KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Getting Started in Luxury Real Estate With Scott Bautista

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

I'm your host, Juan Carl's Baronecetti, and I couldn't be more excited to start off season two with an incredible guest. He's a good friend of mine. We're in the same company, and he's been crushing the game for the last few years when it comes to luxury real estate. Without further ado, let's jump straight into this. Scott Batista, how are you doing, brother? How's everything? I'm doing great, bro. Thank you for having me on the show.

Anytime. So for all of you who don't know, Scott, him and his brother, Sean, are the founders of Batista Twins real estate, brokered by EXP. Last year alone, their team sold $99 million worth of real estate, and they are complete mega influencers when it comes to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. They're just going out there. And they're the most clean cut guys, razor-sharp suits, matching Porsches. Like, if there's anyone you got to follow, you got to follow these guys. But Scott, how you been?

How's your week so far? Oh, it's been busy. We got a lot going on, a ton of deals. I'm getting closed. So we're excited about it. Spring market here. So you're in the major market of Seattle, right? Is that your main focus?

Yeah, in Seattle. What's your inventory been like the last couple of years? Is it tight like everyone else? Yeah, it's been really tight, especially this year more than ever. I mean, we're down 48% from last year, which is crazy. So it's a tight market and, you know, these buyers are getting desperate out here. And what are you doing to go out there and secure listings and just stay competitive in the marketplace with so many games involved? You know, what I do is just connect with people face to face and Instagram.

always on social media in people's DMs, you know, contacting everybody. It's a contact sport, this business. So listen, let's take it back to day one. You and your brother, tell us your origin story. Like, how did you guys get started in real estate and why? Yeah. So it was like 2005. My cousin, he was a mortgage loan officer.

And he saw I was working at Fullocker. I was there for about six years. And he's like, hey, you should try to push yourself out of your comfort zone and do real estate. There's no cap to it. And I was like, that sounds like a really good business. Sean and I actually did the classes back then together in 2005. And, you know, we both passed the classes. He actually decided to sell cars instead.

And for me, I went into the business to build it in 2006. I got licensed. And then from there on, it was, you know, 22-year-old kid trying to make it. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then when you got started, right? Like, what was that like just starting out as a brand new agent? Did you start prospecting on your own?

Did you get off to a start where you did really well? Like what was your first year like? My first year was actually not too bad. I did seven deals my first year. And it was pretty good because I had a mentor at the company that I was working at back then. I would be in the office. And back then in 2006, people would walk into the office and you would get the lead.

You know what I mean? Those days are over, right? Over. Long on. Yeah, no, something you brought up, I think it's great that when you're starting out, if you have a good mentor or a coach, it's just going to go out there and save you three or four years of your time when it comes to things. So I always recommend people join a real estate team, get a mentor or coach starting out,

and really we could reduce that failure rate so much more. You got to the point where you started your own real estate team. You guys have 15 agents as of last year. You're doing really successful. What's that transition like from going from like a solo agent to actually building out a team and scaling that out? You know, it's definitely a lot of work, you know, because we got agents that are newer and then we have seasoned agents that know what they're doing.

So you definitely have to put the time and effort in mentoring these agents so they become successful and balancing that and having my brother to help helps a lot. Nice. And do you guys split up the roles like one person does more of the managerial side of the team and the other person focuses on sales and marketing or do you guys just work it together? We work it together. Very cool. How has social media like really affected your business as far as like growth and stuff like that?

man it's been incredible growth from social media i don't know what we would be doing without it because that's where most of our business comes from now is social media because people see what we do and they reach out and that's where the deal starts is in our dms we've been referred tons of business from people out of state just because they see how our presence is on you know on instagram and facebook and all that and then tell us more about like your brand on instagram because you guys are always in the matching like suits, you're driving the exotic cars, luxury homes, multi-million dollar like mansions. Is that something you guys put together or tell me more? Yeah, we definitely had a vision because, you know, in this luxury market for us to capture those type of people,

we have to be living that lifestyle. I feel like, you know what I mean? And be able to connect with those type of people having the same interest as us. So that's, yeah, we have that vision of always having that luxury feel and style. So that's what we put out there. Nice. And you, guys are in a pretty expensive price point. Like I'm pretty sure you guys are what, correct? Before it's a price range over there. Average is around 800,000. Yeah, just for like the Maine King County, but where we live on the east side, it's around 1.1 million. Wow. Yeah. Is there a difference for you from selling regular residential homes, let's say 500K or less and selling these $1, $3 million homes? Or what's that like? No, there's actually no difference at all. I mean,

just the clientele is different. You know what I mean? They just have more money. But the whole process is the same. We treat a 500K client the same way we treat our multi-million dollar client. I always tell everyone that if you're going to go out there and your goals to get into luxury real estate at some point, there's no reason for you to go out of your way to really postpone that journey. If you're going to build a database of buyers or sellers in a given market, you might as well start with the buyers or sellers that have a higher net worth and have access to these $2,3 million homes because it's still the same exact work at the end of the day. So you might as well just go for the for the home run.

When it comes to like building your database and generating leads, right? Where do you get the majority of your business from? The majority is from Instagram. We got these deals that are about to close here from Instagram. And these guys are buying $3.2 million, 2.7 million. And another guy's buying at $1.5 million. So these are some recent deals that we got from Instagram. And they just collide into your DMs and they're like, I want to buy a house?

They're not. It's from agents, though, from other companies that refer us the business. Oh, wow. So your biggest deals are coming from agent or agent referrals in other markets. Yeah, those big luxury deals are definitely coming from that. And also our referrals because I've been to end this business for 16 years as well. The most recent ones, like I said, is Instagram. What would your tips be for a brand new agent who wants to break into luxury and is like literally just getting started?

Yeah, I would place myself in an area that's affluent, you know, what I mean and hang out there, gyms, restaurants, car clubs. Those are some tips that I would give and having the right mindset as well and believing that they can do it. So self-development with books that they could grow with. Something I noticed with a lot of like the 1% producers versus the other 90% is that they're always constantly growing. They're attending new conferences. They're taking courses. They're reading daily. So if you're an agent out there and you really want to separate yourself from everyone else, never stop growing as far as your intellectual capacity, always stay reading a really good book. I think books are a great way to just really expand

that learning curve and just get from A to Z much faster. Do you have a favorite book of yours? Anything you recommend? There's this one called Living the Law of Attraction by Jack Canfield. That's one that I definitely recommend all my agents and whoever I feel like just wants to get better in life in general. I love it, man. This has been really good stuff. I wanted to make this one short and sweet, get straight to the point. Any other advice for the listeners out there who are in luxury or looking to really scale their game up to really get to that next level in their business? I would say to surround themselves with other agents that are doing the luxury. That's how we got into it is surrounding ourselves with other luxury agents. And now that EXP has blown up so big,

there's tons of luxury agents at EXP that could help them grow. I love it. And now what's your vision for the future for you, the team, the business? What do you see yourself five years from now? Five years from now, I'll have about 20,000 agents, you know, with me with EXP. And we're going to be selling a billion dollars worth of real estate every year. I freaking love it, man. Massive gold. For sure.