`Hello. I am a meticulously maintained, 2,000-square-foot Colonial home with four bedrooms, two baths and gourmet kitchen. I sit on an acre of land with mature landscaping that includes a rose garden, an herb bed, numerous trees and lovingly planted perennials that bloom from spring through fall.”
This is what a Talking House might sound like. While the big action in real estate technology is on the Internet, home sellers and agents are still looking for ways to draw in would-be buyers who drive through neighborhoods looking at homes with for-sale signs in front of them. In recent years, more and more of these signs have incorporated all-weather boxes to hold brochures and other information a prospective buyer might want to know before calling an agent.
The Talking House takes the idea a step further by incorporating a radio transmitter that broadcasts a three-minute, pre-programmed message about the house within 300 feet of the property. This way, would-be buyers can just drive by, tuned into the AM radio frequency
`Would-be buyers can just drive by, tuned into the AM radio frequency specified on the sign, and hear about the house specified on the sign, and hear about the house.’
Agents like the $200 transmitter because it allows consumers to hear a pitch about a house without having to deal with an agent face-to-face. “Sometimes, people are driving around the neighborhood and when they see a talking house, they stop and listen and become interested,” New Jersey Century 21 agent Mary Shortway said in an interview with the New Jersey Record last summer. Instead of them thinking it’s out of their price range or not big enough, they hear the message and discover that the house is a better deal than they thought.”
The Talking House is manufactured by Wisconsin-based Realty Electronics Inc. The company has been making the devices since 1993 and has sold more than 50,000 of them, according to company President Scott Matthew, a real estate agent himself who got the idea from Disneyland, where visitors can tune their car radios to hear parking lot information.
