The Eloise Circle property in Los Altos Hills is dramatic, and so is the challenge of finding a buyer. Designed by a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, the 5,600-square-foot home has a large, pointed, glass skylight that dominates the roofline, copper waterfalls in the foyer and a sculptural poured-concrete central support in the family room that looks a bit like a palm tree.
At $3.45 million, the home will appeal to a small segment of buyers – moneyed people with personalities as bold as the house, said Connie Miller, broker associate with Alain Pinel Realtors.
Miller and agent Rick Bonetti are trying a unique marketing strategy: They plan to mail 5,000 DVDs with a narrated tour of the home, a video segment interviewing Miller on Los Altos Hills and a community profile of the city of Los Altos to high-end realtors and people who can spread the word.
Realty Impact Marketing of San Jose shot footage at 10625 Eloise Circle for the DVD last week. A relatively new concept, the company also specializes in revamping realtors’ Web sites, streaming-video house tours and community profiles such as the one on Los Altos.
The Los Altos segment of the video – which can be seen at www.realtyimpactmarketing.com – stresses the downtown ambience, good schools and the safety of living in Los Altos. Realty Marketing is planning to profile 55 communities in the state in this way.
At $15,000, the Eloise Circle marketing effort is expensive but, as Miller said, “The smaller the market, the broader you have to reach.”
Alain Pinel’s listings Web site will also post the video – a sign of the increasing importance of the Internet in realty marketing. The number of homebuyers who use the Internet to search for a residence has risen dramatically, according to a National Association of Realtors study, released last week, based on more than 7,800 responses to a questionnaire mailed out nationwide.
Last year 77 percent of buyers used the Internet to search for a home, compared with 2 percent of homebuyers in 1995, according to the study. And, Miller added, “My guess is it’s probably three times that in Silicon Valley.”
“The DVD is a new concept,” Miller said, “and not everybody wants to go through the hassle of producing it. But we think it’s an effective market differentiation tool for us.”
For more information, call Connie Miller at 279-7074 or e-mail [email protected].
