Speaker 1: 0:14

hey guys, the john mcnamara host run in vegas. We're talking local sports, business, real estate. If you guys like what you see today, subscribe, follow us on Runnin' Vegas Podcast on Instagram. And today we got a special guest. Kevin Ogden, manager Virtue Real Estate Group, is in the house, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yes, sir, thanks for coming on, excited to have you on. So tell me about you, kevin, your story, where you're from, how you got into real estate.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Kind of a crazy story. Midwest farm boy Went to college. My high school wrestling coach got into the real estate business and then, while I was in college, he recruited me to come work for him. So went to work in the business right out of college and I've been in it ever since, so Excellent.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Yeah, so where'd you go to college? Platteville Wisconsin, so Midwest Platteville Wisconsin cool, so you started in real estate in Wisconsin, or yeah, then Seattle nine years real estate and mortgage and then actually arrived in Las Vegas on 9-11, 2001.

Speaker 2: 1:27

So, trade centers going down. My first day at work was with KB and they were on the South Strip. So the strips closed, the airports closed and I had SWAT guys on the building. It was my first day in Las Vegas.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Oh my gosh, that is crazy. Okay, that's pretty interesting. When I moved here, it wasn't as tense as that, it was just a great recession. So you and I have uh, we're great at timing moving to Vegas apparently. Exactly so cool. So tell me, you've been doing this for a while in Vegas now and I'd like to hear a little bit about that experience. And also, I mean it's kind of cool because you've been doing it since 2001 uh, in in vegas excuse me um, tell me about that process because you you've really seen it all.

Speaker 1: 2:10

The great recession was very unique. Here I love talking to people that went through it and their experience, what they learned from it. If you can go into that a little bit, yeah, there was.

Speaker 2: 2:19

There was such a high, you know, when we hit the high of the market, you know there weren't signs up in the yards anymore because the houses sold before the sign companies put signs up, lock boxes weren't going out. So you had a lot of companies, you know, went out of business when their little entities, you know, went out of business and as quick as it rose, it's like someone flipped the light switch and it went out and went out quick.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Yeah, yeah, so yeah when I came here, I I was just really ignorant to it all. I was selling in um, new york and I came out to vegas. It was really like more of a lifestyle change. But when I came, I'm sure you remember um, so it was like my. My first day was, I believe, like somewhere in the middle of January. It was around my birthday in 2009. That's when I was licensed, moved here in 2008 and I go on full around MLS and there was 36,000 homes for sale. It was depreciating 3% a month. I got into these things called short sales. I had 40 of them at a time. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Uh, so those were some fun days. I'm really grateful, uh grateful. As bad as the market has been over the last two years, it's not that market yeah, that was, that was unique, it was, it was unusual very much so absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 3:37

But that's what's nice about vegas, is it always bounced back quickly, you know yeah, the neat thing about here for the exception of what two years ago, I mean this year we appreciated 12 and before um, we saw deep uh depreciation in 2022. Before that, it was appreciating minimum 12. A year pandemic appreciated 24. I think that's one of the reasons why it went down in 2022. But yeah, it's appreciated double digits. For what? 13 out of 14 years?

Speaker 2: 4:12

Yeah, it's been. You know people talk about the real estate market fluctuations, but it's been bouncing steadily for us for a while. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Yeah, coming from upstate New York, it may appreciate two, three, 4% on a good year. So when I came here and I'm like it's appreciating, like I don't think people really understand how crazy that is Like real estate in Vegas, is it it? It might be hard to break into it, but it's a lot easier to sell out here because prices are going up than it is like in a town where everything's stagnant or prices are coming down.

Speaker 2: 4:50

So it's a pretty neat market, yeah and for new agents, because there's so many model matches. It's not like Seattle or Spokane or other areas where everything's been remodeled five times. Here you go into a subdivision, there's model matches everywhere, so it's easy to, you know, determine pricing and things like that. So it's fairly easy, I feel, for an agent you know, getting into the market here.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Me too. Yeah, because really most of it's been built over the last 25 years that we're taking a look at. Even yesterday I showed a home.

Speaker 2: 5:25

I'm telling my buddy I'm like I've sold this model five times in my career, so I know exactly where everything is In four different subdivisions. Right, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 5:34

Because in upstate New York I'm selling homes built in 1911 that are falling apart or completely renovated. And I got into Mike Ferry like when I first got in real estate and he's like you got it and he's a California guy right, he's like you got to go preview all the homes and and I'm in upstate New York, I'm like that is impossible because all the homes were different, like just cause you look at once, all the homes are different in that subdivision, completely different markets. So I think you're absolutely right and it's kind of cool too, because everything is so dense here. It's really easy to get everywhere. It's easy. You know, infrastructure-wise in Vegas is pretty awesome the way they did it. It's easy to get around.

