Selling to Immigrants: ‘Learn Their Way’

In the last century, during the heyday of European immigration, more than 1 million foreigners arrived on American soil each year. Most were from Europe and they came to such East Coast cities as New York and Boston.

Now, our country has literally “turned around”--the front doorstep for most Asian and Latin-American immigrants is the West Coast.

How has the real estate market responded to this change and how have real estate brokers and developers capitalized on the highly specialized immigrant market?

John Tuccillo, vice president and chief economist of the National Assn. of Realtors, starts off by telling Realtors what not to do: Ignore the trend.

“If you miss the boat, someone from the immigrant’s own ethnic group will very quickly step in and take on the marketplace that you’ve left for them,” Tuccillo said.

Immigrants typically have circles of friends and sources of information that are specific to their own ethnic community, he said, so Realtors must find a way to gain a presence in that community. Marketing to immigrants, for instance, usually involves specialized channels, such as foreign-language newspapers and targeted direct-mail campaigns.

Another crucial step is to hire agents from the particular ethnic community or communities that the Realtor is trying to reach, Tuccillo said.

Jack Newe purchased the Century 21 E-N Realty office in Diamond Bar in 1974. When he first started out there were virtually no immigrant buyers or sellers in his area.

Now, between 40% and 60% of his clients are immigrants, mostly from Asian countries. “I started immediately hiring ethnically diverse agents. They were looking for jobs and I was looking for them,” Newe said.

About half of the 53 agents in his office are Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese or Latino immigrants, he said.

Another fundamental change Newe has had to make involves accommodating ideas, practices and mind-sets not typical of most American buyers.

“You have to understand other cultures. The American way is fine for Americans. But the customer is always right. We’ve had to learn to work with them and their way of doing business,” he said.

For Newe, the flexibility has paid off. His office was recently ranked first in sales of all the Century 21 offices in the San Gabriel Valley, he said.

Learning flexibility in people skills and business practices is not the only re-education necessary, however. Gopal Ahluwalia, of the National Assn. of Home Builders, said immigrants usually have basic differences in the types of homes they are looking for. For one thing, immigrants typically want larger homes with more room for extended family members, he said.

“They will probably forgo amenities like a second fireplace or a Jacuzzi for extra rooms,” he said. “They need more bedrooms because they usually live with extended family members in the household. They also have more visitors so they need guest rooms.”

Because immigrants are eager for their children to achieve more than they have, many of them are concerned with education and finding homes in areas with good schools. “If they have to commute to work, that’s all right, as long as the kids go to a good school,” Ahluwalia said.

Perhaps the most important consideration to an immigrant is security. “Immigrants are even more concerned with security than native-born Americans, because they are relatively new here and they are more fearful of crime. Having a security system in the house is a big selling point, as is the location of the home,” he said.