Selling Your Home
Preparing your property to be presented at its best at the right price with both focused social media & personal direct marketing while having a super responsive expert agent who prices it right and anticipates what buyers want ahead of time is the key to getting you top dollar in the fastest time.
Here is my selling strategy :
Prepare the house
Painting, repairs, declutter, yard cleanup, storing. They all play a key part in giving the best possible first impression to buyers as soon as they pull to the driveway.
Hundreds spent sprucing up your property can translate to thousands more dollars on your bottom line.
If together we feel the house needs staging, I have Charleston’s top interior designer on my speed dial. We can have your house looking like it should be featured in Charleston Magazine.
We can help with suggestions and also recommend & coordinate the contractors to handle it all for you.
Professional Photography
It seems redundant to have to state that professional photography is the only way to go, but every single day I see terrible iPhone photos being using to market houses. It is essential and has been my standard for years now.
I always schedule photos to be taken on sunny days, if we have to wait for the weather to clear up a few days, we will, it’s worth the wait to present your house in the best possible light.
If your house is on the water, we’ll check the tide charts to capture it at its best. If you have night lights that are spectacular, we’ll come back in the evening and capture those photos too.
drones & videos
If an aerial view will help sell your property, we’ll get the drone out too and capture those special views. YouTube is a fantastic medium for marketing your house and nothing get clicks like gorgeous drone shots over the water, golf course and whatever it is that makes your property unique.
Homes are filled with stories, let’s use them
I’m an engineer and love facts, but when it comes to selling a house and convincing buyers that this can be their new home, a story filled with emotion is going to beat data every time. That is why my marketing is full of stories.
Stories are relatable and leaves people wanting more. It’s one thing to see a backyard fire pit, but another to hear the stories created around the fire pit. Buyers start imagining what it would be like to create their own stories in your house.
When you use storytelling to help sell a house, people are more likely to assign a higher value to the house than they would to a property listing that contains only basic facts. Emotion sells !
Tell the buyers why you love your house
Who knows your house better than you do. Before we list, I’ll ask you what you love about the house, anything you did to the home, what you’ll miss when you move, the area, your neighbors, your tips on local places. I call this the Seller Notes.
It helps with the story side of the marketing mentioned above and gives you a chance to share your love for your home beyond just the bricks and mortar.
This is an excellent example of what I mean, you can feel how much this seller loves her house and makes buyers want it too. Click Here to see this example
ANTICIPATING BUYERS QUESTIONS
When any buyer is really interested in your house, they start asking questions, lots of them ! Things like how much is your insurance, what flood zone are you in, what’s your average electric bill, what are the schools, what internet provider do you use. 99.99% of agents don’t have this information ready (in my experience!) and lose valuable time trying to gather it all at the most crucial time, when buyers are excited about your house. Buyers may be looking at other houses too while waiting for a response. Before we list, I’ll ask you for a list of information that buyers commonly ask for so that no time is lost when time is of the essence. I call this sheet the Buyers FAQ Sheet
Preparing You with sample contracts
When offers come in for your house, they are legal documents, which by nature are complex and sometimes confusing. When you get an offer, it’s a little stressful already without having to view some legal document for the first time, so before we even list the house, I show you sample offers similar to what an offer on your house will look like. We review them, I explain the contingencies, the clauses, the what-ifs of the contract and answer your questions. By doing all this up front, you have lots of time to familiarize yourself with the documents so that when a real offer comes in, you are comfortable with them. I started doing this a couple of years ago and wish I’d been doing it since the first house I sold. It makes a HUGE difference for folks when a real offer comes in.
PRICING correctly
Pricing is absolutely crucial. We can do all the preparation & marketing steps already mentioned, but ultimately pricing is the most important part of getting you top dollar. This is especially important now that the market is easing and the urgency buyers have felt in recent years is not there anymore so it’s vital to be accurately priced house to get offers.
My outlook on this is crystal clear - Price the house correctly to begin with.
The old “well let’s price it high and see what happens, we can always drop the price” is guaranteed to do one thing…..get you less money and take longer to sell. Happens every single time.
I’m an engineer, a stats nerd, have a mathematics degree and have been investing my own money in the Charleston market for twenty years, so I know what a house is worth. Together we’ll come up with an asking price that is just right.
That doesn’t mean you’re leaving money on the table or giving it away, it means you’re pricing it near the actual market value. This will get more showings, a quicker offer and a higher price.
