Navigating the Final 90 Days of the Year with Success in Real Estate with David Caldwell
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[00:00:00] David Caldwell: What’s up? Hey, for those of you that don’t know me, I’m David. I’m going to be here every other week. So I’m the every other week guy. Now you guys, some of you have heard this pitch. I’m a coach, but I’m also a practitioner. I was slaying a canceled listing yesterday that I’ll be bringing to the market on Thursday.
Thankful to say, so no, I’m just like you guys, I’m making these calls. We’re going to talk about preparing. For the next 90 days. But to me, the next 90 days is always about preparing for next year a little bit, right? The fourth quarter in my business and my coaching business has always been about habit change.
So we’re going to talk about some of those things today. So I asked earlier before a lot of people were on like where everyone was, and I know we’re all in a different market. So I want to give some examples. I’ll give some examples from my market today, but I think this is really important when we think about what the next 90 days.
If you were the CEO of a publicly traded company at the beginning of every quarter, you’d be expected to get on a phone call with all your investors and share what happened so far this year and what you think is going to happen in the next, in the rest of the year. And not just from the perspective.
Of this is what I did, and this is what I think I’m going to do, but this is what’s happening in the economy. This is what’s happening in our business. This is what’s happening in our market. I’m going to show you guys some examples of this, but I think this is something we as real estate professionals miss, unfortunately.
We don’t always think about, you know, in finance, they call it the headwinds and tailwinds of the market. So we all have been hearing this stuff and I’m going to try to share the right slide this week. So if I’m off, someone yell at me proactively, please.
You guys see it says Portland metro area? Metro Portland, Oregon? Yes. Okay, perfect. This is really important to me and my business for the next 90 days, as I presume it will be for all of us. I saw a headline today. I think it was 24 year high. For mortgage rates, but what does that really mean if I’m a really if I’m a real estate professional?
What this means for me in the portland metro area this chart is affordability going back to december 2009 It’s broken out by quarter the red line. What does this red line mean? Well, it means that any of these time periods up until now when I spoke to someone if I use june of 2014 as an example The average person that I met in my marketplace that could afford to buy real estate, not only could afford it, they could afford almost 130 percent of the mortgage payment.
We’ve lived in a world where people can afford to buy real estate, in Portland at least, and I’d be curious what this is for your marketplace, because you may or may not have these same challenges. But a challenge that I’m facing is today, the average person that we talk to, the average Portlander, the Portland metro area, they can only afford 84%.
Of the average mortgage payment. This is going to dictate my habits. This is what CEOs of businesses are expected to know. We all know rates are high and we can understand the implications. But in other marketplaces, despite what was going on, the average person I spoke with could afford 120 or 140 or 160 percent of the average payment of a house.
And today it’s 84. I have to talk to more people to find people that can actually afford 100 percent, 120 percent. This is what we talk about, like the factors facing us going in to the next quarter. Based on that information, if I know that information and it’s not just a hypothesis, how do I have to change?
My habits.
We all probably need to take a hard look at what we’ve done this year and see where we need habit change going into the next 90 days.
Another thing to look at, like, I know the fourth quarter of the year in Portland, there are less sales opportunities historically. I can’t take my foot off the gas pedal. And I won’t get into the boring numbers for you guys, I can show you, but I won’t. Sales are down 28 percent year over year in Portland.
Last year, about 4, 000 agents out of 15, 000 actually had a sale in the fourth quarter. What do my activities have to look like to ensure that I’m one of the people that not only gets a sale, but get multiple sales, if that’s part of my business plan, these perspectives are important, even if you just take what I’m sharing with you and look and go, how do I need to change my habits?
By a show of hands, maybe who is. ahead of their goal or on pace for their goal.
You guys, my hand’s not up. So don’t be embarrassed if yours isn’t. I didn’t focus on this enough last year. I didn’t think about how the economy could impact what I do.
So this is really important to sit down and really look at your business and go, you know, am I doing enough open houses? Who’s been getting business from open houses this year? They’re good, right? Oh, I see. I see my boy Robin there. I was like, who’s that guy with the great beard?
[00:05:57] Robert Mack: We double ended two deals this month because of open [00:06:00] houses.
Tell me, tell me more about that. Like what kind of people are you seeing walk in to open houses right now, Rob? I’ll be honest. I’m not doing them. My team is you got to ask them how I should ask them.
[00:06:13] David Caldwell: You ask him and come back and report to us. Hey guys. One of my agents in an open house, one of my listings this weekend, and the person that lived down the street that was just going out to walk their dog, she held the leash while the people went in and looked at the house.
They’re an escrow on it.
[00:06:29] Robert Mack: I do want to add one of the deals that one of my agents found the buyer and we are now going on Monday to meet them because they want to sell their property after we close on the purchase. So that, that transaction is turning into three for us.
[00:06:44] David Caldwell: Look, I want to give you some insight for those of you who have done open houses and maybe think open houses.
You guys haven’t had that success that Rob’s talking about. If you look at the National Association of Realtors, every year they put out a survey. It’s the Homebuyer and Seller Survey. They survey 150, 000 people. Pre COVID, and we’ll get back to it. Pre COVID numbers were 4 percent of sellers and 5 percent of buyers find their agent in an open house.
What type of people go to open houses? I think there’s two types. Crazy people and serious people. It’s got to disqualify the crazies and talk to the people who are actually in action. But if we’re behind on our goal, and only a couple of us are doing open houses, that might be a habit change that I would suggest statistically 10 percent of home buyers find their agent because they asked a question about a property online.
That’s a Zillow connection, right? That’s a, that’s an online lead. That’s really good asking a specific question. Well, 5 percent just walked into an open house. There is a humongous opportunity in this lead source. And if you’ve thought about doing open houses, that would be something that I would suggest that you lean into realtor.
com. They sell people online leads. They did a humongous survey. The number two places agents found their business. was open houses.
So when you think about changing habits, things to take into next year, where can I put myself in the way of active buyers and sellers? That might be one place that I suggest.
I, I gave an example of getting an expired or a canceled listing yesterday.
Is anyone calling canceled or expired listings? Does anyone like want to list more properties in the next 90 days or in the next 12 months? No one wants more listings or expired canceled, except for are
[00:09:09] Robert Mack: We, we are, we’re pushing now an expired in-house expired listing training. On a weekly basis of the six agents that we have on the team, four of them express, have expressed interest in finding new ways to get listings.
And so we’re, we’re rolling out that training and we’re going to go for it. Rob, you, you call expires, right? I don’t call them active now, but I, I built my business on calling expires when I first started for four years.
[00:09:36] David Caldwell: And what was your experience like when you did that? Were people nice? Were they mean?
What was the biggest challenge?
[00:09:42] Robert Mack: I would say most people are nicer than you think, you know, a lot of us have this narrative in our head that it’s going to be hard. It is not easy. It is hard. But really it’s a numbers game and it’s all about the nurture, right? We’ve all seen those statistics around how most agents call two times, maybe three, but most sales happen on the 5th, 6th or 7th contact.
That’s expired right there. You don’t even have an amazing script. As long as you call 6,7,8,9 times, eventually you’ll start setting appointments. And you’ll start taking listings. It’s, it’s inevitable.
[00:10:14] David Caldwell: My experience asking people what their income goals are. Usually they’re high. It’s like doctor money. So I would suggest that most of your guys goals to acquire the type of income that you desire.
The answer to the activities we do is going to be a lot of the ways that Rob just answered. It’s hard. Sometimes it’s quiet. I will tell you guys in a lot of marketplaces where we need listing inventory, there is a tremendous amount of gold to be found and canceled and expired listings. Like Rob, I built my, my, built my business on expired listings and I was really silly that I stopped calling those people for a while and by a while, I mean, many years and I think all the time about where I’d be if I would have just kept up on that habit and that skill set instead of pivoting to some new shiny object, which we all have a tendency to do.
Here’s a beautiful thing. If you want to prepare, if you want to succeed in Q4 and going into next year with canceled and expired listings, there are already people that have decided to hire a real estate agent. They’re already people that have agreed to play by the rules and commission structures that we present.
They’re just people that are disappointed they didn’t get the result they expected. And in these conversations, how can you engage someone, build trust, and try to help give them another path? The hardest part about Canceled Inspires, in my opinion right now, is getting people to actually communicate with me.
It’s less frequent, and I think the fear for some people, and if you don’t share this fear, I apologize. I think the fear for some people calling cancel expires is like, what if they swear at me or what if they do this? Or what if I do this? Or I seem silly. [00:12:00] You guys, the single largest challenge is actually getting them to respond.
But to Rob’s point, the people that stay on it, that are consistent, that build trust in their consistency, they’re the ones who usually get the opportunity to interview.
People’s plans rarely change. Most people’s plans just get delayed. That’s part of one of my favorite scripts with expireds. Hey, Nizar, I know people’s plans usually don’t change, they just get delayed. So can I ask, if you would have sold your home, where would you be right now?
