Garret Jones: Hello everybody, thank you for joining us. This is Home Equity First and I am Garrett, terrific host in my Monterey hat today, not my San Jose hat. And I've got Terry Larkin, one of my absolute favorite people who we've had a roller coaster of a ride together and I always appreciate getting to talk with you. You are
Teri Larkin: Ha!
Garret Jones: with fidelity and why don't you how long have you been in the real estate game why don't you just tell us a little bit about what it is you do and how long you've been doing it.
Teri Larkin: Yeah. So I've been doing this for 32 years now, ⁓ only with two title companies in that time. And ⁓ basically what I do is change and has evolved so much over the years. But what I do is help agents ⁓ with their business, with their business planning, ⁓ that sort of thing. ⁓ And then I also correspond with the escrow officers who they're going to be working with. And so knowing what the escrow officer's needs are and relaying that to the agent and vice versa is part of my role as well.
Garret Jones: So give us a day in the life a little bit. I know you talk to a lot of agents, so you see all the personalities that there are in our business. What do you work on educating them on? How do you help? Because I know you meet with lot of agents, and everybody kind of has different ideas and different plans. What strategies are you working with agents on today? And I know it's
Teri Larkin: Sure. Yeah.
Garret Jones: probably changed greatly over the years.
Teri Larkin: Yeah, I know. And that's a great, great question because every agent is very different and what their wants desires are. Some things that are universal right now. And what I'm hearing is we're seeing an uptick a little bit in inventory and we've got some people who are hoping and praying that rates are going to come down. And so going over some materials that really help those buyers get off the fence that are waiting for rates to come down.
Garret Jones: Mm-hmm.
Teri Larkin: ⁓ Barring a major war, barring another ⁓ epidemic, we're not going to see those rates coming way below five, which people are hoping for. So, and obviously historically these are still very, very low rates. So showing them what it would mean to buy now versus later. So if they hold off thinking, I'm going to wait for those rates to come down, what it's really going to cost them. And things that speak directly to them. not just a universal, but looking at the numbers that relate to them has been very big right now for agents.
Garret Jones: Well, yeah, and in our market in particular, we're propped up by how many buyers are using their RSUs and these stocks that they're getting paid with their company. It really keeps the entry level of home prices up, right? Kind of a little, it's a little protection against interest rates that we see in our particular area, as opposed to other places in the country where they They don't have the terrific economy. ⁓ know, the stock market has been going crazy the last couple of, couple of months. mean, Google in particular, I believe is up, you know, 150 points in a year. And it's, and, and so there is that, what do you, so you, you work with a lot of agents probably on building a geographic farm.
Teri Larkin: Right.
Garret Jones: Is that true? Do you help agents with that?
Teri Larkin: Yep. That is group. Yeah, that's one area. Uh-huh.
Garret Jones: Let's talk about kind of the data that you pull for particular communities. And for those listeners who are not in real estate, ⁓ a geographic farm would be a zip code or a particular suburban area. They range from probably 500 homes all the way up to 50,000 homes, depending upon who's sending out, what agent is sending out the mailers.
Teri Larkin: Right?
Garret Jones: But what data are you looking at? Because real estate is very micro, it's micro climates, right? And you see it every day how these different areas are all performing. Some are performing similarly, some are different, right? We've got different school districts, we've got different commute times. We have a lot of, I mean, here's what I'm seeing right now. Almoden Valley is down 20%, you know, sales prices. year over year and their inventory just keeps getting higher and higher where where Cambrian is still holding strong and and Campbell is still holding strong and Willow Glen in San Jose is still you know the one of the best areas communities to buy in right but ⁓ what do you see?
Teri Larkin: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so as far as farming goes and that again, it's going to depend on the agent so we can do something as simple as finding where the high turnover rates are, meaning if homes are not selling in a certain area and they're just spinning their wheels farming and marketing to it. So that's not really a great way to go unless we do the turnover rates. We can also do life events. So things like a NOD notice of default, maybe a divorce is happening. something that would constitute the home being more likely to be sold than just the random home that's been purchased three years ago. So ⁓ we can go as deep as finding out-of-state owners, ⁓ which I think there's a great ⁓ market for that for people who do live out of state. We know the laws here in California for ⁓ landlords are unfortunately a little more ⁓ protective of the renter than the landlord. And so there's all kinds of ways to show, hey, if we took this amount of income and we didn't exchange into something over here, where the laws might not be the same or return on investment can be just as good, then that might be an option for those people.
