Category: Monday Market Minute With Carrie McCormick

Welcome to the June edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie talks about the most appreciated (and most depreciated) neighborhoods in Chicago over the past year.  I provide a marketing tip on how brokers can use Trello to create virtual whiteboards to track their prospects, contacts, and transactions!

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:16
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host to the show and today is another episode on the Monday market minute with my co host Carrie McCormack. So welcome, Carrie.

Carrie McCormick 0:34
Good morning. Hello, everybody.

D.J. Paris 0:36
And if you are, this is your first time listening to a Monday market minute Carrie comes on and talks about the state of affairs with the Chicago real estate market. And basically information brokers also buyers and sellers may want to know about what’s going on today. Carrie is a top producer at properties. She’s been a top producer for a very, very long time. She’s actually last I checked in the I think you’re the top 15 producers in the entire Chicagoland area for the year, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment considering there’s over 40,000 realtors. So anyway, Carrie has been doing this 19 years. Correct?

Carrie McCormick 1:14
You got it? It seems it seems hard to say that number. But yes, I’ve been doing it for 19 years.

D.J. Paris 1:20
Amazing. Well, what’s going on? What are you want to talk about this week?

Carrie McCormick 1:23
So I thought we would do something a little different. You know, it’s we’re headed into our mid year. And I always like to look back at some of the neighborhoods that have performed well here in Chicago, and I thought I would talk about the five neighborhoods with the highest home appreciation. And I’m sure there’s some that you can guess which you know, and then there’s some little surprises in here. But the number one neighborhood that had the highest appreciation is Lincoln Park. So they almost saw a 10% appreciation in their home values from last year.

D.J. Paris 2:00
That’s that’s really surprising to me, because Lincoln Park has been just so steady for so long.

Carrie McCormick 2:05
So they really lead the pack in the last year. The next one, which was not much of a surprise. But of course we’ve got the West Loop. We’ve seen an explosion over there. I mean, there’s cranes galore happening. And the West Loop is almost hitting a 10% increase as well. The number three is Humboldt Park. So we’ve seen a lot of our buyers. Look for more affordable housing, you know, looking to branch out into these wonderful neighborhoods, Humboldt Park has a ton of great things to offer. So Humboldt Park saw an increase in their home values about 7%. The next neighborhood is Roscoe village, one of my favorite neighborhoods. Yeah, so I’ve lived in Roscoe for 13 years. And it has made a big leap. And it’s, you know, just a fabulous neighborhood. The schools there are tremendous. So we see a lot of growth there because of the schools and the wonderful tree lined streets. So Roscoe village, again, was about 6.75% increase in the last year. And to round out my top five, another one of my favorite neighborhoods, which is Lakeshore east. A lot of people don’t know the neighborhood there. But it’s a little oasis, right by the lake, they offer wonderful amenities a park in their walk to everything, just some really great housing opportunities there. And they saw about a 5% increase in the last year. And it’s

D.J. Paris 3:33
and it’s really quiet over there too far as close as close as really it is sort of its own thing. And it’s only really a couple blocks from everything else. So it’s kind of this way. Yeah, it’s

Carrie McCormick 3:45
a little hidden gem.

D.J. Paris 3:47
It is it is and there’s a lot of cool high rises, right of the Aqua is over there and Harbor Point tower and all that stuff. Okay, so if we were to go the other way, are there any neighborhoods that have had, you know, a really significant decline in the last year?

Carrie McCormick 4:01
Good question. So this was a shocker to me. And it’s the Gold Coast. Really? Yes. So the Gold Coast was probably one of the biggest price drops in Chicago and they came in 9.84%. lower than last year.

D.J. Paris 4:21
Mm hmm. In any any idea of why that might be.

Carrie McCormick 4:24
You know, I looked at some of the data and I really haven’t figured out why I don’t know if people are just moving out or if there’s not much inventory over there for people to choose from. I don’t know it just we just saw a big decline in the Gold Coast.

D.J. Paris 4:39
Wow. That’s amazing. Yeah. Well, I think to like the Gold Coast, a lot of times people park themselves there and then live the rest of their lives there. So maybe it’s an inventory thing like yours. Yeah,

Carrie McCormick 4:50
it could be it could be so you know, looking at all the neighborhoods and doing some of this research. It’s always interesting because and I’ve said this before that Chicago is now Not just one market, there’s, you know, several, there’s almost I think 80 different neighborhoods here. And they’re not all created equal. You know, they offer different pros and cons as well as unique levels of competition and supply and pricing. So, you know, all the neighborhoods are just very different. And if you’re not looking to spend an arm and a leg on a property, you’ll probably want to avoid the city’s most expensive neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, you know, the near Northside, Lakeview Lincoln Park, as we talked about, they came in as an average price of 1.175. For an average price in Lincoln Park, which is pretty high. Yeah. And go ahead,

D.J. Paris 5:47
would you say, is there a certain neighborhood? I didn’t mean to interrupt you, so feel free to finish that. But is there a certain neighborhood you feel is kind of like maybe Linkin Park? Isn’t the deal deal of the century right now? Are there other like, Is it gold coast? Because it’s down? Or are there other? Is there a neighborhood that you think is really like the deal right now going on?

Carrie McCormick 6:06
You know, I do. So there’s a neighborhood called North Park and I say that’s like the deal of the year. So to me, it’s a true steal, when you look at North Park, homes average about 67 days on the market, and which is lower than the city’s average, but you know, 67 days, and there’s the homes they’re selling at 30% below list price. And I know so it appears that there’s plenty of inventory in that market, including single family homes and condos and townhomes. So right now, if you’re looking for the deal of the century, I would look in North Park.

D.J. Paris 6:41
Yeah, that’s, that’s good. That is good to know. And it’s, you know, that’s sort of like so North Park is kind of like Cicero divan, sort of like that, right? It’s kind of over over there. And it’s an area that probably is off the radar for some people. But boy, I’d like to buy something 30% off as far as I know.

Carrie McCormick 7:03
So it’s, like I said, it’s the deal of the century, well, hopefully will spur some, some market activity over there and raise some prices.

D.J. Paris 7:10
Awesome. Well, I would like to move into my marketing minute, although it’ll take a few minutes to talk about this. But I, I did want to give everyone out there all the 1000s of listeners were so grateful to have, in addition to what Kerry mentioned about what’s going on the markets talk about marketing. So I have a tool that actually just wrote an article about this tool, because I’ve been hearing brokers use it and I use it my personal life. And I’m not a practicing broker. So I’ve heard practicing brokers are now starting to use this tool, which is kind of interesting, because it isn’t specifically a real estate tool. So here’s what it what the tool well, first, I’ll give you the tools name, it’s called Trello, tr, e LL. O. And I’m going to try to explain what it does and why brokers seem to be interested in and and also how I use it, we actually use it for this podcast, what it is, is a project management app. And it has, you know, you can go to trello.com, there’s a app you can download for your phone. And what it really is, the easiest way to explain it is imagine as a broker, you have a giant whiteboard, and I’m actually going to talk about two different whiteboards. But we’ll just start with one for now. And this whiteboard could be your all the clients you’re currently working with, you’re going to put on this whiteboard on little sticky notes, and you’re just going to put their name, and you’re gonna create columns on this whiteboard. And it’s going to be the various stages of every deal. Maybe it’s Hey, I just met this person for the first time or I took them out on a, if it was a buyer, I took them out and show them, you know, places or an open and they just made the first offer and and you’re gonna be moving that sticky note from left to right to the different columns as they progress from, you know, through that whole transaction, right? So that way, if you had this kind of whiteboard, you could see you could wake up every day, look at the whiteboard and see, oh, here’s where every single one of my clients currently is in the stage, you know what stage they’re at for their transaction. And I personally like that, because I find oftentimes with other CRMs, which are client relationship management tools, and there are tons of them. Sometimes it’s just hard to get a visual look like are they call it like a 10,000 foot view of what’s going on? Right? So Trello allows you to do that it creates these virtual whiteboards. And then you create columns. And you can just drag people, you know, in this case, if it’s a client, you could just drag them from column to column. So you could say I wonder how many people are in attorney review right now that are in my pipeline that I’m working with? Well, there it is. There’s the attorney review column, you have to create it, but it only takes a moment. Okay, so I think you guys generally get the idea. You can drag and drop people from status to status until they’re all the way at the end. And then you can do other things with them. And you could create another whiteboard, even for your prospects. So you meet somebody at a party and you think I should, okay, what do I do after I meet somebody? Well, maybe I write them a thank you note or it’s nice to meet you email or something. So you create that status and then you just drag them in there after you You do that. And then it’s, oh, it’s been, you know, then I do a one month thing or a three month thing or whatever. So you get the idea. You can create these whiteboards. And then it just gives you a chance to visually see everything. Because oftentimes for a lot of the software for to dues or managing prospects and clients, it’s not that visual. And it’s hard to see, like, I wonder how many people are currently in my pipeline? Well, you can make a column, you know, for that, and then just drag people in and then drag them out. And it’s so easy because it’s this drag and drop system. And it’s free to that’s the best part. I mean, you can pay for additional features of Trello, you probably won’t have to I know I don’t, by the way, we use this for booking guests on the show. So we had somebody who was recommended to us to interview last week, but a few weeks ago, they somebody had recommended written in so we drag them into this recommended by listener column, then we reach out to them. And then when they say, Yeah, I want to be on the show, we drag them into the Hey, they’re interested. And then we when we scheduled it, we drag him into the scheduled and then so and so. So we just pushed all the way from left to right. And it’s so easy and customizable. So anyway, I just wanted to explain that in a little bit more detail, so people could get a sense of what I’m talking about visually. But anyway, so that is my marketing tool carry. I don’t know, I’m sure you have systems in place and tools in place. I just have found there’s not very many that you can visually see everything at once.

Carrie McCormick 11:21
No, I love this idea. Actually, I haven’t used it yet. But I’m definitely going to take a look at it. And I like the concept.

D.J. Paris 11:29
Yeah, check it out. It was actually developed. It really for for IT professionals because I used to work at it firm. And this is what IT professionals do. Or if you guys have seen the the TV show Silicon Valley, they always show this is that they show this giant whiteboard and all these sticky notes for when there’s different tasks to build software, and then they just move people you know, they move the sticky note from column to column. It’s the same idea. So anyway, I’ve heard brokers talk about I thought you guys would find interesting. Okay, we’ll wrap this up. Carrie, thank you so much for being on the show. Um, two things. If anyone is ever interested in working with Carrie, obviously she works with buyers, sellers, investors, writers, etc. What’s the best way they should reach out to you?

Carrie McCormick 12:11
Of course, I always say call me three one to 9614612 you can always email me as well. It’s Kerry ca RR ie at@properties.com.

D.J. Paris 12:23
Yeah. And you know, if you are somebody who’s looking for representation, I mean, I know if it was me, I would want somebody who’s the top 15 of all the brokers in Chicago, that would be a good thing. So certainly carry reach out to her and then also as brokers, our listeners who are brokers reach out to us with questions for Kerry. And even for me as well send it through our website, which is keeping it real pod.com our Facebook page which is also keeping it real pod and just shoot us anything and we’ll we’ll cover it on the next episode. So thank you, Carrie, we’ll let you get back to your busy day and we’ll talk next month.

Carrie McCormick 12:58
You got it. Have a great week.

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Welcome to the May edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie speaks about how inventory is up in the hottest neighborhoods of Chicago in this spring market over last year and why that is so exciting.  I provide a marketing tip on how brokers can avoid ethics violations on Facebook posts (article referenced in episode here).

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:15
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host the show. And this is another episode of Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick of app properties. Welcome, Carrie.

