KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Insider's Guide to Real Estate Thriving Amidst Market Shifts and Challenges

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Hello, happy day to you. Today, it is time for Real Estate Real World. And I'm Marguerite Chris Villo, your hostess. We're really excited because we just found out we have had 35,000 downloads to Real Estate Real World, which is amazing. I never in my wildest dreams thought that it would be that crazy. But it's really exciting. And thanks to all of you fantastic listeners for sharing and spreading the word on our podcast. Today I'm excited to have a great new guest, Christy Gillentine. And I'm pretty sure I got that because I asked. I double check. And I'm excited to talk to her because let's tell you a little bit about her. Christy Gillentine is a renowned figure on the real estate industry, making her mark since

becoming a realtor in 2004. In 2009, she founded the 918 home team in Tulsa, Oklahoma, leading it to prominence with visionary leadership and a trailblazing approach. With a commitment to customer-centric practices, Christy's team consistent. outpaces challenges and adapts to market changes. Beyond her achievements in sales management and exclusive listings for Premier Builders, she has overseen the sale of over 4,000 homes, solidifying the 9-18 home team as a top 10 team in Oklahoma. As a dedicated coach, Christy imparts her business expertise to agents emphasizing continuous growth and achievement. Her accolades include the Best of Brokers Arrow Real Estate Business Award and recognition

as a top 100 real estate professional. Christy Gillen, team's unwavering commitment to excellence continues to shape the real estate landscape. Welcome, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You bet. I'm excited to chat with you. I love meeting new people. So I was really excited to see your information come across and I'm like, I need to get to note this guy a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. I was excited to be invited. I'm very happy to be here. Yeah. So you've been in real estate now. What let's be 10 years this year, right? 20. Oh, wait. Oh, that's right. What kind of math? That's why I failed algebra three times. So there you. That's okay. 2004, yes, 20 years. 30 years for me. So it was 30 in December. So that's pretty cool. That's a long time. So you've been through all the markets.

Yeah. Yeah. Saw 2008 hit us here differently than it did some of the areas. Saw the aftermath of that. Going through the changes now with the current shift that we're dealing with. So it's just, it's interesting. But you've been in it long enough. You see the patterns. And you've, you've, You can see where things are trending, and I really keep my eye on that. I have a saying that great agents do well in any market. And they do because they adapt and adjust to whatever those changes are. So what is your, like right now we have a lot going on in the market. I don't know what your market's like in Oklahoma. I know that out here, I'm in Northern California.

And we're still dealing with the lack of inventory stuff, right? We are seeing interesting because we talked a little bit about, this before the show, and I wanted to ask you about it, you're doing a lot of work or have done quite a bit of work with new home sales. And those seem to be just like rising to the top. I want to say over 50% of our sales in our market last year were new home builders and new home sales. What are your thoughts on that? So absolutely. And the market is demanding it. There is a huge lack of inventory, as we know. And therefore, there is a huge demand for housings. And one of the things that I keep trying to talk to other agents about is this is how buyers win in this market is with new homes.

Because if you're out there and you're looking for a home that's already on the market that's built and been sitting there and maybe it's 10, 20 years old, 30 years old, you're going to be competing with all the other buyers that are also in that same price point. Because as we know, we're still coming in over list price. We're still having multiple offers. I don't know about your market. We are. So with new construction, it's a little bit different because if somebody buys that,

house, they can just go build another house down the street. So essentially, there is the ability to have the inventory that you need. Most of the time they're going to, at least in our market, they're going to pay your closing costs. They're probably going to give you incentives. I've seen incentives such as 4.99 interest rates, 4.5 interest rates in this market. So essentially, as a buyer, you can come in. You're not competing with other buyers. You're getting incentives from the builder. You're getting your closing costs paid. And if you're lucky, you're getting an amazing. rate as well. So that I see is what's really driving these new home sales. And what's interesting about the new home sales, at least I see this in my market, is a lot of them won't. They don't drop the

price because they want the appraisals to stay high, right? Yeah. But they're offering all kinds of incentives of the backdoor, upgrades and landscaping and closing cost credits and a number of other things. But the struggle is, I don't know about your market. Some of the builders out here are not offering any kind of agent compensation. Now that we're not seeing in our market. We have seen it go down a little bit. So some of the builders were offering a lower compensation a couple years ago, but they have come back up since somewhat of a more shift, if you will. But no, they're still, as a matter of fact, we have D.R. Horton's largest builder in the United States. And they were offering a 4% commission all through December. Nice. I know that Lenar, who was a big one out here, wasn't paying. And then I was like, okay, so you're not

going to pay a commission to the agents, but you also want us to use your title companies. Right. So it's been a challenge. The interesting thing is that I think a lot of agents don't give enough credit to the new homes and you need to go out and see the inventory that's in your market. Like what is going on in the new homes? Because I live in an area that's growing pretty rapidly. And we have probably 10 new homes subdivisions within 10 miles of my house.

