Sell a house the week before Thanksgiving, and odds are you won’t see that check until 2027. For real estate agents, next year starts in November.
If you want a strong year, your business plan needs to come together this fall.
Here’s where a lot of agents go wrong: they focus on outcomes. They want to know how much money they’ll make off a sale before they’ve signed a contract with the client. They’re counting money they don’t have yet.
Business planning tends to go the same way. You might have a number of deals in mind for next year, or an income goal, but no idea what to do each week to get there.
Business plans fall apart at this point because people overcomplicate them. I want to walk you through a simple way to look at your numbers and turn them into weekly and daily activities.
How to Build a Simple Real Estate Business Plan for 2027
A simple business plan comes down to four steps, and each one builds on the step before it.
- Set your outcome. Decide how many homes you want to sell next year and how much money you want to see on your tax return and in your bank account.
- Pick your business mix. Figure out how many of those sales will be listings and how many will be on the buyer side.
- Find your key objectives. These are the numbers you need to hit to reach your outcome, like listing appointments and showings.
- Plan your activities. Break those objectives down into weekly and daily tasks you control.
Everybody starts with the first two steps. Step three is where a lot of people get lost, so let’s spend some time there.
Why Objectives Get You to Your Real Estate Goals
Outcomes are the result of hitting your objectives over and over. Objectives are the things you can influence with what you do every day and every week.
Here are a few examples of objectives you should be tracking.
- Listing appointments you hold
- Listings you sign
- Offers you write
- Homes you show
Outcomes leave out a lot of things outside your control. A buyer can get cold feet. A seller’s job relocation can fall through, and they have to pull back the move. You can’t stop any of that from happening.
You don’t get full control over your outcomes, but you can get there by hitting your objectives week after week.
Use Your Listing Sign Rate to Plan Listing Appointments
On the listing side, start with your listing sign rate. If you sign one out of every two appointments you go on, you have a 50% sign rate.
Next, look at the share of your listings that sell. If 90% of your listings sell, you’ll need to sign a few extra to hit your goal.
Here’s how the numbers play out if you sell 100% of your listings and want to sell 15 next year.
- With a 50% sign rate, you need to go on 30 listing appointments.
- Spread over 12 months, you’re looking at two and a half appointments a month.
- You can’t go on half an appointment, so round up to three a month.
- To keep it simple, aim for one listing appointment a week.
You’ll want to set more appointments than you need, since some will cancel or never happen.
From there, figure out how many conversations it takes you to book a listing appointment with a seller. Is it 20? Is it 30? Is it 50? I don’t have that number for you. Nobody has it but you. I can tell you which ratios to look at, and your own data fills in the rest.
Your weekly goal is one listing appointment. Your daily work is the conversations it takes to book it. Ask yourself questions like these when you plan your day:
- How many calls do I need to make?
- How many emails and text messages do I need to send?
- How many open houses do I need to sit?
- Am I sending out mail?
Nobody can stop you from doing any of these things. Every one of them moves you closer to holding 30 listing appointments by the end of the year.
Track Your Showings to an Executed Contract on the Buy Side
On the buy side, the number you need is how many showings it takes you to get to an executed contract. Some agents show 10 homes before a buyer goes under contract, while others need 30 or more. You have to track your own numbers to know yours.
Let’s break out the calculator. Say you want 20 buy side sales next year, and it takes you 20 showings to get to an executed contract.
- 20 sales times 20 showings equals 400 showings in 2027.
- 400 showings divided by 12 months comes out to about 33 showings a month.
- 33 showings divided by 20 working days comes out to an average 1.65 showings a day.
Now run it with a smaller goal of 12 buy side sales at the same 20 showings per contract.
- 12 sales times 20 showings equals 240 showings.
- 240 showings divided by 12 months comes out to 20 showings a month.
- 20 showings divided by four weeks comes out to five homes a week.
Once you see how the numbers work, you can plug in your own goal and your own ratio.
Turn Your Numbers Into Weekly and Daily Activities
With your listing sign rate and your showings-to-contract number, you know how many listing appointments and showings you need each week.
The next question is what you need to do to get there, and this is where the planning comes in.
Here are the activities you can build into your week:
- Phone calls
- Conversations
- Direct mail
- Email marketing
- Social media posts
- Open houses
- Script practice
- Appointment practice
No one can stop you from doing any of this. Once you set these activities on a weekly and monthly basis, you have a business plan.
Your questions each week get specific.
- What do I need to do to get on one listing appointment this week?
- What do I need to do to show five homes?
Make the calls and work people through the funnel toward the objectives that hit the outcome you planned for.
Do the planning this fall, and you’ll feel good this time next year.
Why Repeatable Days Lead to a Better 2027
Will this feel boring day to day? For some people, it might. I think it’s exciting, and I love this kind of stuff. Your days are going to look the same, and the work is going to be repeatable. When your days look the same, your year looks a heck of a lot different by the end of 2027.
If you keep every day looking the way it does today, you’ll get the same results you got last year.
Make a change, and let your data tell you which change to make to reach the outcomes you’re planning for.
Build the life you want for yourself and your family. Because that’s why you got into this business in the first place.