Garret Jones: And just to clarify what Terry's talking about is an exchange is when somebody decides to sell a property here in California and take that money and then go purchase a property maybe with better rental restrictions for the property owner than what California is currently offering. And they're exchanging essentially one property for another. that may provide a greater return on that investment, right? Like, so an example of that would be, I had a single family home here and I went and bought a property in Arizona, where in Arizona I bought a six unit apartment complex for what I sold my home for here. And this property here was generating, let's call it $5,000 a month. And when I go buy that apartment complex there,
Teri Larkin: Exactly. Right?
Garret Jones: we're generating $10,000 a month or $12,000 a month. And that's what we're talking about there. What about when you're looking at these farms, what about looking at who the dominant agent is in a particular area and then helping the agent who's considering making that investment to go in and try and secure business in that area? Where do we maybe go? I don't know if you want to.
Teri Larkin: Luckily.
Garret Jones: I don't know if you want to go into that neighborhood because this agent, my understanding is it's like 10%. If you have an area that you take 10 % of the listings in, you would be considered the dominant agent. I don't know what your math chart says there. But what do you say, Harry? What do you say?
Teri Larkin: Right, and that's Yeah, I would say it's about 10%. And it's interesting because, and again, it depends on how much you want to throw at it. So I'll give an example of, know, in Willow Glen, have the Valerie Means, the Joey Portoles that market heavily here and do quite a bit of business. But we have a new player who came on about four years ago, a newer agent. who actually lives down the street. And what she does is puts on movie nights in the summertime at the Willow Glen High School. And she does all kinds of events where she's gathering more and more people together. Plus she's very involved in her kids' activities ⁓ at the school. So she just meets. It's all about meeting different people. Her name's Cassie Shannon.
Garret Jones: And who's that agent? ⁓ huh, And she's with who is she with? What brokerage? Okay.
Teri Larkin: She's with Interro on Meridian and I believe she's teamed up with Brian Tanger now, but she's getting the majority of the listings.
Garret Jones: Hmm. Well, and if we look at the door park neighborhood, right, Brian Tanger is a he's the voice over there. I believe he lives in that neighborhood. He he does one of the coolest things I've ever seen any agent do at an open house, which is he he has met enough original owners over there who bought from the developer when that track of homes was being built.
Teri Larkin: What's up?
Garret Jones: and he actually has the original floor plan for the five units that they sell in that neighborhood. And he puts up this big chart and he has the original floor plan. So when the neighbors come in, he just kind of goes over to the chart and says, well, which one of these do you have? And they go, ⁓ well, mine's like this one, but it's not like this anymore, right? Like this wall's gone and we added a bathroom here. We did an addition there and it's... I I'm like, how do I do that? And you have to meet the original, you got to meet the original owners of these places. but yeah, I love that. cool. Tell me, tell me, so you've, I mean, God, you said 30 years, right?
Teri Larkin: Yeah, absolutely. 30, yeah, 32. 30, yeah.
Garret Jones: 32 years. So you've met a lot of agents. You have seen a ton, a ton of changes in real estate. I want your opinion on what you think is coming with AI and the technology. what changes? Yes. What changes? What changes is that going to bring to the way you were doing your job? And
Teri Larkin: AI is cool. Mm-hmm.
Garret Jones: And let's start there. So what changes does that bring? What is it introducing for you here in these early stages of, this is how I might be able to use this.
Teri Larkin: Yeah. Right. And that's great question. I'm seeing with agents, especially now because we're no longer going on Google, right? We're going on chat and we're putting in San Jose top agent. So how do I get on AI and make sure that I show up there? And that's something I can help agents with and show them how to do that. And we're just seeing, you know, there's so many different things that you can do with AI now, and especially for agents. ⁓ where they have basically virtual assistants. So, and obviously we're rewriting things. I know ⁓ one of the things that we just got approved with our company were the deferred sales trust. And the way, one of the ways that we did that, because I don't interact with the underwriter day in and day out, but I did go onto AI and said, Hey, here's some of their concerns. How would we get this approved? And what would be some of the things? And so AI spelled it out. So there's just numerous ways to use it.
Garret Jones: Yeah, and I want to piggyback all the numerous ways and the more I listen and the more I work with it, the better I get with it. Here is something that I set up the other day, that if you're an agent and you're listening, you need to set this up. And if you support any real estate business, you should set this up. So I did it in Gemini. And what I did is I, the prompt I gave it was give me today's real estate polls. And then I put in an area. Okay. So for me, I said for San Jose suburbs, Willow Glen, Cambrian, Almodin Valley, and the city of Campbell. And then I told it where I wanted it to pull the data from. So I said, use data from redfinrealtor.com Zillow and summarize social media chatter.
