Top 5 Trends Agents Should Be Aware Of with Rob Hahn

You know, the last two plus years have been as uncertain as two years probably ever. And so I asked Rob to come on and let's talk about if I'm an agent, if I'm a broker, if I'm just somebody in the industry or thinking about getting in the industry, what are some of the things that I ought to be thinking about right now? Sure, sure. Right. And so Rob has the good fortune of having sort of a global perspective on this because of all the different people he works with. And so, Rob, tell us a little bit about Rob Hahn first. Oh, God. I mean, I think you did a great job, man. You know, Shitster, I think, is a label that's been applied to me. I like to say that I have very strong opinions, weakly held, meaning, you know, I have strong opinions because once I form them, then I have them.

But if I see some new facts, you know, if I feel like, oh, you know what? I was wrong about that. I'm more than happy to change my mind. Right. So debate, argument, you know, I'm actually just started writing a post because I put something up about the metaverse and a couple of the readers really objected. I'm like, that's great. Like, I'm not looking for agreement. I'm not looking for kumbaya. Like, that's not what it's about. Right. It's about like getting an iron, sharpened iron, that kind of thing. Let's be right. I think it's more important to be correct than to be, you know, like, whatever, you know, like, so, yeah, no, it's really great to be here. And I do want to clarify one thing. Like, when I say I want to try to be brighter and lighter, like what I meant was, I feel like the last 10 years, like for most of my career, I've been almost a bit of a gadfly in the industry.

Like, and I still think I was just simply trying to point out what I was seeing, right. And suggesting reform, suggesting change to deal with those things, you know, things like, you know, the whole like incompetence problem with, you know, vast number of agents, things like that. Things like Realtor association, what they should and should not be focusing on. At this point, I guess I felt like this year I've been saying the same thing and people know what I think. People know where I'm coming from. And there comes a point where I feel like it's being counterproductive, you know, and so I'm not so interested about like, you should do these things. Like, you know, look, if you want to know what I think you should do, you could call me and hire me. And I'm happy to like, to me as a consultant, that's my job is to tell people what they should do as more of a commentator, more of a public intellectual, if you will.

I think the important thing now is to look at some of the mega trends that are happening and just, again, without condemnation. Without partisanship, without any of that, just lay them out and just point out like, here's what I think the implications of these are. So it's not so much about like, everything's going to be great. It's more like, here's what's happening. Right. I'm not telling you to change. I'm not telling you to do this, do that. It's just here are the implications. Right. And then I think each individual broker, agent, association, exec, MLS, figure out then, okay, well, what do I want to do about that? You know, that's, that's the pivot. And so you said you were writing a post, tell people about your blog. Oh yeah. So I write the blog Notorious Rob because I'm a fan of Notorious B.I.G.

But somehow it, it kind of translated, you know, which I love now. I will, I will prepare anybody who, if you're, if you're unfamiliar with Rob's blog posts, you know, carve out some time. Yeah. They're long. And I say this as somebody who writes long blog posts. Rob's are long, but they're always great content. I thank you. You know, there's, there's free posts and then there's the VIP section, which I subscribe to because I think it's important to see the stuff that he posts there. But, you know, also one of the things that I really love about Rob and why I, I value his opinion as much as I do is that Rob is pretty brand agnostic. Like he doesn't work for somebody, you know, I love a lot of the guys who work at Zillow. And I think that they're really, really smart human beings, but they also work for Zillow.

Correct. I, you know, same thing with a lot of the consultants out there, a lot of, you know, the news sources in the industry, you're never quite sure if you're getting objective or you're getting paid news. Yeah. It is a, it is a problem with our industry for sure. Yeah. And so, you know, one of the places that I, and Rob and I have actually had this argument on social media before, I think is, you know, how do we create a objective news source that's free of paid advertising? Yeah. I don't think it's possible. Well, I think the better way is to just reveal the subjectivity. Yeah. Right. In other words, like, and this applies across the board. Like I know the New York times is liberal. You know what I mean? Right. Don't pretend you're not. So just say, Hey, I'm a liberal. This is my view. This is the news. That's cool. I could go read Wall Street Journal.

Yeah. You know, I'm conservative and this is the news. Okay, cool. Like, I think it's better to just let the subjectivity flow. But that's a whole different conversation. Yeah. We could have a whole episode. Oh, yeah. So what do you want to talk about? So the first thing I had on your list was deformed housing market. Oh, yeah. Tell people what a deformed housing market is. So this is, I think, one of the areas where I just look like an economist, right? You know, I'm not one. Right. But my take is this. You know, we've had the craziest housing market probably ever in the last two years. For sure. And a lot of it is, you know, COVID and all of that. And I get it. And then the work from home movement, I get it.

I kind of, I'm of the opinion that we actually have not had a hot housing market. I don't believe the housing market is up 20% year over year. What I believe is the dollar has actually been devalued 20% year over year. Okay. So that's one area where I think I'm sharply at odds with most people. Right. So. Do you think then that people are using housing as a hedge? Yeah, for sure. Okay. I think the most important thing, and I've been, I've been thinking about this from start of 2020, because if you remember, it's not like we didn't have whatever, whatever it was like $15 trillion in national debt. Anyway, it's not like we were as a country, as society doing great on the, on that front. COVID hits. And all of a sudden, and I posted this chart.

And if anybody wants to go look it up, go look at the money supply chart. Right. I mean, it went like this, right? Like I think in one year, the stats that I've seen most often cited is that we created 40%, 35 to 40% of all dollars in existence. This is the start of 2020. Yeah. Right. And I remember seeing that and immediately going, okay, this changes things and we're seeing it now, you know, so now we have the media talking about inflation, you know, 6% CPI, 6.8% CPI prints, things like that. But as soon as we did some of these, you know, multi-trillion dollar bailouts, I was like, okay, this, this is going to have an impact.

And I think that's what we've seen. If you look at the stock market, if you look at the housing market, if you look at any sort of asset, what we've seen is just a massive asset inflation and it tracks very close to the money supply issue. So my take on things really since sometime in early 2020 has been, we're not seeing a hot housing market. I think what we're seeing is a weak currency market, a weak US dollar market, right? So what does that mean? Why is that relevant to a real estate agent? Right. The relevance to me is I don't know that this quote, housing, hot housing market, the seller's market we're in is ever going away. It could be permanent. Yeah. Now here's the thing.

