If you want to sell your house, there are 2 resources you ABSOLUTELY MUST use. . .
December 15th, 2009 categories: FAQ, For Sellers, Helpful Tips, STR Market Info Blitz
This post is part of the Strong Team REALTORS Market Info Blitz. We’re heating up the Winter market by giving you three-months worth of the information you need, November through January. Check out the latest posts in the blitz, here.
A little while ago, we told you about the NAR 2009 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. This document is the result of data gathered from over 9000 people who recently purchased homes.
As you can imagine, the data is extremely useful to agents, since it shows what types of people are buying and selling, what types of homes they are buying and selling, and how they navigate through the buying or selling process.
While this data was gathered from buyers and sellers all across the country, it is certainly representative of what happens right here in the Charlottesville area. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be going over some of the more interesting and important information from the survey. You’ll learn exactly what we’ve learned.
How are buyers finding my house?
The first question we are going to address is one we hear from just about every seller we work with– “how are buyers finding my house?”
Obviously, this is an important question. It is important for one big reason: if you know where buyers are looking for your house, you can concentrate your marketing efforts there.
Luckily, this very question is answered by the data in the NAR 2009 Survey of Buyers and Sellers. The survey asked buyers where they found the home they purchased. There are two very important aspects to this question. The first is that this question was only answered by people who actually bought a home. No browsers or looky-loos in the mix. The second important thing is that the question refers to the where they found the home they purchased. This means that the source the buyers site was obviously very important to them. The answer to this question is one of the major reasons that they bought the house they chose.
The results are displayed by year, starting in 2001 and ending in 2009. Let’s take a look:
72% of buyers found the home they purchased either through the Internet or their real estate agent
Direct your attention to the last column, which contains the survey results for 2009. Notice that the two most popular answers were “Real estate agent” and “Internet” (36% each). That means: 72% OF PEOPLE FOUND THE HOME THEY PURCHASED FROM THOSE 2 SOURCES.
Why is this important?
Marketing your home isn’t a game of chance. There are some ways that work better than others. After looking at the results of the survey, it is obvious that your home needs to marketed on the Internet and to real estate agents. The most common way to market to real estate agents is through listing the home through the local MLS (Multiple Listing Service).
If you are planning on selling the home yourself, you can market it on the Internet through various outlets. You wouldn’t have access to the MLS, so you would have to come up with other methods of getting the home in front of real estate agents.
If, like most sellers, you are going to use a Realtor to assist you in the sale of your home, you want to make absolutely, positively sure that your Realtor has a plan for marketing the home on the Internet and through the MLS.
Things to remember. . .
Most people enjoy seeing their home advertised in print. You need to be smarter than those people. Only 2% of buyers found the home they purchased through a print ad. Your time, effort, and money is better spent elsewhere.
If you really want to sell your home, you need to make sure that it is marketed effectively to prospective buyers. For 72% of buyers, this means that the home needs to be on the Internet and/or in the MLS. Doing those two things, and doing them exceptionally well, will give you the best chance of selling your home for the highest possible price. This is true whether you are selling a home in Lake Monticello or Charlottesville, Albemarle or Louisa.
When you are evaluating Realtors, make sure that your Realtor has a good understanding of how Internet and MLS marketing works, and a solid plan for using both outlets to your advantage.
