You Can’t Market Your Way Out of This
May 15th, 2009 Categories: Market Trends, Selling Strategies
We’re at a crossroads.
Denver real estate agents acknowledge our job requires that we spend personal dollars on marketing our listings, that’s a part of the package. We pay ourselves back after a transaction closes. There is no company behind us sponsoring the ads we run, the postcards we mail, the internet sites we buy.
In a real estate market like we have today, many sellers think (hope?) that we can market ourselves to a sale, we can’t. Buyers are few and savvy.
Exposure is happening. Your real estate broker is advertising and marketing more than ever in the history of brokerage. Properties today are more exposed to a broader market than they’ve ever been in the past. We post them all over the internet, we blog about them, we tweet them, we post them on Facebook, we buy old fashioned print advertising (particularly magazines with a longer shelf life,) we send out email blasts to other brokers, we hold open houses and Broker open houses, and we spread word of mouth like crazy to any broker we think might be lucky enough to be working with buyers.
Still, our clients call us and ask, what more can you be doing? Phone calls like these add to our sleepless nights. What more can we do? We stare at the ceiling at night and pray that this one gets an offer before the seller pulls it and lists it with another broker. To a broker selling hope, but not necessarily selling houses.
The worst indignity is when a seller pulls the listing, lists with another broker and then reduces the price to where you knew it should be all along. Now the second broker has the benefit of all the months you’ve exposed the home, all of the marketing you’ve paid for, plus a price that you weren’t allowed to list it for.
Phew! We tell ourselves to move on, it’s a part of the job, it’s the nature of the business.
It still stinks because you can’t market yourself out of the problem, but you can price yourself out of the problem.
Amen! Do you think home sellers may begin to see agents asking for marketing expenses to be paid up front? Or what is a solution to make sure that Sellers are serious about pricing their homes to sell?
Your statment about “a broker selling HOPE and not houses” is SO on the money. Goes in line with “do you want to list your house or do you want to SELL it?!
Julia Fishel’s last blog post..How the Pinellas Property Appraiser Determines the Value of Your Pinellas Real Estate, Part 2 of 3
Hi Julia,
Right on. It’s very hard to explain to sellers that list price can drastically affect whether they sell or not, and how quickly.
Hi Jill,
Good questions. Asking for marketing expenses up front will work in certain specific situations, but probably isn’t for everyone. Brokers need to be more realistic with sellers and they shouldn’t take listings that they think can’t sell in a timely manner. That’s an injustice to the sellers and to the broker too.
[…] “see, I told you there just weren’t buyers out there.” or “You aren’t marketing the house enough, and that’s why there aren’t buyers.” A $3,000 price change is […]
[…] not getting any showings and no feedback, then you need to drastically reduce the price until feet begin walking through the door. If you aren’t willing or able to, then your house isn’t really on the market yet so […]