Geoff Zahler: My name is Geoff Zahler. I'm the broker and owner of Zahler Properties here in Las Vegas, Nevada.
I have been licensed for, oh almost 20 years now. 2024 will be my 20th-year license. I got licensed right out of college. I'm a third-generation realtor. Grew up in the business. we've owned our brokerage. My wife and I have owned our brokerage here locally since 2013. So we're in our 11th year owning a brokerage and we've been a CINC partner since the very end of 2017.
Jenn O'Connell: Can you give us an overview of your team size and then what your typical annual average production looks like?
Geoff Zahler: When we first started when we first started with CINC in 2017 it was my wife and I, and we had one other agent. And we knew we wanted to expand how we were doing things and we were lead... we were buying leads through some of the other other avenues out there, if you will, I'm not going to name names. And we knew we wanted to have something that was a different type of pipeline. So we did a little investigating and we doing what we were supposed to. We demoed a couple products and had our demo with CINC and it just like it was the right fit.
So when we first started with a CINC in 2017, there was two of us really really jumping on the leads and then we added a third and then we added a fourth, Like any other brokerage, ups and downs. We are currently right around 20 agents. It is in all of our agents use it.
I am a broker that actually lets my agents I basically provide leads for my agents. So it's a teamerage if you want to come up with a fake word, where they have an opportunity to have some leads as well as part of our value add here at Zaler Properties.
And even my role with, how I'm using the platform has dramatically changed, right? When we first got it, there wasn't a lot of us and, I was going through all of the training, the hands on training, and I was learning best practices for calling leads myself. And I was calling a bunch of leads myself.
My role and how we are operating today is I'm not actively in the database other than using it for the purposes of our CRM system. The leads we are generating are for my team and for for the agents on my, in my brokerage. Am I still using it? Of course, right? Am I still going through and maybe touching some of the leads that have been assigned to me either For one reason or another, absolutely. But I'm not in it day to day anymore. My job and my focus is to make sure my agents are having the opportunities. They're getting the right training. They're getting the best practices with me through either scripting or just general like ideas, right? I'm a tinkerer and I'm a system builder which is perfect for people that like like to use CINC. Because there are just so many opportunities here to filter correctly, use this, use that. And the platform is so immense. I've been on it for six plus years, right? And I probably still I'm only using half to two-thirds of the full capabilities because it's so immense.
Jenn O'Connell: So you've obviously grown your team since using the platform. That's great. How about production volume? Like ultimately why have you continued to use CINC for six and a half years?
Geoff Zahler: So for me as a business owner, it is still a very. Let's put it this way. It's profitable for me as a business owner, right? It's profitable for me as a business owner even when I am not actively taking leads. It started off when I was actually engaging with the leads. It was profitable as somebody who was using it in generating business. It's profitable for my agents because they are now having opportunities created for them that they're able to work.
Volume and and production overall, 2023 was a rough year for a lot of us in this industry but 2021 and 2022... In 2021, we did about 240 total units for I will say this it was $99, $99.85 million total. We just missed a hundred. We missed a hundred million by basically a condo in Las Vegas. And then 2022 Las Vegas, our back half of 2022 kind of started a downward trend. Earlier than a lot of the rest of the market here in the United States, but we ended up doing about 170 total units in 2022.
But we are back up and in 2023 is looking, or 2024, looking very positive, right? We're, seeing the pent-up demand. We're seeing people just say, Hey, you know what? Interest rates are where they are, and we know we want to buy. So we're really looking forward to having a nice, strong bounce-back year this year.
Jenn O'Connell: You mentioned it was profitable for you as a business owner and for your agents. So if you're talking to a coaching client and they are looking into CINC or another platform, but they're either familiar with online lead generation, like through another competitor or they've never done it at all, what is your advice to them as they think through their decision?
Geoff Zahler: When it comes to online leads, we should know not all leads are going to be perfect leads, right? It's a long-term game. We also know what we're paying per lead is different than a different service that's several hundred dollars per lead.
So the biggest thing that I always tell anybody who I sit down with, whether it's one of my agents, whether it's a coaching client that I have, is we have to treat every lead equally. Because we don't know which ones are going to pan out quickly, which ones are going to pan out long-term, and which ones are just not going to pan out.
We know that there is no such thing as a bad lead. It's just the system you put around it in order to nurture and support that lead. Now when I say no bad lead, obviously we know there's sometimes bad data, right? I'm splitting the two because we can't control the data that comes in. What we can do is control, hey, this is valid information, this is a valid lead. We need to have better conversations to figure out what their real needs are, and then make sure that we're just doing the long-term follow-up.
The fortune is in the follow-up, we all know that. But, whether it's CINC or a competitor, said, when we are generating Facebook leads, Google leads, what have you, we can only control so much, right? We can't control who chooses to register on the site and who can't. Who registers on your CINC site is going same type of person that's going to register on any other competitor's site. There's no one is better than the other. It's the systems behind it. The tools tools that CINC has generated behind it, including AI, including behavioral messaging and just including just ease of use that puts everything on the agent or on the broker owner, who's setting the systems up.
There's no such thing as a guarantee in this business. We know that it's how you work it, how you spend your time identifying whether this is valid data or not, and then putting it on the path for long-term, short-term success.
Jenn O'Connell: Can you share a memorable story of a CINC lead off the top of your head?
Geoff Zahler: So a couple of things when it comes to certain leads, there's certain things that I do remember. I obviously remember like the first one I ever closed, that's always fun. Oh, cool. This does work. I will say this, nobody, we all as realtors, we all are constantly working, and we have that struggle of like life work balance. There are two clients specifically that I remember, one had reached out to us initially on Thanksgiving Day and one actually reached out to us on Christmas Day.
I utilized the technology. It was a time in life where I was, able to sit and I wasn't, it wasn't like I was actively involved with the family. But I, a very quick engagement. Hey I just want to let you know, I received your information it's Thanksgiving with family. Do you mind if I get back to you?
So I put up a barrier, but I was approachable right away and the response both times. I don't remember the verbatim, but it was basically, wow, thank you so much. I didn't really expect anybody to respond today. Yeah, go ahead. So that's, those are two that like will always just solidify in my mind, hey, These people are people on the receiving end are humans too, and if you put up barriers, and barriers may be the wrong word. But if you put up, hey I'm a family person that I'm, this is my time with family, they're going to respect it. I also know if they're not going to respect it, that's probably somebody I don't want to work with anyway, right? Because guess what? With as many leads as we're generating, there's always another one. There's always another one, right?
I try to, train is the hard word, but I try to put, instill into my agents, whether they're my brokerage agents or my coaching clients, find clients that want to work with you and you want to work with. There are always more opportunities. Let's not be a, let's not work at something to be the detriment of how we want to live our life, right? That's, to me, the biggest thing. Those two stand out in my mind for sure.
Other things I love are because of the analytics, because of the way we can sort things in the system, and the system continuously drips on people. I've got some people right now that my team is engaging with. That registered on the site over 1000 days ago. That's three years ago. What's happened in three years, right? Three years ago, we were still in the height of COVID people were going crazy. We didn't know what we were doing. Some people use that as a springboard to say, Hey, I need to buy a house right now. And others we know didn't. So that's what's really cool about this program, right? That's what's really cool about the long-term effects of having the ability to simply put a search together. Saved search. We've got to save search. Hey, who's logged on in the last 24 hours that we haven't engaged within five or six days, right?
And sometimes it's the newer leads, but a lot of times it's, wow, this person hasn't logged in nine months. That's what I love. It allows the system, because at a certain point, we can't keep up with everybody. We can't follow up with everybody. We have to we have to employ technology that we trust that will be able to give us those signals along with us working it to figure out, okay, this is somebody who I need to touch and touch right now.