Easy question to ask. Hey, you can ask that same question to a, to a buyer. That’s an old lead that ghosted you. You finally got back on the phone. Seems like a year ago, you were planning on moving and you haven’t, but I know most people’s plans don’t change. They just get delayed. If you would have bought then, where do you think you’d be today?
And I asked, why haven’t you gotten there yet? Our jobs help solve people’s problems, right? Preparing for the next 90 days. What problems can I go solve these people in my database? What are their issues?
Does anyone like, you know, ever like just totally nail their goals every year? Like we always have hiccups along the way and building these habits.
Like one thing I think is really important thinking about in q4 when we know it’s naturally going to be challenging more challenging. Like why would I continue to do this when I might face a lot of silence on the other side of the call? Why would I do this knowing that people might want to delay and do something next year, right?
We have to know what we’re trying to achieve. It’s really like interesting with my team members, I always have them like email me their goals and then every once in a while I’ll just like check in with them and see where they’re at, but I won’t tell them what their goals were. And I’ll ask them if their goals have changed and remind me what their goals were.
And so often they’re different. Man, write your goals up on the board next to you so you don’t forget. What, what is the outcome you are going to get if you achieve those things? So Dave, I just
[00:14:29] Nazar Kalayji: looked in Newport Beach, there’s 59 expired listings in the last 180 days. 11 of those were in the last 30 days, and in Corona, there was 16 in the last 180 days, 12 in the last 30 days.
And so it’s not like there’s a ton, but there’s most certainly a lot that are available there. All we have to do is just go and talk to those people and build and foster relationships because a third of all expired listings will relist with the same agent. A third will take up their home off the market because they’ve changed their plans.
And a third will relist with somebody else in the next 60 days or the next. You know, 180 days. And so like, yeah, it’s just another lead pillar that some people may not have thought about before because it’s just too hard, but those that do and craft their skills to be able to do it are going to have phenomenal experience in generating more opportunities than they would have otherwise done.
Yeah. You said
[00:15:17] David Caldwell: there were 69 in Newport? 59. 59. Okay, so 60. So 20, according to Nazar’s numbers, are going to list in the next. in the next 60 days, right? Most of us on this call, if we just had one sale a month, we change our lives. Like that’s the cool thing about real estate. And when you hear numbers like Newport beach, right?
And what those sales prices can be, man, it can really be life changing. One of my agents converted her, it’s her highest sale ever. It was a Zillow lead that they called on a lot, 3. 6 million, which is a huge price point for Portland will be the second most expensive sale in this one particular city. Guys.
That is a life changing amount of income for her one sale. The average
[00:16:09] Nazar Kalayji: of the Newport beach properties was 5. 8 million.
[00:16:13] David Caldwell: Yeah. Hey, what if you just got one every other month or what if you just got an additional four next year? Yeah. One, one thing Ryan and I have been talking about is actually door knocking to expireds a week.
Cause there’s not a ton like, like every day one or maybe two come up. So we thought, okay, everyone’s calling. Why don’t we just door knock? Cause it’s, it’s, we’re also identifying our farm area. So we’re marketing on Zillow. We’re, we’re doing community events. We’re sending mailers. People know us. They recognize the logo.
Let’s knock on the door and see if we can’t maybe separate ourselves from our competition. So it’s definitely on our radar as well, even though I’m not
[00:16:49] Nazar Kalayji: actively doing it. Well, I think it’s cool about expired listings is that you can widen your reach, right? Like you don’t have to be in a specific zip code or even that city.
If you take in Newport, Irvine, Kern, Del Mar, you know, like that South County area, like you have a lot more opportunity every single day. Same with, you know, Riverside County, like if you take a bigger part of the county, you have more opportunity to do that every single day. And because the more you do it, the more you.
Are able to, you know, overcome those objections and get better and better at it. And so that you can convert more at a higher level. So yeah,
[00:17:22] David Caldwell: you guys like all realtors aren’t great equal and to Nazar’s point, right? Like when you build those relationships and see if you can solve their problems, sometimes people just need a different voice.
[00:17:33] Nazar Kalayji: And you guys, I mean, the approach that you can take when you go knock on those doors isn’t, Hey, I want to take your listing. Be like, Hey, and if your plans haven’t changed, or if you got what you’re looking for, if you sold your house, would you still make the move? And most of the time, or at least a portion of them are going to say yes.
