Getting a buyer’s criteria is only half of the equation—you also NEED inventory to matchmake them with. When there is very little inventory in the market for you to choose from it can be disheartening. You have to dig deeper and be creative with your search process. In this episode of Agent Rise, I’m going to share SIX ways you can source inventory to present to your buyers.
The first way you can source more inventory is by sending out a mailer in a neighborhood you know your client is interested in. It can be a letter directly from the family or you as the realtor. Attach your contact info, state you’re interested in a home in the area, and let them know they can give you a call.
Look at expired listings from 2012-2017 where the house sat on the market and didn’t sell. Send the owner a letter with the customer version of the MLS listing attached. Let them know you have an interested buyer and see if they’d be willing to let them see the house. They don’t have to list it, stage it, or get professional photos done—they just have to schedule a time the buyer can see it.
Everyone wants to avoid these because you have to negotiate for your commission. But Zillow, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace are crawling with FSBOs. When competition is tight in the market like it is now, taking advantage of FSBOs is a great way to leverage the market. Listen to the episode for more details!
There are a lot of homes out there available for rent. They’re listed on Marketplace, Craigslist, and even Airbnb. You can send them a message and find out if they’d be willing to entertain an offer to buy vs. a rental agreement.
Someone reaches out to you about a potential listing, but aren’t sure they want to deal with the process. Obviously, you want the listing—but what if you can let them know you might have an interested buyer? You may not get a formal listing with them, but you could end up with a transaction you wouldn’t otherwise have had (or even 3).
We’ve all been there when hosting an open house and nosy neighbors mosey over to see the place. They mention offhand that they’ve thought about selling their house but aren’t ready yet. Take the opportunity and view the conversation as a job interview. Neighbors are easy inventory for your buyers. If you let them know you have a potential buyer, they might go from “just thinking about it” to “ready to sell”.
Hopefully, these 6 options have given you some ideas to forge ahead and continue match-making for your buyers. Everyone is struggling with inventory right now, right? But whenever there is a limitation on a market there is always an opportunity available. Listen to the episode for the full details on each option!
Recommended Resources
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And finally, if you would be so kind - leave a rating and review for the Agent Rise podcast on Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes)
Do you find yourself throwing out excuses to avoid getting work done? Do you start the process of match-making, only to hope that your buyer isn’t available for a showing that weekend? I get it—we all want breaks. Sometimes it’s nice to have a free weekend where you aren’t showing houses. But it’s a HUGE problem if you find yourself avoiding work that is your job! It is how you make a living! In this episode, I share 3 strategies to help get you back on track and doing your job.
If you find yourself slacking on match-making and dreading your weekend because you’re scheduling showings—start setting boundaries! You don’t have to devote the whole weekend to showing houses. You could take Friday evening and Saturday off and only offer clients Sunday’s to show homes.
The key is that you set your availability. YOU tell them when you’re available and let them know when you’re not. Give yourself your 24 to do as you please and dedicate the remainder of your weekend to your clients. It’s the best of both worlds.
If you are busy matchmaking and finding homes to show clients but are short on time, consider hiring a showing assistant. Take a look at the roster in your company and reach out to an agent that you think would be interested in showing some houses for you. They can cover your showings when you need a day off or when you go on vacation.
Pay them a flat fee for showing properties—offer them $50 for the first showing and $25 for each additional. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. It doesn’t leave you bogged down and allows you to forge ahead with match-making. The assistant will make the whole process that much easier for everyone involved.
This next tip is a little outside of the box. If you don’t have the time to show houses, send your buyer to open houses without you. I recommend a few steps if you’re considering this:
I had some buyers who went to open houses on their own every weekend. They’d give me a heads up as to which ones they were going to and I’d get them registered. The process worked well and my clients were happy.
You need to take a step back and ask yourself some hard questions. Am I not putting in the work and doing matchmaking because I don’t want more work? Am I making excuses and laying blame elsewhere to avoid doing work? Do I simply want a free weekend?
Stop making excuses and admit it. Part of the battle is putting in the work. We all have moments when we don’t want to do what we need to do.
But you need to stop holding yourself back and preventing your own success. You have to work hard to get the results you want. Sometimes, that means working on the weekends. It means showing houses when you don’t feel like it.
But it’s when you break through and get work done that you begin to make a difference and work towards reaching your goals. Confront yourself, follow my outside-the-box tips, and move forward to reach your potential.
Recommended Resources
Connect with Neil!
And connect with me on ANY of the following social channels. I LOVE social!
And finally, if you would be so kind - leave a rating and review for the Agent Rise podcast on Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes)
I’ve tried creating YouTube videos before and have always hit a dead end. I was never able to settle into a groove. Recently, I was inspired by Peter McKinnon and a concept he introduced in one of his videos. I put my daily routine for video production to good use and got to work creating content for my Agent Rise YouTube Channel. Hear all about my inspiration, upcoming video ideas—and more—in this episode of Agent Rise!
