Kon Stathopoulos is one of the leading thought leaders in our industry and a real estate practitioner. As the Principal & Owner of McGrath West, Northwest & Hawkesbury, he and his team are writing over $32 million in GCI per year.
In this webinar, Kon Stathopoulos reveals how he uses Realtair to help him:
The tools will enhance your sales strategy, increase listings, and achieve greater satisfaction for your buyers and vendors.
*These techniques will work in both auction and non-auction dominant markets.
The #TechTuesday training series is a Tom Panos & Realtair collaboration
Kon Stathopoulos is one of the leading thought leaders in our industry and a real estate practitioner. As the Principal & Owner of McGrath West, Northwest & Hawkesbury, he and his team are writing over $32 million in GCI per year.
In this webinar, Kon Stathopoulos reveals how he uses Realtair to help him:
The tools will enhance your sales strategy, increase listings, and achieve greater satisfaction for your buyers and vendors.
*These techniques will work in both auction and non-auction dominant markets.
The #TechTuesday training series is a Tom Panos & Realtair collaboration
and I'm so excited my good friend I can call you a friend, a very good friend actually, and a colleague in the industry, but in recent years I would call him arguably the number one thought leader that is practicing real estate. He runs one of the most incredible corporations. We spoke at ARIC the year before last. I still remember introducing you and you had not slept. I still remember you saying I did not sleep last night and I said, like how much did you not sleep? And you said to me I did not sleep at all. Do you remember that?
Kon Stathopoulos:Yeah, I do, tommy. Yep, I do. I get PTSD from ARIC, so I'm glad this year I'm going to go and visit and be someone in the crowd and not actually present. But it was an incredible experience and you're very kind, mate, you are a very good friend.
Tom Panos:So, con, two years ago, your topic was zero to 20 million, I think, in two years I think that was the name of the title 20X in 20 months. 20x in 20 months sorry, it's quite extraordinary that right now you own a number of McGraw businesses in that Paramatta region. How many offices is it Con? Six, six real estate offices, and I think you're doing I think you've exceeded 20 million in fees, isn't it? Am I right?
Kon Stathopoulos:Yes, we're closer to 32, 33 at the moment 32, 33.
Tom Panos:Extraordinary. I still actually remember you on your first day in real estate, your first day in real estate.
Kon Stathopoulos:I still remember 10 years ago, tommy, how long was it 10 years ago, in January this year, 10 years ago.
Tom Panos:It was 10 years. That day, in that room at Edgecliff, where you had just moved over, an executive from a non-related real estate industry came in, which is always sometimes an advantage, because we can get a little bit predictable in the way that we look at the world. Our principal shows us look at the world this way. We then become a sales manager. We look at it their way. We then become a principal. We look at it their way. And often it takes someone that has not been in that world to actually say have you thought about doing it this way? Have you thought about doing it this way? And Con, one of the architects you started at, like this is your second year that you pretty much ran an auction in the start of January, or sorry, your open homes began at the beginning of January. What day was your Super Saturday?
Kon Stathopoulos:So this is February the 3rd. We pushed it back a week this year because of the Australia Day long weekend, but this is our fourth year, so we started. Our first Super Saturday auction was 30 auctions on January the 30th of 2021, I think it was, and we did 31 auctions. Year two, we did 62, year three, we did 67. And then this year we did 130 on one day on-site auctions.
Tom Panos:Kane. You're listening to the leader of a $32 million GCI business. You're listening to someone who has just put 100 auctions up in January, wasn't it?
Kon Stathopoulos:February 3rd 130 on the 3rd.
Tom Panos:February 3rd. Those of you that are watching on Facebook press the share button. Those of you that are watching Zoom in the chat box. Before we leave this session, I'd like you to all type what your number one learning is. Claude, I'm going to put you on the spot. I'm going to tell you this I believe that you're one of the most powerful one-on-one transformational coaching practitioners in the business. With your consent, it's 30 minutes. I'd love to offer a 30-minute one-on-one, as if they were working in your office and you were sitting down. 30 minutes, if you don't mind doing it on Zoom, we're going to pick a winner by the end of today. We'll pick a winner. Is that okay? Absolutely, yeah, beautiful. Share the love, everyone Share the love. And on Facebook, the number one thing you picked out of this session.
