by Jefferson Snow

The housing market is recovering. A recent article from Realtor.org® shows that 41 out of 50 states (including Washington DC) have appreciated price during the first quarter of 2013. When it was all averaged out across the country, home prices have risen 6.7% from quarter 1 of 2012 and 1.9% since quarter 4. That’s great news.

The good news on top of this good news, is that the appreciation is expected to continue. As cited on kcmblog.com, Trulia recently posted a great article indicating that national home prices are still undervalued by a full 7%, meaning the market is still rebounding and is not destined for some new housing bubble.

As happy as we are with these trends of appreciation, there is still one problem: lack of inventory. We’ve hit on it again and again but we want to drive this home. With fewer homes on the market, competition drives up the prices. When the market demands higher prices, less expireds will hit MLS because houses are selling at prices closer to what the seller wanted originally.

With less expireds hitting the market on a daily basis, there is no more important time to go after expireds than at a time like this, especially past expireds.

One of the most important features of the REDX is that we not only provide names and phone numbers for current expired listings, we can perform research on past expireds that came off the market 3 to 6 months ago and have not yet relisted with anyone. Most of these homes probably didn’t sell because they were overpriced. But that was last year. That was then, this is now.

With the rising prices and home values we see happening in many areas of the country, odds are you’ll be able to list more homeowners at prices closer to the amount they wanted to sell their home at last year. You’ll be their hero! If you have the REDX and don’t know how to setup one of these searches yourself, give customer support a call at 800-731-7339×2. We want to help you turn back the clock and catch these expireds that slipped through the cracks.

Know thy customer. You’ve got to in order to run a successful business. That’s why REDX not only keeps up with its own users but keeps good tabs on our potential clientele as well. That being the case, we were excited to see some of NAR’s recent statistics on their typical Realtor®. Now on Realtor.org® you can actually view NAR’s typical member profile.

REDX is all about clearing the path to success for real estate professionals so what interested us most about this profile was income and amount of transactions. If you’ll check it out for yourself, you’ll see the average Realtor® earned about $43,500 in commissions, did about $1.5 million in sales volume, and completed 12 transactions. If we do the math, $43,500 split 12 ways comes out to $3625 per deal.

From the surveys we’ve conducted among our customer base, the average REDX user does 32 transactions a year. Using NAR’s numbers, the average Realtor® sees about $3625 per closing. Applied to our clientele, that would mean the typical REDX client should be pulling in upwards of $115k annually. That’s not bad company to be in but those are NAR’s numbers. REDX clients’  income average was much higher than that according to the 3000-ish survey responses we collected.

So what makes REDX users able to more than double (or more than triple according to our numbers) the average agent when it comes to their amount of transactions? Are they really getting 20 more deals than the normal agent just from working expireds and FSBOs? The answer is probably not. But like we talked about in our last blog post, the more deals you do with expireds and FSBOs, the more you’ll grow your sphere of influence. By exposing yourself to more lead types, you’ll have more clients to glean referrals from and more customers to help with repeat business (which together by the way account for about 42% of the average Realtor’s® transactions). Isn’t it about time for you to get some more lines in the water?

By Jefferson Snow

If you haven’t checked it out yet, NAR has recently released it’s 2012 REALTOR® Technology Survey. The report was a summary of about 1,100 surveys collected from real estate professionals. The survey asked a wide variety of questions to find out how agents are utilizing technology in their business. As you can imagine, the results of this study would be very interesting to REDX, especially when it came to technology and lead generation.

The section the interested us most was their results on “Lead Generation and Listings.” Within this portion of the study there was a very interesting infographic listing what lead generation methods they found not at all important, not very important, somewhat important, important, very important, or not applicable.

Not surprisingly, we found that referrals, repeat business, and the internet were the top three sources of leads. To be precise, 86% of real estate professionals say that referrals and repeat business are “very important” in generating leads while 52% of professionals said the same of the internet.

