In this age of talking computers and other high-tech gadgets and gizmos, here’s one you maybe haven’t run across–a Talking House.
Like the one at 2538 Charglow Dr. in Oakville, a suburb of St. Louis.
“Hi,” the house says to anyone willing to listen. “I have 10 rooms. … A kitchen with loads of cabinets and a pantry. A breakfast room with a bay window. A vaulted great room. A Florida room with a hot tub that overlooks an in-ground pool in the back yard.”
The voice you hear belongs to Dennis Hayden, an agent at Re/Max Premiere Realty, and one of a handful of agents in the St. Louis area using the Talking House to try to sell them.
“They work very well,” said Hayden, who has three, and is about to order 10 more.
“I’m getting lots of calls,” he said, “and from people who are really pretty good prospects, because they already know a lot about the house when they call.”
A Talking House is actually a two-pound recording device, about the size of a telephone answering machine, that Realty Electronics in Fond du Lac, Wis., started turning out about five years ago.
The company sells them to real estate agents for about $200 each, and to individuals who want to try selling on their own for about $350 each.
Making a Talking House talk is fairly simple. You record up to three minutes worth of anything you want say, and tune the device to an AM radio frequency that’s not in use.
Plug the machine into an outlet inside the house, but put the antenna outside if you have a sturdy brick house similar to one owned by self-employed real estate agent Kevin Soutar.
“I put the antenna inside the house first, but you couldn’t hear anything outside. After I put the antenna out the window,” he said, “you could hear fine.”
Talking House messages transmit for about 300 feet. But they are not powerful enough to interfere with local stations. And they don’t bother Talking House neighbors, say real estate agents using the devices.
“The sound doesn’t blare out of the house,” said Robert Wagener, an agent at Coldwell Banker Pasley Realty in Godfrey, Ill., who has three in use. ” … The only way you can hear it is on the car radio.”
For the most part, agents say Talking Houses attract attention as well as help agents, house buyers and sellers.
Soutar thinks the novelty “helps me get business I wouldn’t otherwise get.”
“Also,” said Soutar, “if you are a buyer, you don’t have to get out of your car in nasty weather to go get a flyer. You can just sit in your car and get the information on your radio.”
But Talking Houses don’t impress everyone.
Fern Evans O’Neal, a long-time real estate agent at Prudential Alliance’s office in Ladue, Mo., said she has never used one, “and I wouldn’t.”
“I think it is a short-cut to try to get attention,” she said, “and I think this puts us down on a level with a used-car salesman.”
Joesph Riley, president at Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate company, said agents there stopped using Talking Houses after trying them out several years ago.
“We found that people had problems tuning into them,” Riley said. “We also felt that people wanted to have personal attention. I think people are kind of sick of listening to voice mail.”
