How to not get stung with your listings in the coming weeks

Anthony: Price your listings correctly. Price your listings correctly. That means actually pricing them either at a minimum competitively with what others have recently sold at or a bit low. The game’s about to change over the next seven days folks and I want to talk about this. This is a follow-up to the video that I did the other day when I was on the ski lift with my son and I was talking about what’s going on in the market.

Anthony Lammachia here with Crush It In Real Estate, and I just want to discuss this for a few minutes because I want to save many of you from getting stung in the months to come because many of you are on the road to get stung. Here’s why. I went over this in my predictions. If you haven’t read my predictions, I don’t care where you are in North America, you should. Anthonyspredictions.com, I laid out all of 2023, and there’s several things that I went over. One of them was how, from January 15th to April 15th, we would be back to multiple offer situations and lots of competition. That would create an atmosphere where many agents would think, “Oh, it’s all back. Things are back where they were. Multiple offer situations. The whole slowdown because of interest rates is gone. Buyers have adapted, blah, blah, blah.”

What I explained the other day when I was on the ski lift is that is not the case. We are just in our typical winter slowdown, particularly in the northern states where there’s not enough sellers listing. There’s buyers, they start to fight over properties, and this happens every year at this time. This even happen in OH, just so you know. Not to this extent as far as multiple offers goes because we had dramatically, dramatically more sellers on the market and a hangover of inventory from ’07. Sorry to distract you on that but follow me here.

We’re in a very peculiar situation where there’s a lack of seller’s listing, and when that happens, even if you don’t have a ton of buyer demand, it creates an atmosphere of, “Everything is selling quick.” Don’t be fooled. There’s some stuff selling quick right now. There’s multiple offers on many properties but it doesn’t quite have the same zip that it did a year and two years ago. If you pay very close attention, there’s not as many offers. There is contingencies involved and the offer is much more often now. Not every time but more often. Buyers are willing to walk away. It’s a little different but it is an atmosphere that could fool you, so make sure when you’re pricing your listings, you are pricing more aggressively.

Those of you that are watching in Florida, I see some people in Florida, and in Austin, Texas, Austin, Texas is up to five months of inventory, Florida is headed there. You have to price under what the recent solds have listed at. Absolutely have to. In New England and in northern states, I will be saying the same thing to you guys within four or five months. Same with west coast. You have to. If you look at a neighborhood and everything’s sold between 800 and 900, you got to go at 789, okay?

Right now, in the northern states, we’re still experiencing multiple offers. If everything’s selling in the neighborhood between 800 and 900 depending upon quality, you’ll be okay going in that range. Try to keep it on the lower side and you’ll be better off. If you don’t, you will be caught with a listing that doesn’t sell or five of them that don’t sell in the coming months. That’s what we’re headed for here. There’s going to be a lot of agents that are going to get wake-up calls and get their bell rung.

I’ve said this before in many trainings and in many keynotes that I’ve done. If you think having a buyer who can’t land a property in multiple offer situations and gets frustrated with you, if you think that’s aggravating, you haven’t seen nothing until you get a seller whose home isn’t selling and they blame you. Us, realtors, we get more credit than we deserve when homes sell fast. That’s a fact, we do. We get more blame than we deserve when homes don’t sell. It’s just the way it goes. Make sure to do your job like Mr. says. Price correctly. Have conversations with sellers. Have conversations with sellers.

Anything that’s listing in the next three weeks has to be treated differently than the last three or four. You need to have conversations with sellers, and you just say, “Hey, look, we’re going over that beginning of March threshold now. A lot more inventory’s going to start coming on.” Now is it going to be as much as a normal March? No. Because we have this lock-in effect with sellers who don’t want to give up their interest rate, but is it way more than we’ve seen in the last eight weeks? Of course, there’s no question about that. Way more inventories are going to come on over the next four weeks, so you’ve got to treat those sellers differently.

You’ve got to have those conversations. Remember one of the seasonal business that has seasonal swings and you have to know what goes on in every single season so that you can do things correctly. Rosie, right there, one of our top realtors in the North Shore, she said, “Pre-game the price adjustment conversation.” 100%, in our online training center, we have a whole course on price adjustments, and the course starts at the listing appointment. That’s confused some people.

They say, “Why does it start there?” Because the price adjustment conversation and the preparation leading up to it starts long before. If you don’t do the preparation leading up to it, you’re going to get stung. Here’s the truth, folks, no matter what I say, there’s going to be thousands of thousands of realtors that get stung this year because we’re in an adjustment year. Last year was the beginning of the adjustment but we’re still in it.

Interest rates are also touching right under 7%. Some people are being quoted over 7, the average interest rate, according to Mortgage daily news, which I have on my phone, it’s still at about 6.88. If you read on my predictions, anthonyspredictions.com, I said that rates would go up. I said that in the middle of December and they would go up again before they went down. I’m right so far. I said, “I thought they would likely go over seven for a period of time.” That hasn’t quite happened but I’m almost there.

Truthfully, I hope it doesn’t happen. I hope I’m not right because if I am right, it’s going to slow things down more. These couple of things, these conversations with sellers have got to be different now. We’re going over the March first threshold plus rates are higher. Rates are much higher than they were four, five, six weeks ago. You’ve got to be tougher on your sellers or in April, May, June, July, you’re going to get stung and you’re going to think of this video.

That’s all, guys. I’m headed out for my fourth day of skiing with the kids. I’ve been up north in ski country since Tuesday. Today’s our last day and then we’re heading home. All right. Have a good day, everybody. Happy home selling. Remember what I said, check out anthonyspredictions.com. They’re long but they go over many things in the market. I even lay out the whole season and it applies nationally. That’s all, guys. Have a good day.