A weekly new home marketing podcast for home builders and developers. Each week Kevin Oakley, Andrew Peek, Jackie Lipinski, Julie Jarnagin, and other team members from Do You Convert will break down the headlines, share best practices and stories from the front line, and perform a deep dive on a relevant marketing topic. We’re here to help you – not to sell you!
Kevin
So I wasn't on last week because I was sick. Yeah. And I had there was something else going on anyway, so Julie, Beth and Jen decided to have a podcast party, and I still haven't heard it yet because it doesn't come out until later today or right today. Did it come out today?
Beth
It came out today.
Kevin
I've been busy. So all I know I'm and I'm kind of scared to listen to it as it just said, like boys drool and girls rule.
Beth
I may have sent a message to the whole group saying, Girl rule, Boys drool.
Kevin
Yeah.
Julie
Was so much fun. Yeah every podcast should be like that.
Kevin
That was definitely a micro-aggression.
Kevin
Saying that I was sad.
Beth
I wanted you to really feel left out and that's fine.
Kevin
This is going to be fun. Kevin. We're going to have all new sound effects, new fun times. Let's get started. Welcome to episode 307. I'm Kevin Oakley. And with me today is Julie Jernigan and Beth Russell. Hello. Hello. Who wants to start off story time today?
Julie
I can start.
Kevin
Now, what is a rule allowable?
Julie
So a wooble is a little crocheted stuffed animal, basically. So what happened was that we made new phone rules for the kids because grades were slipping a little bit. Everybody was on their phones. But when you make rules about how much you can be on screens for your kids, that means that you also cannot sit there in the evenings and scroll your phone.
Julie
And I was like, Well, I need something when I don't want to read or whatever. Another option to do. So I got influenced on Instagram. I don't know if you've ever seen their little crocheted. It's a little packet and it's supposed to teach you to crochet, which I learned to crochet like ten years ago. But it had been forever and I'd never done anything like that.
Julie
But they are marketing geniuses. They are so smart because, number one, the little the little thing kits they send you are expensive. Like they cost more than if you went bought your own stuff. But you don't have to figure it out. They just send it as is. Then you scan a little code and they the videos are like super beginner.
Julie
Like you do this step first, then you do the step, then you do the step. It's great. And then if you have a question and it can't answer it, it gives you an email address and a phone number of who to contact to ask your question to. So it's very, very much like walks you through it. And then now I've learned that they always have something new because they have all these limited editions like they'll market to you like the Frankenstein.
Julie
That's only a limited time. And then I'm sure they'll come out. So they're just very smart marketers. And after I bought my first one, I was like, Well, next time I make something, I'll just buy it all myself. But then you love it so much because it's so easy and they do everything for you. And it starts with the little ring and everything.
Julie
But I'm like, They're smart, they're smart. I'm just going to send you my money because you made it so easy and so fun.
Kevin
Because you're not on your phone as the TV on are as their music are with you on.
Julie
Social.
Kevin
Media like gas lamps.
Julie
You know, the kids are around. So, I mean, it's like family time. They're doing whatever they're doing. So it's very you know, it's whatever we're all sitting in the living room. But it was one of those things like, if you can't be on your phone and you're tired at night and you just want to sit on the couch, it's like you don't want to just sit on the couch and all, like, stare at each other.
Julie
So it's nice to have something to do. So that's been my thing as a people. So it's been a lot of fun, that.
Beth
Level of follow up and like detail that they provided and like, and then a resource for help because I was that person to try to teach myself to crochet. Me and my daughter were both like on a mission and we're going to learn how to do this. And I could get like the first row and the second row, but like I tried to build a square and I was just like, I keep doing the wrong thing.
Beth
I'm losing count and I'm watching this video, but it's not helping. And then I just gave up.
Julie
Yeah. And then you find on video that helps and then you can never find it again, you know, because I went through that, too, and I taught myself. So they're smart, smart marketers.
Beth
And now I want to try them. You're influencing.
Julie
I know I'm influencing people. People have messaged me.
Beth
I did you, I saw it and I messaged to do.
Kevin
I'm always the genius of artificial scarcity, which is again, part of what we sell without fail is built around around information in that case and actually maximizing the true uniqueness of each and every home site. But like how many are they really limited by how many Frankenstein wins they can create.
Julie
For, you know.
Kevin
Crochet together? No. Yeah, but it's just like the McRib or anything else. It's like back for a limited time. The Shamrock Shake, the I'm sure the grimace will be back at some point. Yeah. More people should do it. Why not have a limited edition or plan?
Julie
Yeah.
Kevin
Or. Or standard a limited edition Standard option or optional option? Mm hmm. That's cool.
Beth
I like that better than limited incentives, since incentives are never limited.
Kevin
Yeah. And again, just because you're saying limited doesn't mean it has to be truly limited. That's just how you talk about it. I love it. Yeah, that's what you got.
Beth
I had a really great conversation with a marketer this morning who is struggling to find that marriage between making salespeople feel involved and as though they have influence over not marketing.
Kevin
But yeah, moving times.
Beth
They they have a contribution. They want to feel as though they are contributing and setting boundaries of what their contributions should look like. So I had this epiphany moment during conversation of it's like when you have a buyer come in and they want to make a change to the house or they want to put their own personal twist on the house, you do that within boundaries.
Beth
You do that within a set number of restrictions that you have as a company, because not only is it something that you can actually do that you know, fits within the constraints of the plan and the limitations you have as an organization. And so we are constantly telling our customers that they have to live within these boundaries that we set for them.
