Kurt Carlton on building a marketplace for investors

Today’s RealTrending features Kurt Carlton, co-founder and president of New Western, a marketplace for real estate investors. Carlton talks about how he’s working with real estate agents, his take on the affordability issue and the trend of the “Great Renovation.”

Here is a small preview of today’s interview with Kurt. The transcript below has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

Tracey Velt: What are the challenges that you’re seeing in the general community? Like, what are you doing to get the word out and build relationships with the agents?

Kurt Carlton: We’re starting to communicate with agents much more and we’re starting to build that messaging. I think we’ve been a company that’s been misunderstood since 2008. And we haven’t done a lot to fix that. We’ve just kind of kept our heads down and got to work, but now we’re starting to pull our heads up.

One of the reasons why is we’re just seeing more and more listing agents bringing us inventory. We built 27 million homes leading up to 2008. Those houses are starting to have issues for the first time ever, major systems start to break in that 20 to 40 year period. So those houses are starting to become these, these big problem houses that maybe don’t represent the most efficient listing for the seller.

So as that starts to happen, we’re starting to realize that there are 2 million listing agents in the US. It makes a lot of sense to get the messaging out, get them to understand the resource. We are not a competitor, we’re a buyer. And that message is starting to resonate, especially as we become larger in all the markets in which we’re in.

The RealTrending podcast features the brightest minds in real estate. Every week, brokerage leaders, top agents, team leaders, and industry experts share their success secrets, trends, and lessons learned navigating this ever-changing industry. Hosted by Tracey Velt and produced by Elissa Branch.