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After $400K Home Reno, Sold for $1M Over Listing · Market Ready

• 0:00
  And everything was going great guns, and we were just about ready to go on the market. And I told you this story. I looked We were looking at the lawn in the front. There was
• 0:10
  actually a beautiful lawn that we had just laid, sod. And I looked and I saw this little
• 0:16
  windy pipe coming up out of the ground in back of the hedge that no one had noticed. And I was like, "Oh my god, there's an underground gas tank here."
• 0:28
  Every listing has a story. This is the Market Ready podcast.
• 0:36
  Most agents get overwhelmed by having one listing that they need to prepare for the market.
• 0:42
  Maybe if you had two or three that you had to get ready, that would be a lot. My next guest has 36
• 0:47
  that she is currently preparing to get on market and one of the most active agents in all of Compass when it comes to getting a property market-ready. I am unbelievably excited to talk to Andrea Gordon. Andrea, how are you?
• 1:02
  I'm very well, thank you. Thank you for having me on, Lance.
• 1:06
  Thank you for being here because we're going to talk about a particular property cuz I want to walk through cuz I've never heard what you said before, which was that you spent over
• 1:14
  $400,000 getting a property, "market ready," which is I think an all-time new record. But
• 1:21
  first and foremost, I just want to touch really quickly on, most agents getting a market ready
• 1:26
  for two or three properties is it's work, right? 36 is exceptional. Tell me about your process
• 1:36
  and what you do when it comes to how you manage getting properties market ready. Well, I'm very
• 1:42
  fortunate and blessed. This is my 28th year in the business, almost 29th in December it'll be 29.
• 1:48
  And I have spent a Seinfeld episode of finding the right help for years and years and years, but I
• 1:57
  finally have an incredible team that has stayed together for a couple of years now and I know
• 2:02
  we're going to ride off into the sunset together. So I have two amazing listing coordinators,
• 2:08
  Kai Kai Bayless and Phillip Nguyen. I also have a wonderful TC. I also have a dedicated
• 2:16
  marketing team and I also have a virtual assistant in the Philippines as well as two buyer agents. So
• 2:25
  I'm really fortunate in that we have kind of a system and we operate as a system. We meet
• 2:33
  three times a week and discuss all of the listings and the different stages that they're in because those things those listings are not all coming on at the same time. We're rolling them out one after
• 2:43
  another essentially all the way into the middle of 2027 at this point. But normally we carry,
• 2:51
  you know, at least, I tend to sell around a house a week. So possibly more than that this year.
• 3:00
  So we're very very systems oriented. We have a schedule of activities. We have
• 3:06
  you know, we have a meeting plan. We also have like Asana if you're familiar with that.
• 3:15
  They're different sorts of places where you can show what tasks you do. Compass has their own task thing. Because I've been using all these things since time immemorial,
• 3:24
  I haven't really switched over to all of them yet that are on Compass platform, but using those things and systematizing everything gets you to the point where you
• 3:35
  can go out there and be a human being and do the thing that you do best, which is communicating,
• 3:40
  giving service, giving advice, understanding what the marketplace is going to do, making
• 3:47
  sure your clients understand what the market is doing, making sure that their expectations are not out of line with what is happening in the economy, etc. That's what that does. It frees you up not to have to think about that stuff and to carry all that stuff in your head.
• 4:01
  That's amazing. And Andrea, what does the process look like? You said you have listing coordinators, right? When you meet a client and you have an initial conversation with them,
• 4:11
  what does that look like? How do those people get introduced? And what specifically is their job in that relationship?
• 4:16
  Sure. It's really important to me that the sellers meet my listing coordinators at the very beginning of the process because otherwise they expect me to do absolutely everything and
• 4:26
  they expect 100% of all communication to come through me. Any material conversation does come
• 4:33
  through me. I'm in charge of negotiations. I'm in charge of the marketing plan. I'm in charge of any important communications between myself and my clients. However,
• 4:43
  my listing coordinators, they do sit at the inspections. They do get the bids for all of
• 4:49
  the work that is getting done on the property. You know, obviously we are not contractors nor are we
• 4:55
  project managers, but we do facilitate vendors coming to houses to get them ready for the market.
• 5:01
  And, you know, the Notable loan program that's through Compass is a large part of that because
• 5:07
  most sellers choose to take advantage of that when any they have one in the opportunity to do that.
• 5:14
  So, I heard a long time ago that I was one of the top users of the Concierge program throughout
• 5:19
  Compass in the country. So, in any case, what happens is Phillip has a design background.
• 5:30
  He walks into a house and he can just know. I mean, they're like I don't know if you know this. They're like 150 million colors of white. So, he'll walk in and it's not just white. It's like
• 5:41
  designer white, snow white, egret, whatever. And he'll walk in and he'll be like, "The way
• 5:47
  the light is moving through the living room, we should probably go with this white or this color.
• 5:54
  And this should be the trim color." And he's just great at figuring out what colors should be.
• 5:59
  He's great at knowing the different vendors that are good at doing X, Y, and Z. Also he'll be
• 6:09
  good at picking which set of stagers we want to present to our sellers, because he'll know their
• 6:14
  inventory. He'll know, "Oh, this person's really good with with mid-century moderns. This person's
• 6:20
  terrific for craftsman bungalows. This person has ultra-modern stuff. This person uses real art."
• 6:26
  He'll know who the person is to take into that house to get the best possible staging bid.
• 6:32
  Because in our area, not in all areas, obviously, but in our area staging is a major thing because I hate to say it, people don't have that much imagination. They can't figure out how to use
• 6:41
  a house. And so, the staging gives them a really clear idea, "Oh, if I lived here, I would live this incredible Zen existence where I never had any detritus anywhere, right?"
• 6:54
  Well, that's a great point, too. And for those of you listening, Andrea has the most adorable parakeet in the background. So, if you hear chirping, I can't help but laugh because it seems like, is it he or she?
• 7:06
  It's a he. His name is Percival, and he's actually a Pacific parrotlet, which is the smallest species of parrot. He's a hookbill. He looks just like a parrot, but he's the size of a hummingbird.
• 7:18
  He is adorable, my goodness.
• 7:20
  He's very very opinionated about everything, and he tends to like men's voices. So, whenever you talk, he's chirping. It's kind of cracking me up.
• 7:29
  I should spend more time since that's probably about the only thing that likes the sound of my voice, cuz we all know the ladies don't, but that's amazing. And so,
• 7:36
  really helpful. And I think one of the questions that I get asked a lot by agents when they listen to the podcast after they've heard an episode is, "That sounds
• 7:46
  great. I don't even know where to get started incorporating somebody like a listing coordinator
• 7:52
  into my workflow and things like that. How does that person get paid? And are they salary? Like how does that work?" Would you mind just sharing a little bit about how that process works?
• 8:01
  Sure. You know, honestly, I've done all the different ways that process could work. As I
• 8:07
  mentioned, I had a Seinfeld episode for about 20 years there. What happens is if you want a really
• 8:14
  good person to stay, you need to pay them well. That's just number one. As it happens for me,
• 8:21
  they are so useful to me that I pay 20% of my commission to them on every deal
• 8:29
  that they work on. They don't work on all of them. Like lots they don't work on or you know, something where they don't have to do any work. But when a deal that they work on,
• 8:37
  they get a 20% referral fee from me. Now, that's how I've worked it out at this juncture with this particular set of people. Prior to that, I had a payroll company and I had four people on payroll.
• 8:48
  It got really complicated. You know, when you have payroll, you have payroll taxes, you have all kinds of withholdings and this that and the other thing. I worked with not one, not
• 8:59
  two, but three separate payroll companies and they all screwed up at varying times and varying ways.
• 9:04
  And it just kind of annoyed me that it was so complicated and you know, basically made
• 9:11
  somebody whose salary, you know, and by the way, for somebody like me, 20% off of what I make during the course of the year means that they're getting a very hefty salary. They're making about
• 9:21
  $200,000. And that's fine because they're worth it. They're both licensed themselves. And they
• 9:30
  also function as my essentially on the ground assistants. So, it's very worth it to me. And
• 9:36
  in this area, you know, going rate for somebody who does what they do is in the range of $100,000 to $120,000. So, it's right in there as far as what the pay should be. So, that's how I pay them.
