As the housing market continues to slow, we see home sellers becoming more and more creative in their attempts to lure in buyers.

Both private residential sellers and big home building companies that have thousands of homes to unload, are all taking part in the trend of offering discounts, incentives and promotions.

Obviously the big home building companies have the upper hand in offering the discounts and incentives due to their corporate budgets, and many of these companies have taken their attempts to attract buyers’ one step further and have become a lot more creative in their advertising.

A growing trend in advertising for new housing developments is to have a person stand on a busy street corner holding a giant arrow and dancing around and pointing the potential buyer in the direction of the properties.

If you drive down any busy street in California, you are bound to see one of these youngsters holding a sign and dancing and jumping around in an effort to attract buyers’ attention.

A November 19, 2006 article by Rebecca Fairley Raney of The New York Times, “The signs of a cooling market in California,” looks at how this sign twirling market is starting to take over the industry.

“As the housing market cools here in the exurbs of Los Angeles and elsewhere, builders are relying on the frantic motion of these young workers to catch the attention of a dwindling number of buyers. In some cities, it is common on weekends to see six or seven sign twirlers — ‘human directionals’ in industry parlance — on a single street corner, pointing the way to sprawling fields of newly framed houses.”

“The typical employee is male and 15 years old, and he stays on the job for two or three months, according to Nick Victorio, a manager for Creative Outdoor Advertising. The plastic signs weigh 5 pounds, but by the end of the five-hour shift, he said, they feel like 15.”

Although surveys show that the signs are doing a good job of getting potential buyers into the developments, they are being criticized throughout many California cities as deterrents to drivers. Many cities have even already banned the practice altogether.

“Typically, city officials say that the twirlers not only pose a traffic hazard by distracting drivers, but also create blight. ‘This got a little bit out of hand,’ said Mark Lewis, mayor of El Cajon, a city in San Diego County that banned the practice earlier this year. ‘They’re very artistic in regard to swinging the sign around, and some people felt a little endangered.’”

Despite the negative reaction from some local officials, the business of employing humans as advertising does not show any signs of waning anytime in the near future. Some are worried that the human directionals will be something that the consumers start to expect, so businesses offer promotions and incentives to their all-star twirlers.

“The pay starts at $9 an hour, about 30 percent more than minimum wage in California, which is now $6.75 an hour, and it can go up to $16 an hour for top performers.”

Hopefully, these twirlers will continue to do a good job of attracting buyers in order to stimulateour stalling housing market.