I have been a real estate agent for 22 years. I found my niche when I first started, and it was cold calling. If I made 50 phone calls, I got in four or five doors all the time. I have always focused on the sellers, on the listings. We work a lot of buyers too, and those are much easier to grab, but the listings are what I go after.
The market where we are in New York has become so difficult and so competitive. The commission laws have changed. I am a 4% lister, and I used to go list for 4%, but now I am competing against people listing for 1 or 2%. On top of that, when you go after expired listings, it is hard to get the phone numbers. I figured if we could have this in our pocket, we would have all the options in front of us.
We wanted to focus on getting the expired listings. The for sale by owners we could grab off Zillow, but when you go into the expireds, it is hard to get phone numbers. REDX provides a good amount of good numbers, and it is the most well known and the cheapest. It is cheaper than buying leads.
We interviewed a lot of the lead generating companies, and then I said, we have the expireds and the for sale by owners right in front of us. That used to be the easiest market to target. Everybody told me it was a waste, why are you doing that. But I had used it in the past, and there were no hesitations. We just said, let’s do this.
The first week or two was me yelling at everybody on the team, trying to get them to be consistent and to understand that this is not something you leave and do when you want. You have to do it every day. Every morning I come in and manually download all of the new information. I am basically the only one who really coddles it, but we got on track pretty quick.
My first win was an expired listing. They had been on the market for a long time. Jared and I went together, we got the appointment, we got the listing, and we got it sold. We met that listing the next day after I really got going, because I am very aggressive. I said, you are coming with me, it is in a bad neighborhood, let’s go, and the next day we were there. Since then I have done three deals, not just one.
I use REDX a lot for training. I make my team sit in there and watch me call, and I show them how to ask if it is the person who owns the home first. It teaches the new people who start here that there is another way, other than the internet. Everything is not just AI. I am older, and the office is mainly a lot younger, so I try to pair the old school ways of doing things with the new. They ease me into the technology, and I show them the phones.
My pipeline has definitely built. I always ask people if I can reach out to them again, then I save them and send a mailer, a postcard, or a private letter depending on the conversation. My advice to the younger agents who do not understand the value of prospecting is simple. The best way to meet someone is organically and to be in front of them. The more calls you make, the more people you contact, the more interest you get in yourself. You have to brand yourself somehow.