I teach workshops and seminars all the time and one of the first (and most common) questions I get during the Q&A sessions is how many homes should I farm?
I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you.
Don’t worry, I’m going to answer both, but you might not like it.
The bad news… There isn’t really a set number. Traditional real estate training will tell you very specific numbers but the reality is with all the different strategies you can use for farming these days there isn’t a set number because it depends on so many things. There are so many different ways to farm and all have different costs and different outcomes.
The good news… It can be as little or as many as you want.
For some agents, that doesn’t sit well though. They want to be spoon fed a simple answer that makes it very clear what they should do. The reality is that there are so many factors in choosing your farm and you have to know what you want to do before you just go picking a farm.
I’m going to cover some of the important things you should consider today.
Your Budget
When choosing a farm size the first thing I always explain to agents is that your budget is one of the biggest deciding factors in choosing the right size.
If you have a tiny budget, you are going to have to start farming a tiny area. However, just because you have a huge budget, doesn’t mean you should farm a huge area to start.
One of the things you’ve probably heard me say is that “it’s better to scale up then to scale back”.
Even if your budget is huge, throwing more money at a failed system or strategy won’t make it better. So you have to work out the kinks in your business before you throw all your resources at it. This is one of the reasons I advocate for starting smaller and scaling the business up.
Sometimes agents will ask me for a dollar figure. A good rule of thumb, but definitely not set in stone is one dollar per door per month. That’s about $12 per year per home. So if you have $10,000 to invest in your farm, you can look for a farm area around 800-1000 homes. If you were hoping to farm your whole area with that budget and you had 5,000 homes, your message could get drowned out very quickly.
You can obviously do it much cheaper, and you can spend a lot more as well, but you have to make sure you are committed to the time and energy budget needed to succeed.
Your Strategies
The next thing you want to take into consideration is what strategies you are going to actually implement into your business.
Are you going to be mostly offline marketing? Then you definitely are going to be cognizant of your budget.
If you are doing online, you have to make sure you can reach them online efficiently and cost effectively.
If you are going to do a lot of community involvement, you have to ensure you have the time and energy and the budget to reach them.
Your strategies will be one of the biggest deciding factors when choosing how big of an area to farm so it’s important to lay out what strategies you will be starting with. Obviously as you grow, your strategies will adapt over time, but if you are selecting a farm up front, you need to keep in mind what you will be doing and how you will be doing it.
Your Team
Are you doing this alone? If you are, you are going to have to stretch your time and resources a lot further. If you are bringing a team to the table you can rely on them to help pick up the slack. An admin and the right support can allow you to tackle a lot more area because you won’t be caught up in the minutia of it all and can focus on the important things.
If you have a full blown team, your agents should be supporting your efforts in the farm, so you may be able to reach a larger audience. Having the right team can allow you to tackle a farm that most solo agents couldn’t.
If it’s just you, you need to be sure you have the time and energy to maintain the strategies you plan on implementing. You can’ just go gangbusters for a couple months and then do nothing when you get busy. You’ll end up on the real estate roller coaster.
Your Commitment
This is probably the biggest deciding factor in choosing how many homes to farm that most overlook. If you are prepared to make this a big part of your business and are willing to make a commitment to growing, then you may be able to take on more of a farm than most.
If you are “trying” farming, the quickest way to fail is to dabble in it, spread yourself too thing and waste your time and money. Don’t be this person. I’ve seen it happen more times than I’d like to and I don’t want that to be you.
The agents who are ready to make farming a big part of their business are usually willing to do what it takes and are ok with the extra work needed to make the farm succeed. So many agents think farming is easy and you just send out some mailers and start to reap the rewards. Those agents are the first to quick when they don’t see results and usually the first to fail when they don’t put the necessary time and energy into growing it.
What’s the magic number?
Really there isn’t one! I’ve seen agents crush it with less than 300 homes and I’ve seen agents flop trying to go after 5,000 homes! However, if you are just getting started and are looking to get your feet wet, I usually urge agents to focus on 500-2000 homes to start. One of the best things you can do is pick a subset of a neighbourhood to test your strategies out on, and then scale up once you’ve got it figured out. You can still start with the idea that you want to eventually focus on the whole neighbourhood, but build up to that.
As I said earlier, I always say “It’s better to scale up than it is to scale back”. So don’t get sucked into trying to go too big too fast. Get your bearings and then build a solid foundation!
If you are stuck and still not sure how many homes you should farm, then I suggest checking out the perfect remedy – The 30 Day Launch Program. This program helps you choose the right area to farm, lays out the right steps to build a solid foundation, gives you ideas for marketing and adding value and gets you into action on daily basis.
Happy Farming!
Ryan Smith – Founder/Creator
Launch Your Farm
Be sure to check back on our blog and show to get awesome information about geographic farming!
Blog – http://www.LaunchYourFarm.com/Blog
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