Build trust and land dream clients with market reports that shine!
Real estate markets move quickly, and change can happen fast. It’s helpful for people in your community, whether they’re looking to sell or buy soon or not, knowing how home values, interest rates, and competition are shifting. Instead of leaving it to them to look into, you’re in a position to share your expertise and your view of the market, helping those around you to make big decisions while positioning yourself as a trustworthy expert. Market reports are the best tools for doing so!
Why Write Market Reports?
Since it’s your daily work, your knowledge and awareness of the state of real estate in your area can’t be beaten. These reports position you as an expert and as someone helpful and consistent. Showing up with the report periodically—whether in email inboxes, on social media, or in the physical mail—creates consistency in your communications, which helps establish trust.
Aside from the knowledge-sharing and trust-building, market reports are a nice, non-pushy way to remind your contacts that you’re available to help them with further market advice or real estate needs. While already offering value, you’re also reminding them of what else you can offer them. It’s a win-win!
Depending on how you share your market reports, they can also serve as trusty marketing tools by driving more clicks to your luxury real estate website, more opened emails, higher SEO ranking, and increased engagements on social media. SEO for realtors can mean the difference between overflowing lead pipelines and months of frustrating outreach!
How Often?
Many real estate agents opt for a monthly cadence. Publishing your market report once per month allows for comparable data, an easy publishing window for you to remember, and an ideal frequency of content. Clogging inboxes with data too often or publishing very similar content too frequently can lead to exhaustion or overwhelm your email list and follower base.
Some realtors choose to send out their market report once per quarter, which serves as a nice cadence as you ramp up if you’ve got a full plate or content calendar. It’s still a logical and predictable pattern, and often these are easier to differentiate since more data will change throughout a quarter than throughout a month.
What to Include
Data
Market reports are unavoidably grounded in data. Numbers speak volumes about the state of the market, and many people don’t have access to the databases and measurements you do. Some statistics you might cover include many single-family homes sold in your area, what they sold for on average or in price per square foot, days on the market, list price to sale price ratio, and median sales prices. Discussing interest rates and changes in interest rates often makes sense, especially in years like this when historic lows are especially noteworthy!
For each batch of data, start a new section of your market report. Chunking the numbers and findings into more minor headings allows readers to scan and skim without getting lost or confused, making the report that much more helpful!
Analysis
While you can’t have a successful market report without data, you also can’t have a successful market report with only data. Having the numbers on their own doesn’t prove that you’re an expert; giving your interpretation and analysis of them does! You can share insights about how the numbers compare to recent months or years, and above all, work to explain the stats in a way that anyone could easily understand.
If your analysis reveals a particularly rough market for buyers or sellers, include helpful tips or resources for how to compete or effectively market a home. Some of your readers will be plenty informed about the state of the market but might need a bit of advice to help them feel confident diving into it. Giving them that push and offering valuable insights may be what it takes to make them your client!
Your Voice!
Just because you’re writing about numbers doesn’t mean it’s time to get dry and lose your personality! Keep things fun, crack a joke, and maintain a tone that’s fluid with the rest of your posts and emails. If people wanted to read something scholarly and rigid, they could easily find that elsewhere—computers can generate reports just fine. They’re signed up for your email list or following your social media accounts because they’re interested in what you have to say. Be true to your voice and brand, even in these data-heavy communications.
Call to Action
As with any longer message to your contacts, ending with a call to action is critical. It’s what will allow you to measure the success of your reports, and it’s ultimately what will drive more leads to your luxury real estate business.
What you utilize as a call to action is up to you: you might be working toward gaining more social media engagements or followers, which would lead you to a call to action asking readers to share your post. Or, to keep it simple, add a link to your website with conversion-driving copywriting, or include your phone number after urging readers to give you a call and discuss the market further. Keeping track of how many people complete your call to action each month will help you zero in on the right style, graphics, and tone and ultimately pinpoint what’s working.
Staying Relevant
The easiest pitfall with market reports is becoming stale and repetitive. Since many of the categories and overall messages may be consistent over multiple months, or numbers may not change much, it’s easy to fall into regurgitating the same old information, therefore losing the interest of anyone who once read your reports.
Change things up by incorporating local news, spotlights on specific homes bought and sold, and any upcoming holidays or events. Sprinkle time-sensitive information into each report to give your following a reason to keep coming back to read!
Segmenting
Another way to stay relevant? Getting more specific about what matters to the recipient in particular. Especially if you distribute your market report via email, creating a couple of different versions to tailor to specific contacts can work wonders.
For example, you might create segments based on contacts’ current housing situation or simply based on their particular area of town. Don’t reinvent the wheel here—there’s no need to create an entirely different report for each neighborhood. Just one section that people will see and think, “Hey! That’s where I live! Good to know!” is compelling enough to keep them checking back.
Design
No matter how compelling your data analysis turns out to be, people will not read your market report if the layout is confusing or challenging to read. Choose a simple layout and color scheme, and accompany it with a photo or two. Not every data point needs a graph; reserve graphs for especially surprising or sharply changing data and keep them as clean as possible.
Some realtors bring on graphic designers or hire help to design newsletters, market reports, and other graphics. It’s not impossible to do it on your own, though. Sites like Canva have a relatively small learning curve and produce sharp, beautiful graphics that draw the eye.
Building a routine practice of creating and distributing your market report can feel tedious at first, but the benefits of expert positioning, consistent communication, and compelling analysis are well worth it! Meet with the industry market experts at Luxury Presence to learn more!
