Your Customer Base is Changing. Are You?

Look around you. The makeup of the American population is changing very quickly! The “Average” American household looks very different today than it did 40 years ago, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University 2006. Real estate professionals and their brokers will need to change with the times; to accommodate this influx of new homebuyers or much business will be lost.

Let’s take the Hispanic population, for example. Home sales for the Hispanic population are on the rise. Hispanics accounted for 27% of the net household growth in 1995 through 2005 and over the next 10 years, growth in the number of Hispanic households could exceed 4.7 million projected increases among non-Hispanic whites, according to the Harvard study.

Is your office ready for the new homebuyers? Do you provide contracts in Spanish? Do the vendors that you use such as lenders and home warranty companies offer Spanish materials and bilingual customer-support staff? Home Warranty of America is currently distributing brochures in Spanish in 48 out of the 50 states they do business in. Topping the list of states with the largest shares of Hispanic immigrant households are California, Texas, and Florida.

“The Hispanic Community in California is very excited about our Spanish brochures.  California is a state with many Hispanics and the real estate agents love the opportunity to offer to their clients a home warranty plan that can be read in English or Spanish. I get questions everyday, ‘When will we have Spanish literature’? It's very exciting that HWA will now have a Spanish brochure and this will make us even more competitive in the industry.” Said Mariana Torres, HWA Sales Representative for San Bernardino County. Torres is fluent in both Spanish and English.

Some real estate professionals have begun developing thriving businesses by working within this niche of foreign homebuyers. With so many real estate professionals out there competing for your business, it makes sense to find and use new marketing avenues.