What's up, everybody? Welcome to the four o'clock BBA town hall. We're gonna give it three minutes, maybe three and a half. I'm leaning towards the three and a half. Seems like the right number to let people kinda filter in. But while you're joining, if you don't mind throwing something in the chat, tell us where you are, what panelists you're most excited to hear from, you know, just give it the rundown. We got an amazing panel today. We got all the answers to all your questions. Everyone, shelled caffeine. We got here. So this is gonna be the most energetic panel yet, the most energetic BBA town hall. Four o'clock. A lot of Florida's, Tampa's, New Tampa, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, Massachusetts. Right? You gotta get that one right because people will revolt if you don't. Okay. But I think I'm learning. Dothan, Alabama. There you go. Austin, Texas. Sunny Isles. Oh, man. I'm not even gonna try to, pronounce the Virginia place because I got that one wrong last time too. Reno, North Houston. I lived in Houston for a little bit. Jersey Village. Katy, Texas. Colorado Springs. Alright. Keep them coming in. And, yeah. And if you, have some friends and they're not here, you should text them and say, hey. Just got onto the panel. David Lewis is here. I think we wanna hear from him. Right? There's an all star panel. Let's all go run to the room to hear all the brilliance they're about to drop. So invite your friends. Mechanicsville, Virginia. Give it about a minute, minute and a half before I introduce this amazing panel. Cindy says, who is on the panel? Cindy, you're just gonna have to wait. You're just gonna have to look at the faces, or maybe you can't see the can you only can you only see Christina? I can only see you in what? You only see me. Probably because I'm talking nonstop. Diane, where am I from originally? I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. How do I make you guys all how do you do the spotlight thing where we can see everybody? Yeah. We gotta pin everybody. Here, I can do it. I have to Oh, actually, it will only let us do one at a time, David. Whoever's host has to add. Let me do a replace pen. Yeah. Wait. Where's the pen? So if you if you click on this out. If you click on our name, to the right, there's there's three little dots, and it should you you add pin, add pin, add pin to everybody. What about this? Spotlight for everybody. No. Can you guys see everybody? Yeah. Hold on. Let's see. Yeah. That was, Let's try this. Saying nope. How about this? Going off the rails, guys. See Can you guys see all four of us? Okay. I can see all four of us. Yeah. It's the host capability doesn't allow us to to pin more than one person. So I can pin let me see. Yeah. Where it's not, he could fix it. Oh, hold on. Add pin. Yeah. I just I just made you able to multi pin. Okay. Add pin. K. And add there we go. Alright. How about now? Nope. Still no. Alright. Maybe they're on their phone. I added everybody. Look at this. Look at this. Alright. All four of us? Hold on. Alright. Let me Alright. Only who is we can see all four of us. So Yeah. Alright, guys. Welcome to the four o'clock town hall. You know, thousands of people in attendance. You've all told us where you're coming from. We appreciate you hanging out. Let me introduce this amazing panel. I've done a lot of these, and I think this is probably my favorite panel yet. The amount of brainpower and brilliance on this group is insane. We've got brokers. We've got team leaders. We've got, the role play queen, Christina Griffin. Like, we are ready to answer your questions. I'm David Lewis. I run the, TLG ATL team out of Atlanta. I was one of the founding executives here at LPT, and I have been really passionate, this last week or so just to not tell you what forms to fill out, to not tell you where to go for these really specific questions that you ask, but to kind of empower us as agents to think bigger, to go out there, to find a win, to figure out how we can just maneuver through this and come out better than we were when we entered it. Right? So that's been my passion. I wanna introduce next Sarah. Sarah, you wanna tell us all about you? Sure. This is the first time I've ever gotten an official introduction and especially with the right name too, so I'll take it. Sarah Froy, your Georgia state broker, your region one director, helping oversee Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, and learning everything along the way with you guys. So just really excited to have the opportunity to, you know, get all the questions, answer the questions, go into a little bit more probably the technical detail. David might be our our mentality guy, but I'm here to kinda help answer technical questions, things like that, and just here to help. That's right. Yeah. It's, that's amazing. Amanda. The actual Amanda. So I'm Amanda Hannon. I am the managing broker of Rhode Island in Massachusetts as well as region four director. I'm super excited to be here like Sarah mentioned. It I think it's a really challenging time, but I think it's it's going to be really good for our agents at LPT knowing that we are way above our competitors. So, really excited to to see what's in store. Awesome. And now the legendary Christina Griffin. Tell us all about you. Alright. Hey, guys. Christina Griffin. I joined the LPT executive team two and a half months ago. I'm the vice president of partnerships and national real estate opportunities. I've been in the real estate business for over twenty years, sold over five thousand plus homes, and, just here to help and coach you through whatever is needed, to succeed in this market. That's awesome. Okay. Great. I don't know what I did. Maybe I all four of us. You fixed it. I was about to say you fixed that. That's right. That's right. Something happened. The energy has changed. We can see all of these, beautiful minds. Okay. So format of the town hall, guys, like I said, it's just for general questions. So we wanna hear from you. We wanna know what specific questions you have. And I think I'm on, like, twenty three of these things over the past couple of weeks. So, the overall theme has been to educate. The overall theme has been to empower. The overall theme has been just to make sure that you guys have all the tools that you need to keep going, right, to to not stop, to slow down. Like, we've had this mentality of crawl, walk, then run. The crawl was understand what does NAR even mean? What does this NAR settlement? Like, what is the overarching reason that we got here? Then we learned to walk a little bit. So we said, okay. Great. Now we've learned why we're here, what the what the lawsuit, what the rule changes are, and then we learned what forms. Right? So the walk phase is all of the things that these brilliant brokers have been putting on on the statewide level multiple times each week. That's for you to understand how to stay out of realtor jail. Right? No fines. What forms to fill out. The boxes to check. What to put here. What to put there. Best practices. And then the part that I'm the most excited about is the run phase. And as you've seen this week, we've gone from general information to very purposeful classes. We've got classes on which agreements to use where. We've got role plays. We've got, we've got, trying to oh, letting people know you're communicating your value. We have all these things to help you understand not only the basics, but to get more to the advanced level. So I've seen several of you on many of these things, and we are just I I the success stories are pulling are pouring in. We've got people coming in and, who were scared at first, and all of a sudden, they're getting four percent, five percent buyer agreements filled out. They've realized it's not anything wild. It's just it's business as usual with a little bit of a spin to it. So hit us with your questions. Right? Tell us what you want to hear other than Christina and I role playing. As they're asking questions, David, I'll tell you, I'm hearing a lot of breakthroughs today and success from agents that were fearful of submitting offers at the three percent or even two and a half percent commission that they're getting it accepted because they're including it in the seller concessions. And I'm hearing three to five percent being accepted today and breakthroughs happening. So it's pretty exciting. Very cool. Yeah. We have a question from Oh, no. I was gonna say on the broker side of things, what are you guys hearing? Because you guys are probably getting the more technical questions, the more, like, what what are y'all seeing out there? Yeah. So, in Massachusetts in particular, we have been asking for buyer agency agreements all along. So that is kind of business as as usual. But definitely trying to convey their their value. And, I've had a ton of people actually reach out to me about, David, your loyalty agreements and how much they loved that and how they wanna implement that, to give the buyers the kind of make them feel, excuse me, feel that they have a say in the compensation. So I don't know if you wanna kind of discuss that really quick for those who have not heard about your loyalty agreement, but I've heard great things about that. Yeah. Definitely. I'll touch on that. And, Sarah, anything on your end? It's a lot of forms. A lot of form questions. It's a lot of how do I fill out this? What do I do here? Is this right? Is this right? So it's very much everybody trying to feel comfortable with what they're doing. I've always said, and I think I've been a little biased in Georgia and some of our southern states, we've had, buyer brokerage agreements that have been a thing for us for years. And so we're we're fortunate in that aspect, but it's been very cool because, like, being able to share some of the language we have, that's kind of been our norm with other brokers in other states and other people to use as special steps and things like that. That's a lot of, logistical questions with everybody trying to feel comfortable with what they're doing. Love that. I know. So let's hit a couple of these questions. We have a couple of them in, and then if we have time at the end, Amanda, I'll definitely go over that buyer loyalty agreement. But you will find it's now part of the slides in our amazing communicating and marketing value class too. So, if you guys haven't taken that, I believe there's one this evening or tomorrow tomorrow. So okay. Great. So William asked the question. So they're being requested as a seller concessions only. What if we need part of that to cover buyer brokerage compensation? Where do we specify that in writing? I think he's be referring to the, the including it in the offer. Is that right, William? William's in Florida. So, I'll let one of the brokers take that question. So William's saying is, like, when you're requesting a seller concessions as part of an offer, right, the the the, the agent compensation, he says, what if we need part of that to cover buyer brokerage compensation? How do we where would you specify a request for additional closing cost to cover compensation? I guess that's the question. So, again, this and take what I say with a grain of salt. I am Georgia biased here. But with the whole settlement, buyers can ask for it, but it has to come from the buyer. So this can't be you negotiating on the front end saying, hey. We're gonna use some of those concessions to cover compensation. A buyer in their negotiation can ask for whatever they want in the purchase and sale agreement. What I would advise for our state would be in our special stipulation section that it is requested there. So if you have something comparable, something similar to your purchase and sale agreement, that would be there. If your compensation form is not part of the contract, does not go into that, and you're needing to ask for additional, some of those forms do have an other section where you can actually ask for that in the compensation form. If your form does not have that and if your state allows it in the purchase and sale agreement, a special stip section could be a good place for that. Again, that can be state specific, though, and I'm not gonna speak for other states because I know some states don't even allow you to ask for it in the purchase and sale agreement whatsoever. Again, that does need to come from the buyer asking for it. So some language about, you know, all parties acknowledge and agree that the buyer is requesting that x amount of the seller concessions go towards covering the buyer agent compensation. So you wanna just be very specific with the language. Don't leave any loopholes, making sure that they are specifying what the concessions are being used for and that amount. So once again, any, state specific questions, make sure you ask your state specific broker for clarity. But general statement, I think Sarah's stuff is pretty solid. We have an interest And I'm from Florida, so I echo that. That's exactly how we, can handle it. Christina is gonna drop her number in the chat, and she wants to answer all of your contract specific broker questions. He's liable for everything. Give you your broker's phone number. Yeah. She got she loves the have tracked me down already. Loves the questions after ten PM. Okay. So we have a Rich. It may not be a question. It looks like more of a statement. Okay. Tracy asked, what do you do if an offer is made with two and a half percent commission built into the offer price, but the offer is rejected? For for me, it's all part of negotiations. You guys need unless it's multiple offers, you go back and you renegotiate to make it work. Keep in mind, our our role is to negotiate the best terms for our client, especially for working for a buyer. So I've had a lot of agents lately in the last few days that are getting offers accepted where they submit at a certain compensation and then they reject, I would always encourage a counter unless you're at a multiple offer situation. At least that's how I would handle it. How about you guys? Yeah. I would I would be very careful of adding compensation into a purchase price because you're gonna continue to run into that right there where a lender is not gonna value the home based on the value of the home plus your compensation. It's entirely different. So I actually don't think that's the best strategy. I think you're gonna run into a lot of appraisal issues there. The best thing really for compensation is going to be doing it in the concession aspect or a compensation agreement. Yeah. Let me clarify. That's what I meant. The seller concession. So if you're asking for three percent or you're asking for two percent in, seller concessions to cover your compensation, that's part of it. It's just part of the negotiations. Yeah. I I a hundred percent agree with you, Sarah. Sorry. I wanted to clarify that. Yeah. So, guys, like so sellers generally, right, and this is not a universal thing, but it's mostly universal, only care about their net. Mhmm. Right? Sales price minus any concessions. So prior to all of this, the concessions that we generally thought about were seller paid closing cost contributions. Right? We thought about anything that they're leaving on the house, any, like, a work that