Buyers Consultation and Representation Agreement Training

Alright, what's happening everybody? Thanks for joining. This is our online version of the buyer consult and the representation agreement training. And so I'm going to go through this slide deck, but the intro for this is, is the slide deck is really just for training purposes. The slide deck has on the third slide a list of resources here, and so these are cut and pasted into the slide deck so it's easily presentable. But this is where you're gonna wanna go for the source resources that I'm referring to in the presentation. And then we'll update, you know, if we update scripts or add resources and stuff like that, they're gonna be on these documents. So you wanna refer back to these, not necessarily the slide deck. The slide deck is just for training purposes and it's not complete either 'cause I cut and paste sections of it into the slide deck to show an example, but you wanna go back to this. So I'll just run through these real quick. This one is the Buyer Consult resources. So this is a long Google Doc, that has a bunch of the— a lot of the information that we're referring to inside of the slide deck. It's got all of this cut and paste information that you can use to build a buyer consultation presentation. And so this is where we're gonna continue to compile resources, text, scripts, stuff like that. And just stop me if you guys have questions, 'cause you know I can just blow through stuff. So if you have any questions, just raise your hand. This is the buyer intake form. So this is a template. That you can use during the buyer consult. I'll go through this in more detail, but this is a Google Doc. You can, you can edit it, add stuff to it, but this is what I'm referring to when we get to the buyer consult piece of it. This is an example buyer's rep agreement that is filled out and kind of gives you instructions on what to write in each space, right? Terms of agreement, what do you put in there? Um, really And then it's just compensation and the number of days. I'm going to talk about this a little bit later on in the presentation about in Section 10 or Paragraph 10, Section D, what do you put in there. So this is the standard form, and then this is the, the eXp buyer's rep agreement. I am recommending that you guys just use the HER standard form. EXP came out with this, we can use it. I think the HER standard form is a little bit easier to understand, and it's a Hawaii form versus— this is just a national form that anybody in EXP can use. So this is here, you can use it if you choose to, but I would use the standard form that is in your zip forms when you're doing buyer's rep agreements. This is a buyer toolkit. That, um, eXp provides. There's a bunch of templates in here for presentation materials, so if you want to use this, you can find it here, make a copy and edit it. Sorry, I got a mac nut stuck in my throat, I think. Let me get some water. All right, and then this is the buyer's, um, other common objections and questions slide deck. This is all on the Knowledge tab in the team website, and all of the objections that I'm going to talk about at the end of this presentation are here at the bottom of this, and you can link to them right here up at the top. There's Buyers Rep Objections. If you click on that, it'll jump to the slides that we're referring to in the presentation. So that's the quick, um, rundown of all of these, and then we'll go through all of this in more detail. So let me make a slide, make this big for you guys. All right, so basically what we're doing with this is taking the process sequentially from when we have that initial con— uh, conversation with the buyer, and then doing a consultation, showing our value proposition, conducting a consultation, and then presenting the buyer's rep agreement at the end of it. So that's important to understand here is I think the, the main objection or the main apprehension that agents have to having a buyer's rep agreement conversation is you think you got to talk about compensation first, right? And really, you should be talking about compensation last. You got to go through this process, talk about your value proposition, talk about the importance of representation, talk about what your obligations are, what their obligations are, what it is that we're signing, and then you present the discussion about compensation. And I'll show you how to do that at the end of this. All right, so we went through the resources. So this is the system. Just think about this as like a 5-part system, right? The first system is just like we've been doing all along, book the initial meeting with the client, right? ALM and Zillow or whatever it is. If it's a referral from your friend, you want to book that initial appointment and meeting. And this is like the first date, right? This is where you want to find out, do I even want to work with this person? Are they a weirdo? Like, do they not have a job? Like, this is what you kind of want to figure out. So you're not having a buyer's rep agreement conversation initially. You want to do this meeting first, right? Just do that initial appointment and figure out, okay, is this somebody I want to get into a contractual relationship with? If the answer is no, then it ends at that point, right? It's— and if you're going into that initial meeting with that mindset, it'll help you filter out who you should be spending your time with. If the answer is yes and it's somebody that you do want to take the next steps with, then what we're going to do is schedule a formal buyer's consultation. And be clear, I need about 45 minutes of your time. We can do this by video or in person, but I'm going to go through the buyer's consultation process and find out what your needs and wants are, talk about a buyer's representation agreement, and formalize our relationship together. So you set the expectation that this is a formal meeting that you're going to have after the initial appointment. And it doesn't have to be right after. It could be you talk to somebody for a week or two or three weeks, even show them a couple houses, and then you get to the point where, okay, it's not— it's time to have a formal conversation and discuss a buyer's rep agreement. And then third step is actually conduct the consultation, and we're going to go through what that exactly looks like. And when you fill out the buyer intake form and actually collect all of the information that you're going to need to best serve the client going forward. And then once that's done, we're getting them to sign the buyer's rep agreement. So we have it in writing what our formal relationship is. And then the final step of this, which I'll go through all the way at the end, is to send them— I'm calling it a strategic plan because I think it sounds cool, but you could call it whatever you want— but it's basically a summarization of your conversation, a consolidation of the buyer intake form. And it's a plan, right? This is what we're gonna do on the next steps going forward. And I'll show you kind of what an example looks like. It doesn't have to be long and complicated, but just so you have a clear summary of our mutual understanding, our relationship is, and what both parties are gonna do going forward. So we'll go to that in detail also. All right. So, oh, and then back to this, So something to think about here is, I think about this in the client journey context, right? If you're thinking about Zillow, where do we do this in the client journey? And what I mean is like, do you do it before the lead is new, then when you met with, or is it met with and then showing homes, right? All of, all of the different steps. And, and to me, the easiest way to think about this is in the Zillow context, it's between met with and showing homes, right? Met with is first stage, showing homes is we're showing multiple homes. So it's somewhere in that process between those two, those two steps. If you're looking at it from the KV Core client journey, it's between new lead and client, right? So they're— I mean, it's between active lead and client. So they start off as a new lead, we have a conversation, we warm them up, they become active, maybe we show them a house or two, but before we make them an actual client, we have them sign a buyer's representation agreement. Same with the listing, right? They're, they're an active lead. We're having a conversation, we book an appointment, they decide they're going to list with us. Now they become our client because we have a formal, uh, relationship in writing, and that's what makes them an actual client. So it's an easy way for me to think about wrapping around what status they're in. And really, you shouldn't have more than like 10 active buyers with a buyer's rep agreement signed at any given time. If you have 10, you're gonna have a thriving business, you know, closing 2 or 3 deals a month. Like, if you guys think about your normal business practice, the experienced agents, how many really active buyers do you have? Serious pre-qualified active buyers do you have at any given time? I mean, it's not that many, right? So you don't have to have this signed by every single lead that comes in the door. It's really the ones that are moving from the stage of we're just kind of feeling things out and talking story to like, we're actually in a committed relationship going forward. And we have a contractual relationship that I'm going to be representative when you purchase property. So does that make sense? Kind of thinking about where this happens in the client process. Okay, all right, so the value proposition— this is— go ahead, Yoko.

So another scenario is when we do the open house, somebody comes in. I mean, I'm the listing agent or the buyer's, you know, agent, and then they come in, look around.

They may like it, they may not like it.

Then the conversation starts right there and then.

