Whether you’re selling your house yourself or hiring an agent, you need to have a realistic asking price in mind. It should be based on the prices of properties like yours that sold recently, the trend in home sale prices, and current competition.
If you overprice your home, you will miss out on its most important marketing period.
Watch our new video for advice on how to decide on a list price. If you want more information or are ready to put your house on the market, contact your local Help-U-Sell Real Estate office. You can find it on our website.
The National Association of REALTORS released the first ever Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends report last week. The 104-page document compares the habits, practices, beliefs and goals of the Silent Generation, people born between 1925 and 1945, and all subsequent generations through the Millennials, who were born between 1980 and 2000.
A new report from the National Association of Realtors report outlines the differences among younger and older home buyers and sellers.
Based on some of the data regarding the younger generations, Help-U-Sell Real Estate is perfectly poised to assist them in their real estate transactions.
Younger buyers are more likely to want help understanding the process because they’re most often inexperienced in purchasing a home. Help-U-Sell offices often have agents dedicated to working with buyers, and our specialized Jack Bailey Buyer Consultant Training program is nearing completion.
The majority of Millennials who sold their homes used a full-service brokerage, but they were more likely than other generations to opt for limited service, presumably due to less equity in their properties. With a business model that offers full service (or less, if desired) for a low fee, Help-U-Sell is a perfect fit for the newest generation of homeowners.
Why are the younger buyers and sellers a desirable demographic? According to the report’s findings, they are the most optimistic, and younger sellers are the most likely to use the same broker or agent for their next purchase.
What can you do to attract Millennials?
* Make sure you’re easy to find online.
* Consider creating a Facebook ad that targets that age group who live in your area. You can further home in on potential buyers and sellers by selecting people who are newlyweds or just had a child, factors that could precipitate a move.
* Avoid the hard sell. Instead, offer information in a conversational tone.
* For buyers, write a blog series or create a drip email campaign geared toward educating first-time buyers.
* For sellers, let them know about your low set fee and how they can save the most money. These tips can include staging on a budget and how to market their property to friends, co-workers and neighbors, along with the different ways your office works with sellers.
What tips do you have for working with younger buyers and sellers?
One of the challenges real estate professionals have to face (and ideally overcome) every day is objections from potential clients.
In another video lesson from our training program, Help-U-Sell University, we dissect potential objections and what they really mean so that our brokers and agents can respond. You won’t find a memorized sales pitch that will magically help you “win” the client. Your client is your partner, not someone to defeat. Most objections are really requests for more information in disguise. The best response to any concern is truth as you observed it in your career.
Help-U-Sell University's video lesson on handling objections advises to respond to client concerns with truth, research, data and your experience, not a canned script.
The video reviews possible objections to expect and how to be prepared with statistics or solutions. It also suggests a key phrase to use to tap into the reason for a client’s objection. It’s simply “help me understand…”
Before your next listing presentation or buyer consultation, write down the most common objections you’ve heard and come up with factual information you can use to help your client make a better decision.
Help-U-Sell brokers, if you would like to have access to Help-U-Sell University, contact us so that we can set up your account. If you’re not a franchisee yet, you can join the Help-U-Sell family for as little as $2,500 in up-front fees and gain access to our online and one-on-one coaching training. Learn more at our Franchise Opportunity Center.
Matt Kellam, broker/owner of Help-U-Sell Keystone Realty in Chambersburg, Penn.
Matt Kellam, broker/owner of Help-U-Sell Keystone Realty in Chambersburg, Penn., takes a two-pronged approach to serving his clients and marketing their homes: tried-and-true basics and modern technology.
He opened his office in May 2005 and has learned a lot in the years since. “The basic Help-U-Sell system works,” he says. “Don’t try to fix something that’s not broken.”
One exception: He prefers to host open houses himself in order to capture buyer leads.
Personal contact is important to Kellam. He makes a point of keeping in touch with clients, past, present and future and encourages new Help-U-Sell brokers to do the same. “Be sure to be accessible to buyers and sellers,” he says. One of the benefits of running small office is that people can reach him directly on any given day. He’s also planning to put more energy into staying connected to previous clients and centers of influence this year.
For Kellam, the personal touch leads the way in client relations, but the Internet rules when it comes to property marketing. When he started out, he followed everyone else into print advertising, soon realizing that online was where his office needed to focus. Now, he’s creating video tours to help his sellers attract buyers. Having spent 20 years in radio, he says, “multimedia doesn’t faze me.”
Kellam films each house with a Sony Cyber-shot camera and uses Windows Movie Maker to edit the video. He records the audio separately using a headset and then adds the audio track to the video. He uploads the videos on YouTube and links to them on his site under the Virtual Tours tab on the property pages. One of his recent property videos shows both the exterior and interior and gives information about recent remodeling, last year’s property taxes and room dimensions.
He’s planning to phase out static virtual tours in the near future.
Cynthia Stevens of Help-U-Sell Central Properties in Chandler, Ariz.
Cynthia Stevens has weathered her local market’s ups and downs and secured fourth place in seller-side closings in the Winter Warm-Up Contest. Her office, Help-U-Sell Central Properties in Chandler, Ariz., is growing, partially due to the market for distressed properties.
“I was fortunate enough to get hired by Fannie Mae as a listing broker for their REO properties,” says Stevens. “Overall, we are seeing fewer REOs but more short sales and also more new home sales. I think this year will be very interesting!”
Stevens says she enjoys helping people with their real estate transactions. In fact, the largest factor in her decision to purchase a Help-U-Sell office was the concept of consumer choice. “By allowing consumers to have a say in how they sell their home, they are more connected to the process,” she says.
Central Properties’ goals for 2012 are to continue to work with Fannie Mae and also to try to obtain more short sale listings. Stevens would like to increase the office’s sales by 25 percent over 2011, when the office closed 42 sides.
She advises new brokers to connect with other brokers, agents, loan officers and any other people who can provide insight into the local market. A broker should also really know his product and be able to discuss it with anyone he meets. Lastly, she advocates consistent marketing: “Let everyone know you are here!”
