The Future of Real Estate Transactions with Marnie Blanco, Dotloop

Episode Transcript
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Aaron Norris (00:06):
Welcome back to the Data Driven Real Estate
podcast the podcast for realestate professionals dedicated
to driving business using data.
I'm Aaron Norris with PropertyRadar. And this week we have the
VP of industry relations fordotloop Marnie Blanco. Marnie
has been in the industry for acouple of decades in the real
estate space trainingprofessionals and realtors
specifically to get better withtransactions and we find out all
about dotloop integrations andtrends in the real estate

(00:29):
transaction space, the databeing collected and how it's
being leveraged in the realestate space. And of course, the
future of the real estatetransaction and how it's all
about the consumer. You won'twant to miss this week on the
Data Driven Real Estate Podcast.
Marnie, welcome, so, thank youso much for joining us today.
For those who are not familiarwith dotloop, how would you

(00:51):
describe it?

Marnie Blanco (00:53):
Well, thank you, Aaron. It's good to be here.
Good to see you again. Yes, so,dotloop exciting, I'm always
happy to talk about dotloop.
I've been there for almost eightyears now, which seems crazy.
But dotloop is a fully digitaltransaction management system.
And so, that's a lot of words, alot of big words that basically
take a real estate transaction,make it completely digital, so
that you can complete it, youknow, soup to nuts, all online

(01:15):
with your buyers, your sellers,your agents, your brokers. So,
if you think about it, we kindof categorize transaction
management into five buckets.
You know, first, as an agent'sdoing a deal, they have a lot of
documents, a lot of paperworkthat you have to complete, they
have to share and collaboratethat you know, back and forth,
you have offers that might goback and forth, you know,

(01:37):
different type of kind ofiterations of the deal until you
get to the you know, to thefinal terms of the deal, of
course, then you have to signit. So, then you have your
signature component. And so,that's what we kind of call the
agent world, and then shiftsover to the broker world where
they have to review the deal hasto be full compliance, you know,
dot the I's, cross the T's makesure everything's good,

(01:59):
ultimately, to get the agentpaid quicker. That's always a
good thing for these agents.
That's what they love. And thenfinally, you have to store the
deal, right? So, we have, youknow, you do all your document,
work, your collaboration, youreSign, your compliance, and
storage. And that's kind of whatwe look in view as transaction
management in this world to getthe deal done.

Wow. Now Zillow purchased dotloop. Was it in
2015?

It was about five years ago, yup.

Wow. So, I was looking on the dotloop page
today on the services that youoffer. And it's you know, when
you're describing thetransaction, and all the pieces
and the buckets that live withina transaction, it's, it's
extensive.

A lot. Yeah, a lot of people just think, Oh,
it's just an eSign, I just needto sign some paperwork. But it's
much bigger than that. There's alot more workflow, a lot more
iteration, a lot more work onboth the agent and the broker
side.

Yeah, having worked in compliance, that's a
big piece of it to, a people,people don't realize how long
you have to store these, thispaperwork.

Yeah. And it's got to be clean, right? Nobody
wants to get caught withanything dirty.

Right, exactly.
And the fact that it can alllive with in digital, so, it
doesn't go from paper, and thenyou have to scan. I mean,
that's, that's prettyinteresting. Does it incorporate
the mortgage piece as well?

So, that's a great question. That's where it
can. So, it kind of depends.
dotloop is very, is a very openbuilt type of platform. So, that
it can include if you kind ofpicture sitting around a
conference table, it's like adigital conference table, right?
your lender could be there, yourtitle could be there, your, your
agent can be there, broker, etc.
Everybody can come to the table.
And that's what we call a loop.

(03:39):
So, some folks do pull inmortgage, we're seeing a trend
though, and this is where Ithink in the industry is the
trend is mortgages, kind of thenext layer of development,
innovation, upgrading in thatworld, right, from technology to
systems to, you know, justworking with your local lender
that you happen to know down thestreet. And the integration

(04:02):
between systems like dotloop toa mortgage lender is really
where we're starting to see thenext innovation point. So, being
able to share those docs, forexample, you know, mortgage
obviously requires a lot ofnotarization right, and so, we
just partnered withNotarize. Dotloop so, that we ca
notarize documents, you knowpush them to notarize, the

(04:24):
fully get e-Notarized push bacinto the dotloop. So,we hav
those notarized documents idotloop. But even to the poin
where people could see fromlisting, like if they're pullin
up all the listings, we can telbased on not just mortgage, bu
then also title, what type olistings and what type o
properties could qualify forfully digital closing, so that

(04:44):
you're not going to the titlcompany and doing any type o
wet signatures and you're nodoing you know, some of th
process digitally and some othe process manually, but it i
a full digital closing soup tnuts. And so, that's where
think we're seeing a lot of yoknow, the focus coming in th
next couple of years

I've bugged Notarize, we're going to have
them on next year, as I'mfascinated with the online
notary. And I mean, that's a bigpiece, especially as we're
talking about going from paperto digital back and forth. It's
just, it's mind blowing. So,

It is amazing how fast they could change things,
right? You have COVID come intothe mix. And all of a sudden,
you have only a few states thatwill allow an E-notarization.
And then now I think it's what23 or 26 states, you know, very
quickly changed policy and madethat available. So, it's cool to
see the industry and policymoved quickly. In times like
this.

I did not know that on the Rewire where which I
saw your name part of theconference that Notarize put on.
I mean, they rolled out somereally interesting partnerships,
that surprised me, they hadpoliticians online talking about
sort of the digital, did,digitization of our space, and
it was really interesting tosee, it felt like it came out of
nowhere, but you've been workingin this space a really long

(06:00):
time.

We have. We love this topic.

When the, you know, the real estate space, I
think there's a lot of fear.
Who, I asked uhm, the CEO ofT360 was on a couple weeks ago,
and I asked him why is realestate so terrible at
technology? Why it seems likewe're always the last of the
party? Do you have a good answerfor that?

