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TRIBUS CEO Eric Stegemann sits down with Canadian international super agent Tina Mak to talk about what international buyers are looking for right now, what new technology is helping agents close more sales, and what to make of the real estate world right now.
TRANSCRIPTION
Hi everybody. And welcome to the brokerage insider podcast. My name is Eric Stegemann and I am the CEO of TRIBUS, a real estate brokerage platform vendor. Today we’re here with Tina Mak and Tina is a specialist in the international real estate community. She has a number of accolades that she’s achieved as well as things that she’s doing to work with international buyers that I think will be a particular interest to our listeners. So, first of all, welcome to the brokerage insider podcast here.
Thank you for having me. Thanks very much and hope everything’s everybody is safe and well.
Yes, definitely. Definitely and that’s a, a good topic to lead into. We’ll get to in just a second and talking a little bit about the virus specifics. Why don’t you first tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us about your business.
Yeah, so I am an immigrant from Hong Kong. I moved to Vancouver in 1991 and I started doing this business in 1992. So it’s my 28 years in the business. I have been with the same brokerage company since day one, so I haven’t changed anywhere, gone in anywhere. So you talk about loyalty. I, I think that is pretty rented.
Yeah, for sure.
Tina Mak
Yeah. So since 2010, I’ve been on a speaking role from Coldwell banker to Engelmann’s to NAR to Hong Kong, to China, speak in front of the policy makers cause they would like to you know, like have their cause real estate is very different in that side of the world. And they would like to improve the professionalism. So I was representing Canada to let them know what we’re doing in North America, in Canada for them to, you know, like just they’re just policy makers. So, you know, like put some policies together and get agents to follow and things like that. And I also do have my own radio show, a real radio show and the radio stations since 2007. So it’s my 13 years you know, 13 seasons, you know hosting this weekly radio show is a Chinese radio stations, but my guess is from all over the world.
And I do have a guest speak English, speak Mandarin. So I will do live translations right away. And I’ve got a CEO from if, if people there realize, you know, like no religion. So pretty much like all the brand, most of the CEO was on my radio show. And and then I got people from Australia, Hong Kong China, friends, India, my last one was India just all over so that it will give my listener is the Chinese reach out to 80% of my Chinese community in Vancouver so that they will know, you know, what is going on around the world and how people invest globally.
That’s great. So obviously you are a specialist when it comes to international real estate and how even it works in different countries. You know, first thing that I didn’t even have on my list, that something that you just mentioned but something that I wanted that I think is worthwhile asking you about, and I know this, but maybe many of our listeners do not is, you know, what, how is real estate different? How has a real estate agent different in Hong Kong or in Germany or in another country as opposed to the United States or Canada?
One major distinction is that we have exclusive listing and we have MLS. They don’t, they are open you know, like listing meaning that I list my house. I can list it with a hundred different brokerage company. There’s no exclusiveness over there. And to be honest, we are spoiled in this part of the world because if we all, you know, move to that side of the world, we will be so struggling. You know, like it could be very chaotic to us because we have system over here and to them that I don’t want to say they don’t have system, they have their way to do do business. And that applies to Europe Hong Kong any Asia, you know, and European countries. So there, that is the major distinctions and also for commission wise. Okay. Here, let’s be honest that like we are the boss of the brokerage owner.
Okay. Because without us, they, you know, without transactions, you know, they, they got no business. Okay. So, and then we have split house, we have hundred percent house, you know, depending on which part of the North America you’re in, but in that side of the world many of them they’re like salary base. Okay. Just like, you know, like in this part of the world, you know, if you go to buy a car, the car salesman, they have a salary. Okay. And, and then, or maybe you go to any mall, you know, shopping and they have a basic salary. And that side of the world, it’s the same it’s basic salary. So the brokerage owner is the is the boss. So in that side of the world, they would like to, you know, they always recruit the franchise because the owner will make the most money as high, as let’s say, a commission is $10,000 as high as they will get $8,000 and the agents will get only $2,000.
