Real Estate Farming: How to Become the Go-to Agent in Your Neighborhood in 2022

The success of your real estate farming operation depends on choosing the right area. A good farm included 500 homes or less (see our FAQ section for the “why”). Choose a place where there’s healthy demand (a good absorption rate) and where homes are being listed for sale at a solid clip (a good turnover rate). Ideally, choose a place where you’ve got some name recognition and some built-in expertise.

In our Ultimate Real Estate Farming Strategy Guide, we’ve got all the tools you’ll need to choose the right farm area. We’ll show you how to calculate absorption and turnover rates, and give you tips on conducting geographic, demographic, and property research.

Agents crushing the real estate farming game are delivering consistent value to homeowners in their farm areas. The key to this step is to plan the “what,” “when,” and “how” in advance. That way, you can reserve your precious face-time for client conversations that will move your prospects closer to a transaction.

Examples of successful real estate farming outreach include postcards, market updates, social media groups, and neighborhood websites. Create a calendar with each message you’re planning to send, and note what value it provides to your audience.

If you don’t know where to get started with the neighborhood website, we suggest Parkbench. With a Parkbench website, you can create an online space where community members can get information about local events, news, neighborhood happenings, and, of course, real estate—all brought to them by you, their go-to resource.

Your real estate farming leads are distinct from the types of leads you get from Zillow Premier Agent or the home valuation landing page on your website, so track them as such.

For our money, the best way to track leads is to invest in a solid real estate customer relationship manager (CRM) that will allow you to tag farm contacts, automate digital communication like email or text messages, and create a record of the value you’ve delivered over the life of your farm. Plus, a CRM provides an easy system to track every reply you send and ensure you promptly follow up on every point of contact.

Our choice for the best real estate CRM for 2022 is LionDesk, but you can check out all our top picks in our guide: The Best Real Estate CRM for 2022: In-depth Reviews & Pricing.

You’ve chosen the right farm area, made a plan to deliver consistent, long-term value, and set up a system to help you manage and track your interactions. Now, it’s time to set your automated communication plans in motion and start the clock on the high-touch outreach you’ll do to follow up with your postcards, social posts, and market updates.

Successful real estate farming is a combination of long-term automated communication and smart, day-by-day, personal follow-up. If you treat farming as a set-it-and-forget-it strategy, you won’t be as effective. Be active in the communities you’re serving, and your clients (and your wallet!) will thank you!

Details: The backbone of your farming campaign is your real estate farming postcards and flyers. These are ideal tools to convey messages, statistics, and authority to your farm area.

Use them to deliver a quarterly snapshot of the market, recipes, or sports schedules—ANYTHING that will provide value to your recipients.

Details: If your regularly scheduled postcards are a dependable, professional handshake, then on-demand postcards are your unexpected high-five.

Use this marketing tool to make homeowners aware of market activity in their community, especially after a property sells. Look for spikes in your home valuation landing pages traffic after these postcards go out.

Sending about 50 postcards to most similar homes in your farm area is a wake-up call to homeowners. You’ll be providing them with valuable information and insight into what their financial opportunity could be if they decide to sell, as well.

Details: Your farm area should have a dedicated section on your website where you can post weekly updates about the micro-neighborhood market, goings-on in the neighborhood, and even events in and around town. Your content can be short and sweet, with five or six sentences and a picture.

Remember, your website serves two purposes: to act as an online hub for your neighborhood to stop by and see what’s going on, and to show potential buyers interested in purchasing in your chosen area that you’re the go-to expert when they are ready to buy.

Details: The real estate letter is an ideal way to share market deep-dives since they provide more space for in-depth thought and analysis. Talk about what’s going on in your business or give shoutouts to those doing good works in your community.

Share messages that communicate to your farm that you’re the expert when it comes to buying and selling homes and LIVING in your community.

We’ve pulled together 17 real estate prospecting letter templates as a helpful resource for your prospecting venture. Check it out and start upping your prospecting game today.

Details: Collecting and communicating information that your farming community wants to know about is the best way to use a neighborhood-specific website. Try including interviews with local business owners, local news, coupons, and, of course, all the latest information about the real estate market.

Some people won’t visit your personal website because they perceive it to be about you, but a website focused on their neighborhood is about them, making it more palatable, and even appealing! As mentioned earlier, our suggestion for this sort of platform is Parkbench.

Power-users of Parkbench are posting weekly content (if not more often). However, posting once or twice a month is a great first effort for agents just getting started on the platform.

Details: Your farming efforts will be significantly more effective if you’re intentional about getting face-to-face with the people in your farm. Door-knocking isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but remember, you’re not going into these walks around the neighborhood cold.

By the time you kick off your door-knocking weekend, neighborhood residents will have heard from you multiple times. They know you, even though they don’t know you yet, and they should be familiar with the value you’ve provided so far.

Door-knocking takes practice, a little bit of courage, and most of all, consistent effort. Don’t call it quits until you get through your entire farm. We promise that the last 50 doors you knock on will be a lot easier than the first 50.

Details: Whether you’re throwing a summer block party and BBQ or a Halloween party, events are a fun way to meet and greet community members.

Start with something you know will be a hit if you’re new to event sponsorship—like a free pumpkin giveaway in October. Or, try sponsoring a neighborhood garage sale, a community fireworks display in July, or a Christmas tree giveaway in December.