Meet the Board: Eddie Speas – Empowering Agents with Choices and Tools

It's another engaging conversation here on The Triangle Real Estate Podcast. Join me as we continue our Meet the Board series with Eddie Speas, COO at Coldwell Banker Advantage.

We discuss why MLS choice and flexibility are so vital in real estate today, along with how evolving tech is helping agents meet their clients’ expectations. Eddie’s insight into the importance of offering varied tools and choices reflects his deep understanding of what agents need to thrive in a competitive market.

Tune in for a closer look at what’s next for MLS and agent empowerment.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

• The evolution and importance of providing choices for real estate agents
• The impact of technology and AI on the real estate industry
• How Eddie’s experience shapes his approach to leadership and agent support

Links from this episode:

• Know more about Eddie Speas: https://www.cbadvantage.com/agent/9194142580/eddie-speas
• Learn more about Coldwell Banker Advantage: https://www.coldwellbanker.com
• Learn more about Doorify MLS: https://doorifymls.com

1ae5b43598204883b524f061d4880e6d10fca88c (for podfollow.com)

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:01 About Eddie Speas
• 4:15 Real estate adapts; demand persists despite change
• 7:02 Chief Development Officer managing 600 agents daily
• 12:22 Importance of MLS standards and RESO certification
• 19:49 Eddie’s insights on MLS strategy and improvements

Transcript

Eddie Speas [00:00:00]:
Our job at doorfi to give the agents as many options as possible to do their business and do it well. It's not Dorfai's job to even the playing field or doing anything like that, which, you know, I've always been vocal about. But at the same time, it is DORFI's job to help all the members, that is through lots of options and lots of choices.

Matt Fowler [00:00:26]:
Hello everybody, it's Matt Fowler again. I'm the executive director of Doorify MLS, the former Triangle MLS. We recently changed our name. Remind everybody that for a little while longer, I'll probably say Triangle four times in this call that we're going to have today with our special guest, Eddie sp from the Board of Directors. Hey, Eddie.

Eddie Speas [00:00:44]:
Hey, Matt. Good to see you today.

Matt Fowler [00:00:45]:
You too. You too. Thanks so much for joining us, Eddie. And as you've heard me say on other of these podcasts, spend a lot of time together because the board commitment is significant. And you know, this is a lot of time that we spend behind the boardroom doors. We've got 14 voting board members right now, some non voting reps. We have a stakeholder council rep on that board. But Eddie comes to us from a long service on the board.

Matt Fowler [00:01:10]:
Eddie, one of our questions is when did you originally join?

Eddie Speas [00:01:13]:
Well, that is a great question. So I have joined the Raleigh Regional association of realtors and triangle MLS in May of 1993. So I have been a member for a long time, served as the president of the Raleigh Regional association of realtors in 2004 and I believe sometime in 2002 or 2003, I was a non voting member of the, of the TMLS Board of Directors and then later got onto the TMLS board, went off for a little while, came back and so I've served off and on for a long time and it's been my privilege. I've learned a lot. Yeah, I've learned a lot.

Matt Fowler [00:01:47]:
Well, that's 30 years. I hope so. Right, right. I mean, I mean, gosh, things changed since 93. That's the year I started as an appraiser. I didn't know we started the same year.

Eddie Speas [00:01:57]:
Yeah, well, and I, and I remember, I tell folks all the time, I grew up here in the area, by the way. I grew up here in the, in the Triangle. I went to high school here at Athens, went to Wake Forest University. I was not the world's greatest student, but I graduated. But I got my license my last semester college and immediately to work in real estate here in the Triangle about A week after I graduated from college. So again, it's all I've ever done. But I remember being in the office and they had, they had the MLS books at the time still. They were still out.

Eddie Speas [00:02:24]:
And. And I would tell agents the best part about looking at an MLS book was I always turned to the back first. Right, you would turn to the back because that's where the most expensive house in the triangle was. Right. He was always on the back page. And there were no billion dollar houses in that book, I'm telling you. No, I. Wow.

