Realtor Strategies for Falling Rates: How to Guide Clients in a Changing Market

I think you'll see with the Fed easing that, it'll show a sign to people to flock to Treasuries, right to the bond market. And that will then ultimately lead the bond market to a lower price, which will affect mortgage interest rates.So they are a little bit correlated, but at the end of the day, you know, just because the Fed's going to cut rates, if you look at the last two times they cut rates, mortgage rates one time went up, you know, and so, yeah, I tell people just to be cautious, but the biggest thing is about being prepared and so being ready. And that's one of the reasons why we underwrite all of our loans upfront, upfront that are purchases.So when that opportunity does come, because if you look just recently like you were talking about people that said I can't afford the house I want just in the last three weeks coming down that half a point has now approved their purchasing power to where now they can afford that house. That's why we don't let them get discouraged. That's why we stay positive and keep them on track.Because now I can call them back, which I've been doing a lot this morning, going, hey, you're ready? We're good, let's go.

Yeah.

Foreign.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Texas Real Estate and Finance podcast. My name is Mike Mills. I'm a North Texas mortgage banker with Service First Mortgage.And today I am welcoming one of my compadres in the mortgage industry of this roller coaster that we call life, Mr. Steve Barton. And he is the executive vice president of sales also with Service First Mortgage.But today we are not doing a bank commercial, but instead we are here to unpack what is happening with mortgage rates right now and how an expected, an expected Fed rate cut next week is going to impact the housing market.We're going to discuss housing inventory, buyer behaviors, inflation, money supply, and how all of this could impact your timing of a refinance if you're one of those many Americans or you have clients sitting above 7% right now.So if you work in real estate or lending, then this conversation could be a valuable tool to help your clients make decisions on what to do with their home financing over the next several weeks. So, Mr. B, I am sure you are dominating your day as always. So how are you today?

I am, you know, you've made me start thinking about the dominating my day as a catch line, especially when you put it into my chat GPT because I was writing a recommendation letter and I actually wrote it myself because I still like to write myself. Then I put it into Chad GBT and I actually told it to make it less like me and actually have good punctuation.And at the end of the put, let's dominate. I was like, oh my God. Thanks Mike. Now you're, now you're in every part of my chat. GBT too.

Yes, I, I, I try to make sure we permanently permeate that all the way through because you know, we all have our, our, our special phrasing that we use to keep ourselves hyped up. But that's what I love about you because you're always positive.You, if I'm ever having a bad day and I need to have it pulled out of the hole, you'll just tell me to stop being a dumbass and you know, look at the bright side. So I appreciate that about you.

So there is a lot of that. So let's go.

Speaking of bright sides. So the last 30 days or so we've seen quite a, quite a shift down in mortgage rates.You know, we were, for a long time we were hovering in that low sevens to even eight range. And you know, within the last 30 days or so now we're back into the low sixes.And you know, if you're doing a government loan, you might even be into the fives. So it's, it's, it's been a big tick up or tick down I should say now with the Fed rate cut that's more than likely going to occur next week.I think all estimates are that they're going to at least cut by 25 basis points, maybe more.We got to look at, you know, what's the real impact of this going to be because a lot of people think, you know, mortgage rates and Fed rates are just the same thing and if the Fed cut rates, mortgage rates are automatically going to come down. So why is that? Why is a little bit of flawed thinking.

Do you think I haven't heard about this Fed cut. This is interesting. No.Well, it's funny, we spent a lot of time, you know, talking about that and that's one of the big headlines and the Fed interest rate cut.And then of course, you know, on the political side they talk about how, you know, Chairman Powell's been too slow and it's affecting the home building industry. And reality is the 10 year treasury bond is what really determines interest rates.And as I tell any customer I talk to or all my realtors, you can always facetime me at 7:30 in the morning and watch Squawk Box with Me, because that tells you everything you need to know about interest rates. And they barely bring up the Fed interest rate when they're talking about that.They're talking more about inflation, jobs, numbers, things of that nature. Home starts, all of the pertinent data that helps build the mortgage industry.But unlike in the past, where they were truly almost independent of each other, they have now started to correlate ever since COVID a little bit more.So I think a Fed interest rate will actually ease up the lending of banks overnight, obviously, because that's what that determines, which will help with, you know, jumbo rates, helocs, car loans, credit cards. Maybe it could come below 32%. Ever would be great. Which then, yeah, good luck with that. I, I had to explain that to my son.I was like, you can keep spending on your credit card, but here's what it looks like. The next month, he's like, wait a minute. I'm like, exactly.But I think you'll see with the Fed easing that, it'll show a sign to people to flock to Treasuries, right to the bond market, and that will then ultimately lead the bond market to a lower price, which will affect mortgage interest rates.So they are a little bit correlated, but at the end of the day, you know, just because the Fed's going to cut rates, if you look at the last two times they cut rates, mortgage rates one time went up, you know, and so, yeah, I tell people just to be cautious, but the biggest thing is about being prepared, right? And so being ready. And that's one of the reasons why we underwrite all of our loans up front that are purchases.So when that opportunity does come, because if you look just recently like you were talking about people that said, I can't afford the house I want just in the last three weeks coming down that half a point has now approved their purchasing power to where now they can afford that house. That's why we don't let them get discouraged. That's why we stay positive and keep them on track.Because now I can call them back, which I've been doing a lot this morning, going, hey, you're ready? We're good, let's go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.Well, you know, I think what people don't understand sometimes when you look at all these news cycles and when information comes out about what's going to happen and what's going to impact it is much of it's based on emotion, right?So, so whenever you hear that the Fed is going to cut rates, right, a lot of the Movement into the bond market actually starts to happen before rate cut ever even occurs. And so because they're anticipating it to happen.So that's why when you said earlier, when the Fed actually does cut rates, sometimes you can see a tick up in mortgage rates because a lot of that money's already shifted in and now they're reallocating or adjusting based on whatever they said after the meeting or if they went more or lighter or whatever the case may be.And so it's not necessarily a straight correlation one to one on what exactly is going to happen between the two, because any movement that typically happens is going to happen before and then you'll see some adjustments that occurs over the next week or so after the announcements made.And you know, right now the, the big talk is, is that not only going to, are they going to cut in September, but they're expected to cut, you know, pro, possibly going into, you know, this, the, the, the following meetings for the rest of this year. And you know, a big part of this is coming from the idea that, yes, inflation has continued to kind of stay sticky. It hasn't really jumped up.But you know, if you look at just where the numbers were for the last couple report came out, it was sitting at about 2.9. You know, it was down, but it's still, Overall inflation's about 3.1, so it's not really falling off.And with the Fed having a dual mandate of we have to keep inflation under control or, or pricing, but we also have to keep jobs, you know, in line. And, and that's the big story of what's driving this cut, is that the job market isn't as strong as it has been in the past.And so you're starting to see these revisions to the job reports where maybe we didn't add as many jobs as the government said we did right out of the gate.And numbers changing is what's really putting the Fed on the forefront saying, okay, we have to do something because we got to start stimulating more job growth, we have to start stimulating companies hiring and all that kind of stuff.And unfortunately, or good and bad, depending on what side of the coin you're on, is that as that starts to happen, because this is the reason they're doing it, what you're going to see is then people's emotions go, hey, things are going to get better. So now I can make that home purchase, now I can list my house to go find another one.And so what that does to the housing market as a whole is, in my opinion, at least you will start to see movement in both areas, which means if you were holding out for this crash, where these houses were going to come piling down, there was no crash, There was a plateau, there was a slight decrease. Seller adjust, you know, Seller expectations of what their house was worth were probably adjusted slightly.But now if this starts to occur and rates come down, you're going to start to see that number go up.And I think you're going to start to see more people get into the market and therefore even waiting longer because you think rates may come down further. It might cost you in the long run because it's, it's very possible that home prices could continue to go up.

