You’ve probably heard that you can make a fortune selling real estate and perhaps you’ve chosen it as your career path. Or, maybe, you’re even in the process of setting up your own real estate agency. You might think this is an oversaturated market, but with so many companies delivering an inferior service, the market is wide open for someone to sell based on quality. To do this, you need to ensure that your real estate agency stands out from the rest. Remember, you’re going to be competing against businesses that have been on the market for years. So, let’s look at some of the ways you can separate your company from the crowds.
Don’t Just Advertise Online
Perhaps one of the worst aspects of the modern real estate company is that they focus all their efforts online. By doing this, they are limiting the potential to make a sale for their clients. First of all, if you are representing a property in a popular area, you’ll have a lot of homes on sale at the same time. As such, the home you’re representing might only stay on page one for the first day. That doesn’t give you a lot of time to gain interest. Or, you could be selling in an area where there are very few properties and thus limited interest. If that’s the case, you might not even get that many potential buyers searching in that vicinity.
So immediately, there are issues with purely online marketing for real estate? Why then are so many agencies invested in this idea? Well, the answer is quite simple. It’s cheaper, and in some cases, it will work which might be enough for your business to maintain a solid reputation. But it could leave a lot of other clients with properties stuck on the market for well over a year. If that happens, you’re going to struggle to maintain a positive brand.
In fact, research shows that property sales are more successful if offline forms of marketing are incorporated into the campaign. An example of this would be advertisements in the press. People do still read the newspaper and check property listings, particularly in rural areas. As such, this could be a key way to gain attention from local buyers.
So, even though it will cost you more money, it might just be an option worth considering. At the very least, you’ll be able to provide a better all around level of service to your clients. The question is whether you should pass on the extra costs to your customers. This is a tactic a lot of real estate businesses use with companies that use online tactics costing more. It is a good way to manage costs, but you will have to deal with the fact that you’ll gain less interest if prices are too high.
Another possibility would be to present both options to your clients and let them make whichever choice they want. You can offer a more expensive service covering various forms of marketing to some clients and a purely digital representation to others. Essentially, that way you can have your cake and eat it too.
Use Pros
Any homebuyer will tell you that first impressions matter most. It doesn’t matter if the home looks tremendous once you get inside if it looks like a disaster outside, the perception is already there. This starts before the buyers even show up at the home on sale. That’s why, if you are selling houses, you need to use a pro photography service.
Professionals who take pictures of properties can make rooms look larger and more spacious. They can tell customers where to put furniture to frame the property correctly. They can even use filters to make rooms appear lighter or darker. How far you take these tactics is entirely up to you, but it will make a difference in buying behavior. And by using the pros, you can show clients that they are indeed getting a quality service when selling their home.
Tech Tricks
There is plenty of tech that can help you sell the property on the modern market. We can start with some of the basic options like social media. If you have a social media account or accounts for your real estate agency, you will be able to release stunning pictures and or videos of property that you’re representing. You can then link these to online ads shown on places like Rightmove, and you can get direct interest from your followers. If the home in question has a unique feature such as a killer pool it might even go viral. Of course, that’s just the start of the tech you can use to market property.
You’ll definitely need some form of SEO marketing strategy in place too, ensuring that buyers and sellers find the website where your services or properties are advertised. There are plenty of businesses online that work specifically to represent real estate companies. But, if you really want to stand out on the market, you need to take things a tad further than SEO.
You need to look at tech tricks such as VR and AR. When you think about it, VR makes a lot of sense as a tool in the real estate industry. VR or Virtual Reality is the opportunity to give people a first-person completely immersive view of a new place. These days that can be accomplished using simple phone tech or VR gear. Either way, it’s not as niche as it used to be and thanks to Sony a lot of people now have these devices in their home. With RealSpace3D products and similar software, you can even create virtual renderings of property that potential buyers can then tour. This is going to be useful if you’re representing building companies hoping to sell the property while it’s still in the conceptual stages.
As for AR, that can just be used to make your marketing a little more direct and interactive. For instance, you might have pictures of properties that you are representing in the window of your agency. With AR tech, you can add a little code that will let customers view digital pages, information and pictures for this property online. It might even connect with the type of VR experience that we just mentioned.
Efficient
Do you want your real estate service to be efficient, fast and ensure rapid sales. Group viewings are what you should be aiming for. Rather than bothering to set up multiple viewings with various different buyers, only one of who will actually buy the property, show them all at the same time. To do this, advertise open home viewings. Be aware that not every owner will warm up to this idea and it won’t be suitable for all properties. But in many cases, it’s a way to pool the demand,, ensuring the seller gets immediate interest on the market.
When you arrange an open house or plan for multiple viewings, you can either tell the viewer that’s what they’ll be attending or let them find out when they get there. If you make it unexpected, this can leave buyers feeling a little threatened, and it might encourage them to put down a higher offer. Although this does bring us to our next point.
Is Honesty The Best Policy?
There are plenty of estate agents that you can’t trust as far as you can throw them. They’ll deceive buyers about the state of the property, why the owner is moving and other key details. Be aware that if you do this directly in some areas, you will be breaking the law. You must be honest with buyers to an extent, but many sellers find it’s useful to twist the truth. Or, to choose what they divulge to buyers.
An example of this would be a home with asbestos. If you’re representing a seller who has a home with asbestos, you know this, and you are directly asked by a potential buyer you must divulge that information. However, if you were never informed, it’s up to the seller to share that info or wait for the results of a survey.
You’ll get a better reaction from buyers if you are always honest with them and this is worth doing because you have to think about the longevity of your business. Remember, if they do buy the home, they won’t live there forever. Eventually, they’ll sell. They might remember your business representing the previous buyers and choose to use your services. As such, even though you’re representing the seller it’s worth keeping the buyer on your side too.
One particular issue that you should watch out for is gazumping. Gazumping is allowing another buyer to swoop in and purchase the property for a higher price while you have entered a deal with an existing client. Now, strictly speaking, it’s in your best interest to get the highest offer possible for your client. But it certainly won’t win you any popularity contests with the buyers.
As you can see, then there are various ways to present you estate agency as different and offer it as a breath of fresh air to both buyers and sellers.