Speaker 1: 0:30

So my name is Jeff Davis, my business is Romp Real Estate, and it's a technology service designed to deal with a very particular problem that is about to happen within the real estate community.

Speaker 2: 0:44

Okay, and can you delve a little bit more into that problem that's going on and how you plan to help real estate agents?

Speaker 1: 0:50

So, essentially, what's going on and you know for any real estate agents that are listening right now or any of your clients that are listening right now that are real estate agents they know very big, very well what the problem is. And it's essentially that the National Association of Realtors has come to a settlement on a lawsuit they were hit with to change how they essentially work with buyers compensation fees. At present actually up until the 17th of August the way that it works is compensation fees were part of the MLS. If you went on a listing, the realtors could go on there, they could see how compensation splits were going to happen and it was designed as an agreement. It was an agreement in place so you couldn't back out of the agreement. It was legally binding. You now had something that you could work with and you could go. You knew you were going to get paid essentially for. So on the 17th that changes Essentially.

Speaker 1: 1:55

There's two things that the settlement did. It said hey, if you're a buyer's agent, you now have to negotiate a fee with your buyers or the person that you're directly working for, which is the buyer. You're representing them. You're going to negotiate a fee with them and secondly, we're not allowed to put that fee in MLS anymore. Real estate agents are not allowed to put that fee in MLS anymore. Real estate agents are not allowed to put that fee in MLS anymore. So it creates kind of like a head-on problem. And the problem is one I now have to talk to my clients who can't necessarily always afford this fee. I mean, most people don't have the money to pay an additional 2% 2.5% of the cost of the house that they're going to buy in cash out of their pocket as they go buy these homes. So it creates a problem on that side and starts to slow deal flow on that side. It also creates a challenge on the seller side because no longer can you put it in. So there's not even a way to look for that fee anymore. So what you've got to do now is sellers can take that fee and list it on their individual websites, or they could list it on their brokerage websites, but they're not allowed to put it on the MLS anymore. The buyers now are going to have to go and dig for those compensations. So if they've made an agreement with a buyer saying, hey, I'll get paid two and a half percent for this If we can't get the seller to pay it you owe me. That's going to be a lot of buyers turning around saying, listen, this is a beautiful home, but I can't afford to pay you two and a half percent on top of the cost of this home, right? So it's.

Speaker 1: 3:47

The challenge that comes in is they're now faced with a need that wasn't there before. And so, as we've started to estimate this and we started to look through it and anybody who's worked in sales in any industry knows that when you start to put friction into the system, it starts to slow down what you can do with the deal. And that was the crux of the problem that I saw for realtors is that this was going to be a real cost for realtors. Is that this was going to be a real cost for realtors? They were going to have to. Now, you know, essentially, look at 20 to 40 hours more per client or per home that they're putting in, or actually I'm sorry, that's across, I meant to say across the week. So 20 to 40 hours more per week across, you know, the homes and the clients that they're working with. Looking at an extra hour to two hours per client a week or per property a week starts to become cumbersome. So we looked at is how can we reduce the friction in that an idea to separate listings from the MLS make it really easy five minutes for any listing agent to put the information up on the board and then, within three clicks, any buyer's agent can find the property and agree to the compensation that was put onto that property. We've worked with a really good legal team to make sure that we're meeting with complete compliance as to what the settlement was. We welcome anybody to kind of come look at the site from that end with it realtors to create, to increase deal flow or to keep their deal flow going at the current rate it's going right now and turning what was going to be an extra 20 to 40 hours a week into an extra two to three hours a week.

Speaker 1: 5:45

So that's our hope and we think we've got a pretty good system. We're open right now for beta testing on the system, so we're trying to build it out right. We're trying to make it so that it's going to be an easy-to-use system and we also think that there's some additional advantages that don't really exist in the way that they're doing business right now. That will exist with the system One. It'll offer 100% transparency because as you put a listing in, that'll actually trigger a link. That link now goes to the seller. The seller can now see the transactions that are happening on their house. The same thing happens on the buyer's side. As the buyer agrees to a negotiated compensation with a seller's agent, that now goes to their particular buyer. So their particular buyer and the seller are all now part of the entire process. They get to see.

Speaker 2: 6:41

And I'm the dark. No one's in the dark, exactly so.

Speaker 1: 6:50

The whole thing that started this was people complaining that realtors weren't being up front with them, that they were fixing prices. You won't be able to make that claim anymore. Everybody will feel more comfortable. And from somebody who's been in sales the vast majority of their post-military career, I will say that anything that you can do that opens up transparency to people that you're trying to make deals with back and forth opens up the ability to negotiate a lot better, because no longer do I have to tell a seller listen, people aren't coming to see your home because you refuse to pay a buyer's agent fee. There's you can show them now. You can have that open discussion with them and they can see it. They can see it's not you pushing back. I also think that as people see all the work that realtors put in to sell their homes and to buy and to take care of people for their own homes, as people start to see that work, the question of do I really need a realtor or why am I paying this fee, will quickly go away, because there's a lot of work those people do to make those deals and make them happen.

Speaker 1: 7:51

Buying and selling a home is an emotional thing for the person buying and selling a home. It's not for a realtor, right? They're professionals and they're making the deals happen and keeping the deals flowing. The other thing that we see in this is not only will the buyer's agents be able to go on and search for properties that meet their compensation needs and their client's home needs you know, I want a two-bedroom apartment between this or two-bedroom house between this price and this price They'll also be able to, on the seller side, be able to go ahead and search for buyers.

Speaker 1: 8:29

So as a buyer's agent goes on there, they'll be able to go ahead and list up they're going to put in what their buyer's needs are. That is, in turn, going to allow the seller's agents to now go home at the end of the night. And hey, let's see, I'm having trouble selling this home. Let's see if there's anybody who's in the market for this home or who's looking for this home, and see if I can't go ahead and talk directly to their agent and bring their agent in and maybe get a home viewing. That to their agent and bring their agent in and maybe get a home viewing.

Speaker 1: 8:56

That's something that right now, you're limited to with who are the people I actually know and you can talk to them about the homes that you may have up and what you have coming soon and what have you. But with this it now allows you to stretch that out completely, as technology does right. It democratizes that entire market, and so, if the way we look at it is, our goal was, and if what you're going to have is deal flow is going to slow down because the number of hours you're putting in are going to go up to here, if our technology can go ahead and bring it right back down to baseline where it is now, can we increase deal flows by just continuing to add more features on there that allow it to be easier and easier to sell these properties and to work through the negotiations. So that's a big piece of it.

Speaker 2: 9:46

That's a great little plan you have here system that you've got going on. Is this going to be like, maybe, a website with like a portal they log into, or is it going to be like an app or both?

Speaker 1: 9:57

So it's going to. We're starting out in the beta form, which we'll be launching in the second week of September, and again, this goes back to all the real estate agents that you have here. We are looking for communities where we can get a mass of anywhere from 100 to 500 realtors and sign them up for beta testing. That would give them the product for free for the first year. Beta testing. That would give them the product for free for the first year. So, yes, it starts out as a website and we're going to go ahead and run the beta testing as a website. It will then work its way into an app application be on your phone.

Speaker 1: 10:33

So realtors will be able to do this as they're on the move and, in addition to making the deal flow work quicker, it allows them to go ahead and now have a record of it kept of it. They now have. It will turn. It will be a legal document that they'll get out of it, so they'll make the agreement and that will be kept in the portal. Everything will be kept in one place for them. So they can now go from client to client. So they can now go from client to client, they can go from home to home and everything that they need for that particular home and that particular client will all be listed right there. It'll also be nice and easy to read for, like we talked about before, for their sellers and for their buyers.

Speaker 2: 11:14

That is pretty awesome, can you talk to me.

Speaker 1: 11:25

Yeah, I know that sounds awesome. I'm sure some realtors will be listening and be like, hmm, this process sounds like it's going to take some certain not burdens, but things off my shoulders. That will make it easier. Industry originally uh, my, my cousin is, she's actually down in florida and and she's she owns a brokerage down in florida. And she calls me up and she says this is going to be a major problem.

Speaker 1: 11:49

I'd read about it a little bit in the wall street journal. I knew that the the whole thing was coming, but I didn't. Uh, yeah, well, I didn't. I mean to me it didn't, it didn't register. I wasn't a realtor, I didn't register.

Speaker 1: 12:00

So she hits me with the whole problem. I did a little bit of research. She's like look, you're the only person I know that could build something like this. Can we build something together? So we started working on it together and putting it together. This was about two months ago, so we've run really quick with it.

Speaker 1: 12:14

But every realtor that we've talked to that was. And she's talked with the other brokerage and talking to the top producers. Every one of the top producers sees it the same way. It's not Armageddon, but it's definitely going to slow the amount of deals that they're going to be able to do throughout the year, because it's just so much additional work so it limits the number of clients that you can take on at any particular point in time. So every one of them that we've talked to has seen the problem and when we showed them the solution as most people are they're skeptical at first, but very quickly, as they've seen how quickly it works and how it comes together and how it flows, they have, they've been converts in seconds. So yeah, yeah, we're pretty excited about the response we're getting.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I was going to ask you like, how did that come to be? You just explained it to me that your sister no cousin.

Speaker 1: 13:13

I'm sorry, your cousin in.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Florida is a real estate agent and she was just like, hey, we have this big issue coming. I'm just like I know you used to be a real estate agent, but I love that. You were like, hmm, I think I could solve, I could come up with something here. And when you said she knew you'd be able to solve this, or the only one who can do this, do you mean like, you have like software background or what?

Speaker 1: 13:35

So I actually. So I spent 21 years in the Marine Corps not doing anything involved with technology. I was an infantry officer actually, and I went from that. When I left the Marine Corps I did what everybody does in this area and I went into government sales and I didn't love government sales but I did it and so from there I decided I was going to just go work in technology and I loved automotive and I moved over to just go work in technology and I loved automotive and I moved over to working with automotive software. So I worked for BlackBerry If you remember the old BlackBerry phones.

Speaker 2: 14:09

Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:10

So they actually. Blackberry is in about 250 million cars, I think, worldwide last count, but they do the operating systems for all the cars. So I worked at BlackBerry as part of a product team and that's you know. I spent a few years in that background. I went to MIT and did some graduate work in data science and things along those lines.

Speaker 1: 14:37

So I had that idea of okay, how do you market this, how does this go into, how do you build this and how do you find actually more importantly, how do you find the guys who are really really good at putting these things together, rather than just trying to do it all yourself?

Speaker 2: 14:52

Yes, that's brilliant. And you are coming from Massachusetts. What brought you to Northern Virginia?

Speaker 1: 14:59

So 21 years in Marine Corps. I retired out of the Pentagon, we lived in Alexandria and then, as our kids started to get a little bit bigger, we went out to Percival and now into Lovettsville.

Speaker 2: 15:09

Okay, pretty cool, and I know we were talking about Portugal, can?

Speaker 1: 15:19

you tell me a little bit about your history there for listeners who maybe are curious. I don't know how much history it is, so I come from a? Uh, a part of massachusetts, a fishing community where it's a? Uh, we have like one of the largest portuguese populations outside the country of portugal. Uh, it's, it's I, I don't know. I can't think of anybody I grew up with in that town that wasn't at least somewhat Portuguese.

Speaker 2: 15:45

Which, by the way, I had no idea.

Speaker 1: 15:47

It was so cool, I went over there and I didn't even think well, honestly, it was wherever you, if you look around the united states, wherever you find fishing, you find portuguese communities. So if you have a few, if you look in, uh, look there. Uh, new jersey is another place where there's a fairly large portuguese community. And then all the way over on the west coast, over in san francisco and northern california, where you know you had the whole fishing industry out of san francisco. There's a large portuguese community there.

Speaker 2: 16:13

So so wherever there's water and fish you you can find the Portuguese community there, yeah, thriving, yeah, pretty much I love that.

Speaker 1: 16:20

But, yeah, beautiful place. If you ever get to go, it's a beautiful place to visit. Put that on my bucket list. I have so many. Absolutely should.

Speaker 2: 16:26

Thank you, and as far as marketing goes for your business, how do you plan on using social media to help get the word out there about the services that you're offering and maybe for agents who don't know about this and how it can help them?

Speaker 1: 16:43

So our big move right now is, like I said, we are right now trying to get in our beta users. So we have been fairly under the radar for the last couple of months because we wanted to get everything in place. So we wanted to get IP in place. We've put together a fairly unique process so we wanted to make sure that we had our patents pending and everything else before we went too, too public. And then we've had our make sure the prototype works in and of itself. So we've had clickable prototypes done that just aren't live yet. So our big move right now is really just starting to push in individual markets. So we haven't gone on a wide social media campaign. Our plan is, within the next three months we'll push a large social media campaign. We'll get everything moving Once we get the beta testers in. And we've seen, you know, everything works great in a prototype right up until you launch it and democratize it, and then everything goes wrong. So we want to go through that stage first before we go massively.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Our biggest concern right now is we want to find those beta testers to come on to take a look at it and we want to go into markets that we can collect and collect quickly.

Speaker 1: 17:55

So we're not necessarily interested in hitting Los Angeles right away. We want to actually get this thing moving in communities where we can build it out and for it to be useful, all real estate is local right. So for it to be useful, it really has to build out into an entire community. Useful, it really has to build out into an entire community. So having, you know, 10% of the houses in Loudoun County on there makes doesn't make it a very useful product. But getting 40 to 50% of the homes on Loudoun County on there makes it a very, very useful product to realtors and that's where we want to get to. So again, it goes back to free beta testing and if we can get that out once, once we get beta testing and if we can get that out, once we get beta testing moving so we're looking around October timeframe we'll probably push on a big social media push, we'll look at a lot of native ads and then we'll probably look at expanding this campaign out and really trying to do a lot more of things like this.

Speaker 2: 18:50

Yeah, awesome. No, I love that you have a plan already going like in October. Perfect, that's great. And how are you choosing the beta users? Do they come to you? Are you scoping certain people out? Can people, if they're interested, want to be?

Speaker 1: 19:02

Yeah, absolutely. So what we've done is we've set up a landing page right now where it's called romprealestate. If any one of your listeners goes to romprealestate, they can sign themselves up as a beta user. If we get, what we're looking at is geographically, how can we saturate a certain place? So if we know we're getting a certain number in a particular area, we'll use that area as one of the beta testing areas. But if you come in and sign up now, even if you don't get selected as a beta area, you'd still be able to go on, use the platform when it comes out and you'll still get it for free for a year if you sign up now.

Speaker 1: 19:40

Nice so even if you don't get chosen as a beta testing area, you still will be able to use the product, You'll still be able to get it started and you'll still get it for free for a year.

Speaker 2: 19:49

Nice, heard it here first. Nice, heard it here first. And what do you like to do to unwind and what are some hobbies that you have if you're not too busy, like trying to get this built up and all your other endeavors that you've got going on?

Speaker 1: 20:02

Well, I've got a ton of kids, so that's that.

Speaker 2: 20:05

How much are we talking?

Speaker 1: 20:07

So my between my wife and I, we have eight children.

Speaker 1: 20:11

Nice so we were a blended family. She, I came with four, she came with two and then we had two more Um, most of them are. As a matter of fact, I just yesterday, uh, took our youngest to the um to the airport. He just joined the coast guard, so he is off in Cape May, new Jersey, right now getting yelled at Um other one, his older brother, has graduated from officer candidate school this summer and then we have a daughter that's in California, that's going to college in California, another son in California and then an older son getting ready to go to UVA. And then we have two little guys that are in there just kind of kind of just doing the elementary school thing now. So we started we're not smart, we started over at a very old age. As you can see, everything here is gray now, so you look great. So that takes up most hobby time. I also have a little woodworking shop that I work in. I love doing that stuff.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Yeah, talk to me a little bit about that, okay.

Speaker 1: 21:22

Yeah, so we started. I just started building projects a little bit over a year and a half ago it was two years ago and it just slowly kept on building. More and more and more People wanted bigger things.

Speaker 2: 21:37

You know, we started out just for homes, right.

Speaker 1: 21:39

Yeah, this is for homes, just for individual clients. You know, just people who you know when we get word around and we do a little bit of advertising on it. But it's one of those things where we're not we're at the point we're not taking on too many jobs now. We just do a few jobs here and there and I've gone from trying to produce a lot of things to just trying to make really nice things for people, especially people that I like. I love doing it because you just meet a lot of nice people in the area and they're kind of doing a lot of cool things.

Speaker 2: 22:05

And what is the name of?

Speaker 1: 22:05

the business that's called Handmade Virtue.

Speaker 2: 22:08

Okay, pretty cool, handmade Virtue Love that. And is there anything maybe that I did not touch on, that you would like to share with our listeners?

Speaker 1: 22:36

I think the biggest thing that we look at as we go to ROMP, as it goes, a beta tester, come in and see what we're offering on this. I think that they're going to be pleasantly surprised. It's something that we want to work together with them on and it's something that we want to get growing and growing quickly.

Speaker 2: 22:48

Absolutely no. Thank you so much. And now any parting words? I know that this could be a parting word, but maybe a mantra that you like to live your life by, or leave us with a message that's been on your heart. It could be something totally off topic.

Speaker 1: 23:03

That's a loaded question.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Yeah, that is a loaded question, uh, you know, it's okay.

Speaker 1: 23:21

No, it's all right.

Speaker 1: 23:21

I I'm actually trying to think of something, because so one of the things I actually believe in very, very deeply is that, uh, that you know, I believe that there's a general nature behind human beings, right Like I do believe that most people are genuinely good people, regardless of the background you come from, regardless of all of the arguments that we have right now and the way that we consistently divide ourselves and try to find ways around issues and things like that.

Speaker 1: 23:56

I'd say, as I've gotten older, probably the biggest mantra that I've really gone by, the biggest thing that I've seen, is that we come to judgments way too quickly on things Like people look for ways to divide themselves, they look for ways to classify themselves, for ways to identify themselves, and if there's anything that I actually would just love to see stop, is starting to look for the things that actually bind us, rather than the things that actually bind us, rather than the things that actually divide us. So that's probably the biggest thing I live my life by now is, instead of getting angry about somebody having a differing opinion, than me trying to understand why they came to that opinion.

Speaker 2: 24:46

Yes, I totally agree with what you just said there. So thank you so much. That's a huge message that I try to live my life by. Sometimes it's not perfect, but I do the best that I can and I think that's beautiful. But thank you so much for being on the podcast and thank you for sharing your stories and about your awesome business that you've got going.

Speaker 1: 25:05

Thank you.