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The Social Dilemma, how Social Media actually affects the Real Estate Market

 

Below is the actual S. George Real Estate Morning Drive show, hosted by St. George Real Estate Agent Jeremy Larkin, word for word! Enjoy and please share if you find it valuable! Jeremy Larkin and The

Larkin Group @ Keller Williams Realty can be reached by calling 435-767-9821, or emailing sales@gostgeorge.com.

Jeremy Larkin: What’s up Facebook live friends. Good morning. Guys, you can’t hear the ad that we’re listening to, which is why I’m kind of shaking my hips. Hips don’t lie, and neither do either do the numbers. We’re having some fun today in the Cherry Creek Radio Studios. North Bluff Street. We’re about to go live.
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Jeremy Larkin: Of course. We’re solid.
Good morning ladies and gentlemen, ladies and germs, as they say, boys and girls, real estate fans. Hey St. George residents, nearby residents, former residents, and want to be residents. Hey, Jeremy Larkin here, host of the St. George Real Estate Morning Drive, live from the Cherry Creek Radio Studios here on North Bluff Street. High on the Bluff, high on what we call The black Hill. Jesse Paul in the studio with me. Good morning.
Andy: Good morning, everybody. I don’t think this is on. There he is.
Jeremy Larkin: And the mic is off again. Just learnt something. That mic was on until we went live and then it was off.
Andy: Really? It turned itself off. That is bizarre.
Jeremy Larkin: It was actually off.
Andy: Because we actually made sure before you came in the red button was on. Yeah.
Jeremy Larkin: Correct. Odd. So I don’t know, but Jesse’s here. There we go. We’re learning every week, aren’t we? If you could see our setup, it’s quite a setup with all the radio equipment, plus the radio computer, plus two laptops. And the laptops, of course, here’s the best part. Jesse has his laptop stacked up on the Windows NT Server 4 Fifth Edition, essentially a textbook. Why that is in this studio is an incredible mystery.
Andy: [inaudible 00:02:04].
Jesse Paul: Now I don’t know, but it’s an incredible computer. Yes.
Jeremy Larkin: It’s the Windows NT Server 4 Fifth Edition’s textbook, as well as the study guide. Two books.
Jesse Paul: And they’re literally four inches thick each.
Jeremy Larkin: Yeah. Well, well, one is.
Jesse Paul: Okay, three and four.
Andy: And Jeremy, I have a quick anecdote for you. So they’ve delivered a phone book to my front porch yesterday. My wife picked it up and put it on the counter. My 16 year old daughter walked in and she goes, “What is that?”
Jeremy Larkin: You’re kidding me.
Andy: She had no idea what it was.
Jeremy Larkin: Of course, she didn’t, which does bring me to this…
Jesse Paul: Does everybody throw their phone… Because we get one every year. Does everybody just throw them away?
Jeremy Larkin: Recycling. I mean, geez. Do you hate the planet? So here’s the deal, which…
Jesse Paul: I have all of them.
Jeremy Larkin: For what reason?
Jesse Paul: Who knows.
Jeremy Larkin: [crosstalk] Do you mean in all the clutter that’s already in your house, you have phone books?
Jesse Paul: It’s to stack computers on them.
Jeremy Larkin: Okay. I think you should get rid of them. Mine goes straight, literally…
Jesse Paul: My [inaudible] desk is at the office. What I have for home is….
Jeremy Larkin: Oh, you use phone books.
Jesse Paul: … The phone book.
Jeremy Larkin: Okay. Yeah. Mine go straight to recycling. Which, hey, if you want to share that anecdote, thank you for the setup, because although we scripted this…
Andy: We’re kind of on the same wavelength here.
Jeremy Larkin: We are man. 48 hours ago, I’m over at our Desert Flower model and our show, segue, is brought to you by Sunwood Homes. My goodness folks, if I could tell you the exciting things we have on. So, and we’re going to come back to phone books. Brought to you by Sunwood Homes. You can visit them at mysunwoodhomes.com. Most of this is not on their website, so you need to listen right now. Everybody says, “I want affordable home, I want a single family home, I want a starter home.” We are completely sold and reserved out at Desert Flower, 40 lots.
Jesse Paul: Wow. That was fast.
Jeremy Larkin: We’re in the process of phase two, basically 40 more. And in the process of, along with phase two, town homes, a whole two story, three bed, 2.5 bath, 17, 1800 square foot town home project, as well as two, maybe even three more projects in the Hurricane Valley, a whole bunch of stuff coming right now with Sunwood Homes.
So what I encourage you to do is visit mysunwoodhomes.com or come see me at the model. I’ll actually be there today, and let’s get you on the wait list because people will… There’s always people who bail out. I’m there. Some of our great clients from Brookwood, also by Sunwood Homes, they come cruising in because they were just out driving around, fiddling around, and they’d love to come in and say, hey.
I said, what are you guys doing? Are you having a design meeting here? “Now we just wanted to come say, hey and get a diet Coke out of the fridge.” And we started, somehow phone books come up, and of course, our client is not a teenager. She’s probably, man I don’t know, I mean, their in their sixties. She said, “I love the phone book. I use it all the time.” And I thought that was incredible. You know, like really? Wow.
Jesse Paul: To be honest, that’s my era too, but I do not use the phone book. I’m a Google guy. If I want a phone number, I Google it.
Jeremy Larkin: Now can you believe this? Here’s the funny part about being live on the radio. I get a text from Kayla, “Please call me about the email I’m forwarding.” Now she’s off to Bryce Canyon today on vacation and I’m going to be at the model. Should we send this to her instead? She’s going to get a selfie from the radio station…
Jesse Paul: Letting her know, “Hey, I’m on top of it.”
Jeremy Larkin: We’re trying to run a business here. Okay, Jesse?
Jesse Paul: Yes.
Jeremy Larkin: The social dilemma right now. Anybody who is on Facebook, you’ve got to chime in guys. If you’re on Facebook, please give us thumbs up, please, please, please. Guys, here’s how Facebook works. You ready? This is fun. We’re going to talk about The Social Dilemma. Have you heard of the Netflix documentary the Social Dilemma?
Andy: I’ve heard of it. I haven’t seen it.
Jeremy Larkin: When is the next time that you can sit down with your teenagers for 90 minutes and watch documentary? Sunday?
Andy: Yeah, probably. Yeah.
Jeremy Larkin: I’m imploring you to do this.
Andy: The dilemma is the name of it?
Jeremy Larkin: The Social Dilemma.
Andy: The Social Dilemma.
Jeremy Larkin: Trust me, you’ll like it.
Andy: I’m going to write it down right here.
Jeremy Larkin: Okay. And by the way, I didn’t cancel Netflix with the whole thing that happened last month. It’s another conversation. I don’t watch much Netflix, but… Okay, here’s how this works guys. When you comment or give us a good morning or a thumbs up, you actually create, of course, this feeds into more locations.
This feeds to your friends and says, “Hey, Jessica Marone…” Lovely Jessica Marone, good morning. One of the best real estate agents on the planet on our team, she says, “Good morning.” And this now suggests to her friends, “Hey, you should watch this live video.” The Social Dilemma. Okay. It is a whole bunch… And here’s the funny part about it. It wasn’t like this expose where you’re sitting there and you’re like, “We’re going to tell you the dirty secret.” It was actually a bunch of original executives from Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, I’m talking to the big ones. I’m talking chief marketing officers, chief monetization officers, presidents of the company, early investors saying, look, “We built these things with good intentions, but here’s what happened. We used AI…” Okay. And by the way, Trevor, good morning, we use AI in real estate.
So remember Terminator? “I’ll get back.” Our fear was that AI would create robots that would take all of our jobs. Okay? So the greatest quote in the whole movie he says, “Our fear was that it would take over…” What was the word? “… Human strength, actually, AI has taken over human weakness.” And here’s why, the AI simply says this, they created algorithms in all these places, right? All these places to… The algorithm is an entity unto itself. So AI isn’t really going to… Robots aren’t taking our jobs over. This isn’t a Will Smith movie. Has anyone seen really robots walking around on the street?
