How Top Real Estate Agents Analyze Market Statistics • Monday Market Minute • Carrie McCormick

In our September episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties discusses how she uses the data from the weekly market activity report issued by the Chicago Realtors Association to pivot the current shifts in the market. Carrie also discusses what to do as real estate professionals during this time to make the properties you represent attractive. D.J. emphasizes the importance understanding where you are as a realtor at the moment and the importance of a realtor’s cooperation with loan officers. Last, D.J. explains what a holding company is and how real estate agents that are thinking of exiting the market can use them.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Carrie can be reached at carrie@atproperties.com or by phone at 312.961.4612.

Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks, Reblie and FollowUpBoss.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
How does one of the top Realtors in the country use market statistics to stay ahead of the competition? We’re going to find out today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this next year? And do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads into interested buyers? And are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? We’ll find out why agents across the country come to real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering Realtors a real estate sales and marketing solution to generate more business. Real geeks is easy to use. Their websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for the end user. Real geeks is mobile friendly delivering an excellent user experience on the go. Real geeks includes an easy to use CRM. So once your leads sign up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up triggers. Real geeks is loaded with tons of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase your brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. This episode is also brought to you by readily aerial maps. An aerial retail map can sell a commercial listing before it investor ever sees the property. But creating retail maps takes hours robbing you of time you could spend selling real estate. And if you’re tired of spending late nights scouring the internet for retailer logos to populate your commercial real estate map or you’re tired of paying a designer hundreds of dollars to do it for you. While you’ll love rapidly. Now readily is a real estate map generator that lets you create custom designed professional aerial retail maps for your commercial sales buyers and listing appointments in minutes not hours. Simply enter the subjects property address, auto populate nearby retailer logos with the click of a button and download your aerial retail map readily turns the headache of creating commercial property maps into a quick five minute task so you can spend less time making maps more time making money. So get your first aerial retail map for free today by visiting readily.com. That’s REBL i e.com. And sign up for an account no credit card required. And now on to our show.

Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made for real estate agents and by real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show. And today on the show is our monthly series called The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from the Cary McCormack Real Estate Group. With that properties here in Chicago. Now Carrie is a top 1% producer with over 20 years of experience helping buyers, sellers and investors. In fact, in the past 12 months out of 46,000 real estate agents here in the Chicago area, she is in the top 15, not 15%, the top 15 out of that entire 46,000. She’s a true superstar and expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors, and luxury properties. She also works with a lot of developers and is often chosen to represent their high end developments, please visit Carrie at our website, which is Carrie McCormick r e.com. Also follow her on Instagram at Carey McCormick real estate. Both of those links are in our show notes. Carrie, welcome once again to the show.

Carrie McCormick 3:50
Thank you as always.

D.J. Paris 3:54
All right. Well, what’s what’s happening right now? It’s, it’s now the end of September. Last quarter, and what are you what are you thinking about? Like, what’s what’s big in your world right

