West USA Weekly Podcast | Ep. 82 | Featuring Clint Fouts (1.6.25)

Join us for the first edition of West USA's podcast for 2025! In this episode, Todd Menard presents the latest market numbers, Matt Baker shares mortgage updates, and Mike's three predictions for 2025. We also discuss the West USA Choice program with President and CEO Clint Fouts and reflect on the changes in the real estate landscape. Stay tuned for insights on market trends, interest rates, and exciting announcements for the new year. Don't miss our Happy New Year announcements, upcoming events, and much more!

Join our weekly podcast as we continue our commitment to bringing you the best in training, information, and technology. This is your chance to be in the know, hear from the Industry's best, and get valuable tips to help increase your business!
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Transcript

West USA Weekly - The Podcast 1.6.25 (Clint Fouts)

[00:00:00] Good morning, West USA. Welcome to a another edition and our first edition of our podcast for 2025. We apologize for the earlier music, but if you just ever wondered what it sounds like inside Nick's head, that's just 24 seven, right? Said it was new year's music. That was not that, but yes, that is what it sounds like in my brain.

 A little sneak peek. Let's just get rocking and rolling. A sneak peek of what we got coming up today. Todd Menard, he. It's going to be here to give us a look at the numbers. Matt Baker with the Bookspan Baker Team Mortgage Minute. And I'm just going to share my my three predictions and areas of focus for 2025.

I don't necessarily know if I would take it to the bank. Bank, but this is just how I see things. And then our president and CEO, Clinton Fouts is going to stop by and talk with just a little bit about 2024 and some of some of the things coming up in 2025, especially we're going to spend some time talking about West USA choice.

So if you've been curious about that you're going to want to [00:01:00] hang out as always, if you've got any comments or questions, please feel free to email us at podcast at West USA. com. Com and we will get back to you as soon as possible. All right, let's jump into it. Nick, some announcements react starts tomorrow, man.

We are just we're getting rocking and rolling day one. I mean, right away here in 2025. And if you're just curious about how to use a lot of the technology that we offer you react is for you. So that is going to be this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and as always, if you want to get signed up for any.

All

right, boy, we are just we're not messing around. I mean, we just, I guess, I guess we feel like everybody's did not have enough to eat over the holidays. Just get you back into the swing. Yeah, we don't, yeah, let's just ruin your New Year's resolutions. But anyways, the Surprise office is kicking off 2025 with their third annual New Year potluck.

party. Todd's [00:02:00] got a CE class, a virtual class coming up this Wednesday, three hours of Commissioner Standards. Arrowhead's doing their social happy hour this Wednesday, January 8th from 4 30 to 6 30 p. m. at Biggs American Bar and Grill. All right, Scottsdale office meeting this coming up this Wednesday from 10 to 11.

Oh, featuring not only Nick and Dwayne, but we got Clint, wow, look at that, what a, what a trio that is going to be. I hope, hopefully you stand right in the middle, Nick. I usually, I usually try to. I, I, yes. All right, our Arrowhead office meeting is coming up this this Friday. There it is. January 10th from 10 to 11.

30 PM with Clint, Nick, Todd, and Kyle. Okay, now we got a four stack stacked meeting. All right. You guys are going to go golfing afterwards. Yeah, that's a really good idea. All right. And our Aotuki office meeting is coming up this Thursday as [00:03:00] well. And then lastly, if you've not never attended one of our new agent orientations here at West Shoe USA Nick and I are going to be hosting out that a little bit later this morning from 10 30 to 12, actually it only runs really about an hour.

But anyways so it's not too late to get signed up for that. And again, as always, all you have to do is go to your dashboard, click on the calendar, or you can just go to westusacalendar. com and get signed up for any of the events. All right, Todd. Happy New Year. Happy New Year and let's see what we got going on.

Okay, let me start off by telling everybody later today we'll have the month end numbers for December that will be washed and then of course later in the day, probably not until Wednesday, we'll have a retrospect all the way back to for all of last year including a forecast of what's going to be happening for 2025.

So let's get right into our numbers here today. 74 days closed on market. This past week, a 3. 74 months [00:04:00] supply absorption rate is at 26. 74%. Average list price this past week, 755, 000, five 16 average sale price this past week, six 46, four Oh nine. Our list price to sale price retention was 96. 36%.

Inventory took has been taking it. We're down to 20, 000, nine 13. week, dropped another 2. 7 percent. Pending is at 2610. And month end February excuse me, February, there we go. And month end December numbers at 5592. That's unwashed, so we'll see the actual numbers up or down a few. New listings taken this past week, 1452, days on market for active is at 1193, and closed is 74.

2. Looking in the lower left hand section, you'll see each of the price ranges. Here's something, you know, it's, it's not typical to January, but if you'll notice, the only items in red were that the days on markets went down in every single category because the market's back. In fact, it really never went away.

December was kind of a, a, a very [00:05:00] unique month you know, in fact, in, in the numbers which we'll see later but each of the categories also had an increase in the amount of units you know, that they represented. So that's a good sign. The middle number from 600 to 1 million did take about a you know, two tenths of a drop, which is very, very small.

So taking a look at the numbers taking a look, we took 1423 this past week. So 1612, the week before, or actually a couple of weeks before, because the last time we reported was back in December. But 1452 is the same week in 2023 in the beginning. And 1, 162 in the beginning of 2022. So 1, 416, you look at those other numbers.

We didn't do too bad. That's why I kind of left it in the yellow. I wanted to give us a little encouragement that it was equally as good as last year and better than two years ago. But we definitely need 2, 400, at least over 2, 000 units per month per week, excuse me, 21, 493 is where we are fractally.

