The Mostly Real Estate Podcast, with Declan Spring

Episode #53 - Setting the Record Straight: What The Daily [Podcast] Got Dead Wrong - with José Fernández

• Declan Spring

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What happens when one of the world's most prestigious news organizations publishes a deeply flawed hit piece on an entire profession? That's exactly what Declan Spring and guest, José Fernández, addresses in this response to The New York Times Daily podcast episode "The Housing Market Has New Rules. Realtors Are Evading Them."

They examine and dismantle the NYT's reporting, exposing fundamental misunderstandings about how real estate actually works in America. From the false portrayal of NAR as a regulatory body to the complete omission of the Buyer Representation and Broker Compensation Agreements that now create unprecedented transparency in the industry, this episode reveals how biased framing and selective reporting can create a dangerously misleading narrative.

Together, they walk through how buyer representation actually works, why the "dreaded 6%" commission myth needs to die, and the critical difference between market education and the serious ethical violation of steering. Their exchange offers listeners a rare glimpse into the nuts and bolts of real estate practice that most reporting glosses over.

Beyond defending a profession of 1.5 million Americans unfairly characterized as a "cartel," Declan outlines the real barriers to housing affordability—from supply shortages and restrictive zoning to the insurance crisis and stagnant wages—and makes a case that scapegoating real estate professionals for systemic problems only distracts from meaningful solutions.

Whether you're a real estate professional frustrated by persistent misconceptions about your work or a consumer trying to navigate the complex world of buying and selling property, this episode delivers the context, clarity, and honest analysis that was missing from the original reporting. Join us for a defense of transparency and accuracy—not just in real estate, but in journalism too.

José Fernández  is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE#01353359

Declan Spring is a licensed CA REALTOR® DRE#01398898

Declan Spring:

This is Declan Spring. Welcome to the Mostly Real Estate Podcast. The housing market has new rules. Realtors are evading them. That is the title given to the daily podcast from the New York Times on Tuesday, april 29th, and if you're paying attention, you'll have already noticed the direction and bias that's baked into that headline and what's being implied. Realtors are intentionally evading rules that were supposedly created to protect homebuyers and sellers from what? Price gouging, I suppose, collusion Greed.

Declan Spring:

That's exactly what Deborah Kamen, the reporter behind this shameful piece of journalism, sets out to prove without evidence and definitely without fairness. She's cajoled along by an uninformed host, michael Barbaro, who seems to have been given no prep, no balance, no insight into how real estate actually works. Real estate actually works and the result is a misleading narrative, and it's cloaked in the credibility of one of the world's most respected news organizations, the New York Times, and that's the real bombshell here. That's the shame of it all. Let's call this what it really is it's a hit job on a profession made up of a million and a half Americans who are small business owners. Profession made up of a million and a half Americans who are small business owners, independent contractors, parents, veterans and neighborhood experts, and not one of them was interviewed. Not one working realtor was given a voice in this piece. The very group being accused of and I quote Colorado, who decided not to pay an agent who withdrew his home from the market after trying to sell it himself and then wait for it, decided to start a business to fix real estate. Do you think he'll want to get compensated for that work? Now let's actually get into what the reporting got wrong, not just ethically but factually. And not just wrong, but what the reporting omitted entirely.

Declan Spring:

Despite what the episode suggests, the National Association of Realtors is not the boss of real estate. The National Association of Realtors, nar, is a trade group, not a regulatory body. Contracts, disclosure forms, agency laws they're all governed at the state level. Each state has its own rules, its own licensing board and its own standard forms. So to suggest that NAR is unilaterally dictating commissions and contracts across all 50 states is flat out false. Contracts across all 50 states is flat out false. That's either lazy reporting or deliberate framing. Now somehow Cayman manages to emit specific reference to the single most important and transparent reform now in place the buyer representation and broker compensation agreement. This agreement requires that agents and buyers outline in writing contractually who is paying what and why, and this is a major shift in consumer protection. It's transparent and enforceable and to omit this is not just misleading, it's dishonest.

Declan Spring:

Next, I just want to talk about the 6% myth and why it needs to die Now. Over and over again, the episode references the dreaded 6% as if commissions are fixed like gas prices. They're not and they never have been. And nowadays, for goodness sakes, a seller does not even put 6% in a listing agreement because they're no longer responsible for paying in the listing agreement. They're no longer responsible for paying the buyer's broker. Listen, commissions are 100% negotiable and they vary region by region, by service model, by experience, by property type and by market conditions.

