Perhaps when you first became an agent, all those sales contracts and contingencies seemed more complicated. As any seasoned agent will say, agree that your first concern is getting new clients on the books. And our guide to generating real estate leads for new agents has dozens of strategies to get you off to a great start in your brand new career.
As a newly licensed agent, you probably don’t have a strong enough pipeline. There is so much different information floating around about the best places for new agents to find leads that any newbie is probably overwhelmed by it. Here are our 15 tips to help you generate valuable leads.
How to Generate Real Estate Leads For New Agents
As we look at lead-generation techniques, let’s summarize the steps you can use to get higher leads.
Start with People You Know
Your warm market is more likely to work with you than a bunch of acquaintances. You may find that people you already know personally will be more receptive to working with you then complete strangers. Reach out to folks you know through community activities or have connected with online and ask if they can connect you to someone in need of your help. The most reliable way to get a new client is by getting referred from friends.
Continue with People You Don't Know
After sending some vibes to your existing friends, you can start getting creative by using different ways to connect with strangers. It could be your neighbor, someone you met at a networking event, or even people you cold call. -reached using calling. Almost all the techniques described below will help in this aspect.
Nurture and Grow Relationships
It’s great to build a list of warm leads but, just because people need/want your services doesn’t mean they’ll hire you. Real estate is a very relationship oriented industry because people are entrusting you with life events and significant financial assets.
Chances are people have become part of your group, they haven’t left you, and with some well-placed check-ins, small gifts (10%), etc. They’ll also be open doors for referrals, recommendations or just good wishes. Another way to demonstrate your commitment is to let them know how important negotiating is to them during the home buying or selling process.
Establish a Repeatable Process
A month or few-month long extractive process with contact development hopefully resulting in a good percentage who become clients. When you get here, it’s time to reflect — on what has worked for u till this stage. But wait, is a certain event significantly better in attracting interested leads or has contacts reacted to an outreach tactic especially well? Write down & perfect your process you do not need to re-invent the wheel.
And, You will most likely be in a constant cycle of asking those you know for referrals, finding new contacts to talk with, fostering your current relationships and continue improving the process at each step. It looks easy enough put that way, but we all know that real estate lead generation for new agents is the hardest part of it
15 Process to Find Real Estate Leads for New Agents
1. Friends and Family
As I mentioned before, anything is easier to start from somewhere you have some personal connection or a referral. If you still have not done so already, contact other friends and extended family for a quick reach on social media that says you just got licensed as an agent looking to serve clients.
You are likely going to get a few of your connections who also have their own contacts and these may be people looking for a real estate agent so you can start making some few acquaintances from there.
2. You might Attend Chamber of Commerce Events
Chambers of commerce in several cities host networking information sessions for local real estate professionals. Use this as a chance to meet with seasoned executives in the industry. Yes, although they may be competitors in some areas, but you can still get rich information and maybe find agents or companies who are willing to cooperate with young agents to pass on jobs/contacts.
3. Active on Social Media
Networking with your industry peers is important here too, to ensure you’re well-informed of city-specific trends and the nature of the market. If possible, become a member of groups or pages on social media that discuss properties so you can join in the talks. Here are few good places to start :
- Facebook Pages — These can be private so you may need to ask for an invitation
- LinkedIn groups – simple search of your city will pull up a ton of options
- MeetUp groups – typically in-person networking + events
- Quora – demonstrate you are an expert in this subject by answering questions here
- Slack communities – join more broad city-wide tech or business ones
4. Instagram Hashtags
Instagram is one of the most underrated social media lead sources, espcially with millenials. Although not in the same way as other platforms with pages and groups, Instagram provides you with great hashtag research for finding interested leads. Some good Hashtags to begin your search:
#apartment
#newhome
#househounting
#apartmentsforrent
#apartmentliving
#property
#broker
#listing
You can also combine these with city-wise hashtags and location tags to make your search more operative.
5. Reach Out to FSBO’s
“FSBO” for sale by owner, which means the home is simply listed without an agent. Nevertheless, the thing is that FSBO houses tend to sell for less compared to agent-sold homes, and a majority of vendors eventually get help from an actual estate specialist once they come tired in order requiring all time-consuming very well as complicated stuff involving finding buyers.
Look up FSBO listings on the Internet or in newspapers, and then email them (or call if there is a phone number) letting them know how you can actually save/make more money than when using an agent.
6. Reach Out to FRBO’s
Contacting FRBOs, or for rent by owner properties is very similar to FSBO. Look up FRBO listings in online databases, and offer yourself to the landlords as someone who can find them a decent tenant. While it may seem like you would be overreaching, most landlords will welcome turning the day-to-day part of finding renters over to someone else if you approach them correctly and outline how your services could benefit.
Pull FRBO listings from the Internet or newspapers and email or call those owners to explain how doing business with you will create more money for them. This is also specially the case if they are seeking to conduct a vacation home rental somewhere else in the nation where its much harder finding and handling tenants from afar.
7. Give a Free Seminar
Offer to teach a class or just give a presentation at your local library, community center, career fair or even through the Adult Education program in your nearby college. Select a subject matter regarding your job and unique market that you are comfortable diving into. Opportunities like this help you showcase your thought leadership, increase brand awareness for yourself and gain access to more people who could easily slip into the lead category.
8. Host an Open House
This is probably one of the oldest and best warm lead generation ideas out there. With a client ready to sell their home or rent out an apartment, schedule and conduct an open house – advertising hours on your social media platforms email contacts list street corner signs etc.
Have a sign-in sheet for everyone who walks through the door to mark down their name and contact information. They may not be interested in the property, but you know they are on the market for a new place. You can also contact them in a few days to thank for the presence with you and ask about which kinds of places they are looking for.
9. Cold-Calling For Real Estate Leads for New Agents
There’s no secret to how effective this lead generation strategy is for real estate agents. However, it’s also no secret that it worked for agents decades before it took over the Internet. And before you completely dismiss it as a funnel strategy that might work for you, try cold-calling for 30 to one hour a day.
You also need to compile contact lists, the best way is by phone numbers everything from FSBO and FRBO listings (No email) that you have located plus other collected or even attended events. Well at the beginning you will probably want some cold calling script ready with what to say so you do not get surprised.
10. Contribute Thought Leadership Pieces
Surprise of surprises answering questions on Quora can also promote your expertise and consume the informational needs that allows potential leads to find you online. A super simple way to get involved here is by subscribing to PR led email lists like HARO, SourceBottle or JournoRequests.
They provide daily emails of queries from journalists seeking subject matter expertise. So, I am able to scan these emails in just a few minutes and quickly respond for those that you are fit. Aside from quotes, consider applying to become a guest author on sites such as Forbes and Inc. or Entrepreneur with your own business or real estate expert takes.
11. Monitor Marriage and Engagement Announcements
Although this tip may sound a little old, you can always bring it up to date. The concept is very simple, when a couple announces an engagement or wedding they will probably be looking to buy a new home within about 1 year. You can scroll through a newspaper like the old days, or you can switch to Instagram and see some relevant hashtags. Some of the best hashtags to start your search with include:
#marriage
#weddingday
#bridetobe
#engaged
#shesaidyes
#weddinginspiration
And again, feel free to mix these up with those city-specific hashtags like #bridetobe + LAwedding. After you identify a few in your market, send them an Instagram direct message congratulating them and telling them that if they need help finding their house/condo/apt…you’re happy to assist.
12. Social Media Ads
The beautiful part about social media ads is that you can put just a little bit of money behind them and get great results. Think of a few ads to run on Facebook and Instagram targeting each subset age group. You can target them to send users to a specific site, or direct people straight into your social profile OR use it boost one of your existing posts like possibly open house announcements or new listings. You can simply keep an eye on them over the next month to decide whether increasing a budget in one would be better than spending money elsewhere.
13. Build Your Website
When it comes to pushing users into one website, young real estate agents should be able to set up a web page with their services. That all being said, pushing users to a single page website is why its good as an agent but more on that later for new agents in another blog post. Unless you exclusively generate potential leads by way of personal introductions and cold emailing, prospective contacts will at some point want to know that your company has a presence on the internet.
Plus, not all of your leads will have social accounts and if they do,having a website is one place to reach everyone. This means you can share your website URL on all social media sites, so why not write a blog post which then gets shared to Facebook etc. You don´t need anything too complicated your website can consist of just a blog section, a contact form and gallery with examples of your work.
14. Postcards For Real Estate Leads for New Agents
One more oldie but good is postcards: it certainly beats cold-calling and you can send promotions to neighborhoods or areas where work your working at the moment. Postcards are also great because you can buy them in bulk and use them for new neighborhoods later on. People are bombarded with boring, salesy ad copy all day – so keep your design simple and subtle. There are numerous online platforms to get design inspirations from or you could design them yourself freely with Canva.
15. Lead Generation Software Specially For Real Estate Leads for New Agents
Once generated some leads and revenue you should try one of hundreds lead generation tools. While they may not be noteworthy about finding real estate leads for new agents as find their own deal through a manual process, however,you can invest little into these services giving you more time to focus on growing your existing opportunity funnel. Many of the most popular tools are in that several hundred per month neighborhood, so you will have to try some out and see what if any are worth your cash. Some prominent ones are listed below:
There are a lot of lead generation strategies, both tried and true as well as untapped just waiting to be used – so where the hell do you start? It will take some time and a lot of testing to find the right combination that works perfect so do not be afraid try something as well. Fortunately for those agents that specialize in rentals, RentSpree offers a simple tenant application and background check service to streamline the busy agent’s process between similar opportunities. Find out which lead generation software is best for you.
Conclusion
To generate real estate leads in 2024, you gotta blend the old with the new. Real estate agent technology, like JustCall, plays an oar-shaped role in this mix connecting agents to potential leads quickly.
It is a game of getting those hard-to-get leads that are prepared to take shit forward. You see, for agents it is not good to gather a bunch of paid contacts-only the right ones and again over time build trust.
Real estate pros should use clever tactics to keep in front. This involves more modern marketing tactics like digital, leveraging listing websites and driving website visits to capture leads.
FAQs
Buying real estate leads is definitely a good idea to pay for if your business is slower than usual or you are just beginning as an agent trying to expand your network.
Your website, a good SEO plan to drive organic traffic – these are the conversion funnels for generating real estate leads on-line. For commercial use, we can create paid media strategies (social media ads and google Ads) to reach potential clients. Properties can also be listed on popular real estate websites (Zillow, Redfin), and lead capture tools like CallPage or live chat may help convert these leads.
In order to generate real estate leads for new agents without cold calling, inbound marketing techniques are your most effective road. You could also host webinars, online workshops or networking events to draw in new customers. Alone with referral programs and local business partnerships.
