Leveraging digital marketing assets, telling a rich story and finding cash offers before listing a home were just some of the tips shared this week by the lead-generation panel at the Mega Agent Camp hosted by Keller Williams.
The brokerage utilizes a method it calls “make offer for immediate response,” or MOFIRs. These offers can include providing sellers an immediate cash offer, upfront loans for home improvements, and giving special incentives to essential workers such as police officers, nurses and teachers.
“When you make offers for immediate response, you’re engaged in the market of the moment,” said Keller Williams CEO Gary Keller, who donned a black T-shirt that read, “Will give real estate advice for coffee.”
“When you make offers for long-term response, you are out of the market. You are not engaged in what it would take to do business today. And you get smarter by making offers,” Keller said.
Four panelists from across the country told their personal experiences about effective applications of MOFIRs in a challenging housing market for real estate agents.
Ryan Young, owner of the Ohio-based brokerage The Young Team, stressed the importance of building, maintaining and engaging with a database of buyers and sellers. This allows for an ongoing dialogue with potential leads.
One strategy, he said, is to offer a free valuation to homeowners and provide a cash offer based on that valuation. While the likelihood of the homeowner taking the offer is low, it gets a lead in the marketing funnel for future benefit.
“If I send you an email that says, ‘Would you like a cash offer?” that might not be the right timing,” Young said. “So, what I’m doing is I’m expanding my database of homeowners very quickly. Then I have an opportunity to provide that optionality when you get into the funnel. Now I’ve captured you.”
Tim Heyl, owner of The Heyl Group in Austin, echoed that sentiment. He noted that Homeward is a platform that can provide a cash offer for a seller so they can buy before they sell.
“The demand with a soft market shift that we’ve moved to for a cash offer has skyrocketed, but the supply for a reasonable cash offer has declined significantly,” Heyl said, referring to the struggles of iBuyers. “It’s gone incredibly well. With Homeward, we’re providing the offer. We partner with great companies that specialize in how to take the MOFIR to market.”
Jose Medina, owner of Jose Medina and Associates in Ohio, talked about how to leverage a home improvement loan, which greases the wheels for homeowners whose property may not be in shape to sell.
He said that establishing relationships with vendors can help agents provide an offer.
“You can just go to your vendors and say, ‘Hey, can I get 60 days to get paid on that?” Medina said. “If you have a deep enough relationship with the vendors, they will do that with you. It separates us from the other Realtors and puts us in the driver’s seat to get the listing.”
Stacy Esser, owner of the Stacy Esser Group in northern New Jersey, discussed the importance of telling a story around the house. This shows the prospective buyer a vision of the home being more than walls, carpet and a roof.
This method provides the buyer a value proposition for the home that is a reflection of their identity, thus increasing the home’s purchase price.
“If you put that house on the market and don’t do anything, it’s going to be worth X,” Esser said. “But if you tell the story of how that homeowner took care of that house and serviced all of the mechanics, and how that homeowner lived in that house, you sell a lifestyle.”
