The Chris List™

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I'm walking through our entire Seller AI Update System.

The messaging, the timing, the tools, all of it. No fluff, just the playbook.

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Now, let's get into The Chris List...
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​📝 [C]ontent: He bought his dream home but it was not listed
​🛠 [H]ow-To: Tool that turns your ugly past into content
​🔬 [R]esearch: Why your next client walks in not trusting you
​🎨 [I]nspiration: 125-year-old underwear brand just out-bold-ed you
​📧 [S]wipes: Email that makes you look psychic when deals go bad

📝 [C]ONTENT

He bought a house that wasn't for sale (and saved $160k) 🤝

Here's a story that should make every agent sit up a little straighter.

Ben Mutz, a 39-year-old retired Air Force officer, just closed on his dream home.

Six bedrooms, blended family, five kids, a 100-year-old Tudor with a red tile roof. Beautiful outcome.

Here's the part that stings: the house was never for sale. And there wasn't an agent anywhere in the deal.

Mutz used an app called Unlisted, which lets buyers waitlist themselves on homes that aren't on the market.

He found the house, favorited it, got added to the waitlist, and then just... waited.

When a neighbor mentioned the owners might be moving, he cross-referenced, realized it was his favorited home, and reached out directly through the app.

Then he did the thing.

Over six months, he and the owners texted. About sports. About life. They swapped photos of their kids and their dogs. They built an actual friendship.

By the time it came to price, the sellers told him, "Ben, we consider you family."

The result? He bought it for $800,000. It appraised at $960,000. In his words, if that home had hit the open market, it would've sold in two or three days for way more.

He got a $160,000 discount on his dream home. Because of a relationship.

Why this matters for agents:

Your first instinct reading this is probably panic. "Great, another app cutting agents out." And yeah, the disintermediation story is real and it's coming.

But read it again. What actually sealed this deal?

It wasn't the app. The app just opened the door. What won was six months of trust, connection, and a seller who felt like they were handing their home to family.

That is not a tech feature. That is the exact thing a great agent does.

The app didn't replace the agent. It replaced the transactional agent. The one who shows up, unlocks the door, and pushes paper.

Nobody builds a six-month friendship with a for-sale-by-owner and calls it a "tool." That's relationship-selling, and it's the one thing no app can automate.

So here's the takeaway: the agents who lose to Unlisted (ironically, they partner with agents) are the ones who were only ever a middleman.

The agents who win are the ones who were already doing what Ben did. Finding off-market homes. Writing the personal note. Building the human connection that makes a seller pick you over a higher offer.

Be the reason a seller says "we consider you family."

🛠 [H]OW-TO

Time-travel your marketing with a free tool from 2001 🕰️

Here's a content format that costs nothing and stops the scroll every single time: nostalgia.

People love seeing how far something has come. The glow-up. The "we've all been there."

And there's a free tool sitting right under your nose that lets you mine it endlessly: Wayback Machine.

Quick backstory: it's run by the nonprofit Internet Archive, it's been snapshotting websites since 2001, and it has archived hundreds of billions of pages.

Translation: almost every real estate company, portal, coach, and big-name agent has an embarrassing early website frozen in there forever.

And embarrassing early websites are content gold.

Here's the play:

1. Go to web.archive.org. Drop any URL into the search bar. A timeline appears showing every snapshot ever taken of that site.

2. Scroll to the earliest capture. Click the first year with dots on the calendar, pick a snapshot, and boom. You're looking at that brand in its awkward-teenager phase.

3. Screenshot the "before." Grab the oldest version.

4. Pull up today's version. Screenshot the "after."

5. Post the side-by-side. Before/after carousels, "guess whose website this was" reels, "real estate has come a LONG way" posts.

Instant engagement.

Here's your starter list of URLs to plug in, ranked oldest to newest so you can tell a real timeline story:

The coach:

• ​tomferry.com (Tom founded his company in the early 2000s, and his early site likely carried totally different branding before it became the Tom Ferry empire)

The iconic brand:

• ​remax.com (scroll to the late 90s. That red-white-and-blue balloon next to the clunky early web design is the crown jewel of this whole post)

The portal that changed everything:

• ​realtor.com (the grandfather, live since around 1996)

The personal one:

• Your own website (here is my first one), if it's been around a few years. Nothing humanizes you faster than laughing at your own glow-up.

The lesson isn't just "old sites are funny." It's that every one of these giants started ugly.

Tom Ferry, RE/MAX, all of them looked rough at the start. That's a genuinely reassuring message for an agent stressing that their own site or content isn't perfect yet.

You don't need perfect. You need to start.

Do this today: Pull up Tom Ferry's oldest snapshot next to their site today. Post it with the caption "The biggest names in real estate started here. Your content doesn't have to be perfect to build an empire. It just has to start."

Watch the comments roll in.

Nostalgia is the cheat code. The Wayback Machine makes it free.

🔬 [R]ESEARCH

One bad agent poisons the well for the next one 🪣

Here's a stat that explains why some clients walk in already skeptical of you, before you've said a word.

Researchers ran 21 studies with nearly 12,000 people to figure out how a single trust experience shapes the next one.

The headline finding: distrust after a bad experience grows about twice as fast as trust after a good one.

One burn does more damage than one win does good.

And it doesn't stay contained.

When someone gets let down by one Uber driver, one customer service rep, one vacation rental, they don't just distrust that person. They generalize it to the whole group.

As one researcher put it, you update your beliefs about the entire population with every single interaction.

The worst version is what they call exploitation. When someone trusts a person who turns out to be untrustworthy, distrust spikes hardest.

They don't just feel disappointed. They feel taken.

One wrinkle worth noting: the effect only applies to humans.

