Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

In today’s buyer’s market, Kansas City home sellers need to be sure they hire a listing agent who’s up on current real estate trends and prepared to market a home in the places buyers are looking. If you’ve interviewed a Kansas City listing agent recently and the Realtor told you that open houses are going to be a prime basis for getting your home sold, that’s a farce. Open houses sell between 1 to 2 percent of homes and agents who are doing them are looking to turn the tire kickers into buyers many months down the road. That’s just the reality of open houses.

My group’s marketing plan is extremely thorough and goes far beyond the traditional marketing methods most home sellers have come to expect. We know that 90% of Kansas City home buyers will first view online the home they end up purchasing. Many agents have started putting their listings in a few prominent places, but we put our listings in ALL of the prominent places. I tell sellers to check a few weeks after we have their homes listed and let me know if they see anywhere important that we don’t have their home listing. I can go months without hearing any suggestions from home sellers and that reinforces that we’re marketing our listings well.

Whenever a home seller does have a suggestion, we thoroughly review it and make a decision on either adding it to our marketing plan or explaining why it’s not worth the investment. One of the reasons we’re so organized is because we have one marketing plan for our homes. We don’t blow in the wind and do ineffective print advertising when the occasional seller asks about it. Every moment and dollar that we’d spend on such things would take resources away from doing the things that truly get homes sold in today’s real estate market. This means that we provide the same marketing plan whether the home is a $100,000 home or a million dollar home. So the next time you speak with a listing agent be sure the agent isn’t basing their marketing plan on ineffective marketing methods like open houses, print advertising and relying on the MLS as the only real tool for getting your home sold.

Posted by Jason A. Brown