 What's up everybody? I hope you're doing super well. Ricky Caruth coming at you and I want to, I'm fixing to go off about these lawsuits. I haven't talked about the lawsuits in several weeks. I took all the videos down about the lawsuits and all that stuff. But here recently the DOJ turned down the settlement for the Nosellic case. So let me tell you what, what I see happening here and I want you to be prepared for this, right? Nothing really changes. We're seeing a little changes here and there with sellers saying, Hey, am I going to buy the pay the buyer agent commission or I'm going to give you the listing for 3%. In today's world, as it stands, those are pocket listings. Those are for sell by owners who say, bring me a buyer for 3%. But the world that we will eventually get to, I believe it's all but guaranteed is a world where, and this is what, you know, the DOJ wants, this is what the Federal Trade Commission wants. This is what consumers want. This is what the lawyers want. This is what everybody's wanting. Okay. So be careful what you wish for. But if this is what you want, this is what you're going to get. They want the sellers to pay for their own agent. They want the buyers to pay for their own agent. Fine. That is perfectly fine with me because in that world, there's going to be far less agents and the ones that are still in business are going to be the ones who can't go out there and have these conversations. You know, a lot of agents that come into the business, they're new agents. So they go join a team, you know, the team leader gives them buyer leads. Well, right now we work with any buyer that comes into our stratosphere. Okay. We don't really turn many buyers down. Okay. Hardly any at all. Probably none. I know I never turn any buyers down. You want to see property? I'll show you property. Right. And I knew that if they bought something, you know, I was going to help them buy it. I was going to get paid. It was guaranteed to get paid in that situation. Not anymore. Not anymore. We will eventually get to a place where sellers are going to list for 3%, no buyer agent fee. And what we're going to have to do is we're going to have conversations with buyers that we used to also have for sellers. We will, we sit down with a seller. We go through the listing presentation. We tell them exactly everything we're going to do and how much we're going to make. This is how we get paid. Boom. They sign it. Now we're working together. We're going to have to start having the same exact conversation with buyers before we even start working with them. Sit down. Say, here's what we do. Here's how we get paid. This is my fee. If I don't collect this from the seller, we'll try to collect it from the seller. But if we don't, then you're going to have to come up with it. If they sign that piece of paper, then you're working with that buyer exclusively. This is going to be good in terms of, you know, the whole buyer talking to a bunch of different agent thing. That's not going to happen. It's still going to happen a little bit because you're always going to have those wishy-washy people. But the most part, it's going to cut down on that a lot. Okay? But we're not going to be in a situation where a new agent could come in with no experience and have the skill level to talk to buyers about and have that conversation. So now what? And that's where we're going to lose a lot of agents. A lot of agents that are buyer agents, you know, they kind of, you know, go the buyer route because it's easier, right? Something falls in your lap. You help them buy something to get paid. It's automatic. It's there. But in this next world that we're, that we're eventually going to, we're going to be in a place where it's not guaranteed. And now you're going to have to have that conversation, that hard conversation that you don't want to have with sellers. The reason why you don't want to list properties because you don't want to talk to them about how you get paid or, you know, how much they're going to have to pay you. You don't want to have that, how much is your commission conversation or will you negotiate your commission conversation? You're scared to have that conversation. And that's why you depend on buyers now, but in the new world, you're going to have to have that conversation with buyers. So what's that going to do? It's going to knock you right out of the business if you're not willing to actually start running a business, talking to every client. I mean, it's like a lawyer, right? When you talk to a lawyer, you talk to the lawyer and they, you know, hear about your situation and say, okay, great. I got your situation. I'm glad to have, I'm going to send you an engagement letter, sign the engagement letter and send me a retainer and I'll get right to work. It's going to be the same thing with buyers now, you know? And you may or may not ask for a retainer, although I have a call well banker agents telling me, reaching out saying, hey, we have this new, you know, we have this new situation and call well bankers telling us that here's our new disclosures. Here's our new buyer agency agreement where we have to ask for a retainer before we can even start showing property. Now, I don't know if that's true or not. Okay. I'm just hearing third party from, you know, CB agents telling me that, you know, maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I do believe the brokerages are going to start leaning in that direction because they're scared to get sued and they're scared about the outcome of this and they don't, they don't want to put themselves in a vulnerable situation. All this is still up in the air. Okay. We have the appeal thing going on with the, with the original case that's such a Burnett trial, you know, like NAR hasn't even fully committed to appealing that's going through the process. We don't have a judge ruling on that. We have all these copycat cases that have popped up and, and, you know, like if the appeal happens on Sister Burnett, that could be drug out for, you know, two, three, four, five, six years. While all these other copycat cases are going to court, it's just, it's literally a mess. Now, I'm telling you all this to say a couple of things. Number one, I'll talk about NAR, right? And NAR, the problem is, is that buyer agents haven't educated buyers on what we do, how we get paid. Therefore, the buyers don't really know what we do, how we get paid. That's why they were like, oh, I don't need an agent, right? Because they don't know what we do. If they knew what we did, then they would say, I do need an agent. And then when they go to closing, it's like, they didn't really know how we got paid. Then at closing, like we magically get this big check and they don't even really know how. And they're just like, that was weird. And that, that's what the general public, like let's just say, let's just, you know, speak stereotypically here that buyers walk away from the transaction, kind of confused. Like, you know, they went above and beyond, been over backwards, great experience. And then I don't even know how they get made all that money. You know, they're worth it. They made all that money and happy they made that money, came out of the price. But how'd that happen? It's like magical, right? We haven't educated the general public on what we do as agents and how we do it, what we do and how we get paid. That's a big issue and it's got to change. On the other side, NAR. NAR does so much for us as the real estate industry, but they've done a really horrible job educating us on exactly what they do. It's the same exact situation. So buyers are sitting here saying, you know, we don't need, we don't need agents. What do they do? Right? And you got an agent saying, we don't need NAR. What do they do? Sound familiar? It's the same exact situation, right? And what does NAR do? Or the largest donator on Congress, you know, a few things like they fight for us to stay 1099. Okay. If we go W2, we're all employees making minimum wage or whatever, right? Whatever that world looks like. Totally different world, right? 1099, we're business owners. We're not forced to work certain hours. Therefore, you know, like, like W2 agents, they're, they are out there, right? Those companies are not profitable, but they are out there and they give bad service. Why? Because at five o'clock, they're done. They're not, they're not going to answer the phone. They're not working. They're not answering questions, right? But the buyers and sellers need stuff 24-7. You know, they need, they need help 24-7. They need to see property 24-7. They've got questions 24-7. We've got inspection repair dinners happening. We've got negotiations going on. But the employee isn't really, doesn't really have financial incentive to give you that service after hours and, you know, to even give you a higher level of service. It's a totally different ballgame. 1099 allows you to be a business owner, an independent contractor that goes out there and works whenever you're on call, work, not work. It's your choice. It's your business. NAR works, works towards fighting for, for that, for that issue. You know, PPP money back when, you know, COVID hit and, you know, we were getting PPP money. Where do you think that came from? Right? That was NAR fighting on Congress for PPP. There's, there's a lot of things, man. When you look back through the years and all the laws and different things that's happened that NAR has been a part of that fought for us as an industry. It's crazy, but they just don't understand this because NAR does a bad job of educating us on exactly what they do. And we're literally in the same boat as a buyer agent to the buyers. So, you know, should NAR be restructured and, you know, you know, reconfigured and yes, absolutely. Number one, there should be some changes, but number two, there needs to be more transparency around what they do because they do a lot. I don't agree with anything they do, but I would say a good 80% of it is in your best interest as a real tour and that it needs to be in place. It needs to continue to stay in place. Now back to the commission thing. We are going through this world where this is going to happen. Now you might say, well, when I go to a seller, I'm just going to say, you know, you need to pay the buyer agent commission so you can have exposure to all these buyers. And the seller is going to say, well, it's kind of like for sale bounder. As a for sale bounder, they know that it's better to go with an agent, but they want to try this for sale bounder for a while, and then they list it, right? Same thing is going to happen here, right? They're going to list it. They're going to say, well, I don't have to pay it. Well, I'm just not going to offer it at first and see what happens. Maybe I'll sell it. Maybe I'll save that 2%, 3%. And but if I don't sell it, maybe instead of reducing the price, well, we'll say we'll pay a buyer agent commission and then see how it goes. That's what we're going to see. You're also going to be up against other agents, right? You may say, well, if you're going to do 3%, then I'm not going to do this, this and this, right? Minus services, right? At 3%, I'll do this. 4% I'll do this. 5% I'll do this. Well, you're going to be up against agents who are willing to go to 2%, 2.5%, even do 3% full service. So they're going to say, well, you know, Billy down the road, ABC Realty, they're going to go full service for 3%. You're telling me you're only going to do X, Y and Z. So I'm going to go with Billy because he's going to give me full service and he says he can get the job done. You're also going to have sellers who have friends or other sellers that they know who got their property sold for full price without paying the buyer agent commission, right? Or without offering the buyer agent commission. So you're going to be up against this stuff. You make, you can sit there and say, well, I'll just negotiate it or I'll tell them why we need to do this, why need to do that. The market's going to determine this for you. You're not going to have a say so in it because they'll just go somewhere else. And now you're up against the market and what other people are willing to do. You know, same thing on the buyer side. When you're sitting down writing out a buyer agency agreement and you say, hey, I'm doing it for 2%, you might have some flat fee people out there say, hey, we do 35 or $3,500. We'll handle the whole thing for you. Show the property negotiate. Do give you full service, you know, for whatever the flat fee is, whatever the case may be. But we're heading in this direction. The reason for this video is I want you to be prepared mentally. Now we're still in the world that we're in. So what do you need to do? Squeeze it for every last drop you can until these rules, these new changes come into effect. You need to be taking advantage of this while it is here, ladies and gentlemen, I've been talking about January going to be the busiest January you've ever seen in your life. And I've been telling you, you need to stack as many listings as you can because everything's going under contract in January. Did you do that? I don't know. I don't know if you take my advice. I don't know if you listen to what I'm saying about the market and the trends and the opportunities. I hope you do. And I know some of you do. You've got to go all in, guys. You have to go all in. Now, preparing for this and thinking about this, you know, some of you may comment below and say, you know, nothing's going to change. Here's the thing. A lot of agents, we've been faced with so much of this in the past. You know, Zilla, Zilla was going to take our jobs. You know, Amazon was going to come in and take our jobs for salebanner.com was going to take our jobs. AI was going to take our jobs. You know, all these different things have come into the industry. And guess what? Nothing has changed. We still, we're still here. Everything just kind of quietly went away. And that's exactly how a lot of agents are treating the current situation. Like there's these lawsuits, there's going to be these big changes. And agents, it's a boy that cried wolf situation. We don't believe it because we've heard it all before. So it's just, we just think it's quietly just kind of going away, sweeping under the rug. Everything's going to say the same. We're treating this like everything else. And I'm here to tell you, I don't believe that's going to be the case. I could be wrong, but I think it's all but guaranteed. The DOJ wants to see it. The Federal Trade Commission wants to see it. Consumers want to see it. Fine. You want to pay your own commission as a buyer? Awesome. That's the, that's the reward you want to live in. Let's go. Show me the new rules to the game. Now, when you think about information that consumers have these days on the housing market, they know everything. They know all the properties that have sold. They know the history of every property, the sales history. They know all the comps. They know everything for sale. They've seen it all. They know it all. It's all there. And there's even more information about how to do real estate transactions, negotiating contracts, writing contracts, the whole nine yards. It's all right there. Literally, the, the, the general public has more information today than they've ever had in history right now. But the usage of real estate agents is the highest also that it's ever been in history. So, so the amount of information has spiked over the last 10 years, five years of how much information the consumers have behind making decisions to buy and sell real estate, so on and so forth. But the uses of agents has also spiked. Why is that? Well, it's because the more information they have, the more complicated the process really is. They've got so much stuff getting thrown at them. What do you think's going to happen in the new world? It's going to be much more complicated. It's going to be much more complicated. And the problem, here's the problem, is that when we go this direction where buyers have to pay their own fee and the seller is unwilling to pay it, now what? You're in a situation where the agent, you know, I mean, if the buyer signed an agreement saying they're going to pay it, if we can't get it from the seller, then okay, there you go. They're going to have to pay it. They signed a contract to that. Let's say they signed it, but they couldn't really afford it. Just hoping the seller was going to pay it. Now you're in a situation and then you've got the buyers who just can't pay it. They're not going to sign that agreement. What are they going to do? They're going to go straight to the listing agent. When they go straight to the listing agent, this is literally the system forcing more dual agency, forcing more dual agency. And now you're going to have more buyers, right? Because right now they get representation. It's figured into the deal. Later, you're going to have this group of buyers. You're going to have, you're going to have buyers that pay the buyer agent commission and we negotiate it into deals. We put it in the offer and all that stuff. But you're going to have this group of buyers that go unrepresented, that were before all these changes happened, were represented. So it's going to increase the amount of buyers who are unrepresented, who have to go straight to the listing agent. And guess what? They're going to feel like the system's against them because now they're forced because they can't afford it. They're forced to deal with somebody who represents the seller, not them, who's looking out for the seller's best interest, not theirs. And so you let that go on long enough and guess what? Here comes the next class action lawsuit about dual agency. That's the direction we're going in. And there's also going to be a lot more. I mean, if you look at these countries that have this same setup where the buyer pays their commission, the seller pays their commission, there's far more lawsuits. The insurance, the end, there's going to be insurances come out that actually cover these types of lawsuits and this kind of liability. And these insurance companies are just going to rack up. But there's going to be more lawsuits concerning this dual agency thing. And if you look at these other countries that are in this situation, they have more lawsuits. And they're actually looking, these other countries are actually looking at our current MLS model where we do share commissions in the whole nine yards. These countries are looking at this model right now as we speak. They're looking at our model that we currently have and they are trying to adopt it. They are looking to adopt what we're doing. And so what's so ironic here and what's so funny is that you've got other countries who operate the way we're trying to operate and these same countries are trying to operate the way we're operating right now. Right? And that's, it's just hilarious because I feel like we're going back in time. But if this is what happens, if these are the new rules to the game, sign me up, Johnny, because I'm ready to play. Now, when, I'm going to say when this happens because again, I feel this is all but guaranteed. When this happens, we're going to lose 20 to 40 percent. I mean, you know, my buddy James Dwiggins, CEO of Nextome, he says 40 percent. We're going to lose 40 percent of the agent count in the country. That's a lot. I mean, let's just say we're at 1.5 million agents right now. So we're going to get down to what? 800, 850, 250,000 real estate agents in the country, you know? So again, and it's going to be because right now, everything falls in your lap. Buyers come in, you help them. You're going to go over the top to help them. You're going to help them buy something. They're going to get representation, but we're not explaining what we do and how we get paid. We magically get paid automatically from the deal it's figured in and everything's all good. Well, in the new world, that doesn't happen. We have to sit down with the buyer before we even start to work for them. And we have to explain what we do, how we get paid. And we'll try to get that from the seller, but if not, you're going to have to pay it. Those are going to be conversations that those 40% of agents who quit aren't willing to have. They're willing to leave the industry, then have those, and they're not even difficult conversations. It's just business. It's just like, this is what we do. Like if you want to hire me, it's like a lawyer, right? I've heard your situation. I'm happy to help. Hire me. This is what I do. Here's the letter of engagement. Here's the buyer agency agreement. This is how I get paid. Let's get to work. And we're going to lose a lot of agents. Don't be one of those agents, guys. Reach out to me. Reach out to somebody. Work on your skills. You know, number one, let's work on our skills to be a listing agent. You know, we do a listing challenge every month. We do weekly calls. Go to zero to diamond.com right now. We've got agents picking up 10, 20 listings a month. Be a listing agent. Okay, number one, focus on property owners to buy and sell. You know, that's the first thing you should do. But outside of that, reach out to people and develop your skills. But don't be one of these agents that leaves the business. Now, if you are one of these agents to leave the business, so be it. Okay? But the ones that are left are going to be sitting in a really good situation because now, when you work with a buyer, they sign something and you know, you know, you're getting paid. You know that they're not working with other agents. Okay? It's an exclusive agreement. You're explaining to them the exclusivity. You're explaining to them what all you're going to do. They've agreed and said, yes, I want those services and I'm willing to pay for them. And so now you will be in a position where you don't work with every buyer that comes across your desk. You're going to have buyers that look at that and say, I don't want to do it. Great. We can't work together. And then you're going to spend your time on people who do want to work with you, who have hired you to work for them. People that hired you. Right now, we're working for people who haven't necessarily hired us because the deals, the commission is figured in and we can go work with them, represent them and get paid. But in the future, we're only going to work with people who hire us to do so. And this is going to be great for the higher level agents that are good at this. Right? The ones that are great at listing properties that are great at doing the listing appointments and going through the listing agreement and getting signatures and all that are going to be the same ones that are great at these buyer consultations to explain what we do, how we do and how we get paid. But you're not going to be wasting your time on people who, A, haven't hired you exclusively and B, haven't agreed to pay you if we can't get it from the seller. So for me, would I love to keep the current model? Yes. Do I feel like there's a huge flaw with the education between the agents and the buyers and the sellers? Yes. That's something that needs to change. I think that the pendulum is getting swung way too far in the wrong, in the wrong direction. We're going, we're going back in time. This is the way business used to be done, you know, 40, 50 years ago. We're going, we're going to a model that other countries are doing where there's, you know, I don't know the percentages of more lawsuits, but it's tremendously higher. So do I like going, going that extreme? No, I think that somewhere in the middle would be awesome. But again, I don't think consumers understand to the point where they're willing to do that. I think when you put it in front of a seller and you say, Hey, you don't have to pay the buyer agent commission, but you should, they're going to say, well, if I don't have to, I ain't going to. And then there's going to be a chain reaction. There's going to be a trend in the industry. You're going to have agents out there taken two and 3% listings that you're going to be competing with. And if you don't, if you don't come to market, then you're, you're going to lose listings to some of these other agents. This, I'm not trying to scare you. I just believe that this is going to be our new reality. And the only purpose of this video is to prepare you. That's it. Prepare you mentally A and B say, you better squeeze the current market for every little drop that you can. That's all I'm saying guys. So anyway, I hope that you got something out of this. I hope you know how much I care about you deeply and I want to see you succeed more than anything in the world. All right. I'll see you on the next video. Let's get it.