Welcome to the March edition of Monday Market Minute with Carrie McCormick from At Properties!
In this episode Carrie first discusses how the city market is doing before launching into advanced strategies when working with buyers in multiple offer situations. She discusses how buyers can write personal letters to sellers and also suggests making a video to introduce themselves! Lastly she provides some buyer “don’t’s” during multiple offers. I provide a marketing tip around skill building to increase your value to customers.
Carrie can be reached at carrie@atproperties.com or by phone at 312.961.4612.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the only podcasts made by Chicago real estate agents for Chicago real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris and I am your host today on the show. We have as usual Carrie McCormick for her Monday market minute or carry talks about what brokers need to know what is happening with the Chicagoland market. If you’re not familiar with Kerri McCormick she is a top producer. And just to give you an idea of what a top producer she is, by the way, she is a broker at at properties and has been very successful top producer for 20 years. However, she is not only a top 1% producer, she is a top 1/10 of 1% Producer because I did the math earlier today and there are 41,000 brokers in Chicago Carrie is always consistently in the top like 15 or 20 out of 41,000. So we are so honored to have her on the show. She just recovered from a two week illness and is still dedicated to coming and helping our listeners. So welcome. And thank you Carrie.
Carrie McCormick 1:55
Well, thank you very much for having me. And, and first off, I also want to thank everyone that listens to your show, because during the month I always get you know, phone calls, I get emails, I get messages, DM messages from the listeners, you know, asking their questions to me directly, sometimes, you know, they’ll call me. And I just want to say that’s one thing I love about our community here in Chicago is giving, giving back to the community. I’ve been doing this for decades, two decades now. And I’ve learned a ton. And I’m happy to help anyone with any questions, give advice, whatever it is, please keep the questions coming. And love to hear from everybody. Awesome.
D.J. Paris 2:40
So what are we talking about today?
Carrie McCormick 2:42
So I’m just gonna hit on a few things. One, I always like to start with some stats of where the market is, you know, we’re, we’re in our spring market and the new listings in the city of Chicago were down 7.3% For detached which is the single family homes. But they were up 4.6% For the attached which is of course the condos and the townhomes. So again, they were down for the single family homes and they were up for the condos. Now pricing is a little bit on the opposite side, the median price for the detached homes again, single families were up almost 6% But down 4% For attached properties. So just you know in this early spring market, we’re watching you know the inventory come up. We’re watching the sales, the under contract, a lot of things are moving here, we’re you know, off to a nice healthy start of the spring market. But one thing I want to talk about is working with buyers. I am very listing heavy, if you will I do a lot of listings, and I love to market properties, but I do work with some buyers. And one thing that I found in a competitive market like we’re in is how do you position your buyers for success, especially when there’s multiple offers. One thing that I do is I monitor the private listing network which is the PLN and all the other off market networks. Buyers should be prepared and it is our job to prepare them no matter what the market is but they should always present a good face for the seller in negotiations. And as much as a buyer may want to put on the boxing gloves at times. You never want the sellers or the sellers agent to get turned off or frustrated by your by your offer or the way that you position your offer because they will automatically shut down and obviously you’re not going to have a good income out income outcome with that if you if you go in you know looking for a fight so you always want to position yourself in the best light in in the eyes of the seller. I tell my buyers you always need to come across genuine and sincere and you don’t want to be just a name on a piece of paper with a price So one thing a lot of agents have been doing in Chicago is writing a letter to the seller. And this came up a couple of years ago, and everyone started doing this and presenting letters to the sellers. And it worked really nice because again, you give it a nice personal touch. Well, just a quick story is I just had sold a home with multiple offers. Every offer that came in, wrote a letter to my seller. And oddly enough, each letter was almost the same thing, obviously, with different names. So what happened is, we had six offers on this home, six letters that came through, which were almost all identical. And to my seller, they thought, Well, this was very insincere, like, what do you guys, you know, thrown around a template out there of these letters. And it kind of appeared that way. So what I thought it is now buyers need to again, be sincere, be genuine, do a little research on the seller, obviously, we’ve got Google, we’ve got Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, do some research on those sellers, see, if they have a dog, see where they went to college, see, you know, where they went on vacation recently, find something that you can speak to with the seller and put that in your letter. Because also keep in mind, that seller is also going to do research on that buyer. You know, they want to know who’s buying my home? What are they like? What do they? What are their interest. So it is important, it’s kind of like interviewing for a job, in a way, you know, you everything’s online. So you want to make sure that when you present your offer, you’re presenting it in the best light possible. One new technique that I don’t say that I came up with, but that I thought of, is to send a video to the seller. So do do a quick video or have the buyer do a quick video like, you know, hello, this is who we are, this is our dog, smokey or, you know, whoever it is, and, you know, this is what we do. This is why we fell in love with your place. Now you put some tone to to the contacts, right, so now they can see you they can understand you know where you’re coming from, it’s just kind of a nice touch, and it’ll set your, your buyers apart from everyone else.
D.J. Paris 7:21
Yeah, and just thinking about if two offers came in at the exact same price, but one of them had a personalized letter and a video, or one or the other and the other didn’t, all things being equal. I suspect the one that we had the letter or the video might be more likely to get accepted. It definitely
Carrie McCormick 7:41
gets more attention, right. At the end of the day, the seller wants price in terms. But definitely I mean, it just it gives it a different touch. It’s always worth trying, especially when you’re in a very competitive market.
