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Should Real Estate Agents Be Worried About iBuyers? • Close-ing Time • Chris Linsell

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Вміст надано D.J. Paris. Весь вміст подкастів, включаючи епізоди, графіку та описи подкастів, завантажується та надається безпосередньо компанією D.J. Paris або його партнером по платформі подкастів. Якщо ви вважаєте, що хтось використовує ваш захищений авторським правом твір без вашого дозволу, ви можете виконати процедуру, описану тут https://uk.player.fm/legal.

Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.

Chris Linsell from TheClose.com and DJ discuss a viral TikTok video about Zillow’s iBuyer program. The conversation continues about anti-competitive measures and market manipulations. Next, they discuss the control of the information shared in various social media platforms between groups of real estate agents. Last, Chris shares some legal questions you may be asked by your clients and that you should be able to answer.

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

Chris Linsell can be reached at chris@theclose.com.

This episode is brought to you by Follow Up Boss. Get your 30 day trial by clicking here.


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
Today’s episode is brought to you by thumbs up. Here’s a cool fact 50% of consumers rely on their social network to help them make purchasing decisions. So let me ask you, how many more referrals and great leads would your business receive if all your happy customers took the time to post their experiences and endorse your business on social media to all their connections? Well, I’ve got great news thumbs up does just that. Thumbs up is a referral system designed to help businesses leverage their customers social media with almost no hassle. With thumbs up, you can create a personalized post for your customer, allowing them in two easy clicks to celebrate their new purchase or service while endorsing your business to all their connections. Your post becomes their post and all of their friends and family can see your hard work through your customers eyes. And even better thumbs up as offering keeping it real listeners 50% off for your first two months visit get a thumbs up.com forward slash keeping it real and the offer code will automatically be applied at checkout. Again, that’s good a thumbs up.com forward slash keeping it real thumbs up referrals without asking. And now on to our show.

Right Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I am your guide and host through the show today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lindh sell from the closed.com. This is a partnership between keeping it real and the closed.com Let me tell you about the clothes. The clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals. They cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology and team building strategies. From the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Please visit the clothes.com That’s th e c l o e s e.com And subscribe to their newsletter so you get notified every time they publish an article with us as always is crystallin sell he is a senior staff writer and real estate coach for the clothes. Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead generation transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. Chris has been part of hundreds of transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his communities Theater’s production. Chris, welcome once again to keeping it real. We’re excited to have

Chris Linsell 2:52
you here today. So glad to be back. It’s the end of September when we’re recording this. So maybe happy October when people are listening to this. It’s fall either way. The Fall is here by

D.J. Paris 3:04
the Fall is here and I am in Chicago, you’re in Michigan. It is here. Today is the 27th of September although the episode won’t go live for people listening now are probably in October, but it is still 80 degrees outside today. And he in Chicago. I don’t know what it’s like in Michigan must be a nice day up there as well.

Chris Linsell 3:22
Beautiful. I’m not complaining at all. I’m complaining a little bit because I’m sitting in my office working outside goofing around. Got a lot of important things to talk about a lot happening in the real estate world. So I was excited to jump on a chat today.

D.J. Paris 3:36
Yeah, let’s talk first about this viral Tiktok video that’s making the rounds that came up a couple couple of days ago. This was a a realtor basically posted a video about Zillow and some concerns about their eye buying practices.

Chris Linsell 3:55
Yeah, so i i Follow Zillow news very closely. And in fact, I think a lot of realtors should, in part because they are such a dominant force in our industry. But I was even I as somebody who follows them pretty closely was surprised and interested to see this. So if you haven’t seen this you should. You should you should do a little Googling and check out Zelos anti competitive practices. What what people are saying about that? Here’s the gist of a realtor who made a tic tac realtor out of Las Vegas. Here’s what they suggested. They suggested that Zillow as a function of their eye buying program has the opportunity and often the occasion to engage in market manipulation via the purchase and sale prices of the homes that they’re buying in their eye buying program. And I know that sounds a little dense so Let me break it down a little bit, let’s say that you’ve got an entity that has a virtually unlimited buying power. And as a part of an AI buying program, they buy 10 homes in a neighborhood. Now, if you’re talking

D.J. Paris 5:12
about possibly a company with the amount of data that Zillow has coming in and saying, Hey, we we are going to come in and make offers to the sellers.

Chris Linsell 5:23
That’s right, yeah. And as a part of I bind, you often exchange, you get a faster sale, you get a smoother transaction, you get less or no negotiating. So it’s a it’s a, it’s often a smoother experience. But in exchange for that smoother experience, you sacrifice some of your profits. So it’s not uncommon for ibuying. purchase prices to be anywhere from five up to 15%, below the typical market value. So that is understandable considering you’re making a trade for convenience, money for convenience. So let’s say like, for

D.J. Paris 6:03
example, it could start interrupted it could be i by people who are prone to being I buyers, or rather, the clients of I buyers would be maybe somebody who inherits a home from a from a relative that passes away, or somebody that just needs to exit a home very quickly. Maybe they’re being transferred, or they’re leaving the state or that the immediate area.

Chris Linsell 6:28
That’s right, yep. In fact, those were the clients that were first kind of identified as the potential best fits for AI buyers. But numbers have shown that there are more and more people who are willing to trade some of their money for convenience. And this kind of makes sense, when you think about this in the greater landscape of business. I mean, how many times have we paid a few extra bucks for our food to be delivered to our doorstep rather than getting in the car and driving 10 minutes down the road to the restaurant that we got the takeout from? This is what Uber Eats and DoorDash are all based on is this idea that we’re willing to trade some of our money for convenience. So if you put this in the context of I buy, and let’s say this company has bought in a neighborhood, they purchased 10 homes under market value by 15%. And then the 11th. Home they purchase, they purchase it 10% above market value. And I might You might be asking, why would they do that? Well, now they have the latest comps in the neighborhood is 20, effectively 20% higher than the other homes that they own. And so now they can turn around and sell those other homes at the higher using the latest comp as kind of the North Star for the CMAS that are done for the listing prices. Now, there’s a lot that goes into why this isn’t actually an effective strategy. Like there’s a lot of reasons why this wouldn’t work. But what it really does for me, what this conversation really does is it brings up how important the the issue of anti competitive behavior in real estate is, how pervasive it is, how easy it could be for that to happen. And it really starts us down the trail of thinking, where else do we face this problem in our industry? And what can we do about it? Yeah, it

D.J. Paris 8:23
reminds me of it in Chicago, here we have, we have we have a lot of traders, this is a big trading city, we have the Board of Trade here. And whenever I would meet a trader, because I never, maybe I’m not smart enough to really understand how trading truly works. But I would ask, you know, I would meet somebody who was a trader, and I would say, Well, what do you do? And they’d say, Well, I trade interest rates. And I would say, Well, I don’t know what that means. And they would say all we care about is movement. As long as there’s movement, we make money. And I said well do you care if the market goes up, or if interest rates go up or down, they’re like not really, we just care about movement, because the algorithms that they used to sort of predict the trades that would be most profitable to them, were already sort of figured out by whoever the the egg heads were behind the scenes. And so all they really had to do was get some volatility going in the market and they were able to manipulate certain sectors of in this case, in the example I gave like interest rates, just to get some movement going and then they could find some margin in those in that movement and figure out which way they want to bet. And it’s just super talking about a sort of a similar strategy here that you know, it would be whether or not Zillow will or has done this is one question the other the other question is, could anybody do this? And the answer of course is yes. Because anyone could go into a neighborhood and purchase homes under market value and then take so I guess the question becomes around comps is how do we is there a way to streamline whomps comps, you know, we all know is like an art and a science? Is there a way to more methodically define what a good comp looks like so that the manipulation isn’t as easy to pull off? I guess?

