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Redfin bought by Rocket Mortgage: Uncover the implications of this major acquisition and how it could revolutionize the home-buying process.
In this show, we delve into the significant acquisition of Redfin by Rocket Mortgage and explore its implications for the real estate market. What does this merger mean for homebuyers, real estate agents, and the broader industry? We break down the key details of the deal and analyze how it could reshape how we buy and sell homes. Don’t miss out—watch the video to stay informed.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Today’s episode is number 468. As you can tell, by my somber tone, we will talk about serious stuff today. We’re going to discuss Red Fin being bought by Rocket Mortgage. We will discuss some of Open Door’s growing problems if we have time. We’re excited to get into this conversation. Before we start, though, we’ll be sure to introduce you if you happen to be a listener who hasn’t met me or Jonathan Denwood. My partner in this podcast, Jonathan, is a long-time entrepreneur. He’s an import from the UK, and I talked decades ago about him. It’s not like this has been recent.
I’m going to be tarred pretty soon.
They’ve got a lot of rules there that aren’t the same as ours. He’s always had a bit of a feather related to Redfin in his cap. I have some things to say about yet another large portal acquired by another conglomerate. Before we go any further, John, why don’t you give people a little bit of your summary about who you are? Let’s continue to wind up towards the main event. Thanks.
Thanks, Robert. I’m the joint founder of Mail-Right.com, Mel-right. We’re CRM, a lead generative platform with a website and load functionality, and we start month to month at $49. We’re affordable, and it’s just a great platform with a load of functionality. Go over to the website, read what we offer, be blown away, and book a chat with me. Back over to you, Robert.
All right. My name is Robert Newman. I’m a lifetime sales guy, lifetime storyteller, and multiple founder, and I have started several companies. InboundREM, which I started nine years ago, is a nod to some things I saw in the real estate industry that needed to be addressed. A company that was SEO-first, inbound, Trading First, affordable in comparison to other SEO companies, and a few different things. But if you want to learn about real estate, part of inbound marketing is giving away as much of your knowledge as possible for free. And I’ve done that. Thirty-five years of experience, 16 of them in the real estate world, go to my website. I guarantee you will learn something you need to know about digital marketing. All right, without any further ado, we can walk into our main topic today: the acquisition of Open Door by Rocket Mortgage. My guy, John, has always done an incredible job on show notes. If any of you are listening to the show and thinking that there’s no value to going to somewhere where you’re writing, you’re wrong. You should see what John has written and where he got his research.
We will start with the history of Redfern and its founders, David O’Reacher, Michael Dauery, and David Saling. If you can do me a favor, John, I didn’t do the research. I have some knowledge, but I didn’t read up on this if you could start us off and give us your thoughts on these three founders in this company, in a summary way.
Well, a lot of them come from Stanford University. They were into tech. They built some functionality when they started Redfin. You could pass and comment about some of that tech, some like the Mac feature, and some other semi-revolutionary, I think, or semi-better than what was offered. Then they brought on a good old Glenn into the mix, who has been the President and CEO of Red Fin and the public face for quite a long time. I call him the laughing Harina myself. He’s always got a grin. And that’s it—Techie people who provided some great tech and a very flawed business model.
Yeah. So I agree with most of that. So Redfin has always been… A group of tech guys started it. Here’s my hot take. Started by a group of tech guys. They correctly said there was a huge hole in the real estate market for services. And the guy you mentioned said, ” Oh, hey, you can add more. He was a data mining guy. And so he probably thought correctly that data could be used so much better. He also thought that because he had come from Amazon, data could most likely be collected and used for the betterment of the brand much better, and that he saw very few people doing that correctly with real estate. Unfortunately for him, a couple of other guys have these really big ideas that have been tried inside real estate countless times and have never really worked. That is the idea that real estate agents can be very salary compensated salespeople with a single standard of service across every marketplace for people who are buying and selling homes. And that might have worked if the idea of buying and selling homes hadn’t been established so well inside the market as an open field of opportunity for top sales reps.
And why does that matter? Anytime you give many markets, are actually dominated by small businesses. We just don’t think of it that way, John. We don’t look at it that way, but I’ll give you an example. There are a couple of fields of sales here in LA, in Beverly Hills, specifically, that have been dominated by some incredibly aggressive, talented, organized small business owners. We know them by their name. We think of them as agents like Joyce Ray. Joyce Ray has a staff of 13 people that support her. She is a small business owner. When one of her clients calls her, her team of 13 goes into action. You’re not going to take away her business based on a 1% model. There’s nobody that can match the speed, style, privacy that her team offers the right client. And therein we run into the challenges with these one % models. Everybody’s seeing… There are tons of agents out there that say, I can do the same service for one % of your commission instead of three, and the client will save that 2%, and since they’re getting the same service, they’ll love me. It’s just not true.
It’s just not true, unfortunately, for those one % You need profit to add value to your business mechanism, or at least great salespeople, great business owners do that. They take the money that they make and reinvest it into the business. Sound familiar, John?
Yes.
Okay. And so for some reason, everybody, the second you start treating a service like a commodity, flat rate it, you’re going to get a service that is a commodity. And Redfin, nobody figured out that model yet. And so there’s a lot of brokenness inside the model. Doesn’t surprise me that Redfin has been acquired for 1. 75 billion? It’s basically, which is a pittance in today’s world. It’s a pittance. Red Fin has been raising money, doing, flipping, doing all this different stuff for years. So 1. 57 billion, it would be the baby of all the deals that we’re going to see as the real estate industry continues to consolidate. I don’t have much to comment on, except that I use Rocket for my finances. Rocket is a very smart tech-driven company. I think this deal is great for Rocket and completely terrible for anybody and everybody that’s ever been involved with Redfin.
That’s my- Well, they haven’t done too bad in the sales. The major stockholders, and I’m sure Glenn’s done, and some of the founders have done okay. I just think that they were having problems with their business model from day one. The website, you’d probably be better off. I think there’s the figure of 50 million uniques to the website, but their business model, it was failing. So then they got into wholesaling, didn’t they? They got into the same craze as we’re going to be talking about, Open Door and Zillow got in iBuyer. They all pulled in on the COVID years into wholesaling, and They were doing really great because everybody that palled into wholesaling were doing nice. But when the damn broke, they’d been slaughter, basically, because it’s back again to a broken business model, as you so clearly outlined. They had nowhere to go, really. Their hope was that interest rate were going to be slashed, and it was back to a boomy market that would… And they could go back to their old wholesaling days. It looked like it’s not happening. And Glenn, Mr. Smiley, as I call him, always got a grin on his face as he’s cutting your throat.
It’s just a really broken business model. But maybe we can discuss in the second half Really a totally different company. Both Red Fin had a broken business model. Rocket has had its ups and downs with the regulators. But obviously, Glenn wasn’t a founder, but they couldn’t, in my mind, be two different individuals than Glenn and Dan Gilbert. But whatever you think of Dan, and I have different thoughts about Dan Gilbert, he didn’t start with nothing, but my God, he didn’t start with much. To say that he achieved a lot in his lifetime, he’s still alive. I still think he’s reasonably active in the business to some extent. It’s a story that could only happen in America, really. But he’s a very controversial businessman, isn’t he?
Yeah.
But you got to respect him in some ways, don’t you?
You do indeed. We’re going to open up the subject. We’re going to stop a few minutes into it, but we’re going to talk a little bit about what went wrong with Redfin’s business model, which is a The topic that John has included as part of the show notes, but guys, I got to tell you, everybody that’s listening in the show, this is a controversial opinion. The reason that I have this opinion, you can summarize everything that I thought was wrong with Redfin by the last and closing sentence on Glenn Kalman’s LinkedIn profile, which is basically, I’ve done everything there is to do at startups except for be in sales. That is on his It’s his own LinkedIn profile. And it shows people that hate salespeople are the people that create models that are one percenters. And the reason that they always do it is because they don’t understand sales. It’s very similar between democracy and commercialism and communism. And unfortunately, it doesn’t work. That’s the problem because great salespeople want to be compensated in great ways. The minute you figure out that you’re great or that you’re working five times as hard as the other sales guys on the same lot, you’re going to leave.
That is the problem. You can’t keep great salespeople in flat business models, and you want the great salespeople servicing your customers. Let’s talk a little bit about your hot take You linked an article that was what went wrong with Redfin Rocket Mortgage Acquisition. It was an article on HousingWire, which can occasionally be behind a paywall.
Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Sometimes it’s under the firewall, and sometimes it isn’t, is it?
Yeah, but why don’t you share your thoughts on this?
Start us off, please. Well, I can understand. What I would like to get your input from is that you I can understand why Rocket has bought it because of the traffic they’re getting. I’m surprised, even though Rocket is the second largest mortgage company in the US, I’m ongoing by my research and my memory, it’s still only got 4% of the market. It’s still a very diverse market. I’m going to say something, I’m not totally sure I’m correct, but normally them buying something like Redfin, and they’re going to get into the government is going to get heavy quick with them. But in the present political environment, I don’t think that’s going to happen for the foreseeable future. I don’t see the heat coming on Rocket that hard. So I can see the logic for Rocket doing this, because whatever you think of Dan Gilbert and his team, they’re not idiots. They’re far from it. I don’t think… I think what you’ve just said about Redfin and the attitude, the President and the CEO is correct, but they’re not They’re not idiots, but I think they fed on their own dog food, as I would put it.
The thing with Rocket, Rocket has had its problems, hasn’t it? It’s had its brush in. A lot of mortgage companies have had their brush with the government and the organizations of government. They look at the numbers that hit the website, and they think they can do something with Redfin, and Redfin’s agents will recommend Rocket as their mortgage company. I think Red Finns’ business model is so awful I’m not too sure about that. I’ll just be interested in your thoughts about that.
I’m going to share them when we come back from break. So ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to take a short break here. And when we come back, I’m going to go through some of the statistics and some of the things that this HousingWire article, which I just sped read as we were on the show. But full transparency, the article said what I basically said just in more detail and gave more numbers, more stats. Some of the stats I found to be really revelatory I didn’t know them. I didn’t know the stats. I knew the business model brokenness, but it led to some really interesting numbers. So stay tuned and we’re going to walk through those. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 486. Is that right?
Something. It’s 468.
468, sorry. Mental dyslexia. 468. And we’re talking This was about this acquisition of Redfin by Rocket Mortgage. Before we went to break, I was saying that I would cover some numbers. The article in HousingWire basically agreed with me. They said that effectively that this model was broken. Now, that model being broken led to some very interesting numbers. In 2021, Red Finns’ age and count fell by 22. 5% In the same year, the real brokerage went up by 11, 173%, Fathom Realty by 136%, Compass by 78%, eXp by 64%. All of these are newer companies in growth in the middle of their growth phase. But honestly, the number one reason that was listed by top performers at Red Fin for leaving was they felt like their income was capped. Exactly what I just said. And so they lost not just agents, they lost their best agents. That’s a problem for any sales organization. When you’re doing large scale sales, if you can’t keep your best people, that’s an antithesis for a mediocre company at best, if not just a downright massive failure. Another thing about their model was since everybody was on W2s, they created a much higher cost that had nothing to do with production.
The header for the way that this article says that there was no room for error, financially speaking. But honestly, compensation based on performance business models mean that all of your salespeople take the hit when the economy is slow. Generally, John, because I’ve done nothing but sales my entire life, you lose your top, your lower 80% sales agents. You keep your top 20%. So then you think about that because The top 20% figure out a way to produce. They take a hit in their income, but they do figure out a way to produce, which means both the business and the agents succeed. And you’re not pressuring the agents to stay. They are looking at the career that they built for themselves and saying, I can still make some money. And so they go out and they do it. The lower 80% can’t make money because they were never great salespeople and weren’t hustling to start with. So they leave and they really impact the business very little. So the thing that the business does by itself with these compensation models is it stays in operation, it loses its money, but its top salespeople stay. Does that make sense?
Yeah, totally.
W2 models Don’t do that. And they’ve got to support the cost of lower performing salespeople in bad marketplaces. And that’s what happened with Redfin. According to this article, and I agree, that’s what it basically said. Last Last but not least, and this is probably the most important part that the HousingWire article covers, lower commissions meant little to clients. I’m going to say that again. I know you know this, John, so it’s really for the people in the back seats of this podcast. Lower commission made very little difference to clients. That means at the end of the day, the 1-2% that clients saved did not mean very much to them, especially when it started to come into elements of service. But why? For that 1-2 % you’re paying a top salesperson, your experience could be as much as 80 % better. John and people like us break our fucking asses for your five-star review. We do, and it bothers us. It intellectually grabs us because we care. Whereas poor salespeople or even average for people either don’t pay attention, that I’m being kind, or they don’t care, and now I’m not being kind. And it doesn’t matter because somebody who’s vested in their business cares a lot.
John, Do you care? You’ve done crazy things for five-star reviews, right? I have. Have you?
I’ve written a pony for a five-star.
I’ve eaten thousands of dollars worth of business operating expenses to either get, keep, or maintain a good review profile. There’s no level, which means that the client who was legitimately unhappy or thought that they deserve something, they never would have gotten it from me if I hadn’t been paying attention to my online reputation. And this is the difference between maybe an average company or a low-performing company and a high-performing company. And it does make a difference to the customer.
So can we get on? Why do you think… It’s obvious. Why do you think Rocket bolts it? Because they’re not idiots, Dan and his crew. Obviously, they’re synergy, but also, I might be totally wrong. They think that in the articles I’ve read, they think they can cut the cost base down enormously as well.
Oh, they will.
But do you think they also feel, because they’ve done it in the mortgage, so they’ve managed to get people to buy mortgages online. I think they might also think that they can do something with the fundamental model. And then you can’t discount them, because if they didn’t got away from the particular restraints of the particular business model with Redfin, they do have the experience and ability, I would have thought, to do something.
