Jared James

By Jared James

Part of my job as a real estate speaker/trainer is to keep up to date on the latest news, fads, tools and technologies that come out so that I can determine if I think they are here to stay and worth covering with REALTORS®, or if they are here today and gone tomorrow and not worth our time (see talking signs as a case in point). Well, I just got off of a webinar I was doing for real estate professionals on creating new leads using both the old school and new school methods to create the maximum number of opportunities in today’s marketplace, and one of the newest methods that I think is worth paying attention to was demonstrated by Dream Town Realty in Chicago who actually decided to leverage the popular coupon site Groupon.com.

They created a Groupon coupon for buyers and sellers in their area, which cost the potential clients $25 up front and required them to used Dream Town Realty to buy or sell, then at closing the Groupon clients would get back $1,000 in cash (as long as their purchase or sale was greater than $150,000 and they closed within the next 12 months).

Amazingly enough, they had 219 people sign up for this attractive offer in only one month. I think we all would agree that we would be OK with being connected with 219 potential clients that are serious enough about buying or selling a house in the short term that they are willing to pay $25 up front for a coupon.

Now Groupon is only available in major cities, but if you are considering using such a tactic as Dream Town Realty you may want to check out Livingsocial.com or the newest site that actually focuses on secondary markets and was created by the popular ActiveRain.com founder, Jon Washburn, called www.dailyticket.com There is even a coupon site created specifically for real estate deals called housetipper.com. Continue reading »