Read the blog below:
Anthony: Not enough listings, everyone is complaining about it, buyers, realtors, even sellers because many of them are buyers. In about two minutes, I’m going to take you all through a training for probably 20 or 30 minutes. Never know with me, it could go on for 40, but I’m thinking about 20 or 30. We’re going to talk specifically about this dilemma in the market. This is a training for realtors across North America. I don’t care if you are around the corner competing with my company directly. If you’re in Canada, I don’t care where you are, but I want to go over this with you because I want to help increase inventory.
This is my part to try to teach more realtors how to talk to sellers so that sellers can understand how they can protect themselves, so that sellers can feel more confident so that they’re willing to list their home. I’ve noticed the more people that take this training from me, the more listings they’re getting. I made a certain decision over the weekend and I’m going to talk to you about that. I’m going to offer you all something that I’ve never ever offered before because I am determined to lift inventories. I’m going to delay here about 60 more seconds and allow more and more people to get on and then we’re going to get the party started. I’m already burning up.
I think they got the heat on in here, although it is a cold day. We’re going to talk about this dilemma in the market. We’re going to talk about how to solve it, how we realtors can come together, work together, and improve this. I’m absolutely positive of that in certain things have happened over the last week, certain conversations I’ve had with realtors over the last week that have made me say, “You know what? I can have an impact on this. I can have a direct impact on getting more people to list their homes.” That’s why I said it’s time to get on, do a training, share everything with people, talk openly about different things that us realtors are doing wrong.
Remember the video that I did right over there the other day and I said, “Sorry guys, it’s your fault. It’s our fault.” Home sellers and home buyers take a tremendous amount of direction from us realtors. I remember like yesterday in 2007 when people not being not able to afford their homes was new to us. People being upside down was new to us. I remember when realtors in those days would say, “I’m not showing a short sale. I’m not showing a foreclosure. Within 18 months everybody was showing them.” No one really knew how to deal with those types of circumstances. Within 18 months, most realtors knew how to deal with it, many still didn’t.
The point I’m getting at is as time goes on, more and more realtors were learning how to deal with this. I want to speed up that curve because I want to see more inventory. Our market is in crisis mode. Let me get the party started. Not enough listings, legitimate housing crisis. It’s interesting because 12 years ago they said housing crisis. This is a different housing crisis. It’s the opposite way. I was doing a training here a couple of weeks ago at our company and I was saying guys, in 2009, housing inventory was up here. There was too much housing inventory. I know there’s tons of people watching across America but as an example, we reached 47,000 homes for sale at that time.
Right now at this moment, the inventory went like this. Right now at this moment, we are about at 6,500 in Massachusetts. That’s how low it is. I talked to someone today who said to me, “Well, Anthony, let’s say double the amount of homes come on. Would that be enough?” I said, “No, no, no. We need to multiply it by like three times to catch up with demand.” Now we have dramatically more buyers than we had in ’09 but dramatically less sellers. The whole thing is completely flipped or I guess I should do that if I’m trying to match the illustration behind me. Think about that.
What do we do about it? Well, we can be normal humans and just walk around complaining about it and saying, “There’s not enough people listing their homes. Oh my God, there’s not enough inventory. This is so frustrating. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it,” or we can all do a better job at learning how to deal with it. Learning how to deal with it. That’s what’s important. There’s market forces that are making this happen. When I think about it, I was talking to one of our top realtors today. When I think about it, there’s really three reasons or more than three, but let’s go over the top three.
There’s not enough inventory and that creates not enough inventory because many sellers are like, “Oh, yes. I want to list but where the hell am I going to go?” That’s by far and away the biggest problem. There are also still a lot of sellers who are nervous to have people in their home because of COVID. As vaccines go up, that will improve. I promise you it will get better. It will. I also think something just recently changed, especially here in Massachusetts in the last two weeks, that will help this situation. School went back in session pretty much everywhere. I have four children. They’re all going to school every morning.
Now, sellers who didn’t want to have people into their home because they’re like, “How are people going to see my home when I got one kid over here and one kid over there?” That was a problem. Sellers also couldn’t go to work. They couldn’t run their normal schedule. It was hard to leave the house. That’s going to have an impact. That’s going to help, but we still have this massive imbalance. Right no, it’s this way. We have this massive imbalance. What do we do about it? The first thing we do, there’s some don’ts. There are some things that we should stop doing.
Maybe I’ll just write them here. I’m going to write them right here. Stop talking too much about home selling in five seconds. I’m going to write here too strong. I’m just going to say, “Stop talking too strong.” You guys get the point. I don’t need to like write it out for you, but that’s a big issue. Sometimes I hear realtors in our offices in other companies, “Oh, I’ve listed a home over there last week, and the home sold.” In 12 minutes, we had 47 offers. We had people beating the door down. The police had to come because of the traffic. That’s scaring more sellers.
I’ve been guilty of it. I was on the news. I was on Channel 5 two months ago. Our vice president of operations, Angela, said to me, “Anthony, that’s not going to help the market at all. More sellers are going to be scared.” I knew she was right, but I couldn’t resist the news, nor would anybody on here. The point I’m getting at is when you’re talking directly to a seller and a seller tells you, “Oh, I live on Robbins Road.” “Oh, fantastic. I’ve recently sold some homes over there. I’ve helped some people sell and find new homes.” Notice how I stated that. I didn’t tell the rest of the story.
See, 10 years ago, it was cool to say, “I sold that house in a week for asking price. I sold that house in three days for 97% of asking price.” I was the king of, “Sold in X days. Sold in X days.” Now, that’s scaring people. We all need to tone that down. When you say, “Oh, you want to sell on Robbins Road. Fantastic, I recently sold the home on Russell Avenue, on Barnard, in Garfield. I’m very familiar with the area. I recently helped a nice family sell and move somewhere else and they were very excited.
Do you get it? Zip it, zip it because when you start getting into, “I sold the house in five minutes, there was a line out the door, down the street.” Guys, we’re all able to pull that off now. None of us are housing market superman or superwoman. We’re all able to get tons of people to the house for this reason right here, 6,500 homes for sale compared to 47,000 in 2009. We’re all able to do it. If you look at national statistics, they are just as warped.
Housing inventory in Massachusetts right now is down 40% from last year, 60% from two years ago. Nationally, it’s about the same. Canada, it’s about the same. I study many markets. It’s all down about 40% to 50% from a year ago, 60% to 65%, 70% from two years ago. It is what it is. I think we all need to tone that down a little bit, particularly when you are talking to a prospect.
They don’t want to hear that. What they want to hear is some comforting words. They want to hear, “Oh, so you’re looking to sell and buy something bigger. Okay, yes. That sounds great. I’m sure you might be a little concerned about where are you going to go and how are you going to time this all correctly.” Do you follow me? That’s what you have to talk to them about.
They’ll say, “Yes, I am a little concerned about-” “All right, well not to worry. I do this kind of thing all the time. I deal with these situations all the time. There’s protections that we can put in the MLS. There’s things we can put in your contract like your home sales subject to you finding suitable housing. Don’t worry. We’re going to cover all that. Let’s just get together so I can see your home. We’ll start there and then we’ll talk about a plan. Let’s not even worry about listing your home at this moment. Let’s just get together and talk about a game plan of what it would look like.”
Follow me? That’s what I’m talking about. Not, “I’ll sell the home in five minutes. There’s going to be a line of cars down the street.” When you say that, you’re pushing them further and further away and we are all doing it and we have to stop. In addition, we all need to start to get used to these contingencies and get back used to being acquainted with and accustomed to domino sales. Sales that are subject to someone finding a home, subject to another sale. We all, all have to get back to being good at that. That’s the way it goes. Markets change.
I was talking to a great realtor couple of weeks ago that said to me, “When I got in this business eight years ago, I used to dream of getting a client that was selling and buying. Now, I just want a seller. I just want a seller who’s selling and moving and that’s it.” I laughed. I said, “Boy, good point, huh.” The reason I’m talking to you all about this is because I want to make a difference. I know that together we can all make a difference. How? We can talk to sellers more carefully, explain to sellers that they need a plan, explain to sellers that you will be their guide, make sure sellers are clear that you will not allow them to be homeless.
That is our job as realtors. The root of what we do is homeownership. We don’t want to sell someone’s home and have them have no place to go. That would be horrible. If that happens, because they want it to happen, fine, but if they don’t want it to happen, then shame on you, shame on we as realtors because it’s our job to watch out for them. We need to make sure that they’re comfortable.
