Here we are again with another year drawing to a close and with us having only seen for very small shifts in the housing market in Canada over the course of 2023. What we’re going to do with our last blog entry here for the year is to keep it a little shorter than usual and do what we did at this time last year and in 2022 as well. Meaning to have a look forward at what’s expected to be on the horizon starting next week as we move into 2024, and if there’s anything being foreseen as a pivotal change in the real estate market in Canada.

We’re going to take a slightly different angle on this, and come at it differently in the form of identifying 4 pressing questions for Canada’s Housing Market for 2024. Not every entry needs to be related to client prospecting in real estate, although we will take at least once chance to say how our online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads is highly recommended for any realtor who’s most pressing question at this same time is how do I build up my real estate client base effectively. Leads for realtors online can be a great opportunity.

We don’t need to put an additional light on how the market continues to be in a downturn, as most people who aim to buy or sell a home or the realtors who work with them won’t need to be appraised of that. Higher interest rates, a lack of affordability and economic uncertainty is definitely keeping buyers out of the market, and you have homeowners who are willing to be patient and hold out to get the price they envision for their home.

Negated Gains

Home sales have fallen 13% since last spring, and this means a near full negation of the gains seen with the rebound that occurred as the BoC paused their interest rate hikes. But remove the rise in mortgage costs resulting from previous interest rates hikes and inflation would by and large be on target.

The national MLS Home Price Index dropped 1.1% for November of this year, and that is its 3rd monthly drop in a row and the biggest seen since early 2023. The freeze resulting from it all should continue into 2024, but the hope is that before long the economy may benefit from interest rate cuts and that the housing market will benefit right alongside it.

So here are the questions that warrant asking at this time; first, will home prices bottom out for real this time? During this correction, Canadians have seen their housing market plunge, then come back to some degree of vitality before slumping again as Bank of Canada paused and restarted rate hikes. There is a widespread expectation that prices will remain under pressure in some markets until the spring of 2024. If rates do end up being cut though, those lower rates paired with pent-up demand could put a much-needed ‘floor’ under the market and restore some measure of buyer / seller confidence.

Some Markets Better Positioned

Some markets will recover more quickly than others, and it seems they won’t be the ones that have had the most dramatic sways going along with sustained buyer demand and supply vastly outstripping supply like it does in most major metro areas of Canada where the economy may be fairly strong but there simply isn’t enough housing available. So the next question is whether or not mortgage rates have peaked. Here the consensus is that borrowing costs may have peaked, and of course that is due to the BoC appearing to be at the end of their hiking cycle. The decision makers there are expected to start cutting interest rates in 2024 but a string of months features sustained downward momentum in core inflation is going to be required first.

The expectation is that the central bank will cut rates by 1 percentage point in the second half of next year, bringing the policy rate to 4%. Bond yields, which influence fixed mortgage rates, are also falling from their highs in early October. This has borrowers wondering if now is a time to lock-in with their mortgages, leading to question number 3 – should borrowers lock in?

The 5-year fixed is currently the lowest available for most borrowers, but the recommendation is to be mindful of the cost/benefit at what could soon be a turning point in the rate cycle. Moving right along to question 4, and whether or not investors will return to the market in significant numbers. Here we can see that expectations of price gains aren’t the enticement they used to be, and that the spread between cap rates and risk-free yields continues to be tight and that will be a dissuading factor.

Affordability Interests

The next question is can prospective homebuyers have any reasonable hope that affordability will improve? Despite prices slipping a bit lower, the last time housing affordability was this bad in Canada was the 1980s because of the rise in borrowing costs. Costs will continue to come down in 2024, but affordability is still a long way from where it was before the pandemic.

Keep in mind that back at the very start of this year home sales started slow with most major markets reeling under the cumulative 425 basis point hikes put in place by the Bank of Canada in less than a year. But buyers did rush back to the market once the rate hikes were paused.

But the rally in part caused the bank to resume hikes, and the interest rate rose another 50 basis points in the early summer and this lead to the third fallback phase that has lead us into where we are now with all of this as we move towards the start of 2024.

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Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a monthly quota of qualified, online-generated leads that can be the difference between a realtor who is struggling to get his business of the ground and one who is benefitting from growing their real estate client based more quickly. Make one of your ’24 resolutions that you’re going to put more effort and an investment into your success as a realtor who is new to the business but determined to be successful.

A legit online real estate lead generation service is what we offer for realtors in Canada here, and as you’ve probably heard before anything worth its salt as a service likely isn’t going to be inexpensive. Our paid real estate leads in Canada are not cheap per se either, but the explicit reason for that is that there is quite a bit that goes into digging up and verifying leads for people who are genuinely ready to make a move in the real estate market. The reality is if we had leads that routinely went nowhere we wouldn’t be retaining realtors that are signed up with us the way that we have for years.

Our online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads that is built for location targeted marketing in real estate, but as we’ve also said before the real estate lead provided is only half of the equation in converting real estate leads into clients. You’ll need to have the ability to present and carry yourself well as an agent and you’ll need to keep in mind that it will be unlikely you’ll be meeting any of these prospective clients without some type of written communication (email most likely) although it’s possible you may be able to speak with them on the phone or with them.

It’s for all these reasons and more that you need to look at the way you utilize the leads and see them only as only contributor in your efforts to get more clients as a real estate agent. It will be very beneficial is you see building a client base as more of an organic prospecting effort. So with that in mind we have 7 real estate client prospecting ideas for you here with this entry.

1. Be Realistic with Real Estate Prospecting Goals

When you’re new to this it can be hard to envision how many prospects you need to contact in order to establish one buyer’s or seller’s listing appointment. If that’s you a general suggestion is that you start with 5 contacts per day, but also talk to your broker about the firm’s average or what is standard for your market. Put as much as you’re capable of into it and then manage your expectations at the other end understanding it takes time to build a real estate client base when you’re new to the business.

2. List Out Real Estate Prospecting Ideas

Your definition of prospecting in real estate can be undertaking any activity that directly involves verbal or in-person contact with people with the aim of convincing them to work with you as their realtor if they decide to either buy or sell a home. Fortunately there are tried & true real estate prospecting tactics and you should try all of them and then see which ones best suit your self-promotion style.

These are going to be obvious to you for the most part – call or visit people you know, canvass neighborhoods through cold calls or visits, harass seniors, contact the owners of expired or foreclosure listings, and ask former satisfied clients for real estate lead referrals. Another idea might be to sponsor an open house for a seller, and then of course doing what is called ‘floor duty’ at your real estate office where you are the realtor people meet with in if they are walk-ins is a good choice too.

3. Be Judicious With Your Time

One of the realities about being new to the real estate business is that it is hard for agents to determine whether leads are going cold or whether there is still a realistic possibility that person(s) will still work with you as their realtor in the purchase or sale of a home. You don’t want to waste your time focusing on cold leads and dead ends. What you need to do is during initial conversations with real estate prospects you should learn how to be more direct in asking how motivated they are to buy or sell and when they foresee making any such decision. This will allow prioritize those people who are willing and able to do so in the shortest timeframe.

4. Secure Leads

You’ve almost certainly also heard that it’s the early bird that gets the worm, and that can apply to the way you follow up with real estate leads too.When you come into possession of a real estate lead, online or otherwise, you should make sure you make some type of effort to contact the persons by the means they’ve volunteered. Do it within 2 or 3 days at the least. Estimates are that it is between 60 and 90 days from the time you start prospecting to when you’d receive a commission from working with a buyer / seller client.

Right from day one, successful realtors who are new to the profession will spend enough time developing real estate prospecting ideas, following through on prospecting goals and activities, and following up with their contacts. This will ensures that they secure and maintain a solid amount of quality leads.

5. Start Prospecting Daily

The majority of real estate agents in Canada will tell you that some sort of client prospecting effort should be made at least once daily from Monday to Friday, and that this is what’s needed to create a pipeline of real estate prospects that will grow and sustain your business. Making a bunch of calls for two days straight and then nothing for a week won’t cut it. Instead, you need to treat prospecting the same way you would any other important appointment. Plus, every day you should evaluate your prospecting efforts and set objectives for the next day.

