Welcome to our monthly feature Unpopular Real Estate Opinions with Chris Linsell.

Chris Linsell talks about the current situation in the real estate market. Chris discusses mortgage rates and why this is an amazing time to buy a home. Next, Chris talks about AI and its impact on the real estate market, an agent’s job, and the commissions. Chris also discusses how agents can evaluate the level of service they offer and what they can do to improve. Last, Chris discusses the importance of building a portfolio of expertise.

Please check Chris' profile on LinkedIn.

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

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00is AI coming for your job? Well, yes, but also No. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren't converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I am your guide and host through the show and today I'll return to keeping it real as our one of our favorite people that has been with us almost since well, almost since the beginning of our show certainly has been with us for many years Chris Lynn cell and we actually have a new title for Chris's episodes that he's going to be coming on regularly with us used to be called closing time, we came up with a with a different and kind of a more fun title we both thought, which is called unpopular real estate opinions with Chris Lin Sal, let me let me actually tell you more about Chris, if you are new to the show, if you are a returning guest or sorry returning listener to our show, you probably already know this about Chris, but let me tell you more about him to everyone who is new. Crystal Ansel is a real estate technology analyst and director of content at large. He specializes in new solutions to old questions, constantly exploring the cutting edge of technology in the real estate space. And Chris also has many years of experience as a licensed Realtor in the state of Michigan, and has worked as a marketer, a digital strategist and a trainer for major national brands like Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices of Michigan, and Coldwell Banker Schmidt realtors. Throughout his real estate career, Chris has been part of hundreds of transactions ranging from modest rural starter homes to multi million dollar waterside compounds, and accomplished musician, actor and speaker Chris has engaged with audiences sized ranging from 30 to 3000. Most recently, Chris was just a featured speaker at the 2023 National Association of REALTORS Convention, which he just returned. Many of you listening may have already may have seen him speak there. But Chris, what oh, by the way, before Chris comes on, please follow Chris on LinkedIn, we'll have a link to his LinkedIn page. He has writes great content there. And also if you are looking for a sought after speaker, either for a brokerage, maybe an association or a conference, Chris would love to chat with you. He is constantly traveling across the country speaking to lots of Realtors, Chris Lynn cell.com is where you can find his touring schedule and how to get in touch with him. Chris, welcome back to the show. DJ,

Chris Linsell 3:57it's great to be back, we might have to work on cutting that intro down a little bit, I realized I gave you a lot of info. And you know, most people that don't care about that stuff, they just want to they want to get to the meat inside of the sandwich. So thanks. Thanks for having me back. It's really a pleasure to be chatting with you again. You know, when I was or anyone who doesn't know, DJ and I originally met when I was the senior writer for a website called the clothes and did a lot of content and and professional development for real estate professionals through the close hence closing time the former name of our segment but now that I am have moved on in the next chapter beyond the close, launching some new ideas here Unpopular Opinions perhaps man I'm looking forward to digging into it today. It's It's It's good to be back chatting.

D.J. Paris 4:56It's very exciting to have you back Chris is very very important person, I believe, currently in the real estate journalist space. Chris is very, very well informed on what's going on. From not just from a news perspective, but also from the perspective of working agent. And you're also in direct communication with working agents as of course, you being a working agent yourself up. So let's, let's get right into it. What? Well, there's a lot to go over. What do you what's on your mind today?

Chris Linsell 5:30Man, what's on my mind today? Well, you know, there's a lot of stuff, obviously happening in the real estate space right now. I think I think it's important for for real estate professionals right now, to realize that we are, we're currently I don't know if you ever seen the video this, we're currently standing on the beach, watching the water get pulled away from the shore. Like, like what happened in I think it was in Thailand, when there was this earthquake. You know, out in the ocean, everybody standing on the beach was watching the water recede, like there was waves that were getting pulled back like the tide was going out. And everyone was like, What the heck is going on? It's pretty quiet in here right now. But there's no water like we're used to all of that water. In this video is building to a giant wave that's going to come crash over the beach. And right now I have this kind of gut feeling that real estate might be going through that scenario. We're all standing on the beach. It's relatively calm. There's, you know, it's not perfect, but we're not getting splashed right now. But pretty soon, we're going to face some challenges as an industry challenges that we haven't faced in a long, long time, maybe ever. And it is time for real estate professionals to start thinking about this, because we're about to get wet as as the same would go. But I'm here to talk about why we might get wet and to tell people where they can buy their surfboards, because just because the waves are common doesn't mean that you can't be successful either.

D.J. Paris 7:12Yeah, it's funny I that I think that's a really apt metaphor. And it makes a lot of sense, because it does feel very calm. Right now, certainly, the waters are murky. And, you know, there's a lot that people are, at least the agents that I communicate with are unhappy about, but not as unhappy, maybe as they've been in recent, previous years. But there is obviously there's there's challenges with inventory and interest rates. I saw Jamie Dimon yesterday from from Chase, had basically said, Yeah, recession is coming. So um, that was that was depressing to see that usually. I don't know, whatever Jamie Dimon says, I usually think is probably probably close to accurate. But he is not an economist either. So who knows, but he has a team of them working for him. But yeah, we would love let's talk about where that kinetic energy is building right now out and out in the surf. And when it's going to come crashing into us and what we can do sort of brace ourselves for it. Yeah.

Chris Linsell 8:18Well, let me let me start by giving you an unpopular opinion, but not untrue, about the mortgage rates that you just mentioned. So it's true that we've seen volatility in the mortgage rate sector, significant volatility relative to what we're used to, right. Like it was not that long ago, that the status quo for mortgage rates was in the threes in the fours 4% for residential loans. What felt high at, you know, in recent memory, so to see rates where they are right now feels volatile, it feels like a shock even for those of us who have seen rates higher than this. It's just been a long time since those rates have been that high. But let me set some, let me let me kind of set a straight here. It's not popular for me to say this, but we are going to experience as an industry, a significant set of disruption. When industry went when our interest rates come down a little bit. And let me explain why. Right now, most people in most markets are experiencing what I would consider price stagnation. Relative to the interest rates, these high interest rates are not driving prices down. They're just generally keeping them pretty, pretty pretty much flat. This is because these high interest rates, which usually would drive prices down are being buoyed by our lack of inventory, as you mentioned before, right like, even though you Interest rates are high demand was so high that now that the interest rates have come up, we've just kind of hit that equilibrium. But not down here where we want it, it's up a little bit higher, this equilibrium is higher than most people are comfortable with. So imagine what would happen. If say, in 812 16 months,