WASHINGTON – Dec. 4, 2012 – Buyers no longer consider homeownership a sure-fire route to financial security, but many agents find that promoting ownership’s “better lifestyle” still sells homes.

Coldwell Banker’s new “Best Places to Live” campaign, for example, focuses on giving shoppers information on the best place to live before they think about price, square footage or bedroom count.

Under the campaign, buyers can search in five lifestyle categories when trying to find the perfect home: Social Seekers, Suburbanites, Adventurers, Leisure Lovers and Culture Cravers.

Coldwell Banker teamed up with Onboard Informatics to identify up to 20 different attributes, define each category, and rank thousands of communities to help homebuyers target areas based on their preferences. For example, buyers can learn more about good communities for music and the arts, or ones focused on the ocean.

“We are going back to the more traditional ways of judging the value of a home, and not solely looking at it through the financial lens,” says David Siroty, Coldwell Banker’s vice president of communications. “Instead, the emotional and lifestyle value is critical.”

Source: “Consumer-Centric Search Options Change the Typical House Hunt,” RISMedia (Dec. 1, 2012)

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