In our November episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @Properties shares data about the current state of the housing marketing quoting an article from the Wall Street Journal. She provides insight into what agents need to know about buyer and seller behavior as we are close to finishing out the year, and predicts what may happen in the spring. D.J. provides a tip around asking for reviews for your Google My Business profile – currently one of the top ranking factors for search engine optimization.
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.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Right Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcasts 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, we have our monthly series Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from add properties from the Carey McCormick Real Estate Group. Now if you’re new to the show, Carrie is a top 1% producer in Chicago with over 20 years of experience helping buyers and sellers and investors. In fact, in the past 12 months out of 44,000 agents here in the Chicagoland area, Carrie was ranked number 16 in production. She is a true 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 chosen to represent their high end developments. I know this to be a fact because I am purchasing a property that Kari represents through a developer currently. So that is how just how impressed I am as she is in everything here in Chicagoland real estate. We are thrilled to have her on the show. She’s been with us since the very beginning. Please visit Carrie at her website, which is Carrie McCormick, r e.com. And also follow her on Instagram, which is at Carey McCormick real estate. But please visit our website really both her social media and her websites are great models for what agents can aspire to, to promote yourself to your sphere of influence, and for people to find you online. Carrie, welcome once again to the show.
Carrie McCormick 2:13
Thank you so much. That’s quite the introduction. I appreciate it. Well, we appreciate you. Thank you. Yes, I mean, we’ve gone back many years of doing the podcast. So I really appreciate it. It’s a great opportunity.
D.J. Paris 2:27
And she also mentioned we won’t say where but Carrie just happens to be going on a trip coming up to the same exact place that I just got back from completely accidentally. And so we are connected in a lot of different ways. Absolutely. Well, what’s the what’s going on here in the Chicagoland real estate market?
Carrie McCormick 2:45
Well, it’s November in the US and it’s November here in Chicago. So I found this really neat. It’s on Instagram, it’s on the Wall Street Journal. I want to see if you guys can see it.
D.J. Paris 2:59
So what this says for all of our listeners is how the market moves before and after an election. And if you’re like me, you’re probably checking the news way too much right now to see what’s going on with the election. As we’re recording right now. This probably won’t go out for till Monday, the election, maybe will be decided by then. But as of today, Friday? Nobody we’re not totally sure what’s happening yet.
Carrie McCormick 3:21
Yeah, it’s crazy. But this was interesting, because it just talks about the markets, the financial markets after an election day, and it goes back to 1984 to when Reagan, the Reagan election and the markets always have done well. After these elections. You know, right before the election, I felt this here in Chicago, it’s like the week or two before it kind of just slow down a little bit. I think everyone got nervous. And you know, the market was very quiet. But today, Friday, we’re getting a ton of showing requests, people seem to be feeling a little bit better, no matter what side you’re on, but just feeling relief of we kind of know where we’re going. And so we’re seeing a nice little uptick in the market. So that anyways, this was a fun if you know Wall Street Journal on Instagram kind of fun graphic to look at and make yourselves feel better that the markets going to probably do well after this election. But just to talk about Chicago as a whole, we’ve, you know, read in the news and keep hearing, you know, people are fleeing the city and people keep talking about it. And there’s a lot of movement here in Chicago. People are making what I call move ups, you know, whether they’re going to suburbs, or they’re going from a two bedroom to a three bedroom, a three bedroom, single family. There’s all this movement in the city and a lot of negative news about Chicago and we do have our challenges, but I want to remind people that you know, we have such a large population here in Chicago and such a diverse economy and stable market. Chicago has 32 You have the 50, I’m sorry, 32. I said that wrong, we have 32, fortune 500 companies right here in Chicago, we have a very high private sector employment market here, we have 50 million visitors in this city each, approximately each year to the second to New York, we’ve got some really great neighborhoods and different price points. And Chicago has always been very resilient. So as much as we have challenges here in Chicago, I don’t see, you know, tons of people fleeing, I’d see movement, or you know, people making choices either to move to the suburbs, or wherever they’re going a little bit faster than they were before. But just to remind everybody that, you know, Chicago is a resilient city, we’ve got a lot to offer, all of the people that live here.
