Brokerage Insider

Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi everybody. And welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann. I'm the CEO of Travis. We're one of the largest independent prop tech companies in real estate provider of custom brokerage technology to medium and large sized brokerages in the United States, Canada, and around the world.

In addition, I'm the managing partner for Travis capital. We're a private equity fund focused on the PropTech and. On today's episode, we have Greg burns. Greg is the co-founder and CEO of drop offer a company that if you were at the inbound conference recently, you probably saw all over the place. It's an app that helps dial you into off-market listings.

And we'll learn more about how that happens, cause I'm sure our listeners will be intrigued by that lead in on top of being the CEO of drop-off or Griggs, a licensed realtor with compass and previously had his license with Sotheby's and elite Pacific property. Great. Thanks so much for joining us.

Eric is so great to be here with you and your listeners. Well, let's dive in. And, and first of all, I'd like to know, and I always ask people that have been in the industry for awhile, and it definitely seemed like you've been in the real estate brokerage industry for awhile. What got you into real estate?

Yeah, I've always loved architecture. I remember when I was a young child just drawing floor plans and kind of building my dream house and that actually evolved into. A bit of a career in construction. I was a project manager for an ultra high end builder, and I really got to know what it took to build these homes.

And granted, I was pushing the pencil. I wasn't necessarily, you know, swinging and hammer, but I understood the value of each nail. I understood the finished detail that goes into all these homes. And you would slave, you know, you would, let's put it this way. You would spend months and months and months building these homes.

And at the end of the day, I just will never forget where a real estate agent would come in. Spend about 30 days, you know, marketing it and ultimately selling it and making like three times as much money as I did for this, these efforts that we were doing to build these homes. So I quickly realized like, oh, maybe I'm at the wrong part of this transaction.

And I quickly went and got my real estate license and leveraged my, my knowledge about these homes, especially in the high end world to, you know, jump kind of feet first into the. Ultra high end real estate world. Quickly kind of rise to the top because I was able to explain this the golden thread, right?

What, what into some of these really special homes. And it was, it was really a great it was an added tool for me when I'm going to listing presentations to be able to start firing off all these finishes and the details that went into these homes before the homeowner would even go and you know, start exceeding.

Explaining some of these, these finishes that went into these homes and that really allowed me to pick up listings quickly and start selling some of these really beautiful, beautiful homes. And it it quickly led to this ability to. Established myself as an agent and then move on. And we started establishing ourselves as brokerages.

And that was first as a small company, small company called elite Pacific, and then ultimately led and led to the ability to bring compass Hawaii over here, which has been, been nothing short of fantasy. And, and so obviously you're an agent with compass which, you know, I, I will say we have probably about half of our listeners are, are intrigued and would like to, to dig into that more than we probably will today.

And other half of our...

Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everybody. And welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann and I'm the CEO of Travis. We're one of the largest independent prop tech companies in real estate and provider of custom brokerage technology to medium and large sized brokerages in the United States, Canada, and even around the world.

In addition, I'm the managing partner of Travis' capital, a private equity fund focused on the prop tech industry. On today's episode, we have Michael Lucarelli. Now Michael is the co-founder and CEO of rent spree at leasing management tool that has been focused on the MLS industry recently. And I'll, we'll be sure to dive a little more into that, Michael.

Thanks so much for joining us today and thank you so much, Eric. Really glad to be here and excited to chat with you today. Yeah, so let's dive in. So, you know, the first question that I pretty much ask all of our guests is how did you get into real estate and real estate tech? Yeah. So going back a couple of years ago is when I first actually moved.

So I'm from the east coast and I moved to California. It was about 2014 or so. And so a lot of what I experienced was first originating as a renter. And so I had done it quite a bit of moving around up until that point and just saw how there's really a massive number of people that are renting. And the U S again, kind of looking at it from the renter lens and that it was just a completely fragmented process where when you're a renter, you're kind of thrown through these loops where you have to submit your application to many different properties if to pay fees over and over again, you don't really hear back.

