How To Sell Your House Online - New Rise in Real Estate Book

REAL ESTATE

FEATURING Hugo Balarezo Jonathan Modene Tait Zimmerman Henry Benito Jon J. Maniscalco Greg Cooper Jerry M. Pinkas Michael Mosteller Josh Hisaw Daniel P. Hamilton Jared Chamberlain Derek R. Bauer Randy Huntley John K. Mikesh Don G. Wilson Jeremy Mellick Jeremy Eide Matthew O’Neill Sandy Steen Joseph A. Schlager Jr. Mike Grbic Kim A. Williams Dionne Malush Jason Secor Clayton Gits Lars Hedenborg John A. Miller Christopher M. Upham Deb Atchley Gary Atchley

Jose L. Segarra Emmett R. Carr Jason Peck Patricia LaMotte Erin Catron David Connart Joy S. Deevy Brian Flynn Jeff Cook Alexandra Kennedy Jason Cianflone Kevin Clancy Kendall Haney Adam Briley Joe Hochman T. Scott Ashbaugh Lucretia Pinnock Kristy Lynam Mark Stock Matthew Sipera Brett Jennings Heath Higgins Elisabeth Mohlmann Leah Santos Todd Tramonte Jay Kinder Michael Reese Woods Davis Jeremy Bowman Jeff Smith

The Nation's Trusted Real Estate Advisors Reveal Their Top Secrets for Buying and Selling Homes in the New Real Estate Economy

FEATURING JARED CHAMBERLAIN Jared Chamberlain is a real estate expert in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He leads a team of highly trained and passionate agents who are all at the top of their game! Jared has honed and developed his online marketing skills over a number of years and has sold homes for more than 800 clients in his career. Jared works closely with his wife, Rebecca, in their business. To get more information and specific sites to use when marketing your home online, go to: www.tcgroup.me/BookDownloads. (This page will be updated as we find new resources to use.)

The Nation’s Trusted Real Estate Advisors Reveal Their Top Secrets for Buying and Selling Homes in the Real Estate Economy

The New Rise in Real Estate: The Nation’s Trusted Real Estate Advisors Reveal Their Top Secrets for Buying and Selling Homes in the New Real Estate Economy

Real Estate has changed forever... ...and that change can either help you make money—or lose it!

If you’re considering working with The Chamberlain Group or would like more information, head to www.ChamberlainGroup.ca.

The opportunities in buying and selling homes have never been greater, but that goes for the dangers too. How can you know the best moves to make when you’re moving—or simply looking for the most profitable real estate investments? America’s best and most successful real estate advisors are here to help—with cutting-edge advice you won’t get anywhere else. They’ve got their finger on the pulse of the country’s real estate market—and they’re ready to share their insider strategies here for the first time ever!

FEATURING

JARED CHAMBERLAIN

Go to JoinNAEA.com today

The New Rise in Real Estate could lead to a rise in your bank account, if you know how to take advantage of it. This revealing book, created and compiled by the National Association of Expert Advisors™, will uncover the moneymaking secrets from the pros who know—and who are now giving you exclusive access to their proven strategies for buying and selling homes.

Go to JoinNAEA.com today The Authors in this book have donated all royalties to Marketers for Good. For more information, please visit www.MarketersForGood.org DESIGNED AND PRODUCED BY CELEBRITYPRESS WWW.CELEBRITYPRESSPUBLISHING.COM Printed in the USA

HOW TO SELL YOUR HOME USING ONLINE METHODS

How to Sell Your Home Using Online Methods

Selling your home using online methods is the best way to find qualified buyers and have that firm sale before you know it! However, it’s not just the online “stuff” alone that makes this method of selling homes work so well. There are many steps that need to be completed first in order to get the maximum exposure and response you’re looking for before we even go online. Back in the day, buyers would have to actually physically see your home in order to tell if they liked it or not. Now, they’ll look at what’s available to them online and have a gut reaction to what they see, thus pushing them to see the home or to pass for a possible other day if they can’t find anything else. There are so many things in the market that we can’t control, so we must control what we can. The only items that we are truly able to control is how the home presents and is prepped along with how it’s perceived on the market. Everything else, from the neighbors and general market conditions to the future unpredictables are basically out of our control. I would like to introduce you to Catherine and Josh. They were looking to make a change. They simply couldn’t make their current home work for them anymore. Life had brought some amazing changes, and they were expecting their second child in the coming months and knew that where they were living currently just wasn’t going to work. 97

