Should your buyer float their interest rate or lock now?

Interesting question. Some of you really gotta be working with your lender to have that conversation with them. But let me give you a little bit of what's been happening to date in January through roughly March 2021:

Let's look at the numbers and dig into them that I got from one of my lenders — who is an incredible rockstar in the lending world. His name is Brian Case and his team at Guild Mortgage gave me these numbers:

For the entire year of 2021 so far, a floating borrower — or somebody that took the gamble and threw the dice to see if they can get a better rate tomorrow than
they can get today — would've won 41% of the time. And they would have lost 58% of the time.

Because 48% of the time rates went down and 58% of the time they went up. So it's a gamble that may not be paying off.

Overall interest rates have gone up about a half percent since January....

Hey guys, quick question:

Do you have a video bio?

If you don't have a video bio, you could be missing a massive marketing opportunity.

96% of agents are still resisting video. That means that there's a massive opportunity for those agents that are willing to embrace it.

By doing a video bio, imagine that you are a consumer and you're looking at 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 agents on an agent roster. Most of them have the old glamour shot. But you have a video bio. Who's more likely to work with you?

Almost everybody.

Almost everybody's going to click on that video and watch you and give you a shot. They'll give you an "at bat" so you can hit a home run. Instead of just looking at pictures and making a decision, they can actually kind of get to know you a little bit, your personality, your style, and your flair.

And here's what you do in that bio:

You're going to talk about your background, your passion for the market, your passion for real...

I want to turn you on to a book that was recently recommended to me called "Atomic Habits." If you haven't listened to it, it's a fantastic book by James Clear. And it gives powerful insights on how to build habits and actually get rid of habits that are holding you back.

One of the things that he mentioned in the book, which has really resonated with me is this idea of "being in motion" versus "being in action."

Being in motion means that you are planning, strategizing, and preparing to take action, right? There's a lot of agents that are really good at being in motion — but they never actually move up to being in action.

Being in action means you're actually doing the steps necessary to hit your desired outcome.

Now, the difference here between being in motion versus being in action is that when you're in motion, you're not taking a risk. Which is why so many agents get trapped in this space.

You're not risking...

Here's some great language to use with buyers as they're entering the market today. We know it's a high demand, low supply market.

But how do we coach them through this process?

One way is by using the "Auction Analogy." You can do this by talking about a list price as being almost like a reserve price. So the conversation (which you can see below), will give you a good way to help buyers understand what's happening in the market dynamics. You can simply say:

"Hey, now that you're entering the market, I just want to kind of give you a little overview of what's happening in terms of pricing and where sellers are at. We're in a very low supply market and a very high demand market. So, on average, sellers are receiving a least four offers per home. Now some receive less, some receive more. But in general, we're going to be competing for a buyer for a seller's love. We're going to be competing with other buyers. So we want to come in...

There's something happening in the market right now that really will impact your sellers. And that is interest rates are starting to climb a little bit.

When interest rates climb, it affects sellers in two different key ways:

1. It affects what's called buying power of all the buyers in the marketplace.

Here's what that looks like when you're talking about buying power:

If you're a buyer who is going to get a loan of, let's say $300,000, and you had your average down payment that would equal a payment and interest charge of about $1,225 per month. Now that interest rates have come up about a half percent, what does that mean for you?

If you still want to have that same payment, roughly $1225 a month of principal and interest, your buying power actually goes down because interest rates have gone up. You can no longer afford the $300,000 mortgage. Now you can only afford $285,000.

This puts "pricing pressure" on the market.

Now we know...

The National Association of REALTORS® shows that home affordability is better than it's been in the last four years.

So what does that mean?

It means that they measure what it would take for the median family in the country and their median income versus the median sales price and the interest rates that you would have to pay in this market. And they come up with how affordable it is to own a home.

The baseline number is 100. In other words, families have 100% of the median income needed to buy the median priced home in the marketplace.

Now guess what that number is today.

It's 187!

So homeowners on the median scale have 187% of what it would take for them to own a home in their marketplace.

Not only is this an amazing number, but it's much better than it was a year ago.

When we look at home prices going up, sometimes we can get in the trap of thinking that things are getting less affordable.

But the offset to this is interest...

Almost all of us are going to get multiple offers on at least one of our listings this year, probably several of them.

So what are you going to do to market the fact that you brought your sellers multiple offers?

One way you can do this is by modeling my friend Bill up in the Portland, Oregon market.

He received 13 offers on one of his listings! So what he did is he took a picture with him and his seller reviewing all those offers on the table. All 13 offers were spread across the table and labeled. And he took it at an angle where so you couldn't actually read the offers. You could just see them all laid out there with the seller smiling in the background.

And then he put a statement on social media and said:

"Hey, I got great news:

My seller came to me to market this property. Zillow said the home was worth $429k. We listed it at $459k and now we have an accepted offer well above $500,000 for this home."

What is this post doing?

It's...

Are you looking for more ways to find listings? I'm going to give you three more strategies right now.

Over at erealestatecoach, we've got hundreds of strategies over there. Lots of classes, lots of free material over there to check out. And we'll give you two weeks of free coaching. But today let me give you just three quick strategies:

1. Checking out the garage sales and estate sales that are coming up in the spring market

This is where people are downsizing all their stuff. They're doing the spring cleaning and they're deciding to get rid of a few things. But there could be an opportunity for you to reach out and make contact. Now, what would be the script? I'm going to give you those scripts right down below, but you could use this as a mailer, a postcard, an email, or just a direct approach either in person or over the phone.

So you might say:

"Hey as a local REALTOR, I noticed you had a recent garage sale. I hope it went super...

Join this fast paced conversation with certified Ninja Coach and superstar REALTOR Shelly Culbertson as we dive into how her team uses the Property Review strategy to provide more value to her database while unlocking more listings and transactions. Learn the exact scripts, who to call, and how to deliver the update in a way that will drive more referrals and have your client looking forward to their "annual property review".

Need more listings? This is a can't miss episode!

If you're looking for a story to post to social media today, here's a great one for you.

A study was recently done about homeowners and how likely they are now to list their home based on the vaccine being available.

So here's the study and what it shares:

It shares that 70% of homeowners say they'd be completely comfortable moving to a new home with widespread COVID-19 vaccine distribution. In other words, they're ready to leave and go into another house because the vaccine is available. That's 7 out of 10 homeowners compared to only 52% who currently feel that way.

Now, we're only at 52% today. But as the vaccine becomes more prevalent and widespread, which we expect them in the next couple of months, that number is going to move to 70%.

It's going to unlock a ton of sellers into the marketplace.

That represents 14 million homeowners who now feel comfortable moving after widespread vaccination. This is a massive opportunity...