Go Back to Marketing Basics

Whether you are selling your home yourself or working with a realtor, the answer is the same. Go back to marketing basics. We?ll look at things you can do for yourself if you?re selling as a fsbo (for sale by owner). If you?re wording with a realtor, you need to interview to find one who will do the sorts of things we?ll talk about here.

Start with getting your home in first class shape. Then price it realistically.

Begin your marketing by putting up a ?for sale? sign. About 10 percent of sales come from this source in a slow market. It?s not like the days when one put up a sign and buyers came in droves, but it is still worth doing. Lowes and Home Depot both sell inexpensive signs. Get one and install it.

Upload your property to one or more Internet multiple listing sites for fsbo properties. Choose one that encourages adding photos to listings. The more photos the better. Buyers love pictures. Make sure the site doesn?t have a bunch of listings that have already been sold. Buyers get put off by sites where every property they call about has already been sold. Find a site that gives your property its own web address.

Don?t forget lead in signs. These are signs indicating there is a house for sale with arrows on them. They can be placed at intersections to point people from a busy street through the turns necessary to get to your home. Lowes and Home Depot have these too.

Classified ads in your local newspaper are a good idea. You can include a reference to your online listing. That can give you more mileage from the pictures you uploaded.

Brochures are a good idea, too. Put a brochure box out at the front of your property, and keep some indoors for the folks who tour your home. You can probably print an adequate brochure from your Internet listing. If you?re good at it, you can make up your own magazine spread style brochure.

Brochures are useful in several ways. They make it easy for the people who just notice the sign or come in following the lead-in signs to learn more about your property. If they like what they see, they are apt to make an appointment to see your home in person. Be sure your brochure contains contact information such as your phone number and perhaps your email address.

Brochures for people who tour your property will help them remember it. People shopping for a home usually look at lots of properties. After a while they get confused about what they have seen. Your brochure with photos will help them remember your home. That?s a good thing because people are unlikely to write a contract offer on a home they can?t remember well.

Are there bulletin boards at work or your place of worship? Put up a one page flyer or copies of your brochure if you can get permission. After all, the location of your home must be reasonably convenient to those places. What about bulletin boards in the grocery store where you shop, at your dry cleaners, in the drug store you frequent?

The point is don?t do just one thing. Use your head. Put out as many marketing ambassadors for your home as you can figure out how to. The truth is people don?t really sell homes. What they do is bring them to the attention of enough people who are shopping for a home that a buyer inevitably emerges. Present your home to enough potential buyers, and it will sell even in a slow market.

Posted by Tracey Mason on December 13, 2008 at 12:00 AM

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