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Strong year of home sales on the horizon in 2022
As we close out 2021, hopefully with our loved ones, we are taking one final look back at home sales for this year before we turn the calendar and embark on the next chapter in our industry.
2021
2021 took us on a wild ride as we got a peek at the possibility of new seasonality trends. It was also proof that people’s need for a great home to live their lives, raise their family, and now work, is resilient against almost all other things.
Since October we’ve also been predicting that we will see 6.8 million home sales this year. The last time we saw a year of higher home sales was back in 2005. It’s almost hard to believe after a year of non-stop talk about inventory shortages that the result will be a historic number of transactions.
So what does all of this mean for 2022? First, let’s take our last look at 2021.
November 2021
In November, there were 536K home sales, which was 4% more than we predicted. The result was a 6% decrease in sales from October, but a 2% increase year over year. While we historically see a 2% increase YOY as we saw in 2018 and 2019, in 2020 there was a 24% increase YOY, which means November stayed a hot month even not in the height of a pandemic.
December & January
In this final month of 2021, we predict there will be 545K home sales in December which would be a 2% increase from November. In January we predict we will start the year strong with 515K home sales, which would be a 5% decrease from December, but a 27% increase year over year.
Ringing in 2022
As we look ahead to 2022 there are a number of things to consider that will impact transactions. One of the main areas we are paying attention to is inflation, and specifically wage inflation.
As home price decelerates, wage inflation will likely increase affordability therefore causing another strong year of transactions across the country. That’s not to say that all markets will be affordable, but the wage inflation (arguably caused by corporations like Amazon setting the new standard for wages) will have an impact on new homebuyers coming on the market especially in more affordable communities.
Something else that will likely impact the rate of home sales is the Great Resignation. Coldwell Banker recently released a study that revealed the impact the Great Resignation will have on the housing market, particularly in more affordable areas of the country. Around the country workers have indicated they would take a pay decrease in order to live in a more affordable area of the country. So what will that mean for inventory and transactions?
Ultimately, we predict with the deceleration of home prices, wage inflation, and for the foreseeable future, continued low-interest rates, 2022 could be another record-breaking year for home sales.
What role do you play?
As more and more ways to buy and sell homes emerge on the market, one thing remains true – buyers and sellers need a trusted advisor. The most recent data from NAR in 2020 stated that “87% of buyers recently purchased their home through a real estate agent or broker” (source). That means 87% of home sales are dependent on all of you.
Continue to nurture your sphere. Be the first person someone thinks of when they are ready to buy or sell, or, even before they are ready. You have the power to make a difference for your clients, your community, and the industry as a whole.
See you in 2022!
The Home Sales Predictor is a set of prediction data that dives into the number of presentations created and the correlated number of U.S. home sales. This data is provided by MoxiWorks with insights from their MoxiPresent product.
Get our Home Sales Predictor Monthly Report delivered to your inbox!
What Seasonality? Home Sales Hold Strong
Summer is winding down in many parts of the country. Kids are going back to school while professionals head back to the daily grind. One thing not winding down? Home sales.
There were nearly 600K homes sold in July with 591K home sales, meaning our prediction was within 1%. While that is a 10% decrease in home sales from June to July and a 4% decrease YOY that is still a very strong month of home sales and it looks like it should stay steady over the next few months, really just throwing our usual seasonality for a loop.
So, what’s ahead for August and September?
Predictions
Based on activity inside our MoxiWorks products we predict there will be a 2% increase in home sales in August with 601K homes sold followed by a 10% decrease in September with 538K home sales.
While that would mean a 9% decrease for September YOY, when comparing it to a more normal year like 2018 or 2019 that’s a 27% and 17% increase respectively for this time of year which definitely points to this wonky year of home sales continuing.
So, what about home prices?
The big thing we’ve been talking about around the virtual MoxiWorks lunch table this past month is less about the waning inventory (even though that is of course still a concern) and more about current home prices and interest rates. Interest rates are still at a record low, but, at some point, they will start to increase again as economic principles come into play. Until that happens this will remain a seller’s market with record breaking home prices that are spooking buyers. Because these buyers are spooked another thing we are keeping our eye on is the increase in non-traditional home buying, i.e. iBuyers. Needless to say, there’s a lot happening and it will be interesting to see what these changes mean in the coming months. So how can you and your agents be ready?
