The Future of Real Estate Transactions with Marnie Blanco, Dotloop

Development, Product Management, Product Marketing, Training, and Support with 17 years focused in the Real Estate vertical. The real estate transaction has drastically changed and big announcements have been made in 2020. Digitizing transactions makes for a great consumer experience, helps agents get paid faster, and gives brokers and teams data-driven insights to improve business. Marnie helps us explore what this means for real estate, the problem tech giants are seeking to solve, the fear Realtors have, and how data is being used to refine the process.

00:00 The Data Driven Real Estate Podcast welcomes Marnie Blanco with Zillow's Dotloop
00:53 What is Dotloop?
06:03 Why is the real estate industry so resistant to technology?
08:01 What are the barriers in technology for a fully digital real estate transaction?
09:49 How brokers are relying more on technology for the data and to increase efficiencies in compliance (it's not just to make the consumer happy)
12:41 What brokers are learning because of the data captured from within Dotloop
17:00 What data points is Dotloop capturing?
18:52 Are shifting demographics in real estate more technology demanding?
21:38 Introducing partners at the right point in the transaction and how partnerships like Earnnest and Notarize drive further digitization of the real estate transaction (while decreasing fraud)
23:24 The California Association of Realtors and dotloop partnership
26:55 How much time can you save in doing transactions in Dotloop? Reasons why that is hard to answer and may not be the right question to ask
35:27 Zillow Offer and buyer trends. Why agents need to stop worrying and get to work
38:08 Strategic ways Realtors focus on differentiation and less on the transaction (hint: find a niche)
38:34 Covid related real estate trends seen in the data
40:42 Marnie give tips on how to adopt to the new technology and be a better data-driven business
46:47 Off-market real estate and the seller's market in 2021, and trends to watch including ancillary services and vertical integration moves in real estate
49:25 Virtual reality, augmented reality, and how companies like Home Depot are pushing us more online

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Transcript

Aaron Norris: 0:06

Welcome back to the Data Driven Real Estate podcast the podcast for real estate professionals dedicated to driving business using data. I'm Aaron Norris with Property Radar. And this week we have the VP of industry relations for dotloop Marnie Blanco. Marnie has been in the industry for a couple of decades in the real estate space training professionals and realtors specifically to get better with transactions and we find out all about dotloop integrations and trends in the real estate transaction space, the data being collected and how it's being leveraged in the real estate space. And of course, the future of the real estate transaction and how it's all about the consumer. You won't want to miss this week on the Data Driven Real Estate Podcast. Marnie, welcome, so, thank you so much for joining us today. For those who are not familiar with dotloop, how would you describe it?

Marnie Blanco: 0:53

Well, thank you, Aaron. It's good to be here. Good to see you again. Yes, so, dotloop exciting, I'm always happy to talk about dotloop. I've been there for almost eight years now, which seems crazy. But dotloop is a fully digital transaction management system. And so, that's a lot of words, a lot of big words that basically take a real estate transaction, make it completely digital, so that you can complete it, you know, soup to nuts, all online with your buyers, your sellers, your agents, your brokers. So, if you think about it, we kind of categorize transaction management into five buckets. You know, first, as an agent's doing a deal, they have a lot of documents, a lot of paperwork that you have to complete, they have to share and collaborate that you know, back and forth, you have offers that might go back and forth, you know, different type of kind of iterations of the deal until you get to the you know, to the final terms of the deal, of course, then you have to sign it. So, then you have your signature component. And so, that's what we kind of call the agent world, and then shifts over to the broker world where they have to review the deal has to be full compliance, you know, dot the I's, cross the T's make sure everything's good, ultimately, to get the agent paid quicker. That's always a good thing for these agents. That's what they love. And then finally, you have to store the deal, right? So, we have, you know, you do all your document, work, your collaboration, your eSign, your compliance, and storage. And that's kind of what we look in view as transaction management in this world to get the deal done.

Aaron Norris: 2:18

Wow. Now Zillow purchased dotloop. Was it in 2015?

Marnie Blanco: 2:22

It was about five years ago, yup.

Aaron Norris: 2:24

Wow. So, I was looking on the dotloop page today on the services that you offer. And it's you know, when you're describing the transaction, and all the pieces and the buckets that live within a transaction, it's, it's extensive.

Marnie Blanco: 2:38

A lot. Yeah, a lot of people just think, Oh, it's just an eSign, I just need to sign some paperwork. But it's much bigger than that. There's a lot more workflow, a lot more iteration, a lot more work on both the agent and the broker side.

Aaron Norris: 2:48

Yeah, having worked in compliance, that's a big piece of it to, a people, people don't realize how long you have to store these, this paperwork.

Marnie Blanco: 2:59

Yeah. And it's got to be clean, right? Nobody wants to get caught with anything dirty.

Aaron Norris: 3:03

Right, exactly. And the fact that it can all live with in digital, so, it doesn't go from paper, and then you have to scan. I mean, that's, that's pretty interesting. Does it incorporate the mortgage piece as well?

Marnie Blanco: 3:16

So, that's a great question. That's where it can. So, it kind of depends. dotloop is very, is a very open built type of platform. So, that it can include if you kind of picture sitting around a conference table, it's like a digital conference table, right? your lender could be there, your title could be there, your, your agent can be there, broker, etc. Everybody can come to the table. And that's what we call a loop. So, some folks do pull in mortgage, we're seeing a trend though, and this is where I think in the industry is the trend is mortgages, kind of the next layer of development, innovation, upgrading in that world, right, from technology to systems to, you know, just working with your local lender that you happen to know down the street. And the integration between systems like dotloop to a mortgage lender is really where we're starting to see the next innovation point. So, being able to share those docs, for example, you know, mortgage obviously requires a lot of notarization right, and so, we just partnered with Notarize. Dotloop so, that we ca notarize documents, you know push them to notarize, the fully get e-Notarized push bac into the dotloop. So,we hav those notarized documents i dotloop. But even to the poin where people could see from listing, like if they're pullin up all the listings, we can tel based on not just mortgage, bu then also title, what type o listings and what type o properties could qualify for fully digital closing, so that you're not going to the titl company and doing any type o wet signatures and you're no doing you know, some of th process digitally and some o the process manually, but it i a full digital closing soup t nuts. And so, that's where think we're seeing a lot of yo know, the focus coming in th next couple of years

