When selling your home, there are no guarantees that a buyer will simply walk through the front door. In many cases you may have to bring your home to the buyer. Effective marketing will help ensure that your property receives maximum exposure to attract a ready, willing and able buyer.
The appearance of your home, a buyer's first impression, and other considerations can also affect the sale of your home. Have you considered that home prices in your neighborhood and the value of your property are also factors used for pricing your home?
Below are some articles that you might find useful in the home selling process. Please feel free to click on one the links to read more.
Selling Articles
Kevin Kantor's Marketing
vs.
Most Other Agents
- Listing Your Home In The Multiple Listing Service
Kevin puts a lot of attention into making sure the description of the property does more than just describe features and such. This comment section is the only area on the listing that the public can see where the Realtor can evoke the emotions of the buyer. Rather than a simple description, Kevin takes great care in creating a picture of warmth, comfort, and desire within the buyers mind. Kevin also makes sure that multiple photos go on the Multiple Listing Service immediately allowing potential buyers to see the best features of the home for themselves.
Most other agents:
Most agents take only a few minutes and get the listing up as soon as possible with little regard to the choice of wording. They often don't create a compelling ad that causes buyers to want to see the property. When it comes to photos, more than half of the agents only post 1 photo even though our MLS system allows for up to 12 to be posted immediately with the listing!!
- The World Renowned RE/MAX Sign On Your Property
Kevin's For Sale signs are uniquely designed to attract the buyer's attention. More importantly, the signs only have his toll free number shown. This causes potential buyers to only be able to call him with questions about the property. Who else would know more about the property and have a vested interest in selling it then Kevin, the listing agent? Certainly not the new agent doing desk duty and answering the phone. Most new agents have never even been trained on how to retain and build buyer interest and worse, they have no real incentive to sell your property. They are just so happy to get a call, they don't really care what property the call came in about!
PLUS: a special rider sign is attached stating that your home is a "Special Feature Listing" offering a full 1 yr. warranty! How many real estate signs do you see with THAT?!
Things Kevin does that few other agent even thought about:
Kevin places a virtual tour sign up with your address as the domain name. This looks like www.123MainSt.com making it very easy for the buyer to remember and to look at the virtual tour of your property from his computer. When they enter your street address as a web address they are sent immediately to the virtual tour page of my web site featuring your property. Kevin also creates an audio tour for the property where the buyer can call my toll free number and enter the tour number for the property and listen to a compelling description of the property. What they believe is that they are doing this anonymously but in reality Kevin's cell phone is sent a message with the phone number of the caller and the tour ID enabling him to contact them within minutes to see if Kevin can arrange to show them your home. Kevin has found that this is very effective in building interest in a property and less the 1% of all agents do this!
Most other agents:
The typical small sign put up on a property has the office phone number as the predominate number to call for information on the property. Most real estate offices require this so that the incoming calls generate business for the new agent in the office who waits by the phone for such a call. The only problem is, this approach is set up to benefit the real estate office and new agents but does nothing for the home owner trying to sell their home. Worse, the new agent often knows little about your property, and is happy to steer the buyer toward other properties instead.
- Creating And Posting Flyers
Kevin knows how buyers think when they are looking at flyers. First, if they are a serious buyer they look at the flyer to tell them if the home is going to work for their needs and is in their price range. What they are really doing is trying to eliminate homes that don't meet their needs. If, for instance, they are looking for a 4 bedroom home and yours is only 3 bedrooms, the buyer would likely eliminate it from consideration. But what if they needed the 4th bedroom as an office and you had a full basement that could easily be an office? If you say too much on a flyer to a qualified buyer, you may eliminate your home from consideration. On Kevin's flyers, he doesn't mention the bedroom count, the bathroom count or the size of the home. Instead, he uses multiple pictures and well chosen words to build an image in the buyer's mind of the perfect home. He then directs them to his toll free number where they can take the audio tour for more information. Here Kevin will tell them most everything they would like to know. However, in exchange, he gets their phone number sent to him immediately along with the property ID of the home they are interested in. Kevin can then follow up with a phone call to the buyer and build interest in your home as well as handle any objections such as not enough bedrooms!
Lastly, all of Kevin's flyers are always with full color laser printing and photos on high quality paper. After all, he is selling one of your biggest assets and a black and white flyer run through a copy machine is a poor way to present your home!
Most other agents:
Most other agents create a simple flyer with a photo of the property and all the relevant information including the price. Nearly 50% of the agents out there place black and white copies of the flyer in the brochure box at the property. There is often little thought given to the psychology of the buyer and how to best structure the flyer to attract a potential buyer. Worse, most agents use only one side of the flyer to present your home. How many empty flyer boxes do you see on listings?!
- Internet Marketing
If you aren't using the internet to market homes for sale, you are hurting your chances for a successful sale! Kevin knows that over 95% of buyers in this area use the internet as an integral tool when looking to buy a home. The more exposure your home receives on the internet the better. However, few agents understand internet marketing as well as Kevin. There are several integrated approaches that are required to maximize your exposure on the web. First, Kevin makes sure your listing is available on all searchable MLS sites including the most popular...Realtor.com, REMAX.com, RemaxOfUSA.com, AmericasTopRealtor.com etc. Kevin also maintains and owns over 120 URL's that are directed to his main site which receives an average of 42,850 hits a month from potential clients looking for homes just like yours! Your home will be featured prominently on all these sites. When it comes to marketing, Kevin spends thousands of dollars a year promoting his web sites to attract buyers where they will see your home on his front page as one of his featured listings.
Additionally, Kevin cooperates with all other brokers and agents in the area to allow their website clients to find your home when doing searches on those sites. Essentially Kevin makes sure that everyone looking for a home on the internet WILL find your listing.
Most other agents:
As important as the internet is to selling real estate, it is surprising that more agents in this area haven't taken the time to learn how to market homes on the internet. A recent statistic reveals that less then 32% of the agents in the area have a real website and only 3% of these actually promote their site as a way of selling their listings. Imagine what a handicap this is when over 95% of buyers in the Albuquerque/Rio Rancho metro area are using the internet to some extent to help in the search for their next home and so few agents really understand how to promote your property this way!
- Full 1 Yr. Warranty Offered to Buyers On Your Home Paid For By Kevin
Kevin offers and pays for (out of his pocket) a full 1 yr. warranty to buyers who purchase your home. This is a HUGE incentive to provoke a full price offer. When your home is listed, a special sign is placed on your property indicating that your home is a "Special Feature" home offering buyers peace of mind with a full 1 yr. warranty!
Most other agents: ...ask Kevin: "How can you afford to do THAT Kevin!??!"
- Percentage Of Kevin's Commission Donated To Local Charities
Every one of Kevin's listings is listed as a "Miracle Home" which means that Kevin donates a portion of his earned commissions on each sale to local charities including the Children's Miracle Network. In 2005, Kevin donated 100% of each of his commissions for 6 months to directly benefit Hurricane Katrina Relief efforts!
Most other agents:
Less than 5% of agents donate to local charities in the Albuquerque/Rio Rancho metro area.
The Bottom Line:
Of all the decisions you'll face when buying or selling a home, there is none
more important than the person you choose to represent you..
CHOOSE CAREFULLY!
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