Selling Your Property
The Purpose of Advertising in
General
Every home seller likes to be
assured that their listing agent or the real estate
company will run ads featuring their home. Newspaper ads
could be large display ads with lots of listings or
small classified ads featuring just your property. Ads
may also appear in local real estate magazines and your
listing will also show up on the Internet.
Of course the agents and companies
will run ads featuring your house, but not for the
reasons you expect.
You see, the main job of
advertising is not to sell your house directly.
Advertising creates phone calls and some of those
callers become clients of the agents answering the
calls. This builds up a pool of homebuyers looking for
property in general, all represented by selling agents.
Multiply this by all the agents and companies who also
advertise homes, and there is a large pool of homebuyers
in the market at any given time – all of whom are
represented by selling agents.
The agents representing those
homebuyers know about your home because it is listed in
the Multiple Listing Service, has been on office and
broker preview, and because your agent may have also
sent flyers to all the local real estate offices.
The agents match up their clients
with available homes, one of which may be yours. Then
they show the homes to their clients, who eventually
make an offer on one. That is how your house gets
sold. Ads create a pool of clients, one of which buys
your home. Ads do not usually sell your house directly.
Real Estate Company
Advertising
As mentioned previously,
advertising your home in newspapers and magazines rarely
sells your home directly. More likely than not, the
buyer who eventually purchases your home will have
called on a totally different house. The same thing
happens with buyers who call on your house. They will
probably buy something else.
You still want to be certain the
real estate company selling your house runs ads in the
local and major newspapers, whether they feature your
house or not. The ads generate phone calls to the real
estate office, and if those agents viewed your house on
the office preview, they will be familiar with it. This
is how your property is sold.
Or you could be one of the lucky
ones – someone calling on your house may actually end up
buying it.
You should also realize that when
a company advertises the homes they have for sale, there
is more than one objective. Sure, the real estate office
wants to generate phone calls and sell houses, but the
advertising also shows home sellers how effectively they
market properties. This impresses not only you, but
others who may be thinking of selling their home.
The advertising brings in more
listings, which generate more ad calls, which produces
more buyers….and that is how real estate advertising
really works.
Individual Agent Advertising
Individual agents may advertise
your home for the same reasons as companies do. They
usually advertise in classified ads or in specialty
magazines featuring houses available for sale.
As in other types of advertising,
these ads rarely sell your home. Once again, the main
goals of advertising are to accumulate homebuyers as
clients, and to impress you and future home sellers with
how well they market their listings. Some agents
actually do sell their own listings, but not that often.
It is much more productive and
beneficial if your listing agent directs most of his or
her marketing efforts toward other agents. Since this is
"behind the scenes" marketing that you don’t actually
see, it is often difficult for you to measure how hard
the agent is working for you.
It is a mistake to measure your
agent’s effectiveness solely by counting the number of
newspaper and magazine ads featuring your property.
Neighborhood Announcements
When you first list your home many
agents send "announcements" to all of the other houses
in your neighborhood. This can be done in the form of
postcards, a letter, or flyers left hanging on the front
door. These are important because your neighbors might
have friends who are looking to buy a house.
The announcements create
"word of mouth" advertising, which is the best kind.
Open Houses
An open house when your property
is first placed on the market can be very important, but
not for the reasons most homeowners think. Just like
with advertising, most visitors to open houses rarely
buy the house they come to look at. They may not even
know the price of your home when they stop by to visit –
they probably just followed an "Open House" sign to your
door.
An open house performs a similar
function to the neighborhood announcements – it lets all
of your neighbors know that your house is for sale, and
it practically invites them to come "take a look." Being
generally nosy, a lot of your neighbors will take
advantage of the invitation.
And they may tell their friends
about your house, creating more "word of mouth"
advertising.
Of course, there are other reasons
for holding open houses, too. Listing agents who "farm"
a particular neighborhood use them as an opportunity to
meet with other local homeowners who will someday be
selling their home. Your agent may hope to list their
homes in the future.
Open houses held after your home
has been on the market awhile do not usually serve a
useful purpose in selling your home. Most of the
neighbors already know your house is for sale and open
house visitors rarely buy the homes they visit.
However, if you really want more
open houses, your listing agent may allow other agents
to hold it open. Open houses attract prospective
homebuyers and agents hope to convince some of those
homebuyers to become their clients.
All articles © 2000
RealEstate ABC. No articles may be reprinted or
displayed without permission.
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