Anthony: “My lease is expiring in a month. I’m just going to sign for another year. My lease is coming up. I’m just going to sign for another year. What am I going to do? I can’t find a place, I’ll just sign my lease for another year.” You have to have a rebuttal to that, folks. You have to have a prepared response, and your prepared response should be the truth. Mrs. Buyer, Ms. Buyer, Mr. Buyer, if you sign for another year at this time of year, you are going to be in the exact same situation one year from now.

You continue to have your lease expire at the wrong time. Every single year, regardless of market, there is a lot of buyers out, between January and March and there is a lack of listings, especially up here in the Northern States. Some type of response like that needs to happen, folks, then you need to go on, explain a little bit further, and break it down. What I would recommend to these buyers is, I would tell the truth. Listen Mrs. Buyer, if you want to sign a lease, see if you can get your landlord to do another six months, or do another eight months.

It’s unlikely that they will, but at least give it a try. You’ve got to try to get your lease so that it expires either in the summer or the fall. It’s going to be harder to get it to expire in the fall, but at least make an attempt to get it to expire in summer. You can either sign a very short-term lease, or sign an 18-month lease. Don’t do a 12-month lease, because if you do a 12-month, you’re going to be in the same situation one year from now. Folks, are you having that conversation with buyers?

This is obviously more about first-time buyers than any others, but you need to explain this sort of thing. They need to understand what is going on, and what is happening. Let me tell you something interesting, when you point this out to them– God, it’s cold, yes? When you point this out to them, and you not only point it out, but you show them some reports– If you’re here in Massachusetts, log on to marealestateupdates.com, if you’re in New Hampshire, nhrealestateupdates.com, Connecticut, ctrealestateupdates.com.

Even in Florida, they don’t have the seasonal swings to the extent that we do in the Northern states, but they have seasonal swings. I will tell you, as long as I’ve been doing this, 18 years, coming up on 19, there’s always a frenzy in the beginning of the year. This is what amazes me. There’s realtors right now that are surprised. They’re like, “Wow, I can’t believe, it’s like 2020 all over again.” First of all, it’s not, there’s not as many offers, there’s not as much buyer demand, but there does seem to be a lot of buyer demand, because inventory is low.

You need to explain to your buyers that if you keep having your lease expire when inventory is low, you’re going to keep running into this problem. Those are the kinds of things that I will be explaining on Thursday, at our annual Crush It in Real Estate event. For those of you that are watching and those of you that think, “Oh, I don’t need events, I don’t need things like that,” there are many, many little nuances right now. Little, little things, little talking points, things that you should be explaining to buyers.

To sellers, now that the market has shifted– If you are one of these people that actually thinks that what happened in the fall is gone, it’s behind us, it’ll be another 10 years before that happens. You are wrong. You are wrong. It might be 10 years before we have it to that extent. Q4 was the slowest Q4 since 2010, but I will tell you, because I lived this once before, the real estate market slowdown that happened in ’08, it started in the fall of ’05, then the fall of ’06, then it was half of ’07, then it was all of ’08.

These things take time. Now, this is not going to be like that. That was a whole different story. We had an insane amount of inventory, but we are in for a couple of year change here, and you need to be prepared for it, you need to know what to say to your buyers. If you are having this come up with buyers, you need to know how to respond to it. If you want to really sharpen up on your skills and have a big 2023, you’ll be there on Thursday, this Thursday, February 9th, at the DCU Center in Worcester.

Last I checked, last night, we had close to 900 realtors signed up. I expect it to go over a thousand, and then because we’re talking about realtors, it’ll end up at 600, 700, which is typically what we have. That’s all, folks. My son’s basketball game’s about to start. They were warming up and I decided to come out here, do this video, and talk to you all. Now I’m trying to open a gate as I’m talking to you, and it’s freezing. My hands are freezing, so I need to go now. You have a wonderful day.