Have You Heard: There's a Tsunami of 1st Time Buyers on the Horizon!

Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at realtor.com, says he's excited to see traffic and survey data indicating "first-time home buyers are poised to come back in a big way in 2017."

That's the good news; however, Smoke notes that, unfortunately, this surge doesn't mean all of them will actually become home buyers.

Up-to-speed on neighborhood schools & amenities?

And, that's where an agent with sound business processes can make a difference!

Why? This first-time buyer tends to face more challenges than other home buyer demographic segments:

• They need help with down payment funds
• These buyers tend to be renters so there's a lease in place that needs to be managed
• Many need to improve their credit score
• They need to fine tune their focus towards homes in the appropriate price range to quality for a mortgage

That's where the agent comes in with, as Smoke suggests, education, advice and support!

Why not have a prepared informational package highlighting common issues and offering suggestions to address them? A FAQ package, in other words! Work with your lenders so you understand which loans are most appropriate for your buyer profile -- so you can comfortably discuss some of these details with prospects.  If this is your buyer profile, think about scheduling group educational sessions -- and use your CRM software to send out invites, manage responses and keep track of attendees. You can become your prospect's "trusted advisor" for all things home buying!

CPS has been providing sales/marketing software to home builders since 1985 -- and we've seen several tsunamis!  Today's CRM product will help you display financing and qualifying ratio scenarios, slice/dice data to focus on buyers needing additional information and manage those educational sessions, too!  Let us know how we can help you be prepared for this tsunami!

Spring Home Sales Look Promising: Are You Ready?

Signs of Spring are all around us: budding flowers, pollen everywhere, gorgeous sunsets!

And, the signs for a great new home Spring selling season are here, as well.  BuilderOnline recently highlighted Realtor.com's economist, Jonathan Smoke's market take: a strengthening economy, increased consumer confidence, low new and resale home inventories and increased consumer purchasing interest.

Are you prepared for Spring's uptick?

Almost all new home sales are local; how are things in your area? If you're in Boston, Madison, Rochester, Minn or Durham, NC...they should be great as inventory is so low that the median inventory age dropped by an entire month!

The news, in other words, is very encouraging for a great Spring season -- are you prepared to take advantage of this terrific market?

I'm ready, you might say; but are you really?  Amy O'Connor, with Shore Consulting, suggests taking a look at 5 "must haves" for the Spring selling season -- and the first is sales momentum. You can check out the other four here.

Amy suggests you need to start strong -- meaning get organized and be fully ready to snag the early Spring sales.

Are your marketing materials up-to-snuff?  Do you have enough of them?  How about your CRM?  Do you have your purchase agreement documents available for quick and accurate preparation?  Have you looked into DocuSign as a way to quickly generate your entire purchase agreement package for across the web signing?

CPS can help with your CRM needs: we had a client, years ago, who said it used to take him about 3 hours to fully prepare a purchase agreement package and that had been reduced to about 30 minutes using CPS CRM's fully automated purchase agreement prep process.  We can get you up and running with an automated process using your documents in less than 1 week!