Drawing a farm
Sometimes you will find yourself in a situation where an agent wants a specific neighborhood, but there are no farms preloaded in TheGenie for that area. Or perhaps they only want certain sections of a farm. We can use the drawing tool to create ANY custom area and retrieve instant analytics for it.
Start by select "Draw an Area BETA" under the "Area Tools" selection on the left-hand menu. You will be taken to our drawing / painting tool
To start, as always, we must first enter a subject agent if we haven't already. When we save the farm, we have the option to create a report as well which will save under the subject agent's name.
Next, let's take a closer look at the options on the actual tool itself.
View change – This allows you to view the map in different styles
Parcels – shows the parcel boundaries
Streets – show the map with street names highlighted
Satellite – same as parcel view without the parcel boundaries
Address Search – Here you can put an address in the search bar and the map will take you to that address. This is very useful if an agent has a listing and wants to create a mail list for a just listed / just sold campaign. Instead of doing an outdated "radius" farm, we can custom draw the specific neighborhood the listing is in for a more accurate and cohesive target list.
Navigation tools – these buttons allow you to zoom in / out (can also be done by scrolling), and orient the map northward
Map expand – click this button to view the map in full screen
Paint brush – this allows you to click various points on the map and draw a farm
Load Farm – you can load a pre-existing farm in the tool for editing
Delete – this will delete a selected polygon or point on a polygon
Clear all – completely wipes away any drawings on the map
Let's go over a scenario to explain how the map drawing tool can be used.
You are sitting down with your client and they tell you "I want part of the condo complex that contains the address 13657 Sycamore Tree Lane, 92064". First you will want to do an address search ("2" on the image above) to locate the address on the map:
Note that this property is part of a townhouse community. If we were to do a standard "radius" style farm, we would potentially grab the single-family homes to the right of the listing. If we limit our mail list to the relevant area, the agent can send a hyper focused message taking about that specific townhouse community and not worry about residents in other communities seeing it.
To start drawing our farm, select the paint brush tool
Next, locate the boundary of the community you want to target and click to create the corners of your farm (make sure your cursor has turned into a "+". This is how you know the paint brush is activated)
Continue creating the boundary until you have an enclosed space. MAKE SURE to click on the original point to "close" the drawing and complete the custom area
You have now finished drawing a farm! Next you need to name your custom farm area and select whether you would like a saved report in your account under the subject agent's name
When you have completed those settings, click "Save Area" to save the area into your "My Areas" section or click "Save Area and View Detail" to get INSTANT analytics for your client on this customized area.
Let's say that same agent says "Ah you know what, I don't want those properties along the top row. Can we cut those out of the farm?"
You could simply re-draw a new farm, but if it was a larger area, this could be time consuming. Instead, we can EDIT an existing farm. Start by clicking the "Load Farm" button
This will bring up a separate window
You will want to make sure the appropriate area type is selected before entering the area name into the form. Since the farm we are wanting to edit was a custom drawn area, it was saved as a My Area. This is one of the default selections. We will start to enter the name of the farm and select it from the drop-down menu. Then click load. NOTE – If your areadoesn't show up in the drop-down menu when you start to type the name, make sure the proper area type is selected.
The farm will now show up in the drawing tool
Click the inside of the shaded area ONCE and notice the corner dots and dashed outline appear
Click the inside of the shaded area ONE MORE TIME (a total of 2 times – and ONLY 2 times) and note the white dots that show up.
Once you see the white dots, you have the ability to click and drag any corner or white dot and adjust the map accordingly. By clicking the white dots, you create a new axis point which allows for very customized shapes
Once you have adjusted the map to your liking, you can rename it and save as before. Congratulations! You now know how to draw and edit a map.