Business Innovators Radio - Unveiling the Secrets of Real Estate Success with Thomas Fentress

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

In this episode of The Agents Lounge podcast, hosts Larry Ynman and Francisco Bermudez Jr. sit down with Thomas Fentress, a seasoned real estate professional with a diverse background. Thomas shares his journey from growing up in a family of builders and developers to becoming a successful realtor for over 33 years. He highlights the importance of assisting clients and building lasting relationships, rather than just focusing on sales. With his deep knowledge of construction and the real estate market, Thomas provides valuable insights on navigating the industry’s evolving landscape. He shares tips for attending open houses and reveals common pitfalls to watch out for when buying or selling a home.From horror stories of poorly constructed properties to heartwarming tales of helping families find their dream homes, Thomas brings a wealth of experience and wisdom to the conversation. He discusses the shift towards specialized real estate services and offers advice for those considering a career in the industry. With a passion for educating first-time buyers and simplifying the home buying process, Thomas aims to make a positive impact by empowering individuals to make informed decisions.Don’t miss this engaging and informative episode as Larry, Francisco, and Thomas discuss the secrets to real estate success, the challenges faced in the industry, and the joy of helping clients find their perfect home. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or a first-time buyer, this episode offers valuable insights and inspiration for anyone navigating the world of real estate. Tune in to The Agents Lounge and discover how Thomas Fentress is making a difference in the real estate industry.About Thomas FentressThomas Fentress is an experienced and passionate real estate agent with a diverse background in the industry. With a family history rooted in building and development, Thomas grew up immersed in the business and naturally gravitated towards protecting and assisting people. Starting his career as a builder, he later transitioned to become a real estate agent, where he initially held misconceptions about the profession but quickly learned the importance of prioritizing client satisfaction over simply making sales. Thomas’s dedication to assisting first-time buyers and his ability to simplify the process for them underscores his commitment to providing exceptional service.https://www.remax.com/real-estate-agents/thomas-fentress-san-antonio-tx/100000915About The Show Sponsor:The Agents Lounge Podcast is proudly sponsored by Airtegrity Comfort Solutions, your trusted HVAC experts in San Antonio, TX. With a commitment to exceptional service and top-notch comfort, Airtegrity is dedicated to keeping your home or business cool in the scorching Texas heat.Visit their website at https://airtegritycs.com to discover the range of services they offer. From professional air conditioning installations to reliable repairs and maintenance, Airtegrity has you covered. Their team of skilled technicians is equipped with the knowledge and expertise to handle all your HVAC needs efficiently and effectively.Whether you’re looking for a new system installation, need repairs, or want to schedule routine maintenance to ensure your HVAC system is running smoothly, Airtegrity Comfort Solutions is just a phone call away. Reach out to them at 210-446-0105, and their friendly staff will be ready to assist you.Experience the comfort and peace of mind that comes with Airtegrity’s exceptional HVAC solutions. Trust their reliable service and enjoy the benefits of a well-functioning heating and cooling system. Visit their website or call them today to schedule your next HVAC service. Airtegrity Comfort Solutions, your go-to HVAC experts in San Antonio, TX.Agents Lounge Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/turbopassusa-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/unveiling-the-secrets-of-real-estate-success-with-thomas-fentress

Welcome to the Agents Lounge podcast, where we talk all things real estate with the industry's top performers. Join us as we dive into the inspiring journeys of successful agents and uncover the secrets to their success. Whether you're a seasoned agent or just starting out, we got the tips and tricks to help you navigate the world of real estate. Brought to you by Integrity Comfort Solutions. So grab a seat and join us in the Agents Lounge. Good afternoon and welcome to this week, the Agent's. Slown, your local podcast for all things, real estate, realty, and the latest innovations in helping you find your new home. As always, I'm your host, Larry, assisted by Francisco, sponsored by

Air Integrity Comfort Solutions, your local leader in Comfort Solutions. Today on the show, we have Mr. Thomas Fentress. Welcome, sir. Thank you. Mr. Fentress is a local real estate professional of many years in the business. We were talking right before he hopped on, and And he's actually done quite a few other things, too, kind of a jack of all trades. So if you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about your background and, you know, what brought you here today? Well, my grandfather and father were builders and turned into developers at one point. So I kind of grew up around the family business. And when I was old enough to work in the business, I was pushing a broom and houses that were being built.

And then slowly started doing more and more things in between the contract. And when I got older, back then, Trinity University had a homebuilding program. And a lot of the local builders, many names you'd recognize, went through that. And they were just kind of shutting it down at that point because they were, it wasn't quite Ivy League enough for them. So I snuck in there for a few semesters and things. And then my grandfather passed away. And my father said, hey, you're, you know, you're on your path to come join us.

I need your help. Why don't you come now? And so I started building houses in the early 80s, and we would take them from scratch to handing the customer the keys. I think we peaked at about 35 houses a year. I was talking to a friend of mine who was a lifetime friend of mine who was a banker at the time. He was a banker with Kelly Field and Wells Fargo after that. And he was reminding me that back in the 80s, I was borrowing millions of dollars to do interim construction loans. And I was like 23, 24 years old.

So he said, that was, he goes, that wasn't normal. I mean, that, that, I don't think that's not even normal in 2020. Probably not, I guess. But I, that was just life. So it was just, you know, and, but the market changed after 86 when they changed a lot of tax laws and a lot of the savings loans collapse. And along came the RTC, people that experienced it, the Resolution Trust Corporation. And there was a whole lot of foreclosures. and we were watching paint dry.

And so I decided rather than try to live off of a family business, I'd used the real estate license. I'd gotten in 84. And about 89, 90, I started selling real estate, and I've been doing it for the last 33 years. Wow. Okay, that's almost like you were first start off in like the Brady Bunch style garden homes,

you know, all the way to these modern homes that they got today. Wow. And so you have a lot of experience not only in building them, plus selling them, and everything in between then. Yeah, it's funny. I was telling some of the earlier today about my next-door neighbor complaining about his sprinkler linking for the second or third time.

And having been around construction my whole life, I was like, you know, what that's a symptom of is high water pressure. He's an engineer. Oh, ha. And so I said, I've got a gauge in the back of my car. You want to take a peek? And we slapped him on his hose, and he was 100 pounds instead of the max of 80 that you want.

And I said, you might want to call him. your insurance agent and make sure that leaks in the slab are covered and also get get a plumber out here and i of course recommended a plumber that i always recommend with uh core plumbing and uh he was happy to happy to have learned it wow okay i got to say a lot of realtors you know they may outsource some of those uh types of work but the fact that you kind of have that that the in-depth on-the-ground knowledge i'm not the i'm not the guy that'll tell you that that that's definitely what it is but i'm not the i'm not the guy that'll tell you that that's definitely what it is but I can tell you what the symptoms look like.

Yeah. Well, you know, that's kind of pointing in the right direction, or you may be able to say, well, it isn't. Yeah. What is the process of elimination? Yeah. This is what it is. I mean, how did you overcome some of those obstacles along the way?

Because it sounds like, you know, about 30 plus years ago, you had a jump ship into another ship. I switch sides of the desk is what I jokingly said. I had agents on the other side of the desk for me when I was building houses, and then I was over there. And I always thought that the real estate agents were, when I was on the other side of the desk, I thought they were kind of like used car dealers.

You know, I didn't say that because I've been one for 33 years. But I thought they all, you know, wear plaid pants and white patent leather shoes and sold people what they wanted to sell them. And I learned in getting my license and taking some other classes that the only way to be successful is to get your clients what they want

and make them happy so that they go out and become your referral business. And so then it wasn't so salesy, it was much more assisting. the client and I like that idea a lot better. I was wired that way. I fell into the building thing, but it was never natural. It was just the family business. But when I found this, it was a good natural fit and I could tell right away. And I said, I'm going to like this. So I had to learn how to go on vacation after that. You took the family business and just expanded it into different realms of

what they maybe were originally doing. Yeah, switched it around. What the odd part about it was, my friends kept teasing me that they were going to stop asking me to help them move because I would be doing punch lists on their on their tanks and they make them miserable. It's kind of like when you see the check engine light come on and it gives you anxiety. They were kind of worried about this guy's a walking check engine light. He's going to tell me what I need to fix. Oh my God.

I mean, you've seen the real estate industry kind of evolve over the last 30 plus years or so. I mean, where do you see it going? I mean, what are some of these trends that you maybe have seen? I know we talked a little bit about technology coming down to pipeline and stuff like that.

I mean, where do you think it's going to be headed? we're doing a lot of, there's a lot of changes happening. I think it, you know, what it has been for decades, an easy job to get into with a low percentage of people that are still there in six, seven years. I think it's going to become much more of a specialized business in that there are so many companies that have gotten into it and so many companies that are buying straight from, sellers, that there's not going to be the room for all of the people that there's been room for in the past. So it's going to shrink.

Yeah, that's what I... That's interesting. I can only imagine that happening because there's just so many more avenues that have opportunities to get in there. If you're a corporation that has millions or billions of dollars to invest, and you know that if you can just use advertising to get your foot in the door and that's seven out of ten people that are the first one in the door get the business, then that's pretty good odds. And so all they really have to do is advertise.

They don't have to be the best thing for that client. They're not fiduciaries like an agent is. Uh-huh. And so they're serving their own interests and they're using their own contracts. So people don't know that they've gotten themselves into something that maybe they didn't really plan on until it's far too late. And then at that point, I mean, you're just grasping for straws. Then I just hear the stories. After the fact.

Yeah. After the fact. Yeah. I mean, do you have like a, excuse me, a memorable deal or something that you think stands out over all these years of experience in terms of a deal you close, a client you helped or something along those lines? You know, lots of them. It's kind of hard to pick. I've probably been, you know, a thousand deals over that many years. I think of ones like someone that was referred to me that had had someone look at their property

and I had to tell her that her house was actually worth about $55,000 to $60,000 more than what they had told her. What she was getting ready to sell it for. So that was fascinating. I try to look at things from a lot of different angles. There's a lot of ways to value properties that not being an actual appraiser, we can, some common sense and extrapolate and do some other things to check our work. And so a lot of times people think nowadays, well, I can go online and I can just look at this estimate.

And I won't spell that out because there's one that a lot of people think they use right now. And it really doesn't have good data that it uses. And so there's a lot of incorrect information floating around out there. And people don't realize that they can get an experienced realtor to help them and they won't necessarily charge them for it in many instances to give them much more. accurate information. Well, you kind of hit on something there. I've known people who are potentially interested in real estate or, you know, home buying and all that. There's a lot of fear, maybe first generation folks who they came from homes that maybe they didn't have, they didn't

own their home growing up. You know, what would you say to someone who maybe has that trepidation about, man, I don't know if I can do this or if I'm afraid to go talk to a real estate professional. What would you recommend? I was fairly. I was talking to somebody from the east, the far east this morning in the background. And she was saying that the people that they know are worried about having conversations with people because they're going to charge them. And the culture is just different than ours. And we think, who would charge them? You know, we don't even realize that that's a concern.

But the, I think we've got, we need to be a little bit more sensitive to to the clients that, you know, what their concerns are. Unfortunately, as agents, we get busy and we get to doing lots of deals and we're all happy because, oh, look, business is good. And sometimes you get in such a hurry, you can forget to listen to your clients. And unfortunately, in a lot of industries, there's not a lot of active listening going on. You're not just there to get a signature on the listing agreement. You're there to get them what they need.

And I've had clients that, that was a shock to me when it first happened to me, the money wasn't the most important thing. When they turned to me and said, no, you don't understand. I just don't want to own two houses in two different states at the same time. I said, well, you're underselling this one. He goes, that's fine. I want to make sure that I only own one house at a time. And that was one of the first of many instances where I learned to ask people, what do we really want here? Because it's not always how can I net the most amount of money.

A lot of time it is, of course, but not always. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Francisco and I, for those that don't know, him and I went to graduate school together. We got our master's degrees at the same time in organizational leadership. And one of the things that, the themes that came up is people who listen to respond or listen to care. And there's a difference, you know, and there's a difference between hearing and listening. And you hit on a few themes in there that kind of come up. you sincerely want to listen to somebody and see what, you know, your skill set, how that can help them.

Instead of waiting to speak. Yes. Yes, exactly. And I think we live in this transactional world where, you know, people's, you know, I'm going to do this. I'm going to you do that, you know. And there's no real, like, you know, critical thinking involved in that. And with the years of experience you have, I mean, you sound like you definitely know what you're doing. You could help somebody out.

Well, I had a phone conversation with a relative last night, and they were one of the worst that I know, unfortunately, about not listening to, they're waiting to speak. And I could have told her that zebras were stampeding outside the front door, and it wouldn't, she'd have just gone right back into what she was talking about. So it's very frustrating. But the, yeah, I mean, that's the thing about in any industry, but especially ours, we get to, get too caught up in the numbers and too caught up in the, oh, you know, look who won the award this year, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, don't forget that, you know, it's the humans that are, that you're helping. Yes. You know, not the plaques that that you're searching for. Yeah. I mean, some people are in it for the accolades and the money, obviously, and all that. And

that's all well and good. But I personally see real estate as a service oriented industry. It's not just about the bottom line. It's about helping people move to the next step in their life. Well, if people weren't involved, we could do real estate with computers tomorrow. It's such a true thing that the real estate business is a people business, not a land business so much. We all get in the way. Sometimes you're negotiating a deal, and you have to figure out, am I arguing with their client? or am I arguing with their agent?

Why is this not getting through? And sometimes it's the agent, and sometimes it's not. But it's interesting because then you can approach it from a different angle when you put it that out. And you're like, well, why am I even arguing to begin with? How do we get to this point? Yeah, exactly. You know? Well, and that's too true.

I've something else came from conversation this morning. You know, we've got a lot of news. new people in our industry right now. I saw a statistic where 48, 49 percent have been in business for four years or less that are members of the local board, which means a lot of the time you're doing with somebody without a whole lot of experience. And it's nice when you know that. And you can kind of help them not miss things because when the wheels come off during a transaction, it makes everybody look bad. Yeah. So I try to, in all my dealings, I have, I have a to-do list that has everybody's to-does on it, not just mine,

so that I can keep track and everything and kind of give general reminders, hey, to your order the appraisal. Hey, it's been a week and a half. Is the appraisal back, et cetera, little things? Even when that's not my job, if it's two and a half weeks later and it's not back, I look just as foolish as the person that didn't check on it. Well, when one goes down, they all go down, right? Yeah, a lot of experience, like the thousands of homes you sold,

we still see clients where they bought a home they didn't have an air bent in their bastard room I was like what do you mean you like did anybody ever think of looking up in the attic to see if that room had AC and or what's the other one or that's where air ticket you can help you out or they didn't even have a return air so

it's like these people are buying and selling homes without even like without even knowing what what at least the minimum the minimum, like, you should at least know that, hey, man, I went in there and there wasn't any error in that room. I've seen them skip the master closet a lot of the time. It's hot in that closet when they do. Or one of the bathrooms, like the guest bathroom or something like that? Or the utility room would be death.

Oh, God, especially right now, God help you've got to do utility work in there. You know? I had a house that was under contract and they inspected it and it was a brand new build. And they'd not put a single fifth. vent in the attic. There was no turbans. There was no soft vents, nothing. So it was going to get, you know, it was going to be 100, there are 200 degrees in the attic and melting the shingles from the bottom, basically.

And they got to be smart, eloquy about it. And the walk through, they had put vents in the garage on the floor. On the floor? Yeah. In other words, you do it. Oh. We didn't close. And she bought something else. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was, it was, we were like, got the nerve, you know, but.

Well, you kind of alluded to something. You know, when people go out and they're looking at properties and whatnot, sometimes they'll go out on their own because they're, like I mentioned, they're worried about going to a realtor. I mean, what do you recommend to someone out there if they're just looking at home to go to an open house? You know, of course, they're going to make the property look pretty razzle-dazzle. But, I mean, what do you recommend they look at or ask or anything like that?

Well, first of all, I have a 45 minute to an hour. orientation I do with first-time buyers and sometimes people that have bought before. Oh, wow, that's great. We go over all the terms and what happens when and how long everything takes and what everything's for. And one of the things I coach them about is, in a large part, most of the open houses you see are really people out there trying to collect buyers. They know odds are they're not going to find a buyer that way.

Since we've invented lockboxes, it's not hard to get in a house. Oh, like the open door app or even that. That's even easier. So these days when you're walking in an open house, you're basically saying, hey, turn me into one of your buyers. So I coach them to say, hey, tell them you're already working with an agent. And if you are interested in the house, you know, text me, call me, and I'll take a look at it with you, et cetera. But there's a lot of things, a lot of things to look at in those. You can kind of see when there's issues with the house and people have tried to conceal them.

There's still tell-tale signs. I'm sure you see that in the air conditioning business. Yeah, that's very much so. And they don't, they think they're getting away with something, and so it's pretty interesting to spot. But I try to warn them, you know, the things that they might come across in the process so that they're more educated and they feel a lot more confident because, you know, it's a scary thing, especially when they're buying for the first time.

I got to warn them up front what buyer's remorse is. You know, a day or so after you go in a contract of this thing, you're going to be going, what in the world did I do? And we all do that. You know, even realtors do that. When they buy something, you kind of go, well, I hope I'm doing the right thing. And so, you know, I warn them that that's coming. And so that when it comes, it's not this strange alien feeling.

Instead of them going, oh, no, and calling me, going, what am I doing? I get a phone call going, hey, you remember how you said I was going to feel like I Maybe I made a mistake. Yeah. It happened this morning. Yes. That's a much better phone call. Well, you know, it kind of reminds me.

I know you said you started doing this back in the 80s at 1986 movie The Money Pit with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. I don't know. Is there any truth to that? Some. Okay. I mean, I don't know if it's available for streaming, but I would highly recommend folks to take a look at that if you're looking for a good real estate laugh. It's exaggeration for comic purposes, but it's a cute. cute movie. And at some extent, it's based in, like all good humor, some of it's based in truth.

Yeah, I could only imagine. I mean, do you have any, like, horror stories that stand out in your mind? You know, things you've helped people with? Oh, my gosh. You know, I, of course, as you ask me, everything goes out of my head, but I'm thinking about, you know, I used to do a lot of warranty work with when we were building houses. And I remember my father telling me a story about a lady complaining about the carpet was prematurely dirty. the traffic patterns. And while he's standing there, a daughter walks in the door and walks down the hall and he calls the daughter back and says, can we see the bottom of your feet? She's walking around outside and they're black from walking in the street. And so I, you know, years later,

I'm doing the warranty work and I'm talking to a lady that's complaining about her carpet. And I remember this story of my dad's and I look down and the lady I'm talking to is standing on the carpet, barefoot. And before I, I remember this story of my dad's and I look down and the lady I'm talking to is standing on the carpet, barefoot. And before I can look up again, out of the corner of my eyes, see her dog dragging its behind across the carpet. Oh. And I was like, I had to think very carefully about what to say next.

Yeah. That goes back to knowing when to talk and knowing when to listen. Oh, my gosh. I mean, what would you recommend to somebody who may be contemplating, you know, this is a career, or professional or even a career change, maybe for a mid-career professional. Well, you know, it's funny. I've never been able to tell you who was going to make a good agent who wasn't. They talk about coming in all shapes and sizes and personality types.

Interverts, extroverts, there are all kinds that have been really excellent at it. So it's really difficult to say who would be good in it. I do warn people, I said, look, of course, like any organization, they love to sell classes to people. whether you stick around or not, it's not really their problem. It's you're taking the risk investing in the time to get into something. It's not extremely hard to get into. But the staying around rate is not stellar. So, you know, you really need to kind of figure out if it's something for you.

Any job that has really odd hours that can be weekends and evenings at times, it better be something you enjoy doing. Yeah. Because otherwise, that becomes a real chore. and of course because in a large aspect of it is really your own discipline if I used to jokingly use the Oprah example if you're going to watch Oprah all day long you're not going to sell any property but that's long gone but the people that don't push themselves it's really easy to get distracted especially with the internet now yeah yeah so but people with discipline whatever kind of discipline that is it might be be really excellent. But like I said, I wish I could look at somebody or talk to somebody and tell you whether or not they would be a deal of Canada. But it is bizarrely inconsistent. Because there's inconsistent and then apparently bizarrely inconsistent, which is like total haywire,

apparently, all together. Do you do any kind of like philanthropic work or any kind of volunteer work, anything like that that you maybe have done in the past? One of the, I do things that come up, we have all kinds of opportunities that pop up now and then with Food Bank and other things I've done stuff with them in the past. And one of the things I've done in past years is I'll keep my eyes open for a deal where somebody's really in trouble. And the, the, I had one where a guy had been my waiter for years at a well-known restaurant and always been real nice to us and taking good care of us and everything. and he needed to sell his house and his kids were getting older and he had like four kids, boys and girls, and they were all jammed into the same bedrooms and everything. And he's like, man, I've got to get out of your, I got to get a bigger house.

And carpet was threadbare. You could see the floor through it, everything there, etc. And he couldn't really afford to sell and pay off his note. And I basically went to him and said, look, I'm just going to do this for what it cost me and pay my, my, you know, insurance and get you out here. I, you know, I pick one of these deals now and then, and that's my, that's my charity deal, because somebody I know that I can see needs it. Yeah.

You know, and so it's kind of nice because you get to, you know, basically your hands on on the, on the, the. Yeah, you have it back. Yeah. So, but you got to keep your eyes open. But every once in a while, you know, those two come, those two come up, usually about, you know, once every year, sometimes not quite that often. That's good. I mean, that's real good. I was going to ask you.

Yeah, go ahead, Francis. Yeah, so it's going to be two questions. one of them is going to be what inspired you when you first started. I know you mentioned how you were already in the industry, but if you can think of someone or anyone that kind of inspired you to be who you are today. And also, what's your goal for, I don't know, the next five, ten years? You know, there was an agent in my office that was there when I got there, and I liked a lot of the things that he did in the way that he did them.

And I had numerous conversations there actually. There was actually two or three agents, to be fair, that I bounced things off of a lot. There was like multiple mentors and they were really given of their time. And I really benefited from them. There were a couple things I didn't agree with them on where we diverged. But for the most part, that really helped a lot. inspired me. It turns out, having taken tests later and everything else, my personality is naturally geared towards protecting people. And so that part, when I found out that the industry that I had

gotten into, basically taking care of people, making sure that they don't make mistakes, making sure that they don't spend too much or to do the wrong thing, goes along that same vein. So I, you know, that really fired me up because I was like, wait, that's a lot. what I'm doing. You know, and so I enjoy that. Now, what was the second part? Oh. Oh, the future.

Yeah. The, the, I, it's funny. I've shifted in the last couple of years to really looking more for first-time buyers. I've got a lot of, well, a good number of people who, you know, will call me up and say, you know, sell this for me, tell me when it's done, you know, tell me where to sign. And, you know, just trust me and anything else. the opposite side of that coin is if somebody has never done it before and doesn't know we'll just trust and what everything else and I've actually kind of enjoyed that more and I haven't done a lot of that in past years kind of drifted away because a lot of my clients base got older and more experienced with me

and so now it's kind of fun when I get the early on guys because I can take them all through it and simplify it and it's a lot of fun seeing through their eyes and everything else so I'd like to do a little bit more that. I do some land and ranches and things like that. And that's, that's, that's awfully, it's hard to not have fun showing property in Texas countryside, you know. So, you know, those things are, you know, doing more of that is fun. But people ask me, you know, would you retire? And I'm like, yeah, you know, wouldn't be great if I had a hobby and I could find something I loved. And maybe if, if, if, even I got paid, that would be good too. Hmm. I wonder what that might, wait a minute. I'm already.

doing that. So, you know, I mean, that's almost like the, the holy grail of, of your work is you find something that aligns with your personal interest and drive and stuff and you can make, make it as successful as you had done. And I'm Joey. Yeah, and you mentioned it's a family business. I mean, are you planning to hand this off to someone else in your family? Or, you know, my kids so far are not really wired for it. My son's getting ready to get an engineering degree at Trinity. My daughter just started college, and she's looking to be a psychologist in that direction. So they have kind of the directions they want to be. And like I was saying, I think you have to, I think it really matters that you know that's what's for. I was lucky that I fell into it.

We had my whole family had real estate licenses, most of them had brokers licenses. I accidentally got my broker's license. I figured out that you, you know, could take the test for $40. And so I figured I'd go see what was on the test and look up all the terms that we never use that are on every test. And I went in and to take it. And I was leaving. And the lady said, wait a minute, don't you want to know what you scored?

And I went, okay. And she said, you passed. That's good. It's real good. What? Oh, wow. So that was fun. That is interesting.

I think we're getting a little close to time. Yeah, sir. Before we wrap it up, I'm just going to ask you this random question here just to get you know you as a person. If there was like one person that you could sit and have dinner with, whether it's in politics, music, theater, whatever the case may be, who would you want to sit with them? And why would Thomas Ventress want to sit with them? Oh, wow.

That's a good one. There's a lot. There'd be a lot of folks. the Wow Probably an author Probably Yeah

Do we have to live in her dead Either one We have a time to sheen sir Okay Eritagery time to travel Mark Twain Oh Mark Twain Okay

Well why is that I can't imagine How much fun it would be To have dinner With that character A true Renaissance man interviewed by another true Renaissance man. I never thought about that before.

Okay. Oh, that's a food for thought today on the agent's lounge. I love it. So, you know, Francisco and I have had conversations like that before, too. And so, you know, thought provoking. Maybe you might think about it the rest of the week. I wonder what I would talk to Mr. Twain about. You never know.

Well, you know, Tom Fentress, thank you today for joining us on the agent's lounge. We highly appreciate your time, your input, your energy, your expertise, clearly. You know a lot about real estate. And you're welcome to come back anytime you like. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. Our pleasure.

Thank you for joining us today. We'll see you next week on our next episode of the Agents Lounge, sponsored by Ayrtegrity Comfort Solutions, your local leader in Comfort Solutions. You've been listening to the Agents Lounge podcast, brought to you by Aertegroity Comfort Solutions. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or to listen to past episodes, please visitagetloungepodcast.com.