If you haven’t bought or sold a home in a while, you’ll find real estate has changed. HOW? Roughly 90% of homes sold last year were first found – not by Realtors, not in print ads and not by word-of-mouth but on the Internet.
Don’t misunderstand – once there is an offer, little in real estate has changed. The skills to negotiate, to act solely on behalf of a client, these are still job requirements at the heart of being a Realtor. Now, with the Internet so much a part of real estate, even the broker’s old primary tool – the “MLS” has changed.
The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is no longer proprietary. The information in the MLS is now available to everyone, not just licensed real estate professionals. Windermere as a brokerage house has also evolved by providing their brokers a complete arsenal of technical tools available from no other Northwest real estate company. It appears size does matter. Add to this the emergence of the smart phone and it becomes essential brokers have broad technological experience.
• HOW BUYERS SEARCH THE INTERNET FOR REAL ESTATE
There are four ways buyers search for homes:
THE SHOTGUN - A buyer can simply go to Google and type – “98584 waterfront property” and hits enter. As with a shotgun, you will hit all sorts of unintended targets.
TARGETED SEARCH – There are a number of real estate search engines designed specifically to find property. Real estate search engine like Zillow or Trulia ask you to fill a search form for the number of bedrooms, baths, price – much more targeted search.
BROKERAGE SEARCH – In order to make a property search more regional, buyers choose a regional brokerage house. There is a similar search form with similar service to general real estate search engines but more regional, targeted results. Don’t worry, you will get all the listing – not just the listings from that brokerage house.
OLD-SCHOOL PERSONAL EXPERIENCE – You can still drive through a neighborhood looking for signs, depend upon friends and family for a reference OR ask an attentive Broker. The percentage of people who do this drops each year but it still happens. If your home is to succeed in changing hands, all four search must be addressed.
• PROPERTY PREPARATION
PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE – Before you sell your car, you wash it, vacuum the inside, and perhaps do some minor repairs – all this so it looks its best. The same is true when you sell a home.
Before you do anything – prepare your property. External cleaning, gardening, and minor repairs are all suggested. Internal cleaning, de cluttering, and home staging are also recommended. Once it is ready for public viewing, the marketing process begins by listing your property.
• STEP 1 – Preliminary House Inspection
GET A PRELIMINARY HOUSE INSPECTION – For most listings, we start with a preliminary house inspection. Having an inspection certificate on the dining room table for all to see goes a long way to reassuring buyers and brokers of a home’s soundness. It also gives sellers the chance to address potential problems before they become issues in the eyes of a prospective buyer.
• STEP 2 – Multiple Listing Service
TAKE PICTURES. When the Internet is as close as a buyer may get to a property, it is essential that pictures show your home at its very best. When a property is listed, it is very important to load into MLS as many professional-grade pictures as possible.
USE THE MLS – Still effective as a central repository for real estate, property information is entered in the MLS. But there is more to it than just putting in data that makes the MLS work. In addition to a well-written property description, pricing targets are important. Property searches are done in 50K blocks and prices should be set with this in mind. Once in the MLS, major real estate search engines will get the listing information as we will see.
• STEP 3 – Street and Water Signage
PUT UP A SIGN – Within 24 hours of listing a home, a FOR SALE sign is put on the street and a lockbox secured near the front door. Waterfront properties also get a sign that is visible from the water… you never know where a buyer might be when they first see your home!
 |
Add to the sign a QR coding, making the sign into an electronic brochure. This enables potential buyers with smart phones to instantly access property information on the Internet. When they scan this two-dimentional barcode, they are taken to the property’s website (see STEP 5). The screen on their cell phone displays pictures, stats, and other information about the house that a brochure alone could never supply. |
• STEP 4 – Brokerage Search
WINDERMERE SCANS THE MLS – Within 20 minutes of entering the listing in the MLS, the property appears on Windermere’s website. For the thousands of web shoppers who use www.Windermere.comlistings are immediately available.
