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2024 comparison: BoomTown vs CINC Pro – Unbiased review helps you choose the best real estate software.
Get ready for an in-depth comparison between two real estate software giants: BoomTown and CINC. In this honest review for 2024, we dissect both platforms’ features, pricing, and user experience to help you make an informed decision. You can take advantage of this comprehensive analysis that will help you choose the right tool for your real estate business.
#1 – Who is BoomTown vs CINC best aim At?
#2 – What are the key differences between these two CRM platforms?
#3 – What are these two platforms’ key strengths and weaknesses?
#4 – Regarding the functionality price matrix, which offers the best value?
#5 – What are the particular peculiarities of each platform?
#6 – Generally, what agents or brokers would get the best value from either platform?
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. John and I are excited to introduce you to episode 427 of the Mail-Right Show. Today, if you are a real estate system fan, we will be talking about sync in Boomtown. These systems aren’t going to be wildly searched right now because we’re in the middle of one of the most significant upheavals the real estate industry has ever seen. However, that will soon pass, and everybody will be coming back and circling back around for the newest, latest information on these systems. That’s what we intend to give you today: the information you will need to make a great decision about your next real estate system. We’re going to look at sync and boom town before we do. I would love it, John, if you could go ahead and introduce yourself to the audience.
Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of mail-right. com. We’re CRM, a lead-generative platform. We also provide fantastic-looking websites through WordPress. I’m back over to you, Robert.
Beautiful. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we will get into sync in Boomtown. Before we do that, I want to let everybody know that while there are a lot of reviews, and we’re going to do a verbal overview today, we’re not going to look at the system; I do have two reviews up in which I got user licenses for each of these systems. I get a lot of questions, Sean, about the age of these reviews because I only update them sometimes. The reason is simple. These companies need to update their platform in meaningful ways for years and years at a time. My updates and reviews regarding what the system looks like are still 95% accurate, maybe even 97 or 98%. Can you hear it? John and I will download an informational download with our thoughts and opinions about how these systems are positioned today. John has gone ahead as he always does, done an incredible job, prepared a deep list, and The first question, which I think is brilliant, is, who is Boomtown versus sync best named at? I’m going to let you open up with your thoughts about that.
Well, personally, watching your reviews, I have actually not with Boomtown, but we actually had a couple of people helping us use sync. I have yet to get first-hand knowledge of Boomtown, only my research. I do have first-hand knowledge of sync, which is a really powerful system, ridiculously complicated. You needed a load of training—one of the persons we were working with kept complaining about the bits we supplied. I thought, You must be kidding. You have to spend almost 30 hours training with this bloody sink, and they also charge for it. I think I’m correct. They charge for the training. To utilize their enormously complicated system. And I believe Boomtown isn’t too far behind. So I think it’s really power users’ industry individual agents with a reasonably large power team or a brokerage. I really can’t; apart from those two examples, I can’t really see why somebody would use either to be quite truthful. But in those two examples I’ve given, I think their other problem, and I’ll be interested in your thoughts, is KVCORE, because the one that spent an enormous amount of money on trains with SINC.
About six months later, he went to KVCORE and moved there. I think KVCORE can run similar numbers as these. I don’t think it’s as good as either of these, but you might have a totally different opinion, so I’ll be interested in that. I go over to you, Robert.
As the years have passed, SINC has been less about a real estate lead generation system and more about a total back-end automation system. Currently, they’ve got banking integrations that are unique to them. They’ve got property management integrations. They’ve got mortgage integrations and HOA integrations, which are basically CRMs for each of those individual services. They’re far less about being a real estate lead generation system. They’re also far less about being a real estate lead generation system as it relates to everybody else, like everybody else in the industry. And they’ve got a different profile that they use for this called Sync Systems, which is connected to their real estate products. So they started with real estate products, developed all these tools in the back end to service real estate, and then spun it off into another website and another set of services. They are focusing all of their development and innovation time on integrations that don’t relate directly to the average real estate agent or even the average real estate agent. They’re going to be global. If I could best put it, they had the same idea Ben Kinney did with Place, except for their years ahead in making the nuts and bolts.
Now, Ben Kinney has all the excitement, John, and he’s raised a billion dollars for the place. But Sync has the actual tools. I only realized how much or how deep they had gone into this once I did some research for the show and realized that they’ve been doing sideways development for a while. We all know Syncpro as their lead generation system. That’s what you and I are talking about right now, synchro. Syncpro is different from some of the other stuff they’ve been doing. Syncpro has yet to update at all, like in the last few years. Syncpro is a minimal version of these tools that connects to an elementary real estate website, and it doesn’t necessarily… I’m looking through it here for updates. Here’s what I do, ladies and gentlemen, and I’ve said this, and I’ve done this, and John, I’ve done this in countless reviews. I go to the website and see what they’ve been discussing. Are they updating their customers? Are they updating their internal or external customers at all? I look for updates because if you were updating your system as you do with Mailright and had a big audience already, a big group, everything, wouldn’t you take the time to tell everybody how awesome you were doing if you were updating?
Well, their main problem, if you’re talking about sync, is their website offerings because they’re painful, as I’m concerned, even compared to KV. ‘ I think KVCore has done more than what they’ve done. That’s saying something. I’m a bit sassy today. I’ve done another podcast, and I was a bit sassy on that, so I feel pumped up. I’ve had too much coffee, Rob. It could be evil, my comments so that I might get some emails instead of Rob. So there we go. But I need help seeing, apart from the website, what much more they can do. But what they’re doing is what you laid out. They’re doing more on the integration if you’re the most prominent broker and you wanted a Swiss army knife for your back-end stuff. That’s what they’re concentrating on, aren’t they?
Yeah, definitely. And you know what? As with most of my competitors, let me say, everybody, for the sake of this article, I went in and started to read the sync blog, and they’ve definitely increased their presence there. Since they actively advertise against me at InboundREM, I feel like they’re paying attention to what I’m saying. They’re doing many things where they’re doing real estate lead value index, and that’s basically where they indicate, Hey, a dollar spent in leads is supposed to be 13% commission. I am curious to know if that metric is theirs or if they’re pulling average lead value, but I can tell you it’s a lot of spreadsheets and a lot of percentages, and I do not know a single agent making any of these numbers. I need to find out what they’re talking about. I don’t have anybody that’s pulling in a 13 to 1 ROI on PPC right now. I need to find out where they’re getting their data from. But if any of you are listening to this show, just as a quick aside, and you are getting better than 13 to 1 off a PPC budget using any lead system whatsoever, let us know.
Drop us a comment because I’d love to be proven wrong. I would love to be wrong.
So let’s go on to the next one then because we’re almost nine minutes in. So what’s the difference between the two? What’s any really fundamental differences between the two CRMs, Rob?
Oh, tons. Sync is an all-in-one, and it’s super complex. If you have got super complicated back-end payment structures that connect into your front-end sales process, so essentially very large teams with very complex financial arrangements, like many, many affiliate partners, mortgage brokers that partner with you, many people that write loans for you, many people that refer business to you. Sync is one of the hands down. If you can comb through it and create a CTO-type expert and get all the training, and You are right, they oftentimes charge for their trainings. If you can do all of that, then sync is a hands-down choice. Now, Boomtown is a simplified lead generation platform built for teams of salespeople that are small to medium size that are hunters. Everybody can see my reviews, including you, John, where I really drill deep down into that and lay a foundation for why I say that, those two things. Why is it that I feel that those two systems are built that way and who they’re built for. What do you think, though? You’ve watched my reviews, and you’ve done so probably more recently than I dropped them than I have. So what do you think these two key differences are?
Well, number one, Boomtown is built on WordPress, but multi-site. I think that is still the case. Better-looking website than sync, but that’s not saying too much, is it? I think if you’re an individual agent, a reasonably large team underneath you or a broker, and you’re on the mentality to look at all the data and look at where all the leads are coming from and spend their hours and then actually have Excel or a database, and you’re keeping track, and you’re keeping track and you’re keeping track of all hours, blah, blah, blah. It’s probably worth it. If you’re in the hunter mode and you’re up for it, but I think there’s only a small… It’s sizable because still a sizable niche. But I think you got to have the mindset and the knowledge and the resources to make either. But if you’re in the lead generative mindset, you’re going to go with Boomtown, aren’t you?
Yeah. And speaking of Boomtown versus sync, it’s small, medium teams versus large teams with complex back-end scenarios. That’s sync. Ease of use is what I’d say the difference between Boomtown and sync is. If I had to put it down to one sentence for number two, ease of use. Boomtown is easier by far. Actually, everybody’s easier than sync.
Yeah. So let’s go to number three before we go for our break. What are the two platforms as key strengths and weaknesses, Rob? One or two before we go for a break.
Sure. I mean, if I was looking for a sophisticated back-end system that was already developed, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would be taking a strong look at sync, comparing the hundred or so features that has in the back end of the platform and seeing if they met my needs. That’s a strength. The weakness is doing that comparison, doing a dive into sync, it’s going to be expensive and time consuming. That’s the weakness for them. Boomtown is easier to use by far, way overpriced for what you’re getting. I don’t know if that’s a weakness, but they have been so out Outvalued inside the CRM world. I’ve got no words for it. They used to be bleeding edge. For a long time, they were bleeding edge, John. Then they become like they have a slightly better-looking website. They’ve got a little bit more thought and passion put into their products. No doubt about it. They’ve got a better-looking IDX, which they built. There are a lot of strengths with it that they’ve got, but they haven’t really changed all that much in over eight years, and it shows. That’s what I got.
I think with Zinc, I’m not sure. I think they might got bought out by these people, but- Fidelity National Mortgage, yeah, they did. No, I was talking about Boston Logic. I think they’re trying to I think they’re trying to build a competitor to Boston Logic. Boston Logic built custom solutions for large brokerages. That was their bag. But I think Boston Logic either bought somebody. Did they bought Boomtown? I think they might have bought Boomtown. I’m not sure. I’m getting confused, Robert, but it happens often, doesn’t it, Robert?
Property-based and Boston Logic partnered up to build website/real-estate lead gen system. That was in 2018 that they made that announcement. I still haven’t actually seen the final product. I don’t know. I have no idea if they did that. I know they announced it. I don’t think that BostonLogic got bought by anybody because they were raising money six, seven years ago for all private equity money. Now, whether or not that’s remained the same, who knows? I don’t know. I do not know.
I just felt they were going… Because I knew, before we go for a break, I knew the owner’s son of Dickinson’s, which is, I think, the largest independent brokerage in Northern Nevada, and they were looking for a solution. I was having a chat with him, and they went with Boston Logic. But they had 500, 600 agents. So he was looking for a whole Swiss army. That’s why I I think I’ll be totally wrong. Shall we go for a break, Rob?
Let’s do it. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re doing a deep dive today. So if there’s any place that you find this, share it with your other real estate friends, share it in your real estate groups, and that would be the way you’d thank me and John, and leaving us comments. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 427 of The Mailright Show. Today, we’re talking about Boomtown versus sync. We’re doing an honest review for 2024 because John and I are notorious for being dishonest. All right. Number four, regarding the functionality price matrix? Which is the best value? Now, do you want to take a stab at this? Or do you want me to just like, You know I’ve got a lot to say on all of this stuff.
Well, I suppose I think I shouldn’t do this because trying to work out what’s going on in Rob’s mind is not really possible, really. But I presume if you’re looking for… If you’re that size of brokerages, and you’re really looking for a real back-end. And I find it… I know this is a bit of a sweeping statement, really, but I offer a certain type of medium regional brokerage. They have somebody who’s their marketing guru, their analytical guru, and they tend to go with Google paid average, and they track everything They got somebody on board. They’re also looking for a Swiss army knife for all the backends. I think they probably look at sync. But I think if you’re a smaller team and you’re still using They tend not to go, which is the wrong attitude, because they should combine it with content, what you specialize in. But I just find that it’s a mindset. They should combine both, but they tend to go with the paid thing. But if they’re more hunter, as you say, they’re probably going to go… They’ll be better off with Boomtown, aren’t they?
Yeah, in terms of price matrix, ladies and gentlemen, when Boomtown was doing some exciting collaborations with Craigslist, and they had some innovative advertising strategies that connected directly into the back of the platform. And now they’ve lost most of the races. Chime is just as easy to use from a platform perspective. They’re not nearly as valuable from the website perspective. But since Boomtown made the decision a long time ago to go with multi-sites, there’s actually not… While the actual site performs better for Boomtown than it does for a company like Chime, you don’t end up seeing the value out of building on WordPress because you don’t own it. You don’t have control of it, you don’t own it. And Boomtown will take your iteration of that website and do something else with it when you leave, maybe repurpose it, which is great for them and horrible for you, the end user, who spent all the money building up the domain authority and value, because that’s what you’re doing when you advertise to a URL consistently. In terms of the best value for your money right now in 2024, I absolutely would probably say sync, because the complicated, really specific things the sync system can do.
I don’t know that… I mean, Boomtown has never been very friendly on the integration side, and that is more and more what the modern millennium is becoming about, and Boomtown is terrible. All of that sync is better, and they’ve got a lot of custom development. I just think that for them… But they’re both wildly overpriced, just for the record. That’s what I have to say.
Let’s go on to number five, because you know these… You’ve done an enormous deep dive. Are there any particular peculiarities that apply to individual or each platform that you think people should know I think that back in the days in which…
I think it was Alan was in charge of Boomtown. There was a vast difference between sync and Boomtown. They both have incredibly strong management companies. There’s a dual CEO thing going on over at SINC, or there was when I last researched it. And Greer Allen, who is one of the more charismatic, personable, really dedicated CEOs, was the founder and owner of Boomtown. Alan Greer went out, the only money he ever raised was to buy a big building in the middle of the city that they’re in and bring all of his team members together to create a better working atmosphere. That dedication, the fact that they focused on high touch, Boomtown was very It’s very ahead of its time in certain regards, and still is. You still get a high touch onboarding process with a dedicated team. I honestly think that the strength of each of these teams would be in the people, not the platform. The platform technology on both sides is antiquated at this point. You can sit here and go, we would need to do a show on each one of these things. I would need to deep dive it for you and explain what What does all those systems do better for each one of these performance metrics, why AI is changing the game, what you could expect, where you should go.
If for no other reason than keeping this simple, Chime offers many of Boomtown’s same functionality for half the price. By the way, I’m not recommending Chime.
I think one thing I think you’ve touched on in your videos, and I we’ve touched upon it, is I don’t know what… I think it applies to sync as well. But Boomtown, if you want to take your data out and put it in another platform, they won’t make it easy, or basically, they’ll say no. Am I right about that statement? And I think it’s something 100%.
It’s terrible. It’s terrible. The customer service policies at Boomtown are 10 years old, and they could have been better to start with, and they’re awful in today’s marketplace. Terrible. Sync is better, but they still need some friendly customer service policies on the front end. Both of these companies have pivoted to the current revolution that’s happening, which is like influencer style marketing, where, honestly, most people who are their customers are looking for answers online. They’re finding them from third parties because boom, down, and Sync have yet to bother to build a robust content library about using their platform. They’re both locked in the dark ages. Let’s keep all the details of our systems private where anybody can find them. Whereas, of course, they can see it. They have to search harder, and then it won’t be you. It’s not going to be inside your control. It is crazy to me how neither one of these companies has embraced video to the level that they should from an informational standpoint. You want your users who are coming to you in your channel to figure out all the answers.
They both have channels. They’re just not what they should be, in my opinion. That ease of use, that knowledge that you and I talk about incessantly is my touchstone for everybody, which is pretty simple. Do you have the ability to make your products and services understandable and usable by other people? What are you doing if the answer is no or not very quickly?
But I’ll say that the only thing that comes to mind is that it’s not a criticism: In the middle to higher-level power team or brokerage, you got Chime, you got Sync, you got Boomtown. Are any of these higher-level systems reasonably easy to use anyway? I don’t think there is, is there?
By the way, kvCore is the system that has become the easiest to use and has the most of this available from its user base.
All right, yeah. You’re right about that. I see where you’re coming from.
That’s what I’m talking about. If I want to know how to use kvCore, that’s why kvCore is dominating the landscape, my friend. In my opinion, they’ve got so many user-based videos, so many incredible videos from so many different real estate, practicing real estate agents that say, This is the way I’m using the system and making money at it. So there’s a guy on SE Team Leader, there’s one video nine months ago on sync that’s talking about sync is starting to slowly but surely build some video library. They’ve got some videos coming out. Only a few. Five days ago, sync University, real estate training, sync shorts, who knows? Sink CEO on NAR settlement. Somebody said something from Sync on the NAR settlement 30 days ago. I’m going to have to watch it. Like, wow, somebody got online and said something. That’s pretty impressive. I mean, never mind. Considering how big of a company they are, my audience is almost as big as NAR. I mean, and good God, I think they got bought for what, $125 million? I don’t know what the number is, but it was ridiculous. I know that.
It is like a crazy big company with very little focus on its users in terms of how people try to get and use information online. Boomtown is guilty of the same.
So, just to finish off, can you give one persona for each product? To finish off the podcast, Rob, give an ideal persona of who would get the best from each platform.
Sure. Multifocused real estate teams with complicated back-end systems. Real estate companies that focus on property management, sales, lease, rehab, and construction. The sink is a hands-down winner for you. Hands-down. They’re who you should look at. I could only recommend this. You’re doing a multifaceted real estate business of intermittent size, or you own a very large one. There’s a great example. For those people who are listening to the show right now, go out and look at Tarvin Realtors in New Jersey. It’s a multi-focused, multi-generational real estate company, and each kid in the company has taken on a new real estate vertical, so they do everything in their part of New Jersey. I mean, everything. They do buying, selling, rehabbing, or at least they did when I last looked. And they do commercial, they do property management, they do everything. That would be who might look at sync. That’s the target customer profile for which this would still be a hands-down winner. Boomtown. The persona or Boomtown is still a leader in the small to mid-size team space. And for the customer’s persona, this is a little bit more complicated to explain, but I think that small to mid-size real estate brokerages without a competent CMO or CTO on staff, which is most of the teams out there.
They need a tech person. They don’t have anybody that’s doing that for them. So when that is all the case, that’s when the customer service and the help, the outreach, the management that Boomtown does on the client-facing side, that’s when that money becomes justifiable. That’s when I am wrong about justifying the cost of the system. When you want to leverage that in-person training, you get assigned an account rep, or at least you did. Then, all the reports I got from Boomtown clients said that those training and one-to-one interactions were always precious. So, almost a universal five-star rating, which is why I say that’s where probably Boomtown shines. But who needs that specifically, John? That’s a little harder to answer.
You’re going to sit down again.
Oh, sure. Sorry. I’m so sorry. I started pacing.
You did? He was getting excited there; no, I’m so sorry.
I forgot that you were doing the screen thing. I’m so sorry.
I think I was getting where he was getting fed up looking at my phone.
I was pacing. I forgot we were doing that.
He was pacing. I think it’s been an excellent show. We’re not gone too over. And I think we… So, to finish off, well, I think your answer number six is a good finishing point. So, back over to you, Rob. I think we will finish it.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for doing our updated review on these systems. If anybody wants to update my knowledge, I am always up for that. You can reach out to me at robert@inboundrem. Com. You can also go to my website, inboundrem. com Use any of my contact forms and say that you’d like to update my knowledge about sync or Boomtown. If you’re using these systems, if you’ve used them recently, or disagree with anything I said, I am always open to having another conversation about the platform. Over to you, John.
Yeah, and if you’re looking to have a nice-looking website on WordPress, we’re using Gutenberg, and we have a lovely platform for lead generation as part of our lovely WordPress website. So if that’s interesting, go over to Mail-Right. com and book a chat with me or Adam. Back over to you, Rob.
Beautiful. Well, that’s it, ladies and gentlemen. The show is wrapped up. John and I are so grateful for your ears, eyes, and everything in between. Have a great day.
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Get the Inside Scoop on Sierra Interactive 2024 – Pros & Cons Revealed
Discover the comprehensive breakdown of Sierra Interactive in 2024 with our Pros & Cons Review video. Dive deep into the platform’s latest features, strengths, and potential drawbacks to help you make an informed decision for your real estate business. Don’t miss out on this valuable insight – click the link below to watch the full video now.
#1 – Quick Introduction of What Sierra Interactive is And Does
Sierra Interactive sets itself apart by excelling in SEO lead generation, a service not commonly offered by others, in addition to providing PPC and social lead generation. Furthermore, they offer retargeting and remarking through Facebook and Google PPC to ensure no leads are overlooked.
With a rich array of features, Sierra Interactive promises a comprehensive experience that we will explore further to assess its reputation. We will also identify the ideal audience for their services, so stick around for more insights.
#2 – Sierra Interactive Main Features
-a- SEO
Although a website may initially seem unremarkable, it is important to note that it is optimized for SEO, providing valuable leads at no cost. This optimization allows you to rank for your desired keywords effectively. Additionally, the websites are designed to be fully responsive and load quickly on all devices such as tablets and laptops. The fast loading speed also contributes to enhancing SEO performance.
-b – Marketing Automation System
When implemented effectively, marketing automation is a crucial aspect for any company as it significantly reduces time consumption. Sierra Interactive’s automation process involves selecting desired triggers (such as updated lead status), providing supplementary information, assigning tasks to leads, and allowing them to manage the rest.
-c- Combined Ad Campaigns
Sierra Interactives excels in PPC management services through their impactful Google and Facebook advertisements. They take charge of crafting your Google Ads, while giving you the power to decide on visitor registration. What stood out to me was the provision of daily performance reports after 4-6 weeks of campaign launch, allowing you to assess the effectiveness of this strategy.
#3 – Sierra Interactive Pricing
Core Package
Essential Bundle: Priced at $499.95 per month, this package includes access for 5 users and 1 MLS IDX Connection. It offers 1,500 SMS texts and 100 MMS texts, along with 1500 dialer minutes, 250 ringless voicemails, 10k minutes of recorded storage, as well as standard onboarding and support services.
Growth Package
Expansion Bundle: Priced from $699.95 per month, catering to a team of 5 users with 1 MLS IDX Connection included. This package comprises 15,000 SMS texts, 5,000 MMS texts, 500 ringless voicemails, 35k minutes of recorded storage, personalized onboarding assistance, premium support services, quarterly consultations with a dedicated customer success manager, and privileged access to their specialized assets.
12-month agreement
No setup fees
Any additional users are sold in blocks of 5 users at $100 a month for both core and growth packages
For over 45 users you can get custom pricing
Each additional MLS IDX Connection is $25 extra per month for both packages
In comparison to some competitors they are on the pricey side, but not the most expensive option, so it’s something to take into consideration.
#4 – Sierra Interactive Alternatives?
Real Geeks
Chime
Elope
Mail-Right
#5
Major Pros?
Major Cons?
#6 – Final Thoughts
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail-Right Show. Today’s episode is number 426, and we are going to update our review. John and I share interactive. We’re going to do a pros and cons for 2024 and hopefully give everybody who listens and watches our show a little bit of new or updated information on what is arguably one of the top providers of real estate websites and CRMs. But before we dive into this very meaty topic, John, I would love it if you would do me a favor and introduce yourself.
Oh, thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mail Right.com. We’re a CRM lead generation platform built on WordPress, and we provide some great websites as well. Back over to you, Rob.
Cool. And I am the founder of Inbound REM, which anybody watching the show can see on my hat in the background. We are an inbound marketing company that focuses on real estate. We do things like real estate website development, SEO consulting, consulting, and providing services directly to real estate agents and brokers. All right, here we go. So we’re going to talk about Sierra Interactive, which is a choice that John made. And I’m kind of curious. John, we haven’t talked about these guys in a while. You haven’t taught. We haven’t mentioned them. There was no rumbling. Why did you choose them? What was the inspiration?
Inspiration? Um, I think I’m just doing a review of the competition. Um, and I think we have spoken about them before, but it was quite a while ago, so I just thought it might be a good topic, a good time to have another chat about it.
Um, fair enough. All right, so without any further ado, what we’ve got up first here, why don’t you go ahead and do the introduction about what Sara Interactive is and what it does?
Yeah. You know, it’s a competitor to Mail-Right, but there are different flavors to these systems and they’re aimed at different buckets of users. And Rob did a detailed review of this about three years ago. It’s amazing where the time goes, isn’t it, Rob? And he did a bit of a deep dive. I’ve done a smaller review and I think that was, might be two years ago. So I think it’s got some strengths and it’s an experienced team behind it. The guy that set it up, lives about 3 hours away from where I live. He lives in Mammoth Lakes which is about a three-and-a-half-hour drive where I live. I think one of the, and I think you pointed it out in your review, I think if you’re really into, if you’ve got a team above five, a power team, 510 20 people, and you want something that’s customized and you want to know where all the leads are coming from, and you want to spend all that time because you got, I think you said in your review you’ve got a budget of 200 or 300,000.
You do need to know where the leads are coming from. And I think that’s all great stuff, Rob, but I think the problem with wherein this is only my perspective, my view is one of the problems with Siri interactive is the competition. The competition is Follow Up Boss. And if you’re in that team space where you have an advertising budget of 200 to 300,000, in my opinion, you’d be better off going with Follow-Up-Boss. But the only problem with that is it doesn’t provide the website. And secondly, recently they got bought up by Zillow. And I wouldn’t want to share my data, which is my opinion, again, I wouldn’t want to share my data with Zillow. But obviously, Follow Up Boss would push back and say that they’ve made it clear that the data isn’t been shared with the owner of the company. Um, but me personally, I’ve got to be very careful how I word this, don’t I, Rob? But in my opinion, my opinion, I wouldn’t be very happy with that. But that’s my opinion, Robert.
Sure. So my opinion.
Yes, it’s got to be your opinion, Rob.
Yeah. My opinion is that that, um, interactive for a very long time. So the guy that founded it, a guy by the name of Ben, was a very seasoned developer who was already doing work for real estate agents independently. And he ran across the same problem that I did with inbound REM. When you’re out there trying to do this work for agents who are almost exclusively asking you the same questions, we want to be able to get leads. We want to have a CRM, we want it all connected to our website, and the list goes on and on. But the questions have been the same for guys like him and guys like me for, like, almost 2030 years. Like, it’s crazy how consistent it’s been. Just give us one tool that connects to everything. And Ben was already building those kinds of tools as a consultant, and he had the idea of creating a, like, a server-based, fast real estate website that he could sell en masse using templates but his whole, like, a long time ago, John, and it’s all down now, so everybody just has to take me at my word.
A long time ago, Ben used to blog, used to have a couple of thoughts that he published publicly. He’s just kind of said, hey, I’m just going where the wind is taking me, and building a solution to the questions that I keep getting asked. And then of course he did it. And real estate webmasters, which at the time were dominant in the industry, weren’t treating their customers very well. And BIM created a competitive product that eventually started to outshine real estate webmasters. This created a very big following that left real estate webmasters to migrate over to Sierra Interactive over about a five or ten-year period. And Sierra Interactive became one of the top real estate website builders that had a CRM connected to it. They still have the incredible acknowledgment that the number r1 estate website, by traffic, by exposure, by everything, is built on a Sierra interactive platform. That is Ruby Home, which was built on that platform by one of the very few experienced content marketers who got, who decided, that Sierra Interactive was going to be the website he built on. And then he even went so far as to blog about it.
So when, when you Google Sierra Interactive, the review from Tony, who owns rubyahome.com, is still there. It’s like number three in the results when you google Sierra Interactive. All that being said, Sierra Interactive has started to see a lot of bleeds. Ben has now sold the company. Nobody knows who he sold it to.
Oh, I didn’t know that.
