Back in January, I wrote a blog post about sponsoring a neighborhood garage sale as a means of working the farm my colleague and I maintain. Another agent in the office has had great success with this project, and we decided to try it out. We held our first event last weekend, and it was a great success. The neighbors loved it, and we were able to introduce ourselves to many potential sellers and even a few buyers.
We started by determining a date in May, linked to the city "clean-up week" where large items are picked up by the trash service for free. That way, whatever didn't sell and wasn't worth donating, could easily be gotten rid of.
Then we planned a flyer and postcard campaign: Flyers were walked door to door, and postcards were mailed about a month apart (two cards, one mailed in March and one in April, about a month before the event).
We offered free advertising in the local newspaper and on Craigslist, plus signage throughout the neighborhood. We asked participating families to call us, so they could be included on the map we created, and get free coffee and pastries the morning of the sale. We were sure to get contact information from everyone who called (phone, email, full name, snail mail address).
That morning, we set up signs at all major entrances to the neighborhood, then delivered coffee and danish, plus about 20 copies of the sale map, to participating families. We labeled the coffee and food with our business cards, and handed them out as we walked the neighborhood and stopped in to check out people's displays. We also collected contact information from new people we met, to put them on the list for the next sale.
The next day, we called all the participants and asked for feedback. Everyone agreed that it had been a success; one family collected over $230 for the Lymnphoma and Leukemia Society. The food was much appreciated...everybody mentioned how much they liked it, That will definitely be a feature of the next sale!
We probably spent about three hours the day of the sale, plus another 6-8 hours on putting together the map, purchasing and setting up the food goodies and coffee. I think we got great results from a pretty small investment of time and money: New contacts with a great first impression of their local RE team. And when I was at the market a few days ago, I ran into one of the women I'd met last weekend. She recognized me immediately and thanked me again for putting it all together. Maybe I am not a celebrity yet, but I hope to be her agent when and if she decides to sell her home!
