How To Get Real Estate Leads
This question has played many new gents and many experienced agents all throughout their career. The idea that there is this one way to go purchase find or receive leads, is what many people believe. However with so many different ways to get leads the first thing you need to focus on is your budget. Yes you could go throw $50,000 at a farm in campaign and get some leads. Do you want to spend $50,000 for leads or do you plan on doing it for much less?
Purchasing Leads
Let’s start with purchasing leads. This is an option that you will receive almost immediately when you start your career as a real estate agent. Inevitably Zillow Trulia realtor.com and every other lead source will probably begin to reach out to you and tell you about their product, their Facebook team that will get you leads from Facebook because that’s where everyone is that, The team of people you can hire to find leads in your area through their proprietary resource. While all these ways may work, they all cost money. So if you’re looking to start out by purchasing leads you’re going to want the quickest return possible. The quickest return I’m aware of in real estate is typically buyers. Buyers when they are real buyers and not lookee lose our a quick way to make your money back. They’re preapproved and they want to purchase a home. You’re not setting a listing appointment getting the listing appointment to close, and then listing the property while you look for a buyer. While listings are my favorite method of real estate they often do not turn into cash as quickly as a buyer who is ready to purchase. That being said I’ve used multiple sources in order to find buyers, Zillow and Trulia are selling you people who have inquired about a house typically, they may be approved they may not be. You have no way of knowing until you speak with the buyer. Depending on your budget you may receive anywhere from three leads a month to 300 or more. Your ability to close those leads and turn them into sales will directly correlate with your return on your investment. Zillow and Trulia are probably the easiest to get started with. They have a proven track record of supplying leads while the quality of those leads seems to differ greatly depending on the area you’re not paying for a magazine space or radio ad in order to see if it works. Many people make a lot of money using Zillow and Trulia. If you’re starting out make sure you’re not spending more than you can afford to lose, it can be a gamble, and as your scrips get better and your ability to convert those leads gets better the money will be better spent.
Craigslist
This method is so often overlooked, craigslist has a plethora of buyers who are looking at homes in often aren’t working with a real estate agent. I know what you’re thinking how can I advertise on craigslist because my post gets taken down every time I ask if people are looking for a home and want to work with a Realtor. In order to get craigslist leads you’re going to need some sort of bait, yes I said bait, a house that people are going to look for or find in their search. Now you’re probably concerned because you don’t have any listings yet, if you have listings great start marketing them on craigslist start making separate ads for The same home, and tracking which ad copy works best. With craigslist you can renew your post every 96 hours I suggest doing this, track what time of day seems to lend you the most buyer calls. Now be ready for your phone to ring at 10:30 at night or even later, this is one of the downsides to craigslist however it’s one of the only downside. You’re getting free advertising for your listings and buyer calls that you didn’t have to pay for. If you don’t have any listings you can often market HUD homes on craigslist in order to solicit buyers. Look up your local rules and regulations on doing so before work going forward with that. Again make separate add copies, show different pictures in different ads and track the time of day that gets you the most calls. The more listings you have online The greater the chance you’ll get a lead.
Prospecting
This is my preferred method of marketing. Hence the name of my site. The nice thing about prospecting is you’re going to have the ability to actively market to buyers and sellers depending on the hours per day you can work. The downside to prospecting is it only works when you do. Unless you’re using a blog as a method of prospecting which I’ll cover later. The way that you would prospect is typically going to be two expired listings, for sale by owner listings, circle prospecting, open houses can be a form of prospecting if you work them right and finally probate leads. Now I don’t work probate leads, if the market turns and short sales become necessary to survive again I will however at this moment that is not the case.
Expireds
When you’re prospecting expired’s your goal is to be different than the other agents calling them and show value so that you may set an appointment. Appointments are key with expired’s, you will almost never get the listing over the phone. This has happened to me on a couple occasions only due to the seller being from out of state. In this case I attempted to set up a separate phone call in which we could discuss listing the property. Otherwise with expired’s I want to turn them into an immediate appointment roughly 30% of the time or add them to my follow-up list roughly 70% of the time and begin building a relationship to obtain an appointment. Once I have the appointment the job is to close the appointment get the listing and sell it. The nice thing about expired’s is we already know they are willing to work with agents unlike the case with for sale by owner’s.
