Did you know that pools are currently in high demand in the real estate market? If you own a house with a pool, you can expect to sell it for about 8% more on average compared to homes without pools.

This is important for us as real estate professionals because we can inform pool owners that they have the potential to sell at a premium.

Speaking from personal experience as a pool owner, I can tell you what happens after buying a house with a pool:

Initially, it's an exciting novelty, and you use it constantly for the first couple of summers. However, over time, the novelty fades, and while you may not use the pool as much, the constant maintenance remains. This maintenance can be quite a hassle if you're doing it yourself, or it can become expensive if you're hiring someone to maintain it.

For those who have owned a pool for several years, it can eventually become more of a headache than a luxury. This could...

I recently learned a powerful technique from a top real estate agent:

It involves using specific language to handle objections.

Here's what I mean:

Instead of responding with "yes, but," I want you to rephrase it as "yes, and."

This simple shift can have a profound impact on your client interactions. For example, if a client tells you they want to hire a different agent, instead of saying "yes, but," try saying "yes, and I appreciate your honesty. I'm curious to understand your reasons for making that decision."

The magic of this approach is that it changes the dynamic and encourages open dialogue.

When a client expresses dissatisfaction with a property, rather than responding with "yes, but," respond with "yes, and."

Let's say that they think the house doesn't have a big enough backyard. You can say: "yes, and I understand your concern. On the other hand, there's a lovely park in the neighborhood that might...

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...

Hey guys, the market's shifting. That's no surprise here — we've been seeing it for a few months. We're starting to see buyers put up some walls and say, "Hey, wait a second. I'm not going to pay infinity for a home."

And so buyers are slowing down their activity and we're seeing that. And it's also causing inventories to rise, which in turn, is causing sellers to try and avoid missing the boat so they're jumping in. This is causing inventories to rise even more.

So the whole market is starting to change. Not radically yet, but it will accelerate over time. And it's natural. It's normal. We're never going to have a straight up market forever. Right now, some people would argue that we're 12 years into a seven-year cycle.

Now for us, I have a question for you because you are either an agent that's market-driven or strategy-driven.

If you're market-driven, then high tide floats all boats. You do well in a great market and you do...

We have two reports that have recently come out that show the market could be in a shift. And what we mean by that is that we've had this huge frenzy, right? But here's a couple of studies that kind of back up the fact that a lot of you in a lot of markets are starting to report.

You're seeing the market not be quite as intense as it's been, not quite the frenzy.

So here's the reports that we have:

The first one shows that the share of consumers who hope to buy a home in the next six months went from 34% a year ago to just 21% this year.

So people are starting to have some definite fatigue and resistance to pricing that's out there.

And related to pricing, which kind of goes right along with that study, is a new study that shows that even though we're still posting double digit gains in most areas, the rate of price growth is beginning to slow.

When we look at this, it's the second time it's happened in 13 months. And again,...

We've just had some excellent news about where homeowners' heads are regarding selling their home.

The latest study shows that 67% of homeowners believe today is a good time to sell, which is one of the record highs we've seen with this kind of thought process.

But when we go deeper into those numbers, according to Realtor.com, it shows this:

1 in 10 homeowners plan to sell this year. 1 in 10!

Think about that when you're driving home tonight and you're driving through your neighborhoods. 1 in 10 of these homes that you're driving by is going to be listed in the next year!

But here's something that's even more exciting:

63% of those are going to be listing their home in the next six months.

The only question is... Who are they going to list with? Is it going to be with you or your competitor?

And if it's your competitor, why did they get the listing when you missed out? The reason is they did one thing that you didn't do:...

What do you say to a buyer who thinks we're in a housing bubble?

The response to this is really important and you might want to speak about this just on social media. It's a great social media post to talk about because it's on people's minds. They're a little bit fearful of going into the market and paying too much, getting trapped, or thinking it's like 2009 again.

So here's your response (and it could be a video response or post response) where you say:

"Hey, several buyers have asked me recently, is this a good time to buy? Or should they wait until prices fall? What they're really asking me is, are we in a housing bubble? Right? And the answer is no.

In fact, we have several solid economic indicators that show us that we're not even close to a bubble. And we're actually in an incredibly healthy real estate market and home prices are likely to rise going forward for the next several months.

Here's a couple of reasons why:

1. The number of homes...

You learn something new every day in real estate. Even after 31 years in this business, I'm still learning.

I learned something fascinating this morning based on a study from Zillow:

In the last half of 2020, the number of listings taken week by week were about even with 2019.

There's a sense that there's a lot less listings in the market as a result of of us not taking as many listings, but it's just not true.

In the last half of 2020, we've taken as many listings as a nation as we did in 2019. But it doesn't feel like that.

So why doesn't it feel like that?

It's like if you own a grocery store and had a delivery guy come every Friday to fill your shelves with the same order. But what has changed is the number of buyers walking into your grocery store and how many products they're buying each time they come in.

If more buyers are coming into your store and buying more products from your shelves, it's going to seem like there's not as much on the shelves...

One thing we're all challenged with right now is the speed of the market — or how fast listings sell as soon as they hit the market.

When you listed a house in a traditional market, you would have 90 or 180 days of market time. During that market time you'd able to be able to put out just listed cards, call and farm neighborhoods, host multiple open houses, and receive sign calls from your marketing. And with all that marketing, you would be able to convert those interested people into more buyers and sellers.

So every listing could easily lead to five or six more opportunities for more buyers and sellers.

But today things have changed. Every time you put a house in the market, it's generally selling within a few days with multiple offers. So you're getting robbed of that extra marketing opportunity.

But you can change that by using what I call a Marketing Sequence.

A marketing sequence simply means that you have a strategy about how you...

One question we always receive as REALTORS is - What's going to happen next? What's the crystal ball for where prices are going over the next 12 months? 

According to the NAR, Zelman, Realtor.com, Freddie Mac, CoreLogic, Fannie Mae and the Mortgage Bankers Association, the average of all those top industry insiders and economists within those groups, their prediction for the next 12 months is that we're going to see appreciation at 3.9%. You might think that sounds low. After all we just went through a year where we had double digit appreciation and in many markets we saw appreciation as high as 15-16% . Why would this group of economists predict such a low number when most of us would reasonably expect it to be double digits or high single digits (at the very least).  

The reason is I think those economists know something - When you have a low supply and high demand, what happens? Prices go up. When supply increases, it puts pressure on...