When times are tough, get creative
Yes, these are tough times to be in the business of selling homes. Or for that matter cars, newspapers, computers, stocks, you name it.
But the downturn also appears to be sparking some creativity out there in Realtor Land as well.
And that is not such a bad thing for a business that too often has been set in its ways and grumpily fending off challenges from upstart competitors.
Just take Coldwell Banker’s new YouTube branded channel, which the company’s New England division has just signed up with.
The idea is to cast real estate agents in the role of community experts, narrating videos that offer insights into what the real estate market – and life – is like in various communities.
Certainly sounds like an idea that has potential. After all, when you are buying a home or condo, you are also buying into a community. And while there are loads of information out there about various towns and neighborhoods across the Boston area, pulling all that together can be a tall order for a harried house hunter.
I remember house hunting before we bought our house Natick fixer-upper in 2002. We ended up falling in love with our town, but frankly we didn’t know all that much about it beyond what we could figure out talking to friends and driving around.
Now would some Natick overview offered up on a YouTube video by a local real estate agent have made a big difference? Probably not, but it would have offered a good jumping off point.
For real estate agents, though, launching such new ventures, to me anyway, seems like a matter of basic survival.
There has been an explosion in the amount of data out there on prices and sales trends, info that previously was the currency of a few folks in the real estate business.
That means it’s all the more important for real estate agents to recast themselves as local experts, able to offer unique insights someone can’t get just surfing the web.
