Why You Need an Agent (Even Though You Think You Don't)

Most buyers and sellers think an agent's job is writing a contract and collecting a check. Nate and Josh break down what actually happens behind the scenes — the prep, the negotiation, the risk management — and why skipping that expertise can cost you a lot more than a commission.

In this episode:

• The most common misconception buyers and sellers have about what agents actually do
• Why deals fall apart over communication, not contracts
• What agents are actually doing before a listing presentation or buyer showing
• How representation protects you from the pitfalls that don't show up until it's too late

Whether you're buying, selling, or just curious what's really happening behind the scenes of a real estate transaction — this one's for you.

Behind the Beards is hosted by Nate Steffen and Josh Gaylis, two veteran real estate agents talking honestly about the industry — not the polished version.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Behind the Beards, the podcast where real estate gets real, real messy, real funny, and sometimes just downright unpredictable. I'm Josh and I'm Nate.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

We're pulling back the curtain on the world of real estate. Whether you're an agent, industry professional, client, or you're just here for the chaos. You're in the right place. This is a real real estate talk.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Most consumers out there think we just write a contract and get paid. And that is so far from the truth, right, Nate? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Most deals fall apart because expectations and process isn't communicated and talked about between you and your client. Bottom line. There are so many things that we can't sit down with our sellers and our buyers and take them through. Sure, we can have a process sheet and we take them through it. But the amount of things that happen behind the scenes, you talk about it with your client, they're setting certain things up uh throughout the transaction. And then there's all these other personalities. And the truth is, there's so many bodies that touch a real estate deal beyond just us, the agent, and our family.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

For the most part, people only buy a house, right? Like every 10-15 years. Some people, my parents have been living in their house for 32 years, right? There's buyers that I have that haven't bought a house since 1995, right? You know, when they go through the process from point A to point Z, they're like, Holy shit, you handled so much work throughout this entire process. Like back in '95, like I saw one house, my agent just wrote the count and it and it was done, right? Like, until you're in the thick of it as a buyer, for the most part, buyers have absolutely no clue how to run a transaction. And that's why we as agents are so important. And if agents didn't exist, three-quarters of the deals would not get done. Sure, there's certain deals where my your brother-in-law has a has a house and the his neighbor wants to buy it direct, and like, hey, we'll just have our attorney review it and it will be all good. And yeah, there's deals like that that go down, but even in those deals, litigation, lawsuits didn't disclose because they didn't have a representation. I mean, there's there's so much shit that goes into a real estate transaction that we're gonna dive into today that that just shows you all what it actually involves. So that maybe when you go to buy a house and you see this episode, you're gonna be like, maybe I should have an agent way before I even get pre-approved, right? To go through all the steps of like, what am I what am I getting myself into? It's so important.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, we get paid when you're successful. This bottom line doesn't cost you anything to to link into our process and and commit and build a relationship with someone who's gonna help. It's no different than hiring an accountant or an attorney or having your favorite doctor you go to. Very similar situations in very, very serious situations. You're dealing with your your financial profile, you're dealing with your retirement. These are important decisions that you are making as a client. Now, I want to go back to something real quick. I want to make sure I ask you this, Josh. We don't have to have a full bullet point item, right? Uh a checklist, if you will, uh for how we do this. But let's just take it like this. You know, you take on a listing, you and I, let's the scenario, we'll run a quick scenario. You have a listing, it's come up, you're at your listing appointment, they may be in uh interviewing other agents, right? What are things that are going on in your head that you like stress the value? Because for me, it's about I'm thinking about the process. So I'm gonna I'm gonna really provide an element of knowledge to that interview, if you will, or that that connection. And when I walk away, I want them to go, well, that guy was more knowledgeable than everyone else. That that's kind of my my niche, if you will. But what do you think about when you're going through it and then maybe process points? Because you know, we opened up like with communication um expectations being set. Go ahead, just give us a little bit there.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