Carrie McCormick 0:31
Hello, hello. Thanks for having me. As always,

D.J. Paris 0:34
thank you. And for new listeners who aren’t familiar with Carrie, you should be because she is one of the top top top producers in all of Chicagoland. Carrie and I were just talking, and she goes, Hey, we were joking around about about her production. And I figured out she is not only in the top 1/10 of 1% of all realtors, and there are 42,000 realtors in the Chicagoland area, she is actually higher at the highest producing, or sorry, she is in the top 99.95% of all producers. So we’re so grateful she’s insanely busy, and doesn’t even have time to do this. But she’s willing to do it once a month. And what she does is give her take on the market and then answer questions. And we’re so thrilled to have you. So thank you, Carrie,

Carrie McCormick 1:16
no, thank you. And it’s it’s, you know, interesting hearing the numbers because I mean, of course I keep track of, of my business, but I really, you know, focus on my clients and their experience in in the transaction. And, you know, the numbers are just a result of the hard work. It’s not, you know, my purpose is not to have these numbers. And of course, you know, have the rankings. But you know, my purpose is really just for my clients to have a great transaction and an a great experience. And then when you know the numbers come in, it’s just it’s, it’s great to hear that, that I’m up there.

D.J. Paris 1:50
Well, and Kerri works almost exclusively by referral, which also is demonstrative of how she treats her clients. So we’re so excited. She’s on the show. So let’s get into it, tell us what’s going on in the market.

Carrie McCormick 2:02
So April is, you know, we’re in May now, but I always look back, obviously on the previous month, and April tends to be one of the most exciting months in Chicago real estate market. And I’ve got a really exciting market update for you guys too. And because all the numbers are in, and we definitely did didn’t disappoint the market in April. So last month. For those who listen to the show, we talked about the supply of homes here in Chicago. And we all talk about low inventory, but the market has been rebounding after a few years with this tight inventory. And it continues to be a theme this month as well. So May is starting to see the same inventory issues as we did last month. And it seems like Chicago sellers have gotten a little bit smarter. And they realize that this is going to be the time to sell. Because the inventory is tight. Prices are going up and sellers again, if they were thinking about it are on the fence, they’re definitely starting to put their homes on the market. And last month, we saw about 17% more listings hit the market than the prior April month in 20. I gotta think of the year 28 2017 and 2016. So we definitely we saw more come on the market this April than we did two years ago. And so I looked at which neighborhoods are also starting this trend. And it looks like the near north neighborhoods like River North Streeterville and Gold Coast, followed by Wicker Park and Bucktown are leading the number of listings coming into the market. So anyone that’s listening who is a seller in those neighborhoods, I would encourage you to put your home on the market now because prices are starting to tick up. And first of all, this is just awesome news for Chicago. So we’re all about more choices in Chicago for homebuyers, especially during the spring. So we’d love to see more inventory come on the market in different neighborhoods too. But you know, when there’s too many new homes that hit the market, and there are not enough buyers out there that want to buy, we can negatively impact the strength of the market. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. So we are having a great spring market and again, buyers sellers get out in the market and do your thing. So regarding pricing, we also just kind of as you expect prices are going to continue to go up right, we were starting to see the medium home prices grow at a slower rate for a quick second. But with April’s numbers on the books, it looks like we’re back up to a 3% increase in median home price over the prior year. Now that’s a lot of information that I just just gave to you guys, but it’s really the markets really doing well and we’re starting to see some increases here.

D.J. Paris 4:54
And are we on pace to have a spring market as strong as last year’s?

Carrie McCormick 4:58
Well I’m not ruling it out. just yet, so you know, we’re doing well. So I’d say let’s check back into next month’s podcast and we’ll see if may 2018 can tie or beat last month or last May’s media numbers.

D.J. Paris 5:13
Awesome. Well, thank you, Carrie, we’re gonna keep this one short and sweet here and at the on these episodes, I also give a marketing tip. And in this time, I’m going to give you a really, really important marketing tip that’s a lot different from what I’ve talked about in the past. And because this just came out on Friday, Thursday, or Friday from IAR, the Illinois Association of Realtors, which finally has now starting to tell brokers what they can and cannot do on social media when advertising homes. So about a year, a year ago, I called IAR. Because we have a lot of brokers at our firm and I said, What are the rules? Because online, the way that the act is written, it doesn’t specify what you can and can’t do on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. And they said, Well, it just follow the rules. And I talked to the attorneys. And I said, Well, I don’t Please can you give me specific they go, just follow the rules. It was very frustrating. So they are now finally they wrote an article. So I’m going to read to you something that is very, very important. So out of the, all of the ethics violations, for Illinois, for all the brokers for last year, half of them were social media violations. So I’m gonna give you all the listeners an idea of something that is a violation, and this was written by one of their top attorneys. So this is a Facebook post that is in violation of the advertising act. So persons, the brokers advertising a home, there’s a picture of the home and this is the description, Golf Course View address of the home. Beautiful custom lead design home with wonderful views, blah, blah, blah. At the end of it, it says for sale, 515,000, contact Becky realtor, a call or text and then Becky’s phone number, that is a violation. And the reason for that is Becky in this instance, did not and I’ll put a link to this article, by the way, in the podcast notes, Becky did not mention what firm she works at. So you cannot just say hey, I’ve got a new listing, check it out or call me, you have to say I have a new listing, check it out and call me and I work for x. You have to manage mentioned the firm you work at in every single Facebook post if you’re advertising a listing, and that is new, they have never said that before. And out of all the ethics violations. Half of them were social media violations for last year, and that is only going to increase. And most brokers do not know about this. Our own brokers didn’t know about this until just a couple days ago. So I carry I don’t even know if if Most brokers in the industry know

Carrie McCormick 7:45
about it. I don’t think so. And I didn’t know either. I just you know, always think of best practices. And I do include my brokerage. But I also include the equal housing opportunity logo, as well on all my advertising on social media. And one thing, just to add to that, that I’ve noticed is you know, when you post something, whether it’s on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever it goes, there’s different sizes and formats of ads. And what’s happened, like if I format an ad for Facebook, and then it converts over to Instagram, the size isn’t the same. So because the size is not the same, sometimes information gets cut off, right, put your brokerage or your phone number or something at the bottom. And then again, when it posts on to Facebook or Instagram, that section gets cut off. So even though it’s on there for you, the general public doesn’t see it because of the size formatting. So that’s one thing I’ve learned is to make sure that all the ads are resized to fit, which media platform it’s going on. So every all the information can be seen.

D.J. Paris 8:51
Awesome tip. So make sure that your photos are resized correctly and nothing is getting cut off. Like those those disclosures. Make sure if you’re writing a post and you’re advertising a home that you have the firm that you work for in that post. Alright, that’ll do it. And by the way, at Carey is here to answer your questions. So send us your questions you can visit us at keeping it real pod.com send us any questions you have for Kerry. Also, you can find us on Facebook keeping it real pod and obviously iTunes, Google Play Anywhere. Podcasts are served. And we will see everybody next month. So oh Carrie, I’m sorry. If any one is out there who is interested in working with Carrie, maybe a buyer or seller and investor or renter? What’s the best way that they should reach out to

Carrie McCormick 9:35
you you could always call me I pick up my phone. I want to say 24/7 But that’s not true. I do sleep a little bit, but I’m always available. You can call me at 312-961-4612 or you can email me Kerry at@properties.com. And again, I always encourage my fellow brokers to call me with any questions. I do a lot of social media I get a lot of questions. pins regarding, you know, just social media questions or tips and tricks because I really love doing that. And I’d love to, you know, help other brokers as well. So feel free to give me a call.

D.J. Paris 10:12
And you should also check out Carrie on Instagram. She has the no question the very best Instagram account that I’ve ever seen for a realtor. What is your Instagram,

Carrie McCormick 10:22
Carrie McCormack real estate?

D.J. Paris 10:25
Awesome. And you were just on television as well, I was or you just filmed

Carrie McCormick 10:29
a new episode of House Hunters. It’s not going to air until this summer. So that’s exciting. Actually, we’re having a party too. So if anyone wants to come to my house hunters party, I should have mentioned this earlier. The producer of House Hunters is flying in. And she’s going to do a q&a just about the show and you get to meet some of my first time homebuyers and it’s going to be a fun little event. It’s invitation only. So if you’d like to meet the producer of the HGTV show House Hunters, please call me 312961461 To love to have you at the event.

D.J. Paris 11:08
All right. Well, we will see everybody next month and thanks Carrie. We appreciate it.

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Welcome to the April edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie speaks about how the spring market has been a bit slower than last year and how lower inventory has resulted in increased competition. She also talked about the importance of first exterior impressions with buyers. I provide a marketing tip on why brokers should start a 60 second video series on Facebook and Instagram to hook consumers into their content.

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real. The only podcasts made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers and my name is DJ Paris. Today is our monthly episode The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick. So welcome Carrie to the show.

Carrie McCormick 0:16
Hello, hello. Thanks for having me as always,

D.J. Paris 0:19
well, we love having Carrie on the show because not only is she a top one percenter, in fact, she’s way more than a top one percenter, I’m gonna brag for her because she would never do this. But she is in there are 42,000 realtors in the Chicagoland area. So I want to start by saying that is a pretty vast pool of Realtors carry so far this year. 2018 is the 20th highest producing broker in Chicago. So congratulations, as always, which by the way is not unusual for Carrie, but I wanted to bring it to listeners attention, because we’re so grateful that she does this show and does this episode once a month. What we do here is Carrie talks about the market and also is always willing to answer your questions too. So Carrie, tell and by the way, Carrie has been a realtor for 20, year, 19 years, almost 20 years, and everybody loves Carrie. So tell us a little bit about what’s going on in the market.

Carrie McCormick 1:15
Sure. So you know, I always look back as Mark marches because it sets the pace for the Chicago real estate market. And last March last month, lived up to the hype. So looking at the numbers. And being out in the field, you know, boots on the ground, I see some signs of the market. entering into a new phase, my feeling is that this year’s spring market is definitely going to be a lot softer than last year’s market. So last year, in 2017, our spring market started off quickly right after the new year, it was like January 3, it was in full force in effect this year. It’s you know, here we are, you know in April already, we are just now starting to see signs of it ticking up. So it’s definitely a little bit slower than last year. Now everyone’s been hearing and talking about the shortage of inventory that we have here. And how it’s made competition pretty fierce for home buyers. And it’s true. Anytime something that comes on the market, we’re starting to see multiple offers on it prices are getting escalated. And in the past few weeks, the number of homes for sale in Chicago has actually been trending slightly in the upward direction.

D.J. Paris 2:32
So what is what does that all mean?

Carrie McCormick 2:34
So it means that more inventory means less competition, and of course less competition ultimately has an effect on home prices. The median sales price still have increasing overall, it’s been increasing overall, but at a lesser rate than last year. Now, the median home sale price has increased 2.4% since March of last year. So not a big increase. But don’t get me wrong, this the market is still really strong in the supply of homes for sale or lack thereof is still playing a big part in the competitiveness this spring market. And one other thing to talk about real quick is that homes that went under contract last month in March, we’re on the market for median time of 14 days, which is only one day longer from last year. So I always like to compare, you know, this spring market versus last spring market and the home times that are on the market are pretty close to last year.

D.J. Paris 3:41
Yeah, it certainly seems that way. And so what are you telling your clients to do to get ready sort of through this season?

Carrie McCormick 3:48
Yeah, so because our spring market has started a little bit later and we let’s all be honest, this weather. This spring has been very disappointing. I mean, we have snow, we have rain, we have 70 degrees, we have 20 degrees, it’s been all over the board and a lot of my sellers have been holding off on doing any exterior work, curb appeal because we just don’t know what the weather’s gonna bring. But you know, I think we’re on the horizon of some sunshine and some warmer weather so I’m telling my sellers to definitely focus on the exterior of their home. Curb appeal is so important. Do any paint that you need to do power washing, paint your front door paint any you know trim that’s coming off, start planting, you know, there’s some shrubs and flowers that can withstand this weather. So get something nice out on the porch, put some colorful pillows out that curb appeal means so much so start getting ahead and getting that done.

