Home Selling Tips – How to Sell Your House for More | Growing your Selling Price and Buyers USA Canada UK

Home Selling Tips for 2018

Do we need home selling tips just for 2018? I think we do.

Our focus is 2018, the year of more competition and listings. The economic circumstances, taxation issues, price trends, migration, create unique forecasts for each housing market in 2018. To sell at a good price in 2018, you’ll need some strategy and tactical sales excellence.

Even in the best cities, prices are flat and homeowners will have more difficulty persuading buyers or property investors to buy their properties.

The tax situation is less profitable, the US dollar is falling, new home construction is up, the stock market is wild, real estate investors wary, and the economy looks solid.

There won’t be a housing crash in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Houston, San Diego, Seattle, and even the Bay Area forecast is excellent. All of these thoughts will be on buyers minds as they visualize a price for your property. If you keep the faith, then it comes down to what you can do to raise the perception of value to them. And these home selling tips should help greatly.

As you’ll read in the home selling tips, you can have your cake and eat it too. Let go of all the “compromise” talk and know that you can get the maximum prices your home, cottage, condo or land is worth. Everyone knows real estate is precious and governments are committed to constraining supply.

When is the Best Time to Sell My House?

Timing your home sale is important, and asking “when is the best time to sell my house” is a wise question. Make sure you know all the time related issues to seasons and the economic trends happening now.

How to Start a Bidding War?

At some point, you’ve quietly thought about how to start a bidding war. Selling at over asking price is common, but with top notch real estate marketing strategy and a knowledeable Realtor, you can ratchet up your selling price.

Tips to Sell at the Highest Price

These 14 tips to selling at the best price, are another view to your goal to get maximum value for your investment. These are good times with prices high or rising and many babyboomers are enjoying how their house and property is fetching a good selling price.

Which Renovations Increase your Selling Price the Most?

When you’re planning the sale, you know buyers are hungry, but maybe during negotiations they cite how your house is not in good condition. Worse, maybe a good number of prospects online are turned off by its appearance? Instead of letting that happen, and just dumping your home on the market, you might discover which house renovations increase selling price. Make the most of your reno budget.

Should you Sell Your Home Fast or for a Higher Price?

Do you know how Realtors selling strategy? You have a choice when you’re working with a Realtor, whether to sell it quick or take your time with marketing and build interest to a larger pool of buyers. Most Realtors use a blitz type of selling strategy where they maximize the impulse or desperation of buyers.

They might push it all into one intense weekend showing where it’s organized like an auction. Buyers see each other want your home and they might get emotional and start ramping up their bids, well over asking price. It works and clients get the picture that the Realtor has done a fantastic job of creating buyers and whipping up frenzy.

However, if the property has all sorts of flaws, is in a weak neighborhood, and it’s not high season for selling, the home might not sell. If the quick blitz backfires, you could see your selling price rocket downward. Anyone can sell during high season, but the Realtor who can sell you house now, is a good one.

Online Selling Strategy

Should you hire an old school Realtor or the new digital savvy Realtors who use real estate videos and social media marketing? If your Realtor is a power online marketer, they may be able to build substantial visibility to targeted buyer audiences.

Consider getting that kind of Realtor, create a plan, and do a blitz over 3 weeks. The best buyer prospects will hang on if they know you’re doing a 3 week blitz. You won’t lose them and instead you could enjoy 3 times the buyers and bids (over that 23 day period). In fact, the collective effect on the final winning price could be staggering.

We’ve all seen homes sell for exhorbitant prices, even more than double the home’s value. You might want to tap into that craziness and get some extra money for your kids/grandkids education expense.

The above posts offer extensive home selling strategy and selling tips to help you reach a bigger, targeted audience, give them what they’re dreaming about, encourage more and higher bids, and help close the deal with a record high price. Hopefully, the media will report your selling success like you were a star Mega Millions winner!

September 13, 2017November 5, 2017

Explore New Markets – Focusing on the Best Cities in the US and Canada

Is It Time to Grow Your Business?

Surveys show many companies are happy with their digital marketing teams and sales performance. The economy is booming and times are good.

While things are so good, and you’re most able to expand, how outlandish would it be for you to explore new markets in the US and Canada? And over the next 6 months, you’ve got some time to build your business. And it’ll be fun.

Big Changes are Afoot

Globalization is moving more economic activity into major urban centers. A good example is Canada, where only the metro areas of Vancouver and Toronto are thriving. It’s the same in Massachusetts where Boston alone is thriving and it appears to be the same for other major US cities. This is what globalization does.

When you’ve drained the last bit of revenue in your city, it may be the right time to explore Vancouver, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, along with Seattle, Denver, Tampa, Miami, New York, Phoenix, or Boston.

Why burn yourself out in an exhausted market with thin margins? Fun, new, fresh and lucrative are better.

I’ve Done it Before Successfully. It’s Definitely Worth It

These are superb markets where I’ve served many clients in diverse industries. The US cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, and San Diego in particular are a fantastic opportunity in volume and variety. An approach to deliver a fresh new service and approach they will love.

If you’re going to penetrate new markets, you must do it with focus on specific cities. A general approach, not adapted to the business and lifestyle in these cities won’t work. If you want to capture Los Angeles, SD County, or the booming lower mainland of BC, you need to drill down and have someone there.

Certainly there are challenges in expansion, yet comparatively today, success is much more common. And it can be conducted efficiently, beginning with a strategic plan and testing approach. The payoff could be a 100% to 200% growth in sales. The growth in my own solo consulting business revenue was 600% with my best year at $180k. For your business, the potential is obviously far higher.

From Los Angeles to Houston to Chicago and New York and Boston, to London UK, I’ve enjoyed developing new clients in many cities. It is a fun, fascinating and rewarding business opportunity.

Call me now at 416 998 6246 and to explore the opportunities.

August 25, 2016

15 Power Prospecting Tips for Lead Generation – Merrily Hackett

Merrily Hackett, CEO of Sutton Group West Coast Realty is enjoying a phenomenal career in real estate. I’ve talked about her a number of times because she’s a great role model for any salesperson or business person.

Having built 3 separate brokerages in the Vancouver area, and leading SG-WCR’s 25 office brokerage, she’s showing us how to outcompete the competiton.

Last year, U.S.-based author and speaker Stefan Swanepoel ranked Hackett at No. 15 on his list of the Most Powerful and Influential Women in Residential Real Estate. Sutton – West Coast made 16,500 unit sales and over $11 billion in sales volume in 2014, which Hackett calculates brings them in at No. 5 in North America.

Create Quality Time for Relationship Building

Let’s not say “prospecting” anymore. Let’s call it relationship building.

You absolutely need to develop productive relationships with mortgage agents, renovators, landscapers, home inspectors, and prospects that include seniors and young couples.

Comprehensive Agile Digital Marketing Programs for Realtors

In an interview with Real Estate Magazine, Merrily talks about the importance of relationship building and how realtors need to focus on this key business development activity.

“It’s what I see over and over with agents that fail. I used to block off three to four hours daily for lead generation. That included calling expired listings, door knocking and cold calling, reaching out to a sphere of influence on a daily basis, asking people for referrals and to keep me top of mind. I was on the phone connecting with people, ensuring that pipeline was full. Consistency was key. You need to believe in yourself. Many times as a commissioned salesperson, you have those fearful thoughts and moments. A new agent has to have the expectancy and positive feeling that it’s going to come together.” — Merrily Hackett interview in REMonline.

15 Prospecting Tips to Build your Focus and Optimism

Here’s 15 useful prospecting tips – a process to optimize your realtionship building.