• 9:50
  That's really, really helpful. Thank you for sharing that and I'll tell you why too because I think agents often forget or don't see the forest through the trees in the sense that okay,
• 10:02
  well that's 20% of my income that's going to this one person. But how many more deals do you get
• 10:07
  you get have that person, right? And I think that's the thing is that nowadays, you know, we live in an era right now where 90% of all real estate sold in the United States of America
• 10:17
  is being transacted by less than 10% of all the licensed agents. So, the pool is so small now,
• 10:24
  right? For the performing agents that are processing the lion's share of transactions. And those are most often the people that are listening to this podcast. And what I
• 10:32
  want people to recognize and understand from what you just said is this really important point that
• 10:38
  when you have the need for differentiation against other agents that you're competing against,
• 10:44
  having that individual person who is specifically focused on flight traffic control,
• 10:49
  on coordination, on a specific area of expertise, that increases the value of a homeowner's property
• 10:56
  and increases the likelihood that you're going to attract more people to come look at that property based on the presentation of said property is an absolutely essential part because
• 11:05
  if you can present that versus someone else who's going, "Well, my marketing, my marketing, blah blah blah, my marketing." Right? It's that that's just a absolute game-changer. So,
• 11:15
  I think it's just an important factor to recognize. We get short-sighted cuz we look at a dollar amount without looking at the bigger picture of what that brings in increased volume.
• 11:23
  Absolutely. When you're an agent and you are shoving your own flyers into your flyer boxes,
• 11:31
  you are doing the work of an assistant and that assistant is paid around in our area
• 11:36
  around $40,000, yeah $40,000 to $50,000 a year. And so, when you break your time down and the
• 11:44
  time that you spend being your own assistant, if you just had an assistant, you would probably
• 11:50
  double your business. And I think that's born out statistically. Once you get an assistant, you are
• 11:56
  going to see a huge increase in your income and in the number of transactions that you do. And so,
• 12:05
  I've just learned the hard way that that's what you need to do. I've had an assistant now
• 12:11
  in the space of my 28 years as a realtor for about 20 years of those 28 years. And
• 12:20
  you know, from the very start of having an assistant I recognized that it was like a total
• 12:25
  game-changer. As a matter of fact, prior to that I had been buying insane numbers of leads from
• 12:31
  lead generation services and not working most of them or finding that they were kind of lame.
• 12:39
  I dropped, I was spending $90,000 a year on leads and making about $98,000 a year. So my $90,000
• 12:47
  expenditure brought me back $8,000 essentially and a lot of headache and a lot of time wasted. And I quit all of that and just expanded my team and my business has quintupled.
• 13:02
  That's a great great point. All right, so let's pivot slightly. I know prior to us starting the podcast recording you were telling me a little bit of a story that I want to focus on because again,
• 13:11
  the idea of having to to go through a $400,000 upgrade, let's call it, or something to get it
• 13:18
  market-ready, is astronomical. If you can, tell me a little bit about this house and what you saw.
• 13:26
  The house was a magnificent Tudor in an area which we call the Crocker Highlands in Oakland. And
• 13:36
  this house, it had been owned by the same family for decade after decade and you know, a lot of
• 13:43
  older people it's a very typical thing that they're that they love their home tremendously,
• 13:50
  but they get to the point in their lives when they can't walk up the stairs or go into the basement
• 13:57
  or they don't notice what's happening around them. So this place was a magnificent
• 14:04
  pile that was essentially crashing down around their ears. One of the biggest problems being that the roof had been totaled at some point or another,
• 14:15
  the roof was leaking in about 10 different places. And as those of you who are realtors know,
• 14:22
  water doesn't just leak down right down where the hole is, it finds its way all over the place. And
• 14:28
  so this house had a tremendous amount of water damage all the way through it. And we knew about that, and we were aware of that. And that was what we were wanting to address. And we had mold
• 14:38
  experts in and did the whole gestalt of that. We made sure that the mold was remediated and and,
• 14:45
  you know, fully disclosed, etc. And it was all plaster walls because of the age of the property.
