Anne Hartnett
Hi, I’m Anne Hartnett, publisher and co-founder of Seattle Agent magazine. Welcome to Brokerage Culture, where we do a deep dive and talk about the qualities and characteristics that distinguish different brokerages and what sets them apart from their peers. I’m here today with Sofia Padilla, executive director of project marketing, new developments with Realogic Sotheby’s International Realty, Dehlan Gwo, vice president of new developments, RSIR, and Tom Skepetaris, global real estate advisor with RSIR.

Now that rates have eased and inventory has improved, how are you seeing renters make the leap into homeownership, and what role is new construction playing in that shift?

Tom Skepetaris
I think right now with where the rates are, or where they’ve dropped down to, is lower than they have been obviously in the past. And what that’s done is it’s allowed buyers to get off the fence a little bit and ignite the market.
So buyers have an opportunity right now, especially in the new construction world, where myself and my partner Rebecca Matsui — who live in this world of new construction — there’s not a lot of it, but there’s a decent amount of new construction out there. But there’s opportunities for buyers to get seller credits to be able to buy the rates down a little bit more, to make it more attractive for buyers. That’s going to go away as this inventory starts to diminish and the new inventory starts coming in the marketplace, but the rates have come down and we’ve seen an uptick in agent calls and buyer calls to all of our different developments that we represent sellers out.

Hartnett
Townhomes seem to be leading the charge right now. How are developer discounts, receivership opportunities and unique financing options shaping the segment?

Skepetaris
I think the biggest thing for myself and again, my business partner, Rebecca Mitsui, is, we are positioned in an area where we thrive in this new construction world. Myself and Rebecca have been doing this for 25-plus years. There’s townhomes in the marketplace. We have our two story, 1100-square-foot-and-under product that we have for first-time buyers. And there’s a little bit of everything for everybody in the marketplace right now. But what we’re seeing right now is an opportunity, again, for buyers to get into the marketplace at slightly lower costs than they will a year from now and being able to get some credits to buy those rights down. So there’s lots of opportunities with different developers. Everybody’s doing something a little bit differently, whether it’s a 2:1 buy down, a seven year ARM, program, a 30-year fixed program — there’s all kinds of programs out there, and there are motivated sellers out there that we are aware of that we’re able to help first time buyers actually obtain a better loan from themselves based on the discounts that we can get the seller do in terms of credits.

Sofia Padilla
Yeah, I can sort of add to that. We have another developer client who is selling more of that kind of luxury, resort-style living, and even they are coming to the table with some really unique financing options to support people going across the finish line on new purchases.

Hartnett
Realogic Sotheby’s International Realty is known as turnaround experts who earn business rather than solicit it. Can you share how that philosophy plays out in the new construction space?

Skepetaris
Yeah, I think for us or for myself and Rebecca, what we find in the role that we’re in of sales agents that specialize in new construction sales — being the number one listing team in King County — we have developers that reach out to us personally to ask us to take over a project potentially from time to time because it wasn’t selling, or to take on a project because it’s just now starting.

Sellers want expertise in the marketplace. So we have relationships with lenders. We have relationships with receiverships. We have relationships with all kinds of agents out there in the marketplace that potentially need some help sometimes to get product sold. And that’s something, again, that we specialize in, and we are looking for talent all the time in terms of helping us do open houses and things of that nature, but the receivership world might come into into more play, as we’re seeing right now with a lot of developers, you know, struggling to get projects sold, and they want teams that are ready to go. So we as a company, Realogics Sotheby’s International, working with Dehlan, working with Sofia from the marketing side, there’s lots of opportunities for us to put projects at the highest level in front of buyers, more so than working with some boutique agencies out there, or just some agents that just don’t know how new construction works. But we’re here to help everybody in any way that we can in the new-construction world.

Padilla
I think it’s no surprise to anybody that this market has been super fickle. So, you know, putting projects like this on the MLS isn’t necessarily, you know, guaranteed to drive sales. I’ve had the privilege of working alongside Tom and Rebecca now for the last couple of months, and what they do is remarkable. They’re not just about, you know, pricing. It’s really about strategy. And I’ve had so much fun kind of getting a peek behind the curtain.