Vary your approach and method. Know your scripts, but go easy. A script is just a testing tool, not a final approach to relationship building. Be a friendly person first because people may find talking to a realtor boring. A warm introduction, maybe a comment on weather and economy to gauge their mood, then tell them your call is short and to the point – do they know anyone in their neighborhood, and about their family and friends that might be moving, BECAUSE, buyers are very eager to buy and you’d like to help them get a better price. Those are legitimate reasons.
Segment all your prospects into relevant groups (hot, cold, buyers, sellers, advocates,mortgage agents, home services, etc) so you can develop unique approaches to each and have unique value for each. Think about how you’ll describe and present your unique value proposition for each type of prospect or advocate.
Coach your advocates and give them support – the people who may refer business to you sometimes need a little guidance if they have a hot lead. Tell them how to present you to them. Find out why they’re buying or selling — what’s the payoff for the person? With that knowledge, you can explain to your advocate how you’re relevant. With a little purpose, your advocate will make you look good, as opposed to you being part of an offhand comment.
Relax — if you can afford it, you might want to consider getting a massage before you do your prospecting on the phone — you’ll appear friendlier, less threatening, more trustworthy, and more fun to talk to. Call them with a smile on your face and with your goal being networking, enjoying the moment, and finding good prospects. Sales comes later. Right now, you’ve gotta be thinking people and fun.
Set aside 3 hours every day for phone calls to generate interest, gather information and make appointments. Build a positive attitude toward prospecting, that it’s the most important part of your day.
Forgive prospects who waste your time and forgive yourself for wasting their time — this helps you to avoid guilt and other feelings that’ll weigh you down
Remind yourself often that what you’re doing is important. You’re helping people achieve their dreams and that’s more important that anything they’re doing right now. Their friends and contacts should be glad you’re in this to help them.
Spend more time with your hot or top prospects — when you’re getting close, keep in touch and always be ready to offer help, information, and support for their decisions
Have more value to offer — the more value you have to offer, the less likely prospects and advocates will consider you irrelevant. They’re not rejecting you really, you’ve failed to provide value in insight, help, and support. How about mentioning the mortgage calculator on your website, the great mortgage agent you know who could save them money, or renovator/designer who could help them with a quick remodel to lift the selling price?
Use consultative selling techniques to find every person’s most important needs and hurdles — be the person who creates a path for everyone to their dreams
Spend your face to face time wisely by discussing the buyer/seller’s dreams – find out what their success symbols are and their favorite places to visit. Whether country or city, new home or old, the faster you find out what they want, the more likely they’ll choose you.
Calculate how much prospecting/phone time and marketing effort it took to generate a successful lead.
Keep in mind what buyers and sellers really want — a better lifestyle and ask them what their key priorities are as they begin to plan for their purchase/sale. In the end, it’s all about lifestyle and knowing what it is they’re really after is vital
Study up on a new community that you haven’t explored and become an expert on the lifestyle value of that community
Ask prospects what’s holding them back and ensure you develop a list of responses to help

Here’s Kevin Ward with his tips on prospecting. How about finding more people to talk to via Google and Social Media? Just a thought.

And Liz of Keller Williams with social media prospecting. Build relationships first then nurture them along with value, entertainment, and recognition.

Prospecting is a key part of good sales process and it hasn’t hurt Merrily Hackett’s business success. If your lead funnel is too weak, this might be the best thing ever for your career. Now you can justify pursuing a strong Internet marketing program.

Let’s get started right now!

Gord Collins — Real Estate SEO Expert serving businesses in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, New York, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, St Louis, Minneapolis, Green Bay, Charlotte, Tampa, Miami, Orlando, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Oshawa, Hamilton, Newmarket, Richmond Hill, Oakville, Calgary, Kelowna, Mississauga, Anaheim, Beverly Hills, Malibu, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Fresno, Santa Clara, Sacramento, Mountainview, Palo Alto, Portland, Washington, Atlanta, Irvine, Nashville, Sunnyvale, Salt Lake City, Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, Costa Mesa, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Raleigh, Albuquerque, Glendale, Oceanside, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Carlsbad, Santa Clarita, Henderson, Mesa, Temecula, Kirkland, Redmond, Kansas City, St Louis, Stockton, Scottsdale, Palm Springs, Indianapolis, Columbus, Colorado Springs, Fort Worth, Chula Vista, Escondido, Santa Monica, Miami Beach, and Honolulu.

February 22, 2016

Social Media Marketing Works if You Have a Plan!

Generating Leads with a Social Plan and Strategy

While blogging and epic quality content generation are the workhorse for digital marketers, social media still has a vital role With your social media strategy built on a great unique value proposition and great content, it will take your marketing high.

To understand social media’s role, you need to disregard its typical reputation – as a frivolous time waster where nothing of value is shared. Good social media actually uses good content as a focal point, whether it’s brand building party pictures or published whitepapers or clever contests. There’s a “something” in the middle of all that chatter. That something is good content that helps get your UVP and brand positioning across really well.

