953: The Difference Between Good and Great Real Estate Agents – Jay Pitts

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Real Estate Rockstars This is Aaron Amuchastegui. And I am back today to interview Jay Pitts. I’m really excited to get to hear more about Jay. Jay did a pre interview with Curtis and one of the most interesting things that we got to talk about was that his dad was previously interviewed on the podcast. So way back when, like a long, long time ago for episode 129. We have Jeff Pitts. And it’s so I think this will be the first time that we’ve had somebody on here who his dad was previously interviewed. So Jay, welcome to the show.

Jay Pitts 

Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

That should be a fun conversation. So tell everybody where you live and what life is like out there right now in the post COVID world and real estate? What’s it like out there?

Jay Pitts 

Yeah, no, I’m a broker owner of REMAX premier properties in Louisville, Kentucky. So, you know, Midwestern, Southern, I don’t know what you call us. I mean, we’re kind of gateway to the south, if you will, robust market. We’re in the Louisville, the largest city in Kentucky by far. So it’s a market that, you know, is a little bit rural, a little bit suburban, a little bit urban, we kind of get, you know, a lot of diversity there. But extremely short on inventory. Busy, busy, busy. You know, it’s, it’s been it’s been a great year. COVID slowed us down, as it did everyone. But the market came roaring back, you know, rates and being short of inventory already with strong demand. I just I think for those of us in the market that are really looking for growth. It was a supercharger. I mean, we, you know, we obviously want everybody to be safe and healthy. But if you’re if you’re willing to get out and work, there’s plenty of work.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. Does everyone say Louisville wrong that isn’t from there?

Jay Pitts 

Yeah. So there’s actually a shirt like that. The city tourism department sells a shirt with all the different pronunciations listed. So it’s actually local.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So like I said it wrong even trying to say it right.

Jay Pitts 

So it’s Liu-hi-vol.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

It’s not spelt like that, right? Everyone says “Lewisville” on accident, right?

Jay Pitts 

Some people say Lewisville, some people say Louisville because it’s after King Louie. Yeah, but yeah, it’s it’s little tough.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

That’s that’s funny, as you were, you know, Jordan, who had previously interviewed on the podcast when he talked about investing out there. He had said it a bunch of times. And so, if I hadn’t had been talking to him, I probably would have been way off on pronunciations. And as you said that it reminded me like, Oh, yeah, I bet. I bet people really get this wrong all the time.

Jay Pitts 

It’s it’s a thing. It’s very, very much a thing.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Definitely a thing. So we’re gonna get into how you got into real estate and kind of how you started in those first few years. And before we get there, how big is your business now with new agents and volume and stuff like that?

Jay Pitts 

Well, it’s your it’s grown substantially. You know, that’s, that’s another COVID change that we’ve seen. We’ve seen a influx, a large influx of people moving from larger cities, and that that has manifested with clients, but also agents and then we’ve had certain industries service sector, specifically hospitality, specifically, that have been really hurt by COVID. And those are people that traditionally have skills that apply very well to real estate. So you’ve seen a lot of people that have had that maybe backburner kind of thought, like, Oh, you know, maybe one day I’ll try real estate that have gotten a jumpstart that have gotten a push. And so our team has grown substantially. We’re at 32 agents now on the team. My brokerage is about 80 agents. So I’m the principal broker but also a team lead. So team makes up just less than 50% of the brokerage, the brokerage has doubled every year for three years and it’s an agent count, you know, 250 million in sales last year looking for more like 300 this year, you know, business is good. Business is good.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

And so the all those the service industry, people we’ve talked about a lot, you know, since March like there is the service industries got hit really, really hard. And there is some amazing talent of people who have worked in the service industry and are unfairly out of work right now are really striking when these people have really built a career around customer service and management and sales. And we’ve kind of told people like, “Hey, if you can get those guys working in your business, like they would be great to get great talent.” Did you intentionally go after and find those people? Or have you seen a trend of they started looking for real estate, and you were the you were the shopping town they wanted to go to?

