Podcast - Steve Koleno, #3 Real Estate Agent in US

Off Market Podcast: Steve Koleno, #3 Real Estate Agent in US

In the world of real estate, success stories are everywhere, but few match the remarkable journey of Steve Koleno. Today, we peel back the layers of his awe-inspiring trajectory on the Off Market Podcast by Goliath Data. As CEO and Co-Founder of OnAgent, Steve stands as a beacon of innovation, disrupting conventional norms and reshaping the landscape of real estate.

Steve was the #3rd ranked real estate agent in the USA (2022 & 2023) and is on track again in 2024. Since 2016, Steve has closed 4,800+ MLS rental and sales listings, and is the only known Realtor in history to close over 1,200+ MLS listings in a calendar year for both Rentals (1,253 in 2016) and sales (1,643 in 2021). Steve currently holds real estate licenses in eleven states (Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin).

Before becoming an agent, oversaw the operational performance of $820 Million in assets and 4,900+ SFR portfolio at American Homes 4 Rent (AH4R). He also served as Director of Brokerage Services for Invitation Homes (a Division of Blackstone) where he oversaw the leasing operations of a portfolio of 4,200+ SFR.

Steve’s story from triumph to failure and triumph again, is a tale that isn’t often told. 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: Hey everyone and welcome back to the Off Market Podcast by Goliath Data. Today we have Steve Koleno, CEO and Co-Founder of OnAgent. He's the third-ranked agent by sold transactions in the USA over the past two years. He's crushing it again in 2024 and is on track to be number three again. Steve, welcome to the show.

Steve: Thank you.

Austin: Appreciate it So Steve, why don't you tell us a little bit more about how you got into real estate? If I remember you were an engineer that transitioned into a real estate agent.

Steve: Yeah, so I was not a software engineer, but an engineer working that liked working with software It was called an integrations engineer for a large healthcare company. So we were like Fortune 50. So really large company pretty good job. Did that for 12 years, but it really wasn't my passion, right?

Austin: So back then I was healthier and younger. So I was doing marathons. I did an Ironman. I would go home because I wasn't kind of passionate about my job. So I found I had other passions, right? So I did that for 12 years. And then we came across residential real estate as an investor first, and now I'm going to date myself, of how old I am, because only old people will know this.

Steve: I ended up buying a program called Carlton Sheets. It used to be a late-night infomercial many years ago and it was meant to teach you real estate. And this was like probably 2005 or six. And I bought it for a couple hundred bucks, A single guy back then, read it and thought, oh man, this could change my life.

Some people read it and toss it. I read it and ended up telling a friend of mine that I wanted to get into real estate. And he was like, Hey, our buddy, Brian in Arizona has been doing that for years. I lost touch with him since high school, a close friend of mine. Long story short, we started buying rental property.

He had some cash he made from Arizona by the fourth house. I got licensed. It became a company. We bought 27 houses before I quit my full-time job. So in 2007, we bought 23 houses, mostly new construction. And ended up buying 73 single family homes in my life, even though none of 'em are recent, because back in 2009, when all the, the recession, great recession happened, it was not a good time to own one house and we owned 65.

That was not a good part of my life, but we started as an investor. I never really got into wholesaling per se we bought from wholesalers for sure I had some good friends who were wholesalers that would spot deals But in our height, we don't we managed 65 properties I had three crews rehabbing homes because everything from home 27 to 70 something was all rehabs We were buying them discounted But those first 23 did me in because that's when money was free and credit was essential. They would just give you houses.

So we took the houses and in the end, it didn't work out because of the environment, the banks were starting to fail. So, but that gave me the good experience to kind of, I was in real estate, touched it, touched the good life briefly. And then when that didn't work out, I started heading to, um, I had to make a choice back in about 2012, do I go back and work as an engineer or do I try to still do this real estate thing? to. Stay in real estate. And at that time, all these big companies were starting to buy the foreclosures and that's kind of where the next realm of my kind of my stages.

Austin: And I think so many people had a similar experience and I honestly don't know if we're going to head towards it again. Because everybody kept buying properties and now you've got interest rates above seven percent and it's like people don't learn.

Steve: I was an agent just to make commissions on my deals I didn't work with outside folks, but I learned you know, we bought we did it all different ways We raised money We raised our capital. We did hard money. We did soft money and self-directed IRAs.

I did 1P private placement where we raised about half a million bucks. So we, we did it all, you know

Kind of burnt me out a little bit on the investor side back then.

So I kind of liked the realm I'm in now where it's helping other folks navigate real estate. But yeah, we got into a, I ended up getting into some of the big institutional companies is what happens after. From that experience managing 65, even though it doesn't sound like a lot now, back then that was a lot.

There weren't these big companies owning thousands of single-family homes. So my experience fed well into there. I ended up working for three different companies. One of them I was vice president of a really large institutional company. Back then they owned 27, 000. We helped them get to 37, 000 homes. I managed a team of 46 people in three states.

We managed 4, 900 single-family homes and it was property management and I did not like it. I liked the scale and the growth and how fast because I have like high ADHD and I need things to be right on the verge of chaos. So even if things slow down for me, I kind of create other projects or something to keep me at that level, right, right at that chaos level.

Austin: Property management just wasn't, It wasn't fun, right?

Steve: It's not fun, it's not a fun industry, especially when you're at a high level because all you would get are the complaints and the people and complaining up and HR stuff and all that stuff. But I ended up going to another company, which was at that time like a division of Blackstone.

And we rented, and I had a team of six. This is really what changed everything. I think I had a team of six assistants, and eight agents in two states.

We rented 1,253 homes on the MLS. 2016. I did all the pricing. I did all the negotiation with realtors. The agents would show the homes to people who didn't have agents and we would take five to 800 leads a week.

And my call center to six folks who worked for us would take those. They would also enter them on the MLS. And we came up with a system that just would get through rentals. I worked for the largest rental company at that time in the United States. for single-family homes. So, being able to see that level of scale and how big companies do it, it's different, right?

It's just, it's, I, I got to see something. And I know that now when I became a realtor and you thought maybe I'd have an, you didn't know why you were being successful. You started and you're like, why is nobody else doing this? Why is everyone doing the same status quo stuff? Um, but I got to see what it looked like.

In scale, and I think that's been part of the trick, to be honest with you. Yeah, that's the uh, Suncoast Fallacy. They're like, well, if everybody else does it this way, then I must do it that way too. Yeah, and in this industry, that's all over the place. They, you, they, it seems like it can't be. To me, if you're different, you kind of just stand out if you're different.

But for so many people, it's either fear or afraid to be different, or the people they're learning from, their mentors, have always done it the same way. So it's the same thing as for an agent, you know, you're told to go cold call and door knock and bother your friends and family. And I have never cold-called door knocked and have never asked a friend or family to use me ever.

It's uncomfortable. But now that stuff doesn't work as well anyway. Like none of it works as well. Even your friends or family don't, if you're a realtor, don't want you to buy a cold call. They don't want you to, you know, put them on a 36-week drip campaign or something that, that other people are teaching.

So, it is hard because I, I think I bucked, I bucked the system a little.

I don't fall into that. That groove that they just want you to fall into but yeah, yep.

Austin: Well, I mean it was the different stance that separated you apart from the pack, right? So you go from owning all these single-family homes to then going into large institutions to then the next phase of your life, which was becoming one of the top agents in Illinois.

How did that happen?

Steve: Yeah, so slow at first well, maybe not slow to the average agent for me. It was slow, but in the first year, we did 16 deals. I didn't cold call, door knock. I think I did like three open houses in my life or something. Just thought, I only did them because you're coaches and people kept telling you to kind of do them.

