The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Alex Urpí Joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller Live On "Real Talk With Keith Smith!"

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Alex Urpí, CEO of Emergent Financial Services, LLC, joined Keith Smith & Jerry Miller live on “Real Talk With Keith Smith” powered by YES Realty Partners and Yonna Smith! “Real Talk” airs every Friday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Real Talk With Keith Smith” is presented by El Mariachi Mexican Bar & Grill, Fincham & Associates, Inc., Free Enterprise Forum, Intrastate Service Co, Mejicali, Tailored Closet, Premier Garage, Budget Blinds and YES Realty Partners.

Vanessa Parkhill, hello. That's a name you remember. I love Vanessa. Philip Reese, hello. Look at this, huh? We've got the great matching suit. Good Friday morning, guys. My name is Jerry Miller, and thank you kindly for joining us on Real Talk with Keith Smith. It's an absolute pleasure to connect with you through the I Love Seaville Network on a show presented by Yes, Realty Partners. They've been in business, yes, reality partners since 19. 87, nearly 40 years of proudly serving the Charlottesville, Albar County, Fluvana County, and Central Virginia real estate communities.

Keith and Jonas Smith's brokerage is a team you can trust and count upon. They will help you get to the closing table and beyond, and they will do it with honesty, with communication, with virtue, with all the qualities you guys want in one of the most testing processes of your life. Judah Wickhauer is behind the camera. He's the Elmer's Glew of the team. Today's program features a household name. Alex Erpy, he's the chief executive officer of emergent financial services. Yes, Relity Partners is to real estate what emergent financial services is to finance folks.

If you need a team to help you prepare for the future, retire, save accordingly, and strategically, it's Alex. It's Xavier. It's Nicholas. It's Michael. and emergent financial services and this fantastic Erpy family. Judah, if we can go to the studio camera and welcome our panel,

Keith Smith has put this together, along with Alex Erpy. Gentlemen, good Friday morning to you. Good morning. You know what today is? Today's May Day. Today's May Day, yeah. First of May. It's May Day. There's a Mayday story buried in there somewhere that if the coffee kicks in,

I'll tell it. Your May Day story is a lot better than the May Day story that's going around here in Charlottesville. Did I ever tell you about my May Day Day? I'm looking forward to hearing yours. The one that's happening here in Charlottesville is a boycott of business, pulling kids out of public schools and private schools, and trying to make a ripple or impact on the local and national scene for...

It's funny, I don't know if you know this. So May Day, way back, the Tommy doesn't try to use it as an international workers day. So that's my story. Have the church responded. It's actually made it St. Joseph for Worker Day. So it's now, to combat that, it valorizes work instead of, to do the opposite that the communists were trying to do. So that's a little history lesson there.

What's your Mayace? Yeah. Yeah, well, I was going to save it because I really wanted to talk about numbers, but Smith likes to tell stories, and here we go. I like your stories. So it's a communist thing, right? So, and Judah, I don't know if you've got time, and I hate to throw this out you live here, but if you can Google and Google May Day parades in early 1980s in the Soviet Union and the East and Black,

but I don't know if you guys remember that far back, right? The Maydays used to be they would have the Soviet military and yada yada, yada. So we are, I'm living the first half of the 80s, Italian. to the U.S. embassies behind the iron block, so you had iron curtain, excuse me. So every East Block, Soviet bloc country on May Day had their May Day parade, and they would have all the military down and all that stuff. So our embassy at the time was about 10 feet from their red square. I was in Bulgaria at the time.

So the ambassador, which we only worked for, there was five of us that worked for the ambassador. Our job was protection of classified material property and personnel. said, hey, we need two guys to lock the embassy down for 72 hours, because just imagine this, the Russian military is all like 10 feet away from my embassy door, loaded weapons, all this stuff, doing us, all this great stuff, and I'll leave his name out of it. He's, God rest of salt, he passed away.

It was killed, actually. Anyway, my buddy goes, hey, Smitty, why don't you and I do it? And I went, okay, what the hell else do I got to do? So anyway, we go do it. We get in our embassy, lock everything down. So we've got all our surveillance equipment come up. You know, nobody's going in, nobody's going out. And the gentleman goes, hey, Smitty, you take the first 12 hours.

I'll take the second. And I go, okay, no problem. Out comes a bottle of tequila. Now, I want to preface this. This guy was a force recon Marine. his job was to get into places without anybody knowing and getting back, right? So, okay, whatever, here we go. This is going to be a fun 72 hours.

So he took out the bottle with the queue. Start drinking. Oh, man. So now I'm looking at my cameras. And I see him somehow and know that this guy got out of the embassy without my equipment knowing it, was running across the Red Square. Remember how they used to hang the Soviet flags? jerking on a flag.

I'm like, oh, oh, shucks. I used all kinds of fine language. So I can't leave the embassy. That's it. I can't do anything. And oh, by the way, when you're 18, 19 years old, and you joined this duty that I was on, you had to sign a contract that said two things. One, you could never get married. Two, if they ever grabbed you, we're not coming to get you.

So he's jerking on this flag, rips it down and is running across Red Square with this three-story Soviet flag dragging behind him. I'm watching this on the camera. I sling my 870-p shotgun across my back and he's running there. Three Russian Marines are chasing him to go ahead and grab it. We kick, I kick the door open. He comes in

and his God is my witness, a true story. Him and I and three Russian Marines. So two U.S. Marines and three Russian Marines during the Cold War having a tug of war, over a three-story red flag. They wanted the flag back. No shit. They were going to get... Oh, but he didn't want to let go.

No, of course not. Of course not. So we're doing it. And we get the flag. I kicked the door closed. Whatever. Big smile on his face like that. What did he do with the flag?

There's the rest of the story. So now he literally passes out because he was so stinking drunk. He passes out. And I got 48 hours going. Oh shit. Oh shit. I just started an international incident. Oh shit. Oh shit. Excuse my language on that, but that's what was going to say. Right. And next morning, when we're finally done with just the ambassador walks in, and yet this is during the Reagan years. So the, all the ambassadors were former military. So this guy was a retired admiral from the Navy admiral. And just kind of like a top gunish kind of thing. You know, this is an 80s. 85, I think it was 85, yeah, 84, no, it was in 84. And so he calls us saying,

and screaming and yelling at us and putting all kinds of four-letter words together and all this stuff, and there's this pause. And he goes, can I see the flag? That's awesome. That's awesome. Showing the flag. And he goes, I get the F out of here. I went, okay. And I just was thinking this morning on the way in that story,

if these things we hold on our hand was around, I'd be in Leavenworth right now, and he'd be in some gulogs somewhere. And you probably would have an international incident, if we had those. We would have had an, I was just for 48 hours going, oh, my God, oh, my God. Oh, my God, oh, my God. I'm going to get kicked out the door and go, bye-bye. William McChesney is getting you some love. He loves the story. Bob Yarborough, Kevin Willis, Vanessa Parkhill.

Virginia Gray, James Watson, your brother-in-law, Bashir, Daniel Halpert, Jason Howard, Georgia Gilmer, handsome Hank Martin. My wife's watching. Sorry about the cursing. But it was... Made the story better. The punchline was...

Can I see the flag? I love that. So gentlemen, we have... Goodness gracious. This has been the year of real estate deals. and I'm not talking about the year of real estate deals that are like closings. I'm talking mergers and acquisitions. Another one, Keith. We've been talking about this on the show,

and I'm extremely blessed to speak every year in September at the Reese Media, or it has been every year for the last several years, Reese Media CEO convention. This is where in D.C., this is where all the CEOs from the industry come together, and it's a blessing to be able to be on stage and talk about, housing affordability, but the real work is the cocktails after and watching the conversations and watching how CEOs are interacting and kind of reading buying language. So we've been talking about this for a while.

The industry of real estate is all about basically two things. Mergers and acquisitions, so these are creating these larger entities, right? And then the boutique brokerages where, oh boy, I'm in trouble. I just got yelled at for cursing with Zach in the room. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay, Yonit. You start it worse? Probably used a few. So anyway, today is, I want to look at

this real remax potential merger, potential, it's not even a merger, it's a purchase. It's an acquisition on it, not necessarily from a real estate perspective, but from a perspective of somebody, who may or may not own stock in both of these companies. I'll leave that lay there. But I started looking at...

We'll just let that one lay. But I was looking at it from that perspective, and I couldn't think of anybody better than you to kind of look at it from a numbers side of it. I'll just paraphrase this out there. What caught my attention was we got roughly an $880 million purchase. remax is just about 50% of that is in debt.

It has current debt on the books. Real is coming up with the balance of the cash, borrowing it. And all essence, a company A that was not leveraged that much. Now highly levered. A lot of cash. So basically, they were not leveraged at all, so they had a net cash position. Yep, substantial one. Real was the net cash.

rematch was 3.4 times debt to Abita, which is your debt to earnings essentially, right? 3.4. The new company is going to be 2.7. Yeah. So Real is going to go from a net cash to 2.7 times debt to earnings essentially. And they're claiming that they want to take that back down to two by virtue of synergies, you know, at greater earnings, profitability, but no matter how you slice it,

it's going from, we have no debt, or our debt is exceeded by cash or a net cash position. Substantially. A substantial net cash position to 2.7 times debt tax. So for us, layman, explain what that actually means. So the debt to, it's technically net debt to adjust it a bit of, a bit as earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, amortization. It's basically you're earnings.

debt to earning to saying how much do you owe versus what you earn in a different And we're talking about two companies that don't hold any assets. Yeah, but I mean basically no. Rematch is a franchise. It's a franchise, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And Rio mostly operates in the club, right? So they don't have a lot of physical, I mean, I'm sure they got their headquarters and so forth.

But in other words, they don't own a bunch of assets. So a lot of times you will look at for companies. but I bet their debt to their earnings. So basically, Remax has a high debt to earnings. They have a lot of debt, meaning their debt exceeds their earnings, right? The Rio had the opposite. They were, which is rare. I mean, the financial markets, you don't often have a high net cash.