Andy: Not yet.
Jesse Paul: From what you know.
Jeremy Larkin: Yeah, there you go. But here’s what’s… Thank you. But here’s what’s happened. How do you know you’re in the Matrix? How do you wake up from the Matrix when you don’t know you’re in the Matrix? The Social Dilemma walks through how the algorithms work and they feed to us.
I’m going to give you the best example ever, and then we’re going to talk about where all the foreclosures went this morning in Washington County. The best example is this, any Democrats or Republicans in the house, not in the house here, but you don’t have to get into that here, watching or listening to the show. If you’re a Democrat or Republican, I’m going to ask you the following question. Have you, at some point in the last 120 days said, “I cannot believe those guys could possibly think what they think. They must be insane.” Okay. That’s question number one.
This is about the other party. Of course, it’s 100% of the Republicans or Democrats have thought that. I can’t believe these guys… This number two. Have you ever thought, I can’t believe they don’t see all this information. Are they not seeing what I’m seeing. You ready?
Jesse Paul: No.
Jeremy Larkin: No.
Jesse Paul: They’re not.
Jeremy Larkin: They’re actually not, because based on their likes and their interests, physically clicking the like button, but their preferences and their interest and their internet history and their search history…
Jesse Paul: Well, I mean, it goes deeper than that.
Jeremy Larkin: Pause. You’re getting ahead. You haven’t seen this thing. You don’t get to tell me how much deeper it goes yet.
Jesse Paul: Well, I just know how much deeper it goes for me.
Jeremy Larkin: It is actually feeding Jesse based on his political interests and narrative.
Jesse Paul: No wonder I see so much wrestling stuff.
Jeremy Larkin: Thank you. Now, listen. Everyone understands that already. You’re like, “Yeah, big deal.” But what it does is simultaneously throughout this, realize these are the executives at the very end in the credits, it’s all the outtakes. Every one of these guys is like [inaudible 00:09:59], we basically… These are executives on social media. We don’t let them on social. It plays an hypothetical, a dramatization of a family going through. And it shows how a kid’s views are shaped, who is a high school kid, who’s a healthy athlete with crushes and all the things that happen in high school. And how he gets swept into… I’m not going to give it away, swept into a political thing, shows up at a rally and gets arrested because he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s very frightening. Now how much deeper does it go? Now you’re free.
Jesse Paul: Well, how many stories that we heard that are real? Somebody that’s in that same scenario. Happy, great kid, within months he’s going to prison.
Jeremy Larkin: You ought to see the most frightening part of it.
Jesse Paul: It goes deeper, and let me just answer your question now…
Jeremy Larkin: Suicide rates since 2009, 2009, anyone know what happened around 2009? The social media boom are out of control.
Jesse Paul: So the reason it goes deeper is, because it’s based on, let’s say you watch a video, the length you watch that video, it’s…
Jeremy Larkin: All of it.
Jesse Paul: It’s weighted. They’re listening to me. Every time I have a conversation or something, I open Facebook, there it is. Or Google, there it is. I didn’t search it. I talked about it with my phone in my pocket, but it was asleep. Or was it?
Jeremy Larkin: Yeah, exactly. No, let me tell you the best part, Jesse. What we thought it was though, there was a human listening. And here’s what these guys talked about, they said, “Well, that’s not really. The issue is it is just the algorithm, the artificial intelligence.” And so he said, kind of similar to these robot movies, it’s bigger than what they thought. And it’s basically has a mind of it’s own. And they said, “Can you bring this back?” They’re like, “I don’t know, man. We’re headed to dystopia.” It’s pretty scary.
Andy: The Pandora’s Box is open.
