Take advantage of a broad spectrum of technologies and tools to support the sale of your home from start to close. Over 90% of home buyers start their home search on the internet, so top placement on search engines is essential. You’ll gain access to our impressive SEO placement on Google, Bing, and other Search Engines as a Featured Listing. This will maximize your exposure and bring a large number of potential buyers to view information about your home. You’ll be posted on Two MLS systems; the Colorado Springs MLS & the Denver Metro MLS to solicit serious buyers which have property feeds set up with the thousands of Realtors in the State on those systems. You’ll also be Syndicated out from those MLS systems to what is projected to be over 1000 other internet property listing systems. Your home won’t go unnoticed, that’s for certain, no Real Estate Company can beat our Internet Marketing system.
With over 90% of home buyers staring their search on-line you had better not be taking photos with an iPhone. Although Smart Phones do take really good photos these days and it’s possible to get by with these types of photos on rare occasion, it is not good practice to do that. Professional Photos once you see a home listing with them compared to one without them is like night and day. Professional Photos capture light and angles so much better than a Smart Phone or standard Digital Cameras. A Professional Photographer behind the camera coupled with the post processing of the photos is extremely valuable, so much so that we pay for the photography up front. We want our client’s homes to get the best first impression possible because you may not get a second look. Think about it, if a buyer isn’t wowed by the photos, they might simply pass by it and not realize they should go see it and you might get one offer instead of multiple offers and miss out on thousands of dollars. We support Aerial photography where it makes sense. Professional Photography is critical to internet marketing to draw in the most showings possible.
The old saying that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” goes with most anything and that goes with selling your home as well. There are several items to consider in an optimal selling strategy for your home. Strategy with Price, Timing, and Communication can make a huge difference in your bottom line. Usually, it’s not wise to just throw it on the market and see what happens, some thought should go into it. We want to line up Pricing, Timing, and Communication so as to “hit the sweet spot” to use a Golf term. The first 3 weeks of a listing is the most critical and marketable time for your home in this market. After that your home could go stagnant, meaning less interest and showings for your home. So, without going into details of all the strategies, we run through the scenarios to ensure seller knows which strategy will work best for them.
We will pay for an initial Staging Consultation if desired by the seller. In most cases we find sellers don’t want to mess with it and don’t want to have someone messing with their stuff. In most cases homes are not professionally staged and homes still sell. If you’ve ever walked into a model new build home, you likely have been blown away with how spectacular the staging has been done. In this regard we’re talking about a home that hasn’t been really lived in and thousands of dollars and effort has gone in to presenting a new pristine home. If you do opt for the free Staging Consultation, that’s just what it is, a consultation which could lead to a next step of you paying hundreds of dollars in getting staging furniture and accessories to highlight your homes greatest features. Various posts will claim that you get some much more money if you stage as opposed to staging but I always wonder how they are able to claim this when they don’t have two exactly isolated case studies to compare with, so take it with a grain of salt. However, it does make sense if you think about it that if you are going to get professional photography, then staging could go a long way to making your photos really stand out even more so. In any case as long as the home is de-cluttered and fairly clean and well maintained it really is up to the seller how far they want to go with it.
We don’t just throw a sign in your yard and hope for the best. There’s a lot more to selling a home to generate a buzz and get the attention it deserves. It’s important to “work the network”, we not only cast a wide net, but we actively prospect potential buyers through those that live in the area by doing what we call circle prospecting of a 1/2-mile radius around your home. We call the neighborhood and make sure they know your home is for sale and ask if they might know of anyone moving to the area. We also do Reverse prospecting by finding agents that have buyer that have marked interest on your home as tracked through the local MLS systems. This can sometimes spur the agent to reach out to their interested buyer and prod them to go see your home.
Wish Property Group is not a Training Brokerage like the large national chains are that prey on warm bodies and take high percentages out of their commissions. We require a minimum of 2 years of experience as a Real Estate Agent to work for our company. You need a Realtor that has been around the block a few times to read through offers and pick up on the little nuances. You also need a Realtor that can call another agent’s bluff on a less than favorable offer. Ensure you get a Realtor that knows what they’re doing and has the experience to help you be successful.
Because we bill ourselves as a Concierge or Boutique Realty Company, we are definitely hands on with your transaction. We don’t outsource your home to a Transaction Coordinator that won’t be able to address items that come up on the sale of your home with the expertise and timeliness that it needs. The details will be handled with care and constant communication by Your Realtor, to ensure the marketing and sale of your home goes as smoothly as it possibly can. You need to feel comfortable with your Realtor to be able to Text or Call them at 9pm when you need to discuss an offer that has an acceptance deadline later that night.
Of course, technology alone won’t sell your home, but leveraging technology in certain areas is of extreme importance. It is super important to have a dedicated answering service taking scheduling appointment calls from all the Realtors in town. You have to be super responsive to get showing appointments set up and confirmed quickly. Often times Buyer’s Agents are trying to schedule 10 showings for their buyers and if they can’t easily schedule showing your home in their route during a given time frame then your home will get left out. You can’t miss opportunities to get your home presented to a potential buyer. It’s amazing that it still happens in this day and age, but there are other Real Estate companies and Realtors in town that try to field requests for showings and those calls sometimes go to voicemail or go unanswered too long and they miss showings. Don’t list your home with an agent that thinks they can answer and respond to showing requests, it’s not good practice.
Again, leveraging technology in certain areas is important, and trying to get feedback is one of them. We have an over 90% feedback rate from Buyer Agents that show our homes. Once an Agent shows a home listed with us, they later get an automated request to provide feedback on their showing. Sometimes the feedback can be insightful to a seller that can’t see what might be staring them clearly in the face. Buyers have a different perspective than the seller that may have been living in the home for several years. Although a good Realtor can point out to a seller the more obvious things that need to be addressed, it may take several buyers providing feedback before it sets in that something definitely needs to be done. People and Realtors are busy, so if our first feedback request doesn’t solicit a response, then we send them 3 more request for feedback each and every day thereafter and if that doesn’t work then we pick up the phone and call that Buyers Agent to get the feedback. If an offer doesn’t come in within a day after a buyer has looked at the home, then it’s more or less safe to say they are not so enamored with the property that they want to make an offer, but the feedback can be very valuable to move forward.
What is common to most if not all real estate transactions in Colorado Springs is the electronic Contracting system which we call eContracts. It’s just good to know that whatever Real Estate company you go with, you’ll be using a commonly used contracting system that makes it super easy for you to fill out and sign documents via a browser on your phone or whatever computing device. You simply open the email, click the document link, review, electronically sign, and a copy automatically goes back to your Realtor. The Realtor can then share with the other party and title company, and it significantly streamlines the hassle of managing all the paperwork. All the contracts in the system are also approved by the Colorado Real Estate Commission so all the Realtors are familiar with the contracts boiler plate templates. This can be one great reason and reason alone to hire a Realtor to significantly make it easy for you by leveraging common tools.
An Open house can drive a buzz and frenzy depending on the house and other factors. An open house is not usually a fruitful experience for a seller in that you typically get “looky-loos” that are just curious and don’t have anything better to do at the moment, so they drop on in. If an open house is paired with a very desirable home with limited inventory in a sought-after neighborhood on a late Friday afternoon in conjunction with the first allowed showings, then it can be explosive and sure to solicit multiple offers. We support open houses as needed and wanted by the seller and it is taken into consideration with the overall selling strategy for the home.