On my walk with Emmy this morning, I noticed that a house a couple streets over has just gone on the market, and they had one of those “Please take one” boxes on the yard sign, with a bunch of one-page fliers about the house. Even though we have no intention of moving any time soon (and, in fact, are planning to have the basement redone), I took one because, well, I want to know what our neighbors’ houses are like, and what they’re selling for.
Which brings us to the silly poll topic:
I have a hard time believing this is an effective advertising technique, but then, I know next to nothing about real estate.
I have a hard time believing this is an effective advertising technique, but then, I know next to nothing about real estate.
This is because you are assuming that the target market for these fliers is people who are thinking of buying a house in the area. A big chunk of real estate marketing is actually directed at people like you who already live in the neighborhood. I get occasional postcards from local real estate agents pointing out that some house in my neighborhood is being offered (or has just sold) for $XXX,000. As far as a real estate agent is concerned, it is always a good time to buy or sell a house–they get paid when the transaction closes, and not a penny before then.
I, too doubt that this strategy is very effective, but since it costs almost nothing compared to other forms of advertising, it probably makes sense from a cost-benefit standpoint.
My brother just sold his house a couple weeks ago. He posted fliers out front, and kept them stocked, because he says that no matter how buyers first hear about the house, they will drive by at some point, and the flyers had better be available when they do. His thinking is not that he’s wasted money providing flyers for the curious; it’s that at least one of those flyers is going to get into the hands of the eventual buyer (which I happen to know was the case).
No, it’s not very “efficient” in terms of response rate, but they don’t need a large response rate; they just need one. And they don’t know where that one is going to come from, so they have to try all the things they can. And yes, part of the agent’s marketing is to potential future clients as well. So they want to be seen as someone who leaves no stone unturned. So it is in the agent’s interest for people like you to see what they’re doing.
I picked 0-25% just because most of the fliers probably were taken by one kid who walked by and saw that there was something for people to take. Then he threw them on my lawn. While standing on it.
The other strategy may be that if you like a house, as a potential buyer, you can take all the fliers so other drivers-by won’t get that extra information. I’ve actually had a friend who did this while looking for houses, so I know it can happened.
I once used a real estate flier to form a funnel that I used to help get gasoline into my empty tank. Worked. It wasn’t on your list.
My mother has picked up those fliers across the entire country, literally from Maine to California, from Michigan to Florida, from Texas to Washington (both DC and state). She claims that she is actively looking, but they’ve bought a lot of houses (one at a time, to live in, mostly), and so far none they learned of that way.
On the other hand, they have bought homes from *realtors* they learned about that way, so it’s more complicated than I would have guessed.
A lot of people looking for houses will cruise a neighborhood. They;ll often have a list of homes they know are for sale from an MLS listing (online) or from a realtor. By cruising, they get a sense of where things are and what the houses actually look like. If they see RE fliers, they’ll grab them. If you are moving into a new area, this is a pretty common way to go.
(I wouldn’t be surprised if a few realtors grab them too. They like to know as much as they can about the local market, and they might be the one’s to find a buyer.)
Here in England (can’t comment about the rest of the UK!) we don’t get flyers at the houses for sale (I suspect there’d be a lot of glossy paper aeroplanes if we did!), although you can get a flyer by asking the estate agent. What we do get, periodically, is leaflets from the agents shoved through all the letterboxes in an area telling you that they’re looking for properties like yours or in your neighbourhood to sell.
They’re pretty worthless… for one, they don’t have all the info I’m looking for on them – I mean, if I have to stand in front of the house to get said flier, why does it have a GIANT picture of the front of the house on it and nothing about how small/big the kitchen is, nor any information about how the place is heated? The other bit about these fliers I can’t stand is how completely unprofessional the text often is – MULTIPLE misspellings, wrong forms of their, there, they’re or your/you’re, two, too, to, 2, etc., not to mention the lack of proof-reading – repeated sentences/words or missing sentences/words/etc. If your JOB is to sell homes, and, in this economy you’re hurting for business, wouldn’t you AT LEAST run spell-check/grammar check?
Oh, and one last bit before I get off my soap box – what’s with the fliers that don’t EVEN show the price?!
They are more useful than you might think. While you may not be buying, you might want to sell and this presents the agent to you. Since you already live in the neighborhood, your socio-economic position is that of other potential buyers on the birds of a feather principle and there is a good chance one of the neighbors know someone that would be interested and could afford it. Those who have recently bought are among the best prospects as many of their friends may be soon be in the market themselves and may hear of it from you. Most drive-bys like the neighborhood but cannot afford it, but they may still contact the agent that may steer them towards something else they can afford.
I create flyers for realtors. Whether on the printed page or an e-flyer, all of my clients say that they have had good results. Either by way of a sale, meeting a new client, or meeting other realtors. Like others have said its not the quantity, its the results. And it only takes one.