West USA Weekly Podcast | Ep. 79 | Featuring Mindy Weinstein (12.1.24)

On this episode, Digital Marketing Expert Mindy Weinstein joined us to dive into AI for Agents, sharing her expertise and insights. Mike discussed 3 key questions people have about 2025, and Todd broke down the latest market stats. Catch up on all the valuable info and great conversations!

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Transcript

West USA Weekly - The Podcast 12.2.24

[00:00:00] 

Good morning, West USA. Welcome to another edition of our Monday morning podcast. It is officially that time of year. Nope. It's not The fact that we're, it's December. It's not that we're past Thanksgiving. It's not that we're heading towards the holidays. It's that time of year where the Cardinals are let down.

And we all realize it, they get us all excited. And then now we're back to still should have gone for six. Oh my gosh. You're horrible. All right. Well, anyways, we're not here. We should do sports talk radio. Let's do that. Matt, what do you got? I'm ready. Okay. What do you want to talk about? All right, a little sneak peek of what we got coming up today.

Of course, we've got Todd Menard here to give us a look at the numbers. Matt Baker with the Bookspan Baker team, going to give us our mortgage minute. And I'm going to talk about what I consider the top three things that people want to know about 2025. So we're going to talk about conversations we might be having with our clients this month, and then my lovely bride who is an expert on chat GPT in.

We're going to be talking about AI [00:01:00] this morning, so pretty excited about that. So the first question is, is how much of your presentation was generated by chatGBT? Is that your first question for us? I don't know. I use chatGBT for everything now. Mike, where are you? I can't see you. Dear chat, Todd asked me what I where I was, how should I respond to him?

All right. As always, if you've got any comments or questions, please feel free to reach out to us at podcast at westusa. com. All right, let's jump into what we've got coming up. A lot of CE classes, three hours. Oh my gosh. So I'm just going to get a little personal here. Day before Thanksgiving. This is the earliest I've ever seen.

Ever, ever did my CE hours. It's fantastic. Yeah. So, I got like a whole month to play around. I'm impressed. I don't know if that's the spirit of that. All right. Three hours of legal issues at the Chandler office going on tomorrow between 9 and 10. 12. All right, Todd, speaking of CE, we've got a virtual CE class coming up on Wednesday.

Three [00:02:00] hours of contract law to be or not to be paid. That is the question. The answer is I always want to get paid. All right. So that is going on on Wednesday from nine to 12, I assume. Yep. 9 to 12, as always, all of these events can be found on the calendar, which can be found on your dashboard. If you are not with West USA, you could just go to westusacalendar.

com and RSVP for any of these events. All right, up here at the North Phoenix office we are doing a photo day, so update your professional look. They reached out and wanted to know if I wanted to update my professional look. I'm like, it's not gonna help. At some point, you just gotta throw in the towel, Nick.

Is that what you got? Yeah. So anyway, so join us here on Wednesday from 11 to 12. I believe it's Wednesday. I don't see a date on there. December 4th. Is that Wednesday? Yeah. Okay. That's fine. Monday is the second. So yeah, there we go. All right. So then, then, then this would be Thursday, December 5th from 10 to 12.

So this [00:03:00] is for West USA agents only, and this is a buyer agent workshop featuring our managing broker, Dean Becker. So if you want to learn more about working with buyers, come join them on Thursday at the 10 o'clock. Chandler office. Yeah, this is actually Awatuke office. They're gonna go over, it looks like, the LLC requirement that is due by the end of the year.

So if you are a PLLC, an LLC, you need to have your SINFIN credit document done. FinCEN. Beneficial ownership information. Yeah, it's not honestly all that difficult, but there was a lot of questions from a lot of agents, so that's awesome that the Chandler office was able to get something put together.

Nope, this is Awatuke office. Awatuke office, take it back. Yep, Awatuke office. Do better, Chandler. All right. We have got pro start this week for those of you that are newer to West USA, nor have attended a pro start. This is really just diving into how to use a lot of the technology that we provide our West USA agents.

So that documents, documents, yes. Pro start. I'm sorry. Contracts and. Documents. Yes. [00:04:00] This is not The contract is important. Now the ADRE has changed CE classes. They really can't go over the AAR docs too much. So if you are not sure about how AAR docs are working, especially all the new ones tune into March.

She's good at that. All right. We should just have you start doing the announcements. I'm paying attention to them. That's fine. All right, this morning from 1030 to 12 join Nick and I as we take you through everything you need to know about West USA. So if you're brand new to West USA or never attended our agent orientation and not sure about the tools and technology that we offer you, I would encourage you to join us this morning.

Not too late to get signed up again. Go to your. Dashboard and click on the calendar link. It's the last one of the year. Mike always does something fun. The last orientation of the year. She should tune in and find out what that is. Yes. Yes. I've got a whole slew of short jokes, new ones, new ones, new ones.

All right, Nick. Seven year anniversary coming up Friday. So if you've never [00:05:00] attended or participated in any of the boys burger club events, we invite you to join us this Friday at a only burger. As we celebrate seven years of really, our mission is to change the world one bun at a time. And so, and the really cool about this, we're partnering with Carlos Cicero over at the Chandler office for his organization.

And so we are asking everybody who attends on Friday to bring a blanket and we're going to be focusing on. helping domestic violence victims. Now, some, some places require a new blanket. Does this require a new blanket? Yes. Yes. Yes. A new blanket's on Friday. We want to definitely pack out all the cars that are going to show up and drop that donation off.

And, maybe not for nothing, but Aioli's rocking a 10 quarter pounder of fries and a soda, and that's nothing to shake a stick at. Yeah, Nick and I went there last week, and we tried it out, and it was pretty darn It was not terrible. All righty. And we're going to be talking about a little bit more this morning as Mindy Weinstein joins us.

But tomorrow we're doing a very special AI event and this is all about AI for real estate agents, just [00:06:00] the, the improvements of AI, how to leverage it. Here are some she's going to talk about some great tools for agents so you can scan that QR code. We'll have that available to you in a few minutes.