D.J. Paris 4:48
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. We just hired at our firm very similar to a Kerry’s mentioning as Hey, that first impression. When somebody steps out of the car or walks up to the property the first thing you They’re gonna it’s going to elicit an emotional reaction. Of course, homebuying is an emotional decision, obviously. And the first impression is pretty important. So we just hired somebody here at our firm, which is the director of first impressions, which a lot of firms are now doing so that when people walk through the door here at our office, they have a good first impression as well. And I also wanted to say that Carrie brings up a really good good point, aside from it being a really smart idea to get the exterior ready, as realtors and the vast majority of people who listen to the show are brokers in Chicago, you need to know this information, you need to be able to tell your your sellers exactly what to do, where to go, who to contact, to make those, you know, maybe minor or major exterior improvements. And if you’re a realtor, and you don’t yet have that information, work on developing that over the next year, so that you can, you know, number one, it helps justify, you know, the expense for the seller when they’re working with you, because you’re actually becoming really valuable. So, you know, I think somebody like obviously, Kerry has that information. And all realtors should aspire to be able to tell their sellers exactly what to do. Agree. Let’s, let’s move on to our mark our marketing minute, which I had a quick, quick one. So a lot of people have been disappointed over their last many, many years. With Facebook. In particular, if you have a page for your business, what you find is even the people that like that page, oftentimes don’t see your post, it’s the Facebook algorithm. And for better or for worse, you know if 30% of the people who like your page actually see your post, that’s actually a pretty strong number. Now, it’s not a very satisfying number. But one of the ways in which you can increase the amount of visibility to the people that actually want to read your stuff is by video. Facebook actually rewards video and Instagram does as well. Of course, they’re owned by the same company. But what I was wrecked would recommend as getting people hooked on your content. By the way, Carrie does this with still images on Instagram better than any other broker I’ve ever seen. That is not an exaggeration. She’s apps by the way, Carrie, can you plug your Instagram page so people can see?

Carrie McCormick 7:16
It’s Carrie McCormack real estate?

D.J. Paris 7:19
Yeah, it’s it’s Carrie McCormack real estate, definitely check it out. And she does it all herself, which is even more impressive. One thing that I would encourage all brokers to do is start creating video content. And now with Instagram, you only get 60 seconds Facebook, you can kind of have an unlimited amount of time. But what I would do is not inside the Instagram app or the Facebook app, I would just take my phone, turn on the camera and record a 62nd piece. And in 60 seconds, you can get out one really good piece of advice. So maybe you create a series for buyers. first time homebuyers maybe or sellers. Or maybe, you know, here’s, you know, here’s what I do, if you’re thinking about getting ready to buy or sell or, you know, I’m renting and what should I consider buy, you can get out one good tidbit in 60 seconds, and then you can post it directly to Instagram. And then you can then again, don’t necessarily share it to Facebook, actually upload it directly to Facebook. And what you’ll find is, if it’s good content, and you only have 60 seconds, so you should be able to give one good piece of advice. You’ll see this engagement improve. And if you do that once a week. And by the way, if you don’t know what tips to tell, start Googling and looking, reading other blogs and take a look at other sources. So you can give tips, but get people hooked on your content. Carrie is amazing at getting people hooked on her content. Number one, she knows a lot. But she’s able to put that out in social media in a way that is very compelling. So I would encourage everyone listening to start a little weekly, one minute video with a little tip for, you know, people who are interested in buying or selling or even renting maybe, or investing. And that

Carrie McCormick 8:57
is that’s great advice. I do agree I do a little bit of video not as much just because of you know, a busy schedule. And I know everyone’s got stuff to do. And that’s why I do a little bit more still. But it is nice to share. You know my experiences where I’m at new properties coming on the market. And no, I think your advice on the video is fantastic.

D.J. Paris 9:20
Well, absolutely. I just like the I always tell people if you get people hooked on your content, that’s a really, really good good thing. And I think oftentimes realtors, sometimes when they use social media, and when you do you do not do this, which I think is great, but some realtors literally just go, Hey, I have a new listing here it is and that’s fine. But that’s all they do. And I think give people more content more information and carries a great example of somebody who does that really well. So anyway, that’s our episode for the week. If Carrie once again, if there’s any buyer’s or seller’s renters out there that want to work with somebody like you and everybody would want to work with someone like you, how would they get? How would they get in touch?

Carrie McCormick 9:59
Sure. So you can Call me anytime at 312-961-4612. Or of course, you can send me an email at Carey, CA RR ie at@properties.com. And I always encourage anyone to give me a call if you have questions, comments if there’s, you know, another realtor and you just want to kind of bounce some ideas off me social media questions, I’m always willing and happy to help in in chat.

D.J. Paris 10:29
And she is and she is as nice as you can imagine, and obviously very successful. She’s a great pic if you need a realtor. So all right, that does it for this episode. We will see Carrie again in one month. Well, she will talk about April and in May so thank you, Carrie, and thank you everyone for listening. And please make sure to share this podcast with a friend visit us on Facebook which is keeping it real pod visit our website keeping it real pod.com Send us your questions. Would you like to ask Carrie a question? I know if I was out there producing as a realtor, I would want to ask a the top the 20 most successful broker for 2018 A few questions. So let’s send us your questions and she will answer them. So thanks Carrie.

Carrie McCormick 11:11
Thank you have a great day.

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Welcome to the March edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie speaks about the current low inventory situation and how sellers should take advantage right now. She also comments on the stock market and how it’s correlated to the housing market in Chicago. I provide a marketing tip on why to send out postcards to your sphere of influence (tip courtesy of Stephen Hnatow).

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:15
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the only real estate podcast made by Chicago real estate agents for Chicago real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, and welcome to our monthly feature the Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick.

Carrie McCormick 0:30
So welcome, Carrie. Hello, and thank you.

D.J. Paris 0:33
Thank you. And I would like to give Carrie a little accolade because I noticed this on Friday that and this is not uncommon, but it’s I think it’s worth mentioning. So because somebody is new to the show and says Who is this, Carrie McCormack and why are we Why is she talking to us about what’s going on in the market? Well, not only has she been in business for 20 years, and the top 1% producer, she’s actually even higher than the top 1% producer. Because as of today, she is the 15th highest producer and all of Chicago for 2018. So congratulations to you.

Carrie McCormick 1:08
Well, thank you. It’s been a great year so far.

D.J. Paris 1:11
I guess so so. So what we do on these on these episodes, if this is your first time listening, is Carrie talks about the market. And since we have so many listeners, we have 1000s of listeners who are brokers, most of them and are wanting to know what is a top producer thinking about what is what is the top producer telling their clients what’s going on in the market. That’s what Carrie is here to talk about. So I’m going to turn it over to you.

Carrie McCormick 1:35
Well, thank you. Thank you. So I mean, it is true being in the industry for such a long period of time. You know, I love to educate my clients and my colleagues about the market of what’s happening. So right now, you know, there’s a lot of external forces in place in the real estate market across the country, whether it’s tax related legislation, legislation, whether it’s mortgage rates, unemployment changes, family formations, the appetite for buying a new home remains very strong. And it’s enough that it’s driving prices upward in most markets. So in Chicago alone, our biggest thing is inventory here. So right now in the city of Chicago, we are down 7.3%. For detached homes detached homes are single family homes. But the inventory or I’m sorry, the new listings inventory was up 7% For attached, which is the condos. The median price in Chicago is up 9% For single families, and up almost 4% For attached properties, again, which are the condos, and then listings that went under contract have increased almost 13%. So really, you can see that it’s what March now that our market is moving. And I really predict that we’re going to have a great 2018

D.J. Paris 3:02
was so what what are you telling buyers right now? Because inventory is not as prevalent as it has been? What are some of what are conversations you’re having with buyers?

Carrie McCormick 3:16
So you’re right, that is the big story right now that there’s low inventory in in Chicago right now the inventory is down about 5% from the same time last year, meaning there are fewer choices for buyers, and then less competition for the sellers. And the market is trying to sustain a healthy number of listings to keep pace with this consumer base. And it’s you know that we’ve got consumers that are definitely in a buying mode right now. And I talked to colleagues of mine, which you know, is important for the listeners, you know, we are a great team and resources. And it’s just great to talk to each other about the market and what they’re seeing. And there’s evidence of increased showing activity in the market. So again, we’re set up for a nice busy year.

D.J. Paris 4:04
Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. What questions are you getting from buyers and sellers this time of the year? Is there anything that you’re seeing any patterns?

Carrie McCormick 4:14
Well, I’m seeing that, you know, some of the sellers are hesitant about putting their homes on the market because the inventory is so tight, right? So they feel like if I put my home on the market, am I going to be able to find something else. So if anyone’s listening that has a home to sell, I would encourage you to do that now. Because our inventory is low. We’re driving up pricing, it really is a great time to sell and we’ve got buyers in the market that are ready to make a move.

D.J. Paris 4:41
And then what do you tell them if they’re like, Well, I am worried that if I sell it so quickly, I might not you know there might be this disparity in time before I find a new place.

Carrie McCormick 4:51
There’s always options you know, we can we suggest either a longer closing date, we can suggest doing some interim housing for them. Again, it just depends on their goals. And that’s our job as real estate professionals is to coach them through it and create a nice plan for them.

D.J. Paris 5:10
Yeah, that makes that makes perfect sense. I guess it is. It is a seller’s market right now, so might as well take advantage of that. And I wanted to ask you about the stock market. Do you do you watch the stock market? Do you feel it’s there’s a relationship between the stock market and the housing market here in Chicago?

Carrie McCormick 5:28
Oh, of course, I think the stock market has an uncanny ability to predict the future. Or at least, it’s better than some of our Professional Forecasters. Therefore, if you want to know how the outlook of the housing market is, I would take a look at the trends of the s&p Homebuilders index. That’s something that I like to watch closely.

D.J. Paris 5:49
Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know, for all intensive purposes, the s&p, you know, is is a good indicator of a lot of things, the health of the economy, which of course reflects some on the housing market. I wanted to also, this is funny, we did an I did an episode on last Friday, and somebody the person that I interviewed actually had a really kind thing to say about our show, but but also about about Carrie. He said, You know, what’s so great about this podcast is, and this isn’t something that, you know, I need to toot my horn, but I did think this was an interesting point. And he goes, you know, you get access by listening to the show to a top producer, what in this case, Carrie, what she’s thinking about what she’s telling our clients. And you know, this is there are 40 I just looked at, there are 42,000 realtors, in the Chicagoland area, Carrie is literally one of the top top producers. So this is a very big deal. And and I know that listeners really appreciate your time. The other thing I wanted to mention before I get into my marketing idea for the week is to send Carrie and your questions where you can send them to me or to Carrie, but you can visit our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. And you can submit questions, you know, ask a top producer questions, right. That’s what Carrie is here to do. And she’s very kind and generous with your time. As we have found with most of the guests that have been on our show. They’re very generous. But Carrie, in particular is extremely generous. She comes on once a month to answer your questions. So please, this is a wonderful opportunity to do that. You can also visit our Facebook page, which is also keeping it real pod and submit your question your questions there. So please do that. Anything that you want to know about the housing market, or even marketing ideas or what to tell a client or how to run comps, or tricks of the trade, anything that you think Carrie could could assist with, please send us your questions. So that brings me to my marketing idea of the week. And it actually, I was telling Carrie just a few minutes before we started. It’s not my idea. And it’s from an interview that hasn’t yet gone live. So I’m going to give credit to the person who gave me this idea. You’ll hear his interview in a few weeks. It’s Steven Hanna Tao. And he had a really neat, simple idea. And I wanted to get Karis thoughts on it as well. So I asked Stephen, when he is also a top 1% producer. And I asked him what cash when you started? How did you build your business and he had a really concrete simple idea that I thought you guys would want to hear about. So his thought was that nobody is going to use him as a realtor, if they don’t remember, he’s a realtor. And since he was so new, this is in his first year, he figured nobody’s going to remember that I’m a realtor. So he says I better remind them. So his thought was that he would create a postcard and send it to his 100 closest contacts. These are the people he is closest to these are not strangers. These are not people in a certain zip code he’s trying to market to these people he already knows and who already liked him, because he figured those are the people most likely to use me. But if they don’t remember, I’m here they might not. So every Friday, he would send them a postcard and he would design a postcard. He used a service for that there’s plenty of online systems for realtors, I just looked one up, it was 65 cents a postcard, including the design, including mailing it out. And he said he would have that sent out every single Friday. So I guess his client or his prospects would contacts would get them every Monday or so. Or Tuesday, maybe. And he said, I know nobody read these postcards, because, you know, he didn’t expect them to but he said but he goes I know they’re just going to toss them in the garbage. But for the two seconds before they toss it in the garbage, they’re going to see my name. And they’re going to remember that I’m a realtor. And he said I figured I needed to do that every single week. And I said, Well, that’s a lot of work. He said it really isn’t a lot of work. But if you’d run the math on how much it costs, if it’s 65 cents you do 100 That’s $65 a month. I think that It’s around 780 or so dollars for the year. And I said, what were the results? Did you actually see? Were you able to figure out how much you know, business you got from it? And he said, I got at least 40 deals. Now this is over a few year period. I don’t think it’ll happen in the first year. But he did it for a year and he got ended up getting 40 sales out of it. So gosh, knows how much that isn’t commission, but it’s certainly a nice return on investment. And I thought, you know, sometimes the simplest things work. So I wanted to get your thoughts on on that. Well, kudos

Carrie McCormick 10:30
to him. That’s a lot of work. But no, I do I agree to handwritten letters are just getting things out every week to your clients is is critical. It’s it’s definitely something you have to do. So kudos to him.

D.J. Paris 10:43
Yeah. And in particular, I think in the beginning, when you know, you’ve become a realtor, and maybe not everyone remembers that you’re a realtor. So anyway, well, anything else? We want to do you want to talk about before we wrap up?

Carrie McCormick 10:58
No, I think that’s it. I think we’re in a nice healthy market. And you know, everyone, just keep up the good work. And look forward to talking to you guys next month.

D.J. Paris 11:07
Now, if there’s anyone out there who’s a buyer or seller, and is interested in working with somebody like Carrie, and you should be because she is quite good. And she doesn’t need me to tell her that she just is that good. What’s the best way that somebody can reach you, or you

Carrie McCormick 11:22
can always call me I try my best to pick up my phone all the time. 312-961-4612 Or, of course, you can email me at Carey at@properties.com. I also do a ton of social media. So if you’d like to follow me either on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn, I’d encourage you to do that. I like to post a lot of educational tools on there. Little bit of entertainment, and of course, some of my pocket listings that I have coming up.

D.J. Paris 11:52
Yeah, and I would I would also encourage all brokers out there to follow carry on on Facebook and Instagram, Instagram, in particular, because I my personal feeling is that oftentimes Realtors could do a better job with with Instagram, I think and Facebook to Carrie does the best job I’ve ever seen with Instagram and Facebook as well. But specifically Instagram, her posts look amazing, and she does them herself. And you will be absolutely shocked at how nice these look. And you know, I just think it just adds to how professional you are in the field. It reflects in those posts and really impressive. Probably the most impressive I’ve ever seen. Thank you. Yeah, well, it’s, you know, congrats to you. So anyway, that wraps up another episode of the Monday market minute, please tell a friend, tell everyone who is a broker in your office about our show. And if there’s anyone else we should be interviewing in the future. Let us know that as well. And thanks again to Carrie and we will see you in a month. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you

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Welcome to the February edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie talks about gearing up for the spring market and some tips on how to prepare your buyers and sellers. She also mentions how inventory is low and what sellers can do prior to listing their property for optimal sales success. I provide a marketing tip on how to use your business cards more effectively!

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:12
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real. And this is our Monday market minute with Carrie McCormack, and we’re so excited to do this regular segment on the show. And actually, it’s our most popular segment and the one I hear the most feedback from everybody loves Carrie McCormack. So Carrie, welcome again, back to the show.

Carrie McCormick 0:34
Thank you, thank you. And I do encourage I get a lot of phone calls after the show airs of questions from clients and brokers. And so I do encourage you to give me a call and ask me any question that you have.

D.J. Paris 0:48
She’s extraordinarily generous. And congratulations is in order I happen to see just sort of Coincidentally, I was running a report for brokers in the Chicago area, and carry in from January and from January 1 to the 31st was the seventh highest producing broker in all of Chicago. And that is an amazing accomplishment. So congratulations. We’re talking 10s of 1000s of brokers. So congratulations to being number seven.

Carrie McCormick 1:14
Thank you. It’s been a busy month. Cool. So

D.J. Paris 1:17
tell us about January because we are now in February.

Carrie McCormick 1:21
Yeah, so January numbers are in. And I’ve got a feeling that 28 teens housing market is going to be very strong. So in the real estate world, I like to think of January as the calm before the storm, because we start to see the first signs of the spring market. And as expected, the number of homes for sale in Chicago is starting to inch upward this month. And we’ll expect a more significant increase in these numbers of homes for sale over the next couple of months. So again, January is kind of our Launchpad into the spring market. So the number of homes on the market this past January, January 2018 was just about the same as the past two January’s 2017, and 2016. But don’t be fooled by that, because the inventory in Chicago has been very tight. So everyone knows when there’s a shortage of homes, it’s the basic supply and demand, right. So when there’s a shortage of homes, there’s a lot of competition in the market. So the homes that went under contract in January, were on the market for an average of 30 days, they moved pretty quickly. And I think we’re gonna see that throughout this spring market, when homes hit the market, they’re gonna sell pretty quickly. So a lot of questions I get from my sellers. And of course, my buyers is what does this mean for home pricing. And just as you would suspect, the median price of homes is going to increase steadily, it’s going to be a healthy, healthy, steady rate for the rest of the year.

D.J. Paris 3:00
It’s very interesting. What are our sellers? Are you getting a lot of questions from sellers these days about when to when to go on the market? It is generally in our in February, you know, have you gotten the sort of timing the market correctly? Or is it just it’s inventory in such short supply that this is it’s been a great time to?

Carrie McCormick 3:22
Yeah, that’s a great question. So. So the market is consistently changing. And we do see, however, we do see the same patterns year after year in Chicago. So you know, I always tell my sellers sell when the time is right for you. But it can also help when you time the market. Right. So in January, February, these are obviously the cold winter months here in Chicago. But it’s the first signs of springs. So after Superbowl, which is now you know, a lot of agents will encourage you to put your home on the market because this is this start of the spring market, which is good. However, the best months to sell your home are between March and May. That’s the true spring market. And that’s where we’re going to see the most buyers in the market. So I always encourage again, it’s always whenever it’s right for the seller, but if you were to time it I would tell you to put your house on the market in March through May.

D.J. Paris 4:23
Yeah, that makes a lot of a lot of sense. Have you seen notice any other trends recently that are worth reporting?

Carrie McCormick 4:31
Death definitely have your house ready to sell meaning buyers are picky. They are looking to see what else is on the market. They’re not just buying the first thing that they see. So make sure your home is staged correctly. Make sure the even in the outside in these cold months make sure that the sidewalks are shoveled. Make sure that the presentation of the home is absolutely perfect because we’ve got picky buyers in the market. And if you want to get top dollar for your home, make sure it looks like it’s top dollar in the market.

D.J. Paris 5:04
And it’s also probably a good acid test for your broker. If you say, hey, I need you to help me stage the home correctly, whether it’s hiring a professional staging service or just doing work, the broker and the seller can sometimes do some of it as well. And the broker isn’t able to give you that sort of feedback, then maybe it’s time to maybe look for a new broker Absolutely. Makes a makes a lot of sense. Anything else?

Carrie McCormick 5:34
Well, I’m just excited for the spring market. As I mentioned, we’ve got a healthy market here, we need some inventory. So if there’s any sellers out there listening, now’s the time to put your house on the market.

D.J. Paris 5:45
Yeah, and if any buyers and sellers are listening, what’s the best way they can reach out to you?

Carrie McCormick 5:50
Absolutely. So my cell phone is the best way to reach me it’s 312-961-4612. And for our longtime listeners, everyone knows that I work 24/7, so call me anytime.

D.J. Paris 6:03
And that is very true. And also if you are a broker or a buyer or seller, you should really follow Carrie on Instagram. I was just telling her right before we went live today that I’ve said this a bunch, but it’s just so impressive to me, her Instagram feed is truly impressive. And it provides a lot of value to buyers and sellers. But it also looks really nice. What’s the best? What what is your Instagram handle?

Carrie McCormick 6:27
So it is Carrie McCormick real estate.

D.J. Paris 6:31
Awesome. And that’s to seize and McCormick. Great. So I wanted to just very quickly talk and I wanted to and I Kari asked me, What are you gonna talk about today, and, and I didn’t want to tell her because I wanted to sort of throw this without her awareness in advance just to get her take on it. And so I wanted to talk just very quickly about business cards. And this is something that isn’t really an idea I had myself it’s something I was taught many, many years ago. But most realtors and we have 1000s of realtors that listen to the show, have business cards. And oftentimes the question is like, what do I do with these right? You know, people aren’t necessarily walking around with x with other people’s business cards in their pocket, yet I have this whole stack. And I’m not entirely sure what to do. And I always heard, because I dealt with this in a previous profession many, many years ago, I thought nobody is going to keep my business card. And I think that’s probably true, that we could operate out of the assumption that as soon as you hand over a card as well intentioned, and as nice as the person is that you’ve given the card to, there’s a good chance, it’s just gonna get tossed away or thrown in a drawer and never thought or remembered again. And I kind of was always a little bummed out about that. I thought, oh, geez, how do I get people to remember this? And somebody said to me, well, that’s not the reason you give a business card, assume it’ll be thrown away, assume they’ll never, you know, they’ll never see it again. And, and but you give you give a business card to get one back. So if you’re meeting somebody, and you are at a point where you want to give them your business card, the most important thing this, this is what was taught to me was to get their information to Now sometimes people don’t carry business cards, I just went to a conference. And I didn’t bring any business cards, which was silly of me. But it was something that happened. And oftentimes people would ask me for my business card, I didn’t have it right. So but what I would do, since I didn’t have cards, I would give people my information. So in the you know, I’ve always thought that when you give somebody a business card, the most important thing you want is their information. In particular, if it’s potential buyer or seller, so when you give somebody your card, you know, odds are they might not have one on them. So you want to then say, well, you know what, actually, let me send you some information about what I do. And this way, if you lose the card, you know, I’ll make sure you have my information. So you want to get their email address. Ideally, it would be great if you get their physical address, you could write them a personal note, that’s probably a little bit more difficult to do. But everyone’s got an email, and it’s an idea, then you can go home and specifically write that person a nice thank you on email and say, hey, it was really a pleasure to meet you. By the way, here are the things I do for clients. If you’re ever in the market to buy or sell or rent, I’d be honored to work with you. And also from there, you really could put them on a regular marketing email campaign, right, you can now kind of indefinitely reach out to them. Not waiting so much for them to find your business card, maybe in the bottom of a drawer that they tossed it into. So I was curious, Carrie, if you have any thoughts about that?

Carrie McCormick 9:26
I mean, that’s good. Obviously. I agree with you. Because every time I think it’s just a natural human reaction, when someone pulls out their business card into handed over to someone, they pull out their business card, and they’ve got to give it back to you. So it’s that natural reaction of exchanging of cards. I do keep business cards actually. I’ve got a huge stack of them. I do put them in my database, but I like to have that physical it could be just a sign of the times of my age. Maybe I just do I keep the business cards. I like having them handy. So I think it just depends but I Do you think it’s a great idea to always hand out a business card and get one in return? Yeah, and

D.J. Paris 10:05
at the very least get that person’s contact information and stay in touch. It’s the one. And I’m sure Carrie is no exception to this. In fact, I know Carrie is no exception to this. But basically, everyone we’ve interviewed on the show is a big proponent of meeting a lot of people and making sure that they stay in touch with those people, which, of course, is how top producers grow their business, you know, through referrals through people they know, through their previous clients. But they have to stay in touch. So one way to do that is to get somebody’s information. So give somebody a business card, and just in your mind, say, they’re going to toss it away, not because they don’t like me, just because that’s what happens. And so I better get their information, and I better proactively stay in touch with them, so that they don’t ever forget about me. So that was my little marketing tip. It’s a fundamental, but I think it’s a good one. So that’s always good. Awesome. Well, Oh, and one more thing for everyone listening. We do these once a month, we do the first Monday of the month. And we need your questions are more specific. Specifically Kerry needs your questions or wants your questions. So if you are a buyer, or a seller or broker and want to know anything about what’s going on in the market, or if you’re a broker, maybe how to grow your business, like somebody like Kerry has done, send us your questions. And you can find us on Facebook, which are we’re Facebook and in our pages keeping it real pod or we have a website as well keeping it real pod.com. You can send us questions, submissions through that, and we will answer them live on next month’s show. So thank you for listening. Thank you for continuing to tell a friend if there’s any other realtors or brokers in your office or that you know that you think could benefit from listening to Carrie and other people that we have interviewed. Please continue to pass us along. We greatly appreciate it. And we also appreciate Carrie and her time because she is the number seven top producer in Chicago at the moment and she is too busy to do this. So

Carrie McCormick 12:00
we really appreciate it. So thank you. My pleasure. I enjoy it. All right.

