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In a new episode of the HousingWire Daily podcast, Editor in Chief and host Sarah Wheeler sits down with eXp Realty CEO Leo Pareja to discuss the National Association of Realtors‘ (NAR) commission lawsuit, the new rules that agents are facing, and how eXp is helping agents navigate these challenges to thrive in the marketplace.
Pareja took over as CEO at eXp in April 2024 and became the first Hispanic CEO of a major real estate brokerage in U.S. history.
The conversation starts by diving directly into the new rules mandated by the NAR settlement and how Pareja has prepared his agents to navigate them. Pareja says that the first thing eXp did was to create a new one-page buyer broker agreement.
He highlights the importance of having a simple document to preserve the buyer’s experience by making things simple and transparent. eXp purposely designed the document in a way that uses as little legal jargon as possible, so as to not confuse buyers and sellers.
Pareja also believes that collaboration is the biggest key to success in the industry, which motivated him to release eXp’s streamlined forms online for other brokerages and agents to use and benefit from.
Wheeler follows up by asking Pareja for his stance on Compass and their suggestion to remove NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy. Pareja expresses his opposition to that idea, highlighting the vitality of the CCP despite its perceived flaws and shortcomings. The rule requires brokers and agents to submit a property to an MLS within a day after sharing it with the public.
He believes that sellers will benefit from having more exposure for a specific property via MLS-syndicated data. Therefore, if one brokerage can keep a group of properties exclusive to them, they aren’t giving others the opportunity to take action on the data.
Pareja believes there should be exceptions, such as when a property is owned by a high-profile person, if it is tenant-occupied or if it’s still under construction. But these examples are too few and far between to require a complete revamping of the policy.
“If we start creating silos of properties in inventory, we will stop having to compete on service and value, which is the American way of doing business,” Pareja says. “It’ll be an inventory war, which could create pay-to-play scenarios and remove the ability for the consumers to negotiate the best permissions and compensation going forward per the goal of the settlement.”
Wheeler shifts the conversation toward the overall real estate market and asks Pareja to highlight the two biggest problems facing agents and brokers. Pareja explains that the biggest challenge is adapting to a new process following the settlement.
Industry changes, he says, typically occur naturally in a somewhat Darwinian manner and agents passively adapt to them over time. But the NAR settlement changes were imposed on agents and consumers with less warning, hence the difficulty in adjusting. He urges his agents and all others to have empathy for their clients during this time of industrywide uncertainty.
To close out the conversation, Wheeler asks Pareja about how the new rules and evolving technology impacts the industry in terms of who gets the customer first. He says that agents and brokers can better reach clients by putting themselves in the customer’s shoes. Despite the usefulness of technology and marketing, he mentions how personal real estate is. As such, forming relationships with prospective clients is the way to go.