Teri Larkin: Love it.
Garret Jones: summarize all of this into three short paragraphs that I can post or use in social media videos, 30 seconds in duration.
Teri Larkin: Perfect.
Garret Jones: And then I even use Gemini to put my calendar reminder that every day at 9 a.m. I'm to go in to my bot here and to get the pulse of the day. And what it.
Teri Larkin: Boy, that's terrific. Are you finding it different?
Garret Jones: What's that?
Teri Larkin: What are you finding when you do that? you finding it? Are there any surprises?
Garret Jones: That's how I got my helmet in Valley Staff.
Teri Larkin: Okay.
Garret Jones: Right. And then, and then what I do is I'll go back into the MLS because I want to make sure that, that what I'm sharing is factual. So I'll go in and I'll check, check the information out, right? Double check it. But so far it's been, it's been really accurate. ⁓ and I think you have to be careful with, so the social media chatter, right? It social media is intended to either be, I absolutely love this information.
Teri Larkin: Right.
Garret Jones: or I absolutely hate this information and I want to argue with it, but it's not the truth probably on either side. So what I like to do with the social media section is go like, where's the fulcrum, right? Because the fulcrum is the truth, but we have to balance between what people think and what's actually happening, right? You're still going to hear a lot of stories of this house sold for X amount over list price.
Teri Larkin: Mm-hmm. Right. Right?
Garret Jones: in a very short amount of time. Because for us as agents, we need to market the fact that we are getting good results. But if the consumer is only getting that information, they always assume that the market is strong. And we're out there as a brokerages and as agents, we need to continue to keep that message strong because that's what ⁓ allows the consumer to go, hey, maybe I should sell my house. But it might not be the truth in terms of what the data is actually saying. Right. Like I've met with a number of sellers in the last couple of weeks. And unfortunately, my advice for them is to wait. You know, is to wait to sell their home because it's not a really ⁓ strong seller's market right now. And sure.
Teri Larkin: Bye.
Garret Jones: Some homes are still gonna command a ton of interest, right? And they always will, because there's always gonna be those homes. I mean, the data right now says that 55 % of homes in San Jose are still selling above list price. 55 % in all of San Jose. What's that?
Teri Larkin: Right. Do you get that with Altos? Is that through Altos reports or where do you get your through Gemini? Okay, okay. Yeah, and I know Altos does the weekly reports that give you the same information, which is more predictive than just looking in the rear view mirror of what is sold, what's pending. ⁓ It actually helps us to see what's coming down the pike.
Garret Jones: That's through my new bot.
Teri Larkin: ⁓ That might be a good one to incorporate with Gemini as well.
Garret Jones: Yeah. To have it, have it use Altos. What I'm finding with Gemini is there are all these different bots that I can set up that, that make my job easier and more efficient. And that, that's why I'm, that's why I'm offering a home equity first model because my job's easier. have a property research assistant that's already set up in Gemini and, and, and set up with all the, the prop.
Teri Larkin: Okay. Uh-huh.
Garret Jones: the prompts, I have ⁓ a marketing generator for listings where I can give, can give it all the information I have on that seller, as well as the address and the information I have on the property. And I ask it to build three different marketing plans for how we're going to highlight this property to different buyers. You know, the
Teri Larkin: Perfect. Guys. Okay. I love ⁓ one thing I just wanted to say. What I really appreciate about you, Garrett is the fact that you do tell sellers to hold off where some agents are only thinking about the listing, right? And you're actually thinking of what's in their best interest based on what they've told me. And so anyway, just kudos to you. I appreciate that about you.
Garret Jones: We don't, I. Thank you. Thank you. mean, know, 32 years of experience for you and I want your opinion on this. This is going to be a tough question, okay? Just to warn you.
Teri Larkin: ⁓ all right, let me get ready. Okay.
Garret Jones: agents fee structure, agents commission structure, I believe is a little bit archaic. I believe that it's very hard to act as a true fiduciary considering I don't get paid unless a property is bought or sold, right? So there's this, ⁓ it's like a tug of war I feel some days, where some days I feel like
Teri Larkin: Mm.
Garret Jones: Hey, I really want what's best for everyone I talk to. And there are a lot of times where what's best for the people I'm talking to is not for them to buy or sell a real estate right now. That's okay. But my livelihood wants me to go over here and be a salesman. Because if I can just be a salesman, I don't worry quite as much about ⁓ digging deeper. Because oftentimes,
Teri Larkin: I'm
Garret Jones: It's when we have trust with people that they tell us more. And once they tell us more, we can't unhear it. And then we have to really evaluate like, hey, is this what's best for them? And only they know. ⁓ So the question in that long-winded, whatever I was just doing, that long-winded keynote speech that I just gave you, ⁓
Teri Larkin: Correct.
Garret Jones: Where do you stand on, can I be a true fiduciary with the structure the way it is?
Teri Larkin: Yeah, and it's a great question. And I love how you phrase that because, you know, I come from the standpoint of whenever you do what's right for the consumer first, for your sellers, me for my agents, it will always come back to you. Maybe not in the moment. ⁓ But I think we're all, human lie detectors and we know when somebody is out for themselves. versus wanting to educate and are thinking of our best interests and our true professional. So I see that in you. I just think that it always works the best when we treat people the way you want to be treated, right? Kind of basic. Do what's best.
Garret Jones: It's like, what is that? What is it? The golden rule? Do want to others as you would. I think it's something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're all going to be okay if we go through life that way. But, but that's, that's where that's my little ick with the real estate business at times is, is we, we got to
Teri Larkin: Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Out of doubt. Yep. Sure, sure. And rightly so because it is our income, but we even kind of feel icky, right? When we've got that, have a dollar sign in my forehead saying I need this listing or I need this deal as opposed to what is best for them. They're going to refer you people, they're going to trust you ⁓ as opposed to I felt really pushed into this. I wasn't sure that this was the right thing or the right timing. ⁓ We feel that.
Garret Jones: Yeah. And I think that all of what we're talking about in terms of really taking good care of people, it comes with time doing this job. Because I could tell you early in my real estate career, I was so focused on just trying to get a deal done that I didn't have the skill set to step back and go like, what's best for this person? Right. And how do they want to be treated through this process? Because I was so
Teri Larkin: Right?
Garret Jones: tense and tight. ⁓ But that's another thing when I go like people can get anybody listening who's thinking about getting your license. You can have your license in six months if you just take the three classes and pass the state exam. So what that means is we have a low barrier to entry to get into this profession and now we're buying and selling ⁓ for a lot of people the largest assets they have. Now
Teri Larkin: Sure, sure.
Garret Jones: I just ask everybody to consider what the buildup to being able to do that is. I mean, you what's crazy is I've coached a number of different agents. I've worked with a woman who was a rocket scientist. I know another lady who used to work for NASA. And I've also worked with a truck driver. I've worked with somebody who was 20 years old and only had a high school diploma and was selling cars before that.
Teri Larkin: correct. Mmm.
Garret Jones: I mean, every walk of life you can imagine has worked in our field of real estate agent. And it's just fascinating. I think that that's what's fun about it, is that we have all these different personalities and we're all being exposed to about a hundred different things. And people are saying, this is the way to go sell houses and make money. Do it this way.
Teri Larkin: Sure. Mm-hmm. Right, right, right, right.
Garret Jones: Right? I really, I believe that in the next five years that teams and the agents that utilize the technology that is out there.
Teri Larkin: No.
Garret Jones: are going to really dominate sectors. think like what we'll see is like team teams dominating sectors, right? And those are the agents that are, there's going to be two teams that dominate, right? I think it's going to be the community agent is going to dominate. And then it's going to be the discount agent. And I think that those two agents are who's going to kind of dominate different pockets. ⁓
Teri Larkin: That's
Garret Jones: But that's what makes this job so fun is we get to play this game every day, ⁓ meet a bunch of cool people. ⁓ If you're an agent and you're listening, the one thing I hope that you understand is like, don't take this too seriously. Don't take this too seriously. Like everything's gonna be okay. You know, I mean.
Teri Larkin: True. No, right. Yeah, don't grab on too tight.
Garret Jones: No, and I see agents that are really like they have great businesses, right? They sell a lot of houses, they make a lot of money and they're wound so tight. And I just go like, not only is that probably not good for you and your personal life, but it's probably not that good for your clients in the long run either.
Teri Larkin: Right? Right. No, I agree wholeheartedly. It's very true.
Garret Jones: You know? Relax and win. Relax and win. That's our parting thoughts for today. Terry... Just breathe. Hey, thank you for your time today. I love that we got to do this and I always enjoy talking to you and I'm glad that ⁓ you and I saw each other at that last event. Terry's information, we're gonna have it down in the description.
Teri Larkin: Relax and win, I like that. I like that. Absolutely. Thank you.
