No Broke Months For Salespeople - Marketing Tips to Attract Senior Home Buyers and Sellers

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Heather Brooks is the Co-Founder of Customized Aging and a nationally certified Seniors Real Estate Specialist (SRES) and Aging-in-Place Specialist (CAPS).Heather's also a Board Member of eXp Realty's Seniors Network; she helps Educate eXp Agents in the Boomer and Senior Living Market by co-hosting regular virtual training sessions open to members across eXp Realty's extensive global network.In this Live Interview with Heather, she will talk about tips on attracting senior home buyers and sellers!--To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check this link:www.NoBrokeMonths.com --Stop 🛑 wasting your time ⏳ or spending too much money 💸not getting the results you want in sales; I would love you to join me for the upcoming 5-Day Listing Challenge.You will learn how to find YOUR Way to having closings every month.www.get3morelistings.com--Get your free copy of the Real Estate Evolution here:bit.ly/RealEstateEvolution_GetYourBookThis book shows you the step by step on how to:Step 1: Believe in your unknown potentialStep 2: Deconstruct persuasion techniquesStep 3: Find a business and get hired consistentlyStep 4: Be proactive in the relationship with your clients.Step 5: Learn and implement the exact steps to hire, train, lead, and train virtual assistants so that they can build, support, and guide a winning team to scale.And if you’d like to have a consistent and predictable income, like this page, and don’t forget to join the Facebook group to network with the top agents:https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecpicommunity/ To find out more about Dan Rochon and the CPI Community, you can check these links:Website: No Broke MonthsPodcast: No Broke Months for Salespeople PodcastInstagram: @donrochonxFacebook: Dan RochonLinkedIn: Dan Rochon

One of the things is building that trust, building the trust of you're the person that knows about the senior market. Just in the senior sector, you're building trust in a different way. Welcome to the No Broke Months for Real Estate Agents podcast. Working as a real estate agent can be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling, but it can also be frustrating if you aren't making the money you deserve. So if you're ready to end the stressful cycle of working hard for no results, then get started with a proven step-by-step system so that every month is no broke months. Heather Brooks is the co-founder of Customized Aging and a nationally certified seniors real estate specialist

and aging in-place specialist. Heather's also a board member of eXp Realty's Seniors Network. She helps educate eXp agents in the boomer and senior living market by co-hosting regular virtual training sessions open to members across eXp Realty's extensive global network. In this live interview with Heather, she will talk about tips on attracting senior home buyers and sellers. My name is Dan Roshan. I'm the host of the No Broke Months podcast, which is a show for real estate agents to help you have no broke months. Thanks for joining me. Enjoy the show. Today I'm joined with Heather Brooks and Heather and I are going to be talking about attracting home buyers and home sellers from the senior market. So welcome Heather. How are you? I'm doing great Dan. How are you? Fantastic. Thank you for asking. All right. So Heather,

so tell us a little bit about the senior community. What got you involved in this? What do we need to know? I'd love to. So this niche is something that not a lot of agents work or know much about. However, it's exploding. And I'm going to go through some statistics. And I'm going to kind of, in order to understand this demographics, I'm going to walk you through the door of what a long-term homeowner looks like, both buying and selling, and then go over strategies that, how to work with them. First of all, to kind of understand, I've been with the eXp since 2017. I started growing the eXp Seniors Network, I want to say about the end of 2018, beginning of 2019, and we are almost 3,000 agents who work in the senior demographics. And then I started taking

it outward bound because statistically, not a lot of seniors want to move. They want to age in place. So I have found there's this effect. It's a modify or a move effect where homeowners are either going to have to modify their home or they're going to have to move. And I will, as we walk through the door, you'll understand where the modify part comes in and where the move part comes in. So let's take you through kind of a history of the housing market and then into the senior market. When you look at home ownership, according to Harvard study, it's JCHS, they do a lot of housing studies, great place to get statistics for real estate agents that are looking for housing statistics, especially with the senior demographics. It's called JCHS. It's Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. So somebody Google JCHS, they'll find it?

