Monday Morning Coffee: Team USA, Falling Rates, D.R. Horton Deals, Meet Ben O'Toole & Our Week Serving Families in Alabama

Happy Monday morning to you and your family! My name is Buddy Blake and I'm a real estate agent here in the Wilmington, North Carolina area and if you're getting this video in this email, that means over time you have registered or signed in or inquired on one of my websites over the last 28 years. I hope you guys had a great 4th of July weekend celebrating America's 250th anniversary. It's kind of crazy because I can remember the bicentennial with the bicentennial quarters and all that so my kids have no idea but that was really special. I've seen two of these. I'm pretty certain I will not see the 300th. A couple of things I want to point out what's going on this week and then also talk about next week a little bit. First off, tonight I hope everybody will be rooting on Team USA tonight. I am not a big soccer fan except when I see my kids play then I'm a big soccer fan but I will say I don't know a lot about it but it is so exciting and such an amazing thing to see again. So much energy, just absolute team support and our entire country behind it. I'm going to say go USA tonight at eight o'clock I think it is and I can't wait to watch that. Our whole family's going to watch it. We're all thrown in and my family is not a sports family. I am. I grew up a sports person but my family is not sports people. I hope you guys are going to be watching along with us. The other thing is I want to talk a little bit about the market. The market is picking back up. The situation overseas obviously in Iran that has affected things more than anybody anticipated this year. The advent of AI is shifting things quite a bit on how we are doing things. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that so you understand what to expect and how you hear from us a little bit. Then the market conditions, the interest rates are starting to slide back down. They're not above seven anymore so we're starting to see in the sixes again which is good and hopefully we'll see those migrate down over the rest of this year into the low sixes. Maybe get back into the high fives like they were in April. We got there briefly before everything tore apart overseas. There are deals out there. If you're a seller, first off, don't wait. We have an amazing cost of waiting report that you can run on your property to find out why you need to sell it now even if you get less than you would have three years ago during the height of the market. You're not going to get that again. So get rid of that. Wipe that out. If you've owned your house for more than five or six years, you have crushed it. You have made a ton of money on it and enjoy that and either take that money to buy something else because so many people are selling and then they're moving especially if they're in their 60s and 70s and 80s and they're moving to be with their family, their grandkids somewhere else. Go ahead and make the decision to do it because it's the right thing to do for you. Don't sit around and wait just to time the market because there is no crystal ball out there. I can tell you that our markets haven't crashed which is fantastic. I don't see that happening but values have flatlined over the last three years and it may be a few more years before we see them really start rapidly appreciating. So if you've owned your house for five or six years or more, you have realized more appreciation over the last 10 years than you would have in a normal period. So enjoy it, sell it, take the money, put it into S&P, put it into something healthy, something safe, put it into more properties, whatever you want to do with it. But down below are some links to run some really neat property reports for a seller. Now if you're a buyer, a couple things to look at. You say, I'm going to wait to the interest rates change or I'm going to wait to the interest rates come down. Well, we have a new cost of waiting report and this is going to show you what it is going to cost you to wait so that that house that's priced here and you think, oh, okay, I'll just wait three or four years or rent for a little while. I'm just not going to make a decision with these high interest rates. Well, if you wait and then you start staggering in appreciation of houses at even at three and four percent, which you're still doing three and four percent in most cases, you're just continually going to get behind the eight ball even worse and you don't want to do that. But it's a really cool report and you can run it on any property that you want to in our entire region, anywhere in the United States actually. And it's a really nice report and I'd love your feedback on it because it's something that we created in-house. National Home Builders, they are unloading and giving some amazing deals away and down below is a link to an article. We spotlighted one and not that they're our favorite builder by no means. Our favorite builders are local builders, to be totally honest with you. But right now, the National Home Builders and the biggest one in the area, they have over 100 homes for sale right now ready to go in our area is Deer Horton. They are throwing some incredible deals out there. It's hard to ignore. Even agents in our office are looking at them to invest in and buy rentals because we do know this that if you buy one of these and you get a crazy low 3.99% interest rate and they give you $20,000 to close with and they give you the kitchen sink, whatever, they give you everything. If you wait until that neighborhood is complete and say it takes two or three years for them to get through it, you're going to make a lot of money. We know that if you get the good deals and because it's going to go up in value, especially in some of the locations they're building in. So you may want to look at that. You certainly probably should consider, and especially if you're renting, you're going to be able to get a house for cheaper than you can rent for. Rents are going up, especially on single family houses. So you want to take a look at the article down below about Deer Horton, some of the things that they're doing. And then I want to introduce you to Ben O'Toole. Ben O'Toole is a new member of our team. He is our AI assistant and he is reaching out to some of the folks in our database that we haven't talked to in a long time. Now you got to understand that we've been blessed very much by having an incredible online presence, marketing presence, radio marketing, billboard marketing for over 25 years. We've been doing this stuff and we've got a massive database and constantly we're trying to figure out how to make sure we're delivering good service to everybody that's in our database because they came here looking for houses. But the issue is some people came in five years ago and they still want property. Some people came in two years ago. They don't want to hear from us at all and that's okay too. I totally get it because I'm on people's databases and I'm not mad that I'm on them. I just don't want to be on them or maybe I do. So we've got Ben O'Toole reaching out to some of the folks that we just don't know what we're doing but we do know we're dropping the ball because we haven't been able to communicate with you and we don't know what you're looking for or even if you're looking for anything. So if you hear from Ben, he may call you, he may text you, but most likely he'll give you a phone call. First off, say