Jay Pitts 

You know, I didn’t. One thing I can say we amazing company culture, which anybody you talk to, will tell you that but like, just a really, really awesome team, right? Our people, our group, like they they hang out, like they don’t just do real estate together, they like hang out, they really enjoy each other’s company. I think that’s infectious. And so when it’s all been by referral, frankly, and most of it inbound and I mean, we do some things. We do a podcast, we do other media, we do a lot of advertising, obviously, for our listings, we were very progressive in our use of video and things like that, to sell the culture piece to whoever’s paying attention. And I think what that did was that positioned us well to be the recipient of inbound, really solid talent just reaching out to us. I mean, I’ve got to, I can recall to two actors from New York City that decided to move back to Kentucky that just said, you know, the pandemic, we were probably on the way out anyway, this whole thing, it’s time to go home, they move back. They’re phenomenal agents already inside a year in the business and just absolutely killing it. You know, people like that had another real estate agent from Brooklyn, that moved back home, has been a real estate agent in Brooklyn for three years just absolutely destroying business here. We’ve always, we’ve always taught that there is no bad way to generate a lead. My coach, Mr. Tom Ferry is a mentor of mine, he says there’s no bad way to generate a lead. So Tom, you know, I prescribed to that, whether it be online, whether it be sphere of influence, whether it be client events, any sort of lead generation works, if you work it. And so these people that have been service sector, you know, driven and there are other careers, they understand that they understand it. And so, so we’ve got opportunities, I’ve got a big enough business and enough listings and enough marketing that generates opportunities. All I need is great talent, foster those opportunities. And so we found a lot, we found a lot of that this year.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. So what are most of your you guys do mostly listings mostly on the buy side, or because the office is so big, it just split down the middle?

Jay Pitts 

We’re about 60/40 on the buy side. I think a healthy business is 50/50. Right? You know, seller’s market, obviously, you’d rather have listings, buyers market, you’d obviously rather have buyers. But a healthy business has a fairly equal distribution of both. I think the 60/40 split in favor of buyers is reflective of the fact that we’re relatively youthful. And we’re not 30 year veterans. I’m one of the oldest agents in our brokerage at 39, believe it or not. And so these are these are by and large, young people growing careers. They’re not fostering a book of business that they’ve had for 25 years. And I think that tends to lean a little more toward the buying side. And that’s why I think you see the 60/40 split.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, you’re totally right. I think when I think when agents are younger, their sphere of influence hasn’t bought their first house yet. Yeah, right. So it doesn’t make the fact that you guys that you that your demographic of people in your office are so much younger, that you’re so close to it, like 60/40 is pretty darn close to a 50/50 is that that feels like a pretty healthy business. So what about So when did you get into real estate?

Jay Pitts 

You know, it’s funny, you mentioned my dad earlier. I mean, you could, I guess, technically say, my whole life forever. I got licensed two weeks after I graduated college. But I went to work in the mortgage business first because I was a stubborn firstborn. And I didn’t want to follow in dad’s footsteps, or at least that’s what I thought then. So I did something different, but similar is kind of what my idea was. And I had some good success at that, but I wasn’t incredibly passionate about it. But I was licensed the whole time I was investing I was representing friends and flipping houses and buying rental property and that kind of thing while I was in the mortgage business around the end of 2007. I decided to pivot from there and get into real estate full time. So probably the worst possible time in the history of real estate to get in.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

I don’t know if it was different in Kentucky, but you know, 2004, 2005 I was in Southern California, and we’re building brand new houses. And man, as soon as we could build them, they were like pre sold the moment they would come out. We were like golfing a couple times a week, like life was easy. It was just about, like, How fast can we build these things, and they’re gonna sell. And all of a sudden that came crashing down. And like, 2007 I remember when all of a sudden, we were really, really struggling. 2004 — that’d be a great time to be a mortgage officer, right? Jay Pitts 

It was. I mean, I was a kid, you know, I was 22 right out of fresh out of college. So like, yeah, I mean, I was an achiever. I was, I was kind of raised that way. So for me, it was like, I jumped on the treadmill, you know, and pumped it up to 10 miles an hour and just took off run and I made more money than all my friends. I like the mortgage business. It just wasn’t for me forever. And so I pivoted into the real estate that was probably really it was out of the frying pan into the fire, because mortgage was starting to crater in ’07 when I got out and about the only industry that was worse was real estate. And I got into it from one end to the other.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

I talked about 2005, for me was just a really unfair expectation of what life was supposed to be like, because I got my college degree. And then we started right out of college getting paid six figures to you know, run this this office and golfing a couple days a week. And then the crash happened. And we went from like, being paid way more than we were worth to be like, how are we going to pay rent? And how are we going to do anything like it was to 2007 the, the market was kind of peaked out and foreclosures and short sales and things like that had kind of started right around 2007, 2008. So what did you do? So you said like, “Hey, I’m gonna be an agent.” How was that? How did it go? What was 2007, 2008 like for you?