Tom Panos:So, claude, this is called Tech Tuesday. We run it and I know that you're a client of Real Tear and you're a client that's actually gone in a lot deeper than most other clients. You've actually embedded it as part of your processes. You run a very process-driven business. I know that in the time that I've done work with and met that works in your business, I've seen the luxury of working in that environment. You just plug in and pretty much you can list, sell, negotiate and not have every other distraction involved in real estate, which means more dollar productive activity, means more listings. More listings means more sales. More sales means everyone's happy, correct, absolutely Spot on. So we've come to Real Tear and, by the way, susan, if you can put the Real Tear link that if anyone wants to join Real Tear, that's not part of Real Tear, if you can just put the link in the chat box and on social media. I just want to ask you, claude, how did, by the way, how did the auction go? Was it a successful day? The February?
Kon Stathopoulos:the 3rd Great, great day. We had 73% clearance on the day. We sold in excess of $156 million worth of property on the day GCI wise. You know that with including our sole prize, it's a $2 million afternoon.
Kon Stathopoulos:But I guess probably the biggest thing that we get out of Super Saturday is obviously the digital market share, the signboards in our communities. We met 7,000 buyers, we had 12,000 inquiries, we had almost a million online views on the portals. But it's actually the flow on effect of what Super Saturday does for our team. We just closed off February. We listed, we had a record month GCI wise, but we also had a record listing month. We listed 211 properties for $314 million in value. So what that's done now is that that's really set us in really good stead for the balance of this half, which gets us through to winter and then that feeds us through into spring and then it, you know, keeps going on. So it's an incredible initiative. It's not proprietary to us. One can do it and there's a lot of people that have replicated it and we're totally comfortable with that because we think that this is a strategy that actually gets people really good results in a period that's traditionally quieter.
Tom Panos:Beautiful. You're going to do it again next year, absolutely Okay, so, con, today the bits I want to talk to you about are the issues that we have every day in real estate. I was on. We did a podcast yesterday with John McGraw and your mate, troy Malcolm. Actually, I know that you did crossfitting. He actually had a mark on his nose. John actually asked him during the podcast what happened. He said was it a bar?
Kon Stathopoulos:The dumbbell With 24.1, he would have done the crossfit workout of the day.
Tom Panos:Yeah, because John McGraw goes I still cannot work out how you did that with weights. He goes it doesn't make sense, mate, it doesn't make sense Anyway. So I want to ask you this market I got their view what's your view of this current real estate landscape? Con.
Kon Stathopoulos:From a seller or a buyer, from an agent, from an agency.
Tom Panos:Your view as a principal.
Kon Stathopoulos:My view is I'm in control of the market between my ears, tom. So whether the market's good, the market's bad, the market's right up here for me. So our view is that every day we have an opportunity to help someone purchase a property, lease a property, sell a property or live in a property, and if we can do a really good job in our communities, we can be transparent, ethical and help people from a genuine perspective, then we'll create our own market. And whether interest rates are going up or down, there's low stock, high stock it really doesn't bother us. We don't want to be in control of market conditions. We want our own behaviours and actions to be what we're responsible for.
Tom Panos:Geez, I love that response, and the reason I like that response is winners have always got the view I will spend my brain calories, my efforts, my energy on things that I can impact, and I will let go of the non-impactable things, because I only have X amount of brain calories to use a day, so we must use them. Use them wisely. Can I ask you, mike, what are your hours like? Are the hours crazy, or have you been able to work out a system that gives you both a good life outside of real estate?
Kon Stathopoulos:What's it look like for you? You know what, tom. Sometimes the hours are crazy, but for the most part I have early morning starts. I'm up at 4.30 and I know that real estate people go. I get up at 4.30 and I train and I meditate and all that sort of stuff. But I get up at 4.30 because I get to spend the first two hours of the day by myself and I get to train and I get to walk my dog and spend time with my partner and my kids and get them ready for school and whatnot.