Get signed up and join us tomorrow. Lunch will be provided. All right, Todd, what is going on first week of December? Yeah. Welcome back for me, everybody. Oh, look at that moves automatically. No AI. Hey, welcome everybody. Thanks for joining me today. Today. We're going over the market statistics for the week ending December 2nd.

We haven't had a market. Stats over a couple of weeks due to the holidays. So, it's really interesting. Let's take a look. 68 days closed on market, a 4. 23 months supply. Our absorption rate is at 23. 63 average list prices past week at 766, 679 and average sale prices past week at 560, 102. 97. 81 is our list price to sale price retention.

Inventories continued to slide over the last couple of weeks, so we're down to 21, 841 listings. Pending is at 3, 045 and closed units [00:07:00] for last month. It's an unwashed number, so next week we will have the month end numbers for you. But it looks like it's going to come in just about 5 5, 200 and that will be an increase year over year.

Take a look at new listings taken. We suffered greatly down 38%. We only took 1, 089 listings. That's not enough days on market. 110. 7 for active and 67. 7 for closed. Taking a look at the lower left hand side price ranges. You'll notice every single price range. increased in product. Of course, there's no buyers in the market during the holiday.

No, I'm just kidding. But under in each category, however, the days on market also sped up. So when you see days on market go down, which is the last number on the right there, that's telling you that the market's obviously becoming more brisk. So that's the news this week. If you look with 0 to 600, 000, it represents 66.

16 percent of the entire MLS in the Inventory 600 to a million is at 20. 43 and a million and up represents 13. 4. [00:08:00] So taking a look at our spreadsheet, looking in the center column today, the goldenrod column for 2022 same week to the left that, that was two years ago, excuse me, to the left of that last year's numbers.

You're going to notice it's real important to take a look at those. Cause that's how we will. compare this year versus last year and week over week is so capricious. It's sometimes real difficult to really see any real major changes. So new listings, we took 1089. Obviously we're at 1761 a couple of weeks ago.

Looking at last year, this same week, we were at 1388 and 1254 for the year before, and that's, About the lowest we should ever be. So when we get it down to about a thousand there's some breaks going on. We all know people don't like, and I hope we as realtors don't promote people not listing their homes during the holiday seasons.

I understand people are concerned for theft of presence under the tree or, you know, just items during the holiday that they are concerned about. You know, guests [00:09:00] family and guests flying in and staying with them. And the interruption it may cause. Here's the thing. If you've got somebody that's willing to pay you list price today.

Do you want it? Of course you do. So you should always leave the houses on the market during the holidays. Also, it gives greater visibility because there's so fewer properties being put on the market. So there's a reason to list houses if you're interested. Active inventory. 21 8 41 is where we're at. 423 of those are in the coming soon.

Category 16, 667 in the single family detached. We have 2, 594 new home construction properties, bringing the total non distressed inventory to 21, 676. We take a look at the numbers, although the numbers aren't going up in the lower category in the gray. In the short sales lender owned in HUD, you'll notice that it's, it's, Actually about 0.

7 still right around the 0. 75 percent about one quarter, excuse me, three quarters of 1 percent of the entire MLS inventory. But look at the numbers. The numbers are a lot larger than they were two years ago. [00:10:00] 22 short sales. Now we have 94, 27 in the end, the lender owned two years ago. We now have 67. So again pay attention.

HUD is about the only area of the market right now that is pretty good. pretty dormant. Take a look at pending. We're at 3, 045. That's about 5, 400 people more in the marketplace than we had a year ago. However, two years ago we were at 3, 269. Week over week, we suffered just a little bit down 6 percent closed inventory.

Again, this is month to date as it looks right now. We wash all the inventory and make sure that there aren't any errors in reporting. And you know, as well as I do, come on, today's our first day back after the holiday, the month ended on Saturday. So this week we're going to get a lot of additional properties reported as closed that were unable to be done because nobody was working on Saturday and Sunday.

So, we'll expect to see that, but right now it's sitting at 11. 4 percent better than last year. That's some really strong numbers for a descent for November. Looking at month's supply, we're at 4. 23, so that's a [00:11:00] little high. It's red because it really means we're in a buyer's market. If somebody's going to negotiate today, the sellers are all competing to have the best So the sellers are having to you'd think the sellers are having to give up money, but we're going to see that they're not.

What's just happening is there's more, more product on the market and fewer people in the marketplace. That is how that is determined. Looking at average sale prices, median sale price is the one I'm concerned with, the very bottom one there. 434, 990. We're at four 69. I am so happy that recovered, you know, four 69, nine, that's a blip.

And again, median sale prices is what is what statisticians love. But I'm going to tell you that's a median sales price based over the last seven days. So again, this isn't looking at the entire MLS inventory. I do provide that for you usually at year end, but as just as week over week is compared.

So days on market, it's still pretty brisk at 68. We're at 64 and 60 relatively respectfully in the year over year. And we look at list prices, sell [00:12:00] price retention. This is where I was telling you the sellers aren't giving jack up right now. I mean, 97. 81 sure. There's a 2. 2 percent negotiation, but if you slide your eyes, wherever the less of these spreadsheets you'll see, it gives you all the rules of thumb.

And 97. 8 is the historical average since I've been recording these back all the way to 1998. So I can really just. comfortably say to you we're in a market where when the seller wants to sell, they're willing to give up that percent has nothing to do with concessions that are built into the contract or any of the other types of things.

This is clearly just what was the difference between the list price and the purchase price at the time the property was went into contract. And that's really the numbers we got this past week. So hope everybody had a good week and, and go get some listings, go help people come to the realization.

Now's the time. Truthfully. to put their house on the market. They can do it by appointment only if they want. Not saying they can't protect themselves from people just coming in any time. But again, don't, don't be the one who tells people it's not a good time to list your property. All right.

Thanks Todd, [00:13:00] as always. And Matt, what's going on, buddy? Let's let's get right into it. Rates did tick better week over week. So we did see, yeah, well, definitely not a year ago, but they're, they're in the low sevens and And you could see that green sort of angle that happened here. We kind of bounced off this little floor that we had at this 100.

