It’s been said that most decisions are made with equal input from the mind and heart, but when it comes to anything that’s related to your livelihood it is usually better to give more sway of influence to your mind. When a would-be homebuyer of someone who has decided to sell their home and a real estate agent come together in a working relationship it is usually because both have gone through a series of processes that have made them see the fit as ideal.

As it relates to real estate lead generation the one part of that equation has everything to do with the mentality and approach that the agent puts into practice as they progress with the lead. By progress we mean from being made aware of the person(s) to first contact to the entire process of converting them and right through to having them buy or sell a home. There’s a lot that goes into that, and we’re not so much talking about the steps or the methodologies used to turn a real estate lead into a client.

Instead what we’re talking about are psychology-backed real estate lead engagement strategies, and how understanding and best incorporating them into your approaches to converting leads into clients is highly recommended. We’ve gone on at length about how our online real estate lead generation system is proven effective for drumming up the leads, but how you evaluate the potential realtor / client dynamic is also very important. So that’s what we’re going to look at today, because future real estate deals may depend on it.

Better Real Estate Lead Generation

We’ll start off by saying that there are estimates that around 35% of home purchasers these days are of the millennial generation. With more and more millennials buying real estate as first-time home buyers, realtors will be wise to up their lead generation game and try to better target these people as potential clients. While some of the older lead generation techniques still hold their ground, the newer ideas are taking over the real estate industry.

Real estate lead generation is in the simplest sense the action of identifying potential customers and reaching out to them. It has been and always will be an integral part of real-estate marketing with the way it has the potential to ensure prospective customers choose you as their real estate agent rather than any of the many, many competitors you have who are also working as realtors in your area of the country.

Understand that younger people consume and digest information differently, and that’s where we’ll start in presenting real estate lead strategies that are better suited to ‘getting through’ to a newer and markedly different potential client demographic.

Digital Strategies

1. First-Time Buyer Video Guides

With such a large share of millennial clients including first-time home-buyers, it is a good idea to create content where you present yourself as a realtor happy to share tips and checklists aimed at best guiding these buyers towards making a more informed and better choice with buying a home.

2. Regular Update Newsletters

Newsletters are a very good way to update potential clients on the new properties for sale, properties that are in high demand, and other relevant information like the current prices being paid for homes in different locales around the city or town where you’re working as a real estate agent.

3. Instagram Property Posts

You won’t find many realtors if any these days who aren’t making good use of social media, and that’s the way it should be as many of these younger buyers will be very active through it as well as making a lot of the professional connections through social media too.

Try to post beautiful property pictures on social media that create interest among your followers and invite your followers to an open house event or ask them to follow-up for more information on the product. Breathtaking visuals go a long way with certain buyers, and it’s worth your time to put the effort into it.

4. Social Media Hashtags with Outbound Lead Generation

Hashtags can serve as an excellent means of pointing digital-viewing prospective clients to you based on the content they’re interested in – which in this case will of course be real estate. For small business marketing teams with limited access to lead generation resources, hashtags are a useful tool for outbound lead generation through the Internet.

5. LinkedIn Posts to Connect Professionally

LinkedIn is the premier professional networking platform, and realtors can do well with real estate lead generations when they create posts that are informative, well-written, accurate and then conclude by identifying you as a realtor who would be happy to discuss any part of your post as it relates to their buying or selling a home.

6. Snapchat for Lead Generation

Snapchat is another potential self-promotion avenue you can use in the sphere of social media where you can aim to generate new leads on clientele.

7. Sponsored Facebook Ads

Facebooks increasingly tends to be a social media platform for older people, but the value in utilizing it for a real estate lead should need no explanation as older people tend to be the ones who are selling homes as often as they might be buying them.

8. Share Customer Reviews / Testimonials

Sharing reviews and testimonials from existing customers on your business website is also a good and recommended way of getting inbound leads. Testimonials help attract those customers who are in quest of properties similar to the ones whose reviews you have shared.

9. Create an App for your Real Estate Business

A well designed and user-friendly real estate app can help boost your conversion rates for real estate leads, and the most basic reason for that is people always like one-click simplicity when it comes to access relevant content and a means of being directly in touch with the service provider. And as you likely already know, everyone is online primarily through their smartphones nowadays.

10. Convert Webpages / Blogs into a Resource Center

Informative webpages and blogs may be more readily taken in and processed when you have them available through some type of online resource center. This can help you make your business as the one-stop shop for all inquiries prospective clients make about the real-estate market. For example, a short term rental calculator or the latest report on the real estate market could bring value to your prospective clients.

These days this is best done my making your resource available via a QR code that can be very visibly displayed on your real estate website, app, or wherever else would-be clients will first become aware of you as a real estate agent.

11. Custom Landing Page for Client Lead Capture

Effective real estate lead generation needs to be paired with equally reliable client conversion, and there’s always going to be many parts to that. If you have the app and QR code we talked about above, make sure you complete the equation by having custom landing pages connected to registration QR codes to drive users to a client information form. When they fill out the form they get access to all information on your website. Experiment with your landing page layouts and measure the effectiveness with a marketing analytics tool.

Conclusion

Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated buyer and / or seller leads that are delivered to you as the only realtor to get them. These leads will be for people who live in the same area that you’re working in as a real estate professional and are genuinely ready to make a move in the local real estate market. It’s a reliable way to get more out of your client prospecting efforts, and taking advantage of the power of Internet marketing for growing your PREC.

The longstanding belief in pretty much any profession is that if you put your name out there you’ll get business coming your way if you’re offering a service people want and are willing to pay for. This is entirely true for real estate agents too, but the fact is that it doesn’t work effectively to the same extent as it does with other means of making a living. Is that because there are too many realtors and every single one of them has their name out there to the same extent? Absolutely, and that’s why in this business you need to be finding them more often than they’re finding you.

None of this is going to be any type of a revelation for agents, as this is something that’s been the norm for at least a few generations now. There is always going to be the same draw and collective appeal that leads so many people to become newly licensed realtors, and the level of business to be had out there is never going to be balanced in the face of the sheer number of people working as real estate agents in Canada. It really is as competitive an industry as you’ll find, and realtors need to genuinely hustle and get creative in unearthing new clients.

Our online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads is one example of the best way to generate leads for real estate agents. It’s an example of how realtors are incorporating Internet marketing into real estate, and as effective as it is for new client generation it is only one of many approaches real estate lead generation agents can use. So with our first blog entry here this week we will go over 11 lead magnet methods for realtors building up a client base for themselves.

Defining Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a free offer, and what is really common for most is a digital download that your reader will agree to exchange for their contact information in return for access to it. So obviously it needs to create an immediate intrigue for them and they have to be able to see real potential as soon as they’re presented it. If they’re not choosing to click through right away then it’s unlikely they’ll return to do so. It is best if you offer them something of real value with the idea that’s what will be needed if they are to entrust you with their information.

One key strategy will be to test several different versions and types to see which ones resonate with your audience the most. Different lead magnets for the different audiences will be advisable too, considering that if you’re like most realtors in Canada you’ll be working with both home buyer and home sellers clients as you evaluate the best way to generate leads for real estate agents.

Last thing to keep in mind before we move to the lead magnet approaches is to say that all your content and collateral shared as part of your lead magnet approach should be connecting to a high-converting website. That’s something every realtor should have nowadays, and it is 100% worth it to spend good money on one that’s expertly designed. It’s an associated part of real estate lead generation.

Our List of Lead Magnets

1. List of Neighborhood Homes under a Price Point

This lead magnet has the potential to convert like crazy for those searching for homes in specific neighborhoods but doing so with budget constraints. Your communication will offer the exact information they’re looking for in a quick and easily digestible format, and you’ll need to create one for each neighborhood where you’re continuing to work as a real estate agent.

When people download your file then this highlights them as a hotter prospect for you, and then of course you get in touch with them in the manner that you think is best, but will be best served to have an automatic email sequence ready to go for these folks as ideally they’ll take the initiative in contacting you through it.

2. Neighborhood-Specific 2020 Real Estate Market Analysis

This is a lead magnet that works equally well for both buyers and sellers. Sellers will be interested to learn of comparative home values in their area, and prospective buyers may be interested in buying homes in neighborhoods where they can see greater equity being built up in the home over time. Providing this for either group in clear and easily digestible content can be a best way to generate leads for real estate agents.

3. Foreclosed Properties in Neighborhood List

It’s never what anyone wants to hear of, but banks do foreclose on homes and when this happens the property will be resold by the bank. These types of properties have always been a focus for investors and that is very true in larger urban metropolitan areas of Canada. Investor clients are good ones and often will be return clients if you prove that you’re a good realtor to work with. Plus this lead magnet option will attract investors in your specific area who are ready to buy homes and be competitive in doing so as needed.

One focus of this type of lead magnet that is important is to have an automatic nurture sequence automatically sent on a set schedule that will nurture your relationship with each investor who downloads this lead magnet. Email marketing is often the best approach.

4. 2020 Homeowners’ Guide to Selling a Home

This lead magnet is a more general approach to real estate lead generation and may not be as effective for speedier generation of new real estate clientele, but that’s to be understood and this one has aim of promoting activity further down your sales funnel. These subscribers will be easy to convert and need to be nurtured immediately through an optimized sequence.

Done right, you’ll be establishing yourself as an authority on real estate in your area. Then ideally later on down the road the recipient will remember you as they prepare to sell their home and are interested in making contact with a realtor.

5. 2020 Guide to Buying a Home

This one will be the opposite of the #4 lead magnet above, but the difference being you are much more likely to hear from these would-be clients as a response to it may indicate they don’t own a home in that region of the country and may have some degree of urgency to buy one. It could be because they’re moving there to take a new job, or they may be retirees downsizing and coming from somewhere else in Canada.

The approach is the same, establishing yourself as a knowledgeable real estate pro who is keen to help them maximize their interests in buying a home.

6. Best Home for Your Family Quiz

Here’s a more unique approach to real estate lead generation. By creating some type of quiz like this you can more accurately make determinations about a potential client when they voluntarily choose to complete the quiz and submit it to you. Make the questions fairly specific about certain aspects of homes and you can tie in location interests too. Ask the standard questions, but try to ask a few other ones too and if there are interests that are specific to location those should always be incorporated too.

7. Host an Online Contest

It’s natural that people become enticed when there is the possibility of winning something. Of course that will create an expense for you, but if you see that the contest leads to making even 1 new client for you then the cost is often something you can see as worth it. This could be something as simple as offering a $150 dinner for 2 voucher at a nice restaurant in city, or something similar.

Make it as appealing as you can afford, and then make it so that entrants must provide some means of contact information and a little bit about where the interest in the local real estate market lies and whether they are considering buying or selling a home there.

8. Up-to-Date Community & Neighborhood Guide

When buyers look in different neighborhoods they will be naturally curious about what it’s like to live there. Neighborhood guides of this sort can be very successful as a best way to generate leads for real estate agents with the way they can feature walk scores, school information and ratings, and recreational possibilities among a whole host of different community information would-be buyers will find valuable. You can highlight upcoming events and attractions too.

9. ‘How-to’ E-Books or Videos

There is plenty that goes into selling a home that is the exclusive responsibility of the homeowner, and quite often it required some measure of work on their end. This can be anything from staging the home to properly landscaping and improving the exterior of the home for greater ‘curb appeal’.

An e-book or video that you provide for potential clients may be especially helpful for them, and if they haven’t started working with a realtor yet then they may be very open to speaking with you about that role based on the valuable information you’ve shared with them here. In the real estate market, you can build a robust library of how-to articles on your website. Then flesh them out into e-books that you can offer for free download at the end of the article.

10. House Hunting Checklist

This is another good resource idea that you can provide, and it will be especially helpful for first-time homebuyers who are not as familiar with the process of deciding which homes to make an offer on. A checklist will check the boxes for both of those features that increase conversion to your list. When it comes to real estate lead generation, checklists are always a good idea because they’re easy to put together (when you have the experience in the business and have helped many people buy homes) and the information is very simple to review for people.

11. Professional Networking Groups / Associations

Using this lead magnet approach will likely require that you are working as a realtor in a large metro region, but if you are then there are probably professional networking groups or associations that you can join. Usually the way these groups work is that members will promote you in their circles and you do the same for them in yours. This can also be a best way to generate real estate leads because if you participate fully and are very proactive in promoting these professionals then they are likely to do the same for you. Plus you may well find that some of them may be looking to buy or sell a home themselves.

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Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated buyer and / or seller leads that are delivered to you as the only real estate agent who will receive them. This exclusivity is exactly what makes this system so advantageous. You will have the opportunity to be first in touch with these people and displaying the expertise with real estate they will want to buy and sell with confidence. It is a proven way to supercharge your client prospecting efforts and you’ll quickly see that for yourself.

Let’s continue on with what realtors can do to craft optimized scripts for converting the best real estate leads into clients that either buy or sell a home. We detailed how real estate agents in 2023 are in an entirely different world than what would have been the case for them even 10 or so years ago, and that doesn’t even touch on the fact that – quite simply – there are far too many realtors in North America nowadays and even the most successful ones will tell you the same thing.

The one takeaway you can make here is that if you do have the fortune of being presented with a lead – cold, warm, or hot – it needs to be imperative that you do everything you can to sway that individual or couple into choosing to work with you as a real estate agent. Real estate lead generation is certainly not easy, and that overflow of licensed realtor we talked about early has everything to do with that. Not enough of the pie to go around, but shortcomings with how realtors approach prospective clients is part of the reason it is difficult too.

It is for this reason that our online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads is advisable as it is for realtors who struggle with meeting and securing new clientele. But as much as we believe in what we offer here we can readily say admit that the best leads for real estate agents are not always gained through digital means.

So when you’re cold or warm calling as a means of first contacts you really need to be on top of your communication, and so let’s continue with what we started on last week with the best approaches to situation-specific scripts when you’re speaking to someone who is considering a real estate movement.

4.Leveraging Recent Sale Script

It’s smart to have a script written out and at the ready for when there is an opportunity to build trust with prospects by showing that you have sold properties in their local area, or alternately that you’ve guided clients to buying a home there that those people are very satisfied with. These types of scripts will also help you with circle prospecting techniques, as homeowners who live near your real estate listings will be pleased to learn who you are and your ‘track record’, if you will, in the area.

One thing that doesn’t need to be explained is how the best real estate agents are consistently building relationships that help them stay at the front of individual’s memory should they come to need a real estate agent at any time in the future.

With this one you should start with a clear and unassuming intro, along the lines of ‘Hi, I’m John from HomeHeart Real Estate. Am I speaking with the homeowner?’ or something along those lines. You should then wait for their confirmation before proceeding further by explaining that you have sold a property in the vicinity of theirs (providing address) and then explaining how all interest parties, including the eventual buyer, spoke very favorably about the community.

It is at this point that you can then ask if they have any interest in selling their home, but not before as the previous statements will reflect favorably on both your ability as a real estate professional AND the added value of their home based on where it is located.

If the person you speak to responds in a manner that is conducive to continuing the conversation you can then highlight other sales in the neighborhood that speak to homeowners receiving best returns on properties sold there. And yes, you absolutely need to be collecting and categorizing that data before you start putting together your script.

5.The Elevator Pitch Script

The basic aim of an elevator pitch is to highlight why a buyer or seller should choose you as their real estate agent, and every realtor should have one as a means of converting the best leads for real estate agents. The risk with these scripts if they’re done poorly is the realtor may come across as robotic and more exclusively geared towards his or her own interests rather than conveying a desire to help potential clients achieve the best outcome with buying or selling a home.

So your focus should be on coming across as genuine that way, and here’s an example of how to do that –

‘I just sold a property last week in this area, and it sold for considerably more than its original asking price. I am aware of you having a tight deadline for selling your property, and I believe I could put together a plan to get your property moving on the market and above the asking price based on what I’ve done for previous clients in similar situations.’

There can be any number of variations on that, but the overarching message will stay the same. And if clients are not so warm to what you’re saying, try this; tell them you completely understand the reservations they are having, but inquire further into why it is they have whatever specifics around selling their home and telling them that you may have a solution that better meets their needs.

What that will entail will depend on the prospective client, and again that’s something you’ll need to have done your homework on.

6.The Existing Acquaintance Script

It’s fairly common for a realtor to see that somebody who they have had previous contact with has put their property on the market. When this occurs it isn’t anything to be displeased about because it’s actually a great opportunity for you to connect again organically and hopefully make some progress into why they didn’t choose to work with you – yet.

This script is fairly straightforward when it comes to spoken real estate lead generation. Introduce yourself again, but don’t ask if they remember you. Instead proceed right into asking if they’d be agreeable with speaking to you about their choices and what they feel is their gain from choosing to not work with a real estate agent, or working with an agent beside you as the case may be.

Put the focus on a simple reconnecting, and as always let the person’s response dictate where you go further with it. And in the instance that they are working with a realtor there is nothing wrong with saying they can call you at a later date if that agent doesn’t meet their expectations about getting the house sold.

7.The To-The-Point Script

Every realtor will agree there are going to be instances where there’s no need to ‘beat around the bush’ as the expression goes. No doubt cold calling can be time consuming, so if there are reasons why you know that an individual IS going to be buying or selling a home in the near future you can cut right to the chase with efforts to ensure they do so with you as their real estate agent.

