Stuck for ideas for your real estate blog posts? Need some real estate blog ideas to rank on Google, go viral on social media, and actually generate some leads? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Here are some ideas for real estate blog posts you can use over the next few months.
1. Affordable Curb Appeal Ideas for Your Local Market
Format: List post
Difficulty level: Easy
Example title: “11 Affordable Curb Appeal Ideas for [Your Farm Area] Homes”
Potential partners: Landscapers, home stagers, contractors
Curb appeal is one of those things that most homeowners don’t quite understand. They THINK they do, but when it comes down to actually pulling out their credit card or rolling up their sleeves, they will inevitably head to Google, or, if you have a well-written article, your blog.
You can easily make your article much better than others in your farm area too. Start by researching or coming up with some affordable curb appeal ideas and then work with a local home stager, landscaper, or contractor to get their professional opinion on how much it will actually cost them.
2. Home Renovations That Offer the Best ROI for Resale
Format: List post
Difficulty level: Easy
Example title: “7 Home Renovations That Will Get You an ROI at the Closing Table”
Potential partners: Appraisers, contractors
Here’s another blog post idea that most homeowners thinking of selling will find irresistible. After all, renovating their older home will cost them tons of money, and most homeowners don’t have a clue if they will ever get any of that money back at the closing table.
The trick to take this to the next level will be to use a local data source that covers return on investment (ROI) from renovations, or even better, work with a local appraiser or contractor to talk through actual, real-world pricing and what they might recoup at the closing table.
Just make sure to not promise them an ROI for any repair. Remember to add caveats like “has the greatest potential for ROI” or “studies show this repair can have a great ROI.”
3. Interviews With Local Business Owners
Format: Interview article
Difficulty level: Moderate
Example title: “An In-depth Guide to [Neighborhood] for New Homeowners”
Potential partners: Local business owners
While most real estate bloggers will review local restaurants, what will that offer your readers that Yelp can’t? Go the extra mile and interview local business owners and feature the interviews on your blog. You won’t only help educate and entertain your readers, but you can build relationships with local business owners as well.
In fact, this can be a lucrative way to generate referrals before they even hit the usual lead resellers. Parkbench offers agents a turnkey website and referral platform that will make generating hot referrals from local business owners a breeze. So you’ll educate your audience, get referrals, and help promote local businesses. What’s not to love?
4. Home Staging Tips & Tricks to Sell Faster
Format: List post
Difficulty level: Easy
Example title: “7 Interior Paint Colors That Will Help Your Home Sell Quicker”
Potential partners: Home stagers, interior designers
If you’re working in a relatively upscale neighborhood, then chances are your homeowners will start looking at beautifully staged local listings and start to get intimidated. How will their home compete with these beautiful spaces online?
The trick with this blog post idea is to make sure to interview (or research) experts who actually know a thing or two about interior design and how it might affect their listing. Again, just be careful about making any promises here. Avoid saying things like “this paint color WILL increase your listing price” and instead say something like, “one study showed this paint color helped XX homes sell faster.”
5. In-depth Neighborhood Guides for Relocation Buyers
Format: Explainer article
Difficulty level: Moderate
Example title: “An In-depth Guide to [Neighborhood] for New Homeowners”
Potential partners: Local business owners, chamber of commerce, local officials, school officials
While ranking on Google for neighborhood guides will be extremely difficult in many cities, in-depth neighborhood guides make excellent lead magnets, e-books, or social media content. The trick here is to go deep. Most agents are going to write fluffy overviews, if anything, so make sure to get into the nitty-gritty of what moving to your neighborhood will be like.
You can talk about listing prices for different types of homes, local home owner associations (HOAs), local regulations, building codes, zoning, schools, restaurants, or anything else you think might be helpful for someone relocating to the neighborhood.
6. Hyper-local New Homebuyer’s Guide
Format: Explainer article
Difficulty level: Moderate
Example title: “A New Homebuyer’s Guide to Moving to [Your Farm Area]”
Potential partners: Mortgage brokers, local business owners, school officials
Are you working with new buyers? If not, you’re missing out. Many first-time buyers these days have excellent income and credit, and all they really need is someone to walk them through the transaction. If you get it right, you could have an evangelist for life.
Local or hyper-local new homebuyer’s guides are a great way to educate new buyers and show off your local market knowledge and, even better, how well you communicate complex ideas. After all, isn’t that what they’re hiring you for?
Your Parkbench site can work well here too. Just point them to all your local business interviews to show off just how connected you really are to the neighborhood. Every new buyer wants to work with local experts.
7. Monthly or Quarterly Aggregated Market Reports
Format: Monthly or quarterly explainer article
Difficulty level: Moderate
Example title: “Aggregated Market Report for [Your Farm Area, Month Year]”
Potential partners: Mortgage brokers, local brokerages, appraisers
While most agents post some kind of market report on their blogs, most are pretty thin and not actually useful for their readers. If you want to stand out, then take the time and effort to make your monthly or quarterly local market reports as in-depth and nerdy as you can manage.
There is a ton of data out there if you know where to look. The trick is to make that data easily digestible for your audience. So pull data from multiple sources and then contextualize it for your readers. Does the data from one source line up with another?
Just remember to cite your sources here. Most brokerages put out these reports for the explicit purpose of having them shared with homeowners, so they will likely be happy you’re sharing them.
