House Agents — Wanna Start the New Year Kickin’ Ass? Here’s How

First off, I’m gonna say right up front, I’m not a house agent, and haven’t been since President Jimmy was in office tellin’ all of us our attitudes sucked. Of course, becoming an ‘investment agent‘ back then wasn’t what one would call prescient timing. About the time I’d learned enough to become dangerous, we had what we now call a correction.

Since everyone’s all excited these days about transparency, I thought I’d disclose I’m not a house agent, even though I’m about to give a boatload of house agent advice. Furthermore, the advice I’m about to give, isn’t new — it’s just my angle on things.

I was a house guy for my first seven years. My main source of business was generated by farming activities. I’d read a few books, and was unimpressed. Then I was given one by my broker, and after reading it, I’d thought he’d given me the key to the vault. 🙂

It was written by the owner of the well known real estate licensing school, Lumbleau. He was the founder, John J. Lumbleau. It told about a concept called Farming, which really furrowed my brow. Remember, this was the early ’70’s — farming? In real estate?

Even though it involves a little technology, I guarantee you, if I can handle it, your Aunt Fannie can do it. My son Josh’s favorite question for me is, “You made that up, right? You can’t be serious, asking me that question!” It’s almost always a software or a basic computer question, so honest, the hi-tech will be easy.

I’ve been speaking to a few agents around the country this year. I’ve said the same thing to all of them: Build a hyper-local farm as a website/blog.

See? Told ya it wasn’t anything new.

The problem as I see it, is nobody (that I’ve found so far) does it the way I think would work like gangbusters. I keep hearing agents, a couple whom I know, say they tried it, but there just wasn’t any traction. In my opinion they didn’t give it even half a chance to take its first breath. Also, I’d bet my last quarter’s earnings they did about 10% of what I think is required to make it successful. I saw firsthand what one of them did — and to be kind, it was pathetic. Seriously weak. His best shot was something about him being their neighborhood expert….here it comes….serving all their real estate needs.

I kid you not.

Before I start telling you what I’d do, here’s my flimsy credentials for even having the you-knows to offer up this golden opportunity.

While selling homes, I farmed — in the ’70’s. We called it real estate 0.1 back then — not.

It was only about 400 homes or so. I knocked on each door monthly. To make a long story short, after about eight months I was taking two of every three listings from that neighborhood. My broker back then used to hate it when it was cold and drizzly, because three or four housewives would feel sorry for me, inviting me in for ‘a quick cup of coffee to warm you up’. Some days I returned wired for sound.

After a year, appraisers, mostly FHA/VA back then, were calling me for the latest comps. Life was good. I was so oblivious to the economy I wasn’t aware the two year life of that farm was the recession of ’74-’75. Go figure. I was 22 when I knocked on my first farm door.

It’s my belief this approach will work — and on a major scale. In fact, I’ve told the above mentioned agents they could, if so inclined, literally operate 2-5 separate farms encompassing 3-5,000 homes.

(Rod Serling’s voice)

Imagine, if you will, a blog site having more info on your neighborhood than you ever thought existed. I don’t mean boring real estate stuff, as any yahoo can generate that boring crap. I’m talking about reading about your son Steve’s game winning, last inning double in yesterday’s Little League game — complete with pictures. Yep, each neighborhood blog would be a de facto newspaper, with all the work that goes with it.

As an aside, all listings obtained this way would have their own websites linked from the blog. They would be elegant, and photographed within an inch of their lives. What kinda listing tool do you think that’d be? Just another perk for the blog. I repeat — nothing new. However, everyone is already coming to your ‘neighborhood’ site, and now they see how each listing is turned into its own website.

School News

All the info about the elementary school’s science fair. Who won? Who didn’t, but had a pretty cool project anyway? Who got straight A’s? Who is the principal there, and what can he tell you about what’s going on? Field trips — visiting celebrities — and all the big to-do’s parents would love to read about.

Same goes for middle and high schools of course. Gee, I wonder if Mom and Dad will like seeing Susie’s picture in your blog getting her 1st Place ribbon for the 5th grade spelling bee? Ya think?

The PTA will fall in love with you. How could they not? You’re publicizing their every move — for free. The movers and shakers, ahem — parents who live in your farm, are quoted, and sometimes pictured. In other words, their efforts are getting public recognition, and you’re the one doing it.

The local police will do pretty much whatever you want, as soon as they see you’re really, truly offering your community a solid service. Anyone who sees what you’re doing will cooperate with you. It’s a no-brainer for them. Some may be slower than others, but once they actually look at your work, they’ll see how much good the blog’s actually doing.

And they’ll be right. You will be.

