Everybody, welcome to the Offerpad Fireside Chat presentation at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference. I have the privilege of introducing the Co-Founder and CEO of Offerpad, Brian Bair. Brian has served as CEO of Offerpad since 2015 . Prior to Offerpad, Brian was the founder and president at Bair Group Real Estate, and the Co-Founder and Managing Member of Lexington Financial. My name is Mike Ng, and I cover Offerpad and real estate tech here at Goldman. We have about thirty-five minutes for today's presentation, inclusive of Q&A. So first, Brian, thank you so much for-
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- making the time to sit down with us today. You know, to start things off, maybe we can go big picture and discuss the long-term vision of Offerpad within the broader housing market. There's obviously been an increasing focus on diversifying the business beyond the core iBuying model towards more asset-light services. You know, how does that all play into Offerpad's vision and what you want to achieve?
Yeah, you know, from a vision perspective, you know, we've founded Offerpad to be a solution center for everybody, and that's sellers, buyers, real estate agents, anybody who needs renovation. I mean, the idea was to try to create a platform that people could actually get the transaction done. If you think about all the other marketplaces and things that are out there, there's a lot of information, but what people really want, sellers and buyers, is actually transactions. So we're making really good progress there. Just as a reminder, we have the cash buying business, which is the core. We have the renovation business, which people can use our renovation teams, and we have a partners which we partner with real estate agents, and then we work with other investors to buy homes off of our platform.
Those things have made good progress. I would say I'm closer to the vision through even this last year or two, than... We've made some really good progress, and so I'm excited about that.
That's great. Let's talk a little bit more about the cash offer business. So, you know, last quarter, the company talked about perhaps focusing a little bit less on volumes, but more on unit economics.
Yeah
... and margins, and this was reflected in the guidance that you guys gave around homes sold. Could you elaborate a little bit more on this strategy? Why is this the right thing to do right now for the company versus trying to just drive scale and-
Yeah
- and growth?
Good, good, good question. You know, right now, there's still a lot of uncertainty with the affordability. We're seeing buyer demand lower than we'd like to see out there. A lot of inventory hitting the market with not as much buyers, so we're not seeing things move through that. So we've been really disciplined, really through this year, of what we're buying and how we're buying. And, you know, everything's very market specific, but, you know, right now the way to look at it is we're more focused on active and pendings than we are on what's sold in the past.
And so, we're staying really disciplined on what we're buying, homes that are in low active, you know, low active homes areas, and staying away from, like, outlying areas, some price points, some different things on that end of it. So, now to be really clear, that's not going to happen forever. This is a short-term strategy of what we're seeing in the market. They're starting to see, which I'm sure we'll talk about, some news with interest rates and some other things that are happening. And so the easiest thing for us to do is to ramp back on acquisitions, but now it's just not the right time to do that, so we're just watching it really closely and focused on some of the other asset-light services that we have.
Yeah. And that's a good segue to maybe just talk about, you know, your view on the broader housing market.
Mm-hmm.
You know, if you look at some of the MBA data, I think the forecasts are for 4.2 million existing homes.
Yeah
sold this year, up a little bit.
Which is really low. That's really, really, really low.
It's really-
I mean, that is low.
It's tough, yeah.
Yeah.
It's tough.
I mean, just even the GFC, that's lower than projected in the... I mean, than we saw in the GFC. So, transaction volume is very low.
Yeah, and you're in a unique position. You're in the market every day, so, you know, what are you seeing? And,
Yeah
... could we see an inflection or a different-
Yeah, you know, what's interesting is that people are still focused on so I think there's a pent-up demand of sellers that wanna sell and buyers that wanna buy. That's unique. But right now there's so much uncertainty and I was just talking to somebody just a few minutes ago and talking about, like, I don't think there's enough appreciation for how sensitive the affordability is on the rates for buyers. So a buyer that could afford a home when the volatility of what we're seeing in mortgage rates over the last six months, when mortgage rates go up 25-50 basis points, that's knocking out some buyers that could potentially qualify. So that right there is... You know, we're watching that very closely.
But from a seller's perspective, we are seeing a complete different seller than we were a couple years ago.
Mm.
Sellers that are selling now are mostly happening to sell for a life moment, either job relocation, something else going on in their life, which is much different than what we've seen in the past of Offerpad, where people are going to sell for. You know, they love us for the certainty and control. Right now, they're liking us because they can get access to liquidity fast, and they have more control of where they're going. And so, but I think the housing market, like, it's gonna be really interesting to see what happens with interest rates over the next, you know, six months and what that does. I'm really focused on, I think the interest rates. You know, there's two things that need to happen: either mortgage rates come down or home prices come down.
One of those things has to give. We've seen home prices, you know, they haven't come down yet, and we're seeing more active inventory hit. I think that's because you're seeing still this pent-up buyer demand that people are expecting. But on the mortgage rates, if mortgage rates come down, I think you're gonna see buyer demand come back in, and it can turn back on fairly quickly. But that's what we're specifically watching in 2024.
Yeah.
You know, you have a couple other different things. You have this NAR settlement, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
Yeah.
You have the election that's coming up, and so you're just getting through this. But there's a lot of these things we've been waiting to happen are now kind of here, so that's the good news. I think 2024, you're still gonna see people kind of getting... Then, in 2025, I still think we're gonna see lower transactions, but I think you're gonna see more of that appetite to jump back in again, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that's really interesting. And that was a very interesting observation you made about most of the sellers on the platform, you know, moving because of life events. Kind of implies to me that there's a lot of- there are a lot of would-be sellers that may be holding back their inventory-
Yeah
... because of whatever reason. Is that what you're seeing as well?
Yeah. No, no, and this is exactly right. You know, one of the things that you know, we follow it every minute of every day, right?
Yeah.
That's what we do, but mostly, most sellers, even that want to come and sell us their home and transact with us, then get out in the open market and realize what they're trading, what they're giving to what they're gonna get, and they change their mind, right?
Right.
The other thing that we're seeing, like we talked about the kind of the life moments, we're seeing more inventory right now that doesn't have as much pride of ownership or rougher lived in, that needs more renovations. That even if they wanted to, they probably couldn't list on the open market.
Right。
That plays well to our renovations as well, because we can come in there, we can buy that home, obviously from a seller, that we can solve that problem, but that we can help maximize the price by adding the right renovations to the home on the market.
Yeah. Why don't we talk a little bit more about Renovate? You guys have made an impressive amount of progress in Renovate. I think last quarter, the company cited over 300% growth in closed renovation projects, generating $5 million in revenue. How are you navigating growing the, the Renovate vertical? You know, how big could Renovate be in the long term?
Yeah, well, I'm very excited about what Renovate is doing now and what it's gonna. Like, it's just starting right now. I think, you know, obviously, we talked about the low transactions, and so that affects everything. That's not just low transactions overall or for Offerpad, it's low transactions for everybody. That's SFRs, that's, you know, fix and flip companies, however you wanna. Whatever category, everyone's really at their all-time low. Our renovations can help both with the quick turns for some of the SFRs, but then also renovation projects up to $100,000-$200,000. And so the benefit of what we get from Renovate is, we already have the ground game to buy homes on our own behalf there.
So we already have the renovation teams, the foremen, the project managers already there on the ground. And so what we do is we allow others to plug into that, into our renovations, and they can get the same cost efficiency and timing and ground game that we get. And so I think we're gonna see that continue to grow. And it's always been something we've always really indexed on our renovation side, because, you know, to buy as many homes as we do, renovations are so key and the logistics around renovation. And so this is really a good way to maximize the strength of our renovation teams.
Great. And last quarter, Offerpad announced a partnership with Freddie and Fannie.
Mm.
Could you just expand on, like, what these partnerships entail? How does that help to grow the renovation-
Yeah
... business? Like, what are you doing with those?
Yeah, no, I mean, similar to us, Fannie and Freddie, similar to us, they wanna put a nicer home on the market than what they took back, right?
Right.
So they want to get really strategic about what the renovations that they do to the home and try to put again a better product on there. So it's been great for us. We're really excited about that partnership with them and a lot of the other partners that we've signed up on the platform. But you know they... And it helps us diversify with people like Freddie and Fannie that are everywhere. Instead of always having to go into a market and lead with our cash offer, we can now go into a market and lead with our renovation teams. And so we have enough renovation business there that the cash offer business will then follow, or the Direct Plus business will follow.
So it just gives us another product line to launch markets and to help us grow and expand, that it's not always linked to the cash offer business.
Right. And, you know, the company also announced that it's gonna roll out some of their renovation technology, I think it's Reno Captain, to the rest of its markets. Could you just talk a little bit about what that is and, you know, how expanding that-
Yeah
... that technology is gonna help?
I get geared up about, like, I geek out on this.
Yeah
... just because it's so it gives not even just our internal teams, like real-time workflow management, but it also gives our Renovate customers out there and then the partners we work with, they can see real time where they are in the renovation process. Helps with billing and accounting. It's just something we've been working on for actually, you know, a little over two years, two and a half years. But that is something, and as we talk about really cost efficiencies and some other things, is that, you know, that helps us where we don't have to have as many heads in there to upload some of their, the vendor invoices, some of those things. And we can have all of this is really a streamlined process.
The Reno Captain, and our we rolled it out in Charlotte, now it's in Raleigh, now it's gonna be rolled out to different markets. And our partners are loving it on the renovation side, 'cause it does give them that real-time look about where we are in the process, and how quickly. You know, we always say every day and every dollar matters, and they can actually see that we're doing that every day, that we're really working on the efficiency there.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's certainly a market where it's obviously very fragmented.
Yeah.
There's not a lot of visibility into what's happening at any given point-
Well, well-
... in time.
It's a great point. Can we talk about fragmented?
Yeah.
If the real estate side is completely fragmented. That's where Offerpad started, right? But then you look specifically about, you know, you got real estate agents and home warranty and lenders, all that kind of thing. But then you look at the people doing renovations for themselves, or, you know, B2B, like the dealing with contractors and vendors and all that, that is extremely fragmented, and everyone has had a different experience with that. And so what we want to do, and, you know, right now we're focused, highly focused on the B2B side. So people we've talked about, you know, different SFRs, Fannie and Freddie, some of these large portfolio clients. But eventually we're going to be on the, on the B2C side, so we'll be doing renovations directly with customers.
And what's exciting about that is you have a lot of people, like, for example, transactions are low because people are locked into their mortgage rates. But if they're locked into their mortgage, they're still going to want to live in a really nice house. And so we can go in there and add paint, carpet, appliances, flooring, give them an Offerpad-feeling home that they can live in, you know, long term until they want to sell.
Hope you guys come to New York.
Yeah
... at some point.
Soon. Soon.
Let's talk about some of the other, you know, I call them ancillary value add businesses. What about the Agent Partnership Program, right? So, somebody wants to sell their house, they, you know, ask for a cash offer. They may not like it, but, you know, Offerpad has something else to offer, right?
Yeah, there's two really directions with our agent partners. And think of it this way, an agent brings us the customer, or we bring the customer to the agent. So there's really two distinctions there. The one thing that's been important with the agent community right now is leveraging them to figure out who the sellers are. I've been very, very pleasantly surprised with the amount of traffic and activity and the requests that we still have people wanting to sell their home. But identifying who really wants to sell is harder than ever because of mortgage rates and different things.
When they working through the agent community and what we've done there, they're able to identify and bring us that seller before that home is on the market, and it works out really well for them. They get paid a commission, and then we allow them to list the home and once we buy that home on that end, and being able to provide agent listings in this environment is super key, so we've seen that expand and grow really, really fast.
Then the other side of it is, again, this back into really the solution side of the platform. It is when someone comes to us and our cash offer doesn't work for them, for whatever reason. We can have them work with one of our Rewards agents or one of our partner agents in that area and say, "Listen, if this isn't the right path for you, we can have you work with this agent in this area that specializes in this, and you get some rewards for doing that." And with either, you know, reduction in their move costs or a free move, depending on where it's at. So it's worked out really well. The whole idea is what we wanted.
What we want to do and we continue to expand and grow, is we want to find a home for every customer that comes to us. What's the best path for them? Is it the cash offer? Is it trying to list it on the open market, or is it just renovating their home? And/or is it selling to one of our investors who potentially could pay more money than we can because they're going to be holding that home long term as a rental, where we're holding it, you know, in the short term. So trying to find a solution for everybody is really important.
