The biggest barrier to AI in your business is not technology, Kyle Crawford writes. It is the mental block that is quietly costing you your database.
You did not lose that past client to a better agent. You lost them to silence, and to whoever filled it.
While you went quiet, other people did not.
Everyone holding your client’s email address is competing for the relationship you assume you already own, and the agent who shows up consistently is the one who keeps it.
Here is the uncomfortable part. The tool that could help you show up is sitting right in front of you, and most agents refuse to use it for this.
We are all already living with AI. We talk to chatbots. We call into companies, and AI answers. You can tell your phone to book you a dinner reservation tonight, and it handles nearly the whole thing.
Yet so many agents freeze at the idea of building a system where AI has their clients’ birthdays and texts them a happy birthday automatically. We have decided AI is allowed to write a listing description or clean up a spreadsheet, and that is where we stop. Meanwhile the tools have moved well past that, and so have our clients.
That is the real hurdle. Not the technology, the mental block we put up for ourselves.
Let me be clear about where I stand. Nothing goes to my clients without me behind it. Either I am prompting it, or I have fully built the system reaching out to them.
But I do not fool myself. As AI does more and more, we are getting very close to being able to talk to your clients for you, in your voice and your tone. That is exactly why getting started now matters. The agents who learn these systems today are the ones who will be ready when that day arrives, instead of scrambling to catch up.
So where is the line?
First, whatever comes out of AI with my name on it is curated to me, 100 percent. Not generic. Not the default voice the tool ships with. Mine.
Second, pick one system and build into it. I started on one platform and moved easily to another. What stayed constant was the work underneath. Every chat I start, every prompt I write, every project I create carries instructions that were made for me, by me.
Third, test it on yourself first. If I build a project to text my clients on their birthday, I pour my voice and tone into it, then run it on myself before it ever reaches a single client.
And no, I do not think we need to announce to clients that AI is involved, any more than a professional tells their boss they used the writing assistant built into their email. I remember when Grammarly first came out, and I could not imagine working without it. Here we are again, except now the tool can complete the whole task, not just fix the sentence.
The standard was never “Did a tool touch this?” The standard is “Is this good, and is this me?” If the answer is yes, you have done your job.
Here is why this is not just a tech conversation. It is a business one. The agents who refuse to use AI are going to keep losing, slowly and quietly, the way you lose a client without ever noticing they drifted.
If you are the agent who religiously writes the handwritten notes, makes the calls, and sends the texts, this does not apply to you. Keep doing exactly what you are doing. But let’s be honest with each other. Most agents are not that consistent. Most clients go months without hearing from the agent who sold them their home.
A few years ago, the baseline was a monthly newsletter and a holiday email campaign. That is not enough anymore, not if you want your database to stay your database.
Used right, AI is what keeps your database yours and keeps the outside players who only have an email address from creeping into the picture.
None of it sounds like a machine, because you built it to sound like you.
But it only works because you are using it to build deeper, more meaningful relationships, not to send more noise. More genuine touches lead to more conversations. More conversations lead to more appointments and more referrals.
None of that happens on its own. It happens when you stop treating AI like a copywriter, start using it every day, and let it work for you.
The client you lost to silence is already getting someone else’s birthday text. Make sure the next one is yours.
Travis Winfield knows how to use a financial weapon most veterans never fire.
Only about 13 percent of eligible veterans have used their VA home loan benefit, Winfield said, despite homeownership being one of the most accessible tools available to build wealth.
A 24-year Navy veteran, Winfield is the founder of Military Operated Real Estate (MORE), a certification and referral network for agents who serve military families. The company launched publicly in December and has since grown to 105 certified agents across 35 states, covering 73 percent of the country’s 215 military installations, Winfield said.
For Winfield, the case for homeownership starts with what people actually need to survive.
“There’s only a few things you have to have in life,” Winfield said. “You need food, you need housing, and you need some medical.”
For those who’ve served, he said, that need comes with a set of tools most never use. Less than 1 percent of Americans have ever volunteered to serve, Winfield said, yet only about 13 percent of eligible veterans have used their VA home loan benefit — a gap he attributes in part to a benefits literacy crisis inside the military community itself.
That gap has real consequences. Winfield described a listing appointment where a disabled veteran was prepared to sell his home to fund his son’s college tuition — unaware that California offers free tuition at state universities to dependents of disabled veterans. Once Winfield shared that information, the family no longer needed to sell.
That moment, he said, is why MORE trains its agents to function as benefits experts alongside real estate professionals — not just to close transactions, but to surface the tools their clients already have.
“If you serve your country, you deserve to own a piece of it,” Winfield said, attributing the sentiment to a phrase he’s heard others use.
