An Enigma In My Toast

Everyone knows that real estate, residential or commercial, is about sales. It’s a game of finding the right fit for both the buyer and seller. It’s about using psychology to get inside their heads,  identify their respective needs and close a deal.

Image Provided By 5 Recipes for Lifde the head of both and make a deal.

Following a few simple tips will can make brokers more credible overall, while simultaneously assisting them in  successfully market their listings online.

• Do perform a quick clean up of the interior spaces you plan on shooting before you take photos  for web posting. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Many prospective buyers do their research online before calling their broker. Even for an individual with a tremendous sense of vision, it might be challenging to lookpast a room littered with pop bottles and empty paint cans or seemingly endless clutter in the form of stacks of VHS tapes and piles of clothing. Go ahead-set the scene as best you can for the buyer.

• Do complete, and in a clear and articulate fashion, all the information requested by an online listing site in its information section about the property. The more information a property hunter has in advance of his or her call to the broker, the less time the broker will have to spend showing properties that don’t fit the bill. A little time invested entering this information could result in a whole lot of time saved later in the transaction.

• Do clearly list the dates of any open houses or property tours on the listing, and remember to remove the dates after the showing. Listing dates makes it easy for a prospective buyer to pop in an take a look at the property without feeling committed-and can often result in a new broker-client relationship being formed. Failure to remove dates afterward, however, makes brokers look neglectful.

• Don’t mark a property as a “new” listing if it’s not. People can shop for a new home or property for months, even years. They catch on quickly if a listing is marked as new in an attempt to have it stand out from other listings after it’s been on the market for a while. If I can’t trust you to tell me if a listing is new, do I really want to trust you to walk me through my six or seven-figure transaction?

• Avoid using kitschy graphics on the listing photos themselves. Adding “Home Sweet Home” across a pic may at first seem like a great idea to help a prospective owner picture themselves calling it just that, but most prospective buyers click away with a bad taste. The images look like a toddler marred them up and detract from the product meant to be highlighted.