Expired Listings

Yesterday I read Lissa Uder's blog on Expired listings, it was a good blog and obviously garnered a lot of attention.  I decided rather than just add my thoughts to her blog, I would write down what we have decided to do in light of the National and State Do Not Call Lists.  We simply send a letter.  We have a letter that we try to get out the morning that the home expired.  Right on the bottom we have the disclaimer that if they have relisted, we wish them luck in selling their home and please disregard this letter. 

We keep these in a file, then after 10-12 weeks, we check those against the MLS to see if they have re-listed their home.  If not, we have another letter that we send out.  The reason behind this is I am not an attorney, I do not know how the Do Not Call Lists are being interpreted.  I don't feel like I have the time to make sure that each home seller is or isn't on the Do Not Call Registries.  I also think that it is unethical to tell a homeowner who is thinking of selling, whether their house is expired or not that I have a buyer for their house.  That is, unless I have a buyer that has said to me, I have been inside that house and I have to buy it.

If I have buyers looking in that neighborhood and price range, I might say that I have people that I can show the house to, but unless those buyers tell me that they have to have that particular house, I am going to leave it at that.  I believe that a commission is far too little a price to pay for my integrity. 

We have some other follow up mailers that we send if the house still isn't listed 6 or 7 months from the time that their home expired.  I don't know what other Realtors do, this is what we do.  The reason is, I value my time as I value those homeowner's time.  I hate having to talk to salespeople when I am home with my family, it seems that time is getting less and less therefore more valuable to me.  I know that there will be those that will say that it is too passive, not aggressive enough.  That's fine, we are very aggressive when it comes to pricing and marketing homes. 

Like I said, this is what we do, I don't ask anyone else to do things our way, other than to do whatever you do with integrity.  Have a Great Weekend!