“This is not a time to stabilize. If you stabilize in a market like now you’re going to fall behind. You have to grow,” Redfin’s Jason Aleem said at Inman Connect Las Vegas Wednesday.
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If the real estate industry is experiencing a five-alarm fire, agents need to play the role of firefighter.
“It is both run for the fire and have the confidence you have the skills,” Liz Gehringer, CEO of Anywhere Franchise Brands, told a crowd of hundreds at Inman Connect Las Vegas on Wednesday. “The short-term fire is inventory. That’s the focus.”
Gehringer spoke alongside Jason Aleem, senior vice president of real estate operations at Redfin; and Drew Uher, CEO of HomeLight; on a panel called “Should We Run Toward or Away From The Fire?”
The good news is that agents can lean on the fundamentals to help not only survive the fire but grow through it, Gehringer said.
“The best agents can do that, they know that they can stick with this plan,” Gehringer continued. “It’s knowing who your network is. It’s being here to grow your referral network. It’s knowing who your best partners are for mortgage and lending and title.”
Gehringer suggests focusing on migration trends and preferences among buyers and possibly expanding into new markets to meet shifting demand as a way to grow business.
Aleem and Uher agreed agents should focus on strategy and growth during a period when far fewer homes are selling than in the past several years.
“They have no choice. This is not a time to stabilize,” Aleem said. “If you stabilize in a market like now you’re going to fall behind. You have to grow.”
“When I think about right now, it’s kind of a break-glass-in-case-of-fire moment where you absolutely do need to turn it up a notch,” Aleem added.
Redfin’s Jason Aleem speaks on stage at Inman Connect Las Vegas on Aug. 9. Image by AJ Canaria
Uher advised agents to move on from their approach from two years ago and focus on building and nurturing long-term, meaningful relationships.
“For the agents in our network it means focusing on the bottom of our funnel,” said Uher. “We all know that conversion suffers in markets like this.
“The top of the funnel is hurt much more than the bottom of the funnel in this type of environment,” Uher added.
He pointed to an agent in Chicago who previously had a marketing team handling content creation for his social media accounts during the red-hot years of the COVID-housing market, which Uher called a top-of-funnel approach.
“That worked great in 2021 but was a mess in the current time,” he said.
To trim costs, the agent let go of the marketing team and began handling it himself.
“That created more meaningful, authentic interactions between him and his clients that actually matter,” Uher said. “He saw his business increase on the heels of this because he was creating those authentic connections.”
That can happen on social media, Gehringer said, where agents can focus on being the agent that is top of mind if and when buyers and sellers are ready to move.
“There’s a statistic that says 82 percent of people will only meet with one agent and ultimately select that first” Realtor they meet, Gehringer said. “You have to be that first person.”
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