The Neighbors Are Your Best Buyers and Most Agents Ignore Them

When I take a listing, the first people who hear about it are the hundred households closest to it. Before the MLS, before the portals, before the sign goes up.

There is a straightforward reason for that.

Neighbors know who wants in

The people on your street have friends who have said they would love to live there. They have family looking in the area. They have watched a colleague ask about the neighborhood for two years.

That buyer does not have a search alert set up. They are not refreshing a portal. They find out because somebody who lives on the street tells them, and that only happens if the street knows.

Neighbors are sometimes the buyer

The couple three doors down whose kids are getting older. The owner of the smaller house on the corner. The person renting on the block who has been waiting for something to come up.

They already know they want to be on that street. They have already done the part that takes most buyers months.

They set the price expectation for the whole street

Every neighbor who sees your just listed card and your just sold card now knows what a house on their street is worth. That matters to you at the moment you sell, because it establishes the number. And it matters to the next seller on the street, which is why this compounds.

What I actually send

A letter before it is live, saying a home on the street is coming to market and to call me if they know someone.

A postcard when it lists, with the photo and the price.

A personal invitation to the neighbors to come through before the public open house.

A postcard when it sells, with the number.

And a phone call at each of those points, because mail alone gets a fraction of the response that mail plus a call does.

What this is not

It is not a farming program looking for future listings, although it produces those. It is a marketing channel for the house I am selling right now, and it is the one most agents skip because it is work.

Call me at (310) 861-3459.