6. Stay in Lanes

A lot of real estate prospecting and initial contacts will be made over the phone, it is important to know about and adhere to any legal policies related to Do Not Call Registries in Canada. The DNCR state and national databases contain the phone numbers of consumers who have elected not to be solicited by companies they do not already have business dealings with. You could be penalized or fined if you contact someone to inquire about real estate but you’re in violation when you do so. So make sure that you register with the DNCR and check what numbers are already listed in the national database.

7. Read Into People (7th Real Estate Client Prospecting Ideas)

The last thing we will say about looking at real estate generation as bigger-picture client prospecting is that a lot of realtors who do well with this are able to make smart, intuitive, and accurate assumptions about the types of people they’re speaking. And of course we don’t always mean literally as in person-to-person conversation, this is often through text or email communications. For example, some realtors may quickly come to realize that this potential client is going to likely have these vocational or avocational interests.

That may give them the inclination to say suggest they do meet in person to discuss a real estate lead in person, especially if they’re upfront about their homebuying or selling plans that are likely to materialize in the near future. Depending on what you’ve ascertained about them you might suggest it’s best to do that in a coffee shop – or a peeler bar. Which one you’ll suggest will be based on what you’re picking about the person and what type of prospective real estate client they are.

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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 provided only to one realtor – you. This creates an exclusive opportunity to be first in touch with people who have shown a genuine interest in buying or selling a home in the area where you know real estate very well. We partner with some of North America’s largest real estate brokerages including ReMax, Royal LePage, Century 21, HomeLife, Sotheby’s, Keller Williams, and EXP Realty.

One thing is always true no matter what profession you are in. That’s the fact that having others speak highly of you can go a long way in having the person hearing that commendation come to you for services the same way the speaker did. Referrals are so valuable and especially so if you’re in business as an individual the way a real estate agent will be. The premise behind them is simple; provide excellent service and have your client be entirely pleased with their outcome and they’ll be inclined to recommend you to others.

And referrals are always going to be an integral part of how a realtor does well with real estate lead generation. Those who do best with them will be taking a multi-tiered approach to building their client base, and using an online real estate lead generation system like ours here at Real Estate Leads can be a good place to start if you’re new to working as a realtor in Canada. But you’ll need to use different means too, and as we’ve said before there is a lot of value still to be had with older methods such a door knocking or being available for walk-ins at the office.

Knowing how to generate referrals will really benefit you with building your business. But getting organic referrals and ones from repeat clients from your personal connections does require some strategizing. So with this entry we’re going to lay out 7 different way to get real estate leads through referrals.

1. Set Up Client Events

A good way to get prospective clients talking about you as a realtor is to invite them to events, and they don’t have to be anything more than a simple gathering set up your real estate brokerage. There will need to be some type of value proposition for attendees, but there is plenty that you can do to make is so that people stand to gain something if they attend your event. Some part of it will need to involve you promoting yourself as a realtor, and that shouldn’t be difficult if you are confident in yourself as a real estate professional.

2. Establish Community Connections via Social Media

It is more unlikely that past clients will give you real estate referrals if you aren’t at the top of their mind when it comes to contacting a real estate agent. The best thing you can do here is share both real estate market and lifestyle content online and encourage your social connections to share it with their friends and family.

Another suggestion is to be active on community websites and have your user profile indicating that you are a real estate agent. Some realtors will even create their own community website and have it serving as both a valuable resource for people living there and a means of promoting themselves as a realtor.

3. Distribute Key Market Insights

Realtors shouldn’t think that a clients’ interest in real estate always ends once they’ve bought or sold a home. They may have further interests in the market, and you should assume they do. Keeping in touch with them by sending along market insights a few times a year is highly recommended. Other information you could include might be economic reports, latest interest rates news, or even the latest trends in home renovations to increase sale value.

4. Surprise Former Clients with Gifts

You can re establish connections with former clients and increase the likelihood they’ll refer you as a realtor if you stop by their home and bring them a small gift. Try to think of something that will be received well by them, and it can even be something that they can use as a convenience in the home that has your name branded on it.

One idea is to deliver a gift to a client exactly one year after they’ve purchased a home through you.