Jay Pitts 

Well, I got, I got off to a very fast start, but there was a lot of worry in the early going. So I came from the mortgage business, I had a property management background, you know, knew some people that I at least knew who to prospect and I ultimately I got into the REO listing game. I was fortunate. I kind of got in right before they slammed the door shut. But you know, I remember those first couple of months of, you know, right around this time a year in 2008. I was just prospecting, just prospecting, like crazy. And I did about five or six deals. In my first, I think it was six transactions in my first two months, they were all investor buy sides. I think they averaged about $50,000 apiece, so I ran my legs off and still didn’t make any money. And then I was like, Okay, I can’t do this forever. I gotta get some listings. So I went out to five listings, which, if you’re trying to get listings in 2008, they were easy to find, because nobody could sell anything. Right? And they’re like, go ahead and try, like, go ahead, put a sign out there. Yeah. So I took five listings, I didn’t get a single showing on any of the five listings in the first two months. So 60 days, I had five angry sellers. And I was like, “What have I done, I’ve made a bad mistake.” And that’s when I started doing BPOs — you probably remember those. I used to do broker price opinions for pay, I found a couple of companies, they pay $40 apiece, it’s about three hours worth of work apiece. And so I was making like $13 an hour to do real estate. But I just took as many orders as they would give me. And I was doing like 20 a week. You know, I just got married. My wife and I owned a house, we had car payments and student loans. And I just had to do something right. And I was a mover, right? I never never sat still. That was something I could do and I’d rationalize that if the REOs are the only thing that’s selling well, I have to find a way to get those listings. And if these people are asking me to do a broker price opinion on him, that means that they know something they know something about the listing side. In some cases that people do in the BPO, given the BPO orders were actually the ones who had the ability to give you the listing. And a lot of times it was a contractor. But either way, I made it a point to not let these people I get them on the phone number one, the internet was different than right not as helpful as it is today. It was still very much a thing but not as helpful. Business wasn’t being done the same way as it is today. So you can still get somebody on the phone pretty easily. Now, if you don’t want to get somebody on the phone, you’re not gonna get them on the phone. But I would prospect every single order I’d make it a point to speak to somebody to ask them questions like is this report the way you wanted it? can I fix anything? Is there anything I can do better And oh, by the way, who assigns your listings, I want to talk to them and I parlayed that to three or four reo listings in about 90 days, and I sold them, but I still didn’t make any money. And then I got a break, which was my old loan originator, believe it or not at countrywide Home Loans before they went out of business. And my old regional manager called me up one day and said, I think we’re going to be losing an REO agent, because countrywide was a big servicer. So they had, they had a lot of REOs to disposition. And I said, Who do I talk to? Let me interview. Let’s do it. And I just slayed the interview. And even though I’d only been in the business for three or four months, they hired me to list their REOs, and they gave me 15 listings. Yeah. And about 30 days later, they picked up the VA contract from Auckland. And I got another 15 in a day. So in like 60 days time, I went from no listings, to 30 listings. And I ended up that finishing that first year with 50 sales. And then the next year, but yeah, it was crazy. And the next year I did 160.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

That is wild. Like for people that weren’t around in real estate back then. I mean, BPO is a word that people use still use a lot, right? Like that’s now a technique to get a listing, right. It’s like telling somebody, this is how much your house is worth. It’s a way to get a lead like people are putting on Facebook like hey, if you have any interest in selling your house, you know, I’ll give you a free broker price opinion. But I remember back then people are figuring out the reo space. Lenders were figuring out nobody knew what to do. Nobody was really ready yet like foreclosures that happened, but nothing like that. And so as they were coming up with those systems, I know a lot of agents that yes, we’re doing bpos to get paid 13 bucks an hour because there was no other business.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

The shift that you talked about there that I think that there’s probably going to be some sort of opportunity like that for agents out there over this next year. And I don’t quite know what it is. And when when agents have the opportunity, you might not know what it is, they might not realize what it is yet. But you said instead of saying hey, I’m going to do the minimum here. Like I’m going to see what this might lead to. They’re like doing a favor for somebody and then later it pays off. But you went in with the intention instead. All right, I know I’m only getting paid 13 bucks an hour for this. But hopefully it’s my way in, I’m not going to have asset I’m going to I’m going to do my best I’m going to try to follow up with them. I’m going to keep pointing that in there. And maybe none of them assigned to you that big thing. But then when the country wide thing broke open, and some people listening to this are gonna be like that dude, super lucky. On day 90, I was lucky listings. And you were lucky. But I think something that probably helped you crush that interview is you got to say, I’ve done 90 bpos or however many you had done right. And by doing that practice, someone who’s also paying you to practice so whereas right now you could be getting paid to do bpos and you could look at it as I’m only getting paid 13 bucks an hour. The other idea is getting Hey, you’re getting paid to learn getting paid to educate and it got you ready for that other interview that turned into and selling Oreos back then was way different. So somebody’s trying to put their house on the market. The first five listings you had those didn’t sell because people needed to sell it for 200 when they’re when they’re, you know, it was worth 150 their loan was 200 it was worth 150 you get two REOs and those those banks are like, “We will accept the best offer regardless of what it is.”

Jay Pitts 

That’s exactly right. I mean, people wanting to sell and being able to sell, financially capable of selling, are two different things the banks were, you know, I mean, we backstop them with our tax dollars so that they could liquidate that inventory and not crater, you know, our economy forever. That was an unfortunate occurrence. But to me, I saw a market shift that was going to require a service similar to the one I provided. And all I had to do was align myself with that interest. You know, another thing that you mentioned, that really resonates with me, something I say all the time to our agents is you first have to be inspired, before you can be inspirational. Okay, and so to me, I knew, and I’ve had several other situations similar in my career, some recent, and really, throughout my career, where I’ve had the opportunity to really make an impression on someone. And I always take that super serious, like, you know, obviously had to pivot away from the REO at some point because the business just dried up. And so those opportunities for me, have have not been in short supply over time. But every time I identify one of those opportunities, I just really, really put my best foot forward. You know, because if they think I mean, that’s what God I didn’t, I had no business getting that contract, no business, I was six months in the business. I had no money. They were asking me to front all this cost for them. I didn’t know how I was gonna do it.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Because back then they were like, but you’re on your own credit card, we’ll reimburse you if you sell it type thing.

Jay Pitts 

That’s it. I mean, and there’s a really good story, if you want to get into that I can get there’s a really good story about about the expenses that came later in that first year. But I just I had to, I think what I did was I inspired the gentleman that hired me, he knew how much it meant to me, and how hard I was going to work for it. And that’s why he hired me because I had no business getting that contract otherwise.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So that was like 2008. Right? And then so by 2010, 2011 they’re still foreclosures, but most of them are now selling on the courthouse steps instead. Because now there’s like a new range of investors. So they’re buying them before they became an REO. Are you still getting REO leads in 2010 and 2011? Or when did it dry up? How did you transition to something else?

Jay Pitts 

Yeah, dried up in ’13. Okay, kind of ran pretty decent in ’13. It was at least probably 50% of our business through ’13. And I pivoted to team building, which I had built a team because of the reo business, I remember the first agent I ever hired, going to lunch with him at his, he worked at a he worked at a Chase Bank. And he was a personal banker, and it was at the hospital, you know, his bank branches in the hospital and they have like a hospital cafeteria, where he he couldn’t he was in a park parked in a parking garage getting out was a big deal. Like I’ll come to you. And I remember sitting down with him in the hospital cafeteria, saying, “Dude, I need you to come work for me because I’ve got all these leads.” And just like scanning text messages, because I had the one 800 IVR like ProQuest technologies like texts, pinging my phone all day, because that’s the thing REOs were in Vogue, every investor wanted access to them. And I’m running probably 10 X the effort of a normal listing to keep one REO on the market. And I’ve got 100 of them. Right in very short order. So I had no time for buyer leads. And I think a lot of reo agents made the mistake of not capitalizing on the proximity to all that other business. I never made that mistake, I started building a team immediately when I saw that amount of buyer lead inventory that I can get my hands on as a result. And so that kind of is the way it went until about 2013 when the market had pretty much taken a turn for the better, the reo started slowing down. And I then had to pivot to a more traditional lead generation kind of method, but I’d build up a pretty good salesforce and then that ran till about 2016 when I launched my brokerage, most of my team members went out on their own and started their own teams under the brokerage and I started rebuilding the team from scratch at that point.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, something that you added in there was when you were getting all the listings. It’s kind of easy in life when things are going really really good to ignore the ignore the others, right? So it’s like when people are getting, it’s really common for agents to ignore sign calls if they have a listing, because they’re like, you know, the sign call the chances of this person actually buying a house this weekend, or actually buying this one or if somebody wants to come see my open house without an agent, like man, do I really want to start over and especially when people get big into listings like agents that focus on listings, a lot of leads that are given away because they don’t want to deal with assigned calls, they don’t want to do that. When times are going good, and like times are going good for you, you could have ignored those other leads and said, I just simply don’t need them, like I’m doing so well with these reo listings, I don’t need more people being able to capitalize on that. I think that in real estate, it’s really easy to go, “Hey, things are going really, really good. So I don’t need to do that right now. I don’t need to diversify into investing. I don’t need to diversify into other teams. I don’t need to try new lead sources.” But being able to take when you’re getting those wins, but then also say, “But how can I diversify? How can I expand that?” That has to be a big part of how your why your company is so big now. Right? You You took you took everything and you got to leverage it to go to the next level?

