Anthony & Demetrios Salpoglou Discuss Rental Broker Fees in Massachusetts

Anthony: Realtor friends, some interesting happenings here in Massachusetts. Governor Maura Healey is starting to talk about essentially attacking broker fees and how they’re paid with respect to rentals. She’s making an argument that tenants should never have to pay the fee and she also is making a secondary argument about if you didn’t hire the broker, you shouldn’t have to pay the fee. I have a lot to say about that. Before we totally get into what I have to say about that, in addition to my talking about it on the news yesterday, I wanted to bring to you the king of rentals for Massachusetts, my friend Demetrios here. Hello, sir.

Demetrios Salpoglou: Anthony, thanks for having me.

Anthony: I’m happy to have you. You have been just kicking ass in rentals and all things rentals for years. Why don’t you introduce yourself? Don’t be humble. Talk about your different companies or I’ll do it.

Demetrios: Thank you. My name is Demetrios Salpoglou. I’m the CEO of Boston Pads, and it’s a technology platform that’s hyper-focused on apartment leasing and multifamily sales. That, in specific, we’ve aggregated over 18,351 landlords, which comprises over 214,500 apartment listings, 27,000 keys. We have over 1 million pictures, 79,000 galleries, 30,000–

Anthony: Holy smoke. This is all in Massachusetts?

Demetrios: This is all in

Anthony: Really Greater Boston.

Demetrios: Yes, Greater Boston. We spread out. We have 442 luxury buildings across the Greater Boston area and beyond. We constantly pick up luxury buildings.

Anthony: All right, and that’s Boston Pads, all the tech, but you also own some rental companies-

Demetrios: We do.

Anthony: -with realtors or agents that are beating the street every day and assisting tenants and landlords with getting their units rented.

Demetrios: Correct. We have six current offices right now. The brands are Boardwalk Properties, Next Gen Realty, Jacob Realty, Douglas Paul Real Estate, and USWOO. The technology powers down to these and it’s fully integrated from click-to-close all the way from your Google click search engine all the way down through the infrastructure. We have all these real-time reporting tools where agents can make accurate decisions.

Anthony: All right. How many rentals you guys do last year?

Demetrios: Good years, bad years. We’re going to do 6,000 to 10,000.

Anthony: 6,000 to 10,000. Folks, I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s the king of rentals from Massachusetts. He and I, full disclosure, have been texting and in touch about some of the things that have been happening in the real estate space. It’s funny, in the summer, we were talking about how the Department of Justice was all over the sales side of the business, which I was very much on top of. Some people say I’m an expert with that.

On the rental side, I defer to you. I talked about this in the news yesterday. I talked about how, and I want the realtor audience to know this, I am not some proponent of tenants absolutely having to pay. My argument is when they step in and say tenants can’t pay or they make a secondary statement of if you didn’t hire the broker, you shouldn’t have to pay. I think they’re forgetting that things are done differently the further you go out in Massachusetts. Why don’t you elaborate on that and explain your thoughts?

Demetrios: You’ve absolutely been probably the best proponent by far on the sales side, advocating for, and I say that sincerely. I don’t think anyone’s put in more of an advocacy for real estate agents than you. I think you’ve been spot on. I think in terms of apartment leasing, I think that perhaps our legislature just doesn’t understand the leasing process.

Anthony: Clearly, because he’s so nice about it.

Demetrios: What’s the difference between rentals and sales? It’s huge, right? Okay, first of all, the days on market, right? Secondly, the interaction and the speed, the average days on market for an apartment listing in Boston’s 15 days. You don’t necessarily see that in sales, right? It’s a hell of a lot quicker, right?

Anthony: In the last four or five years. Yes.

Demetrios: For sure. Yes, definitely since, and we can we can track data all the way back to the pandemic. In terms of speed, it’s three things that separate apartment leasing from sales, right? It’s the size of the commission, the speed, and how a landlord interacts with the tenants to create a lease. The paperwork’s different and it’s more individualized than it is in, say, sales, right? You’ve got your lease, you’ve got your led law, you’ve got your addendum, you’ve got your escrow, you’ve got your water and sewer. Then a landlord have specific addendums. We have over 500 different addendums for landlords, each one of them having their own unique–

Anthony: Wow.