Gosh. You know?
Well, I think my answer for thatwould be is that technology in
any industry doesn't matter whatit is, can be, you know, you
have to talk about adoption andengagement, and, and all of
that, which all boils down tochange management. And I think
in our industry, because we workwith ICs, right, agents are
independent contractors, youknow, for lack of a better term,
it's kind of like herding cats,right? It's hard to get

(06:46):
everybody going in the right,you know, in the same direction
and same adoption. So, I thinkthat they get there, what's been
interesting for us, I mean, it'sa huge eye opener, especially in
this COVID world, you know,businesses are having a hard
time left and right, you know,people are doing whatever they
can to get by and to make suretheir businesses are in good
shape. But what we saw atdotloop, is that it organically

(07:08):
forced people to really start toadopt the technology, and to
bring it in, you know, I think,as any business in April, and,
you know, May, a little bitMarch, April, May, we took a
little dip at dotloop. But wethen had, you know, breaking
sales and breaking historywithin the company for the next

(07:30):
following five months afterthat. And so, while you know,
this COVID thing is not good. Weall want it to be done sooner
than later. I think it's kind ofgreat that it has forced people
to really push into adopttechnology in this digital
world. And you know, it's sad,because you're right, it's hard
in our industry, we're alwayskind of the last ones, I think.

(07:51):
But sometimes you get a littlepushes in some some odd ways.
And I think at the end, it willonly help the agents and brokers
be be more effective.

Is part of the issue that Realtors, as they're
sort of viewing their valueproposition, they feel like part
of their job is sitting downwith paperwork. And that's where
they find value. And is it sortof an old school model where
access to the MLS and helpingsign paperwork is how they're
seeing value in themselves? Isthat? I mean, you work on the
front line, what are some of thebarriers to technology that

(08:23):
you're seeing? Absolutely.

I think you're right, I think our industry by
nature is like a belly-to-bellytype of industry, right? It's
heart, you know, based onrelationships, everybody knows
an agent or Realtor that theycould work with. But it's, Who
do you know, the best? Who doyou have a relationship with?
And that people don't want togive that up? And nor should
they, I think, you know, whilewe are seeing increased adoption
rates of technology in this dayand age, what helps that those

(08:50):
when you marry the tech with thehuman element, it's not getting
rid of the human elementaltogether, especially buying a
house, I mean, how much more ofan emotional purchase could you
ever have? I mean, it doesn'tget any, any more emotional than
that. So, you want someone byyour side that you trust that
you've known, that you have arelationship with, and that's
never going to go away. But whenyou can marry that with some

(09:11):
tech and make some of the justthe logistics and things like
paperwork easy, you know, thoseare the people who are going to
succeed. Those are the folks whoare going to be able to focus
all their time on relationshipsand, and making people feel good
and positive about the largestpurchase they'll probably ever
make in their life. And thenthey can do it seamlessly in the
background with all this text.
So, I think it's the marriage ofboth of them that is, is

(09:32):
important, but it's hard to letgo of some of that stuff when
you're so used to doing it,right? It's like if you didn't
start this way today, is thatthe way you would do it
tomorrow? Probably not. But youhave to ask yourself that it
becomes a huge change managementexercise for these folks.

Are you seeing independent contractors, because
I noticed that you've gotdifferent models where you're
targeting agents to independentcontractors but also teams and
brokerages. Is there any, aneasier path where people on
teams, is the adoption ratehigher, and churn lower for you,
if they come on board with ateam that this is the
expectation, you're going toadopt this.

Yeah, that's a great point, we do see that, we
see that if brokers would buy asystem like dotloop for their
entire operation, or a teamwould purchase it, we do see
that there is exponentialbenefits, in the fact that
you're able to model inworkflows of the entire company,
it's not just this one agentdoing business the way that they

(10:33):
like to do it. But it modelsthat for the entire company. So,
then the agents can inherit, youknow, a lot of that workflow, a
lot of those processes andbenefits down to the local agent
when the broker sets it up at ahigher level. And so, I think
that in two, I think people justnaturally we've seen it for I
would say, the last three years,the teams continue to grow and

(10:54):
grow and grow. People inherentlylove to work together as teams,
especially as the agentpopulation, we get younger folks
into the agent population,they've grown up in a world when
they went to school, everythingwas done in a team base, every
project is done in a team base.
When I grew up, we won't talkabout how old I am. That was not
the case. It was very individualbased. And it was just get your
stuff done and take care ofyourself. That's not the way

(11:17):
that the new population worksand the new generations work.
So, we do see that whenbrokerages can offer it on a
large scale to their agents,there's inherent benefits that
they get the same thing on teamswhen teams can operate. There's
inherent benefits, there'sthere's a lot of efficiencies
gained.

Absolutely, from just the origination to
compliance piece, from thebrokerage vantage point, holy
cow, that it means a lot and andthe data front, I think part of
the fear too, that you'veprobably run up against as the
fear is, how much data is beingcollected and how it's being
used. So, let's talk about that.
Like, one of the questions thatcame up at the National
Association of Real EstateEditors having their conference

(11:59):
today when you and I arerecording this and one of the
questions that came up wasrespite rules and vertical
integration. So, you know,you've got these large Wall
Street companies like Zillowthat are you know, it's dotloop.
It's the mortgages, that's thebuy-sell side. That's a lot. And
now we've got a newadministration coming on. I
guess let's cover that first. Isthere, do you see any changes

(12:21):
with the new administrationcoming on CFPB? Things that tech
stack designers for a brokerageor team might have to think
about and might impact you guysas well?

