2019 real estate business plan pdf

Real Estate | How To

How to Write a Real Estate Business Plan (+ Free Template)

Published June 30, 2023

Published Jun 30, 2023

REVIEWED BY: Gina Baker

WRITTEN BY: Jealie Dacanay

This article is part of a larger series on How to Become a Real Estate Agent .

• 1 Write Your Mission Statement
• 2 Conduct a SWOT Analysis
• 3 Set Specific & Measurable Goals
• 4 Plan Your Marketing Strategies & Tactics
• 5 Create a Lead Generation & Nurturing Strategy
• 6 Calculate Your Income Goal
• 7 Set Times to Revisit Your Business Plan
• 8 Why Agents Need a Real Estate Business Plan
• 9 Real Estate Business Plan Examples & Templates
• 10 Bottom Line
• 11 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

A real estate business plan lays the groundwork and provides direction on income targets, marketing tactics, goal setting, lead generation, and an overview of your industry’s competition. It describes your company’s mission statement in detail and assesses your SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) as an organization. Business plans should include measurable goals and financial projections that you can review periodically throughout the year to ensure you meet your goals.

Continue reading to see real estate business plan examples and discover how to write a real estate business plan. Start by making your own by downloading and using the free real estate business plan template we’ve provided below.

FILE TO DOWNLOAD OR INTEGRATE

Real Estate Business Plan Template

Thank you for downloading!

💡Quick tip:

Market Leader provides a comprehensive paid inbound lead, automated marketing, and CRM solution to help agents acquire, engage, and nurture real estate leads.

Furthermore, Market Leader offers and guarantees you a number of exclusive seller and buyer leads in your target niche at a monthly rate.

1. Write Your Mission Statement

Every real estate agent’s business plan should begin with a mission statement, identifying your values and why your business exists. Your mission statement serves as the guide to achieving your ultimate business objective. When you create a solid clear mission statement, all other items identified in your realtor business plan should be aimed at fulfilling this statement.

Compass’ mission statement: “Our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world.” (Source: Compass )

Your mission statement should identify your target audience, what product or service you provide, and what makes your business distinct. As seen in the example above, a powerful mission statement should be short and concise but sums up a business objective.

Let’s take Compass’ mission statement above as an example: “Our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world.” The statement identifies what the company offers, for what reasons, and who it benefits.

2. Conduct a SWOT Analysis

SWOT is an acronym that stands for a business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The primary objective of these four elements is to assess a business by evaluating internal and external factors that can drive decision-making and help you make more money . Conducting a SWOT analysis as you develop your business plan for real estate uncovers opportunities to differentiate yourself from the massive competition currently on the market.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths and weaknesses are internal parts of your organization. Strengths identify what product or services you provide better than others, your access to resources, and items that benefit your customers. Weaknesses are items that need improvement, lack of resources, or what your competition does better. These are items within your control to change because you can convert a weakness into a strength.

See the example below if “Agent X” was doing their SWOT analysis:

Opportunities & Threats

External factors drive opportunities and threats and are areas you can take advantage of to benefit your business. Examples of opportunities can be shifts in the current marketplace, emerging trends you can capitalize on, features that competitors lack, or even changes with your competitors. Threats, on the other hand, are anything that can negatively impact your business. You don’t have control over changing the opportunities or threats, but you can develop a practice to anticipate and protect your business against the threats.

The opportunities and threats for “Agent X” would be:

When you complete your SWOT analysis, use it as a guide when creating strategies to meet your business objectives. To gain the most benefit from creating a SWOT analysis, make sure you are being realistic about your business and evaluating it in its present state. You don’t want to be unrealistic by listing strengths or opportunities that don’t exist yet, and you want to allocate time and money to the most impactful solution to your business issues.

If “Agent X” completed the above SWOT analysis, a few strategies they could derive would be:

• Incentivize agents to keep them at the brokerage for longer
• Implement a technology-based key machine to reduce lost keys and keep the team accountable
• Find a competitive advantage against competing brokerages and use that in marketing messages

Zillow agent finder (Source: Zillow )

To help agents locate other brokerages operating in your preferred market, agents can use Zillow’s agent finder page as a research tool to see which agents or brokerages are operating in a specific area. You can find an agent by location, name, specialty, and language. Once you click on a Zillow profile , you can read their reviews, see their team members, contact and website information, and property listings. Take a deep dive into your competitor profiles and can use the information to implement strategies within your own business.

Visit Zillow

Read how our experts feel about this real estate lead generation company in our Zillow Premier Agent review .

3. Set Specific & Measurable Goals

You’re ready to set some business goals after clearly defining your mission statement and SWOT analysis. Goals can help set the tone to increase your performance and drive your business in the right direction. Your goals should have a definitive way to show progress, which can be a prime motivator to keep you on track to achieving them.

Each goal should follow a pattern to identify set criteria. This will ensure that your daily efforts are performed to meet business objectives within a set period. A way to do this is by using SMART goals:

Examples of SMART goals for agents or brokerages:

• Increase closed transactions by 20% to a total of 150 deals within the next year
• I will ask all closed clients for a referral and review within 30 days of closing the deal

Goals can be split into short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goal lengths vary between days and weeks but do not exceed six months. Short-term goals can also be worked on simultaneously with long-term goals. Long-term goals can take up to six months or more to complete and require careful planning and perseverance. A mix of short-term and long-term goals will help you maintain motivation.