Especially because we're not going to build our way out of it this time or anything. We're not going to build our way out of it. And even if we did build a whole bunch, I mean, the dollar's devalued. Right. You know what I mean? So it's not, so it's a whole different problem. Now, this is where I think most people, most economists, frankly, trained economists would disagree with my take is they're saying, yeah, but once interest rates go to a certain point, once prices get to a certain point, buyers are going to drop out of the market. And it's a supply and demand issue. If you have fewer buyers and you just, prices have to come down. Right. So at a minimum, the prices won't appreciate as much. I think the latest study I saw from NAR was that they're expecting home price appreciation to be maybe like six or 7% next year and inflation to be around four.

Right. Because this year it was 19%. Right. You know what I mean? Right. And I figure you and your agents are closer to the ground. So you're seeing buyer activity. You know, you're seeing that. And there are a lot of markets that have slowed down, you know? And we are. But, you know, for us, A, you know, we have the good fortune here in Texas that there's a lot of people moving to Texas. Right. A lot of people. Right. And so, you know, we're benefiting from that significantly, but also wild spikes in appreciation in Houston, Texas, aren't a good thing. Right. I mean, do you want to pay San Francisco dollars to live in a swamp or do you want to pay San Francisco dollars to live in San Francisco? Right. I mean, you know, there's an element of, you know, there's a weather tax in California.

Sure. Yeah. That's what Tom Ferry likes to call it. Right. We don't have that here. Like it's hot and it's muggy and it's going to be, I mean, you used to live here, you know. Oh yeah. The state bird is the mosquito. It is what it is. And so, you know, that 6%, I'm real comfortable with 15, 18% I'm not for my personal market. I guess what I'm saying though, is this, the expectation is that there are a lot of people out there who think the housing is in a bubble and the bubble will burst. And the reasoning is really solid. The reasoning is once buyers house, home price gets to a certain point, buyers are just going to go, I'm not, I'm just, I'm out. Right. So once that buyer demand starts dropping off, then sellers have to adjust their prices down if they want to sell the house. I think what I'm looking at is that there's a pivot happening in the investment side.

So this is something I started talking about this year, like in real earnest, because I saw a study coming out of, oh God, what does John Burns real estate? They're one of the best, I think, in terms of research into kind of investors and investment activity. And then since then, like Ivy Zellman out of Zellman Associates came out with the same similar type of report. And now we're starting to see more and more kind of mainstream economists and mainstream analysts talking about this, which said giant Wall Street hedge funds, institutions, institutional money is pivoting out of bonds into real estate because it's an inflation hedge. So I'm like, okay. And a given year, let's say we have 6 million homes sold. Like, okay, and we have buyer demand dropped by 50% because prices are crazy.

But at Wall Street Institution, an insurance company, a sovereign wealth fund, they're not that price sensitive. They're not taking out mortgages. They don't care about that. They're just more like, I need to invest $5 billion because I had $5 billion in euro dollar bonds. And I don't want to be in that anymore because the bonds are paying 2% and inflation is 8%. You know, like I'm just losing money. Like, no, why don't I take that money and put it into housing, into US residential real estate? Because those people who aren't going to be buying still have to live somewhere. They have to live somewhere. Right. So there's a part of me that feels like when I talk about this sort of housing market, it's that, right? It's like, I don't feel like we're really in the normal supply and demand.

And, you know, the sellers want to move out and downsize and young families want to buy and interest rates are, you know, whatever. Like, I don't feel like we're in that world anymore. I feel like what we're in a world of is the dollars depreciating at 20% a year. The institutional money is like, we don't want to lose 20% a year in purchasing power. Where can we park this money? And they're saying, we don't want to put it in bonds. We don't want to put it in cash. So they're buying gold. They're buying art. They're buying anything, everything that they feel will maintain purchase value. Okay. US residential housing is probably among the best asset categories to do that. So they're coming in, in a big way. And we're seeing so many signs of this.

The bill to rents. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, the big poster child for that is up in Conroe, right? Where I think it was, I can't remember which builder it was. They built 135 unit community strictly as rentals and then sold the entire community off to a hedge fund. Well, so, you know, the interesting thing, and I don't know, you were probably here when this happened. Were you in Houston when the recession began, 2008? Yeah. Okay. No, not in 08. I came in 2011. Okay. I was there 2011 to about 2018. So there's a local builder here. And this builder, you know, they had overbuilt for subprime.

And then when all of a sudden, subprime went away, they were left on the hook with a hell of a lot of inventory on the ground and the overhead that comes with that. Right. And they, at one point, they were running ads to where if you bought one of their houses, they'd put a car in the driveway for you. Just trying to get rid of the damn things. Yeah. And couldn't. And it almost sunk them until they spun all their inventory off into a different company and started leasing them. And now, Camillo Properties is kind of the poster child for this build to rent because they realized, hey, there's something to this. Yep. And they are doing exactly what you're talking about. They're building out these communities. Yep. They're then flipping them out to a hedge fund. Yep.

Voila. And the story out of Conroe was that the builder who did it, and I want to say, I can't remember off the top of my head, I apologize, but it's like a national builder, right? Like Pulte Homes or, you know, one of those guys, right? Yeah. There are several of them that are starting divisions doing that now. They doubled their profits. Yeah. They doubled their profits by building out a community, renting them out, and then flipping the entire community to a hedge fund. They doubled their profits to what they would have made if they just sold those homes individually to working families. So I'm like, look, I mean, we can talk about how unfair this is and how somebody ought to do something. It's like, look, but from a business standpoint, I mean, who wouldn't do that? If I can double my profit, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't you, right?

So I think from an agent standpoint, the deformed housing market is, I think it pays to really take a look at and do your own research, come to your own conclusions. And I understand, like, they're real estate agents. They're not economists, right? But go talk to economists, go watch YouTube videos, go, you know, absorb, like, actually research and come to your own opinion about your own market. Because who knows, maybe the woodlands is completely different than, you know, the U area, right? It's completely different than Katie. But even with that, like, yeah, real estate is real local, but you know what's not local is finance. Right. Finance is not local. As it turns out, math is math, no matter what. And unfortunately, we're not using Texas dollars, you're using U.S. dollars, you know, and you're subject to the Federal Reserve and, you know, global money market.