Here’s an example – ‘Hi, this is Gail from Castle Real Estate. I’m calling as my agency has some buyers who are interested in buying a home in the area and I’ve been made aware that you are considering putting your home on the market. Might I assume that being put in touch with these buyers right away might be to your advantage, and do you think it might be beneficial if I speak to your realtor about this possibility?’

Again, their response will dictate where you go next with your delivery, but this is an excellent way to get right to your intentions while still making it very clear that they are directly in line with what the would-be clients would want for themselves too and making them among the best leads for real estate agents.

Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated buyer and / or seller leads that are from genuine buyers who are in the same area of any city or town in Canada where you are working as a real estate agent. Only one realtor will receive these leads – you. They’re all yours and you can contact these prospective clients at your earlier convenience. It’s a good way to supercharge your client prospecting efforts, and realtors like you recommend it highly as evidenced by our testimonials.

There’s the old but ever-true saying ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ and if we’re going to look at that in the context of a real estate agent making a good living in this profession then it really is quite true. Especially when it comes to what you’re going to do to generate new clients when they’re not coming to you as easily as you’d like. That’s the scenario for nearly all new realtors these days, and truth be told plenty of experienced realtors are struggling with this too nowadays.

It’s a competitive business, and it is entirely fair to say there are too many realtors in major urban regions of the country. Making a name for yourself based on real expertise and excellent service is fine, but you’re probably going to have to employ some of the traditional prospecting methods that were used previous generations of agents here in North America.

Cold calling may certainly not be every realtors cup of tea, but those who get over any uncomfortableness with it are the ones who’ll very likely see success with their real estate business. Some of the best leads for real estate agents are acquired this way, and at any given time there are multiples of people in any area who would be happy to speak with a real estate agent if one were to approach them. If that’s because they are considering the purchase or sale of a home then you will have ventured and gained.

Online real estate lead generation systems like ours here at Real Estate Leads are a smart and proven-effective way to use modern approaches to this need, and the power of Internet Marketing is nothing to be taken lightly when you’re building up a real estate client base. But you still need to get back to basics and do cold calling, and so here at the best ways to convert cold call leads into clients.

Great Script First

Successful real estate cold calls have everything to do with preparation, targeting and delivery. And all of this starts with having the right script for real estate cold calling. A well-built real estate script can help you fill your sales funnel and your CRM with new leads and prospects.

A real estate cold calling script is a pre-written dialogue that breaks the ice with potential clients over the phone, without coming across as too overtly sales-oriented or ‘pushy’ as it may be. It helps real estate agents generate new leads, build a rapport with prospects and ideally will lead potential customers to use your services. Realtors who’ve used them to their advantage will quickly say how they are in line with digging up the best leads for real estate agents.

With a script the fact that it is all written down ensures you are able to cover all the key areas of your pitch. That’s based on the understanding that there are certain prerogatives that will apply to all prospective clients, and those will need to be central in the communication you present with your script. But you should also have parts of it which are tailored to specific buyer-interest groups you may meet in the course of your cold calling efforts.

For a first-time buyer, you can create a script that details how you can help them navigate the process of buying a house when they have never done it before. Investors will be another interest group, and so you can incorporate a part of the script you can pivot to when you learn that this is where the individual interest lies.

Here are 3 types of cold calling scripts you can use as part of real estate lead generation, and we’ll add the remaining ones with our next blog entry detailing scripts for the best leads for real estate agents later this week.

1. Your Initial Cold Calling Script

You’ll start by first introducing yourself, asking how they are doing today and then following up their response by identifying yourself as a real estate agent. You’ll then say that you’d be happy to help answer any questions they might have, but then it is important that you leave it there and say nothing more until they respond.

The biggest reason behind that pause if that the prospect will often warm to you when they see you understand they may be busy at this time. If they state that’s the case, thank them for their time and let them go but not before adding they can reach you at your real estate brokerage if they ask for you by name. That’s all, nothing more and nothing less.

Now oppositely if they do want to talk, then you can continue with what you have to say and gauging what sort of client prospect they are.

2. Measuring of Interest Script

This script will be continuing on what we talked about at the end for #1 there, and specifically with gauging what type of client they may be. Homeowners who are looking to sell a home will usually identify themselves from homebuyers, and often without saying that explicitly about themselves. But asking the right questions in this script is the key to making that determination if they don’t do it for you.

This script measures a prospect’s interest in the market and whether they’d consider selling their property. If so, you’re best approach with them here is to state clearly that you may have clients who would be interested in making an offer on their home. No mention of ‘I can sell your home for’ or any of the other default lines that they’d expect to hear from a hustling realtor. Simply say that you regularly work with clientele who are keen to purchase homes like theirs in that particular neighborhood of that town or city.

The reason this is the best approach is that it paints you favorably as a realtor who has earned the business of clientele and likely has done so for some time. And that will be the type of realtors they’re more likely to want to work with. Ones who have made the best of their best leads for real estate agents. It is a sense that takes time to develop, but when you get good at making this assessment you can then move to being more promotional of yourself as a realtor.

3. Community Champion Script

Realtors who are seen as being civic-minded tend to be held in higher regard by members of that community, and that will include 100% of homeowners there and the vast majority of those looking to buy a home in that city or town. If you have any part of your experience where you’ve contributed to community initiatives you can incorporate brief mentions of that into your script.

Long gone are the days when there wasn’t an inordinately large number of real estate agents for the amount of available business in any region of Canada. While that’s pretty much always been the case for major metro regions like Greater Vancouver and Greater Toronto, it is also increasingly true for smaller cities and towns. It’s unlikely we’re ever going back to a time when realtors find it easy to drum up new clientele, and so for this reason every agent is going to have to put a lot more effort into new client generation.

We’ve been insistent for years that a realtor should never overlook the traditional means of doing that, and you can and will get new clients if you’re persistent with efforts to meet clients in person, whether that’s by door knocking or volunteering at community events etc. But we are definitely living in the information age, and digital technologies are being embraced in every industry and profession. That is the case for real estate too, and look no further than the fact that most realtors and their clients view MLS listings in Canada online.

Being provided with leads has also long been a way that realtors find new clients, but up until the advent of the Internet those leads were acquired by word of mouth. That’s no longer the case, and you won’t find anyone who doesn’t think that is a darn good thing. Our online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads is as good an example as any, but what we’re going to do with this entry is lay out an advanced real estate lead generation guide so that you can create a more effective plan for yourself if you’re a real estate agent.

Optimized Campaign

Effective lead generation is the process of stimulating interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing a sales pipeline. Keep in mind that it’s uncommon for a person who buys or sells a home to have that be the only real estate transaction they’re going to make. If you can create them as repeat clientele that’s always going to be best.

Lead generation is also essential to preparing a business for long-term success. Effective real estate lead generation has the potential to take a business to the next level, and especially if the realtor’s excellence in serving those clients means they will happily use the realtor’s services the next time they’re making a move in the real estate market. Your aim should be flourishing with a continual stream of new potential clients.

These leads will usually come from a combination of referrals, advertising, trade shows, direct mailings and additional marketing efforts, but in truth they can come from anywhere. In the simplest form it could involve a potential client providing their contact information to you, or something equally simple like commenting on your social media post. Any successful real estate lead generation campaign will have a clear goal of turning a lead into a prospect and then a client, and that will be true no matter how ‘hot’ the lead is or not or how it was obtained.

Viable Opportunities / Vital for Success

The first thing a realtor should understand here is that you should never be placing less value or importance on a lead compared to others. You will learn that the most promising leads can go nowhere just as easily as a lead that looked to be nothing materializes into a client down the road. Some have the mindset that if the person isn’t ready to do business right then and there, it’s a dead-end lead. There’s absolutely no truth or logic to that, and it’s important that you realize this.

A primary truth for generating real estate leads is the importance of taking every lead seriously. And even if you believe it’s not likely that it materializes into anything in the nearer future. You never know which lead may turn out favorably down the road. Realtors should leave no stone unturned in order to capitalize on a prospective deal. Your real estate lead generation efforts are only as strong as you make them, so you need to be collecting leads and pursuing ALL of them to the best of your abilities at all times.

Let’s consider some numbers that have been verified by industry research; estimates are that 50% of online leads fail to convert into customers for a year or two at least. And that’s even ones that look especially promising when they’re first obtained. This reinforces the fact that leads take time to cultivate, and it’s important to stay persistent and continue to carry out marketing efforts.

Another very relevant statistic here – 90% of homebuyers in today’s market do their own research when looking for homes, and that’s another reflection of what online connectivity is doing for the world and business these days. These people are choosing to do the initial research rather than have an agent do it for them. This definitely changes the dynamic of the realtor-client relationship, and you need to be receptive to that if you’re going to be turning leads into clients and then clients converted into homes bought or sold.

Lead Generation in Real Estate

The next step in real estate lead generation will be to cultivate those leads into clients. This will be an on-going process that should be systemized and improved upon as you learn more about what is the best way to convince sellers to list with you, or vice versa if they are homebuyer clients. The most essential part of all of that is keeping lines of communication open with the prospects, but also incorporating a call to action in all communications you have with them after the initial 2 or 3 communications that you have with them.

This could range from open house invitations to real estate pamphlets on what they need to know to buy or sell a house. Then once you have successfully assisted many people accomplish their home ownership goals with your expertise, other prospective clients will start approaching you. This has to be the larger, overarching goal for any realtor who wants to build a successful business from their leads and do it as quickly and efficiently as possible.

A good rule of thumb is to spend 20% of your time generating leads, and 80% of your time converting them. Smart networking can be a big part of this, and you should be aiming to meet like-minded people in an effort to exchange referrals, advice, experience, contacts and even knowledge. Regular attendance at industry events and workshops is a good place to start, and if you apply yourself and really makes yourself visible as a reputable realtors then it will ultimately help you reach a wider audience.

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Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated buyer and / or seller leads that will only be delivered to you and that applies to every batch of them you receive each month. They are yours exclusively, and with them you have an exclusive opportunity to bring them in as your clients before any other realtor becomes aware of the same possibility. There’s everything to like about that as realtor given how competitive the business is, so sign up now and claim the advantage for yourself.

Any realtor who is new to the business and not enjoying the level of success with the new career as they’d like is going to think an inordinately large number of real estate leads is going to be a real blessing. Indeed, leads on new clientele can be invaluable when it comes to making a career in real estate profitable and for some new realtors any number of leads are exactly what they need. But what happens if there’s any factor that is routinely preventing those leads from becoming new clients for the realtor?

That may be attributable to the individual’s professional shortcomings, but it also may have nothing to do with how capable they are as an agent. And yes, it is nearly unheard of that anyone thinking of selling or buying a home only has one realtor get in touch with them. A lot can go into what makes an agent fail to secure a client after being made aware of them, but what we can say is that it is possible to be incapable of managing leads if they get to a certain volume.

The value still isn’t to discounted, and of course of our online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads has been very helpful for many realtors who need to get more out of their client prospecting efforts. But what we’ll look at here with this entry is something called Dunbar’s Number and it’s an estimation around the maximum number of leads that a realtor can manage.

New Emerging Trends

Let’s start by evaluating the the post-pandemic phenomenon of significantly lower inventory levels being paired with explosive growth in the number of agents in Canada, and how that has contributed to a very prominent trend and one that everyone will be aware of; the market now features more realtors than there are homes for sale.

The landscape now is one where industry productivity is down on a per-agent basis and they are all out there scrambling for a share of the pie that is not any bigger than it ever was. The number of transactions completed for both existing and new homes has not grown at the same rate that Realtor membership has for the past several years. Plus, ever greater numbers of agents and teams are finding they have hit something of a ceiling with their growth and they have expended all legacy lead generation channels.

So it’s here that the challenge becomes growing faster and more consistently than your sphere is able to do organically.

150 Max

The belief is that it becomes very challenging for a realtor to manage much more than 150 relationships, and 150 is ‘Dunbar’s Number’ here. It argues that growing 10-20% in a year and doing so within more than one sphere is doable and advisable, but the number of leads pursued and with time invested in them should be under 150.

Consider as well that home buyers and sellers are spending ever greater amounts of their time in the home buying or selling journey online before they even make first contact with a real estate agent. When any agent is overly reliant on just one sphere and a limited referral network it is more likely they lose ground to competitors earlier in the process.

It makes sense that potential homebuyers will start their searches through popular online real estate market portals like Realtor.com, and so many realtors will start their paid lead generation efforts here.

But the cost per lead on these sites has gone up significantly in recent years, and it’s important for agents to understand that the leads agents are sent are not exclusive. Agents are sent leads that are also sent to other agents and more often than not they will be competing for them. That is never the case with Real Estate Leads, every lead is only provided to one realtor – you.

There is also the further reality that many teams and agents have been burned by oversold online lead generation packages and strategies that don’t pan out for a variety of reasons. It becomes possible that realtors are paying too much money to generate the wrong leads. Remember that you get what you pay for. If you go with the most budget package from the least expensive lead gen company, it’s very likely you’re not getting premium leads.

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Sign up for Real Estate leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated buyer and / or seller leads that are delivered only to you. No other realtor receives them, and that creates an exclusive opportunity for you reach out to these individuals and convince them you are the real estate pro they need. Check out these testimonials for Real Estate Leads made by profit-mined realtors like you.

So much has been made of how efforts to address the housing crisis and purchase / rental unaffordability have been hampered by economic factors that are hard to counter and have been constricting the effectiveness of efforts to increase housing supply. Anyone who’s been keeping tabs of the discussions around how to remedy the situation will undoubtedly have heard the suggestion that restrictions need to be put on foreign investment and ownership.

What you’ll find among those who work in the industry is that while there’s some receptiveness to the idea of limiting foreign ownership, you’re not going to find any person who has real insight into the market and how it has the ability to work that will be advocating for cutting out foreign investment. Quite simply, the cost of facilitating real estate development here in North America is beyond the capacities of domestic investment engines, and there’s really no disputing that.

And it’s interesting to note that many realtors who’ve been in the business for a long time will tell you that embracing this investment source did a great deal of good over previous decades when it came to increasing the supply and variety of both residential and commercial real estate in Canada. Add to this we should not look past the fact that an unhealthily large part of Canada’s GDP is in real estate, and even newer realtors will know that. Realtors who struggle to build up their clientele base are encouraged to use our online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads.

But turning back onto track with our topic here, we are in line with this way of thinking regarding being more open to foreign investment in Canadian real estate, and here’s why.

Much Needed

Over the last two decades, housing costs have been eating up a progressively larger percentage of HHIs – household incomes. In 2000, home ownership costs made up 36.6% of median Canadian HHI. By 2016 this had gone up to 41%, and by Fall 2022 it had climbed to more than 60%. The average unit price of housing in Canada increased more than 100 per cent in the last decade, from $365,700 to over $760,000. And rentals are of course caught up in the conflagration too – The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation says that the national rental vacancy rate at the end of 2022 was 1.9% , its lowest point since 2001.

All of this is occurring at a time when Canada has it’s highest levels of population growth via immigration ever seen. The house of cards does need to be propped up at all costs, but unfortunately this is one heck of a cost to be absorbing. But we’re absorbing it with a ramifications be dared approach, and so off we go. The way this is pushing housing prices up meteorically given the severe shortage of supply given demand is causing the government to approve various laws and regulations aimed at controlling the price of housing.

British Columbia’s 20%foreign buyer tax and the federal government’s 2023 nationwide foreign buyer ban are examples. But both had absolutely zero effectiveness in making housing more affordable.

Growth Outpacing Stock

A Coldwell Banker real estate study had indicated how over the last 60 years, population growth consistently outpaced the growth in the housing stock. It is estimated that Canada will require 22 million housing units by 2030,, but we’re currently on track to have a shortfall of some 3.45 million units nationally.

But banning or taxing foreign buyers extensively will most likely actually exacerbate the underlying housing shortage. The belief that it will leave more units available for local buyers has no basis in any type of reality and is really just wishful leftist thinking. How these new housing starts are financed has everything to do with how well they can be financed, and plain and simple we’re not capable of it on our own.

In order to obtain construction financing for condo and townhome projects, developers must establish a volume of pre-sales that lines up with the construction loan required. Regulations that artificially reduce the size of the potential pre-sale and investment market are entirely detrimental and can make it more difficult for projects to achieve financing. We don’t need to explain the ramifications of that.

These constraints absolutely do hurt would-be homebuyers down the line, and not only for homeownership but also for the rental market. Total rental housing stock in condos and other forms of multi-family dwelling accommodations constitute 19% nationally. Lessening the supply of condos worsens the shortage of rental accommodation, and we’re not going to be financing the development of them if we’re doing so entirely with domestic investment.

This is the simple fact of the matter, and it is the long and short of why curtailing foreign investment in real estate development is not a good idea. The most pressing matter for government should taking the business imperatives of housing developers and pairing them with a regulatory framework that promotes increased volume and velocity in the supply of housing. Foreign investment is needed for that.__

Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated buyer and seller leads. You will be the only agent who’ll receive the leads, and this creates the exact type of opportunity a realtor will want; being able to be first in touch with prospective clients who are ready to sell a home or buy one in the region of Canada where you works as a realtor. Need to get much more out of client prospecting efforts? You are in exactly the right place here with Real Estate Leads.