Active-duty service members also have access to an extended capital gains exemption window that most buyers don’t, Winfield said, one of the many benefits service members have access to that most are unaware of, as are many agents.
“What if I told you there’s a strategy where you can buy a home at every duty station, and by the time you get out of the military, I can make you a million overnight,” Winfield said.
The idea for MORE took shape over roughly a decade, Winfield said, after he noticed a gap in trusted national brands serving military families.
“Name a national brand that you can trust as a service member or military family when it comes to real estate,” Winfield said. “It doesn’t really exist.”
Winfield pointed to Navy Federal Credit Union and USAA as examples of what that trust looks like in banking and insurance — institutions that, he said, own roughly 92 percent of market share among military families in those categories because they specialize and speak the community’s language. No equivalent, he said, exists in real estate.
Part of the problem, Winfield said, is that military life carries a set of circumstances most civilian agents have never encountered: moves every two to three years on orders, purchases made sight unseen from overseas, time zone differences that complicate communication and financial decisions that often have to happen faster than the market allows.
“You don’t know what it’s like to serve unless you’ve actually served,” Winfield said.
MORE requires proof of military affiliation before an agent can apply for certification, including a DD-214, military ID or documentation establishing dependent status. Agents then complete 35 hours of self-paced curriculum and must show at least three VA loan transactions before they can carry the MORE certification, Winfield said.
Winfield contrasted that standard with the National Association of Realtors’ Military Relocation Professional certification, which he said requires no military affiliation or transaction history to obtain.
“I’m not really okay with that,” Winfield said. “So we’re raising that standard.”
The curriculum goes beyond transaction mechanics, Winfield said. Agents learn how military pay structures work, how to navigate time zone differences with overseas clients and how to facilitate sight-unseen purchases — a common reality for families receiving orders abroad.
Certification is not a rubber stamp, Winfield said. Agents who violate MORE’s ethics policies do not face unilateral removal — they face a board of their peers, structured after military disciplinary processes.
“We’re going to create a board of your peers, just like we do in the military, and they’re going to determine your fate, not me,” Winfield said.
MORE also builds in a consumer-facing quality control component, Winfield said. After a transaction closes, the company follows up directly with the veteran or military family to verify their experience met the standard expected of a MORE-certified agent — functioning, he said, as a check on the network independent of the transaction itself.
The first cohort of agents to go through the certification process had a 50 percent dropout rate, Winfield said — something he described as a feature rather than a flaw.
“This is not for everybody,” Winfield said. “I want to set the standard where the service members are going to want to recognize us as the gold standard.”
His measure of success, he said, will come when agents who previously declined certification start coming back.
“It’s going to be when that one agent comes knocking on my door who said no before,” Winfield said. “It’s like, well, I just had a client who wouldn’t hire me because I’m not certified with MORE.”
MORE has also built programs aimed at two groups Winfield said the industry has largely overlooked: military spouses and transitioning service members.
The More Ambassador Program licenses military spouses as referral agents in a single state, allowing them to earn 25 percent of the commission on transactions they facilitate by connecting relocating families with MORE-certified agents at the next duty station, Winfield said.
The program was built around a structural problem, he said — military spouse unemployment runs five to seven times the national average, driven by the relentless cycle of moves that makes building a sustained career nearly impossible.
“Who do you rely on for recommendations when you’re moving from one duty station to another?” Winfield said. “Your fellow spouses.”
The company also operates as a SkillBridge sponsor. The Department of Defense program allows service members in their final three to six months of active duty to train with civilian employers rather than report for duty. Through MORE’s sponsorship, transitioning service members can embed with real estate teams in the network, Winfield said, building their business before they ever separate from service.
Stop chasing agents and start attracting and selecting them instead, coach Verl Workman writes. Provide solutions that make your value proposition irresistible.
If you ask most brokers or team leaders where their business is failing, they’ll point to recruiting.
And yet, they’re still stuck.
When something isn’t working, the average person’s default setting is to do more of it. In recruiting, “more” effort doesn’t fix a broken model — it just exposes it to more people. The breakdown isn’t happening in the middle of your meeting; it happened before you even picked up the phone.
You’re treating recruiting like a volume game. I’m here to tell you that’s a loser’s strategy. If you want to stop chasing agents and start attracting talent, you have to stop “recruiting” and start selecting.
Most recruiting sounds exactly the same: “Here’s our split. Here’s our tech. Here’s why we’re ‘different.’” Guess what? Every other broker in town is saying the exact same thing. To an experienced agent, you sound like white noise. They don’t care if you’re “good.” They care if you are relevant. Let me explain.
The elite leaders — the ones building massive, profitable teams — don’t give presentations. They conduct exploratory sessions. If you’re doing more talking than listening in a recruiting meeting, you’ve already lost. Your job isn’t to explain what you have; it’s to uncover what they are missing.
The biggest mistake I see is the “safety trap.” You want to help the brand-new agent, but you also want the $20 million producer. You want the team player, but you’ll take the lone wolf.
By trying to be everything to everyone, you are nothing to the people who actually matter.
Broad is “safe,” but broad is boring. High-level agents don’t want a “safe” leader; they want a specialist. They need to know that you understand their specific ceiling.
If your message doesn’t hit one of those nerves immediately, you aren’t a leader — you’re just another person with a desk for rent.
Stop leading with your tech stack. No one ever moved companies because they loved a CRM. They move because of transformation.
The question sitting underneath every conversation is: “What changes for me if I say yes?” If you can’t answer that in one sentence, you aren’t ready to recruit or attract talent of any value.
If the conversation becomes polite but not engaged, it’s because you failed to connect your systems to their survival. You’re selling features (splits/tech) when you should be selling outcomes (time back/wealth building/legacy).
The best recruiting conversations feel slower. They’re fueled by curiosity, not desperation.
When you ask those questions, the tone changes. You aren’t convincing someone to move; you’re determining if they are qualified to join your mission.
Recruiting feels like chasing because you aren’t clear on who you’re best for. When you get clear, the wrong agents filter themselves out, and the right ones engage at lightning speed.
Stop trying to get in front of more people. Start getting more relevant to the right people.
True leadership isn’t about how many agents you have; it’s about how much production and profit those agents generate. If your recruiting is unpredictable, it’s because your recruiting efforts are unpredictable and your ability to serve instead of sell is cloudy.
Start meeting agents where they are, and become the solution they’re not getting from their leaders. When you show up like that, your value becomes unmistakable.
The choice is simple: You can keep begging for agents, or you can build a business so valuable that the right people demand to be a part of it. Which one are you building today?
Inman has been the leading news source for real estate professionals for decades. What happens when the CEO of real estate’s most recognizable media brand says he’s trying to stop being just a media company?
In this episode of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered, Keith Robinson sits down with Inman’s new CEO, Tom Bohn, to discuss his vision for transforming Inman from a news outlet into an indispensable business platform for real estate professionals.
Bohn shares his vision for transforming Inman from a publication agents read into a platform they rely on every day. Instead of simply reporting the news, Inman is building AI-powered tools, data, education and community designed to become an essential part of an agent’s business.
They also dive into AI, leadership, journalism, industry disruption and why the future belongs to agents who embrace technology without losing the human connection.
If you’re wondering where real estate and the industry covering it is headed next, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
The conversation also explores:
One of the most compelling moments comes when Bohn explains that technology doesn’t replace great agents; it exposes average ones. The professionals who embrace AI to eliminate administrative work will have more time to focus on what consumers value most: trust, expertise and relationships.
Whether you’re an agent, broker, team leader or simply curious about where the industry is headed, this conversation offers a thoughtful look at how technology, leadership and journalism are all evolving together.
Connect with Tom Bohn on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered is now exclusively on Inman. Tune in for agent- and team-focused content on Mondays and leadership interviews on Wednesdays each week. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
James Dwiggins is the president of NextHome, Inc. and co-host of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered.
Keith Robinson is the president of strategy at NextHome, Inc. and co-host of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered.
Follow Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered Podcast on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook or TikTok, and subscribe to their YouTube Channel.
Only 13 percent of the nearly 20 million eligible veterans and active duty service members in this country have ever used their VA home loan benefit, according to a 2026 NewDay USA survey of more than 1,200 veterans and service members that also found nearly 1 in 3 received little to no education about the benefit during or after their military service.
No down payment. No private mortgage insurance. Competitive rates. For veterans with a service-connected disability, the VA funding fee is waived entirely. It is one of the most powerful wealth-building tools available to any American, earned through military service.
As real estate professionals, that number should stop us cold. Because a significant part of why that percentage stays so low traces directly back to our industry.
In 2004, I bought my first house in Newport News, Virginia, as an E-5, Petty Officer Second Class, in the Navy. Young, excited and completely clueless, I trusted my real estate agent. That was my first mistake.
He had no idea how VA loans worked. Instead of putting me in the zero-down, fixed-rate product I was fully eligible for, he steered me toward an interest-only adjustable-rate mortgage. My payment was $400 a month. I thought I was winning.
