Creative marketing: The real estate agent from hell
From Future of Real Estate Marketing
By Katie Lance, Thursday, May 20, 2010.Have you seen Really Rotten Realty yet?
Here are a few of my favorite quotes from this site:
"Looking for a home with specific qualities? We will work with you to find out what you are looking for in a home, then we'll show you the homes we wanted to show you before we pretended to care about your needs."
"Worried about getting preapproved by a mortgage company? Why bother? That takes all the fun out of home shopping. We'll figure all that math stuff out after you fall in love with a home you can't afford.
"We hold open houses every week for our clients. We've never actually sold a listing by holding open houses, but we have attracted lots of new customers to our agency by using our clients' homes for our own personal gain. Plus, it's fun to rummage through our clients' personal belongings and if we're lucky there might even be something good in the refrigerator.
"We'll hold as many open houses as you like. It's the least we can do.
"Want your house advertised by a professional? We believe in the Three P's of real estate marketing: Put, Put, and Pray. Put a sign in the yard, put it on the multiple listing service, and then pray someone will come along and buy it.
"We usually find that after enough time passes, and after several price drops the house usually sells itself without too much intervention from us. That's an easy commission earned. We like easy."
Props to Agent Harvest, which offers an agent search site, for creating this really entertaining (and yes, fictional) site. According to the site: "ReallyRottenRealty.com was created by AgentHarvest for entertainment purposes only and is not a real company (thank goodness)."
Pretty creative if you ask me! What do you think?
Click here to view the original blog post.
Katie Lance is the marketing manager for Inman News. Future of Real Estate Marketing is a part of Inman News.
***
What's your opinion? Leave your comments below or send a letter to the editor.
All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.
You must login or register to post a comment.
Submitted by David Knudsen on May 20, 2010 - 4:07am.
Brilliant marketing on Agent Harvest's part. This will pick up a nice viral head of steam. It's unfortunate, though, that the parody works so well because it contains so many grains of truth.
Submitted by Jay Zenner on May 20, 2010 - 7:25am.
Oh boy, I have to steal that line about the 3 P's of real estate marketing (Put a sign in the yard, Put it in MLS and Pray) cause it ain't far from wrong and actually worked pretty well even without price reductions for a long time when the market was hot. The more professional approach necessary now involves a marketing plan built around the traditional 4 P's of marketing, Product, Price, Place and Promotion. The objective of 4PsRE.com is to provide an antidote for the 3 P's approach. Check out the Manifesto.
Jay Zenner
4PsRE.com
Submitted by Paul Howard on May 23, 2010 - 4:12am.
It kind of takes the zing out of the article when the site is redirected before most people get to see it. Agent Harvest has apparently redirected really rotten realty back to their main site but you can see the google cached version here: http://bit.ly/aOUYrQ
Paul Howard, Broker
www.NJHomeBuyer.com Realty
Cherry Hill NJ 08002
Submitted by Ken Lampton on May 23, 2010 - 4:47am.
Wow! What an obnoxious thing for the vendor to do. There's nothing funny about it to me.
---------------------------
Ken Lampton
RE/MAX About Dallas
www.m-street-dallas.com