One of my good friends told me about this incredible strategy that she's using with her buyers.

One thing that happens with buyers is when they come in, we tend to walk them through a conversation that has to deal with criteria. We qualify 'em of course, and we start talking about criteria.

And for instance, when we talk about criteria, here's an example of what we might say, "Well, what are you looking for? Are you looking for a three bedroom, two bath? How much square feet, what area of town?" And then ultimately we get to, "and what price range are you in?" And how did you arrive at that price range?"

We always come down to the price range.

Then they got prequalified with the lender, whatever, and then we try to fit round pegs and square holes.

So we look into the market and start telling the client about why they can't afford to be where they want or why they're gonna have to adjust their budget.

That's a hard conversation to have. And...

Here is a crazy stat that will be interesting for your sellers when you're sitting down to talk about a listing:

84% of the properties coming on the market are selling in less than 30 days across the country.

Now I would encourage you to dive deeper into your own local MLS and see what the number is for your local MLS. But it's probably gonna be somewhere in that neighborhood.

Now, another inverse number to that is what percentage of properties are staying on the market longer than six months? When you go back to 2011, that number would've been about 35%. Today, it’s 2%.

2% listings coming in the market are staying on for longer than six months.

You can just see how the market is so strong right now for sellers and how it's such an advantage to put your home on the market today as a seller.

Another great number to pair with these numbers is the fact that on average sellers are receiving 4.8 offers per listing. That's coming on the...

Here's a shocking number:

For every listing in America right now, on average, those sellers, when the listing goes live, are getting 4.8 offers. Let's call it five offers per listing.

It's truly one of the best times in history to put a home on the market, but will this be changing soon?

The answer is yes.

What will change this dynamic is a buyer's ability to afford the house. And what's impacting that right now is interest rates.

Interest rates are rising rapidly, approaching 5% in a lot of markets. And with that, it's pricing a lot of buyers out of the market. And if they're not priced out of the market, it's for them to readjust what they can afford downward. They can't afford that high price because the interest rate won't allow it.

So when we're looking at working with sellers, we need to tell them there's a five alarm fire going on in the real estate industry right now.

And it's interest rates. They're rising so rapidly that...

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...

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...

One thing that we should do this year is cut the dead wood.

What does that mean?

It means we don't wanna be walking up a mountain, our mountain being our figurative goal set that we've set for ourselves and have a backpack full of rocks on our back.

Now, what is that backpack full of rocks?

Those are clients that don't wanna sell, that don't wanna buy, that are wasting your time, that are frustrating, that are angry people that we do not need to be carrying around on our backs anymore.

We need to cut them loose and work with people that really wanna buy and sell.

So going into the new year, how can we approach our business a little bit differently?

One is to work with ready and willing clients which sounds crazy, but it is so simple that it's obvious, right?

We need to work with ready and willing clients.

Having a ready and willing conversation is important. So I'm gonna give you my "ready and willing" conversation script when I'm...

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...

Hey guys, quick stat that can be meaningful for all of us is this:

Luxury home sales are up 81% compared to a year ago.

Now, why would that be? Why are affluent buyer's coming into this market so heavily?

The answer is they're smart. And they understand they can buy an existing luxury home for far less than it would cost for them to buy a piece of raw land, develop that land and build a new property of a similar size.

So they're seeing these as bargains.

Now yes, of course, prices have risen as demand has risen. But still — its way under what it would cost to build new construction.

So this is an opportunity for all of us that work in a market where there's some affluent housing.

Go back and look over the past two or three years of all the expired listings in the luxury market and target those listings. We know there's now a massive demand.

But it's a place where a lot of agents don't feel confident or comfortable. And so they...

Land is the last thing to heat up in any market. And it's the first thing to cool off.

Why is that?

Because everybody takes the low hanging fruit. If you think of the real estate market like a tree, land is at the top of the tree. Everybody takes the low-hanging fruit before they get to land.

But now that everything is sold out in most markets, people are wondering what they can do. And that's when they decide to build. 

That's why land is starting to heat up. Also, developers are starting to buy land so they can subdivide it and build more homes. Which is another reason why why land is starting to heat up.

As an agent, you can actually go after land as a prospecting method. It's an effective method because very few agents are going after land right now.

But as you drive around in your neighborhoods, you'll see a piece of land in a subdivision that's not developed. Or you'll see a piece of a lot that's an infill lot...

Should your buyer float their interest rate or lock now?

Interesting question. Some of you really gotta be working with your lender to have that conversation with them. But let me give you a little bit of what's been happening to date in January through roughly March 2021:

Let's look at the numbers and dig into them that I got from one of my lenders — who is an incredible rockstar in the lending world. His name is Brian Case and his team at Guild Mortgage gave me these numbers:

For the entire year of 2021 so far, a floating borrower — or somebody that took the gamble and threw the dice to see if they can get a better rate tomorrow than
they can get today — would've won 41% of the time. And they would have lost 58% of the time.

Because 48% of the time rates went down and 58% of the time they went up. So it's a gamble that may not be paying off.

Overall interest rates have gone up about a half percent since January....