Read the blog below:
Anthony Lamacchia: Now, I want to talk to you about the six things that you can start doing right now. Get your pen or start typing, I’m going to roll right through these with you and tell you what they are because you can start as soon as today. When I get to the last one, you’ll understand why I’m going to say not that only you can start as soon as today, you had better be starting as soon as today, because believe me when I tell you– Wow, look at all the emails coming in.
This is great. John , I don’t know you but you did a lot of short sales. Oh, good for you. Now, I lost my train of thought. Six things you can do. Number one, to start doing right now if you haven’t already. No selling, be compassionate. Don’t be trying to sell people right now. Don’t be trying to push sellers into listing, don’t be trying to push buyers into buying. It’s a terrible way to be. People are very nervous right now. Every day, they’re talking about people dying.
We’re still in the midst of a crisis. I think we’re getting to the third quarter of it. I think we’re going to start looking up, but we’re still in it. Don’t be pushing people, don’t be selling, don’t be forcing people to do things. Be compassionate, be there for them, have a heart, check in with them, see how they’re doing, see how their family is. You know what? I have news for you. By taking this tact initially, in the next few weeks, you’ll do less business.
By being a little more laid back, you might do a little less business. “Hey, you know what? Just checking in. How are you? I wanted to see if you do want me to send you some properties, I’ll send them to you. No pressure. Mr. Seller, it’s totally up to you, if you’d like to list your home. If you want to list it now, I’ll do that for you. If you don’t, I’m happy to wait three weeks, I don’t think you’ll be in a bad position if you wait.” Taking that attitude will make it so that a couple more buyers delay buying, a couple more sellers delay selling.
I have news for you, that’s the right way to be right now. In our business, when you are a salesperson people notice it, they pick up on it, they can smell it, and they don’t like it. I’ll tell you, I’ve never been more irritated with salespeople as I have been in the last three weeks. I got people emailing me with this product, that product, “Anthony, now’s the time.” “Get the hell out of here.” Now’s not the time for some fancy new widget.
Now’s the time to steady the ship, make sure that we’re riding okay, that everybody’s okay, the agents are okay, our clients are okay, our staffs are okay. That’s what I’m concerned about. You, as a realtor with your business, you should be concerned about your family, your friends, your clients, your buyers, your sellers, making sure everybody’s okay and everybody’s in the know. That’s what’s key right now.
That’s number one. No selling, be compassionate. This is in the blog section of crushitinre.com. Number two, get in touch with every single past client, every one of them. I don’t want to hear excuses- unless you hated them, unless they were a horrible client. That’s different. Brian Buffini says, “You want to keep 65% of your clients for life.” Well, right now, I’ll tell you something, the clients that were a pain in the ass that you didn’t maybe like so much, that were cocky.
People are getting real humbled right now, believe me. I would call even the ones that you didn’t like so much. Say, hello, check-in, text them, see how they’re doing. This thing right here will eventually make you more money than anything else you could use. This is the time to literally go through your contacts, top to bottom, and check-in with everybody and see how they’re doing, see if they’re doing okay, particularly the buyers that you sold homes to in the last two years.
I know there’s friends- I mentioned Savannah down in Georgia. Savannah has probably sold 100 buyers’ homes in the last two years. If I’m Savannah, I’m contacting every single one of them- knowing her she already did, in the next two days. “Hey, how are you?” Text them. You can cut and paste the darn text, guys. “Hey, how’s things going? You’re doing okay?” You’ve got to check in with them. If you think they might have a financial problem, check-in with them.
I have a friend that I texted over the weekend. I said, “Hey, you’re doing all right right now?” “Oh, yes, I’m doing fine.” I said, “Yes, but are you really doing okay? I know you were having a little trouble before. I just want to make sure. If you need any help, let me know.” This person sent me back the most loving, nice text message I probably ever got in my life because I showed that I give a damn and they know I would have helped if they needed it. You got to care for people. You need to show you care.
There’s no time for laziness right now. That’s one thing I’m going to talk about. That’s my last item. Get in touch with every single one of them, period, end of story, no excuses. Now, be the resource. That’s a big one. This ties into, and this is exactly why I went over the 10 steps realtors should take to show a home. I also talked to you about our information page. We have a realtor resource page. Look what I’m doing for you. I’m being a resource to you.
