If you are planning to sell your home in Markham, Unionville, Stouffville or any sourrounding areas make sure you use a real estate agent that employs a FULL SERVICE marketing plan. More than 90% of today's homebuyers will search for a new home on the internet whether they are using a Realtor or not. Therefore, it is crucial that your real estate agent is up-to-date on current internet strategies to exposing your home worldwide.
Promoting your home on the internet is not the way of the future, it's the way of today!
While newer, non-traditional methods are very important to getting your home sold, older, more traditional methods are still valid and must be incorporated into a well balanced marketing plan. As your local real estate agent , Martin will promote your home with a truly unique marketing approach that focuses on newer, non-traditional methods while still including older, more traditional methods.
To get your home sold quickly and for the highest amount of money the market will pay, you must have a Realtor who is current with today's technologies.
When you hire Martin as your real estate agent to sell your home, he will utilize the following methods according to your needs.
Feature Your Home On Its Own Website
Internet exposure for your home will be crucial since the majority of prospective home buyers search the internet for new listings. Your home's personal and customized website will be a large focus of the overall marketing plan. The URL address for your site will be customized to your home address (eg. www.123Main.com).
With the click of a button, buyers will be able to learn about nearby schools, learn about the neighbourhood, print a brochure, make an appointment and much more. View a generic property website DEMO . Your website will be promoted both through various internet portals as well as through various print materials.
Detailed Website Analytics
This piece of software will be built into your website and is similar to google's analytics. It will basically tell us where the traffic is coming from, how many visitors are viewing your site and where prospective buyers are spending most of their time. Closely analyzing these details will give us a good idea of your home's online exposure and let us know if any adjustments need to be made.
Professionally Photograph Your Home
A picture is worth a thousand words! Well how much would 15-20 professionally taken photographs be worth? Your home will be professionally photographed using appropriate lighting and digital touch-ups to ensure your home looks its best. If you've shopped or researched anything online before, not just homes, then you know how important a great picture is. Don't settle for amateur photography or even 'no photography' in some cases.
MLS will only allow a maximum of 9 pictures, and Martin will make full use of that, but many more pictures will be promoted online in order to give your prospective buyers a better overall feel for your home . The importance of having great photos cannot be stressed enough as they will be promoted throughout most of you home's marketing plan.
Feature Professional Virtual Tours Of Your Home
Virtual tours are a great way to give home buyers a different look at the focal rooms of your house . They will allow the buyer to have a 360 degree view of your home's most appealing rooms. These tours will be available to view from your personalized website, the front page of Martin's website under "Featured Properties and through a "virtual tour" button directly on your MLS listing.
Feature A Video Tour Of Your Home
Martin will also feature a video of your home combining your photos and panoramic shots together with music. This video will again be viewable from your personalized website, Martin's website, distributed through email, shared on social networks and most importantly uploaded to YouTube. YouTube is the world's second largest search engine behind Google. Watch the video below to view a demo.
Google Pay Per Click Campaign (PPC)
When buyers search for homes in your neighbourhood, your personal website will show up alongside the most popular Google search results. Martin will be in control of this campaign and will select keywords that will result in more accurate and efficient clicks. Keywords such as "homes in Markham ", "homes for sale in Unionville ", "detached homes in Stouffville ", "condos in Cornell" etc. The keywords can be analyzed to determine which ones generate more traffic to your site so that adjustments can be made. To view more information visit Google's PPC campaigns .
Syndicate Your Listing To Hundreds Of Active Sites
Your listing will be syndicated to more than just a few other websites, it will be syndicated to hundreds of highly relevant websites exposing your home all over the internet. Every possible website that homebuyers might come accross will contain your listing.
The following websites are just a sample of what you can expect: Real Estate Vine , Homezilla , Oodle , Zoocasa , Househunting , Home Trader , Realty Stock , and many more.....
Social Networks
Martin is very active in online social networks and nowadays, you would be hard pressed to find someone who isn't involved in some way, shape or form. Facebook, for example has over 500 millions active users and growing everyday. Through LinkedIN , Facebook , Twitter , YouTube and even his own BLOG , Martin shares current real estate information, relevant articles, videos, house listings, open houses, etc. These platforms provide for an easy way to keep in touch, build trust, and simply network with huge groups of people. Yet one more avenue to promote your listing!
Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
Your home will also have a complete listing in the local MLS known as www.Realtor.ca to the general public. MLS is well-known to contain the world's largest database of homes for sale. There are roughly 20,000 Realtors servicing homes in Markham and the GTA, and most agents work with anywhere from 1-6 prospective buyers at any given time. Anyway you do the math, that's a lot of potential buyers being exposed to your listing.
Feature Your Home In The Local Real Estate Newspaper
Roughly 3 per cent of home buyers come from print advertising such as newspapers. A very small percentage, but a percentage nonetheless. Your home will be featured in the real estate section of your local newspaper as Martin deems necessary.
Conduct Open Houses
Martin will conduct professional open houses for your listing as required. Public open houses are usually conducted on Saturdays and/or Sundays from 2-4pm. While open houses sometimes do attract nosy neighbours, they are still a popular way to increase exposure to your home. Every weekend, potential buyers get in their cars and browse the neighbourhoods they want to live it. You never know when your buyer might walk through your door!
Schedule An Agent Open House
Since the majority of home buyers come from other Realtors , we want to give local real estate agents a chance to see your home without having to make an appointment. Agent open houses are very popular in Markham and Unionville and attract many local real estate agents . It's a great opportunity for Martin to promote your home and network with other agents so that they have your home in mind when they come across the right buyer.
Text Messages For More Information
The popularity of sending text messages on your cell phone grows every year. Canadians now send over 92 million text messages per day and experts predict that text messages will grow by about 700% in the next 5 years. The average number of text messges sent per month far exceeds the number of phone calls. For this reason With this kind of technology your home will be exposed to even more potential buyers .
Install A Sign
Martin will have a professional "For Sale " sign installed on the front your property. This will let all neighbours and people driving-by know that your house is for sale . This is exactly what we want. Neighbours often have a friend or a relative interested in moving into the area. Your sign will also be used to attach custom sign riders that will either drive traffic to your website, promote your "Text For Info" feature or advertise your open house.
E-mail Buyer Prospects
Over time, Martin has created a database of hundreds of buyer prospects who at one time or another, have either called or e-mailed him about a listing, filled out a form from his website, visited an open house or made a connection with him through his networking. Every potential buyer in his database will receive an email with your listing information and a link to your personal website to view more information.
Provide A FREE Staging Consultation With A Certified Professional
Staging your home is proven to help sell your home quicker and for more money. Real estate staging statistics speak for itself. After cleaning and de-cluttering your home, staging will provide you with the greatest return on your investment. Martin's certified staging professional will meet you at your home and provide you with a customized 56 page report identifying priorites in every room and an action plan to improve your home's showability.
Depending on your budget and timeframe, you can choose to complete the improvements on your own or with the help of the certified home stager. Either way, Martin believes that staging your home will most certainly help put more money back into your pocket after the sale. Martin recommends the home staging services of Monica Stanciu .
Provide High Quality Colour Feature Sheets
Martin will provide high quality colour feature sheets for buyers to take away with them after visiting your home. These feature sheets will show off your home's best assets through photos and descriptive text. These sheets will also direct more traffic to your website.
Distribute "Just URL'd" Notices To The Neighbourhood
Instead of distributing the same old "Just Listed" notices to the neighbourhood, Martin will change it up a little bit sending out "Just URL'd" notices. This title will catch the buyer's eye a little more because it is different, and as you may have guessed, will drive even more traffic to your website so that potential buyers can get a better feel for your home and have more of a lasting impression.
Present Your Home To Other Realtors At Weekly Meetings
As a Realtor at Sutton Group - Heritage Realty Inc. Martin attends weekly meetings where he gets the opportunity to promote your listing to other agents in the office. Martin's collegues are very active in Markham, Unionville, Stouffville and surrounding communities and he makes sure that they are aware of his listings. Martin works with a great team of real estate professionals and they all keep their eyes and ears open for each other.
Telemarketing Campaign To The Area
This tactic, again, comes down to making sure your neighbourhood is aware that your home is for sale . Some of the best leads sometimes come from friends and family wanting to live nearby. Martin will get on the phone and talk with your neighbours to see if he can raise more awareness towards your listing. At the same time, he will direct them to your website for more information.
E-Mail Buyer Representatives
There are many real estate agents in every neighbourhood that specialize in the buyer's side of the real estate transaction. When an agent shows a house to their client, it is courteous of them to leave their business card for the listing agent . This has helped Martin build a database of hundreds of local buyer representatives and he will send them all e-mails with information about your listing.
Contact Local Listing Realtors
Your house is not likely to be the only house for sale in your neighbourhood, just as there have been many homes nearby that have sold before you. The listing agents who are selling or who have sold those homes will have likely come accross many buyers interested in the neighbourhood. It is very important that these real estate agents know about your listing so that they can alert those buyers. Those buyers will likely be some of your best opportunities.
Provide A Lockbox Near Your Front Door
Martin will provide a lockbox near your front door to provide easy access for home buyers and their real estate agents . There is a good reason why most real estate agents and home stagers recommend de-personalizing your home . You want the home buyers to picture themselves living in your home. Allowing prospective buyers to explore your home freely will greatly improve your chances of success. When homeowners are home during a showing, some buyers might not feel as comfortable exploring your home. They might feel intimidated and/or embarassed to discuss your home's attributes aloud. We want to make sure every potential buyer feels comfortable in your home and allowing them to inspect your home in your absence is another great step towards getting your home sold.
