How AI Picks Realtors: What the Internet Says About You When You're Not in the Room

Mike Mills00:00:00

Because here's what most agents never stop to realize. Your next client is doing that search before they ever call you. Referrals aren't what they used to be.Somebody gives your name to a friend, and that friend doesn't just call you. They Google you first. They vet you. And more and more, they're not even doing the Googling themselves. They're asking an AI to do it for them.So the question isn't, am I a good agent? The question is, what does the Internet say about me when I'm not in the room? Question.If a buyer pulled out their phone right now and asked chat gbt, who is the best realtor in my area, would your name come up? If it did, would you even like what it said? Well, today we're going to talk about that.Plus, I got a mortgage rate story that runs through a war, a whole lot of oil, and a brand new Fed chair. And honestly, one of the wilder Mike's minds I've ever done. Six months of chaos crammed into one segment. Let's go.This is the Texas Real estate finance podcast, where we break down the housing market, the economy's mood swings, and whatever financial curveballs get launched at us each week. It's part market update, part strategy session, and occasionally a reminder that none of this is as simple as it should be.Built for Texas realtors who want to actually understand the market that they're working in and not just react to the headlines.I'm your host, Mike Mills, a North Texas mortgage banker with 17 years in the business, host of this show and now the AI obsessed guy teaching realtors how to get found in a world where a robot decides who gets the referral. I'm here to walk you through the data, the noise, and the nonstop plot twist that the Fed keeps handing us.And after six months away, I got a lot to catch you up on. All right, here's what's coming up on today's show. First, the big one.I've been gone for six months and I owe you the full story on where I went, why I rebranded the entire business, and what I've been building the whole time. It ties into everything else in this episode, so I'm starting there. Then we get into rates, and this is not your normal rate update.We're connecting your mortgage payment to a war in the Middle East, a power play over Venezuela's oil, and the bond market chess game between the US And China. Sounds crazy.It's all connected and I'm going to show you after that, a buyer tip Where I take a swing at the most overused piece of advice in real estate. Marry the house, date the rate. It's not wrong, but it's lazy and I'm going to tell you why. Quick, tight. Look into the DFW housing data.Prices, inventory and days on market actually sit right now. Followed by an agent tip that might be the most important thing that you do for your business all week.It costs nothing and it takes about five minutes. Then it's on to Mike's mind and buckle up, because six months of me not doing this segment means I got a backlog. Shut up.Failed Pentagon audits, a housing bill nobody's going to sign. Wall street dumping houses. And yeah, I got some aliens. It's all in there.We'll follow that with a seller tip about the one mistake that's quietly costing sellers thousands in this market.Then we're going to close with the big one, the AI tool that I've been building for most of this year that tells you exactly what the Internet says about you and how to fix it. It's real estate finance and just enough madness to keep it interesting. So hit play and let's make sense of it together.But before we dive in, just a quick word and it'll be quick. This show isn't backed by sponsors or a media team.It's just me showing up every couple weeks to break down a market that's getting a little stranger every single day. And I do it because these conversations turn into real relationships, real clients, and real trust. And that's what keeps this thing alive.So if you get value out of what you hear today, the best way to support it is simple. Subscribe, share with someone who needs it or leave a quick review. It costs you nothing and it genuinely helps me out. And two other things.One, if you or anyone in your circle or your clients is looking at buying, selling, or refinancing, reach out. That is my actual day job and it's what keeps me showing up behind this mic every six months, I guess.Two, if you're a realtor and this AI stuff we talk about sparks something in you, that's the other half of what I do. Now email me. All my info's in the show notes. And honestly, it's pretty easy to find. It's kind of the whole point of today's episode.So before we talk about this week's market update, I do owe everyone an explanation on why I've been in no show for the last six months. I didn't die. I didn't Quit. I just needed to refocus a bit and I changed companies again. But more on that later.If you've been a regular listener, welcome back. Yes, I know it's been a while. We're going to talk about that. And if you're new to the whole show, then welcome for the first time.Today's episode is going to be a little bit different than what you might hear from me the next time out, because before I talk about rates or the housing market or any of the chaos that's gone down since I last hit record, I want to tell you what I've actually been working on for the last six months. Because this show is part of what came out of it, and it changes how I'm going to do things going forward a little bit. So here's what happened.About six months ago, I started getting the same question over and over from Realtors who listen to the show and from agents that I work