Wednesday, April 20, 2005

John Myers of Cranbrook Realtors is throwing in something different with his house in Birmingham: a two-year lease on a Buick LaCrosse.

Realtor has got a deal for you: Buy $1 million home, get a Buick

By Neal Rubin / The Detroit News

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Buy John Myers' house in Birmingham and he'll throw in a little something for the garage:

A Buick.

It's a new 2005 LaCrosse CXL, white, with heated seats, a power sunroof and a sticker price of $31,125. You'll find it in the driveway at 680 Hanna with a blue-on-white banner stretched across the windshield that says, "INCLUDED." Come for the updated bathrooms, leave with a two-year lease.

Myers, as it happens, owns Cranbrook Realtors. He's done well enough in that field that he's listing his home for $1,125,000 while he finishes sprucing up a place near the shopping district. But it strikes him that the last major innovation in his industry came when metal yard signs replaced the wooden ones.

"This business has been follow-the-leader for 100 years," he says, "without a whole lot of people stepping outside the envelope." Meantime, while real estate agents held open houses and maybe baked some chocolate chip cookies, carmakers wrote and re-wrote the book on creative marketing, then scribbled in the margins.

Rebates. Low interest rates. Option packages. Buy a Mercedes, get a free Hyundai.

Granted, this may not seem like the best times to take lessons from the auto industry. If the house doesn't sell, he can probably trade it even-up for General Motors. But Myers, 57, sees the gas tank as half-full.

Brainstorming with some other people a while back, notably builder David Steffes of Royal Crest and Michelle Phaup of Clarkston Realty, he started talking about getting noticed. Next stop: a car store in Lake Orion, the better to spruce up a handful of listings.

"What sells a property is good presentation," he says. "Marketing, if you will. In this day and age when you've got a greater inventory, you've got to do something that makes your property stand out."

If he were a car dealer, he might put an inflatable gorilla on his roof. Birmingham probably has an ordinance about that, so instead, he cut a deal with Wally Edgar Chevrolet Buick.

Myers wants to sell houses, Edgar wants to sell cars. Bingo. The realty company got a good deal because it's also offering two Chevys and another LaCrosse with new homes from Steffes farther north in Oakland County. The home sellers pay for the lease out of their profits once the deals close. Everyone leaves happy, not necessarily in the same vehicle they arrived in.

The LaCrosse on Hanna Street was supposed to sit a few blocks away, Myers says, but then Dmitri Young of the Detroit Tigers leased that house. Myers was already feeling embarrassed about following the herd and leading off with his asking price, since he finds that counter-productive. He's been leaning toward advertising the monthly payment instead, the way car dealers often do.

Given the chance to do at least one creative thing, he snagged the car. It's been in the driveway for 10 days or so, about 10 days less than the ones farther north, and he's already refining the process.

"The first signs we did said, 'This car's yours.' People couldn't relate to that," he says. Live and learn, bob and weave, smile and say welcome: None of the houses with cars attached has sold yet, but traffic is up at open houses, and that's all he can ask for.

Well, that and getting his phone number in the paper: (248) 645-2500.

"In the good old days," he says -- meaning four or five years ago -- "more people were spending their bonuses and stock gains on high-priced homes." Now a salesman needs to think and scramble, and maybe get a boost from a writer who thinks he's on to something.

Neal Rubin appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at (313) 222-1874, nrubin@detnews.com, or 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226.