Podcast Episode 53 Transcript

Episode 53: East Coast vs West Coast: How Real Estate Sales Compare From Opposite Sides

Participant #1:
Most sellers would go with the strategy of pricing. It where they think it's going to land, right? US Realtors hate that strategy because it will backfire in so many ways with the market the way it is right now. You kind of want the market to drive, drive up the price, and that's where you're going to get more than the projected versus pricing. It where you think it's going to go and then you've overpriced it. It becomes less desirable. And so it ends up selling around that listed price, taking that overbidding out of consideration to a certain degree and price it based on where it should be based on normal conditions and let the market drive it up. You get a much better reaction that way.

Participant #1:
Welcome everyone to the Prendamano Real Estate "PreReal" podcast. We're joined today by Kaajal Shahani. She's coming to us from all the way out in the West Coast. She's a realtor in the Bay Area. She's more than just a realtor in the Bay Area. She is like the realtor in the Bay Area. Top 1% of sales in California. I thought it would be fun if we can talk a little bit about the relationships between the two markets as we span the entire country. So first of all, thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me so oftentimes. We like to just give the audience a bit of a flavor of who you are and how you kind of came to where you are today before you became this Dynamite, amazing agent. Can you talk a little bit about your background and maybe some of your influences when you first thought perhaps sales is where you want it to go? Absolutely. So native Californian. My entire family is in real estate, so born and raised in the industry. But that being said, I never thought I would actually be in real estate because the entire family was in it. I wanted to do something different. I thought the corporate world would be super cool. I went to UC Irvine, and right after Irvine, I got a job that took me out to Chicago. And while I was in Chicago, I actually worked for Wrigley Wrigley Gum in their marketing Department for about six months. It was a very short lived career for me in the corporate world. I was like nine to five, got super bored. I just was not a great employee there. So simultaneously I decided to get my real estate license, thinking, hey, my backup career kind of thing. My parents did it. My uncles and aunts did it. My cousins did it. Let me just try. So I got my real estate license back in 2002, became a full fledged realtor in the market of Chicago as a buyer's agent for about three years before heading back to California. I was in Chicago. I ended up getting married. There was in it for three years. My first year as a buyer's agent. I closed 36 homes just representing buyers. Wow. It was the funnest year ever. Downtown Chicago is a great place to start a real estate career. Very fun condos to sell. Great buyer. First time home buyer profile. And then three years into it, my husband and I actually decided to move to my hometown, which was Fremont, California, where my entire family was in real estate. So I moved over back to California between 2005 and 2006. But the market in California is a different animal, just totally different beast. I jumped in as a full time realtor California buyers. Silicon Valley buyers have very different types of mentality of what they're purchasing. They look at it as an investment property. Most of them start with the primary residence, but very obviously in tune with appreciation and numbers and all that fun stuff. So very analytical is how I would describe it. And then since then. So that was 2006. I've been selling in the Bay Area since then. So is your husband also in the business? No. My husband's actually a chiropractor, so totally different. And at Interro where you work is that family owned? It is. So my cousin is the broker of my interrogation side. I do have other family members that work there as well, including my mom. We all obviously work as individual agents. We team up periodically, but, yeah, they all work there. So for us here, Cassandra is his mom, right? Yeah. I'm interested in what that's been like for you. Working with so much family over the years. Yeah. Actually. Great question. It's been great. None of us have crossed paths with a client or a geographical farm where clients have gotten in the way of any sort of relationship. We all work very well together. My cousin is my broker. We have a great relationship, very supportive. My mom, she's at the point in her career, she's been doing this for 30 years. Now. She's at the point where she helps me a lot, and she's kind of winding down. But she does my open houses because I don't have bandwidth to do it sometimes. So the relationship actually worked out really well. My aunt and uncle are there? A few of my other cousins are there, and we actually work very well together. That's great. Yeah. So if our research is correct, you closed 46 homes in 2020. In 2020? Yes. Wow. Right. I mean, that was a very challenging time. Now your focus remains in the buyer agency side, correct? No. So actually, my first year in real estate back in Chicago was kicked off by becoming a buyer's agent just to learn the ropes. Year two, I started representing sellers, and now I would say in what is this? My 18th year, I represent 50, 50, 50% buyers, 50% sellers. And now I find myself sometimes even getting a buyer's agent to help out with a lot of my buyers. Because what happens right now, the way the market is. It's so fast paced, things are on the