How To Create Personas in Real Estate (+ A Downloadable Guide)

What is a persona?
In marketing, a persona is a fictional representation of a target audience segment based on research and data. It encapsulates the vital characteristics, demographics, behaviors, preferences, and goals of a specific group of users.

In the competitive world of real estate, understanding the psychology of your clientele isn’t just a luxury; it’s a necessity.

That's where personas come in. These fictional characters, crafted from insights and data, vividly represent your target audience, helping you tailor your approach and deliver unparalleled service.

Whether you're a seasoned agent, an investor, a property manager, or somewhere in between, personas offer invaluable insights into your clients' pain points and motivations. Let’s explore how personas can revolutionize your real estate game.

(Stick around to the end to download our free personas guide with practical examples tailored to every niche in the industry!)

Why Personas Are Useful in Real Estate

Generally, creating personas helps businesses better understand and empathize with their audience, allowing them to tailor their products, services, and messaging to more effectively meet their customers' needs and expectations.

This principle applies to nearly all real estate professionals. Since many pros operate on commissions, the more streamlined their lead generation process is, the more business they can conduct annually. 

Here’s why personas are beneficial for individual real estate pros:

Agents (and Brokers): The more time they spend marketing and looking for leads, the less time they have to close deals, impacting their commission and yearly earnings. 

Because of this, agents and brokers typically try to pursue leads with the highest likelihood of converting to clients by targeting their marketing efforts. In addition to streamlining the lead generation process, creating personas allows agents to perform in-depth research to better prepare themselves for working with a particular type of person.

Investors: Creating personas can be a game-changer for real estate investors across various niches. 

• Landlords: Understanding the personas of potential tenants allows rental property owners to tailor design and marketing strategies to the ideal occupants. By pinpointing target personas' preferences, needs, and lifestyles, investors can shape the property's features, amenities, and location to align with their desires, increasing tenant satisfaction and reducing turnover rates.
• Flippers: Similarly to landlords, personas guide flippers throughout the renovation process. Identifying potential buyers' characteristics and preferences allows flippers to tailor the design and layout of the property to those specific personas. 
• Wholesalers: Wholesalers can create profiles for homeowners with distressed properties. After finding these homeowners, they can connect them with professionals willing to renovate the properties.

Lenders: Lenders need to anticipate which homeowners will need their services (e.g., refinancing, consolidating multiple mortgages, taking out new loans, etc.). Creating personas helps lenders identify their niche demographics.

Contractors: For contractors, marketing efforts are best tailored to homeowners with evidence of needing their specific services. This may be due to particular features being on the property (e.g., pools, basements, HVAC). Certain homeowner qualities may also make them good candidates for the service (e.g., senior homeowners, absentee owners, divorcees).

How to Create Customer Personas

While the ideal persona will vary depending on your business, there are some vital aspects they should generally include, like:

• A name to personalize the customer segment
• Occupation/archetype
• Age ranges
• Income ranges
• Location
• Education levels
• A brief biography (this could consist of household size and preferences a persona may have that are relevant to your business)
• Goals/motivations (e.g., what motivates this customer to work with you?)
• Pain points/frustrations (e.g., what are common problems and objections among this target, and how does your business solve them?)
• Any other details you feel will help get to know your demographics and get in touch.

Creating a complete profile allows you to get inside your niche demographic's mind and understand how to appeal to individual segments represented by your personas.

Personas Powered by PropStream

Personas are more than just a trendy buzzword in real estate—they're a strategic, impactful lead-generation tool. By diving deep into the mindsets of your clients and prospects, personas empower you to anticipate needs, tailor your messaging, and ultimately exceed expectations.

To create the most powerful personas, you need a one-stop shop to uncover everything about your target demographics in the least amount of time. 

Two words: PropStream It!

With new real estate demographic datasets, you can uncover key insights into the population of local neighborhoods, learning:

• The average level of education
• Average income
• Household composition (e.g., the average number of people per household)
• Employment levels

And more!

Additionally, you can perform deep dives into homeowner situations that will create a base for your personas, allowing you to uncover mortgage details, transaction insights, and more. You can even Drive for Dollars using PropStream’s companion mobile app.

The future of real estate is here, and PropStream is leading the movement with the industry’s most accurate and dynamic data.