How Do Real Estate Agents Get Listings?

As a real estate agent, the lifeblood of your business is winning new listings. Whether you're a new agent or have years of experience, the number and quality of your listings determines your revenue and your local reputation.

Top real estate agents get listings and new clients through a variety of lead generation strategies. If you want to get listings, grow your business, and become your local market's go-to real estate expert, consider these 16 real estate home listing generation tips.

Build Your Reputation Offline

As a real estate agent who wants more home listings, you need to be sure people in your network and community are aware of your real estate services.

1. Tell Friends and Family You're in Real Estate

Don't overthink it: Step 1 to getting more real estate listings is to make sure people you already know are aware of your real estate practice.

Agents tell us all the time that they started in the business by helping friends and family members sell their homes. Some even make a point of telling new acquaintances that they're in real estate. You don't have to force it: Just by telling people you're in the real estate business, you open yourself up to people's questions about selling homes – and possibly even their business.

2. Learn Your Local Market

If you're going to identify yourself as a real estate agent, you'll likely receive questions about the local market. Real estate agents who get listings are those who have learned their local market and can answer these questions intelligently.

Consumers want to list their homes with agents who understand the quirks and realities of their local market. Selling a home in December can look much different than selling a home in June. And selling a home when the market is red-hot is different than selling when inventory is high. Above all, selling a home in one city or town or neighborhood may be much different than selling in another – every location has unique considerations, including schools and taxes.

Make sure you are up-to-date on the local market and the differences in home selling between different neighborhoods. If you're an expert real estate agent, it will show, and you'll get more home listings.

3. Meet Other Agents

Being educated and informed about real estate and your local market is important. It's made easier and is more likely to lead to getting home listings when you have relationships with other agents.

Meeting other agents often involves joining local real estate chambers and organizations and attending networking events. Other methods include joining neighborhood groups or real estate charities.

By meeting and developing relationships with other agents, you'll learn more about your market and how successful real estate professionals operate. You'll also develop relationships with the people who represent buyers. This allows you to hear about what buyers are going through and what they're looking for – making your listing presentations more compelling and informed.

4. Develop a Community Presence

As you learn your market and meet other agents, you should also develop a strong, noticeable, consumer-facing community presence.

Having a community presence helps you get listings. The agent name on the back of Little League jerseys, the yard signs, the billboards, the ads in church bulletins, the overall involvement in your community – when it's time to sell and people need to think of a local real estate agent, you want to be who comes to mind.

Grow Your Reputation Online

At one time, the aforementioned offline methods may have been enough to establish and maintain a sustainable real estate practice. But not anymore. To get listings, you need a strong online presence.

5. Complete and Verify Your Google Business Profile

The first and most essential component of a strong online reputation is a verified Google Business Profile.

Your Google Business Profile appears at the right hand side of the screen when people search for you online. It includes complete business information, including your contact information, recent listing photos, hours of operation, and reviews.

Having a complete, verified Google Business Profile is essential. It tells consumers that you're a credible real estate professional who is ready to do business.

6. Get Google Reviews

The next step to building a strong online presence and getting more home listings is to populate your Google Business Profile with reviews.

Just as when they're offline, people who are searching for an agent online don't usually have someone specific in mind. Instead, they search for terms like "real estate agents near me." You want to be at the top of these results, and you can, with positive, plentiful Google reviews.

Notice that the top agents in this generic search all have dozens of reviews and a high review rating? That's because Google wants to serve searchers agents who are trustworthy. Reviews serve as a proxy, and are essential to any agent who wants to get home listings.

With positive Google reviews, you'll appear at the top of Google search results, attract more attention from sellers, and get more home listings than other real estate agents.

7. Appear on Homes.com

Getting listings means reaching consumers. And reaching consumers means appearing on the Homes.com agent search directory.

Homes.com and Homesnap are both now part of CoStar Group, and tens of millions of dollars are being invested to surge traffic on Homes.com. Already, Homes.com is a leading portal for people looking for an agent to help them sell a home. And the sellers who arrive are valuable: 85% of Homes.com visitors who are planning to sell have not yet selected a listing agent.

Clearly, the Homes.com agent search directory is a place you need to be if you want listings. And you can ensure a place at the top with Homesnap Pro+.

Pro+ members are automatically boosted to the top of the agent search directory, ahead of thousands of competitors. Your profile, synced with Homesnap agent information, will be ahead of thousands of your competitors – winning you real estate listings.

8. Prospect for Off-Market Sellers

Being findable online is important. But particularly during market downturns, being able to effectively and efficiently prospect online for off-market sellers is crucial to getting new home listings.

Traditionally off-market prospecting involves knocking on doors or dropping leaflets that ask whether people want to sell their home. The world's become more complex: If you want listings, you should be using Homesnap Pro+ to identify properties that are likely to sell before they hit the market.

