Building a real estate business plan is vital to shaping a wholesome and lasting business.
69% of business owners recommended writing a business plan upon asking for advice on starting a business.
So how do you write a business plan for real estate? Let’s look at two comprehensive real estate business plan examples to use and crush your goals with. Before we get into its details, let’s also look at why a business plan is a highly recommended strategy in the real estate industry.
Why should you have a business plan?
Well, experts recommend it!
Here’s why:
A well-written business plan helps you in operating the business and attracts financial support. It allows you to take appropriate precautionary measures, prevent being hunted by troubles, set practical goals, and build a roadmap to meet them.
Now, let’s look at a one-page and a ten-year real estate business plan.
- The one-page plan has the fundamentals you require to establish a successful real estate business, like figuring out who you are, whom you serve, etc.
- The ten-year plan goes a little further, helping you set the right goals, build the best team, and expand your lead generation strategies.
One page real estate business plan
Perhaps you are already running a real estate business, and wondering “How do I start a Business Plan!”. This one-page plan helps develop your real estate business vision, direction, and goals. Here’s a template to follow:
Identify who you are
The first part of your real estate business plan should get you to understand who you are and how you would define your business in the overall picture. This includes the vision, mission statement, and an intro to the team.
When you do that, you will be able to bring the strongest essence of your business while speaking or writing to your ideal clients. This helps your prospects know that you know what you are doing and that in turn builds trust.
Add a vision & mission statement
Outline what you want your business to be all about in one or two sentences. This should cover the importance of your business.
Introduce the team
Draw up a list of all the members of your crew and their primary responsibilities.
Recognize your business opportunity
After you have defined your business, discover the opportunities for success. For example: ”To cope with the current work trends, people leave their hometowns and move to metropolitan areas. Once they retire, they enter a new phase where they free themselves from multiple responsibilities. To enjoy this stage of their life peacefully, they need a place within their budget.”
Draft an expense review
Following your revenue and costs, do you need to make changes to your expenditure? If you would, what areas would you alter?
Set an annual goal
Set goals like annual gross income, number of deals, number of people in the database, etc. Goals provide direction, help you make the right decisions, increase effectiveness, and focus on achieving positive results.
Conduct market research
Understanding your clients and prospects helps you to target them efficiently and accelerates the performance of your business. Through this understanding, define the typical clients you need to market to. Get as granular as possible with details like demographics, location, communication preferences, etc.
Strategize the strengths and weaknesses of the company
Analyze your real estate business thoroughly and list down the strengths and weaknesses. For example, an experienced team of agents could be your strength, and a lack of promotional resources could be your weakness.
Build a marketing plan
Create a marketing plan to attract, nurture, and service your target market. That is how you get your services and listings in front of the right customers. This includes a plan for outreach, communication methods, marketing, nurturing, etc.
For example, you can start with content marketing which builds trust among your audience. Capture their contact info through lead magnets and turn interested prospects into buyers with a simple tactic like cold calling.
These sections cover an essential part of your success plan. When put together, they act as an excellent map for your path forward. Take some time going through your business plan and experimenting with the numbers. Once you get these things right, commit to the plan and put it right into action.
Next, we’ll look at a few steps you can take to draft and execute a ten-year business plan for real estate.
What should a ten-year business plan include?
Building a real estate business plan demands constant attention to detail. For those who are just starting out, here is something you should know. The secret lies in knowing what elements you should add and how. Below are four must-haves of a well-executed real estate business plan:
- SMART goals
- Good agents
- Unique value proposition
- Lead generation strategies
SMART goals
Setting your business goals at the start is one of the main things to do in the stage of planning. A profitable real estate business plan starts with SMART goals.
What are SMART Goals?
SMART is the abbreviation for :
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timebound
SMART goals help you achieve successful outcomes and reduce risks. For example, a SMART real estate goal would be to “Increase profit by 10% by March 2021 with necessary cutbacks and improved marketing tactics”. To arrive at this, you need to first break this down into a few definitive goals.
Here are a few of them:
| Constantly Discover | – Look into the sources of real estate financing once a year. – Learn one real estate valuation technique every week. – Learn about five real estate investments every month. – Analyze one competitor’s strategies every day. – Understand one market trend a day. |
| Gain High Profit | – Use your resources wisely. – Invest in appreciating assets – residential properties, commercial properties, underdeveloped land, etc. – Create different sources of revenue like lease or rent to aim for a higher GCI (Gross Commissionable Income). |
| Increase your Investment Options | – Investing your time, energy, and money in multiple properties – – Ex: A vacation rental in Florida + An undeveloped land in Georgia – Open yourself up to different niches you may not have considered otherwise. – Examine your options and discover which types of investments are in your favor. |
| Invest in good tools for your Real Estate Business | – Embrace technology to identify new windows of opportunities. – Search and analyze good investment properties with these real estate investment tools. |
| Expand your Real Estate Network | – Build connections and maintain relationships with your network. – Constantly expand your network by adding buyers, sellers, agents, investors, lawyers, accountants, and other relevant connections. – Join different groups of researchers, demographic analysts, tourism experts, and economists who will perceive various factors that may influence the real estate business. – Once in a while, engage these connections with meaningful one-to-one conversations through texting or calling. |
Good agents
Real estate agents are the keystones of the real estate world. Signing a real estate contract without a real estate agent in tow is like walking into a court without a lawyer.
