Campaign gets back to the adage, “location, location, location”
In this tightened economy, many consumers are shopping with tunnel vision, looking first at price before any other factor. And even those that are attracted to the visual first almost immediately gasp in shock and scurry along when they see something they like is out of their budgeted price. This trend has trickled into the home buyer market, with many home buyers sacrificing amenities and location for the sake of the price tag. But Coldwell Banker recently launched a campaign they hope will get buyers to choose based on the area, rather than clutch purse strings.
Titled “The Best Places to Live,” the campaign aims to have buyers identify which areas work best for their families and careers. The choices are segmented into five lifestyle categories: Social Seekers, Suburbanites, Adventurers, Leisure Lovers, and Culture Cravers. With the help of an analytics company, Coldwell Banker ranked thousands of properties based on a compilation of 20 attributes that buyers find valuable. These rankings help home buyers narrow their search and locate the top properties in the area they would most like to live. And once these properties are identified, other factors are then brought into the picture such as price, square footage, etc.
By getting consumers to focus on the location that would make their living experience the most pleasant, it allows buyers to at least entertain living in an area that they love and use that desire to find a property that then works for them financially and spatially. Although you can’t afford a grandiose mansion, it doesn’t mean you have to ignore personal desires to live in a specific area because you think it would be great for your kids, close to your job or it’s extremely picturesque. By all means, be financially smart, but operating under that mindset doesn’t mean you have to live in a cardboard box 50 miles away from civilization. Coldwell Banker is looking to give buyers the freedom to voice their wants and bring their interests and personalities to the forefront during the home buying search.
“We are going back to the more traditional ways of judging the value of a home, and not solely looking at it through the financial lens,” says David Siroty, Coldwell Banker’s vice president of communications. “Instead, the emotional and lifestyle value is critical.”
