One of my biggest lessons from the recent AREC conference is that we data people just complicate things too much and need to be a lot clearer.
So with this feedback in mind, I sat down and wrote a few simple rules on how data can make money for you. No complicated explanations or reasons, just simple rules we have seen make a difference to our customers – rules that can turn a real estate business into something profitable, something that delivers a good revenue stream.
These rules come from being in the hotseat in our business, where we’re able to look at the behaviours of successful agents and then map these behaviours and how they bring greater market successes.
The rules can be used in each of the three major tenets of running a good real estate business:
- Win more listings
- Turn those listings into sales
- Turn investor sales into property management business
In this first blog post I will go through a few tips on winning more listings using big data tools.
Win more listings
Simple really – target prospects better and get them before your competitors do. Apart from customer referrals and great CRM and database tools, here are a few ways ‘big data’ can help you.
1. Find withdrawn listings from last year that have not relisted. These vendors will already have a price expectation and you can see from their previous listing history the price they wanted to get. As markets have risen, now might be the time to get the price they wanted then and didn’t achieve. To find withdrawn listings, use the ‘withdrawn listings’ button on the front page of RP Professional. I did a quick search and even a top-end suburb like Bellevue Hill has 40 withdrawn listings to target. Just one of these could be worth over $50,000 in commission.
2. Prospect for vendors ‘likely to list’ that have not yet listed. CoreLogic RP Data’s proprietary listings predictor, ‘find my next listing’, on the front page of RP Professional runs a model that increases your chances of finding those vendors that have not yet listed. You can then mail merge this with the marketing database and mail direct to the owners by name.
3. Run a radius search around any property you have just sold or listed. Find the nearest 100 homes with the same characteristics and do a targeted mail drop highlighting your property and referencing theirs. We have seen good response rates with such a targeted campaign as the content is highly relevant to your audience.
4. Use CoreLogic’s new mobile iPad tool and have a report sent to open home prospects before they even leave your inspection – a report on their current home and one on the property they are looking at acquiring. Help them make the decision to move!
5. Create and monitor a custom territory by geography and property type, one that is unique to an area. For example, ‘Units on the wrong side of the railway line’. Creating stats on sales trends, high and low sales results and overlaying this with commentary plus personal branding can create a unique point of differentiation. For example, “Greg is the unit guy, I get his unit report on my area every month and it is interesting reading.”
In my next blog I will go through some tools to turn listings into sales.