From Cold Brew to Closing Deals: A Real Estate Journey

That's good.

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

And I'm your host, Brett Deister.

This is a monthly podcast where I talk with everybody from any industry about marketing and pr.

But this we're going to talk about real estate, what everybody is actually really caring for, because you either want to buy a house, sell a house, or are very interested in all that other stuff, what's going on, because it's very interesting.

But with me, I have David DePaung with me and he is a real estate professional guiding people to have a higher real estate and financial education while being a modern agent capitalizing on the data on our field.

And he lives and works through the coast of Los Angeles and Laguna beach, so LA and Orange County.

For those not really familiar with California, there is a distinction between both of them and they're very distinct from each other.

But welcome to the show, David.

Thank you, Brett.

It's good to be here.

And the first question all my guest is oh, go ahead.

Yeah, no, I was expecting it.

I was getting ahead of myself.

The answer is cold brew.

Every morning cold brew is ready to go, already premixed with the right amount of almond milk that I want.

So I pop a straw in and I get going at 6:00am yes.

Yeah, that's, that's a.

Is it like a specific cold brew that you like or you just do like any cold brew just because you just want that caffeine hit?

Well, I like this brand called Chameleon Cold Brew, but cold brew is really a, a half health measure because I said like, I really love coffee.

So it's less acidic, it's got a bit more of a punch, it's better for your throat.

When I'm on vacation, I'm still doing lattes and all these other things, but I figured if I was going to drink coffee most days that I'm alive, I should try to make it at least a little bit healthier for me.

And plus it's getting summer months, so maybe eventually California will actually get some hot weather.

Yeah, it just broke this last weekend.

It's literally just been rainy all year.

So I gave a brief summary of your expertise, but can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do?

Yes, of course.

So in higher cost markets like L A, San Francisco, New York, Miami, Austin, and a lot of middle markets that are getting there, like Seattle and part certain parts of Texas, Arizona, the real estate is much more than just a home.

Of course, it's a home that you need to have, but without Significant planning for the average American who doesn't have a six figure plus income per person in a dual income household.

Actually owning a home and being able to stay where you grew up long term and not be forced out by rising rents or rising prices takes advanced planning.

So I help people, of course there's clients I work with that have no issue, but I help.

A lot of my spare time is spent educating people that might need to actually prepare for one to three years before they could even qualify to buy a home.

And then we figure out how to get them something and that thing becomes a vehicle over the next five to 10 years.

That saves up all the money that they would need to buy another place or refinance and get their cost of living down and have a safe equity bank that they're saving up for when opportunities or challenges come in the future.

Because if you're renting and something happens to you, you have no options.

No options breed stress.

Stress breeds negativity at all points of your life and it can kill you.

Whereas if you have a home that say you've owned for five years, you've got $300,000 saved in it and suddenly you become unable to work for a little while, or you need to buy a new car, or you have college funds coming up that you need to pay, you have options because you did that planning and you put in that work to get that investment and that home that you can live in.

At the same time, you have the option to deal with these things, which keeps you in a better place, which helps you succeed and stay where you want to be long term instead of being forced to be where you can afford to be.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

I mean, real estate's an interesting time right now because of interest rates skyrocketing.

And at least in the California market, it's so expensive to buy because either you are as a regular consumer, you're either priced out by the price, the home's listing price, or you're priced out because of the interest rates on the actual home themselves.

And a lot of it is above that.

When people, when interest rates were lower, you'd like to think it would have been easy for you to come in and get a lower payment, but the opposite was true.

When everyone could afford homes, there were 10 to 15 homes, offers on every home.

Only one person was getting that home.

We don't make enough homes in California specifically, we build about 50% of what's required each year for the amount of people coming in.

So you really have to work with the system and get a down payment assistance loan or get a low down payment loan or get something to get even a starter home in a neighborhood that you would never want to live in.

But you suck it up.

You live there for a year, you rent it out to somebody, so it's a piggy bank just saving money for you.

And you figure you go back to living where you wanted, knowing that at the very least, if you never did another thing, eventually that home would be paid off by retirement, then you could move back into it and live for next to no cost because you'd just be paying property taxes and maintenance fees or association fees.

