EP 03 — Secrets of a Top Listing Agent (ft. Lori Seavey)

[00:00:00] 
Welcome to Real Estate. It's not that complicated. Broker Ryan Cook and Curious co-host Kent Thaler guide you through buying and selling minus the jargon. Here's today's episode. Take it away guys.
Ryan Cook: Hey, I'm Ryan Cook. 
Kent Thaler: And I'm Kent Thaler. And together we're the real estate navigation team. For another fun episode. Another exciting 
Ryan Cook: episode. 
Kent Thaler: Yes, exactly. Of our real estate. It's not that complicated podcast.
Ryan Cook: Now what was interesting is, this is episode number three. We've gotten some great feedback from our editor about how much we suck. But we are gonna continue to work on it because we know that it takes a little while to find your voice. And I think this episode that we just recorded is leaps and bounds over our other two episodes.
Was a great conversation. 
Kent Thaler: I would also like to point out that our editor really thinks I suck. Okay. You're right. I 
Ryan Cook: was trying to be inclusive and say, we suck. But you're right, suck. 
Kent Thaler: It was, it's [00:01:00] directed mostly at me. Yes. And I'm not sure she's wrong. 
Ryan Cook: She's not, but that's okay.
You'll get better. 
Kent Thaler: I have faith 
Ryan Cook: in you. Yes. We can't do anything about your voice. It is what it 
Kent Thaler: or my fidgeting or my, oh, I take that back. 
Ryan Cook: If folks will notice the new microphone that shows up in your screen, it does have the ability to modulate and give you a different sounding voice so we could actually make that happen.
Kent Thaler: Yes. I could sound like a professional. 
Ryan Cook: Yes. But yeah, we're far from that. Although I'm 
Kent Thaler: not sure that the technology exists yet to make me sound like a professional. Might be able to make other people sound professional. But, my cranston cadence is such that I'm not sure that's possible.
Ryan Cook: It's okay. 
Kent Thaler: Yeah. I have to live with it as I do. Hey, how's the real estate market. So we 
Ryan Cook: actually, we, it's a big milestone this week. We actually broke 10,000 units in Massachusetts available for purchase on the market right now. We haven't seen that since before COVID. Is that a good thing?
That's a good thing. The challenge that we've had the market's been so challenging for [00:02:00] buyers is real lack of inventory. So we've seen inventory rise granted a lot to do with interest rates and affordability. And they are at, right now, I was pulling numbers for the office was doing some research on, people have complained of last number of years.
Oh, the interest rates aren't that high. And when I bought my first house, it was 15% interest. I actually pulled some numbers. So in 1973, when my parents bought their first house the average sale price compared to the median income in the country, a home was 3.65 times.
Your average median salary for a household. Then when I bought my first house in 1999, it was 4.26 times, so it really hadn't risen that much in 26 years. The preceding 26 years is now 7.72 times. Holy crap. Yeah. So it's been a, where folks will talk about the interest rates and blah, blah, blah.
Had 15%. Yeah it was 15%, but the house is only 3.65 [00:03:00] times the median income at the time. So big difference there. So to 
Kent Thaler: put things in terms that, us lay, people would understand houses were about worth about three and a half times what your annual income was.
Now, there were about seven times what year?
Almost eight times what your annual income is. Yes. And yet, interest rates went from, back. I know that my parents, when they bought their house in 1967, paid eight and a half percent. When I bought my first house in 1993, I paid 6% bought, 
Ryan Cook: and in 99 I paid 10%.
Kent Thaler: When I bought the house that I'm sitting in, we paid 6.5%, but I refinanced at 2.9. And now today, I think interest rates are somewhere around six and a half. 
Ryan Cook: Yeah. We're never gonna see two and 3% rates again.
That was government intervention post financial meltdown in 2007. Project program they called qualitative easing, where the Fed was buying mortgage backed securities. And by the. [00:04:00] Wheelbarrow loads. And that drove interest rates down. And now they're in a phase called qualitative tightening.
And then the chair of the Fed has been taking a wait and see approach. Where President Trump has been upset with him that they need to be lowering interest rates I actually think the Fed has taken the right approach of keeping the rates where they are. We've seen inflation drop to about 2.3%.
And the latest results that came out yesterday, so rates came inflation, excuse me, came down to about 2.3%. But we're seeing the spread between the 10 year treasury and mortgage interest rates at about 2.5%. So that's indicating that the market itself is still a little sketchy on the economy.
Kent Thaler: Yeah. It also tells me that money might be a little tighter than you would think, which could explain why there's extra inventory. In that, getting finance might not be as easy as it was even two years ago. Sure. But at the same interest rate level. 
Ryan Cook: And it doesn't mean across the board that buyers in a better position, the inventory is still low, certain [00:05:00] price points in certain towns that are very desirable, still seeing multiple offers.
But, as a whole, these are positive signs for buyers that they could maybe if it's not a matter of negotiating better prices, at least being able to negotiate better terms, maybe even getting a home inspection, 
Kent Thaler: which is exactly why today we decided to concentrate on. The listing agent, the sellers.
Ryan Cook: Yeah. And I have a lot of good relationships in the area and so far we've focused on folks in Southeastern Massachusetts in Rhode Island, where, you know, I know an awful lot of folks and picked out one of the best listing agents in our area, bar none. 
Kent Thaler: when you had told me about Lori and her credentials I was very excited.
Last week when we spoke to Cherri, her credentials are also impressive. And Lori is, every bit is dynamic and as exciting and informative. And I've 
Ryan Cook: known Lori A. Long time. I've known Lori since I first got my license, and she's now with Keller Williams Elite in Plainville, Massachusetts.
By the time she was with her father's brokerage out of Mansfield, [00:06:00] Massachusetts. And her father was a pretty prolific builder and broker in the area where they built a couple neighborhoods next to an apartment that my wife and I, when we got engaged and got an apartment in Mansfield her father was building the neighborhoods around there.
I think it was about 87 homes. She had a good mentor in that fact. But then instead of taking over the family business moved over to Keller Williams brokerage that, offers a bit more training than, a family brokerage has more agents there.
She's been the number one agent. In North Attleboro, Massachusetts for 12 years running. That doesn't happen as a fluke. 
Kent Thaler: And just so people understand, north Attleborough, Massachusetts is not a small town. It's an actual city.
It being the number one agent in that area and the surrounding areas around it, a good amount of volume, 
Ryan Cook: right? She's one of top 100 agents and Keller Williams International, over 160,000 agents.
She's in the top 100. And she routinely shows up in the real trends. Real trends for those who don't know is a independent publication that publishes, who are the [00:07:00] top agents. Top teams in certain areas nationally, could be regionally, could be by state but they keep track of all that stuff and she's routinely on that list.
Kent Thaler: I mean it, the conversation as you're all about to hear was wide ranging. It was very informative. We talked about what it takes to become a what to look for when you're looking for a listing agent. We talked about professionalism. We talked about experience. We talked about how to get experience.
We talked about staging and what that means. 
Ryan Cook: Negotiations, how marketing, how does it, how does an experienced agent help to head off problems before they ever happen? Yep. It was very wide ranging conversations. 
Kent Thaler: Yeah. And I, it's one that if I were looking to buy a house, I hope that somebody would point me towards this particular podcast to get me started, because.
By the time we were done, I knew the right questions to ask the next time I go to sell my house. 
Ryan Cook: And that is the point of what we're doing. 
Kent Thaler: Of course, I'll probably just call Ryan and say, sell my [00:08:00] house. But if I don't do that, because he lives far away from me he doesn't live that far away from me 
Ryan Cook: 45 minutes.
But it's still, I know. 
Kent Thaler: But the point is if I decided to use an independent agent who's not Ryan the questions and the observations that she makes in this episode are spot on and really informative. 
Ryan Cook: So without further ado let's get into our interview with Lori Seavey, who is the head of the Lori Seavey Realty team with Keller Williams Elite out of Plainville, Massachusetts.
One of the top 100 agents with Keller Williams International. Top 100 out of over 160,000 agents internationally. Let's get into it. Our guest is a top real estate producer. Her team has been the number one selling team in North Attleborough, Massachusetts for the past 12 years. Now, as an aside, I'd call that domination. Lori Seavey, one of the top listing agents in all of New England for Keller Williams Realty. Lori's recognized as one of the [00:09:00] top 100 KW agents out of over 160,000 agents internationally.
They call that a rockstar lori was raised in real estate family and earned her license in 2005, and she quickly built a reputation for exceeding client expectations. As the founder of the Seavey Realty team, Lori leads with passion, expertise, and a commitment to service. She's very well recognized for her staging expertise, which she credits for helping sell homes faster and for more money.
She's a certified listing specialist, accredited buyer's agent home stager, and consistently ranked among America's best by real trends. Her business isn't just about real estate, it's about giving back. Lori and her team proudly serve their community through scholarships, local sponsorships and outreach events, truly living their motto, key to opening doors.
And I'll just add on a personal note. Lori and I have worked together personally and one of the genuinely nicest people I've had the pleasure of working with in real estate. And I always feel very fortunate to have that opportunity. So Lori, thanks for [00:10:00] coming.
Lori Seavey: Thanks ryan. I feel the exactly the same way about you.
Kent Thaler: So clearly you're delusional.
Lori Seavey: Nice. It's a wonderful opening. 
I love when I see Ryan at one of my open houses, or I see his name on one of the offers coming in, or I know it's his listing and I'm representing a buyer. I love when it's Ryan on the other side
Kent Thaler: Buttering me up.
Clearly either that or she sees you coming.
I, maybe I haven't figured that out yet. So Lori, thank you so much for joining us today. we're gonna talk about the listing agent and what that means to the real estate process, as well as lay people like me, what it means to find a listing agent and what steps you need to take to find the proper listing agent and then likewise what the listing agent gives you and brings to the entire transaction.
But before we get into any of that. I would love to know how you got into real estate in the first place, because if you got your license in 2005, you had to have been, what, three years old?
Lori Seavey: I appreciate that, Kent. Thank [00:11:00] you. What's funny though is I actually grew up in real estate. My dad was one of the biggest real estate agents and builder in Mansfield.
