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What should you expect from your listing agent?
How do you expect your home to be marketed?
These may seem like simple questions, but the truth is that there is no advertising or pricing standard that Realtors abide by. Most Realtors are personally responsible for the ways in which they choose to market their listings, and are typically responsible for 100% of their marketing budgets. Realtors are also responsible for establishing the value of your home based on recent comparable sales data, as well as current competition in the market.
I can only speak for myself, but I take my career very seriously, and use my previous experience to my advantage. Prior to starting my real estate career in 2003, I was with one of the largest advertising agencies in South Carolina, and earlier in my life, I worked with the largest appraisal management firm in the United States. My experience in advertising helped establish the importance of marketing and branding. My experience reviewing appraisals has helped in the process of determining a homes value.
I promise each of my clients, that I will maximize the exposure for their home with the most effective media our market has to offer. I find this to be crucial in Greenville, which is, and always has been, a buyer's market. Greenville, SC is a buyer's market due to the simple concept of supply and demand. Greenville is a growing market, and therefore, supply currently outweighs demand. My philosophy has always been that there is a buyer out there for my client's home, and it is a matter of finding that buyer through our marketing efforts. If your home is only featured on a select few websites, and our buyer is looking on one of the other major websites, then that is definitely a missed opportunity.
How do I market my listings?
MLS
I promise to accurately depicts your homes features, utilizing every applicable field.
The biggest mistakes I see are when certain crucial MLS fields (i.e. schools, acreage, year built, etc) are left blank. I think this is a disservice to the seller, and could easily minimize the buyers introduced to the home. I recently ran an MLS search for every active single-family home in Greater Greenville. My findings showed that 26% of properties were missing the year the home was built, and 16% were missing the acreage. This is inexcusable in my opinion. Some have said that a .18 acre lot may be considered undesirable, but my response is that a significant group of buyers moving to the area, are looking for minimum yard maintenance. Leaving an MLS field blank is eliminating exposure, it's as simple as that.
Pictures
This may seem obvious, but pictures are crucial to the marketing of a home. I will take as many pictures as possible for each of my listings, and if necessary, I update those pictures to reflect changes in season. If I list a home in April, it is only a matter of weeks before flowers start to bloom and grass begins to green up. If the pictures still have a winter appearance, then the buyer can assume that my listing has been on the market since April, or they could assume November. Unfortunately not every Realtor updates their pictures, in fact, I showed a house to a client in July, and there was a Christmas tree in the interior pictures.
Some people say "a picture is worth a thousand words", but what if the pictures of your home were only worth 500 words? All of my listings get the maximum number of pictures feasible (my record is 36), and those pictures are all taken with a wide-angle lens. The proof of wide-angle superiority can easily be seen in the pictures below. These are pictures taken from the same position with two different cameras, and the blue box identifies how limited the pictures were with a standard lens.
The hardwood floors would have been virtually unnoticed without the wide-angle. | The coffered ceiling would have been easy to overlook if not for the wide-angle lens.
Print
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Real Estate Book
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Homes & Land Magazine
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Greenville News
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Greenville Journal
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Big Blue Book of Dreams
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Full-Color Flyers
Internet
I am constantly looking into other ways to market my homes on the internet, but the following list contains the websites where my homes are currently visible. I also include up to 25 pictures and a featured tour for my listings on each of these websites: (some websites do not accept featured tours)
- GreenvilleMOVES.com
- RealEstateBook.com
- Moving.com
- Zillow.com
- Juno.com
- Trulia
- RealEstate.com
- Google
- MLS.com
- HomeFinder.com
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- Realtor.com
- HomesandLand.com
- Excite.com
- FaceBook.com
- CDanJoyner.com
- Move.com
- RealEstateShows.com
- CraigsList
- Homes.com
- Viewr.com
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- MSN House & Home
- AOL Real Estate
- Netscape
- Prudential.com
- HomeGain
- HotPads.com
- GreenvilleOnline.com
- Oodle.com
- GGARonline.com
- ClickAPost
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- Yahoo!
- HomeScape
- Localism.com
- Vast.com
- CLRsearch.com
- RealtyBaron.com
- geebo.com
- ActiveRain
- Compuserve
- JournalHomes.com
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