Last month, 32% of all transactions closed involved a cash buyer. If you stack up a cash buyer against a finance buyer, as a seller, which one would you prefer? Probably a cash buyer.

Financing has hurdles: the buyer has to qualify, the home has to qualify, there's appraisal and underwriting approval. So, if I had the choice, I would probably want to take a cash buyer.

But how do we incentivize this?

Most agents aren't having this conversation with sellers. Would you like to incentivize cash buyers to make offers on your house? Why? Because with a cash buyer, you're not dealing with qualification issues, low appraisals, or underwriting roadblocks. We can remove contingencies faster with a cash offer, which means we can speed up closing generally faster than with a finance buyer.

To incentivize those offers, you might consider giving a cash discount. What would you give? Maybe a 1% or 2% discount off the price. Let's be honest, with a financed offer, the buyer often asks for closing...

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...

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:

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...