Yeah, there’s no announcement. He just sold it, was gone. Who knows? Who knows what’s happening with it, John? And if I’m just going to save everybody the time and the energy, I’m going to say right now, right here in this format, the biggest con that I have about Sierra Interactive right now is nobody knows who bloody owns the company and nobody knows what their plans are for it. I only know that I, and I think I said this to you once, maybe a long time ago, like, it kind of felt like Ben was getting exhausted running this company from start to, like, he withdrew out of the public light, stopped logging, stopped talking about everything, stopped. I couldn’t find anything on him. Seemed to not want his name out there, like associated with Sierra Interactive, which is bizarre considering the fact that it’s one of the top real estate marketing companies around. So just. Real interesting guy. So that’s that. I mean, that’s the ten foot high what they do, ostensibly, is provide a CRM and they build a real estate website and they provide leads and they do and can do that very well.
What needs to happen, though, and I just want to say this before we get into the overall here interactive thing, I think that Ben sold the company because he knows that the whole platform needs to be rebuilt because they have not kept up with the mobile revolution. They’re falling behind in any numbers of areas that it relates to technology. And while they still build a solid feature and they’re still acknowledged as one of the leaders, somebody’s got to come in with a lot of new enthusiasm and keep this platform. Like, you can’t do multimedia content on their, on the content management system that he built was interactive. That used to not be a big problem. Tony has still built a leading website on it. But you basically have to be a genius content creator in order to get the kind of results that Tony has gotten. Like, just, that’s just the truth, because you can’t do video. You can’t. You can do a limited number of images. The CMS show and the leads that you get from this kind of website are diminishing in quality and have been diminishing quality for a long, long time.
So it is. The future is here. And Sierra Interactive, as it stands, is not as prepared as you would have thought a company with this kind of pedigree would be. So let’s jump into this, though. What are they doing? Well, let’s talk about number two on your list, because they are definitely a leader in this category and I want to talk about it. Sierra Interactive main features. The very first thing that you list on here, John, is SEO. So why don’t you talk about that for a second and answer the question, why did you list this first and all the features?
I just looked at all the other blog content and I drawed up a list following what other people were saying about it. Basically, when it comes to the SEO, I think, as you said in your own review, it’s in the detail, isn’t it? I think compared to some other platforms, it is very good. And I think in the hands, the website example that you utilized in your intro, the person that that was working with Siri Interactive was a very experienced inbound marketer. And that website, yes, it’s built on Sara Interactive, but it’s been enormously customized. So it is. And it isn’t. And what I mean by that, yes, it’s using Sierra interactive technology, the backbone. Is it what you normally get? No, it isn’t. And it’s the same with the SEO because there’s, there’s the technical setting up of a website and that will get you so far depending on who you are up against, but it won’t generate traffic. And without traffic you can’t convert. And the only thing that will get traffic is if Google thinks the content on that website gives more information, is more useful to its target audience than the competitors that you’re up against.
And that that’s a much more sophisticated. And then a checklist of it does meta tags. You can put it has this feature, it’s that feature. It’s all good stuff, but, and it has its place. But without hiring somebody like you or educating yourself and prepared to put the effort in, it really doesn’t, in my opinion, again, it doesn’t really mean much.
Robert, I don’t disagree with any single point. I think that I would say that I’ve got a few, a few additions to add I want the audience to understand before I jump into my editions because it’s definitely going to be a longer than a minute and we would normally go to break in a minute. But instead what I’m going to do is I’m going to push the break to right now. And then when you come back from break, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going dive into my thoughts about Sara interactive as an SEO platform. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 426. I think it is. John didn’t. Okay, we’re talking about an updated review for Sierra Interactive. The last time I updated him three years ago.
You tell me off, Robert, I’ll be the naughty boy audience. He’s turning me off.
Just being honest. John, stop, okay. I can’t. He can’t stop giggling. So the updated SEO review would be this in terms of, so there are two types of SEO that you can do inside, like real estate, you can do search mechanisms. That is what Sierra interactive focuses on. They do a lot of search filters, neighborhoods, city names, things like that. And then they provide a very fast, very good, very responsive way to propel properties into those search results. And it is still a solid way to rank in the search engines if you do ancillary SEO work such as domain authority, building content writing like blogging off the site, things like that, all of which Tony has done in proliferation. The guy that owns Ruby home. If I had to try to put a number to it, I think that Tony has provided himself with about half a million dollars worth of SEO work on his site. Okay, just so everybody understands what John was saying, because it’s very true. What, what Tony has done is he’s taken a very rudimentary backbone along with an incredibly detailed skillset and done something with it. And some of what Sierra interactive does do plays well into what Tony has done.
Adding searches into his blog, interlinking on the site, which works very fast and very well. These are all SEO strategies and Tony has leveraged them to the hilt. The platform is being used about as good as you’re ever going to see it anywhere on Tony’s site. Would the average person have any of these skill sets? Heck no. Would even some of the people that you’re consulting with be able to leverage the platform in the way that Tony has leveraged it? No. Even though theoretically they understand what they’re supposed to do? No, they wouldn’t. Would anybody have the level of creativity and insight that Tony took in order to build a site? No. I’ve taken some ideas from him. His research was so good and he was so intuitive about how people would respond to the individual pages. In other words, looking at his site is like watching the babe swing a bat. Like you don’t understand what you’re looking at or Michael Jordan take a jump shot. But it’s one in a million. It’s one in a million is what you’re looking at. And so could anybody do what they’ve done? Would they even want to try?
I don’t know about that anymore. Unless Sierra interactive makes some big changes. Like if they updated their platform and allowed for multimedia. Allowed for some. Because a lot of SEO these days, John is interaction with the site. Tony’s so good at creating content that he inspires his users to use the site despite itself. You want interactive content and infographics and accordion menus and many other things in addition to clickable search features. You need to give people options. You need to give people video. You need to give people many different options. While some of that might be possible with Sierra Interactive, it’s not intuitive and it’s not easy. And I’m not even sure that all, like, I’m not sure what the process is to include video, but I don’t see a lot of it on any site, which makes me think that it’s probably not easy. But I don’t know that for sure. Now, I’m going to jump into number two here and I’m going to take the lead on this one just because I’m in a flow marketing automation system now. Marketing automation, which is, could be a lot of different things. But Sierra Interactive still does shine in certain categories.
Marketing automation in general, as it compares to like Ylopo or somebody like that, they’re behind the eight ball. But in comparison to every other provider that’s out there, Sierra Interactive still is ahead of the field in terms of automation.
Well, apart from mailrite, because I think the mail right system is better than this.
You can, you can elaborate, you know the mailrite system better than I do, so I’ll let you elaborate on that during your portion of marketing automation. I am unfamiliar, so I will, I can only speak to what I know for sure. What I know for sure is that in terms of automation, things like where CR Interactive has shown, and I still think that they probably shine a lot, is they have an intuitive system for adding agents to your CRM and then getting those agents to hunt inside the platform. Like look at users that have looked at 500 properties, for instance on the platform and then call or text them in an automated way, all from the actual inside the guts of the system. I have never with my system, anybody system that I know of even using follow up boss. If you have this very rarefied salesforce as part of your team, Sara Interactive still stands alone in terms of how intuitive is for a sales hunter to leverage that system. Now if you are like most agents or teams and you don’t have hunters peeling through the traffic of the site or you haven’t given them access, or I can go on and on, this doesn’t matter what I’m saying.
And then automation, such as automated text messages, things like that, they actually are not ahead of the curve. They’re a little bit behind the curve in terms of what you could find. Like they’re about equivalent to real geeks. Like you’re probably going to point out you might be ahead of them in terms of that specific type of automation there.
No, I say, I take back what I said because I see where you’re coming from now. And I, I took it as optimization, the actual interface ux design about how somebody who isn’t as experienced as yourself, they could set up the campaigns. And we did spend a fair bit of time and it’s a pretty robust and reasonably easy. It does need us to show a person a couple of times, but if they’ve got any ability at all, they should be able to do it. But I know, in all fairness, I think you did point this out in your video, the hunter bit, but I forgot that bit. So I see exactly where you’re coming.
From and it’s a rare salesperson type. But the handful of guys that I know or have spoken to some of them many years ago, like there’s a young team that I’ve, I’ve heard rumors of but I haven’t talked to them directly, but I’ve, I know people who’ve worked with them. The keen brothers, who is one of the top sarah interactive sites. And apparently these brothers are hunters. All three of them. There’s three brothers. And apparently they leverage this system to like a massively successful high degree. Nothing I could sell them is ever going to work better than what they’re already doing. If they’re already used to going through their appealing through traffic, they’ve already know what good traffic looks like. Who is most likely.
Yeah. The mail rights system is not aimed for those type of people. If you want that we help you integrate it with follow up boss.
There you go. So that’s, and in terms of automation as it’s being understood by the market, AI, truly true automation, things like that is here interactive anywhere even remotely in that category. No, they’re not.
Well, the mail. Right. System is. But I actually, I actually think, and this is my honest opinion, Rob, that, and I’m a big user of AI actually. I can see it if you’ve got an enormous amount of volume. But I also, and this is just my opinion, Rob, I think other players are over emphasizing the effective effectiveness of elite drip campaign using AI to some extent. But that’s just my opinion. I’m not saying it. I might be wrong.
So I think, I think, John, we need to do a few shows in AI this year. I do, because I agree with you. I think the AI for the most part, the tools I’ve tested seems to be a race to the bottom. I’ve not yet found anything highly customized or, and even what people call AI like y Lopo is, is very extensive exhaustive behavioral tuning as I understand it.
Yeah. And I think you, I think you, you really rate the owners and one particular owner, you really rate them as a marketer, SEO expert. So they probably do provide a lot of value there. But I just also think, but I’ve got to be very careful because they can get very upset very quickly. I just think in my, mostly over.
What I say, John, not you.
I don’t want any, I don’t want any aggro in my opinion. It’s overplayed a bit in my opinion. I think that’s, I think we’re going to rename the show in my opinion.
Yes. So anyway, let’s hand it over to you and let you have your full response about marketing automation system and how you really view SiErra interactive and maybe how you view share interactive versus mailrite.
Well, I didn’t know where you’re going to take it, but I think the point you made was, on reflection totally correct. But I, because I’m just looking at in a different way because you also mentioned this, because I did look at your video a couple of times and I really went through the whole hour that you spent. And to give you honest feedback, I think because I am guilty of it, you really went all over the place. But it’s totally understandable because you were dealing with a really big review and you, when you spend an hour plus you are gonna go all over the place, right? So that’s not been disparaging, I’ve just been honest with you. But, and you did point out in your video you got the hunter bit. And like the Melwright system isn’t aimed at those hunter types. It’s a combination of bold leads with real geeks. That’s where I’ve kind of positioned mailwright. One interesting question is, in your own mind, because you’ve got a lot of experience in this area, you’re probably one of the most experienced individuals the industry. How do you, how do you compare it to real geeks?
What are the strengths? Because we say we’ve got enough of 510 minutes and you probably want to clear off, then I think this would be useful to our listeners. If you don’t think it is, we can just go on. But how do you compare it? Because I think a lot of the people that are listening to this, that might be on the market, they’re going to be looking at either male, right, Sierra Interactive and real geeks, aren’t they? So where do you position seeriact if we were real geeks?
Well, Sierra Interactive is an interesting, is an interesting position still to this very day, inside the real estate industry as a CRM, I found it to be better by far than, let’s say a KVcore. Okay. I found it to be more robust with more options built in, more intuitive integrations for additional outside tools. I always use happy grasshopper as one because it’s an unusual marketing service that only integrates into two common platforms, that is follow up boss and Sierra Interactive. And there’s others too. There’s calling systems that they integrate very naturally into. If you’re doing high volume calling now, what that means to those lay people that are listening to this review is that teams are inordinately especially large teams don’t have a ton of great choices. No offense to anybody. I am not a great choice because I leverage follow up boss. Can follow up boss, take extraordinarily big teams and do well with them? Yes, it can. It just requires a big onboarding process. Sara interactive would require the same thing. It’s complicated. That’s why it took an hour for me to do the review. Real geeks took me about 25 minutes, if I remember correctly.
It’s a much simpler platform. Small teams and agents would gravitate towards mail, right? Or real geeks or something like that because it’s easier to onboard. And I’m going to say the same thing about mail, right. That I’ve said about myself. I’ve always felt, John, that real estate agents or business owners in general fall into kind of a couple different camps. Some people always want to kind of do a McDonald’s or Taco Bell experience with their marketing. They want to know a lot of other people are going there. They’re going to get a reasonably priced meal at a reasonable level of quality, and they’re happy with that. And they’re happy with the fact that they know that a lot of other people are using the system with some kind of track record. Right. And then you have another kind of person that is going to be like, well, I really want to go to a restaurant that where I’m going to walk through the door and the owner is still going to be there and, or at least they’re going to be in the business at some point during that day. And I know that they’re still individually making sure that the meals are served are of high quality and that the people are having a good dining experience.
And you’re probably going to get all of that for the same or less in terms of price as you would at these days, like a taco Bell or something like that. And that’s how I kind of compare inbound Rem and mailrite. You want to still know that the company that you’re dealing with is in the hands of the person that founded it, that you’re going to have an experience that is going to be directly impacted by the person who founded the company. You’re probably going to want to call a John or me, depending on what you’re looking for, as opposed to one of these other companies. If you call real geeks, the owner, the founder is long gone. Who knows who you’re going to get? Hopefully a very good, qualified, experienced salesperson. But are you going to get somebody with a particular level of insight or involvement? No, I virtually guarantee it. I built too many of these sales teams to think otherwise. So would you get a personal experience with mailrite? Absolutely. You’d be able to talk to John directly or, or his partner, but one way or the other, somebody who has direct controlling interest in the company.
