Real Estate 2026: How Buyers, Sellers & Agents Win in a Shifting Market

Tracy Hayes  0:02  
2321, Hey, welcome back to The Real Estate excellence podcast to go to show the show that's uncovering how northeast Florida's top agents build their businesses, serve their clients and dominate their markets. Today's guest made a fearless pivot in 2020 walking away from a 20 year career in fitness leadership to pursue a lifelong dream of Coastal Living. In just a few years, she has closed over 90 transactions across St Augustine, St Johns County and the beaches, proving that discipline structure, I apologize my that's different structure and client service translates now one of the most respected broker now she's working with one of the most respected brokerages on the First Coast. She combines a national speaking experience with elite level negotiation and communication skills. She's also a military mom canines for Warriors volunteer and a firm believer in systems that serve both the agent and the client. Let's welcome Dory Nugent to the show. Thank you so much for having welcome, sorry for butchering that thing. I'm using a new teleprompters app, and it started moving on me when I didn't want it to move there. Yeah, all right, I'm getting better and better at the at the the teleprompter thing here. Welcome to the show. Glad you could come on. You know was, obviously, I troll social media, and that's generally where I find a lot of clients, especially ones that I don't regularly run into. But you had some some posts. You did some good numbers last year. And as I hate, there's a story. And I obviously, I knew your brokerage that you went to, and I know the brokerage that you're at now. And I'm like, I know those two brokerages really well, because their leaders have both been on my show, and that Dory probably has some some good insights to share with the listeners of your move, obviously, coming from another career, I think is very important, coming into real estate and why you did so. I just want to kick us off, Dory, tell us a little bit about your background. I mean, like, Where'd you grow? Like, Where'd you grow up? And obviously, what led you in the fitness industry, because you were really deep into that.

Dori Nugent  2:08  
I was, I was so yes. First of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. It's an honor to be here and to talk to fellow real estate agents and hopefully out there help someone or or somebody to have a great 2026 Yeah, for sure. So I'm originally from Pennsylvania, born and raised in Pennsylvania, lived my whole life there, got into the fitness industry through was a stay at home mom had my first child, and gained that weight of having your first baby, and realize I needed to go to the gym. And you know what? Honestly, the gym was a good outlet for me. It was a gym that had babysitting, so it was like an hour of me time, you know, max of two hours. They'd give you two hours. I'd use every every bit of two hours, you know, and do an hour long class, and then maybe take a shower, chat with some of the girls, some of the other moms that I got to know. And eventually I was just there so much they were like, Hey, would you ever think of teaching a group fitness class?

Tracy Hayes  3:14  
And wow, you get you were Jim junkie.

Dori Nugent  3:18  
And that was the start of my career. I went or

Tracy Hayes  3:21  
gym rat. That's what they got. Gym rat. Gym rat, that's the word.

Dori Nugent  3:27  
So I went and got my certificate to teach group fitness, and that pretty much was the start of it. I just loved it. It was a job that created flexibility for me. I taught a couple classes a week. I got a free gym membership and babysitting, free babysitting, and made my whole new friend group, as stated, Mom, you know you leave your workplace, you know you're kind of lost, because all your all your work friends, are still going to work every day, and now I'm at home with with a baby. So I created a new bond with other moms at the gym and then started teaching. That led into moving to a different gym. As I gained some experience, there was a high end facility that was opening in Pennsylvania, and they were looking for a director of group fitness, and threw my name in the hat for that. Got the job, and quickly was in charge of 70 plus instructors. Wow, yep. And then work there that kind of grew into a little bit of a Operations Director, just because, again, I was there so much so whenever there was a problem that arrived at the gym, I was usually there and could handle it, and then eventually transitioned as I moved into my third facility that I worked at. Moved into sales manager. I did, I did some wow you.

Tracy Hayes  4:52  
I mean, really from, from a mom who was working out,

Dori Nugent  4:56  
who's working out, the top one group fitness class. Turned into, then becoming the sales manager for a very high end, privately owned, large scale club right outside of Philadelphia. It's called the main line area, very wealthy area, pretty much had everything there. They had tennis, they had a pool, they had, you know, the indoor, outdoor they racquetball courts? I'll date myself, yeah, when I first started, there were racquetball courts there, and then plus the large scale Fitness Center, as well as then three group fitness studios.

Tracy Hayes  5:32  
Yeah, what do you think I remember when I first started my mortgage career, I was in Michigan, and there was a club, kind of like what you're describing there. They had tennis courts and and racquetball courts and that sort of thing. And I think the racquetball courts could, you could transition it into a squash, right? That's the other sports, bracket sport. It's what are they? What are they doing now, are they all converting those courts to, you know, pickleball? Pickleball?

Dori Nugent  5:58  
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, they probably would have, but I think what happened was they started converting them long before pickleball started taking off. So most of them got converted into either group fitness studios or they made turf rooms became very, vastly popular here in the fitness clubs the last 10 years. So a lot of them laid turf and did more turf related, you know, small group training,

Tracy Hayes  6:25  
right, right, agility stuff that's big around

Dori Nugent  6:29  
so and youth youth sports have taken, you know, not so much youth sport, but youth athletic training. So a lot of them been created programs we,

Tracy Hayes  6:38  
you know, that's an un you know, to not just get too far off the real estate subject that we're on, but I know a lot of the listeners you all have, lot of you have kids, and one of the biggest challenges we have as a country is like, there's this huge percentage of kids that couldn't even serve our country in the military because they physically are not able To, and it's not because they don't have the physical ability to do, you know, whatever amount of push ups today. That's not the problem. The problem is they are so they've been playing too many video games. They haven't been out there. They literally put real shoes on, and they get shin splints walking on the pavement too much, and that sort of because they haven't been physically out playing sports. Now we have a lot. Obviously, we're in Florida, so a lot of people are active, but there's still too huge of a percentage of young people who are not, at least just casually playing some sports or something, whatever that sport may be, tennis, you know, the racket sports, whatever the but just athletically moving. So when they are 18, if they you know which we would think every 18 year old should be able to serve. But that's not the truth. They're having problems with them, because both men and women falling out of basic training because they physically can't bring their body up to it, because their bodies never had those muscles before. That is correct, yeah, yeah. So just to throw that segment out there, because that's why they think they said going to the turf. And now the thing is, sport, you know, training for a particular sport, whether it's soccer or football or basketball, whatever it may be. But all right, so that takes you to, really, the late 2000 teens.

Dori Nugent  8:20  
That takes me? Yes, the late 2000 teens. I also with being in the fitness industry and being at such a large club started, I'm always looking for more. I'm true, the true definition of growth mindset. I'm always what's next. What's next, what what's next. Sometimes that serves me well, and sometimes

Tracy Hayes  8:43  
you're like, me, you got ADHD, and you're like, Okay, I've conquered this. I'm ready for the next thing. Object.

Dori Nugent  8:50  
Bring it on. Yeah. So got settled nicely in the fitness industry, and then saw the challenge of I'd be going to the conferences, and I was like, I want to be that person that was up speaking and teaching. You know, what we what I felt worked for me at the club,

Tracy Hayes  9:08  
because now you have over about 15 years experience or so in the

Dori Nugent  9:12  
industry this point, probably, I think I had about 12 years of experience when I first started, started with some of the local, smaller conferences. You know, there's always conferences, you know that, yeah, and then eventually wanted to go to the, the largest fitness conference there was. And then wanted to be able to get on that stage and speak. And eventually got to do that. Did that for multiple years. And then I had the really unique once you kind of get in to that speaking crowd, it's very tight knit, because it's pretty much the same group goes around to all the different conferences. It just becomes a very small, tight group. I had the privilege of having dinner. You get invited to a lot of dinners. I. And I sat down at a table with two Australians

Tracy Hayes  10:03  
the fitness people want to eat. Okay, go ahead,

Dori Nugent  10:08  
so we are okay with food. I sat with these two Australians, and they asked me what I spoke what I spoke about, and I told them it was called winners versus warriors. And basically that concept was, you're, I always felt like I had a team of winners, right? You know, you always try to create a team of what you feel are winners, but then there's this elite group that are like warriors, and that's your group. That's they are always going to go the extra distance, the extra mile. They're always coming up, pushing the envelope, yeah, they're always saying to me, What can I do for you? You know, what can I help with if I'm having an event? Yes, my winners are teaching. I've got all my winners teaching, but I've got a couple of these warriors that are coming up on, what do you need help with? What if we did this? You know, they're giving suggestions. So I spoke on that you want to build a team that's winners and warriors. So these two Australians

