Welcome to HomeLight’s inaugural issue of The Lead, a curated newsletter with the latest in real estate. Every week, we scour the internet to bring you a one-stop-shop of the best advice — right in your inbox. Listen to top agents talk about their strategies in converting more leads, read how marketing experts can boost your search volume ten-fold, and share the most helpful articles on social media with your clients. 

Let’s dive right in!

To Listen To

+ Episode 1 | The Anatomy of A Successful Open House

In our first ever episode of The Walkthrough, Matt McGee sat down with Ron Abta, a top agent in San Francisco, California, to explore what makes an open house successful. With more than 29 years of real estate experience, Ron walks us through exactly how he takes advantage of an open house he hosts for nearly all of his sellers. 

But, according to NAR data, only 6% of home buyers find their homes through an open house… so do real estate agents even need to host them anymore? That’s part of what we discuss with Ron, along with other strategies he uses to squeeze as many leads as he can from his open houses. So much so that clients have contacted him years down the line to buy a home after popping by his open houses just for fun!

Tune in on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube (or wherever you listen to podcasts) to hear his open house strategy that lands and converts more leads in one of the country’s toughest housing markets.

To Read

+ HomeLight, The Time-Blocking Template That Helped Cliff Lewis Sell 57 More Homes in One Year: “In 2014, Cliff Lewis sold 90 properties around the Allentown-Bethlehem area of eastern Pennsylvania. He was overstretched and never home. As a new father, he struggled to balance long work weeks and wanting to be with his twin infant sons…he knew this lifestyle wasn’t going to work long-term. The next year, Lewis sold 147 houses. He enjoyed his work and wasn’t suffering burnout. He took his family on vacation. How did Lewis grow his business by 63% while also freeing up his personal time? He started time-blocking.”

We dug into Lewis’s full-proof strategy to find out how he manages to close so many deals and still have to time to sit back and catch a movie with his family.

+ LendingTree, Nearly Half of Homeowners Are Moving to a New Home in the 2020’s:

According to LendingTree, the largest online marketplace for lending, almost half of U.S. homeowners will move to a new home in the next decade. Of the 1,500 surveyed homeowners, 30% want to move to an area with a lower cost of living, 38% are looking for better jobs, and 21% are moving to be closer to their children. While Millennials, Gen Xers, Baby Boomers are all looking to move, it’s for very different reasons. 

+ USA Today, Home alone: The share of single homeowners hits a record, even as housing costs climb: “The share of U.S. homeowners who are single hit a record 38.4% in 2018, the latest data available, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Haus, a company that partners with individuals to buy homes to reduce their costs. 

The trend largely reflects rapid growth in the portion of Americans who are single. It also highlights an improving economy and job market and the willingness of buyers to set up households in untraditional ways to overcome sharply rising housing costs.”

+ Tom Ferry, What You Say Matters, Agent Script Book:

It’s not enough to talk shop. Buyers mean business and aren’t at your open house to chat about the weather. What you say matters, explains Tom Ferry, and if you want more foot traffic and lead conversion, you’ll need to talk smart. This script book is broken up into eight sections with different conversation starters for each. Our favorite chapter is  “The Mega Open House,” which is packed with leading questions to get in the headspace of your buyers. 

More to read:

+ HousingWire: How should real estate brokerages measure success?

+ CoreLogic, U.S. Case-Shiller Index Has Slowest Annual Rise Since 2012

+ Curbed, NYC real estate braces for coronavirus disruptions

To Share

+ For buyers | HomeLight, The Perfect House-Hunting Checklist: “Not only does a checklist-style list outsmart our weak memory, organize our thoughts, and streamline communication, when you have a checklist handy while you view a property, it makes the event more meaningful.” Help your buyers figure out what it is they really want in their dream home. We provide house hunters the ultimate checklist to make the entire process more goal-oriented and organized. With a comprehensive checklist, buyers can fine-tune their questions for you, their agent, and align their goals with the other people involved in their home-buying decision. 

+ For sellers | HomeLight, 35 Seasonal Tips for Selling Your Home Despite the Weather: “As a seller, you can also do all the winter prep work ahead of time and list your home as soon as the holiday lull lifts.” Sellers still have a couple of weeks left of the winter season to get the house in shape for the spring. We interviewed more than 500 top real estate agents across the country and put their tips together in this neat infographic. Check it out below and share it with your clients!

And, that’s our very first edition of The Lead! Stay tuned for a new issue next week.

Follow us on Instagram @teamhomelight to see what our team members like to do (other than writing The Lead, of course).