I am often gallivanting around on real estate forums giving out sage advice to consumers.  My mantra for about the past, I don’t know, five years or so to consumers has been…look at the photos taken by an agent online.  When a seller is going to get a home ready for sale, they should take the time to see what kind of photos a real estate agent takes.  Homes with cluttered images indicates the listing agent doesn’t know how to help a seller prepare the house for the market.  Homes with dark images means the listing agent is unaware of something called a flash.  Out of focus and crooked images?  Well…that should be a deal breaker right there.

Recently, I had a prospect ask me for a referral to a listing agent in Tuscon, AZ.  I went to my handy dandy real estate agent network and asked for some names to start checking out on their behalf.  While I waited for some names, I decided to put my money where my big mouth is and look at real estate agent marketing photos for listings.  I started looking at images of homes in their potential price range for my potential client (’cause y’all know that luxury homes always have professional photographers, right?).    I looked for clean, uncluttered images that have good to excellent quality that aren’t over processed.   We all know that over saturating a photo and making the grass neon green or cabinets orange…not so good looking.  Overly sharp images just look strange and aren’t visually appealing.

As I flipped through photo after photo, I realized how hard it must be for consumers to find a good agent.  It was mind numbing to look through all of the bad images, and I was intrigued by the agent that thought a picture of a beach ball in the pool was a good marketing shot,  as well as the picture of the dowel rod in the closet.  I guess they were trying to do the ol’ Jedi mind trick telepathing (yeah, I just made up that word) all the great family memories you’d spend in the pool hitting the ball back and forth and how fun shopaholics would spend on clothes to hang in the closet?  I know I wasn’t buying it. Apparently, I am immune to Jedi mind tricks.  Cool.

After 45 excruciating minutes, my eyes rolled to the back of my head, drool started to roll down my chin…oh wait, I wasn’t supposed to share that part, I ended up with three names of agents that consistently did good marketing and a trip to my closet for a new t-shirt. Interestingly, all the agents were from the same company.  What that tells me is that the owner of that company actually cares about the quality of the marketing put out by their agents, which generally means they care about their clients.

I found several that did a pretty good job, but if I was going to refer, I wanted to do it to someone that did excellent marketing.  So dear sellers…as you start chatting with listing agents and thinking about listing your home take the time to go through photos.   Luxury home listings typically look good, but you want is the agent that makes an effort for all listings.  Not all homes are remodeled and easy to shoot and you want the same effort on less expensive homes too.  Photos should be realistic, properly processed, and decluttered.   Anything else…just keep on flipping through images until you find an agent that does that.  Anyone can make a decked out house look good.  It’s harder to make regular homes look their best.

All I know is that taking my advice was harder than I thought.

I’m always chatting with real estate agents around the country to see, whom is doing what in terms of new marketing. I’m always looking for new ideas to market my real estate listings here in the Salem area.  I was chatting with a really great Colts Neck, NJ real estate agent, Andrew Lenza about the use of tours in marketing.  He wrote a post about how a buyer for a property fell in love with the house after watching the virtual tour.

Now I do video tours for my listings, but I was curious about how many local homes for sale in  Salem Oregon specifically, had a virtual tour or video tour as part of their marketing.  In this day and age, I have to say I was surprised.  As of today 17% of homes on the MLS have a virtual or video tour.  17%…that’s it.  Now I can bet that most of those are just the slide-show virtual tours, and not an actual video tour, but I’d literally have to flip through all of them to see those stats and well…that’s not going to happen.

I’m guessing that John Kirk and I are some of the few agents in town that do an actual video tour. I’ve been messing around with different formats for my video tours, and have been enjoying adding that aspect into my marketing.  I do use a professional cameraman to shoot my videos since my tiny camera can’t handle the lighting differences.

So, when you are thinking about selling your home in Salem Oregon and you are looking at marketing plans think about this…

According to the 2009 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 63% of home buyers found virtual and video tours helpful, and 26% somewhat useful.  89% of buyers found some use out of virtual tours, yet only 17% of local agents are using them.  Are you using an agent that is missing the boat?  The buyers like them.  Compare that to the 84% of buyers who found newspaper ads not useful at all. Is your listing agent marketing to the consumer.

Seriously.

If you are getting ready to hire an agent to sell your home and you think the 8 page Sunday spread sounds like great marketing…think again.  The buyers of your home are telling you what THEY want.  The only question that remains is are you hiring an agent to sell your home that is listening.

Selling a home in Salem Oregon

Some time ago, I was chatting with another agent about one of my homes for sale in Salem Oregon.  Her client had made an offer and things were not  going well for a bunch of reasons…reasons that I couldn’t tell her about.   The agent was frustrated with me and said “well we haven’t even talked about why your seller is selling.”  My response, “You know I can’t tell you that because it violates the law.”  Yes, telling another agent WHY you are selling your home violates Oregon law.  Confidentiality is one of our fiduciary duties to our clients.  This is outlined in the Oregon Revised Statues starting with 696.800.  I handled the situation by calling my client and asking permission to disclose what was happening that was causing problems with the offer.

Lisa Heindel, a really great West Bank  New Orleans real estate agent, wrote a post about a similar situation on an MLS listing.   You can read her post about an agent violating their fiduciary duties to their seller, but the general gist was that on the MLS an agent disclosed that her clients were getting a divorce and must sell now.  Now, it is possible in the situation that Lisa outlined in her post that the sellers were aware and okay with the disclosure. If that is the case, then the agent’s actions are legal, if not, then they violated their fiduciary duties to their clients.

One of the challenges of real estate is “the deal.”  Most real estate agents don’t get paid until we “close the deal.”  This system generally works well for buyers and sellers since most don’t have funds to pay for services outside of closing.  The problem with the system is that it is really easy to overstep those fiduciary bounds for the sake of the deal.   In my situation that I mentioned above, the agent was clearly bothered that I wasn’t sharing what she felt she needed to know “to bring the parties closer together.”    What was clear from her tone was that this was a common conversation she had and was surprised that I wouldn’t share:  I wasn’t being “friendly” because if I was friendly I would have shared that information.

If you are a home seller in the Salem Oregon area, I encourage you to chat with your agent at the time of the listing about what they will and won’t say about your motivations for selling.  Honestly sometimes disclosing things can really help a sale along, but this is an important conversation for you to have with your real estate agent.     Personally I think I am friendly while maintaining my fiduciary duties to my clients.   I know that this frustrates other local agents who don’t see it that way, but unless you say it’s okay to disclose…it’s not okay.  Some agent value friendly over fiduciary, to the detriment of their clients.