How Most Buyers Search For Homes

You have decided to sell your home, whether it is to relocate for work, upsize so you have more room for the kids, or downsize because the kids are gone, selling a home is one of the most stressful experiences a person can go through. And that stress goes up the longer the process goes on.

There is a lot of work that takes place before you list your home, but having to keep the house impeccably clean, vacate the premises at a moment’s notice and having numerous strangers walking through the home, your nerves are likely to begin to fray pretty quickly.

The other significant component of that stress is the fact that the longer a house sits on the market, the more the price is going to drop.

That fact alone can have a significant impact on life after the sale as many people intend to use whatever excess there is from the sale of their home as a down payment on their new purchase.

To keep the stress down and the price up it is essential to take advantage of every marketing technique available to get your home in front of as many buyers as possible. This is why hiring an expert Realtor will get you the best price for your home.  They have the tools, experience and spread a wide net to get the most buyers to look at your home.

Here are some of the most effective marketing techniques that I implement to help sell your home for the price that you want, not the price someone else wants.  If you are thinking about selling as a For Sale By Owner here are some tools to help you along the process:

Online Marketing

Like so many areas of our daily lives, the internet has taken over house hunting. Using the internet, buyers can do more than just preview a home. They can research the history of the home, what sort of neighborhood it is in, what the local attractions are and more.

And the proliferation of realty agencies and websites like Zillow that list homes complete with photos of the home’s interior and the ability to view the home from multiple devices thanks to apps like Homesnap mean that homebuyers can learn a great deal about any given home before even leaving their own home, making the internet an even more appealing way to at least begin a search.

In fact, it was recently reported by Realtor.com that 90% of buyers used the internet at least some point in their house hunting process.

Here is a myriad of online tools available for the home seller to use and how to get the most out them. I utilize most of these when selling a house.

Personal Realty website – ChaconHomes.com.

Websites for realtors have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years.

While once they may have had some text and one or two exterior photos of the home, they now offer full video tours of a home’s interior, links to Youtube to provide video or detailed floor plans and much more.

How do you get the most from an online listing?  Make sure you follow some basic steps before taking a single photograph.  Also, make sure the photographs are professional and not from a phone camera.

Make sure any improvements to the home that need to be made in order to ensure a quick sale have already been taken care of. Remove the clutter, fix any obviously broken items and add a fresh coat of paint if necessary before snapping a single photograph.

Also, consider doing a video tour of the home. This simple addition to the listing site can generate more traffic for your listing than any mere description, no matter how complete it may be. Some even go so far as to say that one minute of video is worth over a million words.

While a video is key, the writing on a listing has also grown in importance. A simple listing of the home’s features (large deck, sunroom, two-stall garage) is not enough in today’s market.

If you are not working with me or a realtor, hire a writer to bring out the details of the features and present them all in an engaging way that draws the potential buyer in with the possibilities that the home offers.

Buyers also frequent third-party sites, often in the beginning stages of looking for a home. There are plenty of ways for a buyer to narrow his search and compare prices and other features of various homes.

Mobile apps that allow buyers to search homes view photos and videos and more wherever they are have also grown in popularity.  You can download my free app to Homesnap here.

Facebook – Posting your listing on Facebook will help you extend your reach far beyond what you might think.

Once you post the link, every one of your friends can see it. And if they are not looking for a home themselves, they may still share it with their friends, creating an ever widening circle of people who are able to view your listing, many of whom you have never even met.

This brings your home to the undefined market of people who might be interested in moving but have yet to actually begin looking, in addition to putting your listing out in front of others who simply may have missed your home in their search.

Pinterest/Instagram – Making use of these social media sites will extend your reach in many of the same ways Facebook does.

Both are very photo-friendly so make sure that you have plenty of great, well-lit pictures of your staged home to post, allowing buyers to stumble across your listing while browsing on a lunch break.

Craigslist – Many people even search the well-known second hand site for homes.

This isn’t nearly as popular but there is no reason to not put up an advertisement that includes some of the photos and a link back to the listing.

Individual website – One way to centralize all of your content for your home listing is to have a separate, stand-alone website.

This site can act as a hub for all of the content relating to the home sale. In addition to all of your videos, photos, and links to your social media accounts, you can also include additional information and links to neighborhood attractions and activities that will give your buyers a feel not just for the home but for the whole experience of living there.

 Mobile

More and more people are moving away from fixed internet access on a desktop, relying instead on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. That’s not to say that desktops are not important, the majority of website visits are still done using the older computing format.

That said, the data clearly shows that desktop use is decreasing while mobile is increasing dramatically. In fact, people actually spend more time online with their mobile devices than with any other method.

This trend will only increase as movements to cut cords and simplify life in general continue.

The clear implication of this trend for home marketing is to ensure that your listing is mobile friendly and listed on sites with easy to navigate mobile versions.

Again, these listings will make extensive use of photos, floor plans and videos that show off the home at its best.  Naturally, if you choose to set up a stand-alone website, ensure that it is either mobile friendly by default or a hybrid that can easily switch between desktop and mobile versions.

Of course, setting up such an extensive website can be somewhat technical and time-consuming so consider hiring a professional to handle the site development.

There are many marketing tools, but the most effective is hiring an experienced Realtor to help you sell your home.  Realtors have all the tools and techniques already set up and proven based on their experience.

If you would like me to help you sell your home or curious about your current home’s market value please contact me here. Good luck!