PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R
You know, Inspector Toolbelt Talk is always just a little bit more special when Beon is on. How are you, Beon?

Beon DeNood
Yeah, I’m good. How are you, Ian?

Ian R
Not bad. You like how I butter you up before we get going?

Beon DeNood
Yeah, I’m like, what are we talking about again? Oh, yeah.

Ian R
Well, what we’re talking about is the topic of the day, month, week, year, which is the NAR settlement. So we had a podcast on the NAR lawsuit that they lost. But now they’ve, quote unquote, settled, and it kind of depends on when this podcast actually goes out. A judge hasn’t, the final judge hasn’t actually signed off on it yet. But it looks like that will happen. But we wanted to talk about what this means. And I didn’t want to come out with a podcast right away because I wanted to do as much research as possible. And then talk to as many brokers as I could. Because we have what we want to happen as an industry in the home inspection industry. But I want to talk to brokers, what are your organization’s doing? What are you doing as a small brokerage? What are you doing nationally with the company that you’re working with? And we found out some interesting stuff.

Beon DeNood
Cool.

Ian R
Man, let’s get into it. Because I have some guys out there that have asked me, what does this mean? So real quick, we’re going to talk about, maybe Beon, you can help us with what happened. We’re gonna talk, we have good news and bad news. So we’ll mention the bad news first. And we still have a lot of good news. But we have some bad news first, but Beon, what actually happened with the settlement?

Beon DeNood
Yeah, so we’ve been covering this for as it’s been developing, so I’m not going to get into the whole history of it. But basically, long and short of it is the National Association of Realtors, or as we like to say, NAR, which I still have to kind of smile when I say that, but NAR, so they got, they got, they were on the line for, I think it was looking at if they went to trial was $1.8 billion was the amount that had been mentioned a few months ago, which then has a multiplier added to it’s size. So you’re talking about countless billions, basically, if it got to that level, NAR would cease to exist, you know, it would just be gone. So what they did is they, they followed the path of all the other named defendants in the case, and they settled and NAR’s settled amount, settlement amount, was it 418?

Ian R
It was north of 400 million. Yeah, I don’t remember the exact number.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, just just over just over $400 million. So and I guess they also agreed to some policy changes, mainly around commissions that go to the buyer’s agent. Previously, that was just customarily paid by the listing agent, it was part of the agreement, it was wrapped up in 6%. And typically, in most deals, it was three and three, going to, you know, listing agent and buyer’s agent. But that’s been the biggest part of the issue now is and the question is the buyer’s agent, because that can’t be rolled up into an agreement between the seller and the buyer’s agent anymore, that needs to be declared or something to that effect. I’m just sort of at the top of my, my head, going through the facts of it. And that’s where the big question mark is, like, a lot of people who are have been working as buyer’s agents are kind of freaking out, like, what’s going to happen? How am I gonna get my commission’s? Am I going to be working for like, a fixed amount fee, like, you know, in many countries, how it happens. And for home inspectors, keeping an eye on the forums, a lot of guys are like, what does this mean for me, you know, because I work mainly with buyer’s agents. So, you know, where am I gonna get my referrals from and other guys are like, don’t worry, it’s gonna be good for us. So I guess we’re all just trying to see where we’re it falls.

