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...

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 taxes are easier. Maybe they ca...

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...

This is a podcast that will inspire you! Eduardo Reyes learned how to channel his positive energy to move past rejection in the movie and modeling industry by landing roles in 4 major movies and numerous commercials. Using that same determination and drive he launched his real estate career and in three short years Eduardo has become one of the fastest rising stars in the real estate industry closing an amazing 87 transactions last year alone! Watch and listen as he breaks down his approach to the sales process (it’s completely unique!).

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 by a guy named Harvey Mackay. He wrote the book Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty.

And in the book, he talks about this $25,000 question, and I'm gonna pose this question to you.

So the $25,000 question kind of goes like this:

Imagine you own a muffler shop or some kind of business. And it's payroll week and you don't have the money to pay your employees. And you know, if you don't pay 'em, they're all gonna walk because everybody's trying to hire right now. So the question mark is it's 2:00 AM you wake up in the morning and you're like, I've gotta come up with $25,000 by tomorrow morning. Otherwise I'm probably gonna lose my business. Who do you call? In your friends list, your personal friends list, right now, is there someone you call and get $25,000 from by tomorrow morning?

If the answer's no, the reason you probably don't have anybody that qualifies in that category is because you haven't helped enough people and given to enough people. Not ...

In a recent study, it was found that 59 percent of businesses do not have a digital marketing strategy. If you're one of the 41 percent with a plan, congrats! But even if you're doing well with your current strategy, it's always important to explore new opportunities. Matt Muscat is a digital marketing expert- author, coach, and speaker who specializes in working with real estate professionals. Listen as Matt provides his Ultimate Messaging Strategy, the 5 X 5 strategy, and his 5 Personas Technique during this value packed session (side note all of these are zero cost ideas). This is a can’t miss episode!

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...