Skepetaris
Let me tell you, we’ve learned a lot about marketing through Sofia and the Realogics window. It’s a fun experience coming over to Sotheby’s as we have over the last six months.

Hartnett
Finite inventory is a reoccurring theme in Seattle real estate. As new sales approaches Do you believe history is repeating itself, and how should agents position their buyers and sellers?

Dehlan Gwo
As far as the condo market goes, pretty much what you see on the market is what you’re going to get, and it’s what you’re going to get for a long time. These towers take three, four, five years to plan, to permit, to construct and to deliver. With really our last delivery being last year, you know, we represent two of the last three deliveries in the city of Seattle in Infinity Shore Club, where I’m calling from today, and at Greystone. And if you look at the condo market since 2018 in Seattle, just over 2000 units have been delivered. Now, more than 1600 of those units have been sold, so that’s about 80%. So we’re definitely going to see a supply-demand imbalance, much like what we saw in the mid-2010s, which is really what spurred the current condo cycle with the start of the Insignia Tower by Bosa in 2015 and ‘16.
As of, “what should buyers be looking for?” Well, you know, it’s really about buyer timelines. If they’re looking for condos in our urban markets, what I tell buyers is, you either buy now from the standing inventory or you’re going to be waiting three, four, five years for the new wave of product to come out. So it’s really one or the other if you are only sold on new construction.

Skepetaris
Yeah, and I’ll piggyback off of that, Dehlan. Going into the townhome world, you are just going to see more expensive housing every time we go up. If you track — I always like to do this with buyers when I’m meeting with them — our market in Seattle does this. But if you see my hand, it keeps going up. Yes, there’s a little bit of hiccups, and maybe we were in a hiccup, obviously. But if you actually track the market, prices haven’t gone down. Yes, you will see some inventory at lower prices, but for the most part, prices still keep going up at a significant level, and as the demand goes up and the product goes down in quantity, prices are just going to continue to go up. So I don’t foresee big major price reductions in the marketplace overall as we get into the next year, you know, anytime soon in my opinion.

Gwo
Well said Tom, and just to add on to that, you know, it seems like we’re always talking about affordability in Seattle. Now, just on the supply side, you know, housing supply in this city has always struggled to keep pace with demand. So, you know, new construction, while it’s so important for attainability and affordability and consumer choice, it’s really a supply-side problem that we’re working with right now, and that’s only fueled more by the tariffs, by how expensive it is to build currently. Just to put it in perspective, to build another, call it, Class A luxury high-rise, sales prices would have to be north of $1,600 per foot. So, you know, the market’s going to have to come up a lot from where it currently is. We’re currently selling most of our downtown inventory for about $1,000 per foot. So comparatively speaking, you know, a lot of these buyers that are jumping in right now, now that rates are down, now that you know prices are the best they’ve been in the last ten years, they’re starting to realize that this is the time to do it, because the next generation of product is going to be more expensive because it has to be. That’s the only way to get these projects to pencil.

Skepetaris
I still think it’s an exciting opportunity to be in real estate right now. Yeah, we all keep hearing all the craziness that goes on in the world and everything that’s going on. But in all reality, buyers that buy are much more happier in the long run and are excited that they made the decision. Yes, it’s hard to get to that decision sometimes because of where rates are, but it really is an exciting time.

Me and Rebecca, like I said, we love working with buyers as much as we do so many listings, whether it’s new construction or the resale world. We love working with buyers. We love communicating with the agent market world out there. We love to go to networking events. We solicit those events on both sides of the market in terms of buyers and sellers, but it really is an exciting time to be a homeowner. It’s always going to be. I know a lot of people don’t think that’s the case. I think there’s far more people that want to be homeowners — they just don’t know how to get there. And that’s where we come in, as a team, as a marketing team, as Dehlan from the condo world, we come in to bring those people home, wherever it might be, and make them feel comfortable in the marketplace. But it’s not as scary as people think, and it’s not as bad as people think. You just gotta take the step and trust who you’re working with.

Hartnett
As new construction expands, you’ve said there’s a need for more land brokers and site agents. What kind of talent are you looking for and how can realtors get involved in the side of the business?