Isn't it funny that just a year ago we're trying to talk people into the hey, a 7 1/2% interest rate is not that bad. And now we're trying to tell sellers, hey, your home price is a little much. You might have to do some concessions.It's like our, our perfect world that we live in is every time we like plug one water hole, another one pops up. And now we're trying to talk to sellers about this. Right, Major? Yeah, you know, it is, it is a bit of a five dance.And you know, like you said, the job report revision last month really hit the market hard and good for mortgages, but hard in the market. And then obviously having another job report that just came out being really, really off again.You think they'd get some of these college grads that are struggling to find jobs to come work for the people that don't know how to count like you would think counting at this point would be pretty easy for this. But they keep revising everything. But yeah, I mean, so you do need to get creative.But the education piece that we have done a really good job, especially you and John and Donnie and everybody is, is talking to the agents 18 months ago that this will not last. This will pass on the higher interest rates and the pendulum is going to swing to the sellers right now. Right.Because you know that's it's going to come back. And now the buyers had a little bit of a heyday and I think they still have it up until about January 12th is what I'll pick. Okay.

That's oddly specific date.

I had it because I had a Magic 8 ball today and I asked it, as I said, is January 12 the day sellers take control back again to the market and said likelihood is good?No, but it's going to be sometime in the first quarter of next year to where you have 33,000, three, 33,000 houses in DFW on the market high to covet, you had 6,800. Right.So that just tells you that, hey, sellers, you need to be able to make a deal and be flexible because it's not like there's 50 people running up to your house as soon as you list it anymore. Right. And any imperfection, everybody's noticing where before it's just like, I don't care. I just want a backyard and a roof.Just don't have it leak on me. Or it could, I don't care.But at the end of the day, that shift right now is a smart for our buyers to take advantage of, because if they can get it now, especially with rates coming down a little bit, you're getting in before the storm. So you're not paying 50,000 over like you could be by the summer.And more importantly, you're going to capitalize on a traditional 3% appreciation somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 to 12 over the next 24 months. So it's a good time to grab equity again and push forward.So when you talk about generational wealth through real estate, you know, we, we talk about that for everybody, and that's really important to us. And now's a good opportunity to see some of that.

Yeah, well, and, and it creates issues because with the other side of it being, you know, as rates come down and hopefully the job market improves, then you will start to see, you know, by all accounts, some continual inflation, you know, and it continue to go. And, and it's not always about, you know, I think people get confused about this idea where inflation comes from.Supply and demand, which it certainly does. That's a, that's a factor as well. But also it's the money supply.And when you look at how much money is being printed and put into the economy, naturally, because the dollar ultimately gets devalued, right, because there's so much more of them available in the market, then all the assets associated are going to go up in value.Which is why, you know, everybody's like, well, if the economy's not great, which it really hasn't been ultimately for the people on the street, then why is the stock market at all time highs? Why did bitcoin hit the highest level it's been up to? Why is real estate, you know, still increasing every single day?And that's because the value of your dollars is declining. And so if you want to pay, if you want a safe place to park your money to make sure that Those dollars don't dwindle away.Keeping ten grand in your safe is not going to be beneficial. But if you can buy an asset, stocks, bonds, real estate, crypto, whatever, whatever you have a flavor for, then that growth in your, in your wealth.And I won't say money, because money is a lot of times associated to dollars, but the wealth growth that you'll have is going to be substantially more than if you sit that money in savings, you know, protecting for a rainy day, because you got 50 or 60 grand and you just don't want to let it go.But if you can now, like you said, add to your likelihood of generational wealth, where you can have this place that you live in, that's always going to appreciate in value. And I say always in the terms of long term. I don't say always from day to day or month to month, because there will be ebbs and flows.But I think we're starting to move out of that cycle of seeing this stuff start to decline. And now you're going to see it go back up again because this money printing is going to kick back in.

Yeah, no, it's definitely, it's fun to play the game of like, who moved my cheese? The book. That's what I feel like we're in right now is someone behind the curtain is just constantly pulling levers.And it's whoever pivots and adjusts the fastest is going to win on this deal.And so that's why we're trying to do a good job of not only like capitalizing on what AI is going to be able to do to allow us to reach more people and get to things more fast and create efficiency in how we do work. But thus that in turns to opportunities for our clients to be able to capitalize on those opportunities as well.Like, one of the things we were, we were talking about is how Realtors, when a refinance market happens, how they can help their clients give them advice to call us for refinances.And I, I've got a perfect example of one that happened yesterday while we were in our class yesterday, one of my clients called me and said, hey, I was talking to, to our agent and they said, I should call you about refinancing. I said, that's great. Let's talk about it. It's a perfect time. He bought two years ago. He's a vet. We can do an easy streamline.And I said, well, let's talk about the goal, because most people just say refinance to refinance. That is absolutely the wrong reason to refinance. You see something online, think rates are low. That's what makes the phone ring, by the way.Then our job is not just to say, sure, we can refinance you for three, eight of a point. Let's get it done. No, our job is to ask more questions and learn. And I said, you know, Hayden, what's your goal?And he's like, well, ultimately, in the next two years, I'd like to be able to move closer to here because this is where I work. And it's going to be a permanent thing now. And I'm driving an hour and a half each way, which sounds terrible, especially in dfw. We're not in la.It's not acceptable. And so we just went through it and he's a vet. And so I was like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to do a streamline.We're going to lower your rate, use the ability to use discount points on streamlines now to kill the rate all the way down. And I said, you're going to live there for the next 18 months. In about 15 will start searching for your new property.We'll use your bonus entitlement and you can keep this property as an investment because he bought the house at a right time in a good location. And what's going to happen is it's going to run up. So this is an example of a real estate agent being able to understand the needs of their clients.They're going to be looking for the second home because his wife's pregnant right now. So in 12 months, they're going to be out of room and saying, hey, let's go ahead and get this house figured out so that we can get to the next one.So, yeah, it's a little bit longer play, but that's a good example of an agent understanding, you know, their clients needs and how we can help them now to get to where they want to go in the future.

So speaking of refinances, when, you know, the main question we'll get from a lot of our clients is, you know, when, when should I do this? Right? When does it make sense for me to refinance? You know, I have a seven and a half rate and now rates are, you know, 6.75.I mean, that's not what they are. But I'm just saying, for example, yeah, you know, that's not quite a full point.Does it make sense, you know, when you talk to your clients about this, when they call you what, what are the key factors you tell them to kind of look at to determine, okay, is now the time to refinance or should I wait or what? What's the math look like? Like, how does it. How do we make it make sense for them?

Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing I always ask and hopefully our whole team does this is, you know, what's the goal for the house? Right.Because if they're moving in a year and they're just refinancing to save 180 bucks a month for one year, the cost to do that makes zero sense if you know you're leaving. So in the case of Hayden, in this example, last names to be redacted to keep everybody innocent, It's a.Makes perfect sense to capitalize on that, especially on an Earl and doing that so long term.So once we decide what the property is going to be ultimately used for, what the length of time is and what the goals are, then you strategically can start looking at that individual loan. And for me, it's always been a simple deal.Usually it's around a half a point as a simple place to start, and then looking at the months it takes to repay back the savings. Right. So, like, for instance, right now we're coming up on tax time, right? When taxes are due.Well, that's something you can roll into your refinance and actually then deploy that tax money that if you've been escrowing, you can deploy out for other things like college education or things to pay down Credit.

Paying off 32% credit card debt.

32% credit card debt, yes, that would be a good one. But we're going to help you do that. We're going to do an analysis on how many months it takes you to recapture.Another thing we're going to do is encourage us to close at the beginning of the month, because if we do that, we can have two months worth of principal and interest that we can use to help offset those costs as well. So.And you know, of course, right now, I mean, with us, we're not charging our lender fees on refinances if you purchase with us, because we want to make sure that, you know, we already understand you're our client for life and, and we're in it. We're going to be with you through every process.

Yeah, well, when, when, when.Realtors out there, because they'll, believe it or not, most of them don't realize they will get calls from their clients that they've sold homes to over the last couple of Years. And they will ask them, you know, what should I do? Right, what, what, here's where I'm at.I'm not trying to move, but, you know, I want to get a lower premium or rates where they're supposed to be, et cetera.You know, you would think a lot of times they would call us if we did their loan for them, but that's not always the case because, you know, it just depends on the circumstances. But what, what are we, what are we trying to tell agents?You know, when they get these phone calls, you know, obviously, you know, you want them to refer out the number, say, hey, call, call my lender, talk to them.Yeah, but, you know, at the same time, I always tell agents, you know, you need to know a little bit about everything in your business because it's, it's a situation where if every time one of your past clients calls you and says, hey, you know, I'm curious about how to make this claim on my homeowner's insurance, all right, we'll call the insurance agent. Hey, I'm curious if rates are in a place where, you know, I should be able to refinance. Well, okay, here, call the lender then.You know, enough of those conversations.And eventually, at some point, I think buyers or those, those clients will stop calling the realtor because, you know, they'll just be like, well, they're just going to farm me out to somebody else. And I'm not saying that that's necessarily good or bad.What I'm saying is that realtors need to have a certain level of knowledge in all of these facets because you, you want to be, as an agent, you want to be the go to person from your clients for all things related to housing.I want, you know, you want them to call you when they have a question about their grass or they have a question about their design or decorating or roofs or insurance or whatever.Now, you're not going to give them all the information, but you can answer a few questions and then, you know, refer out the expert at that point because you want them to come back to you. So, so what would you advise, you know, agents, aside from just call your lender, you know, what would you tell them?What kind of conversation would that look like?

Like, well, the, the good news is for both you and I, as we do most of our agents, personal loans.And so like yesterday, I spent all last night from 5pm to 9pm calling agents that I've done their loans in the last 24 months and saying, hey, let's go. It's time to refinance. So hopefully that brings into their brain that they need to be telling their clients this.But the other part of being a long term advisor on this journey for financial independence, they need to be having these conversations for a couple reasons. One, it gives them something else to talk about other than the typical, did you see this house?Or let me do an evaluation of a market analysis for you. It gives them a chance to say, hey, do you know I did my loan with Steve too. We just refinance. It's really great. It helped me save money.And then guess what? Here's your hook. I'm using it to buy another property. Because you're not wrong keeping money in a safe. No thanks.I was actually gonna ask if you wanted to go in on a gold bar with me, but.

I'm actually doing that already, so.

Oh, thanks a lot. You didn't even ask me. I missed the boat.

Well, you, you got, you got on late. You know, we were supposed to be on 15 minutes early and I only had two minutes to chat with you before we go.

Well, you know what, Funny story, I'm gonna do this then as well. I'm gonna wait till it goes down on bitcoin like when you told me to buy and I waited and then I got in low again and now I wrote it back up.So you come back to me when goals is down and I'll come in.

I don't think gold's coming back down anytime soon. So if you can get it, go ahead and get it.They're actually on that note, there is talk of taking US Treasuries and instead of backing them to the dollar, they're going to peg them to gold.And if they peg them to gold, the, you know, I'm going to talk about this on my market update next week, but so I'm hashing out a little bit of the details. But ultimately, from what I read, the president has some role that he can set the the ultimate value of gold based on what we carry.And so what it is. So then instead of a Treasury being worth $1,000 in US DO and you, and you then take that and peg it to gold.And now the gold is much greater value compared to US dollars. Now you've reduced the national debt by 20% just by switching over some of these treasuries to being gold backed.And then that also is going to make gold shoot through the roof. So my, my unprofessional finance advice, don't take what I'm Saying I'm just a dude on the Internet. Buy gold.

Okay. All right. Seriously, contact your financial advisor.

Yes.

For long term advice. And God, you know, it's funny, it's the first time I can remember. I'm not saying it's the first time it's happened.I guess this prevalent or maybe social media and obviously the interweb has a lot to do with that where politics is playing more in the influence of money and corporations and things like that than I can remember.And then I was watching Squawk Box this morning and they had the CEO, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers and he was talking about in 2008 when the government took conservative ship over so many different things. Things and even I totally forgot about gm. They had to buy into GM to bail them out as well. So they had ownership in GM before they bought it back.So it's not unheard of. So when you hear sewn in part of intel or taking a profit off Nvidia's chips to China, it's actually not unheard of. If you look.

Well, I don't think it's a new thing or it's a more prevalent thing. I think we're just more aware of it now because.

Right.

Of the prevalence of information. I think it's been going on for very long.

Prevalence. I like how you say that instead of prevalence. That's very good. I feel like I'm in Britain and we're just coming up with new words.

Right. So.So back on the, on the topic of, you know what, what we're, what we're telling, what we're having agents say to their clients to, to be, you know, that go to person like you were talking about.Like what, where, where are we getting, what kind of coaching are we giving them to make sure that they're, they're given the best information they can before they send them our way.