Declan Spring:

And to portray them as a standard, unbreakable rule, it's not just factually wrong, it reinforces a false perception that realtors are operating some kind of secret monopoly. It's unfair to suggest that a group of a million and a half hardworking realtors operates like a cartel. So what's really going on? Well, the story that Daly chose to tell isn't one of reform. It's actually one of resentment. It paints realtors as obstacles to progress, without ever talking to one. It takes a complex, state-regulated profession and reduces it to a cartoon villain. It uses anecdotes instead of evidence and it feeds into a growing distrust of professionals who, despite the headlines, show up every day to advocate for their clients and their community, to protect their interests and help them achieve one of life's biggest goals home ownership, which, contrary to another New York Times daily podcast from last year, is actually better and wiser than renting.

Declan Spring:

So listen, if you're trying to buy or sell a home right now, here's my advice Ask questions, review your agreements, compare services and please know this, the best realtors welcome that level of scrutiny because we earn our business. We don't expect it. Okay, thanks for listening. Now I want to do something that Deborah Kamen and the New York Times failed to do. I want to talk to a colleague. I want to talk to a realtor, a realtor who serves the Berkeley area and has been working hard there since 2002, the wonderful Jose Fernandez with Red Oak Realty. I hear that a couple of new member benefits when you join NAR are three Amigos posters and a tin of cookies wrapped in sets of three.

José Fernández:

I think it's magnificent. I'm looking for the two and a half cookies and the two and three quarters Amigos.

Declan Spring:

Listen, let's do a quick bio. First of all, You've been in real estate since 2002.

José Fernández:

You were born and raised in Berkeley right real estate with a friend that had been doing work for about 15 years at that point and I came in under his arm and basically built my business from there. With the kicks and falls of the early 2000s, as well as the big, hard hit financial crash that happened there and navigating clients through those markets, as well as the golden era of put a sign in the ground and property sell in 10 minutes right.

Declan Spring:

Right, right, remember all of that. And you're with Red Oak, of course, and I was formerly with Red Oak, now I'm with KW, so I hope nobody's already slipped in here, no it's good I came in through the back door.

José Fernández:

We do. It is important to know we're cooperative brokers. We I came in through the back door. It is important to know we're cooperative brokers. We work together.

Declan Spring:

We all work together, Different companies different brokers Don't want to be accused of collusion here. No collusion in the studio, the cartel, the shadowy, nefarious substructure of the real estate industry. We don't want anyone to smell any of that going on.

José Fernández:

None of that here. Let's keep it transparent, but so you listen to this daily podcast.

Declan Spring:

What did you think? What did you think? The transcripts in front of you?

José Fernández:

Yeah, you know, I felt that it is a pretty unfair and uninformed piece of for I don't know if it's the right term clickbait. Yeah, it has a lot of the taglines and a lot of the things that would hook someone in to be like. This is why this industry is broken and bad and what we don't like and what we want to change about it, when it's really not speaking to the process and both sides of the table right, which is one of the things that guess. What Real estate agents have to do all the time is work on both sides of the table. If we represent sellers, we're representing them to their best interest, but we have to educate them on what buyers are looking for and what buyers' understandings are and what buyers' value systems are. So that's about having a full perspective. This piece did not have any of that.

Declan Spring:

This was like a couple of people that were well, here's just some of the and these are all direct quotes. Okay, realtors are evading the new rules. Found ways to evade new reforms, the dreaded 6% price fixing, anti-competitive, block competition, the great real estate workaround winking of defiance, creative and perhaps legal flouting. A cartel operating like a cartel, overvalue their services.

José Fernández:

The whole system is a mess and and and really I think, yeah, it really is so um kind of blind to anything other than the narrative that they're putting down, which it's fine to put a narrative down, but don't present it as this is the research we've done, and we've talked to dozens and dozens of buyers and sellers, but not one real estate agent or not. Well, you know, we'll take the sound bites from the NAR president, who's talking about this, but we're not having any conversation, or anyone who's talking on the other side of the table about, well, what does it mean? Or how do we answer this question that we're posing about?

José Fernández:

the boycott or the steering.

Declan Spring:

Deborah came and says in her reporting that nobody really asked how our commissions paid. I think that's a really weird statement for her to make that nobody really asked.

