How to Get More Listings Without Competing for the Fresh Ones (2026)

If you need listings, you're probably fishing in the same pond as every other agent in your market. Fresh listings are visible to everybody, which is why they're expensive to win. The listings nobody is calling are the ones sitting on equity the owner has never been told about. Send the equity text to everyone who bought before 2024. Call the condo owners who were told in 2021 that condos don't sell. Work the expireds that came off the market a year or more ago, not the ones that expired yesterday. None of it costs money, and the first move takes about a minute per person.

By D.J. Paris, president of sales and marketing at Kale Realty and host of the Keeping It Real Podcast. The fix is below. If you want to talk it through, there's a 10-minute option right after it.

The real problem: you're competing for the listings everybody can see

In most agents' heads, listing opportunities come from public events. A sign goes up, an expired hits the hotsheet, a for-sale-by-owner posts online, somebody announces a move. The moment it happens, every agent in the zip code sees it at the same time.

That's a race, and races get won on speed, budget, and who called first. If you're losing those, you're not bad at listings. You're just late, because everyone saw it at the same time you did.

Now look at the other kind of listing. Somebody bought a place in 2019. They've paid down the loan a little and the market did what it did. They have real money in that house, and they've never seen it written down. Not a Zestimate, not a headline about the market, an actual number for their actual address.

Most owners who'd like a different house have already decided they can't have one, and they decided it without doing any math. The reasoning goes: we'd love more space, but there's no way we can afford to move right now. That conclusion is about the down payment they think they don't have. They're not running the equity side of the equation because they've never been handed it.

When you send that number, you're not asking them to sell. You're settling an argument they've been having in the kitchen for two years. Fifty thousand in equity is a down payment. Some of these people genuinely can't move, and they'll tell you. Others are one number away from calling a lender, and they've been one number away for a long time.

Move 1: the equity text

Make a list of every past client who bought before 2024. That's the whole filter. Add anyone else in your phone you know owns a place from around then.

Then send this, word for word:

Chicago prices are up 13 percent over last year. Want me to run your number? The equity text

Don't add a word.

Fill in the number for your own market and pull it yourself, rather than repeating a national headline. Your MLS will give you the year-over-year change for your city or your zip codes in about two minutes. A local number is credible. A national number reads like something you copied off the internet, because it is.

"Want me to run your number?" skips the automatic no that "are you thinking of selling" gets. It offers information about something they own, as a small favor you're volunteering to do. The ask is for permission to do work, not for a commitment.

They don't want to know about the market. They want to know about their house. Everybody wants that number, and most won't call an agent to get it, because they assume asking starts a sales process they can't stop.

When they say yes, run it properly. Pull comps, put it in writing, and deliver it with no listing presentation attached. If they're ready, they'll bring it up themselves. If they're not, you've just become the agent who gave them something and asked for nothing. Come back in six months with an updated number.

If they say they'd move but can't afford the next place, you're at the real conversation. Ask what they think they'd need for a down payment and then show them what they have. That's also the moment to bring a lender in, because the payment side isn't yours to calculate.

Move 2: the condo call

Around 2021, condo owners in this city got told repeatedly that condos were dead. Buyers didn't want to share a hallway, everybody wanted a yard, and city condos were going to sit. A lot of owners still believe that, because nothing has happened since to correct it.

Before you call anyone, pull condo days on market for your area from your MLS. If the number is short, you have a correction to deliver.

Pull every condo buyer you ever worked with and every condo owner in your phone. Then call. Not a text, not an email, a phone call:

You were told condos are dead. Chicago condos are selling in about nineteen days. Want to know what yours would go for? The condo call

Text when you're delivering information and call when you're correcting a belief. This one corrects a belief. A text with surprising news in it gets read as marketing and dismissed in half a second. A voice saying "the thing you believe isn't true anymore" gets a reaction, and the reaction is usually "wait, really?" That's the conversation you want.

The first sentence names what they think, out loud, before you contradict it. People listen much better after you've demonstrated you know where they're standing. If you open with market days instead, you're a stranger reciting statistics.

Use your own market time number from your own MLS, and use the real one. If condos in your market are taking ninety days, this script isn't a lie you get to tell anyway. Pull the number first, then decide whether this move is live for you.

If you reach voicemail, leave the correction and no callback ask. "You were told condos were dead, they're not, call me if you ever want your number." Fifteen seconds. They heard it, which was the point.

Move 3: old expireds, not fresh ones

A listing that expired yesterday gets called by everyone. The owner's phone rings all day, they get annoyed, and they either relist with somebody aggressive or they go dark. Competing there is a volume game against agents who do nothing else.

A listing that expired twelve to eighteen months ago barely gets called at all. That owner still wanted to sell. Nothing about their situation resolved itself. They took the sign down, told themselves they'd try again later, and then the subject never came up again.

How to build the list in connectMLS, or the equivalent in your own system:

• Status: Expired or Cancelled.
• Off-market date: a year to a year and a half back.
• Area: your zip codes only. Stay where you know the streets.

Before you call anybody, scrub the list against the Do Not Call registry. Your brokerage has the tool for this, or your managing broker can tell you where it lives. Do that step first, every time, and document that you did it. The cost of skipping it isn't worth one listing.

Check that the property isn't listed now, and open every call with "Are you working with an agent right now?" If yes, thank them and hang up. Call between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. their time, and sign any handwritten note with your name and your brokerage.

Then send a handwritten note and wait a week before you call. Keep the note short, with no marketing in it. Say you noticed their place didn't sell and you'd be glad to give them a second opinion sometime. A week later you call:

You tried to sell in [month]. The market's different now. Want a second opinion, no obligation? The old-expired call, after the note

Naming the month is what separates you from everyone who ever called them. It proves you looked them up specifically instead of dialing a list. And "no obligation" makes the yes cheap, the same way "either way is fine" does everywhere else in this library.

The note-then-call order matters too. When you call a week later, you're not a cold caller, you're the person who sent the card. That's a small distinction to you and a large one to them.

Do this today

Listings are a conversation you can start first

The agents who win fresh listings are usually winning on speed and spend, and you can't out-spend that forever. What you can do is go where the starting gun never went off. An owner with unmeasured equity, a condo owner working off 2021 information, a seller whose sign came down a year ago. Most agents aren't calling any of them.

Who this works for, and who should read something else

Frequently asked questions

Still stuck on this one? Book 10 minutes with D.J. I'll call you, and I won't bring up Kale unless you do.