How to Implement RPR into Your Resimercial Business

It's certainly not an official REALTOR designation, but a few years back, a new buzzword surfaced in the real estate industry: "Resimercial." It describes residential agents who dabble in the commercial space, and vice versa.

However, when it comes to applying RPR usage, the term "Resimercial" takes on a whole new meaning. We're talking about residential agents using RPR Commercial to strengthen their business capabilities and commercial specialists who use RPR Residential for the same reason.

Today we'll take a look at how to access RPR Residential and Commercial, and we'll explore how toggling back and forth between the two might benefit you in serving your clients, being more successful, and closing more deals. Let's get to it...

Using Both Sides of RPR io Close More Deals

Okay, first things first. There's a difference between RPR Residential and RPR Commercial. Just like the NAR REALTOR® pins, residential is blue and commercial is red. When you go to the RPR website, the default setting is residential. However, click on the Commercial text link in the upper right, and everything will turn commercial red. (Here's a quick video on how it's done.) That's how you toggle back and forth between RPR Residential and Commercial—super easy! Note: If your version of RPR is Broker branded, only your search bars will appear red.

Traffic Counts

Now, let's dig a little deeper into how one side can assist the other. Perhaps you have a client who wants to reside in a low traffic area or is curious about how busy a particular street or neighborhood is. It's a breeze to check traffic count data for your residential clients in RPR Commercial.

Simply login to RPR, click the Commercial tab, then do a search for the area by Zip code. This will bring up the Search Results page. Then hit the Map View tab, (it's right under the RPR logo.) A map will pop up, and within the map area is a tab labeled Traffic. Click it, then proceed to check the boxes for the Annual average daily traffic (AADT), which is the total volume of vehicle traffic on a highway or road for a year divided by 365 days. Here's a link that explains this process in more detail, and it includes another video to show you how it's done.

Use Heatmaps to Farm

Farming, also known as geographical prospecting, is a proven method of marketing your real estate business to a neighborhood or local proximity in a way that raises awareness of your brand, captures leads, earns referrals, and gains listings. When used effectively, farming provides an excellent opportunity to connect with potential sellers.

Residential users of RPR can use RPR Commercial to get started with lead farming. Let's say you want to create a farming area for high-income earners. Toggle over to RPR Commercial and access the Thematic Map by selecting Go To Maps from the homepage. Enter your local area and choose Demographic Indicators and then Average Household Income. Use any of the map drawing tools to define an area and then save that area. Then, toggle back over to RPR Residential and use that saved area to do a search for residential properties that haven't sold in the last (enter your amount here) years.

Trade Area Report

In RPR Commercial, you can use a Zip code to run a Trade Area Report or use the map tools to draw a custom area around an address or location. You can easily use this document and information to boost your marketing and self-promotion efforts. This video will show you how, step-by-step.

These reports are rich with demographic, psychographic and socioeconomic data and statistics. How can you use this to market yourself? Choose a topic or focus of interest, then create and share a chart on your Facebook page to show off your neighborhood expertise. You could also write a LinkedIn post that takes a deep dive into projected population growth, etc. As a REALTOR®, you have nationwide access to this type of data and packaging it into visual charts and write-ups can help position you as a go-to source regarding local market knowledge.

*Word to the wise: you cannot use the Trade Area Report to guide a residential owner occupier to their purchase; this would be unethical and a violation of the Fair Housing Act. You can, however, use the Trade Area Report as stated above or to evaluate the purchase of a rental income property as an investment.

If you're a Resimercial agent, consider using RPR to help better serve your clients, market yourself, and farm for new leads. Login to RPR to get started and be sure to download RPR Mobile as well.

To view the original article, visit the RPR blog.