You may not make a sale right away on social media, but you can make impact, and a lasting impression around specific issues that are personally relevant to your network. At the very least, prospects will see your spirit, openness, and that you’re involved and active. People buy from people who share the same values and who make them feel good. The more you have going for you the better so make your prospects feel good.

Social traffic is growing. Allowing your business to fall behind in this rising channel is not wise.

facebookgoogle — The use of digital media constantly evolves and Google Alphabet is proof that Google knows it’s search engine is becoming less important. Facebook and Linkedin are the future of digital marketing.

I’ve got an easy to learn process to build your social media plan for Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Each platform has its own user base and strengths, yet your digital marketing plan can bring them all under one umbrella.

The issue with Social Media is a lack of a cohesive plan to build an interesting customer experience with people. Each social channel has its own type of users and you can create a unique customer experience for each of them. And if your website doesn’t offer an emotionally charged, uplifting experience, then social is the perfect solution. You can make your brand look very interesting, interactive and even overcome your weak branding. And let’s not forget how good social media can be for your SEO.

Now That Sounds Like a Plan!

Your social media plan helps create an interesting, ready made experience for the visitor, regardless of what time of day they arrive, and let you funnel them onto your target conversion page. And if you do time your posts to reach the maximum audience, let’s say Thursday, that might be the only time you will ever get these people’s eyeballs. Any other time and they ignore you. Social is very good for reaching the unreachable.

A realtor may only be able to reach home owners and home buyers in the evening or weekends when they’re active on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin. You’ll want to post at those times. They may respond right away, and you can begin a conversation. If you know how to carry out these conversations, you can make quite an impact and generate a new client (and referrals).

Most social posting is done aimlessly, with posters acting on a hope that someone will find it. But most social posts disappear fast and are never viewed again, particularly Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Considering the speed and volume of posts today, you have to be particularly good at timing publishing and to ensure your wording carries that visitor to where you want them to go. No doubt it, Social Media strategy is challenging but so necessary. This is the future.

If you have a plan and you commit to the effort, you’ll start to see results. So let’s take a look at the structure of your social media blueprint and how it’s the foundation for a great strategy.

The Social Media Plan – An Infrastructure to Create Your Customers

Think of your plan as a network of roads and your strategy as how you direct traffic along those roads. Give people the proper signs at the right place and if they enjoy their driving experience, they might all become customers.

set your social media marketing goals

specific
measurable
attainable
relevant
time bound

2. create the customer experience model: describe how users will experience your social content and understand it clearly within a branded and topical context
3. choose the social channels that will work best for you
4. choose and describe your business persona or profile — your brand in social
5. describe types of content that you hope to make sharable — be specific
6. select dates of publishing and frequency – to coordinate content so it generates an impact and action
7. select your call to action and goals for prospects – how will you get visitors to follow your ideal click path?
8. set up Google url shortener for better social tracking – put urls on a spreadsheet and generate the corresponding shortened urls for use on your social posts
9. identify social influencers in the field and large groups of like-people to target
10. Assess your social media goal attainment and refine it iteratively to improve results

Now that you have a methodical plan to visualize and create your material, you can begin building your strategy from start to finish.

Now You Can Brainstorm Your Strategy!

Your strategy describes how you’ll move the visitor from social sites to your blog or website (the final conversion goal) contact form or your phone number. In realty, a phone number is important. You want to capture the prospect while in they’re in the mood. Because one hour from now, they’ll be onto something else, or they’ll go to one of your competitors. That’s a horrible thing to let happen!

Within this social media strategy, you have to create a reason for influencers and other social users to share your content. That requires creating content of value for them — which will make them look good and more valuable to their audience. You need to develop awareness of their expertise and how you can engage with them.

It’s wise to write down a description of your social media account purposes. Give your accounts a pet name (your favorite celebrity?) so you have a theme that people can easily understand and like. You can use a little fun, dry humor and drama if needed to build a compelling social brand image. This image should be okay for influencers and make you look relevant to them. Social influencers are powerful catalysts if you can get them to support you.

