Real Estate Investing Basics: Choose Your Neighbor Marketing

A very effective, though often overlooked method of marketing both your rentals and homes for sale is door-to-door brochures in your property’s neighborhood. Residents who live near your property likely know someone, a friend, colleague, or family member in the housing market to whom they can pass your flyer. It can also attract the direct attention of a neighbor who is ready to buy or move up or down in your home.

If you’re local and don’t mind running around the neighborhood, this method will only cost you a few hours more than the cost of printing. If you’re not available for distribution, or you just have better things to do, paying someone to distribute brochures is very cheap and incredibly profitable if it results in a sale or placement of a qualified tenant. Just remember to take a quick tour of the neighborhood to make sure the flyers have been distributed if you are paying someone to do it.

As for the content of the flyer, it is worth taking some quality pictures of the interior and exterior of the house. If your main selling point is the quality of the property, be sure to present them in full color along with some of the basic specifications of the house. If you’re advertising a rent-to-own that’s really a great deal, make sure your analysis of the numbers is prominent and easy to understand. Also, be sure to emphasize that this property is in their neighborhood and that this is an opportunity for them to choose their new neighbor. Lastly, be sure to include your full contact information – your phone number, fax number, email address, and 24-hour recorded info line, if you have one.

A more expensive variation of this method is to use direct mail to address your neighborhood. Again, you’ll want to tailor your marketing message to let them know that this is your opportunity to shape the neighborhood by helping select new neighbors. To maximize your exposure, try using direct mail and flyer distribution methods, scheduled several weeks apart to ensure that as many neighbors as possible get your message that you have a great property for sale or rent in your neighborhood.