You know, so it is, it does pay to at least pay some attention and I have come to some conclusions. Conclusions I've come to for now, again, strong opinions, weakly held, is I don't think we ever see a drop in home prices. Oh, I don't, yeah, I mean, I can certainly make the argument. Yeah, like 10 years? Let's call it 10 years. I don't think home price will go down 10 years. I think, in addition, I'm expecting home price to appreciate at above inflation and real inflation, not nominal fake government inflation, real inflation. And right now, I think that's probably somewhere in the 15% range. So if you think that, look, here's one of the concrete things I think every agent should be doing. They should be going to their renters, people that they know, and telling them, liquidate everything you have.

And buy a house. Right. And get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. Because right now, mortgage rates are still, what, like three? About that. Somewhere in there. Okay. You could lock in a 30-year fixed rate loan at 3%, and nominal inflation is 7%. Mm-hmm. Like, literally, the bank is paying you to take out a loan. Take out a loan. Maximize it. Right? Yep. Don't do a 20% down payment. Do a 3% down payment. Pay the payment on PMI. Who cares? I've been talking to my end about, you know, if you've ever considered being a real estate investor, don't be scared off by these prices. Right. Now is the time. Yeah. And everything, it's overpriced. It's overpriced until, like, you think.

So, again, so this comes down to do your own research. Investigate. It's overpriced until you go, a year from now, this will be 15% higher than it is today. Exactly. And a year from then, it's going to compound. So, I'm like, housing is cheap from that perspective. Because, again, I don't think it's that home prices have gone up. I don't think this has anything to supply and demand. I think it's that the dollar has been devalued. So, that's big trend number one. Yeah. Number two, we wanted to talk about demographics. Sure. So, this is something I've been harping on since, oh, I don't know, 2011, right? Like, you know, I'm relatively famous in some circles because I got an award at RE Tech South.

There was a conference that used to exist back then. And I remember going up and saying that polygamy will be legal by 2040. Are we still holding that opinion? Oh, I absolutely hold that opinion. Okay. And at the time, it was because I was back then. So, this is 2011. I was already kind of investigating what's going on with millennials, right? And the logic goes like this. So, I was working at Realogy 2004, 2005. And even then, you know, economists and consultants were talking about get ready for millennials, right? Because that's the biggest generation ever. And when millennials come into housing, things are going to get crazy, right? It's going to be like, you know, housing is going to be this amazing thing because all these millennials need to live somewhere, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We've heard that. Yep. And I felt like there was something off about it. And the thing I felt was off about it was starting in like 2009, 2010, we were starting to hear reports in the media about how hard it was for college students to date. So, I'm like, what's going on? Because if they're not dating, then they're not getting married. If they're not getting married, then… Not having kids, which are all the traditional reasons for buying and selling real estate. Exactly. Family formation drives homeownership. You know this. This is just human reality kind of deal. Because it turns out if you're like a 34-year-old single guy, you don't need to buy a house in the suburbs. No. You're much better off renting a two-bedroom apartment.

You know what I mean? If you're a single 24-year-old woman, like you're way better off renting some place in downtown, you know, near all the shopping and the nightlife. Because who knows? You might meet somebody. Yeah. Right? And then he's like… You know, if you look at just the profile of buyers and sellers that just came out, single women, it almost doubled the clip of single men, are buying houses. True. But, I mean, I have some questions around how old are these single women, right? Yeah. I mean, there is a question. Right. Because, again, if you're a 24-year-old single woman, you meet somebody, he's the love of your life, and he's an investment banker in New York, chances are you're moving. Right. You know? So, it's way better to just… But if you're a 45-year-old divorcee… Correct, then buy. Yeah. So, who knows?

But the point is, I was paying attention to demographics back then, and I thought millennials aren't going to get married. I thought there's a huge sort of structural defect. And I'll illustrate, because it's something I've done over time. So, back in 2009, when I started doing the research, and the specific one was University of Georgia, what they found was that 60%, something like 58% of the undergrads at UGA were female. Right. So, it was a 60-40 women-to-men, female-to-male ratio in college back then in those schools. Today, 2021, it is now completely accepted. It's 60-40. Right? And the thing I said was, okay, 60-40, that's great.

Look, girls are doing great. They're, you know, achieving academically. It's good for society. It's good for the economy. No problems with any of that. However, 60-40 means three out of five are women. Right. So, it's two out of five are men. So, mathematically, one out of three college-educated women cannot marry a college-educated man. Yeah. So, the big question that I started asking back then was, would one out of three college-educated women marry, not date, not have flings with, marry, and have families with men who don't have college degrees? And I thought, no, for a lot of reasons.

And, again, fast forward, what, 10 years now, what we're seeing is that being reflected in birth rates. I think the study just came out said that we now have the lowest birth rate ever since the founding of the republic. Which, a lot of people thought that it would be quite the opposite because, you know, let's lock some people into houses. That's right. What happens? You know, everybody thought, well, shit, we're going to have a huge baby boom. That's right. No. We haven't seen that, right? Right. So, we have the lowest birth rate ever. And why is this relevant? Why do real estate agents think about this? So, Ivy Zellman has, she's a really famous Wall Street investment banker analyst. She has a, her firm is called Zellman and Associates. They're really, really well respected. And they are specialists in housing. Yep.

And she came out of the report earlier this year talking about demographics. And talking about how we might actually, you know how the claim in our industry has been, we have a lack of supply. Like, we haven't built houses for 10 years. Huge lack of supply. And that's what's driving the price is really high. 50% of the traditional build and all that. Right. All of that. I'm like, well, what if, because her, Ivy's position is, we actually have too much supply, given demographic trends. In other words, in the future, 10 years from now, we're just going to have fewer families. We're going to have fewer kids. And, you know, that demographic spiral goes down. Like, we might actually have too much housing. It's a really, you know, kind of out there position. However, I kind of think it's real.

I kind of think it's true. And it's something that, you know, economists typically don't talk about. So, honestly, for 10 years, every time I see Lawrence Yoon, like on stage somewhere, I would ask him, what's your thoughts on family formation? Every time I talk to like a zealot economist, hey, what are your thoughts on family formation? Right. In fact, this family formation is not really the accurate measure because a lot of times, you know, like a single man living by himself is head of household. That's a, quote, family. Right. You know, and like, that's not what we think of family. We think of, you know, two people coming together. But I was a single man when I bought my first house and I was everything but head of household. I was just an idiot who had a little bit of money to buy a house. And it was the thing to do at the time.

