Whether selling your home For Sale by Owner (FSBO), already listed with a local Realtor®, or interviewing agents for your listing business, the broader community of real estate buyer agents is most likely the community that will actually sell your home. Thus your or your Realtor’s working relationship with this community is a very important ingredient in successfully selling your home.
One of our most precious relationships here at @Homes Realty is with our fellow real estate agents, not only locally but nationwide. Why? Because this community is one of the key strategic components contributing to our successful home selling program to the benefit of our clients.
Realtors – A Major Marketing Target
According to a nationwide survey of home buyers in 2009, 36% responded that they first found the home they actually purchased from a Realtor®.Thus this is an important group in marketing and selling your home.
This is why we participate within local Board committees from time to time as they are formed, and why we are active within the local Certified Residential Specialist (CRS) group here in Huntsville, because these relationships are important not only to us but to you, as our client! …plus the real story is, I truly love my job and enjoy fully participating. 🙂
We are also active on the National Scene, like within the largest online real estate network in the world, Active Rain, where we recently ranked in participation and thus traffic 1st in Huntsville and Madison County, and also 2nd within the entire State of Alabama. …and yes you will find us on Facebook and other social networks building and maintaining both local and national Realtor® relationships.
Moreover we have also received some very influential national recognition among our peers. In 2010, Better Homes and Gardens selected our company as one of the Top 25 Next Generation Real Estate Brokerages in the nation and has featured us on their website. Another 2010 national recognition which we are especially proud of, was being named as a Top 10 Innovator of Year Finalist by Inman News. While we did not win the national title of, ‘Innovator of the Year’, just being named as a Top 10 Finalist was …enough said!
Why is this important to you as a home seller?
Answer: “Local Realtors Won’t Shy Away From Showing Your Home” and “National Buyer Referrals” …National buyer referrals are more important for areas such as Huntsville, where a steady stream of relocating home buyers are heading to our town from across the country for employment opportunities.
@Homes Realty – Do’s and Don’ts of Realtor Marketing
There are a number of things we do to effectively market your home to other Realtors® and there are some things we don’t or won’t do within this effort. What follows in not an exhaustive list but it should effectively communicate our approach.
What we Will Do:
1) List Your Home on the MLS Syndication Network
This will advertise your home to all local Realtors via private MLS websites. This will also distribute your Home’s for sale information across the public Internet where your listing will be available on a multitude of websites including Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, HotPads, etc, and on-and-on …
2) Aggressively Follow-up on all MLS Reverse Prospect Leads
Reverse prospect leads are generated internally within the MLS and they indicate that another Realtor’s client has expressed interest in your home by either searching its explicit parameters, tagging it as a favorite, etc. We will promptly contact our fellow agent to verify if your home does indeed meet their client’s requirements, if so the objective of this marketing contact will be to hopefully schedule a showing of your home.
3) Strategically Feature Your Home on the Internal MLS Hot-Sheet
The Hot-Sheet internal to the private MLS is actively followed by many …many agents, and especially by buyer agents that are actively working with qualified home buyers. Homes that get hot listed are new listings, price changes, and any major status changes like pending, withdrawn, etc. We will have limited exposure to this valuable marketing mechanism and will use it strategically throughout the selling process.
4) Promptly Follow-up with the Realtors Showing Your Home
With technology today we are notified almost immediately when your home is shown by another Realtor®, even if your home is unoccupied. As a common practice we make contact with the buyers agent who has shown the property and get feedback from their clients. We will share this with you on a regular basis and engage the buyers agent in potential contract negotiation if appropriate interest is expressed.
5) Strategically Use Realtor® Email Marketing Appropriately
We do use automated constant contact email marketing to contact fellow agents where appropriate, such a planned Realtor® Open House, price and status changes when a previous reverse prospect lead has been worked, etc.
What we Will-Not Do:
1) Spam Fellow Realtors with Unneeded/Unwanted Email
Yes believe it or not this happens more than you might think even with our common private MLS linkage. Sadly I have often times found myself deleting these non-significant emails without reading them. This is not the behavior we are looking for when we make such contact thus we don’t practice this activity because continued good relationships with fellow agents benefits both you and us.
2) Abuse the MLS Featured Hot-Sheet Beyond it’s Intent
A few weeks ago I saw a home I had been following closely pop-up on the hot-sheet, when I examined it I found a $100 price reduction. Not $5000 and no not $500 but an actual $100 reduction on a $498k home. This example makes my point …we won’t do this because our relationships are more important than the few advertising impressions to fellow agents this will bring.
3) List Your Home for Less than 3% for the Buyer’s Agent
Given my own 20 years of real estate experience, I personally understand the time, effort, miles, and money buyers agents have invested in their clients. This is sacred territory in my book, thus we do not take listings where this standard buyers agent commission is not offered. Mind you, I am not talking about the ultra-luxury niche where such reduced commissions are common place. …If this were to become our common practice we would expect buyers agent to shy off of showing our listings and your home …again its about relationships.
4) List Your Home at a Self-Service Flat-Rate
While of course we do at times make concessions with our listing commission, as the vast majority of agents do from time to time. However there are a number of good reasons why we don’t participate in the Self-service flat-rate listing niche. One of course is that whatever happens good, bad, or indifferent sticks to us and our reputation, and sadly the news is often times more negative than positive. Moreover this is another potential shy away candidate so its relationship, relationship, relationship.
5) List Your Home If We Can Not Agree Upon a Pricing Strategy
Regrettably I do turn down listing business, in all honesty, more than I would like, but it is …what it is! Don’t worry there are plenty of agents out there that will take your listing regardless of pricing, they know your home is not likely to sell, but they will get free advertising with your listing, yard sign in your yard, and other home owners in your neighborhood may perhaps open up other listing opportunities for them. The bottom line is …we only take listings where we have confidence that we will have a reasonable opportunity to sell your home, thus a win-win for the both of us.
This is a long summary, however I would certainly welcome an opportunity to interview for your listing business and share additional details about our home selling program just drop me an email or give me call 256-425-1659 and we will set things up.
– Elizabeth
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