Matt Fowler [00:02:42]:
None.

Eddie Speas [00:02:42]:
None, None. I remember when the first one. There was a house.

Eddie Speas [00:02:46]:
There was.

Eddie Speas [00:02:46]:
I do remember when the first one came out. It was inside the belt line. Overall, no, it wasn't on Fairview. I think it was on Oberlin. There was a listing of Berlin that went over a million dollars. That was a really big deal, man, that.

Matt Fowler [00:02:57]:
I mean, we've talked about all the tech changes, but gosh, the market, what median right now, I think in the Chapel Hill area is like 680.

Eddie Speas [00:03:06]:
Yes, yes. Yeah. So. And it's. And that's the, that's the, that's the one thing I try to bring to TMLS sometimes is perspective change. All the different changes that we've been through, the market changes, the things that you can't ever think that will ever happen. Things like Covid, you know, up and down, you know, and I tell people too, as interesting, Matt, is that over the last, like I said, 30 years, I had never been in a rising interest rate environment my entire career until a couple years ago.

Eddie Speas [00:03:36]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:03:36]:
And wasn't something that was like. It was just this baseline thing.

Eddie Speas [00:03:41]:
Baseline, yeah. Just slowly went down all that time. It never, never spiked back up or anything. So there's just always challenges and. But with that, opportunities that you just cannot predict or understand. You take. And lots of times, you know too, Matt, as you see, is that you take things for granted, like the information that comes there and all those other kind of things.

Matt Fowler [00:04:03]:
And so compensation, other fields in the database that have always been there. And you can't imagine the world where they're not there.

Eddie Speas [00:04:09]:
Correct, correct.

Matt Fowler [00:04:11]:
And then they're not. And that, I guess your point, Eddie, is that's just part of it.

Eddie Speas [00:04:15]:
Right?

Matt Fowler [00:04:15]:
You, if you're in the real estate business, it's just such a dynamic space. It's heavily regulated, it's one of the largest industries in the country. Certainly minor tweaks have enormous impacts. But at the end of the day, you mentioned Covid, people still move, people still have A life change. They still need a new house. They need us to tell them or help them find the one with, you know, with. With wide doors for handicap access or, you know, that's got fiber. Because they both work from home on Zoom all the time.

Matt Fowler [00:04:47]:
And you can't. That's why you can't just buy a house like a plane ticket. You know, like, people thought about that back when you and I were starting in this. There was the Megatrends book back in the day that said that we would be disintermediated. Right. That there wouldn't if there was an agent somewhere that's just going to be a computer. And I think we all just kind of accepted that as true. Except it wasn't.

Matt Fowler [00:05:07]:
You still need a professional to help you through a transaction as, you know, as continually challenging as this one.

Eddie Speas [00:05:15]:
Yeah, absolutely. Whether you want to call it a guide or a counselor or just a helping hand, you know, the buying and selling of real estate is complex, especially in residential. It's emotional. And getting people through that, whether it's been one house that they bought their first house or whether it's been 10, is that they're just. And I've never seen. I've never seen a perfect inspection report, and I've never seen every closing without. I mean, I mean, you can't. Well, to back up a little bit.

Eddie Speas [00:05:45]:
That's what I love about the business, is that every day is different, and I learn something new every day. Something changes every day. And that make. That's a challenge for buyers and sellers who are not in it every day.

Eddie Speas [00:05:58]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:05:58]:
I mean, they. The average buyer and seller, you know, they read things, they see things, they check things in YouTube. They can learn a lot. But experience, experience does matter.

Matt Fowler [00:06:09]:
Well, you know, there's that old adage that if you think hiring a professional is expensive, hire an amateur. Right, Right. And this is, you know, I have a niece that's moving to town from Boston, and she literally has a PhD from MIT. Okay. So there aren't very many people smarter than her. And the very first thing I told her, she's buying a house in Cary, was, you know, I'm going to. You got to hire somebody. Right.

