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Presenting a Sacramento Home in the Best Positive Light
Every so often, I get an agent complaining that I am guilty of presenting a Sacramento home in the best positive light. They want to know about all the drawbacks and icky things about it. Some of them can’t even see the forest for the trees. They automatically call a house a dog or otherwise trash it because they feel it doesn’t measure up to their incredibly picky standards. Some say their buyers feel duped because I said the home was beautiful and the agent doesn’t think it’s beautiful.
You know what I say about that? I say they are probably those Sacramento real estate agents who drive around town like their kids live here. I hate that. You know what? Your kids don’t live in that neighborhood. In fact, our world is overpopulated as it is. What is wrong with you guys? Try to drive the speed limit, for crying out loud. There are those of us behind your vehicle who have to be somewhere on time. Ha! Go wear your helmets while riding a bike, why doncha?
Also, I say every home is beautiful. Just like every baby is beautiful, even the ugly fat babies. Show me a mother who thinks her kid is ugly. You can’t. No difference with buying a home. Every homeowner picked their home for one or more reasons. To that person, the home is beautiful. Our ultimate buyer will believe the home is beautiful, too. Have you ever heard a person say she hated her stinkin’ house but bought it anyway? Didn’t think so. Everybody knows their own poop doesn’t stink.
My job as a Sacramento listing agent is to find the buyer who loves the home I have to sell. It is presenting a Sacramento home in the best positive light. I can always find stunning features to describe, no matter how small or insignificant to a buyer’s agent. Further, I try to minimize any drawbacks or not-so-nice features. If I describe the home as beautiful, it is beautiful. Carole King would agree.
You betcha, spread the beauty around, is my motto. In fact, I bet you didn’t even know that the most effective word in a real estate description is the word beautiful. It makes my sellers happy because I acknowledge the positive features and admire their home. It makes buyers happy because I reaffirm what they already know. Presenting a Sacramento home in the best positive light is what marketing is about. There is no downside to this except the agents who persist in driving down a street like their kids live there and making the rest of us slow down for no good reason.
How to Customize Sacramento Listings to Reach Targeted Buyers
The Weintraub cats snoozing on a Sunday afternoon, Jackson, Tessa and Horatio.
To customize a Sacramento listing, especially to target certain buyers, you’ve got to know your audience. That’s the first rule of listing customization. When I walk into a home for a listing presentation, I pay close attention to the way the home is decorated and to the people who live in it. I am replacing the people who live in it with new people. And for most practical purposes, the new people generally tend to share things in common with the existing homeowners. People who are alike gravitate toward certain products.
Once you know your audience, that is the buyers you want to target, you can design a marketing campaign to reach those people. It can be simple things from the way the home is presented in MLS, to the words chosen to describe it and the places where buyers find the home. Or, it can be more complicated and marketed to specific mailing lists. Each listing I take is different because the people and the homes are different. I think about the preferences in music, books, TV Shows, extracurricular activities of my targeted buyers.
I would like to believe that all Realtors will customize Sacramento listings, but I know they do not. Some walk through the home and shoot vertical cellphone pictures. I don’t know how they sleep with themselves at night. As hokey as it sounds, each home has a certain feel to it. My plan is to turn that emotion into buying verbiage. To present the benefits in such a way my targeted buyers feel they absolutely must go see the home. I stand in the home and absorb it.
The second way to customize Sacramento listings is to find that one thing that propels purchasing buyer. There is always something. For example, it’s a known fact that buyers generally know whether they want to buy a home within the first 3 seconds of entering the home. It’s my job to find what they spot or feel during that first 3 seconds and transform that energy into clarity for them. I don’t want buyers to second guess. It should be right in front of them. Easily understandable.
There is always a way to make things work. The third way to customize Sacramento listings is to get rid of the things that interfere with the first two rules. When we decided to adopt a third cat in our household, we needed the perfect cat that would blend in with our existing two cats. Our adoption wasn’t just about Horatio, we had to take Tessa and Jackson into consideration. But, hey, that thought process paid off. Look at how well those three cats sleep together now.
If you’re looking to sell a home in Sacramento, why not call a Sacramento Realtor who treats each listing as a precious commodity that deserves her 100% attention? Put 43 years of experience to work for you. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
The Dissing of Calling a Fair Oaks Realtor the Devil You Know
It is not unusual for me to receive phone calls from disgruntled sellers in Sacramento who want to dump their agent. I know you might be thinking to yourself: how lucky is this Sacramento REALTOR — because she doesn’t have to search for business; listings just fall into her lap. The truth is I don’t particularly enjoy listening to a seller rant and rave about all the horrible things she believes her soon-to-be former agent has done. On top of which, I don’t add fuel to the fire; I don’t see any reason to disparage another human being, especially not for financial gain.
I try to get the callers to understand why maybe they are upset with their agent. Perhaps it’s because their agent doesn’t have much experience? If an agent sells one house every couple of months or so, for example, that real estate agent’s experience level will be very different from an agent like me who sells at least a couple of homes every week, on average, and continually lays her finger on market pulse. Not to mention, I’ve been in the business since the early 1970s and have easily adapted in a chameleon-like manner to changes and technology.
Not every agent is so fortunate. Agents are very different from each other. Should you change agents? That’s a loaded question.
Certain home sellers in Fair Oaks called me over the weekend, super irate with their present agent. I explained that I couldn’t really get into it with them until their agent releases the listing from MLS. I don’t ever want to be accused of swiping a client. Bingo, within the day, it was released.
The agent had removed not only all of the photographs but also the marketing comments! Uh, oh. He must have been really ticked off, a supposition I shared with the sellers. Why did they have to make their agent so angry? Was it him, was it them? I dunno. Not good, though.
During the course of our conversations, the sellers had asked what they could do to improve the photos to sell their home in Fair Oaks. The photos looked like they were shot with a cellphone, for goodness sakes, grainy and tilted. We probably talked for an hour, and I gave them a ton of information and then made an appointment to list the home.
The sellers said they were very grateful as I had opened their eyes. I had shared tips that they never had previously considered and which their agent had never mentioned. I gave them ideas for improving the marketability of their home, including how to stage it, down to the color of the flowers for their dining room table. Two hours before my appointment they shot off an urgent email explaining that their former Fair Oaks REALTOR had apologized and literally begged them to give him another chance.
They said it was the devil you know.
They would incorporate all of my ideas, too, and were extremely appreciative for my assistance.
There all sorts of people trying to sell a home in Sacramento these days and looking for a Fair Oaks REALTOR. It doesn’t mean I will change how I do business or stop offering to help. I wished them well and let it go. Besides, I didn’t share everything, and they have a surprise in store. Funny how that works out.
