January 14, 2025 • 57 mins
Vice President of Product at Spiro, Shannon Landers, joins Todd & Craig to discuss our 1st Quarter 2025 Forecast of what the Real Estate Market will look like (primarily in the U.S.). Todd shares the latest updates for the Spiro Software platform, and we get rolling with a new year. Thank you for joining us for the Spiro Podcast!
Chapter Timestamps:
0:00 Episode Open
03:10 Spiro Updates
06:00 First Quarter Forecast Introduction
07:07 Shannon Landers Introduction
09:21 Why are Metrics Important?
54:37 Episode wrap-up
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Coming up on this episodeof The Spiro podcast.
(00:04):
And so to really understandwhere you can take your business,
especially in real estate media,when you're attached to a real estate
market, you got to understand that market
because you don't even knowwhat your opportunities are
or could be if you don't understandwhat's happening in the world around you.
(00:24):
With real estate
Welcome to the Spiro podcast.
Managing your real estate photographyand videography business
with your hosts, Todd Kivimaki
and Craig Magrum
Hi, and welcome to the Spiro podcast,
Managing your real estate photographyand videography Business.
(00:45):
Spiro is a business platform,a software platform
designed to help you manageand grow your real estate media business.
Welcome to a New Year.
I'm Craig Magrum, your host.
If this is your first time
watching or listening,hey, we welcome you to the podcast
and I just hope you get a lot of valueout of this.
The whole idea behind the Spiro podcastis to help you build a strong business.
(01:06):
So we're going to be talking abouta lot of business topics on this podcast
each and every week.
Our our founder, our owner and co-host
of the podcast,Todd Kivimaki. Welcome to 2025, Todd
Hey, Craig. It’s great to be here.
it is fabolous to be back with you all
we took a little hiatus, Craig, didn’t we
Yeah, we did.
(01:26):
We did.
We have to practice what we preach.
We talk about slowing down, takingtime, breathing, right?
So we did some of that too,took some time with our families,
enjoyed the holidays,and now we're back at it.
Yeah, it's it's exciting for me.
Craig, The two weeks between Christmasand New Year, they
(01:46):
I took a lot of that offand I did it somewhat impromptu.
And I think I've learnedI knew I was going to be off
the Christmas week, but I thought, Well,I'm going to check my email
and I should have
not set those expectations myself becauseI think it was more difficult to work.
So and then the week afterI just concluded,
I was like, Well,there's I'm going to take it off.
(02:07):
And I didn't plan very well.
So just being transparent,I, I tried to be on
Kinda didn't communicate to the team.
I boxed the podcast up.
That's why we didn't have one, becausethe team was like, Hey, Todd's off today.
The Wow team.
And Craig's like, Oh shoot,we have a guest today, so sorry.
Tyler.
So I, I learned to be a more effectivecommunicator
(02:27):
before you go into a whole for a year,just tell people what you want to do.
That was a very silly mistake.
So but I learned from it. And
it's a
badge of failure that I'll wearand not do it next year.
I'll take ownership in that as well.
That I should have been a little bit moreproactive in asking questions as well.
(02:48):
So if you're unclear on something, it'sokay to ask questions
and you probably should just to don'tassume anything.
So lessons that we're learningright off the bat here in 2025.
Craig, you know, I think we should go backand listen to our critical communication series
right
oh, great
(03:08):
Well, Craig,
give me give me a minute on the clock hereand I'll give you some Spiro updates.
Here we go.
We need a we need a clock or a stopwatch.
Sound effect.
We have new toys you might be hearinghere in the podcast, guys.
All right, So for updates for Spiro,
we have pushed the video hostingwith Dropbox. New feature.
(03:30):
So this is exciting.I know many of you are using it.
Basically what it allows you to dois that it allows you
to get rid of your Vimeo subscription.
we use Dropbox to host
and to stream the video filesand we make it very easy
for you or your editorsto place a video file in Dropbox.
(03:51):
It comes right into the property.
Website Editor Also,if you use Dropbox for
video hosting,you now have an upload button
right in the property Website editorwhich many of you have asked for.
You can click upload
and that goes to a specific folderin your Dropbox that we manage.
So streamlining, getting rid ofsubscriptions, we're excited about that
(04:15):
and we know many of you are using itand having a lot of success with it.
Looking forward to the weeksand the future.
We are currently workingon a new update that we're
all between William andI, we're calling the collections ability.
This is basically the abilityto add a collection of media
to a listing pageor to an agent or to a company
(04:40):
and this has to do with stock footage,
or this could be additional photosthat you've taken of a property.
And the agent bought 25 photos,but you have ten more good ones
and you're going to try to upsell themwith those ten.
So they're going to bein a locked collection that you can set
a price per photoor a price for the entire collection.
(05:02):
So there's going to be some great wayshere.
The goal with this, y'all,is that we put in features
that allow you guys to make moneybasically while you sleep.
So go take stock footage.
It's a great thing to publicize.
It's a thing that our client need agentsneed that
(05:22):
put it into collections,make it available to the agents.
They can look at it and they can buy it.
And then you're making money.
They're checking out right there.
They're selecting what they want.
Cool thing is, you wake up,you see that you had an order and boom,
you just made moneyand you didn't have to do anything.
so I'm excited about this one, Craig
(05:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. All right.
That's that's all the updates forfor this week, correct?
That's all I'm sharing for this week.
I like how you tease that,
folks.
That's called a teaser.
It's coming back for more.
All right.
Well, it's it's a new year.
(06:03):
It's a new first quarter here.
And we're talking about the business ofreal estate photography and videography.
And one of the things, Todd,
that I run into a lot in talkingwith my clients up here in my market
is they're always askingyou know, how's business for you guys?
You know,how is your shoots and things like that?
And we get talking about the market,you know, what's the market doing?
(06:27):
How are how are the number of listingslooking?
You know, what's the activity?
And we talk a lot of businessand that's a good thing for you
if you're only talkingabout photography with your clients.
I would
argue that they're probably wondering,are they really interested in my business?
Because our whole goal is to help themincrease the number of their listings.
So we need to get a good pulseand what's going on in the market.
(06:49):
And Todd, we've never reallykind of discussed how to determine that
or how to engage people or what to expect,how, you know, how do we as
as business owners in the real estatemedia market
learn some specificson actual market activities?
So we have a guest this weekthat's going to help
help us talk about thatand kind of what to expect
(07:10):
maybe in generalhere in the first quarter of 2025.
I'll let you introduce her.
Yes. So a guest to the podcastthat's been on before
and you're going to see her a lotmore many of you know her.
She hashelped me and grown and scaled Wow.
And now Spiro with me.
And the thing about this guest
(07:30):
is that she just has so much knowledgeof the real estate space.
So yesterday she led a webinar that we didabout broker deals
and the amount of informationthat was in this,
just about the different typesof brokerages, traditional
transactional capping.
it was it's crazy.
And all of this comes together
(07:52):
to make your head spin a little bit,but then that you really understand
your business a little bit betterand you understand your client's business
a little bit better.
And it boils down to a lot of things,but projections, what is my business
going to do?
So I can be ready for it?
What are the agents business going to do?
What are the agents businesses doing?
So I know what my features and benefitsor my sales pitches to them.
(08:16):
So a lot of this soak it all in todayand we're going to have this individual
on the podcast much more.
We're going to continueto put out more educational pieces
because this educationwas instrumental in us growing Wow.
And understanding the entire sphere
of the real estate industry,which is incredibly broad.
(08:37):
So without further ado, Shannon Landers,
she is our VP of product at Spiro, Shannon.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thanks guys. Excited to be back.
Always good to be with both of you.
we're excited to have you be morea regular part of this, Shannon
Yeah, I am too.
I had actually had my husbandlisten to the first one.
(08:59):
He was like, You did so good. so that made me feel good
And so, yeah, so I'm ready.
Let's have a great year and just,
you know, what I really love to do is justI love to see others grow and do well.
So if we can helpeven just one person do that,
then this is all worthwhile.
Very cool.
Well, okay, for first quarter, Todd.
Todd, you want to kick it off here?
(09:21):
Well, I was going to askjust before we get to first quarter,
Shannon,why are the why are metrics important?
Why do you like them so much?Why do we look at them?
This is math.
And a lot of us are creativeand we're like, oh, math,
should we even bother?
Yeah, you know, it's funny you say that.
Yes, we are creative, right?
But we're running businessesand unfortunately, math is in business.
(09:45):
You know, I think we if we all think
back to seventh grade when we were well,we were probably all learning algebra.
Now they're learning like trigonometryin seventh grade.
But whatever,
we you know, we were like,why are we doing this algebra stuff?
And now I look at life and I'm like, Gosh,everything is kind of like an algebra
equation, right?
So X plus Y equals.
(10:08):
And so to really understandwhere you can take your business,
especially in real estate media,when you're attached to a real estate
market, you got to understand that market
because you don't even knowwhat your opportunities are
or could be if you don't understandwhat's happening in the world around you.
(10:28):
With real estate, you know, it isyour lifeblood, is a real estate media
company or photographer is listinglistings is what brings you money.
So understanding what that opportunity is,because I know that there's
nothing worse than having a goalthat's just actually unattainable
(10:49):
like that does no one any good, right?
We talk about smartgoals, things like that.
Like you're you should have an obtainablegoal and then 100% have a stretch goal.
I'm all for it. Right?
But you have to understand these metrics.
The market again,
you don't need to be ableto go explain them to somebody else
or anything like that.
(11:10):
But you do need to know how to look atwhat the opportunity is.
Yeah, for sure.
I think I think one thingthat a lot of us are doing or have done,
we haven't done atWow we're thinking about 2025
and we're trying to project or think
or hope for what the year is going to be.
(11:33):
So maybe you're doing 3k a month right nowand you want to get to 6k
or maybe your 20K,and you want to build a team
and get the 50K a monthor whatever your numbers may be.
You're probably
looking at what last year was,where did you end up?
If you don't know those numbers,just go in to Spiro, click metrics
(11:54):
and it will show you all those numbersthat will show you monthly.
It will show you your yearly figures.
So now we need to look at thoseand we need to understand what could be.
So a lot of this has to do withwhat do you want to do?
Remember, a business is
an profitable enterprise.
(12:17):
Ideally works without you,but you have to work in it
until you get to that phase.
But the businessyou started for your personal goals
and that's something that we talkedabout this about a year ago that is always
is somewhat at timestough for me to think about, like, oh,
my business is going to dowhat I personally want to do,
(12:37):
but that
is why you started your business,because you didn't want to work for a boss
you hated or you wanted to follow a careerthat you had passion about.
You wanted to help people,whatever your why
is, that's why you started your business.
So in order to obtain that and work
towards that life goal,
(12:59):
we need to look at 2025and what is 2025 going to do?
And you need to compare it to 2024
and what the market is going to do,because much like Shannon
said, listings are our potentialfor the most part.
If there's a sign in the yard,
I hope the agent calls meso I can take the photos and video.
(13:20):
That is what we're hoping forand that is all dependent
on what the real estate market does.
And the real estate market is the numberone driver to the entire economy.
It's the number one thingthat drives the economy.
It's amazing
how many people don't think about thatand or understand that the housing
I mean, if you want to remember,just go back to 2008
(13:40):
when the housing market crashedand everything else did with it.
So the American dream is truly
at the heart and soul of everythingwe do in our economy.
And I think that'swhy I'm so passionate about it, too.
Like becoming in real estatewhen you actually realize when you help
people purchase or sell
(14:02):
their largest investment of their liferight.