• STEP 5 – Single Property Website
MAKE A WEBSITE – Using your address, create a website exclusively for your listing such as www.123mainstreet.com. This single-property website should include all the details and pictures of the listing. Make sure you register the website with Google, Bing, Yahoo and others to increase the odds of the property showing up in a general Google search. Do not expect any website to be part of the initial message of a homes introduction to the market. It take a while to get established on the Net.
• STEP 6 – Third-Party Search Engines
GET WEBSITE REGISTERED – To address the “targeted search” list a home in the biggest real estate search engines and retail search sites. If the listing is in the MLS, it will generally get there on it’s own but if you are listing “FOR SALE BY OWNER”, register at each website.
The short list is:
• Zillow.com (largest real estate site in the world and based in Seattle)
• Frontdoor.com (national website of HGTV)
• Trulia.com (second largest national search site based in San Francisco)
• Yahoo.real estate.com (soon to be completely united to Trulia.com)
• RealTown.com (national real estate search site based in San Diego)
• Relo Home Search (national relocation service based in Chicago)
• Craigs List (largest national self-retail website)
This step simply takes time and money, but the property’s listing is usually available for buyers within 48 hours.
Retail websites, like CraigsList are used not to find buyers but to increase the visibility of the single-property website. The more links to the property’s website, the better Google, Bing, and Yahoo display the site in search results. Since these retail sites are so busy, they are a good way to increase the traffic.
Another way to increase web traffic is with social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. Once the single-property website is connected to a social network, the synergy you get on the Internet is multiplied 10 fold.
Google’s search results also favor those websites registered with “Google Places.” Once the registration process is completed, a map of the property’s location is provided for the single-property website.
•STEP 7 – Broker Open House
OPEN YOUR HOUSE TO NEIGHBORS – The more people who see your house the better. Brokers are invited to tour a home with personal email invitations, just in case they have a interested buyer. Neighbors can also tell friends – you never know.
•STEP 8 – E-Flyers
E-FLYERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE – Even experienced real estate brokers are surprised when they learn how many properties are sold to friends, colleagues, and associates of the homeowner.
Most sellers will mention in passing that they are selling a home. When asked where it is, I encourage them to send a professionally looking E-flyer that includes pictures, maps, property description, and other pertinent info.
•STEP 9 – Blog
BLOG – It’s a little like a news paper article – short and sweet. There are a number of websites used to “blog” real estate listings. ActiveRain , Real Estate Marbles and Real Town are the largest and the easiest to use to get the word out.
This will bring attention to the property website and move your listing towards the top of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Timely bloging subjects you may consider writing is how the landscaping looks this time of year (include pictures), community events near your home and how recent improvements are benefiting you.
•STEP 10 – Listing Maintenance
MAINTAIN YOUR WEB PRESENTS – The process of listing a home is not a static event but a process. The property website must be submitted to worldwide search engines, directories, and other indexing sites every two weeks to create a web presence. CraigsList must also be manually “reposted” every week to keep a listing on the first page of the real estate listings.
• ADD YOUR OWN STEP 11
BE BOLD – INOVATE – EVOLVE
If you have an idea how to add or modify these “10 STEPS TO MARKET REAL ESTATE”, I’m happy to hear your ideas. The single lesson I learned from 25 years in the computer industry is someone knows more than you do about some part of technology. Share what you know and we will learn together.
• SO WHAT DO YOU THINK
Listing real estate is not just typing information into the MLS, buying a couple of magazine ads, and then waiting for something good to happen. Listing property in today’s market requires technology and more dedication of time and experience.
Technology is not an option – it’s the way it’s done.
What do you think about “10 STEPS TO MARKET REAL ESTATE”. If you think I’m on the right track, there is a “Facebook – LIKE” button at the top of this page. Please use it. It tells me more about the kinds of ways I can help.
Or, E-mail me with your suggestions, comments and questions: mostyn@Windermere.com. I’d love to hear from you.
|