with on a regular basis. They'd ask, hey, Mike, how do I get more leads in a slower market? And do you think AI is going to change how Realtors do business?And the honest answer was, I do think I know a way. And yes, AI is going to change. And it has changed how real estate gets done. And the interesting part is that the two answers are very much related.So here's what I mean. Most agents, and me too, if I'm being honest, had a Zillow profile that hadn't been updated since 2019.They had a Facebook page with incomplete information, if any at all. About the one thing that we're all trying to do for a living, real estate.And when I try to Google myself, or just a mortgage lender in DFW or a few of the agents that I work with, it's kind of surprising how sparse, mismatched, and incomplete the information was. And here's the part that really kind of hit me.Something like 62% of people start their search for a realtor online, and AI is now leading and shaping that search, especially on Google. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Gemini.So the person searching for a home and the agent trying to get found, well, now it's all tied together. All of it runs through AI and how AI drives things. So I started digging a little further. What I found was not particularly good.Most agents have three different headshots across four different platforms with old phone numbers buried in the bio, license numbers that don't match or don't even show up at all. A LinkedIn that says one thing and a Zillow that says another, and an Instagram that hasn't been touched.The kids were in elementary school and when AI reads all of that, because that is what it does now, it reads everything and it forms an opinion. Sometimes the wrong one and sometimes no opinion at all, which honestly might be a little worse.And then I did the most uncomfortable thing that I could have done. I ran the same exercise on myself. And what I found was a little bit embarrassing, honestly.Different headshots, inconsistent bios, two different phone numbers floating around, a LinkedIn. Still talking about my old mortgage company two companies ago, a podcast bio that didn't match my mortgage bio.And I looking at all of this going, yeah, who is this guy? Exactly. It doesn't make any sense. All the while I was teaching classes about how to use AI and I realized that I had to practice what I preach.Because even though I was teaching agents how to use it in a basic way, I wasn't really focused on the specific things that could actually help their business. I showed them what it could do, but not how to actually do it or where to even use it.So here I was, teaching agents about AI, changing the game, and my own digital footprint was a complete wreck. So I shut up for a little while and I went to work. And here's the thing. I didn't just refresh a logo and call it good.I rebuilt my entire brand from scratch. My new name is Mike Mills tx. Not service first Mike, not core community Mike, not any future employer Mike, just Mike Mills tx.Because here's the reality of the industry. Loan officers move banks like realtors move brokerages. I've watched it happen for 17 years.Guys spend entire decades building a brand around their company name. And then when the company changes ownership or the comp plan shifts or whatever and they walk, they're starting over from zero.So I'm done with all that. Mike Mills TX is a durable thing. Mike. Mike millstx.com is the email that's never going to change.My team is Core Community Mortgage and I currently lend through GVC Mortgage. And one or both of those may change someday. Or maybe not.But the constant across however many companies I might work for over the next 15 to 20 years is me. And that's what my clients are buying. My brain, not my bank. So that was step one. New name, new email, new domain.Then I went through every platform, every profile, every bio, every photo, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok X, YouTube, Zillow, realtor.com, even the random sites I forgot existed.I had a profile on some lender directory that I signed up for back in like 2017 and had no idea I was there until I went looking now, every single one, same headshot, same bio, same contact, same voice. It was annoying. It took way longer than it should have. It was trial and error at its finest.And there were a couple weeks where I just sat at my desk going, why am I doing all of this? Because nobody's even going to notice. And as tedious and time consuming as it was, there was a payoff.Because if you make it consistent and own your branding, you really only have to do it once. You can make a few tweaks here and there.I still got a couple of holes I got to fill in on some lesser used platforms because the Internet is vast and almost forever, so anything out there on you, you've got to be aware of. But the heavy lift, it's done one time. And here's what I learned.AI noticed once I got consistent across platforms, the way AI talked about me changed. The summaries got sharper, the recommendations got better, and.And people started showing up in my inbox saying things like, hey, I was talking to Chat GPT for a mortgage guy in DFW and your name came up. That has never happened to me before this year. And it's happening because the work is now done. So that was the rebuild.But three other things did come out of it that I wasn't planning for. One, I got CE certified by the state of Texas to teach this stuff.I got three approved CE courses for realtors right now, all about how AI is changing the way that buyers and sellers find their agents and what to do about it and how to