In all honesty, I can't remember the last time I had a phone call resulting from a newspaper ad. Talk about expensive! You’re looking at approximately a hundred bucks a pop! Newspaper advertising is becoming increasingly ineffective year after year, as people migrate to the internet for “all things real estate”. It has been shown that the #1 reading audience of newspaper real estate sections are sellers. Not surprisingly, the #2 audience are real estate agents. 81% of buyers begin their home search online.

More telling is this quotation taken from The National Association of Realtors 2006 Survey of Home Buyers and Sellers:

"When asked where they first learned about the home purchased, 36 percent of buyers identified a real estate agent; 24 percent the Internet; 15 percent from yard signs; 8 percent from a friend, neighbor or relative; 8 percent home builders; 5 percent a print or newspaper ad; 3 percent directly from the seller; and 1 percent a home book or magazine."

In other words, you are almost as likely to know the person yourself as you are to find your buyer via the newspaper. In short, it’s a big expense that experience and statistics show just doesn't work.

Dirty little secret - newsprint ads and other mainstream print media are designed to create name recognition and attract new sellers for the agents. Think about it: Since sellers are the largest viewers, those ads are nothing more than advertisements for realtor listings. I find spending money on technology and having a more flexible fee structure is a far more efficient approach to sales success. Huge companies can't deviate from the standard fee structure while spending thousands of dollars on ads that are primarily designed to solicit new business.

To sum up: Print media real estate advertising is going “the way of the
Dinosaur”.

 

 

 

How to price your home to sell - realtor.com

My take:

Looking at past home sales can be a good starting point when pricing. But using past sales in an escalating market will result in leaving money on the table. Conversely in a stagnating market using past sales can result in overpricing the property. Pricing in anticipation of the market is key to success. I read somewhere that the typical agent has an average of 4 years experience. If this is the case a huge percentage of the "newbie's" have never experienced a tough real estate market. It will be interesting as I think we have overshot price equilibrium and projecting forward I am advising my sellers to price aggressively out of the starting gate.



This graph might help illustrate my point. As home prices continue to go up everyone assumes that the glorious blue line will never stop continuing up. However, things do not go up continuously in a straight line. There are pullbacks, markets ebb and flow. So if you knew the market fundamentals were starting to weaken, you obviously would not want to price high, (such as where the red arrow is situated.) You would price slightly lower (see green arrow) than the market to catch the top of a weakening market, thus maximizing your sales price. "Don't follow the herd"...Lemmings perish. And never forget, the herd also consists of a large percentage of the real estate agents! Choose your seasoned agent wisely!