Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Writing Expired Listing Letters

By Amie Greere


As a REALTOR, expired listings could be one of the most helpful sources of leads and new business. Prospecting these expired listings can be as inoffensive as sending the owner of the land an expired listing letter, or as blatant as a door knock and face to face meeting. Regardless of how you prospect your buyer, understanding their frame of reference can be principal to your success.

When approaching your target customer, it is vital to understand that they may still be motivated to sell the house, but might feel that they have been burned by the REALTOR listing process. These prospects have heard the traditional REALTOR presentation and are open to anything that appears unique, different, or more useful than what their existing real estate agent offers.

For prospects of this sort, expired listing script may not be as effective as more direct forms of marketing. Although these letters are low cost and may be sent out in mass, often, expired listing letters, postcards or presents are received well after the prospect has previously signed with a competitor. Often a expired mls listing prospects receive multiple offers from different REALTORS and typically sign with their first contact. Because of this, expired listing letters are regularly received late.

For REALTORS that use expired listings as a supply of business a more useful approach might be to employ listing lead services such as the RedX (Real Estate Data Exchange) or LeadSenders to access the leads in real time. The thriving real estate agent utilizes these tools to identify leads, then reaches out on a daily basis by phone and occasionally in person. By way of these services, the real-estate professional utilizes a first mover advantage to catch the listing before the competition. These tools provide real estate agents with a significant advantage over their competition.

In general, an expired MLS listing lead will sign with the first REALTOR that makes contact. Again, this suggests that expired listing letters may possibly not be the most effective method in which to prospect mls listing leads. Beyond doubt, the axiom that the early bird gets the worm applies to these scenarios, and the profitable REALTOR must fine-tune their lead generation approach accordingly.




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