Ian R
Yeah, so decoupling of the commission is the phrase that we want to remember out of what actually happened because if you look at the documents, their extensive, I’m not an attorney, I can understand bits and pieces of it and I actually went to some external sources to help me understand it, but decoupling of the commission basically means that NAR said they will no longer require a coupled commission. So the seller is not required to pay the buyer’s agent as part of the commission. So that’s going to lead me into the good news, bad news situation. So bad news first. That settlement doesn’t mean a whole lot. So remember, NAR is an association, just like InterNACHI is an association. So if let’s say InterNACHI was told by some federal court, and by the way all the other court cases going on against NAR, apparently this settles them all. So there were like two or three others. And yeah, they said this, this is going to, there’s other, there’s other ones that are happening that it doesn’t settle but anything that had to do with the commission, it settles it because it’s settled in a court of peers. So imagine if the government or a court told InterNACHI you cannot require your home inspectors to charge $500. And InterNACHI goes, okay. Does that mean we can’t charge $500 now? We can charge $500 all day long. And InterNACHI doesn’t supersede New York State, InterNACHI doesn’t supersede me as a business person. So NAR knew what it was doing. It first of all wanted to avoid bankruptcy. But they knew that that decoupling of the commission meant a whole bunch of hooey. Because now it just says in there, and agents are freaking out about it, if you’re going to agent forums there’s people like basically crying, what am I going to do? You’re going to basically do the same thing. So I’ve talked with a bunch of brokers that work on a national level, some that work on international levels, and all this other stuff. And they’re like, it doesn’t matter. Because it doesn’t change how we do business. It’s a couple extra forms to do the same thing. So the 6% commission splits. And this goes into effect, I think in July, if it goes to the final signature, which I think it will, it’s just not going to be required by NAR. So Keller Williams and a couple of others, they already took that requirement out a while ago as part of their settlements. Did anybody see any difference in the market? I mean, they were, the other two organizations represented like a giant portion of the US market, didn’t really change much. So it’s not going to change much in that way with NAR, that’s the bad news, because we all got excited. When I saw it, my heart kind of dropped because I’m like, that’s not what, that’s not what we needed. We needed MLS changes, we needed, we needed something different. And all we got was decoupling of the commission for one organization. And there’s two other major ones they call major, they’re tiny compared to NAR, but NAR’s going to lose a bunch of memberships and stuff like that, that’s just what’s gonna happen. So there’s really good news, stay listening for the good news part. But that’s the bad news of it, is it just meant a whole lot of nothing. What are your thoughts, Beon?

Beon DeNood
Yeah, so it is interesting that it effectively, I mean, like you said, it doesn’t mean that they can’t still, hey, you know, so 3% 3%, I guess that the specifics of it was now that if any property is listed on the MLS, usually the data of what the buyer’s agent would be getting, like that commission split would be part of the listing. And I guess the pattern was, I’m not a realtor. But the pattern was that, you know, obviously, if you got a property with a higher commission, or 3% as opposed to lower, one would be inclined to feature that property as opposed to one that you can, uh, you know, earn less on. But I guess that is now part of the agreement is that that is not published, it’s not sort of a pre-decided thing. But at the time that, you know, you get to the transaction, and you’ve got a buyer, that can be negotiated. But it can still be the same thing. 6% with a three and three, so that couldn’t change. The one thing I wonder about is whether it may make a difference or not like with a lot of homeowners who have bought or homebuyers who have been out there, maybe they haven’t been aware of what their agent is making on the deal as well, now, it’s going to be pretty transparent what they’re, you know, going to be paying them out of the deal. And effectively, you know, it’s going to be tacked on to their mortgage and gets gets paid anyways, because it’s part of the price of the house, right. But what’s going to be interesting is for buyers who want to have their own agent, or if there are any agents out there that said, hey, you know, what, I’m okay with working for a flat fee, or a larger agency that starts forming gets agents, and they’re earning a paycheck and just churning through, you know, transactions, that’s going to be interesting, because then they’ll come to the deal and say, hey, I have my buyer’s agent, we’ve got our agreed deal. Out of the whole thing, and let’s get this done, you know, so, but then again, something like that, to affect the market, at a larger level is going to take time, and it’s gonna have to gain popularity. And I don’t know if the general consumer is going to be sort of that informed to do that, you know? So I don’t know, it’s gonna be interesting.

