The Mostly Real Estate Podcast, with Declan Spring

#60 - Andrea Gordon - REalizations - What 1,000+ Transactions Have Taught Me

• Declan Spring

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What happens when you combine 27 years of real estate expertise, theatrical directing, and PhD-level thinking? You get the incomparable Andrea Gordon. 

Andrea doesn't just sell homes – she tackles challenging client psychology head-on. "Nobody in their right mind wants to spend over a million dollars on anything," she explains. When buyers find a home they love, their faces don't show joy but fear as they immediately begin creating obstacles. "Part of our service is pushing them off a little cliff," Andrea shares, highlighting how agents must help clients stop "talking themselves out of happiness."

This episode reveals the communication secrets behind Andrea's success: meeting with staff three times weekly, marketing teams weekly, and conducting a 15-minute Zoom check-in with every client each week. Her philosophy is refreshingly direct: "People hire me – they don't hire somebody to send them a bulk mail." While technology offers valuable tools, personal interaction remains irreplaceable.

Beyond transaction strategies, we explore how society and  the real estate environment has shifted since 2016. Andrea talks about why agents shouldn't fear asking to be paid for their value. Her passionate defense of the profession comes through clearly: "Every time you don't value yourself, you're not valuing the profession in the eyes of the world."

Whether you're a real estate professional looking to elevate your business or a consumer wanting to understand today's complex market, Andrea's blend of tough love, theatrical flair, and strategic thinking offers a masterclass in what makes a legendary agent. Listen now to transform how you approach real estate transactions!

Please click here for Andrea Gordon's website.

Please click here for Andrea Gordon's podcast.

Please click here for more information about Rainbow Zebra Productions.

Andrea Gordon is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE# 01233563

Declan Spring is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE#01398898

Declan:

This is Declan Spring. Welcome to the Mostly Real Estate Podcast. Well, before we listen to the conversation today with the incomparable Andrea Gordon, I'd like to invite you to an event that I'm hosting at the office at 2089 Rose Street in Berkeley on August 7th. At 2089 Rose Street in Berkeley, on August 7th, east Bay Yesterday is far and away my favorite East Bay podcast. Liam O'Donoghue is a local journalist and historian, and East Bay Yesterday just never fails to just dive into various aspects of the history of the East Bay in amazing and creative ways, and I've just been enjoying this podcast for years and Liam O'Donoghue's been a guest on my podcast before, and I thought it'd be nice to have Liam back, and so he agreed. And so on August 7th, beginning at 3 pm, liam's going to be at the office and we're going to do a live event. We're going to do a podcast with a live audience and you're the audience. So please come to the office here, 2089 Rose Street in Berkeley, august 7th, 3 pm, and we're going to have some snacks, courtesy of Evelyn Freitas at Guaranteed Rate, of Evelyn Freitas at Guaranteed Rate, and I'm going to get into various episodes of the podcast that are relevant to East Bay Real Estate in particular, and I think it's just going to be great. So I'm really grateful that Liam is game for this and then eventually I'll release that as a podcast.

Declan:

So August 7th, 3 pm at 2089 Rose Street, please come along. If you can RSVP, that would be great. You could just shoot me a text 415-446-8591, and let me know whether or not you're coming. I'd like to get about 30 or 40 people here, so please consider joining in that. Okay, without further ado, here's my conversation with Andrea Gordon. I was going to tell everybody, andrea, when you were coming in today into the studio and we just met a realtor, a Keller, that I haven't met before, and we just briefly introduced herself to you I'm not haven't met before and we just briefly introduced herself to you. I'm not sure who you are and we just discussed briefly your transaction volume for the year and she said you're a legend and you know, and of course you are a legend and you have a podcast and you have a book fairly recently and we talked about the book before it was published.

Declan:

And now it's out.

Andrea:

Yep Available on Amazon.

Declan:

How are you?

Andrea:

I'm good, I'm fine.

Declan:

I know you're mourning the loss of a friend.

Andrea:

Yeah, my friend was Lee Brady and she was a phenomenal playwright, incredible human being. I met her when I was 24. I'm 68 now. My mom passed away when I was 19. And Lee essentially became like a surrogate mom for me and I produced and directed 22 of her plays during that time period. 22? Mm-hmm, all over the Bay Area how?

Declan:

many plays did this woman write?

Andrea:

Oh my goodness, I probably don't know the whole number of plays that she wrote, but she was a playwright in residence at the One Act Theater Company, so a lot of those plays that I worked on with her were one acts. And then she also was one of the founders of Three Girls Theater Company and she was a professor in Monterey at the university there and her plays were produced there. She lived in Carmel, her plays were produced in Carmel. Wow, her stuff has been done all over the place. The most recent large full-scale production of hers that I did was a two-character country-western musical with a full band called Southern Lights. Wow, and that was for Three Girls Theater. We did it at Z Space in San Francisco and it was phenomenal. It was so much fun. I want to do that show again. And recently she had I mean, she was 96 years old, by the way- yeah, she had a long life.

Andrea:

Yeah, she basically had just written another play called Appointment in Mendocino and I was going to put it into the reading series that I that I am the head of for Rainbow Zebra Productions at the Magic Theater yes my, my company, has been honored this year by becoming a resident theater company at the Magic Theater yes and um, we present readings of plays by women over the age of 55.

Andrea:

So that's our whole thing. That's the whole thing. Yeah, and Lee had written a play last year called Country Matters, which you know got a standing ovation and people were on the floor laughing. She was just brilliant and amazing and a huge inspiration to me, because if you can be that amazing at her age, yeah then, what are all the rest of us slackers doing honestly? Yeah she was.

Declan:

She was amazing, just just a great human well, people like that are important in our lives and I'm thinking, you know, immediately, of Edna Olmsted, who I'm very fond of yes and it's that same age's that same age, yeah, and so you know, and you, I mean let's, I mean you're inspirational to me and you know, you were the first, I mean you were the first person on my podcast.

Andrea:

I know I was so honored for that.

Declan:

Oh, come on, I mean you're. I was honored. And and and let's. So I want to. Just if anybody wants to really understand your life and your background, they could go back to the very first podcast where you and I chatted for quite a while and that was during lockdown. Yep, it certainly was, and it was a great conversation and you're so generous with sharing your history and all of that, so I enjoyed it. I still listen to it because it means a lot to me that conversation.

Declan:

Let's kind of bring people. I want to anyone who doesn't know you well, now, if anyone's a realtor working in the Berkeley Oakland area, they should know you, unless they literally got licensed last week. Because what I want to do is help. I want to inspire people, because that's what people like you do.

Andrea:

Thank you.

Declan:

Let's talk, because here's how we're going to do that real quick in my opinion, because it's just amazing. Let's talk about your passions and then I want to understand how you balance them. So I give a setup to people who may not be familiar with the workflow of local agents and let me know if this sounds off to you. I think a lot of agents in there, you know, let's say, the average agent even though there's no such thing, nobody's average, correct, everyone's fabulous but a lot of agents in the first six, seven years of their career they're looking to get to maybe a transaction volume as a solo agent. Maybe, you know, if you get up to maybe 12 or 14, that's not a bad year locally. Would you kind of agree with that?

Andrea:

That's actually very typical, and in the recent past there's a crazy statistic. I heard that 71% of agents in the country did not do a single sale in 2023, I believe it was, or was it, 2024?

Declan:

It was 2024.

Andrea:

It was 2024. So a little bit of a rough year, but yeah, to do a sale a month as a baby agent is great yeah.

Declan:

It's hard to do. It's hard to do, right, yeah. And then there are there are not a lot, Okay, so there's not an awful lot of agents, really like truly, who've been in the business for even 15 years or there, maybe longer, who are doing more than 25 a year. I mean, you know a huge amount of agents who've been doing this for a decade or more might get to 25 on a good year. Sure, Right Now, year to date you were just saying it's July. You've closed 41.

Andrea:

Yes, right.

Declan:

That's a terrific volume.

