If you haven’t bought or sold a home recently, real estate has changed.
According to the National Association of Realtors, 90% of homes sold last year were first found on the Internet. That’s because 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. That changes a 150 year tradition Americans have come to depend upon. The business of real estate has changed so much in Mason County, the number of Realtors has dropped from 248 in 2008 to about 79 in 2012. Add to this the Internet, the emergence of the smart phone and the decline of magazines and newspapers, and it becomes important to understand how this new system of selling real estate works.
• HOW BUYERS SEARCH THE INTERNET FOR HOMES
THE SHOTGUN - A buyer can simply go to Google, type what they want and hit enter. As with a shotgun, you will hit all sorts of unintended targets.
TARGETED SEARCH – Real estate search engines, like Zillow or Trulia, ask you to fill
out a search form for the number of bedrooms, baths, price – you get targeted results without much regional flare.
BROKERAGE SEARCH – In order to make a property search more regional, buyers choose a regional brokerage house like Windermere.com. Don’t worry, you will get all the listings – not just the listings from Windermere.
What do Internet shoppers look for:
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Professional photographs – important, as first impressions are key
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Dedicated website – showing off the best of each home
with lots of photos inside and out
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Informative descriptions – appealing descriptions that
invite shoppers to want to see more
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You Tube videos – although not necessary, videos do sell
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Documentation – links to county records, history, disclosure forms
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3D Google Maps – so they can see the neighborhood, roads, access to stores etc.
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Custom QR-Codes – to quickly store information about a particular home in a smart phone
The single most critical moment in selling a home is to move a buyer from their screen to your living room. So first, remember if an Internet shopper does not see your listing, they cannot consider it. Then, the better they think they know your home, the more comfortable they are to take the next step.
PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE. Before you sell your car, you wash it. Before you do anything – prepare your property. Cleaning, gardening, and minor repairs, de-cluttering and home staging are all recommended. Get ready for photographs – the camera will determine how many people will see your home.
Now you are ready to start the process.
• STEP 1 – PROFESSIONAL REALTOR
To choose the right Realtor, interview them. Call each local brokerage and ask the managing broker to send the person who they think is best qualified. There are a few things you should expect.
To determine your “market position”, each Realtor will research comparable homes, look at competing listings and compute the area’s “square foot value”. Tell them your situation. They are there to represent your interests, not theirs.
This is a buyers market – price is important. Remember: real estate is worth what someone will pay for it and generally speaking, it’s about 40% less than paid five years ago.
Price is proportional to time of the market. Higher the price – the longer it will take to sell. If you need to sell your home quickly, tell your Realtor. By positioning your listing lower in the range of comparable homes, your Realtor can speed up the process.
Internet property searches are generally done in 50K blocks and prices should be set with this in mind. A price of $201,000 will be missed in a search for property 150-200K.
Most important, it’s your decision. Who should represent you and what price they should offer are separate decisions. Do not choose a Realtor just because you like their price. Another Realtor may have done better research but may be difficult to work with. The Realtor with the best plan, the one whom you feel most comfortable is generally your Realtor.
• STEP 2 – PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS
YOUR REATOR WILL TAKE PICTURES – DIGITALLY. When the Internet is as close as a buyer may get to your property, it is essential that pictures look professional and show your home at its very best. To look professional “photographic software” like Abobe Photoshop is a must. It is the professional touches that software like this puts into the photos that makes them look “professional” on the Internet. That’s because software is designed to make modifications to overcome the low resolution, glare and back lit nature of computer monitors that distort color and shadow.
• STEP 3 – SINGLE PROPERTY WEBSITES
MAKE A WEBSITE – A single-property website can include as many pictures as necessary (not just the 15 allowed by the MLS) with full descriptions, links to county documentation, nested video tours – whatever an
interested buyer needs to see.
The website is then “registered” with Google, Bing, Yahoo and others. Remember, if a buyer does not see your listing, it cannot be considered.
• STEP 4 –MLS LISTING
GET IT LISTED – Complete and precise information is the key. Since the MLS listing is no longer just for agents but for the world, preparation and research are important. When all the data has been entered, all the photos have been uploaded and the Realtor hits the ENTER key, it sets off a series of events.
• STEP 5 – BROKERAGE SCAN
WINDERMERE SCANS THE MLS – Within 20 minutes of entering the listing in the MLS, it appears on the Windermere website. For the thousands of web shoppers who use www.Windermere.com listings, your home is immediately available.
For those real estate shoppers who want to be among the first to know what’s new on the market, you can get “Email Alerts” sent to your computer. It’s a free service many Realtors offer and at Windermere,
you will receive an alert within 30 minutes from when the listing is entered into the MLS.
• STEP 6 – THIRD-PARTY SEARCH ENGINES
GET WEBSITE NOTICED – Within four hours of listing your property, third-party search engines are sent MLS data. Your listing will appear, usually within 24 hours, depending upon the sophistication of the search engine.
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
will be completely united with Trulia.com)
• RealTown.com (national real estate search site based in San Diego)
• STEP 7 – SIGNAGE
PUT UP A SIGN – Within 24 hours of listing a home, a FOR SALE sign should appear on the street and a lockbox secured near the front door. Waterfront properties also gets a sign visible from the water… you never know where a buyer might be when they first see your home!
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Add to the sign a QR code unique to the listing, making the sign into an electronic brochure. This enables potential buyers with smart phones to instantly access property information on the Internet.
When they take a picture of this two-dimensional barcode, they
are taken to the property’s website, the listing broker’s telephone, a digital brochure – all with a touch of a button.
The screen on their cell phone can display pictures, stats, and other information that a brochure alone could never supply.
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• STEP 8 – OPEN HOUSE
OPEN THE 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 an interested buyer. Neighbors can also tell friends
and colleagues – you never know where a buyer may come from.
• STEP 9 – 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.
While at a dinner party, sporting event or just in the grocery store line, most sellers will mention in passing they are selling their home. When asked where it is, how much and other questions, I encourage sellers to offer to send them an E-flyer that includes pictures, maps, property description, and other pertinent info.
•STEP 10 – SEO
Property listings are usually available for buyers on the Net within 24-48 hours. The work of promoting your listing to make certain your website appears on the front page of a Google search can take weeks. A technologically savvy Realtor will spend the time and money to keep up with the current algorithms for search engine optimization (SEO).
Retail websites like CraigsList are used not to find buyers, but to increase visibility. The more links to the property’s website, the better Google, Bing, and Yahoo display the site in search results.
• Relo Home Search (national relocation service based in Chicago)
• CraigsList (largest national self-retail website)
Social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter are used to draw attention to your listing. Once the single-property website is connected to a social network, the synergy you get on the Internet is multiplied 10 fold.
Google Places – 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.
BLOGS – Blogs are a little like a newspaper article – short and sweet. There are a number of websites that use “blog ed” real estate listings. ActiveRain , Real Estate Marbles and Real Town are the largest and the easiest to use to get the word out.
All this will bring attention to the property website and move your listing towards the top of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Timely blogging subjects like how the landscaping looks this time of year (include pictures), community events near your home and how recent improvements are benefiting the home all help Internet shoppers find your listing
The process of listing a home is also not a static event but a process. The property website must be re-submitted to worldwide search engines, directories, and other indexing sites every two weeks to create a web presence. CraigsList must also be manually “re-posted” every week to keep a listing on the first page of the real estate listings – and so on.
BE BOLD – INNOVATE – EVOLVE
Listing real estate is not just typing information into the MLS any more or buying a couple of magazine ads, and waiting for something good to happen. Listing property in today’s market requires technology and more dedication of time and experience.
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