Using the Shift to Grab Luxury Market Share with Janie Coffey - Part 1

Welcome back to Real Estate Business Builders. This is Lars Hedinborg, founder, Real Estate B School. And today is the part one of a two part series. Janie Coffey, who spent I think like 17 years with Sotheby's and three years opened up Compass Intermarket. She's a business partner at EXP with me. She goes through how to use the shift to grab luxury market share. So she built her business in St. Augustine, Florida in a shift with expired listings. So she knows what she's talking about. She's a massive luxury agent in her market. She's worked in all different markets, meaning all different types of markets and economic shift and bear markets and all this stuff. Right. So this is part one of that training. You don't want to miss it. And there's two parts, so make sure you tune in for part two as well. So we'll hope you enjoy what is up? Janie, how are you?

Hey, Lars, how are you? And how's everybody?

Yes, we are doing awesome. So your topic is specifically as it relates to this market, how do you kind of enter the luxury market or do more in the luxury market? If you're not planning to kind of talk a little bit briefly about your background, are you planning to talk about that in your talk?

I plan to touch on it for a minute or so.

Okay, good. Because your background is super impressive and I think, you know, it just adds a little bit of context. You know, Jenny's just been in this, you know, with Sotheby's, with Compass High Level, with each company. We partnered at EXP most recently and so just appreciate you and all you do for our community. So I'm just going to hand it over to you and let you do your thing.

Off we go. And cool. I have share, so I'm going to share my screen with you guys. So like Lars said, can you hear me? Okay? Everything's good. Yeah, I'm just gonna rip because this is my favorite topic. I've been, I've been waiting for this market for a while and I'll go into all the reasons why I'm excited about the market and why I think you guys should be excited about the market as well. So like Lars said, my topic is conquering a stormy market and how to increase your luxury market share in this market because it's a much better market to grow in luxury than the previous two years. So like Lars said, my name is Janie Coffey. My Instagram is at Janie C. And I am in northeast Florida. So I live in downtown historic St. Augustine, cover all of the northeast coast, but pretty much help you guys out anywhere in the state of Florida. So even though the topic of this presentation is conquering a stormy market, it's definitely not gloom and doom. It's actually really an exciting time. Like I said, been waiting for this market. So it's not like an Eeyore type content. It's not a scary title because sometimes I know people are using scare tactics about the market to get you into something and this is not it. It's really exciting. And I have a worksheet that I will send to Lars to share with you guys after this. So you don't have to worry about frantically taking notes and at the same time trying stay engaged and absorb the content. And the worksheet will basically help you walk through all the different parts of what we're going to talk about here in this next hour. And I have a lot to share, so I'm going to go a little bit fast. This is a two to three hour presentation that I distilled down into one hour. But I don't take your time with me lightly. So I'm hoping that you at least get one really great tangible takeaway that excites you, that inspires you, that motivates you, that you're actually going to take some kind of action on. So with that, let's get going. Like Lars said, my name is Janie Coffey and just a quick little bit about me like Lars was asking about in the beginning, so you kind of understand why Lars asked me to talk on this topic. I am just shy of 20 years in the business in residential sales. I owned a small brokerage, a boutique brokerage in Coral Gables, Florida, which is a higher end community within the greater Miami area. I'm the past executive vice president of one of the largest Sotheby's in the world. I am the director of sales of another Sotheby's franchise which by coincidence has actually merged. So now that Sotheby's runs up and down the entire east coast of Florida, I'm a past founding agent for Compass in Northeast Florida and in fact me and my team were the only Compass presence for a full three years in Northeast Florida. Really got them started here. Most influential top 100 for Inman several years ago and that was in social media, media and media in general. I'm a national trainer. I ranked the top 10 in my market, specifically in the top, I think 150 or 250 in the state of Florida. I've set multiple, multiple high Price Records and then currently the co chair of the luxury division at exp. And all of that is not to brag because I think all of that is completely accessible to each and every one of you too. I just wanted to set the stage so that you know that I've been in the luxury space, like Lars was saying, in a lot of capacities, as an agent, as a team leader in management and in advisory agent capacity for large brokerages. So I'm really like in it. But I'm not necessarily like a luxury person. I personally don't want to. I don't think I live like a luxury lifestyle. I'm just like everybody, I'm just like every agent. But I've kind of cracked the code in luxury real estate estate. So I think that's important because a lot of times people think, oh, that's not me. I didn't come from that background. I didn't, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. My spouse isn't this. I didn't go to this university. That is not. None of those things are necessary to do really, really well in luxury real estate. And I'm proof positive of that. I live kind of humbly, I think, other than my one vice is traveling. But everything else is humble and it's completely accessible to all of you guys. Oh, and a fun fact. I had the great wisdom to actually open a bricks and mortar brokerage in Coral Gables in 2005. And if any of you have been in real estate since 2005 or have a memory of what came shortly after 2005, 2006, 2007, you understand that the joke was really on me to do that. But I don't regret it a bit because I think what I learned being an owner broker with a bricks and mortar office during the recession as a brand new owner broker, actually gave me all the background to weather any kind of storm and look forward to any kind of shifting market as a huge opportunity. And I think that had a lot to do with my heartiness in that. So I think you guys should get excited about it as well. But this is also me, and this is a picture that I took just December of this past year in Antarctica, which is the southernmost continent down by the South Pole. And this is where I slept overnight on an ice shelf in the middle of a whiteout blizzard in a bivy sack, which is basically a sleeping bag that has a piece that goes over your face. So you don't even have a tent and you don't have a tent because if you had a tent, you would actually blow away. And that wasn't looking any fun. We had 35 mile an hour sustained winds. We had 45 mile an hour gusts. But with all of that being said, I was warm and toasty. I felt comfortable. I felt good. I didn't even necessarily want to get out of my bivy sack in the morning. But there was other people in our group. I think we had about 30 to 40 people that for sure still to this day are carrying PTSD with them from that night. There was two big differences between me and a certain set of people. And the other people, we all had the same bivy sack. We were all in the same whiteout, crazy storm. And there was no getting off this ice shelf, by the way, because the storm had come in overnight and there was no way for any kind of little zodiac boat to get to us from the ship because it was such a terrible, terrible, sudden storm that we had to weather this storm. There was no way out. But again, I was warm and toasty and I was like all kind of huddled in there, really fun. And let me show you the p. This is the next morning. This is about 4:45 in the morning. That little red thing at the bottom of the thing, that's the feet, my feet in my bivy sack. You can see the snow up around me and you can see the water down below that was, I don't know, half a football field. And it dropped down. You can see the cliff across the way. That's probably a 20 foot drop. Literally, the only worry I did have, like I said, you can't have a tent because of the. The wind. I was literally scared that the wind was going to pick my bivy sack up and just flip me into the water. So that's the one thing I was excited about. But why did I feel warm and toasty when the other people were having panic attacks? And one person had such a panic attack, they got out of their bivy sack in the middle of the night and stood there in the howling wind, in the sleet for like 45 minutes. And there was a big difference again between those people and the rest of us that were kind of prepared. Well, it's because I was prepared. I had the right clothing, I had the right mindset. I had multiple kind of backup plans. And what I mean by that is I had three sets of clothing. I had three sets of socks, I had three sets of hats, three sets of gloves. I put my boots above my head, inside my bivy sack to Keep the thing off my face. Some people didn't do that. So the snow was landing on their face and making them feel like they were smothering. So the point of all of this is going into a storm prepared versus not prepared, not prepared by what you have with you. So in my case, my gear, my mindset and going into it makes all the