Marketing Matters for Portland Real Estate

Junior has a bet with his uncle Bill. He’s downsizing and selling his home in SE Portland, with the asking price of $249,000. Uncle Bill has a second home in Beaverton he’s selling so that he can buy a yacht. His real estate agent has it priced at three-quarters of a million. Which one will sell faster?

There’s a lot at stake here — dinner at Portland City Grill. Junior is pretty sure he has the upper hand, though. He’s been reading the Portland real estate market reports on his smartphone and he knows that according to the RMLS’ 2014 data, homes in his price category make up the largest chunk of the Portland real estate market, representing 34% of all homes sold. On the other hand, Uncle Bill’s five-bedroom mansion is literally in the 1% of the market, and just as there are fewer homes out there in this category, there are fewer buyers.

Junior has a friend who just got her real estate license, and he lists it with her as a favor. After all, his home is in demand and based on his research it’s well priced. Bill, meanwhile, has listed his home with his trusted Portland real estate agent, one who markets aggressively and also happens to be one of the top agents in the metro area.

Junior’s not worried. Statistically, homes in his price range sell the fastest – the average for 2014 was 61 days. He chuckles when he reads the average time on market for homes in Uncle Bill’s price range. 104 days? That’s 70% longer! He can almost taste the spicy calamari.

A week goes by and Junior’s still not seeing his home come up on Zillow. He calls his agent. She tells him it’s in MLS, what more does he want? Meanwhile, Uncle Bill’s home is practically going viral. His real estate agent has created a website for it, complete with a drone video of the exterior of the home and the incredible views of Portland! Junior sees his Uncle’s home listed on the major real estate websites over and over again. Uncle Bill texts Junior to let him know the home is being shown eight times this week!

Junior finally gets his home on Zillow but it seems lost among the thousands of other homes out there. The photos are lackluster. He starts getting the feeling that his sure bet might not be so sure.

In the end, Uncle Bill’s home sold for asking price, after 15 days on the market. Junior’s home was still on the market with no strong offers, so he talked his friend the real estate agent into dropping the listing. Then Junior relisted with Uncle Bill’s marketing saavy real estate agent! Sure enough, his home sold three days later with the new listing agent – multiple offers in hand, over asking.

Fortunately, Uncle Bill was generous enough to buy both of them dinner before he went yacht shopping. As for Junior, he learned his lesson! Statistics aren’t everything — marketing is.

Sound like a fairy tale? It is not. If I only listed my homes on RMLS, I would be reducing my marketing reach by 98%!
RMLS only accounts for about 2% of my overall marketing reach to targeted Portland home buyers.
Marketing works. In 2014 I sold 54 homes in less than 30 days and in 2015 we are on target to beat that number significantly.
Multiple times I have taken over a cancelled or expired listing, re-listed it at the same price with new pictures and a new marketing strategy and then sold immediately, with multiple offers.

Take Uncle Bill’s advice and find a listing agent with experience selling homes like yours, and a strong marketing package to boot.