Chris Linsell 10:16
That’s a great question. I mean, ultimately, this is something that I talked to agents back, I’m going to be doing a session at the triple play conference in Atlantic City, this December speaking session about how to produce a bulletproof comparative market analysis. And one of the things that I talk to folks about in sessions like that is when you’re pulling comps, you have to recognize that there is no silver bullet, there is no specific apply to all formula that is going to yield you an effective comparison. Just like real estate comps are local comps are specific to the circumstance. And so in the same way that you can’t peg a comp in Lincoln Park to the Gold Coast in Chicago, you can’t, you know, you may have some similarities there. But it’s really going to be neighborhood to neighborhood even building to building sometimes. So that’s the first golden rule here is to not get too tied to a particular comp before investigating how applicable, it is to your actual scenario. The other thing that I think is important to remember when you are thinking about comps, in the context of this conversation about potentially anti competitive behavior, is we engage in market manipulation subtly all the time. I mean, if you don’t think that you as a realtor engaged in this, tell me that you’ve never had a conversation with a client said, Well, if we list in June, we’ll probably get a higher price than if we list in, in February. That’s

D.J. Paris 11:57
it’s the last week. You know, it’s the second week in December, let’s not list right now, because everyone is not paying attention to the market. We’re all doing our December holiday stuff.

Chris Linsell 12:09
That’s 100%. Right? Guess what, if you listed that property in the second week of December, that would change the inventory levels, those inventory levels would balance against the the demand at that current time it would affect prices, you are making subtle market manipulation decisions based on that. And there’s nothing wrong with that, right. Like this is part of fundamental strategy for offering our clients the best experience possible. But we have to decide whether or not there’s a line to be drawn? And if there is who gets to draw it and where is it?

D.J. Paris 12:42
Yeah, that’s really the question because technology is going to perfect this sort of system, because it’s just math really. So ultimately, you know, the the the systems will be figured out technology is advanced beyond beyond regulation at this point in a lot of different industries, not not only real estate, but now real estate starting to get a sense of Oh, wow. So what market manipulation in the equities market in the stock market has been more present for quite some time. And I think there’s a whole regulatory boards, making sure that there aren’t people out there that are obviously manipulating the market in a way that they deem is illegal or unethical. But there are guidelines for securities, we you know, there are there are things that you can and can’t do. If your wife is a C suite executive for a massive public company, and she goes, Hey, our earnings report, which is going to come out next Thursday, is going to be very bad. Let’s dump all of our shares, then that is that is most likely going to be an illegal activity because you have inside information, you’re you’re you’re manipulating the market for your own benefit. So I guess it’d be very interesting to see how how the National Association of Realtors and how the government attempts to sort of regulate this because they’re going to have to, I think,

Chris Linsell 14:09
yeah, I agree with you. And I think you since you mentioned them, I was I was hesitant to pull this card out of the deck just yet. But since you mentioned their name, I’m just gonna throw this out here. The National Association of REALTORS has not been immune to conversations regarding anti competitive behavior. It’s in a different context. But there are a lot of people who have a bit of a bee in their bonnet, so to speak about the fact that it is really difficult to be a full time functional real estate professional in this country without belonging to and I’m just going to call it what it is a professional organization that is on its face voluntary, but I can tell you from personal experience, I can’t belong to my local organization without belonging to the National Association of Realtors. And so is this a is this anti competitive? Would there be rises of other professional organizations for our, our industry if Gnar wasn’t positioned the way they are? I don’t know exactly. I’ve honestly never known a world without the position of NAR in the way that it is right now. But the idea of anti competitive behavior in real estate, this is not new. And these conversations are going to continue to come up

D.J. Paris 15:29
my, one of my favorite questions when I talk to a newly licensed broker, or somebody who just passes their exam, and they are deciding what firm they want to work at. And so they might be talking to me about our firm. And after discussing all the things we offer, I’ll say, Oh, by the way, part of the the sort of way that it works here is you have to join a local association. In this case, there’s, well, there’s lots of several of them here in the Chicagoland area, you have to join one of them, we belong to all of them. So you get to choose which one but you have to join one. And that will pay for your MLS access as well as your local state and national dues. And then oftentimes they’ll say, Well, what if I don’t want to do that? And I say, Well, unfortunately, the way that it’s set up is that you have to not because we expect you to or we require it, but that the local association requires it. And they would say, Well, that seems a bit unfair. And I don’t always have I never have an answer to whether that’s fair or unfair. It just sort of simply is what it is. Although that’s that’s not a good question of why is it that way? But it begs the question of of, yeah, it’d be very interesting to see how the National Association of REALTORS talks about things like this, when they themselves, of course, have, you know, some, some consideration with with their own practices, which isn’t in no way, of course, meant to disparage the National Association of Realtors. But this is just a complicated problem that any massive industry has to face and create some rules around

Chris Linsell 17:09
AI 100% agree. And I actually I want to go on record as saying, I agree with you. Now, if you’re listening, this is not an indictment of you and your your practices on this. In fact, I have appreciated your leadership on this particular. Yeah, I do think that being said, with that, with that caveat in mind, I do think that this is a position, an opportunity for positional leadership to because in the same way that it is so important that you you know, you mentioned the the financial regulations of, you know, let’s say my wife is a C suite executive at a fortune 500 company and I have via her insider information about the stock performance or forecasted performance, in the same way that that is a clearly important place to have regulation, the idea that an industry in which the vast majority of Americans the fundamental component of their wealth is at stake here. I mean, more Americans, their their wealth is tied to their the equity in their home than anything else. I mean, by a longshot. You would think that with something that is as important as that, that we would have thoughtful, assertive and vocal leadership on issues like this so that there is no confusion about where the organization that is designed to protect our professional interests in the same way that we’re designed to protect the fiduciary interests of our clients. Nar needs to have a leadership stake in this conversation and not just being an observer because frankly, this is just too important otherwise,

D.J. Paris 18:58
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Chris Linsell 21:47
Well, you know, the interesting thing about this is in, in the same for the same reasons that I am grateful for, for on a lot to say it kind of Federalist business style where we, you know, there’s so much value and emphasis put on a state’s right to kind of create their own rules and regulations. I think that that’s a really valuable thing, especially in real estate, because just like I was talking about before, like this is a this is a local business, you know, real estate is it occurs on the streets in the neighborhoods, it doesn’t occur on the state or national level. And so local places have to be able to make their own rules about their own markets. That being said, that does open us up to some significant challenges when it comes to creating regulation about these broad spectrum issues. And a great example of this, I’ll share a specific example, in my local market, there are rules that are written into my local associations, bylaws, about not creating exclusive groups within the Board of Realtors, for access to information, there’s basically just like any MLS, if you are a member of the MLS, you get access to all the information on the MLS, there isn’t a section of the MLS that you have to pay an extra set of fees to get into if I see a listing, everybody sees a listing, if I see a comp, everybody sees a comp. Well, what happens when you form these private Facebook groups with 20 realtors who you share listings with before they go live, and all of a sudden, you’re not breaking any NAR rules your mate, maybe it’s hard to say exactly. And that made me breaking any state rules. But maybe you’re breaking a local rule. But are you because the rules were written before Facebook was a thing. All of a sudden you have this antitrust situation where you’ve got 20 People who have access to information that the rest of us don’t. And now we have again, an example of anti competitive problems in the real estate industry. So you know, it doesn’t happen just on these major international kind of billion dollar company, business levels. It happens on the street level, it’s really easy for us to forget that equal and open access to all of the information whether it’s market information or customer information or whatever it is. This is a bedrock for which we build our business models on and you know, anything that jeopardizes that sort of access to information is anti competitive and may require regulation.

D.J. Paris 24:35
Same same sort of idea for a brokerage who may be has a dominant market share in a particular area where they have maybe the most number of Realtors, let’s just make it really simple. So let’s say there’s in most areas, there’s probably one firm that has more market share more agents, more more transactions, they are going to have more information about Coming stuff. And is it okay for a realtor at that particular firm to share with all the realtors within that firm? Hey, guys, just so you know, I’ve got a listing coming up on X date, if you’re interested, but ahead of time tell your clients and you know that is that yeah, that’s a great question is how do we how do you how does that get regulated or enforced it, you know, social media groups where like share groups on Facebook or other different social avenues, where you could share this kind of information, you know, you could put a pretty strong, easy sort of rule in place saying, Hey, we just don’t do that. But what about, you know, hanging out at the watercooler at this big office that has access to all of this stuff, and no one else outside of that those walls might might hear it? It’s very interesting. It’s very curious to see if if the, you know, who would regulate something like that, how it would be regulated? Gosh, it’s very interesting, really opens up a lot of conversation.

Chris Linsell 26:04
It is a real brain Bender, and you know, I regularly get into these rabbit hole conversations with people about this sort of thing. But you know, one truth that I come back to on a regular basis is we can we can pretty much answer the first level of any question around these sorts of conversations with answering, is this good for my clients? Is this the best is am I am I fulfilling my first responsibility as a realtor and protect protecting the fiduciary? well being of my clients, if the answer is yes, if the answer is yes, I’m doing that and I am doing it so legally, morally, and ethically, then, then that’s, that’s really the first test that needs to get passed. If you’re you answer that question, you’re like, I think I am, then there is the I think that that that kind of opens up the next level of, well, if you’re not sure that this is in the best interest of your clients, then it’s in the best interest of somebody else. And that’s when we need to start being worried about this. And I think there’s a lot of people coming back to the original conversation. There’s a lot of people who look at the Zillow scenario, and they say, this is a systemic if this were true, if Zillow was manipulating the market on a larger scale basis, and doing it across many, many transactions, and in potentially many markets, that clearly is not for the best interest of the clients at at hand. It’s not for the best interest of the sellers. It’s not for the best interest of the buyers. It’s clearly for their own best interests, and businesses have the ability or the right to create business models that, you know, can generate profit for them, but not at the expense of their clients here.

D.J. Paris 27:58
Yeah. Interesting. And we will continue to talk about this as more more conversations happen in the sort of the public sphere from leadership, because this will be very interesting to continue to monitor. I would like I know that you are working on a I suspect an article, although I don’t know if it’s something for the close. But I know you were you were talking to me beforehand about some to leave our audience with some some actionable sort of information that you can use in a little bit of a different way. But but but somewhat related to what we were talking about, which is some legal questions that you get asked by clients, and that you should have a ready to go answer for

Chris Linsell 28:41
absolutely, yeah, this this, to me is one of what what we’re talking about here is one of those sticky legal questions that every realtor should should know the answers to, right. So you’re gonna get asked questions that are either by your clients or by other people who look to you as a thought leader in the industry. And this is one of those things that maybe you should have an answer to. There are a handful of other questions that I think every realtor should have an answer to. And they get asked because you’re gonna get asked about this. So we’re not going to go through all of these really quickly. But I just want to plant a couple of seeds in your head. If you’re listening. Here are some questions you should know some answers to and I’m going to point you towards the right direction as far as starting to investigate these. The first question is, can I get a referral fee? If I’m not a licensed real estate agent or broker? How often do we have clients are like, Oh, I’ll send you my brother he wants to buy. Can I get a little piece of that? You know, like, maybe it doesn’t. It’s not phrased in exactly like that, that that way. But we have these kinds of questions and real estate agents, again, to the to their credit. We’re always looking for new lead generation. Strategies and utilizing our sphere is one of those strategies. So ask yourself can I had a referral? Can I pay a referral fee to somebody if they don’t have a license? The short answer to this is no. But it’s complicated. So go on to the close, we have an article all about referral fees, you can figure out specifically, what the legal ins and outs are for your state. So that’s the first question referral fees. The second question is, am I adhering to fair housing practices? This is a big question. And there’s a lot to this. But I’m just going to start you with one question is, is my print marketing, adhering to fair housing? Okay. Just your print marketing, just the things that people will see on a piece of paper? This is hard and fast. There are rules NAR has had rules about this fair housing has rules about this going back 50 years. Okay. So this is the question you should ask yourself, Am I adhering? Just right there? And then the last one, we’ll just leave you with with one or the last one is, am I negotiating legally? And here’s what i Here’s? Here’s, here’s a question to kind of spur this conversation. Did you know that there are certain things that you can’t legally negotiate using like, like certain terms, or certain elements of a contract that you can’t negotiate for, like, you can’t necessarily negotiate a real estate transaction based on like, ease of transaction as a product of familial status, oh, this is my guys, my guys single this will be an easy transaction, he doesn’t have to, you know, you won’t have to set up a whole bunch of moving just just him. Guess what, that’s actually that’s, that’s fair housing right there. If you bring fair housing, if you bring somebody’s familial status into negotiations, you are violating Fair Housing statute.

