KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Behind the Wheel: Drive from Racing to Real Estate Success with Josh Tucker

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Welcome to Real Estate Riches, where Kathy Burns empowers realtors to achieve the success they've always dreamed of. Starting her career at 55, Kathy built a thriving business that offers the freedom of time and financial independence. And now she's sharing her journey to help others do the same. Whether new to the industry or looking to level up, this channel is your hub for proven strategies, inspiring stories, and the tools you need to grow your real estate business. Join Kathy each week to explore global opportunities, successful systems, and expert insights to take your career to the next level. Get comfortable. Pick a video and start learning. Your journey to success starts now. Hey everybody. I'm Kathy Burns, and I'm here today with Josh Tucker, somebody I really respect and admire in the area who does a lot of luxury. And welcome Josh. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Kathy, for having me on and excited to

Spend a little bit of time with you. Yeah. I have a good podcast here. Yeah. So you just popped up on my radar recently more so than ever. And I'm just really loving everything that you're doing. But let's talk a little bit about your history. How did you get into real estate and NASCAR and all those things?

And how it helped you? Because I think that's important. Yeah. So yeah, as you mentioned NASCAR. So I guess we can start there. I came to the Charlotte area, North Carolina in 2002, from northern Indiana. I grew up around racing, grew up around cars. My dad raced at local short tracks in Indiana when I was a kid. So I kind of grew up going to the racetrack with him and working on his race

cars. And then I started driving when I was probably 13 or 14 years old, driving race cars. And so just kind of always had it in my blood. So came here in 2002 and didn't really know anybody or have a job lined up, but I made the move and came down and started knocking on race shop doors and eventually my way into one and ended up having an 11 year. career in NASCAR working with some really big drivers and won a lot of NASCAR races and stuff like that. So it was a lot of fun. Great contacts too, right? You had fun and got great contacts?

Absolutely, yeah. So I think I figured I started NASCAR 102 and I think I kind of early in my career in NASCAR realized that a lot of the people that came into the sport, the average lifespan of a person in viral as a traveling mechanic in NASCAR was probably 10 to 12, maybe 14 years. Makes sense. Yeah. And then after that, there was somebody younger, quicker, you know, more hungry and motivated to do it for less money and all those good things. So what would happen after that? I noticed that people would come off the road and they would take a shop job, but it was always at a reduced pay.

Sure. So I guess it was maybe 2008, 2009. I started thinking, okay, I've been in this for five, six years. Now I'm probably halfway through, you know, before I'm going to get shoved aside for the next younger person to do my job. And so I started looking at some exit paths, some. strategies out of NASCAR and what that would look like. I've always been a people person. I'm a very social person. I love building relationships and things like that. So I knew whatever I did outside of NASCAR, I wanted it to involve people. And I thought, gosh, I've spent now six, seven years

building some incredible relationships with a lot of local people in the NASCAR world here, whether they were drivers or team owners or mechanics or marketing people or just vendor sponsors. Yeah. Things like that. So landed on real estate in 2008, 2009. And, and, and did a little market study on real estate, and that was in the market crash. So I was like, well, that was probably not a good time to leave my six-figure NASCAR job and dive into real estate that I know nothing about when the market's kind of beat up. And a lot of realtors have exited the industry. So I'm hung tight for four or five more years and then jumping in rural state full time in 2013. Well, that was really a good time because the market was changing, wasn't it?

It was. Yeah, kind of rebounded. It was funny. I think back when I got in 2013, it was still like, I felt like every other sale was still a short sale or a foreclosure. Yeah. But it was over the madness, right? We had came out of the recession and people were back working and spending some money and

things like that. But the banks had all this, you know, pent up inventory that they were still trying to get rid of and help people navigate through. So it was a better market for sure than 08 or 09 when I first decided that I wanted to get into real estate, but still a little bit of a struggling or challenging market. but I think people, you know, when you come into an industry like that, and it's what you get used to right off the start. And some of the contacts that I had and the people that I've made relationships

through NASCAR were looking for some of them investment opportunities. So they kind of allow you to jump in into an opportunistic market with some good friends to buy up some investment property. Yeah, that really was a good time for investment property because it wasn't like you were beating somebody up as much. A lot of those had already done either their foreclosures or their short sales. They were still running around in the short sales scenario then, but there were good buys then. And the banks actually kind of stopped allowing them to go for so cheap. They were still

good deals out there, but they weren't like giving them away. And so there was a lot of good opportunities. And having contacts, boy, and staying connected, it's a big deal, wouldn't you say? Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think as you know, the relationship, you know, We're all states a relationship business for sure. And it's kind of who you know and not just who you know, but who you know that trusts you. That trust you. That's the truth. So you rocked my world when I'm going through my social media and I'm seeing you make this post.

