I wanna give you two questions you should ask every buyer to test whether they're actually ready and willing to move forward in the process.

Your time is your most valuable asset. You don't wanna be spending it with people that are not ready to pull the trigger. So one question you can ask is this:

“Hey, you know what? The way I work is very low key. I never wanna pressure anyone. But I do have a quick question for you: If we find you the right house, the one that really clicks all the boxes for you, is there anything holding you back from moving forward?”

Now, that's a great kind of pre-close question that you can ask in advance before you go out and start looking at homes.

And here's another one:

“One question I ask everybody I start working with before we start looking at homes is, what's your biggest hesitation? What's your biggest fear about this home buying process? I wanna make sure I address those concerns before we start looking.”

So now you're gonna get t...

Guys, you've probably heard about the class-action lawsuits targeting realtor organizations, MLS groups, and large franchises.

The plaintiffs claim that they were unaware they were paying both their own fees and the buyer's fees. The lawsuits aim to either eliminate seller-paid brokerage fees or ensure transparent disclosure of these fees. While similar lawsuits have been filed in the past, these recent cases are gaining traction, resulting in settlements.

For instance, a New England MLS paid a 3 million settlement to resolve the issue.

This poses a significant challenge to our industry's business model, which has operated on the basis of sellers covering the REALTOR fees for decades. We may face a future where we have to approach buyers and inform them that they must pay their fees at closing and make a choice regarding representation. If they want me to represent them, we'll have a conversation, sign a document, and they'll agree to pay me a fee at closing if I succe...

I recently learned a powerful technique from a top real estate agent:

It involves using specific language to handle objections.

Here's what I mean:

Instead of responding with "yes, but," I want you to rephrase it as "yes, and."

This simple shift can have a profound impact on your client interactions. For example, if a client tells you they want to hire a different agent, instead of saying "yes, but," try saying "yes, and I appreciate your honesty. I'm curious to understand your reasons for making that decision."

The magic of this approach is that it changes the dynamic and encourages open dialogue.

When a client expresses dissatisfaction with a property, rather than responding with "yes, but," respond with "yes, and."

Let's say that they think the house doesn't have a big enough backyard. You can say: "yes, and I understand your concern. On the other hand, there's a lovely park in the neighborhood that might compensate for it. It's within walking distance and a g...

As a real estate professional, I often get asked about the biggest demographic group that's currently buying homes.

Well, the answer might surprise you:

It's millennials!

In fact, they make up the vast majority of buyers on the market. So, if I want to get these potential buyers off the fence and into homeownership, I need to focus on their motivations, not just on getting more business.

Here are the top three reasons why millennials are buying homes.

1. Millennials want to build equity in their own home instead of building someone else's equity through rent payments.

This is a powerful message that needs to be a part of our marketing campaigns. Have you ever stopped to think that every time you make a rent payment, you're helping someone else build their wealth? What if you could start building wealth for yourself and your family by owning your own home? Homeownership is within everyone's capability, and I can help you get there. Even if you can't do it today, let...

Did you know that more people in America have pets than children? It's true!

20 years ago, 48% of American families had kids at home. Today, that number is down to 40%.

On the other hand, the number of Americans with pets has increased dramatically, from 56% in 1988 to 70% today.

As REALTORS, this information is valuable to us because it affects our conversations with buyers. When talking to potential buyers, we should ask if they have pets and if their pet will impact their home buying decision. Many people will engage in conversation about their pet's needs and how important they are to the family.

But what if we took it a step further and specialized in working with families that have pets or selling homes with pet-friendly features?

This could be a complete differentiator in the market, as it's not a common focus for REALTORS. Sometimes we need to think outside the box to stand out.

If you want more ideas like this that help you differentiate yourself in the marke...

How can every business owner that you know model McDonald's for building wealth? Well, you might not know this, or maybe you do, but McDonald's makes a lot of money selling hamburgers, but they make more money owning real estate.

Did you know that of the 36,000 McDonald's locations around the world, they own 70% of those locations and the franchisees are paying them rent?

See, they figured out a long time ago that the money is in real estate.

So when you're talking to your business owners that are in your database, friends of yours, family members, people that are your in sphere of influence that own a business, ask them this key question:

"Hey, have you ever thought about buying a piece of real estate and putting your business in that? Or maybe buying the building that you're in? Because one of the best wealth building strategies for retirement eventually for your exit strategy is to sell your business and then rent the building back to the new owner. Have you ever tho...

We are in a different marketplace, aren't we? The market totally rolled over into a buyer's market in a lot of price categories. And because of that, we need to hone our negotiation skills. So today I'm gonna give you 10 strategies to help you be a better negotiator. Because we know if a buyer feels good about the negotiation, they're gonna often be excited, and tell their friends and family to use use to purchase their next property.

Remember, it's all about referrals and doing an amazing job.

1. Discovering the motivation

It's simple, but it's interesting how many agents haven't done that. We just had an offer come into my office over $2 million and guess what? It was electronically sent without a phone call to the other agent. Very frustrating experience for the listing agent. But this is the example of a lot of buyer's agents that don't have any training. They're not calling the other listing agent and asking simple questions. Just engaging in building a relationshi...

Only 16% of buyers believe it's a good time to buy a home today. That's according to a new study from Fannie Mae. So when we hear that number, it's kind of a shocking number and it's a record low. Let's not put any sugar on this. It's not good.

So when we're talking to our clients that may have thought about buying but are on the fence right now, how can we have just an honest conversation about the market today?

Well, I like this idea of a "then versus now" conversation. The "then versus now" conversation is dealing with real world numbers. And so let's assume you have a situation where you say, "Hey listen, I know you're kind of on the fence about buying right now, but I just wanna walk you through something to think about. If you were back in time six months ago when we started talking about buying, and you bought a house back then, let's just run through some numbers. I'm gonna compare that to where we're at today.

So back then, let's assume you were at $450,000....

30 years ago, when I entered the real estate business, we used to see a clause, and I used to use this all the time myself, that we would build into offers.

And the clause said something to this effect:

"This offer is subject to the buyer qualifying for a loan and the home qualifying for a loan as noted in the offer terms. And you could say the loan type (conventional, FHA VA, whatever you're gonna do there) at an interest rate not to exceed X."

And that was the key part of that language. And I'm not suggesting you use that language exactly, that's something for you to talk about with your broker. But we would just have an interest rate cap built into our offers.

Now, some people would say, Well Jim, when I have my buyers get qualified, they generally lock themselves in. Not every buyer locks themselves in. A lot of buyers like to try to gamble and float it.

So when we build that language in, it gives the buyer an opportunity if they didn't lock in to renegotiate mid...

What is the picky inspection?

Now, for years we've been in a seller's market. And the last thing we wanted an inspector to do is to come in and kill the deal, right? But today the market is shifting towards buyers. And buyers are starting to gain more and more leverage in the marketplace.

So when I'm counseling my buyers, I might say, "You know, we wanna get an inspection. That's a fair inspection. But I'm kind of leaning towards advising my inspector to be a little bit more picky than they might have been in the past. Let me tell you why:

Because what we're doing when we do an inspection is really looking at health and safety issues and really big structural issues. You know, the roof is going bad, or there's a bad foundation, or something like that. The minor stuff, the things like just noting the age of a water heater and you know that there's a crack in the sidewalk and you know, the basic stuff, the cosmetic stuff is things that we would naturally take on typicall...