Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're talking with Willie Gallegos from Central Valley, California, where he's been in real estate for over 25 years now and runs a nice team that he built.
We started by talking about all the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle including getting and multiplying listings, and then we hit on what may be the biggest opportunity in his business.
Wille has a property management division. They manage 100 properties, and we spent a good portion of this call really unpacking the goldmine that could be in his business already.
There is real opportunity for him to be a Market Maker here, and as you'll hear, this is one of those idea gusher's that just keeps giving.
You're really going to enjoy this episode, especially if you have, or have thought about opening a property management division.
Links:
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep056
Dean: Willie Gallegos?
Willie: Yes. Good morning. How are you doing?
Dean: We make it. Here we are.
Willie: Yeah. I apologize.
Dean: No problem.
Willie: I'm not sure what happened, but we're connected.
Dean: So, Willie, how do we say your last name?
Willie: Last name is Gallegos.
Dean: Gallegos? Okay. There we go. Yes. Perfect. Welcome to chat.
Willie: Thank you.
Dean: I always love these conversations. So tell me all about what's going on in your world. Where are you calling in from?
Willie: I'm calling from California. If you're familiar with the Central Valley, we're just below Fresno and South Bakersfield.
Dean: Okay. Perfect. So what's going on in the Central Valley for you? How long have you been in real estate and what's kind of your... The Willie story here?
Willie: You know, we've been in real estate now for about 25 years.
Dean: Nice.
Willie: Yeah. Time flies.
Dean: Yes.
Willie: But, you know, throughout the years we started to just kind of transitioning to the market and, you know, kind of going with the flow. So when I got into real estate it was a really depressed market. That was, you know, back in the late '80s. Then we transitioned to a really good market. Then we came back to another market that we were anticipating just a short period of time, and it ended up being a number of years. So we went from multiple offers, no offers, to doing broker price opinions.
Dean: Uh-huh. Shifting to wherever the market goes, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Dean: There's something comforting about it though in that this Thanksgiving, just a few weeks ago, just happened to be the exact 30-year anniversary of the day I got my real estate license. A good thing about that is that we've seen the cycles. We've seen more than one. We've seen multiple cycles where things have you know, bubbles even.
We've seen things go up really high, we've seen them crash, we've seen them linger at the bottom and then slowly crawl their way back up, and we've seen it multiple times. So you get this sense of, I don't know, I find it calming, that you know that the bottom is not going to fall out forever, you know?
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. I think once you go through more than one cycle, it probably comforts you and prepares you in a way that you kind of look at things a little differently.
Dean: Yeah. That's it. So where, how, what's the context for you and I here? How long have you been in our world, and how did we end up connecting?
Willie: You know, just recently, we've been pretty committed to a different type of platform and it seemed to work out, but I see our market changing a little bit. What I've researched and I've identified, I think we're coming to an era where we're stabilizing and trying to transition to more of a buyers' market here I'm anticipating next year.
I'm kind of waiting to see what happens at the end of this year and the first part of next year just because I think there's a lot of overflow activity. It's hard to gauge, but what brought me to this is that I was doing some online research and I came across your site and I did the trial period, and I liked the different marketing concepts. And as I dug more and more into it, I just felt that it would be accommodating for my office because I have a small team.
Dean: Yeah. Perfect.
Willie: I'm usually the guinea pig, so I've pretty much embraced your system. My team is still utilizing the other software that we have until I kind of get things going.
Dean: Right. You're the canary in the coal mine kind of thing, right?
Willie: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: You go first and see how everything works out. Right. I get it.
Willie: I take the first leap, and then once I have a good understanding, then I kind of introduce... But they do know that that's in the horizon. But we're a small team, and I've been working closely with Diane, just kind of figuring out some of the marketing, so that's really worked out.
Dean: Yeah. So where, how many? Are you an independent broker or are you with a larger company?
Willie: We're an independent brokerage. I actually was part of a large franchise and I helped develop that company early on in my career, and so I've been independent now for the last 15 years.
Dean: Good for you.
Willie: I've grown. At one point we had 25 agents and kind of a full staff, and I thought that was the direction that I wanted to go into. And after I kind of evaluated that after two years of going in that direction, I realized that I just wanted to be small, and not only managing the office, but also being more of a producing broker.
Dean: Right. I get it. So now it's kind of like your team? Is that the way your running it? So everybody is on your team?
Willie: Yeah. Correct.
Dean: Okay. That makes sense, and that's smart, very smart.
Willie: Yeah, it seemed to work out. An old friend of mine told me there's a Jewish proverb that says "Keep it small and keep it all," but I don't know how. It didn't make sense to me when he said it to me, but the more and more that I kind of built into just doing what I've been doing now for the last, probably the last five years, it's starting to make sense.
Dean: Nice. Now if we look at how many agents do you have now did you say that are part of your team?
Willie: I only had my admin person, which is also my transaction coordinator. She's licensed. Then I have a buyers agent, and my buyers agent has been with me now for 12 years, and my transaction admin person has been with me now for five years.
Then because we do a little bit of everything. We have a field person out doing some odds and ends for us and some more projects. Then we have a bird dog that goes out and finds different opportunities for us.
Dean: Right. Okay. Perfect. Now if we kind of go through the, well, let me ask you this. What's the thing that you were hoping we could focus on primarily here in this call?
Willie: Well, you know, throughout the years we've always seeked opportunities. We've always had kind of different opportunities, but we've had the opportunity to market subdivisions, so that was a good opportunity for us. We went through probably 100 homes within a year and a half. That's a unique outlet, but it was good to have that continuous activity.
Then we've done some marketing online print to bring in some buyers, and that worked out fairly well. Then this past year what I took the liberty of doing is more of contacting the direct market. You know, in 25 years of selling homes I've probably helped over 1,500 families, and so I realized that I wasn't able to keep in contact with all of them. Some had moved. Some had moved to different realtors.
So this year the goal was to hit the target, and so we've been really focused on contacting everyone that was in our database. We had monthly mailers and newsletters and get-togethers, and it worked out. There's a few more. A week and a half or so left in the year, and I was looking at what we did by measuring it, and we did about $30,000 in commissions just by doing that.
Dean: Right.
Willie: So I realized that worked, but for a team I felt that I had to have more activity, more flow, not only to support the office, but also within the office.
Dean: Right. Yeah, I get it. So let's go through the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle and kind of look at where you are and where the opportunity is maybe with each of them.
We start with getting listings as the first thing, so we're going to build a listing-centric business that we've got to have a systematic way of getting and finding listings. So how would you say that you're doing in that right now? Do you have a predictable way to consistently get listing opportunities?
Willie: You know, we do. We've been pretty fortunate to have the percentage of the market that we have had, and in the last few years our market went very competitive, so what I decided to do is I decided to develop a niche, so I would either purchase myself properties and then convert them into listings within the office.
So that gave us control, because we didn't have competition with another company or agent. Then one of our niches that has grown in the last three to five years is that we were representing a group of investors, and so we would purchase properties. They would purchase properties that we'd help them with the purchase, but then also too because we also do property management, so we’d do the repairs and either one of two things. One is that is keep them as a rental, or two they would retail them.
So if they kept them as an investment within the market and it was going up, then we would notify them of those changes and then they would want to sell, so then that created an opportunity for us as well as if a buyer would turn around and retail it, then we had the opportunity. So that has been probably a larger percentage of our business, but that's still a good percentage, but it's kind of transitioning. We need more product to support what we're doing.
Dean: More listings? Okay.
Willie: Yeah. We... Yeah.
Dean: And so if you were to look at that, is there a particular area or type of listing or category of listing that would be the best thing for you. What would you, if you could focus on getting this particular type of listing, what would be the most beneficial for you in the market where you are?
Willie: Well, our past clients is a previous foundation, but because what we've been doing for the last few years. We've been running a kind of we buy homes campaign, and that seems to draw more activity. And I think the advantage to that is it's kind of a real simple process, because they're going to contact us and we price them not more than hours in a given time, and we can make an offer on the house and it's pretty straightforward.
So for the most part that works, and I've got several campaigns that we want to run this coming year within our business plan, but that's one that I want to run, and I'm just probably needing some assistance there, because when I look at the companies that are either franchising or that are licensing for that, it doesn't really make a lot of sense for what they provide.
I think that in looking at your system and kind of getting some understanding of it, that would be one thing I think that we could probably incorporate into what I see in your system and the postcard and things of that nature to kind of make it work.
Dean: Uh-huh. Well, part of the thing, you know, one of the things that is an advantage of how we focus with our getting listings programs is that it's focused on kind of generating the outermost ring of people who are considering selling the house. It was all based on thinking that the genesis thought for somebody who's going to be selling their house, the first thing that crosses their mind then so they have a context for what they're going to be able to do is how much is my house worth? How much are houses selling for right now? How's the market doing? Those kind of general things, where they want to know maybe what they could get for their house or what's going on.