That's right. Right. So, I think it's worth paying attention as a real estate agent because what it implies, not next year, right? Not 2022, right? But if you intend to be in business for a little bit longer than one year, you got to start thinking about, okay, what does this look like? Yeah. If we have fewer marriages, fewer children, what does this look like? And the housing stock that's available, I mean, I think you could argue that a ton of housing stock in America today is inappropriate for the smaller families of the future. No. And I've been actually saying that for a while. The way that we build houses today is not suitable for where things are headed down the road. Like, yeah, the example that I have used for a long time is I am a relative firm believer.

And I realized that in Texas, this is an odd thing to say. I'm a relatively firm believer that sometime probably in the next 10 to 15 years, we won't actually own vehicles anymore. Yep. You'll just ride share everything. Yep. Right? Yep. And so what do we do with millions of houses with garages? You probably turned them into metaverse Zoom rooms. Right? Something like that. Yeah. And so it's just things like that that you look at. I mean, we've seen, you know, whether, you know, I always like to say that every few years the industry needs to find something to freak out about. Sure. Right. And you go back to millennials. Millennials was one of those things because they're so tech savvy that they're never going to use Realtors, but then they actually use Realtors at a higher percentage than anybody else.

And then, you know, most recently it's been iBuyers and things like that. See, here's the thing, Chance. None of those things are fundamental. Right? Right. So when I look at big trends, I'm not, I don't care about millennial tech usage. That's not the point. Like, that's irrelevant. And as we've seen. Right. But millennials not getting married and not having babies is fundamental. Or fewer babies. Or fewer babies at older, you know, like, so if the average family, and I think Texas, you know, some of the red states, quite frankly, are, haven't seen this impact because red states. So, you know, you have three, four kids. It's not unusual. Right. Dude, some of the urban, you know, metro areas, like you have one child, it's like, oh, you're a breeder.

You know what I mean? Like, it's. I feel like down on for that. A little bit. It's a little, you know, I mean, it's, I hate to say, but again, the numbers, the trends support this. And this should become, then let's just think about what this means. Right. Do we need more, like, what do we do with that four bedroom suburban house in Katy, 3,600 square feet? You know, a couple with one child is, do they really need that? Right. And what do we do then? You know, so it's, it's those types of things. And again, I think when you talk to them, as you talk to your younger clients, I think it's worth taking that demographic question in, at least in the back of your mind. Understanding kind of what's happening. So if somebody, let's say you go meet a 35 year old couple, right.

With one child. Like it, it almost pays to think just how special that is. Yeah. Like what percentage of millennials are married in their thirties with a kid. It's not a lot, but in what percentage of them then can afford to put a down payment on a house. Right. It's not a lot. So when you think of in those terms, I think as agents, like you want to think about that. Right. Like, what does that mean? So that's the second biggest trend. And it's going to have a huge impact. Thankfully, none of it's going to, you know, these things are long trends, right. It's not like something you have to worry about next year. Right. Yeah. All right. So the third one we've already kind of touched on, which was you had inflation.

Yeah. So, I mean, we've kind of, we've kind of already jumped. Yeah. It's part of that housing mix. It's the, it's the most important thing going on right now. But if we can, for a minute. Yeah. I want to talk about something that you posted on social media. Yeah. And Rob is, you know, again, he gets you thinking, right. And so he'll ask questions on social media. And sometimes I comment with some dumb ass comment. Just I want to get notifications of what everybody else says. And I want to get that conversation. You made the comment that in the 1980s, the house was the asset. The mortgage was the liability when you have a 13, 14% interest rate.

That's right. But that today, the mortgage might actually be the asset. Yep. Right. And that's not me being creative, by the way. I read that somewhere. I heard that. But still. Blew my mind. That's not, no one ever thinks that. I mean, we're taught to pay an extra payment on your mortgage or, you know, pay every two weeks or whatever that is to get the hell up out of debt. That's right. That may not be the right thing to do right now. That's right. It's great. No. You know what? Here's the thing, Chance. Like when. So after the COVID thing, after the trillions in money printing, Sonny and I, Sonny is my wife. We sat down, we actually had this conversation, which is we're both Gen X. We grew up exactly like you said, you know, don't spend more than you make.

Save money. Don't borrow. If you do borrow, then try and pay back as soon as possible. You want to be debt free. It's that whole, who's that conservative finance guy? Yeah. Like it's like that whole Dave Ramsey thing. Right. And we've lived our lives that way for, you know, 40 plus years. Yeah. We looked at each other and said, we might need to maximize our debt. Yeah. We actually should get rid of cash. We should. And it was the craziest conversation we had, right? Because this wasn't just theoretical. This was like. It goes against everything we've been taught. Exactly. It blew my mind. And yet you look at the numbers, you know. Last week I was having this conversation.

So our, our big pandemic purchase was we bought some land. Smart. And as part of this land purchase, we put $160,000 into the loan for construction. Yep. As because 2021 is the worst time to ever try to freaking build anything in the history of kind. Right. As the last year has passed and I've been building this barn dominium on this land. You know, I've, I've been in a fortunate place where I have paid cash as we've gone. Right. So I haven't taken a draw on this money that's sitting out there. Right. And I am by nature, very debt averse. Of course. As we all are. If you are in our generation, have any sort of financial sense.

Right. My company could probably be bigger. Yeah. We could probably do a lot of different things if we took on debt. Yep. I just hate it. Yep. And so I had really given some very serious thought to just not taking the $160,000. Okay. And then I would be really close to paying this thing off. Sure. Yeah. Probably in the next year and a half or so, we could pay the whole land off and have this asset that is a significant asset. Sure. Owned outright. Sure. And I started asking people and they're like, no, that's the dumbest idea of all time. If you get $160,000 in cash at 3%, what are you talking about? Don't get that money right now. And I'm like, oh, but this just flies in the face of everything that I have lived my life by for 45 years.

I'm 100% there with you. That's why I said, even though the inflation that we touched on it, it's really profound. It's really, really profound. Right. And you're right. So for example, and you're right. I'm kind of doing the same thing. We're having solar installed at our house because I live in the desert. Of course I ship solar. And I looked at, we could just buy it for cash. You know? I mean, it's expensive, but we're doing well. Like we could just, I said, no, no, we're not buying for cash. Why would we do that? Max the loan. Yep. Because it turns out the loan, the fixed rate loan at below inflation rate is the asset. Yeah. Because we're going to pay it back with depreciated dollars.

Right. It's that type of thing that I think most people are going to have a real problem with, like wrapping their head around. But I think it's super important. Agreed. Agreed 100%. All right. Political division. So this is where this podcast episode gets real dangerous real quick. We'll keep it neutral because we're not advocating one side or the other. Right. Exactly. This is not a political discussion. It's a discussion about politics. But you posted in your year, you know, your get everything wrong predictions for the next year. Yeah, exactly. Seven predictions. Sure to be wrong. Yeah, exactly. Which is, I think, your most recent post, right?

Yeah. That you could see the formation of a conservative brand in real estate popping up that's kind of anti-woke. Talking points in most of organized real estate right now. Yeah, I really could. So tell me how you think, if I'm an agent and I'm just out there doing my business, you know, I have made a very conscious effort in my life over the last decade to exclude almost all news. I don't watch cable news. I don't watch local news because it's all just garbage. If I'm an agent out there doing my business and, you know, politics or politics, what are the things that I really need to probably pay attention to from a division standpoint?

I mean, I feel like because it's so tribal, the specific issues don't really matter as much because some other issues are going to pop up and it will become tribal. Something like wearing masks is now tribal, right? You know, vaccine mandates is now tribal, right? Stuff that normally we would look at and go, this is a question of scientific fact, right? It's become tribal. It's become, you know, if you're on this side, if you're blue, then you believe these things. If you're red, you believe these other things. And it's just, so I figure whatever it is, there'll be something else, right? Yeah. Some new thing will pop up and depending on, you know, which political tribe you're in, it's going to become controversial. So I think it's a matter of paying attention to everything.

But the more important thing I think is to try and figure out that tribe, the fact of the division, right? Okay. And again, you could be like, the other side is dead wrong. That's fine, right? If you're Democrat, you're like, the Republicans are evil, racist bastards. And if you're Republican, the Democrats are all commies. And I'm like, fine, believe whatever you want in your personal life, right? The issue is from a business standpoint, from an interest standpoint, the fact of the division is the big trend, right? So not only is the seven predictions where I talk about conservative brand rising up, because I'm saying, okay, it doesn't even have to do with politics. It's just simple marketing, right? Again, you live in Houston. I live in Nevada.

Like, hey, man, 5'11 Tactical is a pretty big brand. It's a huge brand. Black Rifle Coffee. What's that? A Black Rifle Coffee. Yeah. I'm like, these people are selling coffee and jeans and T-shirts. But they're choosing to do it branded in this particular way. Why? Because they figure, you know, again, I've said this in the post, 75 million people voted for Trump. That's a big number. It's a big number. Now, are 75 million people buying 5'11? No. Are they buying Black Rifle Coffee? No. You know, they go to Starbucks. Right. And my take on that is when it comes to a lot of areas, it does make it like, you know, sure, the brand is whatever.

But, you know, I really like Levi's jeans. You know, I like Nike shoes. Right. And the politics aren't, I'm not that political. You know what I mean? It's just not that big a thing. I think where it becomes relevant, though, is where the differentiation of the product or service or price is not as high. And I think that describes real estate perfectly. Explain that to me because I'm not sure I understand what you mean. In other words, it isn't as if, like, the price for real estate services pretty much is the same. Pretty much. I mean, yeah, you have. I think there's a lawsuit going on about that, so I won't comment. Exactly. But, you know, it's more or less the same. Right. Quality of the service. It's not at a brand level. Right.

And I know you operate a brand. And I know you talk about the CBA way. I completely understand what you mean. Yes. But you know what I mean. Like, some of your agents are going to be superstars and some of your agents are going to be nincompoops. I mean, that's just how it is for every single brand. So, from a consumer standpoint, the brand, one way or the other. It's not going to dictate price or the product or the service or whatever. It's the individual agent. Right. Correct. Okay. In that environment, when the differentiation is really hard, then things like politics can play a much bigger role. Right. In other words, if I'm going to end up getting the same thing at the same price, right, then somebody says, I'm, you know, pro whatever. I'm BLM, might matter. Right.

Or if I'm back to blue, might matter. Right. Whereas if it's about coffee, maybe that matters. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe just go whatever. I don't give a crap. Yeah. That's kind of what I meant by it. The other aspect of it, though, is that has real implications for organized real estate. Do you mean because of whatever message they put out? Because of division. Right. Yeah. And I'm, you know, so I saw, I did this thing on the seven most interesting people. Again, the way I look at it, it doesn't matter what you think personally about the specific issue. The Brandon Hooper thing going on in Montana right now, it's a big deal. Yeah. At least within the industry, right? Because whichever way the, you know, MOR, the Missoula Association of Realtors rules on that, you're going to piss off half the people.

Right. There's, it's a no win. It's a no win. Right. And no matter how that goes, it's going to result in disenfranchised, disalienation. You know. The woman we have here in Texas, and I can't, I don't know her name, but the one that was at the Capitol on January 6th. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right. Jenna something. Yeah. Some people like her, some people think she's awesome. Some people think she's, you know. A traitor. A terrorist. Yeah. And so imagining those two groups coming together to talk about we're one Realtor party, let's go lobby this, you know, Governor Abbott about taxes. I mean, I'm like, really? Do you guys really think that's going to happen? I don't know. Maybe. You know, it's happened so far. That was actually what I was going to bring up when we were talking, when we talked about this before the show is, yeah, and you and I have had this conversation in another context before.

I'm a firm believer that Realtors should talk to their clients about what's going on in the politics of real estate. Right. And you actually had come up with a service that did that. That's right. Here in Texas. That's right. And, you know, I'm just a believer that there is value to that. Absolutely. Well, A, I don't think enough Realtors know that we do so much politically, but I certainly don't think the consumer does. Certainly not. And so if we can say, hey, you need to know about this, you know, we take that 1.5 million and we multiply it when you're talking about grassroots efforts. That's right. And so I think there's power there. That's right. But now when you're talking about the disruption side. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, if I'm a real estate agent, am I just being really, really careful about what I post on social media?

I mean, I think everyone does. Yeah. And the issue is going to be housing is inherently political and it's about to get even more political. I'm actually pretty reasonably convinced that housing is going to be a major campaign issue this year or next year, rather, depending on when this gets released, 2022. The midterms, I think housing is going to be a big issue in the midterms and it will be an even bigger issue in 2024. Yeah. Because millennials and families can't buy houses. They can't buy houses. And probably by 2024, rent is going to be a real problem. Agreed. Because rents are going up 15, 20% right now. Yeah. As much as everything else is going up, so are rents. Right.

