Episode 391 - Real Estate Sessions Short Cut with Michael LaFido, CEO LUXE

00:00:00 - Michael LaFido

Agents have to bring more value to the table before a seller will hire them, as well as, of course, a buyer will hire them. So it's all about value building trust, value, your network, your marketing. These are common themes.

00:00:17 - Bill Risser

You're listening to The Real Estate Sessions, and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers, and really anyone with a story to tell. It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me into my 9th year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another real estate sessions shortcuts episode where I venture back in time and select a guest that I interviewed a few years ago and catch up with them and see where they're at. Today week, we're going to be talking to Michael Lofito. Michael's episode was September 1 of 2020, right there. That first year of the pandemic, we chatted a lot about his time in school, his career in football, all the way into the college level. Really fun. And of course, a lot about luxury real estate. So I'm thrilled to have him back on here. Let's get this thing going. Michael, welcome back to The Real Estate Sessions.

00:01:16 - Michael LaFido

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be back.

00:01:19 - Bill Risser

Yeah, I love having guests back for these shortcut sessions. I get to catch up on what's happened since we last talked. There was a whole bunch of stuff that happened before the other podcast that we talked about already, so we're not going to cover that. In fact, I'll put a link to the episode in there so people can see what we chatted about before. But I want to know from you, your best guess, what day and month was that first episode?

00:01:44 - Michael LaFido

Wow, you're hitting me out of left field here. And I'm going to guesstimate. I like, you know, everything's a time warp the last four plus years. So I call it pre Covid, post Covid. And if I had to guess, we were probably shortly after post Covid, I felt like I was doing a lot more guest appearances then. So if I had to guess, I'd probably say 2020 towards the. Probably the fall. I would say probably February of 2020. If I had to guess, it was September.

00:02:13 - Bill Risser

Yeah, you had the fall part, right? Yeah. So September of 2020.

00:02:17 - Michael LaFido

I meant to say October. So. Okay, October, September. So I was a month off. So I was thinking fall. I was thinking October, not February. September of 2020. So I was about a month off.

00:02:28 - Bill Risser

That's impressive for somebody who's busy as you are. All the stuff you're doing, you're always on the road. That's. Congratulations on that. That was good. Yeah, that was good. And then one of the things we chatted about last time was football. You played football. You were a cornerback in college. I just still can't believe that to this day, how tough that position is. But. But there's been a. In the Chicagoland area where you grew up, there's a big change this year with the Bears, and I need your take on it, and that is Justin.

00:03:00 - Michael LaFido

There's a lot of buzz going with the Bears. We have three good receivers at tight end. Now we have a rookie quarterback, and we let go of Justin Fields. And I think overall, people are really excited about it. We like Justin. He was great for the community. But I think we're really optimistic about the future, for sure. And unfortunately, our cubs, our White Sox and our Blackhawks are down. So hopefully, hopefully the Bears will start winning. Yeah.

00:03:25 - Bill Risser

Look, you've had success with the Blackhawks. You've had success. The White Sox have a World Series. The Cubs have a World Series. All in this century. That's not bad. You're doing all right compared to San Diego, for example, where I grew up. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's. Let's. Let's. The question I really like to ask is, in the last four years since we last chatted, what are your biggest, biggest things that have happened for you professionally?

00:03:51 - Michael LaFido

Well, I'll start with number one is our initiative to increase diversity in luxury real estate. So ris Media recognized us as a 2024 newsmaker because of this initiative. So I'm also a member of Aria, Narep Nareb, and the LGBTQ alliance. I recommend everybody join their local chapter. There's so much benefit to it. For example, leading real estate companies of the world has asked me to be a moderator for their upcoming diversity panel. And, you know, like I say, I'm a straight white male Christian, but I'm an ally for all those groups. And so it's much more than just the diversity segments. So being involved is really important. It's. One of my goals is to increase diversity in luxury real estate. And so that would be number one. And I guess the second thing would be we just released a book in May of 2024. It's already hit the best seller in multiple categories. It's called secrets of top luxury agents. And it took us about a year and a half from infancy to completion. And it's a compilation book with 26 contributors. There's 26 chapters, 23, what I call Rockstar, luxury specialists and three rising stars. We have over 13 brokerages represented, and a great combination of male, female and the affinity groups are represented as well.

00:05:19 - Bill Risser

Look, my first thought when you tell me that you've got 26 people sharing secrets about how they're successful in luxury, is, aren't some people going to say, I don't want to do that, Michael, I don't want to share what I'm doing. How did you overcome that? And it must be the people.

00:05:36 - Michael LaFido

You're absolutely right. And so we had a long laundry list of about 75 agents that we have targeted that we've really been impressed with, with best practices, what they're doing, both print, digital, video, etcetera. And out of those 75, we had 26 that we were able to tie down and interview. And they shared openly. That was a requirement. They're not holding back. They're not sharing fluff. It was literally meat and potatoes. And so to get headshots, to get bios, to get them lined up for their interviews, it was painstaking. We missed a lot of deadlines. We wanted this thing to be out in 2023, and it came out about seven or eight months later than we wanted. But in the end, we're getting some amazing feedback and reviews. It's on Barnes and Noble, and then it's on Amazon. Of course, we have a Kindle, we have a soft cover, a hardcover, and we're working on the audible as we speak.

00:06:35 - Bill Risser

Now, this is your second book, correct? The first one was about luxury as well?

00:06:41 - Michael LaFido

Yeah, the first one was titled Luxury listing specialist. It's on Amazon. We've sold thousands of copies and given out thousands of copies. That's a soft cover only. And it's a great book for people that are just kind of dipping their toe into luxury. And then I would say this book is for those that are more committed to luxury. There's something for everybody, however, because as I mentioned, there's 26 chapters. The last three chapters are what I call the, the Rising Star chapters. These are three agents, one with coal banker, one with Exp, and actually two with Exp, but they're female agents that are not luxury specialists per se, but they are doing some amazing things. And their story might inspire many more readers than the others. And then the 23 contributors that are what I call luxury specialists. They are sharing both introductory as well as advanced strategies. All authors, though, they all shared how they got their first luxury transaction, whether it be the buy side or the sale side. So every chapter starts out the same way. Tell us about your first luxury sale. Did you represent the buyer, the seller, and how did they find out about you? So, literally, we have 26 people sharing how they got their first luxury client. So that in itself is worth its weight in gold. And then from there, we gave each author the 23 rockstar agents. We gave each of them 16 of the most common questions that I've been asked over the last ten years. Again, we launched our Lux designation eight plus years ago. And even before that, we've compiled ten years of most common questions about how to break into luxury and how to dominate luxury. And so we've. We narrowed those down to the 16 most common, and we gave those to each of the 23 Rockstar agents. And we said, pick six that you're most comfortable answering. So then what happens is, that's questions two through seven in each chapter. So every chapter starts out with, tell us about your first luxury sale. And then the remaining questions in the chapter are literally the most popular questions when it comes to dominating luxury and becoming the number one luxury agent in your market. And they picked six of those.

00:08:57 - Bill Risser

I love the way you open those chapters because you're absolutely right. This book is for everybody. I've seen agents at conferences all the time say, well, how do you get in? How do you get started? Right? Sometimes they think it's, I married somebody with a sphere, and I was able to do that, but that's not the case for everybody. I know you talked about Gary Ashton. That's not how Gary Ashton got his start. His start was a little. A little rougher, I would say, if you were looking at his entire career, you know, as he decided to go into real estate and leave the music world, right?

00:09:28 - Michael LaFido

So, yeah, I imagine everybody's got their own journey, right? I mean, I was a former high school health and PE teacher, a part time real estate agent. Got a 19 on my act the first time, 18 the second time. And so I tell people, why not you? If I can do it, why not you? But going down the list of all the contributors, everybody's got a story. And I found that most agents, most human beings have what I call limiting beliefs. Okay? They make up excuses. I can't sell luxury because of blank. I'm not licensed x amount of years. I don't drive a nice car. I don't live in that gated community. I'm with a brokerage that isn't known for luxury, whatever it might be. And so that's why I wanted that first question to address the elephant in the room. Right. Like hotels.com comma, captain obvious. People want to know about your first.

00:10:16 - Bill Risser

Yeah. Of the 16 questions, was there one that was extremely popular that a lot of the 26 decided to choose that one?

