In this Ten Minute Talks, Diego Sanchez interviews Amanda Orson to talk about her new venture, Galleon; a company that aims to empower sellers to sell their homes directly. Galleon removes the selling agent from the real estate transaction. This conversation explores possibility of enabling real estate transactions through an a technology platform rather than with an agent. Diego and Amanda discuss the changing dynamics of the real estate market and the implication of a different process for the for-sale-by-owner market.
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00:00I'm Diego Sanchez, president of HousingWire, and this is 10 Minute Talks.
00:12My guest today is Amanda Orson, who is the founder and CEO of Galleon.
00:18And we're going to talk a lot more about Galleon during this conversation.
00:22But Amanda, welcome to 10 Minute Talks.
00:24Thank you so much for having me.
00:26It's so great to have you on.
00:28Before we dive in to your new company, or new-ish company, could you give us a little
00:34bit of an introduction of yourself and your background?
00:38I am definitely a, tritely said, serial entrepreneur.
00:42I've done a lot of different companies over time.
00:44I've principally been a bootstrapped entrepreneur until very recently.
00:47And by way of personal experience, I've been a real estate investor since about 2010.
00:51Interesting.
00:52All right.
00:54So that's the angle that we're coming at Galleon from.
00:57So tell us about Galleon.
00:59So Galleon is basically trying to figure out what would the future of real estate transactions
01:04that are actually conducted through software as an interface, rather than human beings,
01:08look like.
01:09We're trying to anticipate where that is going and trying to meet it there.
01:13Right now, we're a free and open marketplace at the very top of our funnel, if you can
01:17think of it that way, where you can come in and list your house for free.
01:20It takes about two minutes and indicate the price at which you would sell.
01:23We have about 16,000 listings on site right now.
01:26And down funnel, we're about to release something called Navigator this week.
01:30Navigator is basically our transaction software.
01:33Right now, we're focused on the sell side to help sellers basically list and sell their
01:36own home.
01:38So no real estate agents involved in the process.
01:43Homeowners can go direct to the site and list their property.
01:47That is correct.
01:48And it's not to say that there are no agents involved, like if you are selling and you
01:52are willing to compensate a buyer's agent, absolutely a buyer's agent can come and bring
01:55in.
01:56It's really just about giving the seller the control to be able to list and control their
02:01own listing.
02:02So we've had the concept of for sale by owner forever in the U.S. housing market.
02:10And typically, it's anywhere from three to six or seven percent of the transactions that
02:18happen for sale by owner.
02:23How do you think you can change that dynamic so that a more meaningful percentage of home
02:29sales in the U.S. are by the owner?
02:32I think it's already changing.
02:34That's the short answer.
02:35The long answer is, I think that right now we kind of have a perfect storm.
02:39We have a lockup in the industry.
02:41I don't think that's new news to anybody on this podcast.
02:43I think that there are a lot of people that are now brand aware of the fact that this
02:47commission is very expensive and the price has just gone through the roof relative to
02:53all of the other things that you might pay a transaction fee for.
02:57If you were to analogize it to travel or you're now to analogize it to securities or anything
03:02else you might buy, the cost to actually transact because of technology have come down to zero
03:07in the case of securities, for example.
03:09So real estate is very dislocated from the rest of the technology trends over time.
03:15And I think that people are starting to wise up to that.
03:17I also think that there is going to be not right now, but at some point there will be
03:22the implications from the most recent Sitzer settlement agreement.
03:25And I do think that as buyers begin to actually absorb some of that fee in a market that is
03:30different than the one we're currently in, I'll acknowledge readily, I think that we'll
03:33see a little bit more open to new ways of doing things that save $15,000, $30,000.
03:41At least, right?
03:42I mean, depending on where you live.
03:46On the other hand, a lot of people who are selling homes are busy professionals, a lot
03:52of times two income households, not a ton of time to go through all the steps of what
04:00it takes to list a home for sale and then go through that whole process with a buyer.
04:06How are you going to make that process easier so that it's not overly burdensome on a two
04:13income household, for example?
04:15I would say by doing a lot of step by step walkthrough with just in time messaging, basically
04:21by using software as sort of the dashboard interface, we're just simplifying the UI.
04:26Think about how difficult it was to trade crypto prior to Coinbase, same concept, how
04:32much more expensive and sort of fragmented it was to trade securities before Robinhood.
04:36It's the same thing we're doing.
04:37We're basically simplifying the UI and making sure that for any given transaction, you know
04:41exactly where you are in place, exactly who's got the ball in their court and what's next.
04:47And it's just simple software UI.
04:50So that makes sense.
04:52But thinking about the real world aspect of it, where you have to do open houses and
04:59there's still way too much paper to sign throughout the whole process, how do you help
05:06out with the things that need to happen in real life, like an open house, for example?
05:12So there's calendar coordination here.