Carrie McCormick 4:07
now? Yeah, so obviously, you know, we’re headed towards the end of the year. So there’s always a big push to, to finish out the year strong. And as everyone’s been talking about, we’ve had a significant market shift. So, you know, those of us who’ve been in the industry for a long time, I’ve been in the industry for 22 years, you know, we know how to pivot, right? And it’s important that we pay attention to market and we do that. One thing I do consistently is you know, research on the market and reading different articles and different you know, facts about it. And one thing I just wanted to share with everyone that’s here in Chicago is I we have the Chicago Association of Realtors, of course and we have these, what we call faststats These are very informative, you know stats on the market and it can drill down to all over Chicago to specific neighborhoods and I always find that these are A great resource of information. And it’s interesting, I was talking to a colleague, when I usually pull these all of these numbers, you probably can’t see him. But you know, we’re all these big pluses of inventory. And you know, the amount of contracts and pricing, it was always these double digit, plus numbers. And now I look at I pulled it this morning, they’re all negative. So we’ve got, you know, negative listings coming in the market, we’ve got under contract is down, home for sale is down. So we’ve got, obviously, you know, indications of shifts in the market. But instead of focusing this time on this market shift, I wanted to talk about what we can do as brokers during this time, right. And as we hold on to our inventory, and we’ve got our inventory here, some of the stuff is not moving, right, some of our listings are not moving. So what can we do, and I think the number one thing to do is to do a price change. And all of us know, when we approach a seller and say we need to talk, you know, they know that we’re coming to them with a price change. But before we go into the price change, I always like to make sure that we’ve exhausted every other avenue. And you know, part of it is going to be the number one thing is communication, right? So all along from the start of your listing, you’ve got to communicate with the sellers on what is going on. Because again, once you get to the point where you do need to ask for a price change. There’s been the communication with them. So you know, one way to communicate with them is through current CMAs is give them an update of what’s happening in the market, what is selling what is not selling, so that they are engaged with what’s happening in the market. Also, feedback from all of the showings is, you know, after showing, obviously, you have immediate feedback from the buyers, but follow up with that agent, you know, one or two times to find out, you know, where did they buy? Why did they buy this house? What is it and communicate that information over to the sellers? Again, the more information you give to them, you know, makes them feel like they they’re engaged, they know that you’re engaged in their listing, and that you’re trying everything possible.

D.J. Paris 7:16
I love that I’m sorry, I just wanted to say I love that because this idea of keeping the sellers informed and saying, Hey, I’m going to chase these agents after the showing and make sure that I have a good sense of what they liked, maybe where they thought we could do some improvement, if any, and just their overall thoughts. And we’ll start to see if there’s some trends that emerge. I think that’s amazing.

Carrie McCormick 7:38
Yeah, so that’s, I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s easier said than done. But I do think it’s an important part of it. And then ineffective marketing. So sometimes, you know, we launch a marketing plan for a home and then after a few weeks, it kind of dies down. So you really do have to relook at your marketing and see what’s working and what’s not working. And part of that is reevaluating, sometimes the photos that are being used. You know, I just reordered the photos in one of my listings, because one of my listings has a beautiful view of the lake. But the way I initially set up the listing was it went from the foyer to the kitchen to the living room. And once you get to the living room, that’s where these beautiful views take place. Right? And I thought okay, so obviously I’m not capturing someone online, why are they not coming to see this property? So I reordered the picture to put the view first, even though it didn’t make sense, you know, when you walk into the home, but that is that that million dollar view. So I switched up the order of the pictures, I switched him up in all of my marketing campaigns made that view that first and foremost picture, guess what we had a showing this morning, you know, so you know, people’s attention, as we know is very short. So if they get to picture four, and I’ve not engaged them, they’ll swipe right Next, go to the next property. So we have to think about, you know, how is our marketing resonating with the buyer, and really just kind of taking a deep dive into each of your listings of you know, why why are buyers not calling or why are they not buying this property? So again, sometimes it’s good to set it and just go but if it’s not selling you got to change something right? So marketing is is one of them.

D.J. Paris 9:29
i That’s a really good one too. I was thinking about this because interiors can always be modified, right? Like whether somebody likes the paint or the flooring or the fixtures or whatever the furniture in the in the pictures that all can be changed and altered. But if you’ve got a million dollar view, what’s the harm in putting it you know, right outside like the first photo is typically the exterior second photo, a million dollar view, and they’re gonna get to the interior after that anyway, I think that’s a really smart smart play. Yeah.

Carrie McCormick 9:59
The other thing is, is when there’s interior or exterior condition issues, meaning there’s flaking paint, or you have dead grass or cracks in a window or something, you know, there’s defects in the property. When a buyer comes in to see that, you know, sellers sometimes say, Oh, well, we’ll fix it once the house is sold, or we’ll get to that, you know, a seller has lived in a home for years, and they just don’t see what we see coming in. And that could turn off a buyer, you know, a buyer doesn’t look at it so much as Oh, no, I’ve got to replace the grass, or I’ve got to paint. Sometimes they think, Well, does this seller take care of this house? Right? You know, and okay, they’re not taking care of their lawn, or they’re not taking care of the broken window, what else are they not taking care of. So even though these are small fixes are easy fixes. It just, it leaves a bad impression with the buyer. So my recommendation is always just get it fixed. Just get it taken care of. And I know that’s a hard one, because I too have sellers that just don’t want to do it. You know, they just don’t want to fix it until the house gets sold. So you know, if there is something like that, I just like to hit it off, you know, right when the buyer comes in is that the seller is aware of these items, these are the only items that need fixing, we’re going to get them repaired. So at least I hit it, you know, head on that they’re not that the seller is not going to take care of it. But again, I think it’s very important just to have the Home Show to its best on that first showing.

D.J. Paris 11:37
That makes so much sense. I was just thinking about this. Because when buyers walk through even a perfectly man manicured property inside and out, the buyers are still looking at things going, Okay, we’re going to need to change that there already is creating a list of things. And the last thing you want to add to their list is Oh, and look, the paint here is chipped. And yeah, we liked the paint. But now I have to add that to my list of having to deal with that once it’s over. Yeah, that’s a really, really good point is don’t add to the buyers lists in their mind, I guess.

Carrie McCormick 12:08
Right. And again, you know, all of these little things kind of add up in the buyers mind. My last thing is here in Chicago, especially we have a lot of condos and with condos, we have HOA fees or your assessments. And we’ve got some nice healthy taxes here are two in Chicago. So we have to think when pricing a property or presenting a property into the market, you’ve got to add all those together, because that’s the cost of ownership, your HOA fees, again, your assessments, your taxes, and then you have your mortgage, and then you have insurance, right, so all of those calculate to that buyers monthly costs. So we do have to think about when pricing a property or comparing our comps to take those into consideration. And with interest rates doubling since last year, right that plays into how much affordability someone has. So we do have to start doing a little math now when we’re pricing our property and at least again, communicate that with the sellers of that’s how buyers are looking at this purchase of you know, putting all the fees together. So making sure that we communicate that to the seller. And then with all of that you know with communication with your marketing your photos, getting any condition you know bad conditions in the home, cleaned up and fixed. If the house is still not selling, then it’s your price. Then you gotta go back down to the price. But again, if you’ve exhausted all of these, your seller will know that you’ve tried everything I want to

D.J. Paris 13:42
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thing. So I have a couple of suggestions. I’m sorry, Terry, did you have more? Because I wanted to get your opinion on this. Yeah. Okay. So I need to get your opinion, because so right now, our listeners and most Realtors I know, I have actually two things to talk about today. I’ll try to keep them short. But my first one is probably the most important, which is understanding where we actually are as realtors in this market for our buyers and sellers. And what I mean by that is yes, we know and we know, inventories down in most markets, of course, we know rates have basically doubled if not more than doubled in the last couple of years. Not a super fun place to be working when you’re working with buyers or sellers, really. But maybe it’s not a terrible time to buy a property. Now, here’s what I mean by that. And I don’t like to make blanket statements, because of course, it all depends on a million factors. But if you’re thinking, oh my gosh, rates are up, inventories down terrible time to buy. I’m not so sure that that’s objectively true. And here’s what I’m saying. Two years ago, when and even up to a year ago, we people were buying homes sight unseen for hundreds of 1000s of dollars more, maybe millions of dollars more in certain situations above asking price, you know, a lot of things, you know, trying to get deals pushed through at that time was almost impossible. So if you’re talking if you have buyers who are like, well, rates are in the sixes now and I really wanted rates to be in the threes. What you could do is go back to the properties that maybe they would have been looking at during that time and actually see what they closed for. And then actually running sort of the analysis of well, that property, you know, the properties that you were looking at before, you know, we’re selling for $150,000 more than what they go for today. And yes, rates have maybe doubled. But, you know, you you can basically what they call date the rate marry the home. So rates can be refinanced. Right. So at some point do we assume rates can should come down? Well, I certainly hope so. At some point, we don’t know when, but it might actually not be as as devastating to the buyer as it seems, because now they’re getting a cheaper price point. Yes, the rates higher. So maybe they pay higher monthly payments for a few years, or however long before the Fed cuts rates again. But boy, it just seems like I so my point is, is talk to a mortgage, talk to a loan officer, a Lending Officer. And actually, somebody I imagine has a calculator that can figure this stuff out. And it would be a really cool thing for an agent to think about. So that when somebody says it’s just a bad time to buy, you could say well let’s let’s actually run some numbers and I actually it might not be a bad time to buy and if you can demonstrate that through data, I think people will can calm down. So I’m just curious on what your thoughts are.

