The One Thing You Need to Know to Survive in a Down Real Estate Market

Expired Listings are HOT Leads

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it. But it’s very much the truth.

It was once said that “cold calling” is you calling someone you don’t know to sell them something they don’t want. It’s more fun than you can shake a stick at, right?

We don’t think so either.

In a traditional farming setting, that’s pretty much what you do. It usually sounds something like this: “Hi, Mr. Jones, this is John with XYZ Realty; I’m calling because I’m your local real estate specialist and I wanted to know if you or anyone you know is looking to buy or sell a home that could use my help. No. Okay, here’s my number. Please keep me in mind when you know someone is looking.” They go back to watching television, eating dinner or whatever else they were doing and you do this 99 more times hoping to get one of these people to say, “Yes”. And that’s just in one day.

With this approach, it’s not a surprise that the average real estate professional doesn’t last more than two years in the business.

The great news is that with Expired Listings, the opportunity is much different. These people are already committed to selling their home and when you call them as a Real Estate professional offering your services, you know why you’re calling and so do they. Add in the dimension that they are likely upset at their current agent and disappointed that their home hasn’t sold, and you’ve got a smoking HOT opportunity to be the hero and get their home sold and make a nice fee for your time and services.

Some of the benefits of calling Expireds are as follows:

• You get a brand new set of listing leads each day from your local MLS
• These sellers are top-notch leads in most cases since they are ready, willing and able to sell when you call them
• The expense of lead generation is very low because you’re printing up the leads and making calls. Even if you use an Expired Lead generating service you’re still only looking at about $30 a month.
• Your pipeline fills very quickly. (Think Mickey Mouse and the scene with the bucket carrying mops from Disney’s Fantasia!)
• Since approximately 2/3’s of the people who sell a home end up buying one in the same area, you have the chance to generate buyer leads for yourself and/or your team when these people sell their home.

There are drawbacks, but most of them come in the form of overcoming the seller’s disappointment and anger from having a home that’s still in need of selling. Just like you’d rather have a low offer to work with than no offer on a listing, it’s better to have a motivated prospect with questions and objections than no prospect at all. And that’s where your opportunity lays – you bring a fresh face with a fresh perspective and the excitement of a new real estate professional to make all that pain go away by selling their home.

The door’s open; walk right in.

Okay, we agree that Expired Listings provide an abundance of opportunity. Where do you start? As with all successful real estate professionals, you start by creating a system and then taking massive action to implement it.

Here’s what we recommend:

1. If you’re on a tight budget, you can search by hand in your MLS every morning. (Many MLS programs will actually let you create standard search criteria in the system and search for you at whatever time you select for it.) Once you’ve got the listings, you’ll need to search for phone numbers on whitepages.com or on a search site that lets you look up by name and/or address.

If you’ve got some money in your budget, you can use one of the many services out there that help coordinate this type of information. Some go so far as to provide you with some marketing materials and assistance and they usually cost about $25 to $30 per month, which works for even the tightest of budgets.

2. Mail a letter or a card to the expired listing the same day that it expires. Again, there are several low-cost (and even no cost) options out there for you to use as a resource. There’s even a large number of blogs on the Internet with recommendations on how to write a letter. If you are going to write something, make sure that it stands out with a good headline like “Sometimes Even the Nicest Homes Don’t Sell” or “I’ll Sell Your Home, Guaranteed, or I’ll Give You $1,000″. Be different in a good way. Also, be sure to empathize with the seller’s position and offer them a call to action with you and your services as the solution. There are a significant number of resources on the Internet to help you easily and effectively create a letter that works. You can’t rely only on this letter and be successful, but it does help you get through to some people.

3. The key to success in any real estate transaction starts on the phone. You need to be able to make an appointment and give your prospect a good reason to meet with you, otherwise it doesn’t matter how great your listing presentation is, because they’ll never see it. Also, in order to be successful, you need to call early and often. What that means is you need to start calling at 8:00 a.m. in the morning.

Let the shock wear off and keep reading.

Our initial reaction to this was shocking as well when we heard it, but after we heard the reasoning, it made perfect sense. If the person who you are calling is motivated to sell, they’ll have no problem talking with you.
Think about it. The seller of an Expired listing wants to sell otherwise their home wouldn’t be on the market in the first place. And, in almost every case, they are motivated. The results of this effort are great because you are usually the first person to call that day, which limits your competition and puts you in a better position for success. Do whatever you need to in order to get your head around this because calling your leads at this time will impact your results dramatically

4. Have something good to say on the phone and in your listing presentation. You need to differentiate and distance yourself from the prior agent in every way you can. If you offer the same thing the other agent offered your setting them up to get the same results and yourself for inevitable failure. Here’s a short script you might use when calling the leads:

“Hi Stacie, this is John with XYZ Realty, the reason I’m calling is that I noticed your home was no longer on the market and I wanted to find out when you were going to be interviewing agents for the job of selling your home.”

When you start like this, you’re asking an open-ended question that requires an answer other than yes or no and it gives you a chance to move the conversation along.

If they tell you when, set the appointment by saying:

“When would be a good time for me to come over and show you what we can do over and above the competition to get your home sold for the price you want in a time frame acceptable to you?”

If they say they aren’t, ask:

“Why do you think your home didn’t sell?”

Once they answer, turn that answer around for them:

“It looks like you have a nice house. I’m really sorry that it didn’t sell. Let me ask you, if we could [solve that problem, whatever it is, i.e., still get you the price you are looking for, market better than the other agent, give you the highest quality customer service, get more buyers through your home, etc.] and close at a time acceptable to you, would you be interested in that?”

If they say yes, set the appointment. If no, try one last time:

“Stacie, we have some very creative and unique marketing programs here at our office to drive up the demand on your home and we’ve been averaging 98% of our clients’ asking price. If I could get you 98% of your asking price and help you close as soon as possible, would that work for you?”

If they say yes, schedule the appointment. If they say no, call them in three days; they’ll forget that they spoke with you. Sometimes, the wounds from an unsold house take a few days to heal.

5. This may seem like an odd step, but we think it’s an important one. Have the right mindset and attitude for the job. As we’ve said, many of the people you will be calling and meeting are going to be upset and disillusioned with the process of selling their home. Even though you are a different real estate professional, you are still a real estate professional to them and you represent everyone else in the industry.

Also, every hungry real estate agent within 20 miles will be calling them and you can’t deliver the same, tired “List with me and your home will sell” sales pitch and be effective at the same time. Take this into consideration when calling and going on your presentations:

Your cup of belief about you, your team and your services needs to overflow in order for their cup to be filled even to the top. Your confidence and assurance in yourself, or lack there of, to get their home sold can even be felt over the phone. Make sure when you get on the phone or arrive at someone’s house you are ready to get the job done.

Put this line from the movie Boiler Room around your phone somewhere and read it regularly: “…There is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client [your product] or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless…”

It may seem a little over the top, but we need to fill your cup of belief too.

6. Make your appointments to call with other people on your team or in your office. Most of us would never let another person down on an appointment to make calls like we would if we scheduled it only for ourselves. In addition to this accountability, you can feed off of each other’s energy and make the call session fun – yes, we said fun. It seems so simple and it is.

Follow these steps much like the directions on the back of a shampoo bottle…Rinse, Lather, Repeat. The key to success and wealth in the real estate industry is taking your system and working it regularly. You will find that as you repeat these six steps on a daily basis, you will get into a groove that will accelerate your success, even in a down market. Soon, you’ll be saying and doing the right things and not even realizing that you’re doing them.

You can spend your resources on marketing and advertising and generate leads that may or not be buying or selling right now or you can spend your time and a limited amount of resources on working with Expired Listings and work with people who are ready to move now.

What are your plans tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m.?