The summer is here, and if you want to dominate your local market that means you've gotta up your game this season! You must have laser focused, real estate marketing ideas. Summer, as well as spring, is always the top season to kick your marketing strategy in gear when families are moving outside of the school months.
Below, we’ve brainstormed a whole season's worth of real estate marketing ideas that will help bring you to the top of your game. There is always something you can do to grow your business and dominate your local market!
Prepare The Exterior of The Home For The Summer
When selling a home during the summer, it’s extremely important to prepare the exterior of the home. The exterior and curb appeal of a home can give a potential buyer a pretty good idea of what to expect in the interior of the home, so make sure it’s clean, crisp, and attractive.
Below are several things to do when preparing the exterior and curb appeal of a home for a summer sale. If you want the home to sell, these things will need to be addressed!
- Mow and water the lawn
- Trim bushes and shrubs
- Water the plants to avoid dead plants
- Weed and mulch the flower beds
- Touch up any exterior peeling paint
- Paint and/or clean up the front door
- Seal the driveway
These are just some of the most important things to do when preparing the exterior of a home for a summer sale.
Highlight Outdoor Living Space
Another excellent tip for selling a home during the summer is to focus on the outdoor living space. In many areas of the country, summer is a fairly short season, so many buyers spend as much time outside enjoying the weather as possible during the summer.
One of the best staging tips is to help buyers envision themselves spending time relaxing outside or entertaining friends and family.
Address Necessary Repairs Prior To Listing
One of the quickest ways to scare away potential home buyers is by not addressing necessary repairs.
Make sure you show the importance of the necessary repairs to your clients prior to listing the home for sale. Homeowners who complete repairs prior to listing their home not only will likely end up with a higher sale price, but also reduce the chances that a buyer will request a lot of repairs be made after a home inspection.
A few examples of common “necessary” repairs to be on the lookout for include:
- Broken windows
- Peeling or damaged siding
- Damaged roofs.
It’s important when selling a home during the summer that a buyer is not distracted by repairs that have been neglected but is focusing on all the positives a home has.
Keep The Home Cool
Make sure to keep the home cool, at least while the home is being looked at by potential buyers. If the home is not equipped with a central air conditioning unit, it’s still important to focus on keeping your home cool.
Alternative ways to keep a home cool without central air conditioning include installing window air conditioners, turning on ceiling fans, keeping lights off and blinds drawn prior to showings, and placing floor fans around the home.
Depersonalize & Declutter The Home
Depersonalize and declutter the home. As a realtor, it is your job to show the home seller that this is important. Home sellers who actually take action and follow this tip will give themselves an advantage over sellers who decide it’s not important.
A home that has personal effects all over the place, such as family portraits or a report card on the fridge, provide another opportunity for a buyer to be distracted from viewing the home.
When selling a home during the summer, take the time to walk through the home with your clients and evaluate what is actually needed to live comfortably with. If you are the client believe they can live without something while selling the home, coax them into moving it into a storage unit or into the basement or garage. Decluttering a home is one of the best tips for staging a home on a budget.
Stage The Home To Reflect The Summer Season
Staging certainly can enhance the appearance of a home, which can make a positive impact on a sellers as long as the cost to do so doesn’t outweigh the potential return on the investment.
Summer staging tips:
- Placing bright flowers on a dining room table
- Planting bright flowers in a window box
- Having summer scented candles
These are all relatively simple and cheap, but can make a home stand out!
Take care of your clients
This is very much a given, year round. Be your absolute best you can be for your client. Buying a home is a very stressful situation, and you are there for a reason. As a buyer, having a top agent in your corner cannot be understated.
Here are some questions you should ask yourself, that way you can be on top of things for your client during the summer season.
- What real estate marketing strategies actually sell homes?
- Which marketing strategies am I actually using?
- How am I determining what price to recommend to sellers?
- What is my typical list price to sale price ratio?
- How long do my listings typically take to sell?
Strongly Consider Having A Pre-Listing Inspection
There are many benefits of a pre-listing home inspection, one of the most important being that it can reduce the chances of a buyer being scared away after completing their own inspection.
In the majority of cases, having a pre-listing inspection is well worth the cost because even newer built homes can have issues that the owner is not aware of. If your client is unsure whether a pre-listing inspection is good or not, you need to evaluate whether it would be a good idea to do so or not.
Price The Home Right From The Beginning
As an experienced real estate professional, you will provide a seller with a pricing recommendation. Unfortunately, almost all sellers believe their home is always worth more than you are suggesting. Try to show facts and create a comparative market analysis (CMA) for your clients. Earn the trust of your seller and explain to them that a home simply will not sell without the correct pricing, if you start to high, you won't even get people looking at it.
The bottom line of this important tip for selling a home during the summer is to make sure it’s priced correctly, from the beginning. There are very few, if any home sellers who want to leave money on the table because they overpriced their home.
We hope you take this information and apply it for the next few months through this summer season. As a real estate professional, it is up to you to make sure your listings are ready, and prepared to hit the market.
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