 How we doing today Ricky Caruthier and I want to respond to some of the comments from yesterday's video. Thank you for watching yesterday's video. If you didn't, I'll link it in the description. I'll put it at the end of this video, but I'm just to break it down really quickly. This is preparing you for what I feel like is all but guaranteed when it comes to the lawsuits. We've had a lot of things coming to the industry, threaten our jobs, threaten our quality all that stuff and nothing has happened. Matter of fact, everything that came in that threatened our jobs as real estate agents has done nothing but help sell more properties in less time. But I think that this is going to be massive change and I believe that the agents that aren't willing to go out there and have these, let's face it, I think a lot of agents that hide behind buyers and don't go take listings is because they're scared of having the conversation about commissions. They're scared to say, this is what my commission rate is. They don't want to be put in that position where they have to negotiate their commission and they're just, they just, they, they, they veer away from that situation. Well, moving forward, I believe we're going to have to have that conversation with buyers now before we can even work with them. We're going to have to sit down and show them what we do, how we get paid and that they're going to have to pay us if we can't get it out of the seller. Now some of you guys in the comments are saying, well, you know, this is not going to happen, Ricky. You know, we're going to, you know, explain to the seller that they need to offer that buyer agent commission, but here's going to be the problem. If another agent down the road is willing to do it for two to three percent without offering the buyer agent commission, but you're not, who do you think that seller is going to go with? Especially when they know other people who sold their properties and didn't offer a buyer agent commission and still got top dollar. Okay. People are always going to choose money at the end of the day. Yes, they love you. Yes, they trust you, but at the end of the day, if they're going to save $20,000, okay, and there's proof they have proof in their, in their mind, they've seen it with their own two eyes. They know people who saved the buyer agent commission. They know agents and have talked and interviewed agents who are willing to take it for two and three percent. And that's another issue there. There's another conversation about commissions because I believe we could see that two percent to list properties might end up being the new norm. I think you're going to see a lot of agents start to take two, willing to take two. And a long time ago, even before I started coaching and creating content, I actually said that I believe at some point, because of whatever technology, this, that, or the other, that we will go to a four percent norm, which at the time I wasn't even thinking that we would exclude the buyer agent commission out of that equation. But that was a two and two scenario that I thought that we would eventually get to two percent on the seller side, two percent on the buyer side. And a lot of people back then, when I said that, they would complain and say, oh, you know, that's what, I would never do that, blah, blah, blah. The new agents could, listen, two percent is still a very lucrative business. And for new agents coming in that have never experienced three percent, they're going to come in and get two and be tickled. And they're going to go out there and build their businesses on that. And now you are going to be competing against that. So if you got somebody that's willing to do it for two and you're at three, yes, you can, you know, explain your value. And I'm sure you could win some listings here and there, but you're going to be up against the market. The market dictates our rates, the market dictates home prices, right? The market supply and demand. That's what dictates this. You can go out there and, and, you know, negotiate high and, you know, explain your value all you want to. But most people, right? Most people, when it comes down to saving $20,000, they're at least going to give it a try. And then if they do it and then they get the job done, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. So anyway, a lot of you are kind of sweeping this out of the rug. It's kind of went a little quiet. You know, this is going to take time to play out, but let's see where this goes. I want you to be prepared though, because this is what I feel like is going to happen. And in that environment, before I get to the comments, we're going to lose 30 to 40% of the agents who aren't willing to actually do what I'm talking about, have these conversations with the not only sellers, but buyers. You're not going to take every single buyer that walks through the door. And, you know, honestly, from the listing standpoint, you're going to have to work a lot of buyers, you know, because you're going to have buyers who can't afford to pay their own commission that's going to come directly to you. You know, and then opens up all these other questions. Will Zillow continue syndicating? You know, how will teams fare? Like it, there's so many variables happening. You know, it's a chain reaction type deal. But let's dive into some of these. Let's see, this first one. This is not going to make the gap between the haves and the have nots. This is going to make the gap between the haves and the have nots even wider and many veterans will not be able to buy. I believe this. I believe that. Let's see. Thanks for telling me like it is, Rick. You have a friend who lives in South Africa who says basically the only wealth, only the wealthy can afford to buy a home, because they have to pay an agent for their services as you described. And the only wealthy realtors and only the wealthy realtors who aren't going to go to the poor can afford to be realtors. It becomes more of a gamble to be a realtor that those who aren't sitting comfortably already are not willing to make. As you say, the sure thing is to be a listing agent as it is now. But what if a consumer pays a buyer agent and they don't secure a property? Will they be happy with the money they've spent? That should be a fun lawsuit party. It will take more than a good script for realtor to step up to that challenge. Those of us who have focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, these rulings will have the opposite effect. Only the affluent buyers will be able to afford home shopping, concierge service. Absolutely. Yes, if you can't afford to pay the buyer agent commission, then you're not going to have a buyer agent, I believe, in this new market unless you can work with an agent who's willing to work for free, gambling on the fact that they hopefully configure the buyer agent commission into the price. Offering in the purchase agreement, hey, here's our offer. We want the seller to pay the buyer agent commission. Let's see. Joe says, Ricky, you're finally making sense and giving true reality. I don't know what you mean by finally. Under this lawsuit logic, nobody should pay a subcontractor again. That brings up something because I've used this analogy of the subcontractor. You got the contractor, they come in, they bid the job, and then they use the subcontractor to actually do the work, and they pay the subcontractor. No one should pay a subcontractor again. In that instance, here's the difference though. In that instance, you're literally writing a check to the contractor who then writes a check themselves from themselves to the subcontractor. It's not the same way in real estate. In real estate, actually the seller on the HUD is paying the buyer agent directly. The seller's paying. Although in logic, it's the same thing because the seller agreed to pay the full commission to the listing agent, regardless if there's a buyer agent involved or not. On the HUD, it shows the seller actually paying the listing agent and then the seller paying the buyer agent. It's not necessarily the same thing. Logically, it is, but technically on paper, it is something completely different. Now, a lot of people say, well, all we have to do is change that on the HUD statement and show that the whole commission is going to the listing agent, and then there's a subset on the HUD statement that shows that out of the listing agent commission that the seller is fully paying to the listing agent, the listing agent is compensating the buyer agent. Now, that is a very interesting take right there. And I believe that if we wrote the HUD statements like that from day one, I don't know that we would be in this mess because literally that is the loophole. That's the loophole that I believe the lawyers are literally standing on because on the HUD, it shows the seller paying it. I think if on the HUD, it showed that the listing agent was getting the full commission and then out of that the listing agent was paying the buyer agent, I think that there wouldn't even be a lawsuit right now. It's literally how it's disclosed on the HUD statement is, I think, why we're in this entire mess. So that makes me want to go back and say, okay, who came up with that? Why did they come up with that? And was it like Lenders? Was it, I mean, who came up with on the HUD statement that it shows the seller paying the buyer agent? Because honestly, that's not how it works. Per the listing agreement, you're paying the listing agent five or six percent, regardless if there's a buyer agent. And then in the listing agreement it says, if there's a buyer agent involved, we're going to pay them this much. So anyway, it's getting wild. Let's see. I'm still confused how sellers were able to say they didn't know they were paying the buyer agent commission and that they wouldn't negotiate and they couldn't negotiate commission with a straight face. I had the conversation with every seller and buyer. Oh yeah, the listing and buyer agent agreement break it down. Still confused. Yeah, it's because I'll tell you why. It's because people nowadays, they don't even read anything they're signing. It's just electronic signatures and they just go click, click, click, click. They just go right through it, you know, and they don't even read what they're signing. Again, I think that I believe and I know this for a fact that we as agents, as in this industry, has done a horrible job educating the buyers on what we do and how we get paid. So they don't know what we do behind the scenes and they don't know how we get paid. And then at closing, we magically get this big check and they're like, well, that was weird. And they have this weird taste in their mouth about the entire process. And then they feel like, wow, look how much he got. And I didn't really see him do anything. Why did he make that much off of me for the house I bought? And I didn't even see him. He just signed a couple of papers and, you know, no, like you don't know what all we did behind the scenes and we're not telling you what we did behind the scenes and we're not even explaining how we get paid. So there's no wonder why the general public is confused and is fighting this so hard. It comes back to us. We have to take responsibility for some of this. Some of this, we have responsibility in. Ricky have not worked with the buyer in five years. I'm strictly a seller broker. I'm never scared to have a conversation with anyone. When I was with Remax, always asked for a retainer. Cool. Ricky, it's not the buyers. It's not that buyers don't want to use a buyer agent. It's that most simply can't afford one. We are more than happy to have conversations. It's just a sad reality. Buyers are barely scraping up enough to buy it in the first place. Things are going to get very interesting, but I'm ready and excited. So he says, Ricky, it's not that buyers don't want to use a buyer agent. It's that most can't afford it. I never said that buyers don't want to use a buyer agent. Now there are some buyers who say, what do we need buyer agents for? We can find everything on Zillow. You know, why do we need a buyer agent? We can find it on Zillow. We can, you know, you know, Google how to write a contract or, you know, submit it online and what do we need a buyer agent for? So there's that part of it. And that's probably a small subset of the buyers who actually fill that way. I mean, more, you know, around 