If somebody decides to list on the open market, and you set them up with a partner agent, do you share in commissions, or is there-
Yeah
... some sort of flat fee?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, we'll get paid the agents that are what we call our Max agents, they'll pay us a zoning. So basically a zone of what they buy, so anything in that area, or the zip, think of a zip code. And then we'll make a 25% referral fee on anything that they sell. So-
Great
... it's really important to us because obviously, again, we want to maximize everyone that comes to our platform, and you know, as you cover the space really closely, you know, there's only a few cash buyers that are buying in volume out there right now.
Right.
And the cash offer is more important than ever. The sellers are getting accustomed to having a cash offer on their home before they figure out which path they want to choose. And so, it's been a really good partnership with us and the agents. So we want to find the customer where they're at. If they're through an agent, that's great, we'll meet them there. And if they want to come to us directly, that's great as well. But we want to meet them where they're at and make sure they get a full solutions of services that works for them.
Right. And there's no reason for somebody who's a prospective home seller to not start with a cash offer, right?
Tell that to everyone you know. Yes, I agree.
That's great. And, you did touch on Direct Plus, right? Which is, you know, Offerpad serving as a marketplace, you know, potentially having one of your institutional partners-
Mm-hmm
... make a bid on the home. Capital light for you guys. You know, what are you seeing on the institutional demand side-
Yeah
... whether that be from SFR, or you know, long-term rental companies?
Yeah, the SFR over the last really couple of years, this has been, you know, it's been a hard environment, challenging environment for them.
Yeah
... like it has been for everybody else. And so we've seen really, up until, you know, a really low, probably an all-time low volume of what we've seen them acquire. We've seen that change a little bit lately. We're starting to see some different, you know, some people get more into the game. And I'll say one thing: they haven't been completely off in the SFR world, just what they're willing to pay that meet their yields has been. So they've been bidding, but it hasn't been something that a seller will accept or we can normally pay more.
And what I love about that platform in normal times, and you know, when it turns back on, and it will, it's just, you know, tomorrow or you know, who knows, right? But it will turn on and turn on really quickly. I love the idea of the seller coming to us, and we can really give them those solutions. And so, for example, if one of our partners can pay more than Offerpad can pay, great! Let's get them the most money for their home. And it works out great for us. We make a service fee. And then if we can pay more, great, you know, we can buy the home.
So, the thing that's also just one thing to add on that is that, you know, the big five in the SFR world are really important. They have about, but if you think of it this way, they still only have about 2% market share. It's an incredible amount of growth that they've had over the last 10 years. And so we're also laser focused on the mid- to lower-volume investors as well. Because what you realize in real estate is everybody has certain areas that they're willing to pay different prices for or have more value to.
Yeah.
And so we wanna try to, and as we keep expanding our partners that are in our Direct Plus channel, which is great, because in some areas, we're down to people that specialize in just certain communities, that it's an older product in that community. They wanna buy it and completely do a 100% refresh on it. And they're willing to pay more than anybody else. So it really finds a great solution for the customer, too.
That's great. I did wanna go back to a macro question just around mortgage rate declines. You know, what level of mortgage rates do we need to see for us to get back to mid-cycle existing home sales? Is there a number in your mind?
Yeah. I mean, listen, the number that's always been in my... Like, kind of from when this all happened, is if rates could get into that 5.5%-6% range, I think that would be a really good spot, that you're gonna see the activity. And this isn't just me saying this, these are some of our builders, or some of the builder partners we're talking to and others where they feel. But I think that's you know, that's kind of the sweet spot, especially with the equity they have in their home, of where they're gonna give up a 3.5% mortgage, potentially for a 5.5% or a 6%. I think you're gonna start seeing more activity on that end of it.
Now, there is a... You know, obviously, there's some other things that play into that, but that's what we're hoping to see there. And again, I'll say, I'm hoping that I wanna see that sooner than later, so we can start seeing some of the supply come off the markets and start to move through.
Great. Let's talk about some of the operational initiatives. You know, last quarter, Offerpad announced that it expects to generate $35 million in annualized cost savings this year. What's driving these cost savings? How do you balance cost reductions with investing in the business? And obviously, the company continues to evolve.
Yeah.
Like, what, where are some of the pockets that you can pull back from so you can invest in others?
Yeah, no, and it great. You know, we have been laser focused on just our cost structure overall. You know, we went into hypergrowth so fast, now we're focused on, okay, listen, let's right now, as our volume is lower than what we would like right now. But the lower volume, when it does turn back on, to have the efficiencies and using that through our technology efficiencies and headcount efficiencies, our marketing efficiencies. So really figuring out, so when we scale again, we're gonna be that much smarter about what we've learned from the first time and that much more efficient. So, I think over the last two years, we've almost taken about $100 million of cost out of the company. And we can do that.
A lot of them are variable costs for... So it's leading to the volume that we buy. And so, but also there's a lot of efficiencies that we're building out, which... You know, you mentioned Reno Captain and some of the other things that we're doing, that also really leads to headcount efficiencies as well. So we're really excited about what we're doing there.
Great. And what's Offerpad's marketing strategy right now? I mean, I don't think anybody would fault the company for pulling back-
Yeah
... on marketing spend when the U.S. housing market is kind of along the bottoms, but.
Yeah, and this has been- this is. So we're really leveraging. Right now, we're not focused a lot on brand. Normally, you'll see there's kind of, you know, there's two different marketing channels.
Yeah.
You have brand awareness, and then you have basically your call to action in a marketing campaigns. Right now, we're focused on our call to action marketing campaigns, and then really our B2B partnerships. That's through the agent community, that's through our builder partners. And so really leveraging those partnerships. You know, we have a partnership with Realtor.com. Those are the kind of things of where we're focused on that. On the brand perspective, it's just, it's interesting. I mentioned earlier that we're seeing. I'm really happy with the amount of requests we're seeing come to Offerpad, but that's because of years of our brand awareness in our markets.
Right.
And so there's definitely... It does pay off, but in moments like this, especially with the seller that we're identifying, it's the call to action. So we've been really focused again on the partnership side and the call to action. Again, that's all short term. We will re-ramp again when it's time. But for right now, that we're laser focused on cost and really our CPL and the cost efficiencies, and our CPL is one of the lowest it's been right now. So we're really happy with that, too.
Great. And if we could tie that all in together with what you guys have said around your EBITDA outlook-
Mm-hmm
... which I believe is sequential improvements throughout the year, how do you think about the timeline to getting to EBITDA profitability?
Mm-hmm.
Do you still feel confident around the sequential EBITDA improvement?
Yeah, we are making tremendous progress. And shout out to our new CFO, Peter Knag came in. He's been awesome in helping me, you know, cut the cost and where we're gonna be. And the focus is getting EBITDA profitable, but then net cash flow positive after that. And you're not gonna do that just from cost-cutting efficiencies.
Right.
You're gonna do that also from, you know, our four product lines and expanding those, and the, you know, these, like we're doing on Reno Captain and some of the other things. And so, we're gonna continue. But yeah, I really like where we're at on this, on this end of it. And especially with mortgage rates dropping and things, and. But like I'll say again, is that the easiest thing for us to do is to turn on acquisition volume. We have the amount of requests now to go back to where we were at really our peak. It's just we're choosing to be disciplined now.
And so as soon as we see some of the things I mentioned before in the markets, we can turn that on, and we'll be ramping and growing really quickly again.
Yeah.
With a different level of growth, like I said, because we're in markets like Oklahoma City right now and in Minneapolis, doing just renovations. Those are both markets that we wanna be in across the board for all of our product lines. But just with renovations right now, it's gonna be a much easier transition to transition our other product lines into those markets.
Right. And that clarity that you're looking for in the housing market to lean more heavily into it, is it clarity into what's gonna happen with pricing?
Yeah.
To your point, you know, we don't know if it's pricing or mortgages-
Mm
... mortgage rates, or both, or
You know, what really then, and I'll start with the really simple way-
Yeah
... to explain it, and we'll go a little deeper, but simply right now, looking for buyer demand.
Right.
Because what the biggest mistake you can make in a market like this is trying to buy more inventory to solve the buyer demand problem. Well, that's only gonna... That's always, you know... I'm really happy with our overall health of our portfolio and our what we call tail inventory, homes we own under a hundred and eighty days. We've done a really good job managing that. We want to continue to do that. So buyer demand is key. We wanna see what's gonna get buyers back off the sidelines from a mortgage rate drop, right?