• 14:53
  So we had to have the walls replastered where all the work was done. The windows were old,
• 14:59
  so we got around to replacing windows where we were doing all the work around them. And we also
• 15:06
  did fun stuff like the kitchen and the baths. And everything was going I mean, landscaped.
• 15:12
  It was It was great. And we had a design- build firm involved at that point in time who came in,
• 15:20
  you know, with their general contractor to do all of this stuff because this is way beyond what a realtor would do to aesthetically upgrade a space. And everything was going great guns, and we were
• 15:31
  just about ready to go on the market. And I told you this story. We were looking at the lawn in the
• 15:38
  front. There was actually a beautiful lawn that we had just laid, sod. And I looked, and I saw this
• 15:44
  little windy pipe coming up out of the ground in back of the hedge that no one had noticed.
• 15:51
  And I was like, "Oh my god, there's an underground gas tank here." And gas tanks are not dangerous
• 15:59
  because they're going to catch on fire. What they are dangerous for is that the lead in the gas,
• 16:07
  which it would have been, you know, back in the day all of the lights in that house were gas-powered, what have you, and it had a gas tank. Now that's not common in the East Bay.
• 16:16
  It's very common in San Francisco and because I did so much work in San Francisco, that was why
• 16:22
  I understood what that little pipe was. So, we had the leak detection people come out,
• 16:27
  and sure enough, there was a gigantic gigantic gas tank underneath the freshly sodded new lawn,
• 16:35
  which all had to get removed because the lead in the gas leached out into the dirt
• 16:41
  and became quite a hazard. So, we had to have 10 ft by 100 ft by 50 ft in the front yard
• 16:53
  taken out because it was all completely contaminated by lead.
• 16:58
  So, it was an incredibly expensive repair that added over $100,000 onto the already astronomical
• 17:08
  cost of the work that we had already done. And it also put us back because we had to have the city
• 17:14
  come out on three separate occasions to verify that the lead had been completely remediated. It's
• 17:23
  a requirement, and we just had to wait, and it was very annoying because while you're waiting for the
• 17:28
  inspector to come out, you cannot replace any of the dirt. And so, we had basically a mud pit
• 17:33
  in front of this gorgeous home, and it put us onto the market later than the normal season,
• 17:40
  and I was very worried that we were not going to do well on the house because the it we were into
• 17:46
  the holidays. Miraculously, the house sold for something like a million dollars over
• 17:54
  what I listed at, which paid back all of that expenditure, and it was a miracle,
• 18:02
  basically. So, I was really really happy because that gas tank thing was the sort of like the
• 18:10
  coup de grace in the whole situation. And I genuinely believe that I am the reason
• 18:19
  why Concierge limited the amount of the loan that Compass was able to give out because that entire loan was no interest and it took about 6 months for all of the work to get done on the property.
• 18:33
  Yeah. I could see somebody probably laughing a little bit at that one.
• 18:38
  I got a call from from the person who was in charge of it basically saying, "Andrea, you can't spend this kind of money anymore."
• 18:45
  Well, hey, listen, you know what they say, if it ain't broke, break it. I think that's amazing and you know, now, how many of the properties that you do capital improvements
• 18:57
  to work that you work to get market ready, how many of them are you sort of financing, let's just say, through Compass Concierge or another style program in order to get them market ready?
• 19:07
  I'm a huge user of the program. The thing that is selling it is the convenience of it
• 19:13
  all being sort of in one place as opposed to them having to go out, get a HELOC, go through a very
• 19:18
  formal loan process. Notable and Concierge make it very easy for people to apply for this loan.
• 19:28
  And also, I find when I call it a hydra when you have more than one person being a decision maker
• 19:35
  in a family sale. Let's say it's a sale and you don't have one single point of decision making.
• 19:43
  What happens when you get one of these loans at the very beginning of the process is everybody's aware that that money is coming off the top. So you don't end up with one person who feels
• 19:53
  slighted because they paid 50% of something and somebody else didn't contribute and blah blah. It basically just curtails issues amongst people that are jointly working on a project.