I LOVE to tinker with videos. I have all the tools I need to create high-quality video (a great camera and access to Final Cut Pro video editing software). I enjoy creating videos and I’ve wanted to start a channel for a while—but nothing ever stuck...until I was watching one of Peter McKinnon’s videos and had my Aha! Moment.
He was doing a tutorial inside of a vlog.
Now, I’ve done videos before. Some of my ‘I Love Madison’ videos fare quite well on YouTube. In the past, I’ve attempted to shoot videos of me coaching, but didn’t feel like they’d resonate. And it certainly wasn’t something people would be searching for. People want tutorials, but they want them to be fun and entertaining. This is where a vlog tutorial comes into play.
You don’t want to just be a talking head in a video. Even with the best editing and added touches it still comes across boring. But if you work a tutorial into a vlog, it’s far more engaging. So what could that look like? In the 1st video on my YouTube channel I bring you with me to an ‘I Love Madison’ meetup and I teach you how to run one yourself.
You could also shoot a video of what it takes to host an open house. You could start in your office, put out signs, and get B-roll during the open house. As you’re vlogging, you incorporate your “how-to” in a seamless and entertaining way. The goal is to teach something while you’re doing it.
I’ve talked about my dream to travel the country in an RV. Our goal is to do that this summer, but we don’t have the rig yet. My wife pointed out that we could still travel the US and vlog—but just do it in our car. So in March, we are traveling to the Real Estate Distilled conference in Louisville after which we are heading to Disney.
I’d love to meet up with anyone who is along this route (I’ll post it in the Facebook group). The goal is to vlog along our journey while delivering content that is relevant to realtors around the US. I also want to go to different parts of the country where agents are killing it. I’d love to interview them, find out what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, and share it with my viewers.
Whatever you decide to do, I want to encourage you to just go create. If you’re passionate about video and enjoy the process, give it a shot. Listen to the episode to hear how one of my ‘I Love Madison’ videos hit home.
I’ve already posted 3 videos on my YouTube channel and intend to post a video per week. All the while trying to keep in mind what consumers are searching for. It’s all about learning what people want to see and then providing the content. You want people to find you on YouTube and become a face they recognize and think of when they think about real estate.
Here are some video ideas that you’ll be seeing in my YouTube channel:
That’s just the start of what’s in store. But I’d love to know—what would you like to see on my YouTube channel?
Recommended Resources
Connect with Neil!
And connect with me on ANY of the following social channels. I LOVE social!
And finally, if you would be so kind - leave a rating and review for the Agent Rise podcast on Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes)
Last week we talked about daily routines and a day block system that works well for me. So many people have reached out asking how to make a day block system work for their schedule. So in this episode of Agent Rise, I’m going to backtrack and help you nail down what you need to know to develop a daily routine that works for YOU.
You want to reach your daily, weekly, monthly, and annual goals, right? The #1 way to do that is to delegate. How do you decide what to delegate? You need to calculate what your hourly rate is. Let’s say you want a projected annual income of $250,000. Take that number and divide it by 2,000—you get an hourly rate of $125.
If you are doing any task for your business that you could delegate out for less than your hourly rate, you need to let it go.
If you’re constantly doing activities in your business that you could pay someone $20 an hour to do you are wasting your time. You need to stop making the excuse that it’s something only you can do—because it’s not. Your time and attention need to be focused on what produces revenue.
If you’re hesitant to delegate something, what is holding you back? Is it the cost? If you can’t afford to outsource it, ask yourself if it’s necessary in the first place. Is it something you can let go? Remember that you need to simplify your business to amplify your results.
You must dig deep and decide if any given task is worth your time. Does it fit into your 3 pillars? If it does, can you outsource it to someone else for less than your hourly rate? Odds are the answer is yes. Delegate it.
I understand you don’t know where the next deal is going to come from. I get that it’s scary to pay someone else when you don’t have a steady income stream. But it is the only way your business will succeed and grow. It opens up your time to focus on what really matters.
To properly prioritize what you should outsource, I recommend using a method that I learned from the book E-myth Revisited: write out detailed descriptions for the roles that you will outsource. You’ll likely have to play these roles until you’re ready to hire someone—but at that point, you’ll know what role needs to be hired out first.
There are three “buckets” that tasks can be grouped into:
Once you calculate your hourly rate, learn to let go and delegate, and know the roles you can outsource—it is far easier to get into a daily routine. Sticking with your routine gives you more time with clients, more time matchmaking, and you’ll spend more time on revenue-producing activities.
It all comes back to this fact: you are wasting your time by not hiring someone.
You can’t keep doing things the same way you have been. Just like when a plants roots outgrow the pot it’s in, you’ll outgrow the activities that got you started. You need to move to a larger pot! Hiring people is the best way to support your growth and the growth of your business. It will save you money in the long run.
To hear what my team looked like in 2005 versus what it looks like now, listen to the whole episode of Agent Rise!
Recommended Resources
Connect with Neil!
And connect with me on ANY of the following social channels. I LOVE social!
And finally, if you would be so kind - leave a rating and review for the Agent Rise podcast on Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes)