11 Specific Real Estate Niches with Prospects Just Waiting for You To Guide Them

“Let me know if you or anyone you know is thinking about buying or selling a house in the near future!” Sound familiar?

Even if you haven’t said those exact words, you’ve probably witnessed other agents making the plea. Most agents cast a wide net and try to appeal to anyone who might be thinking about buying or selling. Yet even though they’re eager to work with anyone, many agents struggle to do much business.

The reason most agents don’t do a lot of business boils down to some basic math: there are too many agents competing to sell the number of homes that get bought and sold each year.

According to this Homelight article, there are currently over 3 million active real estate licensees. Are they all truly “active” agents working full-time? Probably not. But most of them would probably like to be! And every single one of them will gladly handle the buyer or seller side of any sale in a given year, which takes away from the number of sales other agents could have made.

Now, if you look at this chart below from Statista, you can see that the most number of homes sold in one year in almost two decades was just over 7 million. But every year since has been lower in sales volume. Over the course of those years, the average number of sales was right around 5 million sales. Even if every one of those houses sold had two separate agents representing the buyer and the seller, that would only be an average of 10 million “sides” to be divided up amongst 3 million agents.

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Find more statistics at Statista

Taking all that into consideration, it might sound ridiculous to limit the number of real estate prospects you’re marketing to…

…but whether you’re doing tons of business or not, focusing on a smaller segment of the market than “anybody-who’s-thinking-about-buying-or-selling-a-home” might be your ticket to doing more (and better) business!

Standing out from all of the other agents is difficult with a one-size-fits-all marketing approach. There’s not much for “anybody” who’s thinking of buying or selling to distinguish you from any other agent, unless you have a huge marketing budget and can afford to blast them from every angle possible with your branding and advertising.

On the other hand, if you focus on a “niche market” — a very specific type of buyer or seller — it’s a lot easier for you to stand out from other agents! While you might be ignoring a lot of other potential buyers or sellers, you’re a lot more likely to get noticed by the smaller market segment.

What Is Niche Marketing?

We’ll dig deeper into the specific types of niches you can work with in real estate later on, but before we dive into how you can take advantage of niche marketing, let’s make sure you have a general understanding of what it is.

Niche marketing is when you focus on a specific segment of the market, rather than trying to appeal to the entire population. By concentrating your efforts on a defined group, you can tailor your message to cater to the unique needs and preferences of the target audience.

6 Benefits of Niche Marketing

Here are six benefits to niche marketing:

1. Easier to target clients. When everyone is a potential prospect, it’s difficult to figure out who might actually buy or sell a house in the near future. But when you focus on a specific type of buyer or seller, you can more easily pinpoint people who are likely to buy or sell a property in the near future.
2. Easier to reach them. If you know who you’re looking to attract, it’s easier to figure out where to find them and focus your marketing efforts using social media platforms, online advertising, or search engine optimization (SEO) to target your ideal clientele.
3. You can catch them earlier on in the buying or selling process. The sales cycle for people buying or selling a home begins well before most people pop into an open house, or ask agents over for a listing presentation. Many agents envision it as they start looking at listings online, which is likely a part of their process, but for people who are moving for specific reasons, or circumstances in life, they’re more likely to begin by looking for more specific help and advice most agents aren’t addressing.

   While most agents are simply trying to find people who are looking to buy or sell a house, you can use niche marketing tactics to find people who are way earlier in the process than actually looking for houses to buy, or for someone to list their house. In fact, depending upon which niche you focus on, many types of buyers and sellers don’t begin their journey even thinking of themselves as such. A lot of times they’re looking for information on life events, not real estate related advice or services.

4. Creates a sense of connection and understanding. Because many eventual buyers and sellers begin by looking for information related to a life event, you can help them figure out how to navigate what may be a confusing or trying time in their life, which can give them a sense that you understand what they’re going through beyond what other agents in the marketplace do, and help them feel connected to you.
5. Positions you as an expert. People often judge an agent based upon how much business they do; it can be more of a popularity contest at times than it is a true hiring process. But when you separate from the pack and focus on a niche, you can build a strong reputation and brand identity without even having the most sales or years of business under your belt. Rather than competing based upon name recognition or sheer number of sales, you can tip the scales in your favor against even the highest-producing agents by being seen as an expert in a particular market segment.

