Feedback is one of the most important things we can collect on behalf of our sellers in order to adjust prices, adjust terms, adjust condition, and to get that property really tuned up for the marketplace.

So one thing is we gotta make sure we're going out and trying to collect that feedback. And when we do that, I'm gonna ask three questions:

1. Would you think of the price?

2. What did you think of the condition?

3. What did you think of the neighborhood?

Those are my three questions. I'm sending this by text to every showing agent. But I'm gonna also add one more question. My fourth question, which is maybe the most important is:

4. Can you tell me, did they make an offer on another house or did they actually purchase another property and get in contract?

When I do that and I find out that I can actually deliver that by act to my seller and say, "Well, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, here's the feedback. And they went ahead and made an offer...

One conversation that can come up as you're out there taking listings is, of course, centered on commissions.

And here's a great script to help your sellers look at the commission, not just cost, but as a marketing incentive to encourage showings and to encourage more offers.

So the script kind of goes like this:

"Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Seller, one thing I wanna talk to you about is the commissions that we charge. Now, I charge a listing marketing fee of X [fill in the blank, whatever you're charging]. And all we have to decide now is what we're gonna pay the buyer's agent. Now there's a little secret sauce here that a lot of people don't understand. Which is, that marketing fee that we're paying to the buyer's agent to bring that buyer in can actually incentivize them to show your home.

"Let me show you an example:

"I did a commission survey in your market area where your home is. I went out about a mile two miles, and I looked at every listing that...

There's a new stat out that shows some unprecedented numbers. And the numbers reflect that home buyers entering the market today are paying 39.4% higher mortgage than they did last year at the same time.

Now, why would their mortgage go up almost 40%?

The number one reason?

Interest rates.

Also a bit of home price increases as well. But by and large interest rates going up seven of the last eight weeks. They've gone up so fast.

So when we look at this, some of our buyers may be saying, "Hey, let's pump the brakes on me buying."

How do you respond to that? Well, the response should be a reflection on what happens if they don't pull the trigger now and they wait. We know the Fed is already planning to do six more rate hikes this year, starting right now in May.

So as we begin to roll through the rest of the year, it's highly likely these interest rates aren't gonna go lower. They're gonna go much, much higher as the Fed tries to break...

One thing we should all be aware of right now is that a lot of home sellers are reevaluating their price.

And one thing you should be monitoring in your own market area is the number of price adjustments that are occurring every 24 hours. Maybe on your hot sheet, your MLS data sheet, it's gonna show that number. Keep it a close eye on that, and then think about it with your own sellers.

Here's something that's interesting:

In the last few weeks we've seen 3.5% of all the sellers in America reduced their price.

Now that doesn't sound like a lot. But remember, we're coming off one of the hottest real estate streaks we've ever seen in our market.

But the market's starting to cool when it comes to pricing and people are starting to adjust to get ahead of the market. Typically we don't see price adjustments begin to happen at this level until July or August.

So why are sellers starting to adjust prices much, much earlier than ever before?...

When you drive around your neighborhood or your community, you're gonna see some dilapidated houses. And you know, who else sees those? The city and county.

So what the city and county generally have is a compliance officer that's in charge of enforcing the city and county standards for how homes and properties should be maintained.

Now their standards are probably much lower than our standards, but they have to keep these properties to a certain standard. And if they don't do that, they give the homeowner or the property owner a violation notice. And this violation notice can become sequentially more serious with large fines attached to them.

So why am I bringing this up?

Well, it's a marketing opportunity.

One of the highest concentrations of buyers today is buyers looking for flip opportunities. These dilapidated properties, they can turn around and flip and, and turn a profit on. But there's not very many of them out there.

So...

We're coming into spring. And what do you see during spring? You see a lot of garage sales and estate sales as you're driving around through neighborhoods.

When you see that this should be a red flag opportunity for you. Because what you could do is circle back, just write down the address and write a little note. Or if you have the REDX, a system like that, you could find their phone number or their email address, and you could just send a message over. That's something like this:

"Hey, as a local REALTOR, I noticed you had a recent garage sale or estate sale. I hope it was super successful. Quick question: Are you considering a housing change? Many people who conduct a sale are preparing to relocate or sell the home, which is the reason for my question. Also my office as several buyers interested in the neighborhood. So if you'd consider an offer in your home, I'd love to have a chance to chat at your earliest convenience."

What an...

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...

Part of what we should be doing with our clients, especially our buyer clients, is educating them about the reality of the market.

Here's one example of that:

Did you know that right now in America, 48% of buyers are offering above list price by about 2.9%? So when we look at that on the average purchase price in America, which is about $357,000, it's roughly $10,000.

So 48% of the buyers in the market are offering over full price. That number being an average of $10,000.

Now that's an interesting bit of education we can share with buyers to help them understand what they're dealing with when they're out there in the marketplace.

Then you can pair that with another important piece of data, which is:

On average, buyers are gonna compete on a listing 68% of the time.

68% of the time buyers are gonna be competing with another buyer in the marketplace. Because of that, they've gotta be super competitive when they're bringing that offer in. And...

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...