Month: October 2019

5 Tips for a Successful FSBO

It’s no secret that skipping the real estate agent and selling a home on your own can save you thousands. Depending on the location, the average seller can pay anywhere from 1-4% of the sales price just for listing with an agent. But, if it’s easy to sell on your own, why doesn’t everyone do it? For sale by owner isn’t for the faint of heart, but there are ways to make it successful.

Price It Right

Pricing might be the single most important key to a successful For Sale By Owner. Every property on the market is only new for a few days; it will lose its freshness after a few weeks of showings to potential buyers. Demand starts dwindling after about 21 days, and if the price is too high, you may have to drop it. While it’s never too late, you might have lost an opportunity to sell the house.

While pricing the home low can increase demand, resulting in more offers, you may get less for the home than what you could have. Everyone wants to get as much as they can from their home sale.

Take an objective approach to pricing your home. Look for other similar homes in your area that have sold recently, assess the market, and try to keep your emotions in check.

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Consider Flat Fee MLS Options

According to NAR, in 2018 only 4% of homes sold were not listed in the Multiple Listing Service. Instead of hoping that your other marketing hacks get in front of the right people, make sure your home is readily available for looking buyers and their agents in the MLS. Instead of paying a percentage of the sales price when the home sells and being contractually obligated to an agent, pay a small flat fee up front for them to put the home in the MLS for you.

Pay For Professional Photos

With most buyers starting their home shopping online, it’s critical to make a great first impression. This starts with the listing photos. Don’t cheap out by taking photos with your phone while you drive by. Hire a professional photographer for a couple hundred dollars that can get the best shots possible.

If your listing has poor quality photos or even worse, no photos, you are going to get overlooked by potential buyers.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Social Media

A marketing campaign without the inclusion of social media is incomplete. These are the most visited sites, and your chances of making a sale here are high. One of the best places to market your house is on Facebook where over one billion people are active every month. Others include Twitter, Nextdoor, Instagram and LinkedIn.

You can also join real estate communities and place your ads to reach your targeted area. Post photos of your home and sales details and wait for potential buyers to call. The traditional FSBO sites are now also active on social media, and so wherever you choose to list your home, it may end up in their social media where you are likely to get a lot of traffic.

Offer a Buyer Agent Commission

You decided to sell on your own to avoid paying a listing commission, but don’t ignore what offering a buyer agent commission could get you. Anywhere between 1-3% of the sales price is standard, depending on your market. It may sound like a lot, but it increases the flow of buyers sent your way by buyer agents. Most MLS’ also require a buyer commission to be eligible to add your listing. Failing to offer a commission or not offering enough, can make buyer’s agents direct their clients to go where they are paid. If a buyer’s agent obtains a buyer that eventually purchases the home, the buyer agent commission will be taken from your sale proceeds at closing. A property for sale by owner will gain extra exposure if you offer a buyer agent commission. We buy houses Winter Haven Fl

Can you be successful on your own?

Absolutely, and you can save yourself some money doing it. The internet is full of successful FSBO stories. Use their experience and figure out what works for your home and market. You can also look for online tools to guide you through the process. There are several platforms that provide you what you need to manage the sale from day one to closing. Then make your story one of success.

5 Steps to Real Estate Video Marketing Success

Video marketing is growing like wildfire and if you haven’t already begun using it in your real estate practice you need to start now. Below you’ll find a simple 5 step process you can use to get started or add to your repertoire in using video marketing for your business.

Start With the End in Mind

I know that is a little clich but it’s critical when it comes to using video as part of your real estate marketing plan. There are really only about 4 different outcomes to try and accomplish. They are are as follows:

  • Lead Generation
  • Branding
  • Listing Plan
  • SEO

Once you have your desired outcome for your video it’s time to move onto Step 2.

Keyword Research

Regardless of your desired outcome, you’ll need to do some keyword research to determine what keywords you want to go after with your video. This sounds complex – but really it’s pretty simple. Go to Google and type in “google keyword tool” in the search box. It will return a result for Google AdWords: Key Word Tool. There you can simply enter keywords that you would want to target and Google’s tool will tell you how much traffic those keywords are getting.

Here’s a keyword example to try: foreclosure listings Harrisburg Pa. Did you notice that Google identified all of the key words assoicated and provided the total number of searchs as well as their respective local and global search strengths?

Once you have a list of potential keywords, go back to the Google search and enter in your keywords to see how many competing sites there are on Google. The best keywords to target are those that have high search volume and not that many competing pages.

This information is important- it will be used to sometimes determine the topic of your video, to title and to describe your video when it is time to release it to the public (see Step 5).

What Type of Video Will You Use?

There are several video types you can use. For example you can create a video slide show, video property tour, neighborhood video tour, screen capture video and the list can go on and on. You just need to pick which type of video you are going to use and then move on to Step 4.

Create or Render

Once you determine the type of video, you’ll need to create it. How you create the video is going to depend on the type you choose in Step 3. You may need to go to an actual property and shoot the video tour or you may be able to simply create it on your computer with a slide show or screen capture. Once you have it created you will need to either upload it to a video sharing site or you may need to first render the video and then upload.

Syndication & Distribute (The Fun Part)

So you have your video created, now what? It’s time to get it up and out on the net. There are tons of video sharing sites out there, but definitely the best and most recognized is Youtube. So that is probably the best place to start. It’s super easy to create an account and upload a video there. But if you really want to turbo charge your results you are going to want to syndicate your video on many different video sharing sites.

I know this sounds like a big pain, but here’s the cool thing, there are sites out there that will do it for you. The best free site to do this is tubemogul.com. The way it works is that you upload your video to tubemogul and then enter your title, description and tags and it will actually syndicate your video to a bunch of different sites all at the same time! We buy ugly houses Cutler Bay

I hope you enjoyed this information and would use video marketing in your real estate investing business.