But we ended up doing referrals at first. I tied in with a referral company and started closing them, and that's how we would get our leads. And then when I first started, I did something that most people don't do. Because I came from doing 1200 rentals in 2016, and I knew, and I quit my job, like I quit a good job that I did like, what's inside, kind of an executive, what's inside these large companies for real estate because I thought I could be.

Potentially successful and other people are like you should run a team. What are you doing in the corporate world? You don't your personality doesn't fit in the corporate world. You're an entrepreneur but you only know what you know, you're like You know, this is all I this is what I know. I didn't think I could sell anything and so what you kind of figure it out is You become successful by not selling by like being a trusted advisor and just giving people options and so I got when I started this, I got into the whole world of studying almost like consumer behavior.

Like there was something called the, the, a lot of people don't know this, even if they're realtors, but the 2015 National Association of Realtors had something called the danger report. And it told the biggest threats to the industry. And it was, it was like the most money they ever spent on a detailed report.

It went through associations, MLSs, realtors, and lenders, and it kind of backfired. It came out and the number one thing was agents are not experienced enough, that's like the consumers hit them with a reality that, you know, it's a low, low entry, right?

A lot of those have pulled off. Even if you Google it today, I think you only find one spot. It's in all the videos have been taken off. But because I started in 2017, I use that as my market research, honestly. So instead of me going out trying to meet the needs of what the consumer was using, this is only like a year and a half old.

They did all that work.

So. On there, it just told you commissions are coming down. People want, want to save on commissions. Institutional companies are coming in and buying and that was a threat. I just built my model, a business model around that. Built it around meeting those needs.

And then it's kind of what we did a little later on. I got into things called like, I actually was on one of my first PI, had started to become successful. I landed some big institutional clients. Because of my background, we ended up going in that direction. It took months, it took like 9-10 months of me trying before I could even get in.

Nobody and they're so big, and you have no experience selling homes for them. You work for them, but a lot of people have worked for them. They don't, they want experience. But, I got a chance, they said we're going to give you a chance. Usually, we look for somebody with more experience. Any three houses on the Friday, we sold them by roofing or something.

So I didn't goof it up. And then we got in there and then my systems from being an engineer and kicked in and I created systems and that same client. So 2019, we sold 119 houses my first fFor any year. 83 of them were with one client, right? But then the next year, that client, we ended up being their top agent and they just went into selling them, just got lucky.

Yeah. And we were placed right and we sold 290 somehow, 293 houses in 2019. So in real trends, we were the number one agent in Illinois. We were the number 10 agent in the country, number one agent at REMAX across the country.

So it got me on the radar. Nobody knew who I was. Cause we kind of came out of nowhere and then kind of with the Remax being a number one Remax agent, at least in real trends, even, even though I didn't do most of the transactions with them and to the public, it appeared as that you started going on podcasts and different things.

One of the podcasts, I'm telling a similar story like this, but I, cause we're starting to be successful because, Oh, you sound like a blue ocean, like a blue ocean, you know, do you know that book? And I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'd never heard of the book. And I'm like, I have no idea.

I said, I'm just. different. I don't know.

You're describing like a blue ocean strategy from this book. Of course, I went home, get the book and go and I listened to it and you're just like, this is why I'm success. I just kept saying I was different, but I had created something completely different. I was starting to give consumers more options and better pricing than anyone else.

And Then I got the book and then it was over, because now I have frameworks and charts that I've been operating on for five years. I mean, I went through the whole Blue Ocean thing. I make myself different on purpose. And you can shift that, if you know the framework. As the industry changes, you can always force yourself to be different.

Well, like I have not been to a house since the pandemic. I, it's three and a half, four years. I have not met a client, I've been at houses, but I haven't met a client for a buyer appointment. I don't work with buyers. and a listing appointment. They've been all over Zoom ever since the pandemic. I never went back out.

When the pandemic happened, I thought my whole business was gone because I thought I started it before the pandemic going virtual. I had a model. I started getting licensed in other states. I had signed a 12 state agreement with a broker, a disruptive broker to open up and help them expand.