D.J. Paris 31:50
That’s a great example. Because it is such an easy, accidental thing to say, because there’s, there’s a bit of logic to it. And it’s not necessarily, you’re not doing it with a nefarious sort of reason behind it, you’re just saying, Hey, by the way, my guy here is single, this should go really smooth. Which would be a very easy off the cuff comment to make without realizing that you’ve just violated fair housing.

Chris Linsell 32:19
Totally, totally. So. So here’s, here’s this is what I want to challenge folks on is, take a look at your print marketing. Are you adhering to fair housing rules and regs if you’re if you have questions about this, go to the NAR code of ethics, it’s available for free on their website, they have a whole section about print marketing, and fair housing, just do a quick double check, see how you’re doing on that. Think about your referrals? Are you paying referrals legally? Or is everything getting paid through your brokerage? Or is your lead generation strategies? Are they all on the up and up? You know, is there anything that you’re like? Well, it’s maybe a little a little shady, maybe I shouldn’t be throwing money or gift certificates or, you know, visits to restaurants. All that stuff is kind of part of the course of business for a lot of agents. And it’s not on the up and up. So double check yourself on that. And then the last thing is negotiation are you negotiating legally and ethically, and a great way to double check on this is make yourself a negotiation playbook. Even if you’re the only person that ever sees it. Take take 10 minutes and write down the different ways that you negotiate on behalf of your clients. Just seeing them on a piece of paper puts in pretty stark contrast how you’re going about this where you’re finding success. It’s always great to double check your own strategies to make sure that you’re coloring within the lines,

D.J. Paris 33:45
great suggestions and advice. And if you want to review that entire piece, you would you can go check that out at the closed.com I’m not sure if it’s up yet or if you’re working still working on it.

Chris Linsell 33:58
Yeah, we’re still working on that one. So we don’t have the specific things about legal questions up there just yet, but we have articles about referrals and the legality of referrals. We’ve got articles about negotiation in fact, we’ve got a great section a great course the close pro about negotiation, negotiation tactics and and and how to stay on the up and up and still providing the best service possible. And I love talking about fair housing, especially in marketing. So I’m just about every marketing specific article I’ve done on a close, there’s going to be some sort of element of fair housing to that too.

D.J. Paris 34:38
Well, and the clothes we should remind everyone if you’re not already a regular reader of the clothes, most of their in their articles, almost all of their articles are entirely free of charge. They do have a premium subscription model as well. Do you mind sharing, it’s called the closed Pro. Do you mind sharing a little bit about what the closed Pro is?

Chris Linsell 34:57
Yeah, absolutely. So the close pro Like you said, it is our premium subscription service, you can get just about anything you want on the clothes. But if you want to upgrade your clothes experience, you can go to the clothes Pro, it’s 35 bucks a month. If you want to sign up for the monthly, or, you know, $25 a month, or the equivalent of $25 a month, if you want to sign up for the annual pass. When you go to the close pro, you get access to our courses library, we just had a fantastic course called the Facebook and Instagram Crash Course for agents just just ran this course live. Last week, it’s in replay now and we’ve gotten some really great response to it. If you want to figure out what Facebook and Instagram is for your real estate business, this is just an absolute banger way to do it. We’ve got bootcamps all about marketing and lead generation and business development and team building. And I mean honestly, the list goes on and on. Plus a crazy huge library full of strategy guides and templates and training modules and video content. It really just is a premium opportunity to upgrade your business, you can get so much on the clothes, you can get even more on the clothes Pro. Like I said it’s 25 bucks a month, if you want to go for the annual membership or 35. If you just want to try it out for a month, come on over, we would love to see it and you really wouldn’t see us because I interact with a live with close pro members every week. We do Q and A’s we do master classes, we do boot camps. So if you want to get more Chris, you know where to find

D.J. Paris 36:44
a check out the clothes pro by visiting the clothes.com. Also, if you want to get more of Chris, you can, Chris, where are you going to be speaking you have a bunch of speaking engagements coming up.

Chris Linsell 36:54
Yeah, so you can check me out. I’m going to be on the stage at the National Association of Realtors Conference in San Diego this November. If you’re an East Coast realtor, part of Pennsylvania, New York or New Jersey, I’m going to be on the stage at triple play this year. And then I’m headed out to Las Vegas, the end of October as an attendee and someone who’s going to be covering the Inman Connect conference, and going to be meeting up with a whole bunch of readers and listeners and industry leaders there to take in the presentations to chat about real estate. So if you are headed to Inman Connect, I’m not trying to take the wind out of the inland sales by any means. But the close is going to be there. So come find me. Hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter, send me a message I’d love to meet up and meet meet folks and chat about real estate and your business and and hear how things are going because this has really been an unprecedented year. And I would love to connect with folks and and hear from hear from them firsthand about their experiences and what’s happening in our world.

D.J. Paris 38:02
Amazing. Well, Chris, thank you once again, for coming on. Every month, Chris has been one of our most loyal guest guest hosts for years now. And he always provides incredible value. We’re so thrilled that he is here representing the clothes for everyone. Before you sign off, please ask ask yourself, Do I know another realtor? Who could benefit from this information? The answer is yes, of course you do. Send them a link to this show. If they’re not familiar with it. Easiest way to do that, just introduce them to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. Or if they are already a podcast listener for other shows, they can just pull up whatever podcast app they use search for keeping it real, and hit that subscribe button. And also, please visit the clothes.com it’s the very best website we’ve ever found for real estate agents to learn about how to grow their business and get actionable strategic insight about their day to day lives. And from a marketing perspective. I mean, all of their articles are really well researched. They’re long form articles, they’re not, you know, top five ways to, you know, improve your showing this weekend, which is the five things you already know these, these are going to in depth articles. They’re well researched and written by journalists who know what they’re doing. And I promise you, it’ll help grow your business, or at the very least it’ll grow your knowledge center, so that you can be more effective with your clients. So visit the clothes.com Chris, thanks for being on the show yet again. We want to thank all of our listeners and viewers on behalf of Chris and myself. And on behalf of the listeners and viewers. I want to thank Chris for coming on. He’s a busy guy, and he shows up here and please go visit him if you’re if you’re attending any of those conferences. Go check him out. He’s a wonderful, great human being that we love to have on the show and he would love to say hi You’re in person. So, Chris, thanks and we’ll see you next month. Looking forward to today.

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Вміст надано D.J. Paris. Весь вміст подкастів, включаючи епізоди, графіку та описи подкастів, завантажується та надається безпосередньо компанією D.J. Paris або його партнером по платформі подкастів. Якщо ви вважаєте, що хтось використовує ваш захищений авторським правом твір без вашого дозволу, ви можете виконати процедуру, описану тут https://uk.player.fm/legal.

Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.

Chris Linsell from TheClose.com and DJ discuss a viral TikTok video about Zillow’s iBuyer program. The conversation continues about anti-competitive measures and market manipulations. Next, they discuss the control of the information shared in various social media platforms between groups of real estate agents. Last, Chris shares some legal questions you may be asked by your clients and that you should be able to answer.

