NextHome: REAL Update 04.06.2020

This is your 12 o' clock rail update with me. This is available for anyone in the industry, of course. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer for Next Home, so we will slide in some next homey stuff. But as you probably can tell from our communication level, we just want all of the industry to have as much information as humanly possible in this time. This is high communication zone. The Monday Real Update is really just my time to think about what's happened over the last week. How have things changed? What information can we provide that could have some real value? What's in the ether? What's in the zeitgeist for everyone so that we're having the real conversation just about where we are in time and space. And I know for all of us right now, this is days or weeks, weeks or months and months. Months feel like years. So I think back to the first. This is the second one of these we've done, which is kind of crazy because I feel like I've done about 100 webinars and some of you probably sound like or feel like I've done 100 webinars. You're tired of seeing my face. But we'll do this every Monday at noon for as long as we need to. And I'll try to figure out how to share it to Facebook Live like a grown up or a technological wizard. But this is that time for myself to just share transparently and openly with our company and with the industry. So I'm going to take you through some of the slides. You can ask me questions if this is on Facebook Live. It's really hard to toggle between the comments section of Facebook Live and the Zoom. So I'm just going to focus on the Zoom questions. But for starters, I'm going to take us through just some stuff that I wanted to talk about from a macro standpoint. Then I'll come back around and sweep up some of the questions as they pop up. So if everybody's ready, no more delay, we are off like a herd of turtles. First, here's our webinar lineup for this week. You know about the next Home Real Update because you're on it. So news flash, we're doing one today at 12. We also are doing one tomorrow at 10am this is mini conversations, not mini M a n Y but mini M I n I. So small but powerful conversations. Alicia Baruti from Bombbomb will be with Imran on this one. Really just talking about how to take video, how to take this medium that we're in right now and provide really large value and have powerful but short conversations. Then I'm also working with Spatio. On Wednesday at 1pm we'll be talking a little bit about my virtual open house concept, which we have a whole webinar on. If you want it, you can email me, I'll get you a link to it. There's a virtual open house concept that we came up with and then Spatio also has some really cool things that they're doing to help folks with their version of a virtual open house as well. 10 o', clock, Amren and I. This is for next homies only, but we'll be doing conversation openers. It's a tough time to figure out how to talk about business right now. It really is. And Imran and I will be kind of just doing a role play. We call it stump the chumps inside of our company that makes Emory and I the chumps, not our people. And they can ask us anything. And we'll do our best to come up with collaborate and come up with good answers to some of the tough questions in today's market. And then lastly, as you know, James and I do a Friday consumer facing webinar where we're just talking to the people in your database, in our databases, the people who are thinking about buying and the people who are thinking about selling. And really what we want to talk about on Friday is how do we bounce back from this? What does it look like when we bounce back from this and what does the economy do and what does consumer confidence do and what do buyers and sellers do on the other side? Is it a U shaped recovery or is it a V shaped recovery and how are people's psyches and how is it different? So we want to spend a little bit of time thinking about not the positive things because this has been burdensome for all of us, some more than others, but it's been hard for everyone. But what we really want to do is talk about how do we come back from this and what does that look like? And let's start to think about the old Stephen Covey Begin with the end in mind. Most places that I've read talk about a 60 day sort of pause button that's being pressed and then what happens after that and how can we position ourselves and our clients and the people in our lives? How can we position them well for that recovery and what that's going to look like. So that is Friday at 10am so there is your webinar rundown. I'm going to take just a second.

Here to see if we've got any questions.

Many Conversations tomorrow. Wednesday. Sorry, Many Conversations is Wednesday. Many Conversations is Wednesday, not Tuesday. We actually don't have a webinar on Tuesday, so apologize. I must have misspoke because a couple of you asked me that in the Questions tab. So just to reconfirm Imran's many I got to work on that. Conversation is on Wednesday and it will be at 10am Pacific on Wednesday. All times are Pacific because probably because that's where we live and it's just easier that way. So there is our webinar lineup coming up. Also, I want to talk to you about that Sharing is caring. Here is a great example of one of our next homies that has taken this content that we're creating, especially the Friday content, but really a lot of it. The whole design of this is just our way of saying we want to share information. And the More One of the beautiful things about technology is a lot of the walls around information and sharing have come down. If you think about I'm a listener to the Joe Rogan Podcast. A lot of people have their opinions, pros and cons of that podcast, but it is by far the highest listened to podcast around. And that guy is an MMA fight commentary guy who is black belt in jiu jitsu and used to do Taekwondo tournaments. And this might be a good or a bad thing, but that guy's got one of the biggest audiences in the world and he's interviewing people and asking thoughtful questions. And it's just being shared. It's just being shared openly for whoever wants to have access to it. This is about sharing information in times like this. So we're doing the best we can to provide it to you, all of you, regardless of brand, regardless of industry. And if we want to encourage you to share that out to your network, please be the voice in your local marketplace. Share some of this content if you want to create your own.

Awesome.

