 Thank you for joining us. I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Deep competition, high demand drive, record setting month for a Oahu real estate medium sales price for a single family home reaches 975,000 in May. Both sales of single family homes client over 63%, and more than double for condos with over 135% more sales compared to this time last year in Oahu, and start contrast to the low activity of May 2020 amid pandemic uncertainty. May 2021 set new records with the medium sales price of a single family home rises to, as I mentioned, 978,000, breaking the previous record of 950,000 set in March 2020. And properties flying off the market at an unprecedented pace. June, the month of June is home ownership month. And sister power encourages anyone thinking about buying a home to work with our special guests of sister power. We have Natalie, Maria, and Justine. Well, just good to power, ladies. Thank you so much for having us. We really appreciate the opportunity to talk about our favorite thing. Right, ladies? Yes. Thank you so much for the invitation. Yeah, thank you. You know, real estate, real estate in Hawaii, I call Honamulu the bus stop to heaven. And although the sun kisses our skin every day, we have rainbows, it is a pretty happy price to live here in Hawaii. So I want to ask you, ladies, to not start off with Natalie. And tell us, why did you decide to get into the real estate business? So I had the experience of two real estate agents, and they were polar opposites. One was lazy, uncommunicative, frustrating, very hard to get a hold of. And it was heartbreaking. For us, it was obviously the largest transaction that we were going to have in our lives. And to have somebody who cared clearly so little about us was it made something that was already stressful, even more stressful. And as a result, I thought, you know, I can do this so much better. I had another realtor who was a sister in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And she was so meticulous, so communicative, and it made such a difference that it was the clincher. I thought I have worked in the fine art business. I am comfortable speaking with clients of means and providing that level of service. So why not transfer that knowledge to working with clients in one of the most expensive places in America, here in Hawaii? So that's why I decided, yeah. OK, Justine, what's your take on it? Why did you decide to get into the real estate business? So I had a family friend who is a real estate attorney. And I had been helping him as an assistant in his office. And he's like, you know, you should get your license. And I'm like, ah, the classes are expensive. I don't know. This was actually back in 2007. And he offered to actually pay for them and just kept pushing me to do it so that I could further help him in his business. So I was forced. No. Yeah, I didn't really have an interest per se then. But now I'm obsessed with it and want to make it my goal, you know, similar to Natalie of just being on top of it, responsive, caring. It's not about the money, you know, that'll come if you're honest and just do a good job. And I always put myself in their position and imagine if I was buying the home and try to be as honest as possible. And yeah, so it kind of just evolved from taking the course back then and then about five years ago, really taking it seriously and doing it all time. Wow, I'm so glad to have you, ladies. How about you, Maria? It's so interesting to hear them speak about why they got in. And it's actually very empowering. But I got in. It was a little different for me. My family always gravitated around real estate. They had many properties. So I was around it a lot. And I truly got in for the love of real estate and the business itself. And then when I started to learn about the business, I realized there was many different layers to it. And the most important component is service and being able to service the clients and help them throughout the entire way. Wow. So ladies, you are a realtor's here in Hawaii. What do you wish more home buyers and home sellers knew about the process of real estate transition, Natalie? So for my poor beloved home buyers who are getting beaten up during this market, I want them to know that interest rates are still very low right now. Real estate is still a wonderful opportunity to invest your money. I mean, you can't live in a treasury bond. You can't leverage up to 100% of the cash needed to purchase almost any other investment. So for me, having that value is still there even in a market that is as competitive as this one. Yeah, so just being, what's the number one thing that we as a profession can do to better serve our clients? What is the number one thing you as realtors can do to better serve your clients? So for me, especially with buyers, it's education, education, education. Even the first steps. It's so funny how I work with a lot of my friends or colleagues or referrals that are so eager to buy and they, how do I say it? They're not prepared meaning just basics of how's your debt to income ratio. You have to talk to a lender, start paying off some of your debt, thinking about it. They're like the most eager and positive and excited and sometimes they're not necessarily ready. And then the opposite of the ones that are a little bit more passive are totally have the funds and the means and know the process. So it's really interesting. So I give as much education as possible and don't ever pressure them out and just really let the knowledge, kind of let them decide by giving as much information as possible. And then as far as sellers, same thing just put themselves in the other person's shoes. You're selling right now, but you bought it one time. Remember how it was when you were at your inspection. Remember how it was when you were trying to negotiate price and the seller maybe wanted a really high price. And so being more empathetic to each situation and reversing it to have that perspective, I think is really helpful. Okay, you know, Maria, we were discussing earlier about if you are in, tell us about your position to diversity. You're the vice chair. Yeah. Let's talk about that. That's correct. Yeah. So it's really great. It's a new committee that the Honolulu Board of Realtors has just created. And I have the privilege of being vice chair along with Natalie, which is the chair. And what we're doing is we're creating awareness. We're creating awareness of habits that we've carried out, whether that's through a culture that you've been part of or just customs that you have been part of in your family and your community. And we're creating awareness of the things that we should not be doing. And the idea is to be better and do better by our clients for the community and for ourselves. I think it's important for us to be honest. Sometimes people get carried away with the money they get carried away with everything that we're doing in this business. And it's important to be honest and respect the diversity that's around us. Can I get back on that really quick? Sure. I stood up at my meetings when we were doing meetings every Tuesday in person at Coldwell Banker. And I stood up and asked everyone in my office and whoever was listening for them to go on and tell people to stop using the word the master bedroom. I personally call it the main bedroom and there's a discrepancy on the history. If it wasn't really the slave master's room, was it the master ceremonies? There's two different historical origins of that name, but I hate it so much. And I'm like, could we actually change that in real estate? I was the only one I've set up twice. And it kind of went over to people's head. They didn't even realize it with all the awareness and things going on. Things are changing. We're using different verbiage for things. And I think that's one that needs to be retired. So I always call it the main bedroom and my clients correctly have like, you mean the master? I'm like, no, I mean the main bedroom. I like that, Justine. I'm glad you bought that because with the rising conversation, at this particular time, Honolulu or the state of Hawaii is under a microscope regarding the racism and the discrimination that's going on here in the city. And my question to you, in order for your clients to get a fair shot, what type of conversations, questions are you asking the agents regarding the seller's agenda? Because we make up very few here the numbers, we make up a third of the population, we meeting African-Americans. So I wanna hear from you, Natalie, what type of conversations are you having with the agent? The seller? That's a great question, Sharon. And it's something that I feel very passionately about because I feel like we, I know that we as agents have a fiduciary duty to put our seller's needs above our own. And part of that is protecting them from themselves and from their own implicit biases. And so as a result of that, in the past, buyers have used what we kind of term love letters to try to get their offers to stand above other offers. Sometimes using protected class information that is unacceptable because you, in this day and age, if a buyer is losing out on seven, 10, 15 offers, they start getting dishearted and then they start getting litigious. And for sellers to protect them from that potential unconscious biases even, I strip all those love letters away from my offers. I want the offer to stand on the merits of the terms of the offer over anything else because I feel like I'm doing my seller a disservice by doing anything other than that. Tell me your take, Maria. Yeah, I echo Natalie's words. The famous love letters is something that I do not practice in my business. I do, however, prepare a cover letter, but it's strictly highlighting the things that I'm putting in the contract. So if the property, if we're over asking that I highlight that, if there's any concessions that I think will be attractive to the seller, I highlight that. And I stay away from anything that'll put us in trouble for lack of a better word. It's, we were discussing this earlier today. Every time you get into contract, you should be thinking of it as if one day we may be in litigation and how will the lawyer, how would a judge look at the documentation that you put on there? So it's a serious matter. We can throw a letter together, but what we're putting in that letter can backfire later if we're not careful. Wow, what about you, Justine? I'm so interested in hearing this. I get so many questions that people are moving here and best they're concerned because of the numbers are so low here as far as African-Americans. So tell me, you know, how do you get right to the point, but definitely? Right, so it's interesting also with our company, there was rumor that those love letters are gonna be done away with and especially photos put in there. I don't know where it stands. I think the board of realtors is trying to have passed that down. So similar as the other two women, try to just be direct. What did you like about the home and stay away from your background, your lovely dogs, your special needs child, your all those terms, yeah, just have it out. And just these days, everything is just so short and to the point now that you just want bullet points the most and it's really, really playing. We've really straight away from the love letter type and I definitely don't put any photos in mine. So just to be careful. When you talk about love letters, break it down to it. So for example, it could be, hi, my name is Jane and John. We have a special needs child with two dogs. We can imagine ourselves having many beautiful dinners on the patio of your lovely home. And if you choose us, we're so desperate to get into something like yours. And we have, I've seen all sorts of things of just appealing to, you know, it just gets, it's really personal instead of the contract. I try to have my buyers just stick to what they liked about the home and what they appreciate about the home and keep it about that and highlight points of the contract of how we're going to make it clean and attractive based on contract, but not get personal. I've seen some crazy ones. So yeah, literally talking about personal experiences, ethnicities of who they are, where they're from, what their hardships were, just really appealing to the heartstrings of sellers. It's not fair. And I've heard of many cases of beating out other offers based on the letter alone. So you can really sway someone with what's written on that. So. Wow, that's good information. So Natalie, what are your clients looking for in purchasing a home? Are they looking for comfort, security, a great deal? Right now, I like to tell people I don't work in a particular location. I just work with whoever wants to work with me. And I have predominantly military clients right now who are PCS-ing doing a permanent change of station either on island or off island. So typically what they're looking for is access to wherever they're going to be working. I've got other clients who are investors and what they are looking for really is the greatest return on their investment whether it be cash flow or equity gain. So it's going to be pretty dependent on the individual needs of the buyer. But I will say this, right now, given the basic economic reality of supply and demand, the buyers that are gonna have the best chances of success are the ones that are looking at potentially properties that have been overpriced. So they've been on the market for longer than eight days right now or really two weeks or a month. But also buyers above, so two million, once it gets beyond two million, it becomes a buyer's market which is cold comfort for most normal human beings. But there are pockets of deals. Also condos and Waikiki, which still hasn't really recovered from the laws passed, eliminating the ability to have vacation rentals in certain areas. That market still has excess inventory from 2019. So there's still good deals to be had there. Okay, well, we're black women, realtors in Hawaii. If you're just tuning in to Sister Power. And Maria, why are people wanted to sell their property? You know, it's a wonderful question. I think the reason why people wanna sell their property is because they're realizing that buyers are pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to get into their property. You know, the interest rates have definitely impacted the market tremendously. When we speak on the military, there was a sort of a held back when COVID-19 hit and then they kind of rushed them in here. And that also created a boom. And so I think sellers right now are seeing an opportunity in front of them. And because we don't have the crystal ball, I think they wanna just take advantage of the market right now because they don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Wow, yeah. Well, Justine, what do you do to ensure your clients are comfortable with making the most expensive purchase they've ever made? Great question. So the first discussion you have to have with them is how, what can they afford? As I was saying earlier, the ones that are super eager are usually not always but usually a little bit underprepared because they have no idea even where to start in the process. So setting them up with a lender to know exactly what they qualify for is first and foremost. After that, just being really realistic about the process, explaining to them step by step from A to B what they can expect, communicating along the way, every form that comes in, explaining it to them so that they really can digest it and make it palatable so they understand. And it's very, very wordy and there's a lot of paperwork. And I wish we were just cute at a desk all day. I literally was in Kaneohe all day, wedding, staging, so I rushed here to get on this. But, you know, and I kind of like to show that real side of it. We're running around and it's a personal, emotional relationship business. So yeah, just really explaining and preparing them and making sure that they wanna go through and not having anything fall out of escrow or change their mind, obviously within reason, but setting them up step by step, explain what they can expect and really set that standard so that there's no surprises and they understand the process. That can be really overwhelming. Well, tell us about the piece of property that is in white, is it in white poppins that you are, are you running it out? Are you selling this piece of property? It's actually on the North Shore in Haleiva. And speaking of why people wanna sell, I don't think my sellers will be watching this, but they are taking advantage of the market and they are throwing this cute little cottage out there on the highest end you could possibly be of the market for 1.4 million. It's so cute. It's a block away from Ted's Bakery. It's amazing. It's a three bed, one and a half bath. But for 1.4 million, they definitely are looking for the snowbirds that come over or the California tech money, the people with money that are fleeing to come here and either do their COVID or work from home or whatever it is. And we actually got two offers that got rejected but came really close to that price point. I'm shocked. So for why people wanna sell, they really had no intention of selling and they just wanted to test the waters and see what they could catch. Wow, and the North Shore is beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. Their location is amazing. They are so convenient. Yeah, yeah. On each, yep. So Maria, what piece of advice would you give and Nigel, you can chime in on this, to what piece of advice would you give the new realtors who are coming in, the black women who are anxious to sell that $2 million hold on the beach in the sunset in the background? What piece of advice would you give the realtors to move forward in a gracious and successful way? Yeah, that's a really great question because I learned later on in this career that realtors work first and learn later. And we kind of get our license and then we focus on getting the deals, getting the deals, getting the deals. And it's so important for us to be able to provide education, like she said earlier. And in order for you to do that, you need to be educated. So I would say if you are a new realtor or you're interested in going into real estate, yes, you need to focus on the sales because like you said, this is a very expensive place to live in but it's very important for you to add value to your clients. And the only way to do that is if you get educated, if you're constantly in tune with what's happening in the market, not only in Hawaii, but outside of Hawaii, because Hawaii's a revolving door and like we all know clients have left to other markets and it's good, the more knowledge you have that you can provide to the clients, the more valuable you will be to them. Natalie, your take and then Jeff's thing I wanna hear from you. So I absolutely agree with Maria. The education facet is gonna be of paramount importance. You can't throw a rock on this island without hitting a realtor. So what are you doing to stand out from the crowd? And for me, it's education of my clients and also just really focusing on providing the best possible service. I mean, for new home buyers, I always, always send them out this thick buyers pamphlet. It's got a glossary of real estate terms. It's got a checklist of what it is they're looking for properties. It's got a to-do list of what steps they need to do in order to prime themselves to jump on whatever property they want to. So they have the best chance of success. That's really it, is setting people up to succeed. And from that, your business will grow because you will earn rave reviews from people who know that you did everything in your power to make this huge, expensive dream come true. Justine, take us out, carry us out with more knowledge and wisdom to the young black women realtors who are taking tests. People are changing jobs now. And I noticed a lot of people are going into real estate. I love that binder for the buyer, Natalie. I might copy you on that one, that's amazing. But yeah, for young black realtors that might be getting into the business, I mean, that's what they always ask me, hey, I'm thinking about getting to real estate. Should I do it? I'm like, no, no, it's just, I think that we don't get enough credit for what we really do and how hard we work. But I would suggest that if they are brand new to pair up with a top producer, I did that with a few. I still work with one now who drops knowledge bombs on me daily. I mean, you literally never stop learning in this career. So yeah, besides the education and but to set them up for success, this is unprecedented. We haven't been in a market exactly like this. And with making the offer clean and with realtors even going above and beyond, I help paint my clients home. I won't give that to everyone, but we have done stuff that is so above and beyond. And like you said, adding value, that's what makes you stand out. And I think I would just, for this market though, we are literally learning every day, even what people are doing new to the contract. Take this, take that out. Oh, the realtor is gonna pay for your termite inspection now. Oh, we're doing this to just compete. So I think coming into it during this pandemic or whatever's going on right now, the feeding frenzy of the market would be pretty overwhelming and they should probably pair up with a top producer and take them under their wing for a little bit of guidance because it helped me tremendously. And I still take their brains as well. So hook up with a mentor. Yeah, well, black women, realtors in Hawaii, Natalie, Maria and Justine. Thank you so much for your wisdom. I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough. Thank you for spending time with us. Aloha. Thank you, Aloha. Thank you.