Unlocking the Shadow Inventory: Finding Hidden Opportunities in a Tight Real Estate Market

Okay guys, we all know that there's not enough listings to sell in our markets across the country, but there's still pretty strong buyer demand despite the interest rates. Every agent that I talk to has buyers, but their biggest struggle is finding buyers' homes. So what we need to look at is a deeper level, we'll call it, underneath where the market is seemingly at. We see that there's just, on the surface, it doesn't look like there's a lot of listings, but underneath that, just boiling underneath is what we can call shadow inventory.

I'm gonna give you a classic example:

I sold my house about a year ago, but for about six months leading up to that sale, I would have sold my house. And what I mean by that is we put the home on the market, you know, and we then sold the house. But I would have sold before that. If an agent had approached me and said, "I've got a buyer and I can sell your house today," I would have absolutely signed a one party listing. I would have absolutely said "yes, let's talk. I'm open to giving you a full listing actually because I was a seller that was under the radar, not quite ready to put on the market. But I was gearing up. I was getting ready."

Now, in your market, we've got tons and tons and tons of shadow inventory right now. The market is so depressed and suppressed by the fact that a lot of sellers are not coming to market now. Why aren't they coming to market? They're not coming to market because of the interest rates. They're also looking at the market, not seeing a lot of inventory out there, but they don't want to live in their houses anymore.

There are 22% less listings on the market today than we did a year ago. And listings were low a year ago to begin with. Tons and tons of sellers are sitting on the sidelines but would sell if they were approached with the right situation.

So what can we do about this? Why don't you start reaching out to people with this message and say, "Even if you're not ready to list your house, would you consider selling for the right price? If so, give me a call today." Bingo. You're going to start to unlock shadow inventory.

That would have made me call. I'd say, "Yeah, I consider selling for the right price. I'm not ready to list. I got this going on, that going on. But I am interested in selling."

This is shadow inventory.

There's a massive amount of shadow inventory in your market, but everybody's diving for the listing. Everybody's going up the top level. Go underneath the top level. Just talk to people about whether they'd be interested in selling of the right circumstances. And you unlock a massive amount of shadow inventory in your market. And this is where you can make deals because you're going to have the buyer and you can put these things together. Double-end transactions, do in-office transactions. There's a lot of opportunity in the market. You just gotta go deeper and find it.

Guys if you need more strategies like this that help you thrive in a tight market, then join The Path.

The Path is a mentorship and coaching program for agents and brokerages.

Here's a sneak peak of what you get when you join The Path:

+ 20 Weeks of Daily On-Demand Coaching so you can find more high-quality leads more often and turn them into more listings
+ Hundreds of Downloads - System, Forms, Checklists, and scripts to make your job easier
+ Live Coaching - Multiple Times a Week
+ Goal Tracking and Activity Tracking
+ New Marketing Assets Delivered Weekly

And you get two weeks to try it out for free. Visit https://www.erealestatecoach2.com/Three%20Reasons to start your trial.