Yeah.No, I mean a couple things and I think we've spent a lot of years trying to do this but in the last 12 months, a lot of the time I've spent is on coaching and education and leadership comes in so many different forms and gone I think are the days of taking a couple of realtors to lunch and snapping a fancy photo and saying here we are brainstorming. No one really cares about that. They really want to know how you're going to affect their lives.So when I go into those meetings and things like that, we spend the bulk of the time talking about how to reach customers where they are. Right.And that's what People don't realize it's not like dropping in out of a parachute for one hour to talk about something and say, oh yeah, let's do that. It's literally getting in the street and getting bloodied with the, with your partners and doing this.And, and the thing that they need to be doing is one, talking about how the sense of urgency in this process doesn't mean you have to make a fast decision. A sense of urgency in the process is the preparedness of which you make the decision.So when a decision comes along, my favorite thing is when I get referred a customer, I'm talking to a friend and they're like, well, we're probably not looking to buy for four to seven months. And I'm like, well, let's go ahead and do all this right now. So we're ready. And they're like, no, we'll just wait.Tomorrow I get a phone call, hey, we found a house. And I'm like, come on, man. I mean, literally, I'm not crazy.We all have significant others in these situations that we have this timeline in our brain, and then they see a shiny thing that they like, and it's like, we're going.

Yep.

And so helping agents understand the preparedness doesn't mean you have to move fast. It just means when you do need to move fast, you're already ready. Right. The second thing is understanding what tools they have out there to do that.And, and there's two different types of tools. There's. One is education through social media.And I think you have just pulled together a masterclass on how to use the new AI tools that are out there. And not just doing a class that says, hey, come to my class and I'll show you how to get scripts written out of CHAT gbt.And I'm like, just tell chatgpt to write me a script. And what you want them to write, you don't need a class for that. That's one on one. It's easy now.And what you're doing with the class that you're teaching is the ancillary technologies that fit around it.Creating this hub environment with ChatGPT or perplexity and then the spokes that go out to it and making it so easy for agents that now they're able to talk about the changes and have it look their way to their voice that they know their customer understands faster than they ever have.So that's one thing that's super big, and then two, you better be talking to your partner a lot about what's coming down the pipe when it comes to different products, different programs, speed of which things are getting done. Because as much as we can go super fast because we're Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Jennie Mae Direct, and we can do all that stuff.Non QM loans are still cumbersome. They still take a long time because they've gotten so complex with it used to just be, hey, we'll do a bank statement loan.Now it's like, hey, we'll do a two month business bank statement loan, no pulse required. And you're like, oh my gosh, they don't have to be alive. So there's still some of that education.And then like what we just launched recently is the no payment, no mortgage payment on FHA and VA loan option for three or six months, which if you close at the beginning of a month could give you up to eight months, no payments, which is really crazy. And people are like, oh, you're putting it on the end of my 30 year term, like we're buying a car or something. And that's not what we're doing.Because A, you can't do that. B, we're just following the same principles of a buy down, essentially a 3, 2, 1 buy down.And using that to be able to as a servicer and owning a bank gives us the ability to do certain things that other individual mortgage, like small independent mortgage banks that don't have this option to be able to craft. And so we take that money, we service it and we make the payment.So I talked to a customer last night that I said, yeah, you won't have a payment until February. And they were going with another lender, like, wait a minute, but how much higher is the rate? And I was like, no, the rate's the same.And they're like, wait, you're not charging me for the rate? I said, no, that's the great thing about this program. It's not like a down payment assistance program. It's not anything.It is an FHA loan and we're using the seller concession to get you the month's payment. So that's another interesting way that two things can happen. One, you can get home buyers. That said, I can't afford right now.I'm waiting till I get my raise in January.Well, you better go now because if you wait until the first quarter, you're going to be waiting with 12 other people on the lawn again going, oh, by the way, I got buyer fatigue three years ago and now I'm ready to come back in, right? So let's beat those.And then second, if you're a great agent, which our agents are great, they're going to their sellers and going, hey, by the way, my lender partner has this program, I need $12,000. And we're going to go reverse prospect this and go get this house sold now.Because when you do that, your buyer pool goes from five people to 500 people. And now the seller's not going to care because they're going to get three or four offers because the buyer pulls picked up the $12,000.Actually pay for the fact that they have multiple offers.

Yeah, well, and what we're seeing, and I think it's still going to be here for a little while longer because, you know, until the rates come down a little bit more and we start to see this. I don't know, the, you know, like I said, like you said, first quarter next year is where we'll start to see those demand tick up.But so there's still time in that, you know, sellers are still in control. But what they have to understand, or excuse me, buyers are still in control.But what they have to understand as a seller is that, you know, and this, this happens often. A seller comes onto the market and they say, okay, you know, I meet with a realtor and the realtor says, I think your house is worth $500,000.And the seller's like, no way we're going to, we're not selling it for a nickel less than 550.

Right.

And, and so they price this home, you know, because it's understandable. It's human nature. Agents don't want to lose that deal.So they'll say, okay, we'll try it your way for a couple months and then, you know, we'll see kind of how it goes. Now, there's a lot of flaws in that, that, that, you know, logic. But either way, that's what happens.And so then what happens is a seller puts it at 550. It doesn't go where it's, it doesn't move. It doesn't have very many showings. Then they drop it to 540, right?Then maybe a little bit, but nothing there. Then they drop it to 530. Right.And then even once they get, if they happen to get to that 500 mark where the, where the listing agent said that's where it needs to be. Well, the first offer they're gonna, they're gonna get is not gonna be for 500. It's gonna be for 490. It's gonna be for 485.Because as a buyer you can see that this home started here and worked its way all the way down to here. And so you're going, man, I can get this for even less than what they have it right now. Right.And in that situation, a buyer thinks, hey, I'm gonna offer less. I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can get this house for less. And, and it sounds great, right?You, you bought a house that was listed at 500 and you're buying it for 590 or you know, 48 or 480 or whatever.But if we in turn flip that and go, okay, instead of offering 5 or 480 on that $500,000 house, which by the way, $20,000 in a reduction on the price is going to save you about 120 bucks a month in your payment. That's about it. Okay. And that look, every little bit helps like 120 bucks. That's great.But what if that 20 grand that you could get in seller concessions, right. Instead of the reducing the price. But now the seller is going to pay your 20 grand in closing costs.That money can go to fund these, the six month no payment deal. It can go to fund all of your closing costs if you want. It can go to fund a buy down if however you want to structure it.But that money helps you right now, today.It doesn't help you in, you know, to take, if you do the math on 20 grand at 100 divided by $120 a month, it's going to take you over 13 years to get to that.

Right, Right, exactly.

So who knows where life can take you in 13 years. Take the money now and if you take the concession versus the reduced price, the seller gets the same amount of money regardless.Which by the way, sellers price your home accurately and sharply. So you don't have to give up the farm if you don't need to.But for buyers, you can take advantage of those situations, but take the cash, don't reduce the price because it's way more of a benefit to you up front.

