The Mostly Real Estate Podcast, with Declan Spring

Why Focus Beats Hustle: Build A Systems Optimized Referral-First Business - #69 Jeff Lipton

• Declan Spring

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What if your marketing got simpler, your leads got warmer, and your days felt lighter? That’s the promise behind our deep-dive with operations-minded strategist Jeff Lipton, whose approach turns a referral-first business into a steady, scalable machine. We start with the foundation most agents skip: ruthless focus. Pick a narrow geography. Define your ideal client persona. Choose the property type you’ll master. That clarity sets the course for everything—content, channels, intake, and even what you stop doing.

From there, we unpack the system that actually delivers: SEO built for humans and algorithms, not vanity. Jeff explains how to blend technical hygiene, local content that answers real questions, and credible backlinks earned through PR outreach. We also tackle the shift to AI-driven search and why the winners will write like experts in a conversation—specific, local, and genuinely helpful. AI can draft, but your judgment makes it trustworthy, and that’s what surfaces when someone asks a nuanced question about buying in Berkeley.

Then we go inside the machine: intake checklists that evolved into smart forms, custom CRM fields, and automations that capture timelines, objections, and even gift preferences—followed by post-close surveys that make the process better every month. The result is more inbound, less chaos, and a client experience that feels personal without burning you out. We talk lifestyle design too: setting a ceiling for volume, working with people you like, and creating room for life by automating everything that doesn’t require judgment.

We close with a practical walk-through of Berkeley’s updated Building Energy Saving Ordinance (BESO): point-of-sale requirements, the end of buyer deferrals for the report, deposit mechanics, six-credit compliance options, and why getting compliant before listing can boost demand. Plus, vendor tips, rebates, and electrification insights from a team that’s done it at home and with clients.

Enjoy the conversation? Follow and share the show, and leave a quick review—your support helps more agents find thoughtful, no-fluff strategy.

 Jeff Lipton is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE#02139138, real estate strategist, operator, marketing expert, and business lead supporting his wife, Megan Micco, a top-producing broker associate with Compass, in Berkeley, CA

Declan Spring is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE#01398898

Mentioned in the Show:

Berkeley Emissions Saving Ordinance (BESO)

The SwitchIsOn.org

ElectrifyMyHome.com

Albion (Solar)

Hassler Heating

Copper - An Induction Range Made in Berkeley

Declan:

This is Declan Spring and welcome to the Mostly Real Estate Podcast. Well the holidays are right around the corner. And you know what I'd like for the holidays? I'd like for anybody listening to please like the show on wherever you're listening to and maybe leave a review and absolutely share it with other realtors or even anyone in the public who you think might enjoy this episode or any episode. Can you do that for me? Oh, I'd really appreciate that. That's really all I want for Christmas this year. Okay. My guest today is Jeff Lipton. Jeff is the kind of smart that it's very wise to listen to, so grab your notepad and pen or however you choose to take notes. I've been looking forward to chatting with Jeff for quite some time because I greatly admire the systems and processes he brings to his real estate team. Which team is that? I hear you ask. Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. I'm really, really happy he was able to schedule with me in December because I think the conversation lends itself very, very well to thinking about next year from a marketing and lead gen systems perspective. So that is the bulk of our conversation. But there's kind of a part two to our conversation in the closing 10 minutes where we discuss changes to the Berkeley Energy Savings Ordinance or BISO, or some people say BESO, that go into effect very soon, January 1st, 2026. And if you're curious about any of the vendors mentioned in that part of our conversation, or to link directly to the BISO website, check out the show notes. And now I bring you my conversation with Jeff Lipton. Well, I'm here with Jeff Lipton. I'm so pleased to have you here. Thank you so much for taking me up on the uh on the offer to come on the podcast. I think you're just, in my mind, you're one of the perfect people to have at the end of the year as realtors try and wrestle with how, you know, wrestle the beast of 2026 and how are we going to approach this thing and you know what are the fundamentals we need to have in place. So thank you, Jeff Lifton, for coming on the show.

Jeff:

Thanks for having me, Declan. It's a pleasure to be here, and I've been looking forward to talking to you for quite some time. So I'm glad we were able to do it.

Declan:

Yeah, well, great. And and you and I, people, you know, uh, people should understand that I've just been you and I are friends, and I've been so impressed. You've been generous enough to for for me to sort of look under the hood at the at some of the fundamentals of your lead gen and uh your client intake and certain things like that. It just impressed me so much and inspired me. So I kind of want to bring that to whomever's listening to this podcast, especially newer licensees, because there's some fundamentals that there's so much noise out there that these fundamentals um they sometimes just get lost or they seem old-fashioned. And and I think that's a shame because they are year in, year out. National Association Realtors will tell you that referrals are the backbone of each uh, you know, real uh top-producing realtors mostly their work by referral. And you seem to do that really, really well. So I I really I've been kind of looking forward to this conversation quite a bit. Uh first of all, though, I I don't know that people locally even are going to know you terribly well. But if I say the name Megan Miko, then I think I've got the attention of a lot of people out there locally, because of course everybody knows your wife, your boss.

Jeff:

Yeah, my wife and my boss. I don't know that that would work for everybody, but we've seemed to find a way to make it work.

Declan:

And and that's how I met you is through Megan and understanding that you work with her. Um in you know, MeganMico.com. I mean, you guys are just she's a fantastic realtor, and everything is just polished and lovely and very authentic. And we we just grew to re Denise and I grew to really like Megan and we felt inspired by the work that she does as a realtor at Compass. And uh so we got to know you as well. And it's been really, really nice, and we're learning a lot. So let's let's turn this into a bit of a classroom. Um as my coach, Brian Bafini, often says, more is caught than taught, and that's that's what I like to do on the podcast is see if people can catch anything useful out of this. So uh that said, so you you have a corporate background. Now you're not a sort of public-facing realtor, right? You have a you in fact, um, I'm not sure you haven't been a realtor. I know you're a licensed realtor now, but you haven't been a licensed realtor for as long as Megan has been. Let's go through your bio. Let's tell everybody what you brought to the Megan Miko team.

Jeff:

Sure. I've had a really eclectic professional career. Um, I spent my 20s as a professional musician and audio recording engineer and producer, and I ran a recording studio. Um in the dot-com days, uh, I was working at a recording studio in San Francisco. Which one? It was called Doobie Tunes Studios.

Speaker 2:

Really?

Jeff:

And we were in a building where a number of startups were getting funded for tens of millions of dollars with paper napkin business plans.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And we thought, hey, we got to get in on this. So we wrote a business plan, uh, raised some money, hired a software developer, and built an audio production website application. So we were doing sound design for websites.

Declan:

Wow.

Jeff:

Um I I shifted my focus away from music and music production and more towards business at that point, made a very conscientious decision.

Speaker 2:

Uh-huh.

Jeff:

I was tired of being a struggling musician and decided that I needed to get paid at some point. So I leaned more towards the business side of the operation. Uh, we sold that company shortly after we started it. And I went to work for the acquiring company in product management initially, and then later business development and marketing. All right. I traveled internationally extensively throughout the 2000, 2008-9 period. Um, I then went and got my MBA at the Has School of Business up the street in Berkeley. All right. And when I got out of business school, I decided I wanted to leave what at the time had been digital media. Um, the company had been doing audio, video, 3D animation.

Speaker 2:

Uh-huh.

Jeff:

Um, long story there. Uh, and I and I moved into what at the time was called Green Tech. So I was interested in um energy efficiency, water conservation. I worked for a solar startup briefly. I went to work for a publicly traded energy management firm. Uh, and then back to the startup world running marketing for a water conservation technology company.

Speaker 4:

Wow.

Jeff:

So I spent about a decade in natural resource management. And at the beginning of the pandemic, yeah, I found myself between jobs. I was interviewing for a new position in the water industry. Uh, the company was based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They wanted 50% travel. Okay. Uh our children were in middle school at the time, and I was worried about being away from home that extensively.

Declan:

Right.

Jeff:

And my wife, who had been a real estate agent now for probably seven or eight years, said, Why don't you come work for me?

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And I was really hesitant at that point to make a jump to join her. Uh, I felt that if I left my corporate job, you know, I had a senior vice president title and I had teams, and I had a lot of uh my sense of identity tied up in my career. Yes. And then if I left it as I was getting into my 50s, yeah, that it would be very difficult to return to that if it didn't work out in real estate.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

So um I did some soul searching and really thought through it, and Megan was great in giving me the space I needed to make a decision about whether it was the right thing for me. Right. And whether it would be the right thing for us as a married couple. Yeah. And we didn't know how it was going to work. Yeah. But in the end, I did decide to join her. Um, I had been helping her out sort of on the weekends, sort of building her website and advising her on marketing. Right. Um, so I joined her full-time. I then got my license about nine months later, and that was five years ago. Amazing.

Declan:

It it's it's such a beautiful matchup because I knew when I first got to know you, I was like, this guy's not, he's not your typical real estate agent. He's he's got layers of knowledge that come out of a different world that are they're beautifully suited to, you know, helping somebody build a real estate career, but he's not, he's not your typical front public-facing realtor, just building relationships out in the community. He's he's he's the guy in the back office who's like could be the backbone of organized and accountable marketing and lead generation. That's you know, it's hard to come by in real estate. It's you know, a lot of people are just on their own holding themselves accountable. And it's you know, it's tough to get in. So you've you've done this amazing job. And I and I've so uh my my intuition intuition was correct. You you are different, you're cut from a different cloth.

Jeff:

You're a corporate guy who corporate to some degree, but I I spent most of my career in startups, in early stage companies, building teams, building systems, building processes, building systems, building websites. Yes. Um, I'm familiar with technology, I'm familiar with media, right? I'm familiar with process optimization, and I'm familiar with team building and people management. Yes. So I really brought an operational, financial, and marketing discipline to Megan's business, and she's exceptional on the sales side. She's incredibly intelligent, fast, intuitive, has very high emotional intelligence. Yeah. So she really is the face and power of the business. But I've brought another set of experiences and skills to our team.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And I think it's a thing that's allowed our partnership to be effective and to work without getting into a lot of conflict with our personal lives because we have our own distinct lanes. Yes. She runs the sales, I do the back office. We have very distinctive responsibilities.

Declan:

Yes, yes. I love I love this. I love seeing how well it works. And kudos to you guys as a couple for because that's hard too, being able to work together, mostly from home, I would imagine, in a couple of different rooms. Yes, exactly. And you know, and and then sit down at the dinner table with your kids and not speak too much about real estate.

Jeff:

Yeah, we set a rule early on when I joined her full-time that we would not talk shop at dinner.

Declan:

Yeah.

Jeff:

You know, we've done a reasonably good job of you know keeping to that goal, but once in a while things come up.

Declan:

I mean, we're similar to you at home, Denise and I. We have the same rule, so we try and get client business and the real day-to-day work out of the way, but invariably we'll circle into conversations about real estate. And why? Because we really enjoy it. So to in our minds, there's a difference between those conversations versus the daily work conversations, but they're still real estate conversation, but we allow certain conversation, right?

Jeff:

We're the same way. I think we're both passionate about it. And something that was a bit uh unexpected, although I guess not surprising in retrospect, is when we began working together full-time, yeah, there was a risk in that we only had a single income stream. Everything comes from our real estate business and from transactions. Whereas before she had her own income, I had income from my corporate jobs. Right. And if something were to happen, we had a down year in real estate, you know, we could sort of support each other. Right. So uh we had less diversification from an income perspective. And that was concerning. It's scary. Yeah, it is scary. Yeah. Um, but there is this renewed sense of unified purpose in that we were both on the same team, swimming in the same direction, trying to accomplish the same goals. Yeah. And it really has brought us closer together in a sense in terms of how we see our future, what our objectives are for our retirement, how we're planning out building our business over time. So it's been pretty remarkable.

Declan:

Yeah, fantastic. Fantastic. So, you know, this time of the year we're looking ahead to next year. Now, I, you know, I love I on this podcast, I get the privilege of chatting to a lot of really, really good agents. And um, it there's an awful lot out there for agents to pick and choose from as far as lead generation. I mean, it's in my mind it's it's the constant struggle. Um, not not necessarily even choosing which lead generation, but making a commitment to one one lane in lead generation, or maybe two, or whatever, but something and then holding yourself accountable. Because the tendency in this job is to not be committed long enough to one thing, or to be struggling to do five things and not doing any of them correctly. This is the thing, and and it it has become, in my mind, it's become increasingly noisy with social media in the last several years. Um and there are a lot, there's a I mean, there's just so much, there are so many agents who are producing incredible content out there, and seemingly it's easy to create content on social media. I don't think it is really. I think the people who do it well are amazing and make it look easy, like anything in life, that really good pros make things look easy, right? Um so but I I happen to be maybe I'm old-fashioned. Um, but I look at the NAR stats on referral, repeat and referral. And to me, that's really the meat of a solid career is just repeat and referral. Other things uh can also work, but they tend not to be the center of the bullseye. I see them as flying, you'd be further out from the center of the bullseye. And so I think you're of a similar mind.

Jeff:

Uh in some ways, yes, in some ways no. Oh, good. Um so I agree that you don't want to do a lot of things mediocre or poorly. You want to do one or two things really well. So I believe strongly in focus uh and then executing on the things that are effective and continuing to double down on that. And you're right, it is a repeat and referral business. That is where the majority uh of the transactions come from. Either previous clients or friends and family of existing clients. Um but I also am a marketer and I'm fascinated with technology, and there's new opportunities to reach people that come up all the time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And I believe in experimentation.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

And I think it's useful within uh a reasonable scope of effort and understanding your bandwidth and what you can invest in, both in terms of your time as well as your financial resources to try things out. So each year when I'm developing my marketing plan for the following year, I will usually pick one or two new ideas to experiment with.

Declan:

Uh-huh.

Jeff:

So I'll allocate some budget, I will set up a pilot, I will set goals for the pilot to see what the return is on those investments.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

And if it works, then in the future cycle, I will allocate more resource towards that particular marketing channel.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

Likewise, if it doesn't work out, you know, you haven't lost a lot of time or money. You've made an investment to experiment and find what isn't effective. Right. And then you can jettison that and move on to the things that work better.

Declan:

Okay. So let me just unpack this a little bit uh in the way that my mind works. So for example, um, I just recently ran my numbers for the year. Actually, uh, I went back 50, 100, and 200 transactions. I just kind of want to see where the business is coming from. So I get to like about 80% uh sphere, and I have we could talk about sphere, what does sphere mean to you, and all that kind of thing. But I'm talking about really very fairly close people. I can conjure everybody's face in my mind, for example. I these are people I know. Um so sphere and uh and referral is 80%, right? Um, so actually, I'm similar to you. I will I will like to try new things because we're entrepreneurial, right? So we want to see well what's gonna what's gonna work. But I I look at uh I look at my numbers and I I'll allocate maybe less than 20% because I don't want to mess with my 80%. So I'll allocate less than 20% of my time and resources to some new things, right? That's my my formula. How do I come up with it? I don't know, it just made sense to me.

