Extra Exposure

First of all, remember this is a real estate blog so if you weren’t thinking in terms of marketing when you read the title, you may want to move on to, shall we say…. feistier subject matter. In two previous blogs I have outlined a couple of very important points that people should consider before placing their houses on the market “For Sale By Owner”.  The first blog, “Reasons to Rethink For Sale By Owner” really examines pricing a home correctly from the beginning and how a professional Realtor’s guidance and experience can make a huge difference in accomplishing this.  The next blog, “Having a Professional Negotiator” focuses on the comfort sellers can take by having a Real Estate Agent on their team to handle the direct communication throughout the selling negotiations and lend guidance and insight into what can be a foreign and daunting process.  These two reasons are really enough to give a home owner pause before opting to go it alone, but there is one last point on this topic that I really want, no… NEED to put out there.  Real estate agents can offer sellers far more exposure for their home than the owner can get marketing it themselves. Let me explain…

Consider this, most professionals in real estate are passionate about the area in which they work and for the most part live.  They have made it their business, no their livelihood, to figure out all of the positives, negatives, secrets, attractions, and challenges of their communities.  Not only do they know about these things in an academic sense, they have experienced them, can speak to them with detail and if they haven’t done it or been there themselves, they certainly know someone who has filled them in first hand.  Because they are so invested in these communities, they are usually known as well.  They have deep personal relationship networks that offer them grass roots reach beyond people who work in many other sectors.  This means that word of mouth can help promote a home the agent has listed OR can carry word of a family or individual looking for a certain facet, like location or style of home, and request the agent keep his or her eyes open.  By filing all of these bits of information, the agent many times can know to whom a new home may be most appealing and make sure that demographic is made aware of it directly.  This idea goes beyond personal relationships to professional ones as well.

Real Estate certainly has many qualified professionals working in the field in any given community and though they may compete to some degree for customers’ business, it isn’t adversarial.  For the most part, Realtors and Agents have deep cooperative networks to which they can reach out in order to connect the right buyers to the right sellers more quickly than leaving it to chance.  They can spread the word if they know there is a particular feature of a home that certain agents’ clients find particularly attractive.  They also connect with other professionals beyond their direct industry.  Think of all of the title companies, mortgage companies, contractors, landscapers, designers, decorators, stagers, developers, and investors to whom an agent is connected.  This is an extraordinary web of connectivity to spread word of listings.

Finally, this may be the most obvious point but professionals invest greatly in marketing homes they list to sale.  Even though sellers can now buy access to having a home listed on the MLS, it is still as an outsider without the advantages of connectedness the agents will have.  They have entire marketing strategies.  They will feature the home in print, as well as their own social media sites.  They will feature the home’s assets in the best possible light on flyers as well as host open houses.  They leverage the event sponsorships that have gained them name recognition to generate even more exposure from a certain level of local celebrity.  

All of these things equal a significantly greater level of exposure and advertising and general buzz about a new home for sale than an individual can create by him/herself.  At first blush people may be thinking only of the commission that Realtors earn from homes they have listed but I hope these blogs make homeowners consider the tremendous VALUE they get when partnering with a Real Estate Professional rather than listing their largest asset “For Sale By Owner”.

If you'd like to discus this more with me, contact me at www.BlakeRickels.com