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Brandon Doyle, a Realtor in Minneapolis, MN is also a smart home tech specialist. Brandon goes into detail about what tech clients care about, and how best you can help educate them.
TRANSCRIPTION
Hi, everybody. Welcome to Brokerage Insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I’m your host, Eric Stegemann. I’m the CEO of TRIBUS. We’re a brokerage platform vendor. And today on the show, I have a friend and client Brandon Doyle. Now Brandon is a Realtor and a real estate team leader with Remax Results in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And in addition to selling real estate and being a second-generation Realtor, Brandon’s also the author of three excellent books that cover specifically real estate sales, but some of them talk about general ideas for other businesses as well. Those three books are Mindset, Methods, and Metrics, the Real Estate Marketing Playbook and Success Rate Marketing.
Now I think all of you should probably read these books. And in fact, many people, I know I’ve personally sent copies of these books too. So definitely take a peek at them on Amazon and either download it to your Kindle or get a paperback copy of the book. So on top of all of that, of selling real estate, managing a team, writing three books, Brandon’s also the creator of a smart home podcast, a video podcast called Home Tech Decisions.
And on this podcast, he reviews just about every piece of smart home tech available. And in seriously, if you haven’t subscribed to it, you should just, just keep an eye on what he’s talking about. Just with vacuums alone. He goes really into depth. So Brandon, thank you so much for joining us here today.
Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me.
So tell us a little bit more, first of all, about just being a Realtor. What got you into the business? Obviously, I already mentioned you’re a second generation Realtor and you know where things are at with your team today.
Yeah, for sure. So actually I went to college and I got a degree in real estate, so I got my bachelor’s and shortly out of college, I was doing commercial real estate appraisal. That was around 2008. So a lot of like pre foreclosure, a bank rate finance, like their warehouses and a smaller office buildings. It was very rewarding. I enjoyed it quite a bit and I was working towards my certified general, but then things changed with the place that I was working and the compensation structure had changed. And I wasn’t going to be able to get the hours I needed to get that certification. So I didn’t really want to do residential. So I actually switched over and did hotel management for a while and that’s pretty much dead end career. So I actually joined my father in the business, I think about eight years ago.
And from there we actually grew our team. At one point we had five agents working with us and then just last year we kind of decided, you know, I don’t actually enjoy managing quite as much as I thought I did or would, and still enjoy selling. So it kind of just went back to working with clients again, a more, it’s more of a focus of stop, really paying for leads. So we actually turned off or Zillow spend and are all of our paper clicks then. So now we’re all focused on organically and we get quite a bit from people just finding us online. So a lot of that is just like writing content about neighborhoods and stuff. And we’ve been, I’ve been doing that for years. So that’s working out pretty well. I like you mentioned a, wrote a few books and then I’ve got the smart home channel on YouTube with a buddy of mine. And then I also write for avenues and Realtor magazine about not only smart home tech, but also a real estate marketing in general.
So obviously Brandon comes to this conversation with a pedigree, not only having been a second-generation Realtor, but obviously with writing books and digging into details and being a feature writer on Inman. So we could talk Brandon and I could talk about 20 different topics on real estate and specifically, you know, what he just mentioned about content. I think we should have our own separate podcasts episode, just talking about Brandon and investing time into building content because he’s such a master at that. But today we really want to talk a little bit about smart home tech smart home tech is becoming a really important aspect of the home buying process. And in fact, according to a study by Coldwell Banker, 77% of buyers said they want smart thermostats. 75% said they want smart smoke detectors. 66 said they wanted security cameras and 63% wanted smart door locks. And so Brandon obviously, you know, you’ve gotten heavily into this space. So what, what kind of started that process for you?
