Why Real Estate Agents Are Making Less Money Right Now

The market didn't break your business, it just exposed it. If your income as a real estate agent has gone down over the last 2 or 3 years, you already know you are not alone. But here's the problem: most agents think it's the market, and it's not. And if you don't understand what's actually happening, you're going to keep getting it backwards. So in this video, I'm going to show you exactly why so many agents are making less money right now, and more importantly, how to turn it around fast. And this is the stuff that no one is talking about. So over the last 2 or 3 years, so many agents have seen their income drop. Interest rates went up, buyers disappeared, sellers took their homes off the market, fewer deals, harder clients to work with, more competition, lower incomes, and burnout. And most agents blame the market. Now you got an option. You can either blame the market or you can look at it and say, okay, how do I need to adjust and adapt? Because the market has actually change because the market didn't break your business, it just exposed it. And that's what you have to understand. You understand when something stops working and what was making me money before a certain level and all of a sudden it's not, I can look at it and go like, oh no, I can throw up my hands in despair. Or I can say, okay, what do I have to do to adjust? What do I have to do to adapt? And see, the real reason that your business and your income is down is because the way you were running your business, The problem is when the market is hot, when interest rates were hyper low and everybody's wanting to move, everybody's buying and selling, it makes you feel like you're hot. Makes you feel like you're doing business right. But when the market cools off and your business goes down, it's a reflection that what you were doing was just riding the wave. My friend, the wave is over. And if you want to succeed now, and you can succeed in real estate now, but you got to do it different. And you got to understand you can't play the game the way the average real estate agent plays the game if you want to get extraordinary results. So I'm going to give you the 3 real reasons why your business has gone down over the last 3 or 4 years as interest rates went up, as the number of transactions available in the United States, Canada, and around the world have gone down. There are 3 reasons that your business has gone down with it. Number 1, buyer dependence. See, most real estate agents build their business on buyer. The problem is buyers gives you low leverage. It's very time-intensive, time-heavy, unstable, and you have very little control. So when the market shift and the buyers disappeared, so did your income. So that was the first problem. The first problem is your business was built on buyers, and when buyers are out there popping in everywhere, they're scrambling to buy houses, they're writing offers, they do whatever it takes and all that, then you can make money. But when they start getting scared, skeptical, and disappearing, all of a sudden it's like you're left holding the bag, and the bag is is empty. Reason number 1, buyer dependence. Reason number 2 is you have no listing attraction system. Now, here is the name of the game. And my original broker, Mike Bowman, told me this from the time I started real estate. He said, listings are the name of the game. If you want control of your business, you want control of the market, you want control of your income, you want control of the inventory, and that means you've got to have listings. And here's where most agents get this wrong. They don't have a clear strategy to generate seller leads and to attract sellers. And so what we end up doing, 'cause we don't have a listing attraction model, we don't have a business that is built on drawing listings to us and getting listings, so what we do is we follow the path of least resistance, which is chasing buyers all over town, right? So which leads back to number 1, we get buyer-heavy business. And so it's so easy to spend your entire day, I get to somebody that calls on a sign or calls on a thing or says they're interested in a property,. And I spend my entire day showing buyers around, showing buyers that aren't really ready to buy. And at the end of the day, you got nothing to show for it. And so we spend all this time with this buyer and then find out they can't actually buy a house. And so now we spend the next week or two or three trying to figure out what we're doing wrong. And we're surfing social media and we're searching videos and like this, you're watching YouTube videos. And so it's this vicious cycle that leads from inconsistent results to more inconsistent results. But when you master a process of learning how to attract sellers and get listings, it's scalable and it gives you leverage that you don't get any other way. Now, in a second, I'm going to give you the shift and the solution to this problem that changes everything. Okay, but the third problem that we got to deal with first is that there's no differentiation. You look like every other realtor. Okay, how