What’s your response when the buyer says to you, “I think we're going to put a pin in this right now. We're just going to wait and see what happens with the market.”

Your first response should be, “Hey, totally understand. Let me ask you, what do you see as the advantages to waiting?”

Dig deeper. Figure out what's going on in their heads.

Most of the time they're going to say that they’re waiting for interest rates to drop or prices to fall.

When you hear that, what are you going to do?

You could say, “Well, we'll wait and see with you,” and then follow up in six months. But if you do that, they'll end up signing up on some lead form, getting captured by another agent, going to an open house, or being connected with someone else through a referral, and you're probably going to lose them.

That's the reality.

So instead of doing that, here's what I'd recommend.

Say, “Hey, totally get it. Waiting for interest rates to stop seems like a safe bet, seems like the wise decision to mak...

Hey guys, is it better to be a renter or a homeowner in today’s world? Especially with the rise of digital nomads and people wanting maximum flexibility—being able to live anywhere and work from anywhere.

There’s a strong attraction for that lifestyle, especially for Gen Z. Some in real estate worry: “Will Gen Z still buy homes like Gen X did?”

The reality is in the numbers, and we need to educate them.

Here’s a stark comparison: the average homeowner has 43 times the net worth of the average renter.

Average renter: ~$10,000 net worth

Average homeowner: ~$430,000 net worth

The reasons are many, but the number one factor is leverage.

Let me give you an example. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article comparing real estate to the stock market. They said if you had invested in the S&P 500 over the last 30 years instead of buying a house, you would have made more money.

That’s misleading, because they ignored leverage. Let’s break it down:

Imagine someone gives you $...

Hey guys, with the trade war heating up, renters are concerned about inflation. This is a great opportunity to have a conversation with them, and really put it out there on social media. You could do a video, or send out mailings about inflation likely rising again.

We can say, "Hey, if you're concerned about the trade war and inflation starting to rise again, remember we all lived through COVID when rents skyrocketed. A lot of experts are starting to say that this could happen again. So, if you're worried about that, one of the best ways to hedge is to buy your own home."

I know buying a home can seem like a stretch if you’ve never explored that route, but here’s what buying a home does for you. Even though you might have to stretch a bit for that payment, it locks in your payment for 30 years.

Your payment might seem expensive today, but five, 10, or 20 years from now, it won’t be. If you stay a renter, your rent is guaranteed to increase every year. It’ll keep getting higher and ...

June was Homeownership Month. And as a REALTOR, your job is to emphasize the value of homeownership. It's the product you sell, and you need to let people know that being a homeowner has significant financial advantages.

Here's the first one:

The average homeowner has 40 times the net worth of the average renter.

Why?

The number one reason is that every time you make your monthly mortgage payment, a portion goes towards principal reduction. It's like a forced savings account, building up over time. When you sell the property, you benefit from this accumulation.

Additionally, you have appreciation. Every year, the home's value increases, sometimes more, sometimes less, but over a 30-year mortgage, the property value generally rises.

On top of that, homeowners receive substantial tax benefits that renters don't.

These are three key reasons why someone should consider becoming a homeowner today.

Your job is to provide people with a path to homeownership. The biggest resistance poi...

Here's a massive opportunity for you when you're looking at your sphere of influence. If you've got a list of people in your sphere that own businesses or are entrepreneurs with locations, we’re in a unique position with the commercial market right now. In many areas, the commercial market is really struggling.

The script for reaching out to these business owners in your sphere of influence is straightforward. Start by asking, “Do you rent or own your current location?”

Most will be renters, some will be owners.

If they say they are renters, you can respond with this:

“If you'd like to own, this is one of the best times in the last 10 years to buy commercial property. There are several factors at play:

• Vacancies are high
• Rents are declining
• Rental prices and commercial real estate prices are stable, with some areas seeing decreases

There’s a real opportunity to get a bargain in today’s market.”