Well, and there's a couple of ways, and this is what we do for our agents and we're probably different than most lenders. Where most lenders try a shotgun approach, they're trying to get every single agent to use them. We have preached for the longest time, less is more.Right? Just have 20 killer agents that you can support the you know what out of.So a couple of things we're doing with our agents because we know we're in that dogfight because I still go to open houses. I was at 2 this weekend. I was touring houses with Brittany Connor for an investor client. I went and did that with her.So we're still in the street on weekends. Is if you have that listing presentation and you know the CMA is going to be tough because they're here on their value.CMA is here telling here, then reach out to us before you go and we can pull an AVM for you and we can look at it from our lending perspective side for that and say, hey, the AVM that runs three appraisal models for you is saying it's worth this and you can provide them another source of data that's independent from the MLS for the customer to see. That's actually just third party aggregated data from three appraisal models. So that helps them in an argument.The second thing is instead of saying, okay, we're going to try it your way because you're not wrong once you reduce once. That's one thing you're trying to see if the price is wrong once you reduce twice.People think there's something wrong with the house and they're about to get a deal. And so instead of doing that, say, cool, we're going to go with your price.But what I'd like to do is will you peel out $20,000 for me to be able to go reverse market to so I could tell, you know, people with potential buyers, hey, we've got a six month program that I've already run through my lender. Here's what it would do. It'd get your customer six months, no payments. Then the seller's like, cool, I got my 550.Yeah, I know in the market I'm probably going to give some concessions right now, but they feel good because you gave them the number. They gave you flexibility to craft the message a little bit differently.And ultimately if they get that offer, because now the pool's bigger and it's 20,000 lower, you just pivot off the $20,000 for closing costs and say, you know what, don't worry about the closing cost. We'll just reduce the price. And the seller's happy because they already in their brain had the 20 number ready to go.Yeah, but they got the ultimate higher number in their own deal because then it's the agent's job to know when to apply that. Right. Instead of the seller feeling like, oh, I'm, I'm doing it for less than I thought I should. Yeah, yeah, I mean, just Got to be.

Well, that just goes to what you were saying about, you know, having options, right.Having, having as many options as you can have and having resources and leaning on your partners, whether it be the insurance side of things or the lending side of things or title or whatever, to kind of provide those resources. So that way you can give your clients the most current, up to date, accurate information. And also presented in a way that's, that's understandable.

Right.

That's where, you know, even we, we do the AI classes and, and that's a big piece that I think sometimes agents don't see as a benefit to it is, yeah, you can come up with the valuations and you can come up with, you know, where you pulled your comps from and all that, but when you can take all of that data along with what the expectation of the seller was, and you can drop all that into a large language model like Chat gbt and say, look, I, I know all this is correct, but I need help in crafting a way to explain this to my seller in a manner that's beneficial to them so they understand where I'm coming from, but also gets my point across. Right.And in using tools like that and knowing how to use them can serve you in so many ways other than just, you know, writing a script for or writing a listing description.

Right.

There's, there's a lot of ways that you can use that to help communicate because ultimately your job as a realtor is to communicate the value of your services to the best of your ability. And sometimes, you know, depending on the client, we don't know the best way to approach that.But, but often, you know, tools like this can help you formulate the words that are rolling around in your brain. So that way you can at least communicate it in a way that they understand and it resonates with them. So you can get your point across.

Yeah, I mean it. I tell you this and I tell John and everybody, it, it's just an all out assault everywhere.So you have to be ready to be everything to everybody in some sense. I was on the phone with a list for one of our agents who's trying to get this $3.4 million listing, and that's where they're stuck.And she said, will you get on the phone with my seller so that I could convince them? And I was like, sure, why not? I like talking to humans.And literally we walked through the strategy and I said, look, you can list it at this if you want. And by the way, they bought it like 10 years ago. So I'm like, come on.I mean like, literally you're putting yourself in a, a bad spot here if you, by not being flexible.But what we did instead is we pivoted and since it's going to be a jumbo loan, and the person said, look, I'm cool with like coming off $50,000, no problem. I said, okay, cool, then take your price, let us have the $50,000 and let us make an offer.And we did an offer with buying down the rate, and they were able to offer five and a quarter on a five year ARM jumbo with that money. And the seller bought down the rate, whatever, it was a point and a half to get to their two points. So it was like 60,000.Sorry, 60,000 because it was $3 million. What I based it off on $60,000.And now what you did is you took a payment at six and a half on a 30 year fix on a jumbo on that size to five and a quarter. So even though the seller's paying $60,000 to do that, you have to pay that price.So now they're getting their price, they're already gonna have to deviate at some point anyway. And then you increased your buyer pool because now on something that size, that lowered the payment almost $2,000. Right, right.And so that is game changing for affordability on something like that. But we do it with FHA loans, we do it with everything. And, and our job is to get deals closed.We want to win for our clients and for our agents and partners at all costs. And so we're part of the solution.

One of the things that I learned from you early on, that I appreciate you resonating with me a little bit more, that I still think it's, it's, I think it's something that people think is a boring topic, but it's so incredibly important. And that is your database, your database management.And as a real estate agent, you know, when I, when we do these classes and we ask people to tell us about their database and what they have, you know, often if they have one, if they're being honest and they say, I really don't have one, and then the ones that do raise their hand and say they do have one, typically have an Excel spreadsheet with, you know, they're all of their past clients, you know, and that's it. Now might be 15 or 20 people or 40 people, 50 people, however long they've been in the business.But it's not really what I would call a Database management system. And, and what's really shocking is most brokerages are going to have some level of a, of a CRM that they use, right?That they're, that it puts you into. That they're paying for. A lot of times, sometimes you're paying for it, but it's, it's there and it's available.And Most of these CRMs are built, you know, all pretty well. Like, there's a lot of, you know, good pieces to them that make them effective.But, but agents just don't use it and they don't, they don't take advantage of it and they don't really put it to its fullest extent.So, you know, talk a little bit about the importance of the database and why it isn't just your past clients and why, especially right now, it's going to be a big player as the market starts to change.

Yeah, no, that's, that's a good topic.Obviously, we just had usherpa database training today and rolling out some new features that no one else has seen yet in that, which is going to be really great. But yeah, I've always been a big proponent of looking at a database as a gold mine. Right.It's just a gold mine that's sitting there and it sits behind you and you don't want to have to access it if you don't need it, but for our business, you do. That's where you get gold. And so if you are not operating inside of your database and actually mining it, how do you know your customers needs.How do you know when they're going to need you? Right? You. Like, too many times we've talked to agents and they found out one of their past customers sold their house from where? Facebook.Like, how do you not know that? And when I asked that agent, how did you not know? And they're like, well, I didn't follow up with them. I'm like, well, what CRM are you using?They're like, I have an Excel spreadsheet or it's in my phone. Like, when I hear that, I'm like, it is 20, 25 people. What is going on? Like, literally, my CRM literally flags me to go to the bathroom.Now at this point, it's like, hey, by the way, it's almost like Target. It's like, hey, you need to call this customer again because you're out of it. Last time you ordered this, you got a deal, right? And so it does that.But no, the database is super important. And then once you get the database set, right, and You've actually spent the time because that's where all the hard work comes on.A database is building it, getting it set and getting it. There's.Once that happens, then adding these little journeys inside of it or adding the things that are important for your business or your voice to be able to meet that customer either at their time of need or if you get really good, like we've been able to do, meet them before their time of need, getting alerted before they even know they're going to do something. And you just show up and say, hey, remember me? Hey. By the way, if this ever happens. Oh, I was just thinking about that. That's why I love our CRM.I mean if they're looking at a house for 300,000, but they told the real estate agent they're only qualified at 250.I always tell our agent when they get that alert from us, go find the house at $300,000 even though they told you they weren't looking, send it to them and say, I know this is out of your price range, but this house fits. And they'll be like, how did they know? Well, it's technology, it's a CRM, it's what it's supposed to do.

Well and I think, I think there's just maybe it's a hesitation, maybe it's a un, you know, a fear of new tech or whatever. I, I don't know.But you know, it, it, you have to understand that information is what this entire world is based off of now in every walk of life, right? The, the most valuable companies on the planet are all built on their value of the information that they hold on all of us.And, and our, our, our, our tendencies, where we shop, what we do, etc, so for you as a business professional of any kind of, to not take advantage of that same, you know, access to information that you have, I mean it's there, it's available to you.You just have to use it and build tools around it that will, you know, use that information to your advantage so you can get in front of your clients. And, and it's, you know, I think they, they always do surveys every year with the national association of Realtors.Well, they'll ask buyers and sellers, you know, did you like your agent that you worked with to buy or sell your home? And they'll say like it's like 85%, 90% of them are like yeah, they were great. I thought they were awesome.And then they'll ask a follow up question, did you use that agent to buy or sell your next house and it falls all the way down to like 40% or 30%. Use their agent previously and they're all going, I don't understand what happened. And the simple answer is you didn't stay in front of them.You weren't there.You weren't, you weren't meeting a need before they had the need, or reaching out to them because they're looking at homes on Zillow or, or just saying happy birthday. I mean, something really basic and simple that you can easily do to stay in front of your clients.You didn't make a video and put it on social media or just make a post, take a picture of your, you know, night out with your spouse and just say, here we are talking real estate or whatever, like all of those things. That's why they didn't do it.And so if you can, if you can hone your skills and find good tools and get good education behind how to do this stuff, then you're going to put yourself ahead of so many more people and pick up 50% of business that you would otherwise lose.

And we're happy to be part of that solution because we, we allow agents with our database system to be able to set up their own account in there and take advantage of the tools that we've helped build over the years.If you remember our previous company, when we got there, the CRM was awful, the origination system was awful because they were focused on the wrong things. They were focusing on the utilitarian use of, of all of that stuff instead of the future use.Because you and I knew this and we said, how many thousands of times have we said this? It's not about mortgages, it's about data. If you have the data, you win. If you don't have the data, you lose.So if you have all these past customers and they're in a binder or in a phone or in a book, you're lost. It's over.

Or not. Even your past customers, your friends, your family, the, the PTA group that you're with, your church group, whatever. Like all the people.

I mean, you're a master at this, by the way, in your community, whether it's all the sports leagues you sponsor all the time. Like I remember when you were doing Optimus. What, not, sorry, the other football league.

No, it was Optimist.

Okay, okay, great. I didn't know, I didn't know if we're allowed to, you know, save the plugs of other companies.But anyway, when you were doing that, it Was one of the cool things is it looked like an expense that we were sponsoring that every year. It wasn't. It was a fact that every time they went there, they saw your name, right?And then whenever you talk to them and they like, oh, wait, you do mortgages. And then it's like, boom. And all you were doing was taking that relationship of those people, getting them into your database.And so the, you've already done the community work to say, I'm a great guy, people know you, they love you. And then you meet them in the database. Well, I mean, at least 75.

I mean, let's, let's not. I mean, let's not get too extravagant.

I'm just trying to get, I'm trying to get to 40. You're at like 75, so you're killing me. So that's the great thing. But that. I think that's where people get lost.And I was just having lunch with somebody and he was, you know, they're asking the story of how we got here and what's going on. And, and the reason why is I think companies are trying to be too big. You've got to go hyper local. You've got to get inside the community.You've got to know what's going on so that when a pebble hits the water, you feel the ripple. It doesn't take a tidal wave to wash your house away for you to go, oh, man, I should have built that boat. Right? You're like, hold on, what was that?Right? And that's what a database really does. That's what's having a great CRM really does.It allows you to see those ripples in the water before they become a tidal wave and wash all your customers away to another lender who is watching it.

Yes. Yeah, it's, it's, it's.It should be the number one thing, I think, that, that people spend their time, you know, managing and cultivating and, you know, curating is, is that database because that it can not only obviously pay your bills today, but it's going to pay your bills for the future. And, you know, we're, we're going to be in a place eventually.And this is what I think a lot of older agents don't consider is there will come a day where you don't want to sell real estate anymore and you want to pass that baton to somebody else.Well, if you've done a great job at cultivating this database of thousands of clients that you've worked with over the years and you have a younger agent or another brokerage that comes along and says, hey, you know, we want to buy your business, right? You can sell your business as a realtor, you can sell that data to someone else and, and make an easy pass on transition.Hey, I'm getting out of the market or I'm, I'm retiring, but here's the new person and, and they're trustworthy. And if you need anything, reach out to them and make that soft handover.And you can not only pay for today, you can only pay for the rest of your career, but you can pay for beyond your career. And it's all a matter of how much you really put time and effort into keeping your database clean and effective.

Well, I think that's what we, we have always, I feel like, done a pretty good job. We're not perfect by any stretch, but think about it like this. I always tell people like, you know, when do you want to retire?I'm never going to retire. And I'm saying, all right, retirement is a bad, it's a different way word than it was in the past. Retirement.What used to be, let me get to 62, grab my watch, head off, I die at 65 right now. Retirement is actually doing what you want to do instead of what you have to do, right?So like right now, you and I, on a daily basis, 75 to 90% of our day is stuff we have to do. 15% is stuff we want to do, which is great. And when we get to do stuff we want to do like this, look at how happy we look. We look great.But most of the time we're doing stuff we have to do, but it's okay because we're good at it. And it's what provides for our family and our friends and our partners and everything.So your point is perfect, and it's something that we've been saying for four years to our agents is you need to be thinking of your database as an annuity. Right? That's what it is.It's just an insurance annuity that when you're ready to pass off or sell that book, you're going to get the highest value by staying connected to that book and making sure it transitions out. And if you're a loan officer, same thing goes for you here, right? Like for us, when a loan officer is ready to retire, I don't want you to retire.I want you to move to a part time lo. Let's keep your license active, help keep the business connected.We'll hand it off to another generation of loan Officer coming in and that way you still can get paid for, you know, five years on that annuity. Why let all this work just go to the wayside? Because you're retiring.I mean, no one's really gonna, it's just not the longevity of life right now and how long people are living. There's always a piece of you that's always going to need a secondary income.And trust me, you do not want to count on Social Security or the federal government to be that thing.

No, no. As we can see right now with debt spiraling out of control, that, that's not, that's not something you can count on.You know, hopefully there'll be something there. But you know, they say all the time that it's to going, going away, but we'll, we'll see. I don't, I don't nothing think I'm.

Banking on not with GDP north of 3%, baby.

No, no, I, I don't, I don't see how that happens. I did want. Okay, so, so now we got to get our, our crystal balls out a little bit to see, you know, where, where, where is this thing headed now?You know, we're not going to be graded on this. This isn't.You know, everybody likes to make prognostications but you know, knowing what, you know, being in the business as long as you have, like, where do you really think, you know, over the Next, let's say 12 months, right over, between, between October or September today and September of next year, you know, where do you really think rates are going to head and, and what do you think the impact on housing prices is going to be?

