My wife and I had something exciting happen: We downsized! We moved out of our big house into a much smaller house because three outta four of our kids are out of the house and we want to travel some more.

We're like a lot of people in our generation. We're in that mindset of scaling down. But what's interesting is over the years, in our big house, we received a lot of marketing messages from REALTORS and the marketing messages always focused mostly on the agent getting a listing. For instance, the marketing messages would be a postcard, a door hanger, etc. and it would say something like this:

"Are you considering selling? Call me."
"Would you like to know what your home is worth? Call me."
"I have a buyer who may be interested in your home. Call me."

Now, what are all those marketing messages center on? The agent getting your listing. And I get it. I've been guilty of the same thing.

But what if we changed tactics and we focused on...

Hey guys, quick idea for you. Actually two.

First one is: Have you mapped all the home anniversaries for clients you sold a home to in 2021? Maybe you go back even further. You could go back to 2020, 2019 and map those home anniversaries of those closings, and then give everybody a call as their anniversary comes up.

You can say, "Hey, happy home anniversary. By the way, I did a quick updated CMA on your home for you to let you know what your home is worth and to show you how much equity you've built up over the last 12 months. It's incredible. Let me show you what's happened here."

That will be a value added call. People will appreciate you're making the call and they'll be looking forward to it next year.

Okay. That's a one idea.

Second idea is this time of year, everybody's starting to file their taxes. Get it in front of it. Send everybody you closed a home with in the last 12 months a copy of their HUD and closing statements so their...

A couple interesting stats are coming out. And they show that we have a new generation that's upon us.

And I'm gonna start with the first stat, which is talking about young adults.

So young adults (adults described as 25 to 34) have come back to live at home. Now in 2020, this hit an all time high —17.8% of young adults, 24 to 30 came back home to live with their parents. That's the highest it's been since 1960 guys.

And last year in 2021, it still was 17%, which was the second highest year since 1960.

So that's one side of what some people are starting to call the "sandwich generation."

Now who's in the middle of the sandwich? Guys like me. People that are 44 to 60 years old—I'm 52 right in the middle. So we got our kids coming home, but who's coming on the other side? Potentially older parents, right?

So parents that are maybe 60, 70, 80 years old also might need to come and be a part of the family, right?

...

There's a great book I'm gonna recommend to you called Influence by Robert Cialdini. In the book, he talks about the power of sales language. And how your language, when you're selling can have such a massive impact on your performance.

We tend to just wing it in this business. We tend not to know our lines. And we just kind of think that our sheer great personality is always gonna win the day. But that's a mistake. Just like any true professional, we should memorize some things in the real estate industry.

Not that everything's canned and everything's planned. But there are some things we need to memorize.

When you think about the highest paid professionals in any the industry—whether it's a doctor, whether it's an attorney, whether it's a CPA—do those three professions have to memorize some things in order to pass their bar exam and their accountants exams and all their other exams?

Absolutely. And you better hope that...

How many times when you're talking to a potential seller, do they bring up commissions today?

That conversation is probably happening more often than ever before today because it's a hyper competitive market. We're seeing a lot more commission conversations and people trying to negotiate our commissions to some degree.

So I had this great quote that was given to me by a Ninja student. Ninja is a great program. If you haven't taken the ninja class, highly recommend you do it. I've done it for my agents and brought them in twice to teach to my group. But they had a great quote here for dealing with the commission conversation.

So here's the quote (and it's so good):

"Hey, let me ask you this. I totally understand you're asking about commission but let me ask you just a quick question around that:

Do you believe that your house is gonna sell for a fixed price or do you believe it'll sell in a range of value depending on the negotiation...

I did a class recently, teaching in Southern California. And I conducted a random study during the class. And we were talking about the aspect of being a "hyperlocal agent." Maybe you've heard that term before.

This is where you're connecting, not just with the people in your community, but the community itself. Because if you think about yourself as a person that might move to a new area, what will be the first thing you do?

First thing you're doing is Googling it, right? You're gonna hop on the internet and you're gonna Google that place. You're gonna check it out and you're gonna research it. And the keywords you use for your search would be the city name, right?

But you know, the other place that everyone's gonna go is not just Google, but also YouTube.

That's what I do every time I'm going on vacation, I'm checking out hotels. I'm looking at the air to get a feel for it. I'm YouTubing the heck out of it, right?

So we did a little search for...

Hey guys, some really interesting information regarding remote working and what's happening in the country.

A lot of employers today are saying, "Hey, we started with remote working because we had to. COVID made us do it. But now we're starting to see, this is a really good kind of situation. We spend less on housing our employees in a building somewhere and we can work from home. And great news as a lot of 'em are more productive at home than they were at the office."

So, interesting, interesting study that was just done about this.

And it's related to housing in that 19% of people that are looking to buy a house are doing so because they now have a remote working situation.

See, during the middle of COVID employers were like, "Well, we're gonna let you do this, but then you're gonna have to come back home to the office."

Now they're saying, "Hey, no, you know what? Just keep working from home. We don't care."

Now this gives the freedom...

Hey guys, there's a new study out from The REALTOR Organization talking about the consumer index. They're asking consumers questions about the real estate market.

One of the questions they ask homeowners is: Do they think it's a good time to sell?

What percentage of sellers do you think would answer yes to that question in your market?

Across the country, 76% of people that own a home believe now is a good time to sell.

That's excellent news because when you have such a high sentiment, when you're out there talking to people, they're much more likely to be open to having that conversation.

Not that long ago, just a few years ago, that was more like 30% or 40%. Today, it's 76%. That means over two-thirds of the people you're talking to think it's a good time to sell. Now it's just a timing issue — whether they're ready to sell today or not.

And here's some more good news:

A Zillow study reveals one in seven homeowners over the...

Hey guys, quick market update for you:

We know that the CPI—the consumer price index—has risen dramatically. And right now it's running about 7% to 7.5%, depending on which economist you talk to.

That means that inflation's skyrocketing. The cost of goods and services is skyrocketing. Wages are skyrocketing. And so is the cost of getting a new loan or a new mortgage on a home.

Now, why are loans affected? They are affected because the federal government looks at this as a lever that they can push on the economy to slow the economy down and put the brakes on the growth in the country.

So since November of last year, through roughly today, we've seen a 300-point basis jump in what interest rates are costing Americans.

Now to put this in perspective because what does 300 basis points even mean?

It means that if you were gonna try to get November's interest rate today, it would cost three points. Three points, every a hundred...

If you were to go back in time for the last 24 months and look at every closing you had, would all those people you closed a transaction with have given you a recommendation or endorsement online?

In other words...

If you closed 20 transactions, do you have 20 endorsements on realtor.com, Zillow, Facebook, or Google Business? Or are you missing a lot?

If you're missing a lot, you're missing opportunities. Here's why:

If you look at a couple of agents in your market, you might find this, I see this all the time. You might have an experienced agent that's crushing it — doing 30-40 transactions a year. Then you have this brand new agent who just started their business a couple of years ago and only closed 10-12 transactions each year.

But... online, they're getting a recommendation or endorsement from every single client. And sometimes clients they didn't even close a transaction with, but just had a good experience with them. So...