11 Marketing Tips for a Faster Home Sale
Whether you are thinking of selling your home via “for sale by owner” or going the traditional route of using a real estate broker, these 11 tips will help you get more offers and sell your home faster.
Feel free to download these 11 tips at the end of this article as we’ve compiled them into a printable checklist you can take with you to your listing appointment.
You can show the checklist to your listing agent and suggest that they implement these strategies when marketing your home for sale.
Home Selling Tip #1: Write a good property description
Property descriptions can be written exceptionally well to where they entice potential viewers to set up a showing to see the home. Your real estate agent will write in the property description to the MLS system. Other sites will pull the data from the MLS which means it will end up showing up on platforms like Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, and other real estate home search sites that consumers use. Therefore, it’s important to write one great description that will be used on all platforms the house will be listed for sale.
Home Selling Tip #2: Take good pictures (5-10)
A high quality camera should be used and it’s ideal if you can get some wide angle shots as well. Wide angle photos fit more of the room within the photo and give off a higher quality feel when taken right than regular frame photos. Ask your real estate agent if they have a high quality camera or if they plan to use a professional photographer to snap the photos of your home.
One of the important pieces of a good photo is making sure your home is clean and presentable. This will make rooms appear bigger and less cluttered.
Home Selling Tip #3: Send an email and text message to buyers
As buyers inquire about your home, you should make sure they are followed up with and responded to as quickly as possible to maintain their interest. Having automated emails or text messages that get sent out can be a great way to ensure fast response time to a buyer inquiry via an online platform.
Multiple channels of communication (email, texts, phone call or voice mail) will ensure the buyer is reached effectively.
Home Selling Tip #4: Post ads to craigslist
You should aim to post 15 ads and post daily until sold. Here are good times to post: 5 at 9 am, 5 at noon and 5 at 5pm
There’s a decent pool of buyers who shop homes for sale via Craigslist daily so this is a platform you want to utilize to your advantage to widen your potential buyer reach.
Craigslist ads are free to post and by setting up a schedule, you’ll have a consistent flow of posts go out each week increasing your exposure.
Home Selling Tip #5: Post the same 15 ads on backpage.com
Backpage.com is another resourceful website to post for sale ads on in attempt to attract buyers. Copy the property description you’ve been using and paste it in your backpage.com ad. Also have a few photos ready to use in your ad as well.
Repeat the same strategy of posting 5 ads at 9 am, 12 pm, and 5 pm.
Home Selling Tip #6: Make a video virtual tour of your home
Along with hiring a photographer, you’ll also want to hire out a video tour of your home. Video content is becoming a huge trend in the marketing world today and will increase your chances of getting a sale if used.
Once you’ve made a virtual tour video, you can upload it to YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Your real estate agent can upload it to their website if they have one as well as marketing it to their facebook business page, if they have one.
Home Selling Tip #7: Post a paid ad on Facebook
Facebook has close to 2 billion users and is a great platform for reaching thousands of local buyers in your community. Facebook ads allow you to set custom criteria for the audience you are targeting with your ad, meaning you can market to select zip codes in your city. This will reduce the odds of people seeing and clicking the ad that don’t live anywhere close to your area, which saves you money since you pay per click.
Facebook ads are cheap compared to traditional advertising. You can reach thousands of people in your city for less than $100.
Home Selling Tip #8: Market every day until sold
It’s important to be consistent and market your home daily. This will result in reaching more people in your city and thus a greater pool of potential buyers. Don’t let off the marketing pedal just because you got a few showing appointments set up. Keep the leads coming and soon enough you’ll have multiple offers, inciting a bidding war that ends up above listing price.
Home Selling Tip #9: Place sign in yard for sale or for rent
An old school method but still one of the best methods used today for marketing homes for sale. You can find a for sale by owner sign at a local home owners store like Home Depot or Lowes. If you’re using a real estate agent they should have their own for sale signs with their contact information on it.
For sale signs are seen not only by people driving or walking by your home but also your neighbors which could lead to referrals to people they know.
Home Selling Tip #10: Place signs at different entry and exit points of your neighborhood
If your home is tucked away in a private neighborhood or quiet street, be sure to place signs near the entrance of your neighborhood where there is a higher volume of traffic. Make sure to check with neighborhood rules and ordinances to make sure you can legally place your signs on this property that you don’t own.
Home Selling Tip #11: List property on MLS
As mentioned earlier, your real estate agent will list the home for sale in the MLS system. This will allow your home to be seen by other realtors who may have buyers they are working with and leads to showing appointments.
One final tip is to make sure you set guidelines for showing your home that realtors are to follow. Having lots of random people through your home could lead to theft if precautions aren’t taken. Make sure not to leave anything of high value sitting out in the open.
Open houses are another option but these often become more about the listing agent than about selling your home. The listing agent ends up getting lots of new business from an open house as lots of people come through. It also opens up the home seller to risk of theft as lots of people are moving in and out of the home making it hard to keep an eye on everyone at once.
Overall, consistent marketing is crucial to selling your home fast. You now have knowledge of multiple methods and strategies to consider when creating your marketing strategy. Online marketing is becoming a large and important factor in generating home buyer awareness and appointments. More people start the home search process online today than ever before so it’s important to make sure you are utilizing online websites that home buyers are on.
Thanks for reading and let me know in the comments below which strategy you think works best!
Contact Kevin Foy, Realtor
Kevin is a real estate broker-associate with RE/MAX Oak Crest Realty in Elkhart, Indiana and has served real estate clients for over 35+ years in Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan.
To get ahold of Kevin for real estate services:
- Phone: 574-536-9218
- Email: Kevin@TeamFoy.com
Or you can subscribe below to our monthly email newsletter to stay up to date with the latest real estate news, tips, and housing market reports. Thanks for stopping by today.