Fall & Covid-19
We are of course not ignoring the Delta variant and what that might mean for the Fall and Winter months of home sales, but for now, our message remains the same. Protect yourself and your agents from whatever is coming our way by staying in flow with your sphere. Keep working for your future by staying in flow with your sphere now. If the last 16 months have taught us anything it’s that things can change at a breakneck pace and you don’t want to be left wishing you had kept your book of business fresh, nurtured and full of your future leads.
Until next month.
Long-Term Success in Real Estate Comes from Relationships (Not Cold Leads)
It’s simple when you think about it: People like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. The evidence for this is everywhere.
Have you needed a babysitter, a landscaper, or a dog-walker?
Chances are you probably started your search with people you’re connected with and asked for recommendations and referrals. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about trying a new restaurant in town – but when your coworker says the food was terrible, you decide you won’t go. We all do it to avoid risk. The same can be said when buyers and sellers chose an agent to work with. Buyers and sellers lean on pre-existing relationships to find their agent.
Now, compared to each other, dropping some Benjamins and waiting around for cold leads to pop up in your inbox is easier than proactively expanding your sphere and getting to know people. The latter takes time and energy, the former only needs money. However, as we’ve seen our local, national, and global economy roil from pandemic effects this past year, it’s a good time to consider ways to grow your business that doesn’t directly rely on cash expenses. Instead, think about the networks of people you’re already connected to, and how you can leverage them to grow your business. It’s truly more profitable than you may have previously thought.
Sphere-focused real estate isn’t a new theory. The great real estate philosophers like Ninja’s Larry Kendall, Brian Buffini, Matthew Ferrara, and more all remind agents that success comes from relationships. Still, we get distracted by “disruptors” and “innovators ” and think the industry will be turned on its head.
Sphere-focused real estate business fills pipelines and builds longevity that’s exponentially more dependable than begging for top-of-funnel leads. You need to be actively communicating with your sphere of influence (SOI) to stay top of mind. This way, the next time one of your contacts is even toying with the idea of making a move, you’re the first one they’ll call and you’ll be there to help before they even consider working with another agent.
The National Association of REALTORS annually publishes a report on buyer and seller behaviors and trends. If you aren’t reviewing these surveys, we highly recommend you check them out. NAR recently released the 2020 report with some fantastic stats.
3 out of 4 buyers interviewed only one agent during their home search.
So, unless you’re reaching out to them first, it’s unlikely you’ve going to be able to grab new business without an existing relationship. Consistently keeping in touch, staying in flow, is about doing more than a once-annual home value report and a sports calendar in the fall.
When surveyed, most buyers and sellers found their agent because they were recommended by a friend, neighbor, or relative, or they used their agent from a previous transaction (NAR, 2020). This proves that people trust recommendations. If most buyers and sellers only interview one agent and most find their agent through a referral, then being that connected real estate agent is practically guaranteed business.
Despite the hugely powerful concept of repeat and referral business, brokerages and their agents are still often distracted by the next transaction. They know they need to stay in contact with people but have yet to create a system that prioritizes a relationship-first business. Their day gets filled chasing tasks, and soon, the agent has lost contact with the people who know, like, and trust them.
This forces agents into a vicious cycle that many vendors take advantage of. The stressed, over-worked agent is told, “Don’t worry, we’ll find you leads and give them to you at cost.” Agents expect the business to come rolling in while they care for current transactions, but in the end, these cold leads take more energy and convert less frequently than if the agent had focused on their sphere. It stresses agents out and brokerages are left constantly fighting agent churn due to low productivity.
The inventor of the phrase “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush” could never have envisioned it applying to modern real estate. This adage reminds us of all that every agent has a bird in their hand: their sphere of influence (SOI). If you aren’t keeping a clean, organized database (a CRM) for your sphere, step one is to start.
This article originally appeared in MoxiWorks’ agent magazine, Mile62. Enjoy more articles here.
Hot housing market, with no indication of a cool down, for now.
In last month’s Home Sales Predictor article we said –
“Only time will tell if this flattening trend will continue or if we will see a spike later this year. Many of our clients have shared with us they are starting to see more listings in their area so maybe we will still see a spike? What trends are you seeing? Do you think we’ve seen the peak?”
And, it appears the flattening has not happened yet. In June there were a record-breaking 636K homes sold across the US. That’s 6% higher than our prediction and 24% higher year-over-year. In fact, that is the most homes sold in a month that we have seen since we started tracking this data back in 2016.
July/August Predictions
Looking ahead it appears the market will remain hot with a brief slow down expected for July (which is a historical trend) with 587K home sales. That would be an 8% decrease from June and a 4% decrease YOY. We then expect the market to pick right back up to 601K in August. If our prediction holds true that would be a 2% increase from July and a 3% increase YOY.
When talking with our data team this month about the Home Sales Predictor one thing we all agreed on was the fact that this is a weird housing market that really feels like the tip of a lot of interesting things happening in the world right now.
Especially for us here in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve been living in a market that was mostly closed for the last 15 months, it’s been shocking to see how much has changed in the last two. And, especially in the housing market. A lot has been unpredictable and while we are confident in the data at our fingertips, time will only tell how much wackier this market may get.
Institutions vs. Homebuyers
Things are starting to look up in the economy as we return to work, travel and entertainment. There are even signs things may change for the better in terms of the housing inventory as lumber prices start to stabilize and housing starts will finally be reviving, but we still have an uphill battle to climb as more and more millennials aim to get into the homeownership game.
One of the biggest things at play that we are focusing in on is how much institutional buying is putting pressure on the already shrinking existing home inventory. We’ve been talking for months about the listings shortage vs. inventory shortage, but new data is causing us to take another look when an already pressured consumer market is seeing more pressure from the resurgence of the iBuyers (more on that below) and this further immergence of the institutional buyers that are buying homes and taking them off the market by turning them into rentals.
According to a recent Redfin report investors spent a record $77 billion on homes over the past six months compared to the $55 billion that was spent in the second and third quarters of 2020. That’s 1 of every 7 U.S. homes in the first quarter where in the previous three quarters investor bought closer to 1 in 10 homes (Source: HousingWire).
That same report shared that “Most [investors] focused on single-family homes, which made up the biggest share of acquisitions and first-quarter growth, year over year. Nearly 39,000 of the 55,000 homes investors bought in Q1 were single-family properties, up 4.8% from last year” and that among those buyers were Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent, both “single-family-rental behemoths.” (source: The Real Deal)
So while concerns have been flying around about the resurgence of iBuyers it’s important to note that iBuyers are still only roughly 50% of the way back to their pre-pandemic levels with only 4,383 homes purchased in Q1 of 2021 and only account for 0.5% of homes sold across the U.S. making them nowhere near an immediate threat to our housing shortage.
What does the future hold?
The market will likely continue at this velocity, but the concerns around intuitional buyers squeezing our inventory opportunities will remain top of mind. Especially for how it can disproportionately impact the lower and middle class and especially for minorities who oftentimes lack the generational wealth to get their foot in the door, especially in a crazy market like this one.
And it’s not a great sign when, according to HousingWire “investors gobbled up the largest share of lower-priced homes in the first quarter…One of every five low-priced homes that sold in the U.S. (20.8%) was purchased by an investor, compared to 12.5% of high-priced homes and 11.3% of mid-priced homes.”
So, what can you do?
Use your power as a real estate professional to help overrepresent the underrepresented. Try and focus on building your sphere with families to help get them into homes and start building wealth and generating more opportunities for future growth. The more we can build diverse communities the better for society and the better for our future as an industry. Look for the opportunities to make positive change in your community while making sure all the homes on our street aren’t bought up by investors. Be that valuable resource for all of your contacts in your sphere and educate them on the benefits of buying and selling a home in their market to help continue to foster movement and transactions across the industry.
Sources:
- https://therealdeal.com/2021/05/21/institutional-buyers-are-flooding-single-family-market/
- https://www.housingwire.com/articles/investors-are-buying-up-single-family-homes-across-the-us/
- https://www.redfin.com/news/ibuyer-real-estate-q1-2021/
- https://www.vox.com/recode/22407667/home-sales-boom-rent-housing-single-family-rental
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/lumber-prices-are-way-downbut-dont-expect-new-houses-to-cost-less-11626260401
The Home Sales Predictor is a brand-new set of prediction data that dives into the number of presentations created and the correlated number of U.S. home sales. This data is provided by MoxiWorks with insights from their MoxiPresent product.
