Marketing to Latinos is a little more complicated than just running ads on the local Latino newspaper. Bilingual professionals wanting to be successful on their career must also understand Latinos barrier to homeownerships and find ways to locally help his or her community overcome them.

Step One:

Identify in your market how many Latino cultures are presented. For example; Cubans are first Latino generation, preferring to transact in Spanish. They come to this country as political refugee not planning to go back and that is what makes them potential homeowners. By knowing this fact a realtor then can implement successfully the next step.

Step Two:

Get involve in your community. A realtor needs to be identified from his or her community not only as a real estate agent who can sale houses, but as the real estate professional with answers or as an educator. For example, a realtor could volunteer his or her time on a local non-profit housing organization an teach a real estate class o he or she could write the real estate column for the local hometown Latino newspaper. By doing this a realtor not only are being exposed to his or her community, but it will also show everybody that he or she cares for the community they are are in. Do something like this and then go on to step three.

Step Three:

Marketing; if a realtor already knows his or her community then it makes it easy to create a marketing strategy that works. Going back to Cubans, the realtor knows they preferred Spanish, so it will be best to run adds on local newspaper and radio letting everyone knows that they can go to his or her "bilingual" website for more information, free article or for resources. Also have help line 800 # where potential buyers and seller can call to get answers.

Second generation of Latinos are a different kind of "animal'. They are internet savvy, they are bilingual but preferred English, better educated, and they are US citizen. How a realtor can reach them out? Similar as they are targeting first generation of Latinos, by promoting "education, education, education", but this time online.

Where we can find this pool of buyer? All over the net on social network sites like My Space en Español, HOOD and others. A realtor needs to be able to enter these communities ready to network, create a profile and be an active member in order to let everyone know about this services and the fact that they can access more information freely on the agent's website and/or blog.

This should be in my opinion enough for a bilingual realtors and non-bilinguals too to be successful working with Latinos. I am not selling real estate at the moment and yet I am involve in my community by contributing to my local Latino newspaper, being the NAHREP Chapter President and yes by continuing helping Latinos throughout http://realestatelatino.com

 Bill Arce