582 coming soon. [00:06:00] That took a little bit of a jump by 80 units. 16, 305 single family non detached. 2, 537 new home construction and 2, 100 21, 326 non distressed. Looking at short sales, lender owned and HUD. Currently there's 87 short sales in the marketplace. 73 lender owned properties and 80 non distressed.

Eight HUD slide drives way over until you look at kind of the salmon and the golden rod colors in the middle. You know, this is like three, four times what those numbers were back in 2023. So obviously as a percentage of inventory, it's still representing about 0.78% or less than one 10th of 1% or less than 1%.

But it is something to pay attention to mostly, as Mike has been saying for. six months now, maybe five months has been saying that there are people out there that are confused. They don't understand how to go through a short sale. They never had to do it before. And of course, with all of the equity that most [00:07:00] homes have today why would somebody be doing a short sale?

Well, there's reasons why. So you need to understand what the complexity of what your sellers are going through right now and how to take advantage of it from a buyer's perspective. Lender owned properties, same kind of thing. And then, of course, HUD is still a very, very small representation of the entire distressed market.

But get to it. trained on short sales. I know Claudia Ewan has a great program to help you with that. Pending units. This is the average number of buyers in escrow at any one time. 3, 086 is where we are right now. Just up a little bit, but look at last year. We were at 2, 430. If you don't think we didn't finish September strong or December strong here's the reason right here.

And not the reason. the reason, but here's the identification. This is the verification, if you would that there are 600 more people in escrow right now than there was last year, the same period. Looking at closed inventory, 2466. And again, I don't, it should be a little higher than that. I don't know why, but again, that's another reason why those numbers need to be [00:08:00] washed out.

So looking at this past week, 4. 22 is where we are a month supply average. List price is at 757, average sale price at 604, 818 median, I like that, 465. It kind of came down just a little bit, helps us out. Days on market right now is also coming back. If you notice, we were at 82 last week, but slide rise to the left, we should be about 70.

We're at 68. So again, we're saying that there's no pressure on sellers right now and there's no pressure on buyers. This is a, a normal escrow period kind of time. List price to sell price retention, 97. 49 means the seller did have to give up a little bit more than average for the month of December.

So those are the numbers as we're sitting right now, Mike. Yeah. I just my, my, my takeaway from that is I just. I wasn't expecting as much activity last week as there was. It was, it, it literally, the fourth quarter Clint will be bringing the numbers in just a little bit, but the fourth quarter of last year represented an incredible amount of, of, [00:09:00] of volume of business.

The fourth quarter Brought us back to good numbers. And so I, but I hang in there. I won't, I'll just leave that as a cliffhanger for Clint section. All right. All right, Matt. All right. Well, let's let's get into the lending piece real quick. And just speaking about last week's activity, we did see a nice uptick in, in buyer.

Traffic, which is typical, you know, the beginning of the year, it actually started right after Christmas which is a little bit different. Normally it's like this week that you start getting buyers going, Hey, I want to buy next year. This is, this is happening now and rates haven't necessarily improved.

You know, they're in the low sevens for, you know, firmly without a lot of costs. Again, you can still get a rate in the sixes, but it's going to cost you. And so that's where the, you know, kind of, Are we come in and do a deeper dive and you can really see, you know, remember red means rates got worse and green mean rates got better.

And we've just been kind of hovering like we had a really good early December rates improved, you know, pretty significantly [00:10:00] about 11 percent or 1. 5 percent in cost improvement. But we've since lost that coming into this last week of the year. And really, it all comes down to Inflation. What's going to happen?

And so there's two sort of numbers that they look at. The one on the left is the inflation is CPI. And then the one on the right is PCE, which calls, which means personal consumption expenditure report. Both of them. Test inflation. And you can see on the left hand side, and that's reason why I said we could be in for a good spring is that February, March timeframe where it says, and even go into January and April where it's 0.

if you can just cut those in half, all of a sudden now inflation is pretty darn near the 2 percent target. It's close. It's it's, you know, we're like. 2. 1. And some of these averages right now, CPI sits at 2. 7 because of the rounding up, it's really 2. 6. 5, you know, 2. 65. So it's [00:11:00] really right there. So if you can get that a little bit lower, that'll improve.

And then on the right, which is really the Personal consumption expenditure. That PCE report is the Fed's favorite inflation measure, and you can see that it's kind of trended up, but really the core has gone sideways for, you know, almost the whole year, and I don't necessarily know, but I think that we are starting to see some trending down.

It's going to be touch and go. But I, again, if in CPI on the left in the spring improves, I think we'll be there. Now I put this kind of numbers together because this is often coming up. Should I just rent right now? Or cause I'm having trouble finding a house. And, and so I put this kind of cost of dating, quote unquote, the rate, and I put in a real life example, you know, most of us think, Oh gosh, I got to get the rate into the threes or fours.

The reality is look at. If you just did a 700, 000 price and you put 20 grand down, or I'm sorry, 20 percent down 1 percent higher in rate is [00:12:00] only 182 a month. So it's not, you know, the end of the world, but if you annualize that and then put in a cost to refi, you would be 5, 684 would be a cost for essentially dating the rate right by now.

Date the rate versus here's your benefit. Well, assuming 4 percent appreciation, which Todd could probably say is annualized over the last 70 years, right? That's pretty, that's pretty fair. And then you do minus monthly costs of the 2184 and the cost of refi. You're still, your total benefit for that year is 23 grand that you're leaving on the table if you don't buy now.

So just to write another good sort of numbers example. Now, again, not everybody has 20 percent down, not everyone's buying 700, 000, but you get the idea. Of like that benefit to cost relationship pretty much a four to one. And so, you know, that's something that you can take away for your people. And as always we do our monthly pulse on the second Wednesday of every month, which happens to be on Wednesday.

If you haven't registered before, we deep dive into economy, [00:13:00] housing and rates every month. It's bookspanbaker. com forward slash pulse. And then as always, there's my contact card, but that's it. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, Matt. I want to, before, before you go yeah, I'm just going to ask you your opinion.

I know you're not an economist and we're not going to hold you to it because I'm going to talk about a little bit of what my thoughts are for 2025. A lot of people are just thinking and waiting for for rates to get down into the mid to high fives and in 2025 and taking a look at inflation numbers.

If you just had to guess at the end of 2025, where are rates going to be? I think the mid fives. Mid fives? You think so? I think so. I think there's some economists that think now high fives, low sixes. But I think that if inflation continue, can get to where we want, and then all the other policies that are sort of coming into the fold, could lead us into the mid fives.

Okay. All right. Appreciate it. That's my prediction. All right. Well then Matt and I might have to go out into the parking lot and fight, because I see things differently, [00:14:00] but, but Matt is definitely, I have to say Matt's smarter than I am in some respects, not when it comes down to burgers, but Not burgers.

All right. But, you know, who can, who can compete? Nobody. All right. So here's how I taught, how I'm seeing 2025 when I just kind of take a look at 2024, I take a look at my business, I take a look at my business, my business plan, and, and the conversations that I want to be having with my clients and a sphere of influence of 2025.

So I don't think rates are going to drop considerably. And, and the other thing, and this is, this is, this is not to get political whatsoever. There's this thought that we're going to wake up on January 21st and rates are going to be in the threes and everything like that. It is a process. Correct.

And I would also say January 20th. Doesn't matter what side of the aisle that you're on. It's not d day for anyone. I mean, it's just Things are just going to evolve and and [00:15:00] move forward I think for most of 2025 and and I put most of 2025 because I can't disagree with matt on what the end of 2025 is going to look like, but I think for the majority of the year that we're going to see rates hover to the mid to high sixes.

I don't think that we're going to just, you know, Q1, Q2, all of a sudden rates are going to be in the mid fives. I think it's going to be a lot slower of a process. Then what people predicted for 2024 and what people are anticipating for 2025. I think we might see some major drops we might wake up one day and rat and rates may drop significantly.

I think that those drops for me are going to be short lived. So, buyers need to be really prepared to do, you know, rate locks people who are, who bought in the mid sixes to high sevens need to be prepared in, for those small windows of opportunity to do their re fis. So with all that being said and done, I think [00:16:00] it's our responsibility as agents to To become, to track rates, to become that source of information for our clients, to, to really pay attention to not only where rates are at, what experts are saying, what the feds are anticipating the things that Matt is saying, and, and if you have people that are considering buying in 2025 and, or people who've purchased from you and have high interest rates, I think you'd need to be.

Create some sort of rate tracker campaign, whether it's some sort of a weekly or monthly video text campaign or email campaign or some site, some sort of social media campaign, because I think people are going to be hyper focused on the rates for 2025. Well, I, one of the biggest things is you should never take prediction to determine.

What your plan is going to be for this year, [00:17:00] in other words, you know, there, sure, I could say if prices drop 20 percent if interest rates go into the fives or three and a half, then I'll buy, you know, come on, you know, you have to understand what's going on in the world. You have to understand that rates are not just capricious like this, you know, these, they, they're lethargic and they take time to manipulate based on so many different factors.

To the point, you know, the, whoever the administration is, yeah, there's, there potentially is going to be a left or a right swing to policy, but it's not going to left or right swing to economy immediately. And think about it. We've all been, we've all felt the pinch over the last couple of years. And again, not being political, just reality.

We've all felt the pinch over the last couple of years of, of inflation and how absolutely everything we touch has gone up except inflation. And so it, it is, it's always made it so much less affordable to buy. So we have to be smart. [00:18:00] So when we're, when we're trying to build our, our financial plan or maybe our housing plan moving into 2025 or through 2025, we just have to make sure that we are positioning ourselves.

If you wait and you don't buy. Get the rate early, then you're going to miss out on the sale price. If you, if you get the rate today you know, and it, and it does go down, you can refinance. There's a layer of protection. And I'm wondering, and I can't say I really do a great job of it, because I just kind of thought about this idea but I do do it to a degree, but how many of us, when We sell a home and we enter the, the closing date into our CRMs are keeping track of the interest rate that our buyer just, just just got, because I think it's such a great conversation piece.

You, I mean, you can be a hero if you put 10 buyers into homes last year that had a rate anywhere between the mid sevens to [00:19:00] the high or the mid sixes to the high sevens. And then let's say hypothetically on April 15th, we wake up and rates are in the mid fives, knowing who they are and then being able to get them on that, that process of refinancing to a lower rate.

You, you're a hero. Totally. We talk about it a lot. Building relationships with industry partners. I don't think that there's never been a more important time to have a solid foundation with a lender partner. You need to be having these conversations consistently because they should be backing you up on these conversations.

That's just as important in their world as it is your buyers and yours. You need to be having weekly conversations with your lender. And if you've got someone who really needs to buy, but they need a specific rate, you've You've got to be having them under a microscope every day, checking those rates and making sure the lender team that you're working with is doing the same thing.

Yeah. So, and then just going back to my last point, create some sort of rate tracker campaign because this is what your client, this is the information that they're looking for. So be that source of information. I, I, [00:20:00] you know, I think credit card debt's going to continue to increase. We've seen record level credit card debts, debt for 2024.

