The topic that I want to discuss in this post is not necessarily something that I noticed, but rather a lack of something. In Vina, all around stand large apartment buildings with presumably tens of thousands of units between them. Now I could assume that every single apartment is being occupied, but even in a perfect world, that is near impossible. Thus, their must be some units that need to be rented out. Yet in the month that I have been here, I have seen very little marketing effort for real estate. The most prominent of any advertisements is a simple "se vende" sign on the side of a building. I think this lack of marketing brings up several key questions about the real estate market and how it is sold here in Vina.
1. With all of this available real estate, where would one first go to look into renting or purchasing an apartment?
2. Why does it seem that the marketing for these buildings is so under-funded or simply not there? Is there such a high demand that they do not need to market?
3. What would be the best marketing approach to try and sell real estate here?
To answer the first question, I don't really know. A quick internet search of "Vina Del Mar Chile Real Estate" only provides three distinct areas to search for available apartments, but even those websites seem outdated and don't market well to the consumer. I understand that searching in English will not provide many results, but that just goes to show that little if any of the marketing is done towards foreigners. Even a search for real estate offices here did not prove to be useful at all.
The only two explanations that I can find for why the marketing is so weak for real estate, are that the demand is at a point where they do not need to, or that they simply do not yet know how to. I understand that the real estate market in Chile is not like that in the U.S. The real estate is often semi-ubiquitous and serves a need, rather than a want to the people. Different firms don't often know how to try and push their specific real estate against another.
Finally, if I were to come into today as the marketing partner for a real estate company here in Vina, I believe that my best approach would be the marketing concept. I would focus intently on market size, market segments and what the people in a specific segment need. An elderly couple would not need a 3 bedroom flat and four young students probably could not get along in a 2 bedroom area. Real estate is more specific than people here think and I believe that a marketing concept strategy in Vina could work wonders for any firm that is trying to sell it's vacant space.
Overall, in terms of real estate here in Vina, I believe that the marketing is trailing the production of buildings and new homes. Firms may know how or where to construct something, but I believe that their attempts to "sell" these properties are too miniscule. A good marketer could do very well in the real estate market here.
A few remarks: Don’t assume that because you cannot find evidence of the marketing efforts that they don’t exists. Doing a search in English does not help here in Chile. Chile is plastered with real estate agents (corredores de propiedades) that compete, fight, over the sell of houses. VEry often an owner has more than one agent doing the sell. New buildings are sold differently. Check out a an “sala de ventas” and you will see how that works. Nevertheless you might have some interesting technics that are applied in the USA that might also work here.
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