many times have you heard somebody say, like, you realtors are all the same? Well, the reality is, to most Sellers to buyers, all agents look pretty much the same. Why? Because you're all pretty much the same. Okay, you don't have an audacious promise. You don't have a value proposition that gives sellers, especially sellers, absolute certainty that says you're the agent I'm going to hire. You have no positioning, no connection. The sellers out there don't even know that you exist because you don't have positioning, you don't have branding, you're not positioned out there in the marketplace. And if they do know you and they do see your name or whatever and glistening lights, there's no perceived value. Like, how are you different than all the other agents? And so they simply dismiss you because you have no differentiation. So here's the shift, and this is the payoff, okay? If you want your income to go back up and you're watching this video, I know you want your income to go back up, so stick with me because this is the solution. These are the 3 steps to solve this problem and revive your income and to just take it to new levels. Even in 2026, even when the market has been slowed down for the last 3 years, this is how you turn all of it around. If you want to get your income back, you don't need more leads. You need a different model. You have to have a different model. And this is the 3 steps, the solution of why your income is down and how to fix it. Okay? So I'm gonna tell you this before I get into 3. Stop surfing, looking for solutions, and lock in on what I'm about to tell you right now. Okay, you've looked, you've done all the surfing on YouTube you need to do. Right now you need to lock in on these 3 steps to turn your business around. And without locking in on these 3 steps, you are going to continue to struggle in scarcity and inconsistency. Okay, so here we go. Step number 1 is become seller-focused. All your lead generation should focus on finding motivated sellers. Now, I'm fine with you generating buyer leads, okay? The reason I'm fine with it is because nearly half of all buyer leads also have a home to sell. So what I'm looking for though, when I talk to somebody who's interested in buying a house, I'm like, do you have a home to sell? Do you own a home right now? Are you currently renting? And many of them currently own a home. So now I've got a seller. So it's great to work with somebody when you can double dip. I can help them sell their home and buy a home as well. But your whole mindset has to be seller-focused. Listings give you leverage. Sellers give you listings. Listings give you leverage and listings bring you buyers. Gives you the opportunity to attract more sellers, and it gives you the opportunity to have something to market. Because see, when— if you just market yourself, nobody cares. When you have a house for sale, i.e., a listing, you have what people want, and you have what buyers want, and what sellers can observe and look and see, does this agent know what they're doing? What do they do when they do get a listing, right? So listings allow you to multiply your results. So every time you get one listing, it can turn into multiple listings. In fact, let me tell you this first. Is to become seller-focused. That means your lead generation strategies have to be built toward this. Okay, so I love lead generation strategies that if you're using social media, paid marketing, and stuff like that, you may be attracting primarily more buyers, but inside of that, you've got to be focusing on finding the ones that actually own a home right now that they're going to sell as well. Okay, and because if you're doing paid ads, it's much easier to track buyer leads than it is to attract seller leads. But you want to be attracting your own leads, not paying somebody for leads, not buying leads. Do not buy leads, okay? You need to learn how to master this game. I mean, you can buy leads, but it's always going to be expensive and your profit margins are going to always be dramatically lower, okay? No matter where I'm generating my leads, wherever you're generating your leads, you have to be focused on getting sellers. Now, low-hanging fruit for SellBay owners: expired and canceled listings, okay? Your word-of-mouth marketing team, your A-team, your personal circle, The people that if you build a relationship with them, build top-of-mind awareness, and talk to them and ask for business, say, "Hey, who do you know that's looking to buy or sell? And when you do run across somebody, would you call me?" Now, I know there's a lot of real estate trainers and coaches out there that are telling you, "Don't do that. That's so cringe." But my friend, over 70% of all sellers are going to list with an agent that they already knew or that someone that they knew, i.e., over 70% of our real estate transactions, listing and buyers, are gonna come from a relationship, from your personal circle. And so why in the world would you not talk to them? How would you not train them? I'm going to give you one story of Scott Marlowe in Phoenix, Arizona. So Scott's currently in my List Mastery Elite 100, which is my highest level coaching program. And he did about $150,000 in GCI last year. Okay. Right now, as I record this, we're on day 28, we're 4 weeks in. Day 28, he has already generated over $150,000 in commissions, which is exactly what he did last year. Okay, he has $150,000 pending in the first 4 weeks of Listmaster Elite 100 from $150,000 last year. How did he get it? Personal circle. Now I'm going to tell you the big one. He set an intention. He said, what I really want is I want to make a 6-figure commission check. I want a 6-figure commission check. So he set the intention, he put his mind, and they started talking to the people that he knew in his personal circle saying, hey, I'm doing this 100-day program with a bunch of top agents. I need your help. Who do you know who's looking to buy or sell that I can help? And within a week, one of his longtime past clients that bought a $350,000 house from him years ago gave him a referral of a cash buyer for $4 million. $4 million cash buyer. They're negotiating an offer that will give him a commission check well over $100,000 from one conversation. With somebody he had done business with in the past that he had not been talking to. And I asked him on a coaching call this week, I said, if you had not talked to this past client, do you think they would've given you that referral? He said, absolutely not. He said, because they would've not thought of me. But because I talked to 'em, they're like, they literally text me and say, hey, I just talked to my brother. He's got a friend in another state that is looking to relocate here. They're looking to buy a nice home, 5,000 square feet, super modern, da da da da, in the nice area, nicest area of Scottsdale, Arizona. And it's like $4 million. That's what they're writing the offer, negotiating the offer on right now. Okay, personal circle. But here's the deal, it's a buyer, okay, but that's business. Okay, now here's the other piece. The moment you get into that neighborhood of $4 million neighborhood, he's got a strategy that I teach that how do you go into a neighborhood where you bring a buyer and how do you get listings out of it. There's some insane strategies. I don't have time, that's a different conversation for a different video. But I'm just letting you know, this is what happens when you start talking to your word-of-mouth marketing team. Now, back to this idea of seller focus and getting listings. Open house events are one of the best ways to attract sellers. You're gonna say, how do you do that? Well, here's how you do it. I'm gonna give you another example. Brandon Nulick from California, Southern California. He is another agent on my Listmaster Elite 100, and he took a listing that was just a regular listing. It was like $500,000, nothing fancy or anything like that. But he did this one thing. He followed the process of what we do in our 10-Day Selling System, which is how we guarantee you're going to get listings sold for top dollar, for the most money, in typically 10 days or less. So he did this one thing, took the listing, did the listing launch, set it up the way we taught, and then he did his first open house event. Okay, so to do the open house event, he went and knocked hundreds of doors and invited them with a flyer, inviting them to an open house event. Okay, the very first open house event he did, he had over 60 people show up for the open house event. Over 60 people, including agents and their buyers showing the house. But he had all these people coming through, so there's this craziness, everybody's going crazy. By the end of that first week, he's got 8 offers. He negotiates that 8 offers to finally get the best offer, best terms and price. They sell that house, you put that house under contract for the highest price, higher than any other comp in the entire neighborhood ever. So he sold it for more money and he sold it in less than 10 days. With multiple offers because he followed this process. But here's the kicker. During that open house event, where he's got 60 people coming in, he had 2 neighbors, 2 people that he had knocked on their door, invited them to the open house, and one of them came up to him at the open house event, goes like, "Who are you? Like, I've never seen anything like this. We're thinking about selling our house. We want you to come talk to us about selling our house." And then he had another seller, exact same thing, the next week that said, "I saw what you do at this listing. We want you to come help us sell our house. 