43 and we've recovered back. I always like to give a dollar amount. It's about a half a point in cost. So 400, 000 house. They went under contract maybe at the end of the week. You know, couldn't lock a loan in now you can. Hey, you got about a two grand better in cost for that same rate So not not bad and really the the news of the week last week I'll be at a holiday week was this personal consumption expenditure report, which is the Kind of the fed's favorite inflation measure And you can see that it did tick up to 2.

3, but that was in line with expectations you know the the big thing [00:14:00] when you look at these headline numbers is or is what's to come and I think the general consensus is that Inflation albeit a little bit higher on this report. We were replacing a Point zero one like we were replacing a really low number.

So it's inevitable that it was going to be Ticked up a little bit, but it wasn't higher than what people expected. And I think that expectation component is a big piece of what we're seeing the market react to in a favorable, in a favorable way, by no means we're at 2 percent inflation, but we're, we're getting there.

And then as you, you may or may not have seen, we've got a lot of new numbers for the year. So. Conventional loan official now. I mean, I know a month ago, everyone was putting out their projected numbers. This is official Fannie Freddie. 806, 500. That's your conventional loan limit. And then this year I decided to break up a little bit the state, the whole state of Arizona.

So [00:15:00] FHA is 546, 250, which if you remember, we're like five 30 ish this year. So. It's definitely a slight improvement, but you can see that Flagstaff Coconino County, which clubs include Sedona is at five 63, five, and then all other counties in the state are five 24 to 25. And so a lot of, you know, for, for years, we were the same as every, of every other County in Arizona.

And just that higher balance now in Maricopa has started to kick in. So we're at five 46 to 50, so five 80, you know, five 90 purchase price. Get you a low down FHA loan. So not a, not a bad deal. As always, we've got our second Wednesday. So next week, December 11th, we do our economy, housing, and rates where we deep dive in.

And then this is my contact card. Short and sweet, happy holidays. And it's December. It's December man. I appreciate it. Yes. Oh my God. What's your, what's your one tip for agents for doing better business in the next two, three weeks? Plan. [00:16:00] Put a plan. Like, literally, just paper, pen to paper, plan out, and then just chunk it every day.

Execute. Little bit, little bit. Win by noon. Alright, Matt. Appreciate it, as always. I would say I, I wholeheartedly agree with Matt, but I would do a little caveat to it. There's no point in planning if you're not gonna do anything. And so, for me, December is really a great month to pick up the phone and make phone calls.

We talked about it last month, guys, of just about tips and, and just how to use December that time to go through your Rolodex, go through your CRM system and pick up the phone and make calls and, and, and so forth. But with that being said you just, you know, when, when I'm going to pick up the phone this month, I'm going to make a bunch of calls.

We need to know what's on people's minds. We need to be ready to answer some tough questions. Word. Excuse me, what are the things that people are concerned about 2025 when it comes down to real estate, or more importantly, just [00:17:00] what questions do they have? Because it doesn't, we need to be prepared because if we get on the phone, we start making calls and people start asking us questions about the market and we don't have an intelligent response.

It's, you know, it's. Not going to go very, very well for you. So the first one that I'm finding people, top question people have on their minds is interest rates, and it's been the top question for the past two years, but now people are going into the new year and going what's going on with interest rates because people, there's a lot of people who do want to buy and do want to transact in 2025.

So it just becomes that, that, that game of where, where, where are where are rates today? When are rates expected to go down? When is going to be the optimum, optimum time to buy just as far as rates go. So they want to know when or if rates are going to drop. That's what people want to know. There's so much stuff, so much, so much, you know, Conversations going on in the news [00:18:00] about rates, and if rates do drop, they want to know how far are they going to drop.

Obviously, we are not economists. We do not have a crystal ball. You definitely can give your thoughts and opinions, but you got to be very, very careful how you do that. can't make any kind of guarantees. But I have thoughts of how far rates are going to drop where I think rates might be at the end of 2025.

And so I can have those conversations with the caveat of this. I make no guarantees. And then a lot of people need to refinance. And so this was one of the questions that we have that people did get into mortgages that are, you know, seven, seven and a half, eight percent. And what is that magic number?

Like where does that interest rate need to be for me to be considering doing a refinance? And so with all of that being said you have to have a trusted lender that you work with that can really help you strategize a lot of these answers. Mike, that, that, that's probably the [00:19:00] most important thing. The question is great.

I, I think some people may be more numb to this situation, you know, interest rates at this point. I mean, that's all they've heard for two years. Everybody promised they were going to get better next quarter, promised they were going to get better next quarter, and they never did. So I think people are somewhat kind of like, you know, Yeah, but if you can be the source of the source and you've got somebody who's really good, like a Justin Frederick or Dominic or, you know, any of the people that are out there or Matt Baker or Matt Baker, I apologize.

Yes, Matt. He left. Yep. Okay. Let's talk crap. You know, and you know, and so, or even call Mindy Thompson, you know, the thing is, is that you need to have this information and ask it from different lenders, because you're going to get possibly some different information You know, just, just from that perspective, but, you know, interest rates, sure, people want to know that mostly in the more affordable housing perspective, you know, your, your first time, your, your family, people that are being forced to increase their house size because they've got kids now, they just had babies, you know, or, or unfortunately, of course, jobs cause, [00:20:00] but, you know, they're the people that are really worried about this interest rate, the people that are in that million plus, I mean, you know, they sometimes pay cash, so they really aren't as interested.

But I think that's a good point. Know your market. Exactly. Know your demographic. Know if you're picking up the phone, because the goal for this is to leverage people's concerns on the conversations that you're going to have with them. So, if you're just cold calling or blasting through your contact list and you're not actually picking Paying attention to who you're calling.

If you're about to call a cash buyer and you don't have any information on what that's gonna look like for 2025, but you're all prepped for interest rates and they don't care about interest rates, you've just wasted that phone call. So it's not that you're gonna build a, a, a thesis on interest rates for 2025.

