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Read time: ~10 minutes
Here's the number we want you to sit with today: 80%.
That's the share of real estate teams — small and large — that say their sphere of influence is the source of most of their deals. Past clients, referrals, people who already know and trust you.
Most of those people haven't heard from you since December.
The spring market doesn't announce itself. Sellers start interviewing agents in late February. Buyers start getting serious in March. By April, the agents who stayed in front of their databases are already under contract — and the ones who didn't are trying to catch up from behind.
In this edition: the exact 3-touch sequence to reactivate your database before the spring rush hits, a free resource you can share with every first-time buyer lead starting today, and what the real estate industry's "AI slop" moment means for how you market yourself going forward.
Let's get into it.
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Your Spring Window Opens in 3 Weeks. Here's How to Reactivate Your Database Before It Does.
The spring market doesn't wait. According to NAR's Realtors Confidence Index, the median days on market drops sharply in March and April compared to winter months — meaning sellers choose their agent before the season starts, not during it.
Here's what most agents do: they wait until spring is visibly here — homes going up, signs in yards — and then start calling. By then, the listing is already taken. The agent who stayed in touch through February got it.
Right now you're in the last low-competition window before every agent in your market floods their database with the same "spring is here!" message. Use it.
Step 1: Segment your database into 3 buckets
You don't send the same message to everyone. Pull up your CRM — or a spreadsheet — and tag each contact as one of these:
Past Clients — Anyone you've closed a transaction with. These are your highest-value contacts. They already trust you.
Warm Leads — People who inquired, attended an open house, or engaged with your content in the last 12 months but didn't transact.
Cold Contacts — Anyone else in your database who hasn't heard from you in over a year.
The goal is just to know who's who before you start reaching out.
Step 2: Run a 3-touch sequence over 3 weeks
One touchpoint per week. No hard sell. The goal is simply to be a familiar name in their inbox when the spring conversation starts happening in their household.
Touch 1: A personal market update
Email or text. Keep it short. Lead with something specific to their neighborhood or situation — not a mass-blast. The subject line should feel like it came from a person, not a newsletter.
Email script for Past Clients:
Subject: Quick update on [Neighborhood] homes
Hi [First Name],
I was putting together market notes for a few clients and wanted to send yours along.
In [Neighborhood], homes that went on the market in the last 60 days are selling at [X% of list price] and going pending in an average of [X days]. Compared to last spring, that's [faster/slower/similar].
If you've been thinking about making a move — or if you know anyone who has — I'd love to talk through the timing. Spring typically brings the strongest buyer pool of the year, and the agents who prep their sellers in February tend to see cleaner transactions.
No pressure at all. Just wanted to make sure you had the numbers.
[Your name]
Text script (for warmer contacts):
Hey [Name] — quick note: homes in [Neighborhood] are moving fast again this spring. If timing has been on your mind at all, now's a good window to talk. No rush — just wanted you to have the heads-up. 😊
Touch 2: A value-add with no ask
Send something genuinely useful. A one-page market snapshot for their zip code. A link to a local article about neighborhood development. A brief video recorded at a nearby open house. The goal is a second impression that reinforces: this person adds value, not just noise.
For Cold Contacts especially, this touchpoint is about re-establishing that you exist — before any ask.
Touch 3: A direct, low-pressure call
By now they've heard from you twice. You're not a cold call anymore. This conversation goes differently because of it.
Call script:
"Hey [Name], it's [Your Name]. I've been doing some spring prep with a few clients and wanted to reach out before things get really busy. Are you or anyone you know thinking about making a move this year? I'm not calling with a pitch — I just want to make sure you're on my radar if the timing ever feels right."
That's it. Thirty seconds. Most people say no — which is fine. Some people say "actually, funny you called..." and that's how spring listings happen.
The math on this:
If you have 200 people in your database and 5% of them refer or transact in the next 90 days, that's 10 transactions. At 2.5% commission on a $400k average sale, that's $100,000 in potential commission — from people who already know you.
The effort to reach all 200? About 4 hours of work spread across 3 weeks.
Your next step: Pull up your database and spend 30 minutes tagging contacts into the 3 buckets above. Then write and send Touch 1 to your Past Clients first. Start there. Everything else follows.
The agents who show up in February are the ones who close in April.
A Free Resource Zillow Built for Your First-Time Buyers (And How to Use It to Win More of Them)
First-time buyers are the most time-intensive clients in real estate. They need education before they can act. They ask more questions, second-guess more decisions, and take longer to get comfortable — not because they're difficult, but because they've never done this before.
Agents who pre-educate their buyers close faster, get fewer "what does this mean?" calls, and consistently earn better reviews.
Here's a free tool that helps you do exactly that — and it takes about 30 seconds to deploy.
What it is:
This NotebookLM resource from Zillow (a free Google account is required to access) is a featured notebook on Google's AI research platform packed with Zillow's expert first-time buyer content. It covers how to prepare for buying, how to evaluate your finances, how to understand the market, and how to avoid the most common pitfalls. It's interactive — readers can ask it questions and get sourced answers from Zillow's own content library.
It's free to access and free to share.
How agents use it:
1. Add it to your buyer welcome email
When a first-time buyer lead comes in, your first email sets the tone for the entire relationship. Include this link with a line like:
"Before our first conversation, I'd recommend bookmarking this resource — it was put together by Zillow and covers all the basics we'll be talking through. It'll give you a head start and help you come prepared with better questions."
You're doing two things at once: giving them something valuable and positioning yourself as the agent who thinks ahead.
