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Defining The Minimum Presentation Bar For Online Listings: Basic Concepts (Part 1) / AR Post #100 for me

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Services for Real Estate Pros with Vidlisting.com

Previous comments on my blog post about real estate video by Jeff Turner and Lenn Harley really got me thinking about defining what the minimum presentation bar would be for properties and how various online tools would fit into a conceptual model. I figured this would be an ideal topic for Post #100 here on AR. Bear with me because this is a post that attempts to build a conceptual model within the confines of a single blog post and there is "some assembly required" to get to my point.

Assumptions

There are some assumptions in my thinking around properties and their desirability. Let's start with those...because if those aren't valid..well, you can stop reading and start commenting.

Assumption #1 - Properties have something akin to personality that we'll define here as "basic desirability" that is completely independent of variable factors such as pricing.

Assumption #2 - For this article, we'll say that people make internal decisions about how they will act on properties. These three levels of activity are A) "Take Action", B) "Take Note" defined as doing nothing now but commit to some level of future action or C) "Do Nothing" defined as making the decision to do nothing now and also to do nothing in the future.

Assumption #3 - Action and Interest are not necessarily linked: Certain types of actions can be independent of interest at times. For instance, I'll agree that it is not likely that a uninteresting property will cause a visitor to take action, however, there are likely a set of properties in which there is interest but, for whatever reason, visitors are not taken to a level of action. We'll refer to this as "the bar" for activity.

Assumption #4 - Without pricing as a consideration, there are a small set of properties with a combination of factors such as location, design, and curb appeal that produce a level of desirability that meets some intangible bar such that a broad set of people either take action or take note. Conversely, there are a set of properties that produce such a low level of desirability that a broad set of people decide to do nothing. Most properties fall somewhere between these two examples.

Example: I currently have an investment property for which I receive a call almost every week from people offering to buy or rent it. This has gone on for months. There isnt any sign in the window nor have I expressed any interest in selling or renting it. The property just seems to draw people....

Relating Online Tools With Desirability And Context

So, from our assumptions, it seems clear that the role of tools in the listing is to demonstrate enough characteristics of a property so as to meet an activity bar of preferably "Take Action" but at least "Take Note" for an online visitor.

All online tools provide some degree of context and a varying degree of opportunity for a seller or agent to provide some "additional context" to explain what the visitor is seeing. Since we have a range of choices for online tools, let's classify them with respect to the level of additional context:

Online Tools That Provide Additional ContextTextual descriptions
Narrated Video
Narrated Virtual Tours
Online Tools That Do Not Provide Additional ContextPhotos
Property Videos With Music
Virtual Tours With Music
Most Implementations of Online Mapping Tools

We are almost there. So, now let's bring all of the above together, add in pricing as a factor, and develop some generic categories based on additional context required.

Level of DesirabilityPricingLikely Level Of Additional Context Required
Broad desirabilitypricing higher than market or outside of a particular visitor's budgetmedium to high
Broad desirabilitypricing at or lower than marketlow
Normal desirabilitypricing higher than market or outside of a particular visitor's budgethigh
Normal desirabilitypricing at or lower than marketmedium
Low desirabilitypricing higher than market or outside of a particular visitor's budgetvery high
Low desirabilitypricing at or lower than markethigh

Everything seems to meet the common sense test so far (or does it?). If everything is otherwise in order, we'll look at a number of online presentation methodologies in Part 2 of this post and develop some ideas about when and how to apply them.

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