market for two days, and then you have an offer date, so pure logistics, timing, all that kind of stuff, the more helps, the better. So right now it's the 50 50 and 2021. So far, I've closed 51 deals, of which literally half of them have been sellers. Half of them have been buyers. So I'm curious in your buyer relationships. Are you papering this up and are you becoming their exclusive agent where you're coming to the dance together and you're going to leave together? Yeah. That is such a great question. So I actually don't make my buyers sign a buyer broker agreement with me because I do feel and I know that's kind of going against a lot of what coaches teach us. Right. But what I find is that if somebody along the way does not want to work with you, you don't want to continue the relationship, it's going to go south. Right. Or the flip side where right now the market is so so fast and so crazy and so intense that if the buyer is just not going in with the offers that are needed to get accepted, and they're just kind of like dancing around the market, getting their feet wet. You also kind of want to put them on the back burner a little bit, like, hey, we're there for you to educate you. We're there for you to hold your hand. But if you're not offer ready, we're there for you for education purposes. I don't want them to get stuck in a contract that's going to bind them to me for a year, because who knows what happens during that year? So I actually don't make my buyers sign a buyer broker agreement. I do like working in a very open, communicative type of relationship with my clients. So if they no longer want to work with me or if their plans have changed or vice versa, we should be able to say that to each other. So it's interesting. We're all programmed where our sellers. Of course, we have all of our contracts, right? Yeah. We have to have contracts with our sellers. Yes. But the buyers, there is a bit of a different relationship there. There is a fine line between being a professional, really servicing the client 100% and feeling if they're getting that level of attention, there should be a commitment to you. Absolutely. Then next step in that evolution of an agent and I happen to agree with you is when you've really arrived and you feel I'm that good at what I do. And if you are comfortable with me, then we'll continue to dance together. We don't need a piece of paper that represents that. And if we're not, sometimes things just don't align. Like you said, different goals. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's great. You become known on social, like, your branding is so tight that you're known as just your first name. I was wondering if you could talk to the audience a little bit about how you've leveraged social media to promote your brand and some of the things that you're doing. Absolutely. So consistency obviously is key. When we started real estate, probably the same with you. We didn't have social media, so it's definitely new to all of us. And I commend the newer agents. Anybody that's popped into the business in the last five to six years, they've really, really pushed us kind of older agents to become a brand on social media because you're not really playing with the market, right? You're not putting yourself out there, et cetera, if you're kind of lost in social media. So I would say consistency has been super key. I've hired a few key people for my business that helped me stay consistent with posting on social media. The other thing that keeps it really fun and going is I actually never had a business page, right? I didn't formally have a business page. I think my personal life and my business life kind of commingles into one page, which is more of what I do and more of my personality. And I think when I started using my business page for posting, I started posting less. So I was trying to keep it separate. It just didn't work for me. It didn't work for my lifestyle. So I said, you know what? Let's just make it all one. Let's make it together. It's okay if people know my clients know what I do on my personal end. It's running my kids around or going on vacation or something is fine. So that kind of broke the mold of, like, oh, where do I post? What do I do and all that kind of fun stuff? And then the more I post and the more I share. And sometimes I do share some stuff that isn't very positive. Right? Like, I'll go on a listing appointment. I didn't get it, and I'll get an email or a text saying, hey, we chose somebody else. That's totally fine. That's part of our job, right? And it's nice to share that with the audience, too. It's nice to share that. It's not just all song and dance on the real estate side. We do face rejection on a daily basis. We do write maybe 1215 offers for a client and never get accepted. They get burnt out and they say, we're going to keep renting and you're like, oh, man, I just worked with you for two years, so that happens. And so now I think I'm at the point where it would be nice to share those kinds of things about our world as well. Versus, hey, just pending just sold. Everything is great and everything is closing, and it's not out of I would say, this year it's been the craziest year 51 closings in half a year. I don't think I've ever done that in my entire career, but also there's probably eight that didn't close. It could have been almost 60, but eight of them or nine of them didn't close. So it's nice to share that as well. But I think consistency on branding, consistency on what you're doing makes it more engaging and more fun online. Yeah. So being genuine is invaluable right, because people want to connect and