Where are the green REALTORS®?
If you haven’t heard of one yet, trust me you will. With a presidential election just a year away, you will be hearing more and more talk along these lines. Selling yourself as green is a good marketing angle, and an even better life philosophy in my opinion.
What is a green REALTOR®? I don’t know, because I haven’t seen one market themselves that way yet, but I can paint you a picture of a technology toting green REALTOR®. So lets imagine.
First a green REALTOR® does NOT advertise in print media (or at most devotes 10% of their ad budget to print). Newsflash people… most people are not looking to print ads to aid their property search. They are online. I have seen no less than three studies in the past 6 months, not the least of which is Swanepoels trends report, that demonstrate quite clearly that roughly 80% of all real estate ad dollars are targeted at the least productive channel of communication, namely print ads. Of course you still need to print some things… you have to have a business card to hand out. So consider printing on only recycled paper. Highlight that fact (picturing a ‘printed only on recycled paper’ on the back of your business card).
A green REALTOR® will virtualize the transaction to the extent possible. Burn relevant documents to a cd-rom for you clients. Use digital forms throughout and electronic faxing. If in the end you have to print one set of documents for archival purposes, at least there weren’t 20 drafts in between.
Send correspondence online. I don’t want your Giants/A’s calendar on my refrigerator. I would love to get an email from you breaking down property values in my city or county over time. I would actually love someday if someone sent me an email and said ‘this is so I don’t have to send you a soon to be recycled brochure.’ That alone would get me to open that email.
A green REALTOR® will learn everything they can about the environmental footprint of a home, a block, a neighborhood. “Look at that great space… that is a .25 acre lot. You can do amazing things with that space. Start composting and save money and help the environment.” This could well generate the follow up question ‘what is composting,’ and then you are in. Does the home have great southern facing roof space? It is the perfect solar generator.
A green REALTOR® doesn’t drive clients to home after home unnecessarily. A green REALTOR® knows they have to visit the house once to do the walkthrough. They bring along their camera and take lots of pics and small videos. Consumers can then dramatically narrow the field of homes they have to visit. This point can be brought home from both the buyer and seller perspective.
I think I could go on for a bit, but I believe that should suffice to make the point. There are innumerable ways that real estate is actually going green. I just think it is high time that someone market themselves that way.
So what do you think, worthy of a designation? GRN perhaps?