Right. Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm probably not as
in-depth knowledgeable about allthe details and changes and have
an opinion about what's coming.
Obviously, affordable housingcontinues to be a huge, you
know, target and focus. And I'msure the administration will be
focusing on that. But what itcomes down to is, I think, as
you started to say is what doesthe data do in these, in this

(12:53):
manner? And how can we leverageit in the right way for the
benefit of agents, brokers andconsumers. So, that's always a
big, big question at that,dotloop and then, of course,
Zillow, our owner. We wentthrough even some data sharing
changes this year that we, youknow, change our policy on and
within our industry, data'salways been a hot topic. I,

(13:15):
gosh, I remember, goodness, 16,15, 16 years ago, I hate to say
that I've been in the industrythat long. I remember going to
conferences that was calledyour, like MLS topic in the
tropics. And so, of course, it'san excuse to have a conference
real estate agents loveconferences. It's fantastic. But
we would all go to Florida, andeverybody would talk, attorneys

(13:37):
would come in, agents would comein brokers would come in, we
would all talk about data atthat point in time, which was a
totally different realm than,than what we have now. But it
was who owns the data? Does thebroker own the data? What
happens when the agent leavesthe office? Does the agent get
to they get to take their datawith them, who you share your
data with? What's legal, what'snot, I mean, this topic goes on
for years, it has been a, youknow, multi, multi, multi-year

(13:59):
topic. This day and age where Ithink it always comes down to
again, it's control. And we atdotloop have taken the stance
that the brokers control theirdata, and if the broker comes
in, they purchased dotloop, andtheir agents use dotloop, and
they use dotloop, they own theirdata. Now, if you want to share
it, here's some benefits to howyou could do it. For example, we

(14:20):
integrate their data with onlywith their permission over to
Zillow, to, for example, kickoff a review. So, let's say you
just closed the deal. And youwant to get a review from your
buyer or seller, we can kickthat off automatically because
we know when the deal comes inand it's closed, it's time to
kick off a review. So, there'ssome things like that that can
be very beneficial. Equally, ifan agent wants to showcase how

(14:42):
many deals they've done thatyear, we can see of course in
dotloop that they've done alltheir deals, we can push that
over to Zillow, they canhighlight it in their profile,
so they can show basically youknow that they have quantity and
quality. You know they havethese great reviews and they do
a lot of deals and that helpsconsumers when they're out there
shopping for an agent. So,there's a lot of benefits to the
way that you use data, if youuse data, 1, based on

(15:05):
permission, and it's always incontrol from the agents and
brokers and then 2, based oneither aggregate data that's not
personally identifiable. I mean,think of like if you took data
from an office and Dotloop, andthey have 50 agents, and they
could see how fast the listingis entered how fast the listing
is closed, you cangeographically map that into,

(15:26):
you know, a local county, alocal community, you can see,
does this agent close dealsfaster than agent B? And is
there a training opportunity,maybe agent A is doing way
better than agent B, they bothservice the same area, but one
is doing a lot better, becauseyou can start to glean data from
aggregate, you know, samplesthat are coming through. So,

(15:47):
there's so many benefits to it,as long as you use it in the
right way. And as long as youmaintain control to the
ownership, which is typicallythe broker and you garner
permission. And that's that'sthe end all be all, I think it's
very simple after that.

Data to privacy.
And that's part of thecompliance piece, too, is
working with somebody that Imean, that's got to be a
difficult job sitting in thedotloop position, trying to stay
compliant when you've got youknow, California just passed
another privacy law. It is noteasy. So.

And it, Yeah. And it's constantly evolving, right?
And it's geographically, likeyou said, California does
something obviously, they alwayskind of lead the way for others.
And so, then it follows. Butyeah, you have to stay on top of
it. It's almost like a, youknow, a monthly thing.

Interesting. So, I didn't think about on the
operation side, maybe some ofthe different data points that
you're collecting to givebrokers and teams the ability to
get more specific insights,which is really hard. CRM
systems were all in differenttechnology stacks. So, this is a
different way to collect it onthe transaction side. Hmm, what

(16:56):
other data points are possiblein dotloop?

Well, obviously, I think what you could start to,
to understand and use to is,always the goal of a system like
dotloop is how can you enable anagent to do a deal, get it done
faster, and get paid faster? Imean, that's the name of the
game, right? That's just, Imean.

I like that hook, by the way. I see. you.

It works. It works. Um, so, I think that the,
the options to utilize data canbe I mean, so varied. Could you
use it on, you know, a lot ofthe brokers, we, you know, we
see how they run businesses,margins can be really tight with
brokers, they need to haveancillary services, such as
mortgage title, etc. But theymight have within their
companies, and how can theyintroduce at the right time, you

(17:45):
know, maybe their mortgagecompany into the deal. And so,
their agents make your agentslives easier by introducing,
it's not just Hey, do you want amortgage broke,r mortgage
lender, and you don't even knowwhat phase of the game they are
and their shopping experience,right? But with Dotloop and the
transaction based on whenlistings get entered, or an
exclusive, you know, right tobuy type of agency thing, you

(18:06):
can start to glean reallypertinent relevant times in the
flow of a transaction tointroduce services to make the
lives easier. And that'ssomething that you have to, you
obviously have to be mindful of,you don't want to just start,
you know, inundating an agentwith a bunch of services or
inundating a consumer with abunch of services. But if you

(18:27):
can do it in a in a reallycrisp, relevant way, it actually
will make the entire experiencebetter for everybody. And that's
really the goal, I think of datais to really just glean certain
marks of a transaction, to say,how can we make this easier? How
can you make it better at theend? What, where was the, where

(18:49):
was the pitfalls? Where were thepainpoints? How do you fix that
going forward.

I would imagine what the demographics of buyers
coming on to the market as well,this is probably a welcome
departure from five years ago,even which is crazy to think.
But you know, now that this isgoing a little bit more
mainstream Gen Z. I rememberhearing last year that there was
a thought that they were goingto come on the market faster

(19:12):
than the millennial generationthat they were really interested
in home buying. And there was astat I saw today that it was up
like 150% over the millennialbuys. So, imagine that they're
really adopting this and lovingit.

Yes, yeah. And it you'll see those stats, I mean,
obviously Zillow, you know, hastheir own economists and we put
out stuff like that all thetime. But yeah, and this
particular market or particulargeneration, you know, the
younger ages, the mid-20s, andlate 20s, etc, are just
increasing like so much per lastyear. You know, that always the

(19:46):
big topic was can they afford toget out of their parents houses,
right?

Yeah.

