Raising the Flipping Bar with Derek Marlin

How does the #NAR Settlement impact #realestate agents?

• Derek Marlin • Season 3 • Episode 30

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In today’s episode, we dive deep into a topic that's making waves across the real estate industry: the National Association of Realtors (NAR) lawsuit and how it's reshaping real estate commissions.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  1.  Understanding the NAR Lawsuit: Discover the background of the NAR lawsuit, why it happened, and its implications for the real estate market.
  2. Impact on Real Estate Commissions: Learn how real estate commissions are being affected and what this means for both buyers and sellers in today’s market.
  3. Expert Strategies for Navigating Commission Changes: Get practical tips on how real estate investors and agents can adapt to the new rules and continue to thrive.
  4. Insights from Industry Veterans: Hear Adam and Rick’s unique career journeys, from poker tables to transaction management, and how their diverse backgrounds shape their approach to real estate.
  5. The Future of Real Estate Transactions: Explore predictions on how these changes will influence the real estate landscape moving forward, including potential new regulations and the role of transaction coordinators.
  6. Protecting Yourself in Real Estate Deals: Learn why understanding contract clauses and deadlines is more critical than ever, especially in the wake of the lawsuit.

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Connect with Derek Marlin and ELEVATION!

Derek on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/derekmarlin

ELEVATION’s website: https://elevationinvest.com/

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ELEVATION on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elevationinvestmentproperties


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#NAR #Commission #RealEstateAgent #RealEstate #HomeBuyers #Sellers #Buyers #Settlement #Colorado #Denver #DerekMarlin #ELEVATION #Investment #Veterans #Lawsuit #Podcast #RealEstatePodcast

Welcome to raising the flipping bar, the go to podcast for aspiring and seasoned real estate investors. I'm your host, Derek Marlin, and I'm the CEO of Elevation. We're a real estate investment company based right here in Denver, Colorado. We'll dive into smart investment strategies, market insights, and essential tips for scaling your real estate ventures. Whether you're making your first investment or your hundredth investment, this podcast is your blueprint for success in the ever evolving world of real estate investing. Get ready to elevate your real estate game and begin your journey with me. So we've got two of our heavy hitters here at elevation. Rick, I would love for you to kind of give us a little bit of your background. And when I say this, everybody always like does this really specific chronological thing, but like, give me some highlights. You've been in real estate for a long time. Kind of tell our audience a little bit about your background. Sure. Yeah, I've been in real estate a long time. And it was by accident. My plan initially was, Nothing to do with real estate. I was a marketing major and I had no idea what I was going to do for a career. I was actually just rounding and playing poker professionally. No way. Okay. And right about the same time that I started figuring out that that was late nights in smoke filled rooms with angry people because you're stealing their money. It wasn't the lifestyle I wanted. I had the opportunity that presented itself to just as a bridge to something else, start working in real estate. Here we are 20 years later, still doing it. So it's been an interesting path. It's taken me through all different facets of real estate, including traditional sales, on site sales, contract management, builder meetings for construction and development. And, Now, most recently more of the investment space. And tell me a little bit about your family background in real estate too. Cause you kind of come from the lineage of real estate people, which honestly is interesting that you don't really hear that very often. Like you hear about multi generational people, like my dad was an engineer and I'm an engineer, my grandfather, or I come from finance. So it was like, everybody worked on wall street, but like, you don't really hear about that for real estate. So I'm curious to kind of give the audience a little bit of your, your family background. Sure. as far as like making it a profession, it's not that long of a lineage. my father got his real estate, he was a serial entrepreneur. So he did all of the things and, he started to dabble into real estate, but it was my mom that really took that and she ran with it. So she became, one of the top producing agents in Colorado and, won several awards with a couple of different companies along the way. Nice. She's the one that really got me into it, but I think the lineage for investing goes even deeper than that. My, my grandfather, had a laser company in Florida and they produced lasers with military contracts. Like he put on, the laser that goes on the Apache helicopters for signing. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. Really smart guy. Obviously engineer, but also a great businessman. He ended up selling that business and, took his, financial windfall out of that sale and started to buy investment real estate in and around the Orlando area. And he got up to 30 some odd doors. Cool. In the eighties, I think it was, and, um, and then got bored with that and started another laser company, which did medical contracts. But, that was the origin of our investment history, and really how that sort of set the mindset, I guess, that, that led to how our family is, Evolve from there. Okay, cool. And Adam, I kind of want to throw that same question to you. Give our audience a little bit of your background. You've got a unique background as well of before real estate and getting into real estate. Give us some of those milestones. If they didn't go back and listen to one of our prior episodes about your background. at a place called the point athletic club. It's actually where I met his mom, Allie. She was one of my clients. Right. So she, at a certain point, she recruited me, convinced me to get into real estate. That was 2014. So yeah, I'm on year 10 right now, And so I joined VWP Van Westenberg partners, his mom's Allie Van Westenberg and ran their operations and sales for awhile, then ended up being her expansion partner out in Boise, Idaho. And I was doing that for about a year or two, after I'd moved out there. And then I joined PLACE as Director of Sales for the state of Idaho. so Ben Kinney, Chris Suarez owned PLACE, worked with Michelle Bailey out there. Oversaw, I think at the peak we had 25 agents. when I left to move back here to start working with you, they were down to 18. So, yeah, you're 10 now and, loving it and happy to be here. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I kind of jumped the shark a little bit. I normally intro our guests with a fun fact. So I do want to kind of backtrack a little bit. I would love to get a fun fact. Maybe let's start with Adam and we'll go with you, Rick, of something that people wouldn't think. Something different. It doesn't have to be super out of left field, but just give us a fun fact about you. Oh man, That's tough. I mean I still make music to this day. not as much as I used to so But I used that last time so I guess yeah fun fact i'm still an avid runner. And weights as well too, but I probably I bet I've ran over 10, 000 miles. I tried running for like two months. The first couple of months. No, I'm telling you, man, like I gave it a go. Like I even talked to people. They said, you have to go further. You have to run longer. You're going to hit that runners. It was not a single second when I thought to myself. Anything other than I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. Oh, good on you, bro. I can't. No, I love it. So, it's how I clear my head. It's like my meditation. Nice. Okay, good. So no, that's a great fun fact. Rick, give us your fun or unique facts. Well, I already mentioned I dabbled in poker for a little while, but, probably I would say that, most people don't realize that I'm a coach. I coach. All of the things I, I coached my son's basketball team, his baseball team, his football team. Cool. I've coached my nephew's football team. I even coached the agents that I partner with. So they're calling me up, asking me questions all the time. How do I do this? How do I write that? What should we talk about with this conversation? So, I think just by nature, I'm a teacher. Okay. And, I just wish I could figure out a way to profit from that. Well, I mean, I already mentioned I dabbled in poker for a little while, but, probably I would say that, most people don't realize that I'm a coach. I coach. All of the things I, I coached my son's basketball team, his baseball team, his football team. Cool. I've coached my nephew's football team. I even coached the agents that I partner with. So they're calling me up, asking me questions all the time. How do I do this? How do I write that? What should we talk about with this conversation? So, I think just by nature, I'm a teacher. Okay. And, I just wish I could figure out a way to profit from that. We're in the process. We're figuring it out. Okay, good. No, those are great. Let's jump into some of the meat and potatoes of today's episode. And that's obviously the NAR lawsuit. we're recording this at the very end of August. So we've been quote unquote in it, whatever, a week and a half. So this episode will drop in early September. So we'll barely be 30 days into it. Rick, Adam calls you the wizard. I would love for you to maybe give us a little bit of background about your transaction management company. Cause I think that helps set the stage for our audience to understand the volume that you're seeing. And then we can maybe kind of talk through, let's call it the high level nuts and bolts of this lawsuit. Sure. yeah, so my company is the Closing Concierge Company. Essentially, I was creating the T. C. Industry before the T. C. Industry really took off. T. C. Is obviously transaction coordinator. And so what they do is they'll assist real estate agents with the day to day back office scheduling, making sure the files are compliant, things like that. when I began doing this, I was taking it a step further, and it really was born out of necessity when we were working with, we had a new construction project in downtown Denver, 143 condo units that were all coming, being built from ground up, and they were all coming to market. Basically, two floors at a time, every three to four weeks. And so, we quickly realized we needed to have someone that just managed the processes from, scheduling inspections and walkthroughs and all