The FBI Hostage Trick Your Real Estate Agent Hopes You Never Learn

The FBI tells hostages to ask the kidnapper for food early. Once the kidnapper has invested anything in keeping you alive, killing you costs them something. You stop being an object. You become a person.

Real estate runs the same play. Most sellers never see it happen.

In this episode, Connor walks through three structural problems Santa Clarita homeowners almost never get told about before they sign a listing agreement.

One. Dual agency is still legal in California. One agent collects both halves of the commission and somehow "represents" both sides of the negotiation. The conflict is in the contract on purpose.

Two. The AI tools the listing agent uses every day. Free public ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot. Conversation data can be retained or processed depending on the plan and settings. The seller never opted in. The agent typing in your address, your motivation, and your floor price never asked.

Three. The MLS syndication wars are quietly coming back. A new wave of brokerages is trying to wall off inventory inside their own websites to control buyer attention. Less exposure equals less competition equals weaker offers for sellers.

The fix Connor runs on every listing he takes. Sellers only representation. No buyer side. No dual agency. AI infrastructure running on a locally installed large language model on his own hardware so seller data never touches a public cloud. Twenty-seven plus years in the Santa Clarita Valley. Twenty-three years retired LAPD. Four decades writing code. CA DRE #01238257. SYNC Brokerage.

Read the full breakdown with FAQs, schema-rich Q&A, and the five-question screening filter for your next listing interview at SCV123.com/blog.

Links

Full article: https://scv123.com/blog/taken-hostage-favors-and-ai-in-real-estate
The $17,000 Standard: https://scv123.com
Sellers Only Agent: https://sellersonlyagent.com
Connor with Honor: https://connorwithhonor.com
HonorElevate: https://honorelevate.com