What he never explained was the one-year rate lock. When it adjusted, my payment nearly tripled. The extra $800 a month hit our family like a gut punch.
Orders came in 2006. I sold just before the real estate bubble burst. My neighbors, fellow service members, watched their home values drop 50 percent to 60 percent. Many were stuck. Some lost everything.
I was not saved by good advice. I was saved by luck. And I spent the next two decades asking myself how many others were not.
Military families are not a niche market with minor differences from civilian clients. They arrive at your listing appointment operating in an entirely different financial reality, one most agents have never been trained to understand.
A PCS, or Permanent Change of Station, move costs military families thousands of dollars in unreimbursed expenses per relocation, according to research from the Military Family Advisory Network.
Many are qualifying for a mortgage on a single income because military spouses face an unemployment rate five to seven times the national average, driven by the relentless cycle of relocations that makes sustained careers nearly impossible to build.
Their pay structure adds another layer that most agents miss. BAH, or Basic Allowance for Housing, is non-taxable income that varies by rank, dependency status and duty station. Agents and lenders who do not understand how it factors into loan qualification cannot effectively advocate for their clients through underwriting.
There is also a financial vulnerability in this community that our industry needs to reckon with honestly. According to the Department of Defense’s 2006 Report on Predatory Lending Practices Directed at Members of the Armed Forces and Their Dependents, submitted to Congress as the basis for the Military Lending Act, service members are up to four times more likely to be targeted by high-interest lenders than their civilian counterparts.
During my 24 years in the Navy, serving as both a military police officer and a senior enlisted leader, I lost count of how many formal letters of indebtedness from creditors I processed for service members under my command. I watched debt revoke security clearances and stall promotions.
For this community, a bad real estate transaction is not just a financial setback. It can end a career.
About two years ago, I sat at a listing appointment with a veteran and his family. Before I touched the price or strategy, I asked why they were selling. He said their son had been accepted to UC Berkeley. Tuition was expensive. Selling felt like their only option.
I asked one question: Are you a service-connected disabled veteran? He said yes. I told him that in California, children of service-connected disabled veterans may be eligible to attend any California State University or University of California campus with tuition and fees fully waived, and encouraged him to verify through the California Department of Veterans Affairs.
They started crying right there in their living room. Nobody had told them. Not their Veterans Service Officer (VSO). Not their lender. Not a single agent before me.
They kept their house. Their son went to UC Berkeley. That is the difference between an agent who works with military clients and one who actually serves them.
That kind of awareness does not come from a weekend course. It comes from doing the work. Here is where to start.
Under the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act of 2019, which took effect Jan. 1, 2020, Congress eliminated VA loan limits for borrowers with full entitlement that fit the criteria of this Act.
Most agents still believe VA loans are capped and steer military buyers toward conventional products they do not need. That belief is costing your clients money and costing you credibility with a community that talks to each other constantly.
Any veteran with a service-connected disability rating is fully exempt from the VA funding fee at closing. This can save a buyer thousands of dollars. If you have to look this up mid-transaction, your client is already at a disadvantage.
Many listing agents advise sellers to avoid VA offers based on outdated myths about slow timelines and difficult appraisals. Military buyers are highly motivated, fully qualified, and often paying at or above the asking price. Agents who perpetuate that bias are actively working against their own sellers and turning away one of the strongest buyer pools in the market.
Power of attorney transactions, where a deployed spouse signs on behalf of the service member, happen regularly in military real estate. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, or SCRA, also provides legal and financial protections that affect active contracts and timelines. Errors in either area create legal exposure. If you have never navigated one, learn before you need to.
A VA loan assumption allows a buyer, including a non-veteran, to take over the seller’s existing VA loan at the original interest rate. In a high-rate environment, a seller with a low-rate VA loan sitting on the asset has a significant competitive advantage. Agents who know how to market and facilitate assumptions are delivering real value that most of their competitors cannot.
Military families are one of the most loyal, referral-driven client bases in real estate. They move constantly, they talk to each other constantly, and when they find a professional who genuinely understands their world, they never stop sending business that person’s way.
But loyalty has to be earned. This community has spent decades navigating a financial system that too often saw a steady paycheck before it saw a person.
Military families have learned to read the difference between an agent who has put in the work and one who has simply added a military specialization line to their bio. Earned expertise looks different from claimed expertise, and this community will feel the difference in the first five minutes of a conversation.
The agents who will build lasting businesses in this market are the ones who have genuinely prepared, who have pursued real training, who understand the benefits deeply enough to apply them without prompting, and who walk into every appointment knowing that for this family, this move is not a transaction. It is a mission.
