VivaReal tapping into Hispanic housing market in culturally-relevant manner

VivaReal.us recently launched its updated site that serves as a great resource for Spanish-speaking home buyers.

Why great? For starters, it's pretty comprehensive in the information it offers. Areas like financing, buying a home, selling a home as well as real estate resources are covered.

Where it differs from other sites is it's use of social media tools to teach Latinos about the home-buying process and connect them with practitioners and experts. Specifically, the site has information available in audio and video formats in addition to text.

"VivaReal is an online community that enables consumers proactively looking for real estate to connect with professionals that can effectively assist them with all their real estate needs in their own language," is how Fabio Rodriguez of
Bilingual Marketing Group described it to me in an e-mail.

Mr. Rodriguez went on to tell me that they built the site from the ground up rather than trying to recreate the wheel.

"It would have been much easier to translate all the "how to information" about real estate to Spanish, but this would have missed the mark. In our approach we wrote everything directly in Spanish instead of translating content. We did this with the Latino consumer in mind. Despite the volume of activity and widespread availability of educational materials, there is a shortage of information in Spanish, and the available info in Spanish is not clear enough since in most cases it is just a mere translation from texts originally written in English."

Ensuring Latinos had a reliable and trusted source for housing marketing information was also a motivator for the site. He added:

"From our personal experience working with Latinos, questions remain as to which financial education sources are effective and what type of financial information is especially pertinent to the real estate market. Additionally, information continues to emerge about the growing number of Latinos who have become victims of predatory and unscrupulous financial operators resulting in disproportionately harmed Latinos. Our core goal to empower consumers to make informed decisions (we are not a real estate company so we are unbiased)."

Mr. Rodriguez also mentioned the project is endorsed by Tim Sandos,President and CEO of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP).

“VivaReal.us takes consumer education to the next level by making the information widely available to home buyers in audio and video formats,” said Mr Sandos. “Tools like this will help take the fear factor out of the process and foster a real understanding of home-buying for Spanish speaking consumers.”

¡Buena Suerte!