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Join us as we take a deep dive into the real estate market with insiders in the industry.
#017 Transcript
00:00:20:17 - 00:00:38:05
Michael Conrad
Hey, guys. Michael Conrad here with the Business of Homes podcast. Today's episode actually picks up where we left the conversation with Nathan Weinberg last time. If you haven't listened to part one, I would recommend you go back. Listen to that before you jump into this episode. Thanks for being here. Let's jump back into it.
00:00:38:07 - 00:00:57:09
Nathan Weinberg
I talk about it a lot in my real estate practice. Realtors have been conditioned to say, I'm going to get you a great deal on this house. I'm going to I'm going to help you get a deal. We talked about things in terms of a deal. We hear this all the time. The deal, the deal. We we need to get a deal.
00:00:57:15 - 00:01:24:20
Nathan Weinberg
And your parents might have talked about the deal that they got on a car right? I would say this. You're right. Cars, watches, Some watches. Cars, especially cars and chairs and sofas and all those things depreciate. They lose value. Whether you decide you want to spend a lot of money on something that loses value or just a little is up to you.
00:01:25:02 - 00:01:54:01
Nathan Weinberg
And I'm not judging you one way or another. Those things are important to you for whatever reason they are. But houses appreciate. And so I would say this. You shouldn't get a deal on a house. You shouldn't want a deal on a house. You shouldn't want to overpay for that house. But getting a deal on a house can have the deleterious effect of driving down the value of a neighborhood.
00:01:54:03 - 00:02:19:02
Nathan Weinberg
And what if it. If it doesn't do it immediately? What it will do is create a delta between it'll change your equity quickly. So if I if a house is listed for $100,000 and I get a screaming deal, $80,000, I paid for this house. Theoretically, I've got $20,000 of equity. Right. Because the house is listed for 100 and I got it for 80.
00:02:19:04 - 00:02:37:03
Nathan Weinberg
Oh, my God. I have this $100,000 house. Except the next person on that street lists their house and they see that it sold for $80,000 and suddenly they're like, shoot, list mine for 100. I have to list mine for 95. And so your equity starts to roll down.
00:02:37:06 - 00:02:38:08
Michael Conrad
Mm hmm.
00:02:38:10 - 00:02:44:21
Nathan Weinberg
And so we should not be paying more for a house than it's worth. We certainly have been doing that for a few years.
00:02:44:22 - 00:02:45:21
Michael Conrad
Yeah.
00:02:45:23 - 00:03:15:23
Nathan Weinberg
But we shouldn't be paying less either. And as realtors, we shouldn't we should help our clients understand this concept. And I think it's hard for a lot of people to understand this. But because a house appreciates, we should pay for it. What? It's worth, and let the market work in our favor. Because if we sell that same hundred thousand dollar house for $100,000 because it's worth that, then the next person's going to lose their house for $105,000 and the needle starts moving in the other direction.
00:03:16:00 - 00:03:45:05
Michael Conrad
Yeah, this is a classic case of Pennywise pound foolish or playing a very short game in spite of the long game. And honestly, it asks more of your average American with their deeply baked and selfish idealist individualism than they are prepared to give. And that is think about the larger neighborhood fabric of value. The value that sort of is collective in a long distance, sort of long timeline manner.
00:03:45:06 - 00:04:01:23
Michael Conrad
That's very difficult as the old marshmallow thing with the kids. You know, if you wait 5 minutes, you'll get to marshmallow instead of one. And like, you know, two thirds of more of the kids eat the single marshmallow because they just can't wait. And so this is tough. You know, I myself have certainly been seriously wanting to get the deal and the difficulties, of course.
00:04:01:23 - 00:04:24:18
Michael Conrad
And we're really going down the rabbit hole here is in part due to what I believe is some difficulties with the appraisal system that we have in front of us. And that is if there truly is a property that is substandard of what is considered normal in a given neighborhood and it ought to sell for less, then we need to have more rigid, rigorous and rigid.
