After all, there’s still going to be almost 5.78 million existing homes sold this year across the U.S.
The question is, “Where are you going to get your next one?”.
Ideally, you’ll want to have a strategy in place that helps you identify listing opportunities regularly through consistent prospecting and nurturing of leads from expireds, withdrawns, FSBOs, circle prospecting neighborhood data, home value leads and your sphere and past clients.
But, until you get that locked and loaded, there are a few things you can do to capture lightning in a bottle to score yourself a listing in the next seven days.
5 Top Ways to Get a New Listing This Week
Here are the top ways so get a listing for yourself sooner than you might think possible;
1. Use Social Media to Locate Sellers
Be creative and search Twitter and Instagram, etc. for these hashtag phrases: #LookingToMove, #INeedToMove, and #IWantToMove and see what you find.
It’s possible that you’ll come across an angry tenant looking to move out of their apartment or someone who’s on vacation telling the world about their new dream location.
But you might also find a serious seller or a buyer who is looking to find their next home and has a home to sell. It may only take a short while to search for these, but it could net you some additional business in the form of a listing.
Now, it might take some additional work to get in touch with these prospects and secure a listing appointment for yourself, but it’s also very possible that nobody else knows they’re looking to sell...so that’s a good thing.
Real estate is a people business. Be proactive in your efforts to build new relationships, smart about using the resources available to you, like social media, to locate new opportunities and hungry to get more business.
2. Call For Sale By Owners (FSBOs) today and everyday
With roughly 87% of FSBOs eventually turning to an agent to get their home sold, I’ll never understand why more agents don’t call FSBOs on a consistent basis.
Sure, it’s not highly likely that you’re going to get a FSBO’s listing the first day or week they have it on the market, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get it.
Plus, as you know, the longer the FSBO has been on the market and not sold, the more ripe it is for the picking.
According to NAR, roughly 8% of home sales are FSBOs, which means there’s about 80 FSBOs that sell for every 1,000 homes that sell in your area...and that doesn’t include the number of folks who try to sell as a FSBO and then give up and hire an agent.
You’re not looking to get of them (well maybe you are), you’re just looking to get some of them.
Now, even if you have a service that provides you with FSBO information, it would be smart to check out Zillow for their FSBO data. It’s very detailed and it even has the “Make Me Move” feature for FSBO sellers.
It’s highly likely that if you called a FSBO this week you could lead one of them to the conclusion that it’s time to stop trying to sell it themselves and hire you to get the job done right.
3. Call Your Older Leads
Sure, speed of response in following up leads gives you a huge advantage in converting them to appointments and homes sold.
But that doesn’t mean if you don’t get in touch with the prospect in a few minutes that the lead isn’t good.
According to Brian Carroll, CEO of markempa, a consulting and training firm that helps companies build relationships through empathy-based marketing, only 5 to 15% of the leads we generate are sales ready.
So, if you have a number of older leads - especially ones that you haven’t been nurturing consistently - there’s likely some legitimate listing lead business to be had.
As well, if you use an expired listing provider, you may want to ask if you can go back as many as 7 years for people that listed their home for sale and never sold it.
These folks might just be ready to pull the trigger now with the market moving such a frenzied pace.
4. Do an Open House...Seriously
Feet on street, the best leads out there. People who are out looking at homes - who are physically taking action to find a home - are some of the most motivated prospects you’ll run across.
Now, it seems weird that I would recommend you do an open house where buyers are the main focus, but the fact of the matter is, there are seller opportunities to be had.
Between repeat buyers who buy only one more home and repeat buyers who are buying their third, fourth and fifth house, roughly 52% of buyers out there likely have a home to sell.
Again, we’re in the relationship-building business here and you’ll need to do some work at the open house to find out who has a home to sell and who doesn’t, but the time and energy invested will be well worth it.
5. Work with your vendors and attorneys in the area
Just because you don’t know someone who is looking to sell doesn’t mean others don’t as well.
As a real estate agent, you work with a number of vendors in the industry who regularly come across people who are looking to buy and sell:
These folks are in regular contact with potential sellers on a day-over-day basis and as a result of that, you should be in contact with them regularly, too.
In addition to that, there are divorce attorney, estate attorneys and bankruptcy attorneys who deal with potential sellers each and every day.
If you haven’t established relationships with these types of attorneys, or if you don’t seek consistent referral business from the people with whom you do real estate business every day, it’s time for you to do so.
People want to do business with those that they know, like and trust. Nothing says that more than a referral from one of your vendors.
The important thing to note here is that you must let these people know that you’re looking not just for buyer opportunities, but also seller opportunities.
That way, when it’s time one of them to refer a friend, family member or client that’s looking to sell, they’ll think of you.
There’s no silver bullet that gets you consistent listing business. To do that, you need to set up systems to generate, nurture and then convert leads on a day-over-day basis.
However, if you are looking to get more listings and get them sooner than later, the ideas I’ve shared here should provide you with the opportunity to scoop a few up in the short and long term.