When you have a property to sell, you try to advertise it through various means. The most commonly followed method is to feature your property in the real estate listings in your locality so that you can find a buyer soon. However, you would have noticed that things aren’t as easy as this in reality. Even though your house could be part of the real estate listings in Clinton Mo or any other locality, for many months, you wouldn’t have got any calls from prospective buyers. Have you ever wondered why?
According to the NAR (National Association of Realtors), close to 5million homes (new and old) are sold every year. So, there is no denying the fact that the demand for real estate is still hot. However, how do you ensure that your property is one of the most preferred over the thousands of other listings in your locality? How should you market your property when you are putting up an advertisement for real estate on sale? Keep reading to know more about the same.
The marketing strategies that we have explained in the below sections will help the owners and the real estate agents as well. As an agent, you may promise a seller that you would help find a buyer for him within a month. In that case, how do you ensure that your listing presentation is attractive enough? We have tried to answer some of your questions in this article.
- Make a good first impression
It may be surprising but the truth is that prospective buyers proceed to read the details of the listing only if they like the picture of the property. Posting unclear images of your property on the listing will add no value to your property. Regardless of whether you are the seller or an agent of the seller, you should focus on the photos.
Invest in a good camera and lighting equipment to create a beautiful picture of the property and improve its selling potential. You could also hire a professional photographer to get wonderful angles of the property’s images. Once these images are posted, you will understand that this was the fact that was missing on your listing!
- Reach out to your contacts
In today’s tech-savvy world, the best way to spread the word is through social media. If you have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, you should use these effectively to tell your contacts about the listing. Share the link so that they can view the same. Don’t shy away from asking your friends for leads, if they know.
Social media is a great platform to promote your listing and improve its reach as well. If you don’t get enough responses, you can always re-post your listing on your social media accounts and check the status of the same.
This doesn’t mean that you should ignore your friends in the physical world. When you have a listing and want to sell it quickly, you should try all methods possible to get it sorted. Schedule a lot of meetings to meet your friends & family members to know if someone is interested in buying your property. Even if they aren’t interested, they will be able to give you leads.
You can also reach out to your past clients and ask them for leads if any. Your clients would have had a lovely experience dealing with you in their past purchase; therefore, they would more than happy to oblige to your request. They will forward your listing to their friends & relatives, which opens up the network wider than before.
You can follow up with these leads then to complete a sale successfully. Having a good network of contacts is very important for the success of any business, including real estate. So, the more contacts you have, the more success you can be assured of.
- Be aware of the technicalities
If you want your listing to be seen among the thousands of others in the group, you have to do something different than your competitors. This is why you have to improve on your knowledge of the technicalities of presenting a listing. You should use the right SEO (search engine optimization) techniques in your listing to improve its visibility.
Using the right keywords of your niche in the exact density, being specific about the listing so that it is not lost in the crowd, making the listing very niche-specific, etc. are some SEO techniques that you can try in your listing. If you aren’t sure about these, it is highly recommended that you hire a good SEO professional to make your listing look attractive yet simple. The highlights of your property (sea-facing, near a famous school, right next to a famous railway station, etc.) should be clearly mentioned in the headline of the listing itself to attract more views than before.
- Conduct “open house” tours
Nothing works better than personal inspection when it comes to selling property. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you conduct open tours of your property, at least for people in your locality. This way, prospective buyers can visit your property and identify with the features that you had mentioned in the listing. You can dedicate one day every week for these open house tours.
This will encourage more people to conduct a personal inspection of the property and it will also lead to quick decision making. Though you have posted beautiful photos of your home on your listing, they cannot match the charm of these personal tours. Make a list of people who seemed genuinely interested in the property on these tours. Don’t hesitate to call them frequently and convince them to buy the property. However, there is only a thin line of demarcation between convincing people and forcing them. You need to know when and where to draw the line to avoid being pushy.
- Do your groundwork regarding the price
One of the most important factors that you have to focus on is the pricing details of the property. How much should you sell your property for? You need a professional to assist you with this. Partner with an experienced & reputed real estate agent in your locality to get the pricing right. The agent will compare your property with other houses in the locality and quote a price that is the market price.
If you want to list your property for a value higher than the market price that the agent has offered you, you should be ready to spend a little initially. You can paint the walls of your home and take care of basic repairs so that your property’s value can go up considerably. The final price that you quote in the listing should be approximately the market price for properties in your locality. Even if it is slightly over-priced, your listing will go unseen.
- Know everything that there is about the property
When you post a listing, you will get some inquiries some interested parties. The questions may be related to the property’s construction year, the drainage system, water & electricity connection details, ownership history, the total acreage of the property and the like. You should be able to promptly answer these queries with the right details, so that potential buyers are impressed. By the time you find out these details and answer your potential customers, they would have moved on to other “effective” listings. So, you should be on your toes and be alert to collect all information about the property and keep it handy to be used whenever needed.
- Never give up attitude
If you are a beginner in this field, you may have to work twice or thrice as much harder than an established agent to get your listing. You should be open to new challenges every day in your work to be a successful agent. For getting your listings, you should not hesitate to make cold calls and directly knock on people’s doors in your locality. Not many people may take you seriously, but you should never give up. All you need to do is to keep trying hard to get success.
The journey will get easier as you gain a lot of experience in this field. The listings that you post after a few years will sell off soon because of the name you have earned for yourself. Your clients trust you and they will play a vital role in promoting your listing by word of mouth publicity.
In a nutshell, your listing should be something that defines the property exactly. Don’t use fluff just to fill the space, as this is quite a dynamic field. Your listing will get lost in the crowd if it is not specific, attractive, crisp yet detailed. You need to be honest in the listing and be quick enough to answer all the questions that you get to convert an interested customer into a prospective buyer. Last but not least, you need to post some awesome and professional photos of the property in your listing to make it attractive and appealing.
