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Booming Hispanic Home Buying Market Is Sold on Spanish

There are already 40 million Hispanic households in the U.S. and Hispanics are growing at four times the rate of the general population, said Tim Coughlin, director of marketing in Boston for translations.com, which relies on Spanish translation for about 30% of its business.

Coughlin said that Hispanics will have $778 billion in purchasing power this year, and that is expected to grow three times faster than the rate of inflation to more than $1 trillion by 2008.

Hispanic households are younger and larger than the general population; 79% speak Spanish at home; they spend 9% more time online; and they are four times more likely to make a purchase when they are dealing in their preferred language, he said.

“Hispanics are loyal to the American way of life they are pursuing, but they still want to persist in their ethnic traditions and feel connected to their culture,” said Marilyn Gardner, corporate vice president for sales and marketing in Atlanta for Beazer Homes USA.

With Hispanics expected to account for 31% of household growth in this decade, Gardner reported that Beazer has moved aggressively to tap into this market, although its efforts are still in the early stages and have some way to go.

“Forty-four percent of those who speak little Spanish at home still want Spanish TV,” Gardner said. “Marketing to them in their comfort zone is crucial.”

Gardner offered several tips for selling to Hispanic home buyers:

• Be aware of barriers. Hispanics are not that familiar with the mortgage approval process, and one common misconception is that they can’t buy a home unless they have saved a hefty downpayment.
• They will seek advice from Spanish-speaking Realtors®, friends and coworkers and family members.
• Women are the primary decision makers and the influence of the family is important. “Bring family members to your model homes,” Gardner advises. “Everybody needs to be sold.”
• Make sure that Hispanics are included in marketing photos. Translate brochures and advertising into Spanish.
• A company goal should be to have at least one person in every division who can speak Spanish. Beazer has scored good results from setting up a Spanish-speaking sales person in a store front in a central Hispanic area of Charlotte, N.C.

To improve communications with Hispanics, Beazer started working on a Hispanic version of its Web site in 2002 and hopes to have translated its MyBeazerHome.com site by this spring. Gardner said that Beazer has found that 66% of the people who buy its homes have used its Web site at some point in the buying process.

Melissa Morman, of Builder Homesite in Austin, Texas, noted that her Web site now has a Spanish version — “Casas Nuevas Aqui.”

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