48% of buyer inquiries never get answered. The market slowed down. Your response time can't.
The fall market officially opened last week, and the first real numbers landed yesterday. Sales are slower than they were a month ago, but the buyers still touring are the serious ones. That combination puts a premium on something most agents assume they've already got handled: how fast you pick up the phone. When inventory was tight, being second to respond still got you a shot at the deal. With almost five months of supply sitting on the market, it doesn't.
THIS WEEK'S PRO TIP:
TIME YOUR OWN RESPONSE BEFORE A BUYER DOES IT FOR YOU
Run the test on yourself this week. Have someone outside your market submit an inquiry through your website and your portal profile, then time how long it actually takes you to answer. A WAV Group audit of 384 brokers across 11 states found 48 percent of buyer inquiries never got a response at all, with an average response time over 15 hours. Nobody in that study thought they were the problem.
Look at when you missed, not how many you missed. The gaps almost always cluster in the same windows: the two hours you were at a showing, the drive between appointments, the Saturday morning open house. That's a coverage problem, and no amount of trying harder fixes it.
When you're busy: Your response time falls apart in the exact hours you're standing in someone else's kitchen. Post the showings, open houses, and lockbox runs on KeyPleaz® so the task gets covered and you stay on the phone with the buyer who just came in.
When you're available: Coverage requests are picking up as agents get their listings back in motion for fall. Open KeyPleaz® to claim showings and coverage near you, see the payout before you accept, and build steady work into the busy season.
MARKET NEWS PULSE
NAR released August numbers yesterday and the fall market opened soft. Existing-home sales ran at a 3.98 million annual pace, down 2 percent from July and down 1.2 percent from a year ago, with inventory climbing to 4.9 months of supply. Rates are the reason. The 30-year fixed sat at 6.71 percent the first week of September per Freddie Mac, which pushes the median monthly payment to $2,641, the highest in 14 months per Redfin. NAR's chief economist put it plainly: the ample supply is giving buyers better opportunities to negotiate. But here's the number that should change how you run your week. Even in a market this soft, 30.1 percent of homes went off market inside two weeks per Redfin. Slower on average doesn't mean slow at the top, and what separates those two groups is usually who answered first.
QUICK STAT OF THE WEEK
Going from a five-minute response to a thirty-minute response drops your odds of qualifying a lead by 21 times, and your odds of reaching them at all by 100 times, per the MIT lead response study. With 4.9 months of inventory on the market, a buyer who doesn't hear back from you has plenty of other agents to call. Speed isn't a personality trait, it's a system, and the system breaks on the days you're in the field.
Open the app to keep your response time intact this fall.