There's a question of information security with your sensitive information. So I saw all that on the renter side and then kind of combining that a little bit. I actually ended up getting my real estate license and hung it at a local Remax. And so I really put both pieces together where on one hand I was renting and saw that.

And then I was working in the Remax office and I saw actually a ton of agents that were working with rentals or at least trying to, and at this office. Considering how many people were working with rentals on a regular basis? I was surprised that there was no tools. There was no resources, even like the broker didn't really have any feedback or advice to give to agents on how to handle these types of rental transactions when agents were working with lease listings and representing renters.

And so I just saw a huge gap in an opportunity and given how large renting is in the us. Just like saw big chance for me to kind of come in and create a standardization that can streamline these processes for renters. But of course, also now a lot of what we do is focusing on agents, brokerages landlords, property managers, MLS.

So from a high level, you know, just to, so that everybody is listening. And can you give us a high level understanding of exactly what rents Bree does for either the broker or the consumer? Yeah. W what rent-free does, is it really looks at You know, like these rental transactions, and this is not necessarily something designed for property managers.

Although we do have property management companies that use rent-free it's really for agents that are mainly focusing on selling and buying, but they may have from time to time the opportunity to work on a rental, whether they have a lease listing and they're representing a landlord, or they might represent a renter.

And so Given how many people, how many people are kind of working on those types of transactions and spree really seeks to streamline that process as much as possible, because we know that typically. Agents and...

Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone. And welcome to another episode of brokerage insider. This is the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and real estate technology. My name is Britt Chester. I'm the host of today's episode. I'm also the director of client success here at TRIBUS.

We're one of the largest independent prop tech companies in real estate and provider of custom brokerage technology to small, medium, and large brokerages all over the world today on the show, we're going to be talking about marketing and specifically digital marketing, and we're joined by Nick Markman.

Principal product strategists at vocalize. Nick, welcome to the show. Hey, Britt. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. I think digital marketing is a really exciting topic right now, as we enter this kind of like, I don't want to say post COVID, but this, this next phase. But before we get into it, Nick, tell us a little bit about a vocalize as well as a little bit about your.

Yeah, absolutely. So a vocalize we're collaborative marketing platform. So we basically enable local, small and medium businesses to easily execute sophisticated digital marketing. And we do that by partnering with their, either their national brand, like their. Where we partner with technology platforms, you know, like try this or other CRM website providers.

And through that collaboration of partnering with the what we call the sponsoring partner and the data that they have and, you know, getting a marketing platform, that's integrated with the tools that those agents and brokers are using. We're able to accomplish marketing outcomes on behalf of the, those users that they wouldn't be able to achieve with.

That collaboration and also saved them a lot of time. You know, we'll talk about this, you know, I think throughout the conversation, but the reality is that, you know, local and small businesses some of them may be great marketers, certainly. But to be an expert in, in digital marketing, certainly requires a lot of time and resources to truly be an expert at.

And a lot of those businesses that they just don't have that, right? If you're an agent or a broker, you're going to be spending most of your time selling houses and managing your relationships. So our ideas that we want to be that digital marketing easy button that allows them to still get all the performance that they want from digital marketing leads, revenue.

But by spending a lot less time doing so. And doing so in a, in a really seamless way where they don't really need to set anything not bright. So by doing that, we've seen, for example, in real estate agents and brokers go from spending nine hours a week, marketing their business to nine minutes. And we've seen dramatic performance results as well, seeing 400% stronger performance than when they're doing it on.

Yeah. I mean, I, I know real estate agents are there's, there's so much of an ask on a real estate agent today, right? Like there's so much expectation as to the service that they're, that they're meant to provide. And, and whenever I'm, you know, working one-on-one with either agents or brokerages, it's always a matter of looking at, you know, how much time do we have in the week and how.

Can we really allocate to not just learning and understanding digital marketing, but also deploying that and seeing a solid return there. So I think, you know, tools, you know, I know at Tribus we've, we've partnered with a vocalize and I think that this partnership has been, you know, just in its infancy right now.

One of our, one of our more exciting ones, just because it provides new opportunities for us. To, to put their face out there to put their name out there, to put their properties out there....

Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host Britt Chester director of client success at Travis. And today we have veteran agent and broker Wade . McColey Wade. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

Wait, where are you? Where are you joining us from? Where are you based? We are located in green bay, Wisconsin. And how was the weather in green bay right now? Rainy. It's been very nice, but it is raining now, but we, we appreciate even the warm, rainy days after a few months of I can definitely imagine that wait, you've got quite the resume, you know, when we were just kind of talking a little bit, we'd got, got Realty high, you got cash certified.

Tell me a little bit about your history getting into real estate and just kind of give our listeners and audience, you know, a little bit of your back. Sure. Well, I Fell in love with real estate pretty early on in my, in my, in my life. And one of the things that intrigued me so much about real estate is formerly before that I was in a rock band and Doing a little bit of small touring and realize that boy, this is a tough way to make a living.

Cause we weren't, you're going to become the rolling stones by any means. And had a brother-in-law that was in real estate and kind of watched it and thought, okay, this looks interesting. And he approached me and I got into real estate fairly young when I was about 2021. And just absolutely fell in love with it and maybe a little bit for the wrong reason, but I thought houses were cool and really, really enjoy the fact when it, when the light bell went off for me light bulb went off for me.

It was really about the fact that I didn't know anywhere where I could make. The kind of money that I wanted to make. And what I mean by that is in real estate, there's really no ceiling. I mean, you, you set your own ceiling and real estate, you can make as much or as little as you want by just, you know, getting really efficient, working hard, having good systems.

So that's what launched me into it. I was, I started a couple of different real estate companies sold those was number three for close transactions for a major franchise. And just, that led me to all kinds of really cool opportunities. And that's another thing that I always loved about real estate was the opportunities that it can lead you into if you become really good and known as being really good.

So that led me into. The banking industry, which I helped co-found Nikolay national bank and it's now publicly traded a $7 billion company. That's done extremely well, a lot of talent around that, that wasn't just me by any means. But then when the crash came in 2009, 2010, I saw really quickly that community banks and banks needed a system to help promote their properties in a new way globally.

So fast forward through that, we worked with banks in 38 states. I'm always hiring local agents as our reps. We still do that work today. Then got a opportunity to work for the federal, with the federal government selling assets for the federal government and that morphed into. Realty I've been cash defied today.

Yeah. And I was able to look around on Realty hive. I think, you know, one of the things, and we had mentioned this before you're licensed in nearly all 50 states. And, you know, again, that, that thing that stands out is, is that continuing ed continuing education and, and what all that takes. But can I talk about, you know, why, why you're licensed in so many places and then how that kind of speaks to Realty hive and, and the business.

Yeah,...

Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.

It's always exciting to learn how and why people choose to enter the real estate industry. For Samantha Heyer, a broker associate with MODUS Real Estate in Denver, Colorado, the decision came last year during one of the most transitional periods in history. Heyer entered real estate following a successful career in the communications and PR industry primarily focused in healthcare. This experience - managing brand exposure, media relations, public relations - gave Heyer the tools and network needed to hit the ground running in Denver's hot real estate market.

On this episode of Brokerage Insider, Heyer talks about her decision to enter the real estate industry during the pandemic, and what it's like to navigate one of the most coveted markets right now.

TRANSCRIPT:

📍 Welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interviewed the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host Britt Chester. And I'm the director of client success here at Travis. We're one of the largest independent PropTech companies in real estate and providers of technology to real estate companies around the world.

Today, we're joined by Samantha, hire a realtor with modus real estate here in Denver and actually right down the street from where I live. Samantha, how are you doing today? Great. How are you excited to be here? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for joining us on brokerage insider. You know, I think one of the first things we just kind of like to start with is why don't you let our audience know you know, what you do at modus and give us a little bit of background, how you got into Realty.

Yep. So I'm a broker associate at modus real estate. We're based in the Sunnyside neighborhood. So Northwest Denver I've been with modus about eight months. When I made a career change into real estate, I previously for 10 years worked for a PR agency based out of New York city, but we also had offices in other places.