Kon Stathopoulos:But I guess we're at a point now six officers, almost 100 agents across our group we'll do $2 billion in sales. We've got great infrastructure and that allows us to be really impactful in the areas that matter the most. So, rather than our first 12 months, which is all energy spray and pray, try to be everything to everyone 100% of the time, we're a lot more, I guess, focused and centered on where we need to be. Balance is a big thing for us. I mean, I just came back from a holiday but I kind of don't have the clock in or clock out card.
Kon Stathopoulos:Whatever the job requires is what it requires. So if I need to have a big day, which I will today, then that's okay, because I can take some out of the bucket on Thursday or Friday or next week or whenever I need to. So it's one of the beauty about being in our industry is that we're in control of our destiny. We're not employees, even if you are a commission-only employer or a debit credit we're actually in control of the output. Therefore, we get to control the input of when we need to take a rest or a break or whatever it might be.
Tom Panos:So a 4.30am wake-up would give you how many hours sleep, Like what time do you get to sleep? 9.30am, 9.30am, Okay, so you're getting what health professionals consider 6.30am to 7.30am sleep every day. Okay, con what part? What do you use Realtare for?
Kon Stathopoulos:Well, now, from Super Saturday, we use all parts, so pitch, sign and sell, and sell has been an incredible addition to the suite of the Realtare products, particularly for us. When you think about having 130 onsite auctions on one day, the amount of you know bidder registrations, bids, the amount of offers, the amount of you know buyers that we're meeting, it's been, you know, incredibly powerful for us to use data and insights so one to be able to not model or predict behaviour on an auction day, but to give us a really good ability to be able to forecast what an outcome will look like. But B we use this data in the living room so we can actually outline to an owner you know where bidding started, where the property was announced on the market and then how we, you know, worked with that one buyer to move them up to reserve or above, and tell the story with using data. So we're big fans of the Realtare suite of products. Plus, they're really good people to work with too.
Tom Panos:Okay, Question. And pricing buyers to make more offers in this market. What are the things that come to your mind?
Kon Stathopoulos:You know, I'm sitting at McGraw headquarters right now and we just had a coaching session with John and one of the things that I've learned over the last 10 years about real estate is that you can't stuff up the truth. So, being radically transparent, using comparable, you know, telling people what's being listed, what's being sold, having a process that you can clearly communicate to buyers around making offers to vendors about receiving offers, I find when it's clear and consistent for every buyer, buyers feel more confident, they'll trust you more and they'll want to be able to engage with you. As opposed to, you know, not having a transparent process at all.
Tom Panos:Can you say that first sentence again?
Kon Stathopoulos:You can't stuff up the I'd only use another word, but we're online so I won't. You can't stuff up the truth.
Tom Panos:Someone said to me yesterday on a Zoom but Tom, how do you remember everything? And I said what do you mean? And they said well, how do you remember what you've actually said to someone? So there I said well, listen, I mean I've just actually. I normally just say what's actually happened, which is the truth, and the truth is one version, and that version is normally that's what it is. It's not like you've got to think of three or four versions. So I said I never have an issue because I know that what would have said is what would have actually happened. Right, it's not like I've got. Does that make sense to you? A?
Kon Stathopoulos:hundred percent, and that's exactly our philosophy is why. Why spend energy and effort? Hang on that guy, the guy with the gray hair. He came in. I told him 2.1. And that woman I told her to go across the road. I told 2.3 because he's going to sell man. You know what? It's 2024. People want real time information in speed, with urgency, but they also want to have a transparent experience. Communities are the people that we serve and if I'm going to go around and I have to think about the half truths or the things that I've said to others, it's going to do my head in and it's going to take rent space in my brain and I don't want that. So our philosophy is you can't stuff up the truth. This is what we've got on our agency. These are the comparables that we used, this is what's been recently listed, this is what's been recently sold, and I can actually justify why our price is our price.
