Bernice Ross

For decades, the standard referral fee of a seller who is ready to list their property has been 25 percent. Some relocation companies have charged more than that, but they’re generally coordinating the move and providing other services. So why would any competent agent pay one of the portals up to 40 percent of their commission when there are plenty of other options for being able to get great leads for way less money?  

Before forking over 40 percent of your commission, try working with a few of these ideas to obtain high-quality leads at a fraction of the price you’re currently paying for leads from Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow. 

First, here’s one with a buzzy name: Likely.AI is currently offering real estate agents a free “Database Refresh Report” that allows them to identify the contacts in their database who are most likely to transact in the next 90 to 180 days. They say they’ll give you: 

• The percentage of contacts in your database that have valid contact information. 

• The percentage of your contacts that either listed or sold their property during the last nine months. 
• The percentage predicted to transact during the next 90 to 180 days along with who those contacts actually are.  

U.S. homeowners currently move on average about once every 10 years. If you have 2,500 valid contacts in your database, that means about 250 will move in the next year. Likely.Ai identifies who that 10 percent is most likely to be. If their prediction is correct at 30 percent level, that’s 75 potential listings waiting for you in your current contact database. 

Another suggestion is to double-end more deals. Consider: How many buyer leads have you ignored since the first of the year? According to the National Association of Realtors, half of those buyer leads had a property they needed to sell in order to purchase. If you’re not following up on every buyer lead you receive and asking if they need to sell their current property prior to purchasing their next home, you’re not only losing one listing for every two buyers you ignore, you’re blowing off the opportunity to do two transactions rather than one. 

Put Affordability Front and Center 

With affordability a very hot topic, you can also get up to speed on things like down payment assistance programs and highly affordable mortgages. 

According to Rob Chrane, the founder of DownPaymentResource.com, (DPR) the average amount of down payment assistance that was provided through the programs DPR aggregates on their site was $17,000. Two-thirds of these programs are for first-time buyers, however, one-third can be used for existing sellers.  

If you represent “heroes,” (firemen, police, nurses, teachers, disabled, single parents, etc.) there are a number of specialized programs available for these niches.  

To take advantage of Zillow’s resources at no cost, visit their site to search for active listings. Any property that has down payment assistance available and is posted on the Zillow website (click through on the mortgage tabs until you reach “down payment assistance”) will display all the programs available. You do not have to go through Zillow mortgage to access this data.  

Rocket Mortgage instituted their ONE+ Mortgage program back in May, designed to help buyers purchase with a 1 percent down, a 2 percent grant from Rocket, and a conventional 3 percent down mortgage. The program is available for both first-time and repeat buyers for single-family, owner-occupied residences only.  

By having Rocket Mortgage pay the private mortgage insurance (PMI) that is required of borrowers who purchase with less than 20 percent down, the borrower can save hundreds of dollars per month – according to Rocket, it takes an average of seven years before PMI can be removed from the loan.  

In order to qualify, a borrower must have a minimum FICO score of 620 and cannot make more than 80 percent of the median income in the area in which they are purchasing. For example, if the median income is $90,000, the borrower’s household income cannot exceed $72,000 based upon Fannie Mae’s median income lookup tool.  

Using the approaches above costs you next to nothing, even if they’ll take up a bit of your time. Isn’t it time for you to stop throwing away all that extra money on portal leads now? 

Bernice Ross is a nationally syndicated columnist, author, trainer and speaker on real estate topics. She can be reached at bernice@realestatecoach.com.