A buyer searches the neighbourhood you have farmed for six years. They land on a portal, request a showing on your own listing, and that lead gets sold to three agents, one of whom is you. You pay for the privilege of being contacted about your own inventory.
The frustrating part is that you are the actual expert in that market. You know which streets flood, which HOA is difficult, what the last four comparable homes really closed at. None of that is visible to anyone searching, because it lives in your head and in a CRM instead of on a page with your name on it.
So you keep buying zip codes. The cost per lead climbs every year, the lead quality does not, and if you stop paying for thirty days the pipeline stops with it. You are building someone else’s brand with your commission.
And the agent who quietly published a market update every month for two years is now the first result for the neighbourhood you both work, at no cost per lead at all.