Dominate Your Market with Local Expertise
Learning how to become the local real estate expert is important−here’s why. All real estate agents in your area (your competition) are selling the same products as you: the same houses and the same location. The key differentiator—the way you can set yourself apart from the pack—is your expertise in your product. It’s so obvious, yet this is probably the most overlooked aspect of your real estate training.
If you want to be a great real estate agent, you need to be a real estate expert in two areas:
- Your market area (location)
- Your product (residential housing)
So you can either choose to acquire this expertise very slowly over the next few years (like most real estate agents) or you can use The Easy Way to Become the Local Real Estate Expert guide and develop your expertise as quickly as possible.
The sooner you become a product and market expert, the sooner you will succeed in this business. This is what the veteran real estate agents have that you don’t have. This is what will set you apart from your competition.
Acquiring this knowledge will give you the confidence you need to attract new clients. Plus, the information that you gather in this chapter will be used in the future as you promote yourself on social media.
Learn About Your City
Even if you have lived in your area a while, you may not know it as well as you need to as a real estate agent. While you don’t need to know all the in’s and out’s of your city just because you live there, clients will expect you to have in-depth knowledge regarding the city where you work. They will ask you about schools, taxes, amenities, parks, drive times, etc. If you can’t easily answer those questions, then it’s likely they will move onto a real estate agent who can do so.
To become the local real estate expert, take some time and fill-in the City Worksheet located in The Easy Way to Become the Local Real Estate Expert guide. That worksheet includes the must-know information that clients expect you to be very familiar with.
You can look up most of this information on the Internet. Good places to start include:
- City’s .gov website
- Chamber of Commerce website
- Google maps
- School district website
- Greatschools.org
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Learn About the Public Schools in Your Area
Clients will also expect you to know a lot about the local schools in your area.
What is the name of the local school district?
_____________________________________
Are there other school districts in your local area?
_____________________________________
How do these school districts compare? (Use schooldigger.com to get a comparison)
Check the school district websites in your area, and print copies of the school zone maps, one each for:
- Elementary schools
- Middle schools
- High schools
If your area includes multiple school districts, collect the zoning maps for each district.
To become the local real estate expert, use www.Greatschools.org to make a list of the schools in your area and their ratings. Use a Word document with a table that will enable you to sort the list in various ways:
- By Type (Elementary, Middle, High)
- By Type, then Rating
- Alphabetically
Once you know the ratings of the schools, handwrite those ratings on your printed school zone maps. Study the areas that have the highest-rated schools and the areas with the lowest-rated schools.
Learn About the Local Neighborhoods
Your primary market area may consist of single-family neighborhoods, high- and mid-rise condo buildings, or townhome complexes. To simplify things, they will all be referred to as “neighborhoods.”
If you don’t already know your area very well, use the How to Find a Profitable Target Market guide. Or you may be able to figure out the most popular neighborhoods in your primary area, by doing an Internet search for:
- “Best places to live in YOURCITY”
- “YOURCITY neighborhoods”
- “New construction homes in YOURCITY”
New construction neighborhoods should be at the top of the list because they will have a lot of purchasing activity.
You can also look at local real estate agent websites and see how they are segmenting the primary market on their websites.
Once you know the popular neighborhoods in your area, you should do some Internet-based research to fill in a Neighborhood Worksheet for each of the top neighborhoods/buildings—one set of worksheets for each neighborhood/building. If you do one or two neighborhoods a week you will be the local real estate agent in no time!
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After you complete the City Worksheet and all the Neighborhood Worksheets that you need, use a three-ring binder and make a Neighborhood Notebook. Put the filled-in worksheets, summary pages, and builder information in the notebook. This is something that you can carry with you on tours.
Advice for Touring Your Area
You should drive your area and visit the various city and neighborhood amenities to get a first-hand view of them. You will be more comfortable showing clients homes in your area, if you know where everything is (schools, parks, hospitals, pools, golf courses, etc.) and if you have seen them, in-person, at least once.
There are two ways you can tour your area:
- All at once on 3-5 day tour
- One neighborhood/building per week
All At Once Tour
After you fill in your worksheets and are ready to tour your area, print a Google map and write the various places that you want to visit on the map. Then plan the order you will tour those places.
Plan three to five days in good weather to go on your tour (depending on the size of the city and the number of neighborhoods you are touring). Take photos and video clips of each neighborhood. For video clips, just pan your camera from left to right for each item (clubhouse, swimming pool, tennis courts, etc.) creating 5-15 second video clips. You can then use your photos and video clips for interesting social media posts later on.
Weekly Tour
You don’t have to tour your area all at once. You can visit just one or two neighborhoods/buildings per week. You still need to gather the same information, photos, and video clips as listed above, but you will only do one or two neighborhoods at a time. If you are a part-timer, it may be easier for you to do weekly tours rather than touring the entire area all day for 2-3 days.
