Land is the last thing to heat up in any market. And it's the first thing to cool off.

Why is that?

Because everybody takes the low hanging fruit. If you think of the real estate market like a tree, land is at the top of the tree. Everybody takes the low-hanging fruit before they get to land.

But now that everything is sold out in most markets, people are wondering what they can do. And that's when they decide to build. 

That's why land is starting to heat up. Also, developers are starting to buy land so they can subdivide it and build more homes. Which is another reason why why land is starting to heat up.

As an agent, you can actually go after land as a prospecting method. It's an effective method because very few agents are going after land right now.

But as you drive around in your neighborhoods, you'll see a piece of land in a subdivision that's not developed. Or you'll see a piece of a lot that's an infill lot that doesn't have a house on it in the end of a cul-d...

Are you looking for more ways to find listings? I'm going to give you three more strategies right now.

Over at erealestatecoach, we've got hundreds of strategies over there. Lots of classes, lots of free material over there to check out. And we'll give you two weeks of free coaching. But today let me give you just three quick strategies:

1. Checking out the garage sales and estate sales that are coming up in the spring market

This is where people are downsizing all their stuff. They're doing the spring cleaning and they're deciding to get rid of a few things. But there could be an opportunity for you to reach out and make contact. Now, what would be the script? I'm going to give you those scripts right down below, but you could use this as a mailer, a postcard, an email, or just a direct approach either in person or over the phone.

So you might say:

"Hey as a local REALTOR, I noticed you had a recent garage sale. I hope it went super successful. Quick question: Are you ...

Are you doing circle marketing around neighborhoods where you have an active, interested, and qualified buyer?

If your answer is no, then you're missing a massive opportunity to unlock listings — not just for your buyer, but for yourself and for your business.

So I'm going to give you the single best circle marketing letter I've ever received as an agent. Because I own several properties, I get a lot of marketing from agents. But this particular letter really struck me as being super powerful.

I'm going to give it to you right now. And then you should take this letter and run with it. When you have a buyer that's actively engaged and wants to live in a neighborhood, send a mailing using this letter to unlock some listing opportunities.

Here's what the letter said:

"Hello, James,

My name is... and I'm a broker with 123 Real Estate. The reason I'm sending this letter is that I have a buyer who has interest in buying a home in Ashland in the next month or two. But the mar...

Let's say you have an active, qualified buyer who wants to live in a certain neighborhood. But you've shown them everything and can't find what they're looking for.

One technique to try is to identify any for sale by owners in that market that are either new for sale by owners or what I call "legacy" for sale by owners. Meaning, people that were on the market three, four, five, six months ago, even as much as a year ago.

We give you some great techniques to do that over erealestatecoach. But then the question is, what do we do once we are making the call to these for sale by owners?

What do we say to let them let us in the door? I'm going to give you the script that I'm going to put it down below. So you have it. And if you like this script, and you'd like to see more, I can share with you where you can find more of these scripts. But here is the script:

"Good morning. I noticed you have a home for sale in Laurelwood. And just wondering if it's still available. Great. Hey...

What is educational marketing?

Educational marketing is one of the most powerful techniques you can use to build trust and unlock more buyers and sellers for your business.

But how do you do it?

Well, you got to understand that a lot of expert marketers use what's called "The Curiosity Gap." That's where you pose a question or you put a statement out there and then it makes people curious about knowing the answer.

Now we fall into this curiosity gap all the time — from headlines to news soundbites that are trying to get you to watch the news at six o'clock, book covers, wine labels, and all kinds of things create curiosity in us. But when we look at our knowledge quest as human beings, we're always driven by not knowing and the power of wanting to know what we don't know, right?

So here's an example of this:

One of my good friends, Scott Lewis, a superstar realtor that I work with put this post out. And it was simply about the power of investing in real estate. He said...

Why is list price versus sales price such an important number to know and master in your market?

Here's the answer:

Buyers and sellers need to understand that when they're making or accepting offers, this number will have impact. And I'll give you an example:

Every buyer wants to get a great deal, right? Every buyer wants to feel like they're beating the market. So when we sit with a buyer, we need to educate them about what's happening in the marketplace. For instance, in my market today, sellers are receiving on average 99% of list price. Some are getting much more — they're getting 105% or 106% of list price. But the average in our market is 99%.

So with a buyer, what I'll say to them at the beginning of the relationship is:

"Hey, you know, many homes sell for full price in our current market, or even over full price. But the average is 99%. The key is to see how aggressively the sellers price their home compared to other listings in the area. The more aggressive they ...

Have you ever heard of the aggregation of marginal gains? I hadn't either until I read a story about the British cycling teams winning the Tour de France. They never won the Tour de France before 2010. But their new coach, David Brailsford, challenged them to look at everything they're doing — even the smallest things — to see if there was a way to improve it.

They started with the typical things you'd look at like their diets and exercise programs. But then he went a step further — and started looking at the pillows cyclists were using, the exact time they fell asleep and woke up, their daily routines and more to give them insight into their overall training system.

They figured out that even a 1% increase in any area of efficiency would aggregate marginal gains and finally create wins.

You can do the same thing in your real estate career. You have so many different avenues you're managing, but just getting 1% better in each of these areas can create big wins for your career.

Es...

We see so much marketing that is irrelevant and meaningless — it doesn't resonate with anybody. It's trying to be ironic, cute, and Instagram perfect.

But nobody really cares so these marketing gimmicks fail.

What do our potential clients care about then?

Learning something new — which will always make them stop dead in their tracks and consider your message.

That's the basic idea behind my "Educational Marketing" strategy.

Now let's think of it in terms of real estate:

Not everyone has an interest in real estate. Buyers and sellers usually only get interested right before they're ready to sell their home or buy a new one.

So when a buyer starts to think that they should buy a house, that's when they start to look at all the terms and processes around real estate. Or when a homeowner gets interested in selling, that's when they suddenly get tuned into the market conditions.

That's the power behind using "Educational Marketing" to engage people instead of doing the same...

Have you gotten all of your reviews and recommendations from your past clients over the past year? If the answer is no, you're missing a huge opportunity because there's a young, aggressive, and strong agent that's rising rapidly and would like to capture your future clients.

These young agents are listening to podcasts, watching webinars, and they're learning about a secret weapon in the market — and they may be beating you without actually beating you.

Here's what I mean by that:

These young, aggressive agents are capturing reviews and recommendations. And they are hyper-conscious of getting five-star reviews from everyone and anyone who will give them to them. They're making sure that those reviews go on all the right places, which I'm going to outline for you. And what happens is you can have an agent that's only been in the business 2-3 years, but online, they look like they are super experienced because they've stacked up more reviews and recommendations than their co...

Want to take a lot of listings rapidly?

The trick to do this is by targeting pre-foreclosure properties. There's 2.7 million homes in America today that are in a pre-foreclosure status. That number is so high because a lot of people have applied for a forbearance due to the COVID crisis, the struggling economy, and not being able to make their house payments.

A forbearance is where the lender gives the owner an opportunity to restructure their loan so they can either move or skip payments then make a balloon payment at the end.

But a lot of people are going into default because they're not able to get caught back up.

Here's the latest numbers we found from principal economist, Yanling Mayer from CoreLogic:

39.1% of all forborne loans are now 150 days behind payment. And 25% are 180 days past due.

Now, I don't say this to scare you that we're in 2009 again. The sky is not falling — and there are many differences between the market we were in then compared to the market we...