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...

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...

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...

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...

Zillow announced recently that they've stopped buying homes!

In their press release, they said they had supply chain issues and labor shortages, which is interesting because when you look at what they actually did in Q2 and Q3, where we've had kind of the same issues going on, they actually doubled the amount of homes that they purchased during that time compared to last year.

So why would they go from twice the amount they were buying last year to stopping on October 18th?

Some people are saying that one reason might be they're seeing market changes, just like we've been talking about. They're seeing a lot more listings coming to market which creates pricing pressure and competition. So they may not be able to come in and pay these high prices and then resell it at an even higher price. Because Zillow runs a flipping operation, right?

So we're actually seeing that. I've got a lot of students and a lot of parts of the country that...

I got a quick note on feedback. This came to me from one of my friends that works with me, Adam McGrew. He started doing this a couple of years ago and I thought it was brilliant.

We're always asked for feedback when we do showings. Number one, give the feedback because the shoe's going to be on the other foot. When you are selling a listing and they show your house and you're going to ask for feedback. And if they don't provide it, it's going to be frustrating. So always give feedback.

But now you want to go further than that. Meaning, when you're giving feedback, it actually can be a pre-negotiation tool.

This is how Adam uses it:

Instead of just saying, "Oh, it's a nice house, but they chose another one" or something super simple that's not meaningful, Adam gives a detailed text.

In the text, he gives an insightful analysis of the home, how it compared to other listings, what the buyer noticed as they're walking through the house...

Are you doing a weekly call to all your sellers? If you haven't started doing this, this is something you need to be doing. And as you take new listings, you need to just create this expectation that you're going to call them every week.

My preference is on Monday. I want to get the week started off right. And having my Monday morning power hour, where I call sellers, is super important in my business plan.

So why do we make calls to our sellers every Monday?

Because we need to earn the right to be able to ask for price adjustments, condition improvements, or incentives if they're needed in order to get the property sold.

The market's changing and not every single listing you bring to the market is going to sell instantaneously anymore. Often we're going to have to make some adjustments in the condition, price, or incentives we're offering.

Here's how you handle that conversation with the seller:

I'm going to start by saying, "Hey,...

As we begin to price property, it's important to understand the difference between comp-based pricing and competitive-based pricing.

Comp-based pricing is what REALTORS typically do when they do a CMA, they do a comp based pricing analysis. What they do is they look at properties that have sold three to six months ago, very similar to what an appraiser does. And normally in a typical market, that's very effective. But we're not in a typical market.

When you're doing that today, you could have an inherent flaw in your data. And here's what it is:

Back in April and May, all indications point to the fact that we probably hit our apex point of the market. Meaning that home sales were indicating at 23-26% appreciation rate compared to the year before. So that was the peak acceleration of our markets.

Since then, we've been moderating. And what that means is that people aren't getting 23-26% compared to a year ago. Now it's down to about...

When do listings peak? In other words, when does the total number of listings hit its apex every year?

Well, it's an interesting question and it's definitely been affected by COVID.

Let me break it down for you:

In 2017, the peak was August.

In 2018, it was October.

And in 2019, it was September.

What do you think it was though for the COVID year 2020? And we're still in COVID, but at the beginning of the COVID years:

That number was shockingly (or not so shockingly) April — as March was when it was starting to gain some steam and when we had the shutdown. April was the peak of listings last year, and then it fell off from there pretty dramatically.

What do we expect for 2021 though?

We can't look at the seasonality of real estate anymore. The seasonality of real estate, where we used to know that spring and summer was the peak. And then it came over the top and fall and winter was the slow period.

That's not going to be true...

We know that Google is the number one search engine. But what's number two?

As you think about that question, let me give you another a stat that's really going to blow you away:

One-third of Americans -- according to a Harris poll survey -- say that they plan to move after COVID ends.

Think about that.

Think about the power of what that could do to the country in terms of real estate relocation.

So circling back to that first question I asked though, what is the number two search engine?

The answer is YouTube.

And here's what you can do, which is really, really interesting.

When you dive into YouTube today, search for your hometown. Be hyperlocal as we call it and do this quick search: "moving to [your hometown]."

Or you do could another search, which is: "relocation [your hometown]" and see what the results are.

You might find, like I've found, in area after area, after area, after area is that there are very, very little results...