Declan Spring:

Let's talk about how local real estate really is and what. One of the fundamental problems of this whole piece of reporting is the fact that every single state has its own association of realtors and NAR does not regulate. The states regulate themselves and the commission structure everything. Everything is at the state level and this does not address that at all. This just suggests that NAR governs everything. It's just an absolute and complete, fundamentally problematic emitting of the reality of the real estate industry that it works at the state level.

José Fernández:

Absolutely, and beyond that, even you get into the you know micro environment of our market right, Whether you're in the East Bay or San Francisco, or Bakersfield or Fresno or Yosemite, you know, or Mariposa County or Contra Costa County. These are all different places that deal with the process of buying and selling differently, with an overwhelming regulation of what our professional ethics and duties and values are. But each one of these is a different market that's really being addressed differently and that's part of the touch and feel that real estate agents bring is how am I going to explain to my seller here what their value is If they're talking to their uncle who sells real estate in?

Declan Spring:

Portland.

José Fernández:

Oregon. It's a different market. They try to bring that translation to us and what we have to say is well, that's fine, but that's a different market. How does that really translate to what we're dealing with here? In your market, where you're buying or selling and I do think it's worth saying the comment no one really asks how these commissions are paid. That is whether people ask or not.

José Fernández:

As someone who's been doing this for 20 plus years, one of the first things that we talk about when we get to the listing agreement is this is how it breaks down. And one of the last things after every listing presentation is we're going to get you an estimated proceeds sheet that shows you exactly what you're going to pay how much are your title fees, how much are your escrow fees, how much are your commissions on both sides. This is a standard procedure almost for us here. Now, whether that's transparency across the board in the whole country, I can't say, but we do have a very high level of ethics and training in our little climate here, and I think it's important for that to be part of the discussion if you're going to have an even reporting on an industry.

Declan Spring:

And to just say no one asks how commissions get paid. What does that mean? That's a ridiculous thing to say. Who are who is this? Who are these? No ones, because here's my experience everybody asks me how things get paid. I don't think I've ever had a client who doesn't ask me how things get paid. It's our job to explain the breakdown, to go through the net sheet. Everybody deserves to understand who's paying what and how it gets paid. I mean, that's our job. Like, no one asks how these commission gets paid, to throw that out there in a piece of reporting suggests that it's accurate. This is the New York Times. It's a stupid thing to say. It's an irresponsible thing to suggest it's an incorrect statement.

Declan Spring:

So that brings me to like the six percent thing, the dreaded six percent right she keeps bringing, she just keeps bringing up dread, the dreaded six percent, over and over again. Come on, can we get past this? Really? I don't think I've seen six percent around here in a long time, you know. It really just doesn't exist. Anyway, there's already. There's already a massive downward pressure on commissions because of tech disruption and all kinds of other things that are really problematic.

José Fernández:

One of the things that none of this is talking about is the amount of work that we do as real estate agents on both sides of the table. I'm going to keep talking about that because the dreaded 6% that puts out there the narrative that one agent's getting 6% of any sale and I'll tell you, no agent's getting 6% because agents work for brokerages and the brokerages take their percentage and then we split the percentage with the other cooperating broker or concession to them and so the 6% again. They keep throwing that number out because it's the tagline and it just seems ridiculous. 6% is so close to 10. It's really criminal that it could be so high.

José Fernández:

It should be 1% or 2%, right, but you look at a 1% or 2% representation of a sale, the people that are doing that and the services that you're getting really are going to take away from and hurt the consumer they're going to put them at risk the amount of work that we do on both sides of the table to educate our clients, to guide them into transparent and honest disclosure about the properties, about the issues they know. It's natural to say, well, I don't want to say anything bad about the property. We tell our clients all the time we got to put this out there. We have to let people know because we don't want to open you up to legal liability on the backside Right Getting sued after. We don't want to get sued, we don't want you to get sued.

Declan Spring:

And we educate our clients to do that on both sides of the table, absolutely. And this, you know this, this notion that, okay, we know that the real estate community is very, very tight, right, especially around here. We're a very, very tight group of friends and colleagues. We work together. And why is that? It's not because we're in collusion, itusion at all, it's not because we're a cartel. It's because it's in the best interests of people buying a property or selling a property and or selling a property that we work collaboratively on their behalf. So the notion that our being typed as a bunch is somehow a nefarious, shadowy activity is completely incorrect. It's because we're working hard to protect the interests of homebuyers and sellers and we do that collaboratively. And for that, for it ever to be thought of, that we're doing something nefarious behind the scenes. It's just to me, honestly I'll use the word disgusting, I think it's disgusting.