And then that was going to help me expand. Without all the fees and then the pandemic happened and I thought I'm gonna be screwed because everyone's gonna know you can sell a house Virtually, and then we did I mean the industry adapted But then when the pandemic ended Everybody went back to their office back to doing this back to cold calling back to door knocking back to farming their geographic area and you know I don't, I don't know.

I just don't work like that. You're, you're blanking and you're, you're just going out and hitting a hundred people trying to find the three people that might be willing to sell. Well, there's other ways through social media or technology or ads that you can find people who are ready to sell. So I just, yeah, right.

Yeah, absolutely. It's way more efficient. So yeah, we don't have the similar kind of business model, I guess. But a lot of it's based on that blue ocean concept.

Austin: So you went from top one percent agent or top three in the entire nation and then now you've launched something with your son. Tell us about that. Yeah, so we, during the pandemic I got licensed in eight more states, so right currently I'm licensed in 12 states.

Steve: We're in 46 MLSs, because if you're virtual, And you know it can work or work for you and you meet the needs of those clients looking for that, you can do it anywhere, right? And if somebody doesn't want that, they can go to a regular agent that are in every corner that they can use locally. We are now trying to close our gap.

I have a business model from that Blue Ocean strategy where we have three segments like a done for you, done with you, right? And do it yourself model. We put that basically in a format, which is kind of like Blue Ocean does it in three segments. Back then I didn't call it that. It was called something, it was called limited service, full service, and signature service.

I call Signature Service the traditional agent. Going to the house, maybe you stage it, you're giving them that white glove attention. That's how I started. I did that. You know, I definitely did that. But I got away from that. I just went down a different path with investors. And once you go with investors, they're in a corporate office in Dallas.

You're not meeting them at the house. So you just, it just became natural to do it without meeting at the table. And then you realize you kind of like that better. It's easier to work with businesses than it is, you know, homeowners. So we have always focused on the two components, the limited service and the virtual service.

Um, and the average agent just focuses on. A little part of signature service. Hey, we want the top dollar and that's it. And in real estate is this big. I mean, it's enormous. And there's people from here to there that want all kinds of different service levels. They just don't feel like they have options to the point that they've recently sued national association and won.

So, but now. Twofold. We started the concept of creating a new startup and it's called OnAgent and it's just being launched. Like we just officially launched like two and a half weeks ago. Depending on when this releases, the website will be partially done or not. But we have a community now actually at rethink.

We're an agent accelerator an agent growth accelerator, so it's not an open platform But if you go to rethink. realestate it's a free community. You can just go on there and I will start trying to help folks kind of become more consumer centric kind of see things from a different angle, I guess But me and my son are doing that agent accelerator kind of twofold to You We know there's a lot of agents that are hurting right now.

And this is before Friday when, you know, NRA announced a lot of changes to the industry coming. So the industry is really hurting now, but when we started six months ago, we could sense that people needed help. They weren't necessarily getting the right guidance for a modern world. We kind of see that cause we can see our rise and other people are.

So, and we, I mean, we want to help and we have a need, like the signature part, we can't help us. Like, I don't do much on the buyer side, because I don't have buyer agents. I use software that I can get agents to any house within an hour, kind of like Uber. They have that in, within licensed agents for real estate, so I've been using that for years.

But ultimately, we're trying to create a network of agents now, in all these geographic areas, these green dots, the metro areas, and place them there, and then we can help them, buyers, buyer leads, we can help them, if there's a full service listing somebody wants more than what we give them. Or they start off with us in a do it yourself or done with you and then they're like, hey, this isn't working.

I do want somebody to, well, I have somebody who's already vetted and trained by us. So we're trying to close the gap. We're trying to help agents as well, but we're also trying to kind of close our gap and then hopefully be a resource in the future that people want to go to first because we're giving you more options, more value, more choices.

And I think that's what consumers want now. I know that's what they want, but. They want choices. They just don't want to be told it's five or six percent and clearly that's played out Even though i've known that for five years. We've been quite kind of quietly doing it right now. We're not now we're out there and that's why when you call “Hey, you want to be on XYZ, like yep.”

I'm at that stage where i'm starting to get on podcasts now And I think the industry needs it now. Yeah years ago. I couldn't help anyone I was just going to offend people and they didn't understand it and now The lawsuit actually Even though it doesn't help every agent understand it, at least it's not just coming from me anymore.

Like, regardless of what you think, if it's right or wrong, or you want to argue about the lawsuit. There's something going on where the consumers don't feel something. They're not getting enough information or something. So now it's a little easier to talk about it cause I think I can't help at least agents.

Austin: I’ve got two questions left.

Let's start with the one that I think love the most, which is if you were going back to your times, 2007, you're starting off in real estate, you're going to buy real estate, or you want to go back to when you first became an agent. And tell yourself one piece of advice. What would that be?

Steve: Can I swear on this podcast? Yeah. Okay. The biggest advice I ever got in my life, and I've shared this on one other podcast recently. So, but the biggest advice I ever got came when I was a real estate agent. I already had success, but I really wanted to knock it dead, right? I was trying to, I knew I had more in me and I paid a coach a lot of money who was not a coach for entrepreneurs or real estate.

He was a high-level coach of corporations. I hit it off with him. He didn't even know how to charge me. He's like, I don't, I only work with companies and this, I don't even know if I can help you. He said, if you can do this, let's do it for a month and I'll see if I can help you. And on that last call we had, he basically said this to me.

He goes, you're, he goes, you're a visionary. You're, you're going to will yourself to be successful. You're already successful, but you're going to will yourself to be successful. He goes, but he goes. But I want to tell you something and I need you to understand it. And he goes, nobody gives a fuck about Steve Colino.

And this is a true thing, true conversation. And he goes, everything you've told me the whole month we've been here was you created this model, you put yourself in the center or the real estate agent in the center, and you're offering these services to these people because it's you. And you want to be the top agent and he goes nobody gives a fuck about Steve Colino And he goes once you realize that and he goes you put the consumer in the middle of your business model Your life will change.

That's what he told me And I didn't get it and I was like this guy just paid him all this freaking money And he just told me nobody gives a shit about me in my brain I'm, just but months later like now where I talk about it and I know that's what changed me I have never posted, like I used, my LinkedIn is really written up professionally, but like I used to care about trophies and all that stuff.

I have been the number three agent in the country and I've never posted it once on Facebook to friends or family. Nobody would know because I don't post any because nobody gives a shit. So I have gone like the complete opposite way. So if it's not for the consumer, I don't care. Like it does. Like it, it has to be about the consumer.

And I'm, and a lot of agents aren't like that, and a lot of brokerages aren't. They're agent-centric. They're focused on them and the agent. I am different. So that would be the biggest thing is, and there's another Alex Shirmozy, Hundred Million Dollar Offers, if you know that book, right? Make your offer so good that somebody would feel stupid to say no or something similar to that.

If you wake up every day and all you're trying to do is increase your offer, whatever business you're in, to make it so good. That your consumer would feel stupid not to use you. That's the edge. Just every day, just do that. Don't worry about your leads or friends or family or doubling down on your everyday focus on how you can make your offer better.

That would be the thing I wish I had learned. I wish I would have learned that when I was 25 because I started as an agent at 47 and I don't learn that part of it until I'm 49. You know, so you're starting later in life, but that would be my biggest regret. I didn't learn it like when I was in my twenties or something.

Austin: I love it.

Well, normally I would ask another question, but I think that's the perfect end to a perfect story. You've had an incredible journey and I'm so excited to get this story out and just help encourage people and their real estate journey themselves. I think there's a whole lot of nuggets that came from this conversation.

And I think you're one of the good ones.

Steve: You got it, man. I appreciate it. So thank you very much for coming on, Steve. And I hope you have a great day. You got it, sir. Thanks.