What's Missing?

Real Estate marketing has one chance to make a good first impression. Missing or wrong information leads buyers and their agents to feel either the person responsible for the ad is either incompetent, dishonest or both.

Savvy buyers understand that others are also seeing this mistake and as a result are less likely to bid market price. They see one weakness in the seller's position and eagerly look for others to assess how low a price the property is likely to close for. If buyers think the ad is a deliberate attempt to mislead the public they will distrust other things the seller is saying i.e. what the actual maintenance is, building features etc. In either case the credibility of the asking price is compromised.

Real Estate marketing can be broken down into basic elements:

1) Facts. These include the asking price, monthly charges, minimum financing requirements, address, building type (Coop, Condo or Condop).

2) Description. These sentences describe the location, building and apartment's most desirable features.

3) Photos. If a picture is worth a thousand words then this is the most important and best value way to spend advertising money. Pictures are not only another way to show the apartments best features but in some cases the only option. If the description says the living room get excellent light all day and the pictures don't show this, what will the buyer think? Experienced agents know that if the photos don't show something, there's probably a good reason.

4) Floor Plans. It's important to show reasonably accurate dimensions and scale. This is also a chance for sellers to show the public alternate layouts - perfectly ok as long as they are labeled as such.