Ignite Series

The table below is taken from Tracey Wilson's presentation at the Agent Ignite session. These are derived from his research. If you have questions, please visit his website. This is the BIG RED button he talks about in this presentation.
Here is the PowerPoint from this presentation.
Here are a few points covered:
1)American Rescue Plan: $1.9 trillion for COVID Stimulus Package
Passed even though $800 billion of the previously passed $2.2 trillion CARES Act (passed 3/20/20) had not been spent yet
2)American Jobs Plan: $2.3 trillion for infrastructure
Raise the corporate tax rate to 28%
Increase the global minimum tax paid to 15%
Impose a corporate minimum tax on book income
Eliminate tax benefits for the oil and gas fossil fuels sector
Increase corporate tax enforcement
3)American Family Plan: $1.8 trillion for universal pre-K, free community college, SLD $50K forgiveness, paid family leave
Raise individual income taxes
Raise cap gains tax rate
Increase estate tax
Limit step-up in basis

 
Let's kick off this episode's theme with a quote from Andy Andrews, author of, Bottom of the Pool.  "You have the power to choose every moment of every day, what YOU do with your time is entirely up to you.  You can invest it wisely or waste it foolishly. 
By choosing how to invest your time, it follows that you are also choosing what you learn, how much you learn, how deeply you understand what you’ve learned, what your imagination makes of it——and in what fashion you act upon whatever that might be."

Obviously, as people go through the pipeline and their closings happening, we're not getting as many new people in the pipeline, so that will wane, but closings are still happening. Business, with respect to what you can and can't do, is still happening. Then, I want to kind of wrap this up, and then we'll open up for Q&A is, "What can you keep doing? How do you continue to stay engaged?" Keep learning new technologies, whether that's joining the class on Tuesday or doing a different technology, whatever suits you. This is the second half of the Coffee Talk session from April 1 - 

Jobless claims came out yesterday, and they were actually down just a tick, which really doesn't help at all because we're sitting now after three weeks, we have 3.3 million three weeks ago, 6.6 million the week after that, and then just right at 6.6 million, so we had a little bit over that two weeks ago, and then this week, we just came in at 6.6 million. Those are some staggering numbers. Having said that, I am going to continue to go back to the fact that this is not a housing bubble. This is not an economic recession.

This episode is the Q&A portion from the 4/3 Agent Ignite Coffee Talk: How the Stimulus Package Affects Real Estate, and Equity Rich Zip-codes.
Questions included wondering about how new home buyers are affected, more on forbearance rules and recommendations, Fannie & Freddie, and how lenders are putting a PAUSE on new transactions. Listen to this episode. RSVP to join the next coffee talk and reach out to Nicole Rueth directly if you have more questions.

In this episode of The Double Comma Club, this discussion took place during the new Friday morning series, Agent Ignite Coffee Talk. Some of the topics and points covered included:
Phase 3 Stimulus Package Highlights and how it affects Real Estate:
Foreclosure moratorium for 60 days beginning March 18, 2020.
Moratorium on eviction filings for tenants for nonpayment of rent for 120 days
3. Borrowers of government-backed mortgages can request up to 360-day payment forbearance. Proof of hardship isn’t necessary. No fees, interest, or penalties can be assessed for the forbearance.
Independent contractors may be eligible for SBA 7(a) loans in response to COVID-19 covering expenses for the period of Feb. 15, 2020 through June 30, 2020.
Federal student loans are suspended for 6 months.
Cash payments based upon certain thresholds.
Early withdrawals from their retirement account and IRA without penalty.
Tax credits have been provided for gifts
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (Section 2102) is available for independent contractors
Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (Section 2107) provides additional relieve after state unemployment is no longer available (addl $600/wk)

 
Welcome to our first Agent Ignite Coffee Talk. I've got my water. As I was telling Jeremy Keen earlier, he's like, "Where's your coffee?" I'm two coffees in already, so I'm already a little shaky and I talk fast anyway, so I'm not sure you guys could keep up if I had a third. That's the New Yorker coming out in me. Our first weekly Agent Ignite Coffee Talk, we're going to do this until we don't. We're going to do this until things settle down again.
Right now, things are happening at light speed. It is just changing daily, and so the moment we don't need this anymore, we'll pull back to our monthly, but for right now, we do. The only Fridays that it won't happen on is the Friday that we have the third Thursday monthly agent night. We're going to hold true to that format. I've got Bruce Gardner coming in April. Hopefully, we'll all be back together again in May, but we've got an incredible speaker lineup for our monthly events.

This episode followed the first portion of the new Agent Ignite Coffee Talk series on Friday mornings. This week questions poured in including these topics:
Forbearance, Unemployment claims, HELOC rates, FHA loans, investor rates, furloughed limitations in qualifying, COVID-19 addendums, rate locks, jumbo loans. Listen to this episode of The Double Comma Club.

Stefani Shock joins Nicole Rueth in this Agent Ignite special edition from March 2020. The overall theme is calm leadership is what we need - lightness, levity, and leadership. You need to shift into a sales mindset and be a calm leader for your clients. That's what they need.
In addition to this productive coaching session, Stefani walks agents through rethinking, reconsidering Facebook Live and other video options to reach prospects, stay of value to clients, and continue to be a resource of knowledge for all things real estate. This episode comes on the heels of Nicole's outstanding wealth of statistics, facts and ideas she shared during her monthly Agent Ignite session. It's time for all of us to use our expertise to lift up our collegues and clients as they hold on tight during this current shift in how we do things.

What's the state of the market? If you think about where people's heads are, where their fear is right now, they're trying to control anything. Anything. If I can control the milk that I have in the refrigerator and the toilet paper that I have in the closet, I feel like I've got some of my control back. Toilet paper and milk are fundamental. It goes back to being a youth. This wasn't a matter of a run specifically on toilet paper.
There's too much going on to leave it to chance. Customers still want that zero rate. It doesn't work like that. As the Fed rate in the chart below, the blue line is the federal funds rate and the red line is our 30-year fixed mortgage rate.