Getting a Fast, Confidential Broker Opinion of Value, with Edward Winslow

0:02 I'm very fortunate to work with some great fiduciaries and attorneys who often times work probate or trust litigation that involves portfolio of properties. And sometimes there's several residential properties and then a couple commercial properties. Maybe a industrial, maybe a also an office building. And if you're out of that area of expertise, what do you do? How do you get a broker price opinion for the attorney that might need it or the family? What do you do about that? Well, we're lucky today to have a proprietor of the website

0:29 Called broker opinion of value that really focuses on a variety of property types, non-residential. So, rather than just getting a Zillow estimate for residential property, you have an opportunity to use this tool to move things forward. Edward Winslow is a proprietor of brokeropinionofvalue.com. Edward, thanks for joining us today.

0:46 Thank you, Bill. Appreciate you having me. What was the impetus behind starting this product or this program? You know, it was just you know, it was an idea about a year ago. You know, I have a network of right now I've got a network of about 700 commercial brokers in a school group. And you know, the whole the whole theme is how do you get business? Like how do you use the internet to generate business, which is something that I've been involved in for 20 years. And so I thought, well, why not just create a broker I happened to see the brokeropinionofvalue.com was available, so I bought the domain name and I created a website for it and I let it sit for quite a while. And the idea was

1:28 We'll start building out pages and content way better than the brokers are going to be able to do for themselves and we'll, you know, launch this on a nationwide basis. So, we broke it down into individual pages. Like if you go to brokeropinionofvalue.com, you'll see all the different categories. And you know, we broke them down many different ways and so it's you it's one of these things with the internet that's one of the things, a great thing about the internet is that, you know, sometimes you have an idea in mind about what you're going to do, but you don't really know where it's going to take you until you start seeing results. And you know, it wasn't that long ago that I got a, you know, a great call. I was telling you about it before the call here today about how somebody in Dallas was that there was a property going through a bankruptcy. It was a triple net lease deal. A restaurant was the single tenant, and they were going bankrupt. So, you have an issue there where somebody needed a broker opinion of value. So, what I did was I got the phone call, and I handed it over to somebody in my group who's up in McKinney, Texas, with the just a little bit north of Dallas, and I handed it over to him. He called the he called this individual, put together the BOV. He got paid for that, and now he's in talks with these people about doing some kind of work, out selling the property. And they also want to they own another 20 properties as well. So, he got himself in with a real, you know, that one lead turned into something really great.

3:01 And you know, what I do is when, you know, with the brokers I work with, you know, I work with them on, you know, you utilizing this strategy. I call it proof stacking, right? It's the concept of just layering evidence, using the evidence to build your credibility. And that's how we work on developing business. And so, this is what I teach everybody. So, when they do the when they get the lead for the BOV, they also are not just a broker doing a BOV, but they're a broker that's got credibility because they have all these trust assets we've helped them build. And that's really what this I mean, the industry the real estate industry is all about trust.

3:42 Right. You know, it's who do you trust? I mean, that's really at the bottom of the at the end of the day, it's who do I trust that's going to be, you know, do the best job for me?

3:50 So, this is cool. That's the sort how it evolved, you know? So, this tool to a to an attorney maybe in a you know market where there's not he doesn't have relationship with a commercial broker. Of course, he always go online and look for one themself. But, imagine that's kind of what you're doing. Either you have you have already have a network of 700. So, you either have somebody in that market already or you're reaching out to brokers like that. So, you're not just getting anybody getting somebody that you've worked with and can send that work to get the opinion. What's the cost for the attorney or what's the cost for real estate broker to get a BOV in a in a market like that for a could be a you know 5 10 million dollar property? Well, it depends on the situation, right? You know, some of sometimes the brokers are going to do the if they think that there is a shot of getting a listing.

4:37 They're just going to do the BOV for free. For sure. You know, if it's a if it's a different scenario that's you know, sometimes they need an expert witness. The BOV becomes part of the expert witness thing. So, every there's no real cut and dry situation. It's not a commoditized product. It's more of a you know, sort of a finesse situation. Like what is the scenario? You know, if it's something that is you know, like an estate that's not going to do something for 5 years. You know, do you want to do you know, that's a broker's choice, right? You know, maybe they charge $500, 1,000, 1,500. It could be more depending on what's involved.

5:20 So, when you get a request in your in your network doesn't have somebody in that niche, who's the person who performs the BOV? How do you How does that process happen?

5:29 Well, what we work with you know, a big part of the strategy that I listen, I work with Bob Knakal. I came out of CBRE.

