Creating demand for your home is a crucial step in selling your home fast and for top dollar. Drive dozens of buyers to your home using the following lead generation strategies.

1. Let the world know your home is for sale using the world’s fastest communication medium, the internet. There are many powerful tools online to [...]]]>

Creating demand for your home is a crucial step in selling your home fast and for top dollar. Drive dozens of buyers to your home using the following lead generation strategies.

1. Let the world know your home is for sale using the world’s fastest communication medium, the internet. There are many powerful tools online to get the word out that your home is for sale. Sites like trulia, zillow, postlets and many other. Some are only for agents and yes, not all agents use these sites don’t ask me why. The most powerful sites have a RSS feature that uploads your listing to many other sites with a click of a button. Not only is the feature a time saver, it maximizes exposure for your home online. More traffic, more leads, more cash in your pocket.

2. Market your home to buyer’s agents. 90% of the showings on your home will be done by buyer’s agents, not listing agents. It is a huge misconception that seller’s agents will personally bring buyers through the home. The best way to do this is to find local brokerages and deliver flyers to the agents in that office.

3. Offer a tour of homes. It used to be that car dealerships, jewelers and other retailers would build their businesses far away from each other to fight competition. After being in business for a while, they realized they would be much better by building their businesses close to each other. This increased traffic and made up for customers going for the competition. Similarly you’d be better off by offering more than one home as buyers will be more likely to go out and spend an afternoon looking at various homes instead of just one.

4. Prepare your home for sale. Driving traffic through your home will be almost useless if your home has no emotional appeal. There are many things you can do without hiring a professional stager that  can increase your home’s worth. Start out with the outside. Take a look at your home from the car on the sidewalk. This is the view you buyers get and the true first impression of your house. Trim trees, bushes, mow the lawn, plant some flowers to add color to your home.

Last, pay close attention to the front door area. These is the area where most home buyers hang out waiting for the door to be opened. It is often left vulnerable to the nitpickings of home buyers.

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Your success in selling your home depends on being able to bring buyers to see it. Drive dozens of buyers to your home using the following strategies, find a place to market, communicate your message, talk to the right people.

Find A Place To Market

1. Let the world know your home is for sale using [...]]]>

Your success in selling your home depends on being able to bring buyers to see it. Drive dozens of buyers to your home using the following strategies, find a place to market, communicate your message, talk to the right people.

Find A Place To Market

1. Let the world know your home is for sale using the world’s fastest communication medium, the internet.
The tools you have available online alone can be overwhelming. Depending on your market, some of these mediums will be highly competitive while others won’t be. Your listing should be placed in the various free classified sites such as craigslist, backpage, kijiji, and others.

You should also upload your listing to sites like trulia and zillow. Like these sites there are many that offer RSS (real simple syndication) to post your listing in different websites all over the internet.

Last, you should also consider writing a blog about your listing to drive traffic to it.

2. Newspapers are not out of print yet, and may be the source of your next buyer.
As hard as it is to believe, there are still many home buyers who search the newspaper classifieds to look for homes. You should not ignore this medium if you want to increase the number of buyers going to see your home.

3. Networking with neighbors can be speedy with flyers.
So maybe you don’t know your neighbors, but that’s not the point. You can create a flyer and go for a walk in the neighborhood letting people know that your home is for sale. Many times your neighbors will know friends or relative looking to move in the area. They may just want them to live close to them so don’t discard this option.

4. Go where the buyers are already… with the agents.
As much as you’d like to avoid talking to agents, many of them are working with buyers. Don’t scare off agents by trying to save on the full commission. All the agent wants is to get paid for selling the home, and if you can get the agent to bring a buyer, then they’ll do all the work and you save the listing side of the commission. You can deliver flyers to real estate brokerages and have them go to all the agent’s inboxes to leverage your time.

5. For sale sign.
Your for sale sign is a lead generator, but most FSBOs don’t treat it like that. Your sign should be making offers to buyers to get them to pick up the phone and contact you. This leads me to the message you must deliver to make all these mediums work.

Communicate Your Message.

The reason why most sellers fail at selling on their own, is because they don’t have a clue on marketing. Getting a buyer to pick up the phone and call you is very different than making a buyer aware that your home is for sale.

