My favorite television commercial at the moment is a Citicard ad called Accessories. It begins with an attractive young woman looking into a display case apparently getting ready to buy something. The first thing I noticed was that she didn’t look like an actress even though she was very attractive. She talks about preparing for a vacation with her boy friend and she needed a new belt, nylons and, of course, shoes. She mentions that they had thought about a diamond but she had another rock in mind.

It turns out the belt was a climbing belt, the nylon was rope and the shoes were definitely not Manolo.  It ends with her climbing up a rock formation and standing and enjoying the view on the tip top of this red rock peak  which appears to be about the size of home plate.  Her perky silhouette, pony tail and all. is framed by a gorgeous landscape.  Apparently this card has a better airline miles.  Besides it’s exposure on TV, it has been viewed over 130,000 times on youTube and drawn over 200 comments. The comments identify both the place and the woman who did the climbing.

It’s hard for me to believe banks are still pushing credit cards but based on how frequently the ad runs it must be generating some business.  So why did Citibank go to all the trouble to film what had to be a terribly expensive commercial when they could have just described the features and benefits of their card?

Because that would have been deadly dull…just like most real estate copy.

There are two dominant styles in run of the mill real estate copy. The first is characterized by brevity. I think these are older agents who had to write copy for those big newspapers ads of yesteryear with hundreds of pictures of  little houses.  The copy allowed made a tweet seem like War and Peace. If you are old enough, you’ve seen them. Crn lot, all brick, 3bds, 2bths. Won’t last. Call 2day.

The other style is the documentarian.  These are usually younger people who are comfortable with technology and can add pictures to Realtor.com and add more copy than the truncated MLS information. They’ll not only post the maximum number of pictures, they will describe every detail at great hyperbolic length afraid of missing any detail that might spark an immediate offer.

Neither approach is particularly effective if you are competing with numerous other homes for showings.  Even at the high end of the market, $1 million plus, in my MLS there are almost 200 listings.  Last year there were less than 90 closings of homes listed for $1 million or more.  That means that if there is a buyer out there, she has a lot of choices but  is probably not going to look at all 200 options.  When you are in the lower price ranges and there are thousands of options, getting feet across the threshold is even more difficult.  So, what’s the solution? Do like the wizards behind Accessories and tell a story.

Early in my career I used to believe that the beauty of providing all the pictures and information in the MLS online to every corner of the world was a great thing. The rationale was that instead of driving clients around for days they could narrow their choices online saving them and me time and gasoline. This may work for a buyer agent but takes control out of your hands as a listing agent.  Instead, what you want them to do is be curious enough to want to see it. We’ve all heard the expression “Buyers are liars.”  Of course, most of them aren’t liars but a very high proportion of them a. don’t know what they want, b. can’t agree as a couple what they want, or c. don’t have any sense of what is available to them in terms of style, neighborhoods, etc.

So the solution is that when producing copy and other promotional materials remember:

1. The goal is not to sell the home but to get a showing. Let the home itself do the selling.
2. Engage them with a story. Sometimes it’s easier to come up with a story than others. But just like the Citicard folks you want to make the potential buyer curious. If the house has history, that’s a great way to generate interest.  It could be as simple as dropping the builder’s name or the architect’s. I once tracked down information on the architect of a home and a note that he was considered the best ranch home designer of his era as attested to by Popular Mechanics.  I’m sure the design was purchased out of a plan book. The story may be the origins of the neighborhood or the original owner or any number of things. Don’t fabricate anything but do use your imagination.
3. Tease. This applies to the photographs too. Remember your goal is to get showings.  (Yes, I’m repeating myself, but it’s that important.) Avoid anything that would tempt somebody to cross the home off a list of potentials. You want to make them want to see more.
4. Save one of the best features of the home for a second “WOW.” The second WOW comes during the showing. They have been tempted by your description of the wonderful gardens. Since you didn’t mention it they won’t expect much of the kitchen, for example, which you know is a jaw dropping WOW.  They’ll be pleasantly surprised.

If ever a city had a loser image it is Detroit. I’m usually a part of the large audience that watches the Superbowl every year for the football or the ads or both. For me it’s usually more about the football. But even a little groggy from too much food and a few beers, one ad caught my attention immediately.  The Chrysler 200 ad was clearly a winner. If you were in a coma for the last couple of months watch the video below and then I’ll make my points about why I think it was so good and how some of the techniques used by the ad makers can be used to better market homes.

If you use videos for your properties or just visual tours, remember that you are really creating an ad. If your ad looks like every other ad it is going to be tough to get noticed.  Most of the same techniques that we see in the Chrysler ad can also be used to market homes.

1. It tells a story. The video is a little more than 2 minutes long and yet it tells a comeback story…of Chrysler, of Detroit, of the American auto industry.

2. It’s emotional. You’ve heard the expression “sell the sizzle not the steak.” There is nothing said in this commercial about the horsepower, the cornering ability, the leather seating, the number of cupholders. Those things matter but they don’t sell cars, emotion does. Amazingly, this ad buffs up the image of both Chrysler and Detroit.

3. It uses strong images. There are several pieces of sculpture in this ad including one gold plated and another the gigantic fist of a fighter. What are they trying to convey? How about luxury and strength.

4. It uses sound…great narration, a moving beat and even an uplifting gospel chorus.

5. It teases. Nobody is going to buy a car strictly based on this ad. The first thing I noticed about the ad was it didn’t show the car during most of that 2 minutes.  I was curious enough to walk away from the game and see if I could find a good picture of the car on the internet. What the ad really is attempting to do is drive traffic to the dealerships.

6. It uses a memorable tagline, “Imported from Detroit.”

For reasons that almost everybody understands, Chrysler has been on the ropes. If there is any hope that it can survive it has to become a great marketing organization. In the worst housing market that any of us can remember as real estate agents we do too have to become great marketers.

Challenge yourself to try to use some of these techniques in putting together your next video. What would you do if you had to produce the video with no shots of the house? What kind of story can you tell about the house and the neighborhood? Can you tease by using strong images that drive curiosity? Are you brave enough to try some narration? Remember the first steps towards closings are showings. If your video drives traffic to the home it has done its job. If it looks like every other video or visual tour, it’s probably not worth the effort.

When I was searching YouTube for the Chrysler 200 commercial I came across another one that I hadn’t seen. This has a similar feel but a very different sort of message. View this one too and leave a comment.

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Be impressed.

A lot of trends start on the west coast and eventually find there way to the good Old North State where I live, but you have to wonder about this one. Why? We’ll discuss that in a moment but first take a couple of minutes to view this video in full screen and then go to the property web site. You should be able to click through to it when a link appears at the end of the video. I think you will be impressed. I’ve never seen anything like this for a home in Durham…or anywhere in North Carolina for that matter with the possible exception of the Biltmore House, and that was to attract tourists, not buyers.

A few observations and thoughts…

The most obvious thing of course is that the production values are stunning. I came across this in a blog on real estate photography. The photographer, whose name is Scott Hargis, is quite proud of the work, as he should be.  I don’t know much about serious photography but this wasn’t done with a point and shoot camera.  Much of the blog I mentioned is about the use of software tools like Photoshop and not about what to shoot and how.

Did you notice that nowhere in the video or on the website is price mentioned?  I don’t think this was an oversight.  This reinforces the old saw that if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.  I did a little additional research and found out the price on REALTOR.com. Take a guess and click through yourself.  If the link doesn’t work it means the home has sold. Clue…the price is 8 figures and a nice round number. Do you think the price was set after a careful analysis of the comps? Can you imagine there would be any comps?

Another unusual feature…people.

There are rarely any people in property advertising. Have you ever wondered about that? I have. Virtually everything else uses people…cars, schools, soap, beer. Why so few people in property ads? Of course, there are plenty of people used in real estate advertising…mostly not-so-great photographs of agents. After all, the vast majority of real estate marketing focuses on promoting agents and companies, not properties.

The people used in the video and the photos for Casa Estella did not look like actors. If you read the copy on the site you may come to the conclusion that the people are the owners.  In fact, the copy is much different than you usually see in property promotion.  It has a blog-like conversational tone and in places conveys very subjective information from the sellers…about their favorite places in the house…which, very cleverly, it turns out, depends on the time of day.

There is no doubt that this was expensive to put together.  In the realm of multi-million dollar homes big budgets may make sense but who would you guess paid for it? I don’t know.  If you had a listing this spectacular would you front the cost or would you ask the seller to pay for it? Would you ask for an advance on a traditional commission or negotiate a separate  marketing budget separate from the commission? Would you take the same approach with a more modest property?

Overall impact

I shared the video with a California luxury agent that contributes to another blog I also occasionally contribute to.  She was totally blown away. Among other equally enthusiastic things she said, “Seriously….they are taking it to a whole new level! I loved it! It totally excited me!”

The photographer who took the pictures and collaborated with the video producer posted a blog with comments that run along the same lines as my friend. The comments also contain a discussion about the use of “talent”  or people in the pictures and why it is seldom done. The post is here.

I’m not quite that excited but my roots run deep in a much more conservative area of the country.   Or maybe I would much prefer a city local where good restaurants and convenience stores are always just a few blocks away.

But my primary concern is that maybe it is too good.  My issue  is whether the material creates such high expectations that some disappointment would be inevitable if you took the trouble to go see the property.  A cold overcast day might leave you totally bummed out.  Sometimes you just can’t Photoshop real life.

The goal of good property marketing is to get the home shown to qualified buyers. The promotional material should tease. It doesn’t have to show everything. In fact, it should tease enough to get the showings and then let a fabulous property sell itself.  The biggest “Wow!” moments should come on site…not  at a website.

I’d welcome some other opinions on this.  If you decide to contact the agent, go see the property, and then buy it, please tell them Jay sent you. I could use the referral fee.

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How would you write a movie review?

There are other posts here about copy writing in real estate but there are a lot of points that bear repeating and expansion.  Recently I wrote a post for another blog that focuses on luxury real estate. The basic theme was that what you are trying to do when you write copy is not sell as much as tease.

This is based on the premise that very few properties are sold…speculative investors notwithstanding…without a showing. The goal then of most real estate copy writing is to get showings scheduled for qualified buyers.

Another contributor to that luxury site is Karen Crystal who is a successful luxury property marketer in Southern California. Karen provided a comment to my post that took the idea to another level. She likened good real estate copy writing to a good movie preview. Of course!

My immediate reaction was “Why didn’t I think of that?” Like Karen,  I enjoy the 20 minutes or so of previews that usually precede the main attraction in movie theaters around here. I’ll also watch the “trailers” of any movie that I’m considering online.  Some movies I can quickly eliminate this way but I also often find myself considering movies of a different genre than those I normally gravitate to.

Home buyers are no more rational than other consumers in this way.

We are often barely aware of the emotions that make us fall in love with a movie, a person,  a place or a home. Too much information…even pictures… especially without any emotional content, can often provide the reason not to go see a home. In a buyers’ market with lots of choices, this happens more often than you would expect.

In writing copy for your listings become the “director” and think of the preview or trailer you would create for the home and adjust your copy accordingly. Listen to  your own emotional antennae to pick up clues on what might work.  Look for the clues that you can convey that will not only attract more showings but the right showings.

A couple of weeks ago I showed a home that my buyer clients had identified because of its proximity to where they both work.  It wasn’t their cup of tea, but I loved it. It was built in the 50′s and hadn’t really had much done to it since then except to turn a large garage into an awkward master bedroom.

My feedback to the listing agents  got a laugh out of them because I described how I could imagine my first car…a 1955 turquoise and creme Chevrolet Bel Air in the circular driveway with Wally and Beaver Cleaver shooting baskets behind it.

