How It Runs

Episode 1

$78B in Commissions: Who Controls Real Estate?

How It Runs is a podcast about the real mechanics of the real estate business, hosted by Michael Walliser, founder and CEO of EasyDigz. Each episode features brokers, operators and industry people who actually run these businesses, talking about how transactions really move, where the systems break down, and what it takes to operate independently in an industry that keeps consolidating. Michael is a licensed North Carolina broker with more than 20 years in the business, from foreclosure work on the institutional side to running his own deals and development projects. In the first episode, Michael sits down with his business partner Christopher Britt, Principal Partner and Chief People Officer at EasyDigz, who came to real estate after 25 years in operations and state government and learned fast that running a real estate business is a completely different animal from being a client of one. The two cover what it took to get started as the 2008 market collapsed, what changes when you move from client to operator, and the 97 things an agent does that clients never see. They get into the due diligence behind their own investment deals, how market cycles and broker bias distort pricing, why the MLS catches blame for problems it never created, and why portals sell agents leads that are already under contract. It all builds to the number that frames the entire industry, roughly 78 billion dollars a year in commissions, and their case for open ecosystems built around a common MLS instead of any one company controlling the pipeline.