José Fernández:

I agree with it.

José Fernández:

It's a ridiculous idea when you look at the industry and you know, as you're saying, we're all friends and a tight-knit community, but we're also members of our community that have huge parts of our life that aren't real estate and we're not getting together.

José Fernández:

I mean most of us, even though we're cooperative, are also in some form of competition, and the fact that people that are in competition can be collaborative and can work together and share ideas of how do we address the challenges of, I don't know, knob and tube wiring, insurability you want to talk about an industry that only wants to win and doesn't lose. You know the insurance providers just want to pull out of insuring and so they have created these items, that they are red tagging and what we need to do is sell houses for our clients, get them into houses. So we've had to navigate in the past eight months. How do we do this? Are we spending prep money that used to go into hardwood floors, into updating a furnace or updating a hot water heater? And this is the sort of thing that doesn't get discussed because it's nuts and bolts, it's boring, it's scary and it doesn't make for a good tagline.

Declan Spring:

As you said, we're your neighbors, we have a vested interest in the neighborhoods we live in. We bring so much employment. I counted on my most recent listing I brought 25 individual small business owners or tradespeople, from cleaners to carpenters, to stagers all came through that property, you know, so that the seller could achieve the price that they'd like to achieve for that property. I did, I managed that entire project 25 individual businesses.

José Fernández:

It's an incredible infrastructure Right, and those businesses are businesses that are here, and our brokerage it's a business that's here. This isn't, you know, most of us. We're not working as part of this huge national association of realtors or even the statewide association of realtors. We really have our own little businesses and we are distributing and helping to make it happen. And I think it's an interesting point and I'm not arguing this, I'm just saying is a different perspective is they're talking about a seller should get what they want. A seller should get. The seller can only get what the market will provide for them.

José Fernández:

The market decides and guess who decides on that price? It's the buyers, and the buyers decide. So when we do all that work, when you're talking about all that prep work to get the target price that these sellers want, that they're tied to because they saw something else or the historical data, or because that's just what they want, it is really about how do we present this to achieve the most amount and we leave that on the table. I think most of the time we say hey, we had two Sunday open houses. We walked 32 people through, there were 15 disclosure packages out. We ended up with two offers, the delta between the two offers is $10,000. The market has spoken. You make the decision. I want $40,000 more. It's not there. That's our job and that's not something that we are. The buyer's agent isn't colluding with us to decide. And how do we get this price?

José Fernández:

Like we're all keeping it very. You know we're representing our clients, we're doing our fiduciary duty and we're advising them on the market. We're navigating them through this market.

Declan Spring:

A hundred percent. Let's just demystify something here in the process that's not outlined at all here in this piece of reporting. We have a thing called a buyer's representation broker compensation agreement. It's pretty straightforward. The nuts and bolts are not difficult to understand. We'll demystify it right here. We'll walk through it. Jose, you come to me, you want to buy a property. We now have a form called the BRBC buyer representation broker compensation agreement. I'll sit down with you, Jose, and I will explain to you that you'll be responsible for paying my compensation to my brokerage. Oh, by the way, my brokerage, not the agent. I don't know why these pieces of reporting always claim that it's the agent getting the money. It's never the agent who gets the money. It's the brokerage that gets the money. I'm at Keller Williams. Keller Williams receives the compensation. I get a split out of that based on my contract with Keller Williams. You're the same at Red Oak.

José Fernández:

Correct.

Declan Spring:

Okay, let me get back to the buyer's representation broker compensation agreement.

Declan Spring:

You and I sit down. Jose, you want to buy a house. I have a contract here. Let's look it over. I'm going to be representing you in your purchase. Now the new rules this is state assembly bill states we have to have a contract. That's a state assembly bill. I need you to look over this contract, jose. We need to figure out what is the compensation you're willing to pay my brokerage when we get to the conclusion of a successful purchase for you. And I can't have any more than three months in this contract, but it could take you three months. So let's have a three-month agreement and I'd like 2.5% for my services. I don't get paid an hourly.

Declan Spring:

So, jose, you want to buy a house? I would like to. I'm going to work real hard for you. I'm going to work hard for you. I'm going to represent you. I'm going to explain everything. When you're worried, when you're scared, I'm going to talk to you. You can. In fact, one of the questions anyone should ask their realtor is will you answer the question? Will you pick up the phone? Are you the kind of person as I interview? You are the kind of person that I think will be there for me when things feel scary. That's part of the interview process a buyer should consider.