And while that doesn’t impact the actual thing the systems do, I think that it’s really a massive factor when it comes to who do you want to use? Because do you want to use somebody that. All right, let’s just say that John doesn’t have as robust of a system right now as real geeks because he hasn’t spent $10 million building it and he doesn’t have 10,000 clients. But let’s say there’s a challenge for you. The client, like something specific to your business, the area you work in, you call real geeks. You’re going to be lucky for your request, even gets a support ticket. Whereas if you call John, you’re going to get a very direct response. I’m not saying that John is going to step into every single thing that anybody ever brings him, but you’re going to get a response from the owner and it’s possible that a solution will be presented to you. It’s possible that for your specific little teeny tiny business, with your little. Forgive me for saying this, but you’re probably little in comparison to many other people, small marketing budget, you might get a response from the owner or manager of the business.
It just depends for everybody listening to the show about, you know better than John and I ever will how you’re wired to receive service.
Yeah, thank you for those kind words, but which one? If you’re looking at realist, exclude me, all right. Because obviously you’re the joint presenter of this podcast.
Sure.
So it’s a difficult situation to some extent, but let’s have a look at real. So who do you think real geeks is best for and who do you think Sarah Interactive is best for?
Real Geeks is best for like an agent on a budget. Like an agent on a budget. Probably just getting used to using a real estate website as a tool. They’re hardcore setup time dealing with a number of different vendors. They’re pretty difficult to work with in terms of overall setup, but they’re also very inexpensive in comparison to almost everybody else. And you get a lot for the money that you spend. So I would say to an agent who has some digital marketing chops and the ability to read technical manuals and work well with them real geeks is the solution. Chime, which is next on your list, is exactly the opposite. It is a beautiful dashboard, easy to use, overpriced for what they do. They don’t actually do anything new or anything unusual. They’ve got a number of bleeding edge things that they talk about. But the agents I’ve spoken to so far have said that those things don’t implement well into their overall kit. So I would say that chime is good for small teams or people that are tired of Kvcore but have already used a mass adoption platform. I would say that chime is something to look at.
I hesitate. They make a good looking website that functions fairly well and I like them for that. So much of it is automated that you’re not going to get very good SEO results. You’re up against a lot of other people using chime. So very soon your neighbor, your uncle, the guy down the street, they’re all going to have chime sites. So you have to be very cautious, in my opinion, if you adopt into chime. I don’t know. A lope can’t respond to that platform and I haven’t become the expert that I should have from mailrite. But I will say this, I would say that mail, right, is a better solution than real geeks for sure, especially if you’re looking for a personal touch.
And can I ask one question? Do you know what’s happened to bold leads?
Yeah, they got absorbed by a company that basically mothballed them. They got absorbed by a CRM. I remember that. Not brevity. I got somebody bought them and absorbed them into the platform and they just basically nobody ever talks about them anymore.
So that’s what Melroy is. It’s, it’s, it’s kind of aimed at real geeks and Sierra interactive, probably more real geeks with a, with a strong flavor, bold leads added because I.
Property base.
Property base model and we use Facebook. You know, I had to back off. I was thinking, oh, well, because what happened to Facebook with Apple? But they’ve used AI and they’ve roared back. So it has a high emphasis with a bit of Google local thrown in if you want it. But Facebook, has good landing pages, good drip, good email, decent CRM, and good integration with IDX broker. That’s what we offer. And in the next three to four months we’re going to integrate it a lot with Gutenberg and offer some great website solutions. But I’ll be talking about that in the coming months when we get around to it.
So just a quick aside for everybody, property base was originally. Well, property bases have been buying up, partnering with a lot of other ancillary technology companies, and then absorbing them into what was originally a CRM, that’s what property base is. And what my understanding, John, without any kind of deep knowledge, so please nobody, if somebody’s going to email, it’s your opinion. If somebody is going to email, John, just like inflame him for something I said, which has happened I think once or twice now you just understand. I don’t know for sure, but here’s what I’ve observed and, what you need.
To say it’s your opinion.
My opinion is that the property base absorbed the technology for bold leads, built the same functionality into their CRM and that’s it. They are now just basically a CRM that has lead generation capabilities, that uses the framework that bold leads built. That’s what it was. And whether or not they kept how much of it they kept, one or the other of us would have to do a demo and look at what they’ve got to even begin to answer that. And so, yeah, I don’t know. Anyway, and then they did the same thing with Lone Wolf, which was an IDX provider. So now they’ve got IDX solutions on their websites, but that was being powered by Lone Wolf. So they absorbed an IDX provider and they absorbed like a lead generation provider and built them as spokes on a wheel into a CRM.
They sound like the bog for the enterprise, don’t they?
Yeah, I mean, they find a technology company that seems to be ancillary, like compatible with theirs and then they buy them. Huzzah. Right. So anyway, ladies and gentlemen, this has been a very deep dive. We’ve gone 37 minutes into this. Sierra Interactive is not an easy solution to talk about because it is so robust, and has 50 integrations on the backend. Some of the bigger teams in the US use them there. Some many, many, many websites still get very strong SEO results based on the way that their search filters work. Many teams have massive budgets that are built on Sierra Interactive. And so when you’re looking at a Sierra interactive site, you have to keep in mind that some of the people who spend the most money in the digital space still use these websites. There almost is no comparison. They’re more comparable. Sierra Interactive is actually on the backend, more comparable to a sync and boomtown. Maybe, maybe. But really the two people that have built robust CRMs that do things like connect into mortgage brokers and try to manage little elements of the transaction process, connect into dot loop and the list goes on and on.
That’s C interactive.
And see where I would just to finish off because we’re going to end this. Because if you’re looking, and this is my opinion, my opinion folks if you’re looking at KV core or Sara interactive, I would go with Sara interactive every day. But the thing is, a lot of people get KVcore. In my opinion, the reason why they use it is they get it from their broker and they get it at a very high discount. So then they think, but in my opinion, if you shouldn’t use a system because you’re getting it from a broker at a very high discount, you should use a system that’s the best fit for you at that moment. And a lot of people use KV ore and they would disagree with me. They say we’re getting fantastic results. I think I, if I was that type of individual, I would use Sierra Interactive.
I don’t disagree with anything you said. There’s one thing that’s hard to argue with because I’ve had this conversation with some of the biggest brokers in the country. KVcore, when you start talking about thousands of agents, gives a much better per-seat price than Sierra Interactive ever will. Additionally, at the highest level, when you’re dealing with a salesforce of five or 10,000 or more, you’re thinking to yourself, how do I train five or 10,000 people to use a CRM? And the answer is you probably don’t. Full stop. You try, but your salespeople won’t show up, they won’t absorb. You’re dealing with a very difficult audience to get adoption done. And when in considering all those factors, KV core becomes the de facto solution at $25 ahead for huge brokers.
Yeah, I think that was very insightful. Thanks for that.
Yeah, so, and, but having said that, I agree with everything you said. Small medium-sized teams, people with more control, great teachers, smaller, more enclosed environments, or incredibly strong digital teachers, all would be better served probably using Sierra interactive as their tool. But, and this is the last little thing to everybody listening to the show, John and I said this ad nauseam, CRMs are only as good as your ability to use them. And still the easiest adoption CRM that’s still on the marketplace is follow-up boss. So if you’re just looking for a tool that people can or will learn and it’s inherent inside the platform, in other words, you don’t need to be a digital trainer, you don’t need to have a coo. You don’t have to need to have a CTO or CMO teaching your people how to use it. It can just be learned by the person. It is still follow-up, boss. That’s it in my opinion.
This is my opinion show, folks.
Right? We’re going to rename it, it’s going to be the, in our opinion, real estate show. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, thank you so much for listening to the Mail-Right show. God, we appreciate you tuning into us today. Can’t even begin to tell you how excited we are to hear, to have your earballs. Listen to us, John. If you wanted people to reach out to you, how would you have them do that?
To get my opinions, all you have to do is go to the bell hyphen, write.com, and you can book a demo with me or Adam and we walk through the system. You have any questions, anything, we’re there to help you out. Back over to you, Rob.
Beautiful. All right, ladies and gentlemen, if you’d like to reach me directly. Robert@InboundREM is a way to email me, if you would like to just learn a lot more about us before you message anybody or get a whole bunch of knowledge, including, by the way, what you should be doing with all this nar stuff, go to inboundrem.com, comma, look at my service page, about page. Check out my YouTube channel. I’ve been far more active this year than in any year in recent memory because this is a very pivotal time for real estate. So I’ll talk to everybody soon, or see you soon, or you’ll hear me soon. Thank you for tuning into the show today. We appreciate it.
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In the current real estate industry, two major online-based brokerages, eXp Realty and REAL Broker, stand out. Although they offer comparable platforms and revenue-sharing programs, these companies have distinct differences. Let’s explore the disparities between eXp Realty and REAL Brokerage to help you determine which one best suits your needs.
#1 – Commission Cap
*eXp Realty
Both brokerages save a lot of money compared to franchise-based organizations because they are cloud-based. Because of this, they can reduce the commission caps and pass the savings on to their agents. **eXp Realty**
Commission Cap: The annual commission cap at eXp Realty is $16,000.
REAL Broker.
Real Estate Brokers: A maximum commission of $12,000.
This round’s victor is apparent. You can save $4,000 annually by using REAL Broker since they have the lowest commission cap! However, does that still indicate that working for Real Broker is more economical? Do you think we should discover?
The commission splits between REAL Broker and eXp Realty are.
#2 – Commission Splits
eXp Realty
Commission Split: eXp Realty offers an 80/20 split.
REAL Broker
Commission Split: REAL Broker provides a 15/85 split.
In this round, REAL Broker again wins, giving its agents a better-split ratio than eXp Realty and most other brokerages. This means more money in your pocket!
#3 – Fee’s
Fees are another way brokerages generate revenue from their agents, so knowing all the fees a brokerage charges its real estate agents is crucial.
eXp Realty
eXp Realty charges:
$149 Start-Up Fee
$85 Monthly Cloud Brokerage Fee
$25 Transaction Review Fee
$40 Risk Management Fee per transaction (caps at $500)
$250 Transaction Fee after you cap
Real Broker, In addition to its annual cap, REAL Broker charges:
$249 Sign-Up Fee
$750 Annual Fee
$285 Transaction Fee after you cap
$30 BEOP fee for each transaction
The Real Broker doesn’t charge a monthly fee; you only pay the annual fee after closing your first three deals of the year. If you don’t sell any homes, you don’t pay any fees, period.
When comparing fees, consider the overall impact on your business and which structure best suits your needs. Remember to factor in these fees when deciding between eXp Realty and REAL Broker.
#4 – Stock Bonuses
eXp Realty offers its agents 5 ways to earn free stock within the company:
Earn shares on your first transaction of each year
Earn shares when you cap
Earn shares when an agent you sponsor completes their first transaction
Earn $16,000 worth of shares by hitting their Icon Agent Award
Agent Equity Program allows you to purchase shares out of your commission at a 10% discount
REAL Broker offers its agents 4 paths to earning free stock in the company:
Earn stock by capping each year (the amount varies based on stock price & number of agents in brokerage)
Earn stock by attracting new agents to the company
Earn $24,000 worth of stock by hitting their Elite Agent Award
Purchase stock out of your commission & receive up to 35% free additional shares with a max of $8,000 free stock a year
#5 – Revenue Share
eXp offers its agents up to $2,800 a year for bringing in a new agent to the company out of that new agent’s $16,000 a-year cap. Any agent you directly bring in will be in your tier 1. So if the agent you bring on then brings on another agent, that second agent will be in your tier 2. Their revenue share program can go up to 7 tiers with various compensation for each tier. To unlock the rewards for all 7 tiers, you must bring on 40+ qualifying agents in your tier 1. Qualifying agents means they need to be producing agents who are closing transactions.
REAL Broker offers a similar revenue share program, except they give you $4,000 for every capping agent on your tier 1 you attract to the company. You can receive an annual revenue share for up to five tiers deep, and you must recruit at least 25 qualified agents to unlock all five tiers.
#6 – Software Included
Both companies utilize Workplace. This platform, created by Facebook, is like a series of Facebook groups JUST for business use without all the distractions of personal content and ads. You can mastermind with other agents, search for an agent, and directly message them. Both eXp and REAL also have additional training resources within the workplace.
eXp uses Skyslope for transaction management, while REAL Broker has built its proprietary transaction software, reZEN, which is very user-friendly and easy to use.
eXp Realty uses Inside Real Estate and KV Core for its agents’ CRM and websites, while REAL Broker offers its clients Chime for their CRM and Website needs. Although both services provide similar tools, Chime has a significant edge over KV Core.
Many eXp agents have found that Chime offers superior features and functionality compared to KV Core. As a result, some eXp agents choose to purchase Chime at an additional cost of over $500 a month, even though KV Core is already included in their package. In contrast, REAL Broker agents can access Chime for just $40 a month, making it a much more affordable and attractive option for them.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the MailRight podcast. Today is episode number 425. John and I have been doing this 400… Well, I joined the show at episode number 138.
You’re a newbie, Robert. You’re a newbie. I’m a newbie.
We’re closing in on my 300-show anniversary, which I feel pretty proud about. We’re going to talk In the last couple of podcasts, we’ve been mentioning a lot-I’m sorry, listeners, you’re going to have to watch the video.
He’s got one of his cats flicking its tail right in front of Rob. What are you doing to those cats, Rob?
Well, he was howling outside the door, which means that he was going to be part of the podcast one way or the other. At least right now, you’re not hearing him. So anyway- We’re pet friendly on this podcast. Exactly. We highly… Never mind. I’m not going to get into it. But he’s a rescue, so if anybody wants to rescue animals on their side, thing interests, I highly- Funny enough, Rob, I feel I can rescue every day. All right, so we’re going to try to stay focused, which is difficult for John and me. If you’re a long-time listener, you already know that. We will discuss the differences between real and eXp and share our thoughts about these two brokerages because they’re both at the forefront of a digital revolution. They’re part of many changes that are hitting the real estate industry. And if you want to, for those of you who are crypto people and DeFi people, which are probably not a huge part of our audience, but this for this particular show, I’m going to say that the decentralization is hitting the entire real estate industry and decentralization from brand and things connected to main brokers.
