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Ok, we’re home.
What’d I miss?
NAR CEO Nykia Wright
We are in Dallas for two days only and we’ll be back home tonight. We came to the inaugural Summit Event here last year and it was jammed packed with great speakers and information, and this year has been similar.
The CEO of the National Association of Realtors, Nykia Wright, was on stage yesterday, and you could hear a pin drop. Donna and I were both impressed with her humble demeanor and steadfast commitment to turning around the NAR and making it relevant. She admitted many mistakes were made, and that it will be a long-term project.
She made reference to the good things about the NAR, like being the ‘first voice of real estate’ by publishing market data, and advocating for realtors with the politicians, which I appreciate.
Towards the end, she made a baseball reference that summed it up.
“You won’t see us hitting home runs. We just want to hit singles every day”.
Baseballers know that when you’re behind, you just want to get men on base.
It’s a metaphor for the struggles ahead and that gaining the confidence of realtors will be the primary challenge.
What she didn’t mention was the Clear Cooperation Policy, which is ok because other speakers aren’t touching it either. The latest change by NAR that turned it into a four-headed snake is probably the best solution available as we wait for the Department of Justice and/or more lawsuits to dismantle it altogether.
Meanwhile, private exclusives are getting hotter as other brokerages go public:
I was chatting it up with some of the old guard and the disdain for Compass and Robert Reffkin was palpable. I tried to make three points:
- The last lawsuit forced Compass to pay $52 million. Let’s avoid a repeat.
- More lawsuits and/or DOJ action over the CCP are inevitable.
- Buyer-agents are going extinct, so how relevant is the MLS?
Yes, we want to expose our listings to the public. The new change to the CCP allows brokerages to input their listings on their own websites prior to MLS input, so there you go.
The revised CCP policy tries to make everyone happy. But it won’t be enough for the DOJ, and when they say quit, brokerages will be tempted to cut a deal to upload listings direct to Zillow.
But there are 500+ MLS companies in America.
It will be up to the NAR to provide guidance on finding a solution.
Nykia – that’s your challenge ahead.
Whatever you do, don’t hire the same bozo attorneys that were on the last case!
Dumb Home
Cutting-edge technology was once a de rigueur residential amenity for any eight-figure listing, along with elaborate home gyms, zero-edge swimming pools and 12-car garages. It’s becoming nearly impossible to find a fridge, toaster or LED light that isn’t Wi-Fi-enabled or voice-activated. But the fully loaded tech compound is suddenly falling from favor as high-end homeowners frantically reset the password to escape the $100 billion home-automation industry.
“Just like the arts-and-crafts movement was a reaction against industrialization, we’re now experiencing a reaction against the smart home. People are looking for more manual, less complicated places to live,” says interior designer Jamie Bush, who has worked on some of Los Angeles’ most iconic architectural residences for studio heads, celebrities and tech titans.
While celebrities like Sofía Vergara were once the smart home’s most vocal advocates — the Modern Family actress gushed about how she controlled her home’s security, appliance and media systems from her phone — the honeymoon period with digital domiciles is now facing the reality of unintelligible interfaces, endless updates and forgotten passwords.
“They could not find a single light switch in the entire home,” says Beverly Hills-based interior designer Carrie Livingston about a sprawling penthouse she was hired to renovate. Her clients had inherited the previous owner’s Crestron automation system, which controlled all overhead, wall and table lighting in response to movement within rooms. “The wife complained that every time she got up at night, her husband would see her path illuminated as she made her way from bed to bathroom,” says Livingston, who has worked with clients including Ralph Lauren, Gwyneth Paltrow and Dasha Zhukova. “Other times, she’d enter a darkened room where the lights wouldn’t go on no matter how much she flapped her arms.” Result: Livingston took out the entire system and installed manual switches throughout, an intricate overhaul that cost more than $100,000.
Similarly, Bush recounts a recent renovation involving “a kitchen with a built-in dining table that rises and lowers from counter to dining height with hydraulics. But to do so, you need a passcode. Otherwise, the table will not move.”
Enter the dumb home.
Trendy Tuesday – Natalie
The whole Klinge family is attending the 1000Watt Brand & Marketing Summit in Dallas this week – yeehaw!
One of today’s speakers dove into AI and how agents can use it to save hours of time doing mundane work. But I think everyone could benefit from these tidbits!
As of right now, I’m not one to use AI too much. I usually just ask some simple questions when I’m not in the mood to scour the internet for answers. Most recently I asked ChatGPT the wattage of my microwave by sending in a photo and I also asked why the red light of my blender was blinking. So that just proves how I’m really using AI to save time in my professional life.
One feature of ChatGPT I learned about from today’s speaker is custom GPTs. If you pay for Chat GPT Plus ($20/month), you unlock the ability to create custom GPTs for tasks and topics you repeatedly need assistance with. For example, the speaker hosts a podcast and he created a custom GPT to prepare him for each episode before filming. So now, instead of spending 30-60 minutes researching his next guest, he simply puts in the name of the guest and it produces all the information he needs based on his customization of the GPT.
I thought this was pretty sweet and could be used for plenty of tasks, both work related and not.
My first project: make a custom GPT to help me make our weekly KRG newsletter. I often include upcoming local events and sometimes it takes an annoying amount of time to find events that seem enjoyable, so hoping this makes it quicker. I just did a few rounds of questions and fine tuned the events it pulled by date, location, audience, etc. – so far so good! I’ll keep using it and see how it goes!
If you’re interested in doing the same, here are the steps:
1. Explore
2. Profile ? My GPTs ? Create
3. Add GPT Image (optional)
4. Add name, description, instructions
5. Enable capabilities
6. Click “create”
If you try it out, let me know what you use it for and how you perfect it!
Quantifying A Buyer’s Market
Let’s compare the start of 2025 to previous years.
The last obvious buyer’s market was in 2009, and in the graph above you can see how the supply swamped the demand.
This year, sales have been strong and the supply is still relatively muted. Cash sales are a major driver, and buyers wouldn’t be paying all cash if they didn’t have faith in the environment.
So we’re fine, at least for now.
There won’t be a major panic either – homeowners have too much equity, and not giving it away will feel like the perfect solution for a ‘soft’ or ‘bad’ market. They will just wait until next year.
There should be some great deals made by those who stay in the game and grind out a lowball deal here and there. But they will be rare.
The last downturn was made worse by the exotic low or no-down financing. Most of those who bought in the 2005-2007 era had no equity by 2009, and walking away was common and encouraged by the unscrupulous agents and lenders.
The environment is completely different now.
Everyone was nervous how the market would respond to the doubling of mortgage rates. Three years later, we have survived better than anyone imagined.
We’ll survive the ‘tariff transitory temporary two-step whoop-de-doo market’ too.
Reverse Offer
Rates Move Higher
So much for lower rates!
https://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/markets/mortgage-rates-04072025
We’re not in a buyer’s market is because sellers have to agree to it AND move down on price – if they don’t, then the market is just loitering.
Sellers have the right to hold out on price and either wait for a lucky sale, or hope that market pricing rises up to meet them and their aspirations. The latter has been working for years!
The selling season will run out of gas at some point.
It may have already.
It sure looks like the second half of 2025 is going to be sluggish. Only the gunslingers and crazy people will have much luck then.
So all we have are the next two months.
Mortgage rates will have some influence on the outcome. But the days-on-market will be the main cause of buyer reluctance to paying the seller’s price.
Three-quarters of the current inventory has been for sale for more than two weeks. If those aren’t sold in the next month or two – and their DOM ends up being 60-90 days or more – the chances of them selling in 2025 are remote at best.
Simple tip for home sellers: Decide how much of a discount you are willing to tolerate. Divide it in half, and reduce your price once in April, and once in May. If not sold by the end of June, pack it up and try again next year!
Buyer’s Market?
Are we in a buyer’s market?
No, not yet.
For a buyer’s market to actually happen, it would take sellers to acknowledge it, and act accordingly. Acknowledging it means lowering their price until they get offers, and then cut a deal with one of them.
We’re a long ways off from that happening.
Instead, let’s call it the ‘tariff transitory whoop-de-doo market’ for now.
It’s code for a paused, standoff, you-go-first market.
Previously, buyers hoped for mortgage rates to get under 6% to excite them, but now it’s going to take mid-5s at least to get them to re-engage. It will be too easy for them to pause for at least a week or two to see if the tariff talk scares any sellers to dump on price. Besides, they’ve seen all the current inventory and didn’t like any of it. Not at those prices anyway.
But the drop in rates has stalled. Inflation fears should keep them stalled.
If the rates don’t get the buyers going, then what’s left?
That’s right – there’s nothing price won’t fix!
Inventory Watch
In 1Q25, there were 410 sales – which was +8% YoY!
There are 419 NSDCC active listings today.
This probably reflects the normal optimism, but with prices this high, you have to think that there are going to be a lot of disappointed sellers:
Missing
