Real Estate Disruptors
Let's Disrupt Real Estate. What is Real Estate? Not all markets are created equal. Gulf Coast to Space Coast talks to the leaders in the industry throughout Florida just as if we were sitting across a dinner table. OH! and our hosts and guests change with every episode just to keep you on your toes. We cover the Gulf Coast of Florida to the Atlantic Ocean, think Tampa, Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Daytona Beach, Space Coast, Miami. We talk about investing, marketing, staging, and many many more related topics. Start listening to the Real Estate Disruptors and see what Real Estates Past, Present, and Future will bring?
Real Estate Disruptors
Revolutionizing MLS: Unlocking Real Estate Potential Without Compensation Structures
Discover the revolutionary shift in MLS systems as we challenge traditional norms with Chris Lumia from Stellar MLS. Have you ever wondered what the real estate world would look like without compensation structures tied to MLS listings? Tune in to learn about the innovative steps Stellar MLS is taking to prepare brokers and agents for this transformation, and why MLS remains an essential pillar for real estate professionals, offering more than just compensation.
Navigating the intricate world of third-party IDX feeds within MLS requires precision and care. Chris shares valuable insights on the compliance protocols that safeguard data integrity and protect brokers and agents from potential risks and liabilities. Understand the shared responsibility in upholding these standards and learn why reporting violations is critical for maintaining a fair and trustworthy platform. We emphasize the importance of vigilance and adhering to these guidelines to prevent serious consequences and preserve the integrity of the MLS system.
Maximize your real estate potential by leveraging MLS's expansive resources and strategic opportunities. With Stellar MLS's vast network across Florida and Puerto Rico, agents can tap into powerful referral systems and exploit niche markets for enhanced success. Discover how tools like MLS Match, Hurdler, and specialized training sessions can enrich your business strategy and boost your credibility in the competitive real estate arena. Join us as we share personal stories and announce upcoming learning opportunities that promise to elevate your expertise and grow your real estate business.
Hello everybody and welcome back to the Charles Ruttenberg Reality Podcast. I am here with my cohort, Amir.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey, how's everybody going?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great and we have a very special guest with us today. We want to just jump right into it and thank you so much, Chris, for being with us today. We have Chris Lumia from Stellar MLS joining us today. Guys, Chris, what is going on?
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm happy to be here. It's been a happening year in the MLS world, but we're really excited at Stellar. We think that there's some great things coming to this industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, we had a guest on last week and he was an appraiser and I jokingly said it's been kind of a quiet year in real estate hasn't it?
Speaker 2:Oh, never, never, yeah, we quiet year in real estate hasn't it?
Speaker 3:Oh, never, never. Yeah, we had a few changes happen this year, right, just a few, just a couple, and you know Stellar's uh.
Speaker 2:You know I got to commend you guys. You guys have been, you know, uh, with uh, the videos that you've put out, or Mary Jo, uh, mary Jo Cohen has put out, um, you know, throughout the removal of compensation, the addition of concessions and then the removal of concessions. I think the videos you guys have been putting out were really instrumental with getting the agents on board with exactly how we were going to move forward, and so kudos to you guys for doing that.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, and we tried to stay on top of things. So even long before the case even went to trial, we were meeting with our brokers, we were getting feedback, we were having these conversations. So we really tried to make it so that this was not a surprise. But of course it was a major change and we were really impressed with the amount of agents and brokers who attended all of our sessions and who really just got on board with the new way of doing business.
Speaker 2:There was no other option. Right, absolutely, we pay our dues, we want to do business, so we pay attention and try to find that good way forward. So, just talking about compensation and being that it has been removed from the MLS as of August 6 of this year, we get questions all the time from our agents. You know, here at Charles Ruttenberg we have close to 2,300 agents, so you know, we, we, we have a a big voice there and so I take a lot of those calls and you know I, I back you guys up as much as I can. But I get this common question of hey, compensation is being removed, what's the value of the MLS now? What should I say to them?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and we occasionally get that question, but what we're seeing is it's kind of interesting. So, even though the MLS is changing within the United States, globally, there is this new interest in these countries that have absolutely no MLS or organization in the real estate markets to form MLSs. And as these countries are looking at the value of the MLS and they're deciding whether or not they want to create one, compensation has nothing to do with their decision. So if you look at certain markets, especially in Europe and Asia and different countries, you have these portals and owners can enter their own listings in the portal. Real estate agents can enter listings directly and there are no exclusive listings, so you could have the same property listed five different times at five different prices. So it creates a nightmare for consumers to try to navigate this information and then think about that way as well.
