Posted on August 8th, 2007 by Jonathan Dalton

This afternoon I was asked why a home in Palm Valley, one of the more sought-after destinations in the Southwest Valley, would sit on the market for three weeks with very little traffic. As my seller put it, homes still are selling, aren’t they?

As you saw earlier today with my sales map post for Palm Valley, homes indeed are selling. But compare that map of solds to this map of currently active homes, not including the builders’ inventory of new and spec homes. Homes are color-coded by price, as that is how they are sorted every day by buyers searching the Internet for homes.

Where you see the stars, there are multiple selections. Press the plus sign to increase the magnification and you’ll see the markers separate. Keep pressing and they keep multiplying.

Often the reason why a home is sold, or even shown, deals more with the general real estate market than the house itself. Marketing can do much in terms of positioning, but marketing can’t make competing homes disappear. If a buyer searches in Realtor.Com for Palm Valley homes (or another IDX-based portal), they will have more than 240 homes through which to sift.

And so my marketing focuses on what can be done outside the MLS in an effort to provide the greatest amount of exposure to the largest number of buyers:

If someone Googles PalmValley homes for sale, the first thing they will see will be a craisglist entry for a beautiful Sedona model. That’s my listing, right at the top of the search engines. (Another Palm Valley listing should be up there in the very near future.)

If someone Googles the address of another listing, this one at 3892 N. 146th Drive, the first six listings are all of this home for sale. And not all are even for my own property site; some are for sites that have linked to the property site, taking it national as it were.

Open houses give buyers access to the home for a three- or four-hour window on either a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. The marketing I do provides buyers access to the home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No appointment necessary, at least not until they’ve decided they are serious about purchasing.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not the number of people who view a home that matters. It’s having the one person who is serious about buying the home come through the front door that counts.

Technorati Tags: real estate marketing, Palm Valley real estate, homes for sale

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Categories: General Real Estate, Marketing, Tips for Sellers