00:10:27 - Michael LaFido

What's working today? What are some of your best marketing strategies when marketing a high end home? That's a very popular question. The other one would be, how are you getting in front of more high end buyers, high end sellers, in other words, kind of lead gen. How are you, how are you magnetizing? How are they attracting to you? And vice versa. So where are you going to position yourself? And then I think the other one is pricing unique homes. How do you price these custom unique homes when there's no comparables? Those would be three questions that I think came up a lot. How are you getting in front of them and how are they finding out about you? What are best marketing strategies when you get these high end and unique properties? And the third one is how are you pricing these unique, custom, one of a kind properties?

00:11:14 - Bill Risser

Right. You know, as I look at, you know, you've been kind enough to put up the list of the, of the agents who contributed to the book. As we're having this conversation, you have people from Canada, you have people from all over the United States. Is the term luxury relative? And if that, you know, based on where it is in the country or is it fairly consistent in the world that you kind of work in?

00:11:42 - Michael LaFido

Well, that's a great question. So every brokerage defines luxury different. And so we, eight and a half years ago when we launched our lux designation, we came up with our own terms and definitions, and we believe that there's five price points in major markets and four price points in smaller markets. And those are from low to high. You got starter or entry level. The second, if I were to call these buckets, there's five price points or five buckets in big market. Bucket one is entry or starter level. Bucket two is your average price point. Every market's got an average price point. I use average versus median. Median might be more accurate, but most human beings are terrible at math, including realtors. And so I use average price point is bucket two. Bucket three is how we define a high end home. And we define a high end home as a home. That's two times the average sale price for that given market. And bucket four is how we define a luxury home. And we define a luxury home as three times the average price point for any given market. So the price, average price point in a suburb of Milwaukee is different than a suburb of Chicago, which is different than Davenport, Iowa, which is different than LA. So every market is different. And then the fifth bucket, which is in large markets. And that's what we call ultra luxury. And we define ultra luxury home as ten times the average sale price for that given market. So it's all relative. To get back to your original question.

00:13:05 - Bill Risser

Yeah, that's great. It's funny, I was just watching a video of a $250 million penthouse in Manhattan. I think I just. That's ultra luxury defined, right?

00:13:17 - Michael LaFido

Yeah. Yeah.

00:13:19 - Bill Risser

There are a couple. There's a guy that I'm really close to on this list. I want to know how Richard Silvere handled the conversation. He's an amazing guy. At every New York Inman event, he and I go to a Broadway show and then usually dinner at Joe Allen's. So one of my favorite guys in the business. Is there anything you can share about Richard's chapter?

00:13:39 - Michael LaFido

Yeah. Yeah. Richard is amazing. I've known Richard for years. Obviously, he's with Sotheby's. He's out to Toronto. Toronto's kind of a melting pot, much like Chicago. And one of the things I love about Richard is he's built his team to kind of look like and feel like his community. So he's got a very diverse team, from languages to backgrounds. And I just love that about Richard. He's chapter five in our book. But, you know, he's a great networker and he has got just a soothing, you know, voice about him. He's a know holds bar type of guy. He's a straight shooter, but he does so in a tactful way. And so he is just all about customer support and VIP Ritz Carlton experience.

00:14:24 - Bill Risser

Yeah. Would this book be valuable to a luxury buyer or seller as well?

00:14:31 - Michael LaFido

Thank you so much for asking that. So at the end of each chapter, we have a bonus section, and we asked each of the 26 contributors these two questions. The first question in the bonus section is for somebody that owns a home and they're thinking, a luxury home, a high end, unique home, and they're thinking about selling. What qualities should they look for in an agent when deciding which agent is best to market their high end and unique property? And so we have over 200 tips for homeowners that are thinking of selling from these rockstar agents. Again, at the end of each chapter, for example, chapter five. Right. We're talking about Richard Silver. So at the end of chapter five, there's a bonus section. And we asked Richard what tips for a homeowner would you have, when they're thinking about selling, what should they look for in an agent? So Richard gives one to five. Did some give ten tips? You know, we have over 200 plus tips for sellers. And so then the second question I ask each of the 26 chapters. The last question in the bonus section is, for somebody buying a home. In light of Nar and DOJ in the class action lawsuit with buyer agency agreement, we released this book in May of 2024. And luckily, if we released it in May of 2023, this question might not have been in there. But timing sometimes is better to be lucky than good with timing. And so the last question in each chapter is, for somebody thinking about buying a home, what quality should they look for in a buyer's agent before signing a buyer agency agreement and potentially paying them to represent them? And so we have over 110 tips for buyers from these rockstar agents. So literally, I wrote this book for team leaders, broker owners and individual agents. However, we also had the consumer in mind. So we literally have agents buying. I just had a 75 order yesterday. Somebody bought 75 of these books. And if they're interested in bulk orders, they can go to, literally, secretsoftopluxuryagents.com for more information on the book and who's in the book and read their bios. But on secret to topluxuryagents.com comma, they can also order bulk quantities at a discount. And we had somebody order 75 yesterday because they're going to leave these on buyer appointments, on seller appointments, and say, hey, flip through each of the chapters and at the end and the bonus section. These are the qualities you should look for when hiring an agent to represent the sale of your home or when buying a property.

