Bernie Sanders meme is helping realtors sell homes by making their listings go viral
After the photo of Bernie Sanders wearing mittens on Inauguration Day went viral, the meme showed up everywhere on social media in the unlikeliest of scenarios. Now, the meme is popping up on house listings and closing deals as well.
It all started with Tiffany Szakal, who's been a West Michigan real estate agent since 2008. "I fell in love with the Bernie Sanders meme," said Szakal, owner of I Heart GR Real Estate. "One of our homes in East Hills had to be put back on the market and I thought that Bernie Sanders is a whole mood right now, and he's exactly what we need."
Szakal thought of using the meme because the home was a government-owned home specifically for low-income buyers on "Donald Place", directly behind "Wealthy Street" —the house location and purpose reminded her of Bernie Sanders' political stance.
"[The day after the Inauguration] I was driving down the road and I decided to call my marketing director Aubrey Kuipers and I said, 'Aubrey, we're doing this; it's perfect.'" She asked Kuipers to digitally add Sanders into a few of the listing photos of the home located at 321/325 Donald Place SE. Soon after, two photos in the listing for the home on Donald Place had Sanders sitting on the front porch while another picture showed him in the kitchen.
"Within an hour after the house was relisted with the Bernie memes added to a couple of the images, I got tagged in a post from a very large Instagram account, and then it just took off," said Szakal. "Suddenly, it had over 50,000 likes, then it got picked up by Twitter, Reddit and all sorts of other outlets. It kind of exploded," she added, saying she had been fielding calls about the house from all over the United States, including as far away as California.
Curiously, the house is back on the market. According to Szakal's Instagram post, "Our listing at 321/325 Donald Place is back on the market due to no fault of its own. This double lot listing has 4 beds, 1 bath, off street parking in East Hills listed at $144,900. Mere steps from Wealthy Street faves such as @outsidecoffeeco, @unclecheetahs, @wealthytheatre and SO MUCH MORE! Join Bern and check it out for yourself!"
In the meantime, another realtor, this time from Minnesota had the same idea. Derrick Monroe of Lakes Area Realty G.V. recently listed the home at 1500 78th Ave N in Brooklyn Park for sale. In one of the listing's photos, Monroe digitally added Sanders on the patio, where he looks like he's about to come through the sliding doors.
The home features a "Corner lot, mature trees, 3 beds, 2 baths, the lower level bath was just remodeled from the studs out, new carpeting installed Jan 2021, the deck was rebuilt summer 2020, new plank flooring in kitchen & dining room areas 2020, some new paint and new garage door." After just one day on the market, the home has already a half dozen offers, according to one report.
