Each real estate season comes with unique opportunities and challenges. The benefits of Thanksgiving in real estate marketing! As Thanksgiving draws near, real estate professionals are more aware of the difficulties that lie ahead. This negative focus can prevent you from key advantages in the month of November. You might miss out on some of these things:
- Greater potential for qualified leads. Typically, only the most invested buyers or sellers hit the market during the holiday season, so there’s no need to worry about wasting time or marketing dollars on clients who don’t pan out. This can be beneficial for both buyer and seller agents, and it is particularly valuable when convincing potential first-time buyers to take the plunge.
- Gratitude as a marketing tool. The concept of thankfulness appeals to potential buyers and sellers, who want to know that their real estate agents actually care. Of course, any efforts to integrate this concept into marketing initiatives should be 100% genuine. Today’s consumers are savvy and can see through hollow marketing schemes.
- Get a head start on the holiday season. Consumers regularly complain that they are bombarded with marketing messages during the month of December. Stand out from the crowd with a Thanksgiving-oriented campaign that wraps up just as the competition of the holiday marketing craze starts to get fierce.
- Keep your real estate business top of mind. Even if buyers or sellers don’t anticipate getting involved in the real estate market right now, it’s worth your while to continue to cultivate your relationships. You want to remain top-of-mind so that prospects think of you first when they are ready to move forward.
It has been long been considered common knowledge that the buying craze of Black Friday does not extend to real estate, thanks to a lack of large savings for homes on the unofficial shopping holiday.
However, The benefits of Thanksgiving in real estate marketing are, what days do see the biggest bumps in traffic, and which days are the slowest? And are there any states impacted differently by the Thanksgiving holiday?
Traffic slows for Thanksgiving and picks up slightly for Black Friday, but buyer traffic does not see a full return to form until that Saturday. However, there is typically only 6 percent of the typical stock of open houses scheduled for that weekend, when compared to other November weekends. Other days that see a significant decrease in buyer traffic are Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, as well as Valentine’s Day.
Statewide, Hawaii sees the least amount of effect from Thanksgiving, with traffic being down only 10 percent on average compared to the quarter. New Hampshire, on the other hand, sees a drop of around 60 percent.
The Black Friday of Real Estate
While the spring is typically regarded as the best season for real estate, there is something that can be called a Black Friday of real estate – Dec. 28. Despite the lull for the holidays, Dec. 28 was one of the busiest days of the entire year for buyer traffic. One reason for this may be that though people are typically still on holiday break, they are also past the festivities, making it the perfect time to shop around for a home. Couple that with a New Years resolution to buy a new home, and a similar surge of activity on New Years Day, and you have one of the busiest periods of a slow season.
Another Black Friday-like day is July 6, with a similar situation: a long, post-holiday weekend leads to buyer interest peaking. This time, at the height of the buying season, competition is stiffer, but there is more inventory available. If that’s not your client’s preferred time to buy, then a few months later, Sept. 1 of Labor Day, is also a hot day for buyer traffic.