwartz and Mutual of Omaha, he’s become a part of our family, and he is such a great finance guy. And he may work with you on a loan or not alone. But he’ll help you to say, hey, you know, let me look at your credit report with you, maybe you need to pay off this bill. And you can pick up 35 points. So I think young people today don’t understand, maybe they’ve never had a credit card, so they don’t have any credit. Or maybe they’ve had a credit card and misused it, or maybe they have college debt. So they need to talk to a professional to make sure that their credit score gets higher, because what their rate will be in the mortgage world depends on what their credit score is. And yeah,

D.J. Paris 45:49
yeah, so you’re talking briefly about strategic partnerships, you talked about having, you know, partners in place, you know, stagers, you know, videographers, also, lenders, attorneys, title companies, all of the different ancillary services that you want your clients to come to you to say, Hey, this is what we’re looking for. And then you can say, Okay, we have somebody who’s a great appraiser, or inspector or, you know, fill in the blank. And how important are those strategic we just talked about? The Todd from Mutual of Omaha, how important are those strategic partnerships for your business?

Dena Fox 46:26
Oh, they’re huge. I mean, they’re part of our they’re part of our process. They’re part of our business and our relationships. I mean, the number of times that I you know, we’ve got this incredible handyman, who’s also an electrician that our clients absolutely love and become, you know, he becomes like part of their family, and then they refer them around. I mean, it’s so huge to have all of those tradesmen and vendors under your belt, so that any type of need that your clients ever have, you got a guide for them. And along those lines, actually one of the things that we do for our clients, we do a closing prep document for them, usually about one to two weeks prior to closing, whether it’s for a buyer or seller. And in that closing prep document. In addition to like closing details, letting them know, you know, about wiring funds, or how proceeds are going to be received is at the bottom, we include a list of all of our preferred tradesmen and vendors, for any of their type of needs that they have, whether it’s handyman, electrician, plumber, painter, etc. And then we also advise them on, here’s the type of home maintenance things that you need to be thinking about and doing, you know, regularly. And so with that, we’ll say, here’s an H vac servicer that we can recommend and make sure that you’re doing this twice a year. Here’s somebody who can clean your gutters. And these are, this is when you should be doing it. So really, you know, educating them and also providing them with the resources they need in order to keep up with that.

Marlene Rubenstein 48:01
One of our clients was teasing us because we got a guy, we got a guy for everything. They’re like, You should write a book, I got a guy. But I think the point he made is like with, with our handyman who we absolutely love. I mean, he was helping a woman one time, he ended up taking her to the hospital and sat with her and called me until I came to the hospital because her kids were out of town. Like we all work together in the same flavor and personality and sincerity. It’s who we are. Right? Like we really care about our clients, if they’re sick, I’m going to make them chicken soup and bring it over. Right? You know, if we’re in a inspection, we’re gonna bring food if we’re closing, it’s a party, right? Like, we we live our life, the way we run our real estate business. And everyone on our team amplifies that and lives that in breeds that and it’s, it’s just different. If you know what, it’s not what you do. It’s how you do it.

D.J. Paris 49:02
Right? I think you will. The main point I’ve heard from you guys, both throughout the course of this conversation is having a professional process that is really baked around demonstrating care and compassion, right. It’s how do we how do we bring our clients into our family and become part of each other’s family and you you do that through care? And it seems like through all your processes, they’re always based around this idea of demonstrating that that you guys care about them, whether it’s through information, whether it’s through fun, or concern if they’re struggling. I think that that probably endears that your clients to you forever, which of course will naturally increase your business. So obviously the you guys have been doing a great job of that over the years and actually want to ask, because it’s our final question, and I think it leads into a very interesting One. So I don’t have a first name, just the first initial are, are in Chicago asks, Are you looking to add brokers agents to your team? And if so, what are you looking for in a team member?

Dena Fox 50:13
It’s a great question. And yes, we are especially in for our study business, we’re looking to add some more agents, what we really look for is not only a fit with our team, but somebody who is hungry and motivated. Somebody who’s looking who’s honest, and they’re just, this is such a personal, confidential business. And we work with so many, a lot of the time, people that know each other, and we don’t want them to know that we’re working with them, you know, and we have to keep so much information private. So I would say, in addition to that, somebody who’s really looking for this, either they’re new to the business, or they’re, they’re been in the business for a bit, but it’s their career, that it’s not just something that they’re doing on the side. And somebody who is a team player, you know, that’s incredibly important. We’re all here to support each other, we do a lot of training with the agents when they join our team and provide them with a lot of support and resources. And we want to make sure that, you know, they’re part of the team and that they’re supporting the team as well.

Marlene Rubenstein 51:25
And trustworthy personality matters, right? Like, I had somebody call me yesterday who had worked with us in the past, and we had some issues with, I’ll call it Forgive the expression chick shit, right. And we’re a family that takes care of each other. So if you’re not going to be that kind of personality, we’re not the right team for you, right, because we, we don’t accept in our clients to be talked to in a way that is condescending, and we don’t talk about each other. So that is paramount within how we live, because we can’t service you best, unless we service you together. Because when you get one of us, you get all of us, right? Like, while she does the city and I do the suburbs, Our clients move, and they want us so it doesn’t matter where we are. And, you know, in the height of the season right now, we’re so busy, we have to multiply ourselves, sometimes you’re gonna get one of us, but you might get it you know, someone else on our team, because the answer to edit question you’re gonna ask is yes. Now, how do we make it happen? Right? So yes, we need more team members. Yes, we’re looking for personality and a professionalism, and a trust and sincerity. And yes, we’re also looking for somebody that’s dynamic and terrific in marketing and social media, because that’s a growing part of our business. So we have a lot of needs as our business grows. But we need somebody that understands that you got to walk before you run, because it doesn’t happen instantly. You have to learn it. And to that point, we have mentors. There’s what we love about Bearden Warner is, there’s a mentor in our businesses. Thanks, Dean Russo. He was our first competitor. I love Dean, right? Dean was our mentor and building a team and Dean brought us into the Tom Ferry organization. And, you know, we work with the marketing coach Jason Fantana, and Tom Ferry, and they’re very invested in our business, and they make us better at what we do. And, and they keep us on track. And we have a lot of respect for them. And, and want to really shout out to them because we become better because of the people that care about us. So we can care about them.

D.J. Paris 53:33
Yeah, yeah. So Oh, and just before I forget, if there are if we have listeners that think they would be a fit based on all of the criteria you just laid out about what you’re looking for that will help you build, build the team and also build that that brokers business and and be part of your family, what’s the best way they should be reaching out to you to

Dena Fox 53:55
know they should so reach out directly to me, actually, as I sort of am the first step and screening people and meeting with people. So they would they can either text me or call me at 847-899-4666 or they can email me at Dina dot Fox at Barrett warner.com.

D.J. Paris 54:17
Wonderful. And one last question around coaching since Marlene, you just brought this up, and I think it’s such an important one. How important is coaching and would you recommend to to most agents, if not all agents that they should get themselves a real estate coach you mentioned you were with work with the Tom Ferry organization? Obviously they’re one of the big coaching firms. How important is coaching been for you guys?

Dena Fox 54:43
I think it’s crucial. It’s it’s exactly what I was talking about in the beginning that you always need a mentor regardless of what stage of your career you’re in. And so whether you’re new and you’re being mentored by another agent or you’ve been in the business for a while and you know we You, we have not only a real estate coach, we have a business coach as well. So you, you always need somebody to keep you on your toes and fresh your ideas and be critiquing you, because nobody does this perfectly. And there’s always ways to improve. And there’s always ways that you can keep learning. And so I think it’s important for every agent to have somebody in their life like that I

Marlene Rubenstein 55:23
agree. And even we have the most amazing assistant, Jen. And Jen has a resource that she can lean on as well. And Dina is really the one that was behind coaching. She was competitive ice skater, and she knew the value of coaching and her competitive ice skating career. So I would have to tip my hat to her because I don’t listen as well as she does. So I would say coaching has been critical for both of us.

D.J. Paris 55:48
Yeah, well, they every professional athlete or competitive ice skater has a coach, right. So if the top athletes in the world for all across all sports, have coaches, probably good idea for the rest of us to write.

Dena Fox 56:01
And frankly, that’s part of our job is to coach people, right? I mean, that’s what we’re doing, regardless of who we’re working with is we’re coaching and advising them, so we have

Marlene Rubenstein 56:11
to be coached as well. And we go to four conferences, at least to hear, because we got to stay ahead of the trends. There’s so much to read and to listen to, because if the housing market is down, or or the Coronavirus is dropping the stock market 800 to 1000 points, you know, this all or an election year, It all affects our business. And we’re not current with current events and what’s happening in the world or that the average buyer today is 35 years old, you need to know this. Because you need to change your presentation and change your if you don’t know trends, you can’t live and work to trends.

D.J. Paris 56:51
Yeah, that’s absolutely right, the more you know, and the more you invest in in your business by doing things like getting coaching and attending conferences and staying up on knowing when interest rates drop, and then maybe even reaching out to past clients saying, hey, you need to talk to your lender, because rates just dropped, it might be a good time to refi. And if you don’t have a lender talk to talk to my guy Mutual of Omaha, because he’s excellent. You get to be to bring this knowledge to clients. And I know you guys do that, and you do it obviously very, very well. So congratulations on on all your continued success and and into the future. And again, if there are any brokers that are listening that would like to join a team, like Marlene and denas, please reach out to Dina directly, we’ll put your contact information also in the show notes, you’ll probably get a lot of responses. So I apologize for that in advance. But hopefully you guys can now can find a gym or two in there to help grow even further.

Marlene Rubenstein 57:51
And DJ, we want to say thank you to you, right, because it was the same thing like when Chicago agent nominated us as the best team in Chicago. And we were like, really us and then when we wanted it was, you know, we really never marketed it because we were so flattered. And we really want to acknowledge, you know, Chicago agent magazine, DJ and the people to call us up like you and all of your listeners that say, how do you do it, you know, we’re very accessible, as Dina said, you know, texture at 847-899-4666 Text me at 847-565-6666. Six is a great number for us. But we’re very accessible by text. And we we want to make a difference in people’s lives. And we can’t do that without people like you. So to you and to your listeners, it really means a lot to us. We just want to say thank you

Dena Fox 58:47
for having us. And we’re always here for agents to, to meet with and to ask questions and just provide some advice.

D.J. Paris 58:56
On behalf of the listeners, we think you because you’re sharing so much good information that they can actually take some of what you said and apply it to their business. And I always think that what’s the expression that a rising tide raises all ships, right. So this idea of of bringing these, this information to the market so that other realtors can learn from from your successes is really we’re so honored that you took the time and I know how busy the both of you are. Obviously with all the accolades and business you’re currently doing. We know it’s not easy for you to find time to do this. So thank you on behalf of the listeners. And and then on behalf of of course Marlene and Dina as Marlene just entered Dino just said thank you for listening. We really appreciate it. If everyone listening just tells one other realtor about this podcast, we’ll double our listenership and what that enables us to do is do more episodes and get more sponsors and service more people. So please everyone, tell a friend also follow us on Facebook. It’s facebook.com forward slash keeping a real pot every single day we post an article that we find online, written specifically To help Realtors grow their business. And of course, we post all of our episodes here. Also visit The Rubenstein, Fox team at Rubinstein, Fox team, dot Baird warner.com. And all their contact information is there, follow them as well on Facebook, Instagram everywhere, you can get to right from their website. And again, if you’re interested in joining their team, reach out to Dina and she’ll let you know if it’s a good match. But guys, thank you so much. And we really appreciate and this is a real honor for us. It’s been something we’ve wanted to have you on the show for a couple of years now. So we’re so grateful that you were able to find the time so thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Chih-Hao Yang from Prospect Equities realizes that buyers were once sellers. He wisely has built up a rental empire, closing over 80 per year, and specializing in Chicago’s luxury apartment market. In this conversation, Chih-Hao discusses the importance of niche marketing, social media and customer service. His professionalism and energy has secured him as one of Chicago’s most talked about new real estate agents.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Chih-Hao Yang can be reached at 217-819-8009 and chihhao.d.yang@gmail.com

---

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
Today’s episode of Keeping it real podcast is brought to you by nest egg. Looking to add value to your investor clients recommend nest egg a Chicago based app that is everything your clients need to manage their rentals in only minutes a month. Nest Egg is the only app that gets things done at the rental including on demand maintenance, and services like tenant placement and snow removal. Also nest egg is free to use which makes your clients investments 20 to 30% more profitable. Join nest egg today by downloading the app or by visiting mistake dot rent. That’s nest egg dot rent, use promo code keeping it real to get your first hour of maintenance for free. And now on to the show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast most listened to podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, welcome to the show. Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming back. And as always, thank you for telling a friend think of one other real estate professional that could benefit from hearing from top producers and send them a link to our show. We do two to three episodes a week just for you guys, so you can learn from top producers and today is no exception. We have Chih Hao Yang from prospect equities coming up in just a moment. And this particular episode should be a little different because she how Yun does over 80 rentals a year which is huge number and I was just moderating a panel of top producers for the Chicago Association of Realtors last week, two of the three panelists who are top 1% producers mentioned doing rentals and so a lot of brokers don’t do them and they’re kind of curious and how it works. And our interview here is going to talk a lot about that. So I think you’ll get a ton of value there. As always please follow us on Facebook you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Now the reason to follow us is we post an article every single day that we find online dedicated to helping you grow your business and of course we post links to all the episodes we do like this one, but also we record our interviews live on Facebook so if you can’t wait the couple of weeks it takes us to produce an episode you can watch it can almost like kind of like a behind the scenes and you can watch us live and if you follow us on Facebook Facebook will notify you in real time as we’re doing one of our live interviews and you can also chime in with questions along the way too. So again, follow us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our interview with top 1% Producer chi how Yang?

Okay, today on the show, we have Xiao Yang from prospect equities. GL Yang is bilingual, both speaking both Mandarin and English. He is a broker who specializes in Illinois real estate rentals and sales. He’s been living in Illinois since 2003. And to see the continuous growth of the city and knows every insight a renter or buyer needs to know he has worked with investors and buyers from from the from here locally as well as overseas. He has closed hundreds of deals and receives five star reviews from his clients. He helps clients purchase their dream home and also sell their investments. Besides sales. She also helps international students look for rental apartments throughout the city of Chicago. He’s received tremendous amount of positive feedback from his clients in the rental and sales services. She was part of a part of our future top producers. A series that we’re doing on the show and what caught our eye about him is that every year in addition to all the sales he does, he closes over 80 rentals, which is an insanely high number and it’s super amazing. We’re We’re so honored to have him on the show. It’s an incredible amount of production as we as we enter the rental season. A great reminder that rentals are how a lot of realtors leave them on the table. So we’re going to talk about that today. By the way, please visit Hsiao at realtor ca hy.com That’s realtor C H y.com. Welcome to the show to

Chih-Hao Yang 4:36
thank you so much for this wonderful introduction.

D.J. Paris 4:40
Well we’re super honored to have you and I know you and I had met previously and I was so impressed by you know your business plan and what what you’re doing with your own practice over at Prospect equities with respect to how you’re building your business and the niche you found. I immediately contacted our casting director I said we need to build Got a show. So thank you for being available so quickly. And we’re honored to have you. So I would like to jump right in. I know you you are, you know, you’re not necessarily brand new to the industry, but but you’re still kind of a newcomer, and you’re having all this great success. Can you tell us about how you got into real estate?

Chih-Hao Yang 5:20
Yeah. So then I actually got a major in advertising, and minors in Business and chemistry in college. So when I finished school in 2010, I began working for a commercial real estate developer, doing marketing for them. That’s my initial contacting real estate. So I worked for them for about six or seven years. And then a lot of our clients, then were oversea investor, they were coming to America doing investment, you know, commercial deals. And that’s when I realized, wow, I am in love with real estate. So then two years ago, May 2018, that’s when I went back to when to get my broker license. And then since then, you know, I realized that was the right decision, because I love what I do. And I’m doing what I love. And I think that’s important, like people need to do. Well, they’re into if they’re doing something they, you know, just getting, like getting through today. No, that’s not I, you know, that’s not what I want to do.

D.J. Paris 6:23
Sure, it will tell tell us a little bit about you know, you started you had no clients like a lot of realtors when they get started. Tell us how did you develop your clientele? How did you you know, how did you start prospecting and finding people to work

Chih-Hao Yang 6:37
with, you’re just like everyone else. When I started, I’ve no client. So I started with my background in advertising marketing, I started building my own website. And I have my you know, Facebook, or Instagram, just like everyone else, everyone has the same thing. But to make a difference, I started to produce videos, I do videos to teach people how to buy a condo, a twosie. Like, if you want to buy a condo, watch my videos in five minutes, I will tell you everything that you need to know. I make videos to teach people how to rent apartment, if you’re moving to Chicago, you know, people think that they have to pay a broker fee to rent an apartment, I say no, watch my video, I’m going to teach you how to rent apartment, a twosie. So then I started doing that. And then I you know, every, every chance that I know, every time I meet somebody, I tell them what I do like an Uber share, right? You know, there’s one time I remember there was a lady that was going to her listing appointment. And then I said, hey, oh, just my business car. Contact me if you don’t like the broker that you’re meeting, or you know, when I go out to the bar, you know, people go out and drinks and then I always make sure hey, how are you? My name is G, what do you do? And they will tell me what to do as a hey, I’m a broker. So then I always make sure I asked for their Instagram. Because I they asked me I add them so they know what I’m doing. They might not need me now, but they are gonna need me in six months and eight months and 12 months. And that was my company prospect equities. We sponsor some colleges in Chicago. So we go to their events. And, you know, I builder and meet the students or meet the clients that my knee housing in six months or 12 months, so I’m just planting the seeds and then you know, hoping they will come to me later and it works.

D.J. Paris 8:31
Yeah, it does. It sounds like your background in marketing has really helped you to realize that and I think for most Realtors that’s the hardest part of the job right? Is is sourcing clients. And even as its you talked about, you know, in a share ride on an Uber, passing your card out. It’s it’s like, you know, I took an Uber twice yesterday. Yeah, if never, I don’t I don’t practice real estate. But if I did, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to hand my card even to the driver and say, Hey, by the way, I don’t know you know what your living situation is, but whenever you need to move, are you ever thinking about buying or renting or selling? I would love to work with I did

Chih-Hao Yang 9:09
it one time the guy told me that he was looking for apartment, I always ask them Oh, where in the city do you live? And they will tell me here they are. If they live in a city near me, oh, and then you know, they will usually they will have somebody you do and I would tell them what I do. And then that’s where you know, hey, here’s my car. If you need it in the future, call me or email me. And that works out pretty well. Just everywhere. It’s not just Uber riders everywhere I go. If there’s a chance I don’t want to bother that though. I don’t want to go into a deep conversation. That’s when people are turned off about show thank but you have to let them know you’re there for them whenever they need it.

D.J. Paris 9:41
You also talked about making instructional videos on YouTube and I think that’s one part of marketing that Realtors often don’t realize how powerful it is is, you know somebody, for example, moving to Chicago, especially from overseas was even just from another state They’re not going to know the neighborhoods unless they just, you know, happen to have experience in Chicago, they likely aren’t going to know where to where to move, what the best buildings are, where to move to match their lifestyle, and in having videos, obviously, from an SEO perspective might find how people find your videos on their own via YouTube, and then might reach out to you. But How successful have those videos been? Not as far as number of views? Because that’s not relevant to me. But like, I imagine they’re incredibly helpful to your clients.

Chih-Hao Yang 10:32
I think so because a lot of the times I asked people well, why did you you know, after I close it sales or after a rented apartment, I always ask, Why do you choose me? Where did you find me? So they will tell me Oh, I found you from Instagram, I found you from referral. And I so you, your video talking about? Home Inspection because I even interview like, attorney, I interview Home Inspector, I interview lenders, so the videos are out there for my clients to watch. So they say, Oh, I saw this videos, and I saw your great, that’s why I chose you. So I think they’re pretty useful. And then you actually touch a topic about you know, me moving here from I actually moved from Taipei to Chicago in 2003. So I’ve been living here for 17 years, a lot of my clients are first time homebuyers or first time renting an apartment here. So I know how difficult it is for them. Because I went through all this, I came here as a student, and I have this document called eight one A and I was trying to rent apartment nobody knows what I 20 is 20 is actually a document that’s approved by the USCIS department, homeland Department of Homeland Security. So there’s a section where it says how much money is being sponsored by the family per year. So I told you it was 80,000 or 100,000. So that’s more than enough to rent apartment. But a lot of the landlords don’t understand how to read this document. And I experienced that firsthand because I was a student. So now I’m helping all those students, you know, renting an apartment in a city and bringing them to different high rises, you know, management, and then it educate those buildings, hey, this is a 20. This is their proof of income. You know, they’re being paid, like the parents are supporting the, you know, the school, they’re giving them money. So don’t worry, this is even approved by the USCIS. So you guys shouldn’t be worried about those students not paying rent. So yeah, and I make sure my clients know, I’m on their side, because I went through this. So I think my clients find comfort, knowing that I did it, and I’m helping them. So they trust me, to help them.

