Results: The Real Estate Database Grade

The real estate database grade may be the most important tape measure you have in your toolbox for 2024. Here’s why I’m only exaggerating a teensy bit.

Many experts agree that it looks like leads will get more expensive due to cmsn lawsuits (departure of buyer leads) and new FCC regulations on lead sales (reducing quantity). The answer for agents is to spend more for fewer leads or alternatively it may be to get back to basics (pre portals) and generate your own leads.

Thus, your database will be critical to your success.

However – we did some research, and found that the vast majority of our clients have a very poor quality database.  92.7% of our 4k sample size got a grade of an F with the Revaluate database grade tool. (see attachment) This is due primarily to missing contact data, and suspicious contact records

Dirty Data

Suspicious contacts make up a large percentage of our clients databases. These contacts are primarily comprised of two types of contacts. Non Prospects and Fake Prospects.
Non Prospects are people you wont ever sell a home. IE other real estate agents. Those pesky colleagues creep into your database and make your marketing less efficient.
Fake Prospects are equally wasteful. These are “leads” you captured that include the likes of “bart.simpson@gmail” and “&%$#[email protected]”. They have no value and you will not ever sell Fred and Wilma a new home in Bedrock as (spoiler alert) they are not real people.

Revaluate removes Non Prospects and Fake Prospects from your database, and places them in a file labeled “suspicious contacts”. This will save you time and money on marketing, and reduce your risk of being black listed for spam.

An Incomplete Picture

Real Estate marketers require 4 primary components in order to have a complete picture. We call this the *Full Record. The Full Record Includes:
1) Full Name
2) Physical Address (typically missing on most all portal leads)
3) Email Address 
4) Phone Number
Most databases are incomplete, and lack physical addresses due to portal buyer leads. A full record is desirable, as it enhances your ability to connect with a prospect and have a conversation about their home and life. If you lack a physical address, you dont know anything about the prospects current real estate or even what state it’s in. With a physical, you can do direct mail, CMA’s, JL/JS and pop by door knocks.
*Note: It could be easily argued that social links are also valuable for marketers, however, not everyone is on FB, and X – so it cant be a requirement for a full record in this case.

The Real Estate Database Grade

We talk to more than a dozen agents every day about their database. They all admit they have dirty data and have neglected their databases. But when we show them thier database grade, some feel ashamed. So we wanted to share the reality of the situation.

Most people in the industry are in the same boat with a poor quality database. We’ve graded thousands of real estate databases, and found that almost 93% have an F. So you, my friend are not alone. But – at this moment in time, you have an opportunity to advance beyond your peers.

Revaluate offers a free tool that will grade and audit agent or broker databases so you can spot the issues and see the opportunities for growth. revaluate.com/free
We also offer a paid service that detoxes, de duplicates and appends databases, and even maps them on google maps so agents can connect with their contacts and sell more homes. Pulling out the suspicious contacts alone can raise your grade 5% or more. Repairing your database typicaly raises it another 10%. Removing bad contacts that are just a name or just a phone number can drastically improve your grade as much as 30%.
A good grade is not just for pride and being the teachers pet. A good database grade prevents you from getting in trouble with the FCC. It prevents you from wasting money on direct mail to the wrong person and it allows you to focus your efforts on real people in real houses – rather than the Flintstones.