05:14And I should say the big difference, I think, between what we've built and anything that's
05:18existed before is that we are actually doing identity verification or for the people that
05:22are from a fintech background, KYC, that I think is a step change more than what you're
05:27getting from any of the other portals right now to actually verify that that buyer is
05:31who they purport to be based on all the other criteria that we've seen in the seller is
05:34the person on the deed.
05:35It gives people a level of assurance and trust that they might not otherwise have had.
05:40But beyond that, it's actually about having sort of a marketplace of marketplaces under
05:44the hood. And we're getting very deep into making sure that we understand who the local
05:49professionals are in any given market across all of the segments that are going to matter
05:52to a seller. So think real estate, photography, property inspection, mortgage loan
05:57officers in a given geo, title, an escrow or real estate attorneys, depending on the
06:01geography. That's what's actually under the hood.
06:03In the same way, if you've used Airbnb as a host, you know that under the hood, it's
06:07basically a marketplace of marketplaces.
06:09But what the customer sees is just a clean UI.
06:12And will that marketplace include ratings of those different providers?
06:20So, you know, if you're a seller, you can go with a really highly rated local, you
06:26know, whatever to clean up the house for your next open house or whatever it is,
06:30whatever service you need, you know, you can go with someone who's trusted and highly
06:34rated. Yes, definitely.
06:36In the future, we're not there yet.
06:37We're brand brand new. But yes, that is exactly where we're going.
06:40We want to try and be sort of a high trust, high authority platform and to, you know,
06:44remove the opacity. None of this stuff is new.
06:47We've all done lots of parts of this transaction in our day to day lives all the time.
06:52And I would say, you know, 70 ish percent of the US currently does their taxes annually
06:57enabled by software. And taxes are highly it's actually a very comparable process in
07:03that it's highly specific, it's highly personalized.
07:06There's a lot of nuance and a lot of layers of complication that can happen based on you
07:10and your job and your geography and all of that.
07:12So it's actually pretty translatable.
07:15And is that where Galleon potentially makes its money is in that marketplace of
07:21providers? Yeah, it could be right now.
07:24I think that that is probably the thing that we most need to stay in touch with the
07:29Trump administration and its direction for the CFPB and RESPA, because there's
07:33certainly a RESPA implication there.
07:35I don't know where that's going.
07:36I do know that we all feel that there might be a change of foot.
07:39So we're going to monitor that closely.
07:41But simply the marketplace is free.
07:43Navigator is a software license fee right now.
07:45It's eight ninety nine up front.
07:47But I think we're going to move that to post pay so that we can get the maximum number
07:50of people into the system and using it.
07:52So as a as a seller right now on your platform, is that potentially the fee that I'm
08:00going to pay the fee for the Navigator functionality?
08:03Navigator and Navigator comes with personalized signage and professional photography.
08:08Got it. And right now I can list for free.
08:12Yep. And then if I want to take advantage of those services, I would pay that fee.
08:16Correct. And then obviously all of the transaction software on the other side.
08:20So you've got like a little bit of a two sided problem here that you have to solve with
08:26the business. One is the B2C approach to get people to list their homes.
08:34And then you're going to need providers to come into this marketplace.
08:38How are you thinking about who your customer is and how are you prioritizing the B2C
08:45approach versus the B2B approach for the marketplace?
08:48It's a good question. I would say it's by trying to gracefully say that this is changing
08:56underfoot right now in a way that's not offensive.
08:59I think that we need to be very careful to say that there is not a future where there are
09:03not real estate agents. I think that there is a future, though, where there are fewer and
09:07they become more professional.
09:08So the average real estate agent who does like 1.8 deals a year, that's probably the
09:12person that's going to be displaced or probably the person for whom you would actually do
09:16a better job through software than the person that does 1.8 deals a year.
09:19The highly professional people, if anything, the existence of a galleon and a navigator
09:23in market actually makes them more valuable because you should get a bespoke service for a
09:27premium price. That's the expectation that you would have as a consumer of literally any
09:31other thing. On the consumer side, we actually have more demand than we have supply of
09:38buyers. We have more people that would list right now.
09:41And I think that if we actually opened our doors up to accepting real estate agent leads,
09:45we would never need to raise money again.
09:47And you mentioned your background as a real estate investor as well.
09:54Are a lot of the the first clients on the platform folks who are doing fix and flips or
10:02other types of real estate investment?
10:05Yeah, I would say that right now they're high agency people with some amount of
10:08background. Now it could be that they're investors.
10:11They could be short term rental people.
10:13They could be people that simply have moved a lot.
10:15And there are a lot of different reasons why you might be a person that has moved a lot.
10:18Definitely high agency.
10:20And I would say it's a combination of either it feels like they could do this for
10:23themselves and wants to save the money like they're cash motivated or they had a bad
10:27experience in the past and they're looking for an alternative.
10:29Amanda, it's a really interesting platform.
10:32Thank you so much for joining me on 10 Minute Talks today.
10:36Thank you for having me again.