Speaker 3:If you have to enter, if there's multiple websites within the country and you have to enter your listings directly, when anything changes, you have to remember to go in and change it in all those places as well.
Speaker 3:And how many people are going to remember to do that in every place they have the listing. So now you have inconsistent information across these sources. You don't have any real-time data on the market, you don't have exclusive relationships, you don't have an ecosystem where buyer representation can even occur. So through the MLS, regardless of whether or not there are offers of compensation, you have all these other benefits Just having that single source of comprehensive inventory, having the real-time publishing and real-time information, the data standardization and data integrity, the idea that MLSs follow data standards, that you can feed the data back into your broker back office feed or other software the agent might subscribe to that we have checks in place to make sure the data is correct and accurate. So those are all the benefits of the MLS and why an agent is going to want to belong to the MLS, regardless of whether or not there are compensation offers in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's still the greatest marketplace we could possibly ever have. You know, to put one listing and it does get some feeds out of there to some third-party portals, as we know that, the Zillows and realtorcoms that we're aware of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and that's along the same lines of what I tell people. You know you want to have, you don't want to have the wild, wild west out there. You know you need to have that central location that you're putting the properties into. They are doing their checks and balances on stuff. Otherwise, you know you're going to have, like you said you're going to have, you know, one website saying one thing and another website saying another thing. And where is we're in such we live in such a litigious society that you know if, oh my gosh, this one changed five minutes ago and this one didn't, and oh, but I have the printout here that says you know, then all of a sudden you get a lawsuit because it was invalid information.
Speaker 3:So, having that one dedicated search engine, if you will, and even the major portals they draw directly from the MLS. So Zillow and Homescom actually are powered as brokerages and they have IDX feeds, and then Realtorcom has a data feed. But when you enter a list in the MLS and you make a change, the change flows directly to those sources. So once again, it's all accurate data that flows from the MLS.
Speaker 2:Right, right. No, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1:So along those lines sorry, I didn't mean to jump in on you, amir Along those lines, how is it going to affect? Listen, the one thing you guys have that's amazing is the data. You have the data about the transaction down to the detail for appraisers and for appraisal purposes and for the agent to really go out and do a fair CMA. You know, we knew exactly what the concessions were and what the commissions were Now going forward. By the way, we do know that you guys wound up pulling seller concession field out of there, not to. You know, brag a little bit, but we're going to brag a little. Amir and I have been telling agents for three months that was going to happen.
Speaker 3:And all of a sudden we wake up.
Speaker 1:one day, Actually I was over at the convention and I get a text from Amir that says yeah, we were right 68 days ago that seller concessions are coming out, but along with that, I want your thoughts on the seller concession field coming out. Now you have really no data about compensation. How is that going to affect the people that are drawing off of that, that need it?
Speaker 3:So here's the good news the seller concession fields were only removed for active listings with the idea that there was just too much confusion around those fields. And now we do allow in the public and realtor remarks for statements to have to do with just general credits, concessions, allowances, that can't make any mention of compensation. But there are ways that you can just make a general statement. You know seller is willing to offer a $5,000 closing credit to the buyer or whatever the amount might be, but there can't be any tied compensation. But when you close out a listing there is a field it's actually a required field called seller paid buyers costs and that field, when closing a listing, you include the aggregate of any credits, allowances and concessions given from the seller to the buyer. And that field can be added to a results grid and can be used by appraisers to see the total amount of credits and allowances that that buyer received.
Speaker 1:So when you guys are aggregating that data now or the third parties are aggregating that data from you, the only thing if I'm right here, correct following you the only thing that won't be accurately documented would be in the event that the buyer themselves actually paid their agent outside of closing and it went right to the brokerage.
Speaker 3:That would not be documented. If brokers share compensation with each other, that would not be documented. But in the seller paid buyer cost field that would be all costs given, all credits given from the seller to the buyer, so that could include. Some of that might be compensation, Some of it could just be a general concession, it could be the roofing allowance, but the whole idea there is. It still helps the CMA process. It helps appraisers see okay, even though it's sold for this amount, the seller then credited the buyer this amount for whatever it was for.
