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...

What is educational marketing?

Educational marketing is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to build trust and unlock more buyers and sellers for your business.

But how do you do it?

Well, you got to understand that a lot of expert marketers use what's called "The Curiosity Gap." That's where you pose a question or you put a statement out there and then it makes people curious about knowing the answer.

Now we fall into this curiosity gap all the time — from headlines to news soundbites that are trying to get you to watch the news at six o'clock, book covers, wine labels, and all kinds of things create curiosity in us. But when we look at our knowledge quest as human beings, we're always driven by not knowing and the power of wanting to know what we don't know, right?

So here's an example of this:

One of my good friends, Scott Lewis, a superstar realtor that I work with put this post out. And it was simply about the...

Something interesting that you might find surprising that it relates to real estate, but fertility rates in the US have gone down dramatically over the last hundred years. In America today, we've actually had another 1% decrease.

We have the lowest birth rates than we've had in a hundred years.

Here are the numbers:

For every 1000 women in America aged between 15 and 44, there's 58.3 births. And you compare this to World War Two, when all the baby boomers were born, that number was more closer to 140 births! So huge difference in the numbers.

Now, how does this relate to real estate? I'm going to share with you now. Here is the the data today:

Looking at buyers who have children under the age of 18 in the home, the share of that group has declined from 58% in 1985, all the way down to 33% in 2020. So there's a much smaller group of people buying homes. It's actually the minority, not the majority, who have kids under 18 at home.

So you need to...

You are sitting on one of the best CRMs on earth — but you probably know that.

Facebook is absolutely your best CRM on earth. And then Instagram comes second and LinkedIn is third.

All of these social media platforms give us an insight into what's happening in people's lives.

Now how do you use that information? A lot of us just get up, drink our coffee every morning and scroll through social media meaninglessly. But you don't actually look at it as a CRM.

I want you to look at your social media differently. Look at it like it's a CRM Strategy Feed.

That means, I want you to look for "life changes" — meaning new jobs, new babies, retirements, and college graduations. Or people that are sick or going on vacation. There are many different scenarios where people have life changes — even divorces and engagements.

There's so many different life changes that people go through and today it's all public. Every single thing is public.

Now, when...

You learn something new every day in real estate. Even after 31 years in this business, I'm still learning.

I learned something fascinating this morning based on a study from Zillow:

In the last half of 2020, the number of listings taken week by week were about even with 2019.

There's a sense that there's a lot less listings in the market as a result of of us not taking as many listings, but it's just not true.

In the last half of 2020, we've taken as many listings as a nation as we did in 2019. But it doesn't feel like that.

So why doesn't it feel like that?

It's like if you own a grocery store and had a delivery guy come every Friday to fill your shelves with the same order. But what has changed is the number of buyers walking into your grocery store and how many products they're buying each time they come in.

If more buyers are coming into your store and buying more products from your shelves, it's going to seem like there's not as much on the shelves...

8.9 Million people in the United States have moved during the pandemic. What's interesting is when you dive deep into those numbers. 85% of those folks have moved outside of Metro markets or moved away from Metro markets. They're moving into suburban and rural markets instead.

According to the United States Postal Service, large cities lost the most people during the first seven months of the pandemic. They're seeing people move out of some of the most populated areas and relocating to the suburbs or rural markets.

Now, what does that mean to us? That means that we have an opportunity. There's a seismic shift happening in the real estate market and the real estate world may never be the same. We should be leveraging this as an opportunity. Maybe one of the biggest opportunities we ever have in our real estate career is happening right now in 2021. The market is shifting.

So how can you leverage this? One way is by focusing yourself around relocation....

So one question that you might be getting occasionally from buyers is "I'm going to wait until we see a lot more foreclosures hitting the market...I know they're coming."

A couple of stats that has been recently reported in thew news is that 12% of mortgages across the country had recently been delinquent. Buyers see the headline and naturally assume we are heading back to a 2009 kind of market cycle where there's going to be a ton of foreclosures.

That's not true. Why? Because this is a completely different market environment. 

The first reason reasons we won't see a massive surge in foreclosures is because of the CARES Act, which was created in response to the COVID pandemic. The CARES Act includes a provision which forces lenders to offer forbearance to people that are in financial trouble. Forbearance allows borrowers to skips payments for a period of time or pay interest only payments. It started with a 180 days and it's now been extended for another 180 days. So a...

The National Association of REALTORS recently conducted a study of buyer types and one group has accelerated to become the clear winner in purchasing housing.

While it's easy to throw money at marketing that may or may not be effective savvy agents go where the data takes them. Watch the video to learn three ways to quickly target today's biggest buyer pool as well as which group of buyers is shrinking quickly.

Will you discount your fees so I can buy this house? 

A conversation that is happening more and more frequently is when a buyer asks you to reduce or remove your buyer side commission on your listing and pass the savings on to them. 

Their argument is that they will simply "represent themselves". Of course the reality is that you will still be the one writing the offer, negotiating the sale, opening escrow, arranging financing, attending inspections, negotiating inspections, attending the appraisal, and attending to a million other unforeseen bumps along the way until you reach a successful closing. 

So how do you respond to this request? Watch this quick video for three scripts to use in the field. 

Do you need more leads, more listings, more buyers, and more closings? 

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