Door-To-Door House Hunting Letters: A New Trend?
Have you ever received a letter like this?
A homeowner on Vanderbilt Avenue between Myrtle and Park Avenues received this letter inquiring as the availability of their house — or the homes of anyone else they know in Fort Greene — in their mailbox on Monday, May 25 and wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Of course we know that real estate agents leaving cards asking if we are interested in selling is nothing new, but this seemed like an unusual approach and a little surprising,” said the female homeowner, who wishes to remain anonymous. “Honestly (and perhaps super cynically) I had sort of assumed this was a new and different tactic by a real estate agent to assume a fake identity of a young family looking to move into the neighborhood”
So are the letter authors really a young couple eager to start their life together in our obviously awesome neighborhood? Or is it a ruse from a real estate entity?
Rob Perris, district manager at Community Board 2, told us that while he “ha[s] not heard of this in this area, I have in other [neighborhoods]” and that “yes, this could be a legitimate request from a couple in love with the area, but it seems to me that most of these inquiries are in fact coming from investment companies looking to acquire properties and flip them.”
Perris added that Vanderbilt Avenue “was a main part of the historic district years ago so that may make it more appealing,” although with “the Brooklyn housing market. . . nothing really surprises me anymore.”
An optimistic take, however, was given by Chris Havens, a Brooklynite who has worked in the real estate industry in and around Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn for years.
“I bet it’s real because if it’s a broker, that’d be very stupid since once that got out, everyone wouldn’t like them,” said Havens, who added that “brokers are already soliciting.”
“I have a relative who bought a house that way in London, so to [try and] buy a house that way in Brooklyn, I think is a very smart thing to do. I might do it myself, it’s so competitive.”
As for the letter-writers themselves, we haven’t yet heard back from them, but will update once we hear back.
Update on 5-28-2015: Bernard, one half of the house hunting couple, told us that as an alum of Brooklyn Tech HS, he’s “incredibly nostalgic about the area” and he and Joanna are only looking in the Fort Greene-Clinton Hill area for a new, larger, family-friendly home (they currently live in lower Manhattan).
“We know there is not a whole lot of inventory in these neighborhoods, so we thought about using a creative technique that would effectively speak to residents,” he wrote via email. “As we mentioned, we are not looking to find a deal, rather we are looking to find the right place. The moment that real estate brokers get involved, the atmosphere becomes hyper competitive and pushy. We thought that this might be a way to cut through the noise, which is naturally advantageous for us but may also be beneficial for a potential seller.”
Thus far, they’ve had a few positive responses that they are following up on.
What do you think? Would you try this? Is this the beginning of a new house-hunting trend?