How to Choose A Realtor

Today I'm gonna talk with you a little bit about what you need to know and how you can choose your realtor to make sure that you get the best realtor for you. Recently I was in a listing appointment and these folks had come to me by way of referral. Past clients of mine had recommended that they gave me a call. When I was sitting down with them, they let me know that they were gonna be interviewing other realtors as well. So I was gonna be competing for the job of selling their house, and it all came down to, how I stacked up against these other realtors. And one of the things that I wanted to emphasize to them is experience.

Experience

Experience plays such a big role in the realtor that you choose. But how big of a role does it play? So in the beginning of my career, I used to get low grade anxiety when people would ask me about how long I had been selling real estate. And now after 10 years of selling real estate, it's something that I don't fear at all, in fact, I'm proud of what my experience has been. And so I think at a certain point, there's probably a point of diminishing returns, on experience. So my first tip to you, is find a realtor that has at least three to four years of selling experience.

And it's not just necessarily how many years they've been selling real estate. It also comes down to, how much business are they doing in those years? Inevitably, at some point throughout the year, I will get a realtor tell me about how long they've been selling real estate and never in my years of selling real estate, have I seen this or done that, and they use it kind of as a trump card. And it always bothered me in my early years of real estate, and I vowed not to do it myself because I quickly realized that the realtor that sells 30 homes in one year quickly catches up on that realtor that has been selling homes for 30 years, but maybe not doing the same amount of volume.

Figure out not only how many years they've been selling real estate, but figure out how many homes they're selling in that year, and a bonus tip would be, figure out what kind of homes they're selling, what their clients look like, the price ranges that they work in.

Marketing

When you are sitting down and considering hiring a realtor, you need to understand the marketing that they are going to do for you. And this specifically applies to sellers which I think is relevant as we reflect back on our listing appointment. Marketing is like one big puzzle. We have multiple pieces that we plug together to create the cohesive whole.

I mean, I've seen too many realtors come out with their hot new listing, with photos they've taken on their cell phones. And while iPhone takes wonderful photos, it's not the same as having a professional photographer that shoots houses day in and day out. So we need to think about how our photos, our video, our coming soon sign, our online advertising, how that all comes together, to create a cohesive marketing strategy for you.

So make sure you understand what your realtor's gonna do for you when it comes to marketing. You need to understand how they are gonna get you the best result possible and how their marketing plays a role in that.

Personal Fit

My third and final point that I think you should consider when hiring your realtor is personal fit. It's something that's often overlooked, but it's one of the most important things that you can consider when you're hiring a realtor. There are certain clients that have not hired me because maybe they didn't connect with me, but at the same time, most of my business comes by the way of referral and repeat clients. And the beauty of that for me and for my clients is that we get to work with people that we enjoy spending time with. It's not a difficult relationship to be in, and that is very important.

I think that you need to do some research ahead of time, if somebody says, "Hey, I think you should give Cory a call, if you're thinking about making a move." It's easy to find me online, and it should be easy to find any realtor online. You can hop online, you can read the reviews that other people have written for them. If they've got a one star review out of five, that's probably a telling sign that you shouldn't work with them. But if they've got glowing reviews, and they've got a good, strong online presence, and you can get a sense of how they work and where they work and how they treat your clients, then that's a great stepping stone into picking up the phone and giving them a call to at least interview them.

Make sure you feel comfortable with them, you trust them, and that you think they're gonna have your best interests at heart.

I've had the pleasure of working with mostly past clients and referrals for quite a few years now. And when you get to work with great clients, and they refer you more great clients, it makes for a pretty awesome job. And I feel very fortunate to be able to work with the folks that I do. If you're considering making a move, then I would love to connect with you and chat some more about that and why I've been so successful at helping so many folks over the years. Hopefully we'll chat soon.

Get in touch.

Why Canadian House Prices Will Keep Rising

Today I'm excited to take some time to look at what's been going on here in the local real estate market, so here in London, Ontario. We're also gonna take a look at what's been happening in the Canadian real estate market and how that stacks up to what we thought was gonna happen when COVID kind of kicked off here in Canada, and where I think we might be heading in the future as well.

So let's dive into the numbers

We'll look at London first. And when I talk about these numbers, I'm talking about August of this year, so 2020 compared to August of last year. We've seen the actual number of home sales increased by 13% we've actually seen the price go up by a whopping 22%.

