Don’t let fall and winter be your slow seasons! Master the skill of generating buyer and seller leads and find new clients with this guide from Trulia:
Take the cue from top agents and master the skill of generating buyers and sellers — whatever time of year it is! Here are a few under-the-radar sources of year-end buyers and sellers. Leverage their power to finish the year out strong.
1. Investigate Investors
Avid investors never sleep—not even when the holiday season hits in late winter—so they can often be a hot source of year-end business. If you’re in a market where many investors bought properties at the very bottom of the market, and you happen to be aware that a neighborhood is seeing high values even in this month’s cooler weather climates, marketing to these investors might be well worth the effort. Reach out to the non-occupant owners in the area with an executive briefing, market update or one-on-one investment planning session. Use the time to let them know about the upside of liquidating right now and offering some smart strategies for making their next real property investment move.
2. Borrow Big in Business from Lenders
Sometimes growing your business in the off-season doesn’t require finding a new type of client. Instead, sometimes success relies on going back to your network of other professionals in complementary industries and working together to create an amplified marketing program.
Set up time to speak with lawyers, home repair vendors, and mortgage lenders that you have a strong relationship with. Remind them that you are always willing, able, and ready to accept qualified referrals and that you’d be happy to send leads their way in return.
3. Explore Early Year Expireds
Expired sellers are often overpriced listings whose owners have more reasonable clients as time has gone on. Their desire to move usually intensifies over time, but the market has already done a lot of the hard work of educating them out of overpricing their homes.
If you haven’t done a round of expired listing outreach in awhile, check on your local MLS rules and your own broker’s rules for such marketing efforts, then put a plan in place. Use your cool weather downtime to devote even an hour or two every week to reaching out via phone or mail to listings that expired in the first quarter of the year.
4. Dig Deep into Your Database
Many times, the best off-season buyers and sellers are hiding directly in front of us. Revisit your email nurturing campaigns or create new ones that can highlight some of the benefits of off-peak home buying and selling.
Go back to the segment of your prospective clients who weren’t quite ready to make a move earlier this year. If you or your local market has had a particularly strong last few months, it may be worth sending some information highlighting these successes. A little push may be precisely the thing these clients need to make them hop off the fence.
5. Knock on the Doors of Neighbors
For years homeowners were told that it was a terrible time to sell. Now that the market it back, it’s time to switch that mentality and get them to see that now may be a smart time to consider a move.
Here’s a caveat: these days, the difference between successfully marketing to neighbors of strong recent sales and just sending another market update is all in how well you close the loop and are able to paint a compelling picture for your target seller’s end-to-end journey from listing their current home to moving into the next one.
Sellers in currently thriving markets are no longer fearful that they won’t be able to sell at a good price, but bidding war horror stories do have them concerned that they won’t be able to buy a better home than the one they already have.