And that's, that's a whole another topic to
address which is still achallenge, but we're definitely
seeing in the numbers based ontraffic and deals and
transactions. That they are andit's increasing. And it's what's
interesting too is you start tolook at the renter's even right,
you start to look at what'sgoing on in the renting world.
And they're really starting toconvert at higher rates to the
buying world than, thanoriginally projected. And so,

(20:14):
you might even see, you know,what we typically do about what
five and a half million deals ayear transactions into your,
home in home sales, that you'llI think you'll see that go, you
know, over six, well over sixmillion, you know, this year and
into next year as well.

I just, I just finished my mortgage training my
NMLS, once a year continuing ed,always a lot of fun. And I'm
thinking about all the datapoints, I'm very familiar with
100 data that I have to collectas a lender. And, you know, I'm
thinking about dotloop, andZillow and the mortgage field,
there's a lot of power and thatdata and responsibility. Is

(20:51):
there any RESPA issues orconcerns that we have to be
worried about? As we look moreinto vertical integration? Is
that something that comes upvery often?

And you know, it doesn't come up very often in
our world? No, but of course, Imean, it is always top of mind.
And I think anytime you're doinganything within the real estate
industry is you know, if youhave any type of services you
want to offer, you know, thefirst thing you go look at is
that RESPA compliance, I mean,that's just like check number
one that you have to do. So, wehaven't run into it a lot. I do

(21:21):
think though, as we start to getmore integrated, the mortgage,
the title, and more servicestart to get integrated into
different systems going forward,whether it's dotloop, Zillow, or
anything else out there, thatRESPA is always going to be top
of mind. I mean, again, I thinkthat's a topic that's gone back
years and years as well.

I was, I like the concept of sort of the right
timing, when to introduce thedifferent services I know and
PropertyRadar, they're differentfields that allow you to do
that, like the just listed. Andprofessionals in certain markets
that have very specific nichescan trigger those things on
those kind of activities, whichis a lot of fun. And then even
targeting down to demographics.
So, it's a data game, it's justhow to use it wisely. There's

(22:02):
almost too much. Now, you guysalso outside of Notarize. I was
seeing something else Earnnest.
I had never heard of thembefore. What is that?

Yeah, yeah. So that Yeah, that was actually our
first dip into really helpingdigitize the transaction as
well. So, earnest money, you cancompletely deposit your earnest
money digitally through thiscompany called Earnnest. It was
kind of funny aside thing, iswhen we first launched it, we
have you know, just a basicallya button within Dotloop that
helps you trigger that type ofservice. But Earnnest spells

(22:36):
their name with two ends insteadof one. And so, we got all his
feedback, we were like, this isgreat. Look at all these people,
they're really enjoying theservice, because we are all
these emails and feedback.
They're like, every one of them.
You spelled Earnnest wrong, youneed to correct. It became, it
became interesting, we had to doa little bit of education on, on
nope, this is the companyEarnnest, and this is how they

(22:57):
spell it. But the service initself has just been delightful,
right? It's just it was a very,very easy type of integration
that we were able to do withthem. That took one of those
manual pieces out of the puzzle.
And that wouldn't seem so far tobe pretty easy to get people to
change to. Nobody likes havingto, you know, to do those
deposits manually. So, it's beenit's the uptake and engagement

(23:19):
we had off of it just within thefew months that we've launched,
it has been pretty incredible.

And the, and the fraud going on in the wiring
market right now is such a hugeconcern. It's so scary, so I can
definitely see how that's takingoff. I also see so you guys are
doing some unique partnerships,the California Association of
Realtors, The OntarioAssociation of Realtors. That's
a big deal. What does that meanfor you know the onlooker on the

(23:45):
outside who doesn't realize howbig that is? What does it mean
that CAR it's now working withyou?

Well, first and foremost, I hope you have a lot
of listeners in Californiabecause that is a huge, huge
deal for us. So, a little bit ofhistory is when you're working
with transaction managementdocuments and forms are
obviously a big portion of theof the transaction. So, you get
those from state and localassociations around the country.
And so, dotloop goes out andpartners with all of the state

(24:08):
and local associations to makesure we bring the forms in, we
digitize them, they're always upto-date so that agents and
brokers have the latest andgreatest at all times.
California historically, betweendotloop and California has
always been a battle to getthere state level forms. And
California has done an amazingjob at maintaining that, you

(24:28):
know, that intellectual propertyof theirs, which is this form
set and making sure everybodyuses it. Nobody uses any type
alternative form sets. So, ittook several years to come to a,
an agreement in partnership withCalifornia to say you know what
you can, dotloop can use yourforms. We'll keep them safe.
We'll keep them updated, it,this will be in the best
interest of your agents. So,yeah, so in September, we just

(24:50):
launched our California form setwhich is amazing. And already
getting a lot of adoptionthroughout California because
now they have a lot of options.
Before, they haven't had manyoptions from a transaction
management document perspective.
So, that's a huge market for usvery critical one for Dotloop
that we will be focusing onquite heavily into 2021 and

(25:11):
beyond. Similarly, you noted,Ontario up in Canada, and so
that equally is another bigmarket, you know, California
has, you know, a couple 100,000agents and Ontario Atlantic,
they've got, you know, 60,70,000 agents as well. So,
they're very big markets for usto try to, to help the Canada

(25:31):
market's interesting, they worka little bit differently than
the US they have, you know, theyhave their ways of things they
like done, they have theirsystems. And so ,especially
being a US company trying tooperate in Canada, that's always
a challenge as well, becausethey want to know that they can
trust you, and that they canactually work with you, that's
always an ongoing challenge. So,we definitely have some branding

(25:52):
work to do both in thosecritical markets. You know,
overall, throughout the UnitedStates, we're over 50% of the
transactions actually flowthrough Dotloop in some form or
fashion. So, it might not be theentire, you know, soup to nuts
from, you know, the agent andthe co-op agent. But some former
piece of the transaction flowsthrough dotloop. And I mean,

(26:13):
upwards, well over 50%. But ifyou'd look in California, and
Canada, those are two verydifferent markets. And that
wouldn't be the case. So, wehave a lot of work to do there.
And I think it will besuccessful, we're excited to
kind of open up these newmarkets.

Wow, that I mean, that's a big lift a for those
who don't have to deal withcompliance, you know, being in
the private lending space andattorneys working on paperwork,
I can understand that battle,and I mad respect to the
California Association ofRealtors, I'm only really,
heavily involved in twodifferent associations, but they
do such a good job, ll data thatthey put out,

Well-oiled machine, well run.

How, on average, how, how much can dotloop save a
team on a transaction? As far astime goes?

You know, that's always been kind of a million
dollar question, right? We'vetried to quantify it before. And
there's there's not been a realscientific way to be able to
quantify it. Some people like toquantify it by the amount of
trees that they save. Weactually have a very large
brokerage in Georgia, that weasked them that same question
like how much time theirsystems, he's like, hours upon

(27:27):
hours, he goes, but the one hardthing that I was able to figure
out after being on a year ofdotloop, is they saved over
$100,000 in just paper costs,because they weren't printing
all these deals out anymore, andsigning so, that I was like,
Wow, that's a hard solid number.
That's great. I think any, anyoperation would love that. So,
it's kind of hard. I mean,obviously, it saves you a lot of

(27:50):
time, especially dotloop beingcompletely mobile. A newer thing
that we had added in just alittle over a year ago is not
only are we completely mobile,you can fill out a form on your
phone, you can sign of course onyour phone, you can share you
can do with the entiretransaction on your phone. But
we added a text feature so thatpeople can actually do it via
text. So, let's say you've gotan agent who puts an offer out,

(28:13):
you know, a buyer comes in andputs an offer to a seller and
the seller counters, they can doit all via text. And what will
come in as though it will justliterally say change this field
on the form and you do it viatext it sends back it
automatically updates thedocument, sends it back into
dotloop. And it's just thatlittle, you know, maybe it's a
price field, that got changed.

(28:34):
But it was all done via textmessage, just organic, you know,
native text messaging on yourphone. So, that has been a huge,
a huge time saver for peopleespecially, you know, you're in
the car, and you're jus,teverybody's on their text all
the time. So, those are thelittle things that are huge time
savers, for folks, I think whenreally not only digitize a
transaction, but doing globallyand textually.

And when a transaction is completely
digital, on the compliance andthe storage side too, you know,
I, last 15 years, we have slowlybeen able to start scanning
everything to be compliant withregulators in California. And
we've gone from having to have astorage unit to everything being
online. And then when you dohave your quarterly audits by,

(29:17):
you know, the differentgovernment entities being able
to search files is really cool.
Is it that easy?

Absolutely, yeah, everything. You can search
files, you can tag them indifferent ways. You know, every
operation, every brokerage runsa little bit differently on how
they like to do compliance, theyhave their own processes and
workflow. So, that's what wereally base the foundation of
dotloop around is that you canmodel in your workflow directly
into dotloop so that you can dothings the way you want to do

(29:43):
it. You don't have to do itbecause the system does it that
way. It's because you want to doit that way. And that's what
works for you and your agents.
So, yeah, you hit the nail onthe head. We had another another
brokerage in Chicago. He emailedme one day he goes, 'You know
how I finally realized I becamedigital? I walked in the office,
and they were rolling away myfile cabinets, they were all
gone.' I was like,' Yes, it wasgreat'. So, yeah, it's, it can

(30:05):
all be tagged and searched.
Yeah, much easier than probablydigging through a file file
cabinet.

I just, I'm just thinking of the keywords that
I'm taking away, if I'm abrokerage or a part of a team,
and I'm looking sort of thefuture, what is the next five
years look like for an office.
So, just get paid fasteroperational costs, save trees,
I'm finding lots of littlebuckets of savings and marketing
bullet points to fordemographics that are up and
coming into the real estatespace, making it easy. I always

(30:34):
used to say, if there's somebodythat's not ugly, crying during
their first real estatetransaction, it just really
isn't real.

He didn't experience the full, full deal
of that was case.

Right. You're really missing now. Well, and I
see that's what that dotloop isreally, it's, it's getting rid
of all the friction. And youknow, our industry is ripe for
disruption, because we reallyhave been siloed and didn't work
together on technology. So,it's, it's important to see how
this all changes the consumerexperience, because that's what
we all should be doing, riight?

Absolutely.

Makes it easier.
So, what are some of the otherthings that you guys are working
on for 2021? Any newpartnerships or any new
technology that you're lookingto tackle? Yeah,

You know, I think our big focus going forward is
really blending in andintegrations, I've probably said
that word 1000 times so far, isgoing to be the focus, because
it's bringing in not only youknow, don't leave does the deal,
but you've got the ancillaryservices, you've got mortgage
and title, which is ripe rightnow for disruption and ripe for,
you know, tighter integration.
And, you know, the way we kindof look at it at Zillow and

(31:37):
dotloop is these, you know,consumers, these buyers and
sellers need to cross thisbridge over in, you know, in
this transaction, and they haveall these different pieces,
they're dealing with, you know,the search, they're dealing with
that and making offers, andthen, you know, having the
mortgage, and then making suretitle and closing is, is
seamless. And so, it's reallytrying to build all of that

(31:58):
together, I think in more of amuch again, tighter integrated
play, because right now, it'svery, it's very disparate, you
can get the deal done. But youknow, not necessarily that
mortgage and title coming intothe mix as tight as it could be.
So, I think you'll see a lotmore of that. I do think that
you'll see more of a focus, atleast from us, on the teams that

(32:19):
we had talked about, and teamscontinue to grow. And, you know,
there's even very, very largeexpansion teams that go across
states, you know, it's not justyour local 5, 6, 10 person team
within a, in a state that you'reseeing them grow quite large and
even larger than a lot ofbrokerages. So, being able to
serve them, you know, they arekind of like a brokerage, almost

(32:41):
within a brokerage. So, that'ssomething that's really unique
within Dotloop, because we havea specific teams product. And
so, being able to serve thataudiences is pretty important.

Yeah, the teamwork keeps coming up. And I have
asked this from a few differentguests, like, is there a way
that the industry defines teamsat this moment? And it can be so
varied and different? Do you,let me ask it this way? Do you
see any kind of setup thatreally excels and performs well,
a certain structure?

