There are a million reasons why a property owner may decide to sell – they’re simply ready for greener pastures, they’re changing careers and moving towns, or there’s been a death in the family. Regardless of the reason for selling, preparing a home for sale is tough. It’s a lot of work and if the property sits listed for months but isn’t sold, it’s incredibly frustrating for the seller and the agent.
But expired listings are a veritable gold mine if you’re an entrepreneurial real estate agent.
Lead generation is one of the foremost goals of successful real estate agents. In fact, finding a fountain of leads is often the No. 1 contributor to success. Expired listings are one such fountain. Because these property owners are especially motivated, these listings are some of the easiest to negotiate and fastest to close – if you know why the property didn’t sell the first time around.
Why Listings Expire
When a seller approaches a real estate agent for the sale of their home or property, it’s usually agreed how long the agent will list it, say six months. Sometimes properties don’t sell before their original listing expiration. The seller has the option of renewing the listing. But if they choose not to, it expires.
There are several reasons a home might not sell, such as:
- Overvalued property
- Agent lacks experience
- The home was staged poorly
- Abundance of similar listings
- Poor marketing overall
You can spend time driving to expired listings leads or pick up the phone and cold call the owners directly with an expired listing script – but if you really want to generate successful leads, you need a stronger strategy.
Finding Expired Listings
So, what’s the best way to uncover expired listings? Prospecting expired leads that have fallen off the MLS is one of the most inexpensive methods of lead generation and a savvy business strategy. It also has one of the highest conversion rates compared with other lead sources and generation methods, whether you’re a residential or commercial real estate agent. Once a listing becomes expired, these owners are exceptionally motivated to sell their homes.
How to Approach FSBOs and Expired Listings
If you’ve ever “failed” at something – and we all have at one time or another – you understand how owners with expired listings might feel. The truth is, more often than not, they’ve had better days. They feel discouraged with the home-selling process. Real estate agents may not be their favorite people right now.
But what they can’t see is that they actually need you. They might know some things about the market, but they don’t know enough.
Most of all, they usually are still interested in selling. Preparing their property took time, money, and effort. If they also hired an agent the first time around, they’re not exactly keen on the idea of working with another. Whatever the first agent did wrong is automatically ascribed to real estate agents and brokers everywhere.
They require kid gloves. A lot of these owners of expired listings get calls all day long after the listing expires – many of which are from insensitive agents with similar calling scripts – and no real investment in the feelings of the answering party.
The best way to approach an owner of an expired real estate listing? Connect them with a buyer. You may have seen a call script offering advice just for this instance. Something along the lines of:
“Hello! I see you’re selling [address]. I think I might have an interested buyer. Do you still want to sell?”
And the advice goes on to say that even if you haven’t found a buyer, this “in” gives you time to find one. The truth is – the seller is already upset. There’s no reason to lie – even a little fib – just to get the listing. Be honest. If you can help them find a buyer and get their home sold, say so. But definitely do not say you have a buyer if you don’t. The seller will appreciate honesty, and this helps you build trust – and get the listing appointment.
Getting Expired Listing Contact Information
This can be the most difficult and time-consuming part of expired listing prospecting. In most cases, a listing won’t include phone numbers of the property owners. You can sometimes do a quick Google search and find a name related to the address – but if you’re working with commercial properties, it’s likely you’ll discover a company name, such as an LLC. Not being able to easily find the phone number makes contacting the expired listing owner difficult – but it also means that you might be the only agent who does when you do find their number.
How ProspectNow Can Help You Find Expired Listings and Owner Information
It sounds cliché, maybe – but there’s never been an easier way to find all the information you need for your real estate business. While you could spend your precious time searching endless stacks of public records, you still might not be able to find all the information you need.
ProspectNow has already performed all the research for you – locations, owners, LLC contact information (phone numbers and email addresses!) – and it’s all in one easy-to-search database.
To use ProspectNow to find contact information for expired listings owners:
- Put all of your expired listing addresses into an Excel or Google Sheets document.
- Within the ProspectNow dashboard, click Search Properties.
- Click Advanced Search.
- Click Multiple Address Search.
- Copy the addresses from your spreadsheet and paste them into the box.
- Click Search.
- From the Results page, you can select each owner individually or click Select All and find every number all at once.
To see these steps in real time, watch this video.
Wrap Up
Working with expired listing contact information, you can create a campaign to reach these more-than-ready sellers. ProspectNow can help. We’ve been making real estate prospecting easier for agents like you since 2008.
Recommended Reading:
Finding Commercial Property Owners