Yep. They will find it. 76.2% of seniors actually own their home outright. That's a ton of equity for them. Oh, sure. Yeah. So you have that portion of equity. So then let's talk about our history of our nation's housing supply. 45.5% of our houses here in America have been built between 1900 and 1945. So you can imagine the homes are getting older as well. Now, you also look at our population and the senior demographics, and you have centenarians that have doubled over the last 10 years, meaning you're living a lot longer. You have all of those baby boomers by 2035 that will

outnumber those under the age of 19. That's for the first time in US history. When will that happen? That's in 2035. 13 years from now, the old people will outnumber the young people. Correct. Okay. So you have those three statistics, but let's couple that on with what happens with our nation's housing supply. Less than 6% of our nation's housing supply can actually accommodate somebody with a mobility issue. That means that if you, your mother, your grandmother, and uncle fall in that home, statistically, they probably won't be able to stay in that home unless you make a modification to that home to make it safe to live in a home if something were to happen to you, you know, a fall, a something, a hip, you know, like a knee, something goes down, you're going to need these three key features. And one of those features is a zero-step entry into a home. So if you look at all the homes in your neighborhood, more than likely, there's no zero-step entry. You're going to have to build a

ramp to get up. So there's also needs to be a bedroom and a full bathroom on the first floor. So that's the second. That's the second feature. The third feature is you need to have at least some sort of an accessibility in the bathroom, meaning a grab bar, a shower seat, a special toilet seat to help them sit or stand or bathe. So that's going to happen when you're talking about somebody that's going to take a fall. Well, if you look at those statistics, they're astronomical on the falls and you can't come home. So then you're ending up in an assisted living facility or you're living in some type of a care community. And all you want to do is come home.

So that becomes your move. You need to modify your home or you're going to have to end up moving. And with our nation's housing infrastructure, it's going to be hard. Seniors are also, they're on a fixed budget. So if something goes wrong, insurance companies and certain things are not going to cover, you know, that type of modification. So it's going to come out of pocket. You end up getting a lot of seniors that take out heckum loans, reverse mortgages, what have you to help pay for that. So we as real estate agents can come in and help seniors or older homeowners buy and sell because here's the history behind that. These homeowners have owned their homes for 30, 40, 50 years. They've had their kids in it. They've

had all this history in it. There's a lot of feeling pent up in selling that home. They know that they can't physically live there safely, but it's very difficult. They're often emotionally attached to it because they raised their families there. Yeah. And it's, it's this component of,

okay. Like, yeah, I know I can't, I can't make this work, but it's got all my memories associated with it as well and so you've got and then you've got a lot of stuff packed in there so you get you know hoarding I mean you get a lot with senior homeowners so you have that component to it as well but then

all their money's in it and what do we do do? What can we afford? Where can we go? A different issue all in itself. I want to comment before you go on, Heather, because you're talking, my mom is of that demographic and she lives on my property here and she just had a hip replacement and the hip popped out twice. Yep. Was it when she was taking a step up or step down or trying to get into a shower? Actually, no, it was well, well, yes, for once and no, for the other. She, she, she did getting out of bed was the first time. So she had the hip replacement and that was a really tough getting out of the

out of bed one morning after the hip replacement her hip popped out luckily you can you know she's she's situated you know like an assisted living because she's got me right like so literally like both times I'm standing here and you know she's calling over to me on the phone I'm like okay the call 9-1-1 first please but hey that's another conversation uh so anyway so the second time was was um like it literally just popped out in the middle of sleeping right she's fortunate that she has somebody that can take care of her but she would be in that place of you know i guess sort of like you know she has help and multi-generational living is making a comeback

because of that. The financial strain, just because we're living longer doesn't mean that we can afford it because retirement is supposed to be at 65 or 75, yet we're living to a hundred. So now look at our housing units and looking at all of us that are living in it. We want to live safely, but we want to live independently and not take that away. So you kind of have this fight within a senior homeowner of living safely or do I move? Here's another thing to keep in mind. If you can understand, they are not bam, bam, bam, quick, go, let's, let's get a contract under underway. That's not how senior homeowners are. They are not a three touch, like typical, you know, first time home buyer in that sense. They are not a, I'm going to just go

find you on the internet and see a video of you. They are, they need trust. They need to, um, help understand the market. They need to help understand the senior stuff that's going on. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can. Um, so that's another, um, thing that they really, um, that, that help that trust you have to build as a real estate agent or CAPS. I am also CAPS designated. You have to build trust with the senior homeowner in order for them to feel okay. So when you think about it, they bought a home 30 years ago. Now we have all those memories. I've laid it out. I'm kind of giving you the picture of walking into their home. Their home has steps that go into it. So you know that it's not the zero step entry.