Speaker 3:We don't know what that's for. We don't want to know, Because what we do not want is to have a field where it's reporting. Oh well, this seller provided this much compensation. Because we can't have any data in the MLS that speaks to compensation and that helps set compensation rates or anything along those lines. But by having a field just for general seller-paid buyer's costs, we know exactly how much the seller gave the buyer and what really the true selling price of the property was. And what the buyer did with that is kind of their own business isn't it really?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the buyer's own business. The buyer negotiates with their agent how much that agent expects to be paid. They receive credits from the seller and then they can do whatever they want with that. They can use some of that to pay their agent. They can use it for other things and that's none of our business at the MLS. But we just want to make sure that we have data to help with valuations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just to digress for a second, because that seems to be what I do sometimes is a really bad idea for broker to broker compensation. You're not saying that, I'm saying that. We've been out saying that for a long time. Uh, it just doesn't make any sense for the broker to be, uh, the third party handling the money between the seller and the and the buyer's broker. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, you know, we've been. We took a lot of heat for that.
Speaker 2:We did I mean, I know whether you know it or not, chris, but we came out a little while before the settlement. Well, just after the settlement happened, and we said at Charles Ruttenberg we're not going to share compensation anymore. It's going to come directly from the seller if the seller wants to. Otherwise, it comes from the buyer.
Speaker 3:And what's nice about one thing that's a good thing about the settlement, and especially nice from the the MLS end, is that now that compensation is removed from the MLS, we can be completely out of the business compensation. We can focus on what we do best. We provide the clean, accurate data and we let brokers make those decisions, and every broker can now make the decision on how they want to do business moving forward. Now, of course, there could be some more changes coming down the pike from other sources Sounds that way, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:But right now the MLS can just focus on what we do best and let the brokers decide how they want to operate business-wise.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. How do you guys feel about over there how you just arbitrarily got drug into the settlement and being the police force of this third-party aggregate sites and stuff like that? I mean they kind of task you with a job that's almost impossible and threaten to sue you if you don't do it properly, correctly. Am I accurately conveying that message?
Speaker 3:Stellar MLS. As this is all very new, we are taking a very cautious approach in terms of how we enforce the rules. We're enforcing the rules quite strictly and we've got some attention on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we know Some viral social media posts.
Speaker 3:But really the idea is to take our role very seriously, and we know too, it's not just us, but it's all the brokers who subscribe to Stellar. We want to make sure that we are doing our part to be in compliance.
Speaker 1:How are you guys going to address this third-party IDX aggregate feed? That seems to me to be the biggest challenge you guys would have. I'm assuming I'm going to be way above my pay grade here. There's some kind of algorithm that could see Because I sign license agreements daily around here for agents to form a site with GoDaddy or whoever, and all of a sudden they want an agreement with you guys. I've got to sign off on it. I'm thinking I hope they're not doing something bad with that IDX feed. Is that going to come back on me to the agent? How are you going to find it, Am I?
Speaker 3:going to jail what's happening? So there are very strict rules that anyone who receives a data feed from the MLS cannot use that MLS data to power a site that aggregates offers of compensation from multiple brokers. So brokers can augment the feed from the MLS. So if you want to add on your own listings additional information for your listings from your office only, that's fine. But the minute someone takes a feed from the MLS and starts to create a site that aggregates offers of compensation from multiple brokers, that's a big problem. How are you going to?
Speaker 1:find it.
Speaker 3:One thing that we've learned and, if you think about it this way, the brokers who are following the rules, the agents who are following the rules when they find out that someone else is not, and they're getting an unfair advantage from not following the rules they tell us pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Gotcha.
Speaker 3:And not only that. We have processes where we do all the IDX sites. There's other things as well out there. There are other mechanisms, but usually something is happening like that we get notified within minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Is there a protocol of what you guys would do in place? Would you shut them down? Would you find them immediately? What would you do?
Speaker 3:And this is a little beyond the scope of what I do, and so far, to my knowledge, we have not really seen a lot of issues. But pretty much what Stelman says we're supposed to do is we're supposed to shut down that feed until the issue is resolved.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:So if we find out there's an issue that feed gets cut off.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, absolutely Just cut off, Don't pass go, not kicked out of Stellar or anything, the punitive side of it.
Speaker 3:That's still. There's still a lot there that the settlement's kind of vague on, but I think the feedback that we're receiving, to our understanding, is that we have to cut off the feed until the issue is resolved. Gotcha, if someone is a multiple offender, that could. Oh yeah, I'm sure they're going to lose their license with Stellar at some point.
Speaker 1:Have you heard of any nationally other than you guys that have had an issue with this yet?