5. Be Timely with Referral Requests

Referrals and reviews go hand in hand, and a good way to get helpful referrals as a realtor is to send consistent, automated touches to your people asking for favorable online reviews. There are companies that will manage online reviews for you, and that may be something you want to consider if you’re an established realtor who has a long list of former clients who would very likely think highly of you.

6. Authentically Maintain Client Relationships

You are always going to have more success in getting real estate referrals if you find the right way to tailor a message to that person, and in some cases having them respond at all will depend on it. Be attentive to your client’s needs and prerogatives in real estate purchases, and try to catch onto personal details about them too if you can. All this knowledge can boost your referral rate big time and help with getting real estate leads.

The best way to do this is to have a file on your computer where you can keep notes on your clients, and have it saved in the Cloud so you can access it from your smartphone when you’re out working.

7. Join a Real Estate Referral Network

Our last recommendation here is to join a network where agents exchange referrals with other real estate professionals in other markets. Brokerages may also have their own referral networks you can join, like RE/MAX Global Referral, or Coldwell Banker Referral Network. These referral networks can help you find an agent to provide superior service for your clients in that market, and the idea is that they’ll do the same for you if they know of people who are looking to buy in the area of Canada where you are working as a real estate agent.

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Sign up for Real Estate Leads here and receive a qualified, online-generated buyer and / or seller leads for prospective clients, giving you the opportunity to be first in touch with them and explaining what you can do for them when it comes to best outcomes with buying or selling a home. It’s a dynamite way to supercharge your client prospecting efforts, and you’ll soon see it as a solid investment in growing your real estate business.

It’s as true as ever that nothing trumps the results of hard work, but when it comes to being successful as a person who is new to working as a realtor then it’s not always about hustling harder than others. You’ll be working in one of the most competitive businesses there is, and as a result you may have difficulty getting ahead simply by putting in more hours and working as hard as you possibly can to have your name very visible to prospective clients.

The reality is that you need to work smarter as well as harder. Nowadays every realtor is looking for the inside track to be first in touch with people who are ready to make a move in the local real estate market. That type of exclusivity isn’t easy to obtain, but it sure can go the longest way in building your real estate client base when those people are convinced to work that person as their realtor. This is why real estate lead generation is such a big deal now, and why getting real estate leads is more and more of a priority for agents.

It’s the reason why so many of them have signed up to take advantage of our online real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads. Paid real estate leads can give you the opportunities you’re looking for with being first to talk to prospective clients, but there’s more that you can do to be proactive in drumming up new clientele for your real estate business and we have 7 specific approaches that we’ll lay out here in this blog entry.

1. Optimizing Your Real Estate Agent Website

Having an attractive and professional website is important for any realtor. We’ll assume you have one, and then you need to take a step back and review all the major aspects. That’s because a real estate agent website is a really effective platform for lead generation.

Review your site and look over your online lead generation strategy for your website. The way you use CTAs, landing pages, and every other component should be laid out in the way that’s best for SEO as you won’t get potential new clients visiting your site to the extent you need if your site is not doing well with Search engine page rankings. Get a web-design professional to help you with this if it is beyond your means.

You should also use an analytics tools to track your website’s real estate lead generation and have a more solid and identifiable means of tracking where your leads are coming from and make sure they are being nurtured on your website in an effective way. You can also use these tools to see where your leads are falling off your website and work to optimize those pages and weak points.

The last suggestion we’ll make her is to add a Live Chat function to your site, and using it as a sales tool where you make yourself available to have real-time conservations with interested individuals right through the website. When you are able to answer the question of an online real estate lead or present them with key info in real time, it’s possible to push them down the funnel a little further.

All of this is on top of the obvious need to have quality content on the site, and the type of content that makes clear that you are a genuine real estate professional when it comes to homes being bought and sold in your part of the country.

2. Utilize an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy

Most realtors these days will have set up a page for themselves on popular social media platforms. You may well have done the same, but you may not be using these resources to promote yourself as well as you could be. LinkedIn and Facebook are two of the platforms where realtors can better make a name for themselves, and here’s what you can do.

With Facebook you can switch to a business profile, and you can have this option when you first sign and create the FB account. By going with a business profile you’ll have access to different marketing tools which will let you advertise your real estate business more efficiently and keep track of its effectiveness.

