Concentrated 1,100 letters in one corridor instead of four counties, and fee per deal doubled

I've been running small rental positions for years and started doing land assignments as a side channel about eighteen months ago. The change worth reporting is a targeting one, and I want someone to argue with it.

My first three campaigns were 900 to 1,200 letters spread across four counties, chosen because the price bands looked similar. Results were fine and forgettable. Two assignments per campaign, average fee 5,200, and every deal required me to learn a new planning office, a new set of minimum lot rules, and a new group of buyers from scratch.

This time I put all 1,100 letters into one corridor, roughly a 14 mile band along a state highway where a metro's subdivision edge is moving outward. Same total spend, 2,840 all in with skip tracing.

Results: 19 conversations, 5 contracts, 4 closed assignments. Fees were 8,400, 11,000, 9,600, and 6,200. Average 8,800.

The reason isn't better sellers. It's that I'd already done the split analysis for the whole corridor before I mailed, so when a 12 acre parcel came in I knew inside ten minutes whether the frontage supported three lots or one, and I knew which two builders were already buying within four miles. That let me hold price instead of taking the first offer. On the 11,000 one I had two builders bidding, which has never happened to me before.

What nearly broke it: concentration cuts both ways. Two of my five contracts came from the same 40 acre family holding, and if that family had gone quiet the campaign would have looked mediocre. I also have real exposure to one county's planning department changing its frontage or minimum lot standards, which happens and would strand my whole buyer thesis at once. Those standards are set locally and differ county to county, so it's not a rule I can carry anywhere else.

What I'd keep: mapping buyer demand before mailing, not after. What I'd change: I'd pick two adjacent corridors instead of one, so a single planning decision can't take the whole channel out.

Answer

2aaron_fitz10 Get yoursPRO6

I'll argue with the attribution rather than the result. Your fee per deal doubled, and you're crediting corridor knowledge. Some of that is real, the two-builder bidding on the 11,000 deal only happens if you know both builders exist. But you also ran three campaigns before this one, so the operator got better at the same time the targeting changed. I'd expect the fourth campaign to beat the first three even if you'd spread it across four counties again.

The piece I do think is clean is the ten minute answer on frontage. Knowing whether 12 acres is three lots or one before you talk price is what lets you refuse a low first offer, and that's a per-corridor asset you can't get from spreading.

So the honest test isn't this campaign against the old ones. It's your next two corridors against each other, run at the same time by the same you. If the second corridor takes three campaigns to produce 8,800 averages, the learning curve was doing most of the work and concentration just sped it up.

One thing on your concentration risk. The family holding worry is bigger than the planning department worry to me. Planning changes are usually noticed and slow, and you'd see a comment period. A single family deciding not to sell gives you no notice at all, and two of your five contracts is 40 percent of your pipeline sitting in one conversation.

Concentrated 1,100 letters in one corridor instead of four counties, and fee per deal doubled

1 reply