Okay. So in that case, you know, that, that is very, very different. And in that side of the world, not everywhere, they have to take an exam and pass the exams to be a realtor or agent. Whereas here we do. And so in that side of the world, they can be you know, a janitor can be a real estate agent, a car salesman and not, you name it, you know, like they all have, you know, like multiple jobs. So in that case, I mean, not saying that we don’t have it on this side of the world, you know, like in in Canada since the late nineties, we kicked in the competition act in my days when I joined in 1992 we, I was not allowed to have a second income. I don’t know about us, but I was not allowed to have second income until late nineties and the competition act kicked in.
So because a lot of the agents, they said, okay, I cannot make my living, you know, like things like that. So they said, okay, you have to put food on the table at the house. So they allow this happen. So unfortunately, you know, many of us became like a part time now. And that side of the world, that probably happens in the, you know, I don’t know what the percentage, I don’t want to, you know, like make it out of proportions, but you can imagine it’s because they don’t have that Russo anybody can be enriched the agents and this side of the world. We, we we care about the knowledge, knowledge, worth something, knowledge and experience worth something. Okay. In that side of the world, not necessarily. Okay. So so in that case, you know, there’s a lot of huge difference, obviously cultural gap.
We absolutely have a lot of cultural gaps, you know, like between the East side of the world and the West side of the worst. And I don’t want to make it that macro, but make it like a micro. So in, in E doesn’t matter, what is U S or in Canada, East coast and West coast, we all behave differently. Okay. So, so just to think of that, so let alone his cross Pacific ocean. So, you know, there’s a lot of cultural differences and how you greet and meet people. And when you I always say one thing, if you want to be a good salesman’s advisor or whatever the case may be, if your clients is three years old, you better speak like a three year old. And if your clients is 90 years old, you better speak like 90 years old. They don’t understand our language, you know? And, and then I, we always have to put ourselves in their shoes. Often we have our, I mean, we all opinionated in some way, you know, but we have to put ourselves in their shoes, understand their culture, understand the background in order to break the ice fast. And so that probably is a long answer for your one questions.
Thank you. You’ve touched on a number of interesting points there. And always the thing that surprised me if now, you know, 21 years of selling real estate, when I first met people that sold real estate and other countries, I was so surprised that the discrepancies between a, either how much more schooling that they needed than here, like, for example, in a lot of Europe it’s my understanding that you essentially have to be a lawyer and go through school to be a lawyer to sell real estate in those countries. And then in other countries like South America, where anybody can pop up and say, I’m selling real estate today and have no qualifications. Yeah, exactly. So from that perspective and, and certainly the compensation on that line as well, or that you were talking about where an agent may make a lot less money, also, something that I’ve always found interesting about international the way international real estate is done is that the commissions are not anywhere near 6% in other countries. Is that, is that your experience too?
Well, let me tell you, you don’t need to go to that side of the world in Vancouver, our commission, if you’re lucky is 3% across the board.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you don’t need to go to that side of the world. I’m telling you.
Yeah, we have a client in the Dominican Republic. TRIBUS has a client in the Dominican Republic and the owner was sharing with me what their average commission, even on million dollar houses is, and it’s, it’s next to nothing. It’s just not compensated the same way as the States. So any which way? Well, that’s you know, I, hopefully that’s enlightening to our listeners about how different a different real estate is and other places. I wanna, I do have some, some things that I want to ask you about, first of all, what percentage of the transactions that you personally represent? What percentage of those transactions come from international buyers or sellers?
For the for the international business, I will say is right in the ballpark is about 5% or maybe a little bit more, however because my business is a hundred percent referrals. So and I do travel a lot. My peak time was like, I travel once every two months. So my luggage is constantly, you know, opened up, you know, like, you know, close in, close out and things like that. So you know, like being an international agent, a realtor it’s like a lot of the luxury, you know, like agents, you know, a lot of the agents would like to sell luxury. A lot of the agents would like to sell international. It is not that simple now. We are both us and Canada. We’re very metropolitan, you know, especially a few cities, you know, like New York, you know, Vancouver, Toronto LA you know, like Seattle, you know, all this prime city is very metropolitan now just because you are having a listing and then you have different ethnicity clients customer buyers walk into your open house, or you sell it to them doesn’t mean that you’re doing international business because doesn’t mean that you really understand their backgrounds and things like that.
