How Do You Get More Listings in 2026? What the Top Listing Guides Say

The question I hear from agents who want to grow but cannot see the path is not usually about buyers at all. It is about listings. They work escrow to escrow, rent leads, and watch other agents sign listing after listing while their own pipeline stays quiet. So the search bar fills up with the same ache in a dozen different spellings: "How do I get more listings?" Sometimes it comes out as "how to grow my real estate business." Sometimes it is "how to increase real estate production." Sometimes it is "how to win the listing appointment." But the fear underneath is identical: their business is one listing away from steady, and the listings are not coming to them.

Here is the truth agents need to hear: the listings are not coming, you go get them. The top listing guides this season agree on the core: getting more listings is a system, not a surprise. It is an acquisition engine that fills your calendar with listing opportunities, followed by an appointment process that turns those opportunities into signed agreements. Two guides keep surfacing in the bookmarks of agents who are building the listing side of their business: HousingWire's 12 proven strategies for 2026, and Tim and Julie Harris's seven-step listing process. This post walks through both and ties the pattern back to the AgentPreneur Model.

The searches agents can't stop making this fall

Watch the queries and they all point at the same gap. "How to get more listings," the search agents make the week the pipeline dries up. "How to win a listing presentation," the search they make the week before a big appointment. "Expired listings, how to farm expireds," the search of the agent who just realized a huge part of the market is sitting unserved. "How to grow your real estate business," the goal underneath all of them. Two guides keep showing up in the bookmarks of agents serious about the listing side: HousingWire's "How to Get Listings in Real Estate: 12 Proven Strategies for 2026," and Tim and Julie Harris's "The 7-Step Listing Process: How Real Estate Agents Win Every Listing Appointment in 2026." One builds the engine that fills your calendar. The other builds the appointment that signs the deal.

Guide one: where the listings actually come from

The first guide agents are reading is HousingWire's "How to Get Listings in Real Estate: 12 Proven Strategies for 2026." It is a twelve-item playbook, and its first point is the one most agents still skip: start with your sphere of influence. HousingWire calls your existing contacts "by far the best way" to win listings, because those people already trust you, and trust is the whole appointment. The guide's second strategy is to grow that sphere consistently and on purpose, not when the market gets slow and you suddenly remember everyone you know.

Then the guide turns to the streets. Prospect old expired listings, and the guide is specific: many agents have more success reaching out to old expirations, sellers whose listings lapsed in a previous cycle, than chasing new daily expirations, because the old ones have had time to feel the pain. Buy listing leads if you must, but know what you are buying. Go door knocking in target neighborhoods, which the guide calls old school and still effective, with the pro tip to leave something of value, local market data, an open-house invitation, or news of a coming-soon listing, when no one answers. And host open houses, not just your own but other agents', because that is where the neighborhood sellers show up, and you are the person who greeted them. HousingWire cites a conference-panel agent who door-knocked daily for months and sold more than 40 homes in his first year in the business. Not because he was charming. Because he had a machine.

Guide two: win the appointment before you walk in the door

The second guide agents are reading alongside it is Tim and Julie Harris's "The 7-Step Listing Process: How Real Estate Agents Win Every Listing Appointment in 2026." It opens with the market reality that makes listings the growth side of this year: 43 to 50 percent of listings are expected to expire across most markets. Every expired listing is a seller the last agent lost, and a seller who is more ready than ever to move. The guide's core claim is the sentence every top producer lives by: the appointment is won before you walk in the door.

The seven steps run from lead generation to follow-up, and two of them are where most agents lose. Step two is pre-qualification, and the guide calls skipping it the most expensive mistake in the business. Before you set the appointment you need to know what the seller thinks the house is worth, their timeline, and why they are moving. Showing up uninformed is the number one listing-appointment mistake. Step three is the pre-listing pack, which the guide calls the home run idea: a packet with your marketing plan, your communication guarantee, and your fee structure, sent before the appointment so it eliminates the objections before you arrive. Step four is simply setting the appointment, and the guide flags that going last on the seller's calendar is an advantage, because by then everyone else has shown their hand. Then you present, you confirm the decision, you get the agreement signed, and you follow up.

Two guides, one answer: listings are a system, not a surprise

Read them together and the pattern snaps into focus. HousingWire fills the top of the funnel: sphere, expireds, door knocking, open houses, the daily habit that keeps the calendar full. Tim and Julie Harris win the bottom: pre-qualify, send the pack, take the appointment, sign the agreement. The producer reads both and sees more work. The owner reads both and sees the two halves of one machine. Getting more listings is not about being more likable than the next agent, it is about having the system the next agent does not have. When the pipeline is full of listing appointments you have earned, you grow your real estate business without renting another lead, and you increase real estate production without working more weekends.

This is exactly what BOSS Coaching is built on

That is the AgentPreneur Model, the framework I have coached for 13 years as a performance coach, and the listing side of it is the same recipe. I have spent 23 years in this business the hard way: builder, general contractor, flipper, investor, and now team leader to an eXp organization of more than 1,200 agents across 30 states and 5 countries. That builder background is your unfair advantage on a listing appointment, by the way. When a seller asks about the cracked foundation or the roof, I can talk construction, and sellers can tell. You do not need to be a contractor to win listings, but you do need to know your farm better than the agent who just pulls comps.

The agents I have watched grow their listing business through every cycle did the same five things: owned their database and automation, built lead flow that runs whether they are on a listing appointment or not, showed up on video so the market knows their face, farmed a geography until their name is the default answer for who sells homes around here, and built the team roles and standard operating procedures that let those pillars multiply. That is the Five Pillars: database and automation, lead flow, video presence, and a geographic farm, held together by real estate systems. The listing machine from those two guides is what the Five Pillars are for.

And the environment matters, so let's be direct about it. The eXp model, cloud-based, office-free, with no five-level cap, is a superior growth environment for an agent building this way, because your economics are not built to hit a ceiling. Your splits, your revenue share, and your stock compound instead of capping out, which means the listing production you build does not get eaten by overhead and a cap. Team leader coaching, my lane, is about installing the acquisition engine and the appointment system from those two guides into your business, and then leading the team that runs them. Making real estate fun again, starting with the week your calendar is full of listing appointments you earned.

The 30-day listing reset

If your listing pipeline is quiet, here is the reset I give my own team leaders. Week one, audit the listing side: how many listings did you take last year, how many expired listings sit in your farm, how many homes sold in your target geography, and who are the ten people in your sphere most likely to list in the next year. Pick one farm and commit to it. Week two, start the daily habit: ten sphere conversations and five expired outreach touches every morning before anything else can steal the hour. Week three, build your pre-listing pack, your marketing plan, your communication guarantee, and your fee structure, and pull the micromarket data for your farm so you walk in knowing the market better than the seller. Week four, run the seven-step process end to end: pre-qualify every seller, send the pack, take the appointment, present, confirm, sign, follow up. On day 30, count the appointments you booked and the agreements you signed. That number is your listing business.

If you're an agent ready to stop struggling alone and join a community of real estate leaders who have cracked the code on doubling production, we have opportunities for you. Book a 10-minute call with Coach Randy Byrd, and let's build the listing machine that grows your real estate business and scales your real estate team.