90% of buyers and sellers use a real estate agent, right? There's more people use real estate agents now than ever in history. Why is that? Why? Since they know everything about everything. Consumers know more than they've ever known, but they use agents more than ever at this point. And commissions aren't lower right now. Commissions are still five or 6%. And it varies per market. You know, there's some markets like Manhattan where I believe 2%, you know, for each side is a thing. I mean, there's different markets that have different commissions. But at the end of the day, more people use agents now than ever. All right. So, but I never, I wasn't saying if you miss, if that was miscommunicated that buyers don't want to use buyer agent, right? And as far as simply can't afford one, well, that, this rule hasn't taken into effect yet. Literally, you know, 99.9% of listings out there offer the buyer agent commission as we stand here today. And that's another point. You need to be squeezing this current market for everything that you can. Continue working with your buyers. Continue working with your sellers. Push, push, push, push, push. Squeeze it for every last drop you can before the hammer drops and all these new rules kind of come into place. All right, I've been watching you since day one, but recently I've noticed your titles have become clickbait recently and you're losing my respect. Curious if anybody else feels the same way. Let's see what people said. Maybe he's a guy, yeah, definitely getting kind of weak. He was cool. And then he got a phone call from catch mark, all the videos disappeared. I was thinking the same thing. Glad you brought it up. So strange. You made a video all hype about catch mark calling him and even saying his way of having me on the show must have sold out. I've noticed some clickbait posts as well, but nothing too crazy in my opinion. If it helps him grow more power to him. Here's the thing, man. I'm going to skip past this clickbait thing. Like we all evolve, especially in social media and in our businesses in our life. We're all changed. I'm never going to be, nobody's, nobody is going to be the same person that they was. You're always going to be evolving into this new version of yourself. And if you think something, here's the thing about clickbait. Clickbait to me is that you did something that made somebody click and that you didn't give them the value that they were expecting based on the title and the thumbnail. In my opinion, this is just me and I'm not even biased about it. I feel like my content, whatever the title is, you get the value when you click on the video. I believe that buyer agent commissions are going to go away. You're not going to offer that anymore. I think that the DOJ, the federal trade commission, I believe that in my soul, in my heart. Do I want you to be prepared for that? Yes. The title said lawsuit update. Commissions are going to disappear for real estate agents. There was nothing clickbaity about it. It was exactly what I talked about in the video in detail. So, okay, whatever. Dual agency will be outlawed and buyers will have to sign a document that states they are purchasing without representation. Once buyers realize that there are no negotiations without an agent, buyer agency will come back. And that's kind of where we were to begin with. And that's why we put buyer agency into play. That's why we did the compensation, you know, cooperation rule where we share the commissions and all that. That's why all this came into play in the first place. So we're literally going back in time, back before all this started. We're going to do, I bet you all this complete history repeats itself, right? I believe all this will probably play out again. Well, we'll go back the other way for a while. We'll see how horrible that is. And then we'll come back to the way it is. How long is that going to take? 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Like it's going to take a long time. But I think it will come full circle and that you are right auction man, 707. Let's see. Good work. I read the article and the same big names keep coming up. Companies care more about volume and not code of ethics. Also, it's interesting to me that sign lists and agreement of a percentage doesn't mean anything. And for the big boys and R to not be able to win this case, maybe it's time for lending to cover the buyer side and seller. Yeah. No, for lending to step in, okay, they're going to cover the buyer side. I mean, that means it has to appraise. It's going to come back to the seller net and everybody being happy. And then if they're covering it there, then where does the lending liability lie with? I mean, there's so many questions I have for that. I've looked at the whole thing about covering the commissions in loans and everything. I don't see that as a fix. I see it that it could work in some deals, but honestly, it's not a fix because it's not something that could work across the board. It's one of those things like, okay, yeah, we can put the buyer agent commission covered in the closing calls or in the fees and the seller can cover it at this, that or the other, figure it into the loan or whatever. But at the end of the day, it's going to have to appraise for the value and whatever the seller is going to net out of that, they got to be happy with it. They're not going to sell unless they have to sell. And then if they have to sell and they're forced into that and then we're right back where we were just in a weird place. So I don't see that as like a fix, like, oh, we can just figure it in there and boom, it's a done deal. No, it's not that easy. If the case goes to the Supreme Court, would an attorney bring up the fact that any commission-based business would be considered price fixing? What about the attorneys who charge 30% retainer fees as a standard fee? How about insurance agent who gets a percentage on the policies they sell? Aren't they commission-based? Yeah. I mean, absolutely. It does bring a lot of things into consideration when you think about that. Yes, it's true, Ricky. We must have buyer representation and broker compensation agreement signed with our buyers. Yep, that is going to be a thing. Dual agency is terrible for both sides. Can an attorney on the agent sign please explain this to the general public? Yeah, that's what we need. We need more education to the general public about what we do, what the actual consequences are here. I think that if somebody actually, like, had a presentation and actually shared, like, you know, real data and statistics behind, here's what it looks like when you're, you know, right now, right? And then you take the buyer-agent commission out of the shared commission rule, okay? And then this is what it looks like after that. Whereas buyers who can't afford it are going to have to go directly to the listing agent and not be represented. And then this is all the legal battles and problems that come out of that because people are looking out for themselves. The seller's going to look out for themselves. The listing agent's looking after the seller. Who's looking after the buyer that can't afford it. So you've got buyers who can't afford it, who will pay for representation. You've got buyers that can't afford it that hope we can get it figured into the deals, but that's not going to happen every single time. And so then you've got buyers who are left out, who get unrepresented and then how are they going to be treated? Not real good. And it's like, I'm a real estate expert. If I went to buy something in a state over, I would have to hire a real estate agent. That's how complicated it is, even for an expert been doing it for 20 years. I'd still talk to a real estate agent if I was going to buy property in Atlanta in Dallas in Nashville. If it's complicated enough where I need an agent, if I buy an area that I'm not familiar with, how complicated do you think it is for the general public? People can't go out and represent themselves. And people think it's that easy. Oh, just get a lawyer. The lawyer's not going to do all the stuff an agent does. They're going to do a contract. They might look over it, but there's all these other things. There's the lender. There's the appraisal. There's the inspector. There's all kinds of the title company. There's all these things that are going on within the deal. All right, one more here. This is actually an easy fix. If this does happen somehow, which I don't think it's going to, but if it does, the seller can just give a credit for the buyer agent commission at closing and get it wrapped into the loan. Well, the problem with that is that what if the seller doesn't want to? Yeah, the seller could. Yeah, sure. Sure. The seller could, but you said this is an easy fix. How's that an easy fix? For me, an easy fix is something I look at and say, okay, this can happen across the board. This can happen across all the deals happening. When I think about it getting figured into the loan, that can't happen in every deal because you have appraisal issues. When I think about this, the seller giving credit, sure, it can happen in some deals, but not all the deals. Therefore, it's not a fix at all, much less an easy fix. It's something that could happen here and there on certain deals where the seller agrees to it. The only thing I can see affecting this is the appraisals, which maybe there's a new contingency that will be weighed. Oh, yeah, right. Like, now we're going to waive appraisals and now we can like, you know, just the loan, the loan can be over appraisals now and stuff like that. Bro, that's not going to work. Let's see. I think many, if not most deals will go sour if the seller won't agree to pay buy or age commissions. In most cases, we'll end up at the same destination, but there'll be an extra step in headache to get there. It'll be, they want to buy this house, but they have to pay a commission down payment and closing costs. If you don't pay the agent commission, then you can't buy the house. Okay. But what about the scenarios where the buyer can't afford that, where they can't afford everything like the down payment and all that, the closing costs, they can afford at all, but the buyer agent commission, they can afford everything but the buyer agent commission. What then? Okay. Well, you're just not going to sell to that buyer. Yeah, you're going to sell to that buyer because you want to sell the home. You're not going to walk away from it. You're going to get what you want out of it, right? The seller's going to get what they want out of it. They need to sell. They're just going to walk away from it. Oh, we'll get another buyer that can afford to pay their buyer agent commission. No, the seller's going to say, let's do the deal. And the buyer, if the buyer wants that home, then what? See, this is, this is what I'm talking about. All these suggestions are possible in some deals, but not all deals, right? I'm looking for a fix across the board and there's not going to be one. Every deal is going to be done as they come. We're going to have to negotiate these deals as they are. We're going to have to do our best on both sides. And honestly, like I'm built for this. Like I, my entire career has been listing properties, negotiating commissions. I'm negotiating my commission on just about every single deal, if not from the, in the beginning, in the middle, or even at the end. I've thrown that money at the closing table many times on deals. I have a listing, listing first, right? I represented a lot of buyers as well. Hell, I negotiated my commission on the buyer's side, not a whole lot, but I have always been flexible in my commissions, always willing to do whatever I had to do to make the deal work for everybody. And I walked away with less commission on just about all the deals I've ever done, smiling all the way to the bank. It's called getting the job done. So anyway, with that guys, I'll, I'll, I'll move on to, to something else. I hope you guys have a great holiday, merry Christmas. Don't worry about all this. Just keep working hard and doing what you do to build relationships and help people buy and sell real estate. Nothing's going to change in that department whatsoever. Just kind of the nuances and the process in which we do it. And that's about it. So don't be one of the 30 to 40%. Let me know what I can do to help. And I'll see you on the next video. Let's go.