D.J. Paris 12:03
Well, thank you very much. We’ll see you next month.

Carrie McCormick 12:05
All right. Thank you

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Welcome to the January edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie talks about how inventory is down and how brokers can encourage their clients to take advantage of the current real estate climate. She also answers a question about tax reform and how it may affect buyers and sellers. I provide a marketing tip on how to clone your best clients!

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:16
Welcome to keeping it real, the only podcast made by Chicago real estate brokers for Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris. I am your host for the show. But also today is our monthly episode with a very great and super interesting and fun carrying McCormick. So thank you Carrie for being on our show. This is our Monday market minute.

Carrie McCormick 0:39
Hello, everybody. And thank you, DJ for having me. Glad to be here. Glad it’s 2018

D.J. Paris 0:45
Happy New Year. That’s right. All right, I am going to turret well. First of all, we for our newer listeners tell the listeners a little bit about yourself.

Carrie McCormick 0:54
Sure. So I’m Carrie McCormack. I’m with App properties. I have been in real estate for 19 years now that we’re in 2018 I can officially say I’ve been in it for 19 years. I started in the development world and then moved into brokerage and been in brokerage ever since.

D.J. Paris 1:12
And we should also mention you are a top 1% Producer pretty much for a long time now and which is a big deal because there are about 35,000 realtors in the Chicagoland area. So you are in the very top 1% Yep, well, you’ve earned it and also very well known in the community and industry as well. Everybody knows Carrie. She’s also was voted best dressed realtor out of all 35,000 last year from the Chicago agent magazines. Another very big deal. And also, if you are somebody who is like, Gosh, I wonder how to use social media as a broker. Nobody is better in particular with Instagram, also Facebook, but Instagram Carrie McCormack, I’ve never seen anyone better follow her. What’s your Instagram? Tag?

Carrie McCormick 1:53
Sure. It’s Carrie McCormack real estate.

D.J. Paris 1:56
I mean, it is truly impressive. All of her posts look amazing. You’re consistent. And anyway, so I just wanted to make that point. So let’s, I’m turning it over to you. So tell us what’s going on in the market.

Carrie McCormick 2:07
Yeah, so I just want to round out 2017. Because usually at the end of the year, we see housing activity slowed down for a few weeks during the holiday. There’s a lot of buyers and sellers who want to take advantage of it slower time. But December ended up to be a very active month in the market. So we ended 2017 Very strong. So usually during the holidays, I like to take downtime, and I like to spend it with my family, but my phone never stopped ringing. And there’s many buyers who are in the market, who have been hunting for the perfect home for the past few months. And they haven’t found it because of low inventory. So what’s happening now is they’re getting ready for the spring market. And they’re hoping for new inventory to hit the market. So we’re starting early, it’s beginning of January beginning of the new year. And typically, again, this is still a little bit of a slow down, slow time in the market. But we’re seeing it pick up because again, due to low inventory, there’s buyers out there waiting and ready to buy something.

D.J. Paris 3:11
That’s great. So what what are you what are you dealing with with your clients right now? Are there any particular trends that you’re seeing this time of year, for example, the property tax, the new law that’s gone into effect that might affect charity? Taxes, as are people asking about that?

Carrie McCormick 3:28
Oh, they definitely are. It’s I don’t see so far yet. Obviously, it’s still the beginning of January that it affecting too many people people are asking about it. One of the things is the deductibility of state and local income taxes. And of course, the property taxes, households can still deduct both of these taxes, although now they’re limited to $10,000. We have new buyers new first time homebuyers who didn’t take advantage of some of those old tax laws. So to them, there’s not a big change, but to the other homeowners that there is also it’s important to understand that there’s new limitations on mortgage interest deduction. So that’s another thing that’s going to change some of our new homebuyers here and move up buyers for both their primary residence and second homes. The one change that it did is it eliminated it for equity lines of credit doing the interest deduction. So again, with these changes, it is affecting it a little bit. I haven’t seen a big impact yet on my buyers and sellers. But I’m sure as we roll through the year we’ll see that I always tell people though, again, people ask me these questions about the tax changes. And I’ll say it to everyone here is make sure that you always check with your tax professional to stay on top or ahead of these changes.

D.J. Paris 4:54
Yeah, absolutely. And also, our broker should really start thinking about supporting the lobbyist organization are passively dealer. And if you’re not familiar with what that is, you can contact your local board, for example, Chicago Association realtors or Main Street, North Shore Barrington, and ask them, you know about what those dollars get used for how to how to learn more about it, because the IRS, these are lobbyists that are fighting on your behalf. And also, the consumers behalf too. And we interviewed at the very, very for the first episodes we did here was with Beth Wanless, who’s one of the lobbyists here locally and works in on the on the state level too. And she talked about, you know, all the different resources they have for brokers, but also what they do. And so that tiny little donation that you make, you can make when you do your MLS dues, is $35. I think it’s really, really reasonable. But it pays for a lot of stuff to help protect your future as a broker.

Carrie McCormick 5:55
Absolutely. So I also wanted to talk a little bit about 2018. And some of the predictions that we have overall for the market. Just as a summary, I would say I think we’re going to have a very strong 2018. The problem that we’re going to have though, is going to be inventory, it’s really been a thorn in our side in 2017. And I think that it’s going to continue into 2018. And there’s been a legacy of slow homebuilding not not rentals. But as far as you know, single family homes and new condos, there’s been a little bit of slowdown with the homebuilding over the past decade. So again, I still think we’re gonna have a shortage of inventory. I do think that the number of sellers will, we will see a little bit of uptick in some of the sellers just based on the natural, you know, relocation, natural, upsizing and downsizing. But the problem that we’re also going to face is this chicken and egg situation where, you know, sellers want to sell, and they’re not going to have a problem selling their home. But they’re out there looking for their next home, and there’s no inventory for them to because they can’t find the next home or their next dream home. They’re resistant about putting their house on the market. So it’s, again, one of those chicken and egg games that we’re playing.

D.J. Paris 7:17
So what are you telling your your clients who maybe feel that way? Like, well, I don’t want to put it on the market, because then where do I go? Once it sells?

Carrie McCormick 7:25
Well, I’m actually encouraging them to put it on the market, because there’s such low inventory, you play the supply and demand game, they’re gonna get the most for their home. So you know, I’m encouraging them to put it on the market, you know, we can price it aggressively. Hopefully, we get a buyer, we can move out a closing date, you know, a little bit longer, maybe we go 90 days versus the traditional, you know, 30 or 60. So maybe we do a longer closing, and we hope that there’s other inventory that comes on the market. Or if there’s something that’s been sitting on the market for a while, you know, maybe my, my new buyer can negotiate a great price on it. So I am encouraging everyone to get into the market, and put your house if you’re gonna sell, now’s the time to do it again, supply and demand.

D.J. Paris 8:11
Well said, and I also want to make a point that, you know, I just asked Carrie, well, what do you do in that scenario? She had an immediate answer, because, of course, you know, she’s prepared. And she’s also been doing this a long time. But I always encourage all brokers to have answers to these questions. You know, I didn’t talk to Carrie ahead of time and say, Hey, tell me about what you think of a tax law changes I just asked her and she rattled off a three minute answer. That was pretty impressive. So you know, your your clients, Gore going to be asking, you know, it’s the winter, what should I do have an answer for that. And you know, definitely prepare yourself to have these conversations. I think it makes you look really professional. And obviously, this is a top producer, who’s doing who does that. So thank you, Carrie for all of that. I wanted to talk and I also wanted to get your thoughts on this, I have a very simple and quick marketing minute. And this is called cloning your best client clients rather. And it’s very simple technique. But I’m going to just very kind of go through it specifically so that you have an understanding of what this is. So this is when you’re looking to get more buyers or sellers and you hopefully have at least one that you can reach out to so what I want everyone to do who’s listening who’s a broker is think back to their the best experience they had with one of their clients could be a purchase or a sale. But whoever that that person was that you work with that client, I want you to think and if it was a married couple, usually one of the two of them probably is employed probably has as a job. And I want you to think well what is what are those people do? Right? So let’s say you had a client that was a nurse, this is an example that just came to me and you would love to work with more clients just like them, right? So what I want you to do and maybe make a goal to do this once a month and find, you know, 12 clients over the next year that you can have this conversation but I want you to call that client now could be somebody you’ve bought or sold a home to five years ago, it really doesn’t matter, but somebody had a really good experience with. And, and it might not even be their profession that you’re going to use in this next step. But think of something that’s unique to them. And a lot of cases, it’s a profession. So this person’s a nurse, let’s say you would contact them and say, you know, hey, Mr. or Mrs. So and so I had wanted to say I had a really great experience working helping you buy or sell your home. And I was wondering, I’m working on my marketing plan for 2018. And I was wondering if I could get your advice? Could I take you out for a quick cup of coffee, whenever you’re free, right. So schedule that meeting. And when you ask somebody for their advice, and that’s all I want you to say is, you know, I’m working on my marketing plan, I would really love to get your advice about something, when are you free for a quick cup of coffee, it is one of the most flattering things you can ever ask somebody for their advice, that’s all I want you to say. And then schedule that meeting. And then when you show up, sit down with them. And then this next part is sort of the part two of part one, schedule the meeting, ask for advice, or ask them that you’re going to ask for advice. And part two is when you sit down, say, you know, I just wanted to say that working with you was such a pleasure. I wish all of my clients were were you know, so much fun. And you know, you were just such a joy to work with. And I’m working on my marketing plan for this year. And I want to get in front of more people just like you, you know, now if they’re a nurse, you may want to say I would love to work with more nurses this year. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts about how I might go about doing that? Right. So what you’re doing is you’re asking them for their advice, you’re sitting down, you’re complimenting them. And then you’re saying, Gosh, I would love to work with more acts just like you know, their nurse maybe say their profession. Because if for example, nurses, obviously all work in the same building, they might even eat together or congregate together or go out together socially. But typically, what you want to do is say I would love to work with more acts just like you. If you were me, how would you go about doing that? Or what advice would you have for someone like me, and then you shut up and you say nothing else? You just let them think about it. And I bet you in most cases, in fact not. But I know in most cases, those people will pause, they’ll think about it. And they’ll give you a pretty good answer of well, you should come to the hospital, we all eat at 12 o’clock, I can introduce you to a few people, or we are going out or not you should come by. And now not everyone’s going to have these ideas, right. But some will or somebody might, for example, somebody might say, oh gosh, you should talk to if whatever, if they work in an office, you should come talk to my HR person, they might be willing to send an email out to everyone saying that I had a really good experience with you. And if anyone else needs a broker for buying, selling, renting, you know, I’d be we’d be happy to pass your information a lot. So it’s called cloning your client. And it’s real simple. And it sounds easy. And it is easy. But do that you’ll be shocked if somebody were to come to me my previous broker 13 years ago before I got in the business and said, I would love to merch work with more technology. I was in technology, more tech people just like you how would you do that? I’d be like, Oh, come to the office. I’ll introduce you to some people.

Carrie McCormick 13:06
Yeah, that’s a great idea. Yeah, so

D.J. Paris 13:09
that was all I got. I’ll keep it short and simple, but do it and report back and Carrie and I will be back again in exactly one month. And once again, happy 2018 on behalf of Carrie and myself.

Carrie McCormick 13:22
And I do want to add one last thing if you guys don’t mind. So last last month, I got a ton of phone calls from your listeners. And I want to say thank you to everyone who had called me. And I encourage any broker any listener if you have any questions, and been in the business for a long time. I love working with new agents and new clients all the time. So if you have any questions, always feel free to call me 312-961-4612 happy to chat answer your questions. Maybe sit down for a cup of coffee.

D.J. Paris 13:54
There you go. And also if you’re somebody who’s looking to buy or sell a home Carrie is also obviously a great source. Follow her on Instagram as well. It is truly impressive. All right. Thank you Carrie.

Carrie McCormick 14:04
Thank you.

D.J. Paris 14:05
I know you’ve got showings to go to so I’m gonna let you go. Alright, thanks so much. All right.

Carrie McCormick 14:10
Have a good day.

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Welcome to the December edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie talks about how attached inventory is up almost 20% from last year and how “boomerang buyers” are poised to make 2019 a huge sales year. She also helps a listener convert more open-house leads into customers. I provide a marketing tip around door-to-door lead generation!

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcast made for Chicago real estate brokers by Chicago real estate brokers. My name is DJ Paris, I am your host and today we are doing our Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick. So welcome Carrie.

Carrie McCormick 0:31
Hello, DJ, thanks for having me.

D.J. Paris 0:34
She is the co host. And you I think you still hold the record as the most popular episode to date was the Carrie McCormack first interview that we ever did. So we’re so glad to still have you on the show. And you just did your this past weekend. You did your shop with Carrie event. Tell us can you tell the audience what you did there? Because I think it’s really cool.

Carrie McCormick 0:56
Yeah, it was it was a ton of fun. So one of the things I like to dabble in, of course, is Chicago fashion. And I’ve got some great friends in the fashion world here in Chicago. And so one of my favorite stores is called Sarah Jane. It’s on wells Street in old town. And the owner, her name is Sarah, she invited me and my clients into the store to do some special shopping and it was fabulous drinking Mimosa is shopping laughter good time.

D.J. Paris 1:25
And you are also the Chicago agent magazine as designated you best dressed Realtor in Chicago. So this was an opportunity for people to learn how you do fashion. So anyway, I think it’s very cool. And it also really fun. Yeah, fun client appreciation event. I’m sure.

Carrie McCormick 1:43
It was cool. Thank you.

D.J. Paris 1:45
Yeah, well tell us a little bit about what you see going on now in the market.

Carrie McCormick 1:52
So the markets very interesting right now, I just want to start off with a little bit about our economy. And I think our news in general has played has had some, you know, positive influence in our market. And it’s really kind of given our market a sense of calm for both buyers and sellers. Now we all know that our stock market has soared, we’re over 24,000, which is incredible. And that’s making a huge milestone, and it’s giving some certainty into this market. And that plays into our Chicago real estate market as well. Also, it doesn’t hurt that our unemployment is at about I think it’s like at 4.1%, which is the lowest in us since December to 2000. Another positive note that we have is mortgage rates, they have held steady. So we’ve got this historically, low mortgage rate, we’ve got unemployment that’s low, we’ve got our stock market that’s over 24,000. Again, our news is been relatively calm, which is great. And it’s it’s helped our Chicago market in obviously we’re in December now. Typically, our holiday months are very slow. But we’ve seen listings up 8.4% For we call them detached homes, which is the single family home market. And new listings were up 18.6% For attached properties in that condo market and the townhome market, that’s huge listings that went under contract increased also 19.5% for detached homes, and a little bit on the lower end 5.1% For attached properties. But those numbers are huge for going into these winter months. Now. You know, our weather today I guess was 50 degrees and sunny, that helps keep spire keeps buyers on the streets. The sun is shining, people are out there looking for year end deals, our markets good.

D.J. Paris 4:02
And what do you see for the spring market.

Carrie McCormick 4:06
So I am very optimistic about our spring market, I see that we’re going to have a very healthy 2018. So right now the sales forecast for December and January suggests that we will have an increase in our market and the price forecast also indicates a moderate annual growth as well. So I see some positive movement into 2018. Another interesting fact for those who have been around as long as I have I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years, but we all remember the crash, the dreadful market crash. And according to CoreLogic This is a company that provides information on the real estate market. There’s something called the boomerang buyers. So these are the people who have lost their homes in the recession. And those people are a big part of our real estate market. So they lost their home, you know, back in 20, or 2008 2009. And they’re ready to enter the market again, hence calling them boomerang markets. So seven years have passed since the peak of the foreclosures in 2010. And then also, they will have passed the seven year period of which the credit, the Fair Credit Report, reports their derogatory information, and that’ll be removed from their credit reports. So again, they lost their homes due to, you know, foreclosure hit their credit report, seven years has passed, now that information gets wiped off their credit report. And that’s all going to hit them in 2018, which means there could be a potential 1.3 million buyers entering the market next year.

D.J. Paris 5:56
Wow, so great opportunity to educate those buyers, or obviously, and, obviously sell homes to them. But awesome. It’s good. What are you doing in December? I know a lot of brokers tend to think the activity is much slower, it doesn’t seem like that’s the case for for your business. So can tell us a little bit about what you’re doing to wrap up the year.

Carrie McCormick 6:21
Well, I’m really you know, business as usual, I’m still hosting open houses every weekend, sending out my mailers doing online targeting calling people, I’m acting as if it was, you know, spring market, you know, we’ve got buyers out there, I’ve got inventory to sell, and the phone keeps ringing. So we’re gonna keep keep pushing through the end of the year.

D.J. Paris 6:43
Well, there’s no surprise in your answer. For me to hear that. And it’s nice to hear that that you’re, you’re going as per usual. And it really brings us to a great question that you can answer better than anyone. So we had one of our listeners reached out to us. This is a Keller Williams agent who wrote a really nice, said really nice things about both you and I, but also had a question and he said, I’m getting to his question here was about open houses. And he said, he needs some help with them. Not with open houses in particular, but But what to do afterwards. So he says, This is him asking, I do a ton of open houses probably about 30 or 40 a year, and I’ve gotten some good leads off of them. But I’m having trouble converting them into clients. Once I do a buyer consultation. I know I’m good. But it’s getting to that point. That’s difficult. I’d love some agent insights. So can you talk a little bit about what you might suggest to him?

Carrie McCormick 7:40
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got some good suggestions for him. So I do a ton of open houses. Today. I did two open houses for my clients. And they can be tricky about picking up buyers though. Because I feel that when I’m working an open house, I’m there to service that property, I’m there every lead or person that comes in to that property, my job is to sell that property that I’m on, or I’m at, you know, I want to do my job about that. But as I qualify the person and you’re talking to them, if they clearly state that that property is not for them, you know, then I go into my pitch about helping them, you know, and be a buyer representative for them. So again, first and foremost, my goal is always to sell the property that I’m at. But if the client, you know, states that this isn’t a good fit for them, then I can go into my you know, represent representing them as a buyer’s agent mode. So to answer his question, you have to provide value, right? Because they’re there, and you’re the professional in the business. So you have to listen intently. Listen, listen, listen to what they want, you know, ask probing questions, listen to that what they want. And then again, we have to provide value and service to them. So you know, answer their questions, again, providing value to them, offer follow up with them have off market properties, you know, that’s one unique thing that us as agents can offer that they cannot get online that they can’t get, you know, browsing stuff from their home, offer, you know, pocket listings. So again, offering value to them, and then follow up, you know, once they leave the property, you know, because you only have so much time with them face to face. And I always think you’ve got a minute, you know, to sell yourself and that’s what you have to do. And then follow up, make sure you’ve got their contact information, follow up with them not once, not twice, not three times. You follow up with them until you know they respond to you. And if they don’t want your services that’s you know, then they say that but I would keep following up with them and continue to provide value and offer them solutions to properties that they are looking for that they stated to you.

D.J. Paris 9:59
Well All said, Yeah, take notes when you’re talking or listening, rather listening to those people and then follow up, follow up, follow up and keep following up until they tell you to till till they tell you to get lost or they decide to meet.

Carrie McCormick 10:12
Yeah, I mean, yeah.

D.J. Paris 10:15
So for my marketing idea of the week, and I have not run this by Carrie, although I briefly mentioned it before we started taping and I’ll be very curious to get her take on it. Because she’ll be able to tell me if this is a good idea or not. But I was thinking about the finance, the financial advice of advisor company, Raymond or not Raymond James, Edward Jones. So Edward Jones, is it competes with Morgan, Stanley, Merrill, Lynch, Smith, Barney, all of these financial advisor, companies that are looking to manage, you know, get investments for people under their management. And one of the one of the ways that Edward Jones really distinguish themselves from all the other firms, is they would coach their financial advisors to go door to door and literally knock on doors and say, Hey, I, you know, I’m with Edward Jones, and I want to manage your money. And I thought that was particularly interesting. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart. And I thought, Well, how could a realtor and by the way, people who are Edward Jones, financial advisors who have done that have actually had a lot of success over the years. But realtors, I’ve started to think, Well, how could maybe a broker do that? And I thought, well, here would be a real soft way that I might do it if I were wanting to try that approach. And I think it’s not a terrible approach. So what I would do is, if I got a listing in a neighborhood, I would want everyone else in that neighborhood to know that I was in the process of selling so and so’s home. So I might knock on every door and very politely say, Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother. You just wanted to introduce myself, I’m DJ, I’m in the process of selling your neighbor’s home. And you’ll probably be seeing me come and go from time to time. And I just wanted to make sure you knew who I was. And by the way, if you ever see anything unusual going on at the home, it’s my responsibility to make sure the home is you know, in good order. And if you ever see anything strange over there, please, here’s my card, give me a call, I’d be happy to get that information. So I just thought you could do you could go to every home in the neighborhood, knock on the door very politely. And you’re not specifically saying oh, by the way, if you need help buying or selling or you know, I’m your personal that you could always say that too. But it’s a real soft way to be able to say just wanted introduce myself. So I carry I wanted to get your thoughts on what you what, what you liked or didn’t like about that?

Carrie McCormick 12:32
Well, I love that idea. To be honest, it is very time consuming, I can tell you that sure to knock on doors, and I’ve done it. I’ve had doors slammed on me, I’ve had dogs chased me, you’ve got to be careful, though, because a lot of properties here in Chicago, you know, are either you know, gated in front, and you don’t want to trespass, you don’t know if someone has a dog. So again, just be cautious. Doing it especially just from a safety standpoint. But I’ve had some very positive response, you know, from the neighbors, because that shows that I care, it shows that I’m hard working, it shows that my you know, interest, obviously, is to selling the property and protecting the property as well. So it does definitely puts you in a spotlight and it also can yield some additional business down the road. Also, what I’ve done is just knock on doors in general. So if there’s a street that I have, like a client’s like, Oh, I love Magnolia Street, I’d love to have a house on that street. You know, I will literally knock on doors and let them know that I have a client that’s interested in and give them my card.

D.J. Paris 13:43
I love that. So you’re basically knocking on doors saying I have a client that is looking for homes on the street. Just wanted to introduce myself. I think that’s brilliant. What

Carrie McCormick 13:54
would it mean it’s again, it’s very time consuming. Sometimes weather related as well. You know, you don’t want to go out in the in the worst weather, but it is it’s something different. And you know, people do appreciate that face to face connection.

D.J. Paris 14:10
Awesome. Well, that is going to wrap up our Monday market minute for 2017. We’re going to have Carrie all next year as well. Carrie, by the way, if anyone is out there who wants to work with you, and we’d love you to help them buy or sell a home what’s the best way they can reach you? Yeah, absolutely.

Carrie McCormick 14:29
That’s great. So I’m carrying McCormick and with AP properties. I always answer my phone so please call me at 312-961-4612 or you can email me at Carey ca RR ie at@properties.com.

D.J. Paris 14:46
Also, I want to give a plug to your Instagram account because you have an incredibly impressive Instagram. What is what’s your Instagram handle?

Carrie McCormick 14:57
It’s Carrie McCormick real estate

D.J. Paris 15:00
Yeah, follow it. It’s really, really good. All right, Carrie. Well, thank you so much and we carry and I would like to thank everyone for listening. We have about 5000 of you now that are listening and we appreciate it and send us your questions. Let us know what you know in other information you want Carrie to talk about next year. And I’m excited for 2018

Carrie McCormick 15:25
Me too. Thank you

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Welcome to the November edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie talks about how inventory is slightly down from last year, but homes are selling almost 20 days faster! Carrie also answers the common seller question, “Should I wait until after the holidays to list?” I provide a marketing tip around professional photography – floor plans!

Congratulations to Carrie for winning Best Dressed in the Chicago Agent Magazine 2017 Agents’ Choice Awards.

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:13
Hello, and welcome everyone to the second ever Monday market minute. This is for November. I am your co host, DJ Paris and on the podcast as well as co host superstar producer Carrie McCormack. So welcome, Carrie.

Carrie McCormick 0:31
No, Hello, thanks for having well, you’re

D.J. Paris 0:33
very no thank you, because this is your brainchild, you were the one that came up with this idea. So once a month, Carrie comes on and does an episode with me and really runs the show, talking specifically about what she’s seen on what’s happened in the Chicago market over the last month, what she thinks may be happening in the present and also the coming future. And, Carrie, how many years have you been in real estate? Now?

Carrie McCormick 0:58
I have been in real estate for 18, long years, eight years, let’s say that

D.J. Paris 1:04
incredibly successful? Top Producer at at properties. And before we get into your stuff, how can people get in touch with you if they want to work with you.

Carrie McCormick 1:12
So you can always call me at 312-961-4612? Or shoot me a quick email at Carey at@properties.com.

D.J. Paris 1:23
And this is how hard carry works because it is actually Monday night we normally have this going live Monday morning. So I apologize. This now is going to be Tuesday just for this one time we’ll we’ll have that happen going forward. But the reason is Carrie is so incredibly committed to her clients, that this is the earliest we could get this done. So it’s really a testament to how hard she works. And the reason probably why she’s so successful. So thank you. We are honored to have have you on the show. So Tom, tell us what’s going on in the market.

Carrie McCormick 1:52
Sure, I just want to talk real quick about the state of the market here in Chicago. And as I’ve mentioned before, Chicago is made up of several different markets. Every neighborhood reacts differently, like Bucktown versus West Loop versus Lincoln Park nor center etc. You know, each market is a market of its own. But the national sentiment has given rise to the notion that the housing market is stalling. But I’m seeing buyers out in an increasing number. And I’m getting a lot of showings this fall market on my listings. So buyers are out I think what we’re seeing is that there’s not that many listings on the market right now. There’s not a lot of desirable listings. But you know, there’s definitely buyers out there that are looking, mortgage rates are remaining enticingly low. So folks are trying to take advantage of that I think the employment rate is steady. So people are feeling good about their jobs and end of year bonuses coming up. So we definitely have some buyers here in the market. We’re just waiting for some good inventory.

D.J. Paris 3:02
And what about length of time on the market homes listings these

Carrie McCormick 3:07
days? Sure. So right now the city of Chicago, we’re seeing listings average about 65 days on the market until they come up to a contract. And if you compare that to last year, the same time last year in 2016, that actually were in a decrease last year was 73 days on the market. And then this year, it’s 65 days. So it’s a decrease about 11%. And then just on that topic just to talk about pricing, and then the number of homes sold the city of Chicago and this is according to the National Association of Realtors, the city of Chicago, we did see an increase in the price. So we’ve seen about a 6% increase in the overall price from last year to this year. And then the number of homes sold in the city. We’ve seen a decrease in that one at about 3% from last year. So just to recap that real quick, because there’s a lot of numbers, the numbers sold in Chicago, we saw about a 3% decrease from last year. The sales price in Chicago from this year. It went up 6% from last year. And then of course I mentioned earlier that the average number of days is about 65 days on the market, which is a decrease.

D.J. Paris 4:27
I have a question. So I’m sure brokers get asked this all the time around this time of the year with their sellers is should I put my home on the market? And I know there’s no easy answer yes or no but what what do you usually tell broke? Or you would tell clients who are now coming into the holiday season? Do you have general advice for that or what are your thoughts?

Carrie McCormick 4:47
I do and I think it depends on the sellers motivation and what their next plan is, you know for sellers who need to sell. I always encourage them to keep their homes on the market during The holidays. And the reason I do that is because a lot of folks do take their homes off the market. So because we have a low inventory right now, it’s really going to get reduced once we start hitting the holiday months, which is November and December. So the inventory is going to go way down. Now for folks that need to buy real clients, other folks that have sold that need to find something, this is a perfect opportunity for my sellers, to capitalize on those buyers, and be first and foremost in a purchase decision. So I like keeping the homes on the market during the holiday season. Again, it’s what other people are not doing that sometimes makes you successful. On the other hand, if I have a seller that is flexible on the sale of their home, that they’re not in a hurry, you know, they can move next spring or next summer. What I would encourage them to do is take it off for the holiday months. And then let’s realist in the spring, which will be our highest market.

D.J. Paris 6:00
Wow, that was really fantastic answer. And if you’re a broker and listening, you can take a good chunk of that verbatim and start using it with your clients. And by the way, we need to congratulate you as you are officially the best dressed broker of all of Chicago, according to Chicago agent magazine. So congratulations,

Carrie McCormick 6:22
a lot of pressure. And I don’t know if you read the article, I was kind of joking about it. I don’t know how it came across. But I said I wanted to thank everyone for recognition of my hard work of going into my closet every morning and picking out the the right outfit. It was really meant to be more of a joke. So I don’t know how it came across. But fun.

D.J. Paris 6:41
Well, no, it’s but it’s it’s, ya know, I read that. And it was definitely funny. And I got the joke. But it’s also a quite an honor. And I met that mean that very sincerely. It’s very cool. It’s always nice to be recognized. Thank you. Like when I was in high school, I got like, I got best driver. But that was because I was actually the worst driver and I’d like crashed my car the day after I got my license. So it was an it was an ironic thing you actually earned, best dressed so that I think that’s your Well hey, you’re you’re welcome you weren’t at. So I so a couple of things. What we’re going to start, we have these once a month, these episodes. And this is an opportunity for all of our listeners. And by the way, I was just telling Carrie before the show, she asked how’s the podcast doing and in just to give you some some numbers in September, we had 950 listeners. And we’ve only been doing this a few months. Last month we had over 3000. So we’ve grown quite a bit. And I assume the majority of you are brokers. I don’t know who else may be listening. But you have an opportunity to ask Carrie McCormick, not only the best dressed Realtor in Chicago, but also one of the top top top producers for a very long time. And she just knows so much. And so please send us your questions. You can send them via Facebook, you can send them via our website, send your questions, and Carrie will answer them. And we’ll have some for the next episode. And then lastly, I wanted to go through my marketing minute. And then we will we’ll wrap up this this episode. Keep it nice and short. And I want to talk just very briefly about photography for your listings and get Kerry’s opinion as well in her own best practices. But this is not anything you haven’t heard before every broker has heard you should get professional photography for your listings. Of course, we all know that. But I want to give you a few statistics that were shocking to me. And these are recent statistics and I’ll even source where I got them. So the Wall Street Journal reported this year that only 15% of listings. Now this is in the United States, not Chicago, but let’s assume it’s probably can be correlated here as well. Only 15% of listings have high quality photography. And so that’s one statistic. They also reported half of over $1 million listings, use low quality photos. So only 15% of all listings use high quality and overhead and half of million dollar plus don’t use high quality which is which is incredible to be Shocking. Shocking. So also agents now this is from Inman, probably one of the greatest publications for brokers out there. Agents who outsource photography earn twice as much commission to even twice as much commission as those who do not. Only 35% of agents use professional photographers, which again another shocking statistic,

Carrie McCormick 9:37
I would imagine, though in Chicago, that’s got to be higher.

D.J. Paris 9:40
I would hope so. It’s certainly I mean, we have about 600 brokers, your firm has 1000s And I would hope that almost all of our brokers are using professional photography I’m sure most if not all of yours are to buy or spend. This is Wall Street Journal again. Buyers spend 60% of their time looking at a listing as photos and only 20%, actually on the listing description, and Agent description, so 60% of the time they’re looking at photos, so get good photos. And I wanted to also add one actionable item, even if you already using professional photography, which you would have to be, certainly by now. But the idea of adding a floorplan, I did not realize how inexpensive this was, I thought it would be very costly. And I looked at several different big photography Studios here in town. And it’s like $100, to get a floorplan done for it. I mean, it could be a little bit more depending on how big the home is. But like, it’s such a great opportunity, because buyers can then visualize, you know, putting things in those rooms, and it just also separates you from the pack. Do you have any thoughts in general, not just on floor plans, but just photography, you have thoughts about?

Carrie McCormick 10:54
Oh, I do. I think that I know, your statistics said they spent about 60% on the pictures, I would have thought that that would be higher. I’d say 90% Every everyone goes online first right to look at a home if not more worse. So they’re online looking. So your photographs have to pop. I mean, they’ve got to speak to that person and drama. And that’s what’s driving the traffic to this home. So your photos have to be perfect. And you mentioned the floor plans. I do think that that’s an incredible tool. They were more expensive early on. And we’ve come up with all these different ways. And companies have reduced the prices of us getting these floor plans. And you’re right, I mean, they could start at 100. But they definitely go up depending on the square footage. And there’s different tools and techniques that you can do furniture in these floor plans. And you can have 3d and all different types of floorplans made, you know, to make it easier for the consumer for the buyer to understand the layout and again, draw them into the home.

D.J. Paris 11:59
Yeah, I did a webinar with a photography service earlier this year speaking just about drone photography to for the higher priced listings. And it’s not that expensive. It’s maybe three to $500 Depending on who you use, but getting those flyover videos, especially if there’s a sprawling estate, if there’s nice landscaping, but oh my gosh, if you really i It’s so impressive and I very rarely see it. And you know, if you spend that little bit of money, a little bit of extra money to really make it pop in those short videos. I think boy that could really, definitely leave an impression on the buyers. All right, well, I think that wraps it up for this, this episode of Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick. So again, Carrie, thank you so much. Send us your questions everyone and we will see you next month. Thank you everyone.

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Welcome to the first Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick!

In this episode Carrie talks about how single-family homes and condo inventory is up over last year, but that buyers are taking MUCH longer to make a purchasing decision. She also gives her forecast for the fall market in Chicago and also the broader U.S. housing industry. I provide a marketing tip that everyone SHOULD be doing to increase their referrals, but few do – handwritten notes!

Vote for Carrie for Best Dressed in the Chicago Agent Magazine 2017 Agents’ Choice Awards by clicking here!

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

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:14
Hello, and welcome everyone to another episode of Keeping it real. The only podcast made by Chicago real estate agents for Chicago real estate agents. My name is DJ, I am your host today. I’m really very, very excited. We’ve been talking about this for weeks, maybe even a month or so, I have a co host, Carrie McCormack, who is also on the show, I’m gonna introduce her in just a second, she is going to be doing a co hosting an episode once a month, the first Monday of every month with me, and she’s going to be going over her Monday market minute, which is basically information about the Chicago real estate market, she feels you need to know, we’re also going to be answering your questions. And I’m going to be doing a quick marketing tip as well. So Carrie, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show on a regular basis.

Carrie McCormick 1:00
Absolutely. Thanks for having me excited to be here.

D.J. Paris 1:03
And just in case anyone’s not familiar with Carrie, she was actually a guest, one of the first guests we had on the show she had such a good experience. I guess she reached out to us. And we’re so honored that she wants to be on the show on a regular basis. So we’re so thrilled to have her. Carrie, can you tell the audience a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Carrie McCormick 1:23
Absolutely. So I’m Carrie McCormick. I am with AP properties. And I’ve been a licensed real estate agents selling real estate and our wonderful city for over 18 years.

D.J. Paris 1:36
That’s great. And so talk a little bit about your segment what we’re what we’re going to do once a month. So we’re going to be you’re going to be reporting on sort of the state of real estate in Chicago. Is that correct?

Carrie McCormick 1:48
Yeah. So I’m going to recap the month prior just with activity that’s going on with our housing market with the single family homes, condos, townhomes and any specific neighborhood information that’s relevant, and of course, just kind of talking about the economy as a whole. Because obviously, what happens in our economy affects our real estate market here as well.

D.J. Paris 2:13
Awesome. And we just took pictures you and I last week, we did a professional photo shoot. Did you like any of the pictures by the

Carrie McCormick 2:21
way? I did. I’ve got my top two choices.