That can be your initial appointment, right? Is that conversation at the listing appointment. And then the next step is, hey, I'd really love to help you and work together. Can we schedule 45 minutes to go through a consultation? I really want to learn more about your plans and your needs. And that's when you conduct this next appointment, when we start with the value proposition. I'll give you a good example. I went on a listing appointment yesterday. There was a renter in the unit, right? And so I'm like, hey, what do you do, man? And he's like, oh, I own Jackie Ray's. And I'm like, really? How come you're renting? Well, we haven't really found a place and, you know, we're not sure what we want to do yet. And I'm like, have you sat down with a realtor and talked about it? And they're like, ah, we kind of had some conversations and saw some stuff like 8 months ago, but we haven't really been doing anything. I'd be like, I'd love to sit down with you and see what you guys want to do. I mean, this is a dude with money. He owns freaking one of the nicest restaurants in town, you know what I mean? Like, so like lead generation, right? I mean, I wasn't there to talk to him. He just had to let me in the house to look at the condo, right? So, um, but that's, that's the initial conversation. And, and the next step is I want to sit him down and actually have a consultation with them and see if we can make him a client, right? So absolutely, open house is a great place to start the process with this. Um, and it's really a professional way to present it, right? Because if you're just a kind of a buyer that's kind of looking around and doesn't really have a— know what they're doing, they're like, wow, this nice lady Yoko like wants to like sit down with me and spend an hour with me like telling me about the process. Like, talk about a way to earn their trust, right? And earn them as a client. So absolutely, I mean, that's a great That's a great tactic to use in this. Okay, so value proposition. This is probably the most important part of this, you guys, and you really gotta spend some time going through what is your individual value proposition. I'm gonna show you the team value proposition, right? So everybody can use this, but then you also wanna boil that down and inject in your personal value proposition to that client. So you can use this, modify it, change it, you know, take what you want out of it, but This is a big piece of it where I think if you nail this, the rest of it becomes very easy. And this is a thing that we do a very poor job of doing is being very explicit about what our value proposition is upfront. And we just hope that they know, like, and trust us and will work with us, right? So this is a marketing thing. A lot of times when we get leads off of YouTube and social media, they've been following us. So they see our value proposition, they see the stuff that we've done. But if it's a cold lead that doesn't know who you are and doesn't have any background, doesn't— it's not a referral, like you have to spend time doing the value proposition, right? So I'm going to run you through just an example of what this looks like. So first thing is we tell them we're a statewide operation. As a buyer, you can— we can show you property anywhere in the state within 4 hours and with an expert in that market. We have helped 607— we helped 607 families in 2003 buy or sell real estate, establishing credibility, right? We're the number one team in the state. We help hundreds and hundreds of people. You can trust us. We know what we're doing. If you require an ex— if you require expert advice in any specific area of real estate, our team has experts in the following areas. This is just a laundry list. There's probably more, right? But this is, this is overcoming the objection of, is, are you a competent realtor? Is, hey, I'm competent, but I also have a team that is competent in every single specialty area you can think of, right? We have experts in the following: first-time homebuyers, luxury certified agents, short-term vacation rentals, farm and ranch properties, vacant land, off-the-grid living, second, second and vacation homes, foreclosure, short sales, and distressed properties, new construction, long-term rental investments, leaseholds, investor fix and flips, VA loans. The list goes on and on and on and on, right? So we're telling them whatever you need help with, we can help you because I have an expert that's a phone call away to help me with these things. And then we can tell them our brokerage— this overcomes the objection of I want to work with a big firm, right? Or I want to work with a brand name that I recognize. Well, our brokerage is number 1 in the state of Hawaii for number of properties sold in the last 12 months. We have access to more off-market listings than anyone via an exclusive internal listing service called eXp Exclusives. Our team is an exclusive partner with Zillow and has over 500 5-star reviews, right? So we have external validation of our credibility. Access to our exclusive lending team and their special programs. So this is another benefit, right? If you want to work with me, I have a, I have a crack lending team who has amazing additional benefits. They can give you an $808 lender credit at closing. They'll refinance your property for free within the first 5 years of rates drop. They will cover the cost of the appraisal if your deal does not close, and they can close in 21 days, right? We show them like, you don't get access to this. I'm just going to give you the lender. It's not free chicken, right? If you want access to my lending team who's going to provide this amazing level of service, we're going to work together and you're going to sign this contract. Um, we're going to provide you with a homebuyer's guide or whatever other resources you come up with. And then we'll email you weekly real estate information and monthly market reports. That's Kelly, right? The whole system we talked about yesterday, the team meeting, where I'm going to provide you weekly value even if you're not ready today or you're 6 months out and you want to get educated. I want to provide you with high-level real estate value that you're going to get on a regular basis, and that's all exclusive stuff you're going to get, right? I'm just going to put you on my email list if you're just anybody. So value, right? Creating value. It's all stuff that we would normally do but being very explicit about it so we're educating and it's very clear about that. Make sense? Okay. So the next one is value of representation, right? We have all of this external value that the team provides, but what's the value of representation in the actual real estate transaction, right? So this explains that this is a script you can use. And then if you go back to the consultation outline, This is, this is all— I mean, it's too much text to put on a slide, right? But we run through 10 different things that we do, right? So these are the things that we're going to do during the transaction process. We have local market knowledge, we're going to help you with property searches, we're going to use our negotiation skills to get you the best deal, we're going to help with proper paperwork and documentation, we're going to coordinate all of the inspections and due diligence stuff that's going to protect you to make sure you're not buying a lemon of a house. We're going to give you financing assistance, right, with our lending team. We're going to guide you through the closing process. We're going to give you access to our professional network and all of our trusted vendors. That's curated list that our team puts together to make sure that we have credible contractors and vendors that will help you in the— during the closing process and then after the closing process. We're going to help with a market analysis to make sure you're paying a fair price for a home and giving you— making, making a competitive offer. And then always post-purchase support, right? I always tell people I'm your nephew for life. If you buy a house from me and you need your couch moved, call me. I'll bring 2 strong boys and we'll come move your house. It will move your couch, right? Like, that's the level of service you're going to get from me if you sign up and you work with me as your real estate agent, right? So all this again, template, you can change, modify whatever your individual value proposition is. But there's 10 quick things that are very clear on our value proposition of having representation if you work with me. All right, so we're laying the groundwork here, right? The list is there if you want. It's hyperlinked here if you want to go see it. Okay, so we've laid all the groundwork, we've talked about the value of the team and our personal representation during the process, and now we're going to get into like the formal discussion of the obligations of both sides. I'm letting Patrick in here. All right. So now we're going to get to that, that the formal obligations of the brokerage and the, the client. So does anybody want to read this? Can we see it? There's going to be some reading and some interaction here, so I don't read everything. Come on, volunteer.

I will. Um, brokerage firm will exercise reasonable skill and care for the buyer and make reasonable efforts to locate properties in which buyer may be interested. Brokerage firm will promote the interest of the buyer with good faith, loyalty, and fidelity, including but not limited to: A, seeking a price and terms which are acceptable to the buyer, with the exception that the brokerage firm shall not be obligated to seek other properties while buyer is a party to a contract to purchase a property.

What does that— what does that mean?

Anybody?

It's important.

Well, it means that when you're in contract to buy a place, you're not going after another place.

I mean, kind of basically, right, right, right. If you're on a contract, we're not gonna— it's, uh, I, I always use analogies, right? I tell people, once you're under contract, you're engaged. You got to stop going on Tinder and going out to the bar. Right? Like, we're engaged, we got to be faithful to the, to the transaction that we're in, right? And so this is just a clear communication up front that like, hey, once we're under contract, we're not going to continue to look at every single house on the market every weekend, right? So because we all get the clients that want to do that, so just make that clear up front.

All right, B, uh, procuring acceptance of any offer to purchase the property and to assist in the completion of the transaction.

Pretty clear, right? All the stuff that we talked about, the value of representation.

Presenting all offers to and from buyer in a timely manner.

This is counteroffers, right? Because counteroffers are basically a buyer— an offer presentation back to the buyer. So I'm going to do that in a timely manner.

Disclosing to buyer any material facts known to brokerage firm which would measurably affect the property value.

This is important to clearly communicate to build trust, right, is I'm not here to sell you a property. I'm here to get you into the right property. And if there's information that I'm privy to or I find out about during the transaction process, I'm going to share it with you even if it means the deal gets canceled, right? Because I'm not here to just sell you any type of property. I want to make sure that we get— we're getting into the right one. And that's a sphere— if we don't, if we don't communicate that clearly, that's a fear that people have, is like we're used car salesmen that is just going to sell them the first thing we possibly can, right? So you want to clearly communicate that.

