Transparent Home Buying: Real Estate Auction Platform Informs and Empowers Everyone

Please excuse typos. Joe Selvaggi: This is Hubwonk. I'm Joe Selvaggi. Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute,  a think tank in Boston. Despite being the largest purchase of most consumers' lives, much of the home buying negotiating process is shrouded in an opaque, agent-driven, virtual  black box that can leave sellers and buyers confused and frustrated. While real estate  agents can discuss their clients' sales terms in isolation, there's no common form on which  buyers may view other competing offers, leaving each to guess how best to meet sellers' asking  price, closing dates, and inspection and finance contingencies. The absence of such a platform leaves potential buyers with little understanding of why their offer may not have been accepted  and sellers with concerns that they could have had a buyer who would have met all their  requirements. This lack of transparency distorts efficient outcomes and can serve to discourage  potential sellers and buyers alike. Does this shared challenge have a technological solution, one where sellers can document all their requirements, and where interested buyers can compete to make their best comprehensive offer? My guests today are Boston-based entrepreneurs Tim Quirk and Kevin Caulfield, who co-founded Final Offer, a real estate transaction platform that is already disrupting the process for selling homes. By combining decades of real estate agent experiences with the understanding of how technology has disrupted other consumer purchase transactions, Mr. Quirk and Mr. Caulfield hope to help sellers, buyers, and their agents communicate and negotiate in real time to bring transparency and efficiency to our largest and most important purchase. They will share with us the weaknesses in the current real estate sales process, the ways their platform addresses each party's needs, and their plan to see Boston lead the way in disrupting an industry that has been slowed to change. When I return, I will be joined by Final Offer co-founders and local entrepreneurs Tim Quirk and Kevin Caulfield. Okay, we're back. This is Hubwonk. I'm Joe Selvaggi and I’m now pleased to be joined by real estate experts and co-founders of Final Offer Kevin Caulfield and Tim Clark. Welcome to Hubwonk. Tim Quirk: Thanks, Joe thanks for having us. Joe: Alright good to see you, Tim. Well, our listeners will know that this podcast focuses very often on market innovation often in healthcare or in education but not as often in the private sector which of course is also becoming more efficient with technology real estate from my personal experience seems to be an area that um everyone shares an interest but in view it's still a bit antiquated. We all understand we go out there looking for the perfect home, we might find it, and perhaps our offer isn't accepted, and often that disappointment is because we don't understand why. Or if we sold a home, again, we don't know where those buyers come from, and how the negotiation happens under the veil of the agents and all. What I'm really excited about is you've come up with some innovation. You're a Boston company, you're building a platform, and I personally think it's very disruptive. So let's, for our listeners' benefits, start at the beginning and explain how things work before your innovation. Let's start with you, Kevin. You've got a solid background in nearly two decades of real estate experience. You've seen the internet disrupt real estate in the past, but still what's missing for buyers and sellers as it is now? Kevin Caulfield: I think sometimes in Boston, specifically, supply is always relatively low. You think about Boston, Boston's a small city to begin with, and then when you think about your core neighborhoods in Boston proper, they're even smaller. And so the inventory levels that are there are, you know, they're what's been there for the last 100 years, and it's probably what's going to be there through our lifetimes anyways because of all of the restrictions that are out there with historic, architectural, etc. So it's a very limited supply here. And so I think as people come to Boston and the neighborhoods people want to live in in Boston, with this limited supply, Boston's growing, it's thriving as a city. There's more demand, and things are moving quickly. Inventory is low, demand is higher. And I think in today's world, you know, something comes on the market and maybe not every buyer in the marketplace is given the opportunity to make an offer on that property. And so what we're trying to do, what we're trying to do is allow the entire market, the entire buyer pool to have an opportunity to buy the home that they want to buy. And it's a fast market, it's fast pace here. And what we're, you know, what we're trying to achieve is making sure that everyone has the opportunity to put their best foot forward. Joe: So Kevin, you've identified, of course, we're constrained by our history and our size. We, there's often an imbalance between the supply of homes and the demand for homes. Boston in this area is a great place to live. But don't, you know, we've had a computer,  we've got all kinds of listing services, we've got these applications called Zillow, we can look  online and see all the properties there for sale. What is it that, let's say, the online apps that we, most of us are familiar with, what is it, what is the information we're not getting from, from those apps? Tim, you've helped design this, this platform. What is it that we're missing? Tim: Sure, well, I'll take it from the consumer's perspective, right? So this is my first foray into real estate, been on the tech side for my career. And whenever we talk to anyone about wanting to buy or sell a property, the first thing to do is they go online, they go to Zillow, and they're looking at these