SOTM 42: What Does ‘Essential’ Mean for Real Estate Agents?

Aaron: Rockstar Nation, this is Aaron Amuchastegui coming to your State of the Market 42. I got my good friend Paul Morris back here. Paul and I have been doing the State of the Market a lot the last few weeks. Yes, there’s been a lot of Coronavirus news, there’s been a lot of, how do we manage our teams? We’ve got some really interesting stats this week to talk about for what’s going on. Paul, what is new from out in LA?

Paul Morris: Well, everything is new. This is the real sort of wake-up in the morning and things have changed. I’ve been getting on conference calls, Zoom calls with a lot of my people, a lot of our leaders, and a lot of our agents. Sometimes things are changing so fast. I look down at my phone, and wow, what we were just talking about has just changed. It is the definition of a very fluid market.

An example of that is just recently the governor of the State of California has deemed real estate professionals to be essential services. When I first got that message I’m like, “Oh, wow. Okay, things have changed,” but then I get legal advice, and maybe not so much. So we’ll get into that as one of the examples.

Aaron: Definitely. You’re right. The news is changing every day, the stock market’s changing every day. the rules are changing every day. I follow foreclosures and data and evictions a ton out in Texas, and every day, different counties, different cities, different judges are ordering different things. The state will say one thing, a county judge will say another thing. One thing I know for sure about the news this week is the news will change. It’ll continue to evolve and we will see so. A reminder really, how many agents are part of your team, your offices out there that you’re working with?

Paul: Right, so I oversee three California regions for Keller Williams, and that’s more than 8,000 realtors and also in the offices that I have ownership in, it’s 3,000 realtors. We did 10,000 transactions last year, and almost 9 billion in closed volume. I see a very, very broad group of agents all the way from the very top agents to brand new agents and everybody has questions. It’s our job. Aaron, I appreciate the opportunity for the two of us to talk to the Rockstar Nation. It’s our job to do the best we can to inform our audience of what can we do, what should we be doing? What are the best practices? That’s what this is about.

Aaron: Absolutely. We want to continue to be that resource right now for everybody out there. We’re spending hours and hours every day trying to figure out what this means, what news is important, how it’s going to affect all you real estate agents out there. Let’s jump into it. One of the first things you talked about, so Inman rereleased this yesterday and says, “Feds say residential real estate is an essential business.”

There’s been a lot of different things as people have been trying to figure out, are we allowed to still do real estate? Are we allowed to be in the shelter in place that’s been required? I’m out in Texas, you’re in California, we’re both under shelter in place orders. What does that mean when it says essential business? You’ve had in California, and what are people allowed to do, not allowed to do? What would you recommend?

Paul: First of all, we cannot give legal advice to anybody, obviously. Rights or any legal advice anybody can rely on, but I’ll certainly give you perspective and my take on it. It is absolutely safety first, there’s no question. I believe that if we had locked down super hard, super early, we would have avoided a lot of this. Now we have an opportunity to lock down super hard now and shorten it.

Now, that being said, let me go direct to your question. I was on one conference call with a group of leaders and I got that news. Feds governor says, “Real estate is part of essential services.” I immediately think like, “Wow, does that mean business as usual?” Now, what I’ve learned from talking to the California Association of Realtors counsel and also our own counsel is really a great rule of thumb is to stick with the most restrictive law that there is. In other words, let me put it this way, if the feds say, “Okay, the speed limit is now 85.” When driving through the State of California, the State of California says, “Wait a minute, it’s 70,” it doesn’t matter that the feds say it’s 85, you’re now at 70.

Maybe you drive through a little town, a very little town like, “Hey, wait a minute, coming through our town, the speed limit’s 25,” you can’t zip through at 85 and go, “Hey, the feds said 85.” It is the more restrictive rule that counts. For example, in LA, we’re dealing with the feds that are saying it’s essential services, governor says it’s essential services, but he’s a little stricter. Now, the city of LA mayor is very strict and may come down with even tougher stuff. For example, you still have to have the social distancing by way of the CDC, so we’re not having any home showings except for under very special circumstances. I’m not recommending home showings, there’s a gray area.

Let me break down that gray area a little bit more for you and that is this, if you’re in a gray area and you’re bending the rule a little bit, are they going to come out and handcuff you and take you away? Probably not. However, there’s another concern too and that is if you’re in a gray area and someone gets sick, and there’s going to be a lot more people getting sick, and you tread the line, they’ll never know whether it was what they did with you or what they’ve been doing elsewhere and there is a possibility of liability. It’s really safety first and using using smart social distancing, and hand hygiene, and all that sort of thing. That’s one part of it.

I might go one step further too and that is to say that there are two separate parts of the real estate transaction. When the house goes into escrow, so in other words, you’ve got a signed deal and now it’s escrow, that portion of it is considered to be more essential than the making the sale process. Showing a home that’s before the escrow. As soon as you get in the escrow now they’re saying, well, they require these seven things to close the escrow. Those seven things are really considered much more essential. I hope that is a framework that helps.

Aaron: That helps a lot. Do you think they thought it was essential because there’s the financial impact? If they just said, “Hey, no real estate happens.” It’s such a part of what we do what everyone does. People move, people need to go places, so real estate’s a big industry.

Paul: Well, it’s funny because I was on a very big call with our legal team and all of our managers and a bunch of agents and I tease them a little bit, I go, “Hey, is now a good time for me to ask a personal real estate sales question?” I know everybody on the phone knowing they’re like, “Hell no, Paul, please.” I will tell you, I asked that question anyway for a very specific reason and the lawyer on the phone was saying, “Hey, you know what, if you get a listing, maybe just put the listing on hold.” Then his advice was get extra. If you have a listing agreement for three months, he said, “Put that listing on hold, but put in the contract that you could extend the listing agreement for as long as you were on hold with Corona.” That is good advice.

The reason why I interrupted was this, some real estate transaction still have to happen right now. My example is, personally, I was looking at three real estate transactions myself. One is, I sold a large piece of property, 24 units, in Long Beach which close right before this. I’m like, “Wow, okay, I’m really glad that got closed.” The next thing is my second house out in Palm Springs. I really wanted that off my books, I had it calculated, here’s how much equity I’ll have. A really smart business decision. I did not get it for sale on time. I said to my lawyer in front of the whole group, “Hey, listen, I still want to put it on the market.”

I’ll give you a really concrete example. I was going to come out on the market. I think maybe I could have gotten very low eights. I was going to come out on the market around 780, get some attention, and see if I could close it at 780 or maybe low eights. Now, I’m making a financial decision and I believe, I still want that profit-take, I still have enough profit in this thing. I still want to list the thing. I signed the listing contract yesterday, I may come out on the market at 699 and try and get a lot of attention and be like, “Hey, we know that area. We’re still interested.” Maybe it’ll go off at seven and a quarter, 725.

I’m willing to take that financial burden. I’m speaking to you and to Rockstar Nation like a client so you get the client perspective. There are still some clients that want to sell. Now, the governor State of California and the feds have said Real Estate’s an essential service. Why can’t Paul put his house on the market? Now, am I going to do showings? I don’t have to do showings. I’ve got a virtual tour, I’ve got a lot of photos. The last person that’s like, “Yes, I want to buy, but I got to walk through it.” Then I would do full social distancing and all the things necessary to keep that property safe, to keep the agent safe to keep the people safe. That’s a real concrete example of how I’m wending my way through a real estate transaction.

Aaron: I think that’s a great example of why it is essential, like the first step. Some people need to sell their houses for financial reasons. They can’t wait 30 or 60 days, even if they know that they’re going to sell it for less right now because there’s not going to be as many buyers, you’re not going to have as many showings. People need to adjust the way they do things. We had an agent reach out to us on a showing and say, “Hey, we want to go show this. Are they allowed to?” They asked for permission, they want to make sure no one else had been in there.

It’s going to depend on the local authority, the rules, like you said, the most strict ones there, the safety first type scenario. Yes, I have a property too. I’m going to list it on the market next week. Yes, I wish it would have listed in January because by now it’d be sold and it’s done but I don’t want to wait three, six months. It’s understanding that yes, the game has changed. It is essential.

Totally makes sense to me why it’s out there but agents yes, look at your local stuff, what the rules are, and be creative, like the 3D images now and including floor plans to pictures and all. That stuff is so much more important than it used to be, especially right now because you’re not going to let everybody see the house, you’re going let the people that are really serious that show you proof of funds, that make an offer maybe ahead of time.

Paul: Hear me when I say this, I’m not suggesting anybody skirt the rules. I’m not suggesting that anybody put anybody at physical harm. That’s the last thing we want to do. I’m the guy that three weeks ago said, “You know what, lock the whole country down for two weeks and let’s see if we can head this off.” That was crazy talk. Now it doesn’t seem like it is anymore. I’m full on in favor of that and yet I want to put my property up for sale right now.

I’ll just give you another perspective. Again, not legal advice, but perspective. That is, if you’re looking at these things and they’re sort of gray, you go, “Okay, well, are they going to lock you up for bending that rule?” The answer is no or probably not. However, you got to worry about the liability factor. If you bring somebody into a situation that’s gray and then somebody gets sick, that they get sick from relatives that came in from out of town or from your place, you don’t want to bring that on yourself. Liability and also moral responsibility. I believe in the moral responsibility of taking care of people that work with me or putting people in danger.

Aaron: It’s like Robert, the guy we just interviewed, his podcast’s going to go next week. He said, “At first, they were saying what is defensible? What could you say? Like, Hey, I had a right to do it. Now they’ve switched to, what is advisable. What’s a good idea right now? Is it a good idea to do that, and everyone’s going to have to make that decision.”

Before we go on to the second question, before I forget, the state of the markets right now are what everybody wants to hear, everybody wants to be a part of. Next week, we’re going to do a super special one. Me and Paul are going to be on here, Brandon Turner, the podcast host on BiggerPockets podcast, a couple of other people, we’re actually going to be recording our State of the Market live on Facebook Live, and YouTube through all of our different versions. It’ll be our live podcast that comes back. If you guys want to get on there, so listeners, anybody out there, join us on the Facebook Live, ask us questions. We want to start answering some of those questions live about some of the notes that are out there and we want to hear from you guys too.

If you’re from different states and different things, we want to know what people are doing. It’s going to be a really interactive State of the Market next week. Go find us, Real Estate Rockstars with Pat Hiban on Facebook. Follow that page, you’ll see some of the links to be able to join that. It’s going to be a great State of the Market next week. I didn’t want to forget that before we got to the end.

Paul: Sure.

Aaron: The next little piece of news, so this was another article from Inman yesterday. It’s half opinion, maybe half bags, a second stimulus package could roll back property tax deductions. In the article, I don’t know if you saw this, it says, “How speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly mulling a rollback of the state and local tax deduction that was implemented back in 2017.”

Back when Trump, first the overhaul of the tax system. He increased and decreased a lot of different tax rates but one thing they did is they capped the amount of deductions someone could have for property taxes. I think it was capped at $10,000 a year. You’re in California, you’re in LA, someone’s property tax bill could be $30,000 $40,000 a year or more, but that’s like a normal number where they can only deduct $10,000. Do you think that is going to get rolled back and would that be huge for real estate right now? Do you think there would be a rush of people buying and selling?

Paul: Well, I think that they’re looking at any factor that’s going to make the purchase of real estate more attractive. One of the things that you said and that we’ve talked about a lot is this particular crisis is built on a very different set of circumstances. In 2008, not only did we have a weak economy, but it was real estate that pushed us into that trouble zone. Therefore, I know everyone was hit hard, it was called the Great Recession and everyone was hit hard, but people in real estate were hit disproportionately harder. This time, I see the opposite happening.

