"Yes, I'd use the term more rather than different - more photos, more websites, more online presence, more recommendations to sellers to fix up, clean up, stage their property," said agent Ruth Feldman of Weichert Realtors McCarthy Group in Philadelphia's Mount Airy neighborhood.
"Sales often just take longer, so more marketing is needed," she said. Cleaning up and staging a property "leads to better online photos, which leads to more interested buyers, all circular."
Noelle Barbone, office manager of Weichert Realtors in Media, agrees that these times "demand strong Internet marketing capabilities because consumers are shopping for housing online more than ever before."
The importance of online real estate marketing cannot be overemphasized. When conducting its 2010 survey of buyers and sellers, the National Association of Realtors uncovered these interesting facts:
- 89 percent of buyers used the Internet as an information source.
- 66 percent of Internet buyers drove by or viewed a home they saw online.
- 41 percent of buyers first found their home on the Internet.
- 27 percent of "for sale by owners" used the Internet to help sell their home.
Remember, the experts say, the Internet is not the only tool in the toolbox, but it is the most multifaceted one. No matter who is in charge of creating that online presence for your house, make sure it is linked to every other real estate website possible.
Here's what agent Diane Williams, in Weichert's Blue Bell office, is doing to use the Internet as a marketing tool:
All of her listings go on Truila.com, and her assistant arranges for an automatic e-mail showing the "hits" each week on Truila to each of her sellers. The listings also are on Zillow.com.
