A lot of times, agents pick an area without effectively researching it. I want you to avoid that pitfall. Be the agent who knows EXACTLY where to knock to meet their goals. 

In Module 2, I taught you the basics of choosing farming areas. You learned that an area’s average market value or asset class is an important consideration. Another factor worth considering is proximity to your office. Now we are going to take it a step further. When you zoom in on an area, there are even more considerations. 

The following are some key considerations when choosing an area to farm.

First, you want to look at an area’s Turnover Rate. 

The turnover rate is how fast a listing turns into a sale as well as how often homes in an area sell. 

When you choose an area, you want to make sure it's not a neighborhood where nobody's buying and selling. Check the number of homes bought and sold recently. If nobody's buying or selling, it is probably not worth your time. When I look at a neighborhood, I want to see how many houses have moved in the last three to six months.

You want to knock where there are a lot of sales and where there is steady turnover. You are onto something when you find a community with a steady supply of new listings and recently solds. This tells you something is going on. It is a desirable neighborhood and people are probably upgrading within that community. It might provide you with long-term clients as they move up the asset ladder within the same community.  

The bottom line is that you want to target somewhere with a good rate of turnover.  

Another consideration is a neighborhood’s hills.  

This might not seem like much, but hills are an important profit consideration. This type of area always significantly outperforms other areas.

Why is that? A key reason is that these areas don’t get visited by other agents. It takes more effort to farm these areas. Most agents farm flat areas. This means hills have the advantage that everyone avoids them. When you DO go there, you meet people who tell you they haven’t been door knocked in 20 years! 

In my game, the steeper a hilly area, the quicker the turnover rate. On my map, I have one area where the hill slope is very steep. When I did the math, I realized it was the area with the best sales turnover in my entire game. Whenever I got appointments there, they quickly turned into listings and solds.   

Another consideration I teach my new agents is to not avoid areas with other agents. 

When picking your area, go where other people avoid. People tend to avoid areas they believe are dominated by somebody else. When everyone believes this, it becomes the perfect place to go. These areas are like the hills. They haven’t had any new agents around for years. 

That is how I got established in the game. I went to areas others were afraid to go to. I set my territory up where others supposedly dominated. You can do the same.

Don’t listen to someone who tells you, “Don’t go there, someone already dominates that area.” 

No one is ever as dominant as you think. Never shy away from going to someone else's area. By going there, you are taking action. Most of the time, those who are “dominant” in an area aren’t still doing the work. They are riding on residual business from past efforts. They are no longer really active there. This makes the area an easy target for a takeover.  

The fact that you are there and doing the work is your great advantage. 

It’s a pay-to-play game. You can outspend anyone with any of your resources. That includes time. By putting in the time, you can outwork someone who is no longer putting in the work. 

That is how some agents go from being zero to number one in as little as a year. The person who supposedly rules an area doesn’t have time to actually go visit their zone. They are busy with other things in their business. They are not putting energy into their established ones. They spend their valuable time resource on maintaining their top clients. This means they can’t defend their territory. Areas supposedly controlled by top agents are ripe for takeover by new agents. 

Established territories are the Achilles heels of top producers. Mark these territories on YOUR map and go after them! I’m sure you will surprise yourself with how successful you will be there! 

It’s time for another ACTION STEP!  Go back to your notes on the neighborhoods you identified earlier. It’s time to research them further.  You are going to research and evaluate everything we’ve just covered - turnover rates, hill slopes, other agents etc. I’ve included a downloadable worksheet to help you.  

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