Case study 03 · Solo broker · Realtor partnerships
Fourteen local realtors now send our client their buyers. Six months ago he'd met none of them
1,898 realtors contacted across Facebook, LinkedIn, text and phone. 57 partnership meetings booked. 41 buyer referrals inside the first six months.
We don't publish client names — you're a mortgage broker, so are they, and some of them work your market. The realtors aren't named either; several now refer to our client and didn't sign up to be a case study. Figures below come from the CRM, the calendar and the outreach inboxes, with identifying details blacked out. On a call we'll open the same accounts unredacted.
About realtor partnership
A referral relationship that runs both ways
A realtor partnership is a professional working relationship between a mortgage broker and a real estate agent. The realtor refers homebuyers who need financing to the broker; in return, the broker refers clients who are looking to buy or sell a home back to the realtor.
It's mutually beneficial, and it's kept going by one thing: trust, built on the quality of service each side actually delivers — not by the size of the gift basket dropped off at the brokerage.
Kept going by trust and the quality of service each side delivers — not by who has the bigger marketing budget.
Why it matters
Why realtor partnership is important
A collaborative process that benefits everyone at the table.
Realtors are often the first point of contact for a homebuyer. A strong partnership means they refer those clients before the buyer shops for financing anywhere else.
Working closely with realtors means he can pre-approve buyers before they start house hunting — which makes the realtor's job easier and their offers stronger.
Realtors provide insight a lender never sees — local pricing trends, what's actually moving, and what buyers in this market are looking for.
Being recommended by a trusted realtor gives a broker instant credibility with a client who has never heard of him.
Many mortgage agents compete for the same clients in the same market. A realtor network built the way this one was — on trust, not on rate sheets — is not something a competitor can copy in a weekend.
Before us
He'd already done the coffee-and-rate-sheet run
The spring before, he spent most Friday mornings dropping coffee and printed rate sheets at four brokerage offices. Then he bought a list of 400 realtor emails and sent all of them a PDF of his rates. Two replies came back. One was an unsubscribe request. He decided the realtors in his city were locked up by the bank specialists, and stopped.
He wasn't wrong about his experience. He was wrong about the cause. Nobody had been asked for a conversation, and a rate sheet answers a question realtors aren't asking. A realtor doesn't lose sleep over a quarter point. They lose sleep over a deal that dies on the financing condition, a pre-approval that takes four days, and a lender who goes quiet the week before closing.
Every realtor already has a mortgage person. The opening isn't replacing them — it's being the name they call for the file their person can't do. And one email is not outreach. The meetings on this page took a median of six touches across at least two channels, which almost nobody does on their own, because it isn't a campaign — it's a process with a person on the phone.
The list
Who we actually contacted, and who we left out
Every licensed realtor working his city, pulled from brokerage rosters, public listing activity, the local board directory and each realtor's own social profiles — 2,638 names, cut hard before anyone was contacted. Calling a realtor who hasn't sold a house in two years costs the same as calling one who sold thirty.
| Filter | What it means | Removed |
|---|---|---|
| Local | Most of their deals inside his service area | −364 |
| Residential | Works buyers or mixed, not commercial-only | −98 |
| Reachable | A published business mobile, or a findable Facebook or LinkedIn profile | −152 |
| Not captive | Not on a team with an in-house mortgage specialist | −126 |
| Realtors on the outreach list, of 2,638 found | 1,898 | |
| Connected with during the six months | 1,300 | |
2,638 names found, 1,898 make the list, and over six months we connected with 1,300 of them — an accepted request, a reply, or a live conversation on the phone.
The caller works tier A every single week. Tiers B and C fill the rest of the calendar in the order they were added to the list.
Unedited, cropped to ten rows of 1,898. Company, email, LinkedIn, text and call status are logged per realtor, with the caller's own remarks.
The sequence
Two channels, working the same realtor
Social and phone don't run as separate campaigns. They run on the same realtor in the same three weeks, so by the time the caller says the broker's name, the realtor has already seen his face in their notifications. Nothing here comes from a company page — it's his own profiles and his own local number.
Friend request and connection request
From his personal profiles, tidied first: a current headshot, his city in the bio, and a few recent local posts, so the profile reads as a real neighbour and not a sales account.
Realtor record opened
Tier, area, deal count and which channels are open for this person. Every touch after this point is logged against the record, whoever makes it.
First message, no pitch
Sent only once the request is accepted. It mentions something real — a recent sale, a listing, a post — and asks one question about how they handle financing problems.
Intro text, from his local number
References the connection if there is one, says who he is in one line, asks for fifteen minutes. Two-way, and every first text carries an opt-out.
Our caller dials
A person on our team, working a defined script, calling in the two windows realtors actually pick up: late morning and just after six, between showings. The only job on the call is to book the meeting.
The offer, in two lines
What he does that their current lender doesn't, and a link to his calendar.
Up to five more touches across call, voice note and text
Different days, different times. A realtor who didn't answer at 11am Tuesday is at an open house at 2pm Saturday and scrolling at 8pm Sunday. After day 21, they move to the 90-day list.
Hi , it's , mortgage broker here in . We just connected on LinkedIn. I work with a few local agents on the files the banks turn down. Open to a 15 min call next week to see if that's useful for your buyers? Reply STOP to opt out.
