For those who know me well, you know that buyers are my least favorite aspect of real estate. It might not be a popular opinion, I realize. I don’t like systems to strictly pursue buyers, because the best buyer leads come from your listings. The majority of top agents in the world spend their time, money, and resources generating seller leads. In their positioning and marketing of their seller’s homes, they automatically generate buyer leads. These buyers can be qualified and then, of course, shown the property that they called on for the coveted double-ended commission.
No cost or time was spent to acquire these buyers because you were performing an act, which you promised to do for the seller anyway. The sheer act of buyer lead generation, in my opinion, is a waste of time when you could be “double-dipping” by spending your time acquiring seller leads, selling them yourself, or delegating that duty to a cooperative agent. Your sellers become a great database of buyers someday, too. Agents forget that a listing means promotion and that multiplying effect of being on numerous websites. Why spend money or time finding buyers when they come from sellers? That is leverage!
If you do not want to find your buyers with your active listings, there are other methods of obtaining buyers that can be effective. One is doing the research each morning on the new listings to see which of the listings are tenant occupied. This can be a gray area of lead generation, because the listing agent might consider that tenant their client. Even though we know differently, I have always thought that there are enough ways to make money in real estate without causing anxiety to other agents. It is legally correct to contact the tenant on the listing and let them know that their home is about to be sold. The conversation that I have with tenant occupied listings is the following:
“Good morning/afternoon/evening, my name is (your name) and I noticed that the property at (address) was just listed for sale and am I correct that you live there? Great. By the way, what’s your name? (Name), I just want to let you know that the market is pretty good, and you probably will be receiving some showings and I would expect that your property could be sold in as fast as 60 days. In fact, the average days on the market at the (local board of REALTORS®) is currently twenty-eight days!
“The reason for my call is to see if you would like to be shown any properties to purchase. I say purchase because with the current interest rates of approximately ____% you have the opportunity to buy a home. You would have ownership payments that are equal to or less than rent payments after you take income tax considerations into effect.
“Would you be interested in exploring the opportunities in the housing market to purchase? Would you be interested in meeting with one of my leader team members to find out how much of a loan you could qualify for and how low of an interest rate we could obtain for you? Great, I will have my lender team, (lender’s name) from (lender’s company) call you today. Thanks again for your time.”
As you can see this conversation is filled with value for the tenant. Once the clients agreed to it, the lead would go through the buyer hoop system, which we so aggressively explain and demonstrate in our book Buyer Net Profit. You see, we search for buyers as the world’s greatest way to find listings…leverage again!
Another method of buyer lead generation can be delegated to your affiliates. The system that I use with my lender team member is called the “Expensive Lessee Call.” This call is directed to people out of the reverse directory who rent apartments in buildings that have been identified as expensive. The reason that we go after expensive apartment buildings is that they’re in a better position to afford the payments on modest homes. My lender would then call these tenants from the reverse directory and ask if they have ever considered buying a home.
The lender would go on to explain that he/she is currently pre-qualifying potential tenants who are paying substantial amounts of money in rent. He/she is providing the tenants with pre-approval certificates to be used with a real estate broker to obtain a new home. He goes on to suggest the REALTOR® (which is me!) who would in the best position to help them once they became pre-approved. Once the pre-approval certificate is issued, I am notified to contact this potential buyer and then the buyer is put through my hoop system, which we cover in the Fast Lane Buyer Systems book.
The majority of my buyers come from buyers who see my listings and the sellers who sell them! This is why we have dedicated this whole book to seller lead generation. However, remember in my seller book, we teach you how the search for exclusive property for the buyer will knock their socks off and also find even more listings as you search the ranks of FSBOs, old expireds, your database, postcards to neighborhoods, and others!
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