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

Homelight Cash Close   Today we announced the launch of HomeLight Cash Close, the first program on the market — designed for you, the agent — enabling your clients to maximize their home sale while removing many of the painful contingencies they experience today. Cash Close includes two sister products aimed at dramatically simplifying the real estate transaction, HomeLight Trade-In and HomeLight Cash Offer.   HomeLight Trade-In You know better than anyone: Buying and selling a house at the same time is a logistical nightmare. HomeLight solves this for its agent partners by purchasing their client's home at a guaranteed price and providing immediate liquidity to put toward their next house.   Agent partners who have access to this invitation-only product can earn commission on both the purchase of the client's new home and on the sale of their old one. And the client receives 100% of the upside from the sale of their property. Unlike other iBuying and trade-in solutions, this enables the homeowner to fully maximize their home's value. HomeLight Cash Offer   HomeLight uses its own cash to purchase homes on behalf of your qualified clients and transfers ownership once their mortgage closes. This product has already helped multiple home buyers and agents win negotiations at competitive prices due to the strength of the cash-backed offer.   Interested in learning more? Check out Inman's coverage of our announcement and visit HomeLight Cash Close for all the details. We can't wait for you to be part of our vision of a world where every real estate transaction is simple, certain, and satisfying.       Mortgage rates fall to the second-lowest level in three years This week, the average U.S. fixed rate for a 30-year mortgage averaged 3.51%, dropping to the second-lowest level in three years.   The pace is now 95 basis points below the 4.46% rate of the same week last year, according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey.       Compass shuffles support staff, anticipates dozens of layoffs A Compass source told Inman the company still has no current plans for an IPO, although it's not off the table. The reshuffling will likely result in the loss of several dozen jobs at the growing company, according to a Compass source who indicated that the brokerage is currently advertising approximately 300 job openings — after hiring more than 80 new employees in January alone — and plans to increase its total headcount each month.   According to the survey, the 15-year FRM averaged 3% this week, sliding from last week’s rate of 3.04%. During the same time period in 2019, the 15-year FRM came in at 3.89%

About the Episode On this episode, I’m joined by former real estate agent and now tech company founder and owner, Chris Jones. His platform, Guerilla Realty provides lead generation and valuable tools and resources to real estate agents, and its success is rooted in Chris’ own experience selling homes. It is a business founder on the internal need of his real estate company, and ultimately Chris discovered that there was a market need for what he was providing. Chris joins us to talk about his journey, success, lessons and losses along the way.  Chris is the co-founder and owner of Guerilla Realty. When he was an agent, he found himself working 90+ hours per week doing everything he was “supposed to do”, but still not selling any houses. That’s when he threw everything he knew out the window and went back to his technology background. He together some primitive lead capture tools and then ran free ads to people he were buying, and his business exploded. That’s how Guerilla Realty was born.      In Today’s Episode, We Talk About;   On this episode we discussed; How Chris got into real estate, and  How he eventually made the choice to go into software full-time.  How they grew their team by giving out free tools.  Something he’s excited about, something he has changed his might on and something many people don’t know about him.  Why Chris doesn’t do marketing to scale anymore. 

Don’t make this deadly business mistake...   It’s easy to make, and so many of my friends are making it!  Are you?     See the thing is, that as agents and business owners our North Star  should always be the consumer..   Yet so many are making this MAJOR mistake...

Tweener Homes offers a solution for people in-between residences   https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/abg/2020/01/19/tweener-homes-provides-housing-solutions-people-between-moves/4389855002/   He came up with Tweener Homes, a solution for those needing an “in-between” home due to temporary or permanent job relocation or finding themselves in the situation Calvi and his wife did.       Fathom Realty's IPO filing reveals increased revenue, widening losses The flat-fee, virtual brokerage posted a net loss of more than $2.6M in the first nine months of 2019   Fathom’s S-1 filing revealed the company’s losses are widening, as it continues to grow. In 2017, Fathom Realty posted a net loss of $343,000, which grew to $1.5 million in 2018. Through the first nine months of 2019, the company posted a net loss of $2.6 million. Despite the losses growing, revenue is up at the firm, which reported $78 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2019, slightly more than the total amount of revenue it pulled in during the entirety of 2018.   CFPB planning to eliminate DTI requirement from QM lending rules   Bank of America, Quicken Loans, Wells Fargo, Caliber Home Loans, along with the Mortgage Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association, the National Fair Housing Alliance, and others asked the CFPB to do away with the QM rule’s debt-to-income ratio requirement     The Ability to Repay/Qualified Mortgage rule was enacted by the CFPB after the financial crisis and requires lenders to verify a borrower’s ability to repay the mortgage before lending them money.     But, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not bound to this requirement, a condition known as the QM Patch. Under the QM Patch, loans sold to Fannie or Freddie are allowed to exceed to the 43% DTI ratio.

About the Episode On this episode, I’m joined by real estate entrepreneur, speaker, coach, trainer, and Ylopo Realtor in Residence, Barry Jenkins. With a career that has spanned over 2 decades, and the unique setup of running two teams at the same time, Barry brings a ton of experience to the table. His real estate knowledge led him to become a consultant at Ylopo, and now he has a high-level role.    There’s a lot of outside influences coming into the real estate space, and it has been great for our industry to get refreshed by disruptors. But at the same time, these tech disruptors coming into our industry, also need a real estate agent’s insider knowledge to bridge the gap between tech and real estate. This is the space Barry has stepped into by partnering with Ylopo.    Barry began his career at the age of 18 and has spanned two decades. He currently runs two teams in Virginia Beach, Va. and his teams consistently produce over 200-250 a year for several years in a row. This is with Barry in the office part-time. He is also an executive with Ylopo as the Realtor in Residence where he also trains their users. His passion is Wife, two children, and their little dog. His systems allow him to leverage technology so he can spend time with them.   No matter how much the real estate industry changes, there’ll always be massive opportunities for the agents and companies who come from a place of contribution, and keep our fingers on the pulse of consumer needs. What the consumer needs now more than ever are agents who can start talking to them earlier in the buying process, especially when there are so many options and it can be hard for them to know what to do. If we provide this guidance, we’ll always be relevant.  In Today’s Episode, We Talk About;   01:05 - What got Barry interested in real estate, and how he went from selling shoes to real estate.  - How he runs two real estate teams at the same time.  - Why Barry wanted a tech-driven team.  - What it takes to achieve success in real estate.  - Barry’s role as Realtor in residence at Ylopo.  - What Barry’s excited about, what he has changed his might on and what many people don’t know about him.  Guest Info   Barry began his career at the age of 18 and has spanned two decades. He currently runs two teams in Virginia Beach, Va. and his teams consistently produce over 200-250 a year for several years in a row. This is with Barry in the office part-time. He is also an executive with Ylopo as the Realtor in Residence where he also trains their users. His passion is Wife, two children, and their little dog. His systems allow him to leverage technology so he can spend time with them.

Go Do That Thing! We all have that one thing in our business; the thing we know we should be doing to move it forward, but we just don’t do it. We avoid it, procrastinate on it, overthink and complicate it and get distracted trying the new, shiny, cool, exciting thing... instead of that one thing we know needs to be done. From lead generation to contacting your past clients, the reality is, there are a lot of things we know we should be doing that we aren’t because we’re afraid or we’re just complacent. But here is the dirty secret no one wants to talk about... when we don’t do THAT thing, we delay our growth. So we challenge you to dig past your resistance to doing what you need to do. Stop chasing the shiny objects, stop putting too many things on your plate and GO DO THAT THING.