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Today's track: These Days — Nico

I've been taking a lot of calls lately.

People book a time on my calendar, and almost every one of them opens the same way. Some version of "I'm tired."

Tired of being stuck. Tired of being a gerbil on a wheel. Tired of running around showing houses on a Saturday to online leads who may or may not be qualified, may or may not have talked to a lender, may or may not even show up.

I get it. I've been there.

So here's what I've been telling them, and what I want to tell you going into this week.

It's slow right now. On Friday I showed you that fewer homes went under contract in Jefferson County in September than in December. 530 of them, the lowest month in a year. Rates are sitting above 7%. The phone isn't ringing like it did in April.

Unless you're taking action.

The people I'm working with who are making offers, sending letters of intent, following up, and getting creative are getting results. Deals are getting done. Quietly, but they're getting done.

And a lot of people are sitting on the sidelines waiting for somebody to ring a bell.

Nobody rings a bell.

If you're an agent, let's be honest with each other. There aren't a lot of people who need you to buy or sell a house this week. That's not a knock on you. That's the market.

So what do you do with a slow week?

You don't keep going back to the same well hoping it filled up overnight. You get better.

Be the expert in your field.

Here's what I mean by that.

Further your education. Learn the tools you've been meaning to learn for two years. Go research how the market has behaved in the past, and look for the trends.

I'll give you one to start with.

In October 1981, the average 30-year mortgage rate in America hit 18.63%, according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey. Eighteen. Not seven. Eighteen.

People still bought houses.

How? They took over the seller's existing loan, which is called an assumption. Or the seller acted as the bank and the buyer made payments to them, which is seller financing. Or they used a wraparound, where the seller keeps their old loan in place and the buyer pays the seller a bigger loan that "wraps around" the old one.

The tools I walked you through in September weren't invented by some guy on YouTube. They're how this country bought houses the last time the bank's number didn't work.

Now picture a nervous first-time buyer sitting across from you at 7.28%, convinced the world is ending. If you know that 1981 story, and you can tell it in two minutes, you're not just "an agent." You're the calm person in the room who's seen the movie before.

That's what an expert sounds like. And you didn't need a single client this week to become that person. You just needed a quiet afternoon.

Some other rabbit holes worth going down while it's slow:

You'll come out the other side with stories, and stories are what clients remember.

Now here's the biggest one.

Poke around with my good friend Claude.

I'm not saying that because it's trendy. I'm saying it because it's going to be the largest multiplier in this industry, and in pretty much every other industry, for the rest of our careers. The people who learn it now are going to lap the people who wait.

You don't need to know code. I don't know how to do any of that code stuff. You just need to be able to explain what you want, the same way you'd explain it to a smart friend.

Start small:

And it's not just real estate. I don't know what the next deep dive should be in your industry. You know your world better than I do.

But I'll tell you the easiest place to start, no matter what you do for a living: ask "How do I implement Claude into some of my systems?"

Then keep asking:

How do I get rid of the redundancies, the things I do three times that should be done once?

How do I get more time with my friends and family?

How do I provide better service?

How do I provide better follow-up?

How do I cut costs and protect my margins?

How do I create more leads, and get more done in less time?

Sit with those for an hour. You'll be shocked what comes back.

But really, the whole point is this: guard your time.

Build the systems so you have time to be bored. Time to think. Time to create.

I wrote about where your attention goes last month, and that idea hasn't left me. Most of the best things I've built came out of an afternoon where I had nothing scheduled and nobody needing anything from me. Boredom is where the ideas live. You can't hear them over the noise.

So the systems aren't about doing more. They're about getting your life back so you can do the stuff that only you can do.

A slow market doesn't pay you for showing up. It pays you for what you learned while it was slow.

And you don't have to figure it all out alone.

At Winner Realty we built Robby. Robby is our AI assistant, and you can call or text Robby anytime, day or night, at (502) 305-8915. Ask about buying, selling, investing, what a term means, or where to even start. If it needs a real person, Robby makes sure it gets to one of us.

That's the same number in my signature down below. Use it. That's what it's there for.

I want to tell you about my Dad.

He worked for LexisNexis for a long time and retired there. He's an engineer and an architect. He's ADD, like me.

The difference is he had way more discipline than I do.

But here's what I always noticed. His ADD, paired with an engineer's brain, made him see things differently. He approached problems from angles nobody else was looking at. Over time he just became the guy. The problem solver. The troubleshooter.

He knew how the sausage was made.

When something broke, people didn't call the manual. They called him. (I wrote about him back in June, when he got way cooler after 60. He's only gotten cooler since.)

Be that in your industry.

Harry Borders has been that in the Louisville title world for as long as I've known him. When a deal goes sideways, when a title issue nobody understands shows up, when somebody's stuck, people call Harry. He's not the loudest guy in the room. He's the one who knows how it actually works, and he's generous with it.

That's the goal. Not to be the flashiest. To be the one people call.

I've been around for a while now. Thirteen years in this business. Over 450+ residential, commercial transaction, and off market transactions. I've seen a lot.

And I've been humbled. Plenty.

I've got the lawsuit with Joe and Kim Worth that's been lingering for a long time. It's not fun, but I'll tell you what it's done: it's taught me things no class ever could.

These days I talk to a lot of people we all know. People who are experts in their own right. And they come to me with problems. Bad partnerships. Tax issues. Running out of money halfway through a project. Needing someone to take a second position, meaning a second loan that sits behind the first mortgage and gets paid back after it.

And I've navigated all of it. Not because I'm smarter than anybody. Because I've been in the wreck or one of my clients have, and I remember how we got out.

That's what expertise really is. It's not the certificate on the wall. It's scar tissue you're willing to share.

Here's what I believe.

The action-takers are going to win. They always do, especially in a market like this one. And I can tell who's taking action. You can hear it in the first two minutes of a call. Some people are looking for a reason it won't work. Some people are looking for the next thing to try.

Be the second one.

If you're tired of the wheel, if you want to take back your life and your business and actually build the systems, schedule a time with me. We can talk about the market, your business, whatever's on your mind.

This stuff is fun for me. Troubleshooting, noodling, problem solving. It's genuinely my favorite thing. I love thinking differently, and I love watching somebody's face when the thing they've been stuck on for six months suddenly has three ways out.

So here's your assignment for this week. If it's a slow one, if you don't have a lot of sales or a lot on the calendar, don't go back to the same well.

Pick one thing. One deep dive. Give it three focused hours.

The history of rates. A loan type you don't understand yet. One system in your business that Claude could run for you.

Then go serve people with it.

That's how you become the expert in your field. Not all at once. One slow week at a time.

📈 How Louisville stacks up. Zillow's September report came out last week, and the headline is "an early winter." Nationally, newly pending sales fell 8.5% from a year ago, the 30-year rate hit 7.28%, and 27.4% of listings took a price cut.

Now look at us. Of the 50 biggest metros Zillow tracks, Louisville had the 2nd-fastest sales growth, up 7.2% from a year ago. Only Oklahoma City did better, at 7.5%. Cincinnati was up 3.2%. Nashville, 2.7%. Indianapolis, 0.2%. St. Louis was down 4.2%, and Atlanta was down 11.2%.

The typical Louisville home is worth $279,064, up 1.3% in a year and about 24% below the national $366,913. And our typical rent, $1,339, is the lowest of all 50 metros.

Here's the honest part. Our inventory is up 16% from a year ago, the 4th-biggest jump of the 50. Buyers have more to choose from than they've had in years.

That's why we win here. Prices that still make sense, rents that make the math work for buyers and investors, and buyers who are still showing up when the rest of the country is pulling back. This market doesn't reward waiting. It rewards the people who know it cold.

📊 Friday's poll: Which city are you living in right now? Half of you said "Best of times, I'm buying." 25% are just here for the cardigans. 13% are waiting it out, and 13% are selling and nervous. Half of you are buying in a market everybody keeps calling slow, and that's this whole issue in one number. And Judy, who picked the cardigans, wrote "I enjoy your letters." Judy, I enjoy you.

Today's poll:

Results tomorrow.

🛠️ Tool of the Week: The Louisville Neighborhood Matcher. Tell it your budget, how far you'll commute, how walkable you want it, and whether you're buying, moving here for work or investing. It scores 14 Louisville neighborhoods against what you said and shows you your best matches, with real sale prices, Walk Scores and the honest notes. Takes about a minute. Free, no email required.

🏆 Slow week? Good. That's when the Top Five earns its keep. Every morning I rank the five best deals on the Louisville MLS and the five most ripe for a lowball, with the number I'd offer. If there aren't five great ones, I don't send five. I can't blast other agents' listings to a list, but I can send them to you. Reply "FIVE."

Respond back with what part of town you live in and I have a surprise for you!

Humbly,
Rob Bergeron

Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty: (502) 305-8915
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company

Schedule time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind — book me here.

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PS: Slow-week homework, done for you. Every Winner Realty listing that's live right now in one link right here. A few worth a click: a triplex on South Floyd at $350K, a quadplex on East Oak at $399K, an apartment building on West Oak at $575K, and a house on Estele Ave at $224K. If one of them fits you, text or email me.

Now the fun part. There are 2,107 single-family homes for sale in Jefferson County today. 284 of them have been sitting for 120 days or more (that list is so long it takes two links: part 1 and part 2). 121 have cut their price 10% or more. And 53 are both: on the market forever and already cut deep. That's where sellers start listening.

And for the house hackers (a house hack means you live in one unit and rent out the rest, so your tenants help pay your mortgage): there are 111 duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes for sale right now, plus a couple dozen houses with an in-law suite, a carriage house or a second kitchen. One of my favorites is four updated units for under $50K a door. Another has one unit sitting empty, so you could move in day one. Reply "HACK" and I'll send you my top six. Want to see the math first? Plug any of them into our free house hacking calculator.

PSS: Text Robby at (502) 305-8915 with any question that's been rattling around in your head. Buying, selling, investing, "what does this word mean." Day or night.

PSSS: Feeling like the gerbil on the wheel? Grab a time with me here. No pitch. Just two people noodling on how to get your time back.