How powerful is that?
Like, I really do think, you know,yes, there's crappy agents.
Okay, we'll just say it.There are crappy agents.
We know this, We deal with themon the other side of our transactions.
We get it.
But there is a world of amazing agents
who work super hard for their clientsand hence why.
(14:25):
Maybe they're a little crankywith you, right?
Because they're dealingwith their clients.
And I've always said, you know,why do we call them consumers?
Because they
consume the life out of us.
And that is just the trickle down effect.
But being a realtor
(14:46):
and let me say that really quick toall of you out there, this was something
I was corrected on back in 2013when I started working at a brokerage.
And in at the momentI was irritated that I got corrected.
But looking back it was the best day.
It is realtor.
It is not realtor
it is realtor
(15:08):
So it makes sure
when you're doing presentations,when you're up in front of people,
you use realtor.
Because I promise if you say realtor,
there's going to be 100 peoplein the crowd that make fun of you.
Just a little nugget there. Okay? Yeah,
that's a good one.
That's a good one.
Yeah.
It's very, very muchthanks to a manager at my first brokerage
(15:30):
for setting me straight on that years ago.
All the little things we pick upand it just makes us sound more relevant.
Like we understand.
Like we understand our clients.
Yeah.
And that's what this is about, right?
And not only like,and we'll get to this stuff, but like,
this is an opportunity for youas a photographer
to maybe have coffee with a broker,an owner, and say, Hey,
(15:52):
explains to mewhat's going on in the market right now.
I'm hearing this.
I'm hearing rumors like, tell me.
And they're going to find that
just because you're interestedand understanding their business,
that is going to createmore likability and trust.
Exactly.
for sure.
For sure.
So with knowing, Shannon, thatthe real estate industry is the number one
(16:15):
driver of the economy, and we're tryingto understand as business owners,
as real estate media, business owners,what should we think about for 2025?
Maybe this is the yearwe can make the same amount
we did with the job we quit.
Maybe this is the yearwe can quit our job.
Or maybe this is the yearwe hire a team member.
(16:37):
What can we expect?
What what does 25 look like
in the real estateindustry compared to 24?
Yeah, this is so exciting to talk about.
- So and I'm going to take a little bit of a history road to- please do.
Yeah.
So at the high of 2022,
(17:00):
you know, as we thought,especially with COVID in 2020
and we thought the market, you know, oh,where we're headed down, here we go,
and then we kind of bounce back upbecause now people are working remote
and they can work anywhere.And so the people are moving.
So we ended up,you know, at the height of
6.6 million houses sold,I think was the number in 2022.
(17:23):
Roughly so highest amount of houseswe've ever sold in 70 years.
We have records, right?
And then here comes the middle of 2022or I'm sorry, that was the end of 21.
And here comes the middle of 2022.
And all of a sudden we just we see itwe feel it in the industry.
Like we just see it start going downand down and down.
(17:44):
And the reason being the main reason,I mean, is what went
up, up, up interest rates, right?
As we're trying to correct inflationthat, you know, the biggest lever
they like to use to correctinflation is interest rates.
So and those just kept going up, up, up.
Now you couple that that we've had a ten
previously a ten yearlow of interest rates.
(18:07):
Right.
You know 51% of people out therewith mortgages
have a 4% interest rate are lower right.
It’s crazy.
Yeah.
And I'm just going to tell you guys,all right now, and this doesn't
this didn't come out of my mouth.
This came out of Gary Keller'smouth on stage.
We will probably never see4% interest rates again.
So just get over it now.
(18:28):
Deal with it, swallowthat pill and move on.
Okay.
So we have moved onand what we've got down to in 2023,
we got down to 3.8 million houses sold.
So almost half right.
Half.
So you guys might have noticedyou're seeing a lot of agents
(18:50):
over the last couple of years that leftthe market, you know, are newbies
that didn't get going. well,because we had a million and a half
real estate agents in the marketgot cut in half.
So that is really honestly a norm,a very normal cycle of real estate agents.
And you got to know the market cyclestypically every 7 to 10 years.
(19:11):
That is a very normal cycle of the market.
So what goes up must come downand what goes down must go up.
That is the way of the world.
So now we end 2024and we're probably going
to be roughly about 4.2million houses sold.
So we've seen we've we've gone downand we see now we're going up.
(19:33):
Okay.
So now the prediction for 2025and by the way, all this stuff is online,
but you guys can go to the NationalsAssociation of Realtors
website and you can doall this reaches research yourself.
Now, I am very happyevery quarter to deliver this to you,
but youcan all of this is available to you.
You can also go to your state
(19:55):
board of Realtors.
So like ours is Ohio realtors dot org.
So whatever state you'rein, check out your local information
and then you can even go to yourlocal board and get housing statistics.
So all of this is online,but we're predicting about four
and a half million houses sold in 2025.
So then what do we see?
(20:16):
We see we're going from 3.8 to 4.2 to 4.5.
Right?
So we're we are on our way back up,which is a wonderful thing.
Now, that is a national numberof existing home
sales that we target should hit.
Is that four and a half number?
And honestly, if we took backand went back to all the historical
(20:38):
information, fourand a half is about normal.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
So, so the market,you know, is normalizing.
And I promise what it's not going to dois bust.
Guys, the market's not busting.
There's no housing bubble.
Yes, prices have increased,but inventory is still not high.
(20:59):
So we can break into some of that stuff.
But that's what we'll see for 2025,at least from The Economist.
So these are very smart
people who get paid a lot more moneythan I did to create these numbers.
So, you know,they're the smarter people in the room.
That's what they're projecting.
They're also predictinganother rise in 2026.
So I think that's what's nice.
(21:21):
They're sayingwe're going to go up about 11% next year
and then another 8% in 2026.
So I think we're headedin a really good direction.
That's interesting.
So if you're out there listeningand just one thing to preface
this is that this is US,this is US data.
Canada trends with us.
(21:41):
What I will be able to provideand on the next call is
I will have data from the Canada market.
So I will be able to providein our next quarter call
the Canada and U.S.
market information.
Awesome, awesome.
So looking at this though,if you're an international listener
that don't turn us off right nowbecause there's going to be
(22:04):
we're goingto tell you how you use this data
and you'll just have to goget your own data.
Like Shannon, I realized somethingyesterday when we were doing the webinar.
Tebow was like, Hey, we can't do a broke.
A lot of our brokersdon't want to eat the cost of the media
because only 30% of listingsactually sell.
- I was like, I was like,- Really?
(22:25):
Yes. only 30%.
Yeah, I'mso excited to research that market.
Todd I'm going to dive in because I am.
I am like, That would be exhausting.
Wait, which market is that?
He said the French market.The French, French.
Oh, yeah.
So look at your market.
See what it's going to do,and then you can use these same tactics.
(22:48):
So let's just say no matter where you'reat, if it is a pretty much flat market,
you know, listings are about whatthey were last year.
They're going to be up a little bitfrom a general whole.
Now, I would suggestthat you go to your state or local agency
and see because there's factors
when you think
about it, there's factorsthat affect those numbers
(23:09):
and knowing that you don't want to zigwhen you should zag, like
if your market actually is going up a ton
because you have a lot of peopleand industry and people moving in,
you might need to preparea little bit differently or vice versa.
So in knowing that the industryis going to be about the same,
we're going to see a lot of what we didlast year as far as listings
(23:30):
and agents that you can call,your clients are going
to get about the same amountor maybe a few more.
The further also the further
we get away from everybodyexpecting a 4% interest rate or lower
like I'm might I'm at twoand a quarter on a 15 year loan it's like
and everybody who is in that like I'mnever moving like I'm literally building
(23:53):
I'll build a house on top of mindbefore I move
Or you'll have to wait till the equityreaches a point that it makes sense
and that soand that's what's kind of happening.
And so this we're kind ofon the interest rates
that let's just talk about that right.
Yeah yeah can you can you explain.
So the equity so equity interest rates,will they even out.
How would youwhat's that math problem look like, Shannon?
(24:14):
Yeah.
So essentially,you know first interest rates
were predicting thatthey will balance out around 6% this year.
We're not going to see too, probably toomany crazy drops just because we did.
We still are dealing with some inflation.
And even with the change in the politics,like him
(24:34):
or love him or hate him,we're still kind of in this flux.
So the Fed's not going to start droppinginterest rates crazy, but they do predict
that will end upkind of hovering around six,
which mind you, the 50 yearaverage of an interest rate is 7.2.
Okay.
So again,six is a very normal interest rate.
(24:55):
And if we end up landing there, then thatthat that's really where we want to be.
That is a very healthy interestrate. Okay.
So what happens is overtime, as you build equity
in your home, right, you've paid downyour mortgage, you're getting down there.
Of course, prices have increased year overyear.
We're still looking at some pricesincreasing, not as drastically high
(25:18):
as the years prior, but we're still goingto see probably a 2% increase
in prices over the next yearand then another 2% after that.
Okay.
Again, a home or a houseis always a great investment.
Okay. Always a great investment over time.
So when you build equityand so you have you know,
you bought your house for 300,000,you only owe 200,000.
(25:41):
And now that house is worth 350,
now you have $150,000 of equitythat you can take
and put in as a down paymenton that next purchase.
So that kind of makes those interest ratesnot seem as scary, right?
If you bought a house last yearand you need to sell it
or let's say you bought a house in 2020and the interest rate was 3%
(26:04):
and in 2021 or 2022 you had to sell itand interest rates had gotten to 7%.
That's going to hurt, right?That does that.
That's painful, you know, And so we'regetting to a 6% interest rate does.
And as equity builds and pricesstill kind of increase a bit,
that gives people the abilityand the freedom to move if they want to.
(26:26):
Right.
When the Ds happen.
Do you guys know what the Ds are?
Oh, boy.
I
No idea
I'm just careful about this one, Shannon, I
I'm just gonna
we're talkingdivorce.
Right.
We're talking death.
Unfortunately. Right.
(26:47):
We're talking about, you know,when families grow or they're downsizing
right now, those are the things that,you know, affect people purchasing.
You know,
unless you're Warren Buffet
you're not like out therebuying houses for the heck of it.
Right?
True.
Sure.
Now, I mean, definitely there's a lot ofother people that can go do that.
(27:08):
But typically what we see in real estate,especially due
to some of these math equations,when is the best time to buy a house?
When you need to
When's the best time to sell a house?
When you need to?
Okay.
Because over time,
you know, if you're sitting theretrying to wait and say,
oh, the market's going to crash and we'regoing to get, you know, a cheap house.
(27:30):
But guess what?
By then the interest rates have risenand you're not saving any money.
So and prices have increased.
So, you know,even if that just doesn't work, we see
over time that doesn't work.
my financial guysays the same thing about investing.
It's like,oh, Ryan, should I put it in Now?
(27:51):
He's like,just look at I'm not looking at it.
You're not trying to flip it in six months, Todd.
You want to retire in 30 years?
Yes. Put it in.
I'll handle itand make sure that you're taking care of.
But if you have money to invest,invest it now.
So that's that's the biggest thing.
One other quick point I want to make,Shannon, and correct me if I'm wrong, but
(28:14):
buying and or selling, mainly buying,because then they have to sell.
If you own a house,
all of those numbers come downto one thing and it's it's binary.
Can we do this or can we not do that?
It's monthly payment, right?
Shannon That'sthat's what it comes down to.
We need an extra bedroom.The house cost this.
Somebody do the math for me.
Can I afford that monthly payment?
