Here is a post from 2012. The market was a little different back then. We still had a lot of upside down homeowners, lots of Short Sales and quite a few REOs. Still, there’s good stuff here. Challenge yourself! See if you can’t get one by nightfall!
Can you get a listing today? I’m waiting . . . can you? Let me rephrase the question: If you were to be hung by the neck until dead at sunset if you didn’t get a listing today, could you get one? I thought so. Getting a Listing is something you can DO in real estate. You can’t force a sale, you can’t force a closing . . . but you can DO a listing. You can get one. It is always within your power.
And today, more than ever, a listing is precious. Inventories are so low right now and prices are inching (and in some cases, racing) upwards. Multiple offers abound and the person with listings is in the driver’s seat. But listings are also hard to come by. Many potential sellers are sitting back, noticing the upcreep in prices and thinking: ‘If I just wait a few months maybe I won’t be so upside down . . . ‘
So, what can you do TODAY to get a listing? Here are 8 ideas:
1. Call all of your past clients. It’s a simple dialogue: you need their help. Inventory is drying up, buyers are frantic to find something. Have they heard of anybody thinking of selling? I would be surprised if you didn’t uncover at least 1 listing lead for every 20 calls.
2. Call all of your fence sitting, luke warm potential sellers and heat them up! They’re not doing themselves any favors by waiting. The bargains are disappearing rapidly and while they’re waiting for a few percentage points gain in equity, they’re missing opportunities. Here – use this set of graphics from Help-U-Sell University:
I love that graphic. Unfortunately, the improving market of the past four years has made it a bit irrelevant. Today, if you want to heat up a fence sitting seller, work on where they want to go. Spend an hour or two showing them houses, get them excited about moving. And if they’re moving out of state, start that referral relationship early and have the other agent help get them motivated.
3. Pull all the expired listings for the LAST 12 MONTHS – that’s right, a full year’s worth – and drop them a note about the improving market, the scarcity of listings and the fact that you can save them money!
4. Choose one of your buyer clients who is hot to trot but having trouble finding a suitable home. Working with them, isolate the one or two perfect neighborhoods for them. Then make a flyer with their photo and some humanizing detail, saying they’re looking for a home in that neighborhood. If you’d like to sell, contact Help-U-Sell. And put your ETM on the back. Deliver it however you’d like: snail mail, Excel’s mailbox stuffer program, slide it under the doormat . . . although if you’re trying to beat the hangman at sunset, you’d better stick to doormats.
5. Follow Kurt Steffien’s lead: start cultivating probate attorneys. They are certainly interested in being heroes to their estate clients, and will see your money saving (estate preserving) offer as a way to accomplish that. In other words: they get it. And if you get one and do a good job, it’s not just one listing, it could be many. For months and years to come. Really.
6. Work with Tony (today that’d be Alejandro, Mike or Soren) to build a landing page on your website to capture contact info on people wanting to know what their house is worth. (By the way: this home value landing page already exists on your website! AND, it generates a report instantly so that the people who request it don’t have to wait for a response) Then create a QR Code for it. Have flyers made with nothing more than the QR Code and the words: ‘See How Much Your Home Is Worth Today.’ Put them all over the place.
7. Call every FSBO in the area and ask: ‘If I were to find a buyer who made an offer that was acceptable to you, would you pay me a commission?’ (I know, I know . . .you guys usually choke when you have to say that word, but in this case it will serve you better than ‘Low Set Fee.’). The answer will almost always be yes, because they’ve usually made the same deal with every other Realtor in town. Quickly calculate what, say, 3% is (let’s assume it’s $4,500), and respond: ‘So if I find a buyer who makes an acceptable offer you’ll pay me 3% which is around $4,500 dollars, right? Let me show you what I can do for you for just $3,950*. I mean – I’m Help-U-Sell – you get my complete full service program for less than you’d pay some agent just to find you a buyer. For $3,950*, I’ll help you refine your pricing (if necessary), do all the marketing, get you on dozens of websites, qualify all interested buyers, help you weigh the pros and cons of every offer and calculate your net proceeds, process all the paperwork and handle the details all the way to closing. How’s that sound?’
(*Or whatever your Set Fee is. By the way: Commissions, whether percentage based of set fee, are always negotiable.)
8. Call Jack Bailey and ask him what you should do.
This is July 5. (It’s actually August 9, but the principal still holds true) The longest day of the year was, what? A week and a half ago? So you’ve got a few extra hours of daylight to get it done. Go on now: get out there and don’t come home until you have a signed listing agreement in your sweaty little hand.
*about that graphic: For the arithmetically impaired: If you subtract the current value from the peak value of the first home you get $75,000. That’s the amount of the drop in value, what the homeowner ‘lost’. If you do the same for the second home you get $112,500. That drop is $37,500 more than the drop on the first home. Everything else being equal, that’s $37,500 less the buyer is going to have to mortgage. Translation: quit moping about what you ‘lost!’ Get out there and buy your dream home before it becomes unaffordable again.