Individual Agent Advertising to Homebuyers

Individual agents may advertise your home for the same reasons as
companies do. They usually advertise in classified ads or in specialty
magazines featuring houses available for sale.

As in other types of advertising, these ads rarely sell your home. Once
again, the main goals of advertising are to accumulate homebuyers as
clients, and to impress you and future home sellers with how well they
market their listings. Some agents actually do sell their own listings,
but not that often.

It is much more productive and beneficial if your listing agent directs
most of his or her marketing efforts toward other agents. Since this is
"behind the scenes" marketing that you don’t actually see, it is often
difficult for you to measure how hard the agent is working for you.

It is a mistake to measure your agent’s effectiveness solely by
counting the number of newspaper and magazine ads featuring your
property.

Neighborhood Announcements

When you first list your home many agents send "announcements" to
all of the other houses in your neighborhood. This can be done in the
form of postcards, a letter, or flyers left hanging on the front door.
These are important because your neighbors might have friends who
are looking to buy a house.

The announcements create "word of mouth" advertising, which is the
best kind.

copyright 2000 by Terry Light and RealEstate ABC, revised 2002