How to Win with Zillow's "Make Me Move" Homeowners - Kevin Ward

Hi there, it's Kevin Ward, the founder of yes Masters Real Estate Success Training and the author of the number one best selling book, the book of yes, the Ultimate Real Estate Agent conversation Guide. And on today's video I want to talk about the Zillow make me moves. Now if you're as a real estate agent, everybody knows about Zillow and Realtors have a real love hate relationship with Zillow because you know, they take our listings and then they are market them and then they try to sell us the leads back and, and all of that. But it's an asset if you use it right. And I work with a lot of agents and train them on how to master working with for sale by owners. And of course you can find for sale by owners on Zillow. But one of the weird things that Zillow came up with is they came up with this thing called make me move. And what happens is, is a homeowner can go on Zillow and say, well, I want my house to be on a make me move basis, which means I can put an amount of on my house that says if somebody is willing to pay me that price for my house, then I will consider selling it. And I'm looking here, this is just a snapshot of a make me move in Manhattan Beach, California, Los Angeles. That's kind of a high end area. And so I've just, it's kind of humorous to me what you'll see with these make me move homeowners that. Here's one that it says make me move and the price on it is $4.7 million. The zestimate is 3.94 million. So they're saying if you'll pay me an extra 800,000 above zestimate then I would consider moving. Which most people would. Right, because we also know that most of the time the Zestimates are already even inflated or too high at least a lot of the time. Here's another one down here, 2.5 million. Make me move. The zestimate is 2.09 million. So we're only $400,000 up. We're just looking at, you know, kind of give me a 20% above market and I'll sell my home. Here's one that's 7.5 million and the zestimate is 7.1. So here's the reality of these guys. I heard somebody say these are the for sale by owners. This is the new for sale by owner. It's not the new for sale by owner. It's Not a for sale by owner at all. It's somebody who has given some thought moving, given some thought to selling their home, which they've indicated by creating a make me move profile on Zillow. The question is, what can you do with them? How do you convince them to sell? How do you convince them to list if they're not that motivated? Well, the real answer is you don't. But there's a great way that you can create future business with them. So I want to share with you today three steps of how to really capitalize on the make me move homeowners. How do you connect and position with them in a way that will help you get listings and sales going forward in the future? So here's what you have to understand. One, by very virtue of the fact that they put themselves on as a make me move, there is a high probability that they will actually move and sell their home in the next 12 to 24 months. Now, that's not very encouraging if you need a deal today, but you don't know until you ask them. So the first step, and I'm going to give you three steps here to capitalize on the make me moves on Zillow. Number one is talk to them, contact them, talk to them. You can look up their phone number. If you can find it, call them. If you can't, go knock on their door. If they're in your core market area, they're great people to go talk to and say, hey, I just noticed your house was on Zillow as a make me move. And I was curious if you were just kind of testing the market or if you're really interested in selling. Great, straightforward question. And that question is designed to clarify, are they motivated or not? If they're motivated, set an appointment and go get the listing. Right. Very simple, very straightforward. If they're not motivated to sell, they go like, well, you know, we don't care. We're not really have no plans to sell. We don't really know where we're going to go. But we thought about it and with the market the way it is, we just decided, you know, what if somebody's willing to pay our price, then, man, we move and so forth. But you can tell from the conversation they're really not that motivated. Then here's what you do. Connect with them. And what I mean by that is exchange information and start a relationship. So, number one, talk to them. That's the first step. Find out are they motivated now or are they something in the future so they're either are they now business or are they future business? Number two, if they're not interested, now you want to connect with them, which means start the relationship, exchange information. Well, I tell you what, it's great to meet you. I know right now you're not planning to do anything, but just in case something happens, why don't we exchange information and stay in touch? Do you have a business card? I'm going to hand them my business card. I'm going to get their business card. If they don't have a business card, no problem. Why don't you put your. You can put your information on the back of one of mine. And so they put their information on the back of a card. I got it. I'm going to tear a corner off so I don't hand it away to the next house. Right. And I've not got their information. And now I have connected with them, I've exchanged information. We have now a relationship. They know me, they like me a little bit. Next step, number three. So number one, I'm going to talk to them. Number two, connect with them by exchanging information. And then number three, actually stay in touch, okay? It doesn't work if you don't continue the conversation, if you don't actually touch base with them. So if you get their phone number, so you're going to exchange information. I want to get their name, I want to get. You obviously got their address. If you're standing at their door, if you're talking to them on the phone, you've got their phone number. So I want to have their name, their address, their phone number and their email, okay? Now if you can't get all of it, you get what you can. But a lot of times just by asking, what's your best phone number? What's your best email? They'll give it to you. Let's exchange information and stay in touch. Do you have a business card? They give you a business card. Great. Is this the email you want me to use or do you mean to use your personal email? You know what, use this email. Okay, perfect. So I'm getting the information, but if I leave now and I don't ever talk to them again, it's done me no good at all. So now I want to take them and put them into my personal circle where I can actually build a relationship with them. And in my training, I go into more detail on this. But here's the bottom line. I want to talk to them every month. Just touch base. That's all you're doing. Hey, just Kevin Ward, we met last week or we met a month ago. You said you were, you know. I know because you were a Zillow. Make me move. I just want to touch base, see if you had any questions or anything I can do for you. Great. Anything changed, you know, plans about moving or anything like that. Great. And I'm just going to have a conversation, very light, no pressure. I'm not trying to convince unmotivated people to move. If there's motivation, I'm all over it. But if there's not motivation, spend your time finding motivated people rather than trying to motivate people. Because moving is too big of a decision for people to just do it because, oh well, the market's gone up, then we're moving. There really needs to be more of a life transition purpose or motivation that causes people to literally pack up, sell their home and move. So as real estate agents, you're going to be much better served by spending your time finding motivated people and then taking unmotivated people that aren't ready to move right now and talking to them, connecting with them, and then staying in touch with them. And here's the beauty, because here's what happens when you stay in touch. You call them once a month for a year, you send them emails with your market updates or whatever emails you send out regularly to your personal circle. And all of a sudden one day they decide they're ready to move. Guess who they're going to call? They're going to call you. You have now positioned yourself as their go to agent. If all you did was knock on their door one time or call them and talk to them one time, say, well, here's my business card. Put it on your refrigerator so you don't forget about me. And then you never email them, you never talk to them, you never build that connection. You don't now position yourself as their go to realtor, then they may contact you. But if they do, they're probably going to be talking to three or four other realtors too. But if you stay in touch with them, you're building trust, you're building credibility. You're showing that you're professional, you're consistent, you're available. And whenever the time comes for them to sell, guess what? They're not trying to interview a bunch of other agents. Now here's what we know statistically, according to the National association of Realtors, 70, nearly 3/4 of of all sellers will only interview one agent. Now think about that. 75% of all sellers will only interview 1 agent. I want it to be you. How do you get it to be you? Because you position yourself as their go to realtor. If this is somebody you do not know, you found them here as a make me move. You had no clue who they were. How do I position myself over time so that when they are ready to move, they're not going to Zillow and looking up the four or five top agents in the area and they're going and they're looking at star ratings and they're doing all. And now you're going to be caught in a a pile of other agents that you're competing against because they don't know an agent. What you just did was you separated yourself from the other agents at a time when they were not ready to sell with no pressure, no gimmicks, no high pressure stuff. You're not trying to twist their arm. You're not trying to convince them, you're not pushing them around. You're just connecting. You just built a relationship and now they know you and they like you and they trust you and it's your listing.