Tom Panos:It's pretty simple. And on Saturday, conn, I was doing an auction. The reserve has been crossed out by the owner with a pen and increased from 1.5 to 1.6. And the agent goes to me Tom, can you speak to the owners and explain to them the importance of having a realistic reserve? Listen to this. I said, guys. Obviously, the higher the reserve, the more challenging it's going to be coming, but we're going to try and get you the most as we can. And then I said how did you arrive at the idea of crossing out the number and increasing it by 100? And you know what they said.
Tom Panos:After listening to the market summary our agent gave us last weekend the one that you do on Facebook. It sounded like the market was back and booming again. So we thought we'd give us the benefit of the doubt. So I actually said to the agent do you understand? You've got two stories. You're telling a story to these people and you're telling a story to the buyer, a story to the seller. They're watching everything that you're doing. If you want to talk the market up and say that you got 13 out of 13 and prices are booming, make sure that five minutes later you're not going in hammering your owner saying take your price down 100%.
Kon Stathopoulos:And I think you know one of the key things that we look to do and we don't do anything. That's remarkable, Tom. What we do is we follow the basics, we nail the basics. We've got a high set of standards. We're trying to get better every single day. We don't tell half truths. We're radically transparent. We work with people because we know that the impact on someone that's going to go and try and buy a house this Saturday where we may have been quoting not us, but the market may have been quoting one at 1.1, but we know that the owner won't sell for less than 1.3 and we've already had an offer of 1.270. That has an impact, an adverse impact, on someone's life.
Kon Stathopoulos:Now, this is a serious business. We're dealing with births, deaths, marriages. We're dealing with all sorts of good, bad and ugly things. Why do we need to make it inherently harder for someone to transact with us? That's why they don't like us. That's why they don't trust us. That's why we're second last in terms of the most trusted professions in this country.
Kon Stathopoulos:So our philosophy is you get more bees with honey. Tell them the truth. You can't stuff it up. You don't have to spend the calorie intake in your brain around. What did I say to them? And the worst thing is that sometimes we do get it wrong. But if we can back that up with data and we can demonstrate to an owner that we're doing absolutely everything here's my 14 steps that I've done over the last six days the property's passed in or I'm not getting offers, or whatever it might be If we can demonstrate that we are working towards their best interests and we are building trust and rapport with buyers, that's where the union of happiness exists on both sides, and that's what we try to do every single time.
Tom Panos:Goal. You use the word transparency. I want to ask you, a very big auction-oriented business, I would say more than half your properties are auctioned. You reckon yes, Absolutely yes. Okay, Creating transparency in the bidding process. When you look at your team and does Real Teh help in any way, particularly with a myth? Yes, he does a lot of. He's your biggest auction listener in the company I would say yeah, he is, he definitely is.
Kon Stathopoulos:He had 15 auctions on Super Saturday, as did Joel Hollings and Brad Panner U2, kim McLeary had 11. We've got a very strong auction culture. But in saying that, we've got a culture where, whatever the right strategy and the right method of sale for the owner and that property in that market, that's what is the best outcome for us. But I guess where Real Teh helps is if you're interested in a property, you can either follow it or register to bid. So by doing this you'll be updated with any changes to the property, including whether there's been an offer that the owner is willing to accept if you decide to sell prior. And what we're finding is that people are following, just kind of like on realestatecom or domaincom. They can save and share and that's a really good indicator of whether or not there's interest there.
Kon Stathopoulos:That may be silent, it could be a neighbour, it could be another potential seller. This is actually giving us some data around. Hey, we have more interested parties than when we thought because we may not have uncovered. I mean, buyers aren't going to tell us if they don't have a high trust relationship with us. They're not going to tell us or show us all their cards right. So by using the platform and they can register or follow, what we're trying to do is actually create more transparency for people to follow. They can actually see the story of the property, but, more importantly, we can also track the data on who's actually following. Is this a future seller? Is it a buyer seller? Is it you know someone in the community? Is it one of your potential pipeline sellers? And the beauty about this is that we're always on display. We may as well know who's actually interviewing us at the same time.
