This was the first session of our month long live series on aged expired listings. The whole idea fits in one sentence: stop calling expireds the day they expire, and go after the ones that came off the market a while ago and never came back.
In the first part I walk through how I pull those listings out of my own MLS. In the second part I stop talking and do the work, live, so you can see what it actually looks like to call, text and email a small deck of aged expireds.
Why day one is the wrong day
Think about what happens the morning a listing expires. As I said on the stream, "the day they expired, everybody swarms in." That seller gets call after call, text after text, starting first thing in the morning. To have any chance in that crowd, you need perfect scripts and a comeback for every objection.
I'd rather not fight for a word in edgewise. While we were researching this series I saw a company offering a dialer so you can make 300 dials an hour. "Give me a break." That's not a way I want to spend my mornings.
Who aged expireds are
An aged expired is a listing that expired or was canceled a while back and never came back on the market. I look at listings that have been off the market anywhere from 32 to 480 days.
These are some of the best leads in our business. At some point the owner told the world they wanted to sell. They signed a listing agreement and went through all the hoops. For whatever reason it didn't work out, but the reason they wanted to move usually didn't go away. The phone just stopped ringing.
I shared a moment from earlier this fall, too. I was at my kid's high school football game, just tapping out a few texts and emails to my aged expired deck from the stands, and one of those owners wrote back warm and engaged. That is what a quieter pond feels like.
Pulling the list from your own MLS
You don't need to buy a list for this. "Let's use the data that we're already paying for." Every MLS is a little different, but most have similar filters. Here's the order I work in:
- Pick a small area. Don't pull a whole county. It's too much data and you'll get stuck. What you want is "a nice juicy targeted audience of 20 to 50 really good aged expired listings." In a busy area one zip code is plenty. A school district or a rural county works too.
- Select every status. Expired, canceled, withdrawn, closed. You need all of them so you can see which homes have sold or come back since.
- Set the time window. I used 32 to 480 days, and I match the same window on the closed and withdrawn side so I can cut the homes that already moved.
- Export to one spreadsheet. From there the list gets scrubbed down to the ones that are truly still off the market.
It takes a little effort to figure out the first time. Once you have it, you can reuse it again and again.
Working the deck live
Then I switched over and worked the list on camera. My process for each card is the same:
- Call the best mobile number first.
- If I get voicemail, leave a short one.
- Tap to text: "Just left you a voicemail."
- Tap to email every address I have, because sometimes the third email is the one that works.
When I got someone on the phone, I kept it simple and curious. I asked what they had, whether they'd had any offers, and what was holding things up. One call turned into a conversation about other properties he might sell. That's a new card in my hand.
After a good conversation, I save the person as a contact in my phone and send a handwritten thank you card. Why? "I want them to remember me."
Not every call went well. One owner was short with me and said she wasn't interested. That's fine. I said thank you and moved to the next card.
The game I'm playing
I think of this like Go Fish. All I'm trying to do is add more cards to my hand, because the more cards I have, the more chances for a match. The goal is "more conversations with more people that are more likely to transact."
And the big reason I'm doing this all month is simple: "expired listings don't have to be scary."
Key takeaways
- Skip day one. That's when every agent in town is calling the same seller.
- Aged expireds, off the market 32 to 480 days and never relisted, are a quieter and friendlier place to fish.
- Pull them from the MLS you already pay for. Start with a small area, about 20 to 50 good listings.
- Scrub out anything that has sold, relisted or been withdrawn before you reach out.
- For each card: call, voicemail, text and email. Then save good conversations and send a thank you card.
Chapters
- 00:00 Why we're stopping day one expired calls
- 02:00 The Aged Expired MLS Money Map
- 04:00 A warm reply from the football stands
- 09:00 Why aged expireds are some of the best leads
- 11:00 Pulling aged expireds from your MLS
- 21:00 Working the deck live
- 30:00 Playing the infinite game of Go Fish
- 32:00 Saving contacts and sending thank you cards
- 57:00 Wrap up and what's next in the series