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Let’s take a couple of steps back. Catherine and Josh met a couple years ago when they were doing their orrientation to their new jobs at the time.They both had gone to the same university for the same degree but never knew eachother or met during their schooling. Both Josh and Catherine ended up working at the same job as engineers and were very excited about it. Josh continues to work at the same job in the downtown core, and Catherine just completed her last maternity leave and has gone back to work. About two months ago, they found out the great news that their little boy was going to be a big brother! They moved into their current home when they first got married and have loved the townhome complex they live in. They purchased a quality property a couple blocks from their current job in the downtown core, but with only two bedrooms in their townhome, it wasn’t going to cut in anymore. I met with the couple, and we discussed how we were going to make this transition. I walked them through all the different steps on how we were going to market their home online and use the internet to their advantage. I explained to them that the number of buyers who are looking online for their new home was nearing 90 percent of all buyers, and we must have their home found and visible where the buyers are hanging out and searching. It’s not enough to simply hang a sign in the online world and hope a buyer finds us; we need to be proactive and actively make ourselves be found! I also made it very clear that we can have the best places to hang that virtual sign, but if the home isn’t ready to be sold and showcasing itself to the nines, it’s a waste of time and effort on everyone’s part. Here is what else I told them: 1. USE THE MLS: DON’T HOLD BACK! Using the MLS is the best way to get the most exposure for your listing as it’s the most widely used site out there for selling a home. I explained that the key is what we do with the MLS. If we’re just throwing up dark photos and have a written description that we took off a cereal box, we’re not using this powerful system to its potential. The key is to bear it all. Don’t hold back anything. We must give them links to our website so they can see all the details like floor plans, feature sheets, extra photos, maps etc. Show everything! 98

HOW TO SELL YOUR HOME USING ONLINE METHODS

“Wouldn’t this be too intrusive and give too much info to the buyers? Shouldn’t we have something in our back pockets so we can get them to call you?” said Josh. I explained that long gone are the days of withholding information and waiting for the buyers to come to you. They want to know the info, and they want to know it now! This generation, which is now the majority of buyers out there in Calgary, are briliant at many things, and one of them is not remembering lots of info but rather knowing where to find info when they need it. They expect to be able to research questions and addresses and find exactly what they’re looking for. It’s an absolute must that we give them what they need and in most cases more than what they need! Josh still seemed a bit worried with that answer, and upon further investigation he wanted to ensure that he wasn’t allowing his family to be a target of burglary. I totally understood and explained that if there were items that were of great value, which were best to not have photos of, we can do that and not post those items online, or it may be best to just have them removed from the home while the sale process is happening. 2. HIRE A PROFESSIONAL STAGER I didn’t want to offend Josh and Catherine as their home was in amazing condition; however,we all know that having kids in the home can bring a whirlwind of trouble to a home and take out the “wow” factor quickly. So I showed them how we work with a professional stager who comes into their home, walks through the house, and ultimately gives them a checklist of all the to do’s that need to be done prior to photos being taken. The reason we do this is extremely simple: • We want to maximize what you already own by moving it around and using the space to show it off. • To explain to the buyers in a clear picture the features and functionality of the home. Did you know that homes that are staged bring in about 7.6 percent more in a sales price than those that aren’t. To really maximize our short time on the market that we’re expecting to have, we need to have the home appeal to the specific buyers who will be looking for the home.