And it must have been on, I don't know if it was on Facebook or Instagram because I didn't at that time look at Instagram as much. You really flipped me. So it was a post where you were offering agents to come into that grandfather home. that you had for the $8 million, and they could just do all their content video at this house. And I thought, man, is he brilliant? That was brilliant for the house.

It was brilliant for you. It was brilliant for grandfather homes to be able to do that. And I just, I loved it because you did it all day long, basically. Yeah. I was blown away. And then you and I talked about, like, who was your guy? Who was the buyer? And really surprised me how you found him on Instagram.

So talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So yeah, the content day was really fun. It was an idea that me and my team came up with, you know, I got to give credit to my people that helped me on the marketing side, Joey, Justin, and Josh, and we got a few good people that really put a lot of good ideas out there. So the content was a lot of fun. We have one rule at content day and there was no rules. So yeah. So we open the house up for six hours and we just encouraged agents to come and, you know, create content at the house. And we said, hey, you don't got to tag us. You don't got to tag me, my personal Instagram.

You don't got to tag our company Instagram. You don't have to tag grandfather. You can if you want, but don't feel pressured to. Just create content however you create it and put it out there. And I think it was an overwhelming success. We had like 250 agents come through over the course of six hours. And it really got a lot of exposure for the house. So grandfather loved it.

I think. And we picked a location to do it at a beautiful house. I mean, it's a really incredible house, fully staged, brand new construction. Beautiful. So, yeah, overwhelming success. The feedback that we got from the agents was very, very positive. They love the opportunity. And what I love most about it was we sometimes get stuck in our bubble, you know,

of what we're used to filming for content, right? And I'm a content person. I'm a social media person and always creating content. But I get stuck in my ways of creating content. And I love why. watching individual agents come through and seeing what they did uniquely to create content in their way. And it opened my eyes up to, wow, you know, I never thought about that or agents that were bringing change of outfits and they were changing clothes and doing multiple

different videos and different outfits. And we had some agents that brought their own videographers and they were coming through with their own videographers doing videos. Some agents just had their iPhones and they were creating their own content, which is cool too. So overall, there were drones. There were drones there too. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people that brought drones and were getting aerial videos. And I said, that's fine. Just don't crash your drones, please. Because there's one point in time, there was like four of them flying above the house. We're all trying to get content. And I said, don't crash your drones into each other. But yeah, overall, it was a great event, a fun day. And like I said, like 250 agents got to come through and create content at a beautiful house on the lake.

They created some really unique and engaging content. So it was a lot of fun. Did you find that many did tag you even though you said you didn't have to? Yeah, yeah. I think I got tagged in about 75. Yeah. Their stories, which was pretty cool and still getting tagged. There's agents that still have been waiting to put the content out or they're posting numerous things.

There was an agent that came through and she did a short reel on the little like bar area room that we got. Oh, yeah, yeah. I love that. private room. Yeah. I called a speak easy. She did a short video on that, just kind of pushing open the glass door and going down and exposing the speakeasy. And I think it's up to almost four million views on TikTok now. Wow. He's exploded. Yeah. So it's been pretty cool. You know, to see agents come in and get that kind of content and have that kind of success with it. And I love it. It's amazing. Well, especially if she did tag you because you got equally the exposure.

Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. And like I said, we weren't doing it. for me, you know, it's certainly getting tagged is great. And I don't dislike that, but we made sure that people know, hey, we're not doing this so that I get the exposure and I get the views and the like. You know, we're doing it for you. We're doing it for the property. Obviously, it exposes the property more when you got 250 agents. Yeah. You know, doing content. We have agents going live during the content day from their Instagrams and, you know, getting followers or getting eyes on it that way. So it was a good time. It was a lot of fun. Was that your first grandfather home that you had done? It is. Yeah. So Grandfather Homes, uniquely, they have in-house role estate broker. So Matt,

who owns Grandfather Homes is also a broker. So this is the first time that they partnered with a outside agent. And they built that house on spec, we say. It certainly doesn't have spec finishes, in my opinion. It shows and feels like a custom home. And it took them a year and a half to build it in a year to design it. But they, you know, it was of the scale and magnitude where they felt the need or, you know, could see the opportunity to bring a third party agent at the lake that wasn't a part of it from day one necessarily and didn't have the emotional ties to it after being there every day for two and a half years. Yeah. And kind of partner up with somebody. So yeah, I was thrilled when they, when Matt called me and said, hey, we're nearing completion and we'd really

love to work with you to help us market and sell this house. And it meant a lot to me that they reached out and picked me out of all the wonderful agents at the lake that they could have talked to. So yeah, but it's been a lot of fun. Well, I think, I'm sure you were picked, especially lately, because you're doing some unique things like that. And that house was unique in itself, a unique situation. They don't normally have another agent on it. They were looking probably for somebody that was really going to do something different. And you, really showed it. And I think because you didn't say you have to tag me, you were giving. And so I'm a Christian gal, I feel like you were blessed right back because you gave. Givers gain always wins,

right? And I know that you do, you just do a lot of unique things. And you sold that house, right? It's under contract. Right. Right. Yeah. And how long did you have it on the market before you went under contract? About 45 days. Yeah. 40, 40 days somewhere in there. Definitely under. under two months. And we had great showing activity. You know, everything went really well. I think grandfather has been very pleased. We threw a big party at that house too, which was a lot of fun, kind of a lot of party where we had, you know, I don't know how many hundreds of people, agents and different people from the real estate world. We have lenders there and wealth managers and attorneys and all kinds of fun people there. Some past clients of grandfather homes came.

And it was a really fun party. We had great food there. We had drinks. We had merma. We had merma. swimming in the pool. We had acrobatic people doing cool things on the lake and a big ball, inflatable ball, clear ball. They were out in the lake and different stuff. So it was a fun time. And, you know, I think things like that, they're fun. They engage people. They get exposure for the house, which ultimately is why we do it. I think between that party, the content day, you know, some of those cool things that we've done at that house and at some other listings, it certainly opens people's eyes. And like I said, it's not all me. You know, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my team's help and the help I get from our brokerage too as well. Sure, sure. Well, I met the guys

and they were younger, they're sharp, they're current. But one of the conversations that you and I had, I mean, I love that party. And the fact that you, see, you took advantage of that party. You didn't just have those people there. You actually made sure there was a videography there. There was great video content. There was content that you'd be able to use just like at that house after the party when all those agents were there, there's tons of content that you'll be able to use and use and use. Because that was powerful. And so you build a reputation in the industry of doing things unique.

And the luxury market isn't moving quite as fast as it was. So unique is what you need. It's just like when you first came to the area and you're knocking on doors, you're going to figure it out, you're going to do what you need to do, you're going to make it happen. Then you strategize the market and you saw that it wasn't the right time to go. You held on and then utilized your contacts. And did you start luxury right from the beginning?

No, I knew right from the beginning I wanted to be in luxury. But I think I don't know too many agents that get into rural state and say I don't want to be in luxury, right? I think it's very common for agents to say, I get DMs every day on Instagram from agents to say, what can we do to break into the luxury space? No, I did not. I certainly didn't start in luxury. I worked my way into it. I lost a lot of luxury listings from people that I had great relationships with in the NASCAR world.

And it wasn't due to trust. It was due to experience, right? Right. And that's understandable. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, just like anything, you know, selling in the luxury market, people want to work with somebody that's experienced that's kind of done it before.