That 13 percent VA loan utilization number is not a statistic. It is a gap. And it is an invitation. The question is not whether military families deserve better. They do. The question is whether you have done the work to earn the right to serve them.
Travis Winfield is a retired 24-year Navy Command Senior Chief, Founder and CEO of Military Operated Real Estate (MORE), a national network of military-affiliated real estate professionals, and author of Military Money and MORE. He is a national speaker on veteran financial literacy and VP of the Enlisted Leadership Foundation. Learn more at traviswinfield.com.
“Big deal, it’s a yawn.” That’s how President Trump described a bipartisan housing bill that passed Congress with veto-proof margins — that still doesn’t have his signature.
President Donald Trump still doesn’t have a major housing bill on his desk — and even when it arrives, he’s not promising to sign it.
Trump declined to commit to signing the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, telling reporters at a White House press conference that the bill remains “so unimportant” compared with his push for the SAVE America Act.
“The housing bill is a bill that could get approved. They worked on it long and hard. It’s very bipartisan; that means the Democrats like it,” Trump said, before adding, “Big deal, it’s a yawn. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
Trump also said the bill has not yet reached his desk. “I have not [signed it]. It hasn’t been sent to me yet. It’s coming,” he said. House Speaker Mike Johnson officially sent the bill for Trump’s signature on Monday, which starts the constitutional 10-day window for Trump to sign it, veto it or allow it to become law automatically.
Trump canceled a planned signing ceremony for the bill last week, tying his signature to passage of the SAVE Act, an election security measure that has failed repeatedly in the Senate. Republican lawmakers have said they lack the votes to pass it without eliminating the filibuster, a move GOP leadership has so far declined to make.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, defended the delay at a House Freedom Caucus news conference, saying the president has “been very clear” that he wants the SAVE Act prioritized alongside the housing bill.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, a co-sponsor of the housing bill, pledged at a press conference following the cancellation that the legislation will pass regardless. “This may be a battle, but I guarantee we will get this bill passed,” she said.
The bill passed the House 358-32 and the Senate 85-5 in June, margins large enough to override a potential veto if Congress chose to do so.
Whether you’re working with a nervous first-time homebuyer or an experienced repeat client, Luke Babich writes, your approach can make all the difference in their level of comfort during a transaction.
No two buyers move through a home purchase the same way. A buyer who has to win a bidding war in a matter of days needs a very different approach than a buyer who has a month to weigh the options.
The way buyers gather information, make decisions and handle stress shapes everything about how you should communicate, how hard you should push and how often you should check in.
The agents who close consistently aren’t always the ones with the smoothest pitch. They’re the ones who figure out who they’re working with early and bend their style to fit.
If you’re listening for it, most buyers will tell you who they are in the first real conversation. Pay attention to the questions they ask and how they handle small decisions. A buyer who labors over which three homes to tour on Saturday will likely spend time mulling over an offer, while a buyer who wants you to decide for them may move faster at the finish line.
Response time is another clue. Buyers who fire back quick texts usually want an agent who matches that energy, while those who reply in thoughtful paragraphs the next morning want room to think.
A useful habit is to ask, early on, how and how often they would like to hear from you, then actually honor the answer. An agent who communicates against their clients’ wishes creates friction that has nothing to do with the house itself.
None of this is about forcing buyers into rigid boxes. It’s about forming an initial opinion and adjusting as you learn more. The sooner you understand how someone operates, the sooner you can stop guessing and start tailoring.
Here’s how to work with four different types of buyers.
These buyers show up with a spreadsheet. They’ve studied the neighborhood, pulled their own comparable sales and may track local days on market more closely than you do. What they want from you is evidence, not just enthusiasm. Vague reassurance like, “This is a great deal” may actually erode their trust because it signals that you’re selling rather than informing.
Bring numbers and sources to every conversation. Walk them through the comps behind your pricing opinion, the inspection items worth negotiating and the supply trends in their target ZIP code, then let them reach the conclusion themselves.
The risk with researchers is analysis paralysis, so help them define how much information is enough up front. When it comes to following up, they often value periodic, substantive updates over constant pings, so send a well-chosen listing or a meaningful market shift rather than a daily check-in.
The fast mover decides quickly and expects you to keep pace. This buyer has usually been watching the market for a while and has already done the emotional work of committing to buy, so when the right home appears, they want to tour it today and make an offer tonight.
Market conditions often reward moving fast. The typical U.S. home takes a median of 66 days to sell, but that figure can fall to under two weeks in the hottest metros, where any hesitation could cost a buyer the house.
Match buyers’ speed by being ready before you need to be. Get your trusted lender, inspector and title contacts lined up in advance. Have your clients’ pre-approval letter and paperwork in place so nothing administrative stalls a same-day offer.
Keep your communication short and direct, and follow up with real-time alerts the moment you have an update.
Your real value to a buyer who makes quick decisions is being the steady voice who makes sure they waive contingencies on purpose rather than by accident. Frame that diligence as protecting the speed they care about.
This buyer commits, then quietly unravels. They’re not flaky. They’re thorough in a way that runs on a delay, and they need an agent who can handle it without losing patience.
The key is to create closure rituals. After each major decision, do a brief verbal recap of what was decided and why. This gives the buyer something concrete to return to when doubt creeps in, rather than just the feeling that they agreed to something.
When concerns resurface, don’t dismiss them and don’t fully relitigate them either. Acknowledge the worry, tie it back to the reasoning behind the original decision and help the buyer see whether the new concern is actually new information or the same anxiety in a different form. Most of the time, it’s the latter.
Second-guessers often stall hardest right before signing. Expect it, and build a little runway into your timeline so a 24-hour wobble doesn’t create a crisis. The buyers who put you through the most back-and-forth before closing are often the ones who are most grateful once they’re in the house and won’t hesitate to hire you again in the future.
First-time buyers are often carrying the largest financial decision of their lives with no prior experience to lean on, and it tends to show up as hesitation, second-guessing and a lot of late-night questions. It may be tempting to mistake them as buyers who aren’t serious, but usually the opposite is true. They care enormously and are terrified of making a mistake.
Agents need to offer these buyers reassurance. Slow down and explain each stage in plain language before it arrives, so nothing feels like a surprise. Set expectations by letting them know what’s normal, such as the fact that most home inspections uncover at least a few issues.
Anxiety often comes from not knowing what happens next, so be generous with steady, predictable check-ins early on. The reassurance you provide in the first few weeks may result in a calmer, more decisive client by the time it counts.
People aren’t a single type from start to finish, either, so treat your initial communication strategy as a starting point and keep adjusting as your client’s behavior changes.
When a potential buyer asks about dual agency, Darryl Davis writes, agents need to honestly communicate the potential drawbacks.
Since the rule changes, more buyers are walking up to the listing agent directly and saying some version of the same thing: “I’ll deal with you directly; that way I don’t pay two fees.”
One of our agents raised this on a recent Monday coaching call, and it’s worth talking about. Because the way most agents answer it actually weakens their position.
We are not order-takers or door-openers. We are advisors. Serve, don’t sell. Coach, don’t close. The goal here is not to win the buyer. The goal is to help the buyer see what they cannot see on their own.
Here is the reframe I came up with right there on the call, and I like its simplicity.
Every real estate transaction runs on two separate tracks. There is a listing track and a buyer track. They are different sets of work, and somebody has to do each one.
The listing track is the seller side: promotion, marketing, getting buyers through the door, open houses, online exposure, all the work of finding the person who will say yes. Once the home goes under contract, the seller’s side actually gets lighter.
The buyer track then becomes where the weight is. That is the pre-qualification, the mortgage application done correctly and on time, the FICO score, the inspection, the engineering report, the dozens of moving pieces between contract and closing. That work does not disappear just because a buyer decided to skip having their own agent. Somebody still has to carry it.
When a buyer goes straight to the listing agent to save a fee, the buyer track does not vanish. It just lands on someone whose job is to protect the seller.
Once you understand the two tracks, you can answer the buyer honestly.
“Buyer, there are two things to understand here. The first is that coming to me as the listing agent directly does not save you a fee. If I take on your side, the buyer track, that is work, and I charge for that work. You are not saving anything. You are just paying one person for both tracks instead of two people.”
The second point is the one that should give a buyer real pause.
“Now, in some cases, the listing agent will not charge the buyer because they will not actually do the buyer track at all. Think about what that means. Now you have no one watching your side, and the agent you are leaning on has one job: to get the seller the most money possible.
The place where a buyer thinks they are saving money is often the exact place they are most exposed.
Here is the picture I gave buyers on the call:
Going directly to the listing agent to protect your own interests is like being sued, walking into court without your own attorney and then asking the attorney who is suing you to help you out. They are not going to hurt their own client to help you. They are going to do their job, and their job is the other side. It is not personal. It is simply a question of whose interest they are paid to serve.
There is also an experience gap that buyers consistently underestimate. You might buy a home once every 10 years. The agent across the table may have sold one 10 days ago. They have handled more transactions than you will in your lifetime, and they negotiate for a living. Sitting down to that without representation is not a discount. It is a disadvantage.
Another of our members added her insights, which I really liked. Instead of arguing or persuading, you simply lay out two honest options:
“You can bring in another agent to handle your side, your track, while I handle the seller’s track, and we will work together. Or you can work with me directly; I will handle both tracks for you, and you will have a smooth experience either way. The choice is yours.”
No pressure. No corner. Just two clear options offered by someone the buyer is already talking to.
The strongest close is not a close at all. It is a clear choice, offered by someone the other person already trusts.
This conversation does not argue, beg or try to scare the buyer into anything. It simply explains how the work really gets done and lets the buyer decide with their eyes open.
The ability to communicate effectively and sharpen your skills is more important than ever in this industry. Lay out the two tracks this week, offer the choice, and watch how often the buyer who came to save a fee decides they would rather have you in their corner.
Darryl Davis, CSP, is a nationally recognized real estate speaker, bestselling author and coach with more than 40 years in the industry. Learn more at darrylspeaks.com.
Talks to reopen the Strait of Hormuz have calmed some corners of the financial sector, but real estate brokerages aren’t feeling it yet.
As the war in Iran stretched into its fourth month, signs emerged that the Strait of Hormuz might eventually reopen.
Investors celebrated. Oil prices dropped. But most real estate agents surveyed by Intel have yet to see any improvement in their business prospects, results from June suggest.
Even though agents in recent weeks have become a bit more optimistic they’ll find new homebuyer clients in the year ahead, they remain stuck for now in buyer and seller purgatory, according to the most recent Inman Intel Index survey.
And their overall outlook has not improved much even as financial markets have reacted positively to recent developments in the negotiations to reopen the crucial trade chokepoint in the Middle East.
Chart by Daniel Houston
Business sentiment among agents has swung wildly since last fall, and those whom Intel surveyed were still in the process of recalibrating expectations for the year ahead.
Read the full breakdown of the score’s four components in this week’s report.
Intel’s Client Pipeline Tracker is a compilation of how agents feel about their buyer and seller pipelines — both over the past year and in the near future.
Intel described the methodology in this post, but here’s a quick refresher on how to interpret the scores.
A significantly positive combined score falls around the +20 mark. This type of score would signify that much of the industry is in agreement that pipelines are improving and will continue to improve.
A significantly negative combined score, on the other hand, falls closer to -20. That’s a bit lower than where the industry stood in September 2023, the first time Intel surveyed agents about their pipelines.
For each of the four individual components that go into the score, results as high as +50 or as low as -50 are sometimes observed.
Here are the component scores from the most recent survey, and how each sentiment category changed from the previous one.
The most noticeable shift over the past month — and the one that drove the composite Client Pipeline Tracker rating a bit higher — was in future expectations for buyer pipelines.
The monthly improvement in forward-looking buyer sentiment was partly offset by the fact that agents didn’t feel the same way about their future seller pipelines.
It’s also clear that while some agents are keeping hope alive for a better year, it’s not because they’re seeing dramatic improvements in their buyer and seller pipelines heading into the summer closing rush.
On the seller side, some similar movement was observed, with slightly fewer agents reporting big year-over-year gains in listing clients and slightly more reporting big losses.
As a result, agent sentiment toward listing pipelines dipped slightly for the fifth consecutive month.
This movement is happening against the backdrop of continued volatility in financial markets — and, by extension, mortgage rates.
As negotiators attempted to make progress on a deal to end the war between the U.S. and Iran, hopes that the crucial shipping chokepoint at the Strait of Hormuz might soon reopen have driven oil futures back down.
But while falling gas prices have given consumers some measure of relief at the pump, they haven’t necessarily seen the same with mortgage rates.
Federal Reserve officials have been closely watching the latest inflation data, which has prompted them to signal that they might be reluctant to continue cutting rates until the present bout of inflation subsides.
This same uncertainty has caused bond markets and their closely linked mortgage rates to mostly tread water as well.
For these reasons, the real estate industry appears stuck in much the same place it’s been for the past few months, even as other corners of financial markets have begun to react with relief to developments in the Middle East.
Intel will continue to track these factors — and their effect on reported client pipelines — in the months ahead.
Methodology notes: This month’s Inman Intel Index survey ran from June 16-25, and had received 457 responses as of Wednesday. These results are preliminary and may be revised. The entire Inman reader community was invited to participate, and a rotating, randomized selection of community members was prompted to participate by email. Users responded to a series of questions related to their self-identified corner of the real estate industry — including real estate agents, brokerage leaders, lenders and proptech entrepreneurs. Results reflect the opinions of the engaged Inman community, which may not always match those of the broader real estate industry. This survey is conducted monthly.
For a long time, I thought saying yes was one of my strengths.