Carrie McCormick 19:30
I agree with that. It’s funny that you said that term data rate marry the home because someone just said that last night and I thought that was such a great thing and it was came from a mortgage lender and he said that to your point is just get the home that you want get it the price that you want rates will come down and you just refinance on you know out of that rate. So I always think to is a homes are so special, you know, I mean you have to live somewhere and no, just don’t Don’t cut yourself short by just looking at again, if the payments $200, more $300 more a month, is that really going to change your life? Are you really going to pass up on your dream home? But again, when you do that calculation, it’s probably not as bad as you think. I mean, I would rather pay a higher rate than pay $300,000 over the price of a home personally to app. So I mean, I guess maybe we should do that poll of like, which would you rather have? Would you rather pay $300,000? Over? Or would you rather have a 4% rate versus 7%? Rate?

D.J. Paris 20:32
Right? I really love this. So so everyone who’s listening who’s a realtor, which is probably everyone who’s listening, this is a good thing to to talk to a loan officer about, see if there are any calculators or or say, Hey, I’m running into these issues when I’m dealing with buyers. And I want to actually compare more apples to apples. So can you help me figure out what the data is? Or just at least anecdotally know how to talk about this, like Carrie just did, which really makes all the sense in the world? You know? Yes, we’re seeing the news. media’s is of course pushing, you know, they’re things that are, you know, negative, like rates are up, inventories down, of course, everyone’s seeing that. So as a real estate professional, you need to be able to make sense of that information and bring that back to the client. And it might actually be a really great time for, for your buyers to buy. But you need to run the numbers. And I think this is, this is a great time to develop better relationships with loan officers, and put their feet to the fire, because they’re the ones struggling to write if you don’t bring them business, they’re not likely to do well. And they’re going through the same issues you are. So this is where I think you reach out to them and say, What are you guys telling people? You know, what, what are you? How can you educate me, so I can educate my clients. So just an idea, maybe the sky? Well, the sky certainly isn’t falling. But if it feels like the sky is falling, this is an opportunity then to get some more information. So that and really, it’s your job as a realtor to know this stuff. Anyway, so but I just talked to a lot of depressed Realtors these days. So I want everybody to get undepressed Talk to your loan officers and find out exactly what the real shift is to the to the you know, really, homeowners really only care about how much money they they spend a month on their mortgage. Right? That’s really the end of the day, the most important thing and, and if it’s only a couple $100, and that doesn’t break your client, you know, then seems like, like Carrie said, a bad time to pass up on a dream home, it’s always a bad time to pass up on a dream home if if the pricing is reasonable. This leads me just to one other thing. And again, I apologize, this is gonna be a little negative. But I think there’s an opportunity here. So we’re seeing this in in here in Illinois, we’re seeing that there are real estate agents that are exiting the business, because activity has slowed, of course, you know. And so if you are considering exiting the business course, I would encourage you, our whole show is about teaching you how to flourish. And we hope that you do stay in but if that just isn’t possible for you, then in many states, there are what are what are called holding companies. And here’s really all the holding company is it’s a company where your real estate license is active, but you’re no longer practicing real estate as an agent, your license is active, but you’re just not really using it. And the reason why people can do why people do that is because what they can still do in a holding company is refer business. So we have a holding company here in Illinois, we have about 800 800 agents in it, and what they can do, and this is all state, almost all states can do this, by the way. So what you can do is you can park your real estate license, you’ll avoid paying all your MLS fees, and your association dues and all of the brokerage dues. But you can still earn referral commissions. So if you have clients that are coming into your life, even though you’re not practicing, you can refer them you can refer them to somebody like Carrie, right if you’re in the Chicagoland area, and you can still get paid a referral split. So how it typically works is you would if you have a buyer or seller, you then reach out to someone like Carrie and say, Hey, I’ve got this buyer, I’m not practicing right now. But I’d like to take a referral, split on it. And then you and the other agent would work out the referral split, and then you get paid when the transaction closes. So I know people that have actually made this their full time job where their don’t practice at all. And all they do is refer business to other agents and they have a tremendous amount of success.

Carrie McCormick 24:25
Yeah, actually, it’s funny that you are bringing this up because I received that exact call this morning for someone that’s was never in the business super full time. They were part time and this market shift is really just pushed them out and they want to focus in another direction, which again is is great. And again, we don’t want to ever talk negative, you know, we want to keep everything positive, but everyone’s got to do what they have to do. And this you know, they asked me to be their referral partner and you know, I think it’s such a brilliant way and we we obviously want to service our clients and keep things moving. So I think it’s a brilliant idea to support everybody.

D.J. Paris 25:05
Yeah, it’s one of those things where maybe people who are listening are thinking about even just taking a temporary pause right? Sometimes people do that. So if you’re going to take a temporary pause, or maybe a more indefinite pause, maybe you’ve just accepted a full time job somewhere else, and you want to explore that opportunity, but you don’t want to lose your license, put it in a holding company and then find someone to refer to and yeah, it’s not why you got in this business we get it, it’s not fun to sort of go a different way when you really wanted to be a full time realtor, but if you’re struggling right now, and he can’t find a way forward, there’s kind of a an opportunity to to regroup and save some money and figure out your next step. So that being said, we encourage you to stay in the business and also because lots of people are going to be exiting right now. Lots of agents will exit and that’s just the reality of it. So if you’re in and you stay in and you weather through the tough times, you’re going to be sitting really well when when the market recovers so I don’t think it’s a good time to get out of the business quite frankly. But if you are considering it, there are options. So I think I think that’s a good place to wrap up I’m sorry, I had to wrap up with something a little negative but it’s really still a nice opportunity if you are thinking of leaving for a temp for a period of time and but if you follow the some of the suggestions that you hear from people like Carrie on our show, you will thrive in these in these instances and you’ll actually become stronger and better because so many agents will be you know will be exiting or or they’ll just be depressed and sort of and I think that’s what’s happening to Kerry I don’t know if you’re seeing that from from people you know, who just seemed to be like a little bit down right now realtors are struggling I think,

Carrie McCormick 26:48
ya know, but we’re all here to support each other. So whatever we can do.

D.J. Paris 26:53
I love it. Awesome. Well, for everyone who is listening, please that well first of all, thank you for making it to the end of our episode. We love you we are we just crossed over 400 episodes we’re so grateful to everyone for continuing to support us please support us by continuing to listen and also telling a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing from from people like Carrie and send them a link to our our website keeping it real pod.com Also, if you I want you to watch the best thing I can always say about Carrie is not only is she an amazing realtor and really a true like icon here in Chicago so if you ever have any clients that are moving here, or you want to partner with another agent here in Chicago Carrie is amazing. On top of that she’s also does incredible work with her social media. And I think that if you’re an agent looking to do more with social media and you absolutely should follow what she’s doing use that as inspiration for what you could do to help your branding. So follow her on Instagram which is at Kerry McCormick real estate. That’s a link is in our show notes and Kerry if anyone out there is wanting to partner with you or work with you directly what’s the best way they should reach out?

Carrie McCormick 28:06
Always call me 312-961-4612 Or you can email me at Carey at@properties.com Or like you just said you could follow me and DM me as someone probably just did so put that down.

D.J. Paris 28:22
Awesome. Well Carrie, thank you. She’s Kerry’s been with us for years. We are so grateful to have her she is an insane powerhouse and somebody that you want to follow because you will never feel like you’re having a bad day in the market when you follow her especially on her Instagram. She’s always pivoting making changes and having a lot of success. So we’re glad to have her on the show as always, and again. Thanks to everyone listening. Thanks to Carrie and we will see everybody on the next episode. Guys