This isn’t going to be relevant to all of you, but some of you have already been seeing it. Major metro markets are the most deeply impacted. California, the Pacific Northwest, New York, and places like this, we’re really seeing a big change happening in the way that real estate agents train themselves, the way that they pay their community, commissions, what they consider good compensation packages to be. At the tip of the spear, there are two brokerages that are really at the forefront of this conversation, in my opinion. I don’t know if you agree or not, but it would be real and eXp. So before we dive into this, what I think is going to be a really meaty and really exciting subject for us to talk about, and we’re going to try to tie it into how that might impact your marketing as well. But before we get into any of that, John, number one, do you agree that these are the two companies at the forefront? And while you’re giving your thought on that, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?
Yeah, before I start, Rob, I’m so impressed that you’ve managed to do this intro because if you’re watching this, listeners and viewers, his cat is swigging his tail right in front of Robert’s face consistently. And he just… Rob does the intro like nothing’s happening. I’ve got to say, Rob, I’m very impressed. But to be true for Rob, I wasn’t up with real. So I’m really in your hands with this episode because it balances itself. In some of the episodes, Robert isn’t the expert, but I’ll be interested in hearing your views on this particular one. And I’m also the founder, the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are a CRM, a lead generative platform for real estate agents. It’s really incredible what we offer. We also offer a library of great WordPress real estate website themes from which you can choose one, and you can then utilize the power of Facebook to get some leads. Back over to you, Robert.
Beautiful. Okay. Well, my name is Robert I’m David Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound RMS, one of the only inbound real estate marketing companies that exist. We focus on content and SEO-driven results. We focus on a long-term view instead of a short-term one with your marketing. We focus on you owning your marketing mechanisms because I’m a big believer in taking control of everything related to your marketing. Actually, though, we don’t talk about it a lot. As far as I can tell, so does John. Today, we will talk about one of the more exciting developments in the real estate industry. John, in general, I’ve said to many people, and you and I have talked offline about how we often feel the real estate industry is 10, 15 years behind other industries, especially as it relates to agents changing the way they do marketing and things like that. But do you still agree with that? Is that still something that you buy into?
Yeah, I think it does. It’s so fragmented, isn’t it, as an industry? The past five years have been a learning exercise because I’ve got deep roots in WordPress and web design, but it’s been a learning curve for me, and I didn’t realize how fragmented the industry was and that there are different silos of people isn’t it, and groups in it.
There’s a lot of different silos. And there’s a very small silo, about 13% of the industry that has been gravitating, has been keeping up a little bit more with the digital revolution. And what do I mean by that? So John and I talk a lot about video and agents that are generating commissions and traffic off video and how they’re leveraging video inside hyper-local strategies, and they’re doing all sorts of… But you know what? That’s not the typical agent. It’s a very small part of the industry when you look at the industry as a whole. What is still dominant in terms of marketing? It’s the old school Book of business, word of mouth. I’ve got a network that I built up over 20 years, and I mail those people and send those people little gifts, magnets, and things like that. That’s still almost 100% the standard way to do it. Now you have people doing Twitter, and you have people doing Instagram, and you have People leveraging messaging. They’re communicating directly to their audience, similar to how Elon Musk does with Twitter, communicates directly to you, the consumer, and for better or for worse, that’s how he manages a good percentage of his business.
Public perception has led to a lot of financing, a lot of stock increases, and all sorts of things. Well, that change has been rare in the real estate industry. I bet most of you listening to the show couldn’t name more than one or two agents that you hear that seem to have a natural voice about how technology is impacting real estate transactions, and then they’re trying to go directly to the consumer and explain these differences. Well, real and eXp are the brokerages where that small handful of agents are gravitating, that 10 to 13%. They’re gravitating to digital-first real estate marketing platforms, like real estate agent platforms. These platforms are applying a multi-level marketing compensation package to agents because they don’t have a brick-and-mortar network of offices, which, right off the top, eliminates 30 to 50% of the cost of running a brokerage. If you’re virtual, you’re going to save, or at least I would make the assumption that you would save a lot of money in rigid and fixed costs. Do you agree with that, John? Do you think that that’s an apt assessment?
It is. To be honest with the audience, I have a slight problem, especially with eXp, because I need to learn more about how Rill operates. But I have a problem with eXp, and it might not be totally fair, but it comes from my background because, obviously, folks, I’m English, and in the early ’80s, multilevel marketing operations in the UK were totally illegal, and you can go to prison. It’s not only a civil illegality but a criminal offense in the UK to run a multi-level marketing business. And you can go to prison by running one. And there are people that have gone to jail for running one. So because I’m from that background, folks, it’s very difficult for me to get my head around that in the US, it’s still legal and it’s still quite totally… When it comes to the law, to run a multi-level marketing operation. And eXp, in my opinion, has elements of it. It denies that its core business philosophy and structure are based on MLM principles, but it’s certainly got a very strong taste, in my opinion. And because of my background, I have problems with that.
I think many of our listeners and viewers don’t have a problem with. But I just wanted to explain to you, Robert, why my reaction might seem a bit strange to you. That’s why I’ve just said what I’ve said.
So in the second part of the show, with John’s permission, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to use an incredibly deep article that I found on nextgenagents. Com. I couldn’t do a comparison better. There’s no point in me writing an article or creating an article because they did the best job that you’re going to see somebody do online. So I’m not going to recreate it on my platforms. But John and I can provide insight and commentary to the details of this. And of course, two of our guests, previous guests on the show, are the real spokesmen, which I found fascinating. Matthew Lawson, who you might remember as the guy that founded the YouTube Real Estate Mastermind channel, which is huge at this point. He’s a real guy, and he’s been on our show before, John, and he’s on the NextGen Agents article. He’s featured. He’s becoming a heck of a spokesman for real, it appears. At least that’s what it appears like to me. Before we dive into the nitty-gritty in the latter half of the show, I want to position this in a John, your comments reflect. It’s eerie because you just made this comment without, I don’t think…
I didn’t link John, the next Gen article. I actually just looked it up. But I will say this, his comments are eerily reflective in the next Gen article because what eXp has created was a really aggressive growth model, but they were a little lackadaisical on the way that they created the rules for recruiting agents. And there are complaints circling the industry about schemes, basically somewhat not cool, somewhat fictitious schemes that agents have created to put… What they’ve done is they’ve created downlines of eXp agents, but some people have put those agents under their own name and basically offered training. So some of the commission that we should go to that agent are now going to the upline. And it’s a huge scandal, but there’s nothing illegal about it. You signed an agreement with both entities. But what’s happening is that some eXp agents are doing a lot of recruiting, and they’re not necessarily doing it ethically. That’s basically what it all comes down to. And it is because of the multi-level marketing. Somebody has created a compensation system and a structure where you as an agent, if you’re a good trainer, a real estate trainer like me or John, let’s just say that we wanted to train salespeople on the digital marketing side, but we didn’t want to be real estate agents.
Both eXp and real allow us to do that and receive commissions for doing it. And the way that you’re getting commissions is you’re receiving a very small piece of the earned commissions of the agents that you recruit and train. And so it is a new model where that appeals, mostly in my experience, to guys like Matthew. He’s a It’s a perfect case study where he was already… A broker isn’t going to provide Matthew a lot of value. Number one, he’s doing all his own lead gen. He relies on company branding or brokerage branding at not at all. When people come to do business with him, they’re already sold on Matthew Lawson. They actually don’t care where he works. They don’t care whether it’s Keller Williams or whether it’s Sotheby’s Luxury. They just don’t care. That I mean, and I’m pretty sure that we could probably go back in our show notes, John, and look at that episode. And I’m sure he said something to that effect, that when he gets calls, they’re sold on Matthew. They don’t really… They’re not paid too much attention.
I just quickly, before we go for our… Got about three or four minutes before our half break, is that the concept of a digital brokerage and the bit that is separate to the MLM element of it, I’m fine with it. I’m fine with it, them distributing shares because especially eXp, they are a publicly quoted company. I have no problem with that. The problem was, the problem, because of my background, is I have a I have a real problem with the MLM element of it, or the taste of it. I really have a problem with it, and it’s because where I come from, Robert, because I just consider it And it’s not the case here in America, but I consider it, because of my background, to be iffy, to say the least. I really don’t want to get involved with it.
Which makes sense. I have gotten involved with MLM stuff as a professional sales guy and a professional sales trainer and a professional sales leader. I’ve been approached hundreds of times. I’ve actually been approached three or four different times for eXp by various clients and people that know me and know my reputation in the industry. They all want me to get involved with eXp, and so far I’ve declined. The reasons for that is simple. It is It’s a very complicated thing to build a downline in an MLM. You can do it if you are somebody like me who’s already a CEO and already built companies, and you understand every single element of building a company, you provide a lot of value in your mentorship, and then in which case I would say my continued percentage from all my downline is worth it. There are people out there that provide a huge amount of value to less experienced people, and you pay them for them training. You just constantly pay them for training. But a lot of MLM people are professional signers. They just sign you up and they let everybody else always provide all the value if they provide any value at all.
And they basically hire in masses, kick them in the asses, and hope that something sticks. In other words, somebody else provides the value. What they did is sign you up for the opportunity. And that’s where it gets really shaky, especially since multi-level marketing is somewhat of a pyramid, which is why it’s illegal in Europe. It doesn’t matter how you slice the pie, somebody, the handful of people at top are always at top. That’s it. We’re going to put a pin in this, and we’re going to go to break. And when we come back, John, are you okay with me sharing the screen?
Yeah. Okay.
When we come back, I’m going to use a presentation feature, and we’re going to dive into the incredible differences between real. Then in the bonus section of the show, I’m going to actually share my thoughts because I I asked for this show to be done, and I have some thoughts about why Reel is just right now on fire, and it’s taking a lot of the top agents They’re growing exponentially, and I think I know why, or at least I have an understanding of why they look more interesting to me than eXp. Without any further ado, we’re going to go to break. Stay tuned, and we’ve got some exciting stuff for you. All right, let me edit this out. I’m going to go to share the screen. Here’s our client. Can you see Matthew’s beautiful face right here with my mouse? Okay. We’re going to start here. Okay, we’re just going to… And then I’m just going to… I’m going to read, and then you and I will offer our thoughts. But honestly, it’s just some small differences. The big huge difference is down here in the conversation. This is the massive difference, which I didn’t even know, but we’re just going to talk about it real quick.
Okay, you can read it. Licensee acknowledges and verifies that the referral agent has not promised, enticed, or provided contract with anything of value, including but not limited to lead generation platforms, CRM, coaching trips, rebates or currency in return for naming referral agent. In other words, you cannot… They fixed this massive hole in the exp agreement. Okay?
Yeah.
All right. And then everything else we can read together, I think. Okay? All right. So here we go. Are you ready? Yeah. All right. 3, 2, 1. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 425. For those of you who are able, we’ve moved over to doing a screen share. We’re once again looking at an article on next-gen exigence. Com. What we’re doing is we’re examining an article that they wrote, Taking a look at the Differences between Real versus eXp. For those of you who are willing to do a deeper dive, you should probably go read this article yourself. John and I are not making any assertions, even if we express opinions, that you should make any decisions as it relates to your real estate brokerage. We are not trying to provide professional advice that says that you should or should not leave a brokerage. What we’re trying to do is offer our opinion, take it or leave it, about these kinds of offers in general and the specifics of real versus eXp. To be fair, I have put John in this position, so he has not, and I did not send him this article in advance, so we’re going to both be doing this in real-time together.
John, for the first time, and I’ve just started reading it, I didn’t know what the differences were. I had a very high level view of a lot of people that I respect in the industry, bailing from eXp and heading over to real. I asked the question, why? There’s so many of them. I’d say 50% of the top influencers I know are transferring. I just wanted to know why. And so this show was our answer to that question. Okay? So what we’re looking What I’ve got on the screen right now is a commissioning caps, eXp versus real. Exp charges a startup fee. They have a $149 startup fee, $85 cloud brokerage fee, $25 transaction review fee, $40 risk management fee, and $250 transaction fee after you cap. Exp also charges $149, $500 fee, and $225. In other words, for those of you who are listening to the show, there are some small differences in fees and charges, but to me, they look not that big. All right? Exp, John, I’m seeing here that eXp offers $16,000 worth of shares by hitting their agent award. Their agent equity program allows you to purchase shares out of your commission at a 10% discount.
Now, there is a big difference here. Reel offers a lot more paths into getting stock, purchase stock out of commission and earn up to 50% fee and additional shares with a max of $8,000. Now, I want to be honest with everybody, you included, John. I own shares of both eXp and real, so everybody knows. So again, this is not investment advice. But I noticed something that is fascinating. Have you ever looked at either one of these stocks? Did you ever track it down? Is this Is there an area of interest for you, like personal interest for you at all? Do you invest in any of the companies you talk about?
No, not really, because of what I stated in the first half of the show, Rob.
Okay. All right. Well, I do. Here’s something that is fascinating. Real has a significantly better profit versus loss statement. They’ve got a significantly higher ability to earn revenue via stock. Their cap is much higher. 24 versus 16 is a 30 to 40% difference. Purchase stock out of commission and earn 50% additional shares with a max of 8,000 bonus stock per year. They’re getting very aggressive with agents that are willing to reinvest some of their own income into stock. Their stock, which is selling at $3 a share right now, and they’ve got this incredible P versus E, like a price versus earnings. There’s much more appealing from that end of it. Basically, according to what their share price is, they’re wildly undervalued. So if, John, I think that if you’re an investment-minded agent, this might look appealing to you? What do you think?
Well, funny enough, you bring this up. I was listening to Rob Rowland, and Rob Rowland was the joint founder of an email marketing platform called Drip, and he sold it, sold the business, and it was highly successful. And he runs a podcast called Startups For The Rest Of Us. And I was listening to his week. I listened to it weekly. And he was talking… And it’s related to what you’ve just outlined. He’s related to a concept and a founder of a company called Bold. And Bold was in email marketing and something else. And the employees could buy shares in Bold at a discount, a very high discount. The CEO of BOLD really went on a Twitter storm and online marketing and attacking… Oh, that’s why… It was a competitor to Stripe, online payments. The founder went on a bit of a Twitter storm and an online PR campaign there about how bad Stripe was and how great Bold was, and you should buy shares, and definitely all the staff should buy shares, and they did. They all palled in buying these discounts.