Something that did surprise us at REDX about the study’s results was how few realtors find phone prospecting (telemarketing) to be a vital lead source. The breakdown went like this:

• 41% of agents and brokers found telemarketing not important at all
• 25% found telemarketing not very important
• 12% found telemarketing somewhat important
• 8% found telemarketing important
• 5% of agents and brokers found telemarketing very important
• 9% found it not applicable

Initially this was somewhat troubling. Only 5% of agents and brokers thing that my prospecting enough

Considering these numbers more closely though, a thought came to me. Now this is entirely my opinion and I’m stating any researched facts but you’ve heard the old adage in this real estate: “5% percent of the agents are doing 95% of the work.” Could it be possible that this same 5% could overlap with the 5% percent of agents and brokers who think telemarketing is very important?

Again this 5% thing is speculation but here is a fact to chew on: the average REDX agent does about 32 transactions a year. That number more than doubles NAR’s average agent’s statistics. Could this margin of success between these two types of agents all be due to expired and FSBO listings delivered through REDX? As much as we’d like to say yes, the answer is probably not. But it could be the byproduct.

Even the most ardent REDX users will more than likely do more deals off of referrals and repeat business than they will through expired and FSBO leads. However, every listing you get from our lead sources opens several doors to ask for more referrals and helps you find more clients you can do business with again in the future.

The key take-away I’m trying to get here is that top 5% type agents draw from a well rounded variety of lead sources. From surveys, interviews, and studies we’ve done, we’ve found that the average agent making over $250k per year is consistently prospecting to four to five different lead types. So if you want to be one of the 5% doing 95% of the deals, maybe becoming part of the 5% of real estate professionals who believe telemarketing to be “very important” is the final piece of the puzzle you need to get there.

Previously on the REDX blog: we recapped our monthly Tele-Seminar for April. Our guest was Larry Faris, one of Burbank, California’s finest agents. Larry was so prolific on the call it was like drinking from a fire hose. Dedicating one post to sum it up hardly did it justice. In fact, I probably won’t do it justice with even a second entry on it so you should probably just listen to it yourself. But, if you’d rather just get the highlights, continue reading.

Negotiating With Power
When Larry was young in the business, he met a veteran agent who taught him the ropes. This mentor figure showed how essential it was to proactively go after business, how to prospect to expireds, withdrawns, and FSBOs and perhaps most importantly, how to distinguish yourself from your competition. Larry is convinced that you need to bring something unique to the table that other agents don’t. If you’re the same, there are only two bargaining chips you have left. The first is to take on a listing at price you know you can sell it at and second is lowering your commission to undercut other agents. If you can show prospects why you’re different or better, you’ll have to resort to one of those two things. For Larry, the unique selling proposition is what he likes to call “negotiating from a position of power.”

So what does “negotiating from a position of power” mean? It means that he doesn’t list the property at a price that the buyer can wrestle down during escrow. Larry has 20 years of experience in this business. Anything that can go wrong in a deal, odds are he’s had to deal with it. That’s why he does his homework early. He lets his sellers know that his team of appraisers and inspectors will identify all the problems up front and then price the house accordingly so buyers don’t have leverage during the latter stages of the transaction.

The Art of the Appointment
At REDX we talk at length about how to prospect to set up these appointments. I thought it might be nice to draw from Larry’s wisdom on what to do when you finally do get in the door. At first, Larry takes a tour of the house. He makes sure to tell them how much he loves it. Then he sits them down and flat out asks them if they’ve been interviewing other agents. If they have been, here’s his pitch: “That’s great. I’m glad I have the opportunity to compete for your business. I’ve got one question for you though- If I can show you a way that I can net you more money than my competition (or more than you can on your own for a FSBO) would you give me the opportunity to list and represent you and sell your property?”

Though a little leading, he says they hardly ever say “no.” In fact, he finds the whole “if I could BLANK, would you BLANK,” closing model quite effective. Once they say “yes,” he walks them through his 20 years experience, building value in himself, then lays out the normal pitches other agents typically offer. Finally, he pulls out the big guns and presents what he will do that is unique and different from all the other agents vying for their business. For Larry, it’s this whole concept of negotiating from a controlled position. For you it might be something completely different. That’s great too. Just make sure you have something fresh to bring to the table.

Farewell Faris
We loved sitting down with Larry and are very grateful for sharing with his some of the staples of his success. We talk a lot about prospecting and the opportunity of expireds and FSBOs, but it was great to get some fresh information on how to approach appointments as well. If you’ve got an hour to soak in some real estate genius you should really listen to the call yourself by clicking here.