Ian R
So let me run a couple scenarios by you and what you said about the MLS and everything is all very accurate, but so the average buyer is almost invariably buying at the top end of their market. So if they’re, if they’re allowed to buy a house for 350,000, they’re buying a house for 350,000. They’re not going to go to an agent and say, show me a bunch of houses and here’s three grand, here’s 10 grand, here’s 15 grand, they’re just not going to do it because it’s just not going to happen. So what’s going to happen and what’s starting to happen already, is it just reverses where the commission is negotiated. So before you go on the MLS, and, you know, I would, I would see it, it was like, oh, okay, I have 7% commission on this, I’m given 3.5. And then all these buyer’s agents would clamor to this one house to bring their clients, they’re like, oh, crud, 3.5%, that’s going to be great. And they would do that to attract buyers. In fact, they would ask for extra commission from their clients to attract more buyers if they weren’t attracting enough, you know, back when the market wasn’t so hot. Now, it’s going to be on the other side, a buyer’s agent is going to be like, I’m only asking 2% of your commission. Just, I have buyers. And now that all the, now all the selling agents are going to be trying to draw the buyer’s agents in and checking out what commissions they’re asking for. So it just reverses it. And from what I understand, like Howard Hanna, it’s just a couple of extra documents. And it works.

Beon DeNood
Okay.

Ian R
And remember it’s not a law. It’s not a law. It’s, it’s a settlement of an organization. So there’s nothing to say in any state that you can’t just do it. And there’s other MLS’s out there and NAR doesn’t control it all. And basically, there’s a whole bunch of workarounds. But now you think about it from like, let’s say I’m a seller, and I go, and I say, and this will just show you how I’m forced to just do the status quo. So I say, well, listen, I’ve read all about this NAR lawsuit, you can’t require me to give you 6% commission so I can give the buyer’s agent 3%. Selling agents go, okay, I’m like, I’m gonna give you 2% commission. That’s it. Okay, we’ll list your house, and you won’t have anybody come and come and look at it. You know, some people may come without agents, and that may or may not work out. But what realistically is going to happen is my house is going to sit on the market, buyer’s agents are going to come and say, I just need 2%. They’re like, that’s my whole commission, they walk away, it’s going to be the same thing in reverse. And then my house is gonna sit on the market for a year until I finally pony up and say, alright, here’s the 6% commission, just pay the buyer’s agent what he needs so that he can bring a buyer to my house.

Beon DeNood
Right. Yeah. Because I mean, even historically, this commission split has existed for a reason, there’s a reason that a broker says, okay, I’m okay with giving you as much percentage commission as me because there has to be two sides to those transactions. Right. And that’s going to continue to exist. So, yeah, I don’t know, it’ll, it’ll be interesting. I don’t know if you had anything else, because I had another one to jump into that I had read about, but…

Ian R
Yeah, I want, I want to hear it. Yeah, because I do have a positive spin on this, there’s actually a really good aspect for us as home inspectors. But I want to hear your thought first.

Beon DeNood
Well, there was another one that was talking about a lot of like, these online, home listing websites, you know, so that like the, the tech side of the real estate industry, and how that stands to benefit from this arrangement in the future, because the idea behind it was like, okay, so you can, you know, have a home listed on these, these platforms. And, you know, we offer a set fee for, you know, helping you through your transaction and all the rest, which, again, means that they have buyer’s agents working for a paycheck as opposed to commission’s, and they have this amount they charge to facilitate the transaction. And it’s interesting, because we’ve always talking about commoditizing of the, of the home inspection industry, right. And we talking about all these guys who have a similar idea for the home inspection industry that, hey, we got all these leads, we’ll pay you you know, 200 bucks to do your inspections. And that’s the market price, take it or leave it, that effectively that would mean that kind of a similar thing for the at least the buyer agent parts and not the brokers, they’ll still be earning their commissions, but for the agents handling the buying side of the transaction. But then again, I mean, I don’t know, it will take, it would take pretty, a pretty desperate situation. And again, maybe there’ll be two sides to the market, because there’s some agents that probably will likely drop out and be like, hey, this is too much for me, whatever. And they would be more inclined to support a platform like that as opposed to someone else working directly with brokers. But again, we just have to wait and see how it how it shakes out.

Ian R
Yeah, and so that was the other bad thing actually, that I was going to mention is, so we open a door here for companies like Inspectify, we’ve mentioned them on the show before, that I personally do not agree with how that, how that happens because it commoditize’s our industry in my opinion. You like all those legal, in my opinion, disclaimers, Beon, because I know they listen to the show.

Beon DeNood
So yeah, enough, enough anecdotally’s, we’ve now moved on to, in my opinions.

Ian R
In my opinions, right. One of our listeners made fun of me the other day, he goes, anecdotally, you say, anecdotal, I’m like, stop it, man. It was pretty funny, actually. But now I’ve completely lost my thought. But what happens is, if a buyer goes online says, wow, I can’t find an agent in my area, I can’t, I can’t negotiate with the sellers agents, because they have an advantage over me, I need an agent, they’re gonna go to these companies. And this already actually exists. So I work doing some volunteer work with some real estate stuff. And in small municipality, sometimes we’ll deal with a closing company. So they will have their own people, you don’t have to have an agent. Some people do, some people don’t. And you just deal with a closing company. So these are gonna spread in certain markets where, you know, maybe people are like, you know what, I’ll just go to a closing company, they’ll send somebody open up the door, I’ll look at a few houses, I’ll go by and, you know, dead and done. The problem is, when we train people to do that, everything else gets to be a click of a button too. Oh, we’re right here, I can just click, and here’s my $200 home inspection and my $300 you know, appraisal.

Beon DeNood
Where do I check out?

Ian R
Where do I check out?

Beon DeNood
Can I pay with Apple Pay?

Ian R
That is bad for us. That is bad for our industry. While we’ve opened the door, that is not going to happen yet, in my opinion. And I think that is far, much farther down the road. And I think a couple more lawsuits in and some more federal regulation. Because it’s, it’s just not, it’s just not there yet.

Beon DeNood
Yeah.

Ian R
So what you said, I think, is extremely accurate. I don’t think we’re there yet. But if we have to watch the market, if it turns, but I don’t, I don’t think it will, there’s too many agents out there fighting for their spot now, and how they’re going to make their commission. But here’s a couple other things that agents will do to make their commission, seller’s concession. So that happens all the time with stuff. So if you have to, you know, you want to remodel the kitchen, and they’re like, okay, we’ll give you 20 grand at closing, and we’ll roll it into your mortgage, seller concession, happens all the time. They can do that with commissions, you know, in versions of that, so it won’t come out anything, it’ll just get spread out over 30 years. Oh, okay, cool, there’s gonna be a lot of ways where agents are going to be able to get their commission in markets before you go to click, click, and off you go. That model is not good for any, either of the industries. And NAR is not going, NAR’s not stupid, NAR did not just hand over its own destruction, it knew what it was doing by basically making this arbitrary move. And that’s all it really was, arbitrary. But here’s the good stuff. We are already seeing an increase of people working without an agent, or working around their agent in getting home inspections.

Beon DeNood
Okay.

Ian R
That has gone up. Matter of fact, I was just working with numbers with a, with a home inspector that I know really well in a different market. And he was going over, he’s like, yeah, we get, we get lots of people now, here’s some numbers of people that don’t have agents or people who don’t want to work with their agent, and just want to be protected against the seller’s agent. So we end up becoming a first line of defense for them. We’re not going to get involved in transaction, but they’re going to view us as like, okay, working on my own, or I have my agent over here, but I want to get my own people, that mentality is starting to come back more. And on the flip side of that, which you think would be bad is the seller’s agents are wanting to get pre-listing inspections a little bit more, again, which we haven’t seen a lot of that in the past few years because the market’s been so hot. But seller’s agents are like, I just want to make sure this is smooth, I can get my commission with whichever way this heads and pre-listing inspections, which I love, are coming back. Interestingly, Beon, an attorney told me one time there’s basically almost zero liability in a pre-listing inspection because you have to have damages. So if the damage is okay, there’s a leak in my roof. Okay, what are the damages? $500 to repair that little spot in your roof. And as Joe Ferry actually explained one time, he said it’s not the whole roof, it’s not a $30,000 roof, it’s your damages are that one thing, and you then you have to prove not only negligence, but gross negligence, all that stuff. But for pre-listing inspections, there’s no damages.

