Marketing your home – What works best

The 2 primary factors that determine how fast your home will sell are exposure and price. Exposure that counts most is exposure that reaches buyers who are the most willing, ready, and able to buy.

The best possible exposure is MLS and websites that display MLS listings. MLS and public MLS websites ARE the real estate market. FSBO websites (like newspaper ads and FSBO yard signs) tend to attract investors looking for bargains, agents soliciting listings, and unqualified buyers looking for owner financing.

A common misconception is that a listing Realtor "sells" a home, and that a good listing Realtor has numerous buyers eagerly waiting for you to list your home with this Realtor so they can see it. The truth is that buyers and buyer's agents search properties online and in MLS based on their criteria. The more times your home matches somebody's criteria, the more showings you will get.

There is no secret magical marketing formula that only certain super-Realtors possess. However, it is common for Realtors to make sales pitches about what great marketers they are, and provide a list of things they will do to "sell" your home. Chances are these things are designed to promote their business, not your home. Use your common sense and ask yourself what you would do if you were looking for a home like yours. You are probably not going to be looking for the home in your junk mail or spam email folder.

The most valuable marketing a Realtor can do for you after your home is listed in MLS is to answer the phone positively and respond quickly to buyer inquiries. Have you ever called a Realtor and gotten a convoluted "phone jail" answering system, or one of those "please announce your name" voicemails (as though they were so important)? How many buyers do you think may refuse to put up with that?

Comparison of Marketing Options

MLS & Public Websites that display MLS Listings
The majority of buyers still use real estate agents when buying a home, and 99.99% of all real estate agents use MLS. What is changing is that over 90% of all buyers today are using public MLS websites in their search process. Most buyers today search online and provide a list of properties for their agent to schedule showings. Others call listing agents for more information and showings. The bottom line is that the MLS is the real estate market, and listing in MLS is essential for selling a property for the best price in the shortest timeframe.

Photos
Getting quality photos is one of the most significant things you can do to market your home. (See Photo Guide) Buyers browse hundreds of listings and pay the most attention to those with multiple photos that accurately depict the home. Most local and national MLS websites display the photos that are on the local MLS. Realtor.com only displays multiple photos if the listing Realtor pays for it, which is why many listings in Realtor.com only display one to 4 photos. Unfortunately, what Realtor.com charges has become cost prohibitive for many Realtors. Creekview Realty always pays the extra fees to Realtor.com to allow up to 25 photos in all listings.

Yard Signs
A simple sign on the front lawn is a cheap and occasionally effective advertising tool. A professional real estate company sign is ideal, and For-Sale-By-Owner signs should be avoided. See Sign Advice.

Flyers
Flyers are normally in placed in a flyer receptacle attached to your yard sign. A flyer doesn't need to be anything fancy. A simple black & white letter sized photocopy with a photo of the front, main features, and description will do (most will be picked up by nosey neighbors and dog walkers anyway). Add your name and phone number, but avoid any statements like "for sale by owner" or "call owner at . . ." It's best to state simply "For more information and showings, call John Smith at 214-555-1234". After you are listed with us, you will get a copy of the MLS printout emailed to you. This can also serve as a flyer.

Newspaper ads (including online classifieds)
Newspaper ads can get expensive, and sellers who are not interested in owner financing will have to weed out unqualified buyers. The majority of homes sold with newspaper ads are by professional investors. Newspaper classified ad columns tend to be filled with investor ads with headings like "$0 down", "Owner financing", "Lease Option", "Bad credit ok", "$3000 down, $900/mo.", etc. Investors typically inflate the home prices and give the buyer/tenant (who can't qualify for a loan) a lease option. Credit challenged buyers gravitate towards newspapers because they can't qualify for a typical loan that would be required for MLS listed homes. Other time wasters that will respond to newspaper ads are investors looking for bargains, and Realtors prospecting for listings.

Open house
The value of holding an open house is vastly over-rated. The first people to go to an open house are the neighbors who are thinking about listing their house, and the Realtors want to meet them in the hope of getting another listing. Buyers who go to open houses are typically just looking. Serious buyers would have seen the yard sign and called the phone number anyway. Realtors like to meet prospective buyers who may be in the market to buy at some point in the future. Holding an open house is also a great way for Realtors to give their clients the impression that they are actively marketing the home when they are actually just promoting their own business. If you are convinced that holding an open house will make a difference, you can do it yourself. It can't hurt, and it doesn't require any special knowledge.

Free Real Estate Magazines
Commonly found on racks in supermarkets and convenience stores, these publications exist to either promote a real estate company or sell advertising. They contain very little useful information for buyers, and due to the time lag between printing to actually being picked up and read (minimum 6 weeks), the listings are already out of date before they are ever seen.

FSBO Websites
For-Sale-By-Owner websites get an insignificant amount of traffic from buyers. Buyers who do take a look get discouraged quickly by the limited selection and from the lack of a response from sellers when they try to make contact. Many of the ads are outdated and the homes are off the market, so sellers often don't respond.

Spam
A very unproductive method some agents like to tell their clients about (as though it had value) is mass emails to agents informing them of a house for sale. Agents have access to MLS, and don't need to be spammed with such information – it's just an annoyance. The first thing the typical agent does when checking emails is delete the "House for sale" spam emails from other agents. Many agents mark the sender as a spammer in their email program, causing any legitimate future emails from the spamming agent to go directly into their trash.

Miscellaneous
There are various things Realtors will tell potential listing clients to get a listing. Some of these things sound good, but accomplish nothing more than promote the real estate company. Example: "We'll send out 300 mail pieces to all the homes in your neighborhood!" This is a way for the real estate company to advertise their company and generate listings. Neighbors are more likely to become sellers than buyers, and if a neighbor were interested in buying your home, the yard sign would be enough to let them know about it.

A Virtual Tour is available at a slight additional charge. We create a link in the Realtor.com listing that looks like a little red house that takes the buyer to the Virtual Tour.

The Real Estate Market - How homes are listed for sale, nationwide

MLS
MLS (Multiple Listing Service) is the network that Realtors belong to that gives them access to show and sell each others listings, and comprises 90% all homes on the market nationally. There are over a thousand individual MLSs across the country, each with their own local databases that are accessible only by local member agents. Only licensed Realtors have access to MLS.

Public MLS Websites
All the individual local MLSs make their property listings available to literally thousands of websites that display MLS listings. Listings for public display omit certain information that Realtors can see in their local MLS, such as owner contact information, commission amount offered, and showing instructions.

Some MLS websites are local and display listings from only one MLS, while others are national and display all listings nationwide. Some of the largest national MLS websites are realtor.com, homegain.com, yahoo.com, msn.com, aol.com. coldwellbanker.com, remax.com

Online shoppers

The internet has become the primary search tool for most homebuyers today, and over 90% of all homebuyers use the internet in their search for a home. Among younger buyers, the number is close to 100%. Of all online shoppers, over 98% browse local or national MLS information websites.

Where online home-shoppers do most of their searching for homes

Member: DFW MLS (NTREIS), Austin MLS, Houston MLS, San Antonio MLS, Highland Lakes MLS, Central Texas MLS (New Braunfels, Seguin, Canyon Lake, San Marcos), Temple-Belton MLS, Greater Tyler MLS, El Paso MLS, Waco MLS, Corpus Christi MLS, Bryan-College Station MLS, Fort Hood – Killeen MLS, Greater McAllen MLS

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