You know, I think I'm probably with your prior
guests. I don't yet, I thinkthat the hard part with teams is
one, they're not tracked, as, aswell as, you know, an agent
population or brokeragepopulation. You know, you can
ask 10 different people, howmany teams are there in the US,
and you'll get 10 differentanswers. I don't think anybody
even knows, right? Because ateam could be two people, right?

(33:32):
It's a husband and a wife team,up to, you know, we work with
some teams that are close to1000, you know, people that
because they they are theseexpansion teams that go across
states, and it's a verydifferent business model. I
think, though, that the hardpart with teams, too, though, is
that they change constantly,right? And so, when agents move,

(33:53):
you know, brokerage tobrokerage, or they start a new
team, and then they leave thatteam, and then they add a team
member, that's why it's hard.
And so, I'm not sure if I haveany better answer for you than
your other guests.

It's okay.

It's who we chase, you know, a lot of
different outlets out there, youknow, ranked teams and and it
obviously becomes a bigger topicand I think a lot of the
franchisors are trying to trackteams better, you know, Keller
Williams has always been a veryprotein type of model. And
that's where you see a biggrowth. REMAX, you know, has a
ton of teams, and I think, allas do, you know, all the big

(34:28):
franchisors out there. So, it'skind of one of those that
everybody's trying to tackle insome form or fashion, whether
it's you're trying to servicethem with technology, or you're
trying to service them, andunderstand, you know, their
efficiencies and their processesand so forth. So, it's just one
of those that's a little bit ofan enigma, when you can't really
quite quantify that market, youknow, as clearly as we would

(34:49):
like.

If you, I know you speak with a lot of different
groups and realtors and I doconstantly when I speak in front
of groups, there's a fear,there's iBuyers, there's Zillow
that is buying and selling. AndI always like to show them the
activity that said, buyers andsellers are doing, I'm like,
this is what they're doing. Youhave to make a decision to
leverage them in your businesswork around them and avoid them.

(35:14):
Do something completelydifferent, but it's just getting
the data. So, it what do youtell agents that are fearful of
what their future looks like?
Things that they should befocused on?

Absolutely. Well, obviously, working for Zillow,
we have a whole iBuying program.
That's obviously a big part ofwhat Zillow does, and Zillow
Offers. With, with that said,though, even internally, we
fully recognize and say that,that will, you know, not be
necessarily the norm of house,you know, buying and selling,
it's not for everybody, it's adifferent model, there's, you

(35:48):
know, price inclusions in therethat you have to take into
consideration. Some people youknow, and so there will always
be this. It, I mean, always, whoknows, never say never and never
say always, you know, there isthis very large majority
population of still kind of moreof the traditional type of

(36:10):
buying. Now, that doesn't meanit can't, that, that whole
population can be done easierand smoother. Because that's
really the goal of buy buying,right? Is the whole convenience
factor of it. But you reallyhave to be able to serve both
markets. And so, for those thatare nervous about the iBuying,
there is a ginormous market,that, that's the very minority
portion of the market. So,there's still a ginormous market

(36:32):
to serve. And if you I, in mypersonal opinion, I mean, I got
into this industry, so very longtime ago. Because I just, it was
like a hobby, I love shoppingfor houses, I love searching
online forum, if there's everopen house, I go look at it, if
there's new builds going on, andthey have new models, I am the
first one in line to go walkthrough them. I just love it

(36:54):
right? And so, there's alwaysgoing to be this population of
buying over here that you canserve with just really good
customer service. And it goesout to anything you do in your
life if you want you know, if,do you want to shop at Nordstrom
and get top quality customerservice? Or do you want to shop
at you know, a lower end type ofretail that's going to give you

(37:15):
nothing, right? And so, thatservice element will always
differentiate an agent. So, Ithink anytime agents get nervous
about the iBuying world, youcan, there's 80 million ways to
differentiate yourself. And itall comes down to service and
people like it, it doesn'tmatter what's the normal way of
buying a home people likeservice. It is just it's pure

(37:36):
and simple.

Yeah, and defining service and getting it away from
the transactional stuff thatdoesn't really add value. It's,
it's making it easy. And yeah, Ilike that. It seems like this
new demographic coming into thereal estate space to might be
leaning more into lifestyle. Youknow, a consumer comes armed
with a lot of data. They goonline, they go to Zillow, and

(38:01):
they're doing a lot morehomework than they did a decade
ago before they're even talkingto you.

Absolutely, and power.

Yeah, so, if you're that local realtor who
goes to the chamber meetings andknows economic development and
knows the new model that's goingin, you know, that that
lifestyle, qualitative later,layer that's very difficult to
find on the quantitative datapiece. I think that's really the
magic. And then teams when youhave different people focusing
on the seniors and the peoplemoving into town, corporate, you

(38:30):
know, there's just so manydifferent opportunities, find a
niche.

Especially in this world we're in this COVID
world, you know, what we'reseeing when you start looking at
data is, you know, especiallythe younger generations want to
live in this urban lifestyle,right? They were flocking to
downtown's and they wereflocking, they like you know, be
able to walk to restaurants andwalk to, you know, to working
out and shopping. But what we'reseeing which is really

(38:55):
interesting is now people aremoving out of that, right? And
they're it's, you know, it'skind of called the Great
Reshuffle. And what they wantis, they still want that ease
ability, that walkability score,you know, you can find that on
some sites and whatnot, but theydon't necessarily want it
downtown. So, there's like a top10 cities list I think of that
are called city-ish. And whatyou're seeing is people are

(39:17):
flocking to that because it'skind of a little bit more maybe
in the burbs not too muchfurther, but they've got these
maybe cool little communityareas, you know, with maybe a
community center and someshopping and some niche like
coffee shops and people lovethat but they're not in this big
downtown, robust, you know,hustle and bustle type of
lifestyle. And so, I thinkyou're you're dead on with the

(39:37):
lifestyle thing, and I thinkwe're gonna see it shift
continually over this year andinto 2021 as well.