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

Chris Linsell can be reached at chris@theclose.com.

This episode is brought to you by Follow Up Boss. Get your 30 day trial by clicking here.


Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
Today’s episode is brought to you by thumbs up. Here’s a cool fact 50% of consumers rely on their social network to help them make purchasing decisions. So let me ask you, how many more referrals and great leads would your business receive if all your happy customers took the time to post their experiences and endorse your business on social media to all their connections? Well, I’ve got great news thumbs up does just that. Thumbs up is a referral system designed to help businesses leverage their customers social media with almost no hassle. With thumbs up, you can create a personalized post for your customer, allowing them in two easy clicks to celebrate their new purchase or service while endorsing your business to all their connections. Your post becomes their post and all of their friends and family can see your hard work through your customers eyes. And even better thumbs up as offering keeping it real listeners 50% off for your first two months visit get a thumbs up.com forward slash keeping it real and the offer code will automatically be applied at checkout. Again, that’s good a thumbs up.com forward slash keeping it real thumbs up referrals without asking. And now on to our show.

Right Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I am your guide and host through the show today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lindh sell from the closed.com. This is a partnership between keeping it real and the closed.com Let me tell you about the clothes. The clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals. They cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology and team building strategies. From the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Please visit the clothes.com That’s th e c l o e s e.com And subscribe to their newsletter so you get notified every time they publish an article with us as always is crystallin sell he is a senior staff writer and real estate coach for the clothes. Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead generation transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. Chris has been part of hundreds of transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his communities Theater’s production. Chris, welcome once again to keeping it real. We’re excited to have

Chris Linsell 2:52
you here today. So glad to be back. It’s the end of September when we’re recording this. So maybe happy October when people are listening to this. It’s fall either way. The Fall is here by

D.J. Paris 3:04
the Fall is here and I am in Chicago, you’re in Michigan. It is here. Today is the 27th of September although the episode won’t go live for people listening now are probably in October, but it is still 80 degrees outside today. And he in Chicago. I don’t know what it’s like in Michigan must be a nice day up there as well.

Chris Linsell 3:22
Beautiful. I’m not complaining at all. I’m complaining a little bit because I’m sitting in my office working outside goofing around. Got a lot of important things to talk about a lot happening in the real estate world. So I was excited to jump on a chat today.

D.J. Paris 3:36
Yeah, let’s talk first about this viral Tiktok video that’s making the rounds that came up a couple couple of days ago. This was a a realtor basically posted a video about Zillow and some concerns about their eye buying practices.

Chris Linsell 3:55
Yeah, so i i Follow Zillow news very closely. And in fact, I think a lot of realtors should, in part because they are such a dominant force in our industry. But I was even I as somebody who follows them pretty closely was surprised and interested to see this. So if you haven’t seen this you should. You should you should do a little Googling and check out Zelos anti competitive practices. What what people are saying about that? Here’s the gist of a realtor who made a tic tac realtor out of Las Vegas. Here’s what they suggested. They suggested that Zillow as a function of their eye buying program has the opportunity and often the occasion to engage in market manipulation via the purchase and sale prices of the homes that they’re buying in their eye buying program. And I know that sounds a little dense so Let me break it down a little bit, let’s say that you’ve got an entity that has a virtually unlimited buying power. And as a part of an AI buying program, they buy 10 homes in a neighborhood. Now, if you’re talking

D.J. Paris 5:12
about possibly a company with the amount of data that Zillow has coming in and saying, Hey, we we are going to come in and make offers to the sellers.

Chris Linsell 5:23
That’s right, yeah. And as a part of I bind, you often exchange, you get a faster sale, you get a smoother transaction, you get less or no negotiating. So it’s a it’s a, it’s often a smoother experience. But in exchange for that smoother experience, you sacrifice some of your profits. So it’s not uncommon for ibuying. purchase prices to be anywhere from five up to 15%, below the typical market value. So that is understandable considering you’re making a trade for convenience, money for convenience. So let’s say like, for

D.J. Paris 6:03
example, it could start interrupted it could be i by people who are prone to being I buyers, or rather, the clients of I buyers would be maybe somebody who inherits a home from a from a relative that passes away, or somebody that just needs to exit a home very quickly. Maybe they’re being transferred, or they’re leaving the state or that the immediate area.

Chris Linsell 6:28
That’s right, yep. In fact, those were the clients that were first kind of identified as the potential best fits for AI buyers. But numbers have shown that there are more and more people who are willing to trade some of their money for convenience. And this kind of makes sense, when you think about this in the greater landscape of business. I mean, how many times have we paid a few extra bucks for our food to be delivered to our doorstep rather than getting in the car and driving 10 minutes down the road to the restaurant that we got the takeout from? This is what Uber Eats and DoorDash are all based on is this idea that we’re willing to trade some of our money for convenience. So if you put this in the context of I buy, and let’s say this company has bought in a neighborhood, they purchased 10 homes under market value by 15%. And then the 11th. Home they purchase, they purchase it 10% above market value. And I might You might be asking, why would they do that? Well, now they have the latest comps in the neighborhood is 20, effectively 20% higher than the other homes that they own. And so now they can turn around and sell those other homes at the higher using the latest comp as kind of the North Star for the CMAS that are done for the listing prices. Now, there’s a lot that goes into why this isn’t actually an effective strategy. Like there’s a lot of reasons why this wouldn’t work. But what it really does for me, what this conversation really does is it brings up how important the the issue of anti competitive behavior in real estate is, how pervasive it is, how easy it could be for that to happen. And it really starts us down the trail of thinking, where else do we face this problem in our industry? And what can we do about it? Yeah, it

D.J. Paris 8:23
reminds me of it in Chicago, here we have, we have we have a lot of traders, this is a big trading city, we have the Board of Trade here. And whenever I would meet a trader, because I never, maybe I’m not smart enough to really understand how trading truly works. But I would ask, you know, I would meet somebody who was a trader, and I would say, Well, what do you do? And they’d say, Well, I trade interest rates. And I would say, Well, I don’t know what that means. And they would say all we care about is movement. As long as there’s movement, we make money. And I said well do you care if the market goes up, or if interest rates go up or down, they’re like not really, we just care about movement, because the algorithms that they used to sort of predict the trades that would be most profitable to them, were already sort of figured out by whoever the the egg heads were behind the scenes. And so all they really had to do was get some volatility going in the market and they were able to manipulate certain sectors of in this case, in the example I gave like interest rates, just to get some movement going and then they could find some margin in those in that movement and figure out which way they want to bet. And it’s just super talking about a sort of a similar strategy here that you know, it would be whether or not Zillow will or has done this is one question the other the other question is, could anybody do this? And the answer of course is yes. Because anyone could go into a neighborhood and purchase homes under market value and then take so I guess the question becomes around comps is how do we is there a way to streamline whomps comps, you know, we all know is like an art and a science? Is there a way to more methodically define what a good comp looks like so that the manipulation isn’t as easy to pull off? I guess?

Chris Linsell 10:16
That’s a great question. I mean, ultimately, this is something that I talked to agents back, I’m going to be doing a session at the triple play conference in Atlantic City, this December speaking session about how to produce a bulletproof comparative market analysis. And one of the things that I talk to folks about in sessions like that is when you’re pulling comps, you have to recognize that there is no silver bullet, there is no specific apply to all formula that is going to yield you an effective comparison. Just like real estate comps are local comps are specific to the circumstance. And so in the same way that you can’t peg a comp in Lincoln Park to the Gold Coast in Chicago, you can’t, you know, you may have some similarities there. But it’s really going to be neighborhood to neighborhood even building to building sometimes. So that’s the first golden rule here is to not get too tied to a particular comp before investigating how applicable, it is to your actual scenario. The other thing that I think is important to remember when you are thinking about comps, in the context of this conversation about potentially anti competitive behavior, is we engage in market manipulation subtly all the time. I mean, if you don’t think that you as a realtor engaged in this, tell me that you’ve never had a conversation with a client said, Well, if we list in June, we’ll probably get a higher price than if we list in, in February. That’s

D.J. Paris 11:57
it’s the last week. You know, it’s the second week in December, let’s not list right now, because everyone is not paying attention to the market. We’re all doing our December holiday stuff.

Chris Linsell 12:09
That’s 100%. Right? Guess what, if you listed that property in the second week of December, that would change the inventory levels, those inventory levels would balance against the the demand at that current time it would affect prices, you are making subtle market manipulation decisions based on that. And there’s nothing wrong with that, right. Like this is part of fundamental strategy for offering our clients the best experience possible. But we have to decide whether or not there’s a line to be drawn? And if there is who gets to draw it and where is it?

D.J. Paris 12:42
Yeah, that’s really the question because technology is going to perfect this sort of system, because it’s just math really. So ultimately, you know, the the the systems will be figured out technology is advanced beyond beyond regulation at this point in a lot of different industries, not not only real estate, but now real estate starting to get a sense of Oh, wow. So what market manipulation in the equities market in the stock market has been more present for quite some time. And I think there’s a whole regulatory boards, making sure that there aren’t people out there that are obviously manipulating the market in a way that they deem is illegal or unethical. But there are guidelines for securities, we you know, there are there are things that you can and can’t do. If your wife is a C suite executive for a massive public company, and she goes, Hey, our earnings report, which is going to come out next Thursday, is going to be very bad. Let’s dump all of our shares, then that is that is most likely going to be an illegal activity because you have inside information, you’re you’re you’re manipulating the market for your own benefit. So I guess it’d be very interesting to see how how the National Association of Realtors and how the government attempts to sort of regulate this because they’re going to have to, I think,

Chris Linsell 14:09
yeah, I agree with you. And I think you since you mentioned them, I was I was hesitant to pull this card out of the deck just yet. But since you mentioned their name, I’m just gonna throw this out here. The National Association of REALTORS has not been immune to conversations regarding anti competitive behavior. It’s in a different context. But there are a lot of people who have a bit of a bee in their bonnet, so to speak about the fact that it is really difficult to be a full time functional real estate professional in this country without belonging to and I’m just going to call it what it is a professional organization that is on its face voluntary, but I can tell you from personal experience, I can’t belong to my local organization without belonging to the National Association of Realtors. And so is this a is this anti competitive? Would there be rises of other professional organizations for our, our industry if Gnar wasn’t positioned the way they are? I don’t know exactly. I’ve honestly never known a world without the position of NAR in the way that it is right now. But the idea of anti competitive behavior in real estate, this is not new. And these conversations are going to continue to come up

D.J. Paris 15:29
my, one of my favorite questions when I talk to a newly licensed broker, or somebody who just passes their exam, and they are deciding what firm they want to work at. And so they might be talking to me about our firm. And after discussing all the things we offer, I’ll say, Oh, by the way, part of the the sort of way that it works here is you have to join a local association. In this case, there’s, well, there’s lots of several of them here in the Chicagoland area, you have to join one of them, we belong to all of them. So you get to choose which one but you have to join one. And that will pay for your MLS access as well as your local state and national dues. And then oftentimes they’ll say, Well, what if I don’t want to do that? And I say, Well, unfortunately, the way that it’s set up is that you have to not because we expect you to or we require it, but that the local association requires it. And they would say, Well, that seems a bit unfair. And I don’t always have I never have an answer to whether that’s fair or unfair. It just sort of simply is what it is. Although that’s that’s not a good question of why is it that way? But it begs the question of of, yeah, it’d be very interesting to see how the National Association of REALTORS talks about things like this, when they themselves, of course, have, you know, some, some consideration with with their own practices, which isn’t in no way, of course, meant to disparage the National Association of Realtors. But this is just a complicated problem that any massive industry has to face and create some rules around

Chris Linsell 17:09
AI 100% agree. And I actually I want to go on record as saying, I agree with you. Now, if you’re listening, this is not an indictment of you and your your practices on this. In fact, I have appreciated your leadership on this particular. Yeah, I do think that being said, with that, with that caveat in mind, I do think that this is a position, an opportunity for positional leadership to because in the same way that it is so important that you you know, you mentioned the the financial regulations of, you know, let’s say my wife is a C suite executive at a fortune 500 company and I have via her insider information about the stock performance or forecasted performance, in the same way that that is a clearly important place to have regulation, the idea that an industry in which the vast majority of Americans the fundamental component of their wealth is at stake here. I mean, more Americans, their their wealth is tied to their the equity in their home than anything else. I mean, by a longshot. You would think that with something that is as important as that, that we would have thoughtful, assertive and vocal leadership on issues like this so that there is no confusion about where the organization that is designed to protect our professional interests in the same way that we’re designed to protect the fiduciary interests of our clients. Nar needs to have a leadership stake in this conversation and not just being an observer because frankly, this is just too important otherwise,

D.J. Paris 18:58
I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episode sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast. Do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests? Of course it is a follow up boss and let’s face it following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. Do not take my word for it. Robert slack who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems so you can keep your current tools and lead sources also the best part they have seven day a week support so you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial which is twice as much time as they give everyone else and oh yeah, no credit card required. hired. So you can try it risk free, but only if you use this special link visit, follow up boss.com forward slash real, that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode. Be very interesting to see how they continue to respond. And it yeah, I’m excited for it, I think there’s good people that seem to be tackling these types of issues as best as I can tell, at those levels, so I’m excited to see and I, I think I just believe that that there’s, there’s a lot of good that can happen with understanding that transparency is really critical. And understanding that now that we have technology in place, to an industry that that’s really not as technologically advanced, I mean, realtors are still in person, most of the time they’re doing face to face kind of or old sales, sort of strategy and approach. And that’s there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s tends to be how things are done. But now we have technology that that can manipulate data, and then not manipulate it in evil way. But just find opportunity there that maybe a human brain couldn’t, couldn’t quite do as as quickly. So there has to be some sort of some sort of rules in place about fair play. And I don’t know what that looks like. And I, I, I’m not a poli sci major. So I’m not smart enough to to understand what the role of government is, and where, where they should step in, and where, where they would be overreaching?