Aaron Norris: 5:03

I've bugged Notarize, we're going to have them on next year, as I'm fascinated with the online notary. And I mean, that's a big piece, especially as we're talking about going from paper to digital back and forth. It's just, it's mind blowing. So,

Marnie Blanco: 5:18

It is amazing how fast they could change things, right? You have COVID come into the mix. And all of a sudden, you have only a few states that will allow an E-notarization. And then now I think it's what 23 or 26 states, you know, very quickly changed policy and made that available. So, it's cool to see the industry and policy moved quickly. In times like this.

Aaron Norris: 5:38

I did not know that on the Rewire where which I saw your name part of the conference that Notarize put on. I mean, they rolled out some really interesting partnerships, that surprised me, they had politicians online talking about sort of the digital, did, digitization of our space, and it was really interesting to see, it felt like it came out of nowhere, but you've been working in this space a really long time.

Marnie Blanco: 6:01

We have. We love this topic.

Aaron Norris: 6:03

When the, you know, the real estate space, I think there's a lot of fear. Who, I asked uhm, the CEO of T360 was on a couple weeks ago, and I asked him why is real estate so terrible at technology? Why it seems like we're always the last of the party? Do you have a good answer for that?

Marnie Blanco: 6:23

Gosh. You know? Well, I think my answer for that would be is that technology in any industry doesn't matter what it is, can be, you know, you have to talk about adoption and engagement, and, and all of that, which all boils down to change management. And I think in our industry, because we work with ICs, right, agents are independent contractors, you know, for lack of a better term, it's kind of like herding cats, right? It's hard to get everybody going in the right, you know, in the same direction and same adoption. So, I think that they get there, what's been interesting for us, I mean, it's a huge eye opener, especially in this COVID world, you know, businesses are having a hard time left and right, you know, people are doing whatever they can to get by and to make sure their businesses are in good shape. But what we saw at dotloop, is that it organically forced people to really start to adopt the technology, and to bring it in, you know, I think, as any business in April, and, you know, May, a little bit March, April, May, we took a little dip at dotloop. But we then had, you know, breaking sales and breaking history within the company for the next following five months after that. And so, while you know, this COVID thing is not good. We all want it to be done sooner than later. I think it's kind of great that it has forced people to really push into adopt technology in this digital world. And you know, it's sad, because you're right, it's hard in our industry, we're always kind of the last ones, I think. But sometimes you get a little pushes in some some odd ways. And I think at the end, it will only help the agents and brokers be be more effective.

Aaron Norris: 8:01

Is part of the issue that Realtors, as they're sort of viewing their value proposition, they feel like part of their job is sitting down with paperwork. And that's where they find value. And is it sort of an old school model where access to the MLS and helping sign paperwork is how they're seeing value in themselves? Is that? I mean, you work on the front line, what are some of the barriers to technology that you're seeing? Absolutely.

Marnie Blanco: 8:26

I think you're right, I think our industry by nature is like a belly-to-belly type of industry, right? It's heart, you know, based on relationships, everybody knows an agent or Realtor that they could work with. But it's, Who do you know, the best? Who do you have a relationship with? And that people don't want to give that up? And nor should they, I think, you know, while we are seeing increased adoption rates of technology in this day and age, what helps that those when you marry the tech with the human element, it's not getting rid of the human element altogether, especially buying a house, I mean, how much more of an emotional purchase could you ever have? I mean, it doesn't get any, any more emotional than that. So, you want someone by your side that you trust that you've known, that you have a relationship with, and that's never going to go away. But when you can marry that with some tech and make some of the just the logistics and things like paperwork easy, you know, those are the people who are going to succeed. Those are the folks who are going to be able to focus all their time on relationships and, and making people feel good and positive about the largest purchase they'll probably ever make in their life. And then they can do it seamlessly in the background with all this text. So, I think it's the marriage of both of them that is, is important, but it's hard to let go of some of that stuff when you're so used to doing it, right? It's like if you didn't start this way today, is that the way you would do it tomorrow? Probably not. But you have to ask yourself that it becomes a huge change management exercise for these folks.

Aaron Norris: 9:49

Are you seeing independent contractors, because I noticed that you've got different models where you're targeting agents to independent contractors but also teams and brokerages. Is there any, an easier path where people on teams, is the adoption rate higher, and churn lower for you, if they come on board with a team that this is the expectation, you're going to adopt this.

Marnie Blanco: 10:11

Yeah, that's a great point, we do see that, we see that if brokers would buy a system like dotloop for their entire operation, or a team would purchase it, we do see that there is exponential benefits, in the fact that you're able to model in workflows of the entire company, it's not just this one agent doing business the way that they like to do it. But it models that for the entire company. So, then the agents can inherit, you know, a lot of that workflow, a lot of those processes and benefits down to the local agent when the broker sets it up at a higher level. And so, I think that in two, I think people just naturally we've seen it for I would say, the last three years, the teams continue to grow and grow and grow. People inherently love to work together as teams, especially as the agent population, we get younger folks into the agent population, they've grown up in a world when they went to school, everything was done in a team base, every project is done in a team base. When I grew up, we won't talk about how old I am. That was not the case. It was very individual based. And it was just get your stuff done and take care of yourself. That's not the way that the new population works and the new generations work. So, we do see that when brokerages can offer it on a large scale to their agents, there's inherent benefits that they get the same thing on teams when teams can operate. There's inherent benefits, there's there's a lot of efficiencies gained.