And so when my husband and I moved to Denver about six years ago, Kept that job and was working out of Denver remotely and supporting clients and teams sort of all over the country. So I had a lot of project management experience communications navigating, you know, crisis and issues and things of that nature.

It was all based in the healthcare industry. So did a lot of more. Consumer health or science work. But the crux of it was really client service and I was ready for a change and I wanted to feel a part of. Our new home in Denver and Colorado, and really sort of, you know, in gross myself in the community here.

And my twin sister, Catherine happens to be a realtor in New York city. And she's been doing that now about two years. And so we talk almost every day and you know, when the pandemic hit, I was, you know, spending a lot of time at home and it really got me thinking, okay, I'm ready for a change. And what could it be?

And I decided that real estate would be a really exciting change and would definitely throw me into the community and make me feel a part of Denver. So she sort of gave me the extra push I needed to do it. And then her and I also partnered on sort of a related, but separate business, helping other entrepreneurs who want to start a business, then we help them start a business specifically in real estate and travel.

Very cool. Well, that was definitely a lot. Let's kind of talk about, you know, what was your first kind of thoughts when you were approaching, you know, real estate as a possible career change? You know, I think there's a, there's a lot to take in there because everyone has a different experience and exposure to real estate.

So. You know, when you, when you first started investigating it and...

Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.

TRANSCRIPT:

📍 Hi everybody. And welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann and I'm the CEO of Travis. We're one of the largest independent property technology companies in real estate and provider accustom, brokerage technology to medium and large brokerages in the United States, Canada.

And now even around the world. In addition, I'm the managing partner, Travis capital, a private equity fund focused on the property technology. On today's episode, we have Matt Shaw, the mats, the CEO of a property technology company called blimp homes. Blimp is a mobile only real estate tech company that helps agents connect their clients and other parties in the transaction.

So, Matt, thanks for joining us today. Thanks very much. Great. Well, I'm excited to dig in and learn a little bit more about your company to be honest you know, until we, we chatted here about you coming on the show, I hadn't heard of you guys before, so I'm really interested in learning more about what you guys do.

I did get a chance to play with your app. And so for all those folks listening, you know, feel free to jump into the app store either Google or Apple app stores. You're on both and you can go download the blimp homes app and play with it. But first let's talk a little bit about your history and how you got into real estate, because that's something I'm always very interested in.

Now, when I, when I took a quick peak, it looks like you come from a history in the banking world, the the FinTech world. And then recently you kind of got into the blockchain world. So what, what caused you to have a jump into. Yes. Thanks very much. Well, my background, as you, as you rightly say, is a bit varied.

And I, I started my career in investment banking. I was the best bank for over 20 years, but I was always very much involved on I would say the cutting edge side, you know, the innovation side. So I was very deeply involved for instance, in building the capital markets in the central and Eastern Europe.

And that led me to, to, to, to down various avenues eventually into investing in real estate personally. Really that was probably my first foray into the real estate space. I mean, I guess growing up in London you know, everybody is slightly obsessed with property and you know, certainly, you know, my, my experience was trying to get on the property ladder at a young age.

Going through a bit of a boom and bust and then, and then eventually sort of investing in other properties abroad you know, partly because of my banking background, I traveled around quite a bit. So I've lived in several countries and ended up, you know, buying properties and obviously UK, but also France, Cyprus, Switzerland, Canada, and, and also the U S and I think.

My experience in the U S was one of the reasons where she really piqued my interest to, to get into this. Well, you know, obviously if you've, if you've done that level of investing in ownership of properties, I can see where, where you'd be interested. But do you, do you or anybody around you have any formal brokerage side of the business?

Cause it, the reason I asked the question is that I, a lot of times, you know, people that start in this world, you usually have come from, they were an agent before a broker before a family member was an agent or a broker for before accepting. But from what you just said, it didn't sound like that was the case.

So you were an investor and, and owned property and then decided to jump in and help solve a problem. Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah. So that's my personal experience, but...

Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.

