3 things you must do to find a buyer for your home

3 things you must do to make your home ‘findable’  (part 1 of 3)

Three surefire ways buyers find your house

1) Online

2) A real estate agent

3) Driving around

For your home to sell, the home buyer needs to find it first. Concentrate on the following three areas; Online, Agents, and Driving around.  How serious could a home buyer be if they are not at least looking online, working with an agent or driving around? Not very, although, perhaps if you were marketing to the clairvoyant… OK back on topic.

Can you find your home online?

• Type in variations of your home’s address
  • Does your home show up in the major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Blekko, etc.?
  • Can you find your home on real estate specific search tools like Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow or others?
  • Make a list of the major real estate companies in your area. Make a note of your MLS number or Multiple Listing Service number or ID
    • Visit the home page of those real estate companies. Most of them will allow a website visitor to search for a home from the home page. You  may have the option to use MLS #, price range, address, or minimum requirements like number of bedrooms or baths. You might have to ‘drill down’ or venture further into the website to search. Either way, search for you home on there. Can you find it? Is the information correct?
    • Search on at least the top 5-10 companies. Is your home there? Is the information accurate?
• Next, make a list of the top 5-10 agents or agent teams that you can think of. Visit their websites. Search for your home. Can you find it?

• Is the information correct? Check it.
• Do the search results offer
• a phone number to call
• a person or office to contact
• an email address to contact someone about your home, either to ask for more information or to set up an appointment to see your property