difference in what you experience with it. And you might not know the term seronophile, but a Serena file is a person who loves lightning and thunder, basically a lover of storms. And literally since I've been a little girl, I've always loved storms. So I think that was part of it and I was looking forward to it. But mindset, preparedness, outlook, action and like self determination and resilience, reliance, all those things, the ability to look for opportunities. Those are a surrounder files, gifts. So my goal in this is like ignite a spark in you today to start take on that Serranophile kind of outlook on life. Especially right now we're having a shifting time in our market. But if you take it on and you think how can I overnight on the Antarctica ice shelf and feel warm and toasty and excited versus other people who are feeling completely traumatized, what do I need to do to do that? And how can I really have a positive impact on my business? So again, I want to ignite a spark in you and no pun intended on that either, but I do. I love storms, I always have and I hope you guys will too. So what does that really mean regarding real estate? You know, we have been hearing gloom and doom for the last, what, almost year, year and a half, shift is coming, storm is coming, stormy market, crash bubble, all that stuff. Those are the kind of things that might make somebody scary. Unless you're a storm chaser. If you're a storm chaser, you're actually going to go out and look for those things. And I just want you to remember that real estate gets sold in any market. It's not like real estate stop selling in a shifting market. It's not like real estate stop selling in a stormy market. It always gets sold the last two years. And I we're already in 2023. So really 2020, 2021 and maybe the first half of 2022. The people that that market was the best for was the sellers. They were making out like bandits. But if you were a listing agent, it was not exactly the best market. Why? Because inventory was so low you might have gone when, when, when it was a normal market, I was listing like 20 I carried 20 listings at a time. During this tight inventory market, maybe I had four or five listings. So that's not a good market. If you were working with a buyer during those times 20, 21, it was really hard for your buyers. They were like literally having to give up their firstborn child. So it wasn't really great for buyers. It was not great for anybody or buyer's agents. It was really just great for sellers. So this market that we're in now is really better for most of us. And so the whole thing is, like I said, kind of getting perspective. When you have a drought, you need rain, like a storm is welcome. If you have flower bulbs like daffodils, they need a freeze. Tulips need a freeze. So it's all perspective, it's outlook. And it's just like figuring out how can I make this work for me? What are the tools to make this work for me? My daughter is half German, she lives in Germany. And the weather is. It's kind of stormy there. It's often great snows a lot. And they have a phrase that basically says, there's no bad weather, there's just bad clothing. And that's what I want you guys to take away with you. And why do I feel a shifting market is so good for us, for us as agents and for those of us who want to expand our luxury business or maybe get into luxury in the first time? Well, first of all, there's just more opportunity. There's more listings coming up depending on what state you are. It's still a little tight where I am in Florida, but generally speaking, there's certainly more listings than there were was a year and a half ago, two years ago, there's less competition. I don't know about you guys, but a lot of agents in my market did not renew their license with this most recent license renewal. Those are the agents that probably got into the market when it looked all exciting and hot. And they probably kind of picked off a deal here, picked off a deal here, picked off a deal. So those of us who are in full time real estate, we were kind of getting hit already. The inventory is low. And then you have these newer agents just getting little things here and there. But now that a lot of them have left the market again, there's more opportunity, less competition. Like I said, there's more listings. When there's more listings, that's good for everybody, that's good for us. We have more opportunities to get listings. We have more opportunities to market our listings to get buyers. And if we have buyers, it's a little bit more stable, meaning buyers aren't having to, you know, do all these appraisal gap things and waiving inspections and all the craziness that they had to do a year, year and a half ago. There's also more rental opportunities. And whenever you have a rental opportunity, whether it's to work with a buyer or renter or a landlord, that's just feeding your pipeline for a year, two or three down the road. So seek out those rental opportunities in luxury that could be your entry into the luxury space. Because generally speaking, a luxury landlord is going to be more open to, you know, renting his their property out with an agent, maybe newer to luxury than maybe listing it to sell. And in that time, it gives you the opportunity to build a good relationship, show your value so how good you are. And again, down the road, that can lead to building your pipeline for more business. And then you're going to come in contact with tenants who will become also potential future buyers. Also with this shifting market a year and a half ago, year ago, year and a half ago, a lot of sellers didn't really think they needed us that much as listing agents. They. So what did they do? They came for us on commission. They're like, why do I need you? Everything's selling quickly. I don't need you or I'll list with you, but I just want to get in, in the MLS where you come down on your commission. Now they really realize that they need us a lot more than they thought they did. So they see our value. So if we can demonstrate our value, we can demonstrate how we're going help them navigate this stormy market and get the most the market will bear. They're going to come at us a whole lot less on commission. They're going to come at us a whole lot less on terms because they value us. Again, there was a lot of time back in 2020, 2021 that they're like, you know, they just didn't feel. And a lot of agents were also kind of willing to roll a little on our commission. That put downward pressure on everybody's commission. Especially like I said, those newer agents that were kind of picking and there. And so just, I want you to think when the, when others contract and others feel back, we are going to expand, we are going to get out there, we're going to be prepared, we're going to feel good, we're going to have the right mindset, the right outlook, the right tools to get out there and really leverage this market. I am so excited. I've been waiting for it since like 2019 because I saw some stuff coming and I was like, good, is it going to shift? And then, you know, what happened in 2020? In 2021, it was kind of super weird. I'm in Florida for sure, but I'm sure for most of you guys. So today what we're going to go over is how to define the luxury market. In your market specifically. There's this whole kind of. It's really funny. People have used a million dollars as the luxury market for like the last 15 years. And what is a million dollars in Kansas versus what's a million dollars in Hawaii? And totally different things. So we're going to let each of you understand how to define the luxury market specific to where you are. Because it really doesn't matter what it is in Miami or what it is in la. It matters where you are. We're going to help you develop a business plan that's specific to you, specific to your interests. We're going to help you kind of select your focus because you can't be kind of a jack of all trades in luxury. You really do need to have some kind of focus that's