The Home Buying Process, Explained by Memes

Having trouble connecting with Millennial homebuyers? This graphic may be just the thing you need to get your marketing efforts on their level.

“I Can Haz Real Estate” gives Millennials and other aspiring homebuyers who are Internet-savvy a highly simplified version of the home-buying process. The vehicle this infographic uses to explain this frequently convoluted process is a “meme.” If you’re wondering what exactly memes are, they have been described as “virally-transmitted cultural symbols or social ideas” or cultural elements like jokes and turns of phrase that are created and disseminated by individuals.

The memes contained in this infographic are simple images with text imposed over them. This type of meme uses standardized images with defined voices and contexts in which they should be used. (For example, the fist-pumping baby near the top of the graphic is known as “Success Kid” and is used to express happiness about a victory or success.) As most Millennials and Internet-savvy people can tell you, memes are commonly shared on social networks like Facebook and websites like Reddit.

Why Use Memes to Sell Real Estate?

The Millennial generation, which comprises 80 million individuals, are only just starting to become homeowners. Where can real estate agents reach this massive pool of potential clients? Two words: the Internet.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Millennials spend more time on the Internet than any other generation. 93 percent of Millennials use the Internet, compared to 89 percent of Gen X and 77 percent of baby boomers. They spend more than 3.5 hours on the Internet each day on sites like Reddit and Imgur, not to mention social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (to name a few). A whopping 84 percent of Millennials use some form of social media!

Memes are commonly shared and consumed by Millennials on these websites, largely due to the fact that they are quick and easy to create, upload and share with friends and strangers alike. Even if a Millennial hasn’t personally made any memes, they’ve at least been exposed to them, and most likely appreciate the tidbits of humor, snark and wisdom they offer. For this very reason, a Millennial is more likely to read and respond positively to a meme than flyers, postcards, and other conventional pieces of real estate marketing.

Memes and the Real Estate Industry

Believe it or not, memes are now relatively commonplace in real estate. Inman recently proclaimed that 2013 was the year real estate memes became accepted by the industry. From real estate offices around the country making humorous branding videos out of memes like the “Harlem Shake” (watch this shining example by RE/MAX Essential in Wilmington, N.C.) to agents like Will Ritter using image-based memes akin to the ones found in this post, agents across the country have incorporated them into their marketing plans.

Why Agents Should Love Memes like the Internet Loves Cats

Perhaps the greatest advantage of using memes as part of your marketing is that, for the most part, they are easy to create and completely free. In the time it will take you to read this article, you could have thought up an idea for an image-based meme, created it using a site like MemeGenerator.net, and posted it to your business’s Facebook’s page. Total cost: a couple minutes and absolutely zero dollars.

Similarly, it probably only took the aforementioned Wilmington RE/MAX office less than an hour, a camcorder, and some silly outfits to produce their rendition of the Harlem Shake. Regardless of how you feel about memes, you should appreciate the fact that it would have taken them a lot more time and money to produce a marketing video with similar draw for Millennials!

Should memes constitute a be-all and end-all marketing solution? Of course not. But they can be a valuable component of your plan to reach the growing population of Millennial homebuyers.

Want more examples of real estate memes? Check out this Inman article for a collection of their favorites.

A More Detailed, Memeless Walk-Through

“I Can Haz Real Estate?” borrows information from Market Leader’s “Road to Homeownership” infographic. If you would like to get your hands on a more serious, memeless graphic that outlines the home-buying process, please visit our earlier blog post, “The Road to Homeownership.”

Use Our Real Estate Memes!

Interested in using one or more of the memes contained in “I Can Haz Real Estate” on your social media accounts or website?

From the below images, right-click on the memes you want and click the “Save image as…” option to save them to your computer so they can be easily uploaded to your website or social media accounts.

Want to know more about what exactly all these memes mean? KnowYourMeme.com has all the information you could possibly need.