Being agents on the front line, by now you’ve all heard and maybe felt the winds of change in the real estate market. The “easy” times of a fast-selling market where homes sold within one weekend or even one day are coming to an end. Sellers are actually starting to negotiate now as their homes sit a while longer. In the booming market of the last few years, it didn’t require much work to sell a home when buyers were practically fighting each other for them. Now that rates are “high”, buyers’ buying power has been reduced, and fear has set in for both buyers and sellers. What’s an agent to do to keep business steady? These are my notes that I picked up from seasoned Exp Realty agents at our recent Shareholders Summit. At Exp Realty, we’re all about sharing knowledge and helping other agents out regardless of brokerage. If you found it useful, leave a comment or like, and share it with someone else that might benefit. Feel free to share what you’re doing to adapt to this shifting market.
- Reach out to past clients. Create your database of past clients, ideally utilizing a real estate-focused CRM like KVcore to help you stay organized and simplify contacting them all. Whenever a major change happens, you want to be in touch with past clients to check-in and see how things are going and if there’s anything you can help with. Provide value to them, don’t be a bearer of bad news forecasting doom and gloom.
- Start chasing expired listings. In a shifting market, there will be an increase in expired listings again. And it is more advantageous to actually be the 2nd listing agent as sellers likely weren’t receptive to the advice of the first agent. So the second time around, they might be more willing to listen to the advice of an agent.
- Stay on top of your local market data from the last 30-45 days. During a shift, it is more important than ever to have an accurate pulse on the market. Relying on data from the last 6 months ago or 1 year is now irrelevant to the current market when talking to clients.
- If you have listings, the conversation to set the listing price RIGHT is now more important. Soon to be gone if not already are the days of multiple offers and bid wars. Sellers may have unrealistic expectations of their home’s value based on irrelevant data from over a year ago. Accurate pricing is crucial for a successful listing, otherwise, sellers will be continuously chasing the market down and possibly blaming you as the agent for the failure to sell their home.
- Shift to working with more buyer clients. As the power shifts from sellers to buyers, it may be more beneficial to work more on the buyer side of things now versus the seller side. The tables are changing and as the market power shifts back to buyers, sellers may now start to struggle to sell their homes. Especially if they are not willing to adapt to the changing environment.
- In working with more buyers, building and utilizing your network of lenders will be more important than ever. The more solutions you have to provide to buyers that other agents aren’t aware of. You will be able to serve and attract more customers.