Forget waiting for lower rates. KW’s Jason Abrams has a playbook for finding business anyway

The housing market may be slower, but people still have to move. For real estate agents, that makes identifying motivated buyers and sellers increasingly important as elevated mortgage rates keep some would-be participants on the sidelines.Jason Abrams, chief industry and strategy officer at Keller Williams, discussed those dynamics Thursday at HousingWire’s Mortgage Banking Summit in Dallas.After his speaking session, he added further context on the recent move toward higher mortgage rates having an immediate effect on both sides of the transaction. “You see fewer listings hitting the market because with those sellers that don’t need to move but might want to move, they don’t want to leave that low rate,” Abrams said. “And at 7.5%, it’s hard to convince them to do it.” Sticker shock is real, but agents shouldn’t freeze On the buyer side, he said consumers are confronting a psychological hurdle as much as a financial one. Mortgage rates around 7.5% are far from unprecedented, but that does little to offset consumers’ expectations after years of exceptionally low rates, Abrams added. “You see people that now just have sticker shock, which is really interesting because when you look ...