Millenials, Gen X-ers and over-promotion - The real estate market is constantly changing. Here are the most import May real estate news headlines you need to keep you informed and up-to-date on this turbulent market.
It’s that time of month again – time to dig through some May real estate news headlines. Here’s some of the biggest shake-ups that happened in the market this month
Time to comb through your CRM
Remember those old school postcards and flyers agents used
to send, begging for listings?
Dig them out, comb through your CRM for folks who own
entry-level homes and beg for their listings.
“U.S. home sales fell for a second straight month in April, weighed down by a chronic shortage of more affordable houses,” according to Lucia Mutikani at Reuters.com.
Apparently, there is strong demand for homes at the entry-level price point and, with shrinking mortgage rates, low unemployment and rising incomes, now truly is “the best time to sell.”
Listing agents who take the time to put together compelling marketing pieces, proving to these homeowners how much equity they have, how now is the best time to take that equity and move up to a larger home, etc. will be the winners here.
“Nearly 45 million Americans will reach the general age of first-time homebuyers in the next 10 years,” according to Emma Newburger at CNBC.com.
And, at least one home builder’s representative has already translated that fact into a “wave of millennial homebuyers” entering the market over the next 10 years.
Reaching the age at which people typically buy their first home doesn’t necessarily mean that they will or can buy homes.
In fact, with starter home prices out of their reach as they pay off student loan debt, we think the builder’s rep is a bit premature in her prognostication.
Jessica Guerin over at HousingWire.com agrees. “That wave of Millennial homebuyers may never come crashing,” she says. “Instead, it could end up being little more than a ripple.”
Guerin refers to a Wall Street Journal piece that claims that Millennials, age 24 to 42 in 2019, don’t think owning a home is that big of a deal, in direct opposition to how their parents felt at that age.
Where the Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart got that idea, however, is a mystery. Studies throughout 2018 showed that a big chunk of the generation thinks that buying a house is a good investment.
“Our research showed that a majority of millennials would prefer owning to renting,” according to NerdWallet.com’s Kamran Rosen. In fact, Rosen says that their research found that Millennials “look upon owning a home just as favorably as previous generations.”
They aren’t buying because they don’t think they can afford to. In fact, the Nerd Wallet study found that most of what they believe about why they can’t buy a home is wrong:
Our advice to buyers’ agents longing to work with these first-time buyers is to dispute each of those claims in marketing pieces targeted at tenants. For tips, check out “Need New Clients? Try Tenant Real Estate Leads.”
We can’t leave Gen X out of our generational conversation. According to a LendingTree.com report, it’s Gen X (age 43 to 54) who have credit challenges. They have the biggest auto loan burden and the largest credit card debt of any of the other generations.
With an average credit score of 653 (considered “fair”), they and Millennials pay more for credit. And, Gen Xers know this.
Want to win their move-up business? Show them how to raise their credit scores.
Quit it.
“Don’t come off like a used car salesman. I had to sell a house recently and was given a referral to a highly rated real estate agent,
but talking to him was a non-stop sales pitch. I chose someone else,” says a response to a RealEstate.com Facebook post about how agents can make the transaction better.
Another person responded that she was referred to a “guy in his 20s” by her relocation company. “His sales pitch was so corny that I literally had to stop myself from laughing,” she responded. “We chose a different realtor, a woman in her 50s who came prepared and didn’t brag on herself incessantly.”
“I refuse to work with bombastic egos,” claimed another.
Instead of the tired sales pitch, the endless explanations of why you’re so great, consider some of these qualities that respondents said they long for in an agent:
Keep up with the news by embedding social media posts to your blog – here’s how:
We can't fault you for not keeping up with April real estate news - It's been a bit of a bumpy ride lately. That said, it's important to keep up with the latest, so we compiled all the most important bits worth talking about into one piece.
An informed agent is a successful agent - Here's all the April real estate news you need to know and may have missed. There's been a lot going on in the industry lately, so follow along as we break it all down for you.
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