He built 87 houses in Mansfield, so I grew up around all of that. Didn't think I'd be getting into that, but my husband and I were actually missionaries over in Spain. Came back, I started working as a real estate paralegal, which was one of my degrees, and I had a builder approach me and asked if I would help him with picking out siding or granite for his house, decorating the house.
So I started doing that for him and then he'd have me kind list it do for sale by owner. And as I was doing that, I was like, maybe I should get my license. And then actually Fred Bottomley, who. Since has passed away. One of my heroes said, Lori, you should really get your license. I, you really should go after getting it.
So I got my real estate license, still worked as a real estate paralegal and slowly cut those hours and increased my hours in real [00:12:00] estate. So yeah, been doing it since 2005.
Ryan Cook: So it was all to get away from working with attorneys. Yeah. But now you're, now you have the upper hands.
Kent Thaler: They're working for you now. It's not, you're not working with them. That's a good one. So to start this process if I had a house and I wanted to sell it my first step would be to find a listing agent. Why would I use a listing agent and not sell it by myself? And, what should I be looking for with the listing agent?
Is it just the best price or is there more? 
Lori Seavey: I just feel like the 20 years, 20 plus years of experience that I have, I think somebody coming into real estate and not having that experience and trying to sell their house on their own are really, it's going to hurt them tremendously because they don't know what to look for.
We have that actually, there's a situation going on right now in North Attleborough where somebody's trying to sell their house themselves. And we're watching the disaster unfold. Yeah. Before our eyes right now, Ryan probably knows what house sometimes. 
Ryan Cook: And by the way, so [00:13:00] Lori and I actually talked about this house, 'cause I have clients looking in that market and we were going back and forth the other day and she said, Hey, did you see that one come up for sale by owner?
And I was like, oh, the one on Zillow? She says, yeah. And I was like the price is a little aggressive. And yeah, you watched the disaster unfold.
Lori Seavey: Yeah price, and she's already done a price adjustment in a couple days. 
Kent Thaler: So I guess that lends to a couple of more direct questions.
If you're, a lot of people look at things like Zillow or Redfin or, other online tools and they say, oh, I can sell a house on my own. All I need is a closing attorney. I'm in Rhode Island. All I would need is a closing attorney. I don't know what the rules are in Massachusetts. But in reality, what you're suggesting is that the experience that a seasoned real estate agent or broker brings to the equation can enhance the sale and allow you to get the price that you necessarily want, even in a hot market like the one that we're in now.
And I'd really like [00:14:00] to explore a little more about what you bring to the table that I wouldn't necessarily know to do as a sell by owner.
Ryan Cook: Yeah. And I actually, I wanna add in a little something in that one, because it's a, it's actually a really good question, and Lori May not toot her own horn,
but, you're looking for folks who it's not just, some folks will look at sales volume and numbers and stuff like that, but it's also relationships. Like one of the things that, that Lori and her team, so her team, her hus pulled her husband into her team, her son into her team, a very successful baseball player and other agents on her team as well.
But it's also the relationships they built in town and the trust they built up. So sure they have great numbers. However, the additional factor is all the relationships they've built up, and it's relationships in the agent community for whether realtors are non realtors. Other professionals, et cetera.
And then just other clients they're working with because she's been the go-to agent [00:15:00] in that particular town for 12 years.
Lori Seavey: No, I think relationships are so important and for me, I wouldn't enjoy this if it wasn't for the relationships.
It, I could be selling triple what I'm selling right now, but if I didn't have my relationships with my other co-brokes and it wouldn't be worth it, it wouldn't like, it's the relationships that I really love working with the people that I love. And honestly it has gotten me, when I've put offers in on a property, sometimes it's come down to my clients have gotten that property.
'cause I'm the agent on the other side if they're similar. Same thing as a listing agent. When I get the offers in, and I'll talk about this a little bit later. It may come down to the agent on who's going to get their offer accepted on that property, and I can explain why later.
Ryan Cook: And that's a huge insight by the way, because, there are times, like one of the, newer licensees who will make comments that they're, I just did a transaction, never met the other agent.
I'm like, you missed an opportunity to build a relationship. So when times when you get into a competitive situation, you're [00:16:00] just a name on a piece of paper and they have no idea who you are and what you're bringing to the table, or how you're gonna make things easy for them and their client, 
Lori Seavey: right? Yep.
It makes a difference. Also for me, if the offers are very similar. And it comes down to the agent, it's gonna be, I want the one with experience that's gonna get us to the closing table, and that's going to make it enjoyable. I want somebody who's a partner.
There's some agents that can make it a battle you gotta lose so I can win. And I don't like that. I like, Hey, how can we do it together? That way, even if a problem arises, it's calling the other co-broke and be like, okay, what can we do? We're a team, we're trying to help out both of our clients, what can we do?
So it comes, it can come down to the agent on the other side, on who gets, what buyer gets that property. 
Kent Thaler: I'm still working out. I'm, I guess I'm two steps before you guys right now. I'm still trying to work out, what it is I'm looking for to even list my house.
Okay. You know what do I want? [00:17:00] A listing agent to bring to the table. Do I want their experience, say in marketing, do I want their experience in staging? Do I want their experience in evaluating? It's clear that having relationships with other brokers and agents in the marketplace is helpful.
A wheelbarrow full of cash is also helpful.
Lori Seavey: Yeah, no, completely. Honestly, if I was selling my house and I was interviewing people, I want somebody that has experience in all of those areas. I want somebody who's going to help me market my house and marketing, I mean that the house is the product.
Yeah. And so how do you get that product ready? To put in front of people. And there's a lot of time spent. The majority of my time is spent on getting that product ready. And it's a lot of time and people can be like, oh. 'cause sometimes we'll show us, hey, we're staging a house and show a little video and then on the market and then [00:18:00] yay.
Just like that under agreement. It's not the, just like that, the, just like that could be a team of four of us spending, all of us spending five hours each, that's 20 hours at a house, getting it ready. I have my husband sometimes I'm like, can you go weed in front of that door?
Can you go? Or whatever. Or moving furniture. I'm very OCD with my listings because how the property looks makes all the difference. And if the photos don't grab them, they're not coming in. So that's the start. 
Kent Thaler: So I that's a good place for me to ask a question. 'cause as a lay person I've already used the term staging and I bet you people don't even know what staging is.
And we, we're talking about the idea of marketing and I'm not sure that people who are listening to this podcast for the first time even understand what that is in relation to selling a piece of real estate. For simplicity's sake, and to make it not that complicated I'd really to drill [00:19:00] down into those areas a little bit and understand how both you and Ryan approach those ideas and getting a potential lister or listing ready for market and convincing me as the homeowner that your approach is going to be the one that's gonna make me the most amount of money.
Because in the end, it's about the giant wheelbarrow of cash that you're going to get me. 
Lori Seavey: So for me, it's funny. So I have my seller's guide that I go with on all my listing appointments. So many people have told me this when I'm done, you're so thorough and you gave me a lot of visuals.
So in it, I have a lot of properties that were on the market with another agent that did not sell. And then what we did and then how they sold and how they sold for a lot more money, whether it was, this one was $28,100 more. I had my client spend $4,100 and he got 28,100 more. [00:20:00] So I have multiple examples of that, of, hey, this was on the market.
It was not staged, it was not marketed correctly. This is what exactly what we did, and this was the outcome of it. 
Kent Thaler: When we say staged, what do we mean by staged? 
Lori Seavey: So for me now, some agents, 'cause I ask people that if they're interviewing many different agents, and I go, so they said staging. What did they mean by that?
Did you ask them? And they'll say, oh they just said they'll bring someone and they'll tell us what to do. Move this, do that, tell us what to do. Go out and buy this. I'm like, why do you wanna buy stuff for your house that you're selling? So I feel like for me personally and my team, this started years ago, I was like, oh, let me just buy some fresh towels.
Oh, let me buy a new shower curtain. Let me buy white bedspreads. It now has taken over that we are now renting our own facility in downtown North Attleboro, and we have rooms, and one room is just pillows. That's all [00:21:00] it is pillows and every single color and every shade. So for me, staging is I'm gonna go room by room and we're gonna lighten and brighten and purge.
Kent Thaler: Do you run into resistance from people who say things like why do I have to get rid of stuff?
Do they not understand that. An emotional attachment to their things has nothing to do with the selling price of the property. Yeah. 
Lori Seavey: It's all how it's said. It really is. I was selling a house once and she had a doll collection. And I, it'd be great to pack up all those dolls and she's I love those dolls.
I was like, I love your dolls too, but we're not selling your dolls. We're selling your house. And right now I can't say any of your wains coating. I can't say any of that because your dolls are blocking it. So we wanna remove that. And I always try to say, if I was gonna sell my house today, there's a lot I would have to change.
How we live and how we sell are completely different. 
Ryan Cook: And it can be a really [00:22:00] fine line too. Because you can go in and say something and then you think you are there to help them as a professional, especially when. You have a successful business, you have a track record of success, and you want to help them present their house in the best way possible.
'cause I always tell them, listen, your house, it's no different than going to the department store and you're looking for a new suit or a new dress. It is a suit or a dress on a rack, how it's presented. If you go into Kohl's looking for a dress shirt versus going into I don't know what's a luxury clothier where you go in and it's how you're treated, how they talk to you, how everything's set up.
It's the feeling and the challenge sometimes can be, is they can, and how you word it, Lori, was very important because they could take offense to it. Oh, you don't like my house? No, that's not what I meant. I want to help you get the most possible. And so it can be really delicate depending on who you're working with.
Lori Seavey: And one of the things also I have is on Canva, we did our own little kind of flip [00:23:00] magazine of a ton of before and afters so we could show them like, this is what the bedroom looked like before. And it was all dark colors. Here's what we did when we staged it and it's all white blankets, a lot of pillows, white curtains.
And they're like, wow. Again. 'cause I think a lot of people are visual and so I try to bring a lot of visual to it. So when they see that that looks amazing. 
Ryan Cook: W was that something you just had a natural eye for or did you Like I look at like the hotel industry and how they advertise hotels, where did you get your inspiration from on that?
And then along with that, how do you pick your photographer or get your photographer, unless you're doing it yourself to take the angles. 'cause sometimes you're gonna have the same setup, but they take a very flat. Angle versus angle that's more appealing? Like how do you address that stuff?