Yeah, so I’d say it was five, four or five years ago. My wife and I were living in a townhouse down the road here. And I think it started with like a Ecobee thermostat. And then from there, you know, the echo devices and smart switches. And then when we built our house I had been looking at the different technology for quite a while and kind of documenting my journey and writing about that for Realtor magazine and Inman as well. But just kinda went really deep down the rabbit hole. And then the further I went, the more I found and I started having companies reach out to me and learning about like different technology I didn’t even know existed. And so I’ve really documented everything that we’ve put in our home. And then in addition to that have been testing out absolute ton of devices. I think I’m up to over a hundred different devices I’ve tested personally, and then I’ve helped a friends stuff in their houses as well. So I think I know more than I need to.
Yeah. And that’s definitely the case, as I mentioned, seriously, he really does get it and goes through the process of buying pretty much everything in a particular space. Like I know what do you have right now that you’re reviewing it? What is it? Eight different smart vacuums.
Yeah. So we just wrapped up the smart back end review. I did have eight of them going at once and it drove my wife insane, especially when she’s working from home right now. So that was a fun test, both of our marriage and the vacuums themselves. But right now I’ve got some stuff I’m working on surrounding, you know, smart home tech for working from home. So smart office, like right now I have a sit stand desk, which is pretty cool. And then I’ve got some different lighting options going on that actually notify me of what’s going on around me at the house. Cause right now I’ve got my headset on. So I can’t really hear what’s going on upstairs, but if the garage door open or someone at the door the Nano leaf that’s in front of me here would change colors and I would be notified of that. So that, and the dogs would all start barking too, but
That’s the point. So when Nano leave me and I haven’t even heard of that one, it just tells you something’s going on, that you should know about. Yes.
So the they’re actually just light panels that you put on your wallet. It’s more of like entertainment thing. I think a lot of gamers have been like a Twitch streamers, have them behind them. You can do some pretty cool stuff with it, but normally they just set them to have cool lights going and like, can, they can go to music and stuff too. But I use a program called if this, then that. And I just set it up so that like, if my garage door was open, then it would tell send a signal through IFTTT and it would come out on the Natalie and it would turn the lights, all red. We don’t want to leave her garage door open. That would be bad. And then if someone’s at the front door, not only would the lights turn blue, but then on our show device, it’ll actually just pull up in real time. I can just glance at it real quickly and be like, Oh, it’s a door to door salesman. I don’t need to run upstairs. Or if it’s my package I’ve been waiting for, I can race the dogs out there.
Grab it. And by the way, he just mentioned IFTTT, which stands for, if this, then that a funny story is one of the very first video series video training series I did for Realtors way back in 2010, I believe was about how Realtors should use IFTTT and so you can go into the Wayback machine and, and, and find that very old video of me talking about it. And it’s probably terribly outdated, but that tool is now become widely used by smart home tech. Right? So you can power things and say, you know, if this thing over here happens, then this other thing, make this other thing, like, for example, light up your Nano liter, right?
Yeah. I mean, there’s unlimited possibilities and you can combine things even like across things that aren’t smart home related. Like I can just make it log every time someone walks by and like, count it on a Google doc or something ridiculous like that. Cause anything that plugs into there, you can make these formulas of a trouble instance. It’s all cloud based. So there is going to be like a delay to it. And then, you know, as these companies get bought out or they go under or they changed their way, their software works or then all these formulas stop working. So that can be frustrating. So I really want like, you know, put everything into that. I would definitely recommend setting up your home so that everything is controlled locally. That way you don’t have a lag and then you’re not reliant on these companies, updating their software and playing nice together. Anyone that had an Google or nest device knows very well. What can happen when a, a company changes their stance about working with other companies?
Speaking of that, have you between the two, do you have a favorite?
You know, so in our house we use all Amazon devices. I think it was just cause that’s what we started with. But statistically Google is actually better at answering questions. And if you have a all Google ecosystem, then there is certainly a benefit to using their products just because you can control everything within one app. So that’s pretty nice, but I think Amazon is definitely on the forefront of the technology and advancements and playing well with others. So they definitely integrate with more other products than Google does.