The BIG Kahunas of Social Media — The Influencers

For instance, if you’re a realtor or mortgage agent looking to leverage the millions of mommy bloggers or real estate notables out there, you need to look at things from their perspective. How will your tweet or end goal matter to them and their audience? How about a story on how your home buyer’s lives improved after they bought their house? How did the kids change and become happier and healthier? What in the home was a catalyst for great things?

You can connect that catalyst to your realtor or mortgage services. It makes you relevant to the whole process of their lives. Now they have a reason to click through. Your hook might be how finding a new home can mean the difference between happiness and a poor quality life. The page you point to could be a home search or an article on the “7 features of a happy home.” Mommy bloggers will like that!

As you become more familiar with your strategy, you’ll get better at discovering what moves your visitors to click and to contact you. And you’ll discover trending topics might put you in front of a huge volume of people. You might even advertise if you have some content that’s capable of going viral.

We can’t avoid social media. Facebook is already refering more traffic than Google. That is monumental in the digital era. Things change so please don’t fall too far behind. You’ll regret letting this stuff go.

Top social media performance is no small task. Ensure it’s wired throughout your omnichannel digital marketing strategy. To outcompete, you need to use all resources effectively.

Here’s my phone number. If you’re a moderately successful agent, a digital marketing program with all the bells and whistles is what I offer.

A more desirable alternative to hiring a digital marketing agency or taking in an in-house college grad, is to hire a dedicated digital marketer from Toronto. Together we can collaborate and build the most cost effective yet productive digital marketing solutions. And as an experienced and versatile SEO specialist, Social Media Strategist, and content strategy expert I offer clients knowledge equity in addition to outstanding revenue results.

December 30, 2015

2016 — The Year You Launch Your Own Brokerage

Autonomy, Freedom, Money, and Equity

When you work for a big brokerage, you give away your autonomy, freedom, income and equity. You create value for Remax, Royal Lepage, Sutton Group, Century21, Sothebys, Home Life or the new kid, Engel & Volkers. How about hanging onto that equity?

I’ve known a few very successful people and what they all had in common was initiative. They didn’t sit around, coast, let opportunities pass, or let less important things get in the way. They always had their mind geared for the business they were passionate about building. They weren’t smarter. They seemed to have this vision of where they belonged and they were compelled to follow that path.

A guy I went to high school with was in the news today. His US/Canada company is valuated at a Billion dollars and it’s growing. He had that leadership quality and now all these decades later, it’s apparent he had to be at the helm of a successful firm.

Entrepreneurial leaders have faith and clarity in the sense that they knew something great was going to happen — the journey and the destination. It’s that expectation that’s made them resilient and creative to navigate their way through to success. Richard Branson, Larry Page, and Elon Musk are a few entrepreneurs who have very positive expectations. Do they have regrets?

Here’s what they really want: Freedom, Autonomy, Money, Self-respect, and to make other people happy. They’ve given themselves the licence and freedom to create their ideal, emotionally fulfilling lifestyle.

Smart Long Term Decisions

Out of millions of realtors, mortgage and insurance agents and other professionals, only a select, special few will launch their own company. The rewards are intense. Realtors such as Darryl King, Merrily Hackett, Barbara Corcoran, and Sam McDadi started off humbly and they’re doing phenomenally well. Merrily’s brokerage Sutton West Coast Realty did $22 billion in sales last year.

What About the Complexity?

Launching your brokerage rids you of your broker split, office and desk fees and gives you more funds for marketing. If you fear the paperwork and compliance tasks, you can outsource to a company such as Realty Point. They could rid you of administration tasks. And when you incorporate, you can defer income to tide you through low sales years. It’s just plain smart.

Do you Need to Start Now?

If you’re of the opinion that you should build this dream incrementally (coasting) you probably won’t have the momentum and power to get there. You can’t coast uphill. It’s wiser to start with the intent of building your realty or insurance brokerage sooner, especially during peak sales years. This intensity gets you focused to create an advantage. If you have good confidence you might even choose hypergrowth strategies to get a smart jump.

How Will You Stay Competitive?

If you’re going to be competitive and build significant revenue, you’ll want to leverage the best tools, strategies and talent. There are plenty of agents who actually need to work under your wing. All you need is a system to generate leads and convert those leads. That’s where I come in. If you and your team have a good attitude and pleasant interpersonal and business skills, clients will gravitate to you.

Clarify your process:

create a marketing plan that specifies the source, reach and capture of leads
use a digital marketing strategy that leverages all digital channels
use a prospecting strategy that quickly discovers good leads
maximize your leads with wide exposure on the Internet and local media
increase your conversions by clarifying your UVP to prospects
build your unique value proposition even further
decide on your brokerage business model
bring on one realtor who believes in what you’re doing and can help you build the correct business model
use social media to engage all your connections and build that word of mouth network
test, reiterate tactics, until your lead generation machine is purring like a kitten

I’d be delighted to help you design and manage your complete digital marketing campaign. You’ll get incomparable value and avoid making beginners mistakes.

December 19, 2015

21 Success Tips for Top Selling Realtors

BIG Kahunas Lead — And Make a Lot More Money

Millions of realtors, mortgage agents, new home builders, custom home builders, dentists, insurance brokers, architects, medical specialists, and vacation resort managers are all competing to be the Big Kahunas of their markets. Some will, and from humble beginnings.

The title graphic is courtesy of Inman. In the US, almost 10k agents had at least one transaction per week, or at minimum $20M in sales.

What do these BIG Kahunas do that sets them apart and launches them into continuous success? They:

establish an unbeatable/incomparable unique value proposition
find the right clients, customers and business partners
find the best mentor
get the funding required
make their clients very happy
go all out to make their client successful
help their client learn
take the burden and pain away from their clients
think creatively, innovatively and persistently to solve client’s problems
strive persistently to become the BIG Kahuna in their market

Here’s 21 Big Kahuna Success Tips

Visualize your customer – Yes, think about who you’d like as your clients and build your marketing to capture those exact prospects – dig into their lifestyle and dreams
Build a great digital content strategy as the foundation of your marketing strategy — do this strategically so each channel drives the other simultaneously (omnichannel)
Build inbound content that’s interesting, informative and sharable – this builds excitement into your brand image
Build one very strong niche – such as ecology-mindedness, tax reduction, technology, entrepreneurialism, health, local sports, business trends, job trends, education, etc — whatever subject you believe will make your agent brand stronger.
Advertise in local news flyers/sections have good reach to homeowners and buyers
Advertise via Facebook, AdWords, and Linkedin ad platforms using excellent advertising techniques
Design a new MLS fed website – look at the benefits of my real estate website development services.
Rewrite your listings – using verbs, brand names, and desirable new product names – make it sound elegant
Accelerate your leads through your sales funnel – use high quality digital content they like and need. answer key questions, build desire, and indicate fulfillment is just ahead.
Build a great social media brand image — it makes you look good and builds trust!
Use Facebook to build likability and engage prospects with fun, practical, entertaining material
Use your successful website to attract and partner with other agents
Create original and valuable stories/statistics/events for reporters/bloggers to talk about
Use your linkedin account, plus your own prospect search to connect with investors, agents, and professional people who may need to buy or sell
Use an email strategy to build prospects into your inner circle
Be Generous – Do lots of good deeds – refer business, compliment, promote, offer help to your prospects with any issues they’re having, and set a tone of giving
Be Awesome — this means being yourself but extending your sphere of interest to touch prospects dreams
Stop thinking negatively — there are no limitations, only an abundance of leads and sales – create your own leads
Take a vacation – Get Fresh! – you can’t lead if you’re depressed and worn out. Get away from the source of your stagnation or low productivity to refresh or renew yourself – wipe the hard drive for a fresh, new, strategically effective start
Use interesting apps such as Hyperlapse to create interesting videos to showcase your homes/condos/neighbourhoods.
Hire a creative/innovative digital marketer with a winning program just for you

Building and maintaining a leadership position in your market requires professional help. How many helpers do you need? Start with one, but pick someone who is awesome. If they don’t add tremendous value, you’re wasting your money and time.

Gord Collins has been a leader in San Diego SEO, Montreal, Los Angeles SEO, San Francisco SEO, Vancouver SEO, Boston SEO, and Toronto SEO for 18 years. Your SEO strategy is in good hands.