By now, we all understand that New York City is a unique Real Estate market. An island where millions dwell in a vertical landscape that is unlike any other in the world. If searching for a new apartment or brownstone to live in, how does one natefind one? We have no official MLS to help guide the general public to find NY Houses 4 Sale. It’s not easy street you know when you have to become a relentless property rover each weekend. Most use the New York Times print or online out of citihabitat. Usually, the best source is to seek the guidance of Ms. Corcoran or Mr. Elliman or any of the other hundred plus brokerages in Manhattan. There are of course the new spiderman like search engines that can help find your new Urban Digs. Other than that, it’s trulia a daunting task.
So how can New York City Brokerages help the home buyers of Manhattan find their new home easier? Signs! Lot’s of them!
Open House Street Level Signs
Walking down the street in Manhattan, one can’t help but notice all the signs in retail spaces for both Sale and Rent. These ground floor marketing techniques have been used for many years now and have been quite successfull. Imagine walking down your favorite street or avenue on a Sunday and seeing a sign in front of a building that said, “Open Houses”. The sign would help a potential buyer find property listings that they might might have missed while doing their tedius needle in the haystack home search. Each building could have one sign that would represent all the currently available listings in that particular building, company logos being optional of course. If each broker had their own sign in front of each building it could just get plain old ugly, as I found in my travels around the nation.
Real Estate Signs In the Sky
Here’s an even more radical idea. Imagine walking down any street and looking up at a building and seeing a sign in the window - FOR SALE or OPEN HOUSE or JUST LISTED. Or sitting in your 22nd floor apartment and looking out of your window and seeing the building accross the way with a FOR SALE sign in the window with the companies logo and website on it. Wouldn’t that be cool? The signs would be static cling or vinyl signs that each broker could have custom made for each of their listings. Guerilla markeing? Place advertising? Whatever you call it, it would be different and would help promote their sellers listings even more. These tactics could be applied to Rentals and Commercial Real Estate as well. The sky’s the limit so to speak. Now you could just find a building you like in your favorite neighborhood and simply look up to see if there is anything currently available for sale or rent, residential or commercial, condo or co-op, office space or retail, etc…..
Now some of you might be saying that each building has its own unique rules about signage and so forth but what if the residents and shareholders voted otherwise? You never know until you try it.
Thanks to Christine form NY Houses 4 Sale for the inspiration for this post.
Update:
Found this tidbit about Elliman on Curbed.
Find an Open House or Apartment for Sale in Manhattan by using your binoculars. Can you dig it?
