The CEO of The #1 Real Estate Team in America

In today's highly competitive mortgage industry, building profitable relationships with the real estate agents is essential for success. However, finding effective ways to secure agent relationships can be a challenge. With so many mortgage loan originators vying for the attention of real estate agents, it can be difficult to stand out and establish meaningful connections. Our new case study featuring loan officer Chris Cogill is a must-read. Chris has closed a remarkable 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals. And in this case study, he shares his proven strategies for building strong relationships with real estate agents and leveraging those relationships to drive more business. To get your hands on this resource, head over to LOKestudy.com and download your free copy of the case study today. You'll find actionable insights and practical tips that Chris used to close 36 million in funded loans from agent referrals and how you can, too. Don't miss out. Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Hey, everybody, what's up? It's Jeff Zimper. Welcome to this episode of the Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Thanks for joining in. Really appreciate the fact that you did this. Matter of fact, I got this new button. I'm trying it out. Yeah, it's Halloween. That's our tricky witchy right there. So say hello, witchy. I don't know. Hopefully that's coming through good on the audio. Hey, you know, I'm actually trying to optimize my audio. So if you're hearing some slight audio issues, believe me, I'm aware of them. And I'm working through them with some different audio settings and so forth. So I appreciate you listening no matter what, thanks for tuning in. So also, if you wanted to have a further the conversation with me, you want to stay connected, you are interested in some additional content. Maybe being part of a small group that will help take you to the next level. Hey, we've got a free group for podcast listeners only. It's in Facebook. And if you just go to Facebook and type in Mortgage Marketing Radio, the group will come up. You'll have a couple of questions you have to answer to get in because we want to make sure only the real true mortgage loan professionals out there want to get in. And so we have about 2,000 folks in there right now, I think. And good news for you is if you haven't gotten in yet, now's the time to do it because starting in the next couple weeks, I'm going to be doing some additional lives and ask me anything, some content and even bringing in on some special guests to do some live broadcasts and streams. So if you haven't gotten in there yet, go to the Facebook, type in the Mortgage Marketing Radio, answer the questions appropriately, and you'll be welcomed into the group. Okay, so this week, my special guest is Jason Mitchell, founder and CEO of the Jason Mitchell group, which is a nationwide team, essentially a real estate brokerage, right? With various offices around the country and first, let me set this up. So he's ranked as America's number one real estate team. They have achieved over $6 billion and 10,000 units sold since their inception. They're in 16 states, right? And I've become what is called the number one real estate referral team in the country and ranks in the top five of all production. He's run one numerous awards, been awarded the top producing agent in the state of Arizona for three consecutive years, and he's been on Bravo HGTV, published in Wall Street Journal and Forbes.com. So the man is no slouch, right? And the business model is one that I found very unique when I first heard about it when attending Renee Rodriguez's Amplify event in Vegas. And I started to hear some numbers being thrown out by Jason about, you know, 5,000 referrals generated to date, 65,000 leads passed out to his agents. And we have this conversation about flipping the funnel. And when I say flipping the funnel, what I mean is he works with different companies, some lenders, some banks, some other real estate vendors and service providers within the industry and develops partnerships of a referral exchange. People come to these companies, right? What are some of the companies he has referral partnerships with? Well, they range from open door to fairway, to rocket, to carnal, to home bird, to veterans United, to new American funding, to chase, to a bank of America, to Zelo. And the list goes on and on. And the model for us as a mortgage professional, as you first hear it, it's on traditional number one, number two, you may have a hard time being a fan of the model, right? Because essentially is what they're doing is, you know, striking up a partnership with these companies and bringing transactions, right, to their partners, real estate transactions, to, right, these lenders. Because what they're working with are buyers who are orphaned on a lender. And oftentimes, actually, they're doing it in the reverse as well. In the case of, you'll hear him explain, new American funding, that new American funding, for example, many times has people come to them that don't have a realtor. And so the partnership he has in the case with new American funding and other companies is, hey, well, let's get you hooked up with our preferred realtor or realtor's. In this case, the Jason Mitchell group. So you see how this is playing out. So the point that Jason's making is get to the consumer faster. And that getting to the consumer is hard, right? Getting to the consumer first is hard. And so how do you do that? And if you can figure out a way to get to the consumer more quickly, right? First in line, right, then you can control the directive of that transaction. Does that make sense? So it's about consumer-owned search, right? And so we break this down and have an interesting conversation. And I hope you just show up and listen to it with an old in mind. Number one, and then number two is towards the end of the conversation, we have a nice, frank, heated conversation. Jason gets heated and passionate about this, which is what I like. In talking about what's really been affecting the lack of inventory in the market? What is it really? Is it the millennials? Hmm, maybe. Maybe that's a part of it, but that's not all of it. When you're talking about such a tremendous lack of inventory throughout the country, there's a reason why. And sneak peek, part of the reason why is institutional buyers, right? Hege funds that are buying up swaths of property in different cities across the country. And Jason's very heated and passionate about it because that is completely deterring and creating substantial roadblocks and making it prohibitive for both first-time home buyers because of the lack of inventory. So I think it's a pretty cool conversation. I'd love to hear your feedback on it and get your, your two cents. And after you listen to this podcast, please jump into the Facebook group. Morgan's marketing radio. Love to hear your input on it. And let's continue the conversation going from there. So without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Jason Mitchell, welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's a pleasure. I first saw you at the recent amplify event with Renee Rodriguez and Las Vegas and got a chance to hear kind of what you're doing uniquely in the real estate