How To Network With Other Real Estate Agents • Monday Market Minute • Carrie McCormick

Keeping It Real Podcast • Secrets Of Top 1% REALTORS ® • Interviews With Real Estate Brokers & Agents

In our October episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties talks about networking with other agents and referring business but also using this network as a knowledge source. Next, Carrie discusses the state of the market at the moment and shares her predictions for 2022. Last, Carrie and DJ discuss gifts for the holidays.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Carrie can be reached at [e-mail] or by phone at 312.961.4612.

Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here.

This episode is brought to you by Follow Up Boss. Get your 30 day trial by clicking here.

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Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast paid for real estate agents and by real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show today as as always is our monthly series called a Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from the Carey McCormick Real Estate Group with add properties here in Chicago. Carrie is a top 1% producer in the Chicagoland area with over 20 years of experience helping buyers, sellers and investors. In fact, in the past 12 months out of 44,000 real estate agents in the Chicagoland area. Carrie is ranked in the top 15 in production that’s out of all of the real estate agents here locally. She’s a true superstar and an expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors, and luxury properties. She also works with a lot of developers and is often chosen to represent their high end developments, please visit Carrie at our website, which is Carrie McCormick ar e and I’ll spell that it’s ca RR ie M ccormickre.com. And also please please please follow her on Instagram. You can find her at Carey McCormick real estate for all you Instagram people. Carrie, welcome once again to the show.

Carrie McCormick 2:24
Thank you. That’s quite the introduction. Flaunt Thank you.

D.J. Paris 2:27
We’re excited. Well, we get excited when we have somebody who’s as successful and generous with their time as you and I know how busy you are. So what are we going to talk about today? Yeah, so

Carrie McCormick 2:39
I wanted to talk about referrals. You know, part of growing my business I’ve been doing this for 21 years has been networking with brokers outside of Chicago, whether it’s in the suburban markets, or in other states. And as we know, in this market, there’s been so much movement in and out of Chicago. So if there’s any brokers that are listening, that are outside of Chicago, and they need someone that’s good here to take care of their clients, just so you know, I am always available to do that. I love networking with other brokers and doing referrals. And I think, you know, anyone listening in their own markets should really concentrate on growing their network as well. And working with other brokers. I’ve done a ton between Florida between Arizona. I mean, it’s just it, I just feel like it’s been everywhere that I’ve been talking with these brokers, and not only for referrals and business growth, it’s just good to collaborate on marketing, and just you know what they’re seeing in their market just so we get a broader picture. So don’t look always look at referrals, as you know, an income source, which is great. And that’s important as well, but it’s just it’s a knowledge source as well.

D.J. Paris 3:50
Yeah, I agree. I’ve actually interviewed some agents recently for our show who have taken the leap to be exclusively referral based. And they don’t directly work with clients themselves anymore. And literally all they do is just refer business all over the country, and they sit at their desk all day. So you can even go to that extreme. If our listeners really want to, that’s a big shift. But even if you’re, you know, out there working with clients yourself, you’re gonna run into opportunities where people are wanting to move to another location and really a good idea to identify those retirement zones or those second second home zones or vacation home places and start talking to other agents in that area.

Carrie McCormick 4:32
Yeah, no, I think it’s great. And for 2020 to one of my goals is to pick five key markets and I’m actually going to go fly out and have lunch or dinner with some of the brokers just to really do a one on one so something fun and you can travel and you know, get some knowledge and meet brokers. So that’s gonna be one of my goals in 2022. But one thing I want to talk about is just the state of the market of where we are at and I always like to kind of give a little bit of a key word I think, right? Now we’re headed more into a balanced market. I’m gonna read some real quick stats, just of why we’re seeing this more balanced market and the median home sales went pending in nine days, which is one day longer than in August, which is not a big shift. But as you start seeing the numbers start to move a little bit, it’s just giving us indicators of where this market is going. So we’ve seen home sit on the market just a little bit longer than we did in August. And then inventory has been up, it says 0.4%, from August. It’s a very small game. But again, these small gains will start to accumulate over some time. And we’re going to start seeing a little bit more of a slowdown as we go into this holiday season. Again, we’re starting to see more inventory hit the market. And I really think buyers are a little fatigued from the battle that we had this last spring and summer. And that’s kind of how I feel I feel a little bit beat up from this market of just we’re a constant battle with our buyers of trying to get the homes in these competitive situations. So I think everyone’s taking a little bit of a breather, and we’re headed back into a balanced market. And I think it’s good, I think it’s good. But one thing we do have to think about and worry about is 2022 A lot of my buyers and sellers, you know, of course ask us as brokers for predictions, you know, What’s 2022 going to be like? And as much as we’d like to answer that question and be able to be right, we just don’t know. But we also look at indicators. And when you’re working with a broker, like myself, or anyone else who’s been in the market a long time, and we’ve seen the ups and downs of these markets, we do have a good handle on what we see, especially when you’re in and out of the market. You’re seeing the the activity, and you’re seeing what’s selling and what’s not selling. But a few things we have to worry about is mortgage rates, you know, there’s speculation that mortgage rates are going to pop up a little bit. Yeah. And then this mortgage forbearance programs, they’re all expiring soon. So we have to think about that we have to think about these folks that had overpaid for properties. And just you know what happens with the job market. And lastly, the big word that a lot of people are talking about is inflation. So there’s a risk of policy, tightening inflation, higher mortgage rates, you know, all of that is going to affect the housing market to some degree. I do my own personal opinion is I do think that 2022 is going to be a very strong year as well, maybe not as crazy as 2021. We’re probably not going to see the games that we saw this past year. But I do think we’re going to see a nice healthy 2022. And then even just looking into 2023, I think we’ll really start to see a little bit of a slowdown, but nothing major unless something crazy happens in this world. Of course stuff we can’t predict. But you know, we are seeing a nice healthy 2022 coming around the corner for us.

D.J. Paris 8:10
Yeah, that’s encouraging. I’m excited to hear hear that it seems like there’s a minor, maybe a minor correction going on with with just rates and things are slowing down. But that probably gives buyers more of an opportunity to compete. Which is in a weird way, it’s probably better than when lates rates are so low, because then it almost seemed like all the agents that I knew who were representing buyers were just really frustrated over the last year, it was really hard to get offers even noticed or to compete, and people were doing really creative things. But it was just the speed of which those offers were going out and being considered was oh my gosh, you know, you were probably dealing with it all year.

Carrie McCormick 8:51
Yeah. And I think too, as brokers we have to look back. And you know, it was a definite learning curve, even again, for someone who’s got experience, you know, I’ve went through other great markets like this, I’ve gone through crashes. But you know, really, in the last 20 years, I can’t think of any market that we were competing like this. And we all learned a new skill set to and just different ways to structure deals and to get things done. So I think from again, growing as a professional and and servicing our clients correctly, we all learned some different skills of how to get deals done and be creative and get things done. But it was it was pretty brutal. I mean, it was quite the battleground out there.

D.J. Paris 9:37
Well, you know, that really is it’s so interesting and hopefully things agents are not as overworked as they as they maybe were although I know you’re always working but I hopefully people are agents are starting to take a little bit of a breather to just catch their breath. But I have before we go to our I’m sorry. I wanted to head over to our marketing Minute, because Carrie and I wanted to talk about gifts for the holiday season because it is that time of the year where agents are starting to think about are they going to provide something or they’re going to send something out or do a pop by or, or do some sort of gesture of thanks to previous clients, or current clients are just their network their sphere of influence. But before we get to that, I have just a quick commercial to read from one of our amazing sponsors. So this is I’m going to talk very quickly about follow up boss, which is my favorite CRM and also after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country. This is the CRM that comes up more than any other when I’m talking to agents going, Hey, what tools do you use, so we’re super excited to have them as a sponsor. But let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level. Follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. Don’t take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the United States use his follow up boss. And he’s built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 different systems. So you can keep your current lead sources and tools. They also have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help you need when you need it and get this follow ups boss is so sure so confident that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real podcast listeners a 30 day free trial. Now that’s twice as much time as they give everybody else so and oh, by the way, no credit card required. So it is truly risk free. But only if you use this special link. So please visit follow up boss.com forward slash real. Once again, that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up, boss. Thanks for that. And thank you to our sponsor. So Carrie, gifts for the holidays. What are your thoughts about that? I’m curious, because I have some thoughts as well.

Carrie McCormick 11:55
Yeah, every year I try something different. You know, this year, one thing I want to say before we talk about the gifts is that since it’s been such a great year for all of us as brokers. And we just keep in mind, again, someone who’s been through this before is, you know, you you did great this year, your numbers have doubled, you made a lot of money, you know, a lot of people, you know, don’t reinvest in their business, you know, they’ve made just making up numbers, you know, $10,000 Extra this year, you know, they’re like, you know, going to go buy a car or go buy, you know, something for themselves, which is great, but you’ve got to take some of that money and reinvest it back into your business. And gifting is a great way to do that. You know, because giving to someone, obviously, you want something, you know, you give it to them and you’re hoping that we’re going to give something to you in return, which is those are, you know, more business, but it’s just being thoughtful. So you know that we I always send out holiday cards, I send out magnets this year, and every year I’ve done something different. And I would really love you know if there’s any brokers out there that want to have conversations about this to hear what other gifts have done, you know, well for people this year I’m going to be sending out. I’m a chocolate lover, I’ve got such a sweet tooth and I love toffee. I love chocolate. I love truffles. And I think that’s one thing over the holiday that’s fun to give because you know, it’s something that you’re going to use. So I think that’s where I’m going this year, we’re putting our holiday plan together. But do you have any suggestions DJ,