use a and build tools to reach more people. So if you're a Texas Realtor and you need CE hours and you want to learn from somebody who's gone through this themselves, those classes exist.So reach out and I'll get you a schedule. Two, I built a tool because doing this audit manually for every agent who asked me, so what does AI know about me? Was going to bury me.So I built an AI workflow that does the brand audit automatically. It scans every platform, it finds the gaps, and it tells you exactly what to fix.I'm going to show you exactly what it does in the last segment of today's episode, and you'll have two options at the end. Build one for yourself, or just send me an email and I'll run it for you.Either way, you'll know what AI says about you and three the show because the podcast is part of the brand too. And honestly, coming back with the same intro, the same setup, like nothing changed, didn't quite feel right. So this is somewhat of a soft relaunch.New brand, same goal, same Texas focus. And now there's a companion newsletter called the Agent Algorithm that drops the same day as every episode.Read it, listen or both links are in the show notes. So if you've been listening to me for the past couple years, well, thank you for sticking around.The show is still a market update for Texas Realtors. The data is still Texas specific and Mike's mind is still going to be. However weird the world feels that week, none of that's changing.What's changing is that you're also going to hear about AI tools, AI workflows and the consulting side of things, because that's a real part of what I do now. And I think it's going to make this show even better and hopefully give you a little bit more value for your business.Six months gone, new brand, same goal. Helping Texas Realtors make sense of a market that gets weirder by the week. And honestly, kind of glad back to be behind the mic onto the rest.All right, so let's start where we always do. Because no matter what's going on in the world, the question every Realtor is asking this week is the same. Hey Mike, what are the rates?And this week's answer is actually a little bit better than it's been.But the story behind it is the interesting part because it runs straight through a war, a whole lot of oil, and a fed that just got a brand new face at the top. So buckle up. But first, the numbers.According to Mortgage News Dailies index, as of July 6, 2026, the 30 year fixed conventional mortgage sits around 6.59%. The 15 year conventional rate sits at about 6.16%.The 30 year FHA rate is about 6.17%, the 30 year VA rate is about 6.19% and the 30 year jumbo is about 6.75%. Now these are market averages provided by Mortgage News Daily and not a rate quote.Your actual rate depends on credit, loan type, down payment and a handful of other factors. So talk to a licensed mortgage professional like me to get your actual rate based on your actual situation compliance solved.Now here's the good news buried in all these numbers. Rates have actually come down over the last couple of weeks. We, we did have a spike and then we had a weak jobs report that I'll get to in a minute.That basically erased it. We're not at the lows of the year, but we are off from recent highs.And to understand why we're sitting here at all, you have to understand what happened this year, because it's a wild story and it's not over. So let's rewind a little bit. So back in late February, the US and Israel went to war with Iran. We all know this.And Iran's response wasn't just to fire back at Israel, it was to close the straight of Hormuz. And that's a little pinch point at the top of the Persian Gulf, where about a quarter of the world's seaborn oil moves through every single day.And Iran just shut it down. They mined it, they attack tankers, the whole thing. The oil went bananas. Brent crude, over $120 a barrel at a peak, some days spiking way past that.Gas at the pump jumped more than a dollar a gallon. And, and here's why that matters for your mortgage rate. Even if you never thought about oil in your life. Oil is in everything.It moves every truck, every shipment, every product on every shelf. When oil spikes, the price of basically everything spikes with it. That's inflation. And inflation is the single biggest enemy of low mortgage rates.So through the spring, inflation came roaring back. March CPI hit 3.3%, and then it climbed even further, and we're now sitting around 4.2%. And that's the highest it's been in quite a while.And it's almost entirely an energy story. Now. Here's where it turns a little bit, because back in April, the US and Iran reached a ceasefire and it held mostly.And oil has come back down pretty hard. Brent's back at around $70 a barrel, down from that 120 plus wartime peak. So the pressure that was shoving inflation up is actually easing.And that's why rates have drifted down a little bit more from the spring highs. But this is the part that nobody's really saying, clearly it's not over.The Strait of Hormuz still isn't running at full capacity, shipping still well below where it was before the war. And insurance companies still don't fully trust it. Iran still technically controls whether the straight stays open or not.And they've reminded everybody about that more than once. So the risk hasn't gone away, it's just gone quiet. And markets are still pricing in this calmer version.But if the straight fires back up, oil spikes again. Inflation reignites, and a little bit of rate relief that we just got evaporates.And that's why rates really aren't dropping like everyone had kind of hoped. The forecasters who told you that we'd be in the mid fives by the summer, they were wrong. And yes, I was in that group too.Although in my defense, I did not have U. S goes to war with Iran on my 2026 bingo card. But I digress. There's also a whole other layer to this that most people completely missed.You see, while everyone was focused on Iran, the US made another move back in January that didn't get near the attention that it should have. We captured Maduro in Venezuela and the President stated explicitly that we were taking control of Venezuela's oil.Now Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. 