So I do travel a lot and for that reason, I got referrals from all over the world. And then is this a big part of my business? I deliberately do not want to make anything a big part of my business. Just like in any investment situations is that you don’t want to put all your eggs in the same way
Well, there you go call Tina if you want to work with them. But so let as far as the buyers that are coming, let’s say, you know, the buyers that you’ve had that are coming from China and, and coming from other places and coming to Vancouver, have you noticed any uptick or downtick because of the virus of them trying to get out of ch of China or any other country that you worked with international buyers from. Okay.
So the virus has nothing to do with why people move around. Okay. The virus now believe me or not, I spoke to my clients a couple weeks ago and he is one of the major, I mean, he sent me to retire, but he operated on my father more than 20 years ago. And he became my clients. He has a surgeon in our major hospital in town. And he is now teaching in the university as well. He said to me, he said, Tina, there’s no vaccine said, there’s never a vaccine for SARS, never have vaccines for Ebola. [Inaudible] Nor it will have vaccines for COVID-19. And I said, are you serious? Is that yup. Is that the flu shot never works? So I asked him, I said, so do you think that you know, like if there is ever a vaccine, I said, would you take it?
He said, no. And then I said, so you’re telling me that all the news out there talk about vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. They are just propaganda. He said, yes. So I’m not trying to spread out any force or whatever, but this is an actual conversation I had with my client. So to go back to, is the Corona virus, the reason why people they move out of the country? No. The reason why the people move out of the country sometimes often is politics. Okay. For example, people from Hong Kong, people from Taiwan, people from India and different part of the world or Mexico, they go to us and anywhere it’s all because of politics. Now, China actually is the least the, the, the Chinese people from China, actually, they immigrate has nothing. Well, I don’t want to say it has nothing to do with politics, but mainly is for better quality of life.
Meaning they have fresher air to breathe meaning they would like to have their children’s to get westerns education. And it is very interesting right now the world is going the other way is like a lot of people, a lot of Westerners, they go to China’s university and study in China. So, you know so the, the people from Hong Kong and Taiwan mainly we immigrants for political reason because we did not understand the communist country and things like that and get scared all of it. And like the world is still, you know, very much like you know, like a communism’s is like a scary word. And, and then once I get to know them more don’t talk about politics, just do business and that’s fine. And so they come over to buy to Vancouver, I can share with you is that because in the whole global situation Vancouver and I believe is New Zealand has the lowest cases and then has the highest recovery rate.
So in Vancouver, actually our case up to today from, from, you knows, like February or March up to today, we’re about 2,700 cases. So our recovery rate is like 87%. So when you come over here and, and, and a lot of the people they said is because Vancouver has the is, you know, has, is the second largest cities with most Chinese. And that we wear mask from day one. I w and I personally wear gloves when I go out as well. And so the mask and gloves a mask for sure, is a hundred percent to the Chinese and gloves is, is personal choice. I prefer gloves. And so, you know, that’s the reason why, and they will choose right now, they will choose which city has the less Corona virus situation if they go to, to buy.
Got it. Yeah, I mean, I think that that is certainly something that’s that it seemingly like the people are looking to get away or get to places where there’s less risk a little bit, but I think the political side is certainly the piece that I’ve always heard about is you know, that they have money, you know, if buyers in China have money and they want to get it out of China for example, I heard about 10 ago, I heard Chinese folks would Sue themselves in the United States and lose to themselves in the United States so that they could move more money to the United States then, because I think there was a ruler, there is a really can’t move more than $50,000 or something like that outside of China. Correct.
