You may recall last year we did a real estate broker survey and we asked thousands for brokers “Why did your last seller sell?”. Many of us in the real estate community have speculated as to the reasons people sell, but we figured it would make sense to survey our customers to find out the answer. The answer to this question will help us determine how to find likely sellers before they list their properties.
When I was in real estate brokerage, I quickly realized that the key to the business is getting listings. Provided I had a decent property that was priced fairly, actually selling the listing was not nearly as challenging as getting the listing. I became fascinated with how to obtain listings in a systematic way that scaled. In order to figure out how to obtain listings, we need to understand why people sell.
Especially for ProspectNow users, this is valuable since it can help us filter for likely sellers. Below you will find the updated survey that we conducted July 30th, 2015. Since our email newsletter database has grown, this year’s survey included even more participants than last year.
Last year, the number one answer was “Retiring and wanted to downsize” where as this year the number one answer was “Tired of Managing the Property”. I think these answers are related and would tell me that finding older properties with deferred maintenance would be a good approach for target marketing. For example, in ProspectNow you can filter by year built. You can also filter by ownership date.
Take a look at the specific answers below and happy prospecting!
