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Welcome to the Deerwood Realty Show. I'm John Schink, founder and managing broker of Deerwood Realty in St. Louis, Missouri. That's going to be key today as we discuss something that happened to me on the internet. Yes, that's right—I think I've finally made it on Twitter where people engage with me. I'm up to 600 followers, so if I write something, someone's bound to disagree. Yesterday, I got involved in a discussion—not a kerfuffle or anything. I just wrote some stuff, and it got picked up and sent all over the place. This morning, it happened again. I don’t know how to explain it; I don’t go on the internet to attack people. Usually, I just agree or disagree with something, or I have some fun with it. But, as you know, on Twitter, people get paid to rip on everyone else, and so I got my share of it this morning. I wanted to go over it with you because I thought it was fairly innocuous, and I'm still a bit mystified by the whole exchange because I can't believe someone who's supposed to be an expert in U.S. housing—predicting everything will be terrible, which I've doubted for quite some time—would jump on me, especially since he doesn't even use his real name on his account. I used to follow him, but I stopped a while ago because his posts were far-fetched, and I don't have time for stupidity in my feed.

So, let's get to it. The first tweet was from Unusual Whales, and lately, they've been doing some things that irritate me. First of all, they're using Clever as a real estate source, and Clever is just a discount brokerage referral company, so I don’t trust their data at all. It’d be like using Redfin as a source. I like some of Redfin’s data, but when they talk about agents making too much money, I don’t take it too seriously. Anyway, Unusual Whales posted something, and I commented on it. The tweet mentioned that with mortgage rates above 7%, home buyers are still getting outbid by all-cash offers. I wrote that my last listing had five investor all-cash offers and two offers with a traditional mortgage, which checks out since I'm in St. Louis and these were the actual offers I received. Who better to know what happened than me, right?

Then this guy, Darth Pal, chimes in saying, “Sure you did,” and he posts a graph of national statistics on U.S. existing home sales. Has he ever been to where my listing is in St. Louis? Does he know the neighborhood or how I priced it? No, he knows nothing. It's fascinating to me. It’s like the same people on Twitter who write "Source" as if that settles everything. It’s just funny—this guy doesn't know anything. He used to work in mortgages with Countrywide, and we know how that ended up. Now, his main shtick is basically just posting on the internet, which is fine; everyone's got to make a living somehow. I was just surprised he came after me because, in the past, we've been pretty sympathetic to each other's plights.

So, I wrote back, “You can show me as many graphs as you want, but I have the offers. Are you stupid?” I mean, how hard is this? You can post anything you want about national data, but it doesn't mean anything to a local market. For instance, I know that places like Florida, Austin, Texas, and Phoenix are not doing as well as they were, but I can't speak to the individual pockets within those areas based on my limited understanding of the geography and what I read on the internet. What's going on in Dallas, Texas? I have no idea. Texas is a big state, so there's probably some place where it's doing okay and places like Austin that aren't doing okay. The only thing I know is that places that were booming and busting, where there was a lot of iBuyer activity, typically indicate there are problems. That's all I know.

So, I wrote that, and then he responded again, “Sure you do,” and posted another national graph of U.S. single-family homes with a percentage of properties with recent price reductions. Again, are you just nuts? If I say I have this in this market, at this place, or I had this, who are you to refute what I had? You’re telling me I'm a liar when I have the offers. Very odd.

And he had a friend chiming in, saying, “Oh yeah, that Realtor is lying.” It's like,

I get it, people don't like Realtors, but why would I lie about my own listing that's already sold? That doesn’t make any sense. I'm not even puffing up my listing. I'm just agreeing with the original post that with mortgage rates above seven, home buyers are still getting outbid by all-cash offers, which is absolutely true in my case. I can't speak for any other house anyplace else in the country.

And that's what I wanted to get to tonight. If you haven’t figured it out already, people make money on uncertain things. This guy’s whole stick is that the housing market's going to go down, it's going to get crushed, everyone’s going to get just murdered. It might happen, it hasn’t happened yet though, and it hasn’t happened for two years. So, it's kind of fascinating to me that he would waste his time with me when I'm just simply agreeing with someone else based on my own data.

I thought that was interesting, and I thought I'd bring that to you today. We had some questions I wanted to go over, just in theory. Let’s see if we can figure them out.

Why is it so important to rely on local mortgage knowledge rather than broad national trends? Well, St. Louis County has like 98 different municipalities within it. I have buyers all the time who confuse, let's just say, a 1200 square foot house in Florissant with a 1200 square foot house in Kirkwood. It's not the same; you’re going to have a very different price. In fact, when we were looking at my last show, which I might put in the cards on the video, I was talking about how St. Louis was said to be so affordable to buy, and I'm like, I don't see how it’s more affordable than other places based on what I’m seeing.

Statistics in St. Louis are always screwed up. If you look at the murder statistics in St. Louis, we’re always like top one or two, maybe top five now, but it’s because we have such a small area. The city itself isn’t that big. The widest point of St. Louis is like either 9 or 10 miles. You get these odd statistical numbers. I think it's been unfair for a long time, but no one’s going to care; it’s just as easy to say, “Hey, St. Louis is a dangerous place to live.”

What are some of the common pitfalls of taking advice from internet gurus on real estate? Look, the whole real estate game online is a joke, and I’ve always tried to come with a level of honesty and sincerity about the stuff that I see. I don't say that the market is super hot if I don't feel like the market is super hot, and I don't say it’s super cold when it’s super cold if I don’t think that is the case.

And I also, my whole thing for starting the channel was to take national news and just take a look at it and does it make any sense based on what I’m seeing in my local market, and it often doesn't. I know how this works, and I'm trying to do something as a benefit, but I don't know that people can figure it out if this guy can't figure it out, I don't know how others can.

How can home buyers and sellers verify the credibility of the information they receive online? This is a very simple thing; this is what we can do with everyone. You don’t need the government to ban misinformation. What you do need is to teach critical thinking skills. I know that sounds crazy, but look, you should be getting your data from a variety of sources. For instance, I don’t believe the unemployment numbers that come out; they always seem to be revised downward in the direction that would benefit the administration. And I say that with this administration; I didn't notice it as much with the last administration, but it sure does seem like it's bad during this one. That may change in the future.

But certain things, it’s like if you just go to my profile on Twitter and read the things I've written, you can choose to agree with me or not, you can tell if I'm being credible or not. If you go to that guy’s feed and look like two years ago and see what hasn’t happened, go look and see who he was supporting for president. It’s fantastic; he is a mess.

So, anyway, I think that would help quite a bit. What lessons can we learn from real-life experiences that contradict national statistics? Well, doesn’t that happen all the time? When you read a news story about St. Louis in the newspaper, like what used to be USA Today—I don’t know if they’re still around anymore—or in The New York Times, for example, or The Washington Post, when you see a story written about St. Louis, it

’s quite different than if you actually live here. And this isn’t really a slight against those publications; it’s just if you don’t live in a place, it’s very hard to capture exactly what you’re seeing.

So, for me, my biggest problem with this is I’m not going to show the guy my literal offers. I can’t send him PDFs of my offers, and it doesn’t matter because that wasn’t his goal. His goal was just to take a national narrative, throw it on top of St. Louis, and move on. Are there places in St. Louis where you probably aren’t going to get multiple offers? Absolutely. But in my case and what I was doing with my marketing strategy, I was...

How can real estate professionals effectively communicate local market conditions to their clients? Well, everyone should have a real estate agent that they trust in their back pocket. I know that sounds crazy, but I always tell my clients, my former clients, their friends, anyone, even if you don’t use me in the future because I’ve had people ask for data and then go with someone else at the end of the day. They’re just using it to kind of check out the other person. It’s fine; I don’t take it too personally. But you should have someone that you trust as a real estate agent with you at all times, just that you can call, no obligation, no hard selling, just, “Hey, man, I’m thinking about doing this to my house. Do you think it will add value in the current market?” That’s a reasonable question that I can answer any day of the week. Like, “Hey, John, where do you think this is going? How do you think this will work out?” I’ll give you my opinion.

You should have someone like that who’s not afraid to give you an opinion. Just this weekend, I had a nice couple ask me, you know, they’re getting older, and they’re like, “Should we put a walk-in tub in our bathroom? Will that increase the value of our home right now if we need to sell it?” They’ve already got so much equity in the home; they’re better off just lowering the price and getting out. No one’s going to really like their design anyway, or their style. So, I’m just more than happy to tell them that and move on down the road and just be honest with people.

What are the risks of making real estate decisions based on inaccurate or misleading data? Well, you know, there are times where agents are shifty, and they’ll make comps look like a house is worth more than it is for some benefits, and then there are times where they’ll make it look like it’s worth less than what it is for some benefit. If you think that a wholesaler or house flipper is going to give you the exact comps they use versus what’s really out there, you’ll be shocked. It’s a question of who you trust at the end of the day, and the person should have a track record.

How do different regions in the United States vary in terms of real estate market conditions? It used to be Realtor.com and the National Association of Realtors did like Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, Southwest, and like Middle. I think that that is not the best way to do things anymore, but I don’t know a better way. Maybe you do it based on population. Maybe like the big population areas versus the smaller population areas, or that kind of market size. You know, say like 3 million in a market size are one, and then anything up to 3 million is a different one, and then below like 100,000 is a different one. I don’t really see it being broken down by region as much as it has been traditionally. I understand why they do it, but I just don’t see that as being reasonable in this day and age.

What might national charts and statistics fail to capture in the nuances of individual markets? Well, everything. I mean, our market is so vast in St. Louis. Houses in the hood are going to sell at a different price than houses out in the suburbs that aren’t in the hood. That’s just the way it is. And then there are certain parts of the town that are the hood, and there are certain parts that aren’t. You really just have to know, or you have to trust your agent to help you find good valuations for properties.

And then, how can individuals protect themselves from misinformation when navigating the real estate market? Like I said, just find a real estate agent you can trust and that doesn’t mind you giving them a call every once in a while to help bounce an idea off. Certainly, I’m available if you put something in the comments. I tend to write it down; I tend to answer. I don’t have that many people—unless I don’t understand the question. But I don’t know everyone’s circumstance,

and I think we can all be guilty of that. If someone writes me like, “Hey, should I sell my house in Arizona to a flipper for x amount of dollars?” I don’t think that I’m the right person to ask. I don’t think I can answer that question accurately, but certainly, if we get like a certain part of St. Louis, I’m pretty sure that I can give you a very good answer.

Anyway, with that, I’m going to head on out. I just thought it was odd and kind of fun in the same way to actually get somewhere online to the point where people are actually replying to your comments, out of the blue, and attacking you. It made me kind of happy in a weird way.

So with that, I’m going to head on out. Thank you for watching, thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you on the next one.