Demetrios: Right. You don’t see that on the sales side. I think there’s a loss there in the understanding of the actual apartment leasing process and the value that professional apartment leasing agents provide.

Anthony: Okay, that’s– you’re right. There is a loss of value on that. I was talking to my dad about this last week and my dad was reminding me that every industry gets– all the restaurant is too expensive. The lumber is too expensive. Consumers, us included, have a tendency to criticize industries and criticize costs.

What I take issue with is government stepping in and saying it can’t be done this way or it can’t be done that way. Let me ask you some questions. The first thing that she’s proposing is tenants should not have to pay the fee at all. I want to ask you, what percentage of the rentals in Greater Boston is the tenant paying the fee?

Demetrios: It depends on the time of year for sure. We know that there’s a– the City of Boston runs on a September 1st to August 31st leasing cycle every year. That’s the bulk word.

Anthony: Especially with the schools.

Demetrios: The universities dominate inside the city. Sure. That sets the edge. That has all the ancillary people that are involved with that leasing process or move in process, professors, et cetera, staff. We’re never going to get away from the September 1st to September 1st cycle. Essentially, it’s never going to happen. That’s always going to be in place.

Then so leasing follows and optimizes across each university, across each micromarket, across each neighborhood. You really have to understand the nuances of that. Ultimately, what happens is you’ll see different neighborhoods light up at different times. It’s done because that’s the way the university operates. Then you have pricing that’s automatically built in because of the fact that the universities keep increasing their tuition and room and board. There’s a lot going on there behind the scenes that a lot of people don’t look at.

Anthony: You’re saying that the school units, they obviously backlash and have an impact on all the other units as well.

Demetrios: 100%. If the universities are raising room and board by 3% to 5% every year, guess what happens? The apartments surrounding it look much more affordable. They slowly draft up. It doesn’t take a genius for any landlord to go look and see, “Oh, they just raised the room and board to $3,000.” Say, Boston University, the landlord’s like, “I can provide an affordable solution for $2,000.” The spreads constantly change. I think that’s something that– like in other words, I haven’t seen dorm price control come out. We heard about rent control. Did we see dorm price control? Do we see university price control?

Anthony: What part of the year? I think I know the answer, but I want you to say it. What part of the year is there the most demand on units, generally speaking?

Demetrios: It’s, I would say, starting from January 15th to September 1st is the– people–

Anthony: Correct. The sales cycle is pretty close to that. The rentals have an effect on that, because what we run into is landlords not wanting to allow leases to expire between September and March. Everyone’s leases are expiring between really April to August. Buyers come out in droves late January, February, March. Sellers always– I’ll never understand why they wait. They always– so many of them wait till spring. To get the most money, they list– when they list in February, late January, March. You’re saying the rental cycle, January to September. When is the most demand on rentals? Which months? February, March, April?

Demetrios: It’s literally lights out right now all the way to September. If I had to pick the–

Anthony: Lights out busy.

Demetrios: Yes. I would say if I had to pick one month that was the busiest of them all, it would be July. You have to remember, April’s lights out, May’s lights out, June shoulders to July. It’s busy. July becomes like–

Anthony: July also because there’s freak outs of, “I need to find a unit.”

Demetrios: Yes. I think, well, there’s different markets that open up and stuff that’s been left behind. The whole city opens up. Most of the university stuff, close to universities, the students are renting earlier because they don’t want to be flying out to go see their parents or leaving for the summer, then have to fly back and get an apartment.

Anthony: To find a place.

Demetrios: To come back. There’s a cost associated with that.

Anthony: What percentage, I want to go back to the question, what percentage of the time is tenants paying the fee in Greater Boston? Is it 80%? Is it 90?

Demetrios: The highest we’ve ever seen during the pandemic was 80% of the landlords paying the fee, right?

Anthony: Of landlords paying.

Demetrios: Oh, yes. During the pandemic, because we had a–

Anthony: We had a ton of inventory and no one moving here.

Demetrios: Correct.

Anthony: See, and that’s the part I want everyone to hear. I talked about this on the news yesterday, and I said it to the governor and I said it to the mayor. If you want to solve this housing crisis, if you want to bring rents down, if you want to stop tenants having to pay, you need more supply.