Aaron Norris: 11:36

Absolutely, from just the origination to compliance piece, from the brokerage vantage point, holy cow, that it means a lot and and the data front, I think part of the fear too, that you've probably run up against as the fear is, how much data is being collected and how it's being used. So, let's talk about that. Like, one of the questions that came up at the National Association of Real Estate Editors having their conference today when you and I are recording this and one of the questions that came up was respite rules and vertical integration. So, you know, you've got these large Wall Street companies like Zillow that are you know, it's dotloop. It's the mortgages, that's the buy-sell side. That's a lot. And now we've got a new administration coming on. I guess let's cover that first. Is there, do you see any changes with the new administration coming on CFPB? Things that tech stack designers for a brokerage or team might have to think about and might impact you guys as well?

Marnie Blanco: 12:32

Right. Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm probably not as in-depth knowledgeable about all the details and changes and have an opinion about what's coming. Obviously, affordable housing continues to be a huge, you know, target and focus. And I'm sure the administration will be focusing on that. But what it comes down to is, I think, as you started to say is what does the data do in these, in this manner? And how can we leverage it in the right way for the benefit of agents, brokers and consumers. So, that's always a big, big question at that, dotloop and then, of course, Zillow, our owner. We went through even some data sharing changes this year that we, you know, change our policy on and within our industry, data's always been a hot topic. I, gosh, I remember, goodness, 16, 15, 16 years ago, I hate to say that I've been in the industry that long. I remember going to conferences that was called your, like MLS topic in the tropics. And so, of course, it's an excuse to have a conference real estate agents love conferences. It's fantastic. But we would all go to Florida, and everybody would talk, attorneys would come in, agents would come in brokers would come in, we would all talk about data at that point in time, which was a totally different realm than, than what we have now. But it was who owns the data? Does the broker own the data? What happens when the agent leaves the office? Does the agent get to they get to take their data with them, who you share your data with? What's legal, what's not, I mean, this topic goes on for years, it has been a, you know, multi, multi, multi-year topic. This day and age where I think it always comes down to again, it's control. And we at dotloop have taken the stance that the brokers control their data, and if the broker comes in, they purchased dotloop, and their agents use dotloop, and they use dotloop, they own their data. Now, if you want to share it, here's some benefits to how you could do it. For example, we integrate their data with only with their permission over to Zillow, to, for example, kick off a review. So, let's say you just closed the deal. And you want to get a review from your buyer or seller, we can kick that off automatically because we know when the deal comes in and it's closed, it's time to kick off a review. So, there's some things like that that can be very beneficial. Equally, if an agent wants to showcase how many deals they've done that year, we can see of course in dotloop that they've done all their deals, we can push that over to Zillow, they can highlight it in their profile, so they can show basically you know that they have quantity and quality. You know they have these great reviews and they do a lot of deals and that helps consumers when they're out there shopping for an agent. So, there's a lot of benefits to the way that you use data, if you use data, 1, based on permission, and it's always in control from the agents and brokers and then 2, based on either aggregate data that's not personally identifiable. I mean, think of like if you took data from an office and Dotloop, and they have 50 agents, and they could see how fast the listing is entered how fast the listing is closed, you can geographically map that into, you know, a local county, a local community, you can see, does this agent close deals faster than agent B? And is there a training opportunity, maybe agent A is doing way better than agent B, they both service the same area, but one is doing a lot better, because you can start to glean data from aggregate, you know, samples that are coming through. So, there's so many benefits to it, as long as you use it in the right way. And as long as you maintain control to the ownership, which is typically the broker and you garner permission. And that's that's the end all be all, I think it's very simple after that.

Aaron Norris: 16:03

Data to privacy. And that's part of the compliance piece, too, is working with somebody that I mean, that's got to be a difficult job sitting in the dotloop position, trying to stay compliant when you've got you know, California just passed another privacy law. It is not easy. So.

Marnie Blanco: 16:22

And it, Yeah. And it's constantly evolving, right? And it's geographically, like you said, California does something obviously, they always kind of lead the way for others. And so, then it follows. But yeah, you have to stay on top of it. It's almost like a, you know, a monthly thing.

Aaron Norris: 16:35

Interesting. So, I didn't think about on the operation side, maybe some of the different data points that you're collecting to give brokers and teams the ability to get more specific insights, which is really hard. CRM systems were all in different technology stacks. So, this is a different way to collect it on the transaction side. Hmm, what other data points are possible in dotloop?

Marnie Blanco: 17:00

Well, obviously, I think what you could start to, to understand and use to is, always the goal of a system like dotloop is how can you enable an agent to do a deal, get it done faster, and get paid faster? I mean, that's the name of the game, right? That's just, I mean.

Aaron Norris: 17:17

I like that hook, by the way. I see. you.

Marnie Blanco: 17:21

It works. It works. Um, so, I think that the, the options to utilize data can be I mean, so varied. Could you use it on, you know, a lot of the brokers, we, you know, we see how they run businesses, margins can be really tight with brokers, they need to have ancillary services, such as mortgage title, etc. But they might have within their companies, and how can they introduce at the right time, you know, maybe their mortgage company into the deal. And so, their agents make your agents lives easier by introducing, it's not just Hey, do you want a mortgage broke,r mortgage lender, and you don't even know what phase of the game they are and their shopping experience, right? But with Dotloop and the transaction based on when listings get entered, or an exclusive, you know, right to buy type of agency thing, you can start to glean really pertinent relevant times in the flow of a transaction to introduce services to make the lives easier. And that's something that you have to, you obviously have to be mindful of, you don't want to just start, you know, inundating an agent with a bunch of services or inundating a consumer with a bunch of services. But if you can do it in a in a really crisp, relevant way, it actually will make the entire experience better for everybody. And that's really the goal, I think of data is to really just glean certain marks of a transaction, to say, how can we make this easier? How can you make it better at the end? What, where was the, where was the pitfalls? Where were the painpoints? How do you fix that going forward.

