I watched ABC’s 20-20 show tonight since it had a segment on the real estate market. They featured two couples who wanted to sell their homes (in CA) because one couple wanted to get married (2 homes to sell) and the other couple wanted get un-married.
20-20 brought in an “expert” from HGTV to tell them what they needed to do to get their homes sold. Pricing was the problem for both of them … that’s pretty much a given in today’s market. Two of the homes were staged well, with the unmarried guy’s home needing some work. No problem with the “expert’s” advice here, it’s just common sense.
What I took issue with was her recommendation that the one couple fire their agent based solely on the way he had prepared the in-home brochure. While in-home brochures are certainly important to inform buyers of features/benefits, they’re NOT going to prohibit a sale nor do they have anything to do with getting a buyer to view the home in the first place.
The expert never mentioned anything about how important it is to market the homes on the Internet where 80% of the buyers start their search. Nor did she mention the importance of the photography that is used on the Internet where the photos have a nano-second to capture the buyer’s attention. And she didn’t mention that the home (and photos) need to be placed on lots of web sites for maximum exposure.
I had to feel rather sorry for the agent that got fired based solely on the recommendation of some “expert” one who apparently doesn’t really know what it takes to sell a home in today’s techie world.
Elaine Reese
614-825-8860Real Living HER
2 responses so far ↓
Jodi Poliseno // November 13, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Elaine,
Wow! I can’t imagine giving my opinion of a realtor’s marketing efforts. Any good Stager realizes we all concentrate on the areas that we deem most important when marketing a property and that, especially in today’s market, Realtors work is greatly undervalued. Besides, who knows if the Realtor we “bad mouth” would have been the next Realtor to recommend our services? Unfortunately this particular Staging expert (in her past profession) was a multi gazillion dollar producing Realtor, which adds even more insult to injury.
elainereese // November 13, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Jodi, thanks for stopping by.
Perhaps the agent wasn’t doing a good job in other areas as well, but the way ABC edited the tape, it sounded as if the stager was blaming the lack of a sale totally on the brochure.
One has to get the buyer to VIEW the home in the first place and that takes good photos placed on lots of internet sites. A brochure may just seal the deal ONCE the buyer views the home. It’s not going to get them INTO the home.
I was surprised that the importance of the internet was not even mentioned!
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