About Touring Individual Houses
A lot of real estate training books and courses, including your broker training, will tell you to tour 10-20 homes per week. This is not efficient or effective. Individual houses are here today and sold tomorrow, but the amenities, parks, schools, etc. are here to stay, so focus on touring those places first. Being super-familiar with your neighborhoods will give you a lot of confidence when you are working with clients.
City Images to Collect
You should take photos and video clips when you are touring the area. Collect as many as possible but keep in mind that more can be added later.
For the best photos, try to tour the city on a sunny day in the spring or summer.
A video clip is usually only a 5 to 15 seconds video, either panning a scene from left to right, or starting zoomed in on the subject and then slowly zooming out.
There’s a helpful list of city images/video clips to collect in The Easy Way to Become the Local Real Estate Expert guide.
Neighborhood Images To Collect
You should also take photos and video clips for each of your top neighborhoods. To get the best photos, try to tour neighborhoods on sunny, non “trash days,” in the spring or summer.
There’s a helpful list of neighborhood images/video clips to collect in The Easy Way to Become the Local Real Estate Expert guide.
Learn About Home Construction
In addition to learning the local area to become the local real estate expert, you also need to be an expert in your product.
Real estate agents sell homes…that’s our product. It may be single-family homes, townhomes, farm and ranch properties, high-rise condos, but they are all homes.
You should have at least intermediate knowledge of home construction, materials, systems, architectural details, and potential defects so that you can discuss them with clients when you are out showing houses or on listing appointments. The more knowledge you have, the more confidence you will project with clients, which builds your credibility with them and makes them want to work with you. No client wants to hire an agent who knows less about homes than they do.
Another reason that you need to know a lot about houses is so you can effectively manage the home inspection process, negotiate repairs, and prepare homes to go on the market to sell, etc.
Here are a few places to start learning about houses, but do some Internet searches to find more:
You can learn a lot of what you need to know by reading articles on the Internet and watching YouTube videos. You should visit home improvement stores and learn about materials and costs. You can purchase books on home construction, improvement, maintenance, and repairs. You should also tour model homes and ask builder’s sales agents to tell you about their features and benefits. If possible, ask a veteran agent in your office to go on a tour of a few homes in the area. Choose homes that have been on the market a long time…they probably have issues and defects that the veteran agent can point out to you and teach you what to look for (and avoid).
Another way to learn about home construction is to attend home inspections (once you start working with buyer clients) and listen to what inspectors have to say.
Use the checklist in The Easy Way to Become the Local Real Estate Expert guide to keep track of what you need to know about home construction. You want to know the common terms and understand the PROs and CONs, materials, common defects to watch out for, and price ranges for most of the following items. You should be able to confidently discuss these topics with your clients.
You don’t have to learn all these topics at once, but you should schedule time each week to learn about these items and become very knowledgeable about them. The sooner you know this information really well, the sooner you will project an image of confidence when working with clients.
As you go through the learning process, make bookmarks of helpful websites and articles and keep them organized so you can refer back to them when you create social media posts in the future. Whenever you see interesting graphics or photos, download the file, or capture a screenshot as a JPG file, so you can use those items on future social media posts. However, be careful of copyright infringement and always include the source (the URL address) of the information.
Overall, you’ve got to Know Your Product!
People don’t want to hire real estate amateurs; they want to hire real estate experts. Selling real estate is not just about knowing the laws and contracts. You must be knowledgeable about home materials and construction if you want to be a successful real estate agent.
Master Your Market and Stand Out With HyperLocal Expertise
Use Local Knowledge to Attract Clients and Close More Deals
If you’re not known as the expert in your market, you’re losing business to someone who is. Buyers and sellers want to work with agents who know the area inside and out—not just someone with a license.
This guide helps you master everything from local amenities and school ratings to sales data, builders, and commute times—so you’re never caught off guard in a client conversation or listing appointment.
When you sell real estate, you are selling both a location and a home. Real estate is associated with land, and land is divided into countries, states, counties, cities, neighborhoods, ZIP Codes, etc. Then on that land, there are different types of homes for sale or lease, such as single-family homes, townhomes, high rise condos, rentals, etc. Every area is different. You probably won’t have a lot of Country Homes & Acreage properties in downtown Los Angeles, and you may not find any High-Rise Buildings in Tupelo, Mississippi.
A farm area needs to be small enough that you can affordably advertise in it on a consistent basis (monthly advertising is important), but has enough active sales to be worth your attention. It should be a neighborhood/building that you will enjoy working and one that is a good match for you demographically.
For example, your target market may be: