Cover story: Competing for buyers starts online

With so much information at buyers’ fingertips, Realtors and homeowners are not only competing for buyers with the folks selling the house down the street, but also with hundreds of other sellers with similar homes. The process of narrowing the list of prospective homes used to consist of endless drive-bys but now can be accomplished with the click of a computer mouse.

Making your home or listing stand out on the Internet amid of sea of listings can be challenging, but area Realtors say having a well-planned online presence is a must. Today’s buyers typically know what they want and will quickly pass by online listings that offer too little information or don’t appear to meet their criteria right away.

Just as curb appeal is important when selling a home, so is Web appeal.

“Online listings are powerful advertisements for showcasing homes for sale,” says Carol Harriston, a Realtor with Long & Foster in Silver Spring, Md. “If a listing does not adequately describe key selling features of the property, it may easily be overlooked by the buyer.”

Studies have shown that 87 percent of today’s buyers find their home first on the Internet before contacting a Realtor, says Rob Carter of ZipRealty in Vienna, Va. In 1999, just 37 percent used the Internet in their home search, according to data from the National Association of Realtors’ Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

“Forever and a day, Realtors have been controlling information, but since the Internet has blown up, clients come to us with the properties that they want, and our job is to be more knowledgeable than they are,” Mr. Carter says.

He says price is the No. 1 factor that attracts buyers to follow up with an agent on a particular home seen online.

“You won’t get any attention as a seller if the home is not priced right,” Mr. Carter says.

He says buyers know how much house they can afford. If a buyer has a $500,000 cutoff and you’ve listed your house at $505,000 - even though it’s really worth $485,000 - the buyer likely may never see your listing.

Ms. Harriston says buyers surfing the Web for homes are interested, at a minimum, in price, location, the number of rooms, and photos or virtual tours. Experts agree photos are a must, but they also can hurt if they don’t represent the home well.

When listings don’t feature photos or virtual tours, some buyers may assume the property doesn’t show well and it’s not worth their time, Ms. Harriston says. On the other hand, if the listing includes an exterior photo that shows the house in winter weather during spring or summer, the buyers may wonder why the home hasn’t sold and lose interest.

Experts say it’s important to mention features that aren’t necessarily shown or aren’t as obvious in photographs, such as new floors or a new roof.

“Agent remarks that include any upgrades that were done on the house are helpful to buyers, but if left unstated, there may not be a photo that can show that any improvements were done,” Ms. Harriston says.

Mr. Carter says investing in professional photographs is well worth the cost.

“Photos are the first thing that people see, and their first impression is impacted,” Mr. Carter says. “If you can’t capture them first with the picture and price, then you’ve already lost them.”

Story Continues →