Yeah, I I’m, I use Google extensively and actually I’ve at my house, we have everything set to Google. Like I have nest for my thermostat. I have nest cameras. And so I kind of stayed inside of that ecosystem. So it was better, but most of my family all uses the Amazon ecosystem which is, you know, pretty open and available. And then obviously I think you were alluding to, is nest recently changed their model where before it was, you know, works with NASA and everything kind of played nicely with each other. And then they changed their model to switch over, to being more involved with Google. And when they did that it certainly changed. And, and some of those connections that they had, weren’t there. Luckily I didn’t have any of those products that broke, but you know, certainly a consideration here is when you make these investments those integrations can change over time. Have you used smart tech or your knowledge of smart tech at all, either products specifically, or the knowledge of the products in any of your marketing for real estate purposes?
Yeah, so just having, like putting the content out there on Facebook and other social media channels, I get a lot of people that like reach out to me what their smart home questions. And of course that keeps me top of mind and allows me to like engage them in a meaningful way. So very good in that aspect. And then of course the type of clients that like to work with me or are people that are into this. So oftentimes it’s a selling point for me. I can walk them through what I would do if I were them. So I had a client recently purchased a townhouse and like told him all the stuff that, that I would recommend he actually went with with Google. So that’s been fun for a few people. I’ve helped to do the install, but trying to stay away from that just cause it can be very time intensive. And I’m not a licensed electrician. So when it comes to like switches and things like that, like don’t really need the liability,
But the knowledge that you have that’s there. So the fact that you put out this content, and I know you have a video podcast, that’s on YouTube that people can subscribe to, but I definitely follow it more iteratively on a day to day basis of what you post on Facebook. And so are you saying that that commentary, that you’re, you’re putting little chunks out on Facebook as you go through the process of testing before the video goes out, are you saying people engage with that and that’s how you you’re actually getting some business right now,
Correct? Yeah. It’s just another way to stay top of mind. You know, a lot of agents out there just like, Oh, look at me, I sold another one. Or, you know, I’m out showing houses are hanging, sold science, which is cool. It’s, it’s important to have evidence of success out there. You have to get that social proof. But for me, this is something that I’m just really passionate about and I like to share like the testing as it gets ongoing. And so, like you mentioned earlier, I’ve got a ton of people asking about the robot vacuums. And of course the testing is now done. I’m just waiting on it to be edited for the full release to come out on YouTube. But I have been teasing the content on Facebook and it just getting a ton of people reaching out. So that’s obviously a good thing.
So without giving away the answer, cause we don’t want to jump you launching that show. Cause obviously there’s a lot of interest in there. Can you talk a little bit about the process that you went through and how you posted some of that era of Lee on your Facebook page?
So our approach to any category, it really is to look at first, look at what’s available in the marketplace and then say, okay, what, where would I want to use this know? And one big thing about like, what I’m doing is that I don’t want to tell people, you know, here’s the product you need to buy. I want to tell them, here are the products available in this space? Here’s some pros, here’s some cons here are some unique features to each that I like. Here’s some areas where they were certainly lacking and here are the scenarios in which I would select each device. You know, because if your have all Google stuff, then I’m going to tell you, you should probably just go with the nest thermostat and the nest doorbell, because it’s all on the one app, especially if you’re already paying for a subscription.
So if you already have a ring doorbell and you’re going to add more cameras, why not add ring cameras? Because then of course, you know, you’re already paying a subscription, so why don’t you want to pay two subscriptions? But then with like the vacuums and stuff, I think one thing that sets our channel apart is that we’re really doing more real world testing. You know, so there’s a guy out there, that’s got a channel called the vacuum Wars and he goes super in depth into each vacuum, both robot automated vacuums and upright vacuums. And that’s kind of his thing. But he concocts these very odd test, you know, designed to put the robots through their paces, which is interesting and all, but like, that’s not how we live. So what we do is we purchase the products or in some cases, our central products from the manufacturers for free we test them in our house like for a month at a time that we test something else or we’ll test them simultaneously really just observe how they work. Like, cause there’s a lot of pants where they say things do that like certain stuff or there’s like boast about integration. But then in testing, you’ll find out that like, sure, the doorbell could show up on my little switch, but there’s like a five second delay. And during that time it had been faster to just pull my phone out and look at it. So like some features it’s like, it sounds really cool, but not very practical. So, and that’s the only way to uncover this stuff is to just use it.
