Do Newspaper Ads and Home Guides Help Sell Your Home?
Why do so many home sellers believe that having their home placed in a newspaper ad or home guide will actually help get their home sold? Real estate agents have known for years display advertising doesn’t sell homes! And yet many real estate companies still base their whole listing presentation on the fact they will do more marketing/advertising of your home in major newspapers and home guides than any other real estate company will do. Why? Because home sellers believe this marketing lie! These companies will tell you of the great benefits to be gained from this type of exposure and how this will get your home sold fast. They will tell you of the wide geographic exposure your home will receive. They may even go as far as mentioning how often your home will appear in print and what zones your home will appear in. I know for a fact how these companies work. How do I know? I worked for a real estate company that did (and still does) exactly what I’m talking about! And I soon quit that company because lying to home sellers about a marketing plan I knew wouldn’t work was not a way I wanted to make a living!
The real estate company I use to work for really does do more display print advertising than any other real estate company in the Chicago Land area. But does it help sell homes? I’ll let you be the judge on that. Last year this real estate company listed 239 homes. Out of that 239 homes, this real estate company only sold 13 of it’s own listings. That’s just about 5.5%. Buyer agents from other real estate companies sold the rest of the 226 homes this real estate company had listed. Now, if newspapers and home guides really helped in selling your home. Wouldn’t it make sense that this real estate company would be selling a lot more of it’s own listings? As a real estate agent working with homebuyers. I do not go to the local newspaper or home guide to find homes for my clients. I do what every other real estate agent does. I go on the Realtors® MLS. 80% of all home sales are the direct result of sellers having their home listed on the MLS. The sad part of what this real estate company is doing is, they charge a 4% listing commission to sellers just to have 94.5% of them have their home sold by another real estate company/agent that found it on the MLS. What a waste of money!
Newspapers and Home Guides sell homes. It’s a simple marketing lie that is so easy to believe. Why? Because real estate consumers have been taught, over many years and through relentless corporate advertising, what they think they need, or should have, in order to sell their home. Think of it this way. If newspapers and home guides were so effective in selling homes, the “For Sale By Owner” market would be going through the roof. But it isn’t. And if newspapers and home guides were so effective in selling homes, why is the number of homes that actually sell, as a direct result of newspapers and home guides, only 1% and 5% respectively? Any, and I do mean any real estate agent that tries to tell you that these figures are not true is saying The National Association of Realtors® is lying and the NAR “ Profile of Home Buyer’s and Seller’s Report” isn’t worth the paper it is written on. So who do you think you should believe? The agent trying to get your listing or The National Association of Realtors®? Before you pay a 4% or 5% listing commission that’s based upon a marketing plan of newspapers and home guides we suggest you consider the following;
Every year The National Association of Realtors® publishes a report called the NAR “ Profile of Home Buyer’s and Seller’s Report”. This report is generated from a six-page questionnaire that is mailed to a national sample of 100,000 recent homebuyers and sellers who purchased and/or sold their homes within a given time frame (i.e. mid-2004 and mid-2005, based upon county records). This sampling currently generates a response rate of approximately 8.2 percent. If you took the time to read this report, which most home sellers and homebuyers don’t, you’d find that homebuyers used newspapers 53% of the time as a resource to find homes. Notice I said find homes, not buy homes. Now, this is where the report gets interesting. (Home sellers in particular should be pay very close attention to the following). According to this NAR report, only 5% of all homebuyers actually purchased a home they found in a newspaper ad. Only 5%! The NAR report also reveals that only 1% of homebuyers actually purchased a home they found in a home guide/magazine. Only 1%!
The reason the numbers are so low for homes actually purchased through newspapers and home guides/magazines is that the real purpose in using these two advertising mediums is not to actually sell homes, but rather to serve the real estate companies and their agents in a number of different ways.
First, and perhaps hardest to believe, is the fact that real estate companies and agents run ads of homes for sale in order to attract home sellers. That’s right, Home Sellers. Or what the real estate industry refers to as LISTINGS. Agents know that sellers do, in fact, look at the various real estate ads in newspapers and home guides/magazines. They see how the ads are laid out and formulate ideas as to who would do the best job of presenting their home to the home buying audience. And why do they look at these ads? Because sellers still think this will help them get their home sold! But now you know that newspaper and home guide ads won’t help very much because of the 5% and 2% figures explained above. The second purpose for running ads is to gain buyer leads. If you do a little simple math you’ll see that there’s a lot of buyers leads to be had by running newspaper and home guide/magazine ads.
Think about this: if 53% of all buyers start their home search with newspapers and home guides/magazines, and only 5% and 1% respectively actually end up buying a home using these two sources, that leaves 47% of all homebuyers as potential leads for real estate agents to snatch up and try to sell them a home! The third purpose for running ads is to create brand awareness for a real estate company’s name in a particular market place. Sellers have become conditioned to doing business with a company they have heard of. For many home sellers it just seems “safer” to go with the big, brand name, well known company.
I know that these may be hard facts to swallow, but please don’t just take my word for it. And please don’t take the word of any agent trying to tell you anything different. That agent just wants your listing. Instead please take the word of the highest authority in the real estate business: The National Association of Realtors®. It’s their report, and they have been putting it out for more years than most agents have been in business!
