I. Nobody loves a good crash more than me! (except for everyone else in the mortgage industry)
This is because crashes usually result in lower rates.
So, needless to say, we’re celebrating oil’s crash from $94 per barrel yesterday to as low as $82 this morning – and rates followed.
This puts us very close to the “6.25% average rate sweet spot” (where purchase volume revives) that Logan Mohtashami references.
Oil prices fell after Lebanon and Israel announced a ceasefire and Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz in response.
II. YOUR GRANDMA’S SEO – EVERYTHING THAT WORKED WAAAAY BACK IN 2024 NO LONGER WORKS (AT ALL)
We get as much as 50% of our business from online leads – thanks to the thousands of hours of work from our exceptional marketing team.
And…much of that work was rendered null and void over the last six months, as our online volume plummeted this spring.
The reason is AI – along with Google’s fast and furious SEO rule changes in response to the AI revolution.
(SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as a reminder, is the practice of improving a website’s content, structure, and authority so it ranks higher in unpaid search engine results — driving more organic traffic)
Our marketing team has since revived our online lead volume – but it required an entirely new approach and a shocking level of sophistication to figure out the new landscape.
And that is why our marketing team is setting up a webinar to show agents how to navigate the new SEO landscape.
Non-selfishly, our team truly just wants to warn agents who rely on SEO in any way to get business.
Selfishly, our marketing team realizes that when our agents get more business, we get more business.
Everyone needs to optimize their online presence for many reasons, but here are two:
(1) Every one of your clients will search for you online – before engaging you.
In the olden days, “search” meant Googling (except those few weirdos using DuckDuckGo), but today it means both Googling and using AI engines.
It is essential to ensure clients only see accurate, optimized information about you – including your best reviews, your optimized bio, your optimized Google Business Page, and your website. If not, you’ll lose potential clients without even realizing it.
(2) You’ll get “free” business with optimized SEO.
I was on the phone this morning with a gentleman who received 6 transactions in 2024 from his optimized Google Business page alone; these were clients who came to him without any outreach on his part.
In the second half of 2025, he got nothing… So he just hired a consultant to help him update his SEO and Google Business page, so he can again get six transactions from just his meager, but optimized, online presence.
I know this sounds a bit hyperbolic because my blogs are always a bit hyperbolic. 😊
But – in all honesty – we see this stuff work in real time all the time – including right here at JVM.
Our webinar is on Thursday, May 14th. We will follow up with more info.
