Do brokers in NYC buy leads?

As in "Glengarry Glen Ross"?

I am saying in general.

No.

I have heard some buy "leads" from CityRealty. Any thoughts on that?

They are stupid?

Are you saying there is no value to leads in NYC real estate, or are you questioning the current quality of the leads on the market?

Yes.

No, they do not - I actually brought this up once here, as a seller who hoped that a listing broker would be able to access past OH attendees to present my apt to them.

Ok so the crappy lists that are available arent any good, that makes sense. However, would brokers find value in buying a specific lead (name, email, phone number) of a person interesting in buying the specific property that broker is listing? What if that "lead" even included the price they wanted to pay for it, and the broker could view that price prior to buying the lead?

What's in it for the broker? Why wouldn't she just sit tight and wait for the buyer to come to her? Is the lead-seller somehow preventing the buyer from finding out about the apartment?

Thats clearly NOT working right now is why I ask. The broker can sit and wait for the cows to come home, but they wont make a sale. I think that if the broker had the ability to pay to find someone interested in their specific property, that would be a very good thing. It just looks like all the leads on the market are crap, and thats why nobody is using them.

Any person interested in purchasing real estate is easily able to access any listing that would fit his desired specifics. It's easier now than ever, with searchable sites like SE, Trulia, NYTimes, all of which allow users to use keywords to plug in the elements they're looking for.

A broker with a well-described online listing does not NEED to waste time hunting for interested buyers--interested buyers, if they exist, will come to him. And certainly NO ONE--neither buyers nor sellers--would be interested in tacking on extra costs to the transaction for some unnecessary 'lead' from a middleman.

Gee, so maybe the business model for selling yokels their retirement double-wides in Land o' the Ozarks wouldn't work here?

And just think about it for a moment--why would a buyer with specific criteria in mind would provide personal info to YOU, a middleman, in order to get inundated with unsolicited calls from brokers trying to sell him their product?

And how, exactly, would you be able to include 'the price they want to pay for it' unless they'd already SEEN the apartment in question and assessed what they'd be willing to offer? And if they've already seen the apartment, then why do they need YOU, the middleman?? Why not go directly to the listing agent in the first place? Sheesh, my head's starting to swim...

I never suggested I was going to provide such a service, nor do I know how it might even be done. A quick internet search shows that RE leads are bought fairly frequently in other markets, so I just wondered if it was done here. Thanks for all the responses.

"would brokers find value in buying a specific lead (name, email, phone number) of a person interesting in buying the specific property that broker is listing?"

Ok, so I have a buyer who is very likely to buy a $1 million apartment directly from a broker. I sell them the lead for ?$10? rather than co-broker it and collect a $30,000 commission. Who am I?*

* answer: either someone who didn't really have a person who was actually going to buy that listing, or a total moron.

As I said before its done in other markets so I was just wondering if its done here. No need to get hostile.....

"Real Estate leads" are most commonly bought for things like time-shares, vacant land in some far off location, etc. In other words, circumstances where the sucker.... ummm.... client.... has indicated that they are interested in buying soething which could be somewhat fungible, and where it may be difficult to reach them with advertising because you don't know where they are looking. For example, for timeshares, you might buy leads of people in Omaha if you were selling timeshares in Guatemala because you wouldn't necessarily want to place a print ad in every newspaper in the US.