Yeah.

And so, I mean, for the real estate agent, how are they, how are they supposed to like, get those people?

Because I feel like right now it's a really difficult time to get people to want to buy a house because everybody's like, I don't know if I can afford those payments or.

I've been reading reports that more people are actually leaving California.

Now.

A lot of people could be coming back, but there were reports that more people were leaving than actually coming as well.

Because of just.

I think I just read or saw today that San Francisco had a huge dip in housing, like housing prices or it was like down like 16% or something like that.

So how do real estate agents, like, figure out, like how to navigate this weird, I call it a weird real estate bubble right now?

Because you just, you never really know what's really going on.

Just like the stock market, it's kind of like it's up, it's down, it's left or right.

Joking aside, but how do you figure all that stuff out?

So that's a great question.

And California may seem like one big market, but it really ends up being a few micro markets that, that decide how it's going to go?

So if you're looking at where I would recommend buying in Los Angeles and coastal Los Angeles, coastal Orange county, these areas have actually gone sideways and are very close to the prices they were at the height because they're the most desirable sections of the most expensive neighborhoods and the most affordable sections in those most expensive neighborhoods.

So when you're buying, yes, some of the higher end, some of the luxury and some of the higher priced, congested areas are coming down.

But when you look at an area where, you know, I would recommend somebody buying, which is an area where you're buying at the nearest affordable range, the bottom range you can possibly pay to get into that city that is insulated because there's 10 buyers waiting down here for it to fall 25 50,000 on price for it to suddenly come into their monthly affordable rate.

So yes, short term prices may come up, down, sideways.

But if you buy with the right thinking and the right mindset and the right know three to ten year plan, which is why you need to consult with your real estate professional.

They need to know this, they need to go like, hey, if we're going to buy and hedge our risk, it should be here, here and here.

This is where you can afford and how comfortable are you going up to that price?

If not, let's find a monthly payment that you are comfortable with and get something that has the best criteria that we can match the most risk resistant investment we can get you that you can live off of and not, not be able to afford food because you're spending so much on your mortgage each month.

You have to start somewhere.

It may not be where you want.

You may not have grown up wishing you could buy a starter home to wait 10 years to then buy a home that you want to live in.

But the other alternative is not and watching rents double and you being just where you were.

Inflation killed the value of your money, but it helped the value of all the homes around you go up.

And now you're, you may have $75,000 saved instead of 50, except your money is worth 50 of what it was 10 years ago.

And now what do you do again?

You get left with no options.

And people with no options get upset because they believe that a system has failed them.

So it's my job and it's other real estate professionals jobs to get in front of these people and say like, hey, we can get you there.

It's gonna, after looking at your info, it might take three years for us to get there.

And I'm gonna have to hold you accountable for some of the things that some of the webinars, some of the workshops that these programs that are going to help you require you to do.

And if you don't do it after that, well, there's nothing I can do.

I can't want it more for you than you want it for yourself.

Gotcha.

And I mean you talked about a little bit, but how has the pandemic changed all this stuff?

Because I feel like during the pandemic everybody was trying to buy a house.

I said you had like 15 offers on one house.

And that's when the prices started to just do just a balloon or like a rocket ship up in price value.

So has that also has that Changed or has it also changed on how you show houses like through, through video or whatever is has that actually carried on as well?

Are we still back to like the old school open house?

All of the above.

So in the beginning of COVID there was a period where a lot of people were losing their jobs, like a three month period.

And right after that demand for condos fell substantially.

And there was about a four month period, five month period where people were only looking at single family homes because now they could work remotely.

Well now Suddenly neighborhoods were 3, 4, $500,000 an hour away from where the office was.

We're going up in price 20, 30, 40% because people who are making money, the money you make when you live and work in Santa Monica or Beverly Hills or somewhere else could just move and not have to come back to the office.

So demand switched to single families and that's when I bought a town home because I knew based on how much housing we need to have that the demand was going to come back.

It's only a matter of time.

Then towards the end of the year it came back to everything because there was just no supply of homes and it shot prices up.

Now we're only seeing multiple offers on lower supply cities.

A lot of cities have one to three month supply of houses.

In those one month supply houses.