I'm very rarely right when it comes to this stuff. But I will tell you, in the last 24 months, I have studied more about this than anything I've done. Even loan products or anything like that.I have and like immersed myself from. I have cut it back.I was Getting up at 6am to not to 8am on squawk box and then watching another hour of Squawk on the street, I've now got it down to like an hour and a half, which is good. My counselor said I'm doing really well.But if you look at what I was telling agents when rate were going up and, and this is something that Donnie Eden, our good friend Donnie Eden taught me whenever winter would come up every be like, ah, winter we're going to be down. And it was like a decade ago because we've all been together so long because I don't think anybody else likes us, so we just stick together.But Donnie said, look, I'm tired of this, I'm not participating in winter ever again. And so, you know, when he said that a decade ago, I was like, you know what? That resonated with me.So when rates went higher and all these real estate agents and all these customers said, you know, rates are higher, what do we do? I'm like, no, I'm not participating in this. We're going to do what we always do.We're going to work twice as hard, we're going to help educate, we're going to understand a half a percent on interest rate is only this much in dollars. But the equity you're going to make, that education is going to be there.And I was at a meeting on Monday, let's say Thursday, Tuesday, and I told the agents, I said, look, we have been talking for 18 months that the rates weren't going to last and it's going to go down and when it does, there's going to be a 90 day to maybe six month period where you can get a house before it goes haywire again. And they said, yeah, you have been saying that. I said, okay, everybody set your watch because it started seven days ago. So you're too late, let's go.We got to go, we got to go. So the prediction for, for me, and this is what I would say is what's happening with inflation, you're right, it's staying a little sticky.But the good news is the tariffs haven't done as much damage as everybody thought they were.And with the job market, especially with AI throwing it completely out of whack, I mean, the stories of college grads not being able to get the positions in their field of study right now, it should be where everybody should be looking to be scared.It's not job losses up here on the, the end of people that are in that maybe retirement age or phase out phase from their normal career to their secondary career, it's down at this lower level.And so I think that's going to, or I, I feel that's going to keep rates at a lower level and then you will have minimum of two Fed rate cuts, maybe three. I, I don't know. I mean, I think if they go half a point on this first one, I think it's two.If they go a quarter point, it'll be three over that over the rest of the year.

Well, but, but the, the, the little wild card into that is I think Jerome Powell's term is up. I think may of next year.

Oh yeah, something like that is correct.

And then Trump gets to assign his own person.And as you said, you know, politics and money have crossed so many boundaries lately that, you know, whether it's good or bad for them to do it, if, if, when Trump's, you know, nominee gets in there, I could very easily see them going aggressively after rate cuts. And like I said, I don't know the long term benefits of that. I think that could lead to some, some worse stuff.But it doesn't change the fact like we can talk all day long about what could happen or fear of what it, but what is happening right now and then what, you know, what's in the near future, then you have to plan for that and then what happens in three years after that, look, we have no control over, but you got to plan for what's right in front of you.

Well, I think Trump's going to be able to nominate himself. I think that's where the shocker is going to come. He's actually going to nominate himself.But look, there's been a lot of good stuff that that's come out so far with what, what's happened since he's taken over. But JP as I like to call him because of squawk, my squawk box time with him and all the Fed government.You know, if you look at Roger Ferguson, the former Atlanta chair, he, he's glad to be out of it, right, because they get so much heat now that he didn't have that. But his point, like when he talks, he's so smart. He's a little boring, but he's smart is that, look, Jerome Powell is not doing anything wrong.He's not affecting a mortgage rates. What he's doing is looking at the two things that are most important that affects the long term health of everybody around us.And he's trying to con, take his part in this with all these levers being pulled that he has zero control over whether it's passing a new bill that's the biggest spending bill ever in hopes that it generates enough business to out kick it, which it could, who knows. And new tariffs that could throw inflation right. When he thinks he's got at it under control, that comes in and he's like, oh, what do I do now?So, yeah, having said that, I think they've done a really great job. I hope he gets to finish out because he is a smart man. It's hard to influence him through politics. So we just have to trust.And by the way, Trump's the one who Nominated him, he put him in the place he's at. So to really roast him and say he's the reason why rates are high, it's really not accurate. He's just, it's just politics and it's okay.So for me, long term, I think there's a lot of good things happening. I think you're seeing the easing of rates which will do that.What everybody should be focusing on is the affordability of houses because ultimately the rates going down increases the affordability. Right.Bringing in new ways to lower home prices for the homebuilders is very important to affordability because we don't just believe in, hey, let's go help a millionaire get another million dollar house.We've got to go down into the streets and figure out how do we get somebody who's making $55,000 a year, their own dream fulfillment so they can kill that cycle. That pattern of not being able to move their kids up through real estate wealth, because that is the easiest way to appreciate it and move it on.The stock market's hard. The taxes you pay on stocks when you sell them is hard. Real estate gives you protectionary measures on that wealth to have you be able to grow.So rates will be coming down. I do feel like this is just the first wave over the next 90 days.I think within 18 months, I think you're going to see loans in the mid fours again, but you're never going to see it back where it was.So anybody who says that the cost of service alone right now is over 300 basis points or over 3%, so if you look at that, you can't even service a loan for 3%. So the only reason why you do that loan is if your whole portfolio is running off and you're just trying to save your company.

Right.

So that won't happen.But I think if rates did get in the mid fours, which is, I feel feasible on a government loan in the next 12 to 18 months, that's a great spot to land and we can help a lot of people take care of their families, improve their situation and do the things necessary to, to try to grow again.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.And hopefully, you know, there'll be more, some more legislation on, you know, maybe cutting back some of the zoning rules and allowing for, you know, smaller footprints, which you're starting to see in certain states where, you know, they're not allowing cities to say, you can't build a house on this property for less if it's less than 2 acres or if it's less than this amount of square footage. So they're.They're allowing a little bit more to get back to that, you know, starter home that we just have kind of lost over the last 20 years that you just don't see built because, look, nobody wants to live in a tiny home. Sounds great. It was a cool little thing for a minute. You know, they have their utility, but, you know, it's just a. It's a. It's a.It's an rv, you know, without wheels. So, you know, it's not. It's not what. What people want. So hopefully they'll start to fix that as well. One last thing before we wrap up.Just because I. I want your perspective. You've talked about it a little bit, but, you know, we've been doing these AI classes together and working with agents and showing them how to.How to use these tools. I'm curious, you know, your perspective from where it was prior to kind of going on this journey with me a little bit to where it is now.And, you know, what you've. What you've just experienced to see on how it's opened up some of the stuff that you've done and then.And then some of the stuff that you've, you know, worked with your agents on. I'm just. I'm just curious as a testimonial, like, how is it. How has it impacted you?

Well, you know, I'm mad at you because I always stand at the forefront of technology change, and you got me on this one. You beat me to the punch. But like a good friend, you dragged me over there with you.And you know the thing that I love about any technology advancement? Because everybody freaks out and they say AI is going to replace humans. And that realtor said it the other day in our class really, really well.It said, AI is not going to replace humans. Humans using AI are going to replace the ones that aren't using AI. Right? And. And that's one of my favorite slides that you do is with the Terminator.And is it the Terminator shooting everything, or is it the Terminator painting? Like, what's his name?