things, and they see this estimate and like, what does this thing mean? But at the end of the day, when a property's on the market, what will this seller actually take? And they have no idea what the seller will take. Seller's not telling them that they put a list price on the property, but the seller doesn't have to take it. And so the first thing that you do when you go to buy a house is you want to put an offer in and they're like, well, there's a few offers on the  table, and your agent starts asking them what those are, and they might get limited information about that, if anything. And it always makes the consumer question, is there really another offer on the table? And by not knowing, you take the largest transaction of someone's life and you put extreme uncertainty in place, it causes a lot of anxiousness on that side of the table when it comes to purchasing a property. But it goes for the same for someone that's selling their property, only do it a few times in their life, they get someone like Kevin to help them walk through what the process is. But then did you get to all of the buyers, did all the buyers come in, did we get the best deal for our home? You're always questioning that because you don't do it all day every day, you do it a few times in your life. Joe: So Tim, I want to unpack some of the detail that you just said, you talk about the best deal, the best deal. But we know from our applications, we're often talking about price, but I'm going to bounce that back to you, Kevin. There's a lot of aspects to what a seller is asking for and what buyer is offering beyond price. What are some of the other elements in the quote unquote deal that are interesting and useful if in a transaction, buyers and sellers were to know? Kevin: Sure, I think that the price is one part of the deal. And then the terms of the deal, the certainty in which the deal will get to the closing table or be able to, that the seller will be able to achieve that price that they've been offered. There are certain contingencies that go in there. Maybe someone's got financing, maybe somebody has a home inspection, maybe there's a condo doc review. And so there are all these uncertainties that still lie in the deal. So, what the seller wants is they want the certainty. They want to know that when they lock up the deal that these contingencies, if they exist, are as tight as possible so that they're able to achieve what they're trying to achieve. Another one would be, especially in today's market where the supply is low, demand is high, you can sell your house pretty quickly. But the likelihood of you getting right back into the market and being able to find something maybe a little bit tougher. So, do you have something that's subject to suitable housing? Do you have a lease back in there where you close on your home and you're able to lease it back for a certain period of time while you're able to find your next home? So, all of those terms of the deal, they all factor in, they all have value and they all mean something to the seller. Joe: Now Kevin, I'll stick with you. You as an experienced representative of many sellers, when you get a whole bunch of buyers,  each with their own array of offering, maybe they have a higher price but fewer contingencies or  more contingencies or someone has a lower offer price but more contingencies, how do you weigh, let's say, if everybody's competing for the same house at the same time, what goes on there? Is there genuinely a challenge trying to sell one property to several people all with different priorities? Kevin: Oh, there's definitely a challenge. I mean, as offers come in and even when you get into situations where you're calling for offers, you're calling for best and final of offers, all these terms mean something different to each seller. And so if there's a way to normalize this so that people understand what they're bidding against, what they're bidding on, and excuse me, which each term that is attractive to the seller, if there's a value on that, is it easier for the buyers to understand what the seller is actually looking for and how meaningful that is at the same token for the seller to be able to say, hey, look, I want to close on this  date and this is why I want to close on it and this is why it means something to me. And those terms or those elements of the deal sometimes get lost in translation when everybody gets focused on the pricing. Joe: Yeah, this seems to be a process that's very vulnerable. Again, our listeners may have lost the property they've fell in love with and they really don't know why. As you mentioned, there's so many elements. It really relies on perfect communication between sellers and their agents and then the two agents communicating well with each other and then back to the buyer. And all this is again trying to occur in real time. So I think we've done a pretty good job identifying the challenges of the current market. It's somewhat opaque even though in theory we all know the asking price very little is known about all the elements beyond the asking price in real time as a property is up for sale. So I think we set the stage for where the frustration arises from. Now, Tim, back to you. In designing a product that's sort of, this is an age-old problem, real estate has been transacted much the same way since time immemorial. How do you, from a technology perspective, offer buyers and sellers really what they're looking for? How do you approach something like this? Tim: Yeah. So what we thought was going to be an easy process actually became much more challenging than we had ever expected. So that's nice. What we do is pretty simple. So what if the seller could just disclose what they want? Actually be forthcoming. You look at our lives and we're addicted to information, real-time information. These phones are connected to us at the hip, right? And so if a seller