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I am currently looking at listings. You can usually tell when there are tenants in the home. Those ones have pictures with piles of laundry on the bed, stacks of boxes on the side of the room, and dirty dishes in the sink.
I got to one listing through an MLS site and looked up the selling agent's website. She has TWO residential listings (she has more but only 2 on the website). Each has a description and a "Click here for pictures". In each case, the pictures do NOT go with the description, they are obviously of a different house. Oh, and the listing I found on the MLS site is NOT on her website.
And I keep thinking, some poor ******* is trusting this person to sell his house.....
I hate those overly wide angled photos. But more then that, they are photoshopping them by adjusting brightness, saturation, etc. It can be TOTALLY misleading.
There is a local RE company that will not show toilets in the photos of their listings. Too snooty I guess.
I saw a house today with the "harvest gold" fixtures from the 1970's in the the bathroom, and the walls were either mint green or aqua, couldn't tell. YUCK!!
Anyone else see this sometimes? We were looking for a house with at least a quarter acre so I could garden, chickens, etc. One house had over a half acre. The garden looked pretty in the pictures...a bench, a trampoline and so on. More like a park. I worried it was "too pretty" and I would have to rip a lot up.
The description talked about sipping cool lemonades and listening to birds in your tranquil garden in a quiet neighborhood. Sounds great, right?
We get there and look outside....and couldn't figure out how they even got those pictures. Most of it was a slope if I remember. A rusty building thing. A small area with the bench. Just nothing really useful and nowhere near what the description said. It was also located on a busy street.
Agent said it was priced about 100K above what it should be, and even then kinda a stretch. We still laugh and shake our head at that one.
Fortunately we are closing soon on a lovely house with .32 acres.
What have you seen?
Tell me about it!!!! ARGGGHHHHH! All the pics taken with wide lenses, making the rooms look ginormous and the yards huge, when the rooms are tiny and the yard so shallow you could spit over into the neighbor's yard from the back patio.
Sometimes they use some sort of color filter that makes the pictures look more like drawings than photos, and so odd that you can't even tell what the real colors are.
I don't know if that really helps sell the house. I guess it does, or they wouldn't do it. It wouldn't help the sale if they showed lousy views of the house. But it just ticks me off when I get there and see that the house and yard aren't what was portrayed.
As for the description, I disregard everything subjective and just look for information buzz words (jacuzzi, study, wood floors, etc.). I disregard "beautiful," "large," "lovely," "won't last long," and things like that. If in doubt, I try to confirm information before wasting my time and theirs. I also measure all lots in the appraisal district site beforehand, as well, since a "large" yard is a subjective impression and not factual.
How about when you see a house listed as a 3 bath on certain websites, until you click on the description (or worse, actually tour the house) and find out it's really just a 2-1/2 bath. It was bad enough when a 3/4 bath became a "full bath" for marketing purposes simply because it was a room where you could take a shower; where was the tub that truly qualified it as a "full" bath? But in what sane reality did half a bath--a toilet and sink--qualify as a full bath, someplace you could, you know, bathe or shower?
To be fair, a lot of internet portals suck in information and translate it differently. I may put it correctly in my MLS, but then Zillow or Homes.com, etc. will take 3.5 baths and translate it to 4 baths -- there are 4 bathrooms -- but they aren't four FULL baths, I guess is their logic. I agree, it's annoying.
I am getting ready to sell my home and want to know what I should expect as proper marketing for my $700,000+ home? Glossy postcards sent to neighbors? Virtual tour? Newspaper (what's that?) ads? Glossy mags ads? Properties sell pretty quickly in my neck of the woods so where's the best place to focus this marketing for the highest response?
Best possible photos
Good quality video and/or drone photography
Instead of glossy postcards to the neighbors, invite them over for a 1 hr. preview party before an open house. Cater it. Send the invitations by mail. Handwritten. With a stamp.
For open houses and just listed announcements, boost the posts on agent's business FB page, to reach thousands of people (instead of a few hundred friends and relatives)
Forget newspapers.
Glossy mag ads are generally a 2-4 month prep -- hopefully, you'll have it sold by then!
Agent caravan/agent-only open houses, preferably with a catchy theme. One of our most popular ones was a very trendy jewelry designer who had a private showing, with 20% going to a well-respected children's charity. We had over 60 agents come through in two hours (which average for an agent caravan around here is 8-12)
We usually send out an email to agents highlighting a new listing, price change or open house -- we have about 9,000 local agents on our mailing list.
There's other things, but that would be telling. :-) Just ask your agent specifics on their marketing plans.
Looked at 2 homes like this. One looked great from the pictures. Get there to the owners still in their pjs and then the son comes out with 3 dogs. As soon as the door opened the stench of animals and dog pee/poop almost made want to throw up complete with soiled carpets and damage to all the windows. The bedrooms looked like an eposide of hoarders. Pieces of the floor were missing, tiles, and the bedrooms had mounds of clothes almost up to the ceiling probably covering more damage to the walls. The listing was "Unbelievable and prestine (sp) unit" lmao. They have now lowered the price by a whopping 2K! Our agent apologized showing it to us.
Next place was listed as gorgeous and all high ends updates with really nice pictures. Got there to see all the molding ripped out of every room, 2 giant wholes in the kitchen ceiling and cabinets that didn't close and tile missing out of the bathtub. Um, yeah...
I just looked at one house, my agent and I discovered a whole second kitchen that was not shown in the listing. Really weird house.
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