You wanna know enough. So if the question comes up from the person that you're talking to, you're able to have a decent conversation and then point them towards a lending partner that can have the better conversation. When you're calling on these, Mike, I mean, if you're, if you have someone talking about interest rates, are you wanting them to get pre called?

Are you wanting them to meet with a lender? Have that good conversation with [00:21:00] someone about what could they afford in 2025? Well, that's a great question because we're going to actually kind of really get into it next week on next week's three pack. But the best time to call the lender. It's always now because whether it doesn't matter your timetable, what matters is building that strategy.

The worst scenario for a buyer is to finally go, okay, come April. Okay, now I'm ready to buy. We're going to relocate for schools. Now I'm going to talk to a lender and then we find out that there's something on your credit report that's going to take six months to repair or fix. Fix or, or whatever the case is.

And so it never hurts to talk to the lender now to build that strategy and understand. And then I gonna also say on your source of information, you know, when you talk to your lender, where do they get their information from? Yeah, good point. I know, I know Matt Baker and Justin Frederick pretty much follow the, the same group.

The same group of economists and so I follow them and I get my information from them that comes from that [00:22:00] source because it's just great information. So just be ready to tackle the question And I think the other thing too is is make sure when you're talking to them you're asking about the unique product they have, you know, because again, they, you know, people might've just talked to their lender last week, but when you talk to somebody and all of a sudden you bring up the fact that, you know, if you want to buy an investment property and you can purchase that property without having to basically qualify short of having, you know, a lot of little reasons.

All right. Second one. I was very hesitant to bring this one up, but. Okay. We did anyway. All right. This is, we are not, this is not meant to be political at all. Our opinions mean absolutely nothing. And be honest, your opinions mean absolutely nothing to us when it comes down to your feelings about the election results.

The fact of the matter is, whether you like it or not. Trump will be our next president and it is on people's minds. And how do I know that? Because almost all of us who are in the [00:23:00] day to day real estate business, all we've been hearing from buyers for the past three to four months is I want to wait till the election.

So it's on their minds. And so, so regardless of your feelings on the election keep your thoughts and opinions. and your passion to yourself when you are having conversations with potential buyers. You do not want to alienate anyone because food on the table is much better than just offering my opinion to, to anyone, right?

That's what, really what we're into. But people want to know, this is the questions that I'm getting. Now that we know that Trump will be taking office on January 20th, how will it impact interest rates? How will it impact home prices and how will it impact the real estate market? I'm not offering my thoughts and opinions on this because I'm going to encourage every agent to figure out themselves because depending on where you lean and how passionate you are about it might, you know, It [00:24:00] might impact your answer to it.

That is fine but do your, just be prepared because these are the questions that I'm getting and, and, and I have my, my slew of answers and how I'm helping people you know, you know, observe and, and, and just, you know, plan for and strategize for how I think the housing market will be impacted over a Trump win.

So, I like the last part of each of these bullet points, and I think if you focus on these last parts. So, I don't care about Trump's policies. per se. I care about what is the new administration's impact on interest, what's at home prices, how's real estate. Because, you know, if, if everything comes down to the way it's supposed to be, it's, it should be somewhat bipartisan anyway.

So, you know, but I would go out like right now the Eller School of Business at the University of Arizona is just getting prepared to do their annual 2025 forecast. You can do it virtual. You can sign up for it. It's expensive. It's a couple hundred bucks. But, [00:25:00] you know, or you can just wait for me to give it to you at the end of the month.

So the fact is though, I'll go with the latter. There you go. So, but what I'm, what I mean by this is, is that, you know, one school, you also need ASU's School of Real Estate at Dover W. P. Carey, and why am I saying these things? Well, because they're polarized as far as their opinions are concerned.

One's very liberal and one's very conservative. So you want multiple sources, multiple sets of information from both sides. Both sides to be able to have some kind of clue and they're not, you know, let me just say this to you. They're not calling you and having a conversation with you about how this is going to impact next year because they think you've got the crystal ball.

They're just looking like you for another set of data, another set of, you know, why would I want to get into the house? How's it going to affect my investment properties? How's it going to affect me buying an investment property? How's it going to affect the equity in my home? You know, all these different kinds of things are important.

But bring some kind or offer to send them some kind of data and that data comes from a national resource or a very, very highly [00:26:00] respected resource. I think that the main point to remember here is these are things that your potential calls are going to bring up. Yeah. So you want to be generally educated, but I, the big point, number two is do not Get opinionated.

Do not get emotional. I like what Todd said. How is the current administration's policies expected to impact X? That is going into the conversation. If someone asks you that question, having resources in your back pocket, the source of the source, to be able to help navigate the conversation. them through that conversation is important.

The goal for this, as Mike has said, Todd has said, and I have said, is keeping your relationship with these individuals going. When they are sitting around the holiday table, the multiple times they are over the next couple of weeks, real estate is going to come up. It always does. When it does, you're Name needs to follow any question being asked.

You know what? That's a great question. I'm going to call Mike cause he's a great realtor and he's going to have that answer for you. That is your goal for this phone call. Keep that as the pin. So [00:27:00] you don't get in these deep dart rabbit holes. You shouldn't be in. All right. Then the third one is, and it hasn't gone away.

People want to know. People are asking that we're, I'm waiting for the Phoenix market to crash. I'm waiting for prices to drop considerably before I get in the game. And so people, now that the election has come and gone, and we have not seen a dramatic drop in interest rates we're seeing home prices continue to tick up.

Will the Phoenix market crash? And so I get this question a lot. And these are the things I, you know, you can't, you can't argue and debate emotion, you really can't. And so I help my clients understand the things that I focus on when, you know, I do, you know, I don't want to dig into the numbers, into the data with them as much as just, this is just how I see life, this is how I see real estate, these are the things that I am focusing on.

