Here's a number that we should be talking about with our spheres of influence, our friends, our social media audiences:

And this is 15.9.

Now what's 15.9 represent?

15.9% is the amount that the average renter had as an increase in the rent last year.

15.9%!

And it's likely that this is gonna have again this year or some similar high number, and probably the year after that.

Why?

It's supply and demand. There is high demand and low supply. So it's the same thing that's happening to us in the real estate industry, right? We have low supply, high demand causes prices to rise.

So if renters aren't careful what can happen is if rents continue to rise, they could have rent that's increasing by 10%, a year or more over the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years. They could easily be paying 30, 40, 50% more for rent in a few years.

And they think their rent's high now. Wait another couple years, it's gonna get higher.

So what can they do? What's the solution?

The solution is to take a l...

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 the "why." Now, why would I consider...

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?

Multi-generational housing and bigger housing could be a m...

A few of you are suffering from what I call referral resistance. What's referral resistance mean? It means you've got a pretty good size database of people, a sphere of influence, and it's not performing well.

In other words, you're not getting a lot of referrals. Your sphere of influence isn't sending you buyers and sellers.

Why?

It's because the people in your sphere don't quite trust you enough. They don't quite see you as the expert that you know you are. And because of that, there's resistance to sending you referrals.

So how can you overcome referral resistance?

I'm gonna give you three quick techniques to help you with that:

1. You have to be the experts in their minds, not yours.

How do you do it? You need to be giving them information regularly about the real estate market. Now, this is super easy to do because you are given information all the time. One of the places you are given information from is your local MLS system. So in your local MLS, they're gonn...

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 they do. Otherwise, they're gonna cost you thousa...

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 and marketing skills of your REALTOR...

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 Hermosa Beach. Now my gra...

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 to this worker to go out there ...

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 basis points equaling one point. Each point is...

Hey guys, I wanna give you a quick strategy when you are listing a house for the first time and you're having a conversation with a seller.

I call it my "Many Buyer Eyes" Strategy. And here's how it works:

I say...

"Hey, you know what? One thing I do with all my sellers when I list their properties for sale is I treat you as a buyer. And what that means is that I'm gonna act like you're a buyer for your own property and your own price range. So I'm gonna set you up in the MLS as if you're a buyer looking in the 400-500k price range in your market area, in our MLS zone that we're in with similar attributes of your house. Here's why I'm doing this: I want you to see in real time the listings that are being presented to buyers that are searching for home like yours.

So you're gonna see all your competition, all the price reductions, all the pending transactions, they're gonna be coming to you. And I want you to look at them because we want to be responsive in real time. So...