Getting Your Listings Sold

In today’s market is more gotten harder and harder to sell your listings. Any help you can get in selling your listings should be appreciated.

#1. The first step in getting a listing sold is on the listing call.

Yes, on the listing call.

Make sure the listing is priced to sell. This is one of the most important things in getting listings sold in today’s market. If a home is even slightly over priced, it will not sell. That’s where doing an accurate market analysis comes into play. Over the last several years, it was OK to just pull a few comps, go on the listing call and take the listing at the price the sellers wanted as long it was reasonably close to the comps. It didn’t matter, the house would sell any way! But today, you really need to make sure the comps are good and then make dollar adjustments for differing features.

Don’t put it on the market until the sellers have taken care of all the condition problems. Look it over carefully and tell them the problems you see in how the home shows and the condition. Tell them that by your being brutally honest to them now, it will help them reach their goal of selling the home. You may even want to advise the seller to have the home pre-inspected to find any hidden problems. Having them hire a home stager can also be a great idea, especially if the home is vacant.

Another important consideration when listing a home is the motivation of the seller.

Now comes the marketing of the home.

#2. Putting the home in the MLS correctly! Since most of your listings are probably sold by another agent, you need to be careful how your listing appears in the MLS. And since the buyers often look at listings on-line via IDX and Realtor.com it is even more important to have your listing entered into the MLS correctly.

Here are problems commonly seen in the MLS:

Not enough pictures You need to show off the home’s best features. But leaving out obvious things buyers will want to see (like the front of the home) tells them that there must be problems with the house.

Too many pictures Face it, one hall bath looks like every other hall bath unless it’s really great. And even if it is great, it is very hard to take a good picture of the home. What about the pictures that only show the homeowner’s furnishings, but nothing about the home? But the real winner for too many pictures are the ones with duplicate pictures. Someone must think that more is better no matter what.

Not enough information on the home You need to adequately describe the home in the remarks. Just saying “too much to mention” or “this home has it all” is not enough to get buyers into the home in today’s market.

Using the MLS remarks like a fluff advertisement Buyer’s today can see fluff and hype…and they don’t like it. Tell the facts about the features. Then you sell on the benefits (not fluff and hype).

This should be enough to get you thinking about what your listings look like in the MLS.

#3. Using the Right Marketing

Be careful what marketing you use Because listings stay on the market longer, if you use marketing that doesn’t work well….that also happens to be expensive, you could spend a large percentage of your commission check before you ever get one. How do you avoid that? Track your marketing to see what is actually working.

You need to have your listings on the internet. I’m not talking about just getting them on the IDX and Realtor.com. The main page of your website should have pictures of your listings with links to pages that have detailed information on the listing. Information on homes for sale is the main thing buyer prospects are looking for when they get on the internet. If you keep every listing on it’s on page (or pages) and optimize the page(s) for the search engines, buyers may even find your listing page on the internet. But you can also use that page in your conventional marketing.

Maximize the use of traditional marketing Here’s an example: Don’t make the flyers in your brochure box look just like everyone else’s flyers. Instead, make them colorful so the will attract the buyer’s attention.

Always remember that just putting your listing in the MLS and hoping it will sell will not work in today’s market. You have to work hard today to get your listings to sell.

The author of this article is Linda Grissette. Some of you may remember her as Linda Grayson. Linda is a Broker-Associate with River City Real Estate. She is also the company trainer. Learn more about how River City Real Estate can help you make more money...even in today's market...browse through this site.

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