A nationally recognized founder, branding expert, and industry thought leader, Emile cut his teeth in real estate in 2007 crafting marketing strategies for the Chrysler and MetLife Buildings. See full bio
Looking to get more real estate seller leads in 2022? If you’ve worked in real estate for more than 30 seconds, you’ve probably come to the (painful) realization that 1. You NEED seller leads to become a top producer, and 2. Finding and converting seller leads is hard work.
In order to make the process a little easier, we put together a list of 15 proven strategies to get real estate seller leads in 2022 and beyond. There are tons of great tips here from our friends at Douglas Elliman, so make sure to bookmark this page.
1. Learn How to Find Hidden Listing Inventory
In his 27 years as a broker and coach, Sean Moudry has heard agents give every excuse in the book for why they can’t get seller leads. You can probably guess what the most common excuse was: “But Sean, there’s just no inventory out there!” Sound familiar?
In 2021, we saw historically low inventory pretty much everywhere. Do you think that stopped Sean from getting leads and closing deals well above ask? Of course not. He just worked a little harder and leaned into other sources of listings. You can learn his best strategies to find hidden listing inventory here: 9 Proven Strategies to Find Hidden Listing Inventory in 2022.
2. Drive Traffic to Home Valuation Landing Pages
In 2022, the best way to generate top-of-the-funnel seller leads online is to drive traffic to home valuation landing pages. Of course, the learning curve here can be steep. Getting a low cost-per-click from social media ads and designing landing pages that actually convert isn’t easy.
Instead of banging your head against the wall trying to keep up with the constant changes to Facebook’s ad manager, you can sign up for BoldLeads and get exclusive top-of-funnel seller leads from A/B tested landing pages without the headaches. Even better, everything they offer seamlessly integrates with the Propertybase customer relationship manager (CRM) and IDX websites.
The best advice I ever got about success in real estate and maybe in life was also the simplest: “It’s better to be their first love, second spouse, and third real estate agent.” While we don’t give relationship advice (yet), we can tell you from experience that this is true. First-time buyers and sellers almost always choose the wrong agent. That makes expired listings—when a real estate agent couldn’t sell their home—an excellent source of seller leads.
Of course, like all cold outreach, winging it is probably not a good idea. You’ll need a lead source and auto-dialer like REDX and Vortex, and you need to practice tried-and-true scripts and objection handlers if you want a shot at actually converting them.
If you work in or near a reasonably sized city, chances are there are a handful of listing agents who are literally making millions of dollars doing exactly what you do. Helping people buy and sell houses. This is why joining a top team is a great way to get seller leads. It will take time, but the experience and connections you make will be worth it.
Sure, you might be working buyers for a while, but if you hang in there, you’ll learn invaluable secrets from the best of the best in your farm area.
5. Nurture Relationships With Local Business Owners
One underappreciated way to get real estate seller leads is to develop relationships with local influencers who will then become evangelists for your business. No, we’re not suggesting you go out for drinks with the local equivalent of Kim Kardashian. Instead, you can work to develop relationships with local business owners. Why local business owners? Simple. They know everyone and new people moving to your farm want to know them.
You can always go out and talk to and interview local business owners for your blog or social media to build tons of local content for your leads. Or, you can use the system that Parkbench already perfected to help automate the process and give you a head start.
No matter how good the market is, there are always homeowners who fall behind on payments. In some cases, they are able to recover from their situation by getting caught up on payments or negotiating a loan modification, but in most cases, they will have to sell the home to avoid foreclosure. That’s why working distressed properties can be a great way to get listings in any market.
Learn more about how to find and work with distressed homeowners in Sean’s course, “Survive and Thrive,” in The Close Pro.
7. Work Your Sphere to Find Seller Leads in Your CRM
If you’re not working your sphere, you are leaving seller leads on the table. Period. According to the National Association of Research (NAR), 68% of all sellers find their agent through their sphere. Since you’ve already got some sort of relationship with these people, you can skip the cold outreach tactics and start straight in on strengthening your existing relationship and nudging people toward becoming clients.
