You've taken a listing and posted it to the MLS. Beyond the MLS, what marketing really works for selling that home? It seems that anything beyond the MLS listing is just to make a seller "feel good". There are flyers in the yard box, local "real estate guides", newspaper, craigslist, facebook, magazines, and other types of advertising media. All of which certainly get the propery in front of people, but, I would guess rarely result in a buyer?

Good showing and staging would seem to me a much more effective form of marketing a property than any of the above. A super clean home that smells good and is tastefully decorated with no cosmetic defects is what I like to see when house shopping. If I find a home that is cleaner than I keep mine, smells better with no cosmetic problems, and is decorated better than what I'm used to, it's a home I "desire" while a home that's cluttered, personalized, poorly decorated, smells of pets, or has a sticky patio door it drops off my consideration. However, this form of marketing, especially in an occupied home, seems largely out of the control of the selling agent. We can encourage, but few sellers will actually go "all in" in preparing their home for sale.

Open house? Seems almost pointless for the seller (yes, I realize an occasional sale occurs soley because an open house was held, but I wonder why a buyer would not have otherwise found that home without the open house).

During the housing boom, seems you post to the MLS and sell. During our current bust, seems price is king and more important than any local marketing techniques.

I would love to hear your thoughts :)

Dan

I agree that price is king and the MLS. But recently I had an offer on a vacant lot listing that was found by a buyer on the internet from my property website. They already had their own agent who helped them make the offer, but that's how they found the lot. Their agent didn't find it for them.

I agree, Dan.

The key to selling a house is price and condition, how well it shows. The days of just putting a home in the MLS, sitting back, and waiting for the offers are over. Even though you do need to do many things to get the listing in front of as many eyes as possible, price will get buyers to take that next step to request a shbowing. And the condition will help them decide if they want to make an offer or not.

Terry
http://www.terryiwaniw.com

When you place a home on the market it is at war with all the other homes, doing battle on the Internet on hundreds of websites. It needs to be presented in a way that attracts live buyers to visit it over the other available homes. That means paying careful attention to syndication, re-uploading photos to all sites that downsample them through the syndicators so they look better than the competition, full motion video, state-of-the-art photography using the best equipment and software, manually uploading the listing to the many sites that don't receive syndication, designing websites for the home, interactive floor plans, virtual tours, e-mailing links to the home to all the agents, snail-mailing brochures to all the neighbors. In short - total saturation and premium quality.

If you think it is sufficient to dump your listing on the MLS and wait for it to sell, I advise you to work with buyers. Number one, you won't get many listings because agents like me will be blowing you out the door on listing presentations. And number two, what few listings you get will not sell because they look like crappy little dumps compared to mine.

navarac said: "When you place a home on the market it is at war with all the other homes, doing battle on the Internet on hundreds of websites. It needs to be presented in a way that attracts live buyers to visit it over the other available homes. That means paying careful attention to syndication, re-uploading photos to all sites that downsample them through the syndicators so they look better than the competition, full motion video, state-of-the-art photography using the best equipment and software, manually uploading the listing to the many sites that don't receive syndication, designing websites for the home, interactive floor plans, virtual tours, e-mailing links to the home to all the agents, snail-mailing brochures to all the neighbors. In short - total saturation and premium quality."

Fantastic listing presentation! Can you identify any individual components that stand out as being a significant factor in selling a property (besides the obvious posting to the MLS)? Like, what is the top thing you would do if you could do no others?

Navarac said: "If you think it is sufficient to dump your listing on the MLS and wait for it to sell, I advise you to work with buyers."

I don't think that. Can I still work with sellers?

Navarac said: "Number one, you won't get many listings because agents like me will be blowing you out the door on listing presentations."

Yeah, you've posted a nice listing presentation for sure. I'm really interested in what specific marketing item besides the MLS is the most effective for you?

Navarac said: "And number two, what few listings you get will not sell because they look like crappy little dumps compared to mine."

That's the part where you lose me. I took nice pictures. . .

I don't get your attitude? Maybe you could have said, "There really isn't any one thing that is most effective that I know of. . .so, what I do is everything I can think of, as a package, and hope that something I did, above and beyond the MLS listing significantly contributed to a sale" and be done with it?

Rush has a good brain, nice to see it in action.

Hi~

I have found that taking homes to where the buyers are is our biggest key to success. (Aside from the obvious pricing)

Our listing package includes:

Current HD photos

A Facebook fan page (Facebook gets more hits each day than Google)

You Tube video ( You Tube is the number two search engine in the world

Custom domain name and website for the home including neighborhood information.

Links to over twenty top search engines

Interactive sign rider that leads people to website, youtube and facebook.

Agent feedback with relevant questions like: what did your clients think of the home? Pricing? Neighborhood? To give our clients a perspective that is not ours.

Weekly updates via email including neighborhood updates.

We are selling homes in neighborhoods saturated with long term listing in sixty days or less (WITH Price adjustments assessed every third week!)

So this is not just to make our clients feel good. And guess what? Our Title Company does all the work for a fee!

Best regards,

In this admittedly small sample, it seems that "saturate the internet with dazzling graphics" (to summarize) is a key factor - I'm inclined to agree. . . but what if. . .

So, what if the MLS listing was omitted, but all other marketing was in place (great pictures, videos, yard signs directing to internet, mailers to neighbors, "dial a description", smartphone barcode on the sign to direct, dedicated property website, facebook, craiglist, all major non-MLS web postings, etc) - In other words, remove the MLS listing from an otherwise apparently very successful marketing presentation / saturation. What would happen?

Navarac? Do your 100% all-out marketing, but omit the MLS. . .to what extent would your sales be affected in your best estimate?

I'd think your success rate would be nearly as high at finding a buyer as you got it, well presented, in front of the buyer. Granted, other agents won't bother showing it without the MLS promise of compensation, but buyers, I would think, won't be shy about calling the yardsign phone number to see it. Then again, maybe the ball never start rolling without the MLS presence. . .

There is no justification for doing the bare minimum in any field of endeavor. Either be the best, die trying, or get out of the business.

[quote=navarac]There is no justification for doing the bare minimum in any field of endeavor. Either be the best, die trying, or get out of the business. [/quote]

Quite the go-getter you are. Not quite sure why you "contribute" to these forums. . .I guess maybe you're trying to be the best poster or are going to die trying?

I wasn't really looking for a "spitting contest" with someone, just exploring effective marketing techniques. . .

And that "exploration" consisted of you attempting to advance the absurd view that simple MLS exposure is sufficient to market real estate and that additional efforts were in effect useless, and carried out to "please the seller". Which is of course ludicrous and needed to be described accurately lest other newbies follow that path to the inevitable failure to which it is condemned.

[quote=Rush1169][quote=navarac]There is no justification for doing the bare minimum in any field of endeavor. Either be the best, die trying, or get out of the business. [/quote]

Quite the go-getter you are. Not quite sure why you "contribute" to these forums. . .I guess maybe you're trying to be the best poster or are going to die trying?

I wasn't really looking for a "spitting contest" with someone, just exploring effective marketing techniques. . .[/quote]

I don't know if anyone vcan actually put their fiknger on what works on any given situation, but I agree one must try everything. The key is to get the listing in front of as many eyes as possible. We use all of the tools at our disposal. If somethinjg new comes up or we get a new idea to try, we add it to our marketing plan and then determine how well it works.
But we still retain the tried and true activities.

Terry
http://www.terryiwaniw.com

Not quite sure what navarac's problem is...I don't get the feeling the OP was saying anything of the kind. If anything he's looking for ways to better the service he gives his clients. Isn't that the point? If you want to share what specific things you do that you find are effective, then by all means please do so. If you want to talk in generalities about how great you are and how lousy everyone else is but offer nothing of value...a bathroom mirror would seem a better outlet for your energies.

Anyways, in general I've found the MLS is by far the biggest contributor to traffic on our listings. We do use professional photography, staging, video tours, floorplan tours, etc. We do post the properties with photos and descriptions on non-syndicated sites such as Craigslist, Facebook, etc. Craigslist was getting us good response for a while but thats petered out. Facebook has been worthwhile. If you live near military bases and the property might be attractive to members of the military, there are a few sites out there that provide military specific listings, they've worked for us in the past.

Sending snail mail for listings has had no value for us, and is hugely expensive. We've worked with demographics houses to determine where move-up or move-down buyers might be, and mailed there. We've mailed to local apartment complexes and private rentals for entry-level properties. Some response, but not at all worth the cost. We send out mailer cards for new listings and get open house traffic from it, but that benefits us not the sellers.

Newspaper ads for open houses are marginally effective depending on where you are. Around here, there are a few neighborhoods left where you might find one or two people from the paper out of a group of 15 or so open house groups.

Sending email out to agents with new listings is pointless, and obnoxious IMHO. I get probably 10 of them a day, and just delete them and unsubscribe. If I have buyers looking for a home like yours...I'll find it in the MLS.

I think one thing you might want to look at it where the buyers of the agents that have shown the listing through the MLS have found the property. When we look at the hits and property views on our web-advertisements for our listings. They get looked at...but we get few calls. When you talk to the buyers who come through with their agents from the MLS...often they find the property on their own through our marketing, and then call or email their agents to set up a showing. So, the marketing definitely benefits the seller...you just have to dig a little deeper to find the connected results.

So, beyond the MLS and what gets pulled from it through IDX our most valuable avenues are:

1. Professional photography
2. Customized and premium listings on Realtor.com
3. Property specific websites (if only to track where people linked to the site from, if all the ads link back to the site you can track what site the buyers came from, Trulia, Oodle, whatever)
4. Craigslist
5. Facebook

Hope that helps...

You don't get the "feeling"? Here is the exact quote:



However, I am glad to read that you do more than the bare minimum to market your listings. That is of course the correct way to do business. The more things you do, the higher the probability of success.

I think it should be obvious, once the house show it's best, decent MLS photos, it all comes down to price. Finding motivated sellers who will PRICE THEIR HOME TO SELL is where the smart agents go, rather than simply taking listings.

You can have the best professional photos, best virtual tours, face book etc etc.but if there are 10 similar homes priced better with more motivated sellers than yours then you are only going to make a sale every now and then because of your "smart marketing" by someone who happens to look at your Facebook, for example and does not bother to shop around the MLS. (doesn't happen often enough)

The MLS works because the agents are doing all the work by working with the clients through the MLS. Sales people sell houses NOT websites and Facebookies gimmicks. If you doubt that then why not start up your own FSBO website with your professional this and that and your Facebook Farce and your virtual tours and take over the industry and make the MLS go broke? You know why? SALESPEOPLE SELL THE HOUSES, THROUGH THE MLS not all the other gimmicks presented by other salespeople trying to take your money. This is why "mere postings" with 1% to selling broker does not work.

It's been said, real-estate agents and doctors are the easiest to be sold and it us true.



Having said all this, the gimmicks are what have been called " listing tools" for over 20 years now. It may make you feel special that no one else is doing what you are doing. It may help fool the seller about really works so you can take more listings but that is not the topic of this thread.

The reality is, if you found 100 motivated sellers who must sell and were willing to price their home to sell, present the home decent, decent photos......guess what.......? You will have yourself 100 sold listings!!!!!

Everything else is a smokescreen attempting to hide this one and only truth!