This is how it used to work.
A real estate agent would lock in the client,
they'd stage the place, hold an open house every single weekend and hope that the right buyer
walks through that door.
10 years ago, you could probably go look at a house
and circle back two to three weeks later
and still have an opportunity to make a bid.
The first time I received a lead through Instagram
my mind was blown.
If you're seeing something in a neighborhood
that is established you have two to three days
after the open house in this market to make an offer.
Our world has shifted so much.
Folks are getting comfortable doing business,
either through social media or a hundred percent virtual.
Social media, like everything else it touches
has turned the real estate business upside down.
You've heard this trope before, millennials aren't buying
and owning as much as their parents' generation.
Be it a car, a diamond or a home.
But the lack of ownership is not always by choice.
In 2018, a survey found that 89% of millennial Americans
want to buy a home, they just can't afford it.
As of 2019, millennials of all stripes
owned only 5% of U.S. housing compared with 15%
for gen X-ers.
Millennials, haven't been able
to make these big ticket purchases the same way
as their predecessors did.
Now, this is down to the financial crisis,
we have rising student loan debt,
and a higher cost of living.
Now, millennials are getting older,
they're earning more money and saving more.
So now is about the time where a lot of them are going out
and making those purchases.
And now having been stuck at home
for over a year the same generation
that embraced Ubers and Airbnbs
wants something to call their own.
I got married and I have a child
so looking for more space
and thought about the conventional route of young and single
and live in the city, and then move out to the suburbs
when you have a kid and a wife.
I've seen a whole bunch of my friends
just move on down to the West Palm beach, Miami area,
Austin, Texas.
So they are certainly moving out of the city
but space was top of mind for them moving out.
We lived in Williamsburg for about 16 plus years
and week two in the pandemic we just realized
we needed more.
So we started looking for a house right away.
We now live in Goshen, New York,
which is about an hour and a half from New York City.
Instagram accounts like Circle Houses
and Cheap Old Houses offer a glimpse
into the perfect suburban life.
Often at a price point, not too dissimilar
to what adults pay for rent and major cities.
By the end of 2020 New Yorkers who didn't flee,
paid an average of $2,700 a month for an apartment
even as rent prices plummeted during the pandemic.
Millennials make a large percentage of spending right now
and that makes them a valuable consumer for brands.
That means they're being courted by everyone out there
to spend with them.
They grew up online.
They're comfortable with pretty much anything
that you can do there.
And that's buying things, selling things,
Craigslist, eBay, all that.
Making a hundred dollars purchase on Craigslist
or a a thousand dollars purchase on eBay.
It's not that much of a leap to go even further
if you're buying a fancy piece of jewelry
or a house for a million bucks.
The uptick in home demand
fueled by the pandemic
combined with record low interest rates
has made home buying extremely competitive
over the last year.
So much so that some millennials look to social media
to shop and actually buy their first house sight unseen.
I saw it sort of something on my Instagram feed
and clicked and we ended up seeing this house.
The houses weren't really being shown at that time
'cause we were in full lockdown.
We became really interested.
One YouTube video, 20 Zillow photos, and that is it.
The red hot housing market
spells opportunities
for developers targeting this demographic.
Getting eyeballs strictly through social media.
People are not looking in the back section
of the times anymore for real estate listings.
Our demographic is between late twenties to mid forties.
And that demographic is spending a lot of time
on social media and they're doing a lot of shopping
via Instagram and other social media platforms.
This is Joshua Gelb and Pelle Hamburger.
During the pandemic, the two New York city-based developers
started Nevelhaus, a new construction project
two hours north of the city.
Unlike most traditional real estate listings,
the pair bypass the use of a broker
and advertise their homes directly on Instagram,
no fees, no commissions.
We used to have to hire a broker, work with them,
they would do showings on site.
Now you basically put your renderings on Instagram
and within an hour you have 15, 20 replies
saying "Can I come see it directly with you?
And let's see it tomorrow."
And it's just completely changed the game.
Most people have that image in their head
of the quintessential upstate modern cabin set in the woods.
We've definitely tried to tap into that
and create something that's attainable for these people.
So you can have that.
You can be swiping through Instagram
and that can be your home too.
There's been quite a proliferation
of these direct to consumer brands.
There's just tons of them out there.
It's not that hard to start up a website
that sells things and get things manufactured
for that E-commerce platform.
So like Allbirds with shoes, Casper with mattresses,
or Warby Parker with glasses,
all of that means a lot more opportunity for brands
in the online shopping space.
So it's natural that real estate would wanna get involved
as well with these big ticket items.
10 years ago, the broker would drive the search.
Now I think that my clients texts me listings.
They have alerts.
They find things quicker than we do sometimes
'cause we're out and about.
I'd say that the buyer is much more involved these days.
