The shift from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market is happening all across Canada and the U.S. as inventory levels are reaching some of the lowest listing inventory levels for agents and their buyers in history. The changing of the guard has taken place in many of the market’s as the sellers are now in the driver’s seat as the buyer has less to choose from, the better listings are selling fast and in many cases the best buys are seeing multiple offers and selling above the asking price.

Agents are now faced with many new challenges in today’s market as it becomes more difficult to get listings and maintain a listing inventory, having to find a property for the seller to buy before they will sell and having too many buyers and spending hours with them only to lose out on a sale because the listings are selling too fast or they are losing out in a multiple offer situation.

So if we know working with buyers is more and more difficult in this type of market then why would we invest our time, money, energy and focus on buyers? If we know that we get a listing in today’s market we like our chances of having a sale and a quick sale with little competition, selection and some of the highest levels of buyers we have seen in years in today’s market.

What are we waiting for? Let’s go get some listings!

So here are some ideas and strategies for getting more listings in a seller’s market and start working smarter and not harder in this crazy seller’s market.

1)      What’s my home worth? landing page – Create a landing page to drive curious seller listing leads for you to follow up and convert to a listing. Check out:
www.easyagentpro.com
www.primesellerleads.com
www.boldleads.com
www.leads2listing.com
www.agentlocator.ca 

2)      Bona Fide Buyer Direct Mail – Create a postcard with a photo of your legitimate buyers and a brief story about who they are and what they are looking for and ask people to help you find them a home.

3)      Bona Fide Buyer Door Knock – One of my coaching clients actually door knocked a specific area and brought his buyers along with them and got appointments into 4 homes out of 20 door knocks! How is that for a conversion rate?!

4)      Expired Listings – If your market area allows this. Working the expired listing market is a huge opportunity for sellers that now can sell in this new market. I personally feel face to face contact with an expired listing is the best approach.

5)      FSBO For Sale By Owners – In this market you have as good a chance as any to add your fee on to the private sellers asking price and list their home on the MLS system and probably sell it with it being a seller’s market and so much demand.

6)      Online and Offline Ads – Run ads that have your buyers photos and details of what they are looking for and ask for peoples help to find them a home. Start running ads of all the bona fide home buyers you have and what they want to buy and stop only advertising the listings you cannot sell.

7)      Video email your Database – Send your database an email asking them for their help with finding all the buyers that don’t have anything to buy and see if they thought of selling or know someone that is selling and contact you with their name and number and you will follow them up.

8)      Create a bona fide buyer website – Why does it only have to be a website with only the sellers and their listings? Why not create a website for buyers to list what they are looking for and want to buy and drive the potential home sellers to review your inventory of bona fide buyers for them to find a match and reach out to you with their listing?

9)      Facebook ads and video clips – Driving sellers to your “What’s My Home Worth” landing page or your website that lists all your bona fide buyers and what they are looking for page or better yet a video clip asking your facebook friends to help you find a home for each of your specific buyers.

10)   Sleeve listings – Work the market of seller’s in your database or fellow agents database who would consider selling but are afraid to put their home on MLS. Work your fellow real estate peers and contact them for their sleeve listings and upcoming listings and beat other buyers to their listings by knowing what other agents want or have available for sale but not on MLS. Let them know what sleeve and upcoming listings you may have for their buyers and put some deals together without having them listed on the market.

11)   Home Seller Protection Plan – Contingencies for listings and sellers who are afraid you list their home and leave them homeless. Write into their listing contract that upon the acceptance of an offer they have “x” number of days to find a suitable property or not take the offer or they have the ability to rent back their own property at fair market rent for “x” number of months until they find something else suitable. Or they will have a long completion date to allow them a few months to find another suitable property. All these terms protect them from being homeless and they see are in writing and built into their listing agreement schedule A.

A lot of our markets agents are needing to shift their energy and focus on where the business is and the business is in the listings when your market is a strong seller’s market. Spending too much time on unqualified buyers who can’t find what they want and move too slow or aren’t willing to jump into a bidding war is not the way to run your real estate business. The market has shifted and you are having to get outside the box to get listings but if you can be creative and shift with the market you are going to win and make 2016 a very big year for you and your real estate business.

Strength and courage,

Wade

for more check out www.agentsboost.com