Declan Spring:

So, jose, for all of this work I'm going to do for you, which is going to go on for several months we're going to see lots of properties as many as you need to see going to educate you, work with your lender, we're going to talk about ordinances. We're going to beat the competition. We're going to do everything we have to do. I'd like two and a half percent to go to my brokerage. I'll get some of that. I won't get all of it, but I'll get some of it at some point. And then I have to pay all my marketing. I have to pay my taxes. I have to pay. I'm running a business. So, jose, do you understand that?

José Fernández:

no-transcript know.

Declan Spring:

Well, you know, in this buyer representation broker compensation agreement, which is really as a result of the new rules this is what came out of the new rules In this agreement, you and I are going to sign a two and a half percent. I'm going to also ask you to go through a worksheet so that we can understand whether or not you actually have that money. Now, if you don't have that money and I choose to represent you anyway, in the hope so that we can get it from the seller, you know, let's talk about that, but we are going to be careful about this I want to understand that you can afford to sign this agreement. I want you to do it responsibly. I'm going to work with you. Now.

Declan Spring:

There is a workaround Debra is correct. There actually is a workaround. We can ask when you go to make your offer. We have another form. It's called a residential purchase agreement. When we sit down and we fill out the residential purchase agreement, there's a line in there where we can ask if the seller would please consider covering, covering the cost of this compensation, this two and a half percent. So, although he'll say you're ultimately responsible and the seller might decline to do that, we can make. Make the ask, let's see. Most of the time sellers are amenable to it, because you know why. They look at everything and they recognize, yeah, there's value in paying, that this is a good idea. Let's go ahead and cover the cost of the buyer's broker's compensation. That's what the seller will most likely say. But are you getting what I'm talking about? I totally understand it, jose.

José Fernández:

I want you to ask the questions that you need to ask to fully understand this process If we write an offer on a property and we agree that I'm going to pay you two and a half percent which seems reasonable to me, as maybe an industry insider, but I agree to that 2.5% Declan and then when we write the offer, they only agree to 2.25%. You know the 2.25%, amigo, or let's call it the 2.25 cookie conversation per what every realtor is doing across the country to have this workaround.

Declan Spring:

What happens then?

José Fernández:

What happens to that extra quarter?

Declan Spring:

percent. Well, remember, you're ultimately responsible for the two and a half, and we've gone through the worksheet and we understand that you do have that money. So thank you very much. I've worked hard. I've explained the process very clearly to you. This is a great question. You'll be responsible to make sure that I get the full two and a half percent. So if the seller doesn't want to pay it fully, you'll have to make up the balance, because I like to get paid, especially when I've explained things clearly and directly.

Declan Spring:

Now, if you'd like to negotiate the two and a half percent and this is where I think there's a failure in the reporting as well Agreed, Right, Agreed, Okay. There's a statement here that I tried to negotiate with my realtor or realtors and nobody would come down. I would say to that person you failed at your negotiation. I would say to that person you failed at your negotiation. That realtor negotiated on their side and they walked away when they couldn't get what they wanted. That doesn't mean that realtors wouldn't come down. It means that you did not negotiate well, and now you're blaming the realtor for not coming down Right.

Declan Spring:

Now I would ask anybody do you want to work with a realtor who's good at negotiating? If they show up and they negotiate in their own best interests, is that a realtor you think would try and work hard in your best interests, negotiate well for you? Correct, that's the realtor you want. You want a realtor with strong negotiation skills. Just because they walked away from you and you're disgruntled about that. Don't throw that back at us that we wouldn't come down.

José Fernández:

Right, yes, fair enough, fair enough, I'm ready to sign Declan. I do want to say one thing. I don't know about this seller in Colorado talking about 10 to 30 hours worth of work for the listing of a property, but that seems like an awful little amount of work.

Declan Spring:

It kind of does.

José Fernández:

I mean, I think the numbers. Well, whatever, we won't get into that.

Declan Spring:

Now, I was watching you, Jose, when we were listening to the piece of reporting here from the New York Times or from the Daily Podcast, and you seemed to be particularly agitated with the conversation around steering, and I just want to ask you maybe we'll close on this why were you so agitated?

José Fernández:

I think that steering is a real thing and it is something that our industry historically suffered from. There was absolutely a practice of steering, which was showing certain properties or showing certain clients certain properties to get them to buy or not buy in an area, steering them to a market. Now the difference is, steering is not market education. And we do a lot of market education. Meaning if we have a client that wants to buy in Central Berkeley and we show them four or five properties there, then they see what they sell for and they say, gosh, we're having a hard time making this work. Our job is to give them the perspective of what that value is. And we say, ok, well, you want to be in Berkeley, you like the schools, you like the neighborhood, you want to walk to the perspective of what that value is. And we say, okay, well, you want to be in Berkeley, you like the schools, you like the neighborhood, you want to walk to the Berkeley Bowl, but you're having a problem with the valuation. Let's go look in El Cerrito and see what you get for the same amount of money. And we do that same education.

José Fernández:

I would argue that's not steering, that's educating on the market. The client has the right to choose. Educating on the market. The client has the right to choose. Hey, you know what? Maybe we do want to consider this area, maybe we do want to do this or absolutely we don't want to do this. But that's part of the education is getting them there. And they're having this argument, or they're having this point saying that everyone is steering so that only properties that are offering 3% or 3 Amigos or 3 Cookies are the ones that we're going to show our clients. We are working right now with the contract, the BRBC contract that you signed is we're going to get paid, what we're getting paid and we're working as we've always worked, across the board, showing them the properties they want to see, or properties we think they would be interested in getting, properties we think they would be interested in getting, and so that is a really it's a triggering term that I don't think is really applicable to what they're saying and I think that that's I have a problem with that.

Declan Spring:

And I'm glad. I'm glad you brought it up again, because I do want to point out carefully that again in the BRBC, the Buyer's Representation Broker Compensation Agreement, if you as a buyer say you're willing to be responsible for two and a half percent to your buyer's brokerage, the agent can't come in and you know, ask for three percent. They're actually not allowed Like. That is against the rules. It doesn't matter Even if three percent was being offered by a seller. The BRBC dictates how much the buyer's broker can actually take. So you could have a seller saying I'll give you 5% if you sell my house. We can't do it because the BRBC says no, you're limited to 2.5% period. That is part of the new rules and that's a good thing. Well, jose, thank you very much.

José Fernández:

It's been an honor and a pleasure. I'm glad to be here. I look forward to the next one we do where we can talk about the three cups of coffee or two cocktails, or however we decide to get around this next challenge. Anyways, declan, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, I hope that next time you and I can actually talk about things that matter and not have to deal with this rubbish.

Declan Spring:

Yeah, or we can further our community and our clients instead of having to work against kind of this false narrative of reporting, of this false narrative of reporting Now, before we wrap up, I just want to leave you with a parting thought, especially in light of all the noise around real estate commissions and affordability. There's a narrative out there that suggests the cost of real estate services, specifically agent commissions, is a root cause of the affordability crisis in this country and, let's be honest, that's not just a stretch, it's a complete red herring. Now the real barriers to affordability are complex and well-documented A national shortage of homes, an insurance crisis, restrictive zoning laws, stagnant wages and investor competition in already tight markets. These are systemic issues and cutting a point or two off a commission structure is not going to fix them. Are commissions worth examining? Sure, transparency and consumer choice they matter, but let's not pretend that trimming a few thousand dollars off a transaction is going to solve a decades in the making affordability crisis. It just won't. So the next time somebody tells you that real estate agents are the problem, ask them what they're doing to advocate for new housing, for smarter lending policies and meaningful wage growth, because that's where the real answers are. And please, let's have reporting on some real issues that actually terrify us realtors, and top of mind for me is the willful dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was born out of the 2008 financial crisis. Thanks for listening. Let's keep pushing for transparency, accuracy, respect, not just in real estate, but in journalism too.

Declan Spring:

This episode was edited by me, with original music by Chuck Lindo and graphics by Lisa Mazur. The podcast is brought to you by the Home Factor Realtors, thehomefactorcom. Catch up on the latest news from the East Bay Market in their weekly blog published every Saturday at thehomefactorcom. Catch up on the latest news from the East Bay Market in their weekly blog, published every Saturday at thehomefactorcom. If you'd like to reach out to me with suggestions for the show, please text me at 415-446-8591. Catch you on the next podcast everybody next week with Megan Miko, and we'll be talking about changes coming to the Berkeley Energy Savings Ordinance that come into effect in January 2026 and are really worthwhile understanding.