The week I nearly wrote a legal conclusion into a buildability flyer

I do land and I read parcel files for fun, so when a two-broker land shop asked if I'd write what they were calling "the sheet you keep sending me," I turned it into a retainer instead of a favor. Five months, eleven listings, $1,900 a month for up to three new one-pagers plus refreshes on anything still active. Effective price lands around $630 a listing when they hit three and closer to $950 when they don't.

The sheet is one page per listing: current zoning designation and the permitted use table it sits in, utility distance measured off the county GIS, road frontage and access type, flood panel reference, and any recorded easement I could pull from the deed. Their average land listing runs about $410k and their pre-existing average days on market was around 140. Six of the eleven went under contract inside the five months, two after price cuts, and I'm not going to pretend the sheet is why. What I can measure is that showing requests came in with fewer of the same four questions.

The part that nearly broke it: on listing four I wrote "buildable for a single family residence" flat out, and the broker dropped it into a flyer. Zoning and permitting language varies by state and by county, and a sentence like that is a legal conclusion I'm not licensed to make. Rewrote it as the designation plus the code section plus "confirm with the county planning office in writing." Every claim now carries a sourced-from footer with the pull date.

Time: first two took me eleven hours each, current ones run four and a half. What I'd keep is the cap of three, which is the only reason the hours didn't eat the fee.

3 replies

1chriswalton8CC1CPRO8

One client is your whole book. Run it at 1.5 new listings a month instead of 3 and your effective price per sheet doubles, which is the exact moment a broker with commission pressure sits down and recomputes what he's paying you. What's your plan if they come back and ask for $1,100? And if you say no and they walk, you're at zero revenue with a template nobody else has bought yet. I'd want a second and third broker on the same product before I called the pricing proven.

1Rena Expert

The retainer holds on one assumption, which is that listing flow stays near the cap. At three new sheets a month your realized rate is roughly $630 and your marginal cost at 4.5 hours is about $140 an hour of your own time. At 1.5 a month the realized rate is $1,267 for the same fee and the broker is buying at a price he can compare against a freelancer quoting $250. That comparison is the pressure point, not your quality.

On the refresh question bramble raised: define a refresh as a price or status change only, and treat any new data pull as a new unit. Otherwise the cap on new sheets does nothing, because the work migrates into the uncapped bucket.

The defensible part of what you built is the sourcing discipline. Generative tools will produce a zoning summary that reads well and cites nothing, and the difference between that and a dated pull with a code section is the difference a broker can feel when a buyer's attorney calls. Keep the footer. Keep the pull date.

The concentration point stands. A single-client service line prices at whatever the client's next best quote is, and agent marketing budgets are under real pressure from the commission environment, so the next best quote gets shopped more often than it used to. Two more brokers at $1,400 each is a weaker headline and a stronger business.

Zoning and permitted-use determinations differ by state and municipality, and a buildability statement is a question for the local planning authority and a licensed professional, not for the marketing sheet.

The week I nearly wrote a legal conclusion into a buildability flyer

3 replies