Market for Your Market

Ideas on optimizing your target market for the current market conditions

The market is in bad shape today. But not surprisingly, some markets are in worse shape than others. For whatever reasons, Realtors often find themselves stuck working in their market area for better or worse. But if you are one of the thousands of Realtors stuck in a poor market, don’t worry. There are ways to make lemonade out of even the sourest of lemons.

 

For example, let’s take San Bernardino and Riverside counties in Southern California. An article from Entrepeneur.com by Danielle Babb considered this area one of the worst in the country for buying homes. She cites this metro area as one of the top three worst for foreclosures in the country. Home prices are plummeting and jobs in the area are scarce.

 

What would you do if you were Realtor in this area? Pack up the office and move back to Los Angeles? Maybe. But a less drastic measure would be curtailing your overall marketing to focus on a more specific demographic of home buyers; in this case, retirees. Falling home prices means it’s more affordable, they don’t need a bustling job market, and since they’re retiring, your clients should be less concerned with the value of their home in a year or two than they are with location and comfort. The area is jam packed with upscale country clubs, golf courses, fine wining and dining, and casinos. The weather is hot and dry year round, which many elderly people crave, and since they’re retired, they don’t need to worry about job scarcity.

 

Of course there are some areas which offer very little to potential home buyers, like Detroit. The job market there has been on the decline since long before the housing bubble, the economy took (and continues to take) a huge hit from the loss of jobs in the motor companies, the weather is atrocious, and the area is overall quite depressed. Admittedly, there isn’t much advice one can give Realtors in this market except to “pack up and move.”

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