I, I think we are. on that trajectory to beat 2024 I think credit card debt is going to reach new record levels. So, what that means for us and that we, what we have to understand is this will be, this will be keeping people out of the buyer market. And I think it's one of the conversations that, We need to be having with buyers when we're pre qualifying them as potential buyers and having questions And and not being shocked and educating our buyers that this is going to keep you from you know Because I think I think we're going to have a lot more people in 2025 than we did in 2024 Not be able to buy because of extreme credit card debt.

So get the word out and know where your buyers are at when it comes to credit card debt. And then the other X factor I wanted just to throw out because it's [00:21:00] something that we are, we're seeing a lot of and we're talking with our team about it is I think you know, and, and I don't have a solution for it because I don't get to make important decisions anywhere.

Not even in my own house but insurance premiums are going to impact your buyer's ability, like, like, like your 450, 000 buyer may not be able to qualify for more than a 425, 000 just simply because of insurance rates. And so if I were to advise people for goal one, you know, Nick, you know, talked about building your lender team, but I would really be shopping for Insurance companies as as an agent really having two to three that can that your clients can shop and compare and so forth.

In the past it never really mattered just, who do you want to use for insurance? And, and you got to have insurance or whatever the case is. But anymore, you know, for [00:22:00] us we're building relationships with two to three insurance people and we're It's a, it's going to be a big deal in 2025. You know, we went through this in the nineties.

So, and I want to cyclically tell people that anytime we come through massive inflation, the insurance is premiums always, always, always increase in. Absurmountable amount in the 90s. It went up 30 percent It's going up 30 percent now Why well Lawrence Young from the chief economist from NAR posted over the weekend And if you guys aren't, you know feet having his feed following his feed so it ends up in your in your Facebook I highly recommend you do that.

He just had two great Posts that he made one of them was on this topic of lumber And how all of the costs of sale, that's why builders prices are so ridiculous. It's not because the builders are greedy. It's because they're trying to pay. So they're not, they're no more greedy than a realtor or anybody else who wants to have a successful year.

Oh, I'm greedy. I mean, I'm not [00:23:00] going to, well, but that's business. It doesn't necessarily mean to be great, but in this particular point, the costs of these things are what's causing the insurances to go up so dramatically. And so he, he. He actually explains it in layman's terms and I think it's a really great thing you should you should definitely go out and and take a look at that, but I want to go back to the credit card issue because this is a great time to get your people that may have high credit card debt, even if they're not interested in buying a home to get them to your favorite lender because they could consolidate their debt from 21 percent back down to 7%.

And, and yes, maybe overall, nobody wanted a 7 percent mortgage, but in this particular case, 7 percent on that remaining balance is a lot better than 21%. And so if you look at it from that perspective and that alone could move the average first time home buyer, because that's really who we're talking about.

We're not talking about people in the million dollar or not properties. You know, it's going to take that average first time home buyer and maybe probably [00:24:00] Take them out of I can't buy right now and put them into the yes, I can buy right now All right, and then the third one is and you mentioned it in your numbers I think we're gonna see mortgage defaults are gonna continue to increase and I think it's very important You know when we take a look at your numbers You can look at those numbers and go, okay, yeah, we, we've seen, you know, a 75 to 100 percent increase in these numbers, but Mike, that's not really that staggering.

I'm just saying most of these short sales, most of these defaults don't ever hit the MLS. And so those numbers, even though the numbers that we see on the screen aren't staggering, it is a reflection of what's going on. So I, I just, I see that we're gonna have more and more home homeowners become late on their mortgage payments in 2025.

So with that, I'm not trying to be, you know, n you know, negative this morning. All of these are opportunities. It's just, you know, being, being smarter about how we're having conversations [00:25:00] with people. So this is an opportunity to be a resource by helping homeowners understand their options. You'd mentioned that there's people with equity just because somebody is 30 days late on their mortgage or 60 days late on their mortgage.

It's not necessarily the end of the world. They have opportunities. That they can pursue before their home, before they lose their home to foreclosure. And our job as, as, as real estate professionals is to be able to not, to, to understand what those options are, help them with those options. And then I would, you know, if you're a title company.

Cannot provide you data of, of neighborhoods and who's 30 days late and who's 60 days late on their mortgage payment and can't provide you names, numbers, and emails, you might want to consider shopping because there are title companies out there that can do it. And so when I want to focus on a certain area I can get that data and, and we have, you know, and follow specific scripts and get in a position and set appointments to actually get inside the homes of these [00:26:00] people and, and, and help them explore their options.

And then at the end of the day you know, the, the opportunities to help them explore their options and then the other, sometimes people just can't be helped, don't want to be helped. And then there's sometimes an opportunities for us as investors or for our investors. I like the idea of, of reaching out to your escrow service company to be able to do that.

American Title I know does it for my wife. And, and one of the things that but most of those lists come back based on where they're getting their data from 90 days old. So what I recommend is, you know, maybe if you think this is an area you want to pursue, just go to maricopa. gov yourself go under deeds and, and recordation, not don't go on to parcel information, but go under deed and recommendation.

You can select specifically foreclosure deeds and then hit enter. And I highly recommend you put a particular area but you know, cause there are Mike, you know, I mean, there's no misunderstanding and my numbers are, are, are housing numbers. They're not, they're not, they're not, they're not, They're not where am [00:27:00] I numbers in, in my walk in life numbers.

So to your point, we've been talking about the fact that people have been pinched and, and yes again, December reported super high retail numbers and people that don't have money only gets The industry only gets super high retail numbers if people are putting that on credit cards. Yeah, and I would say not all data that we can access is 60 to 90 days behind other sources that you can go to.