Jenn O'Connell: We know those online leads are a little different than the sphere or referral business. So how do you, keep your team accountable in the system? How do you help them know which leads to prioritize?
Geoff Zahler: I try not to rock the boat too much. I'm a firm believer in, I partner with somebody that I trust, so I want to hear what their best practices are. Now, as a provider of data, you guys have amazing training, right? I've I've been to CINC University. sent a lot of my team to CINC. What Steve and John and everybody does is amazing, and I can't, thank them enough. I obviously take it and then twist it into my Vibe, our mindset here.
So as far as priorities new leads or new leads, speed to lead still is speed to lead, no matter what we employ switch switchboard Sarah, which I still I want probably four or five years without using it and now that we're using them, like, how did I not use this at the beginning?
So I think the training is really strong. The other thing I do more than anything that may differ from how you do it it or how CINC approaches training is when I'm conversing with my team, it's, we need to figure out an instant rapport build right away. Because what I do is I tell my team whether it's, like I said, whether it's my agents at Zahler properties or our Tom Ferry coaching clients is if they're on your search site, they're probably on four or five other search sites. That's just, that's the nature of the beast.
So how do we differentiate ourselves when we're on the phone with them? How can we build rapport with those people? So for me, like I grew up in Southern California and in Las Vegas, we have basically probably more than 50 percent of our buyers are from Southern California. So I always joke, if I see a Southern California area code number, and I'm actually on the phone with somebody, I will try as quickly as I can organically to get in. Oh, hey, I see you have a 310 number. Do you live in LA or are you here now? Sometimes it catches people off guard and they're like how? Oh yeah, I grew up in Santa Monica. So there's sometimes there's that instant report. It's super easy to do that. Even if it's not LA. Even if it's somewhere else. The easiest thing to do in the world is have Google up, type in the area code, and see what part of the country it's from. That's it.
Sometimes it's Oh, like I've never been to South Carolina, but if I see a South Carolina number Oh, are you close to Charleston? Cause that's a place that I want to be on my bucket list. Like, we have to try to take this away from business sometimes and say, I'm a human being. I want to talk to another human being. So that's what I try to instill on anybody I talk to. It's about rapport.
And then the other big thing is let's stop asking yes, or no questions and start getting deeper with the conversations we're having. Every other human being that isn't thinking about this is asking yes, or no questions. Hey, I saw you registered on my site. Are you looking to buy a house? If somebody says, no, there's no turning back from that, right? You can't like, once you get a no, if you can, you open that conversation with a no. You're done, right? You're done. You can come back. You're, in the, you're in the boxing ring with Mike Tyson. You just got punched in the face. You're pretty much done.
Rather than that. It's Hey, I see you've been on our search site. What about Las Vegas interests you? I see you've been looking at a ton of homes, all between three and four bedrooms. What about three and four bedrooms is important for you and your family? You ask those types of open ended questions. And you get that lead talking, that's going to be different than 85 to 90 percent of the other agents that are probably calling them.
Jenn O'Connell: You're nailing this because my two follow-up questions were, what talk tracks work for you? And then like for out-of-state buyers how you approach those differently. So crush that. I guess to take a step forward,
Richard Kaiser: I have a question. So just, I got to chime in, just cause you're in Vegas and out-of-state buyers, I'm sure there's some uniqueness in the market, I'm just curious, do you have a good story of most unique, client that you got that's just a weird, I need a home in Vegas for whatever reason?
Geoff Zahler: Here's what I do get, right? I get a lot of this, Hey, we want to buy, we want to buy an Airbnb or we want to do this. We want to do that. So for me, I never want to turn anybody down, but I also want to be very honest and upfront with anybody I talk to.
So a lot of times we get calls from out-of-state people. Hey, I want to buy an Airbnb. Because that's like now Airbnb, that model's not doing so well lately, but it's still a hot topic from people's minds. And so I basically, I don't shut the conversation down, but I want to let them know, look, I totally get it. Airbnbs and Nashville or this or anywhere like that are still a pretty good position because of the hotel industry being as strong as it is here, the lobbying efforts against Airbnbs and short-term rentals are intense. It is intense. Also, Las Vegas is a ton of, we are dominated by homeowners associations.
The last 30 years, the city has grown so much and so basically from 1999 from 1990 on, 90 plus percent of homes built have been in HOAs. And most of those HOAs already have laws against short term rentals, right? Nothing less than 30 days. So I said, look, we can find something, but I will tell you this, it's a lot easier said than done. And even if you find a house here, like locally, if you find a house here that is already approved for an Airbnb, On the sale, the approval is not for the unit. It's for the person, the owner of the home on the property, and that approval gets eliminated on the sale. And you would have to go through the process again, and you're not guaranteed to get it.
AKA, I almost, I don't think I've ever actually helped somebody buy an Airbnb specifically. I warn them, what you choose to do is what you choose to do. I can help guide you, I can send you items from Clark County or from Las Vegas City or Henderson or North Las Vegas, right? There are pieces that you can do, but the rules and regulations are really tight here. They are really tight here.
We were one of the last big cities. To get Uber approved or Uber and Lyft approved for the same reason, right? The taxi coalition or lobbyists like fought it hard here, same thing with the hotels, right? The hotels aren't going to be like, Oh yeah, come on down, stay somewhere off the strip, right? They're like, no, you're here. We want your money.
Richard Kaiser: I'm guessing on that, like you mentioned condos, I think earlier. Do you find you, you have a pretty healthy mix of like condos in your transaction volume?
Geoff Zahler: There's a decent amount. I would say we are vastly, skewed towards single family here. Our team does probably 80 plus percent of our properties are single family, and it may even be like 85 to 90 percent. Condos are, they're still available. They tend to be a little bit closer to the strip, a little bit older.
That's the other thing, right? Clark County, which is where Las Vegas is, in general, a lot of property types that are available in a lot of other parts of the country, we don't see here. Multifamily, duplexes, triplexes, quads, right? Which is a great investment product for anybody because you buy one, you live in one unit, and you rent out the other two or three. We don't have very many of them here. We don't have a lot of them. There tend to be older and older neighborhoods. But you all, I don't think you've ever, I don't think you've seen a duplex or tri or a quad built in the last 30-plus years here. They just don't happen here.
People talk about ADUs, right? Hey, I'm going to convert my garage into a, an accessory dwelling unit and rent that out. We don't have that here. And it's, unfortunate because they're, such a great type of product, especially as affordability has become such a huge issue.
We are still, I say we are still a relatively affordable city. That's a big city, but we're definitely not the Las Vegas that people used to imagine, right? The $1.99 steak dinner, that is not Vegas and it hasn't been. Our median sales price for single family homes is right around $450,000. It was around $200,000 when I moved here in 2012. So it's it is not the inexpensive, cheap place that people think anymore. It's just not.
Jenn O'Connell: Whether it's like the NAR lawsuit, or interest rates in the last year, we've seen agents, a lot of our clients react in a variety of different ways. Particularly when it comes to buyer leads. So can you speak to why you are still bullish in investing in buyer leads, even with 2023 as it was and beyond?
Geoff Zahler: Absolutely. So really good question. Regarding NAR, I have served and I've been lucky to serve on our local and state association board of directors for the last few years. So I've, I'm pretty up to date with what's going on. And without breaking any NDAs or anything like that. Look, lawsuits happen all the time. We're going to see more of them. The big one and the big settlement that is scaring everybody. I'll say this. It's going to be appealed. Whether that appeal happens or not, or is effective or not. I don't know. But what I do know is things take time.
We are going to see this take probably several years before the official verdict affects us. But I do say this things have changed and are changing and are going to change. This industry is evolving and has been evolving. The comparison I make to everybody is we don't pick up the phone and call stockbrokers anymore, right?