When people were paired with an algorithm that took all their money, their trust didn't drop at all. Our brains don't file AI interactions as "social," so we don't lump the bots together the way we lump people.

The Realtor takeaway:

That skeptical seller sitting across from you? There's a good chance their guard is up because of an agent they hired years ago, not because of anything you did.

The researchers said it plainly: if someone distrusts you, it may just be their perception of you is colored by a bad experience with someone in your line of work.

Our industry has a lot of those bad experiences floating around. Which means you're not starting at zero with a burned client. You're starting in the hole.

So stop trying to win them over with polish and badges. Win them over by being radically, almost annoyingly, dependable in the small stuff.

Answer when you say you will. Send what you promised. Tell them the hard truth about their price.

Because if one bad agent can drop their trust twice as fast, one great one can be the reason they trust the whole industry again.

Be that one.

🎨 [I]NSPIRATION

A 125-year-old underwear brand just got bolder than you 🩲

Hanes has been the definition of boring for over a century.

White tees. Six-packs of socks. The brand your mom bought you. Nobody's ever called Hanes "edgy."

Until now.

Hanes just dropped "Get Comfortable," a campaign built entirely on the situations that live in your anxiety nightmares.

One spot shows a guy getting his pants yanked down at a bar as a prank. Another has a woman grocery shopping in her underwear.

The twist? The main character stays completely unbothered, because Hanes makes them feel that confident.

Then there's "Keep Em On," which tracks across a floor covered in discarded clothes to a couple in bed, their Hanes socks the only thing peeking out from under the covers.

And the NYC transit ads read "Très Cheek" over a closeup of a woman's backside in red Hanes undies.

For a 125-year-old basics brand, this is a full send. They even refreshed the logo to match the new attitude.

Here's what makes it smart, not just shocking: Hanes didn't abandon what they sell. They still sell comfort.

They just found a bold, funny, slightly uncomfortable way to dramatize it. The product is still the hero. The delivery just stopped being boring.

The Realtor takeaway:

Real estate marketing is the Hanes-in-2010 of industries. Same white-tee content on repeat. "Just Listed." "Just Sold." "Happy to help!" Beige on beige on beige.

You don't need to sell something new. You need to say the same old thing in a way that makes people actually look up.

A few ways to steal the Hanes move:

Take the awkward thing and own it. Everybody's scared to talk about a home's flaw, a price drop, the commission question. Make that the ad. "Yes, this house has the world's ugliest wallpaper. Here's why you'll buy it anyway."

Dramatize the boring benefit. You don't sell "great communication." You sell "I texted back at 11pm on a Sunday so my client could sleep." Show the moment, not the adjective.

Refresh the delivery, not the product. Same neighborhood tour you've posted 50 times. New format, new hook, new attitude. Boring content isn't a content problem. It's a delivery problem.

Hanes proved a brand your grandparents wore can become the one people talk about.

Your beige "Just Listed" post can too. It just has to get uncomfortable first.

📧 [S]WIPES

The email nobody sends: "here's what could go wrong" 🧨

Last week's research had a brutal takeaway: one bad experience costs you about double what a good one earns.

So the smartest trust move you can make is getting ahead of the bad experience before it happens.

Here's how. Deals are falling apart at a record pace right now.

Contract cancellations hit 13.5% in early 2026, almost triple the normal 5%.

Which means the odds something goes sideways on your next deal are higher than they've been in years.

Most agents wait for the problem, then scramble. You're going to name the three most common blowups upfront, tell your client exactly how you handle each, and look like the only pro in the room when one actually hits.

Send this the day you go under contract.

📧 The pre-transaction email (swipe it):

Subject: Before anything goes sideways, read this

Hi [Name],

We're under contract and I'm excited. But I've been doing this long enough to tell you the truth: a good chunk of deals hit a bump between here and closing.

Right now, nationally, more than 1 in 8 deals fall apart.

Ours won't be one of them. Here's why.

There are three things that blow up most deals. I want you to know about all three now, so if one shows up, you're not panicking. You're watching me handle it.

1. Financing falls through at the last minute. Even with a pre-approval, a lender can pull the plug days before closing over a credit change or a new debt.

My fix: I stay in weekly contact with your lender from day one and flag any wobble early. Do not open a new credit card, finance a car, or change jobs before we close. If financing gets shaky, I already have backup lender relationships ready.

2. The inspection turns into a fight. This is the number one deal-killer, and it's almost always about who pays for what, not the repair itself.

My fix: we focus on the major stuff (structure, roof, systems, safety) and let the cosmetic noise go. I've negotiated hundreds of these. There's almost always a middle number that keeps everyone happy.

3. The appraisal comes in low. If the home appraises under the contract price, financing gets complicated fast.

My fix: I've already pulled the comps that support our number, and I know exactly how to challenge a low appraisal or restructure the deal if one comes in. This is not the emergency it feels like.

That's it. Three bumps, three plans. Save this email. If one of these happens, I'll be the calm one, because we already talked about it.

Talk soon,
[Your name]

Why this works: You're not hiding the risk. You're the only agent who named it before it happened. When the bump hits, you don't look surprised. You look prophetic.

That's the fastest way to turn a shaky moment into the reason they refer you for life.
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​💎 Pro tip: Don't save these three for after you're under contract. Put them in your listing presentation too.

Walk into every listing appointment and say: "Here are the three things that kill most deals right now, and here's exactly how I handle each one."

You just separated yourself from every agent who only talks about photos and price.

Most agents sell the easy part: getting an offer. You're selling the hard part: keeping the deal alive to closing.

In a market where 1 in 8 deals falls apart, that's the pitch that wins the listing.