And, oh, [00:28:00] by the way, I am still buying, and I'm still investing, and this is why. I'm always attuned to what's going on in the jobs market. Jobs are important, as long as, as long as companies are still moving to Arizona, as long as people are still moving to Arizona, as long as we're still creating jobs, and as long as we still have low inventory, and I know people are looking at the inventory numbers going, oh my gosh, inventory is so high, inventory is still considerably.

Considerably low. I, I just can't wrap my head around how Armar, outside of Palo Verde plant, blowing up. I can't understand, you know, the numbers don't lie. I mean, these are the things that the focus on. So you need to be prepared to answer this question. So, so basically, Mike, I love this because this is how to approach life, number three.

I mean, there's so many applications of this, not necessarily the bullet points underneath, but the concept of people's [00:29:00] unwillingness to move forward based on some external thing that they're relying upon to have happen, you know, and if the interest rates never come down, then they'll be paying so much more for properties, obviously all these different types of things.

as we've talked about over the years. The best way that you can be prepared to talk about it, well, the market, market crash, market's always going to crash. The question is when? I have no idea. You know, it could be 10 years from today. It could be two months from today. But again, you have to stay away.

These are are like a mystery shopper with fair housing. They're trying to get you to step on your own foot that, you know, and the last thing you want to do is give answers. defined answers to any of these questions. You want to lead them to other resources. You want to have other resources available to be able to do it.

But Mike, one last thing, when you sit down with your investors, you know, it's about down payment. It's about cap rate. It's about interest. It's about sale price. It's all these different factors that ultimately will determine whether or not the property is a good investment. I remember, you know, [00:30:00] Back in 1996 in Arizona, Arizona was the place and still is the place that people want to buy houses because of our fast, forcible detainer action laws.

Because of the fact that you know, it's still affordable the cap rates are being met better than in some other places. I'm not saying you couldn't go to Tennessee or someplace else and find a great investment. I'm talking about Arizona though. And, and so once you know that That equation that you know so well, Mike you know, and you just bring people back to the equation.

Yeah. You can buy, you can make a successful investment in any marketplace as long as you know what you're doing and know what those criteria are. And if it's the greatest investment area In the nation, you can make a terrible investment. Well, I'm just saying, if you're not following the numbers and following the data.

Well, if you follow emotion instead of logic, you're absolutely right. Well, the one thing that's not on the, well, Phoenix market crash is the affordability question. And that is a big question for first time home buyers. And that's a lot of the people that are going to be sitting around talking right now is, can they afford to buy a home [00:31:00] in 2025?

So that's a question you need to be prepared to answer. to answer, and that goes back to Todd's point up at number one, having conversation with your lenders about those unique things that they're able to provide. Matt talked about a couple weeks ago. They have that first time buyer program to help offset the down payment.

Those are things you need to have in your back pocket as you are having these conversations and that comes from building relationship with your lenders too. And so, so the point of the matter, the whole point of this is these are just understand what's on people's minds because these are the questions, these are the talking points, and you just, you've got to be prepared for these questions because this is what people want to talk about and the good news is we always say in our saying on our team is nobody wants to talk to a realtor, right?

But everybody wants to talk real estate. These are your opportunities to have deeper real estate conversations. All right, Todd. Nick. Thanks. All right. Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm going to jump out cause we, you need the mic. So I'll talk to everybody later. Have a great week. All right. [00:32:00] Appreciate it.

Alrighty. We Ronnie I'm excited now. I, I know that people are going to be a lot of people have always talked about my wife. On the podcast. It's always in a very positive light. We don't. We don't. I just want to make sure we're super clear. No, it's always in a positive light. People are like, man, who would marry that guy?

And well, you're about to You're about to find out. So, we are excited to have in studio my lovely bride, Mindy Weinstein, the owner of MarketMindShift one of the leading digital marketing agencies in the world. In the nation and Mindy, which I like to define her as really one of the thought leaders in the nation when it comes down to digital marketing and AI.

So, and Mindy is going to be joining us tomorrow at a very special event at Desert Financial Corporate Headquarters, all about AI and artificial intelligence. Mindy, welcome to the big show and also the author of The Power of Scarcity. How are you? I'm good. How are you? It's been a [00:33:00] long time since I've seen you.

It is. Have you been good? I've been good. It's been about an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Breakfast was delicious. We'll have to catch up. All right. And then we've also invited our digital marketing expert here at West USA, Keith Flynn, to jump into the conversation because Keith is is, has become an expert AI, but Really, when it comes down to how agents specifically adopt it.

So, Keith's got his garage door fixed and and it was a little dicey this morning, Keith, I had to ask chat GPT, what was going on? I'm not lying. I legitimately asked it. I had a conversation. So thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. Alrighty first question really want to get into, cause here, here's how I remember what was it like two years ago when chat GPT was launched and became the thing and all the title companies and the lenders all started having these lunch and learns about chat GPT and we as agents ran and flocked to these classes, [00:34:00] only to find out, in my opinion and it could be user error, but in my opinion, it really wasn't all that great.

It wasn't really game changing for us. And so a lot of us kind of like, ah, it's just okay, and kind of just went away from it. And then Mindy, you and I, we've had a lot of conversations over the last six months about it, and you've talked me getting back into it. It's way better. It's so different. I mean, it's night and day.

So when it's Stepping back, everyone needs to understand that AI has been around for a long time. So it's been Al Gore invented AI, I believe, right? Sure. We'll go with that, but it's been around a long time. And so I'm coming from a marketing perspective, but in our marketing tools, it's been built in for years and years.

But what happened two years ago is that all of a sudden when chat GPT came out, it was more. Consumer facing more people saw it in the public, but what you need to know about AI is that what we use today is a lot of what's referred to as [00:35:00] machine learning. So it's trying to understand data to give you an output, which I know that now sounds really techie, but basically it needs information to give you any type of answers or anything to create something for you.

So what's happened over the last couple of years is that now that we're All using a I and there's more money put towards it that that machine learning it's getting better and better. So the more data it has, the stronger it gets. And so now we're seeing tools that I mean, honestly, there was one content tool that I came across that I was shocked that I can't even write any better than this.