Sure.
It all went pair-shaped, and what they didn’t realize, at the The CEO, at the time, he was encouraging all his staff to poll in and buy all this share. He was selling, and the company went bust. He walked away still a very rich man. I want to make clear to everybody there’s nothing illegal that was done. But it led a very bad taste in a lot a lot of people’s mouths, and a lot of the staff really got taken to the cleaners. So as you said all this to me, it’s really strange because I listened to Rob’s podcast on Monday, and as soon as you started saying this, that’s what came into my mind, Robert.
Which is fair. And I just want to be, once again, very clear with everybody, this is an investment advice, and I don’t own very many shares of either one of these companies, eXp or real. I just own enough to have them in my stock tracker so that I am paying attention to their stock price. I personally, it doesn’t matter whether it’s this company or another company, one thing that I do know is that decentralized real estate is definitely the wave of the future. Is it really in a multi-level marketing brokerage scheme? I don’t know. That’s a fast way to build a sales team, that’s for sure. Whether or not it’s the permanent method or model. I mean, one might as well say, John, that a digital education company that was really good at figuring out how to educate people about something could step into the real estate business and train the 50 to, well, the 25% of the industry, which is about 250,000 agents, how to sell real estate at a professional level, market themselves at a professional level, and then take a percentage of all their business moving forward forever because they train them.
That effectively is what these systems and companies are doing. There’s real value in that, I would propose. Whoever’s training the agents, there’s nothing wrong with creating an informational brand that says that if you do a good enough job and teach somebody a career, why shouldn’t you profit? But here’s the problem, and I’ve got it on the screen. There is something that eXp has drawn a lot of fire about, and it plays into John’s It’s the first statement, which he made without even knowing that this existed, because he is right. There are problems in the multi-level marketing model. It is not accidental that the UK has made this illegal, 100% illegal. That is licensee acknowledges… Here’s the big difference. It’s the major difference between real and eXp, and it plays into what are going to be my closing comments. Licensee acknowledges and verifies that the referral agent has not promised enticed or provided contractor with anything of value, including but not limited to lead generation platform CRM, coaching tips, rebates or currency in exchange for naming referral agent. That is a challenge that is happening with eXp. There are a lot of people out there that have got really aggressive with recruiting people into their downline, and they’ve gotten a little shady about how they do that so that they can collect compensation and stock incentives for recruiting It is a loophole that reel his field.
That reason, because while we are talking about the nuts and bolts in finances, I got to tell everybody, including John, the Reasons that people are listing leaving eXp and heading over to Riyal are not based on the compensation. It is a bonus, is what I’m hearing. It is a bonus about It’s just a bonus. It’s a bonus. Why is that? What is the deciding factor? Well, John, I cruised over to real and started to check out their website and I found something that was deeply fascinating to me. The CEO and many of the leaders of the company have done the in-depth mission statement videos, really in-depth reasons for why they established Real, what the mission of Real is, who they’re trying to serve, why they’re trying to serve them that way, what specifically are they aiming to accomplish with Real. It was such an incredibly comprehensive, passionate deep dive, especially by, I think it was the COO of the company. I’ve never seen anything like it. Not from Glenn, the CEO of eXp. You see ra-ras from him, but you don’t see this thoughtful, in-depth explanation. If you headed over to Real right now, trying to learn something about them, you’re going to be able to do the same thing I did, which is you’re going to see some of the officers, the people that run the company, and you’re going to get this incredibly personal conversation about what real is about.
It’s long form, it’s not short form. You have to invest a little bit of your time. But if you wanted to, if you wanted to invest that time, here you’ve got real leaders of the company sharing a lot of thoughts about the company in a very detailed and personal way. I was just staggered because it was so insightful. They really seem to have an understanding of what agents are caring about right now. They seem to really have a desire to serve those agents, help the agents that need help, reward the agents that are learning, teaching, training, growing, and pay attention to the quality of the experience that all real agents are having. That was a part of their absolutely stated mission statement, which is absolutely something that I’m noticing that as eXp grew, I don’t feel like they’re doing. They’re not focused on the mentorship experience that theoretically a multi-level marketing type company could Excel at, theoretically. You were precognizant about this. Now that you’ve seen that it was literally one of the main issues that was called out by Reel, and it’s also called out on this website, and it’s also like, what are your closing thoughts on this?
Well, it’s difficult, isn’t it, Rob? But hopefully you can see why I I needed to explain that I’m English and what the situation in the UK is, because I feel my stance won’t make much sense to you or the audience, really. And there’s parts of For me, it’s these eXp and real that I like. I think a digital agents brokerage for the right type of agents is very attractive and very beneficial. I think the commission The commission cap, the commission splits, the emphasis on digital technology, they’re all attractive. The bit that I can’t deal with is all the bit that a lot of people also find even more attractive than the things I’ve list, which is the multi-marketing side of it, which I cannot accept because of my background It just diminishes the whole concept to me. And I don’t think it has… You don’t have the same response to it. And I’m not And I’m not attacking you because it’s cultural, Robert.
So here’s my closing thoughts. Whether real or eXp are the answer for real estate, here’s what I believe with all my heart. The whole world, a good percentage of all marketing and sales is now happening in what one could refer to as the Influencer or information age revolution. So it is coming down to individuals that provide a lot of value to you. And if that individual has provided a lot of value to you, you are more inclined to do business with them. Or if you perceive that they, like the Kardashian’s is an easy target for me because they’ve made billions off influencer marketing, billions with a B. And they’ve sold video games, they’ve sold perfume, they’ve sold clothing, they’ve sold makeup. The list of things that they’ve gotten into successfully and made massive amounts of money on, basically on the idea of their own personal reputation is staggering. But to be fair, the Kardashian have been incredibly bleeding edge about how they leverage their influence. They’ve got a TV show, and from the TV show, they literally have turned their own reputation into billions of dollars. On a much smaller level, when it comes to real estate, there are a very small handful of agents and people like me and John that provide a tremendous amount of value to the average real estate agent.
Why? Because we will teach you something that is not being taught by your broker. Or if it is being taught by your broker, they’re teaching you things that are 10 years old. Because most brokerages, almost all of them, including Keller Williams, including most of them, don’t understand digital. They’re still promoting platforms and solutions that worked 10 years ago. And many of these platforms or solutions are second or third best options for you as agents to generate leads. And a lot of people, even Tom Ferry, when you walk into this seminar, they’re still I’m not going to be talking to you about mailers and bus benches and digital displays. I’m not saying they don’t also talk to you about websites and things like that, but we’re in a digital first era. It’s not digital second, digital third, digital fourth. I get tired of people saying, do I need a website? It’s like, okay, I get tired of people asking me, do you need a Google profile or a Zillow profile? Or it’s like, it doesn’t matter if you do business for Zillow, you need a profile. Because it’s the biggest, it’s like the Google of real estate.
So saying, Do I need a Zillow? It’s like, Well, yeah. Do I like that? The answer? No, I hate it. I hate telling agents that. I despise saying that to people, John. But do you need it? Yes, you need it. I’m sorry. That’s where the… Wherever the traffic is online, you need to be there, too. If you don’t want to pay them extra money, don’t. I hate that. Don’t pay Zillow extra money, but they let you build a profile for free. Should you not only have it, but maybe even have some reviews there? Because you can put reviews on a Zillow profile, whether or not you use the platform. Should you have some reviews on your Zillow platform? Profile? Yes, you should. Why? Because there’s massive amounts of people on the platform, and you’re back into some business, most likely. It’s frustrating to me that people haven’t realized, and the The only companies that are out there that are serving the digital-first agent, of which I’ve already said is less than 10% of the industry, maybe 10-13% maximum, is eXp and real. Because they are taking the idea of whoever trains you and teaches you on how to do business today in this market, we’re going to compensate you.
Why should a brokerage that is not… I mean, again, this is just my opinion, but wherever you’re hanging your license, if they’re taking a percentage of your revenue, shouldn’t they be providing value in equal amounts to whatever you’re paying or greater? Because to me, if I was an agent, that’s what I’d be looking at. If they’re not training me or they’re not providing me something new, they’re not giving me a mentor, they’re not giving me leads, they’re just taking a percentage of my commission, the answer is, but why? If I have to go out and learn all that on my own without any help from my broker whatsoever, and what John, it seems like you got something you want to add.
Yeah, I think just to finish, I think everything you’ve just outlined, I can agree. I think it’s a balance. And I think when the MLM element becomes the overriding reason why somebody is involved with these digital brokerages and things like eXp. If that is the overriding aspect, project that interests them and makes them a influencer or a driver, whatever term you want to use, then I think I personally have a problem with it. I think if it’s only a small small part, and the other things that you’ve outlined are the main reasons why they like the platform, my concern isn’t so high. Is that making any sense, Robert?
It is. But John is right. We’ve covered as much as we can in a single show. There’s a lot more to be said about this in general. For me, if you’d like to tune in to what I have to say about these things, you can find some of those thoughts on inboundrm. Com. You can also find them on, I think my YouTube handle is YouTube/inboundrmvanis. You can just go to YouTube and put in InboundReum, and you’ll see all my videos. It’s easy to find me. John, if people wanted to find you, How would you like them to do that?
Yeah, go to mel-right. Com. You can book a chat with me. I can show you the platform. We’re building out some new functionality at the end of this month, at the end of April, actually, a library of great WordPress Gutenberg real estate themes, which you can choose a particular theme for your website that we provide as part of the Melright package. And it’s going to be super quick and super easy to edit, and you’re going to love them. So that’s coming out the end of probably April. And when it does, I’ll be talking a little bit more about it. Back over to you, Robert.
So, ladies and gentlemen, any market is always tough as a real estate marketer. But for those who are listening to this show, even though… I am not always firmly in the camp of endorsing somebody because I feel a social obligation. It has sometimes, at times, been a point of contention between John and me. But I will say this: right now, if I were you, if I was an agent, and things were belt-tightening, I think that conversation with John has additional appeal. His platform is inexpensive compared to most other platforms. I’m not trying to put myself in your pocketbook. I don’t know money. However, in terms of the competitive landscape, John’s solution is priced attractively. And then you have the fact that it’s built on WordPress, the fact… You do own it, don’t you?
Oh, yeah. We’re building it on a framework called Gutenberg and a framework called Cadence WP. And I’ve built out a similar platform on my other business. And we’re building out half a dozen super fast-quality, attractive themes. At the present moment, we’ve only got one. It’s similar to Real Geeks, but we’re going to provide a library of websites, and we’ll give you some white glove training, and you’ll be able to customize it yourself, or you can hire us at different levels to customize it. But if you ever decide that you want to leave Mail-right, we will migrate the website to wherever else you want it hosted. So you do own it, Robert.
Perfect. So that’s a big deal. Anyone who’s followed me for a long period of time, including John, will know that I’m just on fire about having control of your marketing, including the ability to have a lifetime license where you can do what John just said. You can move the website to one place or another, which means you can fire John, which, by the way, you can fire me.
So it’s the same. Why would anybody want to fire you, Robert?
And then you get to keep your… Thank you, John. You get to keep your stuff, which is essential if you decide to do work, customize, or learn to use the platform. Having ownership and control means that once you learn the skillset if you do learn the skillset, it is a durable skillset that’s likely to last and be an investment that is long-term in your real estate career. So this is an excellent time to talk to somebody like John. If I were in the position of many agents looking at all these changes and I got a lot of concern about my future budget, I’d probably be calling guys like John and looking deep into Weed Solutions. Now, for those tiny handful of you who are veteran agents, have… I’ve got a NAR. I made some comments on the NAR settlement. It’s in the process of going viral on my YouTube channel. I got like 500 views in under 48 hours. That comment is basically for those small handful of you that are veteran agents, this is the time to shine. Maybe some of you might want to reach out to me because this is the time to make moves and get your digital solutions for how you’re going to handle the buyer-side agreement and get out in front of everybody.
Because those of you who’ve done this for 20 years know you’re not going anywhere. You’re going to Excel in the long term because many people will surrender their licenses. That means that there’s going to be less competition for all of you. That’s the day. Anyway, thanks for tuning in, everybody. John, thank you for humoring me. I appreciate it. I hope everybody got value out of the show. John, I hope you are out of the show. I understand everybody is listening, and I appreciate John giving me a little bit of leniency on this one.
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Are you curious how the NAR lawsuit settlement will influence your role as a real estate agent? Our comprehensive podcast discusses all aspects of this game-changing development and its implications for professionals like you. Arm yourself with knowledge, stay informed, and be prepared for what’s to come in real estate.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 424. And John just gasped in incredibleness when I just said this will be one of the most important shows that we do this year. And I don’t know that he agreed. But today’s show is going to be about the NARS settlement and specifically how you can insulate your business and giving you some ideas early on to protect yourself from some of the changes that won’t be coming until July or August of this year at the very earliest, but they are coming. Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of this, because we’re just going to rip on it, we’re going to go back and forth. I’m going to give my thoughts. John is going to give his thoughts. We’re going to talk about one of his favorite in the entire world as one of the leaders in having a voice on this, the CEO of Redfin, who I’ve seen four different times and four different media channels so far talking about this exact subject. Before we get into this, my English pugilistic friend, why don’t you go and introduce yourself to the audience?
I don’t know what that word means.
That’s in not your days as a boxer.
All right. Thank you so much, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We’re a marketing platform, CRM, landing page, email and text messaging drip campaigns, and a couple of other things in one great affordable package. Back over to you, Robert.
