Our team has had success with many different marketing campaigns as well as internet success. The one thing we have had very little luck with is our farms. We chose an area we like to sell, we have sent the newsletters, knocked the doors, held the contests, etc. but we have only had a couple of transactions due to a great deal of effort. What have you found that really stimulates a real estate farm?

True involvement with the community. My farm brings me 95% of my business, but my name is very well known to most people in my farm area and I am in frequent contact with people in my farm (face-to-face, phone, and e-mail) and I give a lot back to my community in terms of service and organizing community events that encourage residents to get to know one another.

GailSusan, How large is your farm, and how many listings do you get from it in a year? How long have you been farming the area? and... How long did you farm before you started seeing consistant results? (not quite 20 questions...)

Hi Carla, I've been in the business two years. My farm is exactly 965 at the moment (it changes as people move in and out of the area). I had five listings last year and six sales (everything sold, plus one sale from a buyer). I have had eight listings so far this year, three sales, another about to go under contract this week, one cancellation (the exclusion in the listing agreement bought the property), one withdrawal (property wasn't showing well, so owner is renovating it), and the rest are still on the market.

I have been farming the area since September 2004. I didn't see any results from the farming until I started sending out Just Sold cards and then people started to call me saying "I see you sell a lot of homes in the area." I make sure that every postcard I send out has factual data that shows the property I just sold had fewer days on market "Accepted offer in 7 days!" or got the price the seller wanted "Sold at full list price" or did better in some way than the competition "Out of 5 homes sold over $1 million in 2005 in (our market area), this property sold the closest to list price." It's really kind of like a score card that I'm sharing with my farm.

I also send out Just Listed cards to my farm so that potential clients can see that I'm trying to market their properties, not just using the postcards to market myself.

I send out about 14-16 jumbo, high gloss postcards to my farm a year. It's very expensive, but I know I've gotten business from it, so it's worth it to me. Hope this is helpful to you.

The post cards for just listed, sold, etc. Work well for me too.

Being active in the community is key. When my father and I wanted to own the business in his community we started a variety of things. He got very active in the local home owners board, sent postcards, donated money to local charities that impact the community (schools, etc).

All this stuff takes time and needs to be part of a good marketing strategy.

Your not going to see lots of traction till at least 6 months and may have to wait as long as 18 months before some of these efforts pay off. Lots of this depends on how much competition there is in the neighborhood your working on.

Go for things in your community. I actually got business off of applying to be appointed to the local school board. Did not get the appointment, but my name and profession got into the town paper and I got a few calls off of that.

You can never tell how becoming active in your community will pay off... only that it will pay off in some way.

R

I totally agree.