Here is an article that Jerome Quinn and Matt Hoots of The Hoots Group/ SawHorse contributed to for the monthly NARI publication.  Basically, you are able to use our name to help sell your home if we worked on it.  Not only do we build and renovate homes that sell for more and faster according to FMLS (if they were certified green), some agents use our brand name to sell the home as well!  Read on to see the full article as published in the latest NARI newsletter.

Tuffin’ It Out: Your reputation can help sell homes

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Tuffin’ It Out: Your reputation can help sell homes
By Morgan Zenner

If you feel like you’ve exhausted every marketing avenue, you may want to consider a little business-to-business promotion within the real estate community. Real estate agents are the linking chain between remodelers and homeowners with a vested interest in homes. Whether buying or selling, there’s a good chance those homeowners will have a need for a remodeler.

According to the 2009 Remodeling Market in Transition report published by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies research, “Households that relocate spend an average of 20 to 25 percent more on improvements than otherwise similar households that do not move.” This suggests that homeowners are more apt to put money into newly purchased homes.

Real estate agents have an interest in high-quality homes—something that remodelers can provide—and at the same time, they build trust between your potential clients who are looking for advice on the value of the home and guidance on how to increase it.

Reputation gives you branding power in real estate circles

Jerome Quinn, vice president of operations at SawHorse Inc., Atlanta, attracts 50 percent of his new clients by way of the real estate industry. The 32-year-old company started gaining popularity in the real estate circles thanks to their high-quality work and reputation.

“The nicer areas of Atlanta have older homes—many of which we worked on—and new buyers would always ask their agents who the remodeler was,” Quinn says.

Naturally, the agents picked up on this, and started using the SawHorse name in advertisements for their homes. “There are only so many words you can include in an advertisement to describe the house, so it was surprising to find our name in these little advertisements,” Quinn says.

Eventually, that phrase ‘Remodeled by SawHorse’ was being used so frequently that Quinn had to regulate it. Now he requires real estate agents to have written permission to use the SawHorse logo on any advertisement and be specific about which area of the home was remodeled.

“People would say remodeled by SawHorse, but it really was just a day’s worth of handyman work, and we didn’t want to be associated with poor quality renovations from someone else,” Quinn says.

Quinn has created a mutually beneficial relationship to the real estate agents in his market. They love selling SawHorse homes and SawHorse loves taking care of new home buyers. “We receive a lot of referrals from real estate agents, and in return, we also recommend and refer them,” he says.

The SawHorse Web site promotes the increased re-sale value of a SawHorse renovation by placing the real estate advertisements on their page.

This importance of Realtor relationships stems upward in the company, from SawHorse’s parent company, The Hoots Group, which uses its Facebook page to promote real estate agents that have provided SawHorse with leads.

Matthew Hoots, CR, CLC, president of The Hoots Group Inc., explains that his relationships with real estate agents are reciprocal; however no money is exchanged. He has not sponsored advertisements, and he doesn’t receive a portion of home sales—he thinks of the real estate market and remodeling businesses as related but separate.

The exposure is just as beneficial as a percentage of the home sale would be. “Most people who live in Atlanta have heard of us, but if you’re new to the area, you will definitely notice our name in the real estate market,” Hoots says.

Last year alone, Hoots says that he earned $1 million worth of business through real estate agent referrals. “That is without active solicitation—they simply trust our brand and know that homeowners do as well.”

The Hoots group is working to take this step further, using its reputation for green building to court real estate agents who specialize in sustainable homes.

“The green community in Atlanta is very tight-knit, and we’re finding that we need to work harder to build a network within the sustainable real estate market. If we succeed we think it could be very profitable for us,” Hoots says.

Stay tuned for next week as we discuss another way to attract real estate partnerships to increase leads.