The only thing that's not going up, wages. Yep. Right. I mean, you're a business owner. Are you doing 20% raises on your staff? You can't afford to. Hopefully they don't. So there's no doubt in my mind this is going to get political. And the issue is going to be, okay, let's say the city of Houston says... Citywide rent control. Yeah. And HR says, we're not for that because that's clearly a violation of property rights. And NAR has historically stood opposed to rent control. Correct. Except that the Democrat tribe says, we're for rent control. Right. What do we do?

Yeah. Again, I'm not advocating one side or the other. I'm simply pointing out the political division and the tribalism will lead to massive issues within organized real estate, within the brokerage industry, when it's like one side's going to... We saw things like that happen during the legislative session in Texas this year. Okay. There you go. Yeah. So, I mean, we saw that. So I get it. Yeah, for sure. And it's unfortunate, right? Because in theory, in a normal, more normal sort of political environment where it's like, okay, you know what? You disagree over welfare, but then, you know, you could go have a beer afterwards and talk about the Texans and how they suck so much. I mean, that's what we want. So that way you could disagree about whatever.

And then when it comes to rent control, when it comes to property rights, when it comes to real estate, political issues, zoning or whatever, you know, there's a unified front. I don't know if that's possible anymore. It's going to be tough. I don't know. Especially these big issues. Yeah. So we'll see. So that's trend number four. I think it's worth paying attention to. The implication for agents, though, there is one very practical application of this in my mind, which is I think if you as an agent have strong beliefs... I say let the freak flag fly. Okay. Right. So as an example, and I mentioned this to... You're going to find your tribe, right? Right. So I mentioned this to a friend of mine, Blaine, who was my agent when I lived in Houston, right? I'm like, you know, you should think about starting a real estate brokerage that caters to gun owners, right?

Because he is one. You know what I mean? Like, why not? Because fact is, given the division, you don't want to be... Like, do you really want to have, like, a client, you know, type of relationship where you have to... I don't know if that's the main thing in Houston, Texas, because we all got guns here, but... No, that's not true, man. Houston's... Like, let's face it. Inside the loop, it's pretty damn blue. No, it's very blue, but they still got guns. Okay. Then some... Whatever it might be. You know, some of these other... You get what I'm saying? Like, again, if you don't have a strong belief, then don't go out on a limb. But if you do, maybe you actually look at this as an opportunity to say, you know what? I might lose some clients on the other tribe, but I'm going to pick up more clients on my tribe, which is what 5.11 does. And again, these people are selling coffee and jeans and, you know, I feel like...

You know, we had a restaurant here in town that during the whole, you've got to shut down a restaurant, you've got to do this capacity, you've got to do that. This guy said no. He just said no. And he opened. And guess what? Nobody stopped him. Right. And there was a line a mile long outside. Yeah. And so you're going to get that group that's going to support that for sure. Right. And I think that's why I think ultimately my prediction is for some brands. I'm not sure we're going to get that. What's that? I said, unless it's polygamy still. But, you know, we still have 20 years on that, right? Still have 20 years. That's right. We still got 20 years. We're good. So that's number four. The last one was number five, and it was just kind of the general disruption that's going on inside the industry.

Correct. Right. So let's talk about that. So that one, quite frankly, if you're in real estate and you're not paying attention to what's going on with the lawsuits and the federal government, it's like you're not paying attention. Right. You need to change up a little bit. You need to pay attention. So bottom line is I'm of the opinion that we are going to see some pretty significant regulation coming from the FTC next year or this year, right? 2022. And I think we're going to see more regulation over the next couple of years. And specifically, we know that the Department of Justice would like to see cooperation and compensation go away. We know that the Washington, D.C., you know, sort of think tankers and the academics and the opinion makers, we know that they would like to see buyer agents being paid by the seller just eliminated.

Right. We know this. So I don't know that we're going to get that regulation next year. Can we do the chicken and the egg there, right? Are they really being paid by the seller? Again, it doesn't even matter, right? Right. We can make whatever arguments. Point is, some judge or the regulator somewhere is going to go, hey, listing agent, you're no longer allowed to share your commission with the buyer agent. Right. One way or the other, right? But I don't know if we're going to get that next year, but we're going to get something significant. It might be something like the commingling rule. It might be, you know, MLSs can't exclude people because they're not Realtors. You know, it might be whatever, right? Point being, it will be the federal government exerting power.

Which I think will be saying. I think that part, what you're talking about, is really something to pay attention to. Yeah. And it's going to happen. Especially with CoStar just kind of lurking out. Of course. I think there's a really, if I was an MLS executive, that would be something I'd be paying a whole, whole lot of attention to. And I think they are, but you know what? Their members aren't. Right. The MLS execs, the boards, they are paying attention. Yeah. Again, they don't have to agree with my take, but they're at least paying attention. But at the individual agent level, I don't know how many people are really paying attention to that. And the issue for me becomes one of preparation, right? So, you know, in the prep pre-show, we talk about this a little bit.

Whether you believe that this will happen or not, if as a real estate agent, if as a real estate broker, you don't at least have some sort of contingency plan as to what do I do if that happens? Right. I'm like, you get started. I mean, the best time to have started that plan was two years ago. Right. The second best time is right now. Is right now. Yeah. At least have a plan. You know, you could say, oh, Rob's crazy. How am I going to talk about this with the client? How, you know, what is my, what am I, what is my value? Right. And where do I prove that? And how do I. So if you have a buyer, you have to now convince the buyer to pay you. Yeah. Okay. Well, how are you going to do that? Right. Is it a commission? Is it a percent of the price of the home price? Is it an hourly rate?

Is it a flat rate? Like, at least think about that, right? At least have some plan in mind so that if this were to happen, you could then go, okay, this thing that I feared would happen. This thing that I thought would never happen happened. Right. That's the thing I never thought was going to happen because I never thought about it. And now all of a sudden I've got to figure this out. Correct. And that's the place you don't want to be in. No. And you know what? It's, it's a lot like prepping. And I think being that you're in Houston. Yeah. I'm like, if you live in Houston and you don't prep for the possibility of a hurricane. You're crazy. Right. Like going and getting water. You don't want to be the person that two days before the hurricane shows up, you're at Costco trying to buy batteries. Because they're not going to be there. That's right.

That's, that's the worst place to be in. Right. So I'm saying similar thing. Like if you're a real estate agent and you see this disruption is lurking over there, like the time to start putting some sort of plan in place, time to start examining, you know, your tools and your systems and your sphere and is now. Right. Like you don't want to wait until, oh my God, the FTC just ruled this. And now I got to figure it out that that's, that's really what the importance there. I think it's just a prepper mindset, you know? Yeah. And again, I think it's exactly right, man. You don't want to be the person that's trying to go buy water at Costco because hurricane's about to make landfall in 24 hours. Right. You want to have that water. But yet you see that shit on the news all the time. Don't be that person.

Right. Yeah, I, you know, because I'm here and we're on the Gulf Coast and, you know, we think about Katrina all the time because we had so many people from Louisiana come to Houston, you know, a different kind of housing boom for sure. That's right. But, you know, it wasn't like Katrina snuck up on New Orleans. No. They knew it was there. Or that it was possible, right? Right. For days. Nothing. And same thing. I mean, you know, we knew Harvey was here. Nobody thought it was going to hit us and that it was going to do that weird thing that it did. And certainly nobody thought that the possibility of 50 inches of rain was a real thing.

But, I mean, I distinctly remember seeing on the news the day before people in long lines at Costco or Sam's or HB or wherever trying to get supplies. I'm like, that's just not smart, man. Yeah. It's just not smart. Meanwhile, I was trying to find beer. So, I think, and I've been saying this for a couple of years now, I think the most important thing from an agent broker standpoint is to kind of embrace that prepper mindset a little bit. Yeah. Right. In other words, like, who knows? The world is chaotic. Things are going to go up and down. Things are nuts. There's all this disruption. There's all this division. There's all this tribalism. Fine. You can't do anything about that. Right. What you can do is embrace a little bit of that prepper mindset.

Okay. What do I need if this happens? If that happens? If, you know, whatever. Right. If Texas declares independence and says, we out. You know. Okay. Like, how do you do real estate? You know, like, you at least have that preparation. Right. That's the important thing. Every Sunday in our brokerage Facebook group, I post a post. And the idea is, how can I get you thinking about stuff before the week starts? Yeah. Right. And so one of my posts, and it was kind of a weird tangential conversation that me and a couple of people in the office got into one day was, let's just say that Elon Musk started taking people to Mars tomorrow. And I guess maybe this metaverse thing is probably actually a better example, but if you reinvented how you city planned, how you did real estate, like, what were some of the things that you would change or do?

You know, the Stanford School of Design does this. Right. And they bring manufacturers in and they're like, forget everything you know. And if you had to build this, how would you do it? Right. How would you do it in mass? And that whole idea is, are there different ways to look at it? Are there different efficiencies? Things like that. Right. You know, I think COVID over the last couple of years has given us some efficiencies in our business that weren't there previously. Yeah. And I hope stick around. Yeah. But, you know, to me, it's, do I have a plan? But also, like, what seeds can I start planting today that are going to bear fruit if this happens later? Right. And what practices in my business can I get better at? You know, I can say, well, hey, I do all of these things. You know, we were talking earlier. It's like, if I go into an Apple store and I want to see what a MacBook does, I can open it up.

I can hit keys. I can do all those things. I can't do that with a Realtor. No. It's how do we bring some level of tangibility to what we do to prove value? Right. I don't think that as an industry, we talk about that very well or we train it at all for most parts. And I think that if that's, especially if that commission question comes into play, you're going to have to intelligently be able to speak about your bad. Absolutely. And you know what? I think what would be surprising is what the value will turn out to be. Right. And again, we only have theories because this doesn't, we don't know. Right. But if you think about how you're an agent, there's a buyer, what is the buyer willing to pay you to do?

Right. Well, until we're there, we're not going to know. If you go back and look at that profile of buyers and sellers, right? Yeah. So it just came out in November. Yeah. So those are some of the things I look at, but I don't think that, I wish that they would ask some different questions because we know negotiating is a big piece of the puzzle. Right. Okay. Come out. Let's stop. Let's actually explore that. Okay. You know that negotiation is a big piece of the puzzle. Right. What do you think the buyer is willing to pay you to negotiate on his behalf? Exactly. That's the question. Yeah. Because once it's no longer, it's all inclusive in this 6%, you know, in this whatever, and, you know, the cooperating compensation model. Once it is, I will negotiate for you, Mr. Buyer.

Right. And I charge $500 an hour. Right. Or $200 an hour, whatever it is. Right. We don't know yet what the response will be. So you take that list of stuff that buyers claim, these are the really important things that my agent does for me. Guide me through the process, negotiate. But the one to me that's just a giant water sandwich. And I hate that this is the number one thing, especially on buyers, is help me find the right house. Right. What the hell does that mean? Who knows? Council, advisor. But here's the next. It could also be a giant fair housing violation. Who knows? It could. But I'm saying ask the next question, which is, okay, you say that's the most important thing.

How much are you willing to pay me to help you find the right house? Right. Because, you know, people claim they want all kinds of shit until they got to pay for it. And then all of a sudden, eh. Yeah. I mean, you know, I've always said, and it's not directly related to this, but the correlation is there, that if you really wanted to change the way people felt about politics in the United States, take away FICA. Make people pay their taxes. Get their whole paycheck and then write a check to the government like you and I do. Right. Because we're not W-2 employees. That's right. Right? Take that away. Everybody starts paying a whole lot more attention to politics.

Sure. Real quick. Sure. And so what are you willing to pay for XYZ service from the government or study of fish DNA or, you know, whatever it is. It's fine if you do and if you're willing to pay for it, but what's that worth? Right. And I think we'll find out. Yeah. But to your point, I think we're going to find out. And I think as an agent today, again, I'm not an agent. I've never been one. But if I were one today, I'll be thinking a lot about, you know. What of my activities that I do for my clients today do I think I could charge them money for? Right. Because ultimately, man, that is the value proposition thing. And we're all going to experiment.