Tracy Hayes  11:01  
within the fitness building, a club building, a successful

Dori Nugent  11:06  
really liked to focus on, and the club allowed for me to work on the challenge of retention and employee engagement. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time reading a lot of books about how to keep employees happy. I loved that. I felt like that was a challenge for me, and one of the things I really learned about that along my way is that not every employee wants to be rewarded the same way. 100% I have this amazing store. I think it's amazing, but I had these. I went out and bought five at this time, $5 Starbucks gift cards bought you a drink. It actually bought you a grande drink. So I would buy 20 of these at a pop and then I would leave them in the rooms for the for the other group X instructors, if I thought they did a great job, or I don't buy flowers, whatever it is. So I had this yoga instructor, and I walked in right before our class started, and brought her flowers. And just wanted to say, you know, how much I appreciated her. You know, I was like, look at all your all your right in front of all her. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm thinking, I'm doing this grand gesture recognizing her. And oh my gosh, it was the worst thing I possibly could have done after the class, she came to see me, and she was in tears that embarrassed her. She was mortified by that. So I quickly learned that as much as I wanted to create this great gesture, she didn't take it that way. And that was kind of my journey, then really about employee engagement, that I took what I learned and then took that on the road to the conferences, and that was a huge hit.

Tracy Hayes  12:47  
I mean, this just bleeds right into what you're doing now. I mean, I mean if someone listening right now, if you're not relating what she's saying to working with your clients, buyers and sellers right now, this is, I mean, this is just a perfect laboratory that you're actually working in. And you made a, you made them, not necessarily a big mistake. Was a big mistake to her, but it was a mistake that you quickly learned a lot from the whole college semester, right there in

Dori Nugent  13:16  
the college semester. And I agree, you know, it's, it's, it's just interesting what you learn along the way. And I've taken, if we quickly move to present day, I've taken all of what I've learned in the past and and I think a lot of that is can, well, I don't want to say, I think, I believe that that has allowed for me to be as successful as I have been in such a shorter period of time, because I've already learned how to deal with people. And what works for this one might not work for that one. And Alright, we're going

Tracy Hayes  13:45  
to circle. We're definitely going to circle back and tip into this great information right here about you. So what gives you is the transition from Pennsylvania, you want to come to Florida? What? What goes on now?

Dori Nugent  13:59  
Yeah, so 2020, kind of had two, two things that happened. My husband was a high school principal. He's at 36 years he's ready to retire. Wow. Okay, so he was like, I'm ready to return.

Tracy Hayes  14:12  
I'm guessing he's older than you, not by that much. Well, few years.

Dori Nugent  14:16  
It's amazing what a little Botox does he's ready to retire and covid hits at the same time. So we always had a lifelong dream to live at the beach. And finally, kind of decided, let's, let's give it a try. What's the worst thing that happens, we don't like it. We'll move back to Pennsylvania, right? So we decided to take about a year and kind of, kind of leading up to his retirement, we took the year prior. Like, you know, what would it? Would that if that had been 1999 Gosh, or 2019 I'm sorry, 2000

Tracy Hayes  15:02  
Yeah, I'm still in the 20th century, too.

Dori Nugent  15:06  
1019 we probably took that year to kind of look at different locations, and stumbled upon St Augustine, and kind of looked at each other and said, Let's just give it a try.

Tracy Hayes  15:17  
So Well, you mentioned before, lifestyles are important. When you're talking to your you know, which I think anyone in Northeast Florida, people moving here are looking for lifestyle unless a job, you know, they're like, Hey, I'm coming here for that job. If they're moving here because they just want to move here because the area, it is the lifestyle Florida in general, especially, I mean, I, I grew up in, you know, was born in New York. I grew up on Cape Cod and and I came south, but, you know, I came south to South Carolina to go to school. But Florida obviously, has always been that, you know, hey, we're going on vacation to Florida, but to actually come to if you're going to move to Florida, and you did your research, I'm curious with other places you guys looked at besides St Augustine, because it's funny, as I talk to people that I've known for a lot of years that live all over say they asked me where you live now, and living in St Augustine, oh, St Augustine, I drove by the old city so many times I never you know. It wasn't really till I moved here, till I realized the treasure that is the greater Old City, and obviously the beaches and the boating, because we're part of the boat club and, you know, do all that kind of stuff down there all the time. So, alright, so so he's retiring, so we know he's he's leaving the education business, but what you figured you still wanted to work,

Dori Nugent  16:39  
yes, so covid, as I said, also hit simultaneously, which destroyed the fitness industry. Our club was shut down at the time that we moved. So it was like, okay, really don't have a job. In a sense, my job was on hold, and in the meantime, just rewinding, I think I mentioned that I went to a dinner and met these two Australian Yes, and didn't realize, but they were the host of the largest fitness business podcast. It's an international podcast, huge. It was the go to podcast when it came to running your fitness business.

Tracy Hayes  17:18  
I so I went up because you had that on your LinkedIn podcast, as I went in and researched it, because actually, that the name of the name of, it's like, the fitness business or something, fitness business podcast, the fitness business podcast. And I think there's several of them, because I had to go find, obviously, we all have our little like, the what's behind you, right? There is my podcast. Look, I had to find the one that matched the one that you had on your LinkedIn. Because, yeah, there's several of other people using that.

Dori Nugent  17:47  
Og, we had a couple of knock offs, but yeah, everybody in the fitness industry knew the fitness business. Podcasts with, you know myself and JT, that was the one that you went, right? So I went on there, got interviewed, and then right around covid, this all kind of happened at the same time. The host at the time, Chantal, decided to step away, and they did this super fun international search, and they took it all to social media at the time, it was brilliant, genius, way before their time, right? And they kind of made it into this contest online. I threw my hat in. And they had, I think 160 some people apply to be the host, the next host, of the fitness business podcast. And, you know, you get a email like, hey, you've made we've cut it down to 50. And, okay, you know. And then it's like, hey, you've made it to 25

Tracy Hayes  18:43  
that's compliment.

Dori Nugent  18:45  
Like, okay, this is kind of a joke, because I have no communications background. I don't even know why I threw my hat into the ring. And then next thing you know, it's like, you made it to 10. You've made it to five, and then they dropped it down to three.

Tracy Hayes  18:57  
Were they going back and interviewing you again during this time I was

Dori Nugent  19:01  
I would get interviewed with what they referred to as mystery interviewers, and you wouldn't know who they were until you turned your zoom on. And, I mean, there were just times where it was some very in the fitness industry to us.

Tracy Hayes  19:13  
So they weren't putting you on other podcasts, but they were interviewing these different people were calling and having zoom calls with you, basically. Okay, wow, this is interesting.

Dori Nugent  19:23  
Then we get to the final three, and what they what we had to do, and they broadcasted this all on social media. Yeah, they've got the audience on social media to vote, and the three of us had to submit a podcast, just like we're doing today. We had to actually go in, set up the whole camera, do the whole interview, do the whole Edit, and then they played those on the inner on social media, and then the community that followed got to vote on who they thought was the one and I they, they broadcasted it live when they announced the. Dinner and I ended up winning or All right, I want

Tracy Hayes  20:03  
to ask you a question because, and again, your listeners, I don't want to take you guys to because we're going to get into real estate really deep here. But this actually relates to having, what, personality, ideology, thought process, communication and obviously, relationship building. We've talked about all of that just here in the first 15 minutes the I have an idea of why they selected you. But did you? Did you come to some sort of the day? Come to some after you, obviously they selected you. Why the audience selected you? What was? What do you think the reason was, I think there's,

Dori Nugent  20:42  
I think there's two reasons why. First one is, I was very smart on who I selected to interview. I wanted to make sure that I interviewed

Tracy Hayes  20:51  
on your in your practice podcast. Okay, yes, that was shown so that made you look better, because you had you were very selective

Dori Nugent  21:01  
very selective on who I chose, and it was a business owner that had a very huge social media following,

Tracy Hayes  21:08  
ah, I need to Tracy people.