D.J. Paris 12:48
Yeah, you know, and I want to circle back to the i 20. Because for a lot of our listeners, probably most of our listeners are gonna I don’t know what that is. So, so to just explained it, but just to make sure it’s really clear, this is a document that is endorsed by the Department of Homeland Security, basically, they have vetted this particular individual, and they’re able to have a document that says, here’s the amount of money that is that is going to be spent by the family of this individual who is maybe a student, you know, going to school here, and then you then present that document in lieu of a social security number. Gotcha. And to a prospective landlord, or, you know, maybe even if they’re purchasing a property, how, how much of the time do you have to educate the landlords on what this document is? How it works, how to interpret it.

Chih-Hao Yang 13:40
So like, you know, we know, for renting, there are two sides of renting. You can go on MLS and individual owners, individual owners, and those are usually the ones you know, they don’t know why 20 years, right. And they even if you tell them, what, 20 years, they might not accept it because they’re just this fear, you know, the tenants might not pay rent, sure, so that instead of bringing those clients to the MLS listings, I bring them to the high rises in the loop st reveal River North South Loop where you know, the scores are so then those heights, I bring the my clients to those buildings, they know four or five, six, and they pick one and usually those buildings, they know what’s going on, they actually have a lot of those students already. So want to remind, you know, auto brokers, when you get a client’s that’s international students with i 20. You have choices, you don’t have to just bring into the MLS listing, bring them to high rises. And then another thing is the high rises pay more. That’s true, they pay 100% of one month’s rent or 125 from this 150 If you put them to the MLS you get 50% Right. So then why not? If you really think about If you you know, it really depends, but then I always it’s good for us, but it’s also good for the clients. I always, you know, I want my clients to have an easy process when they’re applying for it, you know, apart I don’t want to apply for this round got rejected got applied today and get rejected, they should have a fair, you know, chances, you know getting apartment.

D.J. Paris 15:22
Yeah, and you just said a lot. I want to unpack that a little bit because there’s a lot of our listeners who are like, What do you mean there are rentals off the MLS, so in Chicago and, and in many other markets as well. Obviously, individual owners or sometimes management companies will list their properties on the MLS. There’s also what we would call third party management firms that don’t list their properties on the MLS, but still work with brokers like chi, how to get their properties rented. And because those properties aren’t, or those units aren’t on the MLS, there’s no listing agent, which means as she has said, there’s no one to split the commission with and in Chicago, including the suburbs, most of these management companies pay one month’s rent. So all of a sudden, you know, depending on whatever your split is, with your current firm, you might be getting, you know, I will you will be getting much more money, because obviously, there’s no one to split it with. And you typically get one month’s rent, as she has said, sometimes there’s specials where it’s 150% of one month’s rent. So if you’re saying, Well, how do I get access to these buildings? What I would do for our listeners is talk to your managing broker and say, Hey, I understand there’s all these management companies that will work with brokers on how do we get in contact? Can you help me get their inventory, because the challenge, of course, with these management companies is because they’re not on the MLS, you have to keep up to date with their inventory. And so a lot of times, those are 10, typically called Hot sheets. So you ask those management companies, either directly or maybe your managing broker can make the introduction and say, Hey, can we get on your distribution list? So every time you send out updates about what’s available, can you email us and then there’s, there’s all sorts of software solutions, where you can put that information into into but even if you’re just getting the emails, that’ll help you know what’s available. And I imagine you get a lot of those, those emails, I

Chih-Hao Yang 17:10
get 3040 emails every day for hot sheets. And I actually go through one by one because I look at it and then memorize I remember because in case somebody in two days later asked me, Hey, you know, I want to get a two bedroom, two bath, my budget $3,000. And I know where to bring that? Because the hash is in my head. And I know what to bring in. What

D.J. Paris 17:31
percentage of brokers do you think have that level of knowledge? Obviously, you know, you’re focused on your business, but it has to be a small percentage of brokers who even really, really try to, you know, explore that market.

Chih-Hao Yang 17:45
I have a couple brokers friends, they only do MLS, you know, showings? And I say, hey, like, think about, you know, the other way? Why are you You know, when you get $3,000 clients, if you bring in two or 3000 from MLS, you get 50 to 1500 or lower. But if you come to that one is three, like, it’s 3000 or more, that’s, it’s a big difference. And we are putting the same amount of work into right in our job, why not getting more, and that is it’s also for the clients benefit. So we’re now you know, we want to make sure the client likes the place, of course, so that Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t don’t even think about the third party management as an option. And I always tell people, I love to tell people, hey, that’s Option two, don’t forget, it’s not just MLS.

D.J. Paris 18:37
Yeah, it’s nice to know that and and I, you know, I know, like, at the firm, I work out, we have a similar database of third party management. And sometimes there’s 5000 listings in there. And I think, Boy, if I was a practicing broker, and I only use the MLS, which might only have 5000 rentals in it anyway, now, I’ve effectively just doubled the amount of not only the amount of money I might get on the transaction, but double the number of possibilities for my client, which ultimately is the best part is you get to show your client more stuff, and something that might meet their needs. Oh, and by the way, you might you’re gonna get paid better on it if they decide to choose that property.

Chih-Hao Yang 19:15
Yeah, I actually always there actually, like four or five big third party management in Chicago, and you can I email them directly, I say, hey, please send me you know, a hot sheet every day, which they do. So then that’s how I get, you know, update it all the time and know what’s going on. Who’s doing promotion here, you know, sometimes they give promotion to clients that we bring, they will say, Hey, if you bring your clients to our building, they get one month off, and I tell my clients, hey, let’s go to this building. You get one month or two months off, you get the applikation fee waive admin fee waived. Why not as good. MLS would never waive your read. No, never waive your applikation admin fee. So when I get this benefit, I tell my clients Hey, let’s go see this building. They’re giving two months off for You well, you signed a 12 month lease, why not two months off? So yeah.

D.J. Paris 20:04
So my my girlfriend, I think I might have shared this with you off offline. But my girlfriend is in the leasing office over at catalyst, which is down at on display ads. And I asked her when I first started dating her, I said, Be honest with me. I said, Do you like working with brokers who bring in their clients? Because she’s trying to rent properties as well? And I said, or do you? Would you rather not work with brokers like between you and me? What do you think? And she goes, I love working with brokers. And she says, Well, let me she was actually let me let me adjust that statement. She goes, I like working with really good brokers. Because she goes, they make my job easier. And they bring in qualified candidates. And we’re both working together to close this transaction. So even though a lot of these buildings that you work with and represent have their own internal staff trying to rent, they are they are very, most of them are very broker friendly, and some of them aren’t. And some of them won’t work with brokers, but the majority of them will, and they’re thrilled to have you come in and learn the property and be able to bring them qualified candidates.

Chih-Hao Yang 21:04
Very true. I actually build you know, a personal relationship with a few brokers on size for the for the buildings, you know, I just need to submit a text I say, Hey, are you free tomorrow? Can I bring my clients? And they will say yes, even on the off day, there’s a broker, there’s an on site leasing agent, they would show me on her days off, because she knows, when I bring my clients a, they’re going to sign it or they they’re going to consider because I already pre approved my clients. I asked them, Hey, can you show me your i 20? I want to make sure you know, their approval in Cali if they’re if they’re working, I say, hey, how much is your salary per per month, and I do the math divided by three, note that three times rent qualification. I already talked to my clients about those requirements. So I know where to bring them.

D.J. Paris 21:56
Yeah, it’s such a smart. Such a smart idea. I was moderating I was telling you this offline, but I’ll mention it to our our listeners I was I was moderating a panel of top producers for the YPN in Chicago, for the Chicago Association Realtors yesterday, there were three top producers. And they asked them, one of the questions from the audience was, how are you adjusting to the changes in the real estate market? You know, basically, what are you seeing as trends and two of the three, what one person only does sales, and that’s all she does. And the other two people said, oh, my gosh, rentals are where it’s at. And they said, It’s great because most brokers really don’t like doing rentals, or they have it in their mind that they don’t think they should be doing rentals. And both of them said it’s this, it’s really not a smart plan. Because one of the gentlemen does 100 rentals a year. And a really a great guy named Will from Fulton grace. And he goes, he goes, I love it because most brokers won’t touch rentals. He says I love it. Because not only am I helping that person, obviously, and he loves helping people. But he said, I’m starting the relationship. And those people at some point down the road, if they stay in Chicago will probably become a buyer at some point. And he goes, my job is to take such good care of them today that maybe in two years, three years, five years, when they decide to purchase, they say hey, well I’m finally ready to buy and or even along the way, maybe they want to move to another apartment, right? And now all of a sudden, I can help he can help them again. And also, you know, they’ll refer possibly their friends as well. So I really admire your tenacity. And you have a team now and I want to talk about how impressive this is. Because you have built up a team fairly quickly in this business that is particularly unusual. Usually brokers don’t build teams, until they’re many, many, many years into the business. But you saw the opportunity and started doing that. Now can you talk a little bit about your team and yeah, guys are doing

Chih-Hao Yang 24:01
Yeah, so my managing broker actually talk to me and say, Hey, how you have so many clients, and why don’t you and there’s people that are coming into our brokerage and then I actually three now that are under my teams, and then you know what, I’m busy, I cannot do to showings, you know, I give it to my team members, they would go do the showings and then when they’re busy, I would take on, you know, their clients to the showing, I think it works great. And then I want to make sure that my clients are because a lot of I’m just one person, I cannot be at three places, you know, at a given time. So it’s always good to have a team member then shares my my goal I want people to I don’t want to just take everyone I want to I want that my team members to have the same goal and so desire to be successful.

D.J. Paris 24:53
Yeah, and I have a question. So how what is the typical lead time from the moment you start working with renter, okay, the time when they typically make a decision is is it to several weeks? Is it a few days? Is it a month? What is typically the time?

Chih-Hao Yang 25:11
Well, I get a lot of people they’re looking didn’t right time to talk to me, it would be 45 days, 60 days before their lease is up, because there’s when availability as is there for everyone to see. So if they talk to me six months, early, I was saying, talk to me later, like, you know, I will talk to them and say, Hey, what’s your budget? What’s your location? Like? Where’s your location that you want to live? A? I asked him a question. I said, but there’s nothing for us to see. Yeah, I would put it on my calendar to make sure I go back to the person in four months. And we’ll revisit and then I will book the showings. But you know, if they talk to me 45 days before their leases up, I can quickly I talked to them I sent you know, all the questions location and budget and your phone number email, like I say, hey, you know, let me schedule you a showing this weekend. And then, you know, on weekends, I was scheduled 1234565, or six places, and then we go see, usually they make a decision right away, I have clients that would, you know, they see 123 on the force showing there’s a Oh, why don’t need to see the other two, I want this one, and then we’ll just apply and do it right away. And that happens all the time. So then, you know, for with attendance or renter, they can be it’s not buying a house. So they can make their decision pretty quickly. If everything that they tell me fits, you know, the apartment fits the requirements. So it’s very important to listen to what the tenants well, they said we weren’t in Unit laundry. So don’t be bring them to places that have no in Unit laundry, it’d be wasting my time, their time. But then, you know, some people will say, Hey, I walked in Unit laundry, but my budget is 1500. But I will tell them, hey, if you want a unit laundry, 1500 you cannot find a studio, if you are in unit, it has to be maybe 17 or 18, in the area that you mentioned. So that I will tell them right away. And so they know. I don’t want to be you know, taking them to places with laundry. And then is it Oh, is it because of my budget? So I tell them upfront is that hey, if you want a dishwasher, you want this your hardwood floor? Maybe you have to up your budget, otherwise, we don’t have anything to see. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 27:21
think it’s also so important. And you obviously have done this, which is you know, your inventory, you know, these buildings inside and out? How did you first get acclimated to these buildings? Where did you go visit them on your own and say, I want to learn what you guys offer? And tell us about how you did that? Good question.

Chih-Hao Yang 27:41
So my managing broker when we started, he was coaching us. Our assignment for the first 12 days was to visit 10 properties in your area. So I pick Streeterville. So I picked 10 high rises, as soon reveal, I call them I say, Hey, can I do a broker tour? Just me. So I went outside, take photos and take videos, I talked to the leasing agent or the property manager. And I take notes, how much is your applikation fee whatsoever. So I’m actually putting an Excel sheet. So I learned I first learned about the area. And then you know as time as time goes by, I will get a second client that wants to live in South Lou or River North. So I just go on site. And then that’s how I get started. I actually for the first half days, actually, each day I went to one property and learn about that building. So I know what floor is the pool, what floor is the gym, and then just I think we need to know we need to be familiar with the product. So then we can sell it to our clients. If we don’t know anything about products, how do we sell sell it to the clients?

D.J. Paris 28:50
It’s so funny. You mentioned that because it’s such great advice. Just today we predict we publish an episode with Matt Larissa, who’s the number two highest producing broker in Chicago. And he tells us in our episode, when he first started, he didn’t he grew up in in Cicero didn’t even know any of the neighborhoods inside of the city. And even though it was only a few miles away, and he would get up every day, and he said I wanted to he said he wanted to know River North. So he said he would get up every day. And this is this is many years ago, but he would just walk from building the building and go, Hey, are you a condo building or an apartment building? He said, he said, I had no idea. He had a notebook. He did exactly what you did, where he wrote everything down. He became an expert. He did that for a few years. And then all of a sudden, he just knew more than everybody and I suspect you have a similar thing that you know more about apartments and I know that’s not all of what you do. Of course, you’re all do a ton of sales as well. But you just know, you know these buildings where you don’t even have to think about when you just have to talk to the client and say what are you what are you looking for and you probably know where did a few minutes I imagine.

Chih-Hao Yang 30:01
So like, there’s a client, they’re looking for apartment near a Gold Coast, Chicago, he told me Chicago red light stop. So in my head, oh, this here, here, here here like in my head I already have like list. So I just need to type it out and send it to him and say, Hey, let’s go see those places. So it just the more you do, the more familiar you get to learn. And then you just remember, I don’t, I didn’t mean to memorize those buildings, but just, you know, I do this every day. So it becomes part of my life. And then I actually love doing that. So that it’s not like a pressure for me to memorize buildings or stuff.

D.J. Paris 30:36
Yeah, and I have a question. App. And I know you work with a lot of international students who might be returning back home or or maybe staying after the duration of their lease or school year is up? How do you stay in touch with them after they move in? So you’ve helped them find an apartment? And obviously, you be honored to have referrals from them and and then again, maybe down the road, they want to move to another apartment or possibly buy a home? Do you? Do you do anything to stay in touch? Do you have any advice for our listeners on how to? Because a lot of times what I find even with a broker, is that our own firm, although I don’t, you know, I don’t know for sure. But I suspect a lot of them like sell somebody a home or rent in somebody’s apartment. And then just well, hopefully they’ll think about me in the future. Do you have any processes to stay in touch? Yeah. So

Chih-Hao Yang 31:23
as soon as a lot of people stop talking to their clients after a sign a lease, but Right, I don’t stop there. I ask them, Hey, do you know how to set up you know, your combat account? Because a lot of people don’t know how to set it up. Right? Erica, how would they know how to set up combat account by right blocks and teach them hey, you might have to call if they don’t accept your you know, because they don’t have social security. So you might have to go to their office to set up your account and I teach them to and then some buildings require renter’s insurance, I don’t know where to get a renter’s insurance. So the website listed as a hey, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this. And on their moving days, I texted and said, Hey, good luck moving in today. And let me know if you need help with, you know, the moving company, and gifting you know, contacts. And after they moving, you know, I might send them like a welcome like a housewarming gift. So they knows me. And then I actually have this newsletter that I send out monthly, and I just write a little thing, just really personal, it’s about me know what, you know, where I see, you know, where the new buildings are coming up, you know, where my clients are being, you know, renting their apartment, where they’re where they’re buying their homes, so they get email from me once a month, so they knows me and I say, Hey, if you have any other clients, you know, they’re looking for renting or buying, you know, you have had my service before, if you’re satisfied, refer me to them, I’m happy to help them, I’m happy to find your next home. So then I Christmas, I send them chocolate cards, stuff. So they know, it’s not just a one time thing I want to I get a lot of repeated, you know, is my third year a you know, as a broker, and I get like my second year and third year I keep getting this client who rent it, and then they want to move apartment and I go back and tell them, you know, move them, you know, help them to move move apartment, or people who rent it the first year, and then now we’re gonna buy and helping them to buy. And I actually have people who want to sell your condo from the first year. So it’s, it works out. It’s not just a one time thing with clients, I think

D.J. Paris 33:30
it’s probably the biggest mistake that brokers make when they work with a client, whether it’s a buyer or a seller or renter, is the transaction closes, and then they go, Okay, well, if it’s a buyer, he’s probably not going to buy another home for seven or 10 years. seller who knows renter, they’re going to be there for the next 12 months? Well, we’ve tried to remember to check in in month 10 Or month 11. But you need to really have a process obviously, like you do, because I mean, I’m always amazed. And I don’t know if you can relate to this. But it’s not just in the real estate world, I find that most of the service providers who I pay fees to on a annual basis or even monthly basis, very rarely do I get a lot of communication from them over the years, you know, I think about different professionals that that I’ve probably given a substantial amount of money to over over the years and I think well sometimes I get a card during the holidays and that’s about it. I think you know, boy, they’re really missing out on opportunities because I like them. I’d be happy to share their information with my friends but I just don’t think about it because I’m not hearing from them. So this is a great strategy for our listeners to stay in touch.

Chih-Hao Yang 34:44
I’ll give you a great example like even buyers. I close a condo at Oh Tang in January this year, so last month, and then I’m already helping them first their second property thereby it’s an investment because they were there asking me, Hey, they have, you know, little extra money, they want to, you know, do something investments. And then I actually personally bought, you know, an investment property. So I was telling them, Hey, you can go, Wait, which area they were, you know, they were consulting me I was like talking to them. So yeah, it’s the buyers not necessarily going to wait five, six years, my buyers, they bought a house in January, they’re already working out on their second candle they’re buying for investment.

D.J. Paris 35:25
Yeah, it’s, that’s just the perfect point is, and that’s the other thing too is as a broker, if you’re listening, and you’re going, oh, gosh, I don’t really know much about investments, then make it a mission over the next year or two years to start studying and understanding what house hacking is, you know, buying multi unit properties, and why why people do that you know, how it works, and educate yourself. So that, because you might always be thinking about primary residence, okay, where are they going to live where, and they might be thinking, gosh, I have some extra cash, maybe I’d like to invest in and if you can’t really help them, then you’ve just missed another opportunity. And they’re going to use somebody else. Right? Yeah. I would, I’d like to hear this particular story that you that you shared here. And when we were talking, or you were, we were asking you about what you wanted to talk about. And safety is such an important thing. And oftentimes as men, we might not think as much about safety as maybe women would, but you shared a really interesting safety story. If you don’t mind sharing that with our audience, I think it’s important to hear it.

Chih-Hao Yang 36:37
Yeah, I want to share about this story because as a broker, now we have to take this sexual harassment prevention class. So the you know, we know how important this is. And so this happened to me last January 2019. When it was during the polar vortex, it was so colao. So I was wearing my, I was doing a showing. So a girl contacted me and she want to rent an apartment and this was the MLS deal. So I went to the I went to the building, and there was a guy already there’s a doorman and there was a guy at the lobby, and I didn’t think he was my client because it was a girl. So just waiting there. And then the girls show up. And I gotta keys we all went up to the building is the one bedroom is a small one. So it was a quick showing. So we went inside. And it was after five minutes or so we were leaving. And then the girl was standing at the door. blocking the entrance. The guy approached me and he said, Hey, nice jacket. I was wearing my Canada Goose. You know how last year there was all this quite Yeah, that’s going out to most

D.J. Paris 37:47
that’s the biggest jacket. Yeah, it’s a very, it’s a nice jacket. Yeah.