Probably not a great place safety wise. So you really have to understand why are they inviting you to their home? What's not working for them in the home? You know, it's probably the staircase. It's probably the really small doorways because the doorways aren't wide enough for a walker to get through. So if you can understand that those features aren't working for them in this home, but and let them know that you understand that they that those features aren't working for them as well and see them. But it's OK, because there are homes with those features. One story homes. There are one-story homes in the area, 55 communities. You've got options out there that aren't in a brick and mortar, per se. Do you find, Heather, that there's certain areas? You're in Florida and also Los Angeles, is that correct? Yes. You're bi-coastal. I would think that maybe even more so in Florida, that there's more accommodation for senior living than many other areas.

We call it the Sunbelt States. So for those that are out there, if you are in a Sunbelt State, you are sitting pretty in the senior market of people wanting to move. And I see that the Sunbelt states are basically sunny because you've got arthritis and other things that are going on. You've got California, Nevada, Arizona, Mexico, Utah, Texas, Alabama, certain parts of it, Florida, you've got, you know, you want to be tropical and warm. So that would be the Sunbelt States. For real estate agents that are in the cold, get referrals in Sunbelt States. Make a network of referrals outside of your area. Because when somebody wants to move, and this is why senior homeowners are both the buy and the sell, because in order to help them sell, you're going to have to help them buy at the same time.

Where are they going to go? What are they going to do? So if they're wanting to buy something, let's say in Florida and you're in Michigan, or let's say you're in Canada, or they want to buy in Texas or Arizona, have some great referrals in your network of real estate agents to say, hey, I've got a great real estate agent there. And I say this because I'm going to go back to when you are marketing to this to this demographics. And I will go at the end of this. I'll talk about how to market to them and where to find them. It's important to know these certain little marketing techniques with them because they want to know that you know other people outside of this. Are you looking to move to Arizona? And then you get one of your friends' beautiful house that they're listing over in Arizonarizona and then you've got some deal going

and you got a referral fee so you've got that component of the sunbelt states so that's a great question pick them up pick them up as a listing and then refer to them to an agent in tampa or phoenix or wherever right okay and then you got the buy again you got the sell and you buy when they're selling a home that's two stories that they can't live in. That's upstairs, downstairs, lots of stuff. But they want to buy something that's smaller, that's less maintenance. And then you've got the you've got both ends of that deal helping them in the community. Because, again, networking, 55 plus communities, continuing cares, assisted living. Be the expert in that field in your

community as well. Hey there, it's me, Dan. Excuse me for interrupting my own show. I want to tell you about a coaching client who I have called John. And John was recently working with some buyers who they ended up writing 12 offers on 12 different homes, none of which got accepted. And that could just be frustrating. But even worse than that, those buyers ended up becoming renters because they rented a home. And guess what? They went directly to the rental. They didn't even use John for his services when they rented. If I just described an experience that maybe you can relate to, and if you're struggling right now because interest rates have risen so high and the inventory is so low right now, it's just so tough to work with buyers. And if you want to learn, instead of work with buyers, how can you take three more listings right now? I invite for you to an upcoming class that I'm hosting.

It's online. It's free. You can join me at www.get3morelistings.com. That's get3morelistings.com. And I will show you the exact techniques and tactics that my students are using to be able to get three more listings every single month. So that's www.get3morelistings.com and you can save yourself a seat. It's free, it's online, and I look forward to helping you get more listings.

Heather, go back, talk to us more about the trust because you're talking to us about the um you know the trust that they have to have in in us as their professional agent it's it's more because of the you know of the components of you know they have the memories etc tell us more about that so trust in the senior sector and I'm not just talking about home ownership. I'm talking about across the board with their doctors, with their friends, with their lawyers. It is the way they grew up. They grew up in a time that was, you know, you didn't know who to trust. They were in war. There was a lot of those great depressions. Some of them, you got to think of back then the way that they were raised and the way that their behavior is in their, in their everyday life. They've got a group of friends that they're, you know, that they're solid with.