Now when we look at Canada as a whole, we've seen those numbers, the home sales go up by 33%, which is huge, and our average sales price is up by 18 1/2%. So we look at those numbers and some of those numbers are huge as far as growth goes and when we look back at some of the predictions that were made, if you remember Evan Siddall from CMHC came out and said that he expected a decrease in home values of 9 to 18%. If you search on YouTube, you can see that there's lots of people that are gonna tell you that the real estate market is gonna crash. So why hasn't it? Let's take a look at why maybe these numbers are the way that they are.

Back in March, COVID hit and everything shut down, the economy shutdown, the government basically told people to stay home, some people were laid off or couldn't work. There was predictions that we are gonna see a huge drop in the value of homes across the country and who knows maybe that will still happen, but it hasn't yet. So there's a few factors that I think have played a big role in stimulating the real estate market across the country and particularly here in London, as well.

As soon as COVID hit and people were beginning to be laid off, the government jumped in and provided $146 billion worth of stimulus into the Canadian economy, predicting that they would kind of play that out for about three months to try and stimulate the economy. On top of that, we've given people the opportunity to defer mortgages, we've also kept interest rates at historically low levels, and we'll probably continue to do so. Some people get out, they begin to feel comfortable and they decide they want to actually make that move that they were thinking about, but they realize that there's not that many houses on the market and it does come back to the supply and demand. So we've got very, very low supply and demand is starting to ramp up. People are realizing that money is cheap and that they can go and possibly buy the house that they wanted to before, and they're feeling confident enough that things are going to normal. And this is how we've gotten to this spot, where we are, where we see a record number of sales taking place and record sales prices across the country.

So let's get to the exciting part

Let's talk about where we think things are going to go in the future, and when I say the future, I'm talking about the next few years. The Canadian government has made it very, very clear that they're gonna keep interest rates basically pinned to the floor. If you read between the lines, they are very okay with Canadians continuing to borrow money, to live their life and do the things that they need to do. So as we head into the future, I think what we're gonna begin to see is we're gonna begin to see inflation happen. The Canadian government made it very clear that they would rather see an inflationary environment versus a deflationary environment. And for those reasons and the fiscal and monetary policies that they have in place, I think we'll continue to see most asset classes continue to grow in value, particularly real estate.

The only way we would really see that change is if all of a sudden there's a glut of supply on the market. So it would take people losing their jobs on mass and having to put their homes up for sale, or having them repossessed by the bank that then puts them up for sale, where all of a sudden buyers have tons and tons of options and sellers begin to have to compete on price in order to get their homes sold. But we are so far away from that environment right now and I think we're gonna be really far away from that environment for some time, for years. I think that interest rates are gonna be very low, I think the government's gonna continue to try and support people who have lost their jobs due to COVID all out of fear of running into a deflationary environment.

So who stands to benefit?

The people that stand to benefit are the ones that already own homes. They're gonna watch their homes go up in value, they can then take that value in their home and either upgrade their house, especially while interest rates are low.

If you own multiple properties like I do, then I can take them and re-leverage them and go and buy more rental properties.

The people that are really gonna struggle during this environment…

are the ones that don't have anything in an asset class. They don't have any sort of investment, they don't own any sort of real estate, it is becoming tougher and tougher for first time home buyers to get into their first home, as they watch home values grow by double digits percentage-wise, month over month or year over year, while their income's not growing at that pace either. It is just getting tougher and tougher for them.

Some of my final thoughts on this

This is stuff that I'm personally thinking about for myself, for anybody that does own a home or anybody that owns rental properties, or is thinking about getting into them, I honestly do think that this could be a great time, we've had the government sort of promise us that they're gonna keep interest rates historically low, and the value of your home is increasing rapidly, so if you're considering upgrading your home, now maybe a good time to make that stretch if you've been considering it, I don't want you to make any financially unsound decisions, or if you're thinking about getting into rental properties, it's a great time to do that as well, because the best time to buy an investment property was like, yesterday, because those things are appreciating so quickly and I think if you get into the market now you've got a few good years ahead of you, of watching that asset increase.

So that's it, that's kind of where I think things are going to go in the future. If you have any questions or have any thoughts or comments on this, I would love to see them.

Questions?

What I Wish I Knew When I Became A Realtor

Today I wanted to take a moment and talk about things that I wish I had known when I had started my real estate business. Over the past couple of years, I've really been asked a lot, "Hey, I'm thinking about getting into real estate." Or, "I just got into real estate, and these are the things I'm struggling with. How do I deal with that?" Or, "What would you do?" And I thought it would be good just to kind of summarize some of the most important things to realize and consider before you get into real estate or when you start real estate. And if you're not doing either one of those, then I invite you just to join in for a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at what it's like to be a realtor.

10 years in Real Estate

This summer, I actually celebrate being in real estate for 10 years so. And I say celebrate because this career, or this business, has been such a blessing to me in so many ways, but there's so few people that actually make it this far into the business. I mean, I think the stats are that after the first year, 50% of the people that started will be gone, and by the end of the second year, you can cut that number in half again. And so the attrition rate is really really high in real estate, especially in those first couple of years. And you might think, "Well, why is that?" And I think it has to do with a bit of the HGTV effect. I think that HGTV has painted this picture of what real estate is like, and being a realtor is this fun job where you get to go around and look at beautiful homes and show fun people houses, and eventually, they decide to buy one, and then you get paid a big fat check. But it misses the biggest biggest part of what it is to actually be a successful realtor and have a long-lasting career. And that is the fact that it is a sales business. They never show you how those people got those clients. And the reason they don't show it is because it's kind of boring and mundane, but honestly, it's the most pivotal part of being a realtor.

Gaining Clients

There are so many different characters in real estate, and I think there's good reason for that. I think there's reason there's all sorts of different characters in life, and people often want to work with people that are similar to them. But I also think that there's some realtors I look at, and I think, "Man, how are you still selling real estate? How do people still work with you? Because you are just so bad, in some ways, at what you do." But the reality is they've mastered the element of sales, or lead generation, or finding clients, whatever you want to call it. Is they've gotten really good at that, so that no matter how bad they are at the other parts, they can go out and find new clients. If you don't know how to generate leads, if you don't know how to find clients, then you career's not going to be very long-lasting. I'm at a point now where most of my clients are either past clients, or referrals, or by word of mouth, or I'm generating leads off existing business that I already have. Whether that's people calling me on listings I have for sale or other means.

Marketing

Advertising, obviously, I'm doing at this point as well. But in the beginning, I mean, I sat in open houses. I took leads from other realtors that were too busy to deal with them. I knocked on doors. I cold called people. And to be honest with you, I didn't love any of those things, but it's what I had to do to get my real estate career started. I basically came to London, and the only other person I knew was a realtor. A good friend of mine was a realtor, and he wasn't gonna buy a house for me. So I had to go out and find people. I had to find strangers that wanted to work with me. If you're in the fortunate position where you actually have a lot of friends and family in the town where you're selling real estate, then I think you're fortunate because you can go to them and say, "Hey, listen, I got my real estate license. Are you thinking of buying or selling?" And a lot of times they will give you a chance way more so than a complete stranger will. So I would encourage you to do that, but you need to think long and hard about how you are going to find clients and how you are going to generate business when you jump into this career.

Time and Money

So those are the two resources that you have when you get into real estate. You've got probably lots of time and not a lot of money. So you need to spend those resources accordingly. Don't overvalue your time and think that you're some sort of top producing realtor who thinks that their money is worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars per hour. The reality is it is not. Your time is not worth that, and so don't go and spend a bunch of money. I've watched realtors literally spend their whole budget on one ad in the "The London Free Press" or a newspaper and kind of let it all ride on black type thing. And they just, it blows up in their face because that's not how advertising works. It's not this one big push. I mean, you need to have a budget to do advertising consistently. And the reality is is you probably don't have the budget to do that when you start. So go and do the things that you can commit your time to. Sit at tons of open houses, chase down tons of leads, post on social media yourself, record videos like I'm doing right now. All those kinds of things you have the time to do. So do those things. Give your time to lots of things that are potentially going to generate business. And as your career grows, this is what's gonna happen, is you're gonna have less and less time to give to things, but you're likely gonna have more and more money to allocate to either paying people to do the things you don't have time to do or don't wanna do. You're gonna have time to pay for advertising to help you generate leads. But you're going to get more and more picky with how you allocate your time. And your time is likely gonna be spent much more on meeting clients and going on appointments, and that's about it. And other than that, your time should be given to trying to generate leads.

Whether that's figuring out what your ad campaigns are gonna be, or how your advertising looks, or literally picking up the phone, or knocking on doors, or however you choose to do it. So time and money, think about how you are going to spend those resources when you get into real estate, and my advice to you would be talk to other realtors.

Effort = Success… if you’re smart about it

I have had moments in my career where I've poured tons and tons of effort and time into things to have nothing to show for it. Sometimes it's your own fault, and sometimes it's other people's fault.

