Have you ever wondered how to sell a house online?
NO. Taking four photos with your phone and writing 2 lines is not enough to post an online sales ad.
In this article you will find out how a home is published online and what strategies to increase the visibility of a listing that real estate agencies use.
When the need arises to change homes the first thing one does ( actually with any need in the modero world now ) is to look online at what deals there are.
Then pick up the phone and type into your search engine the keywords that identify the property of your desires:
" house with garden for sale Verona"
"top floor apartment for sale with terrace Verona"
"apartment for sale downtown Verona with 2/3 rooms"
Two-room ...three-room ...studio ...
Whatever you are looking for, the first result any search engine will give you is the website where you can find more content that meets your need. When it comes to houses, the first page of results is full of "aggregators" of real estate listings, so-called real estate portals.
On these sites you find listings from all the real estate agencies in your city and sometimes, a few listings from private individuals.
The portals are many but, those with better quality and usability are in order of no. of page views
Then there are a number of smaller "little portals" that, without anyone telling you anything, take the information from these portals and in turn republish the listing with a link back to the main site. (trovit.it kijiji etc) the latter are the worst because they do not contain updated information ( often if you see photos of a house there, it is not excluded that the property is already sold) .
Strategies for making your ad more visible
There are two actions to be able to increase the visibility of an ad. The first is"organic" the second is paid.
What do I mean by Organic? some of the major portals (they are all adjusting now) reward quality content, the listing, that contains as much information as possible for the user. This is why you will first find house listings that contain lots of quality photos, an attached floor plan, extensive description, video and virtual tour attached etc etc. Only by knowing all the parameters that the portal evaluates to increase the ranking of the ad will you be able to achieve quality placement.
The second strategy is the paid strategy
Real estate agencies pay a subscription fee to place their products within the first national portals that connect buyers with the real estate agency.
In addition to paying a subscription just to "be there" there is the possibility of paying for "extra-visibility" services within the portal itself, which allow, in the face of a real estate search, to position one's property so that the ad is displayed earlier than other agencies. These ads have various names: "top ad" "gold ad" "platinum" "silver" "showcase ad" "star" etc etc. based on how much one pays, the ad will be displayed higher on the list.
This dynamic, designed to make advertiser real estate agencies spend more money, breaks down when a user begins to do a more in-depth search. If you try to do a search on any portal you will notice that each list of results can be reordered on an ascending or descending basis according to certain parameters, such as:
- Sort from largest to smallest (and vice versa)
- Sort from cheapest to most expensive (and vice versa)
- Sort from the one with more rooms to the one with fewer rooms ( and vice versa)
- Sort from most recent, meaning date of publication, to oldest
When the user makes this kind of selection, the logic of "the more I pay the sooner I am seen" is broken as the parameter for visibility is no longer that of sponsorship, but that of content.
To summarize, if a user looking for a one-bedroom apartment downtown asks to view the listings starting with the cheapest (which happens in 90% of cases) the listing with the cheapest one-bedroom apartment of all will appear at the top of the list even if they have not paid for extra visibility.
Since there are so many advertisers and they all want to be at the top of the list now everyone pays for added visibility, not thinking about the fact that by paying everyone, in the end no one will ever be first and that ultimately the user will see as the first solution the content they are really looking for.
How many times have you seen the same ad with 2/3 or even 4 agencies, with different square footage, different prices and different photos???
This happens because some homeowners do not have one real estate agent follow up on the sale but let the house be marketed by multiple agencies with the logic of "first come, first served" in these cases you have to be very careful and I will explain why:
- By having multiple parties to the sale, you cannot be certain that you are the only one doing a home negotiation.
- It is possible that the real estate agent may not be in possession of all the necessary documentation to assess the goodness of the deal
- Your broker's priority will be to close the deal quickly to win the transaction.
The ads from private
Finally you find the ads of private individuals, there are not a lot of them, but some people prefer the DO-IT-YOURSELF, without having a clue how to do it.
When you approach an ad from a private individual you come into contact with sales dynamics in which:
- The seller is certain that his house is affixed from a zoning point of view ( of course it is his!).
- Any flaws or negative aspects you will have to discover on your own
- Information with the dropper and documents only after you have started the negotiation
- 0 knowledge of the dynamics of buying and selling ( notary time, mortgages, costs, taxes, and more)
- His house is the nicest on the market, so either you pay his price ( arbitrarily decided without a comparative data ) or that's the door.
Of course, there are also "diligent" private sellers, but they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
This brief overview I have given you is the prevalence of the housing market, but it is not all you can do to sell or buy a home.
I personally design ad hoc campaigns for each seller's need, each property, based on what there is to do. There are very effective off-line activities such as leafleting in the area, a dedicated mailing, on-site signage, various billboards, and advertising in trade magazines.
There are other ways to promote oneself on the web, with "active" visibility campaigns on social by studying the appropriate target audience and coverage area.
And then there are the relationships that each agent/agency has. The network of clients and colleagues one can work with has, in many cases, enabled me to sell a property without too much effort.
In this modern age YOU CAN and MUST demand more from a real estate agent. If you ever have to sell a house, choose your contact person carefully!
Good research
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