Demetrios: Yes, it’s absolutely a supply problem.

Anthony: I don’t think they get that, though.

Demetrios: I think they do. I think it’s just, how do we figure it out and work with them to try to get the best solutions? I think they have to listen to business leaders.

Anthony: I haven’t heard from them. Have you?

Demetrios: No, I haven’t. The guy who’s rented the most apartments in the history of New England since the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth. That would be me. I’ve never gotten a call from them.

Anthony: Never got a call from them. I am the owner of the fourth, close to being third largest brokerage in New England as far as total sales transactions a year. I haven’t heard from them. I know the governor. She’s actually very nice and she does a great job on many things. On this, she’s got it wrong. She’s got it wrong. It’s very frustrating. Okay, so tenants– wait, during the pandemic, landlords were paying 80% of the time. That hasn’t been the case in the last couple of years. Tenants are paying more.

Demetrios: What happened was, and this is– we’ll go into it real quick. When everybody left, the greatest migration out of Boston we’ve ever had in history. Landlords were renovating like crazy, like they’d never had before. They were updating everything. It was the first time they had vacancy, right? Your normal leasing cycle, 2019, lowest unemployment rate, great economy, we still saw at the peak would come up for availability about 6%, right? We know that 6% and above creates– so we have two different things, the real-time availability rate and the real-time vacancy rate. If you have a vacancy rate at 6%, you’re going to have almost all the landlords paying the fee anyway.

Anthony: Really, that’s all it takes?

Demetrios: Right.

Anthony: You’re telling me all it takes is 6% vacancy.

Demetrios: That’s all it takes.

Anthony: Then it flips and landlords are paying more often.

Demetrios: That’s it.

Anthony: I would have guessed a way higher number.

Demetrios: No, and your availability rate also has that impact. Look, when people left during the pandemic and we went north at 10%, here’s what happened. Landlords fixed all the properties, they lowered rent, they paid fees, everybody ran back. It looks like a triple black diamond ski slope all the way down as we fill the apartments back in.

Subsequent to that, and I knew it was going to be the lowest we’d ever see because people got a great deal after the pandemic. They got to live in a better–

Anthony: That first year.

Demetrios: That first year. They got to get a better apartment than they ever had and a better neighborhood they ever thought they could get into or a better street because the units were better and they were coming back in and they were taking advantage of that. Subsequent to that, three years later, we average after that under 1% vacancy rate for three years straight. We’re just starting to see 1% now in the real-time vacancy rate.

Anthony: Because of that, tenants are paying more often-

Demetrios: That’s right.

Anthony: -because landlords have more power. That’s exactly what I explained on Fox 25 yesterday, because if they want to solve it, they have to make it easier to build. I’ve been a licensed builder in Massachusetts since I was 22, so 21 years. Every two years, I have to go for continuing ed. I got to sit in two days of classes for six hours. Every two years when I go, it’s harder to build. They got this energy efficient C-Rule and they added that. Now the window– the windows today that you have to use, right? The worst windows you could buy 25 years ago would have been the best windows you could possibly buy. They’re still not good enough. They still want better ones, better ones.

The state keeps making it more expensive to build. The municipalities, look at the City of Boston, especially since Mayor Wu, and I don’t care if she sees this, because all the developers are saying that they just don’t want to say it to her. She’s made it harder to build. They’d make it more complicated. Permits, do you see permits? 35 permits got approved in November of 2024. In the entire City of Boston, 700,000 people, one of the biggest cities in the nation, 35 permits approved for new construction. What?

Demetrios: I work with all the biggest landlords in our database, right? I’ve got a stack this high of permit deals that landlords bring to me and say, “Please sell this for me because the risk is too high.” Normally, landlords are going to permit, or developers are going to permit that so they can go get a profit, right? When you add too much affordability in there, to your point, when you add too much, it’s like you’re trying to build now a Mercedes or a Ferrari, but ask it be built at a Hyundai price, if you will, right?

Anthony: I always say you can’t get a Cadillac for the price of a Camry.

Demetrios: It’s that simple. In many respects, it’s good, right? We’re trying to build the best housing stock possible, but the pricing of it, and then adding in the affordability requirements. There are countless developers that will say to you, “I don’t care if you can build 3,000 units. When you have a 20%, it’s impossible. The math doesn’t work.”