Matt Fowler [00:06:31]:
Because I. I live here and I run the MLS. But I don't know Carrie. Like, somebody needs to know Carrie, with the daycare and the soccer and the greenways and all the stuff in schools, of course. And it's just so much. It's such a better experience, like hiring a local guide when you, you know, if you just like Drive around, look out the window. That's very different than if you have someone who grew up there. Correct.

Matt Fowler [00:06:53]:
And you get to be that for people. Or I guess, let me, I have I skipped a question or two. Eddie, like you manage people in your office. What's your actual role at your company?

Eddie Speas [00:07:02]:
So I'm the Chief Development Officer for Caldwell Banker Advantage, also the qualifying BIC for the firm. Our firm is, we're, we are a family of companies and we have about 60 some offices that spread across Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. My role is to work and help grow the business for the triangle and the triad of our, of our areas. So I work with about 600 agents and 18 managers. And so every day is. I, I, the way I look at it is I'm in the trenches. I choose to be in an office with the agents instead of being in an office somewhere away from the agents. So I have, I have a license.

Eddie Speas [00:07:41]:
I have been in their shoes. I sold for a long time. I did a lot of other things with real estate in my license. But now I work basically to help other agents grow their business or to make their business easier or to be, help them build a better business. So that's where my role is.

Matt Fowler [00:07:57]:
I know you and I talk about those people all the time. You're a zealous advocate, Eddie, for, for, for those folks as I, you know, I couldn't do what I do without that. Right. So, so I'm really interested. You're, you've got your ear to the ground with these people like you, you could avoid them, but you, you don't. You're out there among them. Looking at 20, 25 coming up. We just had a half a point rate cut.

Matt Fowler [00:08:18]:
You know, we have all this automation coming into the business. We have, we have AI, we have these productivity tools that I think are coming in from all over the place. We have all this stuff. You're, you know, you're on the inside. You get to see the new tech coming in. You know, you've been to the, to the conferences and stuff that we go to. What do you tell those, those, the practitioners in your office? All of our subscribers get to see these Meet the Board podcast. But I mean, you're a, you're a leader in, you know, in a big brokerage across, across a few states.

Matt Fowler [00:08:49]:
Is there a theme that you're sharing with your people?

Eddie Speas [00:08:52]:
Well, I don't, That's a great question. Keeping up is not easy. You know, so it starts with knowing the agent really, truly, truly knowing what type of business they're trying to build.

Eddie Speas [00:09:04]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:09:04]:
The agent. The agent has to know what their goals are, what they want to try to achieve and this. And then how do they get their tools. Technology.

Eddie Speas [00:09:13]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:09:14]:
Are built. And the most successful ones, right. That could get in place, either they either make life for me, it's got to solve some different problems.

Eddie Speas [00:09:22]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:09:23]:
It's either got to save the agent money or it has to save them time, or it has to meet the expectations or exceed the expectations of the client.

Eddie Speas [00:09:32]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:09:32]:
So, for example, right now, you cannot imagine having a business that doesn't have E signatures.

Eddie Speas [00:09:38]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:09:39]:
Every buyer and seller now probably expects to be able to sign a contract through E signatures.

Eddie Speas [00:09:44]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:09:45]:
But, you know, when you and I started our careers, the idea that you could have E signatures was not an expectation.

Eddie Speas [00:09:52]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:09:53]:
I mean, we were still using roller roll, roller faxes with the roll paper, and I was the coolest dude in the world with a back phone.

Eddie Speas [00:10:00]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:10:00]:
But. But the idea that, you know that. So, you know, if it don't accept technology or take on technology, if you don't understand why you need it or what you want to do with it, but once you know that, then you can do the research to figure out what tools meet those, what you're trying to achieve, or in one of those categories.

