Next Level Agents: The Kevin & Fred Show - Interviews with the best and brightest minds in the real estate industry

Ben Kinney launches new brand-agnostic platform Place Inc. will handle a variety of business tasks for teams, which will be able to keep their existing branding and remain in their brokerages.   The new platform meant to help teams deal with an array of business tasks while also allowing them to keep their existing branding.   The new platform is called Place Inc., and in a statement is described as “a full service real estate and technology platform that partners with the top 1 percent of agents and teams.” The idea, the statement continues, is to help agents become more profitable, boost their value proposition to customers and “grow their unique local brand, all without having to leave the brokerage where they are currently affiliated.” Ben Kinney In a conversation with Inman, Kinney said that Place’s goal is to help agents grow their business. “The majority of these individuals struggle with the business side,” Kinney explained. “They lose staff or can’t grow or double their business.” Place is meant to solve that problem.     Redfin blows away expectations, posts $233M in revenue The company's revenue jumped a whopping 88% year-over-year during the final 3 months of 2019.   $233 Million: Redfin’s 2019 Q4 revenue Between October and December last year, Redfin raked in $233 million. The company also had a gross profit of $40 million, and a net loss per share of $0.08, compared to $0.14 during the same period one year prior. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Redfin also claimed that it saved consumers “over $44 million in the fourth quarter and over $180 million in 2019.” Those numbers include savings the company counts from the refunds it directly hands over to customers after a deal closes, as well as from lower listing fees. During the first quarter of 2020 — which we are in the middle of now — Redfin expects to bring in between $179 million and $188 million in revenue, which would represent a jump of between 63 percent and 71 percent.     Jeff Bezos' $165M mansion deal shatters Los Angeles sales record Bezos bought the Beverly Hills estate from Hollywood mogul David Geffen in an off-market deal without the involvement of any agents. Amazon’s CEO and the richest man in the world just bought a Los Angeles mansion for $165 million, shattering a previous residential sales record for the city set just months earlier. Jeff Bezos bought the Beverly Hills estate from Hollywood mogul David Geffen and, in doing so, set records with the most expensive residential deal to ever take place in the Los Angeles area, according to the Wall Street Journal. The sale took place off the market and without an agent.     KW Posts Net Agent Loss for 4th Consecutive Month in January 2020. Agent count has dropped by 3,499 over this span.

In Today’s Episode, We Talk About; - John’s journey as an entrepreneur prior to real estate and starting Yodle at 21. - Exiting Yodle and the importance of being led by value not the goal to exit the business. - Entrepreneurial PTSD and the challenges founders face - The journey of OJOLabs and why John chose it as his next venture after Yodle.- The difference between real AI and what people say AI is.- Scaling and its connection to a lack of entrepreneurial desire. - What John is excited about, what he has changed his mind on and something surprising about him. - The value of earned trust, and why it’s what makes a real difference in business. What doesn’t exist today is a consumer trusting a product or company  Guest Info John Berkowitz is the Co-founder and CEO of OJO Labs, an Austin-based company that has quickly become a leader in conversational AI technology. With the application of its patented AI, OJO empowers people to make better decisions through the fusion of machine and human intelligence by automating lead conversations for agents and creating data-driven, personalized experiences for consumers. John’s track record of building and scaling successful, mission-driven technology companies with award-winning workplaces paved the way for the formation of OJO in 2015. John’s dedication toward building a positive work environment led to OJO being named to Comparably’s 2018 Best Company Culture list, and Built In Austin’s Best Places to Work in 2019.  Prior to founding OJO, John co-founded Yodle, and was instrumental in building it into a $200M+ revenue leader in the online marketing space with more than 50,000 SMB customers and over 1,400 employees. In February 2016, Yodle was acquired by Web.com in a $342 million all cash transaction. Recently, John was named to Swanepoel’s SP200 and The Most Powerful Technology Executives in The Residential Real Estate Brokerage Industry list. John is actively involved in nonprofits, and currently serves as CASA’s board president, using his entrepreneurial background and resources to fight for the welfare of children in the communities he operates in.