could give you the information on what they want, truly, not just about price, but also all of their terms, would that make it faster or more efficient for buyers to actually submit offers to the seller that matters to them most versus them guessing? And so that's part of what we've done is we've allowed the seller to actually commit and contractually commit to the price and terms that they disclose on their listing on final offer. So go ahead. Joe: I want to drill down on that. So right now, if you are offering a property, you say, my house is, I want a million dollars, but you don't really communicate anything else. You don't talk about closed date. You don't talk about preference for contingencies. You don't talk about anything else, just price. So what you're saying is by communicating all the elements of the seller's wishes down to the detail, more buyers might be attracted because whereas they may just be reaching on price, they may be more flexible on terms. So they're encouraged to offer when  they might otherwise not feel competitive. Tim: That's right. Yeah, that's right. And then the fact that the buyers now have assurance that the seller is committed to take this offer, they have to take it. The question is, when do they have to take it? When it comes to our platform, at least they have the clarity to know what the seller wants and what they've committed to accept. And so for buyers that have been in the market that have lost multiple times, you'll hear it from them again and again.  I just wish I knew why I lost or what I needed to do to purchase this property because this was the right place for our family at this moment.” They just didn't have the ability to do so.  And that's one of the major, major, major high-level challenges that we're trying to solve with the Final Offer platform. Joe: So, okay, so what we're talking about is more communication. We're talking about transparency. We're saying with more information, we can have higher quality deals. Now let's say, okay, we've got more information. We've attracted more buyers. In theory, we're going to have higher competition with buyers for that same property. How do buyers, and I think you alluded to it earlier, and it seems to me at the very least, buyers will be assured that they're competing against another actual buyer and not a, let's say, an assertion that there is another buyer. They'll be able to see the fact that another buyer exists. How do buyers view other buyers and the relative strength of their offers compared to each other? Tim: Yeah, so, you know, it's been fascinating to see with what's happened with our platform today, is that when an offer comes in, whether or not that is for something that the seller is committed to take, which in our world would actually get publicly disclosed, what the price in terms of that offer is for all buyers to know what that is, so that if they wanted to purchase the property, they know exactly what they need to do to come in to be able to beat that offer. But if they've tried to negotiate with the seller, they may not be disclosing the price in terms of that offer, but an alert still goes out and on the site in real time, you can see that an offer actually came in. And so the fact that the process that a buyer goes through the register with their agent to make an offer on our platform, including uploading a pre-approval and being verified that they can make an offer, gives buyers assurance that there's actually another offer there. And if they are interested in the property, it gets them to call their agent and say, did you see that an offer just came in? I'm interested, please call the agent to find out what's going on. And so it gives buyers that comfort to be able to come to the table faster. And then as the process goes forward, very quickly, they'll be able to understand where they stand in that, and ultimately, what do they need to do to either purchase the property or to say, you know what, maybe it's too rich for me at this point and I'm out, but at least I know I'm out. Joe: Now, Kevin, I want to go back to you. You're the person who's, and unless with the technology, more with the human beings, this automates a lot of the mystery. And perhaps even some of the hard work you have to do juggling multiple offers, the agents are still engaged, right? The seller's agent, the buyer's agent are still communicating on, let's say, the soft edges of the parameters. Say more about how in a situation where we are now exchanging far more information in real time. How does a real estate agent manage with this additional layer of technology? Kevin: Well, I think the technology just adds a, it's a more sophisticated level of negotiation, right? And so you need to take everything into account in terms of what the seller really is looking for, they're looking to, in some instances, it may just be the price, right? But I think a lot of it, it's a little bit more complex than that where terms do matter. And so what this does is it gives it to, it gets that information out to all of the agents, right? Everybody's getting the same information. Everyone's on the same playing field. Everyone understands where they need to be in order to buy the home. And I think that's part of the frustration in today's world where, you know, sometimes that isn't the case where people don't have a real understanding of what they need to do. They think sometimes it just comes down to price. It may be dates, it may be contingencies, you know, final offer really gives them the outline of what the deal needs to look like as a whole in order for them to buy the home. And then when they do lose the home, they understand why they lost, right? And they can take that process, that education, into the following week and hopefully make the winning bid as they move on to the next properties that they start to engage. Joe: So perhaps it's the shameless