Expired Listings Aren’t Dead Leads: How to Build a Targeted Failed-Listing List

When a listing expires, it’s easy to read it as the end of the story. For the owner, it usually isn’t. The home didn’t sell, but the reasons for selling may still be there. The real challenge for an agent is practical: which of the expired listings in your market are worth your time, and how do you reach those owners?

In a recent Labcoat Agents session, Burton from PropStream built a failed-listing list live, then showed what to do with it. Here’s the process.

Start With the Category, Then Narrow It

PropStream has nationwide data, so you can pull up a county, a city, up to five zip codes, or draw a search area on the map. In the demo, Oakland County, Michigan returned roughly half a million records. Selecting the “failed listings” lead category removed about 98% of them in one click.

From there, Burton layered on a few filters:

• Property type: single-family residential only, to cut out apartment buildings, mobile homes, and vacant land
• Days on market: 150 or more. A listing that sat for five months before failing is a different situation from one pulled after a week
• Owner type: individual, not a corporation

That left 379 results in Oakland County. The same filters returned 94 in Lancaster, California and 280 in Nashville. You can also filter by listing or status date to focus on listings that failed in the last 45 or 60 days.

His one warning: don’t pile on too many filters. A failed listing plus divorce plus bankruptcy plus no mortgage may leave you with zero results. Add layers that fit your strategy, like equity, loan type, or pre-foreclosure, and stop there.

Get Contact Info and Keep It Compliant

Once the list looks right, check the properties, choose Save from the Actions menu, and name the list. At that point you can skip trace it for phone numbers and emails, or save it as addresses only and skip trace later from the My Properties page.

PropStream flags numbers on the do-not-call list and marks owners who are known litigators, which matters if you’re doing outreach.

What It Costs

• Skip tracing a single property costs about 12 cents on the standard plan.
• A list of 5,000 addresses would run about $600 at that rate.
• The PropStream Connect add-on is $30 per month and includes skip tracing, which Burton valued at up to $3,000 a month for 25,000 skip traces, plus a built-in dialer.
• The dialer is single-line. It can display a local area code to match the market you’re calling, and it screens against do-not-call. For heavier outreach, PropStream also owns BatchDialer, which offers multi-line and predictive dialing.

Turn the List Into a Campaign

Each saved list can become a campaign, and each campaign gets its own website. For a failed-listing list, the message might be that you specialize in expired listings. The site includes an application form, and submissions are emailed to you. You can mention the site on a call, a postcard, or an email.

Outreach options inside a campaign:

• Direct mail: a single send, a multi-send over a set period, or an A/B split test between two designs. Postcards start around 57 cents each, and hybrid letters (a printed letter in an envelope) are about $1.20. Postage is included.
• Mailing address: send to both the mailing address and the property address, since the owner might not live in the home.
• Letters: templates are dynamic, with the owner’s name and address filled in, or you can write your own.
• Email: recipients can reply directly to you, and the sender shows your name rather than a no-reply address.
• Dialer: available with the Connect add-on.

One Creative Tip

Burton also shared a trick for “zombie properties,” which are pre-foreclosures where mail isn’t being answered. A friend of his skip traces the neighbors on either side, since they often know how to reach the owner.

Think of the Data as a Buffet

His closing point was about how to use the platform. The prebuilt lead categories are the quick options, but the filters let you build lists no one else has. For example, you could find investors with 10 to 20 properties who list a flip every six months, then build a relationship with them. The data only goes as far as your creativity.

Watch and Try It

Watch the full session replay: https://youtu.be/f7MMoy85O8Y

Try PropStream with a 30-day trial: https://trial.propstreampro.com/lca/

The trial includes the full platform for exploring data, with a limit of 50 saved addresses.