One thing that we should do this year is cut the dead wood.

What does that mean?

It means we don't wanna be walking up a mountain, our mountain being our figurative goal set that we've set for ourselves and have a backpack full of rocks on our back.

Now, what is that backpack full of rocks?

Those are clients that don't wanna sell, that don't wanna buy, that are wasting your time, that are frustrating, that are angry people that we do not need to be carrying around on our backs anymore.

We need to cut them loose and work with people that really wanna buy and sell.

So going into the new year, how can we approach our business a little bit differently?

One is to work with ready and willing clients which sounds crazy, but it is so simple that it's obvious, right?

We need to work with ready and willing clients.

Having a ready and willing conversation is important. So I'm gonna give you my "ready and willing" conversation script when I'm talking to a buyer.

So when I'm t...

At this time of year, a lot of sellers will say something like this:

"Hey Jim, I think I'm just going to wait because I will probably get more from my house later anyway. So I'm just going to wait until spring or summer and see what happens then."

How do we address that comment or that concern?

I'm going to give you one script that's worked for me over the years. And it works by talking about the fact that when we're staying and rebuying in the same market, waiting doesn't make a lot of sense.

So let's put this in practice. You might say,

"Hey, I hear what you're saying, but here's something to consider, right? If you're buying or selling in the same market -- because the entire market's going up in value at the same time -- waiting to sell your home to buy another home just means the other home you're buying is also going up in value at the same time.

In fact, there's a little bit of a Delta that if you're buying a higher priced home, it might be more expensive the ...

Now we've all heard of supply chain issues hitting the entire country. Lots of things happening because of COVID breaking down the supply chains.

But is this impacting real estate?

It absolutely is impacting real estate. It's impacting builders. It's impacting all kinds of vendors that are tied to real estate.

My wife and I are remodeling a house and we've had to wait six months for the cabinets to come in. It's impacting remodeling and flipping and all kinds of areas that we don't necessarily consider tied to the supply chain.

But real estate is definitely one of those areas.

So how can we use this?

Here's one way we can use it when we're out prospecting is talking about supply chain issues because everybody can identify with it right now.

So you might just say:

"Hey, you know, what, can you do me a huge favor? Even real estate is facing supply chain issues. We're facing very low inventory compared to most years and huge buyer demand. So if you see any for sale by ...

At this time last year, 46% of sellers were offering some kind of incentive to buyers to encourage them to make an offer on their house over the competition.

Now, those incentives could have been anything from closing costs, down payment assistance, home warranties, pre-paying for services. There were lots of different incentives that could have been thrown into the mix.

But this year that number has dropped down to 26%. But this is still a very high number.

And you can describe this to sellers like this: 

"Hey, listen, it might be kind of surprising, but about one out of every four of sellers that we're competing with in the marketplace is actually offering an incentive to the buyer to encourage them to make an offer on their home. So it's something for us to consider. We got a great price, but maybe that would make our home stand out just a little bit more is thinking about an incentive.

Let me describe what could mean:

It could be in closing costs, down payment as...

What are the top seven reasons why someone would want to sell in your market?

Well, according to the National Association of REALTORS new profile of home buyers and sellers across the country, here are the top reasons:

1. They want to move closer to family and friends — 18% of the time.

2. Their home is too small — 17% of the time.

3. Their neighborhood has become less desirable — 11% of the time.

4. Their home is too large — 9% of the time.

(Add the too large to the too small, and you got 26% of the time they want to sell has to do with the size of their home.)

5. A change in their family situation — 9% of the time.

6. Moving due to retirement — 7% of the time.

7. Job relocation — another 7% of the time.

So why do we care?

Here's the reason why:

Instead of talking about generalities like do you want to sell your home? Are you ready to move? Let's talk about specifics when you're doing marketing —whether geographic marketing, social media marketing, sphere of in...

This week, we got some great information from NAR and some good news for the market.

We've had this kind of trending downline with home sales across the country. Now we've had a sharp turn in sales:

Sales are up 7% compared to September.

So why would we have this kind of dramatic increase in sales right now coming into fall?

There's a couple of key reasons:

1. There's more listings coming to market

We're seeing more listings coming to market every single month. The market is building with listings right now, which means buyers can finally find what they're looking for. So if you've got buyers on the sidelines, encourage them to come back in, because now there's more and more listings piling in. And there's listings coming back on the market as well.

2. Interest rates have stayed low

But the biggest reason why buyers are coming back to the market?

3. Prices are moderating

People are finally bringing their prices down to meet the market. And that's key.

We look at A...

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 when I'm talking with a seller, for exampl...

I have some good news for people that already own a home that are in your database.

Here's the stats:

According to the KCM blog, home equity is up 29.3% across the board — which equals $51,500 in added equity over the past 12 months.

So then the question is:

Well, what can people do with that equity?

And there are a lot of things they could do:

They could pull it out in cash with a refinance, of course. They could take that equity and use it as a way to move into their dream home by stepping up — and there's a lot of people out there that may not realize that they can step up into their dream home with very little changes in their payment because of their equity.

There are tons of conversations you can have here.

Take that data, repackage it, and push it out to your people in your sphere of influence and start having conversations with them.

You could say, "Hey, would you like to get a specific number for how much equity build you've had in the past 12 months?"

You...

Is the market in a bubble situation? Is the market about ready to collapse?

Some people say that they're waiting for the market to collapse.

Well, that's not going to happen.

Here's the number one reason why:

When we look at the last market collapse that we had, which was 2008 and is still fresh in everybody's memory, it was caused by credit running amuck.

Credit was being given to people that shouldn't have been able to get a loan. In other words, there was a credit issue there.

People were getting liar loans and no doc loans. So the credit markets were out of control. They were bundling these junk mortgages and selling them on the stock market as derivatives. When that collapsed, it caused Lehman brothers and all these others to start collapsing, which caused the massive 2008 collapse in the marketplace.

Are we in that same situation today?

Absolutely not! Nothing compares to that.

In fact, right now, we have is super strict lending standards — stricter than we'v...

One question that you might get, or a comment that you might get about the market is everybody's talking about home prices being very high.

They might say, "You know, I don't think I'm going to enter the market because the prices are so high. Or I don't think this is sustainable, that these prices are so high."

And home prices have gone up over the last couple of years. But another measurement to take a look at when we're analyzing the market is something called affordability. It's actually something that's tracked by the National Association of REALTORS.

Affordability is key because it takes into account several key factors.

1. Your income — the median income of families across the country.

2. It takes into account the median interest rate being paid by mortgage borrowers across the country

3. And median pricing

When you combine those three factors, you fid affordability is better than it's been in decades.

Now, how could that be?

Well, pricing is only one of thos...