5 Hidden Resources For Home Sellers Revealed

Less than half of all people who have tried to sell a home in Tallahassee have succeeded over the past four years, and we actually monitor this trend and call it the home sales success rate. In looking at the 57% of failed home sellers over the past year, one thing that immediately stands out is that they failed to use all of the resources they had available when trying to sell their home. You see, just getting on the internet and into the Tallahassee MLS are not enough, you actually have to take advantage of every opportunity to attract a buyer, and today we'll cover the hidden resources for home sellers.

First of all, home sellers should understand the analogy of the auction. If you think of selling a home as one large auction, then what would you rather have? 1 or 2 interested parties gathered to bid, or tens or even hundreds of active bidders? Anybody who has auctioned off valuable items will tell you that the auction house chosen is critical, as it will determine the volume and quality of the attendees. This is true in real estate as well.

Many people like to say that the key to selling a home is exposure, but the reality is that targeted exposure for a home is really what matters. Having a large auction where the attendees want to buy cars is not going to get a home sold, thus it is not about the volume of exposure, rather it is about getting a home exposed to people who want to buy a home in Tallahassee today.

5 Hidden Resources For Home Sellers

Thinking back over my 20+ years in real estate, the most overlooked, high-value resource that sellers miss occurs with their choice of the real estate agent that they choose. You can go through the MLS in Tallahassee right now and see that over 70% of the listed properties are not optimized in the database to attract every possible buyer. The agents have not been trained to do it right, and the missing opportunities are costing many people a sale on their home.

Tops on the list of hidden resources for home sellers is working with the highest caliber real estate agent available. The difference in fees between a great real estate agent working at a great real estate company will be far less than the losses the seller takes from failing to sell a home in a declining market. In fact, many of these un-trained agents charge the same fees as the top agents in the business. This is a mistake that is made by sellers who fail to grasp the importance of having a top agent, but it is one that can be cured very easily.

The MLS is the central point for all of the data used to market your home for sale, and that is why having a great understanding of all the ins and outs of the Tallahassee MLS is second on the list of hidden resources for home sellers. Most applications on the internet that promote homes for sale pull their information from the MLS systems across the country. That is why a typo error in the MLS will mean a typo error on 50 different websites or more!

It is a measured and documented fact that homes with multiple pictures get viewed more often than homes with no pictures. In fact, the Tallahassee MLS allows for 25 pictures for each listing, yet fewer than 5% of all listings have maxed out their photo options. You might wonder how a smaller home or condo could have 25 pictures, but I can tell you a smart marketer with a targeted marketing plan will show you exactly how the best 25 photographs will go into your MLS listing. Remember, all the other websites pull from this data sources, so you want the MLS listing to be perfect.

There are so many home sellers that would use creative financing if it meant getting their home sold today. Sadly, most of the "failed to sell" homeowners never even explored the benefits of marketing a home with creative financing techniques. Even if the eventual buyer does not need creative financing, the marketing of these benefits will increase the buyer pool for the homeowner and will likely result in a higher price. Again, think of real estate as an auction. If the buyer does not feel competition for the home, the offer price will be lower than if the buyer thinks he has to compete to get the home.

Most home sellers do not understand how limited owner financing can increase their pool of home buyers, and in my experience, once they have been taught these benefits by an experienced agents, they often choose to add them to the offer. And of course they often get their homes sold. Currently, less than 1 in 6 home sellers offer any form of special financing for homes in the Tallahassee MLS, and this is a huge mistake for those other 5! Creative financing can increase the size of your buyer pool and thereby increase the sales price that you receive.

The difference between the old ways of advertising a home for sale and today's top methods for using a targeted marketing plan on the internet is like night and day. Most real estate agents think they "advertise" a home on the internet much in the same way as they advertise in the newspaper and specialty magazines. Unfortunately, this is just not so.

The heart and soul of most real estate agents online marketing is their claim that they will "put you on over 50 different websites ...." which of course everybody does through the automated MLS syndication. If this is what it takes to sell a home, then why are 57% of the listings in the Tallahassee MLS failing to sell?

The real answer is through a targeted marketing plan that takes advantage of the known locations of ready buyers on the internet. If you think about it, if all Tallahassee MLS listings are put on REALTOR.com and the other real estate aggregate sites, and 57% of all listings are failing to sell, can't we say that being on those sites is not really a factor in getting a home sold?

Of course, we put all of our listings into the Tallahassee MLS, and all of ours end up on those sites as well. But our success rate is more than double the average in Tallahassee, and we would love to show you how our targeted marketing program takes advantage of the hidden resources for home sellers and drives more buyers to our clients' homes. If you need to sell a home and want to see more, just drop me a note.

Joe Manausa Real Estate is a brokerage company headquartered in Tallahassee, Florida. Its unique business model provides specialists to both home sellers and home buyers, and the results speak for themselves. JMRE has significantly more 5-star reviews on google than any other local competitor. Joe Manausa Real Estate is a leader in internet marketing and utilizes search engine optimization, email marketing, social media and data analytics to get their clients’ home sold faster and for more money than any other Tallahassee brokerage firm. For more information, visit www.manausa.com or call us at (850) 366-8917.