00:04:24:18 - 00:04:53:08
Michael Conrad
For that matter, standards of how appraisals account for irregularities or deficiencies and their present. I mean, look at any appraisal form and you can see all the pluses and minuses that help you understand. But gosh, it's it's deeply subjective in the way that it needs not be. And it's not objective as it needs to be, given just a shocking amount of data that we now have in 2023, specifically around appraisal values of the past, current values, sale prices.
00:04:53:12 - 00:05:19:20
Michael Conrad
And we better know through just the magic of technology what things cost. I mean, there's entire software that the whole appraisal industry uses, like exact image that kind of forcibly puts everyone on the same page, whether we like that software or not, on value over time. And so the appraisal industry still has a long way to go. And depending on which appraiser you're talking to, it's either going to stay exactly the same forever or it's going to be changing and all the robots are coming for their jobs, you know, overnight.
00:05:19:20 - 00:05:41:04
Michael Conrad
So I don't know which one it is, you know, but I do think that that is a big ask, too, to not avoid the deal when, of course, very obviously you are correct. And that is we can't be just trying to get that extra spread without being thoughtful of the larger impact of equity and, you know, dollars per square foot value over time.
00:05:41:06 - 00:05:41:17
Michael Conrad
Mm hmm.
00:05:41:22 - 00:06:05:00
Nathan Weinberg
I mean, remember what an appraiser's job is, right? So an appraisal doesn't work for you. The buyer, you paid for them, but that's not what who they're working for. The only reason you paid for them is because a bank told you to. And the bank told you to. Because the bank doesn't trust you or your realtor. And the bank doesn't want to give you more money than the house is worth, Right?
00:06:05:02 - 00:06:30:15
Nathan Weinberg
They're happy to give you less. They'd love to do that. So most appraisals come in at value. Most appraisals come in at value. And that's not because the appraisers done a bad job. Appraisers. You want to talk about a hard job? Hard appraisers have a really hard job, and they work really hard. But, you know, they are there to affirm value.
00:06:30:17 - 00:06:48:06
Nathan Weinberg
They're not there typically to assess value. That's my job. My job is to say that the house is worth X. Their job is to say it's not worth more or less than X, because I need to tell the bank that the bank isn't overpaying for this. The belongs to the bank until it's paid off.
00:06:48:12 - 00:07:10:14
Michael Conrad
Right. They're not going back to some sort of book of like pictures and dollar signs. They're they're really saying whatever value you've established, can I go find things of a similar value with the proper pluses and minuses to sort of get myself to a happy middle? That's exactly that proves out the original assertion. So in some ways it's a hypothesis.
00:07:10:14 - 00:07:14:04
Michael Conrad
And can we prove the hypothesis of value correct or incorrect?
00:07:14:04 - 00:07:27:01
Nathan Weinberg
That's right. And I mean, they're flawed too, right? And you get appraisers that are coming because of this. I say new, but it's now ten years old. This new appraisal system where nobody can talk to the appraisers.
00:07:27:03 - 00:07:27:18
Michael Conrad
Through a broker. And.
00:07:27:19 - 00:07:53:22
Nathan Weinberg
Right. I'll sell a house here in East Nashville and an appraiser from Wilson County comes to do the appraisal. And they are talking about market conditions in their appraisal. But those aren't based on firsthand knowledge. They're based on a report that they pull up that's by some bean counter somewhere they don't know about this neighbor, this micro neighborhood like I do.
00:07:53:22 - 00:08:07:03
Nathan Weinberg
And I drive through it every single day. So I can tell you that this neighborhood is on the rise, where fundamentally their data is 24 months old and they don't know that it's on the rise. And so there's a there's a disconnect there.
00:08:07:08 - 00:08:32:14
Michael Conrad
Oh, yeah. It's always been a backwards looking buy. It's a data driven industry, so it's always backwards looking. That's fine. But forward movement sometimes is difficult to sort of get your divining stick or your crystal ball out to figure out which direction we're going because that is difficult. And I'm tempted to sort of put this in almost a Quaker oriented style where you get everyone in the neighborhood and everyone has to agree to a value, you know, as the Quakers would do.
00:08:32:16 - 00:08:46:10
Michael Conrad
But no, I don't think that's it either. It there has to be sort of this original sense of value where if someone is willing to pay for it and it is intrinsically valuable, you know, at that value.
00:08:46:10 - 00:08:55:17
Nathan Weinberg
I mean, that's the that's the nature of market, like a market economy, right? A capitalist system says that the market will decide what needs to happen.
00:08:55:17 - 00:09:23:10
Michael Conrad
And I'm not sure I'm a hard and fast capitalist anymore, but I certainly still believe the patron saint, Adam Smith, in his understanding of the invisible hand. Like I it will guide, it will move, it will reward and will punish and in like kind. And so I do believe in market value. And what is difficult for I think your average consumer who doesn't care about all those sort of back end dynamics is understanding, avoiding the desire to get the deal or fearing the overpayment.
00:09:23:12 - 00:09:49:02
Michael Conrad
Those are sort of like metta feelings about trying to buy that are really difficult because they kind of cloud the judgment when in reality it can kind of be boiled down to some some sense of like simple numbers and a level of willingness. But it's very convoluted now, especially when the market, particularly in Nashville, has been moving so much.
00:09:49:02 - 00:10:13:16
Michael Conrad
Yeah. I mean, for those of us that have been in the business, you know, a while, we have seen easily five or six pronounced areas of sort of a real estate overture, like, you know, overtures in music, like a big overture of dynamics, you know, seller markets, buyer markets, low rates, high rates, speed of sales, number of days on market, etc..
00:10:13:18 - 00:10:31:05
Michael Conrad
I mean, you speak of the trough of oh eight. Remember back then when it was like days on market was measured in hundreds of days? Oh, 100, 200. I remember houses 300 days on market and I mean that is just wild. Every fourth house in Nashville was for sale, you know, in oh nine, it felt like, and nothing was moving.
00:10:31:05 - 00:10:41:02
Nathan Weinberg
And so I would cobweb that I had a set time in my open houses to cobweb houses. That's how long they were sitting there. Just they were being reclaimed.
00:10:41:05 - 00:11:04:06
Michael Conrad
Yes. And also Oreo houses like that is something that was alive and well. And, you know, winterizing and winterizing houses to go show them in. And now it's just sort of absentia from this market. And, you know, I come originally from California, where the market didn't play by the same rules as everybody other state. And it's starting to feel in some ways like Nashville doesn't play by its the same rules as everybody else.
00:11:04:11 - 00:11:12:14
Michael Conrad
It's on its own wavelength. I'm not saying it's good or bad, it's just a feels a little bit different in the rollercoaster everyone else is on. And so it's been interesting.
00:11:12:16 - 00:11:21:18
Nathan Weinberg
I, I, I'm always interested to talk with people who are from California because the Prop 17 was the little estate. There was a.
00:11:21:23 - 00:11:22:05
Michael Conrad
Left a.
00:11:22:05 - 00:11:47:21
Nathan Weinberg
Long time ago. There was a proposition in California in the seventies. It was the seventies that basically created a grandfather system to property taxes. And so if you owned a home at any marker in time, you froze in time. The amount of property tax increase that could be associated with that property.
00:11:48:01 - 00:11:49:18
Michael Conrad
Almost like rent control for every time, just.
00:11:49:18 - 00:12:17:11
Nathan Weinberg
Exactly what it was. And so what happened was in the early 2000s, I was living in California. And when this really when the state of California about went bankrupt because what had happened was that everybody in Southern California and Northern California who had these multimillion dollar homes, I mean, mansions in Newport Beach and paid a couple thousand bucks and tax.
00:12:17:13 - 00:12:59:01
Nathan Weinberg
And it was just really interesting to watch the the economy really just crater because of this really not thoughtful process around property taxes. That's another piece of that realtor education. Right. Like, we have to protect our clients. And so if we know if we are helping somebody buy a house in a neighborhood and we know that there's an elderly person in that neighborhood, it's incumbent upon us to make sure as a real as a real estate professional, it's incumbent upon us to make sure that everybody in those neighborhoods is safe and in a in a in a position that is tenable for them, including people that are not our clients.
00:12:59:03 - 00:13:14:14
Nathan Weinberg
And so if I help somebody buy a house and I'm not saying I've done this or that, I would do this. I should do this. If I help somebody buy a house in a neighborhood, I should be looking around. And if I see somebody who's older sitting on their porch, I should make sure that they don't need help.
00:13:14:16 - 00:13:30:01
Nathan Weinberg
I should make sure that they understand their rights because nobody from the city is going to come knock on their door until it's too late. They're usually wearing a badge and a gun. Right. And so we don't want that. We need to protect those citizens now.
00:13:30:02 - 00:13:37:03
Michael Conrad
Make them aware of the programs and opportunities for what it may very well be, a gentrifying neighborhood for them to be able to survive the gentrification.
00:13:37:03 - 00:13:39:03
Nathan Weinberg
They don't want someone buy your house that shouldn't.
00:13:39:05 - 00:14:13:09
Michael Conrad
Yeah, that's a really interesting idea. And I think you've continue to tease out this both in this podcast, but also very obviously in your brokerage that deep layers of realtor education is required to perform the profession and the professionalism at the level that commands respect and compensation that is due this industry. And I was part of an industry, the stagehand industry.
00:14:13:09 - 00:14:38:09
Michael Conrad
You know, you set up for entertainment based things years and years ago and that is a union based business. And there was a lot of defense around you know, we have to make sure that the union is strong. And I was young and sort of questioner of all things, as many young people are. And I was saying, but why are we defend doing something is valuable if it is not intrinsically valuable?
00:14:38:11 - 00:15:07:00
Michael Conrad
And let's go to the work and to the workmen and the results and the product that they are doing and saying is what they're doing valuable. And so I struggle sometimes because I've been in and seen professions where the value of that profession is defended at first blush, but that the intrinsic value in the practice is poor. And I'm sad to report that many of the fellow agents I was working with at the time were poor practitioners of that craft.
00:15:07:02 - 00:15:30:12
Michael Conrad
You know, they really didn't, I think, command the value that they required. And to some extent it was like book education, some of it was experience, but some of it much of it was actually just opening your eyes, opening your ears. And what I would maybe even say is waking up to what's around you. So the experience that you are having is continually building you up and making you better.
00:15:30:17 - 00:15:53:19
Michael Conrad
You know, there's sort of this adage in my companies that everyone's allowed to make mistakes. In fact, you are encouraged to make mistakes. We try to avoid making the same mistakes twice with this idea that we learn immediately and deftly from our mistakes. And so all experience is profitable for edification and for education, especially this stuff where we're going, you know, into the gutter sometimes.
00:15:53:19 - 00:16:34:22
Michael Conrad
And so you are promoting this idea of deep need for education, deep subject matter. We're we're in the weeds here talking about appraisal philosophy. We're talking about, you know, degradation cycles of homes and wood and these sorts of things. We're talking about investments and money working for us. I mean, this is a pretty multifaceted conversation that is, I think, illustrating that you as a real estate practitioner are able to not only touch on these sections, but really provide a lot of shepherding and assistance and advice and value, and that you're sort of making the call out there and saying, come with me, let's do this, let's let's really draw ourselves up to our highest height
00:16:35:00 - 00:16:58:22
Michael Conrad
as realtors and operate this. And yet I don't see a lot of other brokerages providing it. I don't see a lot of it happening in the real estate schools. I don't see a lot of private sector options happening it. And honestly, I don't see a lot of that self-starting, cold crank amperage required out of the general practitioner who saying, I need that, I need to go, you know, do all of this and fine figure all this out and ask the right people.
00:16:59:00 - 00:17:05:15
Michael Conrad
I'm not seeing it as much, which I know I think can be very frustrating for all parties, especially the consumer sometimes.
00:17:05:18 - 00:17:40:16
Nathan Weinberg
I mean, it's frustrating for me. Education. Somebody said this, somebody in recent decades said this education is a silver bullet and not just in real estate in everything around us. And, you know, I said earlier in this that real estate is fundamentally about investment. And that's true. But that investment needs to be available to everybody. And equity is something that the real estate profession has failed to provide for a very long time.
00:17:40:18 - 00:18:14:14
Nathan Weinberg
I would say still fails to provide and I'm not saying that we aren't fundamentally working on it. I do believe that there are lots of very smart, very, very caring people that want to create equity in the real estate world. M-W was founded on the concept of real estate equity, maybe a little bit differently, but the idea was that not everybody who's moving to Nashville or lives in Nashville looks like me and you.
00:18:14:16 - 00:18:41:04
Nathan Weinberg
And we need to have a brokerage that can help people achieve that dream, but B feel comfortable while they're doing it. And comfort usually comes in groups making sure that you are part of a group that you feel like you belong in. So a sense of belonging and feeling like you're treated, not just feeling actually being treated equally to everybody else.
00:18:41:06 - 00:19:05:05
Nathan Weinberg
And so M.W. is founded on this principle of equity. We need equity in real estate. It starts with realtors. Realtors that don't pass people off at first blush, as one kind of a buyer or seller, ask real probing questions to get a sense of who they actually are and then treat everybody the same. Yeah, I didn't realize it.
00:19:05:05 - 00:19:15:07
Nathan Weinberg
I'm not I didn't realize it at the time. But me going on Craigslist at the beginning of my career was the ultimate, ultimate act of equity in real estate.
00:19:15:08 - 00:19:16:17
Michael Conrad
You know, who was in their line of it.
00:19:16:17 - 00:19:43:23
Nathan Weinberg
And they didn't know that somebody was there for them. And so we we fundamentally could help people that were being ignored. And that's the basis for creating equity in real estate, helping people that otherwise are ignored because they aren't ready to buy $1,000,000 house. Well, if I helped them buy a $200,000 house today stands to reason. Someday they will be $1,000,000 buyer and I'm willing to make that investment in them.
00:19:44:01 - 00:19:48:15
Michael Conrad
I wonder if your strategy would still work. I wonder if you could still go on Craigslist today and find those people.
00:19:48:17 - 00:19:50:14
Nathan Weinberg
And is Craigslist even around? I don't know.
00:19:50:14 - 00:19:59:09
Michael Conrad
I think it's lost its former glory. But yes, I do think it's still around.
00:19:59:11 - 00:20:20:17
Jake Hall
Hey, everyone, It's Jake, director for the Business of Homes podcast. I hope you've been enjoying today's episode, starting with why you shouldn't get a deal on a house. What needs to change about the appraisal process and how real estate investing should be available to everyone. When we return, Michael and Nathan take a deep dive into affordable housing. You don't want to miss it.
00:20:20:19 - 00:20:38:11
Jake Hall
Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram @thebusinessofhomespod, where you can interact with us and see some great bite sized pieces from all of our episodes. For you listeners out there, did you know our entire podcast are filmed in Are on our YouTube channel? Check it out next time you want to see our amazing guests tell their stories.
00:20:38:17 - 00:20:57:10
Jake Hall
And are you currently watching this episode in video format? Don't forget to follow us on your preferred audio streaming service to take us with you on the go. Lastly, do you have any feedback or one to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcastcast@gmail.com. Please enjoy the rest of today's episode with Nathan Weinberg.
00:20:57:10 - 00:21:06:07
Jake Hall
Let's get back to it.
00:21:06:09 - 00:21:36:15
Michael Conrad
So I, I also wonder as I, I sort of think to myself, maybe that person buying that $800 room or want to get that 800 room isn't going to qualify because the housing prices have gone up to an extent where you have to go pretty far out to find something that works for that. I'm wonder if we're going to start to see sort of a cold, laboring concept of, you know, desperate individuals, maybe their friends, maybe their family, but I'm just really thinking of strangers.
00:21:36:17 - 00:21:43:16
Michael Conrad
We're coming together to sort of a collectivism of buying power who are becoming sort of incidental roommates. I don't know. We're seeing.
00:21:43:16 - 00:21:44:02
Nathan Weinberg
Some of that.
00:21:44:02 - 00:21:45:21
Michael Conrad
Already. That's an interesting concept.
00:21:45:23 - 00:22:06:21
Nathan Weinberg
We're seeing some of that already. But I'm going to tell you this. If we want to have a really serious conversation about affordable housing in the city, our political leaders need to stop coming up with nonsensical solutions like tax credits to builders. Your tax credit means almost nothing to me, means almost nothing to me. My accountant's going to hate that I said that.
00:22:06:23 - 00:22:38:09
Nathan Weinberg
But it's it's it's true. This city and cities around the country own vast swaths of prime real estate. And if we're going to address the affordability issue in our city, the city and the state can make the biggest impact on housing prices by simply doing something that happened right after the Great Depression. It's called block grants. Everybody's heard the word block grant, but no one knows what it means.
00:22:38:11 - 00:23:06:13
Nathan Weinberg
And what happened was the federal government after the Great Depression said we need to encourage investments in communities and we own collectively these huge blocks of real estate that we are going to give to cities so that they can distribute that land to people that will build them and create affordable housing. Much of East Nashville is ranch houses, right?
00:23:06:15 - 00:23:39:17
Nathan Weinberg
And much of green hills at one point was ranch houses. Those were all block granted, at one point. Those were fundamentally the original housing developments in the city. So anyway, that complains about how all the houses are cookie cutter and other places. Let's talk in 30 years like you're going to love the way those lock 30 years. But these block grants created affordability where it didn't exist because in giant swaths of land they could say, okay, you, Nathan, come and build us 30 houses.
00:23:39:19 - 00:24:01:16
Nathan Weinberg
We're going to give you the land which is going to reduce your basis in these properties by hundreds of thousands of dollars sometimes, which means that you don't have to sell that house for $1,000,000. You might sell it for half a million dollars. And I know that number doesn't seem affordable. But, you know, if we talk about it in terms of $200,000.
00:24:01:16 - 00:24:07:13
Nathan Weinberg
Right. And the city gave me the land for free, well, maybe I can sell that house for a buck 50 instead.
00:24:07:15 - 00:24:14:07
Michael Conrad
I know. But we have to have practitioners in the development side who are listening and willing.
00:24:14:07 - 00:24:15:19
Nathan Weinberg
Well, they'll be required to.
00:24:15:19 - 00:24:39:05
Michael Conrad
I know, I know. There are. Obviously there's stipulations on even receiving that block grant. I get that because that is taking place in parts of California that I'm familiar with where, you know, the highly rigid, affordable housing initiatives that exist there have only passed by those sort of formulas. But even still, business has not gone towards a social good by organic.
00:24:39:05 - 00:25:07:21
Nathan Weinberg
Doesn't have to it doesn't have to. That's the beauty of this. Like, we don't have to make everybody into Mother Theresa, right? As a developer, a real estate developer, it's not easy to sell million dollar houses. People with million dollar tastes have million dollar tastes. They want things to look really specifically, right? I can sell 150, $200,000 houses every day, day long.
00:25:07:23 - 00:25:36:20
Nathan Weinberg
And if I've got ten of them, then I've sold my million dollar house and I sold it faster than that million dollar house sells and I've got the notches in my belt and I can incrementally change neighborhoods. And so as a developer, the the ticker, the quantity of units that I've built is almost more important to me than the value of those units, because I can go out then and pitch myself and say, I built 300 units, right?
00:25:36:22 - 00:25:50:08
Nathan Weinberg
A bank never asks me, and maybe they should, but they never ask me how much those units were worth, that I was able to build 300 units and sell 300 units makes me a demonstrably lower risk.
00:25:50:10 - 00:26:20:04
Michael Conrad
Right? Because it it's experience. That's right. In the ability to go through the entire production process that is more important than the value. Now we aren't just fighting on the affordable housing front. A land problem, though you could make argument that that is probably the beginning problem. But there is a Labor cost issue that has crept its way into the construction world, which is affecting every listener here that's trying to do a renovation of their home or anyone that's gone through a build process.
00:26:20:04 - 00:26:43:03
Michael Conrad
And that is everything gets more expensive because between labor shortages, inflation and sort of a geographic spread of a metros, we we reach farther with the same population. You know, we've struggled for dollars per square foot on the build because labor has gone out. I mean, notoriously people are like, how did my grandparents or my parents afford that house for so cheap?
00:26:43:08 - 00:27:08:14
Michael Conrad
Well, number one, labor rates were low. It may not have been a land issue 60 or 100 years ago. It was really labor was more easy to come by at a cheaper rate and honestly had a higher ability to produce quality, you know, product. And so where are you seeing that labor issue begin to fit in? Because it doesn't feel like we're solving that problem any time soon.
00:27:08:16 - 00:27:41:20
Nathan Weinberg
Labor is fundamentally more expensive and honestly, it should be more expensive. Quality laborers do a lot of really hard and technical work that they have been largely underpaid for for decades. The cost to build a house went up 50 60% in a matter of weeks, and that happened in correlation with COVID. Obviously, it happened in correlation with the change in political environment.
00:27:41:22 - 00:28:11:18
Nathan Weinberg
And so, you know, elections matter. And when we make decisions about elections, we shouldn't be thinking necessarily about the hot buttons. We should be thinking about the things that help us every day. And so when I worked the polls recently for the mayoral election and 85 people came through in a day, made me kind of sad know because what the decisions of the city council and the mayor do.
00:28:11:20 - 00:28:21:14
Nathan Weinberg
I feel those every single day. And people just didn't come out to vote. And so I do think that that's my soapbox. But I think.
00:28:21:16 - 00:28:23:03
Michael Conrad
You know, this was a Rock the Vote episode.
00:28:23:03 - 00:28:30:03
Nathan Weinberg
Right? I do think that the cost of labor is largely tied to the political decisions we've made about who helps us. You know.
00:28:30:03 - 00:29:01:09
Michael Conrad
The accidental vilification over the last 40 years, you know, in our lifetimes of labor in general, conceptually, you know, knowledge, economy versus physical economy. I came up in a blue collar household, but by the time I was going off to college, it was important that I have options beyond that. Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, that was, I think a just a generational accident that, you know, our grandparents and parents were trying to continue to give us better lives and nobody really knows what a better life looks like for the next generation.
00:29:01:09 - 00:29:07:11
Michael Conrad
But you're doing your best. And and so I think we were all encouraged to go away from trades and now we're paying the piper for it.
00:29:07:13 - 00:29:33:17
Nathan Weinberg
Well, that's absolutely true. And, you know, that's a very different angle on this. And it is important. In this old house about ten years ago started a scholarship fund to pay for skilled tradesmen. So carpenters, electricians, plumbers, because if you ever watched this old house with your parents, that crew is getting kind of old, like real old, real old, and nobody knows how to do the kinds of things they're doing.
00:29:33:20 - 00:29:44:10
Nathan Weinberg
I am encouraged, though, and I'm just going to because I'm a pretty positive guy and I'm off social media now. But I have discovered YouTube, which maybe is worse.
00:29:44:12 - 00:29:46:00
Michael Conrad
You're down the YouTube rabbit hole.
00:29:46:05 - 00:30:20:03
Nathan Weinberg
I discovered all of these remarkably talented woodworkers that are on YouTube and are sharing these skills. And it makes me encouraged because I do believe that a younger generation is discovering the value of trade work. And they're realizing my I have a kid that I've worked with in the past who realized that by going to welding school and then learning about underwater welding, he could earn $180,000 a year without a college degree.
00:30:20:05 - 00:30:31:01
Nathan Weinberg
And I know people that were in law school for, what, like 12 years, some stupid thing like that, and do not earn $180,000.
00:30:31:03 - 00:31:00:00
Michael Conrad
So fun factoid about me. I actually went to underwater welding school and I ended up dropping out because I didn't want to go live on the oil rig to show you 180,000. I didn't want to live on the oil rig to do it. As we think about the next generation of specifically professionals, you know, we're coming back and around to this idea that education continues to be the ticket to success in some manner, shape or form.
00:31:00:02 - 00:31:26:05
Michael Conrad
Education leads us out of one station into another. It raises us up from lowly places to better places. It enriches our practice in such a way we're able to serve better our clients. And I think it hedges against and protects us against failure and folly by making sure that when there is market movement, market changes, that we are able to respond and move.
00:31:26:05 - 00:31:56:15
Michael Conrad
If you don't know what an Oreo is, well, when those are coming back, you're not going to know what they are. Right? And so education at the realtor level, not at the school level. And really, I don't know if we can yet look to the private sector just magically produce. I think we really again, like you talk about it, you have to go to the brokerage and say the brokerage of old as a safety net and sort of a safe harbor for a license is a very tired, very two dimensional concept.
00:31:56:17 - 00:32:20:11
Michael Conrad
And you have to almost be charging forward and reaching into an agent's life who's in your brokerage and saying, no, you need to raise yourself up. It's it's it's a coaching level of like that basketball. Who's your coach? Sort of, you know, identity much more than it It's sort of this like quiet Wikipedia in the background that's helping you know what to do next when you don't know what to do next.
00:32:20:11 - 00:32:47:09
Michael Conrad
And so yeah, I think in some ways it doesn't take an incredibly wide amount of experience in development and construction and real estate and all the things that you've done it. It really takes a strong, like, admirably minded brokerage to sort of reach beyond my agents are just numbers and they're just transaction fees to reach beyond and say, no, we've got to raise them up.
00:32:47:09 - 00:33:10:16
Michael Conrad
And again, we start playing the long game, the bigger fabric rather than just the short game. The short game is, is brokerages are places to hang licenses and earn transaction fees and, you know, service agents. And the long game, as we save the profession by making sure that brokerages are instructing that next version, speed of the leader, speed of the pack.
00:33:10:16 - 00:33:15:09
Michael Conrad
You have to be the leader to make sure that the pack is going in the right direction.
00:33:15:11 - 00:33:16:18
Nathan Weinberg
I Bravo.
00:33:16:20 - 00:33:21:23
Michael Conrad
Yeah, well, there it is. And I honestly feel like we could keep going for hours and hours and.
00:33:22:04 - 00:33:24:03
Nathan Weinberg
To pick my kid up. Otherwise we would.
00:33:24:05 - 00:33:36:15
Michael Conrad
We will have to conclude this another time. We have to have you back. This has been wonderful, Nathan. Thank you so much. We truly. I feel like, are hitting more and more these days, especially in this episode on the business of homes. And thank you for coming along with.
00:33:36:15 - 00:33:38:11
Nathan Weinberg
Thanks for having me. This is fun, guys.
00:33:38:11 - 00:33:55:17
Michael Conrad
This has been wonderful, as always. Michael Conrad here. And I want to encourage you to hit, subscribe and join us on YouTube and on your favorite places where you're listening to podcasts. Give us feedback. We want to know if we're talking about the things that are interesting to you. And most of all, we would love to hear what you want to talk about.
00:33:55:17 - 00:34:08:15
Michael Conrad
And specifically, if you want to be on this podcast, hit us up. We're constantly bringing in New blood to share stories, and we'd love to have you. We'll catch you next. Then.
00:34:08:17 - 00:34:31:00
Jake Hall
Hey, everyone. Jake, again, director for the Business of Homes podcast. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. A huge thank you to Nathan Weinberg for being a part of the podcast. Go follow him on Instagram @nathanweinbergbroker and let him know how much you enjoyed their story. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred listening platform and make sure to follow us on Instagram as well @thebusinessofhomespod.
00:34:31:02 - 00:34:40:23
Jake Hall
Do you have any feedback or want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcastcast@gmail.com. Thank you again for listening and we'll see you soon.