Leverage Design and Market Knowledge With Renee Lossia Acho | The MREA Podcast (EP.65)

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Welcome back to another episode of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent podcast. I'm Jason Abrams and this is the place where we lift the curtain on the world of real estate like never before. Every week I sit down with visionaries, pirates and mavericks. We're here to document, demonstrate and most importantly, demystify their game changing models and systems. What secrets propel them to the top and how are they living their dreams? This is about passion, it's about strategy. But above all, it's about real, tangible success. So buckle up and let's dive in. This is the Millionaire Real Estate Agent podcast. Hey, friends, have you ever heard the saying that doctors make the the worst business people? Well, that may or may not be true, but our guest today would have you believe that teachers make the best business people. Friends, I'm talking about a mega agent hailing from Birmingham, Michigan. Over 200 million a year in sales. And yes, she is a former teacher turned real estate agent. She's going to teach you exactly how to go out and work with builders and also a model on exactly how to turn your primary residence into millions of dollars, tax free. Sit back and buckle up. This is Renee Ache. Renee, how are you?

I'm great, thanks. How are you today?

Jason, I'm nervous if I'm being completely honest, because I've looked up to you as a real estate agent for so long and I remember because we live in the same town. Driving past your signs and thinking it's impossible for any one person to have this many luxury listings. And so this is a really big day for me. Thank you for being here.

It is my pleasure to be here.

So we're going to talk about the 200 million in annual sales. We're going to talk about an average sales price of a million bucks in the Midwest. We're going to talk about all the things. But before we do, I want to go all the way back. Before you had this success, how did you get into the greatest industry in the world?

Totally by accident. Like several people I know, I started off as a high school teacher, graduated from Michigan Go Blue and got a master's in education. And I taught American history and government for almost 10 years. Ironically, previous to that, I grew up in a family environment of architects, builders and designers. So my summer job growing up would be to work alongside them and on doing that actually into college, just as a side enjoyment. And as that happened, I recognized that later, looking back on that, it was sort of an apprenticeship, an unknown apprenticeship that I had not really understood at the moment. I tell people Sometimes you have a set of keys that throughout life, you're putting on a keychain, and you never really understand when you need to use one of those to open a door. And so as I was teaching, I got into it and had some friends that colleagues were looking for design and they were buying houses, and I was helping them, just because that's what you do. And recognized by one of my friends that I had this talent to do that. She said, how do you know how to draw and sketch kitchens and do these fabric selections? And I said, well, you know, I grew up in the industry. So that then sort of created and manifested into additional people that I was helping on the side and doing some work in, which then led to an introduction of somebody who was doing spec homes, and he was a newer builder developer in the area and asked me to possibly help him make some design selections, which of course I did, and he was selling them. So I'd hold the houses open on Sunday and sort of, again, just allowed life to take me through this journey. All along, of course, I was following my passion, which was teaching and I was raising a family, until one day, lightning struck. I was pregnant with my third child, and my second had been diagnosed with a very serious autoimmune disease. They told us that she had leukemia, and I was five months pregnant.

Oh, my gosh.

I cannot imagine, and I hope you never have to. So in that moment, my entire life unraveled. Obviously, everything stopped for my husband and my entire extended family and I. And trying to find and figure out how to take care of this child and what she was going to need in doing that. The good news is she does not have leukemia, but she did get diagnosed with a very serious autoimmune disease that took a huge toll on our family. Emotionally, of course, and physically, but financially, and you don't realize until you're in the thick of that what that can do and how quickly that takes hold of everything you have. It basically pulled back from our jobs, my husband and I, and put 100% effort into making sure that she got the care that she needed. And within, what, like a matter of minutes, we are in so far upside down on our financials. Bills keep coming, life keeps happening, medical bills add to it. You don't have a whole lot of, you know, resources as a teacher to figure that out.

You said something I want to touch on. It felt like it was minutes. That must have felt crushing at the time.

To be honest, Jason, looking back at that part of my life, it's sort of A blur. We had surgeries and traveled all over the country trying to find a cure for what she had and get her the help and finding the best doctors. And ultimately, ultimately we got things stabilized and she was on her way to being cured and going into remission. But that was after many years and within a matter of, like I said, what felt like minutes, it couldn't have been more than a year. We had accumulated what felt like an amount of debt that never would have been solved. I thought, there's no way in my life I am ever going to get out of this debt. I'm going to go to my grave with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. Family loaned us money, we maxed everything out, we sold our home and we just kept having to plug away. There's nothing in life that will ever motivate you that I can think of more than the health of a child or a loved one. And this certainly was not the exception. What ended up kind of parlaying this journey was that I had to figure out how to make some money fast and create some flexibility in my life to be available to my children and specifically my daugh. But of course, all three of them. While I had been designing and doing these things for my colleagues, I then started to dabble into real estate and started getting phone calls from people, you know, you do what you have to do. So I got into real estate to pay medical bills. That was my motivation.

It is so crazy to me. So do you stop teaching or are you at that point a dual career as we call it?

I stopped teaching, my mom and dad were my nannies and I got into real estate full fledged because I realized I first was doing part time teaching and a little bit of real estate and then I said, you know what? I can't do everything. And the lack of flexibility in teaching, even though it was my passion, this needed to become my profession. And so I then went full force and ironically found a niche that I didn't quite realize was missing in the real estate marketplace. I started to leverage my apprenticeship or my knowledge and background in architecture, design and building and took it to builders in the area and said, let me help you design these products. Let me tell you what the market is, let me tell you what price point and what style. It might not be dark floors, maybe it's light floors or white kitchens versus dark kitchens or whatever it is. I can bring the voice of a lot of the consumer want and help you prior to completing these projects and then going off. Shoot, I wish I Would have used a different blah, blah, blah. I brought it to them ahead of time. So I said, let me start with you and design these homes together and then take it to market, and I'll do that for my service. And ultimately got a huge following overnight of instead of one product where, you know, Jason's looking to sell his house and I've got your listing. I had five or six. And then those builders are always looking for more product. So that was the key that unlocked a door that I had never anticipated needing, nor did I even understand I had a talent for until I had to put the pedal to the metal. And there it was.

I can't tell you the feeling of relief that I have washing over me because I didn't realize that you had this incredible value offering to build. I thought that I was going on appointments with builders and they were hiring you instead of me because you're better looking, smarter, faster, and more articulate. And come to find out, you just had better value proposition than I do. This is fantastic news.

It was fantastic news for me, and I'm glad it can be great news for you as well. So that was really what started me. And then, you know what's also interesting? So, you know, fast forward. As I was doing this and I was, you know, making money and still taking care of my kids, and my husband and I are juggling all this stuff, I started to recognize that I was helping these guys to make lots and lots of money. And I said, hey, wait a minute, I bet I can do this, too. So I got my builder's license, and I started developing my own homes. And I built. I think I'm on Project number 17. I've lost track. I don't even know, But I have done 17 build and remodel projects that I have then lived in some and sold others prior to and just flipped. But what I really took away from it is that I can help anybody. The value proposition of taking anyone's needs and becoming a resource for them. And so if you're looking at a house and you can't see past a paint color or, gosh, this would be great. I wonder if I can open up this wall between the family room and the kitchen. Those are things that my knowledge and capability can apply in any situation for any client. And it's a resource that then really broadened my spectrum of what I can serve and provide as a value proposition, not just to builders, but to all of my clients. And then I kept myself in the business of building and selling to maintain that Knowledge and continue to be able to have that current understanding of what the market is, what the pricing is, what the value is for doing something to a house versus not. If you're looking to buy a house and want to invest in doing the kitchen and bathrooms, you know, I can actually figure out to some degree what that cost will be, what it will mean, what kind of time it would take, and then whether or not that product, that home at the end, will be a good value to my clients. If they invest X, will it be worth Y? And I tell people it's not about the price you pay today, about the overall investment you're making in that home, and are you outpacing the market value in that area once you're completed with the work that you're really going to spend on that house. So it keeps you relevant. And I think that's really what has been the game changer.

So if I'm sitting out there and by the way, friends, we're about to get into this thing, I'm taking the notes. You don't have to take the notes. I'm taking the notes. If you don't get the notes, they come out every Thursday. Go to MrEanotes.com, put in your email address, and then every Thursday, I send you the notes. So if I'm sitting out there and I'm going 90 in my range Rover, I'm in the Tesla doing my thing, and I'm saying, okay, how would I even start to think about that? Renee, tell me exactly. If you were starting today and you're a real estate agent, how do you start making all that money?

It starts with knowledge. We ask sometimes. I know on different podcasts that I've been on and talking to different agents and doing this kind of thing, they say, what is your superpower? I don't know that I have a superpower. I don't know that anyone necessarily has a superpower. But I can certainly tell you knowledge is the power tool that provides to everything.

Okay, when you say knowledge, define it for me. Does it break into buckets? Is it just the way you see the world?

It does. I'm not talking about the average price per square foot in your neighborhood. I'm not talking about what was recently sold or is recently listed. That all comes without even question. If you don't know that, then we've got other things we need to talk about. So it's knowledge about your market, knowledge about the trends of the markets, what just happened 10 years ago. What are the projections from 10 years from now, what are the rates? What makes certain areas valuable over others? What are the schools? I tell people, when they say location, location, location, what does that really mean? Well, it means does it have schools that people can pick, both private and public? Does it have a ratings? Does it have an artery that's close to an airport that's going to keep people coming there? Does it have multiple arteries of travel that can take you uptown or downtown for more people having a marketability in that area? What are the municipalities like? What are the features of these areas that are going to stabilize faster and with more longevity than other areas? So it's knowledge of the real boring stuff, right? The analytical stuff that you need to know from this city versus this city, this county versus another county. Then you have, you know all of it from a federal standpoint, local and then hyperlocal. So it's that knowledge, but then it's product knowledge. How are you selling a house and you don't understand that product? You wouldn't go to a mechanic that didn't know how to give you an oil change. How are you selling a product? Do you know the difference between casement windows and double hung? Do you know the difference between granites and marbles and quartzites? Do you know the difference between oak wood floor and walnut species? Why is that important? Because those are the things that create value in the home. Those are the differentiators.