While rock-star marketer Seth Godin doesn’t usually give renovating advice, a recent post gave some interesting tips for creative selling.
In a recent post called On being proactive, Godin wrote: “In my experience, much of marketing is a game of waiting for the other guy to go first. Well, if nothing is happening, you go first.” He gave a few suggestions but one relates to real estate and some “provocative ideas for home builders”.
“If you want to sell a new house, why not offer prospective buyers help in selling their old houses? Send your idle crews to their house to paint it or do other important cosmetic fixes. Fill the old house with the furniture you use in your models, etc,” he wrote.
“Take it a step further. If your home building service is totally slack, why not get to work upgrading and selling older homes or even foreclosed ones?
Some of the ideas were drawn from this article in the Chicago Tribune, which in turn quoted Kerry Mulcrone, a Minneapolis-based new-home sales trainer.
At the recent National Association of Home Builders’ convention in Las Vegas, Mulcrone reminded a packed seminar session that builders are in the same boat as their buyers; therefore, they need to be their buyers’ partners.
So how could this relate specifically to renovating? Try these (but they all need a bit of out of the box thinking):
- Re-use - approach someone about to renovate and offer to remove and take away their windows, kitchen and even building materials if you can use them on your renovation (and they’re in ok condition).
- Demolish and re-sell - demolishing an old house usually costs quite a few thousand dollars. Does the demolisher go gung ho and destroy everything? or does he take care and save the materials to re-sell via a recycling yard. If it’s the latter, is the owner getting a cut? Why not offer to demolish and then sell the re-usable materials on eBAY and split the profit with the owner?
- If you’re a builder or tradesman, post flyers offering this service: “About to sell your home? Know that sprucing it up adds thousands to the sale price but don’t have the money to get this done? Call us in. We’ll spruce it up and take x% of the sale price.” (Alternatively, if you’re a homeowner wanting to renovate and then sell, why not approach a builder with the same proposition?)
- Get your builder to give you the bill of quantities (or pay to get it done yourself - I suggest this in Chapter 5 of my book). Then pay for the materials yourself on credit card and with the points shout yourself a trip overseas. By the end, you’ll need it!
- OK I cheated. #5 has very little to do with trading but here it is anyway. Develop a design with materials in mind by getting a design concept first and then researching all the ways it could be built fast and cost effectively. (This is less self evident than it seems by the way. While designing for your needs and site conditions is important, the choice of materials and the construction method will have a massive impact on cost. Find out more in Part 2. Subscribe here to receive it via email.
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