“What is Forecast? It sounds too good to be true!”

You’ve just popped round number 34 to show a prospective buyer around. You step outside and the well-sought-after street of Park Avenue lays before you. What you don’t know is that number 3 is planning on moving, and Mr Turner at number 64. Even the couple at number 90 have been considering it. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that? Sure, you could flyer the whole street to try to get valuations but that will result in a lot of wasted marketing. What’s the alternative?

Forecast! The powerful, predictive Godsend for estate agents.

With Forecast, we can tell you the properties most likely to go up for sale in the next two months so you can target them with your marketing. Now you’re only paying to send out a mailer to numbers 3, 64 and 90, not all 120 houses on Park Avenue. 

Identifying likely movers with Forecast reduces your marketing spend and increases your chances of winning valuations before your competitors!

Uncover off-market listings

Did you know that in the 12 months up to June 2024 only 18% of instructions came from switching agents or multi-agency listings? That means that the remaining 82% of instructions were brand new to the market. What does that mean for you? More strategic prospecting opportunities. Rather than going after properties already on the market and competing with all the other agents scrapping to get vendors to switch agents, you can beat everyone else to the punch by marketing to those not up for sale yet. 

With Forecast’s built-in AI targeting you can stay ahead of the game. Like a market whisperer, it knows who’s getting ready to instruct so you can swoop in before your rival agents do! 

Forecast turns data into deals with precise predictions. It allows you to be a proactive agent rather than a reactive one.

How does Forecast work?

The feedback we get most from our clients when we tell them about Forecast’s capabilities is, “It sounds too good to be true.” 

We get it because typically, “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.” But Forecast really is that clever and we love to prove to clients that it is as effective as we say! 

Let’s first explain how it works… 

Forecast is like a crystal ball, predicting what properties are most likely to come to market. It’s not magic, it’s a combination of mathematics (traditional analysis techniques) and machine learning. This unique model has been built in-house by our data scientists! Forecast analyses thousands of data points to reveal when someone in your patch is contemplating moving. It has eight years of learning and is based on 17 years of tracking the property market, so it has vast insights to draw from. It learns as time goes on, so like a fine wine, it gets better with age. 

Forecast considers thousands of factors including consumer behaviour, demographics, property attributes and market data. We use factual historical data to predict how likely changes are. Here are some of the factors that Forecast takes into consideration when making predictions: 

• Family composition 

• Age of homeowner 

• Length of residency 

• Property type and size 

• Financial situation 

• Market conditions 

• Performance of the local market 

• Location characteristics 

Forecast accurately predicts over 50% of all instructions every month and contains just 10% of off-market properties. This means you only need to communicate with 10% of the properties in your patch, to reach over 50% of the vendors who will instruct! If you send mailers out to these highly targeted prospects, you’ll reap the rewards of new instructions coming your way, with minimal effort! 

Does Forecast work?

For one of our largest agent clients, Forecast regularly generates 60% of all valuation leads. 

We carried out an exercise to determine the number of mailers needed to generate one new instruction: 

To communicate with one property that will go on to instruct, you would need to: 

• Send 21 random blanket canvassing mailers (On average c.5% of properties instruct each year) 

• Send 11, 20:20 targeted mailers (c.9% of property instructions are within 20 properties on either side of an agreed sale) 

• Send 6 mailers with Forecast (On average c.6% of properties in the top 10% of the Forecast model come to the market) 

So again, here is why you should choose Forecast for an off market targeting strategy:

• It's used by some of the top agents in the UK 

• It's award-winning 

• It's built on 17 years’ worth of data tracking the UK residential property market 

• It regularly generates over 60% of all valuations for one of our largest clients 

• It has generated thousands of listings for our estate agency clients 

• You’ll enjoy a robust return on investment 

Canvassing is time-consuming. And hey, we're not knocking it. Going door-to-door is a sound strategy for sourcing leads. But! It takes time. A lot of time. And budget. Predictive tools like Forecast can help busy agents save time and resources that would otherwise be spent on manual prospecting and lead generation. By focusing efforts on properties most likely to come on the market, agents can optimise their productivity and reduce expenses. 

Forecast works best when used in smart marketing

We can combine the power of estate agent lead generation tool Forecast with our mobile marketing campaign to target those households most likely to come to market in the next two months. Your ad will be displayed on the mobile phones of those who are considering moving within your local area or frustrated vendors looking to switch agents. You’ll reach these vendors first and before they've even decided which agent to choose! Your brand is in front of them, so they don’t need to Google or ask for referrals as they’ll be familiar with your brand right when they’re in the market for an estate agency. 

With Forecast and our mobile marketing, you’ll get in front of prospective sellers in your local area . Send mailers out with TwentyEA’s Prospect tool (our real estate prospecting tool) to make it even easier to source leads. 

If you’d like to learn more, we’d love to talk to you. Get in touch with our team to find out how we can put you in touch with sellers before they’ve even instructed! Join the other agents enjoying the fruits of Forecast’s labour!