Friday Post September 5, 2023

Tuesday “first sips” * back to school, #’s, AI & a ruler

Whether you have kids heading back to school or not – we all have one thing in common – Labor Day 2023 is behind us and the seasonality of real estate is underway. I hear of title orders being up (slight surge in orders roughly 3 weeks ago) & stagers busy which points to fresh inventory – yet we don’t yet know how Buyers will respond. I’m ready to find out – let’s go!

Pulling in manager, Jordan Malloch’s synopsis for metro Seattle market happenings from his Friday recap as a digestible bite heading into a new week:

I know we have all felt it, but we can now see that the lack of inventory we are seeing is having a direct impact on the number of pending and closed sales. With nearly 20% less homes on the market than one year ago, it is unsurprising that we are down over 16% with our closed sales. With a full month of data, June and July were very similar months. Number of sales were virtually identical and the closed sales price was the same at $875k. The cumulative January-August sold price is now 8.4% lower than what it was one year ago.– Jordan Malloch

I’m curious to know if you are using AI in your real estate business. No longer is AI a complete stranger to our continuing education and an idea to consider. Real life examples? Have you used to put a fresh set of words to marketing comments? Have you found best practices in “prompts”? Over the weekend I enjoyed an article on Reading, writing, and ChatGPT: High school English teachers adjust to the new realities of AI. “This (AI) is the calculator, but for English” – the teacher described. And, “ultimately (though) they are making predictions at a massive scale, and they’re not always accurate, although they should improve as they progress over time.”

…and, for all of us – “part of the learning process is knowing to double-check the results.” A learning lesson for us all – as we navigate real estate and AI.

As we wrap a few digestible bites heading into a new week, I share the image above as an idea worth considering as you work alongside your client’s Form 17. While I won’t take on the legalities of an incomplete Form 17 in this post, I will share a good idea! While we all know to not touch this document on behalf of a client, we can certainly take (and should) a look for the completeness in the doc. And, what better way to do this is take a ruler and move it down the page – line by line. This practice makes it visually very easy to spot gaps in deficiencies in disclosure, to then point out in guidance with your clients. Just last week we had a story of an incomplete Form 17 allowing for a Buyer to walk. Yes, way more detail to that story yet for this post – I’m focused on checking for completeness and a good helpful tool – literally – is an old fashioned ruler to do so! Your eyes will thank you.

Have a great week – here to help, the ultimate goal. No doubt, my curiosity sits with our Buyers – how will they react to new post Labor Day inventory? Fingers crossed Buyers have adjusted, retooled and ready for supply….

And, for fellow Jimmy Buffett fans – #BubblesUp

New lyrics released Sept 2nd – volume up – here you go.