Garret Jones: of this podcast and Home Equity First. If you want to know how to save and keep more of your equity when selling a home, me a call. Bye bye.
Teri Larkin: Thanks so much, Garrett.
Teri Larkin: Ha!
Garret Jones: with fidelity and why don't you how long have you been in the real estate game why don't you just tell us a little bit about what it is you do and how long you've been doing it.
Teri Larkin: Yeah. So I've been doing this for 32 years now, ⁓ only with two title companies in that time. And ⁓ basically what I do is change and has evolved so much over the years. But what I do is help agents ⁓ with their business, with their business planning, ⁓ that sort of thing. ⁓ And then I also correspond with the escrow officers who they're going to be working with. And so knowing what the escrow officer's needs are and relaying that to the agent and vice versa is part of my role as well.
Garret Jones: So give us a day in the life a little bit. I know you talk to a lot of agents, so you see all the personalities that there are in our business. What do you work on educating them on? How do you help? Because I know you meet with lot of agents, and everybody kind of has different ideas and different plans. What strategies are you working with agents on today? And I know it's
Teri Larkin: Sure. Yeah.
Garret Jones: probably changed greatly over the years.
Teri Larkin: Yeah, I know. And that's a great, great question because every agent is very different and what their wants desires are. Some things that are universal right now. And what I'm hearing is we're seeing an uptick a little bit in inventory and we've got some people who are hoping and praying that rates are going to come down. And so going over some materials that really help those buyers get off the fence that are waiting for rates to come down.
Garret Jones: Mm-hmm.
Teri Larkin: ⁓ Barring a major war, barring another ⁓ epidemic, we're not going to see those rates coming way below five, which people are hoping for. So, and obviously historically these are still very, very low rates. So showing them what it would mean to buy now versus later. So if they hold off thinking, I'm going to wait for those rates to come down, what it's really going to cost them. And things that speak directly to them. not just a universal, but looking at the numbers that relate to them has been very big right now for agents.
Garret Jones: Well, yeah, and in our market in particular, we're propped up by how many buyers are using their RSUs and these stocks that they're getting paid with their company. It really keeps the entry level of home prices up, right? Kind of a little, it's a little protection against interest rates that we see in our particular area, as opposed to other places in the country where they They don't have the terrific economy. ⁓ know, the stock market has been going crazy the last couple of, couple of months. mean, Google in particular, I believe is up, you know, 150 points in a year. And it's, and, and so there is that, what do you, so you, you work with a lot of agents probably on building a geographic farm.
Teri Larkin: Right.
Garret Jones: Is that true? Do you help agents with that?
Teri Larkin: Yep. That is group. Yeah, that's one area. Uh-huh.
Garret Jones: Let's talk about kind of the data that you pull for particular communities. And for those listeners who are not in real estate, ⁓ a geographic farm would be a zip code or a particular suburban area. They range from probably 500 homes all the way up to 50,000 homes, depending upon who's sending out, what agent is sending out the mailers.
Teri Larkin: Right?
Garret Jones: But what data are you looking at? Because real estate is very micro, it's micro climates, right? And you see it every day how these different areas are all performing. Some are performing similarly, some are different, right? We've got different school districts, we've got different commute times. We have a lot of, I mean, here's what I'm seeing right now. Almoden Valley is down 20%, you know, sales prices. year over year and their inventory just keeps getting higher and higher where where Cambrian is still holding strong and and Campbell is still holding strong and Willow Glen in San Jose is still you know the one of the best areas communities to buy in right but ⁓ what do you see?
Teri Larkin: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so as far as farming goes and that again, it's going to depend on the agent so we can do something as simple as finding where the high turnover rates are, meaning if homes are not selling in a certain area and they're just spinning their wheels farming and marketing to it. So that's not really a great way to go unless we do the turnover rates. We can also do life events. So things like a NOD notice of default, maybe a divorce is happening. something that would constitute the home being more likely to be sold than just the random home that's been purchased three years ago. So ⁓ we can go as deep as finding out-of-state owners, ⁓ which I think there's a great ⁓ market for that for people who do live out of state. We know the laws here in California for ⁓ landlords are unfortunately a little more ⁓ protective of the renter than the landlord. And so there's all kinds of ways to show, hey, if we took this amount of income and we didn't exchange into something over here, where the laws might not be the same or return on investment can be just as good, then that might be an option for those people.