And that group of people, If we take an area, a neighborhood, my favorite are if there's a named area or a planned community or a category of homes that you could attract, that we offer the information on what's been going on in that category or that area as the first step.
Now anybody who would be responsive to a we buy houses type of offer is a subset of the people who would be interested in kind of knowing what their house is worth, because they're in the early stages of getting ready to sell, right?
So what I want to do is I want to go through a situation where out of the 1,000 homes let's say there's a 5% turnover rate in a particular area. That means that in that 1,000 homes 50 of them are going to sell in the next year, right?
Willie: Correct.
Dean: Now what I want to do is I want to identify as early as possible. If I could just like flip a switch right now and identify the 50 people who are going to sell their home in that area, that's a big advantage, right? Rather than trying to convince them to list their house with me, I'd rather know who's just thinking about it at this stage, because then I can just focus my attention on convincing those 50 people to list with me instead of trying to, and having to, spend all of the money to convince 1,000 people to list with me, when 950 of them it's not on their radar.
Willie: Correct. Correct.
Dean: Yeah. So I think that what you can do is blend those things, where I would start with let's just chose the areas and identify the people who are going to be selling, the people who are much more likely to sell their house, and then when they respond, then let them know that one of the options they have is that you maybe could buy their house.
Willie: Correct. Correct.
Dean: Yeah. So you get both that way, you know?
Willie: Yeah. And one of the things that we recognize is that when we get approached by individuals that want to sell the house like yesterday, we'll make an offer, and we'll also say in addition to making an offer on your home, the other service that we have is we can list your home.
Dean: Yes.
Willie: One of the challenges that we come across all the time, I would say probably more than half the time, when we present that a... Oh, we don't want to work with this realtors.
Dean: Right.
Willie: So it's been somewhat of a challenge, because we'll say well you're not actually working with realtors. We're working with the other realtors and we're working with you. I say you'll be working directly with us, but sometimes that response fails. So what suggestions would you have as far as like ideas to overcome-
Dean: What they really want, the reason that they don't want to work with a realtor is because they don't want to pay a commission.
Willie: Right. Right.
Dean: So when you go in, if you're going to buy their house today from them, buy it quickly, how do you calculate what you're actually going to pay them? What's your formula that you use?
Willie: We run a couple of different scenarios. We'll do a drive-by initially and sometimes we'll make the offer over the phone just based on comps, and usually the offer that we make is sometimes between, depending on the condition of the house, 10 to 20% below the market.
Dean: Right. That's exactly like everybody who makes those offers, right? That's the only thing they're not... You can't make any money in the we buy your house game if you're buying houses at full retail, right?
Willie: Correct. Correct.
Dean: So I think to be able to explain to people like that, that listen, I'll buy your house. Here's the offer and we can do it today. But if you kind of position that’s the worst case scenario, right? This is like it's the safety net. Definitely you're going to get at least this much, or work with us to now maybe we can do some repairs, we can do some whatever to get the most money possible for the house, and you will end up netting more money than this bottom line, you know?
Willie: Correct.
Dean: That's a good way to think about it. And this is what people who are getting afraid of companies like Opendoor and the others that are online buyers. That's going to be true for all of those online buyers. They're not going to be paying retail for these homes. They're going to be paying at least 10% below retail, right?
So for the smart realtors, that's going to provide a safety net for them, where people who wouldn't be able to guarantee to sell homes can now go into a situation and guarantee a sale for more money than what that is just to give themselves some time, you know, 60 or 90 days, to find a retail buyer and make more money for the seller.
Willie: Correct. Yeah. We've experience about a 50% ratio for... We present that and then they realize it and then they agree to put it on the market because they want to make more money.
Dean: Of course. Yeah.
Willie: A commission at that point becomes irrelevant, because they're making a lot more money versus the offer that we present, and also in comparison to what the market can offer.
Dean: Yeah. And that's the thing, so when they're saying they don't want to work with a realtor, you say listen, I'm an investor who happens to be a realtor, which is an advantage for you, because I will buy your house. I will buy it for whatever this price that you've agreed on, but I may be able to get you more money.
Willie: Correct. Correct. I think we need to be a little more aggressive in that aspect of things. I think by being aggressive it's not necessarily list your house with us, but more like just showing them the advantages.
Dean: Yeah. No, I know what you mean. It's not aggressive in trying to manipulate them or get them to do something. It's being more clear and overly clear on what the opportunity is for them, like presenting your situation of buying it as that's the immediate solution. If you've got 30 or 60 or 90 days here, we may be able to get you more money. But I totally understand, if you want to be out now, next week, then we can do that. I've got the money. I'm ready.
