How to Start a Real Estate Career in 2018

Getting new prospects is always an uphill task. There is hardly any simple way to gain new prospects without spending money. For agents who may be trying to cut costs, this represents a Catch 22 scenario. If you spend money on acquiring prospects, you may end up running out of operating capital before selling a home. If you do not spend any money, then how will you get any prospects or deals in the pipeline? This binary choice may make it seem impossible to have a middle ground. However, there are some ways you can build your prospect list with an investment of nothing more than your time and effort. Here, we highlight four such tactics that can land you more prospects at no monetary cost.

Build on Top of Recent Sales

It is well known that when one home sells, usually, one to two more homes in the area sell immediately after. The reason is that when a home goes up for sale and receives multiple offers, those offers represent people prepared to purchase a home. You could say these are hot leads. When the home sells to the winning offer, the other offers are often prepared to make a compromise purchase of a house that is in the same neighborhood and within the same price range. As such, what you want to do is immediately make a few house calls to homeowners in the neighborhood and let them know that there are several engaged buyers ready to make an offer if they are ready to sell.

For Sale by Owner

This is another easy way to get prospects without having to spend money. Homes that are for sale by the owner tend to be more approachable especially if the homes are in the neighborhood you serve. You can easily walk up to the front door and pitch your offer. You can start by seeking to get a preview of the home and then getting a go-ahead from the owner to list it. The benefit of going after such deals is that such sellers often want to work with one individual and tend to favor personalized service as opposed to being represented by a company.

Expired Listings

As the housing market currently favors sellers, or what is known as a seller’s market, there are bound to be many expired listings. This is primarily caused by sellers overpricing their assets to take advantage of the demand for homes. What this does, however, is to suppress buyer appetite, leading to expired listings. For you, this represents an opportunity to go after these expired listings, to repackage them and reposition them so that they are better fitted for buyer expectations. The great thing about this method is that sellers are often more receptive to getting help with the listing as they did their part and they were not able to sell.

Add Value to your Database

This method involves engaging your existing database of either past clients or current prospects. Here is an example of how you can engage them. According to the Nation Association of Realtors, more than half of potential home sellers do not know the value of their home. To capitalize on this, you can go through your database and create a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) of each home represented. Then send this out to your database with a note providing some insights and additional info on their home. By doing this, you will be establishing yourself as a knowledge broker, which will drive warm leads your way.

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