Well, that's just a situation like if you're doing like a sight unseen, right? You're out on video tours and say, I'm going to use Pāhoa as an example. You're down in Pāhoa and you're doing site, you're doing video tours and they love, love, love, love, love this brand new build house. And right next door there is 100 chicken houses. You gotta tell them that they're there, that they will never sleep on a full moon night ever again. So that, because that's a material fact.

Absolutely, absolutely. And then finally, the brokerage firm shall not be obligated to make any— an independent investigation or evaluation of the property, independently verify statements of the seller or any expert, or verify any information or statements made by the buyer. So this is important to keep us out of hot water, right? Is we hire professionals and the buyers to do their due diligence. Like, you cannot rely on us to make an interpretation of what if the roof needs to be replaced, right? And sometimes we take for granted that clients think that stuff. They have stuff in their head that they believe that we take for granted because we're professionals in the industry. And so having these very clear expectations and communication upfront, which just makes the process easier, and then it keeps us from getting sued a lot of times, right? Because if they're like, how come you— we're just dealing with a situation right now where somebody bought a lot and the, the seller told them, it's Ocean View, that thing was fully fenced. It actually wasn't fully fenced. It was two lots that was fully fenced. So they think they have double the amount of land that they actually have. They didn't want to do a staking survey because it was too expensive, and now we're in the situation where they think they own two but they only own one because of a misrepresentation from the seller, right? Again, there's no way we could have verified that unless we do a staking or a survey, which we recommended, which they turned down, right? So we've clearly communicated what our obligations were, and now we have mess. We'll deal with it. But just a good example of that where it's not our job to clearly tell you where the property lines are. We cannot do that, right?

So, right, an interpretation of, of terms and this and that too, you know, if that—

it's—

I'm just dealing with this thing with a trust and everything. Call your lawyer, call a tax professional. I, you know, I can, I can, you know, tell you, I can Google what these terms mean, but to interpret what the terms mean Call your lawyer.

Yeah. So where— pop quiz— where is this from? Where is all this text from? Did I make it up?

No, it's all in the—

it's all—

it's all part of the stuff from the EXP and from the HAR forms.

No, this is— this is from the buyer's rep agreement, cut and paste from the buyer's rep agreement, right? So this is the two— the two paragraphs that you really gotta cover in the buyer's rep agreement are this one Okay, so we'll go back, we'll go back, we'll get back to the next, the next paragraph next. But so this is— these are all, all of our obligations, right? This is our value proposition as a team. This is the value representation of me individually. This is our brokerage firm obligations to you. And then now we're going to have a discussion about what exactly your needs are, right? We want to find out about you, and that's what the buyer intake form is. You can modify this, add stuff to it. Somebody said we should ask for their birthday so we can send a birthday card. That's a great idea. We Right? So you can add to this, but it's all the basic information where you can turn it into a Google form if you want to do it electronically, but where we actually formally collect information from the buyer. A lot of times we don't do this, right? We have a conversation on the phone. Maybe we put some notes in KVCore, but we didn't ask maybe all the questions that needed to be asked in order to have a very clear understanding of what that buyer's needs are. One of the biggest examples of this is, can I get the full names of everyone who will be on the purchase contract? Right? We just assume that it's Tom, and when it's Thomas, right? And then we write the contract, and then we got to do an amendment afterwards. Or we find out when we're about to write the contract that Carol actually wants her sister on the contract too, who's actually got the money, but her sister is crazy and like doesn't want to help her, right? I mean, like, crazy stuff happens because we don't have the conversation up front with the buyer and create a clear understanding of what their plan is, right? To build our strategic plan. Another example is financing. Where everything's good. They say, yeah, I'm paying cash. We go through the whole process, and then we write the offer, and we find out they got to sell their house in Connecticut to get the cash. And we're like, whoa, nobody, nobody ever said that. But it's because we never asked, like, where's the cash coming from? Do you have proof of cash funds? Can we provide that in 3 days? Right? These are all the things that we want to ask them. So if we formally go through this process and find out all the things that they need, it's going to make that process smoother going forward. So that's the buyer intake form. And that's like formally, like questionnaire, right? Go through it, ask them all the questions, have a discussion about things, get clarity on what their needs are.

And that's a super important thing on that personal information is trust, okay? So if the TMK is stating that it is, um, Dylan J. Nonaka and Monica Nonaka Revocable Trust, then that's how that's going to be taken title. That's who the seller is, is the trust, and then it's Dylan and Monica as trustee. And it has to be clearly specified like that. It can't be, you know, Dylan, it has to be very special specified, especially when it comes to a trust.

We got to have that conversation up front. All right, so modify this to the way you want to look at it, but it's a good template to use. Okay, so now the buyer's obligations. Who wants to read the buyer's obligations? Anybody? Not Carol? I'll go ahead.

All right, so buyer's obligated to act in good faith to cooperate with brokerage firm by furnishing it with all relevant personal, financial, or other information that may be necessary to facilitate the purchase of property.

Okay, pause, pause. This is important, right? Because we're having this discussion, right, when we're talking to them. Has anybody had the situation where you get in a contract, they're like, hey, I need proof of funds in 3 days because, um, that's what the contract requires. And they're like, I don't want to give you that. And we're like, uh, you kind of need to because the contract requires it, right? But you have this awkward conversation now. But if we have this conversation up front and say, hey, there's going to be times throughout the process that I'm going to ask you for personal information, for financial information, are you comfortable providing that information? I'll be clear about what I need. I won't share any of your account numbers or Social Security numbers, but that's part of the transaction. We take for granted that people understand that, but they don't sometimes, and we got to have that conversation. All right, keep going.

This includes keeping appointments, attending inspections, returning messages, and advising all other real estate agents that buyer has executed this exclusive contract with broker.

Super important, setting expectations, right? Is like, if I'm going to be your real estate professional, I expect you to return my phone calls, to show up to appointments on time, right? Because if you don't do that, we can fire them, right? And say, hey, we're not—

we're done.

We're not going to be dealing with this anymore. But again, a lot of times we don't have that explicit conversation about what my expectations of you are. And you can't just blow me off, right? It's that I'm a professional. My time is valuable. I'm not going to— I'm not going to be treated that way. Go ahead, Carol.

And one of the things that was hard for me in the beginning as a new agent, because it's not— you're not— when you're growing up and stuff, it's not proper to ask about money. It's not. Acceptable to talk about money to other people because it's not your money. You only talk about your own money. So don't worry about doing that because this is part of our job and you have to be comfortable asking the questions about somebody else's money. And that was one of my hardest things because that, you know, growing up you just don't ask people about money. But as a new agent, you just have to get past that one.

And yep, just having an open conversation, say, hey, we're gonna have to talk about your finances at some point, is that cool? Like, right? I mean, and if they're going to sign a contract with you, then they have a level of trust that it should be okay, right? And that's why we're going through this process. It's a trust-building process. All right, back to the— go ahead, Thomas.

Buyer understands and accepts that neither brokerage firm nor licensee can render tax advice, tax planning, tax-deferred exchange information, and the like, or any other technical or legal advice in connection with this contract.

This is important, right? This is important. Be very clear, this is not what we do. We're not going to provide you with tax advice. We're not going to tell you what the tax implications are if you don't sell in 2 years. I mean, all the stuff that you're going to be asked, if we have the discussion up front and say, but I have a great list of professionals that I can refer you to to have those discussions, but I'm not going to be able to provide that myself, right? So expectation management, right?

Whether specialized advice is deemed necessary, buyer is strongly advised to seek the services of an appropriate professional. Buyer acknowledges that the decision to retain any particular specialist is wholly the decision of the buyer. Buyer shall notify brokerage firm in writing of any areas of particular concern.

