Not seen at average real estate listings

Baltimore agents are employing Spider-Man and unicorns to help sell homes

Inside a sun-splashed Canton living room, Spider-Man casually lifts a hand to adjust the built-in air conditioning unit. In an updated Hampden kitchen, a unicorn peeks inside a stainless steel refrigerator.

These lovely Baltimore homes, the characters seem to suggest, could be yours.

Or at least that’s what Berkshire Hathaway agents Christina Dudley and Michael Frank hope the scenes communicate. The Baltimore-based duo are incorporating offbeat characters into traditional photo galleries designed to attract viewers and, they hope, buyers on real estate sale websites.

While real estate photo galleries are often staged, they rarely feature people, let alone unusual characters. A representative of Realtor.com said the website has not noticed a significant trend of agents dressing in costumes to sell homes, but did point to one Texas listing that received attention over the summer for featuring a Tyrannosaurus rex. And in 2016, another agent in Texas and one in the United Kingdom reportedly tried to sell homes staged with pandas.

So far Dudley and Frank have staged two home photo shoots using a quirky character bopping around the property, highlighting the best features.

“These charismatic strategies won’t work with every house,” Frank said. “It’s just a way to show you we’ll have fun.”

Dudley saw a similar gag online in which a real estate agent in the Midwest posed around a house in a dinosaur costume, she said. So when a down-toearth friend approached her to sell the Hampden home, the team decided to give it a go.

“We wanted to do a flamingo, but we See SPIDER-MAN, page 6