(28:36):
Absolutely.
And I actually urge peopleto look at monthly payment.
Just, you know, don't look at it overall.
Here's the thing.
If you've bought a house,when you're signing the hundreds
of pieces of paper that you have to signat the closing table.
Right.
Have you looked at the Amortizationtable and have you looked
at what you would pay overallfor that home over tearing a number?
(28:58):
You're like, wait a minute, I boughta $300,000 house, but I pay 450, right?
Like it. And here's the thing.
You typically most people only live inthat house, especially their first house.
7 to 10 years.
Yeah, you're over time.
You're not paying that amount. Right?
Things are going to happen.
Life is going to happen.
You might refi, you move.
(29:21):
Right?
So, you know, over time,the interest rates, honestly,
you know,they they matter, but they don't matter.
And meaning, too, that there'smultiple ways to purchase home.
So there are still ways to get into a lowrate for five years and then refi again.
You know,you can always refi really say, you know,
(29:44):
date the rate, marry the house.
Right.
Marry the house
and you might date the rate andyou might do different things to do that.
So so I mean, this forecast to me,I'm excited about this.
You know we have seenin the last two months existing home sales
percent year over year, so month to month.
(30:06):
So saying December of 24to December of 23,
we have seen home sales increasefor the last, November and December.
And what that means is that we dofeel we're we're over the hump
and we're over this little humpthat we had in real estate.
(30:27):
And we're projecting that those steady
increases in home sales will happen,
which means more listings
on the market to get jobs for,
to meet new agents to work with them,provide them other services.
So that is really all good news.
(30:49):
On the 2025 front and summer of last year,
we still were unsurewhat would kind of forecast out in 2025.
There is about three different scenarios.
So I think wewe all feel pretty comfortable now that
home prices will tick up.
Now, what could happen a little bit?
(31:09):
What could happenis the this kind of bump back up
in real estate could bring more agentsand to so that is that something else
to think about in the realityof all these things that matter
is that we sell a reduction in agentswhich quite frankly we needed.
And then now as the market startsswinging back up,
(31:31):
you're going to see people, especiallythe companies that sell real estate
classes, kick up those ads
and try to bring more agentsback into the business.
Yeah, that that makes sense.
So good news for all of us.
Real estate for real estate,media company owners and businesses.
We have a little bit more potential,but we're heading in the right direction.
(31:55):
And so, Shannon,maybe let's take this from
how do you you talked abouta couple segments of realtors.
You know, we talkedyou just talked about new agents
potentially coming inand we have established agents
and then we have what we call our VIPclients.
So clients that do a lot with usand we can expect more new agents in
and it might take themsome time to get listings, am I not?
(32:17):
If they're really connectedin their community.
We saw that a couple of years ago wheneverybody got in in COVID and that really
that spread out the listings among agents.
How would you thinkabout those segments of agents right now?
If you're a media company business owner,what would you focus on, Shannon?
(32:41):
You know, I,I always think it's a good idea.
Make sure new agents know who you are.
Right?
So because if you can get them fromthe get go, that's just easier, right?
If you provide them
that great service, you're not fightingfor their business later.
Of course, you don't knowwhat that new agent will eventually be.
Well, they stick it out or they make it.
(33:02):
You know, this is a 90%fail rate in their first year as an agent.
Wow, wait
Explain that, Shannon.
what does that mean, 90% fail rate
So let's just I mean, let's just saya thousand new agents join in a month.
A year later, 900 of those will be gone.
- Wow.- So I have to tell a quick story.
(33:24):
Earlier this year, one of my clients,we were going into a house.
I was getting ready to shoot itand he stopped on the front porch.
He turned around and looked at me,said, Crack.
Have you ever thoughtabout being a realtor?
You justyou have a really good way with people.
I think you'd make a really good realtor.
And I just kind of grin.
I said, Rob, I thought about itfor about 2 minutes when I first
got into this business and I decided, No,nope, I'm going to stay a photographer.
(33:46):
I've seen what you have to deal with
with that 90% stat.
Yeah
Well, and often and I think this isso great because I think this correlates
with with being a real estatephotographer in a company.
And once you, you know,
real estate agents are entrepreneurs,they are independent contractors.
They are taking this on.
They are not getting paid hourlyfrom the brokerage.
(34:07):
They're not employees.
You have to self-sacrifice
all the thingswhich is all the things you have to do
as a real estate photographer, Right?
You're an independent contractor.
You're opening your own business.
You're doing all the same things.
So a lot is similarities in that.
And what we see isaccountability goes out the window
(34:30):
there.
it'svery hard to keep yourself accountable,
especially if you've been an employeefor years and years and years,
and then you have to switch gears and nowthere's nobody telling you to clock in
at a certain time or, you know,put this work in or hit these deadlines.
(34:51):
And so it's why coachingis actually so important in these spaces
because you just need somebody to helpkeep you accountable.
And it's typically very hardto do that by yourself.
So whether you getan accountability partner,
I think we talked about this in Vegas,like we see
(35:12):
groups of people kind of keep each otheraccountable to what they're doing.
And I think that's great.
You know,
this all it's
hard to growwithout somebody kind of pushing you.
Now, some of us have that drive insideand that's okay.
You know, I'm aI am an A-type personality.
If anybody hasn't figured that out by now,
(35:33):
very A like.
And I'm typically very self driven.
But I do feel as I get older, I see thatdrive decreasing just because I’m tired.
so it's very similar.
So I think, you know, agents,new agents are great.
Or to get in touch with
I one, it's been crazy amounts of timelike awareness with them.
(35:56):
Right.
Making sure they know who you areespecially have like a brokerage
has you in a lotlike they typically have new agent classes
teach one or attend one say Hey,can I come in and just meet, you know,
they'll do an orientation with new agent,be a part of that.
You know, maybe at that pointit might not be a listing that you get.
Maybe you maybe do headshotsand you can do headshots for them.
(36:18):
You know, speaking of that,
you know, just doing headshot,if you like headshots and you can do it
and there's a brokerageyou want to partner with,
maybe go and set up headshotsevery other month that you do for them
and charge a nominal fee, you know,So there's ways to kind of make sure
that you provide some valueto those people and then they know.
And like you right now,I would be focusing on teams.
(36:43):
So we've seen
teams explode in real estate, right.
And and a big reasonwhy is who wants to be a broker.
A broker bearsall the responsibility right
Yeah.
So you can be a team leader of a team
and operate a very large team.
(37:04):
And and kind of to your point,Todd, end up maybe
being out of the businessand watching your business flourish.
And that's very appetizingto a lot of agents.
You know,they do want to grow a big business
and then be kind ofon the outskirts of it.
So I would sayteams are a great resource one
because they're they focus on listings.
(37:25):
If you have a team,you have to get listings
because listings create babies, createmore listings.
They also create buyers.
So if you're carrying the inventory,buyers
see your inventoryand that typically brings buyer leads too.
So I think that is really I like
(37:46):
I like focusing from the top downand that kind of helps you do that
with the teams and it could helpyou get in with the brokerage easier too.
Can I jump in on that real quick?
It's interesting that you brought upthe teams issue because, Todd,
you and I have spoken a lot about, well,you as well Shannon, about broker deals.
And one of the creative waysof partnering with a brokerage
(38:08):
is suggesting to themthat they pay for their agents photos.
Right. As a recruiting tool.
We've we've talked about that.
Well,I just ran into that at the team level.
I just signed on a new team this week
and the team leader is doingthe same thing.
She's fronting a certain amount of moneyfor photos for the other agents
(38:29):
on her team
Yeah. Yeah.
And that's the first timeI've ran into that in my market.
So you can take that that idea
of the brokerage level of,you know, broker paying for photos.
And you can introduce that ideato teams to help team leaders
- attract more realtors to their team.- To their team, Absolutely.
Because they're trying to growand provide value to in Spiro.
(38:51):
what I love about Spiro, sorry,I am going to drop some Spiro stuff for you
because I am the VP of product for Spiro
and that drop a little bomb.
What I love is the account manageraspect in Spiro where teams
because typically a teamis going to have a director of marketing
and they can be the account managerfor all the agents and then the rest
agent.
(39:11):
You know, it's such a benefitto kind of showcase that.
So sorry, just dropping
a little thing that I love about teamsand you're going to see more teams.
We we see this in the industry teams.
Teams are kind of the future becauseagain, they don't want to be a broker.
They don't want to have ownership.
They can build a big teamand still be very successful
many brokeragesand not bear all the responsibility.
(39:34):
So we'll continue to see
the thiskind of formula out in the market.
You know, so interesting,it just hit me because I'm slow,
but this is no different than whatwe are doing at our own business, right?
We have startedand once you get your business going,
(39:56):
you're going to hit a point.
And trust me,
you're going to hit a point where like,I'm kind of done shooting houses.
Yes, you will.
You will.
But you're like,I really like to connect with agents
or I'm done shooting on two days a weekor one day a week, whatever it is.
But you get to the point
that there's going to be some other thingsthat you want to focus on
and you're going to hire photographersand you're going to say,
(40:17):
Hey, we've got this great thingwhere you can be
creative, will supply your equipmentand we'll give you jobs.
When you need jobs, you'll get paid.
You don't have to edit all this othersell points of why and why we try
get people to come inand be photographers at our company.
That's the exact same thingthat these top agents are doing.
They're getting a little tired.
(40:39):
Yes. Yes.
They don'twant they don't want any buyers.
They don't want they want no buyers.
They only out at nineshowing houses out on the weekends.
Right.
They want to go to those
listing appointments, get those listingsand let the team team handle it.
It is Todd.
It is extremely insanehow much we correlate.
(40:59):
Again, this business is businesssales is sales.
But when you're dealing with somethingthat typically is that kind of that
independent contractor statusand then you build a business,
it all is very similar.
And I think that's importantto really focus in
and let agents know, Hey,I'm doing what you're doing
right, Like let a team leader know, Hey,I'm doing what you're doing.
(41:23):
I'm building out a teamLike they get excited about that.
These guys are entrepreneurs.They're like you.
They love this stuff. They get excited.
So, you know, share in that knowledge,share in the heartaches and the
and the pain points, you know,agents are real
people at the end of the day and they’llreally appreciate just the realness
(41:44):
and the realness of saying,hey, this stuff can be hard.
You know?
but when you get it going rightman, is it is it beautiful?
And does it provide youthe things you need?
Yeah, that's.
And for all of you out there that aresaying, Hey, my agents only expect me,
your agents are doing the same thing,just be honest with them like Shannon said
and be open. Hey, I'm building a team.
(42:06):
I think that's so that's such a fabulousangle to take from it
to correlatethat to them so that they connect with you
and they go, Oh, yeah,I did the same thing.
Like, I don't want to show,I don't want any more buyers.
I don't want to show houses at 8 p.m.
on a Tuesday or a Saturday.
Oh my gosh, we weren't guys.
We were showing houses at midnightwhen we were in the crazy.
(42:26):
Like when we got down to in Dayton, Ohio,we get down to like 500
listings on the market
- in all of Dayton? - in all of Dayton.
And to put this in perspective,
when I got in in 2013,we had 6000 houses on the market.
You were down to 500 guys.
I thought agents were going to chew eachother's heads off, it was very unhealthy.
(42:49):
You'd have40 cars show up at an open house
or evenshowings and there was nowhere to park.
And it's unhealthy for the buyer.
It's even actually unhealthyfor the seller.
Imagine trying to go through 30 offersand that's what was happening.
So what what we're getting to,I think, is what I'm on a call like the
(43:12):
that summer of 69 or somethingthe season of love in real estate.
We're all going to love each other againand work together
because there are two sidesto every transaction.
You have a list side, you have a sellside, you've got to partner together.
Realtors, they're they're there to help
(43:33):
make home connectionswhere we're like, know
relationship connections,that that is what we do.
And and so I'm looking forward to,
I believe,what will be smooth out of the industry.
The other thing that is almost behind usis these lawsuits as well.
(43:55):
So these law suits are pretty muchall finalizing
like we're finalizingknowing what paperwork we have to do.
And again, a reminder to allthat are out there that maybe didn't
read the Real News on this,the lawsuits were not about commission.
The lawsuits were actuallyabout transparency around the commission.
(44:18):
So it had nothing to do with agentsoverpricing thing,
nothing of their commission.
There is no standard commission.
We typically see a 6% list fee,
but that is always negotiable, always.
It has been sincethe beginning of real estate.
(44:40):
Everything is always negotiable.
So what we're going to seewith this transparent fee of these buyer
commissions that are being paid,I think is a very healthy thing.
I think when consumers can understanda little bit more of how things operate,
I think that's actuallyalways a good thing for us.
So we're seeing in all this stuffkind of smooth out.
(45:01):
We know what we have to do now.
Things are behind us
and unemployment
is still low, that's a really good thingfor us too,
with unemployment still being low.
So it's good and there's some hot market.
So before we end,maybe we'll end with that.
I've got the hot market list of cityfor the U.S.
(45:22):
for 2025.
So we'll be able to see peoplenow would me Yeah, let's do it.
That's okay. All right.
So your top ten housing hotspots
for 2025,if you are in Boston, be excited.
So that's Boston, Cambridge, Newton,
(45:43):
Massachusetts, New Hampshire.
Those areas,they're they're seeing hot stuff.
And Todd,you're going to love this next one.
Oh, yes.
Charlotte,if you are in Charlotte, Concord.
Gastonia. Well, you know, I love Gastonia,
North Carolina and South Carolina.
Guys,you are looking for some hot markets.
(46:05):
In fact, if you're in the South,that makes up 45% of our sales last year.
So that's a reallyincredible number. Okay.
If you're
in Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Michigan,congratulations.
Grand Rapids.
All right.
Again, back to South Carolina,the Greenville Anderson area.
So I believe Greenville just right over.
(46:27):
Isn't that just right over the border?
I think I feel like of North Carolina.
If you're in Hartford, Connecticut,Middletown, Connecticut,
you're in good shape.
This next one does not shock me.
Indianapolis and Carmel Anderson,those areas
typically always hotbeds anyway,but you're doing good.
(46:49):
Of course, the Midwest is always kind ofinsulated from highs and lows.
Guys.
Remember that we don't seeas much fluctuation.
Kansas City, Missouri
and Kansas, congratulations.
Nashville, Tennessee.
Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler and Arizona.
(47:11):
And then, of course, a beautiful city.
If you haven't, then get there.
San Antonio and New Braunfels.
You guys are looking for a nice 2025and hot spots.
So again, a lot of this will fluctuatejust based of interest rates.
So for some reason something happens,
(47:31):
you know, pay attentionand remember that this stuff is so local.
I cannot say that enough.
We've got to get into your neighborhoodsand neighborhood, even
that you see trends.
So get with your VIP's,take one to coffee, say, Hey,
can I pick your brain and understandwhat's going to happen in our market,
what you're going to forecast,what you're seeing that they love
(47:54):
to talk about that stuff anyway,and that'll help make a good connection.
Todd and Shannon
let me pick your brain on one lastthing is we get ready to wrap up here.
So with thisthis first quarter 2025 forecast of up
a little bit of a bump in inventoryand things like that,
what between the two of you,can you give us, say, three action stops
(48:15):
that we as real estatemedia owners should take
for our business here in the first quarterto get ready for the rest of 2025?
What are the top three things basedon this information, they should act on?
I'll give one Shannon,
this is regardless of what the market is,you need to build as many relationships
with your clients as possiblebecause they see potential in the market.
(48:37):
So when I took that data in from Shannon,I thought,
what would our agents thinking right now?
- So they have confidence- yes, confidence is up
confidence is up,which means they'll spend money.
They also understand
that there's competition,which means they need to be different.
So I'm building those relationships.
I'm explaining what
(48:58):
our products and services do sothat I can begin to count on that agent.
And then they become a raving fanand I get referrals.
So relationships,
I know I gave a few more things in there,but we're we're doing that at all.
We're doing that at Wow.
Right nowwe are building relationships like crazy.
yeah, absolutely.
You know,I think if you have it. plan some goals
(49:20):
this year,you get that done by January 31st, right?
And so get some goals downand then go and research your market
and see what the listing forecastlooks like and set and say to yourself,
I want to capture 2% of the 3% of this,you know,
and know that those are good numbers.
Don't don't thinkespecially I think what Charlotte carries
(49:43):
80,000 listings a year so I can't rememberWow that's a huge number.
So if you were going to try to say
I want 10% of those,that it's probably unattainable.
I think 8000. I mean, that be awesome.
Todd's been in
Charlotte a long time and he doesn't evenhave that much market share.
So because it is so big.
Okay, so just think about that.
(50:04):
Hey, I know that my city carries20,000 listings a year.
I want to make sure I get 500 of those
because that is, you know,that's a doable number for you.
So definitely making sure that I would seta task to go understand my market.
And some of that can be goget in relationship with people
and understand my market to understandwhat my opportunity is and then how
(50:27):
I can go forward and make a planto reach out to the people.
Right. Because everything is a map.
You want 500 listingsand you divide that out, Say
the average agent carries seven listingsa year, right?
I'll say ten for easy math.
That's 50 agents and you get 50 agents.
And usually you'reprobably got to reach out to 100 agents.
(50:48):
Right.So everything is a math correlation.
Again, love it or hate it,that is how it is.
So go ahead and figure out thesemath equations so that you can go forward
and be able to hit your goalsrespectively.
Yeah, Shannon that sounds likeour next webinar with how to do.
We should take some numbersbecause the other thing
that come with comes with a math equationis when your numbers
(51:11):
number of jobs go over a certain amount,you need to hire
So we see that a part timephotographer does 400 a full time, does 7
to 800 in general,if your numbers are tipping over
some of those barriers you need to hire,how do you hire then?
What does that meanfrom an admin standpoint?
And that pushes everything up,which is great.
(51:31):
You just need to be prepared for itbecause I've tried it before
without doing it and I thought, I'mgoing to do it all myself,
or I just didn't realize at the time,quite honestly, and working 16 hours
a day becomes not fun very quickly,even if you are making money.
Yeah, you learn real quick that way.
That money is not the endall, be all when you do things like that.
(51:54):
So you know,and it just all comes down to you guys.
You got to have a planand you to have a purpose, right?
You know, I continue to read booksand I suggest everybody
at least try to read a book a month.
It can be overwhelming,but read a book a month.
And and the one I'm kind of so I saygive me three months to kind of read it.
Just because the holidays,
(52:16):
you know, is How To Live Your Best LifeNow, right?
Like how to how to be your future self nowand having hope and purpose
that that creates everything for you.
So, you know, without help,we we can't move forward.
And whether you're spiritual or religious,you know, both of those teach you
(52:39):
that you know, you have to have a Whyand you have to have a purpose.
So planning and doing all those thingsis going to help you reach that.
And remembering that, you know,
if you're not uncomfortable,you're probably not growing.
that's a hard one, but it's good.
It's tough.
Yeah, we said it on the webinar yesterday.
We were we were talking about it,you know, and we have is that we have a
(53:02):
bold stayed here at KW as you know get
get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
So sometimes being uncomfortablemeans you need just someone to talk to.
You need someone to reach out to.
Now we are happy to hear from you.
We love hearing from you.
In fact, it wasn't phrased very well.
So you can commentwherever you're watching this from.
(53:24):
If you're on YouTube,you can comment below.
It's great therebecause there's a community in there.
We also have the Spiro Superuser Group.
That's a private group.
Search for itand you'll gain access for that.
We have great discussions andthey're on Facebook and just on Facebook.
Yes. Thank you.
On the Facebook
Make sure that you put
(53:46):
just Google or put in the search barSpiro Superuser group
and then you'll see a request accessand we'll get you in there.
Todd And I'm are a little delayedsometimes I'll get you on that.
What we'll try to we will make a planto be better at that in 2025.
We'll get you in. Yes, yes.
And then finally, you can always emailhello@spiro.media.
(54:08):
You can say, Hey, Todd. Hey, Shannon. Hey, Craig.
And many of you are doing that.
The team in there that goes into our inboxwith the customer
support team is they'll read itif they can help you, right?
Then if it's a spiro or a question,
they can get you answers,but we will get to you.
Just give us a littlebe patient with us in that inbox.
You will hear back from us.
(54:28):
There might be some time that goes.
If it's urgent,we'll get it to the right person.
But if it's just a question
or a thought for the podcast,we always love to hear from you right.
And speaking of that,if you do have a question
for the podcast business relatedthat you'd like to see us cover,
we'd love to hear your ideasbecause we want to provide content
that's relevant to you and your business
and what's going to help youimprove your business.
(54:49):
So again, email us.
hello@spiro.media.
Yeah, and you know, I thinkanother great idea is I'd be happy.
I know a lot of great peoplein this industry
and we can even bring thema couple of them on as guests
and let them talk for sure.
They would be more than happy to do that.
I bet I could get our O.P.to probably hop on here
(55:10):
- and give us some great information too,- it'll be good to have her on.
Yeah. Yeah, it would be good.
And again,hearing from many people's perspectives,
it's always good tothen formulate what you want to do.
Absolutely.
- Awesome.- Shannon, thank you.
Thank you for all that data.
We love it. So helpful to know and
(55:32):
all of our brains are going to rest now.
Well, I'm getting preparedfor another snowstorm, so I have a foot of
snow on the ground and I'm getting readyto get five more inches.
So I'm not sure wherewe're going to start putting this stuff,
but my kids are out of school againand happy.
So there we are.
And again, my Buckeyes play tonight,so I know this.
(55:52):
Once this is recorded,that game will be over.
So I will be prayingby the time this podcast comes out.
We are playing in the nationalchampionship, so let's hope. Go Buckeyes
I know, if you don't like it, I'm sorry.
And thanks for inviting me on guys,any time I love this and again,
(56:14):
guys will be doing this at least oncea quarter, giving you a market update.
All right.
Well, guys, thank you for joining usfor this inaugural podcast for 2025.
So glad that you joined us again,if it's your first time joining us.
We're so glad to have you on here.
Make sure you hit the subscribe button
so you get notificationson the next podcast episode that launches.
We typically
(56:35):
try and launch these on Tuesdaysjust so that that you're aware of that.
And again, if you have a commentor a topic idea, please
leave us either a comment on the YouTubechannel or you can email us.
hello@spiro.media.
And if you've found this beneficialand you want to you've got some friends
in the industry, we invite you to share itlike it, you know, all that good stuff.
(56:55):
So thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
We just appreciate the opportunityto be able to be a part
of your business lifeand speak into your business. So.
All right.
That we're going to close things up.We will be back next week.
We've got another special guestthat will be joining us
and we're excited to hear from him.
So stay tuned. In the meantime,make sure you take some time.
It's here at the beginning of the year
to be thankfulfor the blessings in your life
(57:18):
and still take a breath, especiallybefore the spring market heats up.