Yours is even better than ours because it's from you. But if you don't have the bandwidth to do the creative, take ours, have an opinion on ours, hell, disagree with us, I don't care. And then push that out. But be the voice in your local marketplace. Sharing is caring. Except when it comes to Tater Tots. I'm not sharing Tater Tots. Those are all mine. All right, we'll shift gears a little bit, talk a little bit about COVID 19 and it's out there, right? And it's something that we have to talk about. And I want to look at the most current numbers. Now this is interesting to me. If you're looking at the slides and they're in front of you, you'll see that we had a big dip yesterday. And I don't one data point isn't a trend. So this is something we want to pay attention to. I don't think that the daily new cases, I don't think this many fewer people got it yesterday. I think it could be a testing thing, a reporting thing. We have to wait and see how the data continues to come out. The thing I just like to remind people here is as a nation, we're behind on testing. And so this doesn't mean this many people caught the virus today. It means that many people tested positive today. So there is a lag here that's associated with this curve. And what we want to see is it start to top out now. Did it top out on April 4th? And now we're going to trend, flatten down and bounce along a little bit and then flatten the curve as we've become a new phrase we all know the meaning of maybe we'll see. We have one good data point from yesterday and that's great. You need a few more good data points to have a trend line and so we'll just see. My intuition is that that's an anomaly down, but that it will be higher tomorrow and we aren't. Most of what I've been reading and researching says that we should peak out somewhere mid April and today's the 6th, not the 16th. So I think that we are going to see this continue to trend up. But a positive data point is a positive data point and one we should pay attention to. So update on the numbers and again, we'll report this to you every Monday and give you my thoughts as the trend lines start to develop. There is some good news out there. I don't want to be Pollyanna about this or be overly optimistic. There's sort of a two, three fold process to solving a pandemic. Okay, well, I guess fourfold. First thing you do is you try to separate people so that it doesn't spread. That has obviously been in effect here in California for almost three weeks. In other parts of the country last time and in some parts of the country not yet. But that's the first step is you try to create distance. That's social distancing. Then you take the drugs that are already approved and have been tested and safe and you see if any of those drugs are effective in helping people who catch the virus. It's not something that will stop you from getting it. It's not a vaccine, but it will help with treatment. And we have drugs that have already been approved that. That sometimes we can find that help fight the virus that we have today. Also now there are people that are developing new drugs that they're trying to get sped through, and with some speed they can get released that are specifically designed to help with treatment of this. And then the last one is a vaccine. Vaccines take a lot of time because you've got to run clinical trials and all the things to keep people safe. So I don't think we'll have a vaccine soon, but I hope that we will have. And there's been some things that looked promising in the beginning, and then after the trial, the trial process, it didn't work out. But we are trying a lot of different things to find a successful drug therapy that will help people who catch the virus to recover from it and make it less lethal. They're doing a lot of stuff in New York. New York is sort of the epicenter for this. Part of the reason is because they're doing more testing, but that's also a great place to have that testing of these various drugs to see what we can really do to help people that catch it. So it's not amazing news, but the right things are being done. And some of these different drug combinations are seeming to start to have some positive effects. It's very early. There is still a lot of research that has to be done before you can make any sort of declarative statement. But I'm just passionate about at least communicating some positive news, because I think you get enough of the negative just by turning on whatever local news you prefer or national news you prefer. All right. The stock market is something I know a lot more about than the news channels because candidly, I pay more attention to the stock market than I do the news. The market is incredibly volatile right now. Financial markets hate uncertainty. They really don't like it. And this is one of the most confusing and uncertain times we've had in a long time. You hear about a drug, and then the mark that might be working, the market goes up. Turns out that drug didn't work. The market goes down. You hear about something that the government did, and the market goes up, because that sounds like it'll be helpful. And then they peel back the onion a little bit. It turns out there's some complexity to that because the government's moving really fast, and then that the market slides back down. So the market is Incredibly volatile right now. But one thing that I find interesting is the market was roaring back, at least the last time I looked. I've been on a lot of calls and webinars for the last few hours, so hopefully there wasn't some announcement that caused it to tank. But as of a couple hours ago, this was true, that the market was having a really good day. And I thought it'd be interesting just to see how the hotel stocks were rebounding. There's something that markets call a bottom out or capitulation, where you basically give up and be like, okay, I don't really want to buy stocks right now, but these are so cheap compared to where they have been historically. I think it's time to come in and buy some. And I didn't do every hotel stock under the sun, But I picked three big ones, all of them up somewhere between 9% and 13.5% on the day. What that says to me from a psychological standpoint is you're starting to see people start to realize, okay, this is bad, this isn't good. I'm not going to try to put a positive spin on this, but at some point, cheap is cheap enough and maybe we should go ahead and take action on this. And so we are starting to see stock prices rebound on the hotels. They'll probably go back down again. I don't remember the volatility piece. This isn't to say we're through it and we're past it, but it's one of those leading indicators where people are starting to realize, okay, this is the new normal. And at some point people are going to go to hotels again. I believe that, like, we're not going to stop going to Vegas, we're not going to stop going to Hawaii, we're not going to stop staying in hotels. And when people start doing that again, these stocks will come back. That has caused some of the smart money or the institutional investors to say, yeah, that looks cheap. It's time to buy in on some of the hotel stocks again. Kinds of things I like to pay attention to just to get an idea of what people are thinking and feeling. This is a resource that one of our members actually said to us while we were in the webinar, and we'll make sure everybody who's listening to this gets it. But this is a resource that's great. There's a lot of confusion on how to get the IRS money, how to receive the government money. The IRS is the delivery mechanism because they're used to sending money to Americans from a Federal standpoint. So that is the mechanism that the government is using for these payments. And we'll make sure you get a link to the website that shows the right place to answer a lot of Q and A. Okay, cool. Just doing a quick question check. This is about psychology. And you're going to see a lot of this is just about. Okay, it's been two weeks, three weeks for us in California, two weeks for a lot of the country. All right, so what does all this mean for us? Right. And I don't want to be dismissive of where we are in time and space and I don't want to be insensitive. A friend of mine was someone that I know, one of a real estate guy I've worked with from golly, probably my fourth year in the business.

So I've known him for 16, 17 years now.

He tested positive for the virus and.

Has made it through it.

He gave a very heartfelt plea for.

People to participate in social distancing. He apologize for his arrogance. But it's interesting to see the psychology and how it's starting to shift. It's critically important that we stay safe.

It's critically important that we take care.

Of each other and take care of ourselves.

And I know, I believe this to.

Be true, that the human spirit is incredibly resilient. And in some of these hotter markets, Northern California being one Southern California, but really most of the country has. Most real estate agents and companies were.

Having their record January and February before all of this started.

So it was a great opener to the year.

And it may not be time for.

Some people, it might not be time.

For them to think about buying a.

House right now, and that's okay. And for some people, it might not be time to sell a house today.

But there are times where if someone.

Is willing to push through the fear to take action, they can have an opportunity. And this is what we're seeing. This is from Southern California, so this isn't nationwide, and this is on their mls. This is from a conversation that I had with some of our owners in LA. The last seven days they saw 70 homes go pending, which is their market average. Now that's in California, Southern California. That's not all across next home or all across all this is one area in Southern California. There's been delays in closings, but it's only been a couple days. The last seven days we saw 70 homes go pending, which is our market average. Had 12 cancellations since this started, but nine of the 12 went right back into escrow. So what this means is, I get it if someone is freaked out and.

Said, and their 401k went down to.

A 201k because of what the stock market's done in the last month. And they're just saying, I'm tapping out.

I need a break, I'm going to.

Back away and see what happens. I respect that, I truly do. And for some people, that's a very appropriate decision matrix. There are also other people out there who are, who are saying to themselves, I've been getting my face busted in by this real estate market and it's been really hard for me to find a home because of the competitive nature of it. And so maybe if I can build some mental scaffolding to get past the fear of taking action right now, this could be an opportunity for me. And I also understand those people and respect those people as well. There's no right or wrong here so long as the most important thing, whatever.

You'Re doing, you gotta be doing it safely. And I mean really safely.

I've seen huge debates on Facebook about real estate is essential and what essential means. And some people celebrating it, other people saying they shouldn't, celebration shaming them. And you know, that's hilarious California thing to say. The hell is celebration shaming anyway?

But I'm not saying how an individual.

Wants to react to this is very personal. So long as you are keeping safe and keeping the people around you safe and taking the precautions that you're supposed to be taking, then it is a personal choice. And some people will take action and still proceed, and some people won't. And I think it's an intimate individual choice so long as they aren't doing things to endanger themselves or other people. So this is just a reminder because.

I think for a lot of us.

We get stuck in our own perception of.

Fear. Fear is real, right? And sometimes you have to be courageous. Be safe, but be courageous. If there wasn't fear, there is no courage, right? Because in the absence of fear, there's nothing to be brave about. But it is brave to look at this, look inward and make a decision. That's what I think is the most important thing. But I don't want all of us just to get stuck in the fear paradigm. So people will still transact human nature is what it is, and people will still move forward. It's our job as an industry to make sure we're doing it in a safe way, but still be there to support them. Stuck at home. I am stuck at home. Many of you listening are stuck at home you are maybe sneaking out to the grocery store. Everyone has their definition of what essential is, but please, please be safe. But if we're gonna be stuck at home, let's figure out how to be safe at home but also like better ourselves. And that doesn't mean binge watch. Tiger King.

I think that's the title.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm but look, I mean that train wreck was interesting. I slept through some of it. But you know, hey, I did binge watch some Star wars this weekend, so that was something. But I want to share with you and we'll put this in the email that you get after this. But HubSpot I read a bunch to Vicki's question how much do I read? A lot. I read a bunch of different blog posts on working from home. This one was really good. I'm actually working on writing one for real estate because the what you should do is a little bit different. This is more general but great HubSpot blog post which we will put in to the email that you get. Or if you want it again, please feel free to email me. But I pulled out a couple of things that I really liked from the article. Just to think about working from home differently. I know in this industry we think we've all worked from home the whole time. We duh, what's the difference? But the answer is it is different because we still left the house. Sometimes this is true. Like you might as well be trying to sell property in Canada and you live in California. So it is a little different. We used to go to appointments, now we don't. Right? Or much less. So number one, get started early. This one I'm a big fan of. Now I happen to be blessed or cursed depending on the day, with being an early riser. But I can get a lot done before the house gets up and moving. I've got an amazing, beautiful, awesome, talented, hilarious eight year old little girl and when she wakes up, work productivity is impacted. There is no two ways around it. So get started early. It really, really helps. 2. Act like you're going to work. Someone told me once on one of the webinars that I was doing that his boss used to get dressed and drive around the block and then walk back in the house. Okay, that's cool. Like that's a little much even for me. But take a shower, get dressed. Don't have. I know this has been running around Facebook. Don't have your daytime jammies and your nighttime jammies. Don't do that Right. Go ahead, put on a dress shirt, put on a polo, put on some real pants and act like you're going to work. Take the actions that you used to take before you go to work. I just saw in the chat Tiffany said not to judge her on Tiger King. Tiffany, I'm officially judging you. No, just kidding. Choose a dedicated workspace and you might have to do some reconfiguring. I know for a lot of us you work from home, but you might just jump to the dining room table and set things up. Look, if you got to order one of those horrible little put together experiments from IKEA to get a small desk to tuck somewhere in your home, do that. Have somewhere that's not like the dining room table to work from if at all possible and order something cheap. Besides, you're stuck at home anyway, so taking a half a day to put together the stupid thing, at least it gives you something to do and it keeps you away from Tiger King Tiffany and others. It's the most number one thing on Netflix and I can't make fun of it. I watched it too, so I should probably stop. But get a dedicated workspace in your area so that you know when you're in that area, it's work time and that is what you are there for. 2 or number 4. Time block, time block, time block. Make appointments with yourself for the things that are important. That's the best way I've found in my career. I do this when I'm at the office and now that I'm working from home constantly, I have to do it even more. But make appointments with yourself, even if it's just follow up with sphere of influence. Put an hour appointment in your and that is what you're going to be doing during that time. You can also put lunch with the kids or your fun stuff too if you're doing creative things with the kids so that they aren't going completely stir crazy. But make sure you're time blocking and setting aside chunks of time so that you can have that chunk set aside and then you can erase it. Like if your daughter comes in and all of a sudden it's time to go sing Let It Go from frozen for the 4,598 time. Okay, go sing Let it Go. And she says let it go even though it's not let it go. It's the new song from the second Frozen that's not called Let It Go. But I'm supposed to know anyway, that's my problem. We'll do another webinar on That a different time. But you can erase it. But if you erase it, you gotta replace it somewhere else in your day. So that way in the unknown. Thank you, thank you marketing for bailing me on out. But she calls it let it go. So how am I supposed to anyway, so time block. If you erase it to go sing into the unknown, then you replace it somewhere else later in the day or worst case, the next. Since you can all read a little more, I'm going to recommend a book that I've recommended a lot lately. It was actually a book that was heavy on my mind late last year and early this year when I was doing some goal setting work. But it is called the Power of Habit by Charles Duhig. And he talks about the cue. And the cue is like an actor. You need your cue for when you're supposed to step on stage. Well, there's the process of setting a mental cue to do the things that are really important for you tomorrow is dramatically exponentially increases the likelihood that you will do it. So example, if you wanted to get that garage workout in, you might, for me it would be boxing. I might get my boxing gloves and just put them by the door of the master bedroom. And the act of doing that the night before, that cue of picking up my, going to find my boxing gloves and setting them by the door, they might have been in the garage where I left them laying next to the heavy bag. But if I go get them, pick them up and bring them somewhere else, set them next to the coffee maker, set them by the front door, Front door. Front door would be a problem by the bedroom door, then that cue exponentially increases the likelihood that you'll take action. And then we all know that if you consistently take action, you get a different result. So think about the cue for the most important things for you. Maybe you plug your cell phone in instead of on the nightstand, you plug it in at your little IKEA desk that you built in the hallway to have your dedicated workspace. But that'll be your cue. That right? Today I'm focused on work. It's not the weekend. This is where I'm going to go to plug in. So just some thoughts and ideas to share. Really want you guys to believe in yourself. I know that there's a lot of information coming your direction and not all of it's positive. And it is hard to stay positive right now. There's just, you know, it's a heavy time. It's a heavy time for all of us. All of us deal with those things. In different ways. I tend to just take action that isn't always the right thing, cause problems, but it's a heavy time for all of us. And so I really want to encourage you to believe in yourself, to. To give yourself some grace for when you have a hard day. It's okay to create space for yourself and compartmentalize a little bit and say, I'm not going to worry about this for a few hours. I'm going to go do this other thing that brings me joy. And here are some examples of that. We had an ex homie that was making masks, and I think that's awesome. And somebody might look if she posted this on her Facebook wall, which she did. I didn't read all the comments, but someone might say, Those aren't the N95 masks that are safe. And listen, I get it, okay? But maybe taking action and doing something instead of just sitting in it helps. And so maybe these aren't the ones that should be used in a hospital. And these definitely aren't the ones that should be used if you're going to be treating people who have COVID 19. I respect that, but I see dozens and dozens of people around town wearing masks that are similar to this. And at least Shantelle did something. She took action for herself so that she could get through a day, right? So I love things like this. I love the value that it provides. A friend of mine owns a restaurant here in Pleasanton, California. He's been trying to do charitable giving. You can imagine the restaurant industry has just been decimated, right? And he's doing delivery and pickup, and he's doing his best to keep his doors open. And so I reached out to him and I said, eddie, for those of you that are in Pleasanton, California, it's Eddie Pappas.

My friend Eddie.

I reached out to him and said, how you doing? He's like, not great. I was like, that is awesome. That is honest. And he said, but I'm trying, trying to figure out how to give back, because if I just think about how I'm doing, I'm pretty miserable. And he's hitting roadblocks. You know, he wants to make meals for healthcare workers and take them to hospitals, and they aren't sure how to receive them and the liability that's associated with it. And, you know, look, it's complicated out there, and everybody is trying to do their best they can to stay safe. But I just know that if you can focus on what you can control, which in times like this doesn't feel like A lot. But if you can focus on what you can control and what you can do and take action on those things, then some of it starts to slide off your shoulders and some of the heavy does go away. So I'm going to figure out a way to help Eddie out. All of you keep trying to figure out ways to just find the things that you can latch onto that provide value for you in these moments. And then this is just a really heartfelt thank you. My mom's a retired dialysis nurse. My sister is a doctor. Some people who work for the companies have spouses that are doctors. And all of you have probably within 2 degrees of separation, have health care workers in your life. And these people, to me, they are the true front lines of this thing. They are the ones who are battling every day. I have so much respect for them. I have a habit. Not all the time, but if I see someone in line historically who is a first responder and they're in line at Starbucks, I'll buy them their coffee. If I see someone in the military having lunch and it doesn't look like they were getting lobster, I might buy a lunch every once in a while. I am officially adding anyone I see in scrubs to my list of people that I will buy coffee for or a lunch for when I feel like I can and when I have the opportunity. So just think positive thoughts, pray, send energy, whatever you feel is the right thing to do do. But our healthcare workers are putting it on the line right now. I love and respect all of them and also those of us who have loved ones who are those folks. It impacts us as well. So there's that famous quote. I think it's by Mr. Rogers, which.

Is kind of hilarious.

But when something bad happens, look for the people who are running towards the problem. I'm sure I butchered that quote, but those people are the heroes. And in this time, these healthcare professionals are on the front lines for us and they deserve our love and respect. So that's your real update. I'm going to take a second. I don't see a ton of questions.

In here, which is cool.

Yeah. Look for the helpers.

That's right.

And thank you. I think. Yeah, I agree. Wayne. Any mask is better than no mask. So I personally agree. I know there are other people that don't, and that's cool. If you want to, we can do a zoom chat.