Today’s track: It Could Happen To You — Ryo Fukui
I’ve been in this business a long time. And over the last three or four months, I’ve noticed something I can’t unhear.
Agents are stressed. Not busy-season stressed — carrying-it-around stressed. You can hear it in their voices on the phone. You can feel it in the transactions. Deals that should be routine turn tense. Small snags become standoffs. Extensions that used to be one phone call now take three. Everybody’s grip is a little too tight.
Now, this business has always run on a certain amount of adrenaline. Big money, hard deadlines, other people’s biggest decisions — that’s the job, and I’ve never minded it. This is different. This is stress that shows up before the problem does.
I wondered if it was just me, so I brought it up with some of our team. It’s not just me. They’re feeling it from the other side of their deals too.
Here’s the math underneath it.
Week of August 23–29 last year: 433 closings in our market. Same week this year: 278.
Listings didn’t slow down to match — 497 new ones hit that same week, up from 491 a year ago. Year to date we’ve had 18,386 new listings against 16,101 last year, while closings sit nearly flat: 10,665 versus 10,375. The market is still arguing with itself — sellers keep coming, and the paydays are spread thinner.
And when an agent only has one deal working, that deal becomes everything. When a deal is everything, everything in it feels like a threat. The inspection is a threat. The appraisal is a threat. A lender who doesn’t call back by lunch feels like the end of the world. A deal should never have to carry an agent’s whole month on its back — but right now, a lot of them are.
Now add the lead machine on top.
A lot of brokerages are paying big money for leads — Zillow Premier and programs like it. Expensive leads have to perform, so the agents working them get squeezed for every last drop of juice. Response-time quotas. Conversion dashboards. Somebody looking over your shoulder asking why Tuesday’s lead hasn’t signed yet.
I understand the business logic. Those platforms aren’t cheap, and on some of the programs the platform’s cut comes out of the commission at the closing table. When a brokerage spends that kind of money, it needs the machine to produce — so the pressure rolls downhill, and it lands on the agent’s shoulders.
But I watch what it does to the human on the other end. The agent gets whipped, the whip becomes stress, and stress doesn’t stay put — it walks into the transaction and sits down at the table with everybody else. The buyer feels it. The seller feels it. The agent on the other side feels it. I feel it.
And that stinks. I wouldn’t want to wake up every day like that. Nobody should. You spend a third of your life working — if the first feeling of the morning is dread, that’s not a job problem. That’s a life problem.
Today’s track is Ryo Fukui, a jazz pianist from Sapporo, Japan. He taught himself piano at 22 — a late start, no conservatory, and the industry never came calling. So he didn’t chase it. He and his wife opened a little jazz club, and he played there nearly every night for decades. His room. His pace. His people. No machine, no quotas, no squeeze. He just did the work he loved, in a place he built, and the world eventually found him anyway.
The track is called “It Could Happen To You.”
That’s really the whole message today. It could happen to you — the agent who wakes up without the pit in their stomach. Work doesn’t have to suck.
At Winner Realty, we don’t pay for leads. Never have. I own a data company, which comes in handy when you own a brokerage. Our agents get what they need without a bill attached and without a quota chasing them around. Nobody here is getting squeezed to justify somebody’s lead spend. Our agents are happy and healthy — two words that don’t show up in many brokerage pitches, and the two that matter most.
Don’t take my word for it. Call any of our agents. Honestly — call any agent at any brokerage in town and ask them two questions: how are you doing, and how does your brokerage support you? Ask the second one twice. The answers will tell you everything.
And if you’re the agent reading this with the pit in your stomach, here’s what the data says: moving is normal. 73% of agents have hung their license at more than one brokerage. Among agents ten-plus years in, 82% have switched at least once, and half have been with three or more. Median tenure at a firm is about six years. Switching isn’t disloyalty. It’s a career. The agents who stay somewhere miserable out of loyalty are usually being loyal to a version of the company that doesn’t exist anymore.
Besides — the ground is moving whether you move or not. In January, Compass closed on Anywhere. Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby’s, Corcoran, Better Homes and Gardens — one company now, 340,000 agents, and a promised $225 million in “cost synergies.” If your brokerage has been merged, acquired, or rolled up by private equity lately, ask yourself an honest question: is the place you work still the place you joined?
Synergies is a word that means somebody’s getting squeezed. It’s usually not the shareholders.
Life is good over here. Sit down with us and I’ll show you why. Bring your goals, your bottlenecks, whatever’s on your mind. No pressure, no pitch — and the coffee’s on me.
📊Yesterday’s poll: [ROB — paste Tuesday’s “next real estate move” results + your one-line take before scheduling]
Today’s poll:
Real talk — how's your stress level in this market right now?
One more thing, since a lot of you reading this are agents.
Wednesday, September 16 at 11 AM, I’m doing a free 45-minute session on Google Meet called Steal My AI Stack. It’s the AI tools I actually built for my own real estate business — listing descriptions and comps summaries, a deal analyzer, and the one that runs overnight so there’s a report waiting for me when I get up. Live and unedited, including the parts that broke.
Same deal as the coffee: no pitch, nothing to buy, no sales call after. If you want to talk to me afterward, you start that conversation. Lenders, title, inspectors, appraisers — you’re welcome too.
Register here: https://forms.gle/veN4hxejizVo7Hg99
The recording goes to everyone who registers. The Q&A and the prompt pack only go to the people in the room.
Warmly,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company
Schedule time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind — book me here.
🏆 The Top Five is ready as always — five real deals, five lowball setups, my math on every one. In a week with 278 closings, good numbers matter more, not less. Reply “FIVE” and today’s list is yours.
PS: Average 30-year mortgage this morning: 6.59%. Monday I told you oil would bleed the rate out — we were at 6.66% then. Keep watching. Sellers are getting creative out there. 41 opportunities currently offering seller financing, including four multifamily properties and 22 land deals. If the bank’s rate doesn’t work, maybe the seller’s will. And if you just want to see what we’ve got cooking: current Winner Realty offerings.
PSS: Anyone looking for a deal on a Red River Gorge property? Seller reached out and asked me to reach out to my network. Hit me up.
PSSS: I’ve got 6 of 12 for a industry fantasy football league, $50 buy in. I’m interviewing potential members, reach out.
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