How to Properly Advertise a Luxury Home in Portland

I’m shocked and dismayed when I see most luxury homes for sale in the Portland area. There are so many tools that could be used to help these gorgeous homes sell, and so often, few if any are used. Most home buyers will not visit a home unless they are attracted by the online advertisement. Our local RMLS is a great tool, but there are so many other online tools that are necessary – essential to marketing a luxury property online!

1. Use professional photography. This should be a no-brainer, and thankfully at least 50% of the luxury homes I see for sale are now using professionals. If you have a luxury home (really any home) in Portland you should expect your Portland agent to pay the few hundred dollars it takes to get great pictures. It is a shame when a real estate agent takes terrible pictures with their phone or really, it is a shame whenever a Portland real estate agent takes the photos themselves (and they are not professionally trained). Believe me, the vast, vast majority of real estate agents in Portland are not professionally trained to take photos of anything.

2. Use an aerial video. If the home sits on over 1/3 acre or has a breath-taking view, your real estate agent should pay for an aerial video. You cannot capture the “feel” or the “worth” of the land or the amazing view with a still picture! Click here for an amazing sample.

3. Use a 3D walk through tour. The bigger the home is, the more important this advertising tool becomes. Use a 3D walk through to check out these examples. Click here, you won’t be disappointed. I will let the 3D tours speak for itself. This may (in time) become the most important real estate marketing tool online!

4. Use professionally designed home and garden brochures. RMLS gives Portland area real estate agents 440 characters to describe your home publically. Only 440! That amount of space is tough enough for an average home in the area, for a luxury home – forget it. We need more than a paragraph to share with the home buyer all the amazing things that a Portland luxury home has to offer. See our professionally created home and garden brochures.

5. Use “Big Data”. As we all know, not everyone can afford a luxury home. In fact, most of the available buyer pool cannot. With luxury homes, special targeted marketing becomes more important than usual. What use is “Big Data”? While the concept is scary, the best use of “Big Data” is targeted marketing. We can reach (and I’m not giving away the secrets here) people who have been targeted by “Big Data” as most likely to buy a home in Portland soon and those who are making enough to afford a luxury property. We can then reach all of these potential buyers with stellar advertising, putting our luxury home listings directly in front of them.

6. Promoted paid advertising. Visit our standard listing package here, for a complete understanding of why paid promoted advertising is necessary. (In other words, simply getting your home on all the available real estate websites is not enough.) Also, feel free to pick up my Amazon e-book on home selling.