I can share that with you. The 50,000 U S has always been in place for the longest time. It’s only in 2016, they start to be really gung ho about it. Okay. so there is a rules, but whether they act on it is another thing, right? So in 2016, they act on it because the four, a M because they don’t want to have too much money you know, get out of China. The thing is, you see, it’s like the law of 10 years ago, Chinese buyer is very different from now, the Chinese buyers very different. Okay. So let me tell you the differences. 10 years ago, you will have those rich Chinese. Maybe you want to say corrupt money. I don’t know. I have not dealt with it. My S those myself but I always say that corruption is everywhere in the world, but, you know some countries, they amend it and some countries they don’t.
So anyhow, 10 years ago, you have a lot of rich Chinese to get all of China. Doesn’t matter where they go. It’s the prime city, prime country, super prime city, super prime country in the world. They will go, okay. And then right now it’s very different. 10 years later, you’re dealing with a lot of millennial. A lot of them, they are in the thirties and the forties. They have no problem showing you the bank statements and they have no problem. But then their budget is a lot less than 10 years ago, 10 years ago, you know, it’s like you open the water, tap and unable to close the tap water, just keep coming out. And whoever has been doing business with the Chinese in the last 10 years or so, or since 2010 to 2016, had a good run, make a lot of money and things like that.
But 2016, the wallet tap, starting to turn tighter and tighter and tighter. And, and now those the first 10 years group, there are less educated. The people have money, they don’t speak much English. Okay. And now many of them not saying that they speak a lot of English, but many of them, their children grown up. They, they have educated in the different part of the world in England, in U S in Canada, in Australia. So they starting to buy, if they sh should they choose to stay in that country. So, and their parents is very different. The Paris is, you know, they actually make real money and they actually have real job. So that’s why they have no problem showing any bank statements. So it’s quite different, you know, if we keep on living in the past, then we have the past information’s perception. But that 10 years later is very different.
Gotcha. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about a little bit more at the virus anything that you’ve seen or that you have leaned into recently because of the virus, anything you’re doing different because of the virus.
Absolutely. we cannot go out. So now we are all zoom podcast, you know, that’s what we do. And, and virtual tools you know, like we do a lot of VR. We try not to, you know we would absolutely in Vancouver would absolutely keep our social distancing two meters, six feet away. So for all that it makes a lot of you know, it creates some challenges, you know, at the beginning. So now forget about just us over here. Because China has the, you know, like the coroner virus being discovered in China first. And so I have constant conversation with China and, and in that, you know, in that side of the world, their VR just talk off, they’re on fire. Okay. VR in this side of the world, we’re so used to it in the past. I can, I don’t want to say 10 years, but at least in the five last five years is, you know, like is widely used.
We all have videos for our listings in that side of the world. Privacy. I don’t want people to come into my home and shoot the videos. Maybe I’m messy. I don’t want to clean up my house or whatever the case may be. But now because of the Corona virus, VR takes off like crazy. Now, however, during the corner virus time, I discover one absolutely game changer technology that I would like to share with everybody. This technology is from Taiwan that I adapted. And in fact, I brought it over to North America. Nobody’s using it because right now what we have is MetaPort or whatever tools you using is still very much VR, a virtual tool. And then if you want to, if you’re, if you have a client sitting at home, don’t want to go out and the listing agent will go to the house and do a Face Time or WhatsApp videos, or we chat, which is what the Chinese use a social media platform.
And that’s how we do it. However, this new technology that I adapted and bring it over to this side of the world is actually when you do the sh when you share the three 60 video, you stitches them together. And actually I can call you with the link that I have that I posted on, on MLS. I posted on any social media, or even I can email it to you, Eric, you can literally click the link, my listing link and type in your phone number and your name. You can literally call me from your laptop and I can receive phone call. And then I say, hi, Eric, nice meeting you. Thank you for calling me. And Eric would say that Tina, I’m interested in your listing. Then Tina will say to Eric as Eric, let me sync my phone with your phone and I will start touring your house. My listings with you and the, and the technology will allow me when I moved to the right, Eric will see me showing the right side of the, of the house, moved to the left. And Eric says, see the left side the other side of the room. So we, I can actually talk to you, see your face and tore the house without me physically go to my listing.
