Geography Is Dead, So How Big Is Your Farm Area?

If you’re following the plot, I live in Connecticut. Plus I have an occasionally, um… “quirky” I believe is the positive word for it real estate photography/agent blog.

Okay… go off to Google Analytics if you haven’t already been there. Just a crap load of stats you can get once you put the little widget on your blog somewhere. (I recommend embedding it in the footer somewhere).

Anyway – check out this map of America.

The darker the green is, the more website visits I get from that particular State.

So you can see some generally minor across the country interest, likely mostly all other RE bloggers.

Connecticut is a nice dark green, so that’s good. Means I’m hitting my State pretty well.

Hang on… California is a huge readership.

I’m bigger in California than in Connecticut?!?! Wow, maybe I should get licensed there. (Relax, I’m only 4% serious on that count)

Anyway… moving on to the next point I’m going to make – we’re walking, we’re walking.

I got contacted my one of my Connecticut blog readers – yes an actual live consumer – to come take photos of his house in Wallingford. Now Wallingford is about 35–40 mins drive south of where I live in Bristol. Plus I’m talking 85% of that drive time is on I-84 and I-691.

I have never been to Wallingford before.

But all I’m doing is the photographs. I’ve got one drive to get there, clicky clicky, and return home. (NB* “clicky, clicky” refers to 2.5 hours of effort shooting, staging and smoozing with the seller.) Anyway the story comes out that seller is mucho unhappy with their agent. For some very legit reasons too. Listing expires Dec 31^st. We’ll limp out the year with what we got, after that please take the listing.

Anytime I get a check to do a listing appointment, I count that as a win. 🙂

Here’s the thing though – I don’t really need to know overly much about Wallingford to sell a house there. One or two trips down and I’ve shot photos, got a lock box in place, visited Town Hall, met the sellers, signed the agreements etc etc. 99% of everything else I’ll be doing is by phone, fax and Internet. If I’m the least bit worried about pricing I’ll spring for a CMA from a local agent, heck maybe even a proper appraisal, though based on showings and their price I am pretty mentally firm on where they should be already.

Ding Dong, Geography Is Dead. Why bother keyword crunching to win a tiny little neighborhood when the whole State is within reach? Admittedly Connecticut is geographically petite, so I can count the whole State as my farm area, your mileage (groan) may vary.

As a caveat though – buyer side 40 miles away? Are you fluffy bunnies crazy?!? Refer that out.