Dori Nugent  21:14  
So that was one and two. I was able to connect with him to the point where he started getting very emotional and cried

Tracy Hayes  21:24  
about his business and probably dealing with covid and everything,

Dori Nugent  21:27  
yes, and I feel like that was and it was genuine. It wasn't anything. He just got very choked up. And I feel

Tracy Hayes  21:34  
like, well, the word I had in my mind was to answer my own question of why I why they chose you. My first thought was you were the most authentic of it. And it sounds like based on the fact that you had an emotional practice podcast, or whatever you want to call it, that made it more even more authentic, and it really attached to the people, because your authenticity, which is, you know, through words thrown out, what makes a great real real estate agent or a great real estate agent on social media. And so is one who is authentic, being authentic, being yourself, you know, really sharing in people feel that you're, you know, being truthful, that you know you're you're putting it out there. You're not trying to sell them something. And I that I think you I was right. My guess was right, authenticity.

Dori Nugent  22:26  
I feel like if you use the word authenticity, you have to use the word Trust. I think if you feel that somebody is authentic, you automatically trust them. Yes, I do feel like that goes. They go hand in hand.

Tracy Hayes  22:39  
100% totally, totally agree. Alright, so you are, let's take the position of many of our buyers right now coming from out of state. You're searching in Florida. Where are some other places besides St Augustine that you kind of had on your top three list?

Dori Nugent  22:57  
Hilton Head was top on the list. We also looked at Myrtle Beach and we looked at the Outer Banks,

Tracy Hayes  23:04  
okay, as well. Okay, so how did you cross those off?

Dori Nugent  23:09  
So I had, we had kids in college at that time, so we needed one, needed to be near an airport. Two, I was still and even my husband, we were still young enough to the point where we wanted to have second careers. So we needed to be somewhere where there was job opportunities. And then number three, we also wanted to be somewhere where it was lively, because we had two college kids, we wanted to make sure they wanted to come and visit us, sleepy beach town or some retirement community type feel beach town, because we're as I'm really worried that I was going to lose them and they weren't going to want to come.

Tracy Hayes  23:47  
I've never, I've never been to the Outer Banks, but at this time of the year in the Outer Banks is probably very quiet. It's like Cape Cod just totally winterized, and half the people are gone. I went to school in South Carolina, so I'm well aware of Myrtle Beach, which, again, at this time of the year, very quiet, not much going on. Hilton Head, to me very it's designed to be quiet. It's designed to for that second home, or the retirees that are just gonna, you know, play golf, walk on the beach, but for that career opportunities, I imagine they were limited in Hilton Head, they

Dori Nugent  24:29  
were really limited was soon as we thought Hilton Head was going to be it. We were like, convinced, had a real estate agent, convinced it was it. We got there and literally within the, like, the first day, we were like that, this is not Yeah, this is not for us. Yeah. Couldn't wait for that weekend to be over because we knew we both, both knew it was a waste of our time, and I felt badly wasting the agents time as well.

Tracy Hayes  24:53  
All right, so now we're focused in on St Augustine.

Dori Nugent  24:56  
We're focused truly on North Florida, up. Atlantic Beach and Neptune Beach. Okay, that's where we're now focused. Fly into Jacksonville. Is said, as soon as you start Googling Jacksonville airport, all these little pop up ads come for st could pop up with St Augustine. I never heard of St Augustine before in my life, but, you know, they show the most beautiful pictures of the downtown. And I was like, well, this place looks kind of interesting. So I was like, Well, why don't we stay there? And, well, you know, we rented a car, and then we'll just drive back up north to go visit Jack's Beach, Neptune Beach, Atlantic.

Tracy Hayes  25:31  
Did you do anything in Fernandina? Did you make that venture? Okay, there.

Dori Nugent  25:35  
And we got into town, and we, I, we my husband, I were just both like, what is it this place. I mean, we we drove up to, up to up north to Neptune Atlantic Beach. We could not wait to get back down to like, Milano, Anastasia, yesland, yes. We're just like, This is it? Yeah. So we went home, and then we quickly booked a second trip and came down and focused primarily on the Villano and Anastasia Island. Yeah, Island area. Alright.

Tracy Hayes  26:05  
One thing about st Old Town, St Augustine, like, I think every city you see, if I want to say the true colors, you got to get out early in the morning and like six, seven o'clock and drive around when no one else is on the streets, really, and see what's going on. To me that gives you the real feel of the city, because the real people are getting up at that time. The tourists will come later, but they're not walking around at six, seven o'clock, you'll see the runners, obviously, or people walking their dogs that those are going to be your neighbors that you see. And you really, if you've never been to St Augustine and the the Old City, obviously, you're not in the Old City directly. You're, you're on the beach, so but you're, but that's its own little community itself, and it's only it's attached. And I would imagine again, you drive out on Anastasia and so forth at six, seven o'clock in the morning, you're going to see the runners, the people walking their dogs. Those are the people you'll be living around.

Dori Nugent  27:04  
They are then they're the same people every morning. Yeah, it's the same dogs,

Tracy Hayes  27:09  
runners, yes, yeah. So alright, it's now you've narrowed your geographics down. How do you narrow the house down?

Dori Nugent  27:17  
Yep. So we, I did the infamous clicked Zillow to connect me to an agent, and got connected with an agent at the time, and then came down obviously, and toured just like everybody else did, and we had a wonderful, wonderful experience

Tracy Hayes  27:36  
with I'm gonna ask you for this, because this, I didn't think it would be a good reel. You You made a maybe you, I don't know what your opinion of your agent was. You know, good, bad or indifferent. But for someone out of town right now, who really you know now, you know you've you know you've been here five years. You know the geography, you know some of the you know when you're living out at the beach, there's certain things you need to know, you know. Versus just a subdivision, you know, inland five miles or on the other side of 95 is just different things you need to know, depending on where you're buying, obviously, the schools and all that kind of stuff is kind of standard in agent selection. If you're looking for a top agent in St Augustine or northeast Florida, Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach that you just mentioned, what should that person moving from Pennsylvania? What are some of the things they should be doing to find really the top agent that's going to really be the negotiator? You say one of your top skills are obviously knowledge of the area, and just to give them that best all around experience,

Dori Nugent  28:46  
yes, this is I can't stress this enough, if you're out of town moving to this beach town, you have to have an agent that knows the area. You don't want an agent that's from inland Florida. You want an agent that lives at the beaches. Each Beach, as you know, Tracy is different. The flood zones are different. Where it floods, what are the pocket areas that flood? What are the short term rental restrictions and that can go street to street? Yeah. In Villano, it can go street to street. It can go street to street. In St Augustine Beach, my husband, I, we weren't really interested in short term rentals. You know, we were looking for homestead but buyers that are coming that are second, third homes or investment properties, it's so important to have an agent that knows the beach, because it's, it's different. HOA restrictions up north. You're said, You're from up north. We don't have a lot of those. You don't think about Hoa, those HOA restrictions of, can you park your boat in the driveway or not? Can you park your boat behind the fence? Some HOAs allow for that. Some don't. Super important. If anybody out there is listening to this and moving out of. Date, it's you've got to have a hyper local agent that listen, they we all get pretty savvy on negotiating. We all can open a door and show you a home, but it's the little things when it comes to living in a coastal town that I think

Tracy Hayes  30:16  
are important. Well, obviously you're successful. That's why you're on the show. You've experienced this in the last half a dozen years, doing it yourself. There's a lot of agents you know that are out there. There are licensed agents that you know probably have been living at the beach for 20 years, but they're not having the success that you're having. And I don't know if you agree or disagree or expand on my statement here, but I think it's a lot of them, because they aren't putting themselves in the shoes of the buyer. In what are they going to be concerned about? Is like I look up trending questions. What are the trending questions? What if people want to know? And that's where you're building the at least the initial rapport, the trust, the authenticity with your clients.

Dori Nugent  31:05  
Yeah, so if I, if I get five minutes to speak to a new buyer, I'm not, and they're an out of state buyer. I'm not selling them on my sales volume numbers. That's just not who I am. I'm not going to tell them I sold this. I sold that. I sold, you know, three homes last year I saw, and I see a lot of that. I see a lot of agents that pride themselves on that, which that is something to be proud of, but I don't find for me that gets my five minutes attention. That's not

Tracy Hayes  31:37  
what I'm going to may have got you the phone call, but now you're on the phone with a phone call. But I'm, I'm

Dori Nugent  31:41  
going to talk to you for five minutes about selling the lifestyle. What does it look like for you? What do you want your lifestyle to look like? You know, I'm selling you about walking downtown if you want to be in the historic district. I'm, I'm selling you on walking your dog on the beach and what that looks like, and what that feels like, and what it feels like to be February and you can sit outside and have a beautiful dinner with yummy food. Yeah, that's what I want to sell you one because living in Pennsylvania in February, you're freezing. You know, you're not sitting outside at all. You know, you're probably still wearing your coat.

Tracy Hayes  32:17  
The charcoal grills got a foot of snow on top, or the covers frozen.

Dori Nugent  32:21  
Actually, I want that five minute phone conversation that when they hang up, it sounds dreamy, it sounds wonderful, and they're like, that's that's what we want, because that's what my husband and I wanted, right? We wanted our agent to just make it feel like almost FOMO, that, you know, we were missing out because we weren't living here,

Tracy Hayes  32:41  
right, right? I did that is great advice for anyone. Anyone listening right now, the sales numbers, what you post on Instagram. I mean, maybe your friends see that and think it's great, but they really I don't, I don't think most people actually understand when someone puts up there, I did 20 million last year. People think, did you make $20 million they don't understand that means, you know, my sales volume, they don't and you know,

Dori Nugent  33:09  
the average person that's not in real estate, you're out of state, buyer, they have no idea, is 20 million good is 20 million bad, right? I mean, you really have to be in the industry to understand whether 20 million is that average. So I'm not wasting my five minutes.

Tracy Hayes  33:25  
Just to throw in there, I did see a reel this morning. It was done by a very reputable she has a podcast too, and I'm losing her name, but 70% of the agents in 25 sold zero to one home. I think it was zero to or one to six. Was like 5% of that. Anyway, only 30% of the agents basically sold homes, you know, that are licensed out there. So just to give everyone perspective, but yeah, I totally agree that people don't have it. Now, if you went on there and said, Hey, I just sold this couple from New York, this great, beautiful beach home that actually goes further with consumers,

Dori Nugent  34:07  
that goes further and and tell me about the beach home now they're going to get to do what now, this is what their lifestyle looks like. Remember, I always look at it this way. I feel like whenever I put one of my videos on social media, I'm trying to connect with the couple or the wife that's sitting in Ohio on their couch at eight o'clock at night. It's cold, it's dark out, and I want, again, to sell them this. If you were in Florida, St Augustine, this is probably what you would be doing right now, right at eight o'clock, you may be having drinks on the rooftop over in Villano, you know, at one of the restaurants or downtown.

Tracy Hayes  34:47  
Let's, let's expand on it, because I think this is important. You know, you've been doing it five years. You think of a, think of a family. You know what you're seeing coming you know, because you're deep in the St John's County. County. So what are you seeing as far is your want to call average, but your typical client right now that you are getting one, kids, retirees, what are you seeing? A lot of kind of the mix of the buyers that are coming into town.

Dori Nugent  35:17  
Me, personally, my business is about 75% folks from up north, one of the states up north, that are selling their primary home and moving down here to finish the next chapter or or to continue the next chapter in their life. I do

Tracy Hayes  35:33  
work with still working or retired, still kind of, kind of both, you

Dori Nugent  35:37  
know, newly retired, or maybe they're looking to pick up a little side hustle weather down here. I'm not saying I don't work with families, with children. I would not say that's my primary business,

Tracy Hayes  35:49  
because that's what's not inside because you're not marketing to them. It's because just what what you're seeing right now is buying with the current market conditions and so forth. Yes, and

Dori Nugent  35:57  
I do also, I, I, I try to make my niche also military family. So I do sell a lot to the PCs. Moves to the military community. I'm very close with that. My son currently serves in the United States Army. He's a he's an Army Ranger, so I understand what that lifestyle is like and the move, he just moved from Hawaii to Washington state.

Tracy Hayes  36:24  
So, yeah, you wouldn't think that's that difficult, but when you pack up everything in the crates, and they're moving that stuff, and you got to wait for it to come and wait for

Dori Nugent  36:35  
it to come, it's never, never there when you get there, you know, a lot of lot of them have pets, especially if they're married, the wife tends to have a dog or or two, just because, again, if the husband is occupied, so, yeah, it's, it's, there's a lot to it. So I do also like to focus on if I have families that are usually military families. Yeah, I'm working with, yeah. What now

Tracy Hayes  36:57  
there's a lot of new construction in St Johns County, greater, St Augustine, which most of, most of St John's County. For those listening outside the area, most of St John's County is considered St Augustine as far as a mailing address. But then there's the Old City, which is in St Augustine Beach, which is is within that, but obviously smaller communities within the Greater St John's community of Florida, which is very popular, lot of new construction. Yes, is that an area you've been dealing a lot with? What your attitude when customers are coming down? Because I think one mistake a lot of agents have made over the last whatever amount of years is, you got a military move, you put them in an oh, I want to buy new construction. They buy a new construction when that neighborhood still has 567, years of building to go on. And now that person is trying to turn around and sell that house after being in there two or three years. And right now, where the way the builders are at, the builders are putting every incentive to try to get people to buy homes. It's hard to compete, and that person is often stuck with it, obviously, maybe not make the equity that they hopefully or have to discount the price or whatever. What is, what is your attitude towards that and just prepping people to buy new construction? Because I think a lot of buyers have this attitude that I'll just go like they're walking into a retail store, just go in and talk to the sales agent. What's the importance of having a real estate agent in making that new construction buy? Well, let me just let me, just before I packed that a lot, I had a whole suitcase full of stuff there. Let me go

Dori Nugent  38:31  
back to your first question was the military family. Do you sell them new construction? You? This is where it comes back to trust, authenticity and trust. They're trusting me. They don't know the area. They're they they got papers that says, here's your next duty station. They don't really know the area, right? You. That's where I want to create that relationship keep it going, because I would hope that when they decide to move again, they call me to sell their home if you put them in a brand new construction community, and you're right, they usually move about every two years. They're never going to sell that. And guess who they're going to be upset with? They're going to be upset with me. Yeah, you're going to tell everybody else, she did us wrong. She did us dirty, because they're You're right. They're not going to be able to sell their home, because they can go walk right down to the model home, get an interest rate that's, you know, 4%

Tracy Hayes  39:29  
and incentives, and the agents are getting incentives, and

Dori Nugent  39:33  
the agents are getting incentives, right? So you have to be smart with your military folks on where you place them. And it's definitely always whatever house you look I always tell them this, whatever house we look at, we need to look at it as far as a resale. Now I don't do that, especially for the military. Yeah, military only, you always have to buy knowing that they're going to sell this in two years. And what does that. Look like exactly. Okay, so that's, that's number one. If you work with the military community, gotta be that's how you have to look at it, going back to just new construction in general. I mean, it's, it is it's the best value on the market. But however, I always again, you have to, if you're going into a brand new community, you have to make sure, yeah, I tell my customers, we need to make sure you're not moving within the next five years. Yeah, it's, I've been on so many listing appointments with sellers that are trying to sell their home in these communities that aren't finished. It's sad. Yeah, it's, it really is. It's, you know, I have to deliver bad news to them. I'm like,

Tracy Hayes  40:37  
well, and then it's the stress that it puts on you, because you've got this house that's sitting and you got to tell them, Okay, we got to drop the, you know, we got to be this aggressive price. Or, you know, how we want to structure it with the lender, because the lender can help you out, you know, structure it in some sort of way. Never as good as the builder can do. They just got that inside thing. Plus they have the ability, you know, they're, they're, you know, incentivizing the agents. But, but the stress of having a listing that sits on there, they're 90 126 months. And you know, obviously the you're stressed out because they asked you to perform, but you're running into a wall.

Dori Nugent  41:16  
You're running into a wall, and guaranteed they're interviewing other agents, if you think they're not interviewing other agents after about four months, or whatever their expectation is. So when you go into your listing appointment, I find right now, it is crucial to set expectations. That's usually things go south when expectations aren't met. That's how, that's how I

Tracy Hayes  41:37  
that's very good point, right? Yeah. So

Dori Nugent  41:41  
if you're going in and you're you're telling them that the expectation is, hey, average days on market is, you know, 180 days, you know, four months. If, when four months hits or 180 days hits whatever, whatever it may be, and you haven't sold that home, I guarantee you, they're interviewing other agents. They're talking to their neighbors. They're talking to the the people they work with. Hey, who did you use? Hey, I think you sold your house quickly. You know you're going to lose your job.

