The agent who didn’t know I was listening

I was walking through the office last week when I caught a conversation I wasn’t meant to be part of.

Two agents standing near the coffee machine. One of them was being honest with another agent — the kind of honesty you usually save for after a glass of wine on Friday, not for a Tuesday hallway. He didn’t see me coming. He wasn’t asking for advice. He was just saying it.

Then he said the part that stopped me cold:

“I just don’t know where to start with listings. I haven’t been here long enough. I don’t know enough people.”

He moved on. The conversation kept going. He probably forgot about that sentence ten minutes later. I didn’t. I pulled him onto my coaching calendar that afternoon.

Here’s why I couldn’t shake it.

He named something out loud that most agents in this business have stopped admitting to themselves. That fear doesn’t disappear after year three. It mutates.

A new agent says, “I don’t know enough people to do listings.” A mid-career agent says, “My pipeline’s reactive. I’m not really sourcing anything — I’m just catching what comes to me.” A top producer says, “I’ve been an order-taker for years. I haven’t built a new source since 2019.” A team leader says, “I built a team without ever building the system underneath.” A luxury agent says, “I’m one referral relationship away from a quiet six months.”

Different language. Same fear.

Most agents at every level have a pipeline that depends on people coming to them — and they’ve quietly accepted that as a permanent condition of the business. It’s not.

There is a category of motivated sellers sitting in your MLS right now who don’t care whether you have a sphere. Don’t care how long you’ve been in the business. Don’t care who you know. Don’t care how big your team is. Don’t care what brand is on your card.

They care about one thing: who’s going to help them actually sell the house this time.

I call them second-chance listings.

They’re the sellers whose listings expired 30, 60, 90+ days ago. The ones who pulled their home off the market because nothing was working. The ones who are still sitting on a house they thought would be sold by now — and quietly wondering what went wrong.

This isn’t a new concept. Expireds and cancelleds have been a play forever. But here’s what’s different in 2026: the agents winning these listings aren’t using the same scripts everyone else is.

They’re not calling and saying, “I noticed your home expired.” (Every agent says that. Every seller hangs up.) They’re not blasting a 7-day text drip and giving up when it doesn’t convert. (That’s noise. The seller is already drowning in noise.)

They’re doing the slow, specific, deeply considered work that the volume agents won’t do — and they’re using AI to make that work sustainable at scale. That’s the play.

The mindset shift before the mechanics.

Most agents look at an expired listing and see failure. The seller failed to attract a buyer. The agent failed to get it sold. The price failed to clear the market.

The agents winning second-chance listings see something different. They see unfinished business. They see a homeowner who still wants to move but doesn’t know how. They see a story that hasn’t been resolved yet — and an opportunity to be the person who resolves it.

The seller doesn’t need a pitch. They need someone who actually understands why it didn’t sell the first time — and has a real plan for what to do differently.

That understanding is your only edge. The agent who shows up with a thoughtful diagnosis wins the listing. The agent who shows up with a script gets hung up on.

Here’s how to run the play this week.

Five plays. Each one has the action, the why, and the AI execution. Run them in order.

1. Pull every expired and cancelled listing in your market from the last 30, 60, and 90 days. By tomorrow.

Open your MLS. Filter for expired and cancelled status. Pull the addresses, price history, days on market, original list price, and final list price. Build a list. If your market is huge, narrow by geography or price band — pick the lane where you actually want to do business.

Don’t read the list yet. Just build it. The reading happens in Play 2.

The agents losing this play either skip this step or do it once and quit. The agents winning it pull a fresh list every week and treat it like an inbox. Make this a weekly habit, not a one-time exercise.

AI execution — copy this exact prompt: “I’m a real estate agent. I’m going to paste expired/cancelled MLS listings from the last 90 days. For each listing, give me a one-line diagnostic of the most likely reason it didn’t sell, based on the data I’ve given you: price history, days on market, original vs. final list price, photos available, listing remarks. Don’t guess wildly — if the data doesn’t support a clear reason, say 'insufficient data — needs visual review.' I want a triage list, not a fortune-telling exercise.”

That diagnostic list is gold. It tells you which listings are likely price problems, which are likely marketing problems, which are likely condition problems, and which need eyes on them to figure out. You’re not guessing anymore. You’re operating with a signal.

2. Pick your top 10. Drive by every single one. This week.

Yes. Drive by. In person. Pull up to the curb. Take a photo. Look at the yard, the windows, the front door, the street, and the neighbors’ homes. Take notes.

You will see things the MLS photos didn’t show. The bad curb appeal. The dated landscaping. The neighbor’s broken-down truck. The business across the street that probably scared off some buyers. The shaded front porch that photographed poorly online. The roofline that needs work.

This is the step every other agent skips. It’s the reason every other agent calls with a generic script. You’re not going to be one of them.

Bring your phone. Take photos. Build a one-page profile on each of your top 10 — the address, the diagnostic, your visual notes, and your hypothesis on what to do differently.

This is the work. There’s no AI shortcut for this one. The reps build the edge.

3. Write each seller a handwritten note. By Friday.

Not a postcard. Not a mailer. Not a text. A handwritten note. On real stationery. In your real handwriting. Mailed with a stamp.

Why? Because every other agent is texting them. Every other agent is mass-mailing them. Every other agent is leaving the same voicemail script they pulled off a coaching call from 2019. The seller’s inbox, mailbox, and phone are flooded with noise.

A handwritten note cuts through all of it. It’s the one piece of mail they’ll actually read. It’s the one signal that says: this agent slowed down enough to think about my house specifically.