Chris Linsell 21:47
Well, you know, the interesting thing about this is in, in the same for the same reasons that I am grateful for, for on a lot to say it kind of Federalist business style where we, you know, there’s so much value and emphasis put on a state’s right to kind of create their own rules and regulations. I think that that’s a really valuable thing, especially in real estate, because just like I was talking about before, like this is a this is a local business, you know, real estate is it occurs on the streets in the neighborhoods, it doesn’t occur on the state or national level. And so local places have to be able to make their own rules about their own markets. That being said, that does open us up to some significant challenges when it comes to creating regulation about these broad spectrum issues. And a great example of this, I’ll share a specific example, in my local market, there are rules that are written into my local associations, bylaws, about not creating exclusive groups within the Board of Realtors, for access to information, there’s basically just like any MLS, if you are a member of the MLS, you get access to all the information on the MLS, there isn’t a section of the MLS that you have to pay an extra set of fees to get into if I see a listing, everybody sees a listing, if I see a comp, everybody sees a comp. Well, what happens when you form these private Facebook groups with 20 realtors who you share listings with before they go live, and all of a sudden, you’re not breaking any NAR rules your mate, maybe it’s hard to say exactly. And that made me breaking any state rules. But maybe you’re breaking a local rule. But are you because the rules were written before Facebook was a thing. All of a sudden you have this antitrust situation where you’ve got 20 People who have access to information that the rest of us don’t. And now we have again, an example of anti competitive problems in the real estate industry. So you know, it doesn’t happen just on these major international kind of billion dollar company, business levels. It happens on the street level, it’s really easy for us to forget that equal and open access to all of the information whether it’s market information or customer information or whatever it is. This is a bedrock for which we build our business models on and you know, anything that jeopardizes that sort of access to information is anti competitive and may require regulation.

D.J. Paris 24:35
Same same sort of idea for a brokerage who may be has a dominant market share in a particular area where they have maybe the most number of Realtors, let’s just make it really simple. So let’s say there’s in most areas, there’s probably one firm that has more market share more agents, more more transactions, they are going to have more information about Coming stuff. And is it okay for a realtor at that particular firm to share with all the realtors within that firm? Hey, guys, just so you know, I’ve got a listing coming up on X date, if you’re interested, but ahead of time tell your clients and you know that is that yeah, that’s a great question is how do we how do you how does that get regulated or enforced it, you know, social media groups where like share groups on Facebook or other different social avenues, where you could share this kind of information, you know, you could put a pretty strong, easy sort of rule in place saying, Hey, we just don’t do that. But what about, you know, hanging out at the watercooler at this big office that has access to all of this stuff, and no one else outside of that those walls might might hear it? It’s very interesting. It’s very curious to see if if the, you know, who would regulate something like that, how it would be regulated? Gosh, it’s very interesting, really opens up a lot of conversation.

Chris Linsell 26:04
It is a real brain Bender, and you know, I regularly get into these rabbit hole conversations with people about this sort of thing. But you know, one truth that I come back to on a regular basis is we can we can pretty much answer the first level of any question around these sorts of conversations with answering, is this good for my clients? Is this the best is am I am I fulfilling my first responsibility as a realtor and protect protecting the fiduciary? well being of my clients, if the answer is yes, if the answer is yes, I’m doing that and I am doing it so legally, morally, and ethically, then, then that’s, that’s really the first test that needs to get passed. If you’re you answer that question, you’re like, I think I am, then there is the I think that that that kind of opens up the next level of, well, if you’re not sure that this is in the best interest of your clients, then it’s in the best interest of somebody else. And that’s when we need to start being worried about this. And I think there’s a lot of people coming back to the original conversation. There’s a lot of people who look at the Zillow scenario, and they say, this is a systemic if this were true, if Zillow was manipulating the market on a larger scale basis, and doing it across many, many transactions, and in potentially many markets, that clearly is not for the best interest of the clients at at hand. It’s not for the best interest of the sellers. It’s not for the best interest of the buyers. It’s clearly for their own best interests, and businesses have the ability or the right to create business models that, you know, can generate profit for them, but not at the expense of their clients here.

D.J. Paris 27:58
Yeah. Interesting. And we will continue to talk about this as more more conversations happen in the sort of the public sphere from leadership, because this will be very interesting to continue to monitor. I would like I know that you are working on a I suspect an article, although I don’t know if it’s something for the close. But I know you were you were talking to me beforehand about some to leave our audience with some some actionable sort of information that you can use in a little bit of a different way. But but but somewhat related to what we were talking about, which is some legal questions that you get asked by clients, and that you should have a ready to go answer for

Chris Linsell 28:41
absolutely, yeah, this this, to me is one of what what we’re talking about here is one of those sticky legal questions that every realtor should should know the answers to, right. So you’re gonna get asked questions that are either by your clients or by other people who look to you as a thought leader in the industry. And this is one of those things that maybe you should have an answer to. There are a handful of other questions that I think every realtor should have an answer to. And they get asked because you’re gonna get asked about this. So we’re not going to go through all of these really quickly. But I just want to plant a couple of seeds in your head. If you’re listening. Here are some questions you should know some answers to and I’m going to point you towards the right direction as far as starting to investigate these. The first question is, can I get a referral fee? If I’m not a licensed real estate agent or broker? How often do we have clients are like, Oh, I’ll send you my brother he wants to buy. Can I get a little piece of that? You know, like, maybe it doesn’t. It’s not phrased in exactly like that, that that way. But we have these kinds of questions and real estate agents, again, to the to their credit. We’re always looking for new lead generation. Strategies and utilizing our sphere is one of those strategies. So ask yourself can I had a referral? Can I pay a referral fee to somebody if they don’t have a license? The short answer to this is no. But it’s complicated. So go on to the close, we have an article all about referral fees, you can figure out specifically, what the legal ins and outs are for your state. So that’s the first question referral fees. The second question is, am I adhering to fair housing practices? This is a big question. And there’s a lot to this. But I’m just going to start you with one question is, is my print marketing, adhering to fair housing? Okay. Just your print marketing, just the things that people will see on a piece of paper? This is hard and fast. There are rules NAR has had rules about this fair housing has rules about this going back 50 years. Okay. So this is the question you should ask yourself, Am I adhering? Just right there? And then the last one, we’ll just leave you with with one or the last one is, am I negotiating legally? And here’s what i Here’s? Here’s, here’s a question to kind of spur this conversation. Did you know that there are certain things that you can’t legally negotiate using like, like certain terms, or certain elements of a contract that you can’t negotiate for, like, you can’t necessarily negotiate a real estate transaction based on like, ease of transaction as a product of familial status, oh, this is my guys, my guys single this will be an easy transaction, he doesn’t have to, you know, you won’t have to set up a whole bunch of moving just just him. Guess what, that’s actually that’s, that’s fair housing right there. If you bring fair housing, if you bring somebody’s familial status into negotiations, you are violating Fair Housing statute.

D.J. Paris 31:50
That’s a great example. Because it is such an easy, accidental thing to say, because there’s, there’s a bit of logic to it. And it’s not necessarily, you’re not doing it with a nefarious sort of reason behind it, you’re just saying, Hey, by the way, my guy here is single, this should go really smooth. Which would be a very easy off the cuff comment to make without realizing that you’ve just violated fair housing.

Chris Linsell 32:19
Totally, totally. So. So here’s, here’s this is what I want to challenge folks on is, take a look at your print marketing. Are you adhering to fair housing rules and regs if you’re if you have questions about this, go to the NAR code of ethics, it’s available for free on their website, they have a whole section about print marketing, and fair housing, just do a quick double check, see how you’re doing on that. Think about your referrals? Are you paying referrals legally? Or is everything getting paid through your brokerage? Or is your lead generation strategies? Are they all on the up and up? You know, is there anything that you’re like? Well, it’s maybe a little a little shady, maybe I shouldn’t be throwing money or gift certificates or, you know, visits to restaurants. All that stuff is kind of part of the course of business for a lot of agents. And it’s not on the up and up. So double check yourself on that. And then the last thing is negotiation are you negotiating legally and ethically, and a great way to double check on this is make yourself a negotiation playbook. Even if you’re the only person that ever sees it. Take take 10 minutes and write down the different ways that you negotiate on behalf of your clients. Just seeing them on a piece of paper puts in pretty stark contrast how you’re going about this where you’re finding success. It’s always great to double check your own strategies to make sure that you’re coloring within the lines,

D.J. Paris 33:45
great suggestions and advice. And if you want to review that entire piece, you would you can go check that out at the closed.com I’m not sure if it’s up yet or if you’re working still working on it.

Chris Linsell 33:58
Yeah, we’re still working on that one. So we don’t have the specific things about legal questions up there just yet, but we have articles about referrals and the legality of referrals. We’ve got articles about negotiation in fact, we’ve got a great section a great course the close pro about negotiation, negotiation tactics and and and how to stay on the up and up and still providing the best service possible. And I love talking about fair housing, especially in marketing. So I’m just about every marketing specific article I’ve done on a close, there’s going to be some sort of element of fair housing to that too.

D.J. Paris 34:38
Well, and the clothes we should remind everyone if you’re not already a regular reader of the clothes, most of their in their articles, almost all of their articles are entirely free of charge. They do have a premium subscription model as well. Do you mind sharing, it’s called the closed Pro. Do you mind sharing a little bit about what the closed Pro is?

Chris Linsell 34:57
Yeah, absolutely. So the close pro Like you said, it is our premium subscription service, you can get just about anything you want on the clothes. But if you want to upgrade your clothes experience, you can go to the clothes Pro, it’s 35 bucks a month. If you want to sign up for the monthly, or, you know, $25 a month, or the equivalent of $25 a month, if you want to sign up for the annual pass. When you go to the close pro, you get access to our courses library, we just had a fantastic course called the Facebook and Instagram Crash Course for agents just just ran this course live. Last week, it’s in replay now and we’ve gotten some really great response to it. If you want to figure out what Facebook and Instagram is for your real estate business, this is just an absolute banger way to do it. We’ve got bootcamps all about marketing and lead generation and business development and team building. And I mean honestly, the list goes on and on. Plus a crazy huge library full of strategy guides and templates and training modules and video content. It really just is a premium opportunity to upgrade your business, you can get so much on the clothes, you can get even more on the clothes Pro. Like I said it’s 25 bucks a month, if you want to go for the annual membership or 35. If you just want to try it out for a month, come on over, we would love to see it and you really wouldn’t see us because I interact with a live with close pro members every week. We do Q and A’s we do master classes, we do boot camps. So if you want to get more Chris, you know where to find

D.J. Paris 36:44
a check out the clothes pro by visiting the clothes.com. Also, if you want to get more of Chris, you can, Chris, where are you going to be speaking you have a bunch of speaking engagements coming up.

Chris Linsell 36:54
Yeah, so you can check me out. I’m going to be on the stage at the National Association of Realtors Conference in San Diego this November. If you’re an East Coast realtor, part of Pennsylvania, New York or New Jersey, I’m going to be on the stage at triple play this year. And then I’m headed out to Las Vegas, the end of October as an attendee and someone who’s going to be covering the Inman Connect conference, and going to be meeting up with a whole bunch of readers and listeners and industry leaders there to take in the presentations to chat about real estate. So if you are headed to Inman Connect, I’m not trying to take the wind out of the inland sales by any means. But the close is going to be there. So come find me. Hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter, send me a message I’d love to meet up and meet meet folks and chat about real estate and your business and and hear how things are going because this has really been an unprecedented year. And I would love to connect with folks and and hear from hear from them firsthand about their experiences and what’s happening in our world.

D.J. Paris 38:02
Amazing. Well, Chris, thank you once again, for coming on. Every month, Chris has been one of our most loyal guest guest hosts for years now. And he always provides incredible value. We’re so thrilled that he is here representing the clothes for everyone. Before you sign off, please ask ask yourself, Do I know another realtor? Who could benefit from this information? The answer is yes, of course you do. Send them a link to this show. If they’re not familiar with it. Easiest way to do that, just introduce them to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. Or if they are already a podcast listener for other shows, they can just pull up whatever podcast app they use search for keeping it real, and hit that subscribe button. And also, please visit the clothes.com it’s the very best website we’ve ever found for real estate agents to learn about how to grow their business and get actionable strategic insight about their day to day lives. And from a marketing perspective. I mean, all of their articles are really well researched. They’re long form articles, they’re not, you know, top five ways to, you know, improve your showing this weekend, which is the five things you already know these, these are going to in depth articles. They’re well researched and written by journalists who know what they’re doing. And I promise you, it’ll help grow your business, or at the very least it’ll grow your knowledge center, so that you can be more effective with your clients. So visit the clothes.com Chris, thanks for being on the show yet again. We want to thank all of our listeners and viewers on behalf of Chris and myself. And on behalf of the listeners and viewers. I want to thank Chris for coming on. He’s a busy guy, and he shows up here and please go visit him if you’re if you’re attending any of those conferences. Go check him out. He’s a wonderful, great human being that we love to have on the show and he would love to say hi You’re in person. So, Chris, thanks and we’ll see you next month. Looking forward to today.

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