If you log on to crushitinre.com and you click on the realtor resource page, you will see a whole bunch of resources with a whole bunch of things for you. Now, if you jump over to lamacchiarealty.com, in the top bar, you will see right in orange, there’s a bar there- of course, now it’s being slow. Click here to view our COVID-19 resource page, excuse me, you click on that, then you’ll see a bunch of video updates that I’ve done for buyers and sellers, blogs that we put out.
We just put out a blog yesterday about fire inspections, and how the law has changed in Massachusetts- I shouldn’t say changed. The law is temporarily changed whereas sellers don’t have to get the inspection, buyers can do it 90 days after closing. We put the law in there, we put the Mass Association of Realtors addendum in there for buyer and seller to sign, we put recommendations on how we think sellers should still get the house up to snuff and have it ready. We put in all my update videos.
We have a complete homeowner mortgage assistance section that explains a whole bunch of things. There’s also a section with clickable links. Guys, go rip them off, I don’t care. Go take them. You click on Quicken Loans Rocket Mortgage and it’s going to immediately pop up the information, go cut and paste it, and send it to your client. If they are telling you, “Yes, I’m a little nervous. Honestly, I’m nervous about my mortgage payment.” Billy works bartending at night and now he’s not doing that.
I do this during the day and now I’m laid off. Hey, listen, understandable. Everyone’s going through this. Let’s do this in steps. Let’s first find out who owns your loan. I’m going to send you a link, guys, rip off our link, send it to the client, let them see who owns the home– I’m sorry, who owns the loan? Then go right back. You don’t have to tell them Lamacchia is involved if you don’t want to, I don’t care. “Who services your loan?” “Oh, my loan is serviced by Wells Fargo.”
Great, go click on our Wells Fargo link, take the darn information and send it to your client. Be the resource, you’ve got to be the resource for your client. It’s super important to do that. Anything that involves their home, you want them thinking of you and thinking of you first, not selling them on anything. When you’re talking to them, you are doing this in a genuine effort to help them keep their home that you sold to them. No one, and I mean, this sincerely.
No one should be doing it with a mindset of, “Well, I hope they have to sell the home because that’s better for me.” No, that’s crap. These people will lose their home, help them keep it, do all you can. If eventually, in six months or a year they’re like, “You know what? We just want to downsize.” Fine, do your job and sell their home. That will happen. You should genuinely be trying to help them keep their home.
That’s the business we’re in, it being in real estate, being realtors. That’s what we do, we help people achieve home ownership. It’s one of the most sacred things in the world for hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s part of the reason that we have, as a country, one of the best, most functional societies because people have a stake in the ground of what they own and they take care of it, it gives me chills just thinking about it.
That’s another item. Number one, no selling, be compassionate. Number two, get in touch with every past client. Number three, be the resource. Those are three important things you can start doing today, today. Now, number four, watch inventory levels. This is more of a tactical item. It’s going to be very important for you to really know what you’re doing. Lala land is over.
You might think it’s not, a month from now, six, eight weeks from now, because you’re like, “Wow, it’s busy again.” Yes, it’s going to be busy again because it’s going to be pent up demand that comes back out, but I’ll be real surprised. I will be shocked. It’ll probably be the shock of my career, if we go through the whole year, and we don’t have a slowdown, I’m telling you, it’s impossible. It’s also an election year.
The election years and the falls of election years, those are particularly slower. Now we’ve got a double whammy, job loss that going on, we’re going to see it get a little bit slower. You’ve got to watch inventory levels of homes for sale in your market. It is critically, critically important that you do that. All right, now, we watch it on a state level. We’ve been doing that for 10 years.
I’ve reported to you, guys, on a lot of that data, how many homes are for sale. Now, what you need to do, and we’re going to start doing it as a company, we’re going to start tracking the inventory– Well, we do do it but we don’t do a weekly. Inventory of homes for sale in our office towns and all the towns around them. We’re also doing it statewide. If I’m a realtor right now watching, I don’t care where you are. We have people watching, I’m scrolling, I can see people all over the country watching.
