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Do you know it's not your job to sell the listing?
It's a cooperative effort for you and the seller. Here are
the 5 areas of responsibility to sell a property.
1. Pricing - That's
the Seller's responsibility. You can guide them with a CMA
but they make the decision.
2. Condition - That's the Seller's responsibility.
You can guide them by suggesting some house cleaning and
landscaping to give the property curb and eye appeal, but
again, it's their decision to spruce it up.
3. Competition - There are 5 other similar homes on
the market and the Buyers will view them all. That is beyond
the control of either you, the agent, or the Seller.
4. The Market - Is it an up market, down market,
flat? Are there a glut of listings or buyers? Are interest
rates rising or falling? All good questions and concerns that
may affect the sale, but, again, beyond the control of either
you, the agent, or the Seller.
5. Marketing - Bingo!
That's your job and what you, your company and possibly your
franchise have to offer. You are there to show the Seller
your marketing difference and convince them to list with you.
The Guaranteed Closing - "If you'll just sign the
listing contract here, I'll have your personal address website
active in 2 hours."
Imagine how impressive it would be if you went to a
listing appointment with a PowerSite website
already created. This is marketing at its finest. How can you
miss getting the listing? And it doesn't cost you a dime for
PowerSites until it is activated, which is after
the seller signs the listing contract.
You don't even need your own website to use
PowerSites.
PowerSites guarantees you a marketing advantage
over every other agent. Click on any of the links on the
right for more information.
Impressive to say the least.
Did you know you can also
save money on your newspaper
advertising with PowerSites?
Last Sunday I found myself following
my normal routine and sat down to an extra cup of coffee
and a read (versus a midweek skim) of my local
newspaper. Of course, I couldn’t help but look at the
property section, and as I read through the advertised
listings I saw an opportunity.
Now, you can call me a cynic, but it’s my opinion that
most forecasters fall into one of two categories: those
that don’t know and those that don’t know they don’t
know (if you need proof, I have one word – weather). And
the property market has more forecasters than a lot of
other industries. In my opinion, the most overused
headline of the moment has to be “Has the property
bubble burst?”. Despite my cynicism, it is hard to
escape the reality that the forecasts of a slowing
property market seem to be correct. Inventory is
increasing, the average time a property sits on the
market is getting longer, and incentives are becoming
more and more creative. So how does that relate to my
Sunday morning routine and the opportunity?
As I looked at the amount of text used to describe each
home, I started to wonder exactly how much money our
clients spend on newspaper advertisements. I asked our
marketing department to contact my local newspaper and
find out the cost of the following sample listing:
Nas/T: $169,900 2BR, 1.5BA, LG EIK,
Balcony, New cabinets & bath rms w/ceramic tile. FDR,
LR, MBR w/dressing area. Convenient Arlington
Location. Close to shopping. Nashua Schools. Jack Doe
Realtor 603 882-7354
They discovered that this sample
listing would cost $161.56 for four days. I have to
repeat something: $161.56 for four days! Now, I can’t
speak for every area, but I do know that homes in
upstate New York are on the market for several weeks, if
not longer, so what would the total cost be? Other
questions arose. Can we save our clients money? Could
they not only save money, but do so effectively? Our
marketing department then priced a variation of the same
ad. Remember – same property, same paper, same period:
Nas/T: $169,900 2BR 1.5 BA.
www.123AnyStreet.com. Jack Doe Realtor 603 882-7354
The cost? $89.72, a savings of
$71.84. Now, don’t think I am suggesting you should stop
using a newspaper to advertise a property—I’m not.
However, there are many ways to effectively (including
cost effectively) market a property, and I started to
realize that by using a PowerSite, our clients could
save more money in print costs than the cost of a
PowerSite. Now, I could go on and on about the other
benefits of a single property Website, but this one
reason alone deserves attention.
I believe that most buyers look for five things when
they look through the listings in a newspaper. In order
they are:
-
Location
-
Price
-
Number of bedrooms
-
Number of bathrooms
-
Everything else
And the far cheaper alternative ad
provides all of these things. Did I mention this is just
for a four-day ad?
Now, some of you might be thinking, “Well, this must be
Manhattan, or some other big city”. It’s not. The
example is from the Poughkeepsie Journal. For those of
you not familiar with Poughkeepsie, it is about 80 miles
north of Manhattan, has a population of just over
30,000, a median family income of $35,779, and has 18.4%
of families below the poverty line. This isn’t an
expensive place to put an ad.
Even if the forecasters are correct at the moment, that
doesn’t mean that you have to spend more and more money
to reduce the inventory, sell a property quicker, or
have the seller offer to pay the first year’s mortgage
(and that’s a real example of an incentive I’ve seen
advertised). Realtors are business people—and like all
successful business owners, it’s not about how much
money you spend, it’s how and where you spend it.
So, there I sat, coffee cup waiting for a refill,
thinking about what I could do with my discovery. We
will be starting a national survey to see just how much
Realtors spend in newspaper ads. Results will be broadly
published, but until then ask yourself the following:
“Just how much money could I save next month if I used a
Website address in my ad rather than a lot of text?”
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