Willie: So then based on that. Because I was looking at what I did initially and I thought I probably needed to reserve myself rather than just kind of putting the cart before the horse. So I went on to ProspectsPLUS and ordered some postcards in a particular neighborhood, and I think the first campaign that we sent out was for about 500, and it was a free home market evaluation campaign that they have. This has probably been about now about a week and a half.
Then we sent out another campaign immediately after that, which is something very similar to the we buy houses campaign, and we did that for 500 homes as well. We haven't got anything back in regards to people calling or things of that nature, but I think it has to do with the timing, because people are getting postcards, but they're probably getting Christmas cards and-
Dean: Yeah, but that's no different. I mean why wouldn't you mail the getting listings postcards, the postcard that we have that is the control? This is the one it's really interesting to me. You know, we've got this tool. We've got the entire program. There's no mystery in getting listings. I've solved the problem, right? I've solved it for thousands of people for more than 10 years now, track record galore of just, you know, it works.
And so I'm always amazed that I present that to people, and you're talking about being more aggressive on the assertions for working with the sellers, that I need to figure out how to be more clear on the only thing that I would be doing until it gets beaten is the current control of our getting listings program, the one I don't know how many of these Listing Agent Lifestyle podcasts you've listened to, but the first episode with Tony Kalsey, where we outline a five-year case study of this.
And if you're watching on GoGoAgent, what's going on right now with Diane right here in Winter Haven, we're running the exact campaign. So I've figured everything out for you. I've got the exact postcard, the landing page, the whole thing.
Willie: And that's kind of what I sent those out, and obviously there's a little bit of investment there. I think it was 200 bucks for each campaign.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah.
Willie: And then I realized, you know, I probably need to, because I listen to different podcasts and I've been speaking to Diane and figured that I probably need to just look at the program that you have, because obviously the results are there. So then that's why we kind of set up this phone call, because I think if I would have done that to begin with, then I think I may have had a little more effect than this.
Dean: You're right.
Willie: And so that's kind of where I'm at now. Our goal is is to look at that and really adopt it and put it into effect with the postcards that are available and to-
Dean: Right. And that's the thing. That's where, so we've got, you know, I've got a whole team of people standing by to even help implement all of that, right? So all you really need to do is point to the area on the map where you want to get the listings and we can get the list, prepare the postcards, mail the postcards, do the whole thing, set up your landing pages, all of it. Yeah.
Because it's really a turnkey system right now, and we've got all of the, you know, we have a whole ongoing followup program. Each month with our get a top dollar newsletter to send to all of the people who respond, because that's really where the value is.
If we picked an area of 1,000 homes, or 500 homes if you want to start with that, the idea is to mail consistently to that group and generate all the leads of the people who are potentially going to sell.
Then when you do a transaction, to then expand out to 1,000 homes or 1,500 homes, and to start growing it with profits, you know? Let it self-sustain itself.
Willie: And I saw the easy button and I was almost ready to press it, but what I shared is that I felt that I needed to try to get a better understanding of the roles, because once I bring my team onboard, then obviously I won't necessarily have the time.
Dean: Right. I got it.
Willie: But it would definitely be the way to go for me as far as to manage the team and get everything else in place, so that way there should be enough business for not only myself, but also for each team member, so we can finish up the end of the year business planning, and everyone has some pretty high expectations for next year.
Dean: Right. That's awesome.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: So do you get a lot of listing as a team? How many listings do you currently have or do you normally take?
Willie: Not necessarily as a team. I'm kind of the rainmaker, and so I'm generally the one that provides the listings. We had, you know, I shared that we had that subdivision here, and that subdivision came out of a relationship that I had with a business owner that I became investor/developer. So we attained that, and that worked out for the office and for the team.
Then I decided that we'd be a niche in the market and eliminate the competition, so then I went ahead and starting buying properties and then just have the team handle the listing of it. Then I had a group of investors that was buying property, so I just had the team.
So the team itself, probably just this year alone has probably been the most active as we've been on the listing side, and we've gone through some training in that part of it. So this year, out of the production that we've had, they generated about five listings among the two of them. They more predominantly have focused on buyers.
So our transactions this year is a little lower than what normally it should be, and that was because we were doing a direct target, we were hitting past clients. Then also too we were implementing a lot of training. You know, I was getting them more exposed and keeping them more accountable, so that just took a little more time.
