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        <title>Atlanta Real Estate Blog</title>
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        <description>Atlanta real estate blog. Consumer focused real estate information for Atlanta and information and insight into local and national topics. Areas of interest include; Buckhead, Sandy Springs, Roswell &amp; Alpharetta. North Metro Atlanta.</description>
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            <author>ryan@premieratlantarealestate.com (Ryan C Ward)</author>
            <title>Monte Hewett Resale Home in Great Location - Walk to Marist!</title>
            <description> <![CDATA[ 


Every once in a while, a great home in a great location comes available - this is one of those homes. Located inside the perimeter and just off of Ashford Dunwoody within walking distance of Marist, this 4 bedroom 3 and a half bath home sits in the quiet Brookhaven neighborhood of New Haven off of Harts Mill. As you enter, you immediately notice the bright and open floorplan. From the front door, you notice the 2 story foyer, hardwood floors and you can see through to the kitchen, breakfast room and into the family room.

This is actually the formal dining room that has been decorated to be more of a casual sitting room than a formal dining room as you enter the house. As you walk back, into the kitchen, you will see&nbsp;the extremely useful and usable floorplan with&nbsp;the kitchen adjacent to an informal dining area that is adjacent to the 2 story family room with a second master on the main which could be used as an office/study or guest bedroom. Here are a few pictures that will probably better describe this than I can:







Upstairs, the master is more than spacious - It's expansive and includes a screened porch area outside double doors that open for those nights that just beg for you to sleep with the windows open. Have a look:





Just in case that isn't enough for the master, there is a gorgeous bathroom equipped with a full steam shower that seals shut for a truly relaxing experience and the closet is large and separated into his and her sections. A luxurious suite in a quiet enclave of new homes built by a certified professional home builder.



More Information

In keeping with why we feel we offer the highest level of marketing, you can view more photos and information on the homes own website: Brookhaven homes for sale.

As with all of our marketing, we have taken an opportunity to buy an excellent domain name - brookhavengahomesforsale.com so that when we are finished and this home is sold, we can continue to use a high trafficked dedicated website for more sellers in Brookhaven. Sounds simply, but, we will make sure that this website is THE place to list a home for sale in Brookhaven. We are doine the same thing with another Single property website that will market Crooked Creek homes for sale in the same way.

You can always just give me a call directly if you would like to go and see this home or just want a little more information about it. It really is a great home in a great location that is priced to sell. Next door, there is a FSBO for sale - very similar on an unfinished basement for about $60,000 more than this one. If you are looking in this area, you need to see this home.
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            <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2009 22:39:07 -0400</pubDate>
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            <guid>http://www.premieratlantarealestate.com/blog/listing-real-estate-is-a-full-contact-sport.html</guid>
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            <author>ryan@premieratlantarealestate.com (Ryan C Ward)</author>
            <title>Listing Real Estate is a Full Contact Sport</title>
            <description> <![CDATA[ 
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&nbsp;will be&nbsp;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&nbsp;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&nbsp;poor first&nbsp;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&nbsp;the home&nbsp;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&nbsp;photos make&nbsp;the impression&nbsp;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&nbsp;single property website&nbsp;we&nbsp;almost have&nbsp;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 &quot;Hey, I'm for sale, but, I'm just like the rest of the houses for sale in the neighborhood&quot;. 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,&nbsp;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&nbsp;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&nbsp;we now have some marketing materials for offline and online&nbsp;for use in&nbsp;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&nbsp;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&nbsp;me about 10-15&nbsp;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.
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            <pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:46:36 -0500</pubDate>
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