Here’s a tip to help you find more listings for your buyer clients.
Lately, agents from my brokerage and my coaching clients alike have been asking me how to find listings in today’s market when it seems like there’s an overabundance of demand and a very limited supply of homes.
For example, one of our agents was recently trying to get five different buyers under contract, and she was struggling to find them properties. She began to realize that many of these buyers were in a position where they couldn’t really buy a new home until they had sold their current one, but they also didn’t want to sell their home until they had secured a home to buy.
If you find yourself in a position where you can’t seem to find listings, I challenge you to look to all the people in your database and think about who among them might have a property that, if listed, might be the perfect home for your prospective buyer.
The agent I mentioned reached out to those people in her database. The ones she contacted all shared the same reserves that other sellers have—that they wouldn’t be able to find another home to buy fast enough if they sold their current one. Her task became playing matchmaker for all of these people, and over the course of two weeks, she ended up finding homes for all five of those buyers just by calling around and talking to people. The homes she found weren’t even on the MLS! What’s more, as she made all these calls, she found two additional listings from people who were looking to sell.
Over the past couple of years, agents have been in a place where all they had to do in order to find homes for buyers was to just hit ‘Refresh’ on the MLS and wait for something to show up. The market has changed; now you have to do a little more homework to find listings, but if you make the right calls, it’s absolutely possible.
This is an opportunity for you to expand your SOI and solidify the relationships you have with your clientele. Let them know what to expect when buying or selling a house that isn’t on the market. For example, buyers need to know that just because they’re buying an off-market home doesn’t mean that they’re going to get a killer deal for it—it just means that they’ll get a chance to buy a home without a bunch of other buyers competing for it. Essentially, they’re paying a premium to tie up a house before it goes on the market.
Ultimately, even though this market is difficult for buyers and buyer’s agents, this is a chance for you to reevaluate your business practices by expanding your relationships with your database and leveraging them to find opportunities for your clients.
If you have any questions about today’s topic, feel free to reach out to me. In the meantime, stay tuned to my blog for more coaching tips to help you in your real estate business.
