Sell Fast With This Marketing Plan

Did you know that it takes more than putting a sign in the yard and listing your home on the MLS to get the most money on your home sale? In this video, I’m going to show you help I help my clients get top dollar and incredible terms when they go to sell their homes. We’ll look at the importance of a strategic market plan and how it can get your home sold faster and for more.

 

 

Any agent can take your listing, pop a sign in the yard, and put it on the MLS. However, if you want to sell for top dollar and fast, you need a really great marketing plan. The truth is that not all real estate agents are created equal, and not all market properties in the same way.

 

One of the ways that you should qualify the agent you decide to work with is by asking them what their marketing strategy is in addition to putting your home on the MLS and sticking a sign in the yard. What is their strategy? What are they going to do for you? Remember, the difference between an agent who understands marketing strategy and your cousin Ned who just got his real estate license could make you or save you thousands of dollars in the long run.

 

Another key to marketing your property is decluttering, depersonalizing, and staging it. Typically, when I’m helping someone, there are a couple of different ways do to this. If somebody is going to move out of their house and it will be vacant, then we should stage the home (or at least consider virtually staging it).

 

However, that doesn’t work for all people. Sometimes you have to live in your house as you’re selling. In that case, what we do is bring in a professional stager. We’ll talk about how we can utilize what’s in your house to make it the most appealing for potential buyers that are coming through. This includes going as far as removing all of your personal photos. Once you remove your wedding photos and the picture of Great Aunt Tilly, we use what you have left in the house.

 

We may also remove some furniture, storing it in the garage or by some other means. The main goal is to create an impact on people when they walk in. We want them to fall in love and be able to visualize themselves in the house, even though it still has some of your stuff in it. We bring in fresh flowers and plants as well, as a lot of green creates a definite vibe.

 

Another important step in marketing your home is to get amazing photography and videography. Your home’s first showing is officially taking place online, so if your house doesn’t present well there, it could cost you in-person showings. The majority of buyers actually decide within the first five seconds or even the first two or three photos that they see online whether or not they’re going to look at that house in person.

 

Additionally, taking pictures with your own cell phone is a huge no-no. You must hire a professional photographer to do this for you. Professional photographers understand the best lighting, angles, and composition so that they can make your home really shine online. The pictures should show off the main selling features of the home: think kitchen, primary suite, updated bathrooms, huge walls, and windows.

 

Little details like that really need to be brought to light, as these are the rooms and the features that trigger buyer emotions. This also creates competition and interest in the house. The video should do the opposite of all of that. While it’s going to showcase a live walkthrough of the house, most importantly it’s going to help the buyer understand the flow of the home.

 

Video gives you an extra edge in marketing your home that properties without video can’t do. One additional option that I never skip, no matter the house, is getting a professional and accurate floor plan done. That, paired with the videography and photography, really helps create a sense of spatial awareness and allows potential buyers to visualize and understand the flow of the home without ever stepping foot inside.

 

Once we have all of that marketing material ready to go, it’s time to start getting ready to list your home online. Your home is going to be posted to all of the largest home search sites, the top real estate websites where home buyers go to look at homes. These include places like Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, Homes.com, and Trulia.com, all of which have close to 100 million visits per month.

 

In addition to those places, your home is going to be featured on the MLS, or the multiple listing service website. The MLS makes sure your listing and your property are available to all of the real estate agents in the Portland Metro area. The information from the MLS also feeds all of those other top sites. Because of this, having accurate and very detailed information makes a huge difference.

 

You should know whether your agent is connected to other realtors through designations, networking groups, and their own personal networks. The vast majority of home buyers are represented by an agent, so we really want to focus on advertising to that community as well as to the general public. The key to the MLS is how you position the property. Adding details about school districts and having emotional listing remarks are two things that we do to make it more appealing online.

 

The next step in the process is marketing your property on social media and other online sources. Creating a buzz by posting your property on sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram is key to generating initial interest. We want to get your property out in front of as many prospective buyers as possible.

 

Additionally, using Google and social media to advertise allows us to really target the best buyer for your home. In addition to this, we post proper signage as well. Once we list your home, we must be the most aggressive in marketing your home in the first two weeks. This is your best chance to sell your home for top dollar and to get the most competition.

 

Having well-advertised open houses, broker opens, virtual opens and neighbor-only invite opens is a phenomenal way to create buzz and get your property in front of more eyes. Increased signage paired with well-placed social media ads really gets your property out there to prospective buyers.

 

I really hope that this video showed you the importance of marketing your home for sale. It plays a key role in getting top dollar for your home if that’s your goal and I’m guessing it is. Of course, there are a ton of details that we didn’t even cover here, so please reach out to me and I’m happy to answer any questions that you may have.

 

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