"I was thinking about that somebody who's just scrolling through (video sites) late at night and types in the words 'real estate' and 'Chicago' and says, 'Let's see what pops up,'" Davis told the Chicago Tribune.
Davis, a Coldwell Banker agent in Evanston, Illinois, made a video of a townhouse listing and put it on YouTube.com.
Been there, done that-the late-night surfing, not the video uploading-only, of course, it was "Oklahoma City," not "Chicago."
And guess what I hit on YouTube, the latest, coolest, hippest, news-makingest, people-empowering, information democratizing information geegaw on the Internet?
Not a cool, hip loft apartment.
Not a $1 million house in Edmond that would cost $3 million or $4 million or more on the West Coast.
Not some architectural marvel as cool and hip as YouTube itself.
Nope.
A dadgum warehouse.
Oklahoma City real estate's presence on YouTube, at least the day I first looked, was a 93,000-square-foot warehouse, with 6,000 square feet of office space, on 6.4 acres at 11935 S Interstate 44 Service Road.
G. Cooper Ross of Oklahoma City's Klaus Realty put up a video 3 minutes, 43 seconds long to extol the virtues of the property-individual spaces, ceiling heights (24 to 31 feet), loading bays and docks, and so on. The warehouse is for sale for $4 million or for lease at $4.25 per square foot per year on a triple-net basis.
Ross was not thinking of online insomniacs like me. Such marketing is more targeted than it sounds.
Rather than putting the video out there blindly hoping that someone like me — or better, someone looking to buy a warehouse — might find it, Ross said he put it up so he could send the link to potential buyers. That way, neither would have to deal with e-mailing a huge video file.
It's a virtual tour. Potential buyers-and there have been a couple of Texans, from San Antonio and Dallas-can see every feature of the property without flying here to tour the property.
Now, it was awhile back that I did my late-night search for "Oklahoma City" and "real estate." I did a broader search this week and found videos of homes for sale in Edmond, Norman and elsewhere.
Real estate on YouTube is just taking off.
Ross, 25, has a journalism degree from the University of Central Oklahoma and used to be a producer at KWTV 9.
He said there's lots of potential for real estate on YouTube, for real estate sales — and for video production companies, although Klaus Realty does its in-house since Ross has the know-how.
Shooting a video and uploading it to YouTube is "the easy part," he said. Doing it right takes a certain touch-something that is painfully clear from watching most of the amateur videos.
Labels: real estate, video, YouTube
¶ 12:18 AM
Furl It