AI output and I didn't feel that way a couple years ago. So we definitely have advanced. Keith, how hard has it been getting agents back into, let's just say for agents right now, and we're going to try to blow their minds when they, when they hear the word AI, all they know is chat GPT the average agents, not aware that chat GBT is just one form of AI.

We'll get into that. But, you know, with my premise that. A chat GPT wasn't that great when we started. A [00:36:00] lot of us got bored. How hard has it been getting agents interest and back into it? You know, in thinking about the answer, there's a lot of the same approach for chat GPT. I've seen a lot of agents take with many aspects of their marketing.

They get into it, they tend to class, they start it, they create a page and then they just go as dormant and they don't ever come back to it. And so one of the things that I've, I've tried to educate our agents on is that it is evolving. And as Mindy's pointed out, it is getting stronger and it's getting more intelligent.

It's now has access to real time data with searching capabilities. And so, I encourage agents to continue to attend classes and educate themselves, continue to learn because it is evolving and it's evolving very fast. We're literally in the middle of an AI arms race right now. Everybody and their mothers baking it into some platform, some type of product offering.

And for a lot of real estate agents, there's a ton of products out there for them to utilize for their [00:37:00] marketing efforts, video content creation, you name it. There's a, the, many of the AI applications are focused on many different niches. And so whether you're a loan officer and there's special platforms for them as well as agents.

Regardless of what your business is, find the platforms that are going to have the most advanced form of their AI baked into it and continue to look. Don't ever just settle on one because I've jumped from platform to platform, 20 a month here. Cancel that went to a newer version because there's something better.

But really if you're not evolving with your with your business and continuing to massage it and make it better each and every other day, then you're just, you're going to be left in the dust because there's just so many people who are embracing it and really adapting it towards their business models.

Well, for years, when, especially when I was corporate my AI that I use was Nick cause he's kind of the guy that we all went to. For the answers, but he never got better and never got smarter. So [00:38:00] that was really neat. All right. Before we get into some specifics, guys Minnie, I'll start with you. Cause this is, this is the thing that you and I have been talking about how it's changing your business model and changing, I'm not gonna say completely, but in changing a lot of how you approach your digital marketing business for us as agents.

Where is, how is AI really changing the world of marketing? And it's an important question because Keith, as you know, one of the things that agents we get thrown into as the owners of our own business, we wake up one day and we're the CMO, the chief marketing officer, and we don't have degrees in marketing and we don't have backgrounds in marketing.

But we are, we are marketers. And so I think it's important for us to understand where AI is taking the world of marketing and where is the opportunities for us as agents outside of just chat, GBT, give me seven Facebook posts on the home buying process. That was, that was all we [00:39:00] did for, for, for a couple of years.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it is streamlining things. I mean, so with what you're talking about, that example, yes, it can do that, but not that simply. So here's. So you asked me, I feel like you asked me like five questions in a line. That's possible. Okay. Well, I'm used to being at home where I don't get a word in edgewise, so I gotta, I gotta, I gotta throw out all my questions.

We're gonna air all our dirty laundry right All right. So let's start with, okay, you asked me at first about how is changing the world of marketing, changing the world of marketing. And so I will say like in my world where this is what we do, we practice marketing. You know, one of the things that's been brought up a lot is, you know, of course will it replace a lot of our job functions?

And so what I've been seeing, and of course this is new, so I mean, I might have a different answer, you know, a year from now, even six months from now, it's basically the way that it's working is I feel like it's making people more accountable. Better and more powerful with what they're doing because AI still requires human intelligence [00:40:00] and it still requires you to be actively involved.

And so what I mean by that and going back to even agents is that, yeah, you gave an example of chat dbt, but if you put it in something like that, that just says, Hey, give me, you know, seven posts, you're going to not going to get out that good of information. So the way it's changing marketing, it's helping you streamline.

But you still have to put in your knowledge, you know, your buyer, you know, your seller. And we call it, and we refer to that as prompts, right? Right, right. And so, and there's a lot of different platforms, but I mean, just regardless of whatever you're using. Anything's whether you're using something to create content, that's written social media, content, video email.

I mean, there's so many different functions with it. You still have to give enough information of like, this is exactly who I'm trying to reach. And then what happens is the AI tools can come in and really help you get messages out there and do it a greater skill too. So that's a huge part. And so for me, with what we do now, And marketing is at the [00:41:00] end of the day, we still have to know who we're targeting always.

And so, and you know, and I think a lot of my book was on scarcity. So I have a psychology background is that we have to understand who we're reaching and then we can use the psychology background. And then she married me, go figure. Yeah. I'm gonna question that one. We'll talk about that later. That's another episode.

But I think that's, again, that's, it's just helping us. It's a, it's a tool. And I think that's what people have to remember. It is a tool. And then even going to. Keith, what you said just a minute ago is that it's easy to jump from tool to tool. They do different things, but just pick a handful of the ones you're going to use and you might change it over time.

Don't try to use every new tool that comes out. Well, and I think with that, Keith, it's, you got to, before you choose the tools, you got to identify what you're trying to accomplish and what you're wanting, how you're wanting AI to impact your marketing campaigns. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, to your point, when we first started out, it was very superficial scratching the [00:42:00] surface with these products.

You know, easy prompts. Give me seven social media posts targeting new homebuyers for the next week, you know. And now what we've learned is the better the input, the better the output. And so we're really ha we're encouraging, and I encourage agents in my classes to really dive deep into what it is that you want to accomplish.

And that starts with prompts, and it really starts with educating the the AI to what who you are, what you do, why you do it, what you want your end results to be there's a, there's an acronym, it's called the BRIGHT method. And it's it's your brand, it's your really what you're doing is you're just prompting, I can't remember right now, I'm just drawing a blank, but the, the prompt really is your ability to input All there is to share with AI so that you get a better response.

And so encouraging agents to go deeper, to share more about what you want your end results to be, who you're targeting, what your tone is going to be, or do you want it to be, you know, fun for the holidays? Do you want it to be sarcastic? Since that is my spirit [00:43:00] animal. You know, I love sarcasm and so I've actually asked.

