Listing Real Estate is a Full Contact Sport
Posted by Ryan Ward on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 2:46pm.
Listing real estate in any market requires that we make contact with other agents and prospective buyers, but today, this statement really does hit home (pardon the pun). With home sales down and still falling, squeezing the most out of our databases will be essential. Sure, a home has to be priced right, it must have good photos and the condition must meet the price, but, that's often not enough to get a home sold in today's market.
Many agents will argue that one good listing photo, the right price and listing a home in the MLS will result in a sale, but, that isn't my experience in this market. With fewer buyers and more listings available, it's quite possible that a particular buyer at a particular price point may not see your home or even if they do see it online, they may elect to not make an appointment to view it. So, making contact with as many agents as possible combined with a multi-medium marketing campaign is essential for any good listing agent.
While the prescreening process of potential sellers must be more tough than in the past (you can't list every home you have an opportunity to list or you'll go broke marketing unsold listings), there are certain steps that I feel are essential to give a home the needed exposure to have the highest chance of selling. So, you have a listing that is priced right, now what do you do?
Once you have a listing that is priced right, the next most important thing you must do is to ensure that the listing has superior photos. As real estate agents and brokers, we are entrusted by are sellers as complete marketing experts. Have you ever seen superior marketing with crappy photos? Well, maybe in real estate, but, not in other professions. So don't let your marketing begin with a poor first impression. You absolutely must have good photos. To do this, you have 2 options; hire a professional or buy a real camera. It's time to put down that point and shoot that you use to take pictures of your spouse at the park and get a real camera. You know, something that will actually demonstrate the qualities of the home without overexposing half of the picture and underexposing the other half because you took a picture in a room with a window. Your photos should look something like this:
If your photos don't show well, buyers won't pick it to view and agents won't pick it to send to their clients. Remember, this is a full contact sport so make sure your photos make the impression they need to make.
Once you have good photos, you can make a great looking flyer rather easily in several different programs to place at your listing. If you still think it's better to have a listing without a flyer, you haven't done a very good job keeping up with the changing needs of today's buyers.
So now you have a well priced listing, great photos and a great flyer, but, you haven't done anything except the bare minimum (actually, not enough in my opinion) to market a home. You need a virtual tour. And a website for that home. We do them for all of our listings, I make my own, but, most agents will need to purchase one. The single property website should be the absolute authoritative source of information for the property and the virtual tour should be the same thing except unbranded as most MLS systems require no contact information about the listing broker. If possible, the single property website should spotlight the neighborhood as well as the house, contain the seller's property disclosure, a survey or plat if available and anything else that me be helpful to help get a buyer engaged in the listing. Several interactive virtual floorplans are available that you can add as well. This single property website we almost have completed for a listing in Churchill Downs willl be used after the home sells to market to the neighborhood, but, since it is winter, we cannot obtain decent neighborhood photos. You can view it here: Homes in Churchill Downs.
You also need to take a little extra time and consider what your marketing looks like to a buyer when they are in front of or driving by your new listing. I'm talking about your yard sign. Are you still using something little that sticks in the ground just by stepping on a stake? Stop. Immediately. That's so - 1990's. And cheap. It says "Hey, I'm for sale, but, I'm just like the rest of the houses for sale in the neighborhood". You need to actually market your listing. It needs to stand out. Some people advocate custom signs for each listing and I think they are a great idea, but, you need to make sure they meet certain legal requirements so if you can't do those, at least use a large 4 X 4 post and sign that will not look like the neighbors sign on a little stake.
Many people are now saying that we need to include videos for our listings. I'd agree, but, I'll leave video for another post because at this time, it's quite expensive and/or time consuming to create one that actually looks professional. They almost all look like something on America's Funniest Video and I'm not going to do that to any of my sellers. I'm currently investigated several video editing programs and a few cameras that may be more effective. Let's just say this: You can't use a flip phone or camera to take a real listing video.
So we now have some marketing materials for offline and online for use in the full contact sport of listing real estate. How can you get these materials out to agents and to buyers?