Matt Fowler [00:10:22]:
Yeah. So I guess, let me see if I can. You're meeting, you know, your people, you're meeting them where they are. What is it exactly that we could add to this particular business person's, you know, quiver of stuff that would actually help that person? Because not all technology is going to help everybody. I think, you know, I use these metaphors all the time, Betty. I don't know if that's a bad thing, but I had somebody tell me the other day that if you wanted. If you want a custom cabinets in your house, these are, you know, $30,000 custom cabinets. That person that's going to build them is going to use the tool that they're comfortable with.

Matt Fowler [00:10:54]:
There's a craftsman that lets them deliver the product that they're confident they can deliver. And it may be an old plane from their grandfather, but if they want to make a thousand of them, they're going to need lasers and stuff.

Eddie Speas [00:11:05]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:11:05]:
So you don't know whether to give that person a plane or a laser until you understand what their business is.

Eddie Speas [00:11:12]:
Correct. Plus, how do you meet the needs of an agent who's been with Do5 for one day and a member that's been with Dora for 40 years.

Eddie Speas [00:11:22]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:11:23]:
And that's Always, you know, because that one. Because the one person who's been with the, you know, door fire for 40 years, they may like to use the.

Matt Fowler [00:11:31]:
Plane, but maybe they want to learn.

Eddie Speas [00:11:33]:
To use the laser.

Eddie Speas [00:11:34]:
Right?

Matt Fowler [00:11:34]:
Yeah, that's a. That's an excellent segue here in the. In the 10 minutes or so we have left into. Into choice. Eddie. So you were in the room. It sounds like I'm blaming you. Sounds like I'm blaming you.

Matt Fowler [00:11:45]:
You're in the room when we decided that we couldn't be all things to all people and we shouldn't try to make the plane work for everybody, stretching that metaphor or the laser that we're going to just. Since standards exist, we're going to convert our stuff to standards and we're going to just do both.

Eddie Speas [00:12:00]:
Well, I think you have to back up on that.

Eddie Speas [00:12:02]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:12:02]:
And here's the reason why you're taking for granted the standards part.

Eddie Speas [00:12:06]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:12:07]:
Just like, you know, it's to some degree, we all take for granted that the MLS exists and how it got there and all that kind of stuff.

Matt Fowler [00:12:14]:
But we offer choice. It was based on standards. But you didn't. We can't take standards for granted. Like, we could won the choice.

Eddie Speas [00:12:21]:
Right. So riso.

Matt Fowler [00:12:22]:
Exactly.

Eddie Speas [00:12:22]:
Right. So that's where. Where I was headed with that was real estate standards Organization, you know, has been working. And I know that most Door 5 members don't know who RISO is.

Eddie Speas [00:12:31]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:12:32]:
You and I do.

Eddie Speas [00:12:33]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:12:33]:
But that is a volunteer group that came out of the CMLS, correct? Yeah, ultimately, to some degree. Right. Which is multiple listing services, Right. I believe it's a volunteer organization.

Matt Fowler [00:12:45]:
Yep.

Eddie Speas [00:12:46]:
And they. They created the ability, basically, in my simple terms, is that all these different MLSs had to have engineers writing code in order to figure out how to put. Because everybody said a Data was different.

Matt Fowler [00:13:00]:
600 different, like spreadsheet formats, right?

Eddie Speas [00:13:04]:
Yeah, exactly. Right. And in order to become efficient, in order to be able to share data properly.

Eddie Speas [00:13:10]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:13:11]:
And to do more with the data, it had to be in an organized format.

Eddie Speas [00:13:15]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:13:16]:
And so we're very lucky that RISO put those standards together. And I believe that do. We're one of the first, if not the first, to be fully resource certified.

Matt Fowler [00:13:26]:
We're the most certified MLS in the country. I keep finding a way that doesn't make it sound crazy, but we're the most certified MLS in the country with all three, because we also have the coveted third one, which is a little foreshadowing into something we're releasing next year, which is the Ability to write into the database, not just read from it. So we'll be able to have. If you're inside the Caldwell Banker ecosystem and you've got the house already identified inside your own system as a lead and it's, you know, it's in there, the CMA program, the CRM system that you use probably in some internal form system to get the contract signed. What this is foreshadowing is the ability for you or your listing broker to just click push the okay, it's time for the MLS now button. And it just posts inside the MLS. You never logged into Paragon Matrix or Flex MLS. You logged into the Caldwell Banker ecosystem.

