Agents who fail to make their listing a powerful one may miss out on the full value of the homes they’re selling
By Michelle Huffman
Your listing is your first showing. Agents who fail to make it a powerful one may miss out on the full value of the homes they’re selling.
“Many agents rely on someone else’s standard, set by templated flyers, brochures and websites, and it becomes a sea of consistency,” says Michael Repka, CRS, CEO of Palo Alto, California-based Deleon Realty. Buyers zip through listings that all look the same, dimming a home’s attraction and shortchanging its potential.
But CRSs who get creative with listings say these homes attract attention and sell for more than originally imagined. You don’t have to be a poet or graphic designer to write and package a stunning listing. You need an anchor. “When I go into a property, I’m looking for the anchor point, the crown jewel of the property. That’s where I’m going to plant my flag and then circle outward from there,” says A.J. Heidmann, CRS, at McEnearney Associates, Inc. in Arlington, Virginia.
The anchor can be something particularly spectacular, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be a unique-for-its-market feature, an underappreciated use for the property or the home’s distinctive story.
Here are four different approaches that utilize an anchor to build a listing that signals a home’s real value.
Unique underscore
The anchor: Sell a standout feature or unique aspect of the property.
This approach works best with homes that have an obviously unique feature, particularly one that you can highlight visually and make unforgettable enough to build your marketing around.
This is Repka’s expertise: With his high-quality film production, Repka films sweeping panoramas and tightly focused details, and then splices them together with something that is eye-catching that will highlight the property.
For example, in one listing his focus is on the distinctive indoor pool. He shows a mermaid swimming in the pool, her bright red tail reflecting the loud colors that accent the furniture and walls of the otherwise muted home. The video isn’t about the mermaid moment, but it sticks out and so does the home.
Similarly, when selling a Joseph Eichler home, he zeroed in on the architect’s cult following to sell the home, building a contact base from fan groups and interviewing a leading Eichler expert about the home’s finer details. He could have sold it as a lovely, slightly retro home, but this move brought more fervent buyers, one of whom paid $1.3 million over the asking price.
Diamond in the rough
The anchor: Find the best and highest use of the property, and highlight it over the usual fare.
Sometimes, polishing a hopelessly bland or problematic property into something beautiful may be a lost cause. Instead, CRS agents like Melanie Hurwitz with Allison James Estates & Homes in Vista, California, talk with homeowners, dig around properties and dust off county records.
One of her listings featured “a big house, but they didn’t keep it clean,” she says, and the homeowners wanted to do little to make it seem worth the $800,000 they wanted for it.
So she pitched the property’s “endless possibilities” created by its unique zoning, flat five acres, multiple garages and view. The buyer, who paid the hefty list price, owned a car and video business, so the garages and outbuildings for storing video equipment were perfect.
Hurwitz has done similar things with other properties. Rather than hiding a home’s Pepto Bismol pink color, she featured it, transforming the medicinal color into “breast cancer awareness pink,” and donated part of her commission to the Komen Foundation. For another listing, she discovered a dilapidated home was part of a three-lot parcel. It became the “fix me or burn me” property, and the listing focused on the value of the lot.
Love connection
The anchor: String together the elements of a property that tell the home’s story—one that appeals to a specific buyer.
Heidmann compares this listing-writing approach to writing for an online dating service (which is how he met his wife).
“You don’t write your ad to appeal to everyone; you write it to appeal to the kind of person you want to be with,” he says.
He starts by considering the most likely buyer for each property and how he can craft a listing description that will ignite that person’s interest. So, a quiet, suburban home becomes “perfect for reading books with your windows open.”
In one listing, Heidmann’s anchor is the backyard. The owners put $600,000 into it, but the investment pushes the home above the neighborhood’s average price point, a challenge because the commute to Washington, D.C., is over an hour. So, Heidmann puts the backyard—the “jewel” that lies behind the “quiet facade”—out front and walks buyers through the “commanding view of the expansive grand terrace,” before going into the interior layout that “provides the ultimate in flow on a daily basis.”
He creates a romantic picture of a home that has “so much space and so many entertainment options, you may never leave,” selling the entrepreneur, consultant or executive who has gone permanently remote on the home’s luxurious living space, functional office and entertainment venue all in one.
Elevated makeover
The anchor: Invest in minor upgrades to elevate a bland home or fixer-upper that needs work and generate a major payoff.
This approach is for those homes you otherwise wouldn’t quite know how to pitch, but you know they have high potential for upscaling. Scott Furman, CRS, broker/owner of the Scott Furman Realty Group outside Philadelphia, tackles these listings through prep work so thorough that “most of the marketing is done before it even goes on the market.”
Furman relies on highly qualified stagers who really understand how to thread a mood across multiple rooms, deep cleaning in and out, appropriate landscaping, excellent photography, 3D tours and floor plans, and an assistant who can translate his walkthrough notes into the right description.
To create the narrative, he walks through the home as if he’s an excited buyer. Those details show up in the listing, where Furman imagines “cold winter nights soaking in the hot tub on the multilevel deck while stargazing and sipping wine.”
What the total package brought to the table was an extra $125,000. Based on his original assessment of the home and market data, he expected to list it between $325,000 and $350,000. But the home went on the market at $472,500 and sold for $475,000.
With these creative listing approaches that flow from anchor features or concepts, you may find your homes selling for more than you thought possible, and your reputation in the community growing.
For more effective and efficient ways to sell, check out the course Creating Listing Abundance at crs.com/learn.
Photo: iStock.com/123ducu
