Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

I have been working on expanding the reach of my marketing in selling houses and I have been collecting some useful advices of which I provide the first ten which would be valuable for both a local as well as an international real estate buyer.

The luxury kitchen of a ghouse for sale in Texas

They all require some work therefore it is better to learn them early, before you get to the actual sale, but you can always catch up later on. Some of them are particularly relevant for distant buyers, that is people who are not in the area and cannot see the house directly but that are interested in moving or they want a second investment home for vacation or for getting cash flow from the rent.

1. Research the area for any type of touristic amenities that could attract the distant buyer and collect videos or pictures of the most interesting ones and make them available online, possibly on your own site or on a free platform like blogger.com, tumblr.com, Facebook and so on. You will use this same platform to also make available pictures, videos and text about the following points.
2. Network with people in the area so to gather information about the neighborhood that would make the house more interesting.
3. Research the school district where the house is located and check to see if there are private schools that can provide assistance to foreign students of any age. If you’ll sell to a family, this is an important aspect. Sometimes international investors buy properties in the US near a university where they plan to send their kids. The more information you have and you can make available, the better.
4. Locate the major centers of entertainment that are available. Restaurants and movie theaters should be close by. But major attractions can also be at some distance from the house: up to two hours of traveling by car would be acceptable for somebody planning to buy a vacation house.
5. Any fitness center in the neighborhood? Do they allow seasonal memberships? Any park, tennis court, swimming pool can be an important element while making the decision.
6. Level of maintenance. Within reason, the house should be in move in condition. A remote buyer won’t have the time, resources and willingness to make repairs.
7. Have a professional photographer produce a visual tour of the house with a wide angle lens that will show clearly every room. This element alone can procure you a sale when you are dealing with a distant buyer.
8. Is there a hospital or a clinic near by. When you have families moving over or you have elderly buyers, this can be an important element to research and advertise.
9. Evaluate the market and determine a correct price. If the pricing is way off you will delay markedly the sale. Also be ready to explain to a remote buyer how did you determine the price.
10. Study ads by your competitors to see what buyers are responding to and stress these elements in your communication.

These are general advices that work also for you when you are evaluating a house that you want to purchase as your main residence or an investment.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. I have found a booklet that lists 89 more tips that you can employ. Is part of a whole package on how to sell your home and is available on Clickbank (click here for the affiliate link). I have got the whole package and found it quite interesting for the price. You might want to check it as well.

A tribute to my family that is supporting me in many ways during this awesome adventure.

Statistics tell us that almost ninety per cent of the people looking for a new house start their search online and make their first selection from the screen of their computer before going out and looking at the house for real. It is a fact and yet the majority of people which trying to sell a house don’t try to leverage the Web to its full potential.

The Web has become a key vehicle for selling your house.

Home owners go as far as placing a few ads on Craigslit, which is great for procuring phone calls but then you need to sift through a number of people, most of which probably don’t even qualify. Many Realtors instead advertise the property on the MLS (the service that allows Realtors to pitch properties to one another) and on “many other minor sites” they don’t even know the name of, but don’t take the time to create their own presence on the Web.

I myself recognize everyday that I need to do more and to leverage more the power of the Web because I realize that more and more it is becoming the crossroad for all transactions, from the minor purchase of an eBook to the major purchase of a house.

Why people are holding themselves back from using this incredible tool? Five misunderstandings or myths that get in everybody’s way:

Myth or misunderstanding 1: leads gathered online don’t work
Leads coming from the Web as just as good as the leads you can get from a magazine, a newspaper, an open house, fliers or bandit signs. They will have different effectiveness depending on the area or the type of property you sell, but they work nonetheless. The quality of a lead depends on your ability to qualify it and to close.

Myth or misunderstanding 2: you don’t need a web site or a blog
Official statistics show that almost ninety percent of home buyers go on the Web first. If you have a presence there you have the chance of contacting them even before they start looking for a new home (offering them services that can be provided through a site), you can pre-qualify them and you can show them you properties as soon as they are available.

Myth or misunderstanding 3: you need to be an expert in technology to do it
As a matter of fact, people with little or no technical experience are doing much better on the Web than the technical expert ones. You can build a site with no technical experience using templates already done for you, the most difficult part is having a plan and knowing what to do in order top get results in the real estate field.

Myth or misunderstanding 4: you can’t afford to have a web site
Let’s forget about the free sites that are not adequate for the purpose of real estate marketing, but you can still get a professional site developed and active for few hundred dollars. It is much more expensive not to have one. The success of your Internet presence won’t depend on how much you spend on the site itself but on how much work or bright ideas you put into it.

Myth or misunderstanding 5: the competition is too strong
The competition is a good thing. When you have competitors then you know you are doing the right thing, and the only way to reduce the pressure by your competitors is by being there yourself and conquering your share of it.

Roberto Mazzoni

One of my readers asked me to expand on one article I had posted two days ago about the importance of sharing information during a sale process. So I have found an additional video by Barbara Corcoran, one of the retail real estate experts on the market, that gives some general advice on how to view the real estate market today from the view point of an end buyer or a seller.

Video by Barbara Corcoran.
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I am in the process of selling two houses that I have just finished rehabbing and I am always looking for something new that can help me complete this complex step faster and easier. The real estate world is a peculiar one since it demands some novelty of approach, so that you can stand out a bit from the crowd, but also requires lots of reassurance for the prospective buyer and that means doing things the “old usual way” which is familiar.

Bringing the two elements together is kind of challenging, but I have come to the conclusion so far that the best way to give “reassurance” is by listing the property through a Realtor. The vast majority of people buy through agents and the fact that there are third parties involved (the listing agent and broker and the buyer’s agent) gives more certainty to the buyer of the fact that he cannot be hidden major material facts that could influence the value of the house. You need to find the right Realtor, of course. Some Realtors spend most of their time only trying to lower your selling price for one reason or another, and giving you bad news instead of looking for creative way to sell the house for the right price.

The opportunity of using a good Realtor has been confirmed also another very experienced US investors who have been selling directly for most of the time in the past and that now resort to Realtors for almost every single sale.

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