A unique house deserves a website of its own
Go onto Zillow, Realtor.com or any of those sites and look at any listing on it. What do you see ? Lots of other houses that aren’t the main house right ? These sites like Zillow are there for only one reason, to capture leads to sell to realtors. They market themselves as being there for the buyer and seller, but they are not actually trying to sell your house, they are using your house as clickbait so you’ll keep clicking on the other houses and eventually fill out a form asking for information and they then sell that information to realtors who will spend the next two weeks calling you every day !
Every listing of mine gets its own dedicated domain with your address on it. A clean, crisp, professionally designed webpage to do one thing, market your house and only your house. No other distractions.
This is used on all the marketing so buyers stay focused on your house. Here’s an example
A custom sign for a beautiful home
For sale signs are not all created equally. Agents love putting their sign in your yard, but they are a bit like Zillow, these are false friends. They are not designed to sell your house, but to market the agent and their brand.
All that’s on there is their name, phone number and for the more vain ones, their photo. They use the same sign for every listing.
When you’re driving around, take note of the signs and you’ll see what I mean.
I make a custom sign for every single listing that has your home’s details and selling points on it. You can even keep it as a souvenir when the house sells.
Sure it has my details on it, legally we have to have it on there and (yeah, I’m trying to promote my brand too!) but your house is the main focus.
Remember your dedicated website, well that’s on the sign too. This is a huge asset because as people are driving around looking at houses, they can see the website on the sign and pull it up on their phone to read all the details, photos and videos of your home while sitting right in front of your house.
No one wants to call an agent’s number on a sign for information. With my sign, the website gives it all to them.
Marketing
All the steps above have been about getting ready to list. It’s extensive and a lot of work, but now it’s time to let the world know that your house is for sale.
I break the marketing down into 3 sections. Social media marketing, email marketing and good old fashioned relationship marketing.
Social Media
Love it or hate it, it’s where people are and the Facebooks/Instagrams etc make their money from advertising so they have nailed down how to do it.
Facebook is my go to, your house is going to be seen by at least 10,000 people on FB. Those professional photos, drones, videos, stories and your dedicated website all look stunning and will attract lots of clicks.
You have a part to play too in sharing on all your local neighborhood FB groups, who better to spread the word to than people who already love where you live.
Email Marketing
I have access to every agent in town and can focus on those who specifically work, sell and have buyers looking your area. It’s not just a plain old email either, it’s very carefully designed and curated with all the details from the email subject line being crafted to get people to open it, to including content without any branding on it so that other realtors can share openly with their clients without worrying that they are promoting a competitor
Old Fashioned Relationship Marketing
I’ve been in this business a long time, have developed lots of strong relationships with other agents and I have a good reputation. In an industry filled with inexperienced part time agents, top producing agents like working with other top agents who they trust, so when I call to them about your house, they’ll answer the phone and listen to why they should tell their clients about your house.
Feed the agents with information
When it’s time for showings, agents will request a showing, once you approve the showing, the agent showing the house gets an automated email confirming it with no details other than address and price. Now most agents will be showing 5+ houses to their clients at a time and don’t properly research all the houses before they show them. They are literally flying blind when they get to your house, trying to read the stats about it, while also trying to unlock the door.
I do their prep work for them and personally contact the agent before the showing and send them all the marketing materials, including :
Your Sellers Notes sheet about why you love your house
The Buyers FAQ sheet with ALL the information buyers ask
Links to your videos/drone that they can share with their clients before the showing
Even small details like where the lockbox is (you don’t know how much time I have spent trying to find lockboxes at houses) to which is the route to guide their clients through your house.
After the showing
The agents get an automated survey to fill out as soon as they leave your house, most fill it out, some don’t. I’ll always call them and get more information out them over the phone than just a few rushed types lines.
communication
Lack of communication is the number one complaint about their realtors when people are surveyed. I can assure you that will not be a complaint you’ll have.
We’ll establish what is your preferred method, whether that’s phone calls, text or email. I always call my sellers once a week to talk in person (usually on Tuesdays) but as things happen, I’ll be letting you know via email/text.
I try to anticipate everything ahead of time, but if there’s anything bothering or concerning you or you have any questions at any time during the selling process, call me. 843 452 2325 is my number.
Whatever it is, we’ll get it resolved.
Thanks for reading all this, I know it’s a lot but selling your house is a big deal and I give it the attention and detail necessary to get it sold for you.
Now the preparation is done, you can read Step 1 : The Listing Process