 What's up everybody? Ricky Caruth here. Welcome back to my channel. So today I want to talk about the coronavirus and its effects on the real estate market. First off, let me just say that it's a little too early to really visualize how the coronavirus is going to affect the real estate market. We haven't seen any price drops. We haven't seen really any effect up to this point in terms of real estate. Now the stock market's a different story. The stock market last week went down more than 10%, which was the fastest more than 10% drop that it has ever seen in the history of the stock market. So what does that tell you? It tells you that there's a lot of fear out there. Now who knows how this is all going to end up. Maybe we find some vaccine or maybe we take care of the problem before it gets really, really bad in the United States. Maybe we don't. Who knows? No one knows what the outcome of this situation is going to be. And I think that's the scariest part about it. We're just venturing into the unknown here. So in regards to real estate, let's talk about the current real estate market. We're at very low inventory, a high demand. We started 2020 off really extremely strong in terms of resells, new construction, home starts. All that data looks extremely well. We also have some of the lowest interest rates ever, which is really driving demand. People want to get out there and they want to find their next home while interest rates are low. So we're at a really strong point in the real estate cycle. So will the coronavirus bring us down that's yet to be seen? Like I said, it's too early to really tell if it's going to really strongly negatively affect the real estate market. But you and I, we're going to be prepared either way. We're going to make it through this regardless if it affects us in a negative way or not. Let's go through the different scenarios. Let's say the coronavirus is taken care of fairly quickly. We get a vaccine. Everything starts moving in a positive direction. The spread starts to slow down. There's less deaths, so on and so forth. And the market kind of continues on the path that it's on now. Great. That's not a huge problem for us. We don't have to really make any significant adjustments if that's the case. Now let's talk about the alternative. Let's say that it does continue to spread and it has a significant negative impact on the real estate markets. I think that that would mean prices are going to come down because demand will go down even though we have some of the lowest inventory we've ever had. We've had some of the lowest interest rates we've ever had. You never know what's going to happen. So let's just say that that does happen. We have a significant price drop, significant demand drop, and we're sitting here thinking, what do we do? This is the situation that we have to take extreme significant adjustments. And in a way, it's not exactly the same way, but in a way, this really reminds me of the BP oil spill that happened in 2010 in my market. The BP oil spill hit my market directly, and it was a significant mini real estate recession that lasted about six to eight months in 2010. It was a very scary time, a lot of uncertainty just like now with the coronavirus. Real estate agents were leaving the area, sellers were dropping their prices and basically selling their properties much lower just to get out because they were so scared. The reason I say that this is not exactly the same scenario is because when the oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, that moment when that happened and we realized there was a huge oil spill on our hands, it was a significant shock in the market. Everybody was immediately scared and immediately took action. This is a little different. We heard about the coronavirus several months ago. It's kind of been slowly building up. There wasn't really a huge shock as far as the real estate market is concerned. We have had a pretty big shock in terms of the stock market that hasn't necessarily translated into the real estate market quite yet. It may, it may not, but I talk about this all the time. I talk about when the market does decide to take a dip, to correct a recession, a crash, whatever's going to happen. It's inevitable. It's going to happen at some point, but I talk about this all the time that it's going to be a market shock. Everyone's going to change directions in terms of buying or selling. They're going to start making decisions differently and there's going to be a temporary downturn in your personal business. That's okay. That's what I call the adjustment period. We're going to go through this adjustment period, figure out what this new market looks like, make our adjustments during the adjustment period, and then we're going to be ready to take this new market head on and really understand what people's problems are and how we can find the solutions. When the oil spill hit and we had that mini recession, I remember looking at all the other agents in my office that were freaking out and I remember saying, look guys, let's just stay calm, stay on the phone, talk to your clients, let them know that you're here, keep them informed of the oil spill, everything that's going on, and just see what you can do to help them. See where their mind is, see if they're wanting to just sell their property quickly, if they're wanting to buy something because it's going to be cheaper. See, this is where you're going to win is when you realize that if the real estate market is significantly negatively affected, that means prices are going to drop pretty significantly. And with the price drop, we're going to have investors on the sideline waiting for those deals. So if this happens, be prepared for this. If we see this drop start to happen and things really start to take a turn, then we're going to start reaching back out to our past clients letting them know that we're here, we're not going anywhere and see what we can do to help them. Do they want to buy because things are going to be cheaper? Do they want to sell because they're scared and they want to maybe sell some of their investment properties? Or are they just going to ride this out? Are they going to hang on from what everything they got and just kind of ride it out? Either way it goes, we're here to help them, keep them informed, see what we can do to help them. The coronavirus could have a negative effect on new construction. We have about 30% of new construction materials coming from China. We have wall board, we have lighting and other items that come from China. So there could be a slowdown there. We might have a problem getting lighting fixtures and so on and so forth, things like that. These are just really small detailed things, but it's things to think about. So the bottom line is, is that it's really too early to tell if the coronavirus is going to affect us in a negative way in terms of the real estate market, but I want you to be prepared either way this goes. If it starts to take a turn for the worst, I want you to be ready to get on that phone and I'll make more videos if that happens, telling you what to say in different situations and how we're going to handle this and how we're going to get out there and help people. Otherwise for now, I just want you to continue doing what you're doing. I want you to continue your three by three, three hours of calls, three days a week. I want you to continue to push through the 90 day action plan. If you're in the middle of the 28 day challenge, just keep going. Don't worry about the rest. We're going to talk to as many people as we can possibly talk to in our market and continue building that database. The size of our database is going to determine the size of our income. I definitely want you to relax. I don't want you to worry about this in terms of your job as a real estate agent. We're going to be just fine either way this goes and I'm going to be right here to help you. Click that like button, hit the subscribe. Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you right now. Hit me in the comments and I'll see you in the next video. Let's go. One, two.