Volume 1
Real Estate
It amazes me that in this day and age, some business owners do not understand the importance of the changes we’ve witnessed in the transfer of communication and information over the last ten or so years.
Admittedly, I have an over-wordy way of saying things. The thing is, people are on the internet now.
Many people spend the majority of their time on the internet at work, at home and on their phones. No matter your demographic, it's becoming more and more likely that you're going to find them on the internet.
Last Sunday I was out house hunting with a trusted friend. That may stop some of you dead in your tracks “Kim Jackson,” ...you might say …. “you can’t credit your way out of a paper sack….
Why would you look at houses?”
Why would you look at houses?”
My answer to that is visualization and manifestation, my friends. You either “get that” or you don’t …
if it’s latter, you really SHOULD have it explained to you, it’s some very enlightening stuff!
Anywho, I digress … my pal and I were driving around looking at houses. He advised me to look for houses that weren't necessarily for sale, but appeared to be a bit run down and without an occupant on streets that were nice otherwise.
We drove around and spied a tremendous find near the river .. in fact I would be able to see the river AND the Quincy bridge from my front lanai, should I find a way to own this house. This particular house did not appear to be for sale, only abandoned. The only signage we saw were the no trespassing signs,
which we promptly ignored to get a better view of the house.
The second little beauty WAS for sale. A tiny little doll-house looking place. It was very run down and had a very overgrown yard. I stood at the edge of the yard and imagined it after a good dosing of paint, whimsy and cozification. Seeing the name of the realty company printed clearly on the sign, I said to my friend, “Groovy … we’ll hit their website and know how much this place is within the hour!”
We rushed back to my apartment, went to Google, typed in “CASTLEMAN REAL ESTATE” and found pretty much nothing that was of any use whatsoever to advance my excitement about this property into a sale. (yes I’m calling you by name… you should be ashamed of your lack of marketing and web presence)
After googling “Castleman Real Estate”, we found many business listings. Those gave the name and phone number … which wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was to be able to google and find a website for this realty company that contained well taken photographs of the interior of the home,
information about the year of construction and possibly a video.
My friend needed to take off and so I bid him a good day … I then poured a fresh cup of java and began a 45 minute online investigation of this house. I can't put into words how perplexed I was that this company didn't have a website.
Overwhelmed with other matters, I called my mother and told her about the house. I asked her if she could look into it and find out the asking price. This evening I learned that she called today and there was no answer at the real estate company.
_________________________________________
_________________________________________
If I owned a real estate company, here's what I would do.
I would first advise sellers that if they leave their precious velvet Elvis paintings on the wall, their make shift shelving tower piled full of mail and chachkies and don't bother to "present" their home in any way that the selling price will dramatically go down.
ABC's 20/20 went to Bothell, WA and staged a home on camera
with 32 talented ASP/ASPM Stagers.
To be perfectly honest, it shouldn't really matter that a seller would make a better return. They should be driven by the desire to make their house look as lovely as possible if they're trying to sell it, but that's just my outlandish opinion.
I would take advantage of social networking sites, blogging sites, video hosting sites and the like. I can't imagine another purchase that's more driven on the emotion of the buyer than real estate. It's critical to catch a prospect when they're as hot as possible and the place to do that is online, with a radio schedule flooding the website into the ears of unsuspecting listeners.
I would upload a minimum of two video tours per week. Video tours don't have to be any sort of fancy camera work or cinematic artistry ... They need to be clear, thorough and somewhat steady. They need to provide an uncluttered view of the interior and exterior of the home so that the prospective buyer can imagine this place as their own home.
These are just some thoughts from the nucleus of my noggin on the matter. I see a lot of opportunity for the first realty company to jump on the 2010 bandwagon. I don't expect it to be the aforementioned realty company, but I'm certain there are realtors out there that possess
drive and vision for their company.
There you have it!
No comments:
Post a Comment