10 Creative Ideas To Help Sell A Home


Orlando Real Estate Marketing Ideas

Whether your home is in great condition or it needs a ton of work, the key to selling is a great marketing plan. As a motivated seller, you want your home to stand out among your competition to potential buyers in any way that you can.

A strong basic marketing plan is good…. but not good enough. There are a lot of little things that are often overlooked by Realtors. These real estate marketing tools take a bit of extra time and effort to prepare but they can have a huge impact on getting your Orlando home sold for top dollar.

If you team up with the right Orlando Realtor who’s willing to put in the extra effort, everybody wins!

These are some often overlooked real estate marketing ideas that have served us well and incorporated into your marketing plan.

Create A Floor Plan

By creating an attractive and professional-looking floor plan which represents your home, buyers get a clear picture of your property at a single glance. In addition to having paper copies available, take it a step further by making it available online.

A floor plan isn’t hard to make either… Your Orlando Realtor should be able to do this for you at no charge. After all, it’s going to benefit them as well by making your home that much more buyer-friendly.

Create A Professional Video

Video is more popular than ever and only continues to trend upwards. Just go to Facebook and you’ll see more videos than images. A professional-looking video tour of your home is important in selling an Orlando home these days.

Our company Youtube Channel “Orlando Realty Consultants” contains a video for every one of our listings and has proved to be an invaluable tool in our home selling arsenal. A well-made property video will engage a potential buyer much more than text and images.

Your Orlando real estate agent should offer this service to you. If they aren’t using video as part of their home selling marketing strategy then you’re missing out on a serious amount of exposure to potential buyers.

 Provide Utility Bills

In my experience, only about ten percent of home buyers will ask for the seller to provide them with a copy of their utility bills so they know what their monthly expenses will be.  Instead of waiting for them to ask for this information, why not have it available before they even think about asking. Buyers will appreciate it … especially the ones that wouldn’t have even thought about asking.

Provide A List of Service Providers

Everybody loves convenience. They want to start enjoying their new home as soon as they get moved in and settled. If you have service providers that you are happy with such as lawn maintenance, pest control, house cleaners, etc… then share this information. Compile a list of service providers that you’re happy with and have it available to your buyers. This will show buyers that you care about your home and that it’s been well maintained since the time you lived there.

Home Owners Insurance Provider

Depending on how experienced home buyers are with the process, they may be clueless in some or even all aspects of the home buying process. Homeowners insurance is a big one not only in price but in service. If you’re happy with your homeowner insurance provider, then you should make your potential buyers aware of what company you’re using. You should even give them the contact info of whom you deal with. You never know, it could end up saving you a few bucks on your next house.

Neighborhood Info

If you live in a neighborhood like mine you’ll be dealing with a very strict homeowners association. It’s best to let your buyers know about the basics. Although this may seem unimportant to some buyers, others will most definitely appreciate knowing what to expect moving forward.

Local School Information

If you’re in a grade-A school district, you should make your buyers aware of that. Even if you don’t have any children of your own. Being in a good school district is advantageous for maintaining property values.  Also, let them know if the local schools have won any awards or are involved in anything else important within the community.

Public Transportation

Although it may not be important to you, it may be extremely important to the new homeowners. Things like bus transportation, train stations, bike paths, etc. are all great to have in your information packet.

Share What You Love About The Town

Provide a written description of the reasons you love your neighborhood. This should be easy to do because it taps into your emotional side… just as it will into theirs. Writing a well-prepared narrative about things you love most about your home and neighborhood is a fantastic way to add a personal touch….emotions sell real estate!

If you think that the above information will be useful in the marketing of your Orlando home, then here are a few more…

  • Touch Up Paint- provide the paint colors of both the inside and the outside of your house so buyers can easily maintain the paint or buy more of the same if need be.
  • Water Shutoffs- If your water shutoff valve is in an unusual place, let the buyers know in case they need to get to it in a hurry.
  • Trash Days- Inform the new buyers of trash and recycling days.
  • Appliance Info- Provide as much information as you can about your appliances including warranty information, etc.

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Why Use A Short Sale Specialist?