So and for our listeners, Tina actually sent me out LinkedIn, trying to check this out ahead of time. And it does it does feel a lot like a Matter port you’re going through. I will say that the image quality does seem to be better than a Matter port. I find that the Matter port tours tend to be a little grainy in places. And this seems to be a much higher quality a video that you can see as you walk through everything. But I think the really interesting thing, Tina with this product is that it that I can, you can sync with the buyer. So it’s almost like you are it’s Face Time meets Matter port, right? Yes.
Is I’m taking my report to the next level. What we have in any platform out there is no communication. This one, if once we finish this, if Eric, that you would like to try it, call me, right. So you can literally try that yourself. And then, you know how I am you know, like tour the house guide you toward the house in real time is the interactions between the listing agents and the buyers. You can increase your double ending possibilities. Okay. And then secondly, is that, you know, like you don’t have to be at the house physically. And another thing is that if you have parents bank, okay, if you’re living in Chicago, your parents is in New York and then your sisters is in the West coast and everybody can get on this and look at the property and then you can all discuss it.
And so, and, and speed up the decision process. And even if the, you know, after you do the showing, and then if you get into the discussions in the evening with your spouses, okay. With your spouse, and then you will say that, okay, I would like to put an offer on that, but I want to see it again, who will go out at nine o’clock at 10 o’clock in the evening, you know? And so you use this technology, you can actually talk to the agent again and all that. Now this is another part, another product I find it is absolutely interesting, not interesting is very useful to agents who handle rental properties, because for rental properties, as we all, I believe we all experienced the tenants will make an appointment and no show,
No,
They just know Sean though, is they don’t care about telling you. And then you drive all the way to open the door, you know, and say, okay, where are you? Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you. I got tied up. I cannot make it. But in this pro in this product, you can actually, they call your rental listing. You can show them your rental listing. And they say, Oh, now I don’t like it. And then you say, and then let’s say, Eric, call me. And then Eric, you said, Tina, I don’t like this rental unit. And Tina was say, Eric, I actually think that I have another one that you might like it without leaving the phone. I will change it to another listing and tool you another listing, another listing, you can go through 10, 20 rental properties. And then if you decide to choose on one or two, then the agents can go and make sure that you will show up because you like those listings.
Yep. I totally agree. In fact, a lot of our clients have try this. That’s the ones that have implemented tools like this and like Matter port and other things like that have seen big upticks in their business. In fact one of our large clients during this time they’ve actually increased their business while the virus was going on over 2019, because they were the only company out there talking about the ability to do Face Time and do these sorts of more interactive features where a client didn’t have to get out of their house, but I can see the value in this tool where you can be connected with the customer and, and as you’re walking them through, because as we all know in real estate the feedback that the non-verbal feedback that you get from clients and Tina, I’m sure you this, like when you walk through a house, I could always tell whether a client was going to be ready to put an offer on it within the first 30 seconds to a minute because of their nonverbal cues. It’s, you know, they’re smiling, they’re wowing, you know, et cetera. And I think if you can see that in this video as you’re walking them through everything, I think that goes a long way to really helping.
Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s all about communications. We’re in the business of communication,
By the way. I don’t think you mentioned what the name of the tool is. Why don’t you do that for our listeners? T O U R
R I N G Touring. So like I said, Eric, you know, like I’m more than happy if you have a minute, you know you call me and then when I demonstrate it to you within the first 30 seconds, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And that is so very much different and there’s nothing like this. And it, it literally is a COVID-19 discovery for me.
Well, if somebody, if somebody that’s listening in on this, once they get more information, is there a website that they can go check it out?