So, I mean, it's different on the list side than when you're on the buy side, right? Equal work, you're still gonna do a shitload of work on either side of the transaction, but let's focus on the listing side, right? When I have a listing appointment scheduled, my mind starts firing, right? Because I'm I I'm not a type of guy to just go into a presentation and win and wing it. I can't do that. I want to be so prepared and so transparent and so upfront with my marketing plan, my presentations, speaking about my company and my stats, that they don't even think twice of who to use because it's so clear, cut, and dry. So, I mean, certain things in my head, I need to I need to know the area, right? I need to know the numbers, I need to know what's going on. So, right, right, do my CMA, I really dial that in. That takes a lot of time too. I might be calling a lot of agents from we go as far deep as calling pending properties in active properties, okay? Because it's not just the sole properties. If your agent's just sending you three comps and saying, Nate, your house is worth one four based on these three comps, fire that freaking agent because they're not looking at the whole picture, right? So I look at active, pending, and sold, and I call the agents that have active properties. How's how's it going? Right? I have something coming up. How's your activity? Oh, you're at two million and you've been on for 90 days. Well, we're not gonna fucking price it at that price because I'm gonna be doing a disservice to my seller, right? So these are just little things that go into even prepping for the for the price, right? Like for the comp, right? So I once I get the price down, and then I'm feeling really comfortable with like my pricing strategy, I go through my entire listing, my listing presentation with details about my company and why we're the number one, why I'm the the best agent for you too. Here are my all my testimonials. I've done 10 deals in your neighborhood specifically, yada yada yada, right? And then I have a full curated marketing plan with dates of like from the time we signed the listing agreement to closing, it's a list of 500 things of like this is what you need to expect from me, right? It's transparency, it's just putting your best foot forward as a as an agent, knowing your shit, knowing your numbers, and like you're never gonna lose. But I mean, people don't understand it, they think it's like on the list side, they think I just get a call from from someone and I go in and I say, Hey, I'm the top eight, and they just hire. No, like we go to bat, like we, you know, it's a you get that that opportunity, you still might not get that, right? So you need like 10 of these. So, us in our day-to-day lives, like we're hustling day in and day out, and we need to have so much in our pipeline to be successful because not everything pans out, right? I I know my kind of numbers when I go in a listing presentation. Take away like if I'm the favorite of the fool, right? Because sometimes when you get a referral from cousin John, you already got it, you're the favorite. But say I'm going up in a listing presentation and I'm up against three people. Mine, I have like an 80% retention rate, right? If I'm going up against other agents, eight out of 10 times, I'm gonna win it because I know my value, I know my pitch, I know my marketing strategy, and I know all my systems are dialed in. It's it impresses people, right? So you gotta know your numbers, but there's so much that goes into it on the listing side prep and on the buy side, it's it's really a lot that that we do.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

I'll back you up on this, right? What you just described is a tremendous amount of time preparation for not even knowing if you're going to get the job.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

And even if I do get the job, there's it could take three months to sell that house. I mean, the way I price it isn't it shouldn't take that long, but I'm saying, like, and I love what with that point that you made. We get paid when you're successful. We don't get a dollar until you're successful, until you agree to close on the property. And then once we're in escrow, everything goes as planned because we put on our hat, right? And we get everything done, and then it closes, then we get a check. Most of you out there, yeah. I mean, like, we don't clock in and get paid hourly, right? Like, that's why we deserve every single penny of what we charge, two and a half, three percent, right? Like, there's there should be no conversation about going under, and there isn't in my appointments, because it's just not worth my time to do it for less than that. I know what my value is, I know what my hourly rate is.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Yeah, so so stepping back uh real quick, yeah, there's a tremendous amount of time that goes into that. And and because of that, we are sitting in our preparation stage with something like that, knowing we better be on top of it or tight. But there's one thing that you can't do sometimes before you go to like, let's say you're your listing appointment, or you're you may be doing this on a Zoom. I have out-of-state, out-of-area clients all the time. Sometimes that listing appointment is done over Zoom. I'll just speak uh a couple seconds on this. My other thing is this has got to be a good fit. Here's the process I know and the steps to go through. So whenever I have a client, a potential client that that starts focusing on compensation, starts focusing on um what's your marketing look like? Sure, I have all that ready. You know, the numbers, knowing kind of what the around the listing price or the value of the home is. I generally like to do a walk of the home and estimate a value, use that as a touch. I'm really looking at other people's personality with that. But let's stay with process and let's stay with deals fall apart because expectations weren't set. I will go, are you familiar with the process of listing your home? Well, here, here's some expectations, right? You can expect if you don't know all of the things that are going on in your home, like pre-listing seller side inspections, which we need to line up and I'd like to have in a link before we go live on any, on what however we're marketing the property, whether it's MLS or off-market exclusives or whatever it is, right? And we need to have pictures, staging, inspections. Let's stay with inspections real quick, because most people don't realize this, right? If the expectation is you don't know what's going on in your house, well, then you can expect buyers when they do their own inspections, if you don't do them up front, you can expect that they are going to find something wrong with your house. And therefore, you can expect that you are going to get a request for repairs, request for credits, things like that. Get ahead of it. That's the process. So now you asked me about why I'm worth whatever, two and a half, three percent. I'm doing staging, I'm paying for that. Well, listen, you should focus on the expectations because the truth is people hire me because I'm good within the contract. Think about that. Everyone wants to hire their agent on the on the front end of how pretty the marketing is. And listen, we all do great marketing, we all we all know how to set up deals, but it's also personality, and they hire me for once we're in contract. That's what you really pay your agent for. The negotiation, the strategy, the knowledge of how to uh navigate a difficult buyer or difficult agent on the other side. That is why. That is why. And that knowledge, you don't we don't read a book, right, Josh? We don't go, hey, I did your training class on knowledge today in the real estate industry. No, it comes through doing many, many deals and also having the will and the gumption to go out and fight for your clients and do what's right and talk to your legal department and and and navigate through those things because there's always something new, but it's a character thing as well, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

It's it's protection too, right? I mean, we're there to protect you as well. I mean, there's countless times where I've told buyers to walk away from deals. They were very happy I did, right? At the time, they're like, Well, shit, we love this house. I'm like, Well, you're getting yourself into you're you're getting yourself into a situation because of X, Y, and Z. Do you want to do you want to go through with that? And they're like, wow, like he's not out for his pocket. Like he actually cares about making this a like a true whole transaction. Like you they yes, you need to be happy, but we need to pre- our job is to protect you as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:35

My favorite word in real estate is reasonable and unreasonable. Like if you are truly a teammate and a member of your team and you're and you're you're you're you're you're representing your clients fairly, you can spot a situation like maybe the maybe a buyer or seller on the other side of the transaction is is saying, hey, well, I'm not doing that, and puffing up their chest. And it's a total reasonable request. But if they're being unreasonable, you can't argue with unreasonable. And therefore, you help you and your clients get together and you make the most reasonable decision that you can. And you talk it out and you're on their team. We don't sit there and throw out these fancy, you know, oh, if you do do this or else, we're not like these sales-y type of uh, you know, Wall Street, whatever you want to say, right? We're not listening we're just good people that know our know our stuff in this industry. And therefore, we want to go out and share it with as many people as possible. And therefore, we are looking for like-minded clients who will trust our process because it's worked. And again, you're gonna have little things that are specific to each to each piece, right? I I love that. I like to talk about communication and expectation because I think far too much we have people going and they're looking at sure, like we all mentioned, everything's important. Testimonials, Josh, you and I work on our technology quite a bit, right? We know people are searching us online, uh, but we also make uh eventually meaningful direct human connection with our clients and setting expectations in process should be what's important to the client.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Not, hey, the last agent that was in here said they're gonna do my deal for 2% and uh, you know, or 1% and this and that. What are you gonna do for me?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