Most Realtors in Orlando won’t touch a short sale file while others… even though they’ve never done a short sale… refuse to ask for help which can seriously hurt a homeowner’s chances at selling their home via short sale.

As the leading short sale experts in Orlando, we take on all short sale listings, even the ones that other agents want no part of. You see, it is one thing to process a short sale with just one lender but when you have to deal with multiple lenders and or liens attached it becomes a whole other ball game.

A short sale specialist should know everything there is to know about the process and everything else that goes into facilitating the entire transaction. The agent should be aware of everything from foreclosure postponement, lender guidelines, and the latest state short sale regulations. There’s no situation that should arise that’s is beyond your short sale agent’s comprehension.

Cash Back To Seller Programs

Even though your lender is accepting a loss on what’s owed to them, many times we’re able to get our short sale clients anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000 back at the closing for relocation costs. A short sale agent should be up-to-date on all the various cashback to seller programs offered by different lenders. If they aren’t aware of this it could cost the homeowner thousands of dollars when they need it the most.

How Does A Short Sale Agent Get Compensated?

In a typical short sale transaction, the lender pays the real estate commission from the sale price. Some agents will try to put a short sale processing fee on the CD [Closing Disclosure formerly as the HUD-1] but it must be approved by the lender. You should never, ever pay a real estate agent prior to doing your short sale. Only attorneys are legally allowed to charge an upfront fee to complete your short sale.

If you’re in a situation where you need to do a short sale on your home, be sure to hire a proven expert in order to give yourself the best chance at making the sale happen. For a free consultation with one of our Orlando short sale experts visit https://orlandorealtyconsultants.com or call 407-902-7750.

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Storytelling Sells Homes for Top Dollar!

Creating an emotional attachment for your home can get it sold faster than you can say, Uncle.

Out of the blue, we received a call from potential clients, Doug and Barbara, about them wanting us to list their home for them in Downtown Orlando. They were referred to us by Doug’s parents Rick and Helen.

Three years ago we helped Rick and Helen sell their home in Whisper Lakes and they were very happy with the results we delivered both as Orlando Realtors and consultants.

You see, Rick and Helen both understood the process as well as the unique approach we use to sell Orlando homes to produce the biggest profits for our sellers. Unlike some listing clients, they did everything we asked from them to a T and the result was that we broke the record for the neighborhood producing the highest price sale per sq ft in Whisper Lakes. Even to this day, and that was three years ago…

Rick and Helen had already given us the lowdown on their son and daughter-in-law’s situation so we could be prepared. They also mentioned how Doug and Barbara tried selling their home several times before with no success. So, my first move was to look up their home in Downtown Orlando, the old expired listing.

Although it was a pretty nice house, there were some fundamental mistakes that I noticed immediately. I also noticed that the real estate agent they used was a friend of mine and we had worked on several deals together over the years. And although he was a friend and a decent agent, he doesn’t have the same approach or the mentality that we have to sell Orlando Real Estate.

Beware of the “List it and Leave it” Realtor…

Unfortunately, he’s one of the thousands of Orlando real estate agents that just list it and leave it. And although he’s a friend, I’m not in the business of sharing my secrets of selling homes for maximum profit with my competition. See, we use a psychological approach to sell homes in Orlando.

When we interview a potential seller, we really put them through the wringer. It’s important to do this so we can find out what our client’s motivation is. Once we have this information, we come up with a strategy and plan so that we can achieve the desired results. Why cause not everyone’s motivation is the same. That’s why every single one of our listing clients gets a completely customized plan of action to achieve their desired result.

Even though the success rate isn’t 100%, by doing this we get results that far exceed our client’s expectations. So when Doug and Barbara came in for their initial consultation, their motivation became crystal clear to me. They had already moved to a different home and didn’t want to continue making two mortgage payments nor did they want to become landlords by renting out the home they vacated.

At this point, they just wanted to sell their Orlando home for top dollar as quickly as possible. You are probably thinking…..Who doesn’t want to sell for top dollar as fast as possible?… Well, not everyone needs to sell immediately.