Need help? Yes. Want to jump on a call? Sure. Need me to review something, attend a meeting, solve a problem, weigh in on a decision or make time for a conversation? Absolutely.
I genuinely believed that was part of being a good leader. I thought being accessible was leadership. I thought being available was leadership. I thought saying yes was leadership. If people needed me, I wanted to be there. If there was a problem, I wanted to help solve it.
The problem was that eventually all those yeses started stacking on top of each other. And that’s when I learned something nobody tells you about saying yes.
At first, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. One meeting here. One favor there. One project. One commitment. None of them seem particularly demanding by themselves. In fact, most of them seem completely reasonable. The trouble is that we evaluate every request individually while our calendar experiences them collectively.
Looking back, I wasn’t failing because I wasn’t working hard enough. I was working plenty hard. I wasn’t failing because I didn’t care. I cared deeply. I wasn’t failing because I lacked commitment. If anything, commitment was the problem.
I had committed myself to so many things that my attention was spread across dozens of priorities at the same time. The irony was that I was trying so hard not to let people down that I started letting everybody down a little bit. Nothing catastrophic. Just death by dilution.
I was showing up to meetings less prepared than I wanted to be, responding later than I wanted to respond and giving important projects whatever energy happened to be left over after everything else had taken its share.
From the outside, it probably looked productive. My calendar was full. My days were busy. There was always something happening.
But from the inside, it felt like I was constantly running half a step behind. I was rushing from one commitment to the next, carrying unfinished conversations into new conversations, thinking about the next thing while I was still in the current thing.
The people around me were getting access to me, but they weren’t always getting the best version of me. At the time, I didn’t realize those were two very different things.
What finally changed things wasn’t burnout or some dramatic moment of realization. It was something much simpler.
I started noticing that the people doing their best work weren’t necessarily the busiest people in the room. They weren’t trying to attend everything, join everything, fix everything or participate in everything. They were selective. Not selfish, selective. There’s a difference.
They understood something I had completely missed.
You may not know what that thing is yet, but the tradeoff is coming.
That’s the part most of us ignore. We look at opportunities and ask, “Can I do this?” That’s almost always the wrong question. The better question is, “What will this prevent me from doing?”
Those are very different conversations.
Can I squeeze one more meeting into my week? Probably. Can I take on one more project? Most likely. Can I attend one more event, join one more group or volunteer for one more responsibility? Usually.
But eventually all those individual decisions start competing with the things we claim matter most: family, health, deep work, thinking time, rest and relationships.
The important things rarely disappear all at once. They get crowded out one commitment at a time.
That’s what I finally had to learn.
Saying no wasn’t about becoming less helpful. It was about becoming more useful.
For years, I treated every request as though it deserved equal consideration. The result was predictable. My best energy got scattered across too many priorities. Everything received some attention, but very few things received my best attention.
And if I’m being honest, some of those yeses had very little to do with helping people. They had a lot more to do with avoiding discomfort.
Saying yes avoids awkward conversations. Saying yes avoids disappointing people. Saying yes allows you to feel helpful in the moment.
Saying no requires something different. It requires being comfortable with the fact that someone may not get the answer they wanted. It requires accepting that every opportunity is not your opportunity. It requires trusting that protecting your attention isn’t selfish. It’s necessary.
I think this is one of the reasons leadership becomes harder as responsibilities grow. If you’re capable, people bring you things. If you’re dependable, people bring you more things. If you’re successful, people bring you even more things.
The reward for being effective is often additional demands on your time. Which means the ability to say no becomes increasingly important as your responsibilities grow. Not because the opportunities are bad, but because your capacity is not unlimited. Nobody gets extra hours simply because they’re needed.
These days, I say no more often than I used to. Not because I care less. Not because I want to help less. Not because I’ve become less committed to the people around me.
I’ve simply learned that attention is finite. Time is finite. Energy is finite. Every one of them is valuable, and every one of them can be spent only once.
When you spend them on everything, you eventually have nothing left for the things that matter most.
The funny thing is that saying no didn’t make me a worse leader. It made me a better one.
My work improved. My focus improved. My relationships improved because the people I was helping got a better version of me. They were getting my attention instead of whatever happened to be left over after everything else had taken its share.
Once I stopped trying to be available for everything, I finally had the capacity to be fully present for the things that mattered.
For a long time, I thought leadership meant saying yes. Now I think leadership is often knowing which yeses deserve a no.
Because the goal was never to do everything. The goal was to do the right things well.
Keith Robinson is the Co-CEO of NextHome, Inc. and co-host of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered. Follow Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered Podcast on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook or TikTok, and subscribe to their YouTube Channel.