Jay Pitts 

I mean, there, there were definitely mistakes made. You know, I mean, like if we could all I mean, look, I bought a bunch of, well, I bought a bunch of houses, I should have invested more. But I mean, you got to give yourself a little bit of grace, because how does anyone ever know that they’re in a once in a lifetime situation? Yeah, when it’s the first time this thing has ever happened? Like, I didn’t know how fortunate I was. Oh, I like to say it was right time, right place, right time, right skills. Because I could have easily blown it. It’s like, there were agents lined up to take my position. I earned it. I kept it. Right? And I benefited from it. There are things I would do differently, I probably would have leveraged out more of the left side to my team. That’s easy to say like, I’ve got houses I paid 30 grand for that are worth 150 now, and I’m never gonna see five x 10 year growth again, in my life. I don’t think in terms of real estate purchases. I mean, what I should have done is spent every dollar I had buying rental real estate, because those were once in a lifetime lows. But I had no way of knowing that, and I still bought 25 houses and I’m in a really good equity position in those. I wish I would have bought 100. 

Aaron Amuchastegui 

It’s impossible to know, like you said, when you’re in the middle of a once in a lifetime opportunity being able to take advantage. We flipped so many houses from 2009 to 2012, and we were making so much money monthly and I didn’t invest in anything. I didn’t know any better. I thought it was gonna last forever. I didn’t have any mentors teaching me about owning real estate, long term, you know, we were buying foreclosures and fixing them and selling them. And then in hindsight, you go like, wow, that was a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I think we’re in one now. Right? So like, obviously, the world changed a lot in the last year figuring out for people listening, like figuring out what your opportunity is, or what it is. But this is a this last year has obviously been a monumental shift in the world. And there are a lot of things that you know that even in the first three to six months became a once in a lifetime opportunity and the opportunity is gone. But you know, for some of the investments and things like that out there, but it is so tough to you know, hindsight is always amazing, right? I’m not who knows what they’ll say hindsight is now I think people will talk less about hindsight being 2020. Yeah, but the But yeah, I mean, we figure out later that the opportunities that we have, and yeah, it’s easy to beat ourselves up about what we would have done different. And yeah, what is one thing that someone would have told you about real estate? Your first year? Or if you could go back and tell yourself one thing? What advice would you give yourself about about real estate?

Jay Pitts 

Oh, wow. That’s a great question. Gosh, there’s so much. Okay, here it is. This is pretty good. And it took me until 2014 to learn this. It’s not how little you spend, it’s how much you keep that matters. So you could rephrase that you could say, you got to spend money to make money, right? For me, I spent the early part of my career pinching pennies. I was incredibly frugal, I was incredibly stressed. I was overworked. Personally, I put too much on my own shoulders on my own back. I’m good at that. Right? If you go back and listen to that episode with my dad, you’ll you’ll hear that in his voice. Like that’s what he taught us taught us how to work. Right. And that was the answer. You know, nobody can ever take your work ethic away from you. Yeah, right. You can take everything you have every monetary possession that you ever accumulate, but they can’t take your way your will to work. If you have your will to work you’ll always be okay. And that’s true. Okay, but there is a moment where there’s like an inflection point when you’ve had a little bit of success, where if you continue to do the same things that you’ve always done, you put yourself under a lot of undue stress and I did that. I did that to myself, I did it to my family, I did it to my kids, I did it to my wife, and I wish I would have been more comfortable allowing others to help me sooner. Yeah, you know, I built a team. But instead of, I mean, they picked up everything that went uncut, like went unaccounted for. And I still pressed myself just as hard if not harder to do even more myself.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So you built the team, but you still like worked as much as you possibly could all the time, it was kind of like the team had to let was gonna get the leftovers for lack of a better word, but you were still gonna just crush it?

Jay Pitts 

Well, I did crush it. And, and I can give you numbers I remember vividly. But what I tried to do was inspire them to build a business for themselves under my umbrella, which is still very integral to what I do today. But I wasn’t handing my business off. I was saying here’s leads, here’s how you convert leads, go work. And, but in 2015, we did 360 transactions, I did 150 of them personally. And and I had six other agents, which if you take the other 210 and divided by six, that’s a pretty high agent productivity rate, right? 35 transactions or so per agent, like, but who in their right mind wants to sacrifice what is required to do 150 transactions in one year yourself? I should have never done it. Yeah,

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah. Those are interesting things we get to learn in life of how much how much more is worth more, or the you know, growth, like you grew very quickly. And the people who get to teach people how to grow. What about some guys kind of some fire round questions that are like some advice stuff? So what was one thing — the best thing you learned in 2020? Could be about real estate or life, like what’s the biggest takeaway?