D.J. Paris 2:25
Awesome. I just turning I’m turning all of that over to you because I don’t know that I have as good i We should also mention before we get started that you are up for an award for Chicago agent magazine you are up for you’re probably too humble to to talk about it. But you are up for the best dressed real estate agent and edit. And I think that is super cool, because Thank you. So if you want to, please do vote for Carrie. And you can do that right at Chicago agent magazine.com. Currently, it’s on their homepage. If it falls off the homepage, we’ll have a link to it in the notes of this podcast episode. So please vote for Carrie. And I did not get nominated for best dress. So at least one of at least one of us did. So let’s get started. Let’s start with your very first ever Monday market men and I’ll turn it over to you.

Carrie McCormick 3:18
Thank you DJ. So according to the Chicago Association of Realtors, I’m going off of a week ending September 16. And I put them in two different categories. The first is the single family home market, which we call detached housing. And then also the condo townhome market, which is attached housing. So just going back single family homes, our new listings actually increased a little bit over 10% It actually increased 10.2%. So there’s a lot of new listings that came on. And then our and under contract sales have also increased and that was a big, whopping 50%. And then lastly, our inventory decreased to four I’m sorry, to 8.4% which is down to 4334 units on the market. And then going to the condo townhome inventory, which again is the attached housing, new listings there also increased 15% The under contract sales increased 16%. And then our inventory increase there 1%. So you can see, you know, we’ve got a lot of movement in the market. One thing that I’m seeing in this fall market is that buyers are being extremely picky. And what that means to our sellers, is that the number of showings that we’re getting on the homes on average is up. So for attached homes, which are the condos and townhomes. We’re seeing approximately 10 to 15 showings before those sellers will get an offer and it also increases In the detached homes, the single family homes, sellers need 15 to 20 showings in order to get a contract on their home. So again, buyers are being extremely picky in this market. They’re looking at numerous properties before they’re making a decision. There’s no urgency for them to buy, and therefore, the showings have increased.

D.J. Paris 5:23
Do you also think could it also be a factor of is our brokers pricing the homes higher than they ought to be? Or is it more just there as people are just looking at more stuff before they decide?

Carrie McCormick 5:37
I think it’s a combination of both. Like I said, buyers are being picky. They know what they want. They know that the markets moving a little bit on the slower side right now. So they don’t have a sense of urgency to pull the trigger. You know, on one home, they’re going out looking at the competition and seeing what else is out there before they do that. So if a home is priced correctly in the market, if it’s priced aggressive in this market, that home will sell quick. But we do and I’m starting to see sellers there, they’re not budging on their pricing, you know they are, they’re coming in the market a little bit high. So I think they need to just be a little more realistic of, you know, this fall market, if they want to sell, they’ve got to price their property correctly. They have to have it. And I don’t mean staged professionally, but they’ve got to have it market ready to sell, or else it’s going to sit on the market through the winter months are going to have to hunker down and maybe try again in the spring market.

D.J. Paris 6:37
And if anyone out there is who’s listening, who’s not a real estate agent would be interested in looking at their specific neighborhood reports on what’s going on specific to their neighborhood. You’re you’re you will do that for them correct?

Carrie McCormick 6:50
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So you know, this is the broad Chicago Chicago’s comprise of 77 neighborhoods. So this data, especially with the new listings, and under contract, that is Chicago as a whole. But yes, every market in our neighborhood in this in the city has its own market within a market. So I am happy to pull reports on specific neighborhoods to pull that data for you.

D.J. Paris 7:16
And what’s the best way someone can reach you to get that

Carrie McCormick 7:18
she can remember from the first show, I told you, I always pick up my phone. So you can call me at 312-961-4612. Or you can send me an email to carry ca RR ie at a as an apple T as in Tom properties.com. Carrie at@properties.com

D.J. Paris 7:40
Do you think the state of economy is affecting housing.

Carrie McCormick 7:45
So there’s not been any major changes in the economy that would affect our housing market. So such factors such as wage growth, unemployment, mortgage rates, all of those have been stable. And as you know, Chicago’s made up of 77 neighborhoods, and each of our neighborhood has a market of its own. And every neighborhood has unique supply and demand challenges. So as a whole, though, I think our residential real estate market right now is in good shape.

D.J. Paris 8:14
What what do you predict for the for the Fall housing market.

Carrie McCormick 8:19
So we’re in the fall market now. And I think that competition is expected to remain fierce for the available listings that are on the market. Savvy buyers know that deals can be made well into these fall months. And again, sellers have to be realistic with their listing price if they want to sell this fall. Otherwise, they’re going to have to hunker down for the winter and relist in the spring of 2018. But right now I’m seeing a lot of demand for Logan Square Bucktown Wicker Park West Loop. And I’m also seeing a lot of clients who, you know, are starting their families and they want to stay in the city. And they’re starting their research now of looking at schools in different neighborhoods, for their for next year. So I’ve actually, which is kind of fun and unique. I’ve been working with some clients on educating them on different neighborhoods and school systems. And I partnered with school sparrow.com, and also the founder of Chicago School GPS to help educate these buyers on the school systems and different neighborhoods here in the city.

D.J. Paris 9:26
Awesome. And then lastly, as far as the broader economic viewpoint, do you do you see any trends there?

Carrie McCormick 9:35
So I do and this is gonna get a little technical and a little nerdy, but I love this stuff, because I think that the broader economic state of our market obviously affects my job and your job and what we do here in Chicago. So in August, there’s two consumer indices that both increase and the first one is the consumer confidence index. It increased From 122, or increased to 122, from 120 last month. And this survey also revealed that consumers appraisal of the current market conditions has improved. And they’re saying that business conditions are good. And when consumers feel good they buy and Consumer Assessment of the labor market was also very upbeat. In addition, the survey indicated that consumers have a fair favorable assessment of their own financial situation. There’s low unemployment, there’s low interest rates, as well as renewed gains in the value of their homes and their stock portfolios. So this pushed personal finance evaluations to a near time high. And when people are feeling good about their job, they’re feeling good about their stock portfolio. You know, they end up buying and I think this is a good indicator that we’re going to have a strong 2018.

D.J. Paris 10:56
Awesome. So just to recap, it seems like in the city, at least, listing inventory is up. time it takes to sell takes a little longer because consumers are being picky. But it appears that everything looks good as far as the near futures. Unless I missed something. It sounds No, I

Carrie McCormick 11:17
think I think we are in our we’ve got a healthy market. I think we’re in a good state here. As I mentioned, sellers have to be realistic about their price going into this fall winter market. And they have to price and prep their properties to be ready to sell.

D.J. Paris 11:34
Awesome. Well, thank you. And I want to get your opinion and your feedback on my this marketing tip I have which is we’re going to shift gears into the final segment of our Monday market minute show, which is a marketing a marketing tip. So one of the I’ve been getting a question a lot from our brokers here at our office, which talks a lot about buying leads. And there’s a lot of lead services, Zillow, Trulia, realtor.com, they all sell leads, and we have brokers that purchase leads and have tremendous success with them. Other people don’t seem to have success. I know it’s a very specific type of way to make the trend to convert those those leads into buyers, or sellers. But I wanted to come up with an old fundamental approach that is not purchasing leads, that I almost guarantee would work for anyone. So if you’re a broker out there, this this tip is for you. And this is around writing handwritten notes. So I was doing a little research for the show. And I found this this guy’s name’s Joe Girard, he’s considered the I think he’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for selling the most used cars of anyone in a history and which I think is such a funny thing, because you like there’s probably not a more hated individual on the planet than a used car salesman. And this guy is was like beloved, and he sold over 13,000 cars now I’m sorry, the 13,000 cars in like 15 years, he averaged 35 car sales a week. And it’s truly remarkable. And he did it almost exclusively by referral. That’s the really impressive part. And people love this guy. And so he wrote a book and I haven’t read the book, but I was reading other people’s assessment of Joe and read interviews with him. And they said, Well, how did you do this? What why were Why were you not only so successful, but the people loved you. And he’s in he’s contributes 100% of his success. He says, he’s not a good salesperson, he has no sales, salesmanship per se. He just wrote personal notes to every single person that he knew, including his clients, his his contact list, and he wrote a note to every person every single month. So handwritten notes. So this goes back to it like this fundamental, kind of like, if you go and hire a personal trainer, and you pay them $75 for the hour, or however much it is, and they say, Okay, let’s do some push ups. And you’re like, the very disappointing thing to hear. Because, like I already know, I’m supposed to do push ups. So this is kind of like the push up of dealing with or trying to get referrals, which is staying in touch, right? And I’m going to talk about writing handwritten notes. So in 2013, there was a Harvard Business Review looked at how often people receive personal notes. This is, you know, four to five years ago. And on average, the average American fan family only received one personal note every seven weeks, and I’ll bet you that is in I bet you it’s more like one out of every 20 weeks. I mean, I I can’t think of I can’t remember the last time I’ve gotten a personal note. It’s just so long. I mean, aside from birthdays and holidays, I’m talking about just out of the blue never happens. So anyway, this is so I started thinking about how do you do this? And I wanted to look at what the cost would be and then how much time it would take. So what I thought is what if some a broker just took their top 100 contacts could be clients, family, friends, etc. Just pick 100 People We’ll commit to writing every single one of them a note every single month, which sounds like a lot of work, and it is a bit of work. But it’s not that expensive. And it will guarantee, I almost guarantee it’ll create amazing results. So here’s how much time it’s actually going to take. So basically, you have to write five notes a day to get to 100. notes, and then you know, every month, so it’s, I figure, it’s maybe most two to three minutes, and no, let’s say it’s three minutes of notes, it’s 15 minutes a day. And all you really have to write in these notes, try to write just two sentences is probably plenty. What I would also do is drop your business card in there, which would save you the having to write if you know anyone that’s looking to buy or sell a home, I’d be honored to have to work with them, your card in there will do that. But write something personalized if you know they have kids, hope your kids are doing well in school or just thinking about you and wanted to say hello, it doesn’t really matter so much what you’re right. But if you can do something personalized, personal to that person do that. So it’s your right to do that it’s 15 minutes a day, basically five notes three times a day. And here’s the cost associated with it. So 100 notes a month is going to run you about $100 Just buying those those note, you know those cards, then the big expense is actually stamps and that’s 49 cents. And we figured that’s about $49. So 50 bucks a month 50 plus 34, the stationery is $80. So for $80 a month, and 15 minutes a day, you’re gonna you’re gonna end up getting 100 notes out and 1200 notes by the end of the year. And I guarantee you for $80 a month, I can assure you if you look at the studies that have been done on how buyers and sellers and Carrie has been doing this 18 years, and I’m sure what she would corroborate this. But if you look at the studies that how buyers and sellers choose their realtors, almost majority of the time they go Who do we know who’s a realtor? Or they ask their friends who did you use? And a very small percentage of those people don’t choose a realtor that way and they go online and they fill out a lead form. And those companies sell those leads. And so it is a small percentage goes that way. But the vast overwhelming number of buyers and sellers, if they have if they don’t already have a realtor, they’re thinking Who do we know. And so that is my tip of the week. It takes a little bit of work, but it absolutely I’ve never met anyone who’s done it who hasn’t had tremendous success. And if if all it does is generate one more sale a month. There you know, there you go.

Carrie McCormick 17:28
It is it’s such a nice personal touch. And I think that’s a great tip.

D.J. Paris 17:33
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much we will carry we’ll be back in exactly one month to talk about further on to the fall and the winter market. And we’re so thrilled to have her on the show. So Carrie, thank you so much again, how can people reach you if they are looking for a realtor themselves?

Carrie McCormick 17:50
Sure, they can call me at area code 312-961-4612 or shoot me an email Kerry ca RR ie at 80 properties.com. And for having me.

D.J. Paris 18:05
Oh, you’re welcome. And one last thing it Carrie is also here to answer questions. So if you are a consumer and you have questions about the real estate market, you we can answer those live on the show or if you’re a realtor and you’re interested in how to how to somebody like Carrie, sixth house, she successfully built her business, send us your questions, you can do that through Facebook, Twitter. You can also send it to us via email at our keeping it real pod.com website. So again, thank you so much everyone and we will see Carrie again in a month and I will see you guys next week. So thank you very much. Thanks Carrie. Thank you

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