Some homeowners don’t need to sell immediately. And in that case, they have the luxury of being able to “test the market”. Others are facing foreclosure and need a short sale. Over the years we’ve successfully worked with almost every situation imaginable, we just have to know what the client’s motivation is so we can come up with a game plan.

Back to Doug and Barbara’s story… We came up with a pretty aggressive game plan for them that included some pretty costly repairs and upgrading, like putting in Stone countertops as well as a fresh coat of paint and new carpeting in some rooms. Since we regularly rehab homes in Orlando, we were able to get them reasonable pricing on all the repairs by using our own contractors. This undertaking was not cheap, but 100% necessary for Doug and Barbara to get the results they needed.

After some intense planning and coordinating of schedules between sellers and contractors, the work was done in less than 2 weeks. Once the house was showroom ready it was time to call in our professional photographer (you must have awesome and amazing photos to sell a house for maximum profit). In this particular house, our photographer went out twice at different times of the day just to get the right lighting.

Doug and Barbara were stressed out!

They had questions about the process like…  “Why are we spending money on a house we want to sell?” I asked them to please trust me. And because they were referred to us by Doug’s parents, they did exactly that. I’m very careful to never guarantee anyone specific results, but I do guarantee that by following our recommendations and game-plan, they will be in the best position possible to get the results they need.

Don’t tell anyone but, our “secret” is to try our best to create an emotional attachment between a buyer and the house. In order to do this properly, there are certain steps that you must follow, sometimes it’s something major, sometimes it’s just a little tweaking, all geared towards finding the right emotions of the home.

It’s true, buying a home should be an economical and logical decision and you should try and keep your emotions out of it. However, when I’m working with buyers, despite me warning them about keeping their emotions in check when we’re actively looking at homes, most of them just can’t help getting emotional once they see “the one”. There’s no denying that buying a new home involves EMOTIONS.

This is the top reason we do everything we do… Professional photos, staging, videos, buzz campaign, cookies in the oven at the open house, it’s all choreographed to create an emotional attachment to the home.

This is what most Orlando realtors just don’t understand. They have no understanding of human psychology, therefore they don’t understand emotional trigger points or “hot buttons”. They have no clue about the “rule of 3’s” in telling a story. This means they don’t have a detailed approach to achieve the goal of maximum profits for their clients.

Sellers who want to half-ass what we recommend to do in our initial meeting can’t expect to achieve the highest dollar amount for their home which is something we tell them going in.

I’m very upfront with my seller clients and if they don’t agree with my recommended listing price on their home as-is and they’re not willing to do the needed repairs to get the highest dollar amount, then I wish them all the best and move on.

Note to Sellers: Sellers should beware of listing agents who agree with whatever listing price the seller wants. They’ll just wait for you to get frustrated and drop the price. This can cost the seller thousands in profit!

Back to Doug and Barbara. After all the repairs and upgrades were complete, listing day and the open house were upon us. Our patented “33 step media blitz” campaign always delivers great results for our open houses. In the 12-4 pm window, we had for walk-ins, about 20-25 buyers, buyers agents and of course, tire kickers [that came for free cookies] walk through the home with some very positive comments flying through the air.

It was a great turnout that produced 4 solid offers by the very next day. And I’m happy to say that we got $4,000 over the asking price because it turned into a bidding war [the only kind of war I condone] The sellers even ended up buying about a third of the furniture from our staging company!

I asked the buyers at the closing, what they liked about the house. They said it just blew every other listing they saw out of the water, and they could totally see themselves raising their young family there.

Mission…. Accomplished! We achieved our client’s desired outcome by implementing the power of human emotion.

Few realtors in Orlando understand the power of storytelling and how it can be used to sell houses. We learned a long time ago that conveying your message, principles, and thoughts through telling a story is more powerful and engaging than anything else you could do. That’s why we consider ourselves storytellers that happen to be in the real estate business. If you would like more info on selling for top dollar visit us at https://orlandorealtyconsultants.com/

I hope you enjoyed the story!

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Orlando Short Sales… Know The Rules!

Don’t let the name fool you, Orlando short sales take a long time! The reason being is that a short sale means that the bank loses money so you can’t blame them for not being in a rush. This can however be helpful to the homeowner by allowing them time to get their house sold and avoiding foreclosure. If a lender approves a short sale on a home, it means that they are allowing the homeowner to sell their home for less than what’s owed on the mortgage.