Jeremy Larkin: The social Dilemma, go watch it right now this weekend with your children. It’s incredible. And I tell this, it’s so fun because we use it for real estate. So what I can do as I go into real estate, so when I’m marketing your home, Jesse, one of the cool things we’re able to do, is we’re able to find sample target audiences, and take your property.
And if you’re saying to me, “I want to market my home to folks likely moving from cities that are falling apart.” We do that, and we can do that. And we can actually feed your property based on their likes, their interests. Now, Facebook came out about a year ago, this is the funny part, and they put some controls in place to protect people that are [inaudible 00:12:51], but the bottom line is these guys talked about it. These are brilliant, where they actually protecting them. So very cool.
Jesse Paul: Protecting themselves.
Jeremy Larkin: Protecting themselves. So what happened is, there’s basically no monetary incentive for this beast to get tamed. And so it’s funny, because I was watching our viewers went down as I was talking about it on Facebook. That’s hilarious. Is that coincidence, or did people bail? Because they’re like, “Ugh.” Now, I shared how long ago, Jesse, by the way…
Jesse Paul: They don’t want to see our faces. Oh, the longer I watch…
Jeremy Larkin: Jeremy Larkin here, host of the St. George Real Estate Morning Drive. I’m actually feeding this today, by the way, from my personal Facebook page, which is not a monetized page. So I mean, it’ll feed in the ways it feeds, but it’s not being monetized in a way that’s going to show up if I were paying advertising dollars for it. We feed this on my personal page, this real estate show because that’s where most of my connections are, and that we share it later to our Larkin group page, which is facebook.com/st. George experts.
Look, the world is weird. And what we realized, and this is the setup that I wanted to go with, this social dilemma, is that it’s actually changing tastes of buyers. And what we realize is… By the way, yes, they can affect the election. Side note, watch this documentary and you’ll understand.
And if they can affect an election, they can also affect buyer tastes, people’s views, people’s perceptions. So, Jesse, one of the things that you and I talked about earlier this morning, we talked about the real estate market. He called and said, “What are we talking about on the show?” And we noticed that a lot of markets are booming, but it seems like a lot of our friends outside of Washington County are more afraid of a bubble.
Jesse Paul: More than a bubble, they’re afraid of what’s going to happen when the mortgage forbearance’s come to fruition. What is going to happen with them? Are they going to foreclose, are they going to be able to catch up? Because right now, they’re being held by legislation. They can’t foreclose. They have to work with them.
Jeremy Larkin: Correct.
Jesse Paul: So there’s, I believe the number was 30% of the mortgages in the United States are in forbearance, or in some kind of forbearance.
Jeremy Larkin: So here’s forbearance. Forbearance is, I’m in foreclosure, but the bank because of mitigating circumstances, like COVID says, “Eh, we feel pretty bad. So we’re going to kick the can down the road.” Now I just shared my screen guys, if you’re watching us on Facebook live. We’re going to talk about, let’s talk about the data. So Jesse, you’re exactly right.
And what we don’t know… Remember how I said, I’m asking if Jesse’s a Democrat and I’m a Republican. I’m like, “Doesn’t he see the data I’m seeing?” So we’ll take this to real estate…
Jesse Paul: But [inaudible 00:15:41], I don’t either.
Jeremy Larkin: But if you move this over to real estate, the market looks really good, but we actually don’t know. We actually don’t know how many people are truly in forbearance. And we’re doing that, we’re researching that with Chantry Abbott, who’s one of our show sponsors. Chantry is with Guild Mortgage. I’m hoping next week or two weeks from now, he’s going to be on, we’re going to talk about how many… What percentage are in forbearance. So, Jesse, look at this. Lot sales, and lot sales in Washington County, 2019 to 2020. Well, that’s interesting. I just heard us. That was awesome.
Andy: Yes. I just put you on full screen so I can read your chart.
Jeremy Larkin: Beautiful. Thank you. So if you look at this guys, there were 118 lot sales in September of 2019. Guess how many building lots sold in 2020? How many, Jesse?
Jesse Paul: 2245.
Jeremy Larkin: Twice as many building lots sold. First question. Jeremy, it seems like everything is… There’s a ton of new construction. Is that correct? Answer, yes.
Jesse Paul: Well, just go back to what you were just talking about [inaudible 00:16:49]. That’s a ton of activity coming up in the next year.
Jeremy Larkin: Yeah.
Jesse Paul: Wow.
Jeremy Larkin: Yeah. I want to skip down. I want to skip down. New dwellings, Jesse. Couple of slides down. New dwellings, which is any sort of a dwelling, single family home, condo, townhome, anything that you can live in. 155 went up last year this month. This year?
Jesse Paul: 222 this year.
Jeremy Larkin: 222 versus 155 this month last year. Okay. We’re at 1,635 dwellings through September, last year we had 1988. We will crush the number of new dwellings. Question. It seems like a lot of people are moving to St. George. Answer, they are.
Jesse Paul: And going back to what we were talking about earlier, that’s why we need to get the data, because here in St. George… I mean Washington County, 50% of our sales are actually cash.
Jeremy Larkin: Guys, 50% of our home sales are cash. Good morning, April. You’re welcome for the info on Facebook live. Thank you for being on. We’re watching our beautiful face. You know everyone says our ugly mug, that kind of stuff. Nope. Thanks for watching our beautiful faces, Jesse. There you go. Go ahead, man. What you got?
Jesse Paul: So I also wanted to point out, and you and I talked about this earlier, is it an intense market? Yes. So 60% more homes sold last month, September than last year.
Jeremy Larkin: About a year ago in the same month.
Jesse Paul: But here’s one of the challenges in why it’s so intense. We were 3% down in new listings. So if you’ve got 60% more sales and 3% less in new listings, it’s going to make sense that it’s going to be intense. And it’s going to make sense that a lot of those buyers are actually going to go to new construction, because there’s nothing.
Are there other homes on the market? Yeah, but they’re either grossly overpriced, or just they don’t fit with the buyers that are in the market, but really they’re just overpriced.
Jeremy Larkin: Right.
Jesse Paul: Homes overpriced, even in the craziest market ever, it will just sit.
Jeremy Larkin: This is exactly right.
Jesse Paul: 30% are still not selling.
Jeremy Larkin: Let me move down here. Okay. Well, I’m just rolling. And if you’re watching us on Facebook live, Jesse, you’re always right. Listen, on behalf of your wife, you’re always right. Just kidding. If she ever hears this she’ll know that’s 100% not accurate.
Jesse Paul: I paid you.
Jeremy Larkin: Yeah. Well, of course you did. This is the crazy part. Okay.
Jesse Paul: All right. Tell us the crazy part.
Jeremy Larkin: How many sales, sales of property were there last year in September?
Jesse Paul: 715.
Jeremy Larkin: Yeah. 1,168 in September of 2020, guys.
Jesse Paul: And that’s what I was talking about, the 60%, that’s that number.
Jeremy Larkin: Right. This is the actual number. Might I remind you of something if you’re watching our show right now, I don’t know if you didn’t know, but there was a global pandemic that started in March. The entire economy was shut down, like actually shut down for 60 days. In California and other places, you still can’t sit down in a restaurant. Could I remind you that about 60 days into the pandemic, a national, basically a civil war started around race. Might I remind you that we’re in the most toxic political environment and election year ever. Do you understand why I’m emphasizing this, right, Andy? This should not be happening, this real estate market. This shouldn’t even be happening.
Jesse Paul: It shouldn’t, but it is.
Jeremy Larkin: This is crazy. My only claim to fame on my whole entire life was that I was biggest comedian, 1993, Dixie High School. My second biggest claim to fame, did you guys know that?
Jesse Paul: That’s cool.
Jeremy Larkin: [inaudible 00:00:20:45]. I mean, I didn’t do stand up, but I guess people thought I liked to joke around.
Jesse Paul: I can’t see why they’d think that.
Jeremy Larkin: Number two was when I predicted at the end of April, 2020, that this was actually going to cause our market to blow up and our market was in complete tatters at the time. Listen, if I die today, those were my two things. Biggest comedian ’93, Dixie High, thank you.
Jesse Paul: And you called this.
Jeremy Larkin: And I called this.
Andy: What about your kids, Jeremy? Come on now.
Jeremy Larkin: No, but I’m talking about claim to fame. My kids are incredible.
Andy: You’re their dad, wasn’t that…
Jeremy Larkin: I think they’re incredible. They’re incredible. But these are my two claim to fame moments.
Jesse Paul: One of these days you’re going to say, “Man, my claim to fame… That Eli, I can’t believe he did it.”
Jeremy Larkin: That guy is going to be a billionaire. So I could talk about that all day long, Andy. Thank you for the correction. [inaudible] So check this crap out, guys. We’re projected to have 11,000 sales in 2020, and they were just 8,096 in 2019. So when we ask the question, where did all the foreclosures go? Well, the issue is this, guys. It’s hard to have foreclosures… Zoom this down a little bit. It’s tough to have foreclosures when everyone has equity, and the people who would be in foreclosure could sell their house in 72 hours if they wanted to for the right price. Now, let’s back up, if you are someone in foreclosure, you got options. And the first thing I would recommend is you get on the phone… Here’s why you’d be in foreclosure, risk of foreclosure.
If, because of COVID because of any other circumstance, health issues, any crisis, you can’t make your payment, get on the phone with your bank. They’re probably going to put you in a forbearance program if you want to be in it, which is, “Hey, we’re going to kick the can down the road. We’re not going to run you through 180 day foreclosure cycle.” That’s number one. Number two, if you’re saying, “I don’t really want to be in the house anyway, I just want out of it.” Call us. We can if you want, make you an instant cash offer, you don’t have to clean it up. You don’t have to repair it. You don’t have to stage it. You don’t have to show it. If we, also at the same time, we’ll say, “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Home owner, or Mr. and Mr, or Mrs. and Mrs.” Let’s all the PC today.
“Here’s what your home could sell for on the open market, but here’s what’s going to require to get it ready. Here’s what it’s going to look like to show it.” So we’ll give you a couple of options. So call your bank first. If you don’t want the house, then let’s talk. But it’s tough for there to be foreclosures when everybody wants a home. I was talking to Steve Kemp, commercial guy in town, one of my good buddies, in the building, we’re in the same building. [Vantage] financial and commercial real estate broker, great guy. He said, “I had a guy call me yesterday or last week.” I don’t know what he said, that guy called him, “Steve, I need to buy something. Do you have any commercial buildings? I just need to buy something up there right now.”
It’s that kind of stuff. But remember, it eerily feels like 13, 14 years ago. So we want to watch it. I’m going to give you the quote of the day, and it’s killing me. Seth Godin, Seth Godin, G-O-D-I-N. He may have gotten it from someone else, but the quote of the day is this, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
Andy: I like that.
Jeremy Larkin: [inaudible] share that with you. History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. This rhymes a lot. And here’s why it doesn’t repeat itself, because things are never going to be exactly the same, because things were always not the same as they were. Guys, visit Jesse at soldinstgeorge.com, soldinstgeorge.com. Right?
Jesse Paul: Yep.
Jeremy Larkin: Is that where they contact us? If they want to have a conversation about buying, selling, am I crazy to buy? Am I crazy to sell? And the last thing I’ll share is, we’re going to share Jesse… If he hasn’t, we’ll link this data for you. Thank you [inaudible] Mitch Larson for sharing it. Notice there’s a default. There’s basically no notice of default. There’s virtually zero foreclosures in Washington County right now. There have been 27 total foreclosures in the entire year of 2020, guys. Where did all the foreclosures go? Wasn’t it the famous song, ‘Where did all the Cowboys go?’ Was that the nineties hit? They went away because people want to move here. Jeremy Larkin, Jesse Paul, The Larkin group, KW Realty saying, over and out.