Particularly in the tech world, right? Because in essence, it is a real estate company, but it's primarily a tech company. As we'll get into, it's metrics. was a lot more like a tech company than a real estate, a realtor company. I do need to jump in at this point because before people start hitting the panic button

you got a lot of real agents watching the program right now, local. Yeah. So this is a conversation at the moment. This is a disclosure. I'll tell you my real stock took a hit. My remax went up. To be expected. That is typical. Which is normal.

That is normal. But this has to go through an approval process, right? Right? Because they're both publicly traded corporations, right? They have to go through the regulatory perspective. Both stockholders have to vote for it. And maybe we'll talk about this a little bit later, and you might have some insight on it. I'm going to know more about this when I go down to the Caribbean.

Remax has about 100 local, they operate in 100 other countries, and I'm curious what other countries might have to approve this purchase. Right? So I don't have an answer. to that but I'll know more because I talk to the remax people that run the Caribbean operations when I'm down there and see what they have to say. And even a franchise model that that may not be as bit of an issue.

Right. I don't know. Places like France, you know, they look at things very differently. Yeah, I mean, the European Union always looks at it. Yeah. A little different, a little differently. But I'll let you finish. No, just in the sense of, and again, that's not abnormal that a company takes on debt.

to acquire another company, right? So no of this is out of the ordinary, nor is the disparity in stock prices. Usually the company being bought, being acquired, typically see their stock go up. The company doing the acquiring typically sees their stuff go down. Now, it's a dramatic shift that we're seeing,

and there's a couple reasons for that. One is just the pricing. So this particular acquisition is a little, unusual because both of these companies have seen it hit. They're about both down about 70% from their peak prior to the announcement of the acquisition. So you had two stock prices very much on the decline. So of course from the rematch perspective, here's a deal that's coming into $13.80 per share. And your stock was sitting at around $7 per share. A lot of I want to buy that stock. I'm going to buy that stock. I'm going to buy that.

to stop and then now granted not everyone's going to get paid the 1380 but there's only a certain portion have they agreed to pay in cash so even if you elect cash this is a good chance that what you'll actually get is 5.5 shares of real so I think now that's come back to

about the actual price given current price is about $10.38 a share because real is like just a tad over just under two I think as of this morning anyway in other words what people are expected to get yeah just real is at two basically in other words, since you're going to get five and a half shares of Rio for every share of rematch,

you're going to bet basically get about $10.38 worth for every share of remax as of yesterday. That's still higher than the seven and change it's trading at. So for still upward pressure because you're like, hey, I buy it for seven, I hold it for a couple weeks, and then I get 10. So hence why that goes up. I think what's hitting real is what's, what's, typically hits a lot of the acquiring stocks, which is here you have a company that's seen about 55% revenue growth in the last two years.

And so it's like many tech companies is on a high growth trajectory. That's not going to happen when you acquire remax. Even if remax didn't have negative growth over the past few years, you're acquiring a very large long existing slow growth entity. Your combined growth numbers just cannot be 55%. So a lot of real holders are going to just sit there and say, okay, the growth potential is dumb. Now, maybe there's going to be some greater earnings potential and so forth, but already that kind of is going to, no matter what, that's going to hit your stock price. So the real question in mergers like this is what does real think they're going to gain? And I think from a financial analysis perspective, when you dig into their numbers is where you kind of see what they're hoping to gain.

which is you kind of have two companies that look like complete opposite. Complete opposite. Rebax is a legacy brand. Yeah. Well, it's two different models. From my world, from the real estate world is two different models.

But from a pure financial numbers, what you have in real is extremely high revenue growth. You're talking, when you go back five years, you get 230%, 80%, 83%, 55%, 55%. That's massive numbers as far as your revenue.

And revenue is what you bring in before your expenses. So that's just pure, I'm getting more clients, I'm getting more people using my platforms, I'm getting more money. I think Real mostly makes it in the form of a percentage. They get 15%. Is that in fees and different? The model is very different.

I don't necessarily want to go down that road on it. In other words, that's where their revenue is coming. 100%. Their revenue is all tied to more people using. Well, the play from Real is, I think, and I'm going to let you finish the analysis. just looking at this purely from a stock, you know, from an investment perspective, I think the play for real is that they're going to eventually merge in over time, probably at 12 to 24 months,

certain percentage of the remax into their system, which then would increase the Reels revenue, which then would make my stock for real go up and make my remax one go. Well, you won't have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's exactly so. Then there's that. They're a high-growth company.

Like any tech company, their net profit margin is negative, which in that problem, once you factor in the expenses. Does that really scare anybody? In tech, it does not. Yeah. I mean, granted, as you could argue, it's scalar to some people over the past year, hence the decline and the stock price prior to the merger.

But that's not unusual either, but when you're a high-growth tech company, you typically spend jobs of money, you're going all out to get growth and then you figure out, okay, how do I make money later on? So there's like a fever in the industry because I see it at the CEO events. M&A, M&A, M&A, M&A, we got to acquire, we got to acquire.

We got to acquire, we got to grow, we've got to get bigger. That good thing or a bad thing from your perspective? As a financial advisor, is that makes sense? Yeah, from a financial analysis perspective, that's always been like when I, you know, look at sectors. That's always been my concern with tech. And it is why tech is a risky sector. Now, granted, it doesn't feel risky right now because tech is also large-cap growth,

and large-cap growth has been the top-performing sector three years in a row. But I want to explain to how rare that is. How rare what is now? That one sector is the top-performing center three years in row. Got it. Which is large-cap growth, you think, all your typical top tech stops. We don't know them, right? for them to be the top performers, three years in a row, there were 23, 24, 25 is very rare.

This year, that's actually flipped. Their large-track road is underperforming small-cap for the first time in 20 years, basically. So that's unusual. But it may seem like, so in other words, what I'm trying to convey to people is tech is a risky sector, even if it hasn't felt that way, for the past few years. And this is why, because tech pretty much operates on. I'm going to spend, and this is what Apple used to do. People forget now, because Apple is such a big company.

There was a time when Apple would just bleed money into R&D. I remember. Pay no dividends. I remember. And say, everything is growth in revenue. We will figure out the rest of it. As we go. And these were, for every company in tech that figures that out, there are some that basically never figure out how to make money.

So in my industry, real estate, it's, feels like they figured something out, right? You're saying real. Real. Real. Real has. I just, I don't understand. I mean, I understand the play to acquire this massive company, right? Get agents, get yada, yada, yada. I just, I can't wrap my mind around basically going,

I'm just going to round up for the take of a sake of a billion dollars in debt, right? Because they had some existing debt, not a lot, some. They're basically borrowing almost nine, hundred million dollars to do this deal. I'm struggling understanding. Yeah, on the days. Well, again, I think that's basically, and you're right, they've been improving, right?

Their net profit margin was minus 0.4% at the 25. That's actually, that shows you, given that it used to be minus 9 in 2021, that's showing you that they've become more profitable. Remax is the reverse. Remax is a company with basically anemic revenue growth. Yeah, yeah. It's like a minus 5, but positive profit.

All right. And what you do and some of the financial analysis that I've seen is, it's also a very different profit model. In other words, how Rematch makes money from their franchise, he's is very different than how Real currently makes money from its. But all that's going to at some point go away, right? If this merger happens and all that stuff depending. I don't know.

I'm not sure they're going to leave my franchise. The franchise agreements probably are supersede this deal or get grandfathered in. Some analysts suspect what this is also a diversification. of sources of Reels model. There you go. Franchise feeds. There you go. There you go.

There you go. Because Reel's model right now is very much reliant on actual closings. In other words, they get a percentage plus some fees. Well, I mean, Real has a number of different profit centers. They have fees tied to transactions, let's call it moving paper fees. They have fees tied to commissions and a, frankly,

very avatation. advantageous commissions. Very advantageous cap scenario to the agent. They're also offering basically a lending scenario to agents where they can get their commission before closing, which I find incredible. I also find that extremely dangerous and risky. Well, if the deal falls apart of the problem.

That's my point. So there's a number of different profit centers. That most appeal to me has real found a new profit center with this franchise model. Is that what's happening? But there are some ways if you think about it, everything you just mentioned is a very fluctuating source of profit. Exactly. The franchise model is almost like an annuity.

It can be expected. You can budget for it. Yeah. But I would think over time. I don't know if I go a billion dollars in debt for it. I just can't wrap my head around that number. Well, especially since, and I'm not saying locally, especially since nationally, the data suggests a slowing real estate market. the data nationally suggests a cooling market

we're going to later on in the show we can break that down to get into that into local stuff and you know the whole intent here is we want to be respectful to real folks we want to be respectful I mean there's a lot of real folks watching the show right now remax folks and all the stuff so this is this is not about brokerages this is not about brokerage models this is about what does this look like from a financial analysis

perspective from the perspective of a financial analyst right? You're not really sitting there debating which model is better. That's exactly right. What you're looking at is saying, this is someone diversifying sources of revenue. Well, what is... This is, I want to get revenue from two different ways instead of the one way I was getting it before. Both of us, all of us are blessed enough to have a little bit, you have a ton of experience in the street, you have a ton of experience. I have some experience in it.

You know, when you've got a billion dollars on a balance sheet, Wall Street don't care about the client, right? It doesn't care about one of the three requirements are trip around the sun, which is SELTA. It's going to care about balance sheets, and it's going to care about shareholder

value, and what do we need to drive that number up. When you're that much money in debt, so there will be some shifts over time. They don't have to be, because their expectations, the reason what is their expectation?

So the real expectation, the reason they think that they can go from 2.7, which is the way they'll be after the merger down to 2, is because they're expecting about $30 million in annual cost-saving synergies. So synergy is... Redundancies, back-end office.

The trading is half of that expected $30 million. They're claiming will be redundancies. That basically means in very simple terms, a lot of... Which is inevitable. A lot of remax back-end office is going to get laid off. That's what we're talking about right there.

Well, so, again, I don't want to start going down. Some of it may not necessarily be personnel, but rather systems that you're paying. A hundred percent. Okay. Yeah. You need about just from a, you take it down to a small business level. The two businesses that both pay in quick push, you merge. You're only paying quick push once.

Sure. Yeah. Another example of a redundancy is a human resource officer with both company. Another example of redundancy is transaction coordinators. Yeah. Another example of redundancy. office admins. CRMs.

Yeah. CRMs. CRMs, you know, all this stuff. I mean, you know, ultimately, I think my real stock's going to do great. That's, you know, we'll see how it goes. I mean, your financial advisor is right there. Well, that's the one part that I, you got to say. Right.

Well, we're not supposed to be talking about that, right? You give him a portion of the portfolio that he's able to go. No, no, no, no, we're not too much. This is like me talking. I made a commitment. We weren't going to do this. Got it, got it. I didn't know about that commitment. Sorry about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's a licensing thing.

Got it, got it. We want to be careful. But in any event, it's interesting how this transition is going to go, not necessarily from a Reels perspective, I think. I think, you know, I just struggle with how they're going to make those numbers work. That's a heavy lift, right? Well, what's going to be interesting is something's going to have to change. So when a company says, right, there's going to be $30 million of synergies, 15 is redundancies, your typicalism. The other 15 is clearly because we think that these two things together

are going to begin to generate something. But that means something has to change, right? In other words, the other half of the synergy can't be, we don't change anything about the way either of us is operating because otherwise then you wouldn't expect $15 million in additional. cost you have to change something 15 redundancy

the other 15 million you have to do something So one just to get this out there's a runway from this conversation to this actually happening right because it's got to go through the regulatory got to go through two sets of boards You know there's a lot of smart people I'm sure figuring out math and how

things are going to get worked through it But once this transition happens for lack of a better term on it, let's say six to 12 months from now, real stock isn't performing like it should. What does that look like from an investor's perspective? From an investor's perspective, that's a tricky one because my suspicion is that there's going to be two sets of investors that are coming in right now. They're looking at real.

You have the people that were already there who are probably going to now have to make the decision, does this still fit my risk profile? because or I'm out well because in other words if I had it in my portfolio as a high growth now I need to have it in my portfolio as a stable to less slightly profit generating but no longer high growth at least until I see otherwise because the greater portion of it's of what for me now is is a slow growth so let me try it a different way what do you need to see for that to go back into the high growth category basically what people are going to be looking at is it's right is their revenue numbers. Once they combine, do we see anything like the growth? Because you're not going to see 55. So no one's going to be looking at this new company and saying, I need to see 55% revenue growth or else I'm leaving, but is that's where we'll have before? No. What an investor's going to want to see is, can you turn rematch as minus five into plus five, plus 10? The rematch has been in a downward trajectory. I mean, they've been negative for the past four

years. So they've been a slightly shrinking company, mostly. But they've been profitable, though. but they've been profitable. But in other words, a real investor is going to want to see, does that number turn around? Well, when this happens, everybody will be a real investor. Everybody will be a real investor. Does that turn around? Interestingly enough, you're probably going to get some people,

which I've already seen, you're going to get some investors who are going to look at this and say, well, real stock went down too much of this news. In other words, because you're always going to have the people that do the technical analysis, and they're going to say, that was a big drop. Acquisition denounced. You always have a drop.

right but what you're going to have is going to have people who go in then I've already seen some analysts say yeah I put this on the buy for the precise reason that they just think that the price drop that happened after the napal was too high therefore you go that it bumped up and it bumps up but now it's back down a little bit exactly so what they're going to be looking for is they're going to run a deeper analysis they're probably even I would do right they're going to run into all these financial analysis they're probably going to do a little bit of charge where's the sharp and knowing and they're going to look and say this is down too much too quickly i'm going to go in because i think it will tick back up even if it never gets back because they're because it in you know it's funny right i think a lot of people the average person might look and say oh down minus 70 how can they ever possibly get that back but from a investor perspective that's a sum cost well what people so what people are betting on let's let's call it what it is they're betting on this being an apple. That's what they're betting on. They're betting on this

deal being an Apple deal when Apple was whatever it was 10, 20 years ago, right? When I first bought it, right? What they're betting on is, I don't care what it did over the last year. It's the law right. Yeah. Yeah. Because your choices is not go back

in time, right? There is no go back in time. The thing about the, what I'm reconciled the thing about the Apple world, and we took you way too much of your time. And I'm sure this folks got questions. but Apple was kind of in control of itself, right? Right? You know, it was either going to succeed or it was going to fail, right?

This now is one, two very different models trying to merge into one, which now I'm $900 million in debt, right? And I'm trying to restructure a legacy brand over time and operation over time to be more like me. That's a freaking heavy lift. It's also made a real estate giant. I mean, what is it? Compass is number one in the industry, size-wise. I mean, you're looking at a top-three, top-four player here now.

But in volume of transactions nationwide, Remax is the king. Yeah, yeah, right. This will be, yeah, from my-res-in-old. This is a top-three-four brand here. By huge-ge. We've been like size. No, just as far as like-size, transactions. Size of the actual resulting company, I think will become a top-three.

I learned this in Vegas. remax is size also in an agent income right it's the largest because of the volume right

it's got so many um uh franchises around around the world but I just I wanted to get some of

your time on air and say you know what does this make sense does you know I'm not looking at it from a real estate

perspective more from like we're doing a financial perspective, weaving in a little bit of the industry into it. But I would say is when you looked at the numbers, you looked at the analyst, what you're seeing is it makes, it makes logical sense. You see what the game plan is,

you see what they're doing. Where I would say is that this is a higher risk move than some of the other mergers and acquisitions people might be used to like, in other words, when two grocery stores merge, that's not the same level of risk move that this is. So what if this is a fail?

Because it's two different models. That's why you're saying that. And the relative positions of the two companies. In other words, this isn't Amazon flush with cash buying Whole Foods. 100%. Right, years ago. And they did that all in cash. All in cash.

100% all in cash. This is, okay, I am going into debt because I have a great deal of confidence that I can make this work. Right. But there's a huge risk if I don't know. make this work because I just took myself from a net cash company to a 2.7 leverage company. So that's the risk as far as if it doesn't.

Let's say 24 months from now, stocks kind of don't get where they need to be, revenue doesn't get where, what is it? From somebody who's in the business that now all of a sudden this becomes a behemoth, what happens there, coach? Is this like

too big to fail kind of thing? I don't think so. I don't know. I don't think so. I'm just asking questions. Because it's not in the financial industry. It's not a utility. This is not like an airline. And you can survive for a long time. I think what happens,

I don't think that this suddenly turns, I think this doesn't work, isn't that site, suddenly Real starts like hemorrhaging money. Sure. I think this doesn't work, ends up looking, my suspicion. They start selling off pieces of it.

Or know that Real just ends up looking like Remax now. In other words, it just becomes... On paper. On paper. It just looks like a slow growth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, slight net problem. So it goes from Armitus II to my little thing I've let,

the little firecracker I light off. This is a ballsy move by real. Yeah, I mean, it's either going to be. And today's digital media, build your own personal brand world, the need for a legacy brand or some kind of like associating your, business to a bigger brand is not needed like it used to be I mean there is at one time where like a remax or a Sotheby's or like you know let's let's open the door let's call it now it's the name so let's call it like it is because if anybody goes

back and tracks the shows for seven years I've started I started saying this a long time ago brick and mortar's gone right so let's instead of using names let's call them brick and mortar right so brick and mortar right so brick and mortar is gone. It used to be all about the brand, right? The brick and mortar brand. Then it started migrating to about the agent. And what Real is doing, and I have to hats off to them, they're trying to merge something that I think if they're successful, it would be really, really awesome. And I'm just saying that, even though we're an end of Brooks, it with a KW at the end of it. they're trying to merge the agent and the client together.

It's really interesting, and they've been, from my perspective, that's the reason they've been growing, is very, they are kind of marrying the agent and the client together, whereas in the past it was always, you know, it was about the brick and mortar, it was about that, right? We also used to have books when you had to look for MLS, right? Right. So, you know, I just, really this one made me go,

hmm, how do you reconcile? It's a more interesting one from a, you know, you dig into the financial metrics. You know, this is interesting, because you don't often see, I mean, most of your mergers, right, are very similar business models. And this is similar only in the sense that it's real estate.

So tying this together, do you got time? Yeah. Do we have any questions? No, keep going. Keep going here. So tying this together to the market, I do my annual, or my beginning of the month kind of white paper of the market and the car footprint. And, you know, the first four months of the car footprint,

you know, we've had a substantial jump in sales, roughly 7%. So we're 7% higher than we were last year. The prices are down. Average and medians are down in the car footprint. So this is Album Marshall. Wolfavana, Nelson, Green, and Louise, of those six jurisdictions, all product types, you know,

attach, detached, new construction. We're down, on the average, around 3% on the median, around 4%. Down. When you start taking a look into the jurisdictions, you'll see the numbers start going up and down, right? Album Mars outperforming those numbers.

But I took a dive, which I generally don't do. Let me get the numbers and make sure I've got this I took a dive into what's on pending right now. We're sitting in the car foot pending roughly 613 are under contract right now. So these are in the pending processes. Some will close in May, some may close before, after, excuse me.

So I just, for the heck of the show, I just took 80% off at the top of that number, which equals 490. That is two times the amount of pendings or closings we'll have in May versus the first every month, January, February, March.

So those months on average is... Two times what any individual month did on average. Yeah, so those were 210 per month. So the pipeline's full. The pipeline's full. And if you project that 80% in numbers what the median sales price... It's higher.

You'll see at the end of May we're going to reverse those three and four percent. Which makes sense, because the first part of Q1, was snow apocalypse, you know. Well, what it is, it's back to the normal system of the market. Yeah, 100%. The one thing that stood out to me about your data dump was the drop in value for some of these outer counties. Yeah.

And you're talking, did you see the numbers, Alex? No, I'm weird about it. Pretty sizable drop and median values for some of these out of counties. Good, we'll ask you to talk intelligently about it. I would encourage the viewers and listeners to go to Keith Smith's Facebook page, He's got a tab, he's got a post called White Paper, where he talks about data, transactions, median values, units sold already in Q1 or from Q1 for the first part of the year and what's coming up in the pipeline. Almaro County, really only your market leader with home value uptick. Charlottesville's down in 2026. Fluvana's down in 2026 a bit.

Green County, the Darling, is down. Well, let's talk about why. I do want to talk why. And one of the questions that I have for this is like, I'll let you just. How much of this do we start talking about gas and fuel? No, none of that's got to do it. So I'll throw this to you and then get out of your way.

This war and Iran's been going on for two months. Two months and change. Gas was 419 coming in. How many times is the buyer now saying 45 minutes from the epicenter of employment at $4.19 of gas is just not that appealing to me right now. So let's talk about the green shift. Yeah.

It's actually very much... That's a housing type shift. So you're going single family detach to attach. That's why the value in green is dropping. I love it. I mean, this is what I do for a little. So 600, Stanley Martin driving the value. They've shifted to more attached stock now. And as you're building attached stock

that has a price point that's different than a single family detached toll. That explains the green drop in value. And people need to understand that when you're look at, when they look at the numbers, values did not drop. Fluvana is what I'm really interested in. So you say same type.

They're building town homes now. So 2025. They did single family homes. There was more single family detached, built, and sold. Now they're attached. Their transition to attach. Which are more affordable.

And that transition is eventually going to stop because they're going through their product type, right? So probably this time next year, you're going to see that was that whole product thing. Green County will still be on a pretty good accelerated year over year on it. Back to your driving thing, the reason why the townhomes are selling out there, because that's where you can buy it. And people are just driving out there to do it, and they're making adjustments in their life.

It's affordable. It's more affordable. They're making adjustments in your life. Fulvana County... I mean, you should tell the drop in numbers to the viewers and listener. You published them. I was, my jaw at the table when I read it. On Flavana or Green County? Flavana, certainly.

Yeah, so Flavana has, first of all, substantially dropped in a sales volume. It dropped about 12% year over year. The average sale price jumped about 16%. It went from 477 to 399. The median had about a 6% drop, 372 to 350. Part of what's going on is the new construction. There's only one new construction project. They're at the flat level.

they're almost finished and we talked about this in previous shows. Once they finish that project which they will be at the end of the year, they kind of accelerated the price because a lot of these new constructions had fours in them

and high fours in them, the single family detached. They are pretty much done with that out there. Now they're trying to wrap up the rest of the townhomes which will drive this number down. You're going to see that balance a little little bit, but it took a shot in the arm because of the new construction, similar to green,

but you're looking at roughly a 6% drop. 6% drop in median value and 12% drop in units sold. But the thing to note is the new construction, if you look at that, and it was flat on sales year over year, and value was flat on it. So that new construction is not really impacting the market as much as it. And that makes sense. That makes 100% sense. And comparing it to the benchmark of Almaro County, you had units sold flat.

Yes. And you had median value, a 2% uptick, which is an 8% overall delta compared to Flavana. Yeah, but look at the numbers, right? Look at the price points. You know, the price points are, you know, substantially different. Let me go ahead and get Almar County's price points. the average 745,000 was up to 26.

The median 565. Up to up 2% sales are flat. New construction is up 5% but dropped 8% and because nobody's building in Elmore County anymore. The only one of the central Virginia counties to drive

incremental value Almaral County of the jurisdictions. And it's always been it's always... Is this the one without the new construction? Yeah, it's... No, there's no new construction in Charlottesville City. Yeah, Charlesville is pretty much non-existence. But yeah, so, you know, you're

looking at roughly 380 sales in Alamoire County out of the 846 in 20th. So, you know, not quite 50%, but awfully close. And the rest of the five jurisdictions are filling in the volume. The volume on that.

He's good. He's good. Our three-year-old son, Zachary, is here in the office. today and so far as being quite good for the first 10 minutes. We have to tell people there's poor patrol on the screen. I think Uncle Judah is hopping Zachary right there. I mean, so Keith, so you don't attribute any of this to gasoline?

At the moment... Two plus months of war and two plus months of $4 gallon gas and you don't attribute softening in outer county central Virginia to gasoline and fuel? I'm not seeing that right now. Okay. That may change. I think

the market, and I look at week over week, right? You know, we're pretty much out of one-to-one, right? We're out a constant we've been running week-over-week, new construction, excuse me, new sales versus pendings, pretty much a one-to-one, one-on, one-off, one-on, one-off. And that number's been running anywhere from

the low one-hundreds to tickling 150 units, right? And it's kind of hovering the last few weeks in the 120-130 range. kind of on, kind of off. I haven't looked at it this morning. And I will say from my financial planner, perspective I put off my financial planner,

when we talk with clients, I would say that it's not that people get hurt when the gasoline prices go up, but I will say they don't make decisions of this nature based on that because you're, because of the constraints. In other words, if you can't afford to live in the middle

where you work and you have to move to one of the surrounding, counties, then you just, it is what it is, right? I mean, you'll just move to the surrounding counties and know you have to pay more in gas. Because you're constrained, you can't, like if you can't afford to live in Albumaro, you won't say, well, I won't move to Green because I have to pay more in gas. And well, I can't afford to live in Albuhr. I will move.

So I will tell you where the gas is showing up, and any realtors that are on, please chime in on this. The gas isn't showing up on the where so much. The gas is showing up in the deal. And why this is, what I mean by that is it's showing up in the deal that whatever you put on the market, better be priced right, better have the right features, better be in the right condition. If it is, I, I was, we're helping a couple of clients out at Lake Monticello has a pretty good inventory, right? You know, not quite 1% yet, right? We have 4,500 lots. We're, we're below 4,45 homes on the market.

There's multiple offers going on. There's houses that are sitting, right? So I think where the gas is showing up is in the deal, right? People aren't going to buy a home and go, I'll spend $5,000 in painting it. That's not going to happen. That's where it's going to show up in real estate. If this hangs on any longer, then here we go.

Here's the open. Here's the open. Scorrel. That's where it's going to show up, in my opinion, for what it's worked. The market is still trucking along, and we're heading into a market right now that I think is going to certainly uptick as the weather's gotten warmer as kids and parents try to land their forever spot before the school year starts. I'll tell you what, that is absolutely red hot now is a million plus in Almar County. A million plus in Almar County is moving, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah.

Yeah, so let me see. Do you want me to give you those numbers? Yeah, I got it right in front of me. We're up 13% in sales. Last year, we had 56 million plus in Alamar County. Now we got 63. And a million plus has become an extremely competitive. Yeah.

Multiple. You called a million to a million six. It's a multiple for scenario. It's escalators. Again, it has to hit the three, right? Got to be the right location, right, right features, right condition. It's doing it, but I just looked at it this morning.

So we're out of 100, last seven days going from today back. We got 108 that came on. 139 when pending. So in seven days, so we were now reversed back. Yeah, more pending than our. We got more pending that's coming on.

It's been very much like one to one the last few weeks. We're now seeing that, which this is in the case, to the market, right? It's, it's, we're in it in a big way. You know, May and June, you're going to start seeing mid-July things slowing down a little bit. Kids going on vacation. Kind of mid-August, you're going to start seeing this thing pick back up again. But for 40 years, that's been the rhythm. Yeah. So we're kind of going, we're kind of going back.

Keith Smith, Alex Earpie, Real Talk with Keith Smith, Archive, Online, and Real Talk with Key Smith. gentlemen, maybe at the 115 markers of closing thoughts for the viewers and listeners over here? No, I thought I was just going to have you for five minutes. You should, you should, you know, he's the executive producer, you should

come, have him back more. This was part of the thinking. You ever see the movie man who came to dinner? Yes. You invited him to dinner and he doesn't leave. Yes. You invite me on your show for five minutes. I've been kicking you under the table for the last

20 minutes and you just won't take a hint. to our advantage. You know, this is my show. It's supposed to be about me. Damn it. As I set my closing words as I go away for two weeks. I love it. Gentlemen, it's been awesome. Thank you for the analysis on the real remax deal. Alex. Keith, a 40-year anniversary. Enjoy it with Yona. Yeah. Well, thank you for doing this, Alex. There's a lot of questions out there on the agent side, and I really didn't want to get too much into that. I really wanted to look at it. So thank you for for doing that and looking at it from a financial. Always fun to come chat with you.

So next two Fridays, I am out. I've got folks filling in for me, so you're going to see special guests sitting here and other guests sitting there, probably giving me a hard time that I'm not here. Enjoy your anniversary. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, very well-deserved. You guys are a special couple. Thank you. He's going to come back, sun-kissed. Yeah, hopefully it makes me, This is my theory. It makes me look about six to eight pounds lighter. It absolutely does.

And about 10 years younger. So hopefully we'll see how that goes. Folks, enjoy the weekend. Keith Smith is one of the principals at Yes Reli Partners. Alex Erpi is the CEO of Emergent Financial Services. This show is archive wherever you get your podcasting and social media content. Thank you kindly for joining us. I just want to say this out loud.

Sure. It's acted awesome. I'm shocked. Our three-year-old son is awful. Off camera, I'm absolutely shocked. He's about 15 feet away from us. My wife has texted me, is Zach in the studio? Because nothing bad is happening right now.

Yes, he is in the studio. Thank you for being awesome. Zachary, good work, Zachary. Good job. We love you. Good job, Zachary. I got a little shy right there. That's real talk with Keith Smith on a Friday. So long, everybody.

Thanks, guys. Be well, everybody. Happy May Day.