You Simply Won’t Believe This…’Fake Famlies’ Staging New Builds….
Fake Families Discovered.
“Mom” Gena Poniatowski shows off some of the features of the model home in Oxnard, including a deep whirlpool tub.
“Residence Style #2,” at left, is just one of three available configurations at Westerly. The house has 2,420 square feet, five bedrooms and a two-car garage, priced from $706,126.
Daughter “Danny” makes cookies in the kitchen. “I love my fake parents!” she jokes.
Morning Edition, July 21, 2006 · In Southern California, a home builder is battling a softening real estate market by taking advantage of an abundant local resource: actors. The Centex company has hired four actors to play a family “living” in one of their model homes — a performance called Homelife.
According to the “script,” it’s mom’s birthday, and helping Gena Poniatowski celebrate is her husband for the day, Ian Murray, and their kids, 14-year-old daughter Danny Devan Sickafoose and her real-life brother, 12-year-old Colin Robert Sickafoose. They gather around a cake to sing “Happy Birthday” in the kitchen, along with a few strangers who’ve come to see the house.
One clue that this isn’t a real family? Poniatowski is wearing a stick-on nametag that says “mom,” Murray is wearing one that says “dad,” and the couple is better-looking than anyone you know.
The no-last-name family occupies a model of the “Residence 2″ style home in the Westerly neighborhood of Riverpark, a huge planned community going up in the city of Oxnard north of Los Angeles.
Amanda Larson, Centex’s director of marketing for Los Angeles and the Central Coast, says they’ve already staged two performances of Homelife at another housing development, and it gives the company an advantage.
“It’s less intimidating to people,” she says. “Maybe they’re not ready to meet with a sales representative — these people are more like your friends.”
The actors say they enjoy improvising with potential home buyers. They bake cookies, watch cartoons, play Scrabble — all the while, extolling the virtues of living at Westerly.
“Mom” brought her own personal items and set up in the upstairs bedroom.
“I felt like I’d be getting ready for my birthday, so I brought a hair dryer, hairbrush, some makeup, clothes in the closet — things like that,” Poniatowski says.
The actors and the show they put on got great reviews from house hunters. In fact, there was only one minor complaint — Homelife would be even more realistic if the family would just fight a little…
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It’s an April fools joke.
they told us so, although hidden, at the end of the story.
Ya know…I thought it was a hoax…
Googled the heck out of it and came up snake eyes.
They DID have a story after the Fake Families story that was about ‘Favorite April Fools Jokes’.
I think its a real story. Why? Centex homes is mentioned by name and I can’t imagine that
the CEO of CENTEX would want anything to do with an April fools joke like this.
I could be wrong….
Readers, is this a true story….is this really happening?
You know that was called ‘Guerilla’ Marketing about 15 yrs ago ….lead the competition and a cool idea!
You know that was called ‘Guerilla’ Marketing about 15 yrs ago ….lead the competition and a cool idea!
Personally I like the idea. You know whatever it takes to ‘stage’ the premises. There is no need to lie when asked by prospective buyers yet this is what we see all the time at Expos and other shows demonstrating their wares.
Thinking outside the box is not bad.
This story reminds me of so called viral marketing where a person (salesperson undercover) hangs out at a coffee shop or club and interacts with people to talk about a product he or she has and likes to talk about such as a cell phone, shoes, etc.
I staged family will leave some who are sincere and want to connect with family to become angery at the agent.
Do they have staged dogs or turtles also?
It’s a fun idea/theatrical performance. If a builder, realty, or “open house listing or buyers agent” did this in their MODEL home (which all buyers know when their in a model home), the necessary idea of “name tages” should read “MOM-actor”, etc. That way, even someone who is slow on the uptake yet could read the name tags and know that even a “neighbor” with a name tag “Neighbor-actor” and carring a real prop of the baking sheet full of freshly baked cookies would know they are being entertained. Another helpful tip would be to have DRAMATIC entrancies by each actor who would in turn point vigorously at their name tag; so as to ensure that the potential home buyers are aware that a show is in the middle of being performed on their behalf!
Yes, Centex Homes did this to show how future homeowners might “live” in their new home. I was an onsite sales agent in Atlanta for Centex for 3 years, so you are getting it straight from a former employee.
What is NOT TRUE was that anyone was being misled. People would walk in and they thought they actually walked into someones house by accident. After the initial embarrassment passed, they prospective buyers got a real kick out of it as the actors would them invite them in and roll play living in the house.
All Centex did was take showing off a model home (what us onsite sale people do everyday) to a new level.
Why does everyone assume the worse before doing their homework?
Hi David,
Thanks for contributing…good to hear from someone who worked there.
With you input it does seem that the NPR article was a tad fast to cast judgment.
You are right….we should all be skeptical…..especially of the skeptics!
Tim