If you're not farming expired listings you're missing out on one of the best real estate marketing strategies going...and a major source of income. Why? Well, there are many reasons, but I've distilled it down to 4 major ones for the sake of brevity.
Perhaps they will convince you once and for all about how an expired listing script is one of the best strategies for marketing real estate.
1. Farming expired listings is easy to do. It's as simple as logging into your Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and doing a search of expired listings for any time frame you want. Go ahead - try it right now. It's simple, easy and near effortless!
2. Expired listings are some of the hottest leads you'll ever have - each one is a known and motivated seller! When a listing expires it's usually not a good thing.
Some owners have to sell because they're moving to another city and state to start a new job. Others may have to sell because they were "down sized." Still, some want to sell because they're transitioning into retirement and are trying to lower their monthly living expenses.
In many instances, no matter the reasons, they're more motivated to sell than they were before!
3. Sellers of expired listings are often more realistic about price and terms the second time around! Good agents can leverage expired listings to better prices, terms and conditions. Astute Sellers are quick to understand that they may need to give a little on their asking price, or sweeten their listing by providing other financial incentives to sell their properties.
The more the Seller is willing to "give", and they will, the more desirable their new listing with you will be, and the more likely you are to get it sold!
When Sellers insist on overpricing their listings you can politely decline them (which will shock them like you wouldn't believe) knowing that more opportunities are just a few mailings away! Sometimes the Sellers are so stunned when you decline their offer to list with you they'll start back pedaling while trying to give you what you want to list with you. After all, how many times have you actually declined a listing?
4. Most real estate agents do not farm expired listings - they assume that someone else has already converted them to new listings. But they're wrong. Sometimes nobody is going after them!
I'm constantly amazed at the number of agents who know that expired listings are worth their weight in gold, but ever market them.
Go on and try it out for yourself. Go around you office and see if any of your coworkers are farming expireds! But do it quietly! You don't want to give them any ideas if they don't already have any!
What you'll find is that few, if any, are farming expired listings. Instead of marketing real estate in this relatively stress free way, they're hung up on complicated real estate marketing schemes that cost a bundle of money and deliver little return on their investment.
It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen. Even veteran agents, who should know how valuable expired listings can be, don't farm them. In the end their failure to act is your gain.
So, if you're not farming expired listings you ought to seriously consider it. Don't continue to be one of those agents that assumes another agent has already secured the listing. Instead, be the one that actually converts the expired listings into new ones!
