User:Shijie Hua/sandbox

Basic description
Geographic Farming is an important concept in real estate. Geographic Farming illustrates that agents of real estate who exploit the business in a market demographic or certain area that agents will market to. The term farm indicates growing something. It is what agent does when agent farms a subdivision in local. Agents plant the business seeds for future, nurture these businesses with marketing. After that, hopefully earn the pay back in commissions. Farming is related to any or all of postcards, door knocking, direct mail, newsletters, email or any other form related with advertisement. The knack to farming an area is to regularly cultivate and leave a message for clients continuously.

Advantage to the firm

 * 1) To offer a continuous impact of new listing, while having the same sales turnover opportunities.
 * 2) To ensure periodical and systemic touch with the area that agents is farming.
 * 3) To develop an image of company as a liberal, qualified and technical company.
 * 4) To offer a vehicle for bringing the company and the individual agent closer to the community.

Advantage to the sales associate

 * 1) To offer a framework for finding sellers and buyers permanently.
 * 2) To exploit an efficient listing/selling cycle with the minimum effort and expense.
 * 3) To boost the local "farmer" by establishing a system which propagates information regularly to ensure the confidence of customers and friends, and to establish the name, fame and expertise of sales people.
 * 4) To permit agents to target specific groups of people by income area, area of interest, educational background, community groups, etc..
 * 5) To offer opportunities to make use of real estate arithmetic ratios.
 * 6) To offer an outlet for personal innovation, initiative, imaginative power and ingenuity, and promotes services as individuals, branch office and business.
 * 7) To take advantage of the impact of the program, which consorts and synchronizes the efforts of the whole real estate team to benefit all individuals in the team.

Determine the right price
For the starter agents, the farming areas should be less expensive but offer more transaction opportunities to turn over the need of farm to survive.

Find an area that has enough homes
Geographic area is supposed to be based on a certain number of houses(e.g. 200 to 500 homes), and it can be expanded subsequently. However, the apartments should be avoided because agents won’t get the same level of exposure as targeting houses (Putting a for sale or sold sign on an apartment is unavailable). Prospecting in freehold areas is easier than prospecting in apartment. It’s difficult to collect information in apartment. Agents will also have a much easier time getting marketing materials distributed in a freehold area.

Look for an area with a healthy amount of turnover
Turnover is a kind of measure which illustrates the demand for existing homes, or home sales. If the turnover rate is four per cent. It illustrates that with a 1,000 homes neighbourhood, agents can expect at least 40 transactions every year. Low turnover rates may not get the consistent, dependable business for the growing demand of the company. However, experience has proven that even the biggest top producers in a particular neighbourhood never gets more than 25 per cent of all the transactions. What can be ignored that if agent is the new salesperson on the block, there will be many opportunities for new agent to get leads. In case agents find an easy-to-access area with a decent turnover rate in an area that agents are familiar with, the recent sales need to be checked to guarantee nobody else is farming in that area. However, any agent with a large percentage of recent home sales in chosen area is still worth to pay attention. If there is such an agent, it doesn’t indicate other agents cannot farm here, but it does illustrate that a more investment of time and money may be required to win the control of the area. Whether the area is worth to fight or if agents would get better results farming a different area need to be considered.

Identify the audience
Identify the audience that agents are looking for is helpful for developing marketing messages. For instance, if agent works widely with artists in local, propagating the companies that highlight local art may be an effective way to attract customers interested in the art of agency farms. If agent's farm is home to many couples that just married, who are willing to grow their families, agent is supposed to focus more on the educational facility and parks for community. The 2016 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers discovered that 80 percent of buyers concern the knowledge of an agent in local area have. An agent who can impress a buyer with their knowledge of the schools, public parks, events, commerce, communication in local area will be a more attractive listing option.

Set up partnerships
Creating strategic partnerships with local businesses is an essential part for geographic farming, which helps agent to build a reputation as the export of neighbourhood, as it can be recommended to clients.

Coordinate with approved business to offer special discounts or coupons to those agents recommend. Moreover, agents should ponder compose a recommended company directory in farming area and remember to include branding and contact information at the bottom of each page, then ask the businesses in local to let you leave a bunch of their customers and share your catalogue with social media and your website.

Connect with community
As for geographic farming, agent is suggested to schedule time per month specifically used to communicate with neighbours and incorporate it into your other farming plans.

It can be implemented through the following typical means:


 * Offer season content: Provide regular use of seasonal content(e.g. a card, coupon, recipes and useful information) to neighbourhood for vacation and other considerable times in the year.
 * Provide market update: Market updates include information that agents provide to expected clients, with respect to the value of the prospect’s home. With the development of information, this specific information is the most valuable information the agent can provide. Expected clients are aware of the information praiseworthy because of the guide how to determine the value of their houses. Normally, Assessing the value of a house can be difficult.
 * Door-to-door knocking: agents walk door-to-door in the farming area, meeting residents and then talk about the listing and potentially invite the resident to an open house which agent is scheduled to sell, which increase the chance that the the ultimate purchaser of a house is likely the friend, member of family, or acquaintance of somebody who already lives in the neighbourhood.
 * Organize events: The events allow agents to obtain contact information from residents for future opportunities. That information that agent collect directly builds the database of people to communicate with.

Quantify market
Agents are supposed to count or check at a database or mailing list marketer to confirm the marketing target size of agent, which is necessary for budgeting.

Agents will even be willing to refine the target carefully if audience is too considerable for the budget.

Establish through Internet
In the light of the 2016 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 86 percent of recent buyers have the feeling that online resources as the most beneficial source of information for searching house. Agents should confirm that they are reaching potential buyers through incorporating the farming efforts throughout the online website. Farming online can also assist agents connect with relocated clients who are interested in moving into the farming area. It builds to showcase the community where they work and directly contributes to the good of the community. This is in view of the fact that a website of community highlights the neighbourhood and its various facilities. As a result, visitors to the site will make a decent impression of the neighbourhood/community. These sites make potential buyers interested in the community. Therefore, buyers may be interested in agents' listings in the community. So as a service to them and the community too. Agents' include the listings on the community website leads to a result that anyone who considers about living in the neighbourhood can get a sense of what homes are available there.

Scale
Agents can create a main website which serves as the “mothership.”

However, other sites and pages are supposed to describe the target client as much as possible.

The strategy of setting website
Agents should have numerous small websites that can be offered to the main website. Agent is encouraged to use a different logo and design for small websites to improve professionalism. It provides a more personalized feel for Internet browsers. Agent can also use community-specific domain names for the site.

Agent can also use the URL on the dock sign. This will provide traffic to agent's local neighbours when agent sends flyers and postcards, include a community-specific URL.

Edit a waiting list for buyers
Agents are recommend setting a label on community websites which declare "Join my buyer waiting list." , enable potential clients to provide the contact information which will then be able to begin a discussion with them about moving to the neighbourhood or selling a home in it, which will benefit agent to attract more retailer for that specific community(farming area).

Generate content for the site
Agents are supposed to fill in contents on the community websites (e.g. a quick video of the neighbourhood, its public areas, and communities for agent's website; proper photos and characterisation of walking trails, shopping location and colleges ). It will help to build websites to the community where citizens are interested in reading and watching information which is related to where they live (or where they want to live) effectively.

Social Media
The advantage of social media(e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) is that they are inexpensive and enables lightning-fast communication with a large number of residents. Social media is helpful for agents to find out what's going on in geographic area and consider starting a group or page to highlight commerce and events in local, which contributes to the reputation of agents.