FSBO’s
For sale by owner’s are people who for one reason or another do not want to work with an agent at this time. The typical response I hear is that they do not want to pay the commission for something they can do themselves. Little do they know rarely do for sale by owner’s succeed in selling their home, if they do it’s often for a lesser amount than they would have been able to receive by listing with an agent. Now you and I both know that, however we don’t want to open with that when we speak to the for sale by owner. We also don’t want to lie and say we would like to come by and see the house because we have a buyer that might be interested unless you have a buyer that might be interested. Do not lie to for sale by owner’s, do not lie when prospecting or in life in general really. For sale by owner’s often have an issue trusting agents so if you come in with a bait and switch plan occasionally you may get the listing, however most of the time you’ll ruin your relationship with that for sale by owner and never get the listing. You need to call and speak with the for sale by owner and find out a little bit about their goals. Where are they moving to? When do they want to be there? How did they come up with their price? Why did they decide to sell this home on their own? How will they continue to handle the sale if they are unsuccessful within the next 30 to 60 days? These are all important piece of information. The next thing you want to do is add value to the for sale by owner’s. I personally would never buy an item I saw a little or no value in unless my wife saw a lot of value in it. Then I would buy it immediately LOL. However you want to make sure that you were showing the for sale by owner that you are a valuable asset to them. You’re not attempting to help them sell the house, do not be confused by adding value and helping them sell the house. There are many different ways you can add value, maybe you drop off a sellers disclosure or which they may not of already hat, maybe you drop off a lead-based paint addendum which they probably don’t half. However you decide to add value to the for sale by owner’s is up to you. Check with your broker and see what they recommend in your area as the different forms we can drop off which are often very helpful maybe proprietary to your office. Now these forms aren’t helping them sell the home, they are simply bringing value to your relationship because it’s something they didn’t have and will need if they sold the home down the road. If you do not have enough business right now you can go preview for sale by owners homes by asking them if you may see it so if you come across the buyer you’re more knowledgeable about their home. Let them know you like to keep a private inventory of homes that is not on the MLS.
Blogs
How can blocking help my real estate business? How To Start A Real Estate Blog As a real estate agent your job is to be an expert on the area that you work. Writing a blog abs content to the Internet that buyers may find when looking for information about a subdivision, County, Township, school system, etc. then you have all of your information on a side bar or separate page so that if they are purchasing a home they can go through you. Today there are several applications that will put an IDX feed on your blog. This is helpful because while people are looking at information about the area they see a list of homes on the bottom of the screen or the side of the screen. If they click one of these feeds it takes them to your real estate website where they discover your the area expert once again and maybe they will fill out a lead capture page. I do not recommend blogging as the sole method of prospecting for buyers and sellers when you’re first starting out. You should select several methods of obtaining the leads when you’re starting out. Blog at the same you are working your other methods and down the road your blog may become a viable source of leads for you. If this happens or when it happens I do suggest hiring professionals to go through your blog possibly redesign it but at the very least make it SEO friendly. If you know how to do the stuff already congratulations, if you don’t and you want to learn look up the information on YouTube. You can learn just about anything you want on YouTube today. Let’s give an example where blog might be helpful, a new buyer is looking to move into the town you’re working. They’re concerned about the entertainment in the area, are there enough bars, how are the restaurants, is there a night life and what is the social make up of the area? Said Buyer goes to the Internet searches your town social life or bars and hotspots. You just happen to have a review up of one of the top bars in town, they read your review and noticed the house that they’d already been looking out in your feed on the side. They click that feed go to your website and decide yes the bars meet our criteria let’s go see the house we want. Now while this may sound ridiculous it does happen. The way you make it more likely to happen is to get more people to your blog, the way you get more people to your blog is to create content consistently and often.
Farming
Farming is often used when you want to take over a neighborhood as the realtor of choice. Farming often means mailings and if you’re doing it right doorknocking. Can you add circle prospecting to this? Of course! Now when you were trying to find a new location to farm you need to look at a few things. You need to look at how many homes are in that area your farm should consist of no less than 500 homes. The larger the better in most cases, you don’t however want to market to a farm you can’t afford to. Mailing to a farm can often take six, 10, even 12 or more months to see a return. Remember these are people you do not know if they do not know you, you need to be in front of them often to make them feel comfortable to the point they will call you when they have a real estate need. Another thing you want to look at is are there any agents that are dominating your farm? You often will see other agents who have sold multiple homes in the subdivision or area you were trying to work. Make sure this agent doesn’t have a marketshare over 25%. Anything less than this and you can begin to work at anything more and chances are it will cost you more time and money to buy that neighborhood then you would make finding another neighborhood where no one is dominating. Is farming the best method for beginner? Well that depends on the beginner. Did you just sell a start up company and you have loads of cash ready to spend and you can stand to wait several months without any business? Maybe this is for you, if not I would suggest a more active marketing approach like expired’s, Fsbo’s, open houses or even Zillow ads before going after farming. Farming is a great method to bring in Leeds, however you have to sustain your business so don’t get caught up thinking you’ll be the one person who has a 10% conversion rate on your first mailer. My first mailer went to over 5000 people, I never received one call from it. Because I was new and I thought I would get at least a 1% conversion, what I failed to realize was the amount of times I would need to get in front of these people to start seeing that conversion rate. That conversion rate is an average, you don’t acquire the average with one attempt.
Open Houses
If your brand-new to real estate you need to be doing open houses. There is no excuse not to. You are in a house where buyers are coming to see the house often on represented by an agent. This is your audition to be there agent, maybe they even have a house to sell. When you first begin you should be doing every open house you can. If you have the choice try to hold open houses that have not yet been held open. New listings are often best. Price drops on homes are a great time for an open house. When you do an open house, you should Dornach the neighborhood handing out flyers and inviting the neighbors to bring anyone they know looking for a house, or if they just want to come see what the house looks like. Chances are you won’t have every neighbor wanting to buy that home, you may however have two or three buyers that are in the home when they have an influx of people through the open house. This creates a sense of urgency and buyers therefore giving you a better chance of selling the open house home and hopefully picking up a buyer or two.
Thank you so much for reading this article if you found any value at all please leave a comment, share on Facebook or just suggested to a friend. Let us know you enjoyed it. Now go get some leads.