Latest / Charleston's Leading Producers / #34 Stop telling clients what to do...educate them instead | Chandler Townsend

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#34 Stop telling clients what to do...educate them instead | Chandler Townsend · Charleston's Leading Producers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Some people talk about, you know, a uh an argumentative or you know, a combative or just you know a difficult client more times than not, and I find it's just an uneducated client.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hey leaders, I'm Jake, a loan officer obsessed with business growth and finding out what's actually working in our market.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: If that sounds useful, hit follow.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this week's leader.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we're recording, Chandler.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening, man?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hey man, appreciate you having me on.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Love to be back with CLP.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Excited to be back.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we were just we were working through some some technical issues there.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's good to have you here.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of the part of the business, you know.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of the fun, man.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you never get bored.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I truly try new things and you try to set up different technology.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, thing about tech, man, is when it works, it's amazing and it's the best tool ever.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: But then half the time it feels like you're just spending, you know, spinning your wheels figuring it out before you're actually, you know, ever even benefiting from it.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, whatever.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So true, so true.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: But we were just talking too.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you do a great podcast, Low Country Lowdown.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where you um also interview business leaders um in our community.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But we were just talking about you know the effectiveness of you know doing it on YouTube and doing it on these different platforms.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So um I wanted to make sure we just hit record and just continue this conversation.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know, where are you finding the most success?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is it on YouTube?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the I would hope so.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's the only place we post it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so uh really YouTube's been really good for low country, low down.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's our main avenue.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we'll occasionally post on Spotify, but it's pretty much through YouTube.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll use other social media like Instagram and Facebook uh to sort of advertise it and redirect it back to the YouTube channel.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the show is is exclusively on YouTube at this point.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but it's been really great so far.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, like you said, connecting with other small business owners, that's an awesome part of it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, just commit connecting with the community as a whole.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we have artists on there.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've recently got some you know local politicians on there.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: We've got the elections coming up, so figured we want to incorporate them a little bit.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's just been really awesome to connect with the community and learn so much about businesses that you know I don't know anything about.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, for example, we had um a young lady, uh I lose uh with uh inspired joy was the name of her company.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I don't know, uh Jake, I'm not a very artsy guy.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know this, I don't know too much about uh you know easels, but it was really great talking to her and learning about her art studio and and just kind of you know expanding my horizons.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And there's so much to love about the low country, so it's it's been great, man.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can relate on the art side, but I am a huge Bob Ross fan, you know.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: But outside of that, happy little trees, baby.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Happy little trees, happy little accidents.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we need in real estate, is more just uh we're having a happy little accident here.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's all move on to the next thing.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: But um we'll get into some of that too.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But what I love about that is your it sounds like we've taken a really similar approach in the podcasting thing where the goal is just to connect with people, you know.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I enjoy doing this so much more than some of the other, you know, like we look at networking groups and like things like this, you know.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I I continue to go back to this where I just had such a horrible BI experience.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've had so much more enjoyment doing a podcast than something like that.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if it's been similar for you, but well, so there's a couple, you know, a couple different things about it.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: One, networking, you know, that's fine.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I still go out to those events and I do those things, but I fully believe that as an entrepreneur, you have to find ways to love what you do, or else you're really not gonna do it.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you work for yourself, you're not gonna get fired, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's great, but it's also kind of an issue because no one's gonna fire you when you slack up.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: You don't always have a boss who's gonna hold you accountable.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and the easiest way to overcome that is to just love what you do, because then you're gonna want to do it, whether or not you have to or you don't.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I love my job as a realtor.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: I love my job as a team leader and in, you know, teaching my agents and educating them and you know, helping clients directly as well.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: I love doing that.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a part of the business that is ultimately necessary that I really, you know, in the entirety of my career, never really loved that much.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that was client acquisition.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Before you can love your job, you got to go out and you get the clients uh that you love helping, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so client acquisition was always a bit of a laborious um, you know, task for me.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't something I was really excited about, um, you know, and you had to find more creative ways to do that.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, social media is a big part of any marketing ecosystem at this point in client acquisition.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you one thing, Jay.