people can't relate to someone that is always just operating here. Yeah. We're not always a game, right. Something we have those days without a doubt. So what other technologies are you using? Technology so profoundly has changed the game it has over the last 1015 years. What other technologies are you guys using in your shop to stay at the top of the market? Absolutely. So Intero does provide a lot of technology tools, and honestly, I don't even use all of them. They provide. And sometimes I sit back and think if I did like, wow, this is so powerful, but I do use a tool called Moxie. I think it's U. S. Wide, but it's a CRM tool, but it's also a goal setting tool. So once it's all populated in there, you have it. All right. There you have your website, you have testimonials, you have your referral intake form. Very super cool tool. At Interro, we do have another tool called Design Studio, where everything is already designed for you just have to auto populate your stuff. So I do have a virtual assistant that helps me create marketing pieces through there. And that helps tremendously. I think between those two. And then actually, there's one more called Real Scout. I don't know if that's us wide, either, but Real Scout is another very cool tool, and that's purely how I use it. I test the market for when I am getting a listing. So there's a tool in there where you can populate an address and put in a potential list price for your seller. It'll bounce back how many buyers are looking at that price? What would happen if you priced it lower if you priced it higher? So that's a very cool tool to take with you when you're speaking to a seller. It takes away from the guessing game of, hey, what if I priced it higher? Which is what most sellers want to do, right. And then for buyers, the flip side is like, hey, do you want to see what this listing is doing? If this is the price and you have 900 buyers looking at it, and that's kind of what we're dealing with right now. So that's a very cool tool that I use on a daily basis. Very neat. Yeah. It's funny that all of these technologies and virtual assistants have just become the common parlance of the description of what we do. This is just the game has changed so much. And some of my laugh at me when I talk about the book that we used to carry around and the index, the Thomas Kite. And yeah, if you want to look up a block and lot, you thumb through the microfilm and you put it on this little dish that shined the light up. And you took your tracing paper out. The tools we have today are so awesome. I love being an agent. Now, I have to say, I do have to say we have so many things that make our life easier. Without a doubt, I was hoping you could spend a few minutes and just educate the market on your market. Is it Center City? Is it a bit of a suburb? What's the demographic of it? And then maybe we could talk about the market itself as far as activity and what you're seeing there. But could you just paint a picture for a few moments of where are you operating now? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm physically out of the East Bay of the Bay Area location. So I'm about 30 to 40 miles, let's say north of the Silicon Valley and the East Bay is comprised of Pleasanton, Danville, Livermore, San Ramon, Dublin. It's suburbs of basically San Francisco. If I were to hop in a car and drive to the epicenter of Silicon Valley, I'm about 30 to 40 miles from there. But remember, traffic is so bad in California, so Covet has changed that dynamic. And so what's happened now is a lot of my clients are actually moving out of Silicon Valley and out of downtown San Francisco and moving to my area. My East Bay area, where you get single family homes, you get much bigger lots. Anything that has a swimming pool right now is on fire. It's just crazy. Whereas before Preco, it was like, oh, pool. I probably won't even use it. And I'm going to spend the 15 grand to fill it up. So that dynamic has changed. But location wise, we have the East Bay, which is what's been blowing up in the past twelve months. And the South Bay, which is considered Silicon Valley, is still holding up. It's still crazy, but it's the type of homes that are different. I would say single families in all these markets are highly desirable. Condos and townhouses have taken a little bit of a backseat because of lack of space. Condos and townhouses also have a lot of stairs, which now with the dynamic of most people still working from home and kids at home and potential in laws and visitors and guests that are staying longer. Those trilevel townhomes and condos don't work very well for those scenarios. And then San Francisco, right? I mean, the San Francisco market has definitely definitely changed. The condo market in downtown San Francisco has changed. Most of the owners there have moved out to the East Bay. So what is an average price in yours? Let's say a one family detached. What's the average price point? Average price point? About 1.5. And a lot of first time home buyers are jumping in at that price point. And I say that so hesitantly, because something may be priced at 1.1 .2 but it'll get overbid to one five. So the average has become one five. And for that, you're getting anywhere from 14 to 1800 square foot single family with a decent lot. Obviously, the closer you get price point of let's say 2 million, you'll start getting slightly bigger homes. I'd say about 22 to 2600 square feet, 2700 sqft with bigger lots. So the first time home buyer profile is jumping in really at the 1.5 Mark. Not to say people are not jumping in at the million to million two Mark. But in that