Tracy Hayes  42:10  
It sounds like you've obviously, you've expressed you've had some of these new these sellers in new construction neighborhoods. You've had a number of them. What have you learned? What's your strategy? Someone called you today with the situation. What is the conversation sound like when you're when you're having that appointment, assuming you, you know, well, whether you, they've gone with you or not, you, you're going to put out your strategy, and that's what they're going to hopefully buy into if they sign you up to list their home. So what is your, you know, expectations that you're setting. What is the the attitude? How's that conversation work?

Dori Nugent  42:45  
So I think that biggest, the one thing that I really like to do is I like to when I come not only present the numbers of, hey, this is what we need to list your house at, this is what the numbers look like. I like to bring the builder always has, like, three deals. They usually have, like, three homes that they're like, you know, these are our specials, right? I like to bring those, you know? So I call the builder rep, and I say, what do you got right now, if I was to walk in your office, what three homes do you have on special? What do those numbers look like? And can you get me what the mortgage looks like? So when I go into my seller, I'm like, Look, here's your house. Here's what we need to price it at. But if we have somebody that's looking in, let's just say silver leaf. Here's three homes that the builder rep is going to show them. This is what the price is going to be, and this is what the mortgage looks like. So they have a clear understanding. You know, they they moved in, they're paying their mortgage. I sellers forget about what's going on two blocks down the street with the new construction. They just do. They're not really paying attention life. Life is happening. So I like

Tracy Hayes  43:52  
to they own their home. They're in their home. So they're not they're not shopping it anymore. I like

Dori Nugent  43:56  
to remind them what's going on outside of their street in the next phase, whether it's phase four or Phase Five, this is what's going on, right? And again, it just brings an expectation. I can always go back and say, Hey, I told you that. This is what's happening in Phase four. And again, I think it just helps to calm expectations when their house isn't selling, right?

Tracy Hayes  44:19  
That's, that's brilliant advice for everything going out on the listing, appointment like that. That's great, because you also got to realize now someone buying now you're looking more at a 6% interest rate, or maybe, you know, the VA or fhme High fives or whatever, but you're basically 6% on average. You're looking at, you know, if you're looking at rough numbers and working up a payment and where they themselves may be in a mortgage right now at three and a half percent because they bought, you know, four years ago, but they're still, you know, in that so, yeah, bringing them to reality that that's that's a great advice there on how to strategize, because obviously, then at that point, you're going to propose something, whether it's a price point. Point or, Hey, we need to put money aside to help buy the interest rate down, just like the builder is, so we can at least get close, you know, type of thing.

Dori Nugent  45:09  
Yeah, cover closing costs. You know, offer, offer that we're covering closing costs. But you just, my other thing is, I like to say, okay, you've who's our buyer for this house, because the most buyers are going to walk into the model home and they're going to say, sign on the dotted line for the special, one of the houses that they have on special, right, that they're running all the incentives on. So then, who's our buyer? You know, our buyer might be somebody that's in a hurry. They don't have time to wait for new construction, right? It might be somebody that they just don't want to deal with all of the the dust and the noise and the traffic they might want to they might work from home, therefore, they don't want to be moving into a

Tracy Hayes  45:54  
we're building a house literally next door, bang, bang, bang. All day long,

Dori Nugent  45:58  
that's where I think your listing description comes in handy. Or if you do a promotional video for the home, I think you need to sell that house on this is who your buyer is.

Tracy Hayes  46:08  
Yeah, yeah. Let's we're going to, let's dip back, like I said we were going to dip back into the fitness industry work some talk about the skills that you in this and I'm sure you reflect, you know, routinely back like, you know, how, when you're working and strategizing, how your communication with the client, you know, you talked about your your bringing the flowers and then promoting that yoga or, you know, pumping up that yoga instructor, and that was the wrong thing to do. Talk about some of the things that that you've seen, where you've related, some of the stuff you learned in in 20 years of life, let alone because it was the fitness industry, and now you are using that in your strategies, strategizing, when you are having conversations, planned conversations with your clients or negotiations that go on how what's the bridge so tell us about some of the things you learned there that you actually have brought to real estate.

Dori Nugent  47:11  
Two things I learned that I feel the fitness industry prepared me for the real estate industry. First thing is customer service. I was fortunate. I worked at two very high end clubs that fell over backwards for the customer. If you knew that John came in every morning at 6am and he always bought a bottle of water and he always asked for a towel, we had that already on the counter the second we saw him walking through the door,

Tracy Hayes  47:37  
yeah, right, yeah.

Dori Nugent  47:38  
If you were a yoga instructor and you knew that Mary always runs in late. She's one of the last participants, but she always wants the back right hand corner,

Tracy Hayes  47:49  
and she always comes to the six o'clock class.

Dori Nugent  47:51  
I would always make sure that my instructors had her mat already set up, or at least saved for her, right? You have to do that that makes people feel special, right? Them staying retention. You keep people because you make them feel a certain way. It's the same in real estate. When you get out of your car and you meet them at a house, how do you get out of your car? Do you get out and you're like, Hey, come on, let's go look at the house. Or do you get out of the car and you make them feel special, right? And I think there's a fine line between being fake about it and being authentic about it. You know, you don't want to get out and just compliment them, and you really don't mean it, but that's on you. That's like, my whole drive there. It's like, Okay, I gotta, I have to get in the right frame of mind. They're excited, you know, they can't wait to come see this house. So when I get soon as I open that door, it's, you know, I'm already out the smile on my face, excited to see them. And let's make this a special moment for them, as I'm telling you, you sell when you can make people feel a certain way.

Tracy Hayes  48:59  
Agree, Agree. Definitely the the emotional part of whether you make them laugh, cry or whatever, that they remember that, what are some because when you they might have seen you on they might they you on social media. If they sit here and watch this podcast or listen to your your your fitness podcast, or where they, you know people, tendency is especially on video, they actually are creating a relationship with you, but it's just on their side because you're not seeing them, right? So when they show up, they've seen you, because wherever, YouTube or social media or whatever, and now you get what's, what's a, just a little thing you like to do to kind of break the ice in this introduction, that that first, you know, 15 seconds.

Dori Nugent  49:44  
So one thing that I, that I like to do, I do this quite often, is I so I live by Starbucks or, or if, even if it's privately owned, but iced coffees, lattes, I live on them. They're my fuel. They're they feel me. I love to text my customers and say, Hey, I'm stopping at Starbucks for a nice coffee. Would you like one? How nice is it to show up to a house right? Hand them, yeah, and then just hand them. And sometimes they say no, sometimes they say yes, but again, it's that ride there. You just, you know, text them an hour before you're just like a friend would Yes, yeah. And how does that make them feel, even if they say no, yeah, well, how heck. That was awfully nice of her to to ask.

Tracy Hayes  50:30  
I think people don't realize, you know, we're thinking about them. And obviously that that gesture 15 minutes for that you're all right. You're thinking about them. You're focused on them at that point. And obviously, you know, the easy thing, because you're stopping anyway.

Dori Nugent  50:46  
You stopping anyway. Same thing again, if I'm out showing houses all day, I'm like, oh, I need a little snack, you know? So the Circle K, I always try to text them, hey, I'm stopping for a protein bar at the Circle K, I know we have a lot of houses to look at. Do you want me to grab you a water

Tracy Hayes  51:04  
and a soda or whatever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

Dori Nugent  51:06  
it's about 5050, sometimes they say no, and sometimes they're like, oh my gosh, I'm dying. I would love to have a Diet Coke.

Tracy Hayes  51:12  
Well, I think also, it's also a gesture that, I think it sets them up later in conversation that you're not, it's not frugal that I'm You're very generous, and it's in you think generosity means a lot. No, the generosity of, hey, I'm thinking about you. I'm going to buy you a, you know, iced coffee, and I'm actually going to carry it to you that is worth a lot more than you think it is to a lot of people. Because a lot of people are like, I'm not going to call them, because if they say yes, then I got to buy it, and that's a few bucks, and then I got to carry it for them. I'm not gonna bother to do that.

Dori Nugent  51:57  
I don't get it that way. That's not my mindset, but

Tracy Hayes  52:00  
it thinks it's your abundance mindset that you're actually putting out there, and that's what it's a positive I'm thinking about you, but also I'm generous, and I, you know, my whole goal is to make you happy if I summer summarize it there,

Dori Nugent  52:17  
don't get me wrong. And I think all the agents out there that are listening to this know that you just sometimes get buyers that it doesn't matter. You could bring them a brand new car and you'd get no emotion from that. Yeah, it doesn't always work, you know, right? It's just one tip. It's just one of my it does.