303 Billion barrels, about a fifth of the entire global total. And what nobody connected was who is Iran's biggest oil customer? China.Who is Venezuela's biggest oil customer? Also China and Russia is in that mix too.So when you take Iran oil offline and put Venezuelan oil under US control at the same time, what you're really doing is squeezing the energy supply of America's two biggest global competitors simultaneously. Now I'm not saying that that's the master plan, but I'm not saying it's not either. I'm just pointing out the facts.So energy is one front, but here's another one that nobody connects to your mortgage and it's the one that actually moves your rate bonds. So the thing that most people never learn is that your mortgage rate doesn't follow the Fed.It follows the bond market, specifically the 10 year Treasury. And when investors buy up US bonds, rates go down. When they back away, rates go up. It's that direct.And who's one of the biggest buyers in US Debt on the planet? Well, that would be China, along with a handful of other countries that may not exactly have our best interests at heart.So when we're squeezing China's energy supply on one side of the board, you have to ask what happens on the other side? What happens to their appetite for our debt?Because if the biggest buyers of our bonds decide to buy less or even sell or even use it as leverage, well, that puts upward pressure on bonds and that flows straight downhill to the rate that your buyer gets quoted on a three bedroom house in Mansfield. That's the part that blows my mind. You've got energy, wars, debt, leverage, superpowers moving pieces around a global chessboard.And at the very end of that entire chain is a family in North Texas, just hoping that their mortgage payment could comes down a couple hundred bucks so they can afford the house with a good backyard. Bigger things to think about than most people realize and all of it lands on your closing table. All right, what about the Fed?Well, real quick, because a lot's changed there too. Jerome Powell is out his term ended his chair back in May. Kevin Warsh is the new Fed chair, Trump's pick, confirmed and now running the show.And here's the tension you need to understand. Trump appointed Warsh because Trump wants rates down.However, the Fed is supposed to be independent, but Warsh got the job with a pretty clear understanding of what the man who appointed him wants. So you think new chair Trump's guy rates are coming down, right?Well, not so fast, because at the June meeting, the Fed came out more hawkish than anybody expected. The market was betting on cuts sometime this year.And instead the Fed signaled that with inflation still running hot, they might not cut at all this year. And some folks were even whispering a little bit about a hike.And that is quite the opposite of what everyone assumed a Trump appointed chair would do. So there's a real tug of war right now between what the White House wants and what the inflation data actually will allow.So what does this all actually mean for you working with buyers and sellers right now? Well, here's the takeaway. Rates are a little better than the spring, but they're not falling off a cliff.And anyone promising your buyers to just wait rates are about to tank is pretty much guessing the pressure could really go either way. A shaky economy and cooler energy could bring them down a little bit. But a straight flare up or sticky inflation could push them right back up.Nobody knows. Not me, not the Fed, and not the guy on YouTube with the countdown timer to 5% rates.Now, you've probably heard the line, marry the house, date the rate. And I've got some thoughts on that one because it's not wrong, it's just lazy and it's oversold.And I'm going to get into what it actually gets right and where it falls apart in the buyer tip in just a bit. So just hang tight there. So for right now, the rate picture is just this.It's better than the spring, it's still stuck in the mid sixes and nobody is holding a crystal ball. So plan around the rate that exists today, not the one that somebody's promising you in the next quarter. So that's the rate picture.It's messy, it's political, and it's tied to A war half a world away. But that's exactly why you've got somebody like me breaking it down for you every couple weeks.And that is the perfect setup for this week's buyer tip. Because there's a slogan that I'm going to take a swing. All right, Buyer tip of the week. And I'm going to step on a sacred cow here. So buckle up.You've heard it. Every agent DFW has said it. Marry the house, date the rate, and it rolls off the tongue. It sounds clever, and honestly, it's not even wrong.But that's exactly why it's a problem, because it's a bumper sticker, a thing that people say instead of having an actual conversation with their buyer. And it quietly oversells one half of itself. The date the rate part.Because date the rate is a promise that you'll be able to refinance later into something better. And nobody can promise that. The