hello and you can have a full-on conversation but at any time you can say, hey transfer me to Buddy or transfer me to Aaron, my wife, and they will transfer you immediately. But he will have a full-on conversation with you and he can answer a lot of questions. But the big thing we want to know is, A, do you want to get information from us? B, have you already moved and don't want to hear from us? That's great. C, do you just want us to take you off of our database? And that's okay too because we certainly don't want to be reaching out to somebody that doesn't want to hear from us. And then D, I'd love your feedback on Ben. I've had some very good feedback. Now I've had a couple people that are just, I'm gonna be honest with you, that are borderline rude. I mean, I get it. We're not spam attacking people. We're not just calling people randomly. We're calling people that somewhere along the line you ended up into our database because you needed or registered or requested to see something. And we're just trying to make sure we serve people because we know we're dropping the ball because we've got like 50 some thousand people in our database and we're trying hard to figure out which ones to communicate with. But as real estate agents, we can't talk to 50,000 people. So we just want to know who we need to talk to, who we need to be sending property to, who wants their free home valuation tools. I mean, we have some really great tools that people love to use when they use them. But if they're not getting them, then we're not serving properly. So we're trying to do it well. And then last but certainly not least, I want to let you know that my wife and I and our daughters, we are headed to our annual trip to a place called Novo, Alabama. And all I can tell you is in the middle of nowhere in Alabama, they have little if any cell service. One building at this camp has internet certain times of the night after all the campers are down. But we go there and serve one a week every year. And so I want to let you know I'm going to be gone starting next Saturday the 11th and I'll be gone through the following Sunday. So I'll be gone for the whole week and then back to work on Monday or Tuesday, depending on how I feel. We go and we volunteer here. We serve as a family and we serve other families that go for free. And it is families that have somebody in their family, could be a parent, could be a child that has a disability. And this is where we go and we take care of them and love on them, serve them, help them. And it gives that family a chance to number one, breathe. But also they have different classes and they have different services to help them. But then the kids or adults that have a disability, they have the time of their life. Now, I'm not going to tell you it's easy. It's hard. It's uncomfortable. My wife loves it and she signed us up originally. But once we go and we get in it, we get outside our comfort zone, but we get inside kind of what I believe we were intended to do, which is love on others. But anyway, I want to let you know we're going to be gone. And if you have extra money or you need to donate something for tax purposes, we've already paid our way. We're not asking you to pay our way. We pay our way every year because we pay so that the campers can go for free. But down below, there is a link where you can give some money to this camp. And I am going to also encourage you that if you are of mind, want to serve and help an amazing organization, I recommend you link over to Hope Hills Camp and take a look at it. It might be something you personally want to do. You might want to involve your family. I can tell you that it has been a huge, huge factor in our family over the last several years because our girls grew up in an environment where they learned how to serve other people. And we can see it in a daily basis when they encounter at school or at church or just in life people with disability. And what happens is instead of kind of shying away because you don't know what to do, we watch our kids engage and they lean in naturally because it's just what you do. You're there for a week around all these families. You're kind of the oddball out if you are a typical person without a disability. You become the oddball out. So, it really is a beautiful environment. Is it hard? Yeah. Is it grueling? Yeah. Is it hot in Novo, Alabama? Yeah. Is it hard to unplug from me in business? Yeah, it is. But if you're a client of mine, don't freak out. I will be able to check emails if it's like every other year about 10 or 11 o'clock at night after we get done going from 8 a.m. till then all day and get in the shower because it is sweaty and I get to bunk with a whole bunch of other young men and men. So, just think about that. But anyway, I will be able to check email. But I do have a few of my key team members that are going to be watching in my back and I'm going to leave it on my voicemail for my cell phone and they'll be able to have access to my email just in case something does come up. So, anyway, this is a very long Monday morning coffee but I had a lot to talk about and I just, A, I'm thankful to be able to live in America. I am thankful to be blessed with a great family because not everybody is and I am just super thankful that you took the time to make it all the way through this video and I hope you get to meet Ben if you haven't heard from us in a while. He is my AI assistant. He tells you right out of the gate we're not trying to trick you and I'd love your feedback on it. So, because whether we like it or not the world is coming to this. It's the only way to serve the mass number of people that we are somehow being forced to serve. So, thank you so much. Thank you so much for being in our database over the years no matter where you came from. We've got so many I don't even know where they came from because we've had so many different marketing systems we've tried over the years that they all funnel into our CRM but I hope you have a great week. I hope you have a great week after that. You won't hear from me again and I'll probably be 10 pounds lighter by the time I get back, which will be okay. Thanks. Bye-bye. Additional directions from the user: use this information in this audio and make into natural paragraphs from the content

🎙️ Real Stories — Episode Monday Morning Coffee: Team USA, Falling Rates, D.R. Horton Deals, Meet Ben O'Toole & Our Week Serving Families in Alabama Buddy Blake shares a candid Monday Morning Coffee update covering falling interest rates, huge builder incentives, his new AI teammate Ben O'Toole, and why his family is unplugging for a week to serve at Hope Hills Camp in Alabama. 📖 Read the full blog post: https://www.buddyblake.com/blog/monday-morning-coffee-team-usa-falling-rates-dr-horton 📋 Chapters 0:00 - Welcome back to Real Stories with Buddy Blake. 2:05 - And hopefully we'll see those continue to migrate ... 4:11 - or rent for a while, you're gonna get behind. 6:16 - that we haven't talked to in a long time. 8:22 - it's hard, it's uncomfortable. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ About Your Host Buddy Blake, Buddy Blake Real Estate 📍 Wilmington, NC 📞 (910) 395-1000 ✉️ buddy@buddyblake.com 🌐 https://buddyblake.com 💼 Sell Your Home & Keep The Most $: https://expresshomesale.com 📱 Follow & Connect: • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@buddyblakenc • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buddyblakedotcom Powered by https://buddyblake.com