Anecdotally, we've had a guest on, I was we were
talking about Silicon Valley andhow he was noticing some people
coming into San Diego becausethe median price is about half
and, and then in Palm Springsand Riverside County. Just a
couple hours away. Same thing.
Palm Springs getting an influx,and they're both near airports
to where if people had to get upto Silicon Valley, it's

(40:04):
possible. But you know, theirdollar just goes a lot farther
in Southern California and someof these great markets like the
city-ish. I mean, those areproper cities with real
downtown's and a quality of lifethat they like, a little bit
more space. So, interesting.
Look at all the, I didn't eventhink about all those kinds of

(40:25):
data points that you get accessto, you can see it on the fly.

Absolutely, absolutely.

You don't have to bug to get access to some of
that data. That's cool.

You know, and actually, it's really good.
Zillow actually puts out quite abit of their research on that.
So, I will dig up those links,and I'll forward that over to
you.

That's true, they do put out quite a bit of good
stuff. Um, any other advice for,you know, technology adoption,
it is a question I wanted to askyou. Do you have any top tips
for maybe adoptions and stickingwith something and really
building it as part of a cultureto become data driven?

Yeah, that is a great note, I had mentioned
earlier in that we had thecompany in Georgia who measured
you know, their savings in theamount of paper they saved. But
there's one that is veryinteresting on how adoption has
gone. And they have I mean,their engagement rates are 70,
80 90%, and up with ourparticular dotloop system, which

(41:23):
is amazing. And the way thatthey did it is they don't just,
they didn't just buy a system,train people and say use it,
what they did is they reallywove it into the DNA of the
company. So, for example, whensomebody onboards into, they
hire a new agent into thecompany, they actually run all
of their onboarding paperworkand education through dotloop,

(41:44):
because it's just a form, youknow, it's just paperwork that
needs to be filled out, likeanything else. And what that
does is it just gets some kindof introduced to the system,
right? Because one of thehardest things about a
transaction management system isyou don't want somebody in the
middle of a deal trying to learna new transaction management
system. That is chaos, it is,it's scary, and they don't want
it, they want nothing to do withit, they'll quit, you know, into

(42:05):
two seconds. But if you canstart to introduce it to them
when it's not, you know,emotions aren't high and
activity isn't, you know, aflurry of activity going on,
like something like onboardinginto your company. That is
pretty brilliant type of way tostart to gain adoption. So, I
think that's really what it is,is you it's not going to be a

(42:25):
one and done type of thing. Youdon't just train them once. And
then they're experts. And it'sgreat, right, because it all
comes down to what we've beentalking about is change
management. And changemanagement is just hard for a
human being. Regardless, there'slots of people out there that
say they love change and powerto them. But I don't think
they're the norm. And when youhave to ask somebody to start
doing something a new way, it'sgoing to take a little bit of

(42:47):
time. And so, kind of back towhat I said there is really
making sure that you have ahuman element coupled with the
technology as well. And so, whatwe how we represent that in
dotloop, is we have an entirecustomer success team, that when
you onboard with dotloop, abrokerage comes in buys us, for
the, for their agents, weonboard their admins, we go

(43:09):
through training, we model theirworkflows, and so, that they
feel comfortable, because thenif you can get some champions
internal, your agents are goingto adopt it a lot faster too and
when you don't just have itbeing shoved down their throat,
they've got some internal folkswho understand it, who can see
the benefits, make it easy forthem, and then also be an
additional resource to them moreso than just us training the

(43:30):
agents. But it takes some timeand you have to have that human
element, they have to be able toreach out to a person at any
given time, support is huge,right? We put hang a lot of
weight on our CSAT scores, andwithin support and success and
making sure you know they'rewell over 95% because especially
in the nature of the industry,being a belly to belly type of

(43:50):
industry. Agents love people,and they want to talk to a
person they want to you know,have questions and in
conversation. So, rolling outtechnology is tricky. It can be
very, very tricky. You have togo in with eyes wide open that
it might it's not going to be aone and done thing and you've
got to add a human element toit.

Yeah, and sometimes it's just making it a
goal to scare yourself into trysomething new. So, I'm I
consider myself a technologyforward guy and, PropertyRadar
as we go national. We integratewith Zapier, so we, Zapier, so
we can over 2000 systems, CRMand different partners. So, I,
I'm going to make it a goal topush myself in the technology

(44:32):
front a little bit in 2021. Anywe've covered a ton, is there
any other trends in 2021 that weshould have an eye out for?

You know, I think it's gonna be interesting just
to see the mere number oftransactions that continue in
2021 you know, at this COVID hitthis world hard, but the real
estate industry is doing quitefabulous. And I think that's
great. I think it's good thatpeople are I mean kind of what
you just said they have to kindof just jump in and try it
right, they might have beenscared to move, they might have

(45:03):
not liked it. But I think what'sgoing to be cool is that we're
going to see more transactions,more deals, and the process and
the transaction itself isgetting easier every day. And I
think that we're going tocontinue to see that through
2021 and beyond.

Now, with all this keyless entry, and with you at
home, not having to drive towork you have time to play with
technology, there's no excuse.

Yeah, we've seen over that, you know, over the
last several months, like our 3Dtours, on search, and virtual
home showings have gone up 60plus percent, like sellers are
adding some virtual element toeverything in their listings,
you know, buyers are coming inlooking, watching all of this
virtual stuff. And so, it's justkind of a new way of doing
things. And I think people willget more comfortable with it.

(45:44):
And in the end, it will probablysave them time, they'll go look
at two homes instead of 20homes, which is, you know,
always a good thing foreverybody. So, I think it's
going to be cool to watch. It'snot going to happen overnight,
but it's going to continue toevolve, which is going to be
cool.

I was looking at a chart the other day where during
the downturn, like in the 2012,I think it was, where the
average number of homes ahomeowner was looking at before
they actually got to buy was itwas ridiculous. And like now
because of COVID agents arereally being able to benefit the
looky loos are out like, are youqualified? Are you ready to go?

(46:20):
I mean, that's a huge benefit.