• 20:06
  That's a great a great point, too. Well, look, I could talk to you all day about this because I think this is fascinating and you know, having been actually myself at
• 20:16
  Compass when we rolled out Compass Concierge originally, you know, and and somebody that
• 20:22
  was involved in the training of how to roll out and do Compass Concierge, I can tell you
• 20:28
  one of the most in the beginning underutilized and underappreciated programs, I think in all
• 20:35
  the programs I had seen at Compass because it was such a tremendous value add to the homeowner and the logistics behind it when you put it in a rational sense to say to somebody, "Look, would
• 20:44
  you be willing to spend a thousand dollars to make back somewhere between 25 and a hundred thousand?"
• 20:50
  Exactly. It's kind of a no-brainer when you when you think about it. Very often
• 20:57
  I am blessed to have clients that do have deep pockets and can fund these things themselves, but they very often elect to take the loan anyway. And then there are also people that
• 21:07
  can't afford to do that work and they're at a very large disadvantage in our market because again, not that many buyers have huge imaginations and so you have to guide them by the hand to show
• 21:18
  them a beautiful house that they could enjoy living in where they feel like their lifestyle would be better if they lived in that particular house. And consequently,
• 21:27
  the people that are having trouble, they can't afford to move out or they can't afford to do the painting or they can't afford to fix some serious problem with their floors. The loan
• 21:38
  makes all the difference in the world to those people in getting a house ready for the market.
• 21:44
  Yeah. Unbelievable. Well, listen, at the end of episodes, I like to throw in a little trivia
• 21:50
  just to see if we can stump each other as we go through this process. So, there's no right or wrong answer. I'm just curious to see. So, we're going to we're going to do a little bit of trivia. You ready?
• 21:59
  Yeah. Current first-time buyer age. What is the current median age of a first-time homebuyer right now?
• 22:09
  In my area, they're a little bit older, actually. They're 35 to 40.
• 22:16
  Pick a number. If you had to guess, what would you say the current median age is? 37. That's pretty good. 40. Okay.
• 22:24
  40 is the current national median age of a first-time homebuyer. Ok, so it's everywhere, not just here. That's right. Okay. Really, really crazy.
• 22:32
  What is the national average median price of a home sale for somebody selling it on their own, like a for sale by owner, versus using an agent?
• 22:45
  Gosh, that's a hard one for me because the pricing in California is so different than every place else in the nation.
• 22:51
  I think I read someplace that that a median house sale was somewhere around $418,000, and that with using an agent it was somewhere in the range of $470,000, but I'm not sure.
• 23:04
  That's shockingly close. I mean, I got to tell you, actually, I was I was nowhere close on this one. You got that one pretty pretty spot on.
• 23:12
  For sale by owner, national median is $380,000, compared to $435,000 if you use an agent. Okay.
• 23:20
  Super, super interesting. All right, last question. You ready? And this one is one I know. You're in California, and disclosures are very important.
• 23:28
  Yes.
• 23:29
  Okay. What percentage of Americans report having considered or have sold a home
• 23:39
  affected by perceived paranormal activity? What percentage of Americans have
• 23:48
  sold or reportedly been involved in the sale of a home that reportedly had paranormal activity? Well, I have no idea, so I'm just going to throw out 10%.
• 23:59
  I got to take you to play lotto with me today. That is absolutely 100% correct. 1 in 10 Americans report having been involved in a transaction that had paranormal activity.
• 24:10
  That is so funny. I just pulled that out of the hat. No, I'm pretty good at that kind of stuff. I'm kind of an idiot savant as far as numbers are concerned, so
• 24:20
  Well, I told you I need you to come play the lotto with me then because or at least jump on jump on Kalshi for some betting odds because I could use the help. Andrea, I can't thank you
• 24:29
  enough for spending the time with us doing this unbelievable wealth of information, knowledge, and experience. I'm also very grateful to Percival who had many thoughts and opinions too when I was speaking. So, please please thank him for me when he's done with nap time.
• 24:42
  I surely shall. And he'll say he'll say "baby." And also again, probably the only person that'll call me "baby" anytime soon.
• 24:52
  But, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Again, we'll put your contact information in the show notes in case anybody has follow-up questions
• 24:59
  or further things they want to know from you, but thanks again. It's so great talking to you, and I really look forward to speaking with you again soon. Thank you, Lance.