 Happy New Year and it's good to be back. First of the year. Missed this thing. I again remember Dennis Ozaki that started it. Land and power and power and land. I have a guest today that talks even faster than I would like to. And the segue into that from power and land is that he has a unique perspective of buyers as an auctioneer. He auctions a number of things and as we all know you have to kind of you hit the gavel and then you start talking and you don't stop talking until you've cajoled every last cent out of those in the audience who have come to buy. So the buying proposition is of particularly interest to me who does market research and then again has to talk to people about in a sense politics, why we are where we are, why our price is so high for housing and just about everything else. And it has to do with some economics. We have the highest quality of life in my opinion in America. But there's an emotional thing. And it's hard for me to quantify emotion. But my guest show typo might well be able to articulate some of the emotion, but even better, he can tell us what he does, what he sees and what happens. So I'll turn it over to you Joe. Thank you. Ricky is good to be with you. It's good to have no news of fellow surfer and come on a local for many, many decades now. And yes, it's showtime and I've brought my gavel. Got gavel will travel now to this online forum at ThakeTech. I've admired ThakeTech for a long time with wonderful, bright, articulate people like you and Dr. Akina and Rusty Kamori, Jay Fidel, so many wonderful people, Howard Wigan, old friend. And so thank you for all you do. It's very interesting the title of your particular subject matter and being able to work a niche on this ThakeTech show, Politics and Landed, why and how it might tie into me and the auction action world, real estate auctions probably as a matter of focus. But it's just kind of an interesting coincidence that as a struggling surfer who is only going to utilize Minoa as a way station and platform to go surfing, I bet she was forced into declaring a major because I was getting to be a junior and I said, well, how about political science? And so I happen to have that degree under my belt and have some interest in politics. But I will tell you with regard to the subjective, the emotional element you talked about. And I do like to really tell people that there's an art and science to auctioneering. And yeah, thanks for the compliment about fast talking, but if I could talk just as fast as you think, I'd really be all free. That's another story for the day. But anyway, so I will tell you this, what came to mind was you being a well read learning man, you remember what our beloved sometimes citizen Mark Twain said back in the 1800s about Hawaii and Hawaii real estate, the loveliest fleet of islands anchored at any ocean. And like you said today too, it's still true. And that that creates this demand and an emotional upside factor, doesn't it, to the cost of living and the cost of real estate here in Hawaii. And that's, so there is an emotional, not just an objective aspect to this whole subject of real estate and evaluations, how auctions impacted. But anyway, that's just a little bit about reaction to some of the things you shared. And as a matter of the introduction here today. Actually, that's pretty good. It was there's a bunch of writers that came out here just loving the place, starting way back in the monarchy. But even today that Michael Crichton lived right up the road, and he just kept buying hopes. He had a love affair with this place and baked it into some of his books. Thank you for the compliment of reading. Your educational background, I did not appreciate until we got to know each other a little bit better. Thanks to James Jones, who we both sponsored to be a member at the Outrigger Canoe Club, and they started sharing war stories. The one thing about the two of us that we know about surfers is there's stories. But behind the stories is often, you know, a distillation of a trend or a truth or something like that. And I'll go back and salute Mark Twain. He called it a long time ago. Um, back to you, Joe. Well, you know, you know what you're, I'm not saying you're implying it or but I'm somewhat inferring it where this could be going, rather than being contextual, conceptual, historical, all that and more might be to the cutting edge of the prominent, talking about market research, Ricky, issue of Hawaii, the cost of housing, the costs of affordable housing, the need for it or whenever. One thing I'm going to champion isn't just my profession and the oldest marketing method on the planet. Marketing and selling, by the way, is both, right? Marketing and selling the auctioneering, stock market, that's the biggest auction in the world. It's really bringing buyers and sellers together. But the beautiful thing about it where it could really benefit these these issues, these factors of Hawaii is that it's not just about getting the highest price for say, real estate in Hawaii or anything, but it's also to give a fair forum for the buyer to buy something at fair true market value and maybe not anymore. So that if he has that assurance that the marketplaces is at a certain level and he bids a little bit more in order to secure property acquisition, he has a sense that he bought somewhat rationally and fair to himself too, you see. That's really what we're trying to create here, even though you kind of implied some of the the jocular references about auctions in the past. And occasionally there's a rational exuberance and charity benefit auctions, that kind of thing. But it can be a very equitable fair transaction with a win-win for buyer and seller, including in real estate, which I think is a good thing because of, well, the long bull run that we've just been through that seems to be trending slower and or probably downwards, going to change things. We could talk about that, how the auction method could help it. But you give my point about that, is that it's not a win-lose, one-sided, lopsided benefit. I think that's the reason it's been around so long is because it's the ultimate way, Ricky, to determine the value of anything. When you've got a concentrated amount of time and space and people well informed and motivated to buy something and determine what's something worth in order to acquire it today, I think it's really a very helpful method. So I'm going to extend on that a little bit and go to the thought that you engendered, which was it is indeed all you said. And compare that to the normal way of buying real estate homes, which is you go search, you have an agent help you, the agent then goes out and negotiates with another agent. And it's a back and forth, it ends with an agreement when it does. And then they split 6%. There's a bunch of conditions baked into it in terms of not hiding any relevant facts, that sort of thing. It's an interesting process. It's under attack currently. Yes, I know. And Europe has like a 6% round trip. In this age of the internet, it might well evolve towards doing more auctions. And I think you and I have never talked about this, but I know what we're going to talk about next. So how would you do it? How would you spread this methodology? And we have to go back to affordable housing because that really is the other half of this. Because a market set's a high price. We've got our put as a market set, an accurate price. But here in the way we have a ton of offshore buyers. And that's news. But go back and talk whatever you want. I mean, can this methodology? Yeah, let me comment on some of the things you brought up and distinguish where it is that might come out of local team and our number one in America, National, Central or GP King, where we're actually focused to help people the most to benefit from this ancient method that now in the modern era, using both live and internet bidding, marketing and selling can really help the most. You talked about a market that I'll just call, let's just call the average priced home. Price is a little bit below, a little bit above. Things up to maybe a couple of million or so, submission is the last very long bull run that seems to be finally petering out, starting to change. We should talk about that in a minute. They're fine for the listing method. And of course, we had a little bit of a pent up demand by worship scare supply, which helped pump up the price. But that's really what we do also, paradoxically with the high end market, high value real estate, mansions, large land tracks, ranches, that kind of thing. That's really where we focus, by the way, because typically there are comparables, but the auction method of a bunch of pre-qualified cash buyers with no contingencies, by the way, as opposed to the listing method, which has a lot of different restrictions and different issues. Let's say, well, that's going to be very helpful in that niche market, because it will help determine the value when a bunch of qualified, well-informed, motivated, bitter buyers bid somebody's property up. That's going to be pretty much today what that property is worth in the world. Now, listing can take care of a lot of very ordinary average properties up to a few million, but in the high end market that we focus on, this auction method can be very, very helpful if you see what I mean. Well, I've lived your thing. I've been asked to do market research on the best properties, and it's impossible if the comp set is one or a none, and that's what you're talking about. Yeah, it is. So, typically that's our focus. I think the listing method has been very, very successful, obviously, for a long time, especially to, obviously, ordinary properties. Let's just call that even up to even two or three million here in Hawaii. However, I will tell you that, speaking of surfer brands, his name shall remain anonymous for now, because they told me just last month, and they're head of one of the largest escrow title companies in Hawaii, and they watched the real numbers of transaction close, and he said, literally, no uncertain terms that we're not only either in or about to go into a recession, but also a buyer's market. Now, this paradoxically, down the side of that coin, may be where also we can help, because we're really a compacted, accelerative system, and not everybody wants to wait for long DOM days on market into the high end properties. It could be a year or two. What if somebody has a life chapter they want to close and would love to be able to cash in their chips and move to the mainland, move to another kind of a property or retirement home, whatever, but they could do so with the auction method, date specific in about 90 days versus about a year. So, there's a benefit, but I really like what you brought up, because I did notice that incredible. It was, I don't know if it's exaggerated, you're more the expert in this area than I am, but they called it an extinction level challenge to the core 6% national association of wealth or commission structure system, or cause or not, regardless of whether you agree with it, but did you know in our world, we not only pay courtesy to brokers, but we also, the seller doesn't pay the buyer broker fee. So, they save that with the auction method because we do on the buyer's premium. So, there's a transactional savings with the auction method, as well as getting it done date specific to cash buyers without all the usual contingencies. So, I think that with all these changes like you brought up with the possibly changing commission structure of the listing method, maybe even the courtesy to brokers system and the auction method will apply to more friendly joint venturing, shall I say, because we're very friendly brokers and sellers. So, one of the things that this then focuses on is data and accuracy, or information or facts. You have a ramp up to the auction and I run around trying to do all my due diligence and get everything, get everything, get everything. Sometimes in a unique property though, I might find something that the seller didn't know about. Now, in that case, the seller should, if he's thoughtful, just say, okay, instead of a 90-day hard close, you know, I'm going to inform everybody and add another 30 days so you all can factor this into it. And it could be something like finding not Red Hill type stuff, but something along those lines. But let me go back to information. So, if you're not only going to provide a platform to have a transaction, that platform probably has to extend into all sorts of information, probably has to be vetted by lawyers and accountants. So, in terms of the way realtors have kind of evolved, they've become a very powerful political lobbying group and they're very protective of a number of things. They're protective of their members, they're protective of their rights, and the commission indeed is something that they protect and they should out of self-interest. But just because it's that way doesn't mean it's always that way. If you were to go into this space, what would you want to accommodate and what would you want to achieve? Well, the main thing is to remember the difference, not just the friendliness or compatibility of the all auction, the real estate auction marketing method and selling method with the traditional brokerage, because they are compatible. We really don't have a lot of strong opinions or aversions or conflicts of interest. We're very friendly, we're very win-win and rather would team rather than compete, we're just that, that's our kind of our philosophy in the nature of it. So, the auction itself, it brings something unique in that it conveys and signals urgency. Desirous seller, selling desirable assets, seeking desirous buyers and sewers for this property is to make a great marriage. You know, the desirous buyers respond to a motivated decisive seller. And the big difference for Ricky is that, and it's not a negative, it's just a contrast with the listing method, it might take a long time, you don't know if or whenever for whatever you're going to sell it, but especially with a higher property, especially with going to a recession, the Tennessee is going to be that the markets going to start bidding it down. We do the reverse. We start low, track enormous interest and then get everybody to push it up. So, it's a directional change, right? And it gets exciting. I mean, it's not too exciting seeing things going down, except if you're shopping and you want to save money at a specific store or something like that. So, I think that's going to be one of the keys is that we're going to be having properties spit up and selling fast. Now, you talked about all the facts and figures and the due diligence. I think you're going to like this too. Look at the words act proactive and reactive. So, even with the best of the MLS system, and it's a great system, probably better than it's ever been, it's still a little bit passive reactive to people's interest, again, if ever, whenever, for whatever. And so there's this idea of due diligence kind of underway and maybe later and maybe an escrow and all that kind of stuff. In the auction method, we turn it on its head. We do the opposite. We front load all the due diligence in the front load so that people come into it feeling very motivated, excited because they're extremely well informed. However, they only sign in saying they're they're sticking to their bid no matter what because it's contingency three. Obviously, unless it's fraud, that's a lot of the story. So this creates excitement, right? Because one bidder may have strong interest compared to another one relative to the amount of information they have. It's not necessary to be the high bidder to know 99.9% of everything. They they want it for a lot of reasons, right? Does that make sense? So it's a little bit different that way. Yeah, that that actually glues to where I've been trying to get to in a sense mentally, which is is that subjective part. And I was going to segue into it by saying, okay, a regular transaction, it's over the phone. Sometimes it's in person, an auction, okay, it it's in person, it can be over the phone. I mean, like the art houses, blah, blah, but that that moment to moment, your urgency really pushes, I would say, you know, emotions and logic, because you have to settle them and or you have to to the front and is when you do, is there you want to talk about live auctions or telephone auctions or zoom auctions for a sec, just in terms of the subjective? Right, I will. And I'll give you a little bit of history. I think you'll enjoy this part of the conversation to Ricky, too, in terms of the history, because it's relevant and segues right into your question of the condition of the marketplace now, where we use online a lot and live online combos and marketing and selling. But I know it began live real estate auctions back in the late 90s, during that recession, where there was no internet marketing and no internet bidding or selling. But I did a lot of research and found the touchpoints dating all the way back to when everything had to be live and you had to show up in person, you know, just papers and, you know, that kind of thing in a PA system. And I'm thinking about at YTE of the big guy, thinking about Mola Cuy, these were all very successful real estate auctions. What a lot of people don't know is, for example, and this has not to do with pie of property, which is our focus, but just to show you the power of the auction method, when, if you remember the early 70s, when the Dell Web screened in the condominiums, they couldn't give them weight to save their life. They solved that with the auction method. And a lot of people don't know they had a thousand people turn out for that auction. And it really got the interest because of the auction work is, hey, they're going to sell, we got to get part of it, we got to compete, we got to get one right before they're gone or whatever. So and it worked really well. But now fast forward, we do a combination of in person, combined with internet bidding, combined with like you said, they do a set of these for R2 with folks, people on folks, some people want to be anonymous. That's where the beautiful online bidding is cool too, because you don't get to see who's the audience, right? So some people want to be seeing something, want to be there, kick the tires and be present. They love that live environment and some people might want to be anonymous and they can be with our method of using live and online bidding or by the phone, right? So it's a beautiful system that just again, makes for more decisive conditions. But you're right, you're kind of alluding to that there's a potential capture of an upside. You remember Alan Greenspan, talked a lot of the auction during the dot com before it became the dot bomb era, talked about irrational exuberance in the marketplace. So we do want to generate that obviously for the seller, but we're fair to the buyer is that, hey, you know what? If it's too crazy, just stop bidding. You see where the market is. If it's too rich for your blood, you stop with somebody else paying the right price or overpay, that's really up to them, right? But it's a very fair transparent system. That's what we like to say. I will remember irrational exuberance, but I have another phrase you'll like, which is wisdom of crowds. The wisdom of crowds was one of the better looks on market research. You obviously know that if you get enough people looking at something, and then you run out and ask them something, if you collect all their answers, they pretty much hit the mark. And the model was the livestock shows in England in the 1800s, asking the onlookers how much that cow weighed. And there is a wisdom to clouds that you could appreciate, and I can too. Now, the Dell web story is what sparked it. Let's flip it around and start stargazing because the other market where you have just a ton of people in it has to be affordable housing, both for sale and rent, and the lower people's incomes, the bigger the market. I do a lot of stats. I do maybe six to eight affordable housing studies a year, and that's Hawaii, okay? So if there was a way of somehow getting people, and I'm stretching, I got to stretch. I mean, part of the stretch is that I want the problem solved. I'm looking for the best way of solving it. The way it is run historically is that the supply has been so bad that the demand has increased, and finally that the cries have hurt by those without shelter. The demand has gotten so bad that the regulatory process on housing has shifted from being onerous to liberalizing at least on the side of affordable housing. So I don't know where I started. I don't know where I went. I think I ranted, but there is a large group of people, and the internet is entirely appropriate for aggregating a market like that. I don't know how we'll make it work other than democracy and elections, but the history of social media has been, okay, now we're connected. What do we do with it? There's a downside to social media in that it can turn into look at me moments and then allow people to rant away and ratchet up the rant to get attention to themselves. And auction is the opposite. It may be a free for all in terms of values, but it has a narrow focus with the goal that gets reached, and that's very satisfying to people. You know that as being a shopper as well as a buyer. Yeah, it's really just, again, it's a beautiful method of really connecting buyers and sellers in a very friendly, transparent, and rapid method. And just on average, people would like to get things done more decisively and get have done period versus not and done a little bit faster rather slower. So we offer a lot and you brought up a great issue. It's not one that I don't have any answers for right now. You put it by the chapter stick to the niche that we're most efficacious with. And I will say that although we're talking primarily about landed politics and roasted auctions in Hawaii that people can find me on the net at surferjodyauctioneer.com. And although I'm a comprehensive auctioneer that by the way, I'm not a wolf, I team with all kinds of great local and national partnerships and all of my dishes from estates to charities to surplus equipment. If anybody has any question about any aspect of this enormous niche world, now the less here in the world, I'm glad to answer questions. But I think that again, I think that our timing can be good to help a lot of sellers right now to capture a lot of the equity that they patiently and painstakingly have been paying mortgages on for many, many years now to capture that gain before what some people think is going to be maybe a significant slowed out or downturn, right? And they're sitting out all of those gains, but might be better to capture it now and sooner rather than if ever later and slower. So the auction method could come at a bear. I must tell you that we're excited having established our local team of the veteran broker and one of their agents, the national JP King National Partnership, we're getting ready to announce the upcoming months. Some people that are looking to come aboard with the method. And one of the my erotically is a large land track, multiple parcels that really could be brought to affordably help a lot of ag farmers, you know, that kind of things. There could be a social sustainable effect on that particular sale, but other ones are looking as large ranches, which have a real hard time selling here in Hawaii, but not just a few mentions. And some are a couple of very large nonprofits that have some surplus land that could be used for creating affordable housing, where right now they're just unused property. So this could all come about and we'll be glad to on four people as time moves forward about those exciting facilities, Ricky. Do good on that because the next reservoir of land that you could develop sits in the public sector and they're very bad about making the transition from, for instance, sometimes schools, they could use housing on them. Okay, they're not going to build it, get a developer. There's all sorts of other public lands that you can see as you drive around don't look really beautiful because they're unloved and unwanted. So if you can have a system, the other thing with the public thing is that it has to be transparent and it has to be realistic. So, you know, I'll keep on banging the drum and pushing you towards that way. But I'll let you a gavel the gavel, gavel the conversation and we'll say Aloha. It's been a great showtime with you, Ricky Cassidy. I'm Surfer Joe. Meeting adjourned. Sold your way. Aloha. Aloha. Thank you.