Beth
But we're not doing that internally as a team, especially when it comes to marketing and that conversation between sales and marketing. So in this example, we were talking about Facebook, we were talking about, you know, on site team members having their own Facebook and putting their content out there. And they should do that within the boundaries set by the marketing team because they are representing the brand and the marketing team should be the protectors of that brand.
Beth
If that salesperson leaves and all of a sudden the messaging change or you can't get that Facebook page back and it has your name attached to it in ten different ways, or if they're sharing content that you can't get because they're not sending it and sharing it to you, you're just hurting your brand and hurting your company. So allow them to participate.
Beth
Allow them to feel the level of contribution that they they can, but do it within the boundaries that you set for them.
Kevin
Yeah, it's team members are not children. What I mean by that is I have four kids. If all four kids when they were two years old, let's say they were all two year olds at the same time, and they all draw pictures. It doesn't matter what the picture looks like. I put it on the fridge. Everyone gets a picture on the fridge.
Kevin
I do not have to put everyone's picture on the fridge. And but there is this tension of we should be curating and crowd sourcing from any available team members. And how you do that is tricky because you don't want to mock up like where marketers go to work in your CMS system, in your well-organized folders and files of images and videos, etc. You don't want to mock that up with a hundred different people sending you mostly mediocre stuff.
Kevin
Mm hmm. So you do have to find ways to allow people to contribute without promising that you'll hit publish. Yep. But the the people who are good at it, their stuff gets published. That becomes a reinforcing mechanism to encourage them to do it more. Mm hmm. And the people who keep trying, but aren't quite getting there when. When you are the team has time.
Kevin
You can train and try to, you know, show them how to do it better because they want to do it better at it. Yeah, it's it's interesting that employees, generally speaking, they don't feel like it's co-opting to take the company's name or their community name and say, this is the page of this thing. It's like, well, it's mine.
Kevin
I'm just doing it. It's just me. Like, well, then you would just do it on your personal page if it was just you. So there does have to be some recognition that, like you are actually using that as your own.
Beth
That's exactly what we're talking about. Like they can brand themselves in terms of an expert in the real estate world or in a contract or whatever. That's fine. If they as a salesperson, they want to brand themselves, I'm fine with that. Where I get frustrated is where they are branding themselves without acknowledging the fact that they are a subset of another brand and what they are selling is not theirs.
Beth
It is of this homebuilder. Their product is not theirs. And so you can't take your name and put it on something that is not yours.
Kevin
That's fair. My my story time is my new favorite saying or a thing to try to help marketers train themselves to say more frequently in meetings or discussions with others, which is, huh, That's interesting. What data point did you reference to come to that conclusion? Hmm. Hmm. That's interesting. What data point did you reference to come to that conclusion?
Kevin
Because any time the market gets tough, all the feelings come out everywhere. All of the I'm the expert, I'm closer to the customer. That's the stuff we tend to hear from the set, like I'm talking to customers. I know, I know, I know. Or what we heard from one individual was I just can't believe that there's only X number of people who are interested in a new home of a certain price point to be built over the next year.
Kevin
In this one specific location. And like almost no matter what people tell you, I think that's a great response. People pay for that calls with you. If you're listening.
Beth
I feel like I would pay to just be in a room where you ask somebody that question so I could just watch.
Kevin
Yeah, because either they're mean, It's it's always going to be good and not like we're not trying to trick people, but maybe they have a data point, but they're looking at it incorrectly, meaning like cancellation rate historically is one of those where people can look at that incorrectly and they're like, We're so proud. Our cancellation rate is 0% this year.
Kevin
Maybe not something to be proud of if you're trying to, you know, get them the number of sales you want to hit. So they might just be that they have the right metric, but they're looking at it incorrectly or they're comparing it. And so that's a teachable moment that I'm like, Oh, I totally understand how you came to that conclusion.
Kevin
It's just there's this other nuance that let me help you understand or, you know, on the side, I'll send you other information about to clarify, or they're going to say, Well, I don't know. I just how I feel. And then that just leads me back down the path of, okay, so we don't have a data point, but what you're saying is that you need help with this problem.
Kevin
And it goes back to taking things out of the tactical and back to the strategic level again. I think that's that to me is the healthy boundary. We want to talk strategically with partners in any or any silo of the organization. We want to talk strategically all the time, but just like I don't ask them, which closing technique did you use?
Kevin
Are you sure that was the right one, saying, Hey, I think we should use this specific platform with this kind of a budget, with this kind of a message in order to solve this, this challenge, that's where things go sideways. So when they don't have any data point, it's like, awesome. So really what it is, is you're just saying that this this is a problem that you don't know how to overcome except to solve it this way.
Kevin
And most of the time they're like, Yeah, that's. Can you help me with that? Yes, I can help you. I'm going to end up helping you by again separately outside of a group scenario, walking you down a different, better way to get there. Then maybe your rational initially were thinking of. But I don't I can't think of a bad outcome of that question being answered.
Kevin
That's why I love it so much now.
Julie
And actually you all are putting together two things that I love with your story time. So and Kevin, you know this that Steve Shoemaker used to when a sales person would come to him and say, we need more signs or we need an event, he had a little form that he would give them to fill out that said, okay, like, what would it be?
Julie
What would the goal of that be? What is this data? Which did a few different things. They either it wasn't important enough for them to even fill out. So then we didn't have to worry about it or it actually highlighted what is the thing they're trying to solve and is that the best way to solve it? Or we can can we help in another way, which is combine jobs to storytimes to me that it's like making them forcing people to to look at that, you know, the data and the problem and that and then come up with the best solution for that.