One of the most effective contact tools available to us is our email database. Do not be afraid to use it unless of course, you can predict the future and already know where the buyer will come from. If you don't, you need to enlist the help of your database. Contact them. If you have been selling real estate for a while, you might already have a large list of people who don't sell real estate for a living. If so, use it. Email your database your listing. Send them a link to your single property website. Make sure that you contact as many people as possible and ask them to contact anyone they might know who is looking for a home. If you set it up right, you should think of your database as your friends and advocates on your behalf. We send flyers to our database and it is very large, but, we have been at it for a while. We create our own, but, there are readily available companies and templates that you can use. For us, the decision to create seamless branding trumped a more generic flyer that could be purchased so we spent the necessary time to create a custom flyer. The email we send looks like this:
In the past, I used to consider emailing flyers to agents as spam and while I still do to a certain degree, I no longer feel that it is completely unwarranted to send other agents new listings. I am not going to leave any stone unturned looking for a buyer for a listing. Just make sure that you have a readily available unsubscribe link in your email. Agents sell real estate for a living and we need to target them just as we need to target buyers - by contacting them directly.
Two other methods of contacting potential buyers and agents that I see more and more agents getting away from is holding homes open on Sundays and holding broker-agent caravans. This is not only missing potential buyers and agents with buyers, it's just plain lazy. There is no reason not to hold homes open. If you have held open houses in the past and had little success, you may need to reevaluate how you marketed the open house. Times have changed. People don't just come out of the woodwork. You must give a little push. Contact. Full contact. Every way possible. Directional signs, internet advertising (Google Adwords is great for this), newspaper...do what it takes.
If you are an agent and you are reading this post, you might think that marketing a home like this is too time consuming and at some point you will reach a place where you feel you have diminishing returns for your investment of time and money. That's true - if the home doesn't sell. In fact, taking the listing in the first place is by definition diminishing returns if it doesn't sell so prepare wisely- and take listings wisely. The process of listing a home utilizing all of the methods outlined above takes me about 10-15 hours from meeting the seller, going over the marketing and market statistics, taking the photos, editing the photos, setting up the websites, creating your print and email flyers, placing the sign in the ground and syndicating the listing to all of the effective internet venues that potential buyers are using to look for homes. Of course, if you don't do any of these things, it will take longer the first time, but, once you do it and become efficient, you can ensure that your home shows like a model and presents itself better than the competition to more buyers and other agents.
Otherwise, you may need to consider becoming a buyers agent.
Hi, and welcome to our Atlanta real estate blog. Whether you are a consumer, journalist or another real estate professional please feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment. You will find relevant local and national real estate information as well as market statistics, insight and information about various neighborhoods and listings. If you would like more information about something in particular, please use the contact form and I will be glad to help.
Ryan Ward, Principal
Premier Atlanta Real Estate
Phone: 404.630.3187
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Share15 Responses to "Listing Real Estate is a Full Contact Sport"
Hi Mark, The website....I host them on subdomains for one site, but, for some neighborhoods, I'll buy a domain for a neighborhood instead of a property address and redirect it to the subdomain. I'm going for as much traffic from all sources as possible - including search engines and we will rank for and be found for every subdivision that we get a domain for. Once the website is finished and the home is sold, we'll transfer off of the subdomain and onto the new subdivision website and use it to market more listings to sellr sin that neighborhood. So, when I obtain the listing, I'll usually explain that it will take 3-4 days from right then to have all marketing complete. Sometimes it takes a little more with bad weather for photos or something. Anyway, I buy the domain name when we get the listing. It takes 12-24 hours before we can use it, but, we have other things to do so we aren't waiting like taking and editing the photos, creating a flyer, doing the 800 info hotline. The website takes about 15 minutes to install with the plugins, 10 minutes to upload the photos, 20 minutes to edit the site on the domain, etc...so the actual site takes about 1 to 2 hours total. Copying the site for the unbranded version for the virtual tour takes about 20 minutes.
Posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 3:07 PM.
Well done Ryan! Pictures are key to selling real estate listings. You must have a photography background, becuase my photos never come out that nice. That Atlantic Station living room picture belongs in an elegant home magazine.
Posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 8:21 AM.
Listing photos are so important and you do take great pictures Ryan. The living room is especially good because you've captured the details of the ceiling and molding for those finely tuned buyers. I like the ideal of neighborhood sites/domains because they can age as opposed to a domain that is specific to one property...but I haven't drilled it down to that level yet. I know its a good thing...but there are only so many hours in a day and here I am at 12:30 p.m. catching up.
Posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 11:30 PM.
Ryan I must say I am quite frustrated with your fellow selling agents. I have good credit and I will be buying a house, but these people are delusional. My wife and I put an offer on a recent listing at 90% of OLP and their counter was 100% with some closing costs and the refrigerator! When is negotiating vigorously for your client a FAIL? When you run off your only offer. We know that if they do not sell for 30 days they will be back. We are just irritated by the fact that this agent is saying their house is better than the comps of a year ago. When the last two homes in that neighborhood sold (the only two) the Dow was at 12000 and 11500 and our economic collapse was a rumor. Today the Dow is at 7500. Do Agents like to pretend that 2009 is not different than 2008? Obama has come into office and moved from a message of hope and change to one of grim perseverance in the face of a multi year recovery. No one I respect in economic circles thinks we are close to a bottom at this point. It does not mean we are going to wait to buy, for the sake of my marriage I am out of this apartment, it means that I will not purchase a house that does not represent a value. Comps from 2006 and 2007 are NOT VALID! Agents who represent to their sellers that this market has them in the drivers seat are doing their clients a disservice.
Posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 6:47 AM.
Hi Clayton, I'm on my way in to the office, but, will respond to you about your frustrations in just a bit. Your sentiment is not uncommon and I would like to address it...
Posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 6:55 AM.
You do an excellent job with your pictures. The living room shot is great and I really enjoy the way you set up the posting!
Posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 2:07 PM.
Ryan, As for Open Houses, in this area, they just aren't generating much interest. I went to an Open House for a 3/2 2000 SQ. 4.6 acres lakefront home a few weeks ago. I was the only person (agent or prospective buyer) that showed up. The house was marketed well in my opinion and that price wasn't too far off what it should be, but nobody still showed up...ALL DAY!!! As for the broker open...I have tried to conduct a few of these, but brokers will only come if there are prices and full lunches.
Posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 9:28 AM.
I agree completely with you, Ryan - no one should take a passive approach to marketing their listings. The more pics you havem the better (I'm even guilty of skipping over listings with only one or two pics, so I know my buyers do it too!) & I am still a firm believer in open houses & broker tours/opens.
Posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 11:09 AM.
The living room embodies a wholly original concept: a melding comfort, culture, classic design and modernisation.
Posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 6:24 AM.
Great information. Your pictures do look great and it does make all the difference. The pictures are the first impression one has to go on so you better make them as impressive as possible.
Posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 1:14 PM.
I absolutely agree that pictures are the key to success!!! I (almost never) will look at a listing that doesn't have pictures or has has pictures of poor quality. Time is money these days and we need to make it to where potential buyers can briefly review listings and be able to quickly pick out homes they are interested in. One good picture is all it takes to pique interest.
Posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 12:04 PM.
Ryan, I've been saying this for years professional photography will help drive traffic to listings which will result in more offers for your clients. My parents are purchasing a home in Las Vegas and all they do is complain about all the photo's of the properties they see on the internet. We are experts and we need to act like one. When I bring in a professional photographer it makes me look like a professional in the sellers eyes. It's the 75-100 I spend. By the way your photo's are amazing.
Posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 8:53 PM.
I read this post a few months ago and I wanted a refresher, so I came and read it again. Great stuff. I appreciate you taking the time. I really need to reevaluate the listings I accept and the marketing I do for them.
Posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 2:12 PM.
Listing real estate is actually about going out and selling these days. Your right, you have to be aggressive.
Posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 AM.
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Ryan, I love the single property photo website. Very sharp. How long does it take to create that website for a listing once you the initial template created? Do you need to buy a domain name for every subdivision?
Posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 12:56 PM.