Get our Home Sales Predictor Monthly Report delivered to your inbox!
Our Growth Leads to Your Value: A letter to MoxiWorks customers
Dear customers,
There’s increasingly more horsepower behind the rate of innovation and growth of our offerings here at MoxiWorks and we’re thrilled to share the benefits of that growth with our customers aka you. With your support, we continue to push progress of the industry as a whole with our suite of products and services we offer. And as we grow, our focus remains to provide continued benefit to you, our customers as we innovate and establish new integrated partnerships.
From Open Platform to Open House
We believe that no two brokerages are alike, which is why we’ve built the industry’s only true open platform, which gives you – the broker – the power of choice. Working with a truly open platform means even though you and other companies may have the same tech partner in us, you’re still able to provide unique value to your agents. Each brokerage has the ability to mix your own unique cocktail of technology and fill it with your own unique content and branding geared at a specific market, which drives the success of your agents and enables you to advance your value proposition and stand out in your market. This allows you to grow your technology strategy along with your company and we’re right there with you along the way.
All our customers have access to the same SaaS products and open platform that we have created. Therefore, adding new customers means added revenue, allowing us to expand our ability to build and enhance those products, benefitting all customers equally. It’s a win-win situation for all.
Getting Faster, Better, Stronger Together
Yes, bringing on new customers means we had to grow our team and we’re proud to say we’ve increased the number of full-time Moxians by 25% since the beginning of the year – we’ve already hired 35 new employees so far – and we continue to bring on talent across all functions of the organization. The result is that we’re more capable than ever for all our customers, you included.
The MoxiWorks philosophy has always been rooted in driving the industry forward through collaborative investment in innovation and that only continues to strengthen. Our initial investors/customers: Windermere, Long & Foster, Howard Hanna helped fuel our growth strategy to get us where we are today and continue to push us to where we can get tomorrow. Along with over 150 integrated partnerships and new innovative product offerings, we are bringing the benefit back to you, our customers every day.
We look forward to continuing to support each and every one of our customers in a unique way that drives their business forward. Let’s sell more homes together.
Regards,
York
Strong Spring Season of Real Estate Transactions Ahead
Real estate and Spring have historically had a strong relationship. Just like Mother Nature, each Spring we all come out of our pseudo-hibernation, fresh and energized (maybe we aren’t feeling as fresh this Spring after almost a year of psuedo-hibernation, but I digress). Based on the trends we are seeing this Spring season of real estate transactions is poised to be a stellar showing.
But, before we get to that, let’s take a quick look at what happened in February.
The Wild Winter Storms of February
Last month we predicted there would be 384K US home sales and we ended up very close with 383K US home sales. This means our prediction was within 0.03% of the total number of homes sold in February.
Overall this ended up being a 1% decrease in the number of home sales month over month from January but was still a 13% increase year over year compared to the number of home sales in February of 2020 (which was just before the pandemic started in the US).
While we typically see an increase in home sales between January and February we aren’t concerned about this 1% decrease since it was actually a drastic increase from the 31% decrease in home sales we saw month over month in January.
And, we also have to remember that February was an intense month full of unpredictable Winter weather across the entire country. Texas saw historic low temperatures that had thousands of people without electricity or potable water for days on end just to name one of the drastic storms and its impact.
But as we said Spring is strong and we are seeing a strong climb in our predictions, even with the tight inventory squeeze.
March & April Home Sales Prediction
Looking at the predictions we expect to see a 26% increase month over month of home sales in March with 483K home sales. This might sound like a huge jump, but even in 2020 there was a 24% increase month over month between February and March so this is right in line with the Spring season in the real estate market.
As we look to April and the one-year anniversary of the pandemic begins to set in across the nation, we predict we will see a 46% increase YOY for the number of home sales APR with 532K home sales.
We all remember what it felt like a year ago. When things shut down. Life became completely uncertain and that dip in April and May home sales had us all wondering what would happen to the housing market.
Thankfully as we all know that dip didn’t last for long, and I think it’s important to take a moment and recall the absolute resiliency this industry showed.
Now a year later in April of 2021 things may still be teetering on uncertainty but the good news is there is a lot of hope on the horizon.
Just this week it was announced that all adults in the US will be eligible for the vaccine by May 1st and $1.9 trillion dollars is rolling into the economy. Things are happening that are going to stimulate the economy, save more lives and help people get back to some sort of normalcy.