I'm like, okay, well, I can see you don't really understand what's important to what you're doing right now.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

I'm not afraid to say that to people. Buyers and sellers don't need constant updates, they need clear ones, and this is what comes into communication deals fall apart because there's not expectations set up front, and there's the there's there's bad communication all the time, all the deals that that I have that fall apart is because uh the listing agents not communicating something that the seller said to them, or my buyers and I were not on the same page, which is very rare, right? Because everything is clear cut and dry. You gotta be like it's just you gotta have a clear message to your client, right? It it it there don't need to be wild, and you gotta know your shit, right? So at the end of the day, you you can't just read a book and know how to you know to to treat your six million dollar buyer when you're in escrow with a certain situation. It it just comes with experience, it comes with doing a hundred transactions and a hundred million dollars of the business. It's just and and don't get me wrong, like I learn stuff still every single day, right? But they're that you know, but it's not like drastic things that are gonna like kill the deal. Those have been dealt with. I've failed in the past, right? And now my my job is you know to get to make you successful, right? Because of all my past experiences. So it's uh you gotta you gotta work with a vetted agent who knows what they're doing. Yeah, and listen, we're we're kind of psyched. We're not kind of psyched. I'm no, we're not kind of, I'm fucking psychotic.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Listen, I we how much free time do we have to listen? So, what I want to say is this we also know from our experience the deal isn't done until that thing is recorded, not just closed, not just people signing on the dotted lines with their notary or at the title company. When it's recorded with the county, that's when it's done. Things fall out of escrow in in the last minute stages all the time. And it's because there's certain things that weren't communicated. And sometimes your communication to your specific client is isn't enough. And here's what I mean: sometimes the other agent, you talk to them and they're like, oh, they were afraid to have the conversation and they spun it in a different way to their client, and all of a sudden their client's showing up to the closing table, and there's a surprise. So we tell our clients what it is not over, and hopefully not over after that is when it's recorded either, because we like to continue our relationships forever, of course. But the deal itself is not done until that last minute. So keep that in mind.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

There's a lot of ways to mitigate like mistakes and delays and hiccups in the in the transaction, right? Like I had a I had a buyer, and it at the end of the day, it was my fault for not for not setting the expectations from the beginning, right? And I'll never do this again. This is like one of my first few deals, right? But like this is probably a decade ago. I had a I had a buyer that was closing in five days. So they were scheduled to sign their loan docs in escrow, in in San Diego, like two days before, right? It's typical two days before. So I get a call from the buyer the morning that I that I assumed everything was set up that they're gonna be signing their loan docs in escrow. And the buyer said, Hey Josh, and it was like no, I said, Where are you? He's like, I'm actually in the airport. I just landed in Texas. I said, I said, excuse me, you know you're you have an appointment to sign loan docs in escrow. He said, I know I I had to take a business trip. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. Can we just push this? I said, you know, the seller could give you a notice to close, and like, how long is your trip? He you know, he said, Oh, I'm here for six days, it's a retreat. I said, What? So here's my error, right? My error was from the very beginning in my buyer's consultation. Now, what I do every single time is like, hey, these are the steps. By the way, three, four days before Estro closes, I need you to be in town. And if you're not gonna be in town, I need to know. And if you're gonna be out of the country, I need to extra know because we're gonna have to set up like notary, and not every Estro company has you know mobile notaries to go to Japan, right? Thank God he was in Dallas, and this estro company at the last minute said, Okay, well, we'll send a mobile notary out there. He's gonna have to sign like in the next two hours, and he like you know missed a meeting or whatever. He signed, they FedEx the document, we had a one-day delay, and we closed. But like, I'll never make that mistake ever again because I know what can happen, right? It's happened to me. So now expectations are set, my buyers know that they need to be here, right? Um, through the process, and and that will never happen again.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

