Get In Real about Real Estate with Howard Chung and Paul Balzotti
Success strategies for local Realtors in the Pacific Northwest. Howard Chung is the VP of John L. Scott Real Estate Affiliates and owner of GreenOceanTV. Paul Balzotti is the owner of John L Scott Real Estate in Bellingham and co-owner of John L Scott Real Estate in Anacortes. Hosted from the Anacortes John L. Scott office, they discuss strategies for Realtors to have consistent success and live life as a contribution.
Get In Real about Real Estate with Howard Chung and Paul Balzotti
Market Shifts and Clear Cooperation: Navigating Real Estate in 2025
Paul and Howard dive into the significant industry shifts happening in 2025, including clear cooperation policies, lawsuits, and changing market dynamics that are reshaping how properties are bought and sold.
• Clear cooperation policy requires listings to be shared with all agents and the public, not kept as private exclusives
• Approximately 80% of sellers only speak with one agent, making transparency in listing strategies crucial
• Private exclusives risk creating a fragmented market that's less efficient and potentially problematic for fair housing
• John L Scott's "Listing Launch" strategy maximizes exposure through coordinated marketing and strategic open houses
• Successful selling requires understanding both the "backlog of buyers" and how to reach "off-market buyers"
• Social media advertising and financing knowledge (like 2-1 buydowns) are essential skills for today's agents
• Creating weekend buzz with proper presentation and pricing helps overcome buyer hesitation in a high-interest rate environment
If you're a real estate professional looking to navigate these changes, make sure you're staying informed about policy changes and focusing on transparent, consumer-first approaches that maximize exposure for your listings.
Well, welcome everybody to another edition of Getting Real, the Getting Real podcast with Paul and Howard and it's been a little bit, paul, since we've actually been doing the podcast and, of course, this is really mostly for real estate brokers, agents, people in the real estate industry. If you're a mortgage, you know insurance maybe, uh, and you know this is going to be relevant and there's so many things happening in 2025, specifically right as far as industry changes, market changes oh my gosh lawsuits and everything else happening. I mean, what's some of your take on right now, paul?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I wanted today to talk about clear cooperation, sure, and the CCP, and there's a lot of lawsuits going on. Right now it's a wild time in real estate and so I wanted to. We sometimes do this over the computer, but I love these green chairs, yeah, and I love getting you and Anacortes with me, yeah, and so I wanted to get in the green chairs and Anacortes with me, yeah, and so I wanted to get in the green chairs and Anacortes. And I wanted to talk to you about clear cooperation coming soon, all the lawsuits going on, and basically give a really good explanation of John L Scott's view on that, because I think we have great messaging, we have a great philosophy that could be articulated and we do have a stance on all this.
Speaker 2:So I guess, just to break it down a little bit, there's lawsuits going on for companies that want to do private, exclusive listings where they'd be just published with their company, be just published with their company. There's also the National Association of Realtors, nar, who's just changed their policy to allow for coming soons where you could list your home and not publish it to Zillow and Redfin and the public portals, but it would need to be listed on their MLS for all of the realtors to see at least that it's coming soon. And then you have the Northwest MLS, which I consider one of the more progressive MLSs, and private MLSs that are not part of the Realtor Association, that have had a policy of clear cooperation in that when you list you immediately bring it to not just the MLS members but to the public as well.
Speaker 1:So is that a fair breakdown of the different ways, clear as mud, right, because when I'm going out to real estate offices and I ask brokers and agents specifically like, do you understand what's happening with clear cooperation policy, and they're like, what are you talking about right now? And so even people who've been in the business for quite some time there's lot of confusion because, like literally every day there's like something new that's happening, and and then all of a sudden, zillow will come out with a response to something, and then redfin will come out with a response, and then homes willcom will come out with a response, and so there's just a lot of like talk and news and different things, and so it's like hard to stay ahead of what's actually happening. And plus, literally we don't know what will happen in three, six months from now. Right, all the transitions and some of these new rules, how that will actually play out. And at the end of the day, we're still trying to help consumers, aren't we? You know, like you know, I guess if there is one common ground is just like we're all saying, we want to make, uh, you know, um, good, uh policies, um, that are fair. You know as well as you know good business practices for consumers as well as the real estate community. You know we want, you know we're all in favor of choice, obviously, right, that's been happening for a couple of years now, pretty big with the buyer agency agreement and the commissions, and so that's been, of course, you, you know, in the conversation for, you know, well over a year at this point.
Speaker 1:But now we've got this really interesting, nuanced, clear cooperation policy discussion that's happening and again, ccp what it's kind of referenced as and you know it's been around for a long time and most MLSs. All it's basically saying at a very simple level is hey, we don't want you to like keep things private right in your pocket, especially not disclosing that to your client, because that's unethical. If you're just trying to sell it to your own buyer, for example, or my buddy Paul in the office, hey, I'm just going to share it with you or just my office and we're going to keep it just exclusive to ourselves, and so I think that's kind of the spirit. If you have it to yourselves and you're not, for example, disclosing it to your seller, your seller thinks it's going to be marketed to everybody and get you the most amount of money in the shortest period of time possible and that's not happening, then you're actually, you know, not abiding by the rules and the ethics, and you know all the things that you've agreed with your seller, right, your client. And then, of course, if you're a buyer and like, you've been waiting for months, if not years, sometimes, right, for that right property to come on the market, and then you discover a house came on the market exactly where you wanted it and it's already sold and never even kind of quote-unquote hit the market. And so, like these are all the big kind of questions I think we've got to be thinking, as we are navigating through these changes, what's good for consumers, what's good for sellers, what's good for buyers, what's good for the real estate community? You know how are we giving the most amount of options, all that?
Speaker 1:So, again, it can be somewhat confusing. One thing I will say for sure right is, nobody likes to go backwards, right, paul, yeah. And so you start thinking about, like, oh, I really love my, you know my smartphone. And so you start thinking about, like, oh, I really love my, you know my smartphone. But you know, there are, like certain companies now even coming out with smartphones like with no apps. You know it's got GPS, but like, okay, there's no apps on it, right. So it's kind of going arguably backwards, right. So I don't know if, like, some of those are going to stick around, you know, but the idea is that you know there's an MLS policy in place, right, where agents across firms are sharing with the same rules. I mean, all that came into place for a reason, and part of it was also fair housing, right. So we want to share.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, like back 100 years ago in the United States, if you were a consumer looking for a house to buy, you would have to go to one office what listings do you have? Then you would have to go to another office next door which listings? You would have to go to one office what listings you have? Then you would have to go to another office next door which office you know listings you have? That was prior to clear cooperation policy, right today, all around the world, there are still places trying to put in an mos policy, right? So if you want to buy in japan, for example, like, what listings do you have available? What listings do you have? And so to a consumer, like, what website do I even go to? I've got to go to multiple websites. What information is actually real? Can I trust it.
Speaker 1:So we're trying to create much more of that transparency, trust, good processes, good policies in place, and I think that's why, right now, when we are talking or we're hearing about firms that want to do private exclusives right, the coming soon conversation and some of those there is some things that we should be concerned about Now. What's the talk around it is this is more choice for consumers. Okay, I guess it's a choice, but we need to pair it with a really important statistic Most consumers, most sellers, choose one agent the one that they trust, the one that's in front of them. Oh, you really like you were recommended to me. Oh, I'm going to use you. So when you say you're going to have this private exclusive thing, I guess I'm just going to trust you, because you know they're just wanting. We're concerned about selling their house.
Speaker 2:I think it's like 60 something percent 80% or 80%. Only talk to one broker.
Speaker 1:That's right. 80 only talk to one. Yeah. So then if I basically kind of say, oh, this is going to be our process and so you, because of the trust that's already established, you sign, you have the choice to not do that, I suppose, and just go straight to the mls and not have private exclusive, for example, but then, like, I think those are the parts that I think there could be a little bit of concern on right, and that's what that why companies like John L Scott and a lot of the firms are saying, ooh, private exclusives. We should be somewhat careful if that is in fact going to happen, because when it happens, you know, kind of with one firm, then all of a sudden other firms adopt it. Right, because it's like, well, if we're going to do it, then we're going to do it too.
