Everything you need to know about real estate leads to start as a real estate agent

Let’s talk about real estate leads. Should you buy phone and address listing data? What do you need to do to get real estate leads? Is it worth spending money on advertising yourself as a real estate agent? How to get reviews?

In this longread, we will try to answer all these questions.

How to Get Leads in Real Estate: Basic steps

Stable obtaining real estate leads is what differentiates successful agents, particularly in the earlier stages of their careers. Therefore, if you desire to be a successful real estate agent, you have to implement tactics that will create a steady influx of home buyer leads. However, when you are just starting out, it can be difficult to recognize where to begin. Here are some tips that may be beneficial.

1. Host a party

Host a housewarming party for your buyers and take the chance to turn their acquaintances into your new clients. Everyone is a bit jealous when they witness someone else purchase a home, so use this to your benefit! Providing food and rewards is a great way to start conversations and establish a connection. Pass out your business card or do a gift drawing and acquire their contact information — you’ll be surprised just how many real estate buyers leads start popping up.

2. Treat your tenant clients like future buyers

Don’t be upset if you receive an inquiry from someone looking to rent a house. It’s a perfect opportunity to develop a relationship with a potential future buyer.

Often, people rent a house in an area they eventually want to purchase a property. They become familiar with you and if they’re pleased with your services, they are more likely to come back when they are ready to buy.

Most clients take less than two years to make the transition from renter to owner. If you start by getting renters into their homes, you may reap the benefits sooner than you expect.

3. Switch to demographic vs geographic farming

If you are aiming to draw in a certain kind of real estate lead, you need to do more than just understand their demographic. Especially for first-time homebuyers of a younger generation, you should concentrate on becoming an expert in a certain niche, and learning in detail about the group you are interested in.

Figure out what type of house they need and the features they would want. Additionally, figure out the places they inhabit and the amenities they are searching for. With this information, you will be able to locate potential leads in the region of your choice.

4. Use homebuyers’ data from the suburb you work in

Having the right data on potential homebuyers in the area you serve is still beneficial. No matter what methods you decide to use to attract real estate leads, a database is still an important asset.

In the past, buying lists of homeowners in a given area for cold calling was an accepted practice. Nowadays, social media outreach has become a new way to generate leads. But the purpose remains the same — to get in contact with buyers that you weren’t working with before.

If you are working in Australia our Radius Suburb service can help you to touch with potential real estate leads in your suburb. We provide a “purified” list of real estate leads — names, addresses, and phone numbers. The residential list data is downloadable over 12 months, and verified against the Do Not Call Register biweekly. Here you can check the number of records for the suburbs you work in for free.

5. Become a restaurant regular

Hold recurring meetings with clients at a single restaurant or coffee shop. This way, you can cultivate clout with the wait staff, be entitled to the most prominent tables, and seem both reputable and rooted in the local community.

Furthermore, you might even become acquainted with the other attendants — subsequently positioning you as the go-to person for them once they are ready to make a purchase.

6. Send a handwritten note

Get some pen, paper, and a postage stamp, and take the time to write a note to a customer who you currently or previously represented. Show gratitude for their decision to use you as their real estate agent, and let them know that you would be more than willing to offer them guidance, suggest a good moving service, or even mail any important documents needed to meet their tax requirements.

People will really appreciate the effort you put in if you take the time to handwrite your message, making you stand out amongst the countless emails they get these days. Additionally, why not pick up the phone to call them a few days after to potentially gain referrals?

7. Use MailChimp or another Newsletter soft

Millennials make up a majority of the current consumer market. 64% of them prefer outreach via email. So, whether you prefer new or old-school methods of marketing, email needs to be part of your marketing strategy.

In the past, this would mean putting together email lists and crafting each message from scratch.

Thankfully, we now have online tools like Mailchimp

It’s an email marketing platform with an intuitive UI and a feature-rich free trial. It has a variety of email marketing templates, surveys, and even postcards you can customize to suit your real estate leads email marketing campaigns.

MailChimp also includes a CRM for easier management of your real estate contact list. It also allows integration with socials like Instagram, Facebook, and Google Ads for simplified marketing campaign management.

Alternatives to Mailchimp:

• Moosend
• Hubspot
• Omnisend
• GetResponse
• Constant Contact
• MailerLite, etc.

There are many alternatives and it can take a long time to describe all the nuances. Here is our other article about soft for real estate agents and the article about How to choose CRM for real estate leads.

8. Leverage the internet to advertise

Put money into paid online advertisements to get more real estate leads. The number of home buyers who used the web to hunt for a house rose to a record high of 97% in 2020, according to the National Association of Realtors. Here are some ways to publicize yourself as an estate agent:

• Facebook ads
• LinkedIn ads
• Google ads

Spending a budget on advertising is always a concern, so in one of the sections below, we will discuss this point in more detail.

9. Be an active internet user

The advice above on using paid advertising goes hand in hand with the advice to stay active online:

• Ask customers to leave feedback for you
• Respond to real estate Q&As on Quora
• Write your blog

You should have an online reputation. Otherwise, potential real estate leads will click on your ads, but not become your customers, as they simply won’t find anything about you on the web.

Unless you specifically ask for referrals, your previous clients are not likely to provide them for you. Only 29% of happy consumers will recommend their company to others without being asked.

You should be an active internet user.

One of the drawbacks of requesting referrals is that you could upset clients by doing so, particularly high-end clients. But the reality, though, is that the vast majority of your clients will be pleased to hand one over to you. Customers report being willing to suggest a friend or colleague 83% of the time.

So, reviews and Quora are pretty important things.

10. Choose your niche while writing your blog

This closely intersects with point 3. about the demographic niche. When it comes to online reputation, simple reviews are not enough. One of the best ways to generate leads in real estate is by effectively portraying yourself on the World Wide Web, and a simple Facebook or LinkedIn profile won’t always do. 

An active blog may not be enough either because no matter how much valuable content you produce, you can’t rely on that alone to make it to the top of the search engine results page. Some ten years ago, you could get to the top of Google results with the help of a blog, but today it will be very difficult for you to find such keywords so that articles written based on them get on the first pages of search engines.

Considering that the internet is made up of many different websites, the best way to make the most of your online image is to research the types of content that are most relevant to your industry, also it has fewer competitors, so you can get to the top.

Then, use that information to create content that allows you to cultivate a personal brand on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube. Diversifying your presence will significantly improve your ability to attract organic traffic from search engines.

Is it really worth it to pay for real estate leads?

Google ads, paid listings — does it really worth it? Many real estate agents answer “yes” as the typical real estate commission is normally in the thousands of dollars. Such an amount outweighs the monthly cost of several hundred dollars you could pay for ads or listings.

Data from CoreLogic argues that the median price of a home in Australia was approximately $859,684 in September 2022. At a commission of 2%, the benefit of buying leads is understandable.

Furthermore, a study conducted by OpenAgent suggests that Australian real estate agents can miss out on as much as 13% of their leads. Agents simply don’t have time to process all potential leads. This point is important given that many agents think “I’m not the only one buying these listings, so what’s the point?” or “there are far more successful agents who buy ads, why should I do that too?“.

The general point

We all know that 2023 will be a tough year and lead generation in the real estate market will be not an easy think (what we talked about in more detail here). But it’s important to understand that most of the points in this article are about the basics of networking, and if you learn how to communicate with people, this will always be the best way to get real estate leads.

Just keep this general point in mind and remember that Australia remains the richest real estate market in the world.