How To Find Clients Who Need To Buy And Sell Now—Regardless Of The Economy

The U.S. real estate market is in the depths of a downturn. 

In January 2023, existing home sales dropped to their lowest level in over 12 years. 

There are many reasons for this—the faltering economy, sky-high interest rates, and a housing bubble that has made property in some cities unaffordable. 

Realtors are already beginning to feel the burn. At Paperless Pipeline, the number of closed transactions across all our users fell dramatically. November 2022 saw 45% fewer transactions than the same period in 2021. 

These are frightening times. Many realtors will be asking questions like:

  • Will my business survive? 
  • Can I still afford to pay my staff?
  • How can I save costs?
  • How can I increase my sales?

This article focuses on the latter. 

Lead Generation Matters

In a world of high competition and falling demand, real estate agents need to put extra effort into lead generation. 

You could hold more client entertainment events, post more often on social media, and increase your advertising budget. But with fewer potential clients on the market, these activities are unlikely to offer an immediate return.

You could also sign up for a real estate lead generation service. But most of these are drawn from people engaging with Zillow or property valuation tools and this doesn’t necessarily deliver highly motivated buyers or sellers. 

Instead, you need to take a smarter approach. You need to find those people who don’t just want to buy or sell a property but that need to—regardless of the economy. 

These clients will be more reliable because of their drive to buy or sell. This drive also means you’ll be able to make some great deals. Sellers may be willing to sell a property for below market value and buyers may be willing to pay extra for the right home. 

This article provides several ways to find these clients and target them.

Who Needs to Buy or Sell a Property?

So who are these people? Here are some examples:

People who need to buy or sell properties are likely those experiencing the following:

  • Distressed foreclosures
  • Probate
  • Divorce
  • City code violation orders
  • Expired listings
  • Moving cities for a new job 

There are also a few indicators that suggest someone may be willing to sell their home. These include:

  • High equity
  • Increased interest rates
  • The number of times they have moved in the last eight years

How to Create a Super-Targeted Lead Generation System

In a recent Paperless Pipeline roundtable event, Daniel McClam, President and Lead Broker at Hawks Real Estate, told us about a lead generation process his company has developed and is having huge success with.

Hawks works with institutional investors (usually hedge funds) that want to buy residential or commercial properties. Daniel and his team find properties that match the buyer’s criteria, belonging to people with a high probability of selling (due to the reasons listed earlier in this article). They then broker a deal with the seller and then flip the properties wholesale to the hedge fund.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Understanding the buyer’s needs

Hawks meets with institutional buyers and gets a clear understanding of the type of property they want to invest in and why.

  1. Targeting

Hawks has developed software to identify properties that match a hedge fund’s buying criteria. This includes filters like: 

  • Neighborhood
  • Number of beds
  • Bathrooms
  • Size
  • Estimated value

But more importantly, it can identify the likelihood to sell indicators we mentioned earlier.

This allows Hawks to create shortlists of properties their client wants to buy, with owners motivated to sell. 

  1. Cold-calling

The shortlists are sent to a call center. This consists of 10-20 operatives who cold call people on the shortlist, asking them if they would be interested in selling their property. This results in 25–45 leads per day where the person has said they are interested in selling. 

  1. Buying

Each lead is passed on to an agent who calls the property owner. They seek to establish the seller’s needs and to ensure they match those of the institutional investor. 

  1. Flipping

Hawks gets the deal to the stage where the property is under contract with the seller. They then take the deal to the institutional investor and agree to terms.  

Why This System Could Work for You

There are several benefits to this system:

✔️Deals are unlikely to fall through: The system minimizes the chance that a deal won’t work by precisely matching buyer and seller needs.

✔️It’s very efficient: Almost all poor-fit leads are qualified out during the cold-calling phase. This means very little time is wasted on poor-fit leads.

✔️Everyone wins: The seller gets to sell their property and the buyer gets the exact property they asked for.

✔️Agents are happy: Agents get to work on relatively straightforward and lucrative deals. They spend more time selling properties and earning commission.

✔️You can operate remotely: You can target properties wherever your buyer desires. There’s no need to have a physical presence in the area.

Best of all, even though Hawks targets institutional investors, there is no reason why this system wouldn’t work for residential buyers too.

For example, you could set your targeting criteria to focus on a specific neighborhood. They could identify people who are likely to sell in that area and offer to sell their property. They could tell them about the other properties they have sold locally and secure the deal before their competitors can.

How to Set up This System at Your Brokerage

There are a few things you’ll need to have in place for this to work for you. 

They are:

  1. Understanding your buyers

Hawks don’t just find sellers. They first focus on understanding their buyer’s criteria. This reduces uncertainty by ensuring they find the perfect property for their client. 

  1. Get targeting software

Hawks has developed its own targeting software. It scrapes various public databases to identify people who own a property that meets their client’s criteria and who need to sell their property. 

You could do the same by hiring a developer. However, this is likely to be expensive and time-consuming.

Another option is to use an off-the-shelf tool like REDX. It provides leads for preforeclosures, for sale by owner (FSBO) properties, and expired listings. 

  1. Hire cold callers

Next, you’ll need a team of cold callers to contact and qualify those leads. You could hire someone to do this—but this is often expensive and requires additional management. 

Instead, we recommend outsourcing this to someone else. Not only will this be cheaper, but it will also be easier to scale—instead of hiring new salespeople, you simply pay the cold calling company for additional support. ExpertCallers is a good example of a company that provides outsourced cold calling services. 

  1. Use agents that love hitting the phones

It’s a good idea to hand your sales calls to an agent who enjoys answering calls and can do it well. They’ll need to be someone who is good at influencing and can broker deals. 

It will be less suitable for agents who enjoy being on the road or meeting people face-to-face. 

  1. Get reliable transaction management software

The real estate transaction doesn’t end once you have a buyer and seller. You still need to go through the closing process. This involves a number of compliance tasks to be completed by certain dates—if any are missed, the whole deal could fall through. 

Unfortunately, this is also where agents often take their eye off the ball. It’s a good idea to use a transaction management tool to ensure no balls are dropped and that every deal runs smoothly—after all, there’s no point in investing in a lead generation system only to lose deals to silly mistakes. 

Paperless Pipeline is a great option for this. Not only does it come with checklists, automated due dates, and transaction reports to help keep your deals on track, but it also offers flexible and affordable pricing. 

You pay per transaction. This means if you experience a dip in production the amount you pay drops accordingly. Once production increases again, you’ll pay more. This way, you pay more during the good times and less during the hard times. 

Other Ways to Boost Real Estate Leads

Of course, the system described above isn’t the only way you can boost leads in a downturn. 

Here are a few other ideas:

Become a Representing Agent for a New Development 

Becoming a representative for a new property development project will give you a reliable pipeline of sales opportunities. 

Each new development could potentially provide you with multiple deals.  

You’ll need to connect with developers working on new construction projects to do this. 

Try to find clients interested in buying into their developments and approach the developer as a buyer’s agent—this will prove to them that you can sell their houses. 

If a developer likes the work you’ve done to sell it, chances are they’ll keep doing business with you, and may even ask you to become their representing agent. 

It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that can develop over time. 

Expand into new markets

Often when demand falls in one property market, it increases in another. If production slows, consider moving into other markets. For example, if you work in residential sales then you may wish to consider:

  • Rental properties
  • Commercial property
  • Ranch sales

Equally, it may be worth niching down harder. In other words, become laser-focused on what you do best. 

For example, if you sell property across a certain county but make 80% of your sales in one city, then focus your efforts there. Use your success and experience as a selling point and build a name for yourself as the go-to realtor in the area.

Reach out to past clients

Your best customers are those that you have already helped to buy or sell a property. If you did your job well, they will want to work with you again the next time they buy a new home.

And, because the average homeowner moves house every eight years, you can roughly predict when that will happen.

It’s therefore important to keep the relationship alive by staying in touch with them. This way they will think of you when moving home again. Not only this, but they are also likely to recommend you to friends and family.

Expand your sphere of influence

Personal connections are one of the best ways to get sales. The more personal connections you have, the greater your chances of landing deals. 

People are more likely to recommend someone they know or like, so you can generate more of these leads by developing your personal network—often referred to as your sphere of influence. 

Some ideas for meeting new connections include:

  • Joining professional real estate associations
  • Joining local business groups
  • Volunteering for local charities
  • Geting involved in community groups

Reduce your costs

Generating leads is only one small part of surviving the real estate downturn. It’s also important to review your costs and see where you could make savings. 

We recently spoke to Hal Barnett of Southwest Realty in New Mexico. He explained how reducing his business’s overheads and downsizing it had made it more profitable.

Here are some of the things he did:

  • Sold one of his offices
  • Switched to working remotely
  • Left a franchise and became independent
  • Reduced the number of agents from 50 to 15
  • Started using Paperless Pipeline to support efficient remote working

As a result of these changes, Southwest Realty has seen its profits increase. This has allowed them to offer their agents a more favorable commission split. 

Save Costs and Avoid Lost Deals with Paperless Pipeline

This article shows that Paperless Pipeline is a critical tool for realtors facing a challenging market. 

It helps you to:

✔️Process more deals more efficiently

✔️Avoid losing deals to mistakes

✔️Reduce your tech costs


Discover how Paperless Pipeline can help your business by signing up for a free trial today.