How to Find Listings in a Low Inventory Market
SUMMARY
What do you do when there are no listings…. And when you need business?
Use these 3 Reverse Prospecting Strategies:
1. OLD EXPIRED/CANCELLED LISTINGS – Door knock.
2. LOCAL PAPER/DIRECT MAIL: We have buyers.
3. FB TARGETED AUDIENCE by zip code to homeowners.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
What do you do when there are no listings in your market?
Hey there, it’s Kevin Ward, the founder of YESMasters Real Estate Success Training. Today’s video is actually the answer to a question from one of my coaching members and it’s basically this, what do you do when there are no listings in your market? When there’s no listings for your buyers, and when you need business, and you need listings, how do you do that? What do you do when there’s no listings and how do you find listings in a low inventory market?
This is a great question. Here’s kind of what they have done. In this case, they’re in Canada so there’s even the restriction of being able to prospect expired listings. He says that the market here is a bit different from the United States. We can’t call expireds and there’s not many for sale by owners. I’m not sure who to prospect, I’ve reached all of my personal circle that I can, I have six buyers in my hand, but there’s no house. There’s no houses within their budget and so he’s like, “I need your help to direct me which way to go.”
Let’s talk about how do you get more listings or how do you find listings in a low inventory market, and especially when you’ve got six buyers in your hand? I guarantee you if you’re in a situation where you have a bunch a buyers without being able to find them inventory, you also have other agents in your office that are in the same situation. You may have six buyers, or you may have three, or two, but your office has probably 20 or 40 or 100 buyers that are looking for properties that can’t find what they’re looking for right now.
I want to share with you three strategic strategies, three strategic strategies. Yeah, three strategies to find listings in a low inventory market. First, if what we just call reverse prospecting. In fact, all three of these are just different varieties of reverse prospecting, which means I’m actually calling in this case because I have buyers or we have buyers and we’re looking for people that are interested in selling. First one, is old expired and old canceled lists. If you’re in a market, if you’re in a place like Canada where you’re not allowed to prospect … Go after expired and canceled listings, you’re going to do this a little differently.
The strategy is basically this, find all the old and expired and canceled listings in your market that have been on the market at any time in the last two to three years. The last two to three years they have been on the market and did not sell. Now, the reason is, statistically those people are more likely to move in the next 12 to 24 months than other people. A lot of times, they’re interested in moving, they just don’t have to move and so they just haven’t had that trigger, that emotional trigger to make them go, “Okay, it’s time to move.”
What if you knocked on their door and said, “Hey, the reason I’m knocking on your door is because we have a ton of buyers right now. I have buyers myself. In my office, we have a lot of buyers and there’s a lot of buyers in the market right now and we don’t have enough inventory, which means there’s not enough houses for sale. I’m just stopping by today to see who you know that is thinking about potentially selling their home in the near future that we might be able to connect with one of our buyers?” Now, that question is not directed directly at them, but it’s basically saying, “Do you want to move? Do you know anybody that wants to move”
It’s an open-ended question, but it’s designed to start a conversation and so forth. Now, I have done this in a low inventory market and literally the first time I did it, I did it in a low inventory market, it wasn’t even my agent. I had another agent in my office, they had a high motivated buyer, they will looking to buy a luxury home. This happened to be at the two million dollar price point. I needed listings, I needed deals, and I’m like, “Alright, here we go.” I pulled up all the old, expired, and canceled lists and I started calling and door knocking and just was targeting those people.
These were specifically houses that matched what this buyer was looking for. Out of that, I found a couple of people that wasted my time and then I found one home owner, one family that they were actually building a new home and in the process of going and interested in selling their home if the price was right. We brought in the buyer, we signed a one time showing agreement, a one time listing agreement, which basically said if we bring a buyer and they’re willing to pay a price that you’re willing to accept, you’ll pay us a commission. We signed that one-time listing agreement. This was not putting it on the market, it was not putting it on the MLS, this was not a marketed listing.
This was saying, “We have a potential buyer. We’re going to let him know about your house. There’s no guarantees. They’re going to come in, we’re going to show it to them, and if they like it, they write an offer that you like. We negotiate the offer. You accept it. You’re moving. They get the house. You get a great price.” It worked. The buyers came in, loved the house, brought an offer that ended up coming above appraised value, and they went ahead and were willing to pay it because they knew this was what the sellers said, “We’ll accept this. We won’t accept less. If it doesn’t appraise, we’re not going to accept it right now because we don’t need to move for another four to five months.”
That strategy works. It works powerfully. That’s the first way is to go after old, expireds, and canceled listings. If you’re in a market like in the areas of Canada where you can’t prospect expireds, then just target specific neighborhoods of the homes that match where your buyers are mostly looking and just go knock doors. It doesn’t have to be an expired or canceled. Just go knock a hundred, two hundred doors. Go knock a hundred doors a day, that will take you about three hours. Three or four hours, go knock a hundred doors a day. You’re going to to 20 to 30 people a day. You’re going to get the word out. You’re going to get your word out.