00:17:06 - Bill Risser

Wow, that's great. I think that's awesome. I mean, that's. I'm sure there's a, in that community, that world of luxury, there's all kinds of chat back and forth, and there's referral based stuff. But having some real solid information, it makes a difference.

00:17:23 - Michael LaFido

So that it really does. I mean, I have a publicist on our team, and we're getting news agencies calling us about that, the bonus section particularly, because, again, with August 17 approaching and everything else, you know, the chapter, the Ford was written by undercover billionaire Glenn Stearns. And I point blank asked Glenn, Glenn, you own multiple properties across the world. What do you look for in an agent if you don't have a relationship? And he says, you know, do they have a digital footprint? Do they have a lot of reviews? Because ultimately, it's about trust for me when I'm buying or selling, can I trust this person? And he also said their network is important and their marketing. But this is a common theme that I've heard for years from high net worth individuals when interviewing and hiring an agent to represent them on the buy side or the sales side. And so I, of course, is approved for continuing education in multiple states. And we've had people approach us about getting a class approved. They think it will be a home run. Every state will approve a class based on value adds for buyers and value adds for sellers because it's consumer first. And when we launched our Lux designation in 2016, I struggled with, do I have a luxury sale requirement? In other words, you have to sell a certain number of luxury homes in the last year before you can get certified in luxury. Ultimately, we waived that because I thought about the consumer first. And if your wife plays pickleball with somebody and she says, hey, we want to list our house, your wife's friend doesn't know what she should look for, perhaps in an agent that's best to market their home. And so I wanted that agent to be set up for success versus failure. In other words, hey, we want to give you the tools and certify you and the resources and best practices today so that you'll be successful. Versus, hey, good luck. And if you don't sell it, well, come back when you sell two or three. Because I had a Keller Williams agent, and again, I'm sure it's with other brokerages, she was getting a $5 million listing, but she didn't qualify for their luxury division. So she ended up hiring me and I coached her up to get the listing versus, hey, good luck and come back to us once you get it sold. I was just flabbergasted by it. It would have been by far the highest priced listing for their market center, but nobody would help her because she didn't qualify for their luxury division.

00:19:54 - Bill Risser

That's awesome. Michael, this has been great. I'm looking at the clock. I try to keep these on the shorter side. You've given some, a lot of great information. Congratulations on the book. Best of luck. You kind of mentioned the best place to get it. For someone who just wants a single copy, Amazon would probably be the easiest way.

00:20:12 - Michael LaFido

Well, I got actually a better place for them to get it. Okay. So you can purchase it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It'll be $30 plus shipping and handling for the soft cover. However, I'm giving away your listeners copies for free. If they go to freeluxurybook.com. all they do is pay the shipping and handling, so for under $10, they'll get a copy of the book sent to them. Just go to freeluxurybook.com. try to make it really simple for everybody.

00:20:39 - Bill Risser

That's awesome, Michael, it's been great catching up. Thank you so much for your time today. And as I said before, congratulations. Best of luck, and I'll see you at a conference soon. I'm sure.

00:20:51 - Michael LaFido

I appreciate what you're doing for the industry. You go to these conferences to learn, to network, and your show is amazing, and I'm honored to be on it a second time. I can't believe it was September of 2020. I guessed October of 2020. I was close, but it's been almost four years, and I just love watching what you're doing, so keep it up, please.

00:21:11 - Bill Risser

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