5 Tips to Market your Property through Real Estate Postcards

Marketing your Real Estate has always been a cumbersome job. Many often Realty Agents/individuals keep looking for ways & channels to aid their marketing strategy. Today we bring to you another means to market your property – Real Estate Postcards.

Real Estate Postcards have proved to be an effective marketing tool. The great feature of postcards is that they are distributed easily & do not cost a lot. Another benefit is that they give your future clients a visual to view & hold onto until they need your business & you also do not have to hire a marketing professional.

Postcard marketing does not take a long time to start generating leads for you. Make sure your marketing is effective; your postcard is direct & gives information that will capture the attention of the viewer. It will work immediately & create a steady flow of business over time. 

An example of Real Estate Postcard

  

How exactly can you create effective marketing through postcards?

Follow these 5 tips for the best outcome:

1. Analyse the Results - Measure & analyse the immediate results that you receive after your postcards are distributed & make sure to keep track of the business it generates over time. Make sure to put your email, phone number, website, etc. on the postcard so people can get a hold of you easily with their real estate needs or what they are interested in. Postcards are an easy way to open the doors of communication between you & future clients. 

Keep track of you appointments & note down where the source was generated from & what outcome it brought you. Measure the return of the investment & if it was able to provide you a positive lead.

2. Design the Postcards Creatively to Fetch Results - Add these five elements in your postcard to make it effective: 

1. The picture of practitioner on both sides
2. Pictures of Homes for Sale
3. Beautiful logo & text with striking font, color, layout, & design
4. A message specifically to target market
5. Call to action

3. Follow Consistency in Branding & Frequency - An effective real estate postcard marketing demands the frequency between 9 & 12 postings annually for the highest value market & 4-12 postings annually for other markets. The idea is to make a name yourself. Meaning that when people think of real estate your name will come to mind in a positive way. 

4. Focus on High Value Markets – High-value markets get you the highest returns on your efforts & investment. So obviously you need to send your postcards for real estate to groups that will be potential leads, & that will generate leads.

           High-value markets:

• Your area of influence which includes clients in the past
• Your work & resident neighbourhood
• Other markets that you are recognized by face or name

5. Do not forget the WIIFT rule – Make sure you always consider the mind-set of your audience before you put your foot forward for real estate postcards marketing campaign. Your primary objective should be to answer “What’s in it for them (WIIFT)”? What is going in their minds? Are they eager to know what the scenario of current real estate market is? Do they trust that you can serve their needs in the best way?

Closing Remarks

Initially, Real Estate pros did not believe that they could really do well in creating an effective message in their real estate postcards; however the messages can turn out to be real effective if these simple yet wonderful tips are followed.

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Serviced Apartments – An emerging arena in Real Estate

Not all but some of our readers will agree with this post. We recently got a chance to study the functioning and business model of Serviced Apartments in Hyderabad (India) and felt the need to share the same with our readers. Let’s see how effectively we can communicate our views on this topic.

Serviced Apartments – What are they?

For those who are not aware of the term Serviced Apartments; they are no different from normal residential apartments, but with an exception that they provide complete services to the tenants.

Serviced Apartments are fully furnished houses including all the white goods that are provided to the tenants for use. The tenants residing in these apartments can make use of all the “free services” provided by the owners – house-keeping, food, electricity, laundry etc.

In short, a Serviced Apartment can be thought of as a variant of a PG (Paying Guest) accommodation, with some exceptions.

Business Model

This is one of the most exciting and profitable business models that can exist as recurring income source in real estate. Here instead of charging for apartment as a whole, tenants are charged on per bed basis. This will become more clear from the following example:

Shown below is a residential apartment in Hyderabad having 25 apartments of 3 bedrooms each –

Now consider these 2 scenarios –

Scenario 1: Rent as an apartment

Earnings

Rent per apartment/month	No. of apartments	Total/month
Rs. 25000	25	Rs. 625000

Costs

	Cost per apartment/month	No. of apartments	Total/month
Misc	Rs. 2000	25	Rs. 50000

Net Profits

Profit

Rs. 575000

Scenario 2: Rent as Serviced Apartment

Earnings

Rent per bed/month	Total beds per apartment	No. of apartments	Total/month
Rs. 10000	6	25	Rs. 1500000

Costs

	Cost per apartment/month	No. of apartments	Total/month
Housekeeping	Rs. 2000
Electricity	Rs. 2500
Wifi	Rs. 1500
Food	Rs. 6000
Misc	Rs. 3000
Total	Rs. 15000	25	Rs. 375000

Net Profits

Profit

Rs. 1125000

So after looking at the figures of both the scenarios, we have very less to explain anything. You can cultivate money in the second scenario and at least we are considering jumping in this arena as soon as possible!

Disclaimer: The figures quoted above are exact figures of a Serviced Apartment in Hyderabad, but we are not sure whether this will hold true in other cities as well.

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Channel Partners: An Emerging Trend in Real Estate

In our first post “Understandingthe Reality in RealT”, we mentioned Transaction as an essential part of the 5 step value chain. We further elaborated its details in our following post – “Transacting & Using your RealT”. Today we bring to you a fast emerging trend in the Transaction phase of real estate projects – the introduction of Channel Partners.

The figure below shows exactly where Channel Partners have made their place in the value chain:

   

What are Channel Partners?

Essentially CPs are the agencies that take the responsibility to sell-off whole or part of the realty projects in a pre-agreed upon duration & take their commission/fees in doing so. In this process, they underwrite the properties which are to be sold by them. More on this will get clear in the following discussions.

How are Channel Partners different from Brokers?

Although doing the same work, there is a huge difference between Brokers and Channel Partners.

A Broker acts as a liaison between the Seller & Buyer and in this process he takes his commission from both the parties.

A Channel Partner on the other end underwrites the property to be sold for a particular duration by paying the owner some percentage of its cost (refundable). The CP is then free to use any means of promotion & sale including sub-broking, conducting events, etc. to sell the property. Once the property is sold in the pre-decided duration, the CP gets a handsome cut from its sale, much larger than a broker’s, and gets his underwriting amount back from the builder.

If in case a CP fails to sell the underwritten properties in the specified time duration, he is liable to pay to the builder, an amount that is pre-specified in the agreement between him and Builder.

Why do Builders prefer Channel Partners?

With the evolution of new ways & processes in Real Estate, Builders have quickly adopted the concept of Channel Partners. We were perplexed at first about the acceptance of Channel Partners in this sector but when we looked at its profitability by putting ourselves in the shoes of a Builder, we got all our answers.

Following are some of the benefits that a builder enjoys in partnering with a Channel Partner:

• Immediate funding of Operational Costs: The builder uses the underwriting amount to fund his immediate cash requirements. This is similar to funding by booking amount, the difference being that the percentage of cash is relatively small.
• Guaranteed sell of the property: By partnering with the CPs, the Builder ensures that his property will be sold. He no longer has to worry about the marketing and promotional activities. Even if the CP is unable to sell the property in the specified time, the Builder easily gets the interest amount by penalizing the CP.
• Better than Broking: Using CPs is better than relying on the brokers. This is because of the fact that brokers have no liability to sell the property, whereas CPs have!
• Free Promotion: Suppose that a CP has underwritten 50 units out of total 100 units constructed by the Builder. Now, to sell those 50 units, the CP will carry on promotional activities by conducting events, advertising etc. But in this whole process, the Builder is getting benefit of free publicity of remaining 50 units as they fall under the name of same project.

These and several other benefits have made Channel Partners a hot topic in emerging markets. Also, it is noteworthy that this trend is picking up pace quickly in Tier 2 cities. RealT Horizon is glad that our vision of development in the Tier 2/3 cities is getting much air!

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