Yeah. And it's interesting to go in and see. And I'm curious, and maybe the answer to this or not, but we're seeing a lot more of the over 55 communities coming up in our area. There's three within five miles in my house. That's interesting. We do have two here that I know of that are new built neighborhoods that are over 55, but those are actually luxury price point properties, very high end. I have seen in the past here town homes and more of a downsizing. for over 55, but I'm not seeing that currently in this market. Well, some of these new homes, these over 55, they are like resorts, literally resort living. Like there's one down the street called Esplanade and they have bars and pools and pickleball and workout rooms and polis and you can rent cabanas by the pool. And it's like, I've sold three in there. It's been great. It's quite a resort. Yeah.

But the new homes, they're doing things differently. we're seeing not only a lot more of the over 55, but we're seeing now the ones that have the, what they call it, they have a second unit, like a multi-family. Yeah. Which has been really touched on that.

We've seen two master type floor plans become more, more popular for people that do have family better and multi-generations and things like that. It's interesting always to see the trends and the different markets and how the builders are building to suit. those needs. So you mentioned that you're rebuilding your team and what does that look like and what kind of people are you looking for to be a part of your team? So for me, I always want agents that are coachable, growth oriented, able to work a plan, have some self-discipline and our team players.

And then of course, one of the most important things is really care about the people that they're serving. And I think with those ingredients, I can usually find a phenomenal agent. It's funny. My previous guest I had on the show that I was recording today, we were talking about how a big challenge in the real estate industry is a lot of agents just don't look at it like a business. Yeah. They don't really look at. There's that famous thing, everyone wants to go to heaven. No one wants to die. So they all want the results and they want the money that comes with it, but they don't necessarily want to put in the work that is associated. And I think we're seeing the natural cleansing of the industry, so to speak.

Yeah, absolutely. I see that. And statistically, I think it's 50% leave in the first year, 50% on that second year, and then another 2530 on the third year. So if you can make it past three years in the industry, you're probably doing good. But it's those people that have those skill sets that are doing that. Because by year three, you're really taking off and doing big things. Not that you can't in your first two years as well.

You absolutely can. but that's what I see with that. It's interesting too because I've said this a couple times. We have a whole generation of real estate agents and consumers that since 2010 have not seen a challenging market, right? So they've literally, all we've seen is prices continue to rise and interest rates continue to be low. So when the interest rates like bumped up last year, like people didn't know what to do.

They were like lost and confused. I'm like for most of my career rates were in the five to eight percent. Like when they got down into the twos and threes, we thought it was insane. So not only do we have all these real estate agents who are having to adjust, but consumers are really having to adjust to the what's really going on. Like we're not in a market where you're in a position in which maybe they have three percent interest on the home that they're currently living in. And maybe their lifestyle has changed and they have to sell or they want to sell.

but they feel stuck because they know it's going to cost them so much more to live. So it is an issue. And I will say it's probably a better issue than some things that we could be dealing with. We could be dealing with people sitting at home with 18% interest rates and not going anywhere. We're always trying to find that solution for the market. Some people are going to be really lucky and be able to stay in their home for a long time as long as it suits their needs. The other guys that do have to move, it's like, how do we find solutions for them? And some of them, we may not be able to solve all those problems.

We can't solve the rates. We can't solve the fact that maybe they got their home at X rate and they're going to come in at, maybe they got it at three and they're going to come in at six in their next one. But there's ways in which we can position them to at least get the best for that next purchase. And that can look like a lot of different things, a lot of different things. What did you do before you got into real estate? I was a mom. So actually, when I got in real estate, I had a five-year-old and four-year-old twins.

And I ran up business. Yeah, they were 11. months apart. And that's why I came into real estate. Actually, I came in with the team concept. Wait a minute. Hold on. So you had a five-year-old. You had a son. Yep. And then 11 months later, you had twins. So you had three kids under two. Yeah, three kids under one. Three kids under one. Yeah. He was there. My oldest was at their first birthday. Or they were at his first birthday. They were a month old at his first birthday. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, my two youngest are 17 months apart. And I thought that was wrong. You know. So they're all grown now. They're all grown. They're all super close. My daughter

worked for me for years in the industry. She's actually in law school now. My boys never did really get into real estate. But yeah, they probably honestly have seen more houses than most people because when they were young and you do what you got to do, especially when I was young in this industry, and I didn't have a lot of business going on. And I trained my agents to do this years later as well. I committed to seeing 20 homes a week. So if I'm not showing buyers, if I wasn't showing buyers and I didn't have anything going on,

we're going to go see 20 homes a week. And I had the kids. So what I would do is I would pick a neighborhood. And I would find if there's a neighborhood and they've got 10 homes and maybe five of them vacant, I wasn't disturbing people that lived in the homes at the time. I would go and I would preview those homes. And so, yeah,

they've probably seen hundreds of, No, I love that so much because that is some of the advice I give agents all the time is to get up and go look at homes if you don't have anything going on. Because I don't know if you've had the same experience you probably have, but I can't tell you how many times I've walked through a house and then in the next 24 hours, maybe 48, I meet somebody and I'm like, I just looked at a house like two days ago that would be perfect for you. It just always seems to tie together because energy creates energy. Absolutely. It happened to me more times than I can count. And how many times, right, did you go out and maybe you did that? And then a week later you get a listing appointment in that neighborhood.

And now you can just talk. Oh, I saw that house up the street. It has ABC in it. And it's just naturally coming out. It's just a natural conversation. Yeah, knowing your inventory is like nothing else. Like I have a friend, Nick. I'm going to, I got to get him on the podcast.

And he has a Sotheby's and he has a big, he's a big luxury agent. And I remember asking him his story. He goes, I was new and I had a wife and baby at home. And he goes, so I would literally go out and spend all day driving in the neighborhoods that I wanted to sell in. And sometimes I would just park my car in front of the house. And when people come by to get flyers, I'd pull out the flyer and hand it to him and say, can I show it to you? And he ended up getting to know all the people that he knew every house, knew every inventory, He knew every little nook and cranny of the areas of neighborhoods.

And he's an extraordinary human being. He sells stupid amounts of real estate and high-end luxury. But he did that by getting out there and getting to know the inventory and getting to know the neighborhood. I don't know why more agents don't do that. But I think that's probably one of the best things I hear. And think about this, Marguerite. If I was going to do that today and I wanted to go and preview a bunch of homes, how much work it's going to take me.

So I'm going to have to go in there. I'm going to find these homes. I'm going to set up the appointments, yada, yada, yada, go out there and show them. Or I can go buy a model home in a new construction neighborhood and I could see homes just boom. So there's different ways of doing that. But yeah, getting out there and getting to know the inventory is really a huge key for success for newer agents. I believe so. So what is your favorite part about being a real estate agent?

What part do you love? There's two parts. I really love making sure that clients are taking care of. So anybody that's working with people on my team, I want them to have the most amazing experience. And I know a lot of say that, but that's a big deal. We're dealing with people's most stressful event in their life and helping guide them through that. That's a big part of it for me.

But training people how to help guide people through that. So helping others create their career, elevate their career, grow their business. That is a huge passion for me as well. And I actually learned that from growing my team and helping people join me that maybe they had been doing real estate for years and they were able to join the team and then double their income within a year just by plugging in and doing the right things. Just a little pivots here and there. So that's always been a big passion for me as well. What is your biggest challenge or frustration with the industry? I would say in the last couple years, it is new people coming in and thinking that this is how

real estate is. That has been really frustrating because as you know, this market we had was anomaly of lack of housing and extremely low interest rates. And I have never seen a market where we could put a house on the market and know that we're going to get 12 offers by the end of the day or at the week. Like, when did that ever happen before? So I know a market in which it's a six months inventory. And you're going to have a long conversations with these sellers over a period of time because the house isn't, it's going to take time for the market to absorb it. So that was frustrating for me because what happened was I'm big on teams obviously because I do some people thrive by themselves but I do think that success can be found on the right team so a lot of agents didn't want to deal with that because

they just had business falling into their laps and what we're seeing now is a lot of those same agents struggling and trying to find the answers so that they can do maybe what they did when the market was phenomenal how do they continue that because it's not coming as easy and it is a lot harder and It's, I hate to say it, but I don't think our market's going to do fine, but I don't think our inventory pool is going to necessarily improve in the next 12 months. So how do we as agents deal with that? So we were talking a little bit about the new homes and it's still the lack of inventory that we're seeing, right? Yeah. And I know that there's a great guy here locally, he only does local stuff, that he's an appraiser.

His name is Ryan Lundquist. And he's super amazing. he's always pulling these stats and reports and things like that to show us. And he has said the same thing. He doesn't think that the inventory problem is going to be solved anytime soon. Because even for some of these builders, if they go buy the land today, sometimes that whole process can take years depending on where you're at. Like we have a lot of farmland in our area, a lot of agricultural land.

So we have a thing called the Williamson Act. And if you buy the land, it has to be non-producing for 10 years before you can convert it into residential land. So it was to keep them from going and buying all the farmland. It's not having farmland. But I know even in our market, it's definitely the inventory thing is a challenge. But it's weird. It's a catch-22 because sellers think that there's no inventory

and that they're going to get ridiculous prices for their home and they're going to get all these multiple offers. So they're not being realistic about pricing their home. And then they wonder when the house doesn't sell right away. And that's what we're saying. We're seeing those days on market take up a little bit. Yeah. And so it's taking some time to really stop and make sure that as an agent,

you really understand, which is, again, I'm going to take them back because I think it was brilliant what you said. I preach it all the time about getting out there and actually seeing the homes and the inventory. is you can compare apples to apples. Absolutely. And it's so easy to have conversations with people when you've seen the inventory, when you can have conversations and be knowledgeable.

And it just gives that confidence to an agent that they do know what they're talking about because they're out there putting in the work. Sure, maybe they're not selling houses just yet. Or maybe their production is slowed down a little bit, but they're still doing the work. They're still doing the industry stuff. And they're still going to be able to easily have conversations with their client. when that time comes because they're staying relevant in what's happening. 100%. So what are you excited about in this next coming year? What direction are you going? What are you working on right now?

I'm really excited. I am excited about new construction because I do see it as such a big opportunity. I'm also really excited about regrowing my team coming back in from new construction itself with this company that I'm with EXP now. I've been with EXP since October and I'm honestly shocked at the resources that are available that I had no idea. I had no idea. And I'm almost 50 and I was able to plug in and just figured out just easy. Being able to regrow my team in a way that is a little bit different than it was before because we're more of a self-organized team. And I'm very excited about that because agents can do their own thing but also still be part of a really big. network. Yeah. Yeah, I've been with EXP now almost seven and a half years. It was eight, seven years in

October. So I've been with EXP for a while and it just keeps getting better and better. This isn't intended to be at EXP pitch fest. It's it continues to grow and advance. And it's fun because having been in real estate 30 years, I'm seeing a lot of familiar faces that I've known over the years who are now here, right? Right. And collaboration over competition is, is rises true within this company and all the options and opportunities that you have here and that are being built for our agents. It's pretty powerful. Yeah. And we've got people in this company that were leaders in other companies, other real estate companies, which I wasn't aware they were here until I came. And I'm like, whoa, okay. Yeah, one of my favorite that's here right

now is Leo Pereja. And I have known Leo for many years from the REO days. I remember him when he was, because he's young. He's still young. But when I met him back at the the REO days. I was a big REO agent. And he was crushing it back then. I want to say he was like in his 20s. I'm like, who is this young punk? And now he's here at EXP and he's doing some phenomenal things. So it's really fun to watch people go through these transitions in their career and in their life. And now he's married with young kids. It's really, it's powerful to see. You mentioned REO, and that kind of brought me to, I'm going through the modules for REO and Relo certification for EXP. And I hadn't done that at my last brokerage. They didn't necessarily offer that to everybody.

And I did prior to at other brokerages. But I hadn't dealt with REOs since the market correction of 2008-ish. And what I'm hearing is we're going to see REOs in our future, but it's not going to be residential. I'm hearing commercial. Yeah, I would agree. And there's also a division and I can get you more information about this online or if anyone's listening, they're free to reach out. Is one area that Leo was significant in developing is institutional investors. And these investors went in and bought blocks and blocks of houses, right? Now a lot of them are selling them. Yeah.

And so they are doing it through EXP Realty. So I think EFP Realty handed out like 1,400 properties in the last couple weeks from these institutional investors. It's exciting. Exactly. When we're talking about how does a buyer or how does a buyer, how does a realtor navigate this market if there's a lack of inventory? It's resources like this, right? It's resources of large, a big group that maybe an individual company, a small, independent brokerage, maybe doesn't have access to those resources, such as connections with these large companies. And now you have a listing and now you have something that you can market with that from. So you always have to be thinking about, sure, nobody's going to be selling right now. but where are those other opportunities?

And that could be Arios, that could be saying, hey, maybe I need to look into commercial. It's funny because my quote I created, my favorite quote, I'm sure I created it, is you get paid in direct proportion to your ability to figure shit out. You have to get resourceful. You have to get scrappy and creative and find ways to get business if you want to make it in this business.

Otherwise, you can go back to doing whatever you were doing before or go and get an hourly job or which I'm not cut out for that. The reality is that there's tons and tons of options and opportunity. You just have to find it and you have to put in the effort and the work to get out there and see what's available. Christy, this has been an awesome conversation. I'm super grateful for you joining us today. Is there any parting words you'd like to say before we wrap up? No, I would just say, guys, just if you're struggling out there, find a group, find a tribe of agents to hold yourselves accountable and keep that energy going because that

really keep that mindset. And I think that's the main thing and just be looking for opportunities. If one door closes, two more will open. I love that. I love that. And get out there and look at houses. Get to know your inventory. That's my favorite quote of the day today. So yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a true pleasure getting to know you. Hopefully I'll see you at an EXP event here coming up soon. And everybody, thank you for joining us again on real estate, real world, where we get to talk to all the cool people.