The seller as suitor

How do I lure thee? With toys and flowers, maybe even a fake family.
By: Ann Brenoff: Los Angeles Times
TRUTH is, much of the joy was sucked out of the home-buying process over the last few years. Buyers, faced with a scarcity of choices, were pressured to act faster than their comfort-zone speed limits and urged to make offers that often stretched the boundaries of common sense.

But did sellers really think they would ride the crest of the wave forever?

Welcome to real estate's Brave New World, where buyers rule and sellers drool every time someone actually shows up at an open house.

With more listings to choose from and less frenzied competition comes a sea change in how real estate is being marketed. To the chorus of "hallelujah," we have seen the end of some of real estate's ickier marketing practices; then again, others appear poised to take their place.

Under the category of goodbye and good riddance: playground-like pleas of "Pick me! Pick me!" from buyers desperate to find something, anything. Buyers promising to love, honor and faithfully water the seller's cherished rose garden if only they could own it. Impassioned letters from Mr. and Mrs. Desperate (with a photo of their adorable son enclosed) begging to buy your house so little Johnny can live up the street from his best friend.

Perhaps we are also rid of those mysterious spurts of sudden interest in the house you just looked at — the one that had sat on the market forlornly for months. And with it those frantic calls from your agent urging you to make an offer that very minute because five other families suddenly had a simultaneous epiphany and were ready to go full price, plus some. Now, it is safe to say, no one will be advising you to write up an offer on the hood of your car, just so you can be first.

Down but not out are those cold calls at dinner time from agents claiming to have a client ready to buy if only you were ready to sell. Or variations on that theme: a sister-in-law who wants to live on the block, a friend who has been admiring your home from afar, a client who is flying in for the weekend and wants to see your place — even though it's not for sale.

There is, of course, no reason to believe that the heights (make that depths) buyers and their agents reached in the last few years won't now be rivaled by the strategies of sellers and those who represent them.

Those incessant mailings from real estate agents trying to drum up business aren't going anywhere soon, they've just set their sights on a new target: buyers. So far, the "best-of-show" missive in our icky file is one that went out recently in Santa Monica. It asked seductively, "Do you know what your neighbor at [address here] did last night?" Well, the neighbor listed his condo, and the agent was fishing among local homeowners to see whether they knew someone in the market to buy. Nobody ever said sex doesn't sell.

In fact, says Ely Dahan, assistant marketing professor at UCLA, all that has really changed is that marketing is now plucking at the heartstrings of buyers, rather than the emotions of sellers.

In this climate, where bidding wars are a distant memory, Dahan says, owners will have to sell more than just their homes: They will have to sell a way of life.

Buyers will have to be convinced they are signing on for romance, family harmony and/or a life filled with interesting friends who come over to be entertained. The house needs to convince buyers that all that is standing between them and holding A-list parties is the absence of an outdoor Viking kitchen.

Home stagers, Dahan says, should do a booming business in this market — but not those who just rearrange the furniture. Nothing that simple will make a home jump out of the chorus line.

"The smell of freshly baked cookies in the oven, the dining room table set with fine linens and china, fresh-cut flowers" will all be de rigueur, he says, along with de-cluttering, removing personal items and repairing anything that's broken.

"Lifestyle, think lifestyle," Dahan says.

To that end, a home stager may set up a bistro table in the garden with Champagne chilling in a bucket or pipe in music to set the scene. When it comes time for showings, there will be scented candles burning in the bedroom, a fire going in the fireplace. Those hoping to sell to a family may be advised to install a swing set in the backyard — even if the homeowner's own kids are grown and gone.

"It's all about appealing to the emotions of buyers, subtly suggesting things to help them envision themselves living in this house," Dahan says.

New-home developers aren't immune to the shifting tide. They are also pulling out the stops to suggest a lifestyle to prospective buyers.

Pushing the needle on the can't-you-just-imagine-yourself-living-here Richter scale is Centex Homes. For its Santa Clarita Milestone development, the builder hired actors to play house while prospective buyers toured the model home. The mom and dad, son and daughter celebrated a birthday with a party and interacted with one another, demonstrating what a wonderful life onlookers could have — if they just bought this house. Each actor wore a name tag identifying his or her role: "Hello, my name is Dad."

The program, dubbed "HomeLife," has already expanded to Centex's Westerly at Riverpark master-planned neighborhood in Oxnard.

"I think it's both entertaining and beneficial," says Amanda Larson, marketing director for Centex. One prospective buyer touring the model told Larson that she had about 30 people in her extended family and that she wouldn't have realized how large the home was if she hadn't seen so many people gathered around the "family's birthday cake."

And at least one builder is counting on the power of a nagging child. Pulte Homes, a national builder with Los Angeles-area developments, doesn't skimp when it decorates the kids' rooms in its models. The builder outfits the rooms with whatever movie character or fad is currently in vogue so that children will remember them, says Deborah Blake, a vice president of marketing for Pulte.

This thinking extends to common areas too. In one of its Arizona multi-generational projects, Pulte Homes installed a kid-size railroad, a water park with a "fun dunker" that dumps 300 gallons of water from a two-story-high bucket, an in-line skating rink and skateboard parks. Pulte also made sure these amenities were the first things buyers saw when they drove into the development.

Blake says that about 18 months ago, Pulte redesigned its sales offices, looking for ways to keep children occupied while parents had "more serious conversations" with sales agents. The builder installed big toy boxes and, in its multi-agent offices, there's now a separate toy-filled room with a nanny cam. The kids can watch videos using headsets, and Mom and Dad can check the nanny cam periodically for peace of mind.

Pulte also gives out coloring books that include games like "decorate your new room" and "find the path from your old house to your new house."

Suzanne Finne, marketing manager for Pulte Home's Orange County/South Riverside division, says the builder is putting in a "monster play set" in the yard of one model set to open in November.

"We realize that children are part of the discussion," Blake says, "and we want them to talk about what a great place that was on the way home from a model tour."

Bah humbug, says Jim Crawford, a columnist for RealtyTimes.com and a Keller Williams Realtor in the north Atlanta area. Crawford says flat out that gimmicks don't work.

"Having survived other changing markets," he says, "it is the basics that sell the homes…. Giving away Jaguar cars, BMWs, exotic vacations do not work. Proper pricing, determining who is most likely to buy the home and identifying their needs is what's important."

The bottom line remains that a home "speak" to a buyer.

"Homes need to make an emotional statement," says Gary Harryman, a Pritchett-Rapf agent based in Topanga. "It has to hit you as soon as you walk in the door."

He recalls a Topanga property, which, he says, left most would-be buyers swooning. It had four bedrooms and three baths in just 2,700 square feet and sold for $1,650,000. What made it so special?

"Everything about it said 'Old World charm,' " Harryman says. "Everything felt authentic, right down to the smallest detail — the kitchen cabinets, the sconces, the hardware.

"It was a joy to show because of how people reacted to it — they instantly got swept up in its presence."

And presence can be hard to stage.