Keep Your Eye On Your Money

What is your cost to get your house noticed, per eyeball?

The interent has changed the way people buy and sell homes. Gone are the days of flipping through the big green MLS book at your local real estate office. Gone are the long Saturday drives in the back seat of your realtor's lincoln looking at 30 houses to see what you like within your price range. Gone is the lack of information for the consumer.

People are searching for homes while in their underwear. Come on you've done it. Just as your getting ready for bed your partner calls you "Honey come and see this one!" You rush over to the computer with your best pair of Calvin Kliens on. You catch a glimpse in the mirror and think "this is not the way my parents hunted for their first home".

The internet is a great tool allowing people to make a short list based upon what they see in the listings posted to their favorite sites. But as a home seller how do you choose where to list your home? Is there a way to measure the value of those eyeballs looking at each and every site? Let's boil it down with simple math. Depending on who you talk to Private Sale is garnering somewhere between 10 and 25% of the market. So as a conservative figure I am going to work with 15% for the purposes of this calculation. We are going to forget that people are looking at multiple websites and assume that 15% is decidedly Private Sale and the remainder are only looking on the MLS.

The cost of an average detached home in KW is just over $300,000. Based upon the industry average of 5% it would cost you $15,750 incl. GST to sell or $185.29 per set of eyeballs out of 100 home buyers. Looking at the same home being sold with PropertyGuys.com shows us a much better scenario. To ensure you are getting all the same coverage including paper advertising, virtual tours, and even an appraisal done by a 3rd party licensed appraiser lets look at the $1,500 package. With tax you would pay $1,575 or $105.00 per set of eyeballs a savings of nearly 44% per set of eyeballs. Remember that is the most expensive package. If you went with the $350 package it would cost you $23.33 or about 1-8th of the cost of the realtor.

I know what you are thinking. They get more eyeballs and that means more chance of selling, right? Wrong! The stats from November 2008 to October 2009 show that for every 100 listings that were listed by an agent in the Waterloo Wellington area 58 of them sold. Same time frame, same area for PropertyGuys.com and the numbers show 60 out of 100. The list to sell ratio (how many homes were listed vs sold in a given time period) for PropertyGuys.com in October was 81.67%, MLS was only 68.08%. I guess taking the commission off the table and making your pricing more attractive is what buyers are looking for.

Give your buyers a reason to have their eyes pop out when they see your home...


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