Real estate letters
Off-market enquiry letters
An off-market letter is the only prospecting letter written on behalf of somebody else, and that changes everything about it. You are not asking the owner to consider selling in the abstract. You are telling them a specific person wants their specific house, which is a far easier thing to read and a far easier thing to get wrong by exaggerating.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
Where the buyer is real and specific
Hello,
I am working with a family who have been looking on [STREET] for about [NUMBER] months. They have missed out twice and they are not in a hurry, which in practice means they are prepared to wait for the right house rather than compromise on the street.
Yours is the shape of house they have described to me. If selling is something you would consider in the next year or two, it would be worth a conversation now rather than when it is on the market.
If not, I will not write again.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Where the buyer is a downsizer or an upsizer from the same suburb
The strongest version, because the owner usually knows them or knows of them.
Hello,
I have a couple in [SUBURB] looking to downsize without leaving the area. They have been here thirty years and they do not want to start again somewhere else, which narrows the search to about fifteen houses and yours is one of them.
No pressure and no obligation. If it is ever something you would think about, my number is below.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Following up an off-market conversation that stalled
[FIRST NAME],
We spoke in [MONTH] about [ADDRESS] and the buyer I had at the time. They have since bought elsewhere, so that particular opportunity has gone.
I wanted to tell you rather than leave it hanging. If your thinking has moved on since then, the market has too and it would be worth another conversation.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Getting it right
- What to mention. Who the buyer is in general terms, what they are looking for, and why this house. A direct answer to the question the owner will ask first, which is whether you actually have a buyer or are using one as a pretext.
- What to leave out. Inventing the buyer. Owners talk to each other, and a street that receives four identical "I have a buyer" letters from four agencies works out what is happening within a fortnight. Also avoid naming a price you cannot stand behind.
- How long. 70 to 120 words.
- How personal. Matter of fact. The news is interesting enough on its own and any salesmanship on top makes it sound invented.
- When not to send one. When you do not have the buyer. There is no version of this letter that works as a general prospecting device, and using it that way burns the one approach that genuinely cuts through.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [STREET], [SUBURB], [NUMBER], [MONTH], [FIRST NAME], [ADDRESS].
This is the letter least suited to a large merge. A buyer brief that fits forty houses on a street is not a buyer brief, it is a mailout, and the owners will read it as one. Write it to the ten or twenty houses the buyer would genuinely consider.
Before any run, read the piece with the longest value in your data, the shortest, and the empty one. If all three read as English the merge is sound. Personalising direct mail at scale covers the rest.
Sending these at volume
Off-market letters work in small, targeted runs rather than large ones, so the production question here is usually the envelope rather than the letter: a hand-addressed envelope to twenty houses is what gets the letter read at all.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint and hand-addresses the envelopes.
Running small targeted drops rather than whole streets? Hand-addressed envelopes
Keep reading
Prospecting letters
Five prospecting letters an Australian agent can adapt, what to leave out, how long each shou…
Just sold
Just sold letters that give neighbours a reason to read them, with versions for a published p…
Just listed
Just listed letters that ask neighbours for the two things they can actually give: a buyer, o…
Real estate letters
Prospecting, just listed, just sold, appraisal and settlement letters for Australian agents, …
Real estate
Handwritten mail for Australian agencies: farming a suburb, appraisal follow-ups and post-set…
Writing more of these than you have evenings
Tell us roughly how many and what they say. We will come back with an exact price and a production window.