Tom Panos:I can see how tech. So this morning I did a transaction, not in real estate but in travel. I'd gone to the website Sky Scanner. So my daughter's overseas in Denmark, in Denmark, finishing uni and I made up my mind con, I want to go for three weeks in July, june, you know, go and see her and I'm going to go to Greece. So I'd gone on to Sky Scanner about a week ago and I was looking at the flights and then there was a button. It says press this button to get alerted if the flight that you want to do goes down. I get an email today and it's sub. Look, anyway it was. It was around 17, 18 grand. When I saw business flights to Europe and it's dropped down to 13. Like they must have done some special and straight away I thought that's it. Bang, I'm doing it. This is the journey of a customer in 2024. Technology is looking at probability. Technology allows you to actually move away from spray and pray and have a targeted approach to people at the right time.
Kon Stathopoulos:So technology is an enabler for people to get real time information to make the best informed decisions. And the agents and the agencies that don't adapt or adopt to technology whether it's real tear or any other type of tech unfortunately they're the ones you know. The portals aren't going to dissim disintermediate agents or agencies. It's going to be technology the people that don't use it. So why make it harder? Make it easier. That's why people like you know, before you bid, exist and that's why you know we work with people like Dot and CrossFit that, can you know, actually do reviews for contracts for our buyers and do it in real time for us.
Tom Panos:Everyone, everyone you've mentioned there are the people I work with. So the quality, the quality businesses that you see value, I'm curious getting the highest possible price for them. We are essentially warehouse price maximizes, If you really see. That's what we bring to the table. We bring in marketing and negotiation ability to get someone more money than the next person. Right, correct, con? What do you reckon the difference between an agent that's good at negotiating and good at marketing and has got a good database and a process, versus someone that's got the opposite all of that bad database, bad negotiator, bad marketing, bad everything, bad agent. What's the difference for the vendor?
Kon Stathopoulos:outcome, price percentage Mate tens of thousands of dollars minimum. I mean, look, I'm very blessed that I have had the opportunity to work with the best agents, I believe, in the country through McGraw, through my head of sales role. But I'm also very blessed that I get to work with some of the best agents on planet earth right now. You know I've got a mid-Niak doing in excess of 200 transactions Corey Skibarus, ruma Mundi, joel Hollings I mean these are all superstars, right? The difference between the agent that actually is engaging their community, works with buyers, has a great reputation, doesn't burn people, makes it easy for them to transact, demonstrates value, also makes the buyer feel that they've actually paid the most amount of money. But they also feel good about it. I think you know. I mean, we had an auction two weeks ago. I've been away for two weeks, but we had an auction two weeks ago. We hit reserve and you know it was quite a high reserve. Our owner probably had been listening to something online and we had a guide of one four to one five fifty. The reserve was one six. It got to one six and, you know, rather than call it on the market and rather than just kind of go, great, we've hit reserve, let's get it sold. We pushed that auction and it's all for one, eight, ten. Now Some agents are happy when the market, when the properties hit, reserve that it's on the market, it's for sale.
Kon Stathopoulos:The best agents I see are the ones that can extract the most amount to maximize the profit for their vendors whilst also balancing a great buyer experience. So I guess for us, the way that we use sell in terms of being able to generate a higher price is and I made some notes so I'm just referring to it because I reflected on this after our SuperSata it was the first time we actually engaged it. So what do we do? We looked at it. We made it easy for buyers to be able to do business with us.
Kon Stathopoulos:The platform notifies all interested parties of any updates or any changes to the property at any time so they can actually see what's happening in real time. It's a clear and consistent process that people can use to put offers forward. It provides transparency in the buyer process so they actually can see that this is real, and it allows people to be able to participate so they can bid and sign from anywhere. So if you're in Denmark visiting your daughter, that doesn't exclude you from being able to participate on the platform. It actually enables you to be able to do business anytime you want. So I think the speed of being able to use the technology and making it easy and transparent is where that can help actually get a better price for your owners, coupled with a great agent, great agency that's got the right skill set, the right mindset and has done their job.
Tom Panos:How do you use real tear or any non-real tear? But because real tears? Putting it on if you can see, if there's any ways that we can bring them into the conversation, creating opportunities for targeted prospecting.
Kon Stathopoulos:Oh well, I mean, look if you're using data. So, whether you're using agent box or home pass or real tear, you're collecting information. So our belief mechanism we met 7,000 buyers last month, right, 6,775 buyers, something like that. There is an intent for every buyer of why they have come through to a property physically right. Our job is to be able to sift through them and to work out what was it that enticed Tom Panos to come and look at this property. Was it the location? Was he a neighbor? Is he a future seller? Did he love the architecture?
Kon Stathopoulos:So I guess data gives you insights that enable you to have better conversations in real time. So when we use the pitch product that real tear have, we can see when an owner has opened it right. We can see when an owner has gone back and revisited and looked at it over and over again. Would that change the dialogue as opposed to not having that information? Hey, tom, I'm just checking in. Have you had a chance to look at the proposal versus? Hey, I know Tom's looked at this six times in the last three hours. Tom's in decision making mode. Right now might be the best time for us to jump on the phone and actually have a conversation in real time.
Tom Panos:All right, that's absolutely gold Team. I'm gonna give you a minute or so to put your comments in there. What are some of the learnings you've had so far? Listening to the conversation with Conn and I gotta tell you I can't see on social media at the moment, but I'm having a look here Scott has made it and Scott's a good agent, trust me he says I'll keep it simple, everything and it resonates. You've got this. You've got this. A few, oh, john's being very nice here Get real tear. Yes, flattery will get you everywhere, john, but, conn, can I just ask before we finish off here today because I know that 11.15 is when we've got your time tool is identifying hot buyers and sellers with real tear is much easier than not with real tear, correct? I?
Kon Stathopoulos:will think about it. If they're registering to follow the property and they've got an intent, then that creates a hot list straightaway that you can actually engage with. Hey, tom, I saw that you were following the property, you know. Were you looking at buying, selling? What was you know? Where are you at in your journey?
Kon Stathopoulos:I think the thing is for us is there are a lot of distractions in real estate.
Kon Stathopoulos:There are a lot of things that we should be doing, we could be doing, but if we're not nailing the basics around prospect list and sell, we're not speaking to our clients every single day, being radically transparent, being able to help them transition with that next move, whether it's a buyer or seller, we're not giving them the whole truth 100% of the time, making it easy for them, then you will disintermediate yourself out of your marketplace.
Kon Stathopoulos:The agents that I see have the best cut through and the best success are the ones that keep it simple you can't stuff up the truth and they nail it 100% of the time and they follow a process and they use technology as an enabler and they use, you know, things like real tear or whatever it might be. They're the ones that are winning right now, right, not the ones that are kind of trying to. You know, use technology, social media. You need to have all of those things. Please don't get me wrong, tom, but less is a lot more okay Because there's so much noise out there. Tell your owner the truth. Use data to be able to back up why you're giving them evidence around a price increase, reduction, whatever it might be, why this is a good offer. And do the same thing with your buyers. Make it easy on both sides and you'll actually create less friction and you'll have better longevity in this game.
Tom Panos:Oh, beautifully said. Ladies and gentlemen, you've been looking at the owner and proprietor and he's been chatting about a number of things, but mostly about his Super Saturday experience that finished on February. The third does 32 million in GCI a big real tear fan, conn. We've had a number of people that have commented. A lot of people absolutely love. I've learned the transparent with all the parties in real estate. It's the best. When you can't stuff up the truth, people love that. You can't get caught out with the truth, authenticity and the way it goes. Listen, I'm gonna give it to Scott. Scott's a real estate gym member, he's a great agent and I just know he's gonna really value that 30 minute conversation with you. Scott, hit me up through the real estate gym. I'll line it up. Conn, I wanna thank you so much. You're welcome. Those that have been on social media. Thank you as well for joining in. You've been listening to Constatopoulos on behalf of Real Tear on Tech Tuesday. Thank you so much, conn. Thanks, tom. Cheers, mate, good to see you.