2 seller leads from 1 listing because he wasn't just taking a listing, putting a sign in the yard, putting it on the MLS and waiting. He was actively going out there and marketing himself as he marketed the house. And he was getting into conversations with homeowners knowing that if I get into enough conversations with homeowners, somebody's gonna be ready to sell their house. And that's exactly what he did. So this is the first step that is so powerful. Now there's more to it that both Scott and Brandon understand that I'm about to share with you now. Step number 2 is stop chasing and start attracting. Stop chasing and start attracting. What you can see how Brandon did this is like he was not chasing business, he was attracting business. He was attracting buyers to his house, to the listing that he had, which is making his sellers happy. It's also impressing other homeowners who are thinking about selling and they're going like, holy crap, this is the kind of agent we want. So he's attracting sellers. So here's the game. If you want to attract sellers, you have to have what sellers want. For example, one of the things that I teach is if you want to stop chasing and start attracting sellers, you must have an audacious promise that guarantees better results. And you got to be willing to do this, okay? And I train agents how to do this. I've got an event coming up in August called Listing Domination Live. We're going to spend 3 days training on all of this. I'm going to encourage you, get a ticket. You can go to yesmasters.com ListLD Live and get it. Take it. We'll put the link in the description. But this is what we're going to be training on, all these specific strategies for how do I stop chasing and start attracting listings. Now, here's what a guaranteed sale does, or giving guarantees of better results. It eliminates the feeling of risk that sellers have when they look at talking to agents. They're like, ah, I'm afraid. They're afraid to sign the listing agreement because they don't want to be stuck with a bad agent. But when you're able to guarantee them the best results and you make hiring you feel like no risk, like hiring you is not a risk, it's a high perceived value or high perceived chance of success, then they go like, okay, I feel good. And the way we do that is through what we call a 10-day selling system. So, a 10-day selling system lets them know— this again, this is part of the audacious promise. The 10-day selling system says, I have a process to get your home sold faster for more money. That's it. And that's why we don't call it a marketing plan. We don't talk about marketing plans because sellers don't want their house marketed, they want their house sold. They didn't hire you to market it, they hire you to sell it, right? See, a marketing plan is for an agent who's hoping the property will sell if I just market it enough. What we have is a selling system that says marketing is a part of it, but what we know how to do is get the best offers in, get them negotiated, get you the best terms of price. So we know how to sell the house, not just market the house. And this is what you can become, my friend, as a master of the game. And I'm telling you, in any market, there is high demand for an agent that knows how to do that. Now, here's another thing that's important in the stop chasing and start attracting is having an Online Seller Vortex. Okay? An Online Seller Vortex is basically a seller-faced website that is dynamically different than the traditional real estate website which just has pretty house on it and says, "Hey, search for your next dream home here," and all that kind of stuff. It's just a search engine, a knockoff of Zillow. But an online seller vortex has a very specific framework that says, "Oh, you're thinking about selling your house? Here's why you want to be on this page and here's what you need to know to make the best decisions to get the best results in selling your house." And that online seller vortex, what it does is it lets them check you out and see why they should talk to you before they are ready to talk to you. Homeowners, when they're thinking about selling their home, it's not that they don't want to sell it or that they don't even want an agent to sell it for them. It's that they don't want to make a bad decision. They don't want to make a mistake and they don't know what to do and they hate pressure. When you sit on a listing presentation, they just feel pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. They're like, I don't want that. I don't want to talk to a bunch of agents. So they resist that. So if you have an online seller vortex, this is where you stop chasing and you start attracting because in the online seller vortex, What it does, it lets them see you. It lets them see your audacious promise. Let them see what your selling system is like. Let them see what you can actually do. And that leads to step number 3. Okay? Step number 3 is become irresistible. You gotta become irresistible. First thing you gotta do is you gotta get seller-focused. Second is you gotta stop chasing and start attracting. And then once you start attracting, you gotta become so good, so irresistible that they can't tell you no. Now, to become irresistible, one thing you have to do is you got to get into a conversation with them. Okay, so that's why we have like the Online Seller Vortex and your audacious promise is what gets them to say like, okay, you're the agent I need to talk to, let's talk. Okay, and then once they are engaging with you in a conversation, in fact, even before they're engaging with you in the conversation, this goes back to your Online Seller Vortex, this goes back to the preliminary conversations when maybe you just talk to them on the phone or