Have a great week, guys.
Thank you for joining usfor the Spiro podcast,
managing your real estate photographyand videography business.
This is a production of Spiroand wow video tours.
You can find out more about Spirois real estate, media, business management
software at our Web site, Spiro.Media.
Coming up on this episodeof The Spiro podcast.
(00:04):
And so to really understandwhere you can take your business,
especially in real estate media,when you're attached to a real estate
market, you got to understand that market
because you don't even knowwhat your opportunities are
or could be if you don't understandwhat's happening in the world around you.
(00:24):
With real estate
Welcome to the Spiro podcast.
Managing your real estate photographyand videography business
with your hosts, Todd Kivimaki
and Craig Magrum
Hi, and welcome to the Spiro podcast,
Managing your real estate photographyand videography Business.
(00:45):
Spiro is a business platform,a software platform
designed to help you manageand grow your real estate media business.
Welcome to a New Year.
I'm Craig Magrum, your host.
If this is your first time
watching or listening,hey, we welcome you to the podcast
and I just hope you get a lot of valueout of this.
The whole idea behind the Spiro podcastis to help you build a strong business.
(01:06):
So we're going to be talking abouta lot of business topics on this podcast
each and every week.
Our our founder, our owner and co-host
of the podcast,Todd Kivimaki. Welcome to 2025, Todd
Hey, Craig. It’s great to be here.
it is fabolous to be back with you all
we took a little hiatus, Craig, didn’t we
Yeah, we did.
(01:26):
We did.
We have to practice what we preach.
We talk about slowing down, takingtime, breathing, right?
So we did some of that too,took some time with our families,
enjoyed the holidays,and now we're back at it.
Yeah, it's it's exciting for me.
Craig, The two weeks between Christmasand New Year, they
(01:46):
I took a lot of that offand I did it somewhat impromptu.
And I think I've learnedI knew I was going to be off
the Christmas week, but I thought, Well,I'm going to check my email
and I should have
not set those expectations myself becauseI think it was more difficult to work.
So and then the week afterI just concluded,
I was like, Well,there's I'm going to take it off.
(02:07):
And I didn't plan very well.
So just being transparent,I, I tried to be on
Kinda didn't communicate to the team.
I boxed the podcast up.
That's why we didn't have one, becausethe team was like, Hey, Todd's off today.
The Wow team.
And Craig's like, Oh shoot,we have a guest today, so sorry.
Tyler.
So I, I learned to be a more effectivecommunicator
(02:27):
before you go into a whole for a year,just tell people what you want to do.
That was a very silly mistake.
So but I learned from it. And
it's a
badge of failure that I'll wearand not do it next year.
I'll take ownership in that as well.
That I should have been a little bit moreproactive in asking questions as well.
(02:48):
So if you're unclear on something, it'sokay to ask questions
and you probably should just to don'tassume anything.
So lessons that we're learningright off the bat here in 2025.
Craig, you know, I think we should go backand listen to our critical communication series
right
oh, great
(03:08):
Well, Craig,
give me give me a minute on the clock hereand I'll give you some Spiro updates.
Here we go.
We need a we need a clock or a stopwatch.
Sound effect.
We have new toys you might be hearinghere in the podcast, guys.
All right, So for updates for Spiro,
we have pushed the video hostingwith Dropbox. New feature.
(03:30):
So this is exciting.I know many of you are using it.
Basically what it allows you to dois that it allows you
to get rid of your Vimeo subscription.
we use Dropbox to host
and to stream the video filesand we make it very easy
for you or your editorsto place a video file in Dropbox.
(03:51):
It comes right into the property.
Website Editor Also,if you use Dropbox for
video hosting,you now have an upload button
right in the property Website editorwhich many of you have asked for.
You can click upload
and that goes to a specific folderin your Dropbox that we manage.
So streamlining, getting rid ofsubscriptions, we're excited about that
(04:15):
and we know many of you are using itand having a lot of success with it.
Looking forward to the weeksand the future.
We are currently workingon a new update that we're
all between William andI, we're calling the collections ability.
This is basically the abilityto add a collection of media
to a listing pageor to an agent or to a company
(04:40):
and this has to do with stock footage,
or this could be additional photosthat you've taken of a property.
And the agent bought 25 photos,but you have ten more good ones
and you're going to try to upsell themwith those ten.
So they're going to bein a locked collection that you can set
a price per photoor a price for the entire collection.
(05:02):
So there's going to be some great wayshere.
The goal with this, y'all,is that we put in features
that allow you guys to make moneybasically while you sleep.
So go take stock footage.
It's a great thing to publicize.
It's a thing that our client need agentsneed that
(05:22):
put it into collections,make it available to the agents.
They can look at it and they can buy it.
And then you're making money.
They're checking out right there.
They're selecting what they want.
Cool thing is, you wake up,you see that you had an order and boom,
you just made moneyand you didn't have to do anything.
so I'm excited about this one, Craig
(05:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. All right.
That's that's all the updates forfor this week, correct?
That's all I'm sharing for this week.
I like how you tease that,
folks.
That's called a teaser.
It's coming back for more.
All right.
Well, it's it's a new year.
(06:03):
It's a new first quarter here.
And we're talking about the business ofreal estate photography and videography.
And one of the things, Todd,
that I run into a lot in talkingwith my clients up here in my market
is they're always askingyou know, how's business for you guys?
You know,how is your shoots and things like that?
And we get talking about the market,you know, what's the market doing?
(06:27):
How are how are the number of listingslooking?
You know, what's the activity?
And we talk a lot of businessand that's a good thing for you
if you're only talkingabout photography with your clients.
I would
argue that they're probably wondering,are they really interested in my business?
Because our whole goal is to help themincrease the number of their listings.
So we need to get a good pulseand what's going on in the market.
(06:49):
And Todd, we've never reallykind of discussed how to determine that
or how to engage people or what to expect,how, you know, how do we as
as business owners in the real estatemedia market
learn some specificson actual market activities?
So we have a guest this weekthat's going to help
help us talk about thatand kind of what to expect
(07:10):
maybe in generalhere in the first quarter of 2025.
I'll let you introduce her.
Yes. So a guest to the podcastthat's been on before
and you're going to see her a lotmore many of you know her.
She hashelped me and grown and scaled Wow.
And now Spiro with me.
And the thing about this guest
(07:30):
is that she just has so much knowledgeof the real estate space.
So yesterday she led a webinar that we didabout broker deals
and the amount of informationthat was in this,
just about the different typesof brokerages, traditional
transactional capping.
it was it's crazy.
And all of this comes together
(07:52):
to make your head spin a little bit,but then that you really understand
your business a little bit betterand you understand your client's business
a little bit better.
And it boils down to a lot of things,but projections, what is my business
going to do?
So I can be ready for it?
What are the agents business going to do?
What are the agents businesses doing?
So I know what my features and benefitsor my sales pitches to them.
(08:16):
So a lot of this soak it all in todayand we're going to have this individual
on the podcast much more.
We're going to continueto put out more educational pieces
because this educationwas instrumental in us growing Wow.
And understanding the entire sphere
of the real estate industry,which is incredibly broad.
(08:37):
So without further ado, Shannon Landers,
she is our VP of product at Spiro, Shannon.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thanks guys. Excited to be back.
Always good to be with both of you.
we're excited to have you be morea regular part of this, Shannon
Yeah, I am too.
I had actually had my husbandlisten to the first one.
(08:59):
He was like, You did so good. so that made me feel good
And so, yeah, so I'm ready.
Let's have a great year and just,
you know, what I really love to do is justI love to see others grow and do well.
So if we can helpeven just one person do that,
then this is all worthwhile.
Very cool.
Well, okay, for first quarter, Todd.
Todd, you want to kick it off here?
(09:21):
Well, I was going to askjust before we get to first quarter,
Shannon,why are the why are metrics important?
Why do you like them so much?Why do we look at them?
This is math.
And a lot of us are creativeand we're like, oh, math,
should we even bother?
Yeah, you know, it's funny you say that.
Yes, we are creative, right?
But we're running businessesand unfortunately, math is in business.
(09:45):
You know, I think we if we all think
back to seventh grade when we were well,we were probably all learning algebra.
Now they're learning like trigonometryin seventh grade.
But whatever,
we you know, we were like,why are we doing this algebra stuff?
And now I look at life and I'm like, Gosh,everything is kind of like an algebra
equation, right?
So X plus Y equals.
(10:08):
And so to really understandwhere you can take your business,
especially in real estate media,when you're attached to a real estate
market, you got to understand that market
because you don't even knowwhat your opportunities are
or could be if you don't understandwhat's happening in the world around you.
(10:28):
With real estate, you know, it isyour lifeblood, is a real estate media
company or photographer is listinglistings is what brings you money.
So understanding what that opportunity is,because I know that there's
nothing worse than having a goalthat's just actually unattainable
(10:49):
like that does no one any good, right?
We talk about smartgoals, things like that.
Like you're you should have an obtainablegoal and then 100% have a stretch goal.
I'm all for it. Right?
But you have to understand these metrics.
The market again,
you don't need to be ableto go explain them to somebody else
or anything like that.
(11:10):
But you do need to know how to look atwhat the opportunity is.
Yeah, for sure.
I think I think one thingthat a lot of us are doing or have done,
we haven't done atWow we're thinking about 2025
and we're trying to project or think
or hope for what the year is going to be.
(11:33):
So maybe you're doing 3k a month right nowand you want to get to 6k
or maybe your 20K,and you want to build a team
and get the 50K a monthor whatever your numbers may be.
You're probably
looking at what last year was,where did you end up?
If you don't know those numbers,just go in to Spiro, click metrics
(11:54):
and it will show you all those numbersthat will show you monthly.
It will show you your yearly figures.
So now we need to look at thoseand we need to understand what could be.
So a lot of this has to do withwhat do you want to do?
Remember, a business is
an profitable enterprise.
(12:17):
Ideally works without you,but you have to work in it
until you get to that phase.
But the businessyou started for your personal goals
and that's something that we talkedabout this about a year ago that is always
is somewhat at timestough for me to think about, like, oh,
my business is going to dowhat I personally want to do,
(12:37):
but that
is why you started your business,because you didn't want to work for a boss
you hated or you wanted to follow a careerthat you had passion about.
You wanted to help people,whatever your why
is, that's why you started your business.
So in order to obtain that and work
towards that life goal,
(12:59):
we need to look at 2025and what is 2025 going to do?
And you need to compare it to 2024
and what the market is going to do,because much like Shannon
said, listings are our potentialfor the most part.
If there's a sign in the yard,
I hope the agent calls meso I can take the photos and video.
(13:20):
That is what we're hoping forand that is all dependent
on what the real estate market does.
And the real estate market is the numberone driver to the entire economy.
It's the number one thingthat drives the economy.
It's amazing
how many people don't think about thatand or understand that the housing
I mean, if you want to remember,just go back to 2008
(13:40):
when the housing market crashedand everything else did with it.
So the American dream is truly
at the heart and soul of everythingwe do in our economy.
And I think that'swhy I'm so passionate about it, too.
Like becoming in real estatewhen you actually realize when you help
people purchase or sell
(14:02):
their largest investment of their liferight.
How powerful is that?
Like, I really do think, you know,yes, there's crappy agents.
Okay, we'll just say it.There are crappy agents.
We know this, We deal with themon the other side of our transactions.
We get it.
But there is a world of amazing agents
who work super hard for their clientsand hence why.
(14:25):
Maybe they're a little crankywith you, right?
Because they're dealingwith their clients.
And I've always said, you know,why do we call them consumers?
Because they
consume the life out of us.
And that is just the trickle down effect.
But being a realtor
(14:46):
and let me say that really quick toall of you out there, this was something
I was corrected on back in 2013when I started working at a brokerage.
And in at the momentI was irritated that I got corrected.
But looking back it was the best day.
It is realtor.
It is not realtor
it is realtor
(15:08):
So it makes sure
when you're doing presentations,when you're up in front of people,
you use realtor.
Because I promise if you say realtor,
there's going to be 100 peoplein the crowd that make fun of you.
Just a little nugget there. Okay? Yeah,
that's a good one.
That's a good one.
Yeah.
It's very, very muchthanks to a manager at my first brokerage
(15:30):
for setting me straight on that years ago.
All the little things we pick upand it just makes us sound more relevant.
Like we understand.
Like we understand our clients.
Yeah.
And that's what this is about, right?
And not only like,and we'll get to this stuff, but like,
this is an opportunity for youas a photographer
to maybe have coffee with a broker,an owner, and say, Hey,
(15:52):
explains to mewhat's going on in the market right now.
I'm hearing this.
I'm hearing rumors like, tell me.
And they're going to find that
just because you're interestedand understanding their business,
that is going to createmore likability and trust.
Exactly.
for sure.
For sure.
So with knowing, Shannon, thatthe real estate industry is the number one
(16:15):
driver of the economy, and we're tryingto understand as business owners,
as real estate media, business owners,what should we think about for 2025?
Maybe this is the yearwe can make the same amount
we did with the job we quit.
Maybe this is the yearwe can quit our job.
Or maybe this is the yearwe hire a team member.
(16:37):
What can we expect?
What what does 25 look like
in the real estateindustry compared to 24?
Yeah, this is so exciting to talk about.
- So and I'm going to take a little bit of a history road to- please do.
Yeah.
So at the high of 2022,
(17:00):
you know, as we thought,especially with COVID in 2020
and we thought the market, you know, oh,where we're headed down, here we go,
and then we kind of bounce back upbecause now people are working remote
and they can work anywhere.And so the people are moving.
So we ended up,you know, at the height of
6.6 million houses sold,I think was the number in 2022.
(17:23):
Roughly so highest amount of houseswe've ever sold in 70 years.
We have records, right?
And then here comes the middle of 2022or I'm sorry, that was the end of 21.
And here comes the middle of 2022.
And all of a sudden we just we see itwe feel it in the industry.
Like we just see it start going downand down and down.
(17:44):
And the reason being the main reason,I mean, is what went
up, up, up interest rates, right?
As we're trying to correct inflationthat, you know, the biggest lever
they like to use to correctinflation is interest rates.
So and those just kept going up, up, up.
Now you couple that that we've had a ten
previously a ten yearlow of interest rates.
(18:07):
Right.
You know 51% of people out therewith mortgages
have a 4% interest rate are lower right.
It’s crazy.
Yeah.
And I'm just going to tell you guys,all right now, and this doesn't
this didn't come out of my mouth.
This came out of Gary Keller'smouth on stage.
We will probably never see4% interest rates again.
So just get over it now.
(18:28):
Deal with it, swallowthat pill and move on.
Okay.
So we have moved onand what we've got down to in 2023,
we got down to 3.8 million houses sold.
So almost half right.
Half.
So you guys might have noticedyou're seeing a lot of agents
(18:50):
over the last couple of years that leftthe market, you know, are newbies
that didn't get going. well,because we had a million and a half
real estate agents in the marketgot cut in half.
So that is really honestly a norm,a very normal cycle of real estate agents.
And you got to know the market cyclestypically every 7 to 10 years.
(19:11):
That is a very normal cycle of the market.
So what goes up must come downand what goes down must go up.
That is the way of the world.
So now we end 2024and we're probably going
to be roughly about 4.2million houses sold.
So we've seen we've we've gone downand we see now we're going up.
(19:33):
Okay.
So now the prediction for 2025and by the way, all this stuff is online,
but you guys can go to the NationalsAssociation of Realtors
website and you can doall this reaches research yourself.
Now, I am very happyevery quarter to deliver this to you,
but youcan all of this is available to you.
You can also go to your state
(19:55):
board of Realtors.
So like ours is Ohio realtors dot org.
So whatever state you'rein, check out your local information
and then you can even go to yourlocal board and get housing statistics.
So all of this is online,but we're predicting about four
and a half million houses sold in 2025.
So then what do we see?
(20:16):
We see we're going from 3.8 to 4.2 to 4.5.
Right?
So we're we are on our way back up,which is a wonderful thing.
Now, that is a national numberof existing home
sales that we target should hit.
Is that four and a half number?
And honestly, if we took backand went back to all the historical
(20:38):
information, fourand a half is about normal.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
So, so the market,you know, is normalizing.
And I promise what it's not going to dois bust.
Guys, the market's not busting.
There's no housing bubble.
Yes, prices have increased,but inventory is still not high.
(20:59):
So we can break into some of that stuff.
But that's what we'll see for 2025,at least from The Economist.
So these are very smart
people who get paid a lot more moneythan I did to create these numbers.
So, you know,they're the smarter people in the room.
That's what they're projecting.
They're also predictinganother rise in 2026.
So I think that's what's nice.
(21:21):
They're sayingwe're going to go up about 11% next year
and then another 8% in 2026.
So I think we're headedin a really good direction.
That's interesting.
So if you're out there listeningand just one thing to preface
this is that this is US,this is US data.
Canada trends with us.
(21:41):
What I will be able to provideand on the next call is
I will have data from the Canada market.
So I will be able to providein our next quarter call
the Canada and U.S.
market information.
Awesome, awesome.
So looking at this though,if you're an international listener
that don't turn us off right nowbecause there's going to be
(22:04):
we're goingto tell you how you use this data
and you'll just have to goget your own data.
Like Shannon, I realized somethingyesterday when we were doing the webinar.
Tebow was like, Hey, we can't do a broke.
A lot of our brokersdon't want to eat the cost of the media
because only 30% of listingsactually sell.
- I was like, I was like,- Really?
(22:25):
Yes. only 30%.
Yeah, I'mso excited to research that market.
Todd I'm going to dive in because I am.
I am like, That would be exhausting.
Wait, which market is that?
He said the French market.The French, French.
Oh, yeah.
So look at your market.
See what it's going to do,and then you can use these same tactics.
(22:48):
So let's just say no matter where you'reat, if it is a pretty much flat market,
you know, listings are about whatthey were last year.
They're going to be up a little bitfrom a general whole.
Now, I would suggestthat you go to your state or local agency
and see because there's factors
when you think
about it, there's factorsthat affect those numbers
(23:09):
and knowing that you don't want to zigwhen you should zag, like
if your market actually is going up a ton
because you have a lot of peopleand industry and people moving in,
you might need to preparea little bit differently or vice versa.
So in knowing that the industryis going to be about the same,
we're going to see a lot of what we didlast year as far as listings
(23:30):
and agents that you can call,your clients are going
to get about the same amountor maybe a few more.
The further also the further
we get away from everybodyexpecting a 4% interest rate or lower
like I'm might I'm at twoand a quarter on a 15 year loan it's like
and everybody who is in that like I'mnever moving like I'm literally building
(23:53):
I'll build a house on top of mindbefore I move
Or you'll have to wait till the equityreaches a point that it makes sense
and that soand that's what's kind of happening.
And so this we're kind ofon the interest rates
that let's just talk about that right.
Yeah yeah can you can you explain.
So the equity so equity interest rates,will they even out.
How would youwhat's that math problem look like, Shannon?
(24:14):
Yeah.
So essentially,you know first interest rates
were predicting thatthey will balance out around 6% this year.
We're not going to see too, probably toomany crazy drops just because we did.
We still are dealing with some inflation.
And even with the change in the politics,like him
(24:34):
or love him or hate him,we're still kind of in this flux.
So the Fed's not going to start droppinginterest rates crazy, but they do predict
that will end upkind of hovering around six,
which mind you, the 50 yearaverage of an interest rate is 7.2.
Okay.
So again,six is a very normal interest rate.
(24:55):
And if we end up landing there, then thatthat that's really where we want to be.
That is a very healthy interestrate. Okay.
So what happens is overtime, as you build equity
in your home, right, you've paid downyour mortgage, you're getting down there.
Of course, prices have increased year overyear.
We're still looking at some pricesincreasing, not as drastically high
(25:18):
as the years prior, but we're still goingto see probably a 2% increase
in prices over the next yearand then another 2% after that.
Okay.
Again, a home or a houseis always a great investment.
Okay. Always a great investment over time.
So when you build equityand so you have you know,
you bought your house for 300,000,you only owe 200,000.
(25:41):
And now that house is worth 350,
now you have $150,000 of equitythat you can take
and put in as a down paymenton that next purchase.
So that kind of makes those interest ratesnot seem as scary, right?
If you bought a house last yearand you need to sell it
or let's say you bought a house in 2020and the interest rate was 3%
(26:04):
and in 2021 or 2022 you had to sell itand interest rates had gotten to 7%.
That's going to hurt, right?That does that.
That's painful, you know, And so we'regetting to a 6% interest rate does.
And as equity builds and pricesstill kind of increase a bit,
that gives people the abilityand the freedom to move if they want to.
(26:26):
Right.
When the Ds happen.
Do you guys know what the Ds are?
Oh, boy.
I
No idea
I'm just careful about this one, Shannon, I
I'm just gonna
we're talkingdivorce.
Right.
We're talking death.
Unfortunately. Right.
(26:47):
We're talking about, you know,when families grow or they're downsizing
right now, those are the things that,you know, affect people purchasing.
You know,
unless you're Warren Buffet
you're not like out therebuying houses for the heck of it.
Right?
True.
Sure.
Now, I mean, definitely there's a lot ofother people that can go do that.
(27:08):
But typically what we see in real estate,especially due
to some of these math equations,when is the best time to buy a house?
When you need to
When's the best time to sell a house?
When you need to?
Okay.
Because over time,
you know, if you're sitting theretrying to wait and say,
oh, the market's going to crash and we'regoing to get, you know, a cheap house.
(27:30):
But guess what?
By then the interest rates have risenand you're not saving any money.
So and prices have increased.
So, you know,even if that just doesn't work, we see
over time that doesn't work.
my financial guysays the same thing about investing.
It's like,oh, Ryan, should I put it in Now?
(27:51):
He's like,just look at I'm not looking at it.
You're not trying to flip it in six months, Todd.
You want to retire in 30 years?
Yes. Put it in.
I'll handle itand make sure that you're taking care of.
But if you have money to invest,invest it now.
So that's that's the biggest thing.
One other quick point I want to make,Shannon, and correct me if I'm wrong, but
(28:14):
buying and or selling, mainly buying,because then they have to sell.
If you own a house,
all of those numbers come downto one thing and it's it's binary.
Can we do this or can we not do that?
It's monthly payment, right?
Shannon That'sthat's what it comes down to.
We need an extra bedroom.The house cost this.
Somebody do the math for me.
Can I afford that monthly payment?
(28:36):
Absolutely.
And I actually urge peopleto look at monthly payment.
Just, you know, don't look at it overall.
Here's the thing.
If you've bought a house,when you're signing the hundreds
of pieces of paper that you have to signat the closing table.
Right.