Okay, I want to stop, stop there. This is, this is a, this is an important note. Also, right? It's a lot of times we have a conversation and the buyer says something that is extremely important to them, but we didn't hear it properly, right? Or we didn't interpret it properly, we didn't catch it, whatever it was. And then a week later or 2 weeks later at closing, something happens and they bring it up and we, and we didn't act on it, right? This is important to say, hey, it's really important I make sure I do everything that you expect, especially things that are really important to you. Please just reiterate in writing to me when there's something of particular concern so I can make sure that it's not overlooked, that it doesn't fall through the cracks. Perfect example of this is I sold a condo one time and it was competitive offer situation, and the offer that ended up winning, they said, well, do whatever, you don't even have to give us an inventory list, we'll take whatever the seller wants to leave, you know, increase their cash offer, did all this stuff. And it was a vacation rental, so it's pretty clear that everything was going to stay, but they said, hey, if But if the seller wants to take anything, plates, forks, we'll replace it, no big deal. Cool. So we go through the process, we close, or we get, we get the closing. I asked the seller, hey, you sure there's anything you don't want to take? And they said, hey, my friend loves that framed koa canoe paddle by the door, can you just take that and give it, drop it off at my friend's apartment? And they gave me instructions or whatever. So I think I take the framed koa paddle, everything else stays. I mean, everything. Plates, forks, everything stayed in the condo. A month later, I get a call from the, from the listing agent ranting and raving about how we took the frame koa paddle and it should have been included. And I said, whoa, wait, there was no inventory. You guys put in your contract that we could leave whatever we wanted to leave, and there was no specific inventory sign, so the seller wasn't obligated to leave that. And that was the only thing the seller wanted. It's the only thing we took. So contractually, we've met our obligation. Right? That should have been something that that agent got in writing from their client saying that they really like that piece of artwork and that we should have left it. Then we could have had a conversation during the transaction, but they never did that, right? So contractually, they're kind of— I mean, we weren't in the wrong, right? I mean, we did contractually what was obligated to us, but there's little things like that that happen throughout the process that we want to make sure that we get it in writing explicitly if it's important to them, because we want to make sure that we act on it. And there's Same thing coming back, right? If there's something that really important comes up, we need to not only have a conversation but also reiterate in writing, because if it's not in writing, it didn't happen, back to the buyer or our client what that is. And so there's no misunderstanding. All right, so back to this. Go ahead.

Buyer agrees to consider properties selected by brokerage firm. Buyer further agrees to act in good faith towards the competition towards the completion of any property contract entered into in furtherance of this contract. Buyer has an affirmative duty to protect him/herself, including discovery of the legal, practical, and technical implications of discovered or disclosed facts, and investigation of information and facts which are known or made known by Buyer or are within the diligent attention and observation of buyer. Buyer further agrees that he/she has not entered into a binding exclusive right to represent contract with any other brokerage firm.

All right, any questions on this? Pretty straightforward, right? I mean, it's a lot— there's a lot of legalese in here, but again, this is what they're signing. This is ultimately what we need to communicate to them. And make them feel at ease that this is, this is what we do and this is what your obligations are. And it seems silly, but even stuff like you, you're going to act in good faith towards the completion of any property contract. We've had situations where somebody goes dark like a week into it or 2 weeks into it, and we don't know what the hell they were doing. And if we wanted to have legal recourse, if we wanted to protect ourselves, we need something like this signed, right? Because our client is not performing, our client is, is behaving badly, but they were advised on what their obligations were and they signed an agreement saying that they would adhere to it, and that way it protects us as a brokerage firm and you as an agent, right? So lots of important stuff going on here. Again, this is directly from the Buyer's Representation Agreement. So those are the two paragraphs that you want to focus on— the brokerage firm obligations and then the buyer's obligations. Okay, so now that we've done all of this, right, we've done value proposition about the team, value proposition individually, about the value of representation. We've, we've asked about all of their, their needs and their hopes and their dreams, their wants through the buyer consultation process and the buyer intake form. Now we have the discussion about compensation, right? Because this should be an easy conversation at this point. We've proved our worth, we've proved our value, we've proved that we're interested in what their needs are, we want to help them. And now we have the conversation about compensation. And so this is the way I would approach this, right, is The conversation is not, when you buy a property, you're going to owe me 3%, right? That's not a good way to present this, and it's actually not the way it works 99% of the time, right? So very important that we present this in a way that is realistic in how the business actually works and what is the most likely outcome. And that's a big mindset shift, I think, for a lot of things that we do in life, is don't worry about the 1% problem driving what you do 99% of the time, right? Do what you do 99% of the time and deal with the 1% problem when it comes up. But you cannot let that drive your decision-making. And I think that's a big barrier to having this conversation is we're worried that the buyer is not gonna, is not gonna like the fact that they may be on the hook to pay us compensation if they buy something and the seller is not offering compensation. And there's two things I want you to keep in mind before you have this conference, this conversation. The first one is don't let your personal experience color what you think the buyer believes, right? There are many states where this is a very standard process. It's required before you can even show them property. There are buyers that you encounter that will expect to have to sign something before they start working with you. So don't think that this is like totally out of the ordinary and foreign, right? There's going to be those set of buyers, and then there's other set of buyers that don't know any different, that this is the first time they've never dealt with a real estate agent before. This is just a normal course of action, right? So We're just doing what we normally do in the normal course of business. So don't assume that this is like going to be a foreign thing that they're automatically going to object to, because in the vast majority of cases it's not. And the second mindset thing we got to think about is don't assume every buyer is a broke-ass, right? Because that's what we're— the reason we don't want to have this conversation with a buyer is that we think that they cannot pay. And the reality is the vast majority of people that we do business with are financially well off, right? They're doing 20% down, they're doing 30% down, they're paying with cash. The amount of people that we work with that have like very little down payment money or no down payment money is a small segment, less than 10%, right? There's not that many VA loans and USDA loans, and we do them, but it's a small segment of the overall business. So don't let that person in that situation color your presentation or the way that you do your business, because Hey, if we run into somebody who like cannot pay, I'm gonna go through how we deal with that, right? But like, that's not the assumption that everybody cannot pay and everybody's a broke ass, because many people that can easily come up with the money to pay for your representation if they need it. So we're gonna go through this. So this is the presentation, right? In the vast majority of cases, the seller will offer compensation to the buyer's brokerage, and our services will not cost you anything out of pocket. Vast majority of cases, 95% of the time that's still the standard course of business, right? The seller is going to offer some level of compensation and it's taken care of. You don't have to worry about it. In the rare occurrence that the seller is not offering compensation or the compensation is less than our agreed-upon amount, we're going to have a couple of options. So it's not you owe me money, right? There's some options here. So let's talk about what the potential options are in the rare 5% chance that we run into a situation where the seller is either not offering compensation or the compensation is less than we agree upon. So the first one is we can negotiate compensation into our offer via direct payment from the seller to our brokerage, or via a credit to the buyer that will be paid to our brokerage at closing, right? So we can negotiate into our offer if they're not— if they're not offering compensation, we can negotiate compensation into our offer, or the additional compensation if they're only offering 1% or something like that. So, so we'll deal with that when it comes time to negotiate. The second way is we can adjust our offer price based to account for compensation. This can be done via a credit back from the seller for the cost of representation, or in the form of a reduced offer price so the buyer can factor in compensation into their closing costs. Cash situation, right? If it's a cash situation and the property's $800 grand and they're not offering any type of compensation, we offer them $780 and we account for $20 grand going to— going towards compensation. For the buyer's brokerage, right? So we can, we can build that in based upon the situation, if it's cash or it's financing. But that's the second thing that we can do. And the third thing is, very rarely the buyer has to make a payment at closing as part of their closing costs. So very rarely, the least likely outcome is yes, you will be on the hook to make a, to make a payment and, and compensate the brokerage firm as part of your closing costs during the transaction. But it happens very, very, very rarely, right? So we gotta put into context what the most likely situation is gonna be and what the most least likely outcome is gonna be. And the least likely outcome usually drives how we handle this, which is the wrong way to think about it, right? Does all that make sense? Okay. And, and just think about, like, you know, I've done this probably the fourth time now, and we have some conversations during the live sessions where people are like, well, what about the VA buyer, right? And I said, okay, got it. But think about how many things have to stack up for this to be a situation, right? So first you have to have a VA buyer who has zero ability to make any type of additional payment. Got it. Then you have to find a seller who is completely unwilling to negotiate any type of compensation, doesn't want to offer anything. For those two things to line up, each one of them is extremely rare, right? But for those two things to line up at the same time is like less than a 1% chance ever. If you do 1,000 transactions, you may run into that one time in your career, right? So don't worry about it. We'll figure it out when the time comes. We'll figure about it. We'll deal with it at the time. But don't let that kind of drive your worry about should I do this or should I not do this, because in most cases it's going to be fine. And the most important thing you got to think about is you don't have to hold the buyer to this, right? If they, if they sign a 3% buyer's rep agreement and you get into contract on a million-dollar house, it's only offering 2.5%. Yeah, they offer us— they, they owe us a half percent more, but you don't have to, you don't have to enforce it. You can just say, I'm good with 2.5% and move forward, right? Them signing this doesn't obligate you to enforce it. So that's always an option too. Or if they're, if they're offering 1.5%, they're a nice local family that's a USDA buyer and you really don't want to put them out any more money, you can just take the 1% if you want to at the time. This is really to protect you in a case where something weird is going on and you're not going to get— because if you have a, uh, relationship with that buyer and you start showing them properties and then they send you a fizbo, or they send you a property the seller is not offering compensation, they say, I want to see this you cannot ethically tell them, no, I will not show it to you because they're not going to pay me. You've created an agency relationship, you created a client-brokerage relationship, and now you're obligated to service that client, right? So this guarantees that you can show them every single property that's on the market because compensation is built in and that you have a, you have a contractual representation relationship. Does that make sense? Okay. All right. Okay, we're good. We got 20 minutes. So I'm gonna go through these. These are just common objections you're gonna get, so we can kind of talk through these and start kind of understanding what you will get from an, uh, you know, from a buyer in terms of objections. Go ahead, Carol.