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: People don't really care about real estate content on social media.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's not as much that they're not interested in it, but you know, generally there's just a surplus, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's eight billion realtors who are filming a little walkthrough video of their open house or whatever.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's just all kind of the same rinse and repeat like stuff.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: That was a nice way I was gonna say that.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, you know, I found that well, let me let me see if I can do this in a way that one, I really enjoy, and two, was you know, really creative.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And three, ideally could maybe help some other people out.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the idea behind Low Country and Lowdown was well, I can spread awareness about my business through highlighting other local businesses, and it's just something that I really enjoy doing.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I look forward every single week to doing the cast, and so you know, I don't have to force myself to, oh, I you gotta make this social media vote, da da da da da.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's something I'm looking forward to doing.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it also helps out other local businesses, which is important to me as well.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's kind of a win-win on many fronts.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that that is just hitting the nail on the head.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we just had we just hosted a top producer panel.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was fortunate enough, I was sitting on stage, three top producers in our area, one of them was Erin Spencer, who actually also does a podcast on her own.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but she, in front of 70 agents in the room, said, you know, if you are one of these realtors who is walking through a listing, and it's, you know, whether it's a huge listing or a little listing, whatever, and you're lip syncing to a song, you are making a video about yourself, you are not helping promote you know, the selling of a home.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like like everybody in the audience was just like, oh my gosh, like you could tell like the people that like, oh, I thought this was gonna be a a walkthrough on how to make those videos.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, people are like pulling up their phones, like, delete, delete, delete, delete their last post.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Aaron Spencer just called me out, but man, it was just so refreshing to hear somebody say that in a way like that, too.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and you're so right in that you know, so much of the content looks the same.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and what we're trying to do is actually develop a connection, you know, by doing a longer conversation, and it can still be split up and put onto social media, you know, it can be cut into a shorter piece.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, but the other side of it though, too, is like as a realtor, as a loan officer, you have to go through an experimentation phase, though, too, of what works for you online.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if that's the blueprint that gets you started, you know, maybe, but and that's the hard part is you're doing it publicly whenever you're going through that.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta find what you're good at, right?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta find what works for you.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that go through and they do the little TikTok dances and they lip sync to the songs.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Look, nobody wants to see me do that crap, all right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: No one's really gonna be excited.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they might get a laugh out of it, but you know, uh, people aren't like hungry for Chandler Townsend dancing to a TikTok song content, all right?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what they crave.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you gotta find out where you can win.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, anyone who has known me uh for any period of time or even uh very briefly probably has observed that I'm kind of a chatty guy, like to run my mouth, and so it just leans good into a podcast, and and I'm genuinely interested to talk to these people.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, what we see with that um audience as well is that it continually exposes us to more people and a uh broader audience because I might have like okay, for example, we had Inspired Joy the other day, and you know, the immediate audience is of course our core group of subscribers, which you know they're they're gonna follow most of what we do, but then you get a whole nother branch of people, you know, everyone who really loves what Inspired Joy does, and you get to expose yourself to that audience.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have another guy coming this Friday, um, fellow by the name of King Hollywood.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: He owns a cigar lounge um in North Charleston called Lux Cigar Lounge.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Great place, cool spot.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, what once that goes live, we're gonna get expanded to all of his audience.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so you you kind of get you dipped your feet in so many different ponds.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it gives them an opportunity to do something themselves that they probably were not really engaging in.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, Lux Cigar Lounge does a lot of marketing, inspire joy does a lot of marketing and everyone else we've had on, but very seldom does their audience get an opportunity to really hear them in a long format, you know, environment just kind of really say what they're all about and what you know who they are.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we it's been it's been wonderful.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've really been enjoying it.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's interesting too how much people want to dive into a long form conversation because it's like not even part of our society almost anymore.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is so click, you know, everything happens so fast, um, everything is so instant.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: It is really refreshing to be able to listen to somebody who's going through a lot of the same things that we're going through too, as business owners, people running businesses, trying to grow businesses, marketing, you know, understanding all of these different things.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's it is cool to connect with people who are in the mud.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And from a business standpoint, it really, even though like anytime you post a short format reel or like a TikTok or whatever, you know, YouTube Shorts, whatever the short format ones are, you tend to usually get higher viewership numbers.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel that there's also something to be said about, you know, client intent or viewer intent rather.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: If somebody is watching your thing and they're scrolling, they might hit, you know, one to 200 scrolls per hour.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're just really going through that and you kind of get lost in a seat.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: If somebody's taking 15, 20, 30 minutes to an hour to sit down and listen to something like that, that is a much higher intent viewer.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: That is a much you know, much higher probability that that port person will remember you, uh, remember the business you're promoting, and you know, just more likely to engage with you because you're not just you know one out of 300 scrolls that day.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you've been doing such a good job too of mixing in um things in the within the community as well.