It started with one agent who was too busy to stay in touch
In 2018 I started ExecAssist to help real estate agents with the work that piles up behind the scenes. The first thing I noticed was not messy files or missed follow ups. It was that great agents were quietly losing touch with the people who already trusted them.
Past clients, neighbors, friends from church, the couple they helped buy a first home five years ago. Everyone meant to stay in touch. Almost nobody had the time.
So we started writing newsletters for them. Not market blasts with a stock photo of a house. Real notes, with the agent's own news, the events in their own town, and numbers from their own market. Over the years that work became the heart of what we do. When ExecAssist merged into The Option Leverage Platform in 2024, the sphere of influence (SOI) newsletter came with us as a core service, and today about half of the agents we support use it every month.
I also know what it feels like to be on the receiving end. As a military spouse, I have moved my family across the world more than once, and I live in Portugal right now. Every move, the people who stayed in my life were the ones who kept reaching out with small, specific, personal notes. That is exactly what a good SOI newsletter does.
The holidays are when people actually open your email
From Thanksgiving through New Year's, people are thinking about home more than any other time of year. They are hosting family, decorating, looking for something to do on a Saturday, and making quiet plans for the year ahead. Some of those plans involve moving.
That is why our November and December newsletters lean so hard on local details. Small Business Saturday, Giving Tuesday, the tree lighting downtown, the toy drive at the fire station. When an agent shares those things, they are not selling. They are being useful, and being useful is what earns the reply.
We see it every year. The newsletters that get responses are the ones where a reader thinks, "I didn't know that was happening," or "That's my favorite bakery too." The generic ones get deleted with the rest of the holiday promotions.
A slow market rewards the agents people remember
This fall is not an easy market. According to the National Association of Realtors, existing home sales ran at a 3.99 million annual pace in September 2026, and August and September were the two slowest months of the year. Sales were down year over year in every region, and pending sales fell 7.3%.
At the same time, inventory climbed to 1.60 million homes and homes are sitting longer. NAR's chief economist noted that rising mortgage rates mean fewer buyers can qualify, while sellers may need to be realistic about pricing.
Here is what those numbers mean for an agent. When fewer deals are happening, every single one matters more, and most of them will come from people who already know you. Nobody hires a stranger to price their home in a soft market. They call the agent who has been showing up in their inbox all year with something worth reading.
I have watched this play out since 2018. The agents who kept their newsletters going through slow seasons were the ones getting the calls when the market turned. The ones who paused to save time or money usually spent the next spring trying to rebuild relationships they had let go quiet.
What personal and local actually looks like
Every month we ask our agents to fill out a short form before we write their SOI newsletter. It is the most important step in the whole process, because it is where the newsletter stops being ours and starts being theirs. Here is what we ask for:
Their own news. A new puppy, a kid's first season of soccer, a trip home for the holidays. Readers stay for the person, not the property.
Events in their actual town. Not "holiday events near you," but the tree lighting on Main Street at 6 p.m. on the first Friday of December.
Local businesses they love. Small Business Saturday is the perfect excuse to name the coffee shop, the bookstore, and the restaurant they would take a friend to.
A cause they believe in. Giving Tuesday gives every agent a reason to share a local food bank or toy drive without it feeling like a pitch.
Their market, not the national one. National headlines say the market is slow. Their sphere wants to know what is happening on their street.
None of this is complicated. It just has to be real. A reader can tell in two seconds whether a newsletter was written for them or for everyone.
Don't go quiet now
It is tempting to coast through the holidays and plan to restart in January. In this market, that is the wrong move. The people in your sphere are making decisions right now about where they want to live next year, and you want to be the name they think of first.
You do not need to say more. You need to say something real, local, and personal, every single month.
If you are already one of our newsletter clients, your November form is due November 2. Submit it here, and browse our holiday event guides for ideas. If you are not working with us yet, we would love to take this off your plate. Get started here.
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