The other big point for social media promotion is to be very choosy about the images you use. There is no overstating how important good pictures of properties are when you’re promoting your services as a real estate agent. But that doesn’t just apply to properties, as you need to have good quality images of yourself on the profiles and again you can and should hire a photographer if you’re not capable of taking those photos on your own and making them look really good.

With LinkedIn it is all about connecting once you’ve taken the first and easier step to optimize the professionalism of your profile. Look to see what other successful realtors you know are doing to that end, but it shouldn’t be anything that’s too elaborate for you to understand and emulate with your own profile.

As far as the connections, start thinking about people who could actually be real estate leads in your market as well as those that would make for great referral sources. Look to connect to real estate investors as well lawyers, mortgage lenders, tax and financial advisors, and of course other real estate agents where you may end up being mutually beneficial for each other in the future.

3. Making Contact with People for Expired and FSBO Listings

Cold calling may never have the conversion rates that it once did, and many realtors don’t see it as valuable the way previous generations of agents would have. But making cold calls to people who you know are the owners of homes where their listing expired or they have chosen to be FSBOs (for sale by owners) is something you should definitely be doing because it is much more conducive to better real estate lead generation. The chances of conversion are much higher here than cold-calling just anyone whose number you have come by. Of course, that’s if you approach this lead generation strategy correctly.

With expired or withdrawn listings you want to start by making sure the listing is not still in the possession of another realtor. If it’s not, see what you might be able to discover about why the home didn’t sell when it was listed with another agent. It’s not always an inherent problem with the property itself. Sometimes, it comes down to insufficient marketing, bad photos, an unappealing description, unreasonable asking price, or something else entirely.

With FSBO listings you may need to be patient and just listen the reasons why the homeowner feels they can sell a home without a realtor, but in some instances you may be pleased to learn that the owner is disappointed with the lack of interest in their home and has now warmed up to the idea of working with a realtor. You won’t know until you make that contact, so just go into it being as professional and helpful as possible and see what gains you can make there.

4. Go With a Paid Real Estate Lead Generation Program

This is what we do here at Real Estate Leads, and of course we’re going to speak favorably about what can be gained from paid real estate leads. They can go a long way when you want to scale your business and always have qualified leads that you can feel confident investing the time and effort in with the understanding there is a legit chance to gain a new client out of it.

We can vouch for the integrity and viability of what we have here, but you’re encouraged to figure out if each one is qualified or not. You can often see how reputable one is by reading others’ testimonials and getting an idea of whether or not they’ve received genuine real estate leads. We’ll add briefly that we have a lead qualification process here that has been proven effective for determining if a lead is worthy of being distributed to a realtor who has signed up with us.

5. Strategizing to Receive Real Estate Referrals

Having former clients speak highly of you when they meet others who need to work with a realtor has always had so much value for any realtor. It is of course dependent on you provide excellent service and having those former clients be 100% pleased with the entirety of their home sale or purchase. But most realtors have the means of providing that, and we’ll assume that you do too. Waiting for the natural interactions with your SOI (sphere of influence) to pay off in referrals doesn’t have the best results. A strategy to get more referrals is needed.

Good ideas for real estate lead generation here including keeping in touch with past and present leads/clients. Don’t hesitate to ask for referrals too if you feel quite confident that the people will speak highly of you as a realtor.

6. Nurturing Real Estate Leads

How do you nurture a real estate lead? Consider that a lot of leads that land in your lap may not be ready to buy or sell property yet. They’re simply not at that stage in your real estate sales funnel and that’s okay. You need to keep the lead warm until they’re at the point where they are ready to make a purchase or finally put the home on the market. Provide value through email campaigns, send them your newsletter, share content from your blog, follow up with automated emails to save time, or whatever else you feel with be equal parts helpful and keeping you in mind.

7. Offer Incentives
   

This final suggestion here is sort of tied into the nurturing idea we talked about above, and one of the things you can do is remind prospective clients that they can visit your site and see that you have certain offers you extend only to clients that agree to list with you. One of the more common ones is to offer them free use of a moving van when they sell their home, and you can make that same offer to would-be homebuyer clients too. There are many different possibilities of what you can offer here, but it really just comes down to the basics of adding value for the customer as well as making their choice of you as their realtor that much more attractive based on what’s in it for them. Because there’s plenty of realtors out there and you can be sure many of them are as gifted with self-promotion as you are. What are you going to do to stand out?

It’s safe to say that nowadays eight times out of 10 when a person is looking at real estate agent’s site it is going to be through a mobile web browser device. It makes sense when you consider you definitely don’t need to be in front of a desktop or notebook to be on the Internet anymore, and many times the situation will be a prospective buyer or seller will see a realtor’s name on any type of promotional material and then google search with their smartphone to learn more about them. The importance of mobile websites has been talked about at length, but maybe not enough in these circles when it comes to online leads for real estate agents.

But those leads are always the topic of discussion around here, and so for that reason agents should know that the handheld dynamo they have in their pockets can be a good source of leads and just one of the many examples of the best way for real estate agents to get leads. We’ll still continue to champion our real estate lead generation system here at Real Estate Leads as the best way, but every realtor will do well to take a multi-prong approach to getting the leads they need to build a strong client base.

There are so many tactics and strategies that go into real estate lead generation for the purpose of attracting, engaging, and converting potential clients into qualified leads. They go well beyond traditional marketing techniques and include the implementation of a compelling value proposition, attractive and well-designed mobile website, and landing page optimization. You will need to make changes to targeted advertising campaigns based on the increasing prominence of mobile web browsing that we talked about.

With tailoring a good portion of the digital marketing you do for online leads for real estate agents to be more geared towards mobile, you’ll get better results from your lead generation efforts. That will lead to a better sales funnel, and better growth and profitability for your real estate business

Know where to Meet Target Audience

The most successful real estate lead generation strategies begin with target audience research. After all, you can’t create criteria to qualify your leads without understanding your target audience and where are you most likely to have them see you in the world of mobile web browsing. You may have had leads dropping out of the funnels previously and not understood the reasons, and it may be that you weren’t communicating with them through preferred channels.

So the first option here in a discussion of the best way for real estate agents to get leads is to conduct interviews with significant members of your real estate audience, ones you have been in communication with previously. The focus will be what sort of motivations do they have when contacting someone who’s piqued their interest in real estate.

Create Customer Personas

With an understanding of that audience sectors’ pain points gained, you can then take the findings and combine them with relevant geographics, psychographics, and demographics to create a customer persona for online leads for real estate. Try to get very individual with your analysis, and along with traits that would be seen in all these kinds of buyers you can also look at where these types of buyers are best and more receptively contacted when you want to break the ice on real estate lead, or do a timely follow up on one.

Utilize Google Analytics

You can also gain a lot from learning more about your target audience and their mobile preferences by using Google Analytics. Among what can be gained here are overviews of customer’s online behavior, including how long a certain person spent at your website, where they found it, and which pages they interacted with. Anyone who spends a lot of time at your site and is interacting extensively with a page for a specific home for sale can be a warmer lead for you for sure.

Review What Competitors Do in the Space

You can also gain insight here by simply seeing how other realtors are putting together material they are aiming to use for mobile web exclusively as a means of drumming up real estate client leads. Take notes, and especially if you’re in any platform where you can see to what extent people are replying and interacting to the content – however it’s put together. It’s smart to do this alongside some simple market research where you can find trends that tie into what you’ve determined about the people most likely to become your new clients.

From here the next step and the last part of what we’ll cover in this entry. Your offers and they way you detail them to would-be clients will be different when you’re optimizing for mobile. Images will need to be formatted differently for starters, but the standard approaches will still be underpinning all of this. A captivating offer could involve a time-limited promotion that offers a discounted price or special financing alternatives for a specific property.

As always, trying to stir up any sense of urgency in replying is going to be good for whatever you come up with. And if these offers are going to be made available through your mobile optimized website for realtors it becomes immediately important to ensure that it features intuitive site navigation, full search functionality, smart social media integration, adaptable web design, and an extra-visible online contact that also has a line after submission that explains how you’re very happy to receive this from them.

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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 make up a dynamite way to supercharge your client prospecting efforts and one that comes highly recommended from realtors just like you all across Canada. Take advantage of the power of online marketing to fuel the growth of your PREC as a successful real estate agent.