Now, what I’m saying about Redfin, which is basically, listen, you’ve talked about it a lot. I’m going to give these guys the error of margin, just a margin of error. These entrepreneurs just started that were just inexperienced, didn’t know what the hell they were doing. I’m just going to say that they were woefully underskilled for the thing that they did. They still, they brought it to life and they did something, and that’s more than most people do. So I say that with a grain of salt. But the guy that runs Rocket is a beast of a different color. He knows exactly what he’s doing. I have a lot to say about Rocket that is all good.
Can I just interrupt? There’s a term in North London for people like Dan Gilbert. We Monster Mashes. He’s a Monster Mash. That’s a North London. It’s the endearment. It means that he’s a monster. He’s somebody that if you go up against him, you don’t really want to do you do it? You got to really think serious before you go up against Dan Gilbert.
There’s a few different things. Number Rocketbot in a perfectly-timed market acquisition. Let’s not ignore that fact. Redfin was in the middle of absorbing losses due to yet another massive shift in the real estate market, eating it, taking it on the chin. They had made some changes in the business that are likely we’re going to continue to see benefit from, such as Redfinnext, which is them going back to a traditional compensation model. The problem is you’ve got 12 years of history however long it’s been where they built a company up under a different model. And once you’ve got that pace, the only way to really shake things up is to start another brand or let somebody acquire you. That’s exactly what happened here. Rocket acquired the company is going to rebrand and probably drop everything into a regular compensation model. But on top of all of that, they got the company to steal, John. 1. 75 billion, are you joking me? Compass raised seven billion out of the gate. This is ridiculous. It’s a pittance. They bought the company with that pittance, and they now have a search portal. They now have a Salesforce. They now have market synergies with their mortgage company.
It was a brilliant move by Rocket. Brilliant. It’s going to add so much value, not to mention, I don’t know that anybody else has noticed this, but the logo and branding between Rocket and Redfin is already similar. It was just a genius move on Rocket’s part. Then gives these guys like Glenn and other people like him, they can gracefully sunset out and become like all the other second-tier players in the tech space. I have half a billion dollars. Let me throw it into other things and maybe they’ll get lucky because they’re not, which is what happened to the guys, the PayPal Mafia. There’s a lot of second-tier entrepreneurs, and then there’s Elon Musk, who is truly driving innovation, no matter what you say about him, driving innovation, things like that. Glenn Kalman needs to be retired because he swings and misses a lot. So let the guy retire. Veroon needs some room to run, and he’s going to get it. That’s my overall opinion. He’s really going to get his room to run.
I think the other That’s great. I think the only important thing is regulation because I think Rocket with lending the two businesses, but it’s still a very fragmented business. So their market share But I think they would have some normally. But I think in the present climate, they’re not going to get it. Shall we finish off with Open Door? Another great success story.
This has been our primary podcast. We’re going to give you some bonus content today. John did. We had a lot to say about Redfin. For those of you who are watching this on YouTube, do us a favor, take a moment, take a beat, take a breath, and give us a thumbs up on if you liked what we’ve done, if you like John’s content, if you like the research, the show notes, all the things that we did, trying to just give you a little bit of information to apply here. Now, we’re going to talk about OpenDore. I actually know a lot more about OpenDore because I’m a member of the Motley Fool, and Motley Fool talks about OpenDore all the time. I’m much more familiar with what’s going on with OpenDore than I was with Redfin. If you’d like to reach out to you, though, John, how would you like people to do that?
I’ll just go to the mail-right. Com website, have a look what we got, you’d be blown away, and just book a chat with me, and I’d love to show you what MailRight offers.
Back over to you, Rob. If you’d like to know more about SEO long-form, like inbound strategies where people passively come to you, if you’re interested in to see how I think marketing is being shifted in the information age, Go to inboundrem. Com. Read any of our articles, or if you really have liked what you heard on the show today, if you want to just gab about these real estate portals, go ahead and schedule a call with me. I’d be happy to share my thoughts in more detail. We’re going to move on to OpenDore, which if for those of you that don’t know, is a company that simply acquisition homes and then sold them on a platform. That’s the really basic part of Opendoor. Everybody loved the business model so much, they jumped in on it, including Redfin, including Zillow, and then everybody, for the most part, has retreated out of that industry except for OpenDore, which is the biggest one. There’s still a couple of other players, but OpenDore is the biggest player. So with that opening, let’s get into, John, why did you even include them at the end of the podcast?
Well, I just thought it was just insightful. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had little comments about Redfin, haven’t I? I’ve been diligent in my kicking of them, haven’t I? But open door, every mother, I was going to swear there, has got into this model, wholesaling, where you got the convenience, but people, their biggest purchase, most people’s biggest purchase, do they really want to give you 30 plus of their equity in one of their biggest assets of their life. Unless they’re forced to, or it’s a secondary asset, they’re probably not, are they? But if the market’s going up every month by 2, 3%, you don’t need so much margin, do you? Unless something fundamental changes in the economy, which you can’t In the interesting times that we live in, you can have a discount. I really don’t see things fundamentally getting better for opened door. What do you think?
All right, transparently, everybody I own is some shares of OpenDore. All right, this is not investment advice. I think it was a disruptive business model. I think that there’s space for it. I think this is just a horrible time for OpenDore to be around. It higher interest rates, an uncertain market, inventory problems. If you’re looking for the highest priced car on the lot, John, of course, you don’t buy it off a website. Or if you do, you want to walk into it and look at it. When interest rates are this high, real estate is not commoditized, wow, do you ever… Even a crappy home in my neighborhood costs so much money. I can’t buy it off a website. There’s certain markets where you could maybe still, not many, though, Virginia, West Virginia, we could still buy something for $150,000. Sure, maybe OpenDore would there, but where most markets are so incredibly overpriced. However, having said all that, what do I think? I think there’s room, space, and I think just like everything else, I think that homes will be bought off a website as technology catches up. I think that virtual tours with headsets and things like that, I think we’re walking into an age where a lot of people want to buy sight-unseen or at least use, and if OpenDore really had Some forward-thinking members there.
They would do open-door showrooms where you could walk in and use these headsets and basically create a mechanism in which you could buy a lot of inventory online. I do think that And I think the model is there, and I think open-door is the leader. I don’t know that they’re going to survive. The reason I bought them is they’re dirt cheap and they have some momentum. I’m not even saying that it’s an endorsement. It’s probably one of the riskiest proposals for the I have vested like that, that I have in my entire portfolio because they also could announce it going out of business tomorrow. And I wouldn’t be surprised.
You’re a good salesperson because you always sold it to me. I follow the logic and admire your sales ability because I want to kick it in. I think it’s a race as we would say in London. It’s a rabid dog. It needs to be put it down.
I understand. I understand the thoughts. I know where it’s at, but I disagree with the… If it’s not them, it will be someone else. I believe that with all of my heart, John, or I wouldn’t say it on the podcast.
I would never buy a house unless I saw it. I would even consider it. But a lot of people, you’re right. You’re right. I wouldn’t do it, but I’m just an old geezer, so what do I know?
Well, age and wisdom tend to say that one of the most critical decisions you’ll make, you’ve got to do it. But you know what? Great salespeople always overcome those objections, such as a sometimes rock-solid guarantee, and if you don’t like it, you can give it back to us. We offer you $5,000 for the inconvenience. I can go on and on. There’s always a way to overcome somebody’s reluctance if you have deep enough pockets and are sure about your investment. I’m certain that the people running Open Door have some of that going on. But ultimately speaking, Open Door is probably something that most people, except for those of you who are most, whether it’s on the investment side or whether it’s on the I need to buy a house side. If you are a bleeding edge person with plenty of room for risk inside your home purchase or investment life, then this, I don’t know, maybe you do, look at it. I have plenty of room for risk, John, on both sides of my life. I don’t have a deep…
Depending on how low the thing is trading, there’s a 30 or 40 % chance that this is a 100 times investment. Regarding the real estate market, we only need one big upset, and the open door will be back. Like all we need. We need mortgage rates to come down. We need a little bit of it. We need the inventory to continue to spike up. And all of a sudden, anything that pressures people to buy homes, which we haven’t had since the pandemic, we’re seeing the natural deflation of need based upon an overinflation of need a few years ago. And so we’ll see, and we have a wild card running policy in the US.
That’s a very diplomatic way of putting it, Rob.
Are you looking to go into politics, Rob?
No.
Oh, no.
That was very much.
I love the fact that you put it here. For those of you listening and watching this show, listen, come on, man, everybody, engage with John and me. Could you call us up? I’d love to hear what you think about Open Door. For those of you who are listening to this show, you can’t go wrong with John’s offer. Call John if you’re looking to move inside your marketing and your budget has reduced, but you still want a competent provider on the other end of the equation. Call him, please, because you can’t go wrong with the offer he’s built for you. He’s built an offer and changed his offer for the market at large. For those of you who are more veterans and looking to shift your budget from things that are no longer working, such as direct marketing and advertising, InboundREM is a good place to look. And you can go to inboundrem.com and schedule a call with me. Having said all that, John, this is a good place to wrap it up for me. Was there anything else you wanted to add?
I’d come out with a good one-line as Monster Mash, Raby Dog. I thought it was exciting to Tatey.
Hey, you did it at the perfect time. I introduced you as English in this show.
We’ll see you later, folks. Bye.
Bye.
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Discover the best real estate software for agents in 2025. Streamline your business, boost productivity, and close more deals.
This informative video explores the top real estate software options for agents in 2025. Discover cutting-edge tools to streamline workflow, enhance client relationships, and boost sales performance. From CRM systems to market analysis platforms, we’ve covered you with expert insights and user reviews. Don’t miss out on the future of real estate technology—watch the video now to find the perfect software for your needs.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 467. Today, we will talk about the best real estate software for agents in 2025, or otherwise known as Jonathan Dinwood talking about software for real estate agents he thinks will be helpful, and me taking pot shots.
I found some new stuff to talk about. You get a bit hunk if we repeat ourselves too much. So I found some new stuff.
He did. He did find some new stuff. He found seven things I’ve never even heard of. So it’s going to be really fun today. We’re going to talk about a lot of stuff that nobody’s heard of because if I haven’t heard of it, I can guarantee you that a lot of our audience hasn’t heard of it. But before we get started, before we get the show going, before we throw some coal in the fire, John, tell everybody who you are and why they should listen to you.
Thanks, Robert. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are CRM, a lead generation platform, and much more. We’ve a starting. It’s a closing price of $49 a month. If you pay month to month, it’s just a fantastic value. Over to you, Rob.
Beautiful. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound R-E-M. I’ve been doing online marketing consulting with real estate agents for 16 years, and I’ve built out sales teams and built my own company, Inbound R-E-M, with people. And what we do is educate agents. We do SEO, and we make real estate websites. Effectively, if you want to know about online marketing of the organic style, the inbound style, you go to my website, inboundram. Com, and check us out. Inbound marketing is all about giving away a lot of stuff for free. So, go there and get all the information you need to build your business using online tools. All right, without any further ado, we’re going to jump right into this list. The first one, which has got to be one of the most interesting names for service I’ve ever heard, is Coffee & Contracts, an interesting, exciting name with marketing templates. So, John, why don’t you dive into this for us and tell us why this made your list?
Well, its founder is Hayley Ingram. Is she related to the founder of Ingram? I did some research on that. I couldn’t find a definite answer to that particular question. They supply all leaflets and digital content you can use on social media, your website, and flyers. She, or they, they provide it through a membership website. They’re using WordPress, and they have a library of content. In some ways, it’s similar to MailRight because that’s the side we’ve built out more ourselves. Everything is editable in Canva. Most of what they supply is editable in Canva. It starts at $74 if you’re a single agent; if you’re in teams, it goes down to about $54 monthly. It looks okay to me. It’s something that I plan to expand in Melright as well, but we have recently developed that side of our offering as well.
Very cool.
Could you let me know what you think? I’m looking at their SEO analytics, which are mediocre. Still, they do have some traffic coming into their homepage off a lot of interesting keywords, over a thousand of them, to be specific.
Many of them have to do with marketing for real estate, which is how you probably found them because they’re number five for that keyword.
So this is something- No, I didn’t actually. I just looked at my list of resources that I check over for ideas, and they were in… One of my online resources had written an article, and they were listed in the article.
Got you. Okay, well, for marketing for real estate, they come up number four, actually, above the close. Housing wire and luxury presence are doing slightly better for those keywords, and that’s Those are the big companies doing slightly better for those keywords. Reddit and rock content. In any way, what do I think? I think that I think that there’s a lot that’s already out there with AI that’s going to make this obsolete fairly quickly. But I think that if you’re a beginning marketer who doesn’t want to spend any money on a service like Fiverr or you want to have a Fiverr agent use a very specific type of workflow, coffee and contracts could have a place inside your marketing. I like the pricing, that’s for sure. I like the idea of having a place to go that’s going to give you a lot of ideas because it’s templates. I think that’s probably the important part of template providers these days is to give people ideas to start off their marketing process. If that’s what you’re looking for, then I do think that this website has a few hundred ideas. And if it’s worth $74 a month for those ideas, then it’s a great deal.
I see where she’s coming from, though, because obviously, I’m in this business myself. But I think somebody that can’t afford a company like yours, Robert, but who is okay in using Canva and has some computer skills, and it’s got the great reassurance that you’re not using other people’s copyright materials because there’s a lot of people that get in problems when they’re using imaging or materials that you don’t have the commercial copyright to reuse, and you can get into a real mess really quickly. And there’s a set of companies, and their business model is to sue people or ask ask, send threatening letters and ask for, not enormous sums of money, but thousands of dollars because you use their image or something, and it’s the ease of use as well. So for the price, for what it gets, I can… If you go to the website, it is really aimed at the female agent agent in the style of the website and the copy and their pitch, basically.
Copy you. Listen, I think for most services, including this one, if somebody built it, they probably had an agent archetype in their mind when they built it. I feel like that’s probably the case here, too. I’m certainly thinking that there’s an agent of a certain place in their career or maybe a part-time agent where this service would be really useful and for a very long period of time. So Caffe & Contracts, I love the name. That I will tell you over and over again. It’s really unusual and it’s certainly memorable, and it got them to be number four for a major keyword, which is not easy to do, and they’re only a four-year-old company. So they’ve got something going on there. Check them out, everybody. All right, number two on the list, Agent Crate. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that?