Aaron Norris: 18:52

I would imagine what the demographics of buyers coming on to the market as well, this is probably a welcome departure from five years ago, even which is crazy to think. But you know, now that this is going a little bit more mainstream Gen Z. I remember hearing last year that there was a thought that they were going to come on the market faster than the millennial generation that they were really interested in home buying. And there was a stat I saw today that it was up like 150% over the millennial buys. So, imagine that they're really adopting this and loving it.

Marnie Blanco: 19:26

Yes, yeah. And it you'll see those stats, I mean, obviously Zillow, you know, has their own economists and we put out stuff like that all the time. But yeah, and this particular market or particular generation, you know, the younger ages, the mid-20s, and late 20s, etc, are just increasing like so much per last year. You know, that always the big topic was can they afford to get out of their parents houses, right?

Aaron Norris: 19:51

Yeah.

Marnie Blanco: 19:51

And that's, that's a whole another topic to address which is still a challenge, but we're definitely seeing in the numbers based on traffic and deals and transactions. That they are and it's increasing. And it's what's interesting too is you start to look at the renter's even right, you start to look at what's going on in the renting world. And they're really starting to convert at higher rates to the buying world than, than originally projected. And so, you might even see, you know, what we typically do about what five and a half million deals a year transactions into your, home in home sales, that you'll I think you'll see that go, you know, over six, well over six million, you know, this year and into next year as well.

Aaron Norris: 20:29

I just, I just finished my mortgage training my NMLS, once a year continuing ed, always a lot of fun. And I'm thinking about all the data points, I'm very familiar with 100 data that I have to collect as a lender. And, you know, I'm thinking about dotloop, and Zillow and the mortgage field, there's a lot of power and that data and responsibility. Is there any RESPA issues or concerns that we have to be worried about? As we look more into vertical integration? Is that something that comes up very often?

Marnie Blanco: 21:01

And you know, it doesn't come up very often in our world? No, but of course, I mean, it is always top of mind. And I think anytime you're doing anything within the real estate industry is you know, if you have any type of services you want to offer, you know, the first thing you go look at is that RESPA compliance, I mean, that's just like check number one that you have to do. So, we haven't run into it a lot. I do think though, as we start to get more integrated, the mortgage, the title, and more service start to get integrated into different systems going forward, whether it's dotloop, Zillow, or anything else out there, that RESPA is always going to be top of mind. I mean, again, I think that's a topic that's gone back years and years as well.

Aaron Norris: 21:39

I was, I like the concept of sort of the right timing, when to introduce the different services I know and PropertyRadar, they're different fields that allow you to do that, like the just listed. And professionals in certain markets that have very specific niches can trigger those things on those kind of activities, which is a lot of fun. And then even targeting down to demographics. So, it's a data game, it's just how to use it wisely. There's almost too much. Now, you guys also outside of Notarize. I was seeing something else Earnnest. I had never heard of them before. What is that?

Marnie Blanco: 22:14

Yeah, yeah. So that Yeah, that was actually our first dip into really helping digitize the transaction as well. So, earnest money, you can completely deposit your earnest money digitally through this company called Earnnest. It was kind of funny aside thing, is when we first launched it, we have you know, just a basically a button within Dotloop that helps you trigger that type of service. But Earnnest spells their name with two ends instead of one. And so, we got all his feedback, we were like, this is great. Look at all these people, they're really enjoying the service, because we are all these emails and feedback. They're like, every one of them. You spelled Earnnest wrong, you need to correct. It became, it became interesting, we had to do a little bit of education on, on nope, this is the company Earnnest, and this is how they spell it. But the service in itself has just been delightful, right? It's just it was a very, very easy type of integration that we were able to do with them. That took one of those manual pieces out of the puzzle. And that wouldn't seem so far to be pretty easy to get people to change to. Nobody likes having to, you know, to do those deposits manually. So, it's been it's the uptake and engagement we had off of it just within the few months that we've launched, it has been pretty incredible.

Aaron Norris: 23:24

And the, and the fraud going on in the wiring market right now is such a huge concern. It's so scary, so I can definitely see how that's taking off. I also see so you guys are doing some unique partnerships, the California Association of Realtors, The Ontario Association of Realtors. That's a big deal. What does that mean for you know the onlooker on the outside who doesn't realize how big that is? What does it mean that CAR it's now working with you?

Marnie Blanco: 23:48

Well, first and foremost, I hope you have a lot of listeners in California because that is a huge, huge deal for us. So, a little bit of history is when you're working with transaction management documents and forms are obviously a big portion of the of the transaction. So, you get those from state and local associations around the country. And so, dotloop goes out and partners with all of the state and local associations to make sure we bring the forms in, we digitize them, they're always up to-date so that agents and brokers have the latest and greatest at all times. California historically, between dotloop and California has always been a battle to get there state level forms. And California has done an amazing job at maintaining that, you know, that intellectual property of theirs, which is this form set and making sure everybody uses it. Nobody uses any type alternative form sets. So, it took several years to come to a, an agreement in partnership with California to say you know what you can, dotloop can use your forms. We'll keep them safe. We'll keep them updated, it, this will be in the best interest of your agents. So, yeah, so in September, we just launched our California form set which is amazing. And already getting a lot of adoption throughout California because now they have a lot of options. Before, they haven't had many options from a transaction management document perspective. So, that's a huge market for us very critical one for Dotloop that we will be focusing on quite heavily into 2021 and beyond. Similarly, you noted, Ontario up in Canada, and so that equally is another big market, you know, California has, you know, a couple 100,000 agents and Ontario Atlantic, they've got, you know, 60, 70,000 agents as well. So, they're very big markets for us to try to, to help the Canada market's interesting, they work a little bit differently than the US they have, you know, they have their ways of things they like done, they have their systems. And so ,especially being a US company trying to operate in Canada, that's always a challenge as well, because they want to know that they can trust you, and that they can actually work with you, that's always an ongoing challenge. So, we definitely have some branding work to do both in those critical markets. You know, overall, throughout the United States, we're over 50% of the transactions actually flow through Dotloop in some form or fashion. So, it might not be the entire, you know, soup to nuts from, you know, the agent and the co-op agent. But some former piece of the transaction flows through dotloop. And I mean, upwards, well over 50%. But if you'd look in California, and Canada, those are two very different markets. And that wouldn't be the case. So, we have a lot of work to do there. And I think it will be successful, we're excited to kind of open up these new markets.

Aaron Norris: 26:30

Wow, that I mean, that's a big lift a for those who don't have to deal with compliance, you know, being in the private lending space and attorneys working on paperwork, I can understand that battle, and I mad respect to the California Association of Realtors, I'm only really, heavily involved in two different associations, but they do such a good job, ll data that they put out,

Marnie Blanco: 26:53

Well-oiled machine, well run.

Aaron Norris: 26:55

How, on average, how, how much can dotloop save a team on a transaction? As far as time goes?

Marnie Blanco: 27:04

You know, that's always been kind of a million dollar question, right? We've tried to quantify it before. And there's there's not been a real scientific way to be able to quantify it. Some people like to quantify it by the amount of trees that they save. We actually have a very large brokerage in Georgia, that we asked them that same question like how much time their systems, he's like, hours upon hours, he goes, but the one hard thing that I was able to figure out after being on a year of dotloop, is they saved over$100,000 in just paper costs, because they weren't printing all these deals out anymore, and signing so, that I was like, Wow, that's a hard solid number. That's great. I think any, any operation would love that. So, it's kind of hard. I mean, obviously, it saves you a lot of time, especially dotloop being completely mobile. A newer thing that we had added in just a little over a year ago is not only are we completely mobile, you can fill out a form on your phone, you can sign of course on your phone, you can share you can do with the entire transaction on your phone. But we added a text feature so that people can actually do it via text. So, let's say you've got an agent who puts an offer out, you know, a buyer comes in and puts an offer to a seller and the seller counters, they can do it all via text. And what will come in as though it will just literally say change this field on the form and you do it via text it sends back it automatically updates the document, sends it back into dotloop. And it's just that little, you know, maybe it's a price field, that got changed. But it was all done via text message, just organic, you know, native text messaging on your phone. So, that has been a huge, a huge time saver for people especially, you know, you're in the car, and you're jus,t everybody's on their text all the time. So, those are the little things that are huge time savers, for folks, I think when really not only digitize a transaction, but doing globally and textually.

Aaron Norris: 28:56

And when a transaction is completely digital, on the compliance and the storage side too, you know, I, last 15 years, we have slowly been able to start scanning everything to be compliant with regulators in California. And we've gone from having to have a storage unit to everything being online. And then when you do have your quarterly audits by, you know, the different government entities being able to search files is really cool. Is it that easy?

Marnie Blanco: 29:22

Absolutely, yeah, everything. You can search files, you can tag them in different ways. You know, every operation, every brokerage runs a little bit differently on how they like to do compliance, they have their own processes and workflow. So, that's what we really base the foundation of dotloop around is that you can model in your workflow directly into dotloop so that you can do things the way you want to do it. You don't have to do it because the system does it that way. It's because you want to do it that way. And that's what works for you and your agents. So, yeah, you hit the nail on the head. We had another another brokerage in Chicago. He emailed me one day he goes, 'You know how I finally realized I became digital? I walked in the office, and they were rolling away my file cabinets, they were all gone.' I was like,' Yes, it was great'. So, yeah, it's, it can all be tagged and searched. Yeah, much easier than probably digging through a file file cabinet.

Aaron Norris: 30:13

I just, I'm just thinking of the keywords that I'm taking away, if I'm a brokerage or a part of a team, and I'm looking sort of the future, what is the next five years look like for an office. So, just get paid faster operational costs, save trees, I'm finding lots of little buckets of savings and marketing bullet points to for demographics that are up and coming into the real estate space, making it easy. I always used to say, if there's somebody that's not ugly, crying during their first real estate transaction, it just really isn't real.

Marnie Blanco: 30:43

He didn't experience the full, full deal of that was case.

Aaron Norris: 30:45

Right. You're really missing now. Well, and I see that's what that dotloop is really, it's, it's getting rid of all the friction. And you know, our industry is ripe for disruption, because we really have been siloed and didn't work together on technology. So, it's, it's important to see how this all changes the consumer experience, because that's what we all should be doing, riight?

Marnie Blanco: 31:05

Absolutely.

Aaron Norris: 31:06

Makes it easier. So, what are some of the other things that you guys are working on for 2021? Any new partnerships or any new technology that you're looking to tackle? Yeah,

Marnie Blanco: 31:15

You know, I think our big focus going forward is really blending in and integrations, I've probably said that word 1000 times so far, is going to be the focus, because it's bringing in not only you know, don't leave does the deal, but you've got the ancillary services, you've got mortgage and title, which is ripe right now for disruption and ripe for, you know, tighter integration. And, you know, the way we kind of look at it at Zillow and dotloop is these, you know, consumers, these buyers and sellers need to cross this bridge over in, you know, in this transaction, and they have all these different pieces, they're dealing with, you know, the search, they're dealing with that and making offers, and then, you know, having the mortgage, and then making sure title and closing is, is seamless. And so, it's really trying to build all of that together, I think in more of a much again, tighter integrated play, because right now, it's very, it's very disparate, you can get the deal done. But you know, not necessarily that mortgage and title coming into the mix as tight as it could be. So, I think you'll see a lot more of that. I do think that you'll see more of a focus, at least from us, on the teams that we had talked about, and teams continue to grow. And, you know, there's even very, very large expansion teams that go across states, you know, it's not just your local 5, 6, 10 person team within a, in a state that you're seeing them grow quite large and even larger than a lot of brokerages. So, being able to serve them, you know, they are kind of like a brokerage, almost within a brokerage. So, that's something that's really unique within Dotloop, because we have a specific teams product. And so, being able to serve that audiences is pretty important.

