 ADEVERTISING
IN GENERAL
 Every
home seller likes to be assured that their listing agent or the
real estate company will run ads featuring their home. Newspaper
ads could be large display ads with lots of listings or small classified
ads featuring just your property. Ads may also appear in local real
estate magazines and your listing will also show up on the Internet.
Of course the agents and companies will run ads featuring your
house, but not for the reasons you expect.
You see, the main job of advertising is not to sell your house
directly. Advertising creates phone calls and some of those callers
become clients of the agents answering the calls. This builds up
a pool of homebuyers looking for property in general, all represented
by selling agents (buyer's agents). Multiply this by all the agents
and companies who also advertise homes, and there is a large pool
of homebuyers in the market at any given time – all of whom
are represented by selling agents.
The agents representing those homebuyers know about your home because
it is listed in the Multiple Listing Service, has been on office
and broker preview, and because your agent may have also sent flyers
to all the local real estate offices.
The agents match up their clients with available homes, one of
which may be yours. Then they show the homes to their clients, who
eventually make an offer on one. That is how your house gets sold.
Ads create a pool of clients, one of which buys your home. Ads
do not usually sell your house directly.
INDIVIDUAL
AGENT ADVERTISING TO HOMEBUYERS
Individual agents may advertise your home for the same reasons
as companies do. They usually advertise in classified ads or in
specialty magazines featuring houses available for sale.
As in other types of advertising, these ads rarely sell your home.
Once again, the main goals of advertising are to accumulate homebuyers
as clients, and to impress you and future home sellers with how
well they market their listings. Some agents actually do sell their
own listings, but not that often.
It is much more productive and beneficial if your listing agent
directs most of his or her marketing efforts toward other agents.
Since this is "behind the scenes" marketing that you don’t
actually see, it is often difficult for you to measure how hard
the agent is working for you.
It is a mistake to measure your agent’s effectiveness solely
by counting the number of newspaper and magazine ads featuring your
property.
Neighborhood Announcements:
When you first list your home many agents send "announcements"
to all of the other houses in your neighborhood. This can be done
in the form of postcards, a letter, or flyers left hanging on the
front door. These are important because your neighbors might have
friends who are looking to buy a house.
The announcements create "word of mouth" advertising,
which is the best kind.
OPEN
HOUSES
An open house when your property is first placed on the market
can be very important, but not for the reasons most homeowners think.
Just like with advertising, most visitors to open houses rarely
buy the house they come to look at. They may not even know the price
of your home when they stop by to visit – they probably just
followed an "Open House" sign to your door.
An open house performs a similar function to the neighborhood announcements
– it lets all of your neighbors know that your house is for
sale, and it practically invites them to come "take a look."
Being generally nosy, a lot of your neighbors will take advantage
of the invitation.
And they may tell their friends about your house, creating more
"word of mouth" advertising.
Of course, there are other reasons for holding open houses, too.
Listing agents who "farm" a particular neighborhood use
them as an opportunity to meet with other local homeowners who will
someday be selling their home. Your agent may hope to list their
homes in the future.
Open houses held after your home has been on the market awhile
do not usually serve a useful purpose in selling your home. Most
of the neighbors already know your house is for sale and open house
visitors rarely buy the homes they visit.
However, if you really want more open houses, your listing agent
may allow other agents to hold it open. Open houses attract prospective
homebuyers and agents hope to convince some of those homebuyers
to become their clients.
All articles © 2000 RealEstate ABC
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