Unlocking Real Estate Success: Mike Gebhardt’s Journey from Wall Street to Homeownership

Erika (01:31)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika, and today I am so excited to be joined by Mike Gebhardt. He’s a real estate agent that is…

Mike Gebhardt (01:41)
cut.

My name is Mike.

Erika (01:44)
Hi, you are crushing it in in deals and there is so much that you know about the about the mortgage world We’re so great to have you on the show

Mike Gebhardt (01:55)
Thank you. I appreciate being here.

Erika (01:58)
So our listeners here are gonna love about all the things that you’re doing out in Boulder, Colorado and how you’re keeping things running smoothly out there. So give us a quick rundown, Mike. What is your main focus these days? What markets are you operating in?

Mike Gebhardt (02:16)
I appreciate being here. And thanks for having me, Erika. And real estate pros. I really appreciate being here. The market I live in a town called Superior, which is just north of, ⁓ I’m sorry, just south of Boulder, Colorado. And I work from Longmont to Broomfield or North Denver. And I would say that’s about a 50 mile stretch. been in, I’ve been in this market for, I’ve been out here in the Colorado front range since 2019.

But I’ve been focusing on Boulder and Broomfield in the last six to eight months.

Erika (02:53)
Awesome, What really stood out to me is how many different areas of real estate and different things you’ve worked on over the years. Can you talk about that journey a little bit?

Mike Gebhardt (03:08)
Sure, I’d be happy to. ⁓ I grew up in New York, if you can’t tell about my accident. I grew up, and I don’t even try to hide it anymore, I grew up in New York and lived on Long Island and worked on Wall Street for a long time. So I came to real estate through the finance side of it. My Wall Street career, I was a bond trader, so I was kind of an interest rate geek and I was always watching the Fed and was always watching mortgage rates.

And in 2010, my Wall Street career ended and a friend of mine said I’d be a great realtor because I had a good sphere of influence. had people, a lot of people that I knew on Long Island that were in the same stage as me, know, 50 years old, something like that. So I got my license quickly and built a real estate business as a realtor in two brokerages on Long Island till 2018. ⁓

did not really work in the mortgage side at that point. I came from mortgages and I knew mortgages and I could talk the game very well with my clients, but I was just strictly a realtor. And I did, I built a pretty good real estate business at that point. You know, I was through the twists and turns of life in our fifties though, a couple of things happened to me. I had a health issue, I had a death in a family and one thing led to another. I, um,

I moved out of New York and moved to Costa Rica for a year, thought I might retire there. And it turns out that both of my children settled in the Denver area. So I moved to Denver, Boulder, Colorado in 2019. And I got into ⁓ funding, ⁓ helping fund fix and flips for fix and flip investors and buy and hold investors. I broke it. I broke it money. I broke it hard money ⁓ thinking I might be a fix and flip investor myself. But it turns out the margins weren’t there.

weren’t what I expected in that business. So I just helped provide financing for Fix and Flips for a couple of years. And then about after two or three years of that, had my license. ⁓ I went back to being Joe Realtor and I went back to selling houses.

A couple of years ago, I got a mortgage license. So now I’m one of the 1 % of Realtors in the country that also has a mortgage license, which is a very good advantage for buyer clients that I have.

If having everything in-house works a lot easier. Some people will argue with that, but I will digress from there.

Erika (06:14)
Well, either way, you are a rare combo, which is very cool. What’s been a key to juggling both of those roles?

Mike Gebhardt (06:24)
That’s a great question. That’s a very good question. ⁓ I come from both of those roles. Well, I come to real estate first. job, what I consider my purpose, my utmost purpose is to help first time home buyers and help people like me in my demographic in my 60s trade down or trade out of the equity that they’ve built in their big houses. They don’t need the room anymore. As part of that service,

When I sit down at a listing appointment or a buyer consultation, the first thing we really do is talk about money and what your goals are. When I’m talking to a first time home buyer, I explained that it’s very difficult to make enough money these days to become wealthy. You really need to own assets that appreciate with inflation. So we talk a lot of economics at my appointments. When I sit down with the other avatar that I have, the people that are trading down, we talk about how to protect the equity that they’ve built up in their primary residence.

What the key is for me is I always come to it from a real estate aspect first. And as an adjunct, I will talk about the ⁓ mortgage aspect of it. Because some people, some of the older folks that are trading down, they don’t really need a mortgage or they might buy, they may not need to, but they may buy their new primary home with a reverse mortgage where they don’t have to make payments and it’s a really good tax planning tool.

So I have a basis in some finance that I can help them with those decisions. I find it certainly the financial stuff really helps the first time home buyers because there’s a lot of things that they just don’t know that they don’t know.

Erika (08:02)
Yeah, it’s got to be really rewarding that you have that unique experience and perspective to offer them. Being in, you know, having your feet in both areas.

Mike Gebhardt (08:13)
I hate to say this, Erika, but sometimes what I really want to do is look at people across the table at a listing or a buyer’s appointment and just say, please don’t make the mistakes that I made. This is what I really want to do. And I’m at a point in my life where I can explain that to people in a nice way that say, listen, I know you want to buy this house at this price point with this mortgage. I promise you that I don’t want to be overbearing, but what you really want to do is buy the…

the least house in the best neighborhood instead. I have the experience and I’ve seen things happen that first time home buyers just don’t know about yet. I have my feet ⁓ firmly on the ground and I try not to push anybody which way, but I don’t want people to make the mistakes that I made and I’ve made some mistakes.

Erika (09:06)
So saying that, it makes me think. Every real estate pro has a moment where things got real. A deal that went sideways, or maybe you had the pivot. Can you share any of those moments in your journey?

Mike Gebhardt (09:23)
My pivots, a lot of them have to do with personal issues in my life. ⁓ In my life, ⁓ in the last 15 years, I’ve lost a spouse to cancer. I ⁓ had a massive heart attack and had emergency open heart surgery and couldn’t work for a few months. ⁓ I do a lot of charity work for… ⁓

for drug and alcohol counseling. I help a lot of people get sober. And all that work I’ve done in my life has helped me in my businesses because at the end of the day, this transaction, really doesn’t matter that much. I can come to every meeting that I have with a potential client or every meeting I have with a client from the aspect of this is not the end of the world. We’re going to get through this because there’s so many more important things than a real estate transaction.

What I have had to pivot from

is ⁓ I thought, I don’t know if we, I don’t think we covered it in my, in the webcast yet, that I own a restaurant with my daughter. I don’t think you mentioned that. And as part of that, I realized two years ago that I had to go back and become much more involved in real estate than I thought I was going to be. And that was a big pivot point for me.

And that came right as the NAR settlement was coming out. That came right as people have like, I have always had a contract with my buyers, but it became a lot more important to explain to buyers and to sellers what the NAR settlement meant last year. So the pivot points I’ve had in my life have all been in the last couple of years and they’ve all helped me develop my brand, which we spoke about previously.

Erika (11:44)
Wow, thanks for sharing that, Mike. You had mentioned the NAR settlement. We also have people that are new to the industry. Can you fill those who are new more in on that and the ripple effect that it have?

Mike Gebhardt (11:51)
Yes, excuse me.

Wow. ⁓

Well, the NAR settlement basically states that we have to explain to buyers and sellers, certainly things, we have to explain things that were always true, but were never ⁓ explained by most agents, whether you’re a realtor or a broker or whatever title you use. ⁓

What the NAR settlement states is we have to explain to sellers how buyer’s agents get paid. We have to explain to buyers how buyer’s agents get paid. We have to now explain that of course all fees, all professional fees, commissions, whatever word you want to use, that they’re always and always were negotiable and that we have to be fully disclosed in everything we do, which is all to the good for ⁓ the industry. A lot of people didn’t explain that stuff before and

And it was kind of a gray area. Nobody really knew. Everybody just said, do you sign and let’s go on with this. What I think that does for the industry is having full disclosure to all parties involved is all to the best. What was the second part of the question? I’m sorry.

Erika (13:16)
I was I was asking what the ripple effects were of that settlement

Mike Gebhardt (13:20)
You know, it’s funny, ⁓ a lot of people thought that the ripple, if you read everything last summer when the settlement was coming down, I think it came down in August, ⁓ you would have thought that buyer side commissions would fade into nothing and sellers would say, I’m not going to pay buyer’s agents anymore. And I didn’t believe that was going to happen and what I thought has been born out. Honestly, in the bolder market, there’s been very, very little ripple effects.

Buyers commissions have not come in at all. ⁓ It’s kind of just business as normal. What I do think one of the other ripple effects is I think weaker agents are not doing any deals because they’re not strong enough to sit down and explain how the settlement works. They’re not good enough to explain what their value is to a client and they can’t just walk around and hope to get paid from a listing because as you know, we don’t know what a listing pays a buyer if at all.

So we have to make sure that we ascertain that in our buyer contract. I hope that makes sense without getting too arcane.

Erika (14:21)
Yeah.

Sarah, that was very helpful. you you talked about, you know, agents who are, you know, new or not as experienced, small or struggling with that. And ⁓ as I’m sure you’re familiar with, relationships are the backbone of this industry. What’s been a game changer for you when it comes to building your network?

Mike Gebhardt (14:47)
You know, the funny thing is I used to think that, you know, where I come from, when you start on Wall Street in the eighties, as a young man, they hand you a big book, it’s called the Red Book, and they say, start calling banks, start cold calling, and you make a lot of calls and hopefully you build relationships. And I thought that that worked in real estate too. Remember, I didn’t join real estate till 2010, and I did a lot of that. But what I’ve found is most of my transactions last year came from ⁓

walking down the fairways with my golf buddies.

And I’m in a band and playing playing gigs with my my friends because people know they know you’re in real estate. Your friends always ask you, how’s the market? What’s going on in my neighborhood? What’s going on in my neck of the woods? So I don’t I don’t really have to buy or sell houses. What I do is provide information for my friends and

If we’re not transactional and we can be relationship oriented, that’s the best way to build a business.

Erika (16:29)
Yes, absolutely. people want to work with people that they like, know, and trust, right? So before we wrap up, Mike, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about your work, maybe they want to collaborate, or maybe they need help with a mortgage, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Mike Gebhardt (16:35)
Correct. Correct.

Well, I could I can give you an email on a phone number. How’s that? I work at Coldwell Banker in Boulder and my email is Mike.gebhart.g-e-b as in boy h-a-r-d-t at c-b-reality.com and my phone number is 303-303-681-7006. I almost forgot it there for a second.

Erika (16:56)
awesome.

Well, thank you, Mike. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your story. We need more pros out here like you who really care and want to do things the right way.

Mike Gebhardt (17:33)
Thank you so much. really appreciate this today, Erika. Thank you.

Erika (17:37)
And for everyone tuning in, if you found value in this episode, make sure you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more conversations coming up with experts like Mike, who are building the future of real estate. We’ll see you on the next episode. Bye.