Chapter 7
Putting Your Home on the Market
In This Chapter
◆ How to write a description of your home
◆ How to photograph your home
◆ Brochures and handouts for buyers
◆ The two kinds of open houses
◆ Advertisements
The act of putting your home on the market involves a series of steps. To begin with, your Realtor, with your input, will write a description of your home for the MLS and possibly for ads, will have your home photographed, and will probably create brochures or flyers. A lawn sign will go up. There also may be disclosure forms to fill out for buyers. And the guidelines for showings and open houses must be established.
 
Some sellers make the assumption that their Realtor will take charge and do everything, sort of like going to see the doctor. This is a mistake. Any physician will tell you that his most successful outcomes are among those patients who were most actively involved and invested in their own care. Get involved and become a team with your Realtor. We have seen firsthand that sellers who are truly invested in the process of selling their home actually get more money in the sale. Those who are not get less.
 
The steps in this chapter are simple, but they are not easy. They are simple in that they appear to be a checklist or a to-do list. However, they can be done poorly and incorrectly. If mistakes are made at this stage, it can affect your ability to sell the home. Buyers, and even Realtors, are reviewing dozens and sometimes hundreds of listings. If they are not enticed, they will pass right over yours if it’s poorly photographed or inadequately described.

How to Describe Your Home

The way that you describe your home in writing is of the utmost importance. The description will have a powerful influence over whether or not a buyer wants to make an appointment to see the house. The written description is one of the first things that buyers look at on a new listing.
 
The first five things buyers look at on a listing are the following:
◆ Price
◆ Address
◆ Exterior photograph
◆ Written description
◆ Interior photographs
Writing is not easy. When you, or your Realtor, struggle to find the right words to put in the listing or advertisement, begin by evaluating the big three: size, condition, and location. Which one is your home’s strongest selling point? You may have all three—a really big home in spectacular condition and in a much sought-after neighborhood. If so, say that right away, in the first sentence, and you’ll have their attention. Get to the other features and details in the second, third, and fourth sentences.
 
However, many sellers have only one or two of these selling points. You might have a home in a great location and in wonderful condition, but it’s not large. That’s still good. In fact, it’s excellent. As Realtors, we place a huge premium on location because it’s the one thing that a homeowner cannot change. You can improve the condition and enlarge the home with additions. However, the address is the address. You’ve heard the phrase, “When it comes to real estate, it’s all about location, location, location.” It’s true.
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Seller Alert
Buyers don’t always view properties for the purpose of making an appointment, but rather to justify to themselves why they don’t really need to. They are busy and they don’t want to go see yet another home that’s not for them. If there is a specific trait of your home that is not what they want, they may dismiss the idea of seeing it at all for that reason alone. Make the writing powerful enough to entice them but keep it general. Use writing to pique their interest, drive them to schedule a showing, and let them take in the details (and fall in love with it) in person.

Location

In describing the location, if it’s a good one, simply tell the reader why it’s good. If it is within walking distance to something locally important, such as a shopping village, major transportation, a park, or the beach, say that. If there is a view of a lake, mountain, or city skyline, say that, too. Buyers will not always take, at face value, a statement such as, “Great home in great location.” You need to spell it out for them. If you live near a major town or city to which many homeowners commute for work and your home is close to transportation, it will be worth a great deal of money and should be emphasized.

Size

If your home is small, then less is more when writing your description: say as little as possible about it. In some parts of the country, it is common practice for Realtors to provide, in a listing, the total square footage of the home, as well as the dimensions of each room. In other areas, it is not provided. Giving a buyer an exact number of square feet before she has actually seen the home might be a deterrent to scheduling a showing. She might feel that she needs 3,000 square feet and won’t consider your home with only 2,700. However, if she had visited your home, she might not care about the missing 300 square feet when she sees your magnificent deck overlooking the valley. Unless your home is quite large or you have rooms with large dimensions, think twice about including the specific size, unless it’s routine and expected by buyers in your region.
 
There are, however, ways to describe a small home in a flattering manner. Focus on attributes other than size in the listing. A sample sentence is: “The main floor plan has wonderful circular flow for entertaining.” Be careful how you use words such as “charming,” which are often code for “small” or “tiny.”

Condition

Condition is our favorite element of a home to write about because most sellers have at least one area that is new, has been upgraded, or is in very good shape. There’s much to say about condition, and you have more latitude in this area than you do with size and location. You can almost always find something nice to say and you can be very creative.
 