So it took me teaming up with some other agents on a couple of deals to get my name out there and just kept on working my way up. I think what I did early on that helped was everything that I put out. I tell this story. I have a podcast as well. I need to have you on my show too and interview you as well. It's the one thing that I tell people all the time that talked to me about breaking into luxury real estate. From the very first listing I had was $165,000. It was outside of off the lake, obviously outside of Moresville and Concord. But what I did when I got that listing is I said, I'm going to treat it like a luxury listing. right so i went out and hired the best photographer the best floor plan creator i'd done professional

brochures that i had professionally designed and printed and it was funny because people would come to my listing buyers agents would come and show it and you know and they would get like this six page brochure with floor plans in it and pictures and write-ups and they seen the photography and they're like are you crazy like you're literally spending 30% of what's going to be your commission to sell this house on photography And I said, well, I got a plan. You know, everything I put out there, I want to look professional. I wanted to have a luxury feel because at the end of the day, that's your personal brand. It's your image.

It's what people are going to remember you by. And people take notice, right? Oh, they sure do. They sure do it. I started doing that early on and just slowly worked my way up and eventually got the opportunity to do something in the million dollar price point. I think I was in like 2017, so probably three, four years in. And I just kept using those deals as stepping stones.

And it's helped. Yeah, I was fortunate. The first one I did, actually was 2010. And I had a business partner then and nothing was selling over a million dollars. I mean, nothing. And this one was priced at, it had started at $4.5 million. And then it went through three agents. I was going to be the fourth one if I even got it.

Well, back then, you know, the internet wasn't used like it is today. And even that 10, you know, 14 years ago. And you could get a. phone number for somebody by paying a $1.99 if you get their phone number. And so I paid $1.99 for this guy's phone number. It was an expired. And I called him. And I said, hey, Rick. And he goes, who's this? I said, this is Kathy Burns, blah, blah, blah. And I said, I'm going to sell that house for you this time. So you're going to win with me, buddy. And I goes, oh, yeah? You know, like, who are you? And I had nothing to lose. And I'm not a cold caller at all. But I wanted that house. I like that house.

is on the water and the golf course. And anyway, I pursued him like crazy and finally won the listing. But I told him, I said, you're a million high, even though you come down all these numbers. Because I said, nobody's bought over a million dollars in a couple of years. But I did. I sold it to him for exactly the price that I thought I would go for 2.5. And it took 132 days. And I got cash.

But, you know, it's like you said, now you created a president. because I did, I had no money to spend on anything. I didn't have a budget. But I did giant postcards that I mailed out. I worked people who had second homes. I always went after the second homes. And you and I talked when we were at that house. And I said,

I was surprised to see you marketing on Instagram because I didn't think the price point was there. I was so wrong. So you told me, I asked, who's your buyer? Where is he coming from? Is it a primary home or a second? and I don't know how your buyer actually ended up.

That's irrelevant. But you already knew who your target market was, which I love. Let's talk about going after the target market. Yeah. So, you know, we certainly use Instagram. I think I've closed roughly $17 million off of social media last year and a majority of that's Instagram and TikTok. So a lot of people, you know, we're confused.

They're not confused, but I don't want to say made fun of me, but we're shocked to find out that I have a big presence on TikTok as well. And I had a 68-year-old lady reach out to me on Instagram. And she said, hey, I found you on TikTok. And you know, you can't message people on TikTok unless you follow each other. And so I found you on Instagram and DMG on Instagram. I got this lake house that we want to sell. It's a second home.

And it was a $7 million sale, you know. So the business is out there on TikTok, Instagram. There's a lot of it. And we love creating the content and putting it out there. And we've grown some good following. And talking about the kind of identifying your buyer and going. after that market. So I kind of sell, I've kind of carved out a niche here along with a handful of of other agents at the lake. We're selling kind of the high, high end luxury, the ultra look, if you

will, north of five million, north of six million now in the eight figures, north of ten million. And when I really started doing the research on some of these and, you know, I've now sold with my sale today, actually recorded today of Sailor's Watch for eight and a half million. Congrats. Thank you. Yeah. With that sales are my fifth time kind of selling in this ultra luxury space that's happened now, you know, 18 times at the lake. So I really started honing in and doing the research on who are these 18 buyers that have bought these $6 million plus dollar homes around the lake. Where are they coming from? Are they buying with cash or mortgages? And the overall,

