How to Effectively Market Your Home For Sale
Posted by Justin Havre on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019 at 12:36pm.
When selling a home, visibility is key to finding potential buyers, and that's where marketing comes in. Working with a real estate agent will help with some of the marketing, but there are even more ways homeowners can help their home that don't just rely on giving a collection of photos to their agent. Here are some of the different ways homeowners can market their home to help it reach the right audience.
Take Quality Photos
Online listings are typically going to be the first place a buyer will see the home, so the listing needs to have the best photos possible to fully show off all of the home's best features. Homeowners can either do this themselves if they have some experience with photography, or they can hire a professional photographer who will be guaranteed to get all the best shots. Taking the time to get high quality photos instead of grainy, unclear images can mean the difference between a buyer setting up a showing date or not, so always strive for the best photos possible.
Make Information Easily Accessible
For buyers, nothing is more frustrating than being interested in a home only to find that the home's basic information is either hidden or seemingly nonexistent. To prevent this, be sure when setting up listings to keep the home's information in a highly visible location, especially if the listing isn't on a real estate website. This can help make a home more memorable to buyers because they can save the information for later, and it can also help prevent them from getting frustrated and moving on to the next listing.
Utilize Social Media
For online listings, real estate websites aren't the only place to go to look for information about homes for sale. To go above and beyond, try making a Pinterest board for the home to feature all of the rooms and include information that ordinarily wouldn't be seen in a normal South Calgary home listing, such as how much sunlight the room gets. Homeowners can also make pages on Facebook to advertise their home and create image galleries so prospective buyers can take a virtual tour to see if the home looks like it will suit their needs.
Make Sure the For Sale Sign is Clearly Visible
When selling a home with a real estate agent, the agency will provide a sign for the homeowner to put in the yard so it's clear the home is for sale. While this may seem like an eyesore, signs can be a great way to advertise that a home is for sale to people who may not have known otherwise. If given the option between a free standing sign to put in the yard or a small one to put in the window, opt for the larger more obvious one to bring more attention to the home.
Marketing Tactics Real Estate Agents Can Use That FSBO Sellers Can't
Aside from the MLS, real estate agents do not necessarily have access to secret listings or advertising locations that an FSBO cannot access. What they do have is a network of colleagues and friends along with the experience to know what will make your home sell. Taking quality photos is important, but understanding how to prep and stage a home is critical. No matter how objective they are trying to be, homeowners will always have an emotional connection to the property and won't be able to see it with the same discerning eye as an agent. From paint colors to personal items and dated fixtures, marketing your home will be more successful when it's appealing to a wider audience.
While FSBO sellers could potentially network with real estate professionals, established agents already have existing relationships with colleagues and friends and attend regular events together. This gives real estate agents exclusive opportunities to discuss their listings and consider potential matches between homes for sale and buyers. Marketing is more than just ads and photos; the most success is found with a combination of lots of information for buyers, quality photos of properly staged areas, and word-of-mouth networking.
Use the Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
Homeowners working with a real estate agent will be able to ask to make sure their home is being featured on the Multiple Listing Service. The MLS is a database of homes and properties that can only be accessed by licensed agents. While this may sound like a disadvantage, the agents who use the MLS are able to share homes they represent with other agents in the area to try to work together to buy and sell their clients' homes, so having a listing on the MLS can mean getting more attention from agents representing buyers.