Yeah, looked over their website, looked at some demos on YouTube and that. It’s doing… They’ve expanded. They provide a social media calendar, so does Mailright. Also, they’ve got a service where they actually post for you using their social media calendar. Melright does that as well, additional service. But they’ve expanded. They’ve expanded into the same area as coffee and contracts. And also they’re providing websites, which is what Melright does. We provide a list of templated WordPress-based websites using Gutenberg technology. They’re using their own priority software. I put the wrong price on the list. That was on… It actually starts at $89, but they’ve expanded. One of the things that I noticed, I did do a search on their website to confirm this, but it didn’t come up with any useful information, is they provide content, but they provide their own editor. It’s not linked to Canva, like coffee and contracts. And that can be a drawback because some of the reviews that I watched, they were having problems in actually customizing the content that they provide because there were some browser conflicts. But the last review that I watched was about six months ago, so they could have fixed that problem.
But they provide an editor themselves. It’s a bigger library of content Plus they got this scheduler, this social media scheduler. So they’re offering more functionality than coffee and contracts. But the name isn’t so good, is it? That’s what really matters, if you got the name, doesn’t it?
Right. Yeah, absolutely.
You should have laughed more on that one. That was a good one.
Okay, well.
Because you’re not being well, are You’re not being well, sir.
I’ve not been well. Listen, there is no doubt that there is a deep need inside the real estate space for social media tools. And of all the service-based professions that are out there, one of the service-based professions that gets the most value out of social media is absolutely real estate agents. There’s no doubt. And all the controversies that relates to real estate, whether the market’s heating up or slowing down, plays well into social media feeds. You can really leverage that, which makes these auto-posting tools really interesting to look at. I’ve been looking at a service called Hero Post lately. They’ve been through many phases of development, but they’re the only social media service that seems to have their eye on trying to actually post to just about every popular platform at the same time. And that’s what I’m interested in personally.
I want to be able to-That’s all right, does that?
No, I doubt it. Because I’m talking about Reddit LinkedIn, everything.
We just concentrate on the ones that are relevant to real estate agents. But they say they got 20,000 agents on their website, trusted by over 20,000.
Are you talking about Agent Crate? I have no idea. I’m looking in here trying to figure out what platform- That’s what they’re saying on their homepage, trusted by over 20,000 agents. This is a very hard tool to develop. Now I’m going to… And John, you’ve developed one. So one of the things that… And I don’t know how you cracked the metric for Instagram. You cracked it, though, right?
Well, linking it to Instagram.
Not linking, posting, because they update their actual core tool and they break code for auto-posting services. And then you have to go in and basically reactivate your token every 15 to 20 days with Instagram. We have never figured out a crack for that. It just always breaks. All the automated tools break with Instagram. Did you solve for that?
No, we haven’t. You have to go in and read. We can’t do the impossible. I doubt if these people have done it as well.
Okay.
All right. I’ll be very surprised because all these social media. Our one works for Facebook, Instagram, but you are correct. You have to go in and reconnect.
Okay. Well, we haven’t figured it out either, John.
I don’t think we can.
If anybody ever does figure it out, I think that they’re going to make a lot of money.
I don’t think it’s working it out. I think it’s more to do Instagram. It doesn’t want to bar these optimization tools, these schedulers, but it doesn’t want to encourage them too much either.
I agree with that. I agree with that assessment. Anyway, so that leaves interesting ideas. But ladies and gentlemen, if you have a really good assistant and you have a strong person handling your social, I think that something like Agent Create will automatically post your content is probably really cool. And I love the price. The price at $39 is really, really, really sure.
It doesn’t start. I was wrong on that. I was taking that from a couple of online resources, but when I checked the website, it starts. They got about three to four different plans, and the basic plan seems to start at 89, but I might be wrong. But I did check over the website, and the cheapest price I could find started at $89.
Copy you. All right, well…
But I could be wrong. It could be 39 because there’s a big difference between 39 and 89, isn’t it?
Very, very, very big difference. Well, okay, copy you.
I presume the 39 is like with our MailRight system. We provide the calendar and the functionality, but you have to do the posting, set up the posts, and you can store them in a library so you can reuse them. But we offer an additional service where we will post for you, but they seem be offering that at $1,99 per month. That’s a similar price to what we charge. I presume the $89 is for the self-service. That’s what I’m presuming.
Those prices start to get into the realm of prices that I’ve looked at with Hero Post and Hootsuite and all the rest. What I’m interested in, basically, which Hero comes the closest to, is an automated social calendar function that literally breaks into every single major platform, Pinterest, all of them, like 15 to 20 all at once, so that you can go to one social calendar and push content everywhere that is relevant. Now, what’s relevant for SEO and what’s relevant for a real estate agent who’s not doing SEO are two different things entirely. That’s where John and I are coming at this at cross purposes, because I look at all the platforms that allow you to read content. That’s like Reddit. And John is looking at places where you want to post for branding and things like that. And that is more like Facebook and Instagram. So anyway.
Thanks for saying that. I was a bit puzzled, but now I totally understand. So thanks.
Okay, so number three, Catalyze AI, Predictive Analytics. I’ve never even heard of these guys, John.
No. So please. They’re on the list. I watched an interview from one of their cofounders, Ryan Foults, F-O-L-T-S, Foults. It seems interesting. The price I I found it’s 1400 for the year. I have no idea if it works, but this idea of using AI to monitor, I presume it works with certain CRMs, and it monitors changes that might be occurring in the people in your CRM. And then it it, like when somebody dies, that’s a big event, or other life events, and then it notifies you. I I can actually… I follow the logic, and in a way, I see it’s an interesting way how AI could actually help a real estate professional. I don’t know if this particular setup actually works, because I did a bit of research on them, and I listened to a interview by one of the joint founders about a year ago, but I can’t I can’t really say if it actually worked. I did do a search trying to find reviews, and I couldn’t really find that much, to be honest with you, Robert.
I got you.
It is interesting, isn’t it?
Yeah, I’m doing some very, very basic research right now. And so the guy that they’ve got on the real estate professional that they have on their actual website is deep into AI. He’s got a website built on AI. He’s doing a lot of coaching having to do with AI. He’s using a lot of AI. So it doesn’t surprise me that he is really building, and he’s building all his websites using AI, and all these things look relevant. If he found a tool, and what this tool is saying that they’re doing is using AI to identify when properties are being inherited, which is a thing that you track. You could do that, John. You could do that in an automated way if you built out the AI in the right way.
One thing I found a little bit, I wouldn’t say disturbing, but put me off a little bit. When you go to their website, you click Prices. It takes you to a slightly different website. So if you go to their website and you click the price button, it’s taken to, I presume it’s their parent company, and this seems to It’s not really just a division of another parent of the main company.
Like I said, when you can create anything you want with AI and do it in a click of a few buttons, including websites, John, I think you It’s a bit weird shit like this, and I don’t think it inspires trust at all.
It didn’t with me. So you agree? I thought it was a bit odd myself.
So Wealth feed, the primary company that we’re talking about right here, Wealth feed, is a Okay, a money in motion event. So Wealth feed is basically like a data analytics company that tracks individuals and people, and it’s mostly for really, really high-end real estate markets like California, where your average sales price, tracking an individual, let’s say my neighbor here, who bought a home literally 40 years ago for 50,000. But when they die, it’s going to be a million-dollar transaction. So does it make sense to track that client in that area? The answer is it does, if you can do it cheaply. This tool, Wealth feed, is 13. 99 per year, but it only gives you a thousand monitored contacts, which is crazy. What the AI tool seems to be doing is proactively looking for events inside a zip code. Now, if it works as it’s advertised, that could be really productive. But if you’re only doing a zip code that, let’s say, has a thousand people, how many wealth events would there be in a year? Probably two. So you better have a conversion when you call them. You’re paying 13. 99 for a zip code per year.
It’s not an enormous price for most lead generation, but considering the fact that you are passively sitting there and waiting for somebody to essentially die. I don’t know, John. I would say everybody who’s listening to the podcast, I would say, do your own research and take it with a grain of salt. I like the idea. I don’t know that it’s ready for prime time as I feel about a lot of things that we see and get pitched as it relates to AI. We’re going to go to our break. We’re going to be right back. When we come back, John is going to walk us through the rest of the list. For those of you that like a cheat code, we’re going to be talking about virtual staging, property showings, and a little bit of coaching and goal setting. We’re hoping that we’re going to give you some great ideas. John has once again put together the list and done the grunt work. If you like what you heard, you like what you’ve seen, make sure that you message John. What email are we using for you these days?
It’s Jonathan, J-O-N-T-H-A-N@mail-right. Com.
Make sure you email John there, especially if you have something that you’d like to see him work on for us as a team. We would love to hear your thoughts about, do you want us to deep dive into something that you’re curious about? Let us know. As long as it’s related to real estate marketing, we’ll do it. All right. Without any further ado, we’ll be right back. Okay, dokey. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 467. John and I are talking about the best real estate software. I think that My opinion, John, please forgive me. I don’t know the title, Best Real Estate Software, but I think interesting real estate software for agents. I was pushing it a little bit.
I was just trying to become more enthusiastic like you.
Yeah. I think interesting is a really good way.
Well, that’s what I would have said a year ago, but I’m becoming more American. I think you’re rubbing off on me, Rob. I think in the last couple of years, I’ve become a much more effective market than I used to be.
I think that’s true. I’ve seen a lot of improvements in a lot of your marketing. You’re doing a lot of really cool things. And if I’m not mistaken, since I think I’m still connected to the Mailright calendar, I feel like you’ve been seeing results. I see a lot more calls in your calendar these days from real estate people.
Is that-Yeah, I think the other business is doing… I had a very good year last year. The Mailright thing, it’s going the right direction. It’s been very painful, but I don’t think until Still recently, I had any real idea of market fit, really. So that’s a bit of a problem. But I think it’s much better than that. Can we go on to the next thing?
Dialed odd, man. I’m looking at it. Hit me with it. I mean, I’m I’ve never even heard of this again. Here’s the opening line to the-I thought you would like this one because you’ve mentioned about virtual staging a couple of times in previous episodes recently, haven’t you? Yeah. Empowering MLSs 2, remain central to agents and brokerages, proactively reduce mediations, unlock new revenue, enrich listing data.
Can I tell you what I didn’t like about this?
Yeah, please.
I like the concept, but if you look a bit further on the website, Rob, you realize they’ve gone into a bit of everything, which I know it’s hilarious because that’s what Melright does. But I think if you scroll down, they can make a website for you, they can do video content for you, they can do this, they can do that, they can do the other. And that put me off a little bit because I actually want them to concentrate on the virtual staging, if you understand. Can you understand my logic there a little bit?
Yep. Well, I only see one name associated with this guy by the name of Todd Carpenter. And as with so many other people, he appears to be a real estate agent turned tech entrepreneur. I love it when real estate agents do attempt to provide stuff that they feel like they see the profession and they need. But most real estate agents have never really run a business. And this website, for sure, the StyleDod website, it’s lacking any bit of depth to it. I’m still looking at it going, I think I understand what they do.
I should have kept my mouth shut because I jumped in, but we are on the same prayer sheet in this episode. I think there’s a lot of agreement. Yeah, it’s funny. We got the same impression.
So Stalad also links to another website called reimaginhome. Ai, which is virtual staging, impure space, redesigned furniture rooms, landscaping. It’s a much bigger, much more in-depth website than StyleDot is. It’s got all sorts of stuff here. It’s got pricing, it’s got resources. I understand what it does. It ranges from $14 to $99 a month. It’s at the bottom of the site when you click on AI solutions, but it only takes you to a single place. The S implies it’s going to give you more than one service. It doesn’t. It would appear to me that style. Is serviced almost entirely by this reimaginahome. Ai. This is, once again, another one of these guys that seems to be able to build a website using AI in a heartbeat and then just links to a better website that actually has YouTube videos and you know what they’re doing. I don’t know. That’s my 10 cents, 20 cents, a dollar’s worth.
Can we go to the next one, dude?
Sure. Show Show me. Show me?
Show me.
Okay. Show me. Property showings. Let’s talk about that.
I don’t want to influence you, really, because I’ve got some strong feelings about this.
You want me to go first?
Give me what your impression is of it first.
Well, I’ll say this. This is very different than all the other services so far that you put up here. Number one, the website is deep. It has 30, 40 pages connected to it. So there’s a lot of information here, and I, once again, haven’t heard of these guys. So what I am noticing is that it seems to be a showing agent website where you can get agents to show your property. That seems to be what it is. Our paper showing system makes it easy to pay for completed requests. And then you put in price per showing a tip. I would say, here’s what my thought is, John, as a professional salesperson. I could see maybe a very, very, very, very, very set professional actually getting value out of this. And it would have to be somebody super specific because in general, we’ve got all these people basically trying to take the salesperson out of the sales process. I’ve never understood it. I never will. The idea behind sales, man, is you put me in front of a customer and I’m going to sell them. I’m going to build a relationship up and I’m going to sell them.
This It’s just literally saying, Hey, I want you to go show my inventory, but there’s going to be no salesperson. And it’s the same thing as with certain car dealerships. You name your price, you set your price, buy through an app, blah, blah, blah. Take the salesperson out of the process. So that the consumer, theoretically, doesn’t have a bad experience, right? What a terrible idea.
Yeah, we’re on the same thing. The founder is Matthew Kutcher, K-U-C-H-A-R.
Okay.
Whoever does his online market, they know what they’re doing. If you go on YouTube, you go online, they have done a blitz of videos. You try and find a third-party review, good luck to you, because they’ve pushed any negative review with their own stuff. So who’s ever doing his YouTube or his social media marketing? They know what they’re doing. I think the idea is terrible myself. It’s basically they got their internal review, you get points if you do a good showing. I I know a lot of agents, when the money is coming in, they don’t want to do showings, they think blah, blah, blah. But I just think the whole thing is a terrible idea. I just think it’s shocking. I think it’s shocking that he might be getting traction. A couple of YouTube reviews, they We were sponsoring a couple of major influencers, one guy based in Miami, a top producer. He was saying great things about it. I just think it, like you, it’s like you. It’s just a terrible idea. But who do I know? What do I know, Robert?
