He’s the ‘Grinch’ that stole business.
At a time of year when homebuyers are distracted by Christmas festivities, a pair of real estate agents have discovered a way to get attention — and offload property — by dressing up as Dr. Seuss’ most famous holiday character.
Dennis Matse-Orere, 40, and his wife, Leila, 30 — who run Legacy Property Consultants — had a bright idea to help advertise their listings in December.
A realtor is drumming up business at Christmas with the help of a certain famous holiday character. Patrycja Lis / SWNSThey dressed up colleagues as the Grinch and got snaps of the homes with the famed festive character posed inside.
CEO Dennis and head of marketing Leila had seen a similar idea done by another firm — featuring a non-Grinch character.
They decided to give the marketing technique a go for themselves, but with a special seasonal twist.
They managed to convince a string of their landlord clients to let them snap new property pictures with the Grinch inside them.
Incredibly, the strategy has proven to be a triumph — with some listings getting as much as an 840% rise in clicks over non-Grinch listings.
Properties that used the Grinch to advertise were getting a lot more attention online than properties in the agency portfolio that didn’t. Patrycja Lis / SWNSLondoner Laila said: “I was thinking about how we could differentiate our ads on property portals to stand out.
“We saw another agency featuring a panda character in their listings — and suddenly we had a flood of ideas.
“I said ‘why don’t we do the Grinch?’ — and Dennis, who wouldn’t usually agree to something like this, said ‘why not?’.”
“We saw another agency featuring a panda character in their listings — and suddenly we had a flood of ideas. Patrycja Lis / SWNS
They reached out to a selection of landlords whose properties they represent across North West and central London and asked permission to photograph them featuring the Grinch.
Some weren’t keen, but one agreed — and that listing garnered thousands more views than any of their other listings.
Soon other landlords had got on board — and now Legacy Property Consultants have a string of Grinch properties.
She said: “At first, telling the landlords that we wanted to photograph a Grinch in their property wasn’t the easiest thing.
“But the more we could do, the more examples we had of how well it worked.”
Leila said she and a selection of her colleagues have all donned the Grinch suit in the spirit of the campaign.
She added: “The stats — it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before. They’re going crazy.
“We had two or three properties rented out within hours of us posting the listing online.”