amateur economist in me that always wants to reduce things to numbers and dollars and cents, given, of course, the price of the home is tangible and measurable. How do you create value or describe value, relative value of things like contingencies or close dates or things like that? All those non, you know, how do you put a dollar sign on a close date or how do you put a dollar sign on a home sale contingency or  something like this? You know, if we're going to transact using numbers, what numbers can we possibly assign to these relative values? Kevin: Well, you know, that's not, that's not an exact science. And I think it varies from deal to deal. So some things may mean more in one circumstance than they may in the next, right? And so if someone may really need a date because they need to sell their house in order to buy the next one, or someone may need a lease back because, you know, they can't close on their next home or they need time to find their next home. And I think that, you know, that goes from client to client, but at least the client is able to think about it in a way where, you know, as they're starting to think about listing the home, you get them in the mindset of thinking about selling the home and really what's important to them. And then you start to build values around, build values around what is really important, right? And they get them in that mindset versus being put in that mindset in the heat of the moment because you have to be reactive to an offer that's made. You know, we're engaging them in a position where they can be proactive and tell people exactly what they need to do to buy their home. Joe: So Tim, I want to bring you in here because I've played around with the platform enough to see that actually you do put relative values on different contingents. You have done more than just list the priorities. You've waited the priorities, shared more with our listeners. How does one, you know, how does, how do I as a buyer understand what matters to my seller? Tim: Yeah, so it's pretty amazing. And so as agents have used this platform, even in the open houses, they've been able to disclose this information directly within that experience, right? And so for the seller to say, as Kevin was saying, you know, what's important to you, would you take an offer for if you had two offers at a million dollars, would being able to move out 30 days versus 60 days matter to you? In some cases, it might be worth something to one and not the other, right? It depends on the seller. But if you ask the seller, hey, do you have a place to live when you sell your home? No. Okay, would a 60 day close be more valuable to you than a 30 day close? Yes. If a buyer was able to rent back the property to you rent free for 60 days after you close, would that be valuable to you to give yourself more time? Okay, let's talk about how much value that is. If you got a million dollar offer, would you take 980 in order to be able to stay in the property for two months? Maybe, right? And so you have those questions asked of the seller that starts to get them in the mindset of this is what matters to me. And they can put those values on these terms and disclose those publicly to every buyer in the market. So that that buyer can then either decide to go with one of the terms that the seller likes or they don't have to. And depending on how the seller has set those, that might improve and strengthen their offer or it might weaken their offer versus someone else that would offer a different term. So it lets everyone know in seconds what the seller cares about and it gives them a strategy to be able to decide how they want to make an offer that they know will be stronger or weaker and compare this to someone else. But they know for a fact that the seller wants. And so what's been so great about this is that instead of guessing, buyers are putting in offers that the seller cares about faster and more efficiently because they're being forthcoming with what they care about. Joe: So, but of course, as we know, buyers are competing with other buyers and maybe not always want to be competing with other buyers. Some of our listeners perhaps are fortunate enough to earn enough income that they can buy what they want and don't want to be bogged down with these details and just want to say okay, Mr. Seller, what's your price? Let's take this off the market. Let's not enter in these elaborate options. I just want the property. What's your price? What does your software have to say about that? Tim: Sure. So we give sellers the opportunity to put what we call the final offer on their property. It's their, in some cases, their dream price and terms. In other cases, the price and terms that they just say, I need to sell my property, maybe we put an energy price and terms on it and to move it quickly. It's up to them. But the fact is, is the seller themselves can put the price in terms that if someone gave it to them today, Joe, imagine Kevin walked into your house with a $10 million check. I don't know how much maybe your major property's worth $15? Joe: No, no, that would do it. That would do it. Tim: Okay. So you see where I'm going, right? So you get that smile on your face when you think about what would that be? And you can disclose that to the market. And if someone really wants your property, imagine someone that's starting their family trying to  get into a town that's very difficult and they want the school system and they continue to lose. Would they pay your dream price and terms to know that they can be there for the next 20 years and raise their family there? They would. And we've seen it happen. So by putting the final offer out there, you give buyers the ability to make a decision for themselves. They can buy it immediately, take it off the market. And it gives sellers the ability to potentially get that dream price and terms that they want. We