In our January episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties and Christie’s International shares some interesting facts about 2023 and also shares tips and tricks for 2024 on how to generate leads. Carrie emphasizes the importance of collaboration in 2024. Carrie also shares top 10 ways to find leads she is planning to use this year. Last, Carrie and DJ discuss how you can use AI to gather information on the property you’re showing.

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

Carrie can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 312.961.4612.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00Are you curious about what one of the top real estate agents in the country thinks is going to happen? In 2024? I know I am. 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. There 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'm your guide and host through the show. And today on the show is our monthly series called The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from the Carey McCormick Real Estate Group with at properties here in Chicago. Now Carrie is a top 1% producer in Chicago with over 20 years of experience helping buyers, sellers and investors. In fact, the past 12 months out of 46,000 real estate agents here in the local area. Carrie is currently ranked in the top 12 of agents in the entire group there, which is I shouldn't even say 1%. She's in the top point 00 1% which is actually even bigger accomplishment, of course. So she's a true superstar and an expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors and luxury property. She also works with a lot of developers, and is often chosen to represent their high end developments. I happen to live in a Carrie McCormick development. So I can speak to that. And she does get to do some really cool things. So we are so thrilled to have her please follow Carrie on Instagram, which is Carrie McCormack real estate, I will have a link to that in the show notes and our website, which is Carrie McCormick, r e.com. If you're an agent who has clients, maybe you're in a different area of the country, and you have clients that move in and out of Chicago, Carrie would love the opportunity to network with you and maybe, you know, create a referral relationship because she has lots of clients that move out of Chicago. And she's always referring those to other agents. So definitely reach out to her Carrie, welcome once again to the show.

Carrie McCormick 3:10Thank you, it is the end of 2023. And I'm so excited to talk about 2024. So I'm going to give a few interesting facts about 2023. I'm going to give some tips and tricks that I think would be good for everyone for 2024 to generate leads. But just coupling on what you said is collaboration. I think that's going to be a big deal in 2024. And anyone who is listening who wants to follow me on Instagram and wants to collaborate on posts, I would love to do that. People are moving all over the world right now, though, especially obviously through the United States. If we collaborate and share properties and post our properties in different markets, we're going to start moving everyone in collaborating much better. So you know, I'm happy to do that. So please reach out to me if you'd like to collaborate on Instagram, but I want to share some interesting facts that I found. And this is about the typical homeowner. So in the past, a typical homeowner has accumulated more than $100,000 in housing wealth over the last three years. Wow. So if you've been home in the last three years, you've accumulated more than $100,000 in wealth, obviously approximately, in comparison to renters. It says actually, I take that back. I take that back. The average was I gotta get my facts straight. The average was $396,000 in wealth, versus 10,000. For renters now this is just over the United States is just as not in Chicago. But the general was you've accumulated more than 100,000 the average was 396,000 in wealth over the last three years with your home Um, especially if you live in Florida. Sure, or a renter, it's, you've accumulated $10,000 in wealth. And that's an important fact to know why you should buy a house, why you should invest in real estate and not be a renter. So that was just kind of a fun fact, I found that with the Fed out of the Federal Reserve data, so I thought that was an interesting fact to share with people. Obviously, we're in December of 2024, on 23, going into 2024, everyone's asking what the prediction is, nobody knows. Right. But you know, being boots on the ground and hearing and feeling the market, I think we're going to have a good and exciting 2024, mortgage rates are starting to come down a little bit, they're projecting in 2024, that they're going to continue to come down, the only thing we've got to worry about is inflation. So you know, it's always a balancing act. But I can see and tell that there's so many buyers on the sidelines right now, they are waiting for these rates to come down, which again, they are, they're waiting for more inventory to come into the market, which I'm seeing more and getting more calls for inventory. So that is going to be the strength of our 2024. Market. So with that, I think it's important as brokers that we find the leads, right, and I am sure that's what everyone's trying to do is find the sellers find the buyers, where are we finding these leads? And what I thought we would do is go over, I started compiling a list of the top 10 ways to find leads in 2024. I love it. Is it okay, if I share that with you guys? Yeah,

D.J. Paris 6:44let's know this is great. Because right now everybody is struggling on both the buyer and the seller side. So yeah, let's talk about it.

Carrie McCormick 6:52Yeah, so for over the last couple of months, I've been strategizing of what I'm going to do in 2024. And here is my top 10. So one is QR codes, there are so many different ways to use QR codes, I know that they've been around for a long time. And there's free QR code generators, there's all different things that you can do, you can actually tie them to a lead sheet. So if someone scans your QR code, it goes into a lead sheet, which then all of us or I'm sorry, like an Excel sheet to capture the information. And then down into you can just drop it right into your CRM, you can use them for your videos, your social media, your property tours, those QR codes can track. So make sure you find a way and a system to make sure that those are capturing data, YouTube videos that educate that is going to be a lead generator, right? You want to treat just like your podcast here, right? You you create a platform that people learn. And as soon as they understand that you're a source of information, they're going to follow you and they're going to want to work with you. The third one, which is my favorite is AI we know it's here it's coming. It's such an incredible source. I don't think that's going to replace us, it's just going to help us right, it helps us with all different types of property descriptions, the one thing I started asking is like, what is a social media post, it's going to attract attention in December, let AI tell you what it is let it help you come up with hashtags and keywords. Use it as a partner for your business. So AI is going to be important in 2024. Number five is link your Instagram stories to lead capture pages. So if you have a business account on Instagram, you can put a link in there and say you want to know more, click here, it links to a lead generation page where you can capture their information. And then once you have their information, of course, then send him send them make sure you follow up and send them the information that you're looking for. So again, use your Instagram stories as a lead caption, or lead generator, which I think is amazing. Next one is buy lunch, not leads. So I used to be big into buying leads and you know, they're really just kind of hit or miss. So instead, if I was going to spend $100 a week on leads, I'm going to spend $100 on lunch. There's nothing better than meeting someone face to face, creating a relationship with them. That $100 That you invested in a lunch is going to be a lifetime of leads. And you just make sure that you're obviously keeping up with your relationships. So I think that's going to be important deepen the relationships. Another thing that I've done this is number seven is finding properties that are second homes. Right so here in Chicago we have a lot of second home buyers, the second home Um, clients are not sometimes using their homes. So I'm reaching out to them, let's say they're in Florida or Arizona, and say I see that you own a home at, you know,