Hey guys, now that the market's becoming more competitive, one idea to help your sellers be more competitive is to use the "Buyer Eye Strategy."

What's the "Buyer Eye Strategy?"

When you're sitting with the seller and you've just listed to the property, you might say something like this:

"Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Seller, now that we got the property listed, here's what I'm gonna do when I get back to my office. I'm going to treat you guys as if you were a buyer for a property that's very similar to yours. So here's why I'm doing that:

"I'm gonna set you up an MLS on a search pattern that's gonna include your house, but also any other houses that are listed that are similar. This way, you're gonna see everything in real time, every single listing that's happening. Every price reduction, every pending, every closing that's occurring in your price category. And this will really tune you into the market.

"And if you decide, Hey, look at this as a new...

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?...

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...

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...

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...

This is an amazing number:

63% of home buyers that are out shopping today believe that the homes that they're looking at should look like the homes that they see on TV on HGTV and other shows like that.

That is interesting because that's something we've got to educate our sellers about. Because if that's the buyer's expectation, if we don't meet that expectation, we may not get top dollar.

So when we're sitting with sellers, how do we have those conversations? There's another study that might help with that conversation that will actually incentivize them to want to do this.

The new study shows that of 13,000 homes in the country that were studied in 2020 -- a very recent study -- 85% of those got between 6% and 23% more for their home because they were staged compared to the competitors in the neighborhood.

Those are powerful numbers to motivate your sellers. And then we have to define what staging actually means anyway.

So...

Hey guys, a new study from NAR shows that...

75% of homeowners in America believe now is a good time to sell.

By the way, this is way up from where it was last year at the same time when that number was about 45%.

And what's the difference?

Well, one big difference is that we've had a huge run-up in prices. So sellers are starting to say, "Hey, I can see that this could be a good time to sell because prices have gone so high."

We're also seeing the record low 60-year lows on interest rates, which is another reason why home sellers are thinking they should sell and move up to their dream home. So that's a big reason why a lot of homeowners may be considering selling.

But even though they say it's a good time to sell, does that mean they are going to sell?

Yes, they are going to sell!

According to a new study done by Zillow, 1 in 7 homeowners are planning on selling their home in the next three years.

That's a massive number guys!

Imagine...

What if from every listing you take, you received five transactional sides? Imagine you take 10 listings in the next 12 months. And that leads to 50 transactional sides.

Is it possible? Absolutely.

And more importantly, we have to look at what we've done the last 12 months — how many listings did we take and how many sides did we create? If we are leaving money on the table, it's probably coming from the activities that we're not doing when it comes to our listings and those opportunities are so massive.

We have a system which I call the "5 Star Listing System" and it identifies the five easy transactions we can secure from every single listing we take.

1. We're going to sell the listing that we take

Now, that sounds simple in today's market. 95% of listings are selling as soon as they hit the market. But as the market transitions, as the market shifts, believe me, we're going to need to be able to refine our presentations and...

Interesting question:

How much does what someone sees on TV impact their buying patterns or buying behavior?

And that's a question that was asked within the new staging report from the NAR — the National Association of Realtors. And here's what they found:

63% of REALTORS say that when they're out showing homes to buyers, that the buyers requested to view homes that were comparable to those that they had seen on TV.

Further:

Because of that, 35% of REALTORS say that they have patterned their staging around what they see on TV as well. So TV is definitely having an impact in the real world of selling real estate.

So when we look at those numbers, when we dig deeper, here's what's interesting:

When we ask the bigger question, how many REALTORS are actually staging listings at all?

Here's the numbers:

* 31% of REALTORS stage every listing.

* 13% only staged difficult homes

* 8% only stage high priced homes

But most interesting...