We spend a lot of time combing through listings in the San Antonio MLS as real estate agents. These listings are the lifeblood of our industry and without them, real estate wouldn’t be quite the same. One of the defining pieces of the MLS is the data about all the homes for sale. That data is used on countless sites in the marketing of the property to the buyer.
Flipping through homes, we often see listings with only a few photos, one line descriptions, or a lack of details in the various sections that help give additional information about the home. The details are one of the most important parts of any marketing plan. Every ounce of marketing is related to this source, especially internet marketing, which has become crucial in selling homes. When your listing is syndicated to sites like Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, or a million other sites out there, including our home search, it is the original listing data that is displayed to the public. Most of the big sites pull in photos and what we call the “remarks” section (a brief description of the house). The remarks section is your agent’s chance to describe your house, tell the world the interesting facts about it, and draw buyers to come view it.
Not every agent is a gifted writer or fantastic photographer and many employ people to do these things for them for that reason alone. Even if your agent isn’t the greatest writer or photographer, they should still be striving to give your listing the most detail and the best look it can possibly have. But, often we see homes with four photos (the MLS allows up to 25) or homes with descriptions like “3BR/2BA in nice community.” That’s it. No details, no reasons to investigate further. With that kind of lack of detail it might as well read “house for sale” and nothing else.
Detailed listing information will make your home stand out.
What can you do to make sure you’re getting the most out of your listing? Well, we’d be crazy if we didn’t say hire one of our agents, but in all seriousness, no matter who you select as your agent, make sure your listing contains as much info as possible. Buyers want to know the details before they get in their car and make an appointment to see your home…don’t let them click through to the next house. Ask your agent to show you what they’ve entered into the MLS, google your property address (you’d be amazed how many people do this to find additional info on homes), look at your agent’s website – look where the buyers are looking. Think like a buyer and take a look at your listing. Would you want to investigate further and potentially go see the house? If the answer is no, then there is still work to be done.
image courtesy of Beegee49 (and no, it’s not a photo from the San Antonio MLS)
I’m really glad that you talked about having detailed information when you have house listings so that things stand out. I’ve been wanting to get our house listed for a while, and I think that being able to have an agent help us add the detailed information would be helpful. I’m going to have to see if we can find a good agent to help us with our house listing and hopefully add the detail to get it to stand out to a potential buyer!
The more detailed the data that goes into the MLS, the better. It’s like the old coder saying, “garbage in, garbage out.”