Has the hot summer weather cooled off the interest in your home? There are many easy things that you can do to garner attention and excitement for your property year- round. Read on for some must-dos when it comes to showing and marketing your home, as well as some creative tactics for generating sizzle.
Showing Your Home:
- Establish A Sense of Urgency. If a lot of potential buyers have toured your home and come back for repeat showings, let other buyers know about it. You want your property to appear in high demand, creating a sense of urgency for buyers to make an offer.
- How Does Your House Stack Up? When showing your home, be sure to call out what special features your home has versus other for sale properties in the area. Is your home one of the few in the neighborhood with a pool? Does your condo have lower assessments than other nearby condos? These are the types of things that make your property stand out to house hunters.
- Stay top of mind. For all open houses, collect the names and contact information of the people who walked through your home and follow up with them after the showing.
Marketing:
- Spread The Word. Let anyone and everyone know that your home is for sale, and the quicker it will likely sell. Post your ForSaleByOwner.com property listing on Facebook, send an email to your friends and family and ask them to forward it on to their contacts, strike up a conversation with people at your grocery store, etc…
- Property Listing Prose. Your property listing has to be enticing enough to make house hunters want to take a tour. To make the most of this short-yet important-summary of your property, highlight anything new or remodeled, mention all distinctive elements of your home and include a call to action.
Get Creative:
- Offer Something Free. Sometimes all a house hunter needs is a little incentive to lure them into wanting one house over another. You can attract them with a free flat screen TV, to paint select rooms of the house in the color of their choice or two roundtrip plane tickets, for example. Remember, these extras still cost less than shelling out thousands to a real estate agent.
- Enlist Help. Ask your friends and neighbors to help you sell your home. Hold an open house for your friends, family and neighbors so they can boast about your home to people in their personal network. To entice these outsiders to help you, offer a finder’s fee to anyone who brings you the person who buys your property. Just a few hundred dollars as a finder’s fee can be very motivating.
- Be The Lender. Seller financing is when the homeowner extends financing to the buyer for the purchase price of the property, minus the down payment. This creative financing option has both advantages and disadvantages, but it could mean the difference in selling your home sooner versus later.
Give these ideas a try and let the summertime heat radiate all the way to your closing.