Or if they already own their property, ask, "Have you ever thought of adding a ...

For the last three months, rents have been on decline, and that's kind of a shock. We saw rents skyrocket during covid, but now there's pressure coming into the market.

Two things have happened:

First, people are starting to come back into buying houses again, so they're leaving their rental units to buy houses, a small trickle there. Another big part is the fact that 500,000+ new units across the country were built and came online last year, and 400,000+ are coming online this.

So what's the opportunity for us as REALTORS?

Well, one opportunity is to target mom and pop investors in your local market. These are people that might own two to 10 units in your market. They're not major industrial investors, but they'll be impacted by higher vacancy rates and decreasing rents. Some of these folks bought and they stretched themselves to afford it, and if they have a couple of months of vacancy, they could really get hurt.

Still, it's a strong market and there are still investors acquiri...

I have an important concept for you as we're coming into this challenging market with interest rates.

So I want you to think about something I call parity pricing. Let's paint a picture:

Imagine you're a buyer now. You have a $400,000 budget to buy a house. And you found one and got it in contract. Your budget for your payment is $1,767 a month. That's for principal and interest — we won't worry about taxes and insurance for this kind of demonstration.

So how we came to that number is if we were buying a home in April and we were lucky enough to get a 5.25% interest rate back then, that's what that payment would equal. But fast forward to today, we were shooting this around September where interest rates have shot up to 7.25%. In order for that buyer who only has a budget of $1,767 a month, or for that buyer to buy a house based on today's interest rate, how much would the seller have to come down to get to a parity pricing just on the payment on this house?

The number...

Here's some good news about the real estate market, and we need some good news right now:

As of the second quarter of 2022, home ownership rates were rising. So that's good.

And we say, well, why would anyone not want to be a homeowner? Right? When we're in the real estate business, we think everybody should be a homeowner.

But sometimes, renters have a hard time getting over the hump of deciding if it is a good idea to become a homeowner. Especially when we're seeing interest rates rise. We've seen prices still rising in some markets by double digits.

One thing you can point to, which is really powerful, is the concept of inflation.

Everybody knows what inflation is and inflation is touching everybody. And so you can point out that, "Hey, you know, I'm sure you're aware that inflation right now is at a record high, a 40-year high. The last reading was 8.5% inflation. But what people don't realize is that rents are actually under that inflationary pressure as well. T...

Is it a good time to buy a house today?

It's an important question for us as REALTORS to be able to answer and really be passionate about it. This isn't just an answer we're giving because we wanna sell a house, but an answer that's actually backed up by real data.

That way, buyers will actually believe what we're saying and be influenced by what we're saying.

So here are 5 key reasons, backed up by data, why people should be excited about entering the market today:

1. Rents are rising quickly.

So if you're not a homeowner, what are you by default? In most cases, you're a renter. So latest reading shows that rents are up 14.8% compared to a year ago. And they're likely to continue to rise at a fast pace going forward.

2. Interest rates.

Interest rates have settled back down a little bit. They're not at the peaks anymore. So interest rates historically, when you look at the last five decades, have averaged 8%. Right now, we're in the high fives, low six range.

Meaning...

Date the rate. Marry the house.

Now, what does that mean? That means that if we went back in time to a year ago, the market was a completely different animal. Right?

A year ago, buyers that were in the marketplace were experiencing multiple offers on every listing. They were being asked to sign escalation clauses that would maybe sometimes mean they were paying 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred thousand dollars more than the list price. People are being asked to do appraisal waivers, inspection waivers, appraisal gap language, non-refundable earnest money.

It was an incredible time to be a buyer in what we might call a frenzy market.

Now, fast forward to today:

The market's undergoing a complete shift, right? And what that means is there's a lot more to choose from. There's a lot more listings on the market. List prices are coming down in a lot of price categories. We're seeing a lot fewer buyers in the market. So that means that the buyers left have real power to come in ...