Why Marketing Matters When Selling Your Home

Such a large portion of the real estate process happens online, whether a buyer is researching current prices for Palo Alto, CA, real estate as they browse available homes, or whether a seller is receiving offers through a multiple listing service. It’s so easy to find information on what’s going on in your local market. So if you’re getting ready to list your Palo Alto home, you’ll want to know why marketing is such a key part of the selling process. In this guide, you’ll find out exactly that.

In order to understand why marketing matters when selling your home, you’ll want to find out more about how the Palo Alto, CA, real estate market is behaving. In Palo Alto, home prices have seen a slight decline in the past year, though the median price for homes overall is more than $3.2 million. Sellers are still seeing high demand for homes in the area, however, and the market as a whole is considered very competitive. Average properties sell for as much as 4% over their original listing prices and turn pending in only 11 days. For top properties? Closing deals show prices up to 10% over asking and pending deals in only eight days.

In a market like this, sellers would be wise to work with a realtor who has a keen understanding of how to market a client’s home for the best possible price. To get a more thorough insight into the local market and strategies for selling your home successfully, consider working with realtor Spencer Hsu, who has been an active part of the Silicon Valley real estate community for years.

As you learn more about the local real estate market in Palo Alto, you’ll be better equipped to figure out a plan with your realtor around how to market to the most buyers. Marketing is a seller’s most powerful tool, particularly because of how buyers behave. At least 90% of home buyers search for new properties online. It’s not only where they go once they’re partnered with an agent but where they go well in advance of that, too. So if you haven’t marketed your property in the most optimized way or are keeping it offline, you’re not going to reach the majority of interested buyers.

That being said, there are ways to market your property to attract buyers. It takes a carefully-curated mix of photography, written descriptions, keywords, and promotion to ensure that your home is going to be seen.

When your online listing is optimized with photos, descriptions, and all the other ingredients it needs, it can maximize your potential reach. If you leaned fully on word-of-mouth or physical marketing methods to showcase your property to buyers, you’d only be able to reach those in your immediate area. Having a listing on a multiple listing service means you can reach buyers across the country, too. Not only that, but it allows your realtor to share your listing on his or her website and thus reach an even wider network of buyers. And if your home is lingering on the market longer than you’d like, the developers who worked on your page can track metrics like the number of visitors who clicked on your listing. Those metrics can provide helpful insights into whether or not you need to tweak your page.

Marketing is the top way to target the right buyers, too. Web developers and content writers will use search engine optimization methods to ensure that your listing comes up whenever buyers search for Palo Alto, CA, real estate online. By incorporating keywords into your listing description that buyers are actually typing into their search bars, your page will be more likely to appear in their search results. Aside from keywords, your marketing team can also run ads and cross-promote your listing on other platforms to ensure the ideal buyers are coming across it.

Marketing only works with the right mix of ingredients. For you to have the most success with your marketing efforts, you might want to consider preparing your home in advance for staging and photography. Here again, a realtor like Spencer Hsu, who has in-depth knowledge about preparing homes for sale in Palo Alto, will be an invaluable resource for you to boost your home’s value and pinpoint its perfect price.

The best way to prepare your home for listing is to invest in these three services. Renovations, particularly to the kitchen and primary bathroom, can increase your home’s overall value and bring you the highest returns on your investment. Alongside renovations, both professional home staging and photography have been shown to increase the price and speed at which homes are sold.

Descriptions of your home and an appealing price will also ensure that your marketing efforts are a success. Home descriptions should be engaging and dynamic, but not embellished. You want to give buyers a sense of what features and amenities can’t be seen in photos. Square footage, the age of the home and roof, and any recent remodels are all great details to include. As for pricing, your realtor will run a comparative market analysis to determine an appropriate dollar amount. You want to make sure it accurately reflects any work you put into the property prior to listing.

When you go to list your home for sale, work with a realtor who can provide full marketing services. Realtor Spencer Hsu is part of the top 1% of real estate professionals in the Bay Area. He walks clients through each step of the selling journey, including marketing properties on multiple listing services, real estate websites, and through physical brochures and signage. So when you’re ready to start down the road toward selling your home, get in touch with Spencer Hsu.