Garret Jones: And just to clarify what Terry's talking about is an exchange is when somebody decides to sell a property here in California and take that money and then go purchase a property maybe with better rental restrictions for the property owner than what California is currently offering. And they're exchanging essentially one property for another. that may provide a greater return on that investment, right? Like, so an example of that would be, I had a single family home here and I went and bought a property in Arizona, where in Arizona I bought a six unit apartment complex for what I sold my home for here. And this property here was generating, let's call it $5,000 a month. And when I go buy that apartment complex there,
Teri Larkin: Exactly. Right?
Garret Jones: we're generating $10,000 a month or $12,000 a month. And that's what we're talking about there. What about when you're looking at these farms, what about looking at who the dominant agent is in a particular area and then helping the agent who's considering making that investment to go in and try and secure business in that area? Where do we maybe go? I don't know if you want to.
Teri Larkin: Luckily.
Garret Jones: I don't know if you want to go into that neighborhood because this agent, my understanding is it's like 10%. If you have an area that you take 10 % of the listings in, you would be considered the dominant agent. I don't know what your math chart says there. But what do you say, Harry? What do you say?
Teri Larkin: Right, and that's Yeah, I would say it's about 10%. And it's interesting because, and again, it depends on how much you want to throw at it. So I'll give an example of, know, in Willow Glen, have the Valerie Means, the Joey Portoles that market heavily here and do quite a bit of business. But we have a new player who came on about four years ago, a newer agent. who actually lives down the street. And what she does is puts on movie nights in the summertime at the Willow Glen High School. And she does all kinds of events where she's gathering more and more people together. Plus she's very involved in her kids' activities ⁓ at the school. So she just meets. It's all about meeting different people. Her name's Cassie Shannon.
Garret Jones: And who's that agent? ⁓ huh, And she's with who is she with? What brokerage? Okay.
Teri Larkin: She's with Interro on Meridian and I believe she's teamed up with Brian Tanger now, but she's getting the majority of the listings.
Garret Jones: Hmm. Well, and if we look at the door park neighborhood, right, Brian Tanger is a he's the voice over there. I believe he lives in that neighborhood. He he does one of the coolest things I've ever seen any agent do at an open house, which is he he has met enough original owners over there who bought from the developer when that track of homes was being built.
Teri Larkin: What's up?
Garret Jones: and he actually has the original floor plan for the five units that they sell in that neighborhood. And he puts up this big chart and he has the original floor plan. So when the neighbors come in, he just kind of goes over to the chart and says, well, which one of these do you have? And they go, ⁓ well, mine's like this one, but it's not like this anymore, right? Like this wall's gone and we added a bathroom here. We did an addition there and it's... I I'm like, how do I do that? And you have to meet the original, you got to meet the original owners of these places. but yeah, I love that. cool. Tell me, tell me, so you've, I mean, God, you said 30 years, right?
Teri Larkin: Yeah, absolutely. 30, yeah, 32. 30, yeah.
Garret Jones: 32 years. So you've met a lot of agents. You have seen a ton, a ton of changes in real estate. I want your opinion on what you think is coming with AI and the technology. what changes? Yes. What changes? What changes is that going to bring to the way you were doing your job? And
Teri Larkin: AI is cool. Mm-hmm.
Garret Jones: And let's start there. So what changes does that bring? What is it introducing for you here in these early stages of, this is how I might be able to use this.
Teri Larkin: Yeah. Right. And that's great question. I'm seeing with agents, especially now because we're no longer going on Google, right? We're going on chat and we're putting in San Jose top agent. So how do I get on AI and make sure that I show up there? And that's something I can help agents with and show them how to do that. And we're just seeing, you know, there's so many different things that you can do with AI now, and especially for agents. ⁓ where they have basically virtual assistants. So, and obviously we're rewriting things. I know ⁓ one of the things that we just got approved with our company were the deferred sales trust. And the way, one of the ways that we did that, because I don't interact with the underwriter day in and day out, but I did go onto AI and said, Hey, here's some of their concerns. How would we get this approved? And what would be some of the things? And so AI spelled it out. So there's just numerous ways to use it.
Garret Jones: Yeah, and I want to piggyback all the numerous ways and the more I listen and the more I work with it, the better I get with it. Here is something that I set up the other day, that if you're an agent and you're listening, you need to set this up. And if you support any real estate business, you should set this up. So I did it in Gemini. And what I did is I, the prompt I gave it was give me today's real estate polls. And then I put in an area. Okay. So for me, I said for San Jose suburbs, Willow Glen, Cambrian, Almodin Valley, and the city of Campbell. And then I told it where I wanted it to pull the data from. So I said, use data from redfinrealtor.com Zillow and summarize social media chatter.
Teri Larkin: Love it.