Speaker 1:Then next thing, you know, the consumer is just like now, which listings are available? Now I got to go back this is going back to the old school days I got to go to three, four different companies to find out which listings are actually fresh and live and available and how long were they actually on the market. Okay, because I don't even know anymore, because it's a lot of confusion out there, and real estate professionals need to understand it and also have their own position. They need to be able to articulate to their client what is most important for you? Is it getting the most amount of money in the shortest period of time possible? If that's actually the case, then exposing it to all buyers in the market what we call the backlog of buyers is also important right from day one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, when you do have private exclusives and things like that and that's an option, it's just to me it's pretty obvious that you know, even though it's, even if it's the spirit of it's good, and even though there could be situations, very unique situations where it was it really made a lot of sense for a high-end seller to maybe test out the market with a certain price or whatever. To me it's super obvious that over a period of time when the realtor is in a position where this is a situation where it might allow them to pick up the buyer themselves and sell it themselves or attract more buyers for themselves, because they can say, oh, I have these private listings and so basically use the seller to use the exclusivity that they've got to then bring themselves more business. Yeah, it's so clearly like there that that's going to happen. Yeah, and that clearly is not always going to be in the best interest of the seller. So how can you assume that the broker is going to always give the right advice of what's best for the seller and if your policy is always it's best to wait?
Speaker 2:I think that we definitely, no matter what happens in the future with the legalities of what you could do. I think what I'm hearing from you and what I understand about John Scott and our policy is that we always do believe that from you know the vast majority of people that going directly on the market when it's ready Is the best policy and that's why our philosophy, we should talk about it. It's called the listing launch Great, great terminology, but not just great terminology. What I like about how we do things is um, this idea of you, know I I think there's also the um. I've heard that you know some companies are going to have their own books again. What you want to talk about going backwards like come into our office.
Speaker 2:We have this listing book, yeah, yeah, yeah, um, and of these exclusive things and and then having these exclusives, you got to come to me, you got to come to me, instead of having it be about us. Yeah, um, when we're going through and we're breaking down everything for the seller, what we're gonna do it is truly every single step is how do we get it to the most amount of people on day one? It's like the opposite of like stage step, like slowly going on the market, and it's because of that backlog of buyers. So, let's, why don't you give a description of the backlog of buyers? So let's, let's. Why don't you give a description of the backlog of buyers? Because you'll do it better than I will okay.
Speaker 1:So before I go into the, the backlog of buyers, let's let's talk about a couple things that you talked about right in this, in the psychology of exclusivity, right, yes, so the idea is like, hey, paul, I've, I've got maybe a special off. You know listing that only I've got. Okay, so my office has right, we've got a list of just listings that we have right. Now the psychology there is just like, ooh, I'm going to give you an opportunity to take a look at something and I'm giving kind of like this feeling like you've got this special deal that nobody else has, right, so it's just me and my office, right. And then as a consumer, you might be thinking, oh, is that a special deal, is that a lower price? You know, like, can I get maybe a really good deal? Now I already told my seller, hey, we're going to do kind of like this exclusive thing and we're just going to get feelers out, you know, just to a limited group, and so then of course, you come in and say, oh, yeah, so that's a smaller pool of buyers, right. So that's kind of like the psychology that we're kind of like saying we're being the middle people in this exclusive model. That's basically what's happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and when you were saying John L Scott policy, it's not really the John L Scott policy, it is literally the clear cooperation policy. We believe in clear cooperation policy, you know, like under the leadership, because that is the NWMLS policy. We think it's the most fair for consumers, you know, and you know being special as far as NWMLS specifically, you know they are being more progressive and you know we're really consumer friendly first and so, like it kind of led the way in a lot of the policies that have been changing around the country. So you know, I kind of applaud for, you know, the NWMLS and their position, kind of their approach. But, yeah, john Scott believes in 100% what's called seller representation and we've got our program called Seller Listing Launch, and we too are trying to use psychology right to a degree, but we want to make it available for all consumers, okay, so instead of saying, for example, oh it's just, you know just, we'll give you a private tour, it's just going. Hey, paul, you know the listing is live, it's available, all the buyers are going to be able to see it at once, right? So let's make sure if, like, this house meets your criteria, you're in there, so you have an opportunity to make a bid on it, so that you don't lose out on the opportunity. So it's still using psychology, but it's just being genuine and honest, like it's going to hit the market for everybody.
