Marketing Tall Tales In Real Estate
So you gotta move. Maybe your bundle of joy wound up being three bundles of joy or your boss says it’s time to head to another locale, but the point is you gotta sell your house pronto. Now is the time to list your home and Susie the real estate agent has given you their listing presentation on all of these amazing things that they can do to sell your home that every other Realtor can’t. Everything sounds all well and good but you decide to interview John the real estate agent just to be sure, and lo and behold he has magical real estate powers too! At some point you are likely going to ask yourself what’s real and what’s fake in all of these marketing promises being made to you. If that’s you, then you’ve come to the right place!
A common fiction among real estate agent’s is to overly promise how fast they can sell your home and for how much. If a Realtor promises you they can sell your house for “X” days for over “X” dollars call their bluff. If they guarantee and 1 month sale then give them a 1 month listing agreement. If they guarantee a certain sales price then do a dollar for dollar commission reduction if they do not hit that number. In almost all instances agent’s have an educated guess as to how long a house could remain on the market and how much it should sell for but if they are “promising” something then hold them to that promise.
Another common tall tale is that one real estate broker has so much more marketing muscle than others online. First, one for sale sign in the yard is just as good as another. Also, fact is that once a home hits the MLS, aka the multiple listing service, it gets syndicated out to all other real estate websites, real estate brokerage websites, and all Realtor’s personal websites. Basically your home gets syndicated EVERYWHERE on the web and this makes up the overwhelming majority of opportunities for your home to sell. So it doesn’t matter if you listed your home with Susie or John because your home will go on both their websites and their broker websites as well. Realistically it doesn’t matter who you list it with as long as professional photos are done with a good text description. The biggest Realtor in town has about as much control over Zillow as they do the weather.
Our final fictions involve two of the most timeless marketing strategies for real estate agents those being open houses and print marketing. If you own a smartphone or if you are reading this on a tablet, you know things have changed. Ask yourself when was the last time you were thinking about making a purchase and said “let me go pick up a newspaper or magazine” to figure out what to buy. The only time we shop for things in magazines is when we are looking at the Sky Mall magazine in an airplane at 30,000 feet because cell phones don’t work up there. Open houses have just about the same amount of effectiveness when it comes to moving property. The simple fact is people want to shop online and see it all immediately on their smart object of choice. Realtors love to do open houses to meet the neighbors and pick up a first time homebuyer but they aren’t there to sell your home.
So what agent do you hire? Considering the internet and technology play a role in over 90% of all home sales I would look for a local real estate agent that gives me a listing presentation focused on technology SPECIFICALLY social media marketing. Social media marketing is the fastest growing segment for home sales and the one place where a great agent can really shine over a poor one.