Like, Hey, listen, like without listing it, how about you just let me put you home on the market or do an open house on it for this weekend for you. Right? Offer them that.
[00:17:58] David Caldwell: You guys, if you were an agent in [00:18:00] Portland, there’s this agent, her name is Marsha Keys and she’s like iconic Portland real estate agent.
Everyone knows who Marsha is and she drops off flowers, a pot of flowers on people’s doorstep with a note where she’s just asking for the opportunity to interview if they decide to resell their home. I mean, that’s the most passive approach I’ve ever heard, but it actually works for her and it’s totally on brand.
The key point is she’s going out and trying to engage someone in a conversation. She’s showing effort.
[00:18:36] Nazar Kalayji: I’d like to know, Jessica from your perspective, when you’re dealing with a lot of non owner occupies, a lot of investment properties that are down there in Florida, how are you reaching those expired listings?
Are you sending them an email or a lead pillar?
[00:18:53] David Caldwell: Yeah, both. So we do, we do calls and a letter
and for a while, like, like, just like everyone, I’m sure we had no expires at all, but we are starting to see, you know, we might have 1 every other day, but it’s still 1, you know,
[00:19:14] Nazar Kalayji: and I think a beautiful thing about expires is you don’t also have to go the last 30 days. The last 80 days. You can go. Absolutely. You need to go 3 years ago. And cross reference the ones that didn’t sell and have that be a phone call or door knock and be like, Hey, you put your home on the market during COVID didn’t sell.
Obviously your plans, you know, you’re making a move. If you were to make a move, where would that be? You know, and if I can get you that now, which would you make the move? Cause obviously values have gone up significantly in the last two, three years and there’s things that way. So
[00:19:43] David Caldwell: my favorite thing to do every year, and this is in my own business.
When I was, when I was active actively selling, this got me the best return is looking at the expired listings for the past year and calling black Friday, calling leading up to new year’s and new year’s day, even new year’s day, calling new year’s day. Yeah. I will, I will share an observation, you guys, because this wasn’t planned to be an expired listings call, but you can find a lot of top producers who built their business helping people re list their properties when someone else failed to sell it.
And maybe the seller was the stubborn one, but it’s just the new agent that was able to get it priced right or positioned correctly.
[00:20:30] Nazar Kalayji: You guys, you’ve heard of the saying, the second mouse gets the cheese, right? The home I just listed right now for 1. 2, 3, 5 million was listed by a friend for 1. 3, 7, 5 million pricing correctly.
Pictures are garbage. The guy did nothing except for listed it on the MLS and charged them a small little fee to do it. And they realized that they needed a professional. And so I got the listing professional photos, video, and we took 120, 000 price adjustment. Guess what’s going to happen. That property is going to sell.
And so like, it’s, it’s not that difficult and I would even look at canceled listings, right? Don’t, don’t forget about those opportunities that don’t go after withdrawn, right? So there’s still active listings, but canceled and expired all day long.
[00:21:18] David Caldwell: Hey guys, whether it’s expires or open houses or it’s your online lead pillars or it’s your database that you’ve been ignoring because you don’t want to sound salesy to the people that would love to send you business if you ask.
You have to look at your business and the lead pillars and where the opportunities are. Nobody raised their hand that they were ahead of goal. Nobody. Which means we have to take a deep look at what we’re doing and go see where the opportunity in our market is. Crazy people or people in action are walking into my open houses.
Because the only thing I want to do on the weekend is spend time with my daughters. But all of a sudden I’m an open house guy again. Because the things that I desire for my daughters come from the hard work I put in, in my real estate business. And I’m in a season of open houses, but it’s an opportunity in my market.
You have to look right now in Q4, at the habits you have to create, to create conversations and appointments, so you can plant good seeds and reap what you sow, and have a good Q4 and have a great 2024. Bullshit.
You’re a bullshit.
Well, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t mute. That’s fine. But that’s what you guys have to look at, right? Hey, if you guys are unsure about what some of that market data is, go to one of your leaders, open up the MLS, study the stats, look for the opportunity. When you look, you generally find something.
The things that pay you well right now that are easy that you like to do. If you do more of it, that’s another thing I found. People usually get results there like this. There’s this framework that I coached through. What’s the fastest, easiest way for my clients to get to their goal where they’re happy going to work every day.
And I just try to focus on those things Because you can get repetitions in, if you can get them to do those tasks and people win in the reps, that’s where people get better. That’s where skillset improves. It’s where the quality of everything we do increases. But if we had to put a bow on this, what are the economic headwinds in the business right now?
We know their interest rates. We know there’s lack of inventory. People are locked in. What does that equate to? We have to go [00:24:00] have more discussions and talk to more people and put ourselves in the way of conversations. We have to use this little thing to create conversations. What are the lead pillars I’m going to do that through?
And over the next 90 days, how can I put that into habit? What do I get if I do these things? I think I’ve talked about how I like to do jiu jitsu. You guys, that is a really hard thing to do at 40, especially when you do it with people that are bigger, stronger, and more skilled than you. Most weeks, I’m like, I’m just trying not to submit or get choked during this practice.
And something’s happened over the last six months because I’ve been, I went from going two days a week to four days a week. I’ve gotten a lot better because I’ve been putting in the reps, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s working on a lead pillar or going to a fitness class or reading books to our children, right?
If we put in more reps, we get better results.
Q4 real estate agents are notorious. For only working October, and then they’re gone in November and December. Do not do that. When everyone else leaves in November and December, be a louder voice. Do more open houses, call more expires, call more people in your database. Plant good seeds. Don’t be tone deaf.
Acknowledge where we are in the market. Find people’s problems and figure out how to help them.
It’s almost impossible not to win if you focus on those things. It’s really easy to lose if you do the bare minimum or just wait for your phone to ring.
Anything else? We good? We need to do an expired listings call. It feels like
[00:26:03] Nazar Kalayji: I see a bunch of blank faces and it concerns me. Because I think that, you know, like right now, I don’t know if you guys are like in this analysis paralysis stage where you’re just like unsure what to do, or you know what to do, you’re just not willing to do it because it’s hard work. But like at the end of the day, you guys like either you’re going to do it and be successful or not, like it’s entirely up to you.
No one’s going to want it more than you have to want it. No one can do it. Like you have to have a desire to, and the cool thing is, is that those that like really put in the work and, and, and, you know, hone their skills, crush it in this type of an environment. Cause people are fleeing our industry left and right.
Right. They’re absolutely leaving the industry. And so there’s, even though there’s less opportunity out there, there’s less transactions happening. There’s still opportunities for every single one that wants enough business. To actually go get it and most of you guys are still secret agents on social media.
It drives me absolutely bananas. You guys, I don’t have a social media person. I have my phone and I have my little tripod and I freaking do all my own videos and it probably shows because they’re not phenomenal. They’re not polished. But guess what? I get calls from it. I get people that say, Hey, I saw this ad or I saw this or I saw that like you need to be out there talking to more people every single day and expires is a phenomenal way to be able to do that because these are people have already raised their hand said, yes, I want to sell.
I want to make a move.
[00:27:36] David Caldwell: So I love it. Amber, you raised your hand. I saw you raise your hand at one point. Yes, I would love an expired listing call. Like scripting and stuff like that, please. Yeah. Yeah, we’ll do it. Melissa, put it on the list. Hey, you guys, you guys have to want it. I think this is a, I think this is a great call for everyone to go back and listen to again, to pump you up and listen to again, because it is hard right now.
And like Nazar said, the business is not just going to come to you. I know personally, like we’re going to be playing this at our team meeting and maybe even having a quiz
[00:28:15] Nazar Kalayji: afterwards. I looked it up when I included canceled in the mix, it went up to like 32 in the last 30 days, like, and if you add like all this, you know, surrounding cities that we all work, holy crap, there’s so much opportunity.
And what I found with expires is if it’s harder to get ahold of the person, it’s easier to convert them when, when you get ahold of them, if they’re an easy, if they automatically pick up the phone, it’s harder because everyone, their mom is calling them. Right. But if you like, if you have a hard time getting hold of them and you keep on following up and be tenacious and finally get ahold of them, either calling different hours, sending them a video text message, going to their freaking house, like that, the person that gets actually them face to face is going to have a higher chance of getting them to actually convert.
[00:29:02] David Caldwell: If you guys were going to hire any professional service provider, you’d be challenged to find someone who doesn’t like someone who’s professionally persistent and worked for them before they hired them. But most realtors, we don’t get to work until someone says you want to work with us. Thanks.
[00:29:20] Nazar Kalayji: So David, I, I, I think that the, the response is good. Why don’t we, you know, in two weeks from now, why don’t you do an expired call? Yeah. Maybe we share some scripts and maybe do some role play or, or, or some yeah. And we’ll be good.
[00:29:34] David Caldwell: Alright everybody, see you in a couple weeks. Have an awesome
[00:29:37] Nazar Kalayji: week.
Bye.
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