Marketing A House That's For Sale

The key to top-sales is a solid marketing plan – this means identifying your target market, understanding their needs, creating an impactful marketing message, and presenting a quality product. You need to make the sale all about the person that you are trying to sell to.

So, what does this mean for selling your home?

Everything…

Home staging is an effective marketing technique that integrates decorating with marketing and creates an experience for home buyers. It’s about more than just furnishing a home – it’s about selling a lifestyle! In order to present a “product” that your potential buyers will want, invest in a home staging consultation, and if needed, hire a home stager for additional services, including furniture, artwork, and accessory rental, to complete the look. By working with a home stager, you can identify and address all buyer perceptions, positive or negative, and ensure the most positive experience possible.

Home staging alone is not what sells a house, though it is certainly a contributing factor! Regardless of how great the home shows to buyers, listing the home for the correct price for the market, the neighbourhood, and the quality of home is key to a successful sale. This will allow you to draw in buyers from the right target market, and get the best value out of your home. A qualified real estate agent is your best resource for pricing your home appropriately – avoid making a common mistake that many homeowners make when choosing an agent. Do not choose the agent solely based on providing you with the highest list price, or the lowest commission – a qualified agent will price your house based on what they feel will net the largest return, without discouraging buyers. As well, you want your agent to work hard for you. This means putting in the time and marketing efforts necessary to ensure a successful and profitable sale, and top agents will charge a fair commission based on industry standards.

Select an agent that will ensure your home receives the greatest amount of exposure to home buyers, and is marketed to showcase the best selling features of the home. Your qualified agent will also help to advise you on the best offers to consider, and ensure that you net the highest amount of money possible for your home while also working to get you the terms that you need. In choosing the right real estate agent for you, consider the following: 

• How well do they understand the current market and trends? 
• Ask around – if you know of someone that has recently sold a home, ask them about their experience and ask for recommendations. 
• What type of negotiation skills do they have? 
• What value-added services do they offer to ensure that you will receive top-dollar for your home? This may include a pre-listing home inspection, professional photography, home staging, and more. 

Review their marketing plan – what will they do to provide you and your home with the maximum exposure that it needs to ensure that you attract all potential buyers?

Once your home is staged and ready for market, and you have selected the real estate agent that will work to get your home sold, it’s time for you to share your home with the world. It’s time to make an impression, and that impression is first made through the photos that you show of your home online. This is where the skills and expertise of a professional photographer come in. With ever-changing technology, no matter how great of a photo your cell phone might take, it cannot compare to the tools, and the talent, that a professional photographer will bring to the table. To prove our point, we have taken some great photos with our iPhone 6S, and compared to those of our photographer, Ross Bennett at 3SixtyVideo.

So when it’s time to sell your home, remember to put all of your best marketing tools to work for you, and you will see the results in a quick sale, and maximum profit.

Blog, Blog, Blog... - BTSH Around The House Tip of the Week

Getting your blog on these days is easier than ever. You can find someone out there talking about pretty much any topic under the sun! This week I thought that I would draw some attention to some fellow bloggers that I like to check in on frequently.

Style At Home.com

Not just a great magazine, Style At Home is also online, with lots of great tips for every area of your home. They also feature some great blogs, one of my favourites being “Favourite Things” by Natalie Bahadur. Natalie is the editor for styleathome.com, and loves everything pretty for house and home.

Eco Logic by Jessica Ross

This is a fairly new one that I’ve stumbled across. The web address for it is www.homemakers.com/ecologic/. The name pretty much says it all. Jessica Ross works for Homemakers magazine, and writes about ways to simply reduce the overall effect that you have on the environment. She seems to have a similar philosophy to me. As I mentioned in my article on July 13 (Healthy Living Starts With Your Home—Cleaning Naturally), you don’t have to be a tree hugging hippie to appreciate what makes good common sense these days. I admit that perhaps not all my habits are putting the environment first, but every little effort that we each put into it truly does make a difference. I’m not an environmentalist in the traditional sense of the term, and neither is Jessica. She simply writes about her experiences as she tries to reduce her carbon footprint. Whether you’re taking your liquor bottles back to the beer store for your refund, or bringing your environmentally friendly re-usable bag to the store so you don’t have to pay for bags, or if you go as far as Jessica did, and try out a Hybrid, it all adds up.

The Consumerist

I was actually surprised to find myself so intrigued by this site. Consumerist.com talks about consumer related information, everything “from non-existent customer service to onerous cell-phone contracts to ever-shrinking (and ever-more-expensive) grocery products”. It is not-for-profit, does not take any advertising or sponsorship, and speaks nothing but the truth. I found myself relating to my own personal experience (most recently Sat. Aug 8/09 post stated that Dell’s tech support was the worst of those surveyed—I use a Dell, and after calling for help with my CD drive which the computer suddenly decided didn’t exist any more, I was told in an indistinguishable foreign accent that since my computer was over a year old, they would need to charge me $49.95 to help me over the phone to fix my computer myself). If only I had seen this blog first! Before you buy, check out what this site has to say about the product, or the company.

Written by Shauna Lynn, Beyond The Stage Homes
www.beyondthestagehomes.com