Look, this is not a BS approach. It is not a bait and switch approach if you don’t have buyers. We’re talking about when you actually have legitimate buyers. Now, you’re going, “Well, that’s a lot of work.” Well, yes, and it’s a 10, or 15, or 20, or $30,000 paycheck. Yes, it’s some work to get a result. But, in a low inventory market, it gives you a great opportunity to get out there and talk to people because you’re not so much soliciting them as you’re simply trying to find the right people that you can serve and bring buyers and sellers together. You’re literally here, instead of being a sales person, you’re being a problem solver in a market.
Understand, if you think of yourself as a problem solver, you win. Don’t think of yourself as a sales person, that I’m going to go out there and sell them on moving. No, I’m just going to look. We have people that want to buy and I’m going to go out to find people that are interested in selling and I’m going to be the problem solver to bring them together and solve both of their problems. Very, very, very powerful. Now, here’s a second approach and this, again, would go … This works in any market, whether it’s U.S. or Canada anyway. That is the same essential strategy, except instead of door knocking or phone calling, in other words, in stead of prospecting, do it by marketing.
Now, I am sending out either by direct mail, you can pick a neighborhood or you can target expired or cancels, or you can pick an entire area, however big and whatever you want to do, and direct mail them. Or, in a lot of markets, and this is especially true in areas that are long established neighborhoods, a lot of times they’re luxury neighborhoods, a lot of times they’re like country club neighborhoods where the homes are built 20 plus years ago, and most of the owners have lived there a long time. It’s one of those neighborhoods, you know, where nobody ever moves. Well, those people bought their houses 20, 25 years ago when it was new, luxury homes.
They are now empty nesters and a lot of them are going to be downsizing in the near future. A lot of them are downsizing right now and they’re looking and they’re thinking about it. They just haven’t had that trigger to make them want to do it. What if they got something in the mail from you? Or, in a lot of those neighborhoods, they have local suburbs … The suburbs in those areas have newspapers. Not the big, not like the Los Angeles Times, but the little local newspaper that people actually still read and especially people that are in their … Without being too specific, people that are baby boomers, people that are downsizing, looking to retire, they still look at newspapers.
If you put a big ad in that newspaper, and it’s got to be a big enough ad that they will notice it, put a big ad there that basically it says something like this, “Sell your home the easy way. We have motivated, ready buyers. Our buyers are ready to buy a home today for top dollar. Sell your home without the hassle of a long-term listing and you can sell your home privately and you can sell it without a time rush.” You create an ad and you market that. You can either do it by post card with direct mail or you can do in a newspaper.
Now, if you do it, you’re probably going to have to do this over, and over, and over again. For example, in a newspaper, this is something you would run every week for six months to a year. As a strategy to find … If you’ve got a market where there’s inventory, low inventory, and lots of buyers, why not put the word out and say, “We’ve got buyers. You want to sell you home? Sell your house without the pressure, the hassle, of a long-term listing.” Here’s the deal, there’s people out there that want to do that. There’s other people that go, “Okay, we’re ready to move. You’ve got a buyer? Well, let me check and see if your house will match with one of our buyers. If it is, bring one in.”
You can also tell them, “Look, there’s also a possibility that if we open your house up to the full market, we put your house on the market and market it, that we’ll find a better buyer that’s willing to pay more for your house so it will actually get you a better price. Would you be interested in that?” If we do that, then you are able to put it on the full market. The main thing here, my friend, is that you know how to deliver results. My coaching members, and if you’re one of my coaching members watching this, you know how to do this. You know how to sell their house fast for top dollar because you know how to use a 10 day exclusive marketing.
You know how to guarantee results and guarantee them fast. You’re able to bring that together. Now, last strategy that’s just a variation on all of this with reverse prospecting is simply do the very same thing with a Facebook, social media targeted ad where you’re creating a custom audience, and with Facebook because they can figure all this out. You can do a customized ad set that basically does the same thing as the newspaper or direct mail ad, but it just targets a specific zip code of home owners in a certain age range or whatever, and boom, your ad will show up only to them.
Or, you can do all of these at the same time and it creates a multi-prong approach to help attract this. Now, this is a business strategy. There’s not like an overnight thing, “I’m going to do this and it’s going to work.” But, it’s a great approach and a low inventory market that allows you to focus on the target market that will get you listings, that will get you listings, and when you’re in a low inventory market, you get a listing, you just got a paycheck. As long as you price it right, know what to do to get it exposed, that, my friend, is money.
Now, more details of this, this is the kind of stuff that I teach at my real estate vortex training camp in my coaching programs. If you have any questions, be sure an post those down below. Subscribe, give the channel … The video a thumbs up, and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t done that and I’ll see you on the next video.