Understanding buyer’s wants and needs is essential to knowing how to market a property to get the best price. What circumstances would cause a buyer to make a full priced offer or even above the full priced offer on a home? There is only one thing that causes that: Competition. And I don’t mean the general competition of lots of buyers being active in home searches. I mean direct competition to one particular property. A buyer has to believe that someone else will get the home if their offer is too low.
In order to give buyers the opportunity to compete with other interested buyers, we need to control the marketing and activity of the property so that the buyer’s are viewing the property at roughly the same time.
And that’s it. That’s the strategy: Timing.
Timing the marketing and opening day of the listing is extremely important in creating the competition necessary for full priced and increased price offers.
This is how it happens:
We want to prepare buyers before your listing goes active, so they can get their schedules together and plan to view the home. Remember, buyer’s usually have to coordinate with 3 or more people to schedule the showing; their agent, a spouse, significant other or other family member. This preparation helps to avoid the trickle of buyers that usually happens without it. If seven people want to see your property, we want them to see it over the course of 2 days, not one week.
Before a listing goes active:
>>> I market on Facebook, using paid ads targeted to people in your area and across the country who are searching for homes. With 60 people per day moving to the Raleigh area, we don’t want to miss ads targeted to relocation buyers.
>>> I use paid ads to market the Opening Day Open House.
>>> I share the listing with our Buyer’s Agent network so they can inform any buyers they are currently working with who have a need that matches your property.
>>> I put the listing in the MLS with a Coming Soon designation. That allows agents who are working with buyers who have had difficulty finding a home to see what will be available soon and prepare to see it.
All this marketing, done before the listing is active, acts as a funnel to direct the buyers to the same place at roughly the same time.
If your listing goes active without any pre-marketing, here’s how it could play out:
Buyers don’t have their schedules planned as soon as the listing becomes active in the MLS and they become aware of it, so they can’t find a sitter, can’t get off work, etc, etc. Instead of a rush of buyers they trickle in. There could be a full day between the first showing and the 2nd and subsequent showings. Before buyer #2 walks through the door, buyer #1 may have already made an offer and you, the seller, have already accepted it. If buyer #2 would have offered more money in the face of the competing offer, you won’t know it.
By preparing agents and their buyers for a listing before it hits the market, they have the opportunity to line up their showings in close succession, creating the competition necessary for increased sales contracts.
But wait. Do we have to accept the first offer that comes in?
In my experience, most buyers are unwilling to wait more than a day or two to hear a response to their offer. Emotionally, they have to move on and often early offers will be withdrawn rather than waiting to see what happens. It’s better to control the opening than to react to what happens organically.
Would you like to know how much your home is worth? You can submit your information here and I can do a market analysis and email you the results. Or if you are ready to schedule a consultation, call me at 919-725-1885 or email me here.
