How to Find Off-Market Listings: The Hidden Inventory System Top Agents Use

A Tuesday morning in Phoenix. 47 real estate agents refresh their MLS dashboard at exactly 8:03 AM.

They’re all looking at the same thing.

Twelve new listings. Six are overpriced. Three are in terrible condition. Two are in school districts nobody wants. One might actually work.

By 8:47 AM, that one listing has 14 showings scheduled and 3 offers pending.

Now pull up Kent Brown’s phone from that same morning.

He’s looking at 500+ homeowners in his target area. Not MLS listings. Homeowners. And here’s what makes this interesting: 127 of them tried to sell their home in the past 18 months and failed. They’re not on the market anymore. Most agents have completely forgotten about them.

Brown picks up the phone.

By noon, he has two appointments scheduled. By Friday, he has a listing. Nobody else even knew that house was available.

This is the gap between agents who fight for scraps and agents who create their own inventory.

The Market You Can’t See on the MLS

Here’s the reality most agents miss: inventory isn’t actually scarce. It’s just invisible.

The MLS shows you homes that are ready to sell. But there’s a massive shadow market of homeowners who would sell if the right opportunity appeared. Or if they knew their equity position had changed. Or if someone made it easy enough.

The numbers tell a better story:

FSBOs convert to agent representation 88% of the time. That means nearly 9 out of 10 people trying to sell on their own will eventually use an agent. But here’s the kicker: only 38% actually list their home when they finally make that decision. The other 62%? They quietly exit the market, discouraged and exhausted.

Expired listings have a 43% list rate when approached correctly. Compare that to your Sphere of Influence, which typically has a 3-5% annual turnover rate. You’re working harder to get less.

Pre-foreclosures convert at 15%. FRBOs at 8%. Every single one of these categories represents homeowners with verified intent to sell, but they’re completely invisible on the MLS.

The Matchmaker Strategy: Creating Listings Out of Thin Air

Trudy Padilla doesn’t wait for inventory to appear. She creates it.

Here’s how it works: When she has a buyer who keeps losing out on MLS listings, she stops searching the MLS. Instead, she opens REDX GeoLeads and draws a circle around the exact neighborhood her buyer wants.

Then she calls.

But this isn’t a cold call asking for a favor. It’s a warm call offering a solution.

“I have a qualified family desperate to live on your specific street. They’ve been outbid three times. If you’ve ever considered selling, I can bring them by this week without you putting a sign in your yard or hosting open houses.”

This works because it bypasses the homeowner’s defense mechanisms. You’re not asking them to do something difficult. You’re telling them someone wants their specific home right now.

The psychology is simple: people love being wanted. And they love convenience even more.

But here’s the secondary effect most agents miss: even homeowners who say “not right now” remember this conversation. When they’re ready to sell 6-12 months later, they call the agent who proved she had buyers. No interview. No competition.

Padilla calls this “packing her pipeline.” One circle prospecting session creates immediate opportunities and future listings simultaneously.

The Sidebar Conversation: Listening for Hidden Deals

Kent Brown made $30,000 in commissions from a single phone call to a For Rent By Owner lead.

Here’s what happened:

Brown called an investor advertising a rental property. Predictably, the investor didn’t want to sell that specific property. Most agents would have ended the call there.

Brown kept listening.

The investor mentioned he was actually looking to acquire more rental properties in that neighborhood to expand his portfolio. Brown immediately switched from his FRBO dialer to GeoLeads and started circle prospecting that exact area.

During that session, he connected with a woman who owned two small rental properties in the area. She wasn’t advertising them for sale. She wasn’t on the MLS. She was experiencing “landlord fatigue” and wanted out but hadn’t taken action because listing felt like too much work.

Brown connected the investor buyer with the exhausted landlord. Double-ended commission on approximately $500,000 in volume.

Then the story gets better.

The woman who sold her rentals needed to redeploy that capital. Brown helped her purchase a bed and breakfast in Southern Utah. Three transactions from one FRBO call that “wasn’t going anywhere.”This is what separates top producers from everyone else: they don’t just make calls. They listen for what Brown calls “the sidebar”—the casual comment that reveals the real opportunity.

The Database Strategy: Becoming the Installed Option

Ricky Carruth sends a weekly email to thousands of homeowners he met through circle prospecting.