really, really important. And then we're going to help you determine what are best methods to generate leads for your luxury business. So you might already be doing luxury and you just want to increase it and you want to use this time to like gobble up market share. So when the market stabilizes, whenever that is, you are one of the dominant listing agents or listing for sure, or just dominant luxury agent in general. And you're going to do it in a way that's sustainable, that's exciting. Like I said, that has a spark for you, that ignites something in you because you've got to feel excited about something to be able to carry it on for. For a length of time. So let's get on into it. Let's start at the beginning, which is how do you even define what the luxury market is? The easiest way, if you belong to or have heard of the Institute of Luxury Home Marketing, they're one of the top national firms that gives training on luxury marketing. Luxury real estate. They define luxury as the top 10% of the market. And what that means is if you go into your. I would start with your MLS first, but just go into your mls, go into residential only because we don't want to get commercial mixed in there. And pull up a list of all the solds either. Six months back, 12 months back, no More than that. So at least you have a couple thousand properties. And then sort by by price point, the highest at the top. So let's say 2000 properties have sold in, in the market in the last six months. Whenever you're going to do it to get the top 10%, you would just scroll down to the top, the number 200 property and that's going to be the top 10%. That's what the institute of Luxury Home Marketing kind of calls luxury to me when I do that, whenever I do that exercise in somebody's MLS, generally speaking, I find the top 10% is more like starter luxury. It's where people are going from average bread and butter type properties to luxury. But it's more like starter luxury. So you're going to find that probably to be the case where you are as well. And of course, dollar alone isn't the indicator of luxury. We know that because sometimes you have a tear down on a really nice piece of land sometime, sometimes you have an incredibly luxurious studio apartment. But just for price points, we're going to use the same. I really consider the top 5% as the start of really luxury. So in our case, if there's 2,000 properties, we would just scroll down to the top 100 and whatever that price point break is, that's going to be luxury in your market. And then I, I distill that down even a little bit more and I drill down to the top 1% and I call that Uber luxury. So a lot of people in their head when they're thinking luxury, even in their own market or anywhere, they're thinking that Uber luxury price point, that, that top 1%. First of all, that would be a hardly sustainable business if you were only selling Uber luxury because it's only the top 1%. That means of all the transactions in your marketplace, even if it was a buy side and the sell side, you're only talking 2% of the ENT market. So that's not super sustainable. But starting with that Uber luxury price point and working into that luxury price point is a very sustainable and very comfortable entree into luxury or able to expand. Because you can see there's kind of steps you can go through in your luxury real estate journey from the Uber luxury to build into luxury and then maybe have a smattering of those Uber luxury properties. And the reason you might not want to only do Uber luxury is for because it's the top 1%, there's relatively few in a calendar year that sell and they are much more likely to expire and not sell at all. Because the sellers are thinking this price point up here in the market is here. These are often sellers who don't need to sell. They'll sell if they get their price, but they don't need to sell. So you don't want to only try to aspire to focus only on that, because you're going to. If you're only going to sell 5, 6, 10 houses a year or list, but then 33% of them don't sell it, it could not be a. It's too much of a roller coaster when you only focus on that uber luxury. So we're going to really kind of focus on that starter luxury and that luxury. And just in doing that, that's going to bring you some of those uber luxury things over time as you start to get your name out there and as you start to build kind of your, your business and your game plan and your framework around marketing to get listings and how to market, those listings actually sell. So what kind of business are you actually going to go over? Go, go, go for? You can work on getting buyers, you can work on getting sellers. And then like I said, also the whole rental side of things, depending on where you are, could also be a very good thing too, especially in the shifting market, because a lot of buyers are deciding to rent right now because of the interest rates and things like that. A lot of sellers are choosing to rent right now because maybe they're worried about the market. And they, especially if you're in, say, the West Coast, California, where you've actually seen some price declines, people are deciding to rent instead of sell right now. So that working with landlords and working with tenants could be a really, really good start, especially if you're in that starter price point. The next kind of group of people that are easier to work with are buyers, because buyers generally are going to work with the first responsive, the first knowledgeable agent that they come across. Buyers are generally not out there interviewing and trying to vet and pit each other, you know, agents against each other. Like kind of when you go on a listing appointment with somebody that you don't know, you're. You're very likely competing with two or three or four other listing agents. But that doesn't really happen with buyers. So if you're just getting into luxury, the easier place to enter the luxury market space is with renters. If it pays off in your area. In Miami, where I used to work, it was very, very profitable to work with renters. In northeast Florida, where I am, it is not it makes zero sense to work with renters because what's paid out as a commission is negligible. But then there's the landlord. So I would be searching, going through all the different sources you have to kind of figure out who might be a potential luxury landlord and see if you can get in front of them. And we'll talk about that more in just a little bit. As you start to work with that starter buyer price point group of people, you're going to become more and more comfortable in the luxury space and you're going to start to build relationships with people. If they're buyers, they might have something to sell and then you're going to be feeding your pipeline because at some point they're probably going to sell that starter property and buy a more straight up luxury property. So starting, if you're new to luxury in general, luxury real estate in general, you would want to start with this starter price point, which is with buyers, and then move your way up in price point with buyers. And at some point you will start to get listings. If you're more confident and you're already a strong listing agent, then I would probably start with that starter price point for going after listings, going after sellers, and then working your way up to the regular luxury. So the top 5% and then maybe even the uber luxury as well. The higher you get in price point on the listing side, the more discerning those clients are going to be, meaning you really are going to have to be really well prepared when you go on that listing appointment with your materials, with your understanding of the market, with your marketing plan. So that's why I'm saying it's an easier on ramp with buyers at the lower part of the luxury market and then work your way on up. Before we go on, are there any questions in the chat, Lars, that I should be answering? I'm not monitoring the chat, but I see the numbers.

