What is geographic farming?
The term ‘geographic farming’ is explained as an approach to generating leads by means of sending generating messages and serving a certain neighborhood. It means that a real estate agent sends messages to people they know and can target them more accurately tailoring them to the needs of every potential client. In fact, farming in real estate is similar to one known in agriculture:
- You identify homes which can be for sale one day and plant a seed of the future transaction;
- Nurturing your plant is similar to building relationships with homeowners;
- When it is time to sell a home, you harvest the crop of your efforts.
How much does it cost?
Naturally, every marketing strategy requires investment and real estate farming does it too. Naturally, you may use free resources such as social media posts and emails, but keeping up with modern trends and trying to meet expectations of people of all ages require you to use frequently visited websites, postcards, regularly scheduled letters, sponsoring local events, etc. You see that this investment may take up to several thousand dollars annually, but if you sell at least for homes within this period taking only one-fourth part of the market in this area, your revenue will be 3 or even 5 times higher than expenses made.
Choosing an area for real estate farming
The choice of the area for real estate farming is a very important point since you may be not the only agent to discover it. That is why this choice must be considered taking into account the following points:
- Choose an area where you have built-in expertise, recognition, and name
- The most effective real estate farm is about 400-500 homes.
- Consider a farm with recent and current sales.
- Analyze the competition.
How to make a real estate farming research?
When the choice of the area has been already made, it is time to research it thoroughly. This process will take some time, but you can do it gradually part by part.
- Setting the geographic borders of the area
Geography is a very important aspect since there are homes located in prestigious districts and ones in the suburbs. There is a waterfront property and one located not far from the forest. It is also important to analyze the geographical location as well as facilities offers there.
- Researching property located there
The neighborhood may have private homes, townhouses, and blocks of apartments as well as some unique features as pools, exclusive design, sauna etc. However, the main goal of every realtor is to evaluate the median lot size, typical style, dimensions and features, and median home price, of course.
- Making an inventory of homes
When it comes to inventory, real estate farming requires counting the absorption rate, turnover rate, and their combination.
- Discovering the population living there
This research is focused on learning the average age of people living their, their marital status, education, how they prefer to get information, whether they use social media etc.
Creating a real estate farm marketing strategy
The most important stage in real estate farming is building a marketing strategy. It should have the following features to be effective.
- Messages must be valuable
- Fill them with CTA
- Avoid using statistical data
- Prefer consistency in your messages
Real estate farming allows realtors to become an integral part of the community he or she is working in and become a number-one specialist to call when someone from this area will decide is to sell a home or buy another one for relatives or friends.
