Dear Jan: Our real estate agent says the No. 1 place she markets our home is on the Internet. How does this work? What about newspaper advertising? — JKD
Dear JKD: Most buyers do search first on the Internet for homes. The statistics from the National Association of Realtors show 92 percent of home buyers use the Internet in the home search process. Therefore, it is huge to market your home on the Internet.
For me, the process works like this: after getting a signed listing agreement, I schedule a professional photo shoot of the listing. Most times I not only order inside and outside shots, but I order flyover shots too. The flyover shots are taken with a camera attached to a drone. These photos are amazing and give the buyer a real perspective of what is around the home. I then choose the photos I will use, as we are limited to the number allowed on the MLS. After inputting the listing into the MLS, I then add the photos and make the listing live.
Once entered into the MLS, the listing populates over to national sites like Realtor.com and Zillow.com. It also feeds to Northwest sites like Windermere.com and JohnLScott.com (to name only two). My assistant then adds them manually to places like Redfin, Craiglist, Postlets, etc. We want your listing to be exposed to as many sites as possible thus widening the exposure to more buyers. My own company even has a worldwide site that we populate listings to each day.
Each real estate company has its own policy about newspaper advertising. And so do each of the individual brokers, as they are the ones who have to pay the advertising bill. Statistics show that fewer than 2 percent of home buyers looked in newspapers, magazines or home-buying guides when starting the search process.
Because we are a small community, though, buyers tend to look at our local newspapers to get a sense of what our community is like; therefore, running ads for “New on the Market” and “Open Houses” does attract interest. So, some local brokers do advertise in the local newspapers.
Hope this gives you comfort knowing how buyers are searching for homes. Best wishes.
— Jan Zufelt is an agent with John L. Scott Real Estate in Kingston.
