Real Estate Agent Hires Actors To Be Fake Family
Real estate agents are coming up with some creative ideas to get buyers interested.
In a typical walkthrough, nobody is home at an open house, and the real-estate agent shows the prospective buyer the furniture and into the back yard, while buyers try to picture what it would be like if their family were living there.
Well, no more.
California real estate agent Jackie Metcalf had a listing on the market for a beautiful home in Crest, just northeast of El Cajon. The trouble was, it wasn’t selling.
That’s when Metcalf came up with the idea.
“The wife said, ‘I think that’s weird,’” Metcalf explained. “And I said, ‘Well, I agree with you, but we’re desperate to get people in.’”
Now when prospective buyers take a look and they walk through the house and into the back yard, there are people: a lot of them, with grownups talking and kids playing.
There are also horses going by, but they, too, are actors.
All of them have been hired to play the part of folks who are living there.
The kids, the grownups, the dog, everybody is part of a fake family.
“They interact and frolic in the lovely tropical back yard with Jimmy Buffet playing and drink their margaritas, and just look like fun, so that people come into the back yard and say, ‘Wow,’ ” Metcalf said. “This is what I want to be my home.”
Some sellers are offering thousands of dollars in incentives to prospective home buyers, or free interior design consultation, even an automobile.
What’s critical in the buyer’s market is to get people curious enough to come see what is for sale, and Metcalf hopes her idea will at least create some curiosity.
The fake family of actors is getting ready for an open house on September 1st.
“We’re almost like part of the furniture,” said family actress Jeri Hickman. “But they really don’t want us to react with the potential buyers.”
Metcalf said that if her idea of the happy virtual family doesn’t work, she may start staging homes with dysfunctional families.