I have an unpopular opinion. You're probably going to roast me in the comments for it.
It's okay to let listings expire.
I've been in this business since February 2007. REO. Short sales. Investment deals. Luxury. Multifamily. Plain old everyday real estate. I've worked under just about every umbrella this business has. So when I see an agent brag about a 99.6% list-to-sell rate, I think it's a weird number. And I'll tell you why.
The Math Doesn't Lie
If you've never had a listing expire on you, a couple things are probably true.
One, you only work with people you already know. You're a big sphere agent. That's not a bad thing. It's a great thing.
Two, you probably haven't taken that many listings.
List four or five homes a year and yeah, you'll hit a 100% sale rate. Easy. But take 100 listings a year. Take 150. Take 200. You are going to lose some. It just happens.
Sometimes the client doesn't feel touched enough. Maybe the red carpet wasn't wide enough. Sometimes it's a pricing mismatch. Sometimes the seller is chasing a number and the market just can't get there.
And that's okay. It's okay.
Why You'd Still Want the Sign
Here's a question for you.
If every home in your market let you put a sign in the yard, but you knew up front you'd only sell one out of every thousand, would you still want all those signs with your name on them?
The answer is 100% yes.
Because the more people who know who you are, who know what you do, who know why you're different, the more business you do. It's that simple.
So get comfortable with this. A seller is allowed to try to sell their home. And for whatever reason, they're allowed to decide not to. Your job isn't to win every single one. Your job is to be in front of more people than anyone else.
The Letter
Here's the play.
Every time you land a buyer, reach out to everyone who previously listed their home or thought about it and walked away. You send them something simple. Something like this:
"Hey, I have an opportunity. I'm not sure if it's right for you. But if it is, I may have a contract at your doorstep in the next 48 hours. If you're interested, text me at this number and I'll tell you exactly what I'm looking for."
That's it. Listen to me when I tell you this. I want that level of outreach 500 times a month.
The average turnover right now is around 1.8%. So every time you send 500 letters, statistically there are about 10 people in that group thinking about buying or selling and moving on. Ten conversations you didn't have before.
That's the whole job. Get your message, your needs, and your offers in front of as many people as you can, with the most thoughtful message you can write. More people to talk to about buying and selling real estate.
The more people we ask, the more we get. The more people we ask, the more we get.
AI Isn't the Gap
Too many people want to tell you AI is the thing standing between where you are and where you want to be.
AI is wild. We built the entire Scaling Agent OS ecosystem on it. But hear me clearly. At the end of the day, he or she who has the most conversations, who meets with the most people, wins. That's it.
If AI isn't getting you closer to that table, closer to more appointments and more clients, I don't know what you're doing.
Everything you do every single day is an audition for somebody else. How you walked into Starbucks. How you showed up to a listing presentation. How you showed up to a showing. How you handled a phone call. How many calls you made. What you did for your clients, and what you didn't do for them. All of it is an audition for the general public.
It doesn't matter if it's handwritten notes, carousels, short form, long form, a big YouTube channel, or a blog. Everything you do is an audition.
Grab the Letter
I'm linking the letter below. It's part of the Scaling Agent OS membership, where we give away all the templates, every ad campaign, everything you need to scale a business without leaning on Zillow and those 35, 40, 50% referral fees.
There are no contracts. Rip it off. Send 30 of them to the next buyer you sign up. Then text me the results and tell me how I can make it better.
If you want the full breakdown on identifying more listings in 2026, I'm running an accelerator in June. Three days, two hours a day. I'll roll out a wildly fat red carpet on how to find more clients without cold calling, without Zillow, without the giant referral fees. You can do it in your local market. It takes availability and a very specific action plan, and I'll hand you the whole thing.
This is how we're growing the team, honestly. We were going to launch a big team. Then my coach asked a simple question. Was there a way to give people access to all of this without them paying a huge commission split or joining the brokerage? Yeah. There was. That's Scaling Agent OS.
So go grab the letter. Send it. Watch what happens.
More conversations, more deals. I'll see you on the next one.