Towards the lower end, that more affordable end I told you about, you'll still see 10 offers on a fixer because they can get in at a lower monthly price, a lower property taxes price and they can use some of their funds to fix it up and then refinance in a couple of years.

You know, presumably when rates are down in the fives or sixes, but the higher end is a little bit slower.

The higher end is oh well, you could buy a two bedroom for 400,000, but now here's a two bedroom for 800,000 in the same city.

It's luxury.

It might take 30 or 60 days to find somebody and that person might negotiate 3 to 5% on the price just because it's not a necessity, it's a luxury to buy at that price point in that city.

So we're getting a lot of mixed micro changes all throughout the market.

And we're showing that, you know, we, we're, we're selling significantly less homes this year because most people who refinanced or bought in the 2 to 4% interest rate years aren't going to leave without an amazing opportunity.

So you're not going to see prices plummet without supply.

And where's the supply.

The supply is waiting for prices to come to come down.

So you were stuck in a sideways market until rates start to come down organically like they did before.

And then it'll bring, every time it ticks, ticks down 5%, 5%, like from five to four and a half, four and a half to four.

You bring a new 10,000 buyers back into the market.

And then.

So, I mean, what would be the best digital marketing strategies?

Or how would real estate professionals.

How, how could they market themselves?

Because, I mean, I keep on hearing we hit, we're in downturns, we're going to be in downturns.

The downturn is coming, the recession's hitting, the bubble is popping again.

I've heard some like, it's almost like 2008.

And it's like, okay, what is it anymore?

Like, so how do you market with all uncertainty?

Because I'm pretty sure buyers are like, I'm so scared right now.

I don't really want to buy anything because if I buy something, I might not be able to afford it later down the road.

Yeah, you shouldn't, you should definitely not overextend yourself right now.

You should buy something that you'd be comfortable sitting with higher payments for for a little while.

But a lot of the tools I use now are AI driven.

Like, there's a tool that I provide for my clients called homebot, which is an AI tool that learns more about pricing every year and gets more accurate on the estimate, the home valuation side, but also connects people to lenders I work with, and it shows them how much equity they have in the home.

They, they enter all their information of, like, when they started their loan, how much their loan is when they pay, and it says, hey, you have this much equity in your home, you could qualify to buy another property of this price.

You could invest that money.

And it gives you financial tools and suggestions for how to leverage your home while keeping it, you know, or giving you the option to sell it and what you would most likely walk away with.

And I feel like tools like this are going to become more and more prevalent over the next 10, 15 years, just as Zillow did, which is this is a one stop that people don't really have to pay attention to.

And you log in any time, it'll send you weekly or monthly emails, and it just goes, hey, did you know based on what happened over the last month, you could take equity out, Your payment would be this, and you could afford to buy a house in the next city over for x So I sign my clients up on tools like homebot to one, to show them that I'm out there, that I'm working for them.

I want to educate them on their options and their financial security.

And two, you know, you need to have these tools as a real estate agent.

You need to be able to market better, smarter, faster, to use the data that's out there instead of just saying I live nearby, let me sell your home because that's just not going to work anymore.

Gotcha.

Yeah, I mean that's interesting you think about AI because AI has basically gone into everything.

Even podcasting has transcription tools that use AI or AI to write up titles or do things that I don't really want to spend a lot of time on.

It will do that.

So will AI also help the real estate agent who is smart enough to figure it out to be a better real estate agent and find those like good homes for those people, will help pinpoint those homes for people looking for houses better than before?

Absolutely.

You're still going to need the agent, you still need the human touch.

One, because AI really can't distinguish nuance, it really can't distinguish like this place is remodeled, it's facing this, it's this time of year.

It can't navigate all of the facts plus the strategies that you're going to use, but it can save you two hours writing a blog.

And then of course you have to read that blog and you have to proofread it and you have to edit it because AI will sometimes swing hard and miss a little bit on the facts.

However, all of that stuff that creating content from zero to educate your clients to help people now takes a fraction of the time.

So you leverage that so that you can get back to the one thing you need to be doing, which is just face to face conversations and recommendations to help people with the emotional journey of investing in a home, buying a home.

And then what conscience should real estate be focused on when they're doing digital marketing?

Should it be videos?

Should it be?

I mean I've, I've seen drone technology kind of work if you want to get like a bird's eye view sometimes.

Like how should they be using the their digital content to help them promote the properties that may they may be overseeing to, to sell?

So that's a great question.

A lot of the, a lot of the marketing starts prior to any of that.

But if you want to stay relevant in today's market and every other listing has a aerial view or every other listing is advertising a certain point of this neighborhood.

Chances are you should be, you should be advertising that as well.

You need to have the virtual tour, you need to have the floor plan, you need to have professional photos other instead of a sideways photo you took with your iPhone, you need to just have all these things to show your worth face value.

Now because our, our industry is very transparent so you gotta, you need a guy who's available to do all of that stuff, the aerial photos, everything.

And it really depends on price point too because if you're selling a home that's 3 million and up, yes, you should have all the bells and whistles.

If you're selling a home 600 and down, that's a tear down in the inside.

And you know all you have to do is market it to a certain investor database that you have.

Then you don't need to spend money on the things that aren't going to help your client get more money.

You just need to send more money on getting it in front of those people.

Gotcha.

Is there like optimal like social medias that real estate agents should use to maybe like promote this stuff or is it just figure out where your audience is at and use that is that.

I believe that you have to embrace everything because not doing so just isn't doing the work and not doing the work or you know being lazy is never the answer.

But it's easy now you can go on TikTok and post a thing.

It automatically posted to Facebook, Facebook automatically posts it to Instagram.

And then you put something on your website, you put it on the mos.

It automatically populates on all the third party websites.

It's like you figure out how to make this it impossible not to see this property within 48 hours or 72 hours of you putting everything out there.

But you have to have all those things even if it's you.

You only post when you have a listing and you don't do any other educational content and you really don't want to engage the audience.

The other thing is in our instant attention span generation people who are younger than let's say age 30, a lot of the content has for older clients is nicer videos.

A lot of the content you create for younger clients now or people who might be clients in the future has to be 60 seconds or less.

It has to be here's how I catch you in the first 10 seconds and I'll lose most of you by 30.

But if it's longer than 60, you get.

No one has the attention span to keep watching and take notes.

Gotcha So, I mean, that was, that was the other question.

Is this generational?

And you kind of just said that it seems like Gen Z is like the TikTok and reels type of a thing.

And then the older millennials and above are just like nice videos, maybe with call outs of, like, where the trim is or whatever the house may actually have.

Is that the generational divide?

Yes.

And then, you know, you'll have more boomers on Facebook.

Like, you have to, you have to appeal and show everyone.

You have to be on Google so that if they Google you, that you come up, that they, they don't have to work hard to find you.

Because if they do find somebody else first, most people just be like, okay, that guy.

They don't know that the level of service, just like any industry varies wildly.

And you have to find somebody who's actually doing the work and knows how to speak about these things intelligently, knows how to achieve your goal, and explain to you how it's possible to achieve your goal other than, you know, instead of the first person you find just because you know them or your sister knew them or somebody knew them.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that, that's, that's pretty true on all that stuff.

It's, it's basically like, figure out, like, who your target audience is.

Is that what, Is that what I'm saying?

And then try to do it that.

Way to a niche, and you get that niche, you will naturally spill over.

You will naturally hit people adjacent to the niche, and people will talk about you to other people, and you'll get there.

But you shouldn't be afraid to focus and just be like, I'm going to be the guy for the people who want the education, who want the financial information.

And then when I do write by those people, although it might take a while and it might not pay as much, in a few years, those people are going to be championing you to other people, saying like, hey, this guy's been taking care of me for three years.

You should work with somebody like that and not somebody who doesn't return your calls.

That's true.

And even going back to the more the old school way, like, is still like putting those hangers on doors and putting those, Are those actual, like, flyers and in mailboxes?

Do those still actually work effectively for a lot of real estate agents?

Be like, hey, because I've seen a ton of those.

It's like, hey, we sold this home.

And I'm like, okay, that's, that's cool.

I feel like I need to throw this away now.

I actually love this topic because I've got a little bit less digital with just this specific thing.

You need to have flyers and postcards at your listings so that people can see that you do these things.

And that's a great tool to get hired.

However, on the door knocking side, everything in my mailbox that doesn't, that isn't from the government gets thrown into the garbage.

And I feel like I'm similar with most people.

Any advertisement type of material that comes in my mailbox, thrown in recycling.

So I take my notes, I change them, I put some real information in there, some real tips, recommendations, tools for people to scan with their phone.

And then I hand write the envelope and I leave it on their doorstep because at the very least some of these are getting open at the very most, if I knock, nobody's there.

I leave it at the doorstep.

They're not immediately picking it up and throwing it in the trash because that's, I mean that's wasteful if not anything else.

I'm, I'm doing things to be as green as possible and try to get as many opens as possible without just spending five grand to litter a bunch of people's trash cans to then litter a dump somewhere to then lit.

You see what I'm saying?

So you have to be a little bit more thoughtful about just spending your money and throwing postcards at people.

Gotcha.

It's, it seems to be more of the personal touch that you've got to add to it, not just, hey, look how many homes I sold.

And I'm like, okay, like I may or may not be wanting to buy a house.

So you just told me to throw this away for you.

Well, exactly.

And I don't care who you are, people, most people have to like you and trust you to work with you.

Especially when buying something real estate related or spend money you're going to have to buy to be a home.

So if they don't like you, it doesn't matter how good you are, they just won't work with you.

So you have to, you have to become able to connect with people as fast as possible so that you can help them get the best result.

Because if you just want to be a robot, then AI will take over for you and it'll do a basic amount of job and you can go support AI somehow.

But you, if you want to do this job, this person to person advising on real estate, you're going to have to figure out how to get people to trust you and how to not betray that trust, how to deliver.

When people trust you and come to you for a thing, that might be the most challenging thing they ever do or they do multiple times.

And will virtual reality or augmented reality kind of.

Kind of come into real estate as well?

I mean, we just saw Apple announce their.

I call it the scuba goggles because they look like scuba goggles, but they're the augmented reality thing.

Will they eventually be used for real estate as well, or what do you think about that?

Absolutely.

I think, you know, as soon as it becomes in more homes than less, instead of the virtual tour, you're going to start seeing the augmented tour where you put it on.

You still have that loose summary in the corner of where everything is, and then you motion yourself forward through the homes.

So there will still be people that need and want to go there in person.

However, I do think that as that technology becomes more prevalent, people are going to be like, hey, do you have an AR tour?

I'd love to.

I'd love to walk around the space.

I'd love to get the measurements from the floor plan.

I'd love to see the photos, but I'd love to sit in the space without driving to it.

And you could probably give measurements through the AR as well.

Absolutely.

All those machines measure.

That's how they give you the floor plans now.

So you can go in and see, like, oh, I didn't think that this room was that big.

However, it is, and you can't tell it from the photos or the tour.

Augmented reality might fix that, where you're actually standing in there and you're going, this room is big.

So you could potentially, like, almost, through the new technology, double or triple.

Just the people wanting to go through and do tours without actually being there.

Yeah.

You'll also most likely get more viewers for pleasure.

You'll get people walking the $10 million house that never would dream of spending that much on a home.

However, they've seen it now, because you have that.

But that's true.

I mean, people are like, oh, it'd be nice to have the wine cellar and everything else.

And you're like.

And you probably know, as a real estate agent, you probably know who can buy and who.

You're like, I'll just.

I'll just do it anyways.

Because it's better just to, like, give.

Someone a good impression there and do it.

And then you take a look at the finances and you go, okay, well, responsibly, we should be here.

This is great.

If we do the right things, for the next 20 years we could be here, but right now we're here.

It's a good, like goal setting, like you could be here.

As long as you follow my steps well, exactly.

It's easy for some families who are just going to buy their kids a house, cash or gift to them half a million dollars for a 25% down payment or something like that.

However, you have to be the first person in your family to start that generational wealth tool.

You might have to sacrifice to buy one, two or three properties, low down payments in your lifetime and then before retirement, and then just work on paying it off after.

And then you've left your next generation, your kids, your family, with three properties full of equity that they can now buy another three properties 50% down, meaning all of the payments are relatively affordable and all of them cash flow positive due to rents rising during that time.

And suddenly now you're three generations down.

Your family never wants or anything.

They can work, they can choose the careers they want.

They have this buffer, this cost of living buffer because these properties are providing for them.

Somebody has to start that, Somebody's first generation has to start that.

Otherwise you're just going to be an even further dichotomy of people who own real estate and are wealthy in places like New York and LA and people who don't and are trapped in the renting because they never owned anything.

So they don't really have an option to catch up now.

They have to use the only resource they have, which is time.

And you know, Obviously in your 20s you have more time, your 30s, you have more time.

As you start getting older and older, that time becomes a much more scarce resource.

And so what does the future of real estate look like in digital marketing for the next five years?

Most likely it's going to be exactly what we talked about.

It's going to be the embrace of augmented reality in marketing properties.

It's also going to be even more in depth style robot shot footage like AI and drones, being able to edit a video from the sky as opposed to just taking snapshots from the sky.

And we're going to be able to share that information faster and more accurately with everybody who's looking at this property anywhere in the world.

So even your local market could be more.

It could, it could eventually just be worldwide because you're going to have everybody on the Internet who's interested or maybe slightly interested wanting to look at the house.

Absolutely.

You're going to have things on Zillow translating into your dollar amount, your Measurements, your language, your everything.

As the AI tools learn more and more so that somebody who's in another country can be like, well, maybe I want to buy a home in Los Angeles.

Let me start looking.

And once I find the type of home I want, then I call a professional to be like, okay, I like this type of home.

I have this type of budget.

Where do we need to do, how do I get there, what's available, what can we do, what's on market, what's off market, and then actually engage and get it done.

Because you have the information now, you have the data.

But pre 2000 with the rise of the Internet, nobody really had the information.

You had to go drive to places and look at them to learn about them.

It's true.

Everything was analog before in the 90s and early 2000s.

If you map Quest in four open houses that you got in the paper and you didn't find one of the houses, you just didn't see that house.

And so fun question for you.

If budget was no problem, how would you build a house?

If budget was no problem, oh man, I would.

There's some beautiful ocean view homes in Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, double wide streets, 10,000, 12,000 square foot lots.

Where most lots in LA are smaller, they're between 3 and 6,000.

I would just knock one of those down, I'd extra reinforce it because of the earthquakes.

I'd add a basement like I had in the Midwest where I grew up.

So you have an extra 2,000 square feet at the bottom.

Do a nice two story with a rooftop deck and make the exterior something like a Craftsman or a Spanish style, giving it that character on the outside while giving it the modern finishes and utility on the inside.

Making it a smart house with character as opposed to one of these big blank boxes that pop up that are just all windows in gray.

Although I feel like I'd need $30 million to do that.

So we're working with a smaller budget than that right now.

That's probably true.

Well, where can people find you online?

So I have a website, Depong Real Estate D I P P O N G real estate.com and I'm@depong real estate LA so that it's easier to find on social.

So anytime people want to start talking about this or start preparing for this, they can go to one of those, message me directly, schedule a time to talk and then, you know, no obligation.

I try to see where they're coming from if they need.

If I can't work in the area that they're in.

I set up some time to talk about their needs.

I refer them to somebody who can help them with those needs.

And then if you ever need any advice, I'm there.

You always know where to call me.

You always know where to message me.

And that's a lot of my week.

Catching up on these requests, just letting people know I'm here.

Here's the best resource for you.

Here's the person you need to talk to.

And really try to encourage people to get out there and not avoid it because it's scary, because it seems not doable at some of the price points that are out there.

There's always programs in your area that will help you.

The only thing is, those programs could take a year or two to qualify for.

So you have to start putting in that work now.

And I'm happy to help.

If you come to one of my sites or you Google me and you just give me a call on the phone.

That's what I'm here to do.

All right, well, thank you, David, for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your knowledge on the real estate industry.

Thanks, Brett.

Happy to be here.

Yes, and thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

As always, please subscribe on all your favorite podcasting apps and join us next month as we talk to another great thought leader in the PR and marketing industry.

All right, guys, stay safe with understanding your needs in the real estate market and see you next month.

Later.