The Melton Group Presents
MARKETING THAT DELIVERS RESULTS The Luxe Lowcountry Properties team believes in showcasing your home in the best possible light to attract the largest number of potential buyers. We strictly adhere to our 5 point strategy which guarantees the successful sale of your home.
PREPERATION PRESENTATION PRICING PROMOTION NEGOTIATION PREPERATION PREPARING YOUR HOME FOR SALE The majority of homebuyers prefer a home that looks new or is recently upgraded, yet most homes that come to market aren’t upgraded. Because of this, homebuyers will pay a premium of 5 - 7% for a home that is upgraded or recently remodeled. To help maximize the value of your home, we offer expert advice on where to invest to ensure your maximum return when selling. PRE-INSPECTION The number one deal killer in any real estate transaction is the home inspection. Why? Once you receive an offer for your property, 80% of the negotiating power shifts to the buyer. Pre-Inspecting your home enables us to know about and handle any potential issues with the property BEFORE you receive a purchase offer. This reduces the possibility of any “surprises” during negotiations. Additionally, addressing repairs up front has been proven to minimize the cost of repairs by up to 400%.
PRESENTATION PRESENTING YOUR HOME TO THE MARKET Once the property is prepared for market, it is time to stage the home and capture it in photos and video. Our goal in the Presentation phase is to make a prospective buyer say, “Wow! What a house” and compel them to come for a visit to look at it for themselves. STAGING Professional staging defines the space and makes it show in its best light. Our staging professional will visit your home prior to photographing the property and discuss with you subtle changes that will make the property stand out in photos, video and in person—and inspire potential buyers to picture themselves owning your home as a result. Why stage your home? Staging a home helps it sell faster and for more money. 95% of staged homes receive an offer within the first 14 days, and can sell for up to 3% more money. Luxe Lowcountry Properties has an extensive network of relationships with stagers and decorators who are reasonably priced to help “neutralize” and “freshen up” your home so that it attracts the greatest number of buyers. We also offer complimentary “in house” accessory staging assistance to those who just need a bit of an update.
Alison Melton | LuxeLowcountry.com 843.290.3640 | Alison@LuxeLowcountry.com
the melton group
PHOTOGRAPHY If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are the pictures saying about your property? We exclusively use HDR photography on every property we list. With 95% of buyers starting their search online, that first impression has to be one that inspires buyers, compelling them to see it in person. Luxe Lowcountry Properties ALWAYS provides professional photography services as well as 3-D Matterport walk throughs to help market your property. Depending of the location and type of property, we also utilize drone photography and property videos.
PRICING
Once your home is prepared and ready to present to the market, the next most important factor is making sure your home is priced properly to attract the highest possible offer. Most Realtors use an outdated pricing model called a CMA (comparative market analysis) that only considers past sales data and can cause a property to sell for up to 11% less than it should have. Our Strategic Pricing model considers not just past sales data, but also factors in up to 27 additional economic variables to determine current market trends and how to position your home on the market to maximize buyer demand. STRATEGIC PRICING All buyers are naturally attracted to a good value. The list price for your property in relation to the market value will have a direct impact on the number of interested buyers that come to see your property. Overpricing can discourage potential Buyers from viewing your home, while Underpricing can potentially cause you to leave money on the table. Our Strategic Pricing model will guide you to position your home in the market to attract the highest possible offer based on current conditions and Has helped our sellers net up to 6% more money when selling their home. The #1 mistake sellers make is thinking, “I will list at a high price and if it doesn’t sell, I can simply lower the price later.” As you can see from this chart, buyer activity peaks in week 3, yet most overpriced sellers don’t reduce their prices until week 5 or 6, effectively missing the peak of buyer activity. Pricing properly the first time enables you to maximize exposure and increase your chances of attracting the highest possible offer during the peak activity period. Overpricing is a critical mistake that costs homeowners valuable time and money.
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PROMOTION
Once your home is prepared and priced for the market, it’s time to promote your home to buyers and their agents everywhere. A well-executed marketing plan includes local, national, international and social media campaigns. This helps to maximize exposure to buyers and can drive the final sales price up by as much as 3%.
LOCAL MARKETING Our local marketing strategy starts where buyers begin searching: Google and the most popular local listing services. Our sites- www.luxelowcountry.com and www.charteronerealty.com—along with other highly targeted domains and online marketing channels— provide homebuyers with up-to-the-hour MLS updates and ranks on the 1st page of Google for many local search terms. Our network of websites attract hundreds of thousands of homebuyer views annually through the use of local search engine marketing and social media. We also use local and national print media to market our listings. Luxe Lowcountry Properties is proud to advertise in the following publications such as The Island Packet, Bluffton Today, CB2/CH2, Local Life, duPont Registry, and Wall Street Journal.
