I’m not writing a dictionary, so if my definition of real estate farming differs from yours, well, that’s to be expected.

Real estate farming is a term used to describe a system whereby you can get to become extremely familiar to a large group of people (generally in a specific neighborhood or geographic area). This is accomplished through a slow and laborious (but fun) process of working the people over a long period of time, until they are ripe and ready for harvest. If it’s done correctly and with the right intent, the piece of “farmed” ground can create results year after year.

Can you “Farm” online alone?

NO! BUT it has to be the BASE and CORE of ANY real estate farming that you are trying to do!

Internet Farming And Prospecting by Jim Crawford

This article is what your fellow real estate professionals are reading about real estate farming. In this article, the author, Jim Crawford, states: “Farming is the most effective prospecting tool for cultivating and identifying new potential leads that will generate sales and income for our business.” yet, after saying this, he discourages the reader from getting into TRUE real estate farming by stressing the “downside” of farming: the work of it. Oh, and that it’s so successful that other people do it as well.

Ok. That also reminds me of the downside of most of most careers, isn’t it. The work. Oh, and that SOOOO many people are doing farming.

Let me ask you, how many real estate professionals do you know truly FARM an area? Sure, I get a postcard from one Realtor every month, but has he ever met me? Has he ever done any community service in our neighborhood? Do I know anything about him other than that he sends me a postcard every 4-8 weeks?

Yes, real estate farming is work, but no, although it’s admittedly the most successful, nobody is really putting the system to work effectively. For those that do, utilizing a proper internet marketing AND offline farming system it works WONDERS!

Now, this particular article claims that it’d be more effective to do “virtual” farming online. While that needs to be your first goal… Remember search engine optimization and internet marketing is NOT a switch. It takes time to achieve top ranking, but it must be one of the first things that you do! Also I cannot stress enough to you, do not use a canned website system. Sure there are a lot of well known real estate design companies that can give you all kinds of “templates” but ask yourself would YOU buy from a template website that looked like all of the others? NO… and research has shown that to be true over and over again. These sites are notoriously difficult to use for internet marketing and have such high bounce rates (visitors leaving your site before it even fully loads!) that they can actually HURT your chances more then help. That’s why we recommend our internet marketing partner. They specialize in AFFORDABLE solutions for realtors looking to get all available leads.

Include your website in your farming effort! Why not create a community based website? The site can list phone numbers for the local utilities, list community news, provide contact info for babysitters in the neighborhood, of course with a section covering the neighborhoods real estate activity. This section could list the homes for sell in the neighborhood, as well as some success stories from those that you’ve recently helped buy or sell?

The web should be the base for all of your real world farming.