How can it be a buyer’s market and still see multiple offers? Why are some agents having a great year while others can’t get a deal? Why do some clients choose not to buy or sell when all the evidence says they’re walking away from their own goal?
I think it comes down to which layer they’re living in. Same market, three completely different ways of experiencing it. And most people only ever live in two.
I was talking with a brokerage recently. They told me how slow things were out there. Brutal, really. So I pulled their numbers. Residential sales up 10 percent. And residential is about 75 percent of their business. Their mouths dropped. The market wasn’t slow. It felt slow, and they’d been living in the feeling.
Here’s how I’ve been framing it lately. Three layers.
- How the market is. That’s the data. It’s clinical — the listings, the sales, the average price, the days on market. It’s the x-ray. It doesn’t care how anyone feels about it.
- How the market feels. That’s perception, and everyone carries it — the buyer, the seller, the agent, me.
- The noise. The headlines. The social media. The story from the open house. The water cooler talk.
Many consumers, and many realtors, are treating the noise like fact and interpreting their feelings like data. That’s what leads to poor choices, no choices, and often inaction.
Two things can be true at the same time. The market can feel hard, and the data can tell a different story.
Your clients are probably living in the last two. They feel a certain way, mostly because they’re spending their time talking about the noise. And the noise is loud right now.
Our job isn’t to argue them out of how they feel. Just the opposite. This is their home, their money, their plans. The feeling is honest, and it deserves to be honoured. But you can’t manage the client until you’ve managed yourself. If you’re standing in the noise too, there’s no one left in the room anchored to what’s actually true. So anchor yourself in how the market is, be honest and kind about how it feels, and block out the noise. Then gently lift the client up into reality — not by dismissing the feeling, but by standing beside them in it and showing them what’s actually there. Be the data anchor in a room full of noise.
If you lead a team, this is a good one to talk through together. The agents feeling it the most are usually the ones standing closest to the noise.
The feeling is real. So is the data. The agents who can hold both — compassion in one hand, the numbers in the other — are the ones clients trust when it matters most.
Scott
Scott Mills Coaching
P.S. If someone you know would find value in this, feel free to pass it along.