The first thing that happened was bad news, the stock market’s tanked and real estate hasn’t yet. Do I think there’s going to be a decline in pricing? Yes, I do but I also believe that real estate can emerge from this as a safe haven. Any little thing that makes real estate a little bit more attractive, obviously, interest rates historically low, that’s going to be a big deal. There was a lot of demand when we came into this, very different than when real estate slid and demand was falling off already. So, big difference now than then and I believe that we can really look for some positive things when we come out of this.

Aaron: Yes, when the news first started hitting a week or two ago, and they closed down Vegas. They closed down all the hotels in Vegas, laid off everybody from the hotels, I thought, “Man, this is going to have a huge long-term impact. I was picturing 2007, 2008 foreclosures everywhere, people not coming back. Then you start to see a lot of the stimulus that’s getting pushed and starting to realize– One of the things that Trump said is, “If you had a great business in January, we’re going to make sure you have a great business in May.” They’re going to have that stimulus to try to make this a blip instead, and I’m starting to see some of that stimuluses going like, “Okay.” It’s that great point that 2008 2009, we had a lot of things that weren’t going good.

Well, two months ago, everything was going great, everything was booming, everything was there. If the government and all that intervention is able to make this a blip, that’ll be just a huge, huge accomplishment and something we think about forever. Have you seen the unemployment chart? For years, as you look at it, it was like, okay, on a week-by-week basis, maybe the most was 600,000 in a week or something like that. Then it’s a straight-up last week for millions. Millions of people applying for unemployment. Does that scare you or do you think it’s a temporary thing?

Paul: [chuckle] Both. To say that it doesn’t scare me would be pure folly. I’m not sticking my head in the sand. We’re talking about unemployment rates that will rival or exceed the Great Depression and that’s scary. On the other hand, it was a great economic crisis that led us into that. Now it’s this outside thing that came in and causes Black Swan massive disruption. When we get to the other side of it, for example, they always come up with a vaccine for the flu, they will no doubt come up with a vaccine for this. There’s no doubt that everybody is working on how long will it take?

Whenever we have a vaccine for this and people feel really, really safe, I think not only is there going to be a surge back, it’s going to be like our last guest said, a euphoria. I wouldn’t have said that but I can tell you, with all the people trapped in their houses, and if you suddenly said, “Hey, yes, go get your vaccine and you can run around and do whatever.” The parks will be filled, people will be working. I think this is very unique. There’s not an economics book or a history book that’s got a chapter on this and we’ll be writing that chapter.

Aaron: Everybody wants their old life back. We came on with fruit the other day and my kids are like, “Dad, you got us raspberries, thank you.” I’m like, “It should be like that every day.” We live in this amazing world, this amazing life. I tell you what, yes, when we get to come out of this blip there’s going to be the euphoria of like, “I can go for a walk with my friends, I can drive where I want.” The things that we’ve taken for granted forever we’re starting to appreciate and if we can come out of that with most of our jobs and most of our financial resources, that’s going to help.

 You look at those charts. I was looking at the one on Business Insider and it had said 3.28 million Americans filed for unemployment, might be more this week, but then there’s all of that government intervention that’s just started. They’re going to give away, I don’t know how many trillion, how many step, but it’s based on rehire. Anybody that went on unemployment two weeks ago says, “If you want this government bond, gift, loan, however they’re going to call it, if you want this grant, you need to rehire everybody and for the next two months we’re going to pay everybody’s salaries because within two months we think everything is going to go back to normal.”

I think that unemployment sheets going to go way down because of that government intervention. It’ll be so interesting to look at that chart in two months. It goes da, da,da, boom, back down.

Paul: I think if we had a non-partisan economist on the show, they would tell you that 2 trillion is a lot of money. It is not going to be enough to really cure what this is but the thing that’s more powerful than the economic forces is confidence, consumer confidence. When you see that much money and the government mobilizing and people getting together, it builds that confidence.

Aaron: Yes. The new piece of news that I thought was that’s really newsworthy is Airbnb. Airbnb has obviously taken a huge hit with this. Every hotel out there, every travel industry, every airline, man, it’s been huge. It’s been crazy. Hawaiian Airlines and other things said, “Were no longer flying to Hawaii.” They’re no longer flying from Hawaii to the mainland. If you got on the plane last week, they were giving people cards just saying, “This is our last flight so if you want to come back to the mainland, don’t fly to Hawaii today.” People were like, “Whoa,” and then all the hotels that are– Travel industry obviously taking a huge hit. Airbnb hosts are taking a huge hit.

A couple weeks ago Airbnb made a decision and they said they’re going to let people cancel without penalty. They let everybody cancel without penalty. That cost a lot hosts a lot of money. Not all Airbnb hosts are really wealthy people. Some of them, it’s their house. Some of them, it’s a second home. I lost some big reservations for March. It was a hit and it was a stressful hit and I think it is for a lot of people because not everybody doing Airbnb is an investor that was ready for the hit. They got a ton of backlash. Airbnb got a ton of backlash from their users that said, “Hey, this wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that you came to that without us. We’re the only ones being penalized here.”

I got a video today from the CEO of Airbnb and it was recorded in his house. It was not professional. It was not pitched. He goes on and speaks for 15 minutes and he talks about how when he started the company, he was the first host. They used to meet up with all the hosts on a weekly basis and talk about what it was like. He said that as its grown, he hasn’t had that connection with the hosts anymore so maybe he made a wrong decision.

Now, Airbnb has reached out so they’re going to give away 250 million bucks back. They’re going to pay a portion of what those cancellation fees were. They’re not getting bailed out. It was a big reach out there. Have you heard much about that? What do you think about them backtracking and saying, “Hey, let’s be partners with you again,”?

Paul: This is a common thing for industry because they know that this network that they build a lot of goodwill with over a long period of time has value and what they’re doing is they’re saying, “Hey, we really want to have an outreach to the public and not leave a bad taste in the public’s mouth. On the other hand, all these homeowners, this is our network and we don’t want to kill our network with one move.”

I imagine, I don’t know how heartfelt it is or whether it’s heartfelt and good business but they are looking somewhere on their balance sheet and going like, “Huh, so it’s going to cost us 250 million dollars to do this. That’s a big hit but what we’re going to do is preserve a large amount of loyalty to our brand once we get out of this.” That’s a vote, as I see it, that big corporate giants are saying, “We think there’s something right on the end of this curve.”

Aaron: Yes. It’s the same thing that we’re telling to agents out there too. Communication is key. The news is changing every week. They made what they thought was a great plan they had to a couple weeks ago. They felt like they had to. They felt like legally they had the liability to and then all of a sudden, everything’s changing and so it’s that key to communication where we’re saying, “Hey, If you’re a listing agent or a buyer’s agent, reach out. See if there are showing or not. See what you should do. If you need to postpone, whatever,” and they came back out and they recommunicated and said, “We did this. We didn’t ask you about it because we’re panicking doing the best we could. We’re sorry. We’re going to try to do it like this instead to make up for it.”

For me, it felt heartfelt. It was a good move. It was a really, really good branding move. I thought it was definitely newsworthy to be able to put on here because Airbnb is a big part of the real estate market and the news out there.

Paul: And it really shows where their heads are. If they thought this thing was going to be the end of them they would conserve that cash but they’re looking to make sure they are keeping one of their biggest resources, which is the people that list their homes on their platform, happy and connected to them. Smart.

Aaron: Yes, that outreach. Every state is so different right now too, but we’ve been seeing this bans on evictions where some states are saying no evictions at all, some that are saying no foreclosures at all and then they’re trying to figure which ones, like a governor will say, “There’s going to be no foreclosures,” and the lenders will say, “Well, they can’t really do that,” or that it’s no foreclosures unless it’s a vacant abandoned house and all the vacant abandoned houses are still getting foreclosed because those people, it’s like you have to ask for help. If you ask for it, you’ll get it but you have to ask. All these different things.

Do you think that there’s, in general, we can giving. Everybody seems to look at their state. It’s changing every day too. What’s happening out in California? Have you seen what’s out there?

Paul: One of the things that’s happening is we’re really viewing the fed’s saying it’s an essential service, the state is saying essential service and then we’re still having to really work within some tougher guidelines. The state’s a little tougher. For example, City of LA, much tougher. We’re considered essential business which means we can transact and at the same time we have to make sure that we’re keeping everybody safe. It’s a balancing act for sure.

Aaron: Yes. Totally a balancing act as we see what’s out there. As it changes, again, a lot of it’s the best of intentions. Everybody’s doing the best they can right now. One of the reasons that they have the argument of stopping any evictions is right now is a horrible time to be evicting somebody when they’re not sure where their income’s coming from. Especially if this might be a blip, I think the biggest intention of it is saying, “Hey, somebody might not have income today but because of the stimulus they’re going to have their full pay again in a month, let’s not do something drastic,” so them putting it on hold for a couple months.

I think why they’re doing it so generically is like, “Look, in a couple months the stimulus kicks in and people have a chance to catch up.” It’s a lot harder to catch up afterward. When I think about the foreclosure moratoriums of 2008, 2009, after a few months of not paying rent or not paying their mortgage, it’s tough to get people to pay three months’ worth and catch back up.

Paul: Yes. I think what they’re trying to do is create a pause button. That’s what I mean in 2008, really, the real estate professionals, real estate industry was hit disproportionately hard. I always look at, as an example, my nephew’s a dentist. I’m investing with him on some stuff. Every vendor, his office is totally closed. He has a big rent. He has lots of employees and he’s got no patients. How much does even a good businessman have in the way of reserves to float this out? I think what the politicians are doing and what industries are doing is they’re saying, “Hey, this is a finite amount of time. We need to get through this. In the meantime, we’re going to hit the pause button.” That’s why in this case it makes some sense when you don’t have this massive underlying problem to say we’re not going to do foreclosures because nowadays it’s not just one tenant that’s having a problem. All the tenants are having a problem.

Aaron: Yes, it’s going to maybe happening across the board, especially in like apartments where tenants get to start talking to each other or neighborhoods where there’s a lot of people, the same landlord next to each other, they start to– They say, “Hey, what are you going to do?” “Well, what are you going to–” Nobody wants to be the one person to not pay rent. Nobody wants to be the one person not to pay their mortgage, but now if everyone gets this social proof and says like, “Hey, I won’t if you want.” They’re like, “Okay.” It’s tough to know what’s going to happen or what’s not.

I think maybe the biggest news of the week that is the SBA loan kind of government stimulus that’s happening. This is the thing out there that I think all real estate agents need to start learning about, reading about, see what’s out there. There’s a lot of different examples. I think last week they were talking about, every individual that paid taxes last year, they’re going to give a certain amount to every family. Every person, every married couple based on kids in the household and like average families may be getting anywhere between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on how big their family is.

Then the other thing they’re trying to do is there’s a couple different SBA loans and one is an environmental disaster loan that just says, “Hey, has your business been harmed by this, and if so, you can apply for this loan and it’s going to be paid over many years at a good low interest rate. There’s a way to apply for that on the SBA.” Then there’s one that says, “Hey, here’s one based on payroll.” There’s a lot of different versions in there. Again, no legal advice, but start digging in because it’s saying, “Hey, if you had however many employees you had last year, we’re going to take that monthly average. The grant can be two and a half times that amount and as long as you spend it the next couple of months and you rehire anybody that got laid off.” When I talk about that unemployment thing going back up, that’s that part of that stimulus.

Then I saw a new one a couple of days ago that just said, “Hey, any company can apply for this 10,000 bucks for the loss of rents on something else or loss of any–” It was kind of like there’s these big loans with some– There’s these other ones with big applications, and there’s the one that’s a two page, like anybody can apply for this. At the end it even says like, “Give us your bank account so we can wire you the money if you get approved.” What do you think someone should do right now? Should they be calling their CPA? Should they be calling their bank? Because some of the applications have started already. Some of them say they start this Friday. I don’t know the difference with all of them. Where are you going for your resource on that?

Speaker 1: Well, I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t say I’m the best at it. I’m certainly not the worst and I find it to be confusing. I am talking to my accountant about it. There are resources out there. Some of the loans are overlapping so that I’m applying for more than one. There’s this sort of $10,000 emergency relief one that’s not inconsistent with the longer one and they’ll roll the $10,000 into the longer one if you’re granted the longer one. Yes, right now is the time to get online and do your best with it. Definitely if you have a good accountant, talk to your accountant for sure, but be active for sure.

Aaron: Be active. It’s one of those things where when you think about like if you can actually get a $10,000 grant for taking a few minutes of time and learning, what’s a better use of your time right now as a small business owner, as a 1099 agent? Even if you’re just an agent receiving a 1099, like a lot of you guys, you’re eligible, right? Everybody is eligible for a different version of this stimulus. I think that’s really the news of the week that is going to be the big effort by the government and by people out there to offset this, to try to make what’s happening right now a blip instead of a 6, 9, 12-month correction. The jury is still out.

I tell you what, as I get to see more of these programs that are going to be putting people back to work, even for us we had some layoffs that happened and we see this and go, “Okay. If this works out, we get to bring the people back to work right now. No big deal.” I think it’s really great news. I think there’s political arguments against 2 trillion getting dumped into it. Just like you said, pros and cons of anything, eventually it has to get paid for. Again, it sure looks like news to me. I think that’s great advice, so talk to an accountant, talk to your banker, even if it’s just, “Hey, I’ve got a business checking account over here.” Ask them if they’ve heard about those different loans, but it looked like there’s varying levels of those.

Paul: Aaron, I know we’re doing a really compressed one today, which is good, a lot of information in a short amount of time. I would be remiss in giving this message. It’s a broken record, every time I get on the podcast for now into the future I’ll probably give the same advice. I’m giving the same advice to my network of realtors. I have 3,000 realtors working in the offices that I own and 7,000 in the regions that I look after. My message is, now is the time. That is, spend hours per day on outreach because here’s what happens to me.

I look at my phone and my incoming messages are like, “Hey, Paul, how’s it going? How are you doing or whatever?” That’s coming from only from my family and my closest business associates. Everybody else is silent, which I understand because it’s crazy out there. This is what you should be doing, talking to your family, closest people. However, I am going into my sphere and this is, I want to give actionable advice to the Rockstar Nation of, “Hey, what can we be doing right now?” I believe that there’s quite a possibility of coming out the other side stronger than you are right now. The way to do that is be a leader in your community. Everybody else is freaked out.

I was on a call this morning with Gary Keller and Gary is like, “Hey, I’ve got a special concierge doctor, a special doctor system, my doctor hasn’t texted me saying, how are you doing?” I get my haircut at the same place for eons, my hairdresser hasn’t said, ow are you doing?” I’m like, “Wow, me too.” I’ve been saying this for a lot, incoming not there. If you’re the one hairdresser, you’re the one realtor, and you go out to your sphere, and I have a particular way of doing it that I’ll suggest, you do it however makes sense for you. What I do is I send the first message out. I say, “Hey, Aaron. How you doing?” It’s a slightly personalized message. “How are you doing? Hope your family’s well, hope your daughter’s doing great. Stay safe.” Then I sort of have a, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” Then a little message of hope, this too shall pass. Then I just hit send.

Invariably, I’m getting more than 90% return on that of people coming back.

A lot of times what I get is like, “Wow, Paul, I was just thinking about you.” That’s not BS because I’m thinking about a lot of people before I was doing this without sending the message. I’m the one that is sending the message. Now they go, “wow, hey, I was just thinking about you. So nice of you to do this. We’re good right now. We’ll let you know.” Then after that I have a cut and paste message which is sort of the news of the day which I then say, “Oh,” I’m not hitting them with, “Hey, Aaron, how are you? Here’s a resource,” and clicking on it’s too business like.