Kevin
Yeah, I think it's it's interesting to juxtapose this in all of the branding conversation that happened around the summit this year and post and how important that can be and how it can lift revenue and it can lift profitability and it can increase absorption and all those things are true. And yet the first for something that's already been launched to the world and you don't have that laboratory, it's time you go back to your blog post, Beth, about the drug industry and all the research and prep that goes into it.
Kevin
If something's already out in the wild, the actual best thing to do is to clarify in as extreme away as possible exactly what the offering is, to let it to make it more easily discoverable by the audience that wants it. Yeah, that's always the first place to go is are we trying to be too cute? Are we trying to overcomplicate this?
Kevin
Are we maybe semi embarrassed of something that we don't want to talk about instead of just saying, But you would never say it this way. We are the least expensive, sheepishly built home that will allow you to have a roof over your head in the school district you want. That's not a tagline anyone's going to use, but if that's what you offer, like, the clarity of that speaks to a certain audience.
Kevin
And if and if there's enough of those people, then you win. If it's easy enough. And but oftentimes what comes back is there isn't. And that's when people think we're just going to, you know, Jedi mind trick them into purchasing something that they don't want or can't afford.
Beth
Are you guys seeing the same in your builders data that I'm seeing? Because it was came up twice today with mine, the broad messaging incentive versus the like you just talked about the very specific messaging incentive right now. You know, I have a builder, one that has a dollar amount listed on their incentive. It is still converting higher than their website, but at nearly 2%, whereas another builder with a more pointed messaging about their incentive.
Beth
And what I mean by that is a actual mortgage rate listed in there, their prime messaging that's converting at a steady like 10% plus in comparison. And I think it's like one of the theories that I have behind that, especially right now, is that because one of the marketers just recently asked me, well, that confuses me when I see this whole page broken down of all these mortgage rates and the PR, And that's a lot for me and that confuses me.
Beth
And for me, I think a dollar amount is just easier to understand. Well, I know what $10,000 means. I know what $15,000 means. But then I reminded them that what is this buyer seeing in their everyday life? What? It was all over the news right now? What is everyone telling them? The realtor telling them their their mortgage broker telling them it's the mortgage rates they are that is what they are inundated with in everyday life, especially if they're searching for homes.
Beth
And so when they see this very specific messaging of a lower rate, they're like, oh, wait, that's interesting. And psychologically they're more likely to click on it because they know what that means versus what does $10,000 my way mean to me? How is that going to help me right now?
Kevin
I think the real problem is that people don't understand when things need to be handed off to the next part of the process. And what I'm even.
Beth
Waiting to use that.
Kevin
I have, I don't use the neg, I have like them grouped by positive and negative sounds and I just don't use the negative sounds very much because people sometimes accuse me of being glass half empty, which I think is insane. That's not how I live at all. But they want they want the landing page to sell the house and overcome objections.
Kevin
All of that. We talk about this in the world of online sales all the time. The whole point is to have a conversation that moves people forward and makes that connection to on site sales. Mm hmm. That's that's the goal. That's also the goal of everything you're doing from a marketing advertising standpoint. And yet again, and this is the thing that I think is going to continue until sales become easier is right now the challenges that sales management or sales VP's are getting more involved in messaging as well.
Kevin
And they're like, No, no, no, you have to overcome this objection on the landing page. And get a lead. Yeah, we don't want we don't want we just don't want more conversations with people. We want conversations the people are ready to buy. Yeah, because that's what I keep hearing. And the data and the qualitative conversations is the vast majority of builders, I would say 80%.
Kevin
I know we saw plenty of activity. We have plenty of activity on site. In particular, we have enough appointments. We just can't get that final conversion to take place. And so that's where you just have to help everyone understand that the point of the promotion or the incentive is to begin a conversation, not to not to you know, get them to the point where they're just ready to sign the dotted line.
Kevin
So I don't I would say, but that you don't have to have an either or. But like anything else, we should constantly be saying, do you want to dig into more of this on your own or are you just ready to go do the fun stuff and make the connection and take the next step and go on site or have an appointment?
Kevin
You can always go deeper, but most people don't want to dig deeper into the financing. Certainly not at the top end of the funnel. And that's that's the other thing I would say is a generally still what I'm seeing anyway is that there is no incentive that's bringing vast number of new people to the market. It's still speaking primarily to that middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel rate again, which is important because again, the number of people in your CRM system from last two and a half years is enormous.
Kevin
And so finding that right message that gets those people to respond and reengage is arguably more important than trying to find the new people. Yeah.
Beth
I've also talked to a lot of builders recently about serving the people that haven't moved forward to find out like what is the talent, the most challenging part of this market right now And holding them back, or why didn't they go with them to find out? Like we talked a lot about some about the 1 to 1, right, the personalization and things like that.
Beth
And I think those survey results will tell them going back to market research will tell them that it's not the top level stuff that's interrupting them, it's the middle stuff that's interrupting them. It's the okay, well, I have the timeline. Does it match up? I have to go here. I just there's more going on than I think we think.
Beth
And we can't solve it all at the top.
Kevin
Right? Yeah, but there's there's so many ways I want to go. But we got a lot of news articles to do. I want to do. I want to pull backwards on that. Yeah. So just a little bit more. So the reason that New community launches tend to fail is that people don't know how to activate the list. Building list is typically never the problem.