All goals are equally important; however, success will stem from how you prioritize each one. Slowly add on additional goals as you have the capacity and feel comfortable with the current progress of your current set of goals. Without identifying your business goals, you’ll leave your results up to luck to attain your business objectives.

4. Plan Your Marketing Strategies & Tactics

Developing marketing strategies and tactics and implementing them help you identify and locate your current value proposition in the real estate industry, along with specific timelines for execution. In addition to determining your overall business objectives and goals, your marketing strategy and plan should include the following:

• Pinpoint general marketing goals
• Estimate projected marketing budget
• Know your geographic farm area data and identify your target niche audience
• Analyze market competition
• Identify your unique selling proposition
• Establish a timeline and set your plan in motion
• Track your progress and readjust as needed

While a marketing strategy identifies the overall marketing goals of your business, developing marketing tactics will help you achieve those individual goals. They can include referral business tactics, retention efforts, and ways to acquire new customers. For example, you can offer incentives to anyone who refers your business, or you can implement new email drip campaigns to help increase lead conversion rates.

These tactics should have set key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you evaluate your performance. For instance, a KPI you can set for your business could be that referral business should exceed 20% of your lead generation sources.

If you’re unsure how to put together your marketing plan, check out our article Real Estate Marketing Plan Template & Strategy Guide and download the free template to get started.

Postcard campaign example (Source: ProspectsPLUS! )

If direct mail is part of your promotion strategy, services like ProspectsPLUS! can help easily create and distribute mailers to a targeted area. It also has options for postcards , brochures, newsletters , flyers, and folders. You can also send mailers to prospective clients by geographic or demographic farm areas through its campaigns. Check out its templates and mailing options today.

Visit ProspectsPLUS!

Read how our experts feel about this real estate direct mail service in our ProspectsPLUS! review .

5. Create a Lead Generation & Nurturing Strategy

Having a successful lead generation strategy will help you maintain business growth. Lead generation can be performed organically and through paid advertisements to attract and convert prospective clients. In addition to generating leads, agents should have systems to manage, nurture, and re-engage with contacts to maximize opportunities.

Generating leads through a multipronged approach is the best way to maintain lead flow. Use organic strategies like hosting an open house, reaching out to your sphere of influence, and attending networking events. Employ paid generation strategies, such as purchasing leads from a lead generation company or setting up a website to funnel potential clients. Your marketing strategies will directly correlate with your lead generation strategies.

Every lead is an opportunity, even if they don’t immediately convert into a deal. Effectively nurturing leads can make sure no opportunity falls through the cracks. Agents can nurture leads by continuously engaging and developing relationships with prospective leads . It’s important to provide prospective clients with a constant flow of essential and relevant information, depending on where they are in the real estate buying or selling process.

Here are the top lead generation companies for real estate agents and brokers:

Engage more efficiently with buyer and seller leads using Market Leader’s new feature Network Boost. Network Boost has shown a 40% increase in agents successfully connecting with leads. Market Leader social media experts design highly targeted and optimized ads for your Instagram and Facebook. As visitors engage with your ads, they will be prompted to complete a form and funnel directly into your Market Leader client relationship manager (CRM). This will also trigger an automatic marketing campaign that nurtures your clients and lets you know they are ready to engage with you personally. Try Market Leader’s Network Boost today.

6. Calculate Your Income Goal

Your income goal is one of the most critical items to be included in your business plan. While this may be more difficult for new agents who are still learning the business, it’s still necessary to estimate the amount of money you will earn for the year. Work with an experienced agent or mentor to help you estimate your monetary goals. For professional agents, review your previous years to judge your income goals for the upcoming year.

To calculate your income goal and the amount of work you’ll need to complete to get to that goal, you’ll need to have some basic number estimates:

• Net income: The amount of money you will put in your pocket after commission splits with your real estate brokerage.
• Fee split with brokerage: This is the agreed-upon commission split you have with your brokerage for each completed transaction. For example, if you have a 70/30 split with your brokerage, you will collect 70% of the commission, and your brokerage will receive a 30% commission for each deal.
• Estimate of completed deals per year: You also want to estimate the number of deals you intend to complete yearly. Remember that some months will be busier than others, so make sure to account for holidays, weather, and your schedule.

Real Estate Yearly Goal Calculator

By figuring out these numbers, you can give yourself a realistic number for your income goal. Compute the gross income commission (GCI) or amount of money you must make before the commission splits and the average profit per deal and month you’ll need to reach your goal.

For a more detailed breakdown of your yearly goal, download and use our yearly goal calculator. Input your information into the highlighted yellow boxes, and the spreadsheet will automatically calculate the GCI, total deal count, and gross income you’ll have to earn each month to reach your goal. Adjust the average gross commission per deal and brokerage split as necessary.

FitSmallBusiness Year Goal Calculator

For additional information on real estate agent salaries, review our article Real Estate Agent Salary: How Much Do Real Estate Agents Make?

