Selling your Carlsbad home is a challenge in today’s market. Making the decision to sell can be difficult enough, so you want to know that the REALTOR you hire will get the job done (that’s assuming you price the home correctly – everyone knows an overpriced home will not sell, no matter how good the agent is or how much marketing is done).
Read: What’s Important to You as a Seller?
This is not so much about how to go about finding the right agent, but more about what will the listing agent do for you.
Read: What do You Want to Know About Your Agent?
Also: What Kind of Agent do You Want?
There are many strategies a listing agent can employ in order to help you find the right buyer for your home. The operative word here is CAN, since while there are lots of options, some agents take the easy (or lazy) way and do the minimal work needed to get a home sold. Or they are not aware of all the options before them to market on the Internet, where the majority of buyers are searching for homes.
Gaining the maximum exposure in today market is critical since there is so much competition. Buyers are being picky and are not willing to pay more than what they perceive market value to be. So, to reiterate…PRICING is the most important thing you can do to sell your home. And of course your home will be free of clutter and personal items (i.e., staged), and repairs will have been taken care of. Assuming that is on target, then, what sorts of things might you expect the agent you are considering hiring to provide you with regarding to marketing and advertising?
- Standard offerings
- listing in the MLS – accurate information, no typos hopefully, and lots of high quality photos
- signage in the yard
- attractive feature sheet in the house and in a brochure box (there is some debate about the brochure box)
- An ad in the local newspaper, an open house or two (or perhaps one every weekend – hmm, is that what you really want, given we know few homes sell this way?) and broker caravan
- Other offerings
- Single site webpage or blog (see 6547 Calle Valperizo for an example of a blog I am using for my newest listing)
- Unique URL for YOUR home (see above)
- Virtual tours – these are easy to do and pretty common, yet lots of agents DON’T use them…and buyers say they WANT to see them. Here’s an example (or click below)
- Written marketing plan – many agents do not have one and look at you like a deer in the headlights if you ask to see one. How do you know what they plan to do to target market YOUR home?
- Lots of photos – buyers tell us they WANT to see photos, lots of them. Some buyers will not even look at a listing that has no photos…and many don’t. Here is an example of a slide show of a recent listing of mine (or click below).
- On-line flyers and postings on multiple websites – here is a Vflyer for my latest listing. This gets posted on multiple sites. And there are dozens and dozens of real estate website where your listing should be (Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow are just a few of the big name ones that get the most Internet traffic).
- Video – is there a video of the home, or better yet the community? Here is an example I did (or click below to view video)
Online Videos by Veoh.com
There’s more, but you get the idea. Don’t short change yourself. Selling your home is TOO important, if you are really serious about it.
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If I can provide more information about this community or the housing market in general, or otherwise assist you in your homes search, please contact me by phone or text at (760) 840-1360
or email me at JDowler@remax.net.
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Jeff - it's really important for a seller to check what the would-be-listing-agent actually does for his/her listings. Be sure to check the MLS and the online marketing and the flyers for other properties that agent is marketing. Call some of their listings - the ones that haven't already sold.