price point, you're really looking at condos and townhouses. So you touched on something really interesting there. And I Spar with my sellers all the time. I'm curious your opinion. You had talked about 1.5, but you hesitated because the list price was 1.1 .2. Yeah. Are you a believer in hitting the Mark from the previous comps, even though you know, numbers are going to drive past it or reaching and trying to get ahead of the predicted comp and trying to let the market catch up? What is your strategy when you're pricing a home? I think you would agree with me on the answer. So I'll tell you that most sellers would go with the strategy of pricing it where they think it's going to land, right? US Realtors hate that strategy because it'll backfire in so many ways with the market the way it is right now. You kind of want the market to drive up the price, and that's where you're going to get more than the projected versus pricing it where you think it's going to go and then buyers look at it and think I have no room to overbid you've overpriced it. It becomes less desirable. And so it ends up selling around that listed price. So you definitely want to price homes, taking that overbidding out of consideration to a certain degree. And price it based on where it should be based on normal conditions and let the market drive it up. You get a much better reaction that way. Yeah. It's fascinating to me. Quickly, people forget the principles of supply and demand. Oh, totally. Yeah. It's almost like I feel like I teach Econ at every appointment. So there's a migration from center city out. It sounds like by you as it's here. What do you think is the reason for that? And what do you forecast for those center city markets in the few years that we have ahead of us? So you know what I've noticed. And now we obviously have twelve months behind us of what changed so dramatically back in May, June of last year, I actually personally had a condo listing in downtown San Francisco in a very desirable building. It was a two bedroom, two bath, beautiful property. I literally saw it like flatline. I mean, I had zero showings, which was super shocking. We ended up taking it off the market and just renting out, because unless your seller is ready to undercut the market so dramatically, it just wasn't going to sell. That was reality. And so what I see now, though, now that we have the twelve month data behind us, people have trickled back into San Francisco. Here. They have, but at a very different pace and a very different mentality. So some of the listings, yes, we'll still get overbid based on the list price based on the profile of the property, et cetera. But I do see it taking a little bit of a turn for the upswing a little bit right now where some people are buying second homes, people that are living in the suburbs are saying, hey, it'd be nice to own a condo in downtown San Francisco when prices have come down. So let's go ahead and buy it and rent it until we want to use it. A. B. I've had clients who have moved out to the suburbs and will keep an in town, not even rent it out, but just keep it as an in town for someone who possibly is going back to commuting into San Francisco. So I do see that dynamic coming back. I also do see a lot of parents that are buying their adult children a condo in downtown San Francisco right now because either they're working there or because it's become a little bit more affordable and the overbidding in San Francisco has calmed down so much you have a little wiggle room with even negotiating. So I see that coming back. And I do see that in the coming months, in the coming years, it's going to bounce back maybe not as strongly as it did this last time. But I do see prices coming back for sure, with the momentum of buyers that are wanting to go back in as second time, second homeowners or potentially just an in town or even as a rental property. That's great insights. Could you profile your East Bay buyer a little bit further? I'm curious, with the difficulties with transportation and traffic, where is this buyer working? Oh, yeah. This is such a great question, because the profile is exactly the same for all these buyers. So youngish couple, young couple, I'd say between the ages of 30 and 45 working in Silicon Valley, one or two people of the household has completely stopped commuting and has had the option of working from home. And so that profile is so happy to move to the suburban homes that have these great schools for their kids and the great parks for family lifestyle, backyard, et cetera. They usually have an in law or a parent that's either with them for, let's say, a couple of months out of the year or somebody that actually just lives with them. So they want that expansive house that has enough house for potentially six people, and it's usually dual income husband and wife, both working. And I would say most of them are still okay to commute to the Silicon Valley, even in the potential traffic coming back for at least maybe twice a week. And they're okay with that because it's only twice a week and they get out of the house twice a week. But then they get to come home to this beautiful backyard and a much bigger home that they owned prior to how this world has changed in the past twelve months. So that's pretty much the profile that's buying. So these clients, clearly you have an outstanding relationship with them. I think last time we checked, you had, like, 55 star reviews on your Zillow profile. And I'm wondering the testimonials and the reviews that we were checking out. Obviously, you're meeting and you're exceeding your clients expectations. What's the formula that turns a customer into a repeat client? Oh, such a great question. So staying in touch and being wholehearted about the transaction. And I really don't like using the word transaction because I'm not very transactional when it comes to my clients. I hope they feel this, but the goal is that I'm part of their journey and their life changes. So once you buy with me or once you sell with me, I truly, truly will be open and honest about feedback of houses that they're going to buy. If there's something I really don't think is good for them, I will share that. I will be open about that. I'm not very transactional in that sense. Like, oh, you like a house. Let's just write an offer without my opinion. So I think that probably has a lot to do with it. I actually genuinely genuinely care and will genuinely share feedback with their move. And sometimes I have clients that are young couple, no kids. They're just getting married or they say, hey, I'm going to have a kid in the next year and they're going for like, a Tri level house. And I'm like, okay, you have to remember this in two years, you're going to call me and say, I hate the stairs in my house because I have this newborn or I have this toddler. So then I would suggest even if you have to stretch your budget a little bit, let's explore some other options that don't have massive amounts of stairs. Whereas the flip side, if I have a young couple or even a single buyer, I think that type of house is perfect for them. And I will share that. And I will vocalize that, hey, you should probably shave off some of your budget and go for the lesser priced home because your lifestyle can sustain that right now, and you'll probably live here for the next five to seven years. And when you're done, you've been there for long enough where it's appreciated. You can sell and move on. So I think genuine feedback has so much to do with it being reachable a lot of times. What I've found is talking on the phone for us. Realtors. Right. We have to do that a lot with our current clients, right? Making offers, writing offers, giving sellers feedback. That's all phone call. But a lot of times my old clients honestly will stay in touch with me through text. And I'm so happy with that, too, because we're still connected a lot of times. I can't pick up the phone and speak for 30 minutes or an hour because the day is gone, but they needed some questions on landscaping or, hey, I want to remodel this. What do you think? So I'm definitely there for them for all those scenarios. So the magic word in that description was you said, connected and being a connector is so critical that we connect with our clients in a personal way. Are you also supplementing that follow up with technology? Are you using the CRM to kind of keep in touch with the more generic outreach? What's crazy is I don't I should be. And that's something that's one of my goals, because obviously we can lose sight of the people that we don't speak to on a weekly monthly basis, right? For sure. So that's one of my goals this year is to get a little bit more autopilot on that. Awesome. Yeah. So back in 2011, you appeared on my first place on HGTV. Yes. I was wondering if you could talk us through. How did this come to be? And what was that experience like? Oh, yeah. So I actually had just had my first kid, and this opportunity came up. They were looking for a Fremont agent, and I was thinking to myself, does anyone know where Fremont, California, even is? And granted, at that time, 2011 is right. When Silicon Valley people that were working in Silicon Valley started moving out to Fremont. So that was kind of why Fremont was in the news. And it's funny. It's not even that long ago, but eleven years ago, condos were $300,000. That same condo that was featured in that episode is now like, 700 and Change, which is so wild. So it was an opportunity for a Fremont agent to showcase a first time home buyer who worked in Silicon Valley but was moving to Fremont. So very specific. I happened to be working with a single guy at the time who was like, hey, let's do this. I think this is super cool. So we followed his journey on finding this condo. It was 350,002 bedroom, two bath. It's shocking to say that number now, but it was a very cool experience because I think they were at that time. The profile was very my first place was like in the Midwest and the East Coast, et cetera. Now they were coming over to see what Silicon Valley had to offer, but very cool experience. Did that help propel your career? Did you get a lot of business from that moving forward? No, but a few times was referenced just randomly, like, hey, I just saw you on HGTV. That's so crazy. Probably half the things that people said that I probably didn't even hear it. But I did randomly get recognized. Like, hey, I saw my first place. You look like that girl. And I'm like, Why was that girl? That's pretty cool. You had said a lot of the buyers in East Bay, they're buying in the capacity of investment. I'm wondering what percentage of your portfolio are 1031 exchange buyers? Oh, such a great question. So honestly, that dynamic has changed in the past six months because prices have gotten so wild. So the flip has happened this year where my 1031 exchange clients are my sellers. So this year, I've probably engaged in maybe eight of my transactions have been 1031 sellers, not buyers. And I'd say out of those eight, three of them were out of state. They owned California property and said, Whoa, these prices. I said, Absolutely. Let's do this. And they sold, made a nice looking profit and actually moved their money for an investment property