Aaron Norris: 32:52

Yeah, the teamwork keeps coming up. And I have asked this from a few different guests, like, is there a way that the industry defines teams at this moment? And it can be so varied and different? Do you, let me ask it this way? Do you see any kind of setup that really excels and performs well, a certain structure?

Marnie Blanco: 33:10

You know, I think I'm probably with your prior guests. I don't yet, I think that the hard part with teams is one, they're not tracked, as, as well as, you know, an agent population or brokerage population. You know, you can ask 10 different people, how many teams are there in the US, and you'll get 10 different answers. I don't think anybody even knows, right? Because a team could be two people, right? It's a husband and a wife team, up to, you know, we work with some teams that are close to 1000, you know, people that because they they are these expansion teams that go across states, and it's a very different business model. I think, though, that the hard part with teams, too, though, is that they change constantly, right? And so, when agents move, you know, brokerage to brokerage, or they start a new team, and then they leave that team, and then they add a team member, that's why it's hard. And so, I'm not sure if I have any better answer for you than your other guests.

Aaron Norris: 34:06

It's okay.

Marnie Blanco: 34:06

It's who we chase, you know, a lot of different outlets out there, you know, ranked teams and and it obviously becomes a bigger topic and I think a lot of the franchisors are trying to track teams better, you know, Keller Williams has always been a very protein type of model. And that's where you see a big growth. REMAX, you know, has a ton of teams, and I think, all as do, you know, all the big franchisors out there. So, it's kind of one of those that everybody's trying to tackle in some form or fashion, whether it's you're trying to service them with technology, or you're trying to service them, and understand, you know, their efficiencies and their processes and so forth. So, it's just one of those that's a little bit of an enigma, when you can't really quite quantify that market, you know, as clearly as we would like.

Aaron Norris: 34:51

If you, I know you speak with a lot of different groups and realtors and I do constantly when I speak in front of groups, there's a fear, there's iBuyers, there's Zillow that is buying and selling. And I always like to show them the activity that said, buyers and sellers are doing, I'm like, this is what they're doing. You have to make a decision to leverage them in your business work around them and avoid them. Do something completely different, but it's just getting the data. So, it what do you tell agents that are fearful of what their future looks like? Things that they should be focused on?

Marnie Blanco: 35:27

Absolutely. Well, obviously, working for Zillow, we have a whole iBuying program. That's obviously a big part of what Zillow does, and Zillow Offers. With, with that said, though, even internally, we fully recognize and say that, that will, you know, not be necessarily the norm of house, you know, buying and selling, it's not for everybody, it's a different model, there's, you know, price inclusions in there that you have to take into consideration. Some people you know, and so there will always be this. It, I mean, always, who knows, never say never and never say always, you know, there is this very large majority population of still kind of more of the traditional type of buying. Now, that doesn't mean it can't, that, that whole population can be done easier and smoother. Because that's really the goal of buy buying, right? Is the whole convenience factor of it. But you really have to be able to serve both markets. And so, for those that are nervous about the iBuying, there is a ginormous market, that, that's the very minority portion of the market. So, there's still a ginormous market to serve. And if you I, in my personal opinion, I mean, I got into this industry, so very long time ago. Because I just, it was like a hobby, I love shopping for houses, I love searching online forum, if there's ever open house, I go look at it, if there's new builds going on, and they have new models, I am the first one in line to go walk through them. I just love it right? And so, there's always going to be this population of buying over here that you can serve with just really good customer service. And it goes out to anything you do in your life if you want you know, if, do you want to shop at Nordstrom and get top quality customer service? Or do you want to shop at you know, a lower end type of retail that's going to give you nothing, right? And so, that service element will always differentiate an agent. So, I think anytime agents get nervous about the iBuying world, you can, there's 80 million ways to differentiate yourself. And it all comes down to service and people like it, it doesn't matter what's the normal way of buying a home people like service. It is just it's pure and simple.

Aaron Norris: 37:39

Yeah, and defining service and getting it away from the transactional stuff that doesn't really add value. It's, it's making it easy. And yeah, I like that. It seems like this new demographic coming into the real estate space to might be leaning more into lifestyle. You know, a consumer comes armed with a lot of data. They go online, they go to Zillow, and they're doing a lot more homework than they did a decade ago before they're even talking to you.

Marnie Blanco: 38:07

Absolutely, and power.

Aaron Norris: 38:08

Yeah, so, if you're that local realtor who goes to the chamber meetings and knows economic development and knows the new model that's going in, you know, that that lifestyle, qualitative later, layer that's very difficult to find on the quantitative data piece. I think that's really the magic. And then teams when you have different people focusing on the seniors and the people moving into town, corporate, you know, there's just so many different opportunities, find a niche.

Marnie Blanco: 38:34

Especially in this world we're in this COVID world, you know, what we're seeing when you start looking at data is, you know, especially the younger generations want to live in this urban lifestyle, right? They were flocking to downtown's and they were flocking, they like you know, be able to walk to restaurants and walk to, you know, to working out and shopping. But what we're seeing which is really interesting is now people are moving out of that, right? And they're it's, you know, it's kind of called the Great Reshuffle. And what they want is, they still want that ease ability, that walkability score, you know, you can find that on some sites and whatnot, but they don't necessarily want it downtown. So, there's like a top 10 cities list I think of that are called city-ish. And what you're seeing is people are flocking to that because it's kind of a little bit more maybe in the burbs not too much further, but they've got these maybe cool little community areas, you know, with maybe a community center and some shopping and some niche like coffee shops and people love that but they're not in this big downtown, robust, you know, hustle and bustle type of lifestyle. And so, I think you're you're dead on with the lifestyle thing, and I think we're gonna see it shift continually over this year and into 2021 as well.

Aaron Norris: 39:43

Anecdotally, we've had a guest on, I was we were talking about Silicon Valley and how he was noticing some people coming into San Diego because the median price is about half and, and then in Palm Springs and Riverside County. Just a couple hours away. Same thing. Palm Springs getting an influx, and they're both near airports to where if people had to get up to Silicon Valley, it's possible. But you know, their dollar just goes a lot farther in Southern California and some of these great markets like the city-ish. I mean, those are proper cities with real downtown's and a quality of life that they like, a little bit more space. So, interesting. Look at all the, I didn't even think about all those kinds of data points that you get access to, you can see it on the fly.

Marnie Blanco: 40:29

Absolutely, absolutely.

Aaron Norris: 40:30

You don't have to bug to get access to some of that data. That's cool.

Marnie Blanco: 40:34

You know, and actually, it's really good. Zillow actually puts out quite a bit of their research on that. So, I will dig up those links, and I'll forward that over to you.

Aaron Norris: 40:42

That's true, they do put out quite a bit of good stuff. Um, any other advice for,you know, technology adoption, it is a question I wanted to ask you. Do you have any top tips for maybe adoptions and sticking with something and really building it as part of a culture to become data driven?

Marnie Blanco: 41:01

Yeah, that is a great note, I had mentioned earlier in that we had the company in Georgia who measured you know, their savings in the amount of paper they saved. But there's one that is very interesting on how adoption has gone. And they have I mean, their engagement rates are 70, 80 90%, and up with our particular dotloop system, which is amazing. And the way that they did it is they don't just, they didn't just buy a system, train people and say use it, what they did is they really wove it into the DNA of the company. So, for example, when somebody onboards into, they hire a new agent into the company, they actually run all of their onboarding paperwork and education through dotloop, because it's just a form, you know, it's just paperwork that needs to be filled out, like anything else. And what that does is it just gets some kind of introduced to the system, right? Because one of the hardest things about a transaction management system is you don't want somebody in the middle of a deal trying to learn a new transaction management system. That is chaos, it is, it's scary, and they don't want it, they want nothing to do with it, they'll quit, you know, into two seconds. But if you can start to introduce it to them when it's not, you know, emotions aren't high and activity isn't, you know, a flurry of activity going on, like something like onboarding into your company. That is pretty brilliant type of way to start to gain adoption. So, I think that's really what it is, is you it's not going to be a one and done type of thing. You don't just train them once. And then they're experts. And it's great, right, because it all comes down to what we've been talking about is change management. And change management is just hard for a human being. Regardless, there's lots of people out there that say they love change and power to them. But I don't think they're the norm. And when you have to ask somebody to start doing something a new way, it's going to take a little bit of time. And so, kind of back to what I said there is really making sure that you have a human element coupled with the technology as well. And so, what we how we represent that in dotloop, is we have an entire customer success team, that when you onboard with dotloop, a brokerage comes in buys us, for the, for their agents, we onboard their admins, we go through training, we model their workflows, and so, that they feel comfortable, because then if you can get some champions internal, your agents are going to adopt it a lot faster too and when you don't just have it being shoved down their throat, they've got some internal folks who understand it, who can see the benefits, make it easy for them, and then also be an additional resource to them more so than just us training the agents. But it takes some time and you have to have that human element, they have to be able to reach out to a person at any given time, support is huge, right? We put hang a lot of weight on our CSAT scores, and within support and success and making sure you know they're well over 95% because especially in the nature of the industry, being a belly to belly type of industry. Agents love people, and they want to talk to a person they want to you know, have questions and in conversation. So, rolling out technology is tricky. It can be very, very tricky. You have to go in with eyes wide open that it might it's not going to be a one and done thing and you've got to add a human element to it.

Aaron Norris: 44:09

Yeah, and sometimes it's just making it a goal to scare yourself into try something new. So, I'm I consider myself a technology forward guy and, PropertyRadar as we go national. We integrate with Zapier, so we, Zapier, so we can over 2000 systems, CRM and different partners. So, I, I'm going to make it a goal to push myself in the technology front a little bit in 2021. Any we've covered a ton, is there any other trends in 2021 that we should have an eye out for?

Marnie Blanco: 44:42

You know, I think it's gonna be interesting just to see the mere number of transactions that continue in 2021 you know, at this COVID hit this world hard, but the real estate industry is doing quite fabulous. And I think that's great. I think it's good that people are I mean kind of what you just said they have to kind of just jump in and try it right, they might have been scared to move, they might have not liked it. But I think what's going to be cool is that we're going to see more transactions, more deals, and the process and the transaction itself is getting easier every day. And I think that we're going to continue to see that through 2021 and beyond.

Aaron Norris: 45:15

Now, with all this keyless entry, and with you at home, not having to drive to work you have time to play with technology, there's no excuse.

Marnie Blanco: 45:23

Yeah, we've seen over that, you know, over the last several months, like our 3D tours, on search, and virtual home showings have gone up 60 plus percent, like sellers are adding some virtual element to everything in their listings, you know, buyers are coming in looking, watching all of this virtual stuff. And so, it's just kind of a new way of doing things. And I think people will get more comfortable with it. And in the end, it will probably save them time, they'll go look at two homes instead of 20 homes, which is, you know, always a good thing for everybody. So, I think it's going to be cool to watch. It's not going to happen overnight, but it's going to continue to evolve, which is going to be cool.

Aaron Norris: 45:58

I was looking at a chart the other day where during the downturn, like in the 2012, I think it was, where the average number of homes a homeowner was looking at before they actually got to buy was it was ridiculous. And like now because of COVID agents are really being able to benefit the looky loos are out like, are you qualified? Are you ready to go? I mean, that's a huge benefit.