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So not just doing the podcast, right?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: You've been mixing in, like, hey, we're exploring this part of town, here's what it looks like, here's all that different stuff.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how much time are you putting in?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that's what scares off a lot of people is they see it and it looks like such a big commitment.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a good amount of time commitment, but what I've found is that you know, you got to get comfortable just recording what you're doing.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And like, for example, we went to um Charleston Poor House, and you know, we were invited to help create some content for this local music festival uh that a guy was headlining, and there's a lot of other local bands that were there, and so we're gonna highlight some of those bands.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a couple upcoming podcasts with some of those bands as well.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, we found ourselves out in West Ashley, and you know, we live around Somerville, and I do a little bit of business in West Ashley, but I don't find myself going down there too often just socially or just to hang out.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so while I was down there, I have my cameraman Rob with me.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we hit up a couple couple bars, um, you know, a couple parks and that type of deal.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so just whatever you're up to that day, just bring the camera.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so it doesn't have to be this massive independent time commitment.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it just, you know, it's a lot easier if you just find ways to incorporate content within your everyday life.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's always awkward, you know.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you go to the restaurant and then you look at the table next to you, and you know, the food comes, and before you ever eat the food, you know, you gotta have your phone out and do that whole thing, right?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but honestly, I don't know.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my wife does that anyway.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we go out to dinner, she's like, wait, wait, wait, right.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: She's got to put her, she's got it, whatever.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, just find ways to um, you know, be comfortable creating content throughout your daily life, and um that that's really how you get a lot of your time back.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that's one of the things I am so jealous of realtors of.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's not there's not many, but that is one of the things is the creating of content is like so much more organic because nobody wants to see me grinding through a loan file, you know.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: The actual like day-to-day you know, operations here, yeah.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like me working out numbers on an Excel sheet, so exciting for anybody.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I hear you.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk some mortgage insurance here.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna lower that by 30 bucks a month.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna blow your guys' minds.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Three letters for you about a PMI.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about it.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's it's interesting, but you know, these are important things for the consumer to know about, though.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I think that's one of the uh things that I I'm kind of in this learning process myself of we've got low country, low down, and that's a it's really my business comes secondary in that it's really about supporting the community.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, by the way, I'm a local realtor if you happen to buy or sell, but it's not like real estate forward.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I do have a separate YouTube channel, C Town Real Estate YouTube channel, check it out.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's more about market updates, education, um, and it's really real estate specific.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the you know mountains I'm trying to figure out how to climb right now is well, how do we make this entertaining?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's the fun and the glamorous parts of the real estate.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: We like to go do the showings, we look at all the different you know, houses, and it's just great.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you, you know, oh you know, this is this look at how this is staged and wow, look at this view.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of glitzy things about real estate, but the really important stuff you know goes into the details, and that's not always as exciting or entertaining.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh we're kind of working through it right now, trying to find ways to make those mundane yet essential topics uh a little bit more palatable for the viewer, and so we can, you know, hopefully by making it more enjoyable for them, uh they can find themselves more educated in the process because learning about it as a client is just the same as you know what I said before.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta love what you do as an agent.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: The more entertaining, the more interactive you can be with the client, with the viewer, the better they're gonna retain that information and the more helpful it is for them.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that's such a a great lens to view it through.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm trying to think of you know the YouTube people that I watch.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and I I'm such a nerd.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know if you know Alex Hermosy and Stephen Brown.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: He's the guy that has the nasal strip, right?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, yeah, but it's all business talk.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I pull up my YouTube feed, and it's actually it's one of two things.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's either business talk, like Hermosy, or it's uh golf videos.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, that's the only thing that that comes up in my algorithm.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, total nerd.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm trying to think, you know, I guess Sir Hant has done a lot of that.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think of a blueprint of a real estate person who does both, straddles that line really well of entertainment and this, you know, what Hermosy actually would call edutainment, where you want to get people to watch, but you also want to push them towards learning something about you, about the business, about the market, learning something about something.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I won't claim to be an expert in this, but I can tell you the the the goal we're chasing right now, uh, and that is you know, basically creating an ecosystem, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So when we do a lot of those community highlight reels, and like when we did the other day was at the Sweet Tea Festival in downtown Somerville, it's really great.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And of course we put it on the low country lowdown page, but we added in the Seatown Real Estate uh Instagram page onto that post as well.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes you can kind of gain a followership through you know having those, yeah, you know, just more entertaining, more casual, more glitzy type of videos.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then once they've subscribed to the channel or rather followed on Instagram, you know, there's gonna be these quick little 10, 15, 20 second snippets uh that we cut from a longer format video of me, you know, providing some you know educational value and sort of you know teaching clients these things, but it's still in that short format.