Anthony: Is your listing not selling? Do you have a couple of listings that aren’t selling as fast or maybe they’re sitting there at this point? Folks, it’s August. Every single year in August, September, October, things are a little bit slower due to normal seasonality, but this year it’s worse because of what happened with interest rates, which caused the market shift, and it was somewhat of an abrupt market shift. If you aren’t prepared to deal with these things for your listings, you need to get in the game, folks.

Anthony Lamacchia here with Crush It in Real Estate. Just filmed four new videos for our buyer lead playbook course and Dave and I were talking about what’s going on in the market and one of the things that we discussed on the listing side is we’re hearing more and more agents across the country who are telling us, I only got three showings over the weekend. I don’t know what to do. I only got one offer. I even had an agent a month ago tell me, I only got five offers.

Those of you that have only been in the business two years or maybe even three years, you have really been spoiled. I don’t know how else to tell you, you’ve been spoiled. What we have seen in the last two years, in the second half of 2020, ’21, and the early part of 2022 is unrealistic. We were in a complete frenzy. Now we’re just in a hot market. Depending upon where you are in the country, there are areas of the country that are not hot but up here in the northeast, it’s still a hot market.

Florida is still a hot market. If you’re in a market that’s a little bit cooler, then what I’m telling you applies even more. Folks, you have to get back to the principles, back to the basics, back to things that you haven’t been doing for two years because you haven’t needed to like sitting with your seller and really truly going over comparative properties in the neighborhood, talking about how some of them that got a premium this past spring, well, they got that premium because they went under contract last winter when interest rates were 3% or 4% and there was a quarter of the inventory that there is now.

You have to actually show that to your sellers and make sure that they understand the difference in the market. If you price many homes the same way that some recent ones sold in the last two months, you will end up sitting on them, especially as we get into fall. You have to have those conversations upfront. You also have to talk to your sellers about how you’re going to know if the price is right or wrong within 15, 20, 21 days, and if it’s not, a price adjustment will have to be discussed. Those are the kinds of things that you have to do and then when you list the property, one thing Dave just said is, little things add up to big things.

All the little things that we teach and preach in our courses, you didn’t have to do a lot of them over the last couple of years. Well, now you do. This is a public video going out on Crush It, so some of you are probably wondering, how do I get my hands on those videos? Well, if you’re somewhere in a market that we’re not, you can buy our courses. If you’re in a market that we are in, you can’t buy our courses. The only way to get them is to be a part of our company, but some of those pointers that I just gave you, you need to be put into play with your clients.

Here’s another one. The worst thing you can do with a listing that isn’t selling is not to be in touch with your seller often. It’s the worst thing you can do. You don’t get in touch with them often, they’re going to hate you, they’re going to blame you, and they’re going to ask you things like, what are you doing to sell my home? Which is an infuriating question to hear if you are working hard.

The last thing I want to mention is what Dave said before, and I probably should have mentioned this earlier. We’re in a market situation, we’ve been in a market situation over the last two years where a lot of realtors have gotten fooled into thinking that they’re truly special. I’m so special. I sell all my listings in three hours, and I hate to break it to you, but you’re not and that just is what it is.

When you are in a market with three homes for sale in cities and towns that have 40,000, 50,000 and 60,000 people, there’s bound to be a frenzy over people trying to buy those homes, and that’s what happened over the last two years. Remember, COVID drove inventory down. The low rates, when COVID drove inventory down, Federal Reserve stepped in and did things to lower interest rates. So inventory went down, which does what to prices? When you drive down supply, it drives prices up. To make the demand even stronger, interest rates went down, so we had a double whammy and that’s why prices went up as much as they did.

You might think you’re amazing. In most cases, you are probably not. Maybe you are someone who does all the little things. Maybe you are someone who markets like crazy and does go the extra mile for your listings. If you are, good for you, that’s great, but like Dave said, and like I’m telling you now, the market forces had an even larger impact and that’s what you’re going to learn this fall and you’re going to learn into next year. Beginning of the year, winter inventory will go down because of seasonality. Homes will start selling fast again, but by the time we get to this time next year, I think we’ll see a similar market that we’re in now.

It’s going to be like that for a couple of years while things adjust. So make sure to change your expectations, change your sellers’ expectations, have the right conversations on the front end so that later on you’re not stuck with a listing that’s not selling and your sellers mad at you, and you might do all that correctly and still run into that, into that, that happens, but you want to give it the best in advance. Dave, did I forget anything?

Dave: I think you got it. Good job.

Anthony: All right, Thank you very much. Happy home selling, folks.