I will back you up real quick, story. Yeah, because I I want to make sure we get to our excellent question of the day. But we I had that that that very same thing happened not too long ago, and uh uh one of my agents, uh we we had uh we were representing the seller, the buyers had come to us because it was around the holidays. Uh the buyers on the other side had come to us and said, Hey, uh two of the buyers, or there was like three, three buyers on that side. Anyway, two of them had to go to China. They needed a power of attorney. They got that done before they left, so everything was cool. And then when we went to our sellers, one of the sellers was going on a cruise and didn't tell anybody. So, Josh, this is not just like your sixth day. This guy was in international waters. We had no chance to do the notary. We had to go and do an extension of time after they, after the buyer already extended time. Luckily, he was back two weeks later. When he got off the plane in his home state, we had him go directly to the title company, and luckily we were able to do an extension of time addendum on that.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Does your escrow company not have a mobile notary that goes by ship?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Uh right, yeah. No, they have yeah, they have JSLs on uh cruise ships, but they don't have notaries. Yeah, no, you can't do that. We were even joking, like when they dock, we would send like uh when they're getting close to coming into one of their docking places wherever they were on the cruise, that we would send out one of those like in uh inner two boats with the engines behind it with the noble notary, you know, riding like this, like going to get the paperwork signed, right? Because that would have been a good story, right? But we we we definitely navigate some things that are surprises to us. And yeah, like in your situation, the client just didn't, he just didn't wasn't thinking. He's like, I'm not, I'm not canceling the trip, right?

SPEAKER_02 19:30

I could have prevented that potentially, right? So now in my consultation, if I if I do everything thoroughly, which I do, and a buyer does that, it was out of my control. Like he's just he just didn't listen.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Well, and check that, check this out. It could be a breach of contract thing. So let's talk about this on the back end, right? You can't just yell at your client, say you better get back on the next flight out here, even though we thought about that. Um, but he we we didn't do that. We went back to the other agent who we have built great rapport with on the buyer's side and said, You're never gonna believe this. Here's what it is. My gosh, if we've got to do some type of credit, that's fine. But we didn't start with that. Good news was we both had mutual respect for each other and our communication styles, both agents on both sides. Uh, we were able to talk to our clients because we both had good rapport built with our clients, and no one freaked out, and we closed that thing up two weeks later.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Unfolds like that's the best, right? Sure, there was a hiccup. We got in, we we fixed the issue, and and everything was good. So I'm glad that all worked out, but it doesn't always, right? I've had heard horror stories of people who are buying eight million dollar homes and they they make a per and they're financing two, three million of it because they just want to leverage some debt, and then they buy go buy a Lamborghini in cash, and they're like, Well, what do you mean? Why is it it's not gonna affect me? I'm I have 20 million in the bank. It's like, no, dude, you're getting a loan. You just bought a Lamborghini three days before closing. You're not doing this deal. So that so you know what happened in that deal? You had to get a hard money loan for like five million. This is my buddy's client. How to get a hard money loan for five million in, you know, and and then re-fired six months later. I mean it shit happens all the time in our industry at the last minute. You can't make this stuff up. We are we are crazy people. Who do you guys want representing you when you have these hiccups last minute? It's not gonna be a discount brokerage, I promise you that. You want one of us representing you once shit hits the fan.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