Andrea:

It's a way better year than last year. Last year I didn't have an awesome year. Last year I think I did around that number for the whole year yeah.

Declan:

Okay, well, inventory has bounced back. Yeah, but like the volume that you do. I mean most people here are 41. Oh my gosh, that's only halfway through the year. But here's the fascinating thing about you You're directing and producing plays, which is not something that you can do on Zoom?

Andrea:

No, you can't.

Declan:

Right, how many hours, like when you're doing a, when you're producing or directing a play or writing or whatever. Like you have these other passions, you're giving hours and hours of your time.

Andrea:

Sure, when I do a full production it's usually I schedule it so that it's during what is normally a fallow time. So, for example, when I did my full production of my play Miriam and Esther Go to the Diamond District at the Magic Theater in January of 2024, I rehearsed in December, which is normally a little bit of a slower month. And same thing with my reading series that I just completed at the Magic Theater. I just completed directing a reading a week in June, so I directed five plays with full casts. That was. It was kind of crazy, actually it was. It was a lot, but it was wonderful. It was called Magic Classics and we took plays that the Magic Theater had originated Two plays by Sam Shepard, a play by Julie A Baer, a play by Wendy MacLeod, a play by Luis Alfaro, which was brilliant and wonderful.

Andrea:

And we did very, very intensely, thought through readings of each of these plays and the audience loved them because they were big hits back when they were done and there there was a reason for that. Yeah, um, and honestly, the readings don't take as much time as a full production. On a full production, if you're doing a professional show, you're going to be rehearsing probably a minimum of 20 hours a week, if, if not, 40 hours a week, wow. So it's a little bit rough, along with real estate, and fortunately I have an amazing staff that I work with.

Declan:

So yes, kudos to the staff. Yeah, I get it.

Andrea:

Yeah, they're phenomenal and honestly, you know like do you take vacations ever?

Declan:

You know I did last year Okay, but usually it's weekend getaways.

Andrea:

Right. So for me, I don't ever take vacations. I haven't been on a vacation in probably 25 years, which is I've been in real estate for 27,. To give you an idea.

Declan:

Okay, so that's part of the sacrifice.

Andrea:

Essentially, when I do a play, it's my version of a vacation, which is a little crazy. But there you go. No, to each their own, Whatever brings you the joy you need.

Declan:

It's a vacation from real estate.

Andrea:

I'm kind of a workaholic. To be honest with you, I don't have a great work-life balance.

Declan:

Okay, well, that's very, very honest of you, but you're allowing yourself to take a vacation from one thing in favor of another. Essentially, there's a balance.

Andrea:

Essentially. And then to add you know, craziness to craziness, I'm actually also getting my PhD right now.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

So I'm studying at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the Transformative Studies Division and I was going to focus on women, ageism and real estate, but I started getting into the statistics around it and it was so depressing that I thought I better do something else. So I'm doing women, aging and theater.

Declan:

And I appreciate you saying you're a workaholic and, yeah, I'm not very comfortable with that term. I think it's unfair.

Andrea:

In a way, it is because I really love what I do.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

And I, every single thing that I do I actually really love, yeah, and so, um, I don't feel like you have to pick one.

Declan:

Yes.

Andrea:

Life is interesting and varied and you know I don't have some of the time constraints that other people do. I don't have kids, for example, Okay. So when you have kids, basically I don't even know how parents do what they do, because children are all consuming.

Declan:

I mean nobody says you're a workaholic, as a parent you know. So I don't like the term workaholic. I think it's very limiting.

Andrea:

Okay, then come up with a more positive term. Then what would a positive term for it be?

Declan:

I don't have a word for it. I'm not going to label it, but, like I was talking to Felicia Marisvilla, I love and adore. We were talking about this that she also loves to work, and time away from real estate for her is another activity, so there's no downtime.

Andrea:

She doesn't sit around. No, not Felicia. Why would I do that? I'm really happy doing what I do and, like even my coach is like you should take a day or two off, but I honestly I feel driven in everything that I love to do.

Declan:

You're a producer in a really true sense of the word. I know a day off for you is you write a book or you launch a podcast. That's true. You create and produce. You can't kind of you, can't help it you just manifest.

Andrea:

I've got my podcast, we've, we've actually. You know this is nothing for you, but we've actually hit 50 episodes now.

Declan:

Good for you.

Andrea:

And um and are starting to do better and better on online. What have you and um? Compass asked me to teach a class this year, so I taught a six-part class in how to close things, because nobody knows how to close a deal. I've noticed that everybody's so busy being trusted advisors and what have you that they forget that there's salesmanship that's actually involved in what it is that we do. So I've actually taken transcripts of my course and I'm turning it into a book called Realizations being a real estate agent in the age of disruption.

Andrea:

There are two thoughts around it for me. First off, tracy McBride, who was my manager. She's now left to become an agent on her own out in Sonoma. She came to me asking me to teach this class. So I thought and thought and thought about what I noticed happening at the office and what I see is a lot of people showing tons of property and talking a lot about deals, but not making that many deals, and I see a lot of buyers being extremely reticent because of the interest rates and insurance and all those things that I'm sure you've been talking with a million people about, and I really realized that people don't know how to close a deal and there's a very part of our service to our clients is pushing them off a little cliff.

Andrea:

It really is, because nobody in their right mind wants to spend over a million dollars on anything. They walk into a house and if they really like the house, the look on their faces is not one of exquisite joy. It's like, oh my God, I could actually do this. Now the next thing they do is they stick all these obstacles in front of themselves, trying to figure out well, how can I talk myself out of this? Why do I really want this? It's going to cost too much. The property taxes will be too high. Oh, that tree is going to fall on the house. Oh, the next door neighbor has a car that looks ugly. They give themselves every possible excuse not to do what they're doing and then they retreat.

Andrea:

And they do it also if you get them into transaction. There's a little point in time when the buyer also starts to retreat. Again. It's called buyer's remorse, or they just get really concerned that they're making a wrong decision. I mean, I guess everybody feels it when they're out dating. I've been married for so long that I don't remember quite what that feels like. But when you're dating and there's a point in time when you think, oh my God, I could marry this person, yeah. Then, all of a sudden, all the other possibilities that are out there start freaking you out.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

You know it's like, well, do I really want to do this? Am I settling? Is everything okay? I mean, then a buyer is doing the same thing around a house, not realizing that they are basically talking themselves out of happiness, not realizing that they could change the circumstances at any moment, but they set themselves up and catastrophize before they jump.

Declan:

They see the limitation, not the benefit.

Andrea:

Exactly, and so part of our job is to give them a nice little nudge to doing it, and people don't know how to do that. It's not, and also it's kind of like there are born salespeople and there are not born salespeople, and you, my friend, are a born salesperson. I think so Interesting. Yeah, you're very authentic and you're very open and you're loquacious and you actually care about people and all that good stuff. But on the other side of that, I think you see the benefit in what it is you do, and there is a huge benefit in being able to help someone to make a decision.

Andrea:

Yeah, I agree with that 100% able to help someone to make a decision. Yeah, I agree with that. And that's not. It's not like you're being you know some sort of ambulance chaser or you know jerk. It's that you are connecting what their needs. Sometimes you know, after being with a client long enough, that you know what they need to do more than they know what they need to do.

Andrea:

It's kind of it's kind of interesting because you're objective, you, you're not buying the house, they're buying the house. You're not selling the house, they're selling the house. So, for example, in this market I tend to handle more sellers and buyers actually, I'm 92% sellers at this point and we'll see people that are holding out for $50,000 when they bought the house for $250,000 and they're getting $2 million for it, but their line in the sand was $2,050,000.

Declan:

Right. Where did that line come from?

Andrea:

It's some probably talking to their neighbors who sold their house in 2021. So that's the thing. It's like people are not cognizant that the real estate market really does dip and sway. Even if it's on an upward trajectory, it still is going to dip and rise, and dip and rise, and dip and rise, and being able to figure out how to catch that wave is a really tough thing, especially right now.

Declan:

Yeah, it's really. You know I had Farmer's Moines eye on last week. We had a great chat and he said and I loved it, he said there are no trends in mortgage rates. He said there are moments, exactly, and he's like it's just moments and moments and moments and there's no trend. You know that's a myth Like last week was a great week to lock a rate. This week not as good as last week, but probably who knows will it be better the next moments Exactly, and you know.

Andrea:

Right now, of course, by the way, all the newspapers are writing articles about how buyers are taking advantage of the dip in the mortgage rates, but in actuality, they've already bumped back up again.

Declan:

That's right, that's right. You cannot time it.

Andrea:

Yeah, you really can, and usually by the time it hits major media it's over anyway.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

Or it's gotten worse, or it's gotten way better, but it isn't where it is. They wrote their article. Let's put it that way.

Declan:

So people have this line in the sand that they might be disappointed. But realistically, if they could just shake their head a little and go, oh my gosh, I'm actually doing great.

Andrea:

How do you bring people there? Exactly that way. I've spent a lot of time with them, I've developed a relationship with them where I can be honest and open with them, and I think there's a certain gravitas that I have because I've been doing this now every day of my life for 27 years. I've done over a thousand transactions. Yes, I think there's the. You know, I think within the framework of the tipping point, I'm there and so I think people do listen to what I have to say about these things.

Andrea:

I also write the columns for two magazines, berkeley Hills Living and Montclair Living, really. Yeah, I've been doing that for six years now.

Declan:

Are you serious? I wasn't even aware of those. Like there's no end to the things you're doing out there.

Andrea:

Well, you know, it just started off on a on a lark and um, just I just kept it up. And so people read my stuff every month and, like, this month's article was largely about insurance, you know, because it's going to be published in August, okay, and so August is a terrible month for fires, so I thought it would be important to talk about that kind of stuff. And then I also read I got a phone call from a newspaper reporter wanting me when I had 2049 10th Avenue on the market, wanting me to say negative, nasty stuff about Oakland. Basically, he wanted me to talk about the crime. And so my last month's article was all about how much I love Oakland and why Oakland's great and why people like that should just stop, because they're the problem, not Oakland. Oakland's actually way less crime-ridden now than it's been in years and years and years.

Declan:

I agree If you go back to the 90s when I first started coming to Oakland. I mean it was so much Another city locally here. You know I live in Richmond. Do you know that Richmond today or yesterday in the last 24 hours had its first homicide of the year and that sort of shatters people's perception of what it is to? You know, city of Richmond is Right, because people just assume it's ridden with crime, exactly. Exactly First homicide of the year. We're doing pretty good in Richmond.

Andrea:

Yes, you are.

Declan:

You know what I mean.

Andrea:

I mean we're actually doing really, really well. What we've got going on right now as far as crime that I can see for the most part, is small property crime, car break-ins, those kinds of things. Yeah, all the huge violence has not been around for years actually, and so, you know, the press badmouths us and it's really, really annoying and it also creates a problem for people trying to sell in Oakland. I have people who are you know they'll call me up and they'll be like no Oakland.

Declan:

Right.

Andrea:

And the only reason they're saying no Oakland is because of all the stupid press. That really is meaningless. Yes, so that's why I wrote that article about Oakland and why I love it.

Declan:

Let's get back, though, to cause this is that's why I love chatting with you, but let's get back to this course again. Yeah, and sales.

Andrea:

Yes.

Declan:

And talking to your clients.

Andrea:

Yeah.

Declan:

And what are the so when you were teaching this course to newer licensees, what do you kind of see as being the mistakes that newer licensees make in terms of, maybe, their confidence around being a salesperson?

Andrea:

a salesperson. I think we've been damaged really profoundly by the NARDOJ lawsuits and the commission lawsuits because between that and the reality television shows where it looks like people don't do anything but drive around in fancy cars and eat caviar and go out to lunches and drink heavily, it really affects the whole world's vision of what real estate agents are. Nobody gets what we do, and our National Association of Realtors and different organizations have done a piss-poor job of basically telling people. This is what the American people should know about real estate. That's the whole reason I started my podcast. I got so pissed off about those lawsuits and commissions et cetera, that I thought, okay, rather than be pissed off, which is a useless thing, I'm going to create a podcast that educates the American people about real estate and how it's practiced and the number of vendors that we deal with in our lives, the number of decisions that we have to be helpful with, what it is we exactly do. And so I've had mayors, I've had Robert Refkin, the head of my company, I've had painters, I've had plumbers, I've had different legislators on, I've had people from the California Association of Realtors on, all to show that it's a very, very multi-layered, multi-dimensional world that we live in, we're not playing checkers, we're playing Tetris.

Andrea:

So in terms of all of that young agents who just get into the business it's kind of like when you get your driver's license, you don't really know how to drive.

Andrea:

When you get your driver's license, you also do not know how to do real estate when you get your real estate license Particularly agents who take the online class and get their license.

Andrea:

That way, you have a little bit more opportunity if you take a class in school, to mesh with other people and collaborate and get ideas and hear a teacher talk to you about real estate and how it's practiced. So I'm a big proponent of people actually going to school to learn about real estate. But then, once you get your license and you get out, it's a really good idea to get involved with a team or a group that has good education, because you just don't know what you're doing, and so those realtors go out into the world and they make mistakes. When they make mistakes, usually I have to say it you need to rely on a really excellent manager, but if you don't have one, you're going to continue to make mistakes and you'll compound mistakes because nobody's there to tell you what questions to ask. Even so, it sort of affects the reputation of realtors out in the world, because a lot of people get into real estate thinking, oh, I'm going to make a ton of money and I'll be able to do it exactly on my own time.

Declan:

Right.

Andrea:

And all of those things, and of course people figure out if they're any good and they last they figure out. Oh no, actually what happens is you just work 24-7.

Declan:

Yeah, I always call it a lifestyle.

Andrea:

Yeah, it's ridiculous. So really, what happens in real estate now is that a lot of people are out there doing real estate who don't really understand the ramifications of everything they're doing, and what you're doing is being a fiduciary for somebody in probably the most valuable transaction they're going to do in their whole lives. So taking it really seriously is super important.

Declan:

Yes, I remember on our first conversation you pointed out that we're one of the very few professions that gets fingerprinted. Yeah, yeah, there's not a lot of those.

Andrea:

And real estate is practiced differently in pretty much every state.

Declan:

This is what excuse me. This is what irritated me no end. I do. I love the New York Times. I, you know I read it because I read a lot of things, but it's one of the sources of info. But, man, when they talk about real estate, it drives me up the wall. They cannot, they just cannot wrap their heads around correctly identifying that real estate is a hyper-local thing. Oh, absolutely. And they always talk about NAR. They never talk about the 50 different associations of realtors.

Declan:

You know what I mean. It's like it's maddening to me.

Andrea:

And I have a very different attitude around that. In some ways, one of the things that's maddening to me is that real estate is practiced so differently. Now there are different circumstances in different places. Like, some places they have septic, they don't have sewers. Some places are rural. They have wells, they don't have sewers. Some places are rural, they have wells, they don't have water districts. Some places are extremely urban and you don't have some of the issues that we have with single family homes, what have you. So those differences will always exist, but the way the paperwork is done and it's done differently in absolutely every state- yeah.

Andrea:

In California it's done differently in one half of the state and the other half of the state. Yeah, it creates problems. And then you have a lot of real estate attorneys, for example in New York who finish the transaction Right, and in Virginia who finish the transaction Right, Whereas here in California we actually handle the whole contract from start to finish.

Declan:

That's right.

Andrea:

There are a lot of attorneys that are pissed off that we're doing contracts here in California and they don't believe in the California Association of Realtors forms Right Because they find them to be voidable contracts. So I believe that if there could be more uniformity in all these things, Right. Just like I also, even though I'm on the board of directors of the multiple listing service and on the committee of the multiple listing service I do believe that we should have a statewide multiple listing service. I don't think it should be factioned into little sections.

Andrea:

I think that you should be able to practice real estate in the whole state of California and you should be able to get whatever information you need for the whole state of California.

Declan:

Yeah, it is very broken up.

Andrea:

Yeah, a lot of people move from the Bay Area when they retire to less expensive areas, for example. Not that you necessarily want to work in an area that is not your area of expertise, but you want to be able to help that person to get to the right person where they're going. Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

Andrea:

And so it's just very interesting to me to see that and, of course, depending on what state you're in, there's a different level of expertise that's actually somewhat required, to be perfectly frank. Right, so it would be nice for it to be more codified, I do believe. But at the same time, as you say, it is hyperlocal and it's really stupid to try to do a transaction way outside of your area of expertise. And it's also annoying when people come from other areas here who don't know what they're doing.

Declan:

Yeah, I mean custom. You know what's customary in one place, regardless of the paperwork. You know there's different customs wherever you go around the world, around the country, around, even around the Bay area, there's different customs.

Andrea:

Right.

Declan:

So yeah, you know custom and but, but I, I, I hadn't thought about this before. I'm mostly just so upset with how poorly the you know given an understanding of what we're dealing with that I never thought about. Oh, maybe we should get codified, should be more uniform.

Andrea:

It would make things easier for everyone. It would and it would probably stop a lot of the litigation that occurs.

Declan:

I don't know about that.

Andrea:

I think it would, although people are much more litigious now than they've ever been.

Declan:

Oh gosh.

Andrea:

It's like a nightmare. As far as I can tell, a lot of people bought in 2021, paid too much for their houses. Now that their houses are worth hundreds of thousand dollars less than they paid for them, they're just upset and they're looking for whatever, and the attorneys call them remorse lawsuits and they're everywhere. So it's a very it's a dangerous time and you really need to be extremely careful. Like and when you have a conversation with somebody, write it down. Afterwards send them an email that says we just talked about X, y and Z.

Declan:

Yes, I agree with you.

Andrea:

I have found things to be so unkind since 2016. Yes, I think that during the Trump administration, the first go-round, you saw this lack of niceness start happening.

Declan:

It's a mean time. You know what Farmer's last week. He was like it's just mean, like we were talking about the bill the beautiful bill. He was like it's just a mean bill.

Andrea:

Yeah no, and it's ripping things apart that didn't need to be ripped apart.

Declan:

Yes.

Andrea:

So people are angry, people are upset, people are slight, they're uncertain, they don't feel comfortable, they feel unsure about the economy, even though, my God, what a brilliant economy we have. Right, we have an amazing economy.

Declan:

You know this administration does not deserve the economy it hasn't, maybe it won't survive. You know the way they've set up this bill to. You know they've hoodwinked everybody into like a lot of the problems for people of lesser means aren't going to manifest until after the midterms. That kind of thing, oh that's what they.

Andrea:

they wanted to set it up because they're trying to make sure that they don't get voted out in 2026. I mean, that was cynically these people set that up that way, but nonetheless, all of the economy has been successful and good. It's going to take a lot to break this economy, which I do believe is what Trump is attempting to do. I just have to say that out loud. There's been irreparable damage done, however, to a lot of institutions.

Declan:

Yeah, breaking things is very easy.

Andrea:

Capitalism only exists if there is a different class structure, if there are haves and have-nots. Capitalism does not exist. If everybody has the right to an education, if everybody has enough food, if everybody has a shelter over their head, capitalism doesn't work.

Declan:

Yeah, it can. It can, but there has to be a smattering of socialism in there.

Andrea:

Exactly, exactly, I mean my family is—.

Declan:

There has to be a safety net.

Andrea:

You know these people. I don't think that any of them will be satisfied if anyone who is of middle class is extremely successful. I believe that you have beaten down the lower class to the point where they don't feel like they can get up. The middle classes are still striving for something grasping, as some people would say, and then the upper class doesn't want them anywhere near them.

Declan:

Let me throw out an idea to you as well, because you're talking about things being mean. I'm finding that maybe since 2016,. And I know that our current technology and our devices and all the social platforms and all this stuff contribute to this. So it's not just political, but it's also tech and capitalism. It seems to me that we're being forced more and more to live a transactional life. When I go, for example, to quieter places or I go to Europe, it's a little bit more more like people are more relational than that oh, absolutely communities that work and feel good and less stressful tend to operate on a relational and it's, I think, fundamentally humans prefer most humans prefer sure a

Declan:

kind of a relational environment where there's a give and take, and it seems to me that, um, we're, you know, especially around here in the bay area there's, we're being forced to fit in a transactional, we're being trained to be transactional and everything's all about economy, even like the attention economy, the this economy, that economy and everything is like, you know, everything's just so transaction. I have an, I have a finite amount of energy in the day, so I must make sure that I, you know, protect my energy. So how is this? I have to forget about the relationship. But how am I protecting my energy in these relationships? Today, they become transactional. How am I protecting my money? How am I my time Right? How am I? Everything is looking for my time, so there's an attention. So we're just being made to fit in a very transactional society, absolutely, and that's being, my goodness, the poster boy for transactional living.

Andrea:

Oh, yeah, you know, is Mr Trump Right? Yeah, I mean, when everyone is forced to compete, everyone loses. Yeah, I mean, that's really the truth of it. I'm so loving this class that I'm taking right now, which is called the Art of Transformation, and it's all about the good things we can do in the world and we've been studying, you know, nigeria. We've been studying Nigeria. We've been studying indigenous peoples, we've been studying all kinds of ways in which human society can actually foster and grow and be collaborative, and when one person succeeds, everybody succeeds. When one person fails, everyone fails. One person fails, everyone fails.

Andrea:

It's really fascinating to me that we have fallen into this horrible morass of striving for golden toilets and there's a beautiful, beautiful video that you can find on YouTube called Opulence, by Natalie Wynn, who's an incredible trans woman, who is brilliant, and she really breaks down the demise of capitalism in this country. We're like at the. We're sort of at the end of an era. We're at the end of an empire. We are losing right now because we have let the idea that opulence is more important than substance corrode our brains. And it's gorgeous, it's really worth watching. Yeah, if you watch it, and I'd love to hear what people think about it.

Declan:

Where do we find this?

Andrea:

YouTube. Okay, natalie Wynn Opulence. W-y-n-n. Do we find this YouTube? Okay, natalie Wynn Opulence.

Declan:

W-Y-N-N.

Andrea:

Yeah, I believe that's it Natalie Wynn, yeah. And brilliant, brilliant, brilliant gal.

Declan:

You know, my favorite thing about talking to people is just it leads to more when it goes.

Andrea:

It's a rabbit hole.

Declan:

Yes, but we will. Let's talk about the class again and get back to real estate and sales. Have people changed over the last 10 years? Maybe since 2016, since we used that date before.

Andrea:

I do believe. So. I believe that everybody has changed radically. Actually, I think that, you know, not in the most human terms, obviously, but the pandemic was an enormous catalyst for change. Like during the pandemic, I personally lost several people at the beginning of the pandemic, before they had figured out what it was and how to treat it and all of that stuff. I had perfectly previously healthy friends that really suffered and died, and they were relatively young, because I have mostly younger than me friends, and so I think that what happened to me at least, was I started thinking about what's really important to me. What do I really want? What's necessary for me to live my life the way that I want to live my life, what actually matters.

Andrea:

And I think that there are a lot of people that got to that place, and I think that there's been a fundamental change in buying habits. I think there's been a fundamental change in how people relate to their physical world. I think that there is an urgency around stuff that there hadn't been before, because people. It's sort of like when you know that people die I know that sounds like a silly thing, because we all die but when you realize that it could happen to somebody that quickly somebody you saw last week for lunch is in the hospital in an iron lung thing you start looking at things a little bit more urgently. So I think that that made some changes for many people. There are other people for whom it meant that they just became more acquisitive and greedy and awful. I think it brought out whatever the core of the person was, more into the world.

Declan:

And so I think that, so you think, values got magnified.

Andrea:

Oh, absolutely. And I think that the other thing that happened during that time period was people sort of coalesced into tribes. Remember, people had little bubbles and things like that. But, I also think that that sort of tribalism created separation too.

Declan:

And tech. Like you can't discount the role of tech.

Andrea:

Oh, absolutely During the same period. Absolutely. Our lives got lived on Zoom.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

People don't connect as much. I think that people are lonely. I think there are a lot of lonely people right now because they used to connect a little bit more than they do now. So I think that there is that in the mix as well. And as far as real estate is concerned, if you want to put it into just basic terms, prior to the pandemic you had people that were a little bit more cavalier about everything. So your worldview gets shaped by world events in a really big way and your attitudes around what you do as a person in the world get shaped in a lot of ways by what happens in the world. Like Gen X, people will pick up a hammer, they will pick up a paintbrush, they will buy a house with a problem. They will not be horrified by what they find. They'll just fix it and work on it. Millennials are kind of used to everything being perfect.

Declan:

Yeah, there's a lot more Social media brought curation.

Andrea:

Getting everything they want all the time Right, not being able to handle stress that's the generation that grew up in school where everyone was a winner.

Declan:

Right.

Andrea:

So they didn't learn how to lose or how to fail. Failure is like one of the most important things in the entire world. Right, failure is like one of the most important things in the entire world. Right, it really really is. I actually have a paperweight on my desk that says what would you do if you knew you could not fail? And lately I've thought about that and thought you know what? That's a terrible paperweight, because the reality is, failure is a great thing. Failure what failure does is teaches you. It teaches you how to deal with problems. It teaches you how is teaches you. It teaches you how to deal with problems. It teaches you how to get ahead. It teaches you how to survive. It makes you know that you are capable of surviving and that you'll get through anything If you never fail then, everything is a crisis for you, Right, If it comes up and it's like not perfect.

Andrea:

So what you have in the youngest group of buyers— Fail your way to success right. Yeah, exactly what you have in the youngest group of buyers is people who have never, ever not gotten what they wanted for the most part in an area like this. Because median house price in Berkeley what? 1.253 right now.

Declan:

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Andrea:

Median house price in Oakland is over a million dollars.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

So if you have house prices that are that high, these are highly educated, highly sophisticated, extremely well off people and consequently, people are used to getting what they want. I will not say that they are spoiled, but it's just a way of thinking, and I think tech is also that way too. I think that tech people are problem solvers by nature and they're used to being fairly meticulous with the way they use their keyboards. They're used to looking at things from particular sets of boxes and they're very good at compartmentalizing.

Declan:

Yes.

Andrea:

And so that type going out into the world creates the issues that we do see in real estate right now.

Declan:

Yeah, yeah, most of what you're saying I agree with, and then, beautifully, I disagree with some of it or I haven't had the same experience. But the level of curation, now that goes into it. I mean, you'll remember a time when staging was new, and now it's. Not only is the property staged, but I noticed recently I think it was on the Redfin app and I'm sure it's on many but now you can slide your finger across the photo on the screen and you can have 10 different styles.

Andrea:

Oh yeah, we have that at Compass too, Right yeah.

Declan:

So this is, like you know, getting to. You know you say it's porn for real estate. I mean it's beyond that. I mean it's gotten outrageous. I mean, what kind of expectation are you setting for people?

Andrea:

And it's also I mean, have you noticed, as a realtor, that you go into every single kitchen and they all have waterfall counters that are white, white, tile white? I mean, it's become so homogenized and so there is a particular look which I'm sure, when it first came out, was exciting and crisp and clarity and clean and lovely for all of us. And now it's just boring to me. Whenever I walk into a house, I can actually pick who has staged the house by me. Whenever I walk into a house, I can actually pick who has staged the house by the stuff that's in the house, of course, but it's all super similar.

Declan:

I'm okay with it, though I'll tell you why Because you know, I think every decade still has its telltale signs.

Andrea:

Absolutely.

Declan:

Right, and you don't know it at the time, because it's slow Right. But you look at a house from even 2012,. You go yeah, I get it.

Andrea:

You know we look at a 50s house and everyone's clamoring for the mid-century now. But they don't really want mid-century, by the way. They want the modern idea of what mid-century is. If they were actually faced with a genuine mid-century, they would hate it. It would be like Formica countertops and you know what have you. But but yeah, I mean, it's an idea of what that is that we're always being faced with.

Declan:

Yeah, the idealized version, this perfectly curated. Yes, I know.

Andrea:

Yeah.

Declan:

And so you were getting back to Jan X, you were saying Jan X fortunately had the capacity to cope with things not being right and pick up a hammer.

Andrea:

Right, and now they just pick up a phone and call an attorney.

Declan:

Wow, so people are changing.

Andrea:

Yeah, I think people are changing. I also think that you know, the world has changed pretty radically and it's a much smaller place. Like I just recently wrote, as you know, my children's book, my illustrator lives in Portugal, my editor lives in Canada. You know it's being published out of Los Angeles, so all of us are living this transcontinental life without even realizing it on a regular basis. My podcast, the people that do my podcast, my main producer lives in South Africa.

Declan:

Oh, wow.

Andrea:

And my regular producer, my day-to-day producer, lives in Portugal. Okay, and it's fascinating to me because, without even realizing it, I've personally become transcontinental without even leaving Berkeley there you go. So I mean, I think that that's the beautiful thing of it, but I think it also means that we can't get away from things when they occur. So, for example, one of my dear friends from graduate school lives in New South Wales, Australia.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

And the fires there stopped like a mile from her house. Yeah, and you're affected by things that are happening to people, so I was upset by that.

Declan:

Yes.

Andrea:

And you're affected by things that happen to people literally all over the world and they're happening in time zones that are not even your time zone. There's like this little niggling worry at the back of your head all the time about the rest of the world. You know, back in the day when news took two weeks to travel to you you had time to absorb information.

Andrea:

We have no time to absorb any information anymore and it just keeps on going on and on and on. And you know I say this as someone right now I'm juggling what I have 11 active listings, I believe, and I'm bringing on three this week and I have 21 in preparation. Oh my gosh. Okay, that's a lot of information on all of those things.

Declan:

Yeah, how big is your staff right now?

Andrea:

They're wonderful. I have I have Kai Bayless and Phillip Wynn who are my listing coordinators and assistants. Yeah, they're both licensed realtors. They're wonderful human beings. Um, I have a virtual assistant in the Philippines who's amazing. She was a coder, so she's like Ms Tech. And then I have my transaction coordinator, who is supplied through Compass, but she pretty much works just for me because I have such a big roster. And then I have the marketing team at the office is designated to me. And then I also have an outside advertising company called Agent Upgrade that works specifically. I mean, I'm not their only client, they have lots of clients, but they work with me and we have a weekly meeting. I'm always meeting with people. It's crazy.

Declan:

Would you say your professional life as a realtor has had more of an emergent quality or was very carefully planned.

Andrea:

I think putting it as an emergent quality is a very lovely way of saying it. I think that up until this point in my work it was more like a Seinfeld episode or something. But you know, I've been through a lot of assistance. Basically, what happens with assistance is that when they're really good, they leave you and become agents on their own, and people always work for me and they think they can be me. So they work for me for a year and then they go off and become agents and then call me up and go oh my God, I can't believe it.

Andrea:

This is hard, but at the same time I mean, it's taken me all this time I think I finally have like a really amazing setup. I have incredible systems in place. I have a system in place that allows me to do all the things that I do and actually get the work done. Um, you know, one thing I noticed and the biggest thing I can tell anybody who's listening to this podcast, who's a real tour is communication is the most important part of absolutely everything. I meet with my staff three times a week. I meet with my marketing team once a week that are through Compass.

Andrea:

I meet with my marketing team through my advertising agency once every two weeks and I arrange a 15-minute check-in with every single one of my clients by Zoom, every single week, okay.

Declan:

So if anybody realtors are listening to this, I would go back and say yeah, listen to that again because communication. I'm underscoring it here in my notes.

Andrea:

Yeah, I mean, that's the biggest thing of all. I mean, the other part of it is just.

Declan:

How can the illusion of tech and the products being pushed on us to make us more efficient and save time, how do those distract from this core principle?

Andrea:

They distract because they make you think that you can take yourself out of the equation. What I have discovered is that I am the most important part of my work. People hire me yeah, they don't hire a you know somebody to send them a bulk mail.

Declan:

Okay.

Andrea:

They hire me to communicate with them.

Declan:

Yes.

Andrea:

All that other stuff, all those other tools are great.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

If you use them, but at the end of the day, it's your interactions with other people that make all the difference in the world. You cannot stop interacting with people, or else you don't really want to be a real estate agent.

Declan:

Ah yeah, Because it's a people.

Andrea:

It's all about people and it's also all about making sure that you just are truthful with folks. Okay, making sure that you just are truthful with folks. And I don't know, maybe it's because I'm old or something, but I've gotten more blunt as I've gotten older. I'm not people-pleasing anymore. When something needs to be told to somebody, I talk to them about it. This new thing that's going on where you have to do a buyer-broker agreement with everybody and have to put it in with the offer, et cetera. The reality of that is that it's really good, I agree. It forces people to think about what it is you're doing for them. Yeah, it also makes them remember that you do need to be paid. Yeah, it also means that the duties of each of you are clearly defined.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

You know my job is to help you with your real estate transaction. It is not to be your therapist at three o'clock in the morning, right? So those things get codified in that document, which I think is a great thing, and I think it's. I actually. Maybe I'm going to be on the wrong end of the stick here, but but I actually think that the lawsuit, if they wanted to really have done it properly, they should have just made buyers pay their agents.

Declan:

I don't disagree with that, because now there's this weird gray netherworld area.

Andrea:

That's not good In principle.

Declan:

I understand what you're saying and I don't disagree, it would have been clearer. It's very messy right now.

Andrea:

Yeah, what happens now is you can end up in a and, by the way, I have only noticed that the people who are above $2 million don't want to pay the commission to the buyer's agent.

Andrea:

Okay, the people who are below that, they're perfectly happy to pay because they understand that you've done work, and I always explain to my sellers that that buyer's agent who comes in with the buyer it's not like they just showed your house. They probably worked with that person for six months, and all that's going to happen is the buyer will subtract whatever it's costing them to pay their agent off of what they're going to pay you. So you might as well just pay them. But I also, when I'm talking to a buyer and I'm writing up an agreement with them, I also say look, in the event that the seller isn't going to offer to pay my full commission, what are you going to do? I bring it up in my first conversation with them. I just had this happen yesterday. That's our job, though. But I also say to them okay, let's say you put an offer in and the difference between you being able to get that house and not is my commission. Yes, how are you going to feel about that?

Declan:

That's a skill we all need to be practicing. I hope this is something that everybody listening is doing.

Andrea:

Well, they're not. Oh really, I don't think so, because I think there's a lot of fear for young agents around talking to their clients about paying them, and you should never be shy about asking somebody to pay you if you've done the work, for God's sake, I mean, it's just obvious you get paid for the work that you do. Seriously, I want to make sure that that person isn't going to resent me in the event, because the very first time it happened to me on an over $2 million deal that the seller wasn't paying the full commission.

Andrea:

I felt so terrible about my buyers that I just automatically gave them a $7,500 credit. And then I thought about it and thought well, they're buying a house for $2.1 million. Why did I do that? Why did I just? And so I said to myself I'm not going to do that again. I'm going to bring up all these issues at the very beginning so that if I've prepped my client for that moment, Right. And I'm also not undercutting myself, because I've worked hard for the money.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

You know, and I don't begrudge people wanting to make money, I really, really don't.

Declan:

Right.

Andrea:

But I also feel like we have to make a stand for our profession.

Declan:

Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:

And every time you don't value yourself, you're actually not valuing the profession out in the eyes of the world. It's kind of an interesting thing actually. When you are not doing well in real estate, you have to ask yourself a bunch of questions, and one of them is am I really happy doing this? Is this what I really want? Or am I only doing this for the money? Because if you're only doing for the money, it's not going to work. I mean, otherwise, AI could just replace us. I mean, I love it, yeah, I'm having fun with it, but I also am scared of it, just like everybody.

Declan:

Sure, well, we're kind of curious to see what happens with it and you know it's funny.

Andrea:

It's going to be like now. If you were to listen to an old record of Enrico Caruso singing. It would sound all poppy and scratchy and like not realistic at all. But the people that heard him on those first phonograph albums thought it sounded exactly like him. They felt like they were right in the concert hall, and I have this funny feeling that with AI it's actually somewhat clunky right now, yeah, and so I think that it's going to get much more sophisticated the more it learns.

Declan:

Yes.

Andrea:

And it's funny, From one of my papers they asked me to do an annotated bibliography, and I had seven open houses that weekend. The paper was due on Monday, and so I thought, oh, I'll just have AI do my annotated bibliography, right? So I fed it the information I needed and asked it to come up with some books for me. And then I didn't want to be completely cheating, so I decided once it gave me the annotated bibliography and it looked perfect. It looked absolutely perfect. And so I decided I would look up the books and at least have read a little bit of something from each one of them, and I found out that none of them existed Exactly. But it looked perfect and it looked amazing. So I then asked AI. I said to AI you lied to me. Why did you put all these books that don't exist into my annotated bibliography? They look great, but they're not real. And it said to me I wanted to please you.

Declan:

Yes, this is a real problem with the AI right now.

Andrea:

So you can't trust AI to not screw up.

Declan:

No, and it does want to please you.

Andrea:

So I was a week late with my annotated bibliography, and I read every book on it.

Declan:

Right Cautionary tale, the number of attorneys who've gotten in serious trouble is actually, it's actually hard to believe how many of these intelligent smart I mean past the bar you gotta be, you gotta, you know intelligent, maybe not wise, but you got to be intelligent. Um, yeah, but they're, they're. The wisdom deficit shows up in, like how many of them have been hoodwinked by ai and you know, hey, I get there's a lot of pressure, but my goodness, yeah, no, it's yeah what they call hallucinating.

Declan:

It's the ai hallucinates a lot exactly I'm gonna, in the interest of time, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna and rapid fire get through a few things. Have sellers changed in the last 10 years?

Andrea:

Well, just in terms of the expectations that they have, I feel like 2021 didn't do anybody any favors. Okay, I go back to 2019 as a baseline as opposed to 2021 when I'm talking to people about numbers, because we've had a very, very long, slow decline in values in many places. I mean, there's always that one house that gets like 25 offers and everybody loves it, but on the same block there are four other houses that are going without any offers. So you have to be careful with sellers not to inflate their expectations. You also have to be careful with sellers to make sure that they understand that the timing on all of this you just have to manage the expectations, because you know the days of selling something in 10 days are gone right now by and large yeah.

Andrea:

Yeah, I mean again, you can have that one amazing house that everybody wants and then all the others are sitting there for 62 days. Right In the main areas that I serve, I'm seeing things lasting for very long on the market because, for example, montclair with the fire danger and the insurance problems that are going on market because, for example, montclair with the fire danger and the insurance problems that are going on, it's a siege on Montclair right now. Average days on the market are 73 right now.

Declan:

And again, and that just underscores how local everything is Exactly. Whereas if you're in Monterey Market or Thousand, Oaks, and then so the solution to what ails us as realtors is and I underscored- communication, communication, telling the truth, setting expectations, not setting expectations too high.

Andrea:

That's a big thing, I mean. I have problems sometimes because I'm optimistic too, but I'm also very against what we do in our area here, which is to underprice things grotesquely.

Declan:

I know you're one of a kind really, in that you know you and outside of area realtors. Yeah, you know it's amazing that you still do that. Why do you? I mean, I shouldn't say why do you still do that, because that sounds judgmental.

Andrea:

I just don't believe in somebody driving from hell and gone over to see a house that they can't possibly afford.

Declan:

Right.

Andrea:

What I do is I do a comparative market analysis and I look at the numbers and I take the low one and say to somebody in the worst-case scenario, it looks like this is what you would get. Would you be willing to price your house at this level? I'm not one of those people who's pricing things $200,000, $300,000 below what it's going to get, and maybe that hasn't stood me in good stead, but it just really rankles me that my buyers who are out there or any buyers that are out there are going to waste the gas and waste their life, energy and their time and write an offer that can't possibly go through.

Declan:

Right, you know, it's an uphill battle, though, and I've always wondered. I've always wondered about it and why you continue to do it. It seems like a you know you're. It just seems like an uphill battle too.

Andrea:

Well, it just it's. I think it's wrong. I think that if we could, but we can't, I mean, basically, if you buck the trend too completely, your house is going to sit on the market forever.

Declan:

Okay.

Andrea:

And you can't do that either. So I've been pricing things a little bit lower lately than I had been. But I just don't believe in that. I think it's wrong, and I'm kind of a prude. That way I don't do things.

Declan:

I've always just thought that it's the way it is, and so what's required in a situation like that is having clients understand, clients understand. Now, I do think it makes our clients more reliant than maybe they have to be on us as agents when we're operating as buyer's agents. Oh yeah, because they just cannot decode.

Andrea:

Right, and so what I do for every single buyer when they're writing an offer, I do a comparative market analysis for every single house, right, and that's a hell of a lot of work. It's huge. Yeah, we have to, though, but you, you have to, because there are a couple of agents that price everything at $8.99 and it's really annoying.

Declan:

Let's just tell people about your podcast.

Andrea:

Okay, it's called Realizations capital R-E and then A-L-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N-S. Okay, and they can find it on Spotify, hulu, apple, youtube, amazon. It's everywhere. I will link it in the show notes. Great, thank you, and you can also get to it from my website, which is wwwandreagordoncom.

Andrea:

I created the podcast to expose the American public and the real estate community nationwide to why do we do real estate, what's important in real estate, how we make real estate happen and how real estate intersects with our community, our culture.

Andrea:

So I'm constantly talking about legislation. I'm talking about the amount of money that real estate brings into the state coffers. I'm talking about the amount of money that real estate brings into the state coffers. I'm talking about how real estate is practiced differently in different states and different municipalities. I'm talking about the concerns that realtors have in relationship to legislation, and I've had some interesting and contentious conversations with some of the people from different tech firms. I've had some situations where I've been trying to express what realtors feel about legislation that's being done in municipalities around rent control, around different things like the super lateral ordinance what have you and the unintended consequences of people who legislate without talking to people who actually practice real estate. I've had all of those people on, because it's important for me to get out there. Why it is realtors are important? Because otherwise, by the way, if we don't start blowing our own horns, and talking about what it is we do.

Andrea:

We will be replaced because this generation coming up, this is the generation that thinks they can buy a car by pressing a button.

Declan:

Yes, yeah, no, there's more and more of a like a no touch society here.

Andrea:

Exactly Like.

Declan:

I was telling somebody this morning. I said nobody gets my car anymore Right, ever since COVID. It's kind of a no-touch society, like life has gotten curated.

Andrea:

I think you're right, but I also think that if you had somebody out there who could actually tell you well, you know, when you walk down these stairs, do you notice to the left here you can smell water? Right, AI is not going to tell somebody that the basement smells like water. Right, you know, AI doesn't get any of that stuff and people are going to miss out in really gigantic ways.

Declan:

You know what AI is not capable of? Random acts of kindness.

Andrea:

Yeah, although it may learn.

Declan:

Well, if we train it.

Andrea:

Yeah, exactly.

Declan:

Because it depends on how you train it.

Andrea:

Well, and it depends on who's training it I mean that's the other part of this is that we have to be out there and represent you know. You train AI to do what you need it to do. You train AI to be the way you need it to be. Right If you leave it in the hands of people that have no kindness, who don't care about humanity.

Declan:

Right.

Andrea:

Then eventually AI is going to decide that humans don't need to exist.

Declan:

It Right, then eventually AI is going to decide that humans don't need to exist. It's going to get a lot smarter than us. Believe me and I and so I know you also love. You love engagement with the local association for all of these reasons because it takes people's involvement, but I know you love Kieran Chinoy and the work that he does, so important, so important, what he does.

Andrea:

He is the one that is pointing out to all of us. You know, when they start dumb legislation that's going to screw things up for real estate and you know homeowners everywhere he's the one who brings it to everybody's focus. And he's in the trenches and he's going down to City Hall and he's doing all of those things that that somebody needs to do. Yes, he's proactive, he's amazing. I love him.

Declan:

Yes, Can I ask you a question? It's, it's. It's not necessarily political.

Andrea:

Sure Well, you know my politics, so do you ever get pushback?

Declan:

Oh yeah, oh. You and I have talked before about how most, most people in business are trained to avoid politics at all costs and you are like, no, it's important.

Andrea:

I don't feel comfortable working with people whose worldviews are so different from mine that I can't relate to them. I can talk with people whose views are different than mine. In fact, I think that's important. I think you need to understand people's views that are different than mine. In fact, I think that's important. I think you need to understand people's views that are different than yours, but I can't deal with people that are racist, sexist, homophobic. None of those people are people that I want anything to do with.

Declan:

You're my favorite guest. Let's wrap this up Unless. Hold on if I'm missing anything. What's the name of your book?

Andrea:

My book is called Realizations.

Declan:

Oh, the book is called Realizations. Oh, I'm sorry, and you probably said that earlier and I just didn't write it down.

Andrea:

No, it's okay, and then I also have my children's book, which is Yo-Yo in a Tree, which is a story about my parrot, yo-yo Ma, who is named after my big crush, yo-yo Ma. I've had him since he was an egg and he's 24 now.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

Almost 25.

Declan:

And the kid's book is on Amazon, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. So let's wrap it up with and congratulations, thank you. And let's wrap it up with this private listings thing. And I just want to preface this with one with one other thing that strikes me is like I believe people should read Inman. I think Inman's important, but I don't know if you've noticed, like, like it's, it's almost a little overwhelming, like I get too many emails now and it's news. So they got to create drama and all this stuff.

Andrea:

Right, they're doing the same thing that the mainstream media does.

Declan:

Yes.

Andrea:

They're they're sensationalizing something that is really kind of basic.

Declan:

I, you know, all we can do is talk about locally here. The truth is, honestly, I have no idea what Compass private listings look like, because I don't get any emails.

Andrea:

Because they're private.

Declan:

They're private. I've never had a client ask me about a Compass private listing where I found myself going. I don't know what you're talking about, but there's a lot of. It's just the big deal, and I do think it's valuable to consumers. And so I can see, on the one hand, that it's perfectly reasonable that it should be at a homeowner's discretion how public-facing their listing is. I think that's possible to achieve nowadays without the whole private listings conversation. But I can also see how it's very important that that same homeowner should understand the value of being fully public facing and properly exposed in the MLS. So I guess for me it's really more a concern around the nuance and how this is being discussed with the individual homeowner.

Andrea:

Right. Well, I'm going to say something which is really antithetical to this whole thing. I think it's a big nothing burger. Private listings have always existed. There was Top Agent Network. Remember that.

Declan:

Yes, that's why we had the. I mean, we had Clear Cooperation six years ago, or whatever.

Andrea:

Yeah, clear Cooperation, I believe, was probably set up to kind of stymie Compass from doing exclusives Right. But the reality is, when you work in a real estate brokerage, everybody knows what the new listings that everybody has are. We all talk about our coming soon listings in our brokerage meetings.

Declan:

Right, everybody does yeah.

Andrea:

So it's really. And also your seller lives on a block and they know their neighbors, yeah, and their neighbors notice stuff going on. And their neighbors come up to them and say, hey, are you getting ready to move? And they're like, yeah, we're moving to Los Angeles. And so now the neighbors all know, and then one neighbor tells another neighbor. So you can't keep all this information totally under your hat. Number one Number two private exclusives is a way to essentially test the market.

Andrea:

It's the same thing we do when we have people from our office come and look at our listings before we put them on and ask them their opinion of value. So you can test the value that way.

Andrea:

Active coming soon is a perfectly valid category in the multiple listing service. Yeah, so you can put your stuff on when it's in process of getting ready to go on the market and be there for 30 days or more if you just re-up it. Yeah, so everybody has that opportunity. Yeah, before you go active active, and the only thing is that in that category you're not getting days on the market, which used to be the kiss of death. I don't think it's going to be the kiss of death anymore because things are staying on the market longer. It's a more normal market. It's more like the market I was in when I first started.

Declan:

Right. Do you get asked when you go on listings like what's your average days on market? Do you get asked when you go on listings like what's your average days on market? Sure, do you get asked that question? Sure, okay.

Andrea:

Sure, and what I do is I come armed with statistics for the whole area. In any case, as far as all of this is concerned, I don't see. First off, I genuinely don't believe that there's anything terribly revolutionary in this three-phase marketing thing that Robert is proposing.

Declan:

Right.

Andrea:

I don't really care about it that much. I put everything. When I get a listing, I put it straight into private exclusives.

Declan:

Okay.

Andrea:

The reality is that marketing on the actual market is how you sell your property, plain and simple. Right. Coming soon is a great way to get buzz going up around your property, right Private exclusives is a great way to get buzz going up around your property. Private exclusives is a great way to get buzz going on around your property. The big Zillow not going to let anybody who's done anything, that's coming soon but isn't available to everybody. It's a bunch of bullshit. Zillow is the most corrupt thing on the planet. I hate them. I don't think that they're useful. I think that they rip agents off on a. I hate them. I don't think that they're useful. I think that they rip agents off on a regular basis and I don't think that they are the great moral arbiter of what's possible in real estate.

Declan:

I couldn't understand this row, row, row. Hey, zillow's doing this. Good, zillow's doing this thing to counter. It's a bunch of bullshit it kind of reminds me of that when somebody said Dick Cheney is voting for Biden, he's not going to vote for Trump, and I sort of thought, is that a good thing? I'm not sure. I don't like Dick Cheney. The fact that he's not voting for Trump, that's not.

Andrea:

It doesn't change how you feel about Dick Cheney.

Declan:

He still shot his friend in the face. He still did what you know. He did what people have done for decades in politics he corrupt and filled his own pockets you know.

Andrea:

so, basically, and so point being, you know, I don't think that there's anything revolutionary in the three-phase marketing thing. I think that the coming soon that Compass has before you put it into active coming soon is basically useless. I mean, all it does is creates uncertainty. As far as I can tell, I like the private exclusives because at least it's a great way to sort of build your listing. If that makes any sense, you put it in there, you put the photos in there, when you get them, you do this, that and the other thing.

Andrea:

And then by the time you're ready to go active coming soon, you actually have something already all set up and ready to go Right. But as far as the coming soon, I tend to just go from private, exclusive straight to active coming soon.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

I'm a firm believer in the multiple listing service I would like to coming soon.

Andrea:

I'm a firm believer in the multiple listing service. I would love to see a statewide multiple listing service. I think that the danger that we're seeing in what's going on now with this lawsuit and all of that, is that whole sets of companies will start holding onto private listings and not giving them to everybody, and that would be very detrimental for the whole real estate community. Right and I mean I back in the day, alameda did not participate in a lot of the original stuff, and so I used to drive the streets in Alameda.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

And look at all the for sale signs and mark down all the. I would literally take a grid in the areas that I wanted to serve and drive up and down the blocks and see where the signs were, because they were not playing ball with everybody else. It could go back to those kinds of days. But the other side of it is that we have freedom of speech and we have freedom of choice.

Declan:

And.

Andrea:

I'm a firm believer in that, and if any seller doesn't want to actively market their property everywhere, they should have the right, and or if they want to advertise it only in specific places, they should have the right. It's their damn property. It is not the real estate company's property, it's not the real estate agent's property. It's not anybody's property but theirs.

Andrea:

And it should be their right to make those choices. So I'm really for that and I think that when everybody needs to make all these little stupid categories and compartmentalize everything, I think it's part of your concern about transactional relationships. It's not collegial concern about transactional relationships. It's not collegial, it's not cooperative, it's not collaborative. And having outside organizations who are basically profit monsters dictating to us how we should do our job, which is not their job, irritates me.

Declan:

I'm not going to push back on any of that, because I like having your opinion and I'm not here to push back on your opinion. I want you to, if you want to. Well, what I think is just, it's just a small segment of the overall market and buying it's like. So it's this, you know, single digit percentage of the market, and it's a storm in a teacup.

Declan:

But that's why I said it's a nothing burger Right, it's a nothing burger and that same small percentage of the market. There'll be another drama for that single digit percentage of the market, you know five years from now. But the majority of the market is business as usual.

Andrea:

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Declan:

You know what I?

Andrea:

mean, I also really, really am worried because we don't really have the power when you're talking about a big company like Compass or a big company like Zillow.

Declan:

Right.

Andrea:

As agents, we try to do our job and all these places are trying to impose their belief systems on us. Yeah, systems on us, and I think people should have the right to choose for themselves how they do their business within the guidelines of their own profession. I don't think Robert's right, but I also don't think that Zillow's right. I think there's a gray area in there and I think that just putting one foot in front of the next as agents, that's what we're going to have to do through all of this.

Declan:

I mean, it goes way back to the beginning of our conversation around capitalism and you have to have a healthy dose of skepticism around the ability of corporations. They don't care about us yeah you know and really like, and at the end, and are they winning? Have we lost the fight or is there still a chance?

Andrea:

I think that if you give up, you've lost the fight.

Declan:

Yeah.

Andrea:

I think that if you fight for what's right in your profession and you do the best you possibly can, then you are still. It's interesting. I'm going back to my class again, but what I noticed, that is just so incredibly beautiful, is that very, very small gestures and choices can make a world of difference. So you have these big monolithic corporations who you know face it, they don't. I mean, compass is a great company and I love working there, so I'm not denigrating them at all, but the reality is they don't really care about me personally. They care about the profit that I can make for them. That's what they care about.

Declan:

Yeah, Well, that's their that's. I mean, that's that's what they do, that's their charger, Right yeah?

Andrea:

You know companies like Zillow. They don't care about the agents that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the leads that they could have generated themselves.

Declan:

They don't care about the consumer.

Andrea:

They don't care particularly. Yeah, they care about profit. So you know, what I love is that by communicating properly with our clientele, we can make a world of difference in real estate. Yeah, by doing things like your podcast or me doing my podcast, we can make a change. We can process information in ways that people can actually hear it. We can tell somebody like a city legislator that it's really a bad idea to make all zoning you know a particular type of zoning because of X, y and Z. So making those small choices, it's like the butterfly effect it's going to have a repercussion someplace and that way, that way, we win.

Declan:

A huge thank you to Andrea Gordon for stopping by the podcast studio and being willing to chat for such a long time. If you need information about how to contact Andrea, please just reach into the show notes. There's a couple of links in there that will get you in contact with Andrea and everything that she's doing, particularly in theater as well. So credits this episode was edited by me, with original music by Chuck Lindo and graphics by Lisa Mazur. The podcast is brought to you by the Home Factor Realtors, thehomefactorcom, and you can catch up on the latest news from the East Bay Market in their weekly sub-stack published every Saturday. Go to thehomefactorcom to subscribe Now. If you'd like to reach out to me with suggestions for the show and that kind of thing, please text me at 415-446-8591. And looking forward to the next podcast and we'll have Eamon Darrow. Eamon Darrow, that's going to be a good one.

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Andrea Gordon

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