Anthony: It’s completely insane that these people think that developers make that much money, that they can take 20% of their units and be forced to sell them less than market value. They actually think they’re still going to make a profit. That’s why the developers say, “I’m out. I’m not doing it.”

Demetrios: I served as a volunteer for the City of Boston, Plan Dudley, Plan Roxbury, Plan Nubian Committee.

Anthony: A lot of those areas, they’ve really come up. It’s not like there’s been no improvement.

Demetrios: I tell you, there’s a great group of people there. I think when you’re on these boards and you’re working with these people, it’s great, right? Then you realize that some of them don’t have a strong fundamental understanding of cost structure, right? Once you understand cost, you can see why development gets slowed down. There’s a huge cost component that causes a pause, that takes issue with development itself. Here we are with unaffordable.

I think, what I’ve suggested is, and a lot of people are not going to like this when I say it, but I think we need a two or three year moratorium on any affordability requirements whatsoever on any developments, just so we can stimulate growth. If affordability was working, it would have already been working, right? We know the definition of insanity. We don’t need to go into that.

Anthony: Don’t keep doing it though.

Demetrios: Okay, and then we’ll keep having unaffordable.

Anthony: Look at where I live, Watertown, right up the street. I’ve been there forever. In Watertown, mandatory two year demolition delay on any property. It doesn’t matter if you buy a property that is literally falling to the ground with seagulls living in the attic and raccoons, two year mandatory, not just if it’s historic, two year mandatory. You know what that’s done in Watertown? Developers said, “I’m out.” Now we don’t have more units. Now in Watertown, tenants are paying the fee most of the time. They don’t recognize the impact that they’re having. The other issue, secondarily, good.

Demetrios: I can speak to that. I bought an old house falling apart, like literally birds in it, like rats, open windows. I go to build that property and they slapped historical on it. I said, who’s historical here? They’re like, “Well, we really don’t.”

Anthony: Maybe to the raccoons.

Demetrios: Paul Revere’s mouse may be defecated in there for all I know.

Anthony: Yes, possibly.

Demetrios: Here’s what we know. It wasn’t. They tied it up for several months, and developers have carrying costs. I think the state and the city–

Anthony: The city, they have no compassion for it. Municipalities have no compassion for the money. They have no compassion whatsoever.

Demetrios: Taxes, water, insurance. I think risk. I think that the state has to get serious whether or not they want to treat developers kindly and see that a profit, if they make a profit, is an actual good thing. I think that therein lies the rub. I was on a committee one time and a woman said to me kindly, she goes, “The city is concerned with unjust enrichment on some of these.” I said, “You mean a profit, right?”

I’m going to put 2 million in the ground and I’m going to risk my life savings to go build a small multifamily building. Would you work for two and a half years or three years for free? If you ask that person, they’d say, “Absolutely not.” I said, “Well, that’s really what you’re asking of developers, to put up their–“

Anthony: They don’t see it that way though.

Demetrios: Therein lies the rub.

Anthony: Do you think there’s hope? Because I don’t. At least here, I don’t. I do notice when you go Worcester County West, the municipalities are easier to work with. Just the whole vibe of dealing with them. When we were flipping houses one after the other, outside the 495 belt, it was pretty easy to get permits. You still have to follow the state rules, which every year get harder.

Demetrios: Correct.

Anthony: Do you have hope? Because I don’t.

Demetrios: I think speaking to landlords, they obviously think it’s a lot easier to do development outside of the city. There’s no question about that. The further you go, the better you’re treated. The question is, why don’t we flip that and make all the landlords and Boston developers treated really, really well, treated with respect, have a spot at the table to discuss these things? I think if you’re in an echo chamber, it’s not going to work.

Anthony: That’s what they are.

Demetrios: You have to bring in business leaders and say, “These are some comments and solutions. We work on that, we win.” I think we start bringing supply on. I think we’re ready for it.

Anthony: Am I right to say, and you might not want to answer this, but I’ll ask anyway, to say that development has slowed down dramatically since Mayor Wu’s gotten in?

Demetrios: Yes, there’s no question about it.