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then the ultimate goal for that is to eventually redirect them to the longer format video.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you almost kind of gotta, you know, have all parts of it because people aren't gonna watch the educational content unless they're really in the you know late stages of getting ready to actually buy a house or sell a house, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's just not something you're gonna look too much into if you're five years out.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: But they might start following, engaging with you just by being a member of the community with some of the other stuff.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then over time, as they get you know further in their home buying or selling journey where it's a little bit closer to the finish line, at that point they may redirect to some of the longer format education.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think you've got to have you know a lot of different pieces of the ecosystem put together so you can really have a complete product that is gonna help people, you know, whether they're casually thinking about a move at some point in the future or whether it's it's go time, we gotta you know learn about this right now.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know the hard part of it too, and not to make this whole conversation about social media.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I do want to talk some market stuff too.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I that's where I think a lot of people get tripped up too is they're like, yeah, I I made this Instagram video and I didn't get a client like directly from the video.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but yeah, I mean, man, you gotta make you gotta make content for a long time before it really starts to hit.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the hard part is going through that grind phase of um I heard somebody say the other day, marketing into silence, and it feels like that so much sometimes where you're just throwing out there, throwing out there, throwing out there, and it takes a really long time to for that trickle to start coming back to you.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, it's it's it's a tough thing to do, and it takes a long time to build.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, I'm a big advocate of comparing yourself to yourself.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things in social media that you know it can be really discouraging is when you see somebody else and you go, man, you know, this uh I put a video of I don't know, some you know, restaurant in downtown Somerville I was at.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, I saw someone else put a different restaurant or the same restaurant, even the low video, and they've got like, you know, 200,000 views on their reel, and they've got you know thousands of likes, and everyone's engaging, and you're like, man, what you know, what did I do wrong?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's practically the same thing, right?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact of the matter is, I don't think there's any one individual who like totally understands exactly how these algorithms work and they also change constantly.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you just get lucky.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have two or three videos and one will perform light years better than the other.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really necessarily know why that doesn't happen.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think it just you know comes from consistency and over time these things build.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I'll tell you one thing like those guys, you know, was it Hormuzzi, Hormuzzi?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that fella, uh, or whoever else, you know, when you find someone on YouTube, anytime you discover a new channel on YouTube, go ahead and and and go back and look at their channel and see if that's their first or second video.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because odds are it's like the 2000, you know what I mean?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so it just it takes time and it takes grinding.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, you gotta you gotta be able to you know picture the lad at the end of the tunnel because it's not always gonna be visible on day one, but keep on grinding, it will be there.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think um I just saw it because Hermosy he posts uh his numbered episodes on each episode.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it's something crazy, like 2,000.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And here I am, I'm trying to get to 50, you know, and it's just completely ridiculous.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you see those people who are successful on their fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, you know, tenth videos, and they're always people who had like some sort of following beforehand.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's to go from just you know, any you know, Jane or John Doe just sitting around and hey, I want to do a video, the odds of it going you know nuclear overnight are just extraordinarily low.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's just gonna take time, you know.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it'd be like that.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well let's talk about the market.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on in Somerville?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on in Charleston?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it feels like there's been a shift in the past couple months.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we're recording, it's the beginning of October here.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what's changed in the past couple months?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll tell you what's changed, Jake Cummings.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: What's changed is people's interpretation and the lens through which they view the market.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I have uh printed out some data here.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I always love data because it doesn't like it.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk facts and numbers, all right?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is when people click off the video.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but but that was your fair warning.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: So listen, the interpretation right now, that the general like climate that people are feeling in their heads is oh, you know, we have high inventory, high interest rates, oh no, sky's bombing, etc.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: etc.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Data doesn't necessarily tell that story.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to bring up a couple things right here.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about just overall listings because inventory is a big one that people are talking about.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's too many listings, not enough buyers.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, right.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, September of twenty twenty five, they were five thousand.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is last year, five thousand six hundred forty.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Active listings.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is for the CTAR MLS as a whole.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's like Charleston, Somerville, most of St.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: George, all that the whole area, right?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, say the number gets 5,188.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: 5,648.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then September of 2026, the most recent data we have is September, right?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Recording in October.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: That number is 5,996.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, 300 and some change, more listings.
• 22:21
  unknown: Yeah.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is more listings.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a crazy amount high, but it is more listings than ever before.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: But here's a more important number, or rather, um, percentage that I'd like to talk about.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Absorption rate.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's not something that most people know off the top of their head what absorption rate is, but just to give it a quick little description, absorption rate is the amount of inventory that we have in the market if the exact same amount of buyers maintained, right?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: So basically, in other words, if the exact amount of buyers we had in September were to be just consistent and we didn't add any new listings, then the absorption rate is how many months of inventory we would have before we ran out.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a ratio determined amount how many buyers slash closings that we have in any given point in time versus how many active listings do we have.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's how much inventory is in the market.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So September of 2025, we had 3.83 months worth of inventory.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Would have run out of inventory in just shy of four months.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: September of 26, despite having more listings, about 300 and some change more listings than we had, the absorption rate is actually a little bit lower.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 1.83% lower, 3.76 months of inventory.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: So despite having higher interest rates, despite having a total, a larger number of listings, we actually have less inventory relative to the amount of buyers.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: So what does that tell us?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: We actually have more buyers than we did this time last year.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, you know, with all the stuff that you're hearing.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that people get so caught up and they're concerned about what they see on the news.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what is happening nationally absolutely will impact, and it is a factor to what happens locally, but it's not the end all be all.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: The local market is always going to be a little bit different than the national market.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it can be much uh you know, much different.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at the actual numbers, I mean, you know, we're looking at okay, the median sale prices up 1.83%.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: So despite, you know, again, higher inventory, you know, higher interest rates, we're still seeing prices go up modestly, albeit, but you know, prices are still going up in terms of median sold price, the uh absorption rate is a little bit lower.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, the market is still moving, and I think in a very, very healthy way.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: The issue is when people get caught up in you know, whatever doom scrolling algorithm they find themselves in.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that goes not just for clients, but people in the industry as well.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, despite us working in this, I think a lot of times, you know, realtors and lenders and whoever else they can kind of psych themselves out because they worry about you know what they see on TV or social media.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when you look at the data, you know, this year compared to last year at the same time, you know, it's really it's not that not that different.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if anything, it's actually a little bit better market for buyers or rather sellers.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, the the one thing that so we're both out in Somerville.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: The one thing that it does feel like, and maybe maybe this is in my head too, and there's not actual numbers to support this, it feels like days on market is going up, though, for listings.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that is that is absolutely, I'm so glad you brought that up.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: That was gonna make my next point.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, was days on market have increased.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: So despite less relative inventory in terms of absorption rate, very modestly, and a higher median sale price, days on market are up.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the average is up 8.47, and the median is up 18 to 0.18 percent.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and to put that in perspective, the median days on market uh last year was 33, now is 39.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the average days on market last year was 59, and uh average now is 64.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we are seeing a little bit more days on market.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that goes into more, you know, how do you plan a listing?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's just you know something to be aware of.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the other thing that you mentioned is buyers and sellers mentality right now.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And literally this morning, I I hopped on a zoom call with a client.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I zoom call with all of my clients, right?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, first words out of his mouth, rates are up, what's going on, you know, my payment's gonna be crazy, you know, all of the things that buyers right now are it are being told to think, you know, like that's that's the message right now.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, yeah, well, let's look at it.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: We went through his target price point of what the home that he liked.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about the monthly payment.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was totally comfortable with the monthly payment, he was comfortable with the out-of-pocket cost.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: So what are we talking about?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what where's all the fear?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: It it right, it was totally so now you know he has the clarity and he's ready to go.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's a non-issue.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people just need the right education, and it's not going to be like that for everybody.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if rates went up a point, sometimes that does squeeze people out of the price point that they want, you know.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we need to be bringing the education and we need to be bringing the clarity so that people can actually make an educated decision, not just one based out of fear and what's going on in the headlines.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I couldn't I couldn't agree more.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: I really do think that, you know, uh some people talk about, you know, uh uh an argumentative or you know, a combative or just you know, a difficult client, more times than not, I find it's just an uneducated client.