had it happen over the weekend out in Natick. Joe: So that's a perfect segue. I mentioned in the intro that your product now was live and serving the DC area, the DMV, I think you refer to it as. And of course, our own Boston area mentioned Natick, but of course, Greater Boston. I want to take a step back and sort of talk about the development of this very exciting disruptive technology. You were there at the beginning, both of you, you created a product. What were some of, let's step back into the first iteration of the first version of the product. How did it, what surprised you when the rubber hit the road? You thought you created this perfect product. What didn't it offer that you needed to quickly address? Kevin: You want me to take this? Joe: Go ahead, Kevin. Let's hear it. Kevin: So Joe, I was the guinea pig. And so we did a launch here in Boston. I mean, there were my listings that were going up and the technology worked. And we didn't run any bugs with it. But as a user and coming in as a listing agent and convincing your seller to do it, this is a platform for the listing agent and for the seller. And it should give them ultimate leverage and ultimately produce the best outcome for the seller. And I think where technology can sometimes be black and white, real estate is a little bit gray. And so, we needed to address some of the guardrails that were in there, that were in the system that were preventing me from doing what I would normally do in my line of work, right, to ultimately produce the best outcome for the seller. So we were able to loosen up some of the guidelines, make it work a little bit better. And as we, when we went down to the DMV to launch, I felt like we had a far superior product. And then even from, call it from October to today, even this morning, Tim and I were on with the other two founders, and we were fine-tuning the product. So, we're able to do it. We've been able to do it. We've been able to do it. We've been able to make changes quickly. And we've been able to make changes with real-time feedback, either whether it come from me or from other agents that are using the product. But now it can solve for, it's in a much better place where we can get, we're able to produce the best result for the seller. And it's not as stringent where it was, where it was just, it was either on or off. We've been able to incorporate some of that gray area into the platform. Joe: So Tim, you're the guy under the hood trying to tune the engine to suit the market. What, let's say, single innovation needed to occur forward to be ready for prime time? Tim: Yeah, I mean, really what it was when we first launched here in Boston, the market was just  about at its height, right? And so people would ask us, well, how does this work in a down market? How does this work for a property that's been sitting for months? And so we had to find a way to be able to build in full negotiation functionality, but also a way to be able to draw attention and create demand with the buying community when there might not be any. And so we built those things into this, so that it truly is a platform for real estate agents to take to their clients so that they can negotiate through the platform, but providing more clarity to it. And so it was that, it was that balance. It's a, if you think about a marketplace, you have different dynamics and you've got different weights on either side. And so balancing the trade-offs between what's more important to the buyer and what's more important to the seller, we realized what we needed to do for the agents when it comes to negotiation to make them more effective. And so as we launched in DC back in October, we've been live for five months, you know, we've had over a hundred properties go under contractor been sold, and it's been this, this constant, this constant evolution of the negotiation functionality that has been so critical for the real estate agents to have success with it. And so that's what we're seeing in the marketplace now. And same thing as we've come back to the Boston area is that they're seeing the power of what this helps them to disclose the information to the buying community. Joe: Now we've been talking sort of in hypothetical terms, but, you know, and I think baked in from really the top of the show, we've said that we've sort of implied that there's a the demand for  real estate exceeds the supply, you know, that's perhaps the nature of Boston, but it's not always the case. There's oftentimes when, you know, everyone wants to sell their home, we've all lived through 2008 and 2009. It was pretty ugly and you couldn't find a buyer anywhere. Does this product work in reverse? And, you know, again, I'm sure there's some dog properties, if you will, that the market isn't competing for. How does this serve? How does this product serve? Again, if you don't have any clients like this, it's okay. But how does it serve someone who has a dog of a property who has no interest, no offers? Can this offer something to those folks? Kevin: Maybe you say dog of a property. I mean, is it unsellable? Joe: Yeah, price is wrong. Kevin: That's my stance with real estate, right? Like, there has to be some sort of perception of value, right? And when there is a perception of value in the marketplace, that drives interest. And that's what we are here for. So when you can go in and effectively price a property well, you know, we are a platform that can come in there and ensures that you get the highest and best price for your property, right? So do we sell overpriced listings? No, we can't. And no one can. Everybody has a challenge with that. But when you can go in, when you can go in and out of value and energy number to the property, we can ensure that the process will be run correctly, that it will be exposed to the entire market, that all the buyers will have a fair and equitable chance to make an offer and buy the home. Joe: Tim, I think you had mentioned something about a home that had been on the market for some time. And through the listing process, I think perhaps dropped the price, which had the effect of informing all the people who had been looking at it, that the price had been dropped. And you created where one had not existed a true auction for a property that literally had no one at the auction table prior to you being on your platform. Tim: Yeah, so this happened a couple of weeks ago. And there's many examples of this, but this is really interesting, one where you had a property on the market for one and a half million dollars. There was no interest, buyers circling, but no one wanted to make an offer. And so the seller decided to say, listen, we'll drop the price by $15,000. It's right there out in the open. Everyone can see here's the price in terms. Lo and behold, four buyers come with their agents trying to negotiate lower than that. They finally agreed to one and they gave that buyer a couple options. They said, listen, you can take it for this price and you can take it off the market immediately. It's yours. Or we'll let you come in at $50,000 less than what you just said. And we want to open it up to everybody for one hour. That's it. And so that buyer tried to get it for $150,000 less. Everyone got alerted in real time. The bidding process went up another almost $90,000 from there. And so you got a price in terms for that property that the seller didn't even expect to get when they first listed the property, let alone when it had been sitting on the market for weeks with no interest. So it shows you that if you give people confidence and they trust where they need to be, they now have the information to give them the confidence to make an offer. Joe: Indeed, the real value on information and transparency adds value both to buyers and sellers and improves the market. So if we've been successful in piquing the interest of listeners, is this sort of an application where I as a buyer who's looking around for my dream home and I want more than price, something more than Zillow can offer me, can I go in as an individual and find out what are the price in terms of all the sellers—and certainly the ones on your platform, you know—and get a sense of what matters to the sellers out there so as to sort of improve my profile, what can our listeners do to get excited about this? Tim: Yeah, no, it's great. So anyone can go onto the website to check out any of the properties that are listed on the platform. If you want to see the actual price, the minimum price in terms of the seller has actually signed a contract, stayed in the accept, just put in your email, it'll save  that property for you and you'll get alerted in real time when offers come in. So anyone can go in, take a look at what's out there and the nice thing about it is that we have real-time comps  that are also on the platform. So any property that goes under agreement through Final Offer,  you're able to see the actual price in terms of the offers that have come in. So if you're looking  in a, you're looking in, you know, South Boston, you're looking in Back Bay as listings come on  and you want to understand what's happening in the market in real time, go set up a search and save it and you'll just get email alerts as offers come in. It gives you a great opportunity to see  what's happening in the market that you care about. Kevin: Just to add to that quickly, you know, if you're going to come in though, you know, this is a platform that was built for agents, right?  And so if you want to list your home with Final Offer, you've got to do it with a real estate agent. Same with making an offer. If you want to make an offer on Final Offer, you've got to do it with a real estate agent. So that's the big thing I think and that's a differentiator for us anyways. It's like what we set out to make it a better experience for both the consumer and the agent  and in order to transact on the platform, it's got to go through your agent. Joe: So that to me follows in that your platform, we sort of glossed over it, but you want to make sure the seller is actually a seller and is prepared to sell given the contractual terms. But of course buyers are real buyers. They're not making unqualified offers. So they have to be qualified to be genuine offers and that's part of an agent's job. Now for our listeners, let's start on the seller side. They get excited. They want to be on the platform. You mentioned you have to have an agent. Does the agent need some certification or who are the agents that are already working on this and what's the profile of someone who an agent who embraces this sort of disruptive new technology? Either one. Kevin. Kevin: So I think look, I think the agents that embrace this type of technology, I think are more of the progressive agents that are looking for new and innovative tools to bring to their sellers. And that's what this is. And I think anybody that's doing business the right way and is fully transparent in the process as they go to buy and sell homes, this is right in the wheelhouse there. And someone who's trying to, your fiduciary responsibility is to drive the price for the seller. And this product and final offer as a platform, that's what it does. And we've seen it do it and we've, as we continue, you know, we get and we go out as we get more, as we get more experience with the site, it's happening. And I think the transparency part of it is what is, in some ways, is what is driving the price because people can actually trust that what they are seeing and what is being told to them is in fact what's going on at that point in time. So that in the competition, right, it's human nature. People get competitive, real estate is an emotional buy. As people get caught in the heat of the transaction, we've seen pricing just