Who better to advertise an estate agency listing at this time of the year than the grumpy Grinch?

That’s what a lettings firm in North London decided as part of a new festive marketing push, which has surprised the firm after it sent enquiries ‘through the roof’.

Legacy Property Consultants says it seen a lot of extra interest in the properties featuring everyone’s favourite Xmas grump.

Dressed up

Staff from the estate agency dressed up as the Dr Seuss character, and are pictured peering out of cupboards and shower cubicles or lounging on sofas.

Dennis Matse-Orere and his wife Leila, who run Legacy, had seen a similar idea adopted by another agency and decided Christmas was the right time to copy it, the Ham&High newspaper reports.

And it has worked, with some listings featuring the Grinch seeing an 840 per cent rise in clicks over others.

“I was thinking about how we could differentiate our ads on property portals to stand out,” said Mrs Matse-Orere.

“We saw another agency featuring a panda character in their listings – and suddenly we had a flood of ideas.

“I said ‘why don’t we do the Grinch?’ – and Dennis, who wouldn’t usually agree to something like this, said ‘why not?’.”

She said: “At first, telling the landlords that we wanted to photograph a Grinch in their property wasn’t the easiest thing.

The stats – it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before. They’re going crazy.”

“But the more we could do, the more examples we had of how well it worked.”

She added: “The stats – it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before. They’re going crazy. We had two or three properties rented out within hours of us posting the listing online.”

Pictures: Legacy Property Consultants