Yeah.
We'll be watching that really closely. From the other side of it, like I mentioned, there's a really good opportunity for us. If home prices do decline, there's actually an opportunity to be a buyer, and a buyer's market's a really good place to be.
Yeah.
So we're looking for... So that's where we're watching it really closely before we completely jump back in right now.
Great. That makes a lot of sense. Let's go back to the NAR settlement. You know, I think Offerpad's in a very unique position to have a view on this. You know, there's a settlement that made buyer commissions no longer mandatory and kind of reinforced the negotiability of it. Offerpad has buyer commissions as a cost-
Mm
... but also presumably, some of the service fee is kind of geared off what the-
Yeah
... brokerage commission rate is. So what's your view on the impact of this ruling? Are you seeing buyer agent commission pressure, and is this-
So-
... a good thing or a bad thing for Offerpad?
No, it's interesting. So overall, I think it's a very, very good thing for Offerpad. I think there's two places you wanna be with the new, with kind of this new world. You want to either own the home or you wanna be listing the home, and those are two things that we do. And so I believe, now this is just my personal belief, I believe what you're gonna see America look a lot more like Europe, that you're going to see just more of a listing commission. And buyer commissions are... And I'm not saying that's happening overnight, but you're gonna see over the next one, three, five years, whatever it's gonna be, buyers getting more and more comfortable to working with the seller's agents directly, without a buyer's agent.
Because what's gonna happen is, you're gonna have the seller's agent, the person listing that home. They're gonna have people on call that are gonna be opening that door for buyers that come in without the use of a buyer's agent, and it's kind of where it used to be buyer's agents were doing that. So I think that's gonna be turned upside down. You know, we have the ability with our homes with instant access, so buyers can access our homes immediately through our app. Which they love that, the ability, so they can send us an offer directly. So, I think that's right now, and where I kind of jumped all over that, is that what's interesting is that there's so much confusion right now with this new thing that happened.
Yeah.
I think it's the 17th of August that everything kind of switched over. And you have sellers and buyers that don't know, they all think they're gonna have to... They're gonna save money somewhere, they just don't know how and where. So they're reading the headlines on that. But then you have a buyer's agent, just to be clear, now, a buyer's agent from even a couple of months ago, if I was gonna go show you a house, I would have to have you sign a contract saying, "I'm gonna show you this house, and if I don't get a commission from the seller of 2%, you're gonna have to pay me directly.
Right.
So buyers are taking a hard look at signing that contract and going, "I don't know if I want to sign the contract," and so there's a lot of just kind of turmoil that's happening. Now, that will solve it. It's gonna work itself out, but for right now, you know, we've paid hundreds of millions of dollars in Co-Bro commissions over the last, you know, several years, and it's our biggest pass-through fee, so I think there'll be an opportunity as more buyers come to us directly. Now, in saying that, again, we wanna meet buyers where they're at. If they wanted someone to represent them, and we're okay with that too. We're gonna pay a Co-Bro commission.
But I think overall, long term, it's gonna play well, not just for us, but for, for listing agents who are heavy on the listing side and/or people who own homes. I think that overall, that's gonna be-
Yeah.
It'll play well to that.
Yeah. And do you have a guess or an estimate on, you know, what that buyer broker commission rate is gonna turn to over time? And where is it today?
Yeah.
Is it, like, 2.5%, 2.6%?
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. People talk about three. It's really been two and a half for a long time, you know. I feel like for a long time.
Okay.
It's a little bit like the listing commissions. People always said 6%, and for the last 15 years, listing commissions have been, you know, around that 2% fee.
Yeah.
And never, you very rarely see a three. But you know, I think where, and listen, what, you know, I'm guessing here.
Yeah.
I think they're gonna settle in at the 2%-2.25% range, probably. I do think over time, though, I do think they'll go lower than that, but I think for the short term, you're gonna start seeing it settle around that too.
Yeah.
