Southern California’s real estate market is as cold as the snow adorning the peaks of its mountains. Interest rates are up. Inventory is down. And deals are few and far between.

In slow markets, the agents at the top — those with experience, connections and plenty of clients — typically maintain a modest but steady stream of business.

It’s the agents at the bottom — those just getting into the industry who’ve only managed to close a handful of sales — who starve.

As those agents have grown more desperate for leads, they’re trying alternative ways of finding them. Some are outsourcing the work overseas, and others are turning to AI or automation in a last-ditch attempt to find a seller.

During the record-breaking pandemic market, there were so many transactions that most determined real estate agents were able to make a living. More than 43,000 single-family homes traded hands in L.A. County in 2021, and more than 42,000 were sold in 2022, according to the Multiple Listing Service.

During that time, tens of thousands joined the National Assn. of Realtors, or NAR, with membership swelling to a record 1.6 million in 2022, up 200,000 since 2020. Real estate wasn’t just a solid job; it was a way to leap into a higher tax bracket.

But then the market started to freeze in 2023 as mortgage rates shot up.

Only 11,539 single-family homes sold that year, and sales are at a similar pace so far this year.

Some agents are simply calling it quits. In California alone, NAR lost 9,723 members from December 2023 to January 2024 — a 4.75% decline. But even after the drop, California still holds the second-most active Realtors in the nation at 194,964, and they’re all fighting for an extremely small pool of sellers.

At the peak of the pandemic market, Tyler Andrews, 29, tried his hand at real estate in the Inland Empire, thinking he would use his outgoing personality to sell homes as L.A. residents flocked to the area during the pandemic. He got his license and helped a few friends with their house hunts, but ultimately didn’t earn any commission and stopped in 2023.

He’s one of many agents who rushed into real estate hoping for a taste of California’s latest gold rush.

From the outside, listing a house in a hot market seems like the easiest of get-rich-quick schemes. Homes sell in days, and a 3% agent’s commission on a $1 million sale comes out to $30,000. If you represent both sides of the deal, it turns into $60,000.

But the real estate industry isn’t an easy one to break into. You typically get paid only if you close a sale, and in any market, most homeowners still prefer to go with an agent with experience.

In a hot market, sellers find an agent. In a cold market, agents have to find a seller. The situation is coming to a boil in many areas, such as Leimert Park, where residents have been barraged by agents asking whether they’re interested in putting their homes up for sale.

Cold calling is time consuming — and stressful, considering the ire it draws from those on the receiving end. So some agents are handing that thankless task to machines.

A handful of companies such as Slybroadcast and Salesmsg offer “ringless voicemail,” a robocall-adjacent tool enabling agents to send pre-recorded messages straight to your voicemail box without your phone ever ringing. The messages are often meant to trick you into thinking you missed a call, saying things like, “Sorry I missed you! Give me a call back whenever you get a chance.”

In 2022, the Federal Communications Commission declared the trend a form of robocalling and said it’s illegal if the caller doesn’t have the recipient’s prior consent. But that hasn’t stopped agents from sending out such voicemails to potential clients.

“I don’t have time to cold call all day,” said one real estate agent who asked to remain anonymous due to the potential taboo of using the technology. “I have to find clients somehow, and in a market like this, you have to get creative.”