Never one to sit idly by, Greg has come up with another of his “Insanely Great Ideas”. A video tour essentially hosted by the seller, to me, is shear genius. The fact is, we are selling not a bunch of sticks and stucco but a lifestyle each time we market a property. What better way to make it personal than to bring the potential buyer into the home through video, not as someone panning and zooming their way through a bunch of lifeless rooms but as an invited guest to a conversation over coffee?
Now, Greg’s video deals with a renovation, so it is hard to achieve the warm-and-fuzzies where this particular home is concerned, but I think the possibilities are exciting. The problem for me becomes one of time and time management.
I would venture a guess that most of us here have a hard time with delegation. The fact that we are participating on blogs would suggest that we have some grasp of the power of the technological tools at our disposal, and anyone with a feedreader knows that forty-seven hundred (give or take) new spiffy ways to advertise our properties and ourselves are born every nanosecond. Unless I am a Realty.bot with an arsenal of tech geniuses at my disposal, I have to value engineer my way through the maze of exposure opportunities.
Take the process and importance of having killer property photos. I finally had to acquiesce and admit that photos taken by a true professional are superior to any I can take with my own, albeit very expensive, digital camera. All of our properties, from the one-bedroom condo to the multi-million dollar estate now enjoy professional photos. True, there is an added cost involved, and I still cling to the notion that given the right equipment and time commitment I could achieve somewhat comparable results, yet there is a cost savings… of time. My forty or so photos are now delivered to me within 24-hours in hi-res and web-sized format. No more resizing, no more hours on end of Adobe fun, which frees me to do other things. And the result is (eating crow) far better than what I was achieving as a do-it-yourselfer.
Which home would you want to buy?
I’m going to give the seller-hosted tour thing a whirl soon. The question is, will this result in better exposure of the home, a quicker sale and for a higher price? In the end, that is what matters. That, and I suppose, greater personal exposure. And, I don’t think it is so much what we are doing but how we are attempting to expose the end result.
On the exposure note, Kevin Boer at 3Oceans recently remarked on his blog that his site wasn’t being recognized by Google using the search term “San Francisco Potrero Hill Real Estate”, yet within three hours of posting this remark, presto! Intrigued by this, I did a quick Google experiment of my own. Yesterday, I wrote on my home blog about the opening of the gates at our local Miramar Lake. Lo and behold, a search for “Miramar Lake Reopens” places us first in the search return. The search “Miramar Lake Fence” puts us number two behind Channel 10 News. The simple phrase “Miramar Lake” returned us on the first page.
Clearly, the blog format is much more powerful in attracting eyes than my static website could ever be. This is no revelation, but a reminder that I need to be rethinking the direction of our online marketing. I am swiftly coming to the conclusion that the “stand alone” website is an antiquated, flawed delivery system for exposing not only our listings but ourselves. Whether cross-contamination between our website and our blog will be enough in the long term remains a question to me. Much like Greg’s house, I think a full renovation is on the horizon. We may have to take it down to the framing and build it back up.
If only “Best Darn San Diego Realtor” meant something to Google. Oh, wait…
Greg Swann says:
Here’s another twist, kind of a social web sort of thing: At open house, ask visitors if they are willing to do a brief video interview about the house. Then you can tack those on at the end of the video tour for the listing or use them to make a separate film. As you say, we’re selling lifestyle, and people tend to like what other people like them like. If they can see how other people rract to the home, it might affect thir own reaction. Either way, people trust the opinions of disinterested parties more.
May 5, 2007 — 10:14 am
Derek Burress says:
I would buy the first house. 🙂
By the way, since so many of you real estate bloggers live in major league cities, I think I am going to start begging some of you guys to get me some new hats.
Pheonix, San Diego, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angles, and Mary McKnight being near the spring training camp, etc.. Now if I could just find a blogger in Milwaukee I will be okay!
May 5, 2007 — 6:16 pm
Robert Kerr says:
The lower picture has been manipulated: the colors, the fence and the tower have all be digitally changed.
You might find that some potential buyers don’t appreciate photodigital slight-of-hand.
May 5, 2007 — 9:39 pm
Kris Berg says:
R- Actually, they have not been digitally changed. The first was taken some 6 months prior before we took over the listing. Different season, different time of day, different bloom. Sorry to disappoint.
May 6, 2007 — 3:24 pm