Let Your House Sell Its Self

When buying, people make an instant gut decision as to whether they like something or not, if they like it they will move to the next stage of buying, finding out more about it.

Now imagine you are walking down the main street of your local town and out of the corner of your eye you notice a big sign in a shop window. In big red letters its says SALE NOW ON and you see that it is the clothes shop known for its quality clothing. Curiosity gets the better of you and you decide to venture into to the shop to see what bargains you might be able to grab. As you enter the shop the glare of the lights temporarily blinds you, slowly as your eyes begin to adjust to the bright lighting, you gaze around the shop to see what offers there are.

Immediately in front of you, just a few feet from the shop entrance, you see a sign that says "Everything Half Price" on this rail. Without thinking you head towards the rail, almost as if you were being drawn by an invisible force. You start to browse through the brightly coloured clothes hanging on the rail, but nothing catches your eye. Feeling the cool breeze blowing through the open door, you look up and scan the shop with your eyes and across the shop you see a sign that says "25 % off this rail", you meander your way through the maze of non sale displays over to the 25% sale rail. As you browse through the clothes on this rail, on the back of your neck you can feel the nice relaxing warmth from the lights overhead. Nothing on that rail catches your eye.

Gradually you lift your head up and slowly your eyes scan the rails displaying the clothes, a pink mid length sleeve top with a sequins detail around the V neck, hanging on the top rail of the wall display opposite, the sequins glint in the white of the spot light shining on it. Immediately you think to yourself, "Now that looks nice" and you walk over to have a closer look. You stretch up with your right hand and lift the hanger off the top rail. You look at the price tag and see that is within the price you would normally pay for a top, but it is not your size. Suddenly you hear a polite voice say "Excuse me, can I help you."

You turn your head and see it is the immaculately dressed tall female shop assistant. "That is a lovely top you have chosen.", says the glamorous assistant. You say, "Yes it is, but do you have it in my size". The shop assistant looks at the other tops on the rail and says "Unfortunately we don't, however have you seen these other tops on this rail", she says. "They are the same style, but slightly more expensive, but better quality than the one you have in your hand." Sub consciously you fleetingly, feel the warmth of the assistant's hand on your elbow, as she says "Follow me, you can try it on, the changing room is this way".

You make your way to the changing room and try the top on and you look in the mirror and you are not quite sure if it is the top for you. The shop assistant comes over to you and adjusts the sleeve and her hand brushes your elbow, as she does this she says "That top looks perfect on you, the colour and high quality is just you". You decide to buy it and walk over to the till to pay for it, the assistant says that will be £55.00 please, you think to yourself, normally I wouldn't pay over £40 for a top, but I like it and the lovely assistant said it looked good and it was just me, the extra money is worth it.

Now you are probably thinking what does the above have in common with selling houses.

A lot, firstly it was a lengthy piece of DESCRIPTIVE text, which could have been reduced considerably if we had included a photo of the shop front and one of the shop interior.

Also what you have just read above is the same process to how houses used to be sold, before the Internet came along..

Before the Internet

Buyers looked in Estate Agent's windows, they saw something they liked in the window within their price range and matched their initial criteria - e.g. 3 bedrooms and 2 reception rooms for around £200,000. They would go into the agent's shop and request the particulars of the property they saw in the window.

The Estate Agent would then show them the particulars for the property whilst at the same time asking some questions about their circumstances, e.g. do they have a family, have they sold their house, what is their budget.

The estate agent would then take the particulars of a similar property, normally slightly bigger and more expensive, probably a larger garden and hand it to the buyer. The agent would use their sales skill and knowledge to try and sell the buyer something just outside their budget, the agent would say things like, the bedrooms are bigger, it has a fantastic garden for your children to play in, great value for money. The buyer would now be considering not only a property of the right size and price, but one which is slightly bigger and marginally more expensive. The agent would know that the buyer would more than likely view both properties and end up putting an offer in on the more expensive and larger property.

Also if the buyer standing in the agent's shop had sold their house, the agent was able to steer the buyer towards a property where the seller wanted a quick sale. The agent would say something like "The vendor of this property is looking to move very quickly, I was only taking to him the other day and he was thinking about dropping the asking price price by £10,000, I am sure at a push we could get him to reduce the price by £15,000. You would certainly get a bargain if we could get him to do that". The estate agent already knew the vendor was thinking of dropping the price by at least £20,000. The agent is then in a win win situation because, the buyer thinks they are getting a bargain and the agent can tell the seller he will get an extra £5,000 than he thought he would. The agent comes out on top.

Problems With Selling Property On The Internet

Nearly all estate agents have their own website with a searchable database of property for sale, but the majority of searching for residential property is done via specialist property search engines like PropertyNews or RightMove.

With the Internet, buyers are able to narrow down the results of their searches using similar criteria ( like type of house, number of bedrooms, location) as if they were looking in an estate agent's window, but this is where the problems start. Property sites like PropertyNews and Rightmove churn out results for a number of estate agents, in most cases you get 30+ results, its like looking in all the local estate agent' windows at once.

When the search results are returned, they normally have a photo, a brief description of the property and its address. Buyers of property use the same process as in the clothes example above, they will look at the photographs and if they find one "That looks nice" they will click on to find out a bit more information about it.

This is the tricky part, making the photograph of the property you are selling catch the eye of the person searching - this photo needs to show everything your property has to offer in one single eye-catching photo.

Take a look at the photographs below, just scroll you mouse over the estate agent's picture to see what the agent didn't include, but we did.

Traditional Estate Agent's Photos	Elevated Aspects' Photos






I think you get the picture now!

As you can see from the above our photographs tell more about a property for sale than the conventional agents photographs. Can you really afford for your photograph to be brushed to ones side because it didn't catch a potential buyers eye. In these difficult times it is important to make buyers think they are getting great value for money. Imagine there are two photos of large houses, both have large gardens, a paddock with stables and ample parking, both are of modern style and both priced at £495,000, displayed in adjacent to one another in the search results. One property has the estate agent's standard front elevation shot (left hand column above), the other has the photo taken by us (right hand column above) showing all the features.

With more non face to face communications in our modern world and the fact that many vendors do their own viewings, Estate Agents have very little chance to sell a property to abuyer like they use dto before the internet, so it is important to make the buyer "fall in love" with your property at the earliest opportunity - i.e. when they first see a picture of it.

Which photo illustrates value for money? Well of course it is the Elevated Aspects photo because you see everything you are getting for the asking price.

Let Your House Sell Its Self

I think you get the picture now!

Can You Really Afford Not To Show Everything Your Property Has To Offer!

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