27 Ways to Get Listings

As an example, when my wife and I were looking for a home, we ended up driving through all sorts of neighborhoods. There wasn't much inventory in our price range in the area, so we were driving all over the place. We were stopping at people's houses and asking if they or their neighbors wanted to sell. We didn’t have any luck with this method, but a person who lived in the same condominium complex as us ended up buying one of the homes we were going to check out. It turns out, the home had been up for sale on Zillow as a FSBO two years earlier. So this person knocked on the homeowner’s door and said, "Hey, we noticed you tried to sell your home a while ago. Would you still be interested in selling it?" The homeowners said yes, and they sold it just like that, at what I believe was the price from two years earlier. They simply had no luck selling it, but they were ready to sell the moment this person knocked on their door. That's a great reason to go after old FSBOs. #4: Expired Listings Another obvious lead generator is expired listings. If you're not going after expired listings, you definitely should be — they are some of the best leads out there. Call them up or mail them your promotional packet. Afterward, I follow up with them and try to offer valuable resources and just be there to help in general. You’ll likely find that expired owners are sick and tired of answering phone calls from eager agents. You’ll also quickly realize they have been hearing the same thing over, and over, and over again — oftentimes about how their listing was overpriced. The good news is that with so many agents going after expireds in the same way, it’s easy to stand out from the crowd! The first step is to find a way to be different from everyone else. How can you do that? In real estate, you don’t have a consumable product to offer. What you do have is yourself. Nobody else is you, or ever can be. You’ve just got to take time to find out what you do better or differently than others, and bring it to light. Keeping your ideal lead in mind, remember this question: “What’s in it for me?” Answer that question in a unique way. Put a twist on your point of difference that can benefit the seller.