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Sell Your Home With New-Fangled Advertising
By Shannon Petrie, FrontDoor.com | Published: 7/09/2008
Using a Talking House radio transmitter is likened to having a real estate agent in front of your home 24/7.
For some home sellers, the For Sale sign in the front yard and the ad in the paper aren't enough. In today's sluggish market, sellers are trying some more innovative methods of promoting their homes for sale.
Let Your House Do the Talking
The Talking House radio transmitter sits in your home, continuously broadcasting a customized sales message. As buyers drive by your house, they can tune into a radio station to hear about your home's best features. The Talking House Web site says the service is like having your real estate agent standing outside your home 24/7.
Some agents and sellers rave about this product, while others barely get it out of the box before having technical difficulties. A 90-day trial is available on the system, so it's a tactic worth trying.
Be sure to make your message short and lively to keep listeners interested. Include all the basics, like asking price and square footage, but also paint a picture of your home for buyers with detailed descriptions of your home's unique features.
Give a Virtual Tour
Sellers are also going online to advertise, turning to the popular video sharing Web site YouTube.
With a video camera and editing software, sellers are creating makeshift virtual tours of their homes, which can be uploaded to YouTube for free. From there, the videos can be embedded onto other sites or downloaded onto an iPod.
More and more sellers and agents are using this method; a search for "home for sale" on YouTube pulls up more than 20,000 results. The tricky part is making your video stand out among those results.
Here are some tips for making your own video home tour:
- Read up on basic video production techniques. Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are low budget productions, so you don't have to be a professional videographer by any means. But learning a few basic strategies can help you turn out much higher quality videos.
- Keep it short and lively. In general, keep it under three minutes. Web viewers get bored quickly.
- Take advantage of video capabilities. Unlike still photos, video allows you to guide homebuyers through your home the way you want them to see it. Start at the front door, then lead them to the best room of the home to grab their attention. Add variety with both wide shots of entire rooms and close ups of architectural details. Make use of ambient sound as well; if your back porch provides the relaxing sound of ocean waves lapping against the shore, let buyers hear it.
- Promote your video. YouTube hosts millions of videos, so expect to do some work if you want buyers find yours. Use descriptive keywords, thinking about what words people would most likely search for. Promote your video from the outside as well; if you have a Web site or a blog, link to the video from there.
GO TO: Home Seller's Guide
Read the Top 10 Unique Selling Tactics:
- Hold an open house party
- Take home staging to the extreme
- Help serious buyers with financing
- Have a little faith
- Throw in some extravagant extras
- Make your home a grand prize
- Get Web savvy
- Let your house do the talking
- Put your house on the auction block
- Let buyers sleep on it