We’ve all seen those ads by real estate agents in magazines, on TV, and on the radio promising they can sell your home quickly and for top dollar. These agents spend tons of money to run those advertisements and are actively scouring the streets for people who need to sell their home. They’ve built their businesses on getting as many signs with their name on it in as many yards as possible. Most every real estate agent seminar out there preaches this strategy and Realtors pay top dollar to hear this insider only advice. And the agents who go out and advertise strictly for home sellers do actually sell a lot of those homes every year.

But there is a dirty little secret to this that none of them ever want to talk about.

If you look at their numbers on a monthly or yearly basis, you’ll find that many of these mega agents only sell about 30% to 40% of the homes they list for sale. Why? Because they spend all their advertising dollars on finding people who want to sell their homes, not finding home buyers! Spending money finding people who want to buy those homes just isn’t in the budget. And if you bring this fact up at those real estate seminars, the guru up on stage will say things like “its all just a numbers game” and move on to the next topic. The guru knows that if you have 100 listings, 30-40 of them will most likely sell in any 3 to 4 month period.

Now most of the agents who run their business like this are genuinely good people and I’m not writing this to badmouth them. When you sign a listing contract with them, they seriously want your home to sell in 2 days so they get a commission check. They’ll put your home in the local MLS just like every other agent and hope that things work out in the end. If things don’t go as planned, they’ll send you a letter or you might get a phone call from them asking you to relist your home at a lower price. If you decide to go with someone else, they’ll quickly forget about you and move on to the next house.

I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of grief from agents all over the country for saying this, but it had to be said.

The National Association of buyers reports that 80% of home buyers use the internet as a source when they buy a home. It is at this point most people realize that if you’re selling your home, you need to get your home in front of as many potential home buyers as humanly possible. If your agent is spending those commission checks paying for more TV, radio, and magazine ads trying to find more people who want to sell their homes instead of buyers for your home, you’re getting a raw deal.

Did the light just go off in your head and did I hear your brain go clunk? Good. Keep reading.

The other little secret in the real estate business is that getting your home in the local MLS is the single most important factor in marketing your home regardless of what your agent might say and accounts for about 75% of the marketing process. Think about it, getting your home in front of real estate agents who get paid to find buyers is the single best option you’ve ever had or will have in the foreseeable future. But everyone selling their home using a real estate agent gets in the MLS anyway. In today’s competitive market, how you allocate the remaining 25% of your marketing strategy will definitely make the difference between selling your home quickly and the frustration that comes with having it sit on the market for months at a time.

So all things being equal, wouldn’t it be smarter to list your home with a local agent that advertises for buyers and has hundreds, if not thousands, of potential home buyers on their website every week by featuring your home on their website since you listed with them?

It’s a no brainer.

When you’re selling you home, the ONLY thing you should care about is getting your home in front of as many potential home buyers as humanly possible! You shouldn’t care whether or not your agent has their face on a billboard or does flashy TV and radio commercials. Getting 10, 20, 50, 100, or 200 potential buyers on a local real estate website to look at your home every single week will increase the odds that someone will buy it. “Its all just a numbers game”…sorry, couldn’t resist.

So the bottom line is when you’re selling you home, look for are local agents who heavily advertise for home buyers. You can find these agents by doing an internet search. After all, this is how 80% of home buyers mentioned in the National Association of Realtors study are finding them. If you put yourself in a home buyer’s shoes, you’ll realize they’re looking for local agents with homes for sale and no barriers to being able to easily search. If the agents advertising for buyers require registration before searching for homes, that agent probably isn’t a good candidate because home buyers typically don’t like divulging their information. They just want to see homes for sale and don’t want to run the risk of being e-mail spammed or hassled on the phone by real estate agents.

There is too much at stake in today’s buyers market to leave the sale of your home up to chance. Smart sellers know that taking ever single advantage available to them counts and sometimes the obvious or popular choice isn’t always the best.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Selling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.