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.

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.

The fastest way to achieve your goals is to find experts who have already achieved what you are trying to achieve and let them mentor you. If you are selling your home, you will inevitably have to assemble a team of professionals to help you with the transaction. If you are following the easy [...]]]>

The fastest way to achieve your goals is to find experts who have already achieved what you are trying to achieve and let them mentor you. If you are selling your home, you will inevitably have to assemble a team of professionals to help you with the transaction. If you are following the easy route of hiring the first “#1 Agent” that shows up at your doorstep over the 20 others who are saying they are #1 as well, then you must pay close attention here.

Even you plan on cutting out the middleman and attempt to save the real estate commission, the duties that would have been performed by the real estate agent need to be done. This includes having a reliable title company and lender you can fall back on if the buyer happens to choose morons for their team. I’m not saying they will, I’m just saying it can happen.

So what are you looking for?

Well, most title companies are pretty good for the most part. I have yet to come across any morons in this industry so they are for the most part exempt from this blog post. You can however try to find a title company that will give you a discount if you can get the buyer to use the title company. Buyers choose the title company for the most part, but it is negotiable and you can negotiate with the buyer to pay what you would have saved with your title company if they so adamantly stick to theirs.

Lenders… OMG as in Oh My God… Talk about a low barrier of entry with high profit potential ineptitude-filled industry (Ha! they can righteously say the same thing about us real estate agents)… This special breed of humanity is notoriously known to be lazy… the rest of us just have a hard time doing extremely difficult stuff like showing up on time and answering our phones… but seriously 7 (or maybe 9) out of 10 lenders DO NOT pre-approve their buyers. When you get an offer you should verify that the lender has gathered the pertinent information from the buyer to determine their buying capability. I kid you not, but I have worked with lenders who never bothered to ask the buyer whether they had money for the down payment and closing costs! (and we found out in the middle of escrow… Jesus!)

Luckily I have found a lender that actually sits down with the buyers and pre-approves them before they go look for a home. You want a lender like that. They are hard working and get things done faster. It helps when you work with a lender who has in house underwriting. Don’t bother trying to figure out what that means if you don’t already, just know that it is a good thing and is something you should ask. You can and should get the lender to prepare financing options you can offer potential buyers. This is a little known trick I use to drive up demand for homes.

Last you need someone to network for you within the real estate industry. Even if you are a FSBO, it pays to develop a relationship with a real estate agent who is willing to do stuff for you (such as getting updated comps, bringing buyers, etc.) You should find a way to pay them for it, and it doesn’t have to be money. You can simply tell them you will refer to him all the buyers who have decided not to buy your home so they can find them one. Hey it’s win win. I have a full set of questions agents hate to be asked when being interviewed. Knowing these questions from my 9 step system will help you determine whether you are hiring the right agent or not if that’s the route you wanting to take.

Find out what homes are selling in your neighborhood and play undercover home buyer spy. There’s not need to dress up as a ninja for this covert mission. Simply go on and take notes on your competition and findout their strong points and their weak points. It amazes me how many real estate professionals [...]]]>

Find out what homes are selling in your neighborhood and play undercover home buyer spy. There’s not need to dress up as a ninja for this covert mission. Simply go on and take notes on your competition and findout their strong points and their weak points. It amazes me how many real estate professionals don’t do this and simply rely on pictures and descriptions on MLS, when they should get their highly-paid rear and get to know the neighborhood. I hate to vilify an entire industry but it’s true. In fact, I didn’t do this myself at first, but as you can tell I’ve taken my hand and swiftly given myself a backhand slap to the face to correct myself.

If you are selling through an agent, they should do this for you of course, but if not, you’ll have to figure out a way into these homes.

So what are you going to do with this information?

Well regardless of whether your home is the first one home buyers look at or not, it’s common for home buyers to look at least at 6-10 homes before making a decision. Even first time home buyers who tend to fall in love with the first home they see will look at a few more to have some basis for comparison. You, having done this research along with my buyer psychology training on my 9 step system, will be able to position your home against the competition so that you can create the demand needed to drive the price of your home up to fatten up your piggy bank.

More specifically, when it comes time to prepare your home for sale and trying to figure out which improvements are worth the investment and what not to do before putting your home up for sale, this will give you an x-ray vision on the market to get the most out of the sale of your home.

You won’t be the one to buy the story of the house down the road sold for $XXX,XXX when you know the reason they are buying yours is because it’s in a better location, cleaner, or simply has the right upgrades that the other homes lack. You can only know this for sure when you personally visit these homes. So go do your homework… and humiliate other real estate professionals with your inside knowledge