None of them are currently selling. Most told him “not interested” when he first called. But he asked for their email address anyway, and now he stays in their inbox with valuable content every single week.

Here’s why this matters: real estate transactions are triggered by life events. Divorce. Marriage. Death. Job transfer. Health issues. These events are completely unpredictable, but they happen constantly.

When someone in Carruth’s database experiences one of these life events, they become an instant hidden seller. And because they’ve received 52 emails from Carruth over the past year, he’s the only agent they call.

They don’t interview anyone else. They don’t research online. They just reply to his email.

Carruth calls this his “Million Dollar Business.” It’s built entirely on people who weren’t ready to sell when he first met them but became ready while he was the only agent staying in touch.

Then he compounds this strategy: every time he sells a home from his database, he circle prospects the neighbors about the sale. Those neighbors get added to the database. The flywheel keeps spinning.

Mining Old Expireds: The Forgotten Gold Mine

Paula Burlison, a top 1% agent in Las Vegas, has a specific formula: 36 contacts = 1 appointment.

She doesn’t prospect fresh expired listings that came off the market today. She calls expired listings from 6 to 24 months ago that every other agent has forgotten about.

These are verified sellers. They tried to list. They failed. And now they’re sitting on equity gains that have occurred since their listing expired, making them completely unaware of their current opportunity.

But here’s the psychological difference: fresh expireds are angry and bombarded with calls. Old expireds are calm but cynical about agents.

Burlison uses what she calls the “Kick Me Out” script:

“I know you’re probably not thinking of selling anymore, and I know you probably had a bad experience. But I’m going to be in your neighborhood. If you give me 5 minutes, I’ll tell you why your home didn’t sell and what it’s worth now. If you don’t like what I say, you can kick me out.”

This script grants the homeowner total control. That vulnerability disarms their defense mechanisms and gets Burlison in the door.

She tracks every number in Vortex, REDX’s lead management platform. She knows exactly what each dial is worth: every contact is a $13 payment toward her next listing. With an average commission of $13,000 and a conversion rate of 36 contacts per appointment, each “no” moves her $361 closer to “yes.”

This mathematical certainty transforms prospecting from an emotional roller coaster into a manufacturing process.

The Complete System: How REDX Finds Off Market Listings

These strategies aren’t possible with a phone book and a notepad. They require a complete operating system.

GeoLeads provides the coordinates. You can draw a polygon around a just-sold property, a specific school district, or an entire neighborhood and instantly access 500+ homeowner contacts. This transforms farming from passive (waiting for mailers to work) to active (calling today).

Vortex centralizes everything. Expired listings, FSBOs, FRBOs, pre-foreclosures, and your circle prospecting contacts all live in one platform. You can track which homeowners you’ve called, what they said, and when to follow up. Paula Burlison’s 36-contact formula only works because Vortex tracks every interaction.

Ad Builder provides air cover while you work the ground game. After calling a neighborhood, you can run targeted Facebook ads to those same homeowners. They see your name on their phone, then in their social feed. This multi-channel approach accelerates conversion.

Brand Builder keeps you top of mind. Automated social content and video tools ensure that when a homeowner in your database experiences a life event trigger, you’re the agent they remember.

Direct mail integration provides the physical touchpoint. Some hidden sellers won’t answer the phone but will respond to a well-crafted postcard that references their specific situation.

The Shift from Facilitator to Market Maker

Here’s the fundamental difference between agents fighting over MLS scraps and agents who consistently find hidden inventory:

Facilitators wait for the market to bring them listings. Market Makers use data to identify latent supply and demand, then bridge the gap.

Kent Brown created a deal between an investor and a landlord who didn’t know each other existed.

Trudy Padilla created a listing for her buyer by proving demand existed.

Paula Burlison resurrects sellers who gave up 18 months ago by showing them the market has changed.

Ricky Carruth builds a database so large that life events constantly create new opportunities.

None of these agents are making “cold calls” in the traditional sense. They’re making value calls. They’re bringing information, buyers, solutions, or options that the homeowner doesn’t have.

Getting off market listings is not impossible. It’s just invisible to agents who only look at the MLS.

While 47 agents fight over the same listing in Phoenix, top producers are accessing inventory that never hits the market. They’re not working harder. They’re working in a different market entirely.

See how REDX’s complete platform helps you access hidden inventory → redx.com/