Epic Real Estate Investing - Revolutionizing Property Sales: REDY’s Vision for the Future | Noelle Tassey | 1455

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

In this episode of Epic Real Estate Investing, host Matt welcomes Noelle Tassey, CEO and President of Redy.com, a platform transforming the real estate market by efficiently connecting home sellers with prospective agents. Noelle explains how Redy.com streamlines the home-selling process, allowing agents to place bids for listings and offering upfront cash to sellers upon signing a listing agreement. This model aims to eliminate inefficiencies and ensure that the right agent is matched with the right property, resulting in faster sales and higher prices. Noelle discusses the platform's growth, success metrics, and how both new and experienced agents benefit from this innovative system. The conversation also touches on the future potential of Redy.com in the real estate market and its current national availability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terio Media. Hey, strap in. It's time for the epic real estate investing show. We'll be your guides as we navigate the housing market, the landscape of creative financing strategies, and everything you need to swap that office chair for a beach chair. If you're looking for some one-on-one help, meet us at rei-i-a-com. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.

Let's go. All right. Please help me welcome to the show. It's Noel Tassie. Noel, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Thanks, Matt. It's great to be here. Yeah, likewise. It's good to have you. And I was really interested in what your company is doing, being a former and recovering real estate agent. I was like, wow, this is evolution here.

And I know there's been talks about stuff like this for a long time, but it sounds like you're actually pulling it off. So the company is ready, R-E-D-Y. Yep, that's right. Awesome. Perfect. So describe it to me. Tell me what it's all about and what you're up to. So Ready really is a platform to connect home sellers with prospective agents in a more efficient way for both parties, basically. So, you know, we're very invested in making the entire experience just like much more seamless for both.

We take sellers who are thinking about selling their house, get the details on their property. And then before, you know, anything else happens, we're able to push that information out to the agents on our platform. Those agents can log on. They can submit a proposal, explain to the seller why they're the best fit for the job. The seller then interviews their top agents. They do walkthroughs, sign a listing agreement. And then the kind of twist is that the agent actually pays the seller cash up front on signing the listing agreement. So, you know, they negotiate all the terms and everything else.

And they say, hey, like for your $4 million house in Orange County, I'd love to pay like $15,000 to be your agent on this deal. And we found, you know, agents love it because they're not sitting around cold calling. Like, they're able to really be in control of their business. You know, they see a listing. It's a fit for them. It's fit for what they do. How they're trying to grow. They like their odds of selling it.

They like the terms. Great. And they're just able to do that and not pay any cash till they sign the listing agreement versus, like, spending $20,000 a month on Zillow leads that they're then chasing and calling and chasing and calling. And it's like, you know, in this way, it's like you're only talking to people that are serious about selling their house. You don't pay a penny until you've got to sign listing agreement.

And then you can actually spend your time selling that house and not trying to find your next 10 listings because you can just come back to ready to find those. Got it. All right. So it's just kind of reallocating your marketing dollars. Basically, yeah. That's how all over agents think about it. And is it just is it sort of like a non-refundable deposit that's recouped through the commission? Yep, basically.

All right. So the agent has to be pretty darn certain that they're going to move it then. You know, I will say that is definitely part of it. And it's also why houses on our platform sell faster and for more money than the national average. We're about 12% above the national average and houses on the platform this year are selling about 60% faster. So the consumer does buy right off the platform? No, the consumer is sorry, but like, why we follow these deals through obviously to their conclusion. I see what you're saying. Yeah. And so those are kind of the success metrics for sellers who hire agents on our platform.

And I think it is. It is because the agents are really confident. You know, it's a more efficient way of matching sellers and agents. You know, if you're an agent out there and you're like, I know I can sell a house in this area because, like, I have a ton of buyers and I know the area really well. And I have amazing reach. It's like it makes a lot of sense just say, hey, you know, like, let me just get that listing before let's be real like so many times. They hire the wrong person who maybe doesn't know the area, but it's like their mom's friends, cousin or whatever. Maybe the property. sits for six months, then you have to come in, you know, as the local expert agent turn around and, like, the price probably already dropped, you know, all these things. So we try to help everyone involved to kind of avoid that inefficiency. And how long have you been doing this? Ready's been around for a little bit over three years. Not always under the name Reddy, so we initially launched as bid my listing as kind of a beta launch. And yeah, I guess 20, 2021-ish at this point. That was incredibly successful, but it was a limited local launch. So we took it down and we were like, let's rebuild this properly. Let's build a really great product.

And so we've relaunched this year or last year now. Well, congrats. So things are going well. Yeah, it's been great. It's been amazing to like see the results for sellers. and honestly, like, just seeing the quality of the agents. And it's been really cool. Like, we were talking to an agent the other day.

They were actually a brand-new agent just building their business, and they got their first-ever listing on Ready, which I thought was really cool. And they were like, this was great. Like, I was cold calling and knocking on doors for months and not getting any traction. And, like, I've been on a bunch of transactions as a buyer's agent, but haven't been able to kind of land a listing.

And I did it. And then they sold the house in, like, I don't know, eight weeks. Nice. Yeah. So I was really cool too because, like, again, a big part of this is it has to be better for agents. You know, it can't just be like great for sellers. It is great for sellers. Do you think it's more of a result of the dynamics in the agent seller relationship and kind of what's happened there over the years with the legalities?

Or is it more a result that there's just low inventory and there's greater competition and the sellers are kind of in control? That's a good question. To me, it's really that this has always been like, it hasn't been the most. efficient for either of these two parties, right? And I think sometimes, like, third parties will make this sort of an antagonistic relationship. And it's like, oh, nobody should want to pay commission or this, that, and the other thing, like, you know, they're not adding any value or, like, sellers are like uneducated and difficult. And I don't think any of those things. I think it's, you know, that's a very good story to be telling if you're trying to sit in the middle and take a piece

of the action. To me, it's like, there's just been a lot of incentive for, like, parties to intermediate and not let like these two groups basically connect efficiently. So is your customer more the seller or more the agent? We think it's both. Like everything we do, we think about both parties. And like if you're an agent, you don't want to take on a property that you can't sell, right? Or that you're not confident about selling. So we think it's best.

We try to provide a lot of value to both sides because like I said, I don't think it's like antagonistic. I think it's a partnership. And it's been amazing. One of my favorite things actually that I've seen is sellers never. pick the agent that offers, like almost never, that offers the highest cash bonus. They typically look at the agent that's actually the best fit for their property. They like the cash because it's a real symbol of commitment from the agent. Right.

And like who doesn't like cash? But at the same time, you know, they really care about like, is this agent right for me? And I do love that they're constant enough to pay me some money up front. And that's just been very cool, too, to see that. It's like they really, our sellers understand the value that a good agent provides. All right. Yeah. So what's your background? What inspired you to create something like this? Well, so I'm actually, I'm not the founder. I'm the CEO and president, but my background is in tech.

So I've spent my whole three of building and scaling venture back tech companies, kind of all from thin tech to other prop tech companies, some marketing tech. I sold my last company in late 2020. That was a real estate play. And then I actually started an agency and consultancy that works with venture back. startups after that and scaled it and then met the folks already, met the founder. And honestly, I heard the idea and I just thought, wow, that's the smartest thing I've ever heard. Like I, you know, I've seen a lot of startups. And this for me was just one of those ideas I couldn't pass up.

If you can speak for the founder, what's the problem that was trying to be solved or is it just seeing how you can fit into the, to a transaction? No, so the problem. And I will say that I like 100% when he was telling a story, I was like, wow, this happened to my mom. He was trying to sell his house in Long Island in New York and had picked an agent that it was like, you know, his friends, cousins, whatever, just got their license. So he was like, great, I'll hire this person. They come recommended. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't.

He was one of those people where he did that. They listed the house. And he's seeing every house in his neighborhood sell week after week, month after month. And like, it's three months, it's six months. It's nine months. No bites. No offers. And that was when he was like.

like, wait, and I'm locked into an exclusive with this person. You know, like, I have to stay with them. And they're not selling my house. They're not working hard to sell my house. Like, they're not committed or motivated to sell my house. They're just hoping somebody's got to rock up and make an offer. And so for him, this was like, how do I solve this problem in a way that's better for both sides again? So it's like, that commitment that, you know, you got with the cash bonus, you never have that problem. Like, because our agents are like, I'm betting on myself. I know I'm great. I know I can move this house. Here's how confident I am. And then they do. Got it. So I'm just kind of thinking of this from like both sides. You know, I'm a very much a

marketing geek. So how are you reaching out to sellers and enticing them to try your platform? To be honest, it's kind of amazing what you can do when you tell people like, hey, you know, that thing you were going to, do you want to do it better and get paid to do it? Like people typically will say, sounds pretty good. It's a compelling offer. So we're doing a lot, obviously, to get in front of consumers. One thing that's, you know, worked super well for us is, honestly, going like a little bit old school. You know, if you're a marketing geek and in real estate, you know, how constrained we are in this industry in terms of, like, targeting and things like that. So we found that just getting out and telling the story and doing as much organic as we can has been really impactful.

Like, consumers love it. They hear about it. And they're immediately, like, excited. We've also found, like, we work with a lot of real estate investors. And they, the minute one of them, like, signs out about the platform, typically, like, we'll get a bunch of referrals. So we do a referral program if you're a real estate investor, and that's something that they can sign up for on our site by talking to our team. How does an investor fit in? Because it seems like kind of, it's going to be a retail play, right? We kind of think of two different levels of investor. We've got our, like, smaller scale, like individual, maybe like more of a mom and pop investor. Honestly, you know, even if they have a disposition strategy, typically a lot more of their

properties tend to be one-offs. They need motivated agents. The right agents sell one house that they've invested in, probably not the same as the right agent to sell something, you know, three neighborhoods over at 2x the price point. So for them, this is like, you know, I mean, look, if you're just thinking about these transactions, like an investor does much more like rationally, you're like great. You're telling me that it will sell faster for more money and I get paid cash up front. So my ROI is better. And I work lastly and not to interview 50 agents to figure out who's good for this house. like that's super easy about running a business. We've actually also found for larger investors with larger portfolios,

even if they have a disposition strategy, even the ones with in-house brokerage is actually very often, you know, they'll have edge cases where they're like, we had somebody actually recently who had a big portfolio to move in St. Louis and they don't normally transact there and they don't have any relationships in that area. The person who's running disposition for that book,

you know, just wants the right person for the job who can efficiently move those properties. And so for our platform, they're able to interview the top agents in that area who are the most motivated to work with them, pick an agent, do the whole thing really efficiently, and increase the ROI. So, yeah, there's kind of a use case at every scale there. And then obviously the retail, the retail use case kind of speaks for itself.

That makes sense. And I just sold all of my stuff in St. Louis. I didn't know about it. I wasn't mad. I was telling you next time. Yeah, definitely. I wasn't mad at it. But so that is more the play for the investor is the exit, not so much the acquisition, right?

Yeah, we don't, so we don't do anything on the acquisition side. This is, it's sales only, sellers only. There are plenty of tools out there on the buyer's side. I mean, I have opinions about them. As somebody who's personally transacted in real estate extensively, you know, there's some tools are better than others, but no, we're fully self-side right now. Got it. Totally.

That clearing up a lot of stuff that was in my head. It's good. So what does the real estate market look like for you guys? right now, what are you expecting for the rest of the year? So things are picking up, which I think, you know, the Fed just put out that report, which is really great. You know, going into the summer, where we're seeing kind of velocity increase, which is exciting.

I mean, I'm actually really curious what you're seeing because I know you're something of an expert yourselves. What are you seeing? We do most of our acquisitions are off market, right? We market straight to seller. That's why I was asking you how you guys it's the seller. Because I'm always looking for new and creative ways to do that because it is so competitive. But, you know, we get through.

we get through enough, you don't have to have a bunch of stuff to be successful at it. I see the dispositions on our side has slowed down considerably, but they haven't stopped by any means. The trashy houses aren't selling like hotcakes like they used to. The nice houses and the nice locations still sell really, really quickly. So, you know, when you're fixing stuff up, you have to kind of keep that in mind when you acquire it. You can't just buy it next to the power lines and expect it to go the next day like you used to. Right, exactly. Slap a coat of pan on it and like Jesus take the It doesn't work. Yeah.

Exactly. But I see the balance of supply and demand so lopsided. The supply is just so low. And there's just, when I say demand, people say, well, no one's buying houses. They can't afford and where's the demand? I'm talking about the number of people we have walking the United States. That's what I mean by demand. So maybe they can't buy right now, but they still need a roof over their head, right?

Yep. So to be on the seller side, I think it's really the smart play to be. Are you guys kind of comfortable where you're at right now, or do you see any sort of market expansion, whether I guess through services or products. So, I mean, right now we're just focused and we're available nationally and we're just focused on growing our core business, frankly. I think there's enough there. It's a really important problem to solve.

It's a complicated problem to solve. You know, I think one thing that you just said that I really like just reminded me, like, we look at so many transactions every day sitting where we sit. And I think the thing that I always love about real estate is that there is always, because it's not like a high velocity, like, you know, super efficient market, there's always so much room for smart people to really like make a difference and have like, I would say, you know,

a substantially better economic outcome through making smart choices. And you don't see that in a lot of other asset classes. So you get to your point about like, good assets and good locations will sell. And that's where we see like, especially on the investor deals we do, it's like the investors and the agents,

they choose like those two things, just what their strategy was on the acquisition and then what the agent does. on the disposition, it is crazy how much that impacts the outcome, like, you know, in a very material way. And so I always think that's, like, a very cool thing about the real estate market, whether it's fast or slow. The other thing that you said, I just wanted to touch on about, like, kind of being the seller and having leverage that way, we had an agent on the platform, and I, like, loved this. They bid, like, a crazy amount of money for a listing. It was like, it was a nice house

in SoCal, but it was like a $2 million house, and they were putting up, I can't remember maybe, like, $30,000. And so I called them because I was like, I don't know if this is a mistake. This is like very early days when we had barely launched. So I was like looking at everything and calling everyone. I called them. And I was like, hey, I'm just curious. I just want to make sure you're clear on what you're doing and the transaction because

like, I don't know if the economics makes sense for you. And he was like, look, this is my neighborhood. I control every listing in this market. Like when you control the inventory, you run the market. And I'm not letting anyone else get this listing. And I was like, that is super interesting. This is like an incredible agent. Still very active on the platform to this day.

But yeah, I just thought that was funny. If someone's not from an area like that, they hear those numbers, like, oh, you'd make $30,000, $40,000 for a listing. But on the $2 million house, you're going to pull in at least $100. Right. Exactly. It makes sense for sure. I think the big winner in what you're doing is probably the seller. And so that's good.

So that's kind of easy. So if someone wanted to explore selling their house. house with you, they just go what, to ready.com and pretty simple there. Yep, exactly. Just ready.com, click the get started button. We just ask for some basic information about what their house is, what they're doing. We keep it all anonymized. So we'll push it out to the agents in our network, but we don't like give any identifying details at all. They'll message you on the platform with their proposal. And that happens, you know, within 48 hours, you'll have a stack of proposals to choose from.

Very good. And then the actual transaction happens as a normal traditional transaction. what happens. It doesn't happen on the platform, right? No, that's all, look, plenty of people have spent a lot of time and a lot of money optimizing that, and we're so glad that they have. We're not trying to eat their lunch, so. Yeah, I think they still struggle trying to do that. It's such a people of business, and so many people have come along trying to remove the people from the business. And like, at the end of the day, it's like the biggest transaction most people will ever encounter and just doing clicks of buttons and dragging and dropping type solution. that's scary. People don't want to make a mistake. They want a real person there.

100%. And it's emotional. And like to your point, you don't do it much. So it's like you're not a lot of people who are investors. You don't know the first thing about home inspections and how to handle like a buyer's agents request after a walkthrough. And a lot of times I get people move. I was just talking to one of our agents before this. Like, you know, and they're dealing with a really tough sale where like it's a nasty divorce and all the stuff. And it's like, you know, I'm all for technology. I've spent my whole career working in technology. but you can't replace the people. Like, chat GPT is not going to get to, you know, people in a nine-year divorce who wrote each other's throats

to agree on a sale price. Right. That's the human part. It's funny. When I was an agent, I haven't been agent for a really long time. I stopped. I always went to full investing on my own behalf was 2006 or seven.

So it was back in 2001 or 2002. And I actually created a website just for my market to where, you could come and get a CMA, a market analysis for your property. And I remember borrowed like three grand from my dad. I built this whole website. It was just for our market. So it was really just to generate listing leads for myself, obviously. And so I did that.

And as soon as I got it and launched, Zillow was launched the very next day. And I was like, I thought I had the most brilliant idea. And there was a giant behemoth of a company was working on this master plan. But I remember at the time, I actually said that, I think there was like 1.1 million licensees in the country at the time. Everyone was terrified that Zillow was going to come in and just get rid of all the agents. And then here we are what, 20, 25 years later. And I think there's like 1.2 million licensees now in the business, right?

Just to the point, like, you need people involved. And I think if you guys are going to mix tech with real estate, you have to have the person involved. So I think you guys are on the right track. So from an agent's perspective, though, this might be a little intimidating, might have raised the bar, especially if that this model takes off, raise the bar of entry. You know, you can't just come in as a brand new agent and put 50 grand down to bid for a listing. Is it only those numbers that we've thrown out to get a listing, or is it?

Oh, no. Yeah. So a lot of listings, it'll be much lower, you know, just totally depends on the property, the area of the market. You know, we see plenty or close to like $2,000, right? And so, you know, there are all kinds of... Relative to the market then. Exactly. Yeah. It's totally relative. we like manage it that way like we don't want like I said I mean we literally one time saw somebody put in a crazy bed and called them up just to make sure they were doing something smart for their business so no there are plenty of like entry level properties and I actually think to the point of like the anecdote I shared earlier if you're getting started can be really hard even if you're a seasoned

buyer's agent to break into the sell side and you know if you don't have a track record at all it's tough I've heard all kinds of stories from agents about what they've done to get their first listing and so for us it's you know giving those agents a shot I think is super important. And the agents that like love our platform and love our product are the ones that know they're good at what they do and that are really committed to like getting a great outcome for their sellers. It's not for everybody. Probably the agent that are founder hired that couldn't sell his house like isn't going to be on ready. But right. I think that's kind of okay. Yeah. You have those barriers in place like kind of moving we're moving more towards this meritocracy type

society again, right? So survival of the fittest is what I was trying to work. Totally. I thought I was going to fit that in there, but it didn't really happen. So I'm going to leave it there. But that's perfect. Exactly. It's like efficient markets, you know, you just, it's good to have more transparency. If you're just hiring the agent that like, you know, such and such is such and such knows, you just don't know that you're getting the best person for your home. And that's tough. Like you said, this is such an important financial transaction for so many people, like, could be your whole savings. the rate agent affects your outcome a lot.

You don't want that to just be like taking a flyer. You're in all 50 states, your national? We are. We're in all 50 states. Congrats. Do you have any competition out there? Are you guys the only people doing this? I think we're the only people crazy enough to do this if you can believe that. I'm sure that won't last.

Well, it's the crazy people that change the world, right? That's another quote I heard somewhere. We hope so. For sure. Well, it was a pleasure. If someone wants to get in touch with you, they go through Ready.com, right? R-E-D-Y.com. That's right.

R-E-D-Y-Y-D-Y dot com. Yeah, you can chat with our team and sign right up. Oh, cool. Let's stay in touch in a while. I would love to see where you are in a year from now, but it sounds like you're off

to a roaring start, and that was a pleasure having you on. Likewise, thanks so much for having me. You bet. Take care. And that wraps up the epic show. If you found this episode valuable, who else do you know that might too?

There's a really good chance you know someone else who would. And when their name comes to mind, please share it with them and ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care of them. God loves you and so do I. Health, peace, blessings, and success to you.

I'm Matt Terrio. Living the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know, home for us, we got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.