Galand Haas closed a deal a couple of months ago with people he had never met in person.
They’d been in his database for seven years.
He’s been selling real estate in Eugene, Oregon since 1988. When he started, there was no internet and no cell phones. The MLS was a catalog printed once a week. Buyers sat in the back seat of his car flipping through black-and-white photos, and he kept a jar of quarters in the console so he could stop at payphones to book showings.
At his peak, he was running 200 to 300 transactions a year in a town of about 200,000 people.
He’s watched the tools change four times since then.
Ask him what’s actually produced the business, though, and he doesn’t name any of them.
Four times the tools changed. The job underneath never did.
First came the internet. At the time, most agents wanted nothing to do with it.
Galand remembers most agents rejecting the shift. The ones who embraced it early saw the opportunity first.
“The ones that adopted it were the ones that took over. And it didn’t take them long.”
Then came email and SMS.
Suddenly, agents had a way to stay in front of thousands of people without sending postcards or picking up the phone. It was one of the best marketing tools the industry had ever seen.
Then everybody piled in. Inboxes filled up. Spam filters got more advanced.
Text (or SMS marketing) became the next big channel. For years, it offered a more immediate way to reach people. Now consumers are plenty familiar with spam texts too.
And today, it’s AI.
“The agents that adopt AI and jump into it early on are going to be the ones that really have an advantage over everybody else. And with AI, it could be a much bigger advantage than it ever was with just the internet.”
Four different shifts. Four very different technologies.
But underneath all of them, the job was basically the same: meet people, get permission to stay in touch, and still be there when they need an agent.
“Real estate is a relationship business. What you need to do is go out every single day and develop new relationships. And building that database is important, because once I’ve got an email address or a phone number, now I can start marketing to them.”
The channel changes, but the long-running database stays the same.
A healthy database never stops growing
Galand has roughly 15,000 contacts today, and most of his business comes from that database. He originally built much of it through pay-per-click advertising, but nearly four decades into his career, he’s still adding new people every week.
That’s intentional.
A database isn’t something you build once and then work forever. People move away, email addresses bounce, phone numbers change, and life circumstances shift. Some contacts will simply stop being relevant to your business over time.
That’s why the number of contacts matters less than the direction it’s moving. A database of 5,000 people that’s consistently adding new relationships may be healthier than a list of 15,000 that’s been sitting untouched for years.
And there’s another reason to keep feeding it: most of those new contacts won’t be ready to buy or sell when you meet them.
“Most of these people that come in aren’t ready to buy or sell today. They’re in there doing research. If you’re there at the time they’re ready to buy or sell, at least you’ve got a shot at it.”
Playing the long game
That’s where the long-term value comes from. You’re not just collecting this month’s prospects. You’re staying connected to people while they research, watch the market, save homes, or wait for life to give them a reason to move.
Sometimes that takes a few months. Sometimes it takes years.
Galand’s recent seven-year lead is a pretty good reminder of why you keep them.
A completely different agent, the same answer
Rachel Moussa runs Westwood Realty in Dallas–Fort Worth.
She got her real estate license in 2018 after spending ten years practicing law. That’s 30 years less tenure than Galand, in a different market, with a completely different way of working.
Her database has about 4,000 people.
Some came from open houses. Some she met at a festival in Flower Mound in 2019 and are still in there. Others came through Google ads and may barely remember the first time they reached out.
Her way of staying in front of them isn’t just a drip campaign. She throws parties.
Roughly once a month, an email goes out to the database and 40 or 50 people show up at her house. Sometimes it’s elaborate. She has done themed events with the decor and charcuterie to match.
The most recent one was simpler: beer, pizza, DoorDash, and the pool. Her husband found out four days before the party. They’d moved their couch into the office, so she set up plastic tables instead.
Fifty people came anyway.
“I have people that bought a house with me four years ago, but otherwise there’s not a whole lot of reason to stay in touch. But they still think of me as their realtor, and they come to my house and swim and have fun.”
Adapting the playbook to work for you
Two agents. Three decades apart. Completely different playbooks. Same engine.
One built much of his database through paid search. The other still does three or four open houses in a weekend.
One stays connected through automated listing information. The other sometimes does it with pizza and chicken tenders.
Both keep adding people.
And both give those people reasons to remember them long after the first touchpoint.
How to build a database that keeps producing
You don’t need 15,000 contacts or a pool party.
