Geographic Farming — Is It Dead or Am I Just Doing It Wrong?
Verified
Six months into a geographic farm, 400 homes, mailing monthly. I’ve had two people tell me they saw my mailer, zero listings, one referral that went nowhere. Monthly cost is about $900. I’m trying to figure out if this is just the “not enough time yet” problem everyone talks about or if there’s something fundamentally off with how I’m running it. What does a successful farm actually look like at six months? Should I be seeing any signal by now?
Verified
Six months with two brand recognition moments is actually not terrible for a cold farm. The research on direct mail name recognition is fairly consistent: you need 7-12 touches before someone puts you on their consideration list, and that’s for people actively thinking about moving. Six months of monthly mail = 6 touches. You’re close but not there yet. The agents I know who gave up at 6-8 months almost all look back and wish they’d pushed to month 14-18. The first listing tends to come somewhere in that window, and after that the referral and repeat dynamic changes the economics entirely.
That said — what does your mail actually look like? “I’m your neighborhood expert” postcards and market update cards with real local data (specific sale prices, actual days on market) get very different results.
Pro
One question Devon didn’t ask: what’s the annual turnover rate in your farm? You want 5-8% to have a farm that produces meaningful volume. If you picked a neighborhood where people tend to stay for 20 years, you can do everything right and still wait a very long time for a listing to come available. Pull your last 36 months of MLS sales in that area and calculate the rate before you decide whether to push forward or pivot to a higher-turnover neighborhood. The area matters more than the execution in a lot of cases.
Verified
I pulled the turnover numbers — 4.1% over the past three years. That’s lower than both of you suggested. I think I may have picked a neighborhood I liked instead of one with the numbers I needed. Going to run the same analysis on two other neighborhoods in my target area and consider a pivot. Thank you both — this is the kind of reality check I needed.