The greater Sacramento region real estate market remains soft, similar to many other regions around the country. Inventory levels are up and the Days-On-Market statistics continue to grow. Buyers are heavily influenced by the frequent doom and gloom pieces published in the Sacramento Bee and some of the other fish wrappers in the area. The buyer's predominant plan seems to be to wait until the market bottoms out and then jump in. The fact that interest rates remain historically low is having little effect.
Enter the Realtor with a new listing to market and sell. What to do, what to do? Print marketing is expensive, especially in the Sacramento Bee, and generally ineffective. Direct mail is not too productive. The remaining option is the Internet; less expensive and more effective.
I am aware of no other vehicle that provides equal exposure. The question is how much exposure does it take?
Let's look at one listing that I have had on the market for exactly one month, http://www.2072lamegoway.com/ . I create a separate property web site for each of my listings and use the property address as the URL. That way both the sellers and, even I, can remember that URL. I use the AgencyLogic Power Sites which provide a lot of flexibility including an HTML flyer that can be used in many other web sites and excellent statistical data.
In addition to the individual property web site and my own personal web sites, I create postings or copy HTML flyers into numerous sites.
A list of some of these sites includes: Postlets.com, ActiveRain.com, Point2.com, Trulia.com, Kijiji.com, Oodle.com, Roogala.com and CraigsList.com. Postings on the local MLS and Realtor.com are a given.
Whenever and wherever possible I include a link to my personal web sites and the individual property web site. If the goal was only to get exposure I would get an A. To date, there have been 10,241 individual visits to the individual property site, not bad for thirty days.
However, the goal is to get an acceptable purchase offer. To date, we have had five showings and no offers, more like an F.
I would be interested in hearing from other agents about marketing actions that they have taken that work well. Low cost options are my priority, but if something works I'm all ears.
The answer to my original question," how much exposure does it take?" Enough exposure to result in an accepted offer.
(For the cynics in the audience, we did have a $ 51,000 price reduction and are priced under $ 190.00 per square foot.)
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