Real Estate Marketing - The Most Important Part Of Home Selling

When you are thinking about listing your home for sale having a proper marketing plan is not always the first thing on people's list of things to do.  Most sellers list their home with an real estate professional who puts the home on the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, and that is the breadth of their marketing.  But there could be hundreds or even thousands of similar properties in your market so having a a proper marketing strategy can help to selling your house faster and possibly even for more money than you thought.

Stage one of any marketing plan is the research stage.  Be aware of what the selling, not asking, price of comparable properties in your area over the past few months.  It is very easy to make the misstep of only looking at asking prices in your area and basing your asking price on that data alone.  This could end up in your home taking longer to sell and for a lower price simply because the asking price was too high to start with.  This data can be presented to you by your agent so you can get the full picture.

Once you know what houses are selling for the next phase is to determine what the real estate market is doing.  Values will usually be rising or falling each month but by how much?  Be sure to narrow your research on your particular area.  While values could be rising or going down in a large geographical area as a whole, local areas could be experiencing the reverse.  For instance, in the greater region of Durham, Pickering real estate may have particular economic factors that is causing it to go up a bit despite the fact that the average price of Durham region real estate is falling from month to month.

Once you have decided what your asking price will be you need take a step back and review at your home from the context of a buyer.  What are some areas of your property that could cause a buyer to offer you less or hold them back from making an offer at all. For most home owners it can be quite difficult.  Picking out all of the things that need improvement in your own home can be hard to do.  Being able to understand where your buyer is coming from will be invaluable in the offer negotiations.  In any successful negotiation, if you can understand the other party's reasoning you have a better chance of arriving at a deal that benefits both parties.

How and where you advertise your home is going to have a strong influence on the sale.  There are many types of advertising possible to the home seller but since every penny spend is money taken from your profit you need to look into where you will get the most bang for your buck.  So that being said, where are the potential buyers?

Real estate publications and magazines are still used by many house hunters but most  look on-line for properties at some point.  Advertising your home on-line also gives the advantage of being able to provide potential purchasers with much more detail than a newspaper can.  You can very easily add multiple photos, videos, virtual tours and go into greater detail.  All of this will not only allow your listing to stand out from your competition but can also help in bringing you more qualified purchasers.

The best scenario is to have you home sold in the fastest time frame and for the largest amount of money.  By doing a little research and putting together a marketing plan you will be well on your way to achieving that goal.