Beon DeNood
Right.

Ian R
What was there is already there. You just didn’t see it. So there’s no damages as he explained it. Again, I’m not an attorney, but I always want to…

Beon DeNood
You’re not inspecting for the consumer. This person’s not like, you know, going to be purchasing this property for the next whatever, 30 years or, you know, yeah, that makes sense.

Ian R
Yeah, that’s exactly it. So, there are some good things for us. First of all, this is just the first step. There’s wasn’t a law that was passed, there was a trade association that was required to decouple commissions as a requirement. It doesn’t say it’s impossible, or can never be done again, one trade association was required to decouple, that’s it. So not, not a whole lot going on there. But business as usual, unfortunately, for most of the US, but it opens the door for us as home inspectors, and it is really a good thing. We’re already seeing an uptick of home inspections, just in general, because the market’s getting a little bit better. We’re going to start seeing some houses sit on the market a little bit longer, I think because of the changing commissions, so we’re gonna have better inventory, that’s going to be awesome for us. So imagine, you know, me being the guy who thinks he’s savvy saying, oh, I’m not going to, I don’t have to pay the other guy commission, that house that sits on the house on the market for a year, there’s going to be other ones like that. And that’s going to build up inventory, which we’ve been lacking for, like four years now. Yep. So we’re going to build inventory, we’re going to get direct to consumer marketing. Man, if you haven’t done your direct to consumer marketing. Get on it now. Because it, it’s working out for those that have gotten on it when I said when we talked about NAR the last time and even last year, direct to consumer, that is going to work out really well. Get your SEO, meet and greets local, you know, local, I don’t know what you call them, the home shows and things like that. Stuff like that, that maybe, especially the home shows, I hated those, those might actually be good now. So make sure we get that stuff settled, because it’s already increasing the direct to consumer stuff.

Beon DeNood
Yup. It increases consumer education as well, if you’re out there, you know, I just think of for example, we were talking to the other day about, who’s AJ, Inspector AJ?

Ian R
Inspector AJ, yeah, he’s a good guy.

Beon DeNood
So, so yeah, I mean, he’s, he’s got a massive following on TikTok, right. And that’s how he went to be pretty famous. But you think about what he’s doing as far as consumer education. And what’s interesting, too, he’s talking using a platform like TikTok talking to a generation that is going to be more comfortable with the click, click, click, buy, buy online kind of idea. But if you have consumer education like something like that, these guys oh, I follow this guy on TikTok, you know, I’ll never buy a house without a home inspection, because look at all the crazy stuff that he finds. So it’s interesting to see which way it’s, it’s going to go, but I, you know, a home buying transaction for the people and the businesses who have it part of their model that this is going to be kind of an all online, you know, fixed fee kind of situation. I don’t think that’s going to, you know, materialize in any major way anytime soon. And if it ever does, I think it’ll only be one option of many ways to buy a home. So yeah, you know, the sky is not falling, right now. Things things will change, depending on how your market’s structured, and who’s buying in your market. You may be more affected than others, you know, than not. Will we see some shakeout of agents? I think for sure, yeah. But you know, in all honesty, that probably needed to happen, and we’ll, we’ll see where we land, you know. So, the other good thing about it, when you talk about the shakeup of agents there, the agents that have been around for a while, and the agents that are really good and diligent and hardworking, all of them that I’ve talked to, they’re all like, okay, we’ll adapt, we’ll, we’ll do good by people, we’ll, we’ll do this, we’ll do that. And they’re not worried. And they’re like, okay, we’ll make this happen. The people who are freaking out are the agents that are just like, remember when it was easy, we could just take it like a McDonald’s order. And we’re just, there’s your house, and here’s my commission. Show up in my flip flops, sign a few papers, and woohoo, back to the couch. Exactly.

