The real estate and housing market collapse could become a long term problem with no solution in the foreseeable future so it is indeed a very hard time for real estate agents and mortgage professionals. One of the biggest problem is also the mortgage crisis with mortgage rates dropping.

This current turn of events has led to many real estate agents and mortgage professionals to losing their jobs. What are those in the real estate industry going to do for the next few years while waiting for the market to recover? Well, in order to survive, these professionals will need to strike out and use your marketing and sales skills in other ways.

You can set up your own home based business. You could use your sales and marketing skills to train others that are new in sales and build your own team. So, what type of business can you look into? Well, one of the hot prime areas now is financial education, wealth building and debt control. You can learn the ropes of this industry and then teach and help people to deal with their debts, build wealth and learn how to control their finances. This growing industry will be more in demand especially in difficult times. While building this new business, you must find good leads using your previous real estate sales experience and train your team well.

However, if this is not your cup of tea, you can always look for other business ideas to venture into. You should think outside of the box and go for it, instead of sitting around lamenting the collapse of the housing industry. There are plenty of other opportunities out there that you could grab using your finely honed sales and marketing skills. You could even set up a sales and marketing consultancy firm to help others in their sales and marketing.

The possibilities are endless. Just go for it.

As much as this sounds strange, it is quite true that you can generate a lot of fresh real estate leads by using expired listings. If you can get a good listing, you will be able to generate and abundance of leads. Many real estate agents are spending a lot of money on lead generation, fees, advertising costs and feeling the pinch especially when it all does not result in good leads.

Well, you can get good lists with an expired listing system that will give your more leads and listing than you thought possible. So, it is time that you start adding expired listings to your inventory as more of these listings are expiring now than before due to the collapse of the real estate industry.  More than a million foreclosures in recent times has made it difficult to sell regular home listings so these listings remain unsold and expired.

I’m sure you are aware of the alarmingly high number of foreclosures each week which goes to show that it is very difficult to sell average home listings in a highly competitive market. However, listings are still what you need to keep in your inventory. Sure, you won’t be able to sell off all the ones you have but it is wise to have more now as you will be more secured when the market turns around and become a seller’s market again.

As bad as it looks now, the real estate market will eventually turn around and agents with a large inventory of homes will be the one to have the last laugh, all the way to the bank. In order to generate more real estate leads, you will also need a good real estate marketing system.

Using an expired listing system is one of the best lead generation strategies you could have. Once it’s up and running, you will be able to keep it working by investing only 30 minutes each day to add new names to your list of prospects so that you could print and mail out letters to them.

Just think, you will be generating loads of real estate leads in no time and at such low costs too!