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In doing so, we need to know who the buyers are for this area. We need to know what they like, love and hate, and what superstitions or specific cultural and religious sensitivities they may have and appeal to them. Working with a professional stager takes all the guessing out of this and lets us know exactly what we need to do. 3. PHOTOGRAPHY: LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT! Having professional photos is an absolute must and non-negotiable in my books. I explained to Josh and Catherine that when buyers are looking online, they’ll be able to see everything we expose of the home. This can essentially be viewed as the first showing, as they’re looking at the home and are able to see everything. Because of the online methods we use, having the photography to back it up must show what your home is really like. We want to be able to draw out the emotions of the buyers when they’re looking at the photos and give them an experience that gets them to book a showing. Using quality photography that showcases the home in its best fashion is going to bring in many more buyers, and action to the listing guaranteed! In conjunction with the photos, we need to have extra photos above and beyond what’s on the MLS as well as a virtual tour that the buyers can find easily. Again, it all goes back to giving the buyers more info than they expect to find, and in turn having them fall in love with your home because they can truly see what it is. 4. GETTING TRUE EXPOSURE: PUT THE LISTING ON SITES THAT ARE BEST FOR YOUR AREA This is probably the tactic that most agents don’t use and in my mind is the big secret! I explained to Josh and Catherine that we could do the same thing as many other agents in Calgary and use some online systems to have the listing sent to hundreds of other sites just like every other listing out there. But I explained to them that money doesn’t flow to similarity but rather to differentiation, so we need to be different in how we get your home found. What we do is we only use about 15 to 17 websites that we’ve handpicked from literally hundreds. How we did this is we looked at the top sites that were ranking when we searched certain terms in Google, which many buyers were using. We looked for sites that allowed us to 100

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sell real estate like classifieds or specific home listing sites. From there, we then did some research and back-end work to see what the stats were on these sites and how they performed. Once we have determined what the sites are, we then would manually input the listing into these sites and maintain the listings to ensure the info posted is correct and up to date. We input any photos if it allows, and again put as much info on the home out there as we can. Once this happens and takes effect, we’ll start to see some top rankings for the address of your home. I then pulled out my iPad, did a quick Google search of a random listing of ours, and—violá—there on the first page were multiple results of our postings, which gave the client the right info for that home. 5. BECOME SOCIAL A big part of getting great exposure to your listing is sometimes not selling them at all. Let me explain: We’ve built an online network and sphere of its own. I’ve had people say to me that when they think of Facebook or are on there, they always see us on the site. The key to this is that I’m being real and myself and not selling homes to them. We host multiple photo contests throughout the year for different types and demographics of people, make every attempt to turn online interactions into in-person meetings, and so on. My online friends know what I do, but that’s not who I am. They know if they want to deal with an honest and outstanding realtor that they can get in touch with me. We’ve also created a community group on Facebook called Living in Calgary. This group has just passed the 6,200 member mark and is continuing to grow daily. Having a group that’s focused and loves on our incredible city is a huge asset to getting our name out into the community and being known as the guy to go to for questions about the city! Ultimately, buyers will drive by the homes that entice them with what they see online. If it doesn’t look good and it’s not grabbing them in a personal way, they won’t see your home and simply drive on! What this all boils down to is we have to sell your home three times: 1. We have to sell the home and give the buyers the right impres-

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sion and emotional connection online. 2. We then need to get the exterior of your home in perfect shape because the buyers are going to drive by, and they need to fall in love with your curb appeal. 3. Finally, we need to have the home in show-home condition when they physically view it, as this will make them either love the home or pass on it. Nothing can replace the physical walk-through of a home where the buyers can touch, feel, sit down, and get a sense of the physical space. But what has changed is that buyers are now basing a big part of their decisionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;before they even get into the homeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;on what they see online! We need to be found online, and the buyers need to love what they find!

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About Jared Jared Chamberlain is a real estate expert in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He leads a team of highly trained and passionate agents who are all at the top of their game! Jared has honed and developed his online marketing skills over a number of years and has sold homes for more than 800 clients in his career. Jared works closely with his wife, Rebecca, in their business. To get more information and specific sites to use when marketing your home online, go to: www.tcgroup.me/BookDownloads. (This page will be updated as we find new resources to use.) If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re considering working with The Chamberlain Group or would like more information, head to www.ChamberlainGroup.ca.

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