Kevin
If it is, just call us or email, show it to you canva.com. I'll be getting people on the list generally is never the hardest part. Hard part is activating them properly and it's because they're like people who just give it their best shot. They're like, Well, we send everyone an email and no one showed up or We only got three appointments, send another one, okay, sent another email and we got five more.
Kevin
But that's it. It's really, really sad. Did we call everybody? No. Okay, now we're going to call it. You know, it's just layering that stuff on and there's no it's no different with incentives, especially to the database you already have. Why would you resend the same exact message with a bigger font size at the top? This time and be like, No, now really pay attention to this.
Kevin
So I guess the other part I'm trying to say about is you do have to pick something. You have to hit, but it doesn't have to stay that way for the whole month. Or if you're going to be emailing people twice or three times during the month, one that's text only one that's curated for marketing. Maybe something towards brochures, look at different aspects of the same message.
Kevin
So your first time maybe you are talking about the interest rate and then the second time around you didn't open up or interact with the first one. You weren't talking about monthly payment or you are talking about a different testimonial about how this incentive made buying possible from someone who bought last month. I think both with new community launches and with communication and promotions, people are stuck in neutral or first gear and they just keep you got to be that squirrel trying to break into the into the birdfeeder, like, how are we going to make this happen?
Kevin
Keep trying and our message, different message.
Beth
That being said, like the different message is important, but also like avoid the whole $10,000 this month. Okay, now it's $15,000, now it's $20,000. Like it's clearly something's not working. If if that messaging isn't working, like, let's try a different like you're saying, try a different route. Don't just keep going with the same route and upping the dollars because that is not resonating with them.
Kevin
Yeah, I saw someone is offering real estate agents a 5% or 6% commission. I'm just like, Oh, that's like classic in those markets that are struggling. By the way. Mm hmm. You all know who you are. All all of the builders that we work with have said I reached out to to the general real estate community, and they're all like, we got no buyers for you.
Kevin
Like, there's no one here. We don't have anyone to work with ourselves. Yeah. So giving them extra money isn't making people show up for them either. It's. It's bizarre. Yeah. That the joke in art school was if you can't if you're not a good artist, do it big. If you're really bad, do it read. And if you suck at art, make it big and read and just like just scream out louder, bigger, stronger.
Kevin
Yeah. Oh, that's great. All right. First up, from search engine Lancome. And if we can cue in Eminem's song like Guess Who's Back or controversy, we need a little controversy here. Some controversy. Google is accused of downplaying ad price manipulation. So they're being sued. They've got a couple of problems right now. Google does around antitrust and also this inflation of ad prices.
Kevin
Some advertisers believe that Google is quietly inflating ad prices by 100%, a stark contrast to the 5% suggested by the search engine. The search engine has admitted at the federal antitrust trial that it frequently inflates ad prices by as much as 5% without telling advertisers, sometimes ten, and everyone saying, Yeah, baloney. We think it's up to 100. Now I want to get your two takes, but I just want for the audience, Google's take on this is basically, hey, you're telling us what your maximum cost per click is, what you're okay with it being.
Kevin
And so, you know, we might just add a little bit, but it's still going to be under what you told us you were happy to pay per click. So all is fair, right? And it's just five or 10% and it's like a rounding error.
Julie
Well, number one, it's just the fact that there's no transparency that you're saying it's one thing we're calling it an auction, but it's kind of an auction and it's kind of we're setting whatever we want. The second is just that that's tied in to that. They're inflating the things to meet their own revenue goals, which I mean, obviously that's a conflict right there that doesn't help advertisers.
Julie
And then also, I just wonder, I don't know if I'm explaining this right, but really they're setting pricing on impressions. We're looking at it as just clicks. If it was a pure auction, it would feel like it was just clicks. But how they're raising and lowering prices without telling us is more on clicks and ad. And so I think they're trying to say, well, we're just trying to raise the quality, but it's leaving us out of that equation.
Julie
You know, the advertisers out of the equation. They're benefiting themselves with that.
Kevin
Yeah. I wonder I think I think I follow where you're going. There you went as nerdy as you can get.
Julie
But for me.
Kevin
You know, it just does, period. Because I'm like, again, I'm like the cat hanging on the branch, like, I think I know it. She's gone. I think maybe this is such as Google doing a terrible job of explaining because to your point, it's not just who bids the most money. Yeah, the two bids. It's the most money. And as the most relevant ad that typically gets clicked the most.
Kevin
So there are certainly other things beyond financial measures, but that's really not what Google said, even if that's what they meant. Like, hey, there's two other factors here. What they woops, what you said was, no, we just inflate prices by 5 to 10%. If we're if we believe that we can make the money on it. Now, Google, by the way, you know, of all of the major tech organizations, Google generally scores pretty well in trust with consumers.
Kevin
And I can't explain why they rolled out. There's a phone I think it was the Google pixel five or something like that. I was reading or watching a Marquese Brownlee YouTube video on this where they said, Hey, you buy the phone, and for one monthly fee you can get YouTube premium, YouTube TV, all these different like six different features.
Kevin
And every two years you get a free upgrade of your phone to the latest Google pixel. It was called like Google one or something. Guess what program they canceled and terminated just a month or two before the two year mark. Like these are some shady folks and they get they get away with it based upon the hey, we try lots of things and then we shut things down when it's not working.