And you have to right, because it's still a
seller's market out there,right? And these homes are going
quickly. Our stats are showingthey're going even like three,
you know, three weeks fasterthan they were this time last
year. So, it's you know, it'sstill, still that world. And if
you don't utilize some of thetechnology that's being pushed
out there, you know, from abuyer and a seller perspective,

(46:43):
you really need to jump on boardto make sure.

Yeah, we've been talking a lot of about off
market real estate and, and realestate agents really working on
off market, marketing to get todeals before they ever end up
online because of this, like,'Hey, you want to, you want to
move in six months? We betterplug you into some data, let's
start doing research. Whatexactly do you want?' And really
being able to get reallysophisticated instead of the

(47:07):
spray and pray approach? So, so,many cool ways to use data.
Final question ancillaryservices. What are some of the
other OpenDoors IPO in there?
They mentioned insurance. Inever thought about that. What
other services could beincorporated that maybe I'm not
thinking about?

You know?
Absolutely. Insurance is a bigone. And I think that's one
that's really been overlooked. Ithink a lot of folks are going
to start to dip into that area.
Another one is like homewarranty. I think that's going
to be a huge one, too, as youknow, as people start to look at
their homes, do they want tomove? Do they not? You still
have a great big population thatis just into the, you know,
remodel and staying wherethey're at and making sure that

(47:48):
they love what they have. So, Ithink that will be another big
areas. Well, you know, ancillaryservices is big right. As we've
mentioned earlier, you know,brokerages and you've been in
that world margins are tiny. Andif they don't have some type of
ancillary service model andstrategy, you know, they're
probably not going to be assuccessful as they would prefer.
So, I think you're going tocontinue to see that like you

(48:10):
said, insurance, Home Warranty,are I think are the big ones,
mortgage and title, of course,always. And so those would be I
say, the big four coming. Theother one that I think could be
kind of interesting, too. I'mnot sure if anybody's really
ever tackled or successfullytackled this. This one is, we
talked about the process of homebuying and selling, make it

(48:30):
easier, make the search easier,make virtual 3D tours, virtual
showings, etc. Make thetransaction process easier
everything but the one thingthat I think if somebody would
become a billionaire overnight,if you can make the actual
moving part better. That's whatnobody has tackled yet. Nobody
likes boxing up their stuff.
Nobody. There's not one personthat likes moving, we have a

(48:52):
kind of a funny thing within ourhousehold. My husband, he's
like, if anyone asks you that wedon't know very well what you're
doing on a Saturday, always sayyou're busy because they're
gonna ask you to help them tomove, and nobody wants to help
anybody move. It's not fun. So

No amount of pizza is gonna convince you.

Not enough pizza and beer in the world is going
to help me come over and helpyou move. So, that's where I
think it'd be super cool ifsomebody could tackle that world
is let's just make the wholeactual physical moving process
easier.

I've been watching Wayfair and Home Depot, Home
Depot specifically has theirwhole tech, Virtual Reality,
Augmented Reality research thatthey were doing some really
interesting things like startingin 2017 I've really been
following them. And as furnituremanufacturers figure out, you
know, virtual reality and canyou merge in real time, real

(49:46):
furniture into a new home thatyou're looking for? Like, I
think we're eventually gonna getthere. Like, I've got a
catalogue of all my furnitureand my virtual reality glasses
and I'm doing the walkthroughand it's placing things where
they need to go.

Absolutely, yeah, let the whole Oculus thing is
starting to, you know, gain someattraction. And if people could
visualize that, and or could youimagine if you could visualize
that, and then you can pull innew furniture, and you're like,
Yes, I like that, because nowyou see it in the home and you
could buy it right there on, onwhile you're virtually looking
at it, that will be amazing thatwill come at some point in time.

And having done a cross country move twice in my
life personally, and then justmoving a mother in-law from
Chicago, where she could havegotten rid of half her stuff,
and she could have saved a lotof money on the move. I agree.
That is a really, really, reallygood one. Um, I just as a tip
four for realtors, I know thatyou think about the property

(50:38):
management space, when it comesto ancillary services, they
think that it's only availableto these huge tech companies.
And one of the interviews I dida couple weeks ago was with a
SquareFoot. And they're acommercial brokerage. And one of
the things they came up with itis technology driven. But it's
subleasing space unused. So,they sell a property. And that's
one of the services they canprovide for their clients. So,

(51:01):
there's always, you know, that'ssuch an interesting way to keep
in front of a client, thatlifelong relationship I had
never heard of called belly tobelly before I like that term.

Yes, it is. Yeah, because it can expand in a lot
of different forms, right, youknow, investors are all over the
place, whether it's commercial,or if it's even, you know,
residential property, there's somany new ways to buy investment
type of properties. There's evenone a new business, I have a
friend that actually used to runand own Dotloop, Austin Allison,

(51:33):
he started a whole new companycalled Pacaso. And it's a new
way to buy like your secondhome, right. And so, it's not
this timeshare type of thinganymore, where people kind of
get stuck in there and or theyget stuck in a second home that
they never really going to veryoften, it becomes like almost
like a share of you know, like astock that you can use and you

(51:55):
can purchase. And then whenyou're done, you just say I want
to sell that. And it's not thatyou have to go find a buyer or
anything because there's aholding company. And I think
it's just interesting watchingthese models of just there's
whole new different ways ofthings out there, whether you
know, it's property managementand investment there to second
homes to different type ofbuying and selling within in our

(52:15):
markets. It's going to expand.

Yeah, and sensors.
And it's just, it's amazing howquickly, it's all moving.

Very much so.

Interesting. Well, I really appreciate your time.
Thank you for coming on. It'sbeen a few years since we've got
to chat and I Survived RealRstate. So this is really fun.

This was extremely fun. Thanks for having
me.

Thank you for listening to the Data Driven
Real Estate Podcast, you canfind show notes and links to
some of the resources mentionedin the show at
datadrivenrealestate.com. Clickthat join the community, and
you'll be forwarded to thePropertyRadar community where
you can ask questions about thecurrent show and even see
upcoming guests and askquestions there. We'd love to
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(52:56):
Please don't forget to like,favorite, subscribe and share on
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