In fact, it reminded me of the home of some very good childhood friends, right down to the swimming pool,  backyard greenhouse and large rooms all on one level.  Come to think of it, my folks actually bought that Chevy for my brother and I from those friends.  If cars could tell stories…

My clients were probably too young to relate to any of this but there are buyers out there who would.   To be honest the place needed a lot of work. An accurate and more detailed description would have left anyone cold.  Let the nostalgia flow.  There are few homes that you will list that don’t have some characteristic that can provide an emotional hook to get those showings from the right buyers.

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Thanksgiving is often seen in the industry as the end of the fall season for selling homes and the beginning of the “dead season” during the winter months.

It’s not true.

I’ve often wondered whether this myth was purposely advanced by successful agents so that they could either 1) Take a little break themselves for the holidays or 2) trick their competitors into taking off the holidays so they could have an advantage soliciting listings.

There may also be a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy here as agents advise potential sellers to “not risk looking stale in the spring by marketing a home during the winter.”  There are lots of other excuses…it gets dark too early for after work showings, the holidays are just too chaotic , there’s too much Christmas advertising going on to get noticed, yada, yada, yada.

In my market the numbers do confirm that there is a sharp drop off during the colder months, on average for the last four years about 40%.  That four year period includes two pretty good years and the last two not-so-good years .But that means that there are still a number of homes sold during the winter months and the market is anything but dead.

When is the best time to put a home on the market?

The conventional wisdom is that the buyers come out in the spring. But if so many people wait  for the spring to list their homes then it simply means there is more competition among sellers during the spring. The more you dwell on the pros on cons of the different seasons the more you conclude that there are lots of exceptions to the rule.

The best time to put a home on the market is when the seller needs or wants to and when the home is ready to be marketed.

Being ready for the market is more important than timing. Apple didn’t launch the IPhone before they had crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s in their product development cycle.  That included hardware (really cool), software (even cooler), distribution (AT&T -not so cool), pricing (make the early adopters pay heavily before lowering the price for the masses) and promotion (start a buzz at MacWorld with Steve Jobs’ presentation and let word-of-mouth take over.)

A seller shouldn’t put a home on the market until the same level of preparation is accomplished. It’s a little different when the product is a home but the process deserves the appropriate analysis, planning and preparation. This winter too there are significant buyer incentives available from the government for both first time homebuyers and those “moving up” after 5 years in their existing home.

Winter is not a dead time in real estate. It can be very lively for those sellers who have a tightly integrated marketing plan for their home.

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One of the blogs that I subscribe to is Larry Lohrman’s Photography for Real Estate. Frankly, many of his posts are pretty technical and way over my head but he also writes about the business of RE photography and sometimes shares feedback from others in the business.

On November 11th he shared  something one of his subscribers, Rusty Freeman in LA, had forwarded to him. In an effort to generate some business Rusty had done a search of the local MLS that had yielded over a 1000 homes priced over $2M.  By his estimation, about 40 of these homes actually had had professional photography done.  I don’t know how he knew this but he related that some of the photos were cell phone quality.

After contacting about 10 of the agents for these homes, he got tired of the rejection and gave up.  The agents that he contacted said that they just weren’t spending any money.

Larry offered some interesting perspective on this situation in the post but there are a few other points that I think are important for the real estate industry.

First of all, this situation doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve described in another post an easy to duplicate experiment you can conduct any time you want . I think it’s best to do in a market that you’re not familiar with in order to get the perspective of someone moving to a new community. Simply do a search for high end properties and look at the information from a marketer’s point of view.

Rusty was focusing on the photography. I was focusing on the copywriting. They were both found lacking.

Larry seems to draw the conclusion that this is a cyclical thing. I tend to think it’s more of a lack of marketing sophistication on the part of agents that have never had to market in a buyers’ market. That’s the point of this whole effort to promote 4 P’s RE, that is, to promote best marketing practices in Real Estate…not to generate leads…but to sell homes.

The other factor that holds us back is the current traditional compensation structure. It’s hard to blame agents for not wanting to spend money when there is no guarantee that the home will ever be sold and the agent compensated. As Rusty recounted many of the homes in his experiment had been on the market well over a year.

However, there is absolutely no reason why a professional marketing plan shouldn’t or couldn’t be funded by the seller.  Especially in the high end market the costs are relatively low.  Rusty’s packages start at $130. Try to get a plumber to even show up at your door for less than $150.

If you somehow equate a home listed at $2M with a business with the same revenues…which, by the way, is way more than most small businesses,  I absolutely promise you that most of them got to those revenue levels with significant marketing efforts.

This opens up the whole compensation can of worms, however, an owner with skin in the game is much more likely to price the listing realistically and cooperate with a well crafted marketing plan.

A downturn is not the time to cut back on marketing. To be competitive that’s when it is needed most.

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This guy gets it. To really do a good job representing our listing clients we need to promote the entire experience of living in a community and not just a home. In this blog post on Real Central VA, Jim Duncan doesn’t even mention  a home.

In three short paragraphs he mentions Charlottesville’s academic setting as the home of the University of Virginia, the historic connection to Thomas Jefferson and the job creating engine the university has become.  There’s a lot more he could have said about Charlottesville and he probably has elsewhere in the blog but the theme in this post is JOBS…a timely topic for sure. My only gripe with his post is that he mentions that Charlottesville is two hours from DC and three hours from Norfolk but fails to mention it is one hour from Richmond. In spite of the fact that I grew up in Richmond and still have close family there, “jobs” would not have popped into my mind at the mention of Charlottesville. (What then, drunken fraternity parties? But that was a long time ago.)

It’s important to remember that things we take for granted about the local community are totally unfamiliar to most searchers considering moving from another area. Since the internet gives us the ability to communicate with people all over the world, why wouldn’t you mention the community and its delights  in the copy you write. Does a link buried in your website to the Chamber of Commerce website fill your obligation? Not if you want to communicate that you are an expert on the market.

I don’t know this guy and probably never will but I found it refreshing to stumble upon an agent who could write intelligently about something other than the multi-levels of crown molding and the quality of the counter tops.

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Used to be one photograph of the front of a home was taken to put in the MLS book and possibly use in a one inch square space in a newspaper ad. In many cases next to a one inch square photo of the listing agent inspiring the phrase “little houses little heads.”

Because space was limited, copy writing was spare and twitter-like or simply a summary of the homes features crammed with jargony abbreviations.

Of course, digital photography, web 2.0 and the widespread availability of bandwidth, changed all that. It is now perfectly feasible to construct a full blown website for any property in an hour or less.

Explore the local MLS or national sites like Realtor.com and it is easy to see that our marketing skills still haven’t caught up with the technology. In fact, most of what passes for marketing education in the real estate industry is really about acquiring and mastering the technology.  Even worse, the point made on this blog often is that all this acquisition of technology doesn’t even focus on marketing homes, it continues to focus on marketing ourselves as agents.

But there are oases in this desert. One is www.photographyforrealestate.net that provides resources for agents and others who recognize the importance of good presentation of properties on the web and in print.

I never pine for the “good old days” but one thing that I think may have worked better before everything became digital was that nobody ever revealed too much about a listing in the promotional materials.  The old fan dancers knew it was more titillating to leave a little to the imagination.  The purpose of most home marketing materials is to get a showing scheduled by qualified buyers,  not to reveal every detail. We all know that buyers react in unexpected ways to homes that they see in person. I’ve experienced myself falling in love with homes that I would have written off based on the marketing materials.

Staging, photography and copy writing are just three of the skills needed to expose a home to potential lovers.

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I originally got my real estate license when my agent made more money on the first property I bought to renovate and flip than I did.  There were a lot of lessons learned but one was that if you had a good product you could sell it. The listing agent spent a few hours on the deal and I spent most of a summer.

So, by the time I started another renovation I had my real estate license. Like the first property, this was an older condo/townhouse with a relatively high homeowners association fee…or at least that was my first impression and I didn’t mention it at all in my marketing. When I got a couple of negative feedback messages about the fees after showings I started investigating whether the fees where out of line.

I found out a couple of things.  First, what a HOA provides for the dues can vary quite a bit.  In this particular development the association had been mis-managed for a while and they had to play catch-up as decks and roofs started to require repair. On the other hand, some of the amenities…pool, tennis courts, club house, landscaping…where exceptional.

The second thing I noticed was that most agents totally ignored the HOA in the MLS write ups and promotional materials just like I had. Like me they probably hoped that HOA questions would only come up after the buyer had fallen in love with the home.

I concluded that the HOA information should usually be highlighted, not hidden. In some cases, it may contain the unique selling proposition you need. After all, the point of “condo-ing” is usually having access to amenities that might otherwise be out of reach.  For example, for many individuals owning a swimming pool isn’t worth the expense or hassle. On the other hand sharing the expense with a few dozen other residents is reasonable and may include some social benefits beyond the ability to take a dip on a hot July afternoon.

For my particular project, it turned out the dues where very much in line with other older properties.  Detached homes in similar external condition would eventually require additional investment or decline rapidly in value. My purchase price also reflected the condition. Even after my renovation the cost to the new buyer was less per square foot than new developments. In spite of the HOA dues the total cost of ownership was often still lower than the newer developments or a detached home.

The take away is that as a listing agent of a property with HOA dues,  you should anticipate the objection to a fee  by demonstrating the value. Those that aren’t interested in the amenities and the protections of an HOA are unlikely to buy anyway. It will appeal to many,  including empty nesters and busy professionals without the interest or time to maintain external landscaping or amenities like swimming pools.

Are your experiences with HOA’s similar? Please share your experiences in the comments.

Here’s a little experiment you can try that may change the way you write copy for your listings. Go to Realtor.com and do a search in your market. I like to do this in the luxury range which in my market starts at about $700K, so I search between $700K to $5M, which doesn’t leave much out at the high end. Just glance through a few of the listings and then do another similar search in a market you are not familiar with.

When I first started doing this every now and then one of the things that bothered me but I couldn’t put my finger on for awhile was that even though the homes where beautiful in both markets and both MLS normally pass through the same basic information, the unfamiliar market seemed much more “foreign.” Well, my dad didn’t call me Meathead for nothing. I guess I’m a little slow but it finally dawned on me that while I know the “forest” in my market all I get is a peek at a few trees through the MLS data in the other market.

In your home market, you can usually look at a listing and, because you already know the community, you know exactly where it sits relative to employment centers and shopping, what the schools are like and who built the golf course at the country club. I find that fairly consistently on Realtor.com for only about one or two in ten listings…even for these very expensive homes…does the listing agent write any additional copy at all, and relies on what passes from the MLS to describe the home. This means that something as mundane as “ice maker connection” gets as much attention as an in-ground swimming pool. Worse though, there is no “context” for the home. I did this experiment recently and was delighted to see one listing agent who described how the home was in walking distance to some fine restaurants and walking trails. Still, 90% of his description was about the home itself.

In my community there are three relatively large neighborhoods with homes in this price range and a lot of the homes in each are very similar. But they are very different communities with very different charms. You can do the same experiment in almost any price range and you will get similar results.

Most agents, because they never had to write great sales copy in the boom years are at a loss to do anything better. But now there is intense competition for fewer buyers. We owe it to our listing clients to provide the needed context. When we talk about the three most important things in real estate being “location, location, location” what do we mean? What we mean in residential real estate is location relative to employment, schools, jobs, transportation, entertainment, churches, medical services, etc. But this is hardly ever addressed in the copy we write, much less how it feels to live in that community.

It’s important to keep in mind that many potential buyers are moving to your market and are in another city looking online. Many websites are trying to provide more and more of this context with reams of statistics. But they can’t do as good a job as someone who has lived, worked and sold houses in that market can. That’s you.

Potential buyers don’t know the boundaries of the forest that you as a local take for granted. In the market I just looked at there were 731 homes between $700K and $5M. No buyer  is going to look at all of them. Use the opportunity you have to make your client’s home stand out  in the crowd by artfully providing that context.

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