Absorption Rate in Real Estate

The use of absorption rate in real estate is critical to understanding supply and demand.  How quickly new properties are listed and the time it takes for them to sell can provide a plethora of insight into a particular real estate market.

How to use Absorption Rate to Choose a Farm Area for Real Estate

Choosing an area to farm in real estate can be just as important as the farming material itself.  Many real estate agents choose to market to their own subdivision and that’s fine, but how do you choose what area to farm when spending a chuck of money?

We recommend taking a methodical approach to choosing a farm area.  Absorption Rate, when used in real estate, can prove to be invaluable when choosing where to spend your precious real estate marketing dollars.

Lets start with a basic definition.

Absorption Rate – Real Estate

Absorption Rate: The rate at which active real estate properties are being sold in a predetermined real estate market during a given time period. Absorption Rate is calculated by dividing the total number of available homes by the average number of sales per month (rate of consumption).   The Absorption Rate shows the current pace of sales, how long it will take (with no new properties hitting the market)  to sell through the existing supply of homes.

Variations in Absorption Rate can come from  different ways to “average” the number of sales per month (rate of consumption) and some can choose to use “Pended Sales” as opposed to “Closed Sales” as the other factor.  Also, some may choose to show an absorption rate as a percentage and some choose to show a “Months of Inventory”.

And lastly to simply confuse, some consider the absorption rate to be the rate of consumption and that should be divided by the available units to come up with “Months Supply”.  For our purposes, the Absorption Rate IS the months supply of available housing in a particular area.

OK OK – So How Do I Use Absorption Rate To Farm?

With all of that behind us, when choosing a farm area, it really doesn’t matter how many homes have sold, what matters is the demand.  A typical  market will have between 4-7 months of inventory.

You still need to pay attention to other numbers—tiny areas without enough data can skew the numbers terribly.  When choosing a farm area, you will want to find a place with a decent amount of active properties and below 4 months of inventory (the lower the better).  This will ensure that when you farm, when you get a listing, you will have demand for that listing.  Farming an area of homes that don’t sell is an expensive exercise in futility.

Compare Apples To Apples

Mark Twain said  “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Different people come up with real estate statistics in different ways so be careful in using someone else’s absorption in one market compared to another.  As long as the statistics are derived with consistency you are OK, but that is not always the case.

Use A Variety Of Digital Marketing Tactics

Once you have found the perfect farm area using Absorption Rate, then you should use a variety of marketing tactics to swarm the potential buyers or sellers.  Since you never know what will push someones buttons, so you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

One obvious way to market to a chosen farm area is to use Facebook Marketing.  With Targeted Facebook Marketing you can run an ad that will be seen on the Facebook wall of ONLY THE PEOPLE in your farm area.  Then you will want to customize that ad just for them—maybe use a picture of the front of the subdivision or statistics on that particular area.  Then create a landing page that backs up your Facebook ad to convert.  And then, we also recommend using a Facebook Remarking campaign for everyone who landed on that webpage.

Many will choose to attempt the above processes on your own, which can lead to costly mistakes.  Some, on the other hand, are successful.  Prior to taking this on yourself, you should at least review some digital marketing pricing and get an idea of a marketing budget.  One Click SEO offers a pretty neat Digital Marketing Budget Estimator.

You can put in your revenue and some other key factors and without having to put in an email address — it spits out a monthly number.  You can move things around to get an idea of what fluctuates the monthly pricing.

Here is that link.

https://oneclickseo.com/search-engine-optimization/seo-pricing/#budgetestimator

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DEAN Knows has been specializing in real estate statistics and SEO For Real Estate for over a decade with powerful results.  See what DEAN Knows can do for you.

 Contact DEAN Knows today to see how we can fine tune your real estate marketing!