Five things to do in the first quarter of the new year:

1. Refresh your brand

Refreshing your brand means getting new photos taken. Why? Because you are first and foremost your brand. So you need to get a new, fresh photo. You should do this every year, maybe twice a year. But that new photo is not just a straight headshot, it's multiple photos in different settings. Why? Because your photo is the most used branding element in your marketing arsenal.

But what happens when you don't do this? What happens is people then meet you and there's an immediate brand disconnect. There's an immediate feeling, at least at a subconscious level, that they've been deceived. If they can't trust you with your branding, what else can't they trust you with?

It's more important than you think it is. So get that brand updated and refreshed.

Also, look at your bio. So once you get this new photo, you're gonna update your bio for the new year. And...

Hey guys, here's a fun idea you're probably not doing now in terms of marketing your listings, which is doing a behind the scenes viewpoint of what you're doing to market listings.

And I what you're thinking: What does that mean? Well, a lot of us that watch television today, we'll see a lot of behind the scenes. Everybody loves to see behind the scenes. Like if you're watching your favorite show, whether it's House of Dragons or The Handmaid's Tale or whatever, at the end of the show, they'll circle back and they'll do behind the scenes interviews and so forth.

And people love it. They eat that up. That's when you bought the dvd—yes, we used to do that—we would get the DVD extras and that's what it would have on there.

You can do the same thing with your listings.

What if you started doing some behind the scenes work? And what do I mean by that?

What if you had you taking some photos or some, some...

Here's an interesting question I get a lot as a supervising principal broker, and that is this:

Can I, as an agent, talk to an appraiser? Lot of misinformation about this and some appraisers, it's true, just won't talk to you. But you are okay and it's totally ethical for you to talk to an appraiser.

In fact, NAR has a FAQ on this. You can go look it up, but in their FAQ, they specifically state that people that have an interest in the transaction are completely okay in talking to the appraiser. Now, why would we talk to the appraiser? Or what would be the reason?

Well, there's a lot of reasons. One of 'em, we might be just communicating information about the houseless condition. Improvements that have been done. If there was multiple offers on the home, if the comp sets you used are totally appropriate, you can give them a copy of your comps. If the appraiser wants to accept them, they don't have to. New pending transactions that have...

You're probably hearing a buyer say this to you. They're saying, "Hey, I wanna wait. Let's put a pin in this because I wanna wait and see what happens with the market."

Now if they say that to you, what's your response?

The language of sales matters. We're not trying to manipulate people or push people, but we wanna understand where they're coming from. And help them understand the market a little bit better.

So my response to that would be something like this:

I'd say, "Hey, I totally get it. I wanna move at your pace. I don't want you to feel rushed at all. But I do have a question for you because I wanna understand where you're coming from: What's the value in waiting?"

I'm gonna let them answer and they're gonna probably say that they think prices or maybe interest rates will come down. And my response to that would be:

"I totally understand. And if that's where you're at, I'm totally cool with that, as I said. But...

Here's some good news about the real estate market, and we need some good news right now:

As of the second quarter of 2022, home ownership rates were rising. So that's good.

And we say, well, why would anyone not want to be a homeowner? Right? When we're in the real estate business, we think everybody should be a homeowner.

But sometimes, renters have a hard time getting over the hump of deciding if it is a good idea to become a homeowner. Especially when we're seeing interest rates rise. We've seen prices still rising in some markets by double digits.

One thing you can point to, which is really powerful, is the concept of inflation.

Everybody knows what inflation is and inflation is touching everybody. And so you can point out that, "Hey, you know, I'm sure you're aware that inflation right now is at a record high, a 40-year high. The last reading was 8.5% inflation. But what people don't realize is that rents are...

53% of today's clients that you're dealing with in the real estate industry are actually millennials. They represent the largest group of buyers and sellers in our business today.

And here's what's interesting:

Millennials actually trust referrals from family and friends over all other advertising messages. In fact, they're very distrustful of traditional media marketing.

So what do we do with that information? How do we adjust to that information?

Well, one thing we have to understand is that reviews and recommendations are becoming a really important part of our business. Which means we need to be focused intently on getting reviews and recommendations and endorsements online.

So, I want to ask you: do you have a process? Do you have a plan in place for collecting these reviews and recommendations?

Here's an example:

If we take a brand new agent in this industry, but an agent that's aggressive and doing well, and we...

A stat from a Zillow study that came out shows that 30% of Americans have cited climate change as a reason to move in 2022.

Now, I think about that and I reflect on my own market where I live here in Southern Oregon. And I think, well, a lot of people wouldn't consider this being a climate change issue here, but it is.

You see, we've had, and we've been surrounded by fires for the last four or five years in our community. And those fires create smoke. And it creates a situation where people don't love going outside during the summer, one of the best times to be outside. Coupled with the fact that last year we had a fire rage through the entire city and burned down 2,700 homes. I had three duplexes burned down myself.

So when people have that experience, it's very detrimental. They are in fear of it. Of course they might think about moving. And a lot of people did move away because of that.

Or think about your...

Hey guys, I'm seeing something in the market that I've never seen before, which is really interesting.

We're seeing a mass migration of people moving from one state to the next because of political reasons.

Now, we haven't seen that. In my 33 years in the industry, I've never seen a mass migration because of political reasons. People are moving because they don't agree with the local politics or the state politics. And they're going to where they agree more with the politics of that other state.

So you might say, well, that's interesting, Jim, but how in the world do I capitalize on? How do I use that in my real estate business?

It's interesting because we all know some folks around us—family and friends—that have actually made the move. So isn't like way out there. This is like close to almost all of us.

So I'm gonna give you a simple technique today that you can implement right now.

...

Hey guys, we are still in a low supply market. It's the lowest supply real estate market we've ever seen.

Despite the marketing changes and interest rates rising and the market dynamics kind of influx, still low supply and high demand.

So based on that, how can we go out there and still crush it in the market? How can we thrive despite the market conditions starting to shift under our feet?

One strategy is use the "Pocket Listing Strategy."

It's one of my favorite strategies and it's totally underused. Very few people do it.

Here's the concept:

One in seven homeowners today has raised their hand and said they're interested in selling the next three years. That's 15% of the population.

Drive through any neighborhood, and one of every seven homes you drive by is thinking about selling in the next three years.

There's a massive pent up seller demand, but how do you turn the key to unlock it?

Well, a large group of those people may not be...

Some pretty amazing news from CoreLogic this week shows that the average American in the country had an equity gain of drum roll

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$55,300.

That's more than a lot of people making a year with their normal wage.

So that's a huge increase. That's why real estate's one of the number one wealth pullers in America is this equity buildup.

Now, if you happen to be on the west coast where I live, it's even greater. And in a lot of areas of the country, it's even greater. For instance, in Washington state, that number was $95,000. Where I live here in Oregon, it was $59,000. And if you happen to live in California, one of the highest equity gains in the country, $117,000 in equity gain. Now, what do we do with this information?

Well, one thing we can do is do a social media post or an email out to our entire database.

And here's what we might say:

"Hey, your home is better than average, right? The average...