KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Is The Market Killing Your Real Estate Business

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Hello and welcome to the enterprising agent, a podcast to help agents work smarter, not harder. My name is Stephanie Stone Rob. I run the enterprising agent. And with us, we have an amazing guest this week. I would like to welcome to the enterprising agent, Jane Hewley. Jane, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. So, yeah, so I've been in real estate now for seven years. and love every minute of it. You know, we all have the roller coaster ride in real estate, but for me, it's just, you know, gives me time to catch up on stuff.

So what made you decide to get into real estate in the first place? Well, so I've been an investor in real estate for longer than I really want to admit to. And with that, you know, I've always been dancing around the market. And way back in high school, I worked for a top producing agent. But that's a whole other story. Then I had a career with training dogs, grooming dogs, doing dogs. And, you know, talk about a transition from one career to another. Not really.

Not really. You know, so dog training is 25% dog, 75% human. Real estate is 25% house, 75% human. So really, the percentages haven't changed. It's just that 25% that's different. I love that. We have French bulldogs, very, very finicky dogs. You have Bremlins.

Yes, absolutely. The joys of my life, but our trainers bless them. Very hard to train dogs. So I totally will take full responsibility of that 75% owner that sometimes doesn't stick with it. And when you said that it's, you know, 25% house, 75% client, Oh, I felt that deep in my soul. I totally get where you're coming from. Yeah.

Often, I mean, we can talk about it, but often the house part is not the problem, right? It's all the other pieces. And really in a transaction, the house part, while it plays a role, really it's about educating, guiding, coaching, all of those key words, the client. Whether it's the seller or whether it's the buyer, our job is to walk them through the transaction, and hold their hands, get them from point A to point B. And ultimately, have a seller and a buyer come together at a closing table and exchange keys. Like that, that's what we do in a nutshell, right?

Now, there's a lot of pieces and there's a lot of stuff, but that's just stuff. Yeah, that's just details at the end of the day. Details, yeah. Yeah, and it's very much like working with agents. You know, I always say it's, I went from having my buyers and my sellers as my clients to now having agents as my clients. to now having agents as my clients. And it is still very much, if I think about it, that 25% transaction, 75% where that agent is coming from,

where their mindset is, where that level of dedication is. So, you know, since we're talking about that 2575, and we didn't really expect to go down this path, but, you know, talk to me about for you personally, how do you keep yourself moving down that 75% that you need to, to devote to to have that 25% house to play with. Yeah. So, you know, it's really about education, right?

So either it's a seller or it's a buyer right now, everybody's kind of freaking out with the market a little bit, like, oh, my God, oh, my God, because we had this candy land of a market through, you know, basically COVID where all you had to do was wish art on a star and boom, you could sell a house. And, you know, the buyers were extremely. extremely frustrated with climbing the ladders and you know i don't remember how to play candy land i think i got it confused with suits and ladders there for a second but you know that they were

all trying very hard to buy a house and some of them were lucky and some of them were not and that led us to a point where we felt like we all fell off a clip right right because the market shifted when the fed as the fed had to do started raising interest rates and it seemed like in a blink of an eye we went from 3% to near 8. I mean, thankfully we're floating around 7.5. right now. And the reality is that is a normal market. That is a normal interest rate for housing.

I came across a great meme the other day, so I'm going to just tell you what it, because it was just, you know, so in 1971, the interest rate was 7.33%. And if at that point, you decided that you were going to wait for interest rates to come down, you would have waited 23 years for the interest rate to get below 7.33%.

And in that time, if you had rented, I mean, just calculate the rent. Right. Apply your monthly rent times 12 times 23 years. And then what that monthly payment would be even with the lower rate and what housing prices. Right.

Well, and then the housing, I mean, just that, just the increase in property, value over 23 years offsets a higher interest rate. You know, so what you would have had your house paid off by then. Almost. Or if you round up like I do, you would have, right? Like it would have been done.

You would have owned it free and clear. Like so waiting's not the right answer, right? Understanding the interest rate is just a number. And it's a mechanism and it affects how much house you can afford, right? And if you're waiting for prices to come down, nobody's seeing that happening. especially not in my market area. Down here in most Texas markets, I think Austin being the one exception where, you know, we're seeing what I call more of like a course correction.

You know, houses are going to continue to increase, but they increase so steeply that we just have to plateau so that X and Y axis meets where it's supposed to organic. Yeah. Yeah. So during COVID and all the crazy stuff, we had almost like a J-curve, like where it almost went straight up. in the property value. And that's everybody freaking out about,

oh, it's a bubble, but it's not because those prices went up, not with loans. They went up with cash. People were bringing 50K, 100K over asking in cash to the table. Because the property appraisal was back at market value,

what was then market value. But now they've paid 100,000 K in cash over that. So now the new. market value is actually 100k more, right? So now, you know, I do monthly market updates. And what I can tell you is that month over month, we're still seeing price improvement, right? So how homes are selling for more per square foot, right? And year over year, we're still 16% higher than last year.

Now that's going to fluctuate by area, how much that percent. Of course, of course. So prices are going up. So if you're waiting for interest rates to come back down, one, we don't know when that's going to happen. Nobody does. Nobody has crystal ball to know when that's going to happen. If I knew I would give up real estate and just play the lottery or bet on the ponies, I'd make more money.

Like I could just sell the information, right, and be a billionaire. You know, I used to make jokes about if I could train husbands. I could be a billionaire. Kind of like French bulldogs. Yeah, exactly. same kind of personalities but yeah no the the interest rate

may come down next year may not right and if you wait for that meanwhile the prices of homes are going up so you're waiting for maybe a percentage point better interest rate so 1% but meanwhile the properties have

gone up last year to this year 16%. So there's no cost savings in waiting I mean that's just math The price is going up faster than the interest rate will come down. And so waiting is just going to cost you more money in the long run. So if you want to buy a house, now's the best time. Competition is lower, right?

You're not, you know, sellers are motivated. If their homes are on the market, they want to sell them. Fewer people are writing offers. So maybe you can get some concessions from the seller. Maybe you can get, you know, a better price. maybe you can get that thing that, you know, bothers you on the home inspection fixed. You won't have to throw away all those things because the market's so competitive. And what I can guarantee you is when the rates do come down, it's going to be crazy candy land out here again,

where buyers are going to be up against each other 15 offers on a house. I'd much rather write a contract now. Absolutely. You know, and that's one of the things that I tell my agents is, you know, right now we have this pent-up demand. it is the horses at the gate. We have these buyers that are, you know, a little, little hesitant. We maybe have sellers who are hesitant to sell because they're like, well, where do I go? And I'm trading my four and a half percent interest rate for eight percent. And I'm going to pay the same amount and get less house or, you know, even with the equity that I'm cashing out with.

And the math isn't mathing for them right now. So, you know, I'm telling my agents, the best thing that you can do is continue to educate your buyers and your sellers and continue to build your database. I think right now we're going into what is traditionally the slower season in the fall and winter holiday season. This is a great opportunity to stay engaged with the folks that you've been talking to for six months, 12 months. It's amazing how they return to the market when we least expect them. So question for you, you know, where we're in this market, what advice? would you have for an agent who's like, I don't know what to do or an agent who got in the peak and is now really experiencing what a relatively normal market looks like?

Yeah, so there's a lot of pain out there and there's a lot of fear, which I totally understand. And really, every coach I have, every coach that I've been exposed to, they're all saying the same things. You know, it's time to return to the fundamentals. You know, maybe we got off the bandwagon of making those calls, sending text messages, you know, and really loving on our people. And whatever method you use, generally speaking, you just kind of want to return to that and double down on your basics, right? So for me, I do a lot of Internet leads and I do also work my sphere. but every day, every day I send out text messages to my sphere, and it's not just a text, it's actually a video text.

And every day I call 25 of my internet leads and just try and have a conversation. And that's what I have, that's the bare minimum I have to do for myself to count it as a workday. Right. That's commitment. Well, but, you know, it's hold yourself accountable or get an accountability partner if you can't hold yourself accountable, right? And it's because of the activities that I do that I have a consistent flow of who's actually active looking, who's still pre-approved, who hasn't talked to their lender in a minute and hasn't checked what they qualify for since the rate shot up, right? because what they were qualified for in early August is not the same number that they qualified for now. Assuming their job and everything stayed the same, interest rates went up.

So their approval came down. So having those conversations and loving on them and nurturing on them, it's also a great time to do all of the things that we need to do, you know, update our web pages. For me, it's, you know, funnels, community pages. I also this time of year get real involved in my community with helping with the senior center, the elementary school and those things and really dive into my community and see where I can be of service, right? Because you never know where your business might come from, but I like to be the local expert. And in order to be a local expert, I can't just know about the real estate. I have to know about the local community, the businesses, all those things.

it's a great time to go meet your small business owners, right? And just really work that. Not just like, hey, do you know somebody who wants to buy or sell a house? That's not what it is. That gets real boring real fast. Well, and that's salesy and it's icky and nobody feels good after. I mean, it's just terrible, right? That's not what I do.

What I do is go, hey, you know, I see you have an ice cream shop. It's great. It's great that you're here. I love ice cream. Would you mind if maybe we, you know, like we're doing here, have a little podcast, but do like a little, you know, business interview and share it on social media, right? And just love on the local business, but also be involved in the local community either with the seniors or whatever warms your heart. I have a real soft spot for children and I have a real soft spot for seniors.

The rest of us, well, we're on our own. But those two mean a lot to me. And so, you know, for reasons and, you know, that that's where I tend to focus my efforts. But really, for the business, it's the fundamentals, right? If you're not doing it. And I have a lot of agents to tell me how busy they are. And, oh, I just don't have time to do that or I don't have time to do that. Really?

Well, okay. Yeah, show me your schedule. Show me what you did. You got it. It's like a math problem. Show your work. Don't tell me you don't have business and you're too busy. Because, you know, you got to make time to work your business just like anything else.

Nothing lands in your lap without effort. And the activities that we do today is what is going to, we're going to see in the spring. Right. Yeah. And I personally feel that there's all this pent up demand, but people can't wait forever. Right. Every day, 10% of the population has to move. Every day.

Yeah. Every day. And do you want to be the agent that sat back and just was like, oh, the market? Or do you want to be the agent that is actively trying to find that 10% of people that actually have to sell their house or have to buy a house because of whatever? Right. Whatever that situation is or that point that they're in in their life. Right. I'd rather be the active agent that's out there trying to find them, you know, and work with them.

because that's what will keep your business going month after month, you know, and year after year. Yeah, that there is no magic pill. I wish there was. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't be doing podcasts and coaching agents. I would be like playing the ponies, doing the lottery because I'm psychic, but I also have a magic pill that just makes clients just fall into my lap and money just rained down from the sky. I wish it was that easy. I do believe in the power of visualization, but it's not quite that literal.

Like I can sit here and visualize money. It's not going to just fall from the sky. So, you know, I work with a lot of coaches. You know, if anybody had had a magic pill, I would have found it by now. I have spent thousands upon tens of thousands of dollars on coaching. Right. And that's part of the reason why I have good systems in place. And I'm huge into tech.

I love my robots. All of the things that help me, love on my clients, my leads, my, you know, people that I ran across in some far off land somewhere and happen to get their name and phone number. And without those tools, I wouldn't be able to do what I do, right? And at the same time, nothing replaces me actually picking up the phone and making a phone call. Well, one of the things that you mentioned that you do on a regular basis is reaching out via a text and you mentioned not just a regular text, but a video text. And I think that's a beautiful 2023 way to combine technology and still, you know, that idea of reaching out and touching someone,

if, you know, grew up in the 80s that, you know, yeah, the kids don't remember a bell telephone. Yeah, but yeah, being able to reach out. And I think there's also something very powerful in, video because they get to see your face. They pick up on that body language, that facial expression. I really think reaching out by a video is going to set agents apart versus just text or even really just phone call. Hearing somebody's voice and the tone of their voice is great, but when you can also add the animation of somebody's face and the smile and the light in their eyes, I think it really helps people get to know you. So talk to me a little bit about when you started incorporating video, Did it change the way that people reacted back to you?

Did you get more people responding to your text? Or was it kind of business as usual? Oh, God, no. It gets a very different response. Now, there's a couple of caveats I'm going to give you. So I video text with my, what I would call my close fear on a regular, right? And one of my lenders, we exchange video texts on a, and it's always something funny, you know, because I'll say, you know, please let me know whatever I can do to make your day.

more fantastic, just let me know as part of my regular video text kind of thing. And he'll respond, well, you know, if you had a buyer that wanted to put 50% down on a $2 million property, I can use one of those right about it. Like you and me both, buddy, and we just go back and forth with the video text as opposed to a phone call. And it's just really fun and engaging. And if you happen to see on social media that it's somebody's birthday, don't be the 900 person to go. happy birthday on that birthday post, send them a video text and be like, you know, sing them happy birthday, right?

Like how many people are doing that? Do something silly. Do something fun with it. Off the wall. Whatever works for you, whatever's ever authentically you. Like nobody, you know, I'm a real ham and sometimes very silly and run around in a unicorn suit. But most people aren't like that. But whatever is authentically you, do that.

And video will help show your. authentic self more than anything else. Text messages can be read one of ten ways. Right? Nobody knows the tone in which you sent it. And if autocorrect gets involved, I'll bet they're off. Oh, it's tragic. Don't get started on like when I do talk to text and it wants to make me so very stupid.

Oh, yeah. My car still doesn't identify some of the people in my phone. So, you know, the video just really makes it a little bit. bit more personal. And the only piece of advice I will give is before you shoot the video, smile your biggest smile for like 30 seconds. Not only will it change your attitude, it'll change your body language. And the other thing is don't be, I have to send a video text to my people. It's that I get to send a video text to my people. Right. And just that little switch in the word makes a big difference. But I recently started with the A,

in my phone. And I just, because, you know, there's people I video text them all the time. But there's a lot of people in my phone. Some of them, I'm going to be honest, I don't remember who they are. Right. Same. So I started with the A's and I just sent, you know, hey, have a fantastic day. And if there's anything I can do to make it more fantastic, please don't hesitate to let me know.

And so many people have reached back to me that now I remember who they are because some of them sent me a video text. Oh, how cool. Yeah. And so then you see the face. You're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Totally know who that person is now. So just way more personal. Another friend of mine is doing video text, but her thing is she wants to fill in those gaps in her database. So she's like, hey, you know, I'm just trying to be better about sending out birthday cards, Christmas cards to people in my sphere. Could you give me please your children's names in their birthdays? Yeah.

you know, so that I can send them a birthday card. And who doesn't want their kid to get birthday mail, right? So we get, we don't get fun things in the mail anymore. No, it's all bills. It's very bad. It's all bills. And yeah, the one older person in our family who sends out an actual Christmas card, and that's about it.

It's advertising and bills and, yeah, postcards for services. The e-card, while it's great and the animations are fun, it's not quite as personal as that. that snail mail card. I, you know, so as a member of Buffini's coaching for a long time there, I'm still on the habit of writing out personal notes. Yeah. And, and, you know, there's nothing better than a handwritten note for just making

somebody feel warm and fuzzy. Yeah. And I think that really speaks to that I get to versus I have to when we can go, I'm going to make somebody's day with it. You know, I'm going to send out, you know, I'm very much in that same vein of I want to celebrate things with my past client to the people that I'm connected with. And I've got somebody's address, you know, they get a house anniversary card from me every year with like a little sweet treat, you know, a little candy or whatever I send out.

And I'm probably the only person who's like, you know, oh my gosh, it's the anniversary of you buying that house. Like I hope you had another 365 days of good memory. And knowing that, you know, not to pat myself on the back, but that's going to be when they get that that's going to be something good in their day. You know, I'm not sending them a, oh, and if you know anybody looking to buy or sell real estate, this is uniquely about them and a happy moment in the history of their lives. So I see that they adopted a new dog. Great. I'm going to send them, you know, congratulations on the new member of your family because we want to celebrate those happy things.

And I think that really speaks to that service over sales that I'm that I try to impart on my agents and sounds like you're very much the same way. Yeah. And for next year, this is just kind of off the wall. So you know how there's like National Sock Day, national like really strange. Weird stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So next year, my plan is to do a little bit more along those veins.

So instead of sending traditional holiday cards like Happy Valentine's Day, it'll be like, you know, happy, you know, national, you know, wear your underwear in your head day or whatever it is, right? Like, I love it. Just because nobody will expect it, one, but two, it goes along with my sense of humor. Like, you know, yeah, today's a great day. It's Valentine's Day, whatever. But it's also underwear on your head day. Underwear on your head day. And, you know, just have fun with it, right? And I think it also shows people who you are and people work with you because they want to work with you, because they like your personality, because they like your approach, because they like other things that you do. I joke all the time that I am the official San Antonio realtors for French bulldog owners.

I know we've mentioned them three times in this show. And also fans of true crime podcasts. Because it's like, oh, she's into the same thing that I am or, you know, this person, they go hiking. Like, I like to go hiking or they go to that same restaurant that we really like to go to. And so when you can kind of show people who you are when you take your real estate agent hat off, I think that's really where that client attraction can come into play. So being authentically yourself is such an important thing. Yeah. So one of the things that, you know, I go to meetups for, I like to go hiking as well.

So go to meetups for hiking and things of that nature. I never bring up real estate. No. Somebody will ask me, what do you do? And I'll be like, well, I'm a realtor. And inevitably, somewhere along the trail, somebody will start to ask me about the market. I don't have to start that conversation ever, right? So I'm never salesy about it.

I'm never there, you know, handing out all my cards to everybody. And if somebody wants to have that conversation, I'm always down to have a good conversation about real estate. So a few things that I do on a regular is I have Google alerts so that I get any sort of inbound what's happening in my local area from the planning commission and all kinds of things. Just so that I can be informed on what's happening in the market and not just the interest rate. and how many houses are on the market. But what are the plans coming down the pike, things of that nature? And if you want to know what dirt, why is that dirt being moved? The planning commission is a good place.

Also, your commercial realtors are a good place to network with because they know big developments happening over here or over there because they were part of the deal, right? So paying attention to commercial land being moved. and sold, can let you know, oh, there's going to be a new shopping center with four new restaurants and this, that, and the other thing, and start talking about it early. And then you really do show that you are part of the community and you're not just somebody sitting behind a desk waiting to throw a sign up and call it a day, right? Yeah, like we did in 2022. Right. Well, that was all we were

allowed to do. Well, Jane, I appreciate you joining us today. If people want to connect with you, where can they find you? So my name, Jane Hewley, on any platform will pull me up. I keep it really simple. I don't try and do Sniglfritz 432. That would just be way too hard. So it's Jane Hewley on any platform. You'll find me.

Also, the Noble team has pages as well. Wonderful. Well, Jane Hewley, thanks so much for joining us on the Enterprising Agent. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great night. You too. Thank you.