Jay Pitts 

Um, good, great question. Resilience. How resilient people are, you know. I’d say resilience. It’s just, it’s something we live charmed, which we live most of us a charmed lifestyle. And when you when something happens that threatens to take. No, it didn’t for everyone, for some it did. But when something happens beyond your control that threatens to take it all away, you see, you really get to learn how resilient people are. And, but also beyond that grace is important. You know, if somebody just didn’t feel like working in April, I wouldn’t give him a hard time about it. You know, like, if a client just called me up out of the blue, and I’ve got says, I know, we’ve got an accepted offer on our house, but we’re not sure gonna be there closing unique, can you help me figure it out? Because we’re done? Well, you know, they, I think deserve some of that grace. Because nobody — nobody’s ever been through what we, what we collectively went through in 2020.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

So I mean, April and May, like, I know that April, May, I made like, I made a lot of good decisions, but there were others that I wish I would have done different. Those are very poetic. I love those answers. Yeah, resilience and grace, like the two, the two keys that if we can take that into our life, of knowing that, hey, you’re more resilient than you need to be. And most people are more resilient they need to be. And when people aren’t, or are struggling with that, then giving them grace, because I met plenty of people that just thrived through the crazy, and plenty of people just that absolutely lost sleep, absolutely lost sleep out of my wife is very empathetic about the world. And so when I would be like, when she’d be like, “Hey, are you worried about this business?” I’m like, well, this part of our business is struggling. But this part is great. And I’m not worried we’re going to be fine. Don’t worry. And she would like, but she would lose sleep. And she’s like, but what about everybody else? What about everybody else out there? And so the it’s your I think I think your two ways. So how about ways that you your business, like survived or thrived in 2020? Was there a pivot? Or was there something that happened? I mean, the real estate, the real estate market just started to, you know, pick up a lot, like a lot better than we thought it was going to be. What was there something that you were like, Hey, this is this is how we survived it?

Jay Pitts 

Well, you know, I don’t know. I think it was just, it was, it was a magnifier, it was everything we were already doing. Got a shot in the arm, you know, I mean, we took a pause. And then it was time when it was time to go back to work. And not that we stopped working because we weren’t a shelter in place. We weren’t a complete lockdown kind of community. There were definitely some guidance and some, some some definite shift in the way we do things. But nobody was ever told you can’t work. Real estate was 100% essential the entire time as it pertains to the way our state government looked at things. You know, I’ve got friends in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Michigan and other places that were literally told they cannot work, you know, and we didn’t have to endure that. But when it was time for things to become more normal, we were reading and, frankly, I think it just took all the good we were doing once we turned that corner all the good we were doing, just really, like I said, was turbocharged, you know, we did pick up some really strategic wins for our business this year, you know, some some pretty impactful new construction relationships that I think is a big part of our solving our inventory crisis, and I would probably call it a crisis in some markets ours included, we’re, we’re below we’re sub one and a half months on supply right now. So we really need the houses. So we picked up some really impactful relationships there. I am an internet lead fan, Zillow, I am not, I’m not a Zillow naysayer. So we we received some some very good news from Zillow. This fall, we were, you know, adopted into into a serious program they’re working, that has been a big benefit to our business. So you know, those are those are not, it’s kind of like that interview situation we talked about before, you know, we had to go out and win those relationships, we had to go out and earn those. And maybe those were opportunities that we wouldn’t have had had 2020 not went the way it went. Because I think it moved up timelines for a lot of industry players. Yeah. And then they went looking for partners, and we were the most viable partner, for a couple of organizations that are going to make a big impact on our business.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

It sounds like if I was going to try to summarize that it was kind of like in 2020, you just stuck to the plan, right? You stuck with it, you’re already doing all these things, but it just amplified. So you just you said hey, like the world is going crazy. But like the a lot of the things in real estate are the way they are. So stick to the plan, and show up and still work really hard. And then and then you got to see the benefits of that. So what do you think for 2021? If you were gonna, like you coach your agents, you give them advice. You have your own podcast, if you’re gonna say this is how you’re going to succeed in 2021. Is it stick to the plan? Or is it what any extra advice you give them for 2021?

Jay Pitts 

Yeah, so we had our team retreat a couple weeks ago. So for me, you may see this, I talked in the way that I talked about, you know, resilience and grace, for me, words are incredibly important. The meaning of words are very important. Having, you know, certain, like we have a team, a phrase, we like to call it right team, right time, like that that’s reflected to me is that I have the right people in place for the right opportunity to make big things happen. What I told the team, though, was the two buzzwords for our retreat this year for 2021 were context and discipline. That’s it. So context is about knowing what you want, having a clear picture about what you’re trying to achieve. And it’s different for everybody as a collective, our team, really looking for a monster year in terms of growth, both an agent count, volume, transaction sides, all of it, we were looking for that in 2020, we got it in an unexpected way. So what I basically did was flip it back to where I was in in December, January 19, to 20 that rollover from 19 to 20. And said, Okay, this year should be a little more predictable. And if it’s a little more predictable than 2020, whereas our ceiling, okay, what do we want? Okay, and honestly, for me, the difference between good and great is always discipline. That’s how you get from good to great as discipline, we all know the things we should do that we’re not. We all know our individual failings. We can give ourselves grace, but still understand where we failed. And all I’m asking for from my team is just an ounce more of discipline. Just an ounce more. That’s it, just move the needle. So that’s it.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

The difference between good and great is discipline. That’s an incredible quote. The I really, really like that. So you guys, you have a ton of buyer’s agents, ton of listing agents. You said 60/40 buyers. What’s your number one trick or way to get your offer accepted? If you’re a buyer’s agent competing with other buyers?

Jay Pitts 

No doubt. Okay. So this is this is something I’ve placed and this is this comes from my dad to a lot comes from my dad. Okay. We we did a podcast episode. I don’t want to curse on your show, but there’s the stuff my dad says, like Yeah. He’s read that book and there was a website that, you know, it’s not stuff but you know what I mean. We did an episode of my podcast where my co host at the time, and I just went through quotes, real estate quotes that I learned from my father. Right. And, you know, he says a lot, but I, I’ve learned an incredible, incredible amount from him. What he taught me was to value agent relationships, he taught me to speak to those agents, the way I spoke to those reo asset managers back in the day, right, that inspired versus inspirational kind of idea. How you get your offer accepted is to break through and build rapport with the listing agent, period, end of story, there is no post closing possession, or, I mean, look, price is king, we know that, right? But if you’re a finance buyer, and it won’t appraise for the amount that you have to write your offer, for to get it accepted well, where nobody gets anywhere then. So what ends up happening is building the rapport with the listing agent, finding out what ancillary items, aside from price are impactful to the seller on this particular listing. And doing that getting your client, helping them understand why it’s necessary to make concessions in certain places to make your offer more attractive. And it’s different from every seller, you know, that you run into. So the agents, the only one that’s got the key to that, you’ve got to get it from them. And it’s increasingly more difficult because agents are processing 25 offers. So how do they have time to talk to 25 agents — they don’t. So you got to be creative. You gotta have a good rapport built with them already. That there’s there’s a way to break through, but the agents that know how to break through, they’re the ones that have success in multiple offers.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

I love that break through with the listing agent, the and then because you need to figure out exactly what you want to figure out what the seller wants. But you can’t figure that out. Unless you get to talk to the listing agent, the listing agent is not going to talk to you and 25 other people unless you figure out a way to break through. So listen, if you’re a buyer’s agent out there figuring out how to break through with those. We had a you know, buying, trying to buy some investments house gets listed a week ago, we write a full price cash offer, 10 day close, three hours after the listing comes out. And about two hours later, they say sorry, your offer wasn’t accepted. And we’re just like, but why? Just tell us why, or counter back or something. It was the most bizarre thing to go like, full price cash 10 day close, and just and just say sorry, but the reality is it’s because they had so many and somebody else probably had that relationship. Or maybe there was somebody else that had the cash 10 day close that the agent had a relationship with? And they said like, “Yeah, these other guys sent an offer. And it’s the same as this one. But I know these other guys and they’ll close it.” So like, who do you know? So that’s a really interesting strategy piece out there. That’s been there’s been a lot I asked everybody that right now we’re putting together some series about some of those questions. And it’s been the most common is to find out what the seller wants, but you’re the first one that’s a really breakthrough that may get the relationship with the listing agent, figure out how to make that happen. Like that’s Goal number one.

