home sales?

J

johnisimpson

New member
Was curious if any of you have tried monitoring the newspaper and sending out letters or flyers to each of the homes that have sold in the week. On sundays here, the real estate section lists all property transactions for the week. It lists the address and the new home owner's name. Anyone tried this? I've read that the majority of work and money put into a home is within 6 months of purchase....


john
 
Sounds like a great idea............try it and document your results.

Let us know.......
 
I do this with post cards - I've been doing it off and on for a couple of years. (mostly when I have time).

My most recent problem is that my local newspaper has been purchased by Gannett. They must put the least priority on this section becuase I have noticed that the wrong address (about 20% returns) has gone up and some weeks they will have none while others they will have hundreds. Also, they put them in as fillers to the community section - I've seen transactions that happened eight months prior - most people get our type of service very shortly after they take ownership.

Great Idea - let us know how it works for you.
 
John

If you do the magnet idea - something to think about:

put a calendar on the magnet - give the homeowner another reason to keep your magnet. or a thermostat that built into the magnet.



Are you trying to reach the homeowners that are trying to sell their home? If so - focus your mail-out on curb appeal and how curb appeal = $

use statistics

for example approx. 67% of potential buyers determine whether they are going to buy a home based solely on the exterior.


Mention in your mail-out that you can remove those ugly black stains on their roof - remove mold off their siding - make their deck look half its age, etc.



I'll be glad to help you come up with a mail-out. I own a home inspection business & I know this market very well.
 
Tim

I'd love to take you up on helping with the mail out. I can send you samples of other pieces we've done. Can I give u a call?
 
I would prefer to post on the board so that everyone can view it.



But, send me a email tsmith@semo.edu and I will send you some stuff.


I have

a Newsletter that can be sent to the Realtors.
a Newsletter that can be sent to the HomeOwners.




*Is there a Realtor Magazine in your local area - if so - theres a lot more information than in the Sunday Paper.


Heres an expensive idea - run a add in the realtor section of your Sunday paper.
 
You should be able to get transaction info from the county courthouse. You will probably have to pay something for it.

Also if you know any real estate brokers, their office usually gets this info daily or weekly from the county.
 
I haven't had time to make the mailouts to new buyers work yet but I am still interested in the idea and am looking to get on with it soon. I will still keep you posted as I figure it out.

One thing I tried last year that feels like an almost total waste of time was getting in touch with the realtors themselves and trying to encourage them to use our services on the homes they were listing. I wasn't expecting the realtor to pay for the service but to get them to encourage their customers to have us improve the curb appeal so they could sell the home quicker and hopefully for more money. I made appointments with 10 different offices so that I could talk for 5 minutes at their weekly sales meetings (this is the time when every agent within the office is supposed to be there so they can hear about the new listings gained in the last week). They usually don't like to waste time in these meetings because they all want to get to the new properties so short and sweet was my goal. I quickly familiarized them with the different services we perform and offered 1 incentive. I told them that I wanted them to be comfortable recommending our company and be aware of the quality of work that we do so I handed out 1 coupon to each realtor telling them to use it on their own home, a friends home or one of their clients, just so long as it was a home they would be familiar with for the before and after. The coupon was for 50% off. I thought this was a great deal and expected to hear from some of the realtors. There were usually about 20 per office, so I expected that even if we only did 1 or 2 jobs per office, it would start the word of mouth and the work might start pouring in. In all, I received 1 call. The coupon had been passed to a homeowner looking to sell and we cleaned the house and deck. The realtor came by while we were working and she gushed over the quality and how suprised she was at the transformation (of the deck especially). She ensured she would be using us again and again. I made sure to give her a few extra business cards and told her we would take great care of her clients. That was the last time I've heard from her.

Is anyone else getting much work from realtor's????

thanks

john
 
johnisimpson said:
I haven't had time to make the mailouts to new buyers work yet but I am still interested in the idea and am looking to get on with it soon. I will still keep you posted as I figure it out.

One thing I tried last year that feels like an almost total waste of time was getting in touch with the realtors themselves and trying to encourage them to use our services on the homes they were listing. I wasn't expecting the realtor to pay for the service but to get them to encourage their customers to have us improve the curb appeal so they could sell the home quicker and hopefully for more money. I made appointments with 10 different offices so that I could talk for 5 minutes at their weekly sales meetings (this is the time when every agent within the office is supposed to be there so they can hear about the new listings gained in the last week). They usually don't like to waste time in these meetings because they all want to get to the new properties so short and sweet was my goal. I quickly familiarized them with the different services we perform and offered 1 incentive. I told them that I wanted them to be comfortable recommending our company and be aware of the quality of work that we do so I handed out 1 coupon to each realtor telling them to use it on their own home, a friends home or one of their clients, just so long as it was a home they would be familiar with for the before and after. The coupon was for 50% off. I thought this was a great deal and expected to hear from some of the realtors. There were usually about 20 per office, so I expected that even if we only did 1 or 2 jobs per office, it would start the word of mouth and the work might start pouring in. In all, I received 1 call. The coupon had been passed to a homeowner looking to sell and we cleaned the house and deck. The realtor came by while we were working and she gushed over the quality and how suprised she was at the transformation (of the deck especially). She ensured she would be using us again and again. I made sure to give her a few extra business cards and told her we would take great care of her clients. That was the last time I've heard from her.

Is anyone else getting much work from realtor's????

thanks

john
Click to expand...

I've heard that realtors are a hard bunch of folks to get work from. If it were me, I'd target the owners who are selling, bypassing the realtor.

I just mailed out to new home buyers on Saturday, so most got their letters today. One call already to go look at a 7000 square foot home, definitely want the house, DW, and windows washed, and who knows what else I can sell. I'm going to be doing this every month, sending out letters to all the new homebuyers (of homes within a certain price/size) welcoming them to the neighborhood and offering a 20% discount for any work they request, good indefinitely. We'll see how the response is on this batch.

The property appraiser's office here has new home sales as one of their search criteria on the website, so I can download a list of homes that sold in a comma delimited text file. Import it into Excel, clean the data up a bit, merge it into an MS Word Mailmerge file, and print the letters! The whole process takes about 20 or 30 minutes.
 
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