Marnie Blanco: 46:23

And you have to right, because it's still a seller's market out there, right? And these homes are going quickly. Our stats are showing they're going even like three, you know, three weeks faster than they were this time last year. So, it's you know, it's still, still that world. And if you don't utilize some of the technology that's being pushed out there, you know, from a buyer and a seller perspective, you really need to jump on board to make sure.

Aaron Norris: 46:46

Yeah, we've been talking a lot of about off market real estate and, and real estate agents really working on off market, marketing to get to deals before they ever end up online because of this, like,'Hey, you want to, you want to move in six months? We better plug you into some data, let's start doing research. What exactly do you want?' And really being able to get really sophisticated instead of the spray and pray approach? So, so, many cool ways to use data. Final question ancillary services. What are some of the other OpenDoors IPO in there? They mentioned insurance. I never thought about that. What other services could be incorporated that maybe I'm not thinking about?

Marnie Blanco: 47:27

You know? Absolutely. Insurance is a big one. And I think that's one that's really been overlooked. I think a lot of folks are going to start to dip into that area. Another one is like home warranty. I think that's going to be a huge one, too, as you know, as people start to look at their homes, do they want to move? Do they not? You still have a great big population that is just into the, you know, remodel and staying where they're at and making sure that they love what they have. So, I think that will be another big areas. Well, you know, ancillary services is big right. As we've mentioned earlier, you know, brokerages and you've been in that world margins are tiny. And if they don't have some type of ancillary service model and strategy, you know, they're probably not going to be as successful as they would prefer. So, I think you're going to continue to see that like you said, insurance, Home Warranty, are I think are the big ones, mortgage and title, of course, always. And so those would be I say, the big four coming. The other one that I think could be kind of interesting, too. I'm not sure if anybody's really ever tackled or successfully tackled this. This one is, we talked about the process of home buying and selling, make it easier, make the search easier, make virtual 3D tours, virtual showings, etc. Make the transaction process easier everything but the one thing that I think if somebody would become a billionaire overnight, if you can make the actual moving part better. That's what nobody has tackled yet. Nobody likes boxing up their stuff. Nobody. There's not one person that likes moving, we have a kind of a funny thing within our household. My husband, he's like, if anyone asks you that we don't know very well what you're doing on a Saturday, always say you're busy because they're gonna ask you to help them to move, and nobody wants to help anybody move. It's not fun. So

Aaron Norris: 49:07

No amount of pizza is gonna convince you.

Marnie Blanco: 49:11

Not enough pizza and beer in the world is going to help me come over and help you move. So, that's where I think it'd be super cool if somebody could tackle that world is let's just make the whole actual physical moving process easier.

Aaron Norris: 49:25

I've been watching Wayfair and Home Depot, Home Depot specifically has their whole tech, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality research that they were doing some really interesting things like starting in 2017 I've really been following them. And as furniture manufacturers figure out, you know, virtual reality and can you merge in real time, real furniture into a new home that you're looking for? Like, I think we're eventually gonna get there. Like, I've got a catalogue of all my furniture and my virtual reality glasses and I'm doing the walkthrough and it's placing things where they need to go.

Marnie Blanco: 49:58

Absolutely, yeah, let the whole Oculus thing is starting to, you know, gain some attraction. And if people could visualize that, and or could you imagine if you could visualize that, and then you can pull in new furniture, and you're like, Yes, I like that, because now you see it in the home and you could buy it right there on, on while you're virtually looking at it, that will be amazing that will come at some point in time.

Aaron Norris: 50:18

And having done a cross country move twice in my life personally, and then just moving a mother in-law from Chicago, where she could have gotten rid of half her stuff, and she could have saved a lot of money on the move. I agree. That is a really, really, really good one. Um, I just as a tip four for realtors, I know that you think about the property management space, when it comes to ancillary services, they think that it's only available to these huge tech companies. And one of the interviews I did a couple weeks ago was with a SquareFoot. And they're a commercial brokerage. And one of the things they came up with it is technology driven. But it's subleasing space unused. So, they sell a property. And that's one of the services they can provide for their clients. So, there's always, you know, that's such an interesting way to keep in front of a client, that lifelong relationship I had never heard of called belly to belly before I like that term.

Marnie Blanco: 51:11

Yes, it is. Yeah, because it can expand in a lot of different forms, right, you know, investors are all over the place, whether it's commercial, or if it's even, you know, residential property, there's so many new ways to buy investment type of properties. There's even one a new business, I have a friend that actually used to run and own Dotloop, Austin Allison, he started a whole new company called Pacaso. And it's a new way to buy like your second home, right. And so, it's not this timeshare type of thing anymore, where people kind of get stuck in there and or they get stuck in a second home that they never really going to very often, it becomes like almost like a share of you know, like a stock that you can use and you can purchase. And then when you're done, you just say I want to sell that. And it's not that you have to go find a buyer or anything because there's a holding company. And I think it's just interesting watching these models of just there's whole new different ways of things out there, whether you know, it's property management and investment there to second homes to different type of buying and selling within in our markets. It's going to expand.

Aaron Norris: 52:17

Yeah, and sensors. And it's just, it's amazing how quickly, it's all moving.

Marnie Blanco: 52:22

Very much so.

Aaron Norris: 52:25

Interesting. Well, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for coming on. It's been a few years since we've got to chat and I Survived Real Rstate. So this is really fun.

Marnie Blanco: 52:32

This was extremely fun. Thanks for having me.

Aaron Norris: 52:35

Thank you for listening to the Data Driven Real Estate Podcast, you can find show notes and links to some of the resources mentioned in the show at datadrivenrealestate.com. Click that join the community, and you'll be forwarded to the PropertyRadar community where you can ask questions about the current show and even see upcoming guests and ask questions there. We'd love to engage with you in the community. So check it out. Please don't forget to like, favorite, subscribe and share on your favorite platform where you're listening to the show. It helps us out a great deal. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.