Do you want to become the agent of choice for a specific community? This is called geographic farming and the concept is to establish and brand yourself as the community expert and develop relationships with the occupants who will hopefully choose you over your competition to perform the services they need.

Your real estate farm is a long-term investment in a community and the people who live there. Farming takes time and with the number of real estate agents who you may be competing against, it can be costly to establish yourself.

If you want continuing success within a community, just remember, even though consistency is king in farming, it’s not about how much marketing you do – it’s how you serve the customer that truly matters. Provide the best information and service you can to be considered the local expert, and be thought of first when real estate comes to mind for those in the market to buy or sell. Treat your customers well. Happy customers refer other customers. Unhappy ones usually speak much louder and to more people – often times to their neighbours! If you keep your focus on the people and meeting their needs, the prize will follow.

Advantages of Farming

The number one advantage to farming is the convenience of location. If most of your listings and sales are centralized in one area, it makes your job of serving your customers a whole lot easier. Traveling between customers that are only minutes apart improves your service image and decreases operational costs. With gas prices high, not to mention the recent snow storm, it makes sense to limit your service area a bit. Familiarity with a specific community gives you an advantage that an outside real estate agent simply will not have. When asked about schools, local businesses, community activities, etc., answering these questions without having to do extensive research will give you an incredible edge. Providing information that only an insider would have is a huge asset. The more you know about your neighbourhood, the better your edge.

Developing long-term relationships with your customers and other businesses within the area can be the greatest reward. There is a lot of satisfaction from customer loyalty and referral support. The longer you service the community, the more recognition you will gain, thus branding you and ensuring that your name comes up as the primary community real estate resource.

Farming can yield amazing results – imagine seeing your real estate yard sign every other block. How about being invited to every neighbourhood block party because the neighbours know and like you?

Disadvantages of Farming

Unless you live in the neighbourhood, when you begin to farm you won’t know the people or the community. You have to develop relationships from scratch and learn about the comings and goings of the neighbourhood.

Farming is labor intensive – database management, door knocking, direct mailing, etc. and often times there is little immediate reward.

The variety of people living in the community requires more extensive market planning. If you farm the entire area, make sure to separately consider each type of occupant in each type of dwelling to get the most out of your marketing dollars; homeowners, absentee homeowners/renters, single-family, condo, multi-family, etc. To get the best results, your marketing messages for each should be based on the needs of each type and thus the content will differ greatly.

Cold calling your farm can be even less inviting since the 2003 requirements of the National Do Not Call Registry. Before placing a call, check to make sure the phone number is not on the Registry list. Visit The National Do Not Call Registry for more information about how you can check. Before you sign up and pay, ask your broker if they have an account available for you to use to verify phone numbers on the list.

To reach the majority of potential customers, you are limited in contact to door knocking and direct mail until you establish a relationship and receive e-mail contact information as a less expensive method of contact. Regardless, e-mail shouldn’t be the only source of contact with your potential customers. Door knocking can be fun and is significantly less expensive than direct mail.

The Top 10 Real Estate Farming Ideas

1. Neighbourhood Market Updates

Sending a monthly or quarterly comparative market analysis (CMA) of the community to its members not only shows that you stay aware of the neighbourhood’s sales activity, it provides residents with something of value that they will look forward to receiving regularly.

2. Just Listed & Just Sold Flyers

Whether distributed by foot directly to door steps or sent in the mail, flyers that market your new listings in the neighbourhood as Just Listed / Sold are critical to evidencing your success to other residents. Remember that frequency of contacts is the key to farming success, so additional flyers for Coming Soon, Price Reduced, Back on Market and Open Houses just give you more ways to stay first of mind with the neighbours and show how hard you work to get homes sold.

3. Telephone Calls to Neighbours

Telephone calls to the residents of the farm advertising your new listing as Just Listed or Just Sold typically result in more new listing appointments than any other real estate farming ideas. As with flyers, calls around the neighbourhood to advertise listings as Coming Soon, Price Reduced, Back on Market and Open Houses just increase an agent’s chances of getting new listing appointments. With it being far more difficult to get phone numbers, pounding the pavement and getting residents to opt-in to your communications is even more important than ever.

4. Door Knocking

Although this traditional activity can be laborious and difficult depending on your area’s change in the seasons, there is no better way to obtain the “mind-share” of residents than by meeting them face-to-face. Door knocking does take significantly more time than telephone calls, but you can use your telephone scripts, and it’s a great way to build a relationship.

5. FSBOs & Expired Listings

Staying in contact with For Sale By Owner (FSBO) sellers and owners of expired listings is the most lucrative real estate farming idea since these residents typically have their hand up wanting to sell their home right now. Stay in continuous contact with FSBO sellers by showing how hard you work to market your listings while building relationships by helping them market their home along with your listings. Show the FSBO homes to buyers as much as you can to prove how much more buyer traffic you can generate. Make sure to create a list in MLS to notify you of expired listings. That way you can call them and drop off a marketing packet on their doorstep for a chance to interview for the job the first day the listing expires.

6. Open Houses

Open houses don’t just attract buyers, they give you an opportunity to meet neighbours. Owners that are thinking about selling love to check out open houses in their neighbourhood prior to putting their homes up for sale, and hopefully they know that you are the area’s expert by now. So they will want to not only check out what other competition on the market looks like, but they will also want to meet and see what you do too. So holding successful open houses is critical to real estate farming.

7. Email Campaigns

Whether you meet neighbourhood residents over the phone, at open houses or at their front door, it is crucial to always ask for their email address to be able to “provide them with regular updates about what other homes are selling for so that you know how your home is changing or increasing in value.” Once you start creating an email database of all of the residents in the area, it becomes much cheaper and easier to systematically contact them to evidence your success. Make sure you have a CRM to help you with the follow-up!

8. Social Media & Facebook

Joining or creating a neighbourhood Facebook page is another effective way to keep yourself in front of neighbours to show your efforts. Advertising the page on all flyers, mailers and to neighbours at open houses proves your commitment to community involvement. Post things of value on the page like CMAs, just listed & just sold links, open house invitations and other community events and information.

9. Block Parties

Once established as the neighbourhood expert, hold block party events at a community pool, park or common area. These can even be held at one of your listings in conjunction with an open house. Bring in a bouncy house, cook hot dogs or hamburgers on a grill, blow up balloons with a helium tank, provide face-painting and etc. to show you are giving back to the community. The key here is to market the event in advance with mailers, emails and telephone calls to again make more touches and invite everyone in the neighbourhood.

10. Neighbourhood Websites

Creating a website specific to the neighbourhood you are farming is a great way to again show neighbours that you go above and beyond to market homes in the community. Neighbourhood websites should have a URL that is specific to the neighbourhood like www.ForrestRidgeEstates.com, or www.ForrestRidgeEstatesHome.com if the prior is not available. This URL can be hung on sign riders below all For Sale signs and advertised on all of your marketing pieces as well. Links to the site should frequently be posted on the neighbourhood Facebook page too.

The website itself can be relatively simple and low maintenance. It should include a feed to your local listings (MLS) with criteria pre-set to pull up all active listings for the neighbourhood when prospective buyers search for homes for sale. The website might also feature a video and photos of the neighbourhood and local amenities like nearby shopping centres, schools, parks, trails and etc. Remember the key here is not the content of the site, but the fact that you have one. So it is more important to market the existence of the site to the community than it is to build a complex site with all of the bells and whistles.

Finally, ask for referrals – many people assume that if you are their neighbourhood expert, you only work in their area. If you are willing to serve customers outside of your farm area – MAKE IT CLEAR to the people you contact. You can send Just Sold postcards to your farm with your sales information from outside of their neighbourhood. Many customers have friends who are buying or selling, but they won’t refer you because they don’t know you will work with them. Even worse, they think that they can’t contact you if they are considering buying a second home outside of the neighbourhood. Not good, when all it takes is communication.