This content is informational and does not constitute legal or financial advice. All commissions are negotiable per California Business and Professions Code Section 10140.6.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, most heavy lifting in real estate is done by the Multiple Listing Service. Maybe you've heard of it. It's a conglomeration of different boards of real estate agents, different boards of realtors, all that come together. Some of them actually share information from one to another, some don't, but every single listing does get propagated and shared on these major platforms all across the United States. So if you go to some of the major syndication sites, of course, like Zillow or Realtor.com, which is of course owned and operated by the actual realtor trade organization, you'll see any of the listing that's taken by a realtor, a member of that particular trade group. And of course, beyond that, if you hire somebody that's not a realtor, not a member of that trade group, you have a couple things. Those listings can still be propagated on various channels. Usually they can make them their way onto those websites. It never used to be the case, but now, of course, people are making particular allowances because they want to be able to provide for the buying public the most properties, period. There's also other companies that are breaking in to more of an exclusive type genre, where they say that their listings are only going to be able to be viewed on their website, thereby trying to control the ball. And we saw that even before the syndication sites, where the actual realtor organization controlled the ball all the way to the hilt. But then we had AOL Real Estate, Yahoo Real Estate. They kind of broke the mold and the board of realtors apparently over the years gave up, or some people say they, well, sold out their agents. So now we're watching as real estate companies are kind of starting to go back into that same shell again, saying that, hey, you know, we want to take our exclusive listings with our agents, bypass the board of realtors, and just put it on our website. So you're going to watch as this is going to become more prevalent. Then on the other side of that, you have these different syndication networks and these different realtor organizations, besides just the main ones, but syndication sites, they're now going all in with the realtor organizations. Then you have particular companies that are all out. Basically, you have a couple different factions. Those that align with being a realtor and those that say you shouldn't be aligned with being a realtor. So you watch those. We're also watching other companies purchase each other hand over fist, and typically the purchase is of a more legacy type corporate, stiff, immovable model, very bureaucratic in nature, being absorbed or purchased by a less bureaucratic and a much more progressive type of real estate company. Typically, they sell some kind of an AI inference or AI architecture, and they say artificial intelligence is the way they do things. Well, how much can you really do with artificial intelligence? That's, I guess, the question for today. People, agents themselves, they say, well, when I take a listing, I use all AI tools. Okay, so what? You have AI prepare the listing contract for you? Maybe. Maybe you have AI give you the property description. Maybe you have AI put it together in such a way that it can't be avoided and people just love it. Good, good for you. Then maybe you have AI produce the content. Okay, great. That's wonderful. Then maybe you have AI manipulate the pictures. Maybe you have pictures of a residence that doesn't have any furniture inside of it, and you offer after you, of course, say that these pictures have been doctored or enhanced by AI, then you have those pictures labeled such a way and you use those beautiful. But then on the other end of it, how also are you using AI to sell to this particular residence to buyers and maybe other sellers, people that are interested in the purchase of it? What are you doing with your AI in that realm? Well, then the agent should be smart and say, well, I'm looking at different sites, maybe rental-only sites, maybe that type of advertising, or building content so potential buyers that are looking will actually find this specific listing. And how do you do that? Well, you use a content stream by neighborhood. So if there are any buyers looking in, let's say, Bridgeport area in Valencia, California, in Santa Clarita Valley, you then build the architecture of enough blog posts, enough content, enough social media shares, everything linked back to a specific website, maybe a specific landing page that was also put together with artificial intelligence, and there they will start to see if they're a buyer interested in Bridgeport or talk about any, any kind of buying, purchasing, renting, any kind of attraction to Bridgeport, California, Bridgeport of Valencia and Santa Clarita, California, it's different. But this particular neighborhood, then once it ends up happening, is if you do it correctly, then these buyers will give up their personal and private information, and you can keep them notified as to what type of residences are going to come on the market in the area by that specific listing agent. Now, if that listing agent doesn't represent buyers, they should still do it anyway. Because the buyer attraction really doesn't come down to them working with the seller's agent. In fact, a lot of buyers believe that's nonsense. Because you have the agent representing the seller, if I'm trying to buy real estate or if I get sued by an attorney, I'm not going to use the same attorney that's suing me being hired by the people coming after me. Nor if I'm going to buy real estate, nor am I going to hire the same agent representing the seller to represent me. It's a conflict of interest in my mind, yet dual agency is still legal. In California, it's outlawed in a few states, but in California, it's still okie dokie to do. But in my mind, that's why I don't represent buyers either. I'm a seller's only platform. I have a lot of agents that are more than happy to represent buyers. They don't work for me. They might be in networking groups I work with. But when it comes to one of my sellers' listings, I won't even refer a real estate buyer to purchase to another agent purchasing that property. They're going to have to go get somebody or purchase it on their own. And if they do either way, they're more than welcome to do that. The escrow company is more than happy to explain the purchasing process when you don't have an agent. So sellers are somewhat concerned because other agents go in usually after my appointment, and they tell them who did you interview before I got here, and they say, Well, we talked to Connor. Oh, he's that seller's only agent. He doesn't represent buyers. So he's not bringing buyers to your house. Untrue. I bring every buyer in, I'll show them the house, I'll walk them through, and they're more likely to proceed forward because I'm not squeezing them down because there's nothing in it for me. I'm there to sell the seller's house 100% alone. So any of this ex parte negotiation that goes on, any of this convincing that the seller should take less, all of that nonsense doesn't hit me because I'm not accountable for it, because I'm not pitching it, nor am I involved in the buying process for the residential real estate where I'm representing a seller. So it works out perfectly for my sellers because there is no dual agency or a split type of interest. I'm 100% on their side, and it's never ever or never will be an issue when buyers coming in. Now the other thing that they say is, well, you know, he doesn't represent buyers, so he can't show the buyer. It's my seller's listing. I can show any buyer I want the residents. I just happen not to represent them. They can go get their own agent. There's plenty for them to choose from, and I'm more than happy to tell them that. And I've never had an issue in all the years I've been a seller's only agent. 28 total, 21 years buyers and sellers in the last seven, a seller's only agent. It's worked out beautifully because there's never a question. The other thing that it puts me in a unique position to do is there's no other favors that are ever owed to anybody. Meaning, if you have somebody that maybe did a special favor for your buyer and then their buyer wants to buy the residence you listed, you kind of feel a particular obligation. When I was with the police department all that time, I noticed that just post pre-post-Rodney King, uh, there were a lot of places that basically would pop. You wouldn't pay for anything as a police officer if you wanted to buy cigarettes or chewing tobacco or you know a hamburger or dinner or whatever it may be. Usually the manager would come over and wave the check. The issue with that is, is of course, maybe being unethical in some people's minds. Why should they get all the breaks? But them owe you owing them now. What if the manager breaks the law later? What if you pull them over? How difficult is that ticket going to be to write? I know you might say, well, it's not going to be hard for me. You know, when they're giving you free food, it's like when you get taken hostage, FBI will tell you, make sure that they feed you or do some action that equates to maybe sustaining your life or extending it in some way. By doing that, it makes the kidnapper, it makes it more difficult for them to kill you. Yeah. Didn't know you were going to learn that today. So when it came to that, you know, it reminds me of being in real estate. You know, somebody does a favor for you and your buyer. I got you in when there were all these other people, because you know, Connor, you have a kind face or whatever the hell kind of pitch it is. But then when it comes to seller's listing and you owe them a favor, what's to say you're not gonna kind of bend the rules a little bit, maybe having a better offer, maybe better financing, but maybe leaning the seller towards a yeah. So that doesn't exist. It doesn't exist in my world, and it works out great. When you hear people, agents talking about how they have AI infrastructure, look behind me. I have my own locally installed large language model. I keep my sellers' information and properties gated offline. Nobody sees this. A lot of other agents are using the online systems, the publicly viewed and publicly membered different large language models, and there's no protection in that. Plus, if I have a proprietary type of advertising and marketing model, I don't want the world to see it. That's between me and my seller, what I'm going to do with their listing. And besides producing content like this or producing a blog post related to content like this, I want those secrets to exist. Same thing with the other companies that are utilizing me in other areas, other agents, about building on their AI architecture to make sure that it's not seen by the world because that proprietary marketing and advertising skill, yeah, that's gold. And you never want to put that out for public consumption. I'm Connor with Honor. I hope you're well, sellersonlyagent.com. And uh thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next one.