Miltiadis Kastanis, Director of Luxury Sales, Miami Beach for Douglas Elliman, gets most of his seller leads from his network:
“My seller leads come from my network, from being on the scene, and from always being at the most happening events. My tips and tricks to keeping them as a full-time client is by being at their call even when it’s not related to real estate.
“I go to their personal events, support their causes, invite them to dinner parties, and so on. I become a part of their daily life and offer a superior level of service to make sure they don’t think of anyone else for their referrals or their personal real estate needs. I come from a hospitality background, so it’s really simple for me.”
8. Create an Action Plan for Lead Nurturing & Automate It
Since even the hottest seller leads can take months to convert, successful listing agents create action plans to nurture them for the long haul. Once they have a plan that works, they automate as much as they can. This makes your leads feel like you are devoting time, energy, and interest to their needs even when you’re busy drumming up new business.
Here’s a quick example of a nurturing action plan from Dina Goldentayer, a Douglas Elliman agent in Miami:
Text message: Once per week
Market update call: Every two weeks
Coffee meetup: Once per month
Using an affordable CRM like LionDesk, you can easily automate market analysis drips, birthday and holiday texts, meeting invites, and more. LionDesk also has an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, auto-dialer, and click-to-call features, so you won’t get bogged down with busy work.
While traditionally a seller lead generation strategy that only really works in big cities, converting rental leads has become a viable strategy for agents all over the country. Once you look at demographic shifts, it’s easy to see why. First, more people are renting now than ever before, and second, developers are building more and more high-end rentals outside of larger cities.
Here’s Douglas Elliman Manhattan agent Adrian Radomski on just how lucrative converting rental leads can be:
“Treat every rental showing as if it were a large sale—you never know who you’re showing to. I’ve converted a $9,000 rental showing into a $4.2 million sale. That person then referred me to another family member, whose apartment we sold for $1.3 million.”
More than 100 miles outside of Manhattan, Martha Gunderson, an Elliman agent in the Hamptons, agrees:
“I would say that rentals are a good lead for potential sales. Provide information to the homeowner regarding the true value of their house in the current market and advise them how to get the most for their home.”
10. Get Over Your Fear of Cold Calling Expireds & FSBOs
While many people tend to avoid phone calls as if they were actually allergic to them, the fact remains that the personal connection made on the phone is equal to 10 postcards or emails. It’s simple really—human beings are conditioned to both remember and have a reaction to interpersonal communication.
So when you’re planning out your lead generation and nurturing campaigns to get and convert seller leads, make sure you plan in regular phone calls. That means setting aside a few hours each day to cold call, as well as regularly picking up the phone and calling former clients just to check in and remind them you exist.
Jennifer Alese, Ryan Serhant’s head of new development, didn’t mince words when we asked her how important calling leads was to getting listings:
“Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and TALK. This is so important and goes such a long way. It’s a work day? Text them! At the end of the day, we are all in the same world and evolving with technology. Not everyone checks emails, answers calls, or listens to voicemail.”
Mia Vissichelli, an agent with Douglas Elliman Long Island, swears by cold calling expired listings to generate seller leads:
“Definitely tackle expired listings! It’s a free source of warm leads and it doesn’t cost anything to pick up the phone or knock on their door and introduce yourself. It’s a great way to get listings, learn your market, and get your name out there as a trusted resource. I also love that working with expired listings tests your problem-solving skills, since you have to market the home in a fresh, new way that wasn’t already done by the previous listing agent.”
Dan Burz, a Douglas Elliman agent in Manhattan, agrees:
“I’ve generated a $650,000 listing in New Jersey from FSBO, which led me to a $14 million new development site in Flushing, and I am now the full-time agent taking care of the units. From expired, I’ve got two units at 540 West 49th Street, and I’m the seller’s exclusive agent for everything related to those units (rental and sales). The owners are law professors at Virginia University. In both, I was consistent and didn’t give up until I got their trust.”
11. Build a Library of Local Service Providers to Drive More Referrals
Another great way to drive seller leads is to build a library of local service providers to drive more referrals. The idea is to be known as something of a local fixer. So if someone in your sphere needs something, they know you have connections.
Compass agent, Brian Babst, agrees:
“For everyone I come in contact with, I position myself constantly as a helpful resource, and not as focused on the immediate listing. If they are confident I know the most cost-effective painter, the easiest place for window treatments, or best slice in the neighborhood, I know I’m going to be on their list when it’s time to sell. Especially in a time when there is a ‘Concierge’ or an Angie’s List-style referral source for everything, people want to trust a ‘Brian’s List’ that’s ACTUALLY handpicked and tested. Money and time matter—if you can prove you’re a helpful resource, the sellers will remember.”
12. Work Open Houses to Find Seller Leads
Although many agents tend to ignore them, open houses can be an excellent place to find seller leads. Yes, you’ll get the inevitable parade of tire kickers and curious neighbors, but you’ll also get serious sellers checking out the competition to see what their home might sell for. This makes perfect sense as every buyer thinks they’re going to be a real estate expert these days, and what better way to become an expert than checking out listings in person?
Open houses can be an especially fertile source for seller leads in more affluent neighborhoods, as most residents never even see their neighbors’ driveway—let alone their living rooms.
Barbara Leogrande, an Associate Broker with Douglas Elliman Long Island, sees open houses as a perfect excuse to meet potential clients face to face instead of online:
“For me, open houses are hands-down the best way to generate seller leads. I typically do two to three every weekend, and find that it’s not only buyers who attend, but also homeowners scoping out the competition and subconsciously interviewing the agents they meet. Nothing beats a face-to-face personal experience and making a great first impression. When they call me to list, they say ‘Do you remember me? We met at your open house!’”
13. Create Postcard Campaigns for Your Sphere & Farm
Who doesn’t love getting something personal in their otherwise dreary pile of bills and coupons? I know I do. Well, chances are your former clients and the rest of your sphere do too. Why not incorporate postcards into your nurturing campaigns and give them what they want?
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. Just send out heartfelt messages wishing them a happy birthday, a Merry Christmas, or a postcard with a pretty picture just to say hello. After all, you never know when that postcard is going to end up on their refrigerator and stay there for months or even years.
Think about it: They have friends over relaxing in the kitchen and one of them spots your postcard on the fridge and asks about it. What will your former client say? If they liked you, why wouldn’t they recommend you? Congratulations. You might have just picked up a seller lead for 50 cents.
Pro tip: Take your real estate farming to the next level with a predictive analytics tool like Offrs. Offrs uses over 250 data points to identify homeowners who are most likely to list their home for sale in the next 12 months.
14. Work With Real Estate Investors & House Flippers
If you’re working in a reasonably sized city, chances are there are dozens of investors and house flippers buying, renovating, and selling houses every day. What most people don’t realize is that investors weren’t born yesterday. They know that their best chance to get top dollar for their listing is to hire a listing agent to aggressively market the property.
Why shouldn’t that listing agent be you? If you have local expertise, marketing chops, and enough experience to get them great prices, then you can set yourself up with a steady supply of listings to close every month.
If you’ve tried all the other ways to get seller leads here and you’re still not getting any leads, you might be working the wrong niche. Markets change, and staying ahead of the curve and working niches that are growing rather than shrinking just might be your ticket to getting more leads.
Just make sure you do your research here. Transitioning to a new niche is a risk and might not pay off if you choose the wrong one. Here are six niches that we think will grow in the future: 6 Red-hot Real Estate Niches That Can Double Your GCI.
Over to You
Have a great strategy for getting seller leads that we missed? Let us know in the comments. Still struggling and want some support? Join our Facebook Mastermind Group here.
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A nationally recognized founder, branding expert, and industry thought leader, Emile cut his teeth in real estate in 2007 crafting marketing strategies for the Chrysler and MetLife Buildings.
The Close has a policy of fierce editorial independence. We do not accept money, services, or products in exchange for positive reviews or product placement. Period. If you read about a product or service on this website, it’s because we genuinely think it’s great.
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The reason these companies want to work with us is that they know our readers represent the most engaged, professional, and committed real estate agents online today.
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