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Covid Housing Brochure

Autumn Legge

California University of Santa Barbara

Writing 2

Instructor: Valentina Fahler

February 27th, 2022

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Many of us faced difficulties during COVID-19, one of those being finding a safe place to

live. . As a child, me and my family moved several times so I understand the difficulties when

searching for a new house. We even built and sold a house during the time of the 2008 recession.

My goal for this project was to translate my academic article, “Covid-19 impact on US housing

markets: evidence from spatial regression models,” by Jim Lee, into something practical and easy

to comprehend for a carefully selected new audience. What better way to do this than a housing

brochure. In this essay I explain my process of using tools such as in-class readings, online

resources, and direct relations to my personal life to translate my article into a housing brochure,

while also connecting the importance of how challenges helped me choose those tools.

The research article, “Covid-19 impact on US housing markets: evidence from spatial

regression models,” uses and compares different sets of data related to the housing market to

reflect on the controversy of how urban residents reacted to the sudden change of COVID-19. The

article goes into detail on empirical data collected from sites like zillow, realtor.com, and public

covid case websites. Jim Lee explains his data in full and also gives all the equations he used to

gather this data and come to his conclusion. Lee comes to an overall somewhat vague conclusion

because of the short time period which he used to collect data. He felt he needed more evidence,

however he does note the strong connections between the increase in people moving away from

major cities to the urban residencies during Covid-19. The article is published in an economic

analysis journal within a peer reviewed article website. The audience most likely majorly consists

of people in the economic field looking to go into real estate who regularly read academic

journals.

Finding what subject I wanted to learn more about and translate into a new genre was

difficult. As Karen Rosenberg said in her article Reading Games, “As readers, our goal is quite
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active. We pay attention to our own motivation and agenda for each reading.” While this quote

may seem pulled out of context, after reading it I knew I had to find a subject that related to my

own life to really have motivation for this project. Being an Economics major, I wanted to choose

something that I was interested in learning more about that was related to my field of study. As I

mentioned in my introduction I also spent a lot of time browsing the housing market as a child

with my family. Teaching people about things related to my major while also relating it to my

own personal inspiration got me excited to start this translation on the housing market.

Choosing a genre to translate my article required several different tools... As I read

through the lists of genres I realized I was looking at it in the wrong way. Referring to Lisa

Bickmore and her article Genre in the Wild for guidance, I came across a quote that stated,

“looking at the genre as a formulaic, standalone artifact–does not show very well how the genre

actually functions in an environment.” This quote encouraged me to brainstorm genres within the

environment of my article. I asked myself questions like what genres relate to the housing market

environment? How does that environment relate to my own life? Who do I want my new audience

to be? During times where my family searched for houses, I remember my parents running out of

the car to grab brochures from for sale signs. Looking at the brochure I would judge the pictures

and pricing as if I was an expert at age ten. Then it struck me that a housing brochure was the

perfect way to gain the intrigue of my new audience and portray a clear message from my

academic article. I would be able to give an ideal housing listing and add in all the reasons why

people would want to move from big cities to suburban communities during Covid-19 as

discussed in my article. I wanted my new audience to feel that same excitement I got as a child

when looking for a new home.

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Housing brochures have many great aspects to portray information to a reader. They are

very simple and organized and only give the most necessary information. They grab the attention

of a reader with the use of color symmetry, professional pictures, and folding of the paper. They

usually leave a reader thinking “I want that!” after viewing it. Housing brochures in particular are

used to help a buyer gain initial interest in a housing property. My brochure will bring in

characteristics that are important to those who are looking for a safer environment during

COVID-19. The hope is that the brochure will beat competition for similar properties so the buyer

will tour the property and eventually make an offer. A housing brochure aims to make a buyer feel

excited about the home in hopes that they will make it their own.

A challenge I faced was reading my article. I was very concerned going into the article,

that there would be equations and discussions that would simply go over my head. I questioned

how I was going to read such a long wordy article with very little prior knowledge. For the

solution I referred back to Reading Games. Rosenberg reminded me that by determining my

audience and taking the article slow I would be able to get the main gist of the article and take

from it what I need most. While I may not understand every detail, the main message is the most

important part. As Lisa Bickmore says in the Information effect, “helping a reader gain a greater

understanding of the complex world we all share is in itself an entirely worthy goal.” This advice

brought me to the realization that my goal for this project is about relaying important information

about the world to a new audience, in my case in a similar environment.

Next up in my process was creating the brochure itself and deciding what information to

include. An important tool I used was studying other housing brochures online to help me figure

out what information from my article I would be able to use. Since my article vastly talked about

residents of cities looking to move to the suburbs during COVID-19 I decided the best way to
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portray that message was to do a housing listing brochure for an ideal suburb house outside of a

major city. I created my brochure using an online site called FlipSnack. My brochure is a house in

Berkeley,just 30 minutes outside of San Francisco. I found my ideal house on zillow and used the

pictures for my brochure so I had high quality pictures. My description of the house offers many

aspects of the ideal suburb house that you would not get in an apartment in the city. It talks about

open-floor plans, a small commute, and a great place to entertain, all for an affordable price! It

also includes many aspects of why people were choosing to move from cities to suburbs as

discussed in my academic article. For example my property description includes aspects of the

house like a newly refurbished office to work from home and a safer community with less Covid

cases than the major city. In my realtor description I also emphasize the roughness of the Covid

housing economy. You will also see small exaggerations and detailed descriptions of the most

valuable aspects of the house. Sadly because of the limitations this genre offers I was not able to

include statistics or graphs about how COVID-19 affected the housing market. While I was sad to

not be able to share the math and process behind my article's data collection I felt I was able to

portray the main reasons why people were fleeing from big cities to urban communities. During

the project I had the concern that I didn’t choose the correct genre and that I was appealing to the

wrong audience. Kerry Dirk and his article Navigating Genres was crucial to helping me feel

passionate and in control of my project. Dirk says “many genres are part of our daily lives. Think

about genres as tools to help people to get things done.” I learned this project has a lot of freedom

in it because we live in different genres every day without even noticing it. My concerns lessened

as I found ways to include aspects of my article into my genre in unique ways. I learned that you

can take many things from academic articles, and while they have a general message I was able to

choose how I wanted to portray information to a new audience. I decided to not use the author’s
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process of data collection he used to come to a conclusion. Rather I put focus on the aspects of

housing demand during Covid that drove the author to look for patterns in the first place and used

those in my translations. My new audience was the buyers of houses during Covid which is a

drastic change from someone reading an article about the housing market. It was important that I

knew what my new genre was used for so I could best portray it to my new audience.

In conclusion, I chose to translate my article “Covid-19 impact on US housing markets:

evidence from spatial regression models,” into a brochure because I wanted to appeal to a larger

audience within the environment of my article's topic. I faced concerns when choosing a new

genre, reading an ambitious article, and designing the brochure itself. While this project was at

certain points time-consuming and frustrating, being able to use advice from my in-class readings,

the use of online tools, and reflection on my own personal life brought me through my struggles

and overall gave me a great learning experience. My last added thought from what I learned in

this project is to not be afraid to share with others what you are passionate about learning in the

way that fits the situation best.

Works Cited

Bickmore, L. (2016, August 1). “Genre in the wild: Understanding genre within rhetorical

(eco)systems.” Open English @ SLCC. Accessed on February 24, 2022, from

https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-

within-rhetorical-ecosystems/
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Bickmore, L. (2016). “The Information Effect: The Facts, the Figures, the So What?”. Effects in

Writing. Open English @ SLCC. Accessed on February 24, 2022, from

https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/the-information-effect-the-facts-the-figu

res-the-so-what/

Dirk, K. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 1, Edited by Charles

Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, published by Parlor Press, 2010

Lee, J. (2021) Covid-19 impact on US housing markets: Evidence from spatial regression models.

Taylor & Francis. Accessed February 12, 2022, from

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17421772.2021.2018028

Rosenberg, K. “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources.” Writing Spaces:

Readings on Writing, vol. 2, Edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press,

2011

Zillow, I. (2022.). 1397 Delaware St, Berkeley, CA 94702: Zillow. Accessed February 23, 2022,

from

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1397-Delaware-St-Berkeley-CA-94702/122159966_

zpid/
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