Joyce Hay of the Metro Brokers/GMAC Real Estate Gwinnett office was recently in a two-day staging class conducted by Stagedhomes.com when the instructor asked if anyone knew how many real estate listings there are in the metro Atlanta area.

Hay couldn’t help but chuckle when a Re/Max sales associate answered the question and replied, “I know now because of the Metro Brokers billboard.”

Wanda Hickman, the course instructor for Stagedhomes.com, acknowledged the Metro Brokers billboard campaign as a great advertising and educational tool.

Hay, beaming with pride, told the class that Metro Brokers has several billboards around the city and that her broker (President and CEO Kevin Levent) recently gave away a couple of thousand dollars at the company’s awards banquet to associates who guessed the correct number of light bulbs in the LED screen.

As Hickman proceeded with the lesson plan, several participants continued to whisper about the billboard. A comment from a Prudential sales associate was very telling: “What a good marketing idea…I wish our company had thought of the idea.”

Hickman said she brings up the number of homes for sale in metro Atlanta at the beginning of every staging class to demonstrate all of the work that is available to professional stagers. She keeps track of the number of listings for sale by looking at Metro Brokers’ billboard and tells her class about the signs.

“I drive by the I-285 and I-85 boards daily and always look at them to see how the market is changing,” said Hickman. “The billboard is the only way any of us know how many homes are on the market. I like the sign. It’s great.”

Other Metro Brokers sales associates are hearing similar stories throughout metro Atlanta.

Anne Wallace of the Metro Brokers Perimeter office had her name badge on while buying coffee at Atlanta Bread Company in Decatur one morning when the manager asked, "Are those 80,000 listings all yours or everything in Atlanta?" He said he sees it every morning driving to work and is fascinated by it!

Metro Brokers’ billboards are located on I-75 southbound (just after exit 265 in Marietta), I-85 southbound (immediately after the GA-400 merge), on I-285 (at North Peachtree Road) and on I-75 northbound (just south of I-285) in Forest Park.