Beautiful. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of InboundREM, the 16-year veteran of the real estate industry, a real estate consultant, a real estate SEO expert, a founder of a couple of tech companies, but the one that I get on this show and talk about is Inbound Real Estate Marketing, otherwise known as InboundREM. Com. Go ahead and check us out. We have lots of great information. If you like this show, you’ll be able to get a little bit of education for free by me on all sorts of great subjects. All right. Without any further ado, let’s dive right into it. Over the span of the weekend, it was announced that NAR, after 10 years of had basically settled a lawsuit with the federal government that says effectively, finally, that consumers will be able to actually negotiate their commissions with both the buyer’s agent and the seller’s agent. That’s effectively what the lawsuit said. It’s not going to affect whether or not a buyer’s agent and seller’s agent get commission. That’s not what’s at stake. What’s at stake is that for the very first time ever, a buyer’s agent will have to negotiate their commission rate with their buyer as opposed to having that commission come out of the seller site, which is automatic and connected into the MLSs, which was what the lawsuit was all about.
Before I dive into it, because I asked John to interrupt our normal content flow so that we can discuss this in as real time as possible. This is the very next show that John and I did together after the lawsuit settlement was announced over the span of the weekend. So, John, what are you… And of course, John graciously agreed. And then redid, tossed out the old show. Well, it didn’t toss it out, but saved the old show and then jumped into this one. But you’re looking incredulous. So let’s start off with something that surprises me. You do not think that this is going to be one of the important conversations we have all year? Let’s start there.
I wouldn’t quite say that. No, I think it’s an important subject. How it pans out, I think anybody… I suppose because I’ve been living in America for almost 18 years now, it’s gone so quick, Rob. It’s unbelievable. And in the UK, seller’s agents are slightly under 2 %. The industry is still quite healthy in the UK. It’s a nightmare-ish system. What the UK system doesn’t do is the legal side, the contract, and you have to hire a lawyer to do that. And that is extremely expensive. So you combine the 2% on average in the UK with the legal fees. And the nightmarish, you don’t actually know if you bought a property until the morning of the transfer of the contract. Anything could happen at the last minute and does. It’s a nightmarish system, which has been very difficult to change because lawyers, it’s one of the main financial profit centers for the legal profession in the UK. And so most of the politicians are ex-lawyers. So it’s been totally impossible to change it. So I did some basic math. So let’s say the three %, being a buyer’s agent is a painful experience anyway. So there’s a lot of cost in showing people around and being there 24/7 for them and showing loads of properties.
How that’s going to be paid for is up for debate. When it comes to the sellers, so let’s say a seller agent, they get three %. If they sell one house per month, and if you’re in your third year, you should be doing more than one house per month, in my opinion. If you’re looking at your first two years and you can get up to more than one house per month, I think that’s a great position to aim for. But let’s say you’re doing one house per week, per month, the average mean price in the US, the average price And obviously this varies enormously by city, region, area, is 400,000. 3% of 400,000 is around 12,000. That’s 180,000 gross per year, roughly. Expenses, take that out. Marketing expenses, having a VA, having somebody help you. Let’s say if you’re doing 180, your net might be 100,000, 110, 120,000. I think what it will affect, in my opinion, is the part-time. There’s 1 million licensed real estate agents in the US. That is unsustainable. That cannot keep-One million, two million, sir. I I heard 1 million, but I take you if it’s 2 million, it’s bonkers, right?
At 1 million, it’s bonkers, in my opinion. This situation has benefited the National franchise brokerages and also the associations. Basically, there they are. There’s a lot of agents out there that are selling three, four houses a year. They have no money to invest. They have no money to really build a real business. They totally rely on the brokerages, and the brokerages like it because they’re highly profitable, those transactions. I don’t think somebody that’s not selling one house per month can be an effective professional and really understanding the market and really represent their clients in a semi-professional way. Can you see where I’m going from? Where I’m going at is from-I can.
So in 2024, the US had 1,554,064 604 realtors. That was members of NAR. Okay, there’s a 2 million licensed real estate agents, so a total of 400,000 realtors aren’t even members of NAR. The number that you probably heard was 1 million realtors were going to be members of NAR. The numbers that I’m hearing thrown around is that this lawsuit will probably shake out and have about 25% to 50% of the people that have licenses surrender their licenses, which is why it’s such a big subject and why it is a subject of the show. For a very long time, people like me and other people in the industry, and I say this with the greatest amount of respect, it is fairly easy to get a real estate license, which means that a lot of people have gotten real estate licenses, gotten into the industry with a very low experiential background, not only for real estate, but oftentimes people that have no background in business or anything else at all, full stop, get licenses, people who’ve been raising kids and things like this. That’s fine. But considering the fact I think that this is one of the largest transactions, one of the most important decisions that the people that are making it will ever make in their entire lifetime.
My opinion has always been the bar should be higher to get into the profession, to stay in the profession. The idea that you can come into this with no experience and do a transaction with your family because they love you, who knows what that could end up meaning, an interest rate that’s too high on a loan, contract details. There’s so many different things, inspections that may not be caught or done the right way, somebody buying a property that ends up not being healthy for them, somebody buys a property that puts them into bankruptcy. All of these things have happened and can happen and might happen again. Meaning that amateurs or people, well, maybe amateurs is not the right word, but people with low experience thresholds, this is at a minimum, I would think, because John and I have talked about this before, I’ve said, John, I think we may have said this off camera, and John may or may not have agreed with me, I don’t remember anymore, but I did say, I think the apprentice model would work well in real estate. Basically, you have to be an assistant to somebody that knows what they’re doing for 3-5 years before you can then go out and do transactions yourself.
In the hyper luxury markets, strangely enough, it still works that way. Oftentimes, very successful agents with big business backgrounds get into premium marketplaces like Beverly Hills, and they basically mentor under somebody that already has a very big name for themselves in the luxury market, and they do so for years before they finally either have a book of business or enough referrals or whatever the case is to compete for a single transaction, a single property in Beverly Hills, probably has 5 or 10 qualified choices at a minimum that you could use to sell or buy that property. The commission that we’re talking about, even at 2% to 3%, it’s huge. The latter half of the show, John, I’m going to spend explaining how you can protect your business. For the next three to four minutes, though, what I’m going to explain is how did we get here, in my opinion. Well, I looked up some statistics. This is the first show of the year and maybe the only show of the year where I walked in probably more prepared than John. One of the things that I researched was because I’ve been getting a lot of numbers that said over and over again, Things have changed for people buying homes.
There’s been a lot of pressure on the housing industry because effectively, things have changed a lot. Now, I’m going to show you what things have changed. A report that Zillow did said that the average American household needs to make $106,000. This is average across all 52 states. Needs to make 106,536 dollars a year to comfortably afford the typically priced US home, which, by the way, that is not us here in California, folks. They produced a list. If I wanted to buy a home in Los Angeles, California, the range that I would have to have from my household is $157,000 to $300,000. That’s a staggering number. San Diego is slightly behind us, and San Francisco and San Jose is more like $2,75,000 to $500,000. That’s to buy a home, any home. That’s a tough, tough, tough ask. This is why not only is there pressure right now happening inside the real estate industry, and NAR surrendered this suit after 10 years. Why? Because most people can’t even afford a home. If there’s any hope, psychological or otherwise, to lower the price of homeownership, that is where the entire country needs to line up and be. Nar knows that.
They know that we’re looking at a winter. They pushed it as far as they could possibly push it. But when most people, and I mean most people, John, can’t afford a home in any state, anywhere, that is very bad for the housing market, including the people that already own the homes. Yes, it’s great to be sitting on top of a cash pile. According to most of the things I’ve read, home prices have increased by over 50 to 60% in the last four years. That’s great if you’re sitting on a home that you’ve owned for that long. But imagine you’re like, I’m not buying that home. I can’t afford it, and I make a very good living, at least I think I do. But according to being able to buy a home, I actually don’t, which is crazy to me because I make more than almost anybody that I know. When you start looking Looking at that and going, I can’t buy a home, it’s like, holy cow, do you have to be a millionaire just to even consider buying a home right now in Los Angeles? The answer is almost yes. That’s the framework that is going to create a lot of changes in the real estate industry.
We’re just starting to see the first ones roll out. We’re starting to see a whole bunch of, this is the lawsuit settlement now, negotiate. Nara is I’m trying to pitch this as the 6 or 7% that you can negotiate on is going to make a difference in the home price. Truthfully, it’s probably only going to make a 1% difference.
It’s going to make no difference because none of the sellers, if they can pocket 12,000 on the average purchase prices. The mean average, which is 400,000, which is bonkers, absolutely bonkers. The sellers, they’re just going to pocket it unless there’s For some reason why they can’t. Where I don’t have our friend at Redfin, the man with the smile, as I call him, he’s always very cheerful, isn’t he? But he’s sold, like you pointed out last time we brought him up, he consistently sells the shares in his own company, is how it’s going to affect buyer, buyer’s agents, because How the model is going to work out. Because as you know, most more established agents, either they have juniors that represent buyers, or they just don’t want to do it because it’s the only type of work when you’re trying to get yourself established because it’s such a painful experience and such a time killer showing around possible buyers. And And it’s very stressful. But if you’re trying to establish yourself, you have to do it. Who’s going to pay? Is it going to be paid hourly? Is it, are they going to be a fixed package?
I’ll show you five hours. I don’t know how that’s going to work out. That’s the bit that I don’t think anybody knows, because You can say Australia, Canada, UK, but as I pointed out with the UK, it’s a very different setup. Here you’ve got title companies, the agent with the brokerage does the contract. That’s totally different to the UK. My understanding is the Australian and Canadian is very different as well. I don’t know on the buyer, that buyer’s agent is going to want to be compensated in some way. How that works out, I don’t know, really. Have you got any thoughts?
You need to go for a break. A lot of them, but we’re going to come to the break and I’m going to share those thoughts. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be right back wherever you found us. We’re so glad that you’re with us today. Thank you so much. I hope you’re having a fantastic day. John and I are both We’re so grateful for the ears and the time that you give us. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the MailRight podcast. Today, we’re talking about the NAR settlement. Now, we just spent the set up and shared our individual opinions about what happened with Nara in the first part of the show. If you didn’t already catch it, go back and do a quick listen. But this part of the show, we’re now going to… John just ended the show by saying, Hey, what are you going to do about that? I have a lot of ideas about… It has always frustrated me that commissions were set for real estate agents because it became a matter of morality and ethics about whether or not you offered a bigger service package than somebody else.
And in the luxury space, in certain real estate spaces, every single time you start talking about something that’s commoditized, search or other things, like cell phones is what I used to sell that was super commoditized and long distance plans, which is super commoditized. And you know what? Always, I had to differentiate myself with the personal service package. Always. It’s a mystery to me that it just goes to say that a lot of real estate agents haven’t necessarily been a multi-focused salesperson over the span of their career, because if you had been, you’d know that no matter what, you’re going to have to to come up with a service package in order to get your clients to not only pay you what you’d like to be paid, but also create resilience within your business. Now, here’s some of my ideas for creating a service plan that will, in turn, allow you to negotiate the highest or best buyer’s commission, which is what all of you are going to have to do. You’re going to have an agreement, you’re going to have your customer sign it, it’s not coming out of the seller’s package. Just a few ideas that I’ve had is that I’ve always found it to be ridiculous that on a commission-only basis, a buyer of a home can call you up and say, I would like you to take me out to see homes.
Never made much sense to me, not in the digital age. Why? Because inventory is mostly online. Just do a Zoom call, look at some pictures together, and hash things out. Start focusing on making sure as part of the qualification process that it all happens over Zoom. What I would do personally, John, is if I was a realtor, and number one, John and I have said this forever, it does not make sense. It’s never made sense unless you’re dealing with a referral or a family member, and they say, I’m just going to give you the deal, and now you’re… Let’s say you live in Santa Monica here in LA, but they want a home in the valley, so you sell them a home in the valley. In terms of your marketing, though, that’s a referral. Your actual marketing needs to focus you as a specialist in a certain area. Always has been that way, always will be that way, and very few people even listen to that. Because for some reason, all real estate agents think it’s better to be a wandering generality instead of a meaningful specific, and I will never, ever understand that. You want to know your inventory really well.
What do I mean by that? Right now, there’s like 157 listings in Vanuys. I’d set aside a month, and I’d go out, and probably once a month, every month, I’d pick my top 20 or 30 homes, and I’d walk out there with a camera, have an assistant do the same, and I’d film it because I’m a licensed drillter. I can get into the home anytime I want. As a buyer’s agent, you can see the home on the days that the seller has the home open to be seen, and you can walk through the camera and film it and do whatever you want. I then would keep those video repositories, and I would offer them up as things that my clients and I can look at via Zoom, so I’m not driving all over the place. Now, John, if I wanted to do full commission and I wanted to offer a series of services to somebody, one of the services I’d offer is, Listen, if you want that old-school experience, John, you want to ride around in a car with me and look at things, no problem. But I have a I can ask for that in my agreement.
That is basically a full-service writer that says, Listen, I don’t know how long that’s going to take. You don’t know how long that’s going to take. At a minimum, John, you now need to commit to me that you’re going to give me my full possible commission, 3%, and I will drive everywhere with you. Now, there is this thought that a lot of people are going to race to the bottom with price. Some people have already been racing to the bottom with price, such as Redfin, which is one of the least successful brokerages that’s out there.
You’ve so clearly pointed out, but the only thing I would point out to your model, I totally agree with you, but the thing is the buyer’s agent is probably going to require that you pay a certain amount up front because you might get somebody to sign a contract, but you know and I know a contract is fine. But if you’re going to enforce it, you’re going to have to sue that person. That person is going to have money to be worthwhile suing, unless there’s some indemnity, some insurance, but that’s going to be so expensive. So you are going to ask a sizable deposit, depending on what package the client chooses, you’re going to ask for a sizable 50 % or whatever deposit or the full amount up front, aren’t you?