7. Set Times to Revisit Your Business Plan

Business plans are only effective if you use them. A business plan is a roadmap for your business, and you’ll need to revisit it often to ensure you’re staying on track. It should be a constant resource to guide you through meeting your goals and business objectives, but it’s not necessarily set in stone if you need to make any changes.

Agents should revisit their business plans monthly to measure progress and make any changes to stay the course. If you find that you’re missing the times set for your goals, then you should continue to revisit your business plan regularly. Changing the business plan itself should occur annually once you can have a complete picture of your yearly performance. Evaluating the business plan can help you discover new strategies and ensure you have the appropriate resources for the upcoming year.

Overall status of sales activities in the dashboard (Source: Pipedrive )

Sales software like Pipedrive can help you track your overall business performance when revisiting your business plan. It presents company sales data in easy-to-visualize dashboards that track your business performance and contains forecasting tools to project future revenue. It can maintain company and team goals with progress tracking to keep goals top of mind.

Visit Pipedrive

Read how our experts feel about this real estate customer relationship manager (CRM) system in our Pipedrive review .

Why Agents Need a Real Estate Business Plan

A real estate business plan keeps you up to date on market developments and one step ahead of your competitors. It also enables you to test lead-generating tactics and create new marketing campaigns while keeping track of results over time. A solid business plan for a real estate agent presents the following:

• Where you are at the moment
• Where you would like to be
• How you’re going to get there
• How to evaluate and measure your performance
• When and when to correct the course

Real Estate Business Plan Examples & Templates

Real estate agents and brokerages don’t have to build their business plans from scratch, as many resources provide different examples. Business plan templates can also have different objectives. Some are used to secure financing or help you focus on lead generation, while others are single-page plans meant to get you started.

Here are five real estate business plan examples you can use to create yours:

Lead Generation & Income Plan

Market Leader business plan example (Source: Market Leader )

This business plan is from Market Leader, a third-party lead generation platform. It specializes in lead generation, marketing, and converting leads into customers with an attractive IDX (Internet Data Exchange) website and robust automation tools. Agents can also participate in purchasing leads through their lead products to receive a guaranteed number of leads per month.

A Single-page Business Plan

Business plan for real estate (Source: PngFind )

Agents who are new to writing a business plan can start small. Business plans do not have to be multipage to be effective. This single-page business plan helps identify a single goal followed by three areas to focus on and five objectives for each focus area. As real estate agents begin to feel comfortable with goal setting and completion, they can continue to add to this single-page business plan with duplicate pages, identifying additional goals.

Business Plan for Real Estate Brokers

Real estate broker business plan (Source: AgentEDU )

This robust real estate broker business plan is designed to address organization and management goals. It contains pages identifying personnel information like title, job description, and salary. The business plan also encourages the broker to identify operational goals for future personnel changes. It’s best suited for a broker with a larger team to help drive operational change.

Business Plan With Detailed Financials

Example of real estate agent business plan template (Source: FinModelsLab )

This multipage business plan contains eye-catching graphics and detailed company financial information for real estate agents and brokers seeking funding from outside investors. One of the last sections of the business plan is a financial planning section geared toward showing how viable your business is through your provided income statements, cash flow, and balance sheet reports.

Real Estate Developers’ Business Plan

Realtor business plan template sample (Source: Upmetrics )

Upmetrics’ real estate business plan templates are easy to edit and share and contain professional cover pages to help agents convert their business ideas into actionable goals. The business plans from Upmetrics are geared toward agents looking to transition into real estate development. This plan includes vital sections important for a developer to analyze, such as building location, demand for housing, and pricing.

Real estate CRM (Source: Market Leader )

Market Leader’s business plan is centered around driving more business through lead generation. It helps agents understand their lead sources, average sales price, and how much commission was earned in a given year. It also allows agents to set income and transactional goals for the following year.

Visit Market Leader

Bottom Line

Whether you are a new real estate agent or looking to grow your brokerage, writing a real estate business plan template will help you define the steps needed to build a successful business . It serves as a guided roadmap to help you achieve your business goals, identify areas of improvement, and provide guidance in all aspects of your business, from marketing, operations, and finance to your products and services. Business plans can help determine if your business is viable and worth the financial investment.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is a real estate business plan.

A real estate business plan is a document that presents an outline of your organizational goals. A business plan lays out future company goals and structured procedures to achieve them. Business plans commonly contain plans for one to five years at a time, though they can differ from investor to investor.

A real estate business plan will put you in a position to succeed while also assisting you in avoiding potential pitfalls. It serves as a guide to follow when things go as expected and when they diverge from the initial plan of action. Also, a real estate business plan will ensure that investors know the steps they need to take to succeed.

How do I jump-start my real estate business?

It is important to note that starting a real estate business is not a simple task. Before launching a firm in any field, entrepreneurs should spend numerous hours researching and developing a solid business plan. As you start your real estate business, use the following tips as guidance:

• Think about your professional goals
• Conduct extensive research
• Organize your finances
• Create a business plan
• Establish an LLC
• Make a marketing plan
• Create a website
• Start campaigns
• Keep track of leads
• Develop a network of connections

How can I grow my real estate business?

You can use multiple strategies and ways to grow your real estate business. They include:

• Assess your current situation
• Invest in your professional growth
• Establish strategic alliances
• Take advantage of omnichannel marketing
• Start blogging
• Create consistent social media profiles and campaigns
• Improve your website
• Consider working with a marketing company
• Optimize your signs and direct mail

About the Author

Find Jealie On LinkedIn

Jealie Dacanay

Jealie is a staff writer expert focusing on real estate education, lead generation, marketing, and investing. She has always seen writing as an opportunity to apply her knowledge and express her ideas. Over the years and through her internship at a real estate developer in the Philippines, Camella, she developed and discovered essential skills for producing high-quality online content.

Join Fit Small Business

Sign up to receive more well-researched small business articles and topics in your inbox, personalized for you. Select the newsletters you’re interested in below.

Last updated: January 9, 2024

[DOWNLOAD] Real Estate Business Plan: Step-by-Step

Published in Uncategorized

Real estate is a business. Agents are entrepreneurs. It’s naive—but understandably commonplace—for agents to lack a developed business plan.

It’s always a challenge to identify, quantify, and conquer our goals.

Here’s how.

Table of Contents

• Vision Statement
• Transaction Results & Goals
• Conversions & Lead Metrics
• Lead Gen Systems
• Growth & “Do” Plan
• Progress Chart
• Daily Actions
• Business Expenses
• Personal Expenses
• Download the Biz Plan
• REMM Series

1) What do you want your business to be? Write it down.

Start small. We don’t need mission statements or values declarations. It doesn’t have to be formal or “official.” It just has to be now.

Identify 3 business goals and 1 personal goal. Close your eyes if it helps. Think about what you want to achieve:

• 30 transactions?
• $1M in sales
• Hire an admin or another agent?
• Take weekends off for once?

Whatever they are, write them down.

Once they’re written down, share them. Tell your spouse, your broker, your friends—other Snappack members. Say them out loud to the right people. Stating and sharing these goals helps you hold yourself accountable.

Working with an accountabilibuddy—and having them hold you accountable—significantly improves the chances that you’ll remember and work towards those goals.

Bonus goal-setting tip

Here’s a quick mindset hack: when talking about your goals, replace the word “but” with “and.”

I want to do 40 transactions this year,  but   and I have a long way to go.

The “and” mindset re-frames the goal statement. It changes obstacles into acknowledgements. Problems into plans.

Big difference.

Jump: Top · Vision · Goals · Conversions · Lead Gen · Do Plan · Progress · Daily Actions · Business Expenses · Personal Expenses · Download · REMM · Discussion

2) Use past transactions to set 2019 goals

This one’s simple: you can’t know how to get where you’re going until you know exactly where you are. Use this sheet to help identify and delineate your current and future numbers.

It may take a little reflection or research to come up with these numbers, but it’s worth it. It will make your 2019 numbers clear as day, and help you define a plan to achieve them.

List out last year’s transaction numbers by the following sources:

• COI/Past Clients/Repeat
• COI/Past Clients/Referral
• Referrals from Agents
• Business/Professional Network
• Geographical Farming
• Just list/Just sold/Yikes
• Mega Open House
• Zillow/Trulia/Realtor/etc
• Your website
• Non-Owner Occupied
• NODs/Short Sales
• Promotion/Seminars
• Your Appointment Setter

Then repeat those sources with next year’s goals for each source. Be realistic—but assertive—with how much you increase each source for your goal.

In the next step, we’ll do some math with these numbers.

3) Conversion math

Now that you have your transaction goals defined for the next year, let’s talk about how to hit those numbers.

Real estate has an industry standard conversion rate of 2%. Only 1 in 50 leads becomes a sale.

Knowing that, we can reverse-engineer the number of leads necessary to generate the number of sales you want.

• Transaction goal — input the number of transactions you want
• Leads per year needed — Multiply line 1 by 40 (this represents a 2.5% conversion-to-sale ratio)
• Leads per month needed — Divide line 2 by 12 (months)
• Leads per day needed — Divide line 3 by 20 (monthly working days)

So, for example, if you want to close 4 deals a month next year, that’s a total of 48 transactions—an excellent goal for any agent.

• Goal = close 48 sales per year
• 48 sales ÷ 2.5% conversion rate = 1,920 leads per year required to close 48 sales
• 1920 leads per year ÷ 12 months per year = 160 leads per month required to close 48 sales
• 160 leads per month ÷ 20 working days per month = 8 leads per day required to close 48 sales

8 leads every day. Better get those funnels up and running!

4) Top Lead Gen Systems

This one is fairly self-explanatory. It’s meant to paint a clear picture of which lead sources deliver the best results for you. Obviously, it makes business sense to invest most heavily in the lead sources that provide the best return.

This document helps you get there.

One of the common refrains we hear is that lead gen systems, transaction coordinators, virtual assistants, marketing projects—

These things can’t be looked at as  costs . They’re  investments .

I personally can’t stand superfluous spin. And I think many marketing campaigns avoid the word “cost” at all….investment….because it triggers a certain negative feeling in the audience.

And that may very well be true.

But there are times when things that  cost  money aren’t expenses. They will pay for themselves over time, by providing a return on investment.

Why am I saying this?

Because the Lead Gen sheet above lists Estimated Cost of System in each row. I think it’s important to acknowledge that most of these lead gen systems aren’t free. But they’re also not expenses, per sé.

They’re investments.

5) “Do” Plan

Let’s call this the Do plan. It’s her method for staying in touch past clients and sphere—something every agent is familiar with.

Here’s how she does it.

Call and partner with other businesses to offer discounts.

Local coffee shop? Get a coupon. Local bakery? Buy a few extra snacks to offer around.

Once you have a discount or special offer to give out, start dialing. Your mission is to tell your past clients that the offer is available.

It’s genius—

The discount gives you a reason to call past clients without being too salesy. It means that a random phone call isn’t so random. It looks and feels much more authentic to your clients, and it lets you save some face.

So get on the phone, offer them the unique, not-available-to-just-anybody partnership or discount, and make their day.

And while you have them on the phone, don’t forget to ask them for new business.

How to set up a discount/giveaway program

Run an MVP Program for past clients and give away easy stuff like free coffee, ice cream, muffins, etc.

Every client is included in the program, whether you have a great rapport with them or not. And in fact, some bad-rapport clients may surprise you.

To use this tried-and-true methods, follow these steps:

1) Start a private Facebook group for all your past clients.

Since many of today’s business leads are generated on Facebook, it’s a safe bet that most clients will have a profile and can become your friend and join your private group. It will take some work to go back and find older clients, but it’s worth it.

2) Next, get a Starbucks card and load up $100 it.

You can do this via any store, app, or the website. You don’t have to do it  every month, since $100/mo can be pricey.

3) Take a picture of the card’s barcode or QR code, and share the picture in your private FB group.

Starbucks will honor the barcode and charge the coffee to your card, regardless of who shows the code at the counter. It’s a way to buy the coffee without impacting anyone’s schedule.

This method works at Starbucks, Baskin Robins, Dunkin Donuts, basically anything with a Pay By App system.

What if the business doesn’t have an app?

No problem.

Drive down to your local bakery or other business and ask them if you can hand out coupons. Many will offer a discount like a few dollars or % off. But even if not, they can just act like pre-paid cards, good for future purchases.

These coupons may need to be given out by hand, but they work like a charm: “Want a free coffee & bagel on me? Go to Dave’s and give him THIS. He’ll put it on my tab.”

Other offers for the MVP Program

• “Rent for free” sharing program: loan out power tools, carpet cleaner, or other equipment via your private FB group.
• Event promo tickets: give out 100 free tickets to a local Home Show. Look for similar events near you.
• Thanksgiving pie reverse giveaway: offer free pies via your group. Ask clients to sign up for a time: during a 1-hour lunchtime express pickup (give them a high-five, handshake or hug), or during a 3-hour evening gathering with wine, cheese & cocktails (catchup, shmooze, mingle!)

There are LOTS of ideas out there for how agents can stay in touch with their sphere and clients. This methods work very well, and they may work for you too!

6) Progress Chart

This progress chart does just that.

It’s like the MyFitnessPal of real estate business planning: it doesn’t make you diet. It just forces you to acknowledge when you aren’t dieting.

This is the perfect document to start every month with. Maybe on the first Sunday night of each month, sit down with your numbers and fill out a new column on this progress chart.

The beauty of so-called  big-data is that it reveals patterns that aren’t immediately obvious at first.

That whole “bird’s eye view” thing.

If you’re diligent about filling out this form every month, it will give you a bird’s eye view of your business month-over-month, and reveal patterns you may have missed.

We all know the market goes crazy in the spring—but maybe your buyer leads last into the summer much more than you expected. This doc will show you.

7) Daily Action Checklist

Personally, I feel like I absolutely need it and it would be a game-changer, but I also know I’d be miserable.

What if you could get all the organization benefits of time-blocking, with none of the restrictive blocking of time?

We got you.

It’s not time blocking. It’s task-blocking. Sure, it’s essentially the same as every other to-do list, but this one’s got days on it!

How to fill it out

Here’s what I’d would do. I’d essentially roll this out in 2 phases: discovery and deployment (those terms are used a lot in the tech/development industry).

During discovery, you’re using the checklist as a data-entry form: record your daily life to get an accurate picture of the tasks you’re  already spending time on.

During deployment, you’d use the checklist as…as a checklist. Work down the list in order (or close to it) to keep yourself organized and on-track.

So here’s how I’d do it:

Keep this list with you all day, every day, for at least a week.

We’re not implementing any changes in your routine yet. That will come during deployment, but the only change that  must happen now is that you  must record your tasks. So keep the sheet with you.

Write down everything you do, with start and end times.

Just a list of tasks is a good start. But to really get value out of this list, you’ll need to see how much time you spend on every task.

How much time you spend on, say, lead follow-up may vary by day of week or another factor. That’s fine. Just be as accurate as possible in recording.

After a week (month?), look for patterns.

Are you spending too much time on social media? Is there such a thing?

It depends .

