Marketing Your Home

 
Our marketing efforts and considerations will include advertising, showing the property, how long the house has been on the market and whether you're buying another home. Your home shwill be listed with MRIS, our Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

Advertising and Promotion

Properties are commonly advertised through real estate agent Web sites, Internet home search/listing services, classified advertising and real estate guides. Promotion efforts through office and MLS tours are a good way of getting other buyer agents to view your home and to promote it to the buyers they are working with.

Even with all these advertising avenues, " For Sale" signs on front lawns are still remarkably effective. We will promote our website on the sign and use brochure boxes with the signs to market the property.  With your permissions, we may send a mailing about your property to neighbors. Sometimes one of them has a friend or relative who always wanted to live near them. You never know how far reaching the benefits of word-of-mouth advertising by friends, relatives and neighbors can be.

Showings and Open Houses

To prepare your home for viewing, make it as bright, clean, cheerful and serene as possible. Always look at your home from the buyer's point of view. We suggest that you be absent while the house is being shown to prospective buyers, because your presence will inhibit their actions and conversations. They won’t feel free to open closets and cabinets, test out the plumbing and discuss their observations objectively as they walk through the house. It goes without saying that your children and pets should not be on the premises either.

If we schedule an open house, you may want to notify the neighbors, and assure them that they'll be welcome. They'll jump at the chance to poke around in your house, and sometimes they can turn up a buyer among their friends.

Quick tips for showings and open houses:

  • Clean or replace dirty or worn carpets.
  • Open all curtains and blinds.
  • Replace any burned out light bulbs and turn on all lights.
  • Clear all clutter.
  • Clear all countertops.
  • Wash and put away any dirty dishes.
  • Set the dining room or kitchen table if you have particularly nice linen or china.
  • Simmer a few drops of vanilla on the stove.
  • Put on soft music.
  • Burn wood in the fireplace on cold days, otherwise, clean the fireplace.
  • Put fresh towels in the bathroom.
  • Take any laundry out of the washer and dryer.
  • Leave the house so that we, as your agents, are free to deal with prospective buyers in a professional manner.
  • Put pets in cages or take them to a neighbor.