The Best way to Market your Property Online

In today’s competitive industry the difference between interested buyers and happy sellers and a property that lingers on the market can be as simple as how well you’ve marketed your property online. We asked private property to share a few of their best tips for successful online listings

 

6 Ingredients for a Successful Listing

1         Beautiful photographs

2         All the information about the property

3         A compelling property description

4         A virtual tour or video

5         Floor plans

6         The property’s address

 

Inside Info: How to get a Great Listing Score

Listing scores on property portals such as Private Property encourage property adverts so real you could almost move in. To provide the best possible listing, they’ve chosen the most important criteria in terms of visibility and accuracy and attached scores to them. The higher the score the more “real” the listing.

 

Want to know how to ace your property score?

Listings are rated according to the amount of information. There are, of course, minimum requirements, and meeting them will score you a rating of 25%.

 

Minimum requirements:

• three images

• asking price

• expiry date

• address listed privately

• property description of 140 characters or more

• land size

• home type

• number of bathrooms and bedrooms

 

Add more and raise your score as follows:

+30% for a virtual tour and floor plan

+15% for 12 unique high-res photos

+10% for full address visible

+10% for map of location

+5% for additional price details (levies and rates)

+5% for floor/land area

 

Why bother? The higher the listing score, the higher up in the search results the property will appear, so it’s well worth paying attention to your listing score.

 

What’s the most important part of a listing?

It’s true: a picture really is worth a thousand words. Photos are without doubt the most important part of an online listing. Photos create the most impact, and great pictures can make buyers fall in love with a property before they’ve even seen it in person. Conversely, a grainy, out of-focus picture of what might actually be a fantastic house will put buyers off and may discourage them from requesting a viewing.

 

How to get ahead Online

If you really want to make your property stand out, there’s one simple way to do it: a virtual tour. It’s a great way to showcase a property and allows the buyer or renter to get a 360-degree view of every room in the property. It also gives a nice boost to a property’s listing score and ensures that it will be listed as a “verified listing” because it was visited by a Private Property representative.

 

Avoid these Common Mistakes

Some of the most frequent mistakes real estate agents make when listing on Private Property are below. Make sure you’re better than the rest by avoiding them.

 

  • Using bad photos nobody wants a close-up of a toilet!
  • Adding a generic or very brief property description remember that people want to imagine themselves living here, and to them the property will be unique and wonderful.
  • Not really trying to sell the property and its associated lifestyle – the lifestyle in an area plays a huge part in a buyer’s decision to buy or rent.
  • Not providing all the information available – you’ll save time for yourself and the potential buyer if you outline all the information you have about the property.
  • Leaving out the address – this is very frustrating!

 

NB: Location, location, location…

Once again, the cliché rings true. The most important factor in property is location, so it’s extremely frustrating for a buyer to find a promising property online and not know exactly where it is. Some buyers will pick up the phone to find out the address, but many will move on to the next listing. Be sure to include the address and/or a map with your listing so that you don’t miss out on potential buyers.

 

Final Tip

Double-check that the website that you use to market your property is responsive (as Private Property is). This means that it works beautifully on computer, tablet and mobile. About half the traffic to property websites is through mobile devices and if the site that you use does not cater for them, your listing will be seen by far fewer people.

 

Contact Details

 

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Rona Bekker

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