Then this year, rather than being active as I normally have been, I've been kind of overseeing where was business coming from, how could we minimize costs, that type of thing. So I really wanted to know all the statistics within the business to kind of make sense of it all.
Dean: Yes. Got it. Now how many listings do you have right now?
Willie: Right now we have six listings.
Dean: Okay. Now have you heard me talk about or have you done any calculations on what we call your listing multiplier index?
Willie: Well, so interesting enough is that I did listen to it and I had a pretty good understanding, because I've always believed that that was there. I believe our challenge is that sometimes we get really caught up in the listing and the marketing, so we lose out in that particular opportunity.
But I see the potential there. Getting from Point A to Point B sometimes is a little bit of a challenge.
Dean: Right. I get it. So that's probably a really great opportunity even right now, because you've got six listings right now, to really do some of the things that are the most proven, you know, the things that we can easily do to kind of multiply your listings. Do you do info box flyers?
Willie: We do do info box flyers, and we monitor that as well. To kind of give you an example, we put 50 flyers in the info box and we'll go out once a week or every other week to see how many flyers have been left there, and then what we've done also as an experiment one year is we put the main information on the house on the front page, and then on the back side of the page we put other listings that we had, so it was kind of, I don't want to say bait and switch, but if this house didn't work out we have others that may.
That worked out to some extent, because people would all and say, "By the way, we picked up your flyer and it has these other homes as well." So we try different concepts, and I think maybe the challenge for us is just being consistent.
Dean: Yeah, that's just the thing. Like that's where this is one of the greatest things about being part of the community like GoGoAgent, where we're all striving to reach the same objectives, right? We want to get listings, and we've got the winning proof and leaderboard of what actually is working to get listing.
Then for multiplying listings, the easy things that we have set up are the instant open house. Have you set up one of those for your listings yet?
Willie: I have not. I did talk to Diane about that and I said that I was going to explore that this coming week. Yeah, I like the idea.
Dean: Yeah. Because we're having like tremendous success with generating buyer leads, but also some of those actually turn into seller leads, because there may be somebody in the neighborhood as well, somebody who's got a house to sell, and they're kind of observing what you're doing. But either way, what we've been doing with the info box flyer leading to the instant open house landing page and doing Craig's List ads, believe it or not, leading to the instant open house, are generating buyer leads very easily.
It's amazing when you really think about the economic value of a buyer like that, somebody who is out specifically in that neighborhood and picks up a flyer and voluntarily goes to the instant open house and leaves their contact information. That's a really valuable buyer. So that, for so cheap, right? I mean just the fact of the five cents or whatever it costs for your flyer.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. And I think when I lost at the cost. Because one of the things that we've done. And again, I've been in business for the last 25 years, we were subscribing to online leads and at one point, which is very minimum, when I looked at our business we were spending about between $1,500 or $2,000 a month on online leads. But the flip side of that was that we couldn't contact everyone and we couldn't be consistent in contacting them, because what we found is that they required to at least be contacted a minimum of six to 12 times before they made a decision, and then the followup there.
So we actually had to hire kind of an inside salesperson to make those calls for us. So on top the $1,500 to $2,000 a month, we had the salary of this individual. So I think they don't share all that with you. They say we'll provide you all these leads and good luck.
Dean: Right.
Willie: So I wanted a better approach to that, because I felt that if I was to spend that amount of money, we would have to generate two transactions just to break even.
Dean: Right. Uh-huh.
Willie: But if I spend, you know 25 cents or whatever the cost is and I generate a lead that converts over into a transaction and a client, then for me that's a better return.
Dean: Yeah. And so I always look at like layering things. If you're not doing the instant thing, then I would suggest as a solution the thing that got the biggest impact right away is to set up the instant open house, put out the info box flyer, and that goes a long way, just that, you know. And then I don't know if you do just listed postcards, which we've been having really great success with?
Willie: We do. We do the just listed, just sold, and we've used Quantum Digital for that. The reason for that is because they can measure the amount of people that punch in a code, and it captures that particular person's information.
Dean: Yeah. We do the just listed we do sending people to the instant open house, so we're generating the leads with that. But we've got special postcards that we've done actual measurements, that we get three to five times more calls with our just listed postcard versus traditional just listed postcards. So they're kind of telling the story a little bit about the seller. They kind of look like a news piece.
But the good news I've already written the formula and everything for you, so it's easy to fill in the blank, and we've got the formatting and everything done. That's something that you can just mail to the immediate neighbors just in a specific neighborhood. You can do that.
But layering those things, you know, immediately they're low cost or no cost things that you can do that can get you leads today. That would really be the thing. No doubt if you put out the six info box flyers, set up the six instant open houses, that you would have leads in less than 24 hours, because we've seen it again and again and again, you know.
Willie: Yeah. That's on my list of things to do here at least before the holidays, so I've got a week. The goal for us is to put everything in place now, so that way January 1st we already have this system already in place, working.
Dean: That's smart.
Willie: So that's the goal. The other thing that I shared with Diane is also our company does property management, and that has been a good niche for us, because again in representing the investors what we've found is that is we couldn't provide some kind of a one-stop shop, they would buy the property and then they would go with a different property management company, we potentially would lose them, so we decided to do property management. And it grew from 25 homes to right now we're managing 100.
Dean: Wow, that's awesome.
Willie: It's been good, because it provides a residual and kind of keeps things going, but we've been selective in doing so because obviously we want to provide a level of service. So we've been doing that now for the last five years, and I see that as an opportunity for us to increase. I was sharing that with Diane and she said she'd share that with you and see what ideas you had, because prospects-
Dean: Well, part of the thing that you have is you've got something right now that having a management division is one of the sleeper opportunities that most people don't take advantage of.
Because right now, when you think about it, what you have is you have 100 investors who own those 100 homes, or some number less than 100 investors, because some of them might own multiple properties, but you've got 100 properties that are investor owned that the rentals are turning over pretty consistently, right, that you're constantly looking for new tenants.
So you've got the opportunity to incubate 100 potential first-time buyers, that they're coming in to rent now, but they could turn into buyers of another property. But you've also got then the sellers, the investors who at any given time any of them may decide that now is the time to sell this property, you know.
Willie: Yeah.
Dean: If you just look at that as a little business division that you have, you might be some amazing things if you just focused on proactively seeking out the opportunities to get renters for those properties who are buyer minded, that they're using it as a transition into it, if you think about like a traditional sort of rent to own type of program, so you're at least getting people who that's their mindset. Even if it's not renting to own this property, it's renting this property in preparation for owning, you know?
Willie: And it's interesting you bring that up, because I've been sharing that with my team, and what we found this past year from the owners, we have more control over that because if they decide to sell we normally have that conversation with them. We have that dialogue with them sort of monthly, and when we see just a little bit of an interest, I follow up on that.
But renter wise, we've lost three renters. They ended up buying homes. You know, they gave us their notice and we-
Dean: Right.
Willie: And so we made it. I said now when they come in to pay the rent, if that's what they do, because sometimes they'll come in or send it or pay it online, have this conversation with them. Then we put them all on our mailings, for example our newsletter once a month, and we've even now sent them Christmas cards and stuff of that nature.
So we've only been doing that probably for the last five months. Some have said, "Hey, we appreciate getting this," and others haven't brought it to our attention yet, but I think within the next year I would see that that should contribute to a percentage of our business and-
Dean: Of course. Yeah.
Willie: So what other ideas would you have in regards to that? I'm not sure if there are other individuals that do property management as we do-
Dean: No. I mean I'm sure there are, but we don't run across them who do it at that level, with 100 or more properties. So you've got a unique advantage there, that I would definitely treat those 100 tenants as future buyers, and definitely a newsletter that is filled with properties, like information educating people about how easy it is to actually own their own home.
And I would be scouring and looking for down payment programs and financing that would allow people to buy with very little money down or zero down if possible. You know what they're paying for rental right now. You know what their credit score is because you ran their credit before you rented the property to them, so you know what their eligibility would really be, right, because you've got their financial data from when you evaluated them as tenants.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. You know, sometimes it helps having a conversation to understand the nature, so you're right. We have everything that we need to make that decision, so we can always reflect back to that and say okay, they can qualify in six months or a year from now if they bring up their credit or-
Dean: Yeah.
Willie: So that's good, because I didn't take it to that level.
Dean: Right. What I really focus on with people is to get them to really look at each of the opportunities that they have as distinct little business units. Like I look at all the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, I look at them as well, you’re getting listings division is 100% responsible for getting listings, and we've got all the tools to support you in that. Your listing multiplier division is about taking every listing that you have and multiplying it, and each one of those has its own ROI.
The thing where we limit ourselves mostly is that there's too much to do with too little people trying to do it. So I'm saying if you take those and you have at least one person who their only responsibility is to run one or maybe two of these divisions. You talked about you had a bird dog that goes out and does stuff for you, but imagine if you had somebody who's whole responsibility was to, when you get a listing to multiply it, to do all of those things.
