Marketing Your Home

If you are planning to sell your home in the Markham, Unionville, Stouffville area make sure you use a real estate agent that employs a FULL SERVICE marketing plan. More than 90% of today’s homebuyers will search for a new home on the internet whether they are using a Realtor or not. Therefore, it is crucial that your real estate agent is up-to-date on current internet strategies to exposing your home worldwide.

…Promoting your home on the internet is not the way of the future, it’s the way of today!

While newer, non-traditional methods are very important to getting your home sold, older, more traditional methods are still valid and must be incorporated into a well balanced marketing plan. As your real estate agent, Martin will promote your home with a truly unique marketing approach that focuses on newer, non-traditional methods while still including older, more traditional methods. To get your home sold quickly and for the highest amount of money the market will pay, you must have a Realtor who is current with today’s technologies. When you hire Martin as your real estate agent to sell your home, he will utilize the following methods according to your needs.

Feature Your Home On Its Own Website

We all know internet exposure for your home is crucial since the majority of prospective home buyers start their home search on the internet. Your home’s customized website will be a large focus of the overall marketing plan. The URL address for your site will be customized to your home address (eg. www.123Main.com). With the click of a button, buyers will be able to learn about nearby schools, learn about the neighbourhood, print a brochure, make an appointment and much more. Your website will be promoted both through various internet portals as well as through various print materials.

Detailed Website Analytics

This piece of software will be built into your website and is similar to google’s analytics. It will basically tell us where the traffic is coming from, how many visitors are viewing your site and where prospective buyers are spending most of their time. Closely analyzing these details will give us a good idea of your home’s online exposure and let us know if any adjustments need to be made.

Feature Your Home On My Website

Your home will be listed as a featured listing at the very top of the homepage which receives thousands of visitors every month. That’s right, Martin’s website ranks among the top 2 pages (usually first) on Google for most Markham real estate related searches. eg. Markham Real Estate, Markham Homes for Sale, Markham MLS listings, Houses for sale in Markham, Cornell MLS listings, etc. While many Buyers like to visit Realtor.ca to begin their home search, a large group of prospective buyers find it much simpler to go straight to Google and search exactly what they’re looking for. eg. Detached homes in Markham under $600,000. Martin’s unique internet knowledge gives your listing a sizable advantage!

Professionally Photograph Your Home

A picture is worth a thousand words! Well how much would 15-20 professionally taken photographs be worth? Your home will be professionally photographed using appropriate lighting and digital touch-ups to ensure your home looks its best. If you’ve shopped or researched anything online before, not just homes, then you know how important a great picture is. Don’t settle for amateur photography or even ‘no photography’ in some cases.

The importance of having great photos cannot be stressed enough as they will be promoted throughout most of you home’s marketing plan.

Feature Professional Virtual Tours Of Your Home

Virtual tours are a great way to give home buyers a different look at the focal rooms of your house. They will allow the buyer to have a 360 degree view of your home’s most appealing rooms. These tours will be available to view from your personalized website, the front page of Martin’s website under “Featured Properties and through a “virtual tour” button directly on your MLS listing.

Feature A Video Tour Of Your Home

Martin will also feature a video of your home combining your photos and panoramic shots together with music. This video will again be viewable from your personalized website, Martin’s website, distributed through email, shared on social networks and most importantly uploaded to YouTube. YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine behind Google. Watch the video below to view a demo.

Syndicate Your Listing To Hundreds Of Active Sites

Your listing will be syndicated to more than just a few other websites, it will be syndicated to hundreds of highly relevant websites exposing your home all over the internet. Every possible website that homebuyers might come across will contain your listing. The following websites are just a sample of what you can expect. In addition, you listing will be available on THOUSANDS of of real estate agent websites.

Social Network Exposure

Martin is very active in online social networks and nowadays, you would be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t involved in some way, shape or form. Facebook, for example has over a billion active users and growing everyday. Through LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Martin shares current real estate information, relevant articles, videos, house listings, open houses, etc. On Facebook, your listing will also be promoted (paid promotion) reaching 1000s of extra potential buyers. These platforms provide for an easy way to keep in touch, build trust, and simply network with huge groups of people. Facebook advertising is one of today’s most effective platforms!

Multiple Listing Service (MLS)

Your home will also have a complete listing in the local MLS known as www.Realtor.ca to the general public. MLS is well-known to contain the world’s largest database of homes for sale. There are more than 30,000 Realtors servicing Markham and the GTA, and most agents work with 1-6 prospective buyers at any given time. Anyway you do the math, that’s a lot of potential buyers being exposed to your listing.

Feature Your Home In The Local Real Estate Newspaper

Roughly 3 per cent of home buyers come from print advertising such as newspapers. A very small percentage, but a percentage nonetheless. Your home will be featured in the real estate section of your local newspaper as a new featured listing.