Speaker 3:I have not Now. That doesn't mean that there haven't been cases, but so far I think that people understand the stakes are high, because not only are they in risk of losing their feed and not just for themselves but, for example, if a broker is licensing data for multiple agents, if one agent is misusing that data, everyone gets cut off and you know so. The consequences are high. But not only that, it's opening themselves up to other types of liability and scrutiny from other places outside the MLS. So so far we have not seen anyone misusing MLS data to create a site that aggregates compensation. Now whether or not that's happened elsewhere, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Sure sure.
Speaker 1:So 100% clarity here for me, moment of soberness here, Any one of my agents is misusing that data, there's a threat that the whole brokerage could get shut off. You would come to me because obviously I'm responsible for the agent.
Speaker 3:It would depend on how it's licensed, but like it could. So if you're licensing feeds for your agent's websites and then there's misuse somewhere, somehow and it's all from the same feed, it could impact multiple people.
Speaker 2:And is that just shut off the feed to their website?
Speaker 3:or does that shut off the agents and the brokerage from using Stellar MLS? Well, in this case, it would be the data feed, just the data feed. The data feed would be shut off Gotcha gotcha.
Speaker 2:So they still have access to the MLS. We still have access to the MLS.
Speaker 3:So if I offered them up on a platter to you and the attorneys and everything you'd give attorneys and everything you give Charles Ruttberg really a little grace. But the idea for everyone listening do not use your MLS data fee to aggregate offers of compensation. I think.
Speaker 2:Mike and I are both telling you this together.
Speaker 3:The MLS side from your broker side. Do not do that.
Speaker 1:No, no, no no.
Speaker 3:Do not test the consequences, don't be the first one to see what happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't want to be that first one. I know we had one agent that what was it? Left a word compensation in the field and they got hit with that $500 fine, really quick First day, like the 18th or something. It was crazy so we knew Stellar was serious about it.
Speaker 1:We did, and as you should be. They task you again with a very tall order, being the police of this, and you guys are just trying to run a business out there.
Speaker 3:Well, not only that, but just also to make sure that all of our brokers, that there's nothing the MLS can create liability for. Not only the MLS, but all the brokers want the MLS. Yeah, no, it's definitely important.
Speaker 2:So, Chris, as practices are changing due to both the settlement and other market forces, what are some new ways agents can leverage their MLS to increase the value they provide to their buyers and sellers?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there's so much. And a lot of times we think the MLS is a very transactional system. Oh well, I have a buyer. They just gave me the criteria. I can go set up a search or I can go enter my listing that I already have into the MLS. But if you really just think of all the different ways you can increase your business, there's so much in the MLS Number one because Stellar has such a wide coverage area and we were talking about this before the podcast. But we serve about 20 realtor associations in Florida plus Puerto Rico, so we're in about two dozen counties and really we have listings in 65 out of the 67 counties in Florida, but we are the primary MLS for about 20 counties. It's a referral network. So if you have a seller here in the Tampa Bay area who's moving to Orlando, who's moving to Sarasota, you can use the MLS to see, hey, who sells the types of properties or who works with buyers of those types of properties, and I can make an informed referral. Now we just launched a new product called MLS Match to help with the referral process. So the MLS is a referral network, hyper-local stats and that word is a mouthful.
Speaker 3:But thinking of the MLS and MLS data, not just to say, oh well, in Pinellas County, this many single-family homes sold this month, but to really drill down. Go into the neighborhoods where you sell. In this specific zip code or in this subdivision in Pinellas or Pasco County, homes with pools in this size range sold for X amount of money. Homes without pools of the same size sold for this amount of money. So you can now start to give very specific stats to a seller.
Speaker 3:Hey, you have a pool. You know that pools on average bring X amount of dollars to a sale and get very micro with it. Yeah, exactly. And just use MLS data. You know four bedrooms versus three bedroom homes. What does a four bedroom go for in this neighborhood versus a three bedroom? And use that in your marketing as well. You can create hyper-focused mailing lists through our tools, either through the Matrix, public record search, through Realist, through IMAP, and you can now mail all the owners of four-bedroom homes in this neighborhood with that stat hey, your fourth bedroom brings this amount of value to your home.
Speaker 1:I was at the board that they asked me over there on Tuesday to talk to the new orientation people, and that's exactly what I told them. I said listen, when you have bad news to tell to a seller, let the data do it. Don't you be the bearer of bad news Like, hey, here's the information and look at it and you tell me what price you should reasonably come up with. Use the data. But also good news.
