10 Steps to Sell Your Home

Living in the Northwest - Puget Sound Waterfront

A Tech-Savvy Approach To Real Estate Is Not An Option, It’s How It’s Done.
If you haven’t bought or sold a home in a while, you’ll find real estate has changed. HOW? Over 90% of homes that sold last year are now first found on the Internet, not by Realtors, not in print ads and not by word-of-mouth.

Don’t misunderstand – once you get an offer, little in real estate has changed. The skills to negotiate, to act solely on behalf of a client, these are the job requirements at the heart of being a Realtor. But when it came to marketing, there was a time when all a Realtor had to do to market a property was to enter a listing into the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Now, with the Internet so much a part of real estate, even the broker’s old primary tool – the “MLS” has changed.

The NW-MLS now features “MATRIX” with many electronic options a broker can use to better serve their clients. Matrix is the latest evolution of property locators, replacing a simple database used since the 1980′s and offers a number of technical advantages intent to keep you involved in the sale of your home.

Windermere as a brokerage house has also evolved by providing their brokers a complete arsenal of technical tools including specialized searches, automatic e-mail notification and a well-financed web effort. Add to this the emergence of the smart phone revolution and it becomes essential that brokers have the broad technological experience to take full advantage of these tools.

HOW BUYERS SEARCH THE INTERNET FOR REAL ESTATE
From research, we know there are four ways buyers search for homes:

1. THE SHOTGUN – A buyer simply Googles – “Hood Canal waterfront property” and hits enter. This is generally a less serious buyer however it has sold homes.
2. TARGETTED SEARCH – There are a number of real estate search engines designed specifically to find property. More serious buyers choose a real estate search engine like Zillow or Trulia. They fill the search form and sees what comes up – much more targeted.
3. BROKERAGE SEARCH – In order to make a property search more regional, buyers choose a regional brokerage house. They often offer a similar service to general real estate search engines but more regional and even more targeted.
4. OLD-SCHOOL PERSONAL EXPERIENCE – It may be less than 10% of buyers but there are still those who drive through a neighborhood looking for signs OR they depend upon friends and family for a reference OR are shown a property by an attentive Broker. The percentage drops each year but it still happens. If your home is to succeed in changing hands, all four search must be addressed.

PROPERTY PREPARATION
Before you sell your car, you wash it, vacuum the inside, and perhaps do some minor repairs – all this so it looks its best. The same is true when you sell a home.

External cleaning, gardening, and minor repairs are all suggested. Internal cleaning, decluttering, and home staging are also recommended. Once it is ready for public viewing, the marketing process begins by listing your property.

• STEP 1 – Preliminary House Inspection

For most listings, we start with a preliminary house inspection. Having an inspection certificate on the dining room table for all to see goes a long way to reassuring buyers and brokers of a home’s soundness. It also gives sellers the chance to address potential problems before they become issues in the eyes of a prospective buyer.

• STEP 2 – Multiple Listing Service

Still effective as a central repository for real estate, property information is entered in the MLS. But there is more to it than just putting in data that makes the MLS work. In addition to a well-written property description, pricing targets are also important. Property searches are done in 50K blocks and prices should be set with this in mind.
When the Internet is as close as a buyer may get to a property, it is essential that pictures show your home at its very best. When a property is listed, it is very important to load into MLS as many professional-grade pictures as possible.

• STEP 3 – Street and Water Signage

Within 24 hours of listing a home, a FOR SALE sign is put on the street and a lockbox secured near the front door. Waterfront properties also get a sign that is visible from the water… you never know where a buyer might be when they first see your home!

Also added to the sign is QR coding, making the sign into an electronic brochure. This enables potential buyers with smart phones to instantly access property information on the Internet. When they scan the two-dimentional barcode, they are taken to the property’s website (see STEP 5). The screen on their cell phone displays pictures, stats, and other information about the house that a brochure alone could never supply.

