Archive for September 2011
How to Use Social Media to Help Sell Your House Online
September 27, 2011 | 
Author In such a tough housing market, many vendors are using more and more creative ways to help secure a sale on their property. Social media websites are increasingly becoming part of peoples everyday lives. Facebook has over 500 million active users as at July 2010 and Twitter has 100 million active users. Communication via Tweets and status updates is set to overtake that by email and text messages in the next few years. In essence it has become mainstream and people are using social media in more constructive ways, for instance to sell their homes.
So how can this help you sell your house you may ask? Well unless you have a friend, fan or follower that is looking to buy a house and your house happens to fit you requirements exactly it will be very difficult.
There are instances such as Peter Bouvier in Southampton who created his own website to advertise his home and posted it on Twitter. He claims to have generated 30 viewings and agreed a sale without an estate agent.
In real terms, however, using an estate agent to sell your house will provide you with the best chance. Look out for online estate agents who embrace the power of the Internet to its full potential. An online estate agent should, for example, create a specific page on their website for your property and then create links to it from social media web sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These web sites have created a large following of fans and followers over the last two years. While many fans are not in the market for a home, they’ll often forward the listing to friends who are. The listing gets passed from one page to another, generating a lot of exposure.
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Should I Sell My House Online Or Pay the Estate Agent
Okay, so I want to sell my house, but how do I go about it?
A traditional way to sell my house would be to approach an Estate agent and have them advertise the property. The package normally includes advertising in the areas paper, a photograph in the window of the estate agents shop, a billboard at the front of your house and an estate agent to show the prospective buyer round your house for sale. Oh! I almost forgot about the large chunk of commission that is taken away from the profit you might have received from the sale of your home.
The alternative of course is to get in touch with an expert business online and let them put all of your property information and specs to a huge market for a set price and still have a billboard out in your front garden.
So when I decided to sell my house I used an online site to do the work for me. This gave me the opportunity to have a lot more control over what i was spending on my marketing budget. I cant remember the specific value but I understand that estate agents fees are something like 2 % which is several thousand pounds instead of about one hundred pounds for an expert service, without the fuss and stress. It also means that you can update your information as and when you like and if you decide to change the value of your property you can change it when you will.