Good. Cece had a question. So how you may go over this, but how do you find buyers that are in that starter luxury price point?

Yep, we're going to go over that for sure.

That's it. You should be good.

Okay, cool. I don't want to miss anybody's questions. Okay, so. So we've kind of figured out if we want to start with buyers or we want to start with sellers. We figured out if we want to start with that starter price point or that true luxury price point or even that ultra luxury price point, that uber luxury price point. We figured that out. Now what we need to do is we Kind of have to figure out where are we going to target. We can't. It doesn't make sense to target like you're your whole county or your whole MLS area. You really need to start to discern what would be a good farm for you. And a farm can be a geographical farm, like you know, neighborhood or a city or a zip code. It can also be a property type. So for example, I focus on historic properties and a subgroup separate from that is I focus on oceanfront property. So that's more of a property type type than a geographic farm. There's lots and lots of property types. You can have golf properties, you can have fly in communities if you're in an area that has fly in areas. You can have penthouses if you're in a city. So a property type can be just as strong as a geographic farm. And then there can also be a people farm and that's generally more going to be on the buy side. But what I mean by a people farm is you might choose to focus on working with young doctors because young doctors, they normally have a really great income, maybe have okay credit, but they often don't have a great down payment. So if you start to work with young doctors and focus on getting young doctors, a way to get into that would be find out what kind of special mortgage loan programs are there for young doctors and kind of focus on buyer type content around the hospitals that are often hiring young doctors. So that would be an example of a people type or you know, athletes. If you're in an area that has a lot of athletes, or if you're in an area that has celebrities or fisher people, fishermen, fisher women, fisher people, that would be a people type of a farm. And we're going to build content to draw those people farm people in. So what you want to do is once you've spent some time time figuring out, you figured out your price point, generally speaking, you've figured out buyer, sellers, renters, you're starting to figure out like what is going to be the most ideal farm for you to kind of focus in on. So I would first start to think who are the people you're coming in contact with?

Anyway, so hopefully enjoyed part one of using the shift to grab luxury market share. Make sure you tune into the next next episode to grab part two. And if you already know that you want to get into our community and you want to be around folks that are playing at this level, just grab a free business growth assessment, just go to rebsgrowthassessment. Com and we'll see you over there. Stay tuned for part two.