The buyer doesn’t care about you or your home. The buyer cares about themselves and the deal they are looking for. A home buyer doesn’t walk around and say, I want to buy a house and pay over market value for it.

No way!

Buyers say things more along the lines of “will they take an offer $40,000 below their asking?”

Always looking for a bargain.

Turn around and echo back to them… “Buy this home with little or no money down… call for details”

Then we move on to the description of your home.

Again the buyer doesn’t care that you have a new roof, or a water heater. No. They care about the benefits they get from buying your home. The prestige, the emotional feelings.

So your home should be described as “Beautiful family home on a quiet street and child safe neighborhood”… or “exclusive neighborhood, cul-de-sac home….”

Talk about the benefits…

How do you determine that?

Talk To The Right People

If you are going to undertake the role of marketing your home, you must understand that not every home buyer wants to buy your home. Are you selling a home to first time home buyers? Move up buyers? Investors?

All these buyers have different emotional hot buttons you must push to get them to pick up the phone and contact you. A first time home buyer is usually looking for a move in ready clean place, while a move up buyer wants luxury and bigger space.

Always remember, don’t just say the feature, tell the benefits they get from the features. The more you market and expose your home the faster it will sell.

You must combine desirability, demand, and affordability in you home to sell fast and for top dollar.

Today’s focus will be on creating demand for your home. This is not as hard as you may think. Demand for your home will inevitably be the catalyst to drive up the price of your home. This is [...]]]>

You must combine desirability, demand, and affordability in you home to sell fast and for top dollar.

Today’s focus will be on creating demand for your home. This is not as hard as you may think. Demand for your home will inevitably be the catalyst to drive up the price of your home. This is nothing more than supply VS demand. Supply being only one home (yours), and demand being more than one highly interested buyer.

So here it goes…

The way to create demand for your home is to offer buyers what they want.

That’s it…. the big secret is out.

Yet this is the hardest thing any home seller will do. This includes pricing your home correctly. It is everywhere. Home sellers know this intuitively, yet the average home on the market is priced 7% over market value.

But wait, there’s more. Offering price alone is not enough. Oh, no. Home buyers are greedy. This is their weakness. It will be your lure at the end of your hook to reel them in and create demand for your home. Here’s what I mean…

If your home is within the first time home buyer price range, you must go talk to your nearest lender and have them give you different financing options you could offer to a qualified buyer. Specifically have them give you little or no money down financing options so you can offer that to your prospective buyers.

If your home is in a higher price range, you can have the lender give you low monthly payment options such as interest only loans.

Now take note here. The loan doesn’t have to be the one the buyer uses, but the terms will be what will attract the buyer in the first place and once you have them you’ve created demand for your home. It is at that point that desirability and affordability come into play.

Selling your home without an agent can be very appealing when you pocket in the commission you would’ve paid out to that pushy salesperson. Oh yeah, let’s not forget that you would love to rub it in their face how fast you were able to sell your own home without their help. But are [...]]]>

Selling your home without an agent can be very appealing when you pocket in the commission you would’ve paid out to that pushy salesperson. Oh yeah, let’s not forget that you would love to rub it in their face how fast you were able to sell your own home without their help. But are you really prepared to do just that?

Well, let’s test your knowledge…

Here’s what you should already know. Here are the basic skills you must possess if you are planning on humiliating the neighborhood expert and sell your home yourself fast and for top dollar.

1. You must have a good understanding of the market and the latest trends in the mortgage industry that will help you target qualified home buyers to sell your home. Are you in the first time home buyers price range? If so, you must know what types of financing programs are available in your area and find out if there are any special grants offered. You’d be surprised how many buyers don’t research the types of loans available to them and if you are able to offer them a good deal on financing they’ll be more considerate when buying your home.

You should also know if your home is a good cashflow property for an investor and use that as an angle to market your property.

If you are in the upper range or luxury home market you must know the potential buyer traps with jumbo loans and pay closer attention to how qualified the buyer is before accepting an offer and taking it off the market.

2. Know what to do and what not to do to sell your home fast and for top dollar. There are common seller mistakes that are never taken into consideration until the problem arises. Taking the time to prepare your home for sale and doing quick and easy fix ups can save you thousands and avoid traps during the home inspection period.

3. If you have the last two steps taken care of, you should have enough knowledge to market your property. You know what you are going to be offering your prospective buyers and you should know how your home compares against your neighbors. Part of getting to know the market means that you should know the condition of the homes that sold recently, the ones that are under contract, as well as the homes that are for sale. These are your competitors and you should know what type of upgrades they have so you can price your home competitively.

Your marketing materials should not talk about your home. This is the biggest mistake made in real estate. Even professionals make this mistake. You can look at homes being advertised and find that 95% of them are marketed poorly. Your marketing materials should talk about the benefits home buyers get from buying your home.

If you follow this advice your chances of being successful at selling your own home can increase.

Packaging and design kills competitors in many markets. It’s no wonder millions (billions?) are spent on this unseemingly significant part of selling a product. In your case as a home seller, your home is your product and while you can’t change certain things such as location or the floorplan of your home, there are [...]]]>

Packaging and design kills competitors in many markets. It’s no wonder millions (billions?) are spent on this unseemingly significant part of selling a product. In your case as a home seller, your home is your product and while you can’t change certain things such as location or the floorplan of your home, there are many things you can do to increase the desireability for your home.

If you haven’t done so alredy, the most cost effective and easy thing you can do is to remove clutter and put in storage everything you don’t need. If you have books on a book shelf, leave only enough to take up 30-50% of the total book shelf space. In your bedroom closets, leave only enough clothes to take up no more than 30-50% as well. This gives home buyers the illusion that there is tons of space. The closets will seem roomy and they begin to see themselves filling it up with their own stuff.

In sales a great strategy used by the best salesmen is to get the customer to see themselves using the product before they buy it. This is what you accomplish with these tips.

It’s important to neutralize colors and remove any decorations. This will allow the buyer to imagine their own decorations and desired colors.

You must declare war on dust and dirt. There are things you can clean easily that will really lift the look and feel of the home. If you have tile floors, chances of your grout being dirty in the kitchen area and high traffic areas is extremely high. You should either clean it or paint it. Both methods are cheap and easy.

Fix everything no matter how insignificant you may think it is. When it comes to negotiating the significance of little problems seem to become extremely big and may cause you the sale of your home or thousands of dollars.

By following these tips you will increase the emotional appeal of your home. Home buyers buy based on emotion and by targeting their emotions you can drive up the price of your home and sell it faster.

Selling what could very well be your biggest investment is jeopardized by this one simple mistake home sellers make. There are two things that are negotiated in real estate, price and terms of the purchase. Home buyers want to give you the least amount of money and take as long as they want to [...]]]>

Selling what could very well be your biggest investment is jeopardized by this one simple mistake home sellers make. There are two things that are negotiated in real estate, price and terms of the purchase. Home buyers want to give you the least amount of money and take as long as they want to close the deal. They use whatever they have at their disposal to achieve their goals.

To avoid falling prey to these greedledums you must protect your reason for selling at all costs.

You must know why you are selling and KEEP IT TO YOURSELF! This will help you maximize your profits, maintain control and reduce the stress that comes with the home selling process.

The reason why you’re selling affects everything from setting the asking price to how much time and money will you invest in getting your home ready for sale. To sell your home fast and for top dollar this reason must remain confidential and if asked about it, you can simply answer that your housing needs have changed.

Understand that buyers are looking for the real reason why you’re selling like a loss of job, divorce, maybe you’ve already bought a new home and can’t afford two mortgages for much longer, etc.

On the other hand, as a smart seller you should be digging to find this same exact dirt on the buyer and use it to your advantage at the negotiating table. Some buyers for example may need to buy a home by a certain date because their lease is expiring or maybe they sold their home and need to be out by a certain date. There may be a home buying program that will expire in the near future and they must take action now.

It helps to know your competition to position yourself against them. A common reason home buyers use to sending a low ball offer is that they know of a foreclosure in the neighborhood going for that price. I’ll show you how to handle that in a future post. However, if you know your competition, you know how your home compares against what’s available.

This little technique of safeguarding your reason why may very well be what will get you top dollar for your home.