Three types of agents
| Typical Agent | Average Agent | Superstar Agent |
| Typical agents have a set of everyday tasks and responsibilities. They generally start their days keeping up with administrative tasks. | An average real estate agent brings interested parties to the properties. This helps interested buyers to decide if they want to finalize a deal. | When we say ‘Superstar Agent’, our first frame of reference is Ben Caballero of Addison, Texas, who became the World’s number one ranked real estate agent in 2018. |
| – Answer texts, emails, and phone calls. – Process documents and records. – Arrange appointments and meetings. – Produce basic flyers, listings, and other advertising materials. – Create budgets for monthly, quarterly, and annual activities. – Update client databases. | – Ensures property is in clear and decent condition. – Facilitates the sale and purchase of properties by collaborating with sellers, buyers, and mediators. – Documents all interactions and negotiations. – Forms and develops relationships with clients. – Negotiates with the parties to finalize an agreement and proceed further. | – Superstar agents set individual goals in addition to your business goals. – They plan a schedule and take it seriously. – They are enthusiastically learning all the time. – Superstar agents have a lead generation wheel. |
Unique value proposition
As a real estate business professional, you are constantly in competition. So, the challenge lies in becoming the go-to person in your marketplace.
The first step to a persistent high-profile is to devise your USP (Unique Selling Proposition).
What makes you stand out from your competition?
In this section, we will see three practical steps you can take to have a distinguished real estate brand.
| Own a website | Create a lead magnet | Find out your forte |
| Here is a checklist for a fully functional and complete real estate website: – Service-specific landing pages – Call-to-Action – Forms – Consistent UI & Quality UX – Social functionality – Contact details – Testimonials or Reviews – Valuable content | No matter what type of lead magnet you use, keep in mind that it needs to be associated with your niche. Let’s get into a few examples: – Educational courses – Property lists in the neighborhood – Case studies – Cheatsheets & Checklists – Ebooks – FAQs – Coupons – Guides | The most profitable real estate businesses typically aren’t jacks of all trades. They have a niche. Here are a few examples: – Family houses – Apartments – Condos – Retail complexes – Commercial spaces – Warehouses – Undeveloped lands – Estates – Vacation rentals – Student rentals |
Lead generation strategies
In the competing space of real estate, you need lead generation strategies to attract buyers and sellers. It can be either through inbound or outbound marketing.
The below-discussed lead generation strategies can help you.
1. Video conferencing
Organizing a virtual open house or other events is an excellent way to bring value to your clients and meet potential prospects. Once you introduce yourself to these prospects, create an opportunity to get in touch with them. Our next strategy here explains how to do that.
2. SMS marketing
Why do you need texting for your real estate business?
With a texting tool, you can offer your agents a shortcode and a keyword. Agents can display this information near the property or during gatherings like the video conferencing we discussed above. An interested buyer or seller will text the keyword to the displayed shortcode and be prompted with automated questions to share some information.
This helps you acquire your prospects’ contact and other basic information. These details are a wealth of information that help you recognize your prospects’ needs. Now you can gradually nurture them by sending regular updates on properties of their interest.
This is how it works:
3. Blogging
Google ranks pages depending on many factors. One way to appear in the search results is by blogging. Select topics that your target audience wishes to learn about, and promote each post on social media.
Here is an example of a real estate blog page. This blog page includes valuable information like tips and tricks, enabling the reader to revisit them in the future and stay on top of mind. You can also ask your visitors to subscribe to your blogs or newsletters.
A real estate business plan for a new venture will be very different from that of a well-established business. Each company has different scope, goals, and finances.
For example, the size of your marketing campaign will depend on the budget and resources you have.
If you’re at an early stage, start acquiring 30 leads a month and closing 10 deals. Put your early efforts into activities like – catching up with your network, getting referrals, or running virtual open houses.
Get started now!
An intelligent plan is the first step to success. The man who plans knows where he is going, knows what progress he is making, and has a pretty good idea of when he will arrive. Planning is the open road to your destination. If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you expect to get there?
– Basil Walsh,
Need we say more?
Get started with your real estate business plan or improve an existing one with the help of this article. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at [email protected].
Feature image source: Photo by Avi Waxman on Unsplash