Fed just went hawkish. Rates are parked in the mid sixes, and the whole, ah, don't worry about it.You can refinance next year line, well, that is a maybe wearing a nice suit. It might happen and it might not. And if you sold somebody on a house that the assumption that it will and then it doesn't, well, that's on you.So here's how I'd actually like to frame it for your buyers. Flip the thing around a little bit. Don't wait on the rate. Wait on the right home. Because here's what's real in today's market.Your buyer has leverage right now that they haven't had in many years.Inventory's up, sellers are negotiating, and homes are sitting long enough that you can actually get concessions, get repairs, and even also get a price cut. That's the opportunity, and it's a real one sitting on the table right now. But here's the part that should light a little bit of a fire.That leverage could be temporary, because if rates do drop soon, every buyer that's been sitting on the sidelines waiting for their perfect number floods right back in. And when they do, all the negotiating room that you have today, it's gone. And the competition comes roaring back.Prices firm up, and multiple offers come back in style. A rate drop feels like good news, but. But it erases the exact leverage that your buyer has right now. So the refi, if it comes, awesome.That is a bonus. But it's not the plan. The plan is buy the right house at a price you negotiated very hard while you've got the upper hand.You know, I say it all the time. The best time to buy was yesterday. The second best time to buy is today. But I want to add a really honest asterisk to that today.If you can find the home that actually fits your family and your budget at a payment that you can live with, not a payment. You're praying a future refinance rescues you from a payment that works right now.And the good news is dfw right now, there's a lot of homes to choose from. So go find it now. I just told you that buyers have leverage. Well, let me show you the data that proves it.Here's where the Texas market actually sits. So let's talk about the housing data. And I'm keeping this one tight and short because the headline is simple.The Metroplex is doing the slow, boring thing. It is drifting sideways. And honestly, boring is good. Boring is healthy after the circus that we've been through. So here are the numbers for dfw.It's the latest from Netris and the Texas A and M Real Estate Research Center. So the median price landed around 400,000. That's about 8. 10 Of a percent from a year ago.So it's basically flat, a little bit softer, but no big cliff. The months of inventory right now sit at about 4.4, and that's more homes on the shelves than we've had in many years.Not a glut, but a real choice for buyers. Days on market sits at about 88. That breaks down to about 56 days to get under contract and then another 32 to close.So nearly three months from start to finish, houses are moving. They're just not sprinting. And closed sales came in around 9,200 for the month. So it's solid volume, and people are still buying.So here's the story, and basically one line and two things are true at once. Inventory keeps climbing, and prices are giving back small amounts. The softening held through the spring, but it stayed modest under 1%.But here's the tell, and this is the number that matters most for you. Seller price cuts. The typical DFW seller knocked about $15,000 off their original list price. That's roughly 3.6%.And about a quarter of all active listings knocked took a price cut in May. Now translate that for your seller, because it's the whole game right now. The buyer has options and a calculator.Price your listing to today's market, and it sells in two months. Price it to the neighbor's 2022 number, the one that they bragged about at the block party and your listing becomes one of the price cut statistics.It sits, it stales and it chases the market down. Now one more useful nugget. That 300,000 to 400,000 band is still where the market's living and healthy.That's about 26.1% of every sale in the Metroplex. So if you're working on move up buyers or first timers in that range, that is the fat part of the market and that's where activity is.So that's the housing market in Texas sideways softening a little. Plenty of inventory. And sellers who price right win. Why? Sellers who price on ego lose. Now here's what you can do about your own business.This week's Agent tip. So what is our agent tip of the week? Well, this one pairs with something that we're going to go deep into at the end of the show.So consider this kind of an appetizer. So here's the tip. Google yourself right now, today, before anything else this week. I'm serious.Pull out your phone, open an incognito tab so your own history doesn't skew it, and search your name plus realtor or plus your city.Then go one step further, open up chat GPT or Claude or Gemini or whatever and ask it who's a good realtor in blank whatever area you work and see if you come up and see what it says about you if you do. Because here's what most agents never stop to realize. Your next client is doing that search before they ever call you.Referrals aren't what they used to be. Somebody gives your name to a friend and that friend doesn't just call you, they google you first, they vet you.And more and more they're not even doing the Googling themselves, they're asking an AI to do it for em. So the question isn't am I a good agent? The question is what does the Internet say about me when I'm not in the room?And for most agents, the answer is not much or worse, nothing. An old headshot here, a dead Facebook page there, a phone number from two brokerages ago, reviews on one platform and nothing else. That's the tip.Audit yourself the way a client would find out what's actually out there before your next lead does.And if you do that little exercise this week and don't like what you find, well, don't worry, stick around to the last segment because that's exactly what I've been building this year and I'm going to show you how to fix the whole thing. But it starts here. Just go. Look, most of you have never actually seen what the client sees. All right?Let's take a little breath and get a little weird. Welcome to Mike's mind. So it's been six months since I did one of these. Six months.And in that time, the world did not slow down and wait for me to come back. So this isn't going to be the usual here's what's happened this week deal.This is more like here's the big stuff that's been rattled around in my brain the whole time that I was gone. Some of it's a few months old. But here's the thing.Unless you're wired like I am, and if you are very sorry, but most normal, well adjusted people don't catch half of this stuff the first time around. So while I've got your attention, let's go ahead and fix that.We're going to go from a failed Pentagon audit to a housing bill that nobody wants to sign. Wall street dumping houses and UFOs. And as always, I'll connect it. Or at least sort of connected.So let's start with the government doing fun government things. The Pentagon earlier this year failed its eighth straight audit. 8. That is trillions unaccounted for.Imagine your CPA calling you like, hey man, your books are off by a few trillion, but no biggie.And somehow you're still going to be the one who gets audited if you round wrong on your mileage on your schedule C. Now here's one that actually does matter to your business. And it's happening right now. Like the deadline is tomorrow or today.You see, there's a massive housing bill, the 21st century road to Housing act, sailed through Congress with VETO Proof majorities 85 to 5 in the Senate. And then two hours before the signing ceremony, the President just canceled it. He wouldn't sign it. And here's the weird part.It's not even because he hates the bill. His own press secretary called it historic promise kept the day before.He's holding it hostage as leverage to force a totally unrelated election bill.So this enormous housing package banning Wall street from buying up single family homes, cutting builder red tape, converting empty office space into housing, it's all just sitting there being used as a bargaining chip. But if he does nothing, it becomes law tomorrow, July 7, without his signature.So by the time you hear this, we might actually have the biggest housing law in decades passed by a guy refusing to sign it only in 2026.And speaking of Wall street and houses, remember how everyone spent years panicking, myself included, that hedge funds were buying up every starter home in America? They were. But plot twist, this spring, the big institutional landlords became net sellers, dumping homes at a rate of 408% over last year.And one particular outfit, Vinebrook, is selling off nearly 2,000 because, and I love this, they didn't have enough cash to cover their own debt. Sound familiar? So the same Wall street giants that couldn't stop buying are now quietly heading for the exits. It's funny how that works.Now, another one that could be a real deal killer in Texas and nobody talks about until it blows up a closing is home insurance. So Texas Premiums are up 79% since 2020. So the average DFW homeowner right now is paying three and a half to 4,500 bucks a year.And carriers are getting brutal.They're literally flying drones over your house, spotting a tree limb, touching your roof, and threatening to drop you if you don't fix it in two weeks. And I've seen home insurance quotes come in high at the last second and almost blow up a buyer's debt to income ratio right before closing.So it's not the sexy part of the business. But if you got a buyer on the edge of qualifying, get that insurance quote early, you don't want to learn that lesson the hard way.All right, let's get a little weird now, because, you know, that's why. Half a year, still hanging around, so. So a couple months back, a radar scan under the Giza Plateau. Those are the pyramids in Egypt.Found a giant engineered grid deep underground that some folks think looks like an energy system. Cool. Great. Love that for us. And at this point, I'm not even that surprised. I'm just waiting for Zillow to list it as a fixer upper with great bones.Then there's the magnetic poles. The national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that they may just stop moving around 2035.NASA says that Earth's magnetic weak spot is also growing. Animals are getting their migration scrambled. People are saying they just feel kind of off, but, hey, I'm sure it's nothing.Totally normal planet behavior.And to cap it off, the one that I really can't stop thinking about is there's a documentary out, and it's been out for a couple months now called the Age of Disclosure, where dozens of top government and intelligence officials go on record on camera saying UFOs are real, that we've recovered craft, and that this has been Going on for a very, very long time. On the record. And it barely made a ripple. Marco Rubio was one of them, The Secretary of State. So this was 10 years ago.That is the only thing that anybody would talk about for a month. Now it's just a regular Tuesday. And that's the part that kind of gets me.Not that it's happening, but that