How Real Estate Agents Use Your Favorite Restaurants to Sell Homes

That pizza place down the street could make or break your home sale. The best real estate agents know how to use your favorite restaurants as evidence of a great neighborhood when they market your home to buyers—helping you get a faster sale and a better price.

Top real estate agent George Graham stands behind using your favorite haunts to your advantage when selling your home. He told us that “having great food options is definitely a consideration a person makes when buying in an urban location.”

How does your real estate agent use the trendy diner down the street to sell your house? We interviewed three top real estate agents to show you their tricks of the trade.

1. Seller’s Agents Talk Up Restaurants as a Big Part of the Community

Restaurants help create the pulse of a neighborhood. When buyers decide on a location, the neighboring restaurants and shops are an essential component to the life—and the energy—of the area they’re investing in. That’s why real estate agents often use the best restaurants in the area to advertise how great the home is. As Minneapolis real estate agent Alexander Boylan pointed out, agents are “not only selling a house, but they’re also selling a community.”

Boylan went on to say that real estate agents will often “advertise restaurants as a selling point for the home because of the walkability of the neighborhood.”

That isn’t just the case in Boylan’s market. Graham told us that many buyers are concerned with the walkability of a listing. He said that pointing out “the close proximity to great shopping, food, and restaurants is helpful, especially if you are dealing with a downtown location.”

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Elizabeth Weintraub, a top-performing seller’s agent in Sacramento, even tried out the top Mexican joint in the neighborhood of her latest listing and wrote about it on her blog.

She writes, “The location is perfect. Imagine living a half block away from William Land Park. It is also close to Starbucks and a terrific Mexican restaurant with outdoor dining, Dali’s Kitchen. . . . The point is, if I lived at this home with a view of William Land Park, I would be dining almost nightly at Dali’s Kitchen.” Weintraub specifically calls out the name of the restaurant to advertise how close that house is to delicious food.

Agents use your favorite neighborhood restaurants to market your house and its community in a few ways:

1. They call out five-star restaurants or hole-in-the-wall treasures in the listing description.
2. They tell buyer’s agents the top restaurants they can tell their clients about.
3. They talk up amazing eats at the open house.

In your next meeting with your real estate agent, tell them about your favorite restaurants in the area. They can use those trendy or quaint spots to advertise your house and your neighborhood’s charms.

2. Buyer’s Agents Meet Clients at Restaurants to Show Off the Location

Buyer’s agents will use restaurants to show off the location and help their clients settle on a house. Realtor® Alex Boylan told us, “Sometimes when I have a first-time client meeting and I know they want to be in a certain area, we’ll meet at the coffee shop or the local restaurant and I’ll tell them, ‘This is a part of the community!’ That is a selling point for the community they want to be in.”

This immersion in the neighborhood helps buyers get a solid grasp of its vibe and culture. It’s similar to exploring a city for the first time—you wouldn’t visit the tourist traps to get to know what it’s really like. You’d walk up and down the city’s streets, find a coffee shop, and sit there for a while. That’s what buyer’s agents do to give their clients a more complete picture of the area.

Boylan even goes the extra mile and “buys gift cards for the clients as welcome home gifts for moving into the neighborhood so they can visit their local restaurants.”

The best way you can get buyer’s agents to show their clients the great restaurants in your area is to communicate with your own real estate agent. They can talk to top buyer’s agents at their firm and in the area to make sure they know the hot spots and family-friendly joints perfect for a coffee meeting that shows off the neighborhood.

3. Seller’s Agents Use Restaurants to Attract Buyers with Active Social Lives

Restaurants are an important part of social life for millennials, and nearby eateries are also a big draw for couples and families who take their kids out to eat after school or after activities on the weekend. Without nearby spots, these clients are forced to travel farther to meet up with friends or for a great meal, which isn’t ideal.

According to Weintraub, showing off the great restaurants in the area can be a big draw for millennials who brunch and party at the local haunts with their friends. She told us that “properly marketed, a hot-spot restaurant or even a trendy hole-in-the-wall near a group of homes is a big selling benefit to many millennials today. That particular buying group likes to meet friends at restaurants and watering holes. That’s their social life. They generally do not entertain at home.”

Take note of which restaurants you think your agent should use to market to specific types of buyers. For example, the pasta place with delicious spaghetti and paper tablecloths the kids can draw on is a great place to show off to families. The trendy bar-restaurant combo with the best cocktail in town is perfect for nightlife-hungry millennials. It really depends on your area, and your agent will know the type of buyer you’ll need to woo.

Your Local Food Scene Is One of Your Property’s Greatest Assets

The best way you can take advantage of your favorite restaurants is to tell your real estate agent about them. Though they will be a local expert and probably have a good idea of which eats are the best, they won’t know exactly which ones are your favorite and why. So tell your agent about the hole-in-the-wall diner that you love because your kids love the apple pie. Specifics like that help agents market your house even better.

As Boylan told us, telling buyers about the best restaurants really says, “Hey welcome to the community—now go enjoy it!”

Once you’ve successfully sold your own home by leveraging the power of your local eateries, you may be in the market for a new home—and a new mortgage. Find out everything you need to know about mortgages in our Mortgage Learning Center.

Image: mactrunk