The template every realtor gets, personalised only by name, city and the LinkedIn reference where one exists.
The call
What the caller says, and what realtors say back
The caller isn't selling mortgages and doesn't try to. The caller has one job: get a realtor who has never heard of our client to put fifteen minutes on their calendar. The script is short on purpose, because realtors answer the phone mid-showing.
"Hi, is this — ? It's the caller, for the broker, a mortgage broker here in the city. Did I catch you between showings?"
"He works with a few agents on the buyers banks decline or slow down. He asked me to see if a quick intro call makes sense for you."
"He has Tuesday at 11 or Thursday at 5. Which is easier?" — a specific slot, not "when works for you."
"Most agents we call do, and he isn't trying to replace them. It's for the file they can't do. Worth fifteen minutes to have a backup?"
"Happy to. So it's actually useful — are your buyers mostly self-employed, rebuilding credit, or new to Canada?"
Version four. The first version opened with lender count and rate access. Realtors hung up on it. This version opens with a problem they've already had this month.
The most common objection is the one most brokers get stuck on. It's also the one the script is built around, and it produced more booked meetings than any other opening response.
The definition
What counts as a partnership meeting
Most outreach agencies count a reply as a lead. A realtor texting "send me your rates" is not a meeting, and it doesn't get counted as one here. If a booking doesn't meet all four, it isn't in the 57.
- In his marketMost of their deals inside his service area
- On his calendarA confirmed invite with a time, not "call me sometime"
- Knows whyAgreed to a partnership conversation, not a rate quote
- With the brokerTwenty minutes minimum, by phone, video or in person
A 40.0% show rate in month one climbing to 91.7% by month six — the same team, an improving process.
| Month | New realtors | Conversations | Meetings booked | Show rate | Referrals in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | 520 | 80 | 5 | 40.0% | 0 |
| Month 2 | 440 | 110 | 8 | 62.5% | 2 |
| Month 3 | 380 | 118 | 10 | 80.0% | 5 |
| Month 4 | 300 | 108 | 11 | 81.8% | 8 |
| Month 5 | 178 | 102 | 11 | 81.8% | 11 |
| Month 6 | 80 | 94 | 12 | 91.7% | 15 |
| Six-month total | 1,898 | 612 | 57 | 77.2% | 41 |
New contacts drop in months five and six because the list runs out. Conversations don't — that's when the "not now" realtors from months one to three get their second round.
By channel
Phone books more. Social shows up
Two ledgers, one realtor list, run side by side so nobody mistakes this for a contest.
Read this as two halves of one system, not a contest. Of the 22 social bookings, 14 had also had a text or call. Of the 35 phone bookings, 26 had already accepted a connection request. A broker running only one of these would get a fraction of either column — 612 unique realtors engaged in total, well above what either channel produced alone.
The long tail
The part most brokers never see
Of 612 realtors who engaged, 57 booked. The other 555 said "not right now", "maybe after spring", or just went quiet. They didn't get deleted — they went on a 90-day list, and when their turn came they got a fresh first message that referenced the last conversation, then the caller.
Re-contacted in months four to six, that list produced 18 of the 57 meetings and 5 of the 14 referring realtors. A broker who does one round of outreach and stops never collects any of it.
A realtor refers when they have a buyer who needs it, not when the meeting ends. A broker who judges this service at thirty days sees three referring realtors and cancels. The three indigo bars are the whole argument for staying in month four.
Most first referrals land more than thirty days after the meeting.
Three realtors sent 18 of 41 referrals. You don't need fifty partners — you need to meet enough realtors to find the three who work the way you do, which is a numbers problem, and the numbers are what we run.
End to end
The whole six months in one column
Roughly one referring realtor for every 136 on the list. Any agency promising you a room full of referral partners from a few hundred cold messages is either counting differently or hasn't run it for six months.
The arithmetic
What it cost and what it returned
Our fee is in the denominator, where it belongs.
Commission stated at 100 basis points because that's where this broker's files landed. Yours will differ. Any agency quoting you a dollar return without naming the basis points is guessing.
Worth isolating: the 7 approved files still waiting on closing dates represent roughly $3.4M in volume and $34,000 in commission, and none of it is in the return above. Neither is anything the 14 realtors send in month seven. Referral partners compound; a lead list doesn't.
Let's talk
Want to see these threads unredacted?
We'll open the realtor list, the message inboxes, the caller's log and the calendar on a screen share with the bars taken off, and show you the conversation behind any referring realtor on this page.
Twenty minutes. If there aren't enough active realtors in your market to fill six months of outreach, we'll tell you.
Prefer to email? support@superkreatives.com
Results described are specific to this client and to the conditions of their market and business. Individual results vary. Figures are derived from CRM, calendar, messaging and call-log data for a six-month period. Client and realtor details have been anonymised. The message threads and text shown are representative: wording has been tidied and identifying details removed. Nothing here is a representation or guarantee of future performance. All outreach described is business-to-business and directed to realtors at business contact details they publish themselves; every commercial text message identifies the sender and includes an unsubscribe option, and opt-out requests are honoured and removed from all channels.
