The half-page weekend ad in the local newspaper's real estate section. The Hansel and Gretel procession of signs with indicators leading carloads of curious "drive-bys" to the model home sales office door. The college student standing on a street corner with a huge double-fisted arrow in his hands rocking to an unknown headsetted beat, while directing Sunday traffic to a developer's subdivision. These are but a few of the ways builders try to lasso potential buyers for a look at their new home communities. Some builders and developers, however, are coming up with some innovative "behind the scenes" approaches to make a name for themselves, apart from the usual weekend marketing campaigns.

Schools are a hot topic when shopping for a new home. A quality district can clinch a buyer's decision. So, when the Coppell, Texas operation for Newmark Homes discovered that its 87-home Forest Cove Estates would be situated near one of the area's top-ranked elementary schools, the builder decided to see if Wilson Elementary would be interested in creating a joint effort to cultivate prospects.

The school's principal, Julie Combs, saw an immediate benefit. She wanted parents to have the right information about the school, and she saw that the builder could use Wilson as a selling point. At first, she asked for a $1,000 contribution to buy some software she had been eyeing for a new reading program. In return, Combs supplied the developer with newsletters to distribute to prospects. As an added bonus, buyers were afforded the opportunity to meet the principal and to be taken on a tour of the school. Parents soon became the ones spreading the word about both the school and the builder's new community, according to Newark's marketing director. In the pre-sale mode, the builder could account for 43 per cent of the sales as being sourced to moms and dads of students who already attend Wilson Elementary.

In terms of advertising budgets, the cost to the builder to participate in the growth and future of the area's elementary school is a drop in the bucket, and the rewards are, without a doubt, the most effective and long-lasting type of referrals known to the industry - word of mouth.

East West Partners, in Midlothian, VA, found another way to spur buyer interest. Commemorating its silver anniversary, it decided to give away $50,000 in a raffle, with proceeds to be split between a lucky winner and a local charity. By the time the builder drew the winning names of the individual and the charity, more than 5,000 people had toured the model homes at East West's planned community, Hampton Park.

The charities in the running for the lottery money were determined by in-person voting at the various builders' communities within the master-planned area, and the $25,000 winner would be the most-voted-for charitable organization. The local charities, in turn, promoted the event by spreading the word of the contest to their supporters and arranging carpools to the builders' communities. Philanthropic groups held pool parties, ice cream socials, and pony rides at the new communities to help get out the vote.

In the end, the American Cancer Society of Richmond received the most votes, and a school teacher took home $25,000 of the $50,000 prize in the customer portion of the drawing.

Aside from funding the cash prize, the master developer, East West, partnered with builders and vendors by sinking $100,000 into an advertising blitz for the event. Everyone involved felt they came out winners, and prospects were introduced to the new community, whose exposure may not have been as profound without the effort.

There is no doubt that communities, schools, and charities can work together to benefit one another, when mental "paradigm shifts" such as those described above take place. For the trade-off of slick, expensive marketing and advertising campaigns, builders and developers can become members of those "thousand points of light", benefiting both themselves and their local communities, to become a coveted household word after all.

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Published: June 16, 1999

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A veteran of the real estate and homebuilding industries since 1986, Dena Kouremetis first joined Realty Times as a new homes writer in 1998. Since then, she has authored four books, written consumer columns on new homes issues for websites and newspapers all across the country, contributed to builder trade magazines, appeared as a guest expert on several radio shows and even created a ten-chapter podcast for LendingTree.com’s homebuilder website, iNest.com, now available on iTunes, entitled Uncharted Waters; Navigating the Purchase of a New Production Home. Kouremetis recently joined her local Folsom, CA Coldwell Banker office as a broker associate while continuing to write for the real estate industry. For the past three years, she has been training real estate agents for both the resale and new homes industries, putting her experience, research expertise and gift of expression to work to help others entering the business.