Patrycja Lis / SWNS
He’s the ‘Grinch’ that stole business.
At a time of year when homebuyers are distracted by Christmas festivities, a pair of real estate agents have discovered a way to get attention — and offload property — by dressing up as Dr. Seuss’ most famous holiday character.
Dennis Matse-Orere, 40, and his wife, Leila, 30 — who run Legacy Property Consultants — had a bright idea to help advertise their listings in December.
They dressed up colleagues as the Grinch and got snaps of the homes with the famed festive character posed inside.
CEO Dennis and head of marketing Leila had seen a similar idea done by another firm — featuring a non-Grinch character.
They decided to give the marketing technique a go for themselves, but with a special seasonal twist.
They managed to convince a string of their landlord clients to let them snap new property pictures with the Grinch inside them.
Incredibly, the strategy has proven to be a triumph — with some listings getting as much as an 840% rise in clicks over non-Grinch listings.
Londoner Laila said: “I was thinking about how we could differentiate our ads on property portals to stand out.
“We saw another agency featuring a panda character in their listings — and suddenly we had a flood of ideas.
“I said ‘why don’t we do the Grinch?’ — and Dennis, who wouldn’t usually agree to something like this, said ‘why not?’.”
They reached out to a selection of landlords whose properties they represent across North West and central London and asked permission to photograph them featuring the Grinch.
Some weren’t keen, but one agreed — and that listing garnered thousands more views than any of their other listings.
Soon other landlords had got on board — and now Legacy Property Consultants have a string of Grinch properties.
She said: “At first, telling the landlords that we wanted to photograph a Grinch in their property wasn’t the easiest thing.
“But the more we could do, the more examples we had of how well it worked.”
Leila said she and a selection of her colleagues have all donned the Grinch suit in the spirit of the campaign.
She added: “The stats — it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before. They’re going crazy.
“We had two or three properties rented out within hours of us posting the listing online.”