If you have made major upgrades such as a new kitchen or renovated baths, it should always be mentioned in a listing description. These are among some of the most expensive upgrades that a homeowner can make. You might even be able to use phrases like “state of the art,” depending on how advanced the materials and appliances are.
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Seller Alert
Be careful when describing the age or condition of appliances or systems in your home. If you label something as “brand new,” make sure that it’s accurate. The buyer will often ask the seller to provide the warranty. When the warranty is produced, the buyer may learn that it has expired and in fact the appliance is not brand new. This can cause problems with the deal because the buyer feels that he was misled. This also happens with other big-ticket items such as the roofs, furnaces, and central air-conditioning systems.
If you have absolutely nothing in your home that is new, renovated, or updated, there are still many ways to describe it so that it sounds attractive and valuable. Assuming that it is clean and tidy, use words such as “impeccably maintained” or “open and sunny floor plan.” Go out of your way to mention structural features such as high ceilings; expensive crown, base, raised panel, and dentil moldings; coffered ceilings; original hardwood floors; built-in bookcases; leaded-glass windows; skylights; a fireplace; a breezeway between the kitchen and garage; covered or screened-in porches; decorative staircases; a sunken living room; and more.
 
These are valuable to buyers in a different way than renovated kitchens and baths are. Anybody can install a new state-of-the-art kitchen, but it’s hard and expensive to recreate original architectural elements from the early 1900s. Your home might be old, but to some buyers it can be a better purchase than an updated home without valuable architectural elements.

Photographing Your Home

A picture is worth a thousand words, so you want to get it right. Photography is perhaps the most mismanaged part of the administrative process of putting a home on the market. Bad photographs of homes are all over the Internet. It’s a shame to have a home handicapped on the Internet with pictures that don’t show or even take away from its true beauty. Bad photographs prevent buyers from coming to see your home, and you cannot afford to lose even one buyer, because she might be the one who purchases it.
 
You and your Realtor have three options: to hire a professional real estate photographer to take pictures of your home, have the Realtor take them, or take them yourself. We use only professional real estate photographers. We hire them and pay them ourselves. They are not nearly as expensive as you might think, and Realtors know where to find talented and affordable ones. If this is not an option, we share some great tricks of the trade to taking your own good photographs.

The Purpose and Importance of Good Photographs

Like writing, taking good photos is very hard. Most people think of themselves as pretty good photographers. Manufacturers have made digital cameras so easy to use that even small children take pictures now. When it comes to your family vacation, you’re probably going to take some terrific shots. When it comes to packaging and selling your home, don’t count on it. There are much higher standards in photographing your home as opposed to your family vacation.
 
The main purpose of real estate photographs is to entice buyers just enough to schedule a private showing. The goal is simply for them to want to see more. The goal is not to provide a photo album of every room in the house. Too many sellers, and even Realtors, feel that a listing should be crammed with as many photos as possible. There’s nothing wrong with a lot of pictures; the buyers love them. However, use photos only if they are “good” photos. If they are not, provide just three or four great ones—the buyers will want to see more and will schedule a showing.
 
On the other hand, if you have 10 poorly shot photographs, the buyer may not make the appointment. First, he has seen almost the entire home online. There is less of a need to go see it in person. Second, if the photos were not flattering, he won’t like it enough to come see it anyway. Either way, you’ve lost the buyer without ever having met him, all because of the way the home was photographed.
 
Begin with these two steps:
1. Select the features to be photographed: You’ve already taken some time with the word description to decide what the best and most appealing features are in your home. Determine which among them will make the best photographs; not all of them will. For example, updated bathrooms are a great feature to describe with words but are often a bad idea to shoot because they don’t photograph all that well—even the really big ones. Additionally, there is usually a limit to how many photographs you can use in the MLS, and there are other bigger and/or main rooms that buyers want to see.
2. Preangle: Don’t pick up the camera just yet. Move all around each room that you plan to shoot. Look, with the naked eye, for the best angles. If your living room is rectangular, for example, you want to shoot it in a way that emphasizes the length or the longest dimension. You don’t need a camera to figure this out. Do this even if you are hiring a professional real estate photographer. She may shoot more than one angle in order to provide you with more choices and leave the selection process up to you and your Realtor. It will be much easier on you if you take the time to plan and compose your shots in advance.