We don't. We pick up our phone and place a trade on an app. That's either $4, $5, $6, or $7. The stockbrokers that figured this out, morphed themselves into financial advisors. Money managers. Those weren't terms before the internet, right? Everybody was a stockbroker. We're going to see the same thing in our industry.
We're going to see people that understand the value of what they do, and they're going to be like, I am going to be your financial advisor when it comes to real estate. I'm going to advise you on all things real estate. I'm creating you as a client for life. Yes, I am compensated on transactions, but my relationship proves its value in the five years between transactions with you. This is a transactional business but we have to make it more relationship-based.
So going back to your question about the buyer leads. First and foremost, I still think buyers deserve to have their own representation. They have to. And how we are compensated may change, but until we all have a better conversation with it in everything that it's going to be where it's going to be.
We have to get better as an industry of explaining to our general public why we are valuable and why we are worth X, Y, or Z bananas, right? That's what we're going to have to do. Those that are figuring it out earlier are going to be ahead of the game. That's what I'm training my team, my agents, my coaching clients. Here's how you have conversations about this. Here's how you explain your value. Not just I'm a door opener. That's the difference. That's where I think we will have the stockbrokers go. If they can't figure out how to have that conversation.
The other thing I really love about online leads, we know this. We know that not everybody is a current homeowner and we also know not everybody who's looking to buy a home has to sell a home, but a big majority of people that look to buy homes have a home that they may have to sell. So that's why I still like buyer leads. I still like buyer leads because if you get them early enough and you have the right type of conversation, there could be an opportunity to list or there could be an opportunity for a referral
From a a mindset standpoint from a psychological standpoint, most people don't wake up one morning and say, I want to sell my house. They say I want to buy a new house. So often people start their journey on the buy side, not the sell side. Now they may know a realtor in their town, but they don't, like I said, they don't wake up and say, I need to sell my house in Chattanooga to move to Vegas. They say I want to buy something in Vegas. Oh, that may mean I have to sell my house in Chattanooga. So if we're having that conversation early enough, we can help put the right pieces together.
And that's what's really cool about, like I said, obviously CINC, there's a referral program within CINC. For all my Tom Ferry clients, like one of the big things about being in Tom Ferry coaching is the ecosystem where we all know we all know each other in other markets.
So this becomes a bigger play than I am your, so I am your local Las Vegas expert. But I'm your United States partner when it comes to real estate. So that's why I think buyer leads, A, are important, B, are still relevant, C will continue to flourish.
And then the other thing I will say this, going back to the lawsuit, going back to this, going back to that, we will always find a way. Creative people always find a way. Whether it is, embracing the buyer's brokerage agreement, whether it is discussing how through seller credits, we can basically help offset our costs. And then the other long-term thing, and don't quote me on this, but I know I'm a camera and I'm being recorded. So it's okay... the lending industry is really smart. They're going to probably eventually figure out how to have some part of this compensation thrown into the loan if, we needed to go that way. Now that could take a very long time and it probably won't be the full amount, but just like a VA funding fee can be put into the loan, I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there's a way where Fannie, Freddie type products would allow some kind of credit to offset because we all rely on each other.
Jenn O'Connell: You're a coach, you've been in production as well. How do you coach people if they're considering going from being a solo agent on their own to building and growing a team and how does, how do online leads play into that if they do?
Geoff Zahler: that's a great question. Cause that's my jam when it comes to coaching, right? If you asked me to coach somebody who's brand new to the industry, who doesn't know what they're doing, I have a hard time, right? I have a hard time. And it's not that I can't, I just, I get, you just saw even on my face, like I started smiling with this, like my jam and my big thing is systems and growth, like systems and growth.
It's putting the right people around you to do things that you don't either necessarily need to do anymore or don't ever want to do. But it's easier said than done because a lot of us become solo agents, we're so used to doing everything. We're like, no, I'm doing it all. And the answer is you can't do it all. If you try to do it all, you'll never get to the level you think you want to get to.
So how I talk about it is the first and foremost thing I usually do when I know clients, whether it's my agents or coaching clients, when I know they're ready to start growing a team or doing whatever, I have them make a list of every single thing they do.
I know it's like, Hey, we're going to go back to square one right here, or level one, but I need you to write down every single thing you do. And then I want you to take a look at that list and start circling or crossing off what you shouldn't be doing and what you don't like to do. Great. We are now establishing essentially a job description for what you can offload off your own plate, right?
A lot of times what that becomes is either like an assistant first or a transaction coordinator or marketing person first, right? And then it's, wow, you know what, buyers, I love closing and I love being with people, but I know this, I can handle more transactions with more bodies, right? Because we know it is what it is. Buyers take more human capital time than sellers do, right? We can do, we can handle a lot more listings at one point than we can buyers at one point. So that's why the natural progression is to have a buyer's agent. And before you know it, boom, there's the infancy of a team. That's how we start a team.
And then it's okay, cool. What am I offering? Then it becomes what your value add or your value proposition is. So are you offering as a team lead are you offering your knowledge and nothing else? They can get that from coaching. They can get that from webinars. They can get it from a YouTube video these days.
Or you can offer your mindset, your opportunities with, Hey, I also am providing leads. I'm also providing this for you. Let's help you build your database. Because that's the name of the game. It's your database, right? So that's how I would always, that's like the very beginning stages of here's how you start going and here's how you start growing. And having a site and a system like CINC where you can generate a mass amount of leads with the CRM that you already need to have, with a website that is an IDX website that you should already have, with the opportunity to grow and create organic traffic and organic leads, which you already have. For me, rather than going to four or five different places, it's nice to have a partner that does it all, or a vast majority of it, that you can grow, that you can grow and scale with too. You guys could grow and you can grow and scale with it too. I know you have a new product now that you didn't have when I started, when it was the limited seats, one to five seats. So it's a great thing you can grow with right now. I know with your product I can basically scale as big as I want. And still give the technology to everybody that is here. That, I think, is the foundations for however big you want to be. And there's no right or wrong answer for any team leader.
I know myself, I don't ever want to be, I don't want to have so many people I don't know what's going on. I don't like to micromanage, but I also want to be that hands on leader that knows what's going on. I don't want to just be a manager. I want to be a leader. And for me, that's somewhere larger than we are now, but probably not a hundred people.
Richard Kaiser: Can you tell people one, if they have referrals for the Vegas area, do you talk about your brokerage, where can people get in touch with you? And two, if people are interested in looking at coaching opportunities, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Geoff Zahler: Absolutely. So I obviously love referrals. I do handle referrals personally. So if I do have anybody who reaches out, I do not, I don't, I take them. I'm still in I'm a broker. I'm a team leader. I'm a coach, but I still am in production. I have three kids. I got a lot of mouths to feed. But for me, I still handle referrals personally. And along with my team lead, I basically have one production my own production assistant and she, I call her my team lead. So we handle those internally together. So you have a lead for us in Las Vegas. Hi, my name is Geoff Zahler. I will take care of your lead personally whether it's a buyer or seller.
And then obviously the best way to these days, I always say this, and it's that weird cliche best way to probably get engaged with me or, connect with me, the easiest, rather than spitting out an email address or a phone number find me on Instagram @geoffzahler, I'm the only G E O F F Zahler in the freaking world, so it's not hard to find me. And then there, I've got the link tree or whatever that you can actually connect. I'm building that out. I know it's a weird thing to say connect on social because I that I'm not a millennial in that regard. But sometimes it's just the easiest way to do it.
You'll see me the stuff I post is personal. It's family stuff. It's business stuff. It's mindset stuff. So connect there and then we can obviously put together a Zoom call that kind of stuff, rather than giving a URL to try to spit out, just at Geoff Zahler on Instagram is probably the easiest way to do it.