Historically low interest rates have driven one of the biggest home-buying booms the United States has ever seen. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the past three years have brought record highs for sales of existing homes—and that’s impressive, considering the NAR has been tracking home sales since 1968. Another attractive fact: The median price of a home in 2006 was $222,000, which is up a little more than 1 percent from 2005 levels. Everyone is waiting for the real estate bubble to burst. But according to NAR predictions, existing home sales should trend slightly upward through 2007 and into 2008, and new home sales will start growing again by this summer.
What do these numbers add up to for direct marketers? A robust new mover market featuring some of the most lucrative buyers—new homeowners. A study by Atlantic Marketing Research, as reported by Plainview, N.Y., new mover data and direct marketing solutions firm GETKO, puts home-related spending by new homeowners at more than $9,400. And, says Troy Henikoff, president of Amacai Information Corp., a Chicago-based data solutions firm that focuses on name, address and telephone data quality, “new movers spend more on goods and services within the first three months of living in their new residence than most people do in three to five years.”
Three months—not a lot of time to get your offer in front of someone who just moved. To help you get a handle on how to zero in on this moving target, let’s explore some of the data solutions and processes available on the market today, as well as some best practices for making the most of your window of opportunity. But first, you need to answer the question: What do you have to offer a new mover?
What a New Mover Wants
Before you invest the time and money into developing a program to market to new movers, you should determine if your product or service will appeal to them. Bruce Dulberg, CEO, HomeData Corp., a firm located in Melville, N.Y., that specializes in data and direct mail services targeted to the new mover market, advises marketers to perform some due diligence by researching this audience. He points to NAR and its National Association of Home Buyers Profile as one example of a professional organization that conducts studies and provides statistics to support its members’ information needs—insights that can help you assess what goods and services new movers are most likely to buy.
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