Garret Jones: summarize all of this into three short paragraphs that I can post or use in social media videos, 30 seconds in duration.
Teri Larkin: Perfect.
Garret Jones: And then I even use Gemini to put my calendar reminder that every day at 9 a.m. I'm to go in to my bot here and to get the pulse of the day. And what it.
Teri Larkin: Boy, that's terrific. Are you finding it different?
Garret Jones: What's that?
Teri Larkin: What are you finding when you do that? you finding it? Are there any surprises?
Garret Jones: That's how I got my helmet in Valley Staff.
Teri Larkin: Okay.
Garret Jones: Right. And then, and then what I do is I'll go back into the MLS because I want to make sure that, that what I'm sharing is factual. So I'll go in and I'll check, check the information out, right? Double check it. But so far it's been, it's been really accurate. ⁓ and I think you have to be careful with, so the social media chatter, right? It social media is intended to either be, I absolutely love this information.
Teri Larkin: Right.
Garret Jones: or I absolutely hate this information and I want to argue with it, but it's not the truth probably on either side. So what I like to do with the social media section is go like, where's the fulcrum, right? Because the fulcrum is the truth, but we have to balance between what people think and what's actually happening, right? You're still going to hear a lot of stories of this house sold for X amount over list price.
Teri Larkin: Mm-hmm. Right. Right?
Garret Jones: in a very short amount of time. Because for us as agents, we need to market the fact that we are getting good results. But if the consumer is only getting that information, they always assume that the market is strong. And we're out there as a brokerages and as agents, we need to continue to keep that message strong because that's what ⁓ allows the consumer to go, hey, maybe I should sell my house. But it might not be the truth in terms of what the data is actually saying. Right. Like I've met with a number of sellers in the last couple of weeks. And unfortunately, my advice for them is to wait. You know, is to wait to sell their home because it's not a really ⁓ strong seller's market right now. And sure.
Teri Larkin: Bye.
Garret Jones: Some homes are still gonna command a ton of interest, right? And they always will, because there's always gonna be those homes. I mean, the data right now says that 55 % of homes in San Jose are still selling above list price. 55 % in all of San Jose. What's that?
Teri Larkin: Right. Do you get that with Altos? Is that through Altos reports or where do you get your through Gemini? Okay, okay. Yeah, and I know Altos does the weekly reports that give you the same information, which is more predictive than just looking in the rear view mirror of what is sold, what's pending. ⁓ It actually helps us to see what's coming down the pike.
Garret Jones: That's through my new bot.
Teri Larkin: ⁓ That might be a good one to incorporate with Gemini as well.
Garret Jones: Yeah. To have it, have it use Altos. What I'm finding with Gemini is there are all these different bots that I can set up that, that make my job easier and more efficient. And that, that's why I'm, that's why I'm offering a home equity first model because my job's easier. have a property research assistant that's already set up in Gemini and, and, and set up with all the, the prop.
Teri Larkin: Okay. Uh-huh.
Garret Jones: the prompts, I have ⁓ a marketing generator for listings where I can give, can give it all the information I have on that seller, as well as the address and the information I have on the property. And I ask it to build three different marketing plans for how we're going to highlight this property to different buyers. You know, the
Teri Larkin: Perfect. Guys. Okay. I love ⁓ one thing I just wanted to say. What I really appreciate about you, Garrett is the fact that you do tell sellers to hold off where some agents are only thinking about the listing, right? And you're actually thinking of what's in their best interest based on what they've told me. And so anyway, just kudos to you. I appreciate that about you.
Garret Jones: We don't, I. Thank you. Thank you. mean, know, 32 years of experience for you and I want your opinion on this. This is going to be a tough question, okay? Just to warn you.
Teri Larkin: ⁓ all right, let me get ready. Okay.
Garret Jones: agents fee structure, agents commission structure, I believe is a little bit archaic. I believe that it's very hard to act as a true fiduciary considering I don't get paid unless a property is bought or sold, right? So there's this, ⁓ it's like a tug of war I feel some days, where some days I feel like
Teri Larkin: Mm.
Garret Jones: Hey, I really want what's best for everyone I talk to. And there are a lot of times where what's best for the people I'm talking to is not for them to buy or sell a real estate right now. That's okay. But my livelihood wants me to go over here and be a salesman. Because if I can just be a salesman, I don't worry quite as much about ⁓ digging deeper. Because oftentimes,
Teri Larkin: I'm
Garret Jones: It's when we have trust with people that they tell us more. And once they tell us more, we can't unhear it. And then we have to really evaluate like, hey, is this what's best for them? And only they know. ⁓ So the question in that long-winded, whatever I was just doing, that long-winded keynote speech that I just gave you, ⁓
Teri Larkin: Correct.