Homesnap Pro+ members have access to a range of premium filters, including home loan balances, that help you market your services to people who want to sell their home but haven't yet selected an agent.

Top agents are proactive, and real estate agents who get listings use Homesnap Pro+ to prospect for new clients.

9. Use Social Media Organically

Social media is important for real estate agents, and a component of winning new listings.

The benefits of social media are manifold, and include brand and name recognition. But perhaps the biggest benefit of organic – or non-paid – social media is that it allows you to publicly establish yourself as a real estate expert.

Post about the market, offer advice, or ask your followers what they're looking for in a home. Either way, you're demonstrating to potential sellers that you think critically and seek feedback about the market – boosting your chances of getting more listings.

10. Run Ads on Social Media

After laying the groundwork with strong organic social media, you can use paid social media to draw large numbers of leads into your sales funnel and get more home listings.

Our data scientists crunched the numbers and found that consistent investment in paid advertisements pays off for agents. In fact, agents who buy Facebook Ads through Homesnap earn 2.5 times more leads from Facebook than agents who use social media but do not buy paid ads.

Targeted, data-backed Homesnap Pro Ads help you zero in on sellers, pitch your services, and get more home listings.

Showcase Your Professionalism and Competency

As your presence online and offline expands and you get yourself in front of more sellers, don't forget that showcasing professionalism and competency helps you win more home listings – now and in the future.

11. Deliver Compelling Listing Presentations

Being recognizable and well-known is great, but for some sellers, deciding on a real estate agent takes more persuasion. Enter the real estate listing presentation.

Listing presentations are your opportunity to convince a potential client that you're thorough, professional, and attuned to their needs. Listing presentations are designed to preemptively answer consumer questions such as:

• What's the background of the agent or brokerage?
• What's the state of the local market?
• What homes like mine has the agent sold before?
• What kind of marketing plan does the agent use?
• How does the agent plan to price my house?
• What plans does the agent have for my open house?
• Does the agent have access to photography and photo editing expertise?

Overall, being prepared with a strong listing presentation will win you real estate listings.

12. Always Treat Your Buyer Clients Like Prospective Sellers

Winning attention and affection from sellers is always important, but a long-term, sustainable listing generation strategy requires treating buyer clients like prospective sellers.

Think about it: Needing to sell a home usually means needing to buy a home. Buyer clients sometimes get a bad rap because of the amount of work necessary to help them find their dream home. But if you do a good job for buyers, you'll be their preferred agent when it's time to sell, and you'll win more listings.

13. Ask for Referrals

Hopefully, prospective clients will get a taste of your professionalism, ability, and work ethic through your Google reviews. But winning more real estate listings means being prepared for anything, and that requires referrals.

Ask for past clients to refer you to friends, family, and other people they know. Also be sure to ask your clients for feedback. If you're doing a good job, these remarks will be largely positive, and you can share these comments with new prospective clients to get more listings.

14. Stay in Touch With Past Clients

Remember that referrals and Google reviews and representing clients multiple times all become less likely if you fail to stay in touch with past clients. The same goes for winning listings.

Real estate agents who consistently get listings are usually those who maintain contact with past clients. This doesn't have to suck up too much time: Just periodically check in with your former buyers and sellers to see how they're doing. Simply staying front-of-mind helps boost the odds you'll be hired for their next real estate go-around, and will increase the number of listings in your portfolio.

15. Have a Professional Headshot and Polished Listing Photos

Too often, agents appear unprofessional, untrustworthy, and ineffective because they lack a professional headshot and have listing presentations and an online presence that features poor lighting and staging. Those agents cost themselves listings. Don't be one of them.

Instead, have high-quality, well-lit, professionally-shot and staged headshots and listing photos. If your brokerage or agency doesn't provide that service, it's still worth it: To be a real estate agent who gets listings, you need people to know you're a legitimate professional with a sharp presentation who is ready to do the job.

16. Host Great Open Houses

The last piece of advice to get more real estate listings might seem counterintuitive: Host great open houses. It seems weird. Once you have listings, isn't the focus entirely on getting the best deal by impressing buyers and people touring the home?

The answer is yes, but that's exactly why hosting the best possible open houses is a must. Those buyers are very likely to be sellers once they've signed a contract on a home. Some people at the open house are simply getting a feel for the real estate market. When it's time for them to list their home, they'll remember the well-staged open house, and be more likely to give their listing to the agent that hosted it.

Get More Home Listings and Grow Your Real Estate Business

Getting real estate listings isn't easy. But getting enough listings to thrive as a real estate agent isn't complicated: Develop your offline and online reputation, and consistently demonstrate that you're a professional, thorough agent who is worth consumers' business.

Over time, and with the help of this guide, you should find that you have enough listings to maintain a thriving practice and develop a real estate business that gives you pride.

To view the original article, visit the Homesnap blog.