I think that there are… Listen, he’s been a real estate person for a lot of years, and he has been a Since 2010, and his founding story for this service is being on the ski slopes and somebody calling him to do a show in the next day and being forced into a decision to alter or adjust his vacation based on the fact that he had to show a property. In that one very specific situation, I agree a thousand %. You can have somebody step into you for part-time because he was calling team members in his brokerage to go show property. I don’t disagree with that story, and I think that there is a very specific niche that this could theoretically fill. Is it a big niche? Is it consistent? Is it running in line with where technology is going? No, it’s not. But could it serve a need in a very specific set of circumstances? Yes. For all you and I both know, might it this be one of the more exciting startups? Because it’s been around for eight years Yeah, it’s totally possible, I suppose. All right, we’re down to the bottom of the list now.
This is number 6, the last thing on the list. It’s called agently. Com. It’s the only thing that I had heard of on the entire list, really, that I’d actually seen, stumbled across.
I think I will. I found stuff that Robert Newman doesn’t know much about. I think that is a five-star compliment, actually.
It is. It really is. Tell us a little bit about what you thought about agently.
I don’t get it. I honestly don’t get it. It starts at 39 to 459. I think a lot of coaching platform, I understand it. They are like the Perthini, I think they’re very credible. I think Tom has credibility I think there are mentorship, coaching organizations and individuals that can make a difference. I think a lot of it is mediocre. I think It’s not in my opinion. Please don’t send the poison emails. Send it to Robert. Robert knows how to deal with it. I don’t get it. I just don’t But what do you think?
I think that understanding sales at a brute force level, listen, this is basically somebody who’s taken the idea of train them in classes, train them in masses, kick them in the asses, and turned it into a today’s-age service. And what it effectively comes down to is the numbers for real estate are absolutely staggeringly ridiculous. Just in the last three months, we’ve lost 300,000 licensed agents. But that means that there were 300,000 agents out there, John, that were barely maintaining their license to start with. The numbers that I’m seeing for professional real estate agents in 2024 is dumb. I heard an actual quoted figure that says 85% of agents with a license sold zero properties in 2024. If that number is true, which I’m not saying that it is, but if that data was actually accurate, that would mean that if you put 10 agents in a room, something like seven or eight of them didn’t do squat for an entire year. If that’s true, there’s an epidemic of a lack of sales understanding, basic sales understanding, because I hate to say this, John, but I don’t care who you are. You can be a bad salesperson.
If you went out every single day and knocked on doors every single day, I guarantee you that even a bad salesperson would stumble into a deal eventually because somebody would say, I’m glad you’re here at my door. My parents just died and I now own this house and I have some questions. There’s no way that you wouldn’t eventually stumble into a deal. But why do we not do that? Because people who get real estate licenses for whatever reason have zero understanding of how sales actually works. When that is the case, and they don’t have $600 to $1,000 a month to pay Tom Ferry or Mike Ferry or whoever, yeah, a service like Agently might be good. Digital assistance where you can coach online, tell them what to do, tell them maybe what to do in groups and classes.
I totally… You’ve put it really well. The only thing I would say is this is why it’s important when you’re starting your career to choose the right brokerage. Choose a brokerage that has that cares something about their agents, that will put you under their wing, will provide good training, a principle. There are too many brokerages, especially digital, I won’t name names. And it’s not only digital agents, brokerages, but this applies to the more brick and mortar, larger ones. Kelly Williams, I I think it depends on the region, but I think they still believe in training. I think it’s really finding the right brok, and too many brokerages don’t have the right attitude, in my opinion.
I agree. Listen, at the end of the day, the best real estate sales operations are still manned and helmed by old-school salespeople like me that understand that sales is a numbers game, that you got to get on the phone, knock on a door, do something. Marketing, which is what John and I do, is a great way to apply maybe a few years into your career. And if you If you find something like John where it’s inexpensive and you can learn, then by all means, do it sooner or later.
It has become harder, isn’t it? Because just ringing up, if it’s not on my contact list and they don’t leave a voice ‘s message, ‘ I’m not picking the phone up. If you go around knocking on doors in parts of Reno and certain parts of the Washoe Valley, and you just go around knocking on door, I think it’s a good chance you’re going to get shot. That’s a bit tonne-in-cheek, but it’s not totally, because there are… Yeah, I think you are putting yourself at risk a little bit. I think it’s just got a little bit harder using the general… I think a few years ago, what you were saying, it was correct. You just need to get on the phone or you need to go around knocking on doors. I’m not saying that’s totally wrong. I just think it’s got a bit harder myself.
Yeah, I agree. We’re going through a challenging real estate period right now. One of the things that I agree with that Agent lead definitely epitomizes is, listen, John, when we are going through hard markets, we examine our basic skills and offers, and I’m doing the same thing for inbound REN. Then if everything else fails, you can go old school. I’m considering starting up a phone room right now, and I’ve avoided that. I’m an inbound marketing company. I didn’t want to be back to being a telemarketing company. But you know what? I know it works. There’s no doubt it works. If you reach out to enough people, you can sell stuff. That’s it. You It may take more effort. I agree with you a thousand %. But to say that it doesn’t work at all is a fallacy. It just takes more effort. And all great entrepreneurship, great businesses, great wealthy people. It started somewhere somehow with somebody having a lot of determination to do the basic thing. And it will still work if you decide to- But on the other hand, being what I call the invisible agent won’t help you.
I think not just ramming cards in people’s hands, but going to as many free events as you’re capable of going to and just telling people, and just knowing your local real estate market, really knowing it well, educating yourself, using all the resources of a good brokerage provides, immersing yourself in your local market, and then going to everything, doing as many open homes. If there’s open homes, you do it and you’re rock reliable and you build your data list, talking, going to any event, that’s looking for a speaker and just talking about your… Doing all that, that is to me, the plausible way of not becoming the invisible agent, becoming a real visible agent in your local market.
I agree with that a thousand %. I mean, the first thing to get people to want to contact you these days is to let people know you. And you’ve got a couple of ways to do it. You can do it with big, broad messaging tools like social media. And you can also do it the way that we’ve been talking about on this call, which is you can also just simply knock on a door, walk up to somebody, shake their hand, go to meetings, go to PTA meetings. If you’re a parent, go to every single thing that every other person in your social circle invites you to. I get invited to all sorts of weird stuff, barbecues and event announcements and other people launching businesses, and I can go on and on. The Rotary Club has tons of those. If you go to places where there are meetings that you are part of a membership or invited to, you have a natural reason to be there, and thus a natural reason to talk to every single person in the room, giving you a prime opportunity, if you wanted to, to introduce yourself, tell a compelling story about who you are and what you do, and try to drum up enough of a relationship that even if the person in front of you can’t do some business with you, then somebody else in the room can.
Brian Surhunt talks about this shit all the time. He’s I’ve invented it. It’s dumb. New York is just a place where you go out and have drinks with your friends. I’ve been there, I’ve lived there for a while. You do.
But on the other hand, and I find a lot of agents struggle with this, they’re going to check over your website. If you just got a crappy one page or a website that your brokerage provides, I just don’t think that does it for you. Do you need straight away a fully powered IDX, fully customized? Probably not. But you do need a good website presence, and you do need a presence on social media, even if you’re doing all this other stuff that you’ve just described, because people will check you out, and they They will connect through the website and through your social media. So you need a combined strategy, and I find a lot of agents don’t have a combined strategy.
I want to add a new thought here. Combined strategies I agree with. Multi-platform strategies, I agree with. And I agree very strongly that most data is collected on other platforms. So a brand new agent could probably get away with Instagram, YouTube, and a Google business profile page and I don’t need necessarily need a website, which is shocking because I want to be clear with everybody, I sell websites. I make them. I am literally telling you that there are times that, let’s just pretend, John, that I gave my websites away for free. I would still say there are times and places in which an agent, depending on where they are in their career, may not need one. Where you do need an omnichannel website is when you are slightly established in your career and things are taking off and now you need a single place that talks just about you with no distractions. And in that circumstance, all of a sudden, my advice changes and I go, You absolutely need a website. You need a destination point that connects all the folks that we’ve just talked about, like the YouTube and the Google profile and the Zillow profile and the Active Reign profile and the Medium profile and all those places.
You need a singular place where somebody can learn just about you. And then if they I want to, search for properties. I also think that IDX has changed in terms of priority, like do you need it and what’s it supposed to do? I think that really, honestly, most people only use an agent IDX when they have a relationship with the IDX. That’s what I’m seeing. I’m not saying that strangers don’t do it. They do do it. I’m just saying that I’m watching a shift in user behavior as we speak and that it is definitely changing, in my opinion, and that agents should just be aware of it.
That’s I’m not saying you’re on because it’s just an opinion. I do disagree with you. I think when you are starting, you do need a website presence that you have full control over, and it just needs a good homepage, a good About Us page, good for some decent photos of you, and contact details, just the bare minimum I’m not talking about going crazy, but it’s just an honest difference of opinion. But I think in general, we do agree.
We agree on most things. This is one of the That’s one of the things that we may not necessarily agree on. But you know what, guys, for all those people listening to the show, this is the challenge that you always have when you’re seeking marketing advice. Even experts oftentimes don’t necessarily agree with one another. So my advice is always the same. Get to know the people that you’re taking your advice from and take what works for you personally as a human being and discard the rest, including anything I say, including anything John says.
You want to listen to Robert more than me.
Including anything Tom Ferry says. Could you just figure out what works for you, stick with that, and let the rest go? While we may know more than you on a subject, Tom may know more about mindset and motivating people. He knows a lot about it. He’s very good at it. But how long has it been since he sold a piece of property? Fucking years, decades. So, take it with a grain of salt. All right, we’ve put on a great show. John, you’ve shown up, and you are the expert in the research and all these questions about new services. If anybody had questions, he would be a great guy to go to. Even if John sold you something, he lowered his monthly service price to $49. You can’t beat it. How would people reach out to you?
Thanks, Robert. Just go over to the mail-right. Visit the com website and have a look at what we have to offer. You’ll be impressed with the package we’ve got. We’ve broken it up so the core is more affordable, and then we have other services you can hire us for if you get to that stage. Just look, and then you can book a free chat with me on the website. Back over to you, Rob.
And go to inboundrem. Com if you’re interested in learning how to market yourself in an ever-turbulent market. And all my stuff is free. I do a lot of videos. I’ve done 150 videos to educate realtors on what’s working for SEO.
It’s one of the biggest websites. It’s just got a ton of information on your website now.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for noticing. I, too, have been trying to build everything out slowly but surely. We talked about postcards. If it’s marketing for realtors, we probably have it on there.
It’s one of the best resources on the internet regarding general information about marketing for real estate. You have invested a lot of time and energy in it.
Can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate that, John. Thank you very much. So inboundrm. Com is the place. You can go to the About Our Services page to learn what we sell and how much it costs. But if you want to learn stuff, go to the blog. All right. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. I’ve been Robert Newman, and my partner has been Jonathan Dinwood. He is the master of all things mail-right. Com, and we appreciate you listening to the show.
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You can attach real estate leads to your first YouTube video in 2025. Our guide provides a step-by-step process for creating engaging content.
Ready to harness the power of video marketing for your real estate business in 2025? This video provides a comprehensive guide on creating your very first YouTube video to generate leads. We’ll walk you through key elements like topic selection, audience engagement, and effective promotion. Take your real estate game to the next level—click to watch the full video now.
#1 – What Type of Content Do Your Leads Watch and Like on YouTube?
#2 – Video Optimization | Traffic | Thumbnail | Title | – vidIQ – Canva
#3 – Get A Profession Developed Video Intro
#4 – Tips on Video Recording and Audio
#5 – Video Recording And Editing | Zoom | Descript
#6 – Final Thoughts
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail-Right podcast. We are going to be doing live straight from California and Reno. We’re doing episode number 466 today. If you are looking for specific data on how to do videos or get leads from videos, this is the episode for you today. It will be how to make your first YouTube video for Real Estate in 2025. As usual, you’ve got two pilots for this episode before we get into the episode. Both of us are entrepreneurs experienced in marketing, and each has a different background. I’m SEO, and John tends to be WordPress, but we have developed products and services specifically for real estate agents. Before I go any further into the show, John, why don’t you give everybody a brief wind-up to who you are and what you do?
Well, thanks, Rob. I’ve been struggling, haven’t I, Rob? Folks, I can’t even get into my own Google account. It’s been resisting my efforts for the past 45 minutes, folks, but I managed to overcome it. So I’m flustered, folks, but I’ll calm down. But I’m the joint founder of Melright, mel-right. Com. We’re a fabulous platform. We’re a CRM and a lead generation platform all rolled into one. And we start, if you pay month to month, at only $49. What more could you ask for, my beloved real estate professionals? Back over to you, Rob.
All right, beautiful. Well, ladies and gentlemen, here we go. We’re going to jump right into this. What content do your leads watch and like on YouTube? Before you get started on video, the first thing you need to do, and John is correct, is figure out what video you will make. And you don’t just sit here, devise a clever idea, and do the video. That’s not the way that I do it. That’s not the way that most professional marketers do it. We go on to tools like VidIQ or TooBuddy or AREFs or any number of research tools that we generally either have a free account for or spend some money on. We research subjects that people are currently looking for in our market. First-time homebuyers are people with listings that haven’t sold and people in distressed homes trying to get out. What are they searching for? That’s how I would do it. John, how would you come up with a subject for a video?
Well, there’s the free way, and you mentioned some paid services. One of the free methodologies is to use YouTube search and type in some topics, and then it will drop down some suggestions, which are pretty keyed on. Another free mythology is the guy from Backlinko. It’s Brian Dean. Brian Dean. He’s got a free interface if you go to batlin’co. com and then type in how to get a YouTube subscriber. I’ll make sure the links are in the show notes, folks. He’s offering a free interface that you can also use to type in keywords, and it will come in. It will come out with a list of suggestions. Then you mentioned the ones you can use: TurbBuddy or VidIQ, which has good SEO search-suggestion functionality.
Beautiful. Well, understanding subjects is usually pretty easy to do, especially if you’re using a small set of tools. Okay, go on to YouTube, and if you’re going to use a tool like VidIQ, you go in, you put a general topic, and then it takes a few minutes of looking at videos and seeing how much traffic those videos have. And when you find a subject area that is getting a high level of engagement from people on the platform you’re looking at, you decide to say, Do I have something valuable that I can add to this particular subject? If the answer is yes, we will finally start to narrow down what video you can do. What video makes sense for you to produce? All right. So that’s number one. What content do your leads like to watch, and what content do they like on YouTube? And I cannot emphasize this enough. When looking at this, make sure that whatever you find, whatever subject you’re looking at, you are willing to spend 10 or 15 minutes watching some videos.
If you’re not willing. When you do that, you’re looking in the wrong category. This is my favorite subject because it’s so misunderstood and poorly known. Video optimization. You You listed two sites here. You listed Canva, you listed VidIQ, you broke the subject into categories, you said traffic, thumbnail, title, so on and so forth. John, you put a lot into this, so why don’t you start us off?
Yeah, I think we’ve covered the traffic part, or you have. I think I do some SEO research, see a video that if you’re using one of these paid tools that we’ve mentioned, they’re not that expensive, but they will give you an estimate about how competitive and how much traffic a particular video topic is getting, and then you can use It’s a tool to make a judgment. The other thing is the thumbnail. The thumbnail is important. It’s one of the key factors that will lead to your video being watched. Canva is a great tool. They’ve got a library. They’ve got the free version. I think the paid version is worth investing in, folks. It’s about $110 a year, I think. It’s not ridiculously expensive, and it comes with a load of predesigned thumbnail templates that are reasonably easy to adapt. Another Another thing, give you another tip, I’ve used this myself, is you’re going to need some pictures of yourself. It’s best to use headshots. Now, if you go to a photographer, it can be quite expensive. I got about a year ago some revamped photos. I went to a local photographer. I had about two hours at the time.
I went to their studio. I bought about five headshots from a number of photographs that they took. They charged me, it was a package deal, but it still cost me around $500. But then if you wanted to buy any additional photographs, it was like $50, $90, $80 per photograph. But what I did was I uploaded those photos, and then I took some photos using my iPhone, and I uploaded them to an AI service. You got to upload a certain amount of photos to it, and then it makes headshots from what you’ve uploaded in different backgrounds, different poses, and it provided over 100 different images of me. I know this sounds renders because I’m not the most attractive person, but it did a reasonable job. I’ll try and remember and put it in the show notes for you, folks. But it did a good time, and that would have me, and they were quite good what it did. It did take a couple of hours mucking around, trying to upload enough photos for it to make this batch of additional headshot But he did a great job. Actually, I was really impressed, Robert.
I think that… It’s funny because clients ask me all the time ideas for videos, stuff like that. And what we’ve done at InboundRM is we have a master account on VidIQ. I just give people a login. And when my people get asked, we just generate an idea using VidIQ IQ because the biggest trouble with agents is that they’ve already been inundated with ideas about tools that they can use, and they’re tired of it. Most real estate agents just want to go out and sell real estate. So my team uses With transparency, just uses AI, just generates a couple of ideas, and when a client says, Hey, can you give me a script? Sure, no problem. Here’s a script. Just generate it.
It can generate the The thumbnails. I haven’t used it. I’ve just used Canva, but it can generate the thumbnails, can’t it? It also can generate the headline, the tagline, the top- Yeah, it does it all. And the script, can’t it?
Yes, it does it all. The only Everything that it’s not doing very well is its customization feature on your channel. It’s not that great. Excuse me, John. I’m still getting over being sick.
Yeah, he’s been ill, folks. He’s a trooper coming on the show, really. That’s all good.
So anyway, optimizing a video, though, is a different thing. So optimizing a video is definitely something where it’s like there’s 13 things that we do when we optimize a video. We’re optimizing the text inside the video. You’ve got your footer or your… Here’s a few things about optimizing videos. You want to put it in a description. You You want to use tags, you want to use a title, you want to use a location, you want to do all of these things. It takes us longer to optimize a video than it does to shoot the video by far. These categoric things that you’re doing allow Google to categorize, understand the video much faster with a lot more clarity, and they are far more likely to rank the video once you’ve optimized it correctly on your channel. The main thing that I find is a real game changer is doing high effort activities such as manually closed captioning the video and indexing the video. These two things most people don’t like to do. They don’t because they’re time consuming, and it’s understandable why they wouldn’t do them. You can do a closed caption, automated closed caption in about one second.
But Google can and does understand when you’re using automated tools to close caption a video, they give you extra credit when you manually do it. There’s all sorts of things that we do inside the video optimizing process. We have an almost unbroken 100% track record on ranking videos. And that is because most of this manual stuff that I’m describing to you, nobody does. There’s so many automated tools out there, but unfortunately, nobody has yet created the automated tool that does any of this with 100% accuracy. That’s the problem. So people who spend time giving 100% accuracy, Google can generally sense it. Not 100% of the time, but like 98, they get it right. When they get it right, you give yourself a 10, 20, 30, 40% ranking bonus for just uploading the video and optimizing it correctly. It just takes time. That’s the only problem with it. But cool thumbnails, getting easier and easier to make. More and more tools out there to just input a picture of you and then use these thumbnail optimization tools, just like John already said. I haven’t played with them that much, but that’s because VidIQ is really getting to be incredibly good.
It’s always been decent. It’s becoming excellent. It’s so easy to use. Anybody that’s out there, just go out there and use it. If you get sold on the idea of manually optimizing videos, then you need to call a company like mine. But instead of You’re spending $10 a month, you’re going to spend $150 a video easy. There’s a huge price difference, massive. Just so everybody’s clear between doing it yourself and having other people do the 100% route. In my experience.
Shall we go for a break?
Yes, and I can cough in private. All right, we’ll be right back, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for tuning in.
Oh, dear.
I’m so sorry, John. No. I thought it was better. I thought it was getting better.
I appreciate you doing it, Rob. Honestly, I do, if you’re not feeling 100%.
All right, let me just take it I’ll just sip here and then…
Yeah, bash it out.
I try. All right. I actually need the break this time. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and It is episode number 466. I’m here with my co-host, John, and we’re talking about how to get started with YouTube in 2025 and what you need to do. We’ve covered optimizing videos and how to get content ideas. And once again, because I’ve been coughing up a storm here, I’m going to ask John to give his ideas about getting a number three, getting a professional video introduction done for you. John, take your way.
I’ve done it. I’ve got one for Melright and for my other company. I went to Fiverr and I worked with a guy and I checked him over, and he was like a five-star rating. I think for these small Pacific jobs, I think Fiverr, and using Fiverr, I think they got what they call Fiverr professional. It’s their more expensive service. I think it’s worthwhile and then checking and going with the best rated person that’s got a lot of previous examples and looking at them. I think it does make a difference. I’m not sure how much Google and YouTube sees it, but I think it’s worth the invest because you’re not talking about ridiculous money. It might cost you a couple of hundred dollars to get somebody that that can do a good intro animation and a voiceover. But I think for that money, it’s worth the investment. What do you reckon, Rob?
Couldn’t agree with you more. You’ve done the route that I would recommend for everybody, even over the route that I took. I have a professional in-house videographer, and after many months, they produced a decent intro from the company. If you looked at what I paid, thousands of dollars, and all the time getting to know that person versus a couple of hundred bucks that John’s talking about, perceived value on intros is high. Everybody assumes that you spend a ton of money. I did spend a ton of money, so it’s a reasonable assumption. But when you look at… I’m so sorry, John.
No, it’s all right. Shall I go on to the next one? Please. Tips on video recording audio. Well, we’ve covered this, so I’m not going to go into a lot a lot of detail. We’ve got some past shows that if you listen to, go in. We’ve got a couple of Pacific shows that go into this in a lot of detail. But if you’re going to record, I’ve If you’re going to record on your camera or your iPhone or your Android, you can use Zoom or Loom to actually it will record the video, and it will record it in 4K. If you got the Pro version of Zoom, which is about 150 bucks a year, and a lot of real estate agents do, or you can use Loom. A lot of these inexpensive conference, they’re more about one-to-one conferences or small groups. They actually do record quite well. There are web-based tools. We use one here to record this podcast and make video. We use StreamYard, and there’s half a dozen. They’re more expensive, but you can use Zoom, Basically, if you’re looking for the most easiest way to edit the video and do a rough edit, I think some of these AI tools that are out there, Even Canva has a video editor.
It’s not bad, actually. But one that’s interesting is Descript because it’s like a word processor. You can actually move. It does a transcript of the video and you can just move the words around and that does the editing for you. It’s quite an impressive interface and it’s much more simpler to use. But I think the main thing, folks, it’s not intuitive. The main thing is to sort your sound out, is to just get a half decent USB mic or lapel mic if you’re using your phone, but you can just get… There’s some reasonably good USB mics, around $50. The one I’m using is about $250, but you don’t have to go there. Just look up the reviews on Amazon and you’ll be well off. But you got to sort your audio. But there’s a lot of There’s some expensive choices out there, folks, that can get you going. You don’t have to lay out a lot of money. What do you reckon, Rob?
I agree with John 100 %. So I am not the best example of this because I tend to buy my equipment, keep it, and never update it. The only place I have professional studio equipment is in my actual studio, and I had other resources, other people that knew a lot more about that stuff, use my money and buy the stuff they said we needed. My computer set up, I’m using a Plantronics headset that is still mostly what I use for my calls. I’ve used Plantronics for 30 years now, and so I’m familiar with the equipment and I’m using a $35 Logitech camera to shoot my video on. I did, based on a podcast that John and I did long ago, buy myself a Blue Eyes microphone and discovered that I rarely use it because of the way that it stands on my desk. It interfered with my space. I ended up dropping it. But John is correct in the sense of, what do you invest in? How do you invest? I think it comes down to what your personal brand is. My personal brand in terms of my image is always a little sloppy because I’m a little sloppy.
However, I know my subject matter very, very well. And so when you’re looking at who you are as a person, decide what the most important factors are. And if for some of you, you think that the better equipment, slightly better sounds, slightly better visuals, really, really, really impact your your particular brand. If you walk out to real estate appointments in a three-piece suit or a Chanel dress, whatever it is, then obviously spending a couple of hundred extra dollars on visual or audio equipment makes all the sense in the world for you. If you’re like me, where you’re like a mad scientist, it’s like, I don’t give a damn. If you want the best information that’s available in the real estate industry, you come to my channel. If you want the best-looking whatever person, you don’t come to my channel. I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. I strongly recommend that all of you just take that into account. But what John said about equipment cost everything I agree 100%, about Loom, agree 100%, There’s lots of great video editing stuff out there. It’s getting better and better all the time. Ai is making it better and better.
The entry level for video is actually getting more and easier easier and easier to do because so much of the support work that’s being done on video is going to be absorbed by AI, which just means that more of you should be getting into this now and learning the basic tools because it’s just going to get easier. You’ve already covered video recording and editing. No, did you? Yeah.
We got the final thoughts. I think it’s a really good resource is back to Linnco and Brian Dean because he moved his channel, really, from general SEO advice to advice around YouTube. I think some of it’s really good. The one area, and it’s not I disagree with him, but I think it’s stage two, because one of the other major elements that will determine the success of your YouTube channel is how long people view your videos. It seems to have gone into two different directions. Obviously, YouTube has given a lot of emphasis to short form video as a competitor to TikTok and other platforms. But if you go to Brian’s site, he actually says, When you look at the analytical data, it’s more long form video, video that’s over 10 minutes long between 10 to 20 minutes long. Then he strongly advises that you do a lot more editing. I don’t do it on my videos, but My other channel, the Melright channel has grown quite a bit recently, and my other channel has grown quite considerably, but I just do a lot of videos, and I do some editing, but he’s talking about getting them professionally, or spending a lot more time on the video in having two cameras, having graphics, having animation, and that takes up a lot of time if you’re doing it yourself.
I would have probably advise you to get an editor, but even if you’re doing it offshore, that work does cost a lot more money. I think he’s right, but I think you can get 80 % by doing everything we’ve discussed previously, and I think the last 30 to 20 % is about upgrading your camera, your lighting, and really employing an editor. But I definitely wouldn’t go down that route initially. What do you reckon, Rob?
I think that Brian Dean is probably right. I think that the future of most marketing, as we know it, call and response marketing is on video, which we’ve been talking about for a long time. And call and response marketing for just a talking head video, which is mostly what I do, is getting harder. It is. You have to be really deeply knowledgeable to get a result. And Brian Dean is talking to the world’s best marketers on his channel. That’s who follows by me. When you start taking all that into account and saying, What are you going to do with video? I agree with him. Animations, using AI. I’m following a guy by the name of Michael Weis, who’s doing a lot of AI videos. He’s doing a lot of really cool things with video. Do I think what we want for real estate? I think If you look at the future in real estate as it relates to video and clever implementations is using video AI as part of a listing presentation that you’re doing where you use an edit that switches the decoration inside a room as part of your video listing edit, stuff like that.
I think that whatever realtors get to that baseline first are going to see massive explosive differences in their business because a good video editor could actually do that with relative ease. You just have to suggest it to them because the tools are already out there. They’re already fixed.
I think you, on my understanding, it’s the initial We’ll get in an edit template developed between you and the editor and get in a particular style and having two cameras. You have two cameras depending on the software using Zoom or StreamYard. There’s a device called StreamDec. I’ve actually got one, but I haven’t used it yet. But I do have a two cameras set up and you and pre-programmed Streamdecks. They do a microversion, which is 12 buttons, or they do the next version, which is 16 buttons. You just click a button, then it can change cameras, or it can do an effect or it can do audio effects as well. It’s quite neat. The actual one I’ve got, it’s only a couple of hundred dollars. I think the bigger version is just under 400. It’s not mega money. But I think working with editor and working out a structure, how the videos are going to be edit is the initial cost. I think after you’ve sorted that out and worked with the editor and modified that, then I think the costs go down a bit because the editor knows what you’re looking for on each video.
Interesting. You’ve introduced me to something I haven’t seen yet, and I’m going to check it out because of you, Stream Deck. That sounded very interesting to me. Ladies and gentlemen, one way or the other, this This stuff is going to get easier. Most real estate agents, either through an agency or through their own resources, one of the most valuable tools that you can get is somebody overseas or somebody local to you, a young person who knows how to use these tools. Instead of throwing yourself down every rabbit hole like what John and I do, I’m going to suggest that you find somebody who will throw themselves down the rabbit hole for you. And then you just come up with things that you want to say, content ideas. That’s how I’m going to leverage it is find people that are able to do the mechanics, but I am going to continue to come up with the overall global ideas on content. I think this has been a great show. I apologize to our audience. I apologize to you, John. I thought it was a little bit better.
No, you can’t be playing. He’s a trooper turning up, folks. So give him some love because he had been nil. He has been nil the past few weeks, haven’t you, Rob?
Yeah, it’s been hard to shake. We’re going to wrap this up. John, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and take advantage of this amazing new pricing on your amazing and your upgraded platform, how would they reach out to you to do that?
That’s fantastic, Rob. But go to the Melright website, have a look over the website, and then you can book a free chat with me and I can do a live demo with you, show the key parts of the functionality, and then you can make your mind up if you want to join the Melright family. We have modulised it. We offer other elements to the package, but we decided to provide the core element on a cost-effective basis. Then, we split the different parts into separate modules that are still available if you require them, like IDX or paid Facebook campaigns. But our package is great. We updated it a few weeks ago. We’ve added some new functionality, which I will discuss in the next few weeks. It’s significantly improved, and I would love to show it to you. Back over to you, Rob.
Beautiful. All right. Well, it’s hard to go wrong with the starting cost of $50, ladies and gentlemen, in this spot. We’re living in a cost-budget conscious world. That’s a great doorway into a WordPress website focusing on real estate. It’s a great toolkit, so take a look at it. If you are interested in doing something bespoke or that is more involved for both price and also focuses on slightly different areas such as Google, local, video SEO, things like that. You’re going to want to go to inboundrem. com and check out my services and About page and contact me personally. I’m Robert at inboundrem. Com. We appreciate you tuning into the show. Thank you very much. We hope you got something from it. It thumbs us up, sends us a comment, all the good stuff. Until next time. The next time, I was Robert Newman, and my co-host was Jonathan Deneuve.
We discuss with our special guest Greg McDaniels the importance of quality photography connected to being a successful real estate Read more
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With Special Guest Dave Kimbough
Are you grappling with the shift from traditional marketing to digital strategies? This video addresses the numerous challenges that companies encounter during this transition. We cover everything from shifting consumer behaviors to the need for real-time data analysis. Learn how to navigate these hurdles and embrace innovative approaches that resonate with today’s audience. Tune in and transform your marketing approach—watch the video now.
Moving away from traditional marketing? I’d appreciate it if you could uncover the challenges and find practical solutions to modernize your approach.
Welcome back to episode 465 of The Mailright Show, ladies and gentlemen. We are super excited. After a long hiatus with guests, we have a guest on the show today. The amazing, esteemed Dave Kimbrough is with us this afternoon. And, of course, I have my old pugilistic English partner, Jonathan Dinwood, who I’ve had for a long time.
What’s that word?
I’ve used to meet you before, and you always push back. Pugilistic.
What the hell does that mean?
It means you’re a fighter, dude.
Oh, Putinistic. There you go. I looked that one up. Thanks, Rob.
You’re welcome. And Dave, that’s a true fact. Back in his youth, Jonathan used to box.
I did.
That’s right. How did you guys meet?
We met because he had a previous podcasting partner who was doing the show. That partner found me and asked John if it would be okay if he brought me on as a guest. John said, Yes. That other guy was already John’s hanging his way out of the podcast. John asked me if I wanted to do it. I said, Sure. I thought it would be a lark, and that was three years ago and something ridiculous. It may have been longer. We’ve done 200 shows together; we’re approaching that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Very cool.
Dave, well, before we get started, I’m going to let John go first, and then I’m going to circle back around to you. But, John, why don’t you quickly give people an overview of who you are in your own words without just my little pugilistic intro there?
All right. Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are a CRM and marketing platform for real estate agents, and we’ve just done an extensive upgrade to all our systems, and what we offer is much improved. Just go to the Melright website and find some more. And we’ve also got a new pricing structure, and you’d be amazed at the value that we are offering. Back over to you, Bob.
Beautiful. And for those of you who are catching the show for the first time via video, John has done something different with his hair today. So, if you look at our old episodes, you’ll see that he’s either coiffed or uncoiffed. I don’t know which. All right. So now, let’s move on to our special guest, Dave. Why don’t you introduce yourself to both me And the audience about who you are?
My name is Dave Kimber. I’m a RE/MAX agent team leader in Grand Junction, Colorado. For those of you who don’t know where Grand Junction is, it’s about four hours due west of Denver. We’re located about 20 miles off the Utah border, 4 hours from Denver, and five hours from Salt Lake City. Cool.
For those of you who may or may not know me, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound or Unbound Real Estate Marketing. I am the most experienced online marketing consultant and the most experienced real estate SEO guy in the United States. So, without any further ado, let’s jump into the conversation; before you give us a brief detail, I’d like to know your real estate trajectory: who, what, when, where, and why. How long have you been doing it? What What made you a team member? We both know managing people gets harder and harder. So, give us a five-minute summary of who you are and why you do what you do.
So, I can do that. I got into real estate back in 2002. In 1999, my first wife was diagnosed with brain cancer, and unfortunately, she passed away in 2001. At the time, I was working in pharmaceutical sales and had a completely different career. I had many other careers then and just needed a new gig. I needed a new start. Life had dealt me a lot of cards, and I just needed to try something different. So, The guy I hired to sell my house, I was going back to Atlanta because we’re from the South. I went to the University of Alabama. My parents are from Birmingham and Gadson, Alabama. So I was living in the West, and we’re just for Southern people. So, I was going to move back to Atlanta.
I’m sorry, Dave. I’m sorry for all of us. Go ahead.
So, yeah, don’t hold it against me. So I was going to move back to Atlanta to go to work for another pharmaceutical industry or another company, a biotech company as a district manager. The guy who I hired to sell my house is a long time family friend. And he said, hey, I think you could do great at real estate. He’s like, you should give it a try. And I thought, well, that might be one of the dumbest things anybody’s ever told me because I’ve got a great career, right? I mean, I had a really strong career in the pharmaceutical industry and I enjoyed it. I was good at it. But thought about it and prayed about it and got peaceful about it. And I thought, you know what? I’m going to give it a whirl. So he took me under his wing, and that’s how I got started in the business. It was a lot by intent. I thought I would get into the real estate business and drop my handicap from a seven to a three and sell a dozen houses a year. And that’s just not exactly the way it’s played itself out.
But that’s why we do it. You never know what you’re going to get. That’s how I got started in real estate, fairly serendipitous the way it began.
Beautiful. I want to ask a very brief follow-up question, which John did not include on his list, but it’s an easy question I promise. Why did you agree to come on the podcast?
We have, like I said, been in the business for 23 years, and we have just finished in the last couple of months a new coaching program called Expectation Selling. And so we’ve just launched that here in the past month. And so we’re doing… We’re thankful to have some invites to do some podcast based on the expectation selling platform. And so that’s why I agree to do it. I’ve never done podcasts before. You guys are like my third podcast ever. I appreciate it. I’m almost a podcast virgin.
Well, I don’t know about John, but I’m always happy to take a chair or two. No, I’m just kidding. I appreciate that. That’s terrible. That was terrible.
That was terrible. That was terrible. That was a couple of weeks ago.
Okay. Well, thank you for the incredible introduction, by the way. I know that I appreciate it. I’m sure the audience appreciated it. Once again, John, I’m going to take this next question, and I’m going to change it slightly. John asked the question, and we wrote down for you in the show notes. We wanted to know what the biggest challenge has been for you in 12 months. But now that I know that you have a 22-year history in real estate, and this is not the most challenging real estate market, if you’ve been in it that long, that you’ve ever seen, I want to change the question slightly and say, what is the biggest challenge you have ever faced in your real estate career as far as the market is concerned? Not like a personal challenge, and I’m very sorry to hear about your first wife, by the way, but not a personal challenge, but like a professional challenge related to the industry and the circumstances surrounding it.
2009, ’10, ’11. That’s easy answer.
Okay.
For us, it was where we I think the rest of the Great Depression, whatever they called it back then. 2007, a lot of the nation was having a really tough time. The real estate markets cratered, housing prices cratered, all that stuff. Well, in 2007, 2008, we were still setting records because we were about 30, 40 miles north of where we live is a huge natural gas reserve. So we had a huge energy boom happening here. So we would go to a seminar ours, and we’d go to coaching and all these other things, and everybody be like, oh, my God, we’re getting killed. We’re like, what are you guys talking about? We’re killing it. And lo and behold, we were two years behind everybody else. In 2009, this thing completely flipped, and we were losing a % to a % and a half a month. Buyers and sellers, we lost tons of traditional sellers, and we ended up with a ton of have to sellers, distressed. And you lost your traditional buyer, most of them, a lot of them, and replaced those buyers with distress buyers. People who are buying distress properties, flipping them, fixing them, doing whatever.
That was a very, very difficult market for Yes. It was a lot of foreclosures. We made the intentional decision not to seek or chase foreclosures or short-sale business. It didn’t mean we didn’t do them. That just wasn’t the lion’s share of what we did. We decided stay the course, do traditional real estate. If you chose to stay the course and do traditional real estate back in our market in those times, you were choosing the most difficult path possible.
John, that begs a follow-up question, but you should ask it.
I think I’ll go on to the next one, actually. This is what he’s like.
This is what he’s like, Dave.
If you want to do a follow-up for your question, You’re several.
Yes. Why? In the good Lord’s name, why would you choose the hardest road?
Because it’s what we knew. Just being honest with you, it’s what we knew. We knew how to do it. We were good at it. We were number one in the marketplace at the time, and it was going to have to be a complete revamping of our business and everything we did to take on distress sellers. So it was just my sister. So my sister works with me on our team, and at the time it was just the two of us and one assistant. I think there might have been one more buyer’s agent we had. And we just decided we were just going to stay the course and do exactly what we did. Was it a good decision? I don’t know. I don’t know whether it’s a good decision or not. And it was a hell of a hard time. But we also survived it. We got better, we got stronger, we made our systems tighter. Everything we did when we came out in 2012 was infinitely better because we didn’t just tread water. We spent those three years of getting our ass kicked, but also making our business better. So we came out the other side.
We poured money into advertising. We poured money into everything when everybody else was pulling it back. So did I make much money? No, I did not during those years, that’s for sure. But did we set the groundwork to come out of that thing like a bullet? We did. But it was a really hard I’ve given this advice to so many entrepreneurs and business owners.
It’s ridiculous. But Dave, I’m super glad that you set it on your own. When everybody else runs for the hills, you’ve got a lot of tough decisions. You can pull up stakes or you can invest, thinking, knowing you’ll come out the other side with more momentum than anybody can catch. And it sounds like that’s what happened for you.
That has been our motto whenever anything has gotten tough, it’s pedaled to the metal. I mean, The old stock adage is you buy when people are selling, you sell when they’re buying. For us, like you said, when they’re pulling back, we’re pushing forward. And it’s just harder, stronger, faster. That was our take. And It was our mantra at the time, and that’s what we did for three years. But let me tell you, bro, it was hard.
Believe me, we’re going through a bit of hard on the marketing side right now ourselves. But before we digress, John, finally, Finally, you can ask the next question.
Thank you so much. So Dave, apart from recommendations from your previous clients, I’m sure you get a ton of recommendations and repeat customers.
We can always use more.
Yeah. Apart from that, what are some of the other biggest and successful lead generation methodologies that you and your team uses to attract people to your brokerage?
Well, I mean, nowadays, now or earlier in my career, Please say in the last year, 18 months, what are being some of the methodologies that you feel have worked for you and your team? There’s no question. I mean, the biggest thing for us is new construction. We do a lot of construction. We work very diligently with our builders on our development side, new construction. So that’s a huge one for us. We probably sell more of new construction homes in our market than anybody does. Our leads come in largely website leads for new buyer leads that aren’t referral-based. And a lot of those come from new construction because we have a lot of it, and also residential resale. I mean, between new construction and residential Resale will sell somewhere between 125 and 180 houses a year between those two with a pretty even split between, well, probably a little bit more resale than the new construction, but it’s still a large portion of new construction. And also, too, we do a lot of radio. I know a lot of people think, hey, radio, radio sucks and whatnot. But in our market, again, when you realize we’re four hours from Denver and we’re five hours from Salt Lake City, we literally If you look at a map, we’re about one of the most isolated towns of 150,000 people you’re going to find in this country.
So radio really works here. Yes, people do podcasts. Yes, it’s a splintered and fragmented world. All of these things are so true. But terrestrial radio still does work very well for us, especially AM radio, talk radio. It’s a captive audience. My background was in radio. I was a disk jockey back in the early ’90s, and we found radio to be a very positive thing as well.
I’m not surprised, actually, when I was watching a couple of your early Virgin interviews, I sense that you had some professional training because you are quite a good communicator, Dave.
Well, I don’t know about the professional part of it, John. You’re being very kind.
No, but you understand what I mean. Some people It is difficult to talk on a podcast. Some people get very nervous, but you seem to be able to get your points across without the nerves affecting you.