Recently, the United States Treasury Department changed the rules to make the short sale process easier and more efficient. Usually, the short sale process will drag on for several months and even up to a year in some cases. And even then there was no guarantee that the lender would agree to a short sale. That’s why there are so few Orlando short-sale realtors willing to specialize in this area of real estate.

Some short-sale agents remain skeptical and think that nothing will change. Orlando short sale specialist Jenny Zamora, Broker at Orlando Realty Consultants “I will be the first to shout from the rooftops if the short sale process becomes faster than what it is”.

These are some of the changes that are being put in place:

  • Potential buyers must submit a pre-approval letter from a lender together with their offer on the home.
  • Lenders have to either approve or deny a short sale offer within ten business days.
  • To protect the homeowner from being forced out, the short sale lender must give a 45 day closing period unless the seller agrees to a lesser amount of time.
  • If someone buys a house via short sale, they cannot sell it for at least 90 days. This scenario is fine for someone planning to live in the home but it presents a problem for investors looking to do a quick flip.
  • Orlando short sales done through the HAFA program [Home Affordable Alternatives Program] can’t be sold to a friend or relative or business partner of the seller.
  • A maximum of $3,000 can go to holders of junior liens to release a lien on their property
  • A lender may not foreclose while the house is being marketed for sale during the short sale process.
  • Lenders may no longer charge fees to borrowers who wish to pursue a short sale instead of a foreclosure.
  • Lenders may no longer lower realtor commissions after an offer has been received.

Jenny Zamora, Orlando Realtor, and short sale specialist are overall happy with the changes although she is doubtful these changes will increase her already outstanding turnaround time of 30-45 days to complete a short sale.

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Inspiration Through Short Sales

 

Inspiration can be found anywhere and it’s all up to the individual and what he or she is inspired by. It can be found on a slow walk on the beach or even traveling 90 miles per hour on a speed boat.

 

Something that’s always inspired me has been helping people. Maybe it’s the mother in me, but whether it’s helping my sons put on their soccer cleats or helping someone to short sale their home and avoid foreclosure, the biggest reward for me is seeing that look on someone’s face when they’ve accomplished something that they thought to be impossible.

 

 
Sometimes it’s easy to get derailed from what’s really important in life. One minute you can be in a great mood just driving down the road then an impatient driver cuts you off or you get a flat tire. Then, all of a sudden your in a bad mood and frustrated and you allow it to ruin part or even the rest of your day.

 

 

When you look at the big picture, instances like these are just little obstacles that are part of everyday life and making them out to be anything more is just a waste of your time and energy. So don’t sweat the small stuff!

 

 
Working as a short sale realtor in Orlando, I’ve had clients get discourage and frustrated about how long it’s taking their lender to process their short sale, or if it will even get approved! They have to live with a sense of uncertainty about what the outcome will be which can be mentally draining. Although their frustration is warranted, it’s a complete waste of time and energy to worry about what’s out of your control.

 

 
Having completed thousands of short sales over the years, I’ve become a counselor for distressed homeowners in helping them to deal with the emotional side of the process. Potentially losing your home can be stressful and even mentally crippling, especially when you have a family that’s depending on you to keep a roof over their head.

 

 
A real estate agent’s role in completing a short sale is basically a middle person between the seller and the short sale lender. If a seller takes their own sweet time in sending me documents that the bank is requesting yesterday, then they’re only hurting themselves. In this case procrastination is the homeowner’s worst enemy.

 

 
I try to get my clients to maintain a positive outlook on the situation and focus on the desired results, which is to complete the short sale on their house and avoid having a foreclosure on their record and even get them a few thousand bucks back from the bank at the closing. Keeping a positive attitude throughout the process will only make things easier and help to reach their goal.

 

 

Although short sales are never guaranteed, if you have the right team fighting for you, then at least you’re giving it your best shot. If you or someone you know need help with an Orlando short sale, give me a call 407-902-7750 or visit https://orlandorealtyconsultants.com/short-sale-experts/

 

Orlando short sale agent

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