Kevin
But they're like a and like their logo should. The tagline should be Google the warehouse of empty promises. So really good at search and video. Like they do some things really well, but they're not to be trusted. And we're you even started today on our call with Andrew. He's like who's seeing this other warning, warning message now that they're adding on to accounts?
Kevin
That's basically saying.
Beth
You're spending some money on your bids.
Kevin
Yeah, the person managing your account might not be doing you a favor by doing it this way, even though and this is we just kind of pass this article around was like, Exactly. That's why we manage bids the way we do, because you cannot give people control. That's just like clear as day that they don't. Alter Did you see, by the way, the Amazon like admitted that they raise prices by like up to 30 or 40% on products that they believe they could during the pandemic, just like let's just make more money.
Kevin
We can. Well, that's what they call free inflation.
Beth
Which, speaking of Amazon, their second prime day just wrapped up. And my favorite thing about Prime Day is that you look at the price and then it says like a total price, like the price it normally is. But if you go to a camel, camel, camel and look at the price history that the average price is actually like closer to the prime Day deal and they just knocked it down like a dollar or two.
Beth
Like it's all it's all manipulation, which is how marketers get such a bad name.
Kevin
Yeah, Yeah. Can we not call it that? Marketing is to be another word.
Beth
I'm just getting bad Google.
Kevin
I mean, it still is. Still. And that's again, you just need control. You need you need really limit the keywords. You need manual bidding on terms performance. Max campaigns are from the devil, say aloud. They're proud. Okay. Next up from Redfin.com 59% of recent home buyers say that purchasing a house is more stressful than dating. It's been a while.
Kevin
So I'm going to I mean, I don't know what dating's like, but baby boomers are most likely to say the opposite because again, they haven't dated in a while. Maybe either with nearly half saying that dating is more stressful than home, buying divorce and finding a new job, or the only two listed life events that a majority of respondents said are more stressful than purchasing a home.
Julie
This is weird, weird survey like potty training a child with all of those things.
Beth
Getting into college, like very specific getting into college. But yeah, no, I when this first came out, that was exactly what I said. Julie I was like potty training.
Julie
Yeah. No, no, I think this is a little click baity. Like, what can we do that maybe people will.
Kevin
Agree with you, But look at some of these some of these are fascinating because we typically talk about how broken the the like processes of buying a car. Yeah. And yet 66% of people said buying a home is more stressful than buying a car and let me let's so I agree click baby maybe things position in a way for extreme effect but why do we think like just the top line truth of buying a home is really stressful and might be like stupidly obvious, but let's just name out some things.
Kevin
Why we think it's really stressful.
Julie
Spending a lot of money is very stressful.
Kevin
Yeah.
Julie
Like often getting a mortgage and answering all those questions and figuring out maybe you don't know all the answers to all the things you should know is stressful.
Kevin
Yep.
Julie
Moving a stressful birth knows death. Yes.
Kevin
And I've talked about before, like it's not just the physicality of moving, it's the mental reorganization that has to occur of everything needs a new habit, you know, like just how you walk out of bed and into your bathroom. Your brain has to relearn the it's taxing. Yep. There's no opportunity for trade in, like, no take backs, right?
Kevin
Like, I'm just going to try it for a week. So you're stuck with your decision for a period of time? Yeah.
Beth
You can't have a first date with a house that you're buying.
Kevin
What about the shopping process? Like, that's all the stuff after you buy or as you're buying, but that's where you're like lack of options.
Beth
Beth Yeah, a lack of options right now. I mean, a to the approval of many builders is that new construction is the way a lot of people are going just because of the lack of resale inventory available or affordable resale inventory that's available and affordable, factoring in mortgage rates, of course. And and just like, okay, well, if I have to move what is out there and I'm staying on my street right now, the trouble of selling their house, if they have to sell their house in order to move to this new house, that is very, very stressful.
Kevin
It's I think just the the interaction with humans generally is not good. That's like I'm just again, getting phone calls to be returned, getting questions answered, feeling like you're not a bother when you do. Do have a question or need an answer.
Beth
That's a whole can of.
Kevin
Worms. So I guess to me the bigger thing that I think is interesting to think about in relationship to this article is, is the how much of this is stuff that we could be doing better versus two that a lot of the things we went to early on of it's a lot of money. It's a big decision. You can't redo it quickly.
Kevin
Those those things we can't necessarily change but like if you if a builder did all the things, just all the things to make the experience as good as possible. Do you think home buying would still be top top of the list other than dating? Hmm.
Beth
I don't know. I don't know how to answer that.
Julie
Yeah. And because.
Beth
Without biases.
Julie
Exactly. And because it's not just home builders to, you know, it's the existing world, too. So we can fix our little or we can try to fix our little corner of the world of home buying. But can we be fixed? You know, dealing with realtors and losing out on a house You thought you have to be process.
Kevin
Some people would say, I'm being stubborn on like sitting on this, really. But let me just shifted to something else that you both know way more about than me giving birth to a child. Is that stressful?
Beth
Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin
Like, I don't know the situation where it isn't because and again, from from my stupid vantage point, it's like we've had great hospital experiences, we've had good nurse experiences, we've had good food experiences, we've had good comfortable beds, like all the things you can take, but it's still there. Still because of the amount of change involved. Mm hmm.
Kevin
I actually don't I'm not trying to go negative, but I don't think it's pop. I think the stress will always be there. It's how you manage and respond to the stress versus trying to take it away. Maybe. That's right. I think a lot of the focus is like, we're going to do these things and remove all the stress as well.
