Expireds Guide - Authorify

When I first started listing houses, I was 20 years old and selling real estate in Gainesville, Florida. I had worked as a buyer’s agent for a year and decided I wanted to get into listings. I found some new expireds, and I worked those leads, but I also started working the old expireds. I found one that had expired about a year previously and contacted the sellers. I put their house on the market for $229,900. It sold for $296,000 in 10 days. I made an $8,800 commission, despite my disadvantages: ● I was only 20 years old. ● I was extremely green at listings. ● I didn’t have a great listing presentation. I got the listing, and everything went smoothly because I was the only agent knocking on the sellers’ door. I had no competition because all the other agents focused on the new expireds. We’ll talk more about old expireds later. But the lesson is, if you’re in a red-hot market, start with the homes that expired three to six months ago. Then, work the listings that expired six to twelve months ago. Once you’re done with them, you can start working the older leads. Even expireds that are three or four years old are good leads. #4. Listing expireds can help you find short sales. Here in Florida, the market slowdown of a decade ago was pretty rough. In the markets with which I’m familiar, prices dropped dramatically — 50% drops were common. The number of regular sales — not short sales, foreclosures, or bank-owned properties — dropped dramatically, as well. In Jacksonville, statistics in the multiple listing service for the last six months prior to the slump indicated approximately 10,000 houses sold that weren’t new construction. In the middle of 2011, probably the slowest time in the market, the number of regular sales was down to about 3,500 in six months. That’s approximately 67% less than the current sales rate, but, despite the plunge, many agents did very well during that time — only one third as many houses were sold as usual. There were two main reasons: 1. First, even though the number of sales went down to barely a third of its regular level, the number of agents also probably dropped by 50-60%. As competition dropped by the wayside, agents who stayed in the game were able to pick up a lot of market share. ● I wasn’t tremendously confident. ● I didn’t have superstar sales skills.