They don't venture out, but yet senior homeowners love freebies. They love, you know, they're always saving in freebies. So that's the other component of marketing that I'll talk about after. But one of the things is building that trust, building the trust of you're the person that knows about the senior market. You're the person who, hey, I can call and say, do you by chance have an occupational therapist that you may know in your network? That's something that a senior real estate agent would know. It's no different than a first time home buyer or a first time home buyer agent or selling agent, whatever it is, saying to their client, oh, I've got a roofer. Oh, I've got this person to help you. I've got

somebody to do carpet or I've got a moving company. No different. Just in the senior sector, you're building trust in a different way. So besides like occupational therapy, like what other type of resources would a senior? So you would do a CAPS agent, which is a certified aging in place specialist. That's somebody who can help them modify the home. If an emergency were to happen, you know that they're going to eventually sell the home. Yeah, sure. It's inevitable. We know that.

But it's just a matter of when is that going to happen? And are you the person that they're going to come to to say, do you know of an occupational therapist? I saw your newsletter that put an occupational therapist on there. Also within our community, which is really great, we have a great assistive living facilities. We'll do a commission back to real estate agents if you fill their facility. So network, partner up with one of them. And if you have a senior homeowner that needs to be placed in one of these facilities, you call up your friend over at the facility and

you say, hey, you know, I've got this person, they're coming out of this hospital and I think they're going to go tour. You tell the family all about it. You've now gained trust with the family too, because if God forbid something happens to their parent, the family knows who you are and you've given them the assisted living facility. You've given them somebody to help them maybe clean out the home because that's another big thing is tripping hazards. You know, there's a lot of tripping hazards as you get older in a home, carpets that, you know, that are peeling up or boxes that are in the way. So you want somebody that's going to come in, that's going to help them clean out their home and organize their

and declutter. So you get certain people in your little back pocket and you work with them and work with the community and work with your clients. Well, I was just going to, so let me, so where we are right now in this conversation is what I understand is that they're more likely to take some time before making a decision to hire you or it's really not the decision to hire you. It's really the decision to move really is what they're going to take time with. They're going to need a higher degree of trust and the the the help that they're going to need is not the same help as a first-time home buyer for example they're going to need help

that is going to be more situated to their age and and then also you know the modification of their homes for those that don't sell now are going to be uh for uh stairs a bathroom with the uh you know raised seat and um those are going to be uh and then also um primary bedroom that's on the main floor is something that's going to be ideal for them maybe you can modify that maybe you can't uh but that's if you're, if they're buying a home, then that's probably what they're going to be looking for. Do I understand? Am I following? Let's get to the buying and selling of the home with a senior. Now that we've gone through the door, we've seen the house, we've assessed everything we know. Let's talk about either

buying or selling with a senior homeowner. Now you're going to treat them like a first-time home buyer and a first-time home seller. And I'll tell you why. 30, 40 years ago, paperwork wasn't this thick. Paperwork was this thick. And some of these homeowners only understand the contract because it was three pages and it was like a carbon copy and that's what they had. They didn't understand that there's disclosures. They didn't understand that there's all this other paperwork that comes with just the, you know, just the contract. So it becomes overwhelming. I tell agents there's a three step process with this. You've got to take your time again. Got to take your time, got to gain the trust of the client, got to make them feel good about this transaction, whether it's buying the home or selling the home.

So here's what you would do when you are going to send them paperwork. Don't expect them to DocuSign because chances are they're not understanding the DocuSign. They can't flip through the pages. They need something to look at. So I say one printed out and give it and deliver it to them and say, I want you to go through all of this stuff. We can either doc, you sign it on the computer and we can go through it, or we can physically sign it. But I want you to physically read all of it. I want you to make notes, make all the questions you want and send me either email me or we could meet about the questions that you have with these documents. I tell you this because you don't want to sit there and go through it and go, but I have a question and then call you 15 minutes later or the next day have 10 questions and two days later have 40 more questions.

You want them to sit and digest. That is the demographics. The seniors need to digest the information. They need to make sure they're making a good deal. They're getting a good deal or they're getting a good deal. One of the two, you know, I'm making a good deal in the house I'm about to get, or I'm getting a good deal in the house I'm about to sell because this is my life. So let them sit with the information. Then you can make a video and you can send it to them and say, hey, these are the sections we're going to go over. This, you know, says this, this, this, and this. This says this, this, this, and this. You're going to sign at the bottom of this page and you're just going to kind of video,

just tell yourself with some important information, let them sit and digest it, go over the paperwork, then say, let's have a meeting. If they want the meeting right away, great. But I'm just saying, let them steer the boat for this. Let them handle the paperwork because it's overwhelming. And then get it signed before things start coming up disclosures or like, like maybe something can be come arise. Let them know ahead of time. Hey, this could happen because it will freak them out. It will. And you'll get 50 phone calls. And like I said, it's very much like a first time home seller, home buyer. Yeah, maybe even more, more anxiety, more, more feelings, more emotion. Yeah, emotions than even a first time home buyer in many ways. Right.

I recently wrote the book, Real Estate Evolution, The 10 Step Guide to CPI, Consistent and Predictable Income for Real Estate Agents. evolution the 10-step guide to cpi consistent and predictable income for real estate agents i wrote this book because i have sold real estate since 2007 and developed an immense amount of experience and knowledge during my journey i've witnessed hundreds and maybe even thousands of real estate agents fail in this business and And I firmly believe that that's a shame. In Real Estate Evolution, I will show you the exact steps that I have used as a real estate salesperson to sell 1 to 15 homes every single month for the past 129 consecutive months.

It took me more than two decades to learn the sales and persuasion techniques and more than one decade to master the real estate sales techniques to be able to produce the content that makes up this book. And it took me more than a year to write at a pace of three hours every single day. If you're a real estate agent and you're looking for consistent and predictable income in your business, I invite you to get the book, Real Estate Evolution. And you can get that by visiting www.therealestateevolution.com. And I'll even give it to you for free as long as you pay for the postage. So that's the other portion of this. Now I'm going to tell you how to target and locate.

Hey, there we go. How do we get business? It's so easy. It's the best thing ever. So I would either go to your title rep. You can go to your MLS. There's plenty of programs out there. I think BombBomb, there's a bunch of them. If you are to go into any of these mailing programs and you were to specifically ask for homeowners that have owned their homes over 30 plus years, ask for title wrap.

Very easy, very easy for them to pull this information. You will be surprised at how many homeowners that have owned their home for 25 years, 30, 40, 50, whatever, whatever your timeframe is. I say anything over 30, because it gives you a great, the kids are out of the house, grandkids, maybe a spouse, you know, sometimes spouses have already passed around then it's just 30 years is a long time in a home. Things start to go awry. So that 30 year mark, I start to market. And like I said, it's not a three touch market. You want to continuously just keep a marketing going. I would do one newsletter a month. And in that newsletter, I would put, they like freebies, but because you are a community expert, you're going to learn. There's a free senior community event for Mahjong or

pickleball or whatever the senior thing is. And you're going to put that in your newsletter. It doesn't cost you anything. You're just getting the word out there. And then you're going to put in a little piece of advice. Maybe you've partnered up with somebody. Now I started a company called Customize Aging and I have my partner and I, we've partnered up with Ponta Giulio, which is a manufacturing company for grab bars and toilets and a bunch of, you know, bathroom safety stuff. We are Amazon associates. So we can put a product in our newsletter and showcase it so people can go buy that product and then we get part of it. So real estate agents, you can still be making money being, you know, being just not a real

estate agent, but on products that will help with the safety of homeowners. So you can kind of go, you're now becoming a community expert. So you have to remember when you're marketing to them, you market with freebies and you market with other things. You market with really good content and information in the senior sector, whether it be medical, maybe. I just went to a mobility show and I saw some really great mobility stuff there. And we're highlighting it in one of our newsletters with a link to a video of what we shot there. And, you know, who knows, maybe we'll get a cut of anybody that goes and buys something. You get a little percentage of it, whatever it is. Sure. Getting that information out there. So people are like, wow, that is really cool.

You seem like a community expert in the senior demographics. And then the other thing I suggest real estate agents do is have a voice in the senior living sector, you know, really understand, like get involved. I'm involved with the Home Modifications Act through the National Aging Place Council. And that's every senior, every homeowner across America would get an actual tax credit for modifying their home, just for modifying it, and they get a tax credit. So like get involved because the aging sector and everybody's community needs, you know, help and they need, especially real estate agents to get involved in the housing sector of their area. Okay. So be a community expert, be a voice in the senior

community. And the opportunity is pretty easy to find 30 plus years. And you can go to your title rep or use something like remind or something like that to be able to find that data relatively easily yeah and just keep marketing to them over time it's not something that happens quickly but it's over time go say hi to them just introduce yourself give them information there's this great senior event going on and just make a xerox copy and door knock to them really so would you say that heather would you say that uh print is is probably uh received more uh better um in that community than it's i think it kind of depends on the type of parts i think if you are giving a senior homeowner information of something that's happening in

their community, like, uh, like something over at the senior community that they would be interested in, you know, backgammon, Mahjong, pickleball, I don't, whatever it is, but something, or, or let's say a local deli where, you know, a lot of seniors hang out, but you know, that they have a happy hour or they have a something a senior you know like between four and six seniors eat for half off you can put that in there you're not you're not giving any information that's already not already out there right so just being more targeted with what you're doing yeah he, how can somebody get in touch with you to learn more? They can go to our Facebook site, Customize Aging, join our Aging in Place Network in Facebook. If you are an EXP, go join the EXP Standards Network and I will see you there. I teach classes every

Tuesday night with two of my partners, Eve Hill and Amy Roberts. And we bring education. It's not just geared towards the senior demographics, but we do bring in people that are physical therapists, occupational therapists that talk about what they do and talk about, you know, what kind of things to ask for. And maybe, you know, somebody that needs questions from a, you know, a PT or OT, but we'll bring in attorneys that talk about probate. We'll bring in somebody from a senior living facility. So when you go in and your parent or you, or somebody needs to go in and ask the right questions about what it is that you need, you know, that the care that you need or what type of facility or how much is it going to cost and all that stuff. There are certain questions

that some people walk in and they donate ask. So we bring in people in the whole entire senior sector to talk about those things. Aging in place specialists, educators authors podcasters all the above and you do that in uh in workplace every tuesday or so we do it outside we do it in facebook and a workplace will start we don't stream live there but we are going to start repurposing okay all right so if i want to if i want to check that out aging and yeah aging in place is the is the facebook group to join aging in place network is the network is the place to join yeah that's the place to join we host classes put tons of great articles so many great articles um that is social media by the way last part social media facebook just to kind of give you a statistic 62 of the internet users are 65 or older on Facebook and 72% of them that use it are between 50 and 64.

So Facebook's a great place for this age demographics and education, educating them about laws that are happening. You know, there are certain states that actually have tax credits for seniors to age. I could tell you in California, they have a great tax prop 19 that you can carry a tax base. Not many California real estate agents know about this, that you can carry the tax base from your one home to your next home anywhere in California. So you can pay the same tax. I mean, it helped, right? But nobody knows, not many real estate agents know about this. So there's a lot to be said in everybody's state. Everybody's state has different

rules and regulations in their aging sector. I don't know them all. I could tell you Texas. It has a lot going on in the aging in place sector. San Antonio, if you're there, Salsa is of MIT, Dr. Joe Coughlin, the man is brilliant in the aging sector. They have a whole lab at MIT just for aging, for seniors aging. So they're developing, you know, fall devices and all that stuff. So it's kind of cool. Heather, you're so gracious to spend your time with me today. I appreciate you sharing with us about, you know, the aging community and customized aging. And Heather, thank you again. Thanks so much for listening to the No Broke Months podcast today.

Until the next show, I invite for you to be grateful, make good choices, help someone, have the best day of your life life and go find a listing. mythologies in order for them to follow. Our very special guest in Featured Time of the Day, I cannot even sit in my chair. I'm so excited. Dan Rochon, all the way from beautiful Virginia. Dan, it's an honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. And what I'm encouraging for you is to focus on who you're being

because that's your foundation. And when you focus on that, you're going to find that you do activities that are going to lead to the outcome of having whatever it is in this life that you're looking for.