At this time last year, 46% of sellers were offering some kind of incentive to buyers to encourage them to make an offer on their house over the competition.

Now, those incentives could have been anything from closing costs, down payment assistance, home warranties, pre-paying for services. There were lots of different incentives that could have been thrown into the mix.

But this year that number has dropped down to 26%. But this is still a very high number.

And you can describe this to sellers like this: 

"Hey, listen, it might be kind of surprising, but about one out of every four of sellers that we're competing with in the marketplace is actually offering an incentive to the buyer to encourage them to make an offer on their home. So it's something for us to consider. We got a great price, but maybe that would make our home stand out just a little bit more is thinking about an incentive.

Let me describe what could mean:

What are the top seven reasons why someone would want to sell in your market?

Well, according to the National Association of REALTORS new profile of home buyers and sellers across the country, here are the top reasons:

1. They want to move closer to family and friends — 18% of the time.

2. Their home is too small — 17% of the time.

3. Their neighborhood has become less desirable — 11% of the time.

4. Their home is too large — 9% of the time.

(Add the too large to the too small, and you got 26% of the time they want to sell has to do with the size of their home.)

5. A change in their family situation — 9% of the time.

6. Moving due to retirement — 7% of the time.

7. Job relocation — another 7% of the time.

So why do we care?

Here's the reason why:

Instead of talking about generalities like do you want to sell your home? Are you ready to move? Let's talk about specifics when you're doing...

This is an amazing number:

63% of home buyers that are out shopping today believe that the homes that they're looking at should look like the homes that they see on TV on HGTV and other shows like that.

That is interesting because that's something we've got to educate our sellers about. Because if that's the buyer's expectation, if we don't meet that expectation, we may not get top dollar.

So when we're sitting with sellers, how do we have those conversations? There's another study that might help with that conversation that will actually incentivize them to want to do this.

The new study shows that of 13,000 homes in the country that were studied in 2020 -- a very recent study -- 85% of those got between 6% and 23% more for their home because they were staged compared to the competitors in the neighborhood.

Those are powerful numbers to motivate your sellers. And then we have to define what staging actually means anyway.

So...

How long do people stay in their homes? It's an interesting question. And it's a question that's related to marketing for us.

Prior to 2008, the average person stayed in their home five years before they moved on. So quite a bit of turnover there.

From 2008 to 2016, that number moved up to eight years.

And now that number has gone even higher — it's now 10.6 years.

So why are people staying in their homes longer? Well, there's lots of reasons.

The Great Recession had an impact. Super low interest rates have an impact. Having less inventory in the markets for people to move up to and change homes has also made a big impact.

But one question we should know and ask our clients is how about our local market? How about with our own sphere? What does that look like for the people that you're actually doing business with?

It's a great text. It's a great social media post to ask this question:

"The average homeowner spends 10.6...

We know that Google is the number one search engine. But what's number two?

As you think about that question, let me give you another a stat that's really going to blow you away:

One-third of Americans -- according to a Harris poll survey -- say that they plan to move after COVID ends.

Think about that.

Think about the power of what that could do to the country in terms of real estate relocation.

So circling back to that first question I asked though, what is the number two search engine?

The answer is YouTube.

And here's what you can do, which is really, really interesting.

When you dive into YouTube today, search for your hometown. Be hyperlocal as we call it and do this quick search: "moving to [your hometown]."

Or you do could another search, which is: "relocation [your hometown]" and see what the results are.

You might find, like I've found, in area after area, after area, after area is that there are very, very little results...

Hey guys, here's a question:

How many transactions would you guess in the marketplace are cash transactions?

The answer is 23% of all transactions in the real estate industry today are cash transactions.

Now, why is that important?

It's important because when we're talking to buyers and sellers, we need to be able to talk about the impact cash buyers have in the marketplace.

So for instance, when I'm sitting with a seller, sometimes sellers will say, "Well, Jim, I only want to sell to a cash buyer."

Now I'll say, "Hey, I get it. I would prefer that too when I'm a seller. Cash buyers don't have an appraisal requirement. And a lot of times you can close faster and it's a little easier. I get it. No lender involved. But here's the reality of those numbers: Today the latest studies show that 23% of buyers are cash buyers. So that means 77% are not. Only about one out of four buyers are cash buyers. If we only want to sell to a cash...

A new study from NAR shows what's going on with home buyers and it's really, really powerful data.

When we look at home buyers, these 2000 groups, we found that 52% of them had been pre-approved. So they've gone through the process and they're pre-approved.

When you look at the reverse of that number, that means 48% have not. About half the buyers you're competing with when you're in a multiple offer situation are just pre-qualified. They're not pre-approved.

Now you need to make sure that number one, you're having a conversation with your buyer about the importance of being pre-approved. And secondly, educating your sellers about the difference between the two.

One thing that I would encourage you to do is have a conversation with your buyers as a starting point. So here's what I would say with my buyers:

I'd say, "You know, we're still in an extremely low inventory market. Things are changing a little bit and a few more...

We are in what we might describe as a normalizing market. What does that mean?

We've been in an abnormal market for several years. Our market's been almost a vertical. We've had double digit appreciation for several years. And this has been a run that we've never seen before.

We're about 12 years into a 7-year cycle. So there's an expectation that we're starting to see the markets shift.

A lot of us are seeing a slowdown of showings and energy. And there's some data that backs this up. Here's some of that data:

New listings in the largest 50 metro markets across the country rose 5.1% last month.

And 17.3% of all listings in the country had a price reduction in the last 30 days.

That's in line with pre-pandemic levels, what you would expect in coming into fall. So that's like 2016-2019 levels. Last year, we didn't see that because the market was straight up. It was on a tear.

But right now sellers are starting to say, "Hey, wait a second....

Hey guys, we know the market's changing. And because of that, every single showing you have on a listing is becoming more important.

We don't have unlimited showings anymore. A lot of showings are slowing down. So when we have a showing, you gotta treat a like gold.

So here's a question:

Are you preparing your sellers with checklists, to-dos, and forms that will help them prepare for each showing and really maximize the potential of getting an offer from a buyer?

Really what the client should be doing is making the home inviting, making sure that you're showing that the home has been cared for and maintained well, and third, we want to make sure you have great curb appeal.

Now I'm going to read to you a few things that you might want to include on your to-do list or your checklist or your forms that you could build out.

Now, when you do this, and we talk about these things, I want you to think about the last like 5 or 10 homes that...

Hey guys, you probably saw that the amount of jobs that were added in August to the economy was actually way lower than expected.

245,000 jobs.

A lot of people attribute that to the rise of the Delta virus and people may be slowing down on hiring. But one thing we can be sure of is that there are a lot of jobs available in America.

There's 10 and a half million jobs available right now. One thing that we're starting to see is unemployment benefits being turned off. Or at least not the incentives added by the federal government. So that might bring more people to work.

But right now we've got to deal with what's here now.

So job wage growth in America so far is up about 4.8%. The challenge is that inflation is also a 5.2%. So it's eating up all those gains. When we look at this in terms of what's going to happen in terms of the real estate market, Lawrence Yun — the chief economist for the International Association of REALTORS...