Are you spending too little time on lead gen? Wrong time of day on follow-up? Your discovery phase of data collection should tell you.

Identify & implement changes

Then, of course, you have to implement—nay,  deploy —the changes you came up with after finding patterns.

8) Business Expenses

Dues, entertainment, coaching, communication, education, equipment, accounting, etc— all necessary investments for any business.

As with the lead sources above, the act of writing down these expenses is an important exercise in itself.

Real Estate Agent ROI Calculation

It can’t be as simple as [(income – expenses) / expenses = ????], can it?

Well, sort of.

The I in ROI—the money you have to invest—varies widely, based on what you’re paying for. But there are tons of real estate agent ROI calculators out there.

Placester has a good writeup and graphic on lead-to-close ROI:

That $56k number sounds great until you start to factor in CPI— cost per acquisition . That’s kinda the whole point of this calculation!

How much will it cost me to earn that $56k?

Zillow has a calculator tool on their website to help answer that. It’s pretty good, but keep in mind that it’s supposed to be a sales tool to convince you to become a Premier Agent.

In the screenshot above, we can see a few values used to calculate an ROI for this real estate agent—hypothetically, of course.

And how much are those “other expenses,” you ask? Well, that’s what this page of the Real Estate Business Plan document are for!

Track. Your. Numbers.

Bonus: Conversion rate matters

After your split and expenses come out, that $54k profit might turn into more like $36k profit. Now you’re at a 1:1 ratio with ROI. Or, in simple terms:

You’re barely breaking even.

Not good enough to stay in business. Why even spend the money if you’re not going to earn anything back on it? You’re better off staying home.

But this is business and the bills still have to get paid. You can’t stay home and you can’t just break even even. So how can you fix that?

Convert more.

Do more with the leads you already have.

Let’s run those numbers again, this time converting 2 leads a month, instead of only 1.

Convert just  ONE additional close in a month, and your GCI doubles to more than $180,000 per year. After split and expenses, even if that number comes down to $100k, it’s still almost a 3x ROI.

That’s the power of conversion rate!

9) Personal Expenses

These ones are never fun to write down, are they? Some of them can be written off your taxes in April, but they still have get paid for now.

I won’t harp on the expense topic all over again—you get the idea—but these expenses matter just as much as business ones do:

They impact your bottom line.

And if you’re anything like me, simply writing down how much money I spend (or calories I eat!) makes me do less of it!

Real Estate Business Plan Download

Take it with you! Email it to your office. Print it out and complete it by hand—whatever works best for you. Get your FREE real estate business plan here!

Where should we send your files?

Where should we send your pdf.

Free Guide: step-by-step guide to Real Estate Business Planning to take your business to the next level!

Now It’s Your Turn

Now I want to turn it over to you: Which of the steps from today’s guide are you going to implement first?

Are you going to calculate your Lead Gen ROI? Or work on making your bookkeeping more transparent?

Let me know by leaving a quick comment below right now.

6 thoughts on “ [DOWNLOAD] Real Estate Business Plan: Step-by-Step ”

November 3, 2017 at 1:35am

Great write up. Can’t wait to see the rest of the series.

November 3, 2017 at 12:48pm

Hello! Tried to download the business plan but I got a FB groups pdf instead. Great article!!

November 3, 2017 at 1:12pm

Sorry about that, @katielagace:disqus! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Fixing now!

November 3, 2017 at 1:42pm

Thanks again for the heads up, Katie. Should be all set now. You’ll have to refresh the page a few times and try the download again.

Sorry about that!

January 8, 2024 at 12:33pm

I can’t get the download to work on this. Can you send it to me?

January 21, 2024 at 10:22pm

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to primary sidebar
• Skip to footer

Legal Templates

Home Business Business Plan Real Estate

Real Estate Business Plan Template

Download our template and create a business plan for your real estate business!

Updated September 22, 2023 Reviewed by Brooke Davis

A real estate business plan is as essential as a business plan for any new or existing business. This step-by-step guide will explain how to make a real estate business plan, provide a real estate business plan template for you to work with, and explain how and why each step is necessary for your business plan to be effective.

We also provide links to downloadable templates to help you create your real estate business plan and sample plans to show you the best ways to tailor your plan for any number of real estate business needs.

Whether you seek investors to grow your business or want to track your goals from year to year as your business develops, a carefully crafted plan will help you.

Why You Need a Business Plan for Your Real Estate Business

How to write a business plan for real estate, real estate business plan sample.

The real estate business plan fills several needs. It gives you an outline of your business goals and the direction you want your business to take. It keeps you in line with industry trends. It lets you monitor your annual performance and change your goals as the market changes.

An effective real estate business plan also acts as a financial summary of your business, showing how it stands about your competition and the industry. The business plan acts as a road map for you and a snapshot of your business for any investors or bankers who want to understand your business.

A real estate business plan will help you spot risks and weaknesses early in your business development and help you set realistic goals for your business.

These are known as SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based goals.

Creating a business plan without goals is like starting a journey without a destination. Having a destination without a map means going down many blind alleys, taking unnecessary detours, and wasting time as you frequently need to return and start again.