Biggest Photography Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Mistakes are very easy to make. That’s why there are so many bad photographs online. Here are some of the most common mistakes—and ways to avoid them.
The angle is too narrow. In this type of photo, all you see in the frame is a corner or a piece of a room. It is impossible to get an idea of the size of the room or what it’s used for. When you preangle the photographs, as described previously, choose what you want to have inside the frame from all four sides—the right, left, top, and bottom. For example, if you and your Realtor have concluded that the two best features in your living room are the fireplace and the French doors, then from what angle can you be sure to capture them both?
The angle is unflattering. This is when the room, or the exterior of the home, is photographed in a way that makes it look very small, cluttered, or distorted. Sometimes the exterior photo makes the home appear to be right on top of a neighbor’s, or the kitchen is shot with a low hanging hood in the way, a staircase is distorted and looks way too skinny, or the dining room chandelier blocks the view into the entry hall. The solution, again, is as we mentioned previously: choose and preplan your angles.
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Seller Alert
Take care to check your camera settings before you begin. You’d be surprised how easy it is to find that you did not have the lens set on “wide angle” or that you mistakenly left it in zoom mode, both of which make it impossible to capture a large portion of the room.
The frame is filled with furniture. This is so common. There are thousands of photos out there of couches with captions that read “Living Room” or of beds with a caption that reads “Master Bedroom.” Remember, it’s the structure and the architecture that are the stars of the show, not your furniture.
The photo is too dark. This is also common. It is hard to light a large area evenly. Most digital flashes light only to about 8 to 10 feet. If you are shooting a big room, part of it may be dark and part of it light. Try turning the flash off altogether, turning on every light in the room, raising the shades, and pulling back the drapes. An outdoor photo of a home might turn out too dark when it is taken “into” the sun. The sun should always be behind you and the photo taken at a time of day when the sun’s bathing the front of the home in light. Likewise, when shooting interiors, try to shoot the rooms at different times of day to find the most light. When you do, shoot with the source of the light behind you.
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Trick of the Trade
Your computer may come with a photography software program already installed in it. When you view photographs, it provides simple ways to make them better by enhancing the color, light, and contrast. Often, it’s done with one keystroke on an icon that might be labeled “enhancements” or “sharpen.” These improvements can make a big difference. There will also be other, more sophisticated ways to manipulate the photos for the more advanced user. If you play around with it, you can teach yourself pretty easily.

Brochures and Handouts

There are several choices available to you for creating attractive and informative materials that buyers can pick up while they are inside your home, and take with them when they leave. They are usually provided by and paid for by your Realtor and have different names including listing sheets, feature sheets, highlight sheets, home brochures, property flyers, and property profiles. Each presents written and photographic descriptions of your home and its various rooms and features. They also sometimes include information about your community.
 
Types of handouts include:
Multipage or folding brochure: This is the most expensive type of handout to produce because of its sheer size, number of photos, and paper quality, or paper stock. The paper usually has a glossy finish and is much heavier than regular paper. They are often four pages long and usually done with a full-color (also known as four-color) printing process that allows a very wide range of color in the photos. The Realtor’s agency logo, name, photo, and contact information will also appear on either the front or back of the brochure.
One-page flyer: This type of flyer is often just a smaller version of the multipage brochure. It can be one-sided or two-sided. We recommend using both sides. It is very difficult to provide more than one or two photographs when using a one-sided flyer.
The MLS listing sheet: This is a simple printout of your listing from the Realtor’s regional Multiple Listing Service (MLS). A buyer will already have received this from his own Realtor days earlier, but he may have forgotten to bring it with him to your home. It’s nice for him to have it in hand while walking through so he can reference facts like total number of rooms, the property taxes, condo maintenance fees, and so on.
Upgrades or features sheet: We strongly urge you to create one of these if you have made steady improvements to your home over time. Many of them cannot readily be seen by the buyer. It will drive home the message about how much money you have spent and point out the areas of architectural value. Present this list, or sheet, and it will enhance the perception of value when you need it most, when the buyer is in your home. There is rarely enough room on an MLS listing sheet to highlight every single special amenity such as custom cabinetry; upgraded kitchen appliances; architectural features like original fireplaces, moldings, and leaded-glass bookcases; and systems such as radiant heat, multizone central air, new furnace, updated electric, hardwired sound and security systems, and more.
Community services information: Information about your community—such as schools, day care, public swimming pools, tennis courts, festivals and fairs, transportation, hospitals, and anything else that makes it attractive to newcomers—is a very good idea to display. Best of all, flyers and brochures describing them are often free and can be picked up from the school district board of education, town or city hall, and train or bus stations. Some towns create community resource booklets with contact information for everything from the fire department to the local veterinarian’s office. As we’ve said before, you cannot rely on the buyer’s Realtor to have given the buyer as much information as you’d like about your home or your community.

