Multifamily: off market vs exclusively listed. Any dangers of marketing an off market listing without an exclusive? Best approaches/feedback
I work with a firm/sales manager who are both very strong proponents of exclusively listed deals + taking to market (CoStar, CREXI, Email blasts, LinkedIn, etc). I totally understand the reasoning behind the exclusively listed and then take to market approach and always shoot for the exclusive listing to start. 
I am about a year into the business and quickly learned that most multifamily owners that are open to selling are adamant about marketing their property off market for one reason or the other (too many phone calls, don’t want to scare management/tenants, random people visiting their property) I have brought this concern to my sales manager a few times and get shut down quick.. Leaving me to fight for exclusive listings that we have to talk the owner into taking to market. Our inventory would be 5x as large in terms of multi family if we were allowed to market and create OMs for some of these deals. All of my biggest competitors in the space also do 90% off market trades that never get seen by the Costar and Crexi market. Am I being within reason for wanting to have the freedom to pitch some of these deals off market to buyers that I know are in the hunt for a deal? If you sell a property off market, are you still required to sign an exclusive listing agreement? I feel like I could get away with a commission agreement and not have to fight owners on taking it fully to market. 

In the year:
3-4 exclusive listings 
10-20 owners agreeing to sell off market and naming their price. 

I understand the benefits of both, but would love to get an opportunity to sell off market deals to my clients. I’ve gotten screwed with exclusive listings before so starting to think it’s worth a shot even without it if seller is agreeable to sell at a certain price.