But at the end of the day, Nick, if we followed Todd's advice and went straight to Maricopa. gov and we had an address, we have a tool. It costs you 5 a month. It's called 4WARN. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, There's a lot of powerful stuff you could do there. Correct. There's a lot of ways to use the Forewarn software.

If you're not sure what Forewarn is, join us at 1030 for orientation. We'll talk you through it. Alrighty. All right. Good stuff, guys. That's just my thoughts for 2023. And yeah. All right. Well, [00:28:00] every year we have the opportunity and the privilege to, and I wore a sport coat, especially to honor, to, yeah, well, I was wondering if that was your improved image for 2025.

The boss is in the studio, right? Yeah, yeah, this is not necessarily a new me for, still for 2025, new year old me, don't, don't get spoiled, Todd, but we are, we're lucky to have our people here. President and CEO of WestUSA, Clint Fouts, in the studio for our annual address. And Clint, welcome to, welcome to the podcast.

I was hesitant. I wanted to just throw out a question that we hadn't even discussed, but cause I know we're going to get into numbers. We talked about interest rates and we're going to talk a little bit about the NAR settlement. Thanks and I think that we've all, for the most part, have gotten used to the buyer broker agreement and the buyer broker showing agreement.

And do we need to get prepared mentally, professionally, [00:29:00] if rates do, do things change, do conversations that we have change, if we do wake up and we see a five and a half percent interest rate? And then it is just by, you know, sellers are going to be sitting on tons of offers. And do we need to start preparing for something like that?

I don't think you need to prepare for it. I don't want to see the interest rate drop. I don't either. Thank you. I want it right where it is. I want to see it drop, but I want to see it drop. Slowly and on purpose because a huge drop is just going to cause problems and in the industry and buyers and sellers.

One thing that you guys talked about was interest rate and what you guys, I don't think might've missed is the cost of the homes that everybody's anticipating going up over this next year. So at the end of the year, if you're going to say five or five and a half or whatever Matt was thinking, now you've got to look at what the cost of the home is going to be at that time, as opposed to now.

[00:30:00] Yeah. And it also takes away your refinance options for the same home. And if it does become a buyer's market, and there's a bunch of buyers out there with offers on homes, then, That option's gonna go away for buying, find that perfect home that you're looking for. Yeah. I should say I should clarify.

Yeah, I do. I'm with you. I don't want rates to stay where they're at. I don't like the sevens . Correct. But I, I, I think, I think mid sixes is a very healthy, healthy number for, for at least our market for 2025. I, yeah, I definitely think for 25. Just a nice progressive downward trend would be good. It's about the same speed as it went up.

It should come down. So All right. Well, let's talk about 2024. And what did we do as a brokerage and and what did we do as agents? Because there's just been a lot of like, oh a lot of agents really call it what it is Really had a hard time in 2024 and I think there's an there's this impression that it was just a rough year for You [00:31:00] Real estate agents all across the board and for every agent and I'm not sure that's necessarily the case You know for every time there's a market there's always agents that excel in every market It doesn't seem to matter what that is and it's the hungry agents that are out there hustling and busting in in any market I always say if you're a new agent getting in business and you come in in a slow time You're it's it's great because if you can make it in that market, you're going to make it just about every market But the numbers todd dropped on my desk before he came in here Like 10 minutes ago welcome to my life So he give he gave me some shit.

I took a highlight. I didn't take all of it. So he compares our numbers to the armless numbers for the amount of transactions. We have west usa in two in 2023 we had just shy of fifteen thousand transactions and then this last year we had fifteen thousand three hundred and Fifty seven so so we went up we went up [00:32:00] about 300 or ish, you know, transactions.

So to me, it's somewhat flat from what it was the year before. But it is going up. Same as interest rate, right? It goes down, we want to go have a slow rise going back the other direction. But what's, what's interesting is when armless that shows a 2. 48 percent interest for for an increase for us.

But armless had a 0. 69 drop in closings. So our agents beat the curve against the, for armless. Yeah. So. So that's, it's just kudos to our agents for out there hustling and getting things done. I'm sure that was mostly Mike, but you know. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did 300 just, just in October. Yeah. No, I, I think, I think the numbers are huge because 300 is significant because again, you, according to those numbers overall in the MLS, the numbers dropped.

Correct. And I think there's just, like I said, I, I think there's just a lot of people are [00:33:00] just thinking that it was just a. crappy year for real estate. And, and, and it's true if, if, if you as an agent are struggling, you, you think that everybody is struggling. But that's not necessarily the case. And so I think the hope there is pay attention every single month.

We put the list of the top 10 agents and the, and the top 25 in the brokerage. And that's really who you should be going out to launch, because they're getting it done. And, you know, back in the days ago, everybody used to keep it secret what they used to do. And they thought that everybody has a leverage, or they have something, that guy's producing so much more because he has some secret that he's doing or something.

Over the years drilling down and trying to figure out it's just they're out hustling. I haven't really found anybody that has that secret sauce or the leverage or something else. The knowledge is out there to go get most of these top producers or people that are producing will [00:34:00] sit down and tell you exactly what they're doing because they know most people won't do it.

You just got to buckle down. What do you think it is about West USA that, that the agents here do kind of, they do thrive. They, they do. Exceed the normal market and what's going on in the MLS. I, you know, we're always in the top 20 on just about everything nationwide. So it's not an anomaly. This is something that we see pretty much every year.

Like, but you know, being the president and the CEO and, and you, you have the full 30, 000 foot view of everything that we do. What is it about West USA that helps agents succeed? Well, I think it's been a success for West USA for over the years because my father, when he started the company, didn't say that agents had to do just residential transactions.

You can do everything. Property management. I mean, whatever it is, it's, you have a license to do business and we allow you to do all those [00:35:00] businesses. And growing up in that atmosphere, I never realized it until I talked to some agents. Like we were not allowed to do that over at a different company.

And that's what I said when I came here 10 years ago, I wasn't allowed to do property management and I wasn't allowed to do commercial. And then I got stuck referring those clients to another brokerage. And we don't necessarily see like That isn't why the numbers really grow, it's why people choose to come to us, because those few transactions, they don't have to give away or refer out.

But they're typically doing a lot of it in that residential transaction, or they're doing a lot of it in their niche market that they do. But just the ability to be able to do everything, and have the broker support that knows how to do and help with all of it, it just really stands above. Yeah, and then, and then support and technology.

I, I, I think one of the things that that agents hear out there when they are interviewing with brokerages and they're talking with a brokerage that, let's just call it a split shop where they're going to take 20, [00:36:00] 30%. And the agent says, well, what about these, these, these? You know, West USA 100 percent company and the natural response from the split shops is well, you get what you pay for.

You're not going to get you're not going to get any of this stuff at 100 percent companies such as West USA. I couldn't disagree anymore. Yeah, it's, you know, early on Looking at the opportunities and the things that we can help with our agents. And technically when we look at a product or something, it's not what it looks like for the brokers.

It was, it looks like for the agents. Nick knows he sits in a lot of meetings with us over the years and it's, it's really is. It's like, when we're sitting with a product or a tool, it's how does this affect our agents? And how can we help our agents? It's not about what can West 2 Save make off this tool or what can West 2 Save do for this?

In fact, most cases, a lot of times they're telling us, hey, if you provide this, you can make some extra income off of this. And we're like, we just want to give it to our agents for the cost. I mean, we just want to get the best possible to be able to pass it on to help our agents. And that's just been the motto of West 2 Save for [00:37:00] Alrighty.

So 2024 obviously the big news, I remember I was sitting, I think I was sitting with my in laws and this was, this was the middle summer when all of the changes happened. And, you know, as far as the requirement of having the buyer broker agreement or buyer broker showing agreement and my mother in law who, who was in the mortgage industry, so she should know better you know, said, Oh, that's great.

God, I feel really, you know, I feel really bad for new agents. It's going to be really tough on new agents. And I said, I couldn't disagree with you anymore. New agents who don't know anything about the old ways of doing stuff. This is just, this is just how they doing it. But nonetheless, for those of us that have been licensed and been around it was a big change.

And we don't need to go into any, Any to the details, but are there any updates that we need to be aware about when it comes down to the N. A. R. lawsuit or the N. A. R. settlement as far as what's going on legally or is it just done and done and we're now moving forward? [00:38:00] As, for the industry or for West USA?

Well let's start with the industry. The industry I think it's, I think the attorneys got what they were looking for. I think the industry has to do some changing and I think it needed to do some changing. And I think that's where you're going to see the next two to three years, kind of figure out what's going to happen and where the industry is going to go.

And I wish I could tell you exactly what it is. I could tell you what I would like it to be or what it should be, but I think the industry is going to kind of work it out. There's, we're definitely under a microscope. There are a few attorneys out there with like a second bite. to come after people for that, but so yeah, I mean, it's knowledge is going to be great in the next two, three years and being with a brokerage that can help you navigate through that is going to be huge.

Is it still a serious issue? Because here, here's what I'm saying or feeling I should say is since the changes everybody had to adapt, everybody's following the rules and we didn't see a lot of a lot of blowback [00:39:00] in the sense of, of any more people getting into trouble and agents are starting to lax a little bit and thinking, okay, Hey, you know what?

If I go show this home and I don't have the buyer broker agreement in place because I'm not hearing anything. And, and, and there's, it tends to be this, people just tend to relax and thinking, okay, the attorneys have moved on and so forth. What, what do you say to that? Well, they, the attorneys are great. It, it.

Waiting for damages and I'm not saying that they're creating damages But if they find a small percentage of agents that are doing it's not worth their time. They're gonna wait for the industry to go back the way it was is what they're hoping for and they can come in the next five ten years and Hit with another large settlement so that's what brokerages and agents need to really look out for, is just making sure that there is a change, making sure that they do cover up hopefully NAR can fix some of the stuff they're doing and, and come in compliant with that stuff too.

But it's definitely going to [00:40:00] be a challenge on that piece, but. Well, I think NAR should just sponsor an entire whole. At the phoenix open and take us all they owe us a little 16 Just the whole triple the triple decker, right? All right, so let's jump into okay, we're all aware we've all been seeing emails, about west usa choice I think there is some confusion of exactly what west usa choice is how it differs from just west usa today, And maybe we need to start with the Phoenix Association of Realtors and what the changes that, I'm not going to say the changes, but the additions that they've made and what that is.

So, I think they've always had it. They just created some extra tools that made it more viable. Adairy came in and kind of, what's the best word to say, Todd, as far as they pined on how brokerages or allowed brokerages to manage two companies or to be able to do it. And that [00:41:00] made it a little more viable for us.

But for West USA as a whole, it's more about just our agents having another choice. Again, like I said earlier, we're about our agents. We don't tell you how to do business. We just help you do the business. And we, You know, there's too many times in this business where an agent wants to do something and we just can't.

It's not regulatory. It's not able to be done. And it really kills me because I would love to say yes to every single one, everybody that wants to do everything. But sometimes it just gets us in trouble and gets them in trouble and that's what we're here for is to try to protect them. So when there's an option to come up with another option for somebody to be able to do production or be able to go away, an agent wants to go.

I want to be able to provide that to them. I don't know where this is going to go in the end. I don't know how far it's going to go. So I think it's just something we've invested in to, as an option for our agents. I don't want to step ahead of any other questions you have, but Well, no, so, so am, am I simplifying it?

[00:42:00] The way that I see it is West USA Choice Peace. And, and what the Phoenix Association of Realtors have done. They have offered us the opportunity to be able to operate as a licensed real estate agent. Really, at the end of the day, without having, without the requirement of being a member of the National Association of Realtors.

That would be correct. Or AAR, or The local per se. Yeah. Okay. So, that's a good nutshell of what it is. So, if I'm one of those agents that says, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm fed up with NAR. I don't necessarily like how this went down. And for right or wrong, I'm not going to get into my personal feelings. It doesn't really matter.

But now I have this opportunity to, to, to operate real estate without being a member of the National Association of Realtors and AAR, to Todd's point. So then, if I choose this route, and that's what [00:43:00] WestUSA Choice is, WestUSA Choice is your opportunity, and you're, and you're moving your license over. It's a separate brokerage that agents have to understand.

So I moved my license over to West USA Choice. I'm having to change my branding. I need to, my business cards need to have West USA Choice. My open house signs need to be West USA Choice, but then I can operate without having to be a member of the National Association of Realtors. So if I go down that road, what am I losing and what am I gaining?

Well, today you're losing at West USA. We have CoStar. We have property management we have the reload program and until the choice becomes a little bit more mainstream it's going to take some while. So literally I think. What, Nick, we're three weeks, four weeks into this. I mean, literally, we were told probably [00:44:00] in November, I think.

It was the Friday before Thanksgiving. Yeah, Friday before Thanksgiving. Yeah, I'll never forget. Yeah. So, this is very new to the industry, period. So, it's going to take some while to roll out everything and even see if we have agents that are even looking to. and see if it's going to stick and see if NAR is even going to allow it to stick.

So, yeah, I think, I think one of the biggest misunderstandings of it is that I can go because I'm no longer a member of NAR or any of the trade groups there. That I don't have to live up to any of the, you know, settlement agreements, or I don't have to, but unfortunately, because MLS is also regulated you still have that same responsibility.

So you haven't walked away. I mean, I think that's really what people want to do. started thinking in the very beginning was this new choice was going to allow us to not have to live up to NAR's settlement agreement. And which were referring to like having to use the buyer broker agreement before showing, or even the responsibilities of, of advertising compensation that was part of the [00:45:00] settlement agreement as well.

You are still 100 percent responsible for all those things. All right. Then, then if I do West USA choice. Which means now I'm not a member of NAR, I'm not a member of AAR all my contracts, all the forms that I use, I'm right, I'm not only getting from AAR, but they're copyrighted by AAR, so I no longer can use those forms?

You can no longer initiate the use of those forms there are new forms that the association has come out with our brokers looked them over. I'm They're pretty simple and easy. I don't see any issues with that. If you, if you get one or if you're looking to make that choice to go over there and you need to use them the brokers are talking through it.

It's pretty simple on those forms. So in essence, we're going to have two sets of forms now, possibly. I might have a listing, and I could possibly be getting an offer from an agent from West USA Choice, and now it's a contract [00:46:00] that I've never seen before. Correct. And if you counter, you'll still use your counter and send it back.

And they'll use their counter and send it back. They can accept your counter without a problem, without having to rewrite it. And you'll be able to accept their offer without having to rewrite it. if you want to. But to dig a little deeper as the industry goes forward and I think you're starting to see across country is there's a lot of brokerages that are starting to use their own forms.

They, they don't agree with the forms that have been created within their states. So I, I believe you're already seeing some modifications to the AAR's forms. I would like to see some changes made to the forms. But I, if, And I think that they are going to make some changes, but at the end of the day, I think you're going to see some brokerages coming out for liability purposes.

They're going to be changing their forms, and you're going to have to deal with them anyways. Yeah, just kind of like we have our A forms in the dashboard. Those are your brokers, our brokers agreed documents to handle those types of things that aren't in the regular documents. And I think that's what's [00:47:00] important.

And I think that's a sign of a good brokerage. However, you know, let's pretend broker B you know, you're an enlisting agent and you receive one of those forms from broker B. Well, we've always told you, we don't want you to work with, you know, send it to the broker first, let the brokerage team look at the document that you've been given before you present it to your, your client.

Just to make sure I would recommend you do the same thing in this case. Okay. So. Let's say I I choose to do West USA Choice. I, I choose to transfer my license over there. But I'm also a member of, of the MLS up in the White Mountains. So, I've no longer Because, because, okay, let me backtrack. If I go to West USA choice, I am pretty much then joining the Phoenix Association of Realtors Choice Brand.

Brand, right? Pretty much, yep. Okay. Would are all of the other MLSs gonna play? Nice? So if I, if I decide I'm not going to I decide I'm gonna be west [00:48:00] USA choice. Because I don't want that Realtor Association, you know, but I'm a member of another MLS such as the White Mountains. What happens? I do not believe you're going to be able to do that at this particular moment.

It's only if you're an AR MLS member. If you're outside, then you need to stay with West USA at this particular moment. That doesn't mean those other associations won't perform and come across and offer their own thing and do something else different. But again, it's so new, nobody's making that, that decision yet.

Yeah. And it's really only because the agreement was between PAR and Armless to do this new thing. You know, if that agreement was to expand into other MLSs with, with with MLS choice, then The answer would be it would grow according to those new relationships. And then of course, as other MLS is, or excuse me, as other local associations get on board and try to accomplish the same thing, then the opportunity for you to [00:49:00] belong to another local association would expand based on those agreements as well.

So as of right now, because this is so brand new and it's so cutting edge there's just one, I mean, this is it. And, and you get a choice. And I would have to think you'd be thankful that you are in the greatest, one of the largest metropolitan areas to have this launched here. Alright, and then, I guess we should clarify, I think we've hinted it.

If I choose to go, With West USA Choice, I am no longer a member of the National Association of Realtors, so I think we just really need to articulate that means you are no longer a Realtor, you can no longer refer to yourself as a Realtor and you, that, that just has to be removed from all of your marketing and your branding.

And you won't get the monthly magazine either.

But in that transition, you'd have to do the same thing as you would if you went from any broker to another broker, you'd be responsible for transitioning all of your listing contracts, you'd be responsible for transitioning even your [00:50:00] buyer agreement, buyer broker agreements to from one broker From West USA Realty to West USA Choice.

You also lose the designations that you've received. You cannot market those any longer. You still have the knowledge, but you can't put them on your marketing materials. Like, for instance, like GRI or Correct. Yep. Yep. And you would have to That would also mean you would have to give up your MLS and local association membership to any other association.

So to your point, Mike, I'm a, you said you were a member of White Mountain as well, you would no longer be able to do that. You could only solely be a member of, of MLS Choice. So at the end of the day, how much am I saving? I, like, what, okay, I, I know there's the, the intellectual approach and, and that would be my next question.

You know, what are agents saying? Why are agents wanting to do this? I'm more of a numbers guy because I'm thinking, okay, I've got, I've got, you know, 30 yard signs. I've [00:51:00] got business cards. I've got open house signs. I've got, I've got all kinds of stuff for, so for me, you know, it's a, it's a hassle. It's a, it's a lot of work.

It's an absolute hassle. So I'm more of the dollars and cents. So if I go there, really, what am I saving? And then the agents that you've talked with, because really that is the question, why West USA Choice? What, what is, what are people, what are agents wanting and why are we wanting this? Most of the agents I've heard are, are two pieces.

One, they're just so mad at NAR. They just want away from them. Two, they don't need or use the NAR or they don't use their license. Like most agents do their investors or something else. I'm not lying. They just want to keep it possible. They don't necessarily want to have yard signs and rebrand. They don't usually use it for that piece.

So those two people, what we're seeing, your [00:52:00] savings is 262. So that being said. Before expenses. Well, yeah, that's, that's just the upfront savings. And then you have, like you said, if you have to rebrand, you're going to definitely spend that. But what the unknown is, is NAR has already said they put a two year price lock on when they did the settlement.

And then they're going to look at recollecting the settlement. Does anybody know what the price is going to be for NAR in the next three to five years? I do not know that. So where do you think the money's coming from? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that is kind of the back of my mind, too, is like, you know, what are they going to charge?

How much are they going to charge? They haven't released anything. The fact that they put a two year price lock, I think it was two year, right, Todd? I mean, it was it's a little concerning to me that they didn't even address that up front. So I, I, I have to assume that they are planning on the right increase, so today it's 265 ish, so what is it going to be three to five years from now?

I don't know, so. Alright, last question with all of this that we've just talked about, [00:53:00] West USA Choice, the Phoenix Association of Realtors, As a lot of people had seen on social media, NAR issued a cease and desist letter to the Phoenix association of realtors, which for me, just on the business side, I'm now, if I was thinking about doing West USA choice, I'm going to stand back and see how, How this plays out, but can you add any thoughts to the cease and desist letter in, you know, specifically what they were ceasing, asking them to cease and desist.

Been a little unclear on the NAR side of exactly what they're asking or looking for. To me in a personal aspect, it's more of them just being a bully on the playground and saying, stop this because it's probably going to hurt our memberships in the future. I think there's a lot of states are looking at duplicating this.

And I think NAR is backs against the wall to have to make those changes and do. That's my, I don't, [00:54:00] that's just my personal opinion. I don't know exactly what it is. It's weird because they, they say that agents have a choice to make, do armless without it. Most MLSs or associations do offer this, they just don't promote it.

But then when the one association does actually promote it as an option, they get upset. I want to put it in the CCD system. What's in store for West USA 2025? What are you looking forward to? I think it's going to be a great year. It can be a. A lot of change over the years, over the year as all the stuff works out.

And I think agents are afraid of change. But if you look at where we've been and over the years and how much change we've had over the years, I think our agents are the best verse for big changes. Well, I'll have to to add to that and I'll just, I'll end it. You know, I've, I've been with West USA 10 plus years and I, We've been sitting and talking about these changes for years.

Agents may, may not have been aware of the [00:55:00] changes, but we've been, on the corporate side, aware of these changes, understanding them, adopting and adapting, because I remember, For a lot of brokerages and people that I know, you know, the beginning of summer was almost like the first time that they were hearing about this.

Mm-hmm . And and I, I would say that that's, it's one of the, the best parts for me as far as being part of west USA, is I, I feel like we are always on the forefront of the knowledge, the information legal and, and really we're always on the forefront of preparing our agents for whatever changes are coming down the pipe.

Yes. All right. All right. That being said, by the way, I would, didn't know that we've made these live on video. I always thought you had a face for radio, so I didn't know I was supposed to wear a jacket. All right. So let's talk about Nick. Oh. No, we don't want to. Alright, Clint, appreciate it. Great information as always.

Todd, Nick, thank you. We leave you with the quote of the day. I did read this ahead of time. Oh, good. [00:56:00] So, new year, new homes, new beginnings. Help your clients write their next chapter in 2025. I need just nice music behind these now. Okay. Well, I've got, I was letting you read it because last time I played the music you yelled at me.

New year, new homes, new beginnings. Help your clients write their next chapter in 2025. Go out, make it happen. Go out and sell a home. There it is. Bam.