|
|
| |
Marketing
"Do not hide your candle under a bushel, but set it upon a hill that it may be a light to all who pass."
If no one knows your house is for sale, it stands to reason no buyer will find you. It isn't enough merely to stick a sign in the yard, or even have your realtor place a listing in MLS, although those are both very good, indeed essential, things to do. But there are signs by the truckload and you can view some 13,000 listings in MLS on any given day. Think yours is likely to stand out without some additional effort? Probably not.
That is why at TeamSold we sit down with you as soon as you have listed with us, and together we map out a clear and detailed Marketing plan that encompasses multiple venues and utilizes many tools to "set your candle upon a hill".
The first tool we have that sets us apart from the Marketing pack is that we are just that, a Team, and we bring a collective approach, from several angles, utilizing multiple talents and specialties, all working together to showcase your home. We hold open-house tours for area realtors, giving them incentives-food works!-for them to show up and see how wonderful your property is, and how perfect it will be for that special buyer of theirs. We also, with your consent, hold open houses when potential buyers, with or without their agents, can stop by for a tour. Naturally, these are widely advertised through the mass media.
And speaking of advertising, we are happy to spend considerable dollars favorably positioning your property in effective publications like the News & Observer and the Real Estate Book, among others. We coordinate these ads with featured positioning of your house on TeamSold's website, as well as our company's home website, visited regularly by more than 500 Fonville Morisey agents. Of course, we put up a sign in your yard-two of them if you live on a golf course!—as well as directional signs pointing to the property from adjacent roads and streets (where permitted-some municipalities are cracking down on multiple signs).
We also help you present your house in its most favorable light. Occasionally that involves suggestions that you move furniture about to create more open or inviting spaces for people walking through. We may ask permission to add a lamp or rug from our inventory. We may even get up close and personal by asking you to get the kids to keep their rooms a little neater and straighter. We'll even ask you, if need be! After all, it's your house we're trying to sell.
If the yard is cluttered or overgrown, we may suggest you break out your gardening tools one weekend soon. And if the paint is dingy or peeling in places inside or outside, that's another thing a little elbow grease and a modest investment in paint can rectify.
If you have fluorescent purple carpeting in your great room—and the condo our sailor son is right now trying to buy at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington has just that!—we will probably point out that while you and we think it's lovely, it may present as something of a rude shock to unsuspecting buyers who pop in the front door. Yours may be one of those cases where new carpeting will pay you a bonus on closing day.
New carpet and fresh paint, when needed, are two relatively modest investments that do more often than not pay for themselves and then some, both in boosting your home's value and its final sales price, as well as significantly reducing the time between listing and sale. Step back and take an honest look at your carpet and paint, and see whether this advice is for you.
Generally speaking, however, we at TeamSold do not encourage major, last-minute renovations simply for the sake of a quicker or richer sale. It just doesn't usually pay you a premium, or even return dollar-for-dollar.
What does work is commonsense cleaning, straightening and sprucing up, cooperating with realtors by making your house easy to show (being willing to accommodate short-notice showings is really a good idea—you never know when the buying iron is just the right temperature to strike), and working hand in glove with your listing agent to execute a coordinated, innovative and imaginative campaign designed to turn your candle into a spotlight that, like the openings at Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, attracts people from miles around.
And that's the ticket: To generate a level of excitement and urgency that will spur the right buyer to bring you a great offer right now, today! May I modestly suggest that people who have listed with TeamSold will tell you we are pretty good at it.
|
|
|