Sorry, I have a question on— if we go back one thing, is that we have an agreement, um, and it's the buyer's rep of a certain amount. So when we have them sign this we put an amount in that they're going to, um, we're going to make sure that we're in for, or how I did?

Okay, let me, uh, just—

I'm just wanting to clarify that so that it's—

so yeah, so, so on page 2 we have the compensation, right? So, and I cannot spell, this is, this is kono wana, this is kono wana high school right here.

Yeah.

Negotiating.

Come on.

So there you go. So, um, but this is basically what you fill in here, right, is in compensation. You, you can do a couple of different things, right? You can do a percentage, or you could even do— and I've, um, uh, I think Patrick jumped off, but, but he was— we were talking last week, and there's some really interesting things you can do with buyer's rep agreements if you want to be creative, right? One of them is— and this applies to us here on the Big Island— is you can put in a minimum amount of compensation, right? It's going to be 2.5% or 3% or no less than $1,500, right? So when you go sell them the ocean view lot and the commission is $300, that they got to come out of pocket to pay you the additional $1,200 to make sure that you're compensated at the minimum of $1,500, right? If 2.5% or 3% is, is less than $1,500, you get, you get paid on that. The other thing that Patrick does, which I think is really interesting, and he's, he's executing on it with no issues, is if somebody buys a leasehold property, he charges them the commission based on the fee value of the property, not the leasehold value of property. So if the leasehold, you know, is a $200,000 condo but it's actually worth $600,000, he gets paid on $600,000, not $200,000, right? The buyer has to come up with the additional compensation. If the seller is only offering compensation, you know, 3% on the $200,000, they're gonna have to come up with another 3% on $400,000 more. So you can do some stuff like that. But I think definitely for the land shopper, to protect your time and be like, hey, if you want my expertise in buying land in South Kona, which is higher than anybody else's because of the value proposition I just gave you, it's gonna cost you a minimum of $1,500 in commissions. And if I'm only gonna make $500 or $1,000, just understand that at closing, escrow is going to add on the additional amount to make sure I'm compensated for my time. And if people don't like that, like, really, should you— gotta, you gotta make a business decision. Should you, should you spend your time working with them if they're not going to value your time to get them to that, you know, to that process? So go ahead, Thomas.

Yeah, my question was, uh, for that compensation amount, can you put a percentage, and, and can you put something like, or CSB amount, whichever is greater, or something like that?

You, you can. The danger with that is what if the CSB is $1? Or yeah, whichever is greater.

Whichever is greater.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, yeah, because that's That's what, before this whole change happened, I was doing. But I was just wondering if you could—

that's totally fine. Yeah, absolutely. Really, whatever. And again, this all stems from the fact that we cannot set commission rates, right? That's what the whole NAR lawsuit is about. And, and, and brokerages are changing their business practices, changing their policies and procedures. So at the end of the day, it's whatever you negotiate with your, with your client is, is completely acceptable. The second thing on here which is very important that I want to point out to you guys is, is Section D right here. So this really protects you in the big picture from like a shady client, right, that's going to do weird stuff. And so this is the same as, as what in a listing contract— we should explain this all the time in a listing contract. This is just on the buy side. This doesn't look familiar to anybody?

No, it's a protection period, just like a listing contract.

Exactly.

Yes, period. For 6 months that they have that if they go with somebody else in 6 months, but that you showed them the property and you were quote unquote the procuring cause also, right? So that, that protects you.

Yeah.

And this, this happens Not a lot, but it happens more often than I would like it to happen, right? Where you work with somebody for 6 months, you show them a bunch of houses, and they say, oh, my cousin just got their real estate license, I appreciate all your help, but I'm going to work with them. And then a week later, you see the house you just sold them last week go under contract, right? And it's probably them, right? And there's the whole procuring cause argument. It's ambiguous. The only way you can 100% enforce that is with the buyer's rep agreement signed like this, right? That's the only way you can 100% guarantee that you're going to get paid if you, if you are the procuring cause, because It's ambiguous whether or not, you know, you just showed it to them or you emailed it to them, what that outcome is going to be. So that's the protection here. And it also allows us in all of our objection handling to see if at any point you're uncomfortable or you're not happy with my representation, we can cancel the contract. I'm not going to hold you to the 1 year. I'm not going to hold you to the 6 months because we're protected for 6 months via this. If they cancel on us or it expires, we have 6 months. Of anything that we showed to them, they owe us compensation if they purchase that property, right? So this is like with a situation where, um, you know, you show them the house and then they find out that the house is their classmate from high school, and then they get off on the side and they say, hey Carol, you know what, if we cut the realtor out of this and you— I just sell them to you directly, we don't need to pay the commissions, I give you a deal. And she's like, okay, yeah, shoot. And so she fires her listing agent, I fire my buyer's agent, and we go and we do the deal together, right? Like, that's, that's the kind of stuff that people will do rarely, but it does happen, and this is the only protection you're going to have if that— if they do that. So go ahead, Darrell.

Who?

Oh, Darrell, he raised his hand first. I guess he's not— he's not coming. I don't know if you're— you're just blanking. I don't see your— your mute on, but we cannot hear you. Go ahead, Darrell. Okay, in those scenarios, who do you report your Buyer's rep agreement signed to RAM, your board? No, um, it's something that the broker handled directly with the buyer. Okay. And people have asked, like, well, how do I know, right? Like, how do you— it's, it's hard maybe to find out months and months later, but a lot of times these situations will occur pretty quick. And all you got to do is call the listing agent and say, hey Thomas, I saw your, you know, your house that you have listed just went under contract. I showed it 2 weeks ago. 'Can you just tell me what the buyer's last name is so I can verify that they're not— they, you know, they weren't my buyer that I had a representation agreement signed with and they canceled on me this week?' And he'll tell me. And if it is, it is, then we deal with it at that point. If it's not, then we, you know, we can feel safe. But at least we have something in writing to protect us. Okay, thanks. Daryl, you want to try again? All right, go ahead, Kathy.

