How to Survive a Frozen Real Estate Market Using AI, Lean Systems & Brokerage Innovation

Dustin Parker (00:00)

I would just say that anyone that’s in the real estate industry today is navigating through one of the most difficult markets that we’ve seen in American history. You know, we had the financial crisis, we’ve had, you know, the real estate crash back in 07 and 08, but those were different animals. know, homes were depreciating rapidly and people were underwater and that really infected, you know, so many people. But today’s market is just frozen. You know, our transaction count is just, ⁓ is some of the lowest that we’ve seen of all time.

So I think you have to grind it through right now. Whatever you were doing that may have worked previously, you need to double and triple those efforts today.

Q Edmonds (02:08)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am super excited to be here today. I have someone who has built the fantastic business. And he’s went from one transition point to the next transition point to the next transition point. So he knows how to build it. He knows what he’s doing. And I’m so glad we get a chance to talk to him, peek through his lens. He’s going to drop some nuggets, and we’re going to take him. We’re going to write it down. We’re going to be astute.

because I know that he’s gonna bring so much value to this show. And so I wanna introduce you all to Mr. Dustin Parker. Mr. Dustin, how you doing today,

Dustin Parker (02:43)

You’re doing great. Thank you for having me.

Q Edmonds (02:45)

Absolutely, man. Thank you for being here, sir. listen, man, I want to dive right in. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you don’t mind, want to take us through kind of like a little origin story. We love like the hero’s journey. So kind of how you got to where you are. We love that. And then also what part of the world you’re in, man. So Mr. Dustin, sir, you got the floor,

Dustin Parker (03:07)

Yeah, so I’ve had ⁓ a couple of different careers in my life so far. actually, when I went to college, I was studying politics and foreign policy and ended up working in that industry or that world for a little while before going ⁓ back to school and becoming a teacher for a few years. And my wife was ⁓ pregnant with our little girl who’s almost 11 now. And we wanted to earn just a little extra income. ⁓

The real estate course was coming up in just a couple of days and I kind of want to win. Just signed up for the course and jumped into it head first. that was almost 11 years ago now. And we’ve been in the real estate business and industry now for that period of time and have built all kinds of crazy things since we’ve been on this wild journey together.

Q Edmonds (03:55)

Yeah, yeah. So tell me, you said you built a lot of crazy things. Tell me, what have you built? Like, what are you doing now, Ms. Dustin?

Dustin Parker (04:02)

Yeah, and I forgot one part of your question. So I’m currently coming to you from Delaware. So we operate mostly in Delaware and Maryland, are the two states that we focus on.

But today we have a real estate brokerage, an independent brokerage, where we’ll close about three to 400 transactions a year. And then we built over the last several years, we built around that mortgage title, insurance, property management. And then additionally, we do some development and rehab work as well. And then most recently, we launched a technology company in the real estate sector, which is kind of our baby and our startup, which is where I spend most of my time these days.

Q Edmonds (04:42)

So man, I normally do this when we first hit on, I’m sorry I didn’t, but you say you were in Delaware. I’m in Laurel, man. So we were like right there close to each other. had 30 minutes from DC. So I know you operated in the Merlin market. I’m sorry I didn’t say that earlier, man, but you’re a neighbor, man. So that’s awesome. So man, as you was talking, I was writing down what I like to call your resume, man. So started off in politics, was a teacher. Hacks off of you being a teacher, because that’s a whole.

another beast in itself. thank you for your service when it comes to that. And then you got into real estate for extra income. That was 11 years ago. So that’s safe to say things went well, right? So I have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning no matter what we go through in life, we pick up things that kind of make us who we are and fortify who we are right now.

So man, on this journey,

11 years ago, you got into real estate just for extra cash, teacher, politics, along this journey to real estate. What has it taught you about yourself? What has it fortified in you to make you say, yeah, like this is who I am. This is part of the skill set that I have developed throughout my life to kind of make me be able to do what I do today.

Dustin Parker (06:42)

Yeah, it’s a good question. I write a newsletter that goes out bi-weekly and actually the title of that newsletter is called Dot by Dot. And it’s kind of, it’s referencing that Steve Jobs famous quote about connecting the dots backwards. I totally agree with you. You sometimes we just don’t know where things are headed and then we’re in the middle of it, whether it’s a good thing or bad thing that’s happening in our lives. But they do always connect when you look backwards. And I think about when, when I was in education or when I was in politics, so many of the skills or the relationships that I built during

those periods of time really enabled me to help grow our businesses today. And so we continue to learn through the ups and the downs throughout it. ⁓ every time we have learning opportunity, we really try to lean into that and take advantage of it to the greatest extent that we can.

