KGCI: Real Estate on Air - NAR Settlement Impact on Real Estate Agents, Buyers, and Sellers with Will Penney

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Basically, what I think is going to happen is we're just going to kind of figure things out. And my biggest fear is that real estate agents are going to screw it up. Real estate agents are going to be the biggest pain in the ass in all of this because they're the ones that are going to be bringing it up and talking about it. And they're so desperate because most of them aren't, a lot of them aren't making any money. So they're going to offer to do a 3% listing and not pay a buyer agent. I think it's going to all be in the hands of the weak real estate agents. Are you freaked out about the NAR stuff that's coming in August?

Like maybe you're a buyer's agent and you're like, how am I going to get paid? Do I need to come up with alternative pay structures? What's the listing agent going to, you know, promote on my behalf of the seller? Or maybe you're a listing agent and you're like, how do I tackle this with a seller? What do I say? Or maybe you're just like laying up at night thinking about what's going to happen? I don't know. Well, if that's you, this show is the show for you.

We dive deep into all things, gnar, we look back into the history of what's happened in the past to give us some feeling about what might be happening in the future. Today we have Will Penny on the show. He's out of Akron, Ohio, which I always want to pronounce Akron. And he's been a realtor since 1988. He got his real estate license when he was 19. He has since then sold 2,500 plus homes. He has been around the block.

He's been through it all. He's been through the market crash in 2008. He's been through Y2K as an adult. He brings that up later on the episode. And he was like, you guys remember that? We were like, yeah, we're 10. He's owned a brokerage for a long time. And now he's with EXP.

He has a massive team. So today, Will Penny? Let's welcome him on. Welcome to the agent goldmine, the only podcast in the world, specifically for real estate agents who are stuck at five transactions a year to help them get to 20 plus. Your host, Ali,

Garcette and Shelby Johnson, two EXP icon agents, each do over 40 transactions a year and interview others who are crushing it. In this podcast, you'll receive the knowledge to help you scale your business using systems and processes with our interviews and monologues twice a week. If you want to be a part of our community, reach out. Welcome to the show. Okay, well, you have been around in this industry for forever. I mean, if forever is 1988 when you first got started. So with your wealth of experience your history, you've seen a lot? Like, what are your thoughts on what's going on with the NAR stuff? What is happening? What are your thoughts? I think the most important thing to look at is trends. And all this is about compensation, disclosure, communication. And at the end of the day,

buyers and sellers, like there are, there's nothing on the horizon is taking us out of the picture. So if you look at the NAR stats, over 90% of buyers used a buyer agent last year because they want to, not because we have a cartel. Almost 90% of home sellers used an agent to sell their house because they want to, not because we have a cartel. You can go on your phone and Google discount broker near me and find a bunch of choices. So sellers and buyers are using us and paying us because they want to. So if you think of it that way, and housing makes up about 20% of the gross domestic product, nothing has changed. There's no technology. There's nothing on the horizon that is diminishing our role in the process.

So all this is is a shift in communication. I honestly don't think, maybe I'm naive, but I honestly don't think that sellers are going to stop wanting to pay us. You've got all types of human beings, and most human beings don't like change. That's why despite technology, YouTube, Google, the obesity rates, financial wellness rates, and relationships, divorce rates, nothing's changed, right? We know how to get thin. We know how to get rich. We know how to stay in a relationship, but nothing changes because human beings start something

and they're not consistent, no matter what it is, right? If it's bad, I mean, they'll consistently bite their nails or eat bad shit or whatever, but developing new habits people don't do. So home sellers and buyers continue to want to work with us. I still get recommendations from moms and dads whose kids want to buy a house. And you're going to get the type of people that want to pay $300 to list their house. You're going to get the type of buyers, humans, that want to avoid paying. But if you think about the people that you run into in your normal business day to day,

they're not the ones usually calling you. And I don't think that's going to change. And the vast majority of human beings want things done easily. And then you get to do it yourselfers. And by the way, despite the market that we were in in 2021 and 2020, when real estate agents like complete knuckleheads were posting on Facebook that they get a showing on a house. and they, or they got 26 showings or 106 showings or 206 showings and 28 offers or 108 offers, they're posting that stuff on Facebook.

And despite people seeing that over and over and over again, the for sale by owner rates went down nationally, right? So you would think if there was, we're basically telling sellers to try and sell their house themselves by posting things like that. So why, you know, but they're not selling it themselves. So that just goes to show you that you can trust that most people want to work with us. They don't want to try new things. So if you go back to 1989, a year after I got into business, everybody was a listing agent then.