The problem right now, and I mentioned this in my video the other day, is what most sellers are saying to realtors is I’m not ready. I guess I could have kept writing the list of don’ts. If I wrote a list of dos, it would be show empathy. Get them to understand that you’re there for them. Get them to understand that you have their back, but the other thing that you need to do, and I probably should have talked about this sooner, is you need to not be so quick to believe a seller when they say they’re not ready.
Remember the video that I did over the other day and I told you a small part of a story. You’re going to hear more of the story later, you’re going to hear every detail. I dealt with someone last summer who’s a friend and a business associate, who called me to sell on a Sunday. They were all gung ho about selling. Monday, “Oh, we don’t want to sell. Spoke to my husband, we’ve decided we’re not ready.”
8 out of 10 realtors that hear that would go, “Okay, no problem. I’ll check back with you in a few weeks.” Then 8 out of 10 realtors would check back go, “Hi, you’re ready? Just checking in. Hey, wanted to see if you’re ready. Hey, are you ready?” That’s boring typical realtor follow-up. What did I do in that situation? I called that person that Monday, had a lengthy discussion. I said, “Listen, if you do not want to do this, that’s fine with me. It makes no difference to me, but here’s how it’s going to go.
You’re going to say you’re not ready, you’re going to go out and look at homes on weekends with your husband, you’re going to come across something you like. It’ll probably be on a Saturday and at night at 5:00 AM at a very inconvenient time. You’ll end up wanting to make an offer. You’re going to call me frantic. I’m going to have to get you connected with a realtor. It’s going to be frantic. You’re not going to have an updated pre-approval. We’re going to try to get one. You’re going to submit an offer. It’s not going to be accepted. You’re going to get frustrated and that’s because we have no plan in place.
We don’t have a, okay, we’ll get this ready, this ready, this ready so that when this happens, we do this and if that happens, we do that.” Humans love to know what to expect, so I went over this with this person. “Okay, I’ll talk to my husband.” Tuesday morning, “We’re ready.” If I didn’t make that call, that never would have happened. Fast forward about seven weeks, the person texted me a wonderful picture of their child and said, “My child wouldn’t be swimming in this pool right now if you never called me again that day. We’re in our new home. Thank you so much.”
Honestly, it gives me goosebumps talking about it. It touched my heart. I said, “This is cool.” I don’t talk directly to very many buyers and sellers anymore other than ones that come to me through my sphere and I pass up, but it felt nice. The problem is, I am not criticizing. I’m not here to say, “Look what I did and no one else does.” Please don’t take it that way. What I’m pointing out to you is 8 out of 10 realtors would have heard that and said, “Okay, I’ll check back with you.” Three weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, there would have been no sale.
If more realtors knew how to angle in and say, “Hang on, hang on. I understand you’re not ready to list. Honestly, right now you have no plan. You shouldn’t list your home because you’re not ready, but we should talk about what a plan would look like when you get there. Let’s talk about a couple of options. There’s different things we can discuss in the what-ifs that go along with it. Let’s start there.” If more realtors took that tact, they would get more people to list their homes.
I felt strongly about this for the last few years when we started talking about this three years ago on our trainings, but especially in the last three months, and I somewhat feel, like in the last week or two I feel more confident about this philosophy of mind than I ever, ever have before and here’s why. About 10 days ago we released a new course on our Online Training Center. This is the course I filmed about a month ago right here on a Saturday morning. Took me about three hours. We released that course.
I have since heard from five realtors, a couple in our company and three at other companies because we sell our training all over the country, all over Canada, we have awesome Canadian customers. I’ve heard from five realtors total in about the last 10 days that have said, “Anthony, I have to tell you something. I went on a listing appointment the other day that I never would have been able to go on if I didn’t watch your training because you taught me how to talk to these sellers. Now, not I only sign the listing, but they’re going to list soon and they weren’t planning on it.” That was one of the stories.
Another story was, “I went on a listing appointment. These people were adamant when I booked it that they would not list. I ended up watching your training and between booking and going on the appointment, when I went there, they decided to list with the contingencies you mentioned. Now, I’m putting the home on the market. I know that I’ll get under agreement and I’ll find them something else.”
