Property Marketing

Sincere thanks to my buddy, Joe Ferrara for bringing a new study from Michigan State University  into the real estate space for the rest of us to gnaw on.  It meshes with an article I wrote over a year ago on tailoring your workstyle to fit Gen and Y when trying to help them buy or sell a house.  They – Gen X and Y are quite different from Boomers, and the next generation – the Millennials are different again!  For now, let’s take a top-down look at consumers in general. 

MSU researchers have identified the 4 most important desires of today’s consumer when making a buying decision.

“Consumers say they want a “total experience”  - the totality involves these 4 factors, in this order of importance:

1.  Benefit (what’s in it for me?)

2.  Convenience (easy and readily available)

3.  Price (both the dollar amount and cost in terms of time – time is money).

4.  Environment (does the shopping environment – online or offline – stimulate, entertain, motivate a consumer to buy)”

Although the study was done on the hotel industry, there are obvious correlations for other businesses.  As a researcher said “Consumers’ desire for the total experience does not change in a recession… although they may modify one or more of the factors”.

When preparing a property for sale sellers (and their realtors) need to keep these factors in mind.

Benefit:  Does the home clearly illustrate the opportunity it presents?  Does it look like it’s a great value?

Convenience:  Can the buyers get in to see the home at a moment’s notice?  Is the place easy to show?  How much warning do the sellers have to have and what about that dog?

Price: Back to value – does the home look like it’s worth the money it’s asking?

Environment:  What is the Walkscore of the property?  How much fun is the house to explore?  Are there cool things to look at and imagine how they’d fit for you as you walk around the place?  How motivated are viewers — i.e.  back to value – is it priced well, so well that it apears to be such a great value it won’t last….

Hmmm, back to value, again, do you notice?

Bottom line, today more than ever, is this notion of value.  A property for sale must, must, MUST be priced and presented so that the value is OBVIOUS!

 As you know, the first step to selling property is preparing the thing for sale. (Prep~aration, the 1st of my 3 p’s – where Primp and Promote are the other 2.)

There is a site that will tell you, for your specific zip code, what the ROI – Return on Investment – is for each potential improvement you make to your home.  It’s called the Home Gain Maximizer and is brought to you by the creative folks of  Home Gain.

Whatever you’re considering, these folks will tell you how much more these types of improvements and upgrades have yielded in past transactions and what you can likely expect.

Sound good?

For me, it was particularly heartening to see that Home Staging services enhanced the property listing’s result by 453%!!  Now there’s a % I can live with!!