What goes in the note? Three sentences. One: acknowledge the moment without pitying it — “I noticed your home at [address] came off the market last month.” No “sorry it didn’t sell.” Just acknowledgment. Two: demonstrate you actually looked — “I drove by this week and noticed [one specific observation].” This is where the drive-by pays off. Specificity = signal. Three: offer one specific next step, not a pitch — “If you ever want a fresh set of eyes on what might have happened — no pressure, no pitch — I’m happy to share what I noticed and what I’d do differently. Call or text anytime.”

Sign it. Mail it. Move on.

AI execution — copy this exact prompt to draft your notes faster: “I’m a real estate agent writing a handwritten note to a seller whose home expired or was cancelled. Here’s the address, the listing history, and the specific observation I made when I drove by: [paste]. Write me a 3-sentence note in a warm, human, peer-to-peer voice. Tone: like a neighbor who happens to be a Realtor, not a salesperson. No sympathy language. No pressure. End with a no-pressure offer for a conversation. Keep it under 75 words total.”

Use AI to draft. Use your hand to write. Both matter.

4. Build a 6-touch follow-up cadence for every second-chance seller you reach out to. Don’t quit at 3.

Most agents reach out twice and give up. The agents winning second-chance listings stay in front of the seller for months — through expirations, through holiday slowdowns, through “we’re not ready yet” silence. They don’t push. They show up.

Here’s the cadence. Week 1: handwritten note. Week 2: a short text — “Hey, just wanted to make sure my note from last week made it to you. No pressure either way.” Week 4: a specific, market-relevant insight via text or email — something genuinely useful to them about their property or neighborhood. Week 6: a market update specific to their zip code or price band. Week 9: a simple check-in — “Thinking of you and your house. Anything I can do?” Week 12: one more handwritten note — “Still here if you ever want to talk. No expectation.”

If after 12 weeks they haven’t engaged, move them to a quarterly touch. Most won’t respond in the first 6 touches. Some will respond at touch 9, 10, 11. That’s the math. The agents winning these listings don’t quit at 3.

AI execution — copy this exact prompt to build your cadence at scale: “I’m building a 6-touch follow-up cadence for a real estate seller whose home didn’t sell. Here’s what I know about them: [address, neighborhood, price band, original DOM, my diagnostic from Play 1]. Write me all 6 touches in sequence. Each one should feel personal, valuable, and specifically tailored to this seller — not templated. Vary the channel as I’ve specified. Output: 6 numbered messages ready to use.”

Save the output. Schedule it. Run the cadence. Every time you add a new second-chance seller to your list, you run the prompt fresh.

5. Build a “second-chance dashboard” you check every Friday at 4pm. Track 4 numbers only.

Not how many listings you’ve won. Not GCI. Not pipeline value. Outcomes are downstream.

The four numbers you actually track: listings pulled this week (your raw inventory of opportunity), drive-bys completed (your real work), notes mailed (your differentiator), and conversations had with second-chance sellers (the closest leading indicator to a listing won).

If those four numbers move every week, the listings will follow. They have to. The math is the math.

Friday at 4pm is the right time because it forces you to confront the week before you mentally check out for the weekend. If the numbers are weak, you’ll spend Sunday night planning a better next week. If they’re strong, you’ll feel earned satisfaction going into Monday. Either way, you win.

AI execution — copy this exact prompt: “Build me a weekly second-chance listings tracker for a real estate agent. Four metrics: expireds/cancelleds pulled, drive-bys completed, handwritten notes mailed, conversations with sellers. Weekly target columns, variance from goal, 4-week rolling average. Then write me 5 Friday afternoon self-review questions I should answer every week based on the numbers — questions designed to surface what’s working, what’s not, and where I’m avoiding the work.”

Print it. Pin it to your wall. Run it for 90 days. Watch what happens.

Here’s the bigger thing.

The agent in the hallway thought he didn’t know enough people to do listings. He was wrong — but not for the reason he thought. He doesn’t need to know more people. He needs to work on a source that doesn’t require him to know anyone.

And here’s what I want every agent reading this — at every level — to sit with for a minute:

The work that wins listings in 2026 is the work most of you outgrew years ago.

Top producers stopped doing drive-bys when they got busy. Team leaders stopped writing handwritten notes when they hired someone to handle marketing. Mid-career agents stopped pulling expireds when their referral pipeline started feeling reliable.

And then the market shifted. And the pipelines started leaking. And the referrals slowed. And everyone started asking the same question: what changed?

Nothing changed. You just stopped doing the work that built the business in the first place.

The agents winning the second half of 2026 aren’t smarter than you. They aren’t in better markets. They don’t have better leads or bigger spheres or more luck. They’re doing the work everyone else outgrew.

Drive-bys. Handwritten notes. Slow follow-up cadences. Showing up at touch 9 when most agents quit at touch 2. Pulling a fresh list of expireds every Monday morning, whether they feel like it or not.

The new agent in the hallway is going to run this play because he doesn’t have another option. The question for the rest of you is whether you’ll run it because you remember it works — or whether you’ll wait until the market forces your hand.

Building with you, Austin Sizemore

P.S. — Got that hallway agent on board with the play this week. He’s pulling his first list on Friday. If you read this and you’re sitting on the same fear he was — start with Play 1. The rest will follow.

Austin Sizemore is the CEO & Founder of Austin Sizemore Companiesand CEO & Team Leader of Keller Williams Realty Metro Atlanta — a market center, a producing sales team, and the operating systems behind them.