• STEP 4 – Brokerage Search

Within 20 minutes of entering the listing in the MLS, the property appears on Windermere’s website. For the thousands of web shoppers who use www.Windermere.com, listings from Windermere brokers are immediately available. No other brokerage site offers a faster listing service.

• STEP 5 – Single Property Website

A website is created exclusively for each listing with its own URL address, such as www.123southhoodcanal.com. This single-property website includes all the details and pictures of the listing.
Then I use my search engine optimization (SEO) experience and add appropriate SEO verbiage. This increases the odds of the property showing up in a general Google search, such as Hood Canal waterfront property. Do not however expect any website to be part of the initial message of a homes introduction to the market. It take a while to get established on the Net.

• STEP 6 – Third-Party Search Engines

To address the targeted search (buyers who choose a real estate search engine designed to find specific property), I list homes in the biggest real estate search engines and retail search sites. The short list is:

1. Zillow.com (largest real estate site in the world and based in Seattle)
2. Frontdoor.com (national website of HGTV)
3. Trulia.com (second largest national search site based in San Francisco)
4. Yahoo.real estate.com (soon to be completely united to Trulia.com)
5. RealTown.com (national real estate search site based in San Diego)
6. Relo Home Search (national relocation service based in Chicago)
7. Craigs List (largest national self-retail website)

This step simply takes time and money, but the property’s listing is usually available for buyers within 48 hours. Retail sites, like CraigsList are used not to find buyers but to increase the visibility of the single-property websites. The more links to the property’s website, the better Google, Bing, and Yahoo display the site in search results. Since these retail sites are so busy, they are a good way to increase the traffic.

Another way to increase web traffic is with social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. Once the single-property website is connected to a social network, the synergy you get on the Internet is multiplied 10 fold.

Google’s search results also favor those websites registered with “Google Places.” Once the registration process is completed, a map of the property’s location is provided for the single-property website.

• STEP 7 – Broker Open House

Once the web requirements are completed, Mason County Brokers are invited to tour your home. Notices are sent via the MLS Open House Service as well as personal email invitations.

• STEP 8 – E-Flyers

Even experienced real estate brokers are surprised when they learn how many properties are sold to friends, colleagues, and associates of the homeowner.
Most sellers will mention in passing that they are selling a home. When asked where it is, I encourage them to send a professionally prepared E-flyer that includes pictures, maps, property description, and other pertinent info.
Homeowners should have the option of participating in the sale of their property. The seller decides when it is appropriate and when it is not, but when it is, having a professionally made flyer to send is helpful.

• STEP 9 – Keeping Sellers Informed

Each seller is set up with an “Asset Page.” This is a record of everything that is being done on the seller’s behalf and includes website activity, when someone has toured the home, copies of important documents, and broker activities. Software is configured to automatically notify sellers of any new listing, price changes, and sold properties in their neighborhood. Realtors receive these notifications all the time and with a little programming, sellers can receive the same information.

• STEP 10 – Listing Maintenance

The process of listing a home is not a static event but a process. The property website must be submitted to worldwide search engines, directories, and other indexing sites every two weeks to create a web presence. CraigsList and Oogle must be manually “renewed” every week to keep a listing on the first page of the real estate listings.

• AND THEN Step 11 – Add Your Own Step

If you have an idea how to add or modify these “10 STEPS TO MARKET REAL ESTATE”, I’m happy to hear your ideas. The single lesson I learned from 25 years in the computer industry is someone knows more than you do about some part of technology. Share what you know with me and we will be better.  For example, if you know Google Search algorithm, I’ll buy you lunch.

CONCLUSION
Listing real estate is not just typing information into the MLS, buying a couple of magazine ads, and then waiting for something good to happen. Listing property in today’s market requires more technology, more digital knowledge, and more dedication of time and experience.  As I say, technology is not an option; it’s the way it’s done.

What do you think about “10 STEPS TO MARKET REAL ESTATE”. If you think I’m on the right track, there is a “Facebook – LIKE” button at the top of this page. Or, E-mail me with your suggestions, comments and questions. I’d love to hear from you.

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