BBA Morning Coffee - 8.13.24 - Replay

So welcome to, BBA Coffee.

And this, this is designed to be a standing place hold over the course of the next two weeks where you can connect with the executive team. We're gonna give you some mindsets in terms of understanding how to think about the courses throughout the day, how you should be shifting kind of your conversations with buyers and sellers.

We've got we won't on these classes cover state specific, information that will be left to your brokers for that state specific information there. But this is just gonna be high level overview. What's changing in the industry? What a conversation sound like?

What as a brokerage are we gonna be doing to support you through this process? And then ultimately, how do we use this as a as a rocket booster to help us go faster? We don't wanna just do the same amount of business that we're doing today. We wanna use this as an opportunity to create a better experience with the consumers that we serve, which is obviously the North Star in every in every scenario.

And how do we take market share from, from brokerages or agents who are not paying attention, who are not listening to the queues, who do not understand ultimately what's happening and taking the time to invest like how you guys are this morning. So your entire leadership well, most of your leadership team is here with you this morning. We're excited to be here. Robert, I'll turn it over you to to kick it off for us.

Alright. Yeah. Good morning, everybody.

Exciting to get fired up. This is the first of fifty sessions that we're gonna be hosting, for, this massive change as we go to new forms for the buyer broker agreement, as we go to new listing agreements.

And, again, yeah, I'm getting a bad echo. I think maybe one of my panelists has their speakers up too high, or maybe if everybody on the panel is not talking, we'll mute.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Still there.

Hodge, you wanna try muting too? Everybody's muted. It was Hodge.

Alright.

It was Hodge. Hodge with the now Hodge is breaking my audio through his computer. That is fantastic. Alright.

Yeah. So we're good now, guys. We just have to watch the the mute here. But, yeah, this is the first of fifty sessions that LPT is gonna be holding over the next two weeks, because, again, we wanna make sure that you are as prepared as possible for, the changes that are happening.

And, look, and those fifty sessions do not include all of the state specific trainings that are happening. One of the things we're gonna do is on all of these sessions that we have on what I'm calling kind of the national training, we're gonna make sure you're aware of what's upcoming from a state specific standpoint. I don't know if you have that graphic to share, but if not, I can kinda read them off. We have, we have six state specific trainings happening today.

It kicks off with, Pennsylvania and South Carolina at ten thirty this morning.

Texas, is at noon central time, Illinois at four thirty central time, Wisconsin at four o'clock central time, and then Florida at six PM tonight for folks who who need to get on a little bit later. So, again, every one of these these the big fifty classes, we're gonna be talking about those additional. So today, we have five of the national classes. We have six state specific classes.

I think coach Dean's doing something as well today. I know Penny has her classes. So there's probably fifteen opportunities today for LPT agents inside of the brokerage to get education and training around these changes, plus the amazing resources that are out there, in the rest of the world. So, again, we're here to make sure that we have all these resources.

And more importantly, that if at any point during this transition, you just feel lost or you feel alone or you feel like you're not sure what you should be doing, you're only three or four hours away from one of these these brokerage wide, trainings where you can hop on. And, again, just get plugged back in, hear what's happening. These morning coffees, we're really just gonna kinda talk about what's happening. My gut says there's gonna be news that kinda breaks along the way, so we're gonna keep you guys up to date on what I would call maybe current events, you know, that are happening across the, across the industry right now with these changes and, you know, really excited about about what we're doing.

One thing I did see, I thought this was interesting.

Stellar MLS, actually has started finding some agents, and and one of the interesting things that that they're finding for is, again, not putting a specific amount of buyer broker commission, but just saying call listing agent for the amount of buyer broker commission. So the MLS is taking a very hard stance, on these fines and and on everything. So we wanna make sure, guys, that we are not communicating anything about buyer broker commission in the MLS. Even the statement as simple as call me to find out the amount of the buyer broker commission, is is being construed as that type of communication.

Again, I would just encourage everybody, like, let's not play around with this. MLS fines are no joke.

We're here to make sure you're educated and you know what's happening, but I thought that was interesting. You know, day one of Stellar going into effect, we've already got agents, from other brokerages reporting that they've received fines, for comments in the the with the realtor only remarks.

So make sure you're cautious to that and conscious of that as you are inputting your listings.

Beyond that, you know, we're we're gonna talk a lot about kind of the mindset, the best practices, the scripts. We've got, again, these amazing sessions coming up over the next two weeks.

We've got, again, lots of leadership from across the brokerage here to help share stories and answer questions.

If you have topics you'd like us to cover, throw them in the chat. We may not get to it on this particular session, but we'll definitely take that as we shape both the week two content and kinda where we go from here throughout the week. But, yeah, just to kinda kick us off, I'm gonna talk about some kinda high level stuff that that we're seeing, you know, and and, again, my recommendations. Ultimately, agent choice, you know, how you guys continue you know, choose to conduct business as long as it is compliant and legal. We're not gonna take a very heavy hand with the brokerage. We're not gonna restrict things. We're not gonna shut things down.

Again, unless they are a direct violation of the NAR settlement, we're not gonna put brokerage overlays on top of that. We want you to be able to run your business, but we're also going to share with you best practices and and how we recommend and how I recommend and how the executive team recommends that you deal with some of this. And and so the first thing I would tell you is and, I thought this was really interesting. I, again, I saw on on Facebook, somebody sent me a screenshot of a poll, about kinda what are you most worried about.

And, one of our agents added, an extra item to that poll that said other agents that don't know what they're doing when it comes to the settlement. And and I think that really is the biggest thing we have to watch out for. I told a story yesterday on the LPT plus Zoom about, you know, when I was I remember when I was sixteen years old, and I'm just starting to drive. And my my grandma was a big influence in my life.

And so I remember her her taking me on some, like, driving trips early on and giving me some driving pointers and, this idea of defensive driving, you know, because she said, you know, Chipper, that was my nickname back then. Chipper, I know you're gonna be a great driver, but there's all these other idiots on the road, and you need to be careful of them and you need to watch out for them. And so I think that the big thing that we have to understand is no matter how educated we are, our fifty hours of or fifty sessions over the next two weeks and all the other state specific trainings and everything else, there's one point five plus million realtors in this country who are all now having to adapt to this, and not everyone is plugging in.

Not every brokerage is plugging in and doing the training. And so we have to really think about what what potential obstacles are we going to face because other people out there maybe are not educated and not understanding what's going on. And so I think one of the biggest things is this discussion around, you know, is the seller, quote, unquote, offering buyer agent commission or not? And, you know, I think that there are there are gonna be agents who do pre negotiate an amount of commission.

And so while it cannot be placed in the MLS, there are gonna be agents who choose to say, hey, mister and missus seller. Let's go ahead and agree that we're gonna pay x percent to a buyer's agent and get that, you know, in the contract. Other agents are gonna say, hey. Let's just negotiate the listing side today, and we'll worry about the the buyer's agent commission as the actual offers come in.

Those different methods are gonna happen, but here's what you gotta be be concerned about. There are agents on the other side. There are buyer's agents who are going to take this stance and say, I'm not gonna show a house unless it's gonna pay x. And, you know, their buyer can actually instruct them to do that.

Right? If a buyer signs a buyer broker agreement that says I'm gonna pay three percent, and I don't have the money, so, therefore, I'm going to instruct my agent to only show me houses where the seller is willing to pay three percent. Now my argument with this is we don't know what the actual seller is willing to pay until an offer shows up. Because as much as that seller wants to claim they are unwilling to pay by a broker commission, I promise you, if an offer comes in high enough, they're going to not care all of a sudden about paying buyer's agent commission.

This is a psychology thing. Right?

Consumers and sellers don't care about who's getting what money. They care about the money they are getting. Alright? And so we have to be because we have to be aware of this.

So there are gonna be agents out there who are going to call on every listing and say, hey. What are you paying? What's your what's your seller paying? And I really want you to think about the best way to answer that to make sure that you get every possible showing for your listing.

You know, my recommendation would be to say, hey. My seller is willing to entertain all requests for buyer's agent commission. Because even if your seller has pre agreed to pay two and a half, Well, if you say two and a half to the wrong agent and they have in written instructions from their buyer to only show properties with a three percent commission, then that may be what they do. And now all of a sudden, because you're offering two and a half, they may not show your property.

And so to me, the safest way to communicate those is to say, look. My seller is willing to entertain all offers you know, all requests for buyer's agent compensation because you just don't know. Right? Send in your offer.

Like, we're not gonna pre negotiate the entire offer on the phone today. You know, we don't know what you're gonna ask for in concessions. We don't know what your closing time is. But what I can tell you is my seller is willing to entertain any request for buyer's agent commission.

And this way, you're not preselecting anyone out. You're not giving anyone a reason to not show your house. And, again, there are gonna be a lot of agents who don't necessarily act the right way through this. And so, again, I know a lot of people are putting in there, like, that's an ethics violation.

That is just I get that. But I'm telling you, there are other idiots on the road. Right? Like, yes.

When I'm driving in the right lane and I'm supposed to have the right of way and I'm gonna come to a complete stop at a stop sign, I can do everything correctly, but I can't live with blinders on assuming that everyone else is gonna do the right thing too. And that's what I want you guys to understand is just because it may be the wrong approach or it may be a violation or whatever, trust me. Out of one point five million people, there are gonna be some that get it wrong. There are gonna be some bad actors.

There are gonna be some that that take the wrong stance here. So as a part is, we wanna prepare you, one, how to follow the rules yourself, but then also think outside that box and make sure that you are putting yourself in a position to win even if you're up against someone else who is not following the rules. And so and I think this idea of saying, hey. My seller is willing to entertain all reasonable requests, any requests, requests, whatever.

They're gonna entertain. Right? We're not saying we're gonna agree to it.

We're not guaranteeing we're gonna pay it.

We will entertain any request for, buyer's agent commission. And that that to me is the safest answer. Because any other answer, right, even if you say two point five, two point two five, two point seven five. Right?

Any number you say, there may be an agent on the other side that says, well, nope. I don't show anything less than three. We don't know what type of hard line other people are going to take, where if you literally say, my my sellers wanna entertain any request, and then they say, well, three? It's like, I just said any request.

Like, yeah. Three is a request. Four is a request. One's a request. Like, submit your offer.

Right? Because that's really what we're trying to get people to do. We want people to show the houses and submit the offer. Alright.

So really important verbiage. Now the next thing I will tell you, while you cannot put that verbiage into the MLS, right, you cannot put in the MLS and say, my seller is willing to entertain any and all, requests for buyer's agent compensation. Right? That that is not allowed to be in the MLS.

That is allowed to be in Listing Power Tools. Alright? So Listing Power Tools is not powered by the MLS. It is an independent system that we built.

It is in no way tied to the MLS. It pulls no data from the MLS. It is a hundred percent brokerage specific data. So if you wanna communicate that out, I think a great place to put it is the listing power tools listing description.

Now, again, I would discourage you from putting an amount of compensation in there. Even if your seller has pre agreed to an amount of compensation, I would recommend not listing that because you just don't know what the other person is thinking. However, making the statement, my seller is willing to entertain all requests for buyer's agent compensation concession. Again, however you wanna word that.

I think that is a great sentence to add to the description inside of listing power tools, alright, which is absolutely allowed.

Alright. So I'm gonna take a break there. We've got a great panel here. I wanna get some insight and discussions from other folks.

We've really been talking about the listing side here. We'll pivot to the buy side in a minute. But before we do that, let's go to our great panel on our side and and and talk about, again, how we all wanna handle this, how we wanna communicate that willingness to pay buyer's agent commission. Because to me, that's really the most important thing to prepare your seller for.

More important than than landing on an amount is just their willingness to entertain those requests.

Yeah, guys. This is such a great concept because you never wanna forego a tour from happening at your property. And, you know, that concept of having the conversations with buyer agents as they're reaching out to your listings, It even extends further, and we're gonna dive deeper into this theme with conversations with sellers because we gotta prep our sellers too. Right?

You know, we're gonna you know, during the process, we have to educate our sellers that we may have buyers before the tour. They're gonna reach out to me and ask me, hey. Are we willing to pay a buyer's agent commission? And prepping the seller that our, you know, responses are going to be, hey.

We're gonna welcome the the the contracts is probably the best way to start positioning and educating your sellers accordingly. You know, you want your seller to be prepared for what's possible to come. You know, we're we're at a time where we have to stay nimble, guys. We we have to be able to have the net as wide as possible so we can invite as many individuals as possible to to our tours, and we don't wanna do anything that's gonna shut down those opportunities because we never know.

You know, we never know if a buyer is going to come in, as Robert mentioned, with an with a bottom line number that's going to be appropriate for our sellers, but we can't have something that's going to immediately shut that door before that opportunity is even presented to to us. So, you know, we're gonna dive deeper into those themes when we're, having our courses with, conversations with our sellers. But, yeah, I mean, we gotta prep our sellers too. We have to make sure our sellers understand that those, you know, actions will likely be happening here in the future.

Yeah. Louis, I like that you you describe it that way because, again and we talked about this a little bit yesterday, which is our job, of course, is to guide the seller on how to create the most exposure for their homes so they can obtain the the the highest net number.

And, again, like you said, Robert, we can't pre negotiate that. Right? Like, we don't go and write an offer based on what we think is going to get accepted. We we've all written offers that have not the terms have not been accepted by the seller.

But we didn't stop that opportunity from at least happening. And so when we do that, when we say, hey. We're not gonna entertain, any buyer's commission or we we close that door. Or on the opposite side, we're calling the sellers and saying, hey.

Is your buyer I'm sorry. Is your seller, you know, offering commission? You're you're asking for things that don't matter at that moment. Right?

That that's what's gonna happen through negotiation process. And so, again, we don't wanna have any opportunities where we're either limiting the amount of homes that our buyers can see or on the seller side, limiting the amount of shows that we're receiving because we're pre we're digging into this preconceived notion of, like, hey, we're not gonna pay x or we're not gonna go someplace who says we're not paying x. Like, that is where we really have to get our our buyers and our sellers to just at a holistic level. You will have to choose your individual flavor on how you explain that to them, but that is ultimately the concept that they need to be comfortable with, which is, hey.

Don't. Let's not. Let's go see the house that says they're not paying commission because we can negotiate our way through it. Or let's show the house to someone who is, you know, asking for this, and let's not close these doors, beforehand.

Yeah. Couple of things real quick, Hodge. I wanna jump into the chat. This is actually really interesting example.

So, you know, we actually two folks back to back, Karen and John. You know, say, hey. If my seller agreed to pay three percent and now the buyer is only asking for two and a half percent, what's gonna happen? Right?

So this is really interesting. And this is actually, to me, a reason that maybe pre negotiating that commission is not as maybe good of a strategy going forward. Again, totally your choice. We're not gonna tell you you can't do that or you shouldn't do that, but I want you to think about this exact example that two agents brought up.

Under the new agreement, if that buyer's agent has a a buyer broker agreement for two and a half and that buyer broker is asking for the seller to pay two and a half, that agent cannot receive the extra half a percent. Alright? Like, that that's not again, they could they could ask the buyer to modify and say, hey, mister buyer. Will you sign a new agreement so I can make an extra half a percent?

There's some issues there. One, the buyer could be like, well, why would I do that? Like, because at the end of the day, that extra half percent would then theoretically need to go back to the buyer, or now the listing agent needs to modify their agreement. Right?

And so here's the if if the listing listing agreement says we're paying three, buyer's agent can only receive two and a half. The extra half a percent should go to the buyer. Or when that offer comes in at two and a half, then you as a listing agent could go to your seller and say, hey. Let's do a modification on our agreement and only pay two and a half.

And, again, this just really starts to muddy things up because now you have all of these moving pieces. Because if at the end of the day, if that seller is going to pay the full three, the buyer's agent can't get it, refunds as a credit, I'd say we would probably, in the industry, credit that toward closing costs, you know, if I had to think about it because a lot of mortgage lenders won't let the consumer get the cash back. Maybe it gets credit as a reduction in sales price. Maybe it gets applied toward closing costs.

But we know the buyer's agent cannot get that extra half a percent unless the buyer's agent gets their buyer to sign a document saying, hey. I'd rather you have the extra half percent than me even though I already signed an agreement with you at two and a half. There are some concerns there that you could get into this situation of, like, consumer law around bait and switch. You know, like, if you are consistently showing a a consumer one number upfront and then modifying it up later and that becomes a pattern of behavior, that's something that could be problematic, from a consumer protection standpoint.

Again, these are all unknowns. These are all things that I think are really gonna start to shake out for us as an industry. And so at some point, you really have to ask yourself, what is the benefit of pre negotiating that commission? Again, I'm not telling you not to do it.

You're welcome to do it. And some of this is I don't even think that we know. Right? We're guessing.

I'm guessing based on my experience with consumer behavior. We're all guessing based on our experience with other agent behavior, what we think is gonna work. My gut says at some point, we're gonna land in a place where agents do stop pre negotiating an amount because you just don't know. Right?

And so the other the other interesting factor is if you are up against multiple agents, for that listing.

And and so, say, four agents are going on the listing presentation, and one agent is only asking for the three percent for themselves and then preparing the buyer or preparing the seller for the fact that there will be additional buyer's agent commission, but we don't know how much. And then agent two is trying to get the seller to go ahead and sign right now for a full, say, six percent. That that is going to put you at a competitive disadvantage. Now I know you can explain it.

I I know that I believe buyer's agent commission is critical. I know we all believe that, but I do think it's going to put you at a slight disadvantage with a seller if you are showing them a six percent number when someone else is showing them a three percent number. And if that other person says, hey. I'm only asking for three today because we just don't know how much the buyer's agent commission is gonna be.

It may be two. It may be two and a half. It may be three. We're gonna figure that out as we go.

So now the seller is hearing, well, with agent a, I may get off as cheap as five percent if the buyer's agent only asked for two, but agent b over here wants me to go ahead and agree to a full six percent today.

You know, psychologically, are you at a disadvantage? And I I would say yes. And on the flip side, that agent who prenegotiated, say so then say, well, okay. Well, then I'll I'll just prenegotiate a two a two percent for the buyer's agent so I can be more in line.

Well, now when when one of those agents calls you and says, hey. How much is the buyer's agent commission? And maybe you try to say, well, we're willing to entertain all. But is there any is there any prenegotiator?

Is there any listing agreement? Well, yeah. It's only two. And then that particular agent says, well, I'm not gonna show your house then because I have written instructions from my buyer to only show houses that pay three.

So, again, we're these are all things again, we wanna prepare you for this. A lot of this is game theory. A lot of this is again, we understand the law. We understand the legalities.

We know the buyer's agent can't get the money unless they modify the BBA, which, again, I think that's gonna be harder than maybe some of us think to go back to a buyer and say, hey. I know you agreed to pay me two and a half, but now I want you to pay me three.

Again, while that is allowed, I think that is probably gonna be tougher than maybe some of us are thinking. And so, again, all of these factors are things that we're trying to game theory out and we wanna prepare you for. And I think that's really a lot of what these these coffees in the morning are gonna be about. Like, what are the what ifs?

Right? What are the things we're gonna have to deal with? At the end of the day, we're gonna help you be compliant. We're gonna help you navigate the forms and everything.

We've got the great state classes for that. But we we also just had to be thinking there's gonna be all these scenarios, and we're gonna get spun up and go down rabbit holes as we try to figure this out. And once we've done enough transactions, I think everybody's just gonna be really comfortable and kinda see what happens. But we are in this unknown right now as we race toward this deadline because we're trying to understand what other companies are gonna do, what other agents are gonna do.

But at the end of the day, you know, these are the basic rules. If if if their buyer broker agreement is for this amount and you're paying more, the buyer's gonna get it back, or you can try to modify on the listing side. And think about that situation. Right?

The the the the seller is trying to say, well, let's modify down what I have to pay since they asked for less. And then the buyer's agent is saying, well, let's modify up so I can get that money. There's just a lot of things that are gonna they're gonna happen that we're gonna have to navigate the muddy waters together.

Yeah. That's definitely the sliding scale. Right? Because we know what the black and white rule says says in the settlement agreement, but then there's application.

Right? Like, where is the industry gonna go in terms of applying what the black and white rule say? And right now is very you know, how I would recommend looking at it right now is no different than any other term that you previously negotiated with your sellers and buyers. Right?

You know, before, let's say, for example, you had a conversation with your seller and you agreed to, hey. If a buyer comes in, I'm agreeable to a ten day inspection period. But if that offer came in and it was a five day inspection period, you're not gonna call the buyer and say, hey. Listen, buyer.

My sellers, you know, pre agreed to give you a ten, you know, day inspection period, so let's add an additional five days and resubmit the offer to me. Right? You know, you're advocating for your seller's best interest. You are going to, you know, negotiate the terms that are ultimately more favorable to your to your seller.

So now with these, buyer commissions that may be proposed in the offers, it it would be the same thing. Right? Like, if your sellers are ready with an understanding with you that they are willing to pay up to a three percent, but the offer came in and it's at two percent, well, that's a window. You know, that's a win for your seller, not a loss.

So, you know, I I would look at it as as any other term that we previously negotiated. Right? You know, the inspection period, the financing clauses, the, you know, purchase price, escrow amounts. It's it's now just an additional, you know, dollar amount that's being factored into the negotiations.

You know, I think one of the things to remember, we've got almost five hundred people on this call. We've got a lot of the chat that's going back and forth and a lot of, different discussions and different points of view. Just think about what the consumer is thinking. If we're having this very healthy debate and we're the ones that are the professionals that carry that real estate license, and we're the ones that actually have to navigate this and explain this to the consumer.

We're here to give you these guardrails. And remember right now when you're talking to a buyer, that buyer will become your seller, and you have to really educate the other side of the equation when that happens as well. You guys are in for the long term here. This is your profession.

You're the professional. And so you have to also articulate what your value is. No one expects you to work for free. You're gonna be here, and you're going to navigate this part of the transaction with your consumer.

And you have to really change that mindset now where your value is now more valuable to the transaction than it ever was before.

And so I agree with what RP is saying, the idea of don't limit yourself. Why pre negotiate? You're coming in, and you're bringing the value to this situation now more than ever. In a few days' time, there's going to be significant changes to our industry. We are navigating these waters together. That's why we're doing all of this, before before the deadline and post deadline so that we can be here as agile with you as possible in this. But really just understand your value and now how valuable you are to this entire transaction.

I wanted to add on to that, as far as trying not to pre negotiate.

Something to to pay close attention to is when we're thinking about commission is cooperating conversation conversation versus seller concession. Those are two different things. Right? So cooperating conversation is broker to broker.

And now there's a new spot in a lot of listening agreements. I think most listening agreements that talk about seller concessions.

These seller concessions are a seller to buyer broker to pay on behalf of the buyer. Right? So you have two different ways to negotiate.

Yes, they may be offering, a broker to broker compensation.

Maybe you only get two percent if that's what they're offering, but your buyer still has the opportunity to ask for seller concessions. Those things are not changing, and those concessions can be paid by the seller for buyer broker fees. So don't limit yourself on certain things when you think about commission.

Look at what you're what what you're kind of breaking it down to. Is it broker to broker compensation?

We can get that and then we can switch to seller concessions and we can get that for the buyer as well. So just another point of like review your listing agreement if you're working with the buyer because then you'll see what the seller has options for, and then you'll see what you'll be able to ask for for your buyer and for yourself.

Fantastic. Great point, Christina.

One one question on the chat. One thing is, you know, when when are we considered working with? Do we wanna cover this definition? Is it before the first showing? Is it before we send someone listings?

Anybody wanna jump in on this? I saw that as a a question in the chat that I definitely think we should we should get into here.

Well, this is definitely a difference, I'm sorry, between, marketing yourself and between working with a buyer, which we're kind of defining in Florida as brokerage services. Right? So if I'm showing a listing on behalf of my seller to a buyer, I am doing a function that is on behalf of my seller by showing that property. I don't necessarily have to have a BBA for that function because I am serving in the capacity of my seller. Now if I cross that line of having personal discussion about properties of interest, what they're looking for, their pre approval amount, negotiations, anything in that matter, it then crosses the line over into brokerage services. And on that front, I would encourage agents to have a BBA.

K. Yeah. I think that's kinda our our interpretation is that, you know, I don't I don't think just sending someone a list of listings, you know, again, they're searching in your IDX. I mean, again, correct me if I'm wrong, guys. You guys are taking a lot more training on this than I have. But, really, it's it's when are we getting into actively working together. You know, we think the window of of, again, going to open a door, going to work with someone, Open houses have been specifically exempted.

I know that's that's the case, but, you know, again, getting it getting it early is important. We wanna watch out for those MLS fines. Again, we're gonna be talking a lot about this in the sessions throughout the week. The town halls, we're gonna have a lot more ability for you guys to get and ask questions and steer the discussion.

We have the transitioning current buyers. We have the conversation with buyers and sellers. We have the mechanics and mindset. So we have classes that are gonna really get into the weeds on this, but we wanna try to cover as much as we can today with you guys on this first coffee chat.

But, yeah, it it it's I think, you know, if you are if you're gonna go show houses, we know by that point, you absolutely need to have it. I think from there, kinda to Natalie's point, there may be some gray area on how deep are you going with that person. Like, if you're doing a virtual, you know, showing of a house, that's probably gonna qualify as brokerage services.

But, absolutely, by the time you go open that first door, you're gonna wanna have your your compensation agreement in place. And, hey, we're gonna talk about this deeper in the mechanics, but, you know, there there's different ways to do that. Right? We have what I would call kind of the the short form agreements, which, you know, we have ours in final legal review.

Zillow has one. Some of the states have one. I saw Texas has one specifically. I'm not sure if Florida has put one out yet or other states.

But, you know, there's kinda, like, almost three phases of this. You can have, like, the short firm limited disclosure that just meets what NAR wants. Then you're gonna wanna go from that to a full blown, a hundred percent legally enforceable buyer broker agreement that is state compliant. And then, ultimately, you're gonna go to an offer where that offer and contract are gonna restate if there's concessions or, you know, whatever that commission is.

There there's some mechanically, those are the three potentials you can use. You can skip the early form and go straight to a buyer broker agreement if you're comfortable doing that. I think for a lot of agents, that's gonna be the route they take. I think it's gonna be more Internet lead type stuff where the Zillow type touring form is used or those short form kinda limited showing forms are used.

If you can get a buyer to sign a buyer broker agreement upfront, I would encourage that. That's gonna be your your strongest form, your strongest level of commitment. But, yeah, we wanna make sure these are in place before we start offering those brokerage services and we're actively working with.

And then, like, at the end of the day, the enforcement here is coming from the MLSs. MLS fines are what we're all obviously trying to avoid and not get caught up in. And so, you know, the last thing I think you wanna do is find yourself in a, you know, an ethics hearing or a a fine hearing with the local MLS because they're arguing that maybe something you did like a video showing was actively working with. And, you know, you're trying to argue, well, no.

I hadn't met them yet. So, again, just you gotta think about this. We are we're learning as we go. We're gonna get more examples of this.

The MLSs are gonna start finding people. We're watching that as a brokerage because it's a great way for us to understand examples of of the stances they're taking on some of these things. But the sooner you can get that form in place, under the spirit of the law, the safer you're going to be. But absolutely before you're showing houses, before you're actively working with.

Natalie or Norquis, is there anything else you wanna share there?

I also wanted to remind everyone and to have the certainty that we will be providing state specific training on the forms, the changes, and everything, so stay tuned for the for that schedule as well.

And, again, I'll I'll go over those again real quick. Today, in particular, we have, let me pull this back up. I know at ten thirty, we had our first one.

I lost there you go. You're gonna ship perfect, Taj.

Do you wanna pull up the, the state specifics is what I was gonna give them the quick rundown. Oh, state specifics? Okay.

Let me find that inside. It's in knowledge base. K.

Let me get that for you as well.

So ten thirty AM, Pennsylvania, ten thirty AM, South Carolina, twelve PM central time, Texas, four thirty PM central time, Illinois, four PM central time, Wisconsin, and six PM eastern time tonight for Florida. So, again, throughout every day for the next two weeks, there are great state specific trainings. That is a great opportunity for you to get in there and ask very specific questions about your state. The things we're talking about today, are, are are kind of the broader stuff.

Yeah. Every single state has multiple trainings all throughout the week. It's like I I see North Carolina in the chat. North Carolina is not today.

It may be tomorrow. It may be on Wednesday or, you know, maybe Thursday. The full list of all the state specifics are in the knowledge base. Natalie just posted that link.

So, again, if you click on that link, you can register the Zooms. If you go into knowledge base and you put BBA into the search, you will see the state specific list of all the Zoom links come up. Again, we're operating in, you know, twenty four states right now. So there's a lot of Zoom links in there to get to your state specific.

Our bigger states are having three a week. Some of the smaller states are only having one or two a week. But at the same time, those smaller states, the brokers are much more available to do smaller group or one on one. So if you are in a smaller state that doesn't have the higher frequency of trainings, put in a ticket.

You know, that state broker's there to work with you. We can put custom small classes together. Again, we're gonna do whatever it takes to help everybody navigate this. But all day, every day for the next two weeks, there are tons of state specific classes.

We've got our classes like this one. Again, we're gonna have more of these high level discussions where we're talking about strategy and the what ifs and how to prepare for the other crazy drivers on the road who maybe aren't as prepared as you are. And then the purpose of these state specific classes is to really then dive deep, into those. You know, Christina's on here.

She teaches them. Natalie's on here. She teaches them. We've got a lot of great talented folks across the brokerage teaching the state specific, go through your actual forms for your state.

And Robert, it's her question in the chat about whether we're gonna be doing this in Spanish.

The answer is yes. Norkies and I will be leading the Spanish training. We will have a schedule out for, the Spanish schedule by the end of the day today.

Fantastic.

Alright. Well, we are just about at time. So any final words from anyone on the leadership team, before we turn over? Robert will turn it for you for to close out.

Yes. Sorry. Real quick. Pennsylvania is at, it's it's right after this meeting. It's at nine ten AM. Sorry.

Oh, ten. Okay. Gotcha. My bad. Ten AM.

All I'm gonna say is, ladies and gentlemen, take a deep breath.

We are providing a ton of training for you from real high level to the basics.

It's there.

Just lean into the training and breathe and worry about yourself.

I love Robert's analogy about, you know, you gotta worry about for the other drivers. That's gonna be the problem. It's going to be the people that are didn't pay attention, didn't go to their trainings, didn't go to their MLS, didn't hear about the the deadlines, and now all of a sudden are just throwing a listing in there and talking about compensation, and you're not supposed to.

We have your backs.

I'll see you later.

Yeah. And and, look, guys, every one of these fifty sessions we're doing is live. Every one of the state trainings I just mentioned is live. The videos are are being put in knowledge base.