Your business plan will help you avoid these pitfalls and adjust your course while you travel towards your final goal — a successful real estate business.

You must cover critical topics and include the correct information to ensure your business plan is as effective as possible. Follow our guide to writing a well-formed real estate business plan below.

1. Executive Summary

The executive summary contains an overall review of the rest of the business plan. It should include an outline of your history, your mission statement, and an overview of the rest of the report.

This section will include things like:

• Target clients with a fictional “ideal buyer” persona;
• Target neighborhoods, price ranges, and listings;
• Market overviews and potential threats and opportunities;
• A marketing plan outline.
• Your mission statement. This should include where and how your agency was founded, discuss the legal and financial structure, and stress your dedication to your customers and any special advantages you provide to your target clients.

2. Management Team

If you have a management team or a group that has contributed to the business’s success, summarize their names and contributions.

This section highlights everyone who has been involved in your business.

• Owners, founders, and original managers;
• New management, assigned duties and areas, and specific clients;
• Planned management expansion and anticipated managerial goals.
• Include all information about your managers, names, positions and duties, education and work history, past business successes, and other relevant details. Think of this section as your management team’s biography.

As the business expands, your management team section will be one section that needs constant improvement and updating.

3. Products and Services 

Your products and services should be phrased to make you unique in the industry and highlight how you stand out from your competitors. As a real estate business, what do you provide for your clients that others do not? How do your agents compare with your competition?

In real estate, your product is your listing and your brand. What is it that makes your company the one that your target buyer wants to use? In this section, you will highlight the following:

• Your niche market and how you acquire specific listings in your area;
• Your lead generation model and the way you obtain leads that differentiate you from your competitors;
• Your branding. A defining brand can be nebulous, and many firms resort to hiring a brand agent to help them customize and market their brand. You may be a family-friendly agent or specialize in the young professionals market. Determining how you present yourself is critical to your service profile.

4. Customers and Marketing

The customers and marketing section lets you identify your niche within the real estate business and how you intend to reach them.

You defined your ideal customer in your executive summary; now is where you expand on your perfect customer “persona.” A “persona” is the industry name for the imaginary person you sell to.

• Their demographics, age, gender, job, family preference, and income.
• Deal-breakers. What do they have to have in a home? What can they do without?
• Amenities, recreation, entertainment. Does your ideal buyer need dog parks nearby or bike paths? Do they want access to the water or the theater district?
• What type of neighborhood is your ideal buyer looking for? Do they need a school district or prefer to be far from children?

After establishing your ideal customer, you can select the viability of your marketing niche. For instance, is your buyer likely to be a first-time buyer? If so, what percentage of first-time sales were made in your chosen area in the last two years?

The more detailed you can make your Customers and Marketing section, the more you know how your business will likely thrive in your chosen area.

5. SWOT Analysis

Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are necessary for every business analysis. In what areas are you and your business strongest, and where do you need improvement?

Investors appreciate a business owner who can accurately pinpoint their good and bad points and demonstrate how to improve.

This analysis should be fact-based, not opinion-based. You should be able to provide statistics and metrics for your and your competitors’ business research. Some things to consider are:

• In what areas of your business plan are you strongest? Are they similar or dissimilar to your nearest competitor’s strengths?
• In what areas are you weakest? Are you weak where your competitors are strongest?
• What opportunities can you exploit in the next six to 12 months? Are these opportunities unavailable to your competitors?
• What threats are you facing in the next year? How can you avoid these threats or turn them into advantages?

By analyzing your business objectively and reviewing all the facts and numbers, you can determine how you will be placed in the next year.

6. Financials 

The meat of your business plan is the financials. This includes your expenses, annual income forecast (sales, commissions, or other income), cash flow, and costs. As your business grows, your business plan will include previous years’ financials to track the growth.

Your financials should include, at a minimum:

• Expenses. These include operating expenses, whether you have a physical location or are still in the virtual stage of operations, licensing and permitting, fees and filing costs, and other operating expenses. If you have employees, it will also include payroll.
• The past income portion will track how much you have already made. You should be able to show how many leads you have generated, how many transactions you made, and your income from those efforts.
• Future income is how much you would like to make going forward. You can estimate how many leads are needed per transaction and how many transactions per sale from your past efforts.
• Goals. With this information, you should include your projections for the next year and five-year periods. Presumably, you wish to increase profit over the next five years. You can demonstrate how to achieve these goals using income tracking and market research.

7. Operations

Operations contain the moving parts of your financial projections. This section describes how you intend to reach your business goals in the upcoming year. This section might also include upcoming personnel changes, office expansions, etc.

Real Estate operations can include your projected hours of operation, your action plan for achieving your goals, and your marketing and advertising plan. Initially, this may be somewhat fluid if you do not plan to have set hours of operation or a brick-and-mortar office.

Later, as your business increases, this section will include business hours, open house times, etc.

8. Appendix

If your real estate business plan includes any ancillary documents, such as your Articles of Incorporation or a  Business Purchase Agreement , they would be included in the Appendix.

After your first real estate business plan, your previous years’ plans will go into the Appendix so they can be reviewed by potential investors or by your board. You can also include your quarterly statements and other financial documents.

Your Appendix is the section for any documents you want to have that are not essential for your readers’ overall understanding.

Now that you know what goes into your real estate business plan, all that is left for you to do is click on the business plan creation template and begin. Ensure you have all your documentation and research-ready in advance, and the template will provide you with cues as to what information needs to go into which spaces.

After filling in all the blanks, the template will generate a real estate business plan to your specifications.

• Legal Resources
• Partner With Us
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell My Personal Information

The document above is a sample. Please note that the language you see here may change depending on your answers to the document questionnaire.

Thank you for downloading!

How would you rate your free template?

Click on a star to rate

• 1×1 Solo Agent (Bi-Weekly)
• 1×1 Solo Agent (Weekly)
• Admin & Ops
• Executive Team
• Brokerage/Corporate
• Group Coaching Programs
• Online Store
• Custom Training Suite
• Orlando – ICC Regional Summit
• Nashville – ICC Regional Summit
• Las Vegas – ICC Regional Summit
• Million Dollar Visit
• Login to your ICC Account

Free Real Estate Business Plan Template Download

Download this free real estate business plan template along with the action steps form to maximize plan implementation.

‘Tis the season to create your real estate business plan — and let this FREE downloadable template be your guide! In today’s video, I’ll walk you through how to create your 1-3-5 one-page business plan for your real estate business. I’ll also go over strategies to make your business plan work. To access your free download of the 1-3-5 one-page business plan as well as the action steps form, scroll down to the end of this blog post. Tune in to my video, below, for added insight and guidance.

VIDEO: Free Real Estate Business Plan Template Download

Business plans that work

Here are a few quick tips to consider as you craft your 1-3-5 single-page real estate business plan using our free templates below.

1. The 1-3-5- format is key — one big annual goal at the top, followed by three key focus areas that are broken into five objectives for each.

2. A single page document keeps your business plan streamlined and simple. Gone are the days of large, multi-page business plans that you know you’ll never read again. Keeping everything on one page forces you to focus on what matters and ensures that you will be able to read it again and again throughout the year to re-center yourself.

3. Be SMART. Make your goal , focus areas, and objectives SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound ).

4. Stretch but don’t strain. This goes along with making your goal, focus areas, and objectives SMART. You want to create goals that will stretch you, but you don’t want to stretch so much that you hurt yourself. A lofty goal that is well beyond reach can be very damaging.

5. Create action steps with due dates to help you prioritize. If there’s one supportive document we recommend to your business plan, its an action steps page. These action steps turn goals into actionable to-do items with concrete deadlines.

Download your FREE real estate business plan template

To download your free single-page real estate business plan template, click the image below! Create your big annual goal, your three key focus areas, and your five key objectives for each focus area.

Action steps to support your business plan

For your free download of the Action Steps fillable PDF form from the video above, click on the image below. These Action Steps will help you prioritize your to-dos that will help you achieve your five objectives from your real estate business plan template.

Need more help?

Maybe you are feeling behind, or overwhelmed, or like you need a little guidance to make a business plan that you know you’ll stick with. Take a look at our Business Planning course , which will walk you through the process step by step. And if you need more help in general, or if you need to create an implementation plan, hire an ICC coach today. It all starts with a completely free consultation call — reach out today!

Check out our latest posts:

• How to Coach Real Estate Agents – The 4-Step Process
• Real Estate Recruiting Coach – The RIGHT Way to Recruit!
• 2024 Real Estate Market Update For Q2
• NAR Settlement Agreement Game Plan for Realtors
• NAR Settlement Scripts for REALTORS to Explain to Clients

Realtor Production Standards -.

Top realtor time management..

Brian Icenhower

Brian Icenhower is the CEO and Founder of Icenhower Coaching & Consulting (ICC), which provides customized coaching and training programs to many of the highest producing real estate agents, teams, and brokerage owners in North America. This progressive company also produces online courses, podcasts, training materials, white label training portals, speaking events, video modules, and real estate training books. ICC is one of the largest real estate coaching companies in the world with thousands of clients and a large team of the most accomplished coaches in the industry.

Join the email list to get free content!

• First Name *
• Hidden Are you from the US?
• I consent to receive email and text communications from Icenhower Coaching & Consulting Inc. I consent to receive email and text communications from Icenhower Coaching & Consulting Inc.
• Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Follow Us on Social Media

Online Courses:

Let's connect

• Last Name *
• What would you like to gain from having a Real Estate Coach? *
• Name This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
• Company Name
• Office Phone Number *
• Number of Users & Any Requests: *
• Hidden Are you in the US?
• Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Your Event Resources

Share with your network.

• Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Training and Info

Prestige realty’s training material.  please click below on pdf attachments and videos for useful resources for your real estate business., real estate business plan, 2019 real estate business plan 2019_real_estate_business_plan (pdf), twitter tutorial for beginners, open house check list, check out this great video open house check list 2019_real_estate_business_plan (pdf), how to create a facebook business page, download the 2022 text message templates, you can download your copy of these free templates by clicking on the below link., contact us today.

17505 North 79th Avenue, Suite 212, Glendale, Arizona 85308, United States    

602-944-2100

Enquire here.