There are many real estate niches you can specialize yourself in as a real estate professional.
And maybe you are a realtor or a real estate investor who has already or wants to specialize in the niche of first-time home buyers.
But how to market to them?
Target millennials in the age range between 22 and 39, with an average household income between $69,000 and $80,300, and promote homes in the price range of $300,000 with an open floor plan, two complete master suites, and one standard bedroom.
The ideal marketing channel would be Facebook Ads with ad placements on mobile.
The target interests would be related to weddings and using first-time home buyers in the detailed targeting section.
However, if you would like to dig deeper into what this answer is based on, read on in the rest of my article.
Let’s Get Smart About The First-Time Home Buyer Group – An Analysis
What do you need to know before marketing to first-time home buyers?
Exactly who they are and their needs, greed, and pains. Here, we are doing some of the prep work that is daily business in copywriting.
We need the right marketing angle, as I covered in this article.
Well, the vast majority of them consists of millennials and/or Generation Y (which is basically the same).
They are roughly between 22 and 39 years old.
Surprisingly, 38% comprise the largest share of home buyers (older millennials are 25%, and younger ones are 13%, source).
Older millennials prefer buying previously owned homes or townhouses.
A high priority is also convenience and a low cost for commuting.
About a third of millennial home buyers purchased homes at $300,000 or more in 2018 (source).
The median household income of millennials in the year 2023 was $71,566 per year (source).
According to this well-known realtor website, many millennials find realtors and/or available homes via social media.
Another critical point is that 99% of them are going on their property hunt online from their mobile device (source) and are well-researched and prepared (source).
Millennials also slightly prefer the suburbs to more costly urban areas, and the preferred communication with realtors is texting (source).
But this contrast is by far not as large as in previous generations.
Another interesting trend is that millennials are more willing to accept a smaller house to make the purchase more affordable (source).
Then, there is the preference for two full master suites and one standard bedroom in contrast to one master and three standards preferred by previous generations.
In terms of style and amenities, millennials prefer pre-world War II, mid-century, and Mediterranean homes.
When it comes to features, the following are the most desirable and essential (ordered from high to low, source):
- Laundry room
- Hardwood Front Exterior
- Patio
- Garage Storage
- Walk-in-pantry
- Exterior lighting
- Ceiling fan
- Front porch
- Table space for eating
- Double sink (side by side)
Millennials prefer soft colors, earth tones, and lots of blues, greens, and browns.
For the walls, they like brilliant hues of red and orange accents and generally strong contrasts (source).
When it comes to rooms, they prefer open-floor plans, especially for the dining, kitchen, and living areas, media rooms, work-out rooms, and playrooms for kids.
Regarding floors, no carpeting is the preferred option.
Make sure you don’t offer properties including the features and amenities mentioned below because these are the least wanted ones by millennials (source):
- Elevators
- Cork flooring in the main living spaces
- Wine cellar
- Laminate countertops
- Golf course
- High-density community
- Pet washing station
- Laminate flooring
- Only a shower stall in the master bath
- Dual toilets in the master bath
We now reached the other needs and pains concerning the home purchase process.
Since they are first-time home buyers, one of their major concerns will be making a big mistake when buying their first home.
This means they will need extra hand-holding, which requires a knowledgeable real estate professional to guide them through the process.
Another requirement for building trust and credibility with first-time home buyers such as millennials, for the most part, is patience, the willingness to provide a large amount of information (a lot of questions will be asked), including potential risks and pitfalls, and an overall slower pace during the whole sales cycle.
Market to First-Time Home Buyers by Providing Offers That Meet Their Needs
Now that we know the first-time home buyers’ audience better, you can define and create a suitable offer.
The offer usually includes the product (your properties) and your services.
You might want to focus only on the abovementioned properties based on the preferences mentioned.
This is relevant when acquiring them as a realtor, building them yourself as a real estate developer, or investing in them as a fixer and flipper.
Suppose you are not only focused on first-time home buyers such as millennials. In that case, you may want to offer a special section on your real estate website (e.g., homes in the $300k range and the features and amenities they are looking for).
Or you want to apply certain features in your filters that come with your property listing search.
Regarding the more ‘hand-holding’ that these buyers need, you might want to consider this when you create your content (read my article about this topic), your lead magnets (my article), and additional services you offer.
The Following Could Be Examples of Content:
- Content that explains how to easily apply for mortgages and/or how to clean up credit, interviews with your favorite mortgage broker giving advice on how to get the right mortgage
- Explaining in articles or videos how government loans work and what type of new restrictions there are
- Including information about down payment assistance programs in your articles or videos and other available tips and tricks about down payments
- Using all the frequently asked questions you receive from first-time home buyers in different content formats (articles, videos, etc.).
As a little ‘secret’ SEO trick, you can use the autocomplete function of google search.
It helps you get the right content ideas for your local real estate business targeting first-time home buyers.
For example, you can type in ‘down payment assistance programs in [your location].’
Usually, when a certain number of people search for this term, Google will suggest it to you or other similar search terms.
You can tackle these search terms and produce a piece of content for each one.
All the above content examples could also be prepared in a nice print format that can be handed out after a showing.
But usually, millennials already come well-informed and prepared.
.
Lead Magnet Examples
My other article already covers in-depth lead magnets for real estate.
To attract first-time home buyer leads, you now can also create a lead magnet that helps with needs and pains, such as:
- A quiz that tells the first-time home buyer if they are ready to buy their first home and suggests, according to the results, different short ebooks or other types of content (e.g., sending someone over to a helpful article or service that helps with credit repair who doesn’t qualify, because of bad credit, etc.)
- Different types of online calculators: down payments, monthly payments, home affordability, rent or buy. You can find some more inspiration about that here and here.
- A mini video course or an ebook about how to buy homes the first time in your specific area, which pitfalls to avoid, and what the best mortgage offers with low down payments are
- A virtual first-time home buyer seminar as a webinar
Examples of Additional Services You Can Provide
When your first-time home buyer sees you offer additional services, you will likely convert more leads into customers.
Examples are:
- Offering to help find the right mortgage broker, moving company, calculating the monthly mortgage payments, repairing bad credit, etc.
- You can offer a home warranty to sweeten the deal and reduce the first-time home buyer’s anxiety.
Market to First-Time Home Buyers Through The Right Marketing Channels
We now know what to include in the offer to find the proper marketing channels to target first-time home buyers.
From the above audience analysis, we now know that…
- they have an average household income between $69,000 and $80,000
- they buy homes priced around $300,000
- they find real estate pros, such as realtors, via social media on their mobile device
- their age range is between 22 and 39
For short-term results, which marketing channel does the above information cry for?
You are right. It’s Facebook advertising (covered in this article).
As mentioned above, long-term results could also be achieved with the right local SEO content marketing strategy.
So, in Facebook ads, you could use all the above information to target the already analyzed audience of first-time home buyers.
You could define the audience with an age range between 22 and 39.
Additionally, you could include the average household income (this feature is only available in the U.S.) and even first-time home buyers in the detailed targeting section.
For the ad placement selection, you could do only mobile devices.
Since this age group is also using Instagram, this social network could be an additional ad placement beside the newsfeed on Facebook.
As a quick and secret tip, you could also include an interest in all wedding-related things in the Facebook Ad campaign.
Because 35% of married adults bought their first home together within two years of marriage (source).
More expensive would be bringing this ‘wedding interest targeting’ offline, renting some space at a wedding expo, and approaching potential first-time home buyers on-site.
Before you start driving traffic to your website, make sure it meets the user behavior of this age group.
It should be mobile-friendly, have great pictures, and maybe even better virtual tours (my article).
This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.
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