11 Specific Real Estate Niches You Can Focus On

While other agents are waiting to work with any old buyer or seller that may come along, here are 10 real estate niches for you to focus on and go after some business:

1. First-time buyers who need help figuring out where to even begin the process of buying a home.
2. Renters who aren’t even sure if buying or renting makes more sense. Help them figure out which makes more sense for them, and some guidance on how to go from being a renter to a homeowner.
3. People getting divorced who’ll need to figure out whether or not they can keep their home, or have to sell it, and then navigate the process with someone they probably aren’t getting along with.
4. Downsizing brings up a lot of questions, emotions, and family issues that need to be thought through and dealt with before they sell their house or buy another one.
5. New construction appeals to many buyers, but they are often unaware of the dangers they could face by going directly to a builder or their reps. Help them avoid the pitfalls while setting yourself up to be the advocate they bring with them on the first visit to a new construction site.
6. Some agents offer to “help” FSBO’s as a means of getting in their door to sell them on listing their house, but if you can be a genuine go-to resource for them and truly want to help them succeed, you’ll gain their trust (and future referrals) whether they sell their house on their own, or you end up listing it for them.
7. Or how about helping people who want to buy FSBO’s? People who think they’ll get a better deal by buying a FSBO are out there all the time and agents aren’t focusing on them nearly as much as the people trying to save a buck by selling their house FSBO.
8. Expired listings aren’t always plentiful if the market has been hot, but there’s always listings that expired quite some time ago that other agents have long forgotten and aren’t following up with.
9. People don’t go through foreclosure overnight, and are often waiting far too long to get help or to sell their house because they’re embarrassed and scared. If you can offer hope, understanding, and guidance, you may be one of the only people they’ll answer the phone or the door for during that difficult time.
10. Investors don’t start out owning a bunch of buildings; they all need to start somewhere. Be a patient and useful source of information and encouragement for the ones just starting out, and you’ll have a loyal client who buys and sells more houses in a few years, than the average client does in a lifetime.
11. Get in with relocation clients before they accept their relo package by offering insights they’re likely looking for about the process before they even decide to take the offer. This will help you get business typically being funneled to one of a few “relo” agents in your area by corporate, and you may be even able to do it for a lower (or no) referral fee than they have to pay, if you establish a relationship with the client before a relocation company gets their hands on the client.

Here’s a Step-By-Step Plan to Capitalize on Real Estate Niches

Unfortunately, just saying you specialize in helping a certain type of real estate client doesn’t just make them appear in front of you. You need to do something to attract them, help them, gain their confidence, and ultimately convert them into a client.

Fortunately, it isn’t quite as hard as that last paragraph made it sound!

While it will take some time and effort, here’s a simple step-by-step plan for you to go from being an agent who’s helping “anybody-who’s-thinking-about-buying-or-selling-a-home”, to an sought-after niche expert:

1. Pick a niche you want to focus on and dominate. You can always add more niches as you get one up and running, but start with one. (Pro tip: When you add another, try doing one that is complementary to the other, like focusing on investors and foreclosures.)
2. Create a how-to guide, or some other valuable type of thing — like a checklist — that would be helpful to people in the particular niche you chose.
3. Offer the guide as a giveaway that people can download so you get their email by posting offers on social media, running ads, putting the offers in articles, etc.
4. Create a follow-up series of tips you can send to them after they’ve downloaded your guide, so you have a helpful way to stay in touch.
5. Keep in touch and nurture the relationships until they’re ready to buy or sell a house.
6. Do an incredible job helping them buy or sell a house… obviously.
7. Rinse, lather, repeat. Keep doing this and building up clientele in the niche you started with, and add new ones as your process becomes smooth and manageable.

Here’s How to Make That Step-By-Step Plan Quicker and Easier…

If you want to save yourself some time, or just aren’t into writing your own guides and follow-up tips, check out our Inner Circle membership. In addition to gaining access to tons of other marketing content, we have a “Branded Booklet” guide for each of those 11 niche ideas mentioned above — plus another 9 guides in addition to those — already written, and just waiting for you to add your own branding and personalized edits!

But wait, there’s more…

…every one of our Branded Booklets comes with a series of follow-up emails ready for you to send to your prospects after they download your free guide. They’ll save you a ton of time and effort for less than the price of your daily cup of coffee!