they if you ask them to pay for an inspection or pay for, a home warranty. Like like, it's all I was making a hundred k. Now I'm subtracting five hundred. I'm subtracting five thousand, and then this is my net. So think of this in the same way. If you're asking for commission concessions or if you're asking for any of those things, the sellers only care about their net. So to Christina's point, right, Sarah talked more about the vehicle of doing it because you don't just like if you had a a client previously that needed ten thousand dollars in closing costs, and you're like, well, we'll just increase the sales price. It has to appraise for you to be able to pull that off so you're always kind of risking it. But generally speaking, it doesn't matter how you chop it up. It's all about net. So be be be hyperaware of seller net when making an offer because that's the bottom line that they're gonna look at. Yep. And when your appraisal comes in, kind of dependent on if you had any sort of appraisal appraisal contingency period where you can renegotiate, that's where that will come back in. Negotiate on the price at hand. We know is the buyer gonna come out of pocket above that? Is it the type of loan? Is it is it FHA where they're not gonna go above that, and that appraisal is now stuck with the property for, you know, x amount of time. So if you're running into an appraisal issue, that's gonna become a renegotiation aspect during that deal and, of course, depending on if you have any contingency periods that are covering the buyer. Also, it's gonna go back to the fact of if you had the buyer brokerage agreement written ahead of time and, you know, at that point, it may become a renegotiation with the buyer as well. So that really is going to just, like Christina said, kick start a kinda renegotiation period all around. Right. Tracy mentioned that means that sales prices will go down by approximately six percent because pre, the commissions were always in the sales price. I I don't think that's true at all. I I I I honestly don't. While they did take into account, you know, comp compensation, it wasn't always included in the sales price. It was included in their net, not the sales price. People weren't going, oh, I'm going to I'm gonna I'd like to sell my house for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That's what it's worth. I'm gonna sell it for three hundred and forty thousand dollars because I have ten thousand dollars in compensation bills, and that's not the way it worked. It was my home is worth this amount. My net will be affected by how much compensation I agree to pay. That's always been the case. So I don't think we're gonna see a six percent reduction in price. I and and, David, I think we're just gonna see you know, now that the MLS allows us to disclose what compensation the seller's offering and when it closes, what the seller paid, right now, we can see sometimes two, three percent marked on the MLS. Now we're just gonna see higher numbers because not all numbers were disclosed before in my opinion. Yeah. The the the sales homes are will be worth what they're worth. It's not gonna change based on this. And and, guys, I also want like, we talk a lot about the listing side of things, but remember, you're negotiating your value on the front end to the buyer. You're articulating how much you're worth. And at the end of the day, the buyer is responsible for paying your commission. Now we've got a couple of vehicles of possibly getting that covered, right, through through negotiations and an offer, through, additional concessions and closing costs. Like, there's different ways, but at the end of the day, you're gonna get so laser focused on articulating our value. Number one, defining our value, and number two, articulating it that it's not gonna matter because we're gonna be such a lead agent that those buyers are gonna be willing to pay us whatever it takes to work with us. That's the whole goal here, guys. So I don't wanna be completely if you put all of your eggs in the basket of negotiating with the seller to pay it, you're gonna find yourself falling short in finding a reduction in commission because not all sellers are gonna agree to pay three or four percent. You're gonna find one percent here, one and a half percent here. You're gonna find some people are gonna be willing to pay zero. So our ability to survive in this market is directly correlated with our ability to have the buyers understanding that it's always been part of what they're paying. It's always been part of the negotiated deal. This time, it's coming out a little bit different, if that makes sense. Absolutely. Okay. I would say really con just consult your brokers, your lenders, your attorneys, your title companies. So many people out there right now are just putting together, like, incredible information. They're they're putting together two different kind of seller net sheets. One might be at one price expecting to cover compensation. One might be at a different price, you know, with a different percentage, and it's kinda like David said, it's all how it all comes out to be in the net. And I know I said that entirely confusing. That made absolutely zero sense. But But when it was told to me and when it was shown to me, it made perfect sense. It was basically talking about two different offers with the buyer covering versus the seller covering compensation. And the net that it all came out, if if the offer is written properly, if the contingencies of the concessions, the closing costs, if you can kinda figure out all the little things, they really can come out to be fairly similar. I love that. We have a question, that was sent in that and I'll let you guys take this one. What if the settlement what if this what if the settlement does not apply for agents who are not realtors? How does that impact us? This was at re y'all go ahead, Amanda. I've talked a lot. Oh, no. I, I responded to that just asking for a little more for her to expand on that. But in particular for LPT, all agents are realtors. So, we are all protected against the settlement, and, we all have to kind of obey by the the new rules and the new norms. Yeah. All LPT agents are required to join a association of realtors. Is that correct? Unless you are in our referral network. Yes. LBT takes the stance that we are not NAR members, and so all of our agents follow accordingly. And, just like Amanda said, by doing that, we really adhere to the code of ethics that we sign up to. And so I think if you ask a lot of people, you can expect that, I I think you can expect this to probably eventually reach beyond NAR. Who's to say some attorney in some state won't gather up their own civil suit or something like that, and it's all agents. You know? And who's gonna want a piece of this money that your agent didn't disclose it to? So there's always the potential that this could go beyond just realtors, just beyond the National Association of Realtors to to agents, you know, whether they're a realtor or not. So I think it's one of those that, yes, we we do adhere to a code of ethics, and and we're doing this. Most MLSs are opting into this regardless of, you know, being realtors or not too, so you've got that aspect of whether the MLS you're they're a part of is even going to be offering compensation. They're gonna have to work around that as well. They're not exempt from, you know, not putting in compensation in the MLS because they're not a realtor. That's an MLS rule. And so I think you'll start seeing it adopted primarily by most agents. And, again, I think most people will just kind of start adopting this as a norm because who's to say a lawsuit won't won't go beyond NAR. Alright. Okay. No, Herman asked, is the buyer's agent when you send an offer, you can attach the I think it was more of an answer than a question, but the section is called q and a. So we appreciate you throwing us an a in the q and a section. Very cool. What else, guys? This is this is for you. Don't hesitate. Don't, ask us anything. Just as a general rule, I just want you guys to to be thinking about the value section that I was talking about. Thinking about, like, what your value is gonna be. Thinking about your strategy around, like, the agreements you're gonna get signed. Right? Like, honestly, things are not that different today than they were last week. They really aren't. Like, we're still doing business ninety eight percent the same way. We are just offering a clarity on the side of compensation, and we're offering but the vehicle is largely the same. The buyer has always been responsible for buyer's agent compensation because it was agreed upon that the seller was gonna pay it every single time. Specifically in the Georgia documents, it it said that for a long time. It said, hey. What is the compensation, and what part is gonna be shared? So it's that hasn't changed. The only thing that's changed is the clarity around it. Right? Being very crystal clear on who's responsible for what. Richard asked, can you touch on the difference of seller concessions and compensation? Generally okay. So I'm gonna take the overarching answer to that question because they're to the seller, they're basically the same thing. Now they're different based on how you have to articulate it in certain states within the offer. But from a seller perspective, they think of them exactly the same way because all it does is reduce the net. So if you have your seller hat on, it doesn't make a difference whether you're asking for concessions or compensation. It's more money out of my pocket, and that's over archingly. Now on the buyer side and the way that you're asking the or the way that you're, presenting the offer, I think there's some different interpretation state by state on how you have to differentiate between the two. Is that correct? Yeah. So concessions too are more likely going to affect the buyer's ability, or contribution with from the seller type for their type of loan as well. So true concessions, do have a cap dependent on the loan program. I am not a lender. I'm not even gonna try to get in on to that about what they are. I would just advise, you know, if you run into that kind of situation that you speak to a lender because some loan programs have a cap on what can be contributed by a seller or an agent to the deal. However, the compensation aspect of that is not going to affect the loan as of now. Will things change? I don't know. So, it it's really looking in, like, towards the closing cost, towards the what the seller's coming out of pocket for, you know, the property itself versus the buyer's agent compensation, but they are looking at a little differently. Like David said, from the seller pocket down, no different. From the buyer, it does affect the loan. Tracy asked a question. If I if you contact the listing agent and they say the buyer is not participating in paying an agent, are you obligate as an agent, are you obligated to show the property? The answer is we're all independent business owners, and we can operate the way that we want. I would imagine that from my perspective remember, I'm not a broker. So, like, if I hired you to help me find a house and you weren't showing me houses based on the way you were compensated, unless there was some sort of agreement that you and I had that said, hey. I only have a hundred dollars to give to a buyer's agent. So anyone offering less than a hundred dollars, we don't need to see. You wouldn't be my agent for very long. Well, and and you can run into code of ethics and license law and fair housing issues really quickly. If you refuse to show a potential client a property based on your compensation or lack thereof, you can run into some, like I said, ethical or fair housing, license law issues pretty quickly. And I and the way I read that too is guys, we have to keep in mind our the the purpose around the buyer broker agreement is also to, have that transparency with your buyer on what they are going to pay you. If we structure it in the listing in the offer, that that's I that's that just helps make things easier and simpler. David, I wanna I know we got thirty seconds. I have been in corporate, and REO and and had where I've dealt with offers that have hundreds of transactions. Sorry, hundreds of offers on one property. Once you guys to still keep in mind, as we're structuring the commission on the offer, three, four percent paying on behalf, what whatever part that the buyer is or isn't paying or you're trying to get the seller to cover it, we still need to keep in mind structuring a really strong solid offer. I'm hearing in the last few days, even agents that are asking the seller to pay commission are getting it because they're going in with a high escrow, low inspection period, quick closing. Key when when you are structuring that offer, keep keep in mind to do whatever you can to make that offer as strong as possible regard even if you're having closing cost paid, there's still other factors that's gonna help your offer, be set apart from others that that's gonna help you succeed. Yeah. It's it's it's all about the terms of the offer. It's all about how you present it. I will say that your buyer agreement dictates how much money you are going to make. Right? That is it it is like, if you go past that, like, if even if it so I I would say that if you have a buyer brokerage agreement signed and they say this is all I'm willing to pay you, and I can't pay you out of so, yeah, show the properties every time. Get them right there. Make an offer. See what can happen. Christina is exactly right. Think bigger than commission. Think of overall terms, right, of the contract. Right? It was one more question for me. A a cash offer I've had where people put the entire thing as a, offer, and then, you know, no deposit. It's just it's a five hundred thousand dollar offer with a five hundred doll a thousand dollar escrow, and they get their offer accepted over someone that's a lot higher. So it's just making your offer as strong as possible. It'll help you stand out, and the the buyer broker commission, isn't gonna be a concern. Hopefully, that makes sense. Well, I couldn't find that last question, so we're gonna wrap it here after thirty one action packed minutes of mind blowing information from this amazing panel. I can't thank you guys enough. The legend, Christina Griffin, the amazing Sarah Froy, the awesome Amanda Hannon, and myself, David Lewis, also known as Adam. Thank you for hanging out with us. Check-in on the next, course. I don't do you guys know what the next one is tonight? I actually just pulled it up. I did. I was trying to be prepared. Lost it. Seven PM tonight. The new normal psychology of the sale after August seventeenth. Yeah. This is a good one. I can tell you the slides are amazing. The psychology of the sale, getting into the brain of your buyers and sellers. And then tonight is the BBA toolbox, which agreement, when, and why. Check us out all week. Every morning, they're gonna come out. You're gonna be able to register. Christina, reach out to her directly. She wants to answer all your contract related questions. No. Not contract. I had a bunch of people send me private messages. That's why I posted it.