How Do You Make Your Listings Stand Out?
Your marketing plan for your listings probably includes a number of strategies for making the homes you list stand out from the crowd. And, it’s especially important in a buyer’s market. There’s a lot of competition out there.
One strategy many agents and homeowners use is Home Staging. It can be an extremely effective way to attract home buyers. But, can you promote Home Staging to home buyers? Not really. I’ve never seen (nor would I recommend) a promotion for a home that said “And, the home has been professionally staged to make it look its best!”
I recently came across an interesting idea that you can add to your recommendations for preparing a home for the market, and use it as a marketing tool to buyers and sellers. The idea is a pre-listing home inspection. Now, before you decide I’ve totally lost my mind, let me explain.
A New Way to Use a Pre-Listing Home Inspection
More specifically, the idea I came across is a new way to look at pre-listing home inspections, and a way to use it as part of your marketing plan.
The analogy is to use a pre-listing inspection the same way the car companies use a pre-sale tune-up for pre-owned automobiles. And, I think that makes sense. I’ve always found it very effective to think outside the box and apply marketing strategies from other industries to the real estate industry.
If you make recommendations to your sellers for things to do to prepare their home for sale, why not go all the way? Why not find out and correct the issues that may arise and complicate a close? And, if you can use it as a marketing tool, that’s even better!!
Does a pre-sale inspection mean that the buyer won’t want one of their own? No, but the buyer’s inspection should reinforce the problem-free condition of the home.
Create a Certified Pre-Owned Home Award
You can create a certification program for your listings that have undergone a pre-sale inspection. This is something that you can use to promote the home to buyers. It would also be a good feature to include in your listing presentation.
Create a graphic to identify the homes that are pre-certified. And, do a better job of it than the one I threw together quickly for this post!
You can promote a Certified home to consumers in the Featured Listings that you have on your website. If you can’t add a graphic image to the description of your Featured Listing, use the certification graphic as one of the photos you upload for that listing. Then, in the written description of the home, you can explain what that certification means.
Read the article by Steve Rodriguez at Realty Times to get the full story. If you use pre-sale inspections, or you think it’s a good idea, or you hate it, let me know!