Yes. well, you know what, let me give them if they would like to get in touch with me and then I will send them the all the information you can, they can, you know, like my name is Tina Mak is Mak cause a lot of the time people, they misspell my last name. So it’s T I N M a K. So Tinamac@gmail.com. So it’s quite easy.
There you go. And I’ve seen a copy of this folks. I, I, it definitely looks much better than a Matter port overall, so I
You can actually, you know, like it’s two way of doing it. You can do it with your cell phone and then you can do it with Meta Port. You can have your photographer still do it. I mean, like with, with the, you know, 3000 plus house, you don’t want you to do this yourself, but right now, a lot of people, I mean, even Meta Port, they come up with the app as well. Right. but you know, like a lot of the time, if you’re doing a rental age sorry, rental property, you might not, you know, if a one bedroom or studio, you don’t want to, you know, just call a photographer to come in and do it, this one, you can just do it yourself. They’re just together and get the link and get it out there and people they will call you.
Yep. Great. Alright. You know, one last question for you before we wrap things up here. So something that we’ve been really in depth on, in the past a year and a half, maybe two years of TRIBUS now is really discovering how bad translate automatic translation services are. And so, you know, I, I guess from in the worst of it, I always hear is Chinese. So do you want to talk a little bit about how bad that is, and maybe, you know, when you, when on your website tinamak.com, we have translations that are manual translations into Mandarin, et cetera.
Yep. I do my, you know, like I hired people to do the translations and things like that. You know that is, this is one thing that also this Turing will break the language barrier because when I call you, I will all, when Eric called me, even though I might have my, you know, like accent and then it doesn’t matter what language you speak, but if I can see your face in that, even if broken English or broken Chinese or whatever the case may be, we can still communicate because I know that you’re calling me because of my listing. So when it comes to the brokerage website, if you want to do you know, like actually the, you know, the article thing, you want to write something, things like that. I have to tell you, Google has improved, but still not good enough.
It’s just not there. But they have improved tremendously. Okay. I mean, like, because we have a lot of slangs, let’s be real. English has a lot of slangs. I talked to my buddies and they are, you know, like, and, and, and I have to, you know, like if I stopped talking to my buddies for a while and his legs or her legs, I wouldn’t understand. Okay. Because the thing is like, I just don’t like, I don’t, I don’t get used to those slangs. And when it comes to slangs and you go do it on the Google or any of the, you know, electronic translation, it just doesn’t, it won’t, it won’t cut it, it won’t kill it. So if you want to do a professional one you know, you must hire people.
Yep. And at TRIBUS we actually have a, a tool that allows you to hire people to do translations. And then we actually submit the translated, the manually translated information over to Google, so that if you go to Google in another country for example in Germany it actually, if you go to Google dot D E, which is the German version of Google actually shows the manual translation in German instead of the English site, and it helps it rank higher. So, you know, just a tidbit of tip out there is make sure that you’re not using the auto translate feature. If you be serious about international buyers and sellers, make sure you’re getting manual translations done, or use an, a, a translation service to get that done. Yeah. Anything else before we go here, Tina, that you think it’s important that our brokerage listeners would know about?
I think that’s the most important part is doesn’t matter what technology there’s a lot of noise out there. Everybody wants everybody’s business. You know, just trying to find out what suits you the most what suits your, your business. And, and that’s the most important thing in terms of doing international business. As I said, I’m more than happy to share my experience and coach anybody on that. Because let’s, let’s be real the cultural things. I, if you know the culture, you can definitely break the ice and your successful rate will be much higher.
Yep. Good, good comments there. So you and I, if anybody’s interested, you can reach out to Tina@TinaMak.com. There you go. And if you want to know more information about TRIBUS and the burgers platforms that we provide head on over to try this.com it’s TRIBUS.com. We thank you so much for having listened this next episode of brokerage insider. Make sure you subscribe to our future podcast to hear more great interviews with people just like Tina that could help you enhance your brokerage business. Thanks again for tuning in. We hope you listen in soon.
Thank you very much.
