Email Elizabethsign calls
Where Do Buyers Find Homes for Sale in Sacramento?
Where do you find homes for sale in Sacramento online? Which website is best for listings? We’ve got website wars going on in which the Realtor dot com website is advertising that it has more homes than the popular Zillow and Trulia, and it does, but it seems to me that Realtor dot com lost its effectiveness years ago, back when it controlled the entire market. From where I sit, Realtor dot com had its chance and blew it. It’s a long road to retrieve the power it once possessed.
Some might argue it’s because it let its monopoly go to its head and invariably some other business gained a foothold and isn’t letting go. I have no idea. I just know that most of the home buyers I talk to do not use Realtor dot com to search for homes for sale in Sacramento.
The best place to get your homes for sale in Sacramento is from your own Sacramento Realtor. That’s because Realtors have online access directly to the mothership, our MetroList. You can get listings from a public website via MetroList MLS but it won’t be as detailed or customized as you can get from your own agent. Plus, some of its information in the listings are cut off, like my name, Elizabeth A. Weintraub, for crying out loud, because certain MetroList fields are not designed to handle very many characters. I’ve put MetroList on notice; it doesn’t change.
You also can’t find a Realtor at Realtor dot com. Well, you can, but it will take you forever. For starters, fill in Sacramento for the search field city and Realtor dot com will tell you there are 2,027 Realtors in Sacramento. Then, hit the search button and Realtor dot com will bring up 3,438 Realtors. Does Realtor dot com know how many Realtors are in Sacramento? Can you rely on the homes for sale search link if it can’t get one simple search field right? Not to mention, many of the random names and links that appeared when I tried to search were entries without a photo of the Realtor. Not very enticing.
Zillow and Trulia have the pizazz, and no matter what a Sacramento Realtor tells a buyer and no matter how many private emails a Realtor sends, a buyer’s curiosity will almost always win out. They can’t help themselves. They have a computer or an iPad or a mobile device and they will search for homes online with or without an agent. They might hope there could be that one **special** home that is not listed in the emails from their agent. There might be. Especially among the Coming Soon homes in Zillow.
But eventually, those Coming Soon homes will go online and they’ll get the listing from their own agent. Because most homes for sale in Sacramento generally end up in MetroList.
Every so often I’ll get a Sign Call. This is when a buyer passes by a home for sale in Sacramento, spots my real estate sign and calls me. I have so much information on that sign, and so many ways to get instant data without calling that I’m always astounded when buyers call. They can access a virtual tour by texting a code from the sign, or taking a photo of the QR code or by calling an 800 number. They can call the big honkin’ telephone number of the closest Lyon Real Estate office, prominently displayed. They can call the first agent listed on the sign rider, which is one of my Elizabeth Weintraub Team members, always ready to show homes. And, then, they can call me, the listing agent. I’m like the bottom of the barrel.
I wonder why they aren’t looking online. I wonder if they are working with a Realtor. They ask me for the sales price and I ask if they’re looking for a home. They say no, they are not. I share the sales price with them and then they ask for the square footage. I ask if they want to sell a home, and they say no, they do not. Then they ask for the number of bedrooms. Finally, after I am drilled with a series of these types of questions I ask why, why do they want to know? What possible difference could it make in their lives to find out the number of bedrooms in some home when they are not a buyer nor a seller, and apparently don’t know anybody who is?
Why Real Estate Printing is Dead in Sacramento
The fact is all agents do not sell homes in the same manner, especially those confused by today’s technology; however, many top producers who love technology find it is generally pointless to revert to “old school methods” such as printing four-color flyers and sticking flyers in a box on a sign post, even though they may still retain other dated marketing habits. Real estate has changed a lot over the years, and it’s changed even faster over the past 5 to 10 years. The real estate printing that used to work well for a Sacramento real estate agent doesn’t necessarily work so well anymore.
I love to tackle listings that other agents can’t sell because they tried to do it in print. I just closed two homes that two other agents had tried to unload for months without any results. My approach is different, and I tailor each listing to appeal to my targeted audience. The first thing an agent should do is figure out who is the intended audience for that home? Who will be the buyer? And then market to that buyer using new technology.
I get such a kick out of sellers who come up with these age-old ideas that they believe are fresh and new when they don’t work anymore. They read it in a book somewhere, found it online, saw it on cable or maybe that’s how they sold a home 20 years ago. I worked briefly with an disgruntled and ornery seller last year who sounded like he was itching to cancel the listing because I did not want to put flyers on the sign post. I explained why flyers on the sign post was a bad idea. It was his idea, and he didn’t want it to be bad.
Putting flyers out in a flyer box in the front yard is a really bad idea for many reasons. For starters because kids steal them, if they aren’t removed first from the flyer box by a competitor. Second, it completely negates the purpose of the Virtual Agent signs I employ. My virtual agent signs allow a buyer to get information without talking to an agent, which is what some buyers prefer. They can:
- Call an 800# and get a virtual tour downloaded to their cellphone immediately
- Text to a special text number on the sign for an immediate cellphone download
- Use the QR code to retrieve immediate information to their cellphone.
There are also 3 ways to get more information by talking to an agent. They can:
- Call the large number on the sign panel to speak with a floor agent
- Call my cellphone number from the sign rider
- Call my buyer’s agent cellphone number from the sign rider
Walk by or drive by traffic can also go to my website on their smart phones to look at all of the property details. Others will find that home during neighborhood searches online from their home computers, laptops or iPads. Everybody is online and wired. If buyers can grab a flyer, they won’t use the Virtual Agent system or call. If they don’t call or contact me, I can’t track them or follow up, and they will probably never see the home in person. I capture all of their information when they utilize Virtual Agent. I don’t get that info if they bypass me.
If a buyer’s agent is showing a home, that buyer’s agent will print a flyer for the buyer with that agent’s contact information. They generally don’t want the buyer carting around a flyer with the listing agent’s contact information on it. That’s why sellers don’t really need flyers inside the home, either. An open house agent will print her own flyers; buyer’s agents print their own; and even buyers themselves print their own online flyers. It’s a waste of time and energy to produce flyers when the home is available to view online.
But you know what, even though I disagree, sometimes I will still print flyers for my sellers who insist. A hundred bucks buys a lot of happiness. But *print flyers are really unnecessary today for most homes in Sacramento. Real estate printing is a dead practice in town. Ask a top producer how things have changed in real estate. You might be surprised.
*An exception would be the luxury home market, in which brochures are the norm.