escalate. And, you know, as I said, it's a tool for the listing agent. So the sellers and the sellers have benefited, but at the same time, you know, the people know exactly what they need to do to buy the home. And so, I'd say the consumer or the buy side has benefited, benefited just as much. Joe: Well, again, you mentioned agents or fiduciaries of their clients. But, you know, strikes me, not all agents are created equal. This in some ways reminds me of being the opposite of what I see is sort of the mythical practice. There's so many friends and neighbors who I think they can sell their property quote unquote off market in a sort of secret shadowy market where instead of what we're talking about here is transparency where your home is exposed to the widest possible market with as many details and features of the conditions of sales possible in the wide open space. In some agents mind being fiduciary means selling or buying off market in some shadowy place where only one buyer and only one seller are in the auction. Do you see it sort of  as a sort of antidote to that sort of agent approach to differentiation? Kevin: Yeah, I mean, I don't really believe in that. I mean, I think if you're going to, if you're truly going to bring the highest and best offer to the table, you know, why would you not expose it to the entire market? Right, I think either there's as we've, you know, touched on the Boston market smaller, they are the people that want to live in the neighborhoods they want to live in in Boston even smaller. So in the inventory is tight and it's constantly tight at different price points throughout the city. So why would you not expose it to the entire buyer pool? It just, you know, that to me doesn't make sense. I mean, I think people have made, have tried to create this exclusive or this facade that, you know, if you sell this off market, it's a better experience. I mean, look, I understand there are certain circumstances where people may need to move things quickly and they don't want the disruption of fully marketing their home and that's totally different. But I think it's really tough to make the argument that you've gotten the highest and best offer without exposing it to the entire buyer, the entire buyer pool that's out there right now. Joe: So Tim, back to you again, I want to talk about the product itself or the platform itself.  Listeners, whether they be potential buyers or sellers, where can they go to look at the product, perhaps watch property being auctioned in real time and seeing prices change, you know, before they arrive, can our listeners in a sense be sold on the platform by watching it succeed for other people? Tim: I certainly think so and we've seen this happen. I mean, since we announced we're launching in Boston, this is our phones have been blowing up. Just go to finaloffer.com. That's all you got to do. So you go to finaloffer.com. We've got a short 90-second video there to actually walk you through what this thing is all about. If you're interested in listing property, call your agent. They'll help you. You want to make an offer on a property, call your agent. They'll help you make an offer on the platform. But first things first, just go in there, set up a safe search in the areas that you care about and you'll get real-time information on properties that are in  your local neighborhood or in areas that you're looking to buy. It'll give you the information that no one else has. No one can see this type of information in real time. We've had a lot of people saying it's been amazing to watch this and actually educate them on what people are willing  to pay and what the value of property really is in the areas that they care about. Joe: Indeed. Given that everybody is an amateur real estate expert and loves that hobby, to me, let's use an MBA term, addressable market. Is there any limit to what this platform can offer? Meaning, do you see any market or any homes that couldn't benefit in some way from, again, a more transparent transaction between buyer and seller? Tim: I think when it comes to this particular way of doing business, you look at any industry, the more transparency that's been brought to it, the faster, more efficient it becomes. The way in which you're able to use this platform as a seller to get the best outcome and as the way to get the buyer the best outcome, it's just speeding things up, but in a way that gives you more confidence. No, we've seen everything from a $250,000 studio unit in D.C. upwards to we have properties that are over $10 million in the platform right now. It's all about once you have demand for that property, you can very quickly understand, is there a market for it or is there just one buyer for it? If there is, you've still got the opportunity to work with them to get the best outcome for both parties. Joe: Well, that's a great way to tie it up with a bow. As fellow Bostonians, we're proud of you guys, building a great business here in Boston. We hope eventually when you take over the world, we'll be able to celebrate your success again. Thank you both for being on the show.  I'm certainly excited about the technology. I'm excited about your success as local entrepreneurs. Thank you for being on the show. Kevin: Thank you, Joe. Thank you for having us. Tim:  Thank you, Joe. Joe: This has been another episode of Hubwonk. If you enjoyed today's show, there are several ways to  support Hubwonk and Pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us if you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes Podcatcher. If you want to help make it easier for others to find Hubwonk, you're welcome to offer a five-star rating or a favorable review. We're always grateful if you share Hubwonk with friends. If you have ideas or comments or suggestions for me about future Hubwonk  episode topics, you're welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.