Jeff:

It's 80-20.

Declan:

Yeah. So how do you how do you kind of work out that formula? How do you uh for trying new things? How do you allocate for resources for that and make make decisions at this time of the year for the next year?

Jeff:

It's very similar. Um I would say that from a at least a uh a financial allocation, it's more close to 10% of marketing budget that I'll use for experimentation. Not a lot.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

But I'll design small pilots that I can, you know, get a sense, even if it's not statistically significant, uh-huh. A sense of whether it might be effective and worth continuing to invest in.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

But also I'll determine in the process of that pilot how much effort it really takes me, aside from like spending money on ads, for example.

Declan:

Well, there's energy, there's time, there's a time, there's the time.

Jeff:

And certain projects that I'll experiment with, I'll think aren't going to take that much of my time. And it turns out they take a lot of time. So then I've got to evaluate whether it's worth that effort compared, what's the opportunity cost compared to other uh activities that I could be engaged in.

Declan:

Yeah. And you don't uh subscribe to any like lead gen, like Zillow or platforms or any of that stuff, do you guys?

Jeff:

We don't, but we have tried. We experimented with it. Yes. And we found it was ineffective. And that the leads that we got from Zillow, for example, early on, uh shortly after Megan got licensed, right, were were generally very poor quality. Right. And we've become increasingly discerning about who our clients are. Right. Um both in terms of their demography, in terms of their professional backgrounds, in terms of their geography, in terms of their budget. So uh we found that we weren't getting the results we wanted from those investments, and we terminated that.

Declan:

Yeah, yeah, fair enough. We uh I've I have not paid Zillow ever for leads. Um it didn't seem to me to be useful. Um just didn't. But uh on my team, I have a great agent. He's licensed just a few years, uhib, and he decided he would do uh he'd join a Zillow Flex team, whatever they're called. Um but we kind of we thought about well, what's the primary motive here? Well, obviously try and make some money and meet people, but he found it to be a really useful way for somebody who's newer in the business to have serious conversations with people. What it gave him was not a reliable stream of income, but a reliable stream of conversations and challenges with actually speaking to the public about real estate. And once he felt he'd had his fill of that, he said, that was worth my time and effort because I'm a better, I can speak better now to anybody about real estate. It put me through my paces. I thought that was smart. So that's a good example of experimentation done well, I guess. Yeah. You know? What uh what have you? I'm just curious now. Is there anything that you experimented with uh outside of repeat and referral that you were surprised at how well it did? And you said, Oh, we're gonna keep doing this?

Jeff:

The short answer is no. Uh huh. Um, and to the degree that we continue to invest in some of these channels, it's really about long term. Brand development.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

It's less about a specific ROI on a particular investment in an advertising campaign.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

So there's a variety of channels where we make ongoing investments just to get Megan's face and name in front of people on a consistent basis within a very limited geography. Right. And I don't particularly track well, it's hard to track where people find us. We often get inbound leads on the website. And they come from a variety of places. Sometimes they're referrals, so from existing clients, I would call those sphere. They just happen to contact us through the website. But we also get leads through the Compass website, we get leads through Zillow, which we don't purchase. People just find her there. Yes. And then go to the website and complete a form. We get leads through through Yelp. And then we get this other category of leads, which I just call internet. And then when we do intakes with these prospective clients, I'll ask them, how did you find Megan? And a lot of times they don't remember. They said, I don't remember on the internet, right? They did a search. Her name popped up. Was it Google? Was it through AI? Was it because they went to the Zillow site? Oftentimes they don't recall. Uh-huh. But we know that if we continue, what we've seen is that if we continue investing in these brand development activities, that those lead numbers remain consistent and growing.

Declan:

Okay. That's very cool. And then you have obviously your past clients and sphere, and do you do some level of automated, not even automated marketing to them and just keeping people, you know, to this there's a blog, right?

Jeff:

So we this I guess is the other category that I've invested heavily in over the last you know decade, even before I joined Megan full-time, yeah, which is search engine optimization or SEO. Yes. So I came from the internet space, from technology, uh, and learned early on when the internet emerged what the value of SEO could be. Yes. Um, and then as I learned more about it and started investing my time, I discovered that it's very much a practice. It's not something that you set up and then let run. It's something that you do on a daily basis or a weekly basis. Right. It's an ongoing investment. Right. And it's it it has a bunch of components to it, and probably don't have time to get into all the details. I don't want to do an SEO uh masterclass right now. But you know, I I I wouldn't mind just drilling down on it for a little while, actually. We can talk briefly about it. Um there's technical aspects of SEO. Yeah. So they're related to the website itself. So MeganMico.com in this case. Right. Um, there's the headers and what they say. Let me back up for a second. The purpose of SEO, at least historically prior to the introduction of AI in the last few years. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Um, is to make your brand discoverable when people are on the internet searching.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Those search engines typically were Google or Bing, but there's others as well. Yeah. Um and those search engines, they comb the internet looking for content that matches the intent of the person who's searching.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

And people typically will have search or keywords that they're searching for. Yeah. Berkeley real estate agent would be a traditional one. So we want to develop content on our website that matches the intent of the person who's searching.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Jeff:

So I write blogs, we have sections on the site that um talk about the buyer or seller process. And it's very specific in that it continues to reference the geographic location that we're targeting. So every page you'll find on our website says Berkeley. We're not trying to target people in San Francisco or Richmond or Oakland at this point. So we have a very narrow geographic focus. So one aspect of SEO is to try to create content that's going to answer the questions and meet the needs of the person who's searching.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Jeff:

There's other technical aspects of it, the heading sizes, um, whether there's metadata in the in each page, whether you have schema, which are descriptions of the types of content on the page, lists, um, articles, images. So it tells the search engines what the assets mean and then can surface the appropriate content for the person who's searching.

Speaker 2:

Wow.

Jeff:

The the the third category, so sort of the technical aspects of making sure that the website is structured properly from a technology perspective. The second aspect is developing content that people are looking for. And then the third aspect is having links or backlinks to other websites that have authority. Um so a lot of times people will have a website and you'll get an email from someone saying, hey, I'd like to write a blog article for your site and then link back to my service. I see. And the reason for that is that is if the uh internet, if the search engine, if Google goes out and sees that the New York Times wrote an article and has a link to MeganMico.com, they're going to increase the ranking results of that website because they consider the New York Times to be an authoritative website. Right. And so the more links you have from other places in the web that connect back to your property, the higher your result, your search results are going to be, meaning you're more likely to show up on the first page of the results when someone does a search.

Declan:

Yes.

Jeff:

Um, if you have a low-quality backlink from some garbage website that's just trying to generate clickbait content, it won't help you as much. So there's a lot of effort that's made that that I make trying to get links back to our website. And this takes months and years to develop over time.

Declan:

Yeah, it's I can see why it's a weekly practice and you're constantly refining, tracking, and continually optimizing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Declan:

And prior to your uh coming on board with Megamico.com, was this being done successfully?

Jeff:

It wasn't being done at all. At all. I mean, there was a basic website, but yeah. We started the blog and then we started doing SEO work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And a related activity that may differentiate some of our marketing from typical agents is we have a very dedicated public relations effort. Right. So we have developed relationships with a number of journalists around the country and in the Bay Area who write about real estate.

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Jeff:

And we are constantly reaching out to them, either pitching story ideas or asking if they have stories that they're going to be writing that they need comments on. Right. So we get quests requests all the time for Megan to comment on a particular topic. Yeah. And that creates someone publishes an article in the San Francisco Chronicle and then they link back to our website. And that increases our backlink authority and our SEO numbers go up and we you know result in higher results and in higher placement in the search results.

Declan:

Right. Wow. Amazing. So do you think like okay, so listen, most solo agents, I I just don't think they have the time. They don't, most they don't have the time. So is it a you know, let's say somebody's just planning for next year and they say, you know what, SEO is a good idea. I'm going to allocate time. That's part of my goals for next year. I'm I'm listening to Jeff Lipton. This is clearly something that's going to take dedication, focus, and maybe I'm going to have to pay some money towards getting this done correctly. That would be a reasonable goal because it sounds like you need help with it and it's going to cost some money, but it's a worthwhile, if that feels like it's your thing. Let's say, because okay, I want to contrast this with something that you and I have both tried. I don't, I don't do it. Um, I gave up. It just didn't bring me any fruit, was farming. I don't farm. Now, other agents do very, very well with farming over a long period of time.

Jeff:

Um, but for you, it's this SEO, you've chosen a different track. Well, we tried farming for a number of years. Yeah. Uh we invested for about two years, yeah, and we found we didn't get any result. And I didn't run a three-month pilot for farming because they know it takes longer. It takes two years, yeah. Right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Jeff:

But at the end of two years and tens of thousands of dollars in investment of sending out mailers, we we had no closed transactions. Right. And we decided it was not going to be a fruitful investment of time and money. So we've, you know, shifted our focus to more effective channels.

Declan:

Yeah, it's see, it's it is a difficult business, right? Because there are the everything takes a time, effort, and is overtime and focused effort. And this is this is my thing. It's like for newer license seeds, you gotta pick a thing. And I I just don't want for that thing to be lead generation through a company like Zillow because uh, you know, it it's just it seems to me it's just to be an awful idea. Um, you're giving away, you never because you're so busy with that busy work that you never build your own thing that you're doing. You know, you just you don't have time or you just don't have the time or energy left over by the time you've you know dealt with all of these the leads, they're not leads.

Jeff:

Let me talk about another angle that I think is really important, especially when you're starting your real estate practice. Um again, as I said earlier, I think focus is incredibly important.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

My opinion is that means geographic focus, yeah. The area that you want to work. It also means having an understanding of who your ideal client is. Perfect. And what's their demographic? What are the channels where they consume media? How what what can you understand about the persona of the person that you want to attract as a client? Perfect. And then when you have a sense of that, when you know, when you're just starting your practice, when you're just getting licensed and you're sitting open houses and you're just trying to get buyer leads, you do whatever you can do to get a get a deal. Right. So you don't necessarily early in your career have the luxury to pick and choose. Right. But over time you start to recognize that you have an affinity for a certain type of client. Right. Something that appeals to you. Some people are engineers at heart and they want to work with people who are highly technical. Other people uh are more therapists at heart and they want to people work with people that are more heart-led. Yeah. Other people are business people at heart and want to work with you know people who have a business mindset. So finding that connection with your client is important. And once you've established the persona of your target client, it helps inform your marketing strategy. Who am I going after? Where am I going after them? So, for example, when we talked about farming, that activity is typically sending out postcards. Yeah. Right? It's printed, it goes to people's homes. We've learned that our ideal client is typically a tech worker, very self-sufficient, gen Yually, uh, oftentimes moving from San Francisco to the East Bay as they're beginning to start their families. They want more space and more affordability and better schools. Uh-huh. They don't want paper, they don't look at their mail, they're online, they engage in social media, they engage in search. So we learn quickly that we didn't weren't reaching our target demographic by sending out postcards to, you know, retirees in the Berkeley Hills thinking about downsizing. Right. Not a great fit for our practice. Interesting. We don't take people, Megan does not tour with people for the most part. Um, she doesn't drive them around. Those that's you know, a legacy way of doing business. Yeah, it's very good. People go to open houses on their own. And her clients appreciate that. They want the flexibility, they don't want to be dependent on her schedule to see houses. She goes to brokers tour, she does the things she needs to do to make sure that she can advise them on the right properties. Yeah. Um, and certainly will go back with them multiple times if they're gonna actually make an offer on a house, for example. Right. Um, so we learn what channels were more appropriate to reach the people that were the best fit for the business.

Declan:

Yeah, yeah. I love that. I think I think that's really, really smart. I would just say that uh I think the earlier in their career somebody can do that, the more time they save over a longer period of time. Like you really have to talk about focus. Um, I think focus is essential from day one. If I could encourage anybody on anything, it's just focus from day one. Like start to understand how you feel uh around certain people and in certain situations and with certain types of property, and like just really investigate your feelings and what what triggers delight or fear, you know, just really be on your best uh to be aware of your own inner mechanism and what what what's what's making you fire up and what's what's making you cool your jets. You know, it's really just because you can have a uh you can have an enjoyable career uh only if you're um only if you're happy with who you're in transaction with and negotiating with and you can't be all things to all people.

Jeff:

No, it's impossible. And and you just made this point too. It's not just we're talking about geography, that's one area of focus. We talked about uh the persona of your client, that's another area of focus. Yeah, yeah, there's a property type. You know, we after a period of time decided we were gonna focus on single family properties.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And we don't do duplexes, we don't do condos, we don't do multifamily, we don't do commercial. We have eliminated a lot of categories intentionally to focus on the things that we know best. Yeah. Megan focuses a lot on historic properties, something she's passionate about is historic architecture. Yes. She focuses on home electrification and energy efficiency, something she's also passionate about on. So we have a few areas of things that we become experts on. Yes. In a particular area that we know very well, with a narrow segment of pretent potential buyers and sellers who we know work well with our process.

Declan:

Yes, yes, yes, you do. So uh because you you mentioned AI, I'm and I'm just curious about your thoughts or your concerns or your excitement around uh how AI might impact uh SEO, for example. Um, I don't have a good handle on, but I'm I'm hearing that Google searches are you know it's it's changing how people search. And you know, what do you I mean it's it's it's very difficult to anticipate. I know that Gemini 3 has sent alarm bells at code reds through uh OpenAI.

Jeff:

OpenAI and Enthropic and everybody else, right?

Declan:

Right, and of course Google has you know, if they can command in there, they've already got the audience, they don't have to get subscription fees like so so it's it's it's highly speculative at this point for us to you know we don't really know. But what are your thoughts on the work you put into SEO and how how are you sort of what are you watching for with AI?

Jeff:

Yeah, the AI conversation is uh potentially complex. So the short version is I'm agnostic to the AI tool. Um I I don't care if Gemini beats out ChatGPT beats out Claude, it it doesn't matter. I have my favorites for various reasons. Okay, I use more than one depending on what the activity is. Right. But when it comes to AI search, the big change is that traditional search, you go to a Google search bar, you type in your key phrase, and you get a bunch of links. Yeah. And if you've done your SEO job right, you know, your brand or product or service is going to show up near the top of the search results. Right. The user then clicks the link and they come to your website. Yeah. AI search is very different. People are having in their in dialogue, in conversation with the AI in a in a chat stream. Yeah. And if you ask AI, any of the of the tools, who's the best real estate agent in Berkeley, California, you're not likely to get a link to a bunch of websites. You're gonna get text descriptions of their recommendations.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Jeff:

So the big difference is people are not leaving the AI chat itself to get the information they need. So you don't have the opportunity to funnel someone to an intake form, for example. Yeah. So the approach to SEO shifts a bit in terms of being more conversational in terms of the type of content that's developed, yeah, that is more long form. So it's no longer trying to optimize for a key phrase like best Berkeley real estate agent. Okay. It's more about answering questions that people would have in the context of a dialogue. Like, how do I find someone who is going to be able to uh find a house for me in a good school district on the north side of Berkeley within a budget of $1.25 million by next March? Okay. Um, and that may not be their initial query to the search to the AI, but over time you have dialogue, and the AI, as you probably know, asks you follow-up questions. Yes. And it's trying to refine the details of what you're looking for so it can provide a useful response, which is how it's built.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

It wants to give you what you want.

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Jeff:

Um, often that comes with consequences as well, and and unexpected behaviors. Yeah. Uh so when you're developing content, um, the backlinks start becoming less important, although authority still is relevant. But the blog articles, the lists, the FAQs, the schema becomes increasingly important, and you have to be more and more detailed and specific within each piece of content to answer those questions.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

So the challenge is that it's now easy to create content with AI. You can just ask it to write you an article and it will. Uh, oftentimes that's insufficient. Um, so you have to continue to uh bring your own brain and perspective and experience to the content and never accept what's spit out by the AI out of the box. Right. It always needs refinement, it needs your own interpretation, it needs your own experience. Right. Um and you need to keep it narrow. Uh so it's an ongoing effort. It's not totally different in terms of the format that the content takes. Yes. But it has a different flavor, uh, it's more specific, it's more local, and you really need to demonstrate expertise in something that's unique. Yeah. Otherwise, you're not going to stand out when the AI is trying to deliver results back to the searcher.

Declan:

Wow, that's worthy of a lot of reflection. I mean, we've been looking at our website, you know, over the next few weeks, go, how can we, what can we do here? Because this is very interesting. Now, another let's and I appreciate all of this is fantastic. Something else that uh you've shared with me, and I'm always very impressed by, and uh, you're a very high standard, but your client intake is it's you know, as far as being a real estate nerd, I find your client intake to be uh, I'm gonna use the word beautiful, because it it's it's a thing that I love. Um, and thank you for you know sharing with me enough so that I understand just just how lovely it is. But what's your method for I know you're very very disciplined in terms of your client intake, and I'm I'm I'm not, so this is why I'm this is really important to me. Uh, you have on your website, you'll try and send people through the website to a buyer or seller question page, I guess. Yeah. How does it work? Give me the nuts and bolts of it, and how do you stay so true to to adhering to uh you know this this specific method, and then what are the fruits of that?

Jeff:

So there's a few factors here that I think allow us to do a really good job in the intake. Gary F. First of all, we developed a checklist, a questionnaire uh offline.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

So when we encountered new leads, either through the website or someone would send an email or or make a phone call to Megan, she'd pull up the the questions in the checklist and ask the questions of the prospective client. Yeah. When are you looking to buy? What's your budget? What are some objections you have? What are some of the things in the past that have not gone well when working with other agents? So over time, we realized we had some things that we needed to collect, some data we needed to collect that we had missed out on in previous conversations. Yeah. So that list of questions grew over time.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And we would have a meeting at the end of each transaction and discuss what well, what went well, what didn't, what we missed, and what we could improve.

Declan:

With yourselves or with the client?

Jeff:

With ourselves. With yourselves. Yeah. Internally to the business.

Declan:

Okay. I was just thinking that'd be ballsy to do that with the client. That'd be so impressed at that point, I'd probably just drop the mic here.

Jeff:

Well, we also have we also have a post-transaction survey that we send to the client to gather their feedback on how things went for them. Right. And that's automated. So once the transaction closes, they receive an email that links to a Google form that asks about 15 questions. Interesting. And they can tell us this went well, this did not go well. Discovery was fine. You know, I didn't get enough inventory that I was looking for. The transaction and process during escrow was super smooth, whatever their responses are.

Declan:

Excellent.

Jeff:

So we learned things from that. And then that informed expanding the intake question list. Got it. Um so that's how it started. Uh it started small. We asked a few questions at first, we expanded it over time as we realized we needed to gather other data. Got it. Now, another thing that's a bit unique to us is that I have built our own technology stack. So we don't primarily use the compass tools. We don't use their CRM. We have our own CRM that I had worked used in previous jobs and you know, technology marketing.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Jeff:

Um, I've built the website and manage it and do that by hand because I have the experience to do that. So I have a level of control over our systems and processes that most people don't have. Yeah. So I was able to build custom intake forms that address these specific questions that we have and then create funnels for both buyers and sellers that we can gather that information. Right. So we've over time taken the feedback we get from the post-transaction surveys, from our experience with the intake process manually and just through conversations, and automated large portions of it. Right. So we now gather a huge amount of information, and even to the point where after we've onboarded a new client, whether it be a buyer or seller, we send them, this is all automated, to another forum to ask about their personal preferences and likes and dislikes. Right. Things like what do you what's your favorite thing to do on a date night? Do you have any children or pets? Um, if you were to get a gift, which type would you like? And we have a pull-down menu of five different options. Yeah. So we gather information so that we can continue to reach out to them post-transaction and surprise them with gifts and little, you know, things that we know they would appreciate. And it's funny to me because sometimes they'll say, Oh, you know, we we love uh you know homemade custom pottery.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And Megan will send them, you know, a custom, you know, coffee mug. And they'll be surprised that we have this information. Yeah. But they were the ones that had given it to us months earlier when they filled out the form.

Declan:

Yeah, in the heat of filling out the forms, they forget that they ever did that. Right. And it's when they're more relaxed after the baby's born.

Jeff:

And all that data is fed directly into the CRM. So as soon as they complete the form, there's custom fields for each contact record that can contain all that information. So anybody on the team can go in, see the status of that contact, what the relationship was, buyer or seller, what their preferences are. Yeah. And then we can use that data to trigger automations, to send emails, text alerts, send ourselves notes to do follow-ups. So we're very disciplined in terms of our data management. And that takes a lot of work as well.

Declan:

Yeah, yeah. That's a tremendous amount of work, but it's it's so beautifully executed that I'm like I'm making this podcast conversation mandatory listening for everyone on my team. And and you've seen, you've seen the pay. So the fruits are there. So what are the fruits? Let's talk about the fruits of focus, uh, building systems that work over time, keep your eye on the prize, experimenting just for a little fun outside of the 80% of what you're doing. Uh let's yeah, let's talk about the fruits.

Jeff:

Well, there's lots of fruits. Um number one is we have a wonderful lifestyle.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

You know, and we don't work too hard. We're spending more time working on the business as opposed to in the business because I look to automate everything I possibly can.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Jeff:

And if we can scale things and we can have systems that happen in the background with us having to intervene, that means more free time. And it means more time to spend on the higher value activities, which is talking with clients, essentially.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

So it frees up our time, and that's incredibly important. Um number two is that we see a steady stream of inbound leads that just happens in the background without having to spend money every month on advertising.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

Um, and that's been years of work and the SEO is an ongoing effort, and now the AI search is a new initiative. Um but you know, that's been another thing that that's one of the things I get most excited about. That after years of all this investment, I, you know, I open up my email and oh, there's a new lead. Love to see that. And when you start seeing multiple ones come in every week, then it's that you know you're doing something right. Yeah, you know, we have made very specific decisions about how much we want to work and how big we want the business to be.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

And some people, there's never enough. Um, and we don't feel that way. Yeah. Um, we we do a very good business. Yeah, we've been doing 40 to 50 to 60 million dollars a year in in gross revenue. And that's plenty. Yeah. Um, we don't need to do $100 million. I mean, some people may feel that they would accomplish some life goal by getting to those kind of numbers.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

But I we don't see any reason for it. We we're comfortable, we're saving for our retirement, yeah, we have time together and with our children. Right. Uh, we enjoy our work, and not to say there aren't stressful periods, there are. Yeah. But we've built a lifestyle business, and that's what's most important to us. We're not building a team, we're not building a business that we're likely to be able to sell off at some point to someone else. Yeah. And that's been very intentional. So I think being intentional is really important. Where do you want to go? How much do you want to work? What's most important to you? Right. Um, well said. Well said. And we've been very specific in those things. And we, you know, we reconsider it regularly. We have these conversations often. Right. Um, but we're at the point where we're really able to, you know, work a reasonable amount, make good money, and enjoy our lives.

Declan:

You know, we touched on this, Janine Hunt and I in the last podcast was there's a great benefit to understanding what your needs are, and then X amount of money, understanding your budget and what you need out of your real estate year, and knowing when enough is enough. So that you can kind of hit a cruising altitude and not be looking for more and more, feeling insecure that you won't get there, there, there. And then you build your business, your lifestyle to match the the budget, and you can have a nice life. You have a good year, you might make more, but you still pay yourself the same. I think that's I think that's the trick. I I wasn't great at it early in my career. I've gotten much, much better in the last five years. It doesn't matter what the month is doing or six months or the year is doing. I know what my monthly, I pay myself payroll, and so I, you know, that's it. And I I don't really pay attention, somebody else does to what's coming in annually or whatever. I just need my monthly and that's it. That's and then I'm all set, and I can fly to Ireland, see my parents, do my thing, whatever I need to do, go for a vacation.

Jeff:

There's another thing, too, which we we touched on um in terms of the fruits of our efforts. Yeah, is that for the most part we really enjoy our clients. Yeah. We work with people we like. Very important. They're respectful, they're smart, yeah, they value our experience. Um and more often than not, we uh we really enjoy spending time with them. Yeah, amen. And that's so valuable because I'm sure any agent who's been in the business for more than a few years and had uh you know a dozen or plus transactions has had someone they just did not have a good time with.

Speaker 4:

Right.

Jeff:

You don't need difficult clients who don't respect your advice, who question everything you tell them, who are distrustful, who are you know dissatisfied with the outcomes regardless of what happens. Right. Uh and and life is too short to be spending time with people who are stressing you out.

Declan:

Right.

Jeff:

Um and you can't always screen for these things. It's part of our intake process, right? We've started to build questions to screen for the types of things that we don't want in the business. Right. Everyone does not have the luxury to turn down business, especially when they're starting their career. So we're very, very fortunate in that sense that we have enough business that we don't have to take everything.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Um, but I advise anyone who's thinking long-term, who do you want to work with? How much do you want to work? Think really again intentionally about these things when you're designing your systems and processes.

Declan:

Yeah, amen to that. That's great. And and as my coach Brian Feeney said way back, he said, by the way, not only are those people difficult to work with, but their friends, if their friends get referred to you, they're difficult too.

Jeff:

So conversely, you get good clients. Usually their friends are good too. Yeah, it's a joyous space to be in. And you want that virtuous cycle.

Declan:

Yeah, there you go. And then the client parties are good. We've touched on almost all the big things that I really, really wanted to touch on here. And I hope it's got people thinking. Um, thinking, you know, thinking about 2026. I'm just looking over my notes here. Yeah, I think I think that's a lot. I really do think that that's a lot. And uh, and I would encourage people as they're thinking, you know, one of the uses for chat GPT or Gemini or Claude or whatever that I have nowadays is just brainstorming on this kind of stuff because it's a very cost-effective way to build on ideas and and have some accountability. These these tools are fantastic when they're used correctly, you know. And I've had some fun and some good success with particularly Gemini in the last few weeks, with coming up with action plans based on the kind of things that I intentionally want to achieve. So um have some fun with the AI out there. It's it's great.

Jeff:

One of the things I've found about AI that I caution people about is you can ask it for Gemini, whatever, for a for a plan, for a marketing plan, for a business plan, whatever the thing is you're trying to how am I going to do improve my SEO for AI search? You can get the information you need easily now.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

But it's so good at providing detailed instructions on the steps to accomplish your goal that it can feel very overwhelming. Yeah. Because what you'll get back is a five-page document of 30 things that you then need to go execute on in order to accomplish that goal.

Declan:

Right.

Jeff:

And it can feel overwhelming. Sure. Um, and I would I would encourage people to be careful with that.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Uh, because that can just stress you out more and not really solve a problem. So ask it to give you narrow, focused, executable activities within a particular narrow time frame. Try to have it adjust to your current personal situation. If you don't have a Jeff Lipton in your back office to build yourself a website, tell it that. Yeah. Because you can't do all this stuff by yourself. And if you're just going to try to take on more and more and more and more, faster and faster, which the AI race is sort of leading us to, yeah, it's not going to lead you in the direction of less work, more comfort, more life satisfaction. So just keep it in mind when you're using the tools.

Declan:

Yeah, you have to use them very, very carefully. I'm absolutely with you. And that's valid and that's fair. Um, actually, let's just close on this. Because AI can give you this five-page action plan that feel feels overwhelming. Um, one of the things that people struggle with, and we can talk about marketing all day long, come up with a great list of plans and strategies, and then tactics for the year, but accountability is also something that realtors can struggle with. So there's there's a few approaches. Uh, I do encourage people uh to seek out a coach if they can, even just for a short period of time, because accountability can be hard to come by, and very often we're fooling ourselves if we think, oh, I can take care of it. I you know, I can I can do all that stuff. Yeah. Um, so just a little, let's just touch on accountability, your thoughts on it, and how you guys um stay accountable to each other and the team and the mission.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Um accountability is is important. Uh fortunately, our team, which includes beyond Megan and myself, we have a full-time operations manager slash TC, and we have a listing coordinator. So there's four of us on the team. Okay. But Megan is the only client-facing agent.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Jeff:

And we have people that are hardworking and dedicated and focused, and for the most part, it don't require a lot of management.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Jeff:

So it's it's not a lot of work to hold ourselves accountable. I think people, our team tends to do it naturally.

Speaker 2:

I see.

Jeff:

Um, and again, we've also really designed the business in a way so that we don't have to work too hard. Yeah. Um if being accountable more often than not means doing a little less than you might otherwise try to do. Like give yourself a break, take a walk, uh-huh, go work out, uh-huh, take care of yourself so that you're gonna be in a position to focus and be more effective when you actually are engaged in the job.

Declan:

Okay. That's that's nice. That's nice. I like that. I remember one of the I think I had Megan on twice in the past year, at least once, I know I had her on. And I remember her telling me that one of the things that was a requirement for you in order to join the team is you wanted a gym at home. Which, you know, that's cool though, right? Because the because it it it tells me everything. You're you you're putting your health uh as a priority, and I think that's super accountable.

Jeff:

I mean that and that was a pandemic project. You know, we stopped going to the Y downtown because they shut down. Yeah. And we're like, what are we gonna do? And I was like, I'm gonna buy a bench and stick it in the garage. And then, you know, I bought some mats and put up some mirrors, and then I bought a television and got some more weights, and uh, you know, we've got our own little situation, and it's great.

Declan:

That's true.

Jeff:

Um, and I work out more than I ever have before because I just, you know, have to walk 10 feet instead of two miles. So uh yeah, I mean, and having having accountability to yourself, I think is really important. Yeah. Um, and sometimes it's I'm a workaholic. I can get into it and like I I'm I'm confronted with a problem and I'm not gonna stop until I solve the problem. Right. To my own detriment. Uh and Megan's good at keeping me uh straight sometimes and saying, yeah, come with me to go walk the dog.

Speaker 2:

Right, okay.

Jeff:

And and that's a a benefit of having the lifestyle that we do and working together and being able to check on each other to make sure we're okay.

Declan:

Nice, nice. Well, listen, that that kind of wraps up the the meat of this conversation, what I really wanted to get into. So I I do want to just touch on um Beso or Biso, however anybody wants, because you and I were talking about it earlier. So we'll we'll sort of conclude the the bigger part of the conversation here. Let's just remind everybody where they can find uh Megan if they're interested, or you, whatever you want to give, if you just want to give the website or however you want to do that, and then we'll move into uh Beso.

Jeff:

Yeah, it's all about Megan Miko. Okay, MeganMico.com, M-E-G-A-N-M-I-C-C-O. Um, if you go to MeganMico.com slash team, you can find information about me. I have a compass webpage as well.

Declan:

So awesome. Okay, well, great, and I'll put that in the show notes. And then we're just a few weeks away from uh this Berkeley Energy, this this uh this change. And so let's just you and I were just chatting about it. So I want to just go through it very, very quickly. What is what's happening?

Jeff:

Okay, so let's just start at the top. Um BISO or BESO, BESO is the building energy savings ordinance uh that was established by the city of Berkeley about 15 years ago, I believe. Initially, um there was a point of sale requirement to have an energy assessment done, which costs three to five hundred dollars. You have uh an engineer come to your home, they look around and they try to determine how energy efficient uh your home is. They look for things like windows and insulation, um, electrification, there's a variety of things they look at.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Jeff:

And then out of that you get a home energy report, an HER, a HER, and on the HER is a score or the home energy score, uh, and that's a zero to ten scale. And the higher the point total, the more energy efficient your home is.

Declan:

I just want to point out if anybody ever walks past some gentleman in Berkeley and they're talking saying her score is 10, they're not being misogynistic, okay? This is this is a real Berkeley thing. So sorry, go ahead.

Jeff:

That's a good point. Uh so and then they in the context of getting the home energy report, there would be a series of recommendations on things the homeowner could do to improve their score. Right. Add insulation, put ceiling around your windows, uh, you know, put solar on the building. There's a whole series of things you can do to increase your efficiency.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Um, prior to January 1st of 2026, uh, there were two options for a homeowner that's selling their house. The first option was to go hire the energy assessor and get the report, and then you pay a filing fee with the city. Uh, the energy assessor would submit the report to the city, and then you would be in compliance. The second option, which many home sellers have chosen to do in the past, is to defer that to the to the buyer. Right. Uh so there was a fee of I think it was about $85. So you filed a form and you pass it along, and then the buyer had, I believe, six months to go get the report, then they could see what their score was, along with the recommendations. Right. So at the time it was really just educational for homeowners in terms of how efficient their home was and things they could do to improve it.

Declan:

No action required.

Jeff:

No action required other than to get the report and pay a filing fee with the city.

Declan:

And then the city would have the score publicly available for the Trevor Burrus. That's right.

Jeff:

And there's a there's a uh portal, a BISO portal. If you go to the city of Berkeley, you can find it and you can look up the address of any property and it will tell you if they're in compliance or not. If they are, you can look at their score. The the city determined, the city council determined, that they really wanted to do more to meet their long-term climate goals, which were published in I want to say 2009. Right. So there's been a specific effort to reduce carbon emissions in the city. Yeah. And the BISO project was simply educating people about things they could do, not actually forcing them to do it in any manner. The city council decided they need to put uh a little more meat in on the bone of the project of the program. So starting in January, it will now be a point of sale requirement that the seller go get the energy report. You cannot defer getting the report to the buyer. You have to do it. So you have to pay the three to five hundred dollars, get an energy assessor at your house, and get your report, your her. And the energy assessors, they're on the Berkeley website. Yeah, there's ten or twelve that you can choose from that have been vetted by the city, that are certified. Um, it's a simple process. They come and spend an hour or two at your house, walking around. Looking at things and they write up the report.

Declan:

Okay. So no more deferral. You gotta do it if you're selling a house and you gotta do it.

Jeff:

You gotta do it.

Declan:

Okay.

Jeff:

And as a listing agent, uh you need to include that report in the disclosures. Yeah. And you have to post the score in the MLS record in the public remarks. Okay. Home energy report, score of six, whatever it happens to be. Okay. So the buyers know what the condition of the property is from an efficiency standpoint.

Declan:

Oh my gosh. So in the public remarks. So that's eating up valuable marketing text real estate in our public remarks.

Jeff:

You could probably do it in 10 or 15 characters. It's just a little bit. You could just do H E R equals six. I don't know. We'll find ways of keeping it tight. All right. So that's the first step is as a seller, you have to get the report done. Yeah. Then you have two options after that point. You you have to either defer any upgrades to the home to the buyer. And if you choose to defer the upgrades, the seller has to provide a $2,500 deposit to escrow.

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Jeff:

The buyer also provides a $2,500 deposit to escrow for a total of $5,000. Okay. And the title company will then complete a deposit form and deliver the $5,000 and the form to the city of Berkeley. I see. At that point, the escrow closes, the buyer then has two years to bring their home into efficiency compliance.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Jeff:

They have a number of measures, there's 10 or 12 that you can implement in your home. Each of those measures has a number of credits that's associated with it. Okay. You need to get to six total credits to be in compliance. Got it. Some things like adding insulation to your floor is worth two credits. Right. Some things like installing a heat pump water heater is worth the entire six credits. Got it. So depending on what your score is, what measures have been implemented in your home, you have to determine what else you want to do in order to get to that six credit threshold. Right. Once you've completed the work to get to the six credits, you then file a deposit return form with the city of Berkeley and they give you your $5,000 back. Buyer. To the buyer. Yeah. The new homeowner at this point. Right. Effectively, that means that as a seller, if you defer the work to the buyer, you are giving the buyer a $2,500 credit.

Declan:

Right. And I was telling you I got barked at by somebody for saying, isn't that kind of like my real estate minds, you know, informed me that this is like a mandatory seller credit to a buyer, only if the buyer chooses to do the work and get the money back. Otherwise, who keeps the money after two years if the buyer doesn't do the work? The city of Berkeley keeps the money. So it's an interesting thing, isn't it? Um okay, so there's a buffet that buyers that sellers can choose from, and they can be compliant up to they get the six points or six credits. Yep.

Jeff:

There is there is also a $150 fee uh that you file that you pay for when you file the compliance report. So once you're done with the measures, you have to pay another $150 to the city to submit the report, and then they'll approve it.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Jeff:

And then if you go to the BISA website, you'll see that it is in compliance. A couple other things to note. A small one is while the buyer has two years to complete the work, if it's been deferred, there is the option to extend that for an additional year for a total of three years. Um hopefully people won't need three years to do this. Right.

Declan:

Um Let me guess for another fee.

Jeff:

It's not clear. They have not worked out all the details yet. So this does not go into effect until January 1st, and the city is still working out some of the fine print. Right. From my perspective, we are going to be advising our sellers to uh implement the measures to become certified. And there's a few reasons for that. Okay. Number one, it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 4:

Yes.

Jeff:

You want your home to be more efficient, you want it to be using less carbon, you want it to be using less natural gas for health reasons. No doubt. So it's a good thing to do. Yeah. Um, number two, you're not having to give a $2,500 credit to the buyer for no reason, essentially. Number three, it's likely to increase the demand for your property when buyers know they don't have to do any work after purchasing it to become compliant.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

So we believe that's going to be a marketing benefit to say we've already become Biso compliant. Right. And there still are a number of rebates available for a heat pump water heater. Okay. Um, there potentially can be electrical work that's needed to be done to wire a higher capacity circuit for those appliances. Depends on your house and the situation and your electrical.

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Jeff:

But there are heat pump water heaters now that are as inexpensive as, you know, eighteen hundred to two thousand dollars for four rebates. So in many cases, it may be more cost effective to implement the measures to become compliant than it will be to pay the deposit.

Declan:

Yeah. I like that. I like that. It'll be interesting to see what it does in the market in terms of buyer demand for properties that are compliant versus not. We're all kind of, I guess, itching to look at the data this time next year and see what happened with all of this, what happened at our open houses, what the chatter was at the open houses and all that stuff. That's gonna be fun. But absolutely, I'm fully aligned with your thinking that this is just this is just a good thing to do anyway. Um I know that uh Megan and yourself are just are both very interested in in people making their homes greener and electrifying their homes. And do you have any uh vendors or recommendations on anything at all? We'll need to make relationships in the industry now so that our clients know where to turn when they need vendors. So go ahead and tell us some of yours.

Jeff:

Well, let me make two comments before that. So, as I had said earlier in the conversation, I spent nearly a decade in energy resource management and elect in electricity and water. So I have a personal passion for this stuff. Nice. I care uh a lot about the environment. I think that there's things we can do that are practical and cost effective to reduce our resource use, yeah, uh, become more efficient. And both Megan and I are certified green realtors as well. Nice. So we do bring expertise in our business and our practice to help people understand the benefits and costs and challenges of electrifying their homes. Yeah. We have personally electrified our home. Right. Uh with we've done all of it essentially solar, induction range, heat pump water heater, heat pump furnace, heat pump dryer. We've done all the stuff, higher electrification. Um, so we're big advocates of this stuff. Um, all that being said, uh, there's a lot of vendors out there, and we've worked with some of them. We used Electrify My Home, it's a vendor for our recent heat pump project where we replaced our old gas furnace and installed some mini splits as well. Yeah, quite the project.

Speaker 4:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Um, we've worked with Albion Power for solar. How do you spell that one? A-L-B-I-O-N. Okay. Had a great experience. Um Hassler is a local HVAC company that installed our heat pump water heater abruptly when our eight-year-old water heater broke and flooded our uh basement. Oh, wow. Suddenly.

Declan:

Oh wow. Thank God it was just in a basement. But hopefully it's this is like an unfinished part of the house.

Jeff:

Relatively unfinished. It wasn't a huge problem. The bigger issue was that they said they could install a gas uh water heater replacement in 24 hours, but to get the heat pump water heater and go through the permitting process took nearly a week. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's a good thing. And was more expensive. So we had to suck up having no hot water for six days. What time of the year was this? It was in February of last year. No, it was it was a pain. And fortunately, we fortunately we'd done some work earlier to run a 240-volt circuit to the location of the water heater, knowing we wanted to uh update it to a heat pump in the future.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Jeff:

So we did not have to do any electrical work. And this is a big part of electrifying your home is planning ahead. You don't want to wait until your water heater floods your basement and then be in a position where you're without hot water. If you can do it at an off-peak time when it's warm outside, and you can get your permits ahead of time so you're not waiting, then it it can it can go a lot smoother. So there are lessons to be learned. I'm happy to talk to anyone about the details of these processes if they're interested in learning more.

Declan:

That's very cool. And I think Electrify My Home is electrifymyhome.com. I I'm pretty sure. I'll put a link in the show notes and I'll make sure it's working.

Jeff:

The the one other resource I encourage people to check out is it's called theswitchison.org. Okay. And it's an aggregation of all the available rebates, both local, state, and federal, yes for a whole range of different efficiency measures. Heat pumps, water heaters, solar, battery systems. So uh we also have a home electrification resources page on our website that people can check out.

Declan:

Nice. And of course, we're just about a year away from people not being able within nine counties to get uh a gas-fired water, you know, water heater, too. So furnace, right? Or furnace, so that's gonna dovetail there. And you told me about uh a local Berkeley company making stoves, electric stoves, a Cooper Copper Copper, Copper is making stoves. I'm gonna look into it.

Jeff:

So induction stoves, they're beautiful, wood paneling, they're they're they're wonderful devices. They have a built-in battery.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Jeff:

So if your power goes out for any reason, you can still run your electric stove for some number of hours. I'm not sure how long. Sure. So it's it's a great product. I have some friends who recently purchased it. Um we got our induction before they were commercially available.

Declan:

So you said, and I I won't quote you, well, I mean, I won't hold you to it, but you think they might operate off of 110.

Jeff:

Yes, I believe that's true. Yeah, I mean, at least they have a model that does. Typically, the challenges with 110 is there's lower amperage that goes to that appliance, so they take longer to heat up. And that's true for water heaters and heat pumps and induction ranges as well. So you don't have to do special electrical, but you do typically need at least a 30 amp circuit, even if it's 110 to that location. And many homes don't aren't wired that way. So you always want to consult with an electrician before you start considering electrification updates.

Declan:

Definitely. Jeff, it's been an absolute pleasure to finally sit down with you. I think you're I think you're great. I love the Meg and Miko team, the brand, the whole bit. Learn a lot. Learned a lot from this. This would this was just fantastic. So I wish you a very nice uh December holiday season, a happy new year. Jeff, thank you very much.

Jeff:

Thank you so much for your time, Declan. I really enjoyed it.

Declan:

Thanks for listening to the show. Thanks for listening all year. Here are the credits. It takes a bit to put a show like this together. Mostly it's edited by me. In fact, it's always edited by me. Original music is from Chuck Lindo, my good friend Chuck. Happy holidays, Chuck, and graphics by Lisa Mazer. Lisa is right here in Berkeley, LisaMazer.com. She's a fabulous graphic designer. The podcast is brought to you by the Home Factor Realtors, thehomefactor.com. Catch up on the latest news from the East Bay market in their weekly Substack, published every Sunday. Go to thehomefactor.com to subscribe. If you'd like to reach out to me, and I sure would love if you did, with suggestions for the show, especially for 2026, that kind of thing, please text me at four one five four four six eight five nine one. Catch you on the next podcast, everybody.

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Jeff Lipton

Guest