A different kind of house tour…

We’re all familiar with old-house tours—walkthroughs of beautifully restored buildings that are so breathtaking, you wish you lived in them. But have you ever heard of an old-house tour where all the buildings were for sale? Well, I just did. Some enterprising folks in Massachusetts are holding a dream-houses-for-sale tour on the weekend of November 15 and 16. The five featured South Shore homes range from Colonial Revival to Italianate and all have been completely restored and modernized. Each will be open for only an hour each that Saturday and Sunday, to encourage visitors to stop in at all of them. So if you have a bad case of old-house envy, this tour just might provide a cure. For more information, check out the link below or visit www.modvic.com.

5 Historic Homes OPEN HOUSE Tour.pdf

Tags: editor blogs, historic houses for sale, historic restoration, house tour

Comment by John Rodgers on October 24, 2008 at 3:24pm: That's a genius marketing campaign for a restoration companyor even a realtor who has the luxury of having multiple historic homes for sale. My personal favorites have always been the tours where you could sit down at each home and have a drink, or a course (5 homes, 5 course meal, etc). Something where you can really interact with the home, rather than feel like you're walking through a museum.

A good friend and business associate of mine owns a plantation home with probably the finest collection of antiques I've ever seen, open to the public daily for tours. What makes it so much fun for everyone is it is also his home, so he's not concerned about the "you break, you buy" mentality. Visitors can sit at the dining room table that was owned by a former president, they can play a round of pool on the 1830's Brunswick billiard table, they can play a song on the mid-1800's baby grand piano;if you're tired you can sit in any of the chairs and couches, all with the original hay or spanish moss stuffing. These little details make the tour so much more enjoyable when compared to shuffling through a home staying between the red velvet ropes so you don't breathe too heavily on anything.

Comment by Bruce Rosenbaum on November 10, 2008 at 9:36am: Thanks for the kudos and support! The 5 Historic 'Homes for Sale' OPEN HOUSE Tour this upcoming weekend (November 15 and 16). It looks like we have interest from the major Boston TV stations (Channel 4, 5 and 7) and hopefully one of them will run a story before the event. More traffic means more potential buyers for our historic homes.

We are also now open up to the possibility for a person to do lease or rent to own. It helps us through the tough real estate market and provides some income to offset expenses of maintaining the home.

I also came up with another potential idea to sell our historic home. Last weekend, I was talking to my niece about finding the "right guy" to date and possibly marry. She is orthodox and wants a nice, orthodox jewish guy who is funny and tall. Covering all those bases is a tall order and might be a good challenge for an experienced matchmaker.

Are traditional matchmaking services that much different than what we are trying to do to find Mr/Ms. Right for our unique historic home? My realtor and myself are now looking at how matchmakers work and to come up with a similar marketing plan to match our home with the right buyer. Any thoughts would be great appreciated. Make me a match!

Comment by Bruce Rosenbaum on December 5, 2008 at 10:55am: Our 4 Historic ‘Homes for Sale’ OPEN HOUSE Tour brought in only about 12 families – and most of them were just happily looking.

We were hoping to have Channel 5 news do a story the week prior, but they did not get to do the story and interviews until Sunday morning – the second day of the tours. We got a great 2 minute segment on the Channel 5 11:00PM Sunday news segment “Your Money” and it also appeared on Monday morning – but it was after the event – so no free PR to drive traffic to the homes for our tours.

If you want to see the 2 minute segment, please email me at bruce@modvic.com and I'll send you the link. It can take about 10 seconds to load. We also have over 800 views of our Back Home to the Future Home Tour video featured at www.youtube.com/modvic111

We are now planning to do another Historic ‘Homes for Sale’ OPEN HOUSE Tour with a charitable organization based in RI. We are hoping that a more geographically targeted approach in Providence RI and Southern MA, more timely PR and offering to donate 1% of the sale of the home to charity – we’ll get more exposure to connect with the right type of buyer for our home.

Our research (and gut) has us focusing on the target prospect below:

1) Professional (Doctor - specialist, Lawyer, Architect, Business Executive or Owner) relocating to Providence RI or Southern MA
2) High income of $250,000+
3) Lover of Historical or Period Homes
4) Children present age 5 – 18

Let me know if you know of anyone who fits this criteria or how I would be able to reach this ‘needle in a haystack’. And as always, please pass the word to anyone that is interested in purchasing a fully restored and modernized historic home! All the best, Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum