“You can’t use your normal chain,” says Teplitzky. “Our Internet database isn’t going to bring you anything. You have to resort to unorthodox ways – find brokers that are selling the building, ask the doorman, the neighbor, anyone you know. You should approach them, say you ‘have a buyer and this is what they will pay. Are you willing to sell?’”
Being aggressive in pursuit of sellers can be very time consuming, and that is time lost that used to be spent bringing deals together, says Teplitzky. “It’s frustrating, but totally necessary in this day of low inventory,” she explains. “You can’t just sell what’s on the market. You have to create the market.”
Taylor also recommends being proactive to find the people who might be thinking of selling.
“We’re aggressively seeking listings,” he says. ”We are looking for anybody who wants to buy real estate, anyone who wants to move – up, down, sideways or within.”
Another tactic Teplitzky suggests is using the inventory shortage itself to your advantage by emphasizing that now is the perfect time to sell – before everyone else comes back into the market and the new flood of supply drives down prices.