Chih-Hao Yang 37:52
And then the guy say, but it was so it was so cool. I had to wear it. Because I don’t know about you. Yeah. So the guy say, Hey, nice jacket. And I just look at him as Oh, yeah, you know, I just smile. You know, it keeps me warm. And then he say, hey, let’s switch. Let’s swap our jacket. And that’s right away, I realized he was blocking the door. He was saying that I run away. I knew something was wrong as your client yet but I never met them before. Right? That was the first time you know, I’m meeting them and read it. No, I knew. Well, I’m one person, you have two people. And it goes blocking the door. And the guy said, well give me your jacket. Basically, that’s what he’s saying. But I have I always have my phone with me. So right away, as he say, Dad, just Oh, sorry. I have a phone coming in. So I could just cause there. Hey, so pretend I was talking to somebody else. And I say hey, so and so. I pretend was another client call me I say Oh, I’m I’m doing a showing and 123 Main Street. I’m only two three minutes away. I’ll be there in five minutes. As soon as as soon as I say that. They got a stop. They changed her tone of voice. So then we left. So it because it gives them a signal where hey, I’m telling somebody that I’m here, right, noting so then, you know don’t do anything to me, and then works. And here’s the thing. I went down to the lobby, and then they left. I talked to the doorman. I say hey, do you know the guy and a girl? And then doorman say? Yes, he knows the guy. Oh, so long story short, the guy used to live in a building. He was he got evicted. And then now she’s using me to see the unit and want to apply. So I just know it’s a big no no, like I don’t know. And I asked the guy. I asked the guy why he was expected. I don’t want to share the information live but then you got effector so you know it was

D.J. Paris 39:52
it was just That’s a remarkable story. Yeah,

Chih-Hao Yang 39:55
we have to be and then I asked so then I kind of saw now from what I do showings now, I will go even earlier and go talk to the doorman as a hey, I’m going to do showings at this unit. You know, just if I feel I don’t know, I just wished that the doorman could have given me a hence to you know, get to where he sold the guy going up with me, right? And I don’t know what’s going to happen if somebody didn’t, you know, say hey, do the phone call thing or whatever. I don’t know what’s uh, what was going to happen but

D.J. Paris 40:26
well, it’s it’s amazing because I’m guessing he must have just seen your nice jacket and gone. No, well, I’m up there. Let me see if I can get him to give me the jacket. But that wasn’t his primary reason for being there. I guess he wanted to move back into

Chih-Hao Yang 40:40
the Yeah, he was fascinating. But I can tell that afterwards I could tell he was always under the influence to like, oh, yeah, like, just so they just be careful. Like is there we’re, we’re telling, you know, the female brokers to be careful. But I think this can happen to anyone, everyone. Yeah, my

D.J. Paris 41:00
my girlfriend who’s at catalyst, they have. And I imagine most of these big buildings have the safety features, but she has a little device that she wears on and attracts everywhere she goes. And if she isn’t back from a showing and a certain amount of time, it immediately calls the police. And so you know, for realtors, if you’re working with clients that you haven’t yet met, and you want to be safe, I know that you can buy these devices. They’re not expensive, I don’t think and it might just even be a good idea to have one of these. And there’s also apps you can put on your phone where you push a button. Yeah,

Chih-Hao Yang 41:37
like on the iPhone. If you push the your bottom five times it goes to police right away. Right? Yeah. And then like I turned on, find my friends so that my family or my friends know where I am. But if I if I’m doing a showing a PM, or like night, like sometimes people want to go see you at nighttime to see to view and then I would make sure one person knows where I’m going because usually just me going to, you know, a condo. And nobody like if I don’t tell anyone. Nobody knows where I’m going.

D.J. Paris 42:05
Yeah, safeties, it’s so important. And I we don’t talk about it enough on the show. So I’m so glad you shared that. Because it’s it’s it, especially with rent rentals. You know, it’s a lot of times it might be people you’ve never met before. So this is a great, a great, smart strategy to stay safe. It looks so you know, I think I think what I owe if you have a few questions, I’m sorry, a few questions from our listeners. So we have Randall from Chicago says, Since you do a lot of rentals, how many apartments? On average? Do you show your renters before they end up choosing? And you’ve sort of touched on this?

Chih-Hao Yang 42:42
So it’s a tough question. Some people want to you know, some people say they want to see eight or nine, you’re just crazy. Because for if you go into those high rises, it takes an hour, 45 minutes for them to do a building toward it, you see why unit, maybe two three units, they show you the gym, they show you the pool, they show you their amenities, you sit down and go over pricing. So for each tour is 45 minutes. And when you travel from one place to the other, that’s an hour. So then when somebody wants to see eight or nine isn’t, there’s no way we can see a places in eight, nine hours, like, you’re gonna be tired. I tell them, six would be the maximum for a day, because that would require six hours of showing. And I usually tell them, hey, why don’t you just pick top four. If you don’t like any of the four hour schedule the other three on the next day. And I will say 90% of the time, they will they will be able to pick the top, you know, pick one out of the four. Because I this is just for me, like I find myself forgetting about the first property or first building shop. You know what I can see 12345 I like the sixth one. I’m forgetting the first one. I’m getting confused. When I do this every day. I’m getting all confused. Like, if I don’t even remember how my clients remember anything. So one of the things I take photos for my clients every building Oh, that’s so smart. Oh, yeah, I three, if I go into this building, we see three units. I take a meter off this unit, this unit this unit Oh, after? Yeah,

D.J. Paris 44:20
I’m sorry. I’m pausing it for a second. That is a brilliant, brilliant tip. So and you can do this, by the way with buyers as well, of course. So I mean, I don’t know that anyone has shared that on our show. So I want to just pause for a second and say, if you’re showing your clients, whether it’s homes, apartments, take videos and then get them to your clients after after the day or that day. I’m sorry, go ahead

Chih-Hao Yang 44:41
check with the building for some buildings might not allow videos or photos but and when you ask nicely, they say yes. I’m telling you, I only use it for my personal like I’m going to send it to my clients. So that like let’s say we finish one building and then when we are going to the second light traveling to the second buildings, I will ask them hey, we See through units here? Which one do you like the most? And it was Oh, I like the second unit. So I will make a note, they’d like this one. After we see the second building, I say which unit Do you like the most? And it will say that why? So how about this one? I will compare. I keep comparing, like, so I make mental notes. So on the fifth one, I say, Hey, do you like this one, like, they will also add the fifth one when we finish? I know which ones their favorites? Because and I will send them the videos and photos to them. So they have it. So they can go home and apply. Or they would back to the building. Like to that will work.

D.J. Paris 45:33
Great suggestion. Okay. So Susan, I don’t know where Susan’s from. But Susan asks, I do a few rentals each month, which is great income, but I’m having a hard time converting renters into buyers when their lease is up. Any suggestions about how to convert renters to buyers overtime?

Chih-Hao Yang 45:56
I don’t I don’t count. Well, first of all, you have to make sure they like your service. Like they’re satisfied with your right. Yeah, that might be the problem. Yeah, like it’s a, you know, not every renters I have turned two buyers, but a lot of them turn into buyers. And so you know, you need to make sure they, if they’re not if they Yeah, like I will say that, you know, I make sure that I do everything I can to make sure they’re happy and satisfied with the building, you know, sometimes my, my, my, my client, tenants, client would text me and say, hey, my management is doing this doing that they’re not fixing my, my, my fast and my fixing my lights. But that’s not really my job anymore. But I would go out of my way, send management an email, copy my clients say, hey, my clients so and so is having problem with, you know, having issue with this, can you help them fix it? And now my clients, oh, you know, you know, Chad, how he’s taking initiative to do this for me. And then you know, when they ready, ready to buy, it might come to me, but it’s, it’s hard to I don’t really have I don’t I’m not out there purposely trying to confer my right buyer. I’m not doing that I’m not, you know, making note and you know, planning to do, it’s just, it just happens.

D.J. Paris 47:15
You’re just you’re you’re you’re trying to be of service, no matter whether they rent or purchase. You just want to be the one who helps them and hope that whenever they need any assistance with real estate, they’re reaching out to you. And I think that’s a really good answer.

Chih-Hao Yang 47:33
One of my clients wrote on Zillow as a review saying that I’m a one stop guy, like one stop shop or something because meaning like I can rent and I can help him to find renter insurance, combat, and then I can do the moving company. So I thought it was funny. He called me that one stop guide to go to

D.J. Paris 47:50
Yeah, but that’s what you want to be. And that’s it makes you so valuable to people. And also for our listeners, if you’re thinking oh gosh, you write renter’s insurance. That’s a good idea. I should tell all my renters as they’re moving in, you know, here’s a couple of insurance agents. And so this is an opportunity also to make relationships with insurance agents, and say, Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Insurance agent, I work with renters, or buyers, of course, and they need renter’s insurance or homeowners insurance, can I pass them over to you? And of course, every single insurance agent can say yes. And then you can say, Oh, by the way, if you ever know of any, if your clients are ever moving, I would love that if you would pass in those people over to me as well. And you can develop really good relationships that way.

Chih-Hao Yang 48:32
Yeah, you’re correct. I actually have a couple guys that I can just, I feel comfortable. I know. Their goal is like my so when I they will take care of my clients. So they just say, Hey, this is my client, a new internship, and then they need homeowners insurance. So I know they’re good, good.

D.J. Paris 48:49
Well, for all of our listeners out there, if you want and by the way, not all of our listeners are our brokers. So if you are a buyer or a seller or renter, and or if you’re a broker who wants to join your team or learn more about what your team offers, in case that’s a good fit. What’s the best way that one of our listeners can reach out to you?

Chih-Hao Yang 49:11
Yeah, so go to my website. It’s www at realtor C H y.com. I have my email my phone number my phone numbers 217-819-8009 Send me a text. I’m a My phone’s glued to me. I’m always on my phone. And then I checked I check my emails all the time.

D.J. Paris 49:33
So yeah, and we didn’t even touch on this. And I know one of your big things is you respond to emails and texts, like almost all day and all night. And I don’t want to set that expectation because you need your own personal time too. But you you you that is a big deal to you. I know personally, and I know how much you care about your clients and you are willing to really go the extra mile in communication you’re I know you’re always amazed when Realtors don’t reply. And you’re like, Ah,

Chih-Hao Yang 50:04
I think it’s important to reply emails, like when I get it, I will reply within 30 minutes. Like, why wait, and why are you not checking emails? And sometimes, you know, my clients want to see a building. And then I go onto MLS, it says, oh, please call me to book an appointment. And I was like, Okay, it’s 10 o’clock. And then how can I call you now? or text me? And then right? Why not? Do you know why not using the technology to the emails or other things? Why do I have to call? And then I remember one time I text somebody at maybe 1130. And the next morning, I got angry text back from the realtor saying, hey, it was like, it was it was like, it was 1130. White, it was rude for you to text me 1130 I was like, Okay, so why why did you even protects you? Because I might be working at 2am and they find something I’m working on when I text you. But so turn off your phone, or turn into silent, but don’t yell at me when all right

D.J. Paris 51:06
on the showing notes. Please don’t text after 11pm Yeah, but

Chih-Hao Yang 51:11
yeah, I just assumed that he would turn off, you know, to silent or just let people email you. I think email is the best way to you know, book anything or just doing a joint. Yeah. So and then use I was, you know, recommend other brokers use technology I have had a managing broker was was another broker brokerage. My client was signing, they just, you know, signature and stuff. He doesn’t know how to use Docusign. Wow. So he asked me to sit out DocuSign where I send you my client and send it to his client and giving a copy. And I was just shocked. I was like, so I asked him, I said, How do you usually do this? He said, Well, he asked his clients to go into his office and sign. Oh, and I was like, well, it was 2020 You need to learn how to use DocuSign or, you know, but I was happy to help. But it just, you know, we I think older brokers need to be on the same page. So we can all help our clients to reach their goal, you know?

D.J. Paris 52:09
Well, it is called a cooperative commission. Right? It’s just to be cooperative. And I think sometimes brokers forget that they’re they’re actually sort of on the same side of the table they might be negotiating with one another, but at the end of the day both want to close the deal and and you know, so yeah, utilize technology, especially things like DocuSign dot loop showing assists to schedule showings. It’s amazing how many listings I see on the MLS where it’s like yeah, call me or text me I’m like, why don’t you just set up showing time?

Chih-Hao Yang 52:37
Call me Why is always crazy or like text me? Why would I text I have to like, tell them who I am. It’s email all my senators down there. They know who I am. But it was texting today. Oh, I’m sure how it was prosper equities. I want to do it is it’s, it’s just an extra work that can be say, like, we didn’t have to do this.

D.J. Paris 52:57
Well, on behalf of our listeners, she how I want to thank you for being part of our show, you have given so much incredible value. And I and you know, especially now that rental season starting and you’ve just given our listeners, so many great tips on how to participate, how to and just how to be a better broker in general, whether you’re doing rentals or sales, or both. And so for everyone listening if number one if you’re a broker and you’re like boy, I want to work on a team like that contact CI howdy visit his website, which is realtor, ch why.com. Again, realtor, ch y.com All his contact information is there. We’re gonna post that in the show notes as well so you can get in touch with them. And also, if you’re a renter, or a buyer or a seller or an investor who is looking to work with a realtor like she how you reach out to him the exact same way he’d be honored to talk with you and he’s clearly a rising superstar in the Chicago realtor industry. There’s 46,000 realtors, by the way in the Chicagoland area. Chih Hao is is a rising superstar. So we’re so happy that he came on the show today and and on behalf of the audience, she how thank you for spending time you know how we know how busy it is for you right now with with rental season. And also on behalf of Chico and myself. We want to thank all the listeners for continuing to support our show. Please continue to support our sponsors. And please tell a friend, every listener if you can just think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this particular interview. Send this to a friend and also follow us on Facebook, you follow us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we post the behind the scenes recordings of these interviews in real time, but we also post an article every single day that we find online dedicated to helping brokers grow their business. So we give you nothing but good quality content on there and great interviews like the one here with Shih Hao Yang, so she helped thank you so much again, and we wish you continued success. And this is a great great episode and so much value Farleigh sirs,

Chih-Hao Yang 55:00
thank you so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Barb Noote from Coldwell Banker is a top 1% producer in Chicago and believes all real estate agents should find a mentor for the first few years of their business. She believes this is the equivalent of going to college and the lessons learned are invaluable to helping secure the foundation of this business. In our conversation Barb talks about how she built her business over 19 years by giving back, and why this is the most important value an agent must have!

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Barb Noote can be reached at 224-280-9025 and barb.noote@gmail.com.

---

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the best social media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country. And her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. She’s so confident there’s a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose. Keeping it real listeners receive a special discount, so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount, and now on with the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents. For real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host and guide through the show. And are you an advertiser that is looking to get more business from real estate agents, we have spots available. So if you would like to sponsor an episode, reach out to us you can reach our casting directors on at zonna at keeping it real pod.com That’s our email or through our contact form at keeping it real pod.com and also everyone listening please follow us on Facebook, you can find us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod what we do every single day is we post an article that we find online dedicated to helping you grow your business. And of course we post links to all of the episodes we do and now we even post real live recordings, almost like a behind the scenes you can watch in real time as we record episodes, because once we record an episode, then it takes our team a couple of weeks to actually produce it and get it ready into the format you’re listening to now but if you can’t wait, you want to watch it live where you can do that. So we broadcast them on Facebook and if you’re if you like our Facebook page, Facebook will notify you in real time each time we are doing a live videos you can watch so follow us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And lastly, please tell a friend just think of one other real estate agent that you know that could benefit from hearing from top producers like Barb who is about to ready to come on the show. So thanks guys again for continuing to listen. Thanks for supporting our sponsors. And thanks for telling a friend and now on to our interview with top producer Barbara nuit.

Hey, today on the show we have Barb Knuth from Coldwell Banker. Barb has been a full time top 1% Producing Realtor in the Chicago suburbs for over 20 Or actually for two exactly 20 years. She has experience helping sellers, buyers and renters. She specializes in helping clients understand the home buying or renting process and selling process and out of pocket costs as well as giving them their options so they can make the best decision on what works for them. 90% of Barb’s business is referral based, and she looks forward to being your friend in real estate, please visit her website at Lake County home expert.com and a fresh from the flu. Welcome to the show. Barb, thank you so much.

Barb Noote 3:45
Thank you very much for having me.

D.J. Paris 3:47
I’m just glad you made it. I know this was a was a tough week for you. Yes, definitely. And by the way, you’re also running a business and have four kids. So getting sick is gotta be difficult, a little bit busy. Well, thanks for being on the show. Since you’ve been in production for so long, can you tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about how you got started? Why real estate and how did you how’d you get into the business?

Barb Noote 4:14
Yeah, absolutely. I actually it fell into my lap. It’s not anything that I would have ever thought that I would be doing because I was always very structured and like to be able to plan. And so if somebody would have told me I was going to be working random hours with random people and making random paychecks I would have run away screaming. But I ended up getting a job where I worked with a realtor and she needed some help doing mailings and setting appointments. And it was a great after school job that then after I graduated, I started working more full time hours for her. And I really got to see how fun that job could be. And so then she started giving me a little bit more to do and then had me get licensed and then I was able to stay on with her for a couple more years before I decided I would was comfortable enough to go off on my own. So it was actually a total fluke, but it worked out very well.

D.J. Paris 5:06
So this is a question we get a lot from our listeners, because it seems we’ve had I don’t know, this is like Episode 134, or something like that. So, or 135, whatever it is. And we’ve a lot of top 1% producers have been on our show, and a lot of them had a sort of similar experience where this wasn’t necessarily what they thought they might be doing. When they were much younger. However, how important do you think it is for somebody to have that sort of mentorship? I imagine you probably learned a lot from working from that producer for a while.

Barb Noote 5:41
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, I’m at a point now where, because the markets doing so well. A lot of people past clients that I have, friends that I have, they’re now coming to me, and they’re saying, hey, Barb, I’m thinking about getting my real estate license, can we grab a cup of coffee, so I can pick your brain. And that’s actually the very first thing I tell them to do is that it’s so important because what you learn in classroom is memorization of things that you may or may not end up using. But the skills that you learn while you’re working under somebody. So I’ll have people that will be like so you think it’d be good for me to work on a team 100%? Does it stink, because you feel like you’re giving a split to somebody else, or whatever the case is, that’s always people’s biggest qualms is like, I don’t want to do that I’m gonna have to give, you know, whatever 50% of my check to whoever, whatever team I’m on. But 50% of something is better than 100% and nothing. And that 50% or whatever you work out with that broker is you’re you’re putting a price tag on that hands on experience. And that’s actually something that my husband tells me all the time is that as I’ve trained agents, and as I’ve had agents working underneath me, he goes, You don’t realize the value you’re passing on to them, just letting them shadow you and learn from you. Because it’s the day to day that you really learn and grow from no two days in real estate are ever the same. So you’ve just got to be able to learn to be quick on your feet, and know how to solve problems or forecast ahead on what needs to be done. And you don’t learn that unless you’ve been working with a seasoned realtor first. So absolutely, yeah,

D.J. Paris 7:11
I think that’s a really good point. And also realizing that we all pay money for expert advice in other areas of our life, right? Like, we might have a financial advisor, or we have an insurance agent, or you know, even you know, all sorts of services where either we’re paying directly out of pocket or it’s coming, there’s a commission owed. And you know, a lot of times, like you said, sometimes a broker will get in the business and say, Well, I don’t want to give up half of my income. It’s like, Yeah, but if that top producer or that team member is going to help you build your business, and they have a track record of a lot of success, right, you’re basically paying for knowledge and experience, and they’re gonna ultimately it’s an investment.

Barb Noote 7:51
Right. And I mean, you can’t look at another job and not see it, someone’s paying, someone joins the union there. They’re not getting paid at that high salary right away, I’m trying to think of what the word is now that they use when they’re basically shadowing them, like an apprentice and apprentice, thank you very, very good. So, you know, when you join a union, that’s what you’re doing. And you got two years of that. And with real estate, you don’t have to have a two year or four year college degree. So you’re getting into real estate with no student loans. So if you’re looking at it as you don’t have to be on a team forever, and you don’t have to be working under somebody forever. But if you look at it, as I’m going to do it for two years, I’m going to do it for four years, and the money I’m giving back to that team is the same as education at school, you’re still coming out ahead because you’re still coming out then with no student loans. And now you’ve built yourself a career in those two to four years. So it really is a mindset you got to people have to be able to get past so that they can just throw themselves in and be a sponge, absorb it all. Learn it all and then figure out how you can make it work for you. So

D.J. Paris 8:54
yeah, and also like you know, certainly sit down with met with multiple teams before you make a decision. See what you think’s the best fit. Because not every team is the right fit,

Barb Noote 9:05
correct? Yeah, some people run things very differently. Some people are very hands on other people. You know, I think there’s a transition period where you have to learn what kind of Realtor you want to be because there’s the transactional people who they’re more dollar driven. And they work very well with the real with the consumer who’s also dollar driven. There’s some buyers and sellers out there who don’t want the warm fuzzies they don’t need you to be their best friend. They want you to get to the bottom line, they want you to get the job done and they’ll call you when they need you again. And then there’s other people who want you calling long after the deal is done because they want to tell you about their dog or their cat or whatever their situation is in life. So yeah,

D.J. Paris 9:42
yeah, that’s a really good point. And I know that one of the really most interesting things about your business in particular is how much of it is referral based which I always say that’s the that’s the reward for doing a great job on you know, without Every client, can you talk a little bit about why you think your referral rate is so high? It’s certainly not that high for most brokers. So I think our listeners would be very interested to know why, why you why that sort of happened for you? Sure. Well,

Barb Noote 10:12
first of all, I like say, I’m blessed with really good clients that I like stay in touch. So that’s very helpful. But I think a lot of it has to do with that, that staying in touch. And like I’d mentioned before, I’ve had a lot of coaching over the years, nobody knows everything. So every time I feel like I’ve kind of reached a plateau, I reach out and I invest more money in myself and in coaching to figure out how to get to the next level, or how I can be better for my clients. And something that’s always stayed consistent with that training is staying in touch. And if you don’t treat those clients like a paycheck, the income will follow because you’re genuinely a caring person that cares about them. And I know, it’s hard to think about that if you are a realtor that’s new or you’re struggling, are you trying to figure out how to go from paycheck to paycheck when that’s not consistent. But I can assure you that when you start doing that, and you start leading with just trying to do what’s in the client’s best, best interest, they’ll always come back to you. And it’s not always just about that client. I mean, I’ve got some clients that have referred me so much business, and then their friends and family refer me business, because I helped them. Maybe it was a home inspection that had gone bad and I didn’t pressure them to move forward. I told them that there’d be a better opportunity for them out there, one that didn’t stress them out. Some of my clients joke with me, because when we’re looking at a house, or, you know, they’ll, they’ll like it, but they’ll be on the fence and I’ll be like, you know, kind of talking them through like, hey, you’ve got options, you can buy it, you don’t have to buy it. And they’ll joke with me they’re like, you know, you’re not a really good salesperson, you you’re no, you’re not trying to convince us to buy the house, but I don’t ever feel like that’s my job. I I really look at it as my job is to give them options based on facts, because it’s very easy to get caught in the emotion of negotiations. And I don’t think that everybody makes the best decisions when they’re in that emotional state. I know I’ve bought and sold houses myself. And even that I’ve got to have my husband talked me off the ledge on Sundays. Things are nice.

D.J. Paris 12:08
I had the same thing. Yeah, I had the same thing happen to me. When I went to sell my condo a couple years ago, where I listed it higher than I should have. I knew I knew better on advice. I took none of my own advice. And then I finally after a month I went I should probably lower the price. And it sold right away because

Barb Noote 12:25
your own pictures and everything

D.J. Paris 12:28
that I didn’t do that I was smart enough not to do.

Barb Noote 12:32
Excellent. Excellent. So yeah, I do think that’s got a big, big piece of it is just the caring factor.

D.J. Paris 12:38
Can you believe that? How often and thankfully, I don’t think it’s as prevalent as used to be. But you know, I still see I mean, it even happens, sadly, some of our own brokers, we now have a team in place at our firm, where we go through and look and whenever we see somebody who clearly took their own photos, we reach out to them and we’re like, please, please upgrade your photos like hi, it’s it’s 150 bucks, or whatever it costs, it is absolutely worth

Barb Noote 13:03
and and they I always tell realtors that they should treat selling their clients houses as if they were selling their own and how pristine they want it to be whether that’s with pictures or signage or how it looks online. I just feel like there should be that level of expectation that if you were going to sell your own house, how what would your standards be? And try and get your clients to understand that. So? Absolutely.

D.J. Paris 13:26
Yeah. So one of the questions actually, from when this is a good time for one of our listener questions. So let me make sure I found it. Okay. So you talked a lot about, you’ve talked a bit about referrals and doing a great job for your clients and really showing demonstrating that you’re that you care about them and giving them options instead of trying to push them one way or the other. So here’s a question about after the sale. So one of our listeners, Laura says, How do you stay in touch with your contacts after a sale? Do you do postcards, newsletters, phone calls, texts, social media posts, like, what’s your process for, you know, seeing being that maybe the person is going to be now seven years away from doing another real estate transaction?

Barb Noote 14:11
Sure. Well, and again, I think this is where it’s important that we focus on the fact that just because of that one person has moved in may not be looking to buy or sell again, in seven years, they’ve got all of their family and their friends. And that’s where a lot of my referrals come from is that when I do a good job for them, then they pass that name on. And that’s why a point to bring up to that is sometimes as Realtors we’re always like, Oh man, you know, our clients, they start bringing their parents with on every showing. And then it’s hard because we feel like it’s us against the parents. And it’s really a mindset, you’ve got to get out of your own way and realize that if your clients, parents see you taking such good care of them, they will become advocates for you too. So we’re all trying to help the same person here. So I think that’s important as far as staying in touch with them. One of the big things that I do is I have a 90 day program for after I close. So yeah, absolutely. So this is a huge one because most of the time, I found that when I closed on a house, I would give my client a card at closing with $100 gift card in there. And I would say thank you so much for letting me work with you and blah, blah, blah. And sometimes I wouldn’t even get a thank you from it. And it’s not that which should have been, I wasn’t giving them a gift to get a thank you. But it was almost like I started to feel like they expected me to give them a gift for working with them. Even though I know I worked my tail end off. So I was like, Okay, I want them to know that I’m giving them this because I appreciate them. And I will appreciate them continuously in the future. So I broke that $100 gift card up into three different stages. So now when I meet with them at their walkthrough, I give them a big laundry basket full of toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates, anything you can imagine that you need that first day you move in, oh, that’s so smart. I love that people love it. And it’s way better than a plant because lord knows I can’t keep a plant alive to save my soul. So at least I know they’re getting use out of this, I will get calls and text messages from clients for days being like, oh, Barb, that toothpaste was a lifesaver. We couldn’t figure out where we packed ours or even silly things. Like when we go to do the walkthrough, I had a client one time and she’s like, I have such a bad headache. I don’t know how I’m gonna make it through closing, I’m like, oh, there’s some ibuprofen in this gift basket. So it’s just all those little things that come in super handy. So they get that, and then 60 days after closing so that you know, they get the gift basket that’s lasting about the first 30 days. And then 60 days after closing, they get a gift card from me that just says, Hey, I know buying your house or selling your house was stressful. Here’s a movie gift card now that you’ve unpacked some Why don’t you get out into the community and just take a night off. And then at the 90 day mark, they’ll get a gift card for me for like Kohl’s or target or something like that. And it’s just with a quick little note that says, hey, I’m sure you’ve finished unpacking. And now you’ve thought about additional things you’d like to buy to make this house your home. Happy Shopping, let me know what you buy with it. And that’s always really fun, because that encourages them to interact back with me. So then I’ll get text messages of like a picture of towels, or garbage cans, like something silly, but for them, they bought it. And then they thought of me. And so I always I always get a lot of really good feedback about that. Because most people are programmed to think that once the sale is done, and we’ve gotten our checks that we don’t care anymore, and that’s just simply simply isn’t true. So I think just the long term, staying in touch with them, has really made a huge difference in growth in my business, because they know they’re still on my mind after closing. So it’s a big

D.J. Paris 17:40
one. Yeah, that’s I think you’re the first person that we’ve interviewed who has that sort of 90 day process. Excellent. No, it’s, it’s awesome. And it’s it, you know, if we think as listeners, probably a good percentage of realtors will do something for their clients at closing, or after closing, you know, a gift card, a gift, whatever. But to really think, and that’s certainly better than nothing, of course. But to really think like, what could they use in the first 30 days, and then to put a little gift basket together with like a laundry basket. That’s a good idea. Like paper plates, of course, you know, toothpaste, all

Barb Noote 18:20
those scissors is a big one. Oh, that’s a good one. Like, I couldn’t find my box cutter. So yeah, it’s been really beneficial.

D.J. Paris 18:27
That’s really, really smart. So like, if we think like, boy, does that meet somebody’s needs, you know, it’s funny, I moved into an apartment once. This is like a silly example. But it’s a really good one where the landlord which was the condo owner, he and his wife, they knew I had a cat and a dog. And they the day I moved in, they had put the entire island. The kitchen island was littered with cat toys, dog toys, treats, and you know it, they probably spent $25 total. And it’s it’s silly, but I went wow, that was and then they wrote me a handwritten note, you know, thanks so much for renting. And I was like that was really, really smart. And it made me think that like, oh, they care about me, even though I’m sure they do that for every tenant, but they should do that for every time.

Barb Noote 19:13
They do care about you. They want to have a working relationship. And that’s exactly what I think this is too. So and get

D.J. Paris 19:19
in and guess how well I treated that place. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, it sounds silly, but I probably treated it a little better. Not not that I don’t treat places. Nice. I do but I felt a little more connected to them. Yeah, though. I’d never met them.

Barb Noote 19:34
And I never ation so do right by them. Absolutely.

D.J. Paris 19:38
So what a what a great suggestion. So for everyone listening, come up with a 90 day at least a 90 day plan where you can consistently add value. And it doesn’t it doesn’t mean you have to spend an exorbitant amount of money either just demonstrate that you care and that you’re giving them things that they actually need.

Barb Noote 19:54
Yes, absolutely. Another touch on that too is the Client appreciation events. I don’t know if other people are doing those. But for people who are just starting out in real estate, it can be very intimidating. I remember the first time I did it, I’d only been in business for like seven years. And like, what if nobody shows up? Even worse? What if three people show up? So I partnered up with other realtors, and we, you know, rented out this venue. And that way, we each invited people. And so if I only had two of my people come, but they each had 15, we still had a room full of people. And so nobody could sit there and be like, so why don’t you have any client, you know what I mean? So it took the pressure off of having to look cool. And now I’ve been doing for 20 years, I I’ve got my client appreciation party coming up, we have about 150 people coming. So it’s it’s huge. It’s grown so much over the years, but starting out, like I know, I know, for me, it was always overwhelming when I went to seminars or coaching places. And these realtors that were really successful talked about the things they were doing an all I saw and felt was dollar signs. And I’m like, what, how do I get from where I’m at, though to there, there has to be this bridge, right? And so for me, how could I get there was by partnering up with other realtors. And like I said, small venue, then you’re splitting the cost of like light appetizers, and we just did a little raffle giveaway. And there’s manageable ways to do it. You could even do a reverse one where they come to your office, we did that for pie giveaway, where you can have clients come and pick up a pie right before Thanksgiving. So it’s like a reverse pop by and then they’re coming to you. And then they’re picking up the pie. But you get to see them and it’s Hi, how are you? How’s your family and then, you know, so there’s ways that are cost effective to do it because we just got our pies from Mariano’s. And they were like they gave us a deal at like $3 a pie. So we were able to like buy all these pies and have clients come to us. So again, the pressure was off from having to throw this big hoopla. But they came to us and they were so genuinely grateful. And how nice was it to make this one on one contact with people that I’d closed on back in January. And the following November, I’m able to see them face to face again. So we don’t get too busy this to stay in front of them. So little tips like that.

D.J. Paris 22:05
Well that’s, that’s that’s a really big tip actually. So because everybody at Thanksgiving has a pie, right? So what you’ve actually done possibly is even taken that off their to do list to go out and either make a pie or buy a pie. I mean in a in a sort of silly way. It’s not silly, because it’s actually something every single family has at Thanksgiving. In addition, I want to go back to the partnering with because honestly, that is nobody has mentioned that ever on on our show, partnering up with another agent. I always say agents because we have listeners nationwide and in some states, their agents and other Yeah. So anyway. In Illinois, if you say well, yeah, Illinois, some brokers get very upset. They’re like, we are not agents. We are brokers. But anyway, so partner with another realtor. Yeah, partner with another agent, broker realtor, this is a great idea. Because that is it is everybody’s fear when they do their first client Appreciation Event is I mean, it’s look at anytime anyone throws a party in socially, that is your biggest fear. Yeah, and the reality of it is, is like even if two people showed up, it would be fine. But to alleviate whatever embarrassment or, or, or just, you know, uncomfortable sort of scenario that might be I think that is such a great idea. And the other thing too, is when you partner up with other agents, you can also to help offset the cost even further, you can reach out to your, your your partners, like if you have a mortgage broker, a loan officer who’s you give business to or who wants to develop business with you, attorneys, title companies, you know, they can help offsets. Yeah, but that is so smart. I would have never thought of that for client appreciation partner up with someone else, maybe even two or three realtors. And then nobody knows whose clients are whose.

Barb Noote 23:49
Yeah, it takes the pressure off. So absolutely.

D.J. Paris 23:52
Okay, one of our other listeners asked us a totally different change of direction here, but they said, okay, so you’re out in Lake, you work mostly in Lake and McHenry County, counties, which are the suburbs of Chicago for our listeners who aren’t familiar. Now, one of our listeners named for riq, I believe says one of my suburban clients wants to move to downtown Chicago, I’m guessing freak as a suburban agent, one of my suburban clients wants to move to downtown Chicago, I don’t really know that area. Should I refer the client to a broker that specializes in downtown? Or should I spend time learning about it and help the client myself? Do you have an opinion on that?

Barb Noote 24:32
I do. And I’m going to say refer it out. I have found that, again, the mentality of helping the client the best way and looking out for their best interest is not you either one pretending to know the area or two respectfully, like you said, researching it. Well, you know, there’s something about knowing your area like when people move to my communities, I can tell them all about the schools and the park districts and the grocery shopping and which movie theater has fived Dollar Movie Night and things like that. And there’s value to that, especially if you have somebody moving from out of the area. And I’ve had several clients that have wanted to move down to the city and I have referred them out. And I just, I’m brutally honest with them, I say to them, Look, I love spending the time with you. And I would love to continue to help you. But part of me helping you is getting you someone who knows the area better than you do and better than I do. And so a lot of times, I find that they respect the fact that I’m being honest with them, and referring them, something I also do is give them a couple of options, so that they can talk to those realtors and figure out who’s going to be the best fit. Because if you just contact one realtor and say, Hey, client work with this person, and they’re not a good connection, personality wise, it can also still be a better turnout there. So you want to make sure that you talk to a couple realtors and you feel like you find a realtor that works the same as you and then find two of those and then give those numbers to your client and have them call them and see who they’re most comfortable with after they talk to them on the phone. So, but I definitely think it’s worth just getting the referral fee for because they’ll appreciate your honesty. And they’ll continue to refer you all the business up here in the suburbs, and because they’re going to know you’re looking out for them. So yeah,

D.J. Paris 26:12
yeah. And I think the conversation is a really simple one, right, you basically just say to your client, I would love to help you in downtown Chicago, but honestly, that’s not my specialty. And I have a couple of partners who that’s all they do. And they’re going to do a better job than I can. And so what I want to do is get you in touch with them. Because as much as I would love to do it myself, they’re actually a better fit. And I’ll supervise it, I’ll make sure you’re getting taken care of but really, they’re going to be the I mean, people would be will be so flattered and honored that you’re willing to pass it over. If you and if you frame it correctly, and not just like oh, I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want to drive into the city and help you. Which of course the client wouldn’t probably think anyway, because of how genuine you are, of course, working with them in the past or whatever. But yeah, what a great, great answer. Thank

Barb Noote 27:00
you. Yeah, there’s nothing that’ll blow up more. So if you help them with something, and you’re like, oh, cool, but because you didn’t know the area, like school district wise or something like that. I mean, I the neighborhood I live in actually has three, three different school districts within the subdivision. So I’ve had clients before that want a certain school district? And they’re like, Well, why don’t you show me these three? And I know, like, well, that’s not in this specific school district that you say you want to be in? I can open it up if you’d like, oh, no, we definitely want to stay in the school district. If I don’t know that area, I don’t know that in school boundary lines can just be crazy at times. So it’s important to know the area because it can really bite you. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 27:38
Also, and you know, which of those schools are possibly even the best, which one of those districts is the right fit? Right? So sometimes, you know, having that knowledge is so valuable, and, and you’re just not going to know it all over any metropolitan area or suburban area. So refer out I guess, is the but fine. And you know, by the way, what a great opportunity to create those relationships with other realtors in other areas and just reaching out and saying, Hey, once in a while I get clients that want to move, you know, is it okay, if I pass, you know, over to you. And, you know, I’m sure most brokers would be super flattered.

Barb Noote 28:14
And a lot of folks from the city are moving up this way. So I’ve gotten several referrals from people that want to move out to the suburbs, because maybe they started out in the city, and now they’re having kids and they want to get further north for schools or community or whatever the case is. So it works both ways you build that relationship, and it’ll last Jeff.

D.J. Paris 28:32
Okay. Dave asks, you’ve seen a lot of changes for brokers over the past 20 years, what role do you think the broker will play in the future? Will it be the same as today? Or do you see it changing? Even now?

Barb Noote 28:51
You know, that’s a really good question. I do already see it changing in the fact that office dynamics are changing. When I first got into real estate, it was very popular and desirable to be in a large office. And then everybody kind of had their own office space in there, right. So you knew you were successful if you made it off the floor and into your own private office. And then in the last few years, because of technology, we’re all working so much more remotely, that it almost has become to the point now where although we like having maybe a home port to go to the reality is that we’re more working on the go and a lot of realtors end up working from home, or they want an office that they can go to and maybe just kind of strategize or have some training and then they’re on their way again, so I’m finding that maybe with brokers, either offices may be downsizing, so to speak, like their their main space, they just don’t need as much square footage or they’re going to be changing that to where a lot more of our training is done online. Sure. or the training is changing too, because more of our training is about our online presence. So it isn’t so much necessarily having these long office meetings where we have to go in and we have to meet to get information we need, it’s all at our fingertips. So I think a brokers role will be changing in the fact that they need to be in tune with what tomorrow’s buyers and sellers want, and how they can make sure that we’re catering to those needs. So I just don’t know if the stuffy office atmosphere is necessarily something that’s going to be around much longer. I’m already seeing it with Coldwell Banker, they’re making a lot of changes towards that right now, where it’s more open space where people are collaborating more, but then they’re going off and doing what they need to do. So it isn’t that private. Everyone’s closed off. I think a lot of people are learning that working together now is being very helpful and working online. So if anything, I just think that brokers are having to be more in tune, like I said, with what tomorrow’s buyers and sellers want with the online presence that we need. It’s important. Yeah, let’s

D.J. Paris 31:02
actually that brings me to another question that nobody asked, but I know would be asked by our listeners, which is okay. Let’s say you don’t have an office, or it’s a dedicated space at an office, which is, as you said, becoming more and more common. I know, at our firm, we have like 650 brokers and we have two offices and nobody uses either office. Yeah, I mean, very rarely do they use them. But they’re here in case people want them, which is a lot of a lot of brokers have that scenario where they work, they have an office if they want to use it. But we find that even our own brokers don’t don’t use it much. So my question is, if you get a referral, and somebody wants to buy a property, and let’s say, you know, do you invite them to the office for our first meeting? Do you have do you meet them at a Starbucks? People have all sorts of different approaches. What do you typically do in that scenario?

Barb Noote 31:53
So couple things for the last couple of years. Because my areas so wide, I was just I would ask them, I’d say, Well, where are you located at? Do you want to meet at a Starbucks close to your house. So Starbucks was loving me because I was constantly meeting at different Starbucks is all over. And a lot of people like that I think it’s a neutral zone versus shown to my office. This last year, I did open up a satellite office that was closer to my house because again, mom of four I don’t, I cannot work from home. I try really tried, but the dishwashers calling me and everything else. So yeah, so it’s good for me to physically get up, get my kids to school, and then go somewhere. But it’s a very small office, it’s right downtown Gray’s Lake, and I have it so that way, I would have that central location so that if someone’s like, Well, hey, I can come to your office. Now I’ve got something that’s a little bit more centrally located. So now I’ve got something north suburbs, I’ve got something closer to the North Shore, I’ve got a couple different locations, but the reality is meeting someone on neutral ground is very acceptable. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be office space, if you choose to work from

D.J. Paris 32:59
home. Yeah, and you know, I know safety is obviously always a concern as well, especially if you don’t know the person. And so sometimes, I think realtors, maybe, you know, just go okay, well, let’s start showing your properties. Maybe they haven’t met with the client yet. And if they don’t know them personally, meeting a neutral ground might just be a good idea safety wise, to get a sense of like, am I compatible with this person? Do I feel safe as the realtor, which you know, again, all of us need to need to think about. So you know, having an office is always a great neutral, possibly neutral, meeting space as well. But if they’re not comfortable coming to the office, then you can go to them. And I always think what a great way to say it is say, hey, I want to come to you, I want to make this easy for you. Is there a coffee shop or you know, a restaurant you want to meet at whatever, nearby and I’ll just come to you and make it easy. If you’d rather come to our office, we can schedule that to whatever works best for you. And just letting so what what a great idea. Awesome. All right, let’s see those. Okay, I would so I never get to these because I always forget to so I’ve made it a point to get to these. Because you were nice enough we a little behind the scenes for our viewers and listeners. We always ask a few like funny questions and never asked them because I get to be the lucky one. Yeah, so you get to be the lucky one. So tell us about the squirrel story, or the homeless man story. Either one is fine or both.

