TikTokers filmed within a listing of $ 5.299 million in California. Found a buyer in two weeks.

A few months later, Ms. Maize made the house available as a free place for influencers to create content on social media. Within two weeks of going on the market, the property was in custody after receiving multiple offers. It closed in May for $ 5.1 million, just below its last sale price of $ 5.299 million.

“It was brilliant,” Stevens, 54, said of the strategy.

An artist and founder of the BeTini line of low-calorie cocktails, Stevens had lived in the six-bedroom contemporary-style house for about 14 years with her two children. She had added a number of features to the house.

His son is a musician, so he built a recording studio for him in the basement. He also installed a projection screen that would display images as a backdrop for his music videos, and custom racks to hold lights and microphones. For her daughter and herself, she created an art studio with a hidden oven behind a shelf. And the slide? That was fun for the whole family.

“I think deep down I’m just a giant girl,” she said. The slide, which runs from a rooftop garage deck through a playhouse to the pool, is “wonderful,” she said, adding: “When my kids were little, we were the place to go to play. ”.

Now that her children are older, her daughter recently graduated from college, Ms. Stevens decided to sell the house. He put it on the market in the summer of 2020 with a different agent asking for $ 5.8 million, but there were no buyers. After a few months, he called Ms. Maize.

“I had just read a story about how influential young people had been making money and buying houses,” Ms Maize said. When he saw the home’s projector screen, slide, and other features, he came up with a plan to allow influencers to create content around the house in exchange for using specific hashtags to help publicize the property. “They will reach a different audience,” he remembers thinking.

Mrs. Stevens liked the idea. “The house already lent itself to that kind of thing,” he said. “In my opinion, publishing it and celebrating it was great.” Ironically, he said, his own children had never been so interested in social media.

To prepare the house, Mrs. Maize recommended that Mrs. Stevens do some cosmetic renovations, such as repainting, to give the house a “more neutral feel”. Then the Stevens’ furnishings were removed and interior design firm Vesta redesigned the home with decor intended to appeal to a younger buyer, such as a Chanel surfboard, Maize said. Ms. Stevens and her family had already moved in by that time, so they didn’t care, although “it was a bit sad.”

“Julie, the owner, was so open to letting me do what I wanted,” Ms. Maize said.

Once the home was camera-ready, social media influencers could apply to film there via the property’s website. Ms. Maize had heard of the Hype House, where the content creators lived together, but didn’t want to go that far. “I didn’t want a liability factor for destroying the house,” he said. Instead, influencers could request a free two-hour space in the house, securely on site at all times.

“We had an overwhelming response,” he said, with about 60 people requesting a schedule. Of those, Ms. Maize selected 30 based on criteria such as how many followers they had. Before shooting at the house, they had to sign a warrant.

SM6 Band, the family-run pop-rock band with 2.2 million followers on TikTok, posted images of themselves dancing and clowning around on the house’s grand spiral staircase. TikTok star Hillary Zinks twerked by the pool. On Instagram, influencer Amanda Russo, co-owner of influencer marketing company Babes Who Create, posed in a green and white bikini from Copacabana Beachwear.

Ms. Stevens liked the fact that Vesta organized the in-house bar with BeTini bottles in a rainbow of colors. “It was a lot of fun watching them appear on social media,” he said.

The plan worked. Once the house went on the market in April for $ 5.299 million, it received multiple offers and sold quickly. The buyers, a young couple, are not influencers, but they had seen the house on social media and will likely use it to create content on social media, Maize said.

Although Ms. Maize’s strategy required a little more time and effort, it “created a lot of buzz,” Ms. Stevens said. “It was worth it”.

Write to Candace Taylor in [email protected]