A ‘Super’ Start

What can kick the doldrums out of this housing market?

So far, lower interest rates and prices haven’t done the trick.

How about an upbeat message featuring celebrities buying and selling homes with the help of competent agents?

With its first ever Super-Bowl television commercial aired Feb. 5, Century 21 Real Estate is betting that a bold, positive message will help the 2012 homebuying season get off to a good start, as well as laud their agent force.

The Big Push

Super Bowl Sunday is a prominent date in the realty world, since it’s considered the beginning of the busy spring buying season.

The National Association of Realtors forecasts 4.45 million existing home sales in 2012, up from 4.25 million last year. Traditionally, spring sales set the tone for the year. Strong job growth is crucial to the real estate recovery, notes Celia Chen, a housing economist at Moodys.com. But the spring start does have psychological impact. “A weak spring selling season could weaken confidence about the direction of the housing market and thus cause potential homebuyers to hold back on their purchases,” Chen observes.

Fortunately, Mother Nature has provided its own spur to the year: “With the winter weather being mild, January transactions will be healthier in many areas,” says Philip White, president and COO of Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates.

It Takes 2

The Century 21 Super Bowl commercial features real estate titan Donald Trump, NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, and Olympic speed skater Apollo Ohno involved in both buying and selling homes.

But it’s sellers who most need a nudge, believes Randall Sakamoto, executive vice president at Rosen Consulting Group, a Berkeley, Calif., real estate consulting firm.

“According to the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, nearly three-fourths of respondents think now is a good time to buy a house,” Sakamoto notes. “Sellers have a much more negative outlook, and this is helping to keep the housing market in a depressed state. Many of these households believe that further price declines are coming as they hear about the low reported values of foreclosures and short sales in their neighborhood. Once seller sentiment becomes more positive and in line with buyer sentiment, home sales should increase.”

Survival of the Fittest

The Century 21 spot lauds its agents as being “smarter, bolder, faster.”

“One of our primary objectives with this ad was to put our agents front and center,” observes Bev Thorne, chief marketing officer for Century 21.

Indeed, it hasn’t been easy to be an agent through this downturn. The NAR reports that its ranks of agent members has shrunk to 1,009,940 from a peak of 1,357,732 in 2006.

That shrinkage isn’t all bad, contends Budge Huskey, president and chief operating officer of Coldwell Banker Real Estate. The agents remaining “are committed to the industry and profession,” he says. “They see this as a career not as a way to make money easily part-time.”

The number of realty offices and firms also has shrunk with many mergers during the downturn. The remaining firms are more efficient, contends White. “Whenever you roll in another company or a top sales team from another company into your organization, it doesn’t impact fixed costs that much, but if anything it makes the company more profitable and able to provide the consumer more services,” he believes.

Forward Thinking

Agents who thrive “are able to see what conditions are not only now, but where they are headed,” adds Margaret Kelly, CEO of RE/MAX International.

“I can name you dozens of agents who used to [deal in] luxury properties and now are experts in short sales and distressed sales,” Kelly says. Next on the horizon, she predicts, will be a demand for rental management services from the many investors who are purchasing properties.

As for now, all eyes are on the mood of this crucial spring season and whether a strong start will have a snowball effect. “That would be fun to watch and see happen,” says Thorne.