The Internet as Your Real Estate Agent
The number of consumers that go online each year to look for a new home is steadily growing year after year. As the Internet gains an even bigger foothold, its use is likely to steadily grow and accomplish much of that growth in unexpected areas. One of those areas has been the selling of real estate online.
For some home sellers, selling a home online is exciting. To be clear, having a real estate agent or at the very least a real estate lawyer throughout any selling process will most certainly help you move along the course of action. Particularly if you are selling your first home, a real estate agent can offer invaluable advice and professionally handle your transaction.
Many sellers will still look at an Internet sale as a terrific way to personally market the property and save on real estate fees. Are you ready to sell your property online though? There are some questions you need to ask yourself before you pursue an Internet sale.
Am I Comfortable with Online-Only Advertising?
The best way to get a person online to look at the information on your property is to catch them while they’re online already. Of course, online real estate advertising is the best way to do so. Some sellers are uncomfortable pursuing only web-based advertising sources and would rather maintain a local perspective through newspaper listings. Figure out which consumer you are before embarking on an Internet sale.
Will the Home Show Well Online?
If you are committed to an online-only sale, you will need sparkling pictures of your property to convince a buyer to pursue an online real estate transaction with your property. For most people that put their homes for sale online, professional photos serve this purpose well.
A professional photographer will know how to showcase your property and get the most out of the shots taken. These photos will take the place of an initial showing for many online real estate buyers, so ensuring that they make a great first impression is critical to the online selling process.
Can I Transition from the Internet to Personal Contact Efficiently?
Just like a newspaper ad or other marketing material, the Internet is merely a tool to help you sell your property, not a replacement real estate agent. The Internet will not negotiate for you or find you a title company automatically. It will also not be the only way you deal with a potential buyer and indeed very quickly a potential buyer will want to talk to you to put a voice with the home instead of a web address.
For most real estate sellers, the Internet can be a great tool for the selling of a home, but probably not the entire process. With local regulations to be considered and a negotiation process to endure (possibly with a buyer’s agent on the other end), a real estate expert of some kind like a real estate agent or real estate lawyer will still need to be involved in the transaction.
However, if you feel that selling your home on the Internet is an exciting prospect and that doing so will motivate you to put more time and effort into the sale, it can be a great option. As long as you remember that it is ultimately a mechanism to put you in personal contact with a potential buyer and not the end-all solution to your sale, you can create a positive, efficient, fun Internet selling process for your property.