The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian real estate firm believes digital marketing will bring more “bang for the buck” as it launches an initiative aimed at helping 200 buyers find their “perfect property”.

Matt Sweeting, the new chief brokerage officer at Darville Wong Realty, who is spearheading the firm’s marketing initiatives, told Tribune Business: “It’s called the perfect property programme. We have set up an agency-wide initiative to help 200 people find their perfect property.

“What it does is allow a person to visit our website, The Perfect Property Website [www.findmypp.com]. They can put in exactly what their perfect property looks like and, within a few minutes, they get every listing in the country that meets their profile.

“During the next business day one of our agents will reach out to them and have what we call a discovery conversation to talk about the property, and then we will have a team member dedicated towards helping that person find their perfect property.”

Mr Sweeting added: “We see what’s happening in the market with people looking for months, and over a year, to find the right property. It’s really because no agent has loyalty to them. They might be working with a number of agents. This programme address that but, in addition to that, as well they are going to get every listing in the country.”

He said that with millennials gravitating to social media, digital marketing offers easier access to that demographic. “We’re going to be putting 85 percent of our marketing budget into digital,” Mr Sweeting confirmed. “Traditionally, a lot of money is sent off-line in real estate advertising. We know that millennials are always on their phones and so a billboard doesn’t have the same value it might have had in years past.

“We are attempting to meet people where they are and that is online. Based on some of our marketing tests, we have determined that we can target people based on age, sex and income level. We are going to go after our target market, which are people that haven’t bought property before; single families, nuclear families. We know who our buyers are and we are going to target that all over social media. We believe we can get more bang for our buck moving towards digital.”

Mr Sweeting told Tribune Business that with a number of real estate developments currently underway, 2019 is “looking up”. He added: “I think that things are looking up and that’s indicated by the amount of development that we see going on.

“Millions of dollars are being pumped into real estate in The Bahamas now. You can look at what’s happening at the Pointe for instance. There is a lot going on in commercial real estate.”