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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