Have you looked at the Amortizationtable and have you looked
at what you would pay overallfor that home over tearing a number?
(28:58):
You're like, wait a minute, I boughta $300,000 house, but I pay 450, right?
Like it. And here's the thing.
You typically most people only live inthat house, especially their first house.
7 to 10 years.
Yeah, you're over time.
You're not paying that amount. Right?
Things are going to happen.
Life is going to happen.
You might refi, you move.
(29:21):
Right?
So, you know, over time,the interest rates, honestly,
you know,they they matter, but they don't matter.
And meaning, too, that there'smultiple ways to purchase home.
So there are still ways to get into a lowrate for five years and then refi again.
You know,you can always refi really say, you know,
(29:44):
date the rate, marry the house.
Right.
Marry the house
and you might date the rate andyou might do different things to do that.
So so I mean, this forecast to me,I'm excited about this.
You know we have seenin the last two months existing home sales
percent year over year, so month to month.
(30:06):
So saying December of 24to December of 23,
we have seen home sales increasefor the last, November and December.
And what that means is that we dofeel we're we're over the hump
and we're over this little humpthat we had in real estate.
(30:27):
And we're projecting that those steady
increases in home sales will happen,
which means more listings
on the market to get jobs for,
to meet new agents to work with them,provide them other services.
So that is really all good news.
(30:49):
On the 2025 front and summer of last year,
we still were unsurewhat would kind of forecast out in 2025.
There is about three different scenarios.
So I think wewe all feel pretty comfortable now that
home prices will tick up.
Now, what could happen a little bit?
(31:09):
What could happenis the this kind of bump back up
in real estate could bring more agentsand to so that is that something else
to think about in the realityof all these things that matter
is that we sell a reduction in agentswhich quite frankly we needed.
And then now as the market startsswinging back up,
(31:31):
you're going to see people, especiallythe companies that sell real estate
classes, kick up those ads
and try to bring more agentsback into the business.
Yeah, that that makes sense.
So good news for all of us.
Real estate for real estate,media company owners and businesses.
We have a little bit more potential,but we're heading in the right direction.
(31:55):
And so, Shannon,maybe let's take this from
how do you you talked abouta couple segments of realtors.
You know, we talkedyou just talked about new agents
potentially coming inand we have established agents
and then we have what we call our VIPclients.
So clients that do a lot with usand we can expect more new agents in
and it might take themsome time to get listings, am I not?
(32:17):
If they're really connectedin their community.
We saw that a couple of years ago wheneverybody got in in COVID and that really
that spread out the listings among agents.
How would you thinkabout those segments of agents right now?
If you're a media company business owner,what would you focus on, Shannon?
(32:41):
You know, I,I always think it's a good idea.
Make sure new agents know who you are.
Right?
So because if you can get them fromthe get go, that's just easier, right?
If you provide them
that great service, you're not fightingfor their business later.
Of course, you don't knowwhat that new agent will eventually be.
Well, they stick it out or they make it.
(33:02):
You know, this is a 90%fail rate in their first year as an agent.
Wow, wait
Explain that, Shannon.
what does that mean, 90% fail rate
So let's just I mean, let's just saya thousand new agents join in a month.
A year later, 900 of those will be gone.
- Wow.- So I have to tell a quick story.
(33:24):
Earlier this year, one of my clients,we were going into a house.
I was getting ready to shoot itand he stopped on the front porch.
He turned around and looked at me,said, Crack.
Have you ever thoughtabout being a realtor?
You justyou have a really good way with people.
I think you'd make a really good realtor.
And I just kind of grin.
I said, Rob, I thought about itfor about 2 minutes when I first
got into this business and I decided, No,nope, I'm going to stay a photographer.
(33:46):
I've seen what you have to deal with
with that 90% stat.
Yeah
Well, and often and I think this isso great because I think this correlates
with with being a real estatephotographer in a company.
And once you, you know,
real estate agents are entrepreneurs,they are independent contractors.
They are taking this on.
They are not getting paid hourlyfrom the brokerage.
(34:07):
They're not employees.
You have to self-sacrifice
all the thingswhich is all the things you have to do
as a real estate photographer, Right?
You're an independent contractor.
You're opening your own business.
You're doing all the same things.
So a lot is similarities in that.
And what we see isaccountability goes out the window
(34:30):
there.
it'svery hard to keep yourself accountable,
especially if you've been an employeefor years and years and years,
and then you have to switch gears and nowthere's nobody telling you to clock in
at a certain time or, you know,put this work in or hit these deadlines.
(34:51):
And so it's why coachingis actually so important in these spaces
because you just need somebody to helpkeep you accountable.
And it's typically very hardto do that by yourself.
So whether you getan accountability partner,
I think we talked about this in Vegas,like we see
(35:12):
groups of people kind of keep each otheraccountable to what they're doing.
And I think that's great.
You know,
this all it's
hard to growwithout somebody kind of pushing you.
Now, some of us have that drive insideand that's okay.
You know, I'm aI am an A-type personality.
If anybody hasn't figured that out by now,
(35:33):
very A like.
And I'm typically very self driven.
But I do feel as I get older, I see thatdrive decreasing just because I’m tired.
so it's very similar.
So I think, you know, agents,new agents are great.
Or to get in touch with
I one, it's been crazy amounts of timelike awareness with them.
(35:56):
Right.
Making sure they know who you areespecially have like a brokerage
has you in a lotlike they typically have new agent classes
teach one or attend one say Hey,can I come in and just meet, you know,
they'll do an orientation with new agent,be a part of that.
You know, maybe at that pointit might not be a listing that you get.
Maybe you maybe do headshotsand you can do headshots for them.
(36:18):
You know, speaking of that,
you know, just doing headshot,if you like headshots and you can do it
and there's a brokerageyou want to partner with,
maybe go and set up headshotsevery other month that you do for them
and charge a nominal fee, you know,So there's ways to kind of make sure
that you provide some valueto those people and then they know.
And like you right now,I would be focusing on teams.
(36:43):
So we've seen
teams explode in real estate, right.
And and a big reasonwhy is who wants to be a broker.
A broker bearsall the responsibility right
Yeah.
So you can be a team leader of a team
and operate a very large team.
(37:04):
And and kind of to your point,Todd, end up maybe
being out of the businessand watching your business flourish.
And that's very appetizingto a lot of agents.
You know,they do want to grow a big business
and then be kind ofon the outskirts of it.
So I would sayteams are a great resource one
because they're they focus on listings.
(37:25):
If you have a team,you have to get listings
because listings create babies, createmore listings.
They also create buyers.
So if you're carrying the inventory,buyers
see your inventoryand that typically brings buyer leads too.
So I think that is really I like
(37:46):
I like focusing from the top downand that kind of helps you do that
with the teams and it could helpyou get in with the brokerage easier too.
Can I jump in on that real quick?
It's interesting that you brought upthe teams issue because, Todd,
you and I have spoken a lot about, well,you as well Shannon, about broker deals.
And one of the creative waysof partnering with a brokerage
(38:08):
is suggesting to themthat they pay for their agents photos.
Right. As a recruiting tool.
We've we've talked about that.
Well,I just ran into that at the team level.
I just signed on a new team this week
and the team leader is doingthe same thing.
She's fronting a certain amount of moneyfor photos for the other agents
(38:29):
on her team
Yeah. Yeah.
And that's the first timeI've ran into that in my market.
So you can take that that idea
of the brokerage level of,you know, broker paying for photos.
And you can introduce that ideato teams to help team leaders
- attract more realtors to their team.- To their team, Absolutely.
Because they're trying to growand provide value to in Spiro.
(38:51):
what I love about Spiro, sorry,I am going to drop some Spiro stuff for you
because I am the VP of product for Spiro
and that drop a little bomb.
What I love is the account manageraspect in Spiro where teams
because typically a teamis going to have a director of marketing
and they can be the account managerfor all the agents and then the rest
agent.
(39:11):
You know, it's such a benefitto kind of showcase that.
So sorry, just dropping
a little thing that I love about teamsand you're going to see more teams.
We we see this in the industry teams.
Teams are kind of the future becauseagain, they don't want to be a broker.
They don't want to have ownership.
They can build a big teamand still be very successful
many brokeragesand not bear all the responsibility.
(39:34):
So we'll continue to see
the thiskind of formula out in the market.
You know, so interesting,it just hit me because I'm slow,
but this is no different than whatwe are doing at our own business, right?
We have startedand once you get your business going,
(39:56):
you're going to hit a point.
And trust me,
you're going to hit a point where like,I'm kind of done shooting houses.
Yes, you will.
You will.
But you're like,I really like to connect with agents
or I'm done shooting on two days a weekor one day a week, whatever it is.
But you get to the point
that there's going to be some other thingsthat you want to focus on
and you're going to hire photographersand you're going to say,
(40:17):
Hey, we've got this great thingwhere you can be
creative, will supply your equipmentand we'll give you jobs.
When you need jobs, you'll get paid.
You don't have to edit all this othersell points of why and why we try
get people to come inand be photographers at our company.
That's the exact same thingthat these top agents are doing.
They're getting a little tired.
(40:39):
Yes. Yes.
They don'twant they don't want any buyers.
They don't want they want no buyers.
They only out at nineshowing houses out on the weekends.
Right.
They want to go to those
listing appointments, get those listingsand let the team team handle it.
It is Todd.
It is extremely insanehow much we correlate.
(40:59):
Again, this business is businesssales is sales.
But when you're dealing with somethingthat typically is that kind of that
independent contractor statusand then you build a business,
it all is very similar.
And I think that's importantto really focus in
and let agents know, Hey,I'm doing what you're doing
right, Like let a team leader know, Hey,I'm doing what you're doing.
(41:23):
I'm building out a teamLike they get excited about that.
These guys are entrepreneurs.They're like you.
They love this stuff. They get excited.
So, you know, share in that knowledge,share in the heartaches and the
and the pain points, you know,agents are real
people at the end of the day and they’llreally appreciate just the realness
(41:44):
and the realness of saying,hey, this stuff can be hard.
You know?
but when you get it going rightman, is it is it beautiful?
And does it provide youthe things you need?
Yeah, that's.
And for all of you out there that aresaying, Hey, my agents only expect me,
your agents are doing the same thing,just be honest with them like Shannon said
and be open. Hey, I'm building a team.
(42:06):
I think that's so that's such a fabulousangle to take from it
to correlatethat to them so that they connect with you
and they go, Oh, yeah,I did the same thing.
Like, I don't want to show,I don't want any more buyers.
I don't want to show houses at 8 p.m.
on a Tuesday or a Saturday.
Oh my gosh, we weren't guys.
We were showing houses at midnightwhen we were in the crazy.
(42:26):
Like when we got down to in Dayton, Ohio,we get down to like 500
listings on the market
- in all of Dayton? - in all of Dayton.
And to put this in perspective,
when I got in in 2013,we had 6000 houses on the market.
You were down to 500 guys.
I thought agents were going to chew eachother's heads off, it was very unhealthy.
(42:49):
You'd have40 cars show up at an open house
or evenshowings and there was nowhere to park.
And it's unhealthy for the buyer.
It's even actually unhealthyfor the seller.
Imagine trying to go through 30 offersand that's what was happening.
So what what we're getting to,I think, is what I'm on a call like the
(43:12):
that summer of 69 or somethingthe season of love in real estate.
We're all going to love each other againand work together
because there are two sidesto every transaction.
You have a list side, you have a sellside, you've got to partner together.