And if you worked with a buyer, you represented the buyer or the seller. You were a sub-agent, okay? And the Department of Justice back then got involved because there was some class action lawsuits. And basically, what came from those class action lawsuits is the agency disclosures. And Ohio was one of the first states, 1989. And basically, we had to have a buyer sign an agency disclosure back then and say that we were representing them. And for a period of time, about five to six years, there were old-school brokers. Because if you go back to 1989, the only brands you saw were Century 21, Cobble Banker, ERA, which is a part of the

Anywhere brand. That's Century 21, Cobble Banker, Corcoran, Sotheby's, Better Homes and Gardens. That's that brand. But they've since acquired all of those different brands. But back then, you had Century 21, Cobble Banker. Remax was like starting out. I mean, they were starting to get big. But most of the real estate brokerages back then were mom and pop independence, the vast majority in the 80s. And a lot of them roamed by stodgy old men, right? That was who was the majority of the realtors back then. Women started getting in in the 80s, but a lot of the brokerages were owned by these, all the guys that you don't like, you know, those types of old school men that just did things their own way. And basically what happened was they rejected

buyer agency and they said we are not going to pay an agent who's not representing our seller. So in our market, we had a bunch of brokerages that just refused to pay a co-broke fee to an agent who was representing the buyer. This is after 1989 when you had to have an agency disclosure. So in our multiple listing service, and we've got about 8,000 agents now, Akron and Cleveland is a big market. It's not cornfields. It's more like Chicago, if you can envision that.

So basically what happened for about six years, I started using a representation agreement back in the early 90s. And the reason was, two reasons. As Remax grew, some independent brokers rejected Remax because Remax agents got all the money. were the first, you know, it was Remax and KW and now EXP and the other cloud-based brokerages. But back then, if you were at a traditional company, you were getting 50%. If you're really good, you get 60-40. That's it, right?

So Remax came around, and we had two big independents that said, we're not co-broking with Remax agents, right? So this happened. So we had two things back in the late 80s. Remax agents were getting blackballed and not, they weren't offering us, they were giving us half the co-broke. And then on top of it, we had these old. old school brokerages that refused to acknowledge buyer agency. So in the early 90s, agents,

the progressive ones, started using representation agreements. And the accredited by a representation course came out in about 94. And they encouraged us to use representation agreements then. So back then, the way we fixed this problem that we're dealing with now is we had a representation agreement signed. And then we would reject the offer of compensation in the MLS by calling, because there was no email or texting. So you'd call the agent and say, hey, Shelby, I'm going to show 1, 2, 3, Oak Street tomorrow, and I'm rejecting your offering of compensation, the MLS. And then you'd write it on the sheet, on the MLS sheet.

And then I'd show the house. And then on the contract, I'd write on behalf of the buyer, ABC real estate shall pay DEF real estate, a fee of 3% of the sale price to on behalf, or however, I'm getting confused. But on behalf of the buyer, they would pay the buyer, agent, and we put that on the contract. And that's basically the way we handled it for six years. Six years we had to do that. So suddenly, the vast majority of real estate agents have been in the business for 10 years or less. So they don't know that this happened. They don't understand it.

So we're coming up with all of these conclusions before it even happens without looking at the trends. And the trends are buyers and sellers don't want to use this. And I have listed five houses in the last week, no one mentioned this. I brought it up to hear what they'd heard. In the five, in the five listings, nobody, nobody said, I don't want to pay a buyer agent. Nobody said, well, I only want to pay three percent now. It hasn't happened. It hasn't happened to me. And the ones that did ask, I was like, yeah, basically, it just boils down to transparency and disclosure. We're not allowed to list the co-broke fee in the MLS anymore. And, you know, you've never had to offer a buyer agent fee.

In our MLS since 1998, it's been a minimum of $1. So there's never been any control over how much you have to pay a buyer agent. And if you choose not to pay a buyer agent, then you're going to eliminate 7,000 real estate agents wanting to actively try to sell your house. And in the car business, there's five different values to the same car, retail, wholesale, auction, trade-in, and person-to-person. There's about a 20 to 30% difference in the value of the car, and that's all based on exposure and trust.