Barb Noote 34:29
Okay, well, I’ll start with the squirrel one because the homeless man stories kind of creepy, but the squirrel one was actually like not long after I got into real estate and I was asked to go and look at this estate house. And it had been vacant for a while. And they wanted a market analysis done on it. So I had asked one of the ladies in my office if she wanted to go with me it was a vacant house. They’d love to key under the mat for me. And it was a waterfront property that was actually in her neighborhood. So I said Would you come with me and just put your eyes on it. We can, you know, work it together if you want, I was relatively newer. And so I we get to the house and you open it up and it was like time had stood still it was like shag carpet and paneling and everything. But there was just piles of stuff everywhere. So we’re like walking like in these little paths trying to make our way through this house with just stacks of magazines and newspaper, all this stuff. And it was like, it was so creepy. So it was like someone had plucked whoever lived there and just took them out in the middle of night like makeup was still out on the bathroom. I think it was so creepy. Yeah. And so then like we’re laughing because we noticed there’s all these pictures of like this little Yorkshire Terrier, and there’s all this little like dog droppings. And I’m like, they didn’t like leave this dog in the house. Right? So we’re like now whatever. So we go downstairs and I can’t even see the floor. There’s so much stuff. And so then as I’m standing there, my friend Shawn comes down. And I’m talking to her. But as I’m talking to her, I noticed this pile of clothes is starting to move. And I’m like looking at I think I’m like losing it because I’m looking at it. And then I’m looking back at her and I’m looking back at this pile. And finally I go to say to her, there’s something moving by your foot right at the same time that she says What are you looking at? And as I go to say it, this squirrel pops out from under these clothes on the floor and literally, like grabbed her leg? Oh, no. So she’s screaming, I’m screaming. The two of us are running for the stairs at the same time. And it was like one of those movies where you both tried to go up the stairs. We’re stuck. We’re like pulling at each other. We could not get out of the house fast enough. And then we just sat on the front porch and laughed for like another 20 minutes and then had to go home. But we were like what the heck, what kind of job did we sign up for so? So there was actually a squirrel living in this abandoned hoarder house and yeah,

D.J. Paris 36:49
so maybe the squirrel was doing maybe the squirrel is doing makeup in the bathroom?

Barb Noote 36:54
Maybe it wasn’t dog poop that we were seeing in piles was probably the squirrel in his entire family. So

D.J. Paris 37:00
yeah, oh my gosh. And then tell us tell us the homeless man story.

Barb Noote 37:03
homeless man story was we were showing houses that was during the recession. The market had crashed, there was a ton of foreclosure properties. And so I was working with this investor couple who was buying properties. And so we went into this house and there was a gentleman who was laying on the floor like it was a vacant, it was empty. And it was laying on the floor. And so I was like, oh geez, I’m like Excuse me, sir. Realtor realtor and I went over and I touched him and he was freezing cold. He was dead. Oh, no. Yeah, dead, like full. We had to call the police. I had to wait there while the police came, I was joking with my clients and like, so we writing it up or what? And they were like, Oh, no good. So we had to fill out a police report. And when the police got there, they actually recognized him. He was a homeless man that they had seen in multiple areas. And he must have just broken into this foreclosure and froze, I guess I don’t know. So when people are always like, Oh, do you have any crazy real estate? Real estate stories have ever found a body and like coincidentally I have So luckily, that’s a long time ago. I haven’t had any traumatic experiences with squirrels or bodies since.

D.J. Paris 38:08
Yeah, I in my very first career. My career my very first job when I was in between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I was a security guard at a retirement home. And sadly, crowd, lively crowd except for the few unaligned people I find. So I have had that experience. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s pretty

Barb Noote 38:32
rough sticks in your mind. That’s

D.J. Paris 38:35
for sure does. And then if you could tell us about the man on the couch, that’s the last story Alaska. Yeah,

Barb Noote 38:41
that one was also weird. Come to think of it. I’ve had a lot of weird experiences, get your real estate license today, people. It is one of the exciting things about the job, right? Every day is different. So a man there, we went into this house, and the house was very specifically decorated, I guess I’ll say he had very specific taste. And it was very over the top is very hard for my buyers to visualize themselves in it. And so they were making some comments about it. Like, I mean, I don’t remember what the comments were at the time, I’m sure but they were not positive comments. not positive. Like, why would anybody ever paint this color or who chose this flooring or things like that, right? So we’re going through the house, and I’m just like, you know, like, I get it. Yeah, you know, so I go downstairs, we go walking downstairs, it was a split level, and I turn on the light and there’s the homeowner laying on the couch listening to our entire conversation. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, she’s like, I was sleeping. And I was like, I’m really sorry. You know, we had an appointment. He’s like, Oh, I heard and I was like, Sorry, I’ll leave feedback.

D.J. Paris 39:50
It is it is funny that people with really awful taste never know that they have awful taste.

Barb Noote 39:56
Yeah, they don’t want to hear it either. They’re like, Do you know how expensive this was? I’m like, I’m sorry. All right. So yeah. So it’s been some very fun stories, experiences with my clients, for sure.

D.J. Paris 40:08
And then I just have I have one more question for you. So a lot of our listeners are relatively new to the business and are always curious, obviously, you’re 19 years in

Barb Noote 40:19
2019, that’s fine. Where you’re going with? Yeah.

D.J. Paris 40:24
So for people that are newer, what do you think is the most important thing they should be doing? We talked about finding a mentor, finding a team where you could really learn and absorb, in addition to that for their own business, you know, do you have advice of what they should do, to really, you know, help build a nice future for themselves.

Barb Noote 40:45
So there comes a point where you need coaching, I think that something that Realtors do, right is we don’t want to be in corporate America, we want to be our own bosses, we want to create our own schedules. But then when we actually get to that point, we don’t know what we’re doing. And we don’t know how to create a business, so to speak, because we know how to call people we know how to show houses. The problem with that is, then you’re being reactive to the business, right? And you need to be proactive to create the business. So how do we do that? So I would say the very first thing you want to make sure that you have is a database. I mean, I had a database before it could be online, which is embarrassing. I had like the phone book thing that I would write down these numbers, and then I was constantly having to redo it with new names and new addresses. So now, I mean, with technology, there’s just no good excuse. And most offices that you work at will have some sort of database that you can use. But for me, I think it was coaching, I was in the business for between five to seven years, and I just kind of plateaued. And I just didn’t know how to get out of my own way. I knew what I knew. But I didn’t know how to get past that. And so for me, it was coaching and I went to a bunch of different like, sometimes they’ll offer like a half day seminar for free, or they’ll offer a seminar for $99. And then if you want continued coaching, but even going to that one day seminar, you can get one or two things out of it, implement it. I think sometimes people get hung up on Oh, if I do coaching, it’s because I need this whole thing produced for me. And the reality is just baby step and just do that one thing until you have it down as a system. But if you have a database going just stay in front of your clients, you know, a big thing that a lot of realtors do. When they’re starting out as Popeyes. It’s something that I’ve dabbled in. And I always say that I need to do more of and I’m mad when I run out of time. But just Popeyes you know Father’s Day is coming up, you can get a roll of duct tape and say thanks for sticking with me with your real estate needs and just drop those off at 10 houses of your clients. So something else I did as a new realtor is I always offered to help realtors who were already established, that might be too busy to do their open houses and things like that I would sit the open houses for them because there was an opportunity for me to get clients. And there isn’t anything that you can’t YouTube online. Now. I mean, I wish I would have had access to all the stuff that agents have now because you could YouTube how to have a successful open house and Tom Ferry or pop up or Brian journey or Joe stump any of those. And those are three coaches that I’ve worked with, that have all helped my business grow tremendously. So it’s important that you don’t feel like you’ve got to spend money you’re not making but you also have to look at it as an investment. And find the budget that does make sense for you. And like I said, some offices, I know my office offers Brian Buffini and offer some great rebate if you take the class and finish the course and complete two deals afterwards or something along those lines. So I mean, I’m sure if you talk to your broker and said, Hey, I want to invest in me, there’s a seminar I want to attend, I don’t think there’s a broker out there that would poopoo the idea and not support you in some way and work out something with you. So it’s just constant education. Because those seminars are taught by people that have all been in the same shoes as you at one point or another. So just listen to them and learn from them and take a couple things and run with it. So

D.J. Paris 44:09
a lot of them to a lot of them to have money back guarantees, right so maybe the coaching doesn’t always have that. But like Brian Buffini used to be called 100 days to greatness, I forget what it’s called. Now,

Barb Noote 44:20
they’ll have that. Yeah, they still similar to that. Yeah, I

D.J. Paris 44:23
forget what it’s called. But whatever it’s called, like, there’s a money back guarantee. So if you it’s three or $400, whatever it is, it is absolutely worth it. Because there’s really no risk and you know, you know, getting those courses, even when you’re new and obviously spending money you don’t have is never, never something that anybody’s comfortable doing and not always something somebody should do. But the good news is, is a lot of these places, you know have that built in is like hey, if you’re not having success with this, then we give you your money back. So I always recommend do as much of that stuff of course as you can because even if you just get one or two good ideas and then eventually you know all those come But he’s also have live coaches. So what they really are trying to do is, you know, get you, you know, involved in their systems, and then they want to continually provide that service. And almost every top producer we’ve had on the show has a coach in some capacity. So I always say if the top 1% of all realtors have coaches, like maybe the rest of us should do the same thing. And I understand understanding that cost is, is a factor. But again, some of their introductory courses, which are amazing. I am familiar with Brian Buffini, but there’s also Tom Ferry, there’s Mike ferry, there’s a million others, and they’re all probably pretty good. So yeah, great, great suggestion. And one last thing is is I wanted to ask you, because of course, you’ve been doing this for, you know, two decades now, which is incredible. Why do you think your clients do choose you? And again, I, maybe they’re not necessarily comparing you to other brokers? However, why do you think you’ve become so why do you think you’ve become successful over the years?

Barb Noote 46:01
Um, I do think it’s because I know the area. But I also will say that you have to adapt in this business. So I think that one of the biggest times I saw myself having to adapt, right, and we’re realtors, we are creatures of habit, and we hate change. But yet, we’re in a business that changes daily. So it’s kind of contradicts itself. But one of the areas where I saw the biggest amount of changes when we had that last recession, I mean, we got hit so hard. We had houses out here that were bought and sold for 350 $400,000, that I was selling for 130,000 $150,000. I mean, huge, huge loss. But in that moment, you have to almost figure out what what the need is or what the demand is. So I went through and spent money on all these certifications for short sales certification. So I am an expert in that field. And I learned a lot about foreclosures, I took the training on all the different websites, HomePath had their own website, offers.com has their own website. And I went on there and I would learn how to do all of the offers. Because if you don’t do the offer, right, your client loses it, and you’re selling short sales and foreclosures at the time. So I saw a lot of the realtors get out of the business because they didn’t want to deal with those. And I saw a need. And so I wanted to, you know, fill that need. So was it great. I mean, no, we were working for a fraction of what we’d made during a good market. So I was working the same amount of hours for a fraction of the cost. But these people actually needed us and in a good market. Buyers and sellers don’t always feel like they need us even though we’ve got the background and we know the ropes that have to be jumped through. But in this case, people really did, they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t know how to sell their house and not have to go into foreclosure, how to stay in a house long enough to find a rental or how to even make themselves look desirable as a renter after they had a short sale or foreclosure. So there was a lot of hand holding. And I do think that going through that market has created some relationships with some of my clients that we will forever be connected because we were there, I was holding their hand when they were crying. I mean, I was there when they were losing their house, it was just it was emotional for everybody. And now that the markets come back, I’ve watched all these people rebuild and flourish and come back to buy houses for me again. And that’s where I got to reap the benefits of it, it was painful, sometimes even telling them they had to pay a commission on some of these deals, because they knew that they didn’t really have the money, you know, so it was really hard. But now we’ve seen it on the flip side where there’s really not a lot of foreclosures. And I’ve actually seen Realtors leaving the business now because they only focused on foreclosures. And now they didn’t have a client base to work with. So something that I think is important is you don’t ever put all your eggs in one basket. I had some religious or some clients that, you know, they always say, well, Barb, why don’t you just work with relocation you do great with relocation, you’re, you know, the area. So everybody relocating, and you can’t just invest all of that, because at one point relocation didn’t exist when the market crashed, companies weren’t offering relocation packages. So I think one of the things I learned on that too, is you can’t just rely on one source of income, you have to be diversified and figure out what people need. So I think that just that adapting, you know, like I was saying earlier, how brokers are gonna have to adapt for the market change and what what agents need to help their clients. It’s all about changing and if you dig in your heels, unfortunately, you’re gonna get left behind. So I think that’s built a lot of rapport with my clients is the knowledge that I have just from those experiences and constant training, always taking classes.

D.J. Paris 49:44
Yeah, because you never want to be in a scenario where maybe you’re a traditional realtor working with buyers, sellers, people buying primary residences or selling primary residences, and then all of a sudden investor comes your way and says, Hey, I I’m looking for deals and you’re like My gosh, I really don’t know how to do that. Now, that might be a lot of brokers position today. But then make that point to go, you know, over the next two years, I’m going to take a bunch of classes, I’m going to, I’m going to talk to other realtors who focus on working with investors. I mean, if that’s something you want to do, and then two years in, you’re going to know as much as just about anyone with respect to, you know, working with investors, and you always want to be able to say, I know how to do that. And if you don’t know how to do it, learn how to do it. And and again, even if you’re just watching YouTube videos, there’s a lot to absorb there. But yeah, working with an investor is a completely as you know, a completely different experience and working with a primary residence buyer or seller,

Barb Noote 50:41
definitely, often you have to know what rental income will look like, what resale value will look like, there’s a lot, they’re relying on you for answers for the future. Right, because they want to know what that resale value is going to be when they flip it or what the rental income is going to be versus what they’re paying for it. So there is there’s a little bit sicker layers to it. Another big one is there’s a lot of people that we saw that could not afford to downsize when the market was in its recession, because these people own these large homes, and they’d raise their kids in them. And their goal was then to sell their house for to go towards retirement. Well, they couldn’t because their house was worth 200 $300,000 less, right and what they thought it was going to be. So they’ve been riding it out. And so now this new boom that we’re seeing here is all those people that have been riding out that last recession are like great market came back, we’re going to sell it now. So now you have a lot of people downsizing, and that’s where we also get relocation with people out of state. So it’s knowing where the markets going. And I don’t know that you can necessarily do that if you aren’t in it every day so to speak. And no offense to protect Realtors I get you got to start somewhere. I know I did. But it’s very important that if you’re doing it part time, you’re taking that additional training to understand where the markets going because it moves quickly. It doesn’t seem like all the time, but all sudden, it’s a totally different market. So

D.J. Paris 52:02
Well, I think that’s a great place to wrap up. i You’ve said it all. Thank you. No thank you and for everyone listening, if you are a buyer or a seller or renter and investor someone who is looking for a top producer to work with. Barb would always love to take your your information to your QA. But Barb, what’s the best way? Anyone who’s listening who wants to possibly, you know, work with you is what’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Barb Noote 52:29
Well, we all know realtors have our cell phone stuck to our heads. So my cell phone number is 224-280-9025 Caller text is

D.J. Paris 52:39
great. And what’s the best email as well.

Barb Noote 52:41
My my best email would be bb.newt@gmail.com

D.J. Paris 52:46
Awesome. And then also everyone go visit Barb’s website, which is Lake County home expert.com. And she has links to all of her social accounts there as well follow her on Facebook, just search for Barb noodle, it’ll pop right up. Barb, thank you so much for being on the show. This was so incredibly valuable. You gave about 10 or 11 Really solid ideas for our listeners, which is exactly what we’re trying to do on the show. So on behalf of the listeners, we thank you for your time we know you were sick, we know you have your mom, you’re a successful business. You’re very busy. So thank you so much. And also on behalf of Barban myself for everyone listening. Thanks again please tell a friend just find one other realtor that could benefit from hearing or watching interviews with people like Barb and tell them about the show have them visit our website keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode we’ve ever done or follow us on Facebook facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod to watch these episodes live and also every day we post an article that we find online designed to help Realtors build their business. So anyway, Barb, thank you again and we will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks Barb. Sounds

Barb Noote 53:53
good. Thank you. Bye

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Matt Laricy of The Matt Laricy Group is our most requested guest of all time! He’s a true real estate legend in Chicago, known for his professionalism, work ethic and commitment to the craft. As one of Chicago’s top brokers, Matt discusses how he started in real estate with zero clients and spent the first four years studying the market so that he could become an expert in Chicago neighborhoods. Today he’s the #2 top producing real estate agent in Chicago (out of 46k brokers). Matt discusses his journey and provides tips for anyone looking to take their production to the next level.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Matt Laricy can be reached at 708.250.2696 and mlaricy@americorpre.com.

---

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
Today’s episode of Keeping it real podcast is brought to you by nest egg. Looking to add value to your investor clients recommend nest egg a Chicago based app that is everything your clients need to manage their rentals in only minutes a month. Nest Egg is the only app that gets things done at the rental including on demand maintenance, and services like tenant placement and snow removal. Also nest egg is free to use which makes your clients investments 20 to 30% more profitable. Join nest egg today by downloading the app or by visiting mistake dot rent. That’s nest egg dot rent, use promo code keeping it real to get your first hour of maintenance for free. And now on to the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcasts made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be featuring a true Chicago legend, our most requested guest of all time Matt legacy. So before we get to Matt, couple of quick announcements number one, please tell a friend of every one of our listeners tells just one other realtor who could benefit from listening to interviews like the one we’re about to have with Matt, we could double our listenership and be able to offer you even more episodes. So thanks in advance for telling a friend and also follow us on Facebook visit us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod why? Because number one, we now have video and we broadcast all of our episodes live almost a behind the scenes recording, you can watch as we’re doing it on Facebook, but also we post an article every single day that we find online dedicated to helping you grow your business. So again, follow us on Facebook which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our interview with Matt Larissa.

Right, today is a very special day on our show. We started this podcast two and a half years ago. And today we have our most requested guests of all time. Literally not a week goes by where we don’t hear it from at least one listener saying you have to have our guests on the show. So we’re beyond excited to welcome Matt legacy of the matt legacy group. Now if you’re not if you’re from Chicago you already know about Matt Lauer see, but our listeners of course are nationwide. So want to tell everybody about Matt in case you’re not familiar. Matt is a third generation realtor. He’s also the managing broker for mirror Corp real estate company that his father started. Matt also heads his own team, which is called the matt legacy group. His hard work charisma and true passion for the business help Matt’s reputation as a qualified realtor quickly rise. Some of Matt’s accomplishments are being the number two agent in Chicago. He’s labeled one of Chicago’s who’s who Realtors by Chicago agent magazine. He’s a 30 under 30 by National Association of Realtors, and he’s won the Chicago agents Choice Award for industry MVP. Matt specializes in all facets of the real estate business, whether it’s navigating the way for first timers, helping a seller prep their property for sale or providing help in the luxury market. He knows and has experienced it all Matt’s a strong believer and giving back as a board member for the Make a Wish Foundation and Matt has helped the charity raise hundreds of 1000s of dollars for children in need. He is called the hardest working man in real estate. And I live half block from his office. And every time I walked by day or night, there’s always something going on. So it’s a well earned and deserved reputation. So please Oh, by the way, visit his website at Matt literacy. group.com. Welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt Laricy 4:00
Thanks for having me, man. We appreciate it. And I appreciate the kind words and nice intro.

D.J. Paris 4:06
Well, it’s I mean, it’s absolutely true. You are the most requested person to have on the show. And I know how busy you are. So it’s a real honor for us and our listeners. So thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and we should also plug that you yourself have a podcast and a vlog. And you can actually access that through Matt’s YouTube channel. So we’re gonna post a link to that, but you can just go to youtube search for Matt legacy. It’ll pop right up and subscribe to his channel, his vlogs they look awesome, way better than this. But they’re awesome. And you should definitely check them out.

Matt Laricy 4:34
Definitely subscribe. We appreciate that too.

D.J. Paris 4:37
Well, I would love to talk about I always ask this of all of our guests. You know, I know you come from a real estate family but we’d love to hear about how you got started and your journey into real estate.

