At this time of year, a lot of sellers will say something like this:

"Hey Jim, I think I'm just going to wait because I will probably get more from my house later anyway. So I'm just going to wait until spring or summer and see what happens then."

How do we address that comment or that concern?

I'm going to give you one script that's worked for me over the years. And it works by talking about the fact that when we're staying and rebuying in the same market, waiting doesn't make a lot of sense.

So let's put this in practice. You might say,

"Hey, I hear what you're saying, but here's something to consider, right? If you're buying or selling in the same market -- because the entire market's going up in value at the same time -- waiting to sell your home to buy another home just means the other home you're buying is also going up in value at the same time.

In fact, there's a little bit of a Delta that if you're buying a higher priced home, it might be more expensive the ...

This week, we got some great information from NAR and some good news for the market.

We've had this kind of trending downline with home sales across the country. Now we've had a sharp turn in sales:

Sales are up 7% compared to September.

So why would we have this kind of dramatic increase in sales right now coming into fall?

There's a couple of key reasons:

1. There's more listings coming to market

We're seeing more listings coming to market every single month. The market is building with listings right now, which means buyers can finally find what they're looking for. So if you've got buyers on the sidelines, encourage them to come back in, because now there's more and more listings piling in. And there's listings coming back on the market as well.

2. Interest rates have stayed low

But the biggest reason why buyers are coming back to the market?

3. Prices are moderating

People are finally bringing their prices down to meet the market. And that's key.

We look at A...

One question that you might get, or a comment that you might get about the market is everybody's talking about home prices being very high.

They might say, "You know, I don't think I'm going to enter the market because the prices are so high. Or I don't think this is sustainable, that these prices are so high."

And home prices have gone up over the last couple of years. But another measurement to take a look at when we're analyzing the market is something called affordability. It's actually something that's tracked by the National Association of REALTORS.

Affordability is key because it takes into account several key factors.

1. Your income — the median income of families across the country.

2. It takes into account the median interest rate being paid by mortgage borrowers across the country

3. And median pricing

When you combine those three factors, you fid affordability is better than it's been in decades.

Now, how could that be?

Well, pricing is only one of thos...

If you want a great marketing message that you can put out to your audiences today. I'm going to give you one right now.

And it's not from me. It actually comes from the NAR Economist Blog. If you haven't checked that out, check it out. I pull a lot of data out of there all the time.

But they had this great example of how much equity someone would have built up over a 30 year period.

And so they took an average home price and they went back 30 years ago and said, what was the average home price? What would be your guess?

The average home price 30 years ago was $103,333 — an odd number, but that's what it was.

Then they took somebody that put 10% down back then, had an average payment based on the interest rates at the time, and figured out how much equity they would have built up through equity appreciation and paying off their mortgage.

So what would they end up with net worth today just from their house?

The answer is $349,000.

But not all areas are created equal,...

Hey guys, a new study from NAR shows that...

75% of homeowners in America believe now is a good time to sell.

By the way, this is way up from where it was last year at the same time when that number was about 45%.

And what's the difference?

Well, one big difference is that we've had a huge run-up in prices. So sellers are starting to say, "Hey, I can see that this could be a good time to sell because prices have gone so high."

We're also seeing the record low 60-year lows on interest rates, which is another reason why home sellers are thinking they should sell and move up to their dream home. So that's a big reason why a lot of homeowners may be considering selling.

But even though they say it's a good time to sell, does that mean they are going to sell?

Yes, they are going to sell!

According to a new study done by Zillow, 1 in 7 homeowners are planning on selling their home in the next three years.

That's a massive number guys!

Imagine driving through your neighbo...

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 — tells us his expectation is that the gove...

Hey guys, a recent report shows that inflation is rising rapidly. It's the highest it's been in 13 years — up to 5.4% right now. When we look at that number, we should look at it from the perspective of: How does that impact us as REALTORS and our clients?

As REALTORS, the one thing we should be concerned with is if we took $100k and we put it in the bank and waited a year, based on this inflation rate, then at the end of the year, our $100k would only buy $94,400 in goods. So that's not a good thing. We need to make sure that we're investing in assets that are rising faster than inflation.

And we need to encourage our clients to do the same thing.

One of the best hedges against inflation is real estate. Which is good news for us.

We need to be talking about this with all of our clients that real estate is one of the best hedges against an inflationary market.

One of those reasons for that is that we can look at appreciation rates for real estate. When inflation rises,...

Hey guys, did you know that the average rental price for a two bedroom home across the country, believe it or not drum roll is...

$1,700!

Can you imagine that? It's incredible!

But at that level, how much house could you buy? That's an interesting question. And it's a question that we can all answer.

So the $1,700, if you had 20% down with an average mortgage today would buy you a home priced at about $455,000, which is a shocking high number.

You know why that's so high? Because interest rates have dropped again to a 60-year low.

So instead of renting, somebody can actually go out and buy a house for $455,000. Now that's assuming they had 20% down, but let's assume they don't.

Let's assume they only have 3.5% percent down, which is a typical FHA loan. That might cut that number down by another a hundred thousand so maybe they could afford $355,000.

But wouldn't that be far superior to renting?

These are the kinds of conversations we need to be having with clients ...

There are a couple of numbers we need to look at to understand where the market's at and what's happening with the market.

Number one is the pending home sell index, which ​had a decrease of 1.9% compared to a year ago. And again, a 1.9% decrease compared to last month. Coincidentally, it was the same number.

But when we combine that with an increase in inventory of 4.1% the month before and a decrease in interest rates because they fell back below 3%.

So we have to look at this as the whole and say:

Why would there be a decrease in sales when we've had an increase in listings and a lower interest rate?

Why aren't buyers saying, "Hey, I have more to choose from and my interest rates are going down. Why don't I own the market?"

Buyers aren't doing that. In fact, they're pulling back a little bit from the market.

The reason is...

Buyer price resistance

Buyers are saying, "Hey, it's been 112 straight months of home price increases. We've had a 23% increase in what we...

Affordability is on the tip of everybody's tongues right now.

Why is affordability so important?

Well, it's a measurement of how affordable it is for the average person in America to own a home.

NAR has studied this every single month and they gave us a Home Affordability Graph. And you might expect this, but home affordability has actually been going up because of something substantial, which is interest rates going down.

As interest rates go down, affordability goes up.

That's despite the fact that we've had actually super fast rising prices, right? Prices starting to go into double digit territory across the country. And then we see interest rates going down, which pushes affordability up.

But because home prices have gotten so high recently, that's actually starting to level off and come back down. But we recently had another upswing. So we're measuring a few things when we look at affordability.

When NAR looks at affordability, they look at:

1. Average interest...