Striving For Excellence (Or At Least Improvement)

I don’t like incoming sales calls, plain and simple. Our team has never had a “cold call” strategy, and frankly it has never been a part of our business plan. We are relationship people, and we love “organic” business (grown from within our sphere of influence and past clients).

Phones have gotten better at flagging “potential SPAM,” but it’s not always accurate, so we’ve started answering every call. Lately I’ve been getting at least three recorded calls a day from New York numbers about business financing, all SPAM. Thanks to whoever signed me up for that.

But yesterday I answered one of those “potential SPAM” calls, and it turned into a thoughtful, professional conversation. We actually decided to use their services, but more importantly it led to a great discussion about our business and future.

After talking for a while, they asked me a simple question” Why do you want to continue growing your business?”

It was a very easy answer for me, which has made me dive deeper into the “why.” My exact response was “we are incredibly blessed at the success we have had, and the relationships we continue to develop are beyond what I ever imagined in my life. As a team we are helping multiple families build futures for their families, so that has added an additional level of motivation to my days.”

We believe in the Law of Abundance, not scarcity. There is plenty of business in the market, and we believe if you treat people right, as well as your peers, there is plenty of business for everyone.

But I also am more focused than ever on improving the quality of our local market, both professionally and for real estate overall. I see more marketing tactics when agents use another agent’s sold home to make it appear they sold it, without using a clear and proper disclaimer. That continues to blur the lines of ethics, erode the lines of professionalism and integrity, while leaning on the excuse of “many others do it” or “if there wasn’t a disclaimer on it my admin made a mistake” or it’s blamed on the mailing company.

I didn’t realize how much this is happening until they started hitting our home’s mailbox, with our own sold listings. Personally, when we sell a home in a neighborhood that we don’t have a presence in, we won’t mail to that neighborhood if; a) an agent has an obvious market share there, and b) if I happen to know one of our peers’ lives in that sub. We personally feel that is professional courtesy. It’s an easy couple minute check, and Olivia and I have done those checks for years.

Besides writing a blog every Friday, we started our podcast after years of thinking about it. Someone just asked me how I can do a podcast, given the amount of business that we do. A major reason we launched the podcast is to give honest, hopefully enlightening information, in an industry that is overwhelmed with information, much of it not so good. We felt it is our responsibility, after this industry has provided so much to us, to do everything we can to make it better. By inviting CPA’s, attorneys, and various professionals, to share true and accurate information.

So yes, carving out that time was very tough, but it is all part of our belief in the Law of Abundance, and making our industry better. And frankly we really enjoy it, plain and simple, as it stretches our comfort boundaries, and we believe in constant and never ending improvement.

There are over 16,000 licensed Realtors in Oakland County alone, and 70% did not sell a home in 2025. I saw a statistic this morning that the top 5% in our industry are pulling away, and the gap continues to widen. Many are shocked by that, I am not.

Do you remember the “80/20 rule?” 20% of the people do 80% of the work, 20% of the people make 80% of the money; you probably know all of that, and it is a universal law, not just applied to a particular industry. I remember the 80/20 rule from the early 1980’s, and I said in about 2010 that it had really become the 90/10 rule, so now in 2026, that 5% statistic is not surprising, at least in our industry.

I want to end with a couple of very encouraging stats. One is, according to the National Association of Realtors, available homes for sale will be at their highest point in 2026 since 2020. It definitely feels that way for us, given the number of listings we have coming this spring. Fear not sellers, that does not mean prices are going to go down, because there is a huge pool of buyers entering and re-entering the market.

The other statistic is 50% of homeowners have paid off their mortgage or have at least 50% equity (according to ATTOM and Census). That is amazing! How can that be, you ask? With the number of homeowners that refinanced, or purchased, in the 2 and 3% ranges compounded by values continuing to go up, that amortization schedule becomes very heavy on the “amount of payment going towards equity.” And those homeowners that went into a 10 or 15 mortgage, that equity grew even faster.

Make it a great spring, the birds are singing as of this writing in mid-February!