8. Local Listing(s) of the Week
(Source: 196 Orchard Street, The Serhant Team at Nest Seekers International)
Format: Roundup post
Difficulty level: Easy
Example title: “3 Drop-dead, Gorgeous, Mid-century Modern Homes in [Your Farm Area]”
Potential partners: Local listing agents
This is a fun one and can help you build relationships with local listing agents. For more impact, try and choose three to five listings every week that might fit a certain theme your audience will like. For example, if you’re working in Miami, waterfront listings would be fun to write about. If you’re working in Manhattan, then you can’t go wrong writing about penthouses.
To help take these articles to the next level, make sure to reach out to the listing agent to ask some questions, and also try to write about timely topics. For example, in the middle of winter, you might feature listings with cozy fireplaces. In summer, write about listings with resort-quality pools.
If you have the time and want to scratch some listing previews off your list, why not go to an open house and make a quick narrated walk-through video? This will work great on your blog and social media to boot.
9. A Property Marketing Case Study
(Source: Zurple)
Format: Case study
Difficulty level: Moderate
Example title: “Case Study: How 3 [Your Farm Area] Luxury Homes Sold 20% Over Asking”
Potential partners: Local listing agents, marketing partners
This blog post requires a little more research and, of course, access to data and assets such as before-and-after images. But if you either have a few listings under your belt where marketing made the difference, or know an agent who does, then this is a great post to show off your marketing knowledge to your readers.
You also might want to do a general overview of the case study in the article, then offer something like more comps or market data summaries as a lead magnet.
10. How Economic News Affects Your Farm Area
Format: Explainer article
Difficulty level: Moderate to difficult
Example title: “What the [Latest Economic News] Means for [Your Farm Area] Homeowners”
Potential partners: Mortgage brokers, investment bankers, economists
While your wealthy clients might read the Wall Street Journal every morning, most of the economic news won’t be directly relevant to their personal real estate portfolio. That’s why taking that news and contextualizing it for them is another great way to use your blog to offer something of value for your audience.
A word of caution here though: If you don’t know much about the economy or how it affects your local market, then you should probably avoid these kinds of posts or just interview someone who does.
11. An Interview With a Mortgage Broker
Format: Interview
Difficulty level: Easy
Example title: “What the New Interest Rate Law Means for [Your Farm Area] Homebuyers”
Potential partners: Mortgage brokers
Just like you, mortgage brokers are desperate to present themselves as local market experts. So why not share your audience and let them show off that knowledge? It will help your audience learn more about potentially complicated topics, and they will love you for it.
As an added bonus, doing interviews like these and maybe even promoting them with paid Facebook posts might just get you some referrals down the road. Just make sure to familiarize yourself with RESPA disclosure laws before you set this up.
12. An Interview With a Lawyer on Common Local Legal Issues
Format: Interview
Difficulty level: Easy
Example title: “A Lawyer Explains the Legal Issues of Accessory Dwelling Units”
Potential partners: Real estate lawyers
Real estate lawyers also want to show off their local expertise to your audience because your leads might potentially be their leads too. Are you starting to notice a trend here with interview articles? If you’re just jumping in on this article idea, then here’s a quick recap: Interviewing local experts can help build relationships that lead to referrals down the road.
Just be aware that lawyers will have all kinds of conditions for talking through legal issues on your blog. Also, make sure you find an experienced lawyer who has some skill at simplifying complicated topics. Many lawyers are so verbose they might end up confusing your audience. If you only have access to a lawyer like this, get them to clarify answers in simpler terms and only include those answers in your article.
13. A Guide to Local HOA Covenants
Format: Explainer
Difficulty level: Difficult
Example title: “15 Common HOA Covenants & What They Really Mean”
Potential partners: Real estate lawyers
If you want to get confused (and angry), ask someone what they think about their HOA. For most people, HOAs are right up there with the IRS when it comes to confusing and potentially expensive adversaries. That’s why a friendly explainer piece on HOA covenants can help new homeowners, or anyone who never lived under their rules, feel a little more comfortable about them.
You might need help from a real estate lawyer for this one, because HOA covenants can be confusing, ambiguous, or both. If you don’t have access to a lawyer or a strong understanding of HOAs, then maybe stick to just defining general HOA terms.
14. An Interview With Local School Experts
Format: Explainer
Difficulty level: Difficult
Example title: “[Your Local School Official] on the Exciting New Technology Available to [Your Farm Area] Students in [Year]”
Potential partners: School officials, educational consultants
Without doubt, finding a home in a great school district is the most important criteria for most families with children. The problem is that figuring out which school is actually great for their kids can be challenging, to say the least.
So why not make it easier for them and find some local school experts or officials to interview for your blog? Here in New York City, we actually have educational consultants who counsel families on finding a school that’s right for their kids. Serious stuff for any parent and perfect for your blog.
15. A Weekly Wrap-up of Local Events
Format: Wrap-up post
Difficulty level: Easy
Example title: “15 Fun Things to Do This Weekend in [Your Farm Area]”
Potential partners: Local business owners
While many agents think their audience can get this information anywhere, the truth is that many don’t. They might not use social media as much as you think, or even if they do, they might not subscribe to accounts that tell them about fun things to do.
If you live in a city with a ton of events, try to focus on a few really interesting ones, or at least categorize them into different categories like fun for kids, lectures, tastings, or concerts for adults. Also, know your audience! If you primarily work with older people, they’re probably not going to be interested in the punk rock festival next weekend.