And that's the good news is that that stuff can be done remotely. That's why we offer the easy button program. You know that. You cannot argue against the logic of what we're saying, that if every listing had the info box flyer, had the instant open house, had just listed postcards, was posted on Craig's List, and set up the email auto responder so that everybody is getting communicated with, you cannot argue with the logic of that.
Where people, and I feel their pain with it, is that where it short circuits is the logistics of it. They're struggling managing the logistics of this, and that's why we try and like remove the logistics from it so that you can do what you do, you know? That's really the thing.
Willie: So let me ask you this. I did talk to Diane about the easy button. I know that marketing would be set up and then also some other things, but what more does that incorporate? What more can be done with that as far as like kind of a virtual assistant.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right. Now here's the difference, is that we're trying to really be here for people, and this helps because we're building a community of people who are all doing the same programs, the ones that we know are working.
Now the challenge with just hiring a VA is that you can hire a VA probably for less money than what our easy button service costs, but they don't know what to do, so you have to then explain to them what to do, and that takes the time and logistics, right?
So the difference is that rather than just provide you information and tell you what to do and then you have to go and figure out how to do it. We do offer that, so that's our baseline service, that everything is available to you to do it internally, or to do it yourself, or to hire somebody to do it. But the advantage of having somebody who knows what to do and is able to do it without any intervention from you, that's where the big leverage is. That's where the win is for you.
Willie: Yeah. You're right. We've hired a VA before and it took three months-
Dean: You spend a lot of time managing them and teaching them, and you've got to first of all you have to learn what to do and how to do it, and then you have to show somebody else how to do it, and then you have to manage what they're doing and correct it and fix it, or answer their questions about how to do it.
All I want to do is provide the opportunity where what I'm doing is I show you what to do, and then instead of you having to ask how do I do this, we ask who can do this, and the answer is us. We can do this for you.
Willie: And that's a big benefit, because, again, in the past we've hired VAs and just not quite what we had, or at least not quite meeting my expectations.
Dean: Yeah.
Willie: Let me ask you this, going back to the property management. What ideas would you have to acquire new individuals, so whether they're property owners or-
Dean: Well, see, I would look at this. This is a great little division here, because you've got the ultimate little market maker kit that way. So I would look at it that you've got what would be a dream come true for a first-time investor, somebody who's thinking I'd really like to get involved in real estate, but I don't want to be doing all the management of it. I don't know about finding tenants and I don't want to fix toilets and get calls in the middle of the night, right?
But they have money and they'd like to invest in real estate. That's where you've got an opportunity to on one side of this advertise and find opportunities for investors to do turnkey real estate investing, where all they do is just put up money, and you can manage the whole thing, so that becomes a really great opportunity.
Then finding the buyers is really that I would focus on finding rent to own buyers, people who that message is attractive to them.
Willie: Yeah. That's a good idea.
Dean: Right. Because that way you're gathering the right people. They're at least looking at it as the end of that path is that they're going to own a home, whether it's the one that they're living in. Because you may be able to find all kinds of opportunities for investors.
It sounds like you've got the ability to fix and flip homes as well, so that If you've got the opportunity to help somebody fix up a property and then instead of flip it, but put a tenant in it with a three-year contract and at the end they're going to buy the house, that can make a big advantage for you.
Willie: And it has. You're right. I've been trying. Which I like the idea of the conversation we're having because we have put a lot of work into developing this niche, and so the fact that we are a real estate brokerage, we do property management, and we have a RME, which is the residing management employee that has a contractor's license that we use within our company, and so we're really a one-stop, full service brokerage.
Dean: So you know what's magic here too then? Imagine now then the next layer of this is that you're tying in your running of getting listings program to find the people who have the homes that are ideally suited for this type of thing.
So if you're talking about three bedroom, single family homes, bread and butter homes. That if you're doing the getting listings program in that area to find those people, you are just like setting up this nexus of you find the people who are going to be selling the homes, you've got the investors who want to buy those homes, you've got a system for finding rent to own buyers, your incubating 100 of them in your properties, and you maybe partner with a lender who would pay you money on a marketing arrangement to co-market to those 100 tenants with the eye to them actually buying, and that could be a huge moneymaker for you.
Willie: Yeah. I feel like I'm on Shark Tank, because if you're familiar with the Shark Tank program, you come in with an idea but you just don't know how to get to the next level. So this dialogue, this conversation that we're having, is allowing me to kind of think outside of the box again, and so I appreciate all the feedback, because now I have a better understanding of how to really take it to the next level.