Yeah, well, I think part of that, again, it’s very kind, and I appreciate that. I think part of it is because I spent a portion of my life behind a microphone in radio. But also even here when I talk about radio, we did a radio talk show. I did a talk show for Oh, my gosh, 13 years on Saturday mornings. And that was a really robust thing for me. And I also do newspaper ads and articles. I do a lot of writing. So we just do a lot of diverse things that we find really work for us, and we really like it. Our focus is always about quality over quantity. I’ll happily pay more for a quality lead than less for a whole bunch of quantity, right? So We’ve always been very focused on what’s the quality of our lead.
All right. Beautiful. All right. Thanks. So I’m to go for a break, Rob. Yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in the podcast in any of the many places that we post this podcast Sure. If you’re watching us on YouTube, forgive us. We’re sorry. We’re easier to listen to than look at. But other than that, we really appreciate you all. Most of our audience, Dave, are actually other realtors like you. I’m sure that like me, they appreciate a good story that relates to real estate. And I think that our audience is going to love the fact that you happened into real estate because about 80% of the people I talk to say the same thing. So with no further ado, give us a thumbs up, give us a like wherever you’re seeing or listening to us, and we’ll be right back. We’re going to ask Dave three more questions, and I’ll try really hard to vaguely stick to the format that we handed him before the show. Stay tuned. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It is episode number 465. I shouldn’t know that. I just said it a few minutes ago. I had already forgotten. Welcome to the land of ADHD. We’re here with Dave Kim Burrow and Jonathan Dinwood.
We’re super excited to have John co-host the show with me and Dave be on the show. We have now discovered that he is a radio personality, so he should actually be putting John an eye to shame.
He’s putting one of us to shine. That’s for sure. All right.
So John and I focus a lot on the show, and we each have companies that we end up having a lot of discussions with people about lead generation, specifically real estate agents, realtors, brokers, mortgage brokers, if anything in the real estate vertical. And I’ve been doing it for 16 years, and John has been doing it for eight now. And so we’ve got this conversation always It happens. Always, always, always, every single person. I would love it if you would share with the audience some of your specifically marketing challenges and failures, things that you’ve learned from. We all know that failures is just a way to learn and grow and get better, and I understand that. But at the same time, there has to be things on the road that you tried that you just didn’t work for you.
Yeah, I just want to cut in. Maybe a couple of things that you were sold that looked you thought they were going to really work, and somebody sold you a plan, a platform, and the reality, it didn’t pan out, Dave.
Yeah, I mean, where do I start? How long is it? That’s not a joke, right? I mean, it’s the gospel. I mean, I think the biggest thing for me over the years is I have found around real estate in particular, but not just real estate, the world in particular. It has a way of sucking you in and mesmerizing you with the sexy lure of more. More. You got to have more. As real estate agents, I mean, every single day… John, don’t fall asleep there, bud.
I’m I’m very almost like listening to you, Dave.
I’m just kidding you. I’m giving you a hard time. We get sucked in, every day on my email. I don’t know how many emails a day I get somebody selling me something, somebody calling me, getting text on my phone. All they’re trying to do is suck me in to buy something, to follow the money. Everything is about selling you something as a real estate agent. And you are constantly have this feel. At least I did. Maybe I’m the only guy in the world who ever did, but it was always I need more. I need more buyers. I need more sellers. I need more this. I need more that. And I’ll pay for it. I make good money. It’s just one check away. Hey, Dave, it’s only $1,300 a month. If you close two deals in your market, an average market of $500,000, that’s $30,000. You’re going to make $12,000. You know what I mean? You’ve all done it. And you can justify it right into the poor house. And it has happened to me. So my biggest failure is that. My biggest failure is buying- But give Don’t name names, Dave, because we don’t want to be sued.
But give us a couple that- We can’t get sued if he has an opinion about a company he did business with, John. I’ve got enough Let us see.
You’re just tired of the angry letters I generate for you.
Yes, that’s all I have.
I volunteer these opinions, Dave. I see these guys are second rate, and then he gets the emails.
I get the heat done. I get the heat Dave. That’s what I get. So Dave, there must be a couple that have stuck in your memory banks.
I’m going to caramane them.
Go ahead and name them if you want to name them. If you don’t mind sharing one or two, give us a If you can give us that sticking, that sounded really good, but it didn’t pan out, though.
Oh, my gosh. I mean, I’ve done things with a company called Lion Desk. You guys ever heard of that?
Oh, yeah.
I thought it was going to be the greatest thing ever. I tell you what, here’s the other thing about that. Sorry, I just have to do a qualifier with this.
When you’re in a market- These are Dave’s opinions, I want to point out.
Yeah, and it just didn’t work because what happens is a lot of times these things are built and can be very successful in big markets. When you’re in a market of three million people, and people are calling you unsolicited, I mean, on stuff, they don’t know who it is or may not know who you are or whatever. When you’re in a town of It’s 150,000, it’s 150,000, but it’s still a very small town. People know everybody who works for me. I would get calls from people and say, Hey, who’s Julia? She doesn’t work for you. I’m like, No, she doesn’t. So there Where’s that? I mean, any online lead deal, I mean, where you’re- What was the specifics of what happened with Line Desk that didn’t work for you? Yeah, it didn’t work because it was a really hard bridge to gap in a market my size where people were cold calling or calling database or calling people on your behalf, and the people knew it wasn’t you. They knew that Julia didn’t work for me because they were calling… A lot of people know who works for us. There are pictures in the newspaper, there are pictures our pictures on billboards, our pictures everywhere.
They know a lot of them knew that Julie wasn’t there. So it’s really hard to outsource that stuff in a lot of instances, because if they run across anybody who knows anything about our team, it’s a really difficult thing in a smaller market. So some of these things where if it’s a bigger market where there’s a lot more anonymity, we’re a pretty high profile team here in our marketplace. So it’s a lot harder to slide that stuff under the door, just to be frank. And so it just- So to So just a quick follow-through.
Was it really the fit between you and Linedesk? Was it more that they didn’t really understand? Do you feel it was an understandable misalignment because you were too small, a too niche market? Or do you think you’ve brought them up, so it must have left a bad taste in your mouth. So do you feel that they were aware that it probably wasn’t going to work in your particular market?
Yeah, it didn’t really leave a bad taste in my mouth, right? I mean, it doesn’t. What works for me may not work for somebody else. What works for somebody else may not work for me. I have the extensive knowledge of my marketplace being here for 22 years and being the top agent team in this market for a really long time. We understand the dynamics of our market. If you come from outside of our market, it’s really difficult to understand what those dynamics are. And so it’s a niche market, like you said. And so it’s not a bad taste. It’s just like it was an epic failure because I got a lot of people who called and texted, and put to stop It. Knock it off. Stop texting me. Why are you texting me? And I’m the easiest guy in this town to get a hold of. If you want my phone number, it’s not hard to find, right? So when people are texting people unsolicited and they’re not expecting to get something from me, all they got to do is, Hey, this is Dave Kimbrough with what a blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden they’re like, Hey, dude, stop it.
Knock it off. Why are you texting me? What’s the problem here? I thought you were a market leader. I’m like, Holy crap, dude. Just stop. It’s okay. Let’s dial this thing back. I don’t think it was necessarily, Hey, this doesn’t work. It’s just when you’re in a smaller town, people are less receptive of that stuff. There’s a reason why you lived 4 hours from Denver and 5 hours from Soleil.
The tool was a bad fit.
Bad fit, yeah. It’s not a bad… I’m not saying it’s a bad product. I can’t say because I talked to other agents who did it before me, and they’re like, Yeah, this thing works. This works great for us. It was just a bad fit for my marketplace. It just didn’t fit for our or what I was looking for at the time. It didn’t fit.
We could have a whole episode. Honestly, Dave, the details that most other real estate people want from us is they probably… That’s why John just drilled in so deeply is that we get calls, both of us do, from team leaders, brokers, owners, you name it. And generally speaking, their biggest frustration is similar to something that you’ve just vocalized where they’ve already spent tons of time, energy, and money on tool. It failed because they weren’t able to get a good enough view of the tool before they actually purchased it. And by the time you’re in it, you’re in it. And so the frustration is no, but seriously, will it really work? Now, we get a lot more people spending a lot more time researching, which there’s been no other iteration of the real estate market where that’s ever been the case. Real estate agents love to buy the newest, shiniest thing, which you pointed out. But you get burned a couple of times, and I think that changes, or at least it does for some people. All right, but let’s move on before we run out of time here. Do you use any AI tools? And if you do, what AI tools are you using in your business currently?
We’re pretty limited, honestly, on AI tools. We’re looking at doing some website stuff with changing up our website to where they use a more AI-generated chatbot type scenario, much more authentic seeming interface for the client. I mean, I’ve read a lot of stuff about really exciting stuff that seems to be coming that we haven’t seen. I mean, I know there’s disruption happening that I don’t see. I know there’s disruption going to happen. But at this juncture, we use it for the same stuff. We use it for Asking for coming up with marketing plans for Instagram, videos that are current and things that we can do to make it simple stuff like that. But nothing… I’ve heard and read about things that are just mind-blowing and amazing. If they ever show up, we’ll be the first ones to jump on board if we can. But I think most of it for me, it seems to be more conceptual than it does in actual practice. So we don’t. A lot of people on our market, they use it for copywriting. We use it for copywriting too on stuff, and we need to pound stuff out pretty quick.
They use it for property descriptions, graphic generators. We use some of that stuff as well, but there’s nothing that I would say, oh, my gosh, look what Aon is making a huge impact on our business yet. It’s not.
I have a follow-up question. It’s personal, wasn’t on the list.
Okay, great.
A vendor that I do business with, a lot of business, is getting ready to introduce a room. It’s like a dream room concept, but this is already out there, but it’s not really out there with IDX yet, which is where you get to take a listing and redecorate the room inside the actual search functionality itself, actually within an IDX. It’s brand I knew. I haven’t seen it, so I’m not asking any questions about performance. I’m asking you the thought. What’s your thought about a tool that could do that? Do you think people would use it?
I think they would. I I think if they would, it would be impactful because I’ve always been one of those. The longer I can keep them on a page, the longer I can keep them interacting on a site, the better my chances are making contact with them and then being quality. So Everything we do from picture arrangement, write up, whatever it may be, is can we keep them there as long as humanly possible on each and every property that we have? Because the longer we can keep them, the higher the likelihood is they’ll contact us or see us as a valuable resource.
Couldn’t agree more. All right, number six.
Can I ask that question, Robert?
All right, H. G. Wells, go for it.
So Dave, if you had your own time machine and you could go back in time and maybe mentor your sofa 10 minutes at the start of your real estate career, what would you tell yourself? What little tip, what little bit of advice would you tell yourself at the beginning of your journey in real estate, Dave?
I mean, it’s going to sound super cliché and super stupid, but I don’t think I’d give myself any advice that I wouldn’t want it. I wouldn’t trade the journey that I’ve had. My career has been far greater and far better than anything I ever dreamed it could be with the ups and the downs and the this and the that and every bit of learning. I know we talked a little bit about it earlier. Every bit of learning we’ve done from bad mistakes or things we’ve done, we should have done differently or whatever, we have learned from that. We are learners. We are not fool me once, fool me twice. That’s it, right? I mean, We’re going to fix it. And so I think that the journey that we’ve been on as a team and I’ve been on as a singular agent and team lead or whatever, I wouldn’t trade any of it. And I wouldn’t want some advice to cloud the judgment I came in with, because certainly If there’s anything, I would have maybe said, well, I mean, no, no, there isn’t. I mean, I look back on it, I don’t have any regrets.
I got no regrets, and I got nothing on here that I would read. Okay, one thing, billboards. I would not run billboards. I have pissed away. I have pissed away more money on billboards, trying to get billboards to work for me. And I just am done. I’m done with that. I Somebody saved me a couple of hundred grand over 23 years by telling me, Dave, don’t ever do billboards.
So one other thing. So you mentioned about it, and you’ve been a fabulous guest, Dave. I’ve really enjoyed the interview, and you must come back. I’ve really enjoyed this discussion. So you mentioned this course that you’ve developed. Can you give us a quick outline what that’s about?
Yeah, quick outline is it’s a complete mind shift. It’s a complete mind shift. We’ve taken 23 years of experience. So myself and my sister and my partner, her name is Jan, and my partner Mason have created this expectation selling. One of the biggest myths in real estate is that you can’t have massive production and work-life balance. You can’t have life balance and do massive volume. That’s not true. It’s absolutely not true. So what we’ve done is put together a course to help agents get their time back in their day and get their focus, get their work done efficiently and get more balance in their life by systemizing everything they do. And I mean, it’s a crazy process for those who are willing to go through it and implement the system, because I’m here to tell you, two years ago, I sold 159 listings with one system, right? I still coach football. I still eat dinner at home every night. My wife still loves me, I think.
I’m sure she does.
I’m sure she does. But the whole gist around this thing is if we can find a way to give back what we’ve been able to learn over the last 23 years and the systems we’ve got in order to churn the volume we do with still having a work-life balance, and my kids love me, and my wife loves me, and I spend time with friends and all that stuff. It’s the number one thing that happens to real estate agents. We’re addicted to a hustle culture, and you don’t have to be addicted to the hustle culture.
Where can I get this course, Dave?
You can go to www. Expectationselling.com or follow us on any social media outlet at expectationselling.com.
I will ensure the links are in the show notes, which you can find on the MailRight website. Back over to you, Rob.
Well, we’re going to wrap up the show. I’m going to second what John has said. Dave, you’ve been a lot of fun. I hope you keep podcasting. You’ve got a talent for it. You’ve got a knack for it. But I suspect you probably have talent and knacks for everything else. If you haven’t already looked into it deeply, I suggest you look into both local and video because you are built for it. You would be wildly successful.
You’re perfect. I don’t have a face for video, bro. You do.
It could be worse, though, if you could have my advice. Good point.