Anthony: That’s how I see it. Listen, in her defense, slightly interest rates have gone up. Inflation has screwed up the cost of building. If you compare it to other major cities, Boston is faring much worse as far as construction now since she’s gotten in. It’s really just the whole vibe she’s giving off with developers.

Demetrios: I think that’s where you talk to business leaders and you say, “Look, okay, cost of borrowing went up, debt went up, materials went up, labor went up, everything went up.” Okay, and we’re upping affordable units where the landlord’s going to lose money. That makes no sense. A leader says, “You know what? Let’s cut back on this, go back to any community that says, ‘Well, we need more affordable units.'” You say, it’s build as much as possible. That’s how you get affordability.

Anthony: Right there, folks. Thank you, I’ve said it many times. All right, let’s turn the page for a second there, because you and I could go on and on and complain about the municipalities in the state all day. All right, Instagram. For those of you that haven’t seen it, go on to MassGovernor and go back to last week and you’ll see a post that really got my attention. You didn’t hire the broker, you shouldn’t pay the fee. Let’s end renter paid broker fees.

First of all, I don’t think they realize, as you said, these two comments contradict one another. If we break them apart and we say, “You didn’t hire the broker, you shouldn’t pay the fee.” What about outside of Greater Boston? Heck, even inside sometimes, because we have it happen all the time. Our relocation team, we get incoming folks that are looking for rentals. By the way, I’m going to introduce you to our real OVP after this. We get people, “Oh, hi, there’s a doctor moving in, there’s an accountant that works at Children’s Hospital, whatever, they need, they want to rent the place for a year.”

One of our agents takes them around for the weekend, shows them the property. Sometimes, more so when it’s outside of Boston, when they find a property they like, they write a rental proposal, they propose it to either the landlord’s broker or directly with the landlord, depending on the property. They often put in, they request that the landlord pay our company’s fee when representing the tenant. Now, if they get their wish with this silly post, that wouldn’t be allowed. Now they’d be hurting the tenant and tenant representative’s ability to get the landlord to pay. What is your thoughts on that?

Demetrios: My thoughts are soundbites are good back in the ’90s. We’ve got to go get an awesome podcast like this where we can actually matriculate and talk about the bigger issue. There’s a whole host of things you negotiate beyond the fee, right? Parking, utilities, what’s included, length of lease. All those things factor in, and landlords are willing to negotiate on those things.

First of all, I think the bigger, broader question is, is the system broken? The answer is no. We’ve done 1.5 million showings of apartments on a disclosed dual agency notification form. We’ve never had anybody have an issue with that. Everybody knows that you’re working towards progress of finding an apartment. They know some properties are going to be full fee, half fee. They come to your website, it says it in advance. It openly states what the fee structure is. Landlords will also say, “I’m negotiable.”

I think that trying to force something sounds good, but I think what it’ll actually do is probably slow down the entire process. My biggest concern right now, and there are many of this, is that most landlords, okay, let’s say they decide to go do it themselves, okay? Try to rent it themselves. Most of them do not know how to do the leasing paperwork properly.

So many of them I talk to on a daily basis have illegal things in their addendum, but they don’t know it, they just made it up. They’re good people. They put it in there and I go, “You can’t put in late fees, day one, 10%.” They’re like, “Why can’t I?” There’s going to be winners and losers with this if it passes. Lawyers are going to win. Lawyers are going to win, because just like ambulance chasers, you’re going to have lawyers that reach out to all these tenants, and we’ve seen that these tenant-chasing lawyers now, they try to make money. Is that going to make money for the landlord? No, it’s going to cost them money. Landlords are going to lose, lawyers are going to win. Who else stands to benefit, right? We have to look at who the winners are.

Anthony: I don’t even know if the lawyers will win.

Demetrios: I do.

Anthony: You think so?

Demetrios: I do, I think that– oh, yes, I think that, because tenants will–

Anthony: You’re saying they’ll have lawyers represent them more?

Demetrios: Yes, because they’ll have bad paperwork, right?

Anthony: Yes, but bad paperwork happens every time brokers aren’t involved, that happens. I have family members that they’ve rented their units for years, and now that I got in the business, they turn them over to us. I look at existing leases, they get the security deposit, totally missed. I’m like, “Where’s the security deposit?” “Oh, I put it in my bank account.” Whoa, or lead paint. Lead paint, they all fumble. I’m like, “What in the hell?” It’s not done correctly, and then–

Demetrios: If the onus was to try to put it onto the landlord, and it sounds like what they’re trying to do, or I’d love to have a meeting and understand what they’re trying to accomplish there. If that’s the goal, then I can say with absolute certainty, there’ll be more lawsuits and more landlords that make mistakes on paperwork inadvertently. They’re good people. A lot of them are immigrants that came and they bought a piece of real estate. They’re living the American dream. Sometimes I have to get translators to help. Landlords put information on there properly because they don’t know better, they just made up their own stuff.

Anthony: What you were saying earlier before we went on camera, and I want you to elaborate on that as your last thought, the smaller landlords are going to have a harder time with this.

Demetrios: Absolutely, they’re going to be disproportionately impacted.

Anthony: Explain that.

Demetrios: Look, in Massachusetts, small landlords provide about 65% of the housing in Massachusetts, right?

Anthony: 65% of the housing for tenants in Massachusetts are by small landlords. Yes, I believe that.

Demetrios: Right, and so if a landlord rents, let’s say he owns a triple-decker, and the tenant stays for five years. They don’t know what legal updates happened in the last five years, and a lot of them are still on paper, from old paper leases, and so they’re not keeping up with stuff. They’re going to be disproportionately impacted, not only on the legislative side, but also understanding what they need to do. Now you’re asking them to pay the fee.

Most of those smaller landlords don’t keep up as to date on pricing, trust me, I know, than luxury buildings. These big buildings are constantly looking at rental optimization. They have rental optimization software, right? They’re doing that on a daily basis. Do you think that small mom and pop landlords using that software? No, they’re not, right?

Anthony: No, of course they’re not. Now let me ask you a question. Do you agree with what I said on Fox yesterday, literally live on camera, you didn’t see it yet, it hasn’t been released yet, but it’ll be released today. I said, “Mark my words here on the live news. They pass this, rents will go up the next day,” because the landlords are going to say, at least the corporate ones that are in the know, they’re going to all raise their rents. Then the longer term tenants, they’re going to get hit harder and end up spending more. Am I right about that?

Demetrios: Yes, no question. In fact, I’ve got– if I have time to read off a few data points, if you want, we can talk about that.

Anthony: We have a few minutes.

Demetrios: Look, we sent out a survey to 18,000 landlords.

Anthony: You do agree with me that rents go up.

Demetrios: Oh, yes. Well, the facts are the facts. Do you believe smaller landlords will be disproportionately affected by this change? 93.2% said yes. Would this change?

Anthony: Who got asked that question, the landlords?

Demetrios: We sent it out to all landlords.

Anthony: Okay, keep going.

Demetrios: Large and small. Would this change make it more challenging for you to maintain or improve your rental properties? 87.6 said yes. Do you currently rent your properties through an exclusive agent? We should talk about that. 68.9% said no. If you think about the implications of that, they’re putting it out there because landlords know best on an open market because landlords want their properties rented as quickly as possible. That’s it, it’s speed.

They want three things. They want speed, least amount of disruption to the tenant. They want the highest qualified tenant and they want the most showings as quickly as possible. They want it over so the tenant isn’t disrupted. Landlords know best, the facts are there. These are incontrovertible. If you use an exclusive agent, do you pay the fee? 56.2% do not use an exclusive agent. 33.7% say no. 10.1% say yes. Do you pay the fee?

Anthony: Wait, 33.7% say no to paying the fee.

Demetrios: Correct, right. 10.1% say yes. If real estate agents left the industry due to less opportunities, do you think it would negatively impact your real estate business? 73.6% of landlords said yes.

Anthony: It would hurt the tenants too. Listen, my own sister is at Boston University, and when we sent her, when she had to find a unit, I sent her to a friend that I grew up with, Colonial Real Estate. I don’t know if you know them over in Brookline, and he helped her find a unit, and guess what? I paid the fee. The guy’s got to get paid. I knew me finding her a unit, it wouldn’t jive. He found it, and he nailed it all. That’s super interesting to me.

