How Real Estate Agents Can Study High-Demand Subdivisions to Get New Listings

As a real estate agent, finding motivated sellers or discounted properties for buyers in highly desirable areas is an invaluable skill. Fortunately, it’s an increasingly easy one to learn in our day of advanced technology and data.

Read on to learn how analyzing high-growth subdivisions can help you get new listings and satisfy current clients—plus get tips and tools to streamline the process.

How Studying Subdivisions Can Impact Your Agent Business

Taking the time to look deeper at specific subdivisions in your local area can help you grow your business in multiple ways. Let’s take a look at some of the most compelling benefits.

Identify Sought-After Areas With Precision

Seeking out high-growth cities is a good first step, but pinpointing the regions within these cities where the most growth occurs requires a closer look. Studying subdivisions or neighborhoods can give you a better feel for which exact locations (even down to the street) are more desirable in your city.

Uncover Off-Market Properties

Not every homeowner who’s ready to sell puts their property on the MLS. Some sellers simply haven’t had the time or resources to do so despite facing difficult circumstances, such as pre-foreclosure, the homeowner's death, or chronic vacancies among rentals.

Finding these motivated sellers and offering your expertise is a smart move. After all, in high-growth subdivisions, an off-market property is practically a guaranteed sale—and often means less time on the market.

Find Ideal Properties for Buyer Clients

Since homeowners (as described above) are more motivated, their properties may sell for less than market value, allowing you to get great deals for your buyer clients.

Buyers who are desperate to move into a subdivision with no current active listings can also benefit. Finding off-market properties in those areas can give you a chance to impress your client, potentially leading to referrals and repeat business later on.

How to Analyze and Compare Subdivisions

1. Look at Key Subdivision Features

Not all subdivisions are created equally—or garner equal interest. For example, one study found that 64% of homebuyers prefer neighborhoods with a distinctly suburban feel (as opposed to rural or metropolitan).

A particular neighborhood’s potential for growth often hinges on certain factors, such as:

Quality of nearby schools: Research the school district your subdivision is in. For many families, this is a deciding factor when choosing a home.

The desirability of a larger area: Is the subdivision part of a larger neighborhood? Try cruising around that area to get a feel for its walkability, noise level, cleanliness, and smells. Does the neighborhood have a strong community feel? What are the crime rates like there?

Proximity to local amenities: Check out the area’s nearby public parks, libraries, pools, gyms, shopping centers, hospitals, urgent care centers, and restaurants.

Distance to highways or public transportation: In more rural or suburban areas, proximity to highways may be more important for commuters, while public transit may be more influential in metropolitan areas.

Quality of construction: Take a look at the developer who built the subdivision and their track record. Do they have a reputation for building reliable, attractive homes? How are their past developments performing now?

Lot sizes: Larger lot sizes tend to attract more buyers, so check how much land a subdivision’s homes tend to have.

2. Analyze Real Estate Trends & Run Comps

One of the best ways to study data in a region is by using a tech-driven platform like PropStream. Using PropStream’s draw tool, you can highlight a specific subdivision and immediately see key data points to help you gauge desirability, such as:

• Home price growth
• Average rental price
• Average price per square foot and more

You can then use this data to run comparables and create more precise potential sale prices—whether to help you land a seller client within the subdivision or to find a potential property for a buyer client. With PropStream, this is as simple as clicking the “Comparables & Nearby Listings” tab, which instantly brings up a list of similar homes that have sold recently.

3. Find Off-Market Sellers

Once you’ve identified a high-growth subdivision, all that’s left is to pinpoint off-market homeowners who are eager to sell. Once again, PropStream makes this easy with its various search filters and lead lists, such as “Bank-Owned,” “Pre-Foreclosure,” “Tired Landlords,” “Pre-Probate,” “Zombie Properties,” and more.