Chat TBT to help me with sarcastic responses before usually find those most effective when I'm texting Nick. So, you know, But honestly like if you if you sit down and you have a conversation with AI like you would anybody

or myself or approach it like you're going to have a intelligent conversation with someone who's thoroughly knowledged in what you're hoping to get and extract from it. Give me an example. So, I would start with my brand, you know, so here I'm a, I'm a, you know, a real estate agent with West USA realty of 15 years.

My passion is, targeting new homebuyers. I'm a tell a little bit about myself, my background. I'm an outdoor enthusiast. I like to hike, bike, you know, cross country, whatever that may be. My target audience aren't first time homebuyers looking to Move from a rental into a purchasing a home. My goal is to get them into my CRM, [00:44:00] start to develop a relationship with them.

And and then from there, once you've kind of put in your full prompt then get your results. But here's the thing, just don't stop at that rebake it, go back in again. Well, that's the thing. If you don't get, if you don't get what you want, If you don't, if you're not getting what you're specifically looking for, then you got to go back in and add additional prompts or modify and massage the prompts.

And just to, to, just to clarify, cause I'm just going to assume those agents, no disrespect, have no idea what we're talking about. You're literally typing this into the AI system that you're using. So that's, they're going to get in and you're going to type everything that Keith just said, everything that the prompts that Mindy and Keith are talking about, you're typing them in, giving AI that back.

background, that human engagement, and then you're letting it spit back out its results. And I'm going to add to that, just, this is very, very tactical. And this is actually from experience. So I don't know if this is happening to you too, cause you do all of that. Cause I've done that. I'm gonna use chat GPT as an example.

Cause I still use that. That's one of the many tools that I use, but I spent probably an hour doing a prompts. This is a while ago of trying to get the [00:45:00] brand, right. The tone, the voice, all of those things. And then I just assume like, ah, you know, it'll remember it when I go back. No, it doesn't work that way.

So what you have to do when you type up all those things, once you finally get what you like, save or just copy and paste into a Word document or whatever you use to save information, copy that prompt and save it because you'll need to use it again. If you're doing it all in one sitting, great. But if you're like, Hey, I'm going to go back and work on this tomorrow and you've closed everything out.

It's not safe. Even though it says it remembers some things, it's not perfect at that. Yeah. First time I ever used chat GPT was a couple of years ago. I wanted to get on the bandwagon and, and, and so, Mindy and I, we had an anniversary coming up and, and so I'm like, you know, I'm going to write a killer message in this anniversary card.

So I asked chat GPT you know, write me, you know, 10 message ideas for My 20, you call it our 22nd, 23rd wedding anniversary. And what I got, I'm like, there's no way [00:46:00] she's going to buy this. I mean, this was, this was, this was, there's no way that I write like this. There's no way that I'm that thoughtful or, or that sensitive, but it really came back to, that was all my, that was my prompt, right?

Didn't get into how amazing I am and how amazing I am and how maybe I want, maybe I want it funny. You know, and so forth. So fast forward, now that I've been using ChatGBT, let's just stay on ChatGBT because that's the one that most of us know, is, is really breaking it down. So now going back to our social media posts, or when I'm creating an email I went into ChatGBT probably about three or four months ago and said, and, Basically asked it to give me a demographic of a Arizona homebuyer millennial between this age and this age.

I think it was following a podcast that we did and I went through, because I remember Matt Baker gave us all of the breakdowns of the age groups, and I now have in a [00:47:00] Word doc of like, A detailed persona of every type of Arizona homebuyer based on specific age groups So now that I can now cater to it So now when I want to focus on this age group or I want to focus on this age group And then I can go in and massage and say these are first time homebuyers or these are second time homebuyers the the level of quality that I got just Blue me away because you just, if you're gonna, if you're gonna market, it's sometimes you can just, you know, Hey, happy holidays.

It goes to everybody. Right. But there's, sometimes in certain posts, you're trying to hit certain demographics. You know, if I, if I'm talking about the new FHA loan limits that Matt, You know, Matt spoke about this morning that's not going to be a generic post because my second, third, fourth time homebuyers that are 50, 60 years old are not doing FHA loans.

So now maybe I want to cater it to younger Gen Zers or younger Millennials, first time [00:48:00] homebuyers, give me some, give me some, you know, information to be able to promote. Anyone? Was there a question? No, no, not really, just, just like, hey, Mike, that's pretty amazing. Mike, that's pretty amazing. Okay, one thing, yeah, I will say with what you, and I think you did this, but again, just so everyone's clear, just again, make it very easy and tactical.

When you have those personas, you saved them, again, so when you're saying, Hey, create some posts and I'm trying to reach home first time homebuyers. Here's my persona and you put it back in there. That's the really important part. Because again, AI is all about the data. It's all about the data. So the more quality data that you feed it, the better.

I would say that the one thing I see with a lot of our agents, love you all again it's very clear when you're copying and pasting from ChatGPT into your social media, into your text reply, into your email reply. This is not a, a take and bake system. You need to modify it so it sounds like you expect it.

Especially [00:49:00] those that are gonna comment a happy birthday post, just like Mike tried to do with Mindy. Every, if you're an HBD kind of person, and then the next year you're dropping like a poem on them, it's, it's, it's, they can see through that. One of the things I would recommend, and if you, if for many of our seasoned agents out there who have written quite a bit in the past.

Take all of your past writings and input it into ChatGPT and have it analyze your writing so it starts to adopt your tone. It starts to get your writing style. Because, again, with these large language models, they're learning about what you put into it. And so if you identify your persona, it's like, hey, here's my past writings, here's my You know, everything from a, from a thank you letter, to opening, you know, cold emails, to rebuttals, to overcoming objections, anything that you've written in the past, have it scan and, and analyze your writing so that any future output will sound more like you and not so AI.

Alright, so we got about 10 minutes left and boy, this time is flying. And so for those of you obviously you're looking at the screen. We've got a great event going on tomorrow at Desert Financial Corporate Headquarters. [00:50:00] Mindy's going to be there, kind of really going into a lot of the details of this and a lot of the tools.

Bring your laptops. You're going to, you're going to actually get these tools and you're going to actually Use these tools right on the spot. So you can go to mindshiftevents. com or scan that QR code to get signed up for it. So I want to just kind of get into just some, some favorite uses that, that are a little bit more creative than just Facebook posts.

One of them that we just did, and I haven't posted it on our we we created a Facebook group for agents for AI. But we took a cause I'm very big on recording. I generally do a lot of buyer consults on zoom. So, so we actually, I, so I record these so my team can go back and listen to how I handle a new buyer.

And so unbeknownst to me, our operations director, she took the transcript, put it in there and then actually. analyze the entire conversation of how I led that buyer from I am not [00:51:00] interested at minute 10 and 36 seconds is when the buyer started changing his tune and now I can go back and I completely was able to Analyze my entire sales call and go back and go.

Okay. What could I have changed? It was It was remarkable. Yeah. No, well, one of the ways that I've been using it a lot, again, from a marketing perspective, but still applies to really everyone listening here is when you do come up with a really good idea that you're like, I know that the potential client I'm trying to reach would really like this topic, you don't have to just.

Stick with one thing, meaning like, Oh, you create, let's say newsletter that you send out. You could actually do a newsletter, but take that and then make it into a video. Then you can also make it into audio. Cause some people like audio. There's actually podcasting AI now too, which that's a little still it's, it's working.

It's getting there, but you could do that. You could also create an infographic and all of that's with [00:52:00] AI. So you take one thing and now you've. Basically come up with all these different formats for it, which is great because we all have ways we like to consume content. So it really does reach that too.

And you can make it into a social media posts too. Yeah, and I was gonna suggest that Mike role playing is a huge aspect of of, you know, being in sales. And so I have a former sales background and I remember the years of, of sitting in with my general manager and other sales associates and role playing and, and, you know, there's just no, Other better ways to work your way through, you know, cold calling, overcoming objections, getting to the root objection than actually doing it and sitting down with someone.

And so one of the things that I've I've encouraged a lot of agents to do is, is if you are using chat GPT to download the app and in the bottom right corner, there's a little headset. And you click on that and actually enters into a conversation mode with ChatGPT. So, you can choose your voice.

There's many choices to choose from. And then you just prompt you know, it'll, it'll, it'll say, Hey, Keith, you know, what, how's it going today? And [00:53:00] you have a normal conversation. Let it know that you know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a real estate agent. I'm would love to role play with you. I want you to, to assume the persona of a buyer.

But, but back to what we said earlier, you got to really break that down. What kind of buyer, what kind of age group? because that's how you get so detailed in this role play. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. You know, tell it everything that you want it to to take on the persona. So, you know, the, the age, the demographic you know, are they a renter?

Have they, do they have bad credit? You know, you add in everything that you would think that where it's going to help you work through the role play and then you know, tell it to ask you back questions and then after each question you would like it or every time you answer, you would like it to critique your answer so that you are you, are you answering the correct way?

Are you misleading? Is your, is there a better way to answer that? And so not only am I going to have a role play with me, but I'm also going to offer, have it offer suggestions on how I can become a better sales rep. There any kind of like [00:54:00] recently shockers about AI? Like, Oh, you just came across recently.

Like, I can't believe we can actually do that with AI. For me, it was the podcasting that I said. I mean, I was shocked and had a client send that to us said, Oh, we just created an entire podcast episode using AI. And it was that blew my mind. I would say that definitely blew my mind. I want to add one more thing too, because I just thought of one other usage of AI that I've done recently too.

So especially for presentations, you know, if you, you know, ahead of time, what you're going to present to whether whoever it is, your, your buyer, your seller, you know, you're going to likely bullet point what you're going to say, you know, however you go about it, but. My use case was I had recently that I had to do a very short presentation and I wanted to make sure that I was very clear about what my points were like, well, people really understand what I'm trying to say.

And I actually just, I had typed up the entire thing I was going to say. I actually put it into chat GPT and I said, what would you think [00:55:00] the main takeaways for someone would be? And I actually went back and massaged it. Cause I was like, huh, now I emphasize that a little bit too much. That wasn't my main point.

And then switched it up a bit. So. That was just something to mention that, you know, might work if you're practicing a presentation ahead of time. I mean, there's little random things that you can utilize, especially if you have maybe a difficult texter or emailer that you're working with client wise, you can drop your response into chat GBT or you can put their response in a chat or their email and ask it to give you a A nicely worded email and nicely worded text.

It can help you be a little more firm. It can help you write that, Hey, I don't think we're good fit to work together kind of text or email. I mean, it gives you a lot of different prompts that you can utilize in your day to day that you're just not sure where to get started. Alright, we are up up against the end of the hour.

And I'll just say the last thing that we've started to use it is, you know, Our team, we use the upgraded iFoundAgent websites that allow blogging capability. And I'm not [00:56:00] expecting to be found on Google and, and, and, and come up in the top 10 search is on Google, but I can take the podcast that I do, transcribe it, and ask ChatGBT to turn it into a blog or record something and have it transcribed, and I need a blog and then I can now upload that into my website as a blog.

Now I have a link that I can send to people and say, Hey, check out my latest blog on this and latest blog on interest rates and so forth. But all right as a reminder tomorrow we're going to really get into it. I have no idea what your question was. Yeah, that's great. But we have a lot of people that are not available tomorrow, so we need you to get another class scheduled ASAP.

No, I would cancel what you're doing. So this is tomorrow at Desert Financial Corporate Headquarters. And so there's a mindshiftevents. com, the QR code. Also, I mentioned we have a brand new Facebook group for real estate agents, AI for real estate agents. Mindy, Keith, thanks guys. I appreciate it. I owe Mindy more than [00:57:00] I owe you, Keith.

So, all right, we'll leave you with the cheesy quote of the day. Focus on what you can control your effort, your mindset and your service to clients. Go out and sell a home.