Podcast - Neema Bardi, Youngest Real Estate Broker in CA History

Off Market Podcast: Neema Bardi, Youngest Real Estate Broker in CA History

Neema’s journey to becoming a Broker started early on, as a kid addicted to Legos. He built the White House, the Empire State Building, and even the Taj Mahal. When he turned 10, he started visiting Open Houses with his parents on the weekends. By 18, he was immersed in the world of entrepreneurship, launching his first business: electric scooter charging at the height of the micro-mobility bubble. Another was a mobile coffee cart company, that served $8 Lattes and Americanos to college students on the USC campus before $8 coffees were cool. Perhaps most successful, was a commercial real estate syndication for fast-food companies like Burger King and Starbucks that needed drive-through accessible locations.

While at USC, Neema studied Real Estate Development. Upon graduation, he became a licensed realtor and started working for Rodeo Realty, one of the premier real estate brokerage firms in LA (the firm has about 1200 agents and does $5B+ in annual sales). After breaking the record for the number of deals closed by the first-time agent, and realizing that the 70-30 commission split was not in his best interests, he decided to go out on his own. He reached out to The California Department of Real Estate, with a request to take the brokerage exam (most agents are required to work 2+ years before applying to take the exam). They granted his request, and he passed the exam, subsequently becoming one of the youngest Real Estate Brokers in CA history.

Within a few weeks, he launched Atllas, a tech-focused real estate brokerage built by agents, for agents. Atllas provides a unique payout structure that enables real estate agents to retain all their commissions. It also provides a suite of tools purpose-built for streamlining an agent's marketing efforts, online presence, and open houses. Since its inception, the Beverly Hills-based platform has attracted more than 10,000 agents from all over the country. Sit back, buckle up, and get ready to hear firsthand what happens when someone is bold and brave enough to pursue their personal legend.

Transcript of the Episode

Austin: Welcome back to another episode of the Off Market podcast, this week we have Neema Bardi, the youngest real estate broker in California history. He’s also the Founder and CEO of Atllas the new standard for real estate agents. If you’re a real estate agent who’s tired of paying 10-50% to your brokerage for every deal you close, Neema is your guy. You pay a yearly membership fee and keep 100% of your commissions. Neema, welcome to the podcast.

Neema: Thanks for having me, Austin. I appreciate it.

Austin: So Neema, tell us about how you got into real estate. I know you had a few businesses while at USC, and then you became an agent, a broker, and eventually the CEO of Atllas.

Neema: It started with a Lego addiction when I was a kid. I was building all these different Legos, like the Taj Mahal, the White House, Empire State Building. The tinkering got so bad that my parents were like, Nima, You can't be at home building Legos all day long.

So what they started to do is take me to open houses and that's like how they would bait me out of the house. It's pretty funny. And then I read the book: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which taught me all the fiscal benefits of investing in real estate. And I was like, wow this is absolutely. This is what I want to do.

I ended up going to USC. USC has one of the top real estate programs in the United States. So I did real estate there while I was a student and started multiple businesses, all of them were bootstrapped but generated six figures of revenue, which is super cool.

So yeah, I started in an electric scooter charging super cool business. Doing so much volume. And that's when I caught the bug of starting a business and how much money you could make running your own business.

Then I got into real estate syndication primarily finding deals that could be converted into drive-through use and then getting the entitlements permits and then selling off the deal, getting a lease signed by a big tenant like Burger King or Starbucks.

And then getting, getting those deals sold off to an actual developer who like I had all the writing experience. So I'd model out spreadsheets and then sell off deals, to developers. So how much money do brokers make on that deal. I was like, shit, I should go get my real estate license.

And on top of all of this, funny enough, started another business. It was like a mobile coffee cart concept on USC's frat row selling over overpriced coffee. This is like five years ago, but $8 coffee wasn't a thing at the time. Now it's like the norm. You can't go anywhere without getting an $8 latte anymore.

Funny enough like I had this very expensive coffee machine that was given to me by, my Middle Eastern parents. And I was supposed to return it, never returned it. And I was like, you know what? I could make so much money off this thing. Selling overpriced coffee on the road.

And did that for a little bit, but I always wanted to get back into brokering, got my license, and started working as a real estate agent over at a local firm, close to USC. They have about 1200 agents with over 5 billion in sales a year and join them because they gave me the most competitive split, like, As an agent.

So like a 70-30 split off the bat and yeah, that was super cool. And I guess that's, that's kind of what got me into real estate.