Jay Pitts 

And sometimes it’s done before you ever, like sometimes the only way to do this is to start well in advance of the moment where you’re presenting that offer, because circumstances don’t always dictate that opportunity. But like for me, I try to leave every interaction I ever have with an agent in a positive way I want when they see my name on the top of an offer which I’m not personally writing a whole bunch anymore. Now I want them when they see my team at the top of the that offer. I want them to think okay, this is legit, because it’s got Jay Pitts name on it. It’s legit. And when when when the number comes up on their phone, they want to take that call because they want to talk to me or my agent.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

If you’re a jerk to somebody now, you never know when they’re going to be holding the key to your future success. This is the time when you never know when you’re going to need somebody’s help or on the other side and you were a jerk to them or they were a jerk to you before it changes. How about the on the flip side of that I mean listing agents right now let’s people can sell their house for kind of as much as they want. They get multiple offers. But if you are gonna you know meeting with a seller is there are there any tricks or strategies you get them say “Hey, if you do this, this and this, we’re going to be able to sell your house for more because this is what buyers want. Anything out there that you’re constantly telling your listing people like “Hey, if you want if you want to sell it for more, this is the way to do it”?

Jay Pitts 

Professional cleaning, impeccable media, but professional cleaning is a big deal. I mean, I don’t, you know, people never think their house is dirty. It’s a really tough conversation to have. Yep, you know, I have a very tactful way to have that conversation. But so, I always say that there’s three things that sell a home, right? Its price, its exposure, okay, and appeal. Right and, and so we work on the price together, the agent and the seller, right, we determine what the price is together, they obviously want the highest price possible. And we don’t want to take it above where we believe we can deliver results, the exposure is our job solely because you know, they don’t hire you so that they can go market the house themselves. They that’s what they bring you on for. I go well above and beyond any of my competition in terms of exposure, both from a monetary and an effort standpoint, because I want to eliminate that variable from the sellers decision making. I don’t want them ever to think that I’m the problem, because they hired me as a marketer first and negotiator, second. But that leaves a piece which is solely in the seller’s hands. I don’t live in the house, I can’t keep it clean for them. I can’t make it smell good. I can only advise them when it doesn’t smell good, or it doesn’t look good. And so what happens is, if I do my job when it comes to exposure, and I deliver the showing traffic, but the showing traffic doesn’t yield an offer, there’s one or two things wrong, either the house didn’t measure up to expectations, or the price is wrong. Those are two variables that aren’t within my control. So I always tell sellers, you know, staging is important. Like, you know, appeal is important. But that’s, that’s your call, like, I’m going to tell you what I think. But if you don’t listen to me, that’s on you. And if you do, you’ll be surprised. If you go into a listing confident, and you make them assume some responsibility for success, they’ll hire you more often than the person that comes in and tells them everything they want to hear.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

Yeah, the I think that is that is really, really good advice. You know, I can talk to you for a while about a lot of stuff you have, you have a lot of different things with that. But is that that’s one thing like cleaning is so much bang for the buck, right at the very end. It’s like what what gets them into the house price and pictures, what gets the deal, you know, quality, and when they get there. So the when they’re getting there, it’s used like prices, what gets them there, so you’re right, if they aren’t getting it, it’s not living up to expectations. So if there was a trick to sell your house for more, it would be impeccable professional cleaning, because it leaves a better impression and and it really is if you walk into a house and it and it smells like animals and things like that there’s a different offer that’s in somebody’s brain, there’s a different desirability level, it’s really hard for them to forget about the family that used to live there, and picture how they’re going to be there when there’s anything throwing that off. But man, I never know if our podcasts are gonna go 20 minutes or 45, and we’re almost at an hour. We had a good finish the show because of how much good stuff you had there. But people are gonna want to reach out to you. People are gonna want to reach out to you and get more advice. I mean, you have your own podcast, I think I want to go listen to your podcasts, listen to more of this to see how we can bring more people but what’s your podcast? How can people find you if somebody is looking at getting into real estate in Louisville? How should people find you? Where are you at and what’s next?

Jay Pitts 

Yeah, no, absolutely. Like I said, I’m principal broker and owner of REMAX premier properties you can find us online and any social channel. My personal handle is @JayPittsrealtor. The podcast on iTunes is resource real talk about real estate, but you can just search my name on iTunes and it’ll come up really easy that way. That’s probably the best way to find me we’re about 100 episodes in but doing the podcast thing for quite some time really have a lot of fun with it. It You know, it ebbs and flows as I’m sure you know better than anybody. We go tactical, philosophical, local, national, you know current evergreen like it. We do a lot really, as I’m sure you can tell, I don’t have a problem here in my own voice. So I got a lot to say. So I put it out there our agents seem to like it.

Aaron Amuchastegui 

That’s really awesome, man. Well, I love your story. I love your whole story of how it started and where you’ve taken it and the you know, the things you’ve done right and the things that you would do different all the way along the way it is not a surprise of how of how big your business is and how big you’ve built it. Thanks for coming on the show. Real Estate Rockstars, thank you guys for listening and go check out some of Jay’s other stuff. Until next time, thanks for being here.