Feature Your Home In The Chinese News(Da Zhong Bao)

The Chinese News is a community newspaper serving the interest of Chinese immigrant readers. Markham and the surrounding GTA has large, growing Chinese population and it is very important to promote your home to this demographic to maximize your home’s exposure.

Featured Your Home On Juwai.com

Targeting Chinese buyers overseas, Juwai.com currently has 2.9 million potential buyers viewing their site on a monthly basis. Your home will now have huge exposure on China’s main website for buying property in Canada.

Real Estate Channel

With more than 4 million viewers, the Real Estate Channel is Canada’s largest Real Estate TV network with dedicated specialty programming 24/7. Your home will be featured in homes from coast to coast!

Conduct Open Houses

Martin will conduct professional open houses for your listing as required. Public open houses are usually conducted on Saturdays and/or Sundays from 2-4pm. While open houses sometimes do attract nosy neighbours, they are still a popular way to increase exposure to your home. Every weekend, potential buyers get in their cars and browse the neighbourhoods they want to live it. You never know when your buyer might walk through your door!

Schedule An Agent Open House

Since the majority of home buyers come from other Realtors, we want to give local real estate agents a chance to see your home without having to make an appointment. Agent open houses are very popular in Markham and Unionville and attract many local real estate agents. It’s a great opportunity for Martin to promote your home and network with other agents so that they have your home in mind when they come across the right buyer.

Install A Sign

Martin will have a “For Sale” sign installed on the front your property. This will let all neighbours and people driving-by know that your house is for sale. This is exactly what we want. Neighbours often have a friend or a relative interested in moving into the area. Your sign will also be used to attach custom sign riders that will either drive traffic to your website, promote your “Text For Info” feature or advertise your open house.

E-mail Buyer Prospects

Over time, Martin has created a database of hundreds of buyer prospects who at one time or another, have either called or e-mailed him about a listing, filled out a form from his website, visited an open house or made a connection with him through his networking. Every potential buyer in his database will receive an email with your listing information and a link to your personal website to view more information.

A FREE Staging Consultation With A Certified Professional

Staging your home is proven to help sell your home quicker and for more money. Real estate staging statistics speak for itself. After cleaning and de-cluttering your home, staging will provide you with the greatest return on your investment. Martin’s certified staging professional will meet you at your home and provide you with a customized report identifying priorities in every room and an action plan to improve your home’s showability. Depending on your budget and timeframe, you can choose to complete the improvements on your own or with the help of the certified home stager. Either way, Martin believes that staging your home will most certainly help put more money back into your pocket after the sale. Martin recommends the home staging services of Monica Stanciu.

Provide High Quality Colour Feature Sheets

Martin will provide high quality colour feature sheets for buyers to take away with them after visiting your home. These feature sheets will show off your home’s best assets through photos and descriptions. These sheets will also direct more traffic to your website.

Distribute “Just URL’d” Notices To The Neighbourhood

Instead of distributing the same old “Just Listed” notices to the neighbourhood, Martin will change it up a little bit sending out “Just URL’d” notices. This title will catch the buyer’s eye a little more because it is different, and as you may have guessed, will drive even more traffic to your website so that potential buyers can get a better feel for your home and have more of a lasting impression.

Present Your Home To Other Realtors At Weekly Meetings

As a Realtor at Sutton Group – Heritage Realty Inc. Martin attends weekly meetings where he gets the opportunity to promote your listing to other agents in the office. Martin’s collegues are very active in Markham, Unionville, Stouffville and surrounding communities and he makes sure that they are aware of his listings. Martin works with a great team of real estate professionals and they all keep their eyes and ears open for each other.

Buyer Representatives

There are many real estate agents in every neighbourhood that specialize in the buyer’s side of the real estate transaction. When an agent shows a house to their client, it is courteous of them to leave their business card for the listing agent. This has helped Martin build a database of hundreds of local buyer representatives and he will send them all e-mails with information about your listing.

Contact Local Listing Realtors

Your house is not likely to be the only house for sale in your neighbourhood, just as there have been many homes nearby that have sold before you. The listing agents who are selling or who have sold those homes will have likely come across many buyers interested in the neighbourhood. It is very important that these real estate agents know about your listing so that they can alert those buyers. Those buyers will likely be some of your best opportunities.

Provide A Lockbox Near Your Front Door

Martin will provide a lockbox near your front door to provide easy access for home buyers and their real estate agents. Allowing prospective buyers to explore your home freely will greatly improve your chances of success. When homeowners are home during a showing, some buyers might not feel as comfortable exploring your home. They might feel intimidated and/or embarrassed to discuss your home’s attributes aloud. We want to make sure every potential buyer feels comfortable in your home and allowing them to inspect your home in your absence is another great step towards getting your home sold.