Cicero, NY

HOW TO ADVERTISE YOUR HOME SUCCESSFULLY

OK, so you've decided it's time to sell your home. There are many reasons for wanting to sell a home. Maybe the company your spouse works for is relocating, or your spouse got that well-deserved promotion, but in order to get the promotion, he needs to move to another part of the state or the country. Perhaps your kids have grown and moved away, and you find that the house you bought ten or fifteen years ago when your kids were young is now too big for just you and your spouse. Or, maybe you're a young couple who needs to sell your smaller home and buy a larger one to accommodate your growing family's needs. The reasons for selling a home are endless.

So what now? Do you try to advertise the home yourself or should you go through a Realtor? The most common reason people give for selling their home themselves is because they are either unwilling or unable to pay a real estate agent a commission for selling their home for them. Whatever your reasons for selling your home alone, you first need to understand a few things.

You are about to do something that a good many people think they can do, but give up trying after just a few weeks. Most people give up because they don't realize from the beginning the extent and complexity of the task ahead.

Here are several sobering statistics of which you should be aware:

The vast majority of For-Sale-By-Owners (over 67%) will list with a real estate broker within the first 6-8 weeks.

• Over 12% of For-Sale-By-Owners will never sell at all.
• Less than 8% of all For-Sale-By-Owners will sell their houses without outside help, in most cases this means a real estate agent's help.

Whether you are selling your home yourself or are teaming up with a real estate professional, a home-selling experience should go quickly, smoothly and profitability. If you think you might want to try selling your house yourself, take a moment to look realistically at what's involved. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Can I afford the time it could take to sell my house with only a sign in the yard and an ad in the local paper? Consider that most buyers learn about a house through an agent, not the newspaper.

2. Am I able to stay home to take calls and conduct tours? This is very important and a sure way to lose possible buyers if you're not at home when they call.

3. Do I know how to screen inquiries so as not to waste precious time showing my house to unqualified buyers? Most agents pre-qualify a buyer before showing a home.

4. Do I know what to do before putting a house on the market?

5. Am I familiar with disclosure laws or local inspection regulations?

6. Am I familiar with the necessary legal and financial knowledge to answer buyer's questions, negotiate a contract and close a sale? The reason a listing agent is brought into the picture for someone selling their home is to be assured that their home is being marketed correctly in magazine ads, newspapers, and real estate listings.

Although these listings will help to sell your home, they do more than that. This type of advertising creates phone calls, which in turn becomes clients. This cycle helps build a pool of homebuyers looking for property, all represented by a selling agent. As you start to multiply this by all the agents and all the companies who advertise homes, you will find a large pool of homebuyers at any given time, all represented by selling agents.

Because your home is listed in the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, these agents are aware that your home is for sale.

Agents then match up clients with homes on the market, one of which might be yours. This is when agents start showing homes to buyers, and before you know it, you get a contract.

So remember that ads create buyers - they don't sell homes.

You can pretty much be guaranteed that the person who ends up buying your home has seen it advertised in a flyer, newspaper listing, or the MLS. Even though you know there are pools of buyers out there, it is still important that your agent list your home to keep that building.

Because listings are often created to make an agent look more impressive, don't make the mistake of basing your choice for an agent on the number of listings they have, but what you can determine if how hard they work and the level of their buyer pool.

Even with all the advertisement media, word of mouth is still the best type of advertisement there is. Friends, family, and neighbors will always be your best bet forgetting word out about your house.

Another tool your agent should use is hosting an open house. In this situation, your house is advertised as having an open house, usually on a Saturday or Sunday, when most people are available to look at homes. Your agent will be at your home all day greeting visitors who have come to walk through to see if they are interested in your home. There might be cookies and coffee served, and the agent will provide a guest book to keep track of names as another method of networking and building the buyer's pool.

If someone does visit your home during an open house, even if they aren't interested, they may know of someone else who would be - again, another way for word of mouth advertising to work for you.

Finally, open houses can be used at the beginning of your home going on the market as way of introduction and then again after your home has been listed for awhile to hopefully start movement if showings have been slow.

No matter what type of advertisement is used, make sure your agent keeps it fresh and noticeable. The more your home is advertised, the more people will know it's for sale, which increases the chance of it being sold quickly.

For more information go to www.HodgkinsAndOHara.com or call us at 315-671-5478