Matt Laricy 4:49
Yeah, I mean, since I was a little kid getting in real estate was pretty much all I ever wanted to do. So since I was like two or three years old, I used to go to my father’s office on the south side by Midway Airport area. We we felt like the books because back in the day, they had like little books that you would fill out for, like listings. So that’s kind of like what I did. And so I just kind of always figured I’d get into real estate. And I went to college or anything like that. But literally before I actually graduated college, I already had my broker’s license. At that time, there was only agents and brokers, you know, there wasn’t brokers, managing brokers. So then you had to be 21 to get the broker’s license at that point. So I waited till I was 21. The day I turned 21, I took the test and got my license. And then the day I graduated college, I literally hung my license up and started selling right away. And in fact, my father didn’t allow me to work at the company right away. Just said he didn’t think it would be appropriate. So I went and worked at a century 21 for about six to seven months. And essentially 21 I worked that was actually an old client on my father’s that I think probably didn’t like him. Because I was the only person that didn’t get a desk, and the entire 200 agents out of that office, like everybody has a cubicle. So that’s where I started, you know, selling and I just then I moved events in my father’s company. And that was all in Oh, six. And that’s kind of like right towards the end of Oh, six 2007. That’s kind of when things kind of started getting kind of tough in the business because you kind of start feeling the rumblings at the mark was, yeah,

D.J. Paris 6:12
you got in at a tough time. Yeah,

Matt Laricy 6:15
I mean, I decided in 2008, they didn’t want to sell on the Southside Chicago anymore. They want to take the company downtown. And that just coincides with the fact that it was like maybe middle of 2008 they don’t want to take it downtown, which, as we know, it was like pretty much when the market fell out. And my dad’s a true self that our spirit he’s like, if you want to go downtown, you’re on your own. I’m not gonna give you a he hates North siders, no offense to anybody out there, that’s north Cyrus you just like hates him. And he’s like, I’m not gonna give any money or support you with your dream on that. So I came down here, I was around like, 23 I didn’t have any money. And I didn’t know anybody downtown. I didn’t know the differences between the neighborhoods, either. I didn’t know like, what webinars or vocals man like I didn’t know, that was different. You know, I just know I wanted to sell or the big buildings were. So I came here just house my way the top. And that’s just kind of like how it started.

D.J. Paris 6:57
Yeah, I was talking to Joel Schaub, who comes on our show once a month from guaranteed rate. He’s basically said the greatest thing about you, he just goes, he just thought works, everyone, you know, and I went, Yeah, that’s pretty much it. You know, I don’t know if it’s, of course, you know, you’re obviously extremely knowledgeable, too. But outworking I know, is a big, big thing for you. Would you say that’s, is that your number one success secret? If there was one?

Matt Laricy 7:21
I mean, I’d say it’s one of them. You know, I think the biggest problem in real estate is a lot of people just think it’s easier. They watch Million Dollar Listing, and they’re just like, hey, you know, like, the guy like wakes up at 10 o’clock, and he puts on something that looks cool. And like flirts with some hot girls. And, you know, he’s got a $10 million sale. I’m like, people just think like, that’s how it is. But throughout the years, it’s it’s a constant grind. And you know, we count days off here, and we’re constantly making sure people are working hard. I think that’s important. But also, the other aspect is, is that like, I run my business, like a business. And I think the biggest problem that most Realtors fall into is that, you know, you’re afraid to let go of any power, you think it all has to be done by you. It’s all III. And you know, they don’t understand. And now that teams are kind of more popular than when I first started

my business, I think one thing that probably second most is the fact that we are able to kind of run our business like a business.

D.J. Paris 8:15
Yeah. And you know, actually, that brings us to one of our listener questions. So one of our questions because you mentioned structure, right. And Realtors oftentimes struggle, that’s not always the skill set that attracts someone to being a real estate agent, they love the freedom, they probably don’t thrive in structure, and you are a huge structure guy. So one of our listeners, Suzanne wants to know, do you have a morning routine? And if so, would you be willing to share it?

Matt Laricy 8:41
Yeah, I mean, I actually think that you have to have a structure. It’s kind of like, you know, like you, you have to have a set things that you have to do every day. So like even my assistants, my agents and stuff like that every day you do a certain task. So whether it’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever the day is, you have certain tasks you have to do that day. But then on top of that, you then tackle whatever else comes in. So for me, no matter what, you know, I wake up pretty much at the same time, every single day of the week. Well, not pretty much every day of the week, I wake up same time I go to the gym, you know, get the stress out. And then I tried to not have if I mean, if I have to have an appointment the morning I will but I try not to have like a super early appointment because I like to get through all my leads my prospecting. And then that way, I’m done doing that. And I’ve already cleaned up my inbox at that point. So then I tackle all the other stuff that comes in because like all day long, I always get emails and calls and negotiating deals and all that other stuff. But like, every morning if I didn’t go to the gym, or it’s easy, right? Like, it’d be really easy to just be like, let’s Screw it. Let’s wake up at eight o’clock today and like sleep in and not go to the gym. And it’s kind of wake up and like it’s not gonna make that big of a difference. But that’s, that’s a slippery slope. You know, you you give up one day, then the next day you kind of slip in maybe a little bit later in the next notes 10 or 11 o’clock and that’s kind of now your normal routine. So I think it’s really important that you have structure in this business. And that’s some of the things I try to teach my team all the time this Having structure, you know, every day you have to have like, certain things you have to do. And you need to make sure that I don’t know if you have to write it down or whatever, you have to make sure you do it and check it off your list. And then you can move on to everything else. So whenever I hear people talk about like, Hey, I don’t feel like I’m busy, or I’m, like seeing a lot of success. I’m like, Well, what are you doing every day? And like, well, some days you wake up to this, and sometimes they do this. So I mean, I think routine is probably the most important things you can do to be successful.

D.J. Paris 10:24
Yeah, I had on years ago, I had a Josh Weinberg who’s Of course, Tommy’s partner, Tom, he’s a real close friend of yours. And Josh, I’m sure as well. And they I asked them this is back when I just started the podcasts, didn’t know what to ask people. And I said, Hey, what are your what are your goals for next year? And I had Josh on the show. And he, he sort of laughed, and he goes, Yeah, we don’t really think like that. We think about discipline. And he said, one of his disciplines was Tommy, and this is a few years ago, but it’s probably still true. He said, We have Tommy has to meet one person a day that he hasn’t met before and pitch what we do. And he goes, if we if he does that, we’re gonna hit all of our numbers. And I just love that, that they have those, you know, even however many years they’ve been in business, they still do the basics, the fundamentals.

Matt Laricy 11:05
Right. I mean, that’s, that’s it, I think, the power of routine for everyone the most powerful things you could use to be successful in this business?

D.J. Paris 11:12
Yeah, I would love to talk about, you know, your team hasn’t just been successful. You’ve had a meteoric rise, you’re at the very top of the mountain in Chicago. That doesn’t happen by accident. And, you know, what would you attribute in addition to having, obviously, incredible discipline, and structure? What else do you think is has really taken your team and you to the top?

Matt Laricy 11:32
Well, I mean, I think knowledge is power, you know, so like, let’s face it. So people forget my first year in the business, I did zero to one sale, I think it was like, that’s it nothing. My second year in the business, I did one sale. My third year in the business, I did two sales. But my fourth year in the business, I did four sales. So pretty much in the first four years, I think I made a total of like, $30,000 in four years. I remember at that point, I’m like, 25 ish years old, okay. And I’m living at home in my parents house. Okay, I got dumped by some chick I was dating for a couple years. So I’m depressed and lonely at home with no sales in the worst real estate economy we’ve ever seen. And, you know, you’re also guys, you’re trying to pick up on checks, you’re like, Hey, I’m 25 a little bit home. And I’m in real estate, like how well do you think that went over to anybody you met, you know, make no money. So like, you know, like, okay, loser get out of here. So like, it’s really easy to get down on yourself. And, you know, a lot of people see me and they’re like, well, you’re young, you got so successful so quickly, but they forget, like, those four years are probably the four worst years, but best years of my life to because it, you know, helped build some character, you know, brings you down to realize that, like, you do have to work hard. So what I was saying during those years, is that I knew I wouldn’t get rich in money during those years. So I didn’t care that only had a sale. Yeah, that didn’t discourage me at all. What I always said is that, like, you don’t get rich and good market, you get rich in bad markets, right? So I can get rich in money, I’m gonna get rich and out. So when this market turns, I’m gonna know every single thing possible about the market. So what I would do is I’d drive down here first thing in the morning. And like I said, I didn’t know what River North to go colts, or I didn’t know there was a Wicker Park, like, I had no idea that these were neighborhoods, like we’re not cultured on the south side. Okay, so like knowing all this different shit. So I would get down early in the morning. And I would walk the neighborhoods literally with a paper map. And I would draw out the neighborhoods, and I’d walk into buildings and ask them if they’re rentals or sales buildings. And if it was a rental or sales, if it was rental, I’d walk right now, because I knew that you want to make it big and rentals, you’d only make it big and sale. So if it was a sales, I would drill the doorman trying to ask them, you know what this stuff was, and like, try to figure out what the building was. And if it had a name, I put the name down. So when somebody said like, Hey, this is the Montgomery, you know, like, I knew what that next like before people be like, Oh, I live in X building. The fuck is that? Like, is that a neighborhood that I missed? You know, so I mean, but I did that. And you have to remember when you wake up, and you don’t have enough money to pay for gas to get down to the city, and you don’t have any sales, it can be a pretty discouraging day, and it’s freezing cold out like it is saying you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna go downtown and walk in here. But it’s to figure out what I’m gonna know about it, you know, but I mean, I was partial, what I did try to know is like, so, you know, I tried to memorize the neighborhoods. After that, and go back to the South Side office, and I drill my dad, I would sit in the office, literally, he’d always put on a pot of coffee at like, 6pm and be like, Well, I’m gonna throw another pot on, drinks on with me. And I’m like, Yeah, I’ll sit here with you. And I’d sit back there, and I’d have fucking nothing to do. And I would just listen to him answer the phone call and see what he said. And then when he hang up, if I didn’t know, I’d say, Why did you say that? Like, what does this mean? What is the title? You know? Like, why did you negotiate this way? Like, what’s a better routine? So like, I would just ask every question I could. And that also at that time, there’s these things called computers. So anytime, like, I like I would read any article or do anything I could, like, just try to research so I was like, I kind of spent those four years it’s like a college, like education, like trying to really figure out learn every single thing I could. So when the market started to turn like I can answer any question, I mean, not offending business, but I knew everything.

D.J. Paris 14:56
Isn’t that amazing that your dad really set you up to succeed by Not making it easy for you as far as helping you grow your business.

Matt Laricy 15:04
He didn’t do anything. Like, No, I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. Like, you know, it was tough love for sure. You know, I think he kind of helped pave the way to make sure that like we weren’t brought up silver spoon fed or anything like that, you know, I’m sure. He’ll never tell you we did anything, right. So he pitches every day about everything he still runs, technically runs the company. But, you know, I mean, I think that’s the biggest problem too, is like we were brought up in tough love. My guys are brought up that way too. But we’re in a PC society today. I feel like you know, realtors nowadays are set up to fail. I mean, honestly, because we’re not where everybody gets a trophy. Everybody’s gonna win. And whenever there’s pushback, I see, I tell people all the time, probably the biggest reason why I think I succeed more than other people’s because I want it more. Honestly, you’re the ideal and like, the people will be like, Okay, well, it doesn’t someone’s gonna work out. It was nice trying to work with him, like, wait a second fucking work that were 5000 apart, like, let’s make this work. But go back and talk to your guy, pick up the phone, we can make this happen, you know, and then like next, you know, builder like, Oh, my God, they came up like, can you believe it? We have a deal. Like, Yeah, no shit, because you call him back the second time. Like, I will tell you that that happens once a day, literally once a day. And you know, we’re in a society nowadays, where when the going gets tough people get going, like, they don’t want to work for it. Think about when you talk about the market. People are talking about the back half of the year. They’re always like, Oh, my God, it’s a different market right now. Can you believe it? It’s so tough. It’s like what you mean, it’s so tough to like, I show my clothes like 10 times, like 10 times, the real estate was never designed to sell in two or three days in the market. You know, you got to work for the people who want to work for and trying to make deals happen. They’re the ones that are successful.

D.J. Paris 16:32
Yeah, boy, that is that could not be better said. Absolutely. Right. And I think that shows in, in your work ethic, and also just how determine I saw you speak in an event. I can’t remember six months ago or so for Chicago, real producers. And there was a panel and the panels. Great. And you were up there. And somebody had asked a question about when you give up on a lead. And different people have different answers when once they tell you to buzz off or whatever. And you were like, why would you ever give up on a lead? And you said, I don’t care if it takes five years? I can’t wait for that person to become a client.

Matt Laricy 17:05
Right? I mean, I mean, I, when somebody tells me even like they like it’s a cold lead, you’ve never met him before. Like, oh, you know, we decided just to rent Well, guess what fucker, I just put you in my quarterly photo, every single quarter for the rest of your life, you’re gonna get an email or a call from me. And you know what I would say that every single quarter, I get at least five to six more sales from those people that people would have just thrown away. And guess what, six sales extra? Maybe that’s an extra 50 G’s in our pocket, right? And then that person who bought now they’re like, Oh, I love this guy. They’re gonna refer me to three other people. Right? So that’s technically not just like six more sales, it’d be an extra 20 sales a year. And one of the things I always tell people it’s like Derek Jeter like, you know, I mean, singles and doubles, keeping the game. You keep getting these little wins here and there. And here and there. It’s not about getting a $2 million sale, you get a bunch of little ones. Those add up. And that’s what builds your network. And I’m sorry to cut you off. No, no,

D.J. Paris 17:52
I cut you off. You’re absolutely right. It is singles and doubles all day that wins wins the game. I would love to ask a few questions here. Our audience was kind enough to write in because you’re obviously such a legend here in Chicago. Let’s see normal

Matt Laricy 18:06
guy trying to see like everybody else. That’s all.

D.J. Paris 18:09
Yeah, well, look, I that is, you know, we’ve done 130 Some of these episodes, all top 1% producers, and, you know, they all really you know, all boils down to wanting it more. And so I think you’ve just saying that was was so important to our listeners. And also what’s great too is your first four years, you didn’t have a ton of immediate success, yet. You just kept going and now you know if it was if it all went away tomorrow, you can rebuild it again. That’s what’s so amazing.

Matt Laricy 18:36
I lived at home till I was almost 27 years old. I didn’t give a shit. You know what I said to myself, I said like every dollar I saved, I put back in my business. That’s the other thing is I reg invest in myself. So like instead of spending 2000 hours a month downtown showing off, they’re like, Hey, I got money, blah, blah, blah, I think give a shit. I don’t give a shit if everybody thought I lived on my car. I wanted to be successful in the business and I was willing to sacrifice everything to make that happen. So every dollar made, I thought myself so I’m gonna put that right back in there. It’s like a lot of people talk about like how we got big on Zillow, right? Everybody’s like, oh, man, that guy got big as a Zillow blah blah. I’m gonna tell you a good story. What happened with that? In 2010 I want to guaranteed rates holiday party and Mark Martini Ranch was called Okay, now it’s Pacific Standard Time. Okay. And I was locked up with five agents in the city. I won’t tell them when they were in that worship these guys man fuck, I’m gonna go up there. I don’t know who they are. But they don’t know me. And I’m like, Hey, what are you guys doing for advertising? And like the one guy’s like, I’m on bus boards and you know, billboards all the shit. I’m in CS magazine and all this, like, what are you doing? I’m like, well, there’s this company that got created. It’s called Zillow. And there’s another one called Trulia. And like, I played around with their algorithms. I saw what they did I think they’re doing really well and I put my life savings on the line and I think this might be big. And everybody laughed at me and they’re like the internet like What the Why like nobody’s going online searching for homes like what do you guys I was like, Are you guys idiots like, this is huge. No, like, you’re never make anything blah, blah. They laughed at me and like, honestly, I walked I left the party after that because I was so embarrassed about like, how they made me feel. And I just thought to myself, you know why? If I’m going to keep trying at this, I’m gonna keep trying to tech route and see if they pick up, you know where it takes me like, here I am. But I’ll tell you what those websites first came out. That’s the differences that I invested my money in technology that other people felt would never work. And I did that all throughout my career, you know, and I still do that today, when I, when I see an opportunity, I think something’s going to take off, I invest my money with it. It’s it’s not, you know, John’s money, or I don’t get money from compass or some of these other, you know, places to give me money. Because my own hard earned cash, I invest in myself to see if something’s gonna work. And for people out there listening, you have to know is that like, you got to take chances. If you believe in enough, and you’re gonna work on it, then do it. But if you don’t believe in it, don’t put the money into it, because you’re gonna fail it. That’s the problem with agents is they don’t, you know, they go half and a half out. And they’re like, I can’t believe this isn’t working. It’s like, well, you didn’t give me your all, you know, and that’s the most money.

D.J. Paris 20:47
And I mean, I don’t know any realtors, that that only did a handful of sales in four years who are still in the business, right? Like, that’s the difference between you and everyone else is you just stuck with it, you knew it was gonna work, eventually, and you became an expert. And that was really, really important, as I don’t know how many brokers even become experts anymore.

Matt Laricy 21:05
I think the problem is, as soon as I talk about that, now is that a lot of people get their license, and they have got a great network, you know, and they did really, really well. But when when it gets tough, and I deal with these agents all the time, like how do you not know what a closing cost is? How do you not know what this sounds like? People actually don’t know, I say, you have to learn this stuff now. Because when the market turns, which it will, you know, I’m not saying it’s gonna get to oh, wait, but it’s gonna get a little bit worse. What’s gonna happen is you’re not going to be the expert. People are like, Why am I going to work with that? You know, so you have to educate yourself, every single day, you should be reading something, make sure that you’re ahead of the curve. So you can always be educated on the market.

D.J. Paris 21:39
Yeah. And that actually brings me to one of our listener questions, who said, how do you think this is anonymous question. So how do you feel the real estate market will be affected? If the Republicans win the presidency? Or if Democrats take office? Do you feel there’d be a shift in the market?

Matt Laricy 21:55
Yeah, I think there’ll be a huge shift. If the Republicans win office, the markets can be phenomenal, it’s business friendly, things are gonna keep going the way they’re gone. We’ll have four great years. If the Democrats win the office, I think it depends which one does. And it could affect the market. It’s not doom and gloom. Okay, there’s three branches of government. But I think the market probably won’t be as strong as it would be. If Republicans in office and if you look, statistically speaking, the housing market is typically better with Republican in office, it is, you know, people have more money, and you

D.J. Paris 22:22
don’t care what either way, right? Like, as far as you’re gonna be able to grow your business regardless,

Matt Laricy 22:27
I own a business, you can’t have a political opinion in my mind, because if you’re like Republicans, half the people hate you. And if you like the Democrats, if people hate you, I mean, like, honestly, depending on who gets an office, everybody’s gonna have to make adjustments on their business. And that’s just the way it is.

D.J. Paris 22:41
Yeah, I saw you speak once at an event and somebody was asking about cash. Where do we think the markets headed and you were like, I don’t really care because I will find opportunities no matter what I find, you know, you were they were saying in the winter it’s it’s slower and you were like, it’s not slower for me in the winter. Like I’m just as busy.

Matt Laricy 22:57
Well, that’s the problem is people forget like, you know, people keep saying and now they’re like oh my god this January is different than other January’s. It’s different. Like no shit. It’s not different. We’ve been more seasonal because these rents we’ve been the most rent heavy city in the country for the last couple years in a row. So guess what, January, February, a better number months and July and August. So when you’re slow October, December, the reason you’re slow is because like everybody gets his calls, like, I want to scorch and deal you want to deal. Let’s talk in October, I’ll follow up with you every single week until October. And when October comes in these deals pour in, that’s when we’re going to die. So that’s where from October, December, I crushed it in sales, with investors, my deal seekers, you know, that’s it, you just have to plan your business or your people want a 2 million our house, but you know, they want it at 1.8. Okay, well, I can get that for you in October. I can’t get it for you. In February, when there’s 50 people looking at Samos.

D.J. Paris 23:40
That’s well said. Okay, Roberto asks, What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made while growing your business? Because he would like to avoid it. He says Thanks in advance.

Matt Laricy 23:50
I mean, I’ve made more mistakes, and I could count on my human being just like everybody else, I make a mistake every single day of the week, it’s probably more than one a week or one a day, I probably the biggest one that cost you the most is maybe hiring wrong. You know, there’s some times I make a hire where I kind of know in my gut that it’s not the right move, but maybe I’m kind of desperate at the time. So I take them on, and I take a chance and then I realize like really quickly, they’re not the right fit, and then I’m fucked because it costs you a lot of cash. And then you have to find somebody else. So that’s probably the biggest mistake that cost me.

D.J. Paris 24:21
They say, fire fast, hire slow, right? Something like that. Yeah, I

Matt Laricy 24:25
agree with that. All right.

D.J. Paris 24:27
This is a kind of a silly question, but Rianne I think it’s Rianne. hopefully I’m pronouncing that right asks about your blue suits, saying do you always wear blue suits because you love the color blue? Or is it a branding thing?

Matt Laricy 24:38
I started wearing blue suits because the suit guy went to set he thought it would look good and blue. So I bought my first custom suit was blue. And then after that, I kind of liked that it was different. I felt everybody always were brown or black or gray. And I was like let’s just get these obnoxious blue ones. And as I liked more, I started getting more blue color suits so that we had different ones to wear. That’s it. We have a dress code, my office all my guys who wear suits and ties at all time. So you got to if you work seven days a week, I’d have enough variety in the next you know, for the people out there. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 25:10
I’m always shocked at how so many Realtors dress so casually. I think

Matt Laricy 25:15
it was ridiculous. I do I think everybody listening out there to wear a suit and tie. I mean, you don’t see anybody going into a board meeting and in like, you know, khakis and like a T shirt and trying to win $100 million in business. Now I get it, like we’re not pitching $100 million. But like, I’ll tell you, I probably get two to 3% more business a year because I wear a suit and tie. Like if it’s between me and somebody else, I’ll win it just solely the way I’m dressed.

D.J. Paris 25:38
No question about it. And it’s kind of like, you know, we think other professions like if I went to see an attorney, and if they weren’t in a suit, I’d be a little disappointed and I might not trust them as much.

Matt Laricy 25:48
Yeah, I mean, 100% agree. Yeah. Okay, this

D.J. Paris 25:51
is this a good question. And I suspect I know your answer, but I’m curious to hear it. So Charles asks, With the advent of discount brokerages like Redfin, of course, being the most obvious example. Have you seen this impact your business, if at all,

Matt Laricy 26:06
it’s grown my business, I would say, I think there’s a lot of people, it’s great, because like, a lot of my buyers will go out with them, and then realize that like, they don’t know what they’re talking about. And then they’ve gotten to hold narrowing down for me, like they start with like, 30 years. Now they want one area and they want like one house and like this one popped up, can we see it and I show them one place, and they buy it? It’s phenomenal. And on the sell side, it’s like, they’ll think they want to go a cheaper route. I’m not just naming one company. There’s a lot of companies out there, of course, I realized that wasn’t the right route to go. So then they’ll take us on and we’ll get it more of a realistic price. And it’s easier for us. So I mean, there’s going to be different people that like different things. That’s why they make red cars, black cars, blue cars, everybody’s got their own opinion, there’s no right answer, there’s no wrong answer. Some people will look at as a discount, I just look at as a different personality. That’s it. You know, for me, I don’t see it as a threat. I know what I charge and value, I bring the table, I never degrade any agents or any company. A lot of people do it to us quite often on listing appointments. But I always say that it’s an I’m not here to tell you why I’m better than XYZ. I’m here to tell you who I am and what I can offer. And if you like me, then let’s roll with it. And if not, I wish you the best and I hope whoever gets to listen gets a sale. Like that’s it. That’s how you have to live your life. If you live your life with hatred towards the other agents, you’re going up against companies and you worry about that your business is gonna be affected.

D.J. Paris 27:23
Well, that and it’s called a cooperative commission, you might run across that person in a future deal

Matt Laricy 27:28
that people do business you run into enough that doesn’t make sense like that and other people.

D.J. Paris 27:32
Yeah, 100% Agree. Okay. Lucy asks, I would love to get your opinion about ibuyers. Just for our audience real quickly, I’m sure pretty much everyone knows what that is. In case you’re not I by no means an instant buyer. So somebody goes onto a website, they get an instant offer on a property. And, you know, it’s obviously become quite popular. What are your what’s your take on I buyers?

Matt Laricy 27:52
I think it’s a fad. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s a fad. I think, you know, right now the economy is unbelievable. It’s literally the best economy America has ever seen. The market is unbelievably hot. A lot of realtors who’ve only been in the business last six, seven years like Man Real Estate’s great, it’s never bad. Well, guess what? Like we are in fictitious waters right now. Like naturally the way October December was last year for a lot of people out there that were crying complain about the market that’s normally like how the normal market is okay? It’s like, it’s always like really tough. So when you buy 3000 homes and just pay tax assessments, mortgages, or whatever it is, and they’re not moving really quick, what are the I buyers going to do that? What are they gonna do when they can’t sell in two seconds, I’ve never met anybody that wants to buy something that’s like super overpriced. So if they have 3000 homes that they’re just sitting on, and we’re now in a point where, you know, average market time goes from, you know, 30 days in an area and Deborah, they’re buying and it goes to 300 days, and they have 3000 Those, like how well that’s gonna work for you. Technology disruptors will come into an industry at all times, whenever the economy is very, very good. But when the economy gets bad, how much is it gonna affect? It’s like commission, like a lot of people thought commission was gonna go down, right? And that when the market was booming, like things were selling in 24 hours, you would get a lot more people asking you for commission reductions. Well, guess what, now that market time is up. I have more people will say like, they’ll pay me more if I sell faster. Yeah. So it’s just like, I mean, there’s just a fat for sale by owner.com was the biggest threat to humanity in real estate in the 90s. How that works,

D.J. Paris 29:23
right? Yeah, great point. Yeah, everyone thought that was that was going to replace realtors, I, yeah.

Matt Laricy 29:29
And the real estate agency, I bar all that stuff. It’s evolving. It’s changing. I think the people who do it part time and don’t take the job seriously. I think a large portion of real estate agents in the next 20 years will be gone because it’s been such a thing where like, Hey, I’m gonna get my license two to three deals a year sheets and gigs. It’s cool, right? I think that type of stuff is going to start to change and what I call more like bottom feeders that get a couple of deals a year are gonna be off the table. And I think people are gonna look at more as a profession, which I think is only good, I think it’s gonna make the bigger agents people bigger.

D.J. Paris 30:01
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. All right, Tim asks, do you specialize in only a certain area of the city or do you also work in the suburbs? And should I as a new broker in this person’s in their first year should they specialize in one area or try to do try to go wherever the listings take them

Matt Laricy 30:19
specialized and we mostly specialize in this like what I call the downtown markets which is like South above like Lakeview and then north Center West Loop restaurant, all that stuff. So when I first got my business, I would go anywhere, I would be in like Orland Park up to like Skokie this outside. Like we’re like anything that would come in. I took it like Hungry Hungry Hippo, right? Like all the businesses that get the more the better. And then I realized that like, I didn’t know what happened the street over and like people were kind of like, I kind of felt like I was chasing commission. So like now if I get something suburbs, I refer it out to certain people in certain areas, the suburbs I give to and it’s just like me like and I, if somebody’s like, why don’t want to use you because we’re buying him or something. And suburbs like asset agent, like how many places have sold in this building last, like 10 days, I can tell you everything about everything there is about the market here. Can I tell you what’s happening with NACA today? I’ve never been better with that in my life, like how the fuck am I supposed to, but I could change the commission up there. So like I always say figure out where you want to be own it, specialize in it, know everything you can know about it, and then maybe expand to another smaller region that’s right next to it. So it’s kind of like building an empire. But you don’t want to go too far, where you can’t maintain the balance of the Empire you have.

D.J. Paris 31:21
Yeah, and it takes years, right? Like, it’s certainly you’re in River North, your your offices there, it takes a ton of time takes years to really get that knowledge. And then you become so incredibly valuable to people who want to live in those immediate areas that no one really can compete with you.

Matt Laricy 31:36
Rome wasn’t built overnight. You know, everybody wants that instant gratification these days. I mean, it’s gonna take a long, long time to do it.

D.J. Paris 31:42
And then one last question. So we’ve got, I don’t know what percentage of our listeners are brand new to the business, but we get a lot of new new brokers. So we talked about discipline structure, becoming an expert, taking your time treating it like a business. Is there anything else that you would coach a new broker on to start doing? Maybe it’s a daily discipline? Maybe it’s just something to start working on. But But what’s what’s sort of keeps your, you know, would you recommend somebody to keep their eye on the prize

Matt Laricy 32:10
structure in your day, first off, making sure that you do the same thing all day, every day, like, every day you do, you have to do XYZ, no matter what, you know, and then educating yourself on top of that, and making that part of your routine of being like every day, like, for me, personally, I read five articles a day about the market every day no matter what. So I can always say in tune, you can’t be like, Oh, this happened. But that’s why we tell people like the Wall Street Journal doesn’t need to tell me what’s happened in Chicago. I’m like patting them on the front lines. I know what’s happening here better than they ever would dream to know about it. But that’s because I educate myself all day, every day, these new people out there, take every class, you can take every webinar, you can listen to every podcast, you can read every book, whether you agree or disagree with it. In take all that information in, you could formulate your own opinions later on. The main thing right now is to actually understand what the hell you’re doing. Like don’t worry about the sales, we always thought the sales are a cherry on top, like if I got to sell that be awesome. Like, yeah, make a couple bucks to survive. But like, I was blessed enough to have parents who had like a house that I could live at, but like still like, to me the money I never give it I still today don’t give a shit about how much money I make. I care about having sales and educating myself on what’s happening in the marketplace. You know, I just I think that’s a big problem for new new agents. Everything they know about is like, don’t talk to me about what your GCI is what you know, there’s a lot of the companies are like, what’s my GCI gonna be if I do this, who gives a shit with your money, I can tell you, my GCI is because you want I don’t give a shit. I don’t give a crap about how much money I’m making off per deal. I care about making sure I do the best fucking job. And I know everything there is about, you know, the market and what’s going on out there. And that’s what you should be more concerned about the moral about what you put in your pocket. And every new Broker, I need probably the person that tells me how much money we’re gonna make first year. So the first thing I tell him, I’ll tell you right now, if you ever heard my competence, the first thing you do, I will leave that meeting right away. I cut meeting short so I just get up and I’m like, this isn’t a good fit.

D.J. Paris 33:49
Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, you know, knowledge is power. And for every one of our listeners, I always recommend to I’m not a Producing Realtor myself, but we interview a lot of them for our show. And, and so I always say you should be terrified of somebody who’s better than you. And you absolutely should be because Matt’s and his team is going to come in and blow you out of the water if it’s a listing presentation. So you need to up your game. So you need to spend those four years really upping your game so that you can compete with the big boys and girls of course, but you need to be able to compete and if you can’t immediately articulate your knowledge. You know, guys like Matt are gonna come around and crush you and not that Matt’s looking to crush you, but he’s just going to have a better

Matt Laricy 34:31
technically I am. I like competition and I want to try to be the best in the business. I’ll tell you when I was trying to up in common I would take the first five guys that obviously gameofthrones sure you know and it would count tell the people that you want to kill every night before she went to bed I would look at the top five guys and be like, these are the guys who want to take down like all day every day like what can I do to better myself to be better than that? You know? And then immediate like in a bad way like I feel like a bad people. I mean, these guys are unbelievable rock star people. You know guys and girls. I’m just saying for me personally If I knew to be the best, I had a beat the best. So how would I beat the best? Well, I have to be better myself. These guys aren’t at the top because they suck. They’re the top was the best in the game. So every night like Game of Thrones, I’m saying like their names like, this is what I’m gonna do to try to bring them down. And I would think about it, I had a plan of attack, I didn’t just go off the seat of my pants being like, oh, let’s try to do this today. Like these new people, you have to take the job seriously, if you hold yourself to a serious matter, the people you meet are going to do that as well.

D.J. Paris 35:24
Yeah, and just the sheer amount of knowledge you have on the current markets and what you see future trends going you just make adjustments you you don’t, you don’t even worry about where things are headed. You just notice where they’re headed and adjust the business accordingly. It seems

Matt Laricy 35:38
like it’d be scared about it. You just gotta know that like, Hey, if you have to also think five steps ahead. Like if you know, like, hey, like, I know, this is gonna be a tough end of the year. It’s a presidential election year. Chicago doesn’t perform all that yet. Well, I know August in December is gonna be a bloodbath. So right now I’m already preparing for now today. So that August, December, I’m not held with my pants on I’ll be prepared. I’m going to crush in August number because I know I’m gonna do it next year we succeed.

D.J. Paris 36:01
Yeah, well, you know, I think that you’ve said it all. What a great, what a great conversation. I want to make sure everyone listening. You want it if you want to see, by the way, a great website as well. There’s a lot of just terrible realtor websites out there. Matt Larose has one of the best ones, maybe the best one I’ve ever seen. Visit Matt literacy group.com. You can see exactly what a good website and I love the fact that it’s not, there’s not too much information on there. It’s really concise. It’s clear, it’s a good example of how to promote your brand, which of course, obviously, you know how to do

Matt Laricy 36:31
that, you know, the one thing we did with that was that we didn’t put listings on them and the only company that doesn’t have listings on our website. And what I said is because there’s so many different websites out there nowadays with with listing on there, I said that like why not promote who you are. People want to know who you are, they’re hiring you. So let that be seen. And that’s what we built the website around.

D.J. Paris 36:48
And no one cares about your listings anyway. They care about you, right? I mean? Yeah, yeah. So that’s, that’s good. Because a lot of right, I always say that if like if you’re a realtor, and you’re just posting ads, or not ads on Facebook, but we’re doing posts on Facebook bragging about your your most recent listings, like, I don’t know, the Pete, most people care, but they want to know what you’re all about. And the website does that. And then also listen to us, listen to his podcast and watch his videos on YouTube, Matt literacy project. So I’ll be sending out to all of our listeners in the notes for this episode, you’ll be able to link directly to that. And again, Matt, true legend in Chicago. So grateful that I know you don’t have time to do this, and you did it. Anyway, it’s a real, real honor for our listeners on behalf of the listeners and viewers. Really, really appreciate it real quick, guys, before we go. If everyone out there tells another realtor who could benefit from listening to interviews or watching interviews like the one here with Matt, we’ll be able to double our viewership, we’ll be able to do more episodes for you. So please tell a friend about our website. And on on behalf of Matt and myself to all the listeners. We really thank you appreciate your your support and continuing to, to watch our episodes and listen. So Matt, thanks again. Really appreciate your time. This was great. Yeah.

Matt Laricy 37:58
Thanks, guys. Thanks for watching. You know, we’re always here if there’s any questions in the bottom comment.

D.J. Paris 38:03
Awesome. Thanks, man.

Matt Laricy 38:05
All right. Thanks.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Matthew Arminio of Apex National Real Estate is here to tell you that buy-and-hold and fix-and-flip are still viable real estate investment strategies in 2020. And he should know since he averages over 200 closed sales each year across five states (all investment properties). In our conversation Matt discusses his process for sourcing investment opportunities, how he evaluates the profitability of each property and how real estate agents can increase their knowledge of the investment side of the business!

Contact Matthew Arminio at 888.773.2739 and marminio@springlakecap.com

Want to watch this episode instead? Click here for the YouTube video!

---

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
Today’s episode of Keeping it real podcast is brought to you by nest egg. Looking to add value to your investor clients recommend nest egg a Chicago based app that is everything your clients need to manage their rentals in only minutes a month. Nest Egg is the only app that gets things done at the rental including on demand maintenance, and services like tenant placement and snow removal. Also nest egg is free to use which makes your clients investments 20 to 30% more profitable. Join nest egg today by downloading the app or by visiting mistake dot rent. That’s nest egg dot rent, use promo code keeping it real to get your first hour of maintenance for free. And now on to the show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and guide to the show and in just a moment, we have a great interview with Matthew R Mineo. Before we get started couple of quick notes, I want to remind everyone that we are in the process of launching a brand new website which will make everything a lot easier. If in case you want to search and find old episodes that appeal to you or want to just for example, watch all the Joel episodes for learning with a lender or Ryan do a pre sale or go go for Instagram or carry McCormick for the Monday market minute. So we’re running into just a few snags getting that website completed. But it should be completed in the next couple of weeks. Very excited about that. In the meantime, our website is still really functional. If you visit keeping that real pod.com You can stream every episode we’ve ever done live there. Also, please join our Facebook page, which is facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pot every single day, we post an article designed that we find online designed to help you grow your business. And of course we post all of our episodes there too. And we’ve now added video. So when we’re recording an episode, even though it might not actually get produced for a couple of weeks, what we do in the interim is we while we’re recording it, we broadcast it live on Facebook with video. So guys, it’s a great way to actually watch our episodes being recorded, see some behind the scenes stuff and get the episodes much faster, because it takes me a couple of weeks to produce them and actually get them ready to you through the podcast app that you’re probably using. Lastly, speaking of the podcast apps, if you’re on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Spotify, wherever Pandora, we’re everywhere, please leave us a review. Whatever that review is, we appreciate it. It helps our visibility within those podcast directories and just gives us feedback and lets us know how we’re doing. So please leave us a review. And one last favor. I’m asking for you tell one other person about the show. If you know a realtor out there that could benefit from hearing from true top producers like Matthew or Mineo just pass it along to one other realtor, you can either send them to our website, keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up iTunes or Google Play or wherever and have them search for keeping it real podcasts. It’ll pop right up. Thank you for all your continued support. We couldn’t do it without you guys. We’re cranking out episodes left and right. And we’re so excited to continue to bring you the content that you want and deserve and clearly appreciate. So thank you on behalf of all of us and now on to our interview with Matthew or Mineo.

All right, today on the show, we have Matthew Armindo from Apex national real estate. Matthew is a licensed managing broker in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, and Georgia. He’s focused solely on investments in real estate, primarily a single family investments. He works with all kinds of clients from large institutional funds to everyday investors, sells currently over 200 homes a year which is absolutely incredible. Welcome to the show, Matt. Thanks for having me on. Ya know, thank you. We really appreciate your time. I know I know how busy you are. So this is really appreciative of you spending time with our audience. Tell us a little bit about you know, your journey. How did you get into real estate?

Matthew Arminio 4:35
Yeah, so I got into real estate in 2009. I was working at a bank and managing a bunch of custom credits locally in Chicago and was just dealing with a bunch of guys who had real estate investments on the side and fell in love with the deal structures and the nuances of real estate and all that stuff. I actually went to DePaul University and got a master’s in real estate finance, and then took a job at a private equity shop that was doing commercial real estate ended up in the single family space when everything kind of went dark. In 2009, I was approached by one of the largest rental hedge funds in the country in Chicago to help them source and purchase assets here. So actually did like 600 deals for them from roughly 2009 to 2012.

D.J. Paris 5:33
Well, and how did you find those deals? If you don’t mind me asking what what was back then? What was that? Were they mostly on the MLS? Were they not on the MLS? You know, that’s usually a question are not investor brokers are always curious about investors.

Matthew Arminio 5:47
Yeah, so we did. We did some direct mailings, some Pay Per Click advertising, sort of like the we buy homes. Sure, but for the most part, it was MLS buys. So we we covered 138 Chicago markets for them, eventually expanded into Georgia with them. You know, but it was just wake up everyday pound the MLS understand what their Buy Box was, what type of product they wanted, what the necessary yield was estimating some sort of improvement budget forum and just getting out as many offers as

D.J. Paris 6:24
we could. And these were all buy and hold or were they flips or

Matthew Arminio 6:28
that particular client was all buy and hold on. So the first three years that we were doing this, it was all just buy and hold, but they now on something like 45,000 homes nationwide.

D.J. Paris 6:38
Amazing. Do you still work with them? Are you off five do working with other clients now?

Matthew Arminio 6:42
I don’t work with them anymore. I do work with buy and hold clients. My biggest buy and hold clients are actually in Missouri and Wisconsin. Slightly different model. But my main source of business right now are fix and flip buyers.

D.J. Paris 6:59
Yeah, I’ve talked to a lot of investors over the last, you know, two or three years, it seems that the given we have listeners all over the country, we’re of course located here in Chicago, you have licenses in like five states. So you know, more of the national trends than I would know here locally. But I know even in Chicago, the margins have become a lot tighter for house hacking, or just buy and hold in general. Have you seen Have you seen a shift there’s that why have you expanded to other states because of the Chicago market or just as a natural progression of expanding your business?

Matthew Arminio 7:35
A little bit of both. I mean, we we went into Wisconsin because we had clients in Illinois that liked that, like the general market and like the yield you could get on single family in Wisconsin. Our clients is similar to a Nashville or an Atlanta, just a little bit behind the growth curve. Our clients in Atlanta are looking at four and a half percent population growth going, there’s not nearly enough inventory to satisfy all the people moving. So each market operates a little bit differently. But at the end of the day, it’s all about either hitting, hitting the yield or hitting the spread on your fix and flip to make money for the client.

D.J. Paris 8:21
Yeah, I’ve Yeah, I agree. It’s I’ve always heard that a lot of times brokers who aren’t investors to traditional Realtors working with buyers and sellers, primary residence type of deals are a lot of times not really understanding. They’ll say, Well, we don’t, I can’t, you know, finding the money, you know, to fund to finance these deals. And then savvy investors or seasoned investors say, Oh, the money’s the easy part. It’s fine to making the numbers work that are the challenge. Would you agree with that? Is that been your experience as well?

Matthew Arminio 8:52
Yeah, I mean, making the numbers work is always the hard part. One of the bigger challenges to is when you get into a lot of markets, and you’re dealing with agents on the sales side that aren’t necessarily used to working with investors, it takes a little bit of hand holding on their part because it’s a it’s an untraditional offer. As much as from an investor perspective, we might we’d like to make it look and feel like what they’re used to putting the house under contract, doing the inspection hand holding the client through inspection issues. In Illinois, we have attorneys, so dealing with the attorneys and lining up the closing. It doesn’t quite ever happened that way for us. You know, and it’s unfortunately it’s a lot less, I think, emotional than the retail game and a lot more financially driven. So just trying to educate Realtors on that side of the business is usually the biggest hurdle.

D.J. Paris 9:52
Yeah, they’re just it’s sort of two different animals, right? Like the traditional realtor deals with, you know, the public and you guys you’re To be mostly and the traditional realtor is b2c, it’s just a whole different game, I guess

Matthew Arminio 10:05
it’s a completely different game. It’s a completely different sales experience. The way that my clients talk to me and I talk back to my clients is completely different than what happens on a retail transaction.

D.J. Paris 10:18
Yeah, I imagine they put a lot of trust in you to go out and find that find the deal. And then obviously, if the numbers work there, they’re more likely to make that investment. I imagine the clients are almost rarely to never on site, looking at the property. Is that is that the case? Or do they?

Matthew Arminio 10:35
Yeah, so, you know, in our world, not only are we sourcing the property, but we’re also bird dogging it. So we are for most of our clients is we walked the property, we put the scope of work together, we’re telling them what needs to be done. I mean, it’s no longer it’s not really a game of, Hey, these are the comps. It’s, these are the comps. These are the features of the comps. And this is what it’s going to cost you to get these features into your house. And how will ultimately compare to the other comps. Because we’re not necessarily worried about the property appraising on the back end, we’re more worried about it selling on the back end.

D.J. Paris 11:11
Right? What what type of? Well, here’s a question that I that I’m always curious about be and people brokers who are non who are more traditional Realtors might not understand the sheer number of offers, that I suspect you have to write Are you guys just constantly pumping out offers is that is that a huge part of of the business is just offer after offer and seeing who bites

Matthew Arminio 11:36
you know, when we move into a new market, it tends to operate that way. And it tends to operate that way. Because even us on the buy side don’t necessarily know the nuances of the market. So we don’t quite understand like, what’s an acceptable practice and what’s not an acceptable practice and who the power players are in a market and how we sort of position ourselves so that brokers understand we’re real, and will close. So we might not be the highest offer on the table might not be the best offer on the table. But there’s a certainty to working with us and our clients that I think a lot of other investor brokers can’t offer. You know, but once we sort of understand that market, I mean, in Chicago, we’re gonna buy 6570 assets for one of our fix and flip clients this year. And that’s probably about 20 offers a day, when it comes down to it. It’s incredible.

D.J. Paris 12:30
And how are you guys finding opportunities here in Chicago? Is it? Is it still the direct mail? Is it pounding the pavement? Knocking on doors? Is it MLS? What What have you guys found that’s working in this market? So,

Matthew Arminio 12:44
you know, my general philosophy is you can find great deals. And my general philosophy is you can find bad deals and just trends on in your particular market, sort of what the velocity of the MLS is as to whether or not you can really whether or not you can really find enough opportunities for your client. You know, in Chicago in particular, yeah, we still buy off the MLS primarily. We like it because we get more control that way. Sure. You know, there’s an expectation if you’re on the MLS, that access isn’t an issue. We can run in normal diligence period, we can walk an inspector through it if we need to, we have time to get our contractors in, in some of your faster velocity markets like Atlanta, we don’t have as much time that we can get through the process. And therefore the MLS doesn’t really operate as smoothly for us there.

D.J. Paris 13:36
Yeah, that makes sense. I think in Atlanta is aren’t there to MLS as well, or there used to be I don’t know if they’ve combined Yeah,

Matthew Arminio 13:43
they still have to MLS. And that’s always a fun thing when we open a new market, figuring out what MLS you’re on, and what platform and what it reaches and what it doesn’t. So yeah, there’s one that covers like, mainly Atlanta, and then one that covers everything else. So

D.J. Paris 13:59
Gotcha. And so we have a lot of listeners who are traditional realtors who oftentimes say, you know, I’d love to be able to work with investor clients. But I really don’t know anything about how to get started. You know, I always recommend to people who are looking to get more involved in investments to of course, check out bigger pockets that’s bigger pockets.com was a no brainer for for everyone who wants to even just get a knowledge about investments. And they have podcasts and you know, obviously lots of great resources for people to learn. There any other suggestions you have for brokers that really want to add this to their portfolio, whether it’s their own investments, or to be able to work with institutional clients like you do, or just, you know, mom and pop investors?

Matthew Arminio 14:46
Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that you have to do is figure out who the major players are in your market. So you have to kind of start to track your market, track the flips in your market and figure out Who’s buying them who’s? Who are they? Because the first thing is you got to identify who the potential client that you’re bringing product to, and really have to drill down on their numbers. You know, what you have to remember with them is, it’s not about what I think is a good deal. It’s not about what you think is a good deal. It’s about what they think is a good deal. It’s about what works for their metrics, you know, you have to remember that there’s an asset manager on the other side, that’s being judged on a set of criteria that his boss put in place. And so you have to be able to make sure that you understand that and help him see his way to that particular end goal.

D.J. Paris 15:40
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And so yeah, as far as tracking the big players, I’ve also suggested, wherever you know, our listeners are nationally or even internationally, is to you know, get involved, start going to some of the investor meetups, bigger pockets has tons and tons of them all over the country, people are always promoting those, and then just just, you know, find out who the big players are in your space and take them to lunch and find out how they do things. But one thing I have found is Investors love talking about investments. And there is no shortage, no shortage of podcasts, there’s no shortage of resources meetings that you can attend, to really start to educate yourself.

Matthew Arminio 16:24
Yeah, that’s definitely true. We find a lot of guys on Facebook, so we’re always farming, Facebook investment groups, LinkedIn, investment groups, Instagram, you know, all the various social media sites that you would typically think, where they go to promote themselves, their product, their businesses, I mean, that’s where you go and just strike up a conversation with them. And I mean, at the end of the day, investors are about one thing. Finding deals. So usually, if you say, I’m a realtor, I get the ball start.

D.J. Paris 17:00
Yeah, I think that’s right. And a lot of times, they’re they partner with realtors as well, there’s a lot, you know, and I imagine you, you know, I don’t know, if you do any traditional, you know, public, but primary residence by and sells, but you might be somebody who’s too busy to do any sort of traditional, you know, public real estate transactions. So those are also people that you want to connect with, because they might have opportunities for you, in whatever they’re not spending their day doing.

Matthew Arminio 17:28
Yeah, we spend a lot of time like our our brokerage is 100%, solely focused on the investment space. So when we get a retail client, we’re reaching out to agents that we have relationships with in some markets, and we’re referring that business to them. And so for agents that get a lot of clients that say to them, like, I want to I, you know, I want to do an investment, I want to flip a house, I want to buy some rentals, like, look for someone in your market that understands what they’re doing. And don’t be afraid to refer the business over to them, because usually, there’ll be a great referral source back.

D.J. Paris 18:03
Yeah, and they’re going to be able to better service the client until you you know, get your knowledge up to par. And you know, you shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to somebody like Matt and say, Hey, I’ve got an institutional client or an investor client, that’s not really my specialty, can I pass this over to you and, and, you know, hopefully, other opportunities that come your way would go to them as well. So,

Matthew Arminio 18:23
yeah, give an example of something like that I got approached by a guy based out of Ohio last week. He’s got his foothold on Ohio. But he’s got a client who is buying regionally not nationwide, but they’re buying all over the MLS or Midwest. And he doesn’t have anybody covering Wisconsin. And so he reached out to me and said, Hey, these guys are buying like 20 a month in Wisconsin, I’d like to be able to source and send product to him. And so he and I are in the final stages of putting the deal together, where we’re gonna be his boots on the ground in Wisconsin. And we’re going to source this product, and we’re going to feed it to him, and he’s going to sell it to his client and everybody’s going to win.

D.J. Paris 19:01
Yeah, that’s a really smart idea. That’s some something that all of the top producers we have on our show will will tell you, whether they’re retail or institutional, they’ll say, you know, if there’s something they can’t handle, or that they’re not an expert in, they always refer it out and you earn a nice little referral commission and, you know, turn it over to someone else’s expertise.

Matthew Arminio 19:21
I think early in my career, I tried to be everything I tried. Sure, the market expert, you know, local market expert that, you know, pound the friends and family and be the traditional retail broker and be the investment guy and that message gets muddled and then you don’t have as much power with your clients because they’re not really sure what you are or what you stand for what you believe in, but once we kind of said, all the retail business we’re going to take and give to other people, and everyone just understands that we are the investment firm things got a lot Like our message got a lot more powerful.

D.J. Paris 20:02
Yeah, that said Jack of all trades, master of none. It’s an important phrase. And we, you know, we at the brokerage we’re at, that I’m at as well, we’ve tried to be everything to all brokers and we’ve learned over 10 years oh, we’re not everything to all brokers, we have a very specific narrow niche that we think is important. But you know, that’s what we’re good at. We don’t try well over, you know, we’ve tried to be everything. And then we’ve learned not such a great idea because, of course, we can’t be and then we’re not really specialized in anything. And it’s, it’s really, it’s a hard lesson to learn. But it’s an important one, especially for newer brokers, certainly try a lot of things, see what you like, but whatever you get the most excited about the most passionate about is probably a good idea to focus on. But don’t try to do everything because you just won’t be able to and, and take it from from people like Matt like pick, pick a specialty and really become an expert. But then people will ultimately come to you, right?

Matthew Arminio 21:00
Yeah, I mean, we’ve like I said, it used to be we had to go out and find people in the market. I mean, now we have established relationships with attorneys, investment groups, hedge funds, we’re getting referrals, almost weekly, of like, Hey, I got a I got a guy who inherited money from his Third Aunt that he didn’t know existed, and he wants to buy 10 rentals. And so can you help me out? I mean, we’re constantly building portfolios and positioning guys to be successful in the market. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 21:30
I’ve got a funny investment story for you. This is goes back about 25 years, I heard it from Brian Tracy, the self, the self help guy. And he said that he knew a guy this is this goes back probably actually about 30 years. What he would do, this was his specialty. It’s such a it’s kind of a dark specialty, quite honestly. But it’s it was interesting. So what this guy would do is, is a tough a tough one to talk about. But he would he would watch, I think he was in Las Vegas, this is maybe 30 years ago, and people were retiring out Las Vegas. And of course, at some point, people, you know, would pass on. And so what he would do is he would check the obituaries. And whenever somebody would pass on, he would he would wait a week, he would walk over to the property where a lot of times the family would be gathering trying to figure out what are we going to do with this property? What what’s the point, he would make an offer right there at the front door. And that’s all he did all day was walk around neighborhoods, knock on doors of recently deceased people and say to the families, Hey, are you looking to unload this house, and then he would, you know, he would buy it and rent it out. And that’s all he did. And he became incredibly successful. And he would even tell you, this is the story I’m hearing that he wasn’t really all that smart of a guy. But he knew that that worked. I don’t know that that works anymore. And again, maybe maybe not not the way I would go about building business. But the point is, he had a specialty, it was kind of an unusual specialty. And that actually worked for him. So you know, obviously you don’t do that. But But it’s an interesting idea. There’s so many ways in investments to really go out and source clients. Yeah,

Matthew Arminio 23:05
I mean, we I was at a mastermind meeting in, in Nashville last week for nationwide investors. And the one takeaway that I think I came out of there with was, understand what you’re strong at. Yeah, and just pound that, like, don’t worry about all the stuff that you’re missing on the edges. If you got something that works, just keep being the best at that one thing, that thing coming forward, and you’ll have no problem being successful.

D.J. Paris 23:35
So I have to ask this, because, of course, our listeners were probably waiting for me to ask this. But what markets are what cities in the country? Do you see a lot of opportunity now, and in the future? If you’re willing to share that? Of course.

Matthew Arminio 23:49
Yeah. You know, the, we don’t do a lot of work on the coasts. So I don’t I hear stories from Seattle and California and and those types of places. We like a lot of the southeast that hasn’t necessarily matured. You know, at the end of the day, when you’re looking at real estate from a, I guess, a more a more global perspective, so to speak. Like, we’re looking at markets that have temperate weather decent transportation systems aren’t so oversized that people don’t want to move to them and offer value and cost of living. And if you can throw a good school system and on top of it, I think you got a formula for six for success. I mean, I look, I look at Nashville and Atlanta is kind of the most recent examples of Sure. That population explosion and when you look at them, I mean Nashville in particular, Atlanta was already a little bit bigger, but Nashville was a typical, you know, is a typical mid sized southern city that exploded overnight. Well it exploded out Overnight, because you don’t have state income tax, you have a relatively cheap housing base, you have good employment, like you’re in the middle of the country, it’s a Southwest hub. And it’s got a decent school system in it. So like when you start to add all those things together, it makes a lot of sense. And then you throw in that, you know, it might snow twice a year there. And, you know, I think you’ve got a lot of people in the Midwest that are looking for that more temperate lower cost of living environment. I know that you understand that. When I say that, I pretty much mean Chicago. But yeah, I think that rings true. You know, I think that I think that people will always flock where they can get a better cost of living, and a more temperate environment.

D.J. Paris 25:46
So yeah, I was in Nashville a few years ago for the Eclipse because it was ground zero. So that was really cool. Because you got to look at the stare at the sun without glasses for about three or four minutes before. So that was really exciting. But when I was there, I had not really spent time in Nashville before. As soon as I got there says two years ago, I was like, Oh, I get it. Now I understand why you could just feel it when you’re there, of course, but it at the time, it was just shy of like 1000 people a day were who were wanting to move or moving there. I don’t know if it’s still at that pace. But it was just it was getting crazy. And after visiting there. I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense to me. There’s so much going for

Matthew Arminio 26:27
it. Yeah. So we I mean, we like we like St. Louis a lot. Obviously, I think Indianapolis will continue to attract people, we like Memphis, we’d like Nashville and Atlanta to continue their growth. You know, we think the Carolinas will continue to grow. And Texas will continue to grow. I think those are kind of our major spots. Now. Some of them, we think we’re probably a little late in the curve for us to jump into a new market. But you know, if you’re already there, I think there’s got to be investors looking for quality product. And if you can find your way into that into that niche, and you can help them provide that you can grow your business.

D.J. Paris 27:05
So last question, and probably the hardest question to answer. And I’m certainly not expecting a definitive answer here. But if I if if you could give suggestion, a suggestion to our listeners, who are most of which traditional realtors, non investor brokers, who say, Okay, well, how do I go about finding an investor? Right? So now I found an opportunity, whether it’s a fix and flip, whether it’s buy and hold. And I now think the numbers work, I’ve done the math. Now, where do I take this? Do you have any suggestions of how to go about sourcing investors?

Matthew Arminio 27:41
So I think it’s actually easier to go the other route, if you really want to do it, the best way to do it is to find the investor, understand the investor, look at what the investors bought, look at what the investor is trying to accomplish. Is he trying to flip a house? Is he trying to, you know, is he a buy and hold guy who’s trying to build a rental portfolio, try to really drill down on what they’re looking for, and then go out into the market and find the product. Got it, you know, unless you have, the other side is if you have a property, you better have a deep database, because, you know, we run into clients who, hey, I’m not buying this month, or sure, you know, I’m not flipping right now I’m renting around changing strategies, or I gotta get this sale to go through, which doesn’t line up with your closing date. I mean, there’s a lot of things that there’s a lot of variables that go into selling, you know, brokering a house to an investor. So I think it’s much easier if you have the investors, and then go find the product that fits what they need, then trying to take one house and send it to one guy and talk him into taking it.

D.J. Paris 28:48
Yeah, and the good news is investors hang out in clusters, right, investors love talking back and forth, obviously, bigger pockets is a great example of that. And bigger pockets is great, too, because they keep the forum, which is basically the largest forum that I’m aware of, for investors to chat back and forth. They keep it very clean. They don’t really let traditional brokers get on there and promote their their product, their services, they’ll they’ll boot you right out that it’s really a try, you know, a forum for investors to chat back and forth. So if you’re like, Well, how do I find investors? Well, there’s a lot of ways of course, there’s a lot of different meetups, but the first place I would go is you know, go get on bigger pockets and introduce yourself, say, Hey, here’s where I’m located. Here’s where I’m from, here’s what I’m trying to trying to find some investors. You know, I know how to find fix and flips or I know how to find a buy and hold. Here’s where I’m specialized. Does anyone have advice and probably get 50 responses from from other investors helping you out?

Matthew Arminio 29:45
Yeah, I mean, if you like I said local investment groups. I mean, they’re not the thing about investors is they’re not trying to hide and they don’t care who brings them the product. Right? Like they just they’re not great at promoting themselves either. So you have to do spending you’d have to spend a little time finding them and cultivating the relationship a little bit, but they want you to bring them product, they want to see deals. Yeah.

D.J. Paris 30:10
Wow, that this has been really, really helpful. And by the way, we should mention I forgot if I mentioned this at the beginning, I think I did. I want to say it again, as you guys do over 200 sales a year across multiple states. That is an incredible amount of production. For one, one firm. And I know you guys have multiple people on the team. Can you talk a little bit about your operation and and sort of, you know, how it’s grown over the years?

Matthew Arminio 30:35
Yeah. So when we started, it was just me and another partner. And the basic structure was that, you know, he would spend all day pounding the MLS, and I would be the one that would negotiate the deals with the agents and go out and see the houses and bird dog them on behalf of our client. Since then, you know, we’re, we have seven full time people that are looking for product and helping us acquire product, we now have four guys who just do project management in the markets that we’re flipping, they’re just going and checking in on our clients. On our clients product. Obviously, we have three back office staff. So you know, sort of as we’ve, as we’ve grown our transaction volume, you know, we, we have a set saying that as we add about 15 transactions, there’s usually a body that needs to go along with that. Now, that’s a little different. It’s not 15 closings, it’s 15 full turns, because we’re most of our clients, we’re doing the by some of the management and the sell. So for every 15 that we on board at any given moment, you know, it like right now we have 65 projects going so we have for PMS, that all they do is they have a list of 15 assets, and they are responsible for pounding those 15 assets and making sure that their success.

D.J. Paris 31:57
Wow, that’s that must be challenging cross, you know, multiple, multiple locations, I would assume in multiple states.

Matthew Arminio 32:06
Yeah. I mean, like any good organization, it takes great people to be successful. So we spend a lot of time investing in our people and making sure that we train them on what they’re supposed to do and how they’re supposed to react to situations. And we have procedures in place and processes that keep us to keep us moving in the right direction.

D.J. Paris 32:25
Wow. That’s That’s amazing. Well, congrats on on all the continued success. And so I would also, you know, we, of course, want to make sure that anyone who’s listening, who does maybe have an investor that’s looking for properties, that if they want to reach out to you, what is the best way that they should reach out or for brokers just looking to, you know, possibly even pass deals over to you or swap clients and that sort of thing? What’s the best way?

Matthew Arminio 32:56
Yeah, so the best way to get in touch with with me is via email. So my email is my first initial and then my last name, which is m a r m i n i o, at Apex national r e.com. So that’s,

D.J. Paris 33:13
yeah, that’s Apex national rt.com. You can reach Matt through the website. It’s a great website to because it’s very, very clean, very concise, it spells out exactly what you guys do. So I think that’s a really great resource and, and Matt’s a very easy and approachable person. So if you have questions, he can certainly point you in the right direction or possibly even help your clients. And yeah, so Matt, thank thanks so much for being on the show. I have a few quick announcements as we wrap up here for everyone listening and possibly watching as well. We now have videos as you might know, if you’re listening, you might not know that so you can always watch this interview if you’re just listening. If you visit our website keeping it real pod.com We have a link to the YouTube video. We’re also streaming this live on Facebook, which is a plug for everyone listening to join our Facebook page. So please visit facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we broadcast these episodes live, as we’re doing right now on Facebook, but we also every single day post an article for brokers to that will we find online that will help them grow their business? And lastly, please tell a friend for everyone who’s listening who’s a realtor. If you have any other realtors that could benefit from hearing from superstars like like Matt, definitely pass this podcast over. You know, if everyone just tells one person about us, we’ll double our listenership and can continue to even make more episodes to help you guys grow your business. But on behalf of of Matt and myself, we thank the audience for tuning in and watching and listening. We appreciate it on behalf of course on the audience. Matt, we thank you for taking time out of your day. Again, we know how busy you are. And this is a really, we’re really grateful for you to spend time here. And thanks so much for being on the show.

Matthew Arminio 34:59
Yeah, thanks for having me

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify