5 Questions with Mike DelRose Jr.

I sat down with Mike DelRose Jr. of the Mike DelRose Team, a leading residential real estate team in the Boston area to discuss the current housing market. We also discussed how Mike thinks about implementing technology into his real estate team amongst other topics. You can watch the full YouTube video below:

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 1. What's the biggest hurdle you're facing right now as a team and a leader in the marketplace? 

So it's definitely listing inventory across the board, um, just with low interest rates, people. Who have, um, 30 year fixed mortgages do not have a reason to move right now. They're not gonna go out and pay six, seven percent on a new house, when they can just add, you know, build equity in their own home.

You're not seeing those traditional downsizers move out, you know, after the kids leave for college. They're staying put because they really have no financial incentive to do so. You'll see people moving to be around their kids but that's about it. So, people are looking for different avenues to find new listing inventory, thinking outside the box and all that.

And, you know, from my perspective, it's all about coming to the table with a solution in hand before you go try to acquire that inventory. 

2. Are you doing anything that's unique or a new strategy that you're looking at in order to grow right now in, in this kinda market? 

Yeah. I would say in general sense is being more collaborative with industry professionals. So it's not just agent to agent now, but I'm really trying to break down the barriers between the real estate vertical.

So working with my moving company a little more closely, my attorneys, um, my lenders and strategizing on how we can, you know, basically plant the seeds for this spring market in the next coming year. So, definitely a collaboration. 

3. So even though the market is tough right now from an inventory side, what excites you about a market like this? Can you get excited about a market like this?

Yes, yes, but maybe I'm a little weird for it. Um, I started in 2009 right after the crash, that, that was my introduction to real estate where, houses would be sitting on the, on the market for 90 to 120 days at least, you know, six months in some cases, nobody wanted to buy, no one could afford to buy.

So that was really challenging. What happens in those types of markets is when things slow down and become challenging, um, you push yourself as an agent, you're able to really see what makes you a good agent. You get to really focus on things to generate new business. You really get to focus on ideas you've always had and wanted to implement, and that tends to pay dividends down the road.

Newer agents are really gonna have to weather the storm. But for a veteran agent or team, um, it's time to get back to the grindstone and do the things, you know that work. 

4. What new tech tools that you are currently testing out or seeing in the marketplace excite you?

Yeah, you do know the answer to that question and it's AI and I'm sure any agent you talk to is going to say the same thing. I remember the blockchain boom in 2018, 2019. Uh, that wasn't as practical as AI is. I mean, there was some good tech there, but with this, everyone can use it. Everyone can have access to it.

It's easy to understand. Um, we're already using it to help write listing descriptions. We're using it to create content. Um, while there's some, uh, drawbacks to it, and things that agents really have to be careful of to keep themselves out of trouble, you can really use this to save a ton of time and work on the things that you don't really want to be doing. And instead going out there, going and showing houses and, you know, putting deals together.

There are drawbacks to ai, but if you know how to leverage it the right way, you're gonna save yourself a lot of time and effort. That's what I'm really looking into now is how to implement different AI tech into my business.

5. As you kind of think about deploying tech into your business, how do you approach that and how do you deploy tech throughout your team?

Writer Arthur C. Clarke said good technology is indistinguishable from magic. And I think that really applies here because I have, a large age range on my team from younger agents to older agents and not everyone's up to date with their tech. No one wants to learn tech.

In some cases they just want to go out there and sell houses. So when I introduce technology, it's gotta solve a specific need and make us more efficient. But, it's really about tech that they can adapt to very quickly. If it becomes a hurdle to their business, they're not going to adopt the technology.

So when we introduce something like ai, for example, like List Assist, is a, is a company I've worked with before to write listing descriptions and with List Assist, all you have to do is type in the features of the house. It automatically identifies. And tags photos so it knows what to write about.

So when an agent uses that, they're getting value back immediately. They don't have to think about it. They don't have  to learn a new skill to actually utilize the tech.

And two, it's easy to learn and adopt.

If you are interested in joining me for 5 Questions, send me an email to chris@shaker.io and let's chat!