I would carry out a well planned direct mail campaign which integrates RVM, text messages, direct mailing, cold calling, SEO and online ads.

I was thinking of hiring AdWord Nerds to help with SEO and paid ads.

UghhhUghh dude, the only people that fear (or have) competition are those that are mediocre at what they do.Be a YODA at SEO and never have competition again.Does This...look like I have competition?!

You will harvest leads like a mad man IF you...3) WORK that SEO ma man!

I would not go .net not great for traffic and if there is and established .com they will trump you for any Seo purposes.

I don't know anything about real flow.I do know that 8 out of 10 cases there is an investor carrot site ranking in the top 3 positions on GOogle.With a bit of Jerryll SEO, this will happen:and these leads are SUPER motivated leads, for free organically.If you are serious about it, and realize it is not  (just) a magic website... you NEED to work on credibility and SEO...

I then want to compare these resulrs to my own seo organic results.Like how much do you spend vs the leads you get and out of those leads how many deals do you close?

Otherwise you can google Discount Brokerage + your city or something like that and go with the top non-Redfin results, as they are obviously decent at SEO or google ads and may be good at calling you back, too :)  

We have used professionals for our PPC/SEO previously.  

SEO is something you are going to need to learn.