So if you eliminate your buyer pool by not willing to pay a two and a half or three percent co-broke fee, you're going to drastically reduce the value of your house more than the difference in the fee. And they're like, oh, that makes sense. So I guess where I'm at, I'm either naive or right. I don't know yet. But basically, what I think is going to happen is we're just going to kind of figure things out. And my biggest fear is that real estate agents are going to screw it up. real estate agents are going to be the biggest pain in the ass in all of this because they're the ones that are going to be bringing it up and talking about it and they're so desperate because most of them

aren't a lot of them aren't making any money so they're going to offer to do a 3% listing and not pay a buyer agent I think it's going to all be in the hands of the weak real estate agents that's what's going to have and so we're going to have two we're going to have this giant division We're going to have the agents that know how to communicate their value and explain this in a succinct, clear way. And then we're going to have agents that are scared and the sales rep agents that say all the dumb crap in these Facebook groups. And they're going to not, and then we're going to have to deal with them. But I think it'll be like one onesie-to-seys. Like you're going to, I mean, how often do you see co-broke fees in the MLS now?

Like 1%, 2%, 1, 1,5%. You've got idiots that do that do that already. And all it does is hurt the seller. Right. So that's my, that's pretty much the way I feel about it. Yeah. It's, it's so interesting interviewing you with your knowledge of the past trends and the ups and the downs and like what history potentially repeating itself. You know, transparency. That's the goal of this.

But does it end up being actually more transparent? You know, who knows? It's not. No, it's less transparent. It's stupid. It's just dumb. The whole thing is idiot. And it seems, I mean, obviously you have your system down, right? And from listening to you talk,

it's you, I just read the book or reread the full fee agent, Chris Voss. And it's you're the favorite or the fool. So when you're going on these listing appointments and you're talking to sellers, you are their favorite. You know, you're not the fool. So you're not having those conversations of, you know, trying to backtrack and, re-explain what other agents, the bad ones, have already explained to those potential sellers. So you're not even involved in that race to the bottom where other agents are. If they're the fool, you know, going on these listing appointments where they're not the favor, they're not very knowledgeable. They will have to cut their commission because they have no other way to provide value. How do you set yourself up for your listing appointments to be able to not even have that conversation?

I mean, I just, right now I just go on listing appointments and list the house, right? So, and they talk, I mean, fees always come up. But if I say, you know, my fee is 6% or 5.5% or 5.5% or 3 quarters percent or whatever, and I'm going to pay X amount out to a buyer agent, I don't get a lot of pushback on that. And I don't think most agents will. And it goes back to the beginning of this conversation. The vast majority of human beings don't like change. So everyone's saying, you know, if you don't adapt, you're going to die.

Most humans don't. That's why we're all fat. broken divorced. I mean, and then, you know, and then there's Shelby who's, you know, doing CrossFit. I mean, you know, it, most people can't do that. They're not built for it. They can't keep their head in the game. They put feelings over, you know, consistency every day of the week. And that, that doesn't change, you know, that doesn't change. Humans don't change easily. So I'm not, most humans, if they're calling you in the first place, you know, I've had. I've had. the idiot ones over the years. It doesn't matter what's in place on the MLS level or the NAR settlement

or whatever. You're going to get the guys and the girls, the men and women that think they're the smartest one in the room and they're going to say, well, this is how much I'm willing to pay you. I don't work with those people. But the good news is analytical people like that, the know-it-alls love hearing themselves talk. Thank God. They make up about this much. of the marketplace, humans. The vast majority of people aren't engineers, accountants, they're teachers that want to trip you up on your versus you, apostrophe, R.E.

Most people aren't like that. But you get the ones that are. And just like when we charge a transaction fee, every once in a while, you'll have some bozo say, well, I'm not paying that. Or you see these Facebook groups where an agent gets a text saying, And God knows why they're dealing with it via text. I don't know. But they'll get a text and it'll say, well, we want you to pay us back half of the co-broke fee or half of the fee you're getting. And if you're not

willing to do it, that's fine, but we're going to go in a different direction. And then they screenshot that and put it in a Facebook group. That is not happening. I mean, do you guys get those texts? That's not happening on the regular. I don't think because most people aren't like that. Most people aren't like that, thank God. You know, they're a minority. They don't act. So those are the ones, though, it's not like you're going to suddenly, on August 17th, get easygoing, nice people that just want to get as much as they can for their house

and they don't, and they're nervous or overwhelmed by the process. They're not going to suddenly turn into those idiots. They're not going to have a switch go off and they change their personality. So I don't think it's going to matter. If you are looking to change brokerages this year so you can increase your business and you want to join us at EXP Realty and would like either myself, Aligar said, or Shelby Johnson to personally sponsor you in. So that way you have access to two icon agents, text the word join to either my number 914-318-4918 or Shelby's number 703-39-4332. If I sponsor you and you have access to the both of us and everything that's Five Pillars Nation, we have the chance. checklist, the systems, the process is to help you scale your business, and don't take our word

for it. We've had agents switch brokerages to join us that were stuck making $300,000 GCI, and they join us so they can scale. So text the word joined to those numbers, and we'll take the next steps. For sure. So, Will, I had literally right before this, you know, 30 minutes before we hopped on, I had a newer agent call me, a buyer's agent, and she's just looking for advice, kind of freaking out. And it's hey, like, I'm trying to work with buyers and I know this change is coming soon and I'm so worried about compensation and because I can't speak to the seller and try to, you know, and so it's really whatever the listing agent decides and why would they fight on my behalf, which you've already covered. But so for her, which she was planning on doing was like all of these

different options for the buyer to compensate where it's like hourly, either for consultation or for showing and like all of these different little options of doing this and this, what? what would you say potentially to her if she needed to have her buyer pay her commission? I think that this is like Y2K. And I think you guys were children, you know, during Y2K. But right before Y2K, all of the news was like about what was going to happen. And let's keep our eyes on Fiji to see how fucked up it gets. And guess what? I was standing there in front of my television with my daughter who was born September 1st, 1999, holding her, because it was December 31st, 1999, waiting for the shit to hit the fan, right, as the clock ticked down, and all of the

whole internet, all of the electrical grids, everything was going to fall apart. We were going to start Canada. It was going to be like purge. I was waiting for my whole world to turn into purge. Do you know that movie? Purge? Yeah. Right. So that's what I was waiting for to happen. And guess what happened? Dick Clark, welcome the new year. Fucking nothing happened. Nothing happened. Right. So I think that she needs to spend time now articulating her value proposition, getting her elevator pitch solid. And forget about the what ifs because spending any time on worrying about what might happen when we're all in the same boat together. You know, if there's five offers on a house and the seller isn't willing to pay a co-broke fee, all of those agents are going to be in the same boat together.

They're all going to either not get paid or they're going to get paid. But we don't know how this is going to play out. So coming up with conclusions ahead of time is a gigantic, all that does is just chew you up. So just focus on the fact that homes are selling now. What is the behavior of home sellers and buyers today? How much is it going to change on their end in August, two months away? Are they going to turn into different human beings? No.

They're going to, we're going to just have to figure it out. And, you know, I live in Northeast Ohio. About a half an hour or an hour south of me are Amish people. Well, Amish people aren't allowed to drive cars. They're not allowed to use cell phones. They're not allowed to use gas powered engines. they're not even allowed to use freaking zippers, right? But here's the thing. You come home and they'll be Amish on a roof here, an hour away putting a roof on. And you're like, hmm, how the hell

did they get here? They're not allowed to drive, right? So it's called workarounds. We're in a country of workarounds, right? The Amish borrow phones from the Mennonites. They get a new fresh charged one in their mailbox every day. So that's how they get around the phone thing. They get rides by men. They have this ride share thing where the Mennonites or somebody outside of their community drives them to their roofing job. So my point is even though they're not allowed to use trucks, they can't use gas powered engines, they still get their shit done. And we haven't even figured out what's going to happen yet. But I guarantee you, there's going to be backup plans on how to keep us getting paid. You know, every, I don't, I think that, you know, first time home buyers, you know, FHA, VA

buyers that have no money, they're going to be potentially hurt, but it's going to be insulated situations like one real estate, one seller on a 185 house isn't willing to pay a co-broke fee. And now all six of the buyers are going to be in a situation where they have to talk to their seller or their agent, rather. So I don't think it's going to be like, the new thing. I think it's going to be one-off because I think most sellers are, if they're willing to pay a commission on June 11th, then what's going to happen on August 17th? They suddenly won't be willing to pay. And the cool thing is, we don't repeat news in this country. How often do they repeat the same news, right, unless something new comes up? The new, the cool thing is this settlement was in

April, right? That's when all the news was for two weeks, all this buzz. The only people still thinking about it are us, real estate agents. Nobody is thinking about it anymore. They aren't. Okay. That's what people do that to their detriment, right? They'll say there's going to, there's a hurricane coming next, it's coming next week and they'll say the news today. People are so predictable that they'll stay in their house the day before the hurricane comes, right? That's a fucking hurricane. We're just talking about real estate sales. I don't think if they're willing to pay a commission today, and I'm getting calls from, you know, John Smith saying, hey, would you help my son buy a house today?

And he's not saying, by the way, is he going to have to pay you? If we're getting, if those habits are happening two months out, you think they're going to suddenly change, I think the real estate agents are going to be the ones that screw it up for themselves. And they're going to be hurt and they're going to hurt their sellers. And they're going to, I think there's going to kind of like the. the workarounds with the Amish, I think there'll be a lot of real estate agents that explain it properly to their sellers and say, this is a marketing fee. If you pay two and a half percent

of 500 grand, that is only 12, what is that? 10 percent, $12,500, right? Do you think that if I put your house on the market for $500,000, $500,000 and you attract all of the ready, willing, and able buyers in the first 48 hours, what do you think is going to happen if we just take the floor out and you end up getting one or two. Do you think that could hurt you more than $12,500? Do you think it's possible that you could get a $470 offer or a $460 offer on $500,000, especially if a buyer feels like they got to pay their agent? You think they're going to be like really excited about running in and paying you list price or more? So I think that is where we need to be explaining it, right? And I always use the analogy of cars because

retail, wholesale, trade-in, person-to-person, and auction. Five values. You can go online, a Honda Civic. It's got five different values online. And the differences are based strictly on exposure and trust. And if you've got it on Facebook Marketplace, you're going to get about 25% less for your car. If it's at a Honda dealership, you're going to get about 25 to 30% more based on exposure and trust. Well, if you can explain that story with houses. And then people, they're like, yeah, that makes sense. Because if people go straight to the owner, they're going to pay them a lot less on a car. What makes you think that someone on a half a million dollar purchase or a $300,000 purchase

they're going to be willing to pay you the same? No. If they're scared on a car, on a $20,000 car, they're going to be more fearful because a house is a lot more money and there's a lot more steps in the process and it's a month and a half long versus a day. So that's how I explain it. Everybody like goes, okay, that makes sense to me next. When are photos?

I mean, that's it. Kind of rewinding a bit. Back to transparency. When with us now, with the intention of this, supposedly being to make everything more transparent, but instead it getting a lot more sloppy where just for an easy example, you list a house, the sellers for some reason just refuse to pay the other. buy the buyer's compensation so they're cutting out the other 20,000 agents in your market one month goes by two months go by no offer three months seller decides to change their mind and say you know what

now I will list or now I will compensate the buyer's agent a buyer comes in you know new buyer comes in and they accept that offer but had rejected all the other offers you know because you know it just it can violate FHA or the fair housing. Fair housing, my goodness, so fast. You know, anybody that has a rejected offer or didn't even get to that point, you know, wasn't even able to go into the house because they weren't paying the buyer's compensation can then later say, in my opinion, I feel like a lot of people are going to say, oh, it's because I'm Hispanic. Oh, it's because I'm disabled. It's because I'm, you know, whatever it is. And there's no way to prove otherwise. As a listing agent, I think it's going to be very

hard to say 100% Allie. This isn't transparent at all. This is this is the dumbest decision ever. Because again, we're wasting time because it's what's done is done. But the seller agrees to pay me 6%. Because that's what they agreed to pay me. If they didn't want to pay 6%, then they could interview six other agents and they say, hey, Will Penny. He said he'd do it for six. Well, fuck, I'll do it for four and a half. I mean, it's such an easy process to get an agent to charge less. If you really want to pay less, you either Google discount brokers near me or you just play agents against each other. I mean, it's so easy to play agents against each other in this market.

So if you really want to, most people aren't even willing to do that because they don't have the stomach for it. They don't have the stomach to like work people around and play games. Do you really think they're going to have the same stomach to do what? You're suggesting the vast majority of people aren't going to do that. You're going to get the numskulls that do that. But we see those people in restaurants. They call them Karens and there's men and women that act that way. You know, it's like those types of people are going to be the ones that they go, aha, I told you so. But what will happen? We're going to have this. We're going to have

this period of time. I don't know how long it'll be. It'll only be months, though, where this plays out, you're going to have some bad experiences. We're going to see some lawsuits because it's not just, what about military? Military is a protected class, you know, military status, right? VA, so familial status, number of kids. I mean, there's several different types of people that could claim a lawsuit in this. I mean, if we had a problem with love letters, I mean, this is going to just be freaking bonkers because of what you just said. Because seller, I think we're going to get through this window and then it's going to just be a situation where people kind of, everyone wants the same goal, buy a house, sell a house, sellers who are going to be buyers. You can't have it both

ways. If you're not willing to pay a buyer agent here, well, don't whine when you've got to pay a buyer agent next time, or God forbid you deal directly with the listing agent. And so I think if that happens, I mean, 35 years ago we had the class action lawsuits about buyers that weren't represented. Now suddenly there's agents and pundits that think that buyer agencies going away. No, it isn't. It isn't going away. And I don't think fees are going to just tumble because the money. You could have, it's six minute apps.

Well, I'll do five minute apps or four minute apps. Like you said, it's a race to zero. But it's never a race to zero. You guys are kind of young, but I know, like years ago, I'd run ads saying, list your house, me, free home warranty. Or I'll do a 4% listing. throw in a flat screen TV. Nobody ever called. People do not in general pick an agent for those reasons. You could send postcards out to a neighborhood saying, all 4% this month, and you might not get any calls.

So that's my point. I like to deal with the large majority of humans. We can deal with the idiots that, you know, I just choose not to work with them. And there's not so many of them when it's going to you out of business. They're just going to have trouble getting their homes sold or buying a house because they've got these, you know, they build these walls around themselves and nobody wants to cooperate with them. Maybe I'm wrong. No, I don't think you are. And that was a really good example because a lot of people who are out there, maybe they were considering, well, I'll just list for less 4% or whatever. I think that's a really good personal case study that you have that it doesn't work. Like, you've tried it. You put money towards it. And at the end of the day, it's, do they like you trust you? Are you providing enough value? You know, are you the person who is able to lead them

through to hit their goals? But regardless, so, well, let's just play a quick little game. Like, hypothetically, you know, in a one-off situation where a buyer's agent does need to talk to their buyer about paying the compensation, just in that just for fun, for scripting purposes, what do you think would be, like, how would you recommend a buyer's agent have that conversation with their buyer? If you are looking to change brokerages this year so you can increase your business and you want to join us at EXP Realty and would like either myself, Aligar said, or Shelby Johnson to personally sponsor you in.

So that way you have access to two icon agents, text the word join to either my number 914-3-48-49-18 or Shelby's number, 703. 399-4332. If I sponsor you and you have access to the both of us and everything that's Five Pillars Nation, we have the checklist, the systems, the process is to help you scale your business, and don't take our word for it. We've had agents switch brokerages to join us that we're stuck making $300,000 GCI, and they join us so they can scale. So text the word joined to those numbers, and we'll take the next steps. Again, go back to for sale by owners that we've been dealing with. This is like the reciprocal of a buyer, a conversation with a buyer.

having a conversation with a seller that doesn't want to pay you anything but wants to sell their house. Having a conversation with a buyer who doesn't want to pay you anything but wants to buy a house. It's the same conversation, right? So if you're talking to the buyer, you just, I mean, we've been using buyer representation agreement since 95. I've had a team since 2013. We always, all my teammates use buyer representation agreements. And we have conversations about for sale by owners. And it's the same conversation about whether it's a for sale by owner or the off chance that you have to pay us.

And I'll just say, you know, if you find it for sale by owner, it's very important that you have me call first because if I make the phone call first, then I've got something they want, which is a pre-approved buyer. And I'll manage the process. If you call them first, then what's going to happen is they're going to feel like they've already got you. And then when I jump in, they look like I'm just trying to jump in to get paid. So psychologically, you want to have me call first. They're like, oh, that makes sense. But on the off chance that they don't want to pay us, you might have to raise your offer or ask for a closing cost concession or something to cover our fee.

And I say, don't worry, I'll let you know if that happens in advance. Most people don't get freaked out by that. So in your, in that agent that you mentioned, her, I think she's going overboard because again, it's like, it's like you're going to get a mole tested tomorrow. And you've already thought about how you're dying of stage four skin cancer. You can choose to panic about it, or you can, and it'd be very easy to do. But being emotional about this and worrying every agent, it's happening to all of us. It's not just one agent.

And because it's happening to all of us, we're going to come up with a fix of some kind to kind of smooth it in some way so that the housing market doesn't get weird because of it. So I would just tell her to have a conversation, say, you know, there's going to be a chance where a seller's not going to want to pay us, in which case I'll ask for them to pay it on behalf of you. If they're not willing to do that, well, then you're going to have to make a decision. Do you want to pay me or, but let's deal with it when the time comes. I'll let you know because I'm going to be calling every real estate agent before showing. And that's another thing, Allie. What happens if I don't like you?

That's going to be so, so common now. What happens if I don't like you because you're, yeah, because you're, you, you suck or you're, you're rude or whatever. If we have a transaction where I don't like you and you call me and say, hey, Will, how much are you paying? And you were, you were a jerk to me last time we dealt together. I'm going to be like, well, I don't know what I'm going to say because I don't know how this. I don't know the rules that are going to be around this yet. Neither do you guys. So when the rules are made, like how can we communicate?

it. I have a guy, a friend of mine who's developing an app, they already talked about it on Inman, where he's going to be able to have, you can load up your house, your listing, and the, and the fee that you're willing to pay a buyer agent. So there's going to be workarounds. So there will be workarounds. It's the United States of America. This won't be the one thing where there won't, the workaround came where closing cost concessions. That is a workaround, not in our business, but in the lending business. If you're a buyer and you're buying your first house, you would go and put your down payment down and then you'd have title fees, lender fees, closing costs, other stuff, and you didn't have the money to pay it. Well, so years

ago, they came up with a workaround and they got a closing cost concession approved by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, whoever, and it's 3%, 6%. VA, I think, just changed it to 9% or something like that. Or they actually said that the 6% concession does not include our commission. Right? So VA is, I think they just changed it because our commission isn't a closing cost. It's a finance. I heard something where it's going to be okay there. But the point is closing cost concessions in the first place came around as a workaround

because most buyers couldn't afford their closing costs and their down payment. And they fixed it by allowing closing costs. concessions. And I think that's what's going to happen somehow here. And some people are going to call me naive because they insist on the sky falling. I don't think it's going to because buyers and sellers still want to use us. There are so many ways that this could go, that this will go wrong. And who's going to benefit are the attorneys, you know, because the buyers will sell the sellers, We'll sue the sellers and the attorneys are going to get the fat paychecks. What are you doing now to, I guess, just continue maintaining your tunnel vision.

What are you doing to maintain your rate of closings? Because you're killing it. I just told you. I mean, I'm having these conversations. I bring them up if I kind of gauge the type of people that they are. So I bring stuff up and then I explain to them how it really works. but it's nothing's happening yet. We're only two months out and nothing's happening.

Talk to your realtor friends, the strong ones, you know, the ones that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I just went to a John Cheplac event. So John Cheplac is a coach. He coaches like eight of the top 20 real trends teams. And we were there for three days. Do you know how much that came up? Zero. It didn't come up. It didn't come up. And these are big teams. These are agents doing, you know, like the Tina calls, like the Kyle Whistles. Kyle Whistle was there. You know, doing four or five hundred million dollars here in sales. It didn't come up. Because what's the point of having the discussion until we see it play out? And I don't think that this is going to be the one time where it plays out and it turns into us not getting paid. I mean,

get listings. I guess focus on listings and then you'll always get paid. What? So it looks like you brought a pretty cool golden nugget for us today. Will, what did you bring for our listeners? My, you found a home. What do you do now? So basically my buyer, my buyer service checklist that basically built up the process of being so complicated that they wouldn't want to do it without us. So I'll send you that. Okay, cool. Well, we're going to provide the story listeners. So this is your 179 ways. that agents are worth every penny. This actually ties really perfectly with the conversation that we have today in case agents are out there. And they're like, man, how do I articulate my value? I don't even know if I'm valuable. What do I even do? I don't know. Well, you know what Will knows for you.

So if you go to theagentgoldmine.com and scroll all the way down to the bottom, that's where you can click to get access to our gold mine of golden nuggets for free. And you can get 179 ways plus Will's buyer folder, complete, packet, closing process, things. All the things. Lots of dogs. All the things. Things 2.0. Yes. Yes, exactly. Okay, well, so we know that there's no change in your future.

You're just going to keep crushing it. So what in are you, I don't know, is there any change in regard to, I know you're in EXP and you're, you know, building that family, your team. What is, what does the future hold for you? I only work part time now. so I'm like half retired. I list houses, but I have, we went over my team structure last time. So I'm involved in several parts, but not the whole thing because I've gotten good people.

But yeah, I mean, I'm building my refshare organization. You know, I'm at 161, I think. But I've got a lot of, my 161 agents have sold almost 300 million so far this year. So it's a very productive group of agents. I'm going to keep working on that because I enjoy it. I'm going to keep trying to be a cheerleader for our profession. I'm going to keep trying to talk agents off the cliff and tell them to just sharpen their tools and be good. So whatever happens they can adjust to, I don't think nothing's going to happen.

I just think that humans aren't going to change. That's what I said. And when humans don't change, then the outcome is minimized. Because I don't think that the DOJ and these other governmental organizations, they're not, nothing about this is changing our fees. It's all about communication. And humans, since we're like business to consumer, right, is that what's it B to C? Yeah.

B to C, business is a lot easier because things change very slowly. So because of that, I think that we just have to keep working and then keep our eye out for actual changes and pivot to adjust to those instead of working ourselves up on stuff that hasn't even happened yet. Yeah, I agree. Completely. Heading to our wrap-up questions, Will, what is your favorite app or tool? Cap cut. Cap-cut. Nice. I like Cap-cut. And I like Clipchamp. I edit my videos sometimes, my podcast with Clipchamp. I like that. Clipchamp. Yeah, I've never heard of that. Okay, so podcast editing? Yeah, because I do it myself. Will, leverage. You're the one who is telling us about it. Get that off your plate now.

leveraged all my big time producing things. I mean, I'm only working 20 hours a week. So I enjoy doing that. I mean, I actually, it's creative and I don't mind doing it. And I don't want to pay somebody overseas. Well, if it fills your cup, then we are so happy for you. Reap of question number two. What events are going to in the next 12 months? Well, I'm going to go to EXPCon. And I'm going to, have you ever heard of Eric Worry? Nope. dude look up eric war do w-o-r-r-re he's in we just went to his house is he had 36 he's a multi-level marketing guy but top of his game so we went three of us went to a convention an event he

had at his house and there's another one in december and it's all about organization building so i went there i'll go to ex p con i'll probably go to the regional one just so i can hit icon again. I usually hit ICON in four months still. So I'll be at EXP September, October 1. It'll be three years. I've already hit ICON three times. So that's an amazing award. I mean, that's what we should be talking about to agents. So that, yeah, those events, mainly team building stuff. But I like Eric Worry, if you look him up on YouTube, the guy is legit. Yeah, I'm excited. I feel like I've heard his name in another podcast. I can't even remember which that I listen to. how can we Shelby and I and the audience help you in your business?

I don't know because I'm trying to get out of business. I'm not looking to, I'm just my revenue share org. I want to get my revenue share organization with 1,000 people. But sales, I'm handing a lot of stuff off now. I mean, this is my 37th year as a real estate agent. You know, I've been doing this. You've done your time. I've been doing this since I was 19.

Yeah. And if people who are listening to you is like, I really like that dude, he's cool, he's my people, where can they go to find more, see more, learn more, or connect with you? They can go to the Will Penny P-E-N-N-E-Y on Instagram. So they can go there or they can call me. I'll give out my cell phone. I don't care. 330-760-2866.

That's it. Messenger, workplace. I like helping agents. So they can reach out whenever they want. That's what I love about it. sounds so corny, but that's what I, that's what I love about EXP is like there's the, the top heavy hitters are always looking to get back. So Will, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing what you have all of your knowledge. Thank you so much. People are probably

going to be reaching out. I know I will. So thank you for listening to do today's show. If you want to follow us also on Instagram, we are active and Shelby is now accepting message requests because she changed some settings on her Instagram that was fucked up. Dude. Okay, Will, I'm actually going to share this story in case there's any listeners who have been trying to mess. Oh my God.

So this is, you know, I've been hosting this podcast and the Real State Rockstars podcast for a fucking long time now. And my call to action always is, you know, hang out with me on Instagram. Shoot me a message. Let's be friends. Today, I was two day years old when I found out. the settings that I had on my Instagram account did not allow people who I was not following to message me.

Today. Dude, I just, I can't. So if you're out there listeners and you've tried to message me, I am so sorry from the very bottom of my heart. But, you know, today's the day. You can do it. Come say hi and I will apologize. Thank you so much for listening to today's show.

Let us know what questions you have. If you have found any value in this, give this a. five-star review on Apple and click that little star button on Spotify. We appreciate it. We are Ali the agent, The Shelby Show, and The Will Penny on Instagram. What do you want? You already know, you're tripping me up right now because you know I couldn't access the Google Docs because I'm old as crap. Not this time, Will. Next time, though, I'll keep you on your toes. That's what I'm going to do. So how old are you, Ali, 25? Oh, thank you. I'm 33. You are? I thought you were younger than Shelby.

Okay, well, you guys are both still married. We're basically twins. I thought you were 28. We were both 10 at Y2K. I'm 33. Oh, you are? What's our ending again? Be a bro and share this show.

Bye. Yep. Be a bro. Yeah. If you are looking to change brokerages this year so you can increase your business and you want to join us at EXP Realty and would like either myself, Ali Garc said, or Shelby Johnson to personally sponsor you in.

So that way you have access to two icon agents, text the word join to either my number, 911, 318, 4918, or Shelby's number, 703-399-4332. If I sponsor you and you have access to the both of us and everything that's Five Pillars Nation, we have the checklist, the systems, the process is to help you scale your business, and don't take our word for it. We've had agents switch brokerages to join us that were stuck making $300,000, GCI and they join us so they can scale. So text the word joined to those numbers and we'll take the next steps.