How Do You Market A Property & Position It For A Quick Sale
Do you know what sellers want from you?
Sellers don't want a bunch of BS, they want to trust that you know how to market a property BEFORE they hire you.
In today's world, you need more than listing a house on the MLS and putting a sign in the yard. One of the best things you can do when marketing a property for sale is to really under stand how to effectively position it for sale.
If you can speak to each seller about these 3 very important marketing points on your listing presentation, you will do very well.
How Do You Market A Property Through Strategically Pricing It?
The way you price a property is the most important part of positioning. Since virtually every real estate search is being performed online right now, you want to explain to your seller how people search online.
Buyers search in $25,000-$50,000 increments. That means that each time you price change into a $25,000-$50,000 increment, you will literally reach an entire new audience who previously was not seeing your listing on their radar. Most sellers don’t realize this and when you point this out in detail, they will look at the way they price it in more detail.
The highest advertised price is not at important as the highest amount of eyeballs at a certain price because demand ultimately drives price.
Pricing positioning, many times, is the key to getting an offer quickly or even when a property has been sitting on the market for a long time.
A simple repositioning in price can make or break a successful transaction.
Case Study:
We took over a listing from an agent who had the property listed for over 250 days without one price change. We all know nobody wants to buy the house that sat on the market FOREVER, so let's say we weren't too excited for this one.
When we took the property over we decided to list it at $214,900. This was only a $5,000 price change from when it was previously listed at $219,900. The seller was taking a big loss on the property so every dollar counted! We sat on the market for roughly 3-4 weeks and were getting showings and even received a second showing, but no offers.
I had to have a heart to heart with the seller and tell him that we needed to go below the $200,000 to get an offer. That was the price point that would trigger the most amount of eyeballs with urgency.
I knew we would then be targeting the "up to $200,000" buyer pool and were missing out on everyone capping their searches at $200,000. Within 4 days, we received an offer within $1,000 of list price because the buyer didn't want to lose out on that deal!
The property had an extensive amount of market time, but for only people who were searching above $200,000, not up to $200,000.
Market Time
The longer a property sits on the market, the more likely the seller will get low-balled. WHY?
Because nobody wants to buy the house that nobody else wanted. When a property gets listed for sale, everyone takes notice of it and your best chance of getting an offer is the first few weeks it’s on the market.
People are more likely to pay more for a house when the thought of it being taken away from them by someone else is present.
Someone will pay more for something they feel will be gone tomorrow.
When you get a seller that wants to try to test the market and shoot for an unrealistic price, just make sure they know the consequences up front of accumulating market time.
How Do You Market A Property Through Its Description?
How you describe a property is extremely important when marketing online. You have to remember that your listing remarks are like the storyboard of the house.
You want your remarks to focus on what it’s like owning that property. Is it close to a highway, good school district, lake, nightlife, or public transportation? What about closet space, yard, storage, and light? You want to sell the area and property benefits.
If it was an investment type property where you knew the buyer would be an investor, you should focus your remarks on CAP rates, cash on cash returns, and cash flow. You will want to speak “investor language” so that you can resonate with them.
Regardless of the type of property you are selling, you want to create an ideal buyer avatar and then try to speak or strike a cord with that buyer.
Case Study:
I am going to use another example from the same case study above. The property in the above case study was on the north side of Chicago in a neighborhood that Loyola University is located in. It's a short walk to Lake Michigan and public transportation, which is the draw for living in that area. I told the seller upfront that their buyer was going to come from one of these categories. These are the listing remarks on this exact listing that we used.
"PRICED TO SELL!Recent gut rehab w/all the upgrades galore steps from Lakefront,Loyola,& Redline stop around the corner.Ultra convenient location.Super bright unit feels brand new w/ exposed brick,featuring hardwood flrs throughout,cherry cabs,Stainless Steel appliances, granite c-tops,3 large bedrooms and both baths completely upgraded.Nice size deck off living room for grilling & outdoor space,pkg leased,storage room"
I knew that I had to focus on the location benefits to really speak to that buyer. The couple who purchased this condo loved to take walks on the lake and the remarks about vicinity of lake are what stood out to them. This is Description Positioning!
How Do You Market A Property?
Once you have created your ideal buyer avatar you should have a good idea of where to focus your marketing efforts. If I was selling a 1BR 1BTH condo in downtown Chicago, I know that the buyer will probably be a single person under the age of 34.
Therefore, I would focus certain marketing efforts trying to reach that demographic. One thing I would do is create a Facebook ads campaign to target all nearby zips under those demographics (Facebook just 1 example of using social media to market listings).
You want to steer all marketing efforts towards your ideal buyer avatar. You have a better chance of picking off spin off business this way as well.
How Do You Find More Clients?
Creating a better system to service your listings is one of the things you can be doing to increase spin off business, but it's not everything.
Would you be interested in learning more about adapting a several listing marketing systems that work simultaneously in your business to create multiple lead sources? Do you hate cold calling or cold prospecting? Check out the advanced training for the Listing Advocate Here.
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may want to check this out...