maybe just engaged with them by text message is they need to see— there's 3 things I'm going to tell you about here under becoming irresistible. Number 1 is what we call the attractive character. Okay, the attractive character is you, but it's you where they can feel like they get to know you without pressure. How do they do that? Video. Okay, when they— this is part of the Online Seller Vortex— is when they see you on video talking to them about what matters to them. It's not a brag show. You're not bragging about yourself. It's not a resume dump about why you're awesome and all that. It's about why what their concerns are, and you can speak to their hope, fears, desires, dreams, concerns, and all of that in the video, then they're watching you just like you're watching me right now, and they're going like, I like this agent. I feel like they get me. I feel like they're telling the truth. I feel good about them. And that is your attractive character. This is how you get them to want to talk to you even before they talk to you. Okay, now another way to do it is after you do have a conversation with them, when they're still getting to know you, is to send a personal intro video. Okay, I've got other videos on personal intro video. I'll do another video here in the future on how to do a personal intro video, but it's basically after you meet somebody on the phone or at an open house event, you just send them a quick personal video by text message, and it's like a 30-second video. It says, hey, it's great to meet you at this open house event, or great to talk to you on the phone. I just wanted to send a quick video to introduce myself and let you put a face with the name and let you know anything I can do to help you. I'm here to help you get the best results for your home, or I'm looking forward to our meeting on Thursday, whatever the conversation is. And I'm just introducing myself and it makes it very, very personal. And now they can see, they get a look in your eyes, they get to feel the vibe, they get to hear you and you sound professional and you sound excited, you sound committed, and they're like, I like that. So now they're just getting to know you. This is how you become irresistible to people. Okay? They see your confidence, they see your certainty, they get to know you. And then the other pieces of that to become irresistible, and these are also on your Online Seller Vortex, is you've got to have actual success stories. You need actual success stories, 5-star reviews, video testimonials, and all of that. And once you start getting some serious success, or even if you've had just a little success, you need to highlight your successes. But you have to have a place to do it, and you have to have the right way to do it on your online seller vortex. In other words, your seller-facing website. It's not a traditional real estate agent website because that's just going to put people to sleep. They're going to look at it and go like, that's like Zillow. Why would I go here? I can go to Redfin or Zillow or realtor.com. I don't need to go to your website. But an online seller vortex is completely different. Okay. And so when you do this, it makes sellers come to you, they listen to you, they look at you and they go like, I need to talk to you, you're the one. And so now you start attracting them. And my friend, this happens now, it becomes a flow. And every deal you get, every listing you get will lead to more listings, more success leads to more success. The better it gets, the better it gets. So Right now, there are two types of agents. There are those who are struggling and there are those who are taking control. And the difference is not the market. The difference is not how the interest rates go to or anything like that. It is how they are playing the game. Be the agent who is taking control by making the shifts, the pivots that we just talked about here. So, I'm gonna tell you this. If you are serious, if you like this video, first give it a thumbs up. And any questions, what are you struggling with? Where are you stuck? Post that in the comments. And so I know what to shoot my next videos on. But if you're serious about becoming that listing agent and turning this whole thing around and turning your income around fast, I'm going to invite you to do 2 things. First, in this description, go to moreyesbook.com and get a free copy of my new book, moreyesbook.com, which is going to tell you in detail exactly what we just talked about. And when you get your free copy of that book, I'm also going to give you an opportunity to get a special price on my next 3-day event, my 3-day live event called Listing Domination Live. Listing Domination Live, the link will be there. It will give you a discount opportunity to get a great price on a ticket to come join me for Listing Domination Live, and you will spend 3 days with me implementing everything that we just talked about at a level that will blow your mind. So I hope this video has been helpful. Play to win, always expect yes, make your life your masterpiece, and get your income going this way and not that way. I'll see you on the next video.