5:41 For those who don't know, Bob Knakal is the icon of Manhattan multifamily property. He spoke at the EXP Commercial Convention and I saw him there and got his book and amazing. But when I say the icon, I mean like he's a really good agent, he's done really well. I mean like everybody in that business knows who he is and he's been the number one guy in that market as long as he's been in that business. So, just FYI.

6:04 Flowers for I'm not a call. Well, my background with Bob is that I started with CB in New Jersey when I got out of college and I was there for about a year and I there was nobody in my market in New Jersey that could help me. I wanted to be in the investment sales business.

6:19 And I heard about Bob and I called him up and he would he had been in the business for about three or four years at that time. And I called him up and I said, "Hey, I'm looking to do what you're doing out here in New Jersey. Could I talk to you?" He said, "Well, why don't you come on in?" So, I went in and I met him and from that point Bob and I just hit it off and I used to go in every Saturday morning, I'd drive into the city and Bob and I would sit there with Bob and help him with his newsletters and you know, his you know, market reports and you know, all that kind of stuff. And that's how I got it going with Bob. And today, I worked with them a year later, he started his own firm. I was his first broker. So, I learned the business really from Bob.

6:59 Did you see the map that he talks about? I know the map very well because we used to make those maps. We never We used to The way that firm was built, you know, Massey Knakal Realty, was each one of us had a like a territory. And we would build out those block and lot maps.

7:16 Right. Bob and you know, when COVID came around had an idea, why don't I go block by block by block through the city. He went from like 96th Street all the way down to the Battery, South tip of Manhattan. He walked every single block. Every single block with his you know, the Sanborn block and lot map and he identified every single development site because that's what he's moved into in the last couple years.

7:44 Right. He's moved into development site sales. He's crushing it. But I what I did was he reached out to me cuz I built you know built this internet thing and he reached out to me and he said, "Can you help me with what you whatever it is that you're doing?"

8:01 Right. And so I built out he and I worked together and we built out his whole online strategy. Wow. And so and then today you know Bob and I are still working together and I generate a lot of business for Bob online. And so I have a very unique perspective and a lot of credibility working with Bob. I mean I'm writing press releases and doing what we were talking about earlier for Bob every week.

8:29 Okay, so I don't agree with you. I'm sorry. I'm a bit of a fanboy. You're a bigger fanboy than I am. I'll concede that. So let's go back to the question. I mean we could talk about Bob Knakal I guess for a whole episode and we wouldn't even cover he's just an amazing person. If you're interested in commercial real estate or the business at all or just being a an entrepreneur, amazing story. Get the book, read it. Phenomenal. Can you go back to the story? So somebody goes online needs a broker opinion on some property that they're not that they don't have a resource for. Or maybe they have one they're not sure. You know, you have a commercial agent but he really does mostly industrial and this is an office building and this is multi-family. So I have a guy I love but he's just not really in my opinion professionally the right guy to really give you that opinion. So the opinion comes into you. You have a network that I'm sure fills a lot of those gaps but sometimes you don't have somebody in the network that you have. Are do you have somebody to cover all products nationally because

9:20 Not I don't have every single one and I will I will eventually but I know like I know the business so well at this point cuz I've been at it so for so long.

9:30 You know, I know triple net lease people. I know industrial people. I know most people that sell marinas. You know, RV parks all that. So I can size somebody up pretty quickly.

9:40 Okay. Because what I want is I want what we're doing is, you know, in my group, we talk about specialization, how to develop specialization.

9:48 Yes, for sure. And that's what we're looking for. We're looking for, you know, broker opinion value is not just a lead generation, give it to anybody. We want people who specialize in something specific.

10:00 Right. And then what we can do as a BOV, you know, as the broker opinion value, we can create pages on our site that are going to rank on Google and all these AI sites around that broker. So, we're building out their sort of like online SEO strategy on our site as long as well as their site. And so that's sort of how it works. It works really well. And it's almost like a franchise program. So, we want people we want people that will when somebody is looking for a BOV, we can steer them to the right person who knows that market really well.

10:39 I think that's one of the exciting changes about the technology changes we're all involved with. On one hand, it's overwhelming, it's moving quickly, very technical, very scary. On the other hand, and you and I spoke about this, it really is taking the premium from just playing, let's say, a video game with your website to really authenticating the experts in the field and promoting them instead of 40 searches, you're getting one or two who are really at the top. You mentioned a case where somebody looked for somebody and found Bob Knakal. Well, of course, if you're looking for a development site in Manhattan, any AI worth its salt is going to is going to mention Bob Knakal as the only result. And we all have that opportunity in our niche and in our local market to be that person. So, talk a bit about how you're coaching the real estate brokers, whether commercial, and I guess the same information I think applies to residential agents. And I think it applies to attorneys as well. Know

11:31 It doesn't matter who it is. You know, I tell you, I live in I live in Wilton, Connecticut. It's about, you know, I'm about 40 miles from the New York. And I live right next to a town called New Canaan and also Norwalk. And I live in this area called the Silvermine Historic District. Now, in the Silvermine Historic District, there's probably a thousand single-family homes. Now, the annual turnover rate is probably, let's say it's 5%. Well, out of those thousand owners, there's 50 properties a year that are going to sell. So, if you go into the Silvermine, like if I was to say, "You know what? I'm going to be a residential broker. I'm going to specialize in the Silvermine Historic District. I'm going to put together newsletters. I'm going to write whatever. I'm going to be the Silvermine expert. I'm going to not deviate.

12:20 Right. I'm just going to focus on that market. I'm going to know everything. I'm going to know every different kind of property, the difference between a pink house and a blue house, a green house and a yellow house, a three-story versus a two-story. Like, I'm going to know everything about these houses.

12:35 Right. And that's the model. Like, it doesn't matter whether you are residential, you're selling land, you're selling I mean, there are people that I know that I know this woman who does nothing but sell auto loops, you know, mom-and-pop auto loops. And she has a whole network and she reaches out and that's her thing. Like, she knows the auto loop market, the mom-and-pop auto loop market. So, it's really this is the you know, it's I the one of the things I explained everybody in my group, I said, "What we're trying to do is imagine if you owned the Starbucks on the prime corner in your town." Like, everybody knows that Starbucks. And that's really what you want to do with your business. You want to build your business with such clarity

13:21 Right. That everybody knows who you are. They talk about you. The AI sites today are the exact same way because

13:30 What they're doing is they're favoring that specialist. If you are a generalist, you're not going to perform online today. It's a it's the game has changed and it's really it's really interesting. It's a real phenomenon. But I'm sure you I'm sure you see that in your business. There are people that you know, have these tight little specialized markets. Doesn't mean that you'll always be in these tight little specialized markets. You know, you get to know people in your market.

13:54 Right. They you know, you get business outside your market a lot of times, but that's really where it starts. Well, that's what I've done in my probate niche in LA County is really know every try to my goal is know every single transaction, every single attorney, every single case, every single judge, every single room, every you know, to try to be the Bob Knakal of probate in Los Angeles County. And then the benefit of that is knowing what works, what doesn't work and being able to play on the edges. In your example, and I say this to real estate agents all the time, if you're going to work the Silvermine District where there's a thousand homes, all you have to do is go see all 1,000 homes and you're now the expert cuz I assure you there agents in that area who do a lot of business for the last 10 years that they've just gotten lazy. They're just not bothering to go out and really look at them all. They don't have a map or a database or a tool. And if you're brand new, you can compete with the top two or three in your market just by learning every single home, every listing, every expired, every so sell house, every floor plan, every statistic in that thousand homes. It's not that hard to do. Same with probate. We have you know, we I want to have 500 cases a month filed in LA County. It's only 6,000 a year. That's all there are. And so, if you know all the attorneys on that list, at some point you start to break down the business. So, let's go back to the to the broker opinion value. So, again, this is a tool that you would you're a service you're offering just like any real estate agent would of different types of products nationally.

15:19 So, this is ideal for an attorney who has a estate with out of area property or maybe they're not familiar with commercial agents in certain niches and what that. Is this something they might want to get for a second opinion? Maybe you call a real estate agent, they give you a broker price opinion. I've seen some I look at that. I mean I work hard when I get a chance. I try to make it like it's a full CMA, a full presentation to the seller with scientific detail that I can back up the data. But I've seen some that are just really looks like they just put together, you know, a couple paragraphs. If somebody has a real estate agent they've solicited but they're not happy, is this a second

15:57 It could It can be. Now, like when I get when I get these phone calls, these inbound calls, you know, I ask a lot of important questions. Like, you know, I ask them about themselves. Like, what is the goal? What are you looking to do? Tell me about the property. Tell me about the zoning. Tell me about the condition. You know, how long you know, why did you know, so-and-so buy it in the beginning? Like, I want to know everything about this property cuz there's so many factors that go into a property. So, when I get that information and I hand that over to a broker that's in my group, right? And they've got that lead, they know everything. So, when they pick up that phone and they call that owner or whoever it is, a lawyer or CPA or you know, whatever it might be, it is not a phone it is not a cold call. The these people do not have to repeat the you know, what they just said again. It's all teed up on a silver platter for the broker. So, the broker comes in very knowledgeable. You know, they just end up with so much credibility because you're starting the conversation, you know, on a zero to 10 scale, right? You know, 10 being the weakest, 10 being the strongest. They're coming in at like, you know, maybe a seven or eight in you know, on the trust meter. And that's where we want it.

