I remember when I first started in Real Estate Sales and was told I had to find my own listings. It took a while to sink in and work out what my job was and what I was actually selling. It became clear that I had to make more than just a sale. I had to one, sell myself to get an opportunity, sell them on me, then sell them on a price adjustment, and finally, actually, sell the property. For outsiders, they don’t get how much work an agent does.
Now I thought to myself, who may be selling and how can I find one as quickly as possible on a day-to-day basis? I worked out that people buying might also be selling, people having a garage sale might be selling, and people renovating also. You really have to think and cover all methods. There is also about a 1 in 1000 chance you may catch someone dropping flyers. I liked dropping flyers myself so I could note down what’s happening in the street.
As I was walking down the street one time doing my drops, I saw a sign that said: “For Sale By Owner” and thought to myself, “That was easy. I found one”. I was wearing my casuals, doing my drops at the time, and decided to just walk on in. I knocked on the door and said hello, quite simple. I said, “G’day, I am a local agent and I notice you are selling your property privately”. He said Yes, so I just said, “I am a new agent and I have nothing to sell”. The man replied and said, “but you have no experience”, and I replied, “also I have 100% of my time to sell your property”. He gave me the listing and it was my first commission cheque.
As I had success with this method, it became a bit of my specialty and working out the psyche of the private seller. Why would they want to sell privately in the first place? What I learnt was there are some pretty fundamental basic reasons.
- They do not want to or think they cannot afford to pay an agent a commission.
- They have been burnt before by an agent and now think all agents are the same.
- They have the time and thought they may give it a go before they give it to an agent.
If you have an answer to each of these reasons, you will more than likely get the listing. It is really one of the easiest ways to find a listing. These are some of the processes I put in place for me and then for my agency, to help my agents list more properties.
Track Gumtree on a daily basis to see new properties that have been listed. I decided to do it in my old patch and as expected, there was GOLD!
There are numerous properties just sitting there waiting to be called. If you are scared, you will not get the listing, just pick up the phone and call. Getting to the point of this article is that this needs to be a strategy that is set on autopilot. The way I did this was to have our Real Estate VA’s comb through it daily and allocate the lead to the assigned agent for the area. They would find whether it is an investment, or the owner lives there. If they found that the owner lived there, they sent them a direct mail letting them know that we have noticed your property for sale privately and we congratulate you on the decision to go it alone.
The agent would then drop over a guide on how to sell your home for more, as a gift! This worked like a charm, it is give, give, take.
Here are some websites to look on…
There are actually loads of them. I suggest that you develop a strategy around monitoring them and turning them into listings.
I hope you got some value out of this tip. The task is very costly, as it takes time, which you do not want to waste. Your agents should be producing, so hire a low-cost Real Estate Virtual Assistant to do this stuff for you!
