Own one high-end zip code, or own one property type across the whole metro

Two agents in my area both do well at the top and they got there in opposite ways.

One works a single neighborhood of about 900 houses, most of them over $2M. She knows every floor plan, every remodel, every owner who is thinking about it in two years. When something trades there she is on one side of it more often than not. Her whole business is inside a boundary you could walk in an afternoon.

The other does waterfront only, across three counties. Docks, seawalls, flood elevation, the survey questions nobody else knows to ask. His listings are 40 minutes apart and he is in the car constantly, but nobody else in the region can talk to a buyer about a bulkhead the way he can.

The case for the neighborhood is that reputation compounds in a small space. Neighbors talk. One good sale becomes the next three. The case for the property type is that your knowledge travels, so a soft patch in one town doesn't take your year with it, and the specialty is harder for a generalist to copy.

I'm a few deals in and finding the ceiling on doing a bit of everything, so this is the fork I'm actually standing at. Where I get stuck is that the neighborhood approach has a hard cap on transaction count, and the property type approach means you're a stranger in most of the rooms you walk into.