2. Use it as a social lead magnet
Post it on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn with a caption like:
"Getting ready to buy your first home in [City]? Here's the resource I share with every first-time buyer client — built by Zillow, covers everything from financing to making an offer. DM me if you want to talk through your timeline. 🏡"
You get engagement from people who aren't in your database yet. They reach out. You start a conversation.
3. Reference it in buyer consultations
If you're doing a buyer consultation and someone seems overwhelmed, having a trusted reference to point them to builds credibility. "I shared this with my last three buyer clients and they all said it made the process feel less intimidating" is a real thing you can say.
The meta-lesson:
Google NotebookLM isn't just for reading — it's for building. Any agent with a few hours could create a local version: a notebook loaded with neighborhood guides, school district data, HOA FAQs, local market reports. A client who asks your custom notebook "what's the average price per square foot in [Neighborhood]?" and gets a sourced, accurate answer based on content you uploaded — that's a genuinely differentiated experience.
The Zillow notebook is a ready-made starting point. Your own version is the next step.
Who it's for:
Buyer's agents, especially those working with first-timers heading into spring
Agents who want to add a high-value, low-effort touchpoint to their buyer intake process
Anyone looking for a fresh social content angle
Who it's NOT for:
Agents working exclusively with investors or experienced move-up buyers (different resource needs)
Access it here: notebooklm.google.com/notebook/b3fd7608-7daa-48ef-8b35-88e9df63c73f (free Google account required)
Bottom line: It's free. It takes 30 seconds to include in an email. And it positions you as the agent who shows up with something useful — not just a business card.
The AI Honeymoon Is Over. Here's What That Means for How You Market Yourself.
Real Estate News published a two-part investigation titled "Residential real estate's AI honeymoon is over" — and it names something a lot of agents are quietly noticing but not saying out loud.
AI-generated marketing content has become so pervasive — and so similar — that it's produced a backlash. Industry insiders have a name for it now: "AI slop."
LinkedIn posts that read nearly identically across dozens of agents. Listing descriptions with the same sentence structure and the same adjectives. Virtual staging that looks just a little too perfect. The tell-tale cadence that signals a human didn't write this.
It was only a matter of time.
What happened behind the scenes:
The story isn't just about bad content. It's about structural changes happening now:
eXp Realty updated their listing agreements to explicitly disclose that AI may be used in creating marketing materials — ahead of new California disclosure rules that are expected to require it
Consumer advocacy groups are flagging a new risk: buyers are increasingly using AI chatbots for financial and legal guidance on home purchases — instead of agents. Consumer Policy Center research fellow Wendy Gilch told Real Estate News: "At what point are you using that instead of a lawyer knowing that it's not always correct?"
The agent value question is back on the table. The NAR commissions lawsuits already forced agents to justify their fees. Now, if AI is writing your descriptions, drafting your emails, and generating your CMAs — consumers may reasonably ask: what are you actually doing?
eXp's Chief Brokerage Officer Holly Mabery put it in terms every agent will understand: "It reminds me of Milli Vanilli." The '80s pop duo who lost their Grammy when it was revealed they were lip-syncing. The underlying concern isn't quality — it's authenticity. Consumers may begin to wonder whether the persona they're hiring is actually showing up, or outsourcing the work.
Why this matters for your business:
Authenticity is now a competitive differentiator. When every agent's email sounds like ChatGPT wrote it, the agent who sounds like a human stands out. That gap is only going to widen as AI content volume increases.
Disclosure is coming, whether you opt in or not. California is moving on AI marketing disclosure requirements. Other states will follow. Getting ahead of it — proactively noting when AI assisted with content — turns a compliance checkbox into a trust signal.
"AI slop" is a consumer trust problem, not just a quality problem. Buyers are already skeptical of agent-generated AI content. Agents who over-rely on AI for client-facing work may find that trust deficit showing up in their conversion rates.
Presence is still the thing AI can't replicate. Video. Voice notes. Showing up at the local open house. Remembering that the couple you met last fall mentioned their daughter was graduating. None of that can be generated. In a world full of AI-polished output, it's becoming more visible — not less.
What this means for your business:
You don't need to stop using AI. Use it to save time on the work that doesn't require your voice: drafting initial property descriptions, formatting market reports, building email sequences. AI is genuinely good at that.
The mistake is letting AI replace your voice in the moments that require it. The email that goes to a past client you haven't talked to in six months. The listing description for a home with a story. The market update that needs your local read, not a generalized summary.
Three things to do now:
Add one personal sentence to every AI-drafted email before it goes out. Something only you could write — a specific detail, a local reference, a genuine observation. One sentence changes the feel of the whole message.
Adopt a simple disclosure practice. Something as light as "Written with AI assistance" in email footers or captions is enough to stay ahead of where regulation is heading — and it's honest.
Double down on one channel where you show up as yourself. Video walkthroughs. Neighborhood content on Instagram. Handwritten notes. Whatever form your authentic presence takes — lean into it, when every other agent is posting the same AI-generated "spring market is here!" content.
Your next step: Pull up the last five marketing pieces you published. Could any of them have been written by any agent in any city about any property? If yes, that's the problem. And it's fixable — starting today.
Quick recap:
Your spring market window is opening — a 3-touch reactivation sequence starting now can put you in front of your database before the competition does
The Zillow NotebookLM notebook for first-time buyers is free, shareable in under 30 seconds, and gives you a strong buyer consultation touchpoint heading into spring
The AI slop backlash is real — authenticity is becoming the differentiator, and the agents who keep their voice in their marketing will stand out more, not less, as AI content volume grows
Forward this to an agent who could use these tips.
The Real Estate Marketing Update Team @ imFORZA