As we inch back close to some sort of “normal” and life becomes a little less uncertain people are going to become more comfortable making more and more decisions with some certainty about buying or selling their homes.
So, now is the time.
Pick up the phone. Get in touch with your sphere. The inventory is out there.
Cheers to a prosperous Spring for all!
The Home Sales Predictor is a brand-new set of prediction data that dives into the number of presentations created and the correlated number of U.S. home sales. This data is provided by MoxiWorks with insights from their MoxiPresent product.
Get our Home Sales Predictor Monthly Report delivered to your inbox!
4 Ways for Brokers to Support Their Local Communities
Mercedes Santiago, Marketing Coordinator at MoxiWorks | March 24, 2020
It’s a time of global uncertainty, due to COVID-19, the epidemic that has disrupted the world. We’ve seen the anxiety-inducing statistics on job uncertainty, food scarcity, deaths, and more. The combination of it all is showing us the true magnitude of the current state of our world. While we’re not sure of what’s to come for certain, we know as a community we must jump in and help where we can.
“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.”
– Coretta Scott King
Real estate brokers are an integral part of their communities and experts in the residents, businesses, and structures that make a neighborhood ‘home.’ As such, brokers and their agents are poised to be great community leaders and supporters during this time. We’ve put together a list of recommendations and want to hear from you as well!
1. Support local restaurants
Seattle streets are much quieter these days for obvious reasons, with one of them being the empty tables in restaurants — a trend fast occurring across the country. We know we can’t dine-in, but don’t forget that many restaurants are offering take out, and it’s essential to their survival. Support your community by ordering takeout.
Fun idea: Virtually cater for your agents! Let all agents order lunch on you for company moral! Share your support on social media to encourage others to follow in your footsteps! Not only can you promote positivity and camaraderie amongst your company, you continue to support your market’s economy.
2. Check in with your neighbors
These times are difficult for many, physically and mentally. You could be struggling personally to care for someone who’s been infected with COVID-19. Or, perhaps you’ve upended your day-to-day routine and are now working from home. Especially difficult, maybe you’re self-isolating due to a pre-existing condition and feel uncertain about your safety. While we shouldn’t be physically close to each other, with technology we have the ability to all stay connected. Even from miles away, what you post online has the ability to shift someone’s mindset on the situation. Let’s keep content optimistic, light-hearted, and inspiring to keep our mental states up high.
Fun idea: check-in with your partner businesses like mortgage lenders, moving companies, or home repair persons and share each other’s stories.
3. Reach out to nonprofits
Many nonprofits around your city are constantly providing shelter, food, and support for members of your community — even during pandemics that close other public places. Call around to local nonprofits and decide who needs what most. In our current situation, these groups are running out of food to distribute. Feeding our community and staying healthy is important for us to move past this.
4. Help seniors who are most at risk
It’s a fact that older people and people with pre-existing health conditions are most vulnerable to COVID-19. There are multiple things we can do to keep this group of people healthy and safe.
- Grab groceries for those who are at risk or those that are shut-in. Drop the groceries off at their door to keep your distance.
- Facetime self-quarantined individuals to keep them socialized and less lonely
- No tech? Start a letter-writing campaign to individuals in nursing facilities who can’t visit their friends and loved-ones face to face currently.
Now is the time to think outside your office walls and see how you can help your community.
Together we can accomplish so much more than we can alone.
How to Reach Your Sphere of Influence When It Matters Most
By Maddie Jostol, Senior Marketing Manager
Timing is everything. 75% of sellers and 68% of buyers end up working with the first agent they get in touch with (NAR). So, unless you’re already in flow with someone, it’s unlikely you’ll win their business. And that’s out of pure lack of visibility. You weren’t their first. It’s no longer good enough to be able to be found, but instead, you need to be actively communicating with your sphere of influence (SOI) in order to stay top-of-mind. This way, the next time one of your contacts is even toying with the idea of making a move, you’re the first one they’ll call, and you’ll be there to help before they even consider working with another agent.
