Expired Listings Letter!

Your real estate agency has several different niches that they want you to target for lead generation.

One technique that is taught is to mail an expired listings letter or postcard to owners of homes that have not sold.

Expired Listings Letter Example #1.

Recipients Name
Recipients street address
City, State, Zip

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Name,

My name is (Name), a local real estate agent who has worked in your community for (XX) years. I noticed that your real estate listing has recently expired and that your house has not been sold.

I know that you are discouraged, but don’t give up. It’s never too late. It may simply be that you weren’t using the right agent the first time. 

As you can see from my attached list, other houses in your neighborhood are selling, and there is no reason why yours can’t sell as well.

There are many qualified buyers who would be perfectly willing to pay a full market value for your home!

There could be a number of simple reasons why your home didn’t catch the eye of the right buyer, but one reason could be because your current agent’s marketing plan did not reach its intended market.

Although your mailbox may already be filling up with letters from other agents indicating that they have the perfect solution for your situation, don’t make any hasty decisions before comparing my marketing plan (attached) to theirs. You will soon see why I have been so successful over the years.

I would love to schedule time to meet with you so that we can discuss your options. It’s a simple, no-obligation conversation with no expectations on my part except to make sure that you are fully informed.

Please call me at (phone #). I look forward to hearing from you and to having the opportunity to shine a light on your home so that you can enjoy a successful sale!

Sincerely,

Name
Business Name
XXX Street
City, State ZIP
Website | Email
Phone | Fax

Expired Real Estate Listings Letter Sample #2.

Recipients Name
Recipients street address
City, State, Zip

Dear Name,

Hello there! My name is (name) and I’m a realtor in (city/area).

I’m sorry to see that your house didn’t sell. Believe me, I know how much time, effort, and energy goes into the process — and how disappointing it can be when you don’t get the results you want.

If you’re like many homeowners in this situation, you may be feeling discouraged, frustrated, maybe even ready to give up. But keep in mind that there are many reasons your house may not have sold yet. There might have been a problem with marketing, an issue with staging or photographing the house — or even just plain bad luck.

So here’s my advice: take a deep breath, take a few days off to recuperate and regroup, and then jump back in armed with the right knowledge in hand and the right people at your side. While change can be stressful, sometimes it’s necessary to make great things happen.

If you’re tired of excuses, delays, and a frustrating lack of results, I’d love to offer you some free advice and tips, and talk with you about what you should expect from a realtor. If your current realtor doesn’t quite measure up, even in just one of the many aspects involved in selling a home, that alone may be the reason you’re struggling.

I’d also like to share my theories for why your house didn’t sell this time around and suggest some changes you can make to move toward a successful sale. As an experienced and successful realtor in (area), I know exactly what works and what doesn’t, and would be happy to share this expertise with you.

When you get a chance, give me a call at (number) or get in touch by email at (email address) so we can talk in more depth about some changes you can make to move toward a successful sale. Let’s discuss the problems and find a solution!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Sincerely,

Name
Business Name
XXX Street
City, State ZIP
Website | Email
Phone | Fax

Expired Listings Marketing Tips and Techniques.

One of the more common old school methods that is taught to agents is to pick up the phone and call the homeowners of the expired listing and use a script that has been proven to get the owner to give you the listing.

But now that we have the do not call laws on the books you have to be very careful about this approach. So check your states laws.

My wife is an agent. Ironically her broker hasn’t brought up anything special when it comes to real estate lead generation except to work her sphere of influence. In other words, bug your friends and family.

Since I am direct response marketer I have studied several industries including real estate and I know that there are many seasoned agents out there that have developed their own marketing systems around expired listings.

Many of them include a postcard sequence which is mailed to a list of expired listings. In this case the main goal is to get the homeowner to call the agent.

Others include an expired listings letter sequence or a combination of letters and postcards. Some realtor coaches  encourage you to pick up the phone and call after the sequence is mailed over a two or three week period. This is a technique that I prefer, but you can’t use the phone unless your prospect is not on the do not call list.

So How Do You Get Expired Listing Leads?

In our state you can’t call a homeowner if they are on the do not call list. Most people are on this list. But cold calling anyone is a bad idea anyway because the target prospect has no idea who you are. Why would you call them out of the blue to discuss selling their most important without some sort quality introduction?

What my wife is going to test with my help is an expired listings letter package. Yes, I said package. Instead of just using a #10 envelope with your brokerage name as the return address on the envelope, which screams ‘junk mail’, we are going to hand deliver a 9 x 12 envelope to the doors of prospects. This package will include an expired listing sales letter, which is basically the cover letter, and also include a nice brochure, business card, and a here’s the ‘biggy’, a promotional item!

This promotional item will be something like a notepad with my wifes contact information printed on it so that her name stays top of mind (potentially) because it may be something they want to use around the house. We may also include a refrigerator magnet as well.

But isn’t that expensive?

Of course it’s a little bit pricey on the front end. But consider this. In our area there are not a very many expired listings. In one town in our county 25 expired’s would be a lot. So why not spend five or six dollars per home to really grab their attention? What do you have to lose?

If you get one phone call you’ll be lucky. So what you have to do is keep your name in front of these prospects once per week for three or four weeks, and then once per month for at least one year.

After we hand deliver the package we will follow with a direct mail letter and then consistently mail to them for several months. The monthly contact will be via a print newsletter.