Churches

Aside from sports, this one I’ve got down cold. I’m a PK (preacher’s kid) for Heaven’s sake — pun intended. This group, if handled with absolute honesty and integrity, could very well end up pointing more business your way than the rest combined. This will be easier of course, if you actually attend a church in one of the farms. That said, converting for credibility isn’t recommended. 🙂

Churches always have many things going on, and welcome sincere outside help. A special speaker is coming next month? Put it on the neighborhood blog. Give contact info. In no time they’ll be calling you — a real time saver. (Heck, that’s what happened to me over 30 years ago.) What about church camp in summer? In my experience, churches know when someone is truly doing them a service — and they’re grateful. If you’re taking pictures at a church outing, and they appear, with permission, in the neighborhood blog, it helps them reach out. That’s their agenda in a nutshell — and you’re doing some of the heavy lifting for them.

Sports

I already mentioned Little League. There’s high school sports — boys and girls. The opportunities for pictures are phenomenal. I’ve still got newspaper clippings from Josh’s glory days. (son) Getting to know the coaches and league leadership will be invaluable. Again, once they see you’re for real, they’ll sometimes call you. Do you think kids wanting to write will help out with the reporting? Of course they will. How do you think this will go over with the kids’ homeowner parents?

Duh.

Schools, churches, and sports are only three of almost an infinite number of subjects your blog/newspaper can cover. Major local community stuff is in endless supply — and important to at least a few of the thousands of homeowners in your farm(s).

Look, I said this isn’t anything new.

If looked at closely though, and I have, there still isn’t anyone in the country doing it at the level I would — and I think I know why.

It’s incredibly labor intensive up front. Seriously though, how hard can it be to put a team together? Not other agents, but high school students, older residents looking for something to do, you know the drill.

Know what one of the most popular things I did back in the day when I farmed? Set up a baby sitter directory. Don’t laugh. I set up a sort of clearing house with a 60-something year old woman in my farm. She knew most of the teenaged girls already, and loved being so useful to her younger neighbors. At her insistence, everybody, including me, called her Aunt Ginnie. Nothing went on in that farm she didn’t know about, or find out one way or another. Man, she was like CNN before cable.

When she passed away, I’d already switched to the investment side. Her family lived somewhere in the midwest, and found one of my old neighborhood ‘Hot Sheets’ with my broker’s number on it. They eventually called me, wanting me to sell her home for them. They agreed with me, my old broker was better suited, listing with him. They told me at her memorial, which was well attended by the folks still in her neighborhood, she bragged all the time about how much I depended upon her for help in my farming efforts. You just never know.

An important lesson I learned from the whole baby sitter thing, was what it led to. That one little neighborhood directory led to almost one of every five listings I took from my farm. I was pretty surprised, while my broker was astounded.

It’s my belief that if someone actually takes up this gauntlet, they’ll succeed wildly.

In fact, if they limit their approach to three contiguous neighborhoods, with roughly 2,000 homes, here’s what I think would happen.

Note: I’m using neighborhoods, not subdivisions. Most neighborhoods are comprised of several subdivisions.

After the first six months or so, you’ll be fairly well known. This will happen quickly because unlike me, who had to actually knock on all the doors every month, your folks will knock on your door almost every day — to see what’s new on their blog. You’ll have to be absolutely obsessive about getting your blogs’ URL’s into their hands. There’s a zillion ways to do that, but it needs to happen at the speed of light — and with mind numbing repetition. Frankly, it’ll be a lot of work, but it’s just not rocket science.

Until you’ve successfully made them aware of the blog, followed by ‘giving it a try’ — you’ll be blogging to yourself.

Once it happens though, and you’ve successfully hooked them, they’ll require an almost daily fix of neighborhood goings on. In other words, they’ll come to you several times weekly. How much is that worth?

So anyway, after no more than six months you’ll be pretty well known — and probably tuckered out. Those first months will no doubt be the hardest, because you’ll be starting from scratch. By then you will have networked your way to having the local churches, schools, some coaches, a couple farm residents, and a few teachers acting as evangelists, spreading the word about the agent doing so much for the neighborhood. They’ll also lighten your load, as they’ll become stringers for their blog.

And how ’bout inviting a homeowner with something of value to contribute, to be an occasional contributor? Or helping small business owners who live in the farm with free space on the blog?

I believe at this point it will become wildly viral.

Not only will listings flow your way, but referrals will also begin to appear — and multiply. In the 26 months I farmed my 400 home neighborhood, I listed about, (Memory’s a little foggy on this one, but I’ll be pretty close.) 25-28 homes. That’s not counting the dozen or so around town I listed from farm referrals. Or the buyers. I don’t know how many buyers were generated, but it was more than a few. Well over half of the sellers stayed in San Diego, buying bigger homes — through me. Back in the ’70’s there weren’t a lot of agents farming as hard as I did. I was young, and didn’t know it would fail, so I did it. Again, who knew?

