Nothing is more frustrating for a seller than to go through all the effort to get a property ready to sell and put it on the market only to have it sit there for months and not sell. These expired listings are a gold mine of opportunity to entrepreneurial agents.
When I was a real estate agent, a mentor of mine liked to say, “Go where real estate is happening.” What she meant is that instead of randomly hitting up people who may or (more likely) may not be buying or selling, target people you know are in the market. One example is hosting open houses for residential property. Everyone who walks in the door has buying or selling on their mind. Expired listings are another great example, and one that works for residential and commercial property. These owners have gone beyond just thinking about selling, they’ve made a serious commitment to sell.
One thing to keep in mind with expired listings, the owners are often not in a good mood.
- They are discouraged
- They are not a big fan of real estate agents and may assume they are all the same (worthless)
- They probably know a little about their market, but not enough
- Most likely, they DO want to sell
Think about it. They want to sell, they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get the property ready, they’ve hired an agent (making a commitment to pay a commission), they’ve watched the marketing efforts…and nothing. After all that, they didn’t get to the finish line. They probably aren’t too happy with their agent, either. And, they transfer that blame to any other agent who comes along.
Adding insult to injury, many owners of these expired listings get bombarded with insensitive phone calls in the days after it expires, from agents all pitching the same old line: “Hi, I see your property listing expired. Are you ready to list with a professional who will get it sold and closed?” – or some variation. Most of these cold callers are trying to dial as many numbers as possible, without regard to the human touch.
The easiest and best approach to an expired listing is to bring them a buyer. When you pick up the phone to call, your intro is, “Hi, I understand you are selling the place at [address]. I may have a buyer who is interested. Are you still hoping to sell it?” Even if you don’t have a buyer at the moment of the call (remember you said “I may…”) you have an opportunity to find one for the property in the time between the call and the meeting you set up.
Expired Listings Calling Scripts
There are dozens of other expired scripts you can use to connect with property owners. Here are a few.
- Secrets of Top Selling Agent – Expired Listings Handouts
- Handling Expired Objections
- Ninja Agent
- KW Phone Scripts for Calling Expired Listings
Getting the Phone Number
The challenge is getting in contact with the property owner once the listing expires. Normally, the listing doesn’t include the property owner’s phone number. Internet research can often turn up a name, but in the case of commercial properties, the name is likely an LLC or company name. The fact that the phone number is not handy is a two edged sword. On the one hand, it makes it hard to contact these people. On the other hand, if you can get number, you will be one of the few who do. The competition pool will be much smaller.
This is where ProspectNow comes in. With ProspectNow, finding property owner numbers is easy. The painstaking research of property locations, LLCs, owner names, phones and emails has been done for you already. Just follow these steps in ProspectNow to get phone numbers for expired listing owners.
- Collect the expired property addresses in a single place. Normally, you can search your MLS and then export them to a spreadsheet.
- Copy (cut/paste) the addresses.
- In ProspectNow, click on Search Properties, then Advanced Search, then on Multiple Address Search.
- In the large blank box, paste the property addresses you copied in Step #2.
- Click Search
- Now you can click on “Contact Owner” for each individual property, or you can select them all and look up all the numbers at once
[See a quick video of these steps here.]
With the phone numbers in hand, you can start your expired listings calling campaign and tap this source of ready and willing sellers.
Happy prospecting!