That would be another way to go. It’s all going to depend on your local marketplace, ladies and gentlemen. You’re going to have to see what other people are offering and decide whether or not you’re in the commodity business or you’re in the specialized service business. By the way, for everybody listening to the show, I’ve got no opinions. I’ve always been a specialized person. I’ve always been a person that aims at the higher part of my tiers and my service packages. I naturally gravitate in the way of overdelivering and underselling. Because I do, it makes sense for me to get compensated for that natural character personality trait of mine. Everybody’s different. Sometimes you don’t feel like you’ve got it, sometimes you just don’t want to. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you’re going to be a broker who’s going to be dealing with homes that are very commoditized, subdivisions that are all the same, blah, blah, blah. It’s going to be very hard for you to separate our sales package. You’re going to have to compete on price. There’s a thousand different reasons. If you end up having to compete on price, if it’s all about price, then absolutely at that point, you have to start relying on other things that John and I have said.
Fine, it’s all about price. You can move the conversation, though, to not only about price, but quality of service, which is what Redfin tries to do. They try to do that. They just don’t do it very well, in my opinion. You want to move the conversation to your Google business profile and the place that it has your reviews and start to make sure that you have lots and lots of five-star reviews there. Because if price is going to be the same between you and somebody else, and there’s no way to get around that conversation, then the quality of your service… Because if I’m… John, if you’re dealing… And the only thing that you get suck at, total suckage, is that if John and I both have 500 five-star reviews and we’re completely equal across the board, and then probably what it comes down to is, do they like you? Would you agree, John?
Well, it’s a mixture, isn’t it? I personally would never hire a family member or a friend to represent me in a property transaction, because if you ever lent any money to a relative or a friend, we think, I’ve been lucky. Some friends have lent me some money and I’ve always paid it and I’ve been lucky. But there’s been one or two occasions where a relative hasn’t paid me back and never will, and you just let it go. But really, it’s not a great idea. I think you want competence and you want somebody… It’s a bit like hiring a lawyer or any professional. You got to get You got to have a good feeling about the person, but it’s a professional relationship, isn’t it? They’re not your friends. But on the other hand, you don’t want them to be a shyester, do you? You just want them to do their job and be professional about it, don’t you?
You absolutely do. And so, ladies and gentlemen, this idea of… I don’t disagree with John, but I do think that there’s a lot of conversations that need to happen about around where you are. Here in the United States, we have one or two states where the average home price is still very low. They’re not very common anymore. There, I do know a single state which still sells houses for about 150,000. Single state out of 52. Their idea there might be that price is more commoditized. People won’t be taking the time and the energy that John is suggesting. I mean, somebody making $30,000 a year can definitely still afford that home. So somebody working at Walmart, that’s still a great job that’s going to pay all the bills and get them a home and allow them homeownership and the same opportunities that everybody else wants. In California, you basically got to be an entrepreneur in tech or have a pedigree profession like doctor, dentist, lawyer, that thing.
I have no idea what’s going to happen to California. Who is buying these? I can only presume it’s the investor class or foreign individuals. I have no idea how it’s managed to keep on going.
Yeah, all of that is true. But being the sixth largest economy in the world and having too many people Okay. I’ve had too many people in the world. There’s too many people. It’s the sixth largest economy, and we have too many people population-wise. So we We have 14 million people in Los Angeles, and I don’t know how many homes we have, but let’s just call it 500,000. So way more people, too few homes, still people that are making reasonably good income that can afford them. Crazy, but true. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re getting close to the part where we wrap this show up, and I’m hoping to start a dialog here. If you’ve got, John, and you know what? Actually, this is a great way to wrap this show up. I want to start a dialog around this. I would like to have some follow-up shows, but part of that’s going to be, can we get some participation from our audience? I’m going to ask the audience a few questions here. Do you have any ideas of your own about how you’re going to protect your buyer side commission? For those of you who are buyer’s agents, which actually is about 80% of the licensed realtors.
So some of you listening to this show should do a substantial piece of your business on the buyer side. Come July, this part of your business is going to change. What are your plans to protect your business? If we like the ideas enough, John and I will invite you on to the show, which will help you promote your business and help you promote your website. If you have a single idea that we like, but maybe others that we don’t, we will still mention you by name. I think you’re… Are you comfortable with me saying that we will do that, John? Yeah, we will mention you by name on the show and give you credit for the ideas that you have and say it to our entire audience, which might be 3,000 to 10,000 people, other real estate agents, which, by the way, are great sources of referral business from out of state. John, if somebody wanted to email you and contribute to you directly, some ideas or ask you some questions about the MailRight platform. How are they getting to touch with you?
You can just email me at Jonathan, J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N@mail, M-A-I-L-Right, R-I-G-H-R. Com. Robert. Com. Just email me or you can go to the MailRight website. There’s a contact us form or you can book a quick chat with me. Back over to you, Rob.
Ladies and gentlemen, if for some reason you’d like to message me directly, I will take this subject personally and deal with it. I oftentimes don’t anymore. I’ve gotten very fortunate in the company it’s growing to the size that I don’t have to do a lot of the… What do you always call it? You have a word for it that I’m forgetting right now. Not the grunt work. You use another word. The donkey work. The donkey.
I think that’s what you say. I’m a donkey. You can just read me, Kerr.
No, that’s what… Listen, John, you say that. I don’t say that. You say that. All right.
I know my place.
I’m a donkey. Robert@inboundrem..com. That’s I-N-B-O-U-N-D-R-E-M. Robert@. Com. All right, ladies and gentlemen, John’s laughing at me. Please take us offline. You can laugh at me more in private.
Yes. E-oh, e-oh, my beloved listeners. Bye.
Bye.
————————————–
The Hosts of The Mail-Right Show
Jonathan Denwood
https://www.facebook.com/mailrightusa
————————————–
Robert Newman
InboundREM
https://inboundrem.com
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The ever-evolving real estate landscape in 2024 holds tremendous opportunities for agents seeking a successful career. From leveraging the power of digital marketing and social media to connecting with potential clients and mastering the art of lead generation, agents can explore numerous avenues to stay ahead in this competitive industry. Additionally, effectively utilizing online resources and platforms, such as Zillow and the National Association of Realtors (NAR), can help agents strengthen their brand and forge lasting relationships with homebuyers and sellers.
A well-rounded marketing plan is essential for new real estate agents looking to make a mark in the industry. From creating impactful business cards and email campaigns to hosting open houses and virtual tours, developing a solid marketing strategy can help agents build their network and reach their target audience. Moreover, continually adapting to market trends and keeping track of local real estate developments can empower agents with valuable insights that will set them apart from the competition.
Focusing on building a recognizable personal brand and consistently fostering relationships with clients past and present, real estate professionals can unlock the doors to a sustainable and rewarding career in this dynamic industry. Agents can stay ahead of the curve by adopting innovative marketing strategies and utilizing digital platforms to ensure success in the crowded real estate market.
In the competitive world of real estate, agents need to utilize digital marketing effectively. Weekly time blocking helps agents manage their time more efficiently, ensuring success in generating quality leads. This section will discuss how weekly time blocking can benefit real estate agents’ digital lead generation efforts.
Develop a Regular Schedule: Consistency is essential when generating digital leads. Agents create a predictable routine by blocking specific times throughout each week for digital lead generation activities. This habit lets them focus on digital marketing strategies and ensure consistent leads.
Create a To-Do List: Planning is crucial to effectively using time. Before every week starts, agents should compile a list of digital marketing tasks they aim to tackle, such as updating website listings, writing blog posts, or engaging on social media platforms. This list will serve as a guide for what needs to be done during each time block.
Set Specific Goals and Deadlines: Setting goals and deadlines for digital marketing tasks is essential to maintain momentum and stay organized. Goals can include the number of leads generated, website visits, or social media engagements. Clear, achievable deadlines motivate agents to complete tasks during their allocated time blocks.
Prioritize Important Tasks: Not all digital marketing tasks are created equal. Agents should prioritize functions that yield the best results for generating leads. For example, focusing on email campaigns to past clients or updating popular property listings on real estate websites can be more effective than tweaking website aesthetics.
Monitor Progress: It’s crucial to track the effectiveness of digital marketing efforts and make adjustments as needed. Agents should frequently review their progress toward the goals set for each task. Tracking results will also help determine if any adjustments to time blocks or marketing strategies are necessary.
By incorporating weekly time blocking for digital lead generation activities, real estate agents can increase productivity, remain organized, and generate more leads. Agents should prioritize tasks, set goals, and monitor progress to ensure they efficiently use their time to build a successful real estate business.
A quality newsletter showcases valuable information related to the real estate industry and becomes a helpful resource for clients and potential clients. It encourages subscribers to engage with a real estate agent, leading to significant business growth. This newsletter will include three subsections: Property Pick of the Week, General Local Property News of The Week, and Local Services and Business Reviews.
Our Property Pick of the Week showcases an exceptional property available for sale or rent. This featured property highlights unique aspects such as a desirable location, striking architecture, or exclusive amenities. The newsletter will provide a brief overview, stunning photos, and essential details, including:
This section aims to pique readers’ interest and prompt them to learn more about the property or contact the agent for a viewing.
This subsection covers relevant real estate news, trends, and recent events in the local market. Stay up to date with information such as:
By giving readers an informed perspective on the local market, they will better understand the current property landscape and feel confident in making knowledgeable decisions.
The final section focuses on reviews and recommendations for essential services and businesses in the local area. Recommendations may include:
By offering insight into trusted local firms and services, real estate agents create a valuable resource for their clients, building trust and strong relationships.
Engaging social media videos has become a crucial marketing strategy in the competitive real estate industry. This section will delve into the most popular platforms: YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Each platform offers unique opportunities for real estate agents to showcase their listings, provide market insights, and build a solid online presence.
YouTube is an excellent platform for real estate agents to create more in-depth video content. Agents can create and upload property walkthroughs, neighborhood tours, or informative videos with market updates. To make a lasting impact, consider using the following tips:
Facebook allows for video sharing and offers Facebook Live, enabling real estate professionals to create real-time, interactive content. Here are some ideas for Facebook videos:
To make the most out of Facebook video content, consider these tactics:
As a visually-driven platform, Instagram is perfect for showcasing high-quality images and short video clips. Instagram Stories and IGTV are two features that can benefit real estate agents. Keep these tips in mind:
By utilizing these different social media platforms, real estate agents can effectively market themselves, reach their target audience, and stay ahead in a constantly evolving industry.
In the competitive real estate industry, agents who continually practice their objection sell scripts become more successful in securing listings and closing deals. Practicing these scripts weekly allows agents to gain confidence, sound knowledgeable, and overcome any challenges or objections clients may raise while buying or selling.
Observe and learn: Agents should study successful real estate professionals and adapt their techniques for effectively addressing objections. They should also utilize resources such as online tutorials, books, and training sessions provided by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Practice role-playing: Partner with a fellow agent or a friend to role-play client-agent scenarios, focusing on understanding the client’s needs and concerns. This will help agents structure clear, informative, and appropriate responses to each objection.
Please keep it conversational: When you practice scripts, you should maintain a natural tone without robotic memorization. This will allow clients to feel more at ease when discussing their concerns.
Create a script cheat sheet: Compile a list of common objections and their respective solutions to keep at hand. This will be a quick reference guide when practicing scripts or facing real situations.
Continuous improvement: Agents should evaluate their performance regularly and adjust their scripts to ensure optimal efficiency and a clear understanding of their clients’ needs.
Through this weekly practice, real estate agents will develop the skills to anticipate potential objections, effectively address concerns, and confidently close deals with their clients. This approach will ultimately set agents apart in the ever-changing real estate market.
Having a professional, informative, and up-to-date website is crucial for success in real estate. The industry’s shift towards more digital-focused marketing strategies has made it essential for real estate agents to invest in their online presence. Here are some key points to consider when creating and maintaining your website.
First, having a unique domain name representing your brand and conveying your services can help establish trust with potential clients. Choosing a domain name that is easy to remember and appropriately represents your real estate business is essential.
Once the domain name is in place, you can create a user-friendly interface. The website should be easy to navigate and provide a pleasant experience for visitors. Could you include concise, informative content highlighting your industry expertise? Please update your listings with the latest property information, photos, and virtual tours to keep users engaged and show your dedication to providing the best service.
Please consider implementing a blog section to share valuable insights and news about the local real estate market. This can help position you as a go-to expert and demonstrate your industry knowledge. Integrating testimonials from past clients can also enhance your credibility and build trust among potential clients.
Remember to optimize your website for mobile devices, as many home buyers use their smartphones to search for properties. Also, optimize the website for search engines (SEO) to ensure maximum visibility and attract more organic traffic.
To summarize, a successful real estate agent’s website should:
Investing time and effort into your website can set you apart in a competitive industry and help you build a sustainable career in real estate.
A: In a complex real estate market, agents must focus on building their brand, using email marketing campaigns, cold calling, and social media to reach potential clients.
A: Generating real estate leads in 2024 requires a combination of traditional methods, such as hosting open houses and networking events, and modern strategies, like posting on social media, optimizing your website for search engines, and engaging in targeted email campaigns.
A: To start a successful real estate business, you need to develop a comprehensive marketing plan, identify your target market, build personal connections with potential clients, and continuously educate yourself on the best marketing strategies.
A: New realtors can establish themselves by providing exceptional customer service, leveraging their networks, seeking referrals from family and friends, and consistently delivering value to clients in real estate transactions.
A: To succeed in a competitive real estate market, agents should focus on building relationships with clients, staying informed about market trends, differentiating themselves from the competition, and continuously improving their marketing strategies.
A: Brand recognition is essential for real estate agents looking to stand out in a crowded market. By developing a strong personal brand and consistently delivering quality service, agents can establish themselves as trusted professionals in the industry.
A: Solo agents can market their services effectively by utilizing social media platforms, creating targeted email campaigns, optimizing their website for search engines, and offering unique value propositions to attract potential clients.
The real estate industry in 2024 is more competitive than ever. To become a successful real estate agent, one must employ various strategies, from traditional business cards and referrals to modern digital marketing and social media practices.
It is worth mentioning that becoming a successful real estate agent demands dedication, effort, and resilience. Building a real estate business requires perseverance, learning from successes and failures, and consistently adapting to ever-evolving market trends and technologies. By implementing these strategies and practices, agents can maximize their chances of success in this challenging yet rewarding career.
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