Matt Fowler [00:14:20]:
And there's no particular reason that my organization should require you to use a piece of software that we picked that sits there in the middle when the standards allow you to just give me the listing. And that means. And it blows our, our subscribers minds. But instead of front end of choice, there's no front end. It's just, it's just the Caldwell Banker software.

Eddie Speas [00:14:41]:
Right. Is in the ecosystem of whatever firm.

Eddie Speas [00:14:44]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:14:44]:
Or the. Right.

Matt Fowler [00:14:45]:
That's right. And if you want something different, if you want the, you know, making up numbers, if you want the $500 a month one that comes with a virtual assistant and all the AI stuff, maybe there is such a thing.

Eddie Speas [00:14:57]:
You know, don't say that out loud. Right.

Matt Fowler [00:14:59]:
But I mean, to go with that, there's also basic cable.

Eddie Speas [00:15:02]:
Yes. I mean it could.

Matt Fowler [00:15:03]:
There's one that's less than.

Eddie Speas [00:15:04]:
Yeah.

Eddie Speas [00:15:05]:
And I think that's what you're, what you're really saying is that it's our, our job at DORF to give the agents as many options as possible to do their business and do it well.

Eddie Speas [00:15:14]:
Right.

Matt Fowler [00:15:14]:
Yeah.

Eddie Speas [00:15:16]:
However they think that's exactly right is that it's not door father's job to even the playing field or doing anything like that.

Eddie Speas [00:15:22]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:15:22]:
Which you know, I've always been, you know, vocal about. But at the same time, it is Door 5's job to help all the members.

Eddie Speas [00:15:31]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:15:31]:
And that would, that is through lots of options and lots of choices.

Matt Fowler [00:15:35]:
Yeah. And we're going to, we're. We're finding stuff all the time like, like a new CMA product that's going to be on the dashboard shortly. And it, it may be that you have a CMA in rer. You have a CMA in your MLS of choice. There's one in Home Spotter, there's one in however many CMAs lots you have access to. And what we're doing is we're putting a CMA that we found in Texas that's got a couple of installations around the country called CMA Snap. And it's, it uses our standards, it's a high quality product.

Matt Fowler [00:16:02]:
We're going to put a try CMA Snap button on the dashboard and if you want to try it, try it. You don't. Didn't cost you anything. It didn't disrupt your paradigm system or whatever. But it might be the thing that really speaks to you as an analyst, as somebody who's come up, coming up with the price for a listing and it might be the thing that you and your team uses to differentiate yourself with.

Eddie Speas [00:16:22]:
And this was like what you're talking about is where we're able to offer options, right. If an agent wants to have it, then they can have it, choose to pay for it. If another one doesn't want it, it's perfectly fine.

Eddie Speas [00:16:33]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:16:34]:
I mean, it's. Don't want to get into too far in the weeds. But you know, data is everywhere. It is out there and it is not one person's. I mean, once it's out there, it's out there. And it used to be that, you know, MLS was afraid to, you know, oh, well, we don't want to. Like when Showing Time first came around, there was a firm that used Showing Time.

Eddie Speas [00:16:55]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:16:55]:
And that firm had used Showing Time. And you know, and as far as I know, at the time, they were the only one using Showing Time.

Eddie Speas [00:17:02]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:17:02]:
And then came whether or not, you know, does that firm have an edge that they wanted to keep for themselves and use it and when. As a tool that they thought eventually it became a tool that was best used and by the whole system and it became part of what we do. And now it's one of the most liked systems. But over time, tools no longer give agents an edge. You know, it does sometimes at the beginning.