D.J. Paris 7:53
Yeah, and oftentimes, maybe you know, it can be to that the seller price isn’t the most important thing it isn’t I mean, I’m sure everyone listening, the default is to think price is most important. In most cases, it probably is, but not in all cases. And sometimes people just want to sell their homes to people they like. And if you can show that I’m a real person, here’s a 32nd video about why I love your home. That and it’s genuine, I mean, that goes a long way that’s worth that’s actually worth something. I agree. intangible. So and by the way, it’s fun to do too. And it’s it’s kind of adds another level of humanity to a sort of otherwise kind of, you know, sterile transaction. And we’re going to offer this and hope that they don’t counter but I
Carrie McCormick 8:38
will tell you though, a don’t this did happen once to is I was representing the seller, we got a few different offers. This is just a few months ago, but one of the offers started liking them on Facebook, liking them on LinkedIn, that’s a little much. And then you know, kind of stalking them sending them messages. And so it really turned off my seller, right? Because it was a little creepy. So just again, you got to do it professionally. You’ve got to be careful with it. Obviously just do it with integrity and sincerity.
D.J. Paris 9:15
Yeah, it’s such a great idea. And it really separates you from everyone else. So great idea. So for for my marketing, I do a quick marketing minute at the tail end of our of our monthly episode with Carrie. And honestly, I couldn’t come up with a really cool marketing tip this week. I’ve given a lot of them in the past. Everyone can go back and listen if you’d like. But I realized maybe the most important tip is the least exciting tip that I could give but maybe it’s the most important one which has to do with your skill set. I learned early on I was in a different career and the top salesman that was there was a very likable person, but he was also the most skilled person in the whole company. And I asked him Hey, When do you ask for the sale? Because a lot of times for brokers, we might think the same thing. When do we ask for for head love to represent you and sell your house or I’d love to help you buy a home or or whatever the transaction is. He says, if you’re really good, you never ask, you don’t have to ask, because you do such a good job that everyone knows that. And then over time, people just refer you business. And I went, Well, that makes sense. And the truth was, I wasn’t very good at it because I was new and hadn’t really developed that skill set. So for everyone listening, if you’re new, and you don’t yet have 20 years experience, like Carrie does, which is worth, you know, a price above rubies, what you can start to do is build that foundation, which means every day spend 15 minutes 20 minutes perfecting or increasing your knowledge of your craft. Here’s a really simple example if you want to hyper focus in a particular geographic area. Let’s say you want to be the Linkin Park person. You know, somebody like Nico apostles a really good example of he lives in Linkin Park. He loves Linkin Park, that’s where he’s focused his energy for a lot of years. And maybe he knows it better than most brokers, but he also studied it. And if you studied whatever geographic area you want to focus in on, if you just went to the MLS and you learn every single home that’s for sale in a particular neighborhood or suburb. And you did that for two or three months, you’ll be so incredibly knowledgeable that you’ll be very valuable to anyone who wants to move to that area. And you can’t obviously know the whole city and all the suburbs, but you can know a couple of them or at least one. So if all you did was spend 15 minutes a day studying the MLS and really learning how much a single family home goes for what places are available for sale, how attached, you know, how condos are doing, if you know the inventory and know the numbers, oh my gosh, when you find a client who’s looking for that, you’ll be so insanely valuable. So spend time every day learning and perfecting your craft. It’s this, it you know, it’s like one of those things where you look at somebody who’s really fit. And you realize that every day they do push ups or setups or they do some you know, and maybe they’re not the gym for an hour a day. But if I just did 15 minutes of some exercise today, I would definitely be stronger at the end of the year. So do your 15 minutes, do your push ups every day, whatever that is, and perfecting. You know, a lot of times I was talking to Kerry offline, there’s a lot of brokers that don’t work with investors, because they don’t really understand investments. It’s a totally different world. And I suspect if you spent 15 minutes a day learning about investments and different types of lending products and all the different vocabulary for investors within a year you will know as much as just about anyone and you can really now surface a whole nother industry that you previously weren’t able to. So you know, spend some time every day perfecting your skill set and increasing it and you’re going to be so valuable to people you won’t have to spend as much time marketing so that’s my tip. All right. Awesome. Well, that does it for this month’s Monday market minute. Carrie if there are any listeners out there who may be their brokers maybe their buyer’s or seller’s and are looking for a realtor to work with what’s the best way someone could reach out to you
Carrie McCormick 13:13
sure it’s best way to reach me is just to call me 312-961-4612 Of course you can shoot me a quick email as well which is Carrie ca RR ie at@properties.com
D.J. Paris 13:29
Awesome. Well on behalf of Carrie and myself we thank you for we are coming up on our 100th episode and the numbers just keep increasing with zero marketing. I hope that means we’re we’re creating value I know we are carried hears it from from listeners I hear it as well. And on behalf of both of us. We thank you because we wouldn’t do this if people weren’t listening. And so send us your questions. Tell a friend subscribe on Facebook, subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Anywhere you find podcasts and we will see you next month. And thanks Carrie.
Carrie McCormick 14:02
Thank you
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