And and and here's the other thing, I'll just kind of leave the value with this, right? We we are crazy people, like we we literally work all the time, and we've found a way to make this just part of our life. So that's why we're doing even what we're doing right right now, Josh. Right, this is therapy for us. Because honestly, there is no way to be successful in this business without dealing with people and their craziness and their their their their values and their cultures and everything else that goes into. And then, by the way, know every little step of the real estate business, and then just be ready for. New things that you haven't ever encountered before. And it's your responsibility to get on the phone and help your client and save them and help them through that process. It's insanity. It's insane. What we do every day is yeah, we have good days, we have bad days, but the next day always has to be a good day. You always have to get right back up and do it. So we take, we take rejection, we, we, we take uh, you know, uh gosh, just everything. We we are doing our own marketing. We're we're running a business, and then it's like then we're still servicing clients in arguably one of the most dynamic and just personal way, personal businesses on the planet. And I will tell you this uh kind of leads me into my next question here that you know the value that that we bring, we hope that we've exemplified it in a way that this this business isn't glamorous, and it it's not glamorous for our clients either. And people do things on the other side of transactions all the time. And so, you know, again, it's not a scare tactic. It's not like we're trying to scare anybody by talking this out. We need to voice it out so we can keep our own insanity. So let me ask you this, Josh. What is the hardest part about being an agent? Being a realtor that's successful, that's working seven days. What is it? What's the hardest part for you, man? One thing? Yeah, let's try to focus it on one thing. Maybe we'll sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Yeah, do it like that. The hardest thing about doing this business. I would say um lead generation. I think lead generation is tough for just in general, right? You need to figure out what you're good at. Are you a door knocker, are you a networker, are you this? Like you can't do 10 things at once. So the hardest thing is finding out what you're actually number one good at and what you like too, because it sucks real bad to do things that you don't like. Like if you're not, if you're if you don't like cold calling, don't cold call. It's just why are you gonna do it? So I think that's I think that's probably the hardest part about this business is getting the client. And then also, you know, this is a subcat, and then going through the process, right? But that comes with experience. What about you?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Yeah, correct. Like I have found over the arc of of my career, it's it's it's the constant changes, whether it's society, whether it's technology, whether it's um, you know, not being satisfied with where you are financially, right? Because there's things that you and I do that also is a is is something that our clients don't get to see, right? Because they see us in transactions, right? Or when we're meeting them and lead generation is kind of part of what you said too. But what they don't see is, oh gosh, that's kind of changing in the industry. Or oh gosh, like people don't answer their doors. Okay, so I got to figure out different marketing pillars. Some of the staples will always be there. And our knowledge is one thing that we always want to have face to face. We're always trying to set appointments, and not in a nasty and weird way. We're we're that's that's how we gain more clients and more and more reputation and and and deals and income. But I would say keeping up with the times and the changes and just um you know, society, how it works, you know, social media is this new thing, right? We go through all that. So just keeping up with the times and just staying focused with keeping up with the times. The focus on the deals is always there because if you focus on the deals, you're gonna get the deals done, but you've got to figure out how to consistently, you know, bring those back in to increase your income. And then if you're ambitious enough like you and I, and you know, building teams and building our brand, we are consistently thinking about that and then doing the whole other side of the business. So that to me is the hardest part of being an agent, because it's not just about, like you said at the beginning of our of our time here, it's not just about, hey, I sign a contract and then I get paid. There's so many moving parts. It's also being structured, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:52

I think that's a big, a big, really tough, tough part about this job is that no one's gonna like call you and be like, hey, where are you? It's like you work for yourself, right? So uh structure is huge as well in this business. Really hard. Once you have the systems dialed and and everything, everything really fine-tuned, you're you're pretty golden, but take some time.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

The second piece to that is you and I are both both uh both family men. Um and and you know, that's the timing, uh just scheduling your time. Good answer. I I love that. And it's always good to be with you, Josh. I know um we we could talk all day, but we'll uh we'll save some for the next one. How about that?

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Always a pleasure, brother.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

All right, awesome, man. Thank you for tuning into Behind the Beards. If you've enjoyed today's episode, do us a favor, subscribe, leave a comment, and share it with someone who'd enjoy what you've heard here today.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

You can also connect with us on social media or send us one of your own real estate confessions because who knows, you might just hear it on the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

We'll catch you next time, where we always keep it real, keep it honest, and always behind the beards.