D.J. Paris 13:32
I do. So we just started adding in, I have two different meal services that I use one locally here in Chicago for my lunches at work and then one for for dinner. And for the dinner one, I actually have to make that they send it to one of those meal kit companies. And so we just started doing this and we actually liked it. We’re like, Okay, this is actually pretty fun. So as a result, about four nights a week, I’m actually preparing a meal where I’m cutting and you know, dicing and cooking and doing all of the things to create these, these meals. And I realized I use my cutting board and my knives now, four nights a week. And I thought you know what a cool opportunity for agents to if you’re thinking about holiday gifts, maybe think about what are some tools or some just items in somebody’s home that they use regularly, or you use regularly or that you’d see regularly. And think about you know, and again, buying somebody a cutting board, I guess could be expensive, depending on the type of cutting boards you get or buying them instead of knives can be incredibly expensive. So it doesn’t have to be expensive items. But anything that’s used often and I don’t even know that you need to put your name on it, although you certainly could. But I know if somebody bought me a cutting board and I was using it I would think about them every so often maybe four times a week. So I always think you know, finding things that are in front of the agents face as or sorry, the clients face as much as possible is always a great idea. And here’s just one quick little suggestion for for those of you that We’re working with clients right now, especially buyers, I think although you could certainly do this with sellers to buyers, maybe this makes more sense, I don’t know. So as you’re going to somebody’s first showing, take a picture of them at their, at every showing that you give them before they even put an offer in because you never know which house they’re going to fall in love with. And maybe even do it with their back to you, as they’re about to enter the house for the first time. And then if that’s the home, they end up choosing, then take pictures of them every time they visit that home, or certainly when it closes. And now you probably have, you know, maybe five 610 10 photos of the entire buying process. And what you could do if you really want to do is you could just put one of those pictures every year in a in a frame, you know, which would be relatively expensive, and send that to them and say, here’s another picture of or you know, if you want to do it for 10 straight years, but maybe you send them three pictures in a frame or one picture of them and that process, and it’s really cost effective. And I think that would be so cool. And you could literally do that on the anniversary date during the holiday.

Carrie McCormick 16:02
I love that. I think that’s such a great idea.

D.J. Paris 16:05
Now it’s a fun one to help with that. Because I would love a picture. See, I went and saw the place that I purchased, which Harry happy to represent as well as it carry wasn’t there when I did the showing. So I actually went by by myself. And I thought wouldn’t it be cool, I should have taken a picture of my girlfriend and I seeing the place for the first time. I just didn’t think about it. And we did take pictures with the other agent agent Lisa, when we were looking at social. So she actually did that. And that’s what it reminded me of that. And so I thought oh, well that would be fun to be reminded of that. So that’s my only suggestion. Think about items that are used a lot or that are really emotional. And if you can attach yourself to that emotion, of course. Great idea. So either find something that’s repetitive like a, you know, some sort of kitchen device maybe or something in the bathroom, or something that is highly emotional like when they bought or when they saw the place for the first time. But that’s that’s all I got for this week, or this month rather. And so Carrie is insanely busy, so we’re gonna let her get back to her busy day. But before we do we want to mention if there are any buyers, sellers, investors or agents who have buyer’s or seller’s or investors who are moving to the Chicagoland area and you’d love to work with an agent, one of the very best agents here in Chicago. Carrie would love to chat with you. So feel free to reach out to her. Carrie what’s the best way someone should reach you? If they’re somebody that wants to work with you?

Carrie McCormick 17:30
Yes, I always say call me 312-961-4612 Or if you want to text me email me whatever you like my emails Perry ca RR ie [e-mail]

D.J. Paris 17:43
and please follow Carrie on Instagram she we didn’t talk about it on this call or this this episode but she has an incredibly effective and impressive Instagram account that she does all herself which is even more impressive. So visit and follow her at Carey McCormick real estate that’s McCormick with two C’s. So Carrie McCormick real estate on Instagram and also visit our website which is also really cool Carrie McCormack r e.com. Well thank you Carrie for your for your time. Once again. She’s been with us since the very beginning of the show. We’re so grateful to have her and we’re so grateful that she continues to find time to do this. Thanks also to our sponsor, follow up boss please visit follow up boss.com forward slash real Get Your FREE 30 day trial. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks Kerry.

Carrie McCormick 18:31
Sounds good. Enjoy the day. You too.