Trust This. July 7, 2023.

By Joseph E. Seagle, Esq.

Happy Friday! It’s World Chocolate Day in case you didn’t know. So enjoy your favorite chocolate-flavored anything today, guilt-free.

Social media real estate financial adviser, Nick Gerli, posted the chart above in a tweet on June 27, and it has been reposted over 10,000 times and garnered almost 55,000 likes as of last night.

Why it matters: His data from Alltherooms doesn’t match up to other data out there and appears to be completely inaccurate, as pointed out by James Kleimann with Housingwire.

By the numbers: Sevierville, TN is at the top of the Alltherooms list with a revenue decline of 47.6%. Orlando is in the number 15 spot at -34.8%, according to Gerli’s tweeted data.

• Kleimann’s homework and help from AirDNA found that Sevierville and Orlando were, in fact, down on revenue but by only 9.4% and 10.5%, respectively.

• Kleimann could not get actual data from Airbnb directly to verify it all, but the company said their data more closely matches AirDNA’s than Alltherooms’ data.

What they’re saying: Nick Gerli is a financial adviser who owns Reventure Consulting. I’ve seen him on social media over the past few months. His posts are often sensational clickbait posing as the-sky-is-falling economic analyses. He’s been known to cherry-pick data from various sources and spin them in ways that support his foregone conclusions. He’s not alone in this.

Yes, but: When confronted, Gerli (and other social media financial advisers like him) quickly concede that there are data discrepancies. Still, they don’t put a note on their posts or even qualify the conclusions within the posts.

The bottom line: You can’t believe everything you see on social media.

• Clickbait is rampant because it drives eyes to the posts, garnering revenue for the poster.

• Whenever a “sky is falling” or “this is the next greatest thing to do financially,” post pops up, don’t take it at face value.

• Look behind the numbers.

• Maybe even contribute your data to these sites to improve their accuracy.

Go deeper: Kleimann’s Housingwire article.

2. Tampa REALTOR Association board in turmoil

Three members of the Greater Tampa Realtor Association executive board have resigned over the past couple of weeks in protest over a conflict of interest by the Board’s president.

State of play: It started in February when the association’s executive committee agreed to hire Jason Outman as the Board’s new CEO.

• But they didn’t announce his hiring until March 22.

• On the same day, GTR’s president — Jay Quigley — acted as the buyer’s agent for Outman in entering a contract to purchase a home for $765,000.00.

• Quigley received a 2.5% commission at the closing in April.

• This raised the specter of a conflict of interest because the association president received a commission from a transaction where he represented the person his committee chose to hire as CEO.

Why it matters: The Executive Committee had a special meeting to address the violation of the REALTOR’s conflict of interest policy, but the decision from that meeting is confidential.

• The vice president resigned, saying that the board’s verdict was correct, but the punishment was too lenient.

• Another committee member resigned, saying that the Board wasn’t moving in a direction in the best interest of the membership.

• A third member quit without giving a reason.

• At least one more member is considering resigning as well.

The association amended its bylaws in 2020 to change the structure so that the membership at large no longer elected the officers. Instead, the 16 to 17-member Board of Directors now elects the officers of the Executive Committee.

This was the first board elected through that process which tends to appear that the board members are looking out for themselves instead of the association’s members at large.

Our take: Having served on and represented similar board structures, we understand how difficult it is to get volunteers to serve on them and to get a large membership base to vote for the most-qualified officers.

• The bylaws changes were made during the height of the pandemic, which wasn’t the best time to make such a major structural change to a vital foundational process.

• Trade associations like GTR have large groups of captive pay-to-play stakeholders and larger budgets.

• GTR will have a hard row to hoe to regain their members’ trust, but the first step should be amending the bylaws again to restore the members’ ability to elect their officers and hold them accountable.

3. Catch up fast

1. One-third of home purchases in April were cash-only. The Title Report

2. Housing inventory grew last week by 5,848 listings. In the same week last year, it grew by over 30,000 listings. Housingwire’s weekly housing tracker.

3. The top-5 cash flow markets for under $200,000.00 (spoiler alert: none are in Florida). Bigger Pockets

4. In May, lenders repossessed 4,020 properties through completed foreclosures (REOs). That’s up 38% from April and 41% from the same time a year ago. With defaults and foreclosures trending up, are servicers prepared to handle them? Mortgage Orb

5. Florida’s retirees flee to nearby states with lower insurance premiums and real property taxes. Where are they going? Go Banking Rates

4. Pic of the day

I’ve often repeated that life isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. It’s something I’d heard soon after graduating from law school.

As I’ve aged, I’ve come to believe it’s more like a constant marathon of sprints, one after another. We run as fast as possible daily through our task lists, e-mails, voicemails, social media posts, and daily mail.

But do those things move us forward toward our targets? What if we have no strategic target, no finish line? Or worse, what if we’re racing toward the wrong target a la Sears and Blockbuster (great execution but wrong target)?

• This is one reason we make goals for ourselves. We’re trained early to strive for the end of the semester, the end of the year, graduations, birthdays, and other milestones. It’s human nature to sprint through those milestones others have defined for us.

• Visionary leaders focus on the next target for their business, their team, and themselves. They aren’t carried along with the crowd, sprinting without a strategic purpose. They actively strategize what their next target should be and who will help them reach it.

• They surround themselves with superstars in their positions who are as dedicated to implementing the vision and reaching those targets as the visionary is.

• They focus on their health and relationships as stridently as they focus on their business, and they surround themselves with coaches, counselors, and people smarter than they are to help them build their emotional intelligence and experience.

Why it matters: The next time you find yourself sprinting through the day on tasks and information that others have put in front of you, take a beat to think about whether you’re chasing the right target or just running to be running? And ask yourself if you’re surrounding yourself with the right team to help you figure out the right next goals then sprint toward those together.

We hope you found this helpful — any feedback is appreciated and can be shared by hitting reply or using the feedback feature below.

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