Expired Listings Letters

Expired Listings Letters; Putting The Fun Back Into Real Estate Marketing

Following up expired listings is easy...especially if you use form letters!  New agents can use them to grow their businesses.  Similarly, veteran agents can expand their businesses and increase their commissions using letters, a proven cost effective real estate marketing tool. Both new and veteran agents know that farming expired listings can be very lucrative!

Expired listings letters can work for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. Although letters are a simple way of communicating they can have a powerful impact on how successful or mediocre your career is.

Here’s an example of what I mean.  Send me a letter about something I’m interested in I might hold onto it until the ink fades and the paper turns yellow, but will still try to call you when I'm ready to act on your offer.   

On the other hand if I have to write down your number on a piece of scrap paper...and the operative words are “scrap paper”, it ain’t gonna happen! 

Pardon my English, but I want to emphasize the point! 

Make it easy for prospects to respond to your marketing messages and there’s a pretty good chance that you might hear from them again.  But a funny thing happens when you never mail the letters to begin with...

So, the #1 rule of thumb is always make it easy for clients and prospects to contact you. 

Some more important reasons for marketing with expired listings letters 

1. Owners of expired listings usually re-list their properties after they expire and often times with different agents. Letters informing them of your marketing ideas for their homes can make you a contender for the listings.   
   
   
2. Motivated owners of expired listings are sometimes more aggressive in offering favorable prices, terms and conditions to get their properties “sold” during a re-listing. 
   
   
3. You know where owners of expired listings are, so you don't have to expend a lot of time or energy trying to find them. Fire up your computer, sign in to your MLS listing service site, type in expired listings and there they are.  How can it be any easier?
   
   
4. Pre-written expired listings letters are affordable and relatively easy to find.  Good letters are indispensable, and can have a huge impact on your marketing success.

Benefits of using "form" letters

Form letters are real time savers.  They free you up to better focus on activities that'll make you more money, like showing properties, going on listing appointments, attending closings, etc. Sitting in front of your computer trying to compose letters from scratch is definitely not one of them. 

Mailing letters is also still one of the least costly and effective strategies in today’s real estate market.  The more you mail the more you can earn.

Finally, expired listings letters are easily personalized and made to look like originals, even if you mail out hundreds of the same one. People don't like feeling like a number, so the more individualized your interactions are with them the better.

Single mindedness of purpose
Some years ago a friend of mine coined the phrase “single mindedness of purpose.”  It was the first time I'd heard it, but immediately understood the significance of what he was saying.  

The point, as he put it, to focus exclusively on what I wanted to accomplish and then apply myself to make it happen.

So I applied it to my real estate marketing plan with impressive results!

I got serious about expired listings, wrote some expired listings letters and developed a system for marketing expired listings.  The outcome? My listing portfolio took off like a rocket!  The rest, as they say, is history.

Here's how I did it!
First, I established a process for identifying expired listings on a daily basis.  Then I went about getting the most current addresses to minimize the number of return letters I was getting.

Second, I wrote my letters (there were no form letters available at the time that I liked, so I wrote my own) and set them up in my computer for mail merge.  This allowed me to personalize them on the run and have each one look like an original.  I was able to mail lots of letters in a matter of minutes.

Third, I developed a technique for establishing instant rapport with owners when they called after receiving my letters.

Real estate marketing and sales got to be fun when I started earning enough money to pay the bills, and the more listings I got the more leads I generated.  People that I'd not solicited actually started calling me, buyers and sellers! 

See the cycle?  It can start happening for you, too when you farm listings with expired listings letters. 

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Expired Listings Letters can help you get more prospects, sign up more listings and make more sales.  These particular ones have helped some agents generate 2 or more listings a week, and in some instances without cold calling or cutting fees just to get the listings!  Some say Expired Listings are easy to get, as the Owners are already Realtor friendly and more motivated to sell than before.