Industry
Real estate mail, written and posted at agency volumes
Every agent in the suburb is putting the same printed market update in the same letterboxes on the same fortnightly cycle. The listing goes to whoever is remembered when the decision is made, and nobody remembers a market update.
This page is about producing those letters: what a run costs at agency volumes, how the farming arithmetic works and who writes them. For what to put in the letter, the real estate letter examples have wording for prospecting, just listed, just sold, appraisals and settlements.
The four letters that earn their postage
Appraisal follow-up
They had you in their home and then went quiet. Six weeks later, a short written note that does not ask for the listing. The highest-conversion list in the agency and the one most agents give up on.
Farming a street
Not the whole suburb - the streets you actually want. Personalised with the street name and a recent local result, quarterly, from a named agent rather than the office.
Just sold, to the neighbours
The one moment your local credibility is a fact rather than a claim. Twenty handwritten notes around a result beats a thousand printed flyers about it.
Post-settlement thanks
Written after the money moves, when there is nothing left to sell them. This is the letter that produces referrals two years later, and almost nobody sends it.
Your database against a farmed suburb
The response-rate series does not publish a real estate figure, so we are not going to invent one. What it does publish is the gap between mailing people who know you and mailing people who do not, and for an agency that is the same decision under a different name: the past-appraisal database against the letterbox drop.
- House list - people who have already bought from you or given you their details
- 5–9%
- Prospect list - cold names who have no relationship with you
- 2.0–4.4%
- Average ROI, house list
- 161%
- Average ROI, prospect list
- 29–100%+
These are United States figures, self-reported by the marketers who ran the campaigns, and there is no equivalent Australian series. Treat them as the shape of the thing rather than a forecast of your result - the honest use is to compare channels and list types against each other, not to predict a number for your campaign.
An agency sitting on four years of appraisals it has never written to is holding the better-performing list and mailing the worse one. That is worth fixing before any decision about paper.
Does the arithmetic work?
A 600-household farm drop at 110 words with a handwritten envelope costs about $2.93 a piece - $1,937 including GST, before postage.
Against a typical suburban commission, one additional listing per campaign covers it many times over. That is the whole calculation, and it is unusually favourable compared with most industries - which is why real estate is the sector where this channel has the longest track record.
What it will not do is rescue a weak proposition. If the reason nobody lists with you is your fee or your last three results, a handwritten envelope just delivers that news more reliably.
Costs for typical agency volumes
| Quantity | Per piece | Campaign total | Volume tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | $3.57 | $786 | 150+ pieces |
| 600 | $2.93 | $1,937 | 500+ pieces |
| 1,500 | $2.68 | $4,423 | 1,500+ pieces |
| 5,000 | $2.48 | $13,646 | 5,000+ pieces |
Indicative only, including GST, 110 words per piece, with a handwritten envelope, excluding postage. Full pricing and calculator.
Questions from agents
How often should we write to a farm area?
Quarterly is the usual cadence for handwritten pieces, interleaved with cheaper printed drops if you want more frequency. Monthly handwritten mail to the same 500 households stops reading as personal by the third one, which defeats the point of paying for it.
Can each letter reference the street it is going to?
Yes, and in this industry it is the single most effective field you have. A sentence naming the street, and what has sold on it recently, is the difference between a letter about the market and a letter about their house.
Should the agent’s photo be on it?
Not on a handwritten piece. A photo turns it back into advertising the moment it is unfolded, and undoes the work the envelope just did. Save the photo for the printed appraisal pack.
What about appraisal follow-ups that went quiet?
This is the highest-value handwritten list an agency has. These are people who invited you into their home and then stopped responding. A short written note six weeks later - no pitch, no market update, just an acknowledgement - outperforms every automated sequence in the CRM.
Keep reading
Real estate letters
Prospecting, just listed, just sold, appraisal and settlement letters for Australian agents, …
Handwritten letters
A handwritten letter service for Australian businesses. Real ballpoint on real paper, from 10…
Handwritten envelopes
Addressed envelopes written by hand with a real pen, with or without the letter inside. The c…
Pricing
Work out an indicative per-piece and total cost for a handwritten campaign. Change quantity, …
Examples
Formats, layouts and message structures for handwritten letters, cards and envelopes - with w…
Response rates
What the published direct-mail response data supports, what it does not, and how to design a …
Prospecting
Prospecting letters and B2B outreach written with a real pen. Why cold mail lives or dies on …
Start with the appraisal list
Pull everyone you appraised in the last twelve months who did not list. It is usually a few hundred people, they all know your name, and it is the cheapest test of this channel your agency can run.