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.
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