How to Market Your House for Sale

Marketing your home is easier than you think, as long as you don’t overdo it. But you may be asking yourself how to market your house for sale. If you’re trying to sell your home, whether it’s with a real estate agent or For-Sale-By-Owner (FSBO), it’s important to create a marketing strategy, as there are a number of things you can do to ensure you’ll be enticing prospective buyers in your market. 

Start with a top-rated real estate agent

Hiring a good real estate agent is the most important and first step you should take once you make the decision to sell your house. Your agent will be the main point of contact for both you and potential buyers by creating your listing for public view, showing your house, and marketing it too. 

How to market your house for sale? Take great pictures of your house

To attract buyers, the first and most important thing your agent or you need to do to sell your house is to hire a professional photographer to capture high-quality, great photos with a professional camera. And before anybody takes any pictures, here’s what you need to do: 

• Declutter – Clear as much as you can from counters and furniture. You may even want to move some furniture out into the garage if your home feels crowded. Spaces will look bigger and more welcoming to potential buyers with less clutter.
• Depersonalize – Home buyers want to be able to see themselves in your home, not to see you. Clear out your wedding photos and other knick knacks for photos and showings alike.
• Wait for the sun – Your home will look best with plenty of natural light, so it’s a good idea to wait for the sun to come out. One benefit of taking your own photos is that you can shoot different rooms at different times. You may find that some rooms look best near sunset when there’s an indirect glow instead of a stark beam of light.
• Turn on the lights – Every overhead light and lamp should be on for your photos. Open blinds most of the way, and turn shutters to be parallel with the floor to let in light.
• Turn off everything else – TVs, computer screens, ceiling fans, and anything else that might move should be switched off during photos.
• Move your car – If you have a driveway, make sure it’s clear of vehicles. If you are able to move cars from the street in front of your house, do so as well to leave an unobstructed view, and so buyers can imagine their own cars in their dream home. 

The front

An exterior shot from the front is the most important picture to start with. Your house photo will also look 10 times better than your competition if you crop out sidewalks and streets. Shoot both close up and angled photos and avoid shade falling on the house. Clear away any vegetation that’s blocking the front door or the path to door.​​​

Other outside photographs

Buyers will want to see your yard, if you have one. Emphasize space and shoot long. Mow the lawn and trim the bushes. Remove any evidence of pets and put away children’s toys. Take pictures of the clubhouse, pool, spa, or tennis courts if you own a condo or townhome without a yard.

Interior Photographs

How to market your house for sale? Take photographs of every room. For a cleaner look, shoot most rooms from about chest height to give buyers a view that approximates what they’d see when standing or sitting in the room. Photograph the room not the furniture. Make sure to capture wide angles of every room. Whenever possible, include 3 walls in each photo by standing as far back in a corner as you can. Show how each room connects to the next, so that the prospective home buyer can get a feel for the flow of the house. And watch out for your reflection, so you don’t get people caught in the pictures. 

Market your house online with the MLS

Make sure when you’re selling a property that you use the multiple listing service (MLS) to spread the word about your property online. Photos attract buyers’ attention, and your description on the MLS feeds their curiosity about the specifics. A well-crafted listing description should be a highlight reel of your home’s best offerings, and that includes any perks that come with its location.

When a home goes into the MLS, it’s syndicated to all of the other real major real estate websites. This will help your listing appear on Zillow, Realtor, Trulia, Homesnap, and your agent’s local public-facing MLS at the very least. Typically, this will enable the listing to spread to roughly 500 total websites. 

Consider your selling price carefully

It’s important that you price your house correctly from the start. If you list your house for too high a price, buyers won’t be interested, no matter how well your real estate marketing strategy is. And if nobody makes an offer for your house, it’s eventually going to become an old listing. Plus, if your listing gets old without any bids, you’ll either not sell it at all, or you’ll end up getting low bids by people that think you can’t seem to sell it. 

Think about your house’s appearance

There are 2 scenarios in which a home is viewed, particularly at showings and open houses: non-vacant and vacant.

Non-Vacant

If your house is currently occupied, then here’s a few quick things you can do to give your house a new fresh look and feel:

• Replace the carpets
• Put new paint on the walls
• Update appliances, if you can afford it
• Update your light fixtures
• Hire a landscaper and get your yard cleaned up

Vacant

If your house is currently unoccupied, think about hiring a professional stager. Staging a home can often be enough to expedite the process of selling your home. Staged homes sell about 87% faster and for nearly 17% more than houses left alone. 

Use current technology

Buyers need to see your home presented carefully on the internet, from professional photography to Google to Facebook. And mobile devices are the most popular way to browse the web and social media – 71% of people in the US use their smartphones and tablets versus any other internet-connected device. When listing a home for sale, note that most people will likely look at it from their mobile device. Also, on average, each Facebook user has more than 200 Facebook “friends” with whom they share photos and information. By sharing your listing, you’re showing it to hundreds of people, each of whom could share it to hundreds more.

How to market your house for sale? Alternative strategies

If you want to go around the preparation it takes to sell your house, consider these alternative strategies:

• Sell to an investor – An investor may buy your house quickly. Keep in mind, you may get less than a fair market price.
• Sell to a developer – Selling to a developer is typically only an option if your home is a teardown or on a large lot.
• You can sell at an auction – If you sell at an auction, you can sell your house quickly. However, you are likely to get less than a fair market price. 

What is FSBO, and how easy is it to market your house? 

Selling your home yourself – For Sale By Owner or FSBO – means you can avoid paying around 6% of your equity toward paying your and the buyer’s agents’ commissions. And in the event that you’re putting your house up for sale in a seller’s market, finding a buyer shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. However, if you are in a buyer’s market, this can be an issue selling quickly without professional guidance for marketing and otherwise. 

Aside from being your advocate, if you hire an agent to help you, your agent will know all the tips and tricks for marketing your house. They will help you negotiate everything you need to negotiate with the buyer’s agent too. An expert will keep track of all the intricacies of the transaction too.

And even better, for example, Trelora has five-star rated agents that provide unparalleled marketing service to get you the best price in the quickest amount of time possible. Additionally if you list your house with us, Trelora does this for just 1%. You get the best of both worlds – the savings that FSBO would bring in addition to expert service and assistance.