I wasn’t going to say it. No, I’m just kidding. I’m just joking. No, in all seriousness, Middle-aged white men do fine on video. Please be sure to trust me on that. All right. Without any further ado, though, if anybody wanted to reach out to you personally, I think it’s expectations selling. We appreciate it. I hope that some people check it out. I strongly recommend that they do. If there’s anything I love about inbound marketing, it’s the same conversation you’re trying to have, which is to get back your time while still doing huge business. How would somebody reach out to you? Assuming you even want them to. How would they do?
I do. I’m open to it. Please feel free to contact me anytime. It’s dave@expectationselling. Com. That’s my email. Could you just drop me an email? I live on it. It doesn’t go off my email inbox until it’s done. I’m happy to chat and talk to whoever.
If anybody would like to check out the new, upgraded, incredibly fancy, snazzy system that Jonathan is using, it’s worth it.
It’s a lot better. It’s massively improved.
Because we’ve just gone through hammering all the real estate marketing companies, but no, seriously, we’ve got something you should look at. But anyway, Jonathan, how would you like to? Our system starts at $49 monthly, so it won’t bankrupt you.
So go to the mail-right. Com website and book a call with me. And I will, or a team member will show you the Mail-Right system. Like I say, it starts at $49 a month. Go and have a look, folks.
Beautiful. Well, that’s a big reduction. All right, ladies and gentlemen, if anybody has enjoyed the hustle that I have displayed on this podcast, you can find me at inboundrem. Com. You can go to my About or Services page, either or, and book a call with me directly if you would like, or you can learn everything you’d ever want to know about real estate marketing on my website. Detailed guides, PDFs, graphs, charts, videos, you name it, it’s all there. All right. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. We appreciate it. Once again, Dave, we appreciate you coming on the show. It’s been magnificent and a lot of fun.
Love it. Thank you, guys.
All right.
Take us off. Bye.
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With every passing day, as the competition in the real estate market is increasing, marketing now gets digital. Real estate marketing companies that specialize in marketing pre-existing homes have become a successful trend for agents and brokerages. Agencies that specialize in real estate marketing use SEO strategies to help them stand out in the competition.
The real estate sector is embracing technology, with the best-performing agents already making their mark through a strong online presence and digital marketing. Companies like Luxury Presence, Inboundrem, and Placester have taken the lead in creating digital solutions specifically for real estate. They normally provide services like website development, SEO, content generation, and lead generation tools.
In 2025 and beyond, real estate marketing is either average or world-class and will depend on personalization and data-directed solutions. The best marketing partners don’t just create websites but entire ecosystems that engage buyers in an ongoing fashion off the website itself while also building the agent’s authority. This method assists brokerages and agents in achieving sustained growth while getting the most from their marketing.
Luxury Presence is a full-service provider for real estate professionals. Their platform produces websites, SEO services, blog writing, and lead-generating tools and services.
They have three main service tiers: Essential, Premium, and Enterprise. Usually, the pricing starts from $2,000 + for the first website, while the monthly maintenance fee ranges from $300-$800, depending on the package.
Key Features:
There are a number of choices in real estate websites and marketing. Agent Image offers similar luxury design services at similar price points, while Sierra Interactive puts more of a focus on lead generation.
When comparing Luxury Presence to other options, agents should keep in mind their purposes and clients. High-end property agents laud Luxury Presence, but new agents may find it too pricey.
Over 90% of its clients stay with the platform that it uses. The platform is especially useful for agents in the luxury market that require a sophisticated brand.
Luxury Presence provides all-in-one tools that have been designed just for real estate professionals. The platform brings together many services to create a unified digital marketing strategy for greater visibility, engagement, and conversions.
The platform implements comprehensive search engine optimization strategies tailored specifically for real estate professionals. Their approach includes both on-page and off-page SEO techniques to improve organic visibility.
Technical SEO improvements focus on site speed, mobile responsiveness, and proper indexing. The company conducts keyword research to identify valuable search terms in specific markets and integrates these strategically throughout website content.
Local SEO services help agents dominate in their target geographic areas through Google Business Profile optimization and local citation building. Agents receive regular performance reports tracking keyword rankings, organic traffic, and conversion metrics.
Luxury Presence’s SEO team stays current with algorithm updates and search trends to adjust strategies accordingly. Their ongoing optimization work includes regular content updates, backlink acquisition, and competitive analysis.
The site uses great SEO techniques that are designed particularly for real estate professionals. They likewise implement off-page SEO strategies to enhance organic visibility.
The Speed of the website is made faster and is managed. The company does keyword research to find valuable terms that prospects use in the market and uses them strategically in the website.
SEO services for agents help agents get better control of target geographic areas via Google Business Profile optimization and building local citations.
Agents get frequent performance reports that track the ranking of their keywords, organic traffic, and conversions.
The SEO team of Luxury Presence is up to date with search algorithm updates and trends. Their content gets updated regularly, and link building and competition analysis all the same go on.
Luxury Presence creates amazing written content that highlights an agent’s professionalism and market expertise. Their content team makes neighborhood guides, market reports, and property descriptions that engage potential clients.
A constant stream of blog posts on key buyer and seller topics will help make an agent come across as a go-to local expert in their market. We use the right keywords, metadata, and structured data to make the content SEO optimized.
The platform provides quality photography and videography services that will assist with your project. Their team provides video services like property tours, community spotlights, and agent profile videos.
Our email newsletter templates and campaigns allow agents to nurture their leads with insightful content right in their inboxes. These campaigns can be tailored to your unique requirements and automated based on user behavior.
We provide full-service social media services for all main platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and a lot more. The team makes a unique content calendar for every agent to match their brand voice and audience preferences.
They create professional graphics, captivating captions, and effective hashtags for great visibility. This service manages the posting schedule, engages the audience and moderates comments to ensure active profiles.
Luxury Presence runs paid advertisement campaigns across social media platforms with precise targeting of potential buyers and sellers. Performance analytics measure engagement, reach, and conversion from social channels.
Real estate agents receive periodic reports that highlight the increase in followers, engagement rates, and leads generated. The team ensures their approach stays updated with social media algorithms and technologies at the time.
Luxury Presence has a preferred network of the best real estate agents by market. Members can connect clients with trusted agents in other areas to help relocating clients keep getting good service.
The referral system has a simple dashboard for tracking referrals and commissions. Agents can access detailed sales and review information for potential referral partners.
Agents will receive priority referral access from other Luxury Presence clients. This gets our agent’s qualified leads. The platform takes care of the paperwork involved in referral contracts and commissions.
Agents have referral partner relationships through regular virtual and in-person networking events. These connections can spark collaborations for ventures other than merely sharing referrals between them.
Luxury Presence is ahead in the marketing game because of several advantages it has. Their platform provides mesmerizing website designs that showcase luxury properties and agent brands beautifully.
The business offers full SEO services that help agents rank higher in search results. These strategies to improve website ranking are customized for the real estate market.
Key Advantages:
The marketing team has expertise in targeting HNW clients. By being specialized, luxury agents will connect with qualified leads and not just generate high volumes of unqualified traffic.
Client support at Luxury Presence gets a lot of good reviews. Many agents like the responsive customer service and guidance that is offered throughout.
The platform comes with social media management tools for real estate agents. These tools allow agents to improve their branding across multiple platforms.
Agent uses data analytics tools to assess performance metrics and modify strategy as required. This feature helps professionals make wise decisions about their marketing.
Busy agents streamline their lead management processes with CRM integration. This allows real estate professionals to close deals instead of spending time on paperwork.
Real estate pros might find Luxury Presence has some great services, but potential customers must weigh up the downsides. The high prices mean a lot of new and mid-level agents can’t afford their services. Monthly packages usually start at $500 and may go up to $5,000 for a complete solution.
Contract requirements can be an issue because most contracts require the client to stay for a minimum of 12 months. Agents require a large upfront financial investment before they can assess ROI.
Many users have found the platform’s proprietary tools challenging to learn. Because the tools are so complex, they often need more extra training time that busy agents can’t fit in.
Customer service response times are inconsistent, as noted in reviews by the customers. Some users may get quick solutions, but others may have to wait for days together for support on the tech issue.
Limited Customization Options:
SEO services can take at least 4 to 6 months to produce results. This long timeframe can annoy agents wanting traffic quickly.
You cannot integrate it with other CRM. This could disrupt team workflows if they use specialized software solutions outside Luxury Presence.
Sometimes, content creation services will deliver generic materials that need a heavy revision to reflect a specific market or personal brand voice. Agents managing their platforms end up saving more time than they do.
It is important for agents and brokerages to know how real estate marketing companies charge so they can plan their budgets. Most high-end real estate marketing companies like Luxury Presence and Agent Image have tiered pricing based on the level of service.
Websites with entry-level packages usually start from $3,000-$5,000 for setup and $100-$300 monthly to maintain. These basic packages usually have templated design, limited customization and standard SEO.
Most mid-range packages start at $5000 to $10000, and you pay $300 to $600 monthly. These packages include custom design elements, lead generation tools, and improved search engine optimization services.
Premium packages for luxury real estate professionals can cost $10,000-$25,000+ upfront with monthly retainers of $600-$1,500. These comprehensive solutions offer:
Many companies will also offer a la carte services for specific marketing needs. The price of an SEO campaign can range from $1000 to $3000 per month, and a content creation package can be priced from $500 to $1500 per month.
The price can vary significantly depending on market position, company reputation, and service quality. Some providers offer a 10-15% discount for prepaid annual payments.
When examining pricing, real estate people should assess the potential ROI, not merely the costs. Services with higher price tags tend to yield better quality leads, which can convert with greater effectiveness.
Luxury Presence is a well-known real estate marketing platform, but there are some other good competitors to Luxury Presence in 2025. Let’s take a look at companies offering a service similar to that of Luxury Presence.
Inboundrem has emerged as a Luxury Presence alternative, offering inbound marketing strategies designed specifically for real estate professionals. The service provides SEO services to rank on the first page for highly competitive real estate keywords.
Their CRM includes MLS listings & its automated follow-up sequences convert at 23% higher than the industry average. Real estate agents, particularly.
Value Inboundrem’s content marketing services, which include:
There are no long-term contracts. Pricing starts at $1499 monthly. The company states that most clients see ROI in 3-4 months, compared to an industry average of 6-8 months.
Placester began as a simple website builder but has since grown into a fully-fledged marketing solution. Agents can have fully functional IDX-enabled websites within 48 hours on their platform.
Their AI lead qualification engine scores prospects based on their browsing behavior and engagement pattern. It has been proven through data that it can increase conversion rates by 37% as compared to old ones.
Placester offers tiered pricing plans:
| Plan | Price | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Agent Essential | $59/mo | |
| Agent Plus | $79/mo | IDX website, basic lead capture |
| Agent Premier | $129/mo | CRM, email marketing, analytics |
| Premier + Content | $329/mo | Custom design, priority support |
With their mobile-first approach, websites perform well on the devices and have Google PageSpeed scores around 89/100.
Sierra Interactive is known for its excellent lead generation and powerful automation tools. The platform is a PPC campaign management system. Their proprietary algorithms have lowered the industry’s most cost-effective cost-per-lead by an average of 31% for our 2025 clients.
Neighborhood-specific landing page technology creates hyper-local marketing opportunities that convert at double the rate of regular property pages. Sierra has PPC experts on its team who manage your campaigns, not just your software.
Real estate teams appreciate Sierra’s role-based permissions system, allowing:
Sierra Interactive Pricing Starts At $499 per month (plus a set-up fee), indicating its premium position. The platform has a 6-month commitment, but it also has a 30-day money-back guarantee for new clients.
A: Luxury Presence is a powerful CRM and lead generation solution designed specifically for real estate agents. The Luxury Presence platform enables real estate agents to improve their functionalities, boost their online presence, and gain leads, especially in the luxury market.
A: Luxury Presence is one of the best real estate marketing companies largely because of its specialized nature. It really stands out from others as it focuses exclusively on luxury real estate to provide a comprehensive suite of tools to help luxury real estate agents.
A: Luxury Presence provides new agents with easy-to-use website making, real estate SEO optimization and lead generation tools to establish themselves in the growing competitive real estate market.
A: Luxury Presence helps real estate business owners implement digital marketing strategies. Luxury Presence’s platform has various tools like engaging content, social media management, and effective SEO tactics to boost your real estate business’s visibility.
A: Client reviews of Luxury Presence show it effectively helps luxury real estate agents receive more leads and improve online visibility. Many users love how easy to use Luxury Presence is, the support provided to them by the team, and what Malte Kramer has to say.
A: Luxury Presence has advanced lead generation tools created just for the real estate market. These tools allow agents to capture leads and nurture them for increased deal-closing opportunities in a competitive market.
A: When it comes to choosing the best real estate website design, one must consider their ease of navigation, mobile design, integration with the CRMs, and showcasing listings. Luxury Presence does a great job in these areas.Â
A: Yes to both Brokers and Individual Agents. We Have Agents. The flexible platform is suitable for real estate brokerages as well as luxury real estate agents, so it works for both groups.
A: Luxury Presence can help you discover various opportunities in real estate; may it be market report, lead tracking or any other tool, the agency offers it all while following the best strategies of the luxury real estate market.Â
Choosing a top real estate marketing firm is greatly important for agents and brokerages who want to expand their digital presence in 2025. Firms like Luxury Presence and Agent Image continue to make waves for their all-in-one stunning website design and SEO.
Leading real estate pros know that digital marketing isn’t just about a website. It’s about an entire system that produces qualified leads and builds brand authority.
Real estate professionals should look at more than price when assessing potential marketing partners. The return on investment, quality of leads, and long-term support all count in true value.
According to the industry, custom content and social media marketing will remain crucial for real estate marketing in 2025 and beyond.
Statements and portfolio pieces from past clients are a good indicator of the marketing company’s capability and style. Get case studies relevant to your own property type or market segment from professionals.
The best marketing partnerships change with the times and technology. Real estate companies that offer ongoing optimizations and strategy tweaks, deliver better long-term outcomes.
Real estate professionals should pick marketing partners who have an understanding of property marketing and can turn their industry expertise into business success.
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