that stuff through to appraisals and closings. And so, I took over that role and I realized that was going to be beneficial for, other agents as well, just in the traditional buy and sell residential space. And so, that's sort of where I created my business. And so I call it TC plus now because everybody knows what a TC is. It's very common but I do more, right? I negotiate on inspections and I have. I've done it thousands of times. I've got lots of experience drawn. So I've taken that and I've grown that into a business where I now work with, several agents, partnering over multiple different brokerages and, that gives me the opportunity to see how different brokerages are approaching. These new rules and to see more contracts that are implementing the new clauses and language, being executed and passed around. It all began, well, I don't want to say it all began, but this really, came to fruition due to a lawsuit that originated in Kansas City, Missouri. Now, we are agents in the Denver market. We work in Denver. So, I feel comfortable in saying just another reason for me to hate Kansas City. They've got the best quarterback in the NFL. Yes. And they, created this problem. True. So, yeah. essentially what happened was, there was a seller who was angry about the fact that they felt like they were. Obligated to pay a buyer's agent and that led to some additional litigation part of that litigation included the fact that the mls systems Include an offer of compensation in the listing. It was actually required in most every mls system and so that way buyer agents knew what they were going to be working for and they could Explain to their buyers that this is what i'm going to get paid and and you're not going to have to pay that the reason for the litigation is that, the attorneys and the plaintiffs argued that the, offer of compensation was in one hand, setting the price on the buyer agent market, but also inflating what those buyer agents were going to be paid on a commission by commission basis. And that subsequently resulted in, overinflating values and, It's an antitrust case, so they considered it price fixing, and ultimately there was a jury that saw, you know, lots of evidence, and they concurred with that. But from what I understand, again, not licensed in Missouri, haven't worked in Missouri, but from what I understand, they, and I think it was Iowa, both have, used to have contracts. That we're not very clear on how negotiable commissions can be and how, the offer of compensation can also be variable. It was, from what I understand, it really was kind of baked in with those contracts. They weren't very well written from the start, but, Nevertheless, that, that has created the lawsuit. They sued the national association of realtors. there was quite a judgment, but then a settlement was reduced down to 418 million. Yep. That's all it was. Yeah. Yeah. Um, a couple of pennies, a couple of pennies, right? So, anyway, it's, the settlement was inclusive of, uh, the national association realtor members and the associate, uh, the MLS is that are owned by the national association of realtors. And, The MLSs are really the ones that are now implementing these new rules. Okay. Perfect. And so before we jump to you, Adam, like give us maybe a little bit of a high level overview of kind of, yeah, how did we get here and where we act? Cause I think we can go down the rabbit hole or easily people can Google or use their favorite AI tool to talk about the NAR lawsuit settlement. But yeah, maybe just give us some backstory of why we're here. And then we can talk about where the hell are we going to go? Yeah. in Colorado, we've always done it quote unquote correctly. Yeah. We've had buyer agency agreements. Commissions have always been negotiable. It's standard operating procedure. I've been doing that since I got into real estate, to meet with the buyer before going to a property, doing a buyer consultation, signing an agreement, and then taking them. So overall, it hasn't really affected Colorado as much as some other states from what I can tell. furthermore, there's no real laws right now. So we have guidance being passed down, but Colorado real estate law has not changed yet. It may. DOJ has not passed new laws on a federal level yet. So we're still kind of in that weird pendulum going back and forth of what really is happening. So, being that we're still about a week and a half, two weeks since our MLS changed and not putting the compensation in the MLS, we're still gathering data on what it's going to look like moving forward. Yeah. So. Yeah. And not to mention the fact, and just what Adam was just alluding to was that, you know, the contracts haven't really changed because there's not actual laws that have been, I mean, the contracts have changed, but how we practice has not changed because there's not actual laws that are implemented in, in relation to the settlement, which is true. But it's also further interesting in Colorado that our real estate commission is at odds with the National Association of Realtors. Right. So, one of the, one of the. Changes that the National Association of Realtors settlement requires is that when a agent meets with a buyer to show them a property, they have to have a signed compensation agreement before they show that property. Well, our division of real estate Colorado says that showing a property is not actually a broker service. And because it's not a broker service. It doesn't actually require a compensation agreement because you're not providing one of the services that earns that compensation and so the The division of real estate in colorado is actually adamantly Well, they're not adamantly. I shouldn't say that but They're not going to require that and any buyer who calls them and says hey My agent told me that I have to sign this document before they can show me a house They're going to tell them no, you don't have to do that Yeah, so it's an interesting dichotomy to your point because there is Not any set rules Yeah, and i'm curious to see if that changes. I think at some point that's going to happen the question is going to be is that going to be through colorado? Is there going to be some federal regulation that comes down and then what is the time frame that that's going to happen? I have no idea if we talk in six months year two years never no idea. Well, and I think you guys kind of have actually triangulated on a great point that I want to bring up too, which is again, as the guy that doesn't even have a license, I was always blown away more on the traditional side of the amount of time and energy and effort that real estate agents working with buyers would spend running people around, showing them tons of properties. Maybe they were qualified, maybe they weren't. To buy a specific property and then they get cut out of a deal because they want to go direct to the seller or use Zillow or whatever else. So like, to me, I think this is actually a great opportunity to recalibrate and reset the bar from a professional services standpoint. I know we were talking off camera beforehand of like, there's so many other industries where you don't do this insane amount of work and it may or may not work out and you may or may not get compensated. Like, so to me, it's like, let's reset the bar in a professional manner. Kind of almost in defense of real estate agents who are providing great value. If you're doing a good job, I don't know if you guys maybe want to talk about that, but I was always blown away. I'm like, wait, you just showed how many houses and then they just somehow bailed on you. Like that was mind blowing to me. Yeah. I think it's, I think overall, right, there's going to be some plus and minuses coming from this lawsuit. over the past couple of years, just with the market, we've had a mass exodus among realtors. True. the bar to getting licensed is extremely low. It takes longer to be able to cut somebody's hair, school wise and it doesn't get a real estate license. Yeah. So, and, uh, markets. You know, brokerages would assign anybody with a pulse. You got a pulse. Great. Join my brokerage. I think it led to a lot of issues, a lot of realtors that didn't really know what they were doing. not negotiating properly, not communicating how this actually works with the client, which led to these lawsuits. So I think overall for experienced agents who focus on listings, it's going to be a benefit long term and it's going to wash out a lot of realtors that are not. That don't have value can articulate their value. so yeah, but also the offer of compensation was kind of an easy button Yeah, right. So for the buyer's agents, we could always you know I don't think any of us did that but a lot of agents would meet with a buyer and say oh i'm working for free But we can't use that language because that's not actually appropriate. We're earning compensation But it's free to the buyer If the seller is paying that compensation, but it was never that the buyer was off the hook. Yeah. All right. Our contracts in Colorado had always stipulated that the buyer had agreed to the commission amount that was going to be earned and that they were obligated to pay it. If a certain box was checked, there were two options, but that they were usually obligated to pay it. If the seller didn't. Yeah. Now the offer of compensation was the fail safe. So we can always tell that buyer, Hey. You're agreeing to pay me this percentage, but also at the same time, we have an offer of compensation and in the MLS. And if I show you one of these houses through the MLS, most likely I'm going to be paid by the seller. This really comes into play if we're looking at it for sale by owner. Yeah. And that was sort of the conversation. Well, now it changes just a little bit, but not a lot because all we're doing now is, is saying, we don't know what if anything the seller's offering so we have to incorporate that in any offer that we make And then if they don't agree to pay it, you know. We'll talk about what that means and whether or not you want to go through with it. So we're going to take a quick break and tell you about the next elevation Academy. If you're looking to dive deep into real estate investing, this is definitely the event for you. Our Academy features over a hundred step process to help you navigate every single thing from market analysis all the way down to every aspect of project management. So this is tailored for both beginners and seasoned investors. And our one day intensive training will equip you with the strategies and insights needed to elevate your real estate investing game. Spots are definitely limited. So click on the link below in the show notes to sign up and transform your approach to real estate investment. Okay. Let's get back to the episode. So Adam, like fill us in on how you feel like that this is affected the way we do business elevation, you know, cause a lot of this is more traditional in nature and we focus a little more on the investment side. Whether it's coaching up our agents on our team, how is this settlement, how, maybe some of the changes that we've made as a company to help navigate our folks through this uncertain time. Yeah. Mostly it's communication and getting people on the same page. So we held a, Rick actually led this, I do call him the wizard. He's, he knows everything about the contract. So he led a class for our team and just describing our fail safes that we're going to put in place basically now. And I'll let Rick touch more on this as he's the contract guy. They moved additional provisions from section 29 to section 30. And now section 29 is going to be offer of compensation, right? So it's a broker to broker pay, right? So if a broker gets a 6 percent commission with the seller and they're willing to co op, 3 percent while we'd be locked in for a broker to broker, or it's a seller will pay or buyer will pay, or you can check all three boxes. and there's going to be some pitfalls to many of the options. And one thing we're learning is that many brokerages are recommending different things. And so to be honest, we don't know what we don't know yet. We'll be gathering data over the next month. And I'd like to toss off to him because he'll have some good thoughts. Yeah, I know it's, given the nature of my business, like I've already seen probably. 15 contracts come through with these new, clauses incorporated. And it seems by and large that most everyone is just defaulting to the, seller will pay checkbox. And so essentially it's no different from how the commercial industry has already operated for, I don't know, years, decades, right? So in, in the commercial industry, there was never an offer of compensation through the commercial marketing. for listings. So there was always a broker broker compensation that was incorporated into that. And so the brokers would have that conversation. What are you offering? buyers in a commercial transaction had signed a buyer agency contract that said that they would pay a X number of percentage and then the broker would work it out with the other broker if they were going to get paid that through the compensation sharing. And so really the residential is now just kind of mirroring how commercial has always been done. What I'm finding is that most every contract is identifying that within the body of the contract, seller will pay that commission on behalf of buyer. Okay. if it comes up short of what, you know, the buyer and the buyer's agent had agreed to, that's where some of those other options come into play. but generally speaking, the industry is still acting as if, you know, that's the plan and that's what sellers are expecting to do. Because quite frankly, if a seller is not willing to cooperate in that way, they're going to greatly limit the number of buyers that are able to purchase their property. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing, right? It's going to be very market dependent right now when we have more homes for sale, then we have buyers wanting right. Supply and demand. Yeah, exactly. well, if you're one home in a neighborhood with 10 other active listings, And you're not willing to compensate a buyer agent when 90 percent 2023 NAR report, 89 percent of buyers work with an agent. Yeah. Right. So the 10 percent that don't bought new construction or they did some kind of an off market transaction. Um, and though the often the people that aren't working with buyers agents, their goal is to get the best deal on a property, right? So sellers not offering compensation, buyers trying to go directly to the agent that's listing the property. You're on two far ends. One's trying to get the most money and one's trying to get the best deal. So if you're one of 10 homes in a neighborhood and you're not offering compensation, you're probably going to sell for less. So I anticipate this could affect it in different markets. If we're talking 2021, yeah. I bet we would see some different changes, but right now it's kind of still been just business as usual. It's been Y2K. Yeah. And we were expecting that we were going to start getting a lot of text messages and phone calls from agents before they show our listings saying, are you offering compensation? And that's not really happening. I haven't gotten one. I was shocked. Oh crap. What if we get blown up? How do we have the systems in place? So we were ready with our sales assistant. I know Rick, through your transaction management business, we're like sitting here, ready for the people that come at us with their pitchforks and lanterns and, and blow us up from a communication standpoint. It's interesting to hear you guys say that really hasn't happened. No, I think just generally speaking. The agents in our marketplace, and I can't speak for others, but, uh, agents in our market are, not really considering that this is too much of a change. It's just. Like you said, business as usual. And think if you just like, you know, paralyzed yourself, like I'm not doing anything. I'm not sure. Maybe you're a solo agent. Like you kind of screwed yourself for however, I don't know, six months leading up to this point, six months after this point, like it's kind of mind boggling. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And you know, the system that we had, I'll be at, the identifying a specific compensation amount through the MLS that may have been sort of the one piece that could have been done differently. Yeah. But generally speaking, the system is set up for the success of the buyers and the sellers. I mean, you just take yourself back a little ways, right? If you were, you know, 10 year old Adam and you had been saving up your money and you've got 20 and you're like, okay, I can go finally go buy that new transformer. Mom, can you take me to the target and buy the new transformer? And mom's like, okay, sure. Let's get in the car. She's. And then she says, okay, it's going to cost you 5 for me to drive you to the store and get you into the store and help you check out the new transformer. And he's like, well, transformers 20. I saved 20. I don't have the extra 5 mom to pay you to get me there to get this thing. Now I have to buy a go bot. Yeah. Right. I mean, so that's kind of the same thing here. These, these buyers have been saving up the 20 percent or the temp, whatever their lender has told them, like, this is what you need to have to come and buy this property. They've saved up the money. Now they're ready to go. Well, if the seller offer of compensation is no longer available. They have to buy the go bot. Right. And then the sellers who are, you know, target is sitting there with transformers all over the shelves and nobody to buy them because they hadn't accounted for what it's going to cost to help that buyer get to the store, through the store, execute the transaction properly, and then, move on. So , that's how I equate this, scenario. The changes that were promoted by the attorneys for the plaintiffs. I think it was very short sighted. And I think that's a real, that's a good one. do you think it either helps or hurts? And so, like we probably need a graphic, like the help or the hurt graphic. So let's maybe start with you, Adam, for sellers. Do you feel like this new way of doing business, the settlement helps or hurts sellers? As you see it today, I guess, I think it'll be market dependent. so in a market like this, I think it's neutral. I think, good agents are listing agents are going to coach their client up to say, this is what it looks like right now for your goals to get the most money here. Stats, right? Data rules. So present that. But I do think in a, in more extreme sellers, markets go back to COVID years, even the couple of years preceding that, when you'd still get five offers on a listing, we had a massive shortage of homes in Denver, especially, I think that will be a benefit to sellers. I think you're going to get more unrepresented buyers that work as a customer, with the listing agent, or they try to get through the process by themselves, which I don't recommend and we can get into that. I actually have some stories. Yeah, exactly. So I think it would be pretty market dependent for sale, but I'm not even so sure about that. I mean, it makes sense, but the more I think about that, I'm not even sure that in a seller's market, It even benefits the seller then because probably what's going to happen when you've got 20 offers coming in on a house over a weekend, like we did, you know, three years ago, um, the buyers in an effort to make themselves more competitive, competitive are going to be offering this offer, but then they're going to be offering to pay their own broker instead of asking the seller to do it, which they're mostly doing now so when that happens the amount that they're paying is probably going to be less So maybe in the prior market, they would have come to the seller and said hey i'll pay you sixty thousand dollars over asking and i'll close in three weeks, right? That was the offer three week But but you have to pay my realtor per what you advertise in the mls That's how it was three years ago. In in the future if that same market were to develop That offer may be instead of i'm paying you sixty thousand dollars more i'm paying you forty thousand dollars more I'm gonna pay my own age on my own agent Whereas if they had paid the seller the sixty thousand dollars more and the seller kicked back three percent to the real estate agent Yep That's a bigger net gain for the seller in that circumstance. Yeah. I totally agree with you on that one. To me, it was like, that's where I think as an investment company, we can really capitalize. It's always math. And so even if we go in now and offer on a property and say everything's 0 percent commission, then okay, great. Like again, theoretically to me, whether I'm paying five, you know, 500 for a property and knowing in our pro forma that we're going to get a 10 percent or 10, 000 commission up front, and that helps us make our investment numbers. Well, I'm just going to offer 490. Like it's, it's you're right. It's all math. And I just don't think people thought through that perspective, that math is, you know, they're losing the growth instead of gaining the gross and then paying back the commission percentage. So I'm, it may wind up being that in, in a seller's market based on, what you were saying, that it's more beneficial for sellers. I'm just not convinced it's ever going to be in any circumstance. I think kind of as well, what we'll see in those markets is the buyer agent commission is going to go down, right? You know, if you're in those markets, I've had buyers in 2021 , they were very tough to work with, right? So if you get to that point where you submit an offer. And they, they might start agreeing to do in 1 percent buyer agent commission that seller