Would love any feedback/comments, anything to be careful about when dealing with off market sellers.
[{"id": "i4a4taz", "text": "New MFR Investor here.  Following.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "i4a5wua", "text": "I\u2019m not a big fan of \u2018bring me a buyer and I\u2019ll pay you\u2019 type of arrangements, but when we do this for one reason or another we always have the buyer sign non-circumvent agreement first.", "replies": [{"id": "i4a6mqw", "text": "I definitely would prefer the exclusive listing route, but that really seems to reduce our opportunities by nearly 50%. I would just want a shot at it, and if we\u2019re able to put some of the deals on private websites or market to certain groups, it would also be a great marketing tool to get the guy who IS willing to sign an exclusive. I\u2019m thinking now that there\u2019s really no right or wrong answer here, I just feel like our company just doesn\u2019t wanna have to deal with a situation if it came up (cover their own ass) but it hurts my business personally, we get paid to transact, not necessarily get exclusive listings. Not to mention, exclusive listing people are way more unreasonable price wise than off market transactors (bc we sell them on the benefits of on market deals, sometimes to an extreme). I\u2019m thinking to contact a buddy of mine that\u2019s with a firm that literally only does off market (52 transactions last year) vs our multi team that is BARELY getting into the space (started in 2021, I was one of the first multifamily brokers for the firm. And I had just graduated college) just to get some guidance and maybe even join them at some point in the future. I definitely wanna double down on multi family only.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "i4acxa5", "text": "In my experience, the most sophisticated owners only work this way.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "i4a6mcr", "text": "If it\u2019s not in your inventory, you owe a fiduciary duty to show your listings first. Your listings are what bring new clients into your life, so no reason to market off market properties unless you have too many clients and next to zero listings.", "replies": [{"id": "i4a746h", "text": "We have so many different client profiles. My clients/buyers that want 100+ units don\u2019t care to see my 10 unit or even 20 unit property. Yet the 100+ owners are not inclined to tie the knot with one specific agency. I understand your point nonetheless. As a new broker sometimes we just don\u2019t have that many listings but know of several properties that are for sale with a willing to sell owner.", "replies": [{"id": "i4a81bl", "text": "Overcome their fears of listing with an office. Making the sale happens on the listing side as well. Always ask for the listing/sale. You do pay other agencies a commission, so no reason not to be the one marketing it. What you need to highlight is how your marketing is better than your competition and how you reach out further than they do. \n\nEvery listing you take, you are gambling on yourself to recoup the money you put into advertising. If the cap rate your advertising is less than someone can make on a bond or other financial device then you probably don\u2019t have much of a listing.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "i4a7c0y", "text": "well the exclusive rep agreement and marketing on market are two different things. best practice is to only work by exclusive - but that doesn\u2019t mean you have to put it on market - and as you stated - most people don\u2019t want the property publicly listed so I think you have a valid argument there. But in terms of controlling your business, if the prospect isn\u2019t willing to sign an exclusive then their really not committed to doing business with you and doing business the way you do business. who\u2019s in control of your business? the prospect or you? if so, then work by exclusive only and don\u2019t waste time shopping deals you don\u2019t have a rep agreement for - time is money in brokerage and that valuable time could be spent elsewhere", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "i4acqqq", "text": "Off-market is the market for me. I\u2019m curious what firm you work for? B/c I think that any supervising broker that won\u2019t let you market off market isn\u2019t worth working for. I\u2019ll do about $17.5 mil + in sales this year and 90% of it was sold off market. You can get a non-exclusive fee agreement from the owner or an exclusive agreement sans marketing agreement. So basically you agree not to publicly list the property but you have the exclusive right to sell. There\u2019s a really good reason I prefer selling off-market\u2026 as soon as that listing hits Crexi and CoStar every other broker in town is waiting for it to fall off the platforms and steal the listing. The less your competition knows, the better. I get calls from CoStar and my brokerage all the time to be included on deal-makers list and refuse everytime. I don\u2019t want my competition knowing how I make my money. Plus, bringing offers to sellers is a great way to command their attention and respect for your work. They will pay attention to you if you bring them offers. Any broker asking for a listing, without offering anything in return, isn\u2019t worth their salt IMO. If a broker called me asking for a listing on one of my properties without anything in hand, I\u2019d laugh at them and hang up the phone.", "replies": [{"id": "i4crnjp", "text": "I've got a scenario for you.  I've got a guy I know pretty well, said bring me a buyer for this property and I'll pay you a commission.  He won't sign a listing agreement because he doesn't want to piss off his other realtor friends.  I know this property would sell quickly if I could somehow market it online.  I get decent traffic to my personal site.  What would you suggest?", "replies": [{"id": "i4d8aqb", "text": "There maybe a good list of other reasons he doesn\u2019t want to publicly list it. Don\u2019t tempt fate. I\u2019d look for like-kind buyers in CoStar, tax and research databases and start dialing.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "i4d1htp", "text": "Your firm\u2019s manager is 100% right. I\u2019ve been a broker for 10 yrs and I give the same advise to my associates.\n\nEspecially early on in your career you should be focusing on exclusive listings in which you have an engagement agreement in place. Building a track record of value that you can turn into new exclusive listings. Otherwise, you\u2019re wasting a lot of time chasing your tail with no guarantee of a pay day. It can seem frustrating at first but as you build a track record of successful with sellers and build a good rapport working with the buyers, you\u2019ll build up a bigger base of listings and repeat business. \n\nThis is the nature of brokerage there are no shortcuts, it takes years to build a consistently book of business. The way to get there quicker is to avoid these time-suck traps.\n\nIn my opinion, there is no such thing as an off-market sale if a broker (or brokers) are blasting it out to other brokers and buyers. That\u2019s creating a market plain and simple. Most of the time these \u2018sellers\u2019 are looking for godfather offers. The biggest difference is, unless that broker has some paper with the seller, they may not be guaranteed a commission (or may get screwed out of one anyways). \n\nStick with it, and keep a log of these sellers so when you do close an exclusive listing in a comparable property nearby you can come back to that seller and pitch them again with a track record for that exclusive.", "replies": [{"id": "i4d1yle", "text": "It\u2019s been a frustrating few weeks. I really needed to hear this today and from someone else outside of the company. Thank you. I obviously really respect the sales manager, it just gets frustrating at times having to get sellers to agree to jumping in the market with me. Exclusives are the way to go. Btw how many calls do you expect from your associates a day/week/month?", "replies": [{"id": "i4daz1y", "text": "Hang in there. We all (even the most tenured brokers) go through these periods. It\u2019s a tough business and not for the faint of heart. The secret to success in broker is persistency, time management and discipline. Remember the \u2018golden hours\u2019(aka working hours) you should avoid distractions and avoid administrative tasks during this time (social media, filling in databases, market research, answering mundane emails that can wait, texting your buddies etc). Focus this time on moving existing deals, finding new deals, and touching existing clients during the Golden Hours.\n\nThere is no magic # of call per day, as it can vary so much by property type, service line etc. - a retail leasing broker and an industrial investment sale broker are going to have different targets. \n\nHere is my recommended approach:\n1. Define your total addressable market (total $ volume of sales and average sale size)\n2. Volume of sales that were \u2018brokered\u2019 \n3. Total commission and average commission in your market\n4. Your Sales Target\n5. Your \u2018batting average\u2019 (aka your conversion rate from cold prospect to listing) this is usually pretty low for all brokers 10-15%\n\nFormula:\nDivide your Sales Target by Average Market Commission = # of listings you need to secure \n\nMultiple by 3 (you need 3x the opportunities in your pipeline to the number of deals you need to close) - in case a deal dies, a seller decides to hold etc. \n\nThen divide that number by your \u2018batting average\u2019 to get your total number of cold calls per year. \n\nThen divide by working days to get your Target Calls.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}]