Skepetaris
I know for myself and Rebecca, what we are looking for to build our team, is agents that are hungry to learn the marketplace and learn from open house opportunities. You know, the old school away of — me and Rebecca have been doing this for 25 years, we were sitting open houses on homesite plats, doing large developments where we were open from 11:00 to 5:00 and we were talking to 10, 15, 20 people a day. That was 25 years ago, 20 years ago, and I owe everything that I am today based on those opportunities, and I didn’t cost a dollar. Right? All it does is, you have to sit open houses, talk to people. The more you talk to the people, the more you learn from those experiences, the better you get in communication and you’re able to help guide clients to buying opportunities. For us, we are looking for agents to hold open houses for us to be part of our team, help us teach them how to be a great agent, learn from our experiences.

It’s a fun world. It’s not glamorous, you know, sitting an open house. Yeah, we’re sitting there for two hours. Sometimes we don’t get anybody. But the more you sit open houses, if there’s any agent that’s out there that’s looking to talk to us, you can sit at an open house and buyers do walk in and buy homes from an open house. It doesn’t happen all the time. We’re right on the spot every time. You just have to work it like anything, any job or business that you’re into, you have to work it. You have to hone in on your craft. But there are so many opportunities in gaining business without putting a big dollar expense out. Obviously, there’s the marketing world that Sofia helps us with to bring clients in, but from an agent perspective, there’s a lot you can learn from an open house, and you can gain business from open houses. And it’s a needed thing out there in the marketplace. There’s just not a lot of agents that want to do it nowadays, because everybody’s so hooked on social media and seeing everything online. But let me tell you, if somebody focuses on open house — I made a career out of open house and I still do open houses, and I’m excited about it. Rebecca still does open houses and she’s excited. We do them together, and you just see us feed off of each other when we’re talking to buyers. We’re just excited to work with people and be at those open houses.

But agents that are out there, if you’re out there, reach out to us because we would love to talk with you, and see what your goals are and see if we can help you get there.

Hartnett
RSIR’s new-construction division has been described as a leader in new construction, sales and marketing. What’s fueling your optimism for growth under this leadership, and how will that benefit brokers who rely with you?

Padilla
My optimism for this division comes from so many factors. I think one of the main pieces of that is really this particular team. I’ll start with our CEO, Dean Jones. He has a very robust background, having grown up with a family of developers and having developed properties himself and then going into the creative agency space and starting Realogics many years ago. I think that’s a hugely unique position for somebody to be coming in at, as we’re trying to guide, you know, development and builders through this process.

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge the incredible leadership from Dehlan, who’s been guiding select accounts, obviously, Tom and Rebecca, whose builder relationships are completely unmatched. But we also have a land division led by Tadashi [Shiga]. We have Kelly Mann — these two components within this new dev team is really, I think, what sets us apart. Having worked for some other competitors in this industry I do think that we have a nice advantage in that each of us brings, a sort of niche expertise to what we’re doing here for new dev. So it’s not just focusing on sales and marketing or, you know, staffing sites or whatever, but it’s also at the inception of, you know, these builders and developers, how do they, you know, select land, how do they get the financing for it? You know, what does the unit mix look like? How do we, you know, value engineer projects, create amenity offerings? So it’s full, you know, soup-to-nuts service, and I am just so honored to be part of this collective.

Skepetaris
Yeah. Piggyback a little bit on that, Sofia, and to everybody out there, I think people think that houses just pop up. I don’t think a lot of people, buyers for example, even some agents that are newer to the marketplace, it takes time to determine, to find a piece of property, get it negotiated, get it permitted or, I’m sorry, get it negotiated, determine what you want to build on the property, what’s the best value of the property, is it going to be two units, six units, a condo building, whatever it might be, then getting it permitted, then getting it built, then determining what your pricing is going to be and then bringing it to market so you can get buyers to sell it.

That’s about, in our world of townhomes and new-construction single-family homes, that on average is usually about 18 months, 16 to 18 months give or take from start to finish. In the condo world that Dehlan lives in, go ahead. And that’s longer than that.

Gwo
Four, five, six years.