17:18 And on the consumer of the report side, they're going to get somebody who's vetted and also get somebody who is prepared to take the property and market it properly, not just convince you to list with them, but they're actually going to plan and a and with some proven results. The one of the main tools I know you use is and encourage is press releases. And I have to say, I've noticed this. I've not found until you a vendor that I would consider credible in that space for me to use. I've often thought about the value of press releases because I notice when I look at results, AI results, as well as search results and different alerts and such, that is very heavily weighted by either press releases or a news story in some obscure news source generated by that press release, which is the same thing in a sense as the press release. So, talk a bit about how that's part of your offering works, meaning obviously we're talking to users potentially have broker price opinion, but you also have the background of the back piece of that, which is the marketing to help get them to use this tool for themselves. What does that look like?

18:24 Well, you know, just a I did an interview with a guy in northern Virginia that I do a lot of work with. And we did a press release for him it's over a year ago and he got a call from a complete stranger who owned a it was a somebody from New Jersey who had bought a property in northern Virginia. It was 22 acres. It had a 300,000 square foot industrial building on it. The guy needed to sell the property. He saw the press release, called this individual, his name is Joe Serafin from Serafin Real Estate. And you know, it was like an easy listing to get. I mean, it was insane to get a piece of business like that from a complete stranger, but they trusted what they saw and they read the story. So, he gets the listing and then he said, "Ed, can we do a press release campaign to promote the property? We use You know, one of the big news sites that we use is Business Insider. Business Insider has just been magical.

19:28 Yeah. Yeah. When you know how to use it the right way, it gets picked up by Google News and it gets picked up by Bing and MSN and all these. So you're getting a lot of distribution. Well, we promoted the press release with to promote that property and the buyer came from the press release. So the seller and the buyer, that was a $14 million direct deal. No cold calls, no like easy to get. That's the power of this whole thing. Now, so when somebody comes to me looking for a BOV and I hand it over to the broker, it's like, "Listen, the way I'm going to make money, I mean, this is one of the ways that I can make money with it, is that when you get that listing, you come to me and you hire you pay for our press release and we'll promote the property for you." And it's so it's a really nice synergistic relationship. It works really well together. You know, everybody wins. And that's sort of how we do it.

20:26 And I know clients love to see the press release in the marketing as a result of the press release cuz that it just is so tangible, particularly on non-residential properties where I you know, I don't I know for the high-end properties press releases are important. On the middle part, I don't know how really critical it is. We can disagree on that and I you know, you know, with all respect, but on the non-residential where the marketing with the MLS is so fragmented and the platforms are so fragmented, I can just see that it's all about the marketing and a particular press release being powerful.

20:56 That these things are magical. I'm going to tell you we can we can promote a press release, you know, like Thursday afternoon and it is live, it's ranking on Google Friday morning. And that's how I mean, it's amazing. It really is. And then you can as the broker can show the owner, "Hey, go check take a look do this such and such search. You're going to see your property. Here's a link to the Business Insider. Here's where it is on Google News." And you just have so much credibility. The owner just loves you.

21:27 Yeah. You imagine. Well, look, Ed, we always go way deep on both sides of this. It's amazing program and I know it's something you just worked on the last year or so. We've had amazing results based on your network. Look forward to getting more information. We'll invite you back in a few months again update. If someone's going to get a hold of Ed, let's see here. I didn't check with him. Is this phone number good for

21:46 That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. So, you can call him. We didn't You know, we had We had long conversation before we recorded. I didn't get to check his information, but phone number [phone number]. He's a real estate evaluation expert and the website is This is the resource brokeropinionofvalue.com. And so, if you can't write that down because you're driving or something, please feel free to reach out to me. And love to have you. And again, this is the website we looked at this. It has all the different products on it that if you're looking if you're an attorney looking for BOV or a if you are a real estate agent with an out of area property or out of product property, want some help on it's a great resource. Ed, thank you so much for sharing today this amazing tool and continued success with your program.

22:27 Thank you very much, Bill. Thanks for having me. And for the rest of you, this is Probate Weekly. We get together every week most commonly with probate attorneys or litigation attorneys. But in this case, I thought it was an amazing resource that will help our attorneys, our families, our fiduciaries be more effective doing their job. I hope you find it interesting, too. Love to get your comments. Like this, subscribe, send me a question, comment. If you're an attorney who wants to be on interviewed, let me know as well. You can reach out to me @billgrossprobate on social media. As always, make today your best day ever. Thanks so much.