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that really just, you know, you need to look in the mirror about that because it's your job to educate them.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: If your client is getting their entire market information from like any news network, or God forbid, like, you know, social media or TikTok or something like that, you know, some influencer was like blah blah blah blah blah, like, okay, you know, that that's on you.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't mean that we shouldn't use social media as a as a tool to market the clients and all that type of thing.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: But like you need to have substantive conversations with these individuals, and it's up to you to educate a client.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: If they don't know, that's that's not their job.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't what they do for a living, you know what I mean?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to provide them that clarity.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that one thing that buyers right now, you kind of see, you know, you see the concern and you see that movement of hesitation.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, people look at that as you know, kind of two separate ways.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Either A, the market's really tough right now, I don't want to be involved in it, or sometimes they think, hey, the market's really tough, I should get involved in it even more because I have more leverage as a buyer.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I did want to talk about that a little bit.
• 28:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because this is something that people don't address much.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: When you see what is traditionally referred to as a buyer's market, a lot of people have this, you know, kind of alarm bells go off in their head, where like, okay, hey, I can go in here, I can just like you know, offer 50k under ask every time and it's chill, you know.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not always the case.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: When you have higher days on market, there's a couple things that that go into that.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing is yes, you know, sellers who maybe anticipated a quicker turnaround time, you know, if they didn't know what the days on market were, um, or if they just have to move sooner for whatever reason, then they might be more willing to negotiate because if the median days on market is 39, and you know, maybe their agent didn't do a good job of explaining that to them, whenever they listed the property, they figured, well, I have to get this thing under contract in a week or two.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can be more aggressive with that.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: However, most agents, if they're you know doing their job the way they're supposed to, these are conversations they're gonna have with sellers as well.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: So when you have higher median days on market, most sellers who have a confident agent who has prepped them for this, they're not really feeling a ton of pressure until they're in excess of that.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the important thing to note is that even though you absolutely have a lot more leverage right now as a buyer than you may have had a few years ago, it doesn't mean that a seller in the first week of being listed is feeling a tremendous amount of pressure.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because if they sell that thing in 10 days, then they're a third of the average gays on market.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: You see what I'm saying?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Or rather, a quarter of the media gays on market.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: So there's kind of two sides to that.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there's a lot of deals out there to be had, but you've got to be more, you know, choosy with your listings, or sorry, um, you know, with the listings that you're gonna be making an offer on, because not every individual listing is gonna be in the exact same situation relative to the market overall.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it it is hard to judge somebody's mindset going into it.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And from what I've seen, you know, you do a really great job on the negotiating side.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: That is one of the areas that I've noticed working with you know different realtors over the past few years, that is a huge separator between a really great realtor and you know, maybe a more average realtor is that ability to negotiate.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there there is a lot more power on the buyer side right now.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, we just did one, two, one temporary buy down, client was happy, you know, everything was was great.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but being on the same page going into the negotiation, too.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that drives me crazy is when people just um they go in and they just want to make an offer right away and they want to write it up as fast as possible without really putting thought into what's my leverage on my side and how can I really get the best deal here, you know, according to what my client needs.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be different for every client, too.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Some clients, you know, they need the closing cost.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Some clients they need the house to be, you know, uh moving ready.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: They can't afford for there to be even any any issues going in.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they might not have the cash to make repairs and that type of thing.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, certain buyers may need to be in a certain you know time frame because they've got a new job starting and they got a transfer.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they've got their own house they're selling that's closing by a certain date.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And confidence to close on a specific date is very, very important to them because once their house gets sold, they're not gonna have anywhere to be.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: So there's different factors that go into different offers.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, when I meet with my clients, we go out and we do tours and we do showings.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: Every single client, before we make an offer, we're taking a look at the market summary report, we're taking a look at how this market is performing overall local to where that property is, and we're running a CMA on every single property.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we're trying to give them an idea of, hey, what is objective market value for this property?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of people, again, they base their offers based on, okay, hey, maybe it's a buyer's market.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm, you know, I'm gonna do X amount under ask price.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: But what if the ask price is like 60K above market value anyway?