Quick, pretend to be a buyer, jump on the internet and begin a home search. Which website did you visit and what did you type in as your search parameters? Did the website contain fill in the blank boxes or did it feature a drop down box to choose a price range? Either way, I bet your results were zero. Do you know why? Homes priced for offline marketing do not translate properly to online search. Let me explain.
Why Your Online Listing is Priced Wrong
I remember attending a real estate seminar several years ago where the instructor insisted on teaching agents (us) to price a home to catch the buyer’s eye. If the buyer was looking at a printed list or a brochure, they would notice one house over another because of the way the numbers looked.
For instance, instead of using the price $230,000, you would use $229,572 in order to draw attention. Many of us believed this was the key to getting our listing shown over others. Now, with the popularity of online search, it is time to question whether this theory rings true anymore. How do you search? More importantly, how do buyers search? Simply put, they search in round numbers. Today, a buyer could search from $200,000-$230,000 or from $230,000 to $250,000 (especially if it’s a pre-populated drop-down list). Notice any similarities in the above example? $230,000 appears twice. Online marketing isn’t new and it isn’t all about photos. As a listing agent, it’s important to regularly reinforce our value by doing everything we can to properly price a home for both offline and online marketing to ensure we get the most buyers’ eyes on the listing. In some instances, this could mean moving the price to a rounder number in order to double the views. How are you pricing your listing for sale on the internet? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
