Here’s the whole email. We’ll take it apart afterward, but read it first, because the format teaches better than any explanation:
Subject: Franklin market check: prices up, homes sitting longer
Hi Sarah,
Quick read on the Franklin market for June, straight from the MLS:
- Median sale price: $512,000 (up about 2% from May)
- Days on market: 31 (was 24 this spring)
- Active listings: 412 (highest since last fall)
- List-to-sale ratio: 98.1% (sellers are giving a little back)
- New listings: 187 (steady)
What it means: buyers finally have some room to negotiate, but well-priced homes are still moving in under a month. If you’ve been waiting for less competition, this is the most breathing room you’ve had in two years.
Questions about your street specifically? Hit reply. I read every response.
Jon
That’s it. Five numbers, one sentence of interpretation, one invitation to reply. Swap in your own market’s numbers and you could send this next week. The rest of this post explains why each piece is there, where the numbers come from, and how to angle the same data for buyers, sellers, and your sphere.
Why this email works
It’s five numbers, not fifteen. The temptation is to forward the full MLS stats package. Nobody reads it. Five numbers fit on one phone screen and cover price, speed, supply, negotiating power, and flow. Anything beyond that dilutes instead of adds.
Every number gets a parenthetical. “$512,000” means nothing to a civilian. “$512,000 (up about 2% from May)” tells them which direction the wind is blowing. The comparison is doing the work, not the figure.
One interpretation, committed. The “what it means” line takes a position: buyers have room, good homes still move. Most agents hedge here because they’re scared of being wrong next month. Hedged updates read like the weather report and get deleted like one. You’re allowed to be directionally right and precisely uncertain.
The call to action is a reply. Not “book a call,” not “check your home value,” just reply. Replies are where the actual conversations start, and every reply tells inbox providers your email is wanted, which helps everything else you send. If deliverability is on your mind, the reply habit matters more than most technical fixes.
What a market update email is actually for
Not to prove you’re smart. It’s for owning a question every homeowner and future buyer already asks: “how’s the market?” They ask it at cookouts, they type it into Google, and they get either national headlines that don’t match your town or a Zillow graph they can’t read.
The agent who answers that question in plain English, every month, for the specific ZIP codes the reader cares about, becomes the market. When the reader’s timing turns, there’s no agent selection process. There’s just you.
It’s also the easiest email you’ll ever produce on schedule, because the MLS writes the first draft every month. That reliability makes it the anchor of a monthly send, whether it stands alone or runs as the lead section of a full real estate newsletter.
The five numbers, and where to find them
All five come from your MLS’s monthly stats package, which most MLSs publish by the end of the first week of the new month. Some MLSs label them slightly differently; the concepts are universal.
1. Median sale price
Use median, not average, because one $3M sale skews an average and readers will notice the whiplash. Compare to last month or last year, whichever tells the honest story. If both are boring, say it’s flat. Flat is information too.
2. Days on market
The speed dial. Rising DOM means buyers can slow down and negotiate; falling DOM means “sleep on it” costs the house. This is often the number that changes a reader’s behavior, because it maps directly to how fast they’d need to act.
3. Inventory (active listings)
The supply gauge. Use active listing count or months of supply, whichever your MLS makes easy. Context beats precision: “highest since last fall” lands better than the raw figure ever will.
4. List-to-sale ratio
The negotiating power meter, and the number civilians have usually never seen. At 100% or above, sellers are getting asking price or better. At 98%, buyers are winning small concessions. One sentence of framing makes readers feel like they got insider data, because honestly, they did.
5. New listings
The flow number. It hints at where inventory is heading before inventory moves, and it’s the one sellers watch without knowing it: new listings are their future competition.
The one sentence of interpretation
This is the entire difference between your email and a stats forward, so here’s the discipline:
- Pick the number that moved most and explain that one. Don’t summarize all five.
- Say what it means for a decision, not for the economy. “Buyers have room to negotiate” is a decision. “The market is normalizing” is a shrug.
- One or two sentences, then stop. The restraint is what makes it feel confident.
A useful test: could the reader repeat your interpretation at dinner? “My agent says buyers finally have some leverage but good houses still go fast” passes. “My agent says conditions remain mixed amid evolving dynamics” does not, and nobody has ever said it out loud.
One more discipline: pick the honest comparison. Real estate is seasonal, so “days on market up from May” might just be summer doing what summer does. A decent rule is to compare price levels year over year (June to last June) and momentum month over month, and to say which one you’re using. And if you work a small market where twenty sales move the median, tell readers that: “small-town medians bounce around, so watch the three-month trend, not any single month.” Admitting the noise makes the signal more credible, and it’s exactly the kind of caveat a Zillow graph will never give them.
Same numbers, three audiences
The five numbers don’t change. The “what it means” sentence and the closing line should, because a first-time buyer and a homeowner of twenty years are asking different questions of the same data.
For buyers: frame around negotiating room and timing. “31 days on market means you can actually schedule a second showing now. Inspection contingencies are back on the table too.” Close with an offer to set up a search.
For sellers and likely sellers: frame around competition and pricing. “412 active listings is real competition, but the 98% list-to-sale ratio says priced-right homes still get nearly full ask. Overpricing is the only expensive mistake out there right now.” Close with the offer of a street-level version of these numbers.
For your sphere: frame around conversation value. These are people who mostly aren’t transacting, so give them the line they’ll repeat: “If a neighbor asks, tell them homes are taking about a week longer to sell than spring, and that’s the most normal this market has looked in years.”
Sending three variants sounds like triple work. It’s the same skeleton with a different middle sentence and closer, maybe ten extra minutes. This is exactly what list segmentation exists for: tag contacts as buyer, seller, or sphere once, and every monthly send goes out three ways automatically. In CloseDaily’s Dominate plan ($299/mo, 7-day trial with card) that’s the built-in segmentation plus the drip builder doing the routing; new leads can also get a version of the update inside their drip campaign sequences for buyers and sellers so the market update works even on contacts you captured yesterday.
How often to send it
Monthly. It matches the MLS publishing cycle, it’s frequent enough that trends are visible, and it’s slow enough that the numbers actually change between sends. Weekly market updates in a residential market mean narrating noise, and readers can tell.
Two timing details worth stealing: send within a week of your MLS releasing the numbers, so “June update” arrives in early July rather than August, and pick a consistent send day. Predictability trains the open.
Your 20-minute monthly routine
- Pull the five numbers from your MLS stats package (5 minutes)
- Write the parenthetical comparison next to each (3 minutes)
- Write one interpretation sentence about the number that moved most (5 minutes)
- Adjust the middle sentence and closer for buyer, seller, and sphere segments (5 minutes)
- Proofread once and schedule (2 minutes)
That’s the entire discipline. No design, no graphics, no ghostwritten national commentary. Five real numbers about the place your readers actually live, one honest sentence about what the numbers mean, twelve times a year. Market updates are one email in a larger program; for how they fit alongside newsletters, drips, and follow-up, our email marketing guide for agents walks through the whole system.
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