Should a realtor start a local news brand?

A lot of realtors are starting to do local news, and it's hurting legacy local media, because the realtors get way more traction than the outlets doing the actual reporting. They repackage local news in a more engaging format. I expect a lot more of this.

I'm helping a news organization right now that's losing the attention battle to one real estate agent. They have about six staff and millions of dollars going into the newsroom, and you can tell they're so mad, because this one agent posting fast local news content is crushing them.

Why own a local brand instead of sponsoring one?

My pitch to business owners, realtors included: don't be the person who pays $500 or $3,500 a month to be in someone else's newsletter. Start it yourself and own it. Then you're in charge, and you own an asset. For a realtor making a couple million a year, the cost difference barely registers.

It's an indirect way to get what every realtor wants. Most realtors already have a newsletter, and most of those are all self-promotion and garbage. This isn't a real estate newsletter. It's a local newsletter that happens to be owned by a realtor: local news, local events, maybe a cool house for sale. Big-city media barely covers the suburbs, so a list of things within 15 minutes of home is genuinely useful.

Then you sprinkle in yourself and your life every week. Readers see you as a person and get to know you. Nine months later, when they need to sell their house, are they going to search Google or go to the person they already know?

What's the biggest mistake realtors make?

Doing it in their own name and constantly pushing "I'm a real estate agent, hire me." You're building a local brand. You happen to sell houses.

"Do it a little bit, housing reports, but 90% of what you do needs to be not that."

Nine out of ten pieces should just be cool stuff about the town. Same goes in person: when you're at the chamber, don't lead with being a realtor. Say you own a media company. Now people want to talk to you, and you pitch real estate later. People work with people they know, like and trust, and they won't trust you if every message says "I want your money."

This is genuinely hard for realtors. Even the realtor helping me make local social videos still slips into pitching sometimes. Real estate is known for self-promotion, and readers who feel you're only doing it to sell them can destroy the whole concept.

The other mistake is running it all as a personal Instagram account. That makes everything depend on you. A real media brand can bring other people in, like the old newspaper did. It wasn't one guy writing the whole thing.

Can a small newsletter actually sell homes?

Yes. Two examples I've heard directly, not my own results:

• A realtor in one small part of Austin writes a personality-driven newsletter, about half local and half real estate. She never paid for subscribers; she sent it to friends who sent it to friends. With about 1,000 subscribers, she told me she got five deals in a year, around $5 million in homes. She handled the three over $1 million and referred the two smaller ones out for 25%.
• An operator in a small Kansas town with about 25,000 people on his list has a realtor paying him $3,500 a month just to sponsor the real estate section.

Imagine either of those with 10,000 or 20,000 readers, or in a market where $20 million homes sell all the time.

How long until it pays off?

Longer than most realtors expect. At any moment, maybe 2% of people are looking to buy or sell. The other 98% are happy where they are. So you're not selling every issue. You're building awareness so you're the one they think of. I tell realtors not to expect clients in the first six months. After months, ideally a year or more, they think: I see her every week, she gives me all this value, why wouldn't I call her?

A realtor newsletter service I'm involved with sold it as a "digital billboard" with a 6 to 12 month horizon, and it still lost a client around month three over cost and no visible results. Part of that was the client not doing his part.

The hard part is attribution. When a client closes a big deal without ever clicking a link in the newsletter, nobody can prove the newsletter did it. Clients compare that to ads that show results instantly. My fix is capturing intent at signup with a conditional form, so you know which readers are thinking about buying or selling.

Are realtors good buyers for this?

Some are great. Most aren't. That's from trying it.

• They're short-sighted. You can't tell most realtors to do something for six to 12 months before they see a benefit. Some panic after a month and a half without a lead. You just started.
• They're not entrepreneurs. They should want this, and the ones who get it crush. But most don't want to do anything that isn't real estate, and running a media brand is an entrepreneurial job.
• They need proof. Realtors are bandwagoners. My neighbor is huge in real estate and loved the idea, but told me nobody would buy it until we had proof it produced real estate deals. Once it works, that same instinct helps you.

My guess is maybe the top 1% are a fit, especially if they don't have to do the work. For the rest, the better offer is a marketing play: we own the brand, they're the face, they can make money on the ads. Realtors mostly want to be the local celebrity. Insurance agents, by contrast, ask what else they can build on it. I was one for 10 years. Of three agents I talked to, two signed up. See why insurance agents fit a local newsletter.

Realtors with a back-end business still have an edge over side hustlers. The newsletter becomes a high-engagement lead engine for something they already sell.

What should a realtor's local brand include?

• A neutral town or region name, not your name.
• A face who posts first-person local content on Instagram.
• A newsletter about restaurants, openings, events and local news.
• A short weekly note in your voice and your own listings in a real estate section.
• Occasional housing reports.
• Your brokerage in the footer.

The time ask can be small. For one agent I scoped it at about 20 minutes a week: a quick note on what's happening that week, plus listings. The ad slots can also be currency. Instead of cash, give one to a mortgage broker.

The face doesn't have to be the realtor. One very successful person I work with paid someone whose full-time job is the newsletter. She's the face and she's out in the community. You can own the ad slots for your business, put yourself in the newsletter with festival photos and favorite restaurants, or do both, which I think is best. Personality matters more every year, because AI keeps getting better, and proving you're actually there is how you stand out.

Tad Moore, who runs a regional daily newsletter, told me on my podcast his brand has equity in a new brokerage, while a separate real estate trade newsletter stays independent. I agree the trade version for agents, investors, developers and flippers needs to be its own thing, not part of a brokerage. The broader playbook is in how a local business can use a media brand to win customers.