6 Real Estate Niches Set to Explode in 2013 | Trulia Pro Blog

There’s no better time of year than the slow(er) holiday season weeks to start thinking and working to make your business better in 2013, including by investigating and vetting new niches that are poised to take off next year.

Here’s my short list:

1. Buyers  

Obviously, home values are still down from their top-of-the-market peak, but they are on the increase – and that has deactivated many of the valid fears careful buyers had about buying into a declining market. Further, inventory is still flush in most areas and will continue to be plentiful this coming year as the banks allow their shadow inventories to trickle onto the market.

Buyers make for a fantastic niche because they have a unique set of questions, concerns and knowledge cravings that you can use in marketing to them, reaching them with your knowledge and insights on everything from neighborhood flavor to local market dynamics. Through blogs, seminars, and answering questions in online forums, you can reach buyers and position yourself in their minds as an expert in one fell swoop.

Most first-time buyers don’t have a pre-existing agent relationship, and they are out there actively looking for an agent that will communicate with them on their own level, answer their questions with respect and treat them like a VIP, no matter the size of their transaction. The bonus? If you serve them well, you stand to gain a client for a lifetime of transactions and referrals.

2. Former Foreclosed Homeowners  

The peak foreclosure rate of the recent housing recession took place right around 2010, and most lenders require a minimum of 3 years’ “seasoning” on a foreclosure (or short sale) before they will issue a new mortgage. Newly able to qualify for a mortgage (again), home owners who lost homes to foreclosure will flood back into the housing market next year, having recovered from lost jobs, saved some cash, reduced some debt and paid a whole lot in income taxes over the past few years without the mortgage interest deduction they were so used to.  Many will also be motivated to buy similar or better homes to the ones they lost at a price lower than they paid for their former homes, at the top of the market.

Agents who seek to market to this niche should be up to speed on:

• foreclosure and short sale seasoning requirements,
• other common credit and financial issues this group faces, and
• the local neighborhoods where distressed, yet desirable, listings are plentiful and now selling for well below what they sold for in the 2005-2006 time frame.

3. Style-Specific Buyers  

Some buyers are super specific about their stylistic preferences: they only want a mid-century modern home, a log cabin, a Spanish-style mini-villa, a Tudor, or a glass-walled water view home. Marketing your expertise, inventory and/or specialization in these sorts of properties is like putting out a smoke signal to these sorts of buyers that leads them right to you.

4. Renters-for-Life and Stay-Putniks who’ve recently changed their minds  

At the bottom of the market, it was in fashion in some circles to declare that home ownership was crazy and that the best practice was either to simply rent for life, no matter the income bracket, or to stay in the same home until, as a client of mine was fond of saying, “they carry me out in a pine box.”

Fortunately, the emotional tides that caused such vehement anti-home buying declarations have turned, right along with the shifts in the market.

But here’s the thing: these renters for life and home owners who had planned to stay put are financially conservative and will be more concerned than most with the long-term economic stability and projected future prosperity of the neighborhood and home values. Obviously, every buyer cares about these things, but these folks will be more aggressive in posing these questions to you and expecting data-driven answers to their concerns from the agents they choose to work with on both their purchases and their listings.

5. Urban Farmer Wannabes

There is a burgeoning group of urban and suburbanites who are dealing with digital depression, a desire to eat whole, local foods and the craving to do something with their hands. These trends, combined,  are driving the movement toward urban farming. These are the folks who:

• will want yards, rooftops, terraces and other spaces amenable to planting raised beds, fruit trees and container gardens
• will want to know what the local ordinances say about front yard food planting; and
• might even want to keep a mini-herd of chickens, goats or even bees on the property.

These folks (and I am one – check out my beekeeping getup, here) seek resources and creativity for how to use the space they have, no matter how small or how large, to build the lifestyle they want. Being knowledgeable about permaculture values and urban farming are key for the agent that wants to market to this niche, as is sharing that knowledge with local urban farming and locavore-focused groups, sites and communities.

6. Lifestyle Design Aficionados

Increasing numbers of Americans are taking up the mantle of lifestyle design or lifestyle composition, working and living and owning homes in very flexible arrangements. These folks are often self-employed or freelance/contract workers. They want to be able to travel extensively throughout the year, and like to create a location independent lifestyle, even as they seek to get maximum leverage out of everything they own, as with pooling funds with friends or relatives to buy – or renting out rooms, floors, units or their whole home for a night – or a year – at a time.

In order to make their lifestyles work and flow as needed with economic cycles and the supply and demand forces for their own work, these people will be looking to agents skilled in helping clients:

• buy untraditional and multifamily homes
• work around their unusual income and employment situations and
• satisfying the competing and numerous priorities and wish lists that come  with unique co-buyer arrangements.

Not convinced in the power of niche marketing? Don’t take my word for it – I just spoke with #1 New York Times bestselling author and marketer extraordinaire Tim Ferriss about what he’d be doing right now if he were a real estate agent. Here’s what he said.

P.S. – Take two minutes to update your Trulia profile to include your areas and niches of specialization right now, and we’ll automatically enter you to win a Mercedes E550. Yes, we’ll give you a car for doing a super-fast, high-potency favor for your own business.  You’re welcome!

 

via pro.truliablog.com