Speaker 1:Now to the seller. You know what we're basically saying is we are going to expose your property to every single buyer that's on the market with all the real estate agents simultaneously, and we're going to try to create a buzz, that opening weekend, right? So instead of just like, kind of like putting the house on the market on some random day, you know we're much more strategic in terms of our approach. So we want to invite neighbors, we want all the buyers you know to come in on the same day. So, literally that open weekend, open house. So, rather than like just one showing happening at that same time, we're going to list it. It's available for everybody to see online time. We're going to list it. It's available for everybody to see online. But then, as far as access to see the home in person, we're going to make it available for everybody on the same day.
Speaker 1:So that's all within the rules of the mls agreed upon by the seller. We're going to have that opening weekend. So, for example we listed on friday, all showings are going to happen at the open house right simultaneously, let's say from one to four, with maybe the uh, the neighbors coming from 12 to one. So you just it feels like a neighbor, like a you know neighbor, like party right. So, wow, there's a lot of people, there's excitement, um, and part of that psychology is going to be like shoot, I don't want to miss out on this house. This is a great house, this is a great community. I want to buy this home. Let's, let's do that, and that is part of creating buzz.
Speaker 2:That is what we do at john scott, that is, sell their listing, launch and I think even, like you, were interviewing one of your brokers who came from a much larger company and they didn't have any of that kind of strategy and he was just finding that this is getting their clients even more money right and as well as creating more exposure in such a positive way well, yeah, because I think that, um, if, if you that, if you're a broker, and I think at a lot of companies, what they'll do is they're kind of and I'm not saying this about all companies, but a lot of them do this where there's kind of this underlying thing that's really going on, where we're listing it on the MLS, it's getting syndicated to all the websites, they're putting the sign in the yard and so if you get, let's say, the new bar is professional photos, okay, so you get professional photos, you list it on the MLS. So that's kind of what a lot of brokers are doing. And then they can show a seller a nice brochure that says look, I'm going to put you on Zillow, I'm going to do all these things for you, when really they're, quite frankly, just not doing that much. And so what I love about what John L Scott's policy is with the listing launch, not only do we believe in clear cooperation as a great policy, exposing the home to the full market, but the psychology of okay, not only do we want to have the opening weekend with the open houses and everything like that and create that buzz, but we want the presentation to be there opening weekend. So we want the staging, the everything to be dialed. We want pricing to be positioned right. We want to. When we put it on, there's an entire checklist and we have in our firms here we have a listing coordination team that follows that exact checklist every single time and that includes running social media ads right away. So we're running ads going through the whole checklist. That includes the just listed postcards, that includes the open houses, like you said.
Speaker 2:And why would open houses matter? To your point, what people don't think about when they think about open houses, a lot of realtors, a lot of realtors think oh well, yeah, we just pick up buyers there. This isn't what sells the house. I would absolutely say that open houses can sell the house Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Because, to your point, what happens is when you do open house, when you have the opening weekend, the presentation's right, the price is right, somebody sees it comes on on a Thursday and they see open house Friday, open house Saturday, open house Sunday. It looks really nice, it's priced really right, and you're one of those buyers that's been waiting and looking what's been happening. When they wait and look, they see that either homes sell in the first week, they sell in the second week or they sit. So the buyers already know if it's been sitting for more than two or three weeks, either they think something's wrong with it or they think I can come in and negotiate lower deal, whereas they also know that there's a lot of other homes in this low inventory environment especially that can get bid up or can definitely sell in those first few days.
Speaker 2:And so we're leaning into that and and and maximizing that buzz. So when they show up at the open house, if there's six, seven, eight other people there, even if they are the neighbors, they're thinking, oh my gosh, like this might be one of those houses that's gonna sell the opening weekend. So we're doing everything we can to help them with the presentation, help them with the pricing and positioning and help them with the marketing and the activity so that the buyers, to your point, the psychology is this is a house I need to move on this weekend and it works. And we ran the numbers at our offices and basically, the more we do the listing, launch, the more we do it the right way and the more the trend of getting the house prepared better, staging more often, doing the full launch, doing the social media ads we see the homes sell for more money and less time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it just it really works, I think, and there's an honesty about it. Yeah Right, like it is marketing your home, versus this kind of like quiet little backdoor-y kind of conversation which is kind of this other idea, backdoor-y kind of conversation which is kind of this other idea, and I think that's what sometimes I just feel like I just don't know how honest it is right. And so I think that's where it's so important. And you asked the question earlier, the backlog of buyers. You basically described it perfectly. It is that ready, willing, able buyer, willing to pay market value for the home that they've been waiting for, right, so want to buy a house. You know where we've been waiting on watching.
Speaker 1:So then when the house just kind of comes on the market, it's the mls and there's not that much fanfare about it. You know it doesn't show that well, it's cold in the house, you know it just. You know hasn't been cleaned up there. Oh, they're gonna. You know still, they're still cleaning it out when they come and take a look at the house. That is not the way to do solo listing launch. But we've seen people do that. But listing launch is just like oh my gosh, I'm getting in the first day. It's kind of like back in the day when, like, apple would release, like their iPhones, like, okay, you got to get in line, so now, okay, it's available for everybody simultaneously. And so now you're taking a look at it and like I would want to live here. This is creating that energy, this is it feels like that house party Right, and so that is really a good strategic and honest approach to how homes should be marketed. Right, I mean, that is the expertise of a real estate professional and you know.
Speaker 1:The other thing, too is homes are sitting longer. Not every single home is going to get multiple offers. There are still. That's. That's all the've got to get into is. This is a different market, and so it's just like depending on who you're asking and the type of listing. Oh my God, I got like five offers, and then other people are like I thought I would get one or two offers. I got no offers. I don't know what's going on. And so we have such a unique, different market because of the interest rates, because, number one, so many people with a two and a half 3% interest rate, they're not going to move. Right, they are set in place, they don't want to get rid of that mortgage and so like oh, the homes that do come on the market, we have got to make sure they are positioned and available for everybody and we hope to get that you know multiple offer situation or an offer that first weekend, but it might not.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean well basically. So we just talked about how we market to the backlog of buyers and we do. I think Lennox says 30% more opening weekend say is the term he uses, and I love that because it's like it really is 30% more work and 30% more money and 36% more effort and energy to drive more offers, more traffic on that opening weekend from the backlog of buyers. But to your point, so the backlog of buyers, they come through that opening weekend, the second weekend and if they've passed on the home, essentially right, then you're right. Then it's like what's the next? You have to have a new strategy now because with higher rates and with consumer confidence down, how many new buyers are really entering the market every week this time of year we're recording this in the spring. There is some new people entering the market seasonally in the spring and summer. But once you get through that group, how do you market and get it sold after week three, thinking about something other than what most realtors do, which is just price. They just think about price.
Speaker 1:That's called for, what it is. So I love the term, the backlog of buyers, which is a very I think it's probably mostly a John L Scott you know term where we've used that a lot. But it's basically the waiting buyer, right. The buyer's been waiting for the right house to come on the market, right, and they're on the market. They're on the MLS. As soon as a new listing that kind of meets their criteria hits the MLS, they get a notification from whatever system that they're in. So that's the backlog of buyers, right. So, as you said, the backlog of buyers, they've come in. We even did listing launch, but it's still not price low enough or the interest rates so high. I'm like, well, maybe, I don't know, maybe we should just wait, because when there's uncertainty, a lot of times people don't make a decision. So then they're like, okay, well, this house is on the market, it's pretty good, but maybe we should just wait. Maybe the price will go down, maybe another house will come on the market. Plus, it's like we could barely afford this house anyway with a higher interest rate, so maybe we should just wait. So there's less incentive, whereas with a 2.5% interest rate, right, or 3% interest rate, they're going to be absolutely, you know, like keen on purchasing right away. So, unless they're really forced to make the decision, and it's not the perfect house, people are waiting.