Remember, there are cases, and I’ll talk about this in the training course, there are cases that you should tell a seller you’re not ready to list. You’ve got a seller that’s buying and they’re looking for something very specific, “Oh, I want to live within three streets in Watertown, four streets here in Fort Lauderdale.” You should tell them, “Whoa, that’s very specific, hold off,” but there’s many things they can do to get ready and that’s what we go over in this course.
I am here to sell you nothing, so don’t start jumping off thinking I want to sell you a course. I don’t care about selling you anything. We have enough customers. I’m here to tell you that I’m going to do something different than I’ve ever done and I explained it to the realtors in our company yesterday at monthly updates and I explained why I’m making an exception to the rule that we put in place in our training company and we made a promise to our realtors years ago I said, “I want to make an exception. I want to let everybody into this course for free for 14 days, just this course, not the rest of the Online Training Center but just this course.”
Because if 100 agents take this course, that’s probably 100 more listings that hit the market in the next couple of weeks. If 500 take it, that’s probably another 500 in the next couple of weeks and probably another 500 in the four weeks after because there’s more. Maybe I’ll only have this much of an impact on inventory nationally and internationally, and maybe this much in Massachusetts, but that’s more of an impact than I would have if I didn’t let people watch this course. There’s no hoax, there’s no strings. You just have to fill out your information and we’ll get you on the course.
Lindsay, why don’t we show them what it looks like so that they can actually see it? Can you share it on the screen? I probably should have warned you, you need a second. Put it on the screen, let’s show them so that they can see it. All right. She’s going to go to the page. Let’s skip, Lindsay, to page three just to show them because they’re just going to get access to the Sell/Buy Course. Right there. Awesome. This is the course that I filmed. There’s a welcome to the course, there’s understanding the client’s fears. I go much deeper than I just did. There’s the lead call. Realtors are tripping up on the lead call all the time without realizing that you’re steering people away.
There’s a story, the story I just told you parts of. There’s many more levels to that story. I explained the back and forth of that conversation with that seller to help it really resonate with people. I talked about the listing appointment, how you’ve got to navigate the listing appointment differently. You’ve got to pivot so that sellers can understand and so that they can– You got to remember we do this every day, my friends, they don’t. This is frightening to them.
I talk about the importance of the mortgage’s lender, the mortgage’s broker. I talk about getting ready to list and getting ready to buy. Those are two things that people aren’t doing. Then, we talk about when they find the right home, now what? Then, I have an interview with Darlene Umina. Click in on that just so they can see me and Darlene sitting in the back of the room talking. That’s a 20-minute discussion with Darlene.
We have several realtors in our company that are very, very good at navigating sell/buys. I find her to be one of the best I’ve ever seen. I had a discussion with her. One of the things Darlene talks about is how it is necessary to have a plan and how when she says to a seller, “Listen, we need to have a plan for you,” they bite on to that and they like it. I going into that there. There’s also other resources and several other things.
What Lindsay’s going to do now is she’s going to put the link. Well, it looks like she already put it on the screen, but she’s going to put the live link so you can just click in the comments. For the Lamacchia agents that are watching, you obviously don’t need to sign up for this because you have access to it in our company. For our training customers that are watching, you obviously don’t need to sign up because you’re already on it. For the rest of you, please, for the good of our real estate market, sign up, watch this course. I promise you, I swear to you, I guarantee you, you will end up signing up more listings and more listings sooner because of this course.
Now some of you are watching, saying, “Oh, listen to him, he’s doing this for selfish reasons.” I’m not going to lie. Of course, we’re going to get some benefit. People are going to get exposed to our training, but the biggest reason I’m doing it, I promise you is we have a major inventory crisis, major and someone needs to do something about it. Okay? That’s what I’m trying to do.
Click in, sign up. It says 14-day free access. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get start getting charged at some point,. If you sign up now, you can be taking this course in the next half an hour. It’s like two and a half hours long. You can watch it 15 times, I don’t care. You can print the resources, I don’t care, but I promise you you’ll list more homes. You’ll make more sellers feel comfortable. Go ahead and share this around your offices. That link that Lindsay’s posting. I don’t care. Send it out to every realtor in America, send it out to our biggest competitors, I don’t care. I don’t because I know this will have an impact on getting more homes on the market and we all need it. Everyone does.
That’s it my friends. I want to go home and see my kids before they go to bed. Good night.