There’s two things that I want to regroup on. You had made a comment– oh, I know what it was. You said, during COVID, when that hit, all of a sudden, the landlords were paying the fees everywhere. Think about that, folks. Within a matter of a couple of months when there was suddenly more supply, all of a sudden, bang, landlords are paying.

Demetrios: It gets even better than that.

Anthony: Explain it.

Demetrios: Landlords are dropping security deposit. Landlords are saying you can build your security deposit over six months. Landlords were dropping last month’s rent. Landlords are throwing in free parking. There was so many incentives there.

Anthony: All because of the increased–

Demetrios: Supply. That’s it.

Anthony: Now, what percentage of the units were vacant then?

Demetrios: The highest I think we ever saw for availability was 15.1% available.

Anthony: 15.

Demetrios: 1-5.

Anthony: Think about that. We’re not talking 50.

Demetrios: Oh, no. 1-5. I think the vacancy, if we go look at the real time chart, I think it was hovering right at 10%. That was for a very short period of time. If we just focused on supply and I think we need– look, I think that the city has to get serious about rezoning. Instead of these triple deckers, I think we need to go to six stories across most of the city, combine lots, and then let builders build without having to worry about affordability.

Let them go, take the risk. There’s so much cost out there. The labor is so high. Labor is through the roof. You know this, right? You don’t hear anymore. We see about in the night. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I know you have to. You’d hear it in 2000, “Oh, laborers need more money.” Laborers are super wealthy right now. They’re making a ton of money.

Anthony: I grew up working in the landscape business. When we needed another employee, the next morning, they’d walk over the hill at the garage and they’d start. My brother now is the president of the family company. He’s like, “It ain’t that easy anymore.”

Demetrios: That’s right.

Anthony: Getting them is not that easy. All right, there’s one other big takeaway that I got from this. You said that you have rented more units than anyone since the Pilgrims. How do you know for sure?

Demetrios: There’s three factors, right? Longevity. Who’s been doing it longer than we have? Number two, who’s had more offices focused on leasing than we have? Nobody. Number three, we have the web stats and all the rents to prove it. I think that when you look–

Anthony: That’s impressive. You’ve cornered it. We could do a whole other podcast. You got into rentals, what, right out of school or what?

Demetrios: Yes, 1994 when I started renting apartments.

Anthony: Geez, you started about nine years before me.

Demetrios: Yes.

Anthony: Oh, no, 10. I started in ’04 in sales.

Demetrios: Yes, and it’s been a long walk between real estate and technology the whole time. We built websites that were neighborhood focused to look at all this data. Literally 20 years later, you have so much data to prove what we’re looking at.

Anthony: Good for you.

Demetrios: I think that that’s really our bailiwick is helping landlords, helping consumers. There’s another thing that people don’t talk about that’s super important for real estate agents. I do think a lot of leasing agents get a bad rep. Now, maybe that’s the company that they’re with. I’m not sure, but look at it this way.

We’re calling landlords every single day that have overpriced properties or have been sitting on the market too long and they don’t know that they’re overpriced. We’re actually doing the industry and we’re doing landlords a favor. We’re doing tenants a favor because we’re actually reducing the prices on the ones that are overpriced, and no one brings that up. Landlords could keep their stuff out there forever and have no clue that they’re overpriced. How would they know? We have–

Anthony: That’s the guidance that they’re getting from agents.

Demetrios: Real-time data tools.

Anthony: Look, I’d love to talk all day. Him and I clearly can talk. Congrats on building a hell of a business.

Demetrios: Same to you.

Anthony: How does someone reach you? This is mostly a real estate agent realtor audience. How do they reach you if they’re sending a rental to Boston because he’s the guy you should send it to?

Demetrios: You can go right to Boston Pads. We have a landlord portal there. You can upload all your pictures, you data–

Anthony: Well, that’s for a landlord. What about a realtor that has a tenant or someone looking for a unit, email you?

Demetrios: Oh, yes. D@bostonpads.

Anthony: That’s pretty damn simple. I should make my email that simple. Well, thanks very much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Demetrios: I really appreciate all the work that you’ve done, the advocacy. You’ve done a great job.

Anthony: Actually, I’m rushing a little because I got to do another video today because it’s something that dropped yesterday in the MLS bin case. Thank you very much.

Demetrios: Thank you.