Working with Vacation and Resort Home Buyers as a Real Estate Niche
In general, the vacation home buyer is not living in the area. They may have vacationed there many times, but their focus is different when they’re having fun. Their need is greater for area information specific to real estate, market areas, and local government & building codes.
Marketing, especially with a website, should be focused on the liberal sharing of this type of information.
The more you share, the more they’ll value your site and your expertise.
Less Local Competition for Resort Property Buyers
In my real estate practice, I really enjoy the fact that the competition for the vacation home real estate buyer, and even many sellers, begins on the Internet. And, as many of my clients have told me, it ends there as well. They tell me that my website was very informational and that I responded quickly with email to their requests.
Even though my sale cycle from a visitor providing me with their contact information to the closing can be from eight months to a year, I’m never competing with other local brokers. Once I capture their contact info, we generally maintain a relationship through to a commission.
More Experienced Buyers Want Better Service
When a buyer can afford a significant expense to purchase and maintain a vacation property, they are generally a more savvy buyer. Though they know how the process works, they’ll be expecting prompt and knowledgeable service, even to the point of being a bit demanding at times.
In return, you’ll usually be working with a reasonably tech-savvy buyer, with good email skills, and the ability to respond quickly when you need something signed or an answer to a question.
They Appreciate Services Like Automated Listing Alerts
Once I move a prospect from a general information seeker and casual searcher to signing up for automated new listing and price change alerts, an extremely high percentage will use me for their transaction. They like a bargain and are careful shoppers, so these alerts give them the opportunity to spend a lot of time learning the market.
If you don’t want to spend more time than necessary in answering their questions via email, make sure that you’re sending them as detailed a report as you can in their automated alerts.
Great Future Listing Clients
Though I no longer work with sellers, when I did I found that my resort and vacation home buyers usually came to me first at listing time. All I had to do was maintain contact with them through either mailings or email newsletters until they were ready to sell.
Turnover Is Opportunity
Each vacation or resort market is different but in general they all experience turnover that brings more buyers. People buy a vacation home, tire of the area, or just decide that they want to try another area. Many have the disposable income to do this shuffle around their favorite playgrounds.
They’ll generally turn over a vacation property in five years or less in my market. This means that I need to help them to get the best deal possible, as appreciation is unlikely to aid in offsetting their transaction costs in that short of a time frame.
Resort & Vacation Home Buyers – A Super Real Estate Niche
If you practice real estate in a resort area with a large vacation home and condo market, specializing in this real estate niche can provide a comfortable income, or even a large business if you want that.
Yes, if vacation homes are a large part of your market, you have a lot of competition from other brokerages. But, many of them are trying to do too much, and not focusing on the specific needs of a real estate resort buyer. To truly specialize in this niche, you may alienate some prospects for future listings. Why? I do a lot of posting on my blog site that concentrates on the information of value to buyers. This includes telling them how to negotiate with area sellers for the best deal. I talk about the tendency to overprice homes from the outset. Some sellers may not appreciate this, but it brings me business.
I have found that by dropping listings and concentrating on vacation home buyers, I enjoy freedom and clean focus on one side of the process. This allows me to fine-tune my marketing and process for the best results. It also allows me to cut brokerage overhead significantly. I don’t have to spend money advertising listings. I focus all of my marketing efforts on the Web, via my site, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
A vacation and resort home buyer real estate niche could be just right for you, so check out the possibilities in your area.
Blog-Based Website
There are differing opinions about whether a real estate blog or website should focus entirely on content that maximizes the real estate market and associated key phrases, or is broader in scope, with a lot of area information.
When it comes to resort and vacation home markets, I firmly believe that a really productive (this means commission generating) site is blog-based, and has a huge amount of local and tourism-focused information to go with the real estate content.
I agree with those who don’t believe this, but only from the perspective that some SEO clout is sacrificed with the broader scope, thus less real estate keywords in relation to the whole.
However, my very best clients have been vacationing in my area for years, and they did a great deal of their planning and research for their trips on the Web. None of those early searches were for real estate. They were looking for the most interesting places to see, the activities others found to be fun, and great restaurants and shopping. Now, if my site is hyper-focused on real estate, yes I will get those looking right now, but I’ll not get a visit from the others.
I would rather cover the entire area, activities, places, and people. I get those visitors and vacationers much earlier, well before they may ever want to buy or sell real estate. However, if my site is interesting and they subscribe to my feed or email newsletter, I’ll be their local resource for all of this period before they become real estate prospects.
By keeping the real estate business there, inserting posts on a regular basis about real estate, and keeping this subtle reminder of my business activities, I will get their business someday. They have become loyal readers, and they have been keeping up with the market while they enjoyed my area content as well. It’s a cumulative thing, and I’ll be happy to accumulate visitors over time who love the area and keep returning. They frequently decide to buy that dream vacation or retirement home…and I’ll be right there in front of them.
About the author: Alissa Zucker is an experienced essay writer at the essay proofreading service Mcessay. She used to work as a content writer. Having decided to start a freelance career, she fired. Currently, she has enough time for her hobbies and family caring.
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