Uh, if sometimes I feel the client is, uh, don't want to read a contract, they don't have a patient to explain to them, then how I do is a problem, you know. They just, okay, we can sign. That's always good, you know, which is good, but I just want to get in trouble.

No, so, so what you need to do is, again, this is all being presented during the buyer's consultation. Right? So they've given us 45 minutes of their time to go through all of this. What I like to do with buyer's rep agreements and especially listing contracts is highlight the important parts of it, right? And say, hey, I know you don't want to read the 5 pages, but this is the stuff that we got to talk about. We really got to talk about agency. We really got to talk about the period of the listing agreement. We really got to talk about commissions and how commissions work and how much I'm going to pay the cooperating broker. And I'm going to cover the protection period in the listing contract. Same here, right? We're going to talk about the the, the, the term of the agreement up here. We're going to cover agency brokerage firm obligations and buyer's obligations. If they don't want to read all this non-discrimination, Megan's Law, all this crap, I got it. You don't have to read that stuff. Understand what the compensation is going to be and understand that if you buy anything that we— I show you within 180 days, you still be— you're still— we're still going to be obligated to compensation, whether it be from the seller or the buyer. Right? I mean, we could still be in a situation where they buy the house and we take this to the, to the seller's brokerage and say, hey, we have this buyer under, uh, under contract. They're gonna, they're gonna be fine giving us the CSB, you know. They're gonna, they're gonna honor this just like they would, they would expect us to if they were in that situation. Okay, thank you. And then you have special terms, right? So you can add any special terms that you want to add in here, like I was talking about, you. If you want to have a minimum amount or you want to have charged, you know, on a leasehold, the fee, the fee value on a leasehold versus the leasehold value, you can do all that stuff. All right, Daryl's got a question in the comments here. Do we need to have Zillow Buyer Center? Um, it's— so that's up to you. Um, I would conduct the initial appointment first before you have this conversation. Like, we went back to the beginning. I don't know if you're on since the beginning of the call, but In the process, you want to conduct the initial appointment, have that initial meeting with them, and confirm they're somebody you want to work with. If they are somebody you want to work with, then you schedule the formal buyer consultation to go through all of this with them, and at that point have them sign a contract. I wouldn't go and spend 5 days showing houses without something like this signed at this point, because they do that and then they go dark on you, and then a week later they, they buy with somebody else. You know, you wasted 5 days of your time, right? And The Zillow buyer is the most likely buyer to do this to you because they're an online person that you don't have a personal relationship with that is like shopping around online already, right? So, so would I do this to my cousin who is like, I know 100% not gonna stray on me and is a good dude?

I—

not necessarily. It's— you should still do it, but not necessary. It's more that online buyer that you don't have a strong relationship with that, that you're going to need this legal protection. Go ahead, Kathy.

When do you think is the best time to talk about the buyer representation contract? Because we have to show the client from the leads, show them property to build the relationship, but one side we also don't want to let us show the property again and again. So what time is good time you feel, and how we bring up then we need to talk about some important thing, you know, usually how you do this?

A great way to present it that I heard Jen Davis talk about yesterday is, I'll give you one day of my time for free as a, as a job application. I want to apply for the position as your realtor. If, if this first day doesn't go well and, you know, our initial couple of properties that we see don't go well, then hey, we can go our separate ways, right? But if we want to continue to work together, and I'm going to continue to provide you with advice, provide you with time and effort, provide you with showings, we're going to need to have a conversation about the buyers— not the buyer's rep agreement. We're having a buyer's consultation and we're going through the entire process of displaying value, talking about representation, talking about the team. At the end of that, after all of that, then we talk about signing a buyer's rep agreement because we've laid the groundwork on why it's important and why it's valuable for them to sign it. So you got to make that call. I mean, there's no specific time when you have to do it, but to me, you don't want to be spending more than a day or two with somebody unless you have a clear understanding One of the parts about this is— and we're gonna get to the strategic plan— one of the, the components during the, the consultation is having the discussion about financing, right? We don't do it up front because we want to have the initial meeting and build rapport with the, with the client. But at some point, before you spin your wheels and you spend 10 days showing a property, you want to make sure that they're either qualified or they're in the process of getting qualified, and they're talking to somebody who's actually going to get them qualified versus like just letting them do whatever they want to do. And that's part of the process of this, is you're going to sign this and you're going to have a commitment to me that you're going to take the next steps to get pre-qualified. And you'll see in my example strategic plan, one of the things that we summarize in that is you haven't been pre-qualified, you have a, you have a meeting on this date with Kevin to get the process started, you expect it to take a week or two, and we were not going to go shopping for homes until we know exactly what the budget is and how much you're pre-qualified for. So that way tomorrow when they call me and say, can I see homes all day on Sunday, used to be like, hey, remember the strategic plan, you're not pre-qualified yet, we're going to wait till after you pre-qualified to go start looking at homes. You have a clear understanding and you set that expectation with them on what the next steps are. So that's another huge benefit to this, is just having that, not locking them down, right? And making sure that they have a plan and they're going to perform.

Okay. Actually, when we show the buyer from the, uh, from the Zillow, we can show them one or two times, the most probably two times, and we can bring that ready, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, because we have to meet with them.

So yes, you want to— you want— you want to meet with them first, build a relationship, make sure that you want to work with them, right? If you don't feel comfortable working with them, then don't take the next steps. But that's— it's an— it's a two-way interview, right? You're interviewing for the job, but they're also interviewing to be your client. You want to make sure somebody you want to work with. So yeah, show them a couple of homes, no big deal, right? But what I don't want you doing is spending a week spinning your wheels, doing research, calling listing agents, doing all this stuff, and then they ghost you. The week after, because— and there's no obligation for them to pay you if they buy something the week after.

Okay, so that means if the client we feel, or the customer we feel, is not comfortable, we don't have to consistent follow-up with them, right?

Absolutely not. Yes, absolutely not. If you're not serious enough to do this and get pre-qualified, like, don't keep spinning your wheels. We'll put them on a drip campaign, set them listing alerts, but I don't want you spending 2 weeks, you know, a month working with somebody who's not serious. And if you're not serious and committed to sign a contract That's a, that's a red flag, right? That's a major red flag.

Got it.

Thank you.

Okay. Okay. Back to objections. So I'll go through these. I mean, we got, we're kind of running outta time here, so I'll go through these a little bit quickly, but just know you can refer back to this and again, practice this stuff, build it in your language. You don't have to say the script word for word, but this is examples of how you wanna handle these objections. And a lot of these objections are already pre-handled. If you do the consultation thoroughly and properly and well, you're gonna— you're not even gonna be asked these things because you've already covered it in your consultation process, right? So the fear of commitment: I don't want to sign this because I don't want to be committed to one person, right? If they have a fear of commitment, that's kind of maybe bigger issues, right? But this is something that you want to address and, and just help them understand, right? I understand that your concerns about commitment. However, this agreement simply outlines our mutual commitment to working together during the home buying process. It ensures that I can fully dedicate my time and resources to finding you the best property for you. If at any point you feel representation isn't meeting your expectations, we can discuss and make adjustments. Please remember, this agreement is not just between you and me, it's between you and our brokerage and the reach and expertise of our entire team being at your service, right? So you're not just signing with me, and if I'm not available on Saturday, you're screwed, right? I'm gonna get you serviced. You got our expertise of our entire team And it's an agreement that I'm going to dedicate time and, time and resources to you, right? If you want me to dedicate time and resources to you, I need to have a formal understanding that we have a, we have a relationship, right? So it's important. The commitment is very, is absolutely important if we're going to have a healthy relationship going forward. All right, limited property options. This is one that we have to understand that don't color your understanding of the world through your own lens, right? So some buyers think that if they get into an agreement with you, they can only see properties that eXp has listed, or only properties that you have listed personally, right? People say, send me your listings. What's like, what if my listings don't fit? I can send you more listings, right? And they don't even know we can do that. So that's an assumption that sometimes we have, that people understand how the business works, but it's not necessarily the case. So if this is their objection, that they're going to be, you know, limited number of listings that they I understand that some of you— some buyers worry that signing an agreement may limit their options, but the reality is all property that is for sale through any brokerage is posted on the MLS, and every realtor has full access to it. In addition, our brokerage has an internal system called eXp Exclusives, where agents in our brokerage list homes that a seller does not want to make— but does not want to market on the MLS. If you're not satisfied with the homes that we're seeing, we can discuss and modify the agreement to better suit your preferences. That shouldn't be a problem because you've had a formal buyer consultation agreement and you know exactly what they're looking for, what they want to see, right? And then having the discussion about eXp exclusives— and I recommend everybody go look it up on Workplace and do the training, get signed up for it, because that'll give you access to off-market properties. So really, the objection handler is not only does this not limit your options, it actually gives you more options because we have the largest off-market listing system in the industry. And you won't have access to that unless you work with me and my team. So we're, we're putting them in, send them in the other direction, turning that objection around. All right, trust issues. Um, I completely understand the importance of trust in a relationship. This agreement is a way to formalize our commitment and build a transparent working relationship. If there's anything specific you're uncomfortable with, let's address it in, in the agreement or discuss alternatives that make you feel more at ease. This agreement is a commitment for me and my team to you, ensuring that you will get the high level of service you deserve. In return, you are committing that we will be your representative when you find— when you do find the property you choose to purchase. So an important thing here is having the specific conversation about trust, right? We want to have a trusted relationship, and if people feel weird about that, like, let's talk about it. What don't you— what are your fears of trust? Like, why don't you trust me? Let me see if I can, I can, I can handle those objections. And we're going to get into a couple of those next. So, uh, go ahead, Carol.

Sorry, Dylan, just going back to eXp Exclusives, that and Zenlist are the same, correct?

Yes.

Okay, because when you go to the Okta dashboard, there's nothing that says eXp Exclusives, there's just for Zenlist. So if you're looking for it, you need to look for Zenlist and then you'll find it, and you need to sign up for that to get the listings. So just to clarify, that's—

yeah, and that's more— this is client-facing. Like, if you tell a client Zenlist, it doesn't mean anything to them, right? The eXp Exclusives sounds like something they can understand, like it's an exclusive listing system. So that's a good point. For us internally, it's called Zenlist.

Yeah, but for us, at least we, you know, as our— all of our agents know, that's where you're going to find it. You're not going to find it under eXp Exclusives.

Cool, I'll clarify that with everybody. All right, so this is the one, right? Trust issues. Well, Are you competent? Do you even know what you're doing? Do you have enough experience? All of those types of, of objections. It's crucial to— it's crucial to feel confident in your agent's abilities. I'm more than happy to provide references, share my experience, and discuss my past success. In addition, our team has an expert in every area, um, in real estate that I can think of. If there's anything I cannot answer, I have an expert on my team that can. The agreement is designed to ensure that you have a dedicated and qualified team working on your behalf throughout the entire process, right? So go back and lean on the team for expertise. I can find you any piece of information you could possibly need. I have amazing brokers at my, you know, on call 12 hours a day. Whatever you need, we can answer. You don't have to worry about my personal competence or expertise. The duration of the agreement— again, I don't want to commit to a year. We can negotiate that. We can make it 6 months. But at the end of the day, if at any point you don't like what's going on, we can cancel the agreement, right? Because you're going to be protected via the protection period of anything that you've already worked— that you've already put into it. But this is a negotiable point. You don't have to— I put a year in the, the template, but if they want to do 3 months or they only want to sign it to go see these 3 properties, all of this is completely negotiable up to whatever you're comfortable with. So have that, have that ability to negotiate and be flexible, right?

Because so many of our online buyers, they're a year out, 2 years out.

Totally.

And so if you put in 24 months, then, you know, because they're already telling you you're not going to buy until 2025, but that way you have them locked in. So you, you can put that and it's okay, you know, just because then that way they feel very comfortable that they're only working with you.

Or even if you just do 3 months, it's like— or 6 months. It's like, it's like the my agent relationship in Zillow. You got to put that in your calendar and say, hey, my agreement with Carol is running out on July 31st, I better call her and find out if she wants to continue to work, work together. Or if she went dark on me, they just let the agreement expire and we move on, right? But that's a good way to— business practice-wise, to have a, a formal check-in at different time periods, because you want to renew or extend your buyer's rep agreement if it's gonna, if it's gonna run out or expire. So it's another thing to track and tracking your overall calendar. All right, dual agency concerns. This is one, right? Well, what if, what if we find a property that I like but, you know, your team has it listed or your brokerage has it listed out? I don't like dual agency. You want to just address those concerns and just be very clear, right, that if you're uncomfortable with it, we'll deal with it at the time. It's gonna be unlikely. I mean, it's more likely with eXp than ever before because we have so many people, but It's unlikely that that's the case. You know, 80% of the time it's going to be listed by a different, a different brokerage firm. If it is listed by eXp, let's talk about it at that time, right? Let's figure out the situation. If you're not uncomfortable, I can always refer you out to one of my friends in another brokerage. You're going to have independent representation. But if you are uncomfortable with dual agency and don't want to see anything that's going to potentially cause dual agency, I cannot show you any properties listed by eXp, and that potentially will exclude the property that's perfect for you, right? So We gotta just explain how this all works and let them know, well, let's deal with that very low percentage problem when the time comes. Let's not worry too much about it right now.

And I would add to that that, you know, dual agency, if they don't feel comfortable that you are the, the listing agent and you're representing them and you guys are working on the same property, that, that is an easy thing to fix because, you know, you're showing it to them, I don't feel comfortable with it, you're the listing agent, how are you going to do that? I'm going to incorporate one of my teammates and then they can represent you. And then that way, if that makes you feel more comfortable, but that way at least it's not the same person working on the same two sides and you just talk to them like that because we're all on the team.

And very rarely am I going to be the listing agent of the property that you end up buying, right? That is a less than 1% chance. If you don't have any listings, it's a 0% chance. You got to present what actually is, is, is the reality of the situation. All right, finding a property independently. This is another thing is people think, well, what if I find a for sale by owner? Or what if I drive it to an open house? Can I not buy that one because I have this agreement? Not at all, right? That's not the case at all. You can absolutely shop independently. If you find your neighbors wants to sell their house, we can have a conversation with them and do that. All of this, all this agreement does is ensure that when you do find the property that you want to purchase, that we will represent you in the sale and transfer of that property. Right? So no, no concerns there. You can continue to shop, you can go to open houses, you can go to FSBOs, whatever you want to do. This just ensures that we're going to be your representative when you end up buying. All right, financial commitment, obviously the biggest one, right, is I don't want to have to pay you if, if I'm on the hook to pay. And so we just go back to the conversation again. This should be pre-handled given the conversation about compensation. Right? Because we've created the perspective that it is very, very rare that if you're going to be on the hook to pay us directly. In the vast majority of cases, the seller is going to be offering compensation. And if they're not offering compensation, we can, we can negotiate that into our offer or negotiate it into the purchase price so you have the additional cash to do it. And if all of that isn't the case, then potentially there will be some financial cost on your part. But we're going to be very clear about that before we get into a contract and before you commit to it. Because we're going to have a fair and transparent process for everyone involved. So this is just— this is just a commitment that I will be compensated fairly if— when you, when you purchase property. There's a lot of ways we can make that happen. It's not always going to fall on you to pay us 3% more for the house that you buy. So we just got to lay the perspective out, right, and put their, put their minds at ease that it's very, very unlikely that you will be directly, um, responsible for providing compensation. Okay, and the last thing, anything else on objections, you guys, or anything else you can think of that like—

I'll just throw this out, is that probably a lot of them are going to be kind of like, why are you getting, you know, why are you so strong on this now and everything, you know. We've heard rumblings about, you know, stuff that's going on, so we do need to be prepared to be able to explain what has prompted this, I guess I should put it that way, as far as the lawsuit and what has prompted it and why, you know, that this is becoming more of an issue.

