Ask the agent
How do I find the agents who actually list homes in my market?
Not on Instagram. Instagram shows you who posts, not who lists. Pull every agent in your area with ten-plus listings in the last 12 months, keep the top 20, and tier them before you send a word. Every message to an agent who sold two houses last year is a message that didn’t go to one who listed twenty.
Instagram shows you who posts, not who lists
Plenty of agents with a big following sold two houses last year. The reel is the business. The listings are the hobby.
Your realtor friends are the same trap in a nicer package. They send you a listing when they have one, and a friend with two listings a year sends you two shoots a year.
You want the boring ones. 15-plus listings and no reel. She isn’t posting because she’s at listing appointments.
Friends and the feed are a trickle. That’s what Mike was working off outside DC, and it trickled. A list is a morning routine.
Mike’s trickle was the feed doing exactly what the feed does. It showed him the agents who post. The agents who list were never in it.
Pull by listings, then cut hard
The tool is batchleads.io. About $100 a month, with a 7-day free trial, which is long enough to pull the list.
Sort agents in your area by listings in the last 12 months. Keep ten or more. That’s the pull, and it takes one evening.
The agent with two listings last year still costs you a message, a follow-up and a call, and at the end she needs photos twice a year.
Then cut to the top 20. This is where most people flinch, and it’s the part that matters. Everyone else can kick rocks. If they haven’t listed ten homes in a year, you don’t care about them, and you shouldn’t.
Tier them before you send a word
Twenty names isn’t a plan yet. Tier them.
A is 15-plus listings a year. B is five to 14. C is everyone else. A gets your first ten messages every morning.
B hears from you after A has been worked. C is for practice, if you need to warm up the opener on someone before it goes to a name that matters.
I spent ten years as the agent with the listings, and I wasn’t on Instagram. I was at listing appointments. You’ll never find her by scrolling.
Then look for the golden geese: 100-plus homes a year, zero video, no social. Nobody’s messaging her because nobody can find her. No budget for the tool yet? Zillow’s coming-soon filter is free, and every listing on it is an agent on a deadline.
You don’t need more agents. You need the right 20.
Tonight, start the batchleads trial, pull everyone with ten-plus listings in the last 12 months, and tier them before you send a word.
The agent opener scripts
One observation, one question, and the day 3 and day 10 follow-ups. Free. Then take the sixty-second roadmap quiz and I tell you what to fix first.
Get the scriptsGet my roadmapStraight answers
- How do I find the top listing agents in my area?
- Sort agents by listings in the last 12 months. batchleads.io does it for about $100 a month with a 7-day free trial. Keep the ten-plus, then cut to your top 20.
- Is Instagram a good way to find real estate agents to work with?
- No. It shows you who posts, not who lists. The agent with 15-plus listings a year is at listing appointments, not on a reel.
- How do I find real estate agents to contact for free?
- Zillow’s coming-soon filter. Every listing on it is an agent with a deadline. It’s slower than a sort by listings, but it costs nothing.
Related questions
Julian Lundgren sold real estate for ten years before he shot a listing for money. He runs Cineminn, a Minneapolis real estate photography studio, and writes these answers from the agent’s side of the table. Send a question to info@cineminn.com.