Speaker 3:And sometimes, especially like a lot of times, if know, use the data, but also good news, you know, yeah, and sometimes, especially like a lot of times, if you look at the aggregate stats, it doesn't tell the whole story, because right now, especially here in Pinellas County and Tampa Bay, we have some areas that were just ravaged by storm surge and the way that markets can behave might be very different the more the inland areas that are higher up and we could, you know, the data can really start telling very specific stories.
Speaker 1:I had as you were walking in. I was clearing out email and I think I had 42 notices from MLS about expected closing date not met due to this little storm that just blew through on us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know, I agree, mls does have a lot to offer, you know, and people I. One of the common themes that I see with some agents out there is they just don't know about the extra products and services that you get with stellar MLS. I mean, you know, take, for instance, riz Media. Yeah, I mean that's a great way to keep an eye on what's going on in the real estate market and you get that free with well, not free.
Speaker 3:it's included in your membership, but that's $199 value. So to subscribe on your own, it'll be $199. Then you have RE technology, which would be another I can't remember a couple hundred dollars. And we have Hurdler, a financial tracking system.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful yeah.
Speaker 3:You can actually track your finances, your expenses, your mileage to a specific listing or to a specific buyer and see, hey, I work with this buyer two counties over, but by the time I factor in my gas and all these other costs, this is how much I net from the transaction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you start making better business decisions, exactly, and that's included in your MLS subscription Lead generation tools.
Speaker 3:So through a down payment resource that's a product I love, where you can actually see for any listing the down payment programs that might qualify for. There's a tool. You get your own custom link where you can share with potential buyers first-time buyers, military buyers, anything along those lines where they can see which down payment programs they might qualify for and you get a lead. Oh wow, I didn't even know about that I did not know that, absolutely that is super cool.
Speaker 1:Can you take like two minutes and tell us about the new product, MLS Match?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so MLS Match. I mentioned the MLS as that referral network. So not only are we in so many counties in Florida, we're also the MLS for Puerto Rico and there is actually a lot of movement between parts of Florida and Puerto Rico. We have a data share with First MLS in Georgia, gulf Coast MLS in Alabama. Plus, we have a reciprocal access agreement with Omni MLS in Latin America. So there's a huge network out there. Through MLS Match, you're able to. It's almost like a LinkedIn meets, a transaction management platform where you can find agents in these areas and you can line up a referral through the platform and it even has. You can even set up the brokerages to transmit the referral fees to each other. Right, do it?
Speaker 1:Got the documents for you the referral agreement and everything in there. It's a pretty extensive platform.
Speaker 3:But once again, it's this whole idea of thinking beyond the box, using the MLS not only when you have a buyer or a seller, but also looking is there an additional source of revenue by making a referral? And to me, I think so many people lose out on that because they sell a home. The person's moving to Atlanta. Well, why not? We have the data, we know who the agents are in Atlanta who are working with buyers in whatever city they're moving to. Why not make a referral and increase our revenue stream?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, you know we run into that all the time. Where you know an agent, they get a lead, whether it's a buyer coming in from Atlanta or going out. But mostly when they're coming in, hey, you have a house to sell in Atlanta. Do you have a house to sell in Atlanta? If you don't have an agent, I can find one for you, and that MLS match is a great tool for them to use.
Speaker 3:Or someone says oh, I was going to move to Tampa, but now my job is actually remote, so I think I'm going to move further out. I'm going to go down to Charlotte County and make a referral to an agent down in Charlotte County.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can research the agents right on there, because before you'd have to, you know if I had a buyer or whatnot who was moving out of the area and they're moving to Utah or whatever. I don't know anybody in Utah. Now I've got to get on Zillow Realtorcom, try to figure out you know which agents are doing the most business, who's got a good profile, and then vet them out. This program really saves a lot of time and money or time and energy.
Speaker 1:Where would you recommend that an agent go to? Like, we know the basic classes they have to get to get their access and stuff like that, but an agent that really wants to jump in and figure it out, what would you recommend they do to inform themselves on all the products you guys?
Speaker 3:have. So it depends on where they are, and our training team offers a variety of webinars. We have classes at the boards, but I spent my first five years with Stellar as a trainer and it can be overwhelming If you look at all the products, if you look at all the classes. The first thing I always say to do, if you don't have one, write a business plan and figure out what is unique about you. What can you bring to the table in a transaction. If you had a career in HR before coming to real estate, maybe it's going to be corporate relocations.
Speaker 3:I met someone once and I love this. He came to one of my basic classes. He was a retired physician from Chicago and his niche was going to be other retiring doctors from the Midwest moving to Florida. So figure out what your niche is, what types of transactions you want to do, because a lot of times people, I think, just start too broad and once you know what you want to do that's unique, then look for the products, look for the classes that will help you in that market.
Speaker 3:If it's going to be working with first-time buyers, you're going to want to learn more about that down payment resource tool. But if you're looking to do luxury all cash sales that's probably not going to be very helpful. Right, right, Once again, if you're going to do corporate relocations, all the referral tools are going to be really important. So we have some great classes. I love the one on lead generation tools, because there's a lot of great stuff in the MLS to help you get business. Not only use the MLS to.
Speaker 1:That would be the number one place to start for most people that could be a place to start.
Speaker 3:We have classes on working with buyers, if you're going to really focus on that side of the transaction, other classes about how to enhance your listings with MLS tools. So, really, what type of business you're looking to do, what's going to be your specialty, and then the class title should speak themselves after that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't know it all, but find out what your business plan is, what your niche is going to be, where you think your wheelhouse is, and take the appropriate classes. But that lead gen stuff I would be all over that.
Speaker 2:I'm interested to take a look at that.
Speaker 1:Because that's the number one thing agents want to know is what do you guys do for leads? Well, I want to send them over to Chris. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well before I worked for the MLS, I was actually an agent here at Charles Ruttenberg.
Speaker 3:Really, yeah, you guys didn't know that A long time ago, back in the day, many years ago, but my niche was condos in North Pinellas. So what I would do is I would add to my MLS search grid things like the pet fields and the condo association fees and stuff like that, and really become an expert. Oh well, in this complex, well, there's actually two different associations. If you live in this building, you're paying this bunch of fees, and this building this bunch of fees, and this building you're allowed to have cats In this building you're not, and you'll be surprised at the variation, even within a condo complex. And by me being an expert in that area and using the MLS to get data and to building my expertise, that really gave me some credibility, yeah, and what's going on in the condo market right now I've been telling people for the last year.
Speaker 1:That that's going to be. You can be a problem solver with these buildings, absolutely Okay, I know we are getting running out of time here.
Speaker 1:So, chris, you for everybody out there, chris has agreed to take part in our October 29th, the next training at PRO. It'll be via Zoom and PRO. We're going to have our panel of experts and Chris is going to be there, one of the panelists. So we're going to run it kind of like a broker town hall, or I should say more like a town hall thing, and we'll point the questions to the right people. So thank you for the commitment to that. I would just say this I don't know if you want to give people your contact information Maybe it's just for the brokerage levels that you're doing, but are you out there? Is there any way they could follow you or get a hold of you if people want to talk to you?
Speaker 3:Yes, number one. I'm on LinkedIn, so follow me there. Stellar MLS we're very easy to reach. So if you have anything that's just a product-specific question, if it's oh, how do I do this in Matrix, you might want to contact our support center first, support at StellarMLScom or call us 407-960-5300. But if you do want to talk strategy or anything I talked about today and you feel free to reach out to me, chrislumia at stellarmlscom.
Speaker 1:And he's on it, guys, because I emailed him a lot here in the last three or four months and got back. Okay, we're going to wrap it up with one last thing. If you do have, with the recent changes and everything and you were an agent you know this business as well as anybody do you have any tip, one good tip for agents or brokers out there building their business?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So one thing I kind of said is determine your niche Based on your background, based on whatever you did before real estate. What can you bring to the table? So if you're new, you're really not new because you're bringing with you a lot of experiences. And if you've been doing this for a long time, what have you done? What area of expertise do you have? And really just double down on that and then look at what the MLS gives you to help you with that focus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, take it from there All right, Amir, you've got a closing thought.
Speaker 2:Hey, chris, we just want to say thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate everything you've done for us over the past couple weeks and whatnot Well, not even weeks, months, but thanks for coming in and spitballing with us a bit. And we look forward to seeing you at our October 29th Pro Panel.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Thank you, and I want to give you a heartfelt thanks too, chris. We've had to work together in the last few months to get through these hurdles that we're around and some changes and meshing your operation with my operation. What noise is the easiest? And you've been the consummate professional to get us through it. You've been gone out of your way to come to our office, really help us drill down and get this right, and I really appreciate that we appreciate the partnership and thank you so much for all of you.
Speaker 3:For wantingsteller MLS All right guys.
Speaker 1:That's it for this week's edition of the Charles Ruttenberg Realty Podcast. We'll catch you guys all next time.