Q Edmonds (07:27)

Yeah, no, I mean, thank you, Dustin. will be I hope I can get a subscription and that by that I’ll be looking it up. I’ll be a reader, man. That’s that’s phenomenal. You’re absolutely right. And I love that. I mean, that’s just when you say that by that, just my whole vision just opens up like, yes, that makes so much sense. So thank you for your contribution, even with that. And I’ll be checking it out. But man, I love it. I love what you said so eloquently, man. And, you know, there are times when things just don’t go the way we expect. Right.

deals don’t go the way we expect, we have to think it fast. So Mr. Dustin, I would love to know from your perspective, adversity, how does it look in the things that you do? How has it read its head and how have you overcame adversity in your journey to success, man?

Dustin Parker (08:15)

Yeah, I think kind of the biggest shock to our system was, and I always say we, because my wife and I are business partners and kind of work in the business together. ⁓ But we, you know, we were on a steady upward incline in terms of our business ever since we got into the industry. And then, you know, of course, we had the crazy market of COVID. And then coming out of COVID, interest rates doubled, know, the market became kind of this frozen market where nobody was transacted.

And we’ve had some of the fewest number of transactions in US history over the last three to four years at this point. And so we really had to adjust our expectations in terms of what it meant to grow. We needed to get a little bit leaner. We needed to lean into technology a little bit more maybe than we had previously. And we really had to redefine what our business was during that period of time. And we’re still doing that today. But that was probably one of the biggest challenges, I would say, in our business is going from selling homes like hotcakes to everything

coming to a halt overnight. And the days on market and our specific market where we mostly do our business is upwards of 60 or 70 days at this point, which is just unbelievable for a market that was moving in just one or two days just a couple years ago. So it’s just been a big adjustment of our expectations and then how we approach the business every day.

Q Edmonds (09:35)

Love

it. Dustin, let me ask you this, sir. What is your next real goal? Like, what are you looking to solve a scale next, man? You and your wife. That’s not lead you out. How, how are you? That’s not leave out. So what are y’all looking to solve next, man?

Dustin Parker (09:47)

Yeah, it’s a great question. So we, ⁓ one of the unique things about our real estate brokerage is that we have a salaried agent model. We call it our cosmic agent program. And so one of the things that we look to scale is that model. found that ⁓ agents that are on a salary that have requirements to be in an office for a certain amount of time to participate in trainings. You just have a little bit more control over the consumer experience. And it also drives, I think more profitability for the company while also giving stability for that agent in this up and down market, particularly for most of those 1099 agents.

that exist more broadly. And so one of our big focuses over the next 12 months is scaling that while also continuing to lean into AI and develop our own products to replace some of the legacy enterprise software that we’ve been using for the last several years.

Q Edmonds (11:08)

Yeah, got it. Love it, man. Love it. So I want to talk to you. You mean you’ve been in politics, been a teacher. To me, those things correspond with building relationships, right? And so you’re in business, brokerage, talking to people. So Mr. Dustin, I would love your perspective when it comes to relationship building within business. Is it important? Has it served you well? What is your philosophy? So talk to me a little bit, Mr. Dustin, about relationship building.

Dustin Parker (11:36)

Yeah, I anytime you’re in professional service, industry, relationships are everything. You know, your reputation is what matters more than anything else. And ⁓ if you’re not transparent in the way that you interact with people, if you’re not honest and you don’t give them, you know, the best advice for them, even though it may not in some cases serve you, then that’s going to come back to bite you. And so we take that very seriously. We participate in as many community events as we can. We’re participating in several masterminds and coaching groups and things to continue to kind of lean into, you know, the expertise that we have

available to us. so I think relationships are everything. and we always tell brand new agents that, you know, real estate is simple, but it’s not easy. And, and one of the simple things about about real estate is the more conversations you have with people about real estate, and the more ways that you can offer to help them, the more business that you’re going to do. And it’s just that simple math, and you can actually reverse engineer that to see, you know, what kind of income you’re going to make when you have that number of conversations.

Q Edmonds (12:32)

Yeah, yeah, love it, And again, man, I don’t know why I’m off my game today because I did not ask you the name of your company. So what’s the name of the company,

Dustin Parker (12:42)

Yeah, real estate brokerage is called the Parker Group. ⁓ And then our new technology startup is called Archie.