That might be kind of where I'm at at this point, is that we've put all these different things in place, but I'm not quite sure how to take it to the next level. So this has been helpful for me because I've been taking some notes and trying to think outside of the box and also kind of put things in effect, so that way we can start in that direction now and then. Maybe figure out some odds and ends that are working, that are not working, but I do like the ideas.
Dean: Uh-huh. That's great. I mean it's like just thinking about them as individual divisions here, you know. There's so much opportunity there.
Willie: Yeah. I think I see it, but I think because I've had the vision. I just haven't been able to tap into it. So all these ideas that you're sharing is really kind of getting me excited to kind of okay, here's what has to happen, and put things in place to make all this-
Dean: Yeah. Well I would say, you know what might be a good thing? This a great part of being in a community like this, is that I would suggest that you post a message in the forum and see if anybody else is running a property management division, and then maybe we could gather up a little group of them and do a field report, where we can develop a whole new program like this.
Willie: That's a great idea. I think. Yeah, and I will do that. We're part of a property management organization and we attend their events, but they, and some are doing really well. I mean there's property management companies out there managing 5,000 doors, and that's incredible. That requires a full staff.
Dean: Right.
Willie: I'm not sure if we want to be at that level, but I think they miss on the other opportunities because they're so focused on the property management that if there's a listing that comes up normally they refer that listing to a real estate company, which I believe they can actually handle that themselves. So they leave a lot of money on the table basically.
Dean: Yeah. That's why I think having a smaller scale, like I think 100 is probably an ideal size, you know?
Willie: Yeah.
Dean: It's so great.
Willie: Yeah. Well, I'm excited. I'm glad that I stumbled across the website and your organization and all the resources you have to offer, because I felt that. Kind of like I mentioned earlier, I had the vision, I see the opportunities, but I was just struggling to take it to a whole different level, and I believe myself and my team is ready for that.
Also I've got to be conscientious of what their needs are, because obviously if I can help them they're going to help me accomplishing what we're trying to do as individuals and also as a team, because we have that balance between business and our personal lives, and they kind of complement each other.
Dean: Right.
Willie: So I shared with them that we'll be making a transition and then also I'll be attending the event that you'll have in February in Florida.
Dean: Perfect. Good. Good. I'm going to put that on the... I think that's going to be... Because this is going to tie in with something that we're working on right now, actually preparing for the-
Willie: Oh, great.
Dean: So I'm kind of excited about that. Well, post up in the forum and see if we can rally up some people who are doing that.
Willie: And maybe have like a get-together?
Dean: Yeah. Of course. That would be great. Or certainly it'll be on the agenda.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. Great. Great. Well I'm excited.
Dean: Me too.
Willie: I'll experiment a little more and reach out to Diane, and I'm sure at some point at the beginning of the year I'm going to be pressing the easy button-
Dean: Awesome.
Willie: To make things a little easier for me.
Dean: Right.
Willie: But I appreciate your time. I apologize for the misunderstanding.
Dean: No problem. I'm glad that it worked out, that we were able to connect. This is a really valuable conversation. I think a lot of people are going to get a lot out of the direction that we went here.
Willie: Okay.
Dean: Looking forward to meeting you in February.
Willie: Yeah. Sounds good. I appreciate your time Dean, and have a Merry Christmas.
Dean: Thanks Willie. You too.
Willie: All right. Thank you.
Dean: Bye.
Willie: Bye-bye.
Dean: And there we have it. I love when we get on what I call a gusher of an idea. A gusher is something that just keeps spewing really great opportunities within the idea the more that you unfold it. And even though it sounds like there's so much, it's really a very elegant, self-contained opportunity that could be really maximized, and in a lot of ways very, very profitable.
So I'd love to hear from you actually. If you've got a property management division, we're always looking to develop new tools and new things to create turnkey systems for people. You know I asked Willie to post a message in the forum at GoGoAgent, with our community there, to find maybe other people who are doing that same thing.
If that sounds like you, come on in and join the conversation with us. Just go to GoGoAgent.com. You can come on in with a completely free trial. No credit card required, just your opportunity to take a look and see what we're up to and join in on this conversation, because I think this could really be a valuable business unit for people.
So that's it for this week. If you want to carry this conversation on, you can go to ListingAgentLifestyle.com. You can download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book. You can be a guest on the show just by clicking the be a guest link, and maybe we can talk about some ideas for you're business. So that's it for this week. Have a great week. I'll talk to you next time.