All successful realtors have one thing in common.   For most of us, we learned this lesson early on...   For others. It took longer!    The good news is, that you can choose to dive into this today and see yourself up for success.

Homesnap’s “Pro” product   Homesnap has a new service that crunches data to show which homes in a neighborhood are the most likely to be listed for sale in the next 12 months.   The platform uses an algorithm that crunches millions of records, including MLS data, to come up with a “Likelihood to List” score. The service, available only to licensed agents, shows a “heat map” of neighborhoods color-coded to zero in on the homes most likely to go on the market.   Americans are equity-rich as home values rise   More than a quarter of mortgaged homes had an LTV lower than 50%   Almost 15 million homes in the U.S. were equity-rich in the fourth quarter, meaning their mortgages were 50% or less of their estimated market value, according to ATTOM Data Solutions.   Equity-rich properties were 27% of all mortgaged homes, matching the share in the prior quarter, the report said. About 3.5 million homes with a mortgage were seriously underwater, meaning the loan exceeded the value of the property by 25% or more.   That figure represented 6.4% of all U.S. properties with a mortgage, down from 6.5% in the third quarter. Among 8,262 U.S. zip codes, there were 451 zip codes where at least half of all properties with a mortgage were equity rich, ATTOM said.   Where are the highest equity levels? The San Francisco Bay area.   Boston had the highest equity-rich share in the Northeast, at 35.6%. Dallas, led the South, at 36.5%, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, led in the Midwest, at 27.4%.     African American homeownership lowest since 1968 — when Fair Housing Act passed: NAR official .   At a time when housing prices continue to climb and affordability continues to dwindle, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is eyeing ways to diminish the racial homeownership gap.   “In 2020, there is still a persistent gap in homeownership rates between whites, African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans,” Bryan Greene, NAR’s director of Fair Housing policy, said Thursday at the association’s second annual policy forum in Washington, D.C. “We’ve seen homeownership rates among racial groups steadily rise, but I think many of us would have expected rates to have risen more,” Greene added. “We did see that happen for a period from the early 90s to the early part of this century, but dramatically, at least for African Americans, we started to see that homeownership rate decline — so much so that last year the homeownership rate for African Americans dipped below the rate in 1968 when the Fair Housing Act was passed.”  

About the Episode On this episode, I’m joined by Arizona native, broker, and real estate tech entrepreneur Kyle Wyloge. What’s unique about Kyle’s story in real estate that it is his first and only career, and his career has evolved and taken on many iterations to get him to where he is today. He has used every market shift as a learning opportunity, and through his own business need observed a gap in the market he could fill with the new data project he has developed, Ivy.   Software is the most valuable thing on earth right now, and by connecting software and real estate, Kyle has uncovered a highly in-demand product that can benefit our entire industry.   Growing the user base of 700 customers in 9 months just shows how well his brainchild is catching on.   Kyle is the owner and partner of The Momentum Group; which includes a real estate brokerage, property management company, development company, and a real estate investment fund. His responsibilities range from project marketing, property underwriting, project development, fund management and oversight of the growth and stability of the companies.     In Today’s Episode, We Talk About; - Why real estate appealed to Kyle and how his business evolved through the different phases of real estate. - The Phoenix market in the REO days - Investing in property in Colorado - How to go directly to the seller for your acquisition on the investment side - Ivy and the power of having data and the right information on who you’re calling - Who is Ivy for and how has it evolved. - What Kyle is excited about currently, what he has changed his mind about recently and something cool about him.   Guest Info   Kyle is a broker, investor, real estate tech entrepreneur and the founder of Ivy.   Website: getivydata.com Contact: kyle@getivydata.com

Lets talk about the Pipeline...   Not that thing you surf... but that the thing that tells you where your next paycheck is coming from...