Q Edmonds (12:49)

⁓ so and I’m asking these questions because I love to know the story behind the names. So Archie, man, if you don’t mind, sir, what is the story about Archie? Like I said, I’m mad I didn’t ask this earlier, but man, please tell me the storyline behind Archie.

Dustin Parker (13:06)

Yeah, it’s kind of a funny story. ⁓ we, myself and my co-founder, we’re kind of ideating around what to name the company for a couple of months. And my wife and I were in New York at a conference and we got into an elevator in our hotel that we were staying in. And someone walks in the elevator with this little tiny dog and they call the dog Archie. And we thought, that’s it. We just both kind of clicked at the same time and said, you know what, sounds appropriate for what it is that we’re building and it’s warm and friendly and that’s who we want to be. And so we just kind of stuck with

it.

Q Edmonds (13:37)

Man, I love that. I absolutely love that. Yeah, man. I love story behind the name of company So that’s brilliant man looking at that dog It’s sparked because you want it to feel like anybody can put their hands on it, right? And so I absolutely love that man Listen, mr. Dustin. Is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? or and is there anything you want to say to people as far as motivation education inspiration

If there’s anything along that line, Mr. Dustin, we would love to hear, man.

Dustin Parker (14:11)

Yeah, I would just say that anyone that’s in the real estate industry today is navigating through one of the most difficult markets that we’ve seen in American history. You know, we had the financial crisis, we’ve had, you know, the real estate crash back in 07 and 08, but those were different animals. know, homes were depreciating rapidly and people were underwater and that really infected, you know, so many people. But today’s market is just frozen. You know, our transaction count is just, ⁓ is some of the lowest that we’ve seen of all time.

So I think you have to grind it through right now. Whatever you were doing that may have worked previously, you need to double and triple those efforts today.

And I think one of the ways to do that is just to really lean deeply into the technology that’s available to us today that wasn’t four or five years ago. We have access to AI tools today that are just, it’s almost magic, what they can do. And it’s just unbelievable. You don’t necessarily need a team of developers to build your own products and to solve problems and create automations and a better level of service for your clients and consumers.

that would have just taken weeks and months and tens of thousands of dollars previously. And so I think if you’re not adopting those tools, if you’re not leaning into them and spending time learning them, then you’re gonna be left behind in this industry as it continues to move forward. And if you do the work today in this tough market and you survive it, then you’re gonna come out of this stronger than ever and you’re gonna really reap the rewards, I think, when things change.

Q Edmonds (16:12)

Man, I absolutely does. So basically what you’re saying, we just shouldn’t be using AI to look up definitions. We should be using it for way more than that, right?

Dustin Parker (16:19)

Absolutely. mean, yeah. You can imagine you can use AI for.

Q Edmonds (16:21)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, Mr. Dustin, sir, man, thank you so much. Listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you or learn more about what you’re doing, how can I get in contact with you, sir?

Dustin Parker (16:39)

Yeah, I you can visit any of our websites, theparkergroup.com or archiehub.com for our two businesses. And then I have, as I mentioned, a bi-weekly newsletter that I write at dotbydot.com, which has more information about me and you can reach me directly through that website as well.

Q Edmonds (16:55)

Absolutely love it man. So Mr. Dustin, let me say three things to you, First, thank you for your time because you and I know time is our most precious commodity. Like we put systems in place to get our time back, right? So we want control of our time. So man, I appreciate you giving us some of your time. Two, man, thank you for your story. Thank you for sharing with authenticity, with transparency, man. I truly believe stories, they rule the world. ⁓ The late Kobe Bryant, before he passed away, he said nothing in this world moves without stories.

And I believe in, think you being in political background, being a teacher, know, stories just make things just come alive. It controls a whole narrative. So thank you so much for your story, man. You have impacted people today. Even if we don’t see it just now, I know you have. So thank you for that. Lastly, man, thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your mindset, the way you think in bringing that mindset to this platform. I truly appreciate you being here today, man.

Dustin Parker (17:49)

Thank you. It’s been an honor. Thank you so much.

Q Edmonds (17:51)

Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Dustin. Check him out. Definitely check out Dot by Dot, one of the dopest names. Check that out. I will be checking it out. Looking at show notes, get in contact with him. And listen, I love Mr. Dustin. He’s doing great things. But if you will check him out, definitely make sure you subscribe here, because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Dustin. So sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, have a fantastic day.