Castle?

Yeah, like Picasso. And so look, at the end of the day, all these tools are really great.And so when I did, I said, hey, before we do our first class, Mike, just come over and make me your first student and do a class just with me and show me how to do it, and let's do it by ourselves, you know, because I was like everybody else. Hey, Chet. Gbt. It's so cool look at this recipe. I'm like, wait, Google did that? So you really taught me, hey, how to do this.And you told me, just stop using Google. And so I made Chat GPT my homepage now. So when it pulls up, that's how I search for things. And you say, go on the diet, which I did.And now that's all I use.And I literally do what you told me to do, which is just drive around in your car, turn it on, and just talk the whole time and have the stream of consciousness. And literally, I'm doing letters of recommendation for kids right now.And it was so cool because I turned on chat and I just said, hey, I'm going to write a letter of recommendation, listen to what I say, and just take it down word for word. And then I just spoke the deal out, just like I was dictating to an assistant. Right? That's where it would have stopped.Then I would have to go back and edit punctuation. And did I use the right first person here?And then when I got home, I said, hey, look, I think this is awesome because I'm awesome at writing, because I still want to write my own stuff. But I said, make this a little less like me, like I was telling at the beginning of the story, and please fix all the punctuation and everything.And so I have my wife come in. I said, hey, can you read this?I need to send this over for one of our agents and her son who actually plays soccer for the soccer club and works at the soccer facility. And she was like, man, Chad, GBT really knows you. And I said, damn it, Mike. But I did call that agent. I said, I wrote this.It just got Steve out of it a little bit. But it was me. I did physically write this. And. And that's. But it was cool. That would have taken me hours to do because I would have overthought it.I'd have to proofread it. I'd had to do this. Did I use the right word? I literally drove from our office in Plano to my house, 11 minutes away, and I was done.And I put it in when I got the computer up. Done in five minutes. 15 minutes to do that.

Yeah.

So I see the progression of that. And I am. I'm all in on, you know, now. I told you yesterday, I am. We are nerd now. Between Maddie and.It's something that's evolved for me because if you look at my past life, what was important in the person that was supporting us was someone who could execute you. Know, flights and travel and all that stuff that was important.And now the person that we have help executing us is more of someone that's been in the trenches, out in the field and understands the social media and all these technologies that can help us, you know, be out in the field more, so we can touch more. So I'm, I'm grateful for that. You didn't see this. And this is just a real quick. And I'll stop after this.You were in the classroom teaching yesterday and that room was so small we had to sit outside because, you know, that was just not going to work.So the whole group of sponsors were sitting outside and Maddie and everybody, and they were on their phones and looking at Instagram and all doing all that. And I just said, team, can I have your attention really quick?And I said, hey man, I love doing classes because this is awesome stuff and we're gonna help some people. Where are my lunches at? Let's go get some appointments. So I was like, let's figure out the list. We cracked open the list.I said, get Mike six appointments. Let's get me seven appointments. I'm happy to call people. Mike will. Because if we don't get it, you have to take the next step.The first step is here is what this possibly can do for you. The second step is we got to go hand in combat with each one of these agents and say, let's go use it. And yeah, I started doing it every Saturday.When I do my updates now I put myself into AI. Either I do a video or I do. I have to use my avatar to just build one. Like we did the six month note payments.I said, hey, take this photo and I want to be Shazam from that deal and say, put up to six notes, no payments within 30 seconds. It built like a really good photo of me in a Shazam Costume with Shazam across the top. Six months, no payments. And I sent it out.I got two deals that weekend from it. Yeah, I mean, that's stuff that I'd have been like, oh, let me call my marketing department. They're going to put me in the queue.Then we got six versions of changes I need to do now. Fifteen minutes, it's over. It's church.

The biggest, the biggest takeaway from all of it when I try to impart to them is it's a time multiple multiplier. Right?It is, it gives you your time back because all of these little tasks that we used to do, I mean, look, if you want to outsource your thinking to it. You absolutely can, you know, but I, I don't think that's the proper use for it.I think that what you're trying to do is find the things that you're not thinking of. Find. Tell it where. Here's what I'm, here's where my brain is going with this.And then ask it to help you find the holes and identify issues and then all the little mundane things, the text messages, the emails, the listening descriptions, the, you know, the, the email campaigns, the social media scripts, all the stuff that used to toil over hours and hours. So I say this writer did whatever. Now you can just. Here's what I want to do. Give me a script. You read it, you're like, ah, that's good enough.That sounds pretty close to me.And you know, if you've built your, your, your voice inside of there and then just go and record it and it takes away so many barriers because then you're like, well, I just don't have the time to do this.And, and if you, if you see it that way and you start using it as your own little personal assistant to help you with so many different things and like I like you're doing, just start using it, just start engaging with it. Talk to it on the way. You know, use that time in the car when you're in there for 40 minutes or whatever to, to dump your brain out.It'll keep all that information for you so you can reference it later so you don't forget about it. And then you can accomplish the stuff that you wanted to do one step at a time without it seeming to be so daunting.

I'm, I'm excited to see how when you and I go to White House here in a little bit, it, it play, it plays in the cattle country. Right? Because I think that's gonna be interesting.

I'll tailor that up. We'll, we'll. I'll throw some, some, some Tennessee Vols logos.

Well, I know you, I know you'll be wearing your boots, but I think the best thing that happened for, for you to be able to show people, especially on our team, is we rolled out the six months no payment deal and our marketing department, which we have a great marketing department here with multiple people and they customize stuff like nobody's business. They came up with a couple things that were great and they're usable, but they're one dime uses.And then they have to start creating all the other stuff. You literally went into chat in under an hour and told that I want A six month campaign. One for realtors, one for buyers and sellers.Here's what I wanted to do. And you literally gave it to all of us and it took you under an hour and it's like, here you go.And then we plugged it into usherpa, set up the campaigns and it's over. Yep. It's done.

Yep, yep. It's a, it's a massive tool, but you, you got to use it.So, you know, if you, you want to set up a class for your agents or your brokerage, give us a shout. If your title company and you want to set them up too, let us know. We're happy to come to you and do that for you. So.Well, Mr. Barton, as always, I appreciate your time.I know you're a busy man out there dominating the world, so thank you for, for cutting out an hour and, and spending it with me and hopefully everybody got some insight on today's topics. You know, rates, nobody can predict where rates go. You know, we can start to see trends and we can start to see what's going to occur.But, you know, I, I, I think the old adage is always there. And, and I, I've very, I've yet to really come across a time where it didn't apply, which is, you know, when is the best time to buy a house?And the answer was always yesterday. And the second best time to buy is today, today.So, and that comes from real estate people, obviously, and we got our biases, but, man, I, I still don't know. I, I just haven't come across a time where I didn't think it was still applicable.

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Well, thanks guys. Thanks everybody and give us a call if you need some help. Let's get moving.

All right, everybody, have a great weekend. I will see you back next week with a new market update and we'll get back at it. Take it easy.

See you.