So when I first got started working as a real estate agent, the way that all these brokers tell you to get started is they tell you to call your family, call your friends, tell them you're a real estate agent. I hated this.

So what I started to do was a hundred cold calls every single day. I would target a lot of the houses that were for lease or like, okay, so you have to think backward, right?

So you're like, what houses are most likely to sell? And the ones that aren't like emotionally attached, I would say are more likely to sell. Like people don't live in it. It's vacant. So you could target those, those listings. Then you have to do some research on the property. Like what is the mortgage amount on this property?

How much is the monthly rent going to bring in this person compared to their expenses? And how can you help this person like make more money with an investment property that they're making? So I'd find people who are trying to underprice their houses for rent. I'd ask them why like, Oh, well, I don't care about it.

Just if I can get someone in there and it pays my expenses, like I'm good. And be like, well, you know, we could do what's called a 1031 exchange, a tax-free exchange, get you something that brings in more cash flow. You've built a lot of equity in the house. And so that was my tactic. I ended up building my web scraper that would find all the contact information for people who are trying to sell their own houses or lease out their own homes.

So I hired a VA to follow up with these people constantly. So they thought that I was giving them top-of-the-line service and did over 24 transactions in my first three months of working as a real estate agent.

Austin: That’s incredible! So you started as an agent, and if I remember correctly you became a broker next, is that right? What did that process look like and why did you decide to go out on your own so early on in your career?

Neema: Great, great question. So as I was doing these deals, I started to get very frustrated with how antiquated the whole real estate process was. I mean, it's, you're dealing with the largest asset class in the world, but things still run the same way that they did a hundred years ago. I'm not, I'm not even joking.

The docs are essentially the same. I'm sure some things have been added to like the docs and more language there. But if you think about it as a whole, it's in the same process. It's a very antiquated, painful process. So that started to piss me off. Because the longer those deals took, the longer it took my time to do more deals.

And I also hated the whole split system. At this rate, I negotiated a really good split and got up to an 80/20 split. But still, I mean, that's very aggressive and I still hate it. Giving a fifth of all, it's like I'm paying.

I'm getting taxed on top of my taxes. This is ridiculous. And like everyone knows when they join a brokerage, people join and use you for you like they don't care about the brokerages anymore.

Used to be more of a thing, like back in the eighties, nineties, when it used to like to go into a brokerage and be like, I want to sell my house. Now that doesn't happen. It's like, okay, people are using me for me. I ended up starting my team, by the way, as something I didn't mention that would join under me, it was using all the tools that I had.

I leveraged for myself and they started to see similar success. I think you're very frustrated that it's giving away a fifth of every single deal. So I was like, how do I become broke myself? Like, why am I even here?

So it's like a regulatory compliance thing. So turns out that typically the way that you become a broker is you need experience as an agent for two years.

Plus you need to take a whole bunch of other courses. So I remember I wrote the Department of Real Estate this letter and sent them my transcripts from USC.

I said, Hey guys, I'm Nima. I want to make a big impact in the field. Is there any way you can exempt me from the two-year time frame? I can come in and I can take a broker's exam and pass it.

And they called back to me and they said, congrats, you're approved to take the broker's exam. Took it and yeah, I became one of the youngest brokers in California to ever get a broker's license

From then on I was off the walls and I was so happy I started to talk to other agents and I realized every agent felt the same way that I was feeling. They hated the whole split system. They hated that I had to go to the whole real estate industry as a whole and that's organically what led me to found Atllas.

Austin: So talk to us about Atllas. What is it? How does it work? And why do agents prefer this over the current setup?

Neema: Yeah, great, great question. So my whole vision for Atllas was to allow every agent that signs off to Atllas to perform as well as my team was performing and we've been surpassing that. So we give every agent that signs on to Atllas on top of you to keep all of your commission. You'd access the portal that we built that lets you automatically search for homes that we scrape and index using AI.

It lets you automatically follow up with your clients. It lets you automate your marketing. We've built our fintech product. Whenever we pay you the commissions, as you get paid, your commission is all within the app and issued your own Atllas bank account with your debit card. And you can even spend the money and commissions literally in real-time. That was frustrating to me.

It was like, every time I close the deal, it'll take me like literally three weeks to get my check. And now you get your check as soon as escrow closes. So these are some of the cool things that we've built, and we give you access to the whole pipeline that's able to support you.

You're even given more of a hands-on approach too. You can customize Atllas to every agent, so we'd be as hands-on as you want you're issued a manager in your area, and that manager is in charge of training, creating a business plan for you coming up with goals. If you hit those goals, great.

If you're not hitting those goals, why, what can we do to help you hit those goals? Keep you accountable. And it's for every agent that signs on, they have a different experience, which is super cool.

Austin: So talk to us about your thoughts on the NAR settlement, is it a good thing or a bad thing? How do you expect it will impact your business?

Neema: So this has helped our business a ton. Then they are settlement mainly because like if commissions are going to be cut down, people are looking like, okay, well if I'm losing like 30 percent commissions now, how can I keep more? And like, Oh, well I have a 30 percent split. So I could just, Join Atllas.

And what's nice is our fees are tax write-offs for agents and the tool we're building right now is to allow these agents to, to like, we'll, we'll help you write off the Atllas fee when it's time to file your taxes. So that's a cool thing. And I mean, we've seen so many success stories.

I've had agents cry when they get their commission checks and like, it's so hard. To get a deal and work through deals in real estate you want to keep the commission. And even we've had people who use our products and we have like a tool that automates the whole search process for buyers.

Someone meet, we had an agent meet someone at a coffee shop. And started a search, on the app and ended up selling them a house just because of these tools. And, the buyer thought, wow, this agent's working for me so hard. I just met him at a coffee shop, even though this was all automated with software.

So it's been cool to see, how the software helps agents. And also to the gratification that agents get when they get to keep all their commission. We've had, if you look at like the average real estate agent, I believe it's like. You're, you're in your forties and you're a mom and that's your average realtor.

And so it allows them to put more food on the table at the end of the day. And to me, the fact that I know we're building a business that allows that for people and they're saving so much money. It's amazing. It gives me energy.

Austin: That makes a ton of sense, so talk to us about what real estate has done for your life.

Neema: Well, obviously getting into real estate gives you a lot of financial freedom if you do it correctly. Right. Cause you're dealing with such big commissions. And it's also a very emotional business. Like I remember helping people go through the buying process, and selling process, helping them make more money with properties that they owned.

It's very gratifying. Like there's a lot of instant gratification. And you're helping them like buying a house is the largest purchase 99 percent of Americans make their entire lives. It's their savings. It's everything that they've worked for and I like putting good intentions behind that and helping them.

That's, it's, it's amazing. So one on top of like, all the monetary benefits of every agent. The real estate agents are entrepreneurs like us and they're essentially running their own business and they should be able to keep most of their commission. They should be able to run a successful business.

And so that's, that's been amazing to see, you know.

Austin: So if you had 5 minutes to talk with your younger self what would you tell him? What advice would you give him? What stories or lessons would you share?

Neema: Honestly, I think about this all the time. I'm like, okay, what would I tell my younger self? But at the same time, if I told my younger self anything, maybe I wouldn't be in the place that I am today. I have advice for just people going through it. It is hard. Okay. So it's like, it's extremely hard.

You hear me talk about these things and I talk about it with ease, but I didn't have a life. Like I didn't have a life. And like you could talk to any of my friends, people were like Nima went off the walls, all Nima did was work I lost a lot of friends because of it. But at the same time, I don't regret any of it.

And I think people need to know that you just need to grind. You need to, you need to stay persistent. Like don't let the else, I talked to so many people who cold call. I'm like, Oh, I keep getting rejected. I'm going to change my strategy. No, don't keep going. You can't change your strategy until you get 10,000 no’s.

If you tell me and you come to me like, I got 10,000 no’s. I'm like, okay, shit. Like something is off here. But if you're like, I got a hundred no’s, I’d say a it doesn't matter until you do 10,000 no’s. Then then like keep going.

All right. So, and do you follow up with them a week later? So like, keep going. A lot of people don't realize how much of a grind it is, but everything that requires financial freedom is a grind. If it was easy, everyone, I mean, no one would make money

Austin: Looking back on your journey do you have any regrets? Any decisions that you made, that if you could go back in time and change you would?

Neema: I honestly don't think so because like every decision that I made, every move that I made got me to where I am today. And for that, I'm extremely grateful. And I guess like all, I would go through the failures. I would go through the hard times. I'd go through the grind every lifetime. Again and again, because it's made me and shaped me into who I am.

I think you learn the most when you're down. And so like, I wouldn't want to make it easier on myself. Like I want those dark times to set me up for it all like, those are all character-building days. I think I'm a very different man today than I was three years ago, four years ago. And I had to take all the L's that I took to become who I am today.

Austin: Thanks for coming on the podcast Neema!

Neema: Thanks for having me Austin.