I can remember I listed a house for a couple. They never told me that they were actually in financial distress. I got them an offer on their property, and it wasn't enough money for them to cover all of their debts, and they actually decided to go and declare bankruptcy. I never sold that house. The bank put it back up for sale a couple of months later, and it actually ended up selling for less than what I had on that property. Now, a lot of that is, in my opinion, my fault. I didn't qualify those people. I didn't get their financial information well enough to actually figure out what their situation was and protect myself from wasting my time and effort. Now, on the flip side of that, being as far as I am into my real estate career, I have learned much better how to qualify people so that I don't waste my time like that. I would say I'm famous for saying, "Where there's a will, there's way." And I’ve found this: if you have really really good clients that are qualified, and they're pursuing something, and they really want it, and they have the means to do it, but there are hurdles along the way, usually that is a situation where if there is a will, there's a way. And the effort will equal success. I think that if you are worried about putting forth effort into something that may result in nothing, then talk to another realtor, talk a realtor that's been down that road before, that has the experience, and allow them to kind of filter some of that, or qualify some of that for you. And then you can determine whether it's worth putting forth the effort into whatever that may be, so that your outcome is actually desirable, that it's actually worth the effort.

At the end of the day, if you figure out and learn how to qualify people, qualify situations, it will serve you so much better. Mentorship is something that I probably didn't take seriously enough when I was starting out in real estate.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

If I could give you one piece of advice, and if I could back and do it again, I would join a team. I would join a team that has a realtor that is down that road so much further. They're looking for you to come on as buyer's agent or some part of their team, and if there's a certain demographic of the market that you wanna work with, in a certain price range, or neighborhood, or whatever it may be, and you find a realtor that's already working in that area, then go and join that team, even if it means that you have to join for free. Even if you have to work for them for six months for free, I promise you it will be totally worth it. It will speed up your learning. It will also allow you to have somebody else worrying about generating leads, and they will kick them onto you, and you will gain so much experience in such a short period of time. Something that you could learn in typically three, four years, you'll be able to accomplish in one year. And if at that point you deicide, "Hey, I'm gonna go out on my own," it is totally worth it. If you don't wanna join a team, and you wanna go the route of being a single solo agent from the start, then at least find a mentor that is willing to help you. The challenge is that so many successful realtors are so busy that it is tough for them to give their time to you, and there's really no benefit or reward to them. Or if you say, "Hey listen, I'm looking for you to help me out, to mentor me. Would you be willing to do that if I were to pay you a referral fee on some of the transactions that I have you help me with, or some of the deals that I do if I were to pay you a 25% referral fee, would you be willing to take some of my calls and answer some of my questions." I've learned that there are a few great people in the industry that are willing to give you their time for free just because they wanna see you succeed. And I managed to find a few of those people once I was already kind of on my journey and down the path, and I now try and do that for people. Figure out where it is again that you wanna focus on, what part of the industry you wanna be in, and find those people that are already doing that, so they can help you along on your journey.

Prioritize

While I talked about the fact that in the beginning of your career, you will feel like you have so much time, and you don't necessarily know what to give it to. I think you still need to prioritize your time to the things that are important. I see so many successful realtors in London that have wonderful careers, but the rest of their lives are in really tough shape. I've seen realtors that I feel like I've kind of looked up to in the beginning who have now grown their careers or opened their own brokerages, and they sell a lot of the other parts of their life away in order to accomplish a great real estate career. And at the end of the day, I think, "Why are you trying to be successful?" What is the point of having a successful career if you lose it all, the rest of the things that are important in your life, at the same time. I mean, this is something for me that I made a priority right from the start. In fact, throughout my whole 10-year career, I've basically been home almost every single night for dinner. I've been around for bedtime most of the time. And it's actually something that I explain to my clients, and say "listen," particularly buyers who are, you have to be more active with them, particularly in the evening time or over weekends, I say, "Listen, I do have a family, and I try to be home for dinner and bedtime." And I almost never work on Sunday, and that's because I want it to be family time. I want it to be a rest day, a time to take a break from all the real estate goings on that I'm dealing with. So prioritize your time, and what I find is most people will actually respect you even more for doing that. They completely understand. And set that up with them. Make that kind of parameter and that framework that you work within, and they will understand when you don't necessarily get back to their texts that they sent you at six o'clock, or that you wanna book a showing for seven o'clock at night instead of 5:30. They will understand that, and they will get that.

So that's it for me. This is by no means an exhaustive list. I hope that you found it helpful. If you have any questions, if you're thinking about getting into real estate, leave a comment below. If you feel like I've missed something big, leave a comment as well. That's it from me. I hope you're all having a wonderful day, and we will chat soon.

Questions?