We're all going to learn. Right. And until we actually have done that, we're not really going to know. Right. True. And even if once we think we know, things could change up, right? Absolutely. So, like, you know, we know that YouTube gets billions and billions of views, right? Yes. What if there were no ads on YouTube and you had to pay for YouTube? How many views would you? How many people would actually say, you know what? YouTube is so valuable to you. I'm willing to pay, right? We know for a fact that people are willing to pay for Netflix because they pay for Netflix. Right. But are they willing to pay $29 a month, $30 a month for Netflix? I don't know. We don't know. Nobody knows. There's the elasticity there. Yeah. Correct. We don't know. Right.

So, it's that sort of thing. So, as an agent, I think what I'll be thinking about is, all right, the entire financial model, compensation model could change. It doesn't mean I run out and start, you know, building my buyers by the hour. That's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm saying is, at least thinking about, okay, what of my activities do I think, do I, you know, have some conviction that my buyers will pay me to do for them? Yeah. And then maybe that should change, like, where you invest, where you spend money, what kind of training you're going to want. Like, if you say negotiation, absolutely, my people will pay me to negotiate for them. All right. Well, then maybe don't take that extra class on social media marketing. Maybe go take an extra class on negotiation. Right. Yeah. It's that sort of thing.

So, then the tricky question on this is, and, you know, we don't need to go down this rabbit hole, but the other question is, what about this other stuff that I do in my business? Is it superfluous? Or can I build value in it? And maybe you want to pay for it now that I'm talking about it where previously I didn't. Maybe. I don't know. Don't know. But you know what? The only way to find out is to try and charge somebody. Yeah. The only way, like, if you really want to know what some activity or what you're doing is worth, charge for it. Yeah. And then you'll know real quick. Right. Yeah. I mean, that was one of my things with VIP. Right. It's like, okay, I'm doing all this work. I'm doing legal analysis.

I'm reading, like, you know, company financials. Like, is this valuable? Let's find out. I think it's valuable. I'll pay you 24. Thank you. I know. That's how I look at it. So, I think we're all going to start to see that happen. And it's just, I think we're going to start to see it at the agent level. We're going to start to see it at the brokerage level. Right. Because you're a broker. As a broker, you know that a lot of the stuff that is, like, incorporated into, like, a, you know, cap or a fee or transit, whatever. I mean, if you're breaking it out, it's like, okay, you know what? I'm going to charge you for this. Because that day might be coming as a broker where you might have to go to agents and figure out, okay, what's really valuable to you? Right. I'm going to nickel and dime you. Not because I'm trying to nickel and dime you. Because I want to know what are you actually willing to pay for.

Right. Like, what is it I'm doing that's actually valuable to you? You know, like, it might have to be something like that. I will tell you that it's a struggle. That's a struggle. Real struggle. We're in the process of changing out our technology stack that really isn't, from a functionality standpoint, going to change a lot. It's just going to bring it more in-house under one roof as opposed to a bunch of different services bolted on to a hub. And, yeah, as part of that, agents have a tendency to overthink things. Yeah. And so, as part of that, we look at it as like, okay, well, is this actually providing value? Is this something that looks sexy in a recruiting meeting but doesn't mean shit to an agent when they actually really start practicing their business?

Yep. Like, and from my standpoint, especially in my model, you know, I need to get the things that are the most bang for their buck. Yeah. Right? And then follow that up with support and service and having somebody to answer questions and stuff like that. That's right. Because the answer to your question is, it depends on how long they've been in the business. Of course. Right? Of course. Yeah. So, it's all changing, man. And, you know, nobody knows. Like, I don't know. On one hand, it's kind of exciting. But on the other hand, it's kind of like, holy crap. How much more of this can we take? Hey, man, that's, I think that's the thing. Like, what I'm coming to realize is you got to enjoy the suck. Yeah. You got to embrace the suck. Otherwise, yeah, you know, like, I'm much more willing to embrace this type of suck than a different type of suck.

So, that's why you and I are doing what we're doing, you know? Yeah. Awesome. Well, Rob, thank you, man. This has been great. Fantastic. I love the new- I appreciate you, man. I love the new bright and shiny Rob Hahn. You see what I was trying to, like, I understand. I understand that a lot of the trends are doom and gloom. I understand that they're, like, really scary, and you'd really rather not talk about it. And it's also easy to point that out, right? Yeah. Like, again, going back to I don't watch the news, there's a reason why. Yeah. Because nobody reports good stuff. Yeah. Like, when John Brzezinski, during the lockdown, I don't know if you saw that, he did some good news. Yeah. He did, like, fake news shows, but it was all good stuff that was happening in the world. Yeah, yeah. Like, that, somebody figure that out. Put that on TV, and I'll watch it. Dude, there's some channels that are doing that.

And I think, look, I think if you're neutral about it, there's a lot of good that comes. So, like, the whole commission disruption thing, right? Let's just use that as an example. I wrote a post talking about the upside of disruption. Right. Well, one of the upsides is, if you are a great agent, you really know what you're doing, and you really take care of your people, it's entirely possible to me that you end up making a lot more money. Yeah. Right? Because you have all this value that your buyers and your clients see, and they're like- Differentiation becomes a real thing. It becomes a real thing. I'm like, is that a bad thing? I don't know if it's a bad thing. No. And it's like, and then people get afraid. It's like, well, that means the new agents are going to get screwed. Not necessarily, because if you're new, but you're hungry, maybe you say, listen, I'm going to go and show and prove myself.

So I'll only charge $50 an hour. Right? But that's going to get these clients to give me a shot, whereas they wouldn't have given me a shot before because I don't have the experience. Right. So this could end up being a real positive. So there's some good things happening as well. And I think it's important to kind of think about that. I mean, look, I'm all about, like, I'm investigating a lot of stuff around blockchain and metaverse and all this stuff. Not because I think it's terrifying and it's going to destroy the world. Because I'm like, I think there's some positives and kind of an optimistic view as well. Right. So, yeah, I think I'm fundamentally an optimist. It's just I have to point out trends that tend to be not so dangerous, not so optimistic. But again, the point behind it is not to be like, be terrified and be scared.

And no, it's more the prepper mindset. Exactly. That's all. So if you aren't already a subscriber, go and subscribe at NotoriousROB.com. Thank you, sir. You'll love this content. It's great stuff. But like I said, carve out a little time. Thanks again, Rob. Thank you. If you're watching and listening, we appreciate you stopping by. I hope you can take some of these things and at least get you thinking about what the future of your business might look like. And you can start preparing for it. And we will see you next time on Top 5. Thanks, Chance. I'll see you next time on Top 5.