Lori Seavey: I've always loved decorating, like my house, I've always loved decorating, cleaning, organizing. I love that. I love to stay I love to [00:24:00] make houses look pretty. The funny thing is sometimes I'm making everybody else's house look really pretty and I go home to mine and it's a disaster, but.
I don't know. I think I've just always enjoyed that part of organizing things and, decluttering. So I love that part. I use a professional photographer. I remember getting started, if I look at some of my old photos way, way back, I used to take my own photos. I can't even believe that.
And I tell people now, I am not a professional photographer. I am going to hire and pay for a professional photographer, and I usually have Karen at the photo shoot at the end. Like I'm there to make sure it's completely ready and then I leave. But the photographer we use is somebody that we use. All the time.
And I, they know I want a picture from every single angle straight on every single corner. And they know I want my bathrooms vertical and horizontal. So they just, they know me now and they'll send 120 photos back to me and I have to pick 41 and I use one for the [00:25:00] floor plan. 'cause we're only allowed 42 in Massachusetts.
So they just know me now on how I want my photos done. 
Kent Thaler: You wouldn't think that all of this pre-planning and stuff goes into selling a house, but in reality, the single largest asset anybody owns in most cases. And so they're foolish if they don't put that much effort into. Into selling a house.
Lori Seavey: At least 
Kent Thaler: from my perspective. 
Lori Seavey: I tell people when I meet with them, I go, the three least expensive things you can do to get you the most of amount of money. I said two of them are gonna be not cost you anything. One is purge. We want people to see your house.
That's the product. That's what we're selling. All personal photos. Pack 'em all the way. We don't want people to feel like they're walking into your house. We want them to feel like they're walking into their house. So it's, you're gonna pack anyway. You're gonna move anyway. So get the bubble wrap, get the boxes, pack up, all that.
But purging is a huge one. And then I say the second is clean. A deep clean. I'll tell people it's not like your house is [00:26:00] dirty. But a deep clean, I've sold houses that are very dated, but they're spotless. And they've got multiple offers on it. Even down to your basement. There's nothing like going to a open house and you go down the basement and you're like, with the cobwebs.
Get, ruin the whole feeling of a house. And then you see a furnace and it's so dirty. Or a water heater that's so dusty. So I'm like, come down here thing, a paper towel, pay your kids or whatever. I want you to wipe down even your oil tank, everything to be wiped down. It makes a difference. First impressions are everything, and people will feel like your house is very well maintained if it's just clean.
And then the third thing is paint is one of the least expensive things you can do that can make a huge difference is painting. 
Kent Thaler: Only because I'm fascinated by painting and my wife has me painting every couple of years in this house. As a matter of fact, the wall behind me was painted last year.
Lori Seavey: You gonna lose square footage there? 
Kent Thaler: I'm sorry. 
Lori Seavey: [00:27:00] You're gonna lose square footage if you keep painting. 
Kent Thaler: Yes, you are correct. It's a slow loss of square footage, but it is happening. There used to be an adage that they used to say money into the bathroom and the kitchen is money out at the back end.
If I understand what you're saying correctly, what you're saying is that it doesn't necessarily have to be money, but it has to be attention. And is it the kitchen and the bathrooms, or even in the bedrooms and the living rooms, making them say neutral colors, for example, as, as ready to sell is better than saying an accent wall or something like that?
Is it that specific.
Lori Seavey: Yeah. I feel like when it comes to bedrooms, I'm not as picky. And Ryan, you can let me know. Like the, sometimes if there's a pink bedroom and a blue bedroom, I'm like, let's leave it, let's go with it. Because people that have kids, maybe they have two girls, they just have to paint one room.
Maybe they have a girl and boy, I like when I stage they, it's a total neutral house. I'll always stage one house girl, one house boy, because I see the kids come to the open house and be like, this is my room. So I think it's important [00:28:00] to have both, unless it's a, like really obnoxious color.
But I feel like the main floor is the most important, don't you think, Ryan?
Ryan Cook: Yeah. The main floor is super important. They wanna walk in and if it's super personalized, it's very hard for them to imagine themselves in the space. So those neutral colors and, I think the saying was, $50 in the can is worth $5,000 on the wall.
And it really does make a difference. 
Lori Seavey: Yeah, I did have one family that's we just painted it and we did a bright orange, 'cause it's the sunrise and this is where the sun comes up and this is where, so I was like, oh shoot. They just did it. So we brought in the white curtains, we brought in white wood pieces, the white blankets.
So we tried to tone it 
Ryan Cook: down. 
Lori Seavey: Yeah, that's what we did is with our staging, we toned it down. 
Kent Thaler: Yeah. Okay. So to refocus this a little bit if, what are the terms that you necessarily offer somebody who's walking in the door and saying, Hey, I want you to sell my house. [00:29:00] How much is it gonna cost me?
And again I'm not asking for the exact percentage, but I what I am asking more a line of, I'm trying to figure out why I would choose you over say Ryan. Other than the fact that Ryan's not in the same area that you're in, although you guys overlap a little bit.
Ryan Cook: Some of it is really on what the seller's looking for. I'm sure Lori looks with the MLS on a regular basis as I do. And you look at, and you see how a property is presented in the multiple listings service. And I just like, oh my God. Like why? The person's using their cell phone to take the pictures.
The stuff is still all over the counters in the kitchen and just, but sometimes all they care about is they just wanna hire the cheapest person possible. 'cause they see, they don't see the agent as bringing value. They see the agent as an unnecessary expense or a necessary expense.
They just don't wanna put any money into. And listen, there's a lot of agents out there. It's not hard to get a license, right? It [00:30:00] was in Massachusetts, 40 hours when I got my license. When you get yours, it was 24 hours. So it wasn't a lot of time. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.
And rather than understanding that hiring the right person, it's an investment in helping to market your property and put the product out there to help you earn money. Because like you said, Lori, there are properties that, that were expired and I've done this too, market to expired properties, and then you turn around and it had been on the market for six months and didn't get any offers or got some really low offers, and the seller said no.
And then you came in, really made some very pretty minor adjustments, changed the messaging new photographs, help 'em get their property. And that's three weeks and it's sold over asking. And having the book like Lori has, most agents don't market themselves well. Like I've seen Lori's book.
It's done very well. You prob did you do it in Canva? 
Lori Seavey: I did, 
Ryan Cook: yeah. So utilizing tools out there [00:31:00] and it's fantastic to, to put your messaging out there. So when Lori goes into an appointment. She's practiced one. 'cause you've been in hundreds and hundreds of appointments, but I'm sure you're reviewing all your marketing on a regular basis, right?
Yep. Am I setting the right message? How do I change it? These new changes coming along, this new technology's coming along, does it make sense for us to implement this technology? How have you changed what you are doing? If you looked at what you're doing 10 years ago versus what you're doing now, how have you adapted to the market as it's changed?
Lori Seavey: Oh my goodness. I feel like it's changed so much, and I feel every year we're better. Our systems are better. So when it comes to sitting down with a seller, I feel confident in saying this listen, what I'm gonna do to your house and how I'm gonna market your house.
And then more importantly, how I'm going to negotiate those offers, I'm gonna pay for myself. Seriously, it's gonna be like I covered my commission and the funny and all those things in that book that I have, every [00:32:00] single one of them, I covered my commission 'cause I got them so much more and I covered the buyer's commission.
And so I feel very confident when I say that to them is this is what I'm gonna do for you and this is. It's gonna be like, you're not even paying me because I really believe that. And the negotiation part also afterwards, nevermind just what we do at the beginning part.
I feel like everything's changed. I do floor plans on all of my listings. My systems have changed. I feel if my clients ever ask, if the seller ever ask me what's the next steps? I feel like I failed. I want them to ask me what the next steps are. I'm going to tell them, this is what the next steps are, here's where we're at.
So having Karen on my team is phenomenal because she keeps every transaction in line and we have our system set up. Hey, purchase and sale was just signed. Congratulations. We sent cookies. Yay. Accelerated. Never go 
Kent Thaler: wrong with cookies. By the way, 
Lori Seavey: never Cheryl's cookies are the best.
But we just, we have our systems set so that they don't, so I feel like the [00:33:00] growth and I. I just feel like every year we're learning something new. And training is huge. Like for me as a listing agent, if I just go by what I know. And that was a big reason why my dad wanted me to take over his brokerage.
I thought, you know what? I'm gonna be the top person in that brokerage is gonna be nobody for me to learn from, and I wanna be to learning. And so going over to Keller Williams, for me, I thought the training, that's what I want. And I go outside of my office a lot too for that training, just so I can be learning and bettering myself for my clients.
So I'm not gonna say stagnant. And I think that's so huge that you're Chat, GPT is huge right now, and how I'm using that in my business. So if I just stay the same, even all my social media posts are gonna look so bland compared to everybody else's. So it's just constantly learning and implementing to stay ahead of everybody.
Kent Thaler: You, I wanna go back to something you said just a minute ago. You mentioned that you covered not only your [00:34:00] salary, but you would often cover the Buyer's salary. And I'm curious as to how you are approaching things in light of the NAR settlement.
Lori Seavey: You had an offer, accepted offer at 7 30. The whole offer fell apart. You got rid of your agent. I came on, we redefined, we actually defined rooms in your house. Took better photos, everything that we did. Then I was like, we're gonna list it at 6 99. They're like, what? We had an offer at seven 30.
Trust me, we need to get people in that house. It's been on the market now for 38 days. We gotta get people in, drive them in, put it at 6 99, then we sell it for 7 52. I just covered a big chunk of both of, me and the other agent. So just showing that way. When it comes to nar, I don't spend a lot of time on it.
Some clients that know everything about it. Some clients who've never even heard of it. What are you talking about? 
Kent Thaler: I would assume most people haven't heard of it. It's a unique conversation between Ryan and I Frequently it's actually one of the reasons why this podcast got started was out of a conversation about the NAR settlement and me asking [00:35:00] Ryan a bunch of questions.
Ryan Cook: Kent with a bunch of misnomers and me correcting him, but that's okay. 
Kent Thaler: He can believe that all he wants. But I'm as a consumer and as a mark, so my background is in marketing and sales. And so I'm always fascinated by how people approach the or at least within the real estate market, how they approach.
The concept of the separation of the buyer's agent from the seller's agent or the listing agent and, has your business model changed at all? Or, are you still out there looking to do both ends of that transaction? Do you feel that you can represent somebody on both ends of that transaction anymore the same way that you were able to before?
Lori Seavey: I haven't for years. Tried to do both sides. I don't like doing dual agency at all. I feel like if I'm representing the seller, I'm representing the seller because when I'm representing a buyer, it's a lot different. I'm looking up everything, like all the permits. so how can I represent a seller and then represent a buyer the right [00:36:00] way when then I'm going against a seller?
So I've stopped doing that years ago. There were a few times that I had clients that were just like, Lori, I don't wanna do anything at all. This is the price I want. Do you have a buyer? Bring 'em in. And if everyone plays nice in the sandbox, we'll put it together. But I don't like doing that as much. I do have a team now where I can have a Buyer's agent represent and they can go to town and represent their buyer the right way, you know that they want to.
But I feel like for me, if I'm a listing agent on a house, I'm a listing agent and that's it. 
Kent Thaler: So as a listing agent, you would recommend to other agents if they're going to do it, that they should, especially in light of the NAR settlement, they should seriously look at streamlining their business and focusing on one side or the other.
Not necessarily not doing both, but in each transaction being specific to one side of or the other 
Lori Seavey: in each transaction. Yes. 'cause there's still, even though I have buyer's agents on my team, there's a few buyers that only wanna work with me. [00:37:00] Sure. So I'll work with them and, but hopefully it's not on my list, I think.
Kent Thaler: Hopefully it's not No 
I get it. Look, especially if you did really well by me selling my house I'd want you to be the person to help me buy the next one or vice versa. 
Lori Seavey: The good thing is, yeah. And I have a team now, so if I take a listing and they're selling and then they're buying, like I may bring in Karen or Matthew on my team.
They're part of the whole thing. They're meeting them. So I'm gonna really work on the listing side of it, and they're gonna be taking 'em out to go look at properties. 
Kent Thaler: Can you talk a little about a real estate team versus a real estate agent versus I don't wanna say broker 'cause that that, that's a little more of an a, a loaded term in this particular thing.
But explain a little about how you guys organize yourself as a team and what roles you wanted to have played within the team. 
Lori Seavey: Sure. Yeah, 'cause I've been on listing appointments before. They're like we hear you have a team, right? Are we gonna get you?
Because some people, some agents will downplay a team you don't want a team. You're never gonna get Lori, you're not gonna get, and I'm like, that's right. [00:38:00] Listing side, you're gonna get me through the whole transaction. Now I'm, that's mine. I'm the listing specialist having a team. So being a solo agent, which I was for many years, if I get sick, if something my daughter's graduating, something's happening.
I'm out like. I can't clone myself. And so I felt let me start adding a team first. I just added, I needed a full-time admin. I needed somebody to start handling all the paperwork part of it so I could really focus on what I do best. And so doing that, and then it came to being where I needed a buyer's agent because I couldn't handle both of 'em at open houses for my sellers and doing those open houses.
How am I gonna be at open houses for my buyers? And so for, there's people that can call themselves a team that maybe have a ton of people, they call themselves a team, but they're all individual agents that are together. I feel like for me, my team [00:39:00] is, we all know the agents, like every my clients have met every single person on my team, especially 'cause when we're staging, we're all a part of it.
We're gonna add video and all of that stuff in with our clients also. But I even bring another person from my team on my listing appointment also, so they're really able to meet everybody. We all know that house inside and out. 
Kent Thaler: Does it help to have the different perspectives from your team so that in case you miss something, or in case somebody has a different perspective as to what is valuable in this particular property?
Lori Seavey: Oh it helps so much. The difference is, Karen is my brain. She's my full-time admin, but she's a licensed agent. She also helps to stage, so she's incredible with even just keeping everything on track but my husband has been invaluable and he just retired from teaching in order to help me and join my team.
He's so good with people. And in my listing appointments, he'll [00:40:00] put questions back on my, on the sellers, which you're really insightful, and draw them out. I'm learning from him. Right now on things I should be doing in my listing appointments. And afterwards he'll always, he'll let me know what I did well and what I didn't.
Ryan Cook: He's still being a teacher. He is still grading you. 
Lori Seavey: Yes. But I wanna learn. I wanna learn. So it's all good. 
Ryan Cook: But what's also interesting though too, is that back on the dual agency where you're representing both sides, like I don't allow it in my office. I think it's a disservice to the client. I know there are some states, like Colorado doesn't allow it at all.
Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where we both operate does allow it. I'm not a fan. When you're there to representing a seller, your job is a represent the seller. You can't represent both and provide them the services of advice, guidance, and counsel.
You can't do it. So super important there. And then Lori brought up a really good, important thing about teams, and I'm glad she did, is that most teams are just a. A conglomeration of [00:41:00] people that are all doing their same thing, and I think they're like, oh, I need someone who can fill in if I'm not available on, and that they're not really working together.
I started off my career on a team very similar. Everyone was their own individual person. I had a different thought of what it was going to be but it wasn't a team. Most are just, they're individuals who happen to call themselves a team, and I think it may be for marketing purposes to make themselves look.
They have more market share perhaps. But they're not operating as a team where, like Lori had mentioned, she's a listing specialist. That's what her focus is, and then has folks. Where she's doing the staging, getting other opinions. She has other folks who are focusing on working with the buyers and being their advocates.
And that's really how a team's supposed to work. And then obviously Lori at that point is the one driving policy in the team, one driving standards in the team. This is how we're gonna market, this is what we're gonna do. This is, let's review what we're doing. Alright. A question came up. I hate when questions come up from a client because that question is a potential point of anxiety where they're not gonna be as [00:42:00] happy with us and we wanna make sure we're giving them five star service or whatever you call your service level.
So we need to be thinking, and, Lori's job may be, I'm assuming, alright, we need to handle this. I'd like to see it done like this. And then alright, staff put this together and get it done. And where most agents, they'll see stuff, but because they're solo, and I've been in this position, you're solo, you are like, man here's a great point we get.
I gotta get this done, but I'm so busy that it takes me two or three months to get it done. When you have team who they have individual responsibilities and can go and execute that in a matter of days, 
Lori Seavey: right? Even last night, it was great. Karen knew I was gonna be gone this morning that I had to get down to Narragansett.
So she goes, Lori, just send me an email of what's on your mind that I can take care of. And I lag. I go, do you really want everything on my mind? But it was little things like, okay, we need to send a thank you to this person for this [00:43:00] referral. We need to, it was just banging out a ton of stuff that I needed to do, and it was so awesome to just get that off my plate and she's got it done.
And so that's phenomenal to have. Like I said, having a team has changed things. My daughter graduates next week, next Sunday, and Hey, 
Kent Thaler: congratulations. Yeah, thank 
Lori Seavey: you. She's gonna take over all my social media, which I don't have time for. I love it, but I can get lost in Canva for a few hours.
That's not where I need to be. Yeah. And so she's gonna take over all my, and she's younger, so she's already like, why did you post that mom? What do this job? And she's I'm gonna delete your Instagram account, so it'll be good to have her take over all of that. 
Ryan Cook: We got, that's what we got. Kent's his oldest daughter who is MBA and specialty in media.
And we were starting to do stuff and then she comes back with guys, that was terrible. You need to, why did you do that? Why do you talk about that? And you're like, oh God. It's nice to have people who that's their focus because one, I think one of the greatest challenges we've had. [00:44:00] There's been such an explosion of technology to our business.
So one of the things is a couple of marketers that I followed my most of my career, one being Dan Kennedy. And he would say, you should be looking at what other marketers in your space are doing on a regular basis and what has become the norm. And those are now the defacto standard. So do you remember when I remember I was taught initially it had a point and shoot camera and you'd go and take your own photos of the property.
And then the people who were really doing well, were hiring photographers. You're like, I wanna do alright, I'm gonna hire a professional photographer. And it freed up time for me too. And then people started doing floor plans. That wasn't always something. And now that became almost standard.
I'd see probably a third of listings out there have floor plans. So it still hasn't become a defacto standard. You seeing aerial shots and drone shots, so to see more videos. It almost feels like we as [00:45:00] agents now need to be content creators.
Have you developed that sense that there's this overwhelming need to continually be creating marketing pieces to be in front of potential clients? And do you see that as something that your daughter may be helping you with to enhance the type of services that your team can provide?
Lori Seavey: Oh yeah, a hundred percent. I feel like number one for my, where we get the most views and everything is when we're staging a property. Sometimes we'll do. Like the fast motion, it'll go us transform on a property or we start doing some video sneak peeks of properties. I start getting all these private messages.
Where's that property? Where's that? Or I get all these comments. People love seeing a house transformed. One person reached out to me and said, Lori, I wanna list my house just so you can stage it and then I can buy it back again, but I can live in it. That was the greatest compliment I got. That was just a couple weeks ago.
But I feel like [00:46:00] our video, it's video that has been really big and getting a lot of just action back and forth. So I think that is so important to be doing that. It also for the public that's on social media, the more you're on social media and you're showing that you're busy, that you're gonna be the one that they're gonna call.
I know some agents that aren't even doing much, but they'll post, just listen a house. Okay. Getting it ready. Or they'll every single home inspection, under agreement, sign, purchase and sale, all that. And they'll go, and you think they're selling like 18 houses and it's the same house?
Yeah. So social media can do that, but for my clients, I wanna get their house out there and get help, help people to get excited about it. I love doing the, coming soon for my properties, and I love getting the video out there beforehand and getting the interest out. I love doing that part of it.
Kent Thaler: Of people think that the best part of the movie is the previews. 
Lori Seavey: Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. 
Kent Thaler: You don't necessarily look at it like [00:47:00] that. I I'm sorry. 
Lori Seavey: I was gonna say one thing when it came to you were talking about floor plans and everything. So Ryan, I do 'em on every single one of my houses.
I don't care if it's a million and a half or it's a $300,000 house. They're both getting the floor plan. They're both getting the same exact treatment across the board. For me, it's my digital footprint that listing when it goes up. I love when people go, I saw that listing and I knew it was yours 'cause how it looked.
And so I treat all of my houses exactly the same. 
Ryan Cook: I've sent you those messages. I've seen that plant before. Know 
Lori Seavey: I would try to switch it up some. 
Ryan Cook: That's Lori's plant. I've seen it. 
Lori Seavey: I have a lot of. 
Kent Thaler: Lori, I have a kind of a tangential question. Let's assume that you've done your job well and you've staged well, and you've marketed well and a bunch of people come and now all of a sudden the offers start coming in.
How do you decide which offer you recommend to your client? It would seem to me that it's the one with the most amount of [00:48:00] zeroes after it, but that may or may not be true. I guess financing must have something to do with it and feel, 
Lori Seavey: it's I'll tell you, it's my favorite thing to do is negotiate my offers.
'cause even when I have that, we typically set a offer deadline to be fair to everybody. I don't like when agents say, okay, all offers are due Sunday night. My client didn't even get a chance to call the town hall about something, or they have a question they wonder if they can put in a pool. I don't like that.
So typically I'll do Monday night or Tuesday morning. Because I don't want emotional offers. That's the last thing I want is people were rushing around and now it's an emotional offer. I want that they've thought through it. They had time to talk to their lender. They had time maybe to get their agent back in or their parents in.
Ryan Cook: What? What's the number one reason you don't want the emotional offer, Lori? Because they always fall apart. Oh my God. Every time. Yeah. They'll fall by and I'll never take sight unscene . I did it [00:49:00] once and that's the experience. 'cause you've then seen what happened so you don't do it again. I did it once.
Lori Seavey: We actually even canceled an open house. It was like 10 years ago. Oh my Goodness's a great offer. They asked, we canceled open house and then they got there and saw it and we're like, ah, we don't like it. That just killed a whole week, so I'll never ever do that again.
Oh, not only that, then it looks funny back on market. Yeah. That's the last thing you want. 
Ryan Cook: Oh yeah. Hey, what happened? 
Lori Seavey: Yeah. Yeah. They never saw that. And they did and they hated it. Yeah. 
Ryan Cook: But your clients will love it. Yeah. 
Lori Seavey: So I love though, when I get the offers in, so for me, and this is all experience, why I tell people, you should hire experience because Ryan will say the same thing here.
There's a lot more that goes into an offer, and if you don't know, if you don't know to negotiate the appraisal at the offer and you wait until the appraisal is done, after the purchase and sale, the seller will always lose. They will always have to come down in [00:50:00] price.
I'm looking at how much the buyers are putting down because you want somebody strong, you want somebody, hopefully at least 20% is definitely more appealing. So then a FHA or something, unfortunately it is more appealing. I want what's gonna get my clients to the finish line. I'm looking at are they covering an appraisal gap or not?
What if it does not appraise? Let's hit that now in the offer of time. And then I'm looking at, okay, are they waiving a home inspection? Or if they're doing a home inspection, are they gonna cover an amount of that? Are they gonna cover first 10,000 or 20,000 of issues that can come up? So there's a lot I'm doing.
There's some, you can get eight offers on a property and you're maybe getting rid of five of those that you know are just not gonna work. And then the top three, I'm on that phone with the agents going back and forth, and Ryan got to be a part of one of these. And sometimes our buyers will only go so far.
We're like, just go a little bit higher. But I'm like, this is what we're looking for. [00:51:00] We want an appraisal gap. And Ryan's clients missed out on one only because the other buyers completely waived the appraisal said, we don't even care what it comes in at. We're gonna buy the house no matter what.
Which is his buyers shouldn't feel comfortable doing. 
Ryan Cook: And I'll tell you, and when I'm on his A buyer's agent, man, I have a hard time telling someone. 'cause you're basically telling them there's a potential, you're writing a blank check and it's very hard. 
Lori Seavey: No, you're 
Kent Thaler: absolutely right. I'd actually like you guys to explain the difference what an appraisal gap is. 
Ryan Cook: Oh, that's a great question. Yeah. And I wanna expand on that question a little bit. Not only explaining what an appraisal gap coverage is, but that's been something that's really come up really since COVID, since we've had such a shortage of inventory.
Although inventory, I think we're over 10,000 units available in Massachusetts right now. So we're back over where we were prior to COVID, which is a positive sign, but explain what a place gap coverage is, and then it's become, it's almost become a norm. Do you think, in your [00:52:00] opinion, that is gonna be something that's been negotiated at the offer stage moving forward?
That's gonna become the norm. 
Lori Seavey: For me, I feel like it's the norm for me. I feel like I've been doing it now for such a long time. Are you gonna, are you willing to cover any appraisal? So what it could be, Kent, is, so I could have a property listed, I had one listed at $739,000.
And so with that, I get offers in that are much higher. So I'm like, okay, is this property going to appraise for 810,000? Okay. Or not? So it's now going to the buyer saying, if it doesn't appraise for that, is there an amount you're willing to cover? They may say, Hey, I'm willing to cover 30,000. If it doesn't 
Kent Thaler: oh, so this is the salesman in me, or the marketing person in me would say, okay if the house is listed at $739,000, you have a really good idea that house is gonna appraise at $739,000.
Oh 
Ryan Cook: no. So see, [00:53:00] wait, you have a, 
Kent Thaler: wait, If somebody comes in and then offers $810,000 for it because they want to close everybody out. And they, there shouldn't be an I'm assuming the appraisal gap is the difference between what the house appraises for and what you offer, right?
And so what the bank is willing to finance versus, what the difference that you'd have to come up with in equity. It seems to me that if somebody comes in at $810,000 on a house that you have on the market for $739,000, that might have only appraised for $700,000.
Ryan Cook: No. One, it's a great question and two, like I can typically look at, if I, I have a couple clients looking in North Attleboro right now and Lori being the number one listing agent in town, I know there's a really good chance it's gonna be one of her listings.
I can look at a property and go, that's Lori. And I know it's her listing because she understands, like in certain price points, a really challenging price point. In North Attleboro, for example, of the last couple of months has been the $700,000 range. There's been like, one comes up a [00:54:00] month and so she knows, and this is strategy again, one of the questions you'd ask why you're hiring someone deep depth, a deep, in deep knowledge or in-depth knowledge of the market, right?
If you look at it and in the $700,000 range, it accounts for 20% of all sales in the market. And right now there's one house on the market in that price range. We know one out of every five sales in that town is in the $700,000s. Right now, there's only one house, so there's high demand.
So what you have to look at is, all right, do I push the price and list it at $799,000, right? Or do you take a strategy of, put it a little bit lower, encourage more traffic, encourage more offers. And in a market like that, what Lori has done very successfully, put it a little bit lower.
And sometimes you, it's hard to get the seller on board with that because they like you said it, it's [00:55:00] worth, 7 75 or seven 80. Part of that strategy, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Lori, is that your job as a listing agent is to get the best terms possible for your client.
And if you can encourage more offers, obviously the more offers, the more likely you get. Terms that are more rock solid for your client, where you end up with an offer that isn't gonna fall apart. You end up with buyers willing to give up certain rights or willing to cover differences out of pocket because you've created such a frenzy.
'cause they get into that open house and Lori's good. 'cause generally she's got multiple people from her team at those open houses. And she is Madam Mayor of North Attleboro, so everybody knows this. So she's high and smiling, everyone's having a good time. But they also see there are 20 people in the house and it took them five minutes to find a parking spot.
And so what she's done is she's created a little bit of [00:56:00] anxiety buildup where folks are like, boy, there's a lot of people that want this house. I'm gonna have to come in really hot on this offer to have any hope of putting it together. 
Lori Seavey: And I try, when I talk to my clients about listing their property, I always do the price and strategy of where you list it and how many people you're gonna drive in.
And if you list it too high, you're driving in nobody and they say it's better to put your property on the market for $1 than to overprice it. Sure. Because the market knows what it should be. It's like water, it finds its natural level. The market's gonna determine the price. You just gotta drive the people there is what you gotta do.
And a lot of things that we've done, even shortening our open house times, you're getting more people in at once. There's a reason for it, and it makes 
Ryan Cook: your open house a priority, right? Yeah. If there are five in town and yours is for an hour and the other one's for three hours we gotta make sure we get to her open house because like we got time to get to the [00:57:00] other one.
Lori Seavey: Yeah. But I just feel like pricing it. Where you price it can kill a deal or it can totally make a house explode in a great way. And I feel like that's been so important. We've had terms, I just had one I put on in rent them and the buyers completely waived their whole mortgage contingency.
So not only the appraisal they waived the whole mortgage contingency in order to get that house to say even, 'cause they'd lose their whole deposit if they can't get that mortgage. Yeah. So they felt very secure in that.
Kent Thaler: Relative or themselves, where that if it fell apart, somebody would write a check and they'd be fine. 
Lori Seavey: Mom and dad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So those, it's really important, like I said, for me, getting the offers in and negotiating those, I feel like that's the most important part of my job after getting somebody's house ready.
Is that part of it? So I the offers, some people go oh, you're the best offers. Here you go. I don't even, I told myself, listen, offers are due at this time. You're not gonna hear from me for a few hours. 'cause now I'm negotiating [00:58:00] those offers. Now I'm calling those lenders, right? I'm making sure they're solid, that I'm making sure.
And I like to talk to the lender too, and I like to know what their job is. Learning from experience, we accepted an offer once with a nurse that was per diem. So her per diem hours changed. She could no longer afford the house. So those are questions that now I'm asking up front, that I wanna know that they're solid.
Are they squeaking by, are they're covering this gap? Do they have that money? There's times I've gotten offers and it hasn't said anything about them selling a house. Then I call the lender. They're like, yeah, once they sell their house, I'm like, what do you mean?
Oh yeah, they have to sell their house in order to buy. Yeah. Okay, that's good to know. So it's so important that you're doing that vetting and you're calling the lenders also. So I tell my clients, you're not gonna hear from me for a bit. 'cause now I have to do my work and and I love being like, here's where the offer started at and here's where I got them to.
Ryan Cook: Yeah. No, that's a great strategy and clarifying that. We've had [00:59:00] so many times, especially over the last number of years, where they're writing an offer way over. Or they'll say they'll come out of pocket covering some appraisal gap coverage and you talk to the lender, they're like, they don't have extra money for that.
Exactly. 
Lori Seavey: And you dunno, either the agent is in experienced Yeah. They don't know. So you, to the lender. 
Kent Thaler: But, it's fascinating, but it's off a little bit of the topic of where I'd wanted to go and try and fully understand how you recommend an offer to be accepted. I get that you talk to the money people. Are there other things Ryan and I were talking privately the other day about, those letters that people write, the personal statements.
I'm assuming that they have no bearing because you don't want to get stuck in a. Situation where you get sued because you, I'll let you 
Ryan Cook: answer that one, 
Kent Thaler: Lori. Yeah.
Lori Seavey: I'll ask my clients, do you wanna read the letters or not? But sometimes I hold the letters till afterwards.
I will say, if it comes down to two offers that are very similar and they can't decide, and one person wrote a [01:00:00] letter and the other didn't, the person who wrote the letter is gonna get it. 'cause now they just made an emotional connection, but So what you're 
Kent Thaler: saying is you should write a letter even though you know it's probably not gonna get given 
Lori Seavey: I have my, I, yeah, but I have all my buyers write a letter just in case.
Kent Thaler: It's interesting because, yeah my, my gut instinct would be to not write a letter if the color of my cash isn't enough. There's another house out there, but I get it. It's 
Lori Seavey: funny, I had a client who's very, he's an accountant, very never said All letters are gonna do nothing for me.
And then he got a couple letters, and one of them was a couple that really wanted to move by his house because his parents were right down the street. He was in the middle of moving to Chicago to be right down the street from his parents. So he is oh, I understand this. He's wow, these do work.
Kent Thaler: Without getting too deeply into it can you, as the agent get in trouble or can the seller get in trouble if they pass on a better deal because they get swayed by an emotional letter? 
Lori Seavey: I don't think that would ever [01:01:00] be the reason like, oh, it's just a letter that did it, but.
me as the, 
Kent Thaler: but me as a potential buyer wouldn't know that. If my agent comes back and says they wrote a letter and it was very well received and you didn't, and 
Ryan Cook: it would never be, it would never be communicated. Never. They would never, 
Lori Seavey: yeah.
They would never be communicated back. 
Kent Thaler: Yeah. Excuse me. 
Ryan Cook: And answering your question, Kent and I think Lori was given such good answers that we were interjecting with additional questions, but getting back to the, when you have a bunch of offers, how are you helping them select what is the best offer for them?
I don't think we actually close that out 'cause we kept interrupting her. 
Lori Seavey: I feel like price, we're gonna look at price always. We're gonna look at how much money that buyer is putting down. To make sure the offer's strong, you wanna get to the finish line. We are looking at terms, we are looking at what they're doing with a home inspection, and we are looking at if they're covering an appraisal gap.
So [01:02:00] those are the things that, and then, like I said, then it's their lender also. I also, I don't like pre-approvals from certain lenders. Certain banks, I wouldn't take them because we've had it where we can't find, they don't know where the file is somewhere in this huge bank, and now we don't know where the file is and it's not closing.
So there's certain ones I won't, that I won't work with. So there's so many different facets to look at and what offer we're gonna accept. It's never just price. 
Kent Thaler: So I 
Ryan Cook: guess to sum that up, would you say that you are looking for the offer that reduces risk as much as possible for your client?
Lori Seavey: I think a hundred percent. A hundred percent. 'cause you could have somebody that offers a hundred thousand over and it's contingent upon an appraising and a full home inspection. 
Kent Thaler: Yep. 
Lori Seavey: That's not your best offer. 
Kent Thaler: No, but it's not a real offer. 
Lori Seavey: What 
Kent Thaler: you're saying. I find this whole part of it fascinating because everybody's heard the story of I put my house on sale during, when the market was really hot, high, [01:03:00] and, I listed it for 500 and I was able to get 600,000, in cash, and I had to move out in two weeks.
Does that happen once in a blue moon? 
Lori Seavey: And cash is not always king. People think cash is king right now. I, we had a. Buyers get a mortgage and close in 11 days with a mortgage. So cash is not always king. 
Ryan Cook: It depends on the market. One of the things I'll tell my clients is if you have, one of the things about reducing risk, Lori had mentioned if you have someone putting down less money, let's say FHA federal Housing Administration, so three and a half percent down versus someone with the same offer, except they're putting 20% down all of the terms identical, you're gonna pick the one that's 20% down because there's a higher percentage that it's going to close that issue.
And the, while the selling is using cash great cash is great, but when you have multiple offers and someone else is putting down 20 or 30%, that's gonna close at a super [01:04:00] high rate too. And so the cash doesn't really stand out in that case. 
Kent Thaler: It seems to me, and maybe I'm wrong, but what the cash does is it takes the bank out of the equation. Sure. And so therefore, there's a certainty that we're going to close assuming that all the other terms are met. And when you talk about the appraisal gap if it's a cash offer, right? I'd rather be talking to somebody who is ready to pay $750,000 for the house in cash and the house appraised out at $800,000 and argue about that $50 grand than I would somebody who is, looking at a mortgage and they have 20% down.
it, they, 20% down. And in order to get another 50 grand, they'd have to come up with another 10 grand on the deposit. That might be much tighter. I don't know. It just seems to me that right now, this cash offers is 
Ryan Cook: we're not seeing the cash offers.
And again, you can tell me, Lori, 'cause you list more homes than I do, but we're not seeing the cash offers that are blowing away [01:05:00] financed offers. 
Lori Seavey: Most cash offers they'll come in under 'cause they think, oh, I'm cash. I'm coming in under, yeah. And I'm like, 
Kent Thaler: so is that true of individuals paying in cash or is that the corporate people who are coming in and buying and paying in cash?
I 
Lori Seavey: individuals. I don't feel like we have a lot of corporate here. 
Kent Thaler: That's more Midwest and south thing. 
Lori Seavey: I think wherever they have a Amazon.
Yeah. Not North Attleborough. 
Kent Thaler: Got it. Got it. So my next question would be, let's assume that we everything's going along smoothly and swimmingly and then something happens at or near the closing that. Throws a monkey wrench and everything. How do you handle that as the listing agent and how do you keep your client from jumping off a cliff?
Lori Seavey: I do think, I think what we do at the beginning with the offer will help avoid a lot of that because the things that can come up can be an [01:06:00] appraisal issue. What could come up later on, but I feel like with us getting them to cover an appraisal gap, and I let my clients know listen, they're willing to cover 20,000.
If it's under that, you may, this may be where you end up, but you're still getting 20,000 over what the appraiser says. So we talk through it all, the whole communication. So if it did not appraise, they know exactly where they're at. But by doing that at the beginning, we're avoiding that drama.
And then I think by, if they are doing a home inspection and we're like, Hey, they're willing to cover the first $10,000 or $20,000 of issues, or they're doing it just for health and safety reasons, something like that, then we're taking away what could come up in a home inspection. Now, I do feel like I go through things when I'm pre-listing of, here's some things I feel like you need to take care of.
That would be a red flag for me if I had a buyer on your home so that they don't come up later on. Now if [01:07:00] an issue does come up, I will say this. I don't say anything to my sellers until I've done my best to figure it out. The last thing I wanna do, even I don't tell if my, say I have people tell me, agents tell me, oh Lori, we're sending an offer.
We're sending an offer. I don't tell my clients, right? Oh, I got a phone call. They're sending an offer. 'cause maybe they then change their mind. They don't send the offer. So I'm just taking my client on a rollercoaster, and I think that's the worst feeling ever. So if a problem comes on, I'm not gonna tell them, I'm not gonna call them right away.
This is what's going on. I'm gonna call the other agent and I'm gonna say, how do we figure this out? What can we do to get this to the closing table? And I'm gonna do my best to figure out everything beforehand. And then sometimes we figure it all out and our clients never even know there was an issue.
But I think it's important to do that and not run right back to the clients. 
Kent Thaler: So do you run across a bunch of agents who aren't that proactive and [01:08:00] therefore they drive you? It drive it complicates your transactions frequently. 
Lori Seavey: It's funny, I have a deal right now where, and I love the agent, he's a sweetheart, but.
He doesn't know anything that's going on. I was like, what's the age of the roof? What's this? What's that? So I go and I pull all the permits and everything on it and I was like did you know, hey, here's the age of the roof and here's where they didn't close out this permit.
Like I got permits closed out for him, took care of everything was reaching out to the building. They're like, oh, we'll close that out. And so he just wasn't on top of his property at all, sweetheart. And very grateful, but just not on top of his property, which if it wasn't me, he was dealing with late as they got to the closing, they would've saw that, Hey, there's things here that need to be taken care of.
And it would've been harder to do at that point. 
Ryan Cook: And that's also like super important because successful agents or just agents who are I think serving right, are collaborative workers. There are [01:09:00] agents we run into and not just agents. This could go for any profession that they're finger pointers.
There's someone to blame and they wanna make it known that it wasn't them. And for me, like I never see any value in that. Once you accept an offer and you're working with another broker, we call a co-broke, your job is to work together and make it so that your clients, they never know all the stuff that goes on in the background.
There's no value in them knowing and especially when something comes up. Where Lori, you had said you, don't even let them know sometimes. 'cause there was no value in letting 'em know. Sometimes I will let them know, but I've already solved it. Hey, by the way, I wanna let you know this came up.
Here's what we did to solve it. And if it's something we can take care of and they didn't need to be involved, we just take care of it. And I may let them know, but sometimes things come up and we need their approval on something and we need to get their input because there may be multiple options.
But what we've done is investigated it, figure out, all right, here are all the options. Okay, [01:10:00] this is what option one means. This is what option two means. This is what option three means, plus and minus on each. Very. And I never wanna make anything. At least me personally. I never wanna make anything seem like a big deal.
It's all right. We've dealt with this before and I have, because once you've been doing it a while, you're running stuff like we've dealt with this before. Here's how we handle this. How would you prefer to do it? I like to keep a nice level tone. I'm letting the other agent know, or the other professionals involved, my job really is to one they're hiring, whether it be me, whether it be Lori, whether it be another agent who's got skill in handling that stuff.
So one of the questions who asked early on is, how do you separate one agent from another one? That skill, that experience, right? Vetting folks in advance, getting all those questions answered in advance when a problem comes up. Either having a solution, having a guy, how many times have you done something?
You're like, I got a guy and gonna get taken care of, right? But having a guy, for example, or a gal and. You just take care of it seamlessly in the background, and you only pull in the [01:11:00] client when it's something that absolutely needs their input.
Oh, we just one of these, and they may be a little upset at times, but because you've taken care of it, they know that you've handled it to the best and their needs are being met. And the other professionals are on board like that's our job to make it seem like it's seamless.
They go, wow. Like that transaction was super simple in the background. It was like chaos. But, we took care of it. We were juggling all the balls in the air. But our job is really to make, shelter them from that stuff because that's what we do. Like I, you go to your accountant, I don't wanna know all the details of what the accountant's doing, especially when you're doing business taxes.
Good lord. I don't wanna know. Just tell me what the number is and, do we categorize stuff properly to get my proper write offs?
Kent Thaler: So what you're really suggesting is that agents who make real estate complicated for the sake of making it complicated because they wanna prove their value are doing a disservice to their clients.
Lori Seavey: [01:12:00] If they're making it complicated. My biggest thing I tell people is I wanna take as much stress off of you as possible. Like I really do. And that I'm there to serve them and to help them, I don't wanna stress 'em out. It's already stressful enough. Just unpacking is stressful. 
Kent Thaler: If you talk to a hundred people who have either tried to buy or sell a house, 95 of them will tell you it was extraordinarily stressful because they weren't handheld appropriately.
Lori Seavey: That's sad. 
Kent Thaler: Yeah. But it's, I mean that, that's, again, it's the reason why we started the podcast. It's to show people that it doesn't have to be that complicated. real estate isn't that complicated when you're dealing with professionals, when you have the right tools, when you're organized, and you understand what needs to be done in the transaction.
Lori Seavey: And that's why experience is so important. And that's for sellers to do their due diligence. 'cause I've had, where I just got with a seller recently and she's okay, [01:13:00] Lori, I'm interviewing you and I'm interviewing this other person. And I was like I've never heard that name before. And she was like, yeah.
He said, he sells a lot. I was like, okay. And not that I like Zillow. I'm not a fan of Zillow, but I like Zillow for one reason is you can click on, in the top left of your computer, find an agent, and you can put their name in there and you can see all their sales, you can see all their reviews, you can see everything.
And so I use that a lot on my listing appointments. Listen, any agent you're talking to right now, put all of us at your interviewing into Zillow and look it up because this, so we did it there with the woman. I said what's his name? Did I put it in zero sales in the past 12 months? 
Ryan Cook: The old fake it till you make it, which I think, but 
Lori Seavey: it's so sad because this is an older woman.
She needs as much money as possible. She's going into assisted living and he doesn't know what he's doing. And so I was like, oh my goodness. So for me, I love Zillow for that reason, is I [01:14:00] have over 300 5- star reviews, that helps. People can see how many houses I've sold. If I'm representing a seller or a buyer, they can see what my listings look like.
So it's really important that sellers do their due diligence and get experience. 
Kent Thaler: How does a new agent get experience? 
Lori Seavey: I felt like it wasn't so hard when we got started. Probably Ryan, I feel like it's harder now for agents 'cause I feel like the 
Kent Thaler: only this is how Ryan started back in the stone age.
Ryan Cook: Hey, Lori got her license before me, so 
Kent Thaler: I cannot believe you just said that on our podcast.
Lori Seavey: I feel like we have a lot of strong agents in our area right now. It's really hard to break into that unless they're working with family or whatever.
The best way for them to start is be on a team, and learn from experience. I started on a team 
Kent Thaler: the thing that I've taken from this conversation is that the team aspect of it certainly helps because at least you have oversight and management.
Lori Seavey: Right? 
Kent Thaler: And that 
Ryan Cook: it's, it's oversight, it's management. The type of team matters. [01:15:00] So for me, with the team I was on, was selling over a hundred homes a year. Very prolific broker, very well known in the community, in an area that I wanted to be in. Which was, town adjacent to mine.
So reputation really mattered. I didn't wanna align with someone that didn't have a good reputation. And while the team aspect wasn't what I thought it was going to be, I was still able to gain a lot of experience. One, it was a time when agents went into the office all the time. So I was able to get experience from hearing other experienced agents in the office and challenges they were having.
But I was able to go on appointments with this broker. I was able to ask questions because initially there wasn't this large digital footprint at the time. Now I feel like some people are picking agents because they're a TikTok star, even though they haven't actually sold anything yet and they're really rolling the dice.
But at the time we didn't have that. So I worked on building out my network. I leveraged the team sales to show validity [01:16:00] that I had a team behind me who could help answer questions that I didn't know the answers to yet. A thing that's really important for, a brand new agent aligning themselves if not necessarily just the specific team, an office or a eight other agents who can, provide people to ask questions of sales stats you can say, Hey, our office sells, or, we have this many years of experience that, that someone knows alright, maybe this person we know this agent is a little bit newer, they do have access to a lot of other information.
We, and we that Im, sometimes it's not always about the agent who sells the most. Sometimes it's a personal connection because when we're working with clients. There's so much, at least good agents, there's so much communication that goes on when you've, Kent, you've heard like Lori is like a master communicator with her clients.
And I think that's a super important aspect where a lot of agents fail is just a failure in communication. And sometimes it may not be the agent who's selling the [01:17:00] most is the one who you feel you can trust and communicate with and be honest with. And they're gonna be honest with you in return and tell you if they don't know something, but they're gonna get the answer for you.
And you feel confident that they're gonna do that. 
Lori Seavey: Working with buyers is completely different than working with sellers. 
Kent Thaler: That was good that was gonna be my la that was gonna be like my second to last question. Yeah. So how do you see the difference between working with buyers versus working with sellers in the way in which you have to approach the relationship?
Lori Seavey: I think the relationship is probably the same. You want. People to know that they can trust you, that you're looking out for them. All of that stuff is all the same. But the good thing is for being a strong listing agent, and Ryan could say the same thing, it does help us on how to write up a good offer for our buyers because we know what offers are being accepted, so we know how to write those offers.
When I got started, I was a buyer's agent. That's how I got started, and then got into listings. And now pretty much I wanna only handle [01:18:00] listings. I just think it's a different thing. 
Kent Thaler: In this day and age, specialization is in all industries.
And if you can't be specialized, if you don't necessarily. Become an expert in one area, right? You're inevitably at a disadvantage. Inevitably you're at a disadvantage as compared to the people who do specialize. Yeah. Trying to, if you're trying to be a jack of all for 
Ryan Cook: agents trying to establish themselves, I'll tell them whether they be in my brokerage or in other brokerage, I'm like, establish a niche that you can be known for.
Don't try and be everything to everybody everywhere at all times. It's just not possible. You can't be good that way. You might know a little bit here and there, but you never really establish yourself. I've listed a lot of houses. I, and I tend to like in as much as it takes way more time.
I do working with buyers, but that's like I have where my engineering background and my construction background I like look at the houses a little bit differently and I think that's as much as my. My [01:19:00] engineering technical background helps with the marketing, and I understand that stuff and enjoy it.
I think for me, like I, I think I best serve clients personally on, on the buy side. That's just happens to be where I think I have the strongest skillset to serve 
Kent Thaler: note to self when I sell the house. I call Lori. Not That's fine. That's fine. I got it. Okay. Got it. Lori, you've been incredibly kind with your time, but I do have one more question that I'm just dying to know the answer to.
There are an awful lot of myths about real estate. And as a listing agent, you must come across sellers who have these things in their head that just drive you absolutely bonkers. What's the worst one?
Lori Seavey: I think people think it's easy. Oh, the market's hot. I just gotta put my house out there and it's gonna sell. There was a listing I took over from somebody else where they hired an agent because the agent said, I'll cut my commission, so hire me, I'll cut my commission.
[01:20:00] They hired the person. The person did nothing for them. They had no showings for two weeks on their house in a hot market, none at all. They needed to be in Texas in three weeks. They had to close on their brand new construction house down there. So they got rid of that agent and was like, okay, hired me.
I'm like, I'm not gonna. My commission to nothing. I'm not gonna do that, but I'm gonna show you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna work really hard for you. We rearranged that whole house. I had my husband and son carrying a couch from the first floor to the second floor, taking a bed, moving it from one wall to the other wall.
Like I knew the presentation I wanted. Got the drone in to take a picture so it showed the roof line because the other agent, just went in and just took photos. That was it. Trash cans, dishes in the sink, like dog dishes. It's 
Ryan Cook: easy. It's a hot market. Rights, 
Lori Seavey: a hot market. It's gonna sell no matter what didn't sell.
So we did all that work and then we, and this was a house that was on for $999,000 sat for a few weeks, nothing at all, no showings. They're like, we need to sell. We don't even [01:21:00] care if we get 9 99. We need to sell. So we did all of our work. I said, we're gonna list it at $949,000 now. And so we're gonna list it there.
We put it back on the market, had an open house, drove people in, sold it for 1 million and it closed in three weeks. That was so much work though. That was probably, we were in that house for about 25 hours when you do man hours, staging that house, clearing out that house, helping them move everything in their basement over so we could show the basement.
It was a lot of work that we did there, but they were gone in three weeks and they sold it for a million to do that. So it's, it takes work. And then we marketed it too, and there was a house across the street from it on at the same time. And that house, I think took over two months to sell.
Ryan Cook: So I hope you made a video with those clients. 
Lori Seavey: I did. I have a video of them throwing up their Sold the sold rider. So [01:22:00] excited. They're like huge fans of ours, which I love. 
Kent Thaler: It's a great story and now they live in Texas. Are they coming back so they can buy another house from you?
Ryan Cook: And they know people. 
Lori Seavey: I'll tell you, I had a listing appointment recently that just sold for $950,000. They go, we really wanna talk to some of your sellers. Oh. And the, I was like, I have over 300 5- star reviews. You wanna, they go, we wanna talk to someone. So I gave them, one of the numbers I gave was his number and Oh.
Gave a phenomenal review, which helped me to get that listing that just sold for $950,000 in North. So it's really congratulations 
Kent Thaler: on selling the house and yeah. 
Lori Seavey: Thank you. 
Kent Thaler: Way to have the relationship that worked. Yeah. That's important. 
Lori Seavey: Okay. 
Kent Thaler: So my final question is one that I've been I should have asked much earlier, but I'm curious, when we were talking about staging of the house, we're only talking about the inside of the house.
What advice do you have for homeowners about the outside and curb appeal? 
Lori Seavey: It's super important 'cause that's the first thing people are gonna drive by and see is the exterior of the house. So 
Kent Thaler: is it worth [01:23:00] spending money?
Lori Seavey: It depends when you're listing it.
If you have black railings and they're all peeling or whatever, send it down and repaint them. Spray paint. It's the cost of spray paint. Yep. That will make a big difference. Changing a light outside can make a big difference.
Putting out a nice mat now that we're in this season, so I just went on a listing appointment and I was like, everybody's doing their lawns. I'm like, look at your neighbors. Look at everybody. And he is all over. I'm like, you need someone to edge. You need to mulch. You can mulch lightly. But yes, now in this season, people are gonna have to put some money into the exterior of their house.
Kent Thaler: Gotcha. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that was covered. 'cause I did, I, we had skipped over it and I made a little note and I said, ask about this. And I've been trying to slide that back in. 
Lori Seavey: No, that's okay. And paint's important too, because if there's chipping paint, you're now ruling out FHA and VA buyers, so there's things you wanna take care of about that 
Kent Thaler: because they can't afford to paint the house.
Ryan Cook: No. That's not it. It's part of the appraisal. [01:24:00] Gotcha. Standard. 
Lori Seavey: Yeah. That'll be good questions for tomorrow with the lender because they're just more strict than, they're not gonna put, give a loan on peeling paint. Now I've had buyers come in and be like, I will paint it. If it needs to be painted, I will paint it.
I want this house. But it definitely is important right now. It's so important that you have a nice curb of appeal. 
I people that wanna redo their driveway and I'm like, don't spend the money on that. There's gonna be, your whole driveway's gonna be filled with cars anyway.
Kent Thaler: I just redid my driveway six months ago. 
Lori Seavey: But I just don't talk to my wife. But I usually write it in the disclosure. If you're concerned about your driveway, just disclose everything and write it in your, I love sellers disclosures for my sellers. 'cause there's a little box that says there anything that could impact the value of your house.
I'm like, write it in. 'cause the buyer has to sign that and give it to me with their offer. So if they do a home inspection, they can't come back and talk about that thing 'cause it is off the table. 
Ryan Cook: They try.
Like Yeah, you knew about that in advance with your offer, so we're not even gonna discuss that. [01:25:00] 
Lori Seavey: Yep, exactly. 
Kent Thaler: It, we'll have to have you back if you're willing at some point in time in the future to have an entire discussion about disclosures. What needs to be disclosed, what doesn't need to be disclosed what happens when there's a conflict about whether or not something actually was disclosed.
But that's not the conversation we're gonna have today. But it's definitely one on Ryan and Mine's list of for a future episode because I think that the whole concept of disclosures really sends people off in spaces and directions that they don't necessarily need to go in. It complicates things greatly, but it can cost you an awful lot of money if it's not handled well or correctly.
Lori Seavey: Definitely. Yeah. In any event. Lori, we really appreciate your time. We wish you all the best of luck. 
Thank you. I love being with you both. She does. 
Ryan Cook: She doesn't need the luck. She does everything right. 
Lori Seavey: No. I [01:26:00] pray a lot. That's what it's, I pray a lot. 
Kent Thaler: Whatever you're doing, it's working.
I don't know if it's duplicatable by somebody else. Let's hope it isn't so that you can continue being the top agent in your area. Thank you. In any event, thank you so much for your time. We look forward to talking to you again. 
Ryan Cook: That's it and I'm sure I'll see you in the field, Lori. 
Kent Thaler: I 
Lori Seavey: appreciate it guys.
 
Kent Thaler: that was a really interesting episode. Lori is dynamic. She is an expert in her field and she clearly is passionate about listing staging, marketing and selling real estate. 
Ryan Cook: She's a hard act to supplant, if you're trying to compete in that market study what she's doing and I think it's a little bit more than just trying to do it better than she does.
You gotta bring something extra special. You don't get to be number one in a market for 12 consecutive years. And I'm sure she's on pace to make that 13 consecutive years. There's a lot of passion behind it. Just a [01:27:00] wonderful person.
And I'm not saying that just because we had her on I've done deals with Lori, just an absolute pleasure to work with. Her family is great to work with. Just when you get into real estate, like the type of person you want to work with, even if it's co-broking with just makes it really enjoyable and reminds you why you got into this business.
'cause not every agent's like that. Sometimes you work with an agent and you're like, oh my God, I'm gonna get out of this business if this is who I have to deal with on a regular basis. 
Kent Thaler: I think one of the things that's important to reemphasize that you just mentioned is if you tried to be just like Lori, you'd fail.
But that doesn't mean you can't take an awful lot of what she does. It's common sense, right? She basically makes real estate not that complicated. 
Ryan Cook: But it's common sense developed through years of experience, right? Correct. Yep. And that's, one of the, one of the biggest things that, we asked the question is, how would a new agent break into the business?
And when both she and I started, she's had her license a little bit longer than I have. 
Kent Thaler: Again, you mentioned that, [01:28:00] and I, I do, and it, I'm not, it has nothing to do. 
Ryan Cook: Dad's thinking. We have peers. We have peers. There when we had started, there wasn't all the digital background where you could research someone.
And I think a lot of folks now they're selecting their agent based on their TikTok following or Instagram following. And we actually talked about an example where one agent, and this isn't to berate agents or say folks are unethical, the agent had stated they had a whole bunch of sales and she utilized some technology and sat down with the potential listing client and showed, and it showed that the agent didn't have any sales.
And it may have been, I didn't probe. It may have been they didn't have any sales in that area and they could have had sales elsewhere. But
she was able to help someone make a decision because when you gonna sell your house, for most folks, it is the most expensive asset they have. And trying to get top dollar who you're working with matters 'cause all sorts of things can come up. You want someone who [01:29:00] knows how to handle problems, knows how to negotiate, knows how to price your home, knows how to make your home.
The best product possible so you get the best terms possible. And those best terms aren't always just price. Sometimes it is ensuring that we're getting to the table without problems and sometimes dealing with the problems in the background. And the seller never knows. You just, there there's a lot to, and she shared an awful lot today.
Kent Thaler: For me her organization and professionalism and her willingness to embrace new technology and changes in the marketplace was fascinating. You meet so many people in business, nevermind in a niche business like real estate who "Wow, we've done it this way for the last 150 years, we might as well continue to do it this way".
And they don't evolve and then they become dinosaurs and then they, end up disappearing. 
Ryan Cook: We even asked her, what, basically how have you changed even in the last 10 years? And the amount of changes been overwhelming. And agents need to adapt just because you were a top listing agent [01:30:00] 10 years ago.
Using the technology at the time, things change and things have changed very rapidly. Embrace that and they're gonna continue. She's, continuing to make moves with her team that are continuing to position her at the forefront of technology and marketing and other services to best represent her clients.
Kent Thaler: The biggest takeaway that I got from that part of the conversation is this idea that it's very difficult to do it all by yourself anymore. That there's gotta be specialization and the really smart real estate agents or realtors or brokers are gonna be the ones who are gonna be able to put a team together that's going to be able to compliment themselves within the team.
And they're gonna have specialists who are able to do. Individual jobs instead of being jack of all trades. 
Ryan Cook: And I think part of that comes with what they're looking to achieve. Lori, that's a very high volume team. You could have an agent that's very happy selling eight homes [01:31:00] a year and isn't trying to sell 40, 50, 60 homes a year and can accomplish that on a much smaller scale.
But if you're trying to scale and you're trying to serve a lot of people and make an impact in your community and continue to dominate a community as Lori does with her community you do need a team. And that separation where you are not a jack of all trades, where there, there's some specialty with where people are developing some expertise.
She just laid it out. Why that's important. 
Kent Thaler: I think that, her explanation was really great. I, and I think that we'll have to come back to this topic again in the future. The whole idea of the real estate team versus the individual, because I might make the argument that says that even in the case of the small person who only wants to sell 6, 8, 10 houses in a year that having a specialization, even if they are only working with listings, or if they're only working with buying, or if they're only working in a specific 
Ryan Cook: market with multifamily properties or injectors
absolutely. 
Kent Thaler: It's the idea that they're [01:32:00] specialized in, that they become an expert in what they're doing. As opposed to presenting themselves as, somebody who knows everything. 
Ryan Cook: Yeah. And we did talk about that, and I think that's an important aspect. When I talk to newer agents you tell 'em, figure out what you wanna specialize in.
Become a niche expert. You want your name to come up and a conversation about that specific. It could be a community, single family homes in, in Lori's case, north Attleboro, right? Yep. Who is the top listing agent and that's what they specialize in. Or it could be multifamily property in Dallas, Texas, or whatever the case may be.
But when you start to hone in how your marketing, how your messaging, how you're serving, and then the depth of your knowledge in that area becomes unmatched. And that's what you really should be looking for. 
Kent Thaler: And go one step further. And this is where Lori differentiates herself from a lot of other agents.
It's not only having that knowledge, it's the ability to convey that knowledge to a client in a way that's concise, [01:33:00] understandable, and reassuring. 
Ryan Cook: Yeah. And she really demonstrates she's, it's a master communicator and super, super important. 
Kent Thaler: Yep. So anyway, everyone, thank you so much for listening to Real Estate.
It's not that complicated. Our podcast, we have another episode coming up pretty soon. The next one's gonna be a nailbiter because who doesn't wanna spend an hour discussing mortgages? 
Ryan Cook: Yeah, but the, here's the thing is folks think every mortgage is the same. We're gonna open up your eyes. The fact that there are literally thousands of different.
Lending platforms and different ways to go about it. Whether you are a regular W2 employee, whether you own your own business, whether you're a gig worker, whether you're trying to buy a multifamily, whether you're trying to buy investment property, whether you're trying to buy commercial property.
There are so many different ways a vacation, 
Kent Thaler: home 
Ryan Cook: vacation is so many different ways to obtain financing and having a good lender that can help understand the numbers and help fit you to the right program could save you tens of thousands [01:34:00] of dollars over the lifetime of owning that property. 
Kent Thaler: And the person we have lined up to do this is been in the business for a long time. He's absolutely great. And he is in the Washington DC area, which is gonna make his perspective slightly different.
That's okay. So we're very excited about that episode. And so again. Thank you again for listening to the Real Estate. It's not that complicated podcast, and we'll talk to you soon.