Did you know that the average buyer in the market right now believes that 20% down is mandatory?

In fact, when you talk to buyers, 80% of them believe that you need 20% down.

The reality is that most buyers are putting, on average right now, about 10% down. And of course, we know as REALTORS there are lots of programs where buyers can put way less than that.

You’ve got FHA at 3.5% down. Via USDA, buyers can get 0% down depending on your market. And of course, you’ve got to be a veteran in some cases for VA programs.

But there are also a lot of down payment assistance programs across the country.

In every state, every county, every city, there are down payment assistance programs, and most buyers are completely unaware that these are available.

80% of buyers will qualify for some kind of down payment assistance, yet a very small percentage take advantage of it.

Here’s one quick tip for you that can really help you reach a lot of buyers in your market and give them a great resourc...

Hey brokers, team leaders, I’ve got a question for you: when was your last wow moment when it comes to marketing for your firm?

When did you roll out a piece of digital marketing — maybe a new sign design, new branding, new flyers, something fresh and exciting technologically? Maybe it’s a new website or a new social media skin. Something that wowed your agents.

If the answer is you can’t remember, or it was sometime last year, I’m going to suggest that you commit to doing this once a quarter.

Once a quarter, you should be rolling out a wow moment for your agents where they’re like, “Whoa, that is cool. That is really exciting.”

This keeps your company fresh. It keeps it exciting. It gives you a retention tool, and it gives you a recruiting tool at the same time.

Then the question becomes: what is it?

We’ve got to go in search of it. We’ve got to look for people outside of our company, ideas, strategies, marketing pieces, branding pieces outside the company, and be in tune and sa...

Real estate agents—I’ve got a question for you.

Have you updated your listing presentation in the last 12 months? Hopefully you have. If you haven’t, now’s the time to do it.

Because we’re in spring—we’re in the Super Bowl of the listing season. Spring and summer are the busiest seasons for listings, so we should have an updated listing presentation, refreshed and ready for 2026, and have that dialed in.

And by the way, you should have the same thing for your marketing plan—two separate things, right?

Let’s say we’ve done that. We’ve updated and refreshed our marketing plan and our listing presentation.

Now what do you do with it?

Well, you can wait until somebody calls me for a listing appointment, which is great—but you don’t want to wait. You want to be proactive.

So what you’re going to do with these two documents is you’re going to put them out to your sphere.

You’re going to say, through a text, an email, a phone call—it could be an email or even a letter, an old-school l...

Hey guys, you’ve probably noticed in your market a lot of new construction when it comes to apartments. That’s common across the country right now. Tons of apartments coming online, tons of rental properties.

What’s happening is it’s putting pricing pressure into the rental market. I own rentals in my own small town here in southern Oregon, and we’ve seen pricing pressure here locally.

And what that means is that people that have rentals might be feeling a little bit under pressure, especially the higher-priced rentals.

So let’s assume somebody bought a home. They’ve got a mortgage, they’ve got taxes, they’ve got insurance, they’ve got a property manager to pay, utilities—all the costs associated.

So you’ve got to ask a pretty steep price.

And now the number of renters willing to pay their price has dropped, so they’re sitting vacant.

This is an opportunity for you to pick up listings.

Watch for those high-end rental properties in your market. Watch those rental websites. Watch ...

Hey, brokerage owners, team leaders, I’ve got a few questions for you:

First: What’s been your biggest sale ever at your company? Interesting question.

Second question: What’s been your biggest month ever for closing transactions, by volume and sides?

And then third question: What’s been your biggest listing month ever, by the total number of listings coming into your office?

Those three key performance indicators—you might call those your best records, right? Your highest achievements as a company are really a fun thing to measure your team against and say:

“Guys, I just did a little study.”

You’re talking to your team members in an office meeting.

“I just did a study. Here’s our biggest sale ever in the history of our company—and this is the agent who did it.

And then, “our biggest month ever at this company has been 32 transactions, 15 million closed.

“Our biggest listing month ever was this number.

“I want to set a goal for 2026, 2027 for us to hit a higher number—a highe...

Let me give you a quick, super simple thing that all REALTORS should do.

Once a week—maybe once a month at the very least—you should do the 24-hour report as a live report on your social feeds. It could be a Reel, could be a story.

But what is a 24-hour report?

It simply means you're on your hot sheet in the MLS, and you just read off the stats of the hot sheet. You're going to say something like this:

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“Hey, I just want to give you a quick update on what's happening with the market.”

It's been 24 new listings in the last 24 hours, 18 listings went pending, 32 have closed, and we've got 25 price reductions.

The market is really humming along. We've got a lot of great things.

I saw this really incredible buy come up that I'd love to share with you—if you're looking for a rental property, it looks incredible. We've got another one on a rural property that looks fun too, right on the river.

If any of you have a real estate need, I'd love to be somebody that you talk to. Give me a...

If you're a broker or a team leader, one key thing that's going to make a difference in your ability to keep agents and recruit agents is your ability to deploy AI.

If you're not using AI in your business model, you could be at risk from the brokers and team leaders out there that are really getting heavily involved.

And one of the simplest things we can all do is give our team members AI they can deploy.

What does that mean?

Just a prompt that they can use in their everyday business.

I'll give you an example. We just rolled out an AI prompt for writing ads—super simple—that agents can use to create emotionally compelling ads every time they have a new listing so they can create some amazing ads.

Yeah, it's super simple.

And we just rolled that out to our coaching team.

We also gave them a way to evaluate themselves and how well they are showing up with AEO—answer engine optimization—not just SEO.

We gave them a way to measure themselves on a visibility scale and a 90-day plan...

The late, great Lou Holtz had a way of speaking. If you’ve never seen him speak, I recommend you go check him out on YouTube. Incredible speaker.

But one thing he taught me was that the way people buy is they ask themselves three questions—the essence of these three questions.

First of all, can I trust you?

Can I trust you?

How are you showing that people can trust you? Online reviews. Written recommendations. Testimonials. Can I trust you? Number one question I have.

Second question is, are you good at what you do?

Are you good at what you do? How are you showing that? Are you showing that you're actually getting the job done, or are you getting what I call resistance from your own sphere of influence—not doing business with you or referring you on a regular basis?

Why would that be?

The reason is you're not showing them you're good at what you do. You're not saying, hey, I sold this. I got this pending. I'm out here working every day. I'm working, working, working, and you're...

Brokerage owners, team leaders—I know that you're recruiting every day because you're supposed to do that to build your business. I know you're doing it.

And when you're doing this, and you're setting aside one hour a day for recruiting, who are you targeting? Well, who you should be targeting is the people that are going to be the most receptive to your message.

And often, we just target the top producers in the market, or we target a certain group of people that has done this much production over this number of years.

But let me give you another target: “Gap Agents.”

What's a gap agent?

This is an agent who has not closed a deal in the last 90 days.

They have closed deals in the past. Maybe they've been a top performer. Maybe they were a consistent 3 or 4 or 5, 6, 8, 9 top producer.

But for whatever reason, in the last 90 days, they have not closed a transaction.

These folks will be much more receptive to having a conversation with you because they're looking to be rescued. T...

Hey guys, if you’re an agent and you’re out there selling real estate, here’s one question that you need to answer.

What is the lifetime value of one client that you close the transaction with?

So you have an escrow, it closes, and you receive a commission. And a lot of agents get in this mindset of, "well, I earned my $10,000."

Is that the lifetime value of this client? Is it $10,000, or is it a lot more than that?

Here’s the way we look at this in our coaching program. In our coaching program, we look at each client having a value, a lifetime value of $161,000. You might say, how do you get to that number? Well, we get to that number with a combination of things.

First of all, ideally, this one client isn’t going to just do one bit of business with you. They often, in a lifetime, are going to do two, three, four, or five pieces of business with you, whether it’s investment properties, whether it’s buying their second home or third home, or relocating and you referring them out s...