Skepetaris
Yeah. So having the expertise that we have as a team, working together, collaborating together, we all have different angles that we come from in a good way, meaning that we all specialize in certain things.

So any developer or any buyer that comes to us, we can guide them every step of the direction that we can, in any way. So we’re ready to do anything we need to do in this world of new construction. And any agent that’s looking to be part of this can thrive with us, too.

Padilla
Yeah. And anyone that wants to, you know, support their buyer, you know, they don’t have to be with, you know, RSIR. We’re here to collaborate with you. We encourage you to come and look at our projects. We, you know, encourage you to inquire if you have questions about new development, whatever it might be. We are, you know, here to be partners to you as well.

Hartnett
Anything else you’d like our audience to know about RSIR’s development team?

Skepetaris
I think from our perspective, from what me and Rebecca do, you know, working as the number one listing agents we do with new construction, we want to work with people that want to be part of the process, learn the process. As I mentioned earlier, we do want to work with people, find people to work with us. We’re looking to build our team. I know Dehlan has a team that he wants to build too as well, so we’re on the market. RSIR just in general is looking for good talent overall, whether you’re on the new construction side, that’s one side, or you can just be a resale agent over here too as well. Rebecca and I came over from a boutique company after ten years of being there, and we did it for a reason of what the name brand of Realogics Sotheby’s International has to offer us. What’s behind the scenes that we get. The forefront of, as we said, working with Dean directly, working with Sofia and Dehlan. It’s just a great opportunity to access business and just have fun.

I think that’s what we forget about in this industry. Let’s just have fun. You know, this is what it’s about. I love doing it, as you can tell. But it’s just so much fun dealing with buyers and sellers, and even if there’s hiccups, it doesn’t matter. You know what? Let’s fix the problem and get on to the next thing.

Gwo
And I’ll say this too. I’ve seen so many careers made out of agents that have become product experts in certain developments. You know, they might not be on the listing team, but after representing perhaps one buyer, you know, they know that building inside out. They know the floor plans, the pricing. They have an inside track to the listing team, and they’ll end up ripping four, five, six, up to a dozen sales representing buyers at these developments.

RSIR is so uniquely positioned for even the resale agents where, you know, you have an inside track on all of this inventory that Tom or Reecca are representing, that, you know, my high rise condo team is listing that, you know, some of our other, agents in the new development space, Michele Schuler, Sabine Jacques, etc. We’re all listing new-construction inventory that our agents here at RSIR can really white label and become product experts at. And again, so many people have found success, doing that.

So on the flip side too, you know, you go through an average agent’s rolodex and everybody has contacts to builders and developers. Well, how do you really activate those contacts? The beautiful thing about where we live in our world of Realogics Sotheby’s, is, you know, we’re just a call away. Hey, do you need a townhouse expert? Call Tom or Rebecca. You need a land expert? Call Tadashi. You need a development strategy expert, you know, call Kelly. if you have a big high rise condo in your back pocket, you know, call me and call Sofia. It’s really about activating those opportunities that most agents either didn’t know that they had or didn’t know that they had the resources to go pursue.

Skepetaris
Let’s not forget the branding and the marketing department that we have through Sofia and all she does too, as well, to help us bring these projects to life, from photos, videos, what we’re doing here today. There’s just so much that goes into it nowadays.
I sort of remember when I started real estate so long ago, we used to have these books. So Magnolia, for example, every listing had one little picture in a book of 70 listings, and you had to actually physically go see these homes, right? I kind of miss those days. I think that’s something that has been lost in real estate, because we see everything online, that a lot of agents don’t get out there and learn the product.

And what you said, Dehlan, is number one, I tell agents in our world of open house, when we have what we call a four pack — four homes to sell, six homes, 18 homes to sell in one development — I so would love to have agents say, hey, I want to own that project. I want to be your open house agent for that project. Because once you learn that project and you’ve been there, you know, for six weeks straight and that buyer that takes seven times to buy a property, they come in and say, I’m ready to go, and it’s a friendly face. It’s easy to connect with buyers when you own a project.

Hartnett
Well, thank you Sofia, Dehlan and Tom. I look forward to hearing more about what you’ve got in your future pipeline.