Speaker 2: 6:18

I felt like I knew Vegas in about six months. Yeah, in the Seattle area traffic got really bad. Like Southern California, here, I mean even now traffic's a little more congested but you can still 40 minutes one side of town to the other. Traffic jammed us. As you know you slow down to 35, where in California you slow down to five. So for an agent you know in areas like California they'll work a certain area. I only work Temecula, corona, whatever it is. Here we can work all of Clark County everywhere.

Speaker 1: 6:45

Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you go Mesquite's the farthest away and that's about an hour and a half Pahrump is our still working Pahrump.

Speaker 2: 6:52

You know Pahrump's not that far. I was there last week taking a listing yeah absolutely I would.

Speaker 1: 6:58

In my dad will make fun of me all the time. But in upstate New York, like kind of like similar you're saying I saying I mean I would take listings like two, three, four hours out. I was crazy. I'm like I had to get my next listing. I was obsessed. So that is one good thing about Vegas. It's like the farthest you can go is an hour and a half. You're rarely going to go to Mesquite. You're probably going to refer that out. But so what would you recommend? Say you're a new agent getting into the business. Is there anything you would recommend to a new agent when they first start out?

Speaker 2: 7:27

Yeah, learn all the new construction tracks, get that stuff down pat. Open houses are big. It's a great way to get new customers. I would focus in those two arenas, to start, and getting on a team. I think the team element is getting more and more important than it had been years past, just with listings being so dominant. And if you're with someone who knows how to get listings or has listings, I think being on a team we're going to see that growth a lot and you're seeing that in offices now where they're. You know, 80% teams and 20% independent agents.

Speaker 1: 8:04

Yeah, I think you hit it on the nose because when I got into real estate 20 years ago, you got more experience than I do, but there used to be better training from brokerages. And then what happened? My experience and you know, it seemed like, you know, we got a little bit more commission compression. When I was taking listings it was at seven percent. Now they're down to like five, five and a half. You know we're now it's.

Speaker 1: 8:28

I guess we're not, we're not supposed to talk commissions, but it there's been compression, right. And then on top of that brokerages don't make as much money so they don't have the resources to really do the mentorship, the training like they used to be able to do in the past, really do the mentorship, the training like they used to be able to do in the past. And they're giving like great deals. Great, which I never understood, because when I got in the business I had to date myself. It was 50-50 split and I was going into it like I want to learn and grow. I didn't care about the split. And now I'm sure you've met with new agents, so I want 100%, exactly.

Speaker 1: 9:01

As soon as somebody tells me that, I know I'm like they are not a fit for our team, because if you're worried about that, you should be worried about learning and growing. So I agree with you Teams are the future. They have been the last 10 years, but it's going to continue to grow. And it's smart for brokerages too, because it's very time-consuming. You could have the team leaders train and train the new agents.

Speaker 2: 9:24

Yeah, rather very time consuming. You could have the team leaders train and train the new agents. So yeah, rather than you know, 300 agents, one broker. Yeah, you know that model, you know for sure.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Yeah, so congrats joining virtue real estate group. We're excited to have you on board as the new manager. What attracted you to virtue? And you know what can the agents expect from you as their manager.

Speaker 2: 9:44

Well, I like the luxury aspect of it. You know, average price point at this office $758,000, which is well above, you know, the average agent in Clark County, the number of listings and properties closed in that million plus market. I think that 1 million to 3 million is a nice little niche, little niche that we're able to fill that. A lot of brokerages they're either doing that really high-end stuff or the normal traditional stuff. So I like that sweet spot that we're at 7,000 square foot office, beautiful Summerlin. I mean we've got a good group core to work from. So yeah, there's a lot of good things. It's kind of like tom brady going to the buccaneers, you know there you go.

Speaker 2: 10:28

They had a, they had a good team to start with, and that's kind of how I feel. So, yeah, cool yeah yeah, the uh.

Speaker 1: 10:35

If you're looking for a brokerage, check out uh virtue real estate group. The location is awesome right next to um uh bitner, which is nice. Um, you got a lot of commercials easy to get to. It's on charleston, it's right in the the heart of summerlin uh, which is really nice, and that's what we've always rejoined over a year as well, as we wanted to really work on uh, getting our prices up, and it's really nice to be around like-minded people that they're focused on volume. They're not focused on units, which, from day one in real estate, was always I was taught. Focus on units, learn how to sell, which I don't think is necessarily wrong in the beginning, but later on the volume is really where the money's at. So it's cool to be around people that think big like that and.

Speaker 1: 11:23

I know our team has gotten a lot out of the company and Darren being a great leader to help us out with that.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Yeah, like he sent an email today, he needs open houses in these four properties and they are 3.5 to 5 million and you know that's a great open house to be doing.

Speaker 1: 11:41

For sure when else. That's what I'll say. The thing about Darren is he, in terms of luxury, he's like an open book. There's not I don't know any other luxury agents in town that do that Not to talk about any agent, but that's one thing I really like about Darren he's an open book. He'll sit with you, he's a passionate man, he's humble and he'll talk luxury with you. He'll teach you the business. So it's hard to find that in Vegas anyways so cool, so you're a big-time recruiter.

Speaker 1: 12:13

You have had a lot of success with it, so tell us more about that, because I know you've built teams in the past other areas. What are your goals with Virtue Real Estate to really grow it here in the future?

Speaker 2: 12:24

The goal is to double our agent count over the next 12 months 50 agent. Good strong core. Got some really strong, good producing teams, focusing on adding agents to those teams and build, like we talked about earlier, build the team to help grow the brokerage that way. And then tools for the independent agents. If you come in, you're already seasoned. There's plenty of cool stuff to help you. Take that average $400,000 to $500,000 price point and suddenly get it up there where you're knocking closer to that million dollar range and give yourself a raise by doing, you know, same number of transactions, a few more transactions, much higher price points.

Speaker 1: 13:09

Yeah, absolutely. Those are really good points. Is there anything specific? Because you're known to be a top recruiter regionally, maybe even nationally, I'm not sure. But what are like your techniques to recruit?

Speaker 2: 13:22

How do you?

Speaker 1: 13:22

approach it Because, I'll tell you the truth, I've been in a lot of brokerages and it feels like a lot of managers they're scared to recruit. You know, I've heard a lot of stories and I seen like and everybody talks agent count when you go to a branch and the I feel like never changes for all the brokerages and the offices I've ever been to. So what makes you different Cause you've had a ton of success with it over the years Like what are the techniques that you do to to stand out?

Speaker 2: 13:50

And I think where the where the momentum happens is, is you take care of that first group that you get and then they tell other people and then that the later on, recruiting became less you know me calling people reaching out it became more of attraction.

Speaker 1: 14:07

So I think that's the key.

Speaker 2: 14:11

If you take care of those first few, then they tell 10 people. You bring on some agents and keeping energy is important. You know energy within the office, so plenty of classes. You know events going on that we're doing. That's, you know, putting the name out there and people becoming part of that.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Because since the pandemic agents in the office, even if you go to the biggest offices in town they might have 400 agents, but you walk in there and there's five people and so to get energy in the office again is kind of a key thing and change it from where we've been the last few years, post post pandemic, you know, getting reasons to be back in the office.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Yeah, absolutely. I was always taught day one you go to the office every single day Cause it. There is a huge shift in energy. I know for myself. When I'm at home in my office it's a different John showing up. So I recommend any agent out there. You're busy, not go to the office, have a schedule. So what are some classes? I know Darren's talking about training, like a two-week training course. What are some classes that you guys can provide for veteran and for new agents that are thinking about getting into luxury real estate.

Speaker 2: 15:23

Well, just classes within the office, making sure they're good topics. So we had AI for real estate agents. You know 30 plus people came to that. We're doing contracts classes tying it into that. You know 10 or 14 day boot camp that we're going to do so that they're going to get the.

Speaker 2: 15:42

You know how to write the contract, buyer, broker agreements, how to present it. You know that type of stuff. Probate classes are always good, you know there's just good picking the classes that you do have that tie into. You know the the overall plan that we've got for the office.

Speaker 1: 15:58

So yeah, that's good because that helps create confidence for, especially for new agents, because I I know the biggest thing I get because I'm always when somebody joins my team I'm like you need to learn the scripts and skills so you have business. Because there is, and it's really important to learn the contracts. What I recommend to new agents go to your class to learn the contracts but sit down and actually read the contract and then fill it out a couple times, because it's not really rocket science after you do it a couple times. But it's amazing how these contracts are such a big deal. Especially here you have to be a little bit careful, because you write a bad contract, it can go sideways real quick. We're almost like attorney. We don't practice law, but the way things are done here we're on that. We limbo with that, because when I'm in new york it was totally different environment, just attorneys just attorneys, yeah we could fill the contract out half with all the wrong information and it never mattered.

Speaker 1: 16:58

When I came out here and I was writing contracts I worked at cobalt banker my broker was going to kill me like the first deal I ever did, like what the heck are you doing? And I was just ignorant, dumb and young and like, but it was the best thing for me because it was like I really needed change and I got to get better. I remember I learned all the contracts. I took all the classes from other mentors, like you, and it made such a big difference because then when you're talking to your clients now you're the expert and it just it. There's so much more confidence that come across.

Speaker 2: 17:30

So that's my thoughts and and there's extra verbiage to put in the contract other than just the bread and butter. Yeah, that's part of it. That's going to protect you, your broker, your clients, you know those transactions and knowing you know good verbiage for that extra. It's above and beyond just the basic contract but, like you said, reading contract you don't know how many times an agent asked me a question I say, okay, go to page three, go to 1A, read that.

Speaker 1: 17:56

Well, even you and I the other day not to go into details on this file, but even you and I had to sit down. There was a discrepancy between the buyer and the seller and you and I had to read the contract and then I interpreted it one way, you interpreted another way, my TC interpreted a totally different way. So it's really interesting and you gotta you know. And even 20 years later there's another hiccup on another file and it's that that was not our all fault and it was a good lesson, because you're going to mess up here and there. Guys, what I recommend, like you just said, is adding that little verbiage to help your buyer and seller can make that little difference, even though it might seem like black and white on the contract. People, title companies, lendersenders, other agents they miss stuff all the time and sometimes you got to take that extra effort, like you said, to add that little verbiage so that doesn't occur.

Speaker 2: 18:57

It makes everybody's life easier another agent came to me on one and the the counter that they had the agent the way they wrote it yeah it was a little bit vague and it's just. You just change these, these two words around and add a couple more here, and it made all the difference. Now it was blatantly clear what each side was expecting, not just verbal between agents, and this is what they think that it means.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Yeah, it's amazing, and that's one of the files I'm talking about. It was one word that was not in there and somebody missed it, but it can make all the difference in the world. So I totally understand what you're talking about. But, either way, it's good lessons to learn and you grow from it. And that's one thing I like about real estate is like, 20 years later I'm sure you're aware too it's like I'm still learning new things.

Speaker 2: 19:48

No, and I have my people that I go to when I have questions you know so, and that never ends.

Speaker 1: 19:53

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I always like you. Like, I know the answer 99% of the time, but sometimes I just need to be reassured.

Speaker 2: 20:00

Darren asked me a question and he knew the answer, but he just wanted me to confirm that he was correct.

Speaker 1: 20:05

Yeah, because sometimes you don't run into these things for two, four years and like that's still the rule, right?

Speaker 2: 20:10

right, okay so cool.

Speaker 1: 20:12

So, besides real estate, what do you do? Fun on the side, you know.

Speaker 2: 20:16

I get three kids, they keep me busy. So anything we can do outdoors, you know we started with scooters and we've graduated to electric motorcycles and so we like to get out, you know, go on adventures with those, park them, get out, hike, you know, do that type of stuff. So that's like anything with my kids, anything that's in like a five hour radius, you know, from Sedona to California to Arizona. If it's within five hours, you know we've been there, we've hiked it.

Speaker 1: 20:46

I'm the same way. We've done that. Yeah, we love our hikes Calcutta Basin, sedona, zion, big Bear, right. That's the one thing I love about Vegas, because there's been times I'm like, man, it'd be cool to move to California. Then I'm always reminded I could just drive there in four hours.

Speaker 2: 21:02

I could go there any time. Why do I have to?

Speaker 1: 21:04

live there. If I want to go there, I can just drive or take a 45-minute flight and I can be at the ocean if I really want to.

Speaker 2: 21:12

No, we're fortunate with what we have between Arizona and Nevada and Utah. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Cool. Well, I want to thank you for being on man. We're excited that you're at Virtue Real Estate Group and we're going to be growing this thing together. And, guys, if you're looking for a great brokerage, uh, virtue luxury real estate group, totally recommending kevin, is your man. Call him, text him, set up an appointment, check out the office. And, guys, this is run in vegas, john mcnamara, take care of yourselves today. You.