we've all gotten so numb to the chaos that the government literally confirms that aliens exist, and it's basically a scroll past wild. So, yeah, that is Mike's mind. Six months of it crammed into one segment.Failed audits, a housing bill held hostage, Wall street bailing on houses, insurance, eating your buyers alive. Ancient energy grids, wandering magnetic poles, and aliens. On the record. But here's the thing I always land on.No matter how insane the headlines get, and they are very insane. Right now, the actual market you work in every day still comes down to a few simple numbers. Payment, inventory, demand rates.Everything else is noise. Entertaining noise, but noise nonetheless. And that's Mike's mind. Welcome back to the chaos with me.All right, let's get back to business with this week's seller tip of the week.And this one connects straight back to the housing data that I just gave you, because there is a number in there that should scare every seller in North Texas. Remember what I said. The typical DFW seller is cutting about $15,000 off their original list price.That's roughly 3.6% and a quarter of all active listings took a price cut last month. So here's the tip, and it's simple. Don't be that seller. Price it right the first time. Because here's what's actually happening out there.Yes, the market's still moving. Yes, homes are still selling, but they are not selling in 48 hours with 12 offers anymore. That market is gone and has been gone for a while.Right now, a home in DFW takes around 88 days from start to finish. Call it two months just to get under contract, then another month to close.And the single biggest thing that determines whether or not you are on the fast end or the slow end of that is your price. So let's talk about the overpricing trap. It feels good to list high. Your neighbor sold for a big number back in 2022.Your home is nicer than theirs, so you tack on a little extra just to leave room to negotiate. I get it. But here's what actually happens when you overprice in this market. One, you get ignored. Buyers today have options and A calculator.They've got 4.4 months of inventory to pick from. So your overpriced home doesn't get lowball offers, it gets no offers. It just sits. Number two, you trigger the what's wrong with it problem.Once Your listing crosses 30 to 40 days on market, buyers stop asking what's the price? And start asking what's wrong with it. Even when nothing is your days on market number becomes a scarlet letter.And number three, and this is the one that really stings, you end up actually netting less.The seller who prices high sits for two months and then starts chasing the market down with cut after cut always ends up selling for less than the seller who priced it right from day one. You didn't leave room to negotiate. You left room to lose money. So here's the real tip and it is the least glamorous advice I'll give you all episode.Listen to your realtor. When your agent brings you comps and tells you what the market will actually bear, that's not them low balling you for a quick sale.That's them keeping you out of the price cut statistics. A good agent is looking at the exact same data that I just showed you and they're trying to price you to sell, not to sit.The sellers who fight their agent on price are the ones knocking 15 grand off in month three anyway. They just took the scenic route to get there and lost momentum along the way. So price it for the market you're in, not the one that you remember.Trust the person that you hired to guide you. Do those two things and you're the listing that sells while the one down the street collects price cuts.All right, now for the segment that I've been building towards all episode this, this AI tool of the week question for every realtor listening and answer it honestly.If a buyer pulled out their phone right now and googled you or asked Gemini or Claude or Chat GPT who's a good realtor in Arlington, what would they actually find? Not what you think they'd find, but what's actually there. Because here's the uncomfortable truth most agents don't know.And it matters because it's not just buyer searching anymore. It's AI deciding who to recommend when a buyer goes on a home buying journey.AI's reading every single profile that you ever made, every bio, every, every photo and every old phone number that you forgot was still floating on out there.So for the next few minutes, I'm going to tell you the five things that AI is reading about you which one matters most and what that fix actually looks like. So there are five buckets that AI is checking on you and five questions that you should ask yourself. Does Google know you exist and what you do?Most agents don't have a Google business profile and the ones that do have mostly never touched it. Number two, is your website actually doing anything for you? Not just pretty, but functional. It loads fast, it has a way to contact you.Your bio matches your reality, and more importantly, does it belong to you or does it belong to your broker or your real estate company? Number three, do you have enough recent reviews on more than just one platform? One five star review from 2017 doesn't cut it.20 On Google and 0 everywhere else isn't great, but it's better because reviews drive search period. End of story. Number four, do you say the same thing about yourself everywhere? Same photo, same phone number, same bio, same brokerage.This one's the killer and we're going to come back to it. Number five, are you actually posting on the platforms that you claim to be on?A dead profile is not as bad as no profile, but why have