Lawn Signs

About the same time that your home goes into the MLS, the Realtor will have a for-sale sign installed on your front lawn. There are a couple of things to keep in mind about signs. Some of them have a large post that requires digging a significant-size hole in your front lawn. This is not an issue while your home is on the market. But when it sells and the sign comes out, you could have a large dead patch in your lawn. Some agencies use very similar signs but they have a narrow spike at the bottom where the sign goes into the earth. No damage is done to your lawn. If the agency you are working with does not have these kinds of signs, then plan to reseed or resod. Ask the agency, in advance, to pay for that when the sign comes out.
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Seller Alert
Sometimes sellers forget to remind their children that the home is going on the market on a certain day. When they come home from school and see the sign, they can be taken by surprise and get emotional. Take care to give them a gentle reminder on the day it will go up—and make sure your Realtor reminds you, as well.

Seller’s Disclosures

A seller’s disclosure form is required in some states and optional in others. It is a standard multipage form that the seller fills out when the home goes on the market, and is made available to buyers who express an interest in the property. It covers just about everything relating to your home including its age; structural issues; systems like plumbing and electric, the foundation, roof, attic, and basement; significant renovations; pests and environmental concerns like leaks and water damage, and the presence of lead, radon, asbestos, and mold; and the presence of underground storage tanks like oil and septic. The seller reveals everything she knows about these issues in writing and signs the form.
 
Even in states where the seller’s disclosure form is not required, but only optional, we recommend that you provide one. You will be much better off if you disclose defects or problems right up front. In most cases, an inspection will reveal them to the buyer anyway and he then might question your reasons for withholding the information.
 
Secondly, when a buyer has all the facts before he makes an offer, then his price will reflect his awareness of the problems. Therefore, the deal is less likely to fall apart because the buyer went into it with his eyes open.

Choosing the Date to Introduce Your Home

Let’s begin with the month you choose to bring your home on the market. Ask your Realtor when the peak selling season is in your area. For much of the United States, it takes place between January and June and is commonly referred to as “the spring market.” Don’t get us wrong—homes sell every day of the year, even on holidays. But if you are thinking of selling, choose a month that coincides with the most activity. For example, in the Northeast, particularly in and around New York City, there are hundreds of thousands of Wall Street employees who received bonuses right after New Year’s. This adds to the flurry of business done between late January and June. Additionally, it’s a region with seasons. Sellers often like to market their homes when their lawns are green and their gardens are in full bloom.
 
After you choose the month, you’ll pinpoint the week and day. The week will depend partly on coordinating your schedule with your Realtor’s, but also on planning around holiday weekends, of which there may be many. Again, we have sold homes on holidays before but there is no need to aim for one when marketing your home. If there is a chance that buyers will be out of town for a holiday weekend, why risk it?
 
The day that you introduce it should be dictated by what the common practice is in your area. Some communities have an unwritten agreement among Realtors that all new homes for sale are introduced on Wednesdays. In our community, it is Friday. Go with the flow and follow the Realtor’s lead because more of her colleagues will see it. If there is no standard day, then we recommend choosing one that is not too close to the weekend—no later than Wednesday—so that Realtors have a chance to preview it for their buyers before the first weekend that it is on the market.

Entering Your Home on the Multiple Listing Service

Your home is officially “on the market” when you have signed a listing agreement and have it entered onto the Realtor’s MLS. At that moment, all of the Realtors in the region will see it and notify clients who may have an interest.
 
But we do not recommend allowing showings to take place immediately. We recommend delaying the beginning of showings for a few days, for two reasons. The first is so that the best buyers will have a chance to hear about it from their Realtors and schedule an appointment for when it does become available for showings. Secondly, the delay builds a buzz of excitement about your home among the buyer pool. This can be a very effective tactic.
 
In Chapter 9, we use the analogy of a new film release. Movie studios tease audiences with coming attractions and clips. They understand that the film will have its highest box office receipts in the first weekend, so they maximize that by creating advance buzz. The same theory applies to a new home on the market. It works.
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Seller Alert
Ask your Realtor about the rules and regulations of his local MLS, as some of them require that a home be available for showings as soon as it is entered on the MLS.

The Realtor Open House

In many areas, a Realtor open house is held on the first day that a home comes on the market—before buyers have seen it. The purpose is to allow the Realtors to preview it and establish if it’s right for any of their clients. If it is, then they want to become familiar with all its features to be prepared when they show it that weekend.
 
Realtor open houses are a seller’s best friend. Have one. The Realtors who come to see it are there because they are working with (and directly represent) ready, willing, and able buyers. This one event is often what puts the wheels in motion for a home sale. As they walk through, they are thinking about which clients might have an interest in it. There might be hundreds of homes on the market in your area. To get Realtors physically inside your home, and actively preview it, is the first step in actually getting it sold.
 
Realtor open houses usually last a couple of hours, take place on a weekday, and are not open to the public. Your listing Realtor will host it. As the other Realtors come through, they seize the opportunity to ask the listing Realtor questions about the home. After the Realtor’s open house has concluded, showings to buyers may begin immediately.

Running Ads

As we’ll say over and over in this book, advertising will not sell your home because it’s designed to attract buyers who are not yet ready to buy. The ones who are ready to buy don’t shop the ads because they already know about your home. The listing was sent to them directly from their Realtor, days or weeks ago. But buyers who are still window-shopping and researching do shop the ads because they are not yet working with a Realtor. Newspapers, open houses, and the Internet are the only ways in which they can begin the education process—emphasis on the word “begin.” Of course, there is the occasional exception to the rule, but it is rare.

The Real Reason Agencies Run Ads

The reason that real estate agencies run advertisements is to make the phone ring at the agency. They need to have a steady stream of new business. And they will get it. But people who call in on ads are just beginning their home search and still in the research or information-gathering stage. Someone at the agency answers the phone and makes a connection with the caller. The caller will likely begin working with that Realtor, or another one somewhere else, and start his education in home buying. He is on his way to home ownership but he is not buying your particular home.
 
Many sellers still want the ads, just in case. And Realtors are happy to oblige because the ads raise their profile in the community; it’s sort of a brand-awareness campaign. So let’s assume that you will run an ad because you’ve established that it is in your Realtor’s budget anyway, and it certainly can’t hurt.

An Advertising Plan

The first step in any advertising effort is to determine how much money is in the budget. Next, how will it be spent? If you read and followed the steps in Chapter 3, you will already have had a conversation with your Realtor about how much money there is for ads, and how often and where they will be placed.
 
If you do have an advertising budget, and plan to run ads, the first round should be run the week that your home comes on the market.
 
Ads typically include the following:
◆ A photograph of the front exterior of the home
◆ The price
◆ The town or city
◆ A brief description of the property
◆ Contact information for the Realtor or agency
◆ A time and date for a public open house, if there is one
◆ Federal fair housing logos, which are required by law
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Trick of the Trade
Your home may be advertised quite a bit over time. Space ads out and coordinate them with strategic price reductions. Your goal is to try to recreate demand with a new price, which thereby infuses new energy for your listing. When advertising real estate, the most effective approach is to advertise only when you have something new to say. Otherwise you’re just reminding the buyer pool that your home is not selling and reinforcing a perception that it’s stale and something is wrong with it.

The Public Open House

We feel the same way about public open houses that we do about advertising—that they do not sell your home. This is because they do not attract real buyers. Real buyers will see the home privately with a licensed Realtor. They have no need to see it among throngs of people when they have a representative who can give them access to a full, guided, and private tour.
 
Further evidence that people who attend public open houses are not real buyers is that they almost never want to speak to the listing Realtor. Attendees often barely acknowledge the Realtor and would prefer not to even make eye contact with her, if possible. They want to see the home and be left alone. The reason for this is very simple: they have no intention of buying the home. If they did, they’d be seeing it privately. In Chapter 9, we discuss in detail all the different types of buyers and how understanding them is the key to marketing your home.
 
So who does attend public open houses besides buyers who are not quite yet ready to buy? The two other types of people include:
Nosy neighbors. We use the word “nosy” in the kindest possible way. Some of your neighbors just want a good peek at your home. Others may be thinking of selling their own homes and want to compare yours to theirs.
People seeking entertainment. Some people attend public open houses for fun. They enjoy looking at homes and appreciate architecture and interior decorating, so it’s a great day of entertainment for them.
def·i·ni·tion
A public open house is typically hosted by the listing Realtor in a two- or three-hour window of time when anyone can come through and view the home. They are advertised in advance on the Internet and in newspapers.

The Least You Need to Know

◆ When writing a word description of your home, begin with the big three: size, condition, and location.
◆ The purpose of photographing your home is not to provide a photo album of every single room, but rather to provide a few carefully selected and outstanding shots in order to entice buyers to schedule private showings.
◆ Brochures and handouts for buyers are a great way to communicate every upgrade and feature of the home.
◆ Your home is officially “on the market” when it has been entered into the MLS and you are allowing buyers to come through.
◆ Having an open house for Realtors only is one of the most powerful things you can do when introducing your home to the marketplace.
◆ On the other hand, having an open house for the public will not do much to help sell your home because it will not attract real buyers.
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