Hey guys, some really interesting information regarding remote working and what's happening in the country.

A lot of employers today are saying, "Hey, we started with remote working because we had to. COVID made us do it. But now we're starting to see, this is a really good kind of situation. We spend less on housing our employees in a building somewhere and we can work from home. And great news as a lot of 'em are more productive at home than they were at the office."

So, interesting, interesting study that was just done about this.

And it's related to housing in that 19% of people that are looking to buy a house are doing so because they now have a remote working situation.

See, during the middle of COVID employers were like, "Well, we're gonna let you do this, but then you're gonna have to come back home to the office."

Now they're saying, "Hey, no, you know what? Just keep working from home. We don't care."

Now this gives the freedom...

Hey guys, there's a new study out from The REALTOR Organization talking about the consumer index. They're asking consumers questions about the real estate market.

One of the questions they ask homeowners is: Do they think it's a good time to sell?

What percentage of sellers do you think would answer yes to that question in your market?

Across the country, 76% of people that own a home believe now is a good time to sell.

That's excellent news because when you have such a high sentiment, when you're out there talking to people, they're much more likely to be open to having that conversation.

Not that long ago, just a few years ago, that was more like 30% or 40%. Today, it's 76%. That means over two-thirds of the people you're talking to think it's a good time to sell. Now it's just a timing issue — whether they're ready to sell today or not.

And here's some more good news:

A Zillow study reveals one in seven homeowners over the...

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...

If you were to go back in time for the last 24 months and look at every closing you had, would all those people you closed a transaction with have given you a recommendation or endorsement online?

In other words...

If you closed 20 transactions, do you have 20 endorsements on realtor.com, Zillow, Facebook, or Google Business? Or are you missing a lot?

If you're missing a lot, you're missing opportunities. Here's why:

If you look at a couple of agents in your market, you might find this, I see this all the time. You might have an experienced agent that's crushing it — doing 30-40 transactions a year. Then you have this brand new agent who just started their business a couple of years ago and only closed 10-12 transactions each year.

But... online, they're getting a recommendation or endorsement from every single client. And sometimes clients they didn't even close a transaction with, but just had a good experience with them. So...

Here's an interesting question for you coming into the new year:

How many clients did you fire in 2021?

If the answer is zero, then that tells me as a coach that you don't take your time as seriously as you should.

You see, we all have a value of our time. And we can all figure it out quickly. We can take the 2000 hours an average agent works for a year and divide it by our gross income for last year. And you'll know exactly how much you're making per hour.

So if you made $100k, for instance, divide it by 2000, and you made about $50 per hour. If you made $200k, then you made about $100 an hour and so on.

Let's say that you're at the top, you know, you're doing $200k-$300k a year. Meaning, your time is worth $100-$150 an hour, which is very true for many of my coaching students (and even far more than that), but they're not saying "no" enough.

Here's what I mean:

If you have somebody that's wasting an hour of your time and your...

There's one thing we've all done as human beings, living in the United States of America. I guarantee every adult has thought about this at some point:

They've thought owning a rental would be super cool.

Even if they're not homeowners yet, they've thought it would be nice to be on the other side of the equation — and not be paying rent, but also receiving rent.

So this makes for a great conversation. And there's something interesting that's happening in the world today, which we don't talk enough about in the real estate world, which is this:

A lot of millennials and the next generation of buyers coming in are being taught and embracing this concept that they don't want to own their own home.

They wanna continue renting their own home because they want a mobile lifestyle. And they wanna be able to move from New York to Miami to LA. They wanna surf around and have that mobile lifestyle, but they wanna own a couple rentals.

So...

Here's a super easy technique this time of year, which is super effective:

Go back to 2021. Look at every transaction you closed. Pull the HUD statement from your closing and then send that onto your client.

Why would you do that?

Because now it's tax season. People are gonna start filing taxes. They're gonna realized they lost those documents. And you can provide a real service to them by sending them those documents,. Just email them over and put a little note on that that says,

"Hey, I know tax season's coming. Thought I'd make it easy for you to file your taxes. There's some things here that may be a deduction for you or may save you some dollars in your taxes. Here you go.

By the way, hope you're enjoying the home. If I can help you or your friends with anything in the future with real estate, your referral is my highest compliment."

Something like that. Simple, easy, and guess what? Your clients will love it. They'll thank you....

There's a "four alarm fire" happening in the real estate industry today:

What is it?

Interest rates.

Interest rates are rising extremely rapidly. Now we knew coming into 2022 rates were gonna rise. The anticipation was from Mortgage Bankers Association, NAR, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc. The consensus was 3.7% by the end of 2022.

But what has happened?

First week in January, rates went to 3.12%. Second week in January, rates went to 3.45%.

Wow — that's almost a vertical rise!

So what's the messaging here?

The messaging for our buyers and sellers is get off the fence and get into the market.

Now, why are rates rising so quickly?

Well, we know that the Fed had told us already that they were gonna raise rates three times in 2022 to fight inflation because inflation's at a 50-year high and 7% was the latest number.

So their #1 goal was to fight inflation.

They also announced they were gonna stop buying mortgage-backed securities...

Hey guys, I wanna give you a quick strategy when you are listing a house for the first time and you're having a conversation with a seller.

I call it my "Many Buyer Eyes" Strategy. And here's how it works:

I say...

"Hey, you know what? One thing I do with all my sellers when I list their properties for sale is I treat you as a buyer. And what that means is that I'm gonna act like you're a buyer for your own property and your own price range. So I'm gonna set you up in the MLS as if you're a buyer looking in the 400-500k price range in your market area, in our MLS zone that we're in with similar attributes of your house. Here's why I'm doing this: I want you to see in real time the listings that are being presented to buyers that are searching for home like yours.

So you're gonna see all your competition, all the price reductions, all the pending transactions, they're gonna be coming to you. And I want you to look at them because we...

Lawrence Yun was recently quoted as saying, "If you are under the age of 40, you have never seen inflation this high in this country."

The inflation rate in November hit a record 6.8%. That's the highest we've seen in decades.

So when we look at these numbers and everybody's talking about inflation, how does this relate to estate?

It's an interesting conversation. It's something that we should talk about with our clients.

Here's the good news when it comes to real estate:

Real estate is a tremendous asset and a hedge against inflation. That's why last year, we saw a record number of people investing in real estate. In fact, it was the the highest recorded ever. The percentage of homes purchased was 18.2% were sold to investors.

One reason is they're using it as a hedge against inflation.

So here's what's happened according to Lawrence Yun. He says that real estate has proven to be a good hedge against inflation. Some examples:

In the 1970s,...