Find Sellers Now! Farming for Prospects with RPR

If you know anything about real estate right now, you know that inventory is tight. In this market, you simply can't wait for sellers to come to you. You've got to go find them! And you find them by farming for prospects.

Geographic farming is one of the most tried and true techniques when it comes to an agent's long term success. You need to find the right neighborhoods, crunch data to determine if they're ripe, and effectively market yourself to the homeowners in the area over a sustained period. Not sure where to start? RPR is here to map out your path to success...

You build a farm—then harvest it for leads!

If you're not familiar with geographical farming, here's a simplified explanation: a farm is an area, usually a neighborhood, that you identify as having great potential to market yourself to in order to find prospects and clients. RPR can help you with both.

Find your farm and dig

So how do you figure out if a neighborhood is worth targeting? Turnover rate is one of the most important factors to consider. Turnover is a percentage of how many homes have sold in a defined area in a year. For example, if an area has one hundred homes, and 10 are sold in a year, the turnover rate is 10%. A good rule of thumb is that your farm area must have at least a 5% turnover rate for you to invest in targeting it.

Another important thing to look for when doing this research is to see if a market is dominated by one agent already. If one agent already has 25% or more of the listings in an area, you might want to look elsewhere. This agent has beaten you to it and has obviously already invested their time, resources, etc. We're not saying you can't do it or that it is impossible, but it's more difficult to establish yourself in a market that's already been fished. Or farmed, in this case.

Market yourself to your farm

After you've found your area and done your homework to make sure it's a fertile farm, you need to market yourself to those homeowners. You'll need to apply a mix of marketing tactics, over at least a one year period, including email, social media posts, phone calls, door knocking (post-COVID, of course), and perhaps most importantly, direct mail.

RPR adds tons of value by giving REALTORS® the ability to easily create mailing labels, up to 2,000 per month. (Watch this video: Create Your Own Mailing Labels In RPR: A How-To Video for details.)

• Pro Tip: How to Target Specific Homeowners - This RPR Shortcut will guide you through an example of how to search for Owner Occupied homeowners that have owned the property for between 5-15 years. Try it now!

Farming for prospects: one webinar that can change your entire marketing strategy

We know what you're thinking, "This sounds very complicated and requires a lot of effort. And there's math?!" Okay, it will require work on your part and you will have to put in some time. (Kind of a given, right?)

However, it's not as difficult as it sounds and RPR has simplified it for you. Learn more by saving your spot in this upcoming webinar, "Finding Sellers for Today and Tomorrow: Real Estate Farming is Your Key to Success."

Attend this special webinar and you'll see how easy it is to start farming for prospects in RPR. We show you each step, where to click, how to use the maps to uncover data, how to determine if one agent is getting all the listings, and even how to create mailing labels for your direct mail campaigns.

Finding sellers and getting listings should be the top priority for every practicing REALTOR®. Get started and farm for prospects today to have listings tomorrow.

If you want to dig even deeper and sharpen your farming skills further, be sure to check out: RPR's Ultimate Guide to Geographic Farming. It goes in depth to explain every last detail to help get you up and running. Good luck, farmer!

To view the original article, visit the RPR blog.