Mastering Digital Door Knocking To Get Listings with DropOffer CEO Greg Burns

Brokerage Insider

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TRANSCRIPT

Hi everybody. And welcome to brokerage insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. I'm your host, Eric Stegemann. I'm the CEO of Travis. We're one of the largest independent prop tech companies in real estate provider of custom brokerage technology to medium and large sized brokerages in the United States, Canada, and around the world.

In addition, I'm the managing partner for Travis capital. We're a private equity fund focused on the PropTech and. On today's episode, we have Greg burns. Greg is the co-founder and CEO of drop offer a company that if you were at the inbound conference recently, you probably saw all over the place. It's an app that helps dial you into off-market listings.

And we'll learn more about how that happens, cause I'm sure our listeners will be intrigued by that lead in on top of being the CEO of drop-off or Griggs, a licensed realtor with compass and previously had his license with Sotheby's and elite Pacific property. Great. Thanks so much for joining us.

Eric is so great to be here with you and your listeners. Well, let's dive in. And, and first of all, I'd like to know, and I always ask people that have been in the industry for awhile, and it definitely seemed like you've been in the real estate brokerage industry for awhile. What got you into real estate?

Yeah, I've always loved architecture. I remember when I was a young child just drawing floor plans and kind of building my dream house and that actually evolved into. A bit of a career in construction. I was a project manager for an ultra high end builder, and I really got to know what it took to build these homes.

And granted, I was pushing the pencil. I wasn't necessarily, you know, swinging and hammer, but I understood the value of each nail. I understood the finished detail that goes into all these homes. And you would slave, you know, you would, let's put it this way. You would spend months and months and months building these homes.

And at the end of the day, I just will never forget where a real estate agent would come in. Spend about 30 days, you know, marketing it and ultimately selling it and making like three times as much money as I did for this, these efforts that we were doing to build these homes. So I quickly realized like, oh, maybe I'm at the wrong part of this transaction.

And I quickly went and got my real estate license and leveraged my, my knowledge about these homes, especially in the high end world to, you know, jump kind of feet first into the. Ultra high end real estate world. Quickly kind of rise to the top because I was able to explain this the golden thread, right?

What, what into some of these really special homes. And it was, it was really a great it was an added tool for me when I'm going to listing presentations to be able to start firing off all these finishes and the details that went into these homes before the homeowner would even go and you know, start exceeding.

Explaining some of these, these finishes that went into these homes and that really allowed me to pick up listings quickly and start selling some of these really beautiful, beautiful homes. And it it quickly led to this ability to. Established myself as an agent and then move on. And we started establishing ourselves as brokerages.

And that was first as a small company, small company called elite Pacific, and then ultimately led and led to the ability to bring compass Hawaii over here, which has been, been nothing short of fantasy. And, and so obviously you're an agent with compass which, you know, I, I will say we have probably about half of our listeners are, are intrigued and would like to, to dig into that more than we probably will today.

And other half of our listeners are like, gosh, darn it. Compass that are out there. So what, you know, I have to ask the question of, of what was it that drew you to compass and said, Hey, let's, let's launch it here in wine. There were a couple of reasons. Let's just start at the top. Like we were interviewing other companies to come over here because we had, I had a team that was prepared to make a big move.

And at the end of the day, you know, after meeting Robert Rapkin and just seeing now from again, from the top down, what a genuine individual, he was, how hard working of a man, he was to get the company to where it is today, you know, meant a lot. And then to obviously see the impact that they were doing on the main.

It was very obvious to us here in the islands. One thing that we also realized too, is we're probably the number one sought after referral market for compass. So there was an opportunity that existed there for us to get that referral pipeline moving rather quickly. So it was, it was with all those combined with the fact that Hawaii real estate and the way we market here is like going back in.

And I always used to, you know, take the advantage of, or you utilized the fact of jumping on the airplane and going to events like in men, I would be able to bring back knowledge here that people really thought it was all my kind of inception, but it is in fact, you know, just myself traveling to the mainland and learning more about it.

But that being said, Compass was able to do was bring a lot of this technology that was more common on the mainland, but quite revolutionary over here to really impress a lot of the client or sorry, the agents here to understand that technology really is here to help you be more efficient and more successful.

And so compass was a great platform for that because the tech tools do exist, especially for, like I said, for agents here in Hawaii. It was a, there was an extreme advantage with some of the tech that was being provided. Yeah, it seems like a Hawaii like a few places around it's it's know, always a little slow to adopt everything.

It seems like it takes an extra few years to, to cross the ocean and get down to you guys. Right. Exactly. It that's exactly it, but you can, you can take advantage of that. Right. And that was something that really helped me out as an agent is I realized that quickly. So I would go over. And I'll never forget, you know, going to invent events and I'd wear like a Hawaiian men's leg and people would immediately ask about it.

And I get to immediately talk about Hawaii by the end of the event, I'd be, you know, Mr. Hawaii and that's you're replaceable when it comes to, you know, referrals. For sure. And, and it sounds like that was a huge opportunity for you to bring bring compass over there. Cause I'm sure they wanted a compass, a division to be able to send people over to.