You do need a system that keeps doing three things: adding people, staying useful, and showing you when someone may be ready for more.
Here’s your roadmap to making sure that happens:
1. Find out whether your database is growing or shrinking
Start with two numbers:
- How many usable contacts do you have today?
- How many did you add in the last 30 days?
Then look at what you’re losing. Bounced emails, bad phone numbers, unsubscribes, and people who are no longer relevant to your market all chip away at the database over time.
If you’re adding contacts faster than you’re losing usable ones, you’re growing.
If not, that’s worth knowing before you spend more time fine-tuning email subject lines—which probably won’t move the needle much, if at all.
Track it monthly. The trend matters more than any one month’s number.
2. Pick two sources you can keep running
You don’t need leads coming from everywhere.
You need a couple of sources that continue working when you’re busy.
For Galand, paid search was a major database builder. For Rachel, open houses are still a core source eight years into her career. She runs three or four in a weekend and holds them to a simple standard: if the team doesn’t meet a new potential client, the open house didn’t do its job.
Your two sources may be different.
They could be open houses and organic website traffic. Paid search and referrals. Community events and social media.
The better question is: Will you still do this during your busiest month?
If the answer is no, it’s probably not a reliable source for building your database yet.
3. Capture the researchers too
A website visitor doesn’t need to be ready to buy a house this weekend to be worth knowing.
If you’ve been around real estate for any amount of time, you probably know—most aren’t.
Someone may be checking listings six months before a move. Comparing neighborhoods before a job transfer is official. Watching home values for a year before deciding whether selling makes sense.
Give those people a useful reason to identify themselves.
Property searches, saved searches, listing alerts, home valuation tools, and other lead-capture opportunities can turn anonymous website traffic into contacts you can continue helping.
That’s where a real estate website starts feeding the database instead of simply displaying information.
The lead you capture today may not become a deal this year, and that’s perfectly okay.
4. Automate any follow-up that doesn’t need to depend on you
Once someone enters your database, you need a way to stay useful even when you’re not personally reaching out.
That’s where automated follow-up shines. Listing alerts can keep buyers connected to homes that match their search. Market updates and other relevant communications give people a reason to keep paying attention over a longer timeline.
Set those touchpoints up while the contact is fresh rather than relying on yourself to remember later.
5. Add a human layer
Automation keeps you present. But it doesn’t make someone feel like they know you.
That’s where the human-to-human aspect comes in—and never goes out of style.
Rachel throws parties. Your version doesn’t need 50 people in your backyard.
It could be a regular call list. Personal check-ins. Handwritten notes. Client events. A quick message when you see something that made you think of someone.
The exact tactic matters less than having one.
People in your database will hear from plenty of real estate agents over the years. The human part gives them a reason to remember which one they actually know.
6. Pay attention when behavior changes
A database gets much more useful when it can tell you more than someone’s name and email address.
Someone who has been quiet for two years suddenly starts searching again.
A homeowner checks a valuation.
A buyer creates a new saved search or keeps coming back to the same property.
Those actions don’t guarantee someone is ready to make a transaction happen. But they can give you a much better reason to reach out than working alphabetically through 4,000 contacts.
That’s the shift from having a database to actually using one.
Your automatic layer keeps the relationship warm in the background. Behavioral information helps you decide where a personal follow-up may make sense now.
What you can do this week
Start with what you already have.
Check how many usable contacts are in your CRM and how many you’ve added in the last 30 days. Pick two reliable sources for bringing in new contacts, then make sure the people already in your database are getting the listing alerts or other information they’ve asked for.
Finally, look for signs of renewed interest. Who came back to your website? Who started searching again? Pick a few people who may be worth a personal follow-up.
Then keep doing it.
The tools around real estate will keep changing. Galand has already watched that happen four times. The database is what carries those relationships forward. But only if you’re consistently adding new people, giving existing contacts a reason to stay connected, and paying attention when their interest picks back up.
Turn your database into a long-term growth tool
That’s where iHomefinder can help bring the pieces together. With IDX property search and lead capture tools, your website becomes a place where new prospects can discover homes and enter your database.
Automated property alerts help you stay in touch with buyers as new listings match their interests, while lead activity insights can help you recognize when someone might be ready for a more personal conversation.
Instead of relying on agents to remember every follow-up or manually check in with hundreds of contacts, these tools help keep the relationship moving between conversations.
The lead who isn’t ready today may still be the client you’re closing with years from now.