by Grant Wakelin
When selling your home it must look good online. The super vast majority of buyers look online first, find the properties they are interested online, and evaluate what to investigate further online. Before they even speak to an agent.
Your property’s online profile is key. So what matters?
- Photos
- Description
- Address
Photos
Research proves the importance of photos. Nielsons’ regular Online Real Estate report highlights every time that photos, lots of high quality images, are the most important aspect of a property’s online presence to buyers.
We recently highlighted some interesting statistics, including a USA study that showed profesional images generated 145% more inquiries and another one that showed that professional photos actually increased the price achieved (we like that!). You can see more detail here.
And don’t fall for the traditional real estate agent “less is more” line. Buyers like lots of photos - the aim is to get your house sold, not to force buyers to call an agent to get basic information. Do that and you can lose them altogether. When buyers are searching they screen out properties rather than screen them in - if there is not enough information they are likely to just move on to the next one.
Our work with the online advertising sites (eg www.realestate.co.nz and trademe) has highlighted that there is a specific order buyers like to see photos - so we make sure your photos are arranged in the manner most popular with buyers. The happier we can make the buyer the more interested they will be!
Description
We always get our owners to take the first shot at writing the description on their property. We edit it, but no one knows what it is like to live in a property better than the owner. That is what we want to capture. Tell us the great things about living there, not just the basic facts. You can see more on the sorts of things that work here.
There was a recent article in the Herald along these lines here. The major point being that it is the lifestyle words that matter - sunny, warm, spacious, character, luxury and so forth.
It is important to take some time and write a reasonable description - it doesn’t need to be a book, but it kills me to see the number of 1 or 2 sentence descriptions for a property online. How is that selling the house (I didn’t use ‘home’ deliberately)? Oh, and the little things matter, get the spelling and grammar correct and drop the buzz words or slang. We agents are the absolute worst at that!
Address
Online search is getting smarter all the time. We always include an address - this means the property is included in map searches, for example, on www.realestate.co.nz, improves its “Google-juice” and aids our search engine work in profiling the property. It’s not just about putting the listing on Trademe and waiting - we spend a lot of time and energy ensuring our properties get high visibility in the online world, here in New Zealand on the main buyer sites, but also in the Google world here and overseas. Quite simply you can’t sell a secret.
A great online profile of your property will get it sold. What matters is simple and straight forward. It’s not rocket science, so you wonder sometimes why there are so many terrible examples out there (from real estate agents too). Make yours count.
We recently highlighted some interesting statistics, including a USA study that showed profesional images generated 145% more inquiries and another one that showed that professional photos actually increased the price achieved (we like that!). You can see more detail here.
And don’t fall for the traditional real estate agent “less is more” line. Buyers like lots of photos - the aim is to get your house sold, not to force buyers to call an agent to get basic information. Do that and you can lose them altogether. When buyers are searching they screen out properties rather than screen them in - if there is not enough information they are likely to just move on to the next one.
Our work with the online advertising sites (eg www.realestate.co.nz and trademe) has highlighted that there is a specific order buyers like to see photos - so we make sure your photos are arranged in the manner most popular with buyers. The happier we can make the buyer the more interested they will be!
Description
We always get our owners to take the first shot at writing the description on their property. We edit it, but no one knows what it is like to live in a property better than the owner. That is what we want to capture. Tell us the great things about living there, not just the basic facts. You can see more on the sorts of things that work here.
There was a recent article in the Herald along these lines here. The major point being that it is the lifestyle words that matter - sunny, warm, spacious, character, luxury and so forth.
It is important to take some time and write a reasonable description - it doesn’t need to be a book, but it kills me to see the number of 1 or 2 sentence descriptions for a property online. How is that selling the house (I didn’t use ‘home’ deliberately)? Oh, and the little things matter, get the spelling and grammar correct and drop the buzz words or slang. We agents are the absolute worst at that!
Address
Online search is getting smarter all the time. We always include an address - this means the property is included in map searches, for example, on www.realestate.co.nz, improves its “Google-juice” and aids our search engine work in profiling the property. It’s not just about putting the listing on Trademe and waiting - we spend a lot of time and energy ensuring our properties get high visibility in the online world, here in New Zealand on the main buyer sites, but also in the Google world here and overseas. Quite simply you can’t sell a secret.
A great online profile of your property will get it sold. What matters is simple and straight forward. It’s not rocket science, so you wonder sometimes why there are so many terrible examples out there (from real estate agents too). Make yours count.
Add your comment: