The model home as theater? After three successful "shows" in which a model was staffed by and loosely scripted for a team of actors posing as a family of four, Centex Homes' Los Angeles/Ventura County division is ready to embrace the novel concept and make it into a road show. The question is, will it play in Sheboygan? After all, this is Hollywood, not Wisconsin.

"We see a lot of benefits," says Amanda Larson, the unit's marketing director. "We like it, and people like it because they can picture themselves in the home and learn more about it. From what they're telling us, it's been a positive experience."

The idea for the model home Improv came from Larson's advertising and public relations agency, Roddan Paolucci Roddan, which was charged by Centex to come up with a fresh way to "warm up" the largest model at the company's Milestone community in Santa Clarita some 40 miles north of Tinsel Town. But Centex, "looking for an out of the box idea," embraced it and ran with it. "We thought it would be a good opportunity because it was so new and different," Larson says.

Truth be told, while models are often outfitted to the hilt with stunning furniture and jam-packed with options and upgrades, they are devoid of life and, but for other visitors, are rather static. Only occasionally does even the best trained sales agent leave his desk to tour with visitors, even when there is little or no traffic. And nobody uses hostesses anymore.

"The traditional way is a little cold," says Jim Garfield, the Palos Verdes agency's senior publicist. "Our idea was to show that this house could really be a home. Yes, it goes against the norm, but we think builders need to take one extra step because people need to see themselves in the house. Not just picture themselves in the house in their minds but actually see themselves in it."

To integrate real estate and entertainment, the agency first came up with a skit of sorts, Mom's surprise birthday, in which the family would be making dinner, baking a cake, listening to music, watching television. In other words, all the things real people might be doing when they are sitting around the house on a Saturday afternoon.

The show, which was called "HomeLife," was cast just like a TV show. But these wouldn't be just any actors. They had to fit the demographics the Dallas-based, New York Stock Exchange-listed builder was aiming for at Milestone, where the three to five-bedroom homes were priced from the $513,000s to the $665,000s. The median for Los Angeles County in April was $540,000.

Eventually, Jaason Simmons was cast as the "30-something father." Though he is a professional actor, the 35-year-old Simmons isn't exactly a household name. But he did have a three-year run as a lifeguard on Baywatch. Camille Chen, who has a bunch of credits in television ads, was picked as the mom, and a brother and sister team from the local theater company played the fictitious couple's kids.

The "family" was given enough information about the property to answer basic questions while playing their characters, and was encouraged to not only field questions from visitors but ask them as well.

"Like models at auto shows," says P.R. man Garfield, who sees the actors as walking, talking amenities. "We wanted them to interact with visitors, have a back-and-forth conversation with them. And if the actors couldn't answer a question, someone was nearby who could."

The show was originally set for a two-time run, once in May to correspond with Milestone's grand opening and again in June. But it was so successful Centex took it on the road, playing in July with a new set of actors to help introduce a new model at Westerly in the master-planned community of RiverPark in Oxnard, where the prices range from the $623,00s to the $706,000s. And now, division marketing manager Larson says she's likely to do it again, perhaps at the company's next grand opening.

"HomeLife is intended to bring to life some of the experiences that might exist" within a Centex home, says Larson. "We love the way our homes lives, and now our home-shoppers can actually experience it, too." One visitor told Garfield she never would have known the big Milestone model could have held the 30-35 people who went through the house every hour had she not seen it for herself. "Otherwise, she would have had no feel for how spacious this house really is," the publicist says.

Centex's Larson is hard-pressed to attribute any sales directly to the promotion, especially since the properties are consistently sold out. But it "cost a lot less than a newspaper ad -- pretty much hiring actors for a day, that's about it -- and that's nominal in the grand scheme of things." And it generated tons of traffic and publicity, with ink not just in the Los Angeles Times but also the New York Times and in newspapers as far away as the UK and Australia.

"We're still trying to determine whether HomeLife was the No. 1 factor in someone buying a home," the marketing executive says. "It may be a little bit of a stretch" to go that far, she adds, "but I believe it has contributed."

By the way, if there was a drawback to HomeLife, it's that everybody wants to be in show business. "We had so many volunteers, we could have had a cast of thousands," says Larson. "Everybody wanted a walk-on."

Published: September 6, 2006

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When Lew Sichelman first started writing about housing in 1969, he was the youngest real estate writer in the country. Now, 37 years later, he's one of the oldest -- and most decorated. He has been rated the top housing columnist in the country by the National Association of Realtors as well as by his peers in the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Indeed, NAREE has recognized his work on numerous occasions. One year - due to his advancing age, he can't recall which one - he earned top honors in the annual NAREE Journalism Contest in three out of the four major writing categories. It was the first time one writer has won so many NAREE awards in a single year. Known for his ability to make even the most difficult topics understandable, Sichelman also has been honored by the National Association of Home Builders and the Mortgage Bankers Association. He began providing in-depth coverage of and consumer-oriented information about housing and housing finance at the Washington Daily News, where he was real estate editor. He held that same position for nine more years at the Washington Star, which purchased the News in 1972. The Star, a so-called "writer's newspaper" which also had the misfortune of being an evening paper, was put out of its misery in 1981, and Sichelman, who had begun self-syndicating his column in 1978, decided to become a full-time columnist. Today, his column, "The Housing Scene," is distributed by United Media to newspapers throughout the country. He also is on the staff of National Mortgage News, an independent newspaper which is considered the bible of the mortgage business. And he writes for numerous other publications, including MarketWatch.com, where he answers readers questions once a week, Sports Illustrated (don't ask), RealtyTimes.com, BigBuilder and others. Sichelman is married, the father of five and grandfather of eleven.