Real estate agent Loida Velasquez offers a few tips here on how she markets a new listing:
Loida starts by saying:
“It is price that sells a home, not the marketing.”
I agree … well, kind of. If you have the most amazing marketing in the world, but you are pricing a home at 50% above what the market is prepared to pay then it won’t sell.
However, as we’ve seen in other posts here at BestRealEstatePhotographers.com (such as “How to get a higher sale price when selling a home“, ) the marketing you use can have a big, big impact upon the number of potential buyers you attract, and that competition will affect the price that is achieved.
Loida goes on to mention a few things that she would recommend, and I’d like to pick up on #3: Hire a professional photographer to take pictures.
“It always surprises me, everytime that I look on the MLS and I come across these properties with terrible quality pictures, how am I, let’s say if I was a buyer, how am I supposed to fall in love with your house when it looks like garbage? And I’m just being straight forward here.
So invest a few dollars, maybe $100 to $200, on a photographer that’s going to take high quality, professional pictures that are going to sell the home.
Again, as I said, buyers are now looking online at properties so you want to make sure that your home stands out and is attractive enough for them to want schedule an appointment to take a look at the property.”
Assuming you are priced about right, the marketing can make a difference though. For example, if you are selling a $400,000 home, then you want that property to look like the best, most amazing $400,000 that those buyers are ever going to see. Because what they’re doing is comparing that home with everything else that’s out there, and if your marketing can make it look like the most value packed property that is currently available then that’s great! What I mean by “most value packed” is that if your $400,000 home presents as well as a $500,000 home, then potential buyers will see as being great value for the price, and you’ll have a crowd of buyers all want a piece of it. That’s when you can push the price up, because you’re taking on multiple offers.
So yes, price sells a home, but marketing can and does impact upon what that final price will be. 🙂
Loida Velasquez makes a similar point in another video:
“Hire a photographer!
You know you’re going to make this commission, so you might as well spend a couple of hundred dollars hiring a professional that’s going to make sure that they accentuate and feature all of the property and everything it has to offer. You know that the first place that buyers look for homes is online, so you want to make sure that when they see the property online, they’re going to go, “You know what, agent, I wanna go check this house out because it looks beautiful!”