Category: Real estate advertising

A New Wrinkle in Real Estate Marketing

Coffee shop employees sometimes “salt the tip jar” — putting a dollar or two in an empty jar to influence customer behavior. Now, some in the real estate industry are borrowing the idea and implementing it on a much larger scale.

Home staging companies have been around forever — real estate companies hire them to make vacant houses look lived-in. But until recently, most of the houses weren’t actually occupied.

That’s changing. The Wall Street Journal reports on companies that provide “faux homeowners” — people who actually move in. The idea is not completely new (some businesses did this during the California slump of the early 90’s), but it’s become a lot more prevalent. These companies

…fill high-end empty houses with occupants who play the part of happy homeowners, in a bid to remove the price-depressing stigma of vacancy…Temporary occupants bring their own furnishings and insurance to empty houses, and maintain the home, lawn and pool. They pay utilities and a monthly fee well below market rent. “They are not tenants, because they are instrumental in marketing the property,” says Ms. Heineke [Mary Heinke, owner of Quality First Home Marketing]. And besides, “a tenant isn’t seen as an asset.”…

Showhomes Management LLC, a franchise operation based in Nashville, has 350 “resident managers” living in homes for sale in 46 high-end markets, including in Florida, Arizona and Illinois. The company has seen revenues increase 88% since last year, says vice president Thomas Scott. Unoccupied staged houses aren’t selling as well as those with people in them, he says, “because people can still tell they’re vacant.”

During the boom years, many homeowners just put a for-sale sign on the lawn, and let buyers compete with each other.  Even if the home was in poor repair, buyers would use their imaginations as to what the house could be — and make an offer.

Now, it’s up to the seller to fill in the picture.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out Phil Bernstein’s Facebook Fan Page here

Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein, Portland’s Advertising Expert, at 503-323-6553.

Layaway Comes to Real Estate

Sometimes innovation means going backwards. And sometimes it means moving an old concept to a new industry.

Much has been made lately about the return of the layaway plan — a long-out-of-fashion retail program in which an item is kept at the store while the customer makes payments on it. Until recently, the layaway had been almost completely replaced by the credit card; customers preferred plastic because they could get instant gratification.

The credit crunch has made layaway popular again — Kmart, which never dropped it, is now putting renewed emphasis on the program. Parent company Sears Holdings recently brought it back to Sears after a 20 year absence.

Now, with mortgages difficult to come by, real estate companies and home builders are marketing the concept. According to Business Week,

K. Hovnanian Homes and Beazer Homes are offering contracts that let purchasers deposit downpayment installments in a no-interest escrow account. (Buyers who back out of such plans will lose whatever they’ve accumulated.)

This is a terrific example of what Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer call “Swipe-and-Deploy” marketing. As a concept, layaway is nothing new. But by moving the concept from traditional retail to real estate, a couple of enterprising companies are generating publicity, interest, and buyers.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

How Language Affects Real Estate Prices

For those in any industry who agonize over their media choices and then have someone “just bang some copy out”, here’s more evidence that every word can be precious. 

Interesting article on msn.com about how the choice of words in a listing can increase — or lower — the perceived value of the house.  

“In real-estate listings, what’s the difference between describing your home as “beautiful” versus “move-in condition”? About $12,500 on a $250,000 home. Professor Paul Anglin, a real-estate economist in Guelph, Ontario, says that homes described as “beautiful” in real-estate listings sell for 5% more while “move-in condition” has no effect on sale price.”“

Word choices can also affect the time it takes to sell.

“Listings with the words “beautiful” or “gorgeous” sold 15% faster. “Landscaping” in a listing hastened a sale by 20%. Describing a property as in “move-in condition” quickened the sale by 12%. Calling a home a “handyman special” cut sale time by half (researchers excluded listings that used the term to describe a workshop or hobby area). “

The article’s especially valuable for the chart that matches individual words up with their effect on listing price, sale price, and speed of sale.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Click this link to subscribe.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve written a white paper called The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them. It’s a study of some of the most common ways that companies waste their advertising dollars — along with suggestions to make those dollars work harder and smarter. Request your free copy here.