world. Before I dive into that, probably easiest if you for the listeners, just give your version of the bio. Sure. I'll make it really short. So I don't want to. My name's Jason Mitchell. I currently run the Jason Mitchell group, which is the number one real estate team in the United States. We will do about 2.5 to 2.6 billion this year in production located in 18 or 19 states. Now we have a collective group of our team of around 300 agents headquartered here in Scottsdale, Arizona. I myself was in production for a number of years was a number one agent of Arizona in Arizona for a number of years was voted real estate agent of the decade for the state of Arizona in 2020. You know, Riz Media's most connected real estate agent in the space. The thing about my bio is that we are we're a big B2B brokerage. We specialize in servicing other companies consumer and a lot of them are your big national organizations in lending. And so I'm actually more tied into the lending space than I in the real estate space because a lot of my partners are in the lending space. So very familiar with what's going on there and with a lot of organizations as well. So yeah, so when when a lender has a pre qualified purchase client that does not have an agent. They want to make sure that they connect that agent to a trusted agent that will not bifurcate them and tell them to use their local lender. And that's where we come into play with our national capture rate being right around 86% right now with the referrals that we receive in terms of closing capture rate. So we we do this very well. We do this at scale and it's been an interesting niche, but it's a great one because it's a service that mostly everybody needs in the purchase world. Yeah, so let me find the way thank you for that. Let me unpack that a little bit because that might have blown by somebody. There was a lot in there, but you are the largest real estate team in the country, correct? Correct. And your number one client though your first client, you've probably got more than one client in the mix, but one of your primary clients are lenders. Correct. And I'm looking here at the description. So people like quick in new American funding, rocket homes, are there other lenders you'd want to mention? Yeah, I mean veteran United, new American funding, AmeriSave, exos bank, cardinal celebrity home loans. I don't want to miss somebody because people get upset about that, but the list goes on and on. It's growing every day. So all right, break it down. I'm trying to get my head around this. You're generating when I when I was at amplified. You know, one of the things you talked about was controlling deal flow and getting in front of the customer early first, all that kind of stuff. I think everybody listening gets that the importance of that, but you are sending 4600 referrals a month, at least that's the number I wrote down. We're receiving we're receiving receiving. Sorry, you're receiving. So explain to me how this works in the real world. Your client is a lender and what happens. Yeah, just unpack that for me. Yeah, so other calendar or a network like opcity and realtor.com and Ojo and some other great partners we have, you know, we have open door in the I buyer space as well. We have, you know, we have a variety of partners. We have ideal agent on the listing side. But in any event, when they need a trusted brokerage, when they need, you know, instead of losing using a reload company for distribution that has very little control over their agents. We have more control over our agents because they fall under our specific brokerage. So that's our training, our technology stack, our mission control team, everything we do. We do it at a high level when it comes to referrals. And so when these groups need a referral, they need an agent in any given marketplace that we cover, they will then send over that opportunity, that referral, that client, and then we will take that referral, that client, and we will ingest it into our tech stack. We will then distribute it to whatever marketplace it's in along with creating the intro messaging to the consumer and all of our follow up cadence that come from there and take it from there from the transactional experience to the close. And so every day we're running roughly around a hundred and today about 160, 180 referrals a day that come through our company that we distribute out to agents across the country. Our average agent, our average agent this year will receive about 130 high quality referrals of which they'll close about 32 to 35 transactions from them. So we truly help build our agents book of business at an extremely high level. But because of that, and because of what we do and the partners we bring, we have a high level of accountability to our agents, you know, got to show up to the meetings, got to take your continuing ad that we have like our internal sales continuing it. You got to do the things that we ask you got to give back to our partnerships and be a good partner. And so we just have a lot of control over what we do. And that's why our partners trust us because we have more control over our agents than any other group out there. Okay, so where are you sourcing these opportunities from? Well, they're sourced from the partnerships that you just mentioned. So let's say somebody calls veteran United or rocket to get a prequel. Once they once they take the 1003 and they ask, are you working with an agent? Would you like us to connect you with one? We work with some of the best in the marketplace and they say yes, they then ship it to us and off we go. And that gets assigned to a specific agent in that market, all that kind of stuff. And like you said, you have offices all around the countries. I've looked up the one that you've got here in Vegas in my backyard. So you've got all that the branding and the presence and the actual, you know, people to serve on a local basis. Correct. Yeah, okay. Now that's just a very, very interesting model. And what would you say I'm trying to think of the context of the average lender loan off and start listening to this, you know, I mean part of that is just like, okay. How do they participate in that? But on the flip side, it's like looks like your angle, obviously, or your value prop is with these large companies that, you know, are generating, obviously, you know, they have the capacity, I guess, is what it comes down to. Well, the value prop is capture. Our value prop is that we're the trusted groups. So our, we have a core philosophy and that's protect the source. And so when a source sends us an opportunity, we're going to do everything in our power to make sure it closes with that source. Now, the number one thing when you're taking purchase is if someone doesn't have an agent and you don't match them to a trusted agent, they're going to go find their own agent who's going to give them to their own lender. And so that's where we come into play. We, you know, we service at a high level. We offer our consumers some great benefits and savings along the way. But most importantly, it's the experience and the accountability to know that they're in good hands. And so that's, that's our whole niche. That's what we do. You know, from a local retail perspective on, on lending, we don't do a good job in the retail space because retail L.O.s want one to one. They want reciprocation. And that's not how we're built. Do we have partners we reciprocate to? Of course we do. But in the space of where we're at, we're really, really good at consumer direct because I'm in a lot of those cases, they do all their all their concern is how many deals can I close, but I still need to get it to a trusted agent that's not going to bifurcate the process and go around me. I just want to continue to take 10 or 3s and rip out applications and close deals. So the retail place tough because everyone wants one to one relationships right. Our space is we want abundance so we can take care of your abundance and help you close more deals. So we're much better suited in the consumer direct space. But the source for the consumer who wants to purchase that house by and large is these lender partnerships that you have. Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know the percentage, but I'd say 80% of our business comes from our lending partners. So there are other sources or networks and then other sources again going back to like, you know, you go back to like ideal agent and Ojo and op city and open doors and things like that. There's a big partner of ours in Phoenix as well. We're a big flex partner with them. See, the thing is, is that these groups know that when it comes to reporting and it comes to accountability, JMG does it better than anybody. And so if they have distribution, they like using our service because we know they know that we can control it. There's not a lot of wondering of what's going on. And so, but yeah, it's not just all lenders. It certainly comes from other sources as well. But just then you obviously are tied in tight with the numbers that what do you see for roughly per percentage of consumers who come to a lender don't have an agent. Yeah, so historically it's been in the reverse, right? So there's two sides. And this is why it's so important that if you're going to buy purchased leads purchase consumers that you have this model in place. That's with your local agent or at a bigger level with someone like JMG that you're driving a lot of a lot of consumers into your into your ecosystem. The national average is if you take a 1003 and that client is not matched with an agent that you do not connect them to the odds of you closing that is less than 7%. The national average 7% of a purchase transaction when you don't connect them with a trusted agent partner. When you do connect them with a trusted agent partner at prequel, the national average is roughly around 22%. And so when you think about that number, you have a better than a 300% chance to close that transaction when you match it with the with an agent that you trust. And of us of those connections, those that are close a bull, our our ratio is 86% of the time it stays with you. Sometimes we lose with a convert to cash instead of financing. If they get a better deal, maybe with their credit union, but 86% of the time we're able to close it with that lending source. And that is probably the highest in the country. Yeah, well, that's pretty incredible. So are you seeing an increase then of of consumers showing up because it's been the reverse typically where they go to the realtor first and they figure financing out later. Are you seeing a shift to now where they're figuring the financing out first? Oh, yeah, for sure. So you got two you got two ways to own consumers these days. One, you own them at prequel, you own them at lending, that's your rocket to the world, that's your bedroom, you're not in the world, your new American fundings of the world, that's that space. And then you have search. So that's zillowrealtor.com, truly rocket homes.com. So when you want to own search, you go to search, boobah boom, I get your information, I then call you and I want to take you through my ecosystem. Which means I want to connect you to my agent partner to my lending source to my title company. And you want to own that transaction when you get them at prequel, then you want to go from there, which is more down the funnel than search right. And so from prequel, we then want to match you with a trusted agent partner. And if there's any other ancillary services that we can provide throughout that transaction, so be it. But the consumers either going online nowadays first or getting prequel very rarely are people calling agents first because that's just not look at it's it's a complete 180 from even 10 years ago. And but that's the way it is because everyone begins their search online. So you're either searching on a search engine or you're calling to see how much you should be searching for the realtor come second and third nowadays. Which is why I keep preaching to agents out there that is going to get increasingly more difficult to get to the consumer because these organizations that spend billions of dollars on marketing and advertising are getting to the consumer first. And so knowing that and understanding that they want to provide the experience to their consumer. We as agents have to find ways to either partner with those organizations or partner with teams that have partner ships with those organizations like jam G. Otherwise, it is going to be really hard for you to get in front of a consumer moving forward. And it's it's been shifting for years, but now it's increasingly more difficult and so think about this. So not only is it going to get harder to get to the consumer because big businesses owning those consumers. But as an agent because you can't compete financially against them. That's impossible. So if they're not showing up at open houses. And you can't buy a lead from Zillow anymore and you can't buy a lead from realtor.com anymore. Where are you buying leads from? Because not only is the consumer going there first, you can't buy leads from the sources you used to be able to buy leads from as a realtor. And so it is getting harder and harder to get to the consumer. And most importantly, it's hard to get consumer into housing in general. And so when you consider the landscape of real estate right now, the consumer is getting harder to get to. But yet when I do get to a consumer, it's harder for me to put them into a house because my buyer cycle is taking longer and longer due to the market conditions. Man, it's tough out there for agents. I got to tell you. And that's why our model is so unique, but it also is the future of what real estate is about because we rely on big business providing us the opportunities. And we just have to be a good servicer of those opportunities. And therefore we can drive quality and abundance to our agents where they then don't have to go hunt and kill. They don't have to have ad spend. Do things our way, have a good closing ratio, and we'll take care of the rest. And that's the future. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What about though, you know, agents, for example, or anybody else who's listening to this are like, well, you know, let's play the personal branding, consumer direct, video, YouTube channel, whatever. Right. All those strategies of content marketing and all that jazz. Clearly agents are able to get to consumer via those means, granted, not perhaps at the same scale that you're providing. But we can, you know, client. Well, there's always, well, there's always ways to get to a consumer. The question is it's just harder. And you got to spend more money to do it now too, because now you got more competition, right? Like we're trying to buy ads on Facebook if we're trying to buy ads on Google and paper click and you're competing against these organizations. Guess what? Your PPC is going to just simply be more money. Right. But the other side of it too though, is that when we're made an introduction from a partner, the level of trust and confidence is already there. When you're buying leads as an agent and you drive that lead, there's no loyalty and it's really hard for you to gain that rapport because they don't know you. When introductions are made on your behalf, it's like, if I introduced you to a friend of mine and I said, you know, you're a great guy. He's great. He's a great dude to do business with. They have their guard down because they trust what I'm saying. And that's what we get when we get referrals, whereas when you go to buy leads, the consumer and consumers have less loyalty nowadays. Hell, how many how many agents now you take a client out to go look at a property or two. The next thing you know, they buy a home from from somebody else because they went on the Zillow and that agent was available that second and you weren't there's the loyalty aspect of the consumer is nowhere near where it used to be anymore. So it's just harder. It's going to be harder for agents. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt it's it's grown increasingly harder. When I look at the list of some of the companies you partner with, you know, the performance question comes up. And I'm curious if you want to talk about that at all, you know, the ability to perform the remote loan transaction versus being right boots on the ground local and stuff. Yeah, I follow you there. I look I will tell you this like there's no doubt about it. I think local lenders have a local lenders have a bigger advantage than national players. Just simply because they can feel touch and see that consumer more than the, but where they fail sometimes is the efficiencies. And you would think that a local lender would be efficient because they're in office, but a lot of times our local lenders are relying on back office support of corporations that aren't necessarily in their local markets are underwriters that aren't in their local markets or processors that are in their local markets because they got a piano that they got to protect. I believe the national players certainly have a lot more efficiencies and have a lot more tools and capabilities. But in terms of the actual most important thing and that's that one to one communication and that I want to see you feel you come to my office sit down. Absolutely. Consumers still love that. But that's changing too. Where it used to be I have to make sure that my agent is in my loan officer is in market because I want to go meet them, shake their hands, turn in my documents. As that consumer gets older, I mean, you got to think about it now. I mean, our millennium buyers like they don't care if they put their social security number online. They have they just think it's trustworthy, right? Like yeah, they don't even want to talk anymore. They just want to chat with you, supply documents and just get the loan done. They don't need to see you. And so the mindset of the consumer is also over time going to get to a point where they don't care if they have to go if they have a local person there. Now, now some will don't get me wrong. Some will. But what used to be five years ago where I really, really want that now it's kind of like well, they'd be better to have it. But if it's not there, that's okay. And then it's going to be it doesn't matter. That's my opinion where it ends up. So when I hear these types of conversations about, you know, FinTech and the big brands, you know, coming in and taking market share. Obviously, some people become concerned about the future. I'd be curious to get your take on. Let's just take lenders first. Do you see, you know, because the question always came up with the disruption of real estate, right? Oh, realtors are going to be irrelevant. What's your take on? Let me flip it. What's your take on that first real estate agency relevance? No, I think that the same thing with L.O.'s and market except realtors actually have to open doors. And you want the person that's going to be negotiating for you opening the door. Now, there is a place and it will be the future where I think listings can be controlled from a centralized location anywhere in the United States by offering consumers benefits and savings for a discounted listing. But you have to be the one to open the door, Miss Jones. And we will manage it. We'll negotiate it. We'll put it online. We'll do all those things and we'll do it for a point. But you got to be the one to let them in the door. But on the buy side, I don't think you can infiltrate that because it's been tried many times and it's too hard to control brokerage agents, independent contractor agents and even employee W2 agents. Because it takes so much time to tour and tour and tour a second tour, third tour, a fourth tour. Consumers want that agent that they're working with opening the door, seeing the home with them and getting their opinion. And that you can't replace with technology because you have to be there physically to do so. Can the listings be replaced? Yes, I do believe that can happen. But the buy side, I don't think you can replace that through any kind of tech or automation because people want their agent present when they're looking at property. Has that changed on the road? Maybe, but I think that's a tough code to crack because it's very expensive and controlling to run boots on the ground by side real estate, right? We're centralizing listings is a different story. That's like REO. That's like I buyer. I can centralize that process. It's very hard to figure out how to centralize touring consumers into seven houses in one day and then scheduling those tours the next Sunday and doing the same thing over again. That is really hard to duplicate. And even all the talk about virtual tours, that'll still never replace that and only a small percentage. Would you buy a home if you didn't want through it? I have to be a pretty unique situation to do that. Yeah, I have done that once. I did it once actually an investment property, but that's different. That's different. And also too, a lot of people can put in the contract, they'll buy it side unseen. But they get there before the due diligence period expires because they still want to see it smell it, be around it, see what it's all about. I don't know many people at all that are going to close on a home. They're going to live in without ever stepping foot in there ever. And I don't think, I mean, even when it comes to a car, like I may not buy my car from the person I test drove it from, but I'm certainly going to test drive that car before I buy it. Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense for sure for that. It's like the old saying, I remember everybody was talking about look at how Uber and Lyft disrupted the taxi industry, but you've probably heard this example. Disrupting a $20 ride is a little bit different than the biggest purchase of your entire life. That's right. That's right. And that's why I don't think that's why I don't think it gets disrupted. I think it can on the list side. And you know, the I buyer space proven that that can be an assembly line as well too. And that's fine and dandy. But the people that are buying the homes from the I buyers, they're still walking through those houses with agents. And I don't think that changes for a very long time. And I also think companies would lose money on it. I don't think like you might as well just get a referral fee and get a point on a referral fee. Then try to manage all these boots on the ground and brokerage and MLS and everything that you got to deal with on that end. Because in the end, you probably make less than the point anyways, when you figure out the split, you got to pay and the governance and everything else. You might as well just collect a referral fee and sit back, right? Like and let somebody else do the work for you. And that's where companies like us come in. Because we pay referal fees on almost every single transaction that we close. Yeah, so so how does the you know that the average I hate to use the word average because you know average brings to doubt or question the future of these professionals anyways. I mean, what you've got to be above average, I think to survive today, right? Like do something unique and different because just like the old adage of like your job is not to sell somebody a house, right? Like you said, we don't need agents to find me a house. I don't need that anymore. I don't even don't even agents to let me in a house, right? We've got these remote, you know, lock boxes and all that kind of stuff. So again, I guess let's come back to this thinking of my listeners, largely lenders. Let's take them now separately. How do they remain relevant and valuable with this looming conversation of we've got JMG, who's who if I look at the number correctly, what 65,000 leads you rolled out over what time period was that? Well, that'll be a course that this year will distribute close to 70,000 referrals now maybe 65, 65,000 referrals. Well, it's called 65,000 referrals. And those are two agents across the country to real estate agents, correct? Yes. Obviously, agents who work for you and you're your brokerages. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty compelling. It's like, why would I the hardest thing for a real estate agent is generating the deal, right? Marketing and all that. Now, now you don't have to go hunt and kill. You don't got to have that spin. I mean, I don't pay money for my referrals, right? Because I have partnerships. And so the profitability index to and the fact that it's all company generated, which is higher splits on our end, relatively speaking, the margins are great. But what we do is we invest that money into great technology into great training, a digital experience for our agents and consumers and making sure I mean, we'll close 470 transactions this month. And I have three people in my processing department. I was with when I was up in Amplify, I was talking to an agent and they got nine people in the closing department that are closing 150 transactions a month. And they go, how on earth can you close with only three people that kind of volume? And it's because everything we do is uber efficient and it runs through tech stack. And I have the philosophy of everybody, no matter if you're in our marketing department, our processing department, our communications department, you know, we're set up. Our business is set up very niche for referrals. So like our communications department, I have seven people now in this department. And their only job every day is to make sure referrals get distributed handling any concerns that we have ensuring that all the series are working follow up cadence 714 21 30 60 90 120 follow ups. Like everything we do is based around servicing that client that partners consumer because it's not only our client, it's their client. And so we have a responsibility to make sure that we're doing it better than anybody else. But when you start understanding from an efficiency standpoint that everything is bun burger bun, bun burger bun, and they're doing the same thing is in my processing department, you may have seven tasks, you may have 10, but those are the only tasks you do all day long and you do it 20 times a day. You master your craft, you just you can do it with your eyes closed. And when you're building scalability, you can't have internal operation staff doing a variety of different things that cross over into while she kind of does some marketing here on the social media side, but I also have her doing my transaction coordinating over here like those two don't those two don't judge. Yeah. And so it's just about the efficient process in order to do it in a scalable way. Yeah, obviously people process technology. My favorite three go to words when looking at a business. What's your take then on this whole I buyer thing? I know you mentioned you're probably partnering with them to some degree perhaps for referring. Yeah, yeah, what give me the next I don't know whatever time you look at five years, 10 years, we look back or what's it look like for, you know, the real estate agent and lender as we know them today. Well, you got to look outside the box. Everyone gets pissed off at open door and offer pad and Zillow offers and everything. Oh, they're disrupting knock and they're disrupting the market. They're disrupting the market. Yeah, they're disrupting the list side. They're taking away a listing from you because they're selling their house without having a list on the open market. But guess what? They still flip the house. So there's still buy side opportunity there. And if we wrap our brand around, well, maybe I can partner with these guys. Maybe when somebody doesn't take an I buyer offer that maybe I can get that referral to list the home and I can pay a referral fee to get the listing. Like we partner with open door on the buy side opportunities that they have when somebody turns things down, we also get those opportunities, right. And so when we start looking at like if you don't embrace change in technology, then all of a sudden you're out anyways, because it's coming and the I buyers are going to continue to grow and expand. But at least I buyers aren't chopping up our inventory and not allowing homes to be on the market because they're flippers. The people that are killing our market and I just did a video on this are private equity groups because they're buying all these houses and they're not releasing the inventory to the market. And that's what's killing the market. That's what's killing the middle class right now is because the appreciation rates that are skyrocketing is because there's no inventory has nothing to do with I buyers. It has to do with institutional money that takes these houses, they don't care what they pay for it and they get yield on the rents, but they don't release that product back to the marketplace. And that's where appreciation comes from. And then when they start monopolizing the rental pools, that's why we're seeing rents up 15 and 20% across the country because they have a monopoly on the rents. Well, guess what happens when your rents go up, the value of the asset goes up, right? That's a portfolio. And so they are destroying the middle class and lower income families right now the VA, the FHA buyers that, and I'm not saying those are low income families, I'm saying put them as part of it, but also the VA and FHA buyers out there because they can't compete with them when it comes to offers. And guess what? Now when they're forced to rent for another 12 months and they go back into the marketplace, they can't even afford to live in that area where they could have a year ago, even though they were qualified a year ago. And so it is a systemic problem that we have because people that live check to check, they need home ownership to build wealth because they'll never build wealth in the stock market because you got to have cash to do so. The only way is home ownership and they're being deprived of that right now, they're being, it's being stolen from them because private equity does not care what they pay for the house because all they care about is the rents and they jack it up every single year. And so we need to have legislation against these big private equity groups that own all, you know, Blackstone colony depends on tens and hundreds of thousands of homes that they own. You want to play the game fine play the game, but you got to pay a tax on that game because you're monopolizing it. And as long as you're willing to pay the tax at the end of the year, which we could use monies like that for homeless veterans, for low income housing and do a good thing with the monies that they're paying their fair share, I always equate it to the New York Yankees. You want the best pictures and the best hitters, you can do that, but you got to pay for it because now you're robbing the Kansas City Royals that don't have a payroll and the Oakland A's that don't have a payroll. You can play the game, but you got to pay to play the game and we need to do this. And there's ways to incentivize these institutions to and that is you can play the game. If you off a certain percentage of your portfolio, 5, 10% per year, whatever it is, as long as you're willing to sell a certain amount of your portfolio and introduce that product into the marketplace, then not only will we not penalize you, but maybe we'll incentivize you to do so. Because builders are not building their way out of inventory. It takes way too long and we all know that the only way to do it is we got to get with these PE groups and say, hey, and you know what? That takes legislation and you know the pockets that they're greasing. There's no question about it. But we got to get we got to come up with legislation against this because that's the only way that we can get when you start taxing 2, 3, 4% on your portfolio because you own a certain amount of homes and there should be a tier 5,000, 25,000, 50,000, 100,000 based on how many units you own would be based on your taxable rate for owning that many single family homes and taking way opportunity for the average American to buy home. To then go to lows, go to home depot, spruce up their home, put in landscaping because the renter, the landlords aren't doing that. That's minimum effort. I just got to make the home habitable, right? Like I'm not going out and buying nice cabinets and worrying about what my landscaping looks like, right? So we're missing out on that type of economic growth too because when the average middle American in any homeowner buys a home, they put money into their home. When you're renting a home, you don't put money in a home because it ain't yours and the landlord does minimum viable effort because they don't want to spend all that money on a rental, right? So this is a huge problem and we got to figure it out. You're absolutely right and obviously an effect of that with the low inventory is the appreciation rates and what I'm curious about is when does the market, you know, need a time out and regulate if we've got this manipulation going on because typically if it's left to the natural moves of the market, right? That's going to flow up and down, but when we have this false buying appetite or influx, then that keeps that artificially high, right? No doubt and that's what's going on and the problem is is that they can't compete. Like why, why, why is a veteran that has dedicated their life to this country has a good job can afford to buy a home? Why can't they buy? Because they're using their VA certificate and a seller says, I'm scared of that. Well, why don't we have legislation that says, we will back a veteran up to 100% of whatever it appraises for. Don't worry about the gap because the problem right now is the seller's fear of the gap. Can you make up the appraisal difference? And a lot of times consumers can't. And if you're a veteran or FHA, we got to figure out ways to come up with legislation that says, hey, look, we'll make up the appraisal gap. Because now, look, if I'm a seller, and I got a conventional buyer, and I got a veteran and another conventional buyer, and I got to make a decision I went offered to accept. Right now, I know if I asked the agent and they say that veteran that's putting zero down, they don't have the money to make up for the appraisal difference, but they'll pay you more for the home. Guess what? Sellers are missing out on money because people would actually pay more for the house, but they're afraid to take that offer in case the appraisal doesn't come in. That's crazy. And that's not a true market either because who's to say as an appraiser what you think a home is worth. If I have a Pete Rose rookie baseball card and you're willing to pay a hundred grand for it and someone else is willing to pay 50, guess what the market for this card is? It's a hundred grand, right? But the fear of manipulation from we're still living in the 12 years ago, 2008, right? When we had to, you know, put AC AMC's involved now, third party appraisal management companies, because guess what? Lenders manipulated the process and there were cash back deals going on. But if the government stepped in on govy products and said, look, we'll back these appraisals up to whatever they appraised for. Or how about this? What a novel idea. Guess what? The price of the property is not just based on one person's subjective opinion of value. We will take that into consideration at say 25% but based on your qualifications, we don't care. So if I'm a highly qualified borr with a high credit score decent reserves, that there's an algorithm that says, yeah, but you don't have to make, we can actually fund more money against what the appraisal gap is because we know you're a good borr. And said today right now it's know you're out, you don't got the money to make up for it, you're out. And that's a big problem. Yeah, yeah. For sure, you need to be up there and on Capitol Hill or something, making change happen. March with me. March with me. Getting passionate here, man, love that. Well, I hate the fact, look, I come from Detroit, right? I come from South Detroit and I hate the fact that the middle class keep getting screwed in the marketplace. Middle class are getting screwed right now with inflation. That's who suffers the most is the middle class. And I hate that. And I hate low income people that have worked really hard that now are playing against the big boys. And they don't, they can't compete. It's not fair. Meanwhile, all they're doing is having to pay more and more. I love this. How much with this suck? Your kids have went to the same elementary school for the past three years. Now all of a sudden your rent goes up 20% and you can't live in that community anymore. So now you got to move your kids out of the school district. Are you kidding me? Like that's a problem. Like how much of that suck if you were a nine year old kid that's been going to school for the past three, four years with the same kids. And now because your parents can't afford the rent in the home that they've been living in for four years now they have to move out. Now you have to make a new set of friends. That's terrible. No, no. And I'm always an anti regulation guy. But you know, the problem is when you leave these people unpoliced for too long just like we've seen the latest Facebook news and all this kind of stuff, you know, profit over people. Listen, I don't care if they play the game, but you got to pay to play the game. Yeah, right. Well, I think the other thing too is like very few people understand the impact of what's happening just as you've laid it out with the institutional buyers and all that kind of stuff. We'd the ripple effect. We don't see the ripple effect down to home depot down to the renter. And I got to now move my kid to nobody thinks of that. That's really unfortunate. It's crazy. And it all comes down to again, it's monopolization of the rental markets along with monopolization of the pricing was going on because these big P firms don't care what they pay for the house. They don't care. They're going to hold that home for 20 years. They don't care. So are we going to see prices adjust in the near future downward? No, not downward. No way. No way. We don't have anywhere near the inventory and we don't have anywhere near the exposure in the marketplace in terms of lending and whatnot. And guess what? The minute that happens, there'll be somebody right behind it because rents now are so high that you that you know rents are very indicative of where the where the market is going to go. And so look, look at FHA, look at VA. When you talk about the moratorium clause getting lifted, those will be the first ones at four close, but there's no way it's bringing the market down because there's going to be plenty of people right behind them ready to buy. When you talk about jumbo financing, when you talk about luxury, I mean, I got a 1.75% rate on my home on a 10 one jumbo. So when we bought our home last year, we didn't need to buy a new home, but I knew at some point we wanted a bigger home. And so I said, I don't care what I'm paying for the house. I could care less what I'm paying for the house. I'm getting a 1.75 in one arm from my private bank, right? Now I'm not saying that rates available now, but even two and a half on that seven one, right? You just have to do it. That's why everybody started buying vacation homes in second homes because why not? Remoney almost, I mean, so cheap. Yeah. So, but no, I don't see prices going down anytime soon now. I don't think next year we'll see the same rate of appreciation. I do not, but I do believe the market next year nationwide will probably be up between eight and 9%. Wow. I mean, that's getting really tough for. Yeah, like you say, average Joe, so to speak, right? Yeah. I have the fixed income and can't increase their income like people and us sales and all that can do that. But guess what? These big institutions, they want them to be perpetual renters. They don't want to have ownership. Sure. They want them to rent. You know, you make, I mean, it sounds like they're purposely thinking of that. Okay, here's, here's a novel idea, the sinister plan, right? You think it's like thinking like that? Yeah. I do. I think that, I think that homeownership, homeownership to Americans is critically important. Yeah. And these, to these private equity groups, they could care less. The only thing they care about is how many can we buy and how fast can we buy them? Now they have to hit their buy box, right? Like they're not buying up to 6,000 square foot home or whatever. But guess what? That buy box is the middle American buy box for three, four bedrooms, 1,800 to 2,200 square feet. You know, in a decent area, even in not in decent areas, but there's criteria for their buy box. So they specifically look for a certain buy box demographic on where they're buying it, which is knocking out a lot of people. They're not looking at a million dollar property. They're looking at a $250,000, $300,000 property that they're now charging $2,200, $2,400 a month in rent. That's crazy. And it's only getting worse. I had my marketing director tell me today, she called for an apartment. And last year, she lived there in 2019, she lived there. The same plan that she lived in at that time was $1495 a month. They left that apartment complex, went down to Mesa, and now they're coming back to Scottsdale. And that same plan is $2,085 a month. Now you think about that. That's almost a 50% increase in rent, 50% in two years. And they're getting it, right? Yeah, they can't get. There's only one left. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Now how do people save? Because it's not like she's making 50% more than she did two years ago. She's not. Right, right, right. She might be making 8% more. But yet, her rents are up 50. That's the inflation number. And that's the problem. Is that the middle class are getting absolutely murdered right now. And then they can't happen. We have to have legislation. And if the Biden administration really cares about the middle class, they would look at this housing issue and not worry about what PE is putting in their pocket. Right? Or any, I'm not trying to make this a liberal or conservative thing. Any politician, right? You need to look at housing. Because housing is hands down. It's the largest painting you make when you're rent. And it's the most important asset when you own, right? And so we got to figure this out. It's getting out of control. Who's smart enough to know that that's the actual real solution. Not the tax credit. Shit, man. I don't know. You know what I mean? This is very complex. Very complex. It is. But think of all the things we just talked about in the domino effect of all these things. This brings me, perhaps, to the closing cap on this is because I deal with agents every single day as you do. And, you know, I mean, part of me as a, I just look at them. I'm just wondering, are they going to survive? You know what I mean? With all this going on, it's just like, like you said earlier, it's just getting harder and harder and harder to win, you know? The point is attack your portfolio. You know, because your portfolio, the people that you've helped with in the past, when they send a friend or family member, guess what? That's a good one. And so work on the portfolio. Database. Yeah, or look, stop trying to beat them. Join them, right? Like, I would rather, if all things being equal, let's say that you were working independently, or then you started to go work for a team. But let's say that working on the team, I could close more deals. I have to give up more of my self-gen commissions, but at least I'm closing deals, which means that I'm getting in front of more consumers who can send me self-gen business. Or I stay stagnant over here, and I'm worried about, oh, I have to make 90% on all my deals. Well, guess what? I'd rather close four acts of my deals and have more consumers in the hopper that can give me their friends and family, than sitting here worrying about what my self-gen split is. Who cares? You got to grow your book. The book is everything. And, you know, agents that want to, agents that, you know, can't buy into that concept, it's not going to get any easier. Yeah, I was reading something the other day. I think the future of real estate is teams. Like if you're going to survive, you know, because it's expensive, and you've got to have the long play, and again, the hardest thing is generating those leads and opportunities. So, you've got to be willing to give up some bips for the lead flow. That's right. Which is what you help people do. Look, do you want to go hunt and kill and have this roller coaster? If I had a good month, I had a bad month, I had a bad month, I had a good month, based on what? And again, it's more expensive now to market to consumers than it's ever been, because you got so much more competition. Open houses, good luck. Like, yeah, people come in to open houses, but most of those people that come in, it's different than it was 15 years ago, when, 10 years ago, when I was in the field, when people would come in to open houses because they needed an agent. Hey, can you set me up on a portal? Like, where are you finding off market? Where consumers know more about one houses get listed than agents do these days? Yeah, I just saw a product today come across my newsfeed about, you know, the whole off market properties. And like, you know, how agents used to like, hey, one of my value ads is, I'll find the off market properties, not the MLS. And I was like, hmm. Well, I think I'll tell you what, I think that rules bullshit that they have out right now with these MLS boards trying to control who can have off. Like, that's enterprise to me. And if companies want to find ways to bring private properties to the marketplace. Like, all MLS is trying to do. They're trying to control the narrative so they can get your dues. And they're a very, you know, look, the national association realtors is a very powerful group, right? And so when you start mixing in local board along with national association realtors and things like that, they're putting these rules in place where you can't pre-market. You can't put private stuff online somewhere because they know that if they lose that, they're in big trouble, right? So, but there's going to be that battle because I don't think that's fair. Like, I'm sorry, if you want a market pre-opportunity or private ones that are not on the MLS, you should have every right to do that. Absolutely. Do you think the MLS is screwed up by allowing Zillow in an access? You know, you see that narrative out there? No, because the way I look at it is when it comes to feeds and it comes to what they pay, you know, I'm sure they're paying a fair component of it. What also happens, too, is if they don't, they're just going to build it. And then guess what? You're going to lose your subject. That's true. That is true. That'll just build it. Go around you. That's awesome. All right. Well, listen, this has been a very inspiring conversation, man. I love it. I love the passion. And, gosh, you know, I got to think, if you're in a real estate agent, you strongly got to consider, like, what's your future? How hard is it for you to generate leads and opportunities? And, you know, a company like, you know, yours helps facilitate that. And allows you to do, like, why did you get into real estate? Most agents, I talked to us like, hey, man, they love working with clients. Love helping them find homes and that whole process. And don't love necessarily, like, the hard part about marketing. And just earlier today, I was doing a class helping agents learn Instagram. And it's like so many people are struggling, like, with how to become relevant, and modern, and digital. You know what I mean? Yep. And it's like, if you could just be fed, there you go. Jason Mitchell Group will hand you deals on a platter. So let's, uh, those listening who want to connect with you a little bit more, we got a couple of things to share with them. Number one, your main website, thejsonmichelgroup.com. Correct? Correct. Okay. That's the first place if you want to go learn more about Jason Mitchell Group. And if you might be interested in becoming an agent, I don't know, finding, uh, a brokerage in your area, wherever you're living, living, uh, right now, and listening to this. Um, second thing is that you have something called the 40 day blueprint. Want to explain what that is? Yeah, sure. Uh, I was fortunate enough. I took the time. I wrote a book last year, and we released it in June of this year. It became a number one best seller in Amazon. So we have the book, the 40 day blueprint.com. But I also have the audio, which I think is even better. And I didn't do this book or audio to make money on it. I did it to better our industry. So I always give away, when I'm on shows, I always give away the audio for free. It's nine hours of content. It's eight, it's an eight week course. It's not just for realtors though. There's a lot of good sales stuff in there. So I think lenders would benefit from it too. Um, but if you go to, I think it's, it's either the 40 day blueprint, or I think it's 40 day blueprint. I think it's 40 day blueprint.com. 40 day blueprint.com. Right. And, uh, and if you click by the audio, when you go to check out, just use my last name, Mitchell, all lower case, and it'll get it to you for free. Yeah, awesome. And we'll put links to all that in the show notes. So you've got it. Then lastly, if people want to connect with you on Instagram, your Instagram handle is Jason Mitchell underscore JMG. Is that correct? Correct. Awesome. Cool, man. Love it. Thanks a lot. I know you're busy guy and folks, if you're listening, and you want to connect with more of what he's doing, or introduce an agent, if you're listening to this as a lender, and you think you have an agent who might be a good fit for what Jason's doing, then please send them these resources we've shared with you. So Jason, once again, thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right, listeners, you know what to do. If you like this episode, leave us a review, and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. Hey guys, what's up? Real quick, you've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before, and I just want to quickly remind you, if that you're in a place in your business, where you simply need more purchased loans, you need to fill your pipeline with purchase business, let's just face it, agents are still a solid pillar of business and sources of purchase business for you. Well, good news. Our mortgage marketing pro membership helps loan officers like you close more loans without the hassle of chasing agents or cold calling. Done for you agent classes, expert training videos, a marketing automation platform that automates the entire process for you, everything you need to build your personal brand in your local market, attracting convert agents into referral partners. Plus, done for you proven marketing materials and plug-and-play content to make promoting your class, getting agents butts and seats, partnering with affiliates real easy. But that's not all. 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