The real estate industry is effectively made up of hundreds of thousands of individual agents who are all, in a sense, their own small business managers. It takes tenacity, grit, marketing prowess and flexibility to make it in this industry, and that's especially true when you're talking about red hot, super competitive New York City.

Amy Herman Schechter of SERHANT knows first-hand what it takes. She's built quite a name for herself, whether through navigating New York co-ops, or helping forever-New Yorkers land a brilliant investment property in the Hamptons -- she's done it all. You may have even seen her on an episode of Million Dollar Listing New York, which, coincidentally, is how she came to work with Ryan Serhant and the rest of the agents and brokers at his prestigious brokerage.

On this episode of Brokerage Insider, Amy Herman Schechter talks about what it was like starting in real estate in a post-9/11 New York, and what she's bringing to the table now with 20 years under her belt and a wealth of industry insider knowledge.

TRANSCRIPT:

📍 Hi, everyone. Welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interviewed the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host Britt Chester, and I'm the director of client success here at Travis. We're one of the largest independent prop tech companies in real estate and providers of custom real estate technology to real estate companies around the world.

Today, we're joined by Amy Herman. Schechter one of team sear, haunts leading Manhattan realtors. And one has been named one of New York. City's top 100 real estate agents by the wall street journal. Amy. Thanks for doing my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I think to start, why don't you give our listeners a little bit of an introduction to yourself as well as how you got into real estate?

You know, a little who, what, when, where and why. So I actually started in real estate back in 2002, which is now just about two decades ago. I came from a celebrity and tourism PR background. So I was working with celebrity clients as well as hotels restaurants. Sports heroes and I got into real estate when I was 24.

And so now, you know, my age and at the time I was fascinated by the way, people, especially new Yorkers lived. I'm sure most people can remember. It was back in the days of gossip girl meets. Sex and the city life. And I was one of those girls running around town, checking out the latest restaurants dating, and I loved seeing how people live.

And my father and actually the guy I was dating his father at the time said, you know, why don't you go into sales? You really should like get into sales. You're so persuasive. We feel like you could sell ice to Eskimos and maybe that would suit you in something like real estate. Cause they know I didn't really care to push a product.

It wasn't really, that's not my jam. So The rest is kind of history. I took the exam. It was actually half as difficult in terms of the hours at the time. So you only needed 40 hours. I studied, I took the state exam and then I started in the business and I was like, how am I going to do this? How am I going to get clients?

How am I even going to sell my first home? And it did take me a good 18 months to figure it all out. I started in the rental market and I realized rentals are not for me. I definitely was. You know, I think what happened was, is that rentals were, are a quick fix and you, you know, short, a quick job and you get paid quickly, but I actually really.

Found that I thrived on figuring out where are people going to be for the long-term. How do you navigate this process? How do you get a mortgage who's agreed attorney to come with us along...

This week, CEO Eric Stegemann and Director of Client Success Britt Chester discuss the news of the week in real estate, including:

• The National Association of Realtors sets a new membership record
• Leading Real Estate Companies of the World holds a large in-person event post COVID - are events back?
• iBuyer Data Junky, Mike DelPrete joins cash backed offer company Homeward

This week, CEO Eric Stegemann and Director of Client Success, Britt Chester discuss:

• Returning your agents and staff to the office effectively
• Building culture back with your agents and staff
• Low inventory and what you can do about it
• Getting builders to build faster

Enjoying Brokerage Insider? Please Subscribe Using Your Favorite Podcast Player.

When it launched more than 5 years ago, Opendoor seemed like another rehash of HomeVestors of America - the Ug buys ugly houses company. With offers that were far off value, it was easy for Realtors to dismiss the company.

However, over 5 years, Opendoor has dramatically increased their data and made their offers very competitive. In some markets, Opendoor is offering at or above market value and charging fees as low as 3% total.

Does this mean doom and gloom? Not according to Tyler Hixson, Head of Growth and Strategy at Opendoor Brokerage. Tyler presents numerous ways that traditional brokerages can work directly with Opendoor to not only help their clients, but to get paid for doing it!