Julie
And a lot of the stress comes the stress is the uncertainty of not knowing how it's going to go. So it's so it's going to be stress, even if it goes great, even if your house has no problems, you don't know that beforehand. So you're going to stress about all the problems that can happen. Yeah, for you happens.
Beth
And that's why moving has been consistently, consistently one of the biggest structures in someone's life. And it's because it's just the simple act of moving is stressful enough. But then right now you're layering in a lot of other issues that the stress is never going to go away, like you just said. But there's ways that we can respond better to it or help people respond better to it, better a little bit more creative that maybe we haven't explored yet.
Beth
Like the most stressful part about having a child and purchasing a new home is the stuff that happened after having a child. It's the healing, it's the bringing the baby home, adjusting to a new life. It's the no sleep, it's the feeding issues. It's all of that all happening at once. And then for moving and closing on a home, then have to move.
Beth
You have to hemorrhage more money. You have to get used to a new house. You have to unpack your stuff. Okay. So you still have time out.
Kevin
First I got because I love it, because again, I'm I'm I'm just a guy who doesn't know much. So imagine in the scenario of you having a kid. And then as soon as you come home, your partner says, hey, I'll be back for a 30, 60, 90, 120 day inspection. But you figure this out. How that how that go down?
Kevin
Terrible, right? So I think we just solved a bunch of things for a bunch of people here is we know that the stressful part often comes after moving in that trigger moment. We like, oh my gosh, my kid just punched hole in the door or like, this new thing is being destroyed for my eyes or I found something that they missed and they're going to say, My kid did it.
Kevin
And they they didn't do it. Yeah. Mm. So that's, but it's clear as day that that's where the vacuum occurs in terms of the builder's interaction with the customer. Mm. Yeah.
Beth
Absolutely. I think it's all clear. Is that a way of announcing we're going to have like a parental leave policy now to no one.
Kevin
We have actually spousal policy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah. So I think the post event is a big part of it. And the other thing that I was considering talking about as my story time was I took my oldest to visit college, a college for the first time on Monday and she's, you know, constantly she's a junior, so she's got time to figure this.
Kevin
Obviously, she's constantly like, I just can't wait to get out of high school, get to the next phase, like I'm ready to be an adult, give it to me, let me out. And she wasn't super excited about this first school we're going to because there's only like 3000 kids on the campus and it's in Indiana, kind of in the middle of nowhere.
Kevin
But she had done some research and she thought she was ready and like this was all going to be beneath her. And then she texts me at 6 a.m. the next morning after spending the night in the dorm and was like, How'd it go? She's like, Oh, the dorm is awesome. All the people here are super nice. I love it, but I'm just so freaking happy that I have two more years because I am not ready for college.
Kevin
Like I'm not ready to be all on my own, do my own things, be in this place where I don't know anyone else. Like I need I need time to go back and like, she's also like, I just appreciate the community that I have and the people I know at school, and I'm going to maximize those next two years of relationships with those people because I know now, like I can see the change.
Kevin
So part of this is also the we talk and have talked and we'll continue to talk a lot about inoculation being an important aspect of what you do is setting expectations. And yet and yet, like did you set expectations well enough or not? I don't think can be defined by simply what the customer's reaction always is.
Beth
Yeah, absolutely.
Kevin
Because you can tell them and tell them and tell them and tell them, but they're still going to have a reaction in a lot of cases. And you just got to be ready for it and be available.
Beth
Well, I think I mean, what you said there too, like you can tell them and tell them and tell them oftentimes early, telling them once and expecting them to remember that doesn't work either.
Kevin
And once through one format. Yep. Just like everyone knows email and never run scared to keep sending emails. And you do have to make sure it stands out above the clutter. But the number of emails that I get just from my kids school on a weekly basis and then, you know, you're, you know, you get one email from the builder about an important milestone that gets sent to spam or junk.
Kevin
And and then you're just internally your team is incredulous, like, why don't customers just understand they need to come prepared for this thing? Maybe if it's important enough, you should tell them more than once from more than one method.
Beth
Where's your sound effect from now?
Kevin
Bam dot com. And this is an interesting it's a like Inman like publication but they like to go edgy and they have a YouTube channel and I watch some of them and the guy, one of the guys is kind of a weird jerky. So anyway, just keep that in mind as we talk about the article. But homes dot com has claims this is not the headline but I'm adding this home scam claims it has hit 100,000 monthly visitors.
Kevin
Zillow's rivalry heats up so homes com is owned by costar and their goal they say Andy Florence is the CEO says hey we're going to be the number one syndication platform for residential real homes And they claim that they hit 100 million unique visitors. Last month, Realtor.com and Redfin reported 74 million uniques that would put them in second place, and Redfin reported 52 for the quarter.
Kevin
So that's by the quarter. And they're saying 100 million in a month. Now, here's what's interesting is this would be a 1290 percent increase in traffic year over year for the site. So I don't I can't recall if it's mentioned historic or not, but I think both Zillow and Realtor.com are like heads or some other third party that they probably pay or nudged and were like, Hey, can you help us refute this?
Kevin
They're like, Yeah, that doesn't quite seem right because the prior month they had like 70 million where I should find the exact numbers. But basically they increased by like almost all of the traffic that Realtor.com gets in a month by a month is what they're calling them. So take it with a grain of salt. But they are everyone does seem to agree that they are trending.
Kevin
Now, have either one of you spent any time on Hanscom? Mm hmm.
Julie
Just after reading this article.