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: You could you can make 10% under on the offer and you'd still be, you know, paying way too much for the house.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: So when you structure your offer, it's not about you know relative to what the list price is, it's relative to what the objective value of the property is.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's situations where a house will be listed and you know it's a very motivated seller.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And even in a buyer's market, you could maybe see it, you know, make a full price offer and still get a good deal if it's priced well under market value because they were motivated to get it sold quickly, right?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's not always, you know, oh, well, how much under are we gonna cut them or you know, how much are we gonna give them?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's what is the value of the asset, and then how are we gonna structure our offer dependent on what you need and relative to overall market conditions?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of that goes into it, you know.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: That is the number one.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to, I don't want to choosing my words here.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then when I hear somebody say, like, I'm I'm gonna enter the market as a potential buyer of a home, and the first thing they say is, I I need to get a deal, so I need to offer less than whatever you know the list price is.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to me, that's always the number one thing of okay, we don't really understand, you know, what this what what's really going on here.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and I'm sure from your guy's side, from the realtor side, that can be difficult as well.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but the one thing that I think we all need to do is being able to explain these things in English to potential clients, you know, because there is a lot going on here.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that maybe, you know, it's such an important skill to be able to break these concepts down into something that people can digest and understand.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the realtors and the LOs that are having success are the ones that are able to do that right now.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, because the important thing that people forget about sometimes is that you're not telling the client what to do.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: What your the goal ought to be is to equip the client with the necessary knowledge and expertise so that they can make the decision for themselves, right?
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not going into this and and saying, okay, well, this is one, two, three, Main Street.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, um, you know, uh uh, you know, John Doe, listen, uh, you need to offer 250, trust me.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's not how that conversation goes.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: What we're trying to do is try and say, hey, this is this is all the data, this is the numbers that I've pulled up, these are the comps, this is how much this property is probably worth.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is about where we assume it to appraise.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Forget about the list price.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: I completely take that out of the equation.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I think the property's worth.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is how many days on market it's been on, this is how many days on market relative to the median days on market in this specific neighborhood.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: And this is how many other listings are available uh that are similar properties right now.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: You have to look at active inventory as well.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so you equip the client with every single variable, and like you said, explain it to them in English.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: And once they fully understand and comprehend the situation, then they're the ones who are gonna be able to make the right call about, you know, how do we want to structure this office?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, they're the ones that are calling the shots.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think agents sometimes are, oh, I wish, you know, I could just tell the client what to do.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, that's because you're too lazy to educate a client so that they understand the situation.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just control people and tell them to do whatever.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, they're not gonna trust you if you haven't established that educational precedent anyway.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's just kind of my my humble opinion on that.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thousand percent, a thousand percent.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll wrap us up here, man.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's been 35 minutes already.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um cool.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: It always goes by so fast anytime we chat.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: But um, if anybody um who has been listening wants to reach out to you or see some of the content that we mentioned on here, how can they get in touch with you?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you can go ahead and put my cell number in the description if you want to, 843-703-9970.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: You can always contact me directly, call or text uh through there.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you can shoot me an email, ctown at ctownsales.com.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to browse any of the listings online, if you want to check out what's available on the market and you don't want your information sold to a third party, boom, Zillow, uh, then you can check out my website, cTownsales.com.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: The only person who owns that website is me.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you're never gonna have your information sold to anybody else or any of that nonsense.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's fully, um, you know, fully independently owned.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's ways they can reach out, and we'd love it.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you could follow us on social media, check out low country low down pod on YouTube, check out CTown Real Estate on YouTube, and then you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, all that good stuff as well.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: There you got it, man.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks, sir.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh thanks for doing this.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do it again soon.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely appreciate it, buddy.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Talk so thanks for listening to Charleston's Leading Producers Podcast.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Could you take a moment to hit subscribe on the platform that you're currently listening on?
• 37:37
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jake Cummings, and see you next week.