And, and, and so Brandon’s doing that work and helping buyers. You know, we went through the statistics a few minutes ago. It’s very clear that most buyers today want some sort of smart tech in their home. And that does not matter whether you’re, you know, 25 and buying your first house or if you’re 75 smart home tech just generally makes people’s lives better overall. Right. And so Brandon’s going through the time and checking these things so that you can make better decisions. So when you were looking into the vacuums, particularly because that’s something you’re going to be pushing out on your podcast very shortly, was there any particular, big bullet point items that you found? Wow, I can’t believe this is great that it does this or wow. This feature was so overrated.
Yeah. So you get what you pay for these devices. If you think of your typical robot vacuum, it kind of just bounces around all over the place and, you know, gets itself into trouble. Well, now they’ve got smart navigation features and so it’s kind of just maps through them as it goes. And then it figures out what the most optimal route to go is. And you get these Manx Lyons under carpet. It kinda looked like you just mowed your grass. So that is definitely a feature that I I think is worth it. And then some of the things I don’t think are worth, really worrying about is some of the AI that they’ve added. It’s like, Oh, that’s cool. But just pick up your room before you start the vacuum desk or worst case, if it hits it, it’s fine. But like, I’m not going to chance it on the robot identifying dog poop and not hitting it. I think I’d rather just do a quick once over and say, okay, there’s no dog poop. It’s okay to run the ramp up the vacuum now. So our dogs would ever do that, but it only takes once, you know,
Definitely. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve unfortunately I saw some photos back a few years ago that somebody posted online that went viral of that that problem occurring. And it was a massive ordeal of it happening cause it happened overnight. So that’s you know, all of that content that you’re generating and, and by the way, Brandon’s taking photos of the process. It’s obviously part of the video process. So he’s generating lots of content. I think that leads into the question of how do you think that at another team you know, or maybe even a brokerage or a franchise, how do you think that they could leverage smart home tech knowing that they’re probably not going to take the time and effort that you do? Is there something you think brokerages or other teams could be doing better to leverage smart home tech in their marketing efforts?
Yeah, certainly I’m looking at my Google doc right now and I’ve got 87 pages of just notes. So I would say it, there’s probably not many, if anyone else out there that’s gone as deep as I have, but you definitely don’t need to do that. You can just find good content on the internet and then reshare it or share your personal experiences as well. You know, a lot of the new builders are including smart home tech. And so just touring one of those homes and kind of getting educated on, on what the different products are and what the benefit might be to your clients. And then sharing that on whatever medium, you know, they are the most engaged with for us. It’s our newsletter that goes out monthly. And then also like you mentioned earlier, Facebook has been huge,
But do you think it’s enough just share information and not have the knowledge because it seems like to me, if I was a brokerage leader, knowing the numbers of the study that Coldwell banker did and knowing that people genuinely care about this, it seems like to me, I should be investing time into at least if nothing else training my agents on smart home tech, because it’s obviously so prevalent that no matter the age range people want this.
Yeah. I mean, currently 81% of homeowners say they’d be more likely to purchase a home and have connected technology. So it’s a pretty big segment. And yeah, I would say just, you know, getting educated, you can use free resources. All my stuff gets shared on Realtor magazine and, and in venues. So Realtor magazine articles are coming out about once a month. And then every Friday on in the news, I’ve got a video content and interviews with a product manager, like a product managers at these big companies. So really good insight there, but doing your own research is obviously good. You can, you could even just go to like best buy and like the people that are pretty knowledgeable and just look at the different products and kind of learn what’s going on. One thing that I’ve noticed, a lot of agents don’t seem to understand is that that doorbell is recording it from the time you got out of your car until you went into the house and it hears really well. So I’ve had instances where, you know, agents have talked about the house and their offer at their car, not knowing that like, you can still hear you and it is recording. So
There’s no expectation of privacy when you’re outside. Right. So correct. Yeah, there’s nothing that, as far as I understand, and I’m no lawyer but as far as I’m sure, but I think outside is always fair game. It’s just the question of inside where you may, in some States have to disclose that somebody walking through the home is being recorded.
