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Join us as we take a deep dive into the real estate market with insiders in the industry.
00:00:21:14 - 00:00:46:08
Michael Conrad
My name is Michael Conrad, and I'm excited once again to share the stories, the entrepreneurship and the practice of the business behind real estate and all things home. This is the Business of Homes podcast, and today we are very fortunate to have someone who has seen just a little bit of pretty much everything, if not a lot, a bit of everything over the last 15 years of being in business.
00:00:46:08 - 00:01:11:01
Michael Conrad
He has touched almost every aspect of the world of homes. And I think in a lot of ways he sort of exemplifies, I think, what this podcast is about, and that is the home is the central location that gives so many of us not only personal life but business life. And behind the home is a great deal of complexity and a great deal of business.
00:01:11:03 - 00:01:37:23
Michael Conrad
And in that business we find wonderful stories. And today Nathan Weinberg is sitting with us and sharing just amazing little factoids of what he's picked up along the way. And you don't get there by failing continually for 15 years, but you definitely don't get there by succeeding steadily for 15 years. And Nathan's unique story, of course, is that he hasn't even stayed in one spot.
00:01:38:00 - 00:01:42:18
Michael Conrad
He's transitioned into multiple areas. And I'm excited to talk about some of those today.
00:01:42:20 - 00:01:43:13
Nathan Weinberg
Thanks for having me.
00:01:43:14 - 00:02:07:20
Michael Conrad
Yeah, buddy, thanks for being here. Before we got on, we were sort of trading stories about who owns this building and that piece of land and you know, who's seen what. And I think both of us were remarking that if you're around long enough and I moved to Nashville 15 years ago, gotten to business about 12, you started in business here 15 years ago.
00:02:07:20 - 00:02:28:20
Michael Conrad
And so much of what Nashville now identifies as self-identifies as particularly in the way we sell and develop real estate has changed so dramatically in 15 years. And you said, what was it you were saying you weren't getting into business on the way down in the Great Recession, but right there in the bottom?
00:02:28:22 - 00:03:03:18
Nathan Weinberg
Yeah, all of the well, I think a lot of people had to deal with the suck that I didn't have to deal with. I had to deal with the loneliness, Right? Everybody had been party to the downfall of 26 and 27. Really terrible, terrible experiences where people lost their homes, their businesses, banks were simultaneously the the the the saviors and the the causes of the Great Recession.
00:03:03:20 - 00:03:36:10
Nathan Weinberg
And people didn't really know how, how or what to do with that. And so when I started, it was like a battlefield that had just finished and it was quiet. You couldn't sell anything. The buyers that were out there weren't in a hurry to do anything, and it required of me to be just a little bit naive in the right way and think about things a little bit differently.
00:03:36:12 - 00:03:54:17
Nathan Weinberg
When I started, I remember I got my real estate, like convinced my my new wife at the time it was we had been married for six months. We moved here and she got a promotion that brought us to Nashville. And I said, okay, we've been married for six months, but I don't want to do what I'm doing anymore.
00:03:54:19 - 00:04:10:06
Nathan Weinberg
I want to try real estate. And I think she, honest to God, audibly chuckled. And I said, You just have to give me a chance. If I can't sell a house in a year, then I'll I'll if I want to keep doing it, I'll, I'll find a way to fund it myself.
00:04:10:08 - 00:04:12:14
Michael Conrad
Set the bar kind of low there. A decent year.
00:04:12:14 - 00:04:31:13
Nathan Weinberg
But I knew that if I could do that, that was that was. That was the hill, right? It wasn't a mountain. It was a hill. I could do that psychologically. It meant that I could do it over and over again. But it also was just it was a demonstration of my ability to do something that I had no fundamental knowledge of at all.
00:04:31:15 - 00:04:55:17
Nathan Weinberg
And she said, sure. And so we moved here. And I remember being in Whit clerk's office at Frederick and Clark Realty, and everybody's got their Whit Clark impression and mine is terrible, so I'll spare you right now. But Whit said, Why in the world are you doing this right now? I mean, and it was it was an honest question.
00:04:55:17 - 00:05:17:00
Nathan Weinberg
He wanted to understand why I was crazy enough to decide to get into real estate at that moment. And I said, Whit, I walked into your office today and watched three people walk out with bankers boxes. The my competition walked out the door. I can't think of a better time to start practicing real estate than when there's less people for me to compete with.
00:05:17:02 - 00:05:24:08
Nathan Weinberg
And I think you think, he said, Hmm. And like, sent me to a cubicle. Good luck.
00:05:24:08 - 00:05:25:08
Michael Conrad
Over there. Right.
00:05:25:09 - 00:05:48:11
Nathan Weinberg
And as it turns out, he sent me to a cubicle that was 20 feet from Steve Frederick's office. Steve Frederick is now the titan of real estate in Nashville. Steve Frederick has sold on his own something close to $2 billion of real estate in his career.
00:05:48:11 - 00:05:49:08
Michael Conrad
That's billion with A, B.
00:05:49:10 - 00:06:17:05
Nathan Weinberg
B, Yeah, and nobody competes with Steve Frederick in areas like Belle Meade and Hillwood and whatnot. It's just you call him and he decides if he's going to work with you or not. And I knew his dad. His dad had an office. There's Dad's name was Jerry. Jerry was this giant. He was six foot six. He had played basketball at Vanderbilt.
00:06:17:07 - 00:06:36:13
Nathan Weinberg
He was a wonderful man. He was mostly deaf, but he didn't want to say so. So he'd come into his office and he'd turn the Golf Channel on and he'd listen to golf. But in golf is a quiet sport. But my God, you couldn't hear anything in that office because he had it turned up so loudly. It was just deafening.
00:06:36:13 - 00:06:59:09
Nathan Weinberg
The Golf Channel. And then his brother Chip and the insurance company upstairs. And I just would listen to him and listen to Steve talk on the phone. I didn't have any clients or anything to do. I could read the business journal at my desk. I could and I'll tell you about it in a second. I could come up with ideas on how to prospect and I could listen to Steve Frederick talk on the phone.
00:06:59:11 - 00:07:26:02
Nathan Weinberg
And I tried really consciously to make sure that I had one or two things I needed to ask him every day, so I'd find excuses to go into his office and I just listen to him talk. And I made friends with his assistants. They would give me his open houses to do so. This 25 year old kid was doing million dollar open houses back in 2008, 2009.
00:07:26:03 - 00:07:45:10
Nathan Weinberg
I don't know that I was really qualified, but it meant that I had to learn quick at a code switch. I needed to. I needed to be something that people like Steve would be willing to talk to. And so I remember I did an open house for him once, and I ended up having a conversation with this lovely couple.
00:07:45:12 - 00:08:04:04
Nathan Weinberg
They were in the house for maybe 20 to 30 minutes to talk to them both for a long time. And then they laughed and I finished that open house. The deck cleaned up, I went home and about a week later I got a note, a postcard in the mail, handwritten, and I read through it and it was from Bob Freeman.
00:08:04:06 - 00:08:21:21
Nathan Weinberg
And he and his wife had been in the open house and they had talked to me and he found me and sent me a handwritten note. And I. I knew who that was. I had been here hardly enough time to really take a deep breath. But I knew that wasn't it. It meant that I had made an impression on the right kind of people.
00:08:21:21 - 00:08:43:12
Nathan Weinberg
I was doing something right. It was encouraging to keep doing. I didn't know a soul, didn't know a human being in Nashville, which I mean that the the cards being stacked against me were just remarkable. I didn't know a soul. And so I had to come up with ways to to create a sphere of influence, to create a book of business.
00:08:43:14 - 00:08:54:03
Nathan Weinberg
And so I thought long and hard about it. I knew I could do open houses twice a week and great of meet people there, but I needed something to do during the weeks, right? I couldn't just sit there quietly.
00:08:54:03 - 00:08:55:11
Michael Conrad
And her minor detail.
00:08:55:11 - 00:09:26:02
Nathan Weinberg
Right. Couldn't bother Steve for Derrick every 20 minutes. And so at the time I thought, okay, what's different? What's somebody not doing? People are discounting everyone that is renting. They just don't think that they're valuable clients. And I didn't think I thought everyone was valuable to me. If I could make $100, it sounded great at that moment. So I went on Craigslist and I started looking for people that were searching for rentals.
00:09:26:03 - 00:09:42:05
Nathan Weinberg
So I'm looking for a room to rent or and they always put how much in the in the subject line. I'm looking for a room to rent for $800 or I'm looking for a room to rent for 1300 dollars. And the beauty of that was that I could back that number into the value of a home.
00:09:42:06 - 00:09:44:13
Michael Conrad
You reverse engineer with a mortgage payment, right?
00:09:44:15 - 00:10:05:14
Nathan Weinberg
And so I would email them and if I emailed a thousand people, five of them would reply to me, but I'd email them, I'd say like, I don't know if you ever thought about it, but you know, for that payment you could buy a house and here's how much house you could buy. So I mean, somebody had said they wanted a 1200 dollar a month rental at the time.
00:10:05:14 - 00:10:08:18
Nathan Weinberg
I said, you know, you can afford 250,000 bucks.
00:10:08:18 - 00:10:11:06
Michael Conrad
Yes. Hey, that's a lot of house back then. Yeah.
00:10:11:08 - 00:10:37:07
Nathan Weinberg
And I my very first lead came from it. Name was Dinah Little. I'll never forget her. She was looking for a rental in Dickson who under rent a trailer classic. And she wanted to rent a trailer because that is the only kind of housing anyone in her family had ever owned. Ever. If they owned it at all, I'm not even sure they owned it at all.
00:10:37:09 - 00:11:11:05
Nathan Weinberg
But that's what she knew, that that's the kind of house that she was allowed to have, right? Psychologically, she was allowed to have a trailer. And I remember going and looking at houses in Dickson and you'd show up and the signs would have bullet holes in them. And I mean, it was such a it was awful. And I, I was showing her these rentals and finally I said, Deena, let's can we try can we try to get you qualified to buy a house?
00:11:11:07 - 00:11:24:01
Nathan Weinberg
Let's just see. It's the worst thing that could happen. And she said, sure and sure enough, of course, we got her qualified to buy something. I think it was like she couldn't afford to buy more than $100,000.
00:11:24:03 - 00:11:27:03
Michael Conrad
Right. That's two houses in Dickson in 2008.
00:11:27:05 - 00:11:46:20
Nathan Weinberg
But in addition to that, I knew that Dickson wasn't really where she wanted to live. It's where she thought she belonged. And I said, I'll happily look for houses in Dickson for you all day long, but let's look other places to sure enough. So we started looking and we found her a house and it still makes me laugh.
00:11:46:20 - 00:12:12:18
Nathan Weinberg
It was $78,000. It was on a corner and one side of the property lined up with the railroad tracks and a railroad crossing right here. So we're blue, torn in the gates, you know. And across the street was a liquor store. I mean, it was just if you were writing a book about what kind of real estate not to buy, it was exactly what you don't buy.
00:12:12:19 - 00:12:40:00
Nathan Weinberg
But it was the and she told me this. It was the first time anyone in her family had ever owned a home. Home. And watching them light up, she and her partner light up when they bought that house. I'll never forget it. It kept me going. It has kept me going to date. I'll never forget them. She is an accountant in downtown Nashville now for a big company, and we don't talk.
00:12:40:04 - 00:13:01:11
Nathan Weinberg
But because she'll never sell that house, she'll never leave it. They'll take her out of there in a box because it's so important to her. But what that did is it it put a marker in the sand so that when they do take her out of there in a box someday, that will have built wealth for her family that her family has never experienced before.
00:13:01:13 - 00:13:33:01
Nathan Weinberg
And had she not done that, they would be perpetually stuck in this class system that's broken and she's changing that for them. She doesn't know it. She'll never know it. Right. But her family will. And that's a big deal. And I think fundamentally that's what real estate is actually about. It's about changing generational wealth for people. It's about changing perspective on what we deserve or what belongs to us.
00:13:33:03 - 00:13:58:18
Nathan Weinberg
And I'm proud to be a part of that. And I think that if we think about real tours, our job is not to help people find houses. It's a component of what we do. But our job is actually to help people build wealth. We are a wealth builders, and I'm not the only person to say that. I'm not some clairvoyant who's come up with that concept.
00:13:58:19 - 00:14:16:03
Nathan Weinberg
Lots of people have said that, but I think fundamentally our job is to help people build wealth. So the questions that we ask people about what kind of houses they want to buy, what are the things that are important to them. It's important because it means that we can shorten the period of time we're doing the search for them.
00:14:16:05 - 00:14:37:14
Nathan Weinberg
But the questions we should be asking fundamentally are How long do you want to live here? Where do you want to live? Next? What do you want the money in this house to do for you? Does it create a savings account for you? Does it create of leverage step for you to buy something bigger and batter later? What is that for?
00:14:37:16 - 00:14:54:06
Nathan Weinberg
And ultimately, do you have aspirations to invest in real estate as well? Because I do believe that fundamentally it is. And historically it remains the single best, safest investment that anybody can make.
00:14:54:08 - 00:15:15:09
Michael Conrad
Well, so now hold on. You are accidentally differentiating between a concept of home ownership for me and home ownership that I invest in in theories that someone else might live in. That's right. When in reality I think you could easily agree that all home ownership is investment.
00:15:15:11 - 00:15:16:05
Nathan Weinberg
Yes, it is.
00:15:16:10 - 00:15:44:09
Michael Conrad
All homeownership is investment. And let let's ignore the categorically sort of up in to the right nature of real estate despite its big sort of bite out of it in oh eight. You know it's been up to the right for freaking forever. But let's see, just ignore that concept of it charts up to the right and let's go back to hedge against fill in the blank, hedge against catastrophe, apocalypse, danger, you know, financial difficulties.
00:15:44:09 - 00:16:08:07
Michael Conrad
Personally, I hedge against concept you know your story of of this person who had you know, categorically been impoverished and in a cycle of poverty, both mentally and monetarily. And you're breaking out of that and, you know, a mobile home, a manufactured home, gets blown away in a tornado and a and a regular house maybe has a chance to survive.
00:16:08:10 - 00:16:39:18
Michael Conrad
I mean, a you might get bad leaks in a manufactured home because there's more seams, whereas a home that is, you know, a permanent home is manufactured to withstand the elements. And so there's this hedge against concept. And so if we start to use hedge against language for right back and investment, all of it is investment. And I you know, my I'm married, you know, someone whose parents had a home that probably changed $15,000 in value over 20 years because it was in a small town in a rural location.
00:16:39:19 - 00:17:13:04
Michael Conrad
And so that is still investment by another respect because ownership is place for family. It's not just sort of metaphysical identity, but it's again, hedge against. And so I think all ownership of real estate really is investment. And if you talk to investors, not you're run of the mill real estate agent today. If you talk to someone, say who's an investor or maybe even like a certified financial planner type person, you're going to start to get into this operative sense of money working.
00:17:13:05 - 00:17:36:22
Michael Conrad
And I always sort of imagine this little like wad of bills that's like shoveling something, but like, think of your money working. How does your money work for you? That's the language of a financial advisor or an investor. And it was new to me. I wasn't given that language growing up. That money works for you. Money is what you used to trade for things, whether it's enjoyment or whether it's food or even shelter.
00:17:36:22 - 00:17:54:16
Michael Conrad
And so money working for you is the thing we think about stock portfolios and brokerage accounts and bonds and these sort of things and and rise of value. But the truth is, money has to work for us in investments if we're going to think about real estate, not as two buckets, the house as we live in, in the house we invest in.
00:17:54:18 - 00:18:13:00
Michael Conrad
And oh, I want to live here, but then I want my money to work for me over here in this sort of investment bucket, know if we're going to think about it as one bucket of all investment that the money has to work for you, work for you in the home. You live in your primary residence, which is going to be the vast majority of consumers are going to own one home, but it has to work for them.
00:18:13:00 - 00:18:33:22
Michael Conrad
So it's really interesting that you're teasing out. Very wise, of course, teasing out this idea that the questions we should be asking is about financial stability or wealth generation or again, really, more simply, how is my money working for me in this home?
00:18:34:00 - 00:18:56:21
Jake Hall
Hey, everyone, it's Jake, director for the Business of Homes podcast. I hope you have been enjoying today's episode, starting when Nathan began his real estate career during the recession, how Nathan created a sphere of influence and how all forms of home ownership is an investment. When we return, Michael and Nathan take a deep dive into how to make sure an investment into a home appreciates in value over time.
00:18:57:03 - 00:19:16:21
Jake Hall
You don't want to miss it. 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. BE you listeners out there, did you know our entire podcast are filmed and are on our YouTube channel? Check it out next time you want to see our amazing guests tell their stories.
00:19:16:23 - 00:19:35:00
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 want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcast@gmail.com. Please enjoy the rest of today's episode with Nathan Weinberg.
00:19:35:00 - 00:19:39:19
Jake Hall
Let's get back to it.
00:19:39:21 - 00:20:05:06
Nathan Weinberg
So there's a conditioning that takes place when and whether we want to admit it or not. We live in a caste system. It exists here and it is what it is. I'd love to believe that I could change that in my lifetime. I don't think I can. But what I do know is that I can change your caste.
00:20:05:08 - 00:20:31:15
Nathan Weinberg
I can help you change. I can't. I can help you change your caste. I can help you decide that you want to live a different lifestyle because you make those fundamental investments in yourself. You say, I'm going to buy this not because it's perfect for me today, but because in five years, ten years, 15 years, it is going to be the giant leap.
00:20:31:15 - 00:20:56:02
Nathan Weinberg
I need to change things to move into a different school district, to move to a different state, to sell it all and live on the beach. Whatever it is that you want to do, that house does it for you. And there hasn't been a 20 year span in our nation's history where the value of real estate didn't start here and end up someplace north of that.
00:20:56:03 - 00:21:19:12
Nathan Weinberg
It has not happened even during the Great Depression, even during the Great Recession. And 2000 doesn't happen now. Did it make a dollar? Did it make $50,000 to make $100,000? I don't know. But it's always north of that. So from a perspective of safety, if we think of them as investments, people are like, Well, I'll go buy a seat.
00:21:19:15 - 00:21:37:00
Nathan Weinberg
My mom, my mother in law does this. My mother in law, I'm going to put all my money in a CD because it's safe. And the reeducation around how it's not how how that money is actually losing money at that point. It's losing value because the rate is so low. It's lost on her, not because she's not smart.
00:21:37:00 - 00:21:58:20
Nathan Weinberg
It's just a generational thing. She's very smart. Ultimately, we need to help people realize that investments need to, like you said, work for you and they need to work for you in the way of not diminishing their own value by sitting still. They need to just grow. So when you move into a neighborhood, what are the things that you're doing to help improve the neighborhood?
00:21:58:22 - 00:22:21:22
Nathan Weinberg
We can't be passive investors in our real estate. We need to be active investors. What are the things we're doing to improve the value of our neighborhoods? Are we participating in neighborhood watch programs to help tease out crime? Are we doing beautification projects? Are we investing in the local schools and the parks to help them be better.
00:22:22:04 - 00:22:37:07
Michael Conrad
Even the simplicity of investing in neighbors themselves creates a sense of community which attracts new blood that can help revitalize us, you know, long standing sort of fallow, you know, culture in neighborhoods.
00:22:37:08 - 00:22:53:19
Nathan Weinberg
I read a book a month and a half ago that really kind of changed my perspective in life. It's called Rent, and it's a it was written by some journalists and what they've followed or not I'm sorry, it's called evicted, not rent, but evicted.
00:22:53:19 - 00:22:54:18
Michael Conrad
If you don't pay your rent.
00:22:54:23 - 00:23:31:19
Nathan Weinberg
You get it. Yeah, but it was written by several journalists and they were following the they they followed five groups of people that were evicted in and around sort of the Baltimore area or Milwaukee excuse me, Milwaukee, about seven years ago. And what that process is like for each of them and something that they discussed in in these chapters was really fundamentally interesting to me, which was, you know, the folks that were being evicted were being evicted because they were late on rent.
00:23:31:21 - 00:24:02:09
Nathan Weinberg
It was almost exclusively not because they didn't want to pay rent. There were lots of forces working against them. And what happened when they were actually evicted was the neighborhoods suffered because you had people that had institutional knowledge of all of these people and players in the neighborhood and now they weren't there anymore. And so the steady source of watchful eyes, the calming presence for kids, the neighborhood is gone.
00:24:02:13 - 00:24:15:09
Nathan Weinberg
This fabric, it's right. And so you've changed the fabric of a neighborhood? Well, I think that that's there's so many facets to real estate. That was really an interesting one. And I mean, you made me think of it when you said that about investing in your neighbors.
00:24:15:11 - 00:24:47:15
Michael Conrad
But this concept that we become accidental, passive investors in our personal homes is something worth sort of stopping and thinking about for a second, because if we get right down to it, we live in a in a world that is degrading. We are always moving towards a worse material reality. Wood rots things, age, age and homes for the sort of the top layer of conversation have existed in an appreciable asset category.
00:24:47:17 - 00:25:20:00
Michael Conrad
This is a home that appreciates in value. And then we relegate, you know, our cars and, you know, our boats and whatever else. And nor are there consumer products into a depreciating asset category. And I think what we have accidentally done to our buyer population is we've given them permission to be sort of accidental passive investors in their personal property because they think, oh, this thing appreciates, but let's get right down to it because you come from the construction world now, as do I.
00:25:20:00 - 00:25:42:03
Michael Conrad
And we both know that homes don't just natively get better. In fact, they quite literally will be reclaimed by Mother Nature. If you give it just a handful of years. And so this concept of an appreciable asset really has a great deal more to do with land and a lot less to do with structure and structures will be replaced some more than others.
00:25:42:05 - 00:26:07:21
Michael Conrad
And we have to be very conscientious. This active element of being an investor in our own property, we have to be conscientious of how do we slow the degradation, maybe even down to a potential neutral point to allow for the natural appreciation in quality of, say, neighborhood or overall city fabric, or simply just the land to sort of become that positive force for, you know, investment?
00:26:07:21 - 00:26:36:14
Michael Conrad
Good, so to speak. And when it gets right down to it, so many home owners, renters, definitely. But I would even argue many professionals who occupy the real estate business don't fully yet understand all of how, say, a home works or what to spend your focus and your time on, or how to avoid that natural chaos, sort of degradation that is taking place in every single structure, every single home.
00:26:36:16 - 00:27:06:18
Michael Conrad
And so it's it's a good and interesting reminder that we can't be passive investors in our neighborhoods, in our city fabric, but most specifically our dwellings, if we want it to be a truly appreciating asset. And there are not many stories, but occasionally one will come across on, you know, the newspaper or the news or whatever about some large beautiful structure that has gone to pot, you know, and otherwise would need just a massive financial rescuing or maybe even to be raised and rebuilt.
00:27:06:20 - 00:27:17:12
Michael Conrad
And at that point, we've sort of gone beyond that point where, okay, maybe it would have been an appreciating asset. But if you look at the ledger over time, it had to take a big hit, you know, kind of a thing.
00:27:17:12 - 00:27:39:15
Nathan Weinberg
So it's interesting, You know, when I started building houses and I still do this, we don't build a lot of homes anymore. We build more commercial stuff. But one of the things that I would do with first time homebuyers about five days before they actually took the keys was I would do a really thorough walk through the house.
00:27:39:17 - 00:27:58:20
Nathan Weinberg
And this was not to toot my horn. It was not designed to say, Look at how great I did with this, because I never swung a hammer, Right? I never I was not the one who actually built your home. I developed it. I came up with the plans for it. I sourced the subcontractors for it. I did all of those things, but I never swung a hammer.
00:27:58:20 - 00:28:22:18
Nathan Weinberg
So I can't take credit for physically building your house. But what I can do is protect your your investment for you, help you protect your investments. So we would go through things. We would talk about cleaning, how do we clean hardwood floors to keep them from falling apart? How do we how and when should we replace air filters in HPC systems and what kind of air filters should we buy?
00:28:22:20 - 00:28:45:12
Nathan Weinberg
We talked about light bulbs. What's the what's the cost benefit of the different at the time, the different kinds of light bulbs that were out there? Now it's all LCD, which is great or not. We're not here to talk about that. We would talk about concrete and maintaining concrete and what cracks mean and all the things that a home inspector talks about.
00:28:45:14 - 00:29:05:02
Nathan Weinberg
But we would talk about them in terms of what are the general maintenance items you need. So what are the actual things that you should be doing to your house on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, five yearly basis to do exactly what you just said, which is to protect it from Mother Nature, saying they don't care about it.
00:29:05:05 - 00:29:07:11
Nathan Weinberg
I would like to have it back. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:07:17 - 00:29:45:18
Michael Conrad
You know, some of our listeners here might have had a similar upbringing to me where they had a father or grandfather that when you first started driving a vehicle would tell you, Oh, when it knocks like that, it means this, or when it bumps or hums like that, or when the brakes squeak, it means this. There was those that went before us who learned through many, many years of maybe trial and error or learned from somebody else how to interpret the little signs that tell us that our asset is struggling in need of repair or maintenance or love or whatever.
00:29:45:20 - 00:30:03:15
Michael Conrad
And so I love this idea of this walk through. Of course, nobody listening here is going to be stranger to the walk through right before you take possession of a home. But let it be said, not all walk through. These are the man made the same place. And so you're getting into almost this homeowner education piece. And so I kind of zoom out and I think about it.
00:30:03:15 - 00:30:25:04
Michael Conrad
I think, whoa, hold on. I don't think this in the large scale. I don't think this is happening almost at all. Not at the not at all. Builder New construction level, certainly not at the resale of an existing home. You know, I don't think I've heard very many real estate agents talk about that. This is a part of their process and that may be an education issue.
00:30:25:06 - 00:30:26:17
Nathan Weinberg
For them, too. They don't know it.
00:30:26:19 - 00:30:44:00
Michael Conrad
For them to maybe they don't know it. But this idea that we need to be teaching the next generation of owners, heck, the current generation of owners about, well, what does it do when there's a knocking sound or there's a hum or a squeal? What does it mean? Oh, if you put a ding in your wall, how do you repair it?
00:30:44:00 - 00:31:01:18
Michael Conrad
Or who do you call? Oh, if you find a shingle on your front lawn, don't just put in the trash that came from your roof, bro. That means something's wrong. That's your version of a knocking engine, you know? Or how do I. What if I spill a glass of water on my hardwoods versus what if I spill 50 gallons of water on my hurts?
00:31:01:18 - 00:31:26:06
Michael Conrad
What do I do? And this level of education, I mean, even right now I'm thinking about it appears to be a major gap in the market and someone listening here should take this idea, run with it, and make it almost the focal point of your real estate agent practice in your business, because that is our current sort of more millennial and Gen Z buyers that are coming down the line are hungry for that.
00:31:26:11 - 00:31:47:13
Michael Conrad
You know, grandpa and grandma from the great generation, they knew how to do all that stuff. You know, maybe the boomers did, maybe they didn't. But now increasingly younger buyer is hungry for that information and hungry for that teaching. And it's wise, especially if you're producing homes like you were and are, you know, where you have a vested interest in seeing that surviving as your name on it.
00:31:47:15 - 00:31:59:10
Michael Conrad
That's very smart. And that education, as you were maybe hinting at, isn't solely relegated to owners or renters. Maybe the other professionals also need that education.
00:31:59:12 - 00:32:22:08
Nathan Weinberg
They absolutely need it. And so I will I'll self-promote for a second. So but it's it's internally at our brokerage right now. I'm hoping to to grow it. But I built a class that I teach to our agents twice a year and I call it the Parts and pieces class. And so what we do is we pick a house, I pick a house.
00:32:22:08 - 00:32:49:04
Nathan Weinberg
Sometimes it's a newer home, usually it's an older home. And we meet that day in that house, we get permission to do this and we talk about all of the parts and pieces of that house. What do they do? What is the relevant history of those things? What are the maintenance concerns? What are the things that we can do to upgrade that have real, tangible value?
00:32:49:06 - 00:33:20:00
Nathan Weinberg
We do this in about two hour block of time. It's not nearly enough, but it is a start and it gives realtors the fundamental tools. It's the layup that I was talking about before we got started, right? It's the fundamentals that you need to be a good steward of your client's best interests because if you can't do that, then all you're doing is selling them a used car and it's going to break, it's going to fall apart, and you will be the used car salesman.
00:33:20:02 - 00:33:41:07
Nathan Weinberg
But if you can give them not just the keys to a house, but the way to keep those keys working in the lock, the way to keep the air conditioning working to the way to keep your floors in good shape and to know when there's a big crack in your wall that's greater than a, you know, a quarter inch, that it's something that you should be paying attention to.
00:33:41:09 - 00:34:06:07
Nathan Weinberg
If you can do that, then you'll make clients for life number one, which is what every realtor should be trying to do. You will start having a greater interest in your craft, which has a really incredible history. And if realtors do not understand the history of real estate and real estate sales, they need to start understanding it because there's really fascinating.
00:34:06:12 - 00:34:25:05
Nathan Weinberg
People have been selling real estate for thousands of years. I mean, we used to trade cows who still do you go to rural counties? People will trade farm equipment and cattle and livestock for real estate all the time. And it's totally legal because the contracts written in such a way that it makes it so.
00:34:25:07 - 00:34:27:02
Michael Conrad
Right now cows are worth like thousands of dollars.
00:34:27:02 - 00:34:56:17
Nathan Weinberg
Absolutely. And they're delicious. So why wouldn't you? I do believe that what you said is right. Education is so important. It starts with the realtor and the realtor, just like your dad did, passes it on to their client and their client then can pass it on to their progeny or whoever else they come in contact with that they want to have a great party anecdote or something else they can share that it will change the value of real estate in a good way.
00:34:56:19 - 00:35:22:23
Michael Conrad
You're so right. And honestly, please, anyone listening here steal this idea and you have my permission to not give it all away at one time. You won't be able to no doubt your way. But if you're providing a layer of education for this client of yours, feel free to, in a very selfish business sort of way, bake in future opportunity for you to be interacting with these people again.
00:35:22:23 - 00:35:38:06
Michael Conrad
You always want to be thinking about farming the sphere. And so if you're saying to someone here, let me help educate you on ownership or, you know, tricks of the trade or whatever you can, also in the same breath be saying, But look, you're not going to remember at all and please let me be a resource to you.
00:35:38:07 - 00:36:05:13
Michael Conrad
More agents viewing themselves as a resource for that future buyer or that future seller, you know, is going to put them back calling you, asking for referrals, and it's going to put you always making sure that your Rolodex is at tip top shape so that you can be giving out the best referrals. It can be self-interested in the way that you're perpetuating your business while totally still be helping the client.
00:36:05:13 - 00:36:07:10
Michael Conrad
Those things are not mutually exclusive.
00:36:07:10 - 00:36:20:23
Nathan Weinberg
You know, I think that there's a number of your listeners who probably are going to DMU about what is a Rolodex, but I do like that that word is still so ubiquitous that people use it still.
00:36:21:00 - 00:36:36:20
Michael Conrad
Man, what a really great conversation about real estate investing. Thank you, Nathan, for this great part one and I hope that you guys listening will subscribe because we've got a great part two coming up.
00:36:36:22 - 00:36:56:17
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. And remember, this is only part one, so check back in two weeks for part two. Go follow him on Instagram @NathanWeinbergBroker and let him know how much you enjoyed their story.
00:36:56:19 - 00:40:21:06
Jake Hall
Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred listening platform and make sure to follow us on Instagram as well @thebusinessofhomespod. Do you have any feedback or want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcast@gmail.com. Thank you again for listening and we'll see you soon.