Without a doubt, advancements in technology, and photography in a digital age, have advanced marketing techniques for selling real estate by leaps and bounds. At the touch of a keyboard linked to the internet, home buyers and sellers have learned they are dramatically empowered in their quest to buy and sell real estate.
A wealth of websites provide many buyers (and sellers too) with the ability to conduct their own searches of homes, and explore home values, before contacting an agent. They often continue the search, on their own, even while working with a real estate agent.
Internet consumer searches are done in much the same way, as real estate agents. Search parameters (towns, price range, number of bedrooms and baths, square footage, lot size), can be entered into the criteria. From the input populated in the search fields, listings are produced to match the criteria
Here is where having a Real Estate Professional working with you can make a tremendous difference. Usually in the marketing of properties, listings are presented in “their best light.” In other words, great pictures, marketing descriptions and comments can many times exaggerate the positive, while underplaying the negative – if not totally ignoring it. Real Estate Professionals use their market knowledge and expertise to allow them to filter out properties, which will not work for their clients
One agent remembered a personal friend, who lived in another state, who was ready to relocate to yet another state. The friend was using one of the more popular Internet websites geared for real estate buyers and sellers. The friend flew half way across the country to put in an offer on the house in the picture. She had fallen in love with the huge oak tree in front of the quaint looking house in the “exceptional” picture.
However, when she arrived at the property, she found the huge Oak tree, was mere inches from the front of the house, and its roots were actually busting out the slab in the dining room. The branches were threatening the roof.
It was then, that the friend realized that a referral to a good real estate agent in the area was a great idea after all!