out of state. Because if we do, the reality is, the Bay Area prices have gotten so crazy. Your cap rate for investment property is not the best at all. Like, if you got 2%, you'd be super lucky. So most of my 1031 this year have been sellers. And then the profile of buyers that bought those homes were first time home buyers or second time home buyers. But what's been interesting is I've had a lot of California clients by out of state. So speaking of investment property, Utah, Florida, Texas, Oregon, Colorado. These are like the hot meat. Well, actually, Phoenix recently, a lot of my California homeowners will say, where do I invest my money? And a lot of them have stock money that they're trying to pull out and put into real estate. They want to stay local. But when we share the numbers and go over the numbers, you're zero to maximum 2% cap rate unless you get into, like, the massive multi units. I know. So I have a few clients that are cap rated anywhere from, like, 34% to 8% out of state. So why would you not do that? Yeah. So same thing for us we're seeing Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida. Same thing. People are pushing west and south, where the cap rate opportunities are just significantly better. And there are a lot less legislative threats. Yes, I think that for our market at least. And maybe you could speak to this. The legislative changes and threats to multifamily commercials, the renter protections have really significantly. The pendulum is swung back. And investors are saying for this level of risk and this level of tenacity elbow grease that you have to put in to try and maintain out here, we're not zero to 2%. But the good stuff is five to six. Yeah, right. It's rare that you get into those sevens and eights. It's never sevens and eight if it's performing right. Right. It's become very difficult for them to rationalize exchanging bricks for bricks in the same location. So through the opportunity zone, we have a lot of our clients trading bricks for human capital for making investments in businesses, the coronavirus and the decentralization of everything has, I think, given a bit of a spark and fire to the entrepreneurial spirit here in the country. So we're doing some of that. And the rest of it is we're just moving that stuff out of state. And when you tie that back to what was part two of my question for you before I went off on a tangent here, they're proposing, actually, from what I understand, it's in its current iteration would be to scrap the 1031 exchange to a large extent. Yeah. What impact do you think that would have on the market where you're working now? Oh, yeah. I think the reason why people do 1031, obviously, is to move their money to a more profitable asset, but they've already made their money in Property A or Properties ABC. If they scrap the tens of the 31 and go back to taxing the profit, I think a lot of people would not be compelled to sell, which would tighten inventory in that market. Right. With those absentee owner type profile. I think the taxation rate is so high based on the profit that that would really kill the desire to sell their homes, their investment property homes, and they would probably just keep them. Yeah, I agree. When inventory. Look, we have a housing shortage in New York City. I'm sure you explained. Oh, yeah, for sure. And these down zonings and these legislative changes that potentially can really have a dramatic impact on inventory, is it just results in prices further, going through the roof on certain asset classes and in the other asset classes, they're just not going to move their money. They're not going to generate those taxes. I think it would have devastating impact on the economy. I think so, too. I think that 1031 really helps move people's money between States and between types of properties, et cetera. If I think about it, I'm just one single agent here that's done 810 31 this year, and this year is not even halfway over. I can't imagine how many more if I ever took a poll on that, how many more that's already taken place? Yeah. So that's a good amount of inventory. It sure is. So we'll keep an eye on that as I'm sure you will. As we move forward. Just a couple of more questions. This has been, by the way, I really appreciate value you're delivering here for the audience. First time home buyer versus more seasoned buyers, someone who's been through one or two or three different transactions. How does your approach change on the buy side. Oh, yeah. Great question. So I think a lot of that is personality based, too. Right. So it depends on what the personality of a first time home buyer, first time home buyer a and second time home buyer. Right. If they have very similar personalities and they need the hand holding both times, it doesn't really, really change. But the first time home buyer, for sure, talking them through the verbiage of just the basics. Right. Like putting an offer in contingency, period. What does it mean to put an earnest money deposit down all of that stuff? Those conversations have to be so meaty. And the same conversation probably comes up a few times because for us, I say the word contingency probably 20 times in a day. So to me, it's just part of vocabulary, whereas the average person probably never said that word. And the thing right now is, I would say with the way the market is, we're writing offers with no contingencies all day long, which puts the buyer a first time home buyer, especially at huge risk if they don't understand that once their deposit is in, it's virtually gone. If you decide to back out for any reason. So honing in on that topic is so crucial to me with a first time home buyer. But a lot of times my second time home buyers act like first time home buyers because they haven't purchased a home in this kind of market before. Right. And even for me, this market, it's been 18 years. And this is the first time I've ever experienced how crazy this market is a and there's a few people who are on their third round of buying, but they're just, like, shocked at this market. What does this mean? So I think right now I do treat all of them very similar. Now, my second and third time home buyers, they usually move up. And so we would have done a sale of something when they're in that bucket. Then as a buyer. So then they become very versed in how the market is because they just went through that whole profile. But the flip side. So they were the seller and that and now they're in a buyer. But the first time home buyer, I think hand holding is mandatory, and I think it's a gift that a buyer should take happily because they're in it for the first time. They need the hand holding, especially in this kind of market where it's fairly risky. And right now we're writing anywhere from zero to twelve offers per buyer before they actually get accepted. So teaching them from day one before writing an offer versus on the job training, it makes life so much easier. And the journey so much easier. So first time home buyer education is huge. And I think talking through the education versus sending them PDFs is huge. Yeah. So slowing it down. Right. We're building out an Institute here. The Cassandra Properties Institute for our agents. And I've been in the business for 25 years, and I'm around the business my whole life. So we had someone sit in with us when I was doing samples of the first videos, and every few seconds it was, what does that mean? What does that mean? I think for us kind of vets. It's so rained in our everyday vernacular that we forget, especially with the first time home buyer. It really is important for us to slow it down and make sure that we're really walking them through. Like you said, it is a risky market. Now, these non contingent deals are far into even some of the seasoned agents. Like you said, 18 years, you haven't seen a market this crazy to expect a first time home buyer to be up to speed is unfair. Yeah, absolutely important. And that's great advice. So inventory, inventory, inventory, any tips for the agents out there on where you're grabbing seller leads, how are you generating more opportunities for listings? Oh, for sure. So never lose sight of your database. That's huge. I would say over half of my sales so far this year have generated just through my database. And what I mean by that is somebody owns something, right? Somebody owns a condo in some city that has generated so much appreciation in the past couple of years. They're like, Why would I just not sell it right now? This is the best time to sell. Half of my deals came that way. If any agents out there that's listening has a farm, right? A geographical farm don't lose sight of the geographical farm. It takes forever to build. It takes forever to pay yourself back. But when it does, it does. And consistency kind of like what I was saying about the social media posting. Consistency of doing your farm is so crucial, I think in the beginning, even for me, when I first started farming, I was like, oh, I'm sending these postcards, and I still send postcards a little old school. But when you're sending out these postcards, you want to be the person they think about, when they're wondering what their house is worth, which can then trickle into years down the line. Like, hey, you helped me all these years based on a text or an email or a phone call of what my house is worth. I actually need to sell now. And I've had calls like that happen, like, six years into my farm. So I think not losing the sight of servicing your farm. If you have a geographical farm, and if you don't set one up for sure, consistency of that consistency of tapping into your database and then just being there for your database, especially right now, when there's so much to talk about in the real estate world, interest rates historically low, right? Like crazy, crazy low the turnaround times of property potential 1031 going away if you own an investment property, are you happy with what you've made? If, yes, maybe it's time to move it those kinds of things. So just not losing sight of where your business comes from. And then, of course, I think you touched upon this, too. Online testimonials and reviews. I've had a number of Yelp and Zillow calls and those kind of things this year, but it's the pace of the market, and you just want to be able to be there for them. Well, Kajal, this was a wonderful chat. Really informative. Congratulations on amazing success. Thank you. Best of luck moving forward. Keeping it up. If anyone out there is interested in that area or is interested in making a move again, top 1% for the last 17 years. So she's got this. Unlock. How do people reach out to you? Text is honestly the best way. Really? Yeah, that's my preferred method, because I can see it right away. React to it right away. But if you find me on social media, please follow me. I do all my updates on their Instagram at Kodoshahanyrealestate dot com on Facebook as well. It's just my name. But if anybody wants to have a chat about the California market, send me a text. Send me a message. My web website is just my first and last name. Com so easy to find. Great. Thank you so much for the time everyone out there. As always, we appreciate it. Please like follow share comment and as always, stay safe.