Growing and nurturing your sphere of influence is a key tactic to business growth in today’s competitive landscape. Focusing on driving repeat and referral business could make all the difference in reaching your income goals and growing your business. A typical REALTOR receives 12% of their business from repeat clients, and 17% through referrals (NAR). Agents who do not make the effort to market to their sphere of influence are likely leaving money on the table. Growing and maintaining your personal database is a high-quality source of business that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Tips for reaching your sphere of influence
The art of long-term nurturing can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be as all-consuming as it may seem. The key is to apply a combination of timely, personal touchpoints with set-it-and-forget-it marketing programs. In order to effectively stay top-of-mind with your sphere of influence, the first step is to get a system in place that will support all of your marketing and sales activities. Embrace a system, whatever that system is. Any technology tool is only effective if you actually use it. If you’re just getting ramped up with MoxiEngage, here are some resources for getting started.
An easy set-it-and-forget-it marketing method that is a no-brainer for agents is to sign your contacts up for automated market snapshots. If you’re a MoxiEngage user, you know this as Neighborhood News. This type of automated marketing keeps you in flow with your contact database in a relevant, useful way, without you having to do a thing. When consumers receive market snapshots of their local market with your face on it, they’ll be reminded of who their real estate expert is and be appreciative of the high-value report that keeps them in touch with what’s happing in their own neck of the woods.
For more personal touchpoints, leverage data to keep tabs on everyone in your sphere of influence and build stronger relationships. Typical agents have hundreds of contacts in their database, so keeping up with what’s happening in everyone’s lives isn’t quite realistic. Insights, for example, is the predictive analytics tool available to MoxiEngage users that augments an agent’s database with public records data so they can get to know everyone in their sphere of influence better, faster. Most importantly, it pings you when someone in your sphere is likely to list so you can prioritize who you follow up with. When you have hundreds of people to stay in flow with, it’s vital that you find a way to prioritize who you should reach out to, check in on, and follow up with today in order to win more business tomorrow.
Special dates are another a great excuse to reach out to your old clients and contacts. Holidays and annual reminders are a great set-it-and-forget-it tactic, while reaching out to congratulate them on personal special dates such as house-versaries, birthdays, and anniversaries reminds them that they’re a priority.
To closing and beyond with your sphere of influence
Closing a sale is only the beginning. Once you delight your clients with outstanding service, you want to stay in touch with them long after the sale, remaining their go-to real estate expert so that next time they’re thinking of buying or selling a home (or they’re talking to a friend who is), you’re the one who comes to mind. Get a system in place, along with scalable marketing tactics, that enables you to effectively keep track of everyone in your sphere of influence, so you can grow that influence, and in turn, grow your real estate business.
Your Dirty Database Is Eating Away at Your Real Estate Biz
By Tiana Baur
It’s hard to keep a house clean, but it’s even harder to keep contacts clean. People get married, get divorced, move away; life happens. For all these reasons, it’s extremely important to keep an up-to-date client database so you know you’re putting the right focus and marketing efforts on the right people.
The best way to put it: living with a dirty database is a lot like living with termites. At the beginning it’s not a big deal; there’s not many of them and you probably haven’t even noticed their existence yet. Then, all of a sudden, they creep up on you and before you know it, you have to re-do your basement. As time passes, one out of date contact quickly turns into dozens of contacts. If you could do something today to prevent the flood of bad sphere marketing, would you?
The Solution: Get your contacts cleaned with Concierge.
Concierge is our new-ish MoxiWorks Support offering. One of the ways our MoxiWorks Concierge team helps you is by scrubbing your database of contacts and appending them with the most current data available today. Once it’s been scrubbed, you can choose between uploading the final list yourself or have us do it for you.
Here are the highlights:
- Identify and merge duplicate records
- Consolidate contact data for seamless upload and search inside of Moxi Engage
- + Guaranteed turnaround of two business days
Whether you have us clean your contacts for you or you DIY, these are some marketing tools you’ll be able to use more effectively when that database of yours is squeaky clean:
Neighborhood News
Neighborhood News sends automated market snapshots and overviews, personalized for each subscribed contact in an agent’s Moxi Engage account. These monthly emails keep your sphere up-to-date on market happenings in their part of town. It’s a must-do for all Moxi Engage CRM users as a vital touchpoint.
Moxi Insights
Insights is like concierge, but for extra data you don’t currently have access to, and it lives inside your Moxi Engage CRM. It instantly supplies your database with extensive public data on your sphere. With the subscription of Moxi Insights, you can “set-and-forget,” while it always updates you with the most recent available information out there. Expect to get data from general demographics, housing info, lifestyle choices, financials, and hobbies to where clients/prospects donate and invest their money. Agents can potentially see if their clients have pets, drive certain cars, or if they’re a value shopper. With the help of notifications and badges signaling if they’re highly likely to buy or sell, it’s easy to know how to best conquer your precious (and newly-CLEAN) sphere!
Without a clean database, you’re not able to properly use the powerful tools you have at your disposal. All of this dramatically affects your ability to market to your sphere, the bread and butter of a well-run real estate business. Don’t believe us? See what Matthew Ferrara has to say about it.
Trying Easier to Create Growth
By Matthew Ferrara, renowned Philosopher & Speaker
What will it take to grow your business this year? Will it be more mailings, longer hours or a social media campaign so outrageous, you finally go viral? Let’s hope not, because none of these ideas are desirable or sustainable, something that thousands of salespeople will realize as they beat their goals this year by doing the opposite of such strategies. They won’t try harder to be successful.
They will try easier.
Trying easier is an idea first introduced to me by Dr. Price Pritchett in his book, The Quantum Leap, and it has helped me create consistent and dramatic growth in my business year after year. It works by challenging ourselves to look away from the common-sense approaches to growth – like making uncomfortable prospecting calls or sending out thousands of generic emails – to the uncommon sense of discovering true paths to growth. For real estate professionals, this contrarian mindset puts our focus back on the most productive source of achievement and encouragement: Our sphere of influence.
Any top salesperson will tell you the same story: They tried the harder approach many times. They doubled down on lead generation schemes, bought more marketing and poured money into mailings. They learned snazzy new scripts and six ways to overcome objections to a free lunch. And for a while, they got busier and handled more emails and chased more leads. Some of these even turned into deals, because with huge volumes, some percentage is bound to pan out. But the effort, the costs and the impact on their overall performance eventually wore off.
Today those same top salespeople will tell you the rest of the story: That one day they just happened to call up a past client to talk. Or they caught up with a friend from college. Maybe they sent an email to a good neighbor or had a long chat with someone in their social club. Simple, easy, comfortable conversations with people they already knew and who already knew them. All of which led to the easiest deals they ever did, the simplest presentations they ever made, and the most profitable growth they ever generated.
When you discover that trying easier leads to better results, you should listen to your uncommon sense. Over the life of your career, or just the next few months, you don’t need to perform crazy, risky, uncomfortable techniques to generate growth. Just make a concerted effort to contact a few friends a day. Reach out to them on social media, or send them a text, or leave them a voicemail to meet for lunch. The technique doesn’t matter – do whatever is easier for you – because the key is that you’re reaching out to people who are most likely to engage in a conversation.
You don’t even have to remind them that you’re in real estate or you love referrals, or you’d like to help them again sometime. Just listen to them; talk casually about how your career is unfolding, and perhaps ask them for a little help or advice. As your friends, they’ll do the rest – easily. Decades of experience bear this out: Most career salespeople confirm than 80% of their growth comes from nurturing relationships they already had, as opposed to prospecting to people they didn’t know. More business will be generated by people who already like you, already trust you, and want to see you be successful. That’s what friends do.
Imagine if you started every day with a friendly conversation or an encouraging text message or an inspirational social media post to someone you already know. Imagine if you told your technology to keep your sphere of influence front and center – in your CRM and on your social media feeds – because you wouldn’t hesitate to engage with them. What would it be like not to have to use stale scripts and bland clichés to convince complete strangers to contact you? How much more fulfilling will it be to add so much value to your sphere of influence, they become bursting with enthusiasm to introduce you to even more people? That’s what happens when you get referred by a client you keep in touch with more than a few holidays a year; or your cadre of peers who share your latest positive message on Facebook with the rest of their social network. Even as simple as looking up the name of a for-sale-by-owner on LinkedIn, to see if you might already know somebody who knows them, so your offer to help can be introduced to them rather than hoping your email interrupts their attention.
There’s a lot of growth to be earned in your career. It’s up to you to decide to win it. You can try hard to get strangers to notice you, trust you, and pay you. Maybe you’ll take the challenge and try easier this year instead and strengthen your contacts with the hearts and minds that are happy to see you grow, too.