Realtors, they're they're there to help
(43:33):
make home connectionswhere we're like, know
relationship connections,that that is what we do.
And and so I'm looking forward to,
I believe,what will be smooth out of the industry.
The other thing that is almost behind usis these lawsuits as well.
(43:55):
So these law suits are pretty muchall finalizing
like we're finalizingknowing what paperwork we have to do.
And again, a reminder to allthat are out there that maybe didn't
read the Real News on this,the lawsuits were not about commission.
The lawsuits were actuallyabout transparency around the commission.
(44:18):
So it had nothing to do with agentsoverpricing thing,
nothing of their commission.
There is no standard commission.
We typically see a 6% list fee,
but that is always negotiable, always.
It has been sincethe beginning of real estate.
(44:40):
Everything is always negotiable.
So what we're going to seewith this transparent fee of these buyer
commissions that are being paid,I think is a very healthy thing.
I think when consumers can understanda little bit more of how things operate,
I think that's actuallyalways a good thing for us.
So we're seeing in all this stuffkind of smooth out.
(45:01):
We know what we have to do now.
Things are behind us
and unemployment
is still low, that's a really good thingfor us too,
with unemployment still being low.
So it's good and there's some hot market.
So before we end,maybe we'll end with that.
I've got the hot market list of cityfor the U.S.
(45:22):
for 2025.
So we'll be able to see peoplenow would me Yeah, let's do it.
That's okay. All right.
So your top ten housing hotspots
for 2025,if you are in Boston, be excited.
So that's Boston, Cambridge, Newton,
(45:43):
Massachusetts, New Hampshire.
Those areas,they're they're seeing hot stuff.
And Todd,you're going to love this next one.
Oh, yes.
Charlotte,if you are in Charlotte, Concord.
Gastonia. Well, you know, I love Gastonia,
North Carolina and South Carolina.
Guys,you are looking for some hot markets.
(46:05):
In fact, if you're in the South,that makes up 45% of our sales last year.
So that's a reallyincredible number. Okay.
If you're
in Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Michigan,congratulations.
Grand Rapids.
All right.
Again, back to South Carolina,the Greenville Anderson area.
So I believe Greenville just right over.
(46:27):
Isn't that just right over the border?
I think I feel like of North Carolina.
If you're in Hartford, Connecticut,Middletown, Connecticut,
you're in good shape.
This next one does not shock me.
Indianapolis and Carmel Anderson,those areas
typically always hotbeds anyway,but you're doing good.
(46:49):
Of course, the Midwest is always kind ofinsulated from highs and lows.
Guys.
Remember that we don't seeas much fluctuation.
Kansas City, Missouri
and Kansas, congratulations.
Nashville, Tennessee.
Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler and Arizona.
(47:11):
And then, of course, a beautiful city.
If you haven't, then get there.
San Antonio and New Braunfels.
You guys are looking for a nice 2025and hot spots.
So again, a lot of this will fluctuatejust based of interest rates.
So for some reason something happens,
(47:31):
you know, pay attentionand remember that this stuff is so local.
I cannot say that enough.
We've got to get into your neighborhoodsand neighborhood, even
that you see trends.
So get with your VIP's,take one to coffee, say, Hey,
can I pick your brain and understandwhat's going to happen in our market,
what you're going to forecast,what you're seeing that they love
(47:54):
to talk about that stuff anyway,and that'll help make a good connection.
Todd and Shannon
let me pick your brain on one lastthing is we get ready to wrap up here.
So with thisthis first quarter 2025 forecast of up
a little bit of a bump in inventoryand things like that,
what between the two of you,can you give us, say, three action stops
(48:15):
that we as real estatemedia owners should take
for our business here in the first quarterto get ready for the rest of 2025?
What are the top three things basedon this information, they should act on?
I'll give one Shannon,
this is regardless of what the market is,you need to build as many relationships
with your clients as possiblebecause they see potential in the market.
(48:37):
So when I took that data in from Shannon,I thought,
what would our agents thinking right now?
- So they have confidence- yes, confidence is up
confidence is up,which means they'll spend money.
They also understand
that there's competition,which means they need to be different.
So I'm building those relationships.
I'm explaining what
(48:58):
our products and services do sothat I can begin to count on that agent.
And then they become a raving fanand I get referrals.
So relationships,
I know I gave a few more things in there,but we're we're doing that at all.
We're doing that at Wow.
Right nowwe are building relationships like crazy.
yeah, absolutely.
You know,I think if you have it. plan some goals
(49:20):
this year,you get that done by January 31st, right?
And so get some goals downand then go and research your market
and see what the listing forecastlooks like and set and say to yourself,
I want to capture 2% of the 3% of this,you know,
and know that those are good numbers.
Don't don't thinkespecially I think what Charlotte carries
(49:43):
80,000 listings a year so I can't rememberWow that's a huge number.
So if you were going to try to say
I want 10% of those,that it's probably unattainable.
I think 8000. I mean, that be awesome.
Todd's been in
Charlotte a long time and he doesn't evenhave that much market share.
So because it is so big.
Okay, so just think about that.
(50:04):
Hey, I know that my city carries20,000 listings a year.
I want to make sure I get 500 of those
because that is, you know,that's a doable number for you.
So definitely making sure that I would seta task to go understand my market.
And some of that can be goget in relationship with people
and understand my market to understandwhat my opportunity is and then how
(50:27):
I can go forward and make a planto reach out to the people.
Right. Because everything is a map.
You want 500 listingsand you divide that out, Say
the average agent carries seven listingsa year, right?
I'll say ten for easy math.
That's 50 agents and you get 50 agents.
And usually you'reprobably got to reach out to 100 agents.
(50:48):
Right.So everything is a math correlation.
Again, love it or hate it,that is how it is.
So go ahead and figure out thesemath equations so that you can go forward
and be able to hit your goalsrespectively.
Yeah, Shannon that sounds likeour next webinar with how to do.
We should take some numbersbecause the other thing
that come with comes with a math equationis when your numbers
(51:11):
number of jobs go over a certain amount,you need to hire
So we see that a part timephotographer does 400 a full time, does 7
to 800 in general,if your numbers are tipping over
some of those barriers you need to hire,how do you hire then?
What does that meanfrom an admin standpoint?
And that pushes everything up,which is great.
(51:31):
You just need to be prepared for itbecause I've tried it before
without doing it and I thought, I'mgoing to do it all myself,
or I just didn't realize at the time,quite honestly, and working 16 hours
a day becomes not fun very quickly,even if you are making money.
Yeah, you learn real quick that way.
That money is not the endall, be all when you do things like that.
(51:54):
So you know,and it just all comes down to you guys.
You got to have a planand you to have a purpose, right?
You know, I continue to read booksand I suggest everybody
at least try to read a book a month.
It can be overwhelming,but read a book a month.
And and the one I'm kind of so I saygive me three months to kind of read it.
Just because the holidays,
(52:16):
you know, is How To Live Your Best LifeNow, right?
Like how to how to be your future self nowand having hope and purpose
that that creates everything for you.
So, you know, without help,we we can't move forward.
And whether you're spiritual or religious,you know, both of those teach you
(52:39):
that you know, you have to have a Whyand you have to have a purpose.
So planning and doing all those thingsis going to help you reach that.
And remembering that, you know,
if you're not uncomfortable,you're probably not growing.
that's a hard one, but it's good.
It's tough.
Yeah, we said it on the webinar yesterday.
We were we were talking about it,you know, and we have is that we have a
(53:02):
bold stayed here at KW as you know get
get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
So sometimes being uncomfortablemeans you need just someone to talk to.
You need someone to reach out to.
Now we are happy to hear from you.
We love hearing from you.
In fact, it wasn't phrased very well.
So you can commentwherever you're watching this from.
(53:24):
If you're on YouTube,you can comment below.
It's great therebecause there's a community in there.
We also have the Spiro Superuser Group.
That's a private group.
Search for itand you'll gain access for that.
We have great discussions andthey're on Facebook and just on Facebook.
Yes. Thank you.
On the Facebook
Make sure that you put
(53:46):
just Google or put in the search barSpiro Superuser group
and then you'll see a request accessand we'll get you in there.
Todd And I'm are a little delayedsometimes I'll get you on that.
What we'll try to we will make a planto be better at that in 2025.
We'll get you in. Yes, yes.
And then finally, you can always emailhello@spiro.media.
(54:08):
You can say, Hey, Todd. Hey, Shannon. Hey, Craig.
And many of you are doing that.
The team in there that goes into our inboxwith the customer
support team is they'll read itif they can help you, right?
Then if it's a spiro or a question,
they can get you answers,but we will get to you.
Just give us a littlebe patient with us in that inbox.
You will hear back from us.
(54:28):
There might be some time that goes.
If it's urgent,we'll get it to the right person.
But if it's just a question
or a thought for the podcast,we always love to hear from you right.
And speaking of that,if you do have a question
for the podcast business relatedthat you'd like to see us cover,
we'd love to hear your ideasbecause we want to provide content
that's relevant to you and your business
and what's going to help youimprove your business.
(54:49):
So again, email us.
hello@spiro.media.
Yeah, and you know, I thinkanother great idea is I'd be happy.
I know a lot of great peoplein this industry
and we can even bring thema couple of them on as guests
and let them talk for sure.
They would be more than happy to do that.
I bet I could get our O.P.to probably hop on here
(55:10):
- and give us some great information too,- it'll be good to have her on.
Yeah. Yeah, it would be good.
And again,hearing from many people's perspectives,
it's always good tothen formulate what you want to do.
Absolutely.
- Awesome.- Shannon, thank you.
Thank you for all that data.
We love it. So helpful to know and
(55:32):
all of our brains are going to rest now.
Well, I'm getting preparedfor another snowstorm, so I have a foot of
snow on the ground and I'm getting readyto get five more inches.
So I'm not sure wherewe're going to start putting this stuff,
but my kids are out of school againand happy.
So there we are.
And again, my Buckeyes play tonight,so I know this.
(55:52):
Once this is recorded,that game will be over.
So I will be prayingby the time this podcast comes out.
We are playing in the nationalchampionship, so let's hope. Go Buckeyes
I know, if you don't like it, I'm sorry.
And thanks for inviting me on guys,any time I love this and again,
(56:14):
guys will be doing this at least oncea quarter, giving you a market update.
All right.
Well, guys, thank you for joining usfor this inaugural podcast for 2025.
So glad that you joined us again,if it's your first time joining us.
We're so glad to have you on here.
Make sure you hit the subscribe button
so you get notificationson the next podcast episode that launches.
We typically
(56:35):
try and launch these on Tuesdaysjust so that that you're aware of that.
And again, if you have a commentor a topic idea, please
leave us either a comment on the YouTubechannel or you can email us.
hello@spiro.media.
And if you've found this beneficialand you want to you've got some friends
in the industry, we invite you to share itlike it, you know, all that good stuff.
(56:55):
So thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
We just appreciate the opportunityto be able to be a part
of your business lifeand speak into your business. So.
All right.
That we're going to close things up.We will be back next week.
We've got another special guestthat will be joining us
and we're excited to hear from him.
So stay tuned. In the meantime,make sure you take some time.
It's here at the beginning of the year
to be thankfulfor the blessings in your life
(57:18):
and still take a breath, especiallybefore the spring market heats up.
Have a great week, guys.
Thank you for joining usfor the Spiro podcast,
managing your real estate photographyand videography business.
This is a production of Spiroand wow video tours.
You can find out more about Spirois real estate, media, business management
software at our Web site, Spiro.Media.
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