Real estate letters
Real estate prospecting letter examples
Most prospecting letters fail at the first line, because the first line is about the agent. The owner has not asked you anything, so the only thing that earns the next sentence is something true about their street. Keep it to eight or ten lines and give them one reason to reply that costs them nothing.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
Cold letter to a street you work
The warm version and the professional version differ mostly in whether you lead with the question or the number. Both work; pick the one that sounds like you on the phone.
Hello,
I have sold three homes on [STREET] in the past two years, and the thing owners here keep asking me is what the street is actually worth now rather than what the suburb median says.
If that is a question you have, I am happy to answer it with no expectation attached. No appraisal, no follow-up calls, just the recent numbers for [STREET] and what I think they mean.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Hello,
Three properties on [STREET] have transacted since [MONTH YEAR]. Two sold before the second open home.
If you are weighing up a move in the next twelve months, the useful thing to know now is what that recent activity has done to the value of a home like yours. I can put that in writing for you with the comparable sales attached.
[AGENT NAME], [AGENCY], [MOBILE]
Premium or prestige streets
Scarcity and discretion rather than activity. The owner of a four million dollar home does not want to hear that their street is busy.
Hello,
I work with a small number of owners on [STREET] each year, usually well before they are ready to list.
The conversations are private and they tend to start about eighteen months out: what the home would be worth presented properly, what is worth doing first, and what is not worth doing at all. If that is where you are, I would be glad to have it.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Short enough to read standing at the bin
Hello,
[NUMBER] homes on [STREET] have sold in the past year. If you would like the figures and what they mean for yours, reply to this and I will send them through. No appointment required.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
To an owner you have actually met
The strongest letter in the set, and the one most agents never send. Use it for open-home visitors, past appraisals and anyone who has been polite to you at a letterbox.
[FIRST NAME],
We spoke at the open home on [STREET] in [MONTH]. You mentioned you were watching the market rather than in it, which is the sensible position at the moment.
Since then two homes in that pocket have sold above expectation. I thought you would want to know rather than read about it later. If you want the detail my mobile is below and I am easy to get hold of.
[AGENT NAME], [MOBILE]
Getting it right
- What to mention. The street or the pocket rather than the suburb, one recent and checkable local fact, one specific thing you will do, and a direct way to reply that is not a QR code.
- What to leave out. Your sales count, agency awards, "I was just in the area", a market update nobody asked for, and any suggestion that you have a buyer waiting unless you genuinely do. Owners in a farmed street receive these constantly and have learnt to read the template.
- How long. 60 to 120 words. If it will not fit on a compliments slip it is too long, and a page of text in a hand-addressed envelope feels like a bait and switch.
- How personal. First name where you have it and the tone is warm, "Hello" and the street name where you do not. Never "Dear Homeowner".
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [STREET], [SUBURB], [NUMBER], [MONTH YEAR], [FIRST NAME], [AGENT NAME].
Only merge what the owner can check. A letter claiming three recent sales on a street where none sold is worse than a letter claiming nothing, and it is the kind of error that gets forwarded to a competitor. Where your sales data is patchy, write two versions and split the list rather than merging a field that will sometimes be wrong.
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
Writing sixty of these by hand is an evening. Writing six hundred is not something an agent does twice, and the moment it becomes a printed mail merge the envelope gets triaged with the window-faced post.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint, personalises every piece from your list, written into the sentence rather than dropped into a gap, hand-addresses the envelopes and lodges the run with Australia Post, or sends it back to you to release in waves.
Farming a street this quarter? See a written sample
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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.