overwhelming trend is that these are cash buyers coming from South Florida. So all five of mine that I've sold north of $6 million were all cash fires and they all were primary residents of Florida. Yeah. So like for Whispering, Oaks, you know, the listing that you're talking about. Same deal. That's a South Florida buyer and they're paying cash. But we really seen this trend. So we're doubling down and investing heavy in the South Florida market. And it's really, there's a lot of people in the South Florida market that are looking for freshwater lake houses, not in Florida, right? Because they want to go to a place where there's four seasons. But they don't enjoy it in the winter without having a foot of snow on the

ground. They can come in the summer and enjoy a freshwater lake and all the fun and activities that we have around Lake Norman. So it's really an ideal market for them. And they are buying up real estate here in droves. There was just an article this morning. I'm sure you've probably seen it from the New York Post that talked exactly about it. I shared it on my Instagram. If you haven't seen it, you should go and look at the article because it's talking about Lake Norman becoming this ultra wealthy buyer second home market, you know, and all these people are buying these homes for second homes, vacation homes, and they're coming in droves from South Florida. So it's pretty wild to see. Well, and what would you say is the age grange? Yeah, I would say on the low end,

probably mid-30s to the high end of probably, I mean, mid-50s to 60. Okay. And so. So the mid-50s, that's who I never thought was on Instagram. The 30s, yes, but I didn't think the 50s, maybe the 40s. And that was my mistake. Man, you just gave me such a wake-up call when we were there that day. I'm like, I'm going to change everything. Yeah. I think all the social platforms are great, right? Yeah. You know, rely heavily on Facebook and they're on it every day and they've figured out a way to make Facebook work for them.

And their audience expects them to be there. So I'm sure for me, I just always gravitated towards Instagram and towards TikTok. You know, my attention span is pretty short. So sometimes I don't know, the algorithm doesn't work as well for me for Facebook. Facebook's now started sharing a lot of reels. It's pretty interesting. I still don't get near the engagement on Facebook for real as I do on Instagram or TikTok. But so I think if Facebook works for you, I think it's great.

Keep doing it. Keep doing what you're doing. You're obviously doing very well and just stay after it. But if you want to try something different and you want to explore, you know, Instagram has a phenomenal following. And there are people of all age ranges on there looking for all sorts of rural state opportunities. I do a lot of, I do all the platforms, but my focus has always been LinkedIn, Facebook, and now I switched it to YouTube to really enhance that because I can take pieces of the shorts from the YouTube, turn them into reels for both platforms, even Instagram or rather, even TikTok is

doing long form on there too now. So I cross use a lot of stuff. And the podcasts are really fun lately because I'm interviewing agents from all over today the guy that I was interviewing before you he's from Italy he's a global agent and I've realized that's exactly who I want to be I want to be a global agent I want to be able to do outgoing referrals more than incoming actually just at the stage of the game for me and there's a huge market and the ultra wealthy are the ones that buy all over the world they're also looking for investment properties in all the different countries. Because so far this month, I've got an investor that I connected in Portugal. He wanted to buy hotels. And while we were on the Zoom call, he goes, well, my dream is to buy

a castle in France. I said, I can get you that. I went into my contacts and found an agent who said, I've got two in Bordeaux. I said, great. Now we're talking to him. So then that whole story I just told you about with the Portugal for the equestrian estate. That's a two, between all of those, those over, over 10 million in outgoing referrals. Because the ultra wealthy, who you're dealing with, they're not just one house wonders here. Yeah, it's bigger. And when we start thinking bigger and tactical, like you said, you analyze those buyers, who they were, where were they coming from, what's their age, what's their price points that they're buying. I mean, in the past two years, I've never seen such, so many over $5 million homes on Lake Norman.

I mean, I sold one, I think it's two and a half years, maybe even three years ago. I sold one for five. It was the highest one I ever did. And I remember thinking, man, I'm really making it now because that's a big number. And it was a big number on the lake. And but the funny thing was I sold that for full price in 11 days. Yeah. That surprised me over my price because I told the seller, you're nuts with this price.

And he bought me on it and got it. Cash, like you said. Yeah. The lake market has changed tremendously. And it's been wild to experience. Who would have thought, you know, even four years ago right before COVID, who would have thought that within the next five years, we would be seeing eight digit resells at the lake? You know, and now we are.

We've seen three in the last 45 days. where 10 million plus. Right. So it is wild and it's really interesting to track, like I said earlier, the people that are buying these. And how are they buy, you know, are these cash buyers, which they all are predominantly cash. They're not financing anything. And they were cash in 2021 and 2022, you know, I sold one in Cornelius for $7 million and 21 when interest rates were 2%.

And these people paid $7 million cash for their house in Cornelius, the same. in 2020 when we sold Tennessee Circle for seven and a half million. It was an athlete and it's a cash buyer. So it's fun to track that and figure out where these people are coming from. And you're right, but there's some of these, you know, I actually seen a need in the market. We started up a concierge business or some of these buyers that were coming in and buying these second homes and they're only here several weeks out of the year. And they needed somebody to look after the house for them. So kind of house management, you know, make sure the cleaners are coming, make sure the landscapers are coming, make sure that their boats tied up correct at the dock.

We're just checking in on things, right? And making sure that there's no issues inside the house. So we started that up and then we started the concierge side, right? So a lot of these people are flying in private to the Statesville Regional Airport. So we're taking their cars to the airport for them ahead of time and dropping them off. So they're there when they get off their jet and they're sending us shopping lists, right? Here, we're coming in town for a weekend. We don't want to deal with grocery shopping.

So here's what we want at the house, stocked and ready for us when we arrive. Really? that level of service because we want to be in these people's minds when they're thinking about real estate, whether they're buying here at the lake or somewhere else in the country or like you said globally, you know? I'd love that. So Lori Lawrence, you probably know who he is. I do.

You know, he's got so many of the luxury vacation rentals on the lake. Last I heard he had 24. And I said, Lori, what do you think set you apart? And he said, well, we do a concierge service. And for the people that are coming for the VR. RBO, which I thought was brilliant because he had massages, the chefs would come in, all that stuff. Same thing you're saying, but yours is really making sense for this whole thing because they're not here to offer.

Yeah. So yeah, different. My business is a little different. We don't offer our services for any short-term rentals, right? Right. So Lori's got that market covered along with a couple others locally that very, very well with that. ours is specific for these people that are coming in and buying these six, eight, 10, 12 million dollars houses as private residences.

They're not, they have no interest in putting them in the fourth term rental market, but they want somebody that's local that's going to go through their house on a weekly basis and make sure that everything's being intended to. And then on top of that, they love the concierge side of it, right? With report transportation and shopping and, you know, we can line up private chefs and we can do all that stuff too. So yeah, so it's kind of similar to what Lori's doing, but on a little different level. Yeah, a whole different market. Yeah, it's a different market.

But smart. You saw a need just like he did and you just leveled up. And I think you really touched on some great nuggets here. You know, you worked to get to the higher point. You earned that trust. You partnered with people. You, your marketing has been exceptional since day one. You spend the money. You're unique.

You invest in it. And then you analyze your clients. Like, who's your buyer? I always, if I have a listing, man, I'm immediately thinking, who's the person buying this house? Who's the family? Who is it? Where are they? And that's where my target marketing is going. So, man, I love to have you on here, Josh. Great insights for us all. I appreciate it. Yeah, I love doing this stuff as well. And I think people like yourself and so many others that are willing to get on and share insights and share things that have helped us become successful over the years with newer agents. are coming in or agents that have been in it for a while, but need to refresh or are scared of

change. You know, I think these are great opportunities for people to take away one little nugget that might help their business and I'm all for it. So I appreciate that. Yeah. All right, buddy. Well, thanks again so much. So if you like this, please subscribe, share it. I'll have all Josh's contact information on here, links to everything that he does and check him out because he's something special. Thanks again. Thanks. Thanks. Appreciate it. So thanks for joining me on this episode. of real estate riches, wasn't that great? I'm sure you've got a nugget or two. I know I did. So if you liked it, please subscribe below, share it with everybody, make some comments. We really find that invaluable. And if you're thinking that you would love to talk about this a little

bit more, let's schedule a business strategy call. I'll have the link below. Let's see if we can't mastermind together and see if we can't empower each other. That would be great. So until next time, signing off. Hope to see you on the next one.