It’s a first message, reach out, and then if you reach back out to me, which almost always happens, then I send you resources. Then it feels like a very real contact. Yes I believe that on a business front, this will carry us forward, this will make us leaders in the community. I’m also really genuinely, I do care so It’s not hard for me to do. Resources could be anything from– I interviewed a top realtor the other day on our regional call. He was saying, “Hey, one of the things I do is I get in my car. ” The car, it’s sequestered, you’re safe, it’s isolation. You’re not putting anybody else at risk, you’re not putting yourself at risk, but he’s driving around and seeing what’s going on in his community. You can give a little update, “Hey, look, here’s, what’s going on outside. Line at Whole Foods on Montana’s down the street, line at Whole Foods Wilshire, don’t know why. It’s empty.”

Just whatever tidbits, that’s an example. I found a great article from a doctor on the front lines in New York city. That’s what I was sending out the last couple of days. Those sorts of things, I call them an I care message, but that’s a great, actionable thing. I recommend all realtors do it. It will set you apart and I’d love to see Rockstar Nation come out of this by virtue of the help that we give you, hopefully really come out of this stronger than ever before.

Aaron: Absolutely. It is so important to end with that. Paul, since the time you told me that two weeks ago, I had been doing that like crazy. I’ve been texting people like crazy and outreach because everyone is afraid to reach out. Everyone’s afraid because they’re like, “Should we even say anything right now?” Now reaching out, people need connection. People need people.

The other thing we’ve talked about too is just offering value. We’ve seen agents out there that are grocery shopping for people. We’ve seen, just like you said, local actionable data is, “Hey, I drove around today and these grocery stores had a line and these ones didn’t.” “Hey, I went into this grocery store today and they had tons of fruits and vegetables. Like go check it out or do you want me to grab you some while I’m here?”

This is just a time for real connection, again, not to slow down. I think to really to close it out on your point, a week and a half ago, I go, “Wow, this is bad.” I start looking at all my finances like everybody does. I start looking at all my expenses like everybody does. I say, “All right, I need to make sure I cut this. I cut this, we’re tight on this to make sure we can sustain for next six to nine months of this crazy crash I’m expecting.” Then after three days of depression I woke up on Wednesday and I said, “Okay, all right. I’m ready for the worst but how about I get into action? How about I don’t worry about the worst today and I say, what am I going to do to make a change?” We started reaching out to all of our customers. We started reaching out to our subscribers of some of our real estate data products. We did a webinar. We had hundreds of people sign up and stay on for two hours, more action than we’ve ever had with people dying to hear from us and dying to hear our advice.

Yes, get your house in order and then get into action, come out of this flying. Text your people, reach out to your people. The Rock Star Nation, we know you guys can can do it. Be sure to check in next week for the interactive State of the Market. We do want to hear from you. We want to see you guys live on there. Paul, anything else we should close with?

Paul: I was just going to say, you can find me on Instagram @Paul Mark, t’s M-A-R-K, Morris. Send me an I care message so you can be on my radar and I’ll send you one back and let me know what’s going on out in the field. I’m super interested in interacting with this community. Same thing, I’m the same handle on Facebook. We’re putting out a lot of good information.

We want to emerge as the leaders in this time. This gives us the opportunity. A little saying is that it is the darkness that makes the light more relevant. I think Aaron and I, we’ve been banding around with the light. We’ve been working on being the light for a long time but it’s really when things are dark that the light becomes more relevant, more useful. My advice to everybody out there is be the light in your community. It’s really an opportunity.

Aaron: Be the light. We say fear is contagious, leadership is contagious, that light is contagious. Go after it that way, but we mean it. Reach out to us on social media, send us messages, jump on the line with us next week. We want to hear from you guys and see if we can help. I think that’s it. Thanks, everybody. See you next week. [crosstalk]