In this Storii Time episode, our hosts, Saad and Mike, walk through the big headlines of 2025 from buyer agreements to AI.
Saad: We back.
Mike: we back.
Saad: How long has it been? A month?
Mike: Month-ish.
Saad: Yes, must be yeah.
Mike: I think was our last one was SheDesigns?
Saad: honestly, I don’t even remember anymore. That must be the last one.
Mike: Yeah, yeah, that was like three-four weeks ago probably yeah.
Saad: Well, I mean, think the cadence is good. Hopefully we get a few people chiming in on the recap for this year.
Mike: Yes. And if you click on it accidentally, you’re going to get shouted out.
Saad: Oh, 100 percent. 100 percent. We’ve been waiting a few weeks for this, so that’s definitely going to happen. We’ll cut each other off to make sure that happens.
Saad: What’s the first thing on your mind when it comes to this year. Anything in particular that I mean, I know,, obviously we shared notes with each other, but is there one thing in particular that like you’re like, this is it. This is like one major trend?
Mike: Damn. That’s my credit.
Saad: Damn. Touche, touche. Yes, it’s been that kind of year.
Mike: Yeah, dude. had, I mean, it started end of last year, but the new buyer broker rules that went into effect, have the new inspection….uh… rules that went into effect so we adjust on the fly everybody freaks out about change and then inevitably couple months later it status quo it’s part of the right part of the whole shindig at this point i haven’t had a single problem with either of those. Have you run into any?
Saad: no no problems i mean uh… you know one i think that the by range agreement piece especially. I haven’t had any problems…things are the same as before it’s just on paper now Right? That’s really it. Right? So people really understand that, especially when it’s positioned that way. Nobody likes to decide anything new…when it’s positioned that way, it’s just like, look, let’s just get this done, push it to the side. Now let’s get to work. Right? So that’s easy.
Saad: Well, I would say easy. Right? You need a few reps to make it easy. Right. But, and then the inspection piece, that is…technically a big change.
Saad: It’s good for the consumers. It’s good for buyers. Protects them a lot more. It does mean that more deals will have many people are waving inspections anyway. Right.
Mike: I think that will came into effect at the right time. Imagine back in like ‘21. Like if that was in effect, it would be chaos.
Saad: Right. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. At that point, was like many more people, you know, waving inspections, whether like, just because like, you know, number one inventory was still was very low. And uh there was just no, there was just people like were competing against 20 offers. Like, uh so yeah, many people were.
Mike: That was the only leg up. Yeah, that was the only leg up you had. You had to wave everything and throw a dart at the price sometimes.
Saad: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah. And so to that point…this year, I don’t think I’ve had anybody wave inspections. I think every deal that I had closed kept the inspection even for like new construction and things like that. So, um, again, not a major change, but generally good for consumers. does change the way offers are looked at. But conceptually, not a huge change. You can still do caps on offers. You oh have a toggle you can play with when it comes to expectations. But waving them is out of the equation. So if you’re an agent listening, if you’re a buyer listening, a seller listening, if you’re that one person that’s on the call listening. You need to remember that waving inspections, no go. Actually, the other, I think the other is you.
Saad: What else we got?
Mike: I don’t have those notes readily available, so if you want to just throw out whatever.
Saad: yeah, I got them in front of me. So yeah, interest rates, still high. I know there have been a couple of rate drops as of late or “rate drops”. Folks remember we’ve talked about this many times. It’s already baked into the market rates or I should say in particular mortgage rates. So, like no major change. I’m sure as you’ve seen I think the average the average 30 year fixed right now is 6.2 percent.
Mike: Yeah it’s it’s it has come down every time we’re like Oh my God, we’re gonna get past six. It’s like, yeah. Yeah, exactly. You don’t wanna see that 599.
Saad: Yeah. And, you know, all the pundits, they don’t know. Yeah. It’s hard to make sense of things. Yes, you’ve got like job numbers and you’ve got inflation and all these kinds of things. And yes, they impact mortgage rates. They do. But it’s all big data already. So yeah, the trailing sense exactly. They’re still high. There’s more stuff sitting right now. There are deals to be had. And you were talking about this earlier, Mike, on another call. There are deals to be had, especially at the higher price levels.
Mike: Yeah. I am just observing because I have a client out in Winchester right now, which is a very nice town. The homes are pricier, but I’ve seen multiple large single families that are down from a two five listing number where I think, you know, everybody’s kind of gets caught up in this sometimes…you start to look at it one way and then the market starts to shift back and what was once two five is now two or one nine five or something…which is, you know, that’s it’s an expensive home but that’s a significant drop in the listing price.
Saad: Right, right.
Mike: Yeah. And like these couple of weeks because you and I, we’ll leave the family on Christmas Day to go put a deal together… briefly, briefly.
Saad: I mean…
Mike: I mean, I mean,Ana (wife) don’t listen Don’t listen. But for real, like these couple of weeks are like if you either if you did not sell at this point, the last month or so, and it was still available. Most likely, if you are not in a rush, you probably took it off and are going to relist in January. People right now, they want to sell. Buyers, that’s your indication that, hey, we have some negotiating power here.
Saad: Right. Yeah. And think those are the clients. The clients, I’ve got a few of them that are going out between tomorrow and Saturday and there’s gonna be options for them. Not just in terms of like the pick of the litter…in terms of which property they wanna go after, but in terms of kinda how low they wanna go.
Saad: The other day, it’s up to the seller but like you said, it’s a signal to the buyers that they’re open for business. There’s an option.
Mike: I was looking at some of the clients who are set up for listings and stuff like that. There hasn’t been a new listing in their search terms in like two weeks. So, like that’s a lot of the people that I see. Like everything is at least 14 days, if not older, days on market.
Saad: Yeah. I see that. Actually, I see that for a bunch of searches that I’m doing for some clients…especially for single families. I think there’s a little bit more for condos and things like that. We’ll touch on that in a second, but especially for single families, there’s less options. But one thing I want to mention in terms of inventory is there’s also a lot more off-market. We’re seeing many more alerts of either pre-MLS or no-MLS opportunities, and they’re totally open to offers before they hit the market and things like that. And I think that’s a sign too that the balance is definitely shifted. I would say it probably skews a bit more buyer right now, especially given the time of year.
Mike: Oh yeah, this time 100%. Now it’s all within reason, right? There’s a bandwidth of these properties where it’s not going to be a fire sale, but you might be paying 5-7% less than you would have otherwise. It’s exciting. It’s great. It makes you sharpen the knife on the listing side. And on the buyer side, there’s some breathing room where you’re not like, “okay, I spent 10 minutes in this house. I’m gonna drop a million dollars on it tomorrow.” Because that’s my way to get it.
Saad: I think for that reason too, like pricing is so important, right?
Mike: Yeah
Saad: We’ve talked about this a lot… regardless of the type of property, if it’s not priced well, it’s gonna sit right now. There’s no way it’s gonna go. it’s true, you only need one buyer, but I’ve had listings recently where a client or clients, I should say, like wanted to list at a certain level. I suggested something lower. We kind of like went down a little bit from where they were at. We put it on the market, and crickets. We did marketing, we did reverse prospecting, we did a bunch of different things for as much outreach as we could get. We shared it with our 26,000 email database, all that kind of stuff. Crickets. There’s enough data out there right now for people to see if something is underpriced or not. I should say overpriced or not because that’s what matters more. But, also it’s just hard to buy right now, much harder than it was a couple of years ago. Interest rates, time of year, economic…I guess I should say…headwinds, that makes things much more complicated. I think sellers need to be aware of and price it right from day one. That’s it. That’s it.
Mike: And probably, you know, if you’re already in a bind, but, you know, wait till after the New Year, probably in the next two weeks if you’ve got the time.
Saad: Yeah. Yeah. And this is not the type of thing where you say “hey, let’s try it out here and then do a price cut.” No, that’s not the strategy to work. That sends a totally different signal to potential buyers. Like, you’re going to screw yourself by doing it that way. I said that because it might seem common sense for somebody who hasn’t experienced it themselves, but people actually think that that will work. They’ll think that they can just change it later. No, there’s a lot of psychology involved with pricing right now and I think that’s an important thing for agents to discuss with their for listing agents especially to discuss with their sellers because you can’t just slap a price on anything anymore.
Mike: Nope, nope, no sir, no sir.
Saad: I know you recently did a, was it an FHA deal or a VA deal? Yeah, FHA. You did an FHA deal, okay. Have you done many of these low down payment deals this year?
Mike: I did three this year.
Saad: You did through this? Oh, okay. Got it. So there is opportunity then for, and I say this because my experience has been, at least maybe with my clients and the types of properties they’re purchasing and things like that, is that a lot of my clients who were low down payment buyers, whether it’s FHA or 5% down or what have you, they’ve decided to sit on the sidelines.
Saad: And I can’t really blame them because low down payment means much higher payment. So I think finding that buyer to me, I guess, what you’re telling me is that there are some buyers out there with not a lot of liquidity, but they have the income to support a higher payment, which means that for them, this is a good market.
Mike: So it’s funny, it’s not, at least from my experience with these, it’s not insanely higher in terms of the monthly payment, obviously, because you’re only putting 3.5 % down, it will be adjusted, but you’d expect it to also have a higher interest rate on top of that. And actually with the programs that Massachusetts offers and our lenders are aware of, we’ve gotten FHA buyers in with down payment assistance. And on top of that, I’ve gotten credit…like this one that’ll be closing in 10 days. We got a $12,000 credit to go towards closing costs. Essentially, you can look at it as that almost is paying the down payment. Right? Like, you’re getting away with that for free because that money is getting applied to your closing costs. So, when things are not super competitive, then that gives you an ability to finagle that…if this was 21, you’re going to lose out to somebody putting down 10-20%. They don’t have to go through any FHA uh stipulations of how, you know, what that shape the house is in and potentially like, you know, three weeks into the deal that could potentially blow up because there’s, you know, paint chipping paint or broken windows or what have you. So,knowing ahead of time what FHA looks out for in assuring the bot, like once you’re the only option, They have no choice but to deal with you.
Saad: Right and my point point was not so much about competition. It was more about oh the financial strain. Interest rates may not be higher. It’s more that your payment will be higher with the low down payment. It sounds like there are buyers out there who are willing and able to stomach that, which is great if you’re one of those buyers too. If you see this snippet, and it seems like this is a good opportunity similar to the point we made earlier that like those buyers are active. They can have success.
Mike: Yeah, especially on the multifamilies. you know, we had a client whose offsetting from the rent on the other unit needed to be in the like 2300 a month situation and we were able to find that.
Saad: Nice. Nice. Yeah, that’s awesome. Mean. Yeah, like again, like I think every agent is different that it’s not been my experience at least with my client base. I think all the deals I did this year, uh clients were putting at least 10 down, but in most cases 20%+ right? And many times the 20% or more was with gift money. You saw, we’ve seen a lot more of that. Parents helping out their kids and things like that, especially amongst the type of clients we work with, that’s not uncommon. Anyways, guess everyone’s financial situation is different…the theme or the message is talk to a lender regardless of your situation. Talk to a lender, talk to us. We can introduce you to a lender but regardless of your situation, if you’ve got the the interest in purchasing a piece of real estate in the short to medium term before things really pick up again, which we’ll talk about towards the end of this, It’s in your best interest to have those conversations now.
Mike: Yeah, and when I get people with, when they name a price point that they’re looking to spend, but they haven’t talked to a lender yet, I know that there is a gap of knowledge that you don’t know what your monthly, but like how could you even guess on the price of a home if you don’t know a monthly payment situation? Could be much lower or higher than what your initial estimates.
Saad: Right, exactly.I have a client who’s, he was struggling in Massachusetts and now he’s buying in Rhode Island. Multi-family, all that kind of stuff. Low down payment program. So like, you know, we have a partner agent out there who’s helping him, and like, that’s exactly right. A lender, a couple of lenders had to kind of walk him through what his options were so he felt comfortable given the current environment and things like that. If you’re not talking to the right people. You’re not gonna know and you might miss out on a really interesting opportunity. So yeah, talk to the people that you trust in your network, talk to us, and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.
Saad: A couple other things, let’s shift gears to landlords and tenants. There’s definitely more short-term pressure on landlords and their agents now. Some of you may know, the rules have changed. The tenant is not allowed to pay the landlord’s portion of the broker fee. The landlord has to pay their own agent, right? So, that is as of just a few months ago, right? So, it’s a new rule, but naturally, especially in a expensive market like Greater Boston, where it’s already tough to make the numbers work. And there’s somebody here who’s trying to purchase an investment property. And now you have this additional cost, especially if you have that cost per unit. Right? That’s pressure. That’s like an additional strain that you have to think about on top of everything that we just mentioned in terms of payments and things like that. So, that’s definitely a factor. Have you worked with many investors towards, I guess, like the second half of the year?
Mike: The few multifamilies that I did sell at that time. I did it almost as part of the like, we’re gonna buy this andI’ll help you get a renter. Once you have to start tracking there for showings and things like that, you should be compensated. But the listing online and if the landlord helps take care of the showing the property or anything like that as a service to them. I’ll draw up the paperwork and all that stuff.
Saad: Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Makes sense. Yeah. We have several investment properties right now that we are, we have off-market available off-market. The interest, I mean, granted the price points are not low, but like, but, the interest has been from those professional landlord-level type of people who probably have their in-house systems. agents on staff, right? That are doing some of this stuff, especially when you’re talking about not just three units, not just one, two or three units. If you’re talking about seven units, you’re talking about eight units, talking about 12 units, like that cost adds up real fast. So, uh so yeah, I mean, especially in Greater Boston, I mean, you’re talking about Let’s say it’s even $2,000. Let’s say you’re renting each unit for $2,000. That’s obviously on the low end around here. You’re talking about $24,000 if you get turnover every year. That’s wild.
Mike: Well, least they only have to pay half. Half of it.
Saad: Yeah, yeah. Half of it. Yeah. So there are situations though, like there are some rental agents, and i know this because I do the property management for these properties, there’s some agents who only represent the seller and they’ll like bring in the buyer and especially if there’s a low-income, they don’t have the ability to pay, then who’s gonna pay it?
Saad: So that’s something to consider for investors and also for tenants or potential tenants.
Saad: So last thing, AI has been all over the news in so many different facets. It’s something that we’ve talked about a lot and especially over the last few weeks. Clearly, it looms large in terms of what it means for our business, it means for real estate in general. I think going into 2026, it is very important just as like a last note for especially if you’re in the real estate business or trying to be, it’s very important to really start getting a good handle. If you’re not already doing it, get a good handle. on what the tools are there are out there that could help support your business. AI is not going to replace you, okay? It’s not going replace you. But it can be an amazing compliment to your business. And we’ve seen some of it recently in terms of some of our conversations. We have another call we’re jumping on tomorrow to learn more about some of the things that high-producing agents are doing in terms of using AI to compliment their business and we’re excited and we’re kind of like of that group that hasn’t fully kind of like taken the bull by the horns when it comes to AI but we’re really looking forward to using some of those tools to really grow our business big time in 2026.
Mike: Yeah man, it’s awesome. If you just look through history, I’m reminded of, I saw a bunch of propaganda for anti-electricity companies in the early 1900s and what they put out as scare tactics of everything’s good, like, you know, this is gonna change the world, this, that, they’re like, it’s always, we’re human, we’re gonna go to the negative first. Will it replace some jobs inevitably, but any technology ends up doing that and then new jobs are formed as a result. Just if you familiarize yourself with it, it becomes less scary at that time too. And that’s what we’re gonna try to do, because the unknown is the scariest.
Saad: Yeah, and I think one key thing is like, it can be daunting, because there’s a lot of tools out there. A lot of tools out there, a lot of people saying, oh, this is the next best thing, blah, blah, blah, blah. Find what fits for you and just start using a couple things. It doesn’t have to be everything. Keep it simple and understand where the holes in your business are. There’s almost guaranteed to be something there that you can use to fill that hole. So just be smart about it. And this is the time to do that research and figure it out. So, we’re certainly doing it.
Saad: So anyways, that’s the recap. Did we miss anything? I don’t think so.
Mike: I don’t know.. It’s a good year.
Saad: It was. Yeah, we had a great year. Two very fun client appreciation events. We started doing housewarming parties a bit more aggressively for our clients. Super, super fun. Going strong with the survival kits. Hired at least two more agents. Was it three? Or was it two? Three.
Mike: Three?
Saad: We hired three more agents. Yeah. And yeah, mean, big things coming in 2026 too, which we can’t share just yet.
Mike: Yeah.
Saad: Let’s go.
Mike: Let’s go, brother. Yeah, another full year. This is now what? 18 months of Storii Time? Something like that?
Saad: Yeah, we started July or June of 2025. Yeah, 2024. Right. So we’ll see what comes of Storii Time too. That’s another thing. We’ll figure out what the right medium is. Obviously, we want to get the word out to more people. So Mike and I will be strategizing on that, too. So excited for that as well. Lots of good things are happening.
Mike: We love feedback. Yeah. We love suggestions. So we’ll always incorporate them.
Saad: Absolutely.
Mike: For the final time in 2025, he’s Mike. I’m Saad. This Storii Time.
Saad: It is Storii Time. Happy holidays, everybody, and we’ll talk soon.
Mike: Bye.
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