Realtor Caroline Caira has often brought gifts - usually department store gift cards or restaurant certificates - for new homeowners. But her latest promotion takes the bait.
“I just brought haddock to a closing,” said Caira, who works out of the RE/MAX First Realty office in Watertown. “People like seafood.”
Caira’s fiance, Domenic Vincenzino, owns the Newton fish store Steamers, where she gets her fish. And her new deal offers anyone who buys or sells their house with her free fish for a year.
isn’t so much a reaction to the economy as a partnership to support local business, she said. Vincenzino talks up her real-estate business to customers and features her business cards at the counter advertising the fish promotion. Meanwhile, she talks tilapia to anyone who will listen.
“There’s no real gimmick,” she said, noting that the amount of free fish depends on the amount the house sells for. “If it’s a $500,000 house, we’ll give you $500 worth of fish.”
Caira, who has also served lobster rolls at broker open houses, is one of a select few who go beyond traditional promotions that typically feature free calendars. Another local broker, Naomi Zygiel-Almozlino from Coldwell Banker in Newton, recently sent out a food and wine pairing list to potential clients. Serve sharp cheese with a pinot noir or cabernet sauvignon, it suggests. But mild cheeses go better with sauvignon blanc.
No one may enjoy incentive marketing more than Ron Phipps of Phipps Realty. The Warwick, R.I.-based agent said he’s done plenty of unusual, even funny promotions during his 20-year career.
“Some things work. Some things don’t. It will cause them to smile, but it won’t make or break a sale,” he said.
Thoughtful gifts have included a Douglas fir to a family relocating from the West Coast and bougainvillea for a buyer from Atlanta. He tempted buyers of a waterfront property with a sailboat and offered a professional closet-planning service to a home ripe for a build-out. While jewelry and fur coats are not uncommon gifts in the South, Phipps said they would never work in New England.
Instead, he has plied open-house guests with the latest Harry Potter [website] title and pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
Phipps is careful not to offer anything that might draw attention to a weakness of a house and admitted that some perks turned out to be problems.
“Once I gave a gift certificate to go fishing,” he recalled. “The seas were rough and everyone got sick.”
These days, Phipps has scaled back, saying that buyers don’t want extras in a tight economy. They just want a well-priced house.
“It’s better to price the house where it’s going to be in 90 days, and sell it now,” he said. “We’ve reduced incentives and recommend all those resources go into the selling.”But in Newton, Caira enjoys the friendly conversation that her free-fish-for-a-year deal has prompted. Customers joke, “I’ll eat you out of business.”
“Well,” she said. “Restrictions do apply.”
By Jill Radsken
- jradsken@bostonherald.com
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