Derek Coats, a friend from Arizona. Great guy. Go on and look how many homes are for sale in your market right now? How many were on last week, the week before? You want to know my recommendation? Go back a year. Every single week, do an on a market snapshot, build a spreadsheet and start tracking it because let me tell you, you need to watch that. The town you’re in and all the towns around you, all the towns that you serve.
I don’t mean a town an hour away that you help one random buyer or seller twice a year. I mean the towns that you’re in every day. You have got to track that inventory. Start learning it now. Now’s the time. Not tomorrow, not in a week, guys. There’s no time for laziness now. Now, we’re going to find out who’s good in this business. Okay? That’s what we’re going to find out. You need to watch inventory levels.
Now, I’m going to help you get an idea of what’s going to happen with inventory in a month and in two months if you participate in the survey. I can’t ask you enough. Please make sure, I only see about a hundred emails there. Guys, we want to get like 300. We want at least 300 emails so that we can send you this survey. It’s a six-question survey. It’s very very simple and it’s going to ask you six questions about the market.
What percentage of your buyers- and we’ve made it multiple choice. Literally, you go in and click, click, click. You’re done. What percentage of your buyers are holding off because of COVID-19 financial fears? What percentage of your sellers are holding off because they’re worried about COVID-19 coming into their home? Blah, blah, blah. Very simple questions. Please participate. We’re going to share the data with you. If you participate, we share it with you. If you don’t, you won’t see the results.
These results are going to help you immensely and they’re going to better educate you so that you can properly quantify what’s going to happen with the market and predict what’s going to happen with the market, which is what we’re going to try to do. You can do it as well and it’ll help you out. Make sure to watch inventory levels. Like I said, go on the MLS, pull up an unmarked snapshot, pull up a spreadsheet, start listing the amount of homes for sale in every single market that you work in.
It’s critically important. Number five. Master pricing and price adjustments. When I say master, I can’t emphasize that word enough. If you in the last three years have struggled to get sellers to the right price, you’re going to struggle more. I have news for you. Okay? Yes, more sellers get it. You know the difference between these and ’08- and there’s a lot of differences.
This isn’t going to get as bad, but the difference- but I keep referencing ’08 because that was the last time the market went down. It took a year and a half for sellers to get it last time, that the market had changed. That the economy had changed. Now, it’s not taken a year and a half. It’s taken like two weeks. That’s going to help you, but you’re still going to have sellers that give you speeches about their posts and all these things that they have that are better at their home, their chandeliers, their baseboards, their window trim.
Believe me, you’re going to run into that. Okay. The art of pricing is critically important. You need to practice, even if you need to get with other realtors in your company, you need to practice. We do offer a course. If you’re here in our state, you can take that course. No, no, no. I’m sorry. If you’re a realtor at Lamacchia, obviously you get that course. If you are a realtor out of state, you can get your hands on that course that we have on getting price adjustments.
That’s my one plug of the day, an hour of discussion, one plug on a course that we have on obtaining price adjustments. Your ability to obtain price adjustments needs to be up here by August. If it’s not, you’re going to be in trouble. If you want to read a blog about price adjustments, we have one on Lamacchia Realty, The Art of a Price Adjustment. Go check that out. That’s step one to you, learning or working to improve your price adjustment skills.
I’ve noticed even the people that were very good at, this is like whoa, got to get the dust off and get ready because this is a new market. Pricing and price adjustments is critically important. Now, part of getting good at that is knowing your inventory, knowing the percentage of properties that go under agreement, knowing the data. That’s why I mentioned that previously. Okay?
Last but not least, I probably should’ve put this one first. Don’t sit around feeling bad for yourself. Take action. Can’t emphasize this enough. I have news for you guys that might not surprise you or it may surprise you. In the last three weeks, I have increased the amount of work that I do in a day by probably four hours. I’ve worked harder in the last three weeks than I have in some time. January was an unusual period.
We had an acquisition and it was more than normal, but these last three weeks, I have hit the accelerator. I’ve increased the volume. If you want to thrive- because that’s the thing, guys. If you’re at right now in your brain, you’re thinking survival, you’re already in the wrong place. Your mind is mentally already in the wrong place. This isn’t about survival. This is about thriving. There’s a difference. This is about thriving.