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Is Your Home In The Right Place?

By Liz and Bill Spear

Real Estate Agent with Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com SAL.2002007747

September 01, 2012 06:19 AM

Is Your Home In The Right Place?

If you're trying to sell your home, it is critical that buyers (and their agents) can locate your home. When your home first goes on the market, it's critical to confirm that the ways buyers search MLS actually FINDS your home. Anything less than 100% accuracy may make your home invisible to the buyer that WOULD have been the right one for your home if they'd just been fortunate enough to find it.

Buyers search by map. A radius around a point, a city center, maybe a distance from their new job site. Both our area MLS (Dayton & Cincinnati) have map search functions. It's not uncommon for us to find the pin representing a home's location to be off significantly, especially with new construction homes.

Buyers search by city. Typically NOT much error here. Our boards are pretty tough on making sure something doesn't get claimed in the wrong spot. However, if you live in a township, be aware that Cincinnati MLS doesn't allow your primary address to be the city you want to go under (e.g. Deerfield Township doesn't get to report as Mason).

Buyers search by subdivision. This is another area we often see errors. Most likely a typo here, but we see variations in names that may also throw buyers off the trail. Is your development named something like The Reserves of Pinebrook but everyone just calls it Pinebrook?

Buyers search by price. A dollar too high or low may make you invisible if you're just " " this much too far one side or the other of their property search, your home just disappeared.

Buyers search by home features and other criteria. Check to make sure your key criteria are accurate: school district, bedrooms, baths, lot size, home age, basement, garage spaces, etc. Blow these and you know what happens? Yep, another case of Invisibilitis strikes your home sale.

So when your Warren County home goes on the market, pretend to be a buyer. Can you find your home? If not, you and your agent need to fix it ASAP, or you just might miss that buyer that was right for your home.

Serving Warren County's residential real estate needs,
Liz and Bill aka BLiz

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Jason Sardi

Auto & Home & Life Insurance throughout North Carolina - Charlotte, NC

Your Agent for Life

Can't be sold if it's not found. And the chances of someone "just walking by" are typically quite slim.

Sep 01, 2012 06:21 AM

Endre Barath, Jr.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties - Beverly Hills, CA

Realtor - Los Angeles Home Sales 310.486.1002

Bill & Liz I love the internet it allows buyers from all over the world to see my listings right now I am working with buyers from Asia & the Middle East and the property is in the Right Place! Have a great Labor Day weekend and thanks for the Victory Support!

Sep 01, 2012 06:26 AM

Liz and Bill Spear

Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH

Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Jason, It COULD happen, but I'd consider it quite the longshot.

Endre, You're welcome! That's a pretty good sized geographical area you're attracting buyers from!

Sep 01, 2012 06:31 AM

Roger D. Mucci

Shaken...with a Twist 216.633.2092 - Euclid, OH

Lets shake things up at your home today!

Excellent information................it has to be easy to find.

Sep 01, 2012 06:56 AM

Liz and Bill Spear

Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH

Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Roger, Definitely, they can't buy homes they can't locate, especially on the Net.

Sep 01, 2012 07:06 AM

Anita Clark

Coldwell Banker Access Realty ~ 478.960.8055 - Warner Robins, GA

Realtor - Homes for Sale in Warner Robins GA

BLiz: The sellers agent should be double-checking to make sure all the T's are crossed and the I's dotted. Anything less and they run the risk the home may not be found on a consumer search.

Sep 01, 2012 09:41 AM

Brenda Mullen

RE/MAX Associates - San Antonio, TX

Your San Antonio TX Real Estate Agent!!

This is an excellent post on how folks search for homes BLiz! If data is inaccurate in the MLS, or they are priced way too high, their home may very well be invisible!

Sep 01, 2012 09:52 AM

Liz and Bill Spear

Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH

Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Anita, It's one of the reasons we send our sellers an MLS link for them to cross-check our work. If either us or the office admins make an error and we don't catch it, hopefully the sellers notice before the buyers don't notice. I'm always amazed at the number of homes entered with no lot size, missing garage spaces and the like. Homes just disappear and the sellers wonder why their home is not selling without every knowing a key error that is easily fixed is standing in their way.

Brenda, With all our community posts of late we've been looking even closer than normal at some entries like Subdivision names. Always surprising that so many homes are missing key inputs like that. For some of our local communities, there's a lot of prestige associated with some of them. To leave that name off is seriously hurting the sellers ability to attract the max number of buyers.

Sep 01, 2012 09:54 AM

John McCormack, CRS

Albuquerque Homes Realty - Albuquerque, NM

Honesty, Integrity, Results, Experienced. HIRE Me!

Having the correct location info in marketing is key and one of my many pet peeves.

Sep 01, 2012 11:05 AM

Liz and Bill Spear

Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH

Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

John, I can understand that, because it's one of the things that just baffles me. I've seen million dollar listings that leave off the 5 acres the home sits on, other homes with 0 for garage spaces when the front photo makes it obvious that it has 3. Just not good.....

Sep 01, 2012 11:15 AM

Kathy Streib

Cypress, TX

Home Stager/Redesign

BLiz- had to suggest this. Being in the right place isn't just about location. It's so important for a seller to make sure they hire an experienced, professional and conscientious Realtor who will know to check to make sure their home is in the right place.

Sep 01, 2012 11:37 AM

Liz and Bill Spear

Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH

Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Kathy, Honestly to us it's just Real Estate 101. If you're the listing agent, you need to make sure your listings are properly presented. We didn't even touch on photos and marketing remarks and the rest of the package. Just getting the fundamentals right in MLS will make it so much easier for the buyers to find and buy.

Sep 01, 2012 11:39 AM

John & Irma Nelson

San Antonio Real Estate Broker/Agent with Get It Sold Realty - San Antonio, TX

San Antonio Real Estate Agents - San Antonio Homes

Thanks for the informative Post Bliz - Always a good read! I hope you are having a great labor day! And you are right that its real estate 101 and we have a responsibility to our clients to list and present property as accurately as possible

Sep 03, 2012 01:21 AM

Liz and Bill Spear

Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH

Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

John, We'd have to hope any errors were honest oversights, but when you pull 20 listings and 25% of them have no lot size entered you tend to think some agents aren't even trying.

Sep 03, 2012 02:48 AM