Beth
Am going to see for it had been on there because I used to use the home snap app and dot com is now they acquired Thomson app whenever and so when I went to go use the home snap app, it was like we're now home XCOM. You got to go download a whole new thing and all this stuff and at first I was like Mac.
Beth
But then I looked at it, but then it didn't have the same amount of data that I used to get in the same format. So then I was just disappointed.
Julie
And I did go Google Homes in Mandeville, Louisiana, which is where I live, to see if they came up in the paid search, which they did. So also you have to wonder how much of this is just did they take one, not push it as much advertising dollars as they could in that one month. Right. Because Zillow does didn't come up in the paid search.
Julie
And I mean, maybe they do have some and it just didn't come up in that one. But and just push in that one month to have these numbers to show investors and all those different people. So it doesn't mean that organically more people are going there than Zillow. Like there's ways they can wait. Those numbers.
Kevin
Sure. And there already are platforms that we know basically get almost all the traffic from a paid activity, names that you would know. I think what's really interesting about their approach is and I'll share it for those of you watching the video, this is a listing nearby and they say shots fired to to to Zillow in particular. I think no fake agents on home scum.
Kevin
So it shows the listing agent, Buffy Patterson, her phone number, and then it says No fake agents. We connected you directly to the listing agent who knows the home best. No cold calls, robocalls or spam from random agents. And that's their whole thing, is you're listing your lead and their belief is that the best customer experience is to get you in touch with a person who knows at home the best sellers are all agents, the kinds of agents we want to work with who really do know the home they list really well inside and out unnecessarily.
Kevin
I think that's the first kind of floor. And the second is Buffy doesn't pick up the phone. It doesn't matter if she's the most knowledgeable. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how their strategy pushes output.
Beth
From a consumer standpoint. I appreciate that message better than the message that they're pushing. And I even just sent you all in the chat that we'll have to provide open the notes. But on their website they are pushing the same message of We are the fastest growing industry. There have all these graphs and all this stuff of why they're so much better and they're moving so much faster.
Beth
But like what you just said is way more interesting to me from a a realtor and consumer standpoint, because I can't tell you how many times we would be moving and I'm just frantically trying to get any listing information that I can get before I talk to a realtor, because I like to do my own research. And I would accidentally submit the question on Zillow's like promoted realtor versus the actual listing realtor.
Beth
And most people don't know that you have to go into the list. There's like a small, very particular place. You have to click to actually get in touch with the realtor that is listing the property both rental and resale. So I like that part from a consumer point.
Kevin
Yeah. If again, that person never responds to you. Yeah. Just true. They seem like and anyone from Zuckerman wants to come on the podcast. I would love to have you to talk through this. It seems like they're just on the offensive to try to, like, swing as hard as I can and see what sticks. Like just putting out here millions of free leads.
Kevin
Mm hmm. Billions and commission value.
Julie
What's the data point you're using for that?
Kevin
Yeah, yeah.
Beth
Yeah.
Julie
We're going to use Kevin's question.
Kevin
Yeah. Yeah. It's like millions of free leads delivered since 2004 when we were home start up or somewhat like, what does that what was. I mean.
Beth
Yeah, it's getting desperate.
Kevin
Yeah. Speaking of desperate from CNBC dot com, the housing industry in air quotes urges Jerome Powell to stop raising interest rates or risk an economic hard landing. This this whenever this stuff happens I'm always just like are we really spending time on this? I mean I guess people should do it probably is helpful. But the National Association of Homebuilders, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the National Association of Realtors all wrote to the Fed to convey profound concern about the industry.
Kevin
The group asked the Fed not to contemplate further rate hikes and not to actively sell its holdings of mortgage backed securities. Not selling securities would, in theory, help hold down mortgage rates, and obviously not increasing short term rates might also help mortgage rates. But it just is like Jerome Powell doesn't work for you. So it's kind of like my neighbor.
Kevin
If I if I had a neighbor who would be like, Hey, I'm going to write you a letter. I'm also going to get the local butcher to sign on and we would like you to chop down that tree because we just think that a tree is ugly. I'll be like, That's cool. You don't own land. So now what is this really?
Beth
Do write. Great question, Aren't they?
Kevin
Aren't they all? I think all these three industry things for also actively running messaging saying there's never been a better time to buy is like wow, how's it both? I don't know. Can you tell I don't like political anything. Yeah.
Julie
Yeah. They had lobbyists that needed something to do. It was like when the all the people came together against a they wrote the letter against AIG when, like, they've used forever, you know, it's kind of the same. Yeah. Same feeling.
Kevin
Right. Also, the people who are against, they are the people who are already leading the field in like all kinds of competition coming from other places to be harder.
Julie
Yeah, it's like a different version of that.
Kevin
For those of you are are playing along at home with the game like what Metta is doing with Lama too, which is an open source. All of them is basically trying to say, Hey, we're going to if you're going to try to make it hard for the little guys to compete against you, we're just going to make open source software available for people to use that will build almost taking a play out of Google's playbook with Android.
Kevin
Like, yeah, in Nokia you stink at building software to run phones. We'll just build software for you because we're a software company.
Kevin
Okay, moving right along from Inman Re Max becomes the third major firm to distance itself from NPR announcing details of its settlement in the bombshell Commission lawsuit, the franchisors said agents and brokerages, the freedom to set and and or negotiate commissions as they see fit and will no longer require a realtor membership as part of working with them or for them.
Kevin
So that follows Redfin anywhere and now REMAX All, all. And and they are we're not sure that we can continue for saying we're not going to require membership. Now all these remember the is places and we're going to have Rob hon back on to talk a little bit more about this. For those of you who couldn't come to the summit or missed his session because a lot of people were sad that they missed that one afterwards, you thought it was going to be boring and then it really it wasn't boring.
Kevin
Everyone was talking about it and you missed it. But there's a lot of MLS is that require realtor membership in order to access the MLS and so that's kind of one of the next battlegrounds to come is if that if that holds or whether people will relent in in hopes that the Department of Justice will stop pushing things to change.
Kevin
So any other thoughts, insights on this one from either you.
Julie
Just finally the like flood? I feel like everybody's been talking about this for the last year or two. And finally, like once the floodgates kind of opened, people are following. So it's interesting to see movement on it. Instead of just talking about things. It's like people are actually starting to take a little action. Whether that really makes a difference in how things work yet.
Julie
But I think eventually they're getting there.
Beth
Yeah, Yeah. But does that what we were talking about last week is just Redfin was the first. Now what's next? And now we're starting to see the domino effect happen a little to.
Kevin
Redfin's was voluntary is the one distinction. Redfin's is voluntary anywhere, and Remax is part of the setup. Once they reached on those lawsuits. So they both agreed to pay millions of dollars in fines as well in settlement funds, and then also say we won't make this happen. So that's where some people are, like Redfin. We're just doing this to try to get as far away from this as possible because they don't have much cash to give and a settlement anyway.
Kevin
MM Well, yeah, there's lots of unintended consequences. It might happen from this one. One example that Rob gave was okay, so in theory being able to put I'm not going to offer any money to the other agent and the transaction sounds like it'll be good to consumers and it'll prevent steering, but actually it might make steering worse. Was this scenario of like, okay, if I work a plea, all the three of us work in the same office, I'm going to put I'm not going to pay anyone from, you know, Keller Williams anything but everyone else in the team.
Kevin
Like if you bring me one of your buyers, we'll figure something out. I'll tell them, like, Hey, this this whole thing is good enough that you should pay them some money in addition to as part of the deal. So it actually could make things worse, not better on the steering fronts. All right, Rob, for the rest of that.
Beth
What and going back to what you said earlier about like the realtor incentives that people are pushing, there's like people with parallel to throw money and there are the steering wheel, the offering. So I'm interested to see how that plays out.
Kevin
Yeah. All right. Things we love, things we hate. So we close out every show, you know, on.
Julie
About mine, my and my bills. If you need something to get off your phone, go do it. We will crochet. Yeah, we.
Kevin
Will.
Beth
It was really cute. Mine is. I was also influenced, similar to Julie. I had been waiting for our prime date to happen so that I could get my Bissell little green. If you don't know what that is, it's like a portable upholstery cleaner, carpet cleaner, spot cleaner for pets and whatnot. But when we moved into our new house, we have these chairs that we've had since we lived in Texas, which was like three, four moons ago.
Beth
And they have they're old, they've been in use, but they've also been in storage and through a couple houses. And so they are stained. And I also have children, so they are stained. And so I just really wanted to bring them back to life now that we have them in use in this house and that little thing, it did its job.
Julie
To help the water growth afterwards for you like it.
Beth
It honestly, I was a little concerned because it didn't I only did two chairs as a test to see and I have to go back and do them again, like out on the patio so that I can like really get the sides by. I showed my husband and I took a picture beforehand and then we looked at it after and we were like, Holy cannoli.
Beth
It actually worked. I should post like a before and after, but I'm a little embarrassed by that for.
Kevin
My parents used to have their main vacuum cleaner was a rainbow. I mean, anyone heard of this? Yeah. And it's like one of the last things that was sold door to door by by, like, vacuum salesman. And it was like, the best product ever because you fill it up with clean water and then you just vacuum and there are no bags, and the vacuum just goes through this big water thing in the center.
Kevin
But like how much dirt you really need to put in water to make it look filthy is not lot of dirt, no wonder. And so I was just like, Oh, it's so gross. But missiles are great ray machines. I'm going to try to solve everyone's terrible audio problems everywhere. I we all love and we cheer all of you when you make great content for social or video work.
Kevin
But a lot of you really have to pay attention to your audio game because one of the sounds workers for real talk your it doesn't translate and no one wants to watch that and it's that's just like it's painful almost every content creator we've ever interviewed and we talk about like which is more important the photo image quality or the sound quality.
Kevin
They're like, Oh, you can't fix sound nearly as easily as you can fix image after you shoot it. So this is the latest iteration of the Road Wireless family. It's called the Pro. It's 399 and that sounds like it's a lot of money and it is a lot of money, but just the two lab mikes that come with it, if you were to buy those separately, they are $200.
Kevin
So what I just said there and the justification, it's basically like free the case now charges every everything else in in the so you just have one charging case and accessories case. You get two different receivers and one transmitter. So you put the one transmitter on your camera and it comes with all the cables to attach this to an iPhone with lightning cable or you have SBC in Android.
Kevin
So these are the same things you'll watch on YouTube where people just clip and it has like a fuzzy dead cat on the side. You don't even have to use Alabama. Like it's just an all around easy to fill. The batteries last forever. It also has a 32 bit float, which technically speaking, that just means there. But that's like 130 a bit float is just like super high quality recording said it can't clip at and in terms of going too high or too low it can cover all of the all of the sounds and give you the chance in post to choose what you want or don't want.
Kevin
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
Kevin
How about that?
Beth
I like that better.
Kevin
Bye!