Let’s put my numbers back then into today’s market. Using 25 farm listings plus the 12 referral listings I took, gives me 37 listings in 24 months. I’ll be pretty conservative, and estimate another 15 sales from farm folks moving after I’d sold their homes. I’ll ignore the half a dozen or so additional sales from referrals to buyers.

This results in 37 listing sides, and 15 buyer sides in two years. Today that would mean (at only $500,000 a home) an income for the two years of — $780,000 — figured at 3% a side.

Imagine if I hadn’t had to farm, relative to today’s available hi-tech tools, like a caveman.

With at least 2,000 homes, it’s my contention a total of (at least?) 100 homes a year would come up for sale. All but a very few would list with an agent. In your first year, even if you screwed it up like Hogan’s goat, you’d still, in my opinion, get at least 20% of those lisitngs — that’s 20 listings. If you worked like a plow horse on Grandpa’s south 40, you might get a lot more.

By the second year you’d dominate. If I would’ve had the tools we have today, I believe 75-80% of the listings would’ve been mine. That’s about 70-80 listings every year with a 2,000 home farm. How much other business do you think you’d do by way of referrals outside the farms?

Plenty, that’s how much.

If the median price of your area is, say, $225,000 — and you were paid a listing side on 70 homes, here’s how it might look.

Since you’re a full service agent, that means you’ll make 3%, or $6,750 a listing. Doing that 70 times comes to $472,500 — not counting all the other business coming your way via referrals, and the sales you’ll be making because many of your sellers will stay in town and buy more expensive homes — from you.

In places like San Diego? Your income would approach the need for two commas.

And once you’ve figured out how to gather all the info your voracious, insatiable blog(s) require, you’ll probably be able to expand to 4,000 homes. I know this is the way I’d go if I was a house agent.

(In fact, I’m envious. If anyone has an idea of how to take this idea to the investment side, in multiple states — I’m all ears.)

Instead of traditional buyers’ agents, I’d hire non-agents and agents to be on my team. It’s not that I wouldn’t have buyer only agents, their job descriptions would include behind the scenes farm work. Remember, it’s a de facto newspaper. And for a newspaper to succeed, people obviously need to subscribe to it. Lots of people. All the people in your farms.

Furthermore, as a newspaper, you’d have to remember — yesterday’s big news is today’s fish wrap.

It will become a good news/bad news joke.

The good news is it’s wildly successful, and you’re now the listing king/queen of those neighborhoods. The bad news is it’s because you’re wildly successful due to the addiction you’ve created to constantly renewing neighborhood info on your blog(s).

Creating addictions in real estate — good. Not feeding that addiction daily — bad.

Don’t despair — Russell Shaw does over 400 sides yearly, on his way to 2,000, and he doesn’t even do listing presentations, much less show property. It’s my guess, if he had chosen this method of marketing, he wouldn’t be doing all the grunt work after it got going either. He’d be the face of blog, the front man, as he is for his current operation. What? You thought he went on 400 listing presentations a year? 🙂 Get real — his job is to do lunch successfully every day, and keep out of his team’s way. 🙂 (I’ve dealt with his team professionally on more than one occasion, and they’re top notch.)

Repeat — Everything hinges on your success in making two things happen — and at the speed of light. I’m sure each agent will come up with cool ideas about how to 1.) Get the blog’s URL into every owner’s computer — and 2.) Get them to develop the habit of using it at least a couple times a week. Once you accomplish that, the rest will be up to you.

Keep the blog loaded with more info than anyone has a right to expect.

Cuz if you do, you’ll own every neighborhood your blog touches — no doubt in my mind.

Heck, I did it without computers over 30 years ago — and I had to work with the tools of a Neanderthal. Why, back then I had to walk uphill in the snow, both ways — on every street. My ‘blog’ back then? It was a one page ‘newspaper’ named after the subdivision. I called it, Jeff Brown’s Holly Hills Hot Sheet. Yes, it was as schlocky as it sounds — and it worked like magic.

Look, I know most folks understand video, podcasts, webinars, and the like a lot better than I do. Imagine how much more effective they’d be on a hyper-local farm blog than they are now on the every day blogs we all read? Of course, that only matters if you’re blogging to do more business. 🙂

Seriously, somebody’s gotta do this. It’s killin’ me. The first one who commits, and I mean do or die commitment, will easily control the neighborhoods they choose.

Does anybody know an agent who is even coming close to doing something this hyper-local and content rich blog/website? I’d love to hear about it.