There's a lot of questions that sellers and buyers are gonna have, they've never had to answer before. Because sellers have always thought, "Oh, I just pay a five or six% commission, and then it all gets taken care of." Now, sellers are gonna have to really look at it and go, "Do I really wanna pay a co-bro commission, or should I challenge my listing agent to go, 'Hey, you wanna list my house? You don't need anybody's help. Go do it yourself so I can save that money?'
Right.
If that makes sense. And so there, there's all these different things and choices that sellers and buyers are gonna have to have. I do think it's gonna settle around the two, but I think, like I said, long term, I think we're gonna see lower than that.
Yeah. And have you seen an acceleration in buyer agent commission pressure since the NAR settlement or even the suit, right, like, back-
Yeah
in October of last year?
Too early to tell right now.
Yeah.
Too early to tell. We're getting a lot of sellers and buyers, like, for example, even ask about our service fee, "Hey, is your service fee because now, you know, you don't have to pay-
Yeah
a co-bro?" So people are getting smart on that, which is great. Like, the... I am. And really one of the reasons Offerpad exists is I love sellers and buyers. The more information they have, they're gonna make smarter decisions. They just gotta you gotta simplify what they're gonna do, what the best path is for them. Similar with the agents, when the commissions we're seeing. In some of our markets, we're seeing co-bro commissions drop down to two and a quarter in some of the markets.
But I think what you're having right now is, from a seller perspective and the brokerage commission, I don't think anyone wants to be the first one to start offering lower commissions, and so I think everyone's kind of wait and seeing right now of what happens. But I think over time, I think you're gonna see a challenge again coming through, especially with seasonality. The other thing that, as you see inventory mounting up in some of these markets, you're gonna see listing agents get more, like, "Well, let's pay a bigger co-bro to hopefully drive more traffic to our home.
Right
so we can sell our home before some of the other ones." And so I think you're gonna see a lot of uncertainty for this year. I think it'll start settling down the first part of next year. But I think right now you're just getting everyone getting used to, like, what they're gonna get, what they're gonna get paid.
Yeah. And maybe one last one on this. Just as somebody who's, you know, very tied into the industry, are you seeing this requirement of buyer agency agreement requirements?
Yep
-before showing actually causing a lot of disruption in, like, just people seeing homes?
Yeah. Yeah, it really is.
Really?
You could almost see our showing activity from the 17th on. I think it's the 17th date, so don't-
Sure
... quote me on that. But when it basically got announced, you could see our showing activity slow down a little bit.
Wow!
Because, again, that next day, a buyer's agent would have to, again, say, "You have to-
Sign something
... sign this, and you would be on the hook if the seller doesn't pay." And so that's a lot to sign and such a culture shock from what they've seen over the last several years, right?
Because you had to do nothing-
Right
... you just show up.
Right. And that's where. And so there are even, you know, there's different things to talk about. We'll do a one-day listing agreement. We'll do a one-house listing. Or I'm sorry, showing agreement or one house. The problem is, with that, you're still gonna have to be on the hook. It's someone's gonna have to be allocated to pay the agent money.
Yeah.
And so, again, but that will evolve. You'll see different things, and people get smarter and really what they can and cannot do. But it's. You're definitely seeing it.
Very cool. You know, why don't we wrap up and talk about, you know, what you're most excited about the company, you know, long-term vision. We obviously talked a lot about some of the new initiatives, whether that's, you know, Reno Captain, some of the changes that are happening-
Yeah
... in the industry. You know, where are you most focused?
Yeah, listen, what we're most focused on right now is really the four product lines.
Yeah.
And getting those ready for when the market turns again. And they're ready now, and so I'm very, very excited about what we're gonna see in growth when those turn on. Like, for example, everyone looks at us as an iBuyer right now, and there's a future that less than 50% of our volume can come from our cash offer business. It's just coming from other business channels. And so very, very excited about that. I'm excited, like right now, we're so hyper-focused on the one-time transaction with that seller or buyer. You're gonna see us over time look at that customer for the next five, seven to 10 years, and be part of that journey for the long term with them.
When it's time to refinance their house, it's just time to do renovations. Whatever it's gonna be, we're gonna be living with them for long, so those are all things in the future I'm really, really excited about.
Great. Excellent place to cap it off.
Awesome.
Thank you so much for joining us, Brian.
Thank you. Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you, everyone.