Yeah. And even if they’re not being recorded, the homeowner could just be watching you live. You know, that used to say, they’re not doing that and do quite a bit gray area and the agent could be trying to do everything right. But it doesn’t mean that the homeowner is gonna go a lot with that. I still might say, Oh, I’m going to record them anyways. Very hard to police that.
I think it would be very hard to convince a seller, not to do that. Ultimately, you know, as a seller, obviously you want to glean any insight you can into trying to get top dollar for your house. So definitely something to be mindful of that I wouldn’t have thought of. But if a brokerage is out there thinking about putting together a training package on smart home technology that’s certainly something that probably should be covered is making sure your agents know not to discuss the sorts of things within ear shots of of the house, especially if you know that it has smart home technology in it.
Yeah, they’re great. Big point though, is you know, conveying the property. And so most of the smart home tech is going to be considered personal property like the hubs and, you know, stand alone cameras, the voice assistance, et cetera. You know, the things that would be considered fixtures are going to be the switches, the doorbells, the smart thermostats. But if you’ve got advanced automations where there’s like programming behind the scenes, that’s making this stuff play nice together. You know, that’s, the new owner is going to need to set that up on their own. They’re going to have to establish their own accounts. You’re going to need to factory reset everything. And for someone that might not be as tech savvy, that could be a challenge for them. So being an agent that understands that and being able to help them is a huge value.
So I mean, certainly something to consider is that process of conveyance. I mean, I recently was involved in in renting out a house that had smart home technology built into it. And before the house was rented you know, going through the process of making sure you disconnect everything and figure out how to get it over to the other person is, is not even for a techie minded person like me. There’s a lot of bullet points that you have to check off to go through that process that you may not consider. And particularly in homes, like for example, I know Lindar has started selling homes. All of their new homes include the tech package that has even wifi built into the house. So beyond just the traditional smart home technology that you may consider if you sell any one, our home made in the past, I believe two years, it likely had wifi devices that came with the home and now you have to consider swapping those out or making sure the new person has access to, to control that.
Same thing with doors and, and and thermostats, I’ve heard horror stories where the new owner can’t even control their thermostat because the old seller still has the complete access to it. So all things to consider now, I want to go back to something you said Brandon, cause you know, our listeners of this podcast for the most part are brokerage leaders, brokerage staff members team leaders, et cetera. And so from that perspective, I think you mentioned that your content most of your content is shared in, in men or Realtor magazine. So are you saying that somebody, a brokerage leader could go and, and be able to get that content from Realtor magazine and, and it would be okay for them to start sharing that with their agents on a regular basis?
That is correct. And they’re actually allowed to share it with the consumers directly. So all of the content that I put out there is actually a public publicly available and can be used. However, they see fit as long as like, you know, link back and cite their sources, which is what it is. But I have noticed that a lot of people do share the stuff. So,
So if you’re a brokerage leader and I’ve paid very close attention to Brandon’s content, so I can tell you it’s very, very good and very in depth, particularly for agents that want to get involved with it and really learn this stuff. You can go and Brandon’s telling you that you can go use his content, just make sure to link back or cite him as the source for it. But man, if I’m a brokerage leader, knowing those numbers, I start excited earlier. It would be near the top of my to do list, to put together a smart home packet out of some sort of marketing, whether that’s email based marketing, drip based messages or a training guide and a brochure packet that shows you as a brokerage, really understand this stuff because no one else is doing that right now.
So I think it’s a great way for brokerages to really stand out, knowing that 77% of buyers or more want this smart home tech. So make sure to check out Brandon’s content on Realtor magazine on Inman. And then of course on his video podcast called home tech decisions. So few more questions for you here, Brandon. We in your in your process of going through the technology and being a Realtor at the same time is there a particular piece of technology that you think home buyers outside of the numbers from Coldwell banker? Do you think there’s one thing, is it a thermostat? What is it that home buyers are really looking for in new houses?
Yeah, so going in order, the number on reason that people actually buy a smart home tech is actually to monitor their home. The other smart home, it’s about three fifths of the market. It’s just that alone. But as far as energy savings goes a smart thermostat, you’re going to save 10 to 20% of your, on your energy bill annually. So that, that will pay for itself within typically depending on how hot or cold your market is or like your area is you know, as little as like six to eight months in other cases, maybe it takes a year, but often there’s rebates available for that as well. And then, you know, some people love the voice assistants. Other people hate them. That seems to be kind of an entry point though. And if you buy one of those devices, then you say, Oh wow, this works with other things. And so some of the main reasons people use them are for entertainment, purposes, security controlling their lighting, comfort, you know, the thermostat. Yeah.
So, you know, it seems like as a great closing gift, depending on the price range of the house, et cetera, you could go all the way from just a echo dot, which might be 30 or $40 that you could give them as a smart closing gifts all the way up to like a nest thermostat or an eco B thermostat, which might be $200 and, and, you know, get them into the space of it’s something that’s interested in them as a very nice closing gift. And I know I’ve even heard of some brokerages that have partnered with companies like vivant, which is a smart home technology company in, in a basic package. And then vivant goes in, helps them get that basic package set up. And obviously they can sell that person on other smart home tech. But then it’s a nice little add on that. You feel like you got a bonus when you, when you bought the house. Right. so,
And they do have like an affiliate program as well. Of course. I’m kind of reluctant to recommend anything that requires a subscription and does not work without it. So but yeah, I would say that, you know, giving them a echo or a Google mini, which is the Google equivalent of the echo dot on up to like what the, the show for maybe a nicer listing, it’s a very nice gift. I would be a little hesitant to offer a smart thermostat just because you know, about one in three adults has having issues, setting up their smart thermostat. And that ends to a lot of 22% return rate on those. And that’s actually the by Forbes is the hardest smart home device to install, which clearly these people have never tried to install power over ethernet cameras, because let me tell you that’s way worse.
Yeah. I, I mean, certainly at my house, I was able to install a smart thermostat on my own, but I will tell you, it was it was a complicated process because I’m no wiring expert. And if you haven’t opened up your thermostat before there’s all these different wires that do all of the controls and none of them are labeled with what they do. They all just have letters. So it’s R and G and C and, and
Yeah, the C wire is the important one. If you don’t have that, you’re going to have really struggle. Yeah,
Exactly. But
Forward system with like a forced air furnace AC it’s pretty straight forward, but when you get into know accessory items like a air exchange or a humidifier, or, you know, like a electric base heat, some of those types of systems, it gets much more complicated very quickly. So I know when I was going to watch out for yeah.
When I always stalled my nest thermostat it actually highly suggested that I contact a pro because of my setup and I was able to get it done, but it was not with it without eight hours of work to try, try to get it done on my own and, and constantly going outside to the breaker box and having to turn it off and come back in and test it again. So yeah, I mean, it is, it’s definitely a piece of of complicated, a complicated piece to, to install whereas an echo dot, you know, they just plug it in and it starts working. Brandon, we’re almost out of time for this conversation, but there was one more thing I wanted to ask you about that I know you recently did on your house. And some might say that this is not a, you know, not necessarily smart home tech, but I lump it in there for sure. And that is, I know you installed solar panels at your house. So tell me about the thought process of going through that. What made you do it when you think the payback period is et cetera?
Yeah, so for most people you know, it may not be a good fit just because of the payback period. So it’s about nine years and in some cases it can be up to 12 currently at which it was way less than it was 10 years ago. You asked me that question 10 years ago, the answer would be typically a 25 year payback period. So like cost of things has come down and the panels are definitely more efficient. But so one of the major drivers of that decision was that a federal tax credit will be expiring. Currently it’s a 26% rebate. And so huge advantage there we’re able to secure very low interest financing on it. So our payment is around the same as what we were paying for energy anyways. So we’ll be net neutral within our house.
And then we can use off peak as well if we were to get an ebb in the future, which is actually more effective. So our state has net metering, most States do so basically we sell power back to the utility and we kind of use it as a bank. We don’t have like a battery backup or anything like that. But but federal credit is a huge, huge part of it. A lot of States have incentives and some that utility companies will pay you to install solar because they’re mandated to have a certain percentage of clean energy. Unfortunately, ours was not on that list. So we did not get anything. We actually had to pay a fee to tie into their system. But that actually gets turned on tomorrow. So it’s quite the process looking at my timeline here, cause I’ve documented every step of the way.
And I let’s see here looks like I first decided to get solar in at the end of April. So that’s when I contacted them and I signed a contract in the middle of may and then tomorrow is when it gets fully activated. So we they’ve been installed since the end of July, basically when I think of July 20th is when they went in. But then from there, there’s like this inspection period. And then, you know, the city has to come off and sign off on it. Then the utility company has to sign off on it. And so, but yeah, tomorrow it will be turned on. We’re really excited about that.
That that is, and by the way, this just for time sake purposes, this podcast is being recorded on the 4th of August. So that if that gives you a timeline, cause we do record our podcasts ahead of time and push them out. But that that’ll give everybody kind of an idea of, of where it’s at. Now Brandon last question for you. And I asked all of my guests this one last question which is if you could change anything about the real estate industry, what would that one thing be?
Oh wow. That’s a very tough question. But I think the answer is pretty simple. I would increase the regulation like the requirement just to maintain your license, every other trade, you know, there is a process of being a trainee and then working your way up and there’s like a certain amount of, of work you need to do every year that you don’t have to document in order to maintain your license. I think it would be quite unusual to go to a doctor that only did, you know, work with two patients that year. But yet in real estate we have a lot of what I would describe is marginal or part time agents. And I think that has a very negative impact on our industry as a whole both for, you know, your fellow agent, because you’re dealing with people that don’t have as much experience, but then as well, the clients, because in the end, they’re, you know, they are paying more for the services.
Whereas if we had less agents, we divided out by less people and therefore, you know, commissions would certainly go down and you’d be working with someone that’s more experienced. The unfortunate thing is that, you know, people tend to go with people they know like and trust. And sometimes that person isn’t always the most experience. But by the time that I figure this out, it’s too late, they’ve already, you know, they’re on her contract or them close. And there’s really no recourse for these clients that either left money on the table or found out about something wrong with the house after the fact that their agent should’ve known about. So that, that is one really big thing that I’d like to see address. But unfortunately with the way our state licensing is set up and you know, it being state by state and we have a national organization that benefits very much so from having a large number of people and brokerages, and also benefit by collecting agents. So I don’t see that changing anytime soon, I would probably take, you know, some sort of employment law regulation to force that change into play. But yeah, that’s, that’s the one thing I would change.
Bob Hahn was on our podcast recently and his, his statement was not dissimilar from yours and, and his thing he would change, he stated was getting rid of the 10 99 exemption for real estate because he felt like if you did that instantaneous, the, a whole lot of people would be forced out of the business and you’d be left with the cream. So yeah Brandon and Rob, not the only people to say it either something tells me that sentiment will continue well, Brandon, thanks so much for joining us. As you’ve probably heard folks by listening to this podcast brand and keeps track of, of all the data and everything that he has going on, which is a perfect reason why he would write a book called mindset, method and metrics. So make sure to get a copy of one of his three books, mindset, method, and metrics, the real estate marketing playbook and success rate marketing, as well as make sure to follow and subscribe to his video podcast called home tech decisions. And if you know anybody looking to buy or sell real estate in the Minneapolis Minnesota area, make sure to look up Brandon Doyle doylerealestateteam.com. Thanks again, Brandon for joining us.
Yeah. Thanks. Take care.
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