Social selling is creating brand new ways to shop.
So let's look at vintage clothing for example.
There are sellers on Instagram finding successful ways
to sell one of a kind items.
It's that fleeting nature, the ephemeral nature
of social media.
You post the item online
and whoever's first gets that one of a kind item.
Now real estate has similar scarcity to it.
There's one place to buy, it's one home, one apartment,
one thing.
It's one of a kind.
But the rise in social media real estate
isn't just about the instant gratification.
Researcher Andre Perry, who studies economic inclusion
at the Brookings Institute says social media has evolved
from the days of online hangout spaces and mood boards
to a powerful change agent.
Social media is a primary source to get news
and information.
But it's not just about social media,
it's about the movement that we're in.
The racial justice uprising really gave people
a sense of worth and empowerment.
And so people not only are getting information
about what protects people in the long run
from economic shocks, things like wealth.
And so the fastest way to accumulate wealth
in this country
traditionally has been through home ownership.
People, millennials in particular are saying,
"Hey I want protection. I wanna live longer.
I want my education to go further.
Let me acquire wealth."
And the fastest way to do that is through home ownership.
In his research,
Andre found that not only are more millennials buying homes
during the pandemic, the rate of home ownership
among black millennials are at historic highs.
When the pandemic hit many of the amenities
or the comforts that came along
with those living conditions were gone.
Folks couldn't go to bars and fancy shops.
And so you saw instead of people going out
and buying clothes, they saved their money
and bought property and outside of the city generally.
People are moving to the suburbs, to rural areas,
places where home prices are a little bit cheaper.
Many home buyers are looking for houses
outside the major metropolitan areas.
Additionally, many home buyers are looking
for direct outdoor access and added space
as the uncertainty about the virus persists.
Millennials are also looking to influencers
not just for the latest trends and TikTok dances,
but to partake in important conversations,
be it about politics or personal finance
or anything in between.
Real estate ownership. Let's start small.
Let's, don't be scared to start small.
Instead of renting a big house in the Hills
and California like most artists do,
buy you one that's on the flat.
I meet folks like Brandon Rule
and Charlamagne tha God.
I separate them in two forms.
When you have a residential real estate
and you have commercial real estate.
They're talking to you about buying homes.
When I was coming up really home buying
with a mysterious shrouded process
that only a few people could teach me.
Now I can easily log on to Clubhouse or Instagram
and find literally lessons on how the purchase a home
but done in with savvy and finesse.
Today we're gonna make...
a greenhouse.
Heather having bought her fixer
upper sight unseen also look to internet personalities
to help figure out how to modernize
and to make sure her home was also an investment.
They gave us a lot of confidence
and they make it look super easy.
How we could do all of those things ourselves.
My husband just installed a laundry chute
which is something we never would have thought of
if we didn't see an influencer do that
and how easy it actually is.
And in the case of Nevelhaus, Josh and Pelle
hope that buyers see these homes
as potential secondary income.
These young families look at these products
or they will look at our homes and say,
here's a turnkey Airbnb.
This can serve our family
but this can also be the perfect rental.
We've tried to strike a balance and the design of the home
for working well as a family home, that's gonna be lived in
and also working as an investment.
A lot of this is points to how millennials can utilize
and leverage social media to their benefit.
But it also speaks to, again, this moment
that folks want freedom.
So millennials are really stepping up
to this real estate game and taking ownership
and building wealth.
Of course not everything
is as it seems online.
While social media can be a useful tool for learning,
there's still a lot it can't tell you
about the home buying experience or living in the suburbs
for that matter
We knew going into it budgeting for a lot of renovations.
We kind of thought if we buy it at 450,
we could put two, 300,000 into the house
and really make it ours and our own.
I can't wait to replace in this kitchen and update
our builtin deep fryer,
which not in the listing photos.
We kind of got into the house
and we realized that budget was completely unrealistic.
That we have a lot of people who see our design
on Instagram and they say, "I love it.
Can you come build this on my property?"
And then they'll send us the lot
which they bought sight unseen during COVID
and because of site conditions or zoning,
it's virtually unbuildable.
I think we all know that what you see on Instagram
and what you see in real life are two very different things.
So while we can definitely as brokers
create these fantastic narratives,
the one recommendation that I would give is,
do your homework.
Don't believe everything you see.
That's not to say that there's dishonesty
or anything where people are trying to manipulate you
but not everything you see is accurate.
This shift towards social media house hunting
may also help to bring equilibrium
to a market that has historically disadvantaged
specific groups of buyers.
Many of the traditional ways that people got mortgages
or loans often precluded black people
because they deemed us too risky for those loans.
And so with technology, there's ways to get around that.
As long as more and more black people get educated on racism
and discrimination in lending,
we're going to figure out ways to get around that racism.