Newspapers & Home Guides Don’t Sell Homes
Learn Why...
Does print advertising really help sell homes? The answer is no! So why then do so many real estate companies use this form of advertisement? The answer is simple! Unknowing home sellers believe it will help sell their home. Every time I give a listing presentation to a prospective home seller I always ask if they have ever heard of a report called "The 2005 National Association Of Realtors® Profile of Home Buyers And Sellers" 75 page report? I have yet to run into any home seller who has! But, it doesn’t surprise me.
The reason other real estate agents don’t use this report in their listing presentation is simple. It doesn’t support anything they have to offer to a prospective home seller in the form of marketing for their home except the facts about Internet usage and yard signs. In fact, Open houses, Agent Office Tours of your home, “Just-Listed” flyers to homes in your area to get the word out, aren’t even an asterisk in this report let alone a real statistic!
But, when it comes to newspaper and home guide ads this report has a lot to say. In this report is the fact that 53% of homebuyers started their home search by looking through newspaper and home guide ads. 53%! But a closer look into this report reveals the fact that when homes buyers were asked how they found the home they actually purchase? Only 5% found the home they actually purchased from a newspaper ad. Only 5%.
The results are even worse for home sellers that believe an ad of their home placed in a home guide will actually help sell it. Only 1% found the home they actually purchased from an ad placed in a home guide. Only 1%. So, before you sign a listing contract with any real estate company that bases most of your homes marketing plan on newspaper and home guide ads please think about this. Newspaper and home guide ads have a 95% to 99% failure rate when it comes to getting a home sold.
Just to further prove the fact that newspapers and home guide ads do not help sell homes we have compiled data available through the Realtors® Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI) on a well known real estate company that does in “fact” provide one of The Most Aggressive Newspaper and Home Guide Display Print Marketing Plans in Chicagoland! This well-known real estate company lists a lot of homes! Why? Because a lot of home sellers still believe that marketing their homes in newspapers and home guides will actually help get it sold. A closer look at the data available through the Realtors® Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI) shows that this well known real estate company sells very few of their own listings. Over 89% of their listing were sold through buyers agents from other real estate companies as a direct result of having their listings on the Realtors MLS!
According to "The 2005 National Association Of Realtors® Profile of Home Buyers And Sellers" 75 page report, something as simple as a yard sign was up to 3 times more effective in selling a home than newspaper and home guide ads combined! The following link will give prospective home sellers a very good overview of this 75-page report.
(http://www.realtor.org/PublicAffairsWeb.nsf/Pages/HmBuyerSellerSurvey06).
Deciding which real estate company or agent you will use to list your home is a very important decision. Make sure you get the real facts! At New Market Realty we get our facts directly from The National Association of Realtors®, “The Voice for Real Estate,” which is America’s largest trade association and data available through the Realtors® Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI). Where will the agent you choose get theirs?