Tracy Hayes  52:35  
It does build. It does sink in there, even, even that person who doesn't react to it, or says no, because some people just say no to anything. I mean, they could be sitting there thirsty as could be, and they're gonna just say no. They are, yeah, yeah.

Dori Nugent  52:49  
So that's, that's one thing that I've learned from the fitness industry, and then, which is the whole customer service piece. And the other piece really is just that everybody, everybody, wants to be rewarded differently. You know, some people, it's just they don't want a nice coffee, but it just a nice compliment makes them feel good. Some people, it's asking about their kids that makes them feel good their pets. Yeah, connection is key. I'm huge on connection. I I don't do as well with analytical customers. I'm not a spreadsheet I'm not a numbers person. I'm not that's not what my strength is, my strengths. I know my weaknesses, but I do really well with connection. And when I go into a listing appointment, one of my biggest tips is ice within that first 10 seconds I'm in that house, and if I'm walking into the kitchen, I am scanning for anything that I can talk to them about.

Tracy Hayes  53:54  
I assume you haven't had too many from Northrop Grumman down there, because then you would need the analytical side with all those engineers down there. Now you, you mentioned earlier, you have some books that you felt have moved you. Tell us. Tell us what you got there.

Dori Nugent  54:09  
Yeah. So again, kind of saying, going back to the fact that I was at the fitness business podcast host for five years, I had the opportunity to meet amazing, amazing people. I just didn't interview people within the fitness industry. I tried to branch out and interview people outside of our industry that could bring value of some sort right to the listeners I interviewed. Will gadera. He is a restaurant owner up in New York City, and he owns a well, he sold it, but he owned a Michelin star restaurant, and he has a book called unreasonable hospitality, and it talks about service, the service industry, and how he got to the point of the Michelin star and the one the biggest, not only the food. Gets you the Michelin star, but it's the service that gets you the Michelin star as well, and how he was able to get his staff to come on board and want to go on the journey with him to get the Michelin star that they felt like that star was also given to them as well. So unreasonable hospitality will teach you a lot about the service industry,

Tracy Hayes  55:21  
unreasonable hospitality. Yes, is the book Excellent.

Dori Nugent  55:25  
So he had these, these employees that were planted around his restaurant that their sole job was just to listen. I think he called them ghost, ghost runners, maybe. And if they heard a family that's, you know, sitting at a table, for instance, there was a family that the they didn't get to try a street vendor hot dog. That's all they wanted. And they were talking about how disappointed they didn't get to try street vendor hot dog. Why they're

Tracy Hayes  55:52  
sitting in this Michelin star.

Dori Nugent  55:56  
Hey, people are human. You know, as much as you love Michelin star, you love a good street that person went out and bought the street, the street hot dog. They took it back to the kitchen. Wilson, now he goes, I had to prepare it, you know, like fancied up the plate. They served it. And they created that memory again. I told you, it's

Tracy Hayes  56:15  
how you make people that is brilliant, brilliant. So they did that.

Dori Nugent  56:20  
There was somebody else that said they had nothing to take home. They were upset because they didn't have anything to take home to their child. And somebody ran out and got a teddy bear that had the little t shirt that said, I love New York, and they delivered it to the table again. It's how, how made them.

Tracy Hayes  56:36  
That's high level. That's a good one. Yeah, yeah.

Dori Nugent  56:38  
My go to all the time is the little red sales book by Jeffrey Gitomer. I Little Red sales book. It's a little tiny book. You can read it in no time. But it is sales 101. I mean, it's basic, and sometimes people over complicate the sales process. Read that Jeffrey ginamer got to interview him. It was He was amazing. It was awesome. So that one, and then one of my all time favorites, and one of my all time favorite sales authors, is Bob Berg. Here Endless Referrals. What I love about this book is it was written before social media. It doesn't talk about social media getting referrals. It talks about good old fashioned how to get referrals the good old fashioned way, and sometimes, again, I think we over complicate things. Agents get so in their head about they've got to make their next greatest video. Got to get it posted on social when really sometimes you can just take your time and write letters or join, join a volunteer group, and you can get referrals that way as well. So Bob Berg, Endless Referrals is a bob Berg

Tracy Hayes  57:48  
Endless Referrals. I got to make sure we put those in the show notes and but you are, you are on to something that I strongly believe in. This gentleman who I have this poster here, who I've had on the show. His name is Jim Crow, and he's working, you know, he's built websites for agents for 20 plus years. I noticed that we grew up together. His dad was an agent, and now we're in the AI world, right? So people are doing a lot of their searching and talking to AI, whether it's Google's Gemini or chat GBT or any others. And now he's moved to the he has. He outsources the website build because he's tired of, hey, what colors you want and all this other kind of thing branding. You know that that could be done, but he's solely building content to be found, and why I relate that to what you're you're talking about. Here is lot of agents. There's some agents who are successful because they actually are spending, they are spending the money on videographers and all that stuff, and doing great videos, and they and but it goes beyond the great video. It's how they're putting it out there. They're putting money behind it, whatever advertising where, I think there's a lot of agents who have gotten caught up in the in this thing and are spending money is on videographers to put it on their Instagram, and the only person is watching it is me, because I'm in the industry and I'm watching what you're doing, so I could talk about it on my show, right? And it's the customers are not you spent all that money for that how much that video cost, versus if you spent that money on sending someone a little teddy bear because you saw something happen on social media, maybe there was a, you know, you know, someone passed away in family, or something like setback or birthday. Maybe it's a positive thing, a birthday, something of that nature, and you sent that that makes a greater impact, and probably cost a 10th of what the video agrapher cost you that day. You went and shot that video. Now I think we both agree that when it has to do with the home that you're listing, you want to spend professional photography, video, whatever you it is. That your thing to sell that. But some of this stuff is just just smoke.

Dori Nugent  1:00:06  
It is smoke. And also, the other tip I would tell a lot of agents, especially if you're a new agent, is a lot of my buyers and sellers are older. They're not on Tiktok, they're not on Instagram stories. They may be on Facebook, but they're still into mail. Still enjoy getting a letter in the mail, something handwritten, a little package I just sent out. There's this company. They're so inexpensive, they're air fresheners for your car, but you can any picture you send them, they, they

Tracy Hayes  1:00:41  
make it into an air freshener, into an air fresh that's really good. I love it. It costs

Dori Nugent  1:00:45  
next to nothing. You know, if I can go on Facebook and find your picture of their dog, I will send that to this company, and they it's like five bucks. It's it's so expensive, and send it to them. So you have to know your audience, because I do spend a lot of money in videography, and I do a lot of social media, but I also am very savvy to know that that is not hitting you.

Tracy Hayes  1:01:04  
You've got to follow it up with the groundwork, right? You got to follow it up with the groundwork. My audience, would you agree? So let's jump into social media real quick. Here. I believe social media, for most agents, is more of a to stay top of mind thing to keep reminding their friends and family who they aren't writing cards to all the time. Because, I mean, after you get a series of customers, you're working on Hayes my past customer, so it's people who already have their home but your friends of yours, but you remind them that, hey, I'm in the business. So hopefully at the next barbecue, their other friend says, Hey, I'm looking to buy or sell. They say, hey, you need to call Dory, because Dory is reminding me, because I follow her on her social media, I agree.

Dori Nugent  1:01:46  
And I also think there's a large component of the Jones the what is it? The one ups theory

Tracy Hayes  1:01:54  
that beat the Joneses? Yeah, I feel like a lot of

Dori Nugent  1:01:57  
times we're posting stuff really just to show other agents, like, look what I'm doing. And sometimes I get caught up in that a little bit where I'm like, Oh, I just saw four agents put these incredible videos out. So now I feel like I have to put Yes, video out, and I put the video on. It's like, it was this really just for me to compete with them, or is this really for my for my customers?

Tracy Hayes  1:02:17  
Right where you you come in 2020 you're coming in. You weren't doing real estate before social media. You kind of come in like it's up and running, but it's always getting better, and now AI is come out. Are you using AI for any part of your business?

Dori Nugent  1:02:36  
I am. I'm using AI in a huge part of my business. However, I think I'm literally only scratching the surface. Yeah, I 2026, I have a goal to I really like to take class to learn a little bit more than surface level. But yes, I am using it. I use it a lot for my listing appointments. However, I will tell everybody out there listening, make sure you double check AI makes mistakes. You don't want to sit in that listing

Tracy Hayes  1:03:03  
appointment, so you're helping it. Help you prep for your listing appointment. I do,

Dori Nugent  1:03:08  
like I almost use it as another comp service, you know. And I do still use the comp service with the with our MLS, but I also throw it into Tracy BT to see what I can come up with, what see what they come up with. Comparison, I do use it for a lot of my videos, a lot of my social media. You know, design this for me, design that for me. I have not done some of the super cool stuff where it actually puts, you know, your picture. It's like, it's not really you talking, but it looks like,

Tracy Hayes  1:03:40  
Well, some people are a little out on that, because it's not authentic. As we were talking about earlier. I had Sasha Tripp, she's actually going to be at re bar camp here in St Augustine. Did you get tickets for the I did not. You did not. We got to see how we get if you did, you have you been to an RE bar camp? It's right here and World Golf Village. Okay, so we need to help, help you get in there. But Sasha trip is coming down from Charlottesville, Virginia. I think is there. I had her on, if you look back, I think she was episode 299, so she's a couple episodes back, but she actually talks about, you know, she's, she's with real but she has her she had her own boutique brokerage. Felt like, Hey, let real, and then she uses this other service to do a lot of her back office stuff. But she actually said she's created this persona in AI of like a board of a board of directors, and she describes it. If you listen to the podcast, she talks about having so when all her ideas is, is there and then the other person who's coming to Ari bar camp as an instructor, Jonathan. Jonathan was episode 301, the previous episode, but it was before Christmas, so I had. Last Name will come to me, but if you just go back to Episode 301, Jonathan is coming. He's over location, L O, K, A, T, I O N, brokerages. They're in like five different states. They won an award recently as being the, you know, against Keller Williams, Caldwell, banker, all these others in their use of AI and technology in their brokerage. But what he did is he created a he's, he's, get pretty much what a GPT would look like, but with internally and all the trainings, all his stuff, all his information, is pulled it in, so an agent can just go in there and ask the AI the question. And it's, he's it's just as if he's answering the question, because all the trainings and all the stuff that he's done is all loaded in there, and this is the type of stuff, but I want to go, but Sasha just created that one for herself, this board of directors. She's created these, this persona in there. But, yeah, I think a lot of people, far as AI, they can't quite get their arms around it. So they're like, you were like me, like I said, I upload the entire show. It knows my show very quick. I could ask anything about my show. And hey, what do you advise me to do this and do that? One of the things here in I was streaming my shows before, and I going in the 2026 I'm no longer going to stream to YouTube and Facebook, because I said the actual amount of people who actually watch a streaming is very small, and it throws off the algorithms and so forth. So, yeah, so we're not streaming. We're not streaming this show today. We're just recording it from that standpoint. But I think you have to, you have to start with the journey. And I think people who haven't started the journey, or like you and I are are service level. Here's a success story. I'll actually tell you. This was on my mind. It just came to me. I had a customer email me the other day, said this agent referred me to you, and why should I use you and and and your lender? Well, he had another lender in there, and I assume because he sent this to, like, probably three other loan officers. So I took that, put it in the chat GBT. Now, because chat GBT knows me, I've been using it for two years all my transcripts, and here's every one of these shows, it knows a lot about me and what I do. And I said, Why answer this person's questions? It gave me a lot. I said, All right, we need to shorten that. And I always like to tell them this one little line in here, boom, boom, boom. I shot that email right back to him less than five minutes. I had to return email to him with distinct, professional looking format. It wasn't even five minutes before I got another email in there that said he started the application online. So he clicked the link and went on because I quickly did it and got all my thoughts, it knows me, and put it all in a professional format, where, if I sat there and I'm not his answer and trying to type that out, whatever that would have took me in time, probably not a huge amount of time. But, I mean, what took me at least three times the amount of time that, if not more, I think it needs to be leveraged anyway. All right, let's, I'm gonna, let's do, I'm gonna do a we'll kind of do because I never got into my trending questions. So we're gonna go through these real quick. So let's try to just like fire right right back to is now a good time to buy a home in St Augustine, St Johns County, absolutely 100%

Dori Nugent  1:08:29  
I feel like sellers are getting anxious. They're ready to cut deals. They're ready to work with offers that come across the table. I think sellers are just waiting for offers, put it out there, work through it. Expect to negotiate.

Tracy Hayes  1:08:42  
So you want to hire an agent who's a good negotiator, a one of them, you got a buyer's market. So you got there. Don't hire an agent who isn't a good negotiator, because now's the time to negotiate and work through those little things all in the positive goal of obviously, buying or selling that home. Great advice. Will mortgage rates drop in 26 and how should that affect their home buying strategy?

Dori Nugent  1:09:05  
Okay, well, I don't have a crystal ball, which I did. I think they're going to remain close, give or take quarter percent. Yeah, I don't think there's going to be any massive shift. Therefore, I think buyers are starting to realize that. I think they're tired of waiting, and I think they're ready to buy. Yeah, I think we're going to see a good, good real estate year in 2026 I think our pent up demand of everybody that waited last year because they kept having hopes that the interest rates are going to drop. I think they're over that. Yeah.

Tracy Hayes  1:09:34  
I mean, we are definitely at the lowest they've been in quite a few years, but nothing, you know, within a within a percent. I mean, obviously we were pushing 7% there and on just regular, conventional mortgages. Now we're closer to six. I mean, I did a 5.99 I'm sure some others say, Oh, I got 5.875 however, obviously, loan size, credit score, and all those things help the lender out from, from, from our side of what we can do, and you know how far we can dip into the butt? Get to make the deal work for sure, but my my recommendation is to comment on that you can always refinance. There's no doubt. If it drops drastically, but I agree with you. I don't think you're going to see much more than a quarter percent. So if you see the address in the home you want, and it's a buyer's market right now, you need to jump on it. If it did drop a half a percent in we're well into the fives, which I always said everyone we got the 5.875 we'd see a little bit of a frenzy. I think this summer we could see that we're also we were like, Okay, it's in the fives. We just we got to go, because there are a lot of pent up sellers, and there's a lot of pent up buyers

Dori Nugent  1:10:38  
and agents focus on what the payments going to be, not the price of the house, and send them what their payment looks like with new construction. Yep, yep. I'm telling you, you'll get a sale if you send them what their payment looks like new construction.

Tracy Hayes  1:10:53  
Talk about payments. And I don't think this is in the trending questions, but it should be insurance. You you're out at the beach, how important it is to get insurance quotes pretty much when you get under contract

Dori Nugent  1:11:06  
right away. And actually, I'm at a point where I'm almost already on the phone. I'm I'm already calling the insurance agent, at least the guy that I like to work with doesn't mean that's who they have to use before we even go under contract. I don't want to get under contract and then there's an insurance

Tracy Hayes  1:11:21  
issue, right? 100% is it? I don't think people realize the typical consumer, and because we've learned over the last couple years the information that these insurance agents can pull when it was last time there was a permit for the water heater, obviously, the roof is big here, all those types of things, you need to know that, because if you're going to make the offer, you got to be having some of that information and knowing, hey, we're going to negotiate that hot water heater is 10 years old and should be replaced. You know that kind of thing. Sellers, should I sell now or wait for the market to improve?

Dori Nugent  1:11:56  
I would not wait for the market to improve. I always tell my sellers, all you need is one buyer. Just need one buyer. There's a lot of buyers out there waiting for that one house to come on the market. So get it on the market. Get it going here. I I just not a component of waiting. Plus, I think time kills deals. And if you talk to your seller about waiting they could change their mind in a month, and you've lost a sale.

Tracy Hayes  1:12:24  
Well, I we had a phrase and years ago, and I worked at Quicken Loans my first eight and a half years in the business, pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered. And if you want to sit around and wait for you know the from a seller standpoint, to be lean more towards selling than the buyer's market. Some you're the house you're buying is that much more. So it's all relative if you're buying, if you're selling this house and buying another house. Well, if it's a buyer's market, it's a you're buying. You're having a buyer's market over there. There's no you know, if your house goes up 20,000 the house you're buying is probably gonna go up 20,000 you know, if things were to swing back the other way,

Dori Nugent  1:13:05  
there's Home Selling every single day. That's what you need to convince. You know, you want to convince your seller that homes are selling every single day. Why can't their home be the home that's selling tomorrow, right? You know, I don't go into my listing appointments like, you know, yeah, you know, like, hey, somebody's somebody. There's, you go in the MLS, there's homes going under contract every single day. Let's make your home the one that goes under contract, but it's gotta be priced right.

Tracy Hayes  1:13:30  
Let's see, we talked a lot. Oh, here's a good one. What improvements or staging tips actually help home sell faster? And I'm going to pretense that help home sell faster here in St Augustine, St Johns County, in the current market that we have.

Dori Nugent  1:13:46  
So for me, my number one piece of advice to sellers is paint. Paint, paint, especially if you have an odor in your home. There's actually a new product out there called sensations that you can put into paint that helps to absorb odors. I think there's nothing greater than walking into a home with a solid, neutral color all the way around and the fresh smell of paint. I agree. I'm just a big pain fresh

Tracy Hayes  1:14:19  
if you I don't know if you've had one recently, maybe some of these older homes, which you can get in Saint Augustine, you know, some of these people might have lived there, you know, 2030, years, you know, get some somebody maybe passed away, and their kids have inherited the home, and nothing's been done to it recently. What is your what is your attitude of actually doing, spending actual, you know, hard money, like I'm doing of kitchen or bathrooms and stuff.

Dori Nugent  1:14:44  
I mean bathroom and kitchen. Here's the way I look at it. Most I'm finding buyers right now. They have just enough. Not all buyers, but most of them, they have just enough to pay for the house. They don't have a whole lot of residual cash. They're buying a house. House that has an outdated bathroom, bathrooms and kitchens. Now they're like standing in the house going, now I need to find another $65,000 to update a kitchen or update a bathroom. I'm a huge component of spend the money again. You got to keep it neutral. Don't go trendy. It's just clean and classic, and they think your rate of return is greater with you updating the kitchens and bathrooms. I'm gonna,

Tracy Hayes  1:15:30  
I'm gonna throw this in from a lending standpoint, because it's a very underutilized product, and that's the there's and there's, it's not hard getting them. There's renovation loans that, if you are, you know, you've got this home that hasn't been updated in 25 years. You go in there and go, Okay, what's it going to cost to replace the kitchen and get it updated up to speed? The bathrooms are, you know, obviously flooring, typically, you know, it's somebody's been living in there. Maybe they've had pets or smoker or whatever it is, and to make your offer accordingly. Because, you know, as a real estate agent, you're running the comps, and you're saying, you know, if this house was up to speed, this was a great 1980s home, and it was turn key, you'd probably be able to sell it for this much. That's, you know, the value of the market. But because it doesn't, we really got to go in here and do this. But let's get a renovation loan. Because when we go in there and actually tell the appraiser, hey, we're going to, you know, we're getting a renovation loan because this is what we're going to do, the kitchen, this is what we're going to do, the bathrooms, this is what we're going to put new flooring into it that the appraiser is going to say, Okay, well now that home is like that house down the street that's updated, and that's the value, and you can borrow that money in between to get that done. So, but the problem I think, Well, what I hear from a lot of agents is, obviously, people want lot of people just want turnkey. They do

Dori Nugent  1:16:50  
want turnkey. Yeah, so therefore, I like to take my sellers to the turnkey homes that are on the market and show them this is what we're going up against. Take time to take your sellers out to at least two or three of their competitive the homes that they're going to compete against. And when they walk in, ask them, How do you feel when you walk into this house that has an updated kitchen, updated bathrooms? And then I like to bring them back to their house last and then say, Okay, now in buyer's eyes, you walk into here. How does that make you feel? And it's funny. So many times they're like, Yeah, didn't. Didn't. Again, people get stuck in their own little street, yeah? Their own little world, yeah. Kind of don't know what's going on outside of their street or their neighborhood. So take them into their competition homes. I'm telling it's a it's eye opening.

Tracy Hayes  1:17:38  
That is brilliant advice. I guarantee you one out of 1000 agents may do that. Probably one out of 12,000 agents. Expectations.

Dori Nugent  1:17:49  
And it kind of I always say, cya, cover your ass. It allows for you to when their house isn't selling. It allows for you to go back and say, Hey, remember I showed you these two, three other homes, they are already under contract, I told you, or, you know, I recommended, you know, we always take a personable says, I recommended that you, you know, updated your kitchen I think this is why, you know your house is still sitting and they can't get mad at you. You told them this.

Tracy Hayes  1:18:15  
No, that 100% works. I've heard from agents even, I mean, just the kitchen counter, yes, you know, because it's, it's for Micah and who's got for Micah now? And you go and people go in and they see it for Micah counter, you know, you get everything else, but they see it for Micah counter, like, Oh my No, you got to have, you know, whatever the granite, or whatever the the other material is, they use it that are. They're using a new construction that, that, that right there, just that little thing could turn them off and off.

Dori Nugent  1:18:40  
And it's really if your home is outdated, it takes away a large part of the market. So all your younger, your younger generation that's buying a home right now, they don't have the additional cash to do kitchen guts and bathroom guts. So you're, you're removing that market.

Tracy Hayes  1:18:54  
Yeah, 100% now I break great a great tip. Take him around yourself, your sellers. Take him around and show them what others things are selling. So when you go back and sit down with them, say, Okay, this is how we need to sell your home. Strategize. This is what they're looking at around you. That's brilliant. I want to say it was Michelle Tremblay that I had on and her advice was walk their house as if they were buying their house, and walk around. And that's very similar advice to what you're talking walk around, think of yourself as a buyer of your own house. And walk around. Would you have this sitting here? Would you, you know, because obviously you want to sometimes declutter or take you want to take pictures down, or whatever it is, you know that the agents recommend to prep the houses. That is brilliant advice. Anything you like to add

Dori Nugent  1:19:44  
just one, one other piece when it comes to social media, because I know it's still one of the hottest topics out there. I think it's important, and I've had a lot of success that my social media page isn't just real estate, real estate, real estate, real estate. I think it's really important for buyers and sellers to see you as Dory Nugent, the real estate agent. And Dory Nugent, what? And I think you need to answer that. What is it? Is it a group that you volunteer with? Do you like to cook? Are you a wine connoisseur? Are you cocktail connoisseur? Are you a gardener? What is it? I think you need to blend those two things together so you feel authentic and relatable. Drives me nuts to open up an agent's Instagram page, and when you look and scroll

Tracy Hayes  1:20:35  
through, it says, house pictures, house pictures, house pictures, house pictures, show me i troll everyone's social media before having them on the show to get as much information that can, or find something maybe just really unique about and yeah, it really turns off that I turn up their Instagram, and literally everybody, it's a picture of a house. But I think it also goes back to selling lifestyle, which everyone in Florida should be selling a lifestyle. And you just take some lifestyle photos, lifestyle

Dori Nugent  1:20:59  
photos, yeah, and then whatever your whatever your hobby is, post that, I think that's so important to have on your Instagram, your Facebook page, that when Listen, buyers and sellers are looking at your social media just as much as you're looking at their social media. Yeah, they want to also see, how can they connect with you. I try to have a lot of military pictures on so everybody knows that. Yeah, hi, I'm a mom, right of a child that's

Tracy Hayes  1:21:23  
in the middle serving No, 100% All right, last question here, to summarize everything up, why should someone use Dory Nugen as a real estate agent in St Augustine?

Dori Nugent  1:21:32  
Yep, because I'm going to sell you a lifestyle. And I'm not only just going to sell you a lifestyle, walk away. I'm going to be in your lifestyle, and I want to be a part of your life. I want to show you everything that St Augustine has to offer. I want to share with you the hot spots and the places the locals go and just really make you happy, because that's what Florida and St Augustine is all about, and it made me very happy, and my husband very happy. We said we'd give it two years, and if it didn't work out, we would move back, and we are now on year six. So yeah, and I just think it's about, it's the biggest purchase of your life, and it should be fun. I know it's stressful, but there has to be a little bit of a fun component, and I want to take you on that journey awesome.

Tracy Hayes  1:22:20  
And there's no doubt. I mean, I live in St Johns County. I don't live on the on the beach down there. I live in one of those communities that has some of the amenities, but the school system, the I want to compliment the sheriff's department, because everyone wants to feel secure. And, you know, because we are right on 95 and there's a lot of people going up and down 95 that we don't want to get off on our exits, and you don't either, and it's so if you're looking to buy in St Johns County, especially at the beach in St Augustine, Dory is your girl? Give her call. I'm going to put her contact information in the show notes. Dory, thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. You.