So it sounded like that was a huge win and definitely part of it. And, and I've got to ask too about the pandemic. It seems like you guys were locked down, but then it kind of opened up and it seemed like the flood gates opened with people wanting to buy. Properties in Hawaii. Is that, is that accurate?

Oh, you're absolutely on point with that, you know, it's, it was really an interesting time in real estate over here in Hawaii. We, when the, when the pandemic first too, we were terrified, frankly, you know, we thought that nobody was going anywhere and everybody was just going to stay put we, we quickly realized what happened was.

Yes. People had to stay home and work from home, but where home was became more irrelevant. And what we saw was this, this massive shift of west coast markets, mostly let's call it like Denver west, realize that, Hey, you know what? I can write. And live in Hawaii and there will be no issue with that from my employer or no, from, from peers or whatever it might be.

They realize that it's it's possible now. And with, you know, even if a young children, they, they had some great schools here that could be considered as options that were actually stayed open. So many of our private schools didn't close. So an example would be like, The school that my children go to started about a year and a half.

Well, sorry. About a year and a half ago had about 150 kids total pre or post pandemic. We're now over 300 kids. So it's doubled in its size because we had this. Really a mass movement of families that are willing to live here in Hawaii and work here from Hawaii and raise a family here in Hawaii.

Now that might not be there forever plan, but for the next several years they realize it's doable and you know, they're, they're really their families are excelling over here. It's a great lifestyle for, for their, for everybody in the family. Yeah, it certainly seems. And, and frankly, I did the same thing.

I bought a place in, at a beach when the pandemic hit, because I said, Hey, look, this isn't going to be two weeks. Like everybody wants to initially talking about you know, where do I want to spend the next year of my life at? And I said, you know, let's, let's go to the beach because at least on the beach, you can walk and do whatever, you know, whatever you want to outside as opposed to, you know, in a big city where everything was locked down and fact.

And in two of the cities where Travis has offices, Chicago, and Denver things, even restaurants were closed down until into 2021 where all you could do was delivery. And I think I would have gone stir crazy. And if I had had to done that for, for a year, Where I couldn't get out of the house, couldn't do anything et cetera.

And it seems like Hawaii offered that, that great opportunity. And certainly it looks like real estate was was a big winner, a good choice for people to make during the pandemic. Right? No question. And you've got to keep in mind too, with the focus being Denver over as our main driver of the market this last year and a half.

Like a lot of, a lot of those buyers were looking at Hawaii real estate and looking at it as actually an inexpensive. W now, granted, we can't say that for the whole country, but a lot of these Californians, you know Washingtonians let's say British Columbia, they were able to buy property here at what they would consider like a discount.

So they did, they did just that they came over. A lot of our property here that were, that was property that loud, like elbow room. It wasn't necessarily like vacation rental property or condos. It was the property that gave them some acreage, you know, gave him the ability to kind of wander their own property and not bump into anybody.

So that, that is the product that did exceptionally well. We, we experienced a little bit of a, kind of a a. Oh, a slower rollout back to normality. And in the regard that Canada, which is one of our largest buying markets over here, Just was allowed to come back to Hawaii within the last couple of weeks.

To me, that's the next rush that we're going to see in real estate here in Hawaii, likely to be that Canadian market, looking at the cation rental properties, these condos ones that actually can generate revenue. I think that's where we're going to see kind of this next push in our real estate market.

Yeah. And, and where I'm at in Florida kind of sounds pretty similar in that too, in that, you know, there's plenty of people that's snowbird down here and the Canadians, the opening, the border up you know, certainly is coming at a time where you know, Canadians can come down. And spend time at th at their places.

Many of them had places already in Florida and they couldn't even access it. And we're stuck with this asset and now they at least get to enjoy it. And who knows you know, they bring, bring tourism dollars and everything like that to Florida. And, and of course, to a hotel. As well, very similar, very similar stories.

In that regard, you get a lot from Asia too, though. Don't you do? Depending on the island though. So Oahu tends to have really the most of the Asian market appeal. A lot of that is because Oahu, which is where Waikiki is. Market to them and make it much easier for them to enjoy their time there. And what I mean by that is the Japanese.

As an example, many of them don't have driver's licenses. So renting cars over here is practically impossible for them to do so. A lot of the outer islands don't cater to that. Whereas on a wahoo, they have the actual Japanese board of tourism has have their own buses that travel. And so it makes their experience their much more enjoyable.

So we certainly see the, the, the, I would say most of the Asian market still gravitate towards a wahoo where Maui is very much a when it comes to international buyers. Very strong with the Canadian buyers. And then, you know, some of the other islands like Hawaii and the big island, those do very well with like high net worth mainland us.

That's where Larry Ellison and mark Zuckerberg are fighting over they're massive multi hundred million dollar properties. Right. It's interesting. Yeah. So Ellison bought the island about 97% of the island of Lanai which sits just outside you, you look at it when you're. And he's turned, what was, you know, kind of a little sleepy retreat resort for locals into you know, ultra exclusive getaway for, for the high net worth individuals.

Well, okay. I could sit here and talk about Hawaii real estate and I probably could sit there and talk. Why real estate all day and be very interested in it, but call Greg, if you have a referral, I'm sure he'd appreciate. You're happy to help. Happy to help, but let's talk about your new startup. So drop offer, drop offer was founded earlier this year.

If I, if I remember correctly. Yes, you're actually the prior. Your prior. Okay. So 2020. So here, here you are in Hawaii and I'm sure, even in 2020, and even 2021, the big problem that every agent had was there was no inventory, right? So Greg and a co-founder get the idea to go. And I think the language you use is unlock the off-market inventory, right?

Turn the off market on it's kind of. Yeah. So, so tell me, give, give me the give me, let's start with the 50,000 foot view of what drop offer does, and then let's, let's start with. Yeah. So, you know, again, so drop off or does just that we turn the off market on. We allow agents and their clients to submit offers directly to off-market homeowners through multiple delivery methods, one being smart postcard, also offering targeted web ads as well as emails.

So what we're doing is we're opening up inventory know thick to really. Take it back to where it began from, was myself walking down the streets and door knocking on behalf of my clients. I had buyers that were willing to spend top dollar, if I could just find them inventory. And this frankly was pre pandemic, right.

This has always been an issue for the most part. And so I was. I was literally going, knocking on doors, seeing if there was any interest by these homeowners. And although I wouldn't certainly wasn't batting a thousand. I was definitely having success in doing so, but the amount of time Eric, that it took was like exhausting.

I would spend all day and gets to just get a response. And so I knew that there just had to be a better way. Like I said, Hey, I knew it was a success. The successful. To generate sales. I just knew it took a lot of time to do. So with Keck and understanding the process cause I was doing it so often, I was introduced to my co-founder Kemani Clark and together with his background in intellectual property, as well as computer science, you know, we devise a system that what used to take me like really days to do is now can be done in a matter of.

And it still has this impact on that homeowner to really stop, make them think about, yeah. You know what I have been thinking about selling my house and here's a quick private way to do it, I'm listening. And so it's really taking those pain points that I had as an. Realizing that there was, I'm not the only one with these pain points and developing technology around it that allowed the agent to be much more efficient with his time.

And at the end of the day, make more dollars per hour. But that's not the only thing that's important. One of the, think the big things for agents now is, and I've mentioned this before, but it's to be that trusted advisor and there's no better way to be a trusted advisor than if you're educating your clients.

And so to be able to provide inventory that they did not know of, you are becoming that educator again, which as an agent and in the last 15 years, we really lost a lot of that power of education. And so to be able to bring that back. Have your clients really appreciate what you're doing for them. You should get back into that role of trusted advisor.

And that is that's probably the most powerful position for an agent. For sure. So, so obviously based upon kind of what you're saying, though, it begs the question of how is the door-knocking creates that connection door knocking creates the, you know, it's hard to, to It's it's her to disengage from somebody once you've opened the door, right?

Like I get people that come to my door every day, not every day, but once a week, at least trying to sell me solar for my house. And you know, it's, it's tough. To say, get off my lawn, you know? So you, you engage with them for 20 or 30 seconds. And if there's any interest there, you know, if they're good at what they do, they'll, they'll, you know, try to pull it out of you and extend a 32nd connection into you know, maybe half an hour connection.

Right, right. When you send postcards or mail or ads or anything like that, you can't quite get that level of connection. And in fact, you know what I see frequently and this happens all the time in the. In the, in a space that it's, it's just a little it's I've never seen any agent be able to do this without feeling scummy is the death market.

You know what I'm saying? Like when somebody dies trying to connect with their with their loved ones to do that when my mom passed away last year And I still got from a KW agent up until about two months ago, every week or two, I would get a letter asking to buy the house, even though I had sold it to a family friend long ago.

Right. But yeah, but how do you make that connection where it's not just, you know, thrown away or not paid attention to what is it about drop offer? Narrows it down or connects with the potential seller and gets them to be more interested than just these random letters and broadcasting that's done traditionally in the way of getting.

One of the things that we've done, because we understood the same thing. You lose that connection, that face-to-face connection. When you bring tech into this process, but what we're able to do is we kind of bring back or we pause that, that homeowner. Process of like throwing the postcard into the trash or not clicking on any of our ads is we're actually utilizing the image of your home and it causes pause and, you know, it brings intrigued.

And so with that and proper messaging, you know, we're, we're confident that our, our delivery systems will have a high impact on these homeowners. And th th the great thing is, is, you know, we're not putting them. Kind of that odd position that you had mentioned before, you know, it gives them the opportunity to really consider that, Hey, here's a way I can sell privately and oftentimes, you know, for more money or certainly saving money, but it is it is a way for that homeowner to distill to how should I put this to still be able to sell a property?

With, but however, without having to have the, the stress and the time of actually listing on market, so that...