Ian R
Those agents are going to be gone because it is an extra layer of work now to still be able to get those commissions. The guy, the one broker, I say guy, the one broker I was talking to, he’s like, yeah, it’s a little extra work and extra thought. So as soon as you say work and thought that takes out like a large chunk of agents are like, whoa, I’m not into that. So it knocks off some of the low hanging rotted fruit. And that’s good for our industry. Because to be honest with you, we don’t like that. And that low hanging, rotted fruit tends to, from agents, tends to refer the same type of maybe home inspector set of guys that we get irritated about when we go back to reinspect. And we’re like, how did you miss an entire foundation wall collapsing. We get irritated with him, we’re like, oh, come on, it’s going to clean up a little bit of both industries. And in industries where the numbers are already down with those people. So part of the reason that the market’s picking up is, unfortunately, we lost a large set of home inspectors. And same thing for agents, lost a large set of agents. Now there’s a little bit more work but a much smaller set of people to give it to, which is good mathematically speaking, that’s going to happen even more. So there’s some really good stuff that’s out there for us. Continue marketing to agents and things like that, that’s still going to be important. But pre-listing inspections, and direct to consumer marketing, mostly direct to consumer marketing, that’s going to pick up. I would really recommend everybody focus on that.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, interesting. It is interesting how the media has played this because just about every article you read on any of the major networks or sites, it’s all about the sky is falling and everything’s gonna end, they all talking about like, Australia, the UK, this is, that’s the way we’re gonna go, you know, but it seems to be a bit of an overreaction to the situation. Like you say the folks that are actually in the industry are like, well, yeah, there’s some changes coming, but we’re gonna be good. We’re gonna figure this out, you know?

Ian R
Yeah, I would have loved if we had switched to like, the European style. That’s what I was kind of hoping this whole thing would explode. When as soon as I saw the settlement and like, that’s nothing. Again, it’s like InterNACHI saying, okay, we can’t require our members to charge $500 anymore. Okay, I’m still gonna charge $500. Like, that doesn’t change anything. Now, if it were legislation, I’d be like, whoa, let’s step back. But it’s, it’s NAR. Okay. That’s it.

Beon DeNood
It is interesting. Like with us being in the tech space, I am keeping my eye on Zillow, companies like Zillow, cuz it’s gonna be interesting to see what they do to, you know, deal with the change and what other features and because look, Zillow, we must remember, they’re not a company that are reaching any profit targets, yet, they’ve still been idling, trying to find like, most of their profits come from the rental, rental space. That’s, that’s the big earner. So, you know, they’re kind of poised and it looks like they are looking to want to take advantage of this in some way, shape, or form. And it will be interesting to see how consumer psychology plays into whatever plans they have coming. So we’ll keep an eye on that and obviously report back as it develops, but..

Ian R
Well, it’s interesting. I won’t get into the weeds of it. But I think Redfin is actually positioned a little bit better at the moment for that, just my personal opinion. I don’t have data to back it up just from what I’ve seen, anecdotally for our listeners. But Zillow’s stocks actually went down because where they make a lot of money too in addition to rentals is agents, agent leads.

Beon DeNood
Buyer’s agents.

Ian R
Yeah, buyer’s agents, the leads that they get through there is one of their biggest moneymakers. And so their stocks just like took a big kick to the face. So..

Beon DeNood
They have been very tightly coupled with NAR in the MLS. So it looked to be more of a knee jerk reaction. A lot of the guys in the stock space when they took a dip, they were like buy, buy, buy, because it’s just an emotional knee jerk to the ruling. So we’ll have to see, but yeah, Redfin, Zillow, we’ll see what tech solutions they’re looking to throw at the space. But ultimately, it’ll probably all settle them. It’ll be more like business as usual, which I think everybody’s been looking forward to actually.

Ian R
You know, it’s funny too, though. I imagine maybe the younger people as they, as they get into the buyers market, will maybe be more tech forward when it comes to that. But even young people, they just want somebody, a human being to stand there and say, tell me what to do. I don’t do this. I don’t know, what do I do? And you can’t take that away from them. I mean, we all want somebody to help us through a process like, can I go to legal, legal Zoom, and get legal advice and get legal documents? Yeah. But sometimes, I just want to sit in an office with a dude that knows on the other side of the desk and say, what do I do? And him just talk to me about it. I don’t think you can take that away from the industry. And it didn’t go away from the industry in Australia and Europe. So I don’t think it’s going to magically fall apart here, it’s going to be a lot of business as usual, but some good changes for our industry.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, one last thought I thought of is dual agency. And yeah, so there I mean, we have what is a six, five or six states that do not have dual agency at the moment but the rest of all do. So I don’t know if this will move a lot of guys into sort of where they can do dual agency to pushing those kinds of transactions where everything gets handled in house, the, you know, listing and buying part of the transaction all takes takes place for the same agency, that’ll be interesting. Because if I had a pretty large agency, if you know, pretend broker me, I would see that as an opportunity to be able to probably, I mean, you could potentially see more income. But dual agency has always been painted as this kind of shady practice. And a lot of consumers are aware of that. But I think if you find a place that’s got a good deal, you know, Honest Jon’s you know, Homes.

Ian R
Never, never, never trust any company that has the word honest in the title, if you have to tell me, it’s not true.

Beon DeNood
I compared, that was sort of deliberate because I think of car buying, you know, other than our homes, our car is our next you know, biggest asset typically that most of us buy. And you know, you don’t typically have two dealers involved just to make sure the car is in good condition. If you find a place that has a good reputation that can handle, they’ve bought the vehicle, they have it listed, you’re gonna buy it through them, you’re going to finance through them, you take care of it all. And you trust yeah, it’s good. You know, it has it’s, what is the Carfax thing, and you’re good, you trust the deal. So whether it progressively places where dual agency is allowed, will start moving to that kind of model with with home sales, it’ll be interesting. So I think it’s created some some opportunities, I think we just have to see how some of the bigger players set the set the tone of what’s going to actually happen.

Ian R
Well, I mean, what you just described as a closing company, though, like we were talking about before, some areas, you just have a closing company. I mean, to be honest, if I were in real estate right now, I’d probably be starting the closing company in markets that don’t already have one. I mean, there’s no laws that said, you can’t, I mean, depends on where you are that you can have your home inspectors and your appraisers, and everybody all in house and ready to go just like a dealership. I think that’s more likely a model. But I think it’s going to be small and reach small regional areas.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, you’ll probably have some big guys trying to start some more national kind of efforts. But the one, the more I’m learning about the real estate market in the United States is that it is very fragmented, markets are very fragmented. It’s just, I remember Nick Gromicko used to tell us this, too. It’s like, it’s just too big. It’s just too big. You can’t just nationalize everything. It’s not, I mean, the pockets will have to be way too deep. But you know, what versions of that for regional things like larger cities areas, you’ll probably probably get some operators like that that’ll be able to take a good percentage of the market, but we’ll see, you know.

Ian R
Yup. We’ll see. For now, it is going to be mostly business as usual, but some good stuff on the horizon for us. So hopefully, you take away all of our listeners, hopefully you guys all take away that fact, there are good things that came out of this for us. There’s not much negative that happened for us. The only negative was it didn’t go as far as we had hoped. But Beon, thank you for being on the show and for your insights, and we’ll talk soon.

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