Home, Land, Property Buying and Selling - Creative marketing?

Greetings and hello from the Frozen Tundra. It has been a while since I have posted.

Anyhow, my family and I recently moved to Green Bay and purchased the last local home of a future HOF player that has been in the headlines the past few years. Unfortunately, or Richmond, VA home is still for sale and we are having a hard time getting things moving in the slow market.

My question is, in my opinion, in non-conventional times, non-conventional tactics. I want to somehow link our new home's notariety (sp) to our home that is still on the market, if for no other purpose, but to get some interest. Is this a bad thing to do? Any suggestions?

Two mortgages are killing us.

Thanks,

Dave

Curious, how did you plan to do that? Blogging, ads, etc. Something like "We are the proud owner of X's home or here is a picture of our new home which belonged to famous X but unfortunately our joy of owning this home is overshadowed by the fact that we still have our old home Y on the market back in..." I doubt there is anything illegal in doing it. I guess if you said house for sale and showed pics of the new house and then stated that "this isn't the house but this other one is" one might feel you were trying a bate and switch but different markets, different states.

I can see how well that tactic worked to get you to by your new home but your old home needs its own hook.

IMO price, features/condition and location are most important.
Work on whichever of those you can.

Thanks for the replies.

First and foremost, I would never even attempt to bait and switch, and for that matter, what I was thinking may not help at all, but if it generates any lookers, that is better than we have now (dead market, especially in rural VA).

I would never request my agent do any of this, and I would get her agreement before I did any such thing. I have many ideas, but this is one of them (and probably the least attention grabbing).

Looking for a home or a conversation piece? Be a degree away from ending a legendary quarterback’s stay in <insert town>. To find out how, ….

I know it won’t change the house, but that is not the purpose, it is to generate interest. I do have some more radical ideas, but when the status quo does not work, new ideas are needed.

Thanks again,

Well, it could work but my perspective is from a buyer's point of view.
If I were making a decision that was as serious as a home purchase I would be scared away by a tactic like what you propose.
I mean no disrespect but IMO it doesn't mean much and is too cheesy for something as important as buying a home.

From a purchaser's perspective your home is either priced too high for the market or in not as good a condition as what others are selling for in your price range.

When we bought our current house we had a mobile home that did not sell for over a year.
We were in no hurry to sell but dropped the price when we would not have been able to renew the insurance on a vacant property.
It sold within a few weeks of lowering the price.

How about some minor improvements like paint or complementary decorating.

Actually, the tactic you speak of (in an earlier post) only got us in the house. When the discussions began, we had everything in line and it was a great deal (and we would have bought a house like it for the same price no matter who the owner, but odds are we would have never gone to the house had we not known who the owner was because there were hundreds of houses on the market... it was the hook that got us in and the house that sold us (BTW, the asking price was too high... ). The house itself was never advertised as so and sos house, but there was a well place article in the paper.

Anyhow, the point I was trying to make (and probably poorly) is, the market is not so good no matter where you are (some places worse than others). If you have 100 houses, all with new kitchens and baths, everyone updates paint, everyone does open houses, everyone mows their lawns and such and they are all the same price, what is wrong with using something that makes the house, or at least the sale unique? Especially if there are only a limited number of buyers.

I just see agents using the same tactics that worked when the market was hot and either afraid or not creative enough to do something different... that is why there are a lot fewer agents today than 2 years ago (and the successful ones are doing the same failed things, but they have the reputation to keep them going). I'm not saying I have the right idea, but anything is better than doing what doesn't work in a poor housing market.

I could lower the price more, we have already done that a few times. I need to see an agent who believes creative marketing is not just for light beer.

Thinking out of the box, maybe you could throw something in, free, like a big TV or lawn service or maid service for a year or 6 months. Depends on what you can afford or are willing to shell out. Something like that would catch my eye.
I don't think anything about your new house would make any one interested in your old house and in fact, would probably make them less interested.

Thank you so much, that is what I am more or less looking for. You are probably right about our current house, but I have a few ideas now... perhaps even do something like, X toward a home theater or toward closing costs (I thought about internet or satellite TV for a year, but that would be harder to do I think).

Anyhow, thanks again!

A couple of late comments...

Be carefull using anyone's name in any type of advertising without express written permission from that person. Could be an expensive mistake.

Small incentives are certainly worth a try, but every month the house sits, you're lowering what you make on the sale by the amount of the house payment and utilities. My advice is to either drop your price monthly (or weekly) until it sells or get a renter in until the market improves. Big pain for a short amount of time or little pain for a long amount of time. In the end it's all the same amount of pain.

Forgive me if I'm being too blunt... I am a professional and am speaking from experience.

Doug M.