Are you actively farming your own neighborhood?

It's a straightforward marketing strategy that many agents overlook. So, why should you consider farming your own neighborhood?

Well, it all comes down to the fact that people prefer doing business with those they know, like, and trust, especially when they share a common bond.

When you live in the same neighborhood, potential clients are more inclined to choose you as their REALTOR. However, this won't happen if you're a "secret agent" – someone they don't even know lives nearby and can serve them.

To get started, you need to establish yourself as a local expert.

How?

Begin by introducing yourself through a letter or postcard. Let them know you're a resident and express your interest in being their preferred REALTOR. Share your credentials and accomplishments to give them confidence in your abilities.

Next, demonstrate that you're an active agent....

Guess what?

Millennials, who were the dominant force in the housing market a year ago, have taken a step back. It's been a significant drop.

Now, why are millennials pulling away from the real estate scene?

The primary reason is interest rates.

The real question is, who has taken their place as the leading group of homebuyers? Who's currently driving the market?

Well, it might surprise you, but it's the baby boomer generation, and they're making a strong comeback in the housing market. In fact, cash buyers account for 27% of the recent transactions, and many of them are likely baby boomers with disposable income, not overly concerned about interest rates.

They see opportunities in the market now that they didn't have a year ago when they were competing with numerous other buyers.

So, as you adapt your marketing strategies to changing market dynamics, consider focusing on baby boomers within your sphere...

The impact of climate change is becoming increasingly evident through natural disasters worldwide. In my market alone, 2,700 homes were lost to wildfires, including three duplexes that I owned. Recent events like the devastating fire in Maui have left hundreds homeless.

How does this relate to real estate? Well, it's directly tied. Amid this destruction, we, as REALTORS, have an opportunity to step in and provide assistance. While it won't be an immediate transaction, it can help us build lasting relationships founded on genuine value.

So what's my suggestion?

Reach out promptly to your entire sphere of influence. Capitalize on the awareness generated by these incidents. Say, "Given the current wave of natural disasters, many clients have requested a quick update on their home value to ensure their insurance coverage is adequate. I've already prepared this report for you, and it took just a few minutes. If you're...

Hey guys, do you want to be a little bit more assertive, not aggressive, but assertive in your market? Let me give you a technique, a tip, and I love this idea. It came from one of my coaching students, and that is the idea of a real estate resume.

So, you are interviewing for a job when you're working for a buyer or a seller, and how many times in the real world, when you get a real job, you have to turn in a resume almost a hundred percent of the time. But what if you just become proactive and you create a real estate resume and you give it to everybody in your database? And you say, "Hey, I'm accepting new buyers and new listings for the spring market coming up, and I just thought I'd give you my real estate resume that you can share with your friends and family about my background as a realtor and my qualifications to help them with all their real estate needs. Here's a copy of it. Feel free to share it with your...

I've got a question for you:

How do you win against Zillow and Realtor.com in your local market?

And the reason I ask this question is because it's kind of crazy when you think about it:

Realtor.com and Zillow come to town, their algorithm takes our listings and uses our listings to get buyers to their websites. Then they take these buyers, they capture the information, then they resell the lead back to us.

It is absolutely bananas and nuts that we allowed this in the industry, but here we are. So how do we win against these behemoths, against these massive algorithms that are running 24/7/365 in our marketplaces?

I'm gonna give you the roadmap right now:

The way you win against an algorithm is you have to win mindshare.

Mindshare, not market share, but mindshare.

What that means is, in your community, when people hear the words real estate, what's the first thing they think about?

Is it Realtor.com? Is it Zillow? Or is it your name...

Here's a quick question:

Have you offered your concierge services to all of your clients?

First of all, what's your concierge services? That means that you are the point of contact for anything that has anything remotely to do with real estate, for all of your sphere of influence. And your farmer areas. And your social audiences. So in all those categories, I want those people to think of you when they need a plumber, an electrician, a carpet layer, etc. They're thinking about you before they think about anyone else because you're the main point of contact.

Now, how do you insert value so that they actually make that call instead of just Googling it? Well, here is the way you insert value:

First of all, you gotta talk about it and you should say something like this, "Hey, you may not be aware of this, but I want to act as your real estate concierge for anything that you have related to your house. Whether it's landscaping, a new...

Hey guys, we've got some good news regarding the real estate market, and that is Fannie Mae does a study, it's a purchase sentiment study. They do it every single month. And finally it's broken the downward trend.

All the way since back in February of 2022, there's just been this downward trend with sentiment among buyers and sellers about the market, about buying, about selling. And it really hit a low point here in the last couple months, but it's broken. Now it's starting to come back up.

Buyers and sellers are now seeing a little bit of a rainbow at the end of the tunnel here. They're saying the worst is behind us, and it's starting to look a little bit better.

So this is good news for us. We're gonna combine that with another piece of good news, which is affordability.

So affordability over the last couple of months has gotten way better. We had an interest rate peak, and now it's come down, down, down, down, down, and it's...

If you're looking for a way to quickly ramp up your business—if you're having a little bit of a slow time, or even if you're not—and you want to lead generate in a simple, easy, and organic way, let me give you the 20 messages a day strategy.

The 20 messages a day strategy is very, very simple.

I'm gonna use my social media account. You can pick your one: Instagram, Facebook, wherever. I'm gonna go to my friend's list of my following, my group, my audience, and I'm just gonna pick 20 people. And I'm generally just gonna start at the A's and work my way down. Or start a Z's and work my way up.

But I'm gonna click on each individual profile of those 20 different people. I'm gonna find something interesting, something they've posted that really catches my interest. Maybe they went to a restaurant, they went on vacation, they went to a certain business that you frequent, they bought something super cool,...

Hey guys, we are still in a low supply market. It's the lowest supply real estate market we've ever seen.

Despite the marketing changes and interest rates rising and the market dynamics kind of influx, still low supply and high demand.

So based on that, how can we go out there and still crush it in the market? How can we thrive despite the market conditions starting to shift under our feet?

One strategy is use the "Pocket Listing Strategy."

It's one of my favorite strategies and it's totally underused. Very few people do it.

Here's the concept:

One in seven homeowners today has raised their hand and said they're interested in selling the next three years. That's 15% of the population.

Drive through any neighborhood, and one of every seven homes you drive by is thinking about selling in the next three years.

There's a massive pent up seller demand, but how do you turn the key to unlock it?

Well, a large group of those people may not be...

My wife and I had something exciting happen: We downsized! We moved out of our big house into a much smaller house because three outta four of our kids are out of the house and we want to travel some more.

We're like a lot of people in our generation. We're in that mindset of scaling down. But what's interesting is over the years, in our big house, we received a lot of marketing messages from REALTORS and the marketing messages always focused mostly on the agent getting a listing. For instance, the marketing messages would be a postcard, a door hanger, etc. and it would say something like this:

"Are you considering selling? Call me."
"Would you like to know what your home is worth? Call me."
"I have a buyer who may be interested in your home. Call me."

Now, what are all those marketing messages center on? The agent getting your listing. And I get it. I've been guilty of the same thing.

But what if we changed tactics and we focused on...