it if you don't use it at least occasionally? Now, of those five things, the one that's quietly costing most agents the most points is number four, brand consistency. Why?Because it's the one that nobody thinks to check and is the easiest and most important place to start. You're not lying anywhere. You just set up these platforms at different times. The headshot you used in 2019 is still on your Zillow profile.The phone number from your first brokerage is still in the same directory that you forgot existed. And the bio that you wrote to get your license is full of phrases. AI's read on 10,000 agent profiles this week.You're not standing out, you're getting filtered. When AI reads your profiles, they don't match. Different photos, different numbers, different brokerage names.It can't tell which version of you is real or really if you are the same person or five different people. So it picks the wrong one or just doesn't recommend you at all. I literally learned this on myself.Three different headshots across four platforms, two phone numbers, a LinkedIn that's still my old mortgage company a year after I left, and AI looking at all of it going, who is this guy exactly and what does he do? And that's the silent killer. Not do you have a presence? It's is your presence saying the same thing everywhere A buyer or AI might find you.So a good one has the Same headshot on every platform. It's got the same bio with the same message and personality across all of them.One phone number, one email, your current brokerage, everywhere, including the random sites that you forgot about and your active license number. Where it should be and not where it shouldn't be. That's it. It is not glamorous, it is not creative.It is plumbing and infrastructure, the boring stuff. But you can't do business if you don't have a place to work. This is your foundation, but once it's done, it's mostly done forever.You're just checking it once a quarter and not rebuilding it. Now, when I run this audit for an agent, I score it 100 points total, five categories weighted by impact.In the score lands in one of these three bands. If you're 70 or above, you're in the green. Your online presence is working as an asset. And honestly, most agents I've audited don't get there.I think. I think I've had one so far. You might be in the gold, which is 40 to 69. It's functional, but it is leaking value.And this is where the majority of agents land. And if you're red, which is under 40, that it is actively hurting you. More common than you would think, though.And it's almost always agents who would swear that they were doing fine. So most agents just don't know what band they're in. They guess green, but they're usually gold or red. Now, could you do this audit yourself?Absolutely. You can do it manually and just spend a few hours or days going through each profile.I did it, but you just wouldn't fully know what needs to be changed. Or you could use AI to do it for you. It's faster and it's better, but you wouldn't have to build it.You'd need a way to scrape your own profiles across every platform. A rubric to score it against a brand foundation document with your voice, audience and band language list.So every piece of AI content you put out from now on stays in your voice and the discipline to actually use all that. And most agents who try, they would stop after the scrape. They look at the mess, get overwhelmed and close their laptop.I'm not knocking the DIY path. I did it. If you're tech savvy and you got a free Saturday, try it out. There are tools for every piece. Chat, GPT can help, cloud can help.You can build a basic version for yourself, but honestly, most of you don't want to do that. You want your Score your fixed list and to move on with your day. And that's why I built this tool. So here's the offer.Send me an email, mike millstx.com tell me you want the audit.I'll reach out, I'll run it and I'll get you the report, the scorecard, your brand, the five biggest opportunities ranked by impact, and the fix list with what you should change first or if you'd rather do it yourself, same email. Then we can schedule a one on one and I can show you what I built and how you can build it yourself.So do you want to learn or you just want it done for you? That is the question. Either way, at least you'll know.So whether you build the audit yourself or you let me build it for you, or you walk away from this episode and ignore the whole thing. Now you know the question to ask AI is here and it's being used in every walk of life.So when people Google search realtors and an opinion is going to be formed about you, make sure it's the right one. All right, that is going to be a wrap for this one. Here's what I want you to take away from today. The world got loud these last six months.A war, a new Fed chair, a housing market grinding sideways, and enough chaos in the headlines to make anyone dizzy. But underneath all of it, your business still comes down to the same simple things.Understand the market, price things right, take care of your people and make sure the world can actually find you when they go looking. Do that, and you're already ahead of 90% of the folks just reacting to headlines. And that last part being findable, that's the one that most ignore.Don't be one of them. Go Google yourself this week, see what's there. And if you don't like what you find, you know where I'm at. It's good to be back. I miss doing this.Let's make this next chapter the best one yet. And until next time, be good humans. Just keep grinding because life is what you make it. So make it great. See you next time.