Eddie Speas [00:17:25]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:17:25]:
But there's as, as things progress and becomes more available to everybody. You know, I think what you're saying.

Matt Fowler [00:17:31]:
Is that's a moving target, right? So there are things that would not have been appropriate that we have now in the system and there are probably things that we wouldn't do today that we will consider in a year or two. I could. Yeah, exactly.

Eddie Speas [00:17:43]:
Right. It's a, it's a, it's a. That's the role of the. I believe you and I believe that the role of the DORF is to be the best system and to provide the most opportunities to help the agents. And to do that, you do have to be A little more on the cutting edge, which is hard.

Matt Fowler [00:18:01]:
Yeah. I mean, to be fair, you've been on the board for a long time, Eddie. To be fair, I think we shifted gears pretty abruptly. Is that fair?

Eddie Speas [00:18:08]:
We picked up speed, that's for sure.

Matt Fowler [00:18:11]:
I clearly had an architect architecture in mind that came from years and years in the business that I felt needed to have it shot out in the real world. This choice model, we're not the first ones, but we're among the first. And I think so many people are moving to this. If you're watching the podcast today, it's not fully public, but it's public enough to say that our colleagues down at Canopy announced the other day that they'd signed an agreement with Paragon. So alongside their Matrix platform, they're going to offer their subscribers the ability to choose Paragon. You know, I wonder where that idea came from. And I don't say that, you know, all that self congratulatory because this was John Mosey's idea in 2015 and Bob Bemis before him. Michael Werzer released the Spark API in 2013.

Matt Fowler [00:18:59]:
My company back then released the Spring API in 2013. We all saw this coming, and it's taken dramatically longer than any of us imagined that it would. But we had this architecture in mind and it's what we rolled out last November. And it has been very turbulent and there are things that are still getting fixed. Like the 600,000 photos we just talked about have been added to one of the platforms. No, it's October 28th. That's 11 months later. So that's been a challenge to get the data in sync.

Eddie Speas [00:19:28]:
It definitely has been a challenge. It's been a way bigger challenge than any of us ever predicted or could have predicted. I think, I think what, I think what I feel comfortable with, I don't want to speak for any, any other board member or for you or anyone else, but I feel more comfortable with, as I told agents when I speak to them, is I 100% believe that we have the right strategy.

Eddie Speas [00:19:49]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:19:49]:
The strategy is sound. What we're doing is sound. It is great business practice. And we believe the best strategy execution by some of the vendors and how it went through went poorly.

Eddie Speas [00:20:02]:
Right.

Eddie Speas [00:20:02]:
And we all learned more. And it was painful, man. Gosh, it was painful.

Matt Fowler [00:20:07]:
I mean, it continues to be for forever.

Eddie Speas [00:20:10]:
You know, it continues to be painful, but the path is clear. The strategy is sound, and we feel very comfortable that it's getting better every day and that the product in the end and all the products that are now going to be available will make the agents better at what they do.

Matt Fowler [00:20:28]:
Yeah, a hundred percent. Eddie, really appreciate you spending some time with us today. This is going to go out to all our subscribers. We're having these, these interviews like this with all of our board members. I hope that subscribers watching this get a little better idea of what goes on in there. These meetings last for three or four hours sometimes, and we really talk through this stuff.

Eddie Speas [00:20:46]:
Those are the short ones, Matt.

Matt Fowler [00:20:48]:
Yeah, I know.

Eddie Speas [00:20:49]:
Well, it's.

Matt Fowler [00:20:49]:
And it's not like we don't talk in between the meetings, too. I mean, we have, we have a lot of calls and contracts and stuff that we have to go over. We have a very compressed schedule. And then the industry drops stuff on us, you know, that we have to deal with, like August 17, for example. But we do and we persevere. Thank you for joining us again, and I hope you guys tune in for the next week before. Thanks again. Thanks, Eddie.

Eddie Speas [00:21:10]:
Thank you, Matt.

Matt Fowler [00:21:10]:
Appreciate it.