pays for just to be done and not have to show 40 more houses and submit 30 more offers. So I think that could be a benefit to sellers, but let's see when we get back to that market. Yeah. let's kind of flip the coin. What about buyers? I know this whole settlement was brought about on behalf of buyers and helping make them feel whole or whatever, at least in our market. what do you guys think about? Buyers, how this affects buyers. the buyers, they have a lot that they have to account for. And especially when we're talking about first time home buyers, I don't think for, experienced home buyers, the empty nesters, like if they've done it two or three times, they've got some equity built up. They've got tools they can play with. I don't know that it's really as impactful for them. And to your point, they may be the ones that are more inclined to say, okay, I've done this. I've been around the block a couple of times. I've seen these contracts before. I don't look at them every day, but I feel comfortable going without representation. I mean, maybe that's, you know, you're going to be something that we'll, we'll see the experience buyers doing, but especially for the first time home buyers. This is just really devastating. If the market does change how this, commission structure is set up. I'm still not convinced it's going to change very much based on what we're seeing so far. we're not even getting calls asking if we're offering a compensation for buyer brokers. Like they just, it's, it's expected everybody's business as usual. So. You know, we'll see. I guess the answer to that question is, is it a pro or a con depends on whether or not the practice has changed. Yeah, I think overall, it's a, it's a detriment, um, by far. And I think it could lead to some more lawsuits. Here's a perfect example. So I have a buddy that's a listed a property in Denver, a buyer unrepresented submitted a contract. I believe he helped prepare the contract, but he was treating the buyer as a customer had a fiduciary to the seller. So basically he's a referee. When it comes to the buyer, he can coach the seller, but he can help them make sure they don't miss dates and deadlines, whatever the case may be. Well, they missed their inspection deadline. The buyer did. They had no idea they had 20, 000 earnest money down, right? We have a 24 page contract. One page of it is an entire paragraph of dates and deadlines that all have legal ramifications. Should you miss a date deadline? So they went back to the listing agent said, okay, we want to do our inspection. Listing agent and seller said that deadline's gone. And they're like, well, we're not going to buy a house without an inspection. So they submitted the termination along with an earnest money release. And, the seller said, no, we get your earnest money, the 20, 000. Well, the buyer then got the contract, sent it to a lawyer. The lawyer was like, yeah, you missed your deadline to do all this. So the seller got 20, 000. He was upset that the deal is not going to close, but he got an unexpected 20, 000 from it. So I foresee more issues like that popping up over time. And I think that's going to lead to, you know, the reason we were operating the way we've been operating in the past, 15, 20 years was simply for that fair play. Yeah. Even more. Yeah. Yeah. No. So it's, it's going to lead to more harm than good. I do think a great buyers agents worth their weight in gold. the question is going to be, can we educate buyers enough to know that this 24 page document, right? You're not buying a pair of Jordans from the store. You're buying an appreciating asset. That's worth hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Having an expert negotiate on your behalf and make sure and keep you protected, it's worth its weight in gold. Yeah. Awesome. So we have covered so much ground on the NAR lawsuit settlement. I've been super happy with that. We've got such great information and I know our audience has gleaned a ton from that. What I'd love to do now is actually come back next week and I would love to shift the focus a little bit to not only Denver real estate, what's going on right now. How do we key up agents and investors for success in the last couple of months of the year and more importantly in 2025 so join us on next week's episode and we'll catch you guys on the flip side. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of raising the flipping bar. If you found value in our insights and stories, let's keep the conversation going, connect with me on social media, and be sure to share this episode with friends or colleagues who might benefit your feedback and reviews, help us grow and reach more listeners like you. So please, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review. Thanks again to the elevation Academy for sponsoring today's show. If you're interested in learning more, click the link in the show notes below. And remember every property. Tells a story. Every deal brings a lesson. Keep reaching for those goals and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for listening and watching raising a flipping bar. Just a basic overall disclaimer is that a, this is not legal advice. B, this is not tax advice. See, this is not financial advice. I hope you get the gist, but I'm obviously not a lawyer, not a CPA. Hell I'm not even a real estate agent actually, but in general, we hope you get a ton of value out of this, but there is a bit of a disclaimer.