But on that note, I would also add, how many of our consumers have brought up the lawsuit? Like, very, very few, right? It's— that's the thing, like, most of them are not aware of what's going on in industry. It's super inside baseball, and they may just assume that this is the normal course of business that we normally do, right? So, so Carol's right, be prepared to have that conversation, but I wouldn't inject it into something and further comp— confuse them if they don't bring it up in the first place, right? Because it's really irrelevant to them on the whole big legal picture on everything that's going on. So, Kathy, go ahead.

I wonder, is there more property in MLS more than Zillow? Because someone asked me, you can find more property for us? At the beginning, I said yes, I think maybe you can search for them more. But later they told me, oh, we already see this property already. So I think that they're looking for me to find more property for them, but now I feel it's hard. So I wanna know how I can handle the situation.

Yeah, don't overcommit to that. The reality is this is— I have this in my listing presentation, right? I go and I dispel myths. So the listing presentation, I say, "Hey, everybody else that you talk to is gonna say they have all this secret sauce of how they're gonna market your property to 150 different websites and all this kind of stuff, right?" It's all BS. When you put the property on the MLS, every single property in the MLS goes to every single property website known to man, right? So there's no secret brokerage that has like additional websites that their property goes on. It just doesn't exist. And so from a listing side, that's the case. But definitely on the buyer side, like when people say like, hey, I'm, you know, I want to use Coldwell Banker because they have access to more listings— it's bullshit. They don't. Like, we actually have more access to listings because we have eXp exclusives, right? I mean, most brokerages don't have anything like that because they're too small to make it make any sense. They can't do it on a national scale like we can. So yes, that is not a value proposition that you want to, um, you, you want to, uh, pitch. But what you can pitch is eXp Exclusives, and you can pitch that we have the largest team in the state. And when somebody has a coming soon, it's, it's shared in our meetings, it's shared in our chats. And so before it goes public, a lot of times people will share what their listings are coming up. So we will have inside information. You know, we will, we will know ahead of time if there's things internally, and so there's value there too, right? But on the MLS internet, I mean, it's all, it's all going to be the same.

Oh, so that means it's below 100% connected with the MLS?

100%, yes.

Oh, I see, I see.

There was years, 10 years ago, where like the ADX feeds weren't as good and the technology wasn't as good, but today very, very rarely do you find any discrepancies between What, what you can provide is more information, right? Zillow doesn't display what the leasehold time frame is. They don't display a lot of times what the different HOA fees breakdowns are. I mean, there's some, some details about the properties that are not going to be displayed, but the general property details— price, days on market, you know, that stuff— it's always going to be the same. Redfin, Zillow, Trulia, all that stuff, it's all going to be the same.

So we cannot say we can find more property for them, but actually we can say we can narrow down property for them, can find their specific property. Yep.

Or use our expertise to better point them in the right direction, right? Because that's one thing is like if you do a general search on Zillow and you want a vacation rentable condo, Zillow's not going to know the difference between the condos that can be vacation rented and the ones that cannot, right? So if you want a specific search based on what you're looking for, I can help set that up for you. I can help send you properties that vacation rent and actually do well, that have low maintenance fees, you know, those types of things that can set you up on a better filter. But yeah, in general, every property that's available is going to be on Zillow.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

Okay, so last thing here, guys, um, and yeah, I had an hour and 15 scheduled, so we're right on time here. So this is the final step in the process, right, is we, we've gone through everything, they've signed the buyer's representation agreement, and then we tell them, hey, within 24 hours I'm gonna Summarize everything that we've talked about. I'm going to put together a strategic plan for you. I'm going to email it to you. Let me know if I got everything right. I just want to make sure we're very clear on what the next steps are and what your needs are, so I'm doing it, you know, representing you in, in the best way possible. And so this is just an example of a template, 3 paragraphs, right? The first one, confirming their needs. So this is, this is an example. We're looking for a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house in the Kalakikoa area. The goal is to close by this date, right? If you know that they have a hard date, they gotta move here or whatever it is, that you clear— you have a clear understanding about that. The home needs to be single level, have a fenced yard for your two dogs, or have a yard that can be easily fenced. I will set up— I will set you up for property alerts using this criteria and check the market daily for properties that may work. The best time for you to see properties on Friday or Saturday morning, but if you need to adjust your schedule, we can do that within 24 hours notice, right? So we're just summarizing what their needs are and any specifics about about that, the client's needs and the financing plan. Here's two examples, right? Because now we've had the financing conversation through the buyer's rep agreement. The first one is we have a schedule, we have a schedule, we, we have scheduled a consultation with our lender lending team on this date. We will review the budget and confirm a comfortable monthly payment after the pre-approval process is completed. We will hold off on looking at homes until we are comfortable with the budget, right? So we have a clear understanding. You're going to do the meeting with the lender and get pre-approved before we start looking at houses. Or the other example is you are pre-qualified with this lender up to this amount, and we would like to keep your monthly payment to no more than this, this much. We're using a conventional loan with 15% down, and the lender needs so many days to close. So we've really nailed down the process and it's like, hey, we're just pre-qualified online. Like, we've talked to the lender, we know exactly what program you're using, we know exactly how many days you need to close, any specifics that you need from the lender we have communicated. So we have it clearly written down. So when it's time to write an offer, we don't have to ask questions, right? We got it, we got information collected. And then any additional details, right? My team is at your service. If for some reason you would like to see property at a time that I'm not available, we'll get it scheduled with one of my teammates. You would like to include your brother in all showings and get his opinion when possible. Whatever weird stuff that they, that they end up adding in there. But also setting the expectation— this is something that you have to, you know, figure out your personal business and what your, what your boundaries are— is like If you observe the Sabbath on Sunday and you don't work on Sunday, put that in here, right? I'm unavailable to show properties on Sundays, but my teammate Yoko is an expert in Corona and she's going to do it for you. Is that okay? Right. So you have a clear understanding that when you're unavailable and you do the handoff, they don't freak out about it and say, you never told me, you know, that Yoko was going to show me property or whatever it was. Clearly have that communication of what your boundaries are on certain days, right? I go to my kids' basketball game on Saturdays. I'm not going to show you property on Saturdays, whatever it is. I go to the rodeo on Saturdays. I'm not going to show you property on Saturdays, but tomorrow is going to help you with that. Having those conversations about your obligations and theirs so there's no misunderstanding. All right.

I think that people really appreciate when you set boundaries because so many people don't have them. And so when you tell them that, you know, I can't do this on Sunday because I go to church or I can't, you know, I have my kids' basketball game, they really appreciate knowing that you have a life above and beyond real estate. And I think that they respect you more when you state that. And, you know, it's great that we have the backup, but it's super important that you have boundaries.

Yep.

Absolutely. All right. Any other questions? We're right on time. If not, the homework is get to work, you know, study this stuff and build your personal materials, right? This is all cut and paste stuff. You can build your presentation, have your notes during your presentation, have your buyer intake form that's specific to what your needs are and your system is. So you don't have to take it for what it is. I mean, really, this is just a framework that you can cut and paste and use. But I think if you implement the buyer consultation, all of this gets easier, not only from getting buyer's rep agreement signed, but we're just going to be better servicers of our clients' needs if we have that really clear understanding of what their, you know, what their hopes, dreams, wants are and requirements are.

Salt.

All right, good to go. All right, thank you all. Appreciate you guys.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming on.

Thank you.

Thank you.