THE MELTON GROUP TARGETED SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS Luxe Lowcountry Properties is quite active on Social Media and utilizes boosted posts on both Facebook and Instagram to market your property. We also are members of all of the local real estate related groups so our listings are promoted to over 100,000 Lowcountry area Facebook users. When listing your home, we take a step beyond sharing your property with our sphere of influence on social media. In addition to free social media promotion, we pay a premium to boost your property to a targeted audience of buyers on Facebook and Instagram. This vastly extends the number of qualified eyes that see your home. These social media campaigns get your home in front of thousands of buyers who would not see it otherwise. TARGETED EMAIL CAMPAIGNS Targeted email campaigns may be used to highlight your new listing to qualified buyers or inform people in our sphere of influence that your property has sold in record time. Email is one of the most effective channels to marketing your home, giving us the ability to get it in front of just the right people at just the right time. As soon as your property hits the market, we will send out an email highlighting the “New Listing” to the entire Hilton Head MLS (over 1500 agents!). In addition, we will send out targeted emails to our proprietary list of buyers who are searching for a property just like yours. “IN-HOUSE” MARKETING After generating interest in your property from online and print media and targeted email campaigns, the next major interaction between your property and potential buyers will be INSIDE YOUR HOME. Therefore, we want to create the best possible experience for these buyers. We aim to do this through the following:
on group 1. Create a full color, multi-page Property Brochure detailing your property
2. Create a bound property brochure book (binder) to include photos and description of home, area information, school info, neighborhood or building covenants and restrictions (or relevant documents), utility costs, property vendor lists, and other information as agreed upon by seller. This property brochure book will be available in the house for prospect review. 3. Create a room-by-room showing guide, which will assist agents and buyers with answers on specific details of your property. 4. Host a “Broker Open” and invite area agents for an afternoon luncheon or evening cocktail reception to preview your property for thier clients. 5. Host Public Open Houses- Our take on the open house is completely unique. Often, neighbors have a friend or family member who would love to move into the neighborhood, and these buyers will usually pay a premium to live nearby. So to get the word out, we personally identify and invite the “tastemakers” in your neighborhood to an exclusive wine and cheese open house so they will promote the property and spread the word among their friends and family. Additionally, at our weekend open houses we serve refreshments and place three times as many signs as our competitors, garnering 200- 300% more traffic as a result. Our open houses are truly do-not-miss events!
THE CLHMS DIFFERENCE The Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist™ (CLHMS) designation assures affluent buyers and sellers that real estate professionals have the knowledge, experience, and unique skills to meet their needs. Members of The Institute who hold the CLHMS designation have documented performance in the TOP 10% of their residential markets and have successfully demonstrated their expertise in the luxury home and estate market. WHO’S WHO IN LUXURY REAL ESTATE
Luxe Lowcountry Properties and Charter One Realty are proud to be partners with an elite group of international brokers through Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate. A worldwide collection of top brokers representing the finest luxury properties across the globe, Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate has been leading the real estate industry since 1986. This hand-selected group of more than 130,000 professionals with properties in more than 70 countries collectively sells over $300 billion of real estate annually, making it the most elite and comprehensive luxury real estate network in the world. Who’s Who in Luxury Real Estate’s global network is showcased on LuxuryRealEstate.com, which remains the #1 portal for luxury properties on the web and has more $1,000,000+ content than any near-peer. The company has been recognized as a leader in the industry by Forbes, The Webby Awards, Web Marketing Association, Maggie Awards, ADDY Awards, the Inc. 5000 List, and more.
NEGOTIATION
Negotiation skills are the single most important variable that can help you maximize the equity in your property sale once offers come in. While most realtors have little to no formal training in negotiations, every listing expert on Luxe Lowcountry Properties team has deep expertise in both the art and the science of winning negotiations—trained in the same rigorous curriculum taught at Harvard Law. In fact, we hold the prestigious Certified Negotiation Expert (CNE) designation, which very few agents in our area can boast this accomplishment. CERTIFIED NEGOTIATION EXPERT Very few agents in our area have this designation. The CNE is earned by real estate professionals after successfully completing formal negotiation training over two days. Agents who receive this certification are among the top agents in the country in negotiation skills. In today’s real estate market home buyers and sellers are often prepared with much more information about home availability, pricing, and neighborhood awareness than was possible prior to the online easily available to them. Top agents now differentiate themselves by bring professional negotiation skills to help clients obtain better results in the sale or purchase of their home. CNE agents have a higher skill level which enables them to 1) communicate more effectively to uncover desired information, 2) help clients understand their options, 3) work collaboratively with others, and 4) resolve deadlocks. CNE agents have a thorough understanding of how to negotiate effectively to help achieve their client’s goals. The Real Estate Negotiation Institute is the leading negotiation training and coaching company in the real estate industry with more than 40,000 agents receiving certification. EXECUTION: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER With over 115 variables in the process, selling your home for top dollar requires a team effort to make sure everything gets done and done right. What makes this possible is a division of labor among our team of qualified experts who are focused on making sure that no detail is overlooked. It is this ability to do a lot of little things right—on a tight deadline—that enables us to sell your home for the highest price in the least amount of time with the fewest hassles. During the process of working with us, you will have a professional, full-time team of a marketing director, listing coordinator and closing coordinator at your service to guide you through the process. Alison Melton | 843.290.3640 | Alison@LuxeLowcountry.com