From $0 to $100,000,000!

We have another excellent podcast episode for you this week. Now… every episode of Rise Above the Ranks is excellent in our opinion, but we especially loved this one.

We interview two of our young colleagues, Kris Everett and Vinny Morales, who explain how they went from $0 in annual real estate sales to a whopping $100,000,000! They share their successful approaches, identify avoidable mistakes other agents make, and give their best pieces of advice for new real estate agents.

Our discussion was so great that it even made us more hungry and motivated to succeed. Listen to it and tell us what you think. We truly hope you get as much out of it as we did.

Now, let’s jump into today’s Blueprint!

– James and David

Wall Street jumping back into home buying game

Business Insider reports that large institutional investors are poised to get back into the single-family rental market. According to their report:

• Institutional real-estate investors have amassed $110 billion to purchase or build single-family rental homes in the coming years

• Starwood Group has begun exploring selling 2,000 of its homes to capture the strong demand for its properties.

• Avenue One, a single-family rental asset acquisition and management firm, just raised $100 million to expand its marketplace and reports getting significantly more inquiries to purchase their single-family home portfolios..

Our take

There is no denying that high borrowing costs caused large institutional investors to curtail most of their investments in the single-family rental market this year. Unfortunately, many took this to mean that Wall Street had no interest in the home-buying game at all. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. They were and are simply waiting for the right time to jump back in.

Residential homebuilding spiked last month

Residential homebuilding spiked as new home construction (aka: housing starts) increased 21.7% in May, according to a report from the US Census Bureau. The 1.6 million starts in May blew past the 1.4 million forecast by economists.

• Between April and May, housing starts saw the fastest month-over-month rate increase since 2016.

• Single-family housing starts rose 18.5% to a seasonally-adjusted annualized rate of 997,000

• Multi-family housing starts climbed 27.1% to an annualized pace of 634,000

• May had an 11-month high in new home construction

Our take

This is all much needed good news! We are not surprised that builders are ramping up construction. They’re eager to capitalize on the current mismatch between demand and supply. While this will definitely benefit homebuyers, it won’t be enough because the bulk of the market comes from existing homes rather than newly-built homes. We need to build a lot more, and the number of existing home listings needs to increase as well. Still, this is genuinely a step in the right direction.

The hottest and most improved housing markets

Realtor.com just released its latest report on the hottest and most improved markets. Its rankings are based on two factors: market demand and the pace of the market. Market demand represents the number of unique views per property on Realtor.com, and the pace of the market represents the number of days a listing remains active on the site.

Our take

This list underscores how much affordability is an issue. 12 of May’s hottest markets had median listing prices below the national median, and all five of the most-improved large housing markets were in the Midwest. Most of these markets are highly affordable. Take Cleveland, where listing prices are as much as $204,000 below the national median! The only way other markets can become more affordable is if we address the current supply imbalances that exist. That’s going to take time to fix, unfortunately. Until then, we’re going to be in this muddle.

Schematics

The news that just missed the cut

• We’ve partnered with a GREAT company to give you FREE leads

• Agents sound off on negotiation tactics

• Use these words to sell more homes

• Five-Time #1 RE/MAX agent worldwide shares his strategies

• New agent? Don’t let these expenses surprise you

• The top countries where Americans are buying real estate

Foundation Plans

Advice from James and David to win the day

As we told you up top, in today’s episode of our podcast, Rise Above the Ranks, we interview our colleagues Kris Everett and Vinny Morales, who explain how they went from $0 in annual real estate sales to $100,000,000. It’s a fantastic episode filled with a lot of insights on a variety of topics. We want to highlight their tips for generating leads.

Open Houses – Kris is a master of using open houses to get strong leads. He would attend open houses on both Saturdays and Sundays. We can’t encourage this enough, especially to all new agents who might not have any listings. The leads from open houses are some of the warmest. The people who attend them are highly motivated to buy.

Email Marketing – This was Vinny's preferred way of getting leads. He would identify an area of homes he wanted to sell and get the emails of the homeowners of that area. Then he’d literally ask the homeowner the price at which they would sell. USE THIS! Don’t reinvent the wheel. This strategy works.

Consistency – Regardless of what method you use, you must be consistent. Not every day will be easy but keep at it. The more consistent you are, the better you will do. Remember, the work you put in today will pay off months, sometimes years, down the road.

Honestly, listen to this episode. It’s fantastic. We feel that it will truly give everyone some good motivation to hit the ground running. Listen, like, and share it.

Just in Case

Keep the latest industry data in your back pocket with today’s mortgage rates:

That’s a wrap on this edition of The Blueprint!

Remember: each day is a gift and a new opportunity to lead the life you want and to become the person you want to be. The mistakes and missteps you’ve made in the past don’t define you. Live as intentionally as you can and be ruthlessly focused on the goals you’ve set out to achieve. You can do it!

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you back here on Tuesday!

– James and David