Speaker 1:So now you, as a real estate agent, you've got a dilemma. This dilemma is what do I do? What do I tell my seller when it's been two weeks, three weeks? I told them to price it based upon recent sold, which they did. I told them to clean up the house and do all the work necessary. So it shows pristine weekend one, they did. The other agents said no, clean up the house and do all the work necessary, so it shows pristine weekend one, they did. Uh, the other agents say no, it looks really good.
Speaker 1:Even the buyers have not necessarily said it's overpriced, it's just not good enough for them to make an offer, in which case then he just starts to get stressed because they don't know what to tell their seller. A lot of agents have never actually gone through this market where it's just like boy, it's priced right, it shows well, um, I'm doing all the right things marketing wise. I've done open house weekend, you know, a listing launch, you know. Even the second weekend, third weekend, I've done open houses and I'm still not getting an offer. What do I do?
Speaker 1:I think this is where it's so critical to be working with a real estate firm who can help you through this, guide you through this, coach you through some of these things, because this is where you're not only going after the existing backlog of buyers, right, you're also going after off-market buyers, and this is like where a lot of agents are like what do you mean off-market buyers? I'm like you know what? You need to understand exactly how to go after off-market buyers. Now I'll give a very simple example. There are so many consumers, buyers out there who've bought their home and they weren't on the market, they weren't expecting to buy the house, but the stars aligned and that house kind of came up. So they're an off-market buyer and then they purchased, right. And so our job as real estate professionals is to go after off-market buyers, in addition to counseling our clients in terms of price strategy, pricing strategy and timing strategy. But I think, paul, that's probably another podcast for another day. I'll say one thing on that. I'll say we're.
Speaker 2:We're number one in our markets on social media advertising and we make a big deal about social media boosting. Yeah, part of social media boosting is to market to those off-market buyers, because if you're actively looking on Redfin or Zillow or JohnLScottcom, you saw the home either way, but you may be not quite ready, or think you're quite ready, but you might still be scrolling through Facebook or Instagram every day, and so that's why the social media advertising we do is so important. But I agree there's a whole other discussion around moving from the listing launch into weeks three and weeks four, and it's not always. We can get into it next time, but the hint would be it's not always the price right and some that's right and some realtors will say, well, you've got to drop the price right now.
Speaker 2:That's not always the case. Lots of strategies around that, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's at least finish off with this understanding, because Zillow gets still 150 million views a month, right? Unique visitors okay. How many real estate sales are there? Well, in a year, especially in? Unique visitors okay, how many real estate sales are there? Well, in a year, especially in the past year, it's been way less. It's only like just over 4 million sales. So we have 4 million sales and yet there's 150 million people just on Zillow, right, just on that one platform.
Speaker 1:What does that say? That there's a lot of curious off-market buyers that aren't backed out there. It's just a matter of strategically marketing to them, and I think that's where the real estate agent of the next generation right, like who we are in 2025, this is really what we've got to be excellent at Understanding all the market conditions, the ebbs and flows, the changes. Also understanding how to really navigate the mortgage situation, because I feel like I don't know nine out of 10 real estate agents or brokers they're not talking about the 2-1 buy downs or they can't even articulate it and explain it. Because if a consumer is just waiting for it to be a little bit more affordable because they still would like to get a 30-year fixed mortgage, but under, for example, the 6% mark and that's the magic number for that consumer. You got to be able to talk about 2-1 buy down, have that pricing strategy conversation, the mortgage buy down conversation with your client. So that is something that I encourage every single real estate agent to dive into understand how those programs work.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's, yeah, it's being a proactive consultant.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so okay, well, good stuff. Thank you, howard. Thank you for watching and listening you guys.
Speaker 1:See you next time.
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