Garret Jones: Where do you stand on, can I be a true fiduciary with the structure the way it is?
Teri Larkin: Yeah, and it's a great question. And I love how you phrase that because, you know, I come from the standpoint of whenever you do what's right for the consumer first, for your sellers, me for my agents, it will always come back to you. Maybe not in the moment. ⁓ But I think we're all, human lie detectors and we know when somebody is out for themselves. versus wanting to educate and are thinking of our best interests and our true professional. So I see that in you. I just think that it always works the best when we treat people the way you want to be treated, right? Kind of basic. Do what's best.
Garret Jones: It's like, what is that? What is it? The golden rule? Do want to others as you would. I think it's something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're all going to be okay if we go through life that way. But, but that's, that's where that's my little ick with the real estate business at times is, is we, we got to
Teri Larkin: Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Out of doubt. Yep. Sure, sure. And rightly so because it is our income, but we even kind of feel icky, right? When we've got that, have a dollar sign in my forehead saying I need this listing or I need this deal as opposed to what is best for them. They're going to refer you people, they're going to trust you ⁓ as opposed to I felt really pushed into this. I wasn't sure that this was the right thing or the right timing. ⁓ We feel that.
Garret Jones: Yeah. And I think that all of what we're talking about in terms of really taking good care of people, it comes with time doing this job. Because I could tell you early in my real estate career, I was so focused on just trying to get a deal done that I didn't have the skill set to step back and go like, what's best for this person? Right. And how do they want to be treated through this process? Because I was so
Teri Larkin: Right?
Garret Jones: tense and tight. ⁓ But that's another thing when I go like people can get anybody listening who's thinking about getting your license. You can have your license in six months if you just take the three classes and pass the state exam. So what that means is we have a low barrier to entry to get into this profession and now we're buying and selling ⁓ for a lot of people the largest assets they have. Now
Teri Larkin: Sure, sure.
Garret Jones: I just ask everybody to consider what the buildup to being able to do that is. I mean, you what's crazy is I've coached a number of different agents. I've worked with a woman who was a rocket scientist. I know another lady who used to work for NASA. And I've also worked with a truck driver. I've worked with somebody who was 20 years old and only had a high school diploma and was selling cars before that.
Teri Larkin: correct. Mmm.
Garret Jones: I mean, every walk of life you can imagine has worked in our field of real estate agent. And it's just fascinating. I think that that's what's fun about it, is that we have all these different personalities and we're all being exposed to about a hundred different things. And people are saying, this is the way to go sell houses and make money. Do it this way.
Teri Larkin: Sure. Mm-hmm. Right, right, right, right.
Garret Jones: Right? I really, I believe that in the next five years that teams and the agents that utilize the technology that is out there.
Teri Larkin: No.
Garret Jones: are going to really dominate sectors. think like what we'll see is like team teams dominating sectors, right? And those are the agents that are, there's going to be two teams that dominate, right? I think it's going to be the community agent is going to dominate. And then it's going to be the discount agent. And I think that those two agents are who's going to kind of dominate different pockets. ⁓
Teri Larkin: That's
Garret Jones: But that's what makes this job so fun is we get to play this game every day, ⁓ meet a bunch of cool people. ⁓ If you're an agent and you're listening, the one thing I hope that you understand is like, don't take this too seriously. Don't take this too seriously. Like everything's gonna be okay. You know, I mean.
Teri Larkin: True. No, right. Yeah, don't grab on too tight.
Garret Jones: No, and I see agents that are really like they have great businesses, right? They sell a lot of houses, they make a lot of money and they're wound so tight. And I just go like, not only is that probably not good for you and your personal life, but it's probably not that good for your clients in the long run either.
Teri Larkin: Right? Right. No, I agree wholeheartedly. It's very true.
Garret Jones: You know? Relax and win. Relax and win. That's our parting thoughts for today. Terry... Just breathe. Hey, thank you for your time today. I love that we got to do this and I always enjoy talking to you and I'm glad that ⁓ you and I saw each other at that last event. Terry's information, we're gonna have it down in the description.
Teri Larkin: Relax and win, I like that. I like that. Absolutely. Thank you.
Garret Jones: of this podcast and Home Equity First. If you want to know how to save and keep more of your equity when selling a home, me a call. Bye bye.
Teri Larkin: Thanks so much, Garrett.
