I have a challenge for you today:

I want you to imagine that you're a buyer who just landed in your area and has no knowledge about any REALTORS in the marketplace. So, go ahead and search for homes for sale in your market and see what happens. You'll likely be directed to realtor.com or Zillow. Now, pretend you're a buyer and go through the process of searching for a home on these websites.

As you go through the process, you'll notice that the algorithms push you through a funnel. The first thing they'll ask you is what price point you're looking for. They'll give you a list of price points to choose from, and very rarely will buyers type in a specific price. Instead, they'll be guided to choose a range from a dropdown menu.

Then, the algorithms will ask about bedrooms, bathrooms, and square footage before pushing the buyer further into the system. It's important for us as REALTORS to understand how the algorithms...

I have a concept called "anchor point pricing."

Here's what it means:

During a conversation about price with a seller, I bring up the neighbor down the road who listed their property but didn't really want to sell it. They overpriced their house and have been chasing the market down with four price reductions in the last 90 days. Their home has become stigmatized and people think there's something wrong with it, no matter how low they price it.

I never want that to be the case for my clients, and you shouldn't either.

In this market, first impressions are critical:

The longer a property is on the market, the less it gets.

That's why we use anchor point pricing. Every time potential buyers drive by the overpriced neighbor's listing, they're reminded that they don't want to end up like that person. This conversation can be powerful when someone is on the fence about overpricing their property.

Want more secrets like this that...

Hey guys, when we're talking to a seller and we're having this conversation about price—because price is the ultimate marketing tool that we have—sometimes it's hard for sellers to understand the relationship between the price and interest rates.

So I wanna give you some scripting and some dialogues along these lines, which is really important. And it's focusing on the difference in affordability for buyers and really how most buyers are payment focused.

So if I'm sitting with a seller, I might say:

"Now you've probably been hearing that the interest rates have been rising. But I wanna relate that to what that means to a buyer for your home. So the beginning of the year, interest rates were pretty much at 60-year lows or around 3% level. And since the beginning of the year, we've really more than doubled. We're now pushing 7% and we're probably gonna be over 7% very soon.

And so here's what...

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...

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...

Hey guys, the market is shifting. If you can feel it in your market, you're not alone. One study that's backing this up is a study that's just been done by realtor.com. It shows that of the top 300 Metro markets in the country, 45 are seeing significant price adjustments happening.

I'll give you a couple examples:

Des Moine, Iowa — 32% of the listings have had a price adjustment

Midland, Texas — 28% of listings have had a price adjustment

Toledo, Ohio — 26% of listings have had a price adjustment

Metairie, Louisiana — 24% of listings have had a price adjustment

Where I live, Portland, Oregon — 20% of listings have had a price adjustment.

So not every market's having this yet. But we're certainly seeing sellers starting to be wise to the fact that buyers aren't just going to pay infinity anymore. There is buyer resistance to pricing. We've seen the largest run-up in pricing. Prices have hit an all-time...

Hey guys, when you set a price on a property, how fast do you pivot if you got the price wrong?

And we all get prices wrong, I've gotten prices wrong. Anybody that's been in the industry for any length of time has gotten the price wrong.

So how fast do you pivot? How fast do you reach out to the seller to try to get that price adjustment?

There's a new study done by ShowingTime, which shows that the average across America, in our current market for there to be a massive drop in activity is five days.

After five days, activity goes straight down.

So we have a five day window to try to generate a lot of showings and hopefully multiple offers. If we get past that five days and we don't do an adjustment, we're probably going to have a hard time meeting the market where it's at.

So we have to lay the groundwork with sellers and have a conversation with them about this five day window. It's not two weeks. It's not three weeks. It's not a...

There are a couple of numbers we need to look at to understand where the market's at and what's happening with the market.

Number one is the pending home sell index, which had a decrease of 1.9% compared to a year ago. And again, a 1.9% decrease compared to last month. Coincidentally, it was the same number.

But when we combine that with an increase in inventory of 4.1% the month before and a decrease in interest rates because they fell back below 3%.

So we have to look at this as the whole and say:

Why would there be a decrease in sales when we've had an increase in listings and a lower interest rate?

Why aren't buyers saying, "Hey, I have more to choose from and my interest rates are going down. Why don't I own the market?"

Buyers aren't doing that. In fact, they're pulling back a little bit from the market.

The reason is...

Buyer price resistance

Buyers are saying, "Hey, it's been 112 straight months of home price increases....

What are the most expensive per square foot homes in America?

According to a recent study recently done by REALTOR.com San Jose Santa Clara had the most expensive per square foot averages across the country.

Drum roll — $1,500 a square foot, not far behind are San Francisco and Oakland with $1,200 a square foot.

Now what's the least expensive in the country? Least expensive is Decatur, Illinois at $102 and Youngstown, Ohio at $120 a square foot.

There's a big discrepancy between the two.

The reason I bring this up is because we need to know what our average per square foots are in our local market. And it's going to change by subdivision. It's going to change by micro markets. But overall, you need to know what your county averages are and then your subcategories in different market segments. That way you can speak to this as an expert.

The other thing you need to be able to do is bring these into a conversation with buyers and...