D.J. Paris 5:54
And I think too, you know, right now, rates are so low still and talking to people in the mortgage world, they don’t anticipate the rates changing anytime in the near future. So what a great opportunity to talk to any renters out there. And they now have more purchasing power than they did a year ago. So you have the ability to to buy more, I know, that’s one of the main reasons you actually touched on, on really one of the reasons I’m moving into a property you represent, but also a second reason. One is just because interest rates are so low. And the second is just like you were saying, moving up, I wanted an additional bedroom. And I wanted to move beyond that. So I think there’s probably a lot of people you know, who just now are, wherever they’re moving to, they’re probably moving to a bigger place just because they can afford it more. Assuming, you know, and obviously, there’s a lot of people struggling right now with with employment. But for those who are gainfully employed, if nothing has changed in their financial situation, they can afford a bigger place now,
Carrie McCormick 6:53
right, and some have to because they’re gonna be working out at the home and life has changed, right. And so, you know, whatever space is important to you, people are seeking it. So it’s, it’s keeping the Chicago real estate busy, every broker that I speak to and collaborate with, you know, everyone’s been busy. And so it’s been, you know, really great. And my prediction, and I have no facts or anything to put behind this, but I just just the feeling in the market is that we’ll continue this into 2021, I think we’ll still have a nice end of the year here in the real estate market, and then come 2021 People are going to be looking for happiness and looking for something brighter. As you know, the new year brings new hope for everybody and the real estate market will continue to move.
D.J. Paris 7:42
Yeah, and you said you don’t have facts or figures, but you do have his 20 years of experience as a top producer. So your your opinion is much more valid. I think then then, you know, what, what may we might be seeing elsewhere, especially in the news. But yeah, there’s Are you having a lot of conversations right now with with sellers about is this the right time being that inventory is, is at least here in the city is somewhat, you know, there’s a bit of a decrease in available inventory.
Carrie McCormick 8:11
Yeah, what’s actually been interesting with that, and yes, to answer your question I’ve been meeting with a lot of sellers, is that and one in particular met with last night is they’re afraid to put their house on the market now, because they’re like, We have nowhere to go, right? I’ve seen actually sellers put their homes on the market, it go under contract very quickly, and then they can’t find a suitable place where they want to go. So they just get a little nervous. So it depends, you know, as a real estate broker, you know, we’re also a consultant and an advisor is really kind of finding out what their goals and plans are in whether it’s you know, they put their home on the market this year or in the spring. You know, it’s just a collaborative effort of coming up with a plan that works for them. But in addition to you know, speaking with my clients, as a, you know, business owner, I run my my own business is marketing and branding and advertising and budgeting for next year. This year, you know, I always set a budget for my advertising and spending and this year, I blew my budget, which is fine. And you know, I sold a lot more real estate this year. But just trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. So I think it’s important for the realtors that are listening is to really reevaluate your business and from 2020 What worked what didn’t work where did your deals come from? And figure out what is providing the best ROI you know, for for your money. But really, the one thing that has always worked for me is my networking and my connections with people with COVID you don’t have as much networking obviously and you know, your, your ability to connect and communicate with people are limited. It’s just it’s very different. But with you know, between zoom and all this other stuff you kind of have to reinvent The way that you do business. So I think it’s important for all the brokers to look, you know, at their spend and what they’re going to do for 2021. I’ll show you a quick little behind the scenes funny for you guys. So I do all of my own marketing, as a lot of people know, and I’m very particular about what I send out my messaging and some good some bad, you know, it, it is what it is, but it’s, you know, it’s it’s my brainchild, this is sitting on my desk, and I’m only showing it to you, because I think it’s really funny. So I was trying to come up with a new campaign. And I was trying to explain it, and no one could understand what I was talking about. So like, let me just draw it out for you. So here it is. So it’s a lot of stick figures, it’s a lot of like things and it’s like it was just easier for me. But I’ll show you it again. It’s kind of
D.J. Paris 10:52
I love that. Oh, that’s great. Um,
Carrie McCormick 10:55
but anyways, that’s just kind of how some sometimes like my brain works is I’ll just kind of start drawing stuff and and sketch an idea. Yeah. And I do have an art degree, which is kind of sad. And this is what it ends up to be. But you know, it’s just, it’s coming up with out of the box type of marketing and branding for your business. And so you can launch it good in 2020 or 2021.
D.J. Paris 11:17
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s a good point. For everyone who is listening, please follow Carrie on Instagram do to see because she is somebody, you’ll look at it, and you won’t believe that she’s actually creating the content, because she’s number one, probably too busy to do it. But also, you would think it’s a professional, you know, advertising sort of sort of studio doing this work. And it’s actually Carrie. So that’s Carrie McCormack at Carrie McCormack real estate. And then to tag on to that I have a marketing idea that that’s very, very close to what you were mentioning, which is, you know, we all know that even even if we work exclusively by referral, which is probably the goal for a lot of us. We still people are going to look us up online. And you know, maybe you don’t have a great website or a website at all. But what you absolutely need to have, if you haven’t yet built a web, even if you have built a website is you need to have reviews. The number one, we know that the number one reason why people will end up choosing to buy a product or service is is basically based on online reviews. It’s the number one signal for buyers and installers. And I don’t mean exclusively real estate I in fact, it’s probably much lower than that for real estate because real estate’s so much of a word of mouth business, but for goods and services, especially online purchases, you know, reviews or everything, think about how often you go to Amazon and you don’t buy something that has poor reviews. Well, the number one place to get reviews, and traditionally has always been Zillow. And I think you absolutely should be there because we know Zillow has over 100 million in fact, it might even be I should know, because they come on my show every month, it might even be 200 million people a month, go to Zillow, it’s between 100 and 200 million. So you absolutely need to have reviews on Zillow. And, you know, if you’re using Zillow, you probably already know how to do that. And we talk about it with our Zillow insights series here on the show. But the other place you need to get reviews is Google. Because when someone Google’s your name, if you have a Google what’s called a Google My Business page, that will be the very first thing that pops up on the right on the right hand side and a Google search. And it will, it will show you your review. So the first thing you want to do is get educated about what Google My Business is, it’s basically a free business page that Google will provide you, you have to give them a physical address, they’re going to mail you a postcard in the mail with AppCode on it that way they know that it’s a legitimate business, your it’ll take a week or so to receive and then you’ll verify that and then what you need to start doing is asking for reviews you you there’s a we could I could talk about Google My Business for hours, there’s a lot of things you could be doing with it. But the very first thing you should be doing is asking for reviews. So I know that it is not easy to go back to your previous clients and say, hey, you know that great review, you wrote me on Zillow? Can you also write it for me on Google, but you know, it’s a good thing to do, because it literally will show up whenever somebody Google’s your name. So as much as you might not want to go back and ask I know if a company asked me in fact, a companies have asked me to do this. Well, they’ll say could you know I wrote them a nice review on Yelp. And then they reach out to me and say, Hey, that was really nice of you. Do you mind also posting that on Google and Facebook and I’m like, no problem. I just copy and paste it, it takes two seconds. But you as the agent aren’t able to do that the customer has to do it themselves. So this is a great time if things are starting to slow down in the holiday season. You know, put a you know get a little card made that says please review me on Google and mail it out to everyone with your holiday card or with you know, a personal note or something. But I’m telling you in the last year, our company we we never really focused on Google My Business reviews. And now we ask all of our when our agents work with a client we ask the client to read Are you their agent? And we asked them to do it on Google. And in the last six months, we’ve gotten over 160 reviews. Now we have 700 agents. So that that’s probably not a big number. But if you probably, you know, if you only even have five clients a year, or 10 clients or 20 clients, really ask them, tell them, it really will help you grow your business, and they probably like you enough to do it. And, you know, just do that, get those reviews, because Zillow, you need them there, too. But you really, really need them on Google as well.
Carrie McCormick 15:28
Yeah, that’s a great tip. And I just started doing that, too. It’s really, it is hard to ask for reviews, especially on multiple platforms. But I think like you said, people are happy to do it, especially if they can cut and paste.
D.J. Paris 15:41
Yeah, it’s yeah, I get it. It’s not something fun to ask for. But if you explain to them like, Hey, guys, you know, Hey, mister missus client, I would really, really greatly appreciate it, then maybe do something nice for him as you’re not supposed to reward somebody for a good view that goes against Google’s Terms of Service, but you could do something thoughtful for them as a result. But tell them it would really help you. And it’s it’s just as easy as cutting and pasting. And you can even cut and paste their Zillow review for them, and then call them and say, hey, if it’s okay, I’m gonna send you an email. I’m gonna copy your review. If you don’t mind. Here’s the link. It’ll take them two seconds, I would think most people would do that. So anyway, that’s my little marketing tip of the day, have a wonderful vacation. And we were talking before we started about places to go and Carrie has actually been to this place before that I ended up going and now she’s going back. So I am jealous for her. But we will see you next week next month when you return. And we’ll close out the year with with another Monday market minute. So for everyone listening, please visit carry on her website, which is Carrie McCormick r e.com. I know for a lot of our listeners who are realtors, you might say why should I visit another Realtors website? Because you should see what a really great realtor website looks like. And if you’re a buyer or a seller or renter and investor here in the Chicagoland area and you’re looking to work with a top producer, Carrie is literally one of the very top of the top. So you reached out to her Carrie, what’s the best way someone should reach out to you
Carrie McCormick 17:10
always call me 312-961-4612. Or you can email me Carrie at@properties.com.
D.J. Paris 17:19
Awesome. And we should also congratulate at properties and the company I work for that we both made the Chicago top workplaces again. This is the tribune put Chicago Tribune, our local paper here and they put out the top places to work carries companies in the large business because they large sized businesses, they think they have 3000 or two or 3000 agents working there we have only about 700. But both so we were in the mid size. You guys are enlarged. We both had the highest ranks for our respective category for real estate. So congrats to both our companies there. And yeah, and and again, for everyone listening. We thank you for continuing to support our show. On behalf of the listeners and myself. We think Carrie, she’s been with us for years and years and she’s so great. We love having her and we will see everybody next time. Thanks, Gary.
Carrie McCormick 18:06
Thank you
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