Something super exciting happened in the last month that we haven't seen in the last 15 years:

Home prices on existing homes exceeded home prices for new homes.

Think about what I just said:

Existing home prices exceeded new home construction. So it was actually cheaper to go buy a brand new house nobody had ever lived in than buying an existing home. Absolutely amazing.

Lots of reasons behind that. But one of the reasons is normally when you're buying new construction, you're locking in a price six months earlier. And then they complete the new construction and you move in.

Well, the market has super accelerated in those last 6 months. And guess what's also happened:

Now, if you were to try to pull that off, what's happened with all kinds of lumber, supplies, and even appliances?

Prices have gone up.

So this will probably not be repeated anytime soon because now prices on new construction are beginning to rise again.

But what...

How are you positioning yourself on social media to have impact?

A lot of us are doing a lot of social media, but is it having impact? Are people remembering you or are they just scrolling past your posts because they're filled with meaningless fluff?

If you want to have impact, here's one technique that'll really help you shine in your marketplace:

Storytelling.

Telling a story about your client's experience and what your clients are going through will help you build a relationship with people that are in your audience. It positions you as the expert, as the authority, as a trusted figure, as an advisor, as a counselor. But it will also help people remember you as a REALTOR.

Why?

Because stories are remembered. Stories create resonance and connections with other people. People love reading about people.

So I'm gonna give you a couple of examples of that:

I've got a couple of my great coaching students that I work with in my company....

Hey guys, quick question:

Do you have a video bio?

If you don't have a video bio, you could be missing a massive marketing opportunity.

96% of agents are still resisting video. That means that there's a massive opportunity for those agents that are willing to embrace it.

By doing a video bio, imagine that you are a consumer and you're looking at 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 agents on an agent roster. Most of them have the old glamour shot. But you have a video bio. Who's more likely to work with you?

Almost everybody.

Almost everybody's going to click on that video and watch you and give you a shot. They'll give you an "at bat" so you can hit a home run. Instead of just looking at pictures and making a decision, they can actually kind of get to know you a little bit, your personality, your style, and your flair.

And here's what you do in that bio:

You're going to talk about your background, your passion for the market, your passion for real...

Almost all of us are going to get multiple offers on at least one of our listings this year, probably several of them.

So what are you going to do to market the fact that you brought your sellers multiple offers?

One way you can do this is by modeling my friend Bill up in the Portland, Oregon market.

He received 13 offers on one of his listings! So what he did is he took a picture with him and his seller reviewing all those offers on the table. All 13 offers were spread across the table and labeled. And he took it at an angle where so you couldn't actually read the offers. You could just see them all laid out there with the seller smiling in the background.

And then he put a statement on social media and said:

"Hey, I got great news:

My seller came to me to market this property. Zillow said the home was worth $429k. We listed it at $459k and now we have an accepted offer well above $500,000 for this home."

What is this post doing?

It's...

Are you looking for more ways to find listings? I'm going to give you three more strategies right now.

Over at erealestatecoach, we've got hundreds of strategies over there. Lots of classes, lots of free material over there to check out. And we'll give you two weeks of free coaching. But today let me give you just three quick strategies:

1. Checking out the garage sales and estate sales that are coming up in the spring market

This is where people are downsizing all their stuff. They're doing the spring cleaning and they're deciding to get rid of a few things. But there could be an opportunity for you to reach out and make contact. Now, what would be the script? I'm going to give you those scripts right down below, but you could use this as a mailer, a postcard, an email, or just a direct approach either in person or over the phone.

So you might say:

"Hey as a local REALTOR, I noticed you had a recent garage sale. I hope it went super...

Are you doing circle marketing around neighborhoods where you have an active, interested, and qualified buyer?

If your answer is no, then you're missing a massive opportunity to unlock listings — not just for your buyer, but for yourself and for your business.

So I'm going to give you the single best circle marketing letter I've ever received as an agent. Because I own several properties, I get a lot of marketing from agents. But this particular letter really struck me as being super powerful.

I'm going to give it to you right now. And then you should take this letter and run with it. When you have a buyer that's actively engaged and wants to live in a neighborhood, send a mailing using this letter to unlock some listing opportunities.

Here's what the letter said:

"Hello, James,

My name is... and I'm a broker with 123 Real Estate. The reason I'm sending this letter is that I have a buyer who has interest in buying a home...

What is educational marketing?

Educational marketing is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to build trust and unlock more buyers and sellers for your business.

But how do you do it?

Well, you got to understand that a lot of expert marketers use what's called "The Curiosity Gap." That's where you pose a question or you put a statement out there and then it makes people curious about knowing the answer.

Now we fall into this curiosity gap all the time — from headlines to news soundbites that are trying to get you to watch the news at six o'clock, book covers, wine labels, and all kinds of things create curiosity in us. But when we look at our knowledge quest as human beings, we're always driven by not knowing and the power of wanting to know what we don't know, right?

So here's an example of this:

One of my good friends, Scott Lewis, a superstar realtor that I work with put this post out. And it was simply about the...

What are the digital tools that buyers and sellers want us to deliver to them?

There is a new study that's recently come out that shares exactly what buyers and sellers would like us to use when we're working with them.

1. 3D Virtual Tour

Kind of like a Matterport tour. Another one that goes along with this is a digital floor plan. Now that might be a Matterport situation again where people can see the entire floor plan of the house. Sometimes we have that for new construction. Other times we might have to build that.

2. Email Notifications

Most of us have email available through our franchise groups or even through our offices where we can send automated emails to clients based on their needs that match the MLS database.

3. Video tours

Video tours with their agent (aka you!) offering to walk somebody through a house, maybe on FaceTime while they're not even physically present.

4. The ability to unlock a home and not even have the agent (aka...

Something interesting that you might find surprising that it relates to real estate, but fertility rates in the US have gone down dramatically over the last hundred years. In America today, we've actually had another 1% decrease.

We have the lowest birth rates than we've had in a hundred years.

Here are the numbers:

For every 1000 women in America aged between 15 and 44, there's 58.3 births. And you compare this to World War Two, when all the baby boomers were born, that number was more closer to 140 births! So huge difference in the numbers.

Now, how does this relate to real estate? I'm going to share with you now. Here is the the data today:

Looking at buyers who have children under the age of 18 in the home, the share of that group has declined from 58% in 1985, all the way down to 33% in 2020. So there's a much smaller group of people buying homes. It's actually the minority, not the majority, who have kids under 18 at home.

So you need to...

Why would you use a pending sign? A lot of REALTORS use a pending sign because they want to encourage people to list their home with them. And they want to show off to the marketplace that their marketing actually worked.

But a pending sign can actually be the worst possible thing you can do for your marketing.

Why?

Because when homeowners in your neighborhood see your listing go up, that's when they're most likely to call you and be curious about the home. The pending sign can help a little bit, but you're going to miss out on the most qualified buyers you can have. 

And I'll give you a classic example:

My wife and I have identified an area of town we want to live in called Echo of the Pines. It's a beautiful area with some nice homes in the neighborhood but very few homes come on the market. The other night when we were driving home, we saw a new for sale sign. As a REALTOR, I get all these alerts, but they become noise and I tune them out.