How do you respond when a seller says they'll wait until spring, especially in the winter?

If you can't handle this objection, you're in a tough spot, right?

Let me share a powerful response because mastering the language of sales is key. It's not just about handling objections, but about providing food for thought to help them make the best decision.

So, if someone tells me, "Jim, we'll wait until spring and summer," here’s what I’ll say:

====

“I completely understand. I'll be here to assist you then as well. But here's something to consider. Many potential sellers are planning to wait for the same season, leading to a surge in listings. The advantage is better weather and more buyers, but the downside is increased competition.

Instead of one or two listings, you might face 10 or 20. More competition means buyer interest gets divided among many listings, potentially resulting in fewer showings and offers.

Now,...

I have a quick question for you:

Are you marketing your marketing?

You might be wondering what I mean by that, right? Well, let me explain: As real estate agents, we do an amazing job for our clients. We use drone photography, staging, postcards, social media marketing, and more to showcase their properties. We go all out to sell their homes in record time and get them top dollar.

But who actually experiences all of this marketing? Sure, the buyers who purchase the property may see it, as well as a small group of people in our closest network. However, not everyone is seeing all of our marketing efforts. In fact, on social media, only about 4-6% of our audience is actually seeing our posts.

So, how do we market our marketing?

One approach is to create a success portfolio. Whenever you have a beautiful, photogenic listing, go all out and create a home book, do exclusive videography, Matterport, and everything else....

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...

People that are doom and gloomers that think the sky's following, everything's going wrong, the market's never gonna come back are dead wrong. For one specific reason. And I'm gonna tell you why:

First of all, interest rates are coming down, demand's coming back. There are all kinds of leading indicators that say our spring and summer markets are gonna be incredible. But let me give you just a piece of information, which was shared with me recently, which I thought was absolutely fantastic and got me excited about the upcoming surge of activity we're gonna see in the next 5-10 years. We're gonna have this incredible run that's gonna be starting very soon. And I want you to be a part of it.

It's all about generational population basics. When we look at the baby boomer generation, which when I started in real estate, everything was about the baby boomers because they were just calming through the pipeline, buying up...

Hey guys, here's a fun idea you're probably not doing now in terms of marketing your listings, which is doing a behind the scenes viewpoint of what you're doing to market listings.

And I what you're thinking: What does that mean? Well, a lot of us that watch television today, we'll see a lot of behind the scenes. Everybody loves to see behind the scenes. Like if you're watching your favorite show, whether it's House of Dragons or The Handmaid's Tale or whatever, at the end of the show, they'll circle back and they'll do behind the scenes interviews and so forth.

And people love it. They eat that up. That's when you bought the dvd—yes, we used to do that—we would get the DVD extras and that's what it would have on there.

You can do the same thing with your listings.

What if you started doing some behind the scenes work? And what do I mean by that?

What if you had you taking some photos or some, some...

We know interest rates are rising, right? I'm in contract on a couple of different investment properties right now. I'm still out buying despite the market conditions. Actually, it's an opportunity for investors. And when I got to the point of finding out what my interest rate would be on one of these properties at duplex, I was told that it would be 8.5%.

And I about fell over! 8.5%, that's nuts, right?

And she explained to me that, well, you could pay points, get that down to, you know, 7.5%, or even 7.1%. And there was a lot of strategies around that, but it was gonna be expensive on the point side. So when we're having this conversation, buyers like myself are gonna immediately think my, if I'm gonna pay that kind of points, I want somebody to share that cost with me.

Who do you think it's gonna be? It's gonna be the seller. If the sellers are gonna want top dollar, like these Impressment property owners do of course, they might...

Hey guys, I've got another tool for you:

When you are going out to take a listing and the seller is asking you about getting top dollar for their home, one question you can ask which relates to them getting top dollar is, can I ask you how much do you owe on your current home?

This is gonna reveal how much equity they have and how much they have left to pay off.

Some—about 30% of the people you're talking to—will own their home outright. And the vast majority will have some kind of loan. But a lot of those people have paid down their loans dramatically and they have a very small balance. What if you said something like this to them?

"I got something to ask you guys based on what you just told me:

We're in a high interest rate environment. So it's making affordability a really big issue. And because of that, when people are paying more in interest, they can't afford to pay at a higher price. But if we were able to offer an...

Hey guys, have you ever heard of a blended interest rate?

A blended interest rate is gonna become really important to a lot of us selling real estate in the coming months and years as these high interest rates stick with us.

So here's what a blended interest rate is:

Imagine a buyer has a budget, and they're gonna go out and buy, let's say, a $700,000 house. They have $100,000 down, and now they have $600,000 they're gonna finance. But they can't quite swing the high interest rates that are out there today. It's just gonna put 'em in a place where they can't afford it.

But they're willing to be creative and if you have a seller that's going to be creative, you can still put this deal together.

So here's an example:

Let's say that they were able to go out and get a first mortgage for $400,000 at the current interest rate. Let's call that 7.5%, which is probably where it's headed pretty quick. And the seller was willing to carry a...

I had one of my best agents come to me a couple years ago and she said, "Jim, I got a listing that's priced right. And we're getting showings. But we're not selling the property."

And I said okay, let's go take a look at it. So I made an appointment with her and we went up and looked at the property. And immediately when I pulled up, I knew what the problem was. The property had a steep driveway. And I told her I bet a lot of people were commenting on the driveway. And she said, "Yes, true. We're getting a lot of negative comments on the driveway. And I think that's really the biggest reason why people aren't, you know, looking at the house. Or looking at the house, but then rejecting it."

So we went in and explained to the sellers that they can have the best price property in the world. And actually, have the best house in the world, but that driveway could be the stumbling block for getting it sold.

So I'm gonna give you a...

What is the meaning of measuring market intensity and why does it matter?

Market intensity is an interesting way to look at the market. I was given this idea by my friend, Lennox Scott. So when we look at market intensity, the way we measure it is by how fast listings are going pending the first 30 days they hit the market. So if we go back in time and look a year ago in a lot of markets across the country, when you look at